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LEXINGTON, Ohio – Oriol Servia and Juan Pablo Montoya were selected by INDYCAR to perform initial testing of the 2018 Verizon IndyCar Series universal aero kit for a couple solid reasons. First, since neither currently has a fulltime job driving in the Verizon IndyCar Series or any other racing discipline, they were available for the four scheduled test sessions as the car is prepared to be used by all competitors next season. Following a successful debut test of the superspeedway oval configuration July 25 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the second phase of testing shifts today to Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course for the first application of the road course/street course/short oval configuration. More important to the selection of the test drivers, both are veterans with thousands of miles of track time under their belts in Indy cars. The perspective and feedback each can bring to the table as INDYCAR works through the testing regimen before turning the new-look car over to manufacturers and teams is invaluable. Montoya and Servia are familiar with testing a new car out of the box, from back in the late 1990s and early 2000s when Indy car chassis and engine manufacturers would introduce new equipment in the preseason. Montoya also drove in Formula One for six seasons and was on hand for his team’s car unveiling each year, which was a little like Christmas. “You were always looking forward to (seeing) the new car,” said Montoya, named by INDYCAR to drive the Chevrolet-powered test car. “Actually, sometimes, the first time you got to see the car was when it was launched. It's like we're probably more excited than all the media there because we get to play with a new toy. It's fun.” Servia joined the CART series in 2000 after winning the Indy Lights championship the year before. As he prepared to drive the car that will be used by all Verizon IndyCar Series competitors next season, a smile came across his face as he recalled days gone by of preseason testing. “Back in the day, you used to have a new car every year,” said Servia, testing the Honda-powered car with the universal kit for INDYCAR. “The first day that you would put the car on track, you could almost count on it not being a proper test day because there always a lot of little things like electronics to fuel pump (malfunctioning). It was never usually an important part of the car but it was something that would stop you from running.” No such issues plagued the Indy test and INDYCAR officials are hopeful of a repeat today. Once again, INDYCAR has a lengthy checklist of items to go through with the cars running on the 2.258-mile permanent road course. Follow-up tests with the road/street/short oval kit are planned for Iowa Speedway (Aug. 10) and Sebring International Raceway (Sept. 26). Testing today at Mid-Ohio is scheduled to run as late as 4:30 p.m. ET, but could conclude earlier if the checklist is completed before that time. The test is open to the public for free, with fans permitted in the track infield and carousel areas, as well as the Turn 2 mound. Grandstands are not open and fans will not have access to the garage area or pit lane. The next event on the 2017 Verizon IndyCar Series schedule is the ABC Supply 500 at Pocono Raceway on Aug. 20 (2 p.m. ET, NBCSN and the Advance Auto Parts INDYCAR Radio Network). An intense championship battle is taking shape, with Josef Newgarden on top of the standings with four races remaining. Newgarden’s lead is but seven points over Team Penske teammate Helio Castroneves, with Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon a single digit behind Castroneves. |
CLOSE Gamers, get ready, because a new Xbox One is coming your way. Buzz60 The Xbox One S. (Photo: Microsoft) Microsoft confirmed it will launch two Xbox One consoles: a slim model supporting 4K visuals and a more powerful box dubbed Project Scorpio that will support virtual reality. The tech giant made the reveals during a press conference Monday ahead of the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. The Xbox One S is 40% lighter than the original Xbox One, and will feature support for 4K content and a redesigned controller. The device also boasts a built-in power supply and can stand horizontally or vertically. It will launch in August starting at $299. "We are creating more choice in your gaming experience than ever before," said Xbox chief Phil Spencer to open Microsoft's E3 conference. Microsoft also unveiled "Project Scorpio," a high-powered Xbox One launching next year capable of supporting native 4K content and virtual reality headsets. Spencer says "it's the most powerful console ever built." Although Scorpio is a year away from release, Microsoft Studios Publishing head Shannon Loftis hopes game designers are inspired by what it offers. "We want developers to start thinking about what they want to do with that power." Microsoft did not provide details on the price of Scorpio or what type of VR support Scorpio would feature. Rival console PlayStation 4, developed by Sony, raced out to an early lead in global console sales. As of May, Sony sales PS4 sales topped 40 million worldwide. According to research firm IHS Technology, Microsoft's Xbox One boasts an install base around 21 million. Piers Harding-Rolls, director of games research at IHS, compares the Xbox One S move to Sony launching a slimmer PlayStation 3 during the previous console cycle. "The reversal in fortune of this generation compared to last means that Microsoft has to be aggressive with its console upgrade strategy to gain market initiative," he says. Meanwhile, Project Scorpio gives Xbox an entry into the growing virtual reality market. Sony plans to reveal more details on its PlayStation VR platform during a press conference in Los Angeles on Monday night. Also unveiled during the Microsoft event: Play Anywhere support allowing players to play some games on both Xbox One or Windows 10, and customizable controllers players can craft in a variety of colors. Prior to the launch of the event, Spencer paid tribute to victims of the shooting in Orlando killing 50. "You should know you are not alone," said Spencer. "The gaming community mourns with you." Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/28yv2Ci |
