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The maestro of billionaire whimsy is at it again. This endeavor, at least, may be more fruitful than others. Visiting the country to launch Virgin Airline's new Mumbai-London route, Richard Branson teased reporters from The Hindu that he may invest in India's long percolating high-speed rail networks. Yesterday, the nation reportedly signed a three-year agreement with Spanish Railways to explore the feasibility of bullet trains. And they are still on the look out for investors to back the planned PPPs along seven corridors connecting its megacities and soon-to-be megacities. HSR, if efficient and safe, would be a godsend for India's massive, glacial railways. It would ease pollution and congestion in the car-choked cities as well. For Spanish Railways and Branson, the question lies in the return on investment. An estimate pegs construction cost at 100 crore INR (around $18m in today's volatile exchange rate) per kilometer of track. That would be a little over $2bn for the shortest track and close to $18bn for the longest (connecting New Delhi to the expanding cities of Lucknow and Patna). Three years ago, K.P. Narayana Kumar broke the numbers down for Forbes India. Then, the vision was for bullets breaking 217 miles per hour, as in China: However, this connectivity will come at a price. Preliminary estimates suggest that the cost of constructing a high-speed railway line and acquiring trains to run on them would be in the range of Rs. 70 crore to Rs. 100 crore per km, translating to at least Rs. 37,000 crore for a Mumbai-Ahmedabad line. To recover the high cost, tickets would have to be priced at roughly Rs. 5 per km — so, a Delhi-Amritsar one-way trip would cost about Rs. 2,000. Some new ticket estimates have dropped, but so has the speed: officials now claim it will max out at 186mph. That 2,000 INR figure is nearly four times the cost of the highest class train ticket now; yet it is almost half a plane trip. Kumar again: The Railways are targeting budget and aspiring airline travellers, high value rail passengers and car owners. A preliminary study commissioned by the Railway Board on the market for premium class rail travel showed that the Delhi-Sonepat route, which is on the way to Chandigarh, accounts for close to 20,000 air-conditioned cars everyday. “Many of these car owners would prefer to travel by rail if it can take them to their destination within a third of the journey time,” says a railways official. A former government economist in Kerala, a relatively thriving southern state, came out swinging against its proposed HSR recently, suggesting its cost---about $3m a day in accrued interested alone, he estimated---would only open it to wealthy riders. Branson, of all industry titans, should hope that the rail chips away at drivers not fliers if he takes the investment dive. While he didn't tell The Hindu much more about his railway plans, he said even less about backing the Indian airline sector, recently opened up to foreign direct investment. That may be out of necessary caution---Indian aviation, with its celebrity CEO gone awol, is loaded with debt and a handicapping price war. And Sir Richard's newest route, the reason he touched down in India, is not helping. |
The maker of the Armata T-14 “Super Tank,” Uralvagonzavod, is set to file for bankruptcy. According to a notice posted to the Federal Register, the industrial enterprise's main creditor, Alfa-Bank, intends to file a bankruptcy petition. Alfa-Bank intends to do the same with Uralvagonzavod's two subsidiary enterprises, the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant and the Tractor Plant Technology Park. A representative for Uralvagonzavod said the company would not comment on Alfa-Bank's intentions to file a bankruptcy petition. The Uralvagonzavod R&D and manufacturing corporation, which produces railway and tracked military vehicles, has made a series of losses over the past few years despite decent revenues. In 2014, it came up 5.3 billion rubles ($79.6 million) short even with 127.5 billion rubles ($1.9 billion) in revenue. In 2015, it made a 16.4 billion ruble ($246.5 million) loss. The bankruptcy is likely due to the Russian armed forces' recent decision to reduce the number of Armata tanks it plans to order from Uralvagonzavod. Army spokesmen say the reduction is because of the rise of the tank's production costs. A bankruptcy petition is resorted to when a debtor is unwilling or financially unable to pay debts and legal aid or arbitration is necessary to satisfy the claims of creditors. The Armata T-14 tank, Uralvagonzavod's flagship military vehicle, was first introduced to the Russian public at the May 9, 2015, Victory Day parade in Moscow. During parade rehearsals, the tank, described by Army Times as “faster than an Abrams,” seemed to break down in front of Lenin’s Mausoleum. Uralvagonzavod started developing the Armata T-14 in 2009. Russian media referred to it as the “Super Tank” because of its monstrous size and impressive on-paper stats. |
US-COALITION forces pounded ISIS with 27 air strikes in Iraq and Syria as a twisted suicide bomber killed 22 people in Manchester, according to the US Department of Defence. Coalition military fighters hammered 37 ISIS targets with 18 strikes in Syria – obliterating oil supplies, vehicles and weapons caches. Nine strikes hit 62 ISIS targets in Iraq – destroying an array of deadly weapons including rocket systems, vehicle bombs, machine guns and grenade launches. US defence officials said the strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), a campaign to crush ISIS in Syria and Iraq. The aim of the strikes was to limit to death cult’s ability to commit atrocities in the Middle East and across the world, OIR officials said. Advertisement The Lockheed Martin HULC is an exoskeleton that allows soldiers to carry loads of up to 200lbs for long distances A projectile fired from an electromagnetic rail gun. Rail Guns use an electro magnet to propel a projectile at speeds up to 2500 meters per second. The PHASR (Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response) rifle fires a blinding green laser to dazzle the enemy. Although blinding weapons are illegal to use in war, the PHASR only causes temporary blindness. The Laser Weapon System (LaWS). This weapon shoots a 30kw photon beam capable of burning holes in unmanned vehicles and confusing the navigation of enemy vessels. Drone swarms. To solve the problem of expensive drones being shot down, the military are experimenting with swarms of small, low cost drones, which are hard to shoot down, and when they are, another can carry on the mission. The XM2010 sniper rifle gives exact accuracy up to 1.2 kilometers away, and has a thermal sleeve over the barrel so it's invisible to infrared scanners. The Active Denial System fires electromagnetic waves which are absorbed by the skin. The sensation is so painful, the army call it 'The Goodbye Weapon.' The XM25 airburst, known as 'The Punisher.' This weapon fires a small, programmable grenade up to 500 meters. QinetiQ's MAARS (Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System). The MAARS is part of the TALON robot series used by warfighters to control the escalation of force from a safe distance. US Army Sgt. Josh Deveraux models the goggle-mounted display (GMD) below his right eye, part of his Future Force Warrior high-tech combat outfit. The Future Force Warrior integrates GPS, advanced communications, body armor and other computer systems to he Advertisement DS GLOBAL THREAT: A map showing countries with a significant ISIS presence The strikes came on the same day a lone suicide bomber detonated an explosive device at Manchester Arena – killing 22 and injuring dozens of others. US President Donald Trump condemned the abhorrent attack and blasted the culprits “evil losers”. The attacker responsible for the worst attack since the 7/7 bombings has been named as Manchester-born Salman Abed. GETTY SMASHED: A US-coalition air strike on an ISIS target “We strongly condemn this cynical and inhuman crime.” Vladimir Putin The 22-year-old, who was known to security services, is being probed over alleged ties to an ISIS recruiter. Russian president Vladimir Putin also slammed the “inhuman crime” that saw children as young as eight killed by a bomb packed with nails, nuts and bolts. He warned ISIS terrorists who masterminded the terrorist attack that it will not go "unpunished”. |
Fenway Park has been transformed into a lyric little gridiron for Saturday night’s Boston College-Notre Dame showdown. And just so those yard markers and goal posts don’t go to waste, Fenway will host four high school games next Wednesday and Thursday. After that? The sky is literally the limit: in preparation for a ski and snowboard “big air” competition in February, a 110-foot-high ramp will soon be erected that’ll dwarf the Green Monster. But you ain’t seen nothing yet: Red Sox president Sam Kennedy envisions a night when the Boston Celtics play at Fenway Park. “We would love to consider a Celtics game at Fenway,” Kennedy said yesterday from Dallas, where he’s attending Major League Baseball’s owners meetings. “I think it would be very cool.” Kennedy said that in conversations with Celtics president Rich Gotham, “We’ve kicked around the idea. It’s something I think we should pursue. I know there are a lot of risks associated with outdoor basketball, but it can be done.” Gotham, who talked with Kennedy about the idea while attending a Red Sox game, said, “I think it would be pretty cool as well.” The tricky part would be when to play the game. The Celtics wouldn’t be able to play in the spring because of the NBA playoffs, and November would present weather challenges. October might work for a preseason game, though a possible Red Sox postseason would have to be taken into consideration. “You never say never,” Gotham said. “But we would have to factor for weather. Obviously playing outdoors, wind, temperature, things like that, have an impact on the game. Maybe an exhibition game would be more realistic than a regular-season game. “The games we play in the warmer weather would tend to be NBA Finals games,” he said. “As much as I know everyone in Boston would love it, I don’t think we’d be playing one of those at Fenway.” Though the Celtics have never played at Fenway Park, the old Kenmore Square ballyard has hosted basketball. According to Sports Museum of New England curator Richard Johnson, the famed Harlem Globetrotters took their magic to Fenway in 1954, 1955 and 1963. On July 29, 1954, a crowd of 13,344 watched the Globetrotters defeat the “United States Stars,” whose roster included future Celtics Frank Ramsey and Lynn native Lou Tsioropoulos, as well as former Holy Cross star Ron Perry Sr., a native of Somerville. “I remember it well,” said Perry, now 83, when reached yesterday at a Holy Cross women’s basketball game. “They had the court out in left field, as I recall. I was in awe because I also played baseball and was a big fan. We had a good crowd and everyone had a lot of fun. After the game we all took a train up to Bangor and played them again the next night.” Perry believes he’s probably the only person to play baseball and basketball at Fenway Park. As a pitcher at Somerville High he played in a Hearst All-Star game sponsored by the Boston Record-American, forerunner of the Herald. The old Boston Patriots played at Fenway in the 1960s. The Bruins played there on New Year’s Day in 2010, beating the Philadelphia Flyers in the Winter Classic. That leaves the Celtics as the only one of the region’s four major pro sports teams not to take their game to Fenway. If/when it happens, it’ll likely close the books on exotic sporting events at Fenway, right? Wrong. “Ultimate Fighting Competition is something that we would have to strongly consider if there’s interest,” Kennedy said. “We just want to make sure if we’re creating the right type of atmosphere and event. I wouldn’t rule anything out.” Kennedy is taking a “Back to the Future” approach to how Fenway Park gets used when the Red Sox are on the road or in their offseason. “If you look back in history,” he said, “most of what we’ve done is really a return to the past, whether it’s football, soccer . . . Outdoor ice hockey had never been done, so that was new and different. And the skiing and snowboard event, that is the first of its kind. That will be extremely unique. “But we want to make sure any events we have, and I say this with humility, are worthy of Fenway Park.” Here’s hoping Sam Kennedy and Rich Gotham say yes. What an event: The Green meet the Green Monster. Danny Ainge could tell reporters about his days as an infielder with the Toronto Blue Jays, when he played against Carl Yastrzemski, Jim Rice and Fred Lynn in a three-game series in 1979. And maybe somebody could find an oldtimey White Owl cigar ad and put it on the Green Monster. That would be for Red Auerbach. |
Daily giveaway - YBUY is a try-before-you-buy online subscription service that charges users $24.95 to give them a chance to test drive the latest in electronics, home and kitchen gadgets for 30 days before they commit to purchase.“For most consumers, when it comes to electronics or products for the home, the idea is that they want to test the product out first,” said YBUY CEO Stephen Svajian. “Typically, you’ll wait in line for hours. Then, when you finally get into the store, there’s someone right behind you breathing down your neck, pressuring you, and maybe even dripping sweat on you. And at the end of the day, you may only get five or ten minutes with a device that hundreds of other people have had their mitts on. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen someone wipe down an iPad after they use it. This can make for a pretty gross and stressful shopping experience.”With YBUY, Svajian said, there’s no reason for brick and mortar showrooms to exist. “We can actually bring the showroom straight to your living room,” he said. “Our unique alternative, that comes to you brand new or completely sanitized, allows consumers to test it out for 30 days in the comfort of your own home. This can really help you get to know the item you would like to invest in, before fully committing to make the purchase. There’s no other experience like it out there on the market.”YBUY, who’s site appears to be overloaded at moment because of this announcement, will be offering the new iPad on their site for $24.95 for a one month test drive.Sounds like how you sell puppies. “Why don’t you take it home overnight and see if your family likes him. If not, bring him back tomorrow.”[Via - Business Opportunities Blog |
Starters Trevor Bell of the Angels, top, and Hiroki Kuroda had solid outings… (Charlie Riedel / Associated…) Angels 4, Dodgers 1 AT THE PLATE: Mark Trumbo belted a long two-run home run in his second at-bat, erasing a 1-0 Dodgers lead. Reggie Willits had a run-scoring single and Chris Pettit drove in the final run with a sacrifice fly. Matt Kemp had a single and a stolen base and scored the lone Dodgers run. ON THE MOUND: Six Angels pitchers combined on a three-hitter, striking out six. Starter Trevor Bell gave up the only run. Right-hander Anthony Ortega had a perfect inning in relief. For the Dodgers, Hiroki Kuroda pitched two scoreless innings but relievers Scott Elbert, Roman Colon and Luis Vasquez combined to walk seven batters in 2 1/3 innings. EXTRA BASES: Top prospect Mike Trout, a nonroster invitee, started in right field and went hitless in two at-bats, grounding into a double play, then spent 20 minutes signing autographs. "You're definitely trying to make a statement. Show them what I have and hit the ball hard, run a little bit and have fun," Trout said. UP NEXT: Scott Kazmir faces the Dodgers and John Ely at Camelback Ranch at noon PDT Sunday. ON THE AIR: TV: Prime Ticket. Radio: AM 830, 790. — Kevin Baxter |
Google Hardware product management VP Mario Queiroz announced that it's expanding the base warranty to two years (from one) for all Pixel 2s, while reiterating that despite reports, Google believes the Pixel 2 XL's display is aging similarly to other OLED panels. Engineering VP Seang Chau dug deeper into the device's display characteristics, as well as Google's plan for software updates that will do more to combat image retention by adding a new fade-out for the nav bar buttons and reduce the Pixel 2 XL's maximum brightness slightly. It's also updating both Pixel 2 devices to support a new "saturated" color mode that Google says will be less accurate but may satisfy users expecting a more vibrant look. Finally, when it comes to the Pixel 2's clicking issue, a community manager reports that will be addressed in an update soon. Until then, if it's too much of an issue then users are advised to turn off NFC in their settings. None of the posts addressed concerns some owners have expressed about seeing a blue tint with off angle viewing, so that may be something they have to live with. If Google provides any other information, then we'll update this post. |
Portland Attacker Jeremy Christian Was A Bernie Supporter Jason Blocked Unblock Follow Following May 27, 2017 The media is blaming this attack on Trump Supporters Update: In case people don’t believe he orchestrated a psyop against Trump supporters, he literally said that was his objective. Update: I wanted to include the video of him being removed from the rally the media keep saying he attended. Those who put on the rally did not want him there due to who he was and what he stood for. The attack comes as Portland has weathered rising tensions between groups with fiercely opposing views, including white nationalists, right-wing extremists, anarchists and so-called left-wing “antifascists,” known as the “antifa.” These groups have been colliding with increasing frequency across the country since the election last fall of President Trump — especially in cities regarded as liberal. In April, Berkeley, Calif., was the scene of riots as protests and counter-protests swirled around planned appearances of conservative commentator Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart News editor. Except he was a Bernie supporter. This guy has some serious mental health problems. After reading these posts, it’s very clear of that. It’s just disgusting outlets like the Washington Post link him back to Trump and Trump supporters. Rather than call this what it is, a terrorist attack, they say it was an attack from a white nationalist, right-wing extremist, etc. I even have a post from Jeremy where he stated he could not vote for Trump and rather abstained from voting. It would be nice to not be lumped into the same category as people like Jeremy who need some much needed mental help. These are all taken from his Facebook page. |
Nightmare of last season has made me a better player, insists Torres on eve of Super Cup showdown Fernando Torres has declared he is a 'better player and better person' for his turbulent first 18 months at Chelsea but admitted he would not want to go through it again. Torres insisted he would change nothing that happened to him last season because it made him 'stronger than ever' and categorically denied threatening to walk away from Stamford Bridge if he was not guaranteed first-team football. That was certainly the impression the Spain striker gave after May's Champions League final, when he revealed the depth of his despair since his record-shattering £50million move from Liverpool a year and a half ago. Up for the cup: Juan Mata (centre) and Chelsea manager Roberto Di Matteo pay attention as Fernando Torres speaks ahead of facing his former club Atletico Madrid in Monaco on Friday night Torres' fortunes have transformed dramatically since then, the 28-year-old winning the Golden Boot at the European Championship and - with Didier Drogba now out of the picture - starting this season on fire in front of goal. He looks certain to lead the line again against former club Atletico Madrid on Friday in the UEFA Super Cup and speaking in Monaco, he said: 'I would change nothing that happened to me last season. 'That taught me a lot of things. I learned a lot about a lot of people, in both ways. I learned a lot of things last season - good, bad. It made me a better player, a better person, and I'm stronger than ever now. ' In these 18 months, I've become a better player. I have played in a different way to that I played at Liverpool. I can play more outside the box, associating more with my team-mates. I gave a lot of assists last season. I can mix it more.' Torres admitted that last term he felt like a teenager having to prove himself all over again. 'I'd never been on the bench like eight games in a row,' he said. 'I started to understand everyone in the team. When you're playing, you don't think about these things. ' But when you're there, you understand what people go through on the bench. It was a new experience. I learned a lot of things about that, which made me a better team-mate. 'I always tried to be a good team-mate, as I was as captain in Madrid. But I lost that at Liverpool, when I was never captain. '[At Chelsea] I went back to when I was 17 or 18, having to fight every day for my place. I never want to go back to that situation again.' Playing it cool: Torres was game for a laugh ahead of Chelsea's match with Atletico Madrid Torres was the most expensive player ever transferred between British clubs and is likely to remain so for some time. 'The money Chelsea paid for me was never something I was worried about,' he said. 'It didn't make me play badly. It was just a difficult change from Liverpool to Chelsea. The adaptation took more time than it should. 'But all these things are in the past. Let's think about the present. The future can be brilliant, even better. You know you're going to play, or think you are, and that gives you more time to play your football. 'That's the main difference between this and the previous one-and-a-half seasons at Chelsea. I'm playing more minutes and the confidence is back.' Torres has doubtless been helped by Chelsea's summer signings and he was looking forward to a bright future. Flying start: Chelsea striker Torres has two Premier League goals from three games 'Let's enjoy now. The team is playing really well, the new players are settled and doing well, and we're in a good run now,' he said. 'Let's go about winning the first trophy of the season for Chelsea tomorrow. If we do that, there'll be more to come for Chelsea.' Torres may not want to relive the recent past but was happy to reminisce about his time at Atletico, who he will face for the first time tomorrow since leaving five years ago. 'It couldn't be more special for me. Since my time at Atletico, I've felt the support of their fans,' he said. ' They know I was and am one of them. I've been more than 12 years of my life there. 'It was not only my former club, but the club I support. Tomorrow is so special and I have to leave all those things apart. 'My only commitment is to win this cup. We have to beat Atletico so it's going to be about separating myself from these feelings I've had all my life. After the game, I'll go back to being the Atletico supporter I've always been.' |
