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[APP Request] Nest (Google), Please Release an Android TV App! We all have apps that we would like to see make their way to Android TV. Some just need to be sideloaded to be enjoyed (more on that later), while others could use a developer’s touch to bring a proper TV experience. although I wish all apps functioned properly on Android TV, the purpose of this series is to bring attention to specific apps that belong in the living room and could really use the big screen treatment. Along with the article, I will be reaching out to developers and will update the article if there is any response. In the comments, please leave suggestions of your own APP Requests! However, for now I will be talking about… The Nest App To be honest, I am kinda shocked that this doesn’t exist already. Nest is Google’s arm of household devices. Right now, the Android Nest App can control the Nest Thermostat, Nest Cams (or Dropcams), the Nest Protect Smoke Alarm, and a handful of other devices that “work with Nest.” With Android TV being the main interface of your home, it would make a bit of sense to allow it to control your home’s devices. Even when Google Home drops, I still feel that Android TV will be your main visual hub. I cannot imagine the app would take much work, in fact, a sideloaded version works well enough for the basics. As you can see, you can set your thermostat, test your alarms, and even stream from your Nest Cam. Awesome. But a sideloaded app won’t show up on your home launcher (yet) and it can be so much more useful if properly tuned. With Nougat coming out, Android TV will be able to handle Picture In Picture. Google, this would be a perfect app to showcase this capability. Personally, I use a Dropcam as a baby monitor. Currently, we have a dedicated Nexus 7 that it streams to in the living room. However, I am watching the TV anyways, so I would love to be able to the baby in the corner of the screen. My wife says that I will one day write a book called “Lazy Parenting 101″… This app could have it’s own chapter! But still if you use your Nest Cam to watch your front door and are expecting company, it would be pretty cool to quickly keep tabs on it while you watch TV. I would also like to see Thermostat functionality make its way into the universal voice search. So what do you say Nest? You know I am right! Let’s see this become reality! Brian Stein Brian Stein is a Science Teacher with a love of technology. When he is not molding young minds, he is looking out for the latest and greatest gadgets. Devices: Moto X, G Watch, Nexus 7, Chromebook, Custom Plex Server More Posts Follow Me: |
See Also, 'Priest Visits Boss' (1982, California) Larry Walters of Los Angeles is one of the few to contend for the Darwin Awards and live to tell the tale. "I have fulfilled my 20-year dream," said Walters, a former truck driver for a company that makes TV commercials. "I'm staying on the ground. I've proved the thing works." Larry's boyhood dream was to fly. But fates conspired to keep him from his dream. He joined the Air Force, but his poor eyesight disqualified him from the job of pilot. After he was discharged from the military, he sat in his backyard watching jets fly overhead. He hatched his weather balloon scheme while sitting outside in his "extremely comfortable" Sears lawnchair. He purchased 45 weather balloons from an Army-Navy surplus store, tied them to his tethered lawnchair (dubbed the Inspiration I) and filled the four-foot diameter balloons with helium. Then, armed with some sandwiches, Miller Lite, and a pellet gun, he strapped himself into his lawnchair. He figured he would shoot to pop a few of the many balloons when it was time to descend. Larry planned to sever the anchor and lazily float to a height of about 30 feet above the backyard, where he would enjoy a few hours of flight before coming back down. But things didn't work out quite as Larry planned. When his friends cut the cord anchoring the lawnchair to his Jeep, he did not float lazily up to 30 feet. Instead he streaked into the LA sky as if shot from a cannon, pulled by the lift of 45 helium balloons, holding 33 cubic feet of helium each. He didn't level off at 100 feet, nor did he level off at 1000 feet. After climbing and climbing, he leveled off at 16,000 feet. At that height he felt he couldn't risk shooting any of the balloons, lest he unbalance the load and really find himself in trouble. So he stayed there, drifting cold and frightened with his beer and sandwiches, for more than 14 hours. He crossed the primary approach corridor of LAX, where startled Trans World Airlines and Delta Airlines pilots radioed in reports of the strange sight. Eventually he gathered the nerve to shoot a few balloons, and slowly descended. The hanging tethers tangled and caught in a power line, blacking out a Long Beach neighborhood for 20 minutes. Larry climbed to safety, where he was arrested by waiting members of the LAPD. As he was led away in handcuffs, a reporter dispatched to cover the daring rescue asked him why he had done it. Larry replied nonchalantly, "A man can't just sit around." The Federal Aviation Administration was not amused. Safety Inspector Neal Savoy said, "We know he broke some part of the Federal Aviation Act, and as soon as we decide which part it is, a charge will be filed." DarwinAwards.com © 1994 - 2012 Submitted by: Ed Greany, Douglas Walker, Walter Hecht Reference: UPI, Stabbed with a Wedge of Cheese by Charles Downey Footnote: Larry's efforts won him a $1,500 FAA fine, a prize from the Bonehead Club of Dallas, the altitude record for gas-filled clustered balloons, and a Darwin Awards At-Risk Survivor. He gave his aluminum lawnchair to admiring neighborhood children, abandoned his truck-driving job, and went on the lecture circuit. He enjoyed intermittent demand as a motivational speaker, but said he never made much money from his innovative flight. He never married and had no children. Larry hiked into the forest and shot himself on October 6, 1993. He died at the age of 44. AP Article 3 July 1982 UPI Followup 18 December 1982 Excerpt from Robert Fulghum's Book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten Larry's Obituary Los Angeles Times Ed Greany adds: I am a member of Crest REACT, a non-profit organization that monitors CB Channel 9 for emergencies. I have the entire event recorded on cassette, while Larry and Santiago REACT Unit 66 were in CB contact. He was not rescued by a helicopter, as you inaccurately report (see our previous version) but came down of his own actions and became entangled in power lines. He later committed suicide. He recorded a song called "Lawn Chair that Flew" c. 1982 ASCAP and gave me a personal copy. I invited him to be a guest speaker at a later REACT Council meeting in Corona, CA. The CB recording is not Copyrighted, and you may have a copy by sending $2 to cover duplication to: Ed Greany c/o Crest React P.O. Box 395 Corona, CA 92878-0395 Ed says, "I prefer cash as it is simpler, but any medium is okay." An informative article by alanboyle. |
In a mere nine minutes of Q&A, we noted Welker making an oddly high number of foot references. Here they all are for your sexual listening pleasure. The Patriots' trash-talking is a little more subtle than the Jets'. The transcript: Q: How valuable is it to have a guy like Tom Brady standing in the huddle, especially in the intense situations of the playoff atmosphere? WW: Having Tom in there - it goes without saying, the guy is who he is and he does a great job of making sure everyone is on the same page and putting their best foot forward going out there and playing well and doing what they can out there. Q: How do you approach the young guys about what to expect in the post season? WW: You just talk to them. It's a playoff atmosphere and you can't just stick your toe in the water, you've got to jump right in and make sure you're ready to go and make things happen. In a playoff atmosphere that's what you have to do. Q: Do you try to convey a sense of urgency with the younger players? If something comes up during the game - they have to take advantage of that opportunity because they may not get another one... WW: Absolutely. Every play is so critical and that is something that we talk about quite a bit. Going out there and in every single play if there is a bust or a mental error - it could cost you the game and that is something that we have to stay on top of and make sure that we are doing everything possible to be ready to go on every single play. Q: I know you are excited to play football every game no matter what the situation is but considering last year when you were forced to sit and watch the playoff game, is there a little bit more excitement for you because you are getting back in the playoffs? WW: It is definitely a little bit different especially [last year] I had my foot up in the air trying to get the swelling to go down and things like that. [I'm] definitely excited about getting the opportunity to go out there and have some fun and get in the playoff atmosphere. This is what it's all about. This is where you want to get to. This being my seventh year in the league now, and understanding what this means and how rare of an opportunity it is - [we've] got to make sure we take full advantage of it. Q: How frustrating was it to not be on the field last year? You haven't played a playoff game since Glendale in 2007. How did it feel not being out there last year? WW: It was tough. It was definitely hard to watch, especially the way the game went. I am definitely excited to be out there and these are the types of games you play for. This is what you spend all year getting ready for and you want to go out there and put your best foot forward. Q: Where were you physically last year for the Baltimore game? WW: Where was I physically? Q: Were you on the field, at home or in a box? WW: I was actually in the box. Yeah, I was up there watching the game. Q: Can you put a number on how much Darrelle Revis was covering you on the Dec. 6th game? It seemed significantly more than the first game. WW: It was definitely a little more. I don't really know a number. It was quite a bit, especially any time they did any sort of man coverages and things like that. It seemed to be a lot more, so you've got to be ready for everything and study film on everybody, and make sure you are definitely ready for him and you've got to bring it every play because he is a great player. He's got great feet, he moves around well and [he] does some good things out there. Q: A lot of the defensive players have been talking this week about what you guys needed physically to move forward after the Cleveland game. Offensively how have you guys grown as a unit since that Cleveland game? WW: I think we have had some younger players really step up this year. Over the year that has been how it goes - guys start to mature, start to understand things, start to understand what the coaches want, and get more comfortable in what they're doing. That's huge - having some of the younger guys do that throughout this season and that's big. They really have grown a lot and I think it has really helped our offense. Q: What makes Revis as good as he is? WW: I think he is very patient. He has good feet. He moves around really well. He understands the game. He gets his hands on you pretty well. [He] understands what you're trying to do to him, so he definitely is a tough guy to really set up and get open against. You've got to be on top of your game and make sure that you're doing everything possible to get open. Q: From what you've seen from Aaron [Hernandez] and Rob [Gronkowski] in practice and obviously in the games are they not typical rookies and for that reason, are they going to have no problem handling the playoff pressure? WW: I think being as young as they are, I don't think they really don't understand the significance of this game which is sometimes a good thing. They just go out there and play ball and [they] know what they know. They play hard and play well and I think that will be good for them. I know they are going to go out there and give it everything they've got and that's something that they've done all year. That is something that won't change this week, so we are definitely excited to have them be apart of our team and [we're] excited to have them go out there and make some plays in a critical game. Q: Isn't that what veterans strive for too? To just go out there and play a game even if it's a championship game, as if it's a regular season game to keep on an even-keel? WW: In a way, yeah, but it's different still. It's the playoffs and this is what you strive for. This is what you work all season for - to get this opportunity and to get this chance and you've got to take full advantage of it. Q: What has Deion Branch brought to the offense? WW: Deion is such a great player and such a great teammate. The guy is tough to cover. He does a lot of great things out there - he runs some really good routes. Tom [Brady] trusts him and they are kind of on the same page. He is another guy with great feet and he can really move around and do some great things out there. Q: You guys were on such an impressive role heading into the last 5 - 6 weeks of the season, how do you guys feel you will handle the bye week, are you afraid that you have lost any momentum at all? WW: To be honest with you, I feel like our practices have almost simulated a game as well as we could have. We really got after it during the bye week and even this week of really concentrating and practicing hard and making sure that every play, even in practice... you never know when you will get the chance to run it again before the game, so you want to make sure that you are putting your best foot forward out there and making it happen. Q: How does the playoff atmosphere translate to practices this week of preparation, do you sense it? WW: Yeah, absolutely. [We're] really moving forward and we're going out there being good little foot soldiers. We are making sure we are going out there doing everything coach [Belichick] asks us to do: making plays and doing everything necessary to get ready for the game. Q: You've been on both sides of blow-out games in your career. Who does it help motivate more, when you've been blown- out or when you've been on the team that did the blowing out? WW: I don't know. I think at this point in the year, its playoffs and you understand that even though it ended up being a blow-out last game, one or two plays here and there and it could have been a different ball game so, you've got to make sure you are bringing it every single week, especially this time of year. You've got to bring it every single play and make sure you are putting yourself in the best opportunity to win. The last game doesn't really mean anything and it's all about moving forward and what we do this week. Q: Is communication a big factor this week with all of the Jets blitz packages? You've really got to focus and be alert and make sure everyone is on the same page. WW: You definitely have to make sure you are on top of things. Especially with this team, they do so many different things. [They] move people around and do a lot of blitzes. A lot of teams you don't see all year, so you definitely have to be on your toes and make sure that you're ready to go. You've got to make sure you are putting everything out there that you need to, to be ready to go but communication is definitely a huge thing. |
Note: By submitting this form, you agree to Third Door Media's terms . We respect your privacy . Sign up for our NEW daily brief, your #1 source for need-to-know search marketing news. It’s that time again: April comScore qSearch data are coming out tomorrow. But the financial analysts are releasing it first to their clients and others who’ve subscribed to their missives. According to our source, comScore will report that both Google and Bing have made small, incremental gains since last month and seen modest growth since last year. One or both are growing, it appears, at Yahoo’s expense. AOL and Ask are basically flat. Yahoo is at its lowest point to date and has recorded its eighth straight monthly decline in terms of market share. Our source believes that Yahoo’s share could sink quite a bit lower over time. Here’s the comScore share breakdown for the past two months compared with a year ago: Data source: comScore (5/12) These data do not include mobile search query volumes. We know that many publishers are seeing a range of between 15 percent and 25 percent of their queries now coming from mobile devices. In some categories the percentages are much higher: restaurants for example where 40 percent or even 50 percent of traffic is now from mobile. Google is far and away the dominant provider of browser-based mobile search query volume in the US. Postscript: Now the official comScore numbers are out and they’re consistent with what we posted above. |
Last month, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk made a presentation before the International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia, a followup to his 2016 talk where he unveiled SpaceX’s Interplanetary Transport System and his ambitions to colonize Mars. This year’s presentation showcased some updates and design changes to his plans and the rocket itself — he wants to put all of SpaceX’s resources into the BFR, and use it to provide long-distance travel around planet Earth. On Saturday evening, Elon Musk hosted an Ask Me Anything session in r/space, where he answered questions about his the ITS, the engines that power it, and more. BFR AMA on r/space in 2 hours — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 14, 2017 Interplanetary Transport System The key focus of the AMA was on the ITS vehicles that Musk hopes to use to travel between Earth and Mars — otherwise known as the Big Fucking Rocket. SpaceX made some changes to the design between the 2016 and 2017 presentations, and one user asked about the change to a more cylindrical shape. Musk noted that he wanted to get the “best mass ratio” and that “the propellant tanks need to be cylindrical to be remotely mass efficient and they have to carry ascent load, so lowest mass solution is just to mount the heat shield plates directly to the tank wall.” Some users also asked about the changes to the design of the propellant tanks, going from a series of spherical tanks to something more elongated. Musk replied that it was to “avoid/minimize plumbing hell, but we don't super love the current header tank/plumbing design,” but that “further refinement [are] likely.” Another user observed that the 2016 design appears to have its wings and heat shield integrated into the airframe, while in this year’s presentation, they seemed to be modular, prompting them to ask if could be detached. Musk pushed back on the characterization that they were delta wings, and said that they’re not designed to generate lift, but to ensure that the ship “doesn't enter engines first from orbit,” and to “provide pitch and yaw control during reentry.” However, he didn’t really speak to whether or not they could be detached. In another question about the wings, someone noted that while there were two on the ship, there wasn’t a tail (noting that the space shuttle had one), and asked how vertical stabilization worked for the rocket. Another user jumped in, saying that the shuttle didn’t really use it for reentry, and that it’s likely that the BFR doesn’t need it either, to which Musk affirmed, and followed up by saying that “tails are lame.” Another user asked about the heat shield, asking if it was mounted on the ship or embedded into the skin of the rocket, to which Musk said that they would be mounted to the primary tank wall. Other questions concerned the cargo that the ship would carry between Earth and Mars, with a user asking about what the BFR tankers might carry: will they go over empty, or will they include extra propellant? Musk replied that the first tanker will “just be a ship with no payload,” but that he plans to build a rocket with an “extremely high full to empty mass ratio” that will be used as a tanker, adding that it “will look kinda weird.” Keeping the ship’s propellant cool during the trip to Mars was the source of another question: one user pointed out that a rise in temperature in the tanks would eventually boil off the fuel, and asked insulating the tanks will be enough, or if they would require liquid methane and oxygen to keep cool. Musk explained the tanks will be insulated, but that they might add a cryocooler.” When it came to landing the rocket, someone crunched some numbers of the available thrust and weight of the rocket, and asked if the BFR would perform a “hoverslam” landing when being used on Earth. Musk noted that the “landing will not be a hoverslam, depending on what you mean by the ‘slam’ part. Thrust to weight of 1.3 will feel quite gentle. The tanker will only feel the 0.3 part, as gravity cancels out the 1. Launch is also around 1.3 T/W, so it will look pretty much like a launch in reverse....” Another minor change between the 2016 and 2017 renders was the number of landing legs, going from three to four. When asked about the change, Musk simply replied, “because 4,” and followed up with “Improves stability in rough terrain.” Finally, someone asked one of the big questions left unanswered by Musk’s 2016 talk: what about the threat of radiation for astronauts? Musk said that “Ambient radiation damage is not significant for our transit times,” and that the BFR would just “need a solar storm shelter, which is a small part of the ship.” He followed up by saying that Buzz Aldrin is 87, seemingly implying that his short trip to the moon and back left no lingering damage. Raptor Engines Another major topic that users focused on was on the ITS’s Raptor engines. During this year’s presentation, Musk unveiled a scaled-down version of the ITS, one that utilizes 31 Raptor engines, rather than 42, as initially planned, along with some other changes. One user asked why the Raptor engine was reduced from 300 tons to 170 tons of thrust. Musk first said that they chickened out, but explained that “The engine thrust dropped roughly in proportion to the vehicle mass reduction from the first IAC talk.” He went on to explain some of the thinking behind it: In order to be able to land the BF Ship with an engine failure at the worst possible moment, you have to have multiple engines. The difficulty of deep throttling an engine increases in a non-linear way, so 2:1 is fairly easy, but a deep 5:1 is very hard. Granularity is also a big factor. If you just have two engines that do everything, the engine complexity is much higher and, if one fails, you've lost half your power. Btw, we modified the BFS design since IAC to add a third medium area ratio Raptor engine partly for that reason (lose only 1/3 thrust in engine out) and allow landings with higher payload mass for the Earth to Earth transport function. Another user asked for an update on scaling up the prototype Raptor engines to their final size. Musk replied that scaling up the engines is the easy part, and went on to explain that their objective “is to meet or exceed passenger airline levels of safety.” The flight engine design is much lighter and tighter, and is extremely focused on reliability. The objective If our engine is even close to a jet engine in reliability, has a flak shield to protect against a rapid unscheduled disassembly and we have more engines than the typical two of most airliners, then exceeding airline safety should be possible. This is, he noted, critical for SpaceX’s ambitions to use the BFR to travel around Earth. “The advantage of getting somewhere in 30 mins by rocket instead of 15 hours by plane will be negatively affected if ‘but also, you might die’ is on the ticket.” Another question was about the engine’s autogenous pressurization system, in which the propellent is pressurized in the tanks, rather than using a system using helium. The user asked if the engines would use a heat exchanger system, where the propellent is heated in the engines, with hot gas routed back into the tanks to help pressurize the propellent. If that was the case, would all of the raptor engines would use them? Musk was a bit snarky about this, saying that they’ll be using the Incendio spell from Harry Potter, but followed up with a “yes and probably.” Another user asked about the control thrusters, and if they’ll be “derived from Raptor or from SuperDraco engines,” to which Musk noted that they’ll be “closer in design to the Raptor main chamber than SuperDraco and will be pressure-fed to enable lowest possible impulse bit (no turbopump spin delay).” One detail Musk unveiled during his talk was that the BFR has two different types of Raptor engines: four that can operate in a vacuum, while two others are designed to operate at sea level. When asked if those vacuum engines could work at sea level in the case of an emergency, Musk replied that they could but that it wasn’t recommended. Finally, someone asked Musk whether the rocket engines would be 3D printed, given that the company already has experience 3D printing with its SuperDraco engines. Musk replied that some components would be printed, but that “most of it will be machined forgings.” He went on to note that the company has “developed a new metal alloy for the oxygen pump that has both high strength at temperature and won't burn.” Mars Another line of questions was about SpaceX’s ambitions on Mars, and how the company would set up infrastructure for its colonists. The first question was about whether or not SpaceX would put more satellites around the planet, or if the satellites in place would be sufficient. Musk answered yes, but it’s not clear what question he was answering. He also didn’t quite answer a question about specific landing sites for SpaceX’s base, saying only that the site needs to be in a “low altitude to maximize aero braking, be close to ice for propellant production and not have giant boulders.” He also noted that somewhere near the equator will be good for solar panels. Musk did say that SpaceX will design the ISRU (in-situ-resource utilization) system designed to collect materials for propellant on Mars and that the design is pretty far along. Someone also asked if they’ll transport one of the boring machines that Musk has been using with his Boring Company, to use to mine ice or build tunnels. Musk only replied “more boring!,” so take that as you will. Another big question about SpaceX’s Mars plans have been how the company would keep a colony supplied: one user asked “what companies are you working with to provide the technology that SpaceX isn’t focused on?” Musk didn’t really provide any details on the first two points, but did lay out that their “goal is get you there and ensure the basic infrastructure for propellant production and survival is in place,” comparing it to the development of the transcontinental railway. Importantly, he noted that industry on Mars would “need to be built on Mars by many other companies and millions of people.” It looks as though Musk will have to get help from other companies to realize his vision of a self-sustaining colony. When asked about the illustrations of the Martian city in his 2017 presentation, where some rockets are depicted as permanently anchored, Musk said that we shouldn’t “read too much into that illustration.” Preparations for 2022 Finally, Musk answered a questions about the preparations to get to Mars. One was about what to expect between now and 2022: would SpaceX perform hop tests with the BFR, build new facilities, and test out propellant? “Yes, yes, and yes,” was his reply. He elaborated by saying that SpaceX will start off with short, hops of a “few hundred kilometers altitude and lateral distance,” and then will begin “orbital velocity Ship flights, which will need all of the above.” |