From a legal point of view any action taken would be dependent on the nature of the dispute, the jurisdiction of any agreement and the jurisdiction of the claimant and defendants. Bitcoin is not a tangible asset. It is a piece of data, a number on the blockchain. To move that number to another wallet address on the blockchain the sender must have the 'private key'. All bitcoin transactions are recorded on the blockchain (distributed public ledger). The person or entity that has access to the private key 'owns' the ability to send (or keep) those bitcoin to another wallet address. For the purpose of legal action (to recover bitcoins / access to the private key) one would usually commence the action in the jurisdiction of the defendant entity. In the case of multi-signature wallets / private keys the objective of legal action would be the same (recover the private key). The legal tool (court order etc) will differ on the jurisdiction and will be dependent on any local law regarding bitcoin and digital currency. A bitcoin private key is information. It is data made up of numbers and letters. If bitcoin is not legally defined in the jurisdiction one could consider using the same legal remedy that would be used to recover 'information'. Telephone records, company accounts and recorded music are examples of information. Music could be held on a usb stick or server as could bitcoin. An example could be a multi-signature wallet made up of three keys with two keys required to make a transaction. If one key was in England, another in Germany and another in the United States one would need to take a view on the fastest, most cost effective jurisdiction(s) to commence legal action. Let us consider however if a private key is copied and held in a variety of locations. It could be stored in a cloud service where the geographocal location is simply unknown. Where would the bitcoins then be for legal purposes? I believe we then revert back to the point about bitcoins are always on the public ledger / distributed network / blockchain. If the key or copies of the 'same' key are stored in more than one jurisdiction, this could potentially make any legal action 'easier' as there are more jurisdictions to issue proceedings / local police to become involved. From a legal point of view we would advise clients to commence action in the fastest most cost effective jurisdiction, which assists the ultimate aim. Does it therefore boil down to is the issue, where are the bitcoins being controlled from? Well, again, private keys are just data / numbers and letters. In the first instance it would be usual to assume that the person can control the private key from their current location / jurisdiction. i.e. The person lives in London but logs in to a server in the USA to action bitcoin transfers with the private key. If the dispute / contract is in England it would make sense to start the proceedings in London as we know that this is where the private key is controlled from. If we went straight to the server co in USA it would take more time more risk and there is a very high chance the server is encrypted and can not be accessed without the details from the man in London. How about if they are controlled from multiple locations? Well, the answer to this is fairly straightforward. Only one person can be in control of them at any one time. The location of the individual is the key to where litigation will be commenced unless there is a better jurisdiction and the court can be convinced that they have the authority to accept jurisdiction based on the private key location. Bitcoin is a relatively new concept. As when the internet first started, the lawyers around the world (and the Judges and Courts) were in debate about how such multi jurisdictional issues could be resolved. There was lots of talk about regulation and one comprehensive 'internet law'... this never transpired as the law of contract (and logic) prevailed with any claims being brought generally in accordance with any contract or more specifically, the jurisdiction in which the breach of contract (or crime) occurred. It is likely to be the same with bitcoin. When jurisdictional issues are clarified in the courts, it will provide useful guidance for both litigation and for tax purposes. In summary, due to the lack of regulation and understanding generally of crypto currency by the relevant authorities around the world, it is impossible to give a conclusive answer. There is a massive difference between contractual claims and criminal claims. Quite often (as can be seen the Mt Gox matter), it is difficult to obtain enough information to encourage the police to bring a criminal prosecution. However, there are cases currently going through the courts, which may clarify certain important aspects in relation to accountability when it is clear a fraud has taken place. Richard Howlett is a lawyer at Selachii in London. Disclaimer: This blog article should not be construed as legal or financial advice. |
