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CLEVELAND — There are losses. And then there are non-competitive debacles. File the Bulls' 108-94 loss to the Cavaliers on Monday night at Quicken Loans Arena under the latter. "Everybody has to be on the same page. Until then, we're going to continue to get our ass kicked," Derrick Rose said. "We're not communicating while we're on the floor to one another. Everybody is quiet. Trust plays a part, but communicating on defense in a team sport is huge. "We've got to give a better effort. It seems like we're not even competing. It's (bleeping) irritating." For the second straight game, the Bulls never led and played a low-energy game. That it came after a day off should be as troubling as these statistics: A 25-point deficit. A 54-40 rebounding deficit, including 20 offensive rebounds allowed. A 19-7 deficit in second-chance points. Just seven fast-break points and 37.5 percent shooting. No wonder coach Tom Thibodeau said everything is on the table, including lineup or rotational changes. The defining characteristic of the Bulls under Thibodeau has been a gritty, relentless, workmanlike team up for most any challenge, undermanned or not. Energy and intensity always were in abundance, even if healthy bodies were not. That such underwhelming efforts are accumulating with more frequency is what is so unexpected. "We have to decide when enough is enough," Thibodeau said. "Right now, we're not a multiple-effort team. We're not concentrating. We're not doing our jobs. We have to change that." In fact, the Bulls, who now have lost six of eight, very much resemble a team in need of an All-Star break. Unfortunately, that doesn't come for 23 days. The showdown between the preseason favorites for the Eastern Conference finals pairing revealed a Cavaliers team that has faced adversity and now won three straight and a Bulls team headed in the opposite direction after their 13-2 stretch in December. When perhaps the Bulls' best ball movement comes when Tony Snell fires a pass to a wide-open David Blatt — yes, the Cavaliers coach — for a turnover, it's not your night. Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau after loss to the Cavaliers: 'The way we're playing is not acceptable' Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau after loss to the Cavaliers: 'The way we're playing is not acceptable' SEE MORE VIDEOS "We have to practice harder," said Taj Gibson, who had 10 points, 10 rebounds and five blocks. "We can't be taking days off. We have to play with some energy. "We have the personnel. It comes from within. There's nothing more you can say. It's all about how much heart you have and how determined you're going to be." Gibson's words echo what Thibodeau has bemoaned since the start of training camp, the lack of cohesive practice time. "As a coach, he has a right to say that," Rose said. "But it's just competing. I think guys are just holding on to the ball too long. But on the offensive side, to tell you the truth, I'm not even worried about that. It's defensively, like we give up so many easy baskets, man. Over time it gets to you.'' Thibodeau called for Rose, who sat the entire fourth quarter, with a little under five minutes remaining and the Bulls down 19. Thibodeau then changed his mind and sent Rose back to the bench. "I just decided where the game was, it just didn't make sense at that point," Thibodeau said. "I thought if we had it around 15 or less, we could maybe take one more run at it. I didn't feel it. I thought the group that was in there had cut it down so I wanted to see what would happen with them." Layups: Doug McDermott landed on the active list for the first time since undergoing surgery to repair a small meniscus tear in his right knee on Dec. 13. The first-round pick, who had fallen out of the rotation before the surgery, didn't play. ... Joakim Noah, who once famously mocked Cleveland for its lack of vacation appeal, didn't travel here and missed his third straight game with a sprained right ankle. An MRI showed nothing serious and he's day to day. ... Mike Dunleavy missed his 10th straight game with a jammed right ankle. He has begun running but not always without discomfort. kcjohnson@tribpub.com Twitter @kcjhoop |
Congress Passes Bill To Avert Government Shutdown Enlarge this image toggle caption Mark Wilson/Getty Images Mark Wilson/Getty Images Updated at 7:14 p.m. ET After a monumental legislative victory on taxes this week, Republicans in Congress have been scrambling to avoid a chaotic government shutdown that could overshadow their signature tax bill before it even gets signed into law. The House and Senate passed a spending bill on Thursday that would push a deadline to fund the government back from midnight on Friday to Jan. 19, allowing lawmakers to head home for the holidays without resolving much of their unfinished business. In addition to most Republicans, about a dozen House Democrats and several Senate Democrats also voted for the bill. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had put it on the GOP to keep the government open. "The Republicans control the Congress. They control the House, they control the Senate, and they have the signature in the White House. They have the votes to keep government open. They don't need us to keep government open," she said Thursday. Still, President Trump sought to toss blame for the tense moment at congressional Democrats on Twitter on Thursday morning. The continuing resolution that Republicans in the House had released early Thursday punts tough decisions related to long-term government spending, immigration and defense into the first part of the new year. Republicans needed at least some bipartisan support for the measure in the Senate, as the bill requires 60 votes to be approved, and Republicans control just 52 seats there. In addition to keeping the government open, the legislation extends short-term authorizations for the Children's Health Insurance Program, as well as the Veterans Choice Program, which allows veterans to receive health care at community providers outside of the Veterans Affairs system. The bill also temporarily extends a controversial provision in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, Amendments Act, known as Section 702, which was set to expire at the end of the year. The FBI and other intelligence agencies have said it is critical to fighting terrorism. The stopgap bill includes a nod to defense hawks in Congress who were hoping for caps on defense spending to be lifted, another point of friction with Democrats being delayed. It provides funds to repair two naval ships that were damaged this year in the Pacific, as well as money to bolster ballistic missile defense. A big disaster relief funding bill for areas hit by hurricanes and wildfires was passed in the House as well, but it appears the Senate will hold off on voting on that bill until January. In the new year, when bipartisan budget debates begin again, a pair of major polarizing topics loom. Congressional Democrats, and some Republicans, are hoping for legislation to protect thousands of undocumented immigrants brought into the U.S. as children. There had been talk that Democrats could threaten a government shutdown to force a vote on the measure, known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, but those whispers quieted as the deadline grew closer. Trump ordered an end to the Obama-era protection program in September, but White House legislative affairs director Marc Short said Thursday that the president was always hoping for Congress to come up with a legislative solution. "We believe we'll have a resolution to that in January or February," Short told NPR's Rachel Martin. Politics Lawmakers Will Find A Way To Keep The Government Open, Short Says Lawmakers Will Find A Way To Keep The Government Open, Short Says Listen · 7:12 7:12 And a pair of senators are poised to propose legislation to stabilize insurance markets, after the Republican tax plan zeroed out the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate that had required people to buy health insurance. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, had committed to getting legislation passed by the end of the year, but she and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., have now committed to a proposal "after the first of the year." Collins and Alexander said in a joint statement that they would be waiting to unveil the legislation because "it has become clear that Congress will only be able to pass another short-term extension to prevent a government shutdown and to continue a few essential programs." Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., pledged again on Thursday to bring that legislation up for a vote next year in an interview with NPR. |
WASHINGTON: Despite objections from India and some US lawmakers, the Obama administration on Friday defended its decision to sell eight F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan."We support the proposed sale of eight F-16s to Pakistan to assist Pakistan's counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations. Pakistan's current F-16s have proven critical to the success of these operations to date," state department spokesperson Helaena W White said.The Pakistan Embassy in Washington appreciated the Obama administration's determination to go ahead with the proposed sale, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported on Saturday.The US government announced on February 12 that it had approved the sale to Pakistan of up to eight additional F-16 fighter jets, as well as radars and other equipment, in a deal valued at $699 million.India and some US lawmakers have objected to this sale, saying that the F-16s have not been useful in such operations and would ultimately be used against India.India had said that it disagreed with the US's rationale that the supply of F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan will help combat terrorism but at the same time it had noted that its ties with Washington were not a single-issue relationship.At least two US senators have announced they intend to try and stop the sale despite the administration having vetted the deal with backdoor approvals.On Thursday, senator Rand Paul joined his colleague Bob Corker, the senate foreign relations committee chairman, in opposing the sale, saying he has introduced a resolution of disapproval seeking to halt all arms sales to Pakistan. If passed, the measure would also stop the F-16 sale , which needs to be approved by the Senate before March 12.They appear to have the backing of veteran senator John McCain, whose three decades in the Senate has overseen billions of dollars in foreign aid to Pakistan, but who now has second thoughts about the F-16 supply. "I would rather have seen it kicked over into the next administration," McCain said on Thursday, saying he was "conflicted" on the timing of the announcement."This is really a tough one for me and for a lot of people. I think the timing was really bad on this issue," the former presidential candidate told the Defense Writers Group on Thursday, pressing for a hearing by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where the administration will have to explain and defend the deal to a country many lawmakers believe uses terrorism as a policy tool.Opposition to the deal is bipartisan. "Pakistan must prove it is taking substantive steps to go after all terrorist groups in the country before we move forward with the sale of F-16s," said California congressman Ami Bera, an Indian-American Democrat. "So far, Pakistan has not shown willingness to go after groups like the Haqqani network and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is why I cannot support a sale at this time."While US lawmakers have until March 12 to block the sale, such action is rare since deals are usually well vetted before any formal notification, and it remained unclear if lawmakers would thwart the deal. |
He's not a fan of President Trump, but Bryan Cranston says he has a message for anyone who's hoping that the commander in chief fails: "F--- you." "President Trump is not the person who I wanted to be in that office, and I've been very open about that. That being said, he is the president," the former "Breaking Bad" star - who once pledged to move out of the country if Trump won the White House - told The Hollywood Reporter. "If he fails, the country is in jeopardy. It would be egotistical for anyone to say, 'I hope he fails,'" Cranston, 61, explains. "To that person I would say, f--- you. Why would you want that? So you can be right?" Cranston, star of the new film, "Last Flag Flying," added that he wants Trump to succeed. "I honestly do. ... And if you've got a good idea that helps the country, oh man, I'm gonna support you." Cranston, who backed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 race, has been a vocal critic of Trump, saying last year of the real estate mogul, "There's nothing there." In an interview just days before the November election, Cranston said he would "definitely move" if Trump became president. "It's not real to me that that would happen," the Emmy Award-winning actor said at the time. "I hope to God it won't." "I don't care if you're a Republican and I'm a Democrat or whatever, I don't care. A good idea's a good idea. Let's do that," Cranston said in the Monday interview. "We've got to get away from this idea that our country is political football, and someone with a different opinion is the enemy. Assume they love this country as much as you do, and there's always room for improvement. How can we make it better?" |
Welcome to the Survivor: Heroes vs Healers vs Hustlers preseason! THR's Josh Wigler reports from his exclusive visit to the show's shooting location in Fiji, where he interviewed host Jeff Probst, as well as the 18 new castaways battling it out for the million-dollar prize. Click here to make sure you're all caught up on our stories from the island, including our weekly podcast series "First One Out," an in-depth look at all of the new players, culminating in an interview with the first person voted out of the season. By stepping into the elements, Simone Nguyen has stepped out of her element. As the final Hustler tribe member on the board (not to mention the final castaway in our player profile series) sits across from me in Fiji, she's processing the experience of traveling away from the United States for the very first time, while simultaneously coming closer to her roots than ever before. "This is my first time leaving our great United States. It feels insane," says Simone. "We had to do a graduate thesis [at Columbia University], where I majored in East Asian Studies. I studied my parents' experiences being refugees and their perspectives on the war. I've never left the country. We grew up pretty poor. I was never fortunate enough to reconcile all of my parents' experiences with my own. That means I've had a very divorced experience from the South Pacific. Now here I am, in Fiji, swimming in the water where my parents' boat fled from the Vietnam War." Simone tells the story of her parents, who fled Vietnam when Saigon fell in 1975: "They got in a boat to escape to somewhere — anywhere but Vietnam. Their boat was stopped in the South China Sea by pirates. They basically floated on the water for a few days and they were so thirsty and so hungry. They basically prayed until they got to shore, and they did, in Thailand, where they spent a couple of years in a refugee camp. My parents are pretty devout. My mom is Catholic and my father is Buddhist. Made for a pretty interesting marriage — which is probably why they're divorced!" Eleven years after her parents arrived in the United States, Simone was born. Not quite three decades later, Simone's journey toward the South Pacific began, thanks to another seismic historical moment: the events of November 8, 2016. "It depressed me greatly," Simone says of President Donald Trump's election. "I was mortified and I was terrified that a reality star became president. I dealt with it the way so many people do, which is by binge-watching television. In my case, it was Survivor. I thought to myself: 'I guess you can become a reality star and be president, so there's no reason why this shouldn't be me! And if anyone calls me frivolous after this, then clearly they don't know what country they're living in!' So I said, 'Why not me?'" Is this the beginning of the story for future President Nguyen? For now, Simone is focusing on one challenge at a time: conquering Survivor. She's a recently indoctrinated fan, clearly, given the time table, and she gives credit to her boyfriend Steve, as well as a certain castmember from season 32, for her newfound relationship with the show. "My boyfriend is a diehard fan," she says. "The season that got me to fall in love with the show was Kaoh Rong, with Tai, who looks exactly like my dad — but my dad is smaller, and his English isn't as good. Like Tai, he's not really built for this game. He doesn't like to lie to people. He hates deceiving people. When I thought about Tai, who's like my dad out there, I thought to myself, I could just as easily go out there and have a good time and do everything Tai was doing — except I wouldn't feel bad about it." Indeed, Simone says she has what it takes to compete on Survivor thanks to a few factors, including the "strong sense of civic duty" that fuels her work as a diversity advocate. "We deal with a lot of the external pressures of being a diverse minority in a law firm environment or in the government or whatever you want to do, and we deal with the psychological leadership aspects of getting Asian-American attorneys to look at the stereotypes around them and ask themselves, 'Do these stereotypes apply to me, and what can I do so these stereotypes don't define me?'" she says of her line of work. "For every person who wants to advance or become a judge or a partner at a big law firm, there are always obstacles within a person's self that they have to overcome. But working in diversity and helping them become leaders and game-changers is a big part of why I feel empowered every day." Listen to the podcast below to hear from Simone and the rest of the Hustlers in the fourth episode of our preseason series, "First One Out." Simone plans to use those same skills to pave her own way forward in the game: "I think for the most part, I need to buck the stereotype. As you've obviously observed, Asian-American women don't typically do that well on the show. I think that's because they're viewed as physically expendable but also as a strategic threat. So what I'm going to do is try to be everybody's little sister. I don't want to charm people, but be charmed by people. I think if people feel I'm being taken in by them, even if I'm a strategic threat down the line, if they think they can control me in the beginning? That's the narrative I want to spin." In terms of becoming the little sister, Simone has years and years of practice under her belt. "All these people are playing Survivor for the first time, but I've been playing my entire life," she says. "I have ten brothers and sisters. I grew up on a tribe. I'm the second youngest. Nobody asks me what I think. Nobody wants me to be the one to call the shots. But I am the one calling the shots. I know how to be diplomatic, and I know how to smile until it's time to stop smiling." In fact, that's Simone's mantra as she approaches Survivor: "Smile until you have to kill somebody, and after you kill somebody, keep smiling." Smiles aside, Simone plans to lean on other emotions, wielding her own tears as a weapon. She has an elaborate plan for how to turn up the volume on an emotional moment, and use that as cover to sneak off into the woods to find hidden immunity idols and any other potential advantages. "I'm going to try to do something like recite a letter from my boyfriend Steve, who wrote me a bunch so I would have them," she says. "I'm going to say my little sad piece, and then [start crying]. 'I just need a minute! I'm having so many emotions!' That's a good time to go. People need to be able to respect that. I'm going to respect other people when they say they need a minute — but, in the back of my mind, I'm going to wonder if they're the type of person who would break down in the early days? And I don't see myself as being someone who will break down in the early days over homesickness. It's not as though I don't feel it, but I think I have pretty good control over my emotions. I'm pretty good at communicating my feelings." One thing Simone isn't good about, by her own admission: the outdoors aspect of Survivor. "I've never gone camping," she says, repeatedly emphasizing "shitting in the woods" as her single greatest fear as she embarks on Survivor. "I'm very panicked. I'm not afraid of these other people. I'm not afraid of dying. Nobody's going to let me die. I'm very afraid of my body and what my body is capable of. I don't want to fall and die and be drowning in my own shit! I don't know! It's terrifying!" Certainly, Simone could have taken a cleaner path toward her first excursion in the great outdoors, not to mention her first true travel abroad. But as she puts it: "You gotta go hard. Grab life by the balls!" "Sometimes, you just have to do it," she says. "Look, it's only 39 days. Obviously I'm going to feel the homesickness. I'm not a monster. But I think back to my parents' experiences as refugees. There's nothing here that's going to compare to their experiences. Yeah, I'm going to be shitting in the ocean. Yeah, I'm going to be really, really hungry. People are going to be judging me. But if [my parents] could not die on the ocean, and if they could persist and keep living and keep trying to be happy? The least I can do is just go one more day." Watch the video below for more from Simone on why she's going to win Survivor. Final castaway on the board: Simone Nguyen. Player profile hitting @THR in the morning. #Survivor pic.twitter.com/HRU12PYAcL — Josh Wigler (@roundhoward) September 21, 2017 That's Simone in her own words. But what does everyone else think? Over the course of these interviews, I showed the castaways pictures of each other from casting, to get their pregame impressions of their future competitors. Read on for their takes on Simone. Note: comments from the castaways have been edited and condensed for clarity. Katrina Radke (Olympian, Heroes Tribe): She's a sweet, sweet lady. A very sweet lady. Very pretty. Very pretty. Ali Elliott (Celebrity Assistant, Hustlers Tribe): She seems sweet. She definitely seems like she has a little bit of something different to her. I don't really know if I would get along with her or not. Alan Ball (NFL Player, Heroes Tribe): That's superfan number three. She's a studier, she's quiet, doesn't say much, but she smiles a lot as well. I think it's part of her game. I think with Red, it might be a part of his game, too. Patrick Bolton (Small Business Owner, Hustlers Tribe): She seems like she could have everything kind of hidden up her sleeves. You know, one day she was smiling at me, and then one day it looked like she was talking about me, kind of under her breath. And I was like, I don't like that. And then the next morning she was smiling at me again. So, I'll be watching my back for her. I think we could work together. Challenges, I don't see her really excelling. Cole Medders (Wilderness Therapy Guide, Healers Tribe): She's probably smiled at me more on her own without me having to like pull it out of her. She seems super into getting to know me once we're on the island. And I'd be down with that, too. It's not something that I think people would see coming either, like me and her having an alliance. So I'd be really into getting to know her more too. Devon Pinto (Surf Instructor, Hustlers Tribe): She probably seems like she's going to be the most quiet out of all the contestants, but she seems smart, and I could see her knowing the strategy of the game really well. So, I don't think I want to get on her bad side. I think I'd rather have her on my alliance, because I could see her just pulling some stunts for sure. Ryan Ulrich (Bellhop, Hustlers Tribe): She's playing hard, man. She is really playing hard. Too hard, I think, at pregame. She's smiling at everybody, just so hard until you look back. Like, you cannot look away. She's smiling at logs, she's smiling at trees, just in hopes that they might be in the game, you know? And I just think it's too much. You have to cool it down a little bit. She likes to sit right on top of people... I don't know. I don't have a very good feeling about her. I hope she's on my tribe so she can annoy some other people. Roark Luskin (Social Worker, Healers Tribe): I could see it going where she and the David [Samson] lookalike on day one are like, "We're together! Let's hit the ground running! Let's be so aggressive!" Like pulling a Liz and Peter [from Kaoh Rong], or Shirin and Spencer [from Second Chance]. Just a duo that really wants to get it going. I could see the four other people being like, "Stop it! Just stop!" She is very, very amped. Mike Zahalsky (Urologist, Healers Tribe): She's very smart. She went to Columbia, I would bet, and I say that because during finals she wore a Columbia T-shirt at one point. I haven't seen it again, because I think she realized how that's an error. Right? You don't want to be known as the Ivy League kid. That's why I don't tell anybody! But that being said, she's vocal, and she's confident. She's not afraid to tell people what's going on. We were taking our [cast] photo yesterday, and [they told us to do] a crazy funny picture. And tattoo guy turns to Miss Kentucky and says, "You can pinch my ass if you want. You can squeeze my ass if you want." In the first interaction with these people, he's said something slightly odd to a beautiful girl that's sitting next to him that's never heard anything out of his mouth before. And she was like, "What?" But then, like you would expect, she was like, "I might just have to lean on you." And he was like, "Okay!" And [Simone] called her out on it. This girl was like, "Oh, are we gonna just start flirting with everybody now? I can start flirting, too!" Watch the video below for an early look at what Simone's victory speech might look like. Simone, what are you gonna do if you win #Survivor??? The answer is here, and more soon at the link in the profile! A post shared by Josh Wigler (@roundhoward) on Sep 21, 2017 at 2:52pm PDT Ben Driebergen (Marine, Heroes Tribe): I think she's smart. I think she might have a hard time with the social game and keeping her cool about her. But I think she's a smart girl. She's a proper girl, maybe coming from a wealthier kind of family or a better upbringing kinda deal, you know? Sits up straight, drinks her tea proper, stuff like that. Jessica Johnston (Nurse Practitioner, Healers Tribe): I like her. I do. I think she is going to be a good player. I haven't had a whole lot of interaction with her. I haven't really gotten to see if she's observing the way I am [at Ponderosa]. She reads a lot. I think people who read are smart. I immediately peg them as knowledgeable people. That's awesome. I can't wait to see how she plays. Lauren Rimmer (Fisherman, Hustlers Tribe): I think that she is also going to be kind of a follower. She reminds me of Hannah [from Millennials vs Gen X] or Aubry [from Kaoh Rong], someone that kind of sits in the shallows a little bit and waits for you to tell her who to vote for. You know, people get really far playing like that, but at the end, Hannah never won. And, you know, you got to be able to make some moves and you have to try to upset people, without hurting their feelings for it at the same time. And I think she's going to mainly just be a follower. Chrissy Hofbeck (Actuary, Heroes Tribe): She is the Energizer Bunny, but she could be a little bit ditzy. I have nothing to base it on other than she just seems to be a little bit sort of joyful and kind of out there. A little bit of a Janet from Another Planet. Desi Williams (Physical Therapist, Healers Tribe): I'm not sure why she's here. She doesn't look very athletic. She'll show up with her designer bag and it just doesn't seem like her. I mean, just because you have a designer bag, doesn't mean that you can't live in the wilderness. I shouldn't make that assumption... but I sort of have! So, it'll be interesting to see how she lives out in the wild. She probably comes from some money, or has a great job where she's making enough money to pay for nice things. Ashley Nolan (Lifeguard, Heroes Tribe): I forgot she was here, honestly. I feel like she's the type of person that, unless she annoys the crap out of me, from only the few things I've heard her say, and just kind of like the look on her face, she might be a little bit annoying. But otherwise, forgettable. Pretty girl, probably very nice, but I think she might be nice just because she doesn't really know what else to do. So we'll see. She doesn't strike me as a threat by any means. She just reminds me of one of the people [where] somebody has to go, and maybe nothing huge is developed yet — somebody has to go, and she might just be kind of forgettable, and she might be that vote. Joe Mena (Probation Officer, Healers Tribe): I just think she's going to be voted out first for some reason. I don't know why. I don't think she gets it. I don't think she gets it. She's very nice, very pleasant. I just think she's going to be an easy target for whatever reason. Just the way she carries herself, almost kind of clueless, ditzy, whatever you want to call it. But very, very nice. Mike Zahalsky (Urologist, Healers Tribe): I want to play with her. I'm happy to stack the smart people on my side. JP Hilsabeck (Firefighter, Heroes Tribe): Just another girl. We'll see what happens with it all. Simone Nguyen (Diversity Advocate, Hustlers Tribe): I hope when they're [reading] this afterwards, they're going to forgive me for being a little mean. I hate everybody when I first meet them. Josh Wigler (Reporter, THR): What are you doing at Ponderosa right now? Simone Nguyen (Diversity Advocate, Hustlers Tribe): What I'm doing... I'm writing every day in a Walt Disney journal with a Mickey Mouse pen. When I write in that journal, I'm leaving it wide open for anybody to see. Hopefully I'm giving off the impression of this cute, gullible, open, innocuous kind of girl. If I can just lean into that image and if I can just look into it and not be afraid of people not being threatened by me, then I could go far. Click through the gallery below for photos of Simone and the rest of the Season 35 castaways. Keep checking THR.com/Survivor for more coverage of the Heroes vs Healers vs Hustlers preseason. |
