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“Misery and pain for all, when it falls…” / / / The beginning of the end isn’t slow, like in the tales. It comes all at once, in the form of a speech issued from the vestiges of a death. Remnant will fall. Of that, it is certain: it is a race between a hampered light and a swift dark, a dark that will invariably overcome its brother in the end. Somewhere in the city, a young couple and their children will watch in stupefied horror as the world they had though was untouchable bows to its knees. The kingdoms they thought that were incorrigible are just as corrupted as any. Who is there to trust? No one, they think. No one but themselves. There are people all around them, but right now, every person is locked in solitude of their own panic, horror, fear. The loneliness cannot be fought. Every castle can have its walls cracked wide open, and now it is every man for himself. Ozpin watches, helplessly, from his tower. The Brotherhood planted the seeds of mistrust and revolution long ago. Now, they are finally breaking their bonds from the earth. He is a man who has lived longer than his fear, knows that fear and thought can turn to living creatures, but as he watches the military fleet fall from the sky in a rain of fire, his own emotion is all too real. In her comatose, ice-locked sleep, deep down in the darkness of the vault, some part of Amber’s mind stirs as her other half flames with power and glee. The edges of a thousand souls breathe to her, too softly to wake. Autumn is coming, but with it, coldness shall reign once more. As Qrow and Glynda shoot up to the stars and the clockwork in the elevator, the confined space feels like a cell. Qrow cannot help but think of a young girl in a white cloak with laughing gray eyes: he wonders if his nieces are damned to the same end that she met. Glynda Goodwitch feels the tightly woven threads of order and peace unraveling faster than she could ever hold them together. Both of them meet each other’s eyes: emerald against ruby. But the fear in the air is palpable. The fear in the air is calling to their enemies, gathering in the shadows. On the outskirts of Mistral, a young boy who once dreamed of becoming a Huntsman will stand on shaking knees as a Grimm tears through his home. He is alive only because his fear is drowned by his own numbness: his family is already dead and they were innocent; the guardians, the heroes, they have not come to the rescue. The Huntsmen and Huntresses were nothing more than a glorified lie. The red eyes of the Beowolf look like his parents’ blood as it fills the air: a cold fury fills him for this, for all he is too insignificant to fight, because this is all the fault of the people who were supposed to protect him while he was too weak to do it himself. An old Faunus watches sadly from his static-filled hologram in Menagerie. Sorrow: because humankind and the Faunus are all the same in slaughter: no one is safe from fear, from hatred, from pain. The Grimm are few and far between, here in this sand-locked place, but when humankind falls, Remnant will go with it. This he knows; this he has always known. Yang paces her room, blood singing with worry. Zwei barks anxiously, but Yang’s thoughts are swimming: Blake and Weiss, out in Vale, they are not safe. Ruby, at the heart of the disaster, is not safe. Her hatred for the unnamed voice that hacked the broadcast is fiery and alive. I can’t protect them, Yang thinks bitterly: she couldn’t protect her father or Ruby when Summer Rose never returned. She couldn’t protect herself from Raven’s abandonment. At the moment she needs to be the strongest, she is powerless. Somewhere in Vale, Blake and Weiss see Penny fall, and the sparks that fly from her torn form seem to herald the beginning of the end. They see something die in Pyrrha’s eyes. Blake slams her cup down so hard that it shatters before she’s up and shoving through the crowd. Weiss follows after her, a simple break turned to tragedy: this happens all too often. Blake knows that the girl who she used to be — a girl who cut the connecter on a train and drifted away into the unknown — is dead now. Now, she must fight to her own end to protect her team, and her family. But there’s a bitter relief through this: her partner was not lying, just another pawn in a game of treachery. Weiss’s heart slams through her chest as she thinks of her sister, preparing for combat under a general of lies. Ironwood’s deceit has never cost them too much, but now, she fears the price will surmount what she can pay. Winter could be killed, and yet, so could she. No one is safe: this is the work of a tyrant. At least Weiss has one comfort as they run, Blake and she, to the far-off lights of Beacon: If we all die tonight, we will go down fighting. But neither of them know of a small girl, one who has had too many people torn away from her, who is crying in the allies of the Amity Colosseum, her gray eyes the same shade as the rising storm ribbing the sky. SSSN, CFVY, and JNPR watch in a transfixed horror as the Nevermore bellows above them, blue sparks raining down as citizens flee in a chaotic sea. Like everything, the force shield will inevitably shatter. The aftermath will be devastating. This is what they have trained for, but somehow, now, as it is really happening, the cold chill of certainty seems to drag at their bones, pulling them down, down, down. Sun knows he cannot protect his team from this, that some things are unable to be fought, and he meets Neptune’s eyes with a grim promise. Sage swears and draws his broadsword, but the helplessness on his face is apparent. Jaune stares down in horror at Pyrrha, who looks like something within her has been irreparably broken; Ren is staring at the flickering figure of the pawn with anger in his eyes; Nora looks shocked. Fox clutches at Velvet’s sleeve. The Faunus is glad, briefly, that he cannot see the horror unfolding around them. Coco’s fury vibrates through her as she sees, far across the stadium, a familiar figure leave in the chaos: it is Emerald. And each of them has a single thought running rampant through their heads: I should have known. The cold tile of the floor grinds against Ruby’s knees but the same sharp edge of grief that started fading years after her mother’s death is back once more. Sobs quake through her: through blurry eyes, weaponless, she staggers from the alley and to the centre of the stadium. The pain from Mercury’s blows shiver through her, but it’s meaningless to how her heart aches. She passes Penny and another sob shakes through her: how can she grieve for someone who never lived in the first place? Pyrrha Nikos was the catalyst to Penny’s demise. But Ruby knows this is not Pyrrha’s fault. This is the fault of someone she once called a friend, and for the first time in her life as she sees Emerald leave the stadium, Ruby’s blood runs cold with the desire for revenge. Ironwood’s panic is unleashed and the two announcers glare up at him as he sends out commands to a military that is not responding. Somewhere in the outskirts of the kingdom, soldiers lie with cooling blood, long dead. Emerald and Mercury meet up in a small grove outside of Beacon; her smile is like a razor-slice in the dark. “It feels good to drop the disguises and lies at last,” she says, and Mercury grins, sideways and dangerous. “Phase three has always been my favorite,” he growls happily, before he turns and takes off into the dark, Emerald thundering after him. Ashes will fly in their wake: it feels right to take revenge on the world that was so harsh to them in their youth. Torchwick sits in an unbroken dark, but his heart beats all the faster, because he knows it is time as the guards shriek, muffled, outside his cell before silence descends. Then a line of light widens around a square of black, before the door swings open. Neo is standing there, her eyes cold as winter wind, swinging his cane and hat. He emerges into light, into shadows, and he feels both contempt and pleasure. As they run to the head of the aircraft, he kicks one of the fallen guards. All the false security duped them into their own destruction: he grins as he takes the helm, fires into the night. Far away, Cinder Fall stands in the city that will fall and she watches the stars, the final moments they will shine before they are swallowed completely by the darkness she has forged with her own hands, her own mind. And she feels nothing.

Following the conclusion of their college careers, many NFL prospects begin working with pro-style trainers. The climb to the top of draft boards can be daunting, which is why agents and NFL hopefuls invest so heavily in preparing for the NFL Combine. Trainers are asked to improve prospects' test times and numbers heading into the annual event in Indianapolis. DOWNLOAD THE FREE FIRST COAST FOOTBALL APP FOR MORE JAGUARS COVERAGE Tony Villani owns and operates XPE Sports in Boca Ration, Fla. He has worked with dozens of NFL players on their way to the league and beyond. From Anquan Boldin to Eric Berry to Joey Bosa, Villani has seen some of the NFL's best players start from the ground level and work their way up. This offseason, Villani worked with two of the newest members of the Jaguars' roster, cornerback Jalen Myrick and defensive end Carroll Phillips. Myrick was selected with the first of the Jaguars' two seventh-round picks. He ran a 4.28-second 40-yard dash in Indianapolis in February. Sign up for the GMJ On the Go Thanks Something went wrong. This email will be delivered to your inbox once a day in the morning. Thanks for signing up for the GMJ on the Go newsletter. Please try again later. Submit The Minnesota defensive back came in with blazing speed, but improved his numbers while working with Villani. “He came in and pre-tested almost as fast as anyone we’ve had,” Villani said. “He came in and pre-tested a little slower than [Indianapolis Colts wide receiver] Phillip Dorsett. Phillip Dorsett was the fastest I’ve ever pre-timed. Jalen came in and tested slower than him but got better improvement than Phillip.” Myrick, a cornerback, will get to face Dorsett twice this season, as they are now AFC South rivals. The speed bragging rights remain up in the air. “Officially, well it’s weird, if you look at the hand times in Indy, Phillip Dorsett ran a little faster,” Villani said. “If you go by the official laser time, Jalen ran a little faster. But, nonetheless, Jalen is officially very, very fast. It’s blazing whenever you can put up a 4.2 at the Combine.” Myrick and Dorsett going one-on-one could be an interesting matchup to watch on Sundays. Speaking of interesting, Villani's other Jaguars client goes by an odd moniker. Phillips signed with the Jaguars as an undrafted free agent this week. He is not a huge fan of being called by his first name, according to Villani. “He likes to be called ‘Wild Man,’” Villani said. Phillips produced 20 tackles for loss and nine sacks during his final year at Illinois. His success in college may have come from his on-the-field attitude, which leant itself to his nickname. “I don’t know, I guess he is wild out on the football field, because when you get to know him, he’s a pretty mellow, hard-working, down-to-earth dude," Villani said. "You’re supposed to call him ‘Wild Man,’ that’s what he wants to be called by coaches and everyone. I called him ‘Carroll’ once, he’s like ‘Call me Wild Man,’ so it’s not just for his friends, it’s for everyone.” Villani's warning may be a good thing to note for when you see him in the autograph line at EverBank Field. If not, you may find out how he got his handle some other way. Most Jaguars fans probably hope Phillips earns his nickname on the field this season. Follow Mike Kaye on Twitter at @Mike_E_Kaye.

Untitled a guest Dec 7th, 2012 3,278 Never a guest3,278Never Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up , it unlocks many cool features! rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint Bash 6.06 KB ########################################################################### # This HOWTO tells you how to install the Steam for Linux Limited Beta in a separate user account without giving any root privileges to Steam. # This gives you double security: # 1. None of the Steam programs is ever executed as root, not even the install script # 2. Steam is not even run with privileges of your primary user account. You are told how to generate a second user account which is a sandbox for Steam. # # The HOWTO was written and tested on Kubuntu 12.10 amd64 on 2012-12-07. ########################################################################### # do the following as root (execute "sudo -i" in a terminal to get a root shell): # add steam user account useradd --create-home --shell / bin / bash --user-group steam # deny terminal login for steam passwd -l steam # allow access to soundcard for steam usermod -a -G audio steam # now we allow access to the files of the steam user for our primary user account by adding it to the steam group # notice that this is not needed for steam to work but it is nice to have usermod -a -G steam < USERNAME OF YOUR PRIMARY USER ACCOUNT > # give write access to steam group on steam homedir chmod g+ w / home / steam # inherit steam group to files which are created in the homedir of steam by your primary user chmod g+s / home / steam # prevent steam user from modifying bash configuration so it cannot fake a "logout". ideally, never use "logout", it is insecure. instead, close the X terminal window. chattr +i / home / steam / .bash_logout / home / steam / .bashrc / home / steam / .profile # now we allow our primary user account to sudo commands as the steam user # open the file with nano editor: nano / etc / sudoers.d / steam # paste the following and press CTRL+X to exit, Y to save, ENTER to confirm the filename: < USERNAME OF YOUR PRIMARY USER ACCOUNT > ALL = ( steam ) NOPASSWD: ALL # set correct permissions: chmod 440 / etc / sudoers.d / steam # now the steam user account is set up and we install steam # we must open a terminal which runs as the steam user and preserves the connection to the X-server. # for kde-distrubtions such as kubuntu, use kdesudo: kdesudo -u steam konsole # for gnome-distributions such as ubuntu, use gksudo / gnome terminal (not tested, i use KDE): gksudo -u steam gnome-terminal # now enter the following in the terminal of the steam user: # download the steam package: wget http: // media.steampowered.com / client / installer / steam.deb # extract package control information so we can look at the install scripts dpkg -e steam.deb ~ / steam-package-control-information # extract the actual package contents: dpkg -x steam.deb ~ / steam-package # now we obtain the list of packages which we need to install for steam to work: grep Depends ~ / steam-package-control-information / control # => use your favorite package manager to install those packages. # after the packages are installed, continue in the steam user's terminal: # reading the script /home/steam/steam-package-control-information/postinst shows that the primary action of the install script is to make the update notifier execute the script "/usr/lib/steam/steam-install-notify" per user # so i looked what that script does and it tells the user to run "/usr/bin/steam" # we had extracted this script to "/home/steam/steam-package/usr/bin/steam" # so your job now is to edit this script and replace all absolute paths (= paths starting with "/") which reference steam stuff to be prefixed with $HOME/steam-package # this can be done by: # 1) listing all top level files/directories in the steam package with "ls steam-package". # 2) searching the script for the names of those files/directories # 3) looking carefully at each occurence and deciding whether it is steam stuff and needs to be changed or a system directory which does not need to be changed # here is a diff of the modifications which i have done to the 2012-12-07 version of the file: ## $ diff steam.default ~/steam-package/usr/bin/steam ## 86c86 ## < LAUNCHSTEAMBOOTSTRAPFILE="/usr/lib/$STEAMPACKAGE/bootstraplinux_$LAUNCHSTEAMPLATFORM.tar.xz" ## --- ## > LAUNCHSTEAMBOOTSTRAPFILE="/home/steam/steam-package/usr/lib/$STEAMPACKAGE/bootstraplinux_$LAUNCHSTEAMPLATFORM.tar.xz" ## 156c156 ## < cp /usr/share/applications/$STEAMPACKAGE.desktop "$DESKTOP_DIR" ## --- ## > cp /home/steam/steam-package/usr/share/applications/$STEAMPACKAGE.desktop "$DESKTOP_DIR" # so now we have a modified steam install script. # it will try to generate files in the Desktop of the user account, and the directory does not exist yet, so we create it. mkdir Desktop # now execute the install script finally: steam-package / usr / bin / steam # steam is installed now :) # now i've looked at Desktop/steam.desktop and checked for the syntax of steam. it was: "/usr/bin/steam %U" # according to "http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/ar01s06.html" the %U is an URL, so we don't need that # as a conclusion, the syntax to run steam from the terminal of the steam user is: # /home/steam/steam-package/usr/bin/steam # for being able to run steam directly from your primary user account, we can use gksudo/kdesudo: # for kde-distrubtions such as kubuntu, use kdesudo: kdesudo -u steam / home / steam / steam-package / usr / bin / steam # for gnome-distributions such as ubuntu, use gksudo (not tested, i use KDE): gksudo -u steam / home / steam / steam-package / usr / bin / steam # of course you can create a desktop shortcut which executes this command. for kde, the following works: # 1) browse to /usr/bin with the file manager # 2) drag&drop the kdesudo binary to your desktop to generate a shortcut # 3) rightclick the shortcut and select "icon settings" # 4) in the application tab, set name to "Steam", the command to "/usr/bin/kdesudo -u steam /home/steam/steam-package/usr/bin/steam", and the work path to "/home/steam" # if you liked this HOWTO, please consider donating some bitcoins to me. my address is: 1MUpLx5Y5fH7qTJdT9JvZviwAMjcc4wGWh RAW Paste Data ########################################################################### # This HOWTO tells you how to install the Steam for Linux Limited Beta in a separate user account without giving any root privileges to Steam. # This gives you double security: # 1. None of the Steam programs is ever executed as root, not even the install script # 2. Steam is not even run with privileges of your primary user account. You are told how to generate a second user account which is a sandbox for Steam. # # The HOWTO was written and tested on Kubuntu 12.10 amd64 on 2012-12-07. ########################################################################### # do the following as root (execute "sudo -i" in a terminal to get a root shell): # add steam user account useradd --create-home --shell /bin/bash --user-group steam # deny terminal login for steam passwd -l steam # allow access to soundcard for steam usermod -a -G audio steam # now we allow access to the files of the steam user for our primary user account by adding it to the steam group # notice that this is not needed for steam to work but it is nice to have usermod -a -G steam <USERNAME OF YOUR PRIMARY USER ACCOUNT> # give write access to steam group on steam homedir chmod g+w /home/steam # inherit steam group to files which are created in the homedir of steam by your primary user chmod g+s /home/steam # prevent steam user from modifying bash configuration so it cannot fake a "logout". ideally, never use "logout", it is insecure. instead, close the X terminal window. chattr +i /home/steam/.bash_logout /home/steam/.bashrc /home/steam/.profile # now we allow our primary user account to sudo commands as the steam user # open the file with nano editor: nano /etc/sudoers.d/steam # paste the following and press CTRL+X to exit, Y to save, ENTER to confirm the filename: <USERNAME OF YOUR PRIMARY USER ACCOUNT> ALL=(steam) NOPASSWD: ALL # set correct permissions: chmod 440 /etc/sudoers.d/steam # now the steam user account is set up and we install steam # we must open a terminal which runs as the steam user and preserves the connection to the X-server. # for kde-distrubtions such as kubuntu, use kdesudo: kdesudo -u steam konsole # for gnome-distributions such as ubuntu, use gksudo / gnome terminal (not tested, i use KDE): gksudo -u steam gnome-terminal # now enter the following in the terminal of the steam user: # download the steam package: wget http://media.steampowered.com/client/installer/steam.deb # extract package control information so we can look at the install scripts dpkg -e steam.deb ~/steam-package-control-information # extract the actual package contents: dpkg -x steam.deb ~/steam-package # now we obtain the list of packages which we need to install for steam to work: grep Depends ~/steam-package-control-information/control # => use your favorite package manager to install those packages. # after the packages are installed, continue in the steam user's terminal: # reading the script /home/steam/steam-package-control-information/postinst shows that the primary action of the install script is to make the update notifier execute the script "/usr/lib/steam/steam-install-notify" per user # so i looked what that script does and it tells the user to run "/usr/bin/steam" # we had extracted this script to "/home/steam/steam-package/usr/bin/steam" # so your job now is to edit this script and replace all absolute paths (= paths starting with "/") which reference steam stuff to be prefixed with $HOME/steam-package # this can be done by: # 1) listing all top level files/directories in the steam package with "ls steam-package". # 2) searching the script for the names of those files/directories # 3) looking carefully at each occurence and deciding whether it is steam stuff and needs to be changed or a system directory which does not need to be changed # here is a diff of the modifications which i have done to the 2012-12-07 version of the file: ## $ diff steam.default ~/steam-package/usr/bin/steam ## 86c86 ## < LAUNCHSTEAMBOOTSTRAPFILE="/usr/lib/$STEAMPACKAGE/bootstraplinux_$LAUNCHSTEAMPLATFORM.tar.xz" ## --- ## > LAUNCHSTEAMBOOTSTRAPFILE="/home/steam/steam-package/usr/lib/$STEAMPACKAGE/bootstraplinux_$LAUNCHSTEAMPLATFORM.tar.xz" ## 156c156 ## < cp /usr/share/applications/$STEAMPACKAGE.desktop "$DESKTOP_DIR" ## --- ## > cp /home/steam/steam-package/usr/share/applications/$STEAMPACKAGE.desktop "$DESKTOP_DIR" # so now we have a modified steam install script. # it will try to generate files in the Desktop of the user account, and the directory does not exist yet, so we create it. mkdir Desktop # now execute the install script finally: steam-package/usr/bin/steam # steam is installed now :) # now i've looked at Desktop/steam.desktop and checked for the syntax of steam. it was: "/usr/bin/steam %U" # according to "http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/ar01s06.html" the %U is an URL, so we don't need that # as a conclusion, the syntax to run steam from the terminal of the steam user is: # /home/steam/steam-package/usr/bin/steam # for being able to run steam directly from your primary user account, we can use gksudo/kdesudo: # for kde-distrubtions such as kubuntu, use kdesudo: kdesudo -u steam /home/steam/steam-package/usr/bin/steam # for gnome-distributions such as ubuntu, use gksudo (not tested, i use KDE): gksudo -u steam /home/steam/steam-package/usr/bin/steam # of course you can create a desktop shortcut which executes this command. for kde, the following works: # 1) browse to /usr/bin with the file manager # 2) drag&drop the kdesudo binary to your desktop to generate a shortcut # 3) rightclick the shortcut and select "icon settings" # 4) in the application tab, set name to "Steam", the command to "/usr/bin/kdesudo -u steam /home/steam/steam-package/usr/bin/steam", and the work path to "/home/steam" # if you liked this HOWTO, please consider donating some bitcoins to me. my address is: 1MUpLx5Y5fH7qTJdT9JvZviwAMjcc4wGWh

Video screenshot by Eric Mack/CNET An epic sunset or moonrise can often offer moments of unparalleled beauty, but what if instead of that friendly " man in the moon" coming up over the horizon, it was another of the planets from our solar system or a different star lighting our days? Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, had a little fun in the below videos showing what life would be like if we saw different celestial bodies in our skies on a regular basis. What if, instead of a lone dead satellite lighting our nights, it was actually massive Jupiter or Saturn and its rings that greeted us around dusk? While smaller planets like Mercury and Mars wouldn't appear dramatically different from our moon in the evening sky, the gas giants of our solar system would take up much larger chunks of our terrestrial view. Jupiter especially would dominate the sky. Be sure to watch to the very end of the video to get the trippy view of Earth orbited by another Earth. But why stop there? Let's go even more far out, especially now that we know there are other planets in other solar systems out there, and we can even guess at what their sunrises and sunsets might look like. (Remember our evening on the beach on Kepler 186-f?) Roscosmos also imagined what our days might look like if we orbited a star other than our sun. Watch the video below to see how Sirius, Arcturus, Vega, or, most spectacularly, our old friend the north star Polaris, might light up our world. (Via Gizmodo)

On March 28, 2012, Peter Reid posted his Exo Suit project on LEGO CUUSOO. Today, the project has achieved enough votes to be considered by the LEGO Jury to become an official LEGO set. The Exo Suit is Peter’s most popular MOC and has been featured on page 251 in The LEGO Book . It may have taken a while to get the supporters but it was well worth the wait. Now the project is now eligible to go to the Spring Review stage on March 4th. Congratulations to Peter for this amazing accomplishment! The Andy/Bugdroid the Android by Google project by GLHTurbo now becomes the highest supported project on LEGO CUUSOO. Read the official LEGO statement below: Congratulations on 10,000 Supporters, PeterReid! 2013.01.09 Again, beautiful model and well-deserved success! It’s great to see a model that carries the essence of classic LEGO Space forward to the “present day” of building qualify for review. Congratulations on achieving 10,000 supporters. We now officially advance this project to the Review phase. What happens now? This project moves from the Idea stage to the Review stage. A “LEGO Review Board” composed of designers, product managers, and other key team members will examine the idea. We’ll build concept models and determine if the concept meets our high standards for what it takes to be a LEGO product. This includes factors such as playability, safety, and fit with the LEGO brand. Every potential LEGO product goes through a process like this and must meet the same standards. The LEGO Review Begins in March This project qualifies for the quarterly review beginning in March, which will also include all projects that reach 10,000 between now and March 4. For more information about the quarterly review process, see this blog post. The review is a thorough process and from its start, and can take several months. When finished, we make a “go/no go” decision to develop and sell a product based on the Exo Suit concept. When the review is complete, we will inform you of our decision. If green-lit, this project goes into the longest phase of the project; the Development phase. During this time, LEGO model designers refine the product and develop it for release, we create the product materials (box, instructions, marketing), and get everything ready for a production run. This also takes several months. We will post follow-up information and our decision here. The LEGO CUUSOO Team