Julianne Hough’s wedding to the love of his life Brooks Laich was definitely magical as her brother described it to be Juilanne and Hockey star Brooks got married on 8th July after getting engaged secretly in 2015The dancing With the stars judge Julianne in her wedding gown was looked alluring on the other hand, Groom Looked perfect in a black tuxedo. Julianne made sure she looks perfect on her wedding day, that’s why she chose to wear Marchesa design duo Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig. Brooks looked handsome groom in brooks brothers tuxedo. 28 year old Julianne and her husband Brooks Laich, 34, took their wedding vows in front of 200 guest in Idaho. Julianne’s bestie Nina Dobrev was her one of her bridesmaid and looked beautiful in blush pink gown. Julianne’s brother described this wedding in such a beautiful way, “ “Julianne and Brooks’ wedding weekend transported everyone to a different era. A timeless, magical, romantic experience that was truly perfect in every way. It captured everyone’s hearts and filled them with more love than we could have hoped for,” Hough wrote. “Everything from the hot beautiful weather during the fun lake activities, to the welcome and rehearsal dinners where we danced with friends and family all night long. To the most perfect ceremony I have ever seen where I witnessed my baby sister marry the man of her dreams.” Checkout Julianne Hough’s wedding video: Best moment of my life! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ Has it already been a week?! #mrslaich ?? A post shared by Julianne Hough (@juleshough) on Jul 15, 2017 at 7:24am PDT Share This Post... |
Chris Wesseling did a great job breaking down the potential salary cap casualties in the AFC. Now let's take a crack at some of the biggest names that could be let go in the NFC. With the salary cap not expected to rise much this year, there are plenty of teams looking to cut dead weight. Candidates for release Unofficial list of free agents NFL free agency is set to begin on March 12. Check out this unofficial list of the 2013 NFL restricted and unrestricted free agents for every team, which includes More ... NFL free agency is set to begin on March 12. Check out this unofficial list of the 2013 NFL restricted and unrestricted free agents for every team, which includes Greg Jennings 1. Nnamdi Asomugha, Philadelphia Eagles cornerback: With $4 million of his scheduled $15 million salary guaranteed, the Eagles could try to work out a pay cut to keep Asomugha. More likely: They cut ties after two straight disappointing seasons. 2. Kevin Kolb, Arizona Cardinals quarterback: The Cardinals publicly have said they need to reduce Kolb's deal. He's due more than $11 million and his poor arm strength does not match up well with new coach Bruce Arians' vertical offense. Kolb is due a $2 million bonus on March 19 that serves as a soft deadline for both sides. 3. Michael Turner, Atlanta Falcons running back: Don't overpay for running backs (yes, $6.9 million for a part-timer power runner in decline counts as overpaying). Turner appears as good as gone. 4-5. Devin Hester and Kellen Davis, Chicago Bears: Cutting both players would save less than $5 million, but Hester seems to want a fresh start elsewhere. Davis simply has been ineffective as a starting tight end. 6-7. Alex Smith and David Akers, San Francisco 49ers: Akers is an easy cut because he's paid like a top-shelf kicker. Smith is trickier. The 49ers want to get his $7.5 million salary off the books, but they can be patient about a potential trade if they make moves elsewhere. My best guess is that the 49ers will get a late-round pick for Smith and avoid releasing him. 8. Eric Wright, Tampa Bay Buccaneers cornerback: Wright was guaranteed $7.75 million ... until his peformance-enhancing drug suspension at the end of 2012. Now the Bucs can release last year's free-agent mistake without a problem. That has to be one of the costliest suspensions in memory. 9. Jay Ratliff, Dallas Cowboys defensive tackle: He's overpaid, underperforming, and just got a DUI. And yet owner Jerry Jones probably will try to find a way to keep Ratliff anyway because he loves hanging on to players for a year too long. 10. Matt Flynn, Seattle Seahawks quarterback: I doubt anyone will want to take on Flynn's $5.25 million contract, much less give up a draft pick for it. A release seems more likely. 11. DeAngelo Hall, Washington Redskins cornerback: The up-and-down veteran says he will "do what I got to do" to stay in Washington. A pay cut is possible, but simply cutting Hall and his $7.5 million salary is simplest. 12. DeAngelo Williams, Carolina Panthers running back: I've already discussed this one at length. Paying two backs big money is a luxury the Panthers can't afford. 13-14. Will Smith and Jonathan Vilma, New Orleans Saints: The Saints have kept their Super Bowl winners together for too long. For now, the team is trying to get both players to take a pay cut. The reality is that both players don't fit their new 3-4 scheme and are more likely to get cut. 15. Jahvid Best, Detroit Lions running back: He's only due $876,000, but every dollar counts for the Lions. Best's future remains uncertain. 16. John Carlson, Minnesota Vikings tight end: Cutting Carlson would be less about cap savings and more about admitting a big mistake from an offseason ago. Candidates for restructure NFL salary cap situations SEE PHOTOS Take a look at how each team stands in regard to the expected $121 million salary cap in 2013. 1. Doug Free, Dallas Cowboys offensive tackle: Yes, Free is very overpaid. But Jones doesn't like admitting mistakes, and he would be costly to release. A reduced contract is possible. 