No one knows how it started, but today -- Friday, Aug. 16 -- is National Rum Day. OK, to be honest, a publicist out there is probably snickering as he or she clinks the ice in their glass as the thick, sugary alcohol swirls around. But it is clear that rum is seeing a boost in popularity -- nationally as well as in Greater Cleveland. Kim Haasarud, rum expert and author of the “101” series on drinks, says we’re in a “big resurgence” for rum. “Rums play well in the sandbox with each other,” Haasarud told The Plain Dealer. Haasarud, whose seventh book in the series, “101 Tropical Drinks” came out this year, explains that different styles of rum can be mixed in the same drink. “You can’t do that with tequilas or whiskeys,” she says. Haasarud, who has been a judge on “Iron Chef America” and whose next book in her series is “101 Shots,” applauds rum’s “really rich history.” “It goes back to the 1700s, with sailors and pirates, and used to be one of the most prolific spirits out there. It’s very easy to make. Tequila has to come from a specific region in Mexico, for instance,” she said. Rum’s simplicity, Haasarud added, is rooted in its main source - sugar cane. So the question is: Which rum-based drink will the Phoenix-based author opt for today? “Mai tai,” she said. “It just gets butchered so much, but it’s really a simple drink. Silver rum and maybe a little dark Jamaican rum is good to play with in that [drink]. Fresh lime juice, simple syrup and . The gives it a sort of subtle nuance.” Said Haasarud: “It’s all part of process. We’re starting to explore the different rums out there. Think of it as more of a rediscovery. Micro-distilleries in the United States are helping that.” At least two places in Greater Cleveland are producing rum. Matt Zappernick, one of the owners of Portside Distillery in downtown Cleveland, says he’s still in the learning stages about rum, but he's pleased with its reception. “The maple vanilla rum has jumped off really well; everyone seems to like that,” he said. “Flavored rums have more of an appeal than the straight rum.” Portside sells 750-milliliter bottles of its silver rum and maple vanilla rum for $29.25 each. Kevin Suttman – who founded Seven Brothers Distilling Company, based in Leroy Township between Chardon and Painesville - agrees about rum’s popularity. “It’s growing every month,” said Suttman, who said Seven Brothers recently produced two batches of 250 bottles each in a month. “Vodka is the most popular [of alcoholic styles] right now, but I think rum is kind of growing. It does very well.” Seven Brothers sells its silver rum for about $25 and its spiced for about $28, depending on location. The distillery distributes in Greater Cleveland from the Lorain County border to the Pennsylvania line. For his part, Suttman has warmed up to rum and has a new favorite drink. “I was always a vodka drinker, and I never really liked spiced rum a whole lot. ... I bought ’em all, sampled ’em all. Couldn’t warm up to any of them. But since I launched my line, I use fresh vanilla beans and all the other spices are fresh, high-quality spices. In the end, spiced rum and ginger ale is my favorite addiction. It’s a simple drink.” Bacardi Superior Light Rum finished as the top selling rum in 2011 in Ohio, according to figures from the Ohio Department of Commerce. And rum has at least one celebrity on its side: Singer Enrique Iglesias is an owner of Atlantico Rum. And there's Brian from “Family Guy.” The heavy-drinking dog has a penchant for mojitos. If you miss National Rum Day, keep this one in mind: National Whiskey Sour Day is Sunday, Aug. 25. |
It has been a long wait but the first Lamborghini Centenario has finally been delivered. The lucky first recipient of the highly limited Italian supercar is a Sheikh from the United Arab Emirates. The first Centenario to be delivered is one of the 20 coupés finished in an interesting shade of orange. In addition to the 20 coupés, 20 more convertibles will soon find their way to their respective owners, bringing the total production of the supercar to just 40 vehicles. Lamborghini Centenario 1 of 2 The Centenario was revealed at last year’s Geneva Motor Show and packs a naturally aspirated V12 that is good for 770 hp and 690 Nm of torque. This translates to impressive performance on road, shifting through a 0 to 100 km/h sprint in just 2.8 seconds. The speedometer will keep on running well beyond 350 km/h for those who get the opportunity. The highly limited Lambo was called to life in honor of the 100th anniversary of the brand’s founder, Ferruccio Lamborghini. For more information on the Lamborghini Centenario, make sure to read our first release. |
Who says the thoughts and perceptions of animals are closed to us? Adrian Barnett finds out what it is like to be a... Vincent J. Musi/National Geographic/Getty It’s one of humanity’s oldest questions – the hunter, the herder and the harried modern pet owner have all at some point gazed at an animal and (with rather diverse intentions) mused “I wonder what he’s thinking?” and “Do they see the world like we do?” Many books this year have either touched on, embraced or dived fully into the topic. One of the more intriguing is Danna Staaf’s Squid Empire: The rise and fall of the cephalopods (University Press of New England). It tells the 400-million-year story of a group that once comprised the planet’s top carnivores, to say nothing of lineages that diversified into scavengers, grazers and even filter feeders. Take a water jet-propulsion system, a brain with mammal-grade thinking skills, and optically excellent eyes. Add tentacles and an ability to communicate using colour via direct nerve-control of skin patches, and as Staaf makes plain, you have a smart and dexterous group of animals that, if not for a couple of evolutionary cataclysms, would probably be running the planet right now. This in-depth coverage of an often neglected but ecologically vital group will change your view of squid, octopuses and their relatives, and make eating calamari feel like cannibalism. Advertisement In contrast to the dynamics of Staaf’s squid, Juli Berwald’s Spineless (Riverhead Books) takes us into the, at first glance, rather more passive world of jellyfish. These creatures seem an exercise in evolutionary minimalism, with just two layers of cells – the eponymous jelly and some simple bands of muscle – combining to produce elegant propulsion mechanisms. They have no central brain, yet they see and sense, and have been astonishingly successful for more than 500 million years. Berwald’s exposé of the biology beneath the curved and tentacled dome is combined with a personal odyssey as, after a decade of mothering, she returns to marine science to study jellyfish swarms in the ecologically askew regions of the world’s oceans. Different thinking A very different approach is taken by Deep Thinkers: Inside the minds of whales, dolphins, and porpoises (University of Chicago Press). Edited by marine biologist Janet Mann, the experts in this volume explore the whys and wherefores of cetacean thinking. There are chapters on cognition, tool use and communication, analyses of cetacean social lives, and anatomical studies. In keeping technical language to a minimum and matching the clearly written text to beautiful illustrations and clear and concise diagrams, Mann and her collaborators have produced an evocative summary of what it is to be whale. Copyright Bryant Austin; from Deep Thinkers (Ivy Press, 2017) The first chapter of Deep Thinkers shows just how hard it is to study even very large mammals in a place as huge and complex as the ocean. So working on dog intelligence should be a walk in the park. After all, graves containing dogs alongside humans date back 14,000 years, and dogs were probably helping with the mammoth hunt much earlier than that. Yet neuroscientist Gregory Berns’s What It’s Like to be a Dog, and other adventures in animal neuroscience (Basic Books) reveals that our understanding of why dogs behave the way they do is far less intuitive than we might imagine. We may be able to predict their responses pretty well, pretty often, but the reasons we ascribe to their actions are very much based on our interpretations of how things work. For a dog’s-eye and nose perspective, we need to get inside their heads – and this is where MRI and the author’s special expertise come in. Berns mixes personal stories of dogs and dog lovers with elegant scientific experiments that show the surprising complexity behind many canine daily behaviours: a fun, fascinating and illuminating read. True personalities Every pet lover knows that animals are highly individualistic in their likes, dislikes and general being. Farmers and zookeepers say the same of the animals in their care. But, somehow, it was always assumed that this was an artefact of captivity. Safe and well-fed, such animals could, like a pampered aristocrat, indulge in behavioural whims and eccentricities. Well before the third chapter of Mousy Cats and Sheepish Coyotes: The science of animal personalities (Beacon Press), wildlife biologist John Shivik will have convinced you otherwise. Elephants mourn their lost loved ones and suffer post-traumatic stress after poaching, bonobos read emotional situations and resolve conflicts, marmosets exhibit grief: with this level of emotional sophistication, why wouldn’t they show personalities too? And the examples roll in, from all branches of the zoological family tree – brave chickens, innovative otters, left-handed wallabies… When scientists studying behaviour considered animals to be little more than stimulus-bound and instinct-wired robots, to be accused of anthropomorphism was a social calamity. Now “smart”, “cowardly”, “exuberant” and “shy” are considered descriptive epithets connoting a researcher’s empathy, dedication and field-won insight, rather than lab-coat-shaming emotional overspill. In a text that mixes the history of behavioural science with Shivik’s own field experience and that of many others, personality soon comes to be seen as an unsurprising consequence of adaptive variability. As cryptic animals vary in their colour patterns, so smart ones vary in the ways they deal with situations. It is a credit to the quality of the author’s writing that, long after the point has been made, you are more than happy to turn the page for his next example of glorious animal individualism and eccentricity. |
On Wednesday, a NSW Supreme Court jury found Roger Rogerson, 75, and Glen McNamara, 57, guilty of the murder of Mr Gao. Guilty: Roger Rogerson, left, and Glen McNamara. The jury of five women and seven men also found the men guilty of stealing the 2.78 kilograms of the drug ice that Mr Gao had brought to the fatal meeting on May 20, 2014. The jury took 6½ days to consider their verdict. McNamara, wearing a navy blue suit and a striped tie, did not react as the jury forewoman read out the verdict. Rogerson showed no emotion and put his left hand on a piece of paper he appeared to be reading. Roger Rogerson during Supreme Court hearings over the death of Jamie Gao. Credit:James Alcock However, as Justice Geoffrey Bellew formally read the convictions, McNamara stood blinking. Rogerson bowed his head and kept two clenched fists on the bench in front of him. Former detective and true-crime author Glen McNamara. Credit:James Alcock McNamara's daughter Jessica turned up at the NSW Supreme Court after the jury had returned its verdict. Blamed each other Although Rogerson and McNamara killed together, by no means did they stick to the same story. Victim: Jamie Gao. Credit:Facebook They blamed each other for Mr Gao's death. But the jury members did not need to determine who pulled the trigger as long as they were satisfied the pair acted as part of a joint criminal enterprise. Anne Melocco, Roger Rogerson's wife, leaves the Supreme Court during the trial. Credit:Ben Rushton Shortly after Mr Gao was murdered at Rent-A-Space in the south-western Sydney suburb of Padstow, his body was stuffed into a silver Ocean & Earth McNamara's Quintrex boat was then used to dump Mr Gao's body at sea. Six days later, a fisherman spotted the body floating 2.5 kilometres from the shore off Shelly Beach in Cronulla. After they were arrested, the pair were forced to tailor their stories around the CCTV footage on which they had been caught. What they could not deny was that, at 1.46pm on May 20, security footage captured Mr Gao getting out of a white Ford station wagon and slipping into the storage shed with McNamara. A little more than three minutes later, Rogerson was seen hobbling towards the unit. Rogerson's fictitious account was that he opened the door to a "nightmare". "Well [McNamara] was as white as a ghost, he was shaking uncontrollably and sweating like a pig," he told the jury, gripping the witness stand with both hands. "Then I looked down and I saw an Asian man lying on the floor with his head to my right … and he was dead." On Rogerson's version, McNamara told him there had been a struggle, and that Mr Gao had shot himself twice in the chest. "I said to him, 'Glen the only thing we'll be doing here is calling the cops,' " Rogerson's version went. He said McNamara explained that the two of them would be killed by Chinese Triad members with whom Mr Gao associated, unless they left the area quickly. McNamara painted a very different story. He said he was in the shed for three minutes with Mr Gao by himself but could not explain why, or what they spoke about. The next thing he remembered was Rogerson opening the shed door and demanding Mr Gao hand over the "gear". Mr Gao pulled out a combat-style knife and simultaneously Rogerson produced a gun from the right pocket of his pants. "[The bullet] knocked him back in the chair and he dropped the knife," McNamara claimed. "[Rogerson] held aim and shot him again. Gao stopped moving, there was no noise … he just killed him." He said Rogerson then aimed the gun at McNamara's head and threatened to kill him and his daughters if he did not help to dispose of the body. Private investigator McNamara met Mr Gao through his work as a private investigator in early January 2014. The pair met at least 27 times and exchanged hundreds of texts in the lead-up to Mr Gao's death. McNamara maintained throughout the trial that he formed a relationship with Mr Gao only to research his next true crime book on Asian triads and drug supply in Sydney. Rogerson repeatedly told the trial he had never met Mr Gao and only learnt of his name after his death. But the Crown argued that Mr Gao's death was part of a well thought-out plan. McNamara had taken his boat out the day before the murder and Rogerson visited the shed to remove some office chairs. In further preparation, the pair bought the station wagon with the number plates BV67PX on April 27, which was later used to transport Mr Gao's body. Both denied having anything to do with the car's acquisition but police found a receipt for the car in McNamara's Cronulla apartment with Rogerson's fingerprint on it. The Crown argued all of their plans were for two things only - to kill Mr Gao and to steal the 2.78 kilograms of drugs he had brought. Police would later find two brown pillowslips filled with ice, secreted under the seat of the station wagon, parked in the basement of McNamara's apartment block. Loading The trial ran for 18 weeks before the jury retired to consider their verdict. Rogerson and McNamara will face a sentencing hearing on August 25. |
Share. It just wouldn't be Marvel, baby. It just wouldn't be Marvel, baby. With the probability of seeing Marvel vs Capcom 4 climbing suddenly from “pipe dream” to “distinct possibility” within the last few days, fans of Capcom’s long-running Vs. series have experienced a mix of elation and trepidation. Early reports indicate that Marvel wants to stay focused on characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), possibly even to the exclusion of X-Men-related characters like Magneto and Wolverine. To the casual observer, this is a matter of two characters amidst a sea of beloved alternatives. But it’s much, much bigger than a handful of mutants: Marvel vs Capcom 4 absolutely needs the X-Men universe. Here’s a few reasons why. Secret Wars The first and most important thing to grasp here is the clear, calculated reasoning behind the rumored decision: movie rights. Exit Theatre Mode As you might know, while Marvel Entertainment owns the rights to its characters, it licenses them out for appearances in a variety of entertainment mediums. Most notably, it’s licensed the film rights for the entire X-Men universe to 20th Century Fox, meaning that while they’ve made some money on the licensing fees, they’ve missed out on most or all of the $4.4 billion in revenue these films have made at the box office. In contrast, they keep all the revenue on their own Marvel Studios films like The Avengers, Iron Man, and the Captain America series. “ The comic is an ad for the game, which is an ad for the movie. You know how this works. We live in the interconnected age of corporate brand synergy where every product you release in one medium doubles as marketing for the analogous product in another. The comic is an ad for the toy, which is an ad for the game, which is an ad for the movie. So why, then, why would Marvel Entertainment create products that might drive dollars to Fox’s movies? The simple answer is: they wouldn’t. In the past few years, we have seen a marked reduction in X-Men-related comics from Marvel. Heck, you don’t have to look any further than the cover of their 75th Anniversary magazine from two years ago to see the writing on the wall: Notice anything missing? The X-Men, who are inarguably one of Marvel’s most popular, long-lasting teams, are nowhere to be found! Head to the Toys R Us website and search “X-Men,” and then compare it to a search for “Avengers,” or even “Guardians of the Galaxy.”. The lack of figures and collectibles is staggering by comparison, and none of this is a coincidence. So yes, it is currently only speculation that the X-Men will be passed on in Marvel vs Capcom 4, but given how Marvel is currently treating the Children of the Atom in other spaces, it seems extremely plausible. “ If Capcom wants MvC 4 to get made, they may have to take some orders they don’t like. According to interviews with then-Capcom employee and fighting game community pillar Seth Killian, he and Capcom had to fight extremely hard to sell Marvel brass on including Vs. fan-favorites like Sentinel and Shuma Gorrath in MvC 3. I have every faith that Capcom will, again, fight to maintain the wishes of the fans, but Marvel has grown vastly in pop-culture power and influence since then, and Capcom’s financial situation has only weakened. If they want Marvel vs Capcom 4 to get made, they may have to take some orders they don’t like. And that’s the biggest reason the X-Men need to be in MvC 4 if it does indeed happen: if they aren’t, it’s a sign of corporate brand interests and marketing demonstrably trumping the creative intent of developers, and the wishes of dedicated long-time fans. That’s not a precedent I’d like to see set in my favorite creative medium. The Best He Is At What He Does...Marketing Ironically, this ostensibly marketing-focused approach would likely sink a potential MvC 4’s appeal, thanks to one character: Wolverine. Exit Theatre Mode As the only Marvel character to be playable in every single Marvel-related Capcom fighting game ever made (starting in 1995 with X-Men: Children of the Atom), Logan’s exclusion would end over two decades of him being the face of Capcom’s Marvel contingent. It would essentially be like Capcom deciding that Street Fighter 5 didn’t need Ryu. Can you imagine how many casual players (who make up the bulk of a fighting game’s sales) would just not buy a Street Fighter game without Ryu? It won’t be as different as you might think for a Wolvie-free Marvel vs Capcom 4. “ There’s a reason the very first teaser trailer for Marvel vs Capcom 3 featured Ryu and Wolverine. Not only does he have clout with Marvel comics fans and Vs. series fans, he was the face of the entire pre-Avengers comic book movie boom. Who in the world could fill the gaping, cross-medium, multi-generational brand recognition hole he would leave? Starlord? Black Bolt? Please. Even Iron Man and Captain America can’t match that level of multimedia reach. There’s a reason the very first teaser trailer for Marvel vs Capcom 3 featured Ryu and Wolverine duking it out: it was as good for fans as it was for business. 10 More Years From the outside looking in, a Marvel-themed Capcom fighting game seems like a simple licensing play, which might lead people to believe that one set of Marvel characters is just as good as another, assuming they are well-known and popular enough. However, this represents a huge misunderstanding of the series’ heritage and its fans, both of which would be positively gutted if the X-Men universe were excluded from it. Exit Theatre Mode Marvel-branded Capcom fighting games are not some sort of licensed side-show; they are the second longest running fighting game franchise in Capcom’s stable, with as many, or more main-line titles as Street Fighter depending on your math. X-Men-related characters have been a massive part of that legacy from the beginning. 1995’s X-Men: Children of the Atom was entirely dedicated to the mutants. The broader follow-up from later that year, Marvel Super Heroes, still had a cast that was 50% X-Men. Through the years, roster sizes would swell, but even in the most recent Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, they were tied with the Avengers as the most represented of all of Marvel’s properties with five characters each. “ Imagine if Ken, Ryu, Chun-Li, Zangief, and Dhalsim had been excluded from SF5, and now you're in the ballpark. Whether casual or competitive, if you’ve played and enjoyed these games through the years, the idea of this entire stable of characters disappearing into thin air is almost unthinkable. If you are one of the many Street Fighter fans who expressed disbelief and dismay over Blanka not being in SF5, imagine how you’d feel if Ken, Ryu, Chun-Li, Zangief, Dhalsim, and Guile had also been excluded, and now you are in the ballpark of how disappointing a mutant-less Marvel vs Capcom 4 would be for fans. None of this even touches on how alienated the competitive community would feel. Over 10 years of competitive Marvel vs Capcom 2, players like Justin Wong, Sanford Kelly, and Michael “Yipes” Mendoza elevated the play styles of Magneto, Storm, Sentinel, Psylocke, and Cyclops to what can nearly be called an art form. In fact, the team of Magneto, Storm, and Sentinel (referred to eponymously as MSS) is practically the embodiment of the competitive legacy of MvC 2, which survived the fighting game “dark age” in the aughts. The image above was a widely shared meme circulated during the pre-release period of MvC 3, depicting the iconic team in the new game, and a hopeful wish to see another decade of competitive life for the legendary series. It’s fascinating in that, in their original contexts, all three of these characters would be mortal enemies, but to Vs. series fans this team is a symbol - one that could be wiped clean away if the X-Men universe is excised from Marvel vs Capcom 4. Vincent Ingenito is IGN's foremost fighting game nerd. Follow him on Twitter and help him sort out his Street Fighter 5 character crisis. |
Thirty-two formerly homeless have found a home at the newly opened Pescadero Lofts, a $10.3 million project in the heart of Isla Vista that aims to move people off the streets and into supportive housing. The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors got an update on the project last week from Third District Supervisor Doreen Farr, whose district includes the project. The board voted unanimously to receive and file the report. "We really think it's a feel-good story," Farr said of the project, adding that homelessness in Isla Vista has been a problem since she began her time in office as a supervisor. She recalled attending a meal being handed out to those in need by St. Brigid's in Isla Vista, and "I was struck by the number of homeless people that came out for this." About the same time, Farr was also appointed as the board representative to the South Coast Homelessness Advisory Committee, where they were looking at projects that included wrap-around services. "That seemed to be the model that was needed in the Isla Vista community," she said. That's what the project at 761 Camino Pescadero, a former fraternity property, eventually became after the property was purchased with redevelopment agency money, she said. John Polanskey of the Santa Barbara County Housing Authority, which will own and manage the building, said very low-income people are eligible for housing at the lofts. Union Bank was able to purchase the tax credits and be a construction lender in the $10.3 million project, which had a groundbreaking in November 2013. The building's architecture is inspired by Santa Barbara's Funk Zone and incorporates elements such as large windows "to bring the outdoors in," he said, adding that the residents are people who have "been on the streets for decades." The project has 26 studios, six one-bedroom apartments and a managers unit, along with community programing space, 34 parking spaces and twice as many bike parking spaces. The Rev. Jon-Stephen Hedges, an Isla Vista resident and founder of the St. Brigid's ministry, said the tenant selection brought many people he's seen on the streets for decades into housing. The average time homeless of the residents brought into the lofts was 14.75 years, and three residents are over 30 years homeless, he said. The residents have an average agree of 54, and nine are veterans. "These folks were our neighbors," Hedges said. "They were not a 'target population,'" They were able to use survey data gathered from point in time counts conducted in past years to place the most vulnerable, and 21 out of 32 residents had been deemed at risk of premature death had they stayed on the streets. Residents pay anywhere from $30 to $200 a month, and receive services from case workers on site. "The evidence so far says that this just might be a template," he said. Farr said that 30 out of 32 residents reported incarceration prior to being housed, and that they had been responsible for 14 ER visits within a three-month period. If the costs of incarceration and ER time could be curbed, the county could save money, she said. "We know the impact of having housing of people," she said, adding that future challenges involved equipping residents with job skills to support their goals and keep them housed. "If we can improve their lives and at the same time save costs, that is such a benefit to our community." — Noozhawk staff writer Lara Cooper can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) . Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook. |