As all too many rape victims discover when they speak out, many react by just wishing the victim would shut up and go away. Most rapists attack someone they know, which means that holding them accountable means tearing apart whatever community — school, work, friend group — that the accused and accuser belong in. Often, it feels just easier to pressure the accuser to shut up and go away so everything can return to normal, even though that often requires ignoring that there's a sexual predator in your midst. Advertisement: In a report released on Thursday, Human Rights Watch turned up alarming evidence that, in the military, forces that want to shut accusers up and make them go away have found a disturbingly potent weapon: Misogynist stereotypes. By leaning on prejudiced beliefs that women, especially outspoken women, are either dishonest or crazy, the military was able to get rid of women who came forward with rape accusations. The 124-page report, “Booted: Lack of Recourse for Wrongfully Discharged US Military Rape Survivors,” found that many rape victims suffering from trauma were unfairly discharged for a “personality disorder” or other mental health condition that makes them ineligible for benefits. Others were given “Other Than Honorable” discharges for misconduct related to the assault that shut them out of the Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare system and a broad range of educational and financial assistance. The consequences of having “bad paper” – any discharge other than “honorable” – or being labeled as having a “personality disorder” are far-reaching for veterans and their families, impacting employment, child custody, health care, disability payments, burial rights – virtually all aspects of life. Dismissing women as crazy or liars or both is a long-standing tactic of rape denialists, who feed of false social beliefs about women being less mentally stable or straightforward than men. That's how, for instance, Bill Cosby was able to coast so long, despite having settled a lawsuit out of court in which the plaintiff had 13 women ready and willing to speak out. The belief that women are inherently off somehow is so ingrained that it was easy for the public to believe that more than a football team's worth of women was just doing this out of a female strain of crazy vindictiveness. It wasn't until the numbers swelled to the dozens that most of the public had to start questioning whether it might just be possible that the explanation for the accusations was that they were true instead of that women are crazy monsters who lie for sport. The notion that women are crazy liars is so ingrained in our society that it's often hard to see it. But it's the go-to way to dismiss any woman who speaks out or resists a male-dominated social order. The percentage of women who have been called "crazy" during a domestic spat with a man probably hovers around 99.9%. (Kudos to the men, most of whom admit to having done this in the past, who are publicly pushing back against how easy it is for men to win an argument by simply "diagnosing" their partners as crazy.) Feminists have always faced down accusations that their activism is rooted in the crazy-lyingness of women, since the days of the suffrage movement to the constant drumbeat of "crazy" accusations that feminists get these days on Twitter. One of the most famous books of American 19th century literature deals with the way that women's ambitions and outspokenness is so frequently rewarded with "diagnoses" of mental illness. As evidence for the power of the "women are crazy liars" stereotype, consider the current election landscape. Hillary Clinton is, in objective terms, the most honest candidate who ran a presidential campaign this year. But she is usually rated the least trustworthy. The widespread gap between reality and perception is due largely, probably entirely, to ugly stereotypes about outspoken women as mentally unstable hysterics who lie for sport. Under the circumstances, it's no surprise that calling women crazy or liars is to standard way societies dismiss rape charges that they don't want to deal with. That's terrible in and of itself, but for military women, it's even worse, because these trumped-up charges end up in their military discharge papers, imperiling their opportunities to get work in the future. As the report notes, the stigma of being labeled with "personality disorder" or "mental illness", even if you don't have one, can be used against women in child custody cases and make it harder for them to get health care. Advertisement: Worse, there's almost no recourse. "US law prohibits service members from suing the military for any harm suffered related to their service," the report reads. "The Boards for Correction of Military Records and Discharge Review Boards, the administrative bodies responsible for correcting injustices to service members’ records, are overwhelmed with thousands of cases." The cases that HRW collected are horrific. One woman reports that she was groped, bullied, and raped by her male colleagues in the Navy. She finally complained when they — no joke — waited until she was asleep and set her on fire. "[T]he perpetrators were only given an oral reprimand and, when she complained to a supervisor, she was told she was overreacting," the report reads. After she complained again about an officer who kept groping her, she was "diagnosed" with a "personality disorder" and discharged. She has since struggled to find work, since no one wants to hire a supposedly crazy lady. Advertisement: Obviously, in some cases HRW looked at, there was a decline in mental health. (That happens to rape victims a lot of the time. Shocking, I know.) But, as HRW found, victims who really do need a mental health discharge are often not informed that there is a process to leave for mental health reasons where you are not stuck with an other-than-honorable discharge that can affect future job prospects. The eagerness to get rid of them leads to people who didn't do anything wrong and really need help being stuck with a stigmatized discharge that often makes it even harder to get that help. HRW recommends many policy fixes to make it easier for rape victims to survive without having to carry a dishonorable or other-than-honorable discharge around for the rest of their lives, including not allowing the military to discharge a victim with a "personality disorder" without proper diagnosis and making it easier for victims to get a hearing to change their discharge status. But this problem is also a microcosm of a larger social ill, which is our tendency to lean on stereotypes of women being "crazy" or "liars" whenever they speak out about injustice. We've come far, as a society, on gender issues, but we still live in a world where a woman can be groped, raped, and even set on fire, but she ends up being told she's the crazy one while no one asks about the mental status of men who would do such things. That needs to change, and we can all help by resisting the urge to dismiss any woman who tips our applecart with the word "crazy."

In another example of why Bitcoin is probably best for online transactions, the mercurial PayPal has shut down ProtonMail’s account, freezing $270,000 in limbo until “questions” are “answered” regarding the cash. PayPal is quite good at shutting down popular funding efforts including, most notably, Wikileak’s donation provider a few years ago. Writes Andy Yen, co-founder of the platform: While the $275,000ProtonMail has raised in the past 2 weeks is a large amount, it pales in comparison to many othercrowdfunding campaigns that have raised sums in excess of $1,000,000 so we can’t help but wonder whyProtonMail was singled out. When we pressed the PayPal representative on the phone for further details, he questioned whetherProtonMail is legal and if we have government approval to encrypt emails. We are not sure which government PayPal is referring to, but even the 4th Amendment of the US constitution guarantees:“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures….”It seems PayPal is trying to come up with ANY excuse they can to prevent us from receiving funds. ProtonMail, you’ll recall, is a secure mail program designed to encrypt messages in the browser before they reach the mail server. They raised $284,008 on Indiegogo so far. Folks interested in avoiding the black hole of PayPal can send pledges to ProtonMail’s Bitcoin wallet and get the same perks. This also points to the urgent need for BTC adoption by both major crowdfunding organizations because PayPal is dangerous. Paypal had this comment:

The 51-year old German, who has won the German Rally Championship three times and also competed on the Dakar Rally, will join PSRX’s regular drivers Solberg and Johan Kristoffersson for his rallycross debut at his home event. “When [Motorsport Director] Sven Smeets asked me if I could envisage starting at my home race in Buxtehude, I didn’t need to think about it for long,” said Depping. “I’m really looking forward to the races at the Estering, but I also have a huge amount of respect for them – particularly the start.” Depping also has experience of circuit racing, driving in the Nurburgring 24-hour race in 2010. In his role as Volkswagen’s test driver since 2001, Depping played a pivotal role in the development of the Polo R WRC (from 2011), the car which formed the basis of the Polo GTi Supercar for 2017. “I will prepare well for the races and am already looking forward to the great setting at the Estering. My thanks also go to Petter Solberg’s team, who are taking me and my Polo under their wing for this competition,” he said. The Polo GTi has been the car to beat in World RX this season, and has been undefeated in the series since the fourth round in Belgium. With four wins to his credit, Kristoffersson currently leads his teammate by 35 points in the drivers’ championship, while the squad leads the teams’ standings by over 100 points. “Dieter has done a valuable job for Volkswagen as a test driver and racing driver for many years now,” said Smeets. “He was part of the Dakar team, was involved in the development of countless racing cars and, last but not least, played a major role in Volkswagen bringing home a total of twelve world championship titles with the Polo R WRC. "The start in Buxtehude is a way of thanking Dieter for his fantastic work, but we are also delighted to have a local hero lining up at the rallycross highlight in Lower Saxony.” Last year, Mattias Ekstrom claimed the World RX drivers' title at the Estering. If Kristoffersson maintains his margin at the head of the order after September’s events in France and Latvia, he too could be crowed World Champion at the historic rallycross venue.

Tottenham Hotspur have reportedly made preliminary enquiries about the availability of Ajax manager Frank de Boer. Tottenham Hotspur have allegedly shortlisted Ajax boss Frank de Boer as a potential candidate for the vacant managerial post at the club. Spurs director of football Franco Baldini has made preliminary enquiries to establish whether the Dutchman would be interested in the role, according to The Mirror. De Boer's Ajax assistant Dennis Bergkamp was once a fan favourite at Spurs' bitter rivals Arsenal, but it is unknown whether he would be included in any deal that is brokered. Tim Sherwood was appointed as caretaker manager at White Hart Lane following the dismissal of Andre Villas-Boas, but has expressed uncertainty about taking charge on a permanent basis. Earlier this year, De Boer received the Rinus Michels Award for manager of the year in the Holland after leading Ajax to their third successive Eredivisie title.

I’m just going to go ahead and put this all beneath a cut because we’re headed deep into Spoiler Country, including the return of a Game of Thrones cast member who has been absent for a couple seasons. Thanks to a new season 6 report from Los Siete Reinos, we’ve learned… YES! THE BLACKFISH HAS RETURNED! Okay, I’ll calm down now. Last seen ducking out of the Red Wedding for a well-timed bathroom break, Brynden Tully aka The Blackfish has been missing since season 3. Catelyn’s uncle, played by Clive Russell, has been considered alive according to interviews, and fans have been anxiously awaiting his return. Los Siete Reinos says their sources confirm Russell was seen filming as the Blackfish this week in Corbet, Northern Ireland. We reported in September that Jaime Lannister and Bronn would be journeying to the Riverlands together; happily the new spoilers confirm this! They also report that scenes with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Jerome Flynn were shot there. There were scenes involving an assault filmed, with the Blackfish possibly defending the garrison and shooting flaming arrows. We’ll be seeing Jaime and the Blackfish having an argument, as well. Fans have been wondering if a Blackfish return was in the cards for a while now, particularly since a Riverrun set was spotted in the works in Corbet. Wooden structures built by the set hinted at possible siege engines. The siege of Riverrun, and the role the Blackfish plays in it, is part of A Feast for Crows, the 4th ASOIAF novel. The scenes mentioned by Los Siete Reinos so far are in line with the siege and Jaime and Blackfish’s disagreements from the novel. The new twist is Bronn’s presence; the show is apparently continuing the partnership between Bronn and Jaime into season 6. With the Blackfish returning, can we hope for Edmure as well? Catelyn’s younger brother (played by Tobias Menzies) has been a hostage off-screen since the Red Wedding. Menzies has been busy with Outlander since his Game of Thrones days, but I’d love to see Edmure back if only to provide some resolution to that part of the story. There’s a fresh photo of the tents outside Riverrun. They’re set up on the grounds of Linen Mill Studios- in the other photos in the set linked, you can see the studio buildings and the same ship/green screen Game of Thrones has used for most of the ship scenes for the past few years. It may not have anything to do with the siege, or it might- there is no way to tell at this point. With the Blackfish’s return, I’m basically frothing at the mouth for season 6. What do you think of these new developments, readers?

Browns quarterback Brian Hoyer talks about starting for his hometown team, hating the Steelers much more than the Ravens and the quarterback competition between himself and Johnny Manziel. (3:29) As Johnny Manziel signed big marketing deals with the likes of Nike, Nissan, MusclePharm and Panini, Brian Hoyer was quietly winning the starting quarterback job for the Cleveland Browns with little interest from corporate America. Now, one restaurant chain that signed Hoyer in the spring is reaping the benefits of picking the man who eventually won the job. As part of Brian Hoyer's endorsement deal with Mr. Hero, an Ohio-based chain, the Browns' starter can get about as many sandwiches as he can eat. Courtesy of All Media Design Group Mr. Hero, which has 95 stores (all in Ohio), signed Hoyer in the spring; the chain filmed TV and radio spots and allotted marketing dollars for billboards and buses wrapped with his image. "We didn't quite anticipate that they'd draft Johnny, so we were sweating a little bit," said Dan Traci, owner of All Media Design Group, an ad firm that has the Mr. Hero account and advocated picking Hoyer as spokesman. As Hoyer and Manziel battled for the job, Manziel vaulted to the best-selling jersey in the league, while Hoyer's jersey, at one point, wasn't even available on the Browns' website. Hoyer wasn't exactly a slam dunk pick. After spending years as a backup, he tore an ACL last year, and then the Browns selected Manziel with the 22nd pick in this year's draft. Hoyer celebrated his 29th birthday on Sunday with a 31-10 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers, the team's largest margin of victory over its rival in 25 years and Hoyer's sixth victory in eight games as the team's starter. "Let's just say, as Brian and the Browns continue to do well, the deal gets better for us and perhaps less so for him," Traci said. Traci wouldn't divulge specifics of Mr. Hero's deal with Hoyer other than to say it's for less than six figures annually, comes with incentives based on on-field performance and accolades and, if Hoyer turns into a real star, allows Mr. Hero the option to retain Hoyer for next year at the terms already agreed to. Hoyer, who will be making a 1½-hour autograph appearance at one of Mr. Hero's stores next Tuesday, also gets plenty of free food in the deal. "We gave him some gift cards with this deal," Traci said. "And let's put it this way: He could eat Mr. Hero every day of the season and would still have money left on those cards." Hoyer's agent, Joe Linta, told ESPN.com that pitching his client to companies before the season wasn't the easiest job. One company he approached said to call back when he's named the starter. Hoyer, who has 77,000 Twitter followers, has tweeted only four times this season. Three have been apparent endorsement deals. One for Mr. Hero, another for a bed brand called Reverie and another for Distillata, a Cleveland-based spring water company.

Hang Foxygen Get a load of these guys. These two young guys in the corner booth of a small bar. Classy joint. Beautiful ugly woman sits at the taps. Frail handsome man with a rag mops around her drink. Collectin' the dust. There are other people in the bar is what I'm saying but forget them we wanna focus on the men in the booth. There's something about these two guys. Some sort of exotic mystique. They got an air of show business about em. Like talented actors. Like they've seen triumph and scandal and delirium. How old are they? Could be 37 year olds playing 25 year olds. Could be kids dressed as adults. All I know is these two young guys are lookin' good and bored and ready for some kinda seismic activity. The tall one name of 'France' gets up goes to the bathroom. Comes back with a condom from the machine. Stuffs it in his wallet where the other one used to be. He's muttering his debut novella to Himself. The other one, all cheek bone structure and hair goes by 'Rado.' He's tapping out a rhythm with chopsticks up against the table which he's muted with a napkin. Erratic thuds. Rado's just now written an album in his mind and he's ready for a milkshake. They've each got different hair styles. Different builds. Different ways. But they seem to move as a unit. Like a two legged dog attached to some kind of cart mechanism that follows the drifter around. Snarls when I try to pat it. They don't seem dangerous but they could be the guys they were talking about on the news. Is that why they turned the TV off when they came in? Bar tender didn't bat an eyelid when the Rado one yanked the power chord out. These guys are American that's for sure. West Coast Vampires. They're in the entertainment business. Immigrant ancestors. Real mix of blood types. Gamblers and magnates and Hustlers and POWs. All distilling down to true lyrics and songs that matter in the San Fernando valley and every other place too. Real operators. Kinda guys that discover young talent and harvest it into superstar outfits. Kinda guys that assemble the most talented musicians they could find from LA to Long Island for things like exotic show band arrangements and ambient beauty. Real guys. Guys that make moves. From one place to another. Besides, Foxygen was never just one band. Foxygen is the Big Bang of two combusting minds. It's the splayed Galaxy of polar geniuses Sam France and Jonathan Rado. It's a handshake with a knife behind your back. A cosmic, Californian death-game of highway chicken. A sleepless night in a five star hotel. Truth or dare. Foxygen is the risk of pushing your best friend off the ledge just to see if they can fly. You listen to this album properly. You take in each moment. Each new melody that threads forward from the fingertips of one of this generation's finest piano men in Jonathan Rado. And you fall in line behind Sam France's sprawling and reckless lyric. Witness his mastery. Feel them struggle against the walls of their own creations. Follow them there. To the perimeter. To the exit sign. And let your eyes fog up with thoughts like 'For at least this moment I understand how cold blooded and beautiful I am.' Notice that the two young guys aren't there anymore. They're outside looking for another joint to haunt. They're already out of sight. And now you're on a train. Facing the wrong way so the trees are passing in front of you. And you're looking forward but everything is getting further away. These nowhere towns somehow sound good. Like the city is heavy, but out here we float a little bit. America is too big of a boat to sink. Don't sink baby. Hang.

WEST ORANGE — The man accused of gunning down a Livingston teenager in his car earlier this summer told investigators the murder was an act of retribution for U.S. military action against Muslims in the Middle East. According to court documents filed Wednesday in Washington state, where he is accused of killing three other men, Ali Muhammad Brown said he considered it his mission to murder 19-year-old Brendan Tevlin as an act of “vengeance” for innocent lives lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran. “All these lives are taken every single day by America, by this government. So a life for a life,” he told detectives, according to the documents. Brown, 29, also confessed to killing the other men, all of whom, like Tevlin, were shot multiple times in isolated areas late at night. He described the murder as a “just kill” – carried out against an adult male who was not in the company of any women, children or elderly persons, court papers said. Prosecutors say Brown is a devout Muslim who had become angered by U.S. military intervention in the Islamic world, which he referred to as “evil.” He also referred to drug use as inherently evil. “During the interview Brown also stated that, as part of his beliefs, if a ‘man sees evil then he must take action against that evil’,” according to court papers. Essex County authorities have characterized Tevlin’s June 25 murder as a robbery that turned violent when Brown fired 10 shots into the popular college student’s vehicle, which was stopped at a red light at the corner of Walker Road and Northfield Avenue in West Orange. While three other men, including Brown’s co-defendants Eric Williams and Jeremy Villagran, fled the scene, Brown moved Tevlin’s body into the passenger seat and drove his car to a nearby apartment building, where he abandoned it. The brutal slaying was just one act in what authorities have characterized as a spree of violence that began two months earlier and 3,000 miles away. On April 27, police found the body of 30-year-old Leroy Henderson on a stretch of road called the Skyway outside Seattle, which was later linked to Brown via shell casings that matched those found in his other alleged murders. Prosecutors in Washington say there was no sign of a struggle prior to the slaying, that the two had any prior relationship or contact, or that the crime was motivated by “robbery, drugs or any other crime.” Brown is also charged with gunning down two Seattle men, Ahmed Said and Dwone Anderson-Young, on June 1. Authorities say he had met Said through a hook-up app aimed at gay men, and met them at a nightclub before shooting them. Brown, a registered sex offender and transient who lived in East Orange briefly as a youth, has a lengthy criminal history dating back more than a decade. In 2004, he was arrested along with 13 other members of an alleged bank fraud ring in Seattle, which federal investigators believed may have been sending money earned through the scheme to terrorist groups. But court papers say prosecutors were never able to compile any evidence the money was being shipped overseas. In 2005, Brown pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, and was released with credit for time served. Brown was arrested in West Orange on July 18, and is currently being held at the Essex County Jail in Newark on $5 million bail. Authorities are in discussions over whether to extradite him to Washington, where he could face the death penalty if convicted. Dan Ivers may be reached at divers@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DanIversNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

ORLANDO, Fla. — The Toronto Blue Jays want Shohei Ohtani. Now, the only question that matters is: Does the two-way Japanese sensation want them? Set aside the confusion surrounding the posting process and the ins and outs of the international bonus pool restrictions that the 23-year-old left-handed hitter and right-handed pitcher is subject to. The chase for the Nippon Ham Fighters star could boil down, very simply, to where Ohtani wants to play baseball. To quote Lloyd Christmas … so you’re telling me there’s a chance? On the first day of the GM Meetings in Orlando, Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins admitted they’re ready to put a full-court press on Ohtani as soon as he’s officially posted. “We are extremely prepared,” Atkins said. “He fits about as well as anybody could fit for our team right now. He’s an incredible talent.” You’d have to be inside Ohtani’s head — or at least inside his inner circle — to know what cities he likes and what kind of quality of life aspects interest him. But two things are certain: One is that he’s interested in winning. The other is that he’s eyeing a chance to continue his career as both a pitcher and hitter. That’s something the Blue Jays can offer thanks to the American League DH, and it sounds like it will be part of the pitch. Atkins feels like the organization’s investment in high performance analytics may help on that front too. “There aren’t examples of it in the modern game, but data around recovery specific to that player, data around recovery relative to other players per position,” Atkins said. “We’re not going to have concrete research on how to have a two-way player, but to be a bit more scientific about it than subjective, I think, is a benefit to any organization that’s prepared to do that.” Since Ohtani is under the age of 25, he’s subject to bonus pool restrictions, which hard caps teams between $4.75 million and $5.75 million to spend each year from July 2 until the following June. Teams can also acquire up to 75 per cent of their original bonus pool allotment via trade. According to reports, only six teams have enough bonus pool money to even offer Ohtani six figures. The Blue Jays are not one of those six, but Atkins doesn’t feel that will be a problem if they get to that point. “I don’t think we would have to do too much entirely different than most teams,” Atkins said. “This is going to be an interesting process, for sure. There’s still a lot more information to come, but I think by all means that we are in a position where we’re prepared to be just as capable as most teams to acquire him.” Ohtani may not have the financial bargaining power that Japanese stars before him were afforded when they made the MLB move, but he still has the right to choose his destination, and that has every single team — some more realistically than others — at least holding out hope. ANTHOPOULOS MAKES BRAVE MOVE Two years after parting ways with the franchise he built back into a contender, former Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos was introduced as the Atlanta Braves’ new general manager Monday afternoon while the GM meetings were getting going. Anthopoulos was expected to hop a flight to Orlando late Monday to join his cohorts at the annual event and get right to work on an interesting Atlanta roster that boasts one of the best farm systems in baseball. The 40-year-old Montreal product, still revered by Jays fans for bringing post-season baseball back to Toronto, got exactly what he was looking for too — full control of baseball operations. “I view this as one of the premier jobs in all of sports with the young talent that we have here,” Anthopoulos said during the press conference. “There are some dynamic young players. There's no question that we certainly expect big things moving forward.” ATKINS’ TARGETS While Atkins had no interest in getting into specifics Monday, he did skirt around the subject of his roster priorities. As you can expect with a team that finished 10 games under .500, there are a lot of needs, but position players are atop the list. “Right now, I think the bulk of our focus is on position players,” Atkins said. “Part of that is where our team is, part of that is the market.” While the glaring hole in right field would seem to be a top priority, Atkins pointed to the need for more versatility on the roster, especially in the middle infield. “I think our priority is complementing our infield in some way with versatility,” Atkins said. “Someone who can, not just play when needed, but someone who could potentially get 600 plate appearances across our infield.” “We have to be prepared if Devon (Travis) is not ready to give us 600 plate appearances. If (Troy) Tulowitzki’s not able to give us 150 games, we have to be prepared to offset that. I think the best way to do that is to find someone that has the versatility that could also go to the outfield when we do have a completely healthy infield.” The well-travelled Eduardo Nunez, who’s played more than 50 games in his career at second base, third base, shortstop and in the outfield, could fit the bill in that regard. Nunez has been worth a total of 4.8 fWAR over the past two seasons. AROUND THE DIAMOND Atkins, president/CEO Mark Shapiro, and a group of around 40 from the Blue Jays organization will attend Roy Halladay’s celebration of life Tuesday afternoon in Clearwater, Fla., about two hours away from where the GM Meetings are being held … Atkins shot down the report that Halladay had been turned away by the Jays organization when he wanted to work with their young pitchers. “What was reported wasn’t accurate,” Atkins said. “I’d rather not get into the details.” … Asked whether teams have been inquiring about third baseman Josh Donaldson, who’s slated to become a free agent after the 2018 season, Atkins didn’t say no, but reiterated what the franchise has been saying since June. “Every team also understands how much we value Josh Donaldson and how important he is to us,” Atkins said.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The storage containers are attractively displayed at the Walmart on Atlantic Boulevard in Canton. The bins are lined up in alternating colors of purple and orange. Some sit on tables covered with golden yellow tablecloths. Others peer out from under the tables. This isn't a merchandise display. It's a food drive - not for the community, but for needy workers. "Please Donate Food Items Here, so Associates in Need Can Enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner," read signs affixed to the tablecloths. The food drive tables are tucked away in an employees-only area. They are another element in the backdrop of the public debate about salaries for cashiers, stock clerks and other low-wage positions at Walmart, as workers in Cincinnati and Dayton are scheduled to go on strike Monday. Chat wrap: OUR Walmart rep answers your questions about this story Is the food drive proof the retailer pays so little that many employees can't afford Thanksgiving dinner? Norma Mills of Canton, who lives near the store, saw the photo circulating showing the food drive bins, and felt both "outrage" and "anger." "Then I went through the emotion of compassion for the employees, working for the largest food chain in America, making low wages, and who can't afford to provide their families with a good Thanksgiving holiday," said Mills, an organizer with Stand Up for Ohio, which is active in foreclosure issues in Canton. "That Walmart would have the audacity to ask low-wage workers to donate food to other low-wage workers -- to me, it is a moral outrage." Kory Lundberg, a Walmart spokesman, said the food drive is proof that employees care about each other. "It is for associates who have had some hardships come up," he said. "Maybe their spouse lost a job. "This is part of the company's culture to rally around associates and take care of them when they face extreme hardships," he said. Lundberg said holding the food drive at the Canton Walmart was decided at the store level. However, the effort could be considered in line with what happens company-wide. The Associates in Critical Need Trust is funded by Walmart employee contributions that can be given through payroll deduction. He said employees can receive grants up to $1,500 to address hardships they may encounter, including homelessness, serious medical illnesses and major repairs to primary vehicles. Since 2001, grants totaling $80 million have been made. But an employee at the Canton store wasn't feeling that Walmart was looking out for her when she went to her locker more than two weeks ago and discovered the food drive containers. To her, the gesture was proof the company acknowledged many of its employees were struggling, but also proof it was not willing to substantively address their plight. The employee said she didn't want to use her name for fear of being fired. In a dozen years working at the company, she had never seen a food drive for employees, which she described as "demoralizing" and "kind of depressing". The employee took photos of the bins, and sent them to the Organization United for Respect at Walmart, or OUR Walmart, the group of associates holding the strikes in Cincinnati and Dayton. Vanessa Ferreira, an OUR Walmart organizer, said she "flipped out" when she first saw the photos taken by the Canton worker. "Why would a company do that?" she said. "The company needs to stand up and give them their 40 hours and a living wage, so they don't have to worry about whether they can afford Thanksgiving." The strikes against Walmart, which have been staged in the last several weeks across the country, including at stores in California, Florida and Illinois, are focusing on three issues: ensuring that no associate makes less than $25,000 a year, offering employees more full-time work and "ending illegal retaliation" against employees who speak out against pay and working conditions. The first strike occurred last Black Friday at Walmart stores throughout the country. Though most associates remained on the job, many credit the event with being the public launch of the low-wage workers' movement. Efforts to raise the minimum wage would follow, including a bill pending before Congress to raise the federal hourly minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10. (The minimum wage in Ohio is $7.85.) In the time since, fast-food workers also have staged strikes, demanding the minimum wage be raised. OUR Walmart won't say what is planned for this Black Friday, but the group has a news conference scheduled Monday afternoon in Washington, D.C. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Joseph Hansen, international president of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, are scheduled to announce organized labor's commitment to Black Friday efforts. Lundberg said taken in this context, OUR Walmart had incentive to first misinterpret and then blow out of proportion the food drive at the Canton store as fodder for the campaign. Erica Reed, an associate at the Canton store, agrees. She said food drives have been going on at the store for a few years, so she questions why they are becoming an issue now. Reed said past food drives helped her cope with her own problems, not caused by low wages but because of losing $500 a month in child support when the father of her four children went to jail. She declined to give her salary. "It took a burden off me. I didn't have to worry about how I was getting my turkey to feed them Thanksgiving dinner," she said. Reed said it was "ignorant" to question efforts to help people in need or blame Walmart for the economic realities of the labor force nationally. "You can't find a decent job anywhere," she said. Scott Stringer, a Dayton associate who said he intends to go on strike, said Walmart bears blame because of its dominance. He makes $9.30 an hour after five years with the company. "Walmart sets the precedent for everybody, so if they make changes, everyone would follow suit," he said. "The economy and the United States, in general, would be a better place." A question of salaries Lundberg said nationally that associates make $12.87 an hour. The company considers those working at least 34 hours to be full time. He said the average full-time employee works 37 to 38 hours a week. That comes to an annual salary of about $25,000. OUR Walmart places the average salary at between $8 and $10 an hour, based on glassdoor.com and other websites that compile salaries, often without company participation. Based on that range, the average associate's salary is roughly between $15,000 and $20,000 a year. For example, after about a dozen years on the job, the Canton employee who took the photos makes nearly $12 any hour. But the hourly rate is misleading, she said. Though officially a full-time worker, the associate said she only made about $17,000 last year because the company has had a common practice in recent years of cutting hours. Lundberg said this isn't true and that the company is committed to having full-time employees. For example, he said company-wide, 35,000 associates are scheduled to be promoted from part time to full time between September and January. Ricki Hahn, a Dayton associate who intends to strike Monday, said poor working conditions -- and not money -- motivated her to speak out. She said supervisors consistently berating employees -- often in public -- is part of Walmart's culture. So is failing to address unsafe working conditions, such as unsecured shelving in a stock room that could fall on employees, she said. The company says it has good working conditions, in terms of safety and employee relations. Hahn, who makes $11.70 an hour after 7AA1/2 years, describes her salary as "pretty good'' since she knows it is hard for her to get credit for experience in her industry, and she would be back earning near minimum wage should she take a similar job at another retailer. Hahn said she is realistic about the salaries low-skilled workers should make. For example, she supports the federal bill to raise the minimum wage to $10.10, but believes the fast-food workers demand of $15 is too high. While the Walmart strike isn't just about wages, it always seems to come back to money. Hahn is constantly reminded of this during the work day. "Personally, it is difficult for me to stock groceries that I can't afford at the end of the day," she said. Symbols both in food drive and strike While Walmart officials and many employees see the food drive bins as a symbol of generosity, others see it differently. "That captures Walmart right there," said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University's labor school. "Walmart is setting up bins because its employees don't make enough to feed themselves and their families." Mills, the Canton community activist, said the issue of the food drive drew her in because for her it represented another case of corporations behaving irresponsibly and then leaving the less fortunate to "clean up the mess." She said if employees can't afford Thanksgiving, then Walmart should pay for turkey dinners "with all the fixings and all the sides." Mills successfully worked toward getting Canton to pass a law requiring banks and other financial institutions to put up bonds so the city wouldn't be left paying to maintain the homes on which these institutions foreclosed. Many of these foreclosures were the result of subprime and predatory loans, she said. "I call it the reverse Robin Hood effect," she said. Walmart sees the strikes as a symbol without substance. For example, during the highly publicized strikes in Los Angeles earlier this month, the company said no more than 20 associates participated, though there were about 275 demonstrators. Bronfenbrenner said the company is misinterpreting the low numbers of workers on strike. "There were many work places, that when the striking workers returned, many workers inside stood up and clapped," she said. Both Dayton strikers Hahn and Stringer say they have strong support, even if fellow workers won't join them on the picket line. "A lot of friends of mine at work want to go out on strike, but they fear that they won't be able to support their families if something happens," Hahn said. That something could mean losing a job, said Ferreira, the OUR Walmart organizer. She said she got fired after participating in the 2012 Black Friday strikes. Ferreira was terminated some time after the strike on trumped up charges of staying on break too long, she said. Lundberg said Walmart has a very strong anti-retaliation policy. Hahn and Stringer see themselves at the beginning of a movement that they believe will mushroom. "We'll be speaking out for other areas, like Cleveland, that aren't striking," Hahn said. "Just because they aren't striking Monday, doesn't mean it can't happen there soon."