Despite having to combat unsavoury links with nefarious drug dealing websites and allegations of terrorist financing, the anonymous cryptocurrency Bitcoin has finally found a redeeming cause — helping to fund humanitarian aid projects. One tech savvy charity based in Africa — The Water Project — has revealed how an anonymous donor transferred 38 Bitcoins, equivalent to $23,000, to support one of its causes. The money, the charity said, was the largest it has ever received and will now be used to help fund sanitation projects for the next few years. In a statement posted to Reddit on 13 September, The Water Project expressed its gratitude: "We don't know who you are, but we're grateful. "So just in case you hang out here, we want to say thanks! Today you gave enough BTC — totally anonymously — to provide clean, safe water and sanitation facilities to an entire school and for the monitoring and repair funds to keep it working for years to come." After the mysterious donor sent the 38 bitcoins over two transactions, the charity said it will now identify an exact site for the work to start, noting it is likely to take place in Kenya or Sierra Leone. It explained that further details about how the Bitcoins will be used will soon be posted to its website. The statement continued: "The Bitcoin community has funded more than five projects (some anonymous, some not) over the past couple years in an amazing show of support. We're grateful for every single gift we receive no matter the size! Every BTC provides clean water. So really, thank you all!" The Water Project, which first launched its Bitcoin funding initiative in 2015, is a lead partner of the BitGive Donation Transparency Platform. Its technology-centric project – dubbed The Water Promise – uses Bitcoin donations to receive "highly transparent" international donations. "Bitcoin donations will be used to fund a fully-monitored water project or help maintain one," the charity declared on its website. "And like Bitcoin, this new tech will provide unmatched transparency and accountability in our work." One of the most notable projects to come out of the partnership was the building of a water well at a school in western Kenya which serves over 500 people and was funded by donations from the Bitcoin community. After completion, BitGive published a short three-minute video about the project. On Reddit, which has attracted a vocal cryptocurrency community, the news of the humanitarian donation was welcome news. "38 bitcoin to a charity. Sometimes think bitcoin has been hijacked by the greedy. Kinda' nice to know that there still some big bitcoin accounts out there in the hands of charitable people rather than speculative trader types," wrote one commenter. Another wrote: "That's incredible. Great work rewarded and allowing for more potential to be unlocked!" |
Luna (September 19, 1999 – March 10, 2006) also known as L98 or Tsu'xiit, was a killer whale (orca) born in Puget Sound. After being separated from his mother while still young, Luna spent five years in Nootka Sound, off the west coast of Vancouver Island. Although Luna was healthy and his presence in the area delighted tourists and drew a large number of paparazzi, there were concerns that his behavior was endangering people. After years of debate, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) authorized an effort in June 2004 to capture Luna and place him in captivity. However, the plan was ultimately thwarted by the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nations, who said they believed Luna was a reincarnation of a former chief. The orca was killed by a tugboat in 2006. His story is told in the 2011 documentary film The Whale, the 2013 book The Lost Whale, and the 2016 podcast "Our Americana: Gold River, BC". Early life [ edit ] Luna was born into a population known as the Southern Resident Killer Whale community. This population, which consisted of approximately 80 killer whales at the time of Luna's birth, has been extensively studied since the 1970s. Scientists have learned to recognize each individual in the population by photo-identification, and can thus track individual movements and social relationships year after year. Thus it is known that Luna was born into a group known as the L2 matriline, which consisted of the matriarch, Grace (L2), Luna's uncle, Orcan (L39), Gaia (L78), Wavewalker (L88), and Luna's mother, Splash (L67). The L2 matriline belongs to a larger group called L-Pod. Southern Resident killer whales of both sexes form extremely stable family bonds and remain with their mothers throughout their lives. Luna was first spotted on the morning of September 19, 1999, near the San Juan Islands of Washington, as a newborn alone with his mother. The first person to see him was the operator of a whale watching business, who immediately noticed that the behaviour of the pair was unusual. Killer whale mothers are usually surrounded by other members of their pod when they give birth, and are inseparable from their infants who swim closely by their sides. Luna and his mother were in proximity but appeared relatively disassociated from each other, and there were no other whales nearby. Later that day, Luna was seen leaving his mother to follow whales from K pod and did not reconnect with her for two or three days. Kiska (K18), one of the whales in K pod, had recently given birth to a stillborn calf and may have been lactating when she encountered Luna. Southern Resident killer whales spend summers near the coast of British Columbia, Canada and Washington, leave the area each fall, and return in the spring. It is not known where they spend the winter. The temporary separation of Splash and Luna is so unusual amongst killer whales that it led to speculation about whether Splash was indeed Luna's mother, however they reappeared together near the San Juan Islands in the spring of 2000 and appeared to have a normal mother-calf relationship throughout the summer. On September 23, Luna was seen leaving the area with the rest of his relatives, and beside his uncle, Orcan. Luna was given the name "L98" at birth according to the scientific naming conventions for resident killer whales. A Seattle newspaper held a naming contest in 2000 which resulted in L98 being given the common name Luna, Latin for moon. At the time, it was not known if Luna was male or female. The contest winner, an 8-year-old girl from Bellingham, explained, "The orca whale explores the ocean like the moon explores the Earth and that is why his/her name is Luna."[1] Appearance in Nootka Sound [ edit ] Coastline of Nootka Sound Over the winter of 2000-2001, five members of L-Pod disappeared, considerably more than the typical mortality rate of one or two animals per year. Among those missing and presumed dead was Orcan, who was 25 years old and in his prime. The unusual losses of that winter led to speculation that L-Pod had been struck by a catastrophic event that Luna might have witnessed. It is common for other members of a pod, including uncles such as Orcan, to babysit young killer whales. It was speculated that Luna might have been traveling with Orcan away from the rest of the pod when Orcan died. After Luna did not reappear, he was declared dead by local researchers. However, in early July 2001, Luna re-appeared alone in Nootka Sound on the northern west coast of Vancouver Island, hundreds of kilometres from any other Southern Resident killer whale. A year later, the Mowachaht/Muchalaht people of northern Vancouver Island named L98 Tsux'iit after the tribe's late Chief, Ambrose Maquinna. The Mowachaht/Muchalaht claimed that because Maquinna had declared that after his death he wished to return as an orca or a wolf, that the appearance of Luna four days after his death was symbolic and likely to be his reincarnation. At first Luna, like most wild killer whales, avoided boats and kept his distance from people. DFO tried to keep Luna's presence in Nootka Sound a secret for as long as possible to avoid a rush of visitors, and did not even tell other scientists about Luna until December 2001, by which time he had been there for six months. However, everyone's attention was diverted from Luna as Springer (A73), another orphan calf, had turned up alone in Puget Sound. Springer soon became the center of attention that year. The Namu Shuttle [ edit ] A Seattle-based non-profit organization, Orca Conservancy, which initiated the campaign to rescue and repatriate Springer and helped raise the funds for that successful effort, also took the lead in calling for a similar effort on behalf of Luna. In March 2002, the organization teamed up with Earth Island Institute and the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation in presenting a rescue plan for Springer to National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the central component of the plan being the so-called "Namu Shuttle",[2] leading the orca into a hydrodynamic seapen and then towing it to Johnstone Strait. The procedure was used successfully in 1965 by Ted Griffin to translocate Namu, the first captive orca, from northern Vancouver Island to Seattle, almost the exact distance that would be required for Springer's move. By May 2002, people on both sides of the border were clamoring for federal agencies to take direct action to save the whales. Since Springer was a Canadian whale in U.S. waters, NMFS was the governing authority that was responsible for greenlighting the rescue. And as Luna was a U.S. whale in Canadian waters, the agency that needed to approve any rescue effort in Nootka Sound was the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) Canada—and by all indications, DFO did not intend on doing anything for Luna. "There is certainly less of a sense of urgency with L-98, compared to A-73," said John Ford, Canadian Fisheries and Oceans. "But we are still not confident about his prospects for the long term."[3] Luna would be left to linger in Nootka Sound, and the focus soon turned to Springer. But once that historic rescue, translocation and repatriation was completed in July and August 2002, all eyes again turned to Luna. NGOs like Orca Conservancy, OrcaLab, Veins of Life Watershed Society and Reunite Luna pressed hard for DFO to take action to save Luna, "quid pro quo," as Orca Conservancy's Michael Harris said on Seattle television. "We brought back your orca, now let's do something about ours." But DFO's public response was firm—Luna would be left where he was. The agency stated many reasons not to intervene, but outlined three major ones—first, Luna was thriving in Nootka Sound and was posing no danger to himself or others; second, it was premature to justify intervention on behalf of Luna based on the apparent success of the Springer effort, as the true test of whether or not Springer's translocation had worked would be the following July if and when she returned with her family to its summer feeding grounds in Johnstone Strait. Many DFO biologists quietly predicted that she would not survive the winter. Lastly, even if it were deemed necessary to intervene with Luna, and Springer successfully returned to Johnstone Strait, DFO simply did not have the funding to take on such an action. By the summer of 2002, word had spread about the killer whale in Nootka Sound and boaters started to visit. In their book, Operation Orca: Springer, Luna and the Struggle To Save West Coast Killer Whales, Daniel Francis and Gil Hewlett describe how Luna had begun to interact with boats: "Luna nudged their boat, spun it around like a toy in a bathtub, bounced it up and down by pushing on the hull and spy-hopped directly in front to keep it from speeding away. It was not the behaviour of a wild animal shying away from human contact. As the summer progressed, he became more insistent in his interactions and harder for boaters to escape." Killer whales are intensely social, and boats and people provided the companionship and physical contact that Luna would normally have received from his mother and from other whales. A Canadian federal fisheries officer said in 2003, "I don't think he realizes he's a whale. He thinks he's one of the boys."[4] It is illegal in Canada and in the U.S. to disturb a wild marine mammal. Cetaceans which lose their fear of boats generally fare poorly in the long term, as they can be injured by boat propellers or accidentally run over. A playful whale can cause significant damage to boats, and can accidentally tip a boat putting its occupants in danger. DFO posted signs asking the public to keep its distance from Luna, and sent out pairs of monitors to educate the public and try to keep them away from him. By September 2002, Luna was determined to get attention, so he started following the "Uchuck III", which traveled Nootka Sound daily to deliver supplies to fish camps and loggers. Luna followed the boat to a dock at Gold River, a town along one of the inland waterways connected to Nootka Sound. It was at this time that Luna started to cause disturbances, and in some cases actually caused damage to vessels and a float plane. There were reports that people were feeding Luna potato chips and beer.[4] Luna received some minor injuries, probably from collision with boats. Some people were fined for disturbing the orca. Some who met the playful young whale were profoundly moved by him. Journalists Michael Parfit and his wife, Suzanne Chisholm, visited Gold River in 2004 for a short writing assignment for Smithsonian Magazine, but were so drawn to Luna that the couple ended up staying for three years. Parfit said in 2009: "He needed this friendship—he wanted connection. It's so powerful, that you have people from all walks of life who became dramatically engaged in caring about this single life at sea. He was interested in human beings for a social connection. Luna wanted eye contact, he wanted physical, he wanted almost this mental contact. So how can you not respond to that? We were not sort of whale-huggers. We just went there to cover a story. And we were captivated by the character —by him—almost immediately."[5] In late 2005, after more than a year of observing Luna from a distance in Nootka Sound, and after interviewing dozens of people on Nootka Sound, including many of the stewards who had been paid to keep Luna away from people, Parfit and Chisholm concluded that it was not possible to keep Luna away from people. "Keeping people away from Luna so he does not get habituated hasn't worked, because Luna won't stay away from people," said Chisholm. "We think the only way to keep this highly social animal alive is to give him a human family until his whale family comes to get him." Aware that, "for us the idea of getting involved in a story that we're trying to cover was a fundamental break from journalistic rules," they felt that getting involved was the morally right thing to do. "Parfit and Chisholm thought a whole new approach was needed to protect Luna from boaters and boaters from Luna," according to "OPERATION ORCA: Springer, Luna and the Struggle to Save West Coast Killer Whales." "They proposed the creation of a surrogate family, a 'foster pod,' to which Luna could attach himself. A select group of people, including the Mowachaht/Muchalaht, would be authorized to associate with Luna, keeping him out of trouble, but also teaching him to follow along beside them. Eventually, Parfit hoped, Luna would be encouraged to swim to the outer reaches of Nootka Sound, where he might encounter his own family and be reunited with them. Meanwhile, Parfit had come to believe that Luna craved and needed human contact, and that it was wrong to deny it. Luna had a deep emotional impact on people. While knowing not to associate human feelings with the whale, Parfit, Ed Thornburn, the Kakawin Guardians, and others who came into regular contact with him could not help feeling that Luna’s insistent interactions with people showed that he was desperately lonely. They were caught in a conundrum. Luna needed to be kept wild, which meant interactions with him had to be kept at a minimum. But he was an intensely social animal. How could that sociability be appeased in the absence of other whales? "The downside of Parfit’s proposal was that it would further habituate Luna to human interaction and lessen the chance that he might ever reintegrate with his family group. When Parfit’s plan got no official response, he more or less initiated it himself. During the winter of 2005-2006, he and Chisholm began operating their own stewardship program, spending time in their zodiac watching Luna, and from time to time, leading him away from troublesome encounters with fish farms or other boats. Where this would have led is anyone’s guess."[6] Debate [ edit ] From January to July 2002, attention was diverted from Luna when Springer (A73) turned up orphaned and alone in Puget Sound, Washington. Although it is extremely rare for killer whale calves to be found alone and the cases of Luna and Springer emerged within a year of each other, no connection between their situations has ever been found. In July 2002, Springer was captured and relocated from Puget Sound to her family's summer waters off northeastern Vancouver Island. By the summer of 2003, it was apparent that Springer was healthy and had bonded with close relatives. This raised hopes that Luna could also be moved home, and that he would bond with his family and resume a normal life. Luna was healthier than Springer, and his mother was still alive. Paul Spong of OrcaLab said in 2004, " I don't have any doubts about Luna's future, once he returns to the side of his mum." However, other killer whale experts expressed skepticism that a reunion would work, as it was unknown why Luna had left his family in the first place.[7] Luna had spent much of his early life apart from other killer whale role models, and had not had a chance to develop the social skills required in pod life. Even Springer's reunion had not been wholly smooth – she received extensive teeth-rake marks from other killer whales in the first days of her release.[7] With his limited social experience, scientists had doubts about whether Luna, if he grew to adulthood, would be able to successfully attract females to mate with. In addition to questions of whether relocating Luna would succeed, there was the philosophical question of whether it was appropriate for humans to intervene in the life of a wild animal rather than let nature take its course. The DFO has jurisdiction over marine mammals in Canadian coastal waters. For several years, the DFO's approach was to monitor Luna and try to minimize his interactions with people. Many hoped that the Luna would reunite naturally with his family if they passed by Nootka Sound. Officials were afraid of a public relations disaster should a reunion effort fail in front of worldwide media attention.[8] By the spring of 2003, the consensus amongst a panel of experts convened by the DFO was that some form of intervention was necessary; however, there was little consensus on what exactly to do. As Luna was physically healthy and Nootka Sound had enough fish to sustain him, the DFO did not believe that relocating Luna was urgently needed. The DFO's slowness to act was heavily criticized by many whale advocates, as the longer Luna was away from his pod, the lower the chances of successful re-integration.[8] Relocation attempts and alternatives [ edit ] Over the summer of 2003, the DFO came under increasing public pressure to address the Luna matter. The Department agreed to provide funding for the Luna Stewardship Project, founded by former DFO biologist Mark Pakenham and calling private individuals to monitor Luna in Nootka Sound and keep people away from the orca. However, days after it cut funding to the Luna Stewardship Project, it was reported that a contractor hired by DFO to monitor the crisis had been seen beating the orca at the Gold River dock.[9] Clearly, interactions between humans and boats and this increasingly social and fast-growing male orca were becoming dangerous. It quickly dispelled DFO's argument that Luna was thriving and safe where he was. Also in July, DFO's second argument for inaction was rendered moot, as researchers confirmed that Springer not only had returned to Johnstone Strait with her family after about nine months in the open ocean, but by all indications she was thriving as a wild whale.[10] KOMO 4 News reported that "Springer's apparent success also gives some orca groups ammunition to seek a second attempt. Luna, a lone male orca, continues to frolic with boaters in Vancouver's Nootka Sound. As recently as last May Canadian scientists decided not to interfere and let nature take its course." DFO's last argument for not taking action to save Luna as a lack of funds was put aside at a press conference at Seattle Aquarium in October 2003 conducted by U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell, the Regional Director of the NMFS, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the U.S. Navy. Sen. Cantwell announced a commitment of "$100,000 USD or more if needed" toward the immediate rescue and repatriation of Luna to Puget Sound, and called on the Canadian government to match that commitment.[11] All indications were that DFO would, and Luna might soon be going home. A few days later, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Robert Thibault, announced that Canada would match the U.S. offer with $135,000 CDN. However, DFO, without consulting its Scientific Advisory Panel, announced that Luna would not be moved until the spring of 2004. The decision to delay the operation drew a wave of objections from scientists and advocates on both sides of the border, recommending immediate action. Southern Resident orcas were still present in Puget Sound and the Strait of Georgia, Luna's repatriation site, and most importantly, boat traffic in the area was decreasing. Conditions were perfect for the repatriation attempt,[12] and yet, DFO decided to wait. One scientist on the Panel reported the federal government had prohibited him from commenting publicly on how best to move Luna: "Lance Barrett-Lennard, a research scientist at the Vancouver Aquarium, said news last week that the federal government wanted to wait until spring for the move was a surprise. 'That caught us unprepared a little bit – (the panel) was not notified. It was not our recommendation.'"[13] At a conference on Orcas Island, Washington on April 5, 2004, DFO unveiled its plan to rescue and repatriate Luna. It would involve two phases: "Plan A" would be to attempt to employ a DFO boat in leading the orca out of Nootka Sound and into Southern Resident whales expected to appear at least in passing off the mouth of Nootka in May or June. If that proved impossible, then in June, DFO would go to "Plan B": the hard capture and translocation of the orca to a repatriation site at Pedder Bay, on the southern end of Vancouver Island, where he would be released to his family. However, the Canadian government was getting repeated warnings from NGOs that opposition was growing among the region's First Nations to rescue Luna. They began to voice their opposition to DFO and its primary contractor, Vancouver Aquarium, coming into their ancestral waters and removing the whale. NGOs working on both sides of the border came out strongly in support of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht, demanding that DFO do a better job consulting First Nations in the matter, as NMFS had done successfully with the Namgis First Nation during the Springer effort. Meetings were conducted between DFO and Mowachaht/Muchalaht Chief Mike Maquinna, the son of Ambrose, but the impasse continued. Other First Nations bands throughout British Columbia also expressed their support for the Mowachaht/Muchalaht and their opposition to the capture. At this stage, some NGOs initiated a mediation between Chief Maquinna and DFO. In April, through an introduction from Namgis Chief Bill Cranmer, the organization sent emissaries to Gold River to meet with Chief Maquinna and discuss the crisis. The Mowachaht/Muchalaht reiterated their position, but gave its assurance that it would not block efforts to reunite Luna with his family via Plan A, the boat-follow option. In late spring, the band actually began providing material support to what was now being called "the soft introduction" of the orca to its native pod. By May 2004, DFO and Vancouver Aquarium, assisted by the leading NGOs, were initiating Plan A. The first step was to train Luna to follow the designated DFO boat, hopefully out of Nootka Sound and, if and when the time came, into the path of passing Southern Resident orcas. DFO agents reported that the whale responded positively to the training, and video shot by KING 5 News (NBC Seattle) proved that the whale was following the boat well outside the entrance to Nootka Sound, a critical threshold if the team needed to intercept a passing wild group. NGOs began establishing a sightings network along the remote west coast of Vancouver Island, utilizing existing land-based spotters, as well as sophisticated underwater microphones, or hydrophones, sourced by Orca Conservancy and American Cetacean Society/Puget Sound and operated by Keith Wood of Anon.org at Yuquot (Friendly Cove). The coast was also monitored periodically by volunteer pilots looking for whales.[14] Hopes for the boat-follow rose notably in mid-May 2004 when some of Luna's family was sighted off Strawberry Island, BC, the west side of Vancouver Island, but still some 100 kilometers away from Nootka Sound. The pod never came closer. In late May, researchers confirmed that the rest of the Southern Resident Community of orcas had in fact taken the route along the east coast of Vancouver Island, eliminating any chance of a natural reunion.[15] "With the recent sightings of Luna's pod in the Juan de Fuca Strait, we believe the chances of a natural reunification in the Nootka Sound area have been exhausted," said Marilyn Joyce, Regional Director of DFO.[16] By June, DFO began preparations for Plan B. Meanwhile, tensions were growing with the Mowachaht/Muchalaht in Nootka Sound. A report surfaced that Vancouver Aquarium Director John Nightingale had allegedly alerted Emergency Services at Gold River to prepare for tear-gas injuries. Nightingale also raised concerns on both sides of the border by his request to DFO to close the airspace above the operation to news helicopters. Access to the main dock where the capture team would operate was severely restricted, and no First Nations representative was given access. Furthermore, OrcaLab, which had hosted DFO and Vancouver Aquarium team members during the Springer effort, was now being banned by Nightingale from the Gold River dock. OrcaLab and its Director, Dr. Paul Spong, were strong advocates of the First Nations during the Springer project, as well as a critical partner up until that time on the Luna effort, conducting the Luna Research Project under a DFO permit that previous winter. Denying OrcaLab was considered by many both a strategic mistake and a grave insult, and another blow to citizen oversight. Consternation also was growing about the fact that DFO and Vancouver Aquarium had placed a strict embargo on media access to the operation, and yet had contracted with a private production company to obtain video evidence of the capture and translocation of Luna, in return for allowing the company to retain exclusive license to the video. The NGOs and the U.S. Congressional delegation supporting and helping to fund the Luna effort would stand with the Mowachaht/Muchalaht as it delivered a Demand Letter to DFO. The Mowachaht/Muchalaht would assign the monitor (which later became Nu-Chuh-Nulth reporter David Wichar) and Orca Conservancy would provide the band a veteran network photojournalist (Kevin Ely). Should the First Nations deem the capture and translocation is going forward in what the band deemed a disrespectful manner, it would have two ways of stopping it: through the print pieces published by Wichar, and more immediately, the compelling video that Ely would distribute to the satellite media trucks present at Gold River. It was clear to everyone that public pressure was the sole reason DFO was finally intervening on behalf of Luna; public pressure, presumably, could also put a stop to it. The Demand Letter was written by Chief Maquinna and sent to DFO, and after significant pressure on the U.S. side, the agency finally assented to the mediation agreement. The capture would go forward. On June 15, 2004, the translocation operation was initiated. DFO began trying to lure Luna into a floating pen in order to rehabilitate him in the same manner as Springer. As the operation got underway, the Mowachaht/Muchalaht and other First Nations who continued to oppose the capture, were present in two traditional canoes. They succeeded in leading Luna away from the pen several times.[17] The orca approached the First Nations canoes, and the surprised band members began interacting with him, creating a distraction that prevented the capture team from luring Luna into confinement, despite repeated attempts over the next several days. Some said Luna appeared at this stage to get caught up in the cat-and-mouse game with federal agents. At times, Luna became a source of amusement for onlookers. At one point, the orca allowed the team to lead him to the opening to the seapen, but then at the last second ducked under the escorting DFO boat, surfaced on its stern and pushed the vessel into the seapen before returning to the canoes. That was as close as Luna ever came to being captured. In the ensuing days, however, the tug-of-war on Nootka Sound became dangerously heated, with DFO vessels allegedly buzzing First Nations canoes and rocking them in their wake. Tempers were rising on both sides and authorities on both sides of the border raised concerns. Finally on June 24, 2004, DFO stood down. Once the Mowachaht-Muchalaht exhausted its federal funds to act as stewards, Luna once again was left to his own devices. Death [ edit ] On March 10, 2006, what many warned was inevitable, happened—Luna approached a boat he had grown familiar with, the ocean tugboat General Jackson in Nootka Sound.[18] It is believed that Luna went up to the tugboat intentionally, as he often did, to engage in playful activity. Apparently underestimating the power of the vessel—tugboats have much more powerful engines than other ships of their size—Luna was pulled into the blades and subsequently killed. Luna's death was met with both anger and frustration. Various groups internationally had tried to force the hand of the Canadian government to intervene on behalf of Luna; many were particularly outspoken about DFO's failure to enforce laws that should have restricted public access to the orca and prevented private citizens the opportunity to interact with the whale and further acclimate it to humans and boats. Luna's mother, Splash, went missing in 2008 and was presumed to have died at the age of 33. Luna's six-year-old younger brother Aurora (L101), also went missing and was presumed dead that year. Splash had been showing signs of starvation, probably due to declines in Chinook salmon stocks, the main prey species for resident killer whales.[19] Legacy [ edit ] In 2007, CTV produced a made-for-television film, Luna: Spirit of the Whale, starring Adam Beach, Jason Priestley, Tantoo Cardinal, and Graham Greene.[20] The film is a fictionalized account of Luna's story, containing many real aspects of Luna's life, and was filmed on location in Nootka Sound and at Gold River. The documentary, Saving Luna,[21] produced by Suzanne Chisholm and Michael Parfit, played in theaters across Canada in 2009. The film received awards from around the world[22] and was broadcast on the CBC in 2009.[23] It was broadcast in 2010 on the BBC with the title A Killer Whale Called Luna,[24] and in 2011, with Ryan Reynolds and Scarlett Johansson as executive producers, turned into the theatrical film The Whale.[25] Chisholm's and Parfit's notes were also turned into a book in 2013, The Lost Whale: The True Story of an Orca Named Luna.[26] The song Tsuxiit from Islands' 2006 record Return to the Sea is named after Luna, with footage of Luna taken by Nicholas Thorburn serving as the music video for the song.[27] References [ edit ] General references [ edit ] |