Father-to-be Andy Carroll is working hard on his fitness and is preparing to welcome a new son and a new manager West Ham United striker Andy Carroll is relishing the chance to play under new manager Slaven Bilic and says he is excited by the style of play that the Croatian will bring to the Boleyn Ground. Carroll has been working hard throughout the summer to regain full fitness following a knee injury he suffered back in February, and is on course to return to action in the pre-season. The former Newcastle United and Liverpool forward was thrilled to hear the news that Bilic was appointed as the new manager this week and hopes he can play a major part in the final season at the Boleyn Ground. Carroll said: “I think it has been a great appointment. I have spoken to the lads and everyone seems to be happy with it. He plays a lot of attacking football and I have seen the teams he has been coaching and they love to go out and attack. “That is a great feeling for me and I cannot wait to get started.” He plays a lot of attacking football and I have seen the teams he has been coaching and they love to go out and attack The 26-year-old has worked under a variety of managers during his career, including Kevin Keegan, Chris Hughton, Brendan Rodgers and Sam Allardyce, and is now looking forward to learning the methods employed by the former Croatia and Besiktas boss. “It is interesting to see how he is on the touchline,” Carroll continued. “Different managers have got different styles and this will be very different to what we have had in the past, but it will be very interesting and I cannot wait to get started.” Away from football, there is the impending patter of tiny feet to look forward to for the No9, as Carroll is eagerly awaiting the birth of his first child, a son, with fiancee Billi Mucklow. The front man says he cannot wait to become a father again and hopes this is the start of a memorable few months, on and off the pitch. Carroll added: “The baby is due on Monday and these are exciting times. We cannot wait and it is very exciting. Everything has been sorted out and we cannot wait. “I am a dad already but this is my first (with Billi) and it will be great for us down here to start a family. These are really exciting times at the moment and everything is going well.” |
Iran will launch its first sensor-operational satellite in 2018, in 2018, a top official of Iran Space Research Center said on Sunday. Hassan Haddadpour said that “Soha” satellite will be launched to promote Iran Space Research Center laboratory, emphasized in the six development plan, reported Irna. He underlined elevation of laboratory capabilities of Iran in a way that it will be able to support bigger satellites weighing 1 tonne. Iran has now acquired the know-how of designing and constructing the satellites inside the country, Haddadpour added. He said that the Soha satellite will be able to identify things with resolution of 15m and will be deployed in the 36,000-km orbit. “The Doosti satellite will be launched at first and Nahid-1 Telecommunication Satellite will be launched afterwards,” Haddadpour added. Source: tradearabia.com |
Food blogger and mash-up artist Culinary Brodown talks shop with a UCLA medieval philosophy professor to get to the bottom of an age old question: What constitutes a sandwich? It seems petty to jeopardize your personal relationships over a hot dog. But I think it’s important to stick to your guns, no matter how many times your girlfriend threatens to leave you. I mean, she didn’t actually say that, but I saw it in her eyes. She made the bold—and I’m talking Guy Fieri donkey sauce bold flavors bold—claim that a hot dog isn’t a sandwich. Of course it’s a sandwich, I explained. It has bread; it has meat; it’s portable; people eat it with potato salad and at picnics and stuff. Whether or not it has two separate, parallel slices of bread is irrelevant—if it walks, talks, and tastes like a sandwich, it’s a sandwich. She told me I was shouting, and that we were in a restaurant, and I was causing a scene. I semi-successfully groveled for forgiveness on the walk home. Still, it wasn’t something I could let go of so easily. In light of the stress it was putting on my relationship, ‘what makes a sandwich a sandwich?’ seemed like a worthy question to pursue—and I was certainly not the first to go down that road. The question was posed on Chowhound, which prompted almost 500 responses all from people who thought they knew the one true definition of a sandwich. The Guardian wrote a 2,000-word feature to try and answer the question in July of 2014, and a blog on ESPN even got in on the action shortly thereafter. Most of these sources tended to agree that the hot dog is a sandwich, but they were all based off of overly simplistic dictionary definitions. To actually get at the nature of sandwiches, to ostensibly define the barriers of sandwich-hood, you need a source that can think, react, and respond to all the different potential problems and quandaries. In my search to uncover these hidden truths and find answers, I figured it was time to turn to an expert—that’s where Dr. Calvin Normore comes in. Dr. Normore is a professor of medieval philosophy and Cartesian metaphysics at UCLA. He’s currently working on a book about Descartes and the transition from medieval to modern philosophy. I read the Spark Notes for Plato’s Republic four years ago—so I wouldn’t necessarily call us intellectual equals. But when I asked him via email if he’d be willing to sit down with me over lunch and discuss the philosophy of sandwiches—how they’re defined, how they’re categorized, the ontological implications of sandwich-hood—he was stoked by the idea. “That sounds like fun! Kit Fine has a paper on the metaphysics of ham sandwiches by the way!” he told me. Suddenly, I felt less stupid asking a professor and published author to eat hot dogs with me. Since I promised him lunch, my job was to get in the kitchen and create five edible philosophical quandaries, all of varying degrees of sandwichness—a hot dog, lobster roll, falafel pita, goat cheese tartine, and a classic ham sammy—and see how they lived up to their definitions. I met him outside his office in a courtyard that seemed designed specifically for lunching professors. We passed a group of his suit-and-tied colleagues, who all stared at my picnic basket filled with vague, tin-foil-wrapped objects. ‘We’re discussing sandwiches today!’ Dr. Normore told them. They nodded casually, as if philosophy professors are constantly fielding these kinds of requests. I expected to discuss sandwiches, but I didn’t expect to talk about the rise of Taco Bell’s breakfast menu, and whether or not rollerskaters posed a serious threat to human safety. I like to imagine this is what the old Socratic dialogues were like: Just two guys hanging out, shootin’ the shit, and then gorging themselves on sandwiches. Or, not sandwiches—depending on what you gleaned from this ordeal. How familiar are you with sandwiches? Would you call yourself a fan? I am a fan indeed. I eat sandwiches quite often. I eat them on the run; I eat them on the walk; I eat them while sitting still. I am also quite the fan of hamburgers, especially the Australian iteration with a thick slice of beetroot. But I suppose that raises a very pertinent question: Are hamburgers sandwiches? That caused a huge fight between my girlfriend and I the other day. Hamburgers are definitely sandwiches. Any other answer is wrong. Especially my girlfriend’s. Well that may be the case: after all, it has two pieces of bread with meat quite literally sandwiched in between. But, part of the problem is what Paul Grice would have called issues of implicature. So here’s the thing: A convention of language is that you don’t say something less specific if a more specific thing to say is available and is appropriate. That’s an issue that comes up here because some things that people might call sandwiches have more specific names. So, even if it would turn out that a hamburger falls under the broader category of sandwich, we would never refer to it as such, because it has a more specific—and therefor more meaningful—name. What about a Reuben? It has a specific name that implies specific components, but more people would be likely to call that a sandwich than, say, a hamburger or a hot dog. Is that just because it’s less ubiquitous? No, it likely has to do with the stereotype of a sandwich. So, many concepts have associated with them a stereotype, which you might think of as the clearest model that something has to mimic to fall under a category. For instance, the things we’re sitting on are pretty close to the stereotype of chairs. Now, there are lots of things to sit on that are very far from looking like these. We still might count them as chairs, but they’re farther from the stereotype, therefor less recognizable. A corned beef Reuben meets the stereotype of a sandwich pretty much perfectly: It has two pieces of bread with sliced meat in between. You would have no hesitation to call it a sandwich, even if there were a more specific name. The hamburger is a little further from the stereotype, right? Now, I’d be inclined to think that if you pressed me for an answer, I would agree that it is a sandwich. Sweet, so my girlfriend actually was wrong? Ha! It’s very possible. Despite its specific name, it still satisfies any plausible definition of a sandwich, so I count it as such. But, if I asked you to bring me a sandwich, and you brought me a hamburger when you could have brought me a Reuben, you would have slightly misled me. That would be a total dick move—Reuben’s are the best. So, in terms of stereotypes, it seems like lobster rolls and hot dogs are pretty similar to each other. Indeed, I have had many lobster rolls served inside many hot dog buns. Right? But then why would people be more inclined to call a lobster roll a sandwich than a hot dog? Is it just because the classical image of a hot dog is more broadly recognized as a separate, unique structure? I think it might also be because the history of the hot dog is different than the history of sandwiches as a whole. They almost exist on different temporal planes. When history’s first Frankfurter was made in Central Europe and stuck in a roll of bread, it was done outside the modern concept of a sandwich. So, yes, they likely are sandwiches, but only in the same sense that benches are also chairs. Then in those terms, can sandwich-ness, at least for our purposes, only be examined in an American context? Like, in Scandinavia they predominantly eat open-faced sandwiches, which many Americans might not consider a sandwich at all. Is there any universal definition, or will the concept always be skewed across different cultures? One of the issues that gets tricky is the relationship between the application of a word, and a concept, right? It often happens that a word gets used in such different ways that people are not prepared to think of the exact concept its describing. In Mark Wilson’s book Wandering Significance, which is one of the most aptly named books of our time, he discusses the history of the hazelnut and the filbert. Wait, are they the same thing? Aha! It turns out that from many perspectives, including from that of biologists and botanists, they are the same thing. But, there were social and economic reasons for North American growers to distinguish themselves from Europeans by changing the name of the crop. And they partially succeeded, to the extent that you had to ask, ‘are they the same thing?’ I feel really stupid. I thought filberts were a cheap knockoff of hazelnuts—like ‘krab with a k’ is to crab. Don’t, the farmers who renamed the product were deliberately trying to confuse you. So with open-faced sandwiches, the fact that we use the term ‘sandwich’ may not mean that much. Remember that we still call forged checks ‘checks,’ even though they have the opposite utility. The fact that we’ve created a unique species for open-faced sandwiches might indicate that we don’t view them as a sandwich at all. After all, they lack the concept of betweenness that seems essential to sandwiches. (I fold the open-faced sandwiches on top of each other) Boom. So now it’s just a sandwich, yeah? Ha! And we see how fickle the differences really are! So this is really a case of ontology. All you’ve done is rolled one half of it over on the other; so, in essence, it’s the same object as it always was. How can a sandwich cease to be a sandwich with the flick of a finger? Well that’s the idea that caused a coworker and I to start yelling at each other the other day. He ended up saying, “If I had a roast beef sandwich, and a gust of wind blew the top piece of bread off into a pile of dog shit, it doesn’t make it any less of a sandwich.” So then does intent come into play? I think intention can matter in many concepts. And this is an interesting case with the roast beef sandwich. Certain things are constituted the way that they are because of the process used to produce them. But other things aren’t like that at all. For example, are phone books doorstops? What’s a phone book? I didn’t even know they still made phone books, but I received one in the mail the other day! Even though it has no more informational purpose because of smart phones and the internet, I still never would have told you ‘I received a door stop in the mail.’ So if somebody set out to make a pile of food that just happened to contain bread, and wasn’t at all concerned with it being a sandwich, then it likely wouldn’t be up for them to decide. And that’s the case with a lot of BBQ. The meat’s served on a pile of Wonderbread, but there’s no intention of it being a sandwich. Exactly! Even if you were to construct your own sandwich and eat it as such, it would be inaccurate to say that the pitmaster had been cooking up sandwiches all evening. That being said, I don’t think the maker has the final say. It’s not necessarily crucial for the person in charge of the raw materials to be the decision maker here. And this might matter in legal context. If you set out to not make a sandwich, and somehow the wind had blown all the ingredients together to resemble, say, a corned beef Reuben, despite your best intentions, would you still have to abide by sandwich law? With that in mind, it seems like people have different motivations for defining certain categories and species. I know in New York, since all sandwiches are subject to sales tax, they go so far as to define burritos as sandwiches so they can be taxed as such. That’s a general feature of language. When we use certain words we are either extending or contracting the associated concepts, partly by analogy. In legal contexts, this is often important. So if you have a prohibition against wheeled vehicles in Central Park, can that be extended to roller skates? You would first have to consider the question of why someone would want to prohibit them in the first place. If you’re afraid of people being run down, and you think of roller skates as being things capable of that, then you would rather assimilate them to the category of a wheeled vehicle rather than creating a separate law just for roller skates. I had a buddy get a DUI for driving a motorized beer cooler at like 4 miles per hour, so that analogy hits close to home. Similarly, you would have to think: What’s the point of a sandwich? Why do they exist? Well, you want something that’s easily carried, doesn’t require a plate, and that’s got its own packaging so to speak. So, from that unique perspective, you would be forced to look at the most base level of foods that satisfy those requirements. And so that standard for that word can only be defined by the purpose it is intended to satisfy. So how far can we go until something can no longer be considered a sandwich? What’s the difference between an open-faced sandwich on unleavened crisp bread, and just a pile of loaded-up crackers? I would think that if the crisp bread is small enough, it isn’t a sandwich. But, if it’s a hefty piece of crisp bread that contains a full meal, and I could carry it around, I don’t know that I would object to it being a sandwich. There would certainly be a bit of fuzziness around the edges, and if someone were to insist that it weren’t a sandwich, I wouldn’t necessarily throw rocks at them. Now, if someone were to spread peanut butter on a Ritz cracker and try to pass it off as a sandwich, they would have deviated too far fro our initial meaning and intentions. Is there any way to more clearly define those parameters, or is it all based on intuition? It’s not only intuition, but it’s also not a matter of pure legislation either. What happens is that we proceed outwardly from a central case through analogy. We start with a fuzzy area, and that fuzzy area can only get sharpened when we need to really focus on sharpening it. Let me ask you a question: When does the afternoon end? Yeah, I’ve never had a good answer to that. Screw it, I’ll say 4:30, once you get to 4:31, you’re officially into evening. Well, see, now I might think that the evening doesn’t start until 6:00. With many cases, unless the term has been artificially introduced for a specific purpose—like we see with the New York tax codes—I think all of our concepts have this character. They’ll have a penumbra, where you wouldn’t know what to say until you have to say it. Well that time might as well be know. In front of us we have a ham sandwich, a lobster roll, a hot dog, a falafel pita, and an open-faced tartine—which of them are sandwiches? I’d say all of them. Even the falafel—though I’m the most hesitant on that. It might go along the same lines of the Mexican taco, in that it predates the modern concept of a sandwich so much that it’s inappropriate to define it in those narrow terms. But I, personally, am still fully prepared to call it a sandwich. Damn, that was way too simple. I wish I would have gotten more abstract and like thrown a Big Mac in a blender and spread it on a cracker or something. That would certainly be something, but I don’t think that something would be a sandwich. Also, I would be very hesitant to eat it. Well, lastly, Taco Bell now has an item that they’re calling a biscuit taco, which is just a folded-in-half biscuit with a glorified chicken nugget shoved inside. Is there any conceivable world in which that could be considered a taco? If it should turn out that somewhere in Central Mexico people have been making biscuit tacos for quite some time—which I can neither confirm nor deny in full confidence—then it would be acceptable as a taco. But I don’t know that we can take Taco Bell’s word for it. To be fair, Taco Bell is super autentico. Well, that’s all I got, unless you have any closing sandwich remarks that we haven’t covered. Yeah, can I eat one of these? I haven’t had lunch and I have a class that starts in 20 minutes. |
The Marine Corps commandant has laid out a campaign to impose “cultural change” in macho ground combat units to make sure warriors display no resistance to accepting and mentoring women. The “Marine Corps Force Integration Campaign Plan,” approved by Gen. Robert B. Neller, sparks a revolution in training and education as the 182,000-strong expeditionary force prepares for the Obama administration’s April 1 deadline to start the process of putting women in infantry, armor and artillery units. It contains a new curriculum of sensitivity training. “The purpose of gender integration education is to support leadership efforts to facilitate the cultural change necessary to ensure the integration of female Marines into ground combat arms MOSs [military occupational specialties] and units is successful,” the document states. “In most cases, the introduction of new players to a team disrupts unit cohesion.” The commandant’s new curriculum will include courses titled “Unconscious Bias,” “Interpersonal Communication” and “How to Lead a Guided Discussion.” The “Unconscious Bias” class “[p]rovides an understanding of the concept of cognitive bias, awareness of one’s own cognitive bias via a performance-based exam, and cognitive bias mitigation techniques.” Gen. Neller’s game plan contains some sobering predictions. It warns that physical standards mean only a small percentage of women will succeed, and there could be an increase in medical retirements due to injuries. The scenario sees about 200 women entering direct ground combat units annually, making up about 2 percent of all land combatants. Though committed to equal physical demands, the plan says such standards will be reviewed if too many injuries occur and there are negative “career impacts.” “Female propensity for newly opened MOSs will not be evenly distributed,” the plan says. Of the nation’s two large land forces, the Marines more than Army soldiers have expressed objections to breaking the sex line when it comes to close-in ground attacks on the enemy. The Corps alone asked to keep those units closed but was overridden by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, who wanted a uniform policy militarywide. The Corps’ battle plan repeatedly says it is committed to keeping the same physical standards for woman as for men. “Recruiting, retaining, and advancing talented female Marines in physically demanding fields will require careful consideration,” the paper says. “Physical performance is not only a baseline entry-level requirement for ground combat arms MOSs [military occupational specialty] but also a differentiating factor in promotions. As such, per SECDEF guiding principles, equal opportunity may not always equate to equal participation by men and women, and adherence to a merit-based system must continue to be paramount.” This means the Corps is determined to stick to equal standards for running, lifting, climbing and marching. But it is a policy that may run into political headwinds if women advocates charge that female Marines are being judged unfairly. ‘Merit-based’ standards Elaine Donnelly, who runs the Center for Military Readiness, says the Corps risks being forced to eventually lower its time-honored standards. “If the Marines try to maintain a merit-based system, it will not withstand political pressures to meet equal opportunity goals and gender diversity metrics and quotas,” Ms. Donnelly said. Retired Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, who was Joint Chiefs chairman in 2013 when the Obama administration lifted the ban on women in direct land combat, said at the time that if women could not meet a particular standard, the services must have a good reason why it should not be lowered. That edict presumably will be tested in the coming years as the Army, Marine Corps and special operations units judge cadres of female candidates in strenuous physical demands and harsh environments. Previously, about 200 enlisted Marine women completed basic infantry training as part of various integration experiments. They will be able to apply to move laterally into combat units this summer. No female Marine officer was able to complete the grueling Infantry Officer Course. The Corps is assigning female officers in support roles to combat units to mentor the enlisted women. The Corps’ submitted campaign plan repeatedly says standards are paramount. “Adherence to a merit-based system must continue to be paramount,” it says. “Leaders must not use special preferences or undue pressure to increase numbers at the expense of merit. Integration provides equal opportunity for men and women who can perform the tasks required; it does not guarantee women will fill these roles in any specific number or at any set rate.” Still, the Corps’ plan hints that Ms. Donnelly’s prediction of outside pressure may come true. “Physical standards must be reviewed to ensure they are sufficient to mitigate high injury rates resulting in negative individual, operational, and career impacts,” the plan states. It adds: “Injuries that have career impacts may result in disproportionate medical separations and retirements.” Gen. Neller’s document warns commanders to be on the lookout for “indications of decreased combat readiness and/or effectiveness.” The warning signs: an increase in “light duty,” “limited duty” and “medical separation rates,” and lower readiness rates for sex-integrated units. The Corps did extensive experimentation in the field and found that mixed-sex combat units were less effective than all-male ones. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus openly dismissed the studies. “The integration of women may require a cultural shift in previously all-male career fields,” the Neller plan says. “We are prepared to meet this challenge. The military assimilates change by relying upon the enduring values of the profession of arms.” Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. |