The Russian attempt to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, using what intelligence agencies call “active measures,” has dominated U.S. headlines. advertisement advertisement There is, however, a second front in Russia’s effort to shape the hearts and minds of U.S. citizens, and it’s received almost no attention in mainstream U.S. media outlets since the election. As someone who studies the growth of global public relations, I’ve researched the roles PR firms play in shaping public perceptions of international affairs. For years, Russia has been involved in public relations campaigns that have been developed and deployed by prominent, U.S.-based, global PR firms–campaigns intended to influence U.S. public opinion and policy in ways that advance Russia’s strategic interests. Legal Propaganda? Public relations is an industry that seeks to cultivate favorable impressions of corporations, products, individuals, or causes. A company or public figure might hire a firm to increase visibility, advance marketing agendas, promote strategic initiatives, or manage a crisis. But things can get tricky when foreign governments get involved. When they hire PR firms to influence public opinion in other countries, they could undermine the domestic values and goals of the targeted nations. In the 1930s, the PR firm of Ivy Lee–who, along with Edward Bernays, is regarded as a “founding father” of the public relations industry–was accused of circulating Nazi propaganda in the U.S. In response, Congress enacted the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in 1938, which required foreign propagandists operating in the U.S. to register with the government. In 1966, FARA was amended to cover people promoting the economic and political interests of their foreign clients. In what has become an infamous example of political PR, Kuwait hired numerous U.S. and U.K. firms to drum up support for the 1991 Persian Gulf War. As part of that effort, PR giant Hill & Knowlton audaciously created a front group to hold hearings, led by two U.S. Congressmen, on Iraq’s human rights violations. Called the “Human Rights Caucus,” the group wasn’t actually an official congressional caucus. advertisement advertisement According to ProPublica, Ketchum also placed what appeared to be independent opinion pieces praising Russia in the Huffington Post, on CNBC’s website (where links to those stories are no longer active), and in other publications without acknowledging their sources. The firm lobbied Time magazine to name Putin “Person of the Year,” which it did in 2007. That same year, according to Reuters, Ketchum tried to convince the U.S. State Department to soften its assessment of Russia’s human rights abuses. The firm also contacted reporters who cover Russian human rights abuses and urged them to tone down their criticism. Faced with intense criticism after Russia seized Crimea in 2014, Ketchum formally ended its contract with Russia in March 2015, tersely announcing that it “no longer represents the Russian Federation in the U.S. or Europe with the exception of our office in Moscow.” However, one of its partners, GPlus, continued the relationship under similar terms. Exploiting The Loopholes Late last year, Russia’s Minister of Communications Nikolay Nikiforov announced that the Kremlin would be seeking new contracts with Western PR firms this summer to improve its global image, with the intent of spending between $30 and $50 million a year, and possibly more. He indicated that Russia is seeking smaller, less expensive, and perhaps less visible firms than Ketchum. PRWeek quoted a leading Russian political analyst, Stanislav Belkovsky, who told the publication, “There are a number of schemes that can be used to avoid U.S. accounting rules on lobbying and PR.” In other words, he was pointing out that there are ways to avoid registering with FARA, and thereby concealing the sources of the pro-Russian messaging. advertisement Indeed, the Project on Government Oversight, an independent nonpartisan watchdog group, cites loopholes in FARA that make it difficult to police violations. Even when violations are discovered, prosecution is rare. Instead, lapses are usually remediated by late filing. This is what happened in the recent cases of Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who represented pro-Putin forces in Ukraine, and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who represented Turkey. Though they had both been working as foreign lobbyists for an extended period of time, they only recently filed with FARA as foreign agents. And because the U.S. regulates lobbying, and not PR, another common legal loophole involves contracting with firms that have both public relations and lobbying arms. Clients will then channel as much of their business as possible through the PR arm. The Blurry Line Between PR And News PR as a subject is rarely covered by the mainstream media in the U.S., but nonprofits like ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity, the Sunlight Foundation, and NPR fill some of the void. It’s in contrast to the U.K., where publications like the Guardian extensively cover the nexus of public relations, politics, and policy. During Prime Minister Tony Blair’s tenure, PR grew rapidly in Britain as politicians and businesses adopted U.S.-style electioneering and promotional techniques. Perhaps for this reason, British media outlets are more attuned to the ramifications of public relations. The Trump administration’s attack on mainstream media as purveyors of “fake news” and its promotion of “alternative facts” has rallied journalism to a vigorous defense of the First Amendment, and has led to calls for critical media literacy. Yet research indicates that as much as 75% of U.S. news begins as public relations. For transparency advocates, this is a problem. By definition, PR is a biased, monetized form of communication that seeks to advance the vested interests of clients. Even some public relations industry figures have recently acknowledged their field’s role in the dissemination of “fake news.” advertisement During the past two decades, the newspaper industry has contracted, with advertisers and readers migrating to the internet. Conversely, the PR industry has experienced growth in both employment opportunities and salaries. In the U.S., there are now nearly five PR people for every reporter. Americans are now being exposed to more public relations than ever before. While some PR serves worthy causes–promoting health, education, charity, and disaster relief–I believe all PR deserves closer scrutiny because it bypasses the norms of democratic processes: transparency, accountability, and the right of all interested parties to have a voice in civic debates. To Bernays, the terms “public relations” and “propaganda” were interchangeable. We should think of PR the same way, scrutinizing it with as much critical rigor as we view propaganda. Sue Curry Jansen is ‌‌‌professor of media and communication at Muhlenberg College. This essay originally appeared at the Conversation.

Image copyright Facebook Image caption Aaron Rajman made his professional MMA debut in 2014 and and had a 2-2 record A mixed martial arts fighter has been killed by intruders in the US state of Florida, police say. Aaron Rajman was fatally shot during Monday night's apparent home invasion in the coastal city of Boca Raton. Palm Beach County sheriff's office says a fight broke out after a group of suspects entered the 25-year-old featherweight's home. Mr Rajman died from gunshot wounds. The assailants, whose motive is currently unknown, fled in a vehicle. Dave Zalewski, a Miami fight promoter, told the Sun-Sentinel newspaper: "I'm just literally at a loss for words. Everyone I talked to is sickened. "He was the most humble guy around, he never talked bad about people." Neighbour Luciana Silva told local news station WPEC-TV that shortly before his death the victim spoke to her children to wish them a happy Independence Day. Image copyright Facebook Image caption Aaron Rajman was an observant Orthodox Jew Mr Rajman, an Orthodox Jew, was known for entering the arena wearing tzitzit and a yarmulke. Ranked 26th in his class in Florida, he made his professional MMA debut three years ago and had a 2-2 record, according to MixedMartialArts.com. As an amateur, Mr Rajman won eight fights and lost one. "He was very strong in his faith, and he was a very good person," Rabbi Zalman Bukiet told local news station, WPTV. "This was a special young man who had a heart of gold. "It's a tragedy and extremely painful for them and painful for everybody that knew him." A post on the MMA South Florida Facebook page read: "The world lost another warrior today. RIP Aaron Rajman. You will be missed."

A Zotye Langyue/Multipla EV serving as a taxicab burst into flame Monday afternoon in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, prompting the city to halt all electric taxis on safety concerns. Firefighters rushed to the scene in minutes but couldn’t do much as the car quickly turned into a big fireball, and then ashes and an empty, back shell. No one was injured; the driver and two passengers in the vehicle got out in time. Hangzhou is a pioneer among Chinese cities in popularizing electric cars. Last year, it boasted the first private ownership of a high-speed, all-electric car in all China as one of its residents bought a Zotye Nomad II EV (see our report: Forget Leaf and Volt. You Can Have a Zotye EV Now!). It deployed 30 EVs, 15 of the Zotye Langyue/Multipla model and 15 of Haima Freema, as taxicabs on its streets in late January this year, and plans to grow that fleet to 200 units by the year-end. The incident is likely to deal a big blow to those efforts . The Hangzhou New Energy Taxi Company, which runs those electric taxicabs, announced hours after the incident that it had pulled all of the 30 vehicles off the streets as a full investigation would be carried out.

In addition to being an occasional biological necessity, human flatulence has served a variety of uses, including as a way to clear a room, entertain friends, torture a sibling, and tease a child (pull my finger). But while some humans have elevated farting to an art form (see: The Most Famous Farter in History), perhaps no entire species has elevated farting quite so high as the school-swimming herring, who use their butt vapors to communicate. Bubbling out of a herring’s back end, the fish farts come fast and furious, and as such scientists have named them “Fast Repetitive Tick sounds” or (I’m not making this up) FRTs. Occurring in “stereotyped bursts of 7-65 pulses . . . lasting 0.6-7.6” seconds at a time, the high frequency FRTs are emitted, as with many human farts, in “a single continuous burst train rather than intermittent bursts.” Believed to be the result of “gas expulsion . . . via the anal duct,” the fish acquire the gas when they surface to fill their swim bladders (not from digestion), although they can save this air for at least a day and release it when needed.[1] Because of when and how the fish break wind, scientists believe the farts are used to communicate, although they’re not clear on what the herring are saying. By experimenting with disturbances and even adding a bit of “shark odour” to the study (neither of which had any effect on the farting), they concluded that the FRTs are not alarm calls; likewise, as FRTs were being emitted but nobody was getting busy, the researcher also discerned that the farts were not involved with mating (as any female of any species could’ve told them ;-)). However, as herring work together in coordinated groups, and even shoal together in the dark, the researchers hypothesized that the FRTs were used as “contact calls.” They note that this social communication would only make sense if it couldn’t be heard by predators (who would then be wise to the herring’s location), and it turns out the frequency of most FRTs, at above 2 kHz, is outside of the “known auditory range of most predatory fishes.” Although they also note that FRTs are within the range of hearing of marine mammals.[2] In any event, this explanation is plausible, and would help explain how herring typically shoal, which is in a grid pattern where the distance between each fish matches the distance that their desired prey will jump away. By emitting noxious gases (which in humans is a long-practiced way of establishing a safe distance between individuals), the fish establish the precise interval between school members for optimal fishing. The intrepid researchers who discovered this miraculous use of butt gas, Ben Wilson, Lawrence Dill, Robert Batty, Magnus Whalberg and Hakan Westerberg, were honored with an Ig Nobel Prize in Biology in 2004, for their achievement in science that makes people first laugh, then actually think. Other noted Ig Nobel Prize winners include a group that discovered that strippers earn more when they are at their peak fertility than otherwise (One can only imagine the significant time they had to spend at strip clubs FOR SCIENCE!!!); a group that discovered that when people have a strong urge to pee, they consistently make better decisions with certain types of things and worse decisions with others; and, of course, Sir Andre Geim, who won an Ig Nobel Prize in 2000 for successfully figuring out a way to levitate a frog using magnets. A decade later, he also won a real Nobel Prize “for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene.” (Other humorous, yet thought provoking Ig Nobel Prize winners and their research can be read here.) If you liked this article, you might also enjoy our new popular podcast, The BrainFood Show (iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Feed), as well as: Bonus Facts: Farts are primarily a combination of CO2, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, methane, and hydrogen sulfide, and it is this last bit that is responsible for the pungent odor. The flammability comes from the methane and hydrogen. Farts are born in the intestines as a by-product of bacterial decomposition of carbohydrates and have been “clocked at a speed of 10 feet per second,” or 6.82 miles per hour. Someone else has calculated that over the entire history of people on Earth, collectively, we have expelled about 17 quadrillion farts. Of all the human-related activities that product methane, cattle as livestock produce 28% (or about 80 metric tons each year). In fact, the United States’ 100 million or so head of cattle produce about 5.5 million tons of methane annually. According to Vox, each of us (except for ladies, of course ;-)) produce anywhere from 10 to 20 farts daily, although, luckily, most of it (99%) has no odor. Of those that do smell, “Fat Bastard” was right when he said “everyone likes their own brand,” at least better than other people’s. This is due (again, someone actually researched this) to the fact that you become “habituated” to the smell of your own farts. A French artist and inventor has created “indigestion tablets,” comprised of natural ingredients including seaweed, blueberries and fennel to improve the aroma of flatulence. Selling for about $12 for 60 pills, offerings include the “Father Christmas” tablet that is said to make your farts smell like chocolate. Expand for References

Number Revision Date Title MIL-B-5087 B 10/64 Bonding for Aerospace Systems MIL-HDBK-5 J 01/03 Metallic Materials and Elements (70MB) declared obsolete in 2005 and replaced by MMPDS at <projects.battelle.org/mmpds/> MIL-HDBK-17 Composite Materials Handbook being superseded by CMH-17; see <www.cmh17.org> and <books.sae.org/book-r-422.set3> Volume 1 F 06/02 Polymer Matrix/Guidelines for Characterization Volume 2 F 06/02 Polymer Matrix/Materials Propoerties Volume 3 F 06/02 Polymer Matrix/Materials Usage, Design and Analysis Volume 4 A 06/02 Metal Matrix Composites Volume 5 - 06/02 Ceramic Matrix Composites MIL-HDBK-217 F Notice 2 02/95 Reliability Prediction of Electronic Equipment not maintained; more up-to-date (perhaps) data at <theriac.org/riacapps/search/> MIL-HDBK-340 A 04/99 Test Requirements for Launch & Space Vehicles, Vol 1 MIL-HDBK-343 - 02/86 Design, Construction, and Test Requirements for One-of-a-Kind Spacecraft MIL-M-38510 J 11/91 Military Specification, Microcircuits Not valid for new designs; see MIL-PRF-38535, et al MIL-PRF-13830 B 01/97 Optical Component Inspection MIL-PRF-19500 P1 05/12 Performance Specification, Semiconductor Devices Search current QML/QPL here MIL-PRF-31032 B1 05/12 Printed Circuit Board, General Spec. Supplement 1 - 01/10 List of Associated Specifications MIL-PRF-31032/1 C1 11/12 Rigid, Multilayer, Thermosetting Resin MIL-PRF-31032/2 B1 11/12 Rigid, Double Layer, Woven E-Glass MIL-PRF-31032/3 B1 11/12 Flexible, Double Layer MIL-PRF-31032/4 B1 11/12 Flexible, Multilayer MIL-PRF-31032/6 A 12/12 Rigid, Double Layer, Thermoplastic, High Frequency MIL-PRF-38534 H 09/10 Performance Specification, Hybrid Circuits MIL-PRF-38535 J 05/12 Performance Specification, Integrated Circuits MIL-PRF-55110 G Notice 3 02/08 Performance Specification, Printed Wiring Board, Rigid QPL-55110 - 1/10 Qualified Manufacturers List MIL-STD-202 G 02/02 Test Method Standad, Electronic Parts MIL-STD-461 C 08/86 Control of Electromagnetic Interference E 08/99 Control of Electromagnetic Interference Draft 06/99 461E Draft in MSWord Format XREF 03/01 Comparison of 461E with other standards F 12/07 Control of Electromagnetic Interference MIL-STD-462 D 01/93 Measurement of Electromagnetic Interference Characteristics; Obsolete MIL-STD-464 C 12/10 Electromagnetic Environmental Effects Requirements for Systems MIL-STD-750 F 01/12 Test Methods for Semiconductor Devices Part 1 01/12 Environmental Methods Part 2 11/12 Mechanical Methods Part 3 01/12 Transistor Electrical Methods Part 4 03/12 Diode Electrical Methods Part 5 01/12 Space Application Methods MIL-STD-810 G 10/08 Test Method Standard/Env. Eng. Tests MIL-STD-883 H 02/10 Test Method Standard/Microcircuits 1000-1034 02/10 Detailed Methods MIL-STD-1246 C 04/94 Cleanliness Levels Superseded by IEST-STD-CC1246E MIL-STD-1540 D 01/99 Test Requirements for Launch 7 Space Vehicles (Rev E has been released, but is restricted access)

The bielsista fluidity The philosophy of this Barcelona, of course, is rooted in Total Football and the ideas implanted by Rinus Michels and Johan Cruyff in the early 70s. What has become increasingly clear, though, is that their style is Total Football viewed through a bielsista prism. The central tenets of Marcelo Bielsa's style – the hard pressing, the high defensive line – are very much of the Dutch tradition, but in their use of a back three, which admittedly echoes the 3-1-3-3 Cruyff sometimes employed in the early 90s, Barcelona have taken on a bielsista aspect. The use of a central midfielder, Sergio Busquets, to initiate attacks from the back is classic Bielsa, as is the desire to fight battles high up the pitch in opposition territory – as in the use of Dani Alves to negate Marcelo in El Clásico and so cut off the support to Cristiano Ronaldo. It is not just Barcelona, though. Guardiola famously drove through the night to meet Bielsa in Argentina; another Argentinian, Jorge Sampaoli, a self-confessed disciple of Bielsa, has used his methods to great effect at Universidad de Chile, who won the Chilean Apertura and the Copa Sudamericana and are in the semi-finals of the play-offs for the Clausura. They are astonishingly tactically flexible in terms of shape, but the basic style remains bielsista, something exemplified by the use of a 3-1-4-2 in their Copa Sudamericana semi-final against Liga de Quito, engaging the opposition wing-backs deep in their own half. Bielsa himself, perhaps too fundamentalist for one of the world's biggest clubs, works away at Athletic Bilbao, where he has tempered his idealism with pragmatism, abandoning the back three for a back four, and playing to the strengths of his target-man centre-forward Fernando Llorente. High lines are not for everyone Everything is relative. What is right for one group of players in one set of circumstances will not necessarily be so for another group of players in a different set of circumstances. In the summer, both Chelsea and Internazionale appointed new managers. Both their new managers prefer a high line and a hard press. Both squads they inherited were ill-suited to their style of play, the defences in particular too slow to play high up the pitch and risk balls being played in behind them. In both cases the incongruity of managerial philosophy and squad was clear. At Internazionale, Gian Piero Gasperini lasted only five games before being dismissed, which made you wonder why on earth they had appointed him. At Chelsea, although André Villas-Boas suffered defeats to Manchester United, Queens Park Rangers, Arsenal and Liverpool (twice), and only just made it through the group stage of the Champions League, there seems for once to be patience, an awareness that the constant churn of managers since José Mourinho's departure has allowed the squad to stagnate, and that it will take time. Villas-Boas, recognising the limits of his squad, has stepped back, adopting a compromise position with a much deeper line. The result has been an immediate improvement in performance, but if he is given another year or 18 months to oversee the transition, it is safe to assume Chelsea will move towards the fluidity and pressing style of his old Porto side. Whether he is the right man for the job or not is almost irrelevant; having appointed somebody of such stylistic principles, to do anything other than give him time to mould the squad would be self-defeating. Frankly, it defies belief that a club would not consider how suited its squad is to the approach of the new manager, but that apparently is what Inter did. The false nine and other falsehoods At the end of last year, the false nine was still something unusual, a quasi-mystical novelty. Now it is mainstream, so mainstream, in fact, that Lionel Messi, the archetypal false nine, has at times reverted to being an orthodox No10, playing behind a front man. Certainly in El Clásico, Alexis Sánchez played as the main striker, buzzing in from the right flank again and again; he had an element of falseness in that he did not stand, as an orthodox centre-forward would, up against the opposing central defenders, but whereas Messi's drift would be deep, into midfield, his was to the flank. In that regard he fits the growing trend of forwards who start wide. Cristiano Ronaldo, perhaps, has been the greatest exponent, but Edinson Cavani and Ezequiel Lavezzi often come from wide in Napoli's 3-4-3, while Universidad de Chile's Eduardo Vargas, who will join Napoli in January, was the top scorer in the Sudamericana coming from a wide-right position. This year has also seen the advent of the term "false 10", a coinage that feels a little clumsy. There is as yet, though, no other term for a player who operates as Wayne Rooney did towards the end of last season, playing off a front man as an orthodox 10 would but coming deep to help win possession. When United had Michael Carrick and Ryan Giggs in the middle of midfield, in fact, Rooney was the main ball-winner. The logic, in a sense, is the same as Barcelona's use of Busquets as a centre-back in that it means the battle for possession takes place in front of the initiator of attacks, who should in theory then have more time when the ball is won. Markarián and the platense austerity The Uruguayan Sergio Markarián did not set out to be a football coach. When he decided, aged 18, that he would not make it as a player, he got a job with a fuel distribution company, rising to be general manager. When he was 30, though, he watched Holland humiliate Uruguay at the 1974 World Cup, and decided he had to become a coach so his country would never again suffer in the same way. He started out at Bella Vista, where he coached Oscar Wáshington Tabárez, who is two years his junior. Although Markarián's career then led him to Paraguay and Peru, if he had any influence at all on Tabárez he can take some credit for the resurrection of Uruguay's football. Exactly what influence Markarián had on Tabárez is hard to quantify, but there is a clear similarity of attitude. Both produce tough, resolute teams, sides paced with "garra", the mythical quality of streetwise courage and resolve that underpins Uruguayan football. At the Copa América, Markarián's Peru operated in a lop-sided 4-4-1-1, with Juan Vargas playing off Paolo Guerrero and to the left; Uruguay were as protean as ever, shifting from four at the back to three at the back as required (the return of three at the back as a proactive formation in the past year has been a corollary of the influence of both Bielsa and Markarián). Peru conceded two goals in four games before going down to Uruguay in the semi-final; Uruguay conceded only three in six as they won the tournament. Perhaps it is premature to talk about a reaction against the fluid attacking football played by the likes of Barça and Universidad, but there is a spirit of austerity and attrition about platense football at the moment. Boca Juniors, reinvigorated under Julio César Falcioni, won the Argentinian Apertura conceding a record low of six goals in 19 matches. Racing, who came second, conceded only eight.