2. Kevin Williams, Minnesota Vikings defensive tackle: He's not worth close to $7 million, but he could be amenable to taking less money to stay. 3. Nate Burleson, Detroit Lions wide receiver: The Lions need receiving options, but Burleson has a big salary number ($4.5 million) coming off surgery. He would be costly to cut free. 4. Jordan Gross, Carolina Panthers offensive tackle: Gross is still a key player for Carolina, but he's 31 years old and not $8.7 million good. 5. Corey Webster, New York Giants cornerback: Webster is due $7 million in the final year of his contract. His career has been wildly up and down. 6. A.J. Hawk, Green Bay Packers linebacker: Few players get overpaid for long in the NFL. Hawk has pulled off the trick for a while, and my guess is he should stick around in Green Bay again with teammates Desmond Bishop and D.J. Smith coming off injury. 7. Santana Moss, Washington Redskins wide receiver : A $3.7 million pay day is too much for a No. 4 receiver, even though Moss helped the Redskins last year. Potential surprise cuts 1. Beanie Wells, Arizona Cardinals running back: Wells doesn't have an onerous contract, but he might have worn out his welcome with the organization. The coaching change actually gives him a better chance to stick around. 2. Dunta Robinson, Atlanta Falcons cornerback: If the Falcons bring back Brent Grimes, don't be shocked if Robinson leaves town. 3. DeMeco Ryans, Philadelphia Eagles linebacker: I've read that Ryans fits what the Eagles' defense wants to do under coach Chip Kelly. Ryans played well last season, but $6.6 million is a big number for someone who doesn't make a lot of plays. 4. Jermichael Finley, Green Bay Packers tight end: Halfway through last season, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the Packers already made their decision to let Finley go. He finished the season strong, but is due almost $8 million in 2012. Finley pegged his chances of returning at 50/50. I'd say it's a little higher than that. 5. Carlos Rogers, San Francisco 49ers cornerback: These are called "potential surprise cuts" for a reason. Rogers contributed plenty to the 49ers last season, but he's due $5.5 million and turns 32 this year. 6-7. Brodrick Bunkley and Jabari Greer, New Orleans Saints: I love Greer as a player, but the Saints have way too many defensive players making a ton of money on an awful defense. 8. Jon Beason, Carolina Panthers linebacker: With $3.75 million of Beason's $5.25 million in pay guaranteed, it would only make sense for the Panthers to cut the linebacker if they don't think he can get healthy. Or if they think he won't react to playing outside linebacker with Luke Kuechly in the middle. Other potential cuts Arizona Cardinals: S Adrian Wilson, T Levi Brown, LB Stewart Bradley, CB William Gay Carolina Panthers: CB Chris Gamble, LB James Anderson, DT Ron Edwards Chicago Bears: TE Kellen Davis, G Roberto Garza Dallas Cowboys: DL Marcus Spears, LB Dan Connor Detroit Lions: WR Mike Thomas Green Bay Packers: FB John Kuhn Minnesota Vikings: WR Michael Jenkins New Orleans Saints: CB Jabari Greer, LB Chris Chamberlain New York Giants: T David Diehl Philadelphia Eagles: DL Mike Patterson San Francisco 49ers: LB Parys Haralson Seattle Seahawks: CB Marcus Trufant, WR Ben Obomanu, T Breno Giacomini St. Louis Rams: S Quintin Mikell, T Wayne Hunter Washington Redskins: DL Adam Carriker, S Brandon Meriweather |
Buy Photo Nixa police (Photo: News-Leader file photo)Buy Photo When police responded to a domestic disturbance at Nixa home Friday night, a visibly intoxicated woman ran outside and said she had shot her husband, according to a news release from the city of Nixa. Inside the home on the 800 block of Butterfield Drive was a man with a gunshot wound to his hip who said his wife shot him, the release said. The man was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, the release said, and the woman was arrested. Chadia Ann Ladbasri, 36, is charged with second-degree domestic assault and armed criminal action. She is being held in the Christian County Jail on a $75,000 cash only bond. According to the release, the incident took place at about 11 p.m. Read or Share this story: http://sgfnow.co/2kxJvug |
The BjjBrick Podcast is in iTunes, Stitcher radio, and RSS link for Andriod Here we go my friends! An episode with Tim Sledd about the taboo topics of BJJ. I can’t think of anyone else that I would like to hear from about these controversial topics than Tim. Tim spent countless hours as a hard working successful lawyer, he left this career path to pursue BJJ. Tim’s opinions of these taboo topics are well thought out and he defends them well. We talk about: Washing your belt The history of belts in martial arts How dirty your belt might be Belt whipping and gauntlets Hazing students and the law Throwing students for a belt promotion How to avoid hazing What is a creonte Why you might leave your BJJ school Cross training with different schools Signing a contract to train BJJ Dating within the gym Using the phrase “go to war” for BJJ or MMA Links: Quote of the week: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world” Mahatma Gandhi Article of the week: Stop Doing Drills; Start Using Challenges Daniel Coyle Catch us next week for part 2! |
March 24, 2017; San Jose, CA, USA; United States midfielder Christian Pulisic (10) during the first half of the Men's World Cup Soccer Qualifier against the Honduras at Avaya Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports The United States Men’s National Team resumes World Cup qualifying on Thursday as they host Trinidad & Tobago in Colorado. After a slow start to the qualifying campaign, the USMNT is on the upswing after taking four points from the March set of qualifying matches. They will enter Thursday night’s match in fourth place in the Hex standings just one point behind third place Panama. Their opponents will be looking to build on a better set of performances as well as Trinidad & Tobago upset Panama 2-1 in March and took Mexico to the wire with a 1-0 loss.However, the Caribbean country remains in at the bottom of the table in the qualifying group. The USMNT were