An antiwar sermon at All Saints Church in Pasadena two days before the 2004 presidential election triggered an Internal Revenue Service investigation that threatened the church’s tax-exempt status. But that hasn’t stopped All Saints from taking on contentious issues, as it did on a recent Sunday when the Rev. Mike Kinman preached about sexual assault against women. He also spoke of another hot-button issue: the Republican tax plans. Tucked within the House version of the tax bill — which still must be reconciled with the separate Senate version — is a proposal that likely would have kept the feds away from All Saints 13 years ago. The House version significantly weakens the Johnson Amendment, a 1954 law that bars tax-exempt organizations from engaging in political activity. The provision would give churches and other nonprofits much more leeway to endorse candidates. Whether the provision remains in the tax bill could be known as early as Wednesday, when Republican leaders are expected to unveil a new version that would reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions. Even if the proposal is removed, other efforts to roll back the Johnson Amendment are underway in Congress. Despite his church’s history with the IRS, Kinman said the Johnson Amendment should remain. “It is absolutely not my role to tell someone, ‘You should vote for this person’ as a faith issue,” he said. “As soon as you identify with one candidate as the church, it is too tempting — frankly, the scriptural term for it is idolatry — to say, ‘We’re going to be partisan for this person.’ And then how do you speak truth to that person?” Nixing the Johnson Amendment is seen as a nod to President Trump ’s base. Evangelical Christian groups have argued the amendment is an unconstitutional violation of a pastor’s right to free speech. “We hear from hundreds of pastors across the country fearful of jeopardizing their churches’ IRS status,” said Christiana Holcomb, legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian advocacy group that has been at the forefront of trying to overturn it. But in California — among the nation’s most religiously diverse states — there is little desire from religious leaders to revoke the amendment. Many of the state’s congregations are traditionally conservative, and others are very liberal. Others, like the Catholic church, hew to conservative positions on issues like abortion but strongly support the rights of immigrants in the country illegally. It is absolutely not my role to tell someone, 'You should vote for this person' as a a faith issue. Rev. Mike Kinman, All Saints Pasadena Trump’s base is small in California, even among Christians, said Tommy Givens, an assistant professor of New Testament studies at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. “I expect that a repeal [of the Johnson Amendment] would be greeted broadly in California with widespread concern about the erosion of institutional separation between church and state,” Givens said. Polls show that Catholic voters in 2016 were split between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton , and Catholics “come down on both sides of most issues today,” said Father Thomas Rausch, professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University. “Bishops are very reluctant in telling Catholics how to vote,” he said. “At the same time, that doesn’t mean the church doesn’t have a political voice, because they certainly can preach about moral and social issues. They’ve been very outspoken on the new tax bill and the need for immigration reform.” "“It is absolutely not my role to tell someone, ‘You should vote for this person’ as a faith issue,” said the Rev. Mike Kinman of All Saints Church in Pasadena Christina House / Los Angeles Times The Rev. Mark Whitlock, executive director of the USC Cecil Murray Center for Community Engagement, believes the anti-politicking rule should be repealed because, in churches, “there’s always been the undercurrent of who we want in office.” Whitlock — who has served as pastor of Christ Our Redeemer African Methodist Episcopal Church in Irvine for two decades — said black churches have long supported candidates they believe will help the disenfranchised. During the 2008 election, Whitlock said, he stood before his 3,500-member congregation and said, “I support Barack Obama.” Most of the crowd cheered. A group of Clinton supporters walked out, furious. Whitlock got calls from Republican members of his congregation and from others worried the church would lose its 501(c)(3) status. “You would have thought I committed a cardinal sin,” Whitlock said. “I tend not to hold back and take the risk of finding myself in trouble. I am cognizant of the fact there’s a law and I have a responsibility as a pastor to be creative. But why not have the opportunity to speak freely?” Trump has vowed to “totally destroy” the Johnson Amendment since he was on the campaign trail. Changing the law would require an act of Congress. Doing so is deeply unpopular with the American public. A recent survey by the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland found that 79% of voters oppose scrapping the Johnson Amendment. The results, released last month, show 71% of Republicans, 88% of Democrats and 78% of independents were against doing so. “People are just so tired of the level of partisan polarization, and the idea that it would creep into yet one more area of their life doesn’t sound very appealing,” said Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation. Bishop Guy Erwin, far right, say a prayer in 2015 with the Los Angeles Council of religious leaders as they hold an interfaith prayer service to honor the memory of those who died during the Watts riots. Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times The anti-politicking rule has not been widely enforced. Since 2008, thousands of pastors have participated in Pulpit Freedom Sunday, a nationwide, coordinated preaching effort promoted by the Alliance Defending Freedom in which they challenge the ban by getting political in sermons and sending recordings to the IRS. Only one participating church has been investigated, Holcomb said. Givens, of Fuller Seminary, compared the push to get rid of the Johnson Amendment to the so-called war on Christmas. He said it’s a superficial move that plays well with conservative Christians who believe their faith is under attack. “There’s a very powerful narrative in conservative Christian parts of the country of losing power, of losing the society that they want, that they think God wants,” he said. “So I think the Johnson Amendment, like saying ‘merry Christmas,’ enables the Trump administration and the Republican party to deliver to that sense of nostalgia and sense of loss.” Even now, Givens said, plenty of politicking happens in churches. There are certain issues — like abortion on the right and LGBTQ rights on the left — that congregations take stands on that are linked with certain candidates, Givens said. “There are all sorts of dog whistles that are blown,” he said. Bishop Guy Erwin of the Southwest California Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said he fears a repeal of the amendment would result in politicians “chasing religious leaders for endorsements.” “The job of clergy is to teach the faith,” he said. “It is not to be power brokers who try to line up the vote for an individual candidate.” Erwin said the church is bound by Christian duty to stand against racism, anti-immigrant prejudice and mistreatment of the poor. There are all sorts of dog whistles that are blown. Tommy Givens, assistant professor at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena But even that can seem to have political overtones these days, he said. Just after the 2016 election, Erwin said, a Lutheran bishop in Texas said a congregant complained that a sermon on the Beatitudes — Blessed are the poor in spirit...Blessed are the meek — was being preached “to make Trump sound bad.” At All Saints Church, activism dates back to the 1940s, when the church’s rector stood in front of trains to protest the internment of Japanese Americans. The 2004 sermon that prompted the IRS investigation — which did not include an endorsement — included an imagined dialogue between Jesus, Sen. John F. Kerry and President George W. Bush. Jesus chided both for supporting the war in Iraq and speaking so little about the poor. In 2007, the IRS said it thought the church had tried to influence votes but that officials would not revoke its tax exemption. Outside the church on a recent Sunday were tables touting the church’s LGBTQ, Middle East and racial justice ministries. An “action table” each week details a cause and includes forms for writing to elected officials. Elizabeth Tatum, 52, chatted with church-goers at an action table focusing on the plight of Palestinian children. Tatum, who has attended the church since she was 2 and was present for the controversial 2004 sermon, loves its activist spirit. But she, too, favors the Johnson Amendment. “You have to have a respect for people with different views,” she said. “People shouldn’t just be sheep blindly following their pastor.” The Rev. Mark Whitlock, pastor of Christ Our Redeemer A.M.E. Church, prays at an Orange County Board Of Supervisors meeting in June. Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times hailey.branson@latimes.com Twitter: @haileybranson |
This article was taken from the January issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online In 1967, the BBC set about junking its Doctor Who archive: a moment sci-fi fans wish they could travel back in time to prevent. There are 108 vintage episodes missing, but since 1978 a number have been rediscovered as 16mm black-and-white films. The BBC shot many of these series in colour, but made monochrome copies for countries such as Australia, where many TV companies were still broadcasting in greyscale. The reels had sat in archives since. Now, the Doctor Who Restoration Team, an independent group contracted by the BBC, is using a new technique to regenerate The Doctor in colour. Their method is a refined version of that trialled on the 2009 Advertisement Planet of the Daleks rerelease; it is now being deployed on a seven-part 1970 Jon Pertwee adventure, The Ambassadors of Death. "It seemed almost impossible," says Steve Roberts, 45, the team's supervisor and a BBC senior engineer. "But when they made the black-and-white recordings, they didn't filter off the colour carrier [encoded as a 'chroma dot' pattern in each frame], which for the last few decades has been nothing more than an annoyance." Team member Richard Russell used the signal to reverse-engineer raw colour pictures that could be retouched frame by frame. "It's very, very labour intensive -- several hundred man hours' work every episode," says Roberts. Luckily, a new "quadrant editor" is helping them to produce better source material upfront, so they hope to deliver the Ambassadors episodes to the BBC within weeks. Roberts got into this work through Who fandom -- but has it ruined the show for him? "Yeah... We were always fans. We used to pull these stories out to watch just for enjoyment. Now I'm like, 'I'll watch something else.'" restoration-team.co.uk |
We received a request from the great Footy Maths Institute to have a look at the accuracy of the Phantom Draft that we tracked leading up to the 2014 AFL Draft. In looking at phantom draft accuracy we looked at a pool of 40 players – every player taken in the first two rounds, plus everyone predicted to go in the first two rounds in the consensus draft (Oscar McDonald, Clem Smith, Damien Cavka and Reece McKenzie). We excluded pre-selected players. That gives us a pool of 40 players against which to measure draft accuracy. We have measured accuracy in two manners: Number of exact selections; and Cumulative number of draft picks away from the final draft. Queen of the Draft Around the world of AFL draft writing and prediction, Emma Quayle, from Fairfax, is often called the “Queen of the Draft”. It is a reputation built over years, both in column inches and in the fantastic book on the process The Draft. It is also one that is borne out by the numbers. From our pool of 12 phantom draft who predicted at least the first round, Quayle’s predictions were the closest to the mark, and by a fair margin. Twenty of Quayle’s 21 selections were chosen in the first round, with her only miss being chosen at pick 22 (Daniel McKenzie). Quayle managed to get seven picks exactly right, and a further four chosen to the right club, but in an adjacent draft position (Melbourne’s picks 2 and 3, and GWS’ 6 and 7). On average, her selections were only “out” by average 2.5 draft picks, a phenomenal effort that requires both accurate contacts within the football world and an innate ability to judge talent. But not exactly spot on While Quayle’s seven correct predictions was impressive, it was not the highest number amongst our phantom drafters. Brett Anderson, from SEN, managed to pick eight draft selections correctly, including picks 1 through 6 and pick 8. Anderson’s other correct selection was the aforementioned Daniel McKenzie at pick 22. Brett Anderson also had the honour of being the only expert to pick the selection of the draft’s biggest bolter, that of Patrick McKenna (GWS, pick 23), although Anderson had McKenna going at pick 50. Anderson ended up having the most accurate ‘full’ phantom, ending up an average of 8.85 selections away across our entire sample. How did the Consensus Phantom Draft do? If you’ve been following HPN over the draft period you would know that we came up with a “new” type of phantom draft, the Consensus Phantom Draft, which utilised the knowledge of others and basic math. We neglected to mention when mentioning Anderson’s “exact pick” win that one other phantom draft actually tied with him: the HPN Consensus Phantom Draft v3. A method with no human input managed to beat some of the best adjudicators of talent, with decades of connections within the industry, by using their collective knowledge. Consensus picked the top five in correct order, as did most phantom drafters who updated on draft day (although some got the meaningless order of Melbourne’s two picks wrong). The Consensus Phantom Draft v3 was equal top with Brett Anderson, each getting 8 of 40 selections correct. In addition to the top 5 picks, Consensus also predicted Touk Miller (Gold Coast, pick 29), Brayden Maynard (Collingwood, pick 30) and Harrison Wigg (Adelaide, pick 35), correctly. For these later three correct picks, at least one expert made the exact prediction. Unsurprisingly, Consensus failed to divine a correct pick nobody else had made. Time is the enemy of accuracy At the bottom of our summary (above) you may see redditor /u/pizza_of_death near the bottom of the list, hanging around with the CPD versions 1 and 2. This is, in our opinion, nearly entirely a product of the time that each phantom draft was produced. Version 1 of the CPD was the second earliest phantom draft (behind pizza_of_death), and also the second least accurate. Version 2, produced 11 days later, was considerably more accurate, but still sit far off the pace set by Quayle and Anderson. The third CPD, released just two days later on draft day, was one of the most accurate drafts. Draft day surprises As mentioned above, the biggest bolter of the draft was Patrick McKenna, who was recently captaining the Australian U19 cricket team, and was rated as a speculative selection at best, in spite of his 9 goal haul in the Ballarat league against Kangaroo Flats. Other surprises in the first two rounds included Blaine Boekhorst, James Rose, Daniel Nielson, Lukas Webb and Toby McLean. Carlton reaching for Boekhorst nine picks before any of our experts had him being taken. Rose was picked by Sydney at 37, 21 picks earlier than any of our experts. Special mention to Josh Poulter, who got Rose’s destination correct but at the wrong pick (pick 58). Nielson was picked by North at 25, with only one expert (Knightmare, pick 33) having him selected within the first two rounds. The Western Bulldogs picked Webb and McLean with back to back picks, with only McLean being rated by one expert (/u/pizza_of_death) as being a top 30 selection. Draft day sliders The obverse to stories such as McKenna’s on draft day is those like Reece McKenzie, who after being speculated as being an early second round selection had to wait until pick 77 to hear his name called by Richmond. Other prospects who suffered falls on draft day include Oscar McDonald (CPD pick 25, picked by Melbourne at 53), Clem Smith (CPD pick 36, Carlton at 60), Damien Cavka (CPD pick 66, West Coast at 34), Alex Neal-Bullen (CPD pick 21, Melbourne at 40), Jayden Laverde (CPD pick 6, Essendon at 20) and Hugh Goddard (CPD pick 8, St Kilda at 21). Ultimately while these players were unlucky that they slide down the draft order, potentially losing money along the way, should be proud of their huge achievement of being selected in any circumstance. All seven of the players mentioned above still have a very good opportunity to contribute at AFL level. |
Imagine you’re a Vegas casino: hundreds of employees, thousands of guests, lots of money changing hands. Now imagine you’re a Vegas casino hosting a convention of hackers: thousands of really smart people, who really know how to use computers and really like making mischief. That is the position the Rio finds itself in every year when the DEF CON Hacking Conference comes to town. The conference, August 1-4 this year, features sessions like “Torturing Open Government Systems for Fun, Profit and Time Travel,” “Offensive Forensics: CSI for the Bad Guy,” “Def Con Comedy Jam Part VI, Return of the Fail” and talks about “building your own robots for world domination.” There aren’t any panels on hacking casinos, but it’s not hard to imagine some of the people wandering past local tables this weekend are more than capable of doing just that. So how did the Rio prepare for its special guests? The casino declined to comment on any specific security measures in place for DEF CON, but the Weekly did obtain an all-staff memo sent to employees on July 31 by AGM Dan Walsh. The email asked casino employees to welcome the DEF CON crowd and advised staff that they were expecting up to 20,000 attendees, including “computer security professionals, journalists, lawyers, federal government employees, security researchers and people with a general interest in computer code, computer architecture and hardware modification.” “Due to the nature of the convention,” the note advised employees to take some common-sense precautions, including wearing name badges in front and back of house, keeping swipe badges on them at work, locking out computers when leaving the office and locking office doors. It also warned staff to be “mindful of your personal cellular devices. Do not check any sensitive matter (bank accounts or anything with a private PIN number) on your personal cell phones using Wi-Fi or at your computers for the week of July 31-August 5.” That’s the big one, says a man who goes by Hodge Podge during the conference’s second day. He hails from Lancaster, California, and Hodge Podge is standing at the doorway to a conference room, holding a homemade cardboard sign that reads, “Free hi5s for undercover feds.” He says he’s gotten more than 60 high fives this morning, mostly from people who claim not to be feds. (The high fives are still free.) Tomorrow’s sign will target NSA agents. Hodge Podge echoes the Rio’s advice: “Don’t use the wireless. Definitely don’t log onto anything with a weird name.” I’m glad my phone is turned off in my purse. One year, he recalls, someone hacked into the registers at a casino restaurant, shutting them down. “They had to use calculators,” he says with a laugh. “Anything that can cause chaos, people will do it just because.” Hodge Podge says if he were doing casino security, he’d turn the wireless network off altogether for the week. Just to be sure. It’s 11 a.m. and the hall is crowded with people, shuffling slowly to their next seminar. A man walks by wearing a T-shirt that says, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas unless you pick up a virus.” I’m pretty sure he’s not talking about herpes. Another woman has a cowboy hat covered in tinfoil. Every now and then I hear the smack of someone giving Hodge Podge a high five. Mark Weiser sitting on a bench, looking at his smartphone as if surprised. “I just left a telephone message,” he says, chuckling. Emails are too risky, he won’t use his computer at the convention and he’s not staying at the Rio or at Caesars Palace, which hosted the complimentary Black Hat conference more targeted at cyber security professionals than those who try to best them. Weiser, an associate dean at Oklahoma State University who specializes in digital forensics and security, agrees the Rio’s message to staff was a good idea, but suggests that perhaps it didn’t go far enough. “My big concern is for other hotel guests,” he says, imagining random vacationers getting hacked or with their usernames and passwords posted on the conference’s ignominious Wall of Sheep. Weiser says a conference like DEF CON is an inherently risky proposition for a Vegas casino. He remembers the year all the video poker machines at another property were shut down after someone hacked them so the backgrounds showed pornographic images. Another time, he says, someone launched a balloon above a casino to sniff Wi-Fi signals over a large area. “It’s a cost benefit thing,” he says. Sure, the hackers could wreak major havoc, but “people here are spending a bunch of money and they’re gambling. It’s hard to say no.” And Weiser stresses that DEF CON is a very good thing. Hackers highlight vulnerabilities, point out human error and offer the opportunity to fix them. Weiser describes attendees as the type to break in but not steal anything. Of course, they might not tell the company they’ve broken into what’s up until their speaking session during the annual convention, but once they do, security pros will get to work fixing the problem and making their systems even tougher to hack. Maybe even casino systems like the Rio. |
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Metal Harbor and the Chao Garden added I’ve always been a huge fan of the Sonic games. Sonic the Hedgehog was the first game I ever played, and ever since then I’ve liked pretty much every one of them I’ve played (I maintain Sonic R and Sonic Heroes are fantastic games). That’s why I’m so excited to give Sonic Worlds a go. Sonic Worlds is a fan game heavily based on the Sonic Adventure games and Sonic Heroes. It seems like it makes some massive improvements to how those games played like controls and visual updates. Once complete, the game is planned to include 30+ playable characters, Heroes-style team mechanics (but with the ability to make your own teams), a Chao Garden, and a mix of brand new levels and those remastered from older games. There are already a lot of custom levels released for it, which is fantastic. The latest release includes new levels, and the Chao Garden. You can download it and give it a play from their website. Because the release trailer shows absolutely nothing, here’s the gameplay video for the remaster of Metal Harbor from Sonic Adventure 2 instead: Well, I know what I’m going to be playing today. You are logged out. Login | Sign up |
Jack Wallen takes a look into the wayback machine to view some of the highlights open source and Linux enjoyed throughout 2017. Video: 3 big things every company needs to know about containers Container solutions are the new normal for business. TechRepublic contributor Matt Asay explains how to get started in the cloud, and why big companies need containers. Ah, 2017, it was a good year for Linux—one that continued the solidification of the open source platform on so many levels. From the consumer mobile space to supercomputers, Linux dominated certain sectors in a way no other platform could. Let's take a look at some of the highlights from the year—both the highs and lows—and hopefully draw a conclusion that 2017 was a banner year for Linux. SEE: Linux distribution comparison chart (Tech Pro Research) The de-Unity of Ubuntu There's no way to start a review of 2017 without discussing Canonical dropping Unity as its desktop for Ubuntu and returning to GNOME. This was huge. Canonical spent far too long attempting to bring convergence to the market. While this was a very noble cause, the Ubuntu desktop became the collateral damage of the effort. Linux users had to suffer release after release, where next to nothing improved on the Ubuntu desktop front. This was a mistake of grand proportions and sent a lot of users scurrying to the likes of Linux Mint or Elementary OS (myself being of the latter crowd). Thankfully that chapter is closed; Canonical shuttered the doors of Unity 8/Mir and returned to what they did best—the desktop as we know it. In a move that surprised many, Canonical opted to return to the GNOME desktop and scrap Unity altogether. This was the smart move, as GNOME is one of the slickest, most stable desktops on the market. Don't get me wrong, Unity was an outstanding venture with some seriously advanced features that never really received the love they deserved, but returning to the desktop that helped make Ubuntu an almost-household name was exactly what the OS needed. Speaking of convergence ... Convergence is dead! Long live convergence! If you thought the idea would die at the hands of Canonical, you were wrong. Samsung has opted to resuscitate Linux and convergence, with the help of their Galaxy line of smartphones and DeX. If you're unfamiliar with DeX, it's a dock that enables users to plug in a supported Galaxy device and enjoy a desktop experience, powered by their smartphone. In the midst of 2017 passing, Samsung made the announcement they were developing an app called "Linux on Galaxy," which would allow users to boot their favorite distribution (or multiple distributions) of Linux on their Galaxy S8+/Note8 devices, and take advantage of DeX—so a full-blown Linux desktop, powered by a smartphone. See: Samsung DeX will finally give life to the Linux smartphone (TechRepublic) A Quantum leap for Firefox I never thought I'd see the day. While watching "Mr. Robot" one night, I spied with my little eye a commercial for an open source product. That's right. Mozilla ponied up for a prime time television commercial for their newest browser release. With good reason. Firefox Quantum is the best browser on the market. I never thought I'd be able to say that again. For the longest time, Firefox was my go-to browser. But then bloat happened and Firefox went the way of Netscape Navigator. I kicked the open source browser to the curb, in favor of the lighter, faster Chrome. Chrome worked incredibly well and quickly became the de facto standard browser for nearly everyone. And then along comes Quantum. The latest iteration from Mozilla is light years ahead of where it was. Firefox is now fast, light, and stable—more so than any of the competition. Firefox has finally proved that open source desktop software can easily best the proprietary competition. Hands down, Quantum is unmatched. The year of containers You couldn't throw a rock in IT without it smacking down on a container or 20. Although containers have been around for awhile, 2017 saw to it to make them the darling of the tech industry. And no one does containers like open source. Running Docker or Kubernetes on Linux is like smearing peanut butter on chocolate—it not only makes perfect sense, it's something you feel required to do. In fact, according to Portworx, in a survey about this very subject, over 32% of companies were found to be spending over $500,000 yearly on license and usage fees for container technology. So long Munich, and thanks for all the Linux It seems Munich couldn't hang with Linux. The on again, off again, on again, off again relationship between the German city and open source has finally come to an end. Munich will be migrating its government computers to Windows 10, after more than a decade of using Linux. The reason for the migration is compatible applications and hardware drivers—the standard-issue war cry for those against migrating to Linux. In other words, a lack of applications and hardware drivers. To those who regularly use Linux, this might come as a bit of a surprise, especially considering that the likes of Ubuntu and Linux Mint has some of the best hardware recognition on the planet. In the end, however, there are proprietary devices that still do not function with Linux. Have you ever tried to use a scanner with the open source platform? If so, 'nuf said. Microsoft continues the Linux love fest In 2016, Microsoft became a platinum member of the Linux Foundation. In 2017, the juggernaut continued that "trend" and joined the MariaDB foundation as a platinum member. Microsoft took that support one step further to announce they would offer MariaDB as a managed service on their Azure cloud platform. The love-fest was even more solidified when Microsoft announced the Windows Subsystem for Linux was coming to Windows Server. That's big news for anyone that prefers to work in the bash environment. Along the way, Microsoft also announced it's Azure App Service would be available on Linux. Let the love flow, Microsoft! See: Microsoft makes its Azure App Service available on Linux (TechRepublic) If anything, 2017 should go a long way to solidify Microsoft as a champion for Linux and open source. Linux is the supreme ruler of supercomputers This has been a long time coming. As of November 2017, every single one of the world's top 500 supercomputers runs Linux. The last two holdouts were IBM mainframes running AIX. Those two machines dropped off the list of top 500 machines to be replaced by machines running—you guessed it—Linux. See: Linux totally dominates supercomputers (ZDNet) Look out 2018! We've only really scratched the surface, but it's pretty clear Linux and open source had (in the immortal words of Larry David) a pretty, pretty, pretty good year. If I were to prognosticate (which I will soon) on what 2018 will look like for open source, I'd say given how good 2017 was it's going to have one of its best years yet. Open Source Weekly Newsletter You don't want to miss our tips, tutorials, and commentary on the Linux OS and open source applications. Delivered Tuesdays Sign up today Also see |