Recent high school graduates Abbigail Deason and Grace Branscum, both 18, of Oklahoma City relax inside Meow Wolf's mazelike exhibition space in Santa Fe, N.M., on Friday, July 14, 2017. The startup company behind the popular art installation is seeking out small-scale Internet investors as it lays the groundwork for expansion to major metropolitan markets. SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The startup company behind a popular immersive art exhibition space in New Mexico sought out small-scale internet investors Saturday as it lays the groundwork to take its themed entertainment to one or more major metropolitan markets. More than 500,000 visitors have flocked to Meow Wolf’s kaleidoscopic walk- and crawl-through exhibit space since it opened in a converted Santa Fe bowling alley in early 2016. The art installation starts with a riddle on the doorsteps of a fanciful Victorian house and extends through a maze of glowing passageways and rooms with lasers, buttons and odd musical instruments that respond to the touch. The privately held company behind the art complex — which now encompasses a gift shop, nonprofit educational studio, live music venue, food truck, and a craft beer and wine area — hopes to raise roughly $1 million in increments of as little as $1,000 through the crowdfunding website WeFunder. The investment opportunity comes with no guarantee of a financial return. Shares are not paired to a stock exchange — and come with no guarantee they can ever be sold — under equity crowdfunding regulations created just over a year ago by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “It’s a leap of faith,” Meow Wolf CEO Vince Kadlubek said. “You’re buying into a company that you think has a good trajectory.” The offering appeals directly to Meow Wolf’s fan base to help outfit a creative studio in Santa Fe with heavy manufacturing equipment, while hiring a new creative team. The goal is to add new art installations in major cities — with Austin, Texas, Denver, Las Vegas and Houston listed as top contenders. “This is a foundational round (of financing) that is meant to help us build the infrastructure necessary to deliver on future projects,” Kadlubek said. Registered as a public benefit corporation that can set community priorities before profits, Meow Wolf has reported $7 million in revenues during its first full operating year ending in March. About 85 percent of revenues came from admissions, with full-price tickets going for $20, or $14 for children. The hit family destination has been a bright spot on a sluggish state economy, while adding a dose of venture capitalism to a Santa Fe arts scene that revolves around public museums, nonprofit foundations and private galleries. “We see ourselves as a company of creatives,” Kadlubek said. Current owners of the company include eight founding officers and an additional 48 private shareholders — a number likely to multiply in coming days. Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin, a Santa Fe resident, helped Meow Wolf get off the ground by purchasing its current location and leasing the property at an accessible rate. Federal filings show Meow Wolf’s directors include seasoned San Francisco venture capitalist Stewart Alsop and Texas-based entrepreneur Peter Zandan, a specialist in global brand development. Meow Wolf has been closing in on final approvals for $1.1 million in infrastructure funding from the City of Santa Fe and the New Mexico Economic Development Department.

Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old whose fatal shooting by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida set off a racial firestorm, will speak at UConn on Feb. 28, at 6 p.m., in the Student Union Ballroom. Fulton’s visit, almost two years to the day after Martin’s death, and the subsequent acquittal of the shooter, is part of the University’s events in honor of Black History Month. “Despite the intense struggle of losing a child, Sybrina has become a role model to many by turning her grief into advocacy,” said Willena Price, director of the African American Cultural Center. “She has become an inspiring spokesperson for parents and concerned citizens across the country.” Fulton’s talk also follows the mistrial earlier this month for a white man who killed another unarmed black teen in Florida. The judge in the recent case declared the mistrial after a jury said it was deadlocked on the murder charge against Michael Dunn, 47, who killed Jordan Davis, 17, after an argument at a gas station about blaring “thug music.” Fulton and former husband Tracy Martin offered their support to Davis’s family. “The killing is yet another reminder that, in Florida, racial profiling and stereotypes may serve as the basis for imaginary fear and the shooting and killing of young teenagers,” Martin’s parents noted in a joint statement. “We walk with Jordan in defining his legacy to reflect our hopes by advancing love and tolerance in his memory, and continuing the fight against unjust gun laws.” The statement is one of many renewed calls to reform Florida’s controversial “stand your ground” self-defense law. The circumstances of the high-profile trial of Michael Dunn are similar to those surrounding Martin’s death at the hands of George Zimmerman as the teenager walked home from a convenience store. On Feb. 26, 2012, as Martin returned from the store with candy and juice, Zimmerman spotted him and called the Sanford Police to report him, saying he looked suspicious. Moments later, there was an altercation between the two individuals in which Martin, who was unarmed, was shot in the chest. Zimmerman’s acquittal resulted in a public outcry with marches and rallies around the country. After Martin’s death, Fulton co-founded The Trayvon Martin Foundation, a non-profit organization set out to raise awareness of gun violence and help provide support and advocacy for families who have had relatives fall victim to it. Admission is free, but tickets are required. Tickets are available Tuesday through Friday, noon to 8 p.m., at the Student Union ticket booth. A reception in the North Lobby of the Student Union will follow the talk.

by BRIAN NADIG Construction of a new grocery store in Mayfair and the possible redevelopment of the northeast corner of Cicero and Peterson avenues were among the issues which Alderman Margaret Laurino (39th) discussed in her annual “state of the ward” address on Feb. 5. Work on converting the former Kmart Department Store at 5033 N. Elston Ave. to a Seafood City will start in mid-February, Laurino said. The Kmart, which was built about 25 years ago, closed in 2015. The 45,000-square-foot store will specialize in Filipino food products and include restaurants and a pharmacy, Laurino said. It will be the first Seafood City in the Midwest, as the company has about 20 stores along the West Coast and in Hawaii. Laurino also reported that Imperial Reality, which owns several area office buildings, has purchased all of the storefronts on the north side of Peterson Avenue between Cicero Avenue and Keating Avenue. She said it took a decade to complete the acquisitions, which includes the former Sauganash Restaurant site, 4732 W. Peterson Ave. “We’re looking for something really creative,” Laurino said of the block’s redevelopment. She said that “the bar is set high” given that Imperial in the early 2000s assembled several large parcels at the northwest corner of the Peterson-Cicero intersection, leading to the eventual construction of a Whole Foods store there. Also in the Sauganash area, a wedding and events company is moving into a 75,000-square-foot facility in the 4200 block of West Bryn Mawr Avenue, and Alarmist Brewing, 4055 W. Peterson Ave., plans to open a tap room so that visitors can “sample real Sauganash beer,” Laurino said. In addition, work on the new 35-home Sauganash Glen subdivision at the former Skil Power Tools site, 4300 W. Peterson Ave., should be completed by 2017, Laurino said. “I could not point to another section of the city of Chicago where they’re building high-end single-family homes,” she said. It also was reported that construction on the Albany Park Storm Water Diversion Tunnel Project is scheduled to start in March. The $65 million project is designed to help prevent that the “horrendous” floodings which have resulted in home owners having to be rescued, Laurino said. Also in the ward, the installation of a stoplight in front of the Mariano’s grocery store, 5353 N. Elston Ave., is being planned for 2016 to help reduce traffic congestion in the area, Laurino said. The project will include upgrades to the existing traffic signal in front of the Chicago North Illinois Secretary of State Facility, 5401 N. Elston Ave. Laurino’s address was made at a luncheon sponsored by the Albany Park Community Center, Peterson & Pulaski Business and Industrial Council, Pulaski Elston Business Association, AT and T, and the Sauganash, Edgebrook and Gladstone Park chambers of commerce. The event was held at Monastero’s Ristorante, 3935 W. Devon Ave. Also speaking at the event was city Department of Planning and Development commissioner David Reifman. “For Chicago to grow its global stature, we need strong neighborhoods,” said Reifman, who was appointed the department’s commissioner last year. The importance of having strong neighborhood shopping districts cannot be overstated given that the city loses hundreds of millions of dollars each year in retail sales to the suburbs, he said. One of the department’s initiatives to revitalize neighborhoods calls for the creation of more affordable housing opportunities, Reifman said. “We need good housing for our workforce, our middle class,” he said. Reifman reported that 70 percent of the city’s tax increment financing expenditures has gone to build or repair schools, streets, bridges and housing, including units for seniors. He added that dozens of businesses in the Peterson-Pulaski Industrial Corridor have received TIF grants through the city’s Small Business Improvement Fund Program. Of the city’s most anticipated projects is the Obama Presidential Library, Reifman said. While the library’s location has not been finalized, the project will bring a variety of jobs to Chicago and should foster other development, he said.

Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs! For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription: We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article. Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year. Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year. Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year. Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year. Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs! For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription: We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article. Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs! For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription: We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article. Almost 20 per cent of some 80 resolutions involve aboriginal issues, reflecting an apparent effort by grassroots Liberals to put meat on the bones of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's vow to create a new relationship with indigenous peoples. Those two measures are among a raft of policy resolutions to be debated at the ruling party's first policy convention since winning power last October. OTTAWA - Rank and file Liberals are urging the federal government to ensure that every third governor general appointed in Canada is an indigenous person and that aboriginal languages are granted official language status. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/5/2016 (1018 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/5/2016 (1018 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Federal Liberal party delegates vote on a resolution during the party's biennial convention in Montreal in a February 23, 2014, file photo. Rank and file Liberals are urging the federal government to ensure that every third governor general appointed in Canada is an indigenous person and that aboriginal languages are granted official language status. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes OTTAWA - Rank and file Liberals are urging the federal government to ensure that every third governor general appointed in Canada is an indigenous person and that aboriginal languages are granted official language status. Those two measures are among a raft of policy resolutions to be debated at the ruling party's first policy convention since winning power last October. Almost 20 per cent of some 80 resolutions involve aboriginal issues, reflecting an apparent effort by grassroots Liberals to put meat on the bones of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's vow to create a new relationship with indigenous peoples. Among them, are resolutions to: — Rotate the appointment of the governor general between anglophones, francophones and aboriginals. — Grant official language status to aboriginal languages and provide necessary funding for language preservation. — Pay for First Nations and Inuit peoples' dental, optical, prescription drug and other health-care costs not covered under universal medicare. — Require all Liberal MPs, candidates and nomination contestants to receive training regarding indigenous policy, history and culture before receiving a green light to run by the party. Resolutions approved at conventions are not binding on the party or the leader. But in the past they have presaged some major official policy shifts for the Liberals, including legalization of same sex marriage and marijuana. There are no similarly bold resolutions on offer at the convention to be held later this month in Winnipeg, no doubt a reflection of the fact that the ruling party has only just begun to deliver on more than 150 ambitious promises made during last fall's campaign. The biggest item on the agenda involves not policy but the internal operations of the Liberal party: a proposal to overhaul its constitution to, among other things, do away with the concept of membership, giving anyone willing to register as a Liberal the opportunity to vote in leadership and nomination contests, attend conventions and take part in policy development. Still, there are some resolutions that would push the government to go further than the campaign platform, calling for such things as: — A guaranteed minimum income. — Expansion of universal health care to include pharmacare, home care and palliative care. — Turning the federal portion of student loans into grants for low-income families in 2017 and for middle-income families in 2018. — Lower the voting age to 16. — Repeal the previous Conservative government's anti-terrorism legislation, whereas the platform promised only to repeal or amend some provisions. There's also no shortage of lofty proposals, such as the Liberal women's commission's resolution calling for the creation of a department of peace and non-violence, with a mandate to create a civilian service of professionally trained people working to prevent war and resolve conflict in Canada and around the globe. The women's commission also wants the government to create a panel to recommend ways to improve prevention, reporting and prosecution of sexual assault, considering changes including the creation of specialized sexual assault courts and requiring both the accused and victim to testify. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the day’s breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every morning. The Ontario wing of the party is proposing to strike a task force aimed at elimination of "all forms of Islamophobia." The party's youth commission wants the government to introduce legislation establishing the right to an "ecologically balanced environment" as a human right and to offer safe haven to "climate refugees" displaced by climate change. It also wants the government to establish a department of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered equity and to give refuge to LGBTQ refugees fleeing persecution. There are no resolutions specifically on the thorny question of pipelines which bedevilled the recent NDP convention. But in contrast to the Leap Manifesto, which New Democrats agreed to consider and which was widely seen as anti-pipeline and anti-oil industry, the Alberta wing of the Liberal party has a resolution that recognizes the sector as "a significant employer" and calls for retraining for workers whose jobs are lost in the transition away from fossil fuels. However, another resolution, from the Nova Scotia wing, calls for a creation of national standards for carbon pricing and a phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies over the next five years. Not all the resolutions will actually be put to a vote at the convention. Most will wind up being discussed only in a series of five policy workshops, each of which will choose two resolutions to send to the plenary session, along with 13 priority resolutions that will automatically go to the plenary.

Chapter 4 Communication Part 2 Weiss Schnee the Heiress Lonely silence was not always unpleasant, something Weiss had discovered sometime in her childhood. Despite her longing for others she found a certain comfort in the null noises of a place devoid of humans. Perhaps the word was not comfort, but safety. Her hideaway was the park alcove between Beacon's buildings, rich with crimson trees and blooming blossoms. She had found this place to be alone but over time, time spent with Ruby, her place became their place. Weiss came here to be to be found, but having a moment where this sanctum was hers alone again felt akin to a warm blanket enveloping her on a cold night. Alone she took her seat in one of the solitary benches, the wind knocking some of the blossoms and forever red leaves around her. The wind was cooling, a feeling that stabilized her. Eyes closed she focused on her breath enjoying the momentary peace. When Weiss opened her eyes again she would have work to do, a thousand worries and fears, a thousand imperfections to be mended, but for that brief respite she was able to relax. The moment ended as all did, and soon her eyes opening to see the silent park with its red trees surrounding it, their newly falling blossoms dancing about. The coolness would normally irritate her scar, but it felt nice on her pale snowy skin. Soon Ruby would come after her; soon she would have to say something. An apology for one, though she disdained doing so. Explanation as well, as if apologizing wasn't difficult enough. The other problem was easier, a book in hand already working on it. Weapons theory, a more basic manual, perhaps a good reference point into engineering. This was easy, knowledge over emotions. She could handle knowledge, a realm of facts either black and white, of definitives and absolutes. What was true and untrue could be mastered with studious work. Her emotions seemed impossible to chain, anger always leaking from the ice prison as well as spite and envy's little poison. It was the thing that held her back from being perfect, making the right decisions. Emotions blurred sense, made irrational things rational. She wanted to be cold and calculated just like her father, because in life what is,is the only thing of relevance. Did she though? Ruby made her doubt that, made her doubt a lot of decisions. Made less than perfect seem perfect, and any attempt beyond seem like an exercise in vanity. Results matter, but they didn't make Weiss happy. Ruby made her happy, yet lessened her results. Idiotic philosophizing wouldn't do any good, Ruby would be taken away if she didn't perform. Again the results were what mattered. A big loop. It was almost funny, the fact that Weiss had just read the same three sentences of her book over again was not however. Furthermore that Weiss was so distracted in thought that if asked what the repeated sentence even was, she would have no answer made her irate. Pushing away her world Weiss allowed for no more distractions. The wind, the leaves, the blossoms, the bench itself, everyone and everything was removed from her mind, and Weiss began to work. Soon the ideas written into the page were all that was real, even the paper of the page was beyond her thoughts, automatic and cold. The Heiress carved the basic contents into her mind, learning the basic designs of all common weapons. "Hey Weiss…hi." From the blackness something called her softly, though Weiss did not listen. Instead she scowled, eyes still ripping its way through the contents of the book. The voice was not disrupted though. "Sorry I'm probably bothering you, but I think we should talk about stuff. I'm real sorry about earlier. I wasn't thinking I promise!" The blankness around Weiss began to evaporate making her grimace a bit more, still in the moment clinging to her perfect concentration. She was vaguely aware the voice was Ruby. "Weiss...I'm sorry please don't be mad." Ruby asked not handling the silence well. Weiss noticed the abyss of focus draining from her, the outside world becoming real again. Reds and whites flooding back into her vision, whatever was left of the Heiress hyper-focus was destroyed by a push. Ruby had sat down next to on the bend, the poor girl pushing against Weiss' shoulder for attention. The fencer went from scowling to a frown, her concentration ruined, but more importantly that annoying guilt showing up again. She didn't say anything at first, but when Weiss shot her gaze towards Ruby, the crimson partner broke her facade just a bit. Her girlfriend had the saddest look, desperately pulling and pushing on Weiss. That made her frown even harder. She never wanted Ruby to feel bad, that was her least desired end. That needy idiot was her dearest one. "Stop it you dolt." Weiss growled with her head tilted up refusing to look at Ruby. Part of it was a little embittered desire to be a left alone just a moment longer, but bigger was Weiss' own distaste for hearing that apology. Ruby had nothing to apologize for. The Heiress had acted in anger, lashed out frustrated and hearing Ruby apologize just made her feel worse. Of course that made her angry and so the circle built on itself. Still actions were a choice. If she could control weakness like cowardice and sadness then she could control anger. Weiss did not lower her head, but her eyes refocused on Ruby's sad curled up form. The little red huntress balled herself up pressing up against Weiss' shoulder to get her attention. Sweet little thing that she was just looked up to her nervous. "Ruby...you did really well. I'm sor-...I'm proud of you." The Heiress whispered unable to apologize as intended, her own fear of weakness prompting it to become a complement. No less true, but Weiss felt it inadequate. She hoped Ruby understood that she was not at fault. That despite the fencer's inability to say so properly, she was the real problem today. "Thank you." Ruby muttered, though Weiss could not see her expression behind the red tipped bangs in front of her face. That little ball of huntress erupted, her pale arms clutching onto Weiss' body, her partners face nuzzled into the nape of the girl's neck. Ruby's breath hot on her skin eliciting a sudden mixed reaction. "Ruby let go!" Weiss tensed up immediately, wanting to fight her way out of the embrace. Sudden things made her uncomfortable, something she had yet to fully work out, but she resisted the more violent urge. "No." Ruby mumbled into Weiss' neck the hot breath causing her to shiver. Idiot had no idea how sensitive her neck was. The Heiress did her best not to blush, wanting to stand firm against her affectionate partner's infantile methods of persuasion. 'Ruby can be such a child sometimes.' Weiss thought, subconsciously reaching out and rubbing Ruby's shoulder to comfort her. 'I really need to stop being her mother too.' That thought struck Weiss as even sadder, the last talk with Yang about her mother still being absorbed. "Ruby…" Weiss said lowly, feeling too tired to be so strong and stern. Ruby pulled her head up, the messy straight weave of red tinted black hair. She always had such sweet eyes, made even more pitifully beautiful when she seemed sad. Silver, never so crude as to be called grey. She made for quite the cute puppy at times, though to tell her would just encourage her infantile behavior. "I'm sorry. I didn't notice I was keeping you from studying. I'm so sorry, Weiss I didn't mean to put you behind. I know I keep causing you trouble, I'm so sorry. It's all my fault you're stressed and I was so excited about making you proud I didn't even think. I'm so dumb I just-" Ruby just started spilling it all out into this verbal cacophony of admission and guilt and whatever negative emotion the little huntress seemed to have. Weiss didn't like that, she hated it. Ruby did not need to make her proud, she had tarnished her perfect grade due to her own choices, and most irritable was that Ruby called herself dumb. A small part of the Heiress thought herself responsible for the seed of doubt that found its way in Ruby, making her feel like some sort of idiot. She was a dolt, a dunce, a deliberate pain even from time to time, but she was gifted and brilliant. "Ruby. Shut up." Weiss said, fairly flatly, her teeth clenched in frustration. "It's okay. This was never your fault. You just lived up to your potential. I call you an idiot precisely because you are not an idiot...I just needed a minute to myself. I am better than that, it was pathetic and I'm not going to let that happen again. " Weiss had always found it difficult to speak ill of herself. Not because she was somehow perfect, but it was a sign of weakness, a crack in her authority. Her upbringing taught her that meekness in such things was damning, but time at Beacon had reinforced the deeper truth she had always known. Lying about weakness to save face would not save her from said weakness. Fact and fiction was monochrome, a rare true right and wrong. "And I'm going to help you." Ruby said, still not letting Weiss go. Her usually unsure expression was not there. Instead she had a bit of fire in her eyes, despite still having the easy going smile. Ruby seemed sure of herself. "What?" Weiss replied, inherently uncomfortable with charity. "Weiss, you help me with so much...Weapons Engineering is just me, I love building stuff. I can teach you way more than the books can." Ruby rarely seemed so stern. She was strong in a fight, but not in conversation. Yet here she was still innocent looking, but staring at the Heiress directly, solidly. "Weiss…. I can do this. I can be helpful too, trust me." To this Weiss meant to say thank you, instead something else crossed her lips. "I don't need your help Ruby…" The tone was irritable, yet Weiss felt embarrassed by her own hyperactive pride. She didn't need help, she could handle anything. The Heiress was the boss and tutored Ruby, not the other way around. She wanted to chastise herself for that self-centered thinking, but pride always won out in her. "I know you're perfect." Ruby said with a loose sort of grin cute and innocent, making Weiss blush. She had not expected that. The younger huntress finally pulled out of the embrace sliding her soft hands into Weiss' swaying back and forth as she did so. "But together we will be faster… It's more uhh" She added laying a trap for Weiss to gently fall in. "Efficient?" Weiss replied finishing the crimson girl's sentence. The silver fencer was letting herself be tricked; fully aware it was nothing but flattery. It was always so dreadfully effective on her, having her girlfriend aware of this was very worrying. "Yeah exactly. We're a team, let's work like it." Ruby voiced cheery, the look in her eyes made it clear she knew that the conversation was going her way. "I can't let you just take care of me." She added sweetly and softly resting her head on Weiss' shoulders, her hand tightening on her partner's. "I can handle it th-thank you." Weiss shouted a little, stuttering nervously at the affection. She tried as she could to hold a stern persona, but having her girlfriend snuggle up to her and say sweet things. This sort of atmosphere was getting easier. Before she would have felt trapped completely, like it was some sort of emotional prison, but now even as it made her a little stiff and nervous, the touch was not undesired. Only for her rose, no one else. "I don't understand it all, but I know a lot of things are on you...let's carry it together." Ruby said while smiling brightly, tossing up their interlocked arms into the air ready for a big cheer. "Team Combat Skirts!" She added with a shout to the park, something Weiss opted out of for the sake of pride. The red trees replied with a gust of wind picking up the perpetually falling leaves. They always spun around the park, the enclosed area trapping the wind. A wonderful little place. "They are very fashionable." Weiss said, trying not to smile. "On you, definitely." Ruby replied with a giggle, pressing up against Weiss's shoulder. "You're dumb" Weiss countered flatly, but despite the harshness of her words the ice princess pressed a light kiss on top of Ruby's forehead. An acceptable award for the compliment. "Flattery will get you nowhere with me." Weiss added with a self-satisfied grin, chin up. "Liar!" Ruby shouted back tackling Weiss onto the brown bench, tossing the crimson leaves into the air and the books to the floor. Weiss immediately tried pushing her off, but that smiling bright eyed little dolt wouldn't let go. Giggling all the while that adorably insufferable dolt. "I am not!" Weiss shouted back trying even harder to remove the red hooded leech off her. "Ruby, don't make me hurt you!" She added for good measure, considering exactly how much dust her blade would need to teach Ruby a lesson in personal space. Despite the threats, Ruby just giggled more, clutching the silver fencers form tighter. "You won't." Ruby let out with a laugh loosening up her grip a bit as Weiss stop struggling quite as hard. Weiss would need to re-iron her clothes after this; Ruby's as well, though her partner would easily wear her clothes shabby and wrinkled. The Heiress could add that to the list of chores, though for now Weiss made no effort to move. 'Might as well, it's not like it can get even more wrinkled.' She accepted her defeat and let Ruby stay tight to her, resting her head on Weiss' chest. "Hey Weiss?" Ruby sounded, slightly hushed and mousy. "Yes Ruby?" Weiss replied staring up into the canopy of red and pink tinted trees, the mild beams of light cutting into the park area broken light strains. Laying on that bench she knew a thousand things she needed to do, wanted to do, but didn't move. Ruby said nothing for a moment, then as the wind died down for a moment she aired her final fears. "You're not going to break up with me right?" "Who suggested that dunce?!" Weiss shouted, trying to move but Ruby was still holding her down. The pale huntress, with hair like the leaves, looked up at her with blushed with a embarrassed expression, though she had a bright grin filled with relief. The nerve of her to suggest breaking up over a test grade. One does not toss out everything on the first sign of trouble, Weiss would need to restructure things, true, but the point was to balance the elements of her life, not cut one out. "Blake and I were talking and uhh." Ruby admitted with a chuckle pulling away enough to scratch her head, a nervous habit of hers. "Blake?!" Weiss almost felt her teeth crack from how tight she clenched her jaw in anger. She knew that meddling cat was somehow behind all this, it explained Yang's concern and appearance, this whole thing was one of her little people puppet shows. Weiss knew she meant well, but to scare Ruby like that. This was too far. "Hey, Blake didn't do anything!" A familiar voice shouted behind a bush, followed by a shush from another. That little Faunus and her coconspirator. "Yang! Blake! Out!" Weiss shouted pulling herself off the bench nearly knocking Ruby off in the process. She could apologize later, but really, she could not deal with this sort of childishness. Yang stepped out of a bush, brushing the thin needles and leaves from her fine clothes. The golden girl a bit vain as always. The other one made no motion to move, but was hiding in plain sight, resting in a tree branch, the trouble maker herself. "Told you that she would catch you." Blake said to Yang in her usual monotone, a smile on her face, though weak and weary as all her smiles were. She seemed perfectly content to just sit in that tree a few feet away from the others, how Weiss had missed her was something to fear. Blake was talented for sure. "Everything's better! Let's go celebrate! I'm buying lunch-dinner, it's a Friday afternoon, no more classes!" Yang shouted rising her fists in celebration. If Weiss had any inclination to guess, Yang intended for fun Ruby clearly could not be a party to. Well not one she would allow Ruby to join again, though that club was a pleasant memory. "Totally didn't tell her that by the way." Blake added sliding down from the tree in a saunter, the minx always taking it slower than the rest, never in the same hurry outside of battle. Sometimes Weiss thought Blake did it just to annoy her and the smile she had whenever Weiss got mad encouraged that line of thinking. "Have you no sense of privacy?!" Weiss started taking a step towards the duo, thinking of exactly how to phrase her next lecture. A pale hand stopped her, grasping the cloth of her jacket. It was Ruby giving a sad look, attempting to ease things over with her sweet yet sad stare. It was so annoying that it always worked. "Ugh...Fine let's go" Weiss allowed, feeling too tired for more yelling. Ruby smiled giving Weiss a quick embrace before speeding after her sister. The two of them always were like that, bolting ahead of the rest of them. Unless they were out to do real work. In that case Weiss would have to drag them, but for a night out? Not so much. Somehow it always ended up with the silent duo, Blake and Weiss. The tension had cooled some, though the Faunus' self-satisfied smile irritated Weiss. Perhaps the meddling was a bit much, but Blake had done more good than harm, despite how uncomfortable the spying made her. "So I heard some rumors that Ruby is dating Jaune. And others that she is dating a certain black cat." Weiss opened with making some amount of small talk. The rumors were false to anyone who knows those involved. Pyhrra and Jaune were obviously involved with each other, and Blake was never interested in anything, but her novels and schemes. Weiss felt no sense of fear or doubt in Ruby, but if anyone one knew where these rumors were coming from, it was Blake. "Scandalous. I wouldn't know anything about it." Blake answered in a monotone sarcastic voice. Weiss returned her comment with a look of complete and total disbelief. After a moment Blake rolled her eyes and gave another weak sort of smile "Just clever misdirection, nothing you need to worry about." Again with the meddling, though if rumors as unbelievable as these were around… It would tarnish the credibility of all rumors involving Ruby. "Thank you." Weiss replied begrudgingly. She did not like that sort of underhanded tactic, but Blake had helped cover their trail once again. She was a good… perhaps friend. If Weiss could have this kind of friend. By now they had entered the dorms and their voices became hush whispers. Blake looked around for a moment. Choosing only when the dorm hall was empty to speak. "Anything for our Princess and her rose." She finally replied in vague terms thinking herself clever. Weiss hated the Princess name, but for once, she didn't argue with Blake about it. Honestly it seemed that name was going to stick no matter how hard she tried. "Welcome home Ladies. Time to get ready for a night out." Yang shouted to the entire dorm hall, thankfully empty. She took her scroll out and the dorm room lock, set only to their scrolls. The lock was undone, and the door came open, free for the four of them to get ready for whatever nonsense Yang was planning. Except there already people inside. Weiss felt her heart freeze, the blood in her body turn to ice, though her expression turned glacier hard. Inside stood the thing she most feared right now, but it was impossible. There was no way, it was still too early. Not enough time for word to get out about today. "Friends!" One of their guests shouted a familiar...friend… to all of team RWBY, Penny. She was just another weird piece of the entire puzzle. The major question of why and how she got in her was irrelevant to the form in the room's center. Sitting on a stool, one not from the original room, dressed in an all-white suit, trimmed in black and red accents mirroring his order, was a man she recognized from all her days. A thin man, attractive though getting on in age. Constantly with a just slight bit of a beard, like a day after shaving. His close-cropped hair and only slight bangs never obscured his deceptively friendly expression. In his hands was Ruby's Journal, one of fine red paper and personal secrets. "Zawisza!" Weiss shouted in horrified disbelief. Her father right hand man just smiled brightly his dim brown eyes appearing just as friendly as his smile and he scratched his head like a boy who had just got caught in his sister's room. "Hello everyone! It's good to meet you all. I've been waiting for you Weiss!" ***Sorry still in a bit of Funk so excuse my lateness. . Looks like things are starting to get a little dangerous :D The updates for this one are a bit minimal. Wanted to thank A-rav again for his Beta work, and for mentioning me in his own fic Icy Rose, check it out as well as 'Best of RWBY fan fiction" Community group for adding Melting Vale to their list. Next I wanted to say remember the competition is still on, don't be timid I know more of you can create something cool! :D Remember it's only open till the 1st. Well thank you all for sticking with me and remember to leave a review, every little one helps me in so many ways, trust me. Also for those interested, the song Credens Justitiam, specifically the classical cover by Qonell was the primary music used to help me with this. Edit: Ziiroh problems fixed