You know you are over the target if you’re catching flack. That old adage should give comfort to the proponents of public choice theory, who have been the subject of a flurry of take-downs and “exposés” in the left-wing press. This past month the socialist magazine Jacobin published a piece denouncing any joining of forces of leftists and public choice-espousing libertarians as an “unholy alliance” that would sabotage, rather than spur, the fight against inequality. The Baffler goes even further, excoriating public choice theory as not just wrong, but fundamentally racist. And most interestingly, Zelda Bronstein attacks public choice’s insights into zoning laws in Dissent, positing that planning commissions, land use regulations, and zoning laws have nothing to do with the cost and availability of housing. It’s all the market’s fault, says the owner of some $32 million in rental properties. Common to all three pieces is a reliance on Marxist ideology to serve as a substitute for any practical theory of why individuals, interest groups, and governments behave as they do in the real world. Public choice theory is flawed in their eyes, not so much for its lack of empirical insight, but because it fails to conform to ideological conclusions that were arrived at before the evidence. In attempting to expose the evil of governance-optimizing thought, leftists reveal how incapable their own ideas are at describing a world where incentives are real. Public choice theory deals in the world in pre-ideological terms. It asks how, given the tendency for human beings to use others for their own advantage, actors will re-strategize harmful self-interested behavior into socially useful self-interested behavior. It answers with the idea that states should be limited in their powers, that those powers be explicitly spelled out in a constitution, and that that constitution aligns interests with outcomes with respect to the power dynamic of the society it seeks to govern. One can disagree with the answer that public choice theory purports to have. But it cannot be denied that it is an answer, one that attempts to describe mechanisms that result in effective governments. The left, as represented by the three pieces discussed, fails in even attempting to answer these questions, instead relying on abstract ideology to liberate it from the need to think about practical governance. The result is a stunted critique that demonstrates the limits not of public choice, but of the quasi-Marxism that is so fashionable today. It’s not even that contemporary left-wing thought has a bad theory of rational governance—it’s that leftists have no interest in exploring the topic at all. To understand the limitations of these critiques fully, we must begin with some definitions. For the uninitiated, public choice theory is the rather uncontroversial idea that public officials and advocacy groups are just as motivated by self-interest as private citizens and businessmen. Society, the theory’s proponents further suggest, is not divided into rigid classes of workers and capitalists, rulers and ruled, but instead into a patchwork of individuals and smaller interest groups, from urban renters and suburban homeowners, to restaurateurs and health inspectors. In the social democracies of the 20th and 21st centuries, politics becomes a competition between these interests to extract the maximum amount of privilege and protection from the state, while dispersing those costs onto competitors and society writ large. This view has much to offer those on the left; it explains how powerful interests acquire and sustain their privileges. It also presents a threat to left-wing ideology by seeing society as more than a simplistic class struggle, and by having the temerity to assume that self-interest precedes political institutions. Take the November 30 Jacobin piece, itself a review of The Captured Economy by Brink Lindsay and Steve Teles. In The Captured Economy, Lindsay and Teles detail how established interest groups use state power to benefit themselves—in a practice known as rent-seeking—to the detriment of poorer and less influential groups. The result, they claim, is increased inequality and poverty. To illustrate their point, the two focus on four examples of rent-seeking, financial regulation, intellectual property, occupational licensing, and land-use regulations. Eliminate grants of state privilege in these areas, and you eliminate the economic inequality that comes with them. The response in Jacobin, penned by Max B. Sawicky, concedes some of the basics of this argument, saying that it’s “hard to imagine the super-profits received by holders of patents and copyrights, or the benefits to banks from lax financial regulation, going to any but the wealthiest in society.” Of course, the point Lindsey and Teles are making is not that financial regulations are lax—they aren’t—but that they are slanted to larger wealthier financial firms. This is a minor point, however, for Sawicky saves his real fire for the Lindsey/Teles take on occupational licensing. It is here that public choice theory is on its firmest ground, as it describes how the transformation of the right to work in a profession into a state licensed privilege awards incumbent market actors at the expense of potential market entrants and consumers. Occupational licensing as Sawicky admits creates real inequalities of wealth and privilege. But because they occur within, not across, class lines, their identification and study is at best irrelevant, and at worst a distraction from the fight against wider inequalities. Sawicky gives the example of licensed beauticians in Washington D.C., who are able—through occupational licensing—to restrict the entry of hair braiders into the market. The beauticians are given a grant of state privilege in the form of a license, creating one inequality, leading to higher incomes for the them at the expense of the hair braiders. Eliminating licensing requirements would eliminate this inequality, but asks Sawicky, “is that an improvement in the distribution of income to celebrate?” Both sides, he tells us, are “predominantly African-American women, earning low- and middle-class incomes.” Any distribution thus is just shuffling of income among workers, without doing anything to address the overall structure of inequality perpetuated by capitalism. Left unaddressed is the question of how workers—currently willing and able to use democratic means to extract rents from their peers—will be prevented from doing so under a socialist ideal of more democracy, and greater worker dictation of government policy. Public choice theory answers this, of course. Its proponents would suggest that the best way to limit workers extracting rents from other workers is strict limitations on the very means of extraction. Occupational licensing, whatever its merits, is subject to capture by interest groups—like the beauticians—who would corrupt its public purpose for their own advantage. Do away with the licensing says public choice theory, and replace it with strict protections of all workers to engage in whatever labor they find most advantageous. Sawicky sidesteps these questions, instead suggesting that worker empowerment and more democracy will eliminate the exploitation we see today. In doing so he leaves the important questions unanswered. Would occupational licensing exist in this workers utopia? If it does, how would be constrained so as to avoid it future capture and rent-seeking? We don’t know because Sawicky doesn’t tell us. Instead he leaves it to theories of class struggle to wash away these petty bourgeois questions. Whatever its flaws, Sawicky’s article has the decency to treat proponents of public choice as honest brokers of their ideas. That is more than be said for the vicious screed published by The Baffler’s Andrew Hartman, who see’s public choice theory as nothing more than a cloak for reactionary white supremacists to perpetuate their domination of the working class. The article is long, riddled with evidence-free assertions, and reliant on already discredited versions of history, including the myth that John C. Calhoun was a substantial influence on public-choice economics. I will not relitigate this ridiculous claim, but would encourage readers to check out its many debunkings here, here, and here. Hartman’s point is that public choice theory has unfairly claimed for itself a reputation for anti-statism, when in reality, it’s true intention is to restructure the state to serve the needs of the master class. This is in contrast to Marxism, which Hartman contends has always been the real force of anti-statism, advocating an ideology of “liberty for all.” Writes Hartman, “during the Cold War, Marxism was caricatured as a theory of collectivism—a caricature lent considerable credence by the Soviet Union, the first nation to proclaim itself Marxist, while vesting all power in an authoritarian state. In contrast, public choice was a theory of freedom that portrayed the state as the embodiment of repression. What gets lost in this formulation is Marxism’s actual role as a theory of freedom that actually saw the state as an engine of repression.” Marx’s utopia was indeed one where, in the absence of class divisions, the state would “would wither away and die.” What Hartman treats almost as incidental is that this never happened in any Marxist state. He spends one sentence on the fact that the Soviet Union quickly became a totalitarian nightmare, as did every other state to be seized by Marxist ideologues. The actual results of Marxism are irrelevant. As are the results of public choice theory for that matter. Instead, Marxist theory is what establishes its anti-statist bona fides. Hartman’s thesis is thus an explicit rejection of reality in favor of ideology. Nothing illustrates this better than Hartman’s closing call for Marxists to reclaim the mantle of the true anti-statists. After offering a muted defense of some state action, Hartman writes, “in addition to civil rights protections the state is also Vietnam. It is drones, bank bailouts, tax cuts for the wealthy, prisons. The state is Trump. If we want to reclaim the mantle of liberty from the master class and their court intellectuals, we must also reclaim a theory of the state for the masses.” In a sentence intended to be the anti-state climax of his piece, Hartman identifies a reduction in revenue for the state as somehow an action of unmitigated statism. Because, for Hartman, it’s not what the state is doing, but how one thinks about the state that matters. This is essential for his worldview. To think otherwise would be to acknowledge how Marxism has always led to statism, whatever the intention of it’s chief intellectual proponents. And as with Sawicky, Hartman leaves the crucial questions raised by his views unanswered. If Marxism has led to statism in the past, how will it be prevented from doing so in the future? If the working class can be bought off—as he suggests in the article—by a state under the thumb of the rich and powerful, how will a Marxist utopia avoid such a fate? Hartman’s rather unsatisfying answer is we just have to think about Marxism differently, then it will magically function as an anti-statist doctrine. Public choice theory does not require such ideological purity. Instead suggest real mechanisms for limiting state power, through a mix of explicit constitutional limitations and a requirement that a large majority (some would advocate unanimity) of society approving of state action. Though public choice scholars will quibble over what specific constitutional structures are most desirable, they all offer solutions on how to prevent state exploitation in a world where most people do not share their anti-statist views and who would, if given the opportunity, be happy to engage in a little exploitation. But if theory can blind Sawicky to public choices insights and Hartman to Marxism’s flaws on an intellectual level, it can also do so on a personal level, as evidenced by Zelda Bronstein’s anti-market piece in Dissent. Of the three, Bronstein is by far the best advocate for her position. Her conclusions are no sounder. In her article, “When Affordable Housing Meets Free-Market Fantasy,” Bronstein takes on the growing consensus that restrictive zoning laws, local land use regulations, and obstinate local planners have contributed to the dramatically escalating housing costs in California and beyond. Writes Bronstein, “Developers build housing, and what they decide to build—and when and whether they decide to build it at all—depend on factors that over which local governments have no control: the availability of credit, the cost of labor and materials, the cost of land, the current stage of the building cycle, perceived demand, and above all, the anticipated return on investment.” Of course, all the things that Bronstein mentions are essential to developers’ decisions on where and what to build. Many of the things she lists however, are indeed within a local government’s control. The ones that are not are still heavily influenced by them. Labor costs, of course, are governed in no small part by minimum wage laws, something local governments in California—the primary subject of Bronstein’s essay—have say over. On top of that, local governments also have a litany of prevailing wage and local hiring requirements for construction projects that drive up the costs of labor and therefore development. Indeed, California’s SB 35—which Bronstein spends a good portion of her essay deriding as a regulation-slashing, capitalist-beloved bill—contains within it both prevailing wage and local hiring provisions. While return on investment will of course be the defining factor in whether a developer invests or not, the return of any given investment is heavily influenced by local policy decisions. Whether you rent out an apartment or keep it empty as a speculative bet—in San Francisco, for instance—is going to be determined on the city’s local tenant protections that prevent you from raising rents concurrently with the value of the land. Whether you have to pay per-square foot development fees—as developers in Los Angeles now have to do—is going to determine whether an investor will choose to operate a currently existing apartment complex, or tear it down and build more units. Market incentives interact with local government policy, and local government policy is most often going to be set by entrenched interests at the expense of new entrants. Bronstein herself should know this. She does after all serve on Berkeley, California’s planning commission. She reportedly lives in a $1 million home she purchased for $300,000 and owns another 9 rental properties valued at $32 million. That she spends a great deal of her Dissent piece scolding anti-zoning folks as cloaking their own self-interest in publicly minded rhetoric is thus a tad ironic. It is also something predicted by public choice theory, which would hold that people act out of their own material self-interest while maintaining a façade of public-spiritedness. Just as Hartman uses pedantic theorizing to obscure the disastrous results of his own ideology’s implementation, Bronstein hides in left-wing rhetoric to obscure her own complicity in the phenomenon she seeks to explain away. The details of Bronstein’s biography are not meant as an ad hominem attack. They are included to illustrate a common thread between all three pieces discussed in this essay. All three writers critique public-choice economics not by attacking the substance of its methodology, but by complaining that it steps outside the boundaries of their ideology. Just by addressing the issues raised by public choice—even while rejecting every conclusion—they could ask practical questions that lead to answers instrumental to achieving goals like reducing poverty. But they didn’t. Sawicky brushes off the idea of workers exploiting workers in a democratic system of government, while at the same time assuming that a democratic system of government controlled by workers will free them from exploitation. Hartman engages in word games and pedantic theorizing to assert that Marxism is the true anti-state ideology, liberating him from grappling with why Marxists, once in power, always and everywhere implemented the worst kind of statism seen in human history. So long as one thinks about Marxism the right way, actual questions of governance become secondary, or even irrelevant. Bronstein’s own diatribe against market-based approaches to housing—with precious little acknowledgment of her own role in the problem—raise tough questions for her ideological fellow travelers. If such a committed socialist can be so self-interested now, what mechanism will stop others like her from acting in such a self-interested fashion should they are ever be at the levers of power? Public choice theory, in contrast, takes the realities of incentives and practical governance head on. Unlike solutions of the left that are fenced in by how well their conclusions fit with ideology, public choice theory is value-neutral. It doesn’t lean on the crutch of rhetorical conformity. Public choice scholars accept the fact that most human beings will never be saints. They instead task themselves with formulating structures and mechanism of government that work in a world where not everyone is as opposed on principle to state action as they. Doing so exposes the essential weakness of the prescriptions of left-wing ideology, and for this reason it has drawn so much fire. Christian Britschgi is an assistant editor at Reason |
Male superb fairy-wrens change colour every year, from dull brown to bright blue. But being blue may be risky if you are a tiny bird that is easily spotted by predators. Published today, our new study found that male fairy-wrens adjust their risk-taking behaviour after undergoing colour change, becoming more cautious while brightly coloured. Colour and risk For many males, having beautiful colours is important for attracting choosy females. Researchers think attractive colours come with a cost, so that only the highest quality males can afford to display them. This may be helpful to females looking to select the best mate. One possible cost of bright colours is increased predation risk, as bright animals are easily seen in their natural habitat. This cost can be dramatic (i.e. being eaten) but may more often involve changes in behaviour to mitigate risk, such as spending more time scanning for predators and being more responsive to perceived threats. Such behaviours are costly because they reduce the time available for foraging and are energetically expensive. Kaspar Delhey , Author provided A relationship between bright colours, predation risk and cautious behaviour may seem intuitive; however this is difficult to test. This is because different coloured animals may also differ in their age, size, escape tactics and personality, which can influence both their behaviour and actual predation risk. To address this, we tested whether individuals adjust their response to risk according to changes in their plumage colour. Fairy-wren antics Superb fairy-wrens are small, charismatic songbirds. They live in groups with a dominant male and female and, often, several younger males. These birds are vulnerable to predators such as kookaburras, butcherbirds, currawongs and goshawks. When a group member spots a predator, it gives an alarm call to warn the others. In response, other group members may race for cover, or ignore the alarm and continue about their business. Male fairy-wrens change colour by replacing dull brown feathers with bright blue, black and indigo ones prior to breeding, turning brown again after the breeding season is complete. Individuals change colour at different times of the year, ranging from the Australian autumn (March-April) to late spring (October). Niki Teunissen and Kaspar Delhey , Author provided Although female fairy-wrens have a stable, social partner, when egg-laying time comes, they briefly leave their territory under the cover of darkness and “visit” the male who became blue earliest in the year. Many of the females in the surrounding area prefer the same male, who may father around 70% of the offspring in the neighbourhood. These attractive males are blue for longest (remaining blue for 10-12 months of the year) and so may face the greatest risk of predation. Tracking fairy-wrens We gave fairy-wrens different coloured leg bands, allowing us to follow the same individuals over time. Alexandra McQueen , Author provided We compared the behaviour of the same males while they were brown and blue, as well as males that remained brown or blue throughout the study. This meant we could test for the effect of colour on responses to perceived risk while accounting for individual differences and possible seasonal changes in behaviour. We estimated cautiousness in the birds by testing their response to alarm calls. This involved sneaking up on unsuspecting fairy-wrens in their natural habitat and broadcasting fairy-wren alarm calls from portable speakers. We used two types of alarms: a low-danger alarm, which warns of a moderate threat, such as a predator that is far away, and a high-danger alarm, which signals an immediate threat. Robert Magrath 48 KB (download) Low-danger superb fairy-wren alarm call. Robert Magrath 73.1 KB (download) High-danger superb fairy-wren alarm call. Costs of being blue Responses to the low-danger alarm included fleeing for cover, an intermediate response (such as ducking or looking skywards) and no response, when the alarm was ignored. Fairy-wrens fled immediately after hearing the high-danger alarm, but differed in the time taken to return to the open. We found that fairy-wrens were more cautious while blue; they fled more often after hearing low-danger alarms and took longer to emerge from hiding after fleeing in response to high-danger alarms. Blue fairy-wrens also spent more time scanning their surroundings and less time foraging compared to brown wrens. This suggests that fairy-wrens perceive themselves to be at a higher risk of predation while bright blue and adjust their behaviour accordingly. Kaspar Delhey , Author provided Blue decoys? Intriguingly, fairy-wrens also adjusted their behaviour according to the colour of other wrens in the group. When a blue male was nearby, wrens were less responsive to alarm calls and devoted less time to keeping a look-out. Perhaps this is because fairy-wrens view blue group members as colourful decoys in the event of an attack. This could occur if predators are biased towards attacking the most conspicuous animal, which reduces the predation risk for surrounding individuals. Brown wrens could also be taking advantage of the greater time blue males spend scanning, allowing them to lower their guard. Being blue for longest gives males the best chance of attracting females, but they need to be extra careful lest they get eaten before it comes to that. Coauthors on this research are Annalise Naimo, Niki Teunissen, Robert Magrath and Kaspar Delhey. |