No. 26: NEW YORK JETS Last Season: 4-12 Fourth place, AFC East Losing your starting quarterback a week into camp might be the single worst way to start a season, but the Jets actually stand to come out ahead. Stepping in while Geno Smith recovers from a broken jaw is Ryan Fitzpatrick, who is better than his 25-41 record as a starter over the past five seasons would indicate. In fact, his QBR in 2014 (56.7) was higher than that of Alex Smith, Andy Dalton and Matthew Stafford. (Geno Smith's QBR ranked 26th, at 44.3.) Fitzpatrick's stat line over the past five seasons lines up almost exactly with those for Dalton, Jay Cutler and Carson Palmer. As with those three, Fitzpatrick has won when he's had a highly ranked defense on his side. The Jets might have that after adding Darrelle Revis, Buster Skrine and Antonio Cromartie to a unit that ranked 25th in EPA and allowed a 31-6 TD-to-INT ratio last season. -- Mike Sando The Jets' best hope -- their only hope -- is to dominate on defense, which has to be Seahawks-good to claim a postseason berth. They augmented their talented front by rebuilding the secondary, so they have the personnel to succeed in today's pass-happy NFL. With the additions of Darrelle Revis, Antonio Cromartie and Buster Skrine, head coach Todd Bowles has the tools to play his scheme -- man-to-man on the outside, with heavy blitzing. Losing Sheldon Richardson to a four-game suspension (possibly longer) hurts because he's their most active lineman. Rookie Leonard Williams is talented, but he doesn't have Richardson's fire. Same old story -- they're not good enough at quarterback. Their last starter with a top-10 QBR ranking was Chad Pennington in 2006. That won't change because current starter Ryan Fitzpatrick is a caretaker, and Geno Smith is an enigma. Fitzpatrick can get them to 8-8, but that doesn't mean much because this is a win-now team. Smith has a higher ceiling, but he faces physical and external obstacles -- a broken jaw and a fan base tired of his act. There's no guarantee he will reclaim the starting job when healthy. Yep, this is a quarterback controversy waiting to happen. Jets' percentage chance to win each game Sept. 13 vs. Cleveland: 61.9 Sept. 20 @ Indianapolis: 24.3 Sept. 27 vs. Philadelphia: 43.6 Oct. 4 vs. Miami (in London): 41.8 Oct. 18 vs. Washington: 66.9 Oct. 25 @ New England: 24.8 Nov. 1 @ Oakland: 54.5 Nov. 8 vs. Jacksonville: 65.3 Nov. 12 vs. Buffalo: 50.8 Nov. 22 @ Houston: 38.6 Nov. 29 vs. Miami: 48.9 Dec. 6 @ N.Y. Giants: 46.1 Dec. 13 vs. Tennessee: 68.8 Dec. 19 @ Dallas: 30.9 Dec. 27 vs. New England: 38.6 Jan. 3 @ Buffalo: 37.1 Rich Cimini's game-by-game predictions Going from Rex Ryan to Bowles is like replacing heavy metal with easy listening. The volume will be lower around One Jets Drive, but there will be more accountability than in the past. Bowles is a cross between his two mentors, Bruce Arians and Bill Parcells -- a players' coach with a harder edge than Ryan. Bowles won't tolerate mental mistakes, penalties or being late to meetings. He will have a quicker hook than Ryan when it comes to underperforming starters. He also will have the full support of the front office, which Ryan didn't have. Todd Bowles. Ed Mulholland/USA TODAY Sports Privately, the players are thinking the same thing the fans are saying: If the quarterback position produces efficient, if not stellar play, this can be a playoff team. They feel the other pieces are in place to make a run at the Patriots in the AFC East. The organization sees wide receiver Brandon Marshall as its first big-time offensive weapon since Santonio Holmes in 2010. To a man, everybody believes the defense will be a top-five unit. In the end, it'll be "Fitz-Geno" that determines the season. They will fall short of the playoffs by a couple of games, so the focus will be on how they can upgrade at quarterback. They'll be promoting current rookie Bryce Petty as the possible answer while exploring other options. Fitzpatrick will be a free agent and Smith probably will be pushed out of the picture, so the rumor mill will be churning with possibilities for 2016 -- Sam Bradford, Drew Brees, Robert Griffin III, etc. With a surplus of defensive-line talent, Richardson will be the subject of trade rumors. The future of Muhammad Wilkerson, a free agent, also will be a hot topic. |
It's as slick as any commercial Hollywood production. And it's about as much a "documentary" as a campaign speech by Joe Biden. President Barack Obama's re-election machine on Thursday released a two-minute trailer for what they have billed as a 17-minute documentary that makes the case that he deserves a second term. From the giant American flag fluttering over a cheering crowd in the opening scene to the dramatic recounting of the Navy SEAL raid that took out Osama bin Laden to Tom Hanks' narration, "The Road We've Traveled" is undeniably a state-of-the-art pitch for the president. (Let's take a moment to miss Don LaFontaine, whose trademark gravelly "In A World" could have been the cherry on top). It could be the first campaign video to feature two Academy Award winners: Hanks, and director Davis Guggenheim, who helmed Al Gore's Oscar-winning "An Inconvenient Truth." The trailer opens with a giant flag and cheers from a massive crowd turned out to hear Obama—who first appears with First Lady Michelle Obama and their daughters, walking away from the camera, toward a podium. Hanks's narration begins: "How do we understand this president and his time in office? Do we look at the day's headlines? Or do we remember what we, as a country, have been through?" Words onscreen promise "a film about determination and progress," "told by those who saw it happen" as Obama made "tough decisions" to confront "historic challenges." That turns out to mean loyal current and departed aides, like Biden, former senior economic policy adviser Austan Goolsbee, top re-election strategist David Axelrod, former White House chief of staff (and current Chicago Mayor) Rahm Emanuel, and former Wall Street overhaul champion (and current Democratic Senate candidate) Elizabeth Warren. Goolsbee describes the 2008 financial meltdown that still weighs on the U.S. economy today as "an economic crisis beyond anything anybody had imagined." (Message: Everyone underestimated the problem. That's why the solutions haven't yielded prosperity). Biden defends Obama's landmark health care overhaul—which Republicans will hammer through Election Day—as a once-in-a-generation chance to expand access to coverage. Warren makes the case for the auto industry bailout (while footage shows lights being turn out on factory floors). And it falls to Biden, again, to highlight the bin Laden raid, and lay the credit for the risky operation at Obama's feet. "He's all alone. This is his decision. Nobody is standing there with him," Biden recounts somberly, as the viewer sees the worried faces of the president's national security team gathered in the Situation Room nerve center of the White House, and night-vision-style shots of airborne helicopters. The Republican National Committee greeted the video with raised eyebrows. "In 2008, he did a 30-minute infomercial to talk about what he would do as president, and it seems somewhat ironic that four years later he has to stretch a 17-minute video to say what he's done," spokesman Sean Spicer said. "As well done as it is, even the best Hollywood studio effects can't cover up the failed policies of the last three years." While on the subject, Spicer took aim at Obama's hectic fundraising pace and Hollywood-style leisure activities, like playing golf. "Americans understand that politicians are going to raise money, and that their presidents need downtime and time with their family," he stressed. But "for a guy who's trying to talk about the 99 percent, to be blatantly living the lifestyle not just of the 1 percent but the .1 percent looks contrary to everything that he's talking about." |
The diesel emissions cheating charge against Fiat Chrysler concerns 104,000 Ram and Jeep Grand Cherokees from the 2014 to 2016 model years (AFP Photo/Marco BERTORELLO) Paris (AFP) - French investigating magistrates will open a probe into carmaker Fiat Chrysler for suspected cheating in diesel emissions tests, judicial sources said on Tuesday. The investigation follows a recommendation from the French anti-fraud office and will be run by public health magistrates, they said. France is already investigating global heavyweight Volkswagen and French champion Renault for allegedly fitting engines with devices designed to fool emissions test equipment, making cars seem less polluting than they actually were. US-Italian owned Fiat Chrysler is one of the world's top 10 carmakers. It is already being accused in the United States of emissions cheating. The US Environmental Protection Agency said the undisclosed software on the 2014 to 2016 models of Grand Cherokees and Dodge Ram 1500 trucks sold in the US allowed the vehicles to emit more nitrogen oxides than permitted. In January, Fiat Chrysler said it is confident of reaching its medium-term earnings targets after the group delivered "record results" last year. The company said its bottom-line net profit soared to 1.8 billion euros ($1.9 billion) in 2016 from 93 million euros a year earlier. |
Drawing by Anne Karetnikov Excerpted from Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?: A Neuroscientific View of the Zombie Brain by Timothy Verstynen and Bradley Voytek. Out now from Princeton University Press. In the movie Dawn of the Dead (1978) there is a scene when anarchist outlaws break into the mall that the movie’s heroes had secured and lived in for weeks. This invasion subsequently allows the horde of zombies—which had been aggregating outside—free range of the place. The humans are zipping around playing games while the zombies lumber along slowly and clumsily. The humans easily dispatch the threat of individual zombies because the undead are just too darn slow; there’s no real threat until the humans are outnumbered. The slow and uncoordinated movements of zombies are perhaps the most identifiable feature of their behavior (next to the whole biting and flesh-eating thing of course). Ask anyone to impersonate a zombie and the first thing she’ll do is hold her arms out, widen her stance, stiffen her legs, and utter a low, guttural moan. That’s because, in the movies, as soon as zombies rise from the dead, they begin walking. Well not walking ... more like lumbering. Each step is slow and arduous. Their stance is wide and stiff. This presents us with a very important clue about what’s happened to their brains. Advertisement So what does it take to turn the normally smooth, fast, coordinated movements of a healthy person into the traditional zombie lumber? First, let’s consider the pathways in the brain that give rise to our movements. A Slate Plus Special Feature: The Slate Walking Dead Podcast A spoiler-filled discussion of Episode 5, "Self Help." While “higher” cognitive functions (aka thinking) tend to get all the glory in neuroscience, before the brain did a lot of deep thinking it did a lot of moving. In fact, some scientists have argued that the entire reason we have a brain is to get us moving around in the environment. The logic for this argument arises from observations of a little ocean creature called the sea squirt. Seriously, that’s its name. The sea squirt is a small and evolutionarily old animal of the phylum Chordata (when scientists say “evolutionarily old,” we mean that the life form has been in a relatively unchanged state for millions and millions of years). In its young life, the sea squirt is a little larval creature that has a very primitive brain and sensory organs. Its goal during its larval stage of development is to swim around and find a rock to perch on. Once it has found a suitable home, like, say, a nice secure rock with plenty of organic food just flowing by, the sea squirt will attach itself with its head facing out. Then it basically just sits there catching food as it floats by. As it matures into a full-grown adult creature the sea squirt does something quite strange: It digests its own brain. Yeah, you read that right. Let that sink in. It digests its own brain. Advertisement Biologists and neuroscientists have argued that this is evolutionarily advantageous. See, the brain is really expensive, from a metabolic standpoint. Meaning that it takes a lot of energy to keep the brain going, and energy (food) is pretty hard to come by when you’re little more than a stick on a rock with a mouth attached. So when you no longer need a metabolically expensive organ like the brain, it is better to just get rid of it. Thus, no longer needing to navigate around its environment, the sea squirt simply has lost the need for its brain and does away with it. But waste not, want not, in nature. So “doing away with it” means “eating it.” And thus the sea squirt digests its own brain. The walking dead lack smooth, coordinated actions. Yet they also don’t shuffle or have curvature in their posture. Now luckily for us, we humans are more than mouth-sticks attached to rocks. We need to keep moving. We can’t just sit around and digest away our own brain, because food doesn’t just come to us. No, we still have to go out and get our food, even if it is just by driving to the local fast-food chain down the block. This means we get to keep our brains because, for the brain, movement is life. Unfortunately, the same is true for zombies. Because humans rarely run to zombies, the walking dead have to go to their food source. Which means the zombies also still need their brains. Well, at least part of their brains. If we presume that the primary function of the brain is to get us moving around in the world, then it’s not surprising that a lot of neural real estate is devoted to the planning and execution of actions. In fact, the computations required to simply move around our environment are distributed across vast swaths of both cortical and subcortical areas. So let’s take a walk through the multitude of brain systems that move us around, shall we? Advertisement Most of our voluntary movements start in the neocortex, in two of the four major lobes: the frontal and parietal lobes. Neurons in the parietal lobe that primarily maintain spatial awareness, and those in the frontal lobe that control decision making, are constantly negotiating with one another as to what action we should do next. We might imagine the dialogue going something like this: PARIETAL LOBE: “Hey, there’s a tasty piece of broccoli 30 degrees to the left.” FRONTAL LOBE: “Broccoli??? No way! I want something more awesome!” PARIETAL LOBE: [sigh] “OK, how about that doughnut 10 degrees to the right?” FRONTAL LOBE: “Now you’re talking. Hey! Right arm! Attention, right arm! Prepare the triceps, deltoids, and hand muscles for action. We’re going to make a reach.” MOTOR CORTEX: “Jawohl, Lord Frontal Cortex!” In our silly little sketch here, the parietal lobe tells us where to attend to things that are in the environment while the frontal cortex in the front of the head decides what to do. Then the motor areas, in the back part of the frontal cortex, make the movement happen. Contrary to what you may have heard, there’s not just a single motor cortex. In fact, there are several “motor” areas that are spread out across the frontal lobe and provide the groundwork for planning your movements. You can think of these as the middle management of motor planning. They take the decisions handed down from frontal areas and turn them into plans that the heavy lifters in the arms, legs, and other muscles know what to do with. Which isn’t as easy as it sounds. Advertisement Let’s consider the following scenario: You’re a zombie sitting very patiently on the examination table, hand resting on your desiccated, disgusting lap. The nerdy scientists in their awkward lab coats then place a tasty chunk of human flesh right in front of you. What remains of your undead frontal lobes will immediately say “GO GET THAT!” because, hey, free thigh. Before you can actually grab that tasty piece of meat, however, the motor planning areas in your undead brain, called premotor regions, have to figure out how to get your hand from your lap to the yummy flesh. Now remember, while you can see the tasty morsel, the process of getting your hand off of your lap and to the chunk of meat is pretty complicated. Somehow your brain has to convert a map of the world that’s being projected from the back of your eyeballs to a plan of muscle contractions that uses your bones as levers, much as a puppet master has to coordinate the strings of a marionette doll to make it dance—except here the puppet master is your own brain. Let’s return our attention to that horde of walking dead outside. While zombie movements are slow, stiff, and uncoordinated, zombies do seem to be able to plan movements in the right direction. That is, when a zombie wants to lunge toward you, it mostly gets the direction right. Once it gets its hands on you, it has no problem grasping and holding on. Therefore it would appear that the cortical motor systems are all intact. So what could be wrong? The only real neural culprits left as plausible candidates for the motor dysfunction seen in zombies are the basal ganglia and the cerebellum. Given this restriction, let’s consider what happens when the basal ganglia are malfunctioning and compare that with when something goes wrong with the cerebellum. In both cases, people have trouble walking and coordinating their movements, but in dramatically different ways. For example, in Parkinson’s disease, people develop a slouched posture and walk by taking short, shuffling steps. They also have difficulty generating actions without a very obvious goal (they tend to freeze up). In contrast, people with spinocerebellar ataxia develop a stiff, wide-legged stance and take big, lumbering steps. And unlike those afflicted with Parkinson’s disease, these patients have no problem initiating movements. Advertisement How can we use this information to diagnose a zombie’s brain? We know that the walking dead are shown in movies as having a stiff, wide-legged stance and a big, lumbering walk. They tend to move slowly (most of the time) and lack smooth, coordinated actions. Yet they don’t seem to have trouble initiating movements. In fact, zombies are almost constantly on the move, they never have problems starting a movement (say reaching for a new victim), and they don’t stall in the middle of movements. They also don’t shuffle or have curvature in their posture. For these reasons we argue that the cluster of symptoms seen in zombies, the wide stance, lumbering walk, lack of freezing, ease in general planning and execution of actions, reflects a pattern of cerebellar degeneration. That is, cerebellar dysfunction would lead to many of the motor symptoms of the zombie infection. However, cortical motor areas and basal ganglia pathways should be relatively intact. At about this point, the really astute zombie movie fan will ask, “What about fast zombies?” For those who haven’t seen movies like World War Z, 28 Days Later, or the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, “fast zombies” don’t appear to have any motor dysfunctions. They can move quickly and don’t appear to have any coordination problems. Given the terrifyingly coordinated movements that “fast zombies” exhibit, it is our belief that their cerebellums are likely intact. Any difficulty fast zombies may have moving are likely more to do with the fact that their arms and legs are rotting than any sort of neural damage. In fact, this difference in presentation may allow us to develop neurological classifications of different subtypes of the disorder that may give important clues to the etiology of the zombie epidemic. Advertisement Subtype I (slow-moving subtype): First observed variant of the disease. Subtype II (fast-moving subtype): Distinguished from Subtype I variant by healthy motor coordination. Hey folks ... sometimes diseases mutate. Why wouldn’t zombism? Truth be told, when we had the opportunity to ask George Romero why he made his ghouls walk the way they did in the Living Dead movies, he responded, “They’re supposed to be dead. They’re stiff. That’s how you’d walk if you were dead.” Not quite the answer that appeals to our neuroscience instincts, but a good alternative hypotheses to test in the next zombie apocalypse. |
Texas AG: Democrats more dangerous than North Korea "The Obama administration and his political machine" is "more dangerous" than North Korea, Greg Abbott said Greg Abbott, the Republican Attorney General of Texas, thinks that his state has bigger things to worry about than North Korea. Namely, President Obama. Abbott was referring to reports that North Korea had included Austin, Texas on its list of potential targets in the United States. But, Abbott told the Waco Tribune-Herald, the state has more “far more dangerous” problems, in the form of the federal government. Advertisement: “One thing that requires ongoing vigilance is the reality that the state of Texas is coming under a new assault, an assault far more dangerous than what the leader of North Korea threatened when he said he was going to add Austin, Texas, as one of the recipients of his nuclear weapons,” Abbott said. “The threat that we’re getting is the threat from the Obama administration and his political machine.” |
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In a new move, Daesh has permitted patients in Al-Bukamal and Al-Shaitat, Deir Ezzor’s eastern countryside, to travel outside its controlled territory based on several strict conditions. Civilians who want to travel to Damascus for medical treatment must first provide a medical certificate they obtain from doctors operating at the hospitals run by Daesh in the region. The certificate must states that the patient is in urgent need to be treated by other medical devices for his illness, which are unavailable at the hospitals operated by the group. The second emphasises that the patients will be given an approval to travel on condition that they sign a document stating that they would give up their houses if they exceed the allowed determined period (45 days). Their homes will be confiscated by Daesh, if they violate any of the above mentioned conditions. These are extremely strict conditions imposed on people who are in an urgent need to travel outside Deir Ezzor for medical treatment. However, the newly issued decision came after Daesh imposed a ban on all kind of travels outside its territory, Daesh checkpoints in Raqqa, Al-Bab and Maskana have arrested all civilians coming from Deir Ezzor to the cities and forced them to return. The city of Al-Bukamal and Al-Shaitat area are of significant concern for the organization, as a result of the failed offensive launched by the New Syrian Army to liberate Al-Bukamal from Daesh, and the perpetual feeling of discontent between civilians in Al-Shaitat area due to the horrible massacres that were carried out against them two years ago by the group. |
Dr. Wendy Klein, front center, and Dr. Sterling Ransone, right, from Deltaville, Va., wait to testify during a meeting of the Senate Health Education and Welfare committee at the Capitol Thursday, Jan. 17, 2013 in Richmond, Va. (Steve Helber/AP) Senate Republicans on Thursday thwarted an effort by Democrats to repeal a law to require women to undergo an ultrasound before getting an abortion. Republicans also rejected legislation that would have rolled back new regulations requiring abortion clinics to meet hospital-style building standards. But one Republican crossed party lines to kill a bill intended to prohibit Medicaid funding for certain abortions. That measure would have prevented the use of tax dollars to pay for abortions for low-income women carrying fetuses with severe mental or physical disabilities. The Senate Committee on Education and Health voted strictly along party lines to reject two bills aimed at abolishing the ultrasound law passed last year. It was the most contentious legislation of the 2012 General Assembly session. As originally proposed last year, the bill would have required most women to undergo a vaginal ultrasound before an abortion. The legislation had not specifically mandated the type of ultrasound; it required that an ultrasound be performed and that the patient be offered a view of the image. But vaginal ultrasounds are typically used in the early stages of pregnancy, when most abortions are performed, because the fetus is so small that the external ultrasound does not yield a good image. After an uproar over the invasive nature of the vaginal ultrasound, the 2012 bill was amended to specify that the ultrasound be external. The change was meant to soften the legislation, but critics complained that as amended, it mandates a test that serves no medical purpose. Doctors routinely call for vaginal ultrasounds before performing abortions, people on both sides of the issue say. Now they must also order an external ultrasound to comply with the law. Sens. Ralph S. Northam (D-Norfolk) and Barbara A. Favola (D-Arlington) proposed two bills meant to change that situation. One would have would have removed the requirement that a woman undergo a “transabdominal ultrasound” before an abortion. The other would have prohibited the commonwealth from mandating ultrasounds for “nonmedical reasons.” Both failed in 8 to 7 votes after supporters of the 2012 law, including the Family Foundation of Virginia and representatives of Catholic and Baptist groups, said that the ultrasound helps women make an informed decision about whether to continue their pregnancies. The committee also shot down two bills, proposed by Sen. Mark Herring (D-Loudoun), aimed at lifting strict building standards on abortion clinics. The rules, approved by the General Assembly two years ago but still being implemented, will require clinics to meet the same building standards as outpatient surgical centers. They call for costly physical renovations, such as widening hallways and doorways, that some clinic officials said could put them out of business. Antiabortion activists said the regulations will make clinics safer for women. The committee sided with abortion rights groups on one bill, which would have prohibited Medicaid funds from being used to pay for abortions for women carrying fetuses with severe disabilities. The state paid for abortions in seven of those cases last year, according to Northam, a pediatric neurologist. Sen. Thomas A. Garrett, Jr. (R-Louisa), said his bill would not prohibit anyone from terminating such a pregnancy, but simply prevent taxpayer money from being used to do so. Parents who had adopted children with severe disabilities testified in favor of the bill, including one who helped his daughter, born without arms or legs, up to the podium in a wheelchair. “Doctors can be wrong. Children can beat odds,” said Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation of Virginia. Sen. Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax) said the funds should be available in severe cases, such as when the central part of the brain is missing and the fetus has no chance of surviving outside the womb. “You’re telling me because they don’t have money, too bad, carry it to full term?” he said. Sen. Harry B. Blevins (R-Chesapeake) sided with Democrats on that bill, which was defeated 8 to 7. |