The CCA building and garden are an urban reconstruction project conceived in the 1980s in the western end of downtown Montreal, around the historically classified mansion known as the Shaughnessy House (1874, designed by William T. Thomas) and bridging a road that leads to the city’s system of highways. Opened in 1989, the twelve-thousand-square-metre new building was designed by Peter Rose with Phyllis Lambert, consulting architect, and Erol Argun, associate architect, to house exhibition galleries, the Paul Desmarais Theatre, a bookstore, research facilities including a study room open to the public by appointment, state-of-the-art conservation and collection facilities, and curatorial offices. In parallel, the conservation and restoration of the Shaughnessy House made it one of the rare nineteenth-century Montreal houses open to the public. Through scale, siting, and the juxtaposition of traditional and modern local materials—mainly grey limestone, structural aluminum, and maple wood—the CCA building relates architecture’s past and present. The building is surrounded to the north by Baile Park, and to the south by Boulevard René-Lévesque and the CCA sculpture garden, which restored the urban fabric of an area deeply scarred by mid-twentieth-century highway engineering. Lying at the edge of an escarpment, the garden was designed by Montreal artist-architect Melvin Charney as part of the Quebec government’s competition program for the integration of art and architecture, combining sculpture and public space on a site granted to the CCA by the City of Montreal in 1986. At once a garden in the city and a museum in the open air, it evokes the history of landscape design and comments on Montreal’s early industrial sector below the hill, initiating a dialogue between nature, architecture, and the urban fabric. |
Redskins strong safety Brandon Meriweather (31) will miss the rest of the season because of a sprained toe. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) Hampered for a third straight week by a badly sprained toe, Brandon Meriweather will go on the season-ending injured reserve list, the Redskins announced Friday afternoon. Meriweather sprained the big toe on his right foot three weeks ago against the Indianapolis Colts and missed the games against the Rams and Giants. He tried to take part in position drills Wednesday, but the toe remained painful, hindering his mobility. The injury-shortened season is the second in the past three years for Meriweather, who this past offseason re-signed with Washington on a one-year deal. The eighth-year veteran originally signed with Washington in 2012, but missed all but one game because of knee injuries. Meriweather missed time both to injury and suspension in 2013, playing 13 games. He missed the first two games of this season because of another illegal helmet-to-helmet hit and had played 10 straight games before leaving the first half of the Colts’ game because of the toe injury. With Meriweather out, second-year pro Phillip Thomas will make his third straight start at strong safety. Washington promoted linebacker Steve Beauharnais from the practice squad to the 53-man roster, filling the spot vacated by Meriweather. Also on Friday, the Redskins announced that defensive end Jason Hatcher will not play in Saturday’s game against the Philadelphia Eagles because of inflammation in his right knee. This marks the second straight game Hatcher has missed. The defensive end, who was Washington’s biggest free agent signing, said Thursday there is a “strong possibility” that he doesn’t play in the final game, next week against Dallas. The Redskins also have ruled out backup linebacker Gabe Miller (sprained left ankle). Meantime, left tackle Trent Williams (strained right shoulder) has been listed as questionable. Williams suffered the injury late in the third quarter of last Sunday’s loss to the Giants. He had yet to regain full strength in the shoulder as of Thursday afternoon, but he remained hopeful that he could play Saturday. If Williams can’t play, Tom Compton would start at left tackle (moving from his starting spot at right tackle), and Tyler Polumbus would step in at right tackle. The Redskins listed starting inside linebacker Keenan Robinson (knee) as doubtful for Saturday’s game. Will Compton has started the last two games in place of Robinson, who sprained his right MCL against Indianapolis. Listed as probable are Compton (shoulder), running back Roy Helu Jr (toe), center Kory Lichtensteiger (knee), nose tackle Chris Baker (chest/toe) and safety Trenton Robinson (illness). More from The Post: Santana Moss draws hefty fine for Sunday’s ejection Five story lines to watch in Saturday’s Redskins-Eagles game Hatcher: ‘A big possibility’ his season is over Redskins: No discipline problem | Their penalty numbers Boswell: Criticism of Robert Griffin III goes too far How to watch without NFL Network | Hoping to play spoiler More NFL: Home page | Sports Bog | Early Lead | Fancy Stats | Fantasy Follow: @MikeJonesWaPo | @lizclarketweet | @JReidPost | @Insider |
Getty Images Five years ago, former Giants punter Matt Dodge gave the Eagles one hell of a gift on the field. On Friday, current Giants punter Steve Weatherford gave the Eagles an off-field gift. Appearing on WFAN, Weatherford offered up a variety of opinions about his team’s NFC East rivals. He started with the lowest of the low-hanging fruit. “I’m the biggest Tim Tebow fan in the world,” Weatherford said. “I mean, who wouldn’t want their daughter to date a guy like that? I’ll tell you what, I don’t want him taking snaps for my team.” As to the team’s other quarterbacks, Weatherford offered an automotive metaphor to compare Sam Bradford and Mark Sanchez. “I’m gonna give you a Ferrari that maybe won’t be running all the time, or I’m giving you a nice Cadillac sedan,” Weatherford said. “It’s not the fastest but you know what you’re going to get out of it. . . . Bradford can go zero to 60 in three seconds. But you don’t know if he’s going to start up some days.” Or, for that matter, some years. And yet the Eagles still seem to be interested in adding some years to Bradford’s contract. “Good luck with that,” Weatherford said. “Chip Kelly will get himself in serious trouble if they get an extension for that guy and he gets hurt? He’s done.” It will take a lot for Kelly to be done after the 2015 season, especially since he has won 20 games in two regular seasons. But giving Bradford a new deal, having Bradford get hurt again, and winning fewer than half his games this year could make things very uncomfortable for Kelly in 2016. |
Tom Brady's Patriots lost to Peyton Manning's Broncos in the AFC championship game last weekend, but it had nothing to do with Microsoft's Surface tablets. That's the word from the software giant in the form of a blog post entitled "Surfacing the Facts." Microsoft's detailed response blames stadium "network issues" that affected the Patriots tablets. "Not a single issue has been reported that is related to the tablet itself," during 100,000 minutes of sideline activity, claims Microsoft's Yusef Mehdi. Microsoft says during "rare occasions" like Sunday it works with the NFL to troubleshoot network issues. It doesn't explain why only the Patriots tablets weren't connecting, but the issue was resolved after 20 minutes. Microsoft's Surfaces are built to survive quarterback abuse With the root cause of the issues cleared up, Microsoft has also taken the opportunity to address NFL players throwing the devices around and slamming them into their foreheads. Essentially, the Green Bay Packers lost because they suck, not because a Microsoft Surface failed, according to the company. Aaron Rodgers might like to toss his Surface in frustration, but Microsoft says its tablets still survive quarterback abuse. "These devices were built to endure just about anything, even Johnny Manziel's head," says Mehdi, referencing the time Cleveland’s quarterback bashed the tablet against his forehead in frustration. So, if you see a quarterback pound his head with a brightly colored Surface during the Super Bowl next month, it probably has nothing to do with the tablet itself. It's just like browsing Reddit, they probably saw an image on that tablet that they really didn't want to see. |
Most District politicians wait until they're in office to be accused of stealing city money. But not Christian Carter, the 30-year-old city contractor who announced his run for mayor last week. Carter's campaign kick-off Saturday had some unlikely crashers: District officials. The payment dispute centers on the 2014 Children's Budget Report, which Carter's New Columbia Enterprises produced. Carter subcontracted some of the work to Susie Cambria, a budget and policy analyst, but Cambria says that she's been chasing Carter for money he owes her since March. Cambria claims that Carter owes her around $23,000 in payments from money he's already received from the city, along with about $40,000 in money the city hasn't paid Carter. On Saturday, officials from the office of the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services came to Carter's event at Hill Center on Capitol Hill to get his signature on an affidavit that would allow them to bypass him on the $40,000 payment to Cambria. That still leaves the $23,000 Cambria says she is owed. At Carter's party, Cambria worried about how he paid for the balloons and fruit spread. "This money to pay for this shit needed to come from somewhere," she says. Carter claims that the money the city owes him for producing the budget—-around $100,000, he claims—-is being held up as punishment from Mayor Vince Gray because, as Carter nebulously puts it, he stood up to cronyism. "I want this woman to get paid," Carter says. "I don't want her to have to suffer along with me." But emails obtained by LL suggest that Gray administration is eager to pay Carter. Chris Murphy, Gray's chief of staff, wrote to Carter on June 20 asking for a list of what money the city owes him. "I just want us to move as quickly as possible to work together to make this all right," Murphy wrote. Murphy followed up with emails on June 24 and June 26, copying former city administrator Neil Albert for help contacting Carter. Finally, Murphy emailed Carter on July 8, suggesting that Carter had been "not truthful" with him. The accusations aren't slowing down Carter, who says he's working on building his campaign team. "The more you say to me is the more your can of worms will be opened up for yourself," he says of Cambria and the city officials. "Because I'm the one that's innocent here." Murphy's emails to Carter: From: Murphy, Christopher (EOM) Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2013 6:29 PM To: 'ccarter@newcolumbiainc.com' Cc: Neil.Albert@hklaw.com; Bunn, Sheila (EOM) Subject: Checking In Chris – Any progress on sending me your full list of accounting – what you believe the District owes you and what you owe subs? I just want us to move as quickly as possible to work together to make this all right. Thanks, Chris From: Murphy, Christopher (EOM) Sent: Monday, June 24, 2013 7:34 PM To: ccarter@newcolumbiainc.com Cc: Neil.Albert@hklaw.com; Bunn, Sheila (EOM) Subject: RE: Checking In Chris – Just following up. Any word? From: Murphy, Christopher (EOM) Sent: Wednesday, June 26, 2013 3:31 PM To: 'ccarter@newcolumbiainc.com' Cc: Neil.Albert@hklaw.com; Bunn, Sheila (EOM) Subject: RE: Checking In Neil – Any way for you to reach out to Chris on this to keep us moving forward. We are trying hard to address his concerns but his non-responsiveness makes that impossible. Chris From: Murphy, Christopher (EOM) [mailto:christopher.murphy@dc.gov] Sent: Monday, July 08, 2013 1:28 PM To: 'ccarter@newcolumbiainc.com' Cc: Albert, Neil O (WAS - X75144); Bunn, Sheila (EOM) Subject: RE: Checking In Checking in again. Chris – I asked someone to stop by the address of what you had confirmed to us all was your current office and they were informed you have been evicted for non-payment. I am increasingly concerned that some, if not much, of the story you shared with me, Neil, and Sheila was not truthful. I remain willing to help you get paid whatever you may be owed. But you are certainly not helping us resolve any of this with your lack of responsiveness. Please be in touch asap. Thanks, Chris Photo by Will Sommer |
As DC Refined’s photojournalist, I spend a lot of time on the road - or, more accurately, looking for parking. I rely on podcasts to stay sane and up-to-date on what’s happening in the DMV. So you can trust me when I say go ahead and subscribe to these (non-political) gems from D.C. 1. Metropocalypse If you’ve ever wondered why you’re being escorted off the orange line for the umpteenth time, you should listen to Metropocalypse. This weekly podcast from WAMU’s transportation reporter, Martin Di Caro, goes into the nitty-gritty details of how and why metro went wrong over the span of decades, while never losing sight of the present. It’s also a good podcast to listen to before heading to happy hour with friends - after all, nothing unites Washingtonians like complaining about Metro. 2. The Circus Life D.C. has a thriving music scene and hosts Justin Trawick and Sean Russell are here to guide you through it. The Circus Life not only offers performances from local musicians across genres, Trawick and Russell also have often hilarious and enlightening conversations with locals on topics ranging from penguins to Bruce Springsteen. 3. Hey Frase You can't help but want to be Sarah Fraser's friend when you listen to "Hey Frase." Although she sometimes touches on national topics, Frase often focuses on the coolest things about D.C. - like up-and-coming local rapper Yasmin Radbod. Fraser is fun, funny and NSFW - so you may want to listen to it when you're alone. 4. The Kojo Nnamdi Show Okay, I lied - Kojo Nnamdi does touch on local politics fairly often. However, he's a warm and engaging presence on the radio, making even hour-long discussion of the fate of the D.C. public school lunch program fly by faster than you can imagine. Nnamdi and his guests also talk about The District's culture, touching on subjects ranging from the art of the daiquiri to gentrification around Anacostia. 5. The Ladycast The Ladycast typically comes out every two weeks, but D.C.-based Alex Laughlin's podcast is focused on empowering women. Laughlin's knack for finding interesting interview subjects often leaves me with something to think about for days after listening to it . A notable episode focuses on Laughlin's own battle with mental illness, in part because it ties back to D.C. and it's often hyper-ambitious culture. |
Humanity is locked in a millennia-old battle to the death with diseases. The current outbreak of Ebola reminds us that as our cities get bigger and international travel easier, the risks in an outbreak grow even higher Ebola isn’t the big one. So what is? And are we ready for it? The Black Death swept into Europe on boats from the East in the 14th century, killing as much as half the population of the continent, somewhere between 75 and 200 million people worldwide. The Spanish flu of 1918, carried around the world by soldiers bound for or returning from the butchery of Europe’s battlegrounds, killed between 50 and 100 million people – many more than died in the First World War itself, and maybe more than have died in any war. Humanity is locked in a millennia-old battle to the death with diseases like these. We have fought them back with herculean effort. We developed penicillin and other antibiotics to treat bacteria like the ones thought responsible for the Black Death, and vaccines to fight viruses. But we are in an arms race. And while our ability to treat disease is better than ever before, the current outbreak of Ebola, and the first diagnosis of the virus outside of Africa, is reminding us that as our cities get bigger and international travel becomes easier, the risks involved in an outbreak grow ever higher. We are, as Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, says, “in a perfect storm for viral emergence.” Ebola is very unlikely to become the next Black Death Though Ebola has a high fatality rate when contracted, it is not the thing that keeps most epidemiologists up at night. It could theoretically become pandemic – that is, an out-of-control global epidemic – but experts say that is unlikely. Christophe Fraser, a professor of epidemiology at the medical research council center for outbreak analysis at Imperial College, London, described four factors that are crucial in determining how severe an epidemic will be: how easily the disease is transmitted; how feasible it is to develop a vaccine and a treatment; how long before symptoms are visible the patient is infectious; and the severity of the disease – what proportion of people who contract it die. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Praying for relief from the bubonic plague – also known as the Black Death. Photograph: Hulton archive /Getty “Obviously if a virus is worse on all those scales,” he said, “that makes for a worse scenario. Ebola is very high on severity, and very low in terms of mode of transmission.” Ironically, this makes it safer – a disease that killed a smaller percentage of those who contract it but was more easily spread could reach and ultimately kill many more people. Ebola is very unlikely to become the next Black Death. But that doesn’t mean something else won’t. Even with modern medicine, we haven’t rid ourselves of pandemics; indeed, they have sprung up far more recently than 1918. HIV/Aids is the most recent truly devastating pandemic – and H5N1 avian flu was even more widespread, though less deadly. Ebola is very high on severity, and very low in terms of mode of transmission There are many nightmare scenarios, according to Robert G Webster, chair of the virology division at St Jude children’s research hospital. “Just imagine if the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was transmitted by aerosol. If flu was just as lethal. If H5N1 [avian flu] was as lethal in humans as it is in chickens – and studies have shown that it only takes about three mutations to make it highly lethal. It’s not out of the realms of possibility.” Fraser said that pandemics are extremely difficult to predict because they all start from a random event: a pathogen crossing to humans from another species. “The initial change, the transition, that’s where the pathogen sets in motion its change of transmission,” he said. “There are outbreaks of all kinds of strange viruses that come from contact between animals and humans; one in a million will give rise to a starting pandemic.” That moment, he said, when the virus is learning to propagate in a new kind of host, is when much of its genetic mutation happens – after that, its evolution is much slower. The real danger is a brand new virus, or a hybrid of several (HIV is a combination of four viruses), rather than an evolution of one which, like Ebola, is already known to humans. Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘There have been three major [influenza] pandemics, and a mild one three years ago – which doesn’t reduce the possibility of a pandemic happening,’ Ran Balicer said. Photograph: Darron Cummings/AP Ran Balicer, director of the infectious diseases track in the public health department of Ben Gurion University in Israel, thinks that the most likely candidate for another pandemic is a strain of influenza. “It is always on the horizon, and is a devastating scenario,” he said. “It has a good possibility of manifesting in our lifetime; there have been three major pandemics, and a mild one three years ago – which doesn’t reduce the possibility of a pandemic happening.” Primary responders “Flu mutates all the time, that’s the trouble,” said Webster, whose research specialty is influenza. He said he thinks the US is better-prepared for a global pandemic than it used to be. But there are no guarantees. The US has many advantages in combating the spread of diseases. Near-universal literacy, television and internet penetration mean reliable information about how to deal with an outbreak is much more easily disseminated to those who need it. The lack of these has greatly hindered efforts to fight Ebola in West Africa, where local customs and superstitions – including traditions surrounding the treatment of dead bodies – have made it easier for the virus to spread. In West Africa, no one was prepared for Ebola Additionally, US pharmaceutical companies are contracted to create a constantly updated bank of seed-stock for vaccines every time a new strain of a virus like influenza is discovered, which allows lots of doses of vaccine to be made in a short time if an outbreak occurs. According to Ben Knowles, a spokesperson for the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as long as an outbreak remains outside the United States, the organisation in charge is the World Health Organisation. When a new outbreak occurs in the US – such as the patient in Texas infected with Ebola – the first point of control is the individual state governments. “They are the primary responders,” Knowles said. When a disease on US soil spreads to multiple states, as happened with H5N1 avian flu, then the federal government takes over using the Incident Command Structure, a complex mechanism of interlocking agencies including Fema, the CDC, the Department of Homeland Security and others – the same mechanism that is triggered in the event of a natural disaster or terrorist attack. People wear masks on the streets of Hong Kong following the outbreak of Sars, in March 2003. Photograph: Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images That mechanism has not been activated by the Ebola diagnosis given to Thomas Eric Duncan, the patient in Dallas. The CDC is in the area, rather, because it was invited by the state authorities in Texas to send a team to help. The only question is: will we experience a mild disease, or a devastating disease like in 1918 But there are issues with American preparedness. A 2014 report by the Department of Homeland Security with the ominous title “DHS Has Not Effectively Managed Pandemic Personal Protective Equipment and Antiviral Medical Countermeasures” found that the DHS “did not adequately conduct a needs assessment prior to purchasing pandemic preparedness supplies and then did not effectively manage its stockpile of pandemic personal protective equipment and antiviral medical countermeasures.” Its authors discovered that, among other things, 84% of the department’s store of hand sanitiser was expired – some as much as four years out of date – and that 81% of the department’s antiviral medication would expire by the end of 2015. To solve this problem, the department is “applying for a shelf-life extension with the Food and Drug Administration” for the influenza drug Tamiflu. Fraser said that the current outbreak of Ebola has shown that the global systems that are supposed to spot outbreaks of diseases are not good enough, “and more importantly, the action that follows is not fast enough, not coordinated enough, to cut off an epidemic at source. We know it’s possible – one of the triumphs of the last few decades was the containment of Sars,” he said. “But we failed to achieve that in the case of Ebola.” Webster agreed. “In West Africa, no one was prepared for Ebola,” he said. “We are better off for flu; we can be prepared more quickly. But still if something like Ebola was to spread rapidly, there wouldn’t be the resources in the world. You have to have the equivalent of a police force to deal with it.” “Once every few years we see a new disease in humans,” said Balicer. “Over and over again, we see examples of new diseases; Sars, Aids, mad cow disease. You see, in a pretty constant manner, new pathogens emerging, and we can expect this trend to continue.” “It’s an example of rolling the dice,” he added. “The only question is: will we experience a mild disease, or a devastating disease like in 1918?” |