recently in action against Venezuela in a friendly match on June 2nd. The match ended in a 1-1 draw as Christian Pulisic scored the equalizer for the U.S. A handful of players will be available for selection following absences due to injury in March. Bobby Wood and Fabian Johnson were two such players that have since returned to the USMNT lineup and were featured in the match against Venezuela. The U.S. goalkeeping job appears to be in the hands of Tim Howard as the veteran came up with key saves against Venezuela. He will most likely be the starter on Thursday. There had been some speculation on who the starter would be coming into the set of qualifiers. Trinidad & Tobago has four players on their roster who play in Major Leauge Soccer. Kevin Molino, Kenwyne Jones, Joevin Jones, and Mekeil Willams will all be facing current and future teammates on Thursday. The two countries have met 16 times in World Cup qualifying, the USMNT leads the series all-time with a record of 12-1-3. In September, the U.S. defeated Trinidad & Tobago by a score of 4-0, Jozy Altidore led the way with a brace. The U.S. has not conceded a goal to their opponents since 2008. How to Watch When: Thursday, June 8, 7:50 p.m. (ET) Where: Dick’s Sporting Goods Park-Commerce City, Colorado How to Watch: FS1, FOX Sports Go (Streaming), UNIMAS, UDN |
Spot the Robot Dog gets kicked. Video: Boston Dynamics/Cambridge University/YouTube In "Lisa the Skeptic," a characteristically quotable episode of The Simpsons, a burning android flees a laboratory fire, robotically lamenting, "Why? Why was I programmed to feel pain?" Video: FOX/apala734/YouTube The question is played for laughs, but like so many memorable scenes from this most beloved of shows, it also taps into some of the deeper, overarching themes that define our modern civilization. Pain is a fundamental fact of life for many organisms on our planet; a crucial mechanism for identifying what kinds of actions pose serious threats to our physical and mental health. As robots become more sophisticated and interactive, should they also be programmed to experience pain to prevent injuries to themselves or others, and if so, to what extent? "Pain in the Machine," a 12-minute documentary released by the University of Cambridge on Monday, tackles this multifaceted and controversial issue. The film offers insights from artificial intelligence thought leaders, practicing physicians, and other interdisciplinary experts, and contrasts them with iconic popular culture moments that point to the larger philosophical questions inherent to artificially programming pain responses—including a nod to burning robot bit in The Simpsons. "Pain in the Machine" documentary. Video: University of Cambridge/YouTube/Little Dragon Films Like so many AI research fields, evaluating the utility and benefits of pain in robots inevitably flips the mirror back on our understanding of how those experiences function and protect us in our own lives. "Pain has fascinated philosophers for centuries," Ben Seymour, a Cambridge-based expert on the computational and systems neuroscience of pain, comments in the documentary. "Indeed, some people consider pain to be the pinnacle of consciousness. Of course, it's not a pleasant pinnacle of consciousness but it arguably is a time where we feel most human, because we are most in touch with ourselves as a mortal human being." READ MORE: Researchers Threatened a Robot With a Knife to See If Humans Cared This idea that pain is a profoundly humanizing force, in spite of how excruciating it can feel moment-to-moment, is a standard across many eras and cultures. As the author James Baldwin put it: "[T]he things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive." It remains to be seen whether basic reflexive pain responses, which have already been programmed into some AI systems, could evolve into more complex emotions like empathy, or the kind of solidarity through suffering described by Baldwin. Perhaps robots could even surpass the cognitive and conceptual limits of their human creators, pioneering new approaches to interacting with the world and its inhabitants. "Humans do seem to be no different from very complex machines made up of biological material," points out Marta Halina, a lecturer in the philosophy of cognitive science at the University of Cambridge, in "Pain in the Machine." "That has huge implications on thinking about the future of AI, because we might be able to build machines that are as complex as us, and thus have abilities like us; for example, the ability to feel pain," Halina said. "And if we can build machines that are even more complex than humans, then they might have experiences and abilities that we can't even imagine." Artistic ruminations on these themes, like those featured in the popular new HBO series Westworld, have vaulted these lines of speculation even further into the mainstream. "Pain in the Machine" provides an interesting glimpse into the real efforts to replicate the hardware of pain in robots, while looking ahead to the ethical, philosophical, and social issues that programmable suffering could lead to in the future. Get six of our favorite Motherboard stories every day by signing up for our newsletter. |