The Sports Fans Coalition has already spent $60,000 through September on lobbying. | REUTERS NFL fans toss red flag at blackouts Congress and the Federal Communications Commission are about to get an earful from the Sports Fans Coalition, which plans to turn its federal lobbying operation against television blackouts of sporting events, particularly National Football League games. The campaign begins Friday when the group, along with the National Consumers League, Public Knowledge, Media Access Project, and the League of Fans, will file a petition with the FCC to end its rule that allows sports leagues to effectively block any broadcaster from locally televising games that do not sell out. Story Continued Below “It’s a totally outdated and unnecessary government regulation, and if leagues want their stadiums filled, then they shouldn’t charge so much for tickets,” Brian Frederick, the Sports Fans Coalition’s executive director, tells POLITICO. “The public supports the construction of stadiums with tax money. As long as you are asking the public to support your business, you should return the favor to the public.” Frederick said his group, which has already spent $60,000 this year through September on federal lobbying efforts, will “definitely be ramping up our efforts” in terms of lobbying federal lawmakers to get behind its push. It also “definitely expects the NFL will fight very hard to keep blackouts, which we’re prepared for,” he said. NFL spokesman Dan Masonson confirmed as much. “The NFL blackout policy strikes a balance between encouraging fans to attend games and allowing the games to continue to be broadcast on free television,” Masonson said. “The NFL is the only sports league that broadcasts all of its regular-season and playoff games on free television. At least three games are shown in every NFL market each Sunday during the season.” The NFL, for its part, has spent $1.23 million this year through September on lobbying, federal records indicate. This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 1:29 p.m. on November 11, 2011. This article tagged under: Lobbying FCC NFL Football Sports |
(Photo – CTV.ca) The weekly Canadian TV ratings are out for shows airing July 13-19/15, and leading the charge to the top is of course The Amazing Race Canada Episode 2 on CTV. In that episode, taking place in Santiago, Chile, Hamilton and Michaelia used their Express Pass to skip right to Jon, the Pit Stop and first place (see above pic), while Susan and Sarnjit were last and were eliminated. (Picture – EW.com) Second for the week was MasterChef Season 6 Episode 10. Sadly titled “Rice Rice Baby”, a dish with the main component of….wait for it….rice….needed to be created in 60 minutes. Tommy won the challenge (his rice dish also will get a mention in an upcoming issue of Family Circle), chooses the remaining home cooks’ elimination challenge – creating a restaurant-quality dish with peanut butter and jelly! – and saves Claudia. Or tries to, as she turns down the offer of a free pass! In the end, Hetal won the challenge, Katrina was a close second, and they’ll be co-captains in the next challenge. Shelly and Sara were in the Bottom 2, and it was Sara who draped her apron over her workstation and left the competition! Coming in third was America’s Got Talent Season 10 Episode 8 on CityTV. This marked Week 1 of the dreaded “Judge Cuts”, where in each episode 20 acts get pared down to only 7, with those going on to Radio City Music Hall in New York. A guest judge, and for this week it was Neil Patrick Harris, can use the Golden Buzzer to send an act straight to NY, no fuss, no muss. This week’s winner of the use of the Golden buzzer was Piff the Magic Dragon! The six other acts going to the live shows are Freelusion Dance, Silvia Silvia, Chapkis Dance, Myq Kaplan, 3 Shades of Blue and Samantha Johnson. Below is Piff and his ‘assistant’. Mr. Piffles: The fourth most-watched TV show in Canada a couple weeks ago (hey, ratings are slow to get out! They’re transported by beaver!) was Rookie Blue Season 6 Episode 9 on Global TV. I’m here to say, I have never watched an episode of this show, I have no idea if even the graphic I posted here represents anything current on the show. And it’s Canadian-made. I can tell you, thanks to the good folk who update the Rookie Blue Wikipedia page, that the episode that played that week was called “Ninety Degrees” and had to do with a heatwave that hits town. Making the Top 5 shows of the week? CTV News at 6! Only in Canada would the supper-hour news make the top shows of the week! This stresses the importance Canadians put on getting local news delivered to them. So MAKE CTV KITCHENER NEWS HD ALREADY!!!!! Sheesh!!! 2015, people! It’s gotten to the point when I flip around and find a non-HD picture I’m able to ascertain that I’m either watching CTV News Kitchener or a Marineland commercial is playing. So, listing the Top 5 once more with feeling: 1. Amazing Race Canada (CTV) – 2,402,000 viewers 2. Masterchef (CTV) – 1,968,000 viewers 3. America’s Got Talent (City) – 1,685,000 viewers 4. Rookie Blue (Global) – 1,466,000 viewers 5. CTV Evening News at 6 pm – 1,463,000 viewers Next Wednesday, Canadian ratings and recaps for July 20-26/15! Advertisements |
Ever since the events of Avengers vs X-Men, Cyclops and his Uncanny X-Men have been fugitives on the run. They have broken apart from the other X-Men and have made it their mission to help shield the ever growing mutant population from the world that fears them, by any means necessary. Lately, they have made an appearance at a pro-mutant rally held by humans only to be interrupted by a new and very dangerous type on Sentinel. The Uncanny X-men rally to take on this new Sentinel while defending the human lives at all cost. They are having a difficult time making any headway as their efforts seem to not be fazing the Sentinel. Not even Cyclops, whose powers haven’t been consistent, seems to have any effect. Just when they think all is lost, Magneto shows up to help his team face this menacing machine of doom. In the end, there is still one mystery as we head into Battle of the Atom, who is sending these Sentinels and why? I’ve really been into this X-Men series as Brian Michael Bendis has penned a solid story that is a combination of X-Men meets the Brotherhood of Mutants. They really do mean well, but will, by any means necessary, defend themselves from any and every threat. The art team of Frazer Irving and Kris Anka has produced a visually appealing backdrop to this unique team of X-Men. The Uncanny X-Men will appear next in X-Men: Battle of the Atom #1 and their next issue, #12, will be the fourth chapter in the crossover. Get on out and over to your local comic shop to check out this and other great titles from Marvel! Source(Photo): Marvel Comics |
Ten years ago, Justin Kan and Emmett Shear had just sold their app company, Kiko, and were itching for another venture. They had a concept — livestream video — but no idea how to build it. So they sent an email to the MIT engineering listserv, requesting a “hardware hacker” for an unspecified project. Kyle Vogt, a young student fascinated with robotics, replied. They met over coffee where Kan and Shear pitched their idea before flying out to San Francisco. When the pair landed, they had an email from Vogt with a dense PDF attached — he had drawn out the full hardware specifications for their theoretical live-streaming camera. “This guy is on the ball,” Kan recalled thinking. “We need to bring him on.” They did. Vogt would lead product for their startup, Justin.tv, then go on to start its descendant, Twitch, with Shear. Then he started another company, Cruise Automation. In under three years, Vogt achieved what few tech founders even dare to dream: Twitch, a video-streaming service for gamers, sold to Amazon for just under $1 billion; on Friday, Cruise, an autonomous driving startup, sold to General Motors for even more. Vogt is the Silicon Valley’s latest entrepreneur with the Midas touch, a favored founder with its monied class as tech begins to collide with colossal established industries, like cars. “At Cruise, he was the only one for three months to build it from nothing to a prototype, both the hardware and software. That is a rare level of talent,” said Sam Altman, head of the Y Combinator startup incubator. “I can see Kyle being the next CEO of GM.” Timing helped Vogt, too. The engineer, who is 30, worked on two technologies — livestreaming video and self-driving cars — just as they landed on the radar of big, deep-pocketed companies. But people who know Vogt attribute his success to a rare mixture of technical know-how and business acumen, along with an obsession with difficult feats. “Not only is he not afraid of hard technical problems, but he seeks them out,” said Michael Seibel, a former colleague and partner at the Y Combinator incubator. He is certainly not the only techie working on the hard problem of building cars that drive themselves. What sets Vogt apart is a fastidious attention to the logistics of how people — and companies — will interact with these cars, said Nabeel Hyatt, an investor with Spark Capital, which led Cruise’s first financing round. “That takes a polyglot,” he said. “If an engineer is slowing down, he’s not afraid to write a line of code. But at the high level he is thinking about marketing, brand, consumer experience.” Former colleagues and investors spoke of Vogt’s longstanding obsession with robotics. He was part of the early self-driving car experiments at MIT, interned at Roomba-maker iRobot and competed in two seasons of BattleBots. (At Justin.tv, Vogt hatched a plan for a beer-delivery robot, but it never materialized.) “He’s always been a robot guru,” said Kan. In the fall of 2013, Vogt left Twitch to start up his own company. (Amazon bought Twitch a year later.) He linked up with Kan’s brother, Daniel, who had met Vogt at Justin.tv. And they brought their idea — a system for retrofitting cars with self-driving tech — to Y Combinator, an incubator known for software companies like Airbnb and Dropbox, not hardware. Y Combinator hadn’t done cars; Cruise was their first incubation in the industry. But the partners knew Vogt. And they saw his pitch as akin to what Justin.tv and Twitch did, building a video-streaming system from scratch. “It seemed like the exact same thing: Let us take on a problem that no one has solved,” said Seibel. Within a year, the Cruise team had a rigged-up prototype. They took the incubator’s chiefs down the 101 freeway in Northern California. “It was pretty ghetto,” said Justin Kan, now a Y Combinator partner. But it drove. “I went in it and offered to invest on the spot,” said Altman. Vogt also displayed an aptitude for poaching talent; in September, Cruise hired Andrew Gray, a lead engineer on Tesla’s autopilot software, as its VP, a move that made a splash in automotive robotics circles. The startup was buzzy in that insular world before then, though its business model was never clear to outsiders. Nor was it entirely clear to investors. (One sign of Vogt’s reverence in Silicon Valley: Cruise’s investor list reads like a Who’s Who of tech; however, several of them were in the dark about Cruise’s plans, including the GM acquisition.) The company started building after-market kits that retrofitted cars with autopilot features, partnering with Audi. At some point last year, Vogt shifted plans to focus on building a full self-driving platform. That strategy pits the startup against Google, which is, according to multiple industry sources, pitching a similar system to carmakers. As a part of GM, Vogt will now have many more vehicles at his disposal — and will face far more intense strain testing his hardware hacking against the largest tech companies in the world. It’s tough to imagine Vogt, who has spent his career buzzing from one startup to the next, will linger at the 98-year-old Detroit carmaker. Yet those close to him insisted that he is dedicated to staying at the company. GM probably structured the deal that way, if the company is smart. “Google may still be a formidable competitor,” said Altman. “But there is a reason startups only doing one thing can often win, again and again.” Vogt declined to comment for the story. On Friday morning, he simply sent out a perfunctory tweet. https://twitter.com/kvogt/status/708345171927113728 Additional reporting by Kara Swisher. |
Apple announced a brand new functionality called Apple Pay – designed to be built into its new iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and Apple Watch devices to pay for items via NFC, and pay online via new online payment options. Apple’s motivation, as explained by Tim Cook, was to completely change the outdated technology, problems, and pointlessly painful experience of using credit cards. And we couldn’t agree more. The credit card should be dead. Why? Well, your credit card numbers are exposed to everyone who peeks whenever you use it. This forces credit cards to be something you need to hide in your wallet. The magnetic strip is brilliant, until it stops working which it will with any sort of moderate use, and is five decades old. Signatures are for old people, and PINs are for young people. Australia’s big banks have forcibly removed signatures from being able to be paid for over the counter, but in the US it’s almost exclusive. PINs are almost never used. Apple’s approach is to fix this via one tap of your finger, via TouchID verification. Simply place your iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, or your iWatch (from 2015) up to an Apple Pay terminal and bingo, touch your finger to authorise, and bang, you’ve paid. Wait – isn’t this just PayWave/PayPass on a phone? Apple conveniently ignored the fact that VISA, Mastercard and the rest are already trying to do that, via VISA’s PayWave, and Mastercard’s PayPass. We’ll refer to it as PayWave for simplicity from here. Popular in Australia and the UK, but not in the United States (where payment systems are outmoded) PayWave is convenient and terrifying. It’s brilliant to simply touch your card and pay for anything, up to $100. Beyond that, you’ll need to enter your PIN, and sometimes enter your card and your PIN. It’s more than a worry to consider that if someone gets hold of your card(s) (and let’s face it, who hasn’t lost their wallet at least once), they can slowly purchase as much as they want to your credit limit, just by touching the card to a Coles EFTPOS machine. It doesn’t feel much like stealing. In the UK, London’s Underground (the mighty tube) is ticketless, with the Oyster card being potentially phased out by PayWave. Transport for London, which runs the tube, is implementing PayWave as a straight payment system for tickets on September 13, 2014. Just touch your credit card as your ticket, rather than needing to load up a separate card which costs five pounds just to own in the first place and is a pain for tourists. Apple’s videos seemed to hint that the NFC chip will work with existing PayWave stations. It’s entirely possible – credit cards are just NFC, and the hardware is standardised. ViVOPay and Ingenico generally have a stranglehold on terminals, and they work as standard across the globe. The terminals may not even need a software update Apple’s iPhone 6 or Apple Watch NFC data – the terminal passes card data, which is as per the various standards. Here’s how Apple explain the security involved with Apple Pay: When you add a credit or debit card with Apple Pay, the actual card numbers are not stored on the device nor on Apple servers. Instead, a unique Device Account Number is assigned, encrypted and securely stored in the Secure Element on your iPhone or Apple Watch. Each transaction is authorised with a one-time unique number using your Device Account Number and instead of using the security code from the back of your card, Apple Pay creates a dynamic security code to securely validate each transaction. The benefit implicit in Apple Pay is the TouchID system – providing added security. Essentially, once you have loaded your credit card into Apple’s iTunes (which 500 million people have already), you’re also adding fingerprint security to using your credit card. So, if you lose your shiny new iPhone 6, unless someone can spoof TouchID (which has already happened but is reasonably unlikely to be cracked by your average thief) with your fingerprint. This will no doubt force a reaction in the US. For whatever reason, VISA and Mastercard haven’t rolled out chip and PIN technology in any sort of major way. That makes this a bigger deal than the sort of ho-hum reaction we’re having in Australia. Apple’s press release hasn’t explained anything about Australia thus far – only listing an impressive roster of US banks: American Express, Bank of America, Capital One Bank, Chase, Citi and Wells Fargo at availability, with additional banks coming quickly thereafter including Barclaycard, Navy Federal Credit Union, PNC Bank, USAA and U.S. Bank. Disney and Whole Foods will accept it, in addition to major U.S. retailers including Macy’s, Bloomingdales, and McDonalds, plus a number of apps, including Uber. Judging from that list, it’s possible Apple won’t even bring it to Australia. The iPhone 6 user base is likely to be small initially, and the prevalence of NFC credit cards might mean Apple won’t tackle it in Australia for some time. The other contrary school of thought is that transaction volume may actually attract Apple – where better to bring the technology to people who use it already, but want more convenience? Update: Apple have said it is “working hard to bring Apple pay to more countries”. Update 2: To clarify, Mastercard nor VISA are actively opposed to Apple Pay. Indeed, Mastercard is a partner of Apple Pay: Who's excited for easy & secure mobile payments with #ApplePay? We are! :-) #AppleLive — MasterCard (@MasterCard) September 9, 2014 Apple isn’t trying to intrude on VISA/Mastercards space of actually handling transactions, nor offer credit. That probably means more entrenching of the big credit card companies, rather than competition – and so we may be more likely to see Apple Pay in Australia. |
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: We just interviewed former Florida Senator, Bob Graham, is calling on President Obama to reopen the investigation into the September 11th attacks after new information emerged about the possible role of prominent Saudis in the 9/11 attacks. According to recent news reports, a wealthy young Saudi couple fled their home in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida, just a week or so before 9/11, leaving behind three cars, nearly all there possessions; the FBI tipped off about the couple but never passed on the information to the September 11th Commission, even though phone records show the couple had ties to Mohammed Atta and at least 10 other Al Qaeda suspects. So, this is what Senator Graham had to say on Democracy Now! about why this case matters, and then I want to get your response. BOB GRAHAM: One of the questions around 9/11 is whether these 19 hijackers were operating alone or whether they had a support network that assisted them and gave them anonymity. It’s been my feeling that it was very unlikely that they could have been successful without such a network. We know a great deal about the network component that existed in San Diego. What we just learned is about another pod of this network in Sarasota. What we know, to date, is that there was a wealthy Saudi family living in a gated community near Sarasota, which had numerous contacts with Atta, the Leader of the hijackers, and two others who were doing their pilot training near Sarasota. We also know that this family left the United States under what appeared to be very urgent circumstances on August 30, 2001, just before 9/11. AMY GOODMAN: That was the Florida Senator Bob Graham on DEMOCRACY NOW!. Michael Moore, you did the film, Fahrenheit 9/11. You were dealing with this. You were talking about President Bush allowing the plane of the Bin Ladens to go out of the country when all other traffic was stopped. MICHAEL MOORE: Not just the Bin Ladens, but many Saudi individuals. And I also documented how the night after—-it was the second night after 9/11, Bush had the Saudi ambassador over for dinner, and then they go out for drinks, or at least the Saudi ambassador did, and they went out on the veranda there overlooking the south— AMY GOODMAN: The Truman Balcony. MICHAEL MOORE: The Truman Balcony, that’s what it’s called. AMY GOODMAN: As you told us on the phone. MICHAEL MOORE: Right. And of course, what was I accused of at the time? Well, you know, conspiracy theorist and all this. Well, it was just the facts, and it was a legitimate question to ask, if 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, why, when no one else could fly, could all of these people connected to the Saudi royal family fly, and the Bin Laden family could fly? And things like, the FBI wanted to go immediately to Saudi Arabia an interview friends and family of the Saudi hijackers, because they’re police, they’re doing an investigation of this mass murder. And the Saudi government said no, the FBI can’t come over here and talk—-and the Bush administration just went, Oh, Ok. You know, it’s like, well, wait a minute. But, I documented in the film, the close financial ties, the money that had been paid to the Bush family over the years by the Saudi royal family, the connections with the Bin Laden family. You could see why the decisions that were made in the hours and days after 9/11 took all the focus away from who might be responsible and put it toward, as Richard Clarke said, by the second day, they were already discussing in invading Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11. I mean, Fahrenheit 9/11, we started making that the month after the war started, so all of that stuff in that film was—-we put all of that out before any the mainstream media was covering it or saying these things. AMY GOODMAN: You call for reopening the investigation? MICHAEL MOORE: Oh, absolutely. And I think Bob graham said, Fahrenheit 9/11 had it right. He’s come out and—-I was like, wow, somebody—-I think there’s a lot of unanswered questions and those questions should be answered. It’s why I was disappointed with the way the Bin Laden death was handled. It just seems like, when they dumped him in the sea, a lot of information went with him, and I think history, at the very least, would like to know where was Bin Laden for the last 10 years? AMY GOODMAN: What do you think should have happened? Do you think the U.S. military should have executed him? MICHAEL MOORE: Well, if the order was an execution, I think that’s wrong because I thought what we did with the Germans after World War II was the right thing. They were put on trial and they were given their day in court and a historical record was created and a message went out to—-this is what will happen to you if you commit mass murder. But, listen, I will say this, and I know a lot these ex guys, these Navy Seals and whatever. They may have been in a situation where they felt that they were acting in self-defense. But if in fact they were ordered to execute him and not bring him back, I just think that’s against the American way because we believe even the most heinous person, whether they’re Charles Manson or Eichmann or anybody, should have their day in court, because we’re going to try to be civilized even though they’re uncivilized, even though they’re barbaric. We’re not going to be that way. That used to be a standard we tried to, at least, aspire to, or at least say that we aspired to it. There’s no, like, pretense about that anymore and so, I think—-will we ever known where he was during these last 10 years? I kept saying from the beginning he was not in Afghanistan, and again I got the same sort of, whatever, from that. But, apparently he wasn’t, apparently he was out of Afghanistan a couple months after 9/11, and I said at the time he is either in Pakistan or he’s in Saudi Arabia being protected. We’ll never know, or maybe we will know. Maybe the truth will come out. It often does. AMY GOODMAN: And, finally, we’ve gotten all sorts of Twitter questions that relate to this. Here is one, “Michael Moore seems to have all the answers. Will he ever run for office? Michigan Governor perhaps?” And then we have another Twitter question from MarinaGipps, who asked you on Twitter, “Are you doing a film to uncover which people in office are/were Wall St enablers? Democrats blame Republicans and vice versa.” And let’s lead that to go, where you’re going from here and your next project? Elected office? Another film? MICHAEL MOORE: First of all, I don’t have all the answers. I have a lot of questions. My best work is done when I ask those questions and focus, or try and focus attention on the things that maybe the mainstream media doesn’t focus on. So, that’s what I’ll continue to do. In my last film, I said what I had to say about our economic system. I think it’s at the core of—- MICHAEL MOORE: Capitalism: A Love Story. AMY GOODMAN: Yes, it’s at the core of so much of the abuse and destructive nature of how we structure ourselves as a society, and as long as we allow greed to be the engine that drives us, we are doomed. So, yes, I will continue to make my films and write my books and am working on a project, actually, for next year. So I’ve got—- AMY GOODMAN: And the project is? MICHAEL MOORE: It’s uhh… oh, we’re on radio? AMY GOODMAN: Did you just curse nonstop and we’ve blanked it out? MICHAEL MOORE: Obviously, I can’t talk about the projects while I’m doing the projects because I am—-I’m trying to get them done in one piece. AMY GOODMAN: Is it Internet-based? MICHAEL MOORE: Whatever is—-it could be Internet-based. It could be a Broadway musical. I might tour with Ice Capades. I can skate, and I think i can carry a song. The dance part; you don’t want to see that. AMY GOODMAN: Well, there are a lot of people who want their books signed and I know you have to leave. Thanks so much for spending this time with us, Michael Moore. MICHAEL MOORE: Well, thank you for having me, and thank you for all the good work you do and to the people who are listening, especially, get out there and make a difference and realize the power that you have. AMY GOODMAN: Michael Moore, Academy Award-winning filmmaker, best selling author, his latest book is, Here Comes Trouble: Stories From My Life. |