Jeon "Dragon" Yong Soo is a Terran player and caster from South Korea who is playing for Team YP. Dragon is a former high-level Brood War player who played under the ID "Mio,"[2] which he continued to use in StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty as a member of the clan WeRRa. In May 2014, Dragon founded the Dragon Invitational Tournament series. Wings of Liberty [ edit ] Although Dragon joined SlayerS in 2010, he wasn't able to move into the SlayerS team house for some time due to his work commitments. He stated on his stream that he would enter the team house on October 26, 2011 but wouldn't be allowed to stream anymore. As of December 2011, Dragon was back home, having resumed streaming again. Destiny announced a YouTube partnership where he would upload VODs of Dragon's stream.[3] In January 2012, Dragon left SlayerS to put aside professional gaming for a while to fully focus on work,[4] but after a change of mind decided to look for a new team.[5] On March 6, 2012, it was announced that Dragon had joined team Millenium.[6] On May 3, 2012, Dragon arrived at the Millenium team house to practice there for the months to come. In June of that year, he received a sponsorship from GeIL Memory to promote GeIL's Black Dragon RAM.[7] He left the French team on December 3, 2012.[8] After leaving Millenium, Dragon joined Meet Your Makers along with fellow Korean and former WeRRA teammate PhoeNix.[9] Global StarCraft II League [ edit ] Dragon (Jys) up against NesTea in his first GSL. Three weeks after WeRRa's dissolution in October 2010, Dragon (under the name "Jys") qualified for the GSL Open Season 3, showing remarkable play against Season 2 winner NesTea but falling in the round of 64 with a score of 2-1.[10] Dragon was added to the SlayerS roster on November 30, 2010, along with former WeRRa teammate Cella, shortly after his performance in the GSL Open Season 3. While Dragon was finishing his military service, BoxeR mentioned practicing with Dragon, then playing under the ID Seo Yeon Ji, to improve his TvT in a GSL Season 2 interview.[11] Dragon attempted to qualify for GSL 2012 Season 2 Code A but fell to KangHo (then going by LosirA) 2-1 in the quarterfinals of the qualifiers. IGN ProLeague [ edit ] Dragon giving an interview in English at IPL. In Week 14 of the IPL Team Arena, Dragon was fielded by SlayerS against TyLoo but lost in his match to Uhen. On February 28, 2012, it was announced that Playhem would be sponsoring Dragon at IGN ProLeague Season 4 in Las Vegas, Nevada. At IPL, Dragon played in the open bracket, reaching the round of 16 of the winner's bracket by defeating RxNinja before being sent to the loser's bracket by Code S player GanZi 2-0. Dragon then made it to round four in the loser's bracket, defeating PanzerRH and more notably Team Liquid's Haypro 2-1 along the way before being eliminated by former Code S player Swagger (then going by Killer) 2-0. Lone Star Clash [ edit ] Dragon was invited to the first Lone Star Clash in Austin, Texas. He played viOLet in the first round, losing 2-0. Dragon then dropped to the loser's bracket and was eliminated by Destiny 2-1. Evil Geniuses Master's Cup [ edit ] Dragon played for Millenium in the Evil Geniuses Master's Cup Season VII, an online team league, falling to ViBe of It's Gosu in week 3. He later lost to HasuObs of mousesports in week 4 and DeParture of Fnatic in week 6. DreamHack Open [ edit ] Dragon's game against Cytoplasm, which lasted almost an hour and ended in a draw. Dragon played in DreamHack Open: Summer 2012 in Jönköping, Sweden. He went undefeated with a score of 6-0 in Group Stage 1, defeating Zuth, Megashira, and Team Liquid's Snute. In Group Stage 2, Dragon was eliminated from the tournament, defeating Fade 2-0 but falling 2-1 to both Cytoplasm and MorroW. Dragon's game against Cytoplasm on Antiga Shipyard, which ended in a draw, was given an honorable mention in TeamLiquid's Best Games of 2012.[13] Qualifiers [ edit ] Dragon attempted to qualify for TeamLiquid StarLeague in the TSL 4 Qualifiers, defeating Pokebunny in the first round but falling to LaLuSh in the round of 16. He was defeated in the second qualifier in the round of 32 by mycerion. Dragon came within one game of qualifying for ASUS ROG Summer 2012, defeating Bischu and Brat_OK before falling in the final match to Bly. In the second qualifier, Dragon defeated viPro but lost to Suppy in the following round. Weekly tournaments [ edit ] In 2010, Dragon defeated Astraea and eventual Code S competitor BanBans in the WTA Takedown! before falling to GSL semifinalist Ensnare in the semifinals. On September 16, 2011, Dragon finished second place in CraftCup #L90, defeating BabyKnight 2-0 along the way but falling 0-2 in the finals to Orly. In February 2012, Dragon reached the semifinals of CraftCup #46, falling to sYz 0-2. He then managed to reach the finals of NA ZOTAC Cup #39, falling to Sleep in the finals and taking second place. In the same year, he reached the finals of EU ZOTAC Cup #113, falling to elfi in a close series and again taking second place. Dragon competed in the MSI Pro Cup #7, defeating ToD 2-1 but falling to Polt 0-2 in the quarterfinals. In May 2012, Dragon displayed strong performances in the ESL EU GO4SC2 Cup, first winning Cup #195 and later taking third place in Cup #197. In GameCreds Cup #57, Dragon reached the quarterfinals but lost to GoOdy. Two days later, Dragon fell to Nerchio in Antec Attack #15, also in the quarterfinals. Dragon also participated in Eclypsia Cup #1 but fell in the group stage to biGs, Bly, and Welmu. In the ESET Summer Masters Open #3, Dragon reached the finals but narrowly fell to KroLu, taking second place in the tournament. Showmatches [ edit ] In February 2012, Dragon played against Cella in a best of 7 Playhem showmatch, defeating his opponent 4-0. The next month, Dragon played against Golden in a best of 7 showmatch, taking two maps but falling to his opponent 4-2. Following Lone Star Clash, Dragon challenged Destiny to a showmatch, losing the series 4-0.[14] In May, Dragon played against CatZ in a CSN Allstars best of 7 showmatch, defeating his opponent with a score of 4-2. He next played against desRow in a best of 5 showmatch, winning the series with a convincing score of 3-0. The following month, Dragon defeated LzGamer with a score of 4-2 in a best of 7 showmatch, bringing his record to four wins and two losses in Wings of Liberty showmatches. Heart of the Swarm [ edit ] Dragon left Meet Your Makers on April 1, 2013 after its StarCraft II team disbanded in order to focus on League of Legends. About a month later, Dragon was announced as a member of the Clarity Gaming team.[15] While on Clarity, Dragon competed in various weekly and premier tournaments. In September 2013, Dragon was announced to have joined Core Gaming as a result of an agreement between Core and Clarity Gaming's Chief Operating Officer, Mike Orlani.[16] However, it was determined that Orlani did not have the proper clearance to release Dragon from his contract with Clarity. The issue was satisfactorily resolved for both teams with the decision that Dragon would remain on Clarity Gaming until the expiration of his original contract.[17] Dragon left Clarity in December 2013. Iron Squid [ edit ] Dragon competed in the Iron Squid King of the Hill, challenging reigning champion DIMAGA and defeating him 2-0. Dragon then won two more series against ToD 2-1 and CatZ 2-1 before falling to ForGG 2-0, ending his 3-match win streak. His performance tied him with DIMAGA for the second-longest win streak in the event. HomeStory Cup [ edit ] The Korean casting team at HomeStory Cup: viOLet , Dragon, TaeJa Seed , and HyuN In December 2011, Dragon attempted to qualify for HomeStory Cup IV but fell to RevTime in the Korean qualifiers. On June 21, 2013, Dragon played in the main tournament of HomeStory Cup VII. In Group Stage 1, Dragon defeated TLO 2-1. In the winner's match, Dragon lost to Seed 2-0, and was eliminated by TLO 2-0 in the final match of the group. Major League Gaming [ edit ] Dragon giving an interview in English at MLG Spring. On June 28, 2013, Dragon participated in the 2013 MLG Spring Championship, where he fell in Round 1 of the winner's bracket to CatZ with a score of 2-0. In the loser's bracket, Dragon defeated Mewtwo and binski before being eliminated by ThorZaIN 2-1 in round three. No Dice Invitational series [ edit ] On March 8, 2014, Dragon participated in the No Dice Gaming Invitational #1, defeating South Korean player Hunter 3-2, before falling to Team Liquid's TaeJa 0-4 and taking second place. Later that month, Dragon competed in the No Dice Gaming Invitational #2, losing to HyuN 2-0 in the first round. He then defeated GSL champion Seed 2-0 before falling to Hunter 1-2 in the Losers' Finals and taking third place. On April 30, 2014, Dragon participated in the No Dice Gaming Invitational #4, falling to Revival 2-0 in the opening match. Dragon managed to defeat South Korean player Pink 2-1, showcasing an uncommon style of mech TvP before falling to StarDust 2-0 in the deciding match. Qualifiers [ edit ] In April 2013, Dragon attempted to qualify for GSL 2013 Season 1 Challenger but fell to Guilty in the round of 16 of the qualifiers. In July 2013, Dragon reached the finals of the WCS America 2013 Season 2 Qualifier, winning ten consecutive games against Ranchinator, LaserJSC, Petraeus, SeleCT, and Comm before falling to Arthur 0-2. The next year, Dragon competed in the WCS Europe 2014 Ladder Wildcard Qualifier but lost to Bischu in the round of 16. Dragon competed in the American qualifiers for IEM Season VIII Shanghai, where he defeated desRow in the first round before falling to the loser's bracket to Sound. He was then eliminated from the tournament by Golden. Weekly tournaments [ edit ] On March 24, 2013, Dragon competed in Home Clash II, defeating Harpner and Hanfy before falling to Welmu with a score of 1-3. The next month, he reached the semifinals of an EnerJ Cup Series tournament, winning 6 rounds against opponents including Turuk and Noname before losing to DIMAGA 2-1 in the round of 4. In August 2013, Dragon took first place in the Xilence and Plantronics Cup #11, defeating Revenge in the finals. He then reached the semifinals of Xilence and Plantronics Cup #12, losing in the end to StarNaN. At the end of the month, Dragon finished second place in the NA ZOTAC Cup #116, losing in the finals to Arthur. Showmatches [ edit ] Dragon's hero banshee in his showmatch against White-Ra On February 24, 2013, Dragon played against White-Ra in a best of 7 Playhem showmatch, defeating his opponent 4-2. Later that year, Dragon played against hendralisk in a best of 7 showmatch, losing the series with a score of 4-1.[18] Legacy of the Void [ edit ] On February 16, 2016, Dragon joins Team YP.[19] Casting career [ edit ] In May 2014, Dragon expressed an interest in becoming a caster. He began his casting career by founding the Dragon Invitational Tournament series and commentating the games in English. In June of that year, Dragon acquired Mechanische Tastatur as a sponsor for the tournaments. Dragon Invitational Tournament series [ edit ] The Dragon Invitational Tournament logo. Main article: Dragon Invitational Tournament. On May 15, 2014, Dragon announced that he was sponsoring a $2,000 tournament and that he was looking for players to participate.[20] This tournament became Dragon Invitational Tournament #1.[21] It was the first of the Dragon Invitational Tournaments, a series of tournaments sponsored and organized by Dragon and held online on Dragon's official stream. Tournament #1 featured 16 players invited by Dragon. It was held online from May 23 to May 26, 2014 and cast in English by Dragon. The winner of Tournament #1 was INnoVation, who defeated RagnaroK in the finals 3-2. On May 30, 2014, Dragon announced the second Dragon Invitational Tournament, also featuring a $2,000 prize pool and 16 players invited by Dragon. It was played from June 9 to June 12, 2014 and cast in English by Dragon and his former coach, Cella. In Tournament #2, INnoVation managed to defend his title, defeating Life in the finals 3-1.[22] On June 23, 2014, Dragon announced the third Dragon Invitational Tournament, again featuring a $2,000 prize pool and 16 players invited by Dragon. It was played on July 8, 13, and 14 and cast in English by Dragon. In Tournament #3, Life managed to reach the finals for the second time, defeating Leenock 3-2 to take the title.[23] On July 29, 2014, Dragon announced the fourth Dragon Invitational Tournament, also featuring a $2,000 prize pool and 16 players invited by Dragon. It was played from August 5 to August 8. In Tournament #4, San became the first Protoss medalist in a Dragon Invitational Tournament, defeating aLive 3-2 to take first place.[24] Tournaments Cast [ edit ] 2014 [ edit ] Controversy [ edit ] Under the account name Seo Yeon Ji, Dragon participated in A1 KotH, where he finished first in the September 2010 overall ranking. Based on this result, he was invited to play in the A1 StarCraft II Tournament #2 which invited the top 6 players from KotH along with 2 other players. In the first round of the tournament, Dragon played against TheStC and won. Soon after the match, TheStC wrote in PlayXP that “Seo Yeon Ji used absurd counter build order without scouting. I know that Seo Yeon Ji is MioWerra’s account and MioWerra has been doing stream-cheating online.”[25] When he joined SlayerS, Dragon admitted to listening to a live stream of the tournament during his match when BoxeR asked him about TheStC's accusations. After speaking with TheStC and members of WeRRa, Dragon publicly apologized to TheStC, members of oGs, and WeRRa, stating that "he was sorry for what he had done."[26] Later, in response to allegations of match fixing, Dragon stated that he would “never dream of other tournaments, televised matches, or pursue a career as a pro-gamer,” but no match fixing was found to have occurred and Dragon returned to professional gaming after being cleared of his charges.[27][28] WeRRa’s clan master, Gundam, and vice clan master, Cella, apologized for the controversy concerning Dragon, and Dragon was released from WeRRa. WeRRa disbanded a month later after an unrelated scandal surrounding its clan master, Gundam. After leaving WeRRa, Dragon joined SlayerS clan. He succeeded in qualifying for GSL Open Season 3 in November 2010 despite his earlier promise, for which Dragon apologized. In response to Dragon's apology, Mr. Chae of GomTV released a statement explaining that no action would be against Dragon.[29] Dragon played his GSL match against the previous season's champion, NesTea, and was eliminated 2-1. Trivia [ edit ] Dragon using a special combination of Thors and Ultralisks to defeat his opponent in a ladder game. Was an A+ player on iCCup in Brood War. [30] Plays Random at a high Master level on the South Korean server. Enjoys trolling people in different server locations while streaming. After each won game, Dragon will thumbs up for the camera and say "SUSSESS!" (Success) while moving his eyebrows up and down. His trademark is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ "EZ!" Dragon is also known for saying "I Not Gay" to his viewers due to the numerous amount of people who want to have his babies. Was nicknamed "Ladyboy" by his fans. Was ranked Number 1 in the world on his SEA server account "NyangKoSenSe" during Season 3. [31] Achieved Grandmaster in HotS on a new account "SeexKing" in less than one day with a record of 32-4. [32] Announced his retirement on stream, but later wrote "Dragon Will back Pro Level." Later announced his retirement again, stating "I'm leaving progaming level, just troll and fun games." Announced his return in September 2014 during a stream titled "i am back Progamer Search Team." Achievements [ edit ] Gallery [ edit ] ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Sometimes Dragon is saying "Success!" when he wins the game. Interviews [ edit ] 2013 [ edit ] 2012 [ edit ] |
One of the most important SEO challenge at the moment is the JavaScript applications indexing by the search engines. Since Google announced the "Ajax-crawling scheme" indexing deprecation (= based on URL specific fragments), many experiments have been run in order to identify the actual indexing abilities of the most important search engine. Here is for instance a very interesting JavaScript frameworks comparison: Google claims regularly it interprets JavaScript, but there are some limitations : The only indexed content is the one available in the page at load event; The JavaScript must be fast enough (5 seconds seems to be the limit). Most of the applications do not comply with those rules, so they are partially or not indexed. Some use workaround solutions like prerender.io (see below). The best solution is to provide server-side rendering. TL;DR: YOU MUST USE SERVER-SIDE RENDERING. We present here an efficient solution for Angular 4 applications: Angular Universal. How Angular Universal works (the theory) Angular Universal used to be an Angular 2 add-on, and it is now integrated into Angular 4 core. It allows the generation on the server side of what the application should have done on the client side. Once delivered to the browser, this pre-rendered version is rehydrated with the JS app and everything that will happen next will be done client-side. It requires to deploy NodeJS on your server (but PHP and Python implementations are planned). Note: Angular 4 is not very different from Angular 2, it is just named that way because of semantic versionning. If you use Angular 2, you should upgrade to Angular 4. How to setup Angular Universal (the practice) As you could expect, there are much to explain about the practice, so we wrote a separated article about it: How to setup Angular Universal. Does it really work? Standard crawling To validate Angular Universal abilities, we crawled our site with Screaming Frog SEO Spider. As we want to check how the site behaves without JavaScript, we first ran the tool with the Text Only option: It is roughly equivalent to a basic curl command: curl https://your-url.com on your site: it just donwloads the resulting HTML and does not run any JS or web rendering. The response time is very good (HTML is delivered in less than 500ms). We first note the tool is gathering all the page links properly and is crawling the entire website. It does collect the TITLE, H1 or META Description tags and all the HTML content is compliant with what it would have been in the client-side running application. Hence, the standard page text and words ratio can be computed just like if it was a regular website. Search engines will have no problem in indexing our site. Sitemap.xml crawling On a regular JS app, one of the workaround is to provide a sitemap.xml file to make sure search engines index all the pages. It works as well with Angular Universal, but it is not necessary as all the links are discoverable in the generated pages. JS-enabled crawling Our second test will enable JavaScript: As expected, the crawling is now much slower (as the tool tries to execute all the JS code). We often get some timeout and the page links are not properly crawled. The TITLE tag seems to be processed but some parts of pages are ignored. There still would be some errors regarding our website indexation. The drawbacks Documentation It is still a young technology, it is badly documented. The lack of documentation might impact the project. Deployment Angular Universal will require a NodeJS server on production. It can be handled of course, but that's still an extra constraint. The user experience You can enable Universal just for robots or for all visitors. If you use it for all visitors, you might face annoying side effects, like some blinking if something is first run on the server, then cancelled and re-run on the client. The angular/preboot module is designed to avoid that. With this module, once the prerender version of the page is rendered, the client-side version is launched in a hidden DOM copy. Meanwhile, all the user interactions are recorded. Once the execution is finished, the prerendered version and the client-side version are switched and the interactions are replayed. Setting up preboot is not easy and will be the subject of a future article. What if you don't use Angular? The other main frameworks have equivalent solutions and when they don't, you can still use prerender.io). ReactJS The most famous server-side rendering solution for React is Next.js. It is very easy to set up but still it is recommended to set it up at beginning rather than the project is finished. Next.js proposes Link component to manage routes. It will also replace the Webpack configuration for the bundle generation. With an existing app using a specific sass and webpack configuration, involving custom loaders etc., it might be easier to use Express and to adapt the configuration. In that case, you can use react-dom renderToString. And you will have to adapt react-router (if used). In any case, you will have to cautious with Redux, and make sure it can provide data on the server side. Vue.js Vue.js offers several server-side rendering solutions: Nuxt.js, which is the Next.js equivalent for VueJS. The nuxt/starter template allows to bootstrap a project able to generate all the pages in static version. Those files can then be served by Nginx directly. Vue SSR is more complex. It is quite close to Angular Universal. You will have to adapt to the execution context to produce an accurate SSR service. Only beforeCreate et created life cycle hooks are available on the server-side. It provides hot-reload (so you do not have to restart your Node server everytime), which is handy. Prerender-spa-plugin prerender-spa-plugin is a webpack plugin. It is framework agnostic, and allows to render a collection of URLs. The set up is very quick, and can be integrated in your SPA build. The resulting static files will just have to be published by your web server. Prerender.io Prerender.io is THE generic solution to produce a static version of any JavaScript application. It is a SaaS solution but the company also provides its tool as an open source project, so you can install it on your own server. Basically, it is a multi-thread service providing PhantomJS instances in charge of rendering pages. We recommend to run it behind a Nginx proxy (there is an "official" nginx configuration, and we have made few adaptations). Your turn now Did you set it up? Do you have feedback to share? Do you face issues? CONTACT US if you need help, or order a SEO AUDIT! |
Department of Public Works looks to Europe for idea to paint city walls with water-repellent paint in effort to combat public urination problem The city of San Francisco, tired of cleaning up after those who relieve themselves in the public, wants to test walls that pee back. The San Francisco department of public works (DPW) is hoping to paint some of the city’s walls with hydrophobic (water-repellent) paint. If urinated upon, the paint makes the urine bounce off the wall – and back at the urinator’s feet. In Europe, such paint has been proven to work. In Hamburg, walls in the St Pauli quarter of the city have been painted with a super-hydrophobic coating and given accompanying signs, which read: “Do not pee here. We pee back!” It was the Hamburg experiment, as captured in a YouTube video, that captured the attention of San Francisco officials. “We saw this report on the internet and thought it looked interesting,” DPW chief Mohammed Nuru told the San Francisco Chronicle, adding that the city is considering testing the paint in neighbourhoods where “it’s costing us a lot to send teams out and do clean-up”. Public urination is a long-held and growing concern for San Francisco residents, according to the Chronicle. The city passed legislation against it in 2002 but the ban has had a little success, even though fines for answering nature’s call on San Francisco’s streets can range from $50 to $500. “We know it’s a problem and we’re out there – our foot beats and our mobile patrol units. We’re out there trying to enforce these kinds of violations,” a police spokesman, Sergeant Dennis Toomer, told the Chronicle in 2007. “When we do spot something we take action on it, but we have limitations. We’re trying our best.” In the first six months of that year, San Francisco received 5,636 requests for steam-cleaning sidewalks, the majority of which were caused by human waste. Hamburg faced a similar dilemma, according to IG St Pauli, the community group that decided to paint walls to repel urine. “Prohibitions and fines do scarcely anything,” said a member of the group. “So we decided to solve the problem our own way. Now, St Pauli pees back.” Suggestions for where San Francisco should test its pee-back walls can be submitted to dpw@sfdpw.org. “If a suggestion sounds reasonable, we’ll try it,” said Nuru. |
Originally published in the June 2015 issue of Road & Track. Cross-country moves are both amazing and terrible. I was reminded of this two days ago, when I drove to Seattle from Road & Track's home in Ann Arbor, Michigan. (Old job: Executive Editor. New job: Editor at Large. Switching roles for more writing and a change of pace.) Most of our house went into a moving truck. The rest came with me, in a diesel Ford Transit van borrowed from Dearborn. The Ford left the Midwest holding my dog, my friend and co-driver Jeff Diehl, and boxes of fragile stuff I wanted to keep an eye on. Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington. Three days. Instructional. You expect a fully loaded cargo van to drive like garbage, a mule with too many bags. The Transit, a bright light in the current flock of European-style vans, sat carefree and comfy at 85 mph, bounding along on a wave of torque. Pile into a tight corner, and the stiffly sprung rear axle would just kind of roll-spit you out the other side, like an old Mustang on Percocet. It made the Ford Econoline feel like the Chrysler Building on wheels and most other modern vans seem to have been drawn up by apes. It begged to be caned. I fell hard. The road does weird things to your head. There was babbling about the Transit's greatness to no one in particular. ("You there! Cow in that field! Steering feel!") In the mountains near Bozeman, Montana, I became consumed by an absurd, titanic battle with an Audi A4 Avant, countering the Transit's lack of pace with a hefty dose of bravado. Hunched over the wheel and squinting, I shook my fist at the sky. When we finally passed the Audi, Jeff looked into the driver's window. "He's wearing headphones! Doesn't even know you're alive." "Doesn't matter," I said, the speedometer creeping past 95 mph. "Every van dies. Not every van really lives." At a Minnesota truck stop, possibly under the influence of monumental sleep deprivation, I bought a $2.99 bumper sticker that said "Princess" in curlicue font. It was still on the rear door when Ford's fleet guys retrieved the van in Seattle. As I watched them drive off, I noticed that someone's finger had drawn a heart around the sticker in road grime. I hope both things stay there forever. In the West, you get a better understanding of everything great and terrible about America. In most states, the government asks that each residence have a mailbox. West of Wisconsin and north of Kansas, that requirement transmutes into a minimum of three pickups rotting in your backyard—every dwelling, every street, visible from the highway. One Montana house had five Ford Rangers of various vintages, lovingly parked in the dirt, next to a driveway the size of a football field. Truck stops sold vomitus taquitos and steaklike bison jerky. We got stuck in traffic next to a trailer park where each home had a detached garage almost as big as the trailer itself. Ford It all reeked of Aaron Copland and that Nineties TV commercial for beef. Open space: It's what's for dinner. (Though Montana's communal vibe suggests a missing postscript: You got a problem with that, you commie jackwagon?) The dog, admittedly, helped the mood. A three-year-old English springer spaniel named Elly, after Bernd Rosemeyer's wife. Sweet, but also dumber than a bag of hammers. Despite the fact that her fluffy dog bed was perched in the Ford's cargo area, she insisted on riding between the front seats, head contorted over the cup holders, eyes locked on my face. Every time I moved her aft, she'd plop back up front, visibly uncomfortable. (Drive with animals, relearn life lessons. Love is weird. Also, what looks like suffering isn't always.) And moving gives you a better understanding of your own possessions. The boxing-unboxing process is a weird kind of Christmas, unearthing things you don't remember acquiring. Do I really need a cocktail napkin from the launch of Bob Lutz's watch company? How, exactly, does one obtain a blank piece of 1970s Hoffman Motors BMW dealer stationery? What was I going to do with it—go back in time and prank-mail Germany? ("Achtung, Herren Falkenhausen und Bracq! Sind Ihre refrigerators running?") Plus, you know, boring stuff like furniture. Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, three days. And everything great and terrible about America. The moving truck should—and here I stress the conditional—arrive and unload everything in a few days. It left Michigan late. Movers operate on their own timeline; like Einstein's river, you can't control them, just go with the current. Maybe the water feels nice against your toes; maybe one of the loaders rips a hole in your couch. Too many moves over the past decade have helped me realize that much of life is simply allowing events to unfold. You can't hurry anything but panic. Including the bleed-down of tension. I now have that sea-leg feeling you get after an epic journey, where you both never want to drive again and feel slightly empty because you're not behind the wheel. It's a cross between posttraumatic stress, Stockholm syndrome, and the good parts of a chemical addiction. Predictably, it's hard to shake. And so I found myself diving into Craigslist yesterday, laptop on my knees, on the floor in an empty apartment. There are cars on the other side of the nation. Some might even need to be driven back here. A lot of people live in this big old country, but few take the time to really see it. You don't traipse across your front yard occasionally, who says it's yours? Sam Smith is an editor at large for R&T. He has not yelled at a cow since the incident in question. |