AutoGuide.com Scion announced plans today for the 2015 New York Auto Show where it will debut two new vehicles. The first will be a production version of the iM concept that it showcased during the Los Angeles Auto Show in November, 2014. When it debuted in concept form, Scion said it planned to begin producing the car – based on the Toyota Auris – in 2015. Details on the five-door compact hatchback are still unannounced, but that wasn’t all the news from Toyota’s youth-oriented brand today. SEE ALSO: Scion Lineup to Include Sedan, New 5-Door Hatchback It also confirmed plans to debut a sedan in New York. Details on that car are even sketchier, but its debut will mark the first time Scion has a sedan in its lineup. The company hasn’t announced anything about the sedan apart from plans to show it in some form during this year’s New York Auto Show, but we have previously reported, the sedan will be based on the same architecture as the new Mazda2 being built in Salamanca, Mexico. Scion desperately needs new products. Sales were down by 15 percent in 2014 and there wasn’t a single nameplate. Worse still, sales shrunk for every Scion nameplate. The tC, Scion’s top volume seller, moved 17,947 copies last year representing a six percent decrease, which was also the least severe of of the brand. Discuss this story at our Scion iM forum

Nauru refugee critical after caesarean to deliver premature baby son, flown to Brisbane Updated A Somali refugee is on life support in a Brisbane hospital after she and her newborn son were medically evacuated from Nauru in a critical condition. The Refugee Action Collective said the 22-year-old woman, Naima Ahmed, and her baby boy were flown in separate planes. Ian Rintoul from the advocacy group said Naima was 32 weeks' pregnant when she underwent a caesarean operation on Nauru on Thursday. The baby was born one month premature. Mr Rintoul said an air ambulance transported Naima to Brisbane and a plane carrying the baby left Nauru three hours after his mother. Doctors for Refugees' Dr Barri Phatarfod said if Naima died it would be the Department of Immigration's fault. "Without a doubt the Immigration Department has put the life of this woman and any other pregnant woman in significant danger by making them have their deliveries in Nauru," she said. "It is an absolutely horrible situation. The mother is gravely ill and she is a young mum, she is 22, at the perfectly healthy age for a woman to give birth. "If she dies it is as a direct result of the Government's policies that force these women to give birth on Nauru. "This is the third case we have seen coming out of Nauru where there has been either a tragic outcome or an incredibly distressing outcome." "Ever since the Government stopped routinely bringing pregnant women from Nauru to Australia to have their delivery, something like this was bound to happen," she said. "We only know that something didn't go to plan, she's now in a critical condition, she was intubated... and we don't know how likely the baby is going to recover either." Dr Phatarfod said Naima suffered from the high blood-pressure condition, pre-eclampsia. "She apparently had a seizure on Nauru at five months," Dr Phatarfod said. "She should have been [medical evacuated] out at that point." Mr Rintoul said both were considered to be in a critical condition when they left Nauru. "This emergency medical evacuation raises even more questions about the standard of health care on Nauru," he said. "The Minister needs to come clean on the real standards of the Nauru hospital." A spokesperson from Australian Border Force said the mother and child were receiving appropriate medical treatment. Earlier this month a 21 year-old Somali refugee was transported to Brisbane for treatment after setting herself on fire. Topics: refugees, immigration, federal-government, human, brisbane-4000, qld, australia, nauru First posted

On Friday morning, November 1, 2013 a gunman armed with a high-powered rifle opened fire at Los Angeles International Airport. The City’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC) was activated (Level I “City Watch”) at 1000 hours in response to the shooting. The following are a few updates of the incident: 1800 Hours LAX Update The Upper and Lower Level roadways in the passenger terminal area are expected to re-open by 6 p.m. for all vehicles. Motorists picking up and dropping off passengers will be allowed to enter the terminal area. The passenger transport of passengers to Lot C will stop after the roadways re-open. For passengers requiring special assistance: Los Angeles County Mental Health personnel have been on-scene and available for those seeking mental assistance. Please call LA County Mental Health’s hotline at 1-800-854-7771. LA City sign-language interpreters have been on-scene as well. Passengers unable to reclaim personal belongings containing medical supplies/prescriptions should contact LAX’s on-airport medical clinic: Reliant Medical Clinic at 9601 South Sepulveda Blvd. at the intersection of 96th Street and Sepulveda Boulevard or phone 1-310-215-6020. The American Red Cross has been on-scene distributing water and snacks to stranded passengers relocated from Terminals 1, 2 and 3. 1730 Hours LAX Update At 4 p.m., the FAA lifted the national ground stop on arriving flights to LAX (i.e., flights from originating airports can now depart for LAX). The passenger terminal area Upper and Lower roadways are still closed to incoming personal vehicles until further notice. However, taxis, limos, courtesy shuttles, FlyAway and long-distance buses and other forms of public transportation are being allowed to enter the passenger terminal area on the Upper and Lower Levels to pick up and drop off passengers. Motorists picking up passengers are directed to go to LAX Economy Parking Lot C at the intersection of 98th Street and Sepulveda Blvd. until the passenger terminal area roadways re-open. Arriving passengers from Terminals 1, 2 and 3 are either leaving the airport in their own parked vehicles or being bussed to Lot C to meet motorists picking them up. Terminal 3 and Parking Structure 3 will remain closed until the law enforcement investigation concludes and cleared. The airlines in Terminal 3 (Virgin America, JetBlue, Spirit, Frontier, and Allegiant Air) have voluntarily cancelled all their arriving and departing flights for the rest of today. Passengers with personal belongings abandoned in Terminal 3 and/or with vehicles parked in Parking Structure 3 should expect several more hours – or evening tomorrow – to be able to reclaim their personal belongings or their vehicles. Impacted flights: Between 9:30 am and 3 pm, there were 268 scheduled arrival flights with estimated 20,000 passengers affected —many of which were held at their originating airports. At this time, 46 arrival flights were diverted to other airports in the region with an estimated 5,000 passengers. There were 478 scheduled departure flights with an estimated 51,210 affected passengers. Total arriving, diverted, and departing passengers: 76,000 passengers. Passengers stranded at LAX may contact a hotel accommodations hotline established by LA Tourism & Convention Board at 1-888-831-7176. Terminals 1 and 2 (and Parking Structures 1 and 2) are re-opened so that employees first, then passengers who are already at the airport are re-entering the terminals for departing flights. All passengers are advised to contact their airlines for status on their flights. LAX_Official on Twitter will continue to be the official source of information for airport conditions 1700 Hours LAX Update Impacted flights: Between 9:30 am and 3 pm, there were 268 scheduled arrival flights with estimated 20,000 passengers affected —many of which were held at their originating airports At this time, 46 arrival flights were diverted to other airports in the region with an estimated 5,000 passengers. There were 478 scheduled departure flights with an estimated 51,210 affected passengers. Total arriving, diverted, and departing passengers: 76,000 passengers. Terminals 1 and 2 and parking structures are re-opened so that employees first, then passengers can re-enter the terminals. Terminal 3 and Parking Structure 3 will remain closed until the law enforcement investigation concludes and cleared. Arrangements for airlines operating in Terminal 3 to temporarily relocate to another terminal area. Motorists picking up passengers are directed to go to LAX Economy Parking Lot C at the intersection of 98th Street and Sepulveda Blvd. until the passenger terminal area roadways re-open. FAA national ground stop on arriving flights remains in effect until 4 p.m. Passengers stranded at LAX may contact a hotel accommodations hotline established by LA Tourism & Convention Board at 1-888-831-7176. 1600 hours EMD Update Westerchester Recreation Center has been established as shelter site for displaced passengers at LAX. The center is located at 7000 W. Manchester Avenue, Los Angeles 90025. A hotline has been activated to help travelers stranded at (LAX) find lodging. The toll-free hotline is 1-888-831-7176, and it connects directly to a hotel booking service to connect travelers to hotels in the area nearby LAX Airport. A companion weblink is also available at Discover LA. 1520 hours LAX – Public Relations Update #5: Motorists meeting passengers are directed to LAX Economy Parking Lot C. Passengers will be transported by bus to Lot C within two hours. Stranded passengers who will need hotel accommodations should contact an LA Tourism & Convention Board hotline at: 1-888-831-7176. LAX_Official on Twitter will continue to be the official source of information for airport conditions. 1500 hours LAX – Public Relations Update #4: Phasing of the re-openings of Terminals 1 and 2, as well as the parking structures, will begin shortly. Passengers in those two terminals who wish to leave the a irport are being allowed to do so by either walking out of the airport or driving their parked vehicles out. Once the terminals are re-opened, the terminals will be repopulated with airport workers first, then departing passengers will be allowed to re-enter the terminals. Personal belongings abandoned during the evacuation can be claimed in the baggage claim areas of the terminals in which they were abandoned. Because the incident occurred in Terminal 3 and an investigation continues in that terminal and in Parking Structure3, those two facilities will continue to be closed to the public. Until Terminal 3 is re-opened, operations of the airlines in that terminal will be relocated to another terminal. All passengers are advised to contact their airlines for status of their flights. LAX_Official on Twitter will continue to be the official source of information for airport conditions. 1320 hours LAX – Public Relations Update #3: The FAA has issued a national ground-stop, or hold, for all flights that have not yet departed from their originating airports to LAX. Arriving flights already in the air are either landing at LAX or diverting to other airports in the local region. All airport roadways are still closed until further notice. In the meantime, all motorists are advised to not drive to the passenger terminal area. The California Highway Patrol reports they have closed the entrances and exits on I-405 and I-105 to the airport. Airport officials report ALL departure flights from Terminals 1, 2 and 3 are delayed until further notice. Passengers who were in those three terminals and already processed through federal security screening were relocated to other terminals for sheltering in place while law enforcement officials conduct its investigation. Some airlines at Tom Bradley International Terminal (TBIT), Terminals 4, 5,6,7,and 8 have temporarily suspended departing flights because their passengers cannot reach their terminals. All passengers are advised to contact their airlines for status of their flights. LAX_Official on Twitter will continue to be the official source of information for airport conditions. 1057 hours LAX – Public Relations Update#2: Suspect is now in custody. Multiple victims. Press conference today at 11:30 a.m. at entrance to LAX located at Sepulveda Blvd and Century Blvd with Airport Police Chief Gannon, LAPD Police Chief Beck and Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti. 0951 hours LAX – Public Relations Update #1: All Upper/Departures Level roadways are temporarily blocked by law enforcement. The general public is being held back at law enforcement block. Other than arriving flights, flight operations have been temporary held.

Mike Wise, a Washington Post sports columnist for more than a decade, is leaving the paper to help ESPN launch a new site focused on the intersection of sports, culture and race. The Post announced the news in a staff memo Monday evening. The new site — the brainchild of Jason Whitlock, who will be its editor-in-chief — has been commonly referred to as “Black Grantland” in recent months. Wise, it’s worth noting, is bald, middle-aged, and also white. Wise declined to comment on any potential career move earlier Monday. An ESPN spokesman said the network is at an advanced stage of negotiation with Wise to join Whitlock’s soon-to-launch site, and that a formal announcement likely would happen soon. Wise joined the Post in 2004; he interviewed with the paper on the same day that Joe Gibbs re-joined the Redskins. While he was most known for his columns — and for his radio show, which ran mid-days on 106.7 The Fan for three-and-a-half years — his finest work at the paper included lengthy feature stories about Gilbert Arenas and Donald Brashear. Both those profiles won “feature of the year” awards from the Associated Press Sports Editors. Wise — who spent a decade at the New York Times before joining The Post — also was honored several times by APSE as one of the country’s top sports columnists. Of course, in recent years, he likely became best-known locally for columns about issues that went beyond sports, from Jason Collins to Dave Kopay to the n-word to, yes, the Redskins name. Such issues likely will be a part of the mission at Whitlock’s site, which is expected to debut sometime in 2015. Wise’s departure temporarily leaves three full-time sports columnists at The Post: Thomas Boswell, Sally Jenkins and Jason Reid. The Post is expected to hire another columnist to replace Wise. (Full disclosure: As often noted, Wise is a longtime friend of mine, and someone I admire both professionally and personally. Yes, that makes this all kind of weird.)

Oladipo named Eastern Conference Player of Week INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – The NBA named Pacers guard Victor Oladipo the Eastern Conference Player of the Week on Monday. The former Indiana standout hit a game-winning three-pointer in the Pacers’ 97-94 win over San Antonio on Sunday at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. Oladipo led the Blue and Gold to two wins, while averaging 28.7 points, 4.0 rebounds and 2.7 assists in three games this week. He scored 28 points and set a new franchise record for field goal percentage in Tuesday’s win over Minnesota. He poured in a season-high 35 points in the team’s lone loss of the week at Oklahoma City. The fifth-year pro is eighth in the league in scoring, averaging 25.5 points per game. He has lead the Pacers in scoring in all six of their games this season. It’s Oladipo’s first Player of the Week award of his NBA career. The Pacers are 3-3 with their next game on Tuesday at home against Sacramento.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Claiborne Pell, an aristocratic Rhode Islander who spent 36 years in the U.S. Senate and was best known for championing better education for the poor, died Thursday, the Providence Journal reported. Claiborne Pell, who spent 36 years in the U.S. Senate and was best known for championing better education for the poor, in an undated photo. REUTERS/Handout Pell, who was 90, served as a Democratic senator from Rhode Island from 1961 to 1997. He was the architect of a grant program that bears his name and has helped tens of millions of Americas attend college. Pell died peacefully at his home surrounded by family shortly after midnight Thursday after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease, the Journal reported. Vice President-elect Joe Biden, who served in the Senate with Pell, called him “one of our nation’s most important voices in foreign policy for over 30 years.” “Claiborne Pell was a man of extraordinary integrity, grace and decency,” Biden said in a statement. “Because of Senator Pell and the Pell Grant, the doors of college have been opened to millions of Americans — and will continue to be opened to millions more. That is a legacy that will live on for generations to come.” The Providence Journal cited a statement released by Pell’s family as saying he defined his job in the Senate in seven words: “Translate ideas into actions and help people.” Pell spent his years in the Senate focused on education, the humanities, diplomacy and the arts and for the latter part of his Senate career served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The son of a diplomat with an old-school demeanor, Pell never lost an election in a largely blue-collar state. A self-effacing man, Pell compiled an impressive record in the Senate, from college grants for the poor early in his career to the ratification of nuclear arms treaties near its end. “I always try to let the other fellow have my way,” was one of many vintage “Pellisms” famous among Rhode Island reporters and political operatives, the Journal said.

Hours before the rock band Coheed and Cambria was scheduled to perform at the Comcast Center in Mansfield yesterday, police arrested bass player Michael Todd and charged him with robbing a nearby pharmacy of painkillers. The Attleboro Police Department said in a prepared statement that officers responded to a Walgreens Pharmacy about 1 p.m. Sunday after Todd, 30, of Anaheim, Calif., allegedly demanded Oxycontin and threatened pharmacists with a fake bomb. He absconded with six bottles of pain pills, police said. “The male suspect fled behind the building,’’ the statement said. “He was seen by a passerby getting into a taxi cab.’’ Police said they contacted a local cab company, which reported picking up a fare near the Walgreens minutes after the robbery. The cab service told police the taxi was headed to the Comcast Center, where Coheed and Cambria were slated to open for the 1990s rock band Soundgarden last evening. Attleborough police said they noticed the Mansfield Police Department, which sent officers to intercept the cab. Todd was arrested at the concert hall and he will face charges of armed robbery and possession of a controlled substance, the statement said. Todd was jailed in Attleboro on $10,000 cash bail while his bandmates performed without him. New York-based Coheed and Cambria said in a statement on its website that it will not cancel any shows and plans to continue a tour of the Northeast and Canada with another bass player. “Todd was arrested today on what we consider very serious charges and therefore he will not be finishing up the current tour,’’ the band wrote on its site. “We are surprised, to say the least, and will address the situation with Michael after the tour.’’ Alexander C. Kaufman can be reached at akaufman@globe.com. © Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.