Milwaukee police said the city hasn't had this many homicides since July 1991, when bodies were found in Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment. There were 24 homicides in Milwaukee in August, and there have been 93 total so far this year.VIDEO: Chief Flynn uses homicide numbers to draw attention city violenceThe Police Department said that Milwaukee's per-capita homicide rate was significantly higher than the homicide rate of the city of Chicago. "It is homicidal violent crime that is most significantly affecting our disadvantaged neighborhoods of color," Police Chief Ed Flynn said at an afternoon news conference. "In the month of August, 83 percent of our homicide victims were African-Americans, and 83 percent of described assailants were African-Americans. And against this backdrop, the police department still seized over 200 firearms."Flynn made a plea to those who have been protesting in Sherman Park to turn their attention instead to stopping the violence."I would urge many of those who are most vocal in their criticisms of the police department to lend some of their energy and some of their concern to the extraordinary rates of violent crime that are afflicting us," he said.The chief also said they're having a problem with witness intimidation in shootings where people don't die. Witnesses are afraid to talk to investigators, which makes it hard to bring criminal charges and prosecute gunman. Milwaukee police said the city hasn't had this many homicides since July 1991, when bodies were found in Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment. There were 24 homicides in Milwaukee in August, and there have been 93 total so far this year. Advertisement VIDEO: Chief Flynn uses homicide numbers to draw attention city violence The Police Department said that Milwaukee's per-capita homicide rate was significantly higher than the homicide rate of the city of Chicago. "It is homicidal violent crime that is most significantly affecting our disadvantaged neighborhoods of color," Police Chief Ed Flynn said at an afternoon news conference. "In the month of August, 83 percent of our homicide victims were African-Americans, and 83 percent of described assailants were African-Americans. And against this backdrop, the police department still seized over 200 firearms." Flynn made a plea to those who have been protesting in Sherman Park to turn their attention instead to stopping the violence. "I would urge many of those who are most vocal in their criticisms of the police department to lend some of their energy and some of their concern to the extraordinary rates of violent crime that are afflicting us," he said. The chief also said they're having a problem with witness intimidation in shootings where people don't die. Witnesses are afraid to talk to investigators, which makes it hard to bring criminal charges and prosecute gunman. AlertMe |
A new book titled Do fish feel pain? by the renowned scientist, Victoria Braithwaite, is a very important read for those interested in the general topic of pain in animals, especially because it has been long assumed that fish are not sentient beings and are not all that . A few years ago I reviewed the literature about sentience in fish and other animals who live beneath the surface (see also) and it's clear that a strong case can be made for protecting fish and other aquatic animals from harm. Professor Braithwaite's book contains an incredible amount of recent scientific data that support this idea. Many people will likely not take or have the time to read her book, so let me tell you what she says at the beginning of her chapter titled "Looking to the future." She writes: "I have argued that there is as much evidence that fish feel pain and suffer as there is for birds and mammals -- and more than there is for human neonates and preterm babies." (page 153). Professor Braithwaite then goes on to note that these data will require us to change the ways in which we interact with fish because we now know that they suffer and feel pain. Catch-and-release programs surely need to be curtailed because even if fish survive their encounter with a hook they do suffer and die from the of being caught, fighting to get the hook out of their mouth or other body areas, and the wounds they endure (for a study on catch and release methods and mortality in fish see). Even hunters agree that catch-and-release are unethical and that torturing a fish at the end of a hook is just wrong. It would be singularly unethical not to increase protection for fish and other animals who we previously thought weren't sentient. Teaching our children that ever popular catch-and-release programs are inhumane is a good way to go for making the future for fish and other animals a more humane and pleasant experience. |
"Believe it or not, there are a few things worse than the state." While browsing the blogosphere, Mises.org readers may have come across self-styled "left-libertarians." You may even consider yourself something of a left-libertarian. Some of these folk, like the philosopher Roderick Long, have some very sound ideas, and many deep insights. There is a large subset of left-libertarians who can be described as "anarcho-syndicalists." The rhetoric of these anarcho-syndicalists might sound very attractive to many libertarians. They are ardent in their desire to smash the state, end authoritarianism of all stripes, and to free up "markets." But their idea of a market is very different from that of the classic-liberal and mainline libertarian traditions. Many anarcho-syndicalists also subscribe to a doctrine known as "mutualism." According to prominent mutualist Kevin Carson, mutualists "believe in private property, so long as it is based on personal occupancy and use."[1] For convenience and for lack of a better term, I will refer to this principle of property based on personal occupancy and use as the "anarcho-syndicalist legal order."[2] Under an anarcho-syndicalist legal order, workers would own all the capital goods they work with. There could therefore be no "absentee" ownership and no wage labor. A capitalist could not hand capital goods over to hired workers without thereby losing title. Many left-libertarians think of absentee ownership as a form of authoritarianism, and absentee owners as "petty tyrants." For them, factory takeovers are simply workers defending what was really theirs all along. Furthermore, discounting the work of the entire anarcho-capitalist tradition, they think that the classic-liberal legal order (perpetual and even distant ownership of that which one has homesteaded or contracted for, and all its products) would not be viable without the support of a state — that the anarcho-syndicalist system is the only one compatible with statelessness. Recall that Mises thought of the legal order advocated by syndicalists to be even less worthy of consideration than socialism. At least socialism was a "thinkable — although not realizable — system of social cooperation under the division of labor."[3] For Mises, the only two thinkable systems were socialism and capitalism, and only the latter was realizable, whether in hampered or unhampered form. But for Mises, as unrealizable as socialism is, and as destructive as attempts to achieve it are, it still compared favorably to syndicalism. The ideal of centralist socialism is at least discussible; that of syndicalism is so absurd that one need waste few words on it.… Preferring the producer interest over the consumer interest, which is characteristic of antiliberalism, means nothing other than striving artificially to maintain conditions of production that have been rendered inefficient by continuing progress. Such a system may seem discussible when the special interests of small groups are protected against the great mass of others, since the privileged party then gains more from his privilege as a producer than he loses on the other hand as a consumer; it becomes absurd when it is raised to a general principle, since then every individual loses infinitely more as a consumer than he may be able to gain as a producer. The victory of the producer interest over the consumer interest means turning away from rational economic organization and impeding all economic progress. Centralist socialism knows this very well. It joins liberalism in fighting all traditional producer privileges.… Syndicalism deliberately places the producer interest of the workers in the foreground.… Syndicalism would make all repatterning of production impossible; it leaves no room free for economic progress.[4] The whole point of social production is the use of the final goods at the end of the line. Therefore, any arrangement worthy of the name "social system of production" has to ultimately be about adjusting production for the sake of consumption. The economic state of affairs favored by syndicalists does not fit that bill. Furthermore, an anarcho-syndicalist legal order, stateless or not, would obliterate the intertemporal division of labor and reduce mankind to squalor. Improved productivity depends on capital goods, which in turn depend on delayed consumption.[5] People who choose to delay consumption extensively can come to own a stock of capital goods beyond what they can physically use themselves. If such people cannot hire labor to work with those goods without thereby losing title, they will consume their capital and stop saving. A left-libertarian I recently debated responded to this point by asking how a factory could be "consumed." I explained to him that except for particular cases, such as seed corn, capital consumption is not generally the literal eating of capital goods. Capital consumption is the failure to direct enough materials away from consumption in order to maintain the capital goods. A factory is consumed when it is allowed to fall into complete disrepair, converted to less-productive processes (like a simple process that could be handled by the owner alone), or broken down and sold in parts or for scrap. "If people cannot hire labor to work with those goods without thereby losing title, they will consume their capital and stop saving." Another left-libertarian then chimed in, saying that the workers in such a factory could then simply take over the factory, rather than let it go to waste. I pointed out that, yes, workers could take control of the factory. But the classical-liberal legal order doesn't prevent cooperatives, so if they were so good at running their own factory enterprise, why could not those same workers form a cooperative and pool their wages or borrow money to create or buy their own factory in the first place? If it is because the "absentee-owned" factory was run more competently in light of ultimate consumer evaluation, and thus they would not have been able to compete, then this new turn of affairs will only be to the detriment of the general public. Moreover, if factory takeovers became de rigueur and non-worker-owned plants became impossible because people with capital goods could not hand them over to anybody without losing title to them, there would be drastically less incentive for any individual to delay consumption enough to support future capital-intensive projects. The only such saving that would be done would be saving for worker-owned enterprises. But completely precluded would be any saving that might have been done by any would-be producer who has the providence to support and the judgment to direct a project on his own with the help of hired workers. The entrepreneurial judgment and capitalist providence of any and all would-be employers whose qualities happen not to be best suited for worker-owned enterprises would be underutilized. And the judgment and providence of any and all would-be employers whose qualities happen not to be at all suited for worker-owned enterprises would be completely unutilized. Because nature spreads her gifts un-uniformly, virtually all would-be employers would fit one of those two categories. Collaborative production (the division of labor) is so bountiful because it allows people to specialize: to focus on what they are good at and then exchange with each other. Perhaps in a handful of occasions, the people who are best at supporting and directing an enterprise are the same people who are best at operating the equipment. But because of human and natural diversity, that will virtually never be the case. By confining human interaction such that the direction and support of an enterprise can only ever be done by those operating the equipment, anarcho-syndicalists would be precluding innumerable mutually advantageous exchanges between savers and workers. A capitalist/worker arrangement is effectively an intertemporal exchange. Workers are advanced present money in exchange for enabling the capitalist to own and sell a future product. Abolishing wages would therefore be injurious to both would-be consenting parties in the exact same way that abolishing interest, another phenomenon of intertemporal exchange, would be. "Syndicalists would be precluding innumerable mutually advantageous exchanges between savers and workers." Even more fundamentally, it would be disastrous for the general public as users of the final products (consumers' goods) that production is for the sake of in the first place. On the market, through the instrumentality of profit and loss, consumers reward entrepreneurs who dedicate resources to production processes that are consistent with their desired consumption/savings ratio. Say there is an entrepreneur who would have been able to make a profit by allocating a huge inventory of capital goods to be operated by hired workers in a really long, but hugely productive production process. However, he cannot because his capital goods would have been lost to him as soon as he handed them over to anybody. That would be a huge loss to all the many consumers (the majority of whom are also workers, by the way) who would have enjoyed the later, but greater, comforts and security that the foregone highly productive process would have provided. The general public as users of final goods (which, again, production is for the sake of in the first place) is best served when people in their roles as producers are shareholders/capitalists insofar as they are good at being shareholders/capitalists and in the industry in which they are good at it, and are workers insofar as they are good at being workers and in the industry in which they are good at it. By rigidly yoking ownership with physical manipulation, anarcho-syndicalists would severely constrain the public's horizons by making it so those who provide for them can only do so in a severely limited variety of ways. Under an anarcho-syndicalist legal order, not only would shareholder/capitalists have to be workers and vice versa; they would have to be shareholder/capitalists in the same industry in which they are workers and vice versa. Again, that would preclude innumerable mutually advantageous intertemporal exchanges, and plunge savings, capital accumulation, and future productivity to levels that are fathoms below what the public as consumers (users of final goods) would have preferred. The result would be starvation for most, and a return to a primitive, hand-to-mouth existence for the rest. There are in this world billions of people with different qualities: varying skills in different fields at different levels, varying powers of judgment regarding different areas at different levels, and varying levels of industry. Furthermore, there are trillions upon trillions of different resources that people have at their disposal and different degrees to which they can bring those resources to bear in production according to their skill, judgment, and providence. Because of this boundless variety, regarding consumption goods there are a great many mutually advantageous exchanges that could be made. And regarding production goods and services, there are exponentially more. Which exchanges are to be made? What set, of the infinite variety of possible sets, of exchanges involving these trillions upon trillions of variables would be the most advantageous for humanity? Individuals on a market are constantly striving toward reaching a more advantageous set of exchanges. Now, if, out of all the myriad possible intertemporal exchanges, you pigheadedly say, "Wage-labor is to be abolished! Only intertemporal exchanges among workers in the same co-op are allowed!" you will give humanity only a tiny sliver of all the possible sets of intertemporal exchanges. Not even a sliver. A sliver of a sliver. It should not be difficult to realize how much that would limit mankind's horizons. "Individuals on a market are constantly striving toward reaching a more advantageous set of exchanges." One can only conclude with Mises that The lamentable failure of all "leftist" economic doctrines … is precisely to be seen in their misconstruction of the meaning of saving, capital accumulation, and investment.[6] Yet, all this is glossed over by the anarcho-syndicalists with paeans to worker solidarity and antiplutocracy sloganeering. As for anarcho-capitalists and classic liberals who consider such left-libertarians to be ideological allies simply because they are antistate, consider whether an anarcho-syndicalist society would live peaceably next to a capitalist society if everyone in the former thought all the capitalists in the latter were exploitative, authoritarian tyrants lording it over their neighboring working comrades. Believe it or not, there are a few things worse than the state. And an anarcho-syndicalist legal order would be one of them. |
Imagine if your doctor approached your complaint of chest pains with a conception of the human body from two or three hundred years ago. That’s essentially what police officers, jurors, and judges do every day when it comes to diagnosing whether someone is lying or a memory is accurate or a person deserves jail time. Much of our legal system is based on unsupported gut intuitions about how human beings behave that have been around for generations. No one questions the wisdom of researchers’ developing new, more effective medicines. But the law seems different. The unstated assumption is that those who wrote our codes and shaped our institutions of criminal justice were somehow more enlightened than we are today. The consequences of that mind-set are devastating. Operating on incorrect models of behavior, we end up training our detectives in interrogation techniques that lead to false confessions and employing identification procedures that contaminate witnesses’ memories. We convince judges and jurors that being objective is a choice, when numerous biases operate beyond our conscious awareness or control. We purport to execute only those who most deserve it, but walk down death row and you won’t see the worst of the worst. You’ll see people with ineffective lawyers; you’ll see a disproportionate number of people who just happen to have darker skin and thicker lips; you’ll see innocent people — one out of 25 by the best estimate. Our approach to criminal justice is failing us. The good news is that we possess the tools to make meaningful changes in our police, courtroom, and correctional practices. Insights from psychology and neuroscience are allowing us to develop a more realistic understanding of how witnesses, detectives, and others think and act. Even if our legal founders were better angels, they did not have the methods of modern science to test hypotheses, the ability to collect and analyze real-world data, and the capacity to restructure existing frameworks broadly, rapidly, and effectively. We can make numerous empirically grounded changes right now. If the color of a person’s skin influences where bail is set, as the latest research suggests, we should consider blind bail hearings, much as orchestras do to avoid similar bias in auditions. If prosecutors are susceptible to forces that encourage dishonesty, and routinely fail to turn over evidence of innocence, we should bypass them and have crime-lab reports sent directly to the defense. If police officers subtly influence witnesses, we should adopt computer-administered lineups. But embracing an evidence-based approach to justice also implies a more fundamental realignment of our legal system: reconceiving the fight against crime in public-health terms. The more insight we gain into the genetic and environmental influences on criminal behavior, the more a disease model seems appropriate, and the harder it is to justify a world in which bad acts are assumed to reflect the freely made choices of evil people and offenders are treated with scorn. Every year, we learn more about the role of toxic substances and nutritional deficiencies in cognitive dysfunction linked to criminal behavior. It is not a coincidence that more than half of those in prison have had a traumatic brain injury and nearly a quarter of the correctional population suffers from severe mental illness. It is not a coincidence that those who are incarcerated are disproportionately uneducated, poor, and survivors of childhood abuse and neglect. Advertisement And while we already acknowledge that some harmful acts are not the product of free will — the man whose sudden seizure causes him to drop his baby cannot be said to have chosen to assault his child — the lines we draw between compelled behavior and intentional conduct are a convenient fiction. They simply reflect the divide between the unmistakable, documented influences on human actions and the determinants that remain hidden. The fact that it is very difficult to figure out the particular nexus of factors that led a person to pull that trigger, kick in that back door, or write that bad check does not mean that he freely chose to commit a crime. We need to quit wasting time trying to sort out who deserves blame and get out of the payback business. Instead, we should focus on remedying the harm, rehabilitating the criminal, discouraging others from taking similar actions, and treating the conditions that precipitated the crime in the first place. This may sound revolutionary, but it’s really not so different from how we handle outbreaks of disease. When a dangerous virus overwhelms a town, causation is relevant, but blame isn’t. We don’t treat someone who has contracted Ebola or dengue fever as sinful. We get to work restoring the person’s health, preventing new cases, and trying to eliminate root causes. When an individual poses a particular threat to the public, we quarantine him until he’s no longer a danger, but we don’t subject him to poor treatment and contempt on the grounds that he is a wicked person who deserves it. The logic is simple: Place people in monstrous conditions, and you’ll create monsters. Other countries are already showing us the path forward. The penal systems of Germany and the Netherlands are organized around resocialization and rehabilitation. Prisoners are treated with dignity and have their rights to vote, work, and receive benefits restored when they are released — things they need to become productive citizens. In Norway’s Halden prison, inmates — including rapists and murderers — are locked in their cells only in the evening and spend their days working, studying, cooking, exercising, or playing music. Rather than being denied positive human contact as punishment, they are encouraged to maintain their family connections. And the staff members at Halden act as mentors, not enforcers, helping prisoners to overcome their problems and prepare to reintegrate back into society. The logic is simple: Place people in monstrous conditions, and you’ll create monsters. In the United States, we can catch a glimpse of the public-health model at work in the form of problem-solving courts, which have been around since the 1990s and which explicitly reject harsh punishment in favor of focused treatment for underlying problems like mental illness and drug abuse. The key stakeholders — prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, and offenders — are not cast as adversaries, but as partners, working together to develop a path forward. And the results seem clear: reduced recidivism and reduced cost. Abandoning blame as an organizing principle also frees us to focus on the needs of those harmed by crimes, who have long been shunted to the side of the criminal-justice process and treated as mere props in the effort to gain a conviction. Helping victims to heal should be a central aim of our system. In some cases, that may mean facilitating apologies and aiding victims in forgiving those who have committed crimes against them. Recent research suggests that such actions can be far more effective at repairing the harm than retributive punishment of the offender. In fact, granting forgiveness may provide a victim with a heightened sense of justice, as well as improved psychological well-being. In other cases, catering to a victim’s needs may mean figuring out how the perpetrator can provide restitution. Even if offenders are not treated as blameworthy, they ought to mitigate the impact of what they’ve done. Most important, a public-health model of crime allows us to shift resources from punishment to prevention. A reactive criminal-justice system, like the one we have now, is doomed to always come up short. There is no execution that can compensate for a victim’s murder. There is no appeal process that can restore the lost years of a wrongful conviction. In the future, our major tools for fighting crime will not be police officers, trials, and incarceration, but better prenatal intervention, improved schools, and widely available mental-health care. That will make for duller episodes of Law & Order, but it will leave us far safer and more just. Adam Benforado is an associate professor of law at Drexel University. He is the author of Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice (Crown, 2015). |
We’re a good two years off before we see Marvel’s The Avengers 2, but we already know that Joss Whedon is working hard on the script and it’s been confirmed a week ago that the sister and brother team of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver will be joining the cast as the big additions to the team this time around. There are probably a lot of thoughts about who should be cast in these roles and how they should be portrayed, but we’ve learned that Marvel and Joss definitely have a few ideas already and one of them is that the duo are going to be younger than the rest of the team. Although Joss is still writing and probably not ready to send anything out to actors, for the two roles, they’re generally looking for actors in their 20s and we’ve heard word that the “prototype” for their Scarlet Witch is none other than Irish actress Saoirse Ronan. Except something to note is that they’re going “British” for the role rather than trying to have actors playing Eastern Europeans. As it happens, Ronan just turned 19 last month and she will be turning 20 sometime during the time they would be filming the movie next year though she’s also already been playing more mature roles. If she is Marvel’s “prototype” for Wanda, why wouldn’t Marvel just outright make an offer to Ronan once they have a script done? Ronan has those mesmerizing eyes that would be perfect for the Scarlet Witch, too. As far as Wanda’s brother Pietro–now we’re assuming they’re going to use the same first names from the comics even though they’re played as British—he’s only described as being “euro” and “edgy,” but there are plenty of British actors in their 20s who could fit that bill. Come on SHH readers, what actor could hold their own against Ms. Ronan? Please don’t mention either of the actors from The Host, though. While we know from talking to Kevin Feige about Marvel’s deal with Fox to use the character that there won’t be any mention of the brother and sister being mutants or who their father might be (Spoiler: He’s played by Ian McKellen in Bryan Singer’s upcoming X-Men movie!), the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are two classic Avengers who joined the team way back in Avengers #16, cover-dated May 1965, and the Witch has been a pivotal part of the team ever since. In fact, the Scarlet Witch is still a large part of the Avengers today having just been brought back into the fold with Rick Remender’s “The Uncanny Avengers” that kicked off the Marvel NOW! initiative. There is a lot of history that she brings to the team, although we have a feeling that they’re going to follow the model of how the characters were used in Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s The Ultimates, which has been a fine blueprint for Marvel’s Cinematic Universe so far. If you have any thoughts about this rumor or the possible casting of Saoirse Ronan as the Scarlet Witch, have at it in the comments below! (Photo Credit: C.Smith/ WENN.com) |