Share Earlier today, Twitter gave in to a New York court subpoena requiring it to turn over more than three month’s worth of tweets posted by user Malcolm Harris, 23, who was arrested last September during an Occupy Wall Street Protest. The surrender of the tweets, which Harris deleted from his public profile, follows a months-long battled by Twitter to keep the information from landing in the hands of prosecutors. The surrender of the tweets was the result of presiding New York State Supreme Court Judge Matthew Sciarrino’s threat to hold the company in contempt and impose a fine on Twitter if the tweets were not handed over by today. To assess the amount of the fine, Sciarrino demanded that Twitter disclose its earnings statements from the past two quarters — financial data that Twitter, as a privately-held company, does not want to be made public by the court. The tweets will remain under seal at least until after the court hears Twitter’s appeal on the court order demanding the tweets, which will take place on September 21. “So Twitter handed over a pile of my tweets that’ll stay sealed pending a hearing on the 21st. Bummer.” — Malcolm Harris (@BigMeanInternet) September 14, 2012 Harris was one of more than 700 people arrested on October 1, 2011, for disorderly conduct after about 2,000 protesters blocked traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge roadway. Prosecutors believe Harris’s deleted tweets will prove that he knew he was disobeying police orders to not block the roadway. Reuters was first to report this story. Twitter declined our request to comment on the case beyond remarks made to the court (pdf) by attorney Terryl Brown, Twitter’s outside counsel. What this means for you Whether you plan to start protesting things or otherwise bring the attention of police, prosecutors, and courts into your life, Twitter’s involvement in the case against Harris should concern anyone who looks to the U.S. Constitution as the law of the land. At stake are the rights afforded by the Fourth Amendment’s protection against “unreasonable searches and seizures,” and the First Amendment protection of free speech, both of which are being tested by this case — a case that, on its surface, only concerns a misdemeanor crime punishable by a $250 fine or 15 days in jail. Public vs. private Were Harris’s tweets still publicly available, Twitter would not be involved in this case; the police could simply grab the tweets. However, because Harris deleted the tweets, all types of legal gray area has clouded the court’s proceedings. Back in July, after Twitter attempted to quash the subpoena for Harris’s tweets, Judge Sciarrino ruled that any tweet posted publicly does not enjoy the same Fourth Amendment protections as private speech, even if the tweets had been deleted. Sciarrino’s interpretation is that Twitter, not Harris, own the tweets posted through the service. This, despite Twitter’s terms of service, which clearly state that, as a user, “You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services.” “The Constitution gives you the right to post, but as numerous people have learned, there are still consequences for your public posts,” wrote Sciarrino in his July 2 ruling. “What you give to the public belongs to the public. What you keep to yourself belongs only to you.” Third-party doctrine One of the laws behind Judge Sciarrino’s ruling is what’s known as the Fourth Amendment’s “third-party doctrine.” This controversial rule, established as part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA), in part dictates that any online communication or records that exist on a third-party server (such as emails stored by Gmail, or tweets stored by Twitter) may be accessed by law enforcement without a warrant, as long as the data has been stored for 180 days or more. The understanding at the time the bill was written was that such communications or files had been “abandoned” by their owners, and as such, removed the owners’ expectations of privacy. This portion of ECPA has been recognized as out-of-date, as the law was passed at a time when online communications were rare. As I wrote earlier today, a new bill has been introduced to the Senate Judiciary Committee that would strike the third-party doctrine from the books. Unfortunately for Twitter and Harris, that bill is not likely to pass soon enough (if at all) to have bearing on this case. Moreover, the third-party doctrine was recently opposed by Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, who wrote the following in an opinion issued in United States vs. Jones, which dealt with police using a GPS device to track a suspect’s car for an extended period of time: …It may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties…This approach is ill suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks. People disclose the phone numbers that they dial or text to their cellular providers; the URLs that they visit and the e-mail addresses with which they correspond to their Internet service providers; and the books, groceries, and medications they purchase to online retailers. Free speech caged The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), along with the ACLU, New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), and Public Citizen filed an amicus brief (pdf) on behalf of Twitter for this case. In that brief, the groups argue that the inability for an individual (in this case, Harris) to quash a subpoena of this nature on First Amendment grounds wades into dangerous territory, as it threatens to disuade citizens from engaging in free speech through any form of digital communication. “If people know that the government will be monitoring their speech and creating dossiers on their past, present, and future communications such that they will be held accountable for everything that they say, people will be less inclined to speak or read as freely,” reads the brief. “That is especially the case with respect to ‘casual,’ spontaneous speech, because individuals would likely refrain from publicly making such statements or flipping through random books or websites as often if they thought that the government might later obtain that information and hold it against them.” Going to bat for users — no more? Beyond the questions of constitutionality, the court’s decision to bully Twitter into handing over Harris’s deleted tweets may lead other online service providers to shy away from fighting for their users when the laws are as controversial or unclear as this one. “The big implications [are] that the judge’s actions of putting Twitter in a tight spot (either disclose or face contempt) is likely to discourage companies from zealously standing up for user privacy,” said Hanni Fakhoury, staff attorney for the EFF, in an email with me earlier today. “By not waiting for the case to run through the appellate process, the judge almost seems to infer that Twitter’s protest is frivolous.” “The court should have waited for the appeal to go through,” added Fakhoury. “Without further appellate guidance, and now with a court inferring companies will be punished for trying to sort the law out, I am skeptical whether other companies will take a stand the way Twitter did.” Your thoughts? As an Internet user whose work and communications exist mostly online, the types of actions taken by Judge Sciarrino frighten me — not because I have anything to hide, but there are clearly holes in our laws that allow our rapidly changing digital lives to be exploited. Am I — and the others who opposed this action — paranoid? Perhaps. The problem is, it will be too late if we find out we’re not. I want to know what the rest of you think about this. Leave a comment below, or hit me up on Twitter: @andrewcouts. Just make sure to not say anything incriminating — it could be used against you in a court of law. Update: This article has been updated with additional information about the Constitutional consequences of New York v. Harris. Images via Daryl Lang & jcjgphotography/Shutterstock The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not reflect the beliefs of Digital Trends. |
Of all the occasions in which El Ministerio del Tiempo has told us about a historical event of Spanish history (which is every episode), the second part of ‘Tiempo de Valientes’ is probably the most thorough and intense. You see, about fifteen years ago, the creators of the show, Javier and the late Pablo Olivares, started a project with Rodolfo Sancho’s late father Sancho Gracia and my fellow citizen Arturo Pérez-Reverte about the Last of the Philippines, and of course this was a special topic to use for the show. On the second part of the story, we see Julián after a few weeks locked up inside the church in Baler (the siege lasted almost a year). Luckily for him, Alonso has travelled through time and continents to find him and rescue him. Problem is, Julián is super nice, as we all know, so he refuses to leave these men by themselves. That is, until he realises that he can’t save the ones that are destined to die (Alonso has brought with him information about the siege and the casualties among the men), so in the end, he realises that there is no other thing to do but escape. The day of their escape, however, they are caught by Lt. Martín Cerezo, and Julián and Alonso are locked up with another two soldiers, the four of them being sentenced to death. Don’t be surprised when I tell you that, when the time to escape comes, Julián becomes frustrated because he has to leave the other two behind, as their names are also on the casualty list. These two men were executed the day before the siege ended –by the way, the siege finally ends because Martín Cerezo, who at first believes the newspaper he’s being brought is a fake, reads an article about a friend of his who has been posted to Málaga, something Cerezo knew was his friend’s dream from when they were younger, so he realises the newspaper is real. In the meantime, in the present day, Ernesto finally discovers that the mother of his child is dead, but he does have a 20-year-old son! And Pacino is leaving us (but he said he’ll be back! He said it!) because his father is going back to having suicidal thoughts after his recent divorce, so Pacino is returning to 1981. BUT! Before he leaves, his chemistry with Amelia is out in the open and they finally do it! And this is such a turning point that her grave gets erased, ala Back to the Future Part III, and now she is not dying –and probably not getting married nor having a child. Her future’s changed! I hope this means the romantic involvement they were trying to sell us between her and Julián is gone, because even their reunion seemed more of what you’d see between friends than anything else. And I like her with Pacino more, it makes more sense, and there is more chemistry. And their love scene was beautifully made. So well done, show. Thoughts -They didn’t even give us an episode with Julián and Pacino together! Even though the hashtag (I hate social media terms) of the week was #JuliánYPacino. -Bad news: MdT is taking a break, so it will be a few weeks until we meet the team again. Good news: the next episode will feature Velázquez (it will be about the fire of 1734 at the Royal Alcázar of Madrid, in which lots of paintings were lost, including some of Velázquez’s). -“I’m still in love with my wife.” “But your wife is from the 16th century! You’re not going back there!” -“What is an intertemporal interdisciplinary?” “Sounds serious, right? I just made it up.” -“You’re carrying a crib sheet.” “You poor thing, you must be very hungry. This is not a pork chop, this is a piece of paper where I’ve written down the things that will happen, names of survivors, casualties… so that nothing changes.” The joke here is that the word in Spanish for both crib sheet and pork chop is ‘chuleta’ -When meeting to discuss their escaping plan, Julián and Alonso whistle the theme from The Bridge on the River Kwai. -“We’ll escape through the hole in the wall. I volunteered to fix it and put the rocks without mortar.” “Excellent, and after we’ve escaped, what do we do?” “God will provide.” “The second part of the plan seems a bit too green.” -If you are wondering about the first woman Ernesto visits on his son-searching adventure, she is supposed to be the muse of painter Julio Romero de Torres. -Here are the ministry’s files, for more information about the Siege of Baler. -By the way, the full episodes can be watched here. Not sure if there are country restrictions. |
Broken Bells: Life 'After The Disco' Enlarge this image toggle caption James Minchin/Courtesy of the artist James Minchin/Courtesy of the artist After the Disco, Broken Bells' second album, grew out of late-night conversations about what happens once you've grown up, or what happens after the party. The title phrase developed from band member James Mercer (The Shins) riffing on melodies until he hit something that sounded like "after the disco." "Life is sad," Mercer says. "People, you know, are going to pass, and you know that you will one day. I mean, there's that. I think that Brian [Burton] and I have pretty heavy conversations about things like that." "You think about what it's going to be like when you're older, and now you're there, and, well, now what do you do?" Burton (Danger Mouse) asks. Speaking recently with NPR's David Greene, Mercer and Burton discussed their creative process and how making the album provided a refuge from other projects, both personal and musical. |
What is post-metal? It may mean different things to different people, or if you aren’t familiar with some of the key bands in the movement, it may mean nothing to you. Adding the prefix “post” to hardcore or punk, and now metal, really speaks to artists transcending the previously perceived creative boundaries of a particular genre. It’s all about expanding the rulebook, or throwing it away all together. Post-punk or post-hardcore bands would count as some of my favorite heavy acts like Refused, Thrice, Quicksand, Glassjaw, Converge, etc. Post-metal, as a movement, has really been a sparse and non-unified entity, especially in the early days. Some bands that come to mind are Neurosis, The Melvins, Mr. Bungle, or some bands that came later like Candiria, Dillinger Escape Plan, or even Mastodon. It’s non-unified because the distinctive characteristic of most of these bands is their individuality: they buck trends and zig when everyone else zags. Most of these bands would probably scoff at being called “metal” to begin with. Relapse Records was the home for a few of these acts, so maybe that’s the common ground. Relapse deserves credit for being a label that championed true artists and stuff that didn’t fit neatly into pre-fabricated categories. It was a place for the weirdos, abstract noise, and mad science experiments. Today, post-metal has been somewhat decried as hipster-metal or beardo-metal by many meat-and-potatoes metal fans or traditionalist media. Doing my time in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I have been a little guilty of this. The rise of hipster culture, and their subsequent co-opting of a certain subset of the heavy music brought more than a handful of pretension and flippant snobbery. Painting with too broad of a brush as a way of judging people, and their music by proxy, is shortsighted and dickish on my behalf, if I’m being honest. The truth is post-metal is philosophically progressive and feels objectively more intellectual than most sects of metal. I am by no means an expert on this scene, and many of these bands are well covered by Decibel, Pitchfork, Noisey, Metal Injection, and Metalsucks if you want to go for a deep dive. But, I do see a groundswell of very interesting and artistically vibrant music that is penetrating the walls outside of our little metal culture. Here are a few of the bands that have caught my attention that I recommend you check out if you haven’t already. Baroness Embedded from www.youtube.com Baroness are truly post-metal in that the band’s sound has evolved rather quickly after the more metallic and muscular early Red (2007) and Blue (2009) albums. While always left of center from traditional metal, the band broke ground with the exquisite 2012 double-album Yellow & Green. It still had big riffs and metal leanings, but there was an emotional heft and frailty that felt more like a rock band. Being “post” is often about defying categorization. After surviving a devastating bus accident in 2012, Baroness have emerged with the forthcoming and eagerly anticipated Purple album, due to be released in December. The epic single “Chlorine and Wine” shows yet another plateau for an already luminary band. Shining (NOR) Embedded from www.youtube.com Shining is a band that’s been making a lot of noise for a while, but the fact is there are 2 bands called Shining: one from Sweden, and one from Norway. Both are contemporaries, both are associated with the avant-garde Scandinavian black metal scene, and both are very impressive. I didn’t know this until recently, so the buzz I’ve been hearing is probably an amalgamation of both bands’ achievements. Though, it was the Norwegian Shining that caught my attention recently with their new live music video for “Last Day” filmed on a Nordic mountaintop. Their sound reminds me of the rockiest version of Nine Inch Nails meets Danko Jones with a smack to the face of synthwave and jazz-fusion. That saxophone solo as the climax of the song is absolutely hair-raising. Shining is explosive. Deafheaven Embedded from www.youtube.com Deafheaven is a band that’s impossible to ignore as a key figure for modern post-metal. Their breakout 2013 album Sunbather became a critical smash in several realms outside of the traditional metal media. Unfairly or not, they also became the poster child for hipster metal. Their major key black metal meets ambient space rock or as it has been coined “blackgaze”, is reflective to me that black metal has become a sub-genre that is ripe for innovation, especially as a frontier for post-metal. Sometimes overhype can cause disdain, and their image aligning more with The Smiths than Emperor rubbed some metalheads the wrong way, but the band deserves a lot of credit creating a dynamic conversation through their haunting and beautiful music. I will say if you aren’t pissing people off, you aren’t really making a dent. Dig into their new album New Bermuda, out now. So Hideous Embedded from www.youtube.com Brooklyn’s So Hideous popped on my radar just in the last few weeks. Not unlike several of the post-metal standouts I’ve raved about in the article, So Hideous have a clear black metal backdrop to their presentation. What makes So Hideous special is the classical inspired composition and orchestration, which remind me a bit of Muse’s symphonic side. There is clearly a sharp mind behind these grandiose conjurations. On first listen, So Hideous appear to be an instrumental act, but then tortured vocals emerge to tatter and claw at the pristine sonic layout. If there is one area I think the band can improve, it would have to be in the vocal department. The music is so big and elegant that there should be something vocally to tie everything together more neatly. I always appreciate ambition, and So Hideous certainly has an ambitious and promising future. Their new album Laurestine is available now on Prosthetic Records. Kylesa Embedded from www.youtube.com There’s definitely something in the water in Georgia with post-metal superstars Mastodon and even new jacks like Royal Thunder emerging from Hotlanta. Savannah’S Kylesa are veterans of the sludge-y, doomy, stoner-y, not exactly metal, but too heavy for straight rock scene. They are really a band to witness in a live setting, boasting 2 drummers and 2 lead singers. Kylesa is obscenely heavy, dirty, and rough around the edges, while still being professional. What sets them apart from the typical Sabbath worshipping stoner rock rank and file is making a definitive choice not exist exclusively in the mid 1970’s. While there is there is plenty of respect paid to that era of pre-metal, Kylesa showcase a healthy dose of 90’s grunge influence that gives the band a more timeless and genre bending quality. One thing about post-metal is it’s affinity for the organic and analog. Few bands represent that ethos better than Kylesa. Russian Circles Embedded from www.youtube.com An old booking agent friend with a keen eye for talent hipped me to Russian Circles around 4-5 years ago, but I didn’t really glom onto the band until I saw them live at a sold out show at Saint Vitus last year in Brooklyn. They are an instrumental 3-piece, and the performance was mesmerizing and the breadth of the sound was HUGE. The guitarist used looping delays to create a layered effect not dissimilar from bands like Botch or Tosin Abasi when he played with Reflux. The cascading and rising dynamic melodies would hypnotize you, and when a heavy riff finally hit, you were pummeled. I really loved that the band grooved, and while the drummer was flashy to a degree, the pulse was never lost. When a band understands atmosphere and heaviness to the level Russian Circles does, I am unable to resist. There are many other fantastic up and coming post-metal bands I’ve failed to mention, so please share in the comments. |
Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Details of MPs' expenses receipts are being offered for sale for up to £300,000, it has been claimed. Labour MP Sir Stuart Bell said the Speaker's Commons Estimates Committee he sits on was investigating the case. In the wake of a string of allegations about expenses, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has suggested scrapping MPs' controversial second-home payment. As questions continue about MPs' claims the Committee on Standards in Public Life said it would speed up its review. It had planned to start its investigation later this year but the leaders of the three biggest political parties had all called for it to be brought forward so it could recommend changes before the next election. The suggestion that details of MPs' expenses claims were being offered for sale comes after weekend revelations that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith "mistakenly" claimed for adult movies watched by her husband. Sir Stuart told BBC Radio 4's Today on Tuesday: "All of the receipts of 650-odd MPs, redacted and un-redacted, are for sale at a price of £300,000, so I am told. "The price is going up because of the interest in the subject." It may be a theft, but we will get to the bottom of it. In the public interest Sir Stuart Bell Guide: Europe's MPs' pay s A guide to MPs' expenses Asked who was trying to sell the information, Sir Stuart replied: "Well we have a pretty good idea of not the person, but the source, and that is a subject of a House of Commons investigation." "It's probably a breach of the Official Secrets Act," Sir Stuart said. "It may be a theft, but we will get to the bottom of it. In the public interest, by the way." He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We don't believe that the newspapers will buy all of the 655 for £300,000, but they may wish to take say 10 senior MPs in the limelight and then there'll be a drip-drip of their expenses. "All of these expenses will be published, all of the receipts will be published, probably in July of this year, so there'll be 1.2 million receipts on the table and they can all have a field day." Sir Stuart added that all three of the main political parties should commit to reform of MPs' expenses in their manifestos for the next general election. Newspapers have reported a string of allegations about MPs' expenses in recent weeks, fuelling speculation that information might be being leaked by officials within Parliament. Further anger The allegations have prompted calls for a reform of the additional costs allowance - known as second-home allowance - which covers up to £23,083 of the cost of an MP staying away from their main residence to perform their parliamentary duties. The row intensified when official figures showed the total expenses claimed by MPs went up 6% in 2007-8, to just over £93m. In a letter to the independent Committee on Standards in Public Life, Mr Brown urged it to consider replacing the existing payment with a "simpler overnight allowance" that would be independently determined. He also suggested that all London MPs should receive the same allowance, ending the current distinction which allows those in outer London to make the additional claim for a second home. In his letter to the committee's chairman Sir Christopher Kelly, Mr Brown said: "I would be grateful if you could look to both start and conclude the review earlier than previously indicated to allow us to make progress on the issue as soon as practical." Additional costs He suggested the committee considered scrapping the controversial second-home allowance in favour of a simpler system. London MPs should be prevented from claiming for second homes altogether, he indicated, and others moved to "a simpler, overnight allowance that is independently determined". The prime minister's intervention came after allegations about allowances claimed by Employment Minister Tony McNulty and the home secretary. The Commons authorities have been working to prepare around a million receipts filed by MPs for publication, after losing a long-running freedom of information battle to keep them secret. The documents have now started circulating to members for them to check and make representations on which parts should be deleted for security and other reasons. They are expected to prove damaging to many MPs when they are published before the summer recess. It emerged that Mr McNulty claimed the allowance towards his parents' home in Harrow which he used in addition to a flat in central London. Ms Smith was criticised for claiming more than £116,000 in allowances for her family home in the West Midlands after nominating her sister's property in London - where she stayed several nights a week - as her main residence. Bookmark with: Delicious Digg reddit Facebook StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable version |
Carjacking suspect, Oct. 23, 2016. DETROIT, MI -- Detroit police are looking for a 40-year-old woman they say carjacked a 74-year-old woman who was nice enough to give the suspect a ride when she asked. The suspect approached the senior and asked for a lift as the victim exited McDougall Market on Detroit's east side about 10 a.m. Sunday. "As the victim and the female suspect were heading east on Canfield towards Moran, the victim turned to look at the suspect she produced a weapon, pointed in her direction and advised her that she was being robbed," police said in a statement Monday. "The victim then exited the vehicle and the suspect fled the location in the victim's vehicle." The suspect took the woman's four-door, 1997 green Buick Century, license plate no. CHG 1231. The suspect is described as a 40-year-old, 5-foot-8, 225-pound, dark-complected black woman with a large build and short, curly, brown hair. Anyone with information is asked to call Detroit police at 313-596-2517, or CrimeStoppers, 800-SPEAK UP. |
Why Some Cat Eyes Glow Red at Night Posted on October 8, 2015 under Cat Articles By Arden Moore, a certified cat and dog behaviorist with the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants. Arden is an author, radio host, and writer for Pets Best, a cat insurance and dog insurance agency. I was asked the following question by a cat owner, “When I walk around my house at night in dimly lit rooms, sometimes I get spooked a bit when I see my cat. Precious is a sweet Siamese cat, but at night, her eyes seem to glow red in the dark, giving off a devilish look…What causes her eyes to glow red at night?” Good question. Your cat’s large, round eyes are designed to operate far better in low light conditions and the dark than our eyes. As hunters who are active at dawn and dusk – the best times for them to stalk prey – cats can actually see as well in pitch black as we can see in full moonlight. Here are two reasons cats’ eyes glow in the dark. 1. Take a look at her eyes some evening under a bright lamp. Notice that the pupils are elliptical in shape, compared to our circular ones. In the lamplight, the pupils are narrow slits because they are protecting the sensitive retinas from damage. Now turn the lamp off and notice that her pupils dilate to accommodate the lower lighting. In a very dim light, the pupils will fill her eyes, making them look almost completely black. 2. As for that red glow, it is caused by light reflected from a layer of tissue called the “tapetum lucidum,” which lines the back of the eyeball behind the retina. It acts like a mirror, reflecting light that was not absorbed the first time it passed through the retina back through the eyes onto the light sensor cells in the retina. The result is an eerie glow as your cat’s eyes catch a beam of light in a dark room. This term, tapetum lucidum, is a Latin phrase that means “bright carpet.” Interestingly, some feline eyes glow green rather than red depends on the color of the cat’s eyes. Blue eyes, which Siamese cats have, glow red, while golden and green eyes cast green glows at night. Like This Article? Our Best Content, Delivered Monthly |
Unless you've been living under a rock (that doesn't have WiFi), you'll have seen a fair bit of hype around lately in regards to global warming and the toll the meat industry has on the environment. Add to that the fact that eating too much animal protein isn't all that great for your health. Are you picking up on a common thread? It's timely then that No Meat May is kicking off in a few weeks -- and might be a realistic way for those curious to dip their toe into vegetarianism. The community driven initiative asks participants to remove meat from their diets for the month of May in the name of four important factors -- the environment, personal health, animal welfare and food equity. "The big inspiration behind No Meat May was an eye-opening talk at the Sydney Opera House by Jonathon Safron Foer about his book, Eating Animals. Up until that point I was blissfully ignorant to most of the negative impacts of my then meaty diet. That talk and book not only sent me heading in the 'less meat' direction, but also inspired me to bring as many people along with me as I could," Founder of No Meat May, Ryan Alexander told The Huffingon Post Australia. "At his talk Jonathan illuminated how it would be impossible to get half of the world to turn vegetarian in time to address some big environmental issues, yet how the exact same massive impact would be achieved if everyone in the world reduced their meat consumption by half. "This resonated with me on a deep level. Eating half as much meat seems like such a no brainer when you look at the many devastating effects of our current over-consumption. The four big reasons behind No Meat May are incredibly compelling, and the many benefits of a more plant-based diet are not well understood by most," Alexander said. "I went meat-free soon after and became aware of these two opposing worlds that co-exist. The island of the meat eater and the island of the vego. No Meat May was my way of building a bridge between these two worlds, so that meat eaters could wander over and experience what no meat feels like for a good 31 days. A chance to break the habit, try on vegetarianism, but safely cross back if and when they needed to. Hopefully returning with a greater understanding of meat, where it comes from, and a more conscious approach to eating." Getting involved is easy. Participants sign up on the website and those who register will get free vegetarian and vegan recipes, nutritional information, links to educational documentaries and professional advice from experts. "I’m hoping No Meat May engages and inspires people to make more mindful choices, and plays a part in reducing our unsustainable consumption of meat. "At the very least, on average everyone who takes part in No Meat May will save 17 grateful animals by saying no to just over 7kgs of meat. And participant with prevent the equivalent of 134 Lbs of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere. That in itself is an achievement worth celebrating and a step towards a healthier, kinder, and greener future," Alexander said. |