New dating on the stone buildings of Nan Madol suggests the ancient coral reef capital in the Pacific Ocean was the earliest among the islands to be ruled by a single chief. The discovery makes Nan Madol a key locale for studying how ancient human societies evolved from simple societies to more complex societies, said archaeologist Mark D. McCoy, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. McCoy led the discovery team. McCoy deployed uranium series dating to determine that when the tomb was built it was one-of-a-kind, making it the first monumental scaled burial site on the remote islands of the Pacific. The discovery enables archaeologists to study more precisely how societies transform to more and more complex and hierarchical systems, said McCoy, an expert in landscape archaeology and monumental architecture and ideology in the Pacific Islands. "The kind of society that we live in today, it wasn't born last year, or even 100 years ago," McCoy said. "It has its roots in a pre-modern era like Nan Madol where you have a king or chief. These islanders invented a new kind of society -- that is a socially creative achievement. The idea of chiefs, someone in charge, is not a new thing, but it's an extremely important precursor. We know tribes and bands predate chiefdoms and states. But it's not a straight line. By looking at these intermediate stages we get insight into that social phenomenon." The analysis is the first time uranium-thorium series dating, which is significantly more precise than previously used radiocarbon dating, was deployed to calculate the age of the stone buildings that make up the famous site of Nan Madol (pronounced Nehn Muh-DOLL) -- the former capital of the island of Pohnpei. "The thing that makes this case special is Nan Madol happened in isolation, it happened very recently, and we have multiple lines of evidence, including oral histories to support the analysis," McCoy said. "And because it's an island we can be much more specific about the natural resources, the population, all the things that are more difficult when people are on a continent and all connected. So we can understand it with a lot more precision." Nan Madol, which UNESCO this year named a World Heritage Site, was previously dated as being established in A.D. 1300. McCoy's team narrowed that to just a 20-year window more than 100 years earlier, from 1180 to 1200. The finding pushes back even earlier the establishment of the powerful dynasty of Saudeleur chiefs who asserted authority over the island society for more than 1,000 years. First chief was buried in Pohnpei tomb by A.D. 1200 An ancient city built atop a coral reef, Nan Madol has been uninhabited for centuries now. Located in the northwestern Pacific on the remote island of Pohnpei, it's accessible via a 10-hour flight from Hawaii interspersed with short hops from atoll to atoll, including a stop at a U.S. military installation. Nan Madol is the largest archaeological site in Micronesia, a group of islands in the Caroline Archipelago of Oceania. Uranium dating indicates that by 1180, massive stones were being transported from a volcanic plug on the opposite side of the island for construction of the tomb. And by 1200, the burial vault had its first internment, the island's chief. Manipulate two 3D models of the burial monument, one with foliage and one without, at https://skfb.ly/StXA and https://skfb.ly/S9LF. Construction of monumental buildings followed over the next several centuries on other islands not in the Saudeleur Dynasty across Oceania. McCoy, an associate professor in the SMU Department of Anthropology, and his team reported their discovery in the journal Quaternary Research in "Earliest direct evidence of monument building at the archaeological site of Nan Madol identified using 230Th/U coral dating and geochemical sourcing of megalithic architectural stone." Co-authors include Helen A. Alderson, University of Cambridge, U.K., Richard Hemi, University of Otago, New Zealand, Hai Cheng, Xi'an Jiaotong University, China, and R. Lawrence Edwards, University of Minnesota. An inactive volcano that hasn't erupted in at least one million years, Pohnpei Island is much larger than its neighboring atolls at 128 square miles (334 square kilometers), making it about the physical size of Columbia, S.C. Now part of the 607-island nation of the Federated States of Micronesia, Pohnpei Island and its nearby atolls have a population of 34,000. Pohnpei monument indicates invention of a new kind of society How Nan Madol was built remains an engineering mystery, much like Egypt's Pyramids. "It's a fair comparison to the Pyramids, because the construction, like the Pyramids, didn't help anyone -- it didn't help society be fairer, or to grow crops or to provide any social good. It's just a really big place to put a dead person," McCoy said. It's important to document such things, he said, because this architectural wonder indicates that independently of Egypt, another group of people put effort into building a monument. "And we think that's associated with the invention of a new kind of society, a new kind of chiefdom that ruled the entire island," McCoy said. Unlike Egypt and the Pyramids however, Nan Madol was invented much more recently in the big story of human prehistory, he said. "At A.D. 1200 there are universities in Europe. The Romans had come and gone. The Egyptians had come and gone," he said. "But when you're looking at Pohnpei, it's very recent, so we still have the oral histories of the descendants of the people who built Nan Madol. There's evidence that you just don't have elsewhere." Monumental city built of coral and stone Pohnpei was originally settled in A.D. 1 by islanders from the Solomon or Vanuatu island groups. According to local oral history, the Saudeleur Dynasty is estimated to have begun its rule around 1160 by counting back generations from the modern day. To build the tomb and other structures, naturally formed boulders of basalt, each weighing tons, were somehow transported far from existing quarries on the other side of the island to a lagoon overgrown with mangrove and stretching across 205 acres (83 hectares). The basalt blocks formed when hot lava cooled and adopted the shape of long, column-shaped boulders and cobbles. Formed from 1 million to 8 million years ago, they came from a number of possible quarry locations on the island. The city's stone structures were built atop 98 shallow artificial coral reef islets, each one built by the Saudeleur people. The structures were constructed about three feet above waterline by laying down framing stones, filling the void between them with crushed coral, then laying up double parallel walls and again filling the gap between with crushed coral. The islets are separated by tidal canals and protected from the ocean by 12 sea walls, making Nan Madol what many consider the Venice of the Pacific. "The structures are very cleverly built," said McCoy. "We think of coral as precious, but for the architects of Nan Madol it was a building material. They were on a little island surrounded by huge amounts of coral reef that grows really quickly in this environment, so they could paddle out at low tide and mine the coral by smashing some off and breaking it up into rubble." The largest and most elaborate architecture in the city is the tomb of the first Saudeleur, measuring 262 feet by 196 feet (80 meters by 60 meters), basically the size of a football field. It is more than 26 feet (8 meters) tall, with exterior walls about six feet to 10 feet (1.8 to 3 meters) thick. A maze of walls and interior walkways, it includes an underground crypt capped with basalt. "The architecture is meant to be extremely impressive, and it is," McCoy said. "The structures were built to last -- this is one of the rainiest places on earth, so it can be muddy and slippery and wet, but these islets on the coral reef are very stable." Portable X-ray technology provides clue to source of megalithic stones McCoy and his team used portable X-ray fluorescence (XRF) to geochemically match the columnar-shaped basalt stones to natural sources on the island. The uranium-thorium technique calculates a date based on characteristics of the radioactive isotope thorium-230 and its radioactive parent uranium-234. That enabled them to determine the construction chronology of a tomb that oral histories identify as the resting place of the first chief to rule the entire island. "We used an X-ray gun, which looks like a 1950s-styled ray gun," McCoy said. "It allows you -- at a distance and without destroying the thing you're interested in -- to bounce X-rays off it and work out what the chemistry is. The mobile technology has gotten much more affordable, making this kind of study feasible." Using uranium series dating on coral emerged in the last decade. Accuracy -- superior to radiocarbon -- is plus or minus a few years of when the coral died. A very good radiocarbon date only will get within 100 years. "That's a monumental shift in terms of the precision with which we talk about things," McCoy said. "If Nan Madol had not been made of the kind of stone we could source, if the architects hadn't chosen to use coral, we wouldn't have been able to get this date. So it's a happy coincidence that the evidence at the site came together." McCoy suggests that future research look at finding the cause for this major turning point on Pohnpei, and what sparked this new hierarchy of rule and monumental building in this society.

I hopped on a blog website a couple days ago, and one of the first posts I read was “Xavier Paul: Why is he still here?” Then, in the third game of the most recent series against the Cubs, he went 2-4 with a run, a double and a homer that brought in three runs. That’s why Paul is still here. All season long, we’ve had this feud within the family. Not so much the Cincinnati Reds ball club, but more so within the Reds community; whether that’s online, or out in the streets. I’ve seen valid (and of course completely invalid) arguments coming from the sides of Paul and left field equal Derrick Robinson. Robinson is arguably the fastest guy on the team. In the final game of the series against the Cardinals, Robinson was 2-4 with both of his hits coming as doubles. He can turn first base on a dime if he has to. That’s why Robinson is still here. So, with these two fielders jockeying for position, how do you choose? Both are equally above average fielders and both can hit the ball, not only on a nightly basis, but when it comes down to crunch time as well. Robinson has started in 41 games this season. He’s batting .317, which is hardly terrible, and his on base percentage sits at about .410. From the games I’ve seen, a little less than half of that .410 has been because he was simply able to outrun the throw to first. For Paul, he’s more experienced than Robinson, who had is major league debut earlier this year. Paul is sitting at .288, slightly above his career average of 265. He isn’t quite on base as much as Robinson, either. And if you don’t like seasonal stats for these two, let me throw you the last seven. Robinson has been at the plate 11 times in the past seven games and has acquired three hits. He’s batting .273 with two runs for himself and all three of his hits being doubles. Paul is hitting .385 for batting 13 times. He’s batted in three runs off of a homer against the Cubs on June 11 and has five hits. If it were me, I’d be putting Robinson out there in left just a little more so than Paul, the opposite of what team manager Dusty Baker is doing right now. You’re going to get the same kind of effort and athleticism on defense and both are batting almost equal throughout the season. The one thing the rookie Robinson has going for him is speed. The kid is fast and knows where the ball is and knows his own speed. He’s still a kid, so he’s not trying to be a hero when he doesn’t need to be. You don’t need to be a hero when you have plays like this or this. Note: I wrote a piece last week about Joey Votto being a road warrior. In case you haven’t seen, Votto is hitting .325, stole a base (big deal for him) and yes, hit another home run.

The man suspected of murdering three women in the Ottawa Valley is a former millwright whose life seems to have spiralled out of control during the past five years. Basil Joseph Borutski, 57, has been identified as the man who allegedly shot dead three women in the area around Wilno, a small town about 180 kilometres west of Ottawa. Borutski was recently released from jail after being sentenced to 19 months for assault, theft and a firearms offence. He has a troubled history with police: Court documents reveal that he believed that he was the victim of a longstanding harassment campaign by the Ontario Provincial Police. “People stay away from trouble — so he was someone who was losing friends,” said Janice Visneskie Moore, mayor of the Township of Killaloe, Hagarty and Richards. Moore grew up with Basil Borutski near Round Lake, where she knew the Borutskis as a large, hardworking family. He was a normal kid, she said, but later had “lots of tragedy” in his life. “I feel bad for all them involved,” Moore said. “In a small community, it seems like we hurt more because everybody knows everybody.” Reached at his home on Round Lake, Borutski’s younger brother, William, said only: “Sorry, not today.” Court documents reveal that Basil Borutski was unlucky, abusive and violent. As a young man, his right hand was severed, then reattached, in a workplace injury in Kitchener, which made it difficult for him to write. He returned to school and learned to be a millwright, but suffered a serious motor vehicle accident in 1994 that left him permanently disabled and unable to work. His problems with the law began after the final breakdown of his marriage in August 2008. His relationship with Mary Ann Borutski started in 1982, and together they raised three children: Candace, Amanda and Sahra. But in a November 2011 court hearing, held as part of a contentious divorce proceeding, both Candace and Amanda — despite being called as witnesses by their father — “verified their mother’s version of the dysfunction in the marriage and confirmed that Basil was violent, easily agitated and tyrannical toward his family members.” Ontario Superior Court Justice Rick Leroy was unsparing in his assessment of that marriage: “From what the witnesses said at trial,” he said, “this was a wretched marital relationship.” Candace testified that she had a vivid memory of her father’s violence toward her mother — violence that included hair pulling, slapping and an attempt to push her from a moving vehicle, according to the 2011 judgment in the divorce case. Related During the same hearing, Borutski’s daughter, Amanda, told the judge that her father made repeated threats to burn down the family home should Mary Ann be awarded exclusive possession of it. The Borutski’s Round Lake home burned to the ground in January 2011 months after Basil Borutski cancelled the insurance policy that covered it. The OPP and the Office of the Fire Marshall investigated the incident, but no charges were laid in connection with the fire. Mary Ann Borutski asked the court to award her half of the home’s original value and the court ultimately agreed with her, awarding her an equalization payment of $92,000. “Basil unilaterally and without notice to Mary Ann terminated the fire insurance and vacated the property while resisting every initiative Mary Ann took to re-occupy and protect the premises,” the judge ruled. During the court proceeding, Basil Borutski said his estranged wife made repeated, false accusations of domestic assault against him during their on-and-off 16 year relationship. He called Mary Ann vindictive and manipulative, and suggested her judgment and memory were impaired by mental health issues. His estranged wife told court that Borutski had “destroyed her spirit” through relentless threats and abuse, and that he reconciled with her only in order to evade domestic assault charges. As Borutski’s marriage ended in acrimony, he also came into conflict with the law. At 2 a.m. on New Year’s Eve 2010, Borutski was stopped by an OPP RIDE program in the Township of Killaloe, Hagary and Richards. The officer assessed Borutski but allowed him to proceed. As he left the police stop, Borutski shouted, “Happy New Year,” to the officers. His words were slurred, the officers decided, and they followed him for the next six kilometres. They saw him weave side to side and pulled him over for a breathalyzer, which he failed. At his subsequent trial in front of Ontario Court Justice R. G. Selkirk, Borutski accused the officers of “rigging” the roadside screening device to ensure he failed, and of beating him. He later refused to provide an official breath sample. Borutski, who said he suffered from an anxiety disorder, also claimed he was the victim of 16 years of Ontario Provincial Police harassment, but Judge Selkirk rejected that allegation. “I don’t believe much of anything that he said,” Selkirk told court. “He has made ridiculous, unsubstantiated claims of police abuse.” Borutski was convicted of failing to provide a breath sample in October 2010 and later lost an appeal of that conviction. He was arrested two years later on a raft of other charges, including auto theft and operating a motor vehicle while disqualified. While in custody at Killaloe Provincial Court, he was involved in another incident that resulted in him being charged with assault and mischief. He was sentenced to 575 days in jail in September 2014 while being credited for almost a year in custody. — With files from Gary Dimmock

ZEPHYRHILLS, Fla. — A Florida man pretended to be someone else for more than 20 years, and his wife didn’t even know, Pasco County deputies say. Richard Hoagland, 63, decided not to be Richard Hoagland in 1992 after two failed marriages and four children, the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office said. His second wife said he just disappeared one day, according to Bay News 9. “Linda states that Richard Hoagland had three businesses that were related to insurance,” Sheriff Chris Nocco said. “She states that he embezzled over $1 million.” Investigators said Hoagland ended up in Palm Beach and began living with a man whose son was deceased. He found his death certificate and assumed Terry Symanksy’s identity, according to authorities. Symansky died in August 1991. “He uses the death certificate to apply for a new birth certificate from Ohio; Ohio gives him the birth certificate,” Nocco said. “He uses that birth certificate to apply by mail for a driver’s license in Alabama; he then gets that Alabama driver’s license and uses it to apply for a Florida driver’s license.” A few years later, he remarried and put down roots in Zephyrhills. His neighbors knew him as their landlord — he owned several homes surrounding his. But they knew him as Terry. “We’ve been personal with him quite a bit, and Terry’s the nicest guy anyone could ever meet,” said one of his tenants, Gregory Yates. Hoagland, his wife and teenage son lived on the property. “He’s a really nice guy, and he’s a really good landlord. Never would have known this, couldn’t imagine this was happening,” said another tenant, Dean Lockwood. Hoagland was found out because a nephew of Symansky was doing research on Ancestry.com. He then found more information about his “uncle” on Google — including that he was now a pilot. The family called police, who then contacted the Pasco Sheriff’s Office. Detectives showed up at Hoagland’s home Wednesday, and that’s when his wife learned everything. “For 20 years, she’s been lied to, so now she doesn’t know what she has to do as far as whether her marriage is even legal — what’s going to happen to all the properties they own, their bank accounts. The son has the last name Symansky,” Det. Anthony Cardillo said. It’s not just his family wondering what’s next. “I like it here, so I don’t know what’s going to happen now,” Lockwood said. Hoagland has been charged with identity theft, but the Sheriff’s Office said it has notified federal agencies, and more charges may be coming. Investigators said Hoagland admitted to using a false identity for over 20 years. He said he ran from his old life because he didn’t want to go through another divorce.

With 7:22 left in the fourth quarter Monday, Spurs center Dewayne Dedmon picked up his second technical foul, this one for jawing with Houston's Patrick Beverley. He did not pass Go, but jogged directly into the locker room, ejected from Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals. It hardly seemed fair the rest of the Spurs had to stick around to watch what was left of this abomination. Behind a 3-point barrage unprecedented in either team's playoff history, the Rockets routed the Spurs 126-99 at the AT&T Center, delivering the type of series-opening salvo that could test the losing team's ability to recover. "At this point," Spurs guard Manu Ginobili said, trying to sort out the postmortem, "we feel like everything we did was wrong." With James Harden playing maestro on his way to 20 points and 14 rebounds, and the Spurs' own offense going M.I.A., Houston gave Gregg Popovich the largest Game 1 loss of his career. The previous worst was a 19-point shellacking against New Orleans to open the 2008 Western Conference semifinals, a series the Spurs eventually won in seven games. If the Spurs aim to get past the Rockets in this series, they will require a Haz-Mat crew to clean up all that went awry Monday. Start with the 3-point line, where Houston made a franchise playoff-record 22 shots, attempting an NBA playoff-record 50. "I don't think we executed in a very wise manner," said Popovich, whose team had never allowed more than 15 3-pointers in a postseason game before Monday. "We disobeyed a lot of basic basketball rules that they can take advantage of." The Spurs were behind by 11 points at the end of the first quarter, a deficit that swelled to an almost unbelievable 69-39 at half. There was no coming back from that. Trevor Ariza threw in 23 points and five 3-pointers for the Rockets. Clint Capela chipped in 20 points and 13 rebounds. Ryan Anderson had 14 points and another four 3-pointers. Afterward, the Rockets said all the right things. "It's big, but we can't settle," is how Harden framed a night that saw his team lead by as many as 39. "Game 1 is good for us, but we have to get greedy." Curiously for a coach whose team had just given up 126 points and more 3-pointers than any other club in franchise history, Popovich spent most of his postgame presser bemoaning the Spurs' lack of offense. Back to Gallery Rockets make statement, humble Spurs in Game 1 5 1 of 5 Photo: Karen Warren/Houston Chronicle 2 of 5 Photo: Karen Warren/Houston Chronicle 3 of 5 Photo: Edward A. Ornelas/San Antonio Express-News 4 of 5 Photo: Edward A. Ornelas/San Antonio Express-News 5 of 5 Photo: Karen Warren/Houston Chronicle Quick shots, he said, led to missed shots which led to run-out opportunities for the ultra-athletic Rockets that were near-impossible to defend. "If we're going to shoot quickly and shoot poorly, it's going to be a fast-break deal all night long," said Popovich, whose team was 31 of 84 with 15 turnovers. "And they're better at that than we are." Save for Kawhi Leonard, who had 21 points, 11 rebounds and six assists in 32 minutes, the offensive meltdown was more or less a team effort. Reserve the opposite of a gold star for LaMarcus Aldridge, who labored through his worst playoff game as a Spur. Coming into Monday, the Spurs thought they could use the five-time All-Star's size to punish Houston's small-ball lineups. That didn't happen. Aldridge finished with four points, had as many field goals as turnovers (two), and seemed unsure of himself all night. "I definitely have to help out Kawhi," Aldridge said. "He competed, we all competed, but I have to take my time down there and make them pay." Even when the Spurs could get Aldridge matched on a Rocket he should abuse, it didn't work out. One example, early in the second quarter: Aldridge had the ball with nothing between him and the basket but Beverley, the Rockets' 6-foot-2 point guard. Beverley stripped him, giving way to a Lou Williams 3-pointer the other way. "I've just got to take my time," Aldridge said. "I thought tonight I was trying to rush because there were so many mismatches on me." It was a far cry from Game 1 of last year's conference semifinals, when Aldridge erupted for 38 points and the Spurs beat Oklahoma City by 31. The Thunder recovered to win that series, a memory that offers the Spurs only lukewarm comfort now. Popovich said he doesn't worry about a carryover for Wednesday's Game 2. Ginobili, the Spurs' oldest player, said he frankly didn't know how this Spurs team will react. "We're not used to something like this happening," Ginobili said. With 9:27 left in a game already far gone, Popovich subbed in rookie point guard Dejounte Murray, the last member of his bench. He was officially waving the white flag. The Rockets had long since signaled their intention to offer no quarter. By then, the answer seemed obvious. Maybe Dedmon had the right idea. jmcdonald@express-news.net Twitter: @JMcDonald_SAEN

Photographs fade, books rot, and even hard drives eventually fester. When you take the long view, preserving humanity's collective culture isn't a marathon, it's a relay — with successive generations passing on information from one slowly-failing storage medium to the next. However, this could change. Scientists from the University of Southampton in the UK have created a new data format that encodes information in tiny nanostructures in glass. A standard-sized disc can store around 360 terabytes of data, with an estimated lifespan of up to 13.8 billion years even at temperatures of 190°C. That's as old as the Universe, and more than three times the age of the Earth. "We can encode anything. Just give us the file." The method is called five-dimensional data storage, and was first demonstrated in a paper in 2013. Since then, the scientists behind it say they've more or less perfected their technique, and are now looking to move the technology forward and perhaps even commercialize it. "We can encode anything," Aabid Patel, a postgraduate student involved in the research tells The Verge. "We’re not limited to anything — just give us the file and we can print it [onto a disc]." In order to demonstrate the format's virtues, the team from the University of Southampton have created copies of the King James Bible, Isaac Newton's Opticks (the foundational text of the study of light and lenses), and the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was presented to the UN earlier this month. A new paper on the format will be given tomorrow by the team's lead researcher, Professor Peter Kazansky, at the Society for Optical Engineering Conference in San Francisco. The one-inch discs used to encode new texts in 5D and a diagram illustrating the micron-sized dots (not to scale) which the nanogratings are stored in. (Image credit: University of Southampton) To understand why these discs can store so much information for such a long time, it's best to compare them to a regular CD. Data is read from a normal CD by shining a laser at a tiny line with bumps in it. Whenever the laser hits a bump. it's reflected back and recorded as a 1; whenever there's no bump, it's recorded as a 0. These are just two "dimensions" of information — on or off — but from them, CDs can store anything: music, books, images, videos, or software. But because this bumpy line is stored on the surface of the CD, it's vulnerable. It can be eroded either by physical scratches and scuffs, or by exposure to oxygen, heat, and humidity. 5D discs, by comparison, store information within their interior using tiny physical structures known as "nanogratings." Much like those bumpy lines in the CDs, these change how light is reflected, but instead of doing so in just two "dimensions," the reflected light encodes five — hence the name. The changes to the light can be read to obtain pieces of information about the nanograting's orientation, the strength of the light it refracts, and its location in space on the x, y, and z axes. These extra dimensions are why 5D discs can store data so densely compared to regular optical discs. A Blu-ray disc can hold up to 128GBs of data (the same as the biggest iPhone), while a 5D disc of the same size could store nearly 3,000 times that: 360 terabytes of information. These discs can potentially last for so long because glass is a tough material which needs a lot of heat to melt or warp it, and it's chemically stable too. (Think about all those science experiments that use glass beakers to contain reactive materials without anything bad happening to them.) This makes the 5D discs safe up to temperatures of 1,000°C, say the researchers. 5D data storage obviously has potential as an archival format for museums and galleries, but the scientists involved believe it could be also be commercialized in the not-too distant future. Although the expensive lasers needed to fabricate the discs aren't going to move out of the lab any time soon, the discs can be read relatively easily, with the team from Southampton suggesting the equivalent of a DVD player for 5D information could be developed in decades. "The concept and the development of it is ready to go," says Patel. "It’s a matter of developing the technology so we can then make it readily available for commercial purposes." This seems ambitious though, given the inertia that has to be overcome when introducing any new storage medium. There are also rival techniques being developed and theorized. Hitachi is working on its own form of glass-based data storage, and in 2014, researchers simulated a "liquid hard drive" that would use nanoparticles suspended in a solution to store data. At least storing data in glass discs that can outlive the Earth sounds almost normal by comparison. "Who knows what's going to happen thousands of years down the line, no one can predict that," says Patel. "But what we can guarantee is that we have the ability to store the culture, language, and essence of the human race in a simple piece of glass. For future civilizations — or whatever else is out there."

Robert Downey Jr. seemed to be channeling Tony Stark’s intensity in an interview with the U.K.’s Channel 4 News, walking out of the room when asked about his past. Journalist Krishnan Guru-Murthy tweeted the video of his “Avengers: Age of Ultron” promotional interview with Downey Jr., captioning it, “A steely moment from Ironman.” In the video, Downey Jr. appears rather irritable from the start, but the interview really starts to go south when Guru-Murthy asks him to explain the following quote from a 2008 article in the New York Times: “You can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal,” Downey Jr. said. When pressed on the subject of his past, the actor says, “Uh, are we promoting a movie?” As the interviewer attempts to justify his questions, Downey Jr. says, “I’m sorry, I, I really don’t — what are we doing? Bye.” As he leaves the room, he says, “I’m sorry, it’s just getting a little Diane Sawyer in here.” “Avengers: Age of Ultron” bows in theaters May 1.