Parents looking to rein in holiday spending on Wiis and other high-tech gadgets for their kids this year: take heart.The stick - possibly the world's oldest toy - was added Nov. 27 to the National Toy Hall of Fame, joining the likes of Barbie, Slinky, teddy bears, Mr. Potato Head and Play-Doh."The good thing about a stick is it's limitless," said Patricia Hogan, a curator for the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, N.Y., which houses the Hall of Fame. "Today, it's a magic wand. Tomorrow, it's a fishing pole."Wellington mom Kim Toohey said she isn't surprised the stick was finally getting its due."I have three boys, and they played with sticks more than anything else we bought them," she said. "It's right up there with the box and the pots and pans."This isn't just kid stuff. The second-largest children's museum in the United States, and the only one dedicated specifically to the study of play, the Strong Museum is chartered by the New York Board of Regents and publishes a scholarly journal through the University of Illinois.But outside of academia, it's best known for housing the Toy Hall of Fame, which each year chooses a select few playthings for posterity.Criteria include fueling imagination, according to the museum's Hogan. The toy should also be part of the lives of many kids, preferably over several generations."The Hall of Fame is not… |
The BBC has broadcast a misleading portion of an article by Peter Hitchens from the Mail on Sunday, prompting complaints over impartiality and accuracy. The BBC’s ‘News Briefing’, which was aired on Radio 4 at 5am yesterday used a selective portion of a column by author and commentator Peter Hitchens. The piece was entitled “Here is the best reason for voting UKIP”. Mr Hitchens began his column, “I don’t like UKIP or its leader, Nigel Farage. They are the Dad’s Army of British politics, doddery, farcical and very unclear about what they are actually for.” But the BBC failed to report the headline or indeed any of the rest of Mr Hitchens comments which he described as “generally pro-UKIP”. Instead, the host of the programme continued pulling negative UKIP comments from various newspapers for the rest of the segment. The entire clip can be heard here. In his original article, Mr Hitchens went on to say: “But they have Captain Mainwaring’s virtues too. They are absolutely certain about what they are against, in this case an aloof political establishment that despises the concerns of normal human beings. “They are also indomitable when under attack. And they need to be. I have taken a close interest in British politics since I was a schoolboy, and I have never seen a more disgraceful alliance between politicians and their media toadies than the one that has been secretly made to do down UKIP.” He went on to expose a freshly reported alliance between the Guardian newspaper and Conservative Party Headquarters. The full article can be read here. Mr Hitchens told Breitbart London that he has lodged formal complaints with the BBC, and noted that they have form in misrepresenting him. “Every single item they quoted about UKIP was hostile to it,” Mr Hitchens said. “I’m sure Christopher Booker had a piece defending UKIP this weekend. It was by no means impossible for those looking for a balanced take to find things defending UKIP. “We are in the final stages of these elections in which UKIP is a major party, and since the BBC is bound to impartiality, it is especially during this time that there should be extra vigilance”. “To have something so selective that they misrepresented a generally pro-UKIP article is very striking” The BBC’s cultural and political bias is long-noted, and Freedom of Information requests into its journalistic activities are often fruitless given a restrictive clause in the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which protects whatever the BBC deems to be journalistic activity. Numerous BBC personalities have however confessed to a bias within the organisation, and Breitbart London uncovered the organisation’s disproportionate purchases of the Guardian newspaper earlier this year. Speaking on the issue, Mr Hitchens said, “[The BBC] is like a goldfish in a bowl. It thinks that is the world, and therefore you cannot change the BBC. They don’t know that they are hopefully and utterly biased.” Mr Hitchens is understood to have complained to the BBC in three different ways, including once as a general listener, and once as the author of a piece which has been misrepresented. “I’m pursuing it in every way” he told Breitbart London. |
Get the latest from TODAY Sign up for our newsletter Aug. 20, 2005, 11:44 AM GMT / Source: The Associated Press With a deafening boom, the ashes of Hunter S. Thompson were blown into the sky amid fireworks late Saturday as relatives and a star-studded crowd bid an irreverent farewell to the founder of “gonzo journalism”. As the ashes erupted from a tower, red, white, blue and green fireworks lit up the sky over Thompson’s home near Aspen. The 15-story tower was modeled after Thompson’s logo: a clenched fist, made symmetrical with two thumbs, rising from the hilt of a dagger. It was built between his home and a tree-covered canyon wall, not far from a tent filled with merrymakers. “He loved explosions,” explained his wife, Anita Thompson. The private celebration included actors Bill Murray and Johnny Depp, rock bands, blowup dolls and plenty of liquor to honor Thompson, who killed himself six months ago at the age of 67. Fans scramble to catch a glimpseSecurity guards kept reporters and the public away from the compound as the 250 invited guests arrived, but Thompson’s fans scouted the surrounding hills for the best view of the celebration. “We just threw a gallon of Wild Turkey in the back and headed west,” said Kevin Coy of Chester, W.Va., who drove more than 1,500 miles with a friend in hopes of seeing the celebration. “We came to pay our respects.” Thompson fatally shot himself in his kitchen Feb. 20, apparently despondent over his declining health. The memorial, however, was planned as a party, with readings and scheduled performances by both Lyle Lovett and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. The author’s longtime illustrator, Ralph Steadman, and actor Sean Penn were on the invitation list, along with Depp, who portrayed Thompson in the 1998 movie version of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream,” perhaps the writer’s best-known work. “Over the last few months I’ve learned that he really touched people more deeply than I had realized,” said Thompson’s son, Juan. Too much show for someThompson’s longtime friend George Stranahan lamented the Hollywood-style production. “I am pretty sure it isn’t how Hunter would have done it,” he said. “But when your friends make a mistake you support them.” Anita Thompson said Depp funded much of the celebration. “We had talked a couple of times about his last wishes to be shot out of a cannon of his own design,” Depp told The Associated Press last month. “All I’m doing is trying to make sure his last wish comes true. I just want to send my pal out the way he wants to go out.” Pioneer of ‘gonzo’ journalism Thompson is credited along with Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese with helping pioneer New Journalism — he dubbed his version “gonzo journalism” — in which the writer was an essential component of the story. He often portrayed himself as wildly intoxicated as he reported on figures such as Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. At the height of the Watergate era, he said Richard Nixon represented “that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character.” Besides the 1972 classic about Thompson’s visit to Las Vegas — in which the central character was a snarling, drug- and alcohol-crazed observer and participant — he also wrote an expose on the Hell’s Angels and “Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72.” The Kentucky-born writer also was the model for Garry Trudeau’s balding “Uncle Duke” in the comic strip “Doonesbury.” An unabashed gun-toting ‘freak’ In now-chic Aspen, Thompson was an eccentricity: He proudly fired his guns whenever he wanted, let peacocks have the run of the land and ran for sheriff in 1970 under the Freak Power Party banner. Composer David Amram, a friend of Thompson since the early 1960s, said Thompson had never expected to be successful taking on President Nixon during the Watergate era. “He thought he would be banned or put on an enemies’ list,” he said. Thompson made himself the centerpiece of his stories “to show that a regular person could be in the midst of the craziness of the time,” Amram said. “He was our historian.” After his suicide, one close acquaintance suggested Thompson did not want old age to dictate the circumstances of his death. Anita Thompson said no suicide note was left. |
Gears of War Ultimate Edition PC has been sneakily listed on Windows Store. You can’t search for it currently, but somehow Twitter user @M578Fury managed to catch the page, which features nine Gears of War Ultimate Edition PC screenshots. We have grabbed them for your viewing pleasure; they’re not rendered at 4K resolution, but they still give a pretty good idea of what we can expect. There’s a lot more on the store page, though, such as the file size – a whopping 52.76GB, which will occupy a fair portion of any hard drive. Of course, possibly the most important information is the one detailing the requirements for Gears of War Ultimate Edition PC. Interestingly, Microsoft has added another type of specs to the usual minimum and recommended: ideal specs. You’ll need Windows 10 and specifically the 1511 build to play the game, too, though that was expected since the game has been remade for DirectX 12. There’s nothing about the release date, but Microsoft might reveal that information later this week in a press event, so stay tuned. In the meantime, you can check our review of the Xbox One version. MINIMUM SPECS: OS 64 bit Windows 10 (v. 1511), Processor: Intel Core i5 @ 2.7 Ghz / AMD FX 6-core, Memory: 8 GB RAM (2 GB VRAM), GPU: AMD R7 260x / NVIDIA GTX 650 Ti, HD Space: 60GB, DirectX12 Ghz RECOMMENDED SPECS: OS 64 bit Windows 10 (v. 1511), Processor: Intel Core i5 @3 . 5GHz+ / AMD FX 8-core, Memory: 16 GB RAM (4 GB VRAM), GPU: AMD R9 290X / NVIDIA GTX 970, HD Space: 60GB, DirectX12 . IDEAL SPECS: OS 64 bit Windows 10 (v. 1511), Processor: Intel Core i7 @4GHz+ / AMD FX 8-core, Memory: 16 GB RAM (6 GB VRAM), GPU: AMD R9 390X / NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti, HD Space: 60GB, DirectX12 SUPPORTED OS: Windows 10 (64-bit version only) with Windows 10 November update installed (Windows 10 Version 1511) |
It hasn’t been an easy journey to get here - but last night the sputtering behemoth that is Top Gear showed promising signs of turning around on the negative publicity - and setting off in the direction of a renewed lease of life. It’s fair to say that expectations were low. After the troubles of last series and the high profile departure of Chris Evans, and the long shadow cast by erstwhile presenters Clarkson, May and Hammond, it feels as though this series could be one last roll of the dice for the show that was previously one of the BBC’s most important properties. And while not perfect, on the strength of the first episode, it appears that The Grand Tour should be glancing nervously into its rear-view mirror. First, let’s talk about what didn’t quite work: And this, mostly, is everything shot in the studio. In a series that is known for its cinematography, it seems that like TGT, Top Gear just can’t drop the studio - even if the banter between the new team of Matt LeBlanc, Rory Reid and Chris Harris is at times painfully awkward. The opening gags dropped like a lead balloon - and it was enough to make you worry that something was rotten at the core of what is clearly a very expensive show. From left to right: Man, man, woman, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man. Similarly, the interview with X-Men star James McAvoy felt awkward. To make matters worse, once the conversation was over McAvoy was kept around - awkwardly and silently perched on the sofas between the trio. When Chris Harris tried to enthuse about nerdy details, rather than challenge the audience the show instead grasped towards lazy anti-intellectualism. Though mercifully, studio segments were kept at a relative minimum compared to The Grand Tour. Knowing their presenters hadn’t yet earned it, there were no tedious, self-indulgent riffs about the Oxford bypass or how ice cream makes you gay. But it was in the filmed segments that the show really began to shine. The first piece, in which Harris reviewed some Ferrari or other was competently produced, and even as a non-car person I understood why he liked the car. It felt like a statement of intent: That this is a show where personalities weren't going to overwhelm everything else. The power-washer segment, in which LeBlanc destroyed a watermelon, a shed and a car was a nice visual spectacle too - even if it felt more like a YouTube video. The Kazakhstan film though, is where the show really found its footing. For me, Top Gear is at its best when it stops being a car show, and starts being a travel show - and it also gave us a taste of how Reid, Harris and LeBlanc interact. In fact, it was nice to see that the presenters clearly actually like each other. Despite the veneer of combativeness, it was a million miles away from the decidedly frostier atmosphere on The Grand Tour, in which boorish Clarkson ‘hilariously’ belittles his colleagues yet again. It feels like the presenters actually like each other. Perhaps the best thing about the film though was that unlike The Grand Tour, it didn’t feel as though every moment was contrived or scripted. Don’t get me wrong, I know how TV works. I know that the producers will have worked out in which order to reveal the high-mileage cars in order to get the best punchline. I know that the three different milage-maximising strategies at the end will not have been the presenters improvising their own ideas. But it was done with a much lighter touch than The Grand Tour, and without the feeling that there was someone just off-screen pointing a gun at Richard Hammond and forcing him to read a cue-card. The crash between Harris and LeBlanc felt real, and exciting. Reid’s taxi careering off on its own felt like a real moment - even if it had been planned. In essence - the illusion worked and my disbelief remained suspended. Which is a very long way indeed from watching Clarkson and Co playing soldiers in a pound shop remake of a Michael Bay film. Essentially, I think Top Gear felt fresh once again. It wasn’t perfect - how about letting a woman talk, or worrying about climate change? But it felt like we were watching people who cared about their work - rather than watching three loveless millionaires luxuriating in Jeff Bezos’ gold. In just one episode, in my view Top Gear bested an entire series of The Grand Tour. If last night’s show was a sign of things to come, then Top Gear could be taxiing back into pole position amongst the BBC’s crown jewels. Read More: The Grand Tour is Broken and Needs a BBC Executive To Fix It |
Existing deep ice cores are shown by black dots. The South Pole core (red dot) will fill in the picture of Antarctic climate. The UW researchers were also part of a recent project to drill an ice core at the West Antarctic Ice Sheet divide (WD). This winter, when many people's imaginations were fixed on the North Pole, a small group of scientists has been working on the other side of the planet. In round-the-clock daylight and frigid temperatures, glaciologists have been drilling an ice core at the South Pole. Drilling continues through the end of January for the first of two years of a joint project by the University of Washington and the University of California, Irvine. The National Science Foundation is funding the South Pole Ice Core Project to dig into climate history at the planet's southernmost tip. The 40,000-year record will be the first deep core from this region of Antarctica, and the first record longer than 3,000 years collected south of 82 degrees latitude. "The cold temperatures in the ice, about -50 C, have caused some surprises with drilling since certain aspects of the drill perform differently even than during the test in Greenland at -30 C," said T.J. Fudge, a UW postdoctoral researcher who is chief scientist for this month. The location is just 2.7 km (1.7 miles) from the South Pole. Its thick, uncontaminated layers of ice will help answer questions about how Antarctic climate interacts with the rest of the world. "South Pole is part of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, yet is influenced by storms coming across the West Antarctic Ice Sheet," Fudge said. "This core will help us figure out how the two sides of Antarctica communicate during climate changes in the past." The period between 40,000 years ago and 20,000 years ago includes sudden swings in temperature, and warming at the end of the last ice age. Scientists were also attracted by cold conditions, even by polar standards. Ice cores inside the underground storage trench. Some will travel to the U.S. this year. Some deeper ice is more brittle and will spend the winter in Antarctica to acclimatize. Credit: T.J. Fudge "Most of the other places where we've worked the ice is -25 C to -30 C, and that's too warm for rare organic molecules and other trace gases that people are interested in measuring," said co-leader Eric Steig, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences. "This is basically the coldest ice that we have drilled in," said principal investigator Murat Aydin, a UC Irvine researcher who was chief scientist from setup of the field camp in early November through the end of December. "Everything is harder in the cold." All three scientists were part of a team that collected a more than 2-mile ice core from West Antarctica, a five-year effort that ended in 2011. Analysis of that ice is still ongoing at the UW, UC Irvine and many other labs around the country. The new project at the South Pole is using a new intermediate-depth drill based on a Danish design, and a new drilling fluid. The team reached a depth of 1/2 kilometer (1/3 mile) on Jan. 14. Researchers hope to pass 700 meters by the end of this season and 1,500 meters (almost a mile down) by the end of next season. "We're not just trying to punch through the ice sheet, the most important objective is to bring up the highest-quality ice possible," Aydin said. After the core is drilled, three-foot sections will be flown to McMurdo Station and transferred to a ship. Scientists will then converge on Denver's National Ice Core Laboratory this summer to process the samples and ship pieces to labs across the country. In the UW's IsoLab, Steig will analyze different types of oxygen molecules in the ice to determine the temperature. This will provide a record of climate changes for that region and help to evaluate the large-scale climate patterns across the Southern Hemisphere. "The South Pole is one of the very few places in Antarctica that has not warmed up in the past 50 years," Steig said. "That's interesting, and needs to be better understood." The UC Irvine group will look at ultra-trace gases from air bubbles trapped in the ice. Aydin is interested in gases that are one in a billion to one in a trillion molecules in the atmosphere, but provide clues about the productivity of land-based plants and the extent of tropical wetlands during previous eras. So far, looking at the core shows one layer of ash that the researchers think is tied to a volcanic eruption in the South Sandwich Islands. "Otherwise, the core has been beautifully clear," Fudge said. Scientists work inside a field tent at about -20 C, the same temperature as the national ice core lab. Extra-curricular highlights of this year's season included the Christmas Day round-the-world running race, and participating in the New Year's annual marking of the South Pole. Hear Fudge describe his work on a previous ice core: Explore further: Earth orbit changes key to Antarctic warming that ended last ice age More information: spicecore.org/ |
AURORA — Doctors at Children’s Hospital Colorado hope to launch as many as 25 new clinical trials in the next six months after a recently signed federal law opened the floodgates to test experimental cancer drugs for children. “The pediatric oncology community is really excited,” said Dr. Lia Gore, the director of Children’s Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders. While there are hundreds of cancer drugs in development to treat adults, research on pediatric cancer drugs has historically lagged. Gore said essentially only four new drugs have been approved to treat childhood cancer since 1979. But the RACE for Children Act, signed this month by President Donald Trump, aims to change that by allowing clinical trials in children when there is evidence that a drug being developed for adults could help them, too. Gore gave the example of an adult drug designated specifically for lung cancer. Previously, the drug couldn’t be tested for children because children so rarely get lung cancer — even though the drug also holds promise for treating a completely different childhood cancer. The new law will allow clinical trials for children based on the “molecular target” of the drug, not the name of the cancer. The bill was sponsored by Colorado U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, who attended a celebration of the bill’s signing Tuesday at Children’s, along with new FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb. Sen. Cory Gardner was among the bill’s co-sponsors. Bennet called the bill “a breakthrough for kids fighting cancer,” while Gottlieb expressed equal optimism. “We have a lot of opportunity ahead of us,” he said. The celebration highlighted a daylong tour by the two men that also included a meeting at the University of Colorado Hospital and a presentation for a state legislative committee. Those stops both focused on curbing the nation’s opioid epidemic, which Trump recently declared a national emergency. At the hospital, the men listened as doctors explained new emergency department procedures for reducing opioid prescriptions. For instance, the hospital has modified its digital medical records system so that doctors can more easily check the state’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program when writing a prescription. Doctors have also been encouraged to prescribe smaller amounts of opioids at one time. The result has been a dramatic drop in opioid prescriptions. Three years ago, about 20 percent of emergency room patients left the hospital with an opioid prescription. Today, it’s about 12 percent. “Our answer,” said Dr. Jason Hoppe, an emergency medicine specialist at the hospital, “has been exposing fewer people.” Later, Bennet said he is hopeful that federal, state and local governments can work together to address the opioid crisis, and he said he would be watching for recommendations being prepared by the state legislature’s interim committee on opioid addiction. He also said he is optimistic that federal lawmakers will soon put together a bipartisan bill to reform health care in the country, nodding to hearings scheduled next month by the Senate health committee, on which Bennet sits. “I believe it will happen,” Bennet said of the possibility of a bipartisan bill gaining traction in Congress. “But I don’t know it will happen.” |
By A.Bouchez on 2012, Sunday October 14, 13:31 - mORMot Framework - Permalink Our mORMot framework is now able to stub or mock any Delphi interface . As usual, the best way to explain what a library does is to look at the code using it. Here is an example (similar to the one shipped with RhinoMocks) of verifying that when we execute the "forgot my password" scenario, we remembered to call the Save() method properly: procedure TMyTest.ForgotMyPassword; var SmsSender: ISmsSender; UserRepository: IUserRepository; begin TInterfaceStub.Create(TypeInfo(ISmsSender),SmsSender). Returns('Send',[true]); TInterfaceMock.Create(TypeInfo(IUserRepository),UserRepository,self). ExpectsCount('Save',qoEqualTo,1); with TLoginController.Create(UserRepository,SmsSender) do try ForgotMyPassword('toto'); finally Free; end; end; And... that's all, since the verification will take place when IUserRepository instance will be release. If you want to follow the "test spy" pattern (i.e. no expectation defined a priori, but manual check after the execution), you can use: procedure TMyTest.ForgotMyPassword; var SmsSender: ISmsSender; UserRepository: IUserRepository; Spy: TInterfaceMockSpy; begin TInterfaceStub.Create(TypeInfo(ISmsSender),SmsSender). Returns('Send',[true]); Spy := TInterfaceMockSpy.Create(TypeInfo(IUserRepository),UserRepository,self); with TLoginController.Create(UserRepository,SmsSender) do try ForgotMyPassword('toto'); finally Free; end; Spy.Verify('Save'); end; |
Club versus country will never be a contest for Tim Cahill but the Socceroos legend insists there's no bad blood between he and his Major League Soccer team. Cahill was last week forced to defend his commitment to Australia amid reports the New York Red Bulls were unhappy with him leaving at a crucial stage of the American season for the Socceroos' friendlies in the Middle East. 'I just want to respect my club and respect the Socceroos.': Tim Cahill. Credit:Getty Images The 34-year-old was dropped to the bench for last Saturday's 1-0 win over Houston and, while Red Bulls coach Mike Petke claimed the decision was tactical, Cahill reportedly vented his anger at the situation. However, after arriving in Abu Dhabi ahead of Friday's friendly against the United Arab Emirates, Cahill insists it's all in the past and his relationship with club and coach remains strong. |
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