The RIT men's hockey team unveiled its 2014-15 schedule on Thursday, May 29. The Tigers will play 34 regular season games and one exhibition contest in their 10th Division I season. RIT will play 16 regular season home games in its inaugural season at the 4,200-seat Gene Polisseni Center on the campus of RIT, and one contest at Blue Cross Arena in downtown Rochester in addition to 17 away games.On Saturday, Oct. 4, RIT opens the Gene Polisseni Center by hosting Brock University of Ontario in an exhibition contest at 7:05 p.m. The following weekend, the Tigers begin regular season play at the brand new building, as longtime ECAC foes St. Lawrence and Clarkson visit on Oct. 10-11."We are really excited to play in the Polisseni Center," said RIT head coach, who is entering his 16th season behind the bench. "We will miss Ritter Arena, but are thrilled to be moving into such a big-time facility. The players went on a recent tour and can't wait to begin playing there. St. Lawrence and Clarkson will be great tests for us right away to see where we stand."The Tigers will play Division I powerhouse, Boston College at Blue Cross Arena during Brick City Homecoming and Family Weekend on Saturday, Oct. 18 at 7:05 p.m. It is the sixth straight year RIT will play downtown during its annual homecoming weekend. RIT has drawn sellout crowds of 10,556 fans each of the last four Brick City Weekends against UMass Lowell, St. Lawrence, Penn State, and Michigan. One of the most sought after tickets in Rochester, last year's game against Michigan sold out 15 days in advance.Boston College has won three NCAA Championships over the last seven seasons and is coached by Jerry York, college hockey's all-time leader in wins with 963. RIT head coachand associate head coachplayed their collegiate hockey for York at Bowling Green in the early 1980's."We will have our work cut out for us against Boston College, who has been arguably the top program in college hockey over the last 15 years," said Wilson. "The atmosphere downtown is incredible and we always look forward to this game."The Tigers also travel to face 2013 NCAA Champion Yale University on Nov. 29 and wrap up their non-conference schedule by playing at historic Mariucci Arena on the campus of the University of Minnesota in the 24th annual Mariucci Classic on Jan. 2-3, 2015. Minnesota, UMass Lowell, and Merrimack will participate in the tournament. The Tigers will find out their opening night opponent in the upcoming weeks.Wilson has a personal connection to Yale, as his son Stu will be a junior forward with the Bulldogs in 2014-15."Yale will be very tough in their building, having won the NCAA Championship just two seasons ago," said Wilson. "The Mariucci Classic at Minnesota will be a great way for us to get right back into play after the holidays. All three teams are strong and will get us ready for the final push in league play."RIT will open Atlantic Hockey Association play with back-to-back road trips against Air Force on Oct. 24-25 and 2014 AHA Champion Robert Morris on Oct. 31-Nov. 1.With 11 teams in the league this season, the Tigers will play four games against Robert Morris, Holy Cross, Mercyhurst, and Niagara, and two each versus American International, Air Force, Army, Bentley, Canisius, and Mercyhurst. In all, 28 of RIT's 34 games are against AHA rivals."Atlantic Hockey is as competitive as it has ever been," said Wilson. "We want to get off to a good start and put ourselves in position to host a quarterfinal series, advance to Blue Cross Arena, and win a league title."The Tigers host Holy Cross for two games on Nov. 7-8 before heading to the brand new Harbor Center in Buffalo for a pair of contests against Canisius the following weekend. RIT hosts Sacred Heart on Nov. 21-22, before competing in a home-and-home series against Niagara on Dec. 12-13.Upon returning from Minnesota, RIT plays its final 16 games against conference foes. The Tigers host American International on Jan. 9-10 before going to Sacred Heart and Bentley the following two weekends, while RIT is on intersession. The Tigers return home to face Army on Jan. 30-31, before a second home and home series against Niagara on Feb. 6-7. After going back on the road for two games against Holy Cross the next weekend, RIT wraps up the regular season with consecutive home series against Robert Morris on Feb. 20-21 and Mercyhurst on Feb. 27-28.The Atlantic Hockey Association playoffs begin with a best-of-three series for the sixth through eleventh place finishers from March 6-8. The top five teams get a first round bye. Quarterfinal action will be held at the top four sites from March 13-15. The Atlantic Hockey Association Tournament Semifinals and Championship will be held on March 20-21 at the Blue Cross Arena for the ninth straight season.RIT will look to earn its second berth in the NCAA Tournament as a Division I program. The 2015 NCAA Division I Tournament begins on March 27, and ends with the Frozen Four on April 9 and April 11 at the TD Garden in Boston.The Tigers are 157-110-37 since the start of the 2006-07 season, including an AHA title and NCAA Frozen Four berth in 2010. RIT won 12 games and advanced to the first round of the AHA Tournament last season.Season and single game ticket information will be released in the upcoming weeks at www.ritathletics.com and www.rithockey.com |
On Monday, December 22, the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office served a search warrant at a residence, 300 SE Fawn Glen in Lake City and subsequently arrested a local man on multiple charges relating to internet crimes against children. The investigation was initiated in late November after information was received that a Columbia County man had downloaded child pornography onto his personal computers. Sheriff’s Office detectives with assistance of FBI agents from the Jacksonville office served the search warrant. Arrested was Robert K. Christopher, 30 on charges of 23 counts of Transmission of Pornography by Electronic Device or Equipment and 23 counts of Possession of Child Pornography with a total bond of $230,000. The Columbia County Sheriff’s Office is a member of the North Florida Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. ICAC is an organization of law enforcement officers and agencies from across the nation, who investigates and prevents the exploitation of children through the internet. The Columbia County Sheriff’s Office places a high priority on the safety of our children. If you know of or suspect internet crimes against children, such as enticement, child pornography, or solicitation of a minor report it immediately. You can contact the Sheriff’s Office at 386-719-2005 or Crime Stoppers at 386-754-7099. 911 should be called if the child is in immediate danger. |
A casual observer would probably have a hard time telling the difference between League of Legends, Dota 2, and Heroes of Newerth. All three are spiritual successors to Defense of the Ancients, an insanely popular custom map for Warcraft III that pits two teams of five heroes against each other. That strategic, intense style of play has birthed a new genre, the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA). We’re here to help you see the differences between the three most popular MOBAs currently out on the market. Some of the discrepancies may seem small, but they can make a big difference with games this complicated. First, let’s talk about how they’re similar. They’re all free-to-play and offer plenty of microtransactions (many of which are cosmetic). They’re all based on the structure made popular in Defense of the Ancients: Your team has to destroy the enemy’s base before the other team does. You fight other players and monsters controlled by the computer to earn gold and experience so you can make your hero more powerful, which allows you to push through lanes of the other team’s defensive towers and monsters. Even the main map in each game is essentially the same. Each features two bases connected by three lanes, with a monster-filled jungle offering branching paths between them. Now, let’s get into the differences. We’ll start by looking at some of the basic stats in the graph below, and then we’ll briefly highlight each game. League of Legends (LOL) Gallery: Gallery League of Legends is easily the most popular MOBA out there. While its competitors offer all of their heroes for free, LOL only gives you 10 free characters at a time. Exactly which heroes changes every week. You’ll have to pay for any other champions you want, either with real money or in-game currency that you can earn (slowly) by playing. LOL is the simplest one of the three to grasp. While still heavily based on the original Defense of the Ancients formula, gone are some of the more advanced techniques, like “denying” (the ability to kill your own monsters before the other team can, denying them gold and experience). LOL is generally faster than its competitors although by “faster” I mean matches may take 40 minutes instead of 50. League of Legends also offers a couple of variants on the 5-on-5 play the genre is most famous for. One is just a smaller, 3-on-3 take on MOBA action, but the other, Dominion, is a quicker-paced mode where teams of five fight over circular control points. A fourth map, the Howling Abyss, let’s two teams of five battle on a chaotic, single lane . Dota 2 Gallery: Gallery Compared to LOL, Dota 2 is much more faithful to the original Defense of the Ancients. You won’t find any variants on the classic 5-on-5 map. However, Dota 2 does offer immediate access to all of its heroes, with microstransactions reserved for cosmetic stuff like character skins and announcer voices. Being the newest of the bunch, Dota 2’s also the best looking. While all three feature visuals clearly inspired by Warcraft III’s art direction, Dota 2’s graphics have a cleaner gleam and shine to them. Generally speaking, Dota 2 is slower than LOL. While the layout of the map is identical, Dota 2’s is a bit bigger. Actions, like movement speed and casting spells, are generally slower. Also, while LOL allows players to transport back to their home base at any time, you’ll need to have a stack of town portal scrolls handy if you want to get around in Dota 2. On the plus side, using the scrolls can send you to any friendly building, including towers. Heroes of Newerth (HON) Gallery: Gallery Heroes of Newerth has more in common with Dota 2 than LOL. It’s a very literal spin-off of Defense of the Ancients. Dota 2 and HON even feature many items and heroes that, aside from their names, are pretty much identical. The biggest difference between them is the pacing. HON matches tend to move faster. In addition to the standard 5-on-5 map, HON has two more official battlegrounds. One is a smaller field for 3-on-3 play while the other is another 5-on-5 map with a different layout. Players generally stick with the original. Graphically, HON most closely resembles the original Warcraft III mod. It doesn’t have LOL’s cartoony, dark outlines or Dota 2’s sheen. Those are the biggest differences, but fans of each game could argue endlessly over the smaller details of character balancing and other intricate mechanics. Of course, these aren’t the only MOBAs on the market. Guardians of Middle-earth distills the experience for consoles by using a smaller map and featuring faster action. It also, of course, includes characters from Tolkien’s popular mythology. Super Monday Night Combat combines core concepts of MOBAs, like pushing lanes and attacking towers/turrets, and puts them into a team-based third-person shooter. Even mobile publisher Zygna has released a MOBA called Solstice Arena, which simplifies things by featuring 3-on-3 battles and getting rid of nonplayer monsters. Image Credit: Warner Bros. The genre will see new competition soon, too. Infinite Crisis will pit DC comic characters against each other in MOBA action later this year, and Blizzard is working on its own successor to the original Defense of the Ancients called Blizzard All-Stars. Until then, if you’re feeling the itch to try your hand at this new kind of game, start with League of Legends. It’s the quickest to grasp, and it’s faster action is more satisfying for newer players. If you find yourself craving more complexity, try HON or Dota 2. |
Federal regulators dropped a scathing report on Metro this week. The 36-page report from the Federal Transit Administration highlights widespread problems within Metro’s track maintenance program, and calls for a significant changes to the way things get done, including a new inspection schedule, more staff, better training, clarifications on policies and safety manuals, a revamped system to log and prioritize track repairs, and more. [In scathing report, FTA blasts Metro track maintenance program] But the report, resulting from FTA’s months-long Track Integrity Investigation of Metro, also includes a sizable number of anecdotes that are simply shocking to read. The most notable: Metro officials knew of problems just outside the East Falls Church station — where a Silver Line train derailed on July 29 due to degraded tracks — but they did not shut down the section of track because they needed it for single-tracking as part of SafeTrack surges. Metro board member Michael Goldman, who represents Maryland, pointed to one part of the report that discusses the lack of clear policy on what speed restrictions were required for what type of track conditions, and supervisors who were able to overrule written requirements and use their own discretion. “That shouldn’t be the way we run a railroad,” Goldman said. “We either have policies we adhere to — or we change the policies. We can’t give this kind of breadth of discretion to mid-level managers to ignore safety standards.” In case you aren’t inclined to wade through a 36-page report, we’ve got the highlights below. (And for what it’s worth, all emphases were added.) 1. Months ago, the Federal Transit Administration suggested that Metro fix the problem that later caused the East Falls Church derailment — but Metro officials ignored FTA’s advice because they wanted to be able to continue single-tracking … a decision that calls into question Metro’s commitment to “safety over service.” “… during the track integrity investigation, FWSO [federal inspectors] highlighted concerns regarding the overall track conditions on the section of Orange/Silver Line track from Vienna to Ballston, as crossties and other track components reach the end of their useful life. The FWSO encouraged WMATA to include this track in its SafeTrack program, and specifically to prioritize work between East Falls Church to Ballston, as one of the first three SafeTrack surges. The particular interlocking involved in the derailment was not part of this initial surge because it was used to support single tracking operations.” 2. FTA found 14 serious track issues during three weeks of inspections. “In all, over three weeks between March 21 and April 15, 2016, FWSO’s inspection teams identified almost 400 defects in track conditions, including 7 ‘black’ conditions in three locations that required WMATA to take track out of service and 7 additional ‘red’ conditions that required WMATA to impose speed restrictions.” 3. Though Metro’s rules say that tracks with very serious issues must be taken out of service, Metro continued to operate trains over those tracks, but at reduced speeds. “According to WMATA maintenance standards anything over 120 inches requires that a ‘black’ (out of service) condition be placed on the track. However, WMATA track supervisors at the location with FWSO’s team determined that 15 mph speed restrictions would be sufficient for two of these three conditions.” 4. There was a 21-foot stretch of track without anything holding the steel rail in place. “WMATA did remove from service the track with the third instance of missing fasteners. This short section of track in the crossover between two switches measured 456 inches (over 21 feet) between effective fasteners. This is almost four times the minimum allowed by WMATA’s maintenance standards.” 5. FTA found some sizable leaks throughout the system. “Most significantly, FWSO found multiple water leaks between the Potomac Avenue and Stadium-Armory stations, including a gushing leak at the safety catwalk and a smaller leak just above a newly installed boot and a cable.” 6. Some employees didn’t know how to accurately measure the width of the rail. “As an example, an FWSO inspection team encountered an issue with lack of knowledge regarding the application of third rail gauge threshold measurements. Specifically, at one location where the rail exhibited equipment striking the third rail, employees indicated that the third rail gauge was measured from the field side of the rail. The TRST 1000 [a Metro manual] indicates measurement from the gauge side of the near rail.” 7. Basically, FTA officials said in the report that many of Metro’s inspectors don’t know what they’re doing. “… in subsequent follow-up inspections, FWSO inspectors found deficient track conditions requiring speed restrictions that were missed by track inspectors, including instances of missing direct fixation or DF fasteners (up to 456 inches between effective DF fasteners) that should have been already noted and repaired. In other instances, questions regarding the cause or source of specific defects, from wheel burns, to spalling and corrosion, were incorrectly identified and the typical progression patterns and timelines for common defects were also not well understood. Many of the track inspectors encountered appeared to be inadequately trained with little or no hands-on-training.” |
The UFC will return to Brazil on May 14th for their biggest event there yet. UFC 198 will take place in Arena de Baixada in Curitiba, and is expected to draw over 40,000 fans. Because of that, the promotion has stocked the card with Brazilian talent, to the point that a bout between top welterweights Matt Brown and Demian Maia isn't even on the main card. The event will be headlined by a UFC heavyweight title fight between Fabricio Werdum and Stipe Miocic. The co-main is a very important fight for the middleweight division, with Vitor Belfort taking on fellow Brazilian Ronaldo Souza. In addition to that, Cris Cyborg will make her UFC debut against Leslie Smith, and Anderson Silva will fight Uriah Hall. Here's a look at the current card: Main Card Fabricio Werdum vs. Stipe Miocic Vitor Belfort vs. Ronaldo Souza Cristiane Justino vs. Leslie Smith Corey Anderson vs. Mauricio Rua Uriah Hall vs. Anderson Silva Preliminary Card Matt Brown vs. Demian Maia Patrick Cummins vs. Antonio Rogerio Nogueira Rob Font vs. John Lineker Nate Marquardt vs. Thiago Santos Warlley Alves vs. Bryan Barberena Yancy Medeiros vs. Francisco Trinaldo Sergio Moraes vs. Kamaru Usman Renato Moicano vs. Zubaira Tukhugov |
Dan Frommer, Business Insider Apple has allegedly known about the abuse of Foxconn workers in China for a long time without doing anything to change it, according to a new report from the New York Times. We've previously reported on the numerous difficulties that surround working for Foxconn -- employees threaten mass suicide over pay, the CEO takes his management cues from zookeepers, and there have been problems in the past regarding its hiring underage employees. An anonymous Apple executive told the Times, "We've known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they're still going on. Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn't have another choice." Another executive on the fact that underage worker violations keep occurring: "If you see the same pattern of problems, year after year, that means the company's ignoring the issue rather than solving it. Noncompliance is tolerated, as long as the suppliers promise to try harder next time. If we meant business, core violations would disappear." Apple is supposedly working on it, however. Another one of the Times's sources said, "We're trying really hard to make things better but most people would still be really disturbed if they saw where their iPhone comes from." |
A bystander dressed only in underpants helped police arrest an unlicensed driver who allegedly crashed a car into an Australian takeout restaurant on Thursday then fled. Daniel McConnell said he was lying in bed at home in the Brisbane suburb of Hendra at 2 a.m. when a car slammed into the front of a neighboring fish-and-chips shop, which had closed for the night. "I've come outside and I've seen all of this commotion over here and I was in me jocks," McConnell told Australian Broadcast Corp., referring to his briefs. McConnell said he saw the driver run away and gave chase. "All I had was me undies on and he started to take off up the street and I said: 'What are you doing, mate?' and I started following him. He's like: 'Don't be a hero,'" McConnell said. McConnell said he returned home to grab his keys then gave chase again in his car, still nearly naked. Police arrived and McConnell flashed his headlights to grab their attention. Queensland state Police acknowledged that McConnell had directed them to the street where the 35-year-old driver was arrested. The driver will appear in court in January charged with unlicensed driving, a police statement said. More charges are possible. |
Luxury block boasts of intrigue at the complex close to Westminster and heart of power By Mark Conrad and Mark Watts | 12 July 2014 Dolphin Square has long been a place of intrigue. Indeed, the complex likes to use its reputation for dark secrets and proximity to the heart of power as a way of promoting the block of luxury apartments in Pimlico, central London. But its glamorous reputation is set to be sullied by today’s bombshell disclosures that MPs held parties at the apartment block near Westminster where they and other VIPs sexually abused children. The 12-floor block, which was built over two years between 1935 and 1937, offers its own shopping arcade, cafes, restaurants, gym, swimming pool and spa. Its gardens have a distinctive sculpture of three dolphins. The complex is well kept and quintessentially English. A short walk from Parliament, it is favoured by MPs, Lords, wealthy businessmen, stars and a wide range of other senior public figures thanks to its privacy, proximity to Parliament and views of the River Thames. It is also close to Belgravia, the diplomatic quarter of London. Residents were unable to buy their flats, and could only rent them. Dolphin Square’s Village Magazine boasts about the dark intrigue of the complex. Under a section headed, “The secret residents of Dolphin Square”, it says: “With its close distance to Westminster, it is no wonder that Dolphin Square has been home to the likes of politicians and stars. “But what you may not have known is that the square has also been home to a number of spies. The world of espionage is embedded into the history of Dolphin Square.” It refers to, ‘A History of Dolphin Square’, a book by a previous general manager, K. F. Morris, who describes some residents as “members of mysterious government departments”. The magazine article continues: “A confirmed long-term resident of Dolphin Square was Maxwell Knight – a senior member of the British military intelligence. “It is believed that he used two flats at Dolphin Square. Whilst he was at MI5, Knight recruited William Joyce who was a fellow tenant at Dolphin Square at the time. Joyce, known as ‘Lord Haw Haw’, was later executed for treason. “Whispers claim that agents from both sides of the former ‘iron curtain’ (an ideological barrier between the Soviet Union and non-communist states) were once residents of Dolphin Square. “Another tenant, John Vassall – an admiralty clerk, was exposed as a Soviet spy in 1962 and arrested at his Dolphin Square flat. “It went almost unnoticed that Vassall was spending £10 a week on his flat in Dolphin Square whilst earning £14 a week. “With this rich history and range of covert occupants, the previous residents of London’s most mysterious square must be pleased that walls cannot speak. If they did, many secrets may have been exposed.” But if the panel inquiry that was announced on Monday by Theresa May, home secretary, into child sex abuse at various institutions – including political parties – tries to uncover the truth, then some of the darkest secrets of Dolphin Square may be fully exposed to threaten the very core of the UK establishment. The original cross-party group of MPs who called for the inquiry are to meet May to press for survivors of child sex abuse to serve on its panel, to help ensure that the truth is uncovered. Related Stories : Child sex abuse, ‘Fernbridge’ and ‘Fairbank’: Exaro story thread |