Linux 3.19 was released, to be followed by either a version 3.20 or 4.0. Also, the 2015 Linux Kernel Report reveals a growing rate of kernel contributions. Linux kernel 3.19 was released on Feb. 8 (see farther below). Meanwhile, the next release has a good chance of being renamed from Linux 3.20 to Linux 4.0. As reported by LinuxPlanet, Linus Torvalds posted an entry on Google+ saying he is opening up the question of naming to the community before he makes a decision. “I’m once more close to running out of fingers and toes,” wrote the Linux creator. “So — continue with v3.20, because bigger numbers are sexy, or just move to v4.0 and reset the numbers to something smaller?” So far, Linux 4.0 has been outscoring Linux 3.20 among community voters, says LinuxPlanet. Like the Linux 3.0 kernel released in 2011, the 4.0 (or 3.20) release will be more or less like any other incremental release. There is one major new feature, however: live kernel patching. A joint development of enterprise distro vendors Red Hat and SUSE, live kernel patching is inspired by MIT’s Ksplice. Red Hat and SUSE announced their respective technologies around the same time, and found so many similarities they decided to merge their efforts. The live patching (code redirection) feature includes an API for kernel modules containing the patches, as well as an API/ABI for userspace that lets developers work with them. The technology is said to use existing kernel infrastructure, such as ftrace, as much as possible. Initially it supports x86, but is being ported to other architectures. Linux 3.19 The new Linux 3.19 kernel, meanwhile, improves support for Btrfs file system scrubbing, adds RAID hotswap features, and offers Intel memory buffering enhancements, as well as Device Tree Overlays to ease development of the expansion buses found on community-backed SBCs. Support for several new processors has also been added. According to Kernelnewbies.org, major enhancements in the just released Linux 3.19 include: Btrfs scrubbing support Fast device replacement with RAID 5 and 6 Intel Memory Protection Extensions that help to stop buffer overflows AMD HSA architecture support Support for the debugging ARM Coresight subsystems Altera Nios II CPU architecture Networking infrastructure for routing and switching offloading Device Tree Overlays to support expansion buses found on consumer SBCs like the BeagleBone or Raspberry Pi Support for hole punching and pre-allocation in NFSv4.2 Android binder moved from staging area to stable (click to enlarge) 2015 Linux Kernel Development report The Linux 3.19 release was followed by the publication of the Linux Foundation’s quasi-annual Linux Kernel Development report, which reveals key stats and trends in kernel development. Since the previous Linux Kernel Development report from Sept. 2013, which followed the release of 3.10, major new Linux kernel features are said to include: O_TMPFILE option for the creation of temporary files NFS 4.2 support Virtualization support on ARM64 with Xen and KVM Zswap compressed swap cache Support for using GPU rendering engines independently of a graphical display Multiqueue block layer for improved high-end disk I/O performance Nftables firewall to eventually replace iptables Realtime earliest-deadline-first scheduler Numerous networking improvements Major reworking of the control group subsystem File sealing support for secure interprocess communication (IPC) Overlayfs union filesystem’ Hundreds of new drivers, thousands of fixes According to the new report, more than 96,000 Linux kernel changesets have been merged from 4,169 individual developers representing approximately 518 corporations since Sept. 2013. All these numbers have risen since the earlier report. Some 1,458 developers and 239 companies contributed to the Linux 3.18 kernel released in December. The Linux kernel project, which oversees the largest and most important component of the many modules that comprise a typical “Linux system,” continues to be the largest and most open source project in the world. “There may be no other examples of such a large, common resource being supported by such a large group of independent actors in such a collaborative way,” says the report. Faster pace, larger kernel The accelerating pace of patch contributions merged into the Linux kernel reflects improved testing infrastructure, says the report. For example, during the last 17 months, the “zero-day build and boot robot” self-test framework alone found nearly 500 bugs, all of which were fixed. The zero-day bot is expected to improve over the next year, along with other testing technologies. Kernel Development History (data source: Linux Foundation) Release Date Dev days Files Lines Changes Chgs/hour 3.11 9/2/13 64 44,017 17,407,037 10,893 7.09 3.12 11/3/13 62 44,601 17,730,630 10,927 7.34 3.13 1/19/14 77 44,985 17,934,674 12,127 6.56 3.14 3/30/14 70 45,950 18,275,747 12,311 7.33 3.15 6/8/14 70 46,795 18,636,331 13,722 8.17 3.16 8/3/14 56 47,440 18,882,881 12,804 9.53 3.17 10/5/14 63 47,505 18,868,140 12,354 8.17 3.18 12/7/14 63 47,986 18,997,848 11,379 7.53 Overall: 525 96,517 7.7 Since the release of the 3.10 kernel, patches have been merged at an average rate of 7.71 per hour, says the LF. The speedup has helped accelerate kernel development cycles, which have dropped from about 70 days in 2013 to just under 66 days. The Linux kernel was comprised of only about 10,000 lines of code when Linus Torvalds released the first version in 1991, but has now grown from 17 million lines in Sept. 2013 to 19 million today. It might have been more than that if not for a rare drop in total lines of code in the 3.17 release when the kernel community stripped out a variety of old and unmaintained drivers. The only other time the kernel has shrunk was with the release of kernel 2.6.36 in 2010. When it comes to the rate of kernel releases and the growth in kernel size, more is not always better. The consensus opinion in the community is that the current six to 12 week cycle is ideal. If the cycle is too short, there’s not enough time for testing, says the LF. Meanwhile, Torvalds has long warned about the kernel growing too bloated, which led to the removal of drivers. Then again, to keep up with all the developments from server virtualization to new embedded technologies the kernel will probably need to keep growing. More developers, but fewer volunteers and sponsors Since Sept. 2013, nearly 200 more developers have participated in each kernel development cycle, says the LF. Since the kernel development team moved to the Git repository system with Linux 2.6.11 in 2005, thereby enabling more accurate tracking, some 11,695 developers have contributed, working for a “minimum” of 1,230 companies, says the report. The number of contributions in which the labor was primarily paid for by a company has grown slightly, representing “well over 80 percent,” says the report. Submissions from unpaid developers, meanwhile, continues its slow decline of many years, dropping from 14.6 percent in the 2012 report to 13.6 percent in 2013 and now 11.8 percent. Kernel Developer Affiliation (source: Linux Foundation) Company Changes None 11,968 12.40% Intel 10,108 10.50% Red Hat 8,078 8.40% Linaro 5,415 5.60% Samsung 4,290 4.40% Unknown 3,842 4.00% IBM 3,081 3.20% SUSE 2,890 3.00% Consultants 2,451 2.50% Texas Instruments 2,269 2.40% Vision Engraving Systems 2,089 2.20% Google 2,048 2.10% Renesas Electronics 2,004 2.10% Freescale 1,690 1.80% Free Electrons 1,463 1.50% Company Changes Outreachy 1,418 1.50% Oracle 1,166 1.20% AMD 1,109 1.10% NVidia 1,078 1.10% Broadcom 1,001 1.00% Huawei Technologies 971 1.00% ARM 788 0.80% Pengutronix 763 0.80% Cisco 723 0.70% Qualcomm 679 0.70% Fujitsu 672 0.70% Linux Foundation 627 0.60% Imagination Technologies 579 0.60% QLogic 545 0.60% Ingics Technology 526 0.50% The report suggests that this is not so much due to a lack of volunteer spirit as the fact that Linux kernel developers are in such high demand — good kernel developers don’t stay unemployed for long. “Anybody who demonstrates an ability to get code into the mainline tends not to have trouble finding job offers,” says the report. Over the years, the number of sponsoring companies has shown overall growth, despite some downticks. The 2009 kernel report, for example, listed nearly 1,000 developers working for more than 200 different corporations, while by the time Linux 3.1 arrived 2013, there were 1,392 developers working for 243 companies. In 2014 and 2015, however, the number of companies dropped slightly compared to 2013. On Linux 3.18, for example, 239 companies contributed, compared to 241 on Linux 3.17. There continues to be a large disparity between the volume of contributions submitted by sponsoring companies. The top 10 sponsors today make up nearly 57 percent of total contributions, says the report. The leading contributor — the 12.4 percent who list themselves as “none” — refers primarily to unaligned, unpaid contributors. Since Sept. 2013, Intel has taken over the second-place slot from Red Hat, with 10.5 percent and 8.4 percent of contributions, respectively. Texas Instruments has dropped from fourth place to 10th, perhaps reflecting the chipmaker’s retreat from the smartphone market. Meanwhile, Linaro and Samsung continue to rise on the chart, with 5.6 percent and 4.4 percent, respectively, followed by “Unknown,” IBM, SUSE, “Consultants,” and TI. Google, which has been increasing its contributions over the years, dropped to 12th place behind Vision Engraving Systems. After Google comes chipmakers Renesas and Freescale. Interestingly, two smaller open source organizations have jumped into the next two slots ahead of tech giants like Oracle, AMD, Nvidia, Broadcom, and Huawei. These include our embedded Linux friends at France-based Free Electrons, and the FOSS Outreach for Women, which recently changed its name to Outreachy. The organization is primarily backed by the GNOME Foundation, with fellowship support coming from the LF, Intel, and Codethink. Individual contributions also vary significantly. Typically about a third of contributors contribute only one patch per release, but since the 2.6.11 release in 2005, the top 30 developers have contributed about 17 percent of the total. Since the 2013 report, contributors who have represented 1 percent or more of contributions include H. Hartley Sweeten (2.2 percent), Sachin Kamat, Jingoo Han, and Laurent Pinchart. Perhaps just as important as the developers are the kernel maintainers who approve code. These “non-author signoff” contributors have been led since the last report by Greg Kroah-Hartman with 14.4 percent, David Miller with 8.6 percent, and Mark Brown and Andrew Morton, each with 4.1 percent. The companies supporting such signoffs are increasingly linked to the mobile and embedded sectors, says the report. Non-author Signoffs (source: Linux Foundation) Developer Signoffs Percent Greg Kroah-Hartman 13,028 14.40% David S. Miller 7,780 8.60% Mark Brown 3,735 4.10% Andrew Morton 3,726 4.10% Mauro Carvalho Chehab 2,706 3.00% Daniel Vetter 2,554 2.80% John W. Linville 2,288 2.50% Rafael J. Wysocki 1,614 1.80% Simon Horman 1,339 1.50% Ingo Molnar 1,243 1.40% Developer Signoffs Percent Linus Walleij 1,213 1.30% Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo 1,044 1.20% Jeff Kirsher 916 1.00% Benjamin Herrenschmidt 906 1.00% Shawn Guo 905 1.00% Jonathan Cameron 871 1.00% Felipe Balbi 861 1.00% Jason Cooper 783 0.90% Chris Mason 761 0.80% Johannes Berg 748 0.80% Interestingly, the total number of patches approved by Torvalds — 329, or 0.4 percent of the total — “continues its long-term decline, [reflecting] the increasing amount of delegation to subsystem maintainers who do the bulk of the patch review and merging,” adds the LF’s report. Further information The 2015 Linux Kernel Development report may be found here (requires free LF registration).

An international collaboration of physicists conducting experiments at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has determined for the first time the weak charge of the proton. The findings also include the determinations of the weak charge of the neutron, and of the up quark and down quark. The weak force is one of the four fundamental forces in our Universe, along with gravity, electromagnetism and the strong force. Although the weak force acts only on the sub-atomic level, we can see its effects in our everyday world. It plays a key role in the nuclear reaction processes that take place in stars and is responsible for much of the natural radiation present in our Universe. Lead author Prof Darko Androic from the University of Zagreb, Croatia, and his colleagues proposed the first direct measurement of the proton’s weak charge, denoted by the symbol Qp w – this represents the strength of the weak force’s pull on the proton, a measure of how strongly a proton interacts via the weak force. Since the weak charge of the proton is precisely predicted by the Standard Model, which is a well-tested theoretical framework that describes the elementary particles and the details of how they interact, it is an ideal parameter to measure experimentally as a test of the Standard Model. To perform the experiment, the team directed a very intense beam of electrons into a container of liquid hydrogen. The electrons were longitudinally polarized – spinning along or opposite their direction of motion. Electrons that made only glancing collisions with the protons – elastic scattering, where the proton remained intact – emerged at small angles and were deflected by powerful electromagnets onto eight symmetrically placed detectors. The weak force is far weaker than the electromagnetic force. In classical terms, one might think of this as for every one million electrons that interact with the protons via the electromagnetic force, only one will interact via the weak force. The physicists measured those few weak interactions by exploiting an important difference between the two forces – the weak force violates a symmetry known as parity, which reverses all spatial directions and turns our right-handed world into a left-handed one. In an opposite-parity world, the electrons spinning with their axes along their direction of motion would interact with protons via the electromagnetic force with the same strength. Where the weak force is concerned, electrons with right-handed spin interact differently than left-handed ones. By keeping all other parameters of the experiment the same, and only reversing the polarization direction of the electron beam, the scientists can use the difference or asymmetry of the measurements between two polarization directions to isolate the effect of the weak interaction. The goal is to measure this difference, only 200 parts per billion, as precisely as possible. This precision is equivalent to measuring the thickness of a sheet of paper laid atop the Eiffel Tower. The initial analysis of the experimental data yielded a value for Qp w = 0.064 ± 0.012 that is in good agreement with the Standard Model prediction, Qp w (SM) = 0.0710 ± 0.0007. “Readers should view this result primarily as a first determination of the weak charge of the proton. Our final publication will be focused on implications with respect to potential new physics,” said Dr Roger Carlini, a Jefferson Lab staff scientist, who is a co-author of a paper accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters (arXiv.org). ______ Bibliographic information: D. Androic et al. First determination of the weak charge of the proton. Physical Review Letters, accepted for publication August 30, 2013; arXiv: 1307.5275

Twelve years after the Armin Meiwes case shocked Germany and the world, another bizarre cannibal-fetish murder has, according to media reports, taken place in Germany. Police on Wednesday found body parts on a property in the Ore Mountains, in the eastern German state of Saxony, that, according to German tabloid Bild, came from a murder carried out as part of a cannibal fetish act. The body parts are believed to belong to a 59-year-old man from Hanover, while the main suspect, who, according to Bild, owns the property on which the remains were found, is a 55-year-old police officer. The spokesperson for the head prosecutor, Lorenz Haase, confirmed to German news agency DPA that "the men knew each other." According to Bild, the two men met on a website for cannibal fetishists. The suspect then allegedly invited the man to his property in Reichenau, a small town in the mountains. According to Bild, the victim had been cut into many small pieces some time in early November and many parts of the victim have yet to be found, leading to suspicions part of his body may have been eaten. The suspect, who, according to the newspaper, works as a handwriting analyst in the forensic science institute of the Dresden office of the State Criminal Police Office, was arrested shortly after the remains were discovered. Bild reported the man had split up with his wife several years earlier and had since been living with another man. Another Armin Meiwes? If the reports are true, then this would be the second known time two German men met on the Internet and engaged in a cannibal-fetish murder. In the previous case, which occurred in 2001, 43-year-old Berlin engineer Bernd Jürgen answered an ad posted by a computer repairman named Armin Meiwes who was looking for "young, well-built men aged 18-30 to slaughter." Jürgen then traveled to Meiwe's home, in the town of Rotenburg, in the state of Hesse, where Meiwes cut off and cooked Jürgen's penis. The two men then attempted to eat the severed appendage together, before Meiwes killed Jürgen with a knife. The event was filmed. Meiwes was arrested over a year later, having consumed parts of Jürgen's body, a large section of which he had stored in his freezer, over several months. The ensuing trial became a German media sensation and revealed numerous shocking details about the murder, including the fact that Meiwes seasoned Jürgen's genitals with salt, pepper, wine and garlic, but then accidentally burnt them, and that he read a "Star Trek" book while Jürgen bled in a bath. In 2007, forensic expert Manfred Risse published a book about the murders that included details from the videotape, in which Jürgen reportedly said, while bleeding to death, "If I'm still alive tomorrow morning, we'll eat my balls." In 2003, Meiwes told the daily Welt Am Sonntag he "regretted his actions" and encouraged other people with cannibalistic interests to seek treatment. He also estimated there were 800 "cannibals" in Germany. After an initial conviction of manslaughter, Meiwes was retried and found guilty of murder in 2006, and sentenced to life in prison. He has since become a vegetarian.

Being the verbose kind, I guess I will put in a summary at the top leaving the original post below for everyone to read all the little details. Essentially the summary is that I (and many other core developers) agree that HEAD/trunk in its current form was stalling future development on PHP. Jani indirectly jump started the discussion of moving this stumbling block out of the way by essentially doing two commits that violate the most fundamental rules of PHP development (and common sense courtesy) we have. I am worried that this will lead to confusion in the user base and other seem to think that the "ends justify the means". I also think that we need clearer processes to make it easier for new developers to have a clear path to follow in order to get things done in PHP. Full story: So this all requires a bit of background. I still remember my first contact with a PHP core developer. I do not quite remember the year, but it was quite some time ago. Anyway Jani was great, we filed a bug report on the imap extension. He fixed the bug in no time. IIRC we also ended up sharing a room at the second IPC in Frankfurt I attended. I think only a few years later I realized that Jani is the same guy a lot of people were complaining as being rude. But I guess few of these people realize how much time Jani has spend on verifying bug reports and what a tedious job this is, especially since most bug reports are quite low on the actual relevant details and come with a "fix my code for me, now!" attitude. In other words, I get along fine with Jani and I have great respect for his contributions to PHP. Next piece of background. I am also one in the long list of people that has made a fool of himself by predicting a release of PHP6 in about 18 to 24 months (quite a few people have given this prediction over the past 3-4 years I guess). I have also been one of the people that has tried to motivated people at various times to finish those last 2% that seem to be missing to complete PHP6 in terms of functionality. As such I have opposed a PHP 5.4 because I felt its time to focus on finish up PHP 6 which we have promised people for so long. After releasing 5.3.0 I was hoping things would happen. But last weekend I came to the realization that we have waited long enough. That even if PHP 6 would be unicode bliss (at least in terms of features, probably not in terms of performance), the fact of the matter is that in all of the many years nobody put in the time to finish it. This imho is an indirect proof that the approach taken apparently does not hold enough merit to the world in general. Furthermore looking at internals since last summer it has been more dead than ever: PHP 6 aka HEAD aka trunk had become such a motivation killer that nothing was happening. At the same time I knew that suggesting to move trunk to a branch and copying 5_3 to trunk would cause a lot of confusion. Not only among those reading internals, but also that this would quickly make it to the news sites of the world. Call it politics, marketing or just an unwillingness to cause thousands (millions?) of PHP developers distress and uncertainty, but I figured it would be better to propose this with a semi solid plan and giving a number of PHP core developers the heads up that I will bring this to the list, so that they also could prepare themselves. So I started talking to people offlist, either in person, via phone, via IRC/skype or via email with the full intention of going to the list no later than the end of this month, ideally sooner rather than later. I should also note, I do not code C, I also do not consider myself a unicode expert. So if I wanted to present a plan, I obviously needed to talk to people to get my facts straight. Anyways, this week Jani decided to commit a patch. I guess I didn't mention one more piece of background. Jani had asked to get this patch into PHP 5.3 during the pre alpha stage, but at the time Johannes and I (I was co-RM back then) felt that the patch hadn't been tested enough in HEAD and that while we knew the patch fixes several bugs, we felt the risk of introducing new bugs was too high, especially since Michael who wrote the original patch for HEAD was not always around to fix things. Johannes had tried to get the patch into 5.3 six months earlier, but at the time nobody had time to do the work. So we decided to stick with the known bugs, instead of fixing them and risking new bugs in a very core component of PHP close to going alpha. So basically Jani committed a huge patch into a stable branch, without talking to anyone about this, despite knewing full well that the RM had specifically vetoed this patch in principle. Furthermore the patch from my understanding even breaks the ABI which makes the patch even more a no go. Now I was quite surprised when I saw this patch and I at first got confused why Johannes would allow this patch in now only to find out that he didn't. Like several others I told Jani that he needs to revert this patch, but I then did the fatal mistake of expressing sympathy for Jani by saying that he probably was acting out because of frustration over PHP 6 been stalled as the patch in question was already applied there. Now instead of reverting the patch Jani decided to take things a step further now and simply created a PHP 5_4 branch, despite the fact that during the last discussion over the creation of 5_4 the consensus was to instead focus on PHP 6. Of course there was little focus on PHP 6, which is why I (and many others) also wanted to drop the current approach. If the next version should be 5.4 or 6.0 is of course not a trivial decision to make. For one we had already decided on a lengthy list of [stuff we wanted to remove from PHP for PHP 6, and even if we were to drop unicode from PHP 6, chances were we would stick to the original plan for all other things. Obviously we can however not start stripping these features in a 5.4. Anyway, the good news in all of this was that people were starting to get excited about the future of PHP again. But what irritated me was that apparently a fan club for Jani's actions was forming. It seemed that people were saying he was providing a "shock to the system" that revived core. I do not have reason to believe that it would have been less successful to revive internals without basically pissing all over an RM decision and then following this up by pissing over all sorts of unwritten rules that it's not a lone wolf call to create a branch with the name of a possible future PHP version. Worse yet, if this even gets you a fan club, it means that the already insanely maddening work of an RM just got that much harder. Furthermore Jani was happily committing away into the 5_4 branch, while others were still working on 5_3. Why should they suddenly be obligated to merge stuff into 5_4 because of Jani's shooting from the hip decision? Shouldn't the point in time for such a branch be a bit more consciously decided? Calls to get the branch removed were answered that its all good and sooner or later the 5_4 branch will be renamed into trunk anyway, even though there was still no clear decision. I am sorry, I might be a rule loving German but WTF?!?!?!?! At this point I cannot even try to put into words the level of disappointment. Of course most of us do the bulk of the work on PHP in our spare time, but we do have to have a sense of responsibility to the world out there, with many people depending their professional life's on PHP, something I assume we welcome, and we are toying with the image of PHP here. We are also toying with the position of the RM here, one of the few roles we have in PHP, which is critical to getting at least a tiny bit of structure into the development process. PHP is simply too big to go without any structure at all. So to me the only thing to do at this point was to slam a bit on the breaks. For one I asked that Jani's commit karma be revoked until we sort out the situation. This would have given us the opportunity to communicate to the world at large: "Sorry, someone jumped the gun, do expect some real news to be communicated soon." Instead we have news (heise is probably the most important german speaking tech site) sites and the twitter-verse announcing the creation of 5_4 and the death of native unicode inside the engine. But the cheerleading went on and any criticism of Jani was deemed "bashing". Again WTF?!?!?! I should note one more thing. A lot of people got pissed off by the fact that I decided to first talk to people offlist. This includes many people who I have not yet contacted and a few I did contact. I realize that it's not ideal to do so. I hope nobody is implying I might be complaining about Jani because I was hoping for a moment of fame singlehandedly reviving PHP development. I also realize that going to the list directly could not have been worse than what Jani has created now. I also realize that with all the unwritten rules and power structures in PHP its hard for new guys to get the things happening they want (the fact that traits is still not committed to trunk is a prime example of this very problematic situation). In that light to many Jani's stepping over all rules and processes might seem empowering to the people that are not part of the "inner circle" of core PHP developers. I think thats very short sighted. Again I am German, so I have a tendency to trust rules a lot, but I feel the more rules and processes the actually write down and follow, the more of a chance new people will have in getting "shit done" without turning the project's principles to "shit" like what Jani did with his commits the past two days. So instead of cheering on Jani to continue pissing all over the very few rules we do have, I feel people should more work towards identifying some more rules we can agree on that will ensure that new guys have a clearer processes to getting things into core. I hope that with this blog post I have clarified my position a bit more and I hope that I have convinced some of you that thinking first rather than just shooting from the hip is the better approach when it comes to dealing with such large sweeping decisions like reconsidering the branch into which so much work was pored into and on which so many promises for the future of PHP were based. After taking a bit of time to playing some "laser frisbee" and listening to soothing music I am now again a bit hopeful that we can bring some dearly needed structure into the process to determining a realistic plan for the future of PHP that best serves our large user base.

Nov 10 (Reuters) - Gilead Sciences Inc on Saturday reported a 100 percent cure rate using a combination of drugs in a small number of patients with the most common and hardest to treat form of hepatitis C. Rival Abbott Laboratories Inc, meanwhile, said a trio of its oral medicines to treat hepatitis C produced unprecedented cure rates in a larger number of patients who had failed to benefit from standard treatment, as well as very high cure rates for newly treated patients. Data from both companies' mid-stage trials were released Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease in Boston. Gilead's study, dubbed Electron, examined 25 patients with genotype 1 chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection who were treated for 12 weeks with a combination of three drugs: sofosbuvir, ribavirin and GS-5885. GS-5885 is from a promising new class of drugs known as NS5A inhibitors, which prevent the hepatitis C virus from replicating. The infection was undetectable four weeks after completing therapy in all of the patients who had never received this combination of drugs before, Gilead said. The drugs generally were well tolerated in the study, Gilead said. In the sofosbuvir combined with GS-5885 and ribavirin patient groups, one patient dropped out because of an adverse side effect that the company said was unrelated to the drugs. Sofosbuvir and GS-5885 are still being studied for their safety and efficacy. The biopharmaceutical company will present the data on Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases in Boston. Mark Schoenebaum, a biotech analyst with ISI Group, said in a research note that he expects Gilead shares to rise on Monday based on these "best case" results. UBS analyst Matthew Roden said "these data strongly support Gilead's leadership position" in the hepatitis C virus space. Gilead recently started the first Phase 3 trial evaluating a fixed-dose combination of sofosbuvir and GS-5885 in patients with genotype 1 chronic hepatitis C virus infection who had not received these drugs before.