ATHENS — Investors made clear on Wednesday the depth of their concerns about Greece’s new leftist-led government, driving up its borrowing costs, pushing down stock prices and highlighting the risks in the country’s banking system. Despite some soothing words from Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who at the first meeting of his new cabinet said Greece would not seek a “catastrophic solution” in its debt negotiations with the European Union and its other creditors, financial markets seemed increasingly rattled by his government’s pledges to reject the austerity policies imposed on the country over the last five years. Later, the new finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, appeared to harden the tone, saying that Greece’s bailout deals were “a toxic mistake” and that the new government was determined to change the logic of how the crisis had been tackled. Mr. Varoufakis said the new government would seek what he called a Pan-European New Deal, which would be a bridge between previous agreements and a new arrangement with creditors. He did not elaborate, though, on what such a plan would look like. The White House confirmed that Mr. Tsipras spoke by telephone on Wednesday with President Obama, who has generally been critical of Europe's austerity approach and supportive of more growth-oriented policies. But Mr. Obama has also recognized the need for structural reforms to accompany growth policies. |
In the 1980s, rallying was more popular than Formula 1, but its unregulated mayhem using extremely powerful cars would end abruptly in 1986 after a series of horrific tragedies. In the 1980s rallying was more popular than Formula 1. 'Group B' machines had taken the world by storm. Deregulation opened the way for the most exciting cars ever to hit the motorsport scene. Nothing like it has ever happened since. 'This is the fastest rallying there has ever been' - Peter Foubister. For four wild and crazy years manufacturers scrambled to build ever more powerful cars to be driven by fearless mavericks who could handle the extreme power. The sport was heading out of control and the unregulated mayhem ended abruptly in 1986 after a series of horrific tragedies. This is the story of when fans, ambition, politics and cars collided. 'The fans were crazy. As the cars sped by the spectators ran into the road!' - Ari Vatanen. 'They were playing with their lives'. 'To go rallying is madness. This was refined madness' - John Davenport Featuring world champaions Ari Vatanen, Walter Rohrl, Stig Blomqvist, plus Michel Mouton, Cesar Fiorio, Jean Todt and many many more. From the producer of Grand Prix: The Killer Years and the Grierson-nominated Deadliest Crash: The 1955 Le Mans Disaster. |
How should Microsoft have retooled itself for the era of tablets and touch interfaces? A few alternate-reality scenarios. Getty Images In 1995, consumers in Sydney, Australia go gaga for Windows 95, Microsoft's most rapturously-received upgrade of all time On Friday, I responded to Paul Thurrott's report that the first few weeks of Windows 8 sales have been disappointing by saying that Windows 8 is a long bet — and it therefore doesn't matter much what the early sales numbers look like. Bloggers John Gruber and MG Siegler referenced my post, and both said that Microsoft's strategy of combining Windows' traditional-PC interface with new touch-centric features is a mistake. Their thoughts are worth reading, and the market may well prove them correct. Me, I've been studiously avoiding making any predictions about Windows 8's chances of success…except to say that I think it's going to take a while until we know whether Microsoft's big bet is going to pay off. But here's a question that's worth pondering: If Windows 8 is a misbegotten idea, what should Microsoft have done instead? What should Windows 7's successor have looked like? What sort of products should the company offer for the era of touch interfaces and tablets? How should it position itself to do well in the post-PC years and decades to come? I can think of seven alternate roads the company might have followed. (They're not all mutually exclusive.) 1. The plain ol' plain ol' road. Microsoft could have released a Windows 8 that was to Windows 7 as Windows 7 was to Windows Vista: An improvement, but not a fundamental reimagining. Such a Windows 8 might have introduced some modest tweaks to make touch interfaces work better. But it wouldn't have demoted the old Windows interface in favor of an unrelated new look and feel; it wouldn't have eliminated the Start menu; it wouldn't have bifurcated into separate versions for x86 and ARM chips. Advantages of this road: It wouldn't have confused or alarmed anybody. Disadvantages of this road: This approach wouldn't have done much to reposition Windows for a world in which PCs are looking less and less like PCs. 2. The “Windows 7 Lion” road. Apple upgrades OS X more frequently than Microsoft upgrades Windows, but it hasn't done anything too radical: The operating system is still a conventional desktop operating system for conventional personal computers, and doesn't support touchscreens. But both Lion and Mountain Lion have borrowed lots of features from iOS, including the Launchpad, full-screen mode, Notifications, App Store, AirPlay wireless video feature and more. They're all optional; if you liked OS X the way it was, you can use it the way you always did. Windows 8 could have done something similar, riffing on Windows Phone features in a relatively subtle manner. Advantages: It sounds appealing to me! Disadvantages: Apple has vast numbers of customers who know iOS and are ready to understand iOS-like features which show up in OS X. But Microsoft hasn't had much luck getting Windows users to buy Windows Phone handsets. 3. The Windows 1.0 road. When Microsoft introduced the first version of Windows in 1985, it bore as little resemblance to DOS as Windows 8's new interface bears to old-school Windows. And anyone who ran both DOS and Windows lived in two different worlds with two radically different types of applications, much as Windows 8 users do. But for its first decade, Windows was an optional add-on to DOS — nobody used it unwillingly. Maybe Microsoft could have done something similar again, upgrading Windows in a more conventional manner, but simultaneously introducing an add-on which would give the operating system a simplified, touch-friendly front end. Advantages: Nobody would feel like they were having something unfamiliar forced on them. Disadvantages: A new Windows new interface as an extra-cost option might never become popular, let alone pervasive. (Then again, Windows 3.0 and Windows 3.1 were extra-cost options, and were blockbusters.) 4. The Windows Phone road. During the 15 months in between the launch of Windows Phone 7 and the first public demo of Windows 8, lots of people thought that Microsoft should release a version of Windows Phone for tablets. Then the company revealed that it planned to give Windows itself a Windows Phone-like interface, and it became clear why it hadn't released a Windows Phone Tablet Edition. But maybe there's an alternate universe in which the company's tablet strategy was the same as Apple's: one operating system for phones and tablets, and one for computers. In this scenario, Windows tablets might look much like the Windows 8 and Windows RT models we're seeing, except they wouldn't offer the desktop and wouldn't be compatible with any legacy Windows apps. Advantages: Windows Phone is an excellent operating system which might be pretty nifty on a tablet. Disadvantages: Microsoft's having trouble convincing teeming masses of people to buy Windows Phone smartphones, so there's little evidence that they'd clamor for Windows Phone tablets. 5. The just-Surface road. Right now, Microsoft isn't just introducing a wildly new version of Windows — it's also going into the PC business for the first time, with the tablets it calls Surface. The first version of Surface runs Windows RT, which is basically the same product as Windows 8, except it can't run traditional Windows apps except for the ones it comes bundled with: Office and Internet Explorer. Surface competes with other Windows RT tablets and with Windows 8 tablets, and the whole situation is kind of ugly and confusing. It's conceivable that it would have been cleaner if Windows just went on being Windows, and Surface was a new and unique Microsoft device, running an operating system that wasn't available on anything else. Advantages: It would be easy to understand — and maybe Surface would get more attention if it were an idea unto itself rather than a Windows 8 offshoot. Disadvantages: If Microsoft released an ambitious new software platform and didn't let its hardware-making partners use it, they might be even more ticked off than they are. 6. The something entirely new road. Or, if you prefer, the Courier road. Instead of tackling the tablet conundrum by reworking Windows, in any form, Microsoft could have created something from scratch. Something that wasn't designed to replace Windows as we knew it. At least not yet. Advantages: When a product starts off without any preconveived notions or existing customers, you can do whatever you want without fretting about ticking anyone off. Disadvantages: Unless the idea was BIG, it probably wouldn't go anywhere. And it wouldn't answer an all-important question for Microsoft: What should Windows look like in 2012, 2013 and beyond? 7. The almost the same as what they did, with one big difference road. If you upgrade to Windows 8, or buy a new Windows 8 PC, there's no way to cautiously dip your toe into the new-interface pool. The operating system boots into the Start screen, and it doesn't have the Start button and Start menu; it's willfully unfamiliar in a way that gives cautious consumers and businesses a reason to avoid it. Microsoft could have avoided this by (A) letting users configure Windows 8 to boot directly to the desktop; and (B) retaining the Start menu, at least as an option. Advantages: Windows 8 users could acclimate themselves to the changes at their own pace. Disadvantages: You know, I can't think of any. By shoving people directly into the new interface and withholding Windows' most familiar features, Microsoft took a pointlessly heavy-handed approach which denies its customers the ability to customize Windows to their own tastes. It's a move that's bad for Windows users. And if large numbers of those users respond by steering clear of Windows 8, it's bad for Microsoft. Even if you find things in Windows 8 to admire, as I do, you may still come to the conclusion that a sizable percentage of Windows users should ignore it for the time being. (Last week, my father asked me if he should upgrade; I considered the matter for 1.37 seconds and then advised against it.) But Microsoft, and recently departed Windows honcho Steven Sinofsky, deserve credit for doing something. Something rather daring, actually. Rather than dithering, the company chose a road — and now it needs to figure out how the world's responding to its decision, and journey forth accordingly. What matters now is what happens next. |
Penguins native to South America prescribed pick-me-ups to try to raise spirits after weeks of relentless wind and rain Penguins in a British sanctuary are so fed up with the miserable winter weather they are being given antidepressants. Wild Humboldt penguins are used to withstanding inhospitable weather in the coastal areas of South America, but those living in captivity in Scarborough are struggling with the constant wind and rain lashing the country. Staff at the Sea Life Centre there have become so concerned they have started to administer the medication as a pick-me-up. The centre's display curator Lyndsey Crawford told the Guzelian news agency: "Humboldts in the wild on the coast of Peru and Chile can be subjected to some pretty wild extremes of weather. What they don't get though is weeks of almost daily downpours and high winds. "After the first week out birds were just a bit subdued, but after over a month now, they are thoroughly fed-up and miserable, much like the rest of us." Three years ago the animals became similarly stressed and anxious when they were chased by a trespasser who broke into their enclosure. The experience left the animals, which are particularly vulnerable to any change in routine, frightened and it took some time for them to produce eggs again. According to staff, misery can lower the penguins' natural defences even more easily than in humans. That has lead them to prescribe "uppers" to try and head off any more serious symptoms. "They're doing the trick so far, but we are all praying for the weather to change and at least a few successive days of sunshine to give the penguins the tonic they really need," said Crawford. |
On its surface, the “National Bison Legacy Act” doesn't look controversial. It has already passed through both houses of Congress, now it simply awaits a very likely signature from President Obama. But leftist media are exploiting this adoption of the bison as the national mammal of the United States to stoke the fires of, you guessed it, white ancestor guilt. The Washington Post didn’t stop at pointing a finger at the U.S. government for their role in the near-extinction of the North American bison. No, they specifically cited the whiteness of the western settlers. “The introduction of horses and guns accelerated the pace of bison hunting among Native Americans, who relied upon the animals for many uses,” read the WaPo article. “But then came westward expansion by white settlers — Manifest Destiny — and the pushing of Native Americans off their lands.” “Killing bison became a tool in this fight by the U.S. government, and the pace of extermination became furious,” WaPo added. The language within the Bison Legacy Act suggests the story of the bison is one of the first successful forays into animal conservation. But a quote published by the Post declares that the bill is instead about helping Native Americans in “making peace with the past.” “We look at it as a conservation story, but to Native Americans, it’s also about making peace with the past,” John Calvelli, the Wildlife Conservation Society’s executive vice president of public affairs, told the Post. “Many of those bison were actually killed to help drive Native Americans to reservations. … Now, 100 years later, we as a nation are recognizing this symbol.” The leftist U.K.-based newspaper The Guardian also felt the need to shame modern day Americans for actions they can’t be held accountable for. “The bison is to become the first national mammal of the US, elevating it to the giddy heights of symbolism currently occupied by the bald eagle,” the Guardian wrote. “Little more than 100 years since it was virtually exterminated in America in a manic bid to demolish Native American resistance, the bison now has establishment status.” “There was no way for us to sustain ourselves when the buffalo were exterminated so we handed over vast tracts of land. The buffalo and the tribal people were put on the same path by the government. It was a tough time for tribes,” Jim Stone, executive director of the Inter-Tribal Buffalo Council, told the Guardian. An NPR affiliate also published their interview with Native American radio host John Kane, the beginning of which cited that the bill would “shed light” on parts of history the American government would be “less than proud of.” Kane revealed to NPR that he hoped the adoption of the bison as a national symbol would come with the “recognition of the role American policy played in almost destroying the creatures and those who relied on them to live.” Out of all the issues facing Americans these days, politicizing the adoption of an animal into American symbology is an extremely low rung on an impossibly tall ladder. But, as is evident, liberals never tire of finding opportunities to make Americans feel guilty about their ancestors. |
I am busy coding a web site with go. I am still not convinced that go is the best choice for web development unless performance is in high demand. It is still great fun to learn a new language and a language that have different opinions on many things compared to other languages. This kind of experiences are very good to move forward as a developer. So kudos to flatwallet that lets me learn go while getting paid for it. We try to use as much as possible of the standard library but sometimes it is hard as I described in my post about testing. When it comes to web development there is a good enough template engine that provides with the simplest things to get stuff into your markup. In mainstream template engines the normal way to get behavior into your template is to use <% %> for executing some code and <%= %> for getting some stuff inserted into the generated markup. In go you use double curly braces instead. So in order to insert a value you go {{.Value}} . The single point is a reference to the data structure (remember - no objects in go) that was passed to the template from the back end code and value is a field in that structure. There is the basic control flow things like: {{ if .IsActive }} Active {{ else }} Inactive {{ end }} and loops: {{ range .Books }} <div> {{ .Title }} by {{ .Author }} </div> {{ end }} When using range the . context is set to the current item for each loop over the collection. As you see you just mix curly braces with HTML freely. (So that it looks really messy to the eye….) Since the templating doesn’t conflict with the markup you can also use them in attribute values. This may look nasty at times: <div class="{{if .IsActive}}active{{else}}passive{{end}}"/> Not to my liking. The alternative is to add another field to the page structure and calculate the value in the go code instead. It adds a bit of duplication and the number of line increases and I am not sure the overall readability goes up. So the above may actually be a good choice at times. In this particular case it has the benefit of keepin css classes in the markup. Indeed - you could do it like this just as well: {{ if .IsActive }} <div class="active"/> {{ else }} <div class="passive"/> {{ end }} Better or worse? This is a simple div with nothing else in it but consider a real world situation where there are some content inside etc. Then it may be better to go with the compact solution instead. Things like these may be good to put in the coding guidelines for a project. (You all do them - right?!?) You can define a template with {{ define "my_template" }} <html>....</html> {{ end }} for both whole pages and parts in a page. Say you define a header partial: {{ define "header" }}<div>Menus and other header stuffs.</div>{{ end }} then you can use it in another template with: {{ template "header" }} . So that is kind of neat. There is no support for layouts so for solving that in the standard library way you’ll have to do it yourself with functions calling different templates in different contexts. One more thing. You can use with to get deeper in the context of the page. Like this: {{ range .Books }} <div> {{ .Title }} by {{ with .Author }} {{ .FirstName }}{{ .LastName }} {{ end }} </div> {{ end }} I haven’t used this much but it has the benefit of getting evaluated only if there is something in the referenced value. So it is a combined if statement with a scope narrower. Then there is a bunch of built-in functions that makes life a bit easier. The one that has bothered me most is call that lets you call a function from within the template. But not any function. It must either have been previously tied to the template with calls to Funcs with a FuncMap or be in the global namespace. So if you have a nice little function tied to the struct you are exposing to your template you can not use it right away. I find this limiting - the extra code to set it up can just as well be used to introduce another variable in the struct that holds the computed value. You end up with redundant data in your model where parts are ‘real’ data and parts are computed values. I don’t have a perfect feel for this yet and will come back to review it later and maybe another post about advanced templating. The standard library documentation is really good. The templating basics is in the text/template package while there are some added things for web pages in the html/template package. This separation is obviously good so that you can do templating inside whatever format you work with. Engine photo by Jon Pekelnicky. |
Here on earth, Paul Feig is responsible for blockbuster comedies like “Bridesmaids” and the cult TV show “Freaks and Geeks.” For his new Yahoo Screen series, however, he’s taking matters out of orbit. “Other Space,” Feig’s streaming comedy set aboard a spaceship in the year 2105, held its premiere screening Tuesday night at West Hollywood’s London Hotel, where TheWrap spoke exclusively with the director about his love of sci-fi, the state of streaming content and his decision to return to the small screen. “I actually should sue Yahoo for stealing my color,” Feig joked when we asked if the purple accents in his suit (also Yahoo’s signature color) were more than coincidental. It was only a year ago the tech giant commissioned the comedy from Feig, about a group of misfits piloting a spaceship that gets sucked into a parallel universe and must find its way home. Also Read: 21 Buzziest Streaming Shows: From ‘Marco Polo’ to ‘Transparent’ (Photos) “I love genres. I’m a huge sci-fi fan and I love anything where a bunch of people who shouldn’t be together get stuck somewhere. Honestly, ‘Freaks and Geeks’ was that. In high school, you’re there because you’re the same age and live in the same area,” Feig said. “Otherwise you’re trapped with people you have no reason to be with. Space is the alternate version of that.” Indeed 1999’s “Freaks and Geeks” put a lens on a quirky, angst-ridden American high school. While it only lasted one season the series found talent like James Franco, Seth Rogen, Linda Cardellini and Martin Starr before their big breaks. “Other Space” was a concept of Feig’s for nearly ten years before landing at Yahoo, and the “Spy” helmer says streaming is the perfect platform for this kind of work. Also Read: Paul Feig’s Yahoo Screen Original Series ‘Other Space’ to Launch in April (Photo) “I wanted to do something not on a network. I like new media, and I really wanted to do something where we could do what we wanted and not have the constraints and the pressures of the big networks… I’ve always said I’d rather do the first scripted show on QVC than to be fighting on a network to find your way.” Also Read: Paul Feig’s All-Female ‘Ghostbusters’ Reboot Will Be ‘Really Scary’ In terms of the evolution of streaming, Feig says “it’s the best thing to ever happen to entertainment hands down. It makes it a total meritocracy. It means the good shows get seen, and the ones that aren’t as good get scrubbed away, and it should be that way.” The entire first season of “Other Space,” starring Trace Beaulieu, Karan Soni, Milana Vayntrub, Conor Leslie and Neil Casey, is available for viewing here. The aforementioned “Spy,” starring Melissa McCarthy and Jude Law, opens June 5. Feig’s hotly anticipated all-female “Ghostbusters,” starring McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones, is due July 2016. |
My illegal abortion It was 1967, and abortion hadn't yet been legalized. I shudder to think that it could be illegal again It wasn't a coat hanger. It was a wire. The theory was that by inserting the wire through the cervix, moving it around a bit and then removing it, an infection would result and the pregnancy would be aborted. It worked. It was March 1967. Afterward, after I watched the 'doctor' wash his hands with one of those little soaps wrapped in white paper, after he tilted the bedside lamp just so and after he said, "That should do it," I got dressed, left the motel with the flashing vacancy sign, made my way to the bus station in downtown Detroit, and rode in the dark in the eerie silence of a mostly empty Greyhound all the way back to Mt. Pleasant, the tiny Michigan town where I was a freshman in college. Curled up next to the window under my black pea coat, I wondered how long it would take, whether it would be on the bus or later. I worried that something a lot worse than being pregnant would happen to me because of what happened in the motel room, that I'd get sick or bleed to death. I wondered if I would ever feel right about what I had done and if there had been choices that I hadn't considered. I remember feeling like a mouse that had found the tiniest hole for escape while a giant tomcat loomed. I was distraught, empty and alone on that bus. Back in my dorm room, Jane, my roommate, held both of my hands in hers and said, "It will be OK. You'll see. You'll have lots of children when the time is right." It was a gesture of kindness and compassion that even now brings tears to my eyes. Advertisement: I was 19. I had slept with my boyfriend just a single time. When I missed my period, I ever so reluctantly made an appointment with the town gynecologist who confirmed the pregnancy and then quizzed me incessantly about whether I knew who the father was. Did I know who the father was? Of course. There had only been one person ever. Yes, I knew. The doctor told me to tell my parents but I couldn't. My mother, who had suffered for almost her entire adult life with severe depression, was so deep in her terrible place, on the couch or in bed all day, sleeping or staring, that I almost canceled my departure to college. The last child at home for many years, I had become her driver and caregiver when these episodes occurred. Leaving seemed like the worst kind of betrayal and yet the pull of the relief I knew I would feel being out from under her mental illness was irresistible. I really wanted to be in a place where people were happy. The thought of going home, sitting down on the couch, where I knew she would be, to tell her I'd gotten pregnant was unfathomable. Without question, I could not do that. My problem, then, was mine to solve. My father, matter of fact as he was about everything, would line up a Justice of the Peace and get us married, but my boyfriend had already nixed that plan. He had a friend who had a friend who knew about the "wire" plan. We didn't have the $250 it would cost to pay a bona fide illegal abortionist so the only option was amateur hour. There was no real discussion. The wire became the path we would follow. I was cornered. I knew I was alone with the consequences whatever they would be. My boyfriend could walk away and no one would ever know. He was free. I was cornered. I grieved and was wild for a full year after that. I broke up with my boyfriend, realizing right away that any man who would advocate the wire wasn't lifetime commitment material. I drank too much, bounced from guy to guy, and remember not much from that time except long times in the shower crying in grief and guilt. For years, I counted the days and months -- how old the child would be if the pregnancy had not been terminated. The guilt was overwhelming. But as I matured, I recognized the decision for what it was, what I believed was right. I accepted responsibility and forgave myself. In the truest terms, I did what I had to do. But what I had to do was a dreadful thing. The lack of safe, legal and affordable abortion put me in a dingy motel in downtown Detroit to undergo a risky, unsanitary procedure that could easily have maimed or killed me. That I lived to tell the tale, to write about it on this page, is a small miracle of my life. Six years later, abortion became legal in the United States. Of any accomplishment of the women's movement, this one was always at my core. It wasn't right for women to risk so much in order to be in control of their own reproductive lives. It wasn't right to punish women who have been cornered by circumstances -- unplanned pregnancy, no job, no money, no options -- by daring them to find the $250 illegal abortionist in their city or worse. It wasn't right that women should have to pay for a mistake with their fear, risk their future health and their very lives while men could walk away and be free. I was happy, so happy about Roe v. Wade. At last, I thought, this one thing for women -- at last. Advertisement: Twenty-five years after my abortion, busloads of antiabortion protesters came to my town. Each morning they would pick a different abortion clinic and turn out by the hundreds to harass women coming for their abortion appointments. The crowds could be enormous with people waving signs with what they claimed to be pictures of aborted fetuses, and singing "My God Is an Awesome God" verse after verse, hour after hour. Right away, I signed up to be a clinic defender and each morning I'd get up at 5, pick up a friend, and go lock arms with hundreds of like-minded folks to "protect" that day's abortion clinic and the women who needed its services. We'd stand there silently while the protesters yelled at us and sang their hymns. They'd call us baby killers and murderers. Sometimes it would be nose to nose, shoulder to shoulder. The protesters would bring their children, too, and they would be singing "Jesus Loves Me" between choruses of "Awesome God." We'd all be standing in a giant scrum while morning traffic zoomed by, horns honking in support of both sides. Special protectors in orange vests would shepherd each woman into the clinic for her appointment while protesters surged to scream at her. I couldn't believe how evil and cruel it was to be screaming at a woman when she was in such a terrible situation, when she was cornered. I wanted to yell at them, "HASN'T ANYTHING BAD EVER HAPPENED TO YOU? Where is your loving kindness? And here we are again. Demonizing women. Limiting birth control. Shrinking access to legal and safe abortion. Daring women to go find the wire. All while men can walk away and be free. It makes my 64-year-old soul angrier than almost anything. The extreme hatred for women voiced by politicians, the talk of legitimate rape, the unbelievability of the idea of an ultrasound probe, the intent to demean me/us: It all puts me back on the bus in the dark, by myself, cornered and alone. Advertisement: It's so wrong to treat women this way. So wrong. We just can't go back. |