Sen—Saturn's smog-enshrouded moon Titan is helping scientists understand the atmospheres of exoplanets. A new technique shows the dramatic influence that hazy skies could have on our ability to learn about alien worlds orbiting distant stars. A team of researchers led by Tyler Robinson, a NASA Postdoctoral Research Fellow at NASA's Ames Research Center, have published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "It turns out there's a lot you can learn from looking at a sunset," Robinson said. Despite the staggering distances to other planetary systems, in recent years researchers have begun to develop techniques for collecting spectra of exoplanets. When one of these worlds transits, or passes in front of its host star as seen from Earth, some of the star's light travels through the exoplanet's atmosphere, where it is changed in subtle, but measurable, ways. This process imprints information about the planet that can be collected by telescopes. The resulting spectra enable scientists to tease out details about the temperature, composition and structure of exoplanets' atmospheres. Robinson and his colleagues exploited a similarity between exoplanet transits and sunsets witnessed by the Cassini spacecraft at Titan. Called solar occultations, these observations allowed the scientists to observe Titan as a transiting exoplanet without having to leave the solar system. Many worlds in our solar system, including Titan, are blanketed by clouds and high-altitude hazes. Scientists expect that many exoplanets would be similarly obscured. Clouds and hazes create a variety of complicated effects that must be disentangled from the signature of these alien atmospheres, and present a major obstacle for understanding transit observations. Due to the complexity and computing power required to address hazes, models used to understand exoplanet spectra usually simplify their effects. "Previously, it was unclear exactly how hazes were affecting observations of transiting exoplanets," said Robinson. "So we turned to Titan, a hazy world in our own solar system that has been extensively studied by Cassini." An artistic impression of an exoplanet in transit across the face of its star. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI) The team used four observations of Titan made between 2006 and 2011 by Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer instrument. Their results, including the complex effects due to hazes, can now be compared to exoplanet models and observations. Robinson and colleagues found that hazes high above some transiting exoplanets might strictly limit what their spectra can reveal to planet transit observers. The observations might be able to glean information only from a planet's upper atmosphere. On Titan, that corresponds to about 150 to 300 km (90 to 190 miles) above the moon's surface, high above the bulk of its dense and complex atmosphere. The study also found that Titan's hazes more strongly affect shorter wavelengths, or bluer light. Studies of exoplanet spectra have commonly assumed that hazes would affect all colours of light in similar ways. Studying sunsets through Titan's hazes has revealed that this is not the case. "People had dreamed up rules for how planets would behave when seen in transit, but Titan didn't get the memo," said Mark Marley, a co-author of the study at NASA Ames. "It looks nothing like some of the previous suggestions, and it's because of the haze." The technique applies equally well to similar observations taken from orbit around any world, not just Titan. This means that researchers could study the atmospheres of planets like Mars and Saturn in the context of exoplanet atmospheres as well. |
For several years, Noah Hawley has dined out on the idea of interpreting Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1996 film, “Fargo,” as a television series. The concept has expanded into a unique anthology of idiosyncratic villains, endearing heroes and frozen landscapes. But with the third season, which concluded Wednesday, Mr. Hawley threaded something prescient into his pulp narratives: the current political discourse, in which basic concepts of reality are debated. As two of the season’s characters say to each other: “Those are facts.” “I got different facts.” In a phone interview, Mr. Hawley, who is currently writing a second season of “Legion,” discussed the Coen brothers’ work, Russia and the future of “Fargo.” Following are edited excerpts from the interview. The previous two seasons of “Fargo” felt more insular as crime stories; from the start of this one, when the German officer says, “We’re not here to tell stories; we’re here to tell the truth,” it seems immediately more political, addressing what’s happening in the world today. It wasn’t designed to be political. When I wrote that first hour, we weren’t yet in our post-truth world. It was always my intention in this season to try to deconstruct that opening sentence, “This is a true story.” More in a metaphysical way than in a political way — the whole idea that we start each hour with a lie, and that the events that we’re depicting are purported to be true. It was never intended to be a statement on our modern conundrum here. I just ran headlong into reality. |
Everything that the government has done so far, with a few minor detours, has been almost exclusively focused on maintaining home prices high, by tweaking either the supply or the demand side of the housing equation. As the bulk of consumer net wealth is concentrated in the housing sector, and a wealthy and confident consumer, much more so than the banking system, is critical to the recovery of America's economy, the Administration will do everything in its power to achieve its goal of artificially manipulating the housing market, thereby not causing an incremental loss of wealth to those still stuck with overpriced houses, while the real intersection of actual supply and demand curves would indicate a materially lower equilibrium price. This is ironic, as proper price discovery is critical for a true recovery, since Americans realize all too well that buying a house at prevailing levels in advance of the second down-leg in housing is senseless, the continued pursuit of such flawed policies by the Fed and President Obama merely pulls the market ever further away from its equilibrium, thereby making the