In 2015, the Toronto Star reported that the RCMP had been using dummy Facebook profiles to track activists and rallies . The documents obtained by VICE News, however, appear to be the first indication that police in Canada were actively surveilling Black Lives Matter activists. The reports were spurred on by a wider intelligence operation monitoring a planned Black Lives Matter Vancouver vigil for Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, both killed in high profile police shootings in Texas and were the impetus for the original Dallas Black Lives Matter protest where officers were gunned down by a sniper. In the July 2016 reports, a senior intelligence officer assigned other RCMP officers to “contact [law enforcement officer] Liaison at US Consulate” regarding “Black Panther, Black Lives Matter.” According to a cache of intelligence reports obtained by VICE News through Canada’s Access to Information Act, the federal policing agency not only surveilled the social media accounts of Black Lives Matter Vancouver and its members, but pursued intelligence from the US State Department on hate groups calling for police killings and their links to Canada. Following the killing of five law enforcement officers at a Black Lives Matter protest last year in Dallas, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police sought information on any possible links between African American hate groups and Black Lives Matter in Canada. Read more Following the killing of five law enforcement officers at a Black Lives Matter protest last year in Dallas, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police sought information on any possible links between African American hate groups and Black Lives Matter in Canada. According to a cache of intelligence reports obtained by VICE News through Canada’s Access to Information Act, the federal policing agency not only surveilled the social media accounts of Black Lives Matter Vancouver and its members, but pursued intelligence from the US State Department on hate groups calling for police killings and their links to Canada. In the July 2016 reports, a senior intelligence officer assigned other RCMP officers to “contact [law enforcement officer] Liaison at US Consulate” regarding “Black Panther, Black Lives Matter.” The reports were spurred on by a wider intelligence operation monitoring a planned Black Lives Matter Vancouver vigil for Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, both killed in high profile police shootings in Texas and were the impetus for the original Dallas Black Lives Matter protest where officers were gunned down by a sniper. In 2015, the Toronto Star reported that the RCMP had been using dummy Facebook profiles to track activists and rallies. The documents obtained by VICE News, however, appear to be the first indication that police in Canada were actively surveilling Black Lives Matter activists. The surveillance, assigned as part of an “ops plan,” included social media monitoring of the of various Facebook, Twitter, and GoFundMe pages linked to the movement, to “ensure public and law enforcement safety.” The reports involve input from several units including the federal policing agency’s B.C. Hate Crime Team, their Criminal Analysis section, and Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams (INSETs), which are known to monitor domestic terrorist threats across Canada. In a statement sent to VICE News, the RCMP pushed back on the idea that their social media tracking constitutes “surveillance.” “As the [Real Time Information Centre-B.C.] report makes clear, open source social media monitoring was used to ensure public and law enforcement safety for a July 10, 2016 event planned by the Vancouver Chapter of Black Lives matters,” a spokesperson said in an email. They added that the intelligence centre is supported by the RCMP as well as other law enforcement agencies. “This report was done as a matter of conducting due diligence, in regard to public and police officer safety, as was noted. The report concluded there was no indications of violence.” The monitoring began in mid-July, 2016, and continued until the end of the month. Around the same time, the Vancouver chapter of the activist group called on police to banned from the Vancouver pride parade. “No indication of present threats to police in BC. Black Lives Matter group, speaking against [Vancouver Police Department] involvement in upcoming Pride march determined to be comprised of local individuals who pose no significant threat,” reads one of the reports. Read more: A Pride protest thrusts Black Lives Matter into the spotlight in Canada The Vancouver chapter of Black Lives Matter has publicly protested against police involvement in pride the annual city pride march. The report does conclude: “At this time there are no indications that violence will be used as a tactic.” and notes that it will be a “peaceful rally.” The report, however, was categorized as “unfolding event – serious crime” In the same report containing threat assessments of Black Lives Matter Vancouver, it shows the RCMP looking into the Canadian connections to U.S. hate groups, namely the New Black Panther Party and the African American Defence League, but concluded they could not find a connection between B.C. and “any African American activist groups.” Other emails obtained along with the B.C. Real Time Intelligence Centre reports show RCMP intelligence officers concerned about the New Black Panther Party operating in Canada, with one officer labeling an email as “HIGH Importance.” “Maybe [Real Time Intelligence Centre] can consider a work up on who these groups are and what their messaging is,” says one officer, “whether this is a threat here and whether they are using their messages to radicalize others.” Read more: Emails Show Feds Have Monitored ‘Professional Protester’ DeRay Mckesson In an email to an unnamed American government official, Sargeant Lundie asks for US law enforcement bulletins along with “any further details on the anti-police group known as the ‘New Black Panthers’” and if they had “a presence either in Canada or the Pacific North West.” The US official, whose name is withheld from the documents, replies they’ve not “seen or heard anything as of yet” on the New Black Panther Party, but would “make some inquiries.” There has been little indication that the New Black Panther Party has ever been active in Canada. In 2007, Canadian border guards stopped the chairman of the organization — classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Centre — from entering the country to speak at an event in Toronto. Even in the United States, the New Black Panther Party, which has been denounced by the leaders of the past Black Panther Party, claims just a few thousand members. Micah Johnson, the gunman who opened fire in Dallas before being killed by police, had previously been a member of the New Black Panther Party, although police concluded that Johnson acted alone. In the documents obtained by VICE News is a media report on the shootings, entitled: “Hate group urges gangs to kill cops after Dallas shootings.” The story reports that, after the Dallas shootings, a man associated with the New Black Panther Party and the African American Defence League called on members of the black community in a Facebook posting to “ATTACK EVERYTHING IN BLUE EXCEPT THE MAIL MAN, UNLESS HE IS CARRYING MORE THAN MAIL!” Read the full documents: |
Everton have shown an interest in Sheffield United teenager David Brooks and are considering a bid for the midfielder during this transfer window. Brooks was named Player of the Tournament in the Toulon Tournament, scoring in the final for winners England after switching allegiances from Wales. Sheffield United had been set to allow 19-year-old Brooks to join Chesterfield on loan as part of the deal that saw the club re-sign striker Ched Evans. But the Blades pulled the plug on a deal for Brooks to move to Chesterfield at the last minute, following interest from clubs higher up the Leagues – including Everton. Brooks is yet to make a League start for Sheffield United, having joined the club from Manchester City’s Academy in 2014. The following year he spent two months on loan at Halifax Town, making five appearances and scoring one goal. |
Media property focuses on problem-solving and foundational math concepts and skills on-air, online, on mobile and in the community Miami, FL, May 15, 2013 – Today at its annual meeting with PBS member stations, PBS KIDS announced the premiere date for the upcoming animated preschool series PEG + CAT. The multimedia property follows the adorable, spirited Peg and her sidekick, Cat, as they embark on adventures, solve problems and learn foundational math concepts and skills. PEG + CAT premieres Monday, October 7, 2013, on PBS KIDS with a special one-hour broadcast of two back-to-back episodes, along with integrated online and mobile content. The series airs daily following the premiere (check local listings). PEG + CAT was created by Billy Aronson (Rent, Postcards from Buster) and Jennifer Oxley (Little Bill, The Wonder Pets!) of 9ate7 Productions, and is a production of The Fred Rogers Company. Each episode features a story in which Peg and Cat encounter an unexpected challenge that requires them to use math and problem-solving skills in order to save the day. Their adventures take viewers from a farm to a distant planet, from a pirate island to a prehistoric valley, from Romeo and Juliet's Verona to Cleopatra's Egypt to New York's Radio City Music Hall. While teaching specific math lessons, the series displays the value of resilience and perseverance in problem-solving. PEG + CAT is a multiplatform media experience that includes interactive mobile and online content. The property offers games and other resources online at pbskids.org/peg, and additional interactive features, including more games, streaming video, parent and educator resources and a mobile app, are slated to launch along with the on-air premiere in fall 2013. PBS stations across the country will also bring the series to their local communities by providing PEG + CAT educational resources for families. “We are thrilled to bring PEG + CAT to the PBS KIDS audience this October, not just because it is a smart, funny and engaging series, but also because it meets a critical need for today’s kids,” said Lesli Rotenberg, General Manager, Children’s Programming, PBS. “Over half of our nation’s children are performing below proficient levels in math by the 4th grade, which is why we need to start early to give young children the foundation they need to succeed in this important curricular area. Peg also promises to be a positive role model for girls; this is critical because research shows that kids identify math as being for boys and not for girls as early as second grade.* With her sense of humor, problem-solving skills and eagerness to collaborate and persevere, Peg will help encourage both boys and girls to explore math.” PEG + CAT is funded in part by the U.S. Department of Education through the Ready To Learn Initiative, a program that supports the development of innovative educational television and digital media targeted at preschool and early elementary school children and their families, and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). PEG + CAT is the first original preschool transmedia property developed as part of the federal Ready To Learn Initiative. PEG + CAT is part of PBS KIDS’ ongoing commitment to helping kids build the skills they need to succeed in school and in life. PBS KIDS serves young audiences wherever they live, learn and play — through educational apps, on TV, online and in the classroom. Images, episode descriptions and additional press materials for PEG + CAT are available on PBS PressRoom. About PBS KIDS PBS KIDS, the number one educational media brand for kids, offers all children the opportunity to explore new ideas and new worlds through television, online, mobile and community-based programs. Kidscreen- and Webby-award winning pbskids.org provides engaging interactive content, including the PBS KIDS video player, now offering free streaming video accessible on computer- and mobile-device-based browsers. For more information on specific PBS KIDS content supporting literacy, science, math and more, visit pbs.org/pressroom, or follow PBS KIDS on Twitter and Facebook. About The Fred Rogers Company The company was founded by Fred Rogers in 1971 as the nonprofit producer of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood for PBS. In the years that followed, it not only created hundreds of episodes of this much-loved program, but also extended Fred’s values and approach to other efforts in promoting children’s social, emotional and behavioral health and supporting parents, caregivers, teachers and other professionals in their work with children. The Fred Rogers Company continues to build on Fred’s legacy in innovative ways through a wide variety of media, and engaging new generations of children and families with his timeless wisdom. For more information, visit us at www.fredrogers.org. About CPB The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a private, nonprofit corporation created by Congress in 1967, is the steward of the federal government's investment in public broadcasting. It helps support the operations of more than 1,300 locally owned and operated public television and radio stations nationwide, and is the largest single source of funding for research, technology and program development for public radio, television and related online services. About The Ready To Learn Initiative The Ready To Learn Initiative is a cooperative agreement funded and managed by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement. It supports the development of innovative educational television and digital media targeted at preschool and early elementary school children and their families. Its goal is to promote early learning and school readiness, with a particular focus on reaching low-income children. In addition to creating television and other media products, the program supports activities intended to promote national distribution and effective educational uses of the programming, community-based outreach and research on educational effectiveness. The contents of this release were developed under a grant from the Department of Education. However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government. The project is funded by a Ready To Learn grant (PR/AWARD No. U295A100025, CFDA No. 84.295A) provided by the Department of Education to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Contacts: Maria Vera, PBS; 703.739.3225; mvera@pbs.org Meredith Gandy, 360PR; 646.568.3238; mgandy@360pr.com * “Math–Gender Stereotypes in Elementary School Children”; Dario Cvencek, Andrew N. Meltzoff, and Anthony G. Greenwald; University of Washington; Child Development, May⁄ June 2011, Volume 82, Number 3, Pages 766–779 |
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia – Slovakian lawmakers on Tuesday rejected participation in an expanded euro rescue fund aimed at shoring up confidence in the ability of euro members to survive the financial crisis. Slovakia's 1-year-old coalition government also fell with the vote, because the prime minister had tied it to a confidence measure. After 10 hours of debate in Parliament, the measure calling on Slovakia to support the expansion of the bailout fund failed to pass by 21 votes. "Today we saved more than 300 billion euros for the European taxpayers that would have been used to bail out banks," said Parliament Speaker Richard Sulik, who led Parliament's opposition to the expansion of the bailout fund. Slovakia remains the only country in the 17-member eurozone that has not approved the package of measures, which requires unanimous support to go into effect. The euro stability fund is designed to boost Europe's firefighting capabilities in the financial crisis. Prime Minister Iveta Radicova had urged the lawmakers to back the bill, arguing that the country was losing its credibility. "It is the entire eurozone system which is under threat at the moment, not just a few small countries anymore," Radicova said in the debate in Parliament. "Our euro is under threat. The changing situation needs a quick and immediate reaction." Earlier, Radicova had admitted that a coalition partner was not convinced. EU officials still could find a way of getting around the Slovakian rejection of the bill to boost the powers and size of the euro bailout fund, which is designed to contain debt market turmoil. But doing so would carry costs to European unity. The "no" vote will further complicate the eurozone's efforts to deal with the crisis, which already has seen three countries get bailouts and raised fears of a Greek default and massive losses for banks. As the vote loomed, European Central Bank head Jean-Claude Trichet gave one of his most emphatic warnings yet about the need for swift action to quell the crisis, which he called "systemic." "The high interconnectedness in the EU financial system has led to a rapidly rising risk of significant contagion," Trichet told a committee of the European Parliament. "This threatens financial stability in the EU as a whole and adversely impacts the real economy in Europe and beyond." In a desperate attempt to get her recalcitrant coalition partner to back her, Radicova said the vote will be linked to a "confidence vote" in the government, a move described as blackmail by Sulik, chairman of the Freedom and Solidarity party and the major opponent of the fund. In the debate, Sulik argued that the expanded fund made "no sense" because it would not have enough money to help big EU economies like Italy and Spain and that it would be "an honest solution to let Greece go bankrupt. It is not for the first time Slovakia has been against major eurozone policies since it adopted the currency in 2009. Last year, it rejected providing its euro800 million ($1.1 billion) share of the euro110 billion EU bailout plan for Greece. That rescue went ahead without Slovakia, but another exemption for the country would cast doubt over the eurozone's credibility and ability to function as a bloc. |
TORONTO, Canada — Prime Minister Stephen Harper has lashed out at American groups opposed to a pipeline that would allow oil from Alberta’s tar sands to be shipped to Asian and US markets. Harper capped a week-long attack on US environmentalists with a nationally televised interview Monday night, essentially telling American opponents of the proposed pipeline to butt out of Canada’s affairs. The 731-mile Northern Gateway pipeline would run west from the massive oil sands deposits of northern Alberta — across pristine wilderness and more than 700 rivers and streams — to a proposed supertanker port on the Pacific coast of British Columbia. Harper accused American groups of hijacking public hearings by a federal regulatory agency, which is assessing the environmental impact of the $6.6 billion pipeline project. Decisions on the development of Alberta’s oil sands should be left to Canadians, he said. Read more: Do you know where your oil comes from? In an interview with the CBC, Canada’s publicly funded broadcaster, Harper ridiculed US environmentalists: “Certain people in the United States would like to see Canada be one giant national park for the northern half of North America,” he said. More than 4,000 people have registered to have their say at the National Energy Board’s hearings. In earlier statements, Harper criticizing what he said was “the use of foreign money to really overload the public consultation phase of regulatory hearings just for the purpose of slowing down the process.” Harper’s Conservative government is determined to find more markets for northern Alberta’s oil sands — tar-like bitumen deposits that cover an area the size of Florida. Read more: Is Canada's oil ethical? Quick approval of the Gateway project became more urgent for the government after the US postponed a decision on a different pipeline, KeystoneXL, proposed to deliver Alberta’s tar sands oil to refineries on the US Gulf Coast. On Wednesday, President Barack Obama denied a permit for that pipeline, according to Bloomberg News, but said the company could refile if it came up with a more environmentally sensitive plan. Environmentalists on both sides of the border want to stop Alberta’s booming oil-sands development. They denounce it as “dirty oil,” noting it comes from massive open-pit mining that fells huge swaths of forests, produces millions of gallons of toxic sludge, and increases Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions. With the Gateway project, they also point to the dangers of oil spills, either though pipeline ruptures or supertanker accidents. To reach the proposed port at Kitimat village, supertankers would need to navigate through 186 miles of island-dotted channels and fjords, and waters known for storms, fogs, and strong tidal currents. The proposal would lift the moratorium on oil tanker traffic on the coast of British Columbia, and 200 supertankers a year* would make the challenging journey to Kitimat. The pipeline would transport 525,000 barrels of thick oil daily. Last week, Harper’s Natural Resources Minister, Joe Oliver, slammed “environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade.” “These groups threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda,” Oliver wrote in an open letter. “They use funding from foreign special-interest groups to undermine Canada's national economic interest.” “We think decisions about these Canadian projects should be made by Canadians,” Oliver added in an interview with the Globe and Mail. He also took a swipe at “billionaire socialists ... people like George Soros." Harper’s spokespeople specifically pointed fingers at the Washington-based National Resources Defense Council, whose advisory committee includes actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Redford. The government has been silent, however, about strong opposition to the pipeline from many of B.C.’s aboriginal leaders, who fear oil spills will ruin the livelihoods of their communities. The pipeline is projected on land claimed by B.C.’s First Nations. The federal government’s outburst against “foreign intervention” was widely denounced. Even the staid Globe and Mail, which supported the Gateway pipeline in an editorial, criticized the Harper government for spewing what “almost sounds like anti-Americanism.” Many accused Harper’s government of hypocrisy. They noted that Harper, his ministers, and Canada’s ambassador to the US intervened in the US debate about KeystoneXL, doing all they could to get the pipeline to the Gulf Coast approved. Likewise, Canadian companies spent millions of dollars trying to influence US public opinion on Keystone, including the hiring of high-priced American lobbyists. To then accuse others of foreign intervention in the Gateway debate struck one leading Canadian columnist as “a bit rich.” Besides, when it comes to foreign interests, none are more powerful than the oil companies lined up to back the Gateway project at the regulatory hearings — China’s SinoCanada Petroleum Corp, Britain’s BP, America’s Exxon Mobil, France’s Total E&P, and Japan Canada Oil Sands Ltd. Large sums of foreign money are also funding the pro-pipeline lobby. Enbridge Inc., the Calgary-based company proposing the Gateway pipeline, has a $100 million fund from multinational corporations to promote the project, including $10 million from Sinopec, the state-owned Chinese oil company. “Multinational oil companies are hijacking Canadian’s ability to decide their energy future,” NRDC director Susan Casey-Lefkowitz wrote in a recent blog post defending her US-based group’s efforts against Gateway. Relations between environmentalists and the Harper government have always been strained. War was essentially declared when the government announced last December it would pull out of the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty to reduce CO2 emissions. Alberta’s controversial oil-sands development has become the main battlefield. *This story has been updated with a correction. The original version of this article said 200 supertankers a day. |
Donald Trump: Scouts boss prepared for President's 'highly political' speech to boys Updated The Boy Scouts of America anticipated Donald Trump would spark controversy with a politically tinged speech at its national jamboree but felt obliged to invite the US President out of respect for his office, its leader said. In an address to 30,000 of Boy Scouts on Monday, Mr Trump bragged about his election victory, promoted his political agenda and launched broadsides against "fake news", Hillary Clinton and former president Barack Obama. Other US presidents have addressed past jamborees with speeches steering clear of partisan politics. Boy Scouts of America president Randall Stephenson, who also the chief executive of telecommunications giant AT&T, said every US president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been invited to address the jamboree. He said the Boy Scouts leadership gave "a lot of thought about Donald Trump coming to speak". "If I suggested I was surprised by the President's comments, I would be disingenuous," Mr Stephenson said. "Anyone knows his speeches get highly political — we anticipated that this could be the case. "Do I wish the President hadn't gone there and hadn't been political? Of course." Hoping to minimise friction, the Boy Scouts of America issued what Mr Stephenson called "stringent guidelines" to adult staff members for how the audience should react to the speech. The guidance said: "You can help make the President's visit a success by ensuring that any reactions to the President's address are, as we state in our Scout Law, friendly, courteous, and kind. "This includes understanding that chants of certain phrases heard during the campaign (e.g. 'build the wall,' 'lock her up') are considered divisive by many members of our audience, and may cause unnecessary friction between individuals and units. "Please help us ensure that all Scouts can enjoy this historical address by making sure that your troop members are respectful not only of the President, but of the wide variety of viewpoints held by Scouts and Scouters in the audience tonight." Mr Stephenson, who was not in attendance at Mr Trump's speech, said the guidance was not followed impeccably during the speech, which induced some boos at the mention of Mr Obama. "There were some areas where perhaps they were not in compliance with what we instructed," he said. "There's probably criticism that could be levelled." Mr Stephenson has been a senior Boy Scout official through several of its recent controversies, including decisions to admit gay and transgender youths as Scouts and to accept openly gay adults as unit leaders. Scouts could invite Trump back He said the organisation anticipated there might be some people upset by Mr Trump's speech but he would not rule out inviting Mr Trump to return. "I don't see why we would break with tradition, whoever is holding office," Mr Stephenson said. "We are not to going to censor or edit the President of the United States. That's beyond our pay grade regardless of who it is." The controversy occurred as AT&T, which is based in Dallas, is seeking the approval of Mr Trump administration regulators for its proposed $US85 billion ($105 billion) purchase of Time Warner. Topics: world-politics, government-and-politics, donald-trump, united-states First posted |