How to do an analysis in R (part 2, visualization and analysis) In several recent blog posts, I’ve emphasized the importance of data analysis. My main point has been, that if you want to learn data science, you need to learn data analysis. Data analysis is the foundation of practical data science. With that statement in mind, my most recent blog post showed you “part one” of an example analysis. In that post, we kicked off the analysis by getting a dataset (from Wikipedia) and manipulating it into shape. It is a dataset about shipping volume at the world’s busiest ports, from 2004 to 2014. Now that the dataset is ready, we’re going move into “part 2” of the analysis. We’ll analyze the data using a combination of tools from the tidyverse . Essentially, I want to show you how to use tools from ggplot2 and dplyr together to analyze data. Before we start, keep in mind that what you’re going to see is “intermediate” level ggplot2 / dplyr . That said, even if you’re a beginner, you can look at the code and try to follow the general analysis process. Morevoer, although I occasionally disparage copy-and-paste coding, if you’re a beginner, it will still be instructive to copy and run this code. You’ll still be able to take it apart and see how it works. Copy-and-paste won’t allow you to master ggplot2 and dplyr (and memorize the syntax), but in this case it will help you understand. On the other hand, if you’re not a beginner, and you’ve learned some tidyverse syntax, this will show you how to put the pieces together and get things done. If you’re serious about learning data science, study this post. There’s a lot here for you … Ok. Let’s get into it. Get the data First, we need to retrieve the data. We built the dataset using the code in the last blog post. We originally scraped it from Wikipedia, and hammered it into shape using dplyr and tidyr . If you’ve learned a little dplyr and tidyr , I highly recommend that you review that blog post, and possibly run the code and create the dataset yourself. It will give you an integrated view of how to use data manipulation tools together to shape a dataset prior to analysis. Having said that, if you don’t want to run the code and build the dataset yourself, you can get here by loading it from a URL: #============= # GET THE DATA #============= url.world_ports Create 'themes' for plot formatting Before we actually plot our data, we'll create a few themes that we can apply to our plots. If you're not familiar with them, "themes" in ggplot2 are just bundles of formatting code. In ggplot , we use the theme() function to format specific parts of our plot. We can then "bundle" those pieces of code together to create a reusable theme. That's what we're doing here. We're taking several lines of formatting code (that we execute with the theme() function) and bundling them together. Notice that we're actually creating a few themes here: theme.porttheme : this is just a general theme that we'll apply to most of our plots in this analysis : this is just a general theme that we'll apply to most of our plots in this analysis theme.smallmult : this theme will be applied to "small multiple" charts. Because small multiples can be quite large if you have a lot of panels, they can have special formatting requirements. We're setting up that formatting here. : this theme will be applied to "small multiple" charts. Because small multiples can be quite large if you have a lot of panels, they can have special formatting requirements. We're setting up that formatting here. theme.widebar : This is for "wide" bar charts. You'll see in a moment, we're going to plot some bar charts that are quite wide, and again, these specific charts will have specific formatting requirements. We're bundling that specific formatting code together here. |
Traditional teaching recommends naloxone doses of at least 0.4 mg IV to reverse opioid toxicity. Drs. Lewis Nelson (@LNelsonMD) and Mary Ann Howland (@Howland_Ann) co-authored the opioid antagonist chapter in Goldfrank’s Toxicologic Emergencies.1 They write: “However, this dose [0.4 mg] in an opioid-dependent patient usually produces withdrawal, which should be avoided if possible. The goal is to produce a spontaneously and adequately ventilating patient without precipitating significant or abrupt opioid withdrawal. Therefore, 0.04 mg is a practical starting dose in most patients, increasing to 0.4 mg, 2 mg, and finally 10 mg.” In fact, Dr. Nelson published a recent case series demonstrating the reversal of opioid-induced respiratory depression using low-dose naloxone (0.04 mg).2 Trick of the Trade: Naloxone Dilution for IV Use 3 Given that many ED overdose patients are not opioid-naive, lower naloxone doses are generally sufficient. Here is a quick way to prepare and administer naloxone in doses that will reverse opioid toxicity while limiting the chances of severe withdrawal. Obtain a 1 mL vial or syringe of naloxone 0.4 mg/mL. Grab a 10-mL syringe. Draw up 9 mL of normal saline. Draw up the 1 mL of naloxone. You now have 10 mL of a 0.04 mg/mL naloxone solution. Clearly label the syringe with drug name and concentration. Administer 1-2 mL IV every 60 seconds until the patient is responsive (and breathing) to the desired level. This trick also provides a more precise ‘wake up dose.’ If a naloxone infusion is needed, you’ll likely have a more accurate starting rate. A Few Caveats If a patient is apneic, in respiratory arrest, or close to respiratory arrest from a suspected opioid overdose, this is NOT the technique to use. Administer at least 0.4 mg IV to reverse toxicity immediately. While it would be simple to use a saline flush for this technique, be advised that the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) recommends against drawing up meds into a flush due to the concern for using an unlabeled syringe. 4 Original: November 17, 2014; Last updated: August 20, 2015 1. Kim H, Nelson L. Antidotes in Depth (A6): Opioid Antagonists. In: Goldfrank’s Toxicologic Emergencies. 9th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill; 2010:579-585. 2. J Med Toxicol. 2016;12(1):107-110. PubMed] Kim H, Nelson L. Reversal of Opioid-Induced Ventilatory Depression Using Low-Dose Naloxone (0.04 mg): a Case Series.. 2016;12(1):107-110. 3. Expert Opin Drug Saf. 2015;14(7):1137-1146. PubMed] Kim H, Nelson L. Reducing the harm of opioid overdose with the safe use of naloxone : a pharmacologic review.. 2015;14(7):1137-1146. 4. Is It Really Saline. Institute for Safe Medication Practices. https://www.ismp.org/newsletters/acutecare/articles/20061116_2.asp. Published November 16, 2006. Share This Facebook Twitter Pocket Print Instagram |
India, the world’s second-biggest consumer of urea , is boosting production of the crop nutrient seeking to end imports in the next five years.The South Asian nation, where agriculture makes up about 14 percent of the economy, produced 24.5 million tons of urea in the year ended March 2016, compared with consumption of around 32 million tons during the period, according to data from the fertilizer ministry . The country imported more than a quarter of what it consumed from Oman, China and Iran.“We are in the process of reviving ailing plants, restart closed units, expand existing projects and build new ones,” Dharam Pal, joint secretary at India’s fertilizer ministry, said in an interview in New Delhi. “The target is to wipe out urea imports completely by 2022.”Increasing local supplies of the nitrogen fertilizer will help shield farmers against global price fluctuations and limit government subsidies, allowing for greater spending to spur the rural economy. The goal also ties in with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push to boost domestic manufacturing, as he seeks to create more jobs in the world’s second-most populated nation.Imports surged from near negligible levels in the fiscal year ended March 2001, as consumption outpaced domestic supplies, according to a report by Projects & Development India Ltd., a state-run consultant. Urea imports stood at 68,000 tons in the year ended March 2001, the fertilizer ministry told parliament in 2003.The ministry is studying proposals to revive loss-making Madras Fertilizers Ltd. and Fertilisers & Chemicals Travancore Ltd., Pal said. The plans, which seek to make both companies profitable by end of March, will need the cabinet’s backing, he said.The government is also planning to restart five idle facilities owned by The Fertilizers Corp. of India and Hindustan Fertiliser Corp . State-run energy firms Indian Oil Corp., Coal India Ltd. and power producer NTPC Ltd. will together execute a 180-billion rupees turnaround plan for three of these factories located in the eastern part of the country.Another plant in India’s north-eastern state of Assam, among the oldest in India, will be shut down and replaced with a modern facility, Pal said. The Brahmaputra Valley Fertilizer Corp. will be able to produce more using the same amount of natural gas. A new urea plant of 864,600 tons per year will be built to replace the two existing units of 220,000 tons and 270,000 tons each.The global demand for nitrogen fertilizers is expected to grow 5.6 percent to 119.4 million tons in four years through 2018, according to Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Asian nations, led by China and India, are expected to account for 58 percent of this increase, the agency said. |
We're proud to reveal ScrapCon 2017: the world's single largest convention for ScrapTF users! Rafflers, traders, auctioneers, scrapbankers -- all are welcome! Read on for tantalizing tidbits of tangential tinformation. What is ScrapCon? ScrapCon 2017 is a convention for ScrapTF. Honestly, we thought this one would be pretty obvious. It's a convention. These things are in now. Twitch got one, so we figured it was time. Where? When? How? For ScrapCon 2017, we've gone all-out. We've rented out the entirety of Britain as our convention center, though if ticket sales exceed expectations we have Ireland and Scotland as overflow convention centers. ScrapCon 2017 will run from 1 September, 2017 to 30 September, 2017 so make sure you plan your trip accordingly. To fund this endeavor, we've partnered with Bikea, the world's largest all-assembly-required bike supplier. Bike on! Events and Keynotes ScrapCon 2017 is filled to the brim with exciting events and keynotes. For the thrill-seekers, head to London for some real-time Scrap-to-Unusual rides! Ranging from a few weeks to over a year, this fun-filled ride allows you to experience the thrill of trading, without the burden of having to worry about who gets your profits (we do). Thrill not your thing? Head over to Bristol for our -- you guessed it -- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive 3-week tournament! Followed immediately by a 3-hour Team Fortress 2 mini-tournament. Refreshments not provided. If you're the learning type, you'll love our keynote speeches! You'll have to scour the Birmingham sewers to find them, but they're a treat once you do! Get hype for keynotes such as "How to turn your unusual into scrap: a success story" by Brad Pitt (the actor), "How to escape a poorly-run convention the size of a country" by Sneeza (of TF2 Outpost fame), or "Geel's declassified Sewer-Keynote Survival Guide" by yours truly. Finally, we have a surprise guest speaker whose speech is titled "My name is Robin Walker and here's my story". Travel Information Please do not secure transportation before securing your ScrapCon 2017 ticket! As we will be using all hotels in Britain for convention purposes during ScrapCon 2017, we have partnered with Seabnb, who will be providing floating homes across the coast of the UK. Available amenities include fresh seawater, authentic sea-storm sleeping experiences, and more. We recommend the following hotel address: 1 Ocean Way, Ocean, Ocean 0C34N Tickets Tickets are on sale now for an affordable price! Simply visit the ticket-purchasing website and secure your tickets. They're first-come last-serve, so be quick about it. |
World of Warcraft Patch 6.1.2, Build 19865 Last Update: 04-06-2015 General Implemented a number of client-side changes in preparation for the WoW Token. World of Warcraft Patch 6.1.2, Build 19831 Last Update: 04-01-2015 Bug Fixes Implemented a client-side fix for a character name and chat filter issue. Additional work server side will be required and the issue will be resolved with realm restarts. World of Warcraft Patch 6.1.2, Build 19802 Last Update: 03-23-2015 Introducing the WoW Token Coming soon to an Azeroth near you: the WoW Token, a new in-game item that allows players to simply and securely exchange gold and game time between each other. Players will be able to purchase a WoW Token through the in-game Shop for real money, and then sell it on the Auction House for gold at the current market price. When a player buys a WoW Token from the Auction House for gold, the Token becomes Soulbound, and the player can then redeem it for 30 days of game time. |
*********************** The first book in the Millennium series featuring Lisbeth Salander - the global publishing phenomenon With an Introduction by Val McDermid Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder - and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, truculent computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet's disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vangers are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves. Stieg Larsson's phenomenal trilogy is continued in The Girl in the Spider's Web and The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye by David Lagercrantz |
If the list of qualities you look for in a federal MP includes "tough on killer robots," "can grow a beard instantly," and "has experience riding Canada geese," then Wyatt Scott of Mission, B.C. may be the candidate for you. Independent B.C. candidate rides a goose in wild campaign video <a href="http://t.co/SlS3ubfgu9">http://t.co/SlS3ubfgu9</a> <a href="http://t.co/lN8orTq9ck">pic.twitter.com/lN8orTq9ck</a> —@CBCNews This ad was produced by independent candidate Wyatt Scott. It is embedded here for informational purposes and does not constitute an endorsement by CBC News. A freshly-released campaign video from the 38-year-old small business owner explains that Scott is running for Parliament in the new riding of Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon. "I'm an independent candidate," he says in the video while hurtling through the air with his sword drawn after jumping from the back of a giant Canada goose. "And I'm here to fight for Canada!" He then falls directly onto a dragon, stabbing it through the head. The zaniness only ramps up from there with the appearance of friendly aliens, giant robots and multiple people falling from the sky over the course of just 63 seconds. Between shooting lasers from his eyes and growing an instant beard, Scott does pause a few times to talk about his platform. "University is too damn expensive," he says at one point. "Services like health care and social programs should be expanded, not cut ... The indigenous people aren't even protected by their own government." While the video itself is more reminiscent of an Old Spice commercial than a traditional campaign ad, it appears to have struck a chord with many Canadians on Twitter. WYATT SCOTT KILLED A DRAGON AND HE SHOOTS LASERS FROM HIS EYES AND HE'S RUNNING FOR PARLIAMENT. <a href="https://t.co/DPXP9rqPfJ">https://t.co/DPXP9rqPfJ</a> —@TelegramJames I might have to move ridings just so I can vote for Wyatt Scott. Watch this video. Do it now. HT <a href="https://twitter.com/AndrewR_Physics">@AndrewR_Physics</a> <a href="http://t.co/JFf6He78K8">http://t.co/JFf6He78K8</a> —@seastarbatita .<a href="https://twitter.com/WyattScott_MMFC">@WyattScott_MMFC</a> has mad beard-growing skills. Make him an MP! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/elxn42?src=hash">#elxn42</a> <a href="http://t.co/f4fqzR17qQ">http://t.co/f4fqzR17qQ</a> <a href="http://t.co/0YpysNeISp">pic.twitter.com/0YpysNeISp</a> —@aileendonnelly Will the people of Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon actually vote for Scott based on his dragon-slaying antics? That remains to be seen. As he says in the video's description: "We all know politics are corrupt so lets do something about it. Put an independent in the house." Scott told the National Post that he was at least partly motivated to run as an independent by an experience with the Liberal Party of Canada. Scott told the paper that he helped his friend Rhett Nicholson campaign for the Liberal nomination in Mission–Matsqui–Fraser Canyon and felt the result, a win for local businessman Jati Sidhu, was unfair. Scott told The Province that he previously worked for the B.C. NDP. |
Puda had become an empty Chinese shell company after its chairman Ming Zhao secretly transferred the coal mine asset to himself. Zhao, a wealthy Chinese businessman with connections to the government in Beijing, was also the co-founder and chairman of Shanxi Coal. Despite waring signs, pressed ahead Despite the glaring warning signs, New York-based Black and Fang pressed ahead with the equity raising. The bankers finalised a prospectus, put together a management presentation to solicit investors via a "road show" and organised a press release. The marketing materials contained the blatantly false information. Macquarie, the lead underwriter, then sold $US108 million of Puda shares via a share offering in December 2010, earning the bank $US4.17 million in underwriting fees. Both Fang and Black pocketed bonuses for their efforts. Within 12 months, the 9 million Puda shares that investors paid $US12 each for were virtually worthless. The collapse was ultimately triggered by an investment blogger publicly blowing the whistle on the fraudulent Chinese company. Puda was soon delisted by the NYSE. On Friday, Macquarie settled charges with the powerful US Securities and Exchange Commission, agreeing to pay $US15 million ($19.3 million) towards a fine and compensation fund for investors who lost money. Advertisement "Macquarie Capital proceeded with this offering despite a due diligence process that exposed a false claim by Puda Coal, and investors suffered massive losses when the truth publicly came to light," SEC director Andrew Calamari said. Black agreed to pay $US212,711 to settle civil charges for failing to exercise appropriate care in due diligence. The fine mainly represents a large bonus he pocketed from the deal. Black still with Macquarie While Fang left Macquarie in July 2011 and is barred from the securities industry for five years, Black is still employed by Macquarie as a divisional director in equity capital markets in his home town of Sydney. Black, 40, is banned from supervisory roles in the US for five years. Fang, a relatively junior banker now aged 31, agreed to pay $US35,000. Macquarie and the two bankers settled the charges without admitting or denying the allegations. The incident has also resulted in Macquarie launching legal action against major global law firm and one-time business partner on the soured transaction, Morrison & Foerster. Fang had sent the "no red flags" email containing the Kroll report to an associate lawyer at Morrison & Foerster. How Australia's premier home-grown investment bank ignored palpable problems about an opaque Chinese coal miner that it was marketing to investors, is revealed in a detailed SEC complaint filed with the US Southern District Court of New York and other information obtained by The Australian Financial Review. Advertisement After Fang received the Kroll report and emailed it to colleagues, he did not discuss the contents with anyone or draw to their attention the problems identified, the SEC alleges. Black, head of the Puda deal team for Macquarie's equity capital markets unit, read portions of the Kroll report, including the executive summary stating that Zhao Ming was Shanxi Coal's 50 per cent shareholder, the SEC says. Contradictory information not shared, discussed Black allegedly did not call to anyone's attention the contradictory information he read in the executive summary about Zhao's ownership of Shanxi Coal or discuss it with the deal team. Despite knowing the Macquarie-drafted public documents stated that Puda owned 90 per cent of Shanxi Coal, Black merely skimmed sections of the rest of the Kroll report. He did not go on to read that Chinese corporate records showed the true ownership of Shanxi Coal. While seizing half of the company for himself, Zhao had also sold a 49 per cent of Shanxi Coal on July 22, 2010 to a trust managed by China's largest state-owned investment firm, CITIC Group. CITIC onsold the shares to Chinese investors. The Kroll report indicated in three different places, including a table, that Zhao and CITIC owned virtually all of Shanxi Coal. Advertisement The oversight by Macquarie's New York team was perhaps surprising, given the reputation Chinese companies listing in the US had for fraudulent transactions. Indeed, one unnamed Macquarie banker had sent Black and colleagues an email, warning that the transaction warranted a "deeper dive on due diligence", because Puda "went public in 2005 in a reverse-merger transaction that did not include the typical [due diligence] of a US-listed [initial public offering]." Reverse merger, back-door listing A reverse merger is a back-door way to list on equity markets, by avoiding the higher regulatory and market scrutiny applied to an IPO. A private company takes over a publicly held company with dormant operations. Dozens of Chinese firms such as Puda have used the strategy to list in the US, with several being exposed for accounting fraud. Later, the unidentified Macquarie banker separately emailed members of the deal team, including Black and Fang, warning one of the "stickiest" due diligence issues will be around "potential conflicts of interest by Ming Zhao [and his brother]". After the capital raising was conducted, Puda's share price climbed to a 52-week high of $US16.97. But an online investment blog written by China-centric shortselling publisher, Jon Carnes of alfredlittle.com, exposed Puda's non-ownership of Shanxi Coal and the asset transfers between Zhao and CITIC Trust. "Considering the 2009 and 2010 audited financials can no longer be relied upon, and more importantly the complete lack of internal control that allowed chairman Zhao to first steal the company, then sell half the company (pocketing the proceeds) and then pledge the other half of the company to a Chinese PE fund while piling on $US530.3 million of 14.5 per cent debt, I strongly believe $2.66 is the most this stock is worth today," Carnes wrote. Advertisement Investors immediately punished the Puda stock. On April 8, 2011, the stock price crashed more than 30 per cent in a day to $US6. Puda issued a press release announcing its audit committee had hired lawyers to conduct an investigation into the internet report's claims. The NYSE halted trading in Puda shares. Auditor cautioned reports not reliable On July 7, 2011, auditor Moore Stephens resigned, saying in a filing with the SEC that "evidence supports the allegation that there were transfers by Zhao in subsidiary ownership that were inconsistent with disclosure made by the company in its public securities filings". The auditor cautioned that the financial reports for 2009 and 2010 were not reliable. With its shares trading as low as US1¢, Puda was delisted by the NYSE on August 18. The SEC alleges Macquarie displayed "broader organisational failure" in due diligence and in supervising Fang who had limited experience on China-based companies. "Macquarie did not have sufficient systems in place for ensuring the Kroll report was properly assessed," the SEC says in the court complaint. A Macquarie spokesman in New York says it had noted the settlement between Macquarie and the SEC regarding Macquarie's underwriting of a follow-on stock offering by Puda Coal in the US in 2010. "Macquarie takes its compliance and regulatory obligations very seriously and has worked closely with the SEC to provide relevant information," he says. Advertisement "Under the terms of the settlement, Macquarie has neither admitted nor denied the SEC's allegations." 'Egregious negligence' Separately, Zhao and former Puda chief executive Liping Zhu were charged with fraud by the SEC in February 2012 and the case is before the courts. Black did not respond to a Financial Review request for comment, while Fang could not be reached directly after a message was left with his New York lawyer. Adding to the fallout, Macquarie last week launched a legal malpractice suit against Morrison & Foerster, alleging "egregious negligence" on the Puda due diligence. Morrison & Foerster attorney James Bergin says the law firm was confident it met its professional obligations in performing the duties typically undertaken by US securities counsel in cross-border securities offerings. "Morrison performed appropriate diligence, including obtaining an opinion from a local Chinese law firm regarding the ownership of Chinese subsidiary companies. "With respect to the Kroll investigatory report, which is alleged to have identified the potential fraud, US securities counsel do not typically review or give legal advice regarding the work of private investigators." |
DURHAM — Durham County officials on Monday destroyed gun registration documents stemming from a Jim Crow-era statute, ending months of legal uncertainty over ownership of the materials and threats of legal action had the records been preserved. “I am pleased that we have closed that chapter of Durham’s history,” said state Sen. Mike Woodard, D-Durham, who successfully sponsored repeal legislation in this year’s short legislative session ending the practice of forcing gun owners to register their firearms. It was the only gun registry in North Carolina. “The gun registry records were destroyed this morning,” Woodard said Monday. “The clerk [of courts] and the Sheriff’s Office got together this morning, and took them out, and shredded them.” Woodard maintained all along that his repeal bill was intended to result in destruction of the gun registry, and said he would introduce a bill in the upcoming long session specifically mandating disposal of the records if the issue was not resolved. “We met two weeks ago to administratively make it happen,” Woodard said. “I convened a meeting with the clerk, the sheriff, the county manager, and their respective counsel, and at that meeting we came up with the path that we needed to go to clear up ownership, and who’s going to take action,” he said. Destruction of the gun registry, first implemented in 1935, is “absolutely” a victory for gun owners’ Second Amendment and privacy rights, said Paul Valone, president of the nonprofit gun rights organization Grass Roots North Carolina. “It is, I’m quite certain, a direct response to the certified letter we sent them” about the state’s pre-emption law. Valone was unaware of the county’s action until notified by Carolina Journal. Once the gun registration statute was repealed, it became “very clear that a unit of local government may not regulate or register firearms in any manner, and that’s precisely what they’re doing” by maintaining the registry, Valone said. “So essentially what we said was either they destroy the records, or we destroy the records, or else we will sue you.” The demand letter, sent Sept. 23, specifically stated: “Given that state experts have already determined that the handgun registrations have no historic or archival value; given that no agent of Durham County or the City of Durham can legally utilize the registrations for any reason; given that, absent a statute authorizing their retention, the registrations are a violation of the privacy of Durham County residents; and given the liability to Durham County of the Clerk’s Office continuing to regulate the registrations in clear violation of state law — there is no reasonable course of action but to destroy these registrations.” Valone’s organization had offered to pay a commercial vendor to shred the documents and recycle the waste paper. “We were there to assist and observe the clerk,” Durham County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Brian Jones said of the records shredding. The Sheriff’s Office had been receiving complaints and inquiries from Durham residents, mostly those whose gun registrations were kept on file, to determine what would be done with the records, Jones said. Reaction on the Sheriff’s Office Facebook page supported the registry destruction, garnering nearly 80 “likes” within a few hours. “This is a good thing for all N.C. residents. My two are in there somewhere. The others, I never registered anyway,” Richard Dean wrote on the Facebook post. “A registry does nothing to prevent people from acquiring black market firearms. Also, not having a registry makes it ever-so-slightly more difficult for government to confiscate firearms from law abiding citizens,” wrote Jameson Lopp. “The death of another Jim Crow law is always a good thing,” wrote Sean Sorrentino. Durham County Clerk of Courts Archie Smith, a licensed attorney since 1976 who described lawsuits as his “bread and butter,” said the Grass Roots North Carolina threat of litigation “had nothing to do” with the decision to shred the records. “It was simply a matter of they had passed their time.” Reaching that determination was straightforward, Smith said. “The Administrative Office of the Courts had no interest in them because they weren’t state files. They were strictly something for Durham County. The State Department of History and Archives said they had no interest in keeping them and preserving them. The county attorney for Durham disclaimed any interest on behalf of the county in them,” Smith said. “So as the clerk of court, if none of the legal entities for whom I’m charged with maintaining and keeping records have any interest in these records, and there is no owner of them, no one wanted them … retention of them was pointless,” he said. Hand-feeding the documents into the shredder took about three hours. The confetti-like remnants filled several large plastic bags. “The sheriff and I fed the first few through, and then some folks up here in the clerks’ office fed them through,” Smith said. Smith acknowledged the hullabaloo created by the situation was unusual for his office, which only occasionally deals with interesting or newsworthy events. “Our work is critical, but plain vanilla,” he said. “A horrorific day up here is when somebody gets a paper cut.” Justin Furr, spokesman at the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts, said the agency works with elected clerks of Superior Court on rules for record-keeping and record retention. That includes how long court records must be kept and when they can be disposed. The Durham gun registry documents were not covered by the AOC’s Records Retention Schedule, so the clerk of Superior Court was required to complete a form with the Office of Archives and History in the state Department of Cultural Resources. The AOC “received a phone call from Sen. Mike Woodard several months ago asking that we determine if the gun registry documents are needed for permanent retention,” Furr said. After discussions with Cultural Resources, it was determined “the documents did not need to be retained permanently, and that the county custodian could find the disposition that best suited local needs for these records.” Valone, whose organization has successfully sued state and local governments on other gun rights issues, is now turning its attention to attempts by State Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler, who has announced that guns, including lawful concealed carry weapons, could not be brought into the State Fair, and that warning signs would be posted. “He has no legal means to do this. I don’t even dislike Steve Troxler. He’s a nice guy. We’ve worked with him before,” Valone said. But by refusing to rescind his decision, “he’s going to make us force him to do it via legal action.” Troxler has created a situation now that only raises the “visibility of the issue,” Valone said. “I would just as soon we kept it all nice and quiet, and simply not post[ed] the signs.” Dan E. Way (@danway_carolina) is an associate editor of Carolina Journal. |