anticipated second dip so much more likely and not that far off in the distant future. Below are 5 simple charts the highlight just how precarious the housing situation in the U.S. is, and how likely the second, and probably much more fierce, leg down in the markets is going to be. A bearish report by CIBC [fn] U.S. Housing - A Double Dip; Benjamin Tal and Meny Grauman, January 28[/fn]captures precisely the highly unstable system that U.S. housing has become, and deconstructs it along the five key axes of weakness which while individually may be controllable to a degree, combined represent a recipe for disaster. CIBC's main sources of concern arise from: Short-lived remedies; used by the administration to prevent further price deterioration (tax-credits); Shadow Inventory; in reality when accounting for the surging shadow inventory which very few dare talk about, the total number of available unit sdouble to over 8 million, representing a record high 16 months of supply. Strategic defaults; the amount of households with negative equity is roughly 10 million or about 20%, in 2009 25% of all foreclosures were strategic; as populist anger against banks accelerates look for strategic defaulits to keep rising Quantitative Easing expiring; This needs no introduction: the sole reason why mortgage rates have been as los as they have, has been due to the Fed's constant manpulation of the MBS market via the $1.4 trillion MBS/Agency QE purchase program. With this program set to expire in 2 months, rates are set to explode. House Prices are already entering a double dip; Previously we discussed the Case Shiller NSA home price index number which indicated that a double dip in prices has already commenced. A positive feedback loop will only lead to further deterioration here Analyzing CIBC's factors one by one: Short-lived remedies During the past year in which the program has been in effect, sales of existing homes have climbed by 15%, while new home sales have actually dropped by 5%. In fact, the usually stable sales ratio between the two has more than tripled, recently hitting a record high 18 (Chart 1). But after being extended once by the Obama Administration, this tax credit will expire at the end of April—putting downward pressure on demand for existing home sales. That prospect will make it more difficult to clear out the next wave of foreclosures, prompting another down leg in US house prices. Shadow Inventory the risk of a double dip in US home prices is not simply the result of properties being sold at “fire-sale” valuations, but also due to a deluge of shadow inventory coming onto the market. Although conventional inventories are trending lower, shadow inventories, capturing seriously delinquent and bank-owned properties, are just as large. There are close to two million mortgages that are more than 90 days delinquent, and nearly all of these will end up in foreclosure, given that over the past three years the “cure rate” of this category fell from 40% to less than one percent. Add to that the 2.3 million properties that are in foreclosure or already seized by banks, and total inventories (conventional and shadow) are now running at over 8 million units (Chart 2). At current sales rates, that adds up to a record high 16 months of supply. True, this “shadow” stock will not hit the market all at the same time as banks manage their supply of seized properties, but this constant flow is likely to keep markets depressed for a while. Strategic Defaults A big part of the problem is a still weak labour market, which has left a record 15 million Americans unemployed and another 9 million underemployed for economic reasons. However, just as significant is the roughly 10 million households in a negative home equity position of worse than -20%, for whom strategic default - failing to pay when one could - is a very real option. While negative equity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for default, it’s a clear risk; out of the 2 million or so foreclosures in 2009, roughly 25% were strategic (Chart 3). Quantitative Easing It’s not just inventories and tax credits that are looming large over the housing market, but also interest rates. Aggressive central banks’ rate cuts along with large amounts of agency MBS purchases by the Federal Reserve have lowered mortgage rates by over 100 bps since the height of the financial crisis. That spurred a refinancing boom, which, according to First American Corelogic, saved $2.3 billion in mortgage payments—a roughly 10% reduction—in 2009 alone. Although we don’t expect policymakers to raise the fed funds rate until 2011, mortgage rates have already started to head higher, and could keep climbing towards the end of the first quarter when the Fed’s $1.25 trillion agency MBS purchase program is completed. Those purchases made up almost 50% of all MBS issuance last year, and despite the improvements in the securitization market, their absence will likely have a material impact on rates (Chart 4). Price Double Dip In the final analysis, the end of unprecedented government tax support for housing, along with the looming overhang of supply and a higher cost of borrowing will keep new home building activity trudging along at historic lows over the next two years and could see prices drop again by 5-10% (Chart 5). And there you have it: the best that the government can hope for is to extend and pretend, and to avoid presenting the sad but very simple reality to the American public. Because lack of knowledge is half the battle. Alas, as long as the reset button is not pushed, the only beneficiaries are the very same Wall Street kleptocrats who want nothing more than further perpetuating the status quo. At this point nothing absent a complete socio-economic catharsis can help America; the rest is just Congressional hearings, angry presidential outbursts scripted on the teleprompter, and neverending smoke and mirrors. |