Ruby 2.4.0 introduced a lot of great new features. One of them was open addressing for hash tables - the details of open addressing are a bit obscure, but Ruby hash tables are now faster. Everybody uses hash tables, so everybody gets extra speed. Awesome! But how did that happen? There's an interesting story there. Let's tell that story and benchmark with Rails Ruby Bench, shall we? (Don't care about the story? Scroll down to the end for graphs of the speed differences.) A Beginning and Some Dueling Banjos Ruby's open addressing for hash tables is recorded by a truly wonderful bug report. If you don't care about my commentary, just go read it. Seriously. It begins with Vladimir Makarov proposing open addressing for Ruby's hash tables and including a patch. Open addressing is a better match for modern multilevel CPU caches than Ruby's previous method. That was very nice of him. Thank you, Vladimir! (Here's his explanation of the hash table changes.) Is that the end of the story? Not so much. Koichi points out that his very first patch wasn't perfect, and increased memory usage in some cases (true.) Nobu and Yura Sokolov (funny_falcon) point out some other minor problems. Feedback happens, especially with a large patch, or one that touches very common functionality like hash tables. Vladimir responded, more back-and-forth ensued, and funny_falcon continued to engage more and talk about how he'd have done it (he didn't think open addressing was necessary, for instance, and that he could get similar results without it.) Vladimir responded to him. There was a highly-technical argument, mostly good-natured, going strong. And eventually less good-natured. It's easy for tempers to run hot in technical discussions -- I do the same thing, and they clearly understood what was going on. Isn't it wonderful to watch engineers doing what they feel passionate about, showing that they care but also acknowledging that we all want the same thing? I love watching that. If you have time, read through the whole thread. The back-and-forth is wonderful, and highly educational -- "you should use quadratic probing," "here's the wikipedia article for...," "I disagree that this should be int32," "test large inserts, does the time grow linearly?" It's not just a great deep dive into hash tables. It's a great study in passionate disagreement between highly skilled engineers. It also involved Vladimir and Yura proposing and counter-proposing patches with different good and bad points, back and forth, and critiquing each other's code constantly. Who had the better hash table implementation? Eventually Shyouhei and Koichi (prominent core Ruby committers) looked over the results and checked for errors. The patches continued to improve, and the edge cases kept getting fixed. Either Yura's or Vladimir's patch might win. Each had taken tricks from the other. Nearly-final patches were prepared. Decisions were made about features like maximum hash size. Evaluations continued and intensified. Fixes were made. Yura's patch eventually adopted open addressing, and the two patches were very similar... Koichi put together some great benchmarks and a wonderfully comprehensive report - and basically said the implementations were so close you could pick between them with a coin toss. |
How to Get Organized and Stay Focused in a Modern World By Mark Sisson Getting organized used to be a whole lot easier. As nomadic hunter-gatherers, we only had to keep track of the things we could carry because that was all we owned. As members of a tribe of extended family members, we could lean upon others for assistance with day-to-day tasks and trust they had equal skin in the game. We didn’t have to shoulder everything ourselves, and the responsibilities necessary for survival were simpler. The accessible world was much smaller, the breadth of available knowledge limited by location. You knew all about the lives and goings-on of your immediate community members and which plants were edible in a 20-mile radius and where to get water and when the antelope grazed and the leopard prowled. But what happened 50 miles away was a total mystery, and a thousand miles away might well have been infinitely vast. Important info was recorded through oral traditions—stories and songs. Anecdote and analogy and parable carry weight to this day because for millennia, they were all we had to go on. Then agriculture happened, followed by urbanization and markets and trade routes and, suddenly, we had a lot more information to process. So we created a system for organizing and externalizing information: writing. Physical writing soon gave way to telecommunication traveling along physical wires and, later, invisible data streams shooting and bouncing across the atmosphere. Today, we are roving islands of responsibilities, duties, obligations, tasks, schedules, and information hyperconsumers. We have more “freedom” and everything’s amazing and there’s an app for that and that and that. But that just means we have more things to squeeze in and organize our lives around. It used to be if you wanted to go to Hawaii, you told a travel agent and they booked the plane, the hotel, and the rental car. Now we have the freedom to hunt for the best deal ourselves and travel-hack our way into credit rewards for extra miles and scour AirBNB for an amazing pad on the beach. There are benefits, clearly. We have more opportunities and more options, but we’re busier than ever before with fewer people to help shoulder the load. And unless you turn off notifications, your phone’s always alerting you to the existence of something else to cram into your brain. That’s the rub: on top of the physical world we’ve laid an entirely novel world of digital information that demands even more of our attention. All those tweets, status updates, texts, emails, and snapchats need to be organized alongside our houses, spouses, closets, jobs, bills, cars, and yards. How can our pre-industrial brains stay organized and focus on the things that matter? Here are a few tips to help. Don’t multitask You’re answering emails. You’re checking your phone. You’re pinging colleagues. You’re working an Excel spreadsheet. You’re reading MDA. You’re bouncing around from website to app to Twitter feed to phone call to text message. You’re on top the world and optimizing your performance. After all, doing three tasks at once instead of one must be more efficient. Right? Or maybe not, since the evidence clearly shows that multitasking doesn’t work very well. A 2009 study out of Stanford found that heavy multitaskers—people who reported being frequent multitaskers and felt they were more efficient because of it—were worse at multitasking than people who reported being light multitaskers. When the multitaskers actually tried to multitask, they had trouble switching from task to task, were more easily distracted, and had trouble organizing their thoughts. In a more recent study, performance on a single task was 83%, while trying to do two tasks at once dropped performance to 17%. Multitasking is a lie. Unless the tasks are completely automatic, like breathing and walking, performance of the primary task suffers. If you insist on multitasking, try passive multitasking, like starting a pot of bone broth or a pot roast in the slow cooker before work. Dinner will be cooking as you work without you having to do any extra work. I also find that integrating exercise into the workday improves my ability to focus and create without disrupting my work flow. This could mean using a treadmill desk, keeping a kettlebell at your desk for occasional sets of swings, or taking pushup/squat breaks every 3o minutes. At home, I usually hop on the slack line for a few minutes when my writing hits a lull. Take stock of your digital sensory organs Phones, apps, and social media are sensory organs for our extended digital brains. They provide streams of data and information, and this information either helps or hinders us. Unfortunately, our brain can’t really distinguish between useful and useless information before we see it; it all gets processed simply by virtue of our viewing it, taking up valuable brain resources in the process. On a free day, take the time to sit down and analyze the data streams in your life. Go through your Twitter feed and survey your “followed” list. Are the accounts you follow making you happy, improving your life, inspiring you, or making you money? Stop following the ones who you answer “no” to. Now do the same for the apps on your phone. If they aren’t improving your existence or are sucking your time away without anything to show for it, delete them. Do this for every digital outlet you maintain. Avoid anger porn Between liberals rage-watching Fox News, conservatives gnashing teeth over Obama dancing tango in Cuba, and anyone with a pulse reading Youtube comment sections, people are drawn to opinions and news that enrage them. I call this anger porn, and I’m not sure why we insist on consuming it. At least with regular porn, there’s a pay-off. With anger porn, we just get angry and frustrated. We can’t affect the world events being reported on. We can’t change that other guy’s disgusting opinion (nor can he change your horrendous one); we can reply to comments, but that just turns into a flame war without victors. Anger consumes you. It depletes you. It’s a huge waste of time and attention. Take notes Our memories are fluid—more written in sand than etched in stone. Even our recollections of significant events morph over time until we’re not even sure we’re remembering them correctly. And sometimes they just disappear. How many times have you had a great idea, think “I should write this down,” don’t, and forget all about it? You’d never know because you’ve forgotten all about it! Keep a notepad handy or download an app like Evernote for your phone. I don’t use Evernote myself, instead preferring to jot stuff down on paper or in my phone’s default notepad, but I’ve got friends and colleagues who swear by it. Remove temptations Humans are voracious data hounds. We just love information snacks, little bits of news and gossip that flit across our brains and prevent us from doing what we know we should be doing. And willpower is cool and all, and it’s easy to tell someone “just don’t visit that website,” but in reality? You’re gonna slip up and give in. Don’t rely on willpower. Use one or some of the dozens of tools and apps that block distractions. I’m a big fan of Self Control, which lets you choose which websites to “blacklist,” and for how long. Once a site is blacklisted, you won’t be able to access it for up to 24 hours. Delete it, restart the computer, it’s all in vain. Any and all attempts to bypass the blacklist will fail. For PC and smartphones, Freedom is a similar app. Say “HELL YEAH” or “no” Time and attention are finite. We only have so much, and it’s all we have in this life. After that, it’s gone. If we reject this fundamental truth and attempt to take on more tasks than we can complete, we’ll have no time for any of the stuff we care about and our lives will descend into stressed-out ruin. Derek Sivers has an ingenious way of deciding how to allocate his time and energy. If a potential opportunity doesn’t excite him, he doesn’t take it. If it “sounds kinda cool,” that’s not good enough. He’ll only agree to things if they make him say “hell yeah!” Let your mind wander Mind wandering is our natural state: where we aren’t engaged and focused on a task, we daydream. And it’s not frivolous. It’s essential. This is when our brain recharges and we stumble upon new avenues of thought. Next time you’re in line at the DMV or strolling along the beach at sunset, resist the urge to pull out your phone and occupy your mind. Let it wander. You need the break. Don’t respect arbitrary commitments and rules We all have to pay taxes and die someday. Beyond that, rules descend into varying degrees of arbitrariness. Self-imposed rules are the most arbitrary, like finishing every book you start. What if the book is terrible? If the book doesn’t grab you in the first 40 pages, stop reading it. This isn’t school. You don’t have to suffer through boring (im)material. If you “want” to meditate every morning for 20 minutes but can’t seem to do it, stop beating yourself up. You don’t want to meditate, actually, or else you would. That’s okay. There are alternatives. Worrying about not meditating is worse than not meditating. Avoid decision fatigue I’ve written on decision fatigue before. It’s a pernicious first-world problem that can sap us of willpower and resolve to do the tasks that matter. Read the post and consider what it says. Consciously focus I don’t care what the task is. Entertainment, writing copy, doing spreadsheets, TPS reports, welding, dog walking. Just focus. You could be watching the Walking Dead; actually watch it. Don’t have your phone out. Give yourself fully to the task at hand. Tidy up You’ve heard about the rich and measurable benefits of reducing wanton consumption and getting rid of unwanted, unused items cluttering your home. There’s less to worry about, it’s easier to keep clean, you’re more mobile when you don’t have lug hundreds of heavy boxes around, and you spend less money. And as far as organization goes, tidying offers obvious benefits; you actually know where things are kept! But there’s even evidence that your physical space mirrors your mental space and makes it easier to organize your thoughts and complete tasks. Research shows that trying to complete a task in a messy environment is harder than completing it in a clean, neat one. Physical clutter literally inhibits the brain’s ability to focus, process information, and avoid distractions. Rank your to-do list Get all your to-do lists out. First, throw out the items that aren’t really important. If they ever become important, they’ll resurface later. Next, separate them into two groups: big jobs and easy jobs. A big job is something that takes planning, time, devotion, and probably money. An easy job is something you can crank out in an afternoon. Then, rank each item in each group in order of importance. Finally, start cranking them out. Go down the line of easy jobs and do them as quickly as you can. Go down the list of big jobs and take the first step to actually start. Never have more than two (one from each list) going at once. There are of course times where you might have multiple things going on. That’s fine. Using the to-do rankings helps you focus, though. It’s a good rubric for getting things done, far superior to a big floating list of things you kinda have to do, sometime, somewhere. Realize that “bits” count, too Allowing large items and responsibilities to pile up is an obvious impediment to organization. Remodeling that bathroom, painting that kitchen, applying to that job, and deciding what you’re going to do about school for your toddler weigh heavily. We acknowledge as such. Everyone does. But what about digital “bits,” like unanswered emails and articles you’ve bookmarked to read later but never do? Because they’re digital, we tend to discount their effect on our focus, but they occupy real space in our lives. Because our brains are set up to deal with physical things, and the impact of the digital realm isn’t obvious, a big part of getting organized and focused in the modern world is recognizing and acknowledging the obstacles. Now, it may take months or years for this to become second nature. It may be a constant battle. And perhaps several generations down the line, when human biology interfaces directly with tech, we’ll have adapted. Not yet, though. Thanks for reading, everyone. Take care, and I’d love to hear how you stay organized and focused amidst all the distractions and temptations. What tips would you add? Prefer listening to reading? Get an audio recording of this blog post, and subscribe to the Primal Blueprint Podcast on iTunes for instant access to all past, present and future episodes here. Post navigation If you'd like to add an avatar to all of your comments click here! |
It looks like something that came straight out of a WP8-based Cydia app store. When the jailbreaking method goes out in the wild, it will be the first step towards forming an open developer community around Microsoft's tightly controlled platform.POANDSOUL's tool lets the user get around some of Windows Phone's limitations. For example, it has an option to turn off the display's auto-timeout feature. It can make the text in system apps smaller. Currently, POANDSOUL is keeping the jailbreak method and tool to themselves and their friends, as they fear the hack would lead to rampant piracy. We agree, it doesn't take a Nostradamus to predict that this will be the exact outcome. The app also has the ability to save maps to the SD card, disable the FM Radio option, and enable Data Sense. It's not yet clear whether this tool works only on the Lumia 920, or covers all Windows Phone handsets.Currently, POANDSOUL is keeping the jailbreak method and tool to themselves and their friends, as they fear the hack would lead to rampant piracy. We agree, it doesn't take a Nostradamus to predict that this will be the exact outcome. source: POANDSOUL (Weibo) via WMPowerUser Notably, the tool lets you choose the number of columns on your start-screen, making it possible for the Lumia 920 to display three columns of Live Tiles - a privilege only for 1080p Windows Phone 8 handsets. Last December, word got out from distant China that a local hack team, named POANDSOUL, busted the Nokia Lumia 920 open . Now, the same guys have published some photos and information on their Weibo account, outlining a first of its kind tweak app for Windows Phone 8. |
Is there anything so dull as a brussels sprouts recipe just days after the brussels sprout-ing-est holiday of the year? No? Phew. Because these sprouts, they’re a long time coming. It took me forever to get them right. I’d originally intended them for the cookbook. I made them six different ways in the fall of 2010, and I never found what I was looking for. It was a year before I could even look at brussels again, and by that time, the book had moved on without them. But I had not. I wanted a brussels sprout dish that was the opposite of what I’ve been seeing around in the last couple years — that would be free of nuggets of slab bacon, toasted nuts, buttery breadcrumbs, crumbled cheese or individual leaves, deep fried until crisp as potato chips. Do I dislike any of these things? Heavens, no. But they’re all so heavy. And rich. And brussels, with their cabbage origins, are hearty enough. I wanted to cook them in a simple braise, and then finish them with a piercing, heavenly sauce, something that cut right through the leafiness without adding mountains of pork fat. I wanted the cabbage equivalent of our favorite chicken dish. Of course, it took but two weeks after the great Lowering Of the Stakes (I mean, manuscript delivery) for me to get it right. It turns out that a little free time and slight release of the pressure valve make me a better cook! Huh. Anyway, these are brussels sprouts, exactly as I always want them to be. They’re halved and browned, then braised in wine and broth, topped with rings of shallots, and then, when they’re tender (but not mush), you transfer them to a platter and make a Dijon pan sauce. And if you’re like me, the hardest thing will be not drinking it directly from the pan with a straw. I can tell by the look on your face right now that you’re probably not like me. This is for the best because did I tell you I lost a bag of shallots, prior to making this dish? Lost them. In our tiny apartment. Two weeks later, I still haven’t found them and I fear for when I do. These are the kinds of things that happen when you’re me. But I found my kicky brussels sprout at last, so there’s that, too. One year ago: Roasted Chestnut Cookies Two years ago: Balsamic Braised Brussels with Pancetta (these are the opposite of today’s sprouts, achingly delicious and so very rich) Three years ago: Winter Fruit Salad, Mushroom and Barley Pie, Cranberry Pecan Frangipane Tart, Mustard Roasted Potatoes, Walnut Tartlets and Cauliflower Gratin Four years ago: Tiramisu Cake, Curried Lentils and Sweet Potatoes, Rugelach Pinwheels Five years ago: Honey Hoisin Pork Riblets, Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Coffee Cake, Wild Mushroom Pirogis and Bourbon Pumpkin Cheesecake |
President Obama got legitimately angry at Republicans suddenly dumping Donald Trump at a campaign stop for Hillary Clinton tonight. He took a more mocking tone towards these Republicans earlier this week but tonight, well, he went ham: “They know better, a lot of these folks who ran, and they didn’t say anything, so they don’t get credit for, at the very last minute, when finally they guy that they nominated and they endorsed and they support is caught on tape saying things that no decent person would even think, much less say, much less brag about, much less brag about or joke about, much less act on, you can’t wait until that finally happens and then say, ‘Oh, that’s too much! That’s enough!’ and think that somehow you are showing any kind of leadership and deserve to be elected to the United States Senate! You don’t get points for that!” He said he’s “more forgiving of the people that actually believe it than the people who know better and stood silently by out of political expediency because it was politically convenient.” The president was amazed by how Republicans are standing by such a morally corrosive man when they’ve said for years they’re the party of “family values.” “I’m sorry, what happened?!” he cried. “It’s disappointing. It really is.” He concluded, “If your only agenda is either negative––negative’s a euphemism for crazy––based on lies, based on hoaxes, this is the nominee you get. You make him possible.” Watch above, via MSNBC. [image via screengrab] — — Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com |