Story highlights Omar Meza has been missing since last Thursday His wife Diane says she talked with him late Thursday (CNN) Authorities in Palm Desert, California, are looking for missing AIG insurance company executive Omar Meza. The 33-year-old was last seen at the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort & Spa on Thursday night after a company dinner. Meza was reported missing after he failed to show up for various meetings the following day. "I spoke to him ... I was the last conversation per his telephone records ... on Thursday night around 11:20 p.m.," said his wife Diane. "It was late on a work night. I told him, 'head to your hotel and call me when you get there.' I never got that call," she said. "I tried calling him but he didn't answer. I just went to bed. Didn't think too much of it." She said her husband suffered short-term memory loss from a traffic accident last year. It's uncertain whether that had any impact on his disappearance. Read More |
BELLEVUE, Wash. - A 50-year-old man shot and killed himself during a gun-safety class at a Bellevue gun range.Brian J. Parry is believed to have shot himself in the head with a pistol Sunday during a class at West Coat Armory, a gun range and dealer with outlets in Bellevue and Issaquah.Bellevue police spokeswoman Carla Iafrate confirmed that police are investigating the shooting but refused to release details. She said the investigation into Parry's death is ongoing.The King County Medical Examiner's Office earlier this week ruled Parry's death a suicide. He died of a contact gunshot wound to the head.In an email, a man describing himself as a witness to the shooting said the dead man - identified by the Medical Examiner's Office as Parry - stood in front of more than a dozen people participating in the class and ended his life.Several children saw the shooting, which occurred at West Coast Armory's indoor range at 13216 S.E. 32nd St. in Bellevue.West Coast did not immediately return a request for comment made Thursday morning.According to the business website, the gun range offered an entry-level handgun course the day of the shooting. Participants paid $75 for three hours of instruction meant to teach students how to load and use pistols and revolvers.The incident was first publicized by BellevuePatch |
Mass starvation, disease and hopelessness abound in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus. Although a UN agency has managed to make its first food aid delivery to the rebel-held camp in weeks, many people are on the brink of starvation. The camp is located on the edge of the territory the Syrian government considers under its control, in a southern Damascus neighborhood, just five miles away from the capital’s center. Rebel forces have been holding the camp for more than a year and the army started a siege in June. Nothing and no one comes in or out, as 18,000 people continue to be kept in a state of limbo. Some of the Palestinian refugees living in the camp have been there for decades, victims of the Palestinian people’s conflict with Israel. Now they are hoping desperately for a resolution to this conflict, in Syria. RT made it as close as possible to the edge of the camp under government supervision, to observe as the UN Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), in league with Syrian and Palestinian authorities, delivers the much-needed food aid. There were cases when people were let out to come back with supplies; but only women and elderly men. They knew they could not leave because their families continue to be trapped inside. “It’s as bad as it can get, I’m desperately hungry...we have nothing to eat,” one woman told RT’s Maria Finoshina. There is no free passage deeper into the camp, as snipers are on the ready to shoot anyone who ventures in. The UNRWA hopes it will be able to continue food deliveries. On Thursday, it managed its first delivery in two weeks, consisting of 1,000 food parcels – the biggest yet. "The distribution is ongoing. This is the first aid to enter the camp since January 21, when UNRWA distributed 138 food parcels," UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunness said. Another convoy entered the camp Friday. Speaking to Reuters, Gunness said that they hope “to continue and increase substantially the amount of aid being delivered... with each passing hour, their need increases.” Even in this climate of desperation, versions as to what exactly is going on differ massively. So much so that Reuters claims that the UNRWA has knowledged that one of its latest convoys was fired upon by government forces determined to starve the Palestinian refugees. The same tune is being sung by opposition activists, claiming that the government is using hunger as a weapon. Yarmouk families, meanwhile, continue to perish – and seem to be rather blaming the rebel forces. “There is no food, nothing to eat or drink, the militants are inside,” one resident told RT. “I swear by the soul of the Prophet we want this to stop. What is our guilt? We want to go out!” “We cannot leave – the militants prevent us,” another resident said. A total of 85 people in the camp have died since June, and many fear the number will continue to rise if the aid situation is not restored and supplies do not start running normally. The stalemate has been going on for months now, with no end in sight – despite the Palestinian authorities stepping in. Palestinian ambassador to Syria Mahmoud Al Khaldi told RT that the authorities “are negotiating with the militants to convince them to go out. We tell them that this is of no importance and these are just people – they’ll not gain any strategic goal. We had three rounds of talks, but we failed. And I don’t think they’ll accept this – it’s clear.” Sieges have been a tried and tested rebel tactic for three years now. Just outside Damascus, the town of Adra has been held since mid-December 2013, with 5,000 of those who did not flee in time held prisoner in their own homes and used as human shields, just in case the government forces decide to storm the town by force. They are now encamped just outside the town – but cannot storm it for fear of causing civilian deaths. Anwar Raja, from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, sees the rebels’ tactics as an obvious move to insinuate the government’s complicity in the suffering of its own people. “The Nusra Front and the Takfiri groups are trading on the hunger of the people. They want to say to the world: ‘See: the people are hungry.’ It’s like the residents are kidnapped inside their own camp, inside their own home, and the militants are negotiating over them, negotiating their souls,” Raja said. “They claim that the Syrian state is besieging Palestinians in the camp. They want to invert the image and the truth, saying that the Syrian government is part of the killing force, as they don't do anything to protect the people. They want people to hate the regime.” According to Raja, an evacuation plan has been worked out with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent to evacuate "hundreds" of Yarmouk residents. The evacuees were transported to several hospitals, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Saturday, but the Red Crescent could not be reached to confirm the details of the operation. |
SON OF 4 VOICE The audio that screams from an SEM is fat, fine and funky, with a tonal variety unlike any other sound-generating device on this rock we call home. Gang up four of these monsters, and you've got sounds that're thicker than thunder. SON OF 4 VOICE's SEMs bring back vintage '70s design ... 100% discrete analog ... absolutly no custom chips. SO4V can be used as a 4-voice polyphonic synth or as 4 individual synths under MIDI control. Two SO4Vs can be ganged together to create an 8-voice. Click image for larger version. Click image for larger version. The Polyphonic Voice Control and Programmer section retains all the features of the original Four Voice Programmer and Keyboard control modules, while adding gotta-have-'em goodies like these: • Two MIDI sync capable LFOs with multiple waveshapes including sample and hold per voice •Two programmable ADSR envelope generators per voice • Selectable master tuning (both VCOs or VCO2 only) allows easy detuning for huge unison sounds • Polyphonic portamento with linear or exponential response • Noise generator connected to filter input #1 • External audio or A440 tuning reference connected to filter input #2 • Updated output module with mix and pan control for each voice • Two SO4Vs can be easily connected together - result: eight voices! Each SO4V is equipped with a Tom Oberheim signature plate. The Tom Oberheim SON OF 4 VOICE will bring classic audio whomp to your arsenal of sounds. There's nothing else like it anywhere. Specifications subject to change. SO4V availability: 2012 Click image for larger version. Click image for larger version. SEM-related product questions may be directed to Tom Oberheim: tom (at) tomoberheim (dot) com. Visit www.tomoberheim.com for more. Contact GSF: 310-995-0100 or via email: geoff (at) gsfagency (dot) com |
Taiwan Jones reads football defenses as if he has a cheat sheet. Recognizing and understanding the written word has proved to be a much tougher obstacle. In keeping with his style, Jones stared down the challenge presented by dyslexia and landed a job with the Raiders after being forced to take an unconventional path from high school. “It’s been frustrating,” Jones said of his ongoing battle with dyslexia, a learning disorder that leads to writing and spelling problems. “My father was a big inspiration. He told me to give it my all, and they eventually would find me.” Big-time colleges knew all about Jones during his standout career at Deer Valley High, but a subpar grade-point average made it impossible for Division I colleges to offer him a scholarship. That turned out to be Eastern Washington’s gain. Assistant coach Chris Hansen took one look at Jones on videotape and offered him a scholarship soon thereafter. “I’ll never get a player like him again,” said Hansen, the running backs coach at Eastern Washington. “We usually don’t get to touch players like Taiwan. They’re going to USC and Washington.” Rich Woods coached Jones at Deer Valley. He recalled numerous college scouts dropping by campus to watch tape of some of Deer Valley’s top players. “I would put on the film and they would say, ‘Who’s that 22 kid? Where’s he going?’ ” Woods said of Jones. The excitement died once Woods informed recruiters of Jones’ issues with his grades. Jones’ transformation from a struggling student into a successful one began with his being diagnosed with dyslexia his senior year at Deer Valley. The diagnosis enabled Jones to get extra time on tests and assignments, which helped him get his GPA over the required 2.0 so that he could play at Eastern Washington after redshirting one season. For years, Jones wondered why he struggled grasping things his peers learned in short order. “It always made me feel smaller,” Jones said. “I was struggling, while people were telling me, ‘You should get this. What’s the problem?’ Now things are easier because I know that I can learn; I just need more help.” Woods and Hansen said Jones’ learning disability doesn’t inhibit his understanding of play calls. Jones doesn’t need much help on the football field. His blazing speed — he posted a 4.28-second 40-yard dash at his Pro Day in early April — makes him a threat to score every time he touches the ball. Jones, 6-foot and 198 pounds, did just that the first time he touched the ball for Eastern Washington in 2009, scoring on an 87-yard run. It validated what Hansen saw on videotape before Jones arrived in Cheney, Wash., and during offseason drills his freshman season. “He tore us up when he played on the offensive scout team,” Hansen said. “We couldn’t touch him.” As a result, the Eagles converted Jones from cornerback to running back before his sophomore season in 2009. Jones rushed for 2,955 yards and 29 touchdowns his sophomore and junior seasons. He also scored eight touchdowns on receptions or kick returns. That sold the Raiders on using a fourth-round pick to get Jones in the NFL draft in April. Hansen said it’s an investment that is going to pay huge dividends. Jones’ exploits prompted Hansen to create a new stat: how many tacklers a ball carrier made miss and yards gained after such misses. In one game against Montana, Jones racked up 16 for 168 yards. “Montana was the best-tackling team in our conference, and Taiwan is making them look stupid,” Hansen said. Things won’t be any different in the NFL, Hansen said. “He’s going to make those guys look stupid, too,” Hansen said. “When he gets into the secondary in the NFL, he’s also going to make those guys miss.” Jones joins a Raiders team already set at running back, with Darren McFadden and Michael Bush well established. Yet, there’s always room for a player with Jones’ speed and playmaking ability, Raiders coach Hue Jackson said. “How do you pass up a guy that can make plays like that?” Jackson said soon after the Raiders selected Jones. “As I keep saying, you find a special talent, a guy that can score touchdowns as often and as fast as he can, and if he is sitting there, it’s hard to pass up those kinds of guys. I wouldn’t pass him up, and we didn’t pass him up. “… This guy is a tremendous, tremendous football player, and he is something special.” Jones said he isn’t sure how he will be used by the Raiders. Even so, he is certain that he has the kind of skill set that can’t be overlooked. “I’m a real versatile player,” Jones said. “I can return kicks, catch passes, block. I’ll do whatever it takes to help the team. I’ll work as hard as I can to reach my goal of playing in the NFL.” |
This is a guest post by University of Massachusetts political scientists Ray La Raja. His first post on the McCutcheon case is here. Thanks to Bob Biersack for his thoughtful reply to my post about McCutcheon. However, I do not think he addressed the core points in my previous post, which are: The current system already favors big donors without any of the complicated schemes described by Bob or the amici briefs against McCutcheon. In fact, options similar to those schemes are already available, and nobody uses them. If big donors are going to be a part of the system, it would better to steer them through candidate and party committees than through unaccountable Super PACs or other non-transparent groups. The oral arguments in McCutcheon — and much of Bob’s concerns — focus on circumvention of contribution limits through multiple PACs and joint fundraising committees. Bob poses the same hypothetical that was discussed in oral arguments about a single donor skirting the system with thousands of separate and limited contributions adding up to $3.5 million. While the administrative and legal headaches to pulling this off seem daunting, let us assume it is doable with all the smart lawyers in Washington. But if we also assume that donors seek a “corrupting influence” (his term) then the “skirting strategy” becomes less plausible. Donors will find it difficult to prevent many of the recipients from shirking on the corrupt bargain. This is the familiar principal-agent problem. Even if the complex transaction is coordinated through congressional party leadership, the individual donor loses control over how the money is spent and for whom. Rather than pour millions into a thousand rivulets, it is better for, say, the Koch brothers to finance a super-PAC that advertises issues they care about or donate lavishly to interest groups they control than attempt to elect candidates who are fully committed to their position. For similar reasons, I also question Bob’s assertion that a joint fundraising committee would be an effective vehicle for such donors. But if that is a fear, then one potential remedy is to lobby the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to write rules that constrain the number of candidates or PACs that can benefit from a joint committee. At first blush, I see no strong First Amendment arguments against such constraints, although I acknowledge that rule-making has not been an easy task for the FEC in recent years. Finally, I want to say more about why striking down aggregate contribution limits might actually attenuate ideological extremism (assuming I’m mostly wrong on my first point that people will not try to circumvent contribution limits!). The current campaign finance system – with its emphasis on interest group spending — favors highly ideological factions that have the means and motive to run independent campaigns. Rules that channel more money through party organizations and candidates might dampen the power of groups like the Tea Party. Against this claim, Bob suggests that political parties ran ads in 2012 that were just as “aggressive” and negative as interest groups. Research by the Wesleyan Media Project indicates that this is not true. But this finding is not relevant to my argument. My point about moderation is not about the tone or content of political ads, but is tied to the nomination process where party factions fight their ideological battles. A generation ago, such battles were waged internally in the proverbial smoke-filled rooms. Today they might be hashed out in the open through primary elections. The advantage goes to the interest group that can raise a lot of money and mobilize its partisan faction of voters. Ideological moderation seems more plausible when political resources are controlled primarily by party leaders whose chief incentive is to win elections rather than take positions. Like Bob, I support reasonable contribution limits, but I do not think the retention of aggregate limits on party committees and candidates improves the current campaign finance system. I certainly do not think, as Bob suggests, that a favorable ruling for McCutcheon will encourage “more money from fewer sources to flow more freely.” That dynamic was partially spurred by Citizens United. If anything removing the aggregate limits could make the system more accountable by channeling funds to political committees that are transparent, particularly party and candidate committees, which must face the voters at the ballot box. |
Tennis is defined by quick starts and stops, frequent and rapid overhead strokes, and the engagement of multiple muscle groups during each stroke. The intensity of a match can change randomly, going from long durations of low intensity work to shorter periods of near maximal effort, and vice versa. Read More >> Tennis is defined by quick starts and stops, frequent and rapid overhead strokes, and the engagement of multiple muscle groups during each stroke. The intensity of a match can change randomly, going from long durations of low intensity work to shorter periods of near maximal effort, and vice versa. RELATED: Use These Tennis Drills to Dominate the Competition On average, a player has between 300 and 500 high intensity bouts per three-set match and four direction changes per point. 80% of strokes are made from just under 8 feet, and 70% of movements during a match are lateral. Due to the intermittent explosive nature of tennis, performing med ball drills can be a powerful tool to decrease injury risk, develop agility and improve strength and power. Here are the three critical qualities that tennis players can train with med balls that will enhance their performance on the court. Deceleration The ability to decelerate is important to change of direction in any sport. Most coaches put most of their emphasis on acceleration training but neglect deceleration/eccentric training. RELATED: Developing Rotational Power for Baseball, Tennis and Golf In tennis, deceleration occurs in every followthrough, volley and serve. The muscles that are most heavily involved in stroke deceleration are the upper back and posterior deltoids. Most tennis injuries can be attributed to poor deceleration mechanics, especially in the upper back and shoulders. Performing drills with light medicine balls can be a great way to train eccentrically and to work on deceleration mechanics in these muscles. Med Ball Over-the-Shoulder Pass In a kneeling position, the athlete tosses a small medicine ball over their shoulder with their arm bent at 90 degrees at the elbow and their fingertips pointed toward the ceiling. The athlete works on catching the ball and decelerating the toss before reversing the motion to throw it back. Med Ball Prone 90/90 The athlete lies face down on a bench holding a ball in each hand with both elbows bent at 90 degrees. While pulling the scapula back and maintaining good position, the athlete works on releasing and then catching the weighted ball in rapid succession for multiple reps. Med Ball Prone T's This exercise is performed in the same manner as the Prone 90/90, but instead of the elbows bent at 90 degrees, the arms are fully extended while the athlete maintains good position, rapidly letting go of and catching the ball. RELATED: 3 Tennis Drills for a Faster, More Accurate Serve Med Ball Wall Bounces The athlete faces a wall about a foot away with elbow bent at 90 degrees and fingers pointed up. The ball is bounced between the hand and the wall while the athlete works on decelerating the ball using the anterior shoulder muscles, then throwing the ball back to the wall. Lateral Training Training lateral power and footwork are crucial for tennis players at all levels, because over half of all movements in a tennis match are performed laterally. A player typically covers just a few feet per stroke, and because of this, full acceleration is rarely achieved. Due to this large skew toward lateral movement, training for tennis players heavily focuses on lateral work. There are three basic types of lateral steps in a tennis match. The first is a jab step, where the athlete steps with the lead foot first in the direction of the oncoming ball. The second step is a pivot step, where the athlete pivots on the lead foot while turning toward the ball and taking their first step with the opposite leg. The final type of lateral step is the gravity step, where the lead foot steps inward and away from the intended movement. This small inward step moves the center of gravity outside the base of support, creating a dynamic imbalance which aids in mastering lateral movement. Lateral footwork drills, including lateral crossovers and lateral shuffles, combined with medicine ball throws can be an effective double whammy for strength training for tennis. Emphasize the agility component of reacting to whatever direction you throw the ball. These drills can be performed in planned and unplanned movement patterns. Keep in mind that the mechanics behind a backhand are different from a forehand stroke. Unlike other sports, it is extremely rare to switch dominant hands and hit forehands on the opposite side of the body. For this reason, you could train shuffle footwork dominantly to the forehand side, and crossover footwork dominantly to the backhand side. Med Ball Deep Groundstroke (open or closed) A large medicine ball is tossed above and behind the athlete, who is at the ready position. Once the throw is made, the athlete takes the first step and gets into position to receive the ball behind their starting position. The ball can be thrown either to their forehand or backhand side. After receiving the ball, the athlete loads their body similar to a stroke using a racket and launches the ball back toward the coach. Med Ball Short Groundstroke (open or closed) Similar to the Medicine Ball Deep Groundstroke, except the ball is thrown in front of the athlete, who needs to take a step forward to catch and return the ball. Lateral Run + Throw (wide throw) In this drill, the athlete starts in the ready position and the medicine ball is thrown to their left or right. The athlete shuffles or crosses over depending on which side was their forehand and which side was their backhand to catch, load and throw the ball back. Strength As the technology of rackets and other tennis equipment has improved, groundstrokes have gone from a closed stance to a much more open stance. This has caused the tennis groundstroke to go from a simultaneous coordination of the body to a sequential coordination of the body. This means that specific components of the tennis stroke can be trained separately and still illicit overall groundstroke improvements. Training should try to imitate the sequential coordination of each stroke. Using a medicine ball without incorporating footwork is a way to train core strength and power without fatiguing the lower body as much as footwork medicine ball drills do. When you take away the footwork, you can increase the intensity of the workout by increasing the weight of the medicine ball or power behind each throw. Taking away the footwork also removes the agility component but allows greater focus on power and proper movement. These drills can be performed at the beginning or end of a workout, or before playing. Make sure to train both sides of the body equally, especially in closed stance and shuffle drills. These drills can also be used as a conditioning tool thrown in during practice. The Medicine Ball Slam and Keg Toss are less tennis-specific and are total body power movements that can be used with novice athletes. Med Ball Open Stance Side Throw The athlete stands in an open stance with the toes of both feet pointing forward. Without using their feet, they catch a medicine ball thrown to either side of their body, decelerate the ball, load their upper body and return the ball in a powerful throw. Med Ball Close Stance Side Throw Performed in the same manner as the Open Stance Throw except the athlete is in a closed stance, receiving the ball on one side and throwing it back before switching stances and receiving the ball on the other side of their body. Med Ball Slam The Medicine Ball Slam is a versatile drill that works on total body power and coordinated effort. The ball is picked up from the floor, taken overhead and thrown back into the floor as powerfully as possible. Make sure to pick up the ball up with good form, and that the material of the ball or ground can absorb the power of the throw so the ball doesn't bounce back into the athlete's face. Med Ball Keg Toss The Keg Toss is another basic medicine ball drill good for developing power and strength. In this drill, the ball starts in both hands with the athlete's ankles, knees and hips flexed. A rapid triple extension is followed by an underhand toss of the medicine ball overhead and into the air. The goal of this drill should be maximal height, not maximal distance thrown backward. Photo Credit: Tara Moore/Stone/Getty Images Sources: Fernandez, J., Mendez-Villanueva, A., & Pluim, B. M. (2006). Intensity of tennis match play. Br J Sports Med. 40(5), 387–391. Kovacs, M. S. (2009). "Movement for tennis: The importance of lateral training." Strength & Conditioning Journal, 31(4), 77-85. Kovacs, M. S., Roetert, E. P., & Ellenbecker, T. S. (2008). "Efficient deceleration: The forgotten factor in tennis-specific training." Strength & Conditioning Journal, 30(6), 58-69. Roetert, E. P., Kovacs, M., Knudson, D., & Groppel, J. L. (2009). "Biomechanics of the tennis groundstrokes: Implications for strength training." Strength & Conditioning Journal, 31(4), 41-49. |
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