Image copyright AFP As South Africa's ruling party celebrates its centenary, William Gumede, professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, assesses the performance of its current leader for the BBC's Focus on Africa magazine. South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) - the continent's oldest liberation movement - is having a bitter-sweet 100-year celebration and it is as divided as it has been in living memory. Central to the divisions is President Jacob Zuma who appears intent on pushing for a second term. His critics say this is to pre-empt an unceremonious recall from the country's presidency by ANC members and to prevent enemies from attempting to prosecute him again for his alleged involvement in South Africa's controversial 1999 arms deal. Critics also suggest he wants to safeguard the burgeoning business interests of his family. Image copyright AFP Image caption The ANC is staging a huge party to celebrate its 100th anniversary Mr Zuma's backers retort that he is unfairly maligned by the media in particular and point to his resilience and "common touch" as reasons for his political survival. Julius Malema, the controversial president of the ANC Youth League and a thorn in Mr Zuma's side, was suspended from the party last November for five years for bringing the ANC into disrepute, sowing divisions and undermining the presidency. Mr Malema is appealing against his sentence and is planning to take his fight all the way to the ANC's national elective conference in Bloemfontein in December 2012. The suspension of Mr Malema opens the path for Mr Zuma to be re-elected as president for a second term. Mr Malema and the ANC Youth League not only actively opposed Mr Zuma's second-term aspiration; they were also the conduit for others to express opposition to Mr Zuma's leadership. Second term? The ANC's centenary year may be one of its most bumpy with angry ANC youth league members' rebelling against Mr Zuma's suspension of Mr Malema, leadership battles between various factions over control of resources in government and the party, and a likely rise in protests from disenchanted poor communities against sluggish public service delivery. How the ANC was created White settlers arrived in South Africa from Europe in 1652. It was from that time that Africans began fighting to defend their land. After the Battle of Isandlwana in January 1879, in which the Zulus led by King Cetshwayo humiliated the British army by successfully defending their land, African resistance gained momentum. In an irony fuelled by the discovery of large mineral deposits such as gold and diamonds, descendents of the Dutch known as Afrikaners, or Boers, fought the British over African land. This is what came to be known as the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. In 1910, Britain handed control to the Boers and the union of South Africa was formed with a government that recognised only the rights of white people and denied rights to black Africans. In the period leading up to the passing of the Land Act of 1913, Africans became increasingly impatient with labour laws designed to grab cheap black labour. They fought many separate battles - even amongst each other. In 1911, Pixley ka Isaka Seme called on Africans to forget the differences of the past and unite together in one national organisation. "We are one people, these divisions, these jealousies, are the cause of all our woes today," he said. African leaders who were land-owners stood to lose a lot more than their compatriots who were tenants. On 8 January 1912, chiefs, church leaders and prominent leaders in society gathered in Bloemfontein to form the African National Congress. It was only after 82 years since its formation that the ANC attained its goal when I witnessed Nelson Mandela taking oath in Pretoria as South Africa's first black president, democratically elected. All this in the midst of rising economic hardships resulting from the global financial crisis. The real danger for Mr Zuma is whether Mr Malema can convincingly portray his suspension to the disenchanted and especially the youth, as an attempt by the president to marginalise a "spokesperson" of the poor. This is a tactic Mr Zuma has used himself. When battling former President Thabo Mbeki, he successfully portrayed his sacking for alleged corruption as being motivated by his pro-poor stance. In young democracies such as South Africa, where democratic institutions are still in their infancy, the example set by political leaders is crucial. Mr Zuma was voted in as ANC president in 2007 at the party's Polokwane conference. He replaced Mr Mbeki after promising he would govern more democratically. This was after Mr Zuma and his supporters went on the offensive through attacks on the country's judiciary and media in order to ensure corruption charges against him were quashed. Once in power, Mr Zuma has shown scant regard for South Africa's institutions of democracy. For instance, the president is ramming through a controversial information bill, despite widespread opposition from civil society. This gives the government broad powers to classify almost any information involving a state agency as being in the "interests of national security". The legislation will penalise whistle-blowers, journalists and activists who possess, disclose or even attempt to uncover protected information, and who refuse to reveal the sources of any classified material with jail terms of up to 25 years. Furthermore, Mr Zuma has advocated the establishment of a media appeals tribunal which will have the power to sanction journalists for "misconduct". No direct oversight Worryingly, South Africa's parliament has no direct oversight over the South African presidency; and both Mr Mbeki and now Mr Zuma have opposed efforts to change this. Mr Zuma has also sparked furious debate by insisting that the judiciary should not "interfere" with the executive's "sole discretion" to decide policy. In August 2011 Mr Zuma's close political ally and ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe declared that the courts were acting as if they were the political opposition by "interfering" with the "right" of elected officials to make policies and laws. Image copyright AFP Image caption In spite of his suspension, Julius Malema was recently elected to a leadership position in the party This may stem from the fact that Mr Zuma's government has lost a number of cases in the country's constitutional court. For instance, businessman Hugh Glenister successfully challenged the government's decision to scrap the elite crime-fighting unit - the Scorpions. And fearing the court would rule in favour of activist Terry Crawford-Browne, who campaigned for the government to establish a judicial commission of inquiry into corruption in South Africa's controversial arms procurement deal, Mr Zuma set up his own board of enquiry with his own terms of reference. Mr Zuma also attracted controversy by pushing through the appointment of Judge Mogoeng Mogoeng as head of the constitutional court. Mr Mogoeng supported the death penalty during the apartheid era, and has been accused by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) of having a "mindset" that is "not in line" with the constitution. Mr Zuma, though, has argued Mr Mogoeng is highly experienced. South Africa's globally admired constitution is increasingly talked about by those in the Zuma administration as being either against development or an obstacle to faster public service delivery. In fact Jimmy Manyi, Mr Zuma's former spokesman, has said that "it appears the constitution does not support the transformation agenda in this country." Mr Manyi cites freedom of expression in the constitution as an example of "a problem." 'Predatory state' Throughout his presidency, Mr Zuma has been accused of ensuring his family members and associates benefit from "mega" government and private sector tenders but, despite the president saying he would welcome a discussion in parliament on this, the ruling party seems reluctant to confront the matter head-on. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Albertina Luthuli, who was until recently a member of parliament, talks about the ANC as its 100th anniversary is commemorated. In August, the ANC speaker in South Africa's parliament, Max Sisulu, rejected a request by the opposition Democratic Alliance for a debate on the issue. One ANC youth leader has described Mr Zuma's presidential style as that of a traditional African chief, using his office to distribute state patronage to allies, friends and family. Cosatu secretary-general Zwelinzima Vavi says that South Africa is "slipping into a 'predatory state' where a new tier of leaders believe it's their turn to feed." He adds: "In the process, we have battles of short-term interests." The ANC's leadership succession battle in 2007 saw rival factions often using state security agencies, the police and intelligence services to try to eliminate rivals. At the height of the tussle, a state of paranoia reigned. Alarmingly, it appears that this is still happening - for instance, the alleged use of illegal phone-hacking, according to investigations carried out by the Mail & Guardian newspaper. Mr Zuma comes from the ANC's intelligence wing, the most shadowy, secretive and heavy-handed organ of the party in exile. This culture of operation appears to be infiltrating the state and the ANC. Image copyright Other Image caption The president's credibility is questioned by some of his opponents The rule of law is also increasingly seen as not applying to the political elite. Days after Public Protector Thuli Madonsela found that the then Police Commissioner Bheki Cele, a key Zuma ally, had acted improperly in arranging a multi-million dollar lease for new headquarters from a friend, the police raided her office to search for documents related to the report. However, Mr Zuma's subsequent cabinet reshuffle, in which he fired two ministers accused of corruption and suspended Mr Cele from his duties, has given the president a much-needed boost. But a second presidential term for Mr Zuma is likely to continue on the same trajectory as the first: Paralysis in government as he pays back diverse backers, battered democratic institutions and the entrenchment of undemocratic values and behaviour. These may take a very long time to undo.

This week, the heart wrenching story of a pregnant 10-year-old, seemingly raped by her stepfather, has made international headlines, including here at Feministing. As CNN reports, the girl “has become the latest lightning rod in the country’s heated abortion debate.” In Mexico, the girl’s home country, abortion is legal in the capital city, but prohibited or significantly restricted in most states. This is not the first time the case of a young victim of incest has drawn international media attention for its implications in the national and global abortion debate; in fact, we posted about a year ago on similar case in Brazil in which a nine-year-old Brazilian girl who was raped and impregnated by her stepfather was ultimately able to access an abortion (though was later excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church for doing so). As they did in that instance, advocates have once again seized on this young girl’s case, hailing her as a “perfect victim” whose story should be used to illustrate the dangerous consequences of limiting women’s access to safe abortion. One blogger wrote on Feminists for Choice that this story “goes to show the devastating consequences that legal restrictions on late-term abortions can have on the lives of women around the world.” Another blogger on RHRealityCheck writes that the girl’s case “might make the anti-choice forces rethink their beliefs about forced pregnancy”. It’s true that these cases provide very clear cut examples of the need for ensuring access to safe abortion for all. But so does every other case in which a woman seeks a safe abortion and is unable to access one. And as Miriam noted yesterday, for every young girl in this situation that gets media attention, there are hundreds others who also can’t access the abortions they need. Because despite their propensity for international media attention, cases such as those of the ten-year-old in Mexico and the nine-year-old in Brazil make up only a small percentage of the cases involving women seeking abortion. Employing heartbreaking stories of rape and incest as “clear-cut” to demonstrate the need for safe abortion does a disservice to the world’s women by necessarily portraying their desire to access safe abortion under other circumstances as “less than perfect.” The stories of these nine and ten year old girls–the violence inflicted upon them, the access to services they were then denied, the failure to secure their rights–should certainly enrage us, as members of a movement that aims to promote and protect women’s health and rights. But they should also remind us of the need to continue our work to advocate for social justice and abortion access in Mexico for ALL women, not just so-called “perfect victims”. The pro-choice movement can’t progress its agenda by dwelling on exceptions- it’s got to start making the rules, like establishing access to safe abortion as a human right for EVERY woman and girl. Back in November, a post on Akimbo highlighted the first Mexican abortion fund, MARIA, which is designed to support women in traveling from the states in Mexico where abortion is criminalized to Mexico City, where abortion is legal in the first trimester. Visit their website for more information about the fight for abortion rights in Mexico and how you can get involved. Crossposted.

While there had been speculation that Samsung might depart from the Galaxy name for its newest phone, the invitation was headed “Unpacked 5,” suggesting that the company had decided to stick with that nomenclature for at least one more generation of its flagship phone. The person with knowledge of the plans confirmed that the new handset would indeed be called the Galaxy S5. After some critics disparaged some features of the Galaxy S4 as gimmicky — including its Air View feature, which lets users answer the phone by waving a hand above it — Samsung seems to be playing it safer this time around. While there will be design enhancements and other improvements in the Galaxy S5, the company is counting on other things, like an expected new version of its Knox security software, to enhance the appeal of its devices to relatively untapped audiences, like business users. “Meaningful innovation is the key,” said Neil Shah, an analyst at Counterpoint Technology Market Research. “Ultimately it will depend on design and the ability to lock in customers with useful features.” There has been speculation that the Galaxy S5 might include new technologies like an eye scanner that would allow the phone to identify its owner, or a so-called Quad HD, or WQHD, display, with ultra-high resolution. But neither of these will make an appearance on the Galaxy S5, according to the person with knowledge of the plans, who had been briefed on the specifications. However, the new phone is expected to include a better camera and a higher-performance processor.

Logan Hospital stands by its handling of an incident in which a mental health patient was tackled to the ground, and that it was appropriate to involve a security guard to restrain her. Toni Burcher had been admitted to the hospital on May 5 for treatment relating to her mental health issues, but she and her husband Robert Cowling were reportedly unhappy with the behaviour of staff. CCTV of the confrontation shows Ms Burcher being tackled to the ground, which left her concussed and with a gash to her scalp. “What scared me was the impact,” Ms Burcher told 9NEWS. Her husband, Robert, was also wrestled and held face down by another guard during the incident. “You can actually see the guy rushing at her, grabbing her and throwing her on the ground,” he said. “The way we were treated that night was disgusting.” The security guards reportedly kept Ms Burcher restrained on the ground for six minutes despite medical staff attempting to treat her head wound. Acting Chief Executive of Metro South Health Robert Mackway-Jones said they regret the incident, however there was a broader context. "With the way that the patient presented (to the hospital) it was entirely appropriate that security were involved to restrain her," Mr Mackway-Jones told reporters today. "You really need to understand the full context. The footage that has raised all these questions is only part of the overall care for the patient, so really if you understand the wider context of what has happened, it paints a very different picture." Mr Mackway-Jones said Queensland Police had conducted an investigation into the incident and the Health service had also conducted an internal review, with both finding no case to answer. The couple are understood to have made a complaint to the health ombudsman, and Mr Mackway-Jones said they would cooperate fully with any further investigations. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said security officers in hospitals should act respectfully, but she understood there was more to the matter. Ms Palaszczuk says she found out about the incident through media coverage, but could not confirm whether her office had been informed before it was made public. © Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2019

NYT Pick Susannah France 5 hours ago It is simply history repeating itself. There was the Greatest Generation. Next was the Peace and Love Generation. Then you have the Whatever Generation, The X Generation, and now the XYZ Generation. The 4th generation always pushes the envelope too far so that there's a split in the 5th generation. The 5th always divides to those who want to return to the 1st and those who want the future. If the larger half is those who want to recreate the 1st there will be a war in which many will die. If the the larger half is those who want the future then a devastating war will be delayed by one generation. One step forward, a little dance, and then the music's beat changes. A bit of war and poor are just happy to have lived through it. And it begins again. Flag Flag Reply 42 Recommend Recommend Share this comment on Facebook Share this comment on Twitter NYT Pick Rick Gage mt dora 5 hours ago You miss a big point by not pointing out that the Remain vote was largely supported by young people, Ross. They have grown up in a different environment than the older, more tribal Leave voters. Their technology, alone, makes them more sophisticated and less frightened by change then the more rural and more traditional Leavers. Old people embrace the past because they have more it than the young and the young embrace the future for the very same reason. It's not cosmopolitanism that they have in common, it's the future. Flag Flag Reply 116 Recommend Recommend Share this comment on Facebook Share this comment on Twitter NYT Pick Todge seattle 4 hours ago It's probably true that affluent people who've had the opportunity to scramble up the social ladder, live in nice neighbourhoods, travel, sample foods from different cultures with friends from abroad that they went to college with, lose touch with the less affluent in their various societies. The working people have less leisure for these cosmopolitan pursuits, to be sure, as they struggle to put food on the table and to survive with the austerity imposed on them by the Lord Muck's above who advocate austerity without having to suffer its consequences. But Douthat would have us all believe that these "elites" are the hypocritical liberals he so reviles. And as always, he sneers at any aspirations the liberals proclaim to reduce the inequality that conservatives claim is merely a result of the lower orders' laziness and stupidity. Their's he argues, isn't real cosmopolitanism, only living as they do makes you genuine and not phoney. So if you're a liberal and you happen to be successful, you must be a hypocrite. It's a well-worn and fatuous argument. It would be better if he just admitted that the Trumps, Boris Johnsons, Le Pens like to fan the flames of bigotry to discredit the notion that cultural divisions aren't as insurmountable as they seem. They forget to mention the real issue - neo-liberal, trickle-down cant and a culture of hopelessness. Flag Flag Reply 108 Recommend Recommend Share this comment on Facebook Share this comment on Twitter NYT Pick RR San Francisco, CA 4 hours ago The fundamental problem is this: the disgruntled voters backing Trump, BREXIT and Le Pen, and other similar movements in developed countries, did relatively well in nation states - these were the folks who could get their hands dirty, build roads, work on shop floors ... strong gritty people. This is not valued anymore in the new information age where value is being delivered by people who work with their minds rather than hands. We don't have as many roads to be built as we did in the past. We don't have to fight as many wars (and even the ones we do, we don't need as many people as before because of the nature of modern warfare). These trends have nothing to do with elites. Even when agriculture gave way to industrialization in UK in the 18th century, many farmers would have faced the same set of challenges that blue collared workers are facing today. But there was no referendum those days to take into account their disgruntlement. Some of these farmers moved to the urban centers and got jobs in the factories, or slowly descended into poverty and unhappiness. Flag Flag Reply 26 Recommend Recommend Share this comment on Facebook Share this comment on Twitter NYT Pick Brooklyn Traveler Brooklyn 4 hours ago Culture is not static - it is and always has been fluid. It is constantly absorbing things from the outside and rejecting things from the inside. It has nothing to do with caste - it has to do with exposure. Travel is one way - but movies, books, news, immigrants, music, food...aspects of culture do not move in a great big chunk, they come in bit by bit. Also, you over-simplify and trivialize. Do white liberal parents put their kids in private school because they don't want them exposed to minorities? Or because they worry about safety or substandard educations doled out by big-city school systems? Just because you're concerned that your kid can read, write, add, subtract and divide doesn't make you a racist. (Plenty of minority parents put their kids in private schools for the same reasons if they can swing it.) It's not my job to absorb culture - it is my job to make sure my kid is prepared for the road ahead. If you worry about losing your good-paying job to somebody who will come in from outside the country and do it for 1/5 of what you do it for - does that make you against immigrants or pro keeping your job? This country was built on welcoming and assimilating immigrants (and if you want to be picky, on slavery and genocide). On the whole, letting people in has worked out pretty well for most of us - it's how a lot of us wound up here. But if your job is at risk, who can blame you for being concerned about it? Flag Flag Reply 63 Recommend Recommend Share this comment on Facebook Share this comment on Twitter NYT Pick David N. Ohio Voter 4 hours ago Many if not most of the readers of the Times and of this editorial are cosmopolitans. They are people who believe in merit, in hard work, in worldliness, in educating their children, in the scientific method, and in logical discourse. Mr. Douthat suggests that they (we) lack authentic openness to new ideas. Here's some evidence against Mr. Douthat's theory. The readers of the Times are open enough to read Mr. Douthat's editorials. I think I am not alone in checking out Fox News and talk radio once in a while, just to find out what Rush and the rest are saying. Meanwhile, the editors of the Times provide critiques not only of Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz but also of Ms. Clinton and Mr. Sanders. The "tribe" of well-educated liberal cosmopolitans open themselves to the alternative point of view, even while being critical. This openness, however, is in marked contrast to the other "tribe(s)." Trump supporters have no access to the research conducted by the cosmopolitan press. They have no idea how Trump has cheated workers, partners, investors, and cities. They are in a closed loop. blocked off from the alternative hypothesis. They think Trump will help them when actually he despises them as losers. Proof: a recent poll finds that Trump is "honest." Maybe Trump is bold, is bright, is passionate, is successful. Maybe. But to suggest that he is an honest man indicates a blocking out of pertinent data, a blind spot. Cosmopolitans have their faults. But the mob is blind. Flag Flag Reply 184 Recommend Recommend Share this comment on Facebook Share this comment on Twitter NYT Pick DejanK 4 hours ago Sorry, but this is nonsense. Mr. Douthat is desperately trying to turn the tables - now this whole thing about the Brexit is a result of elitist tribalism. Whereas in reallity Europe is finally starting to get out of the "tribal" (read: national) mindset and truly embrace differences in unity, it was those who are scared of that change who want to revert to the known, which is that tribal mentality. Not every sense of connection is pure tribalism, and you can't equate those longing for the times past with those who fully embrace change in the present. Flag Flag Reply 37 Recommend Recommend Share this comment on Facebook Share this comment on Twitter NYT Pick JMJackson Rockville, MD 4 hours ago Like many pundits trying to simultaneously condemn and extract some "told you so" consolation from Trump, Brexit, et al, Mr. Douhat has landed once again on the supposed sin of hypocrisy. The argument boils down to "At least the populists are honest about their prejudices. You liberals are no better even though you think you are." But no. An honest populist would begin with a dispassionate analysis of why the world is changing and how their behavior is complicit. They will not do that because their so-called constituency is steeped in an amber haze of self-pity, toxic pride and hopeless nostalgia spoon fed by manipulative, power-hungry people with no plan but their own celebrity. There is no equivalency of hypocrisy or moral responsibility between those who at least strive towards better for everyone and those who grumpily deny the possibility while demanding protection from the state they claim to abhor. Flag Flag Reply 74 Recommend Recommend Share this comment on Facebook Share this comment on Twitter NYT Pick PeterS Boston, MA 4 hours ago Globalization is a result of technological revolution that bring people closer than ever. People from around the world can either cooperative and live in peace TOGETHER or there will be a conflict that none of us will live through. This is why America is so important it is a beacon showing the rest of the world how everyone with different backgrounds can live together. Globalization doesn't have to mean economic inequality. It is the GOP policies of lowering of top tax rate and capital gain tax and the proposed elimination of estate tax that gradually concentrate wealth in the top few percent. This economic inequality can be reversed without damaging important international institutions like EU and NATO that have ensure relative global peace for decades. Yes. Trade deals should be structured not just to maximize growth but must make sure that the benefit is equally shared in the society. Globalization is not evil but must be managed. Mr. Douthat, like many of the right wing pundits, like to reduce complex issues to black and white but fails to see the gradations. This adherence to extreme orthodoxy, for example, the all powerful invisible hand of capitalism, is what lead us to today's high inequality. Flag Flag In Reply to Tim Kane Reply Reply 40 Recommend Recommend Share this comment on Facebook Share this comment on Twitter NYT Pick Ceadan New Jersey 4 hours ago The political divisions in The United States and Britain have little to do with ideology, globalism or nativism. The divide really seems to be between low-information voters who can be manipulated and convinced by the corporate media that complicated, longstanding domestic and international problems can be solved by quick, simplistic, "get-tough" policies and those who are educated and informed enough to know that catastrophe almost always follows close behind. Flag Flag Reply 47 Recommend Recommend Share this comment on Facebook Share this comment on Twitter NYT Pick Fred Bauder Crestone, Colorado 4 hours ago You nailed it. However, you had certain advantages people born into elites do not have. It is those, who, for whatever reason, are aware of, or challenged, by profoundly different perspectives, who can attain a degree of clarity about this situation. I hope someday we can move beyond mere awareness into the building of institutions that actually include, in a meaningful way, the broad masses of humanity. Democracy is tricky; the leadership produced by popular demand may not fully serve popular needs. Flag Flag Reply 9 Recommend Recommend Share this comment on Facebook Share this comment on Twitter NYT Pick M. California 4 hours ago This is a twist on the athiesm-is-just-another-religion argument. It's appealingly simple, but upon examination, has a number of logical problems. Cosmopolitans (to use your terminology) are not like other tribes, because membership is a matter of attitude rather than of geography, ancestry, or other external factors. It is not "a powerful caste" but rather an umbrella term for people who reject tribalism. Flag Flag Reply 40 Recommend Recommend Share this comment on Facebook Share this comment on Twitter NYT Pick Indigo Atlanta, GA 3 hours ago It seems that many in every new generation have to learn what has always been true among us humans, that birds of a feather flock together. Flag Flag Reply 11 Recommend Recommend Share this comment on Facebook Share this comment on Twitter NYT Pick LibertyHound Washington 3 hours ago Dothan hits it on the head. "Elites" are so convinced of the superiority of their thinking that they apparently feel that explaining it is unnecessary. The "Remain" position was something like, "all thinking people agree with us." Sure, if you are getting rich in the world's financial capitals, like London or New York, globalism is a pretty sweet deal. But go visit Newark, or Camden, or Toledo, or any other number of former manufacturing cities that are not sharing in that wealth and you will see real people with real disagreements with policy. Condescending to "the little people" may be the only way the so-called elites know how to explain what they can't say out loud: The elites are doing well at the expense of the rubes, and they want to keep it that way. Flag Flag Reply 46 Recommend Recommend Share this comment on Facebook Share this comment on Twitter NYT Pick Jeanne Schweder Charlotte, NC 1 hour ago So your point is that the cosmopolitanism of the global elite is only skin deep, so that makes them hypocrites and thus without merit? Couldn't the same be said of nativists, with their equally self-serving cant and "stop the world" mindset? If there were good paying jobs for all, maybe there wouldn't be a Trump--or a Brexit. The unfettered capitalism that you and your fellow conservatives have espoused for so many decades set the rules for this divergence and is the real reason these two tribes exist. When winners take all, and the losers are left to starve in the dark, you get this kind of very human reaction to change. But we've seen that conservatives don't believe in helping those left behind, especially if they're asked to pay for it. How can you pretend innocence for helping to create this mess? On the other hand, I've seen reports that Trump supporters are generally well off, not jobless and homeless. So I think the real reason they're supporting this bozo is not economic but cultural and tribal, the white tribe that is. They think that if the Muslims and Hispanics were sent home, and blacks put back in their place (under white feet), things would be hunky dory again, for them at least. They're going to be in for the shock of their lives if Trump is elected, because this con man won't be able to deliver on any of his promises. The only thing you can count on is that he'll make an even bigger mess of things. Flag Flag Reply 20 Recommend Recommend Share this comment on Facebook Share this comment on Twitter NYT Pick Phil Tucson, AZ 31 minutes ago Conservatives are always complaining about "elites". You know something, I like elites. When I go to a doctor, I hope he or she were part of an "elite" class in their medical school. If I need legal advise, I would certainly feel more assured if he or she graduated from an "elite" school of law. When our country is threatened by enemies, foreign and domestic, my most fervent hope is our armed forces are led by an "elite" set of officers. My sense is that conservatives are so critical and suspicious of "elites" because so few of them belong to one. Flag Flag Reply 11 Recommend Recommend Share this comment on Facebook Share this comment on Twitter NYT Pick Peter Tregillus Durango, Colorado 31 minutes ago "Genuine cosmopolitanism is a rare thing. It requires comfort with real difference, with forms of life that are truly exotic relative to one’s own." I dunno, Ross. It seems to me the cosmopolitanism has nothing to do with being comfortable. It's about curiosity, openness to new ideas, and a willingness to welcome people who are different and unknown. It's opposite, of course, is provincialism. Where is cosmopolitanism is willing to start from open this, provincialism classically begins from suspicion. Kind of like the way you are describing the people who you label as being cosmopolitan. Flag Flag Reply 8 Recommend Recommend Share this comment on Facebook Share this comment on Twitter Loading...

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