Wide receivers Rashad Ross, left, Josh Doctson center, and Maurice Harris stretch during a June practice. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press) RICHMOND — Rookie wide receiver Josh Doctson wore a walking boot while watching his teammates during Wednesday morning’s walkthrough, but a Washington Redskins official said the boot shouldn’t be interpreted as a sign of a setback. The team’s medical staff has advised Doctson to wear the boot to rest his foot. The spokesman said Doctson didn’t do anything to further injure himself. Doctson, whom Washington selected 22nd overall out of Texas Christian University, has been on the physically unable to perform list since the start of training camp. He took part in the team’s rookie minicamp in mid-May but then injured his left Achilles’ tendon May 25th, the first day of full-squad offseason practices. Doctson didn’t take part in any of the remaining offseason practice sessions, or the full-squad minicamp in late June, because he continued to experience soreness in the foot. The Redskins have described his injury as tendinitis. Doctson last week said that he underwent several procedures during the month of July to expedite the healing process. During that time, he couldn’t do any running. Wide receiver Josh Doctson walks out to practice on Friday. The first-round draft pick has been unable to suit up and go full bore. (Steve Helber/Associated Press) Last Friday, Doctson began rehabilitation work for the first time since June. He reported that the next day, for the first time in weeks, he woke up without any soreness or pain in the Achilles’ tendon. But he hasn’t appeared to make any great strides, at least in the public portion of his rehab work; while his teammates practice, Doctson generally does a series of exercises under the supervision of a trainer, and he hasn’t done any full-out running or jogging. People familiar with the situation have described Doctson as more of a week-by-week case rather than day-to-day. Coach Jay Gruden said last Saturday that Doctson has worn a boot off and on as a precaution. However, Doctson hadn’t sported it during any of the morning or afternoon sessions of training camp. Instead, he wore cleats during his on-field rehab sessions, or sneakers while watching his teammates. Asked about his health Wednesday morning, Doctson said he was told not to comment on it. The Redskins hope that the 6-foot-3, 206-pound Doctson will soon recover and eventually make an impact, particularly as a red-zone threat, as he learns the ropes behind veterans Pierre Garcon, DeSean Jackson and Jamison Crowder. More from The Post: Day 6 observations | WR Diggs debuts | Golston sets the tone Washington wants Cravens to play one ‘position’ — playmaker Steinberg: Colt McCoy stands ready, waiting on ‘if’ to arrive More: Redskins | NFL news | Camp schedule | Fantasy football Follow: @MikeJonesWaPo | @lizclarketweet | @MasterTes |
The recommendation comes amid changes to tax benefits on superannuation and to the aged pension. The family home or a principal place of residence should be included in the assets test for the aged pension, according to the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI). The business lobby group said where a primary residence was valued above a debt-free $450,000, workers retiring at the age of 65 should not be eligible for a full or part pension for the first five years. The politically sensitive recommendation was made in ACCI's pre-budget submission released today, which urged the Federal Government to implement spending cuts that would cause "short-term pain" for long-term budget sustainability. The submission said retirees with assets, including the primary residence above the threshold, should instead be given interest-free pension loans against the value of the assets. The pension loan — in effect a reverse mortgage — would be repaid when the property is sold, the borrower dies or goes into aged care. "This provides retirees with choice so that they can remain in their primary residence, leave a bequest and afford their retirement," the submission recommended. However, the ACCI submission to include the family home in the pension assets test seems likely to be rejected by the Government. Revenue and Financial Services Minister Kelly O'Dwyer told the ABC that all submissions would be considered, but signalled some were destined for the too hard basket. "That would be very much against the principles of the Coalition government," Ms O'Dwyer said. "Never before have we included the family home [in the assets test] and I don't see why that would change." The harsh medicine proposed for future retirees comes amid anger and confusion over changes to tax benefits on superannuation and cuts to the aged pension for some retirees, which came into effect on January 1. The submission raised issues associated with restrictions on access to the aged pension, including disincentives to avoid the early transfer of assets so retirees still qualify. It also urged actuarial analysis and consultation to consider an appropriate threshold where the value of a primary residence would trigger blocked access the aged pension. ACCI said four out of five retirees relied on a full or part-time pension and that a similar proportion over 65 owned their own homes, valued at about $1 trillion. The chamber recommended the retirement age be regularly reviewed and gradually lifted to 70 by 2035. Other recommendations included reducing government spending to 25 per cent of GDP, cutting the company tax rate to 25 per cent for all businesses over a decade and overhauling workplace relations. Follow Peter Ryan on Twitter and on his Main Street blog. |
New Delhi: US President Barack Obama has said that safe havens of terrorism within Pakistan is “not acceptable" and that those behind the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai must face justice. Ahead of his visit to India, Obama said the US will keep working with India for a future that delivers greater security, prosperity and dignity for all people. Asserting that his country has been unrelenting in its fight against terrorist groups, he said, “I’ve made it clear that even as the United States works with Pakistan to meet the threat of terrorism, safe havens within Pakistan are not acceptable and that those behind the Mumbai terrorist attack must face justice." His comments assume significance amid renewed questions in India over Pakistan’s sincerity in ensuring punishment to the perpetrators of Mumbai terror attack. The questions arose after the attack mastermind Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi was granted bail by an Islamabad court in December. Obama noted that Americans were also killed in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, just like Indians were killed in the 9/11 attack in New York. To send a strong message to the Indian people that “we stand together in defence of our security and our way of life", he had made the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai his first stop during his first visit to India in 2010, he said in an email interview to India Today. Upbeat about his upcoming three-day visit to India, which he described as the US’s “natural partner", Obama said he was proud to be the first US President to visit the country twice. Obama said he saw it as an opportunity to work with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make concrete progress and to “hopefully begin a new era" in the history between the two countries. Recalling his unveiling his vision during his last visit here, Obama said “While it’s true that progress has not always come as fast as we would have liked, we’ve succeeded in deepening the US-India relationship across the board." Noting that no two nations agree on everything, he said, “so of course, sometimes India and the United States will disagree. But I believe that we can work through any differences in a spirit of mutual respect". He said, “When those of us at the leadership level agree on action, our governments have to actually implement our decisions. We have to make sure our words are matched by deeds." The two countries can work together to reduce barriers to trade, investment, and high-tech collaboration, he said, adding that American firms are ready to help build the infrastructure that will be the catalyst for the next wave of Indian growth. He had special praise for Modi, saying “his remarkable life story—from tea-seller to prime minister—is a reflection of the determination of the Indian people to succeed." He added that Modi has a clear vision of big things that he wants India to achieve. |
With oil prices still well below the level necessary for many petroleum producers to be profitable, Alberta’s economy is on track for a second year of recession in 2016. View it in your browser Want to share this Owl? Todd Hirsch • Chief Economist Alberta facing second year of recession Between 2010 and 2014 Alberta enjoyed strong economic expansion and rapid job creation. Growth averaged over four per cent each year, for an increase of the provincial economy of more than 20 per cent. With the slide in oil prices in the latter half of 2014 and the resulting pull-back in energy sector investment, the economy slid into reverse last year. “Oil prices have rebounded modestly since the start of the year,” says Todd Hirsch, chief economist at ATB Financial. “However, even with the benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude oil price back in the $US 40-45 range, it is not enough to bring back growth. Prices will need to recover to $50-55 on a sustained basis before Alberta’s petroleum industry will stabilize.” It’s not all bad news. Other sectors of the economy—such as agriculture, forestry and tourism—continue to do well. The full 2016 Q2 Economic Outlook can be read at With oil prices still well below the level necessary for many petroleum producers to be profitable, Alberta’s economy is on track for a second year of recession in 2016. ATB Financial has released its most recent Alberta Economic Outlook for the second quarter of 2016, which is predicting a contraction of 1.1 per cent this year. Modest growth is expected to return by 2017 and beyond. The forecast remains largely unchanged from the Q1 Outlook, released in January.Between 2010 and 2014 Alberta enjoyed strong economic expansion and rapid job creation. Growth averaged over four per cent each year, for an increase of the provincial economy of more than 20 per cent. With the slide in oil prices in the latter half of 2014 and the resulting pull-back in energy sector investment, the economy slid into reverse last year.“Oil prices have rebounded modestly since the start of the year,” says Todd Hirsch, chief economist at ATB Financial. “However, even with the benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude oil price back in the $US 40-45 range, it is not enough to bring back growth. Prices will need to recover to $50-55 on a sustained basis before Alberta’s petroleum industry will stabilize.”It’s not all bad news. Other sectors of the economy—such as agriculture, forestry and tourism—continue to do well. The full 2016 Q2 Economic Outlook can be read at a tb.com/economics Share this Owl: @ABeconomist ABeconomist Book Todd to speak at your event |
SINGAPORE - For the first time, a Singapore Airlines (SIA) aircraft will take part in the National Day flypast. To mark Singapore's 50th birthday, an SIA Airbus 380 in a special livery featuring a Singapore flag-themed design will take to the skies. The plane with the official SG50 logo on the inboard engines and the NDP 2015 'Majulah Singapura - Our Golden Jubilee' logo on the underside will make its flypast over the Marina Bay area at the closing of the Vintage Parade segment of the show. The event will also feature 20 SIA Girls on trishaws, reminiscent of famous SIA advertisements of the past, the airline said on Friday. SIA chief executive officer Goh Choon Phong said the airline's success is "closely linked to that of Singapore, and like all Singaporeans we look forward to celebrating the nation's birthday on Aug 9". "We are honoured to be participating in the National Day Parade during Singapore's Golden Jubilee year, with the world's largest passenger aircraft in the aerial flypast and our iconic Singapore Girl cabin crew in the Vintage Parade," he said. The public will be able to view the A-380 in the aerial flypast for the first time on Aug 1 during the preview show, ahead of National Day. SIA will have two aircraft in the special livery up to the end of this year, serving Beijing, Hong Kong, London, Mumbai, New Delhi, Shanghai, Sydney and Zurich. |
DC and Warner Bros. are pushing ahead with a Nightwing live-action movie, and director Chris McKay sat down with the Shanlian on Batman podcast team to talk about where he wants to take the character. Nightwing — otherwise known as Dick Grayson, Batman’s former right-hand-man — Robin, debuted in January 1984 in Tales of the Teen Titans #44. Ten years later, the character got his first solo series, followed by a mini-series. Grayson has been the leader of the Teen Titans, a super-spy and the vigilante protector of Gotham’s neighboring city, Blüdhaven, and is renowned (this is neither a joke nor an exaggeration) for having “the best backside in comics.” McKay said unlike Batman, Nightwing didn’t come from privilege and as a result, he’s not the same “dour and angry” hero as DC’s most iconic character. Instead, McKay continued, Nightwing came from a family of circus performers and as such, will maintain that type of exuberance while donning his superhero costume. “He’s a fascinating guy to me, because he had all the same things happen to him,” McKay said. “He’s got some of the same negatives as Bruce Wayne and then from a society standpoint – obviously he was adopted into Bruce Wayne’s life … but he didn’t start that way. He’s this guy who has all these negatives and then even more negatives and yet he remains … Those are things why I like Dick Grayson, why I like the idea of Nightwing as a movie.” Warner Bros. announced last week it was pushing ahead with a live-action Nightwing movie and McKay, best known for his work on The Lego Batman Movie, would direct. Nightwing will exist as part of the DC Extended Universe, which is currently populated by Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Suicide Squad. There is currently no estimated release window for the movie. |
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday admitted Canada had failed its indigenous people and told the United Nations his government would do better to improve the lives of aboriginals and achieve reconciliation. Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, addresses the 72nd United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson Trudeau used his speech to the U.N. General Assembly to frankly acknowledge the dark history of Canada’s colonization as one of “humiliation, neglect and abuse” and promised to do more to help the nation’s 1.4 million indigenous people. “We have been working hard ... to correct past injustices and bring about a better quality of life for indigenous peoples in Canada,” he said. “Though this path is uncharted, I am confident that we will reach a place of reconciliation,” Trudeau later added. While Trudeau used his U.N. speech last year to highlight Canada’s strengths, a discourse the New York Times summed up as “We’re Canadian and we’re here to help,” the prime minister took office in 2015 pledging to fix its relationship with aboriginals. Two years in, many say he is not doing enough to help indigenous Canadians, who make up about 4 percent of the population and face higher levels of poverty and violence and shorter life expectancies. Canada’s national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women has been hit by resignations and complaints it is progressing too slowly. Pamela Palmater, a Mi’kmaq lawyer and professor, said she would rather see action than a speech. “Some of his words were exceptionally powerful (and) would give a lot of hope to a lot of people in Canada, but he falls down every time when it comes to substantive action,” Palmater said. Many aboriginal communities do not have access to safe drinking water, and suicides have plagued several isolated communities. Acknowledging Canada’s attempt to force assimilation through residential schooling and other repressive policies, Trudeau called the living conditions aboriginals face “the legacy of colonialism in Canada.” Trudeau promised to move forward with a review of federal laws and policy, and to support indigenous self-determination. Asked by reporters why he used an international stage to discuss a domestic issue, Trudeau said he wanted to highlight what can be done without telling other leaders how to tackle their own mistakes. “This is something that is universal and important,” Trudeau said. Trudeau recently reshuffled his Cabinet to put more emphasis on helping aboriginal people, splitting the federal indigenous and northern affairs ministry in two. |
Hamilton women at the heart of a new G20 lawsuit say they were called “dykes,” and worse, and told to shave their legs by a Toronto police officer — claims supported by the provincial police complaints watchdog. The officer identified the women in his notebook as protesters because of their backpacks, clothing and “hairy legs,” according to a report by the Office of the Independent Police Review Director the plaintiffs provided to the media on Wednesday. Alicia Ridge of Hamilton led away by a Toronto officer during G-20 protests in Toronto on June 27, 2010. Ridge is one of seven plaintiffs in a $1.4M lawsuit against the Toronto Police Services Board over what they say were unlawful arrests. Marya Folinsbee, lower right, is also part of the suit, as is Alicia's sister Devon, seated with a hair band. ( Tomer Ryaboi photo ) <span title="Caption">Devon Ridge sits on the ground as police officers watch over a group of detainees during the G20 weekend in Toronto June 27, 2010. Ridge is among the plaintiffs in a $1.4M lawsuit against the Toronto Police Services Board over what they say were unlawful arrests.</span> ( Tomer Ryaboi photo ) Police detain a group of people during the G20 weekend in Toronto June 27, 2010. Seven plaintiffs have launched a $1.4M lawsuit against the Toronto Police Services Board over what they say were unlawful arrests. ( Tomer Ryaboi photo ) The women are now part of a group of seven Hamilton-area residents suing the Toronto Police Services Board for $1.4 million — the latest, and final, lawsuit to emerge from the ignominious G20 summit weekend. In their statement of claim, the group — composed of five women and two men — alleges they were unlawfully arrested during the G20 by officers who targeted them for arrest using “unreasonable criteria” and who made “profane, sexist and homophobic” comments. One plaintiff also alleges she was sexually assaulted by a male officer who “firmly grabbed her right buttock” during a pat-down search Article Continued Below “The circumstances of the arrest, as outlined in the claim, are disturbing,” said their lawyer, Davin Charney, in a news conference Wednesday morning. “The police, it’s alleged, made sexist comments about women’s bodies (and) they made homophobic comments referring to women as ‘dykes.’” The lawsuit was filed June 26, just one day shy of the two-year deadline to commence legal action relating to the G20. On Wednesday, three of the seven plaintiffs appeared at Toronto police headquarters to serve legal notice to the police board, which they hold responsible for officers’ actions during the summit. No statement of defence has been filed and the allegations have not been proven in court. Spokespersons for both the Toronto police and police board declined to comment on the lawsuit because it is now before the courts. The lawsuit’s seven plaintiffs — named as Holly Driscoll, 22; Marya Folinsbee, 27; Amelia Herman, 25; Brian Jeffrey, 24; William LaPenotiere, 29; Alicia Ridge, 27; and Devon Ridge, 27 — allege they were unlawfully arrested on June 27, 2010, the second day of the weekend summit. All seven were taken to the G20 temporary jail on Eastern Ave. and released the next day without charges. “The plaintiffs were profiled by police using discriminatory, sexist, and unreasonable criteria,” the claim states. “In the circumstances, it was clear that the Plaintiffs had committed no offence and the officers who arrested the Plaintiffs were negligent in their investigation.” Article Continued Below The statement of claim said senior officers began cultivating a “climate … of hostility” on June 26, 2010, in reaction to an outbreak of violence by vandals using Black Bloc tactics. As a result, the claim said, many frontline G20 officers began to search, detain and arrest those who fit the “protester profile” — people who wore black, had backpacks or carried bandanas, goggles and gas masks. (Prior to the G20, many activist groups and websites encouraged protesters to bring such protective gear to summit protests.) According to the statement of claim, the seven friends from Hamilton were gathering in Allan Gardens on June 27 when they were searched by police. They left the park and went to an Amato Pizza restaurant near Yonge and Carlton Sts., where they were suddenly apprehended by between 10 and 15 officers, the claim said. The plaintiffs were searched again and given various reasons for their arrest, including suspected gang involvement, membership in a criminal organization, and breach of peace, according to the claim. “The plaintiffs did not understand the reason for the arrest,” the claim said. “It appeared the police did not understand the reason for arrest.” Among the allegations are that officers invited passersby to photograph the arrestees and that one officer “searched and seized” Folinsbee’s cellphone without a warrant. The statement of claim also alleges a male officer conducted a pat-down of Alicia Ridge and “firmly grabbed her right buttock” while smiling and commenting on her attractiveness. “Despite the presence of female officers on the streets of Toronto and on that location on that day, I was searched by a male officer,” Ridge told reporters Wednesday, sporting a “Challenge Sexism” button on her dress. “And it was a fairly pathetic rendition of a search in that it was just a quick run of a hand up a leg, followed by a swift ass grab. And there were lots of sexualized comments that went along with it.” Ridge has complained to the OIPRD about the pat-down, as well as comments made by her arresting officer. Although she identified the officer as Staff Sgt. Norman Proctor, both in her OIPRD complaint and in the lawsuit, OIPRD investigators concluded her arresting officer was actually Const. James Ure, citing police records of her arrest. On Wednesday, Ridge maintained that her arresting officer was Proctor because she saw his nametag at the time. In a report dated Oct. 31, 2011, the OIPRD dismissed Ridge’s allegations that the police abused their authority in searching her. The report also said Ure directed a female officer to conduct the search. Investigators did, however, substantiate Ridge’s claim that her arresting officer called her a dyke, made obscene insults and told her to shave her legs. According to the OIPRD, Ure wrote observations in his notebook that led him to believe the group was protesters. “All parties appear to be protestors,” the OIPRD report quotes him as writing. “Back packs; clothing and females all have hairy legs.” When questioned by OIPRD investigators, Ure explained that women with leg hair was “one indicator that I associated with protesters down at the G20 that weekend.” “The OIPRD investigators find it difficult to understand the rationale of the explanation by Constable Ure in regards to his ‘hairy legs’ comment,” the report concluded. “The fact that Constable Ure makes notations of ‘hairy legs’ in his memo book leads the OIPRD investigators to reasonable (sic) believe the comments alleged by the complainant to have been made.” According to the lawsuit’s claim, the seven plaintiffs were all taken to prisoner processing centre on Eastern Ave., where they were held for about 26 hours before being released without charge. Six of the seven plaintiffs were strip-searched and all were held under deplorable conditions, Charney said. |