Virginia is one step closer to breaking ties with the country's monetary system. A proposal to study whether the state should adopt its own currency is gaining traction in the state legislature from a number of lawmakers as well as conservative economists. The state House voted 65-32 earlier this week to approve the measure, and it will now go to the Senate. While it’s unlikely that Virginia will be printing its own money any time soon, the move sheds light on the growing distrust surrounding the nation’s central bank. Four other states are considering similar proposals. In 2011, Utah passed a law that recognizes gold and silver coins issued by the federal government as tender and requires a study on adopting other forms of legal currency. Virginia Republican Del. Robert Marshall told FoxNews.com Tuesday that his bill calls for creation of a 10-member commission that would determine the “need, means and schedule for establishing a metallic-based monetary unit.” Essentially, he wants to spend $20,000 on a study that could call for the state to return to a gold standard. The gold standard is a system under which a country ties the value of its currency to gold, setting a fixed price at which gold can be bought or sold by the government. “We’re not going to be printing money with Dave Matthews or Jeff Davis on the front of it,” Marshall said, referring to two famous Virginians. Marshall said he wants to inject competition into the national economy and force the federal government to change its current policy – one he believes will lead to hyperinflation and instability. He also thinks Virginia should be armed with an alternative currency in case it comes under a cyber attack. Many of Marshall’s arguments are similar to ones made by the Tea Party. In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt suspended the gold standard to counter deflation brought on by the Great Depression. The country continued to exchange gold internationally until 1971 when President Richard Nixon ended the practice. Marshall’s commission would examine the impact of the Federal Reserve’s intervention in the banking and credit markets that have resulted in near-zero returns on savings accounts and retirement accounts. “We’re not immune from the consequences of human behavior,” Marshall said. “At some point there is going to be a dollar that breaks the camel’s back.” “This is like planning for the Titanic,” he said. Not everyone agrees. “He’s descending into serious la la land,” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Mark Sickles told FoxNews.com. Sickles said he doesn’t think Marshall’s plan will make it through the Senate. He said the state should not be shelling out thousands of dollars in taxpayer money for the study when there are other pressing problems like unemployment and cuts to higher education that need immediate attention. He argues that Virginia has held a triple-A bond rating with Moody's since 1938. While that's true, the state has been placed on the downgrade watch list three times. Last year, 11 states had considered bills involving the gold standard. The raft of negative public sentiment against the central banking system even caused Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to speak out against the idea during a series of lectures. "Since the gold standard determines the money supply, there is not much scope for the central bank to use monetary policy to stabilize the economy,” Bernanke said during a speech at George Washington University last year. "Under a gold standard, typically the money supply goes up and interest rates go down in a period of strong economic activity -- so that's the reverse of what a central bank would normally do today." |
Russia loads REMIX fuel into MIR research reactor 09 November 2016 Share Russia has started testing its new type of nuclear fuel, REMIX, at the MIR research reactor at the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors in Dimitrovgrad, which is in the Ulyanovsk region. Development of REMIX (from Regenerated Mixture) fuel is part of state nuclear corporation Rosatom's strategy to enable better use of recycled uranium and plutonium on an industrial scale in pressurized water reactors. Rostaom said on 3 November that REMIX fuel rods manufactured in July had been "immersed in the active zone" of MIR. A loop-type research reactor, MIR is designed mainly for testing fuel elements, fuel assemblies and other core components of different types of operating and promising nuclear power reactors. Loading of the REMIX fuel into MIR followed "lengthy and painstaking work" on preparing documentation for, and the production of, the fuel and fuel rods, Rosatom said. The first data from testing the fuel in MIR will include the "swelling, gassing and distribution of fission products and, of course, the isotopic composition of the used fuel rods," the head of innovation at the Khlopin Radium Institute, Andrey Belozub, said in the Rosatom statement. Use of the MIR research reactor is an "extremely important step", Rosatom said, towards full implementation of the project to introduce REMIX into the Russian fuel cycle. Rosatom announced in July that it had started pilot testing of REMIX at unit 3 of the Balakovo nuclear power plant, saying that the use of REMIX will increase the efficiency of uranium use in the nuclear industry. REMIX fuel is produced directly from a non-separated mix of recycled uranium and plutonium from reprocessing used fuel, with a low-enriched uranium (LEU, up to 17% U-235) make-up comprising about 20% of the mix. This gives fuel initially with about 1% Pu-239 and 4% U-235 which can sustain burn-up of 50 GWd/t over four years