of a president like him and he said: 'You'd be in jail.' His rallies saw crowds chant 'lock her up'; in one debate she questioned the Donald Trump raised doubts over his pledge to appoint a special prosecutor to go after Hillary Clinton on Friday by ducking a question about the issue. The president-elect was asked about the high-profile campaign promise in his first interview since he was elected. But he told the Wall Street Journal: 'It's not something I've given a lot of thought, because I want to solve health care, jobs, border control, tax reform.' Any move away from the pledge would be a significant shift from his election platform - and from the part of it which appeared to most energize supporters at his rallies. SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO Interviews: Trump was interviewed for the first time since he was elected by the Wall Street Journal and by Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes which will air on Sunday Off scot free? If a special prosecutor is not appointed, Clinton is not currently under investigation for her emails. The status of the FBI's other Clinton investigation, into the family's Clinton Foundation, is unclear Energized: Chants of lock her up echoed around arenas where Trump held rallies The pledge for a special prosecutor was first made in August when Trump told a rally in Akron, Ohio, neither the FBI nor the Justice Department could be trusted because they 'whitewashed Hillary Clinton's email crimes. He doubled down on the pledge in the debates and used it for one of the most telling blows he laid on her during them. The First Family elect also sat down for a 60 Minutes interview which will air on Sunday. Donald Jr, Eric, Tiffany, Melania and Ivanka - wearing a $1,595 Michael Kors dress - sat down for a chat with Lesley Stahl for what will be there first interview, as a family, since Trump's victory. During the interview, Trump praised the Clinton family and revealed both Hillary and Bill phoned him in the hours after the results came in. 'So, Hillary called, and it was a lovely call, and it was a tough call for her, I mean, I can imagine. Tougher for her than it would have been for me. I mean, for me, it would have been very, very difficult. 'She couldn't have been nicer. She just said, 'Congratulations, Donald, well done.'And I said, 'I want to thank you very much; you were a great competitor.' She is very strong and very smart.' Bill Clinton, Trump said, 'couldn't have been more gracious. He said it was an amazing run. One of the most amazing he's ever seen. He was very, very, really, very nice.' At the second debate, in St Louis, Missouri, he said: 'If I win I’m going to instruct the attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation because there’s never been so many lies, so much deception. 'People have been, their lives have been destroyed for doing one fifth of what you’ve done.' Clinton's response only made it worse for her. When she said 'It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law of our country' he jumped in: 'Because you’d be in jail.' On Wednesday and Thursday Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor who is now one of the president-elect's closest advisers suggested that moves to parson Clinton in advance would be wrong. 'President Obama should leave it to the system we all believe in to determine if she's innocent or if she's guilty,' Giuliani argued as he spoke to Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. The next morning on 'Fox & Friends' he suggested an Obama pardon for Clinton would 'seal Obama's legacy of being one of the worst presidents.' Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor, said the 'two traditions' the country has that are 'sort of in conflict with each other.' 'One is we try to get over the anger and everything else about an election after it's over and put it behind us,' Giuliani said. 'And I don't like to see America become a country in which we prosecute people about politics,' he added. 'On the other hand there are deep and disturbing issues there,' he said of the Clinton Foundation. Giuliani said if Clinton gets off the hook, thanks to being part of Obama's inner circle, it would make it hard to prosecute other people for similar crimes. 'What do you say to a foundation where you have a fraud of $50,000 when you haven't looked at a foundation where there's an alleged fraud of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars,' Giuliani continued. 'Now it may be true it's not true,' the former mayor said. 'But it hasn't been investigated.' Trump was joined by his grandson, Donald Trump III (left) as they filmed the segment This morning, Rudy Giuliani explained why he thought it would be a bad idea for President Obama to pardon Hillary Clinton On Wednesday, during press secretary Josh Earnest's (above) briefing, he was asked whether the president had considered using his executive power in favor of the former secretary of state Questions over whether Obama could issue a pardon have been raised repeatedly this week. On Thursday Press Secretary Josh Earnest deflected a question about a special prosecutor to review Clinton’s emails by saying that the White House doesn’t announce pardons before they’re doled out. ‘The president has offered clemency to a substantial number of Americans who were previously serving time in federal prisons. And we didn’t talk in advance about the president’s plans to offer clemency to any of those individuals,’ he said. Earnest added, ‘That’s because we don’t talk about the president’s thinking, particularly with respect to any specific cases that may apply to pardons or commutations.’ For over a year, Clinton had been embroiled in a FBI investigation into her private email server, but the investigation was closed for a second time just earlier this week. Obama could pardon her whether she asks for it or not. Coming up with a pardon that would cover all of the various charges Trump’s administration could throw at her could prove difficult, legal experts told Politico. The clemency declaration would have to be worded such that it protects her from prosecution for potential violations tied to the Clinton Foundation. A dismissal of potential crimes that wide-reaching would leave a mark on Obama’s reputation. Back in 1974, President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor to the White House, Richard Nixon. Ford did it for any crimes that Nixon may have committed against the country while he served as president. At the time, he justified his decision by claiming that an extensive trial would have further polarized the country. Clinton’s husband’s departure from the White House was overshadowed when he granted Marc Rich, a fugitive at the time, clemency on his last day in office. Rich’s ex-wife made a large donation to the Clinton Library and was a high-dollar Democratic donor. His campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said on a series of morning shows Wednesday that the subject hadn’t come up. Email trail: Huma Abedin, who wept on Friday as she went back to the Clinton campaign HQ in Brooklyn, New York, was part of the FBI bombshell which the campaign claims ruined Clinton's chance of victory Weiner pops up at bad time: The sexting-addicted pervert Anthony Weiner's laptop led to the new FBI investigation into Clinton emails 'We have not discussed that at all, and he certainly did not discuss that on his brief phone call with Mrs. Clinton,' she said on MSNBC. Conway suggested that Trump wouldn’t pursue a case against Clinton, however. ‘I think you heard his own words last night -- to the extent that one man can as president, certainly Vice President Pence who's phenomenal, they're looking to unify the country,’ she said. ‘But we haven't discussed that in recent days. And I think that it's all in good time.’ Taking a cue from Conway, the president’s spokesman indicated today that he too believed Trump move on from Clinton in the wake of his victory. ‘We have a long tradition in this country of people in power not using the criminal justice system to enact political revenge,’ he also said. ‘In fact we go a long way to insulate the criminal justice system from partisan politics.’ The Clinton Foundation has been probed by the FBI but to a far lesser extent than the emails. Clinton has been accused by her critics, including some within the FBI, of engaging in a pay-to-pay scheme, in which she allegedly traded favors for donations to her family charity while she was at State. Damning emails published by Wikileaks showing her closest aide Huma Abedin receiving messages at the State Department from a Clinton family bagman calling donors 'friends of ours' and demanding access to the Secretary of State only added to that impression. Abedin's estranged-husband. the pervert Anthony Weiner. is under a separate FBI investigation after DailyMail.com revealed his sexting 'relationship' with a 15-year-old girl. That led to James Comey's bombshell announcement of the discovery of more emails potentially relevant to the Clinton email probe. |
The grandparents of murdered soldier Lee Rigby today laid a floral wreath at the makeshift shrine to the brave soldier. The couple stopped at the scene of the slaying to lay a blue pillow-shaped wreath adorned with flowers and a blue ribbon with the words ‘grandson’ and Drummer Rigby’s service number ‘2B – RRF’ An inscription read: ‘To our brave grandson Lee Rigby – taken from us too soon. We will miss you terribly. Rest in peace. Nanny and Grandad from Southend on Sea.' Mourning: The uncle (left) and maternal grandparents (right) of Lee Rigby visiting the site where he was brutally murdered The grieving couple held hands as they spent two hours reading tributes laid at the shrine. While reading one – a poem entitled the Woolwich Soldier – Drummer Rigby’s grandmother appeared to wipe a tear from her eye. Her husband, who did not want to give his name, said: ‘We came down here to see the flowers and read the messages people left for Lee. We really appreciate it. ‘We are too upset to say more at this moment. Sorry.’ Tribute: The pair read a selection of the vast array of messages of condolence left at the site The number of people leaving floral tributes was so vast that nearby flower shops reportedly ran out of blooms The poem, The Woolwich Soldier, read: Just out for a walk on an early stack, not looking for trouble, not watching my back. Mothers with prams holding hands with their kids, not paying attention to the car as it skids. Caught completely off guard not expecting what comes, one man with a knife another with guns. No chance of defence, no chance to fight back, looking for help as the cowards attack. An angel arrives as the light turns to grey, a woman attempts to steer attackers away. My last thought of 'Thank You' never strays from my brain, as my body shuts down I feel no more pain. I look to the left and I look to the right, thousands of squaddies are all that’s in sight. Uniforms are crisp and their faces are clean, no anger or hate to be seen. As if by command they all salute as one, the RSM smiles, says 'welcome home, son'. Barracks Commander pays tribute to murdered soldier and his family Lieutenant Colonel Bob Christopher Royal Artillery, the Commander of Woolwich Station where Drummer Rigby served, today released a statement saying he was killed doing a job he loved. It said: 'Drummer Lee Rigby was in London reaching out to young men and women who want to serve their country by joining the Armed Forces. This was a job he loved doing, and he was very good at it. He was tragically killed while travelling home from that job and our thoughts are with his family, loved ones, friends and colleagues. 'Drummer Rigby was proud to live and work in this community, as are all the soldiers who are based here. The best tribute we can pay him is to not allow this awful crime to separate the military family in Woolwich from the fantastic support we have received, are currently receiving and know that we will continue to receive from our friends and neighbours across the borough. 'I would like to take this opportunity to thank the police for their sterling work as well as the local people and their community leaders who represent the wide range of religious and ethnic backgrounds which make up and enrich this borough. |
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NEWTOWN, CT - DECEMBER 17: A woman comforts a boy as mourners depart Honan Funeral Home after the funeral for six-year-old Jack Pinto on December 17, 2012 in Newtown Connecticut. Pinto was one of the 20 students killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) The massacre of schoolchildren in Connecticut may yield new laws to limit the availability of military-style assault weapons. But one thing the latest tragedy will likely not produce: lawsuits against the company that manufactured the gun used in the killings. Under a controversial law Congress passed seven years ago at the urging of the National Rifle Association, gun manufacturers are explicitly shielded from lawsuits that would seek to hold them liable for crimes committed with weapons they sold. The 2005 law has drawn attacks from gun control advocates and constitutional scholars, who portray it as a powerful insulator for gun manufacturers. Why should gun manufacturers, they ask, enjoy a special liability protection not available to other companies that make potentially lethal products? "Gun companies should be treated the same as any other company. There is no reason to give them special exemption from litigation," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law. "It is an outrageous piece of legislation." Gun control advocates said they see a lawsuit in Alaska as their best hope to overturn the law. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence has challenged the constitutionality of the gunmaker shield law in a case involving a rifle taken from a gun shop by a convicted felon. The origins of the shield law stemmed from a rising tide of litigation against the gun companies by crime victims. In most of these cases, plaintiffs alleged that the company was negligent in not forcing the dealers of its products to properly abide by existing laws that prohibit, for example, convicted felons from obtaining a firearm. The most significant of these cases, and the one perceived as most damaging by the gun lobby, was brought by the families of the 13 people killed or seriously injured over a three-week span by the Washington, D.C.-area snipers, John Muhammad and Lee Malvo. The pair used a .223 Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle, similar to the one police said was used by Adam Lanza to kill 20 children in 6 adults with brutal efficiency in Newtown last week. In 2004, Bushmaster and the gun dealer settled the lawsuit for $2.5 million in a case that gun control advocates hailed as a "major breakthrough." The gun lobby agreed. The next year, following a fierce lobbying campaign by the NRA, Congress approved the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which offers a broad shield against lawsuits filed by victims of gun violence. The law does not provide 100 percent immunity, and the The Brady Center, which represented the families in the sniper shooting case, has challenged its constitutionality. But in the years since, the law has done what the industry wanted: offer protection against litigation that targets it for liability when guns are used to commit crimes. The law also ended all existing lawsuits. Wayne LaPierre, the NRA chief executive, hailed the legislative victory as a "historic day for the NRA and also for the Second Amendment." He said Congress "saved the firearms industry" by protecting it against "a blizzard of litigation to bankrupt the industry by legal fees." In the Senate, the legislation won support from 15 Democrats, mostly from pro-gun states, including Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, now the majority leader. President Barack Obama, then a senator from Illinois, and Vice President Joe Biden, a senator from Delaware, voted against the measure. The language of the bill hewed closely to the NRA's position. "The possibility of imposing liability on an entire industry for harm that is solely caused by others is an abuse of the legal system," the law says. The NRA did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. The Brady Center also did not respond to a request for comment. After the law passed, a top lawyer vowed to "vigorously attack the law in courts." The Brady Center has continued to bring liability cases against gunmakers and sellers, citing exemptions in the law. "Well-pleaded, carefully crafted cases can still proceed against irresponsible gun companies," wrote Daniel Vice, an attorney for the group, in a guide for lawyers who want to sue gun companies. The Brady Center is currently handling a case it hopes to use to overturn the shield law. In 2006, Jason Coday, a drifter with a lengthy arrest record, shot and killed Simone Kim, a contract painter, outside of a grocery store in Juneau, Alaska, where he was working. The two men did not know each other. Coday was prohibited under federal law from purchasing a firearm, but two days before the shooting he walked out of a gun store in Juneau with a Ruger .22-caliber rifle. Ray Coxe, the owner of the store, claimed Coday stole the gun when his back was turned and left $200 on the counter. In 2008, Kim's family sued, alleging that Coxe knowingly allowed Coday to pay for the gun without first getting a background check. Two years later, a state judge dismissed the case, citing the lawsuit shield law, which protects gun shops and manufactures against civil claims arising from the "misuse of their products by others." The family appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court, which heard the case earlier this year. A decision is pending. Even if the shield law were immediately repealed, it is unclear whether the Newtown shooting victims would have a case to make against Bushmaster, part of the Freedom Group of arms and ammunition makers owned by Cereberus Capital. (Cereberus said on Tuesday it was putting the Freedom Group up for sale because of the massacre.) According to news reports, the Bushmaster assault-style weapon used in the shooting was legally purchased by Nancy Lanza, the gunman's mother. That wasn't true with the Washington, D.C. sniper case. The sniper Bushmaster came from Bull's Eye, a gun shop in Washington state. Lee Malvo told investigators he stole the gun. Lawyers for the shooting victims claimed the retailer had acted negligently in allowing this to happen. Bushmaster, the victims claimed, acted recklessly in not ensuring that its dealer prevented the gun from falling into criminal hands. |
Large Open Source projects have started to migrate on Symfony components: if it was not first, SensioLabs has talked a lot about Drupal8 because it is one of the biggest CMS on the market. EzPublish, PHPBB, PrestaShop and many others followed, some with a full stack framework approach and others by incorporating only a few software bricks. Zend Framework 1 was losing his popularity, and no more startup was launched on it (in France) when on the contrary we saw appearing some “Symfony developer” job offers in the most successful french companies. A few years later, nobody could conceive of using anything other than Symfony to make a PHP project. PHP 5.3 had just come out and with it the ability to start designing object-oriented correctly. Fabien Potencier finally imposed this prerequisite (initially, Symfony2 required PHP 5.2.7), then Composer was used, and the documentation was complete and in English. At the time, we were moving from a fully integrated full stack framework with a back office provided to a framework that followed what was found in the Java community: besides, many components of Symfony2 were strongly inspired by JEE. In 2011, when I started my studies in computer sciences I learned the PHP using symfony 1.3, and I realized my very first student project on the beta of Symfony 2. Understand how the Symfony project evolves and why it is always worthy to get involved, but differently. The Symfony ecosystem has been enriched with ever more specialized solutions and responding to concrete business problems where the Standard Edition framework (so-called “full edition” or “meta-package”) has no scope. Have appeared among the most famous: The Laravel framework, easier to access and RAD-oriented framework; The Oro platform and the entire associated ecosystem: Oro CRM, Akeneo, OroCommerce, and Marello; The Sylius eCommerce framework; The framework specialized in the design of API RESTful API Platform; All of these solutions are extremely popular and require real Symfony skills. In 2017, what will be the place of Symfony Standard Edition in the ecosystem? Fabien Potencier decided that there would be no more Standard Edition after the 3.4. Welcome to Symfony Flex! Indeed, the creator of Symfony plans to replace it by a composer plugin called Flex that facilitates the creation of Symfony applications. The developer will have the responsibility to choose and add dependencies that he/she needs. The system works according to a “recipe/template” principle where YAML files describe what Flex should do: add a dependency, configure and register a bundle, or create a folder for example. Flex comes with two sources of “recipes”: an official source validated by SensioLabs and a community source where everyone can add their recipes and make them available to everyone. To put it simply, imagine that you want to realize a RESTful API in 2017 using Flex: the ideal would be to use API Platform. As API Platform is available via Flex you only have one command to run to get to a complete application that works. I have to admit that this approach pleases me a lot and that it reinforces the point of view that I defended for several years: a Symfony project not focused on its framework but the maintenance of software bricks of very high quality and well documented. Perhaps we had to wait for the relative success of Symfony 3 and the popularity of solutions like Akeneo for this awareness, but I’m convinced that the Symfony Core team is now moving in the right direction. If you are looking for more information about Flex, there is not yet any official documentation, but Fabien Potencier has produced a series of articles about the project that I encourage you to read and experiment since the composer plugin is compatible with Symfony 3.3 and usable independently of the Symfony 4 release ;) Ok! But why should I learn Symfony in 2017 then? In 2017, you don’t (necessarily) have to learn the Symfony framework, you have to learn and understand the Symfony ecosystem: How a Symfony application reads an HTTP request and returns a response; How a Symfony application builds and makes available objects (called “services”); How a Symfony application dispatches and listens for events throughout the application lifecycle, and how to look and create its events; Becoming familiar with these notions made you able to quickly be comfortable with API Platform, Akeneo, Marello, Sylius, Drupal8, Laravel, and the Symfony Standard Edition framework. What about the components? I am a huge fan of Symfony components: they are maintained by a big community, very well documented and evolve regularly. The learning or use of a particular component obviously depends on the project. Here is my list of the most useful libraries: The Console component: provides a complete console with arguments and options management, essential for PHP in CLI mode; component: provides a complete console with arguments and options management, essential for PHP in CLI mode; The Debug and VarDumper components: they provide a better stack trace in case of error and the dump function as a replacement of var_dump ; and components: they provide a better stack trace in case of error and the function as a replacement of ; The Finder and Filesystem components: they provide a nice API for searching and manipulating folders and files; and components: they provide a nice API for searching and manipulating folders and files; The Polyfill- * components: they allow the application to use functions that are not available, either because of the PHP version or the absence of PHP extensions; All of these components work in “standalone” and are used in the most large PHP projects. So keep learning and investing in the ecosystem: Symfony (framework) is dead, long life to the Symfony project! |
Facebook using people’s phones to listen in on what they’re saying, claims professor BelfastTelegraph.co.uk Facebook is listening in on people’s conversations all of the time, an expert has claimed. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/technology/facebook-using-peoples-phones-to-listen-in-on-what-theyre-saying-claims-professor-34761450.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/uk/article34761446.ece/e6506/AUTOCROP/h342/facebook.jpg Email Facebook is listening in on people’s conversations all of the time, an expert has claimed. Weekly Business Digest Newsletter The app is using people’s phones to gather data on what they are talking about, it has been claimed. Facebook says that its app does listen to what’s happening around it, but only as a way of seeing what people are listening to or watching and suggesting that they post about it. The feature has been available for a couple of years, but recent warnings from Kelli Burns, mass communication professor at the University of South Florida, have drawn attention to it. Professor Burns has said that the tool appears to be using the audio it gathers not simply to help out users, but to listen in to discussions and serve them with relevant advertising. She says that to test the feature, she discussed certain topics around the phone and then found that the site appeared to show relevant ads. The claim chimes with anecdotal reports online that the site appears to show ads for things that people have mentioned in passing. Facebook has not yet responded to a request for comment. At the moment, the feature is only available in the US. When it was first introduced, in 2014, Facebook responded to controversy by arguing that the phone isn’t “always listening” and that it never stores the “raw audio” when it is listening. Read more Project Abacus: Google looks to replace passwords by monitoring your phone NSA can spy on computers not connected to internet using radio waves Edward Snowden: NSA still collecting everybody's information including your d**k pics Facebook says explicitly on its help pages that it doesn’t record conversations, but that it does use the audio to identify what is happening around the phone. The site promotes the feature as an easy way of identifying what you are listening to or watching, to make it easier and quicker to post about whatever’s going on. If people want to use the feature that way, then they can start writing a post in the normal way. If it’s turned on, then it will start identifying what is being listened to or watching – at which point a little face with some soundwaves next to it will appear. If it identifies the sound successfully, then it will show a little “1” next to the face instead – users can then click that, select the thing they are watching or listening to, and then write the rest of the update. “If your phone's microphone has trouble matching what you're listening to or watching, the room you're in may be loud or a commercial may be on,” according to Facebook’s help page. “If this happens, tap, drag and release your screen to try a new match.” Turning off the microphone in a phone’s settings is relatively easy, and since it can be done at the level of the operating system, doing so will mean that Facebook can’t turn it on even if it wanted to. It’s done on an iPhone by heading to the app’s settings, clicking through to privacy and switching the slider for microphone; on Android phones, head to settings and then privacy, and change the permissions that the Facebook app is given. The claims come after Belgian police warned citizens not to use Facebook's Reactions tool if they valued their privacy. Independent Video: Jacob Applebaum: To Protect And Infect More on privacy and surveillance Independent News Service |
A newly appointed city commissioner in New York, Stacey Cumberbatch, told the New York Times last week that she believed British actor Benedict Cumberbatch's fifth great-grandfather owned her ancestors on an 18th-century sugar plantation in Barbados. They "are related," the newspaper noted, "if not by blood, then by geography and the complicated history of the slave trade." The actor, now playing a slave owner in the film 12 Years a Slave, has in the past acknowledged his ancestors' slave ownership, and revealed that his mother once urged him not to use his real name professionally for fear of becoming the target of reparations claims by the descendents of slaves. Such parental advice sits uneasily with the notion of undoing past wrongs that lies at the heart of transitional justice, whereby nations move from committing gross and systematic human rights violations to democracy. Typically, the mechanisms involved include retribution against perpetrators through the criminal justice system, and reparations to victims, including the return of property, financial compensation for suffering, or symbolic gestures such as overturning unjust convictions – as well as simply saying sorry. But there is a third dimension to the victim-perpetrator axis that is less often discussed: what of those who were not directly involved in wrongdoing but who benefited from it nonetheless? This can apply contemporaneously but also to generations beyond. What if your crime – if it can be called that – is to be born the son, grandson or great-grandson many times removed from those wrongdoers, their acts echoing in your blood and in your name? Should Benedict Cumberbatch still say sorry? Should he pay for the sins of his forefathers? Some young Germans, full of shame, appear to think so. Overgeneralising from the acts of their ancestors to their own identity, they feel morally stained by their nation's past. Brecht called them Nachgeborenen: those who came after. German novelists, such as Bernhard Schlink in The Reader, have mined this Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the struggle to come to terms with the past. Is this sort of ethical collectivism – whereby those living today share guilt for the past crimes of those they belong to by dint of their nation, race and so on – just, or productive? It is not easy to even begin to quantify what constitutes just reparations for horrors such as slavery in America, apartheid in South Africa and the Nazi Holocaust in Europe; yet that is the ethical question raised when the past pushes its way, uncomfortably, into the present. We cannot simply consign these questions to history, draw a thick line and move on with the promise of "never again". The answer is not about being individually responsible, through our genes, but collectively accountable for the structural inequalities that have passed down through generations to shape today's world. It is one thing to be universalist, anti-racist and pro-human rights when looking back, but it takes a more reflexive attitude to history to account for the structure of the present through past wrongs, and our place within that historical context. Critics of mainstream human rights discourse take issue with narratives of progress, which suggest a false divide between historical periods of "evil" and post-conflict periods that have transitioned to democracy. For example, some argue that the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, while a model of how to investigate and understand past wrongs, also relied on a too narrow definition of victimhood, excluding descendants of those who lost their land or were subject to forcible resettlement. As such, it left largely untouched an unjust and inequitable economic and social system. As Ronnie Kasrils wrote of the post-apartheid era, "optimism overlooked the tenacity of the international capitalist system". The Cumberbatch case involves two high-profile individuals and so has had media attention, but these questions concern us all. For as long as structural inequalities persist, we cannot overlook how far the tentacles of history might reach into the present. The real challenge is to recognise, and address, how much the privileges of the past continue to benefit some, and wrong others, today. |
Join the Johnson Weld 2016 campaign in 'An Evening with Governor Weld' at the Venetian Room in Atlanta on Wednesday, October 5, 2016 at 7:30 pm. Learn about Governor Weld and his success as a two-term Governor of Massachusetts. See why Johnson/Weld are rapidly gaining support as the sane choices for President and Vice-President. Join us and let's make history together. #YouIn? RSVPs are not required, but appreciated. Doors open at 6:30 pm for a cash bar cocktail hour. Bring a friend! FAQs Where can I contact the organizer with any questions? Email events@johnsonweld.com with your questions. Does a ticket guarantee admission? This event is free and open to the public, but RSVPs are strongly encouraged. Admission is first come, first served. Are children welcome at this event? Yes, families are welcome. |
For anyone who has watched The Wire, it’s no surprise that Maryland (Baltimore, in particular) has one of the highest rates of violent crime in the country. In an alleged effort to address this persistent problem, the state requires an applicant for a license to carry a handgun to demonstrate “a good and substantial reason to wear, carry, or transport a handgun as a reasonable precaution against apprehended danger.” Under this prove-it-to-use-it standard, Baltimore County resident Raymond Woollard, who had had a license to carry for six years (after a violent home invasion), was denied a license renewal because he could not document that he had been threatened recently. The fact that he had been attacked by his son-in-law seven years earlier, an event to which it took law enforcement two-and-a-half hours to respond, was insufficient to meet Maryland’s special-need requirement. Woollard, along with the Second Amendment Foundation, thus brought suit challenging the law under the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010). Although the district court ruled for Woollard, finding that Maryland’s restriction violated the Second Amendment, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit overturned the lower court and reinstated the law. The court purported to apply “intermediate scrutiny,” which allows a challenged statute to survive only if it is “substantially related to the achievement of an important governmental interest,” but in fact, hardly applied any scrutiny at all. The court’s analysis was both circular and contemptuous of Heller, finding that a regulation is “substantially related” to the valid government interest of curtailing criminal gun violence if it merely reduces the number of citizens lawfully carrying handguns, thus accepting the state’s implicit argument that the right to bear arms was itself the problem, one that should not be overcome without “a good and substantial” reason. Cato has filed a brief supporting the plaintiffs’ request that the Supreme Court review the case and clarify that the Second Amendment protects more than the right to keep a gun in one’s home. The deferential approach that the Fourth Circuit took here mirrors the weakened scrutiny applied in the Second Circuit’s decision in Kachalsky v. Cacace, in which Cato also filed a brief. In Kachalsky, the court upheld a New York law requiring applicants for a carry license to show “proper cause.” Instead of requiring the state to demonstrate a concrete connection between the restriction and crime prevention, the court deferred to the political branches’ “discretionary judgment” on the issue. However, other courts have expounded different doctrines since the Supreme Court ruled in Heller that the Second Amendment protects an individual right. For example, the Chicago-based Seventh Circuit demands that a restriction on Second Amendment rights satisfy a heightened level of scrutiny that requires “an extremely strong public-interest justification and a close fit between the government’s means and its end.” This confusion between lower courts lies at the very heart of the definition of Second Amendment rights outside of the home, and is in dire need of clarification. As with all other constitutional rights, the political branches cannot limit the exercise of Second Amendment rights to those who can demonstrate some “special need.” Whatever standard may ultimately govern, this case provides an ideal opportunity for the Supreme Court to reaffirm what the district court said in this case about Woollard’s exercise of the constitutional right to armed self-defense: “The right’s existence is all the right he needs.” |
By Helen Massy-Beresford ‘Upgrading’ humans may sound like science fiction, but it is a real possibility — even a probability. That’s the forecast from historian and Oxford alumnus Yuval Noah Harari. His latest book argues that evolution through intelligent design is already beginning to make inroads against evolution through natural selection, and will ultimately take its place. Professor Harari (Jesus, 1998), who completed his PhD at Oxford’s Department of Modern History, explores the future of humanity in his latest book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (Harvill Secker, September 2016). Now a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Harari is also the author of worldwide bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. In both books, Harari sets out to decipher the deeper mechanisms of history and understand how our reality — gods, individualism, capitalism, patriarchal society and human rights — came about. He explores the fundamental role of imagination and fiction in allowing humans to cooperate in large numbers — the key ability that Harari believes sets us apart from other animals, allowing us to tell the ‘stories’ of gods, nations, money or human rights that lead to efficient mass cooperation. Since life appeared on earth, four billion years ago, it has been governed by natural selection, Harari (right) explains. ‘Now science might replace natural selection with intelligent design, and might even start creating non-organic life forms. People are already merging with their smartphones and their Facebook accounts. These are no longer dumb tools like a hammer or a knife — they are intelligent machines that constantly study us, adapt to our unique personality, and shape our worldview and our innermost desires. In the coming decades, we are likely to proceed much faster along this path, by developing machine learning, biometric sensors and direct brain-computer interfaces.’ Since life appeared on earth, four billion years ago, it has been governed by natural selection, Harari (right) explains. ‘Now science might replace natural selection with intelligent design, and might even start creating non-organic life forms. People are already merging with their smartphones and their Facebook accounts. These are no longer dumb tools like a hammer or a knife — they are intelligent machines that constantly study us, adapt to our unique personality, and shape our worldview and our innermost desires. In the coming decades, we are likely to proceed much faster along this path, by developing machine learning, biometric sensors and direct brain-computer interfaces.’ In 2050, Harari says, it is likely that our smartphones will be embedded in our bodies via biometric sensors, monitoring our heart rates, blood pressure and brain activity 24 hours a day and analysing this biometric data to get to know our desires, likes and dislikes better than we know them ourselves. By 2100, Harari believes ‘humans and machines might merge so completely, that humans will not be able to survive at all if they are disconnected from the network.’ This revolution will lead to important philosophical questions. ‘We are now learning how to create artificial intelligence and how to use biotechnology in order to design animals and to upgrade humans into superhumans. The engineers working on such projects need to address age-old philosophical questions such as “What is consciousness?”, “What is free will?”, and “What is humanity?”’ In writing Sapiens and Homo Deus, Harari has been fulfilling a promise he made to his teenage self not to get bogged down in everyday life. His chief challenge in his latest book has been to avoid wandering into the realm of science fiction, while simultaneously setting his imagination free. ‘I had to beware of being infatuated with technology, and focus on the social and political implications of technology. For example, what will happen to the welfare state when computers push humans out of the job market and create a massive new “useless class”? How might Islam handle genetic engineering? Will Silicon Valley end up producing new religions, rather than just novel gadgets?’ Harari specialises in ‘macro-history’ and has been passionate about looking at the bigger picture since he realised as a teenager that the adults around him didn’t really understand life and moreover, didn’t seem to mind. ‘They were very worried about money, about careers, about the mortgage, about the political situation — but were completely nonchalant about the fact that they didn’t understand what life is all about.’ Harari specialises in ‘macro-history’ and has been passionate about looking at the bigger picture since he realised as a teenager that the adults around him didn’t really understand life and moreover, didn’t seem to mind. ‘They were very worried about money, about careers, about the mortgage, about the political situation — but were completely nonchalant about the fact that they didn’t understand what life is all about.’ Harari’s university students also convinced him that academics had a responsibility to communicate broadly. ‘Even after 12 years of school, people are often woefully ignorant of the most fundamental concepts and processes of history. That’s why I wrote Sapiens and Homo Deus in a simple and engaging style, which should be accessible even to teenagers.’ Amid today’s scaremongering headlines and a wave of nationalism, Harari’s biggest fear is distraction. ‘All our major problems are global in nature: global warming, global inequality, and the rise of disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence and bio-engineering. In order to face these challenges successfully, we need global cooperation. I think the current wave of nationalism is a kind of escapism: people refusing to confront the unprecedented problems of the twenty-first century by closing their eyes and minds and by seeking a refuge in the fold of traditional local identities. I hope that people will wake up in time. But as a historian, I know we should never underestimate human stupidity.’ Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari is published by Harvill Secker. Graphic by vitstudio via Shutterstock. Portrait of Professor Yuval Noah Harari by Guo Xiaochuan. |
It’s official. Jazz turns women on. Researchers have found that women find complex forms of music, such as jazz, sexy. When women were asked to choose between composers of different types of music for a night of passion, they preferred composers that produced complex tunes over those that made simpler songs. The study, conducted by the University of Sussex and published in the Royal Societal Journal, also found that syncopated rhythms proved more of a turn-on for women than simple chord progressions and subtle melodies. That means smooth jazz artists like Brian Culbertson with his sensual songs like “It’s On Tonight’ and “Hookin’ Up” may have to take a backseat to music by the likes of Thelonious Monk and Ornette Coleman. The study, which involved 1,500 women at an average age of 28, was led by Dr. Benjamin Charlton, and extends on Charles Darwin’s own research, which suggested that music evolved via sexual selection. “Musical notes and rhythm… were first acquired by the male and female progenitors of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite sex,” Darwin wrote in his 1871 book The Descent of Man. This study goes a step further, and proves that different types of music can have a drastic effect on sexual behavior. “The ability to create complex music could be indicative of advanced cognitive abilities. Consequently, women may acquire genetic benefits for offspring by selecting musicians able to create more complex music as sexual partners,” Dr. Charlton said in concluding his study. But, before any jazz musicians get too excited there’s a pretty big caveat. The study looked specifically at how the menstrual cycle alters women’s sexual preferences, which means the women surveyed only preferred the composers of complex music as short-term sexual partners and only when their conception risk is highest – Usually around three days in any given month. Sorry guys. But at least it goes some way to explaining where all the jazz groupies went… |
The topics range from butchered human remains to video games. The stories they tell come from as long ago as 10,500 years, and as recently as the 1980s. Of the dozens of articles we’ve posted this year about peer-reviewed archaeological research from around the American West, a select few rose to the very top of the popular imagination. Their tales have some things in common — mainly geography — but what stands out is their shared ability to portray vividly how scientific endeavor can help us understand the past, whether it’s relatively recent history or the earliest evidence of human life in the West. If you’ve read them all already, then thanks for making this list possible*. And if it’s all new to you, then welcome to the community of Western Digs. In either case, let this be the starting point for your journey back through 2013 — and beyond! In September, we detailed new insights into one of the most macabre sites in the Southwest — Cave 7, a rockshelter in southeastern Utah where a hundred years ago archaeologists discovered dozens of skeletons bearing clear signs of hand-to-hand combat: crushed skulls; broken limbs; and remains riddled with stone points, bone awls, and knives made of obsidian glass. But anthropologists have debated what that violence meant: Was Cave 7 a burial ground for the casualties of individual conflicts over centuries, or was it was more like a war cemetery, where victims were put to rest after a single, catastrophic conflict between cultures? Our fifth most popular story of the year lays out the latest findings, and what the bones found there may have to tell us. A type of site never before described by archaeologists headlined our fourth most popular story. The sites, discovered in the southern mountains of Arizona and New Mexico, were remote Apache encampments, called platform caches, which eluded archaeologists for centuries. What’s more, some of the sites and the artifacts found there — like fragments of a ceremonial headdress, a ritual staff or “wand,” and pictographs of Apache mountain spirit masks — date back more than 200 years before ancestral Apaches were thought to have migrated into the southwest from the Great Plains. Read more about this discovery and how it may change conventional thinking about the ancient migrations that shaped the Southwest. In the spring, Western Digs got national attention when we reported that the city of Alamogordo, New Mexico, authorized a Canadian production company to excavate of one of its old landfills. But this wasn’t just a municipal dump — it was a site where the famous video game manufacturer Atari reportedly buried hundreds of tons of broken and outdated merchandise in 1983. No one knows exactly what’s down there, but excavations will begin soon. Learn more about the ‘Atari Dump’ and what it may (and may not) hold. Readers responded in great numbers to our exclusive report in June about new research into some ancient pottery from southern Utah that was found to contain traces of cacao, also known as cocoa, the main ingredient in chocolate. At 1,200 years old, it was the earliest known evidence of the substance yet found in the United States. But to the experts who made the find, what’s even more important was the unusual pottery that it was found in, and what it tells us about the ancient influences of Mesoamerica. Read on to learn more about the archaeology of chocolate. Hundreds of thousands of readers gave the top slot to our exclusive story about the continent’s most lasting impression: the oldest known human footprints in North America. If you haven’t read it yet, you can find out now where they were found, how old they are, and what their identification tells us about the people who made them. But whether you’re a new reader or a return visitor, I’d like to offer a big, very sincere thank you to everyone who has passed through Western Digs this past year, whether you just read one story, or you became a member of our growing community. I read the latest research, interview scientists and write up their findings all in my spare time, because I’m passionate about exploring science, history, and the American West, and I’m glad there are others out there who are as fascinated by it as I am. If you have any questions, comments or ideas of what you’d like WD to cover, let me know in the contact form, or in the comments below. And don’t forget to join Western Digs on Facebook, follow @WesternDigs on Twitter, and follow us on Tumblr and Google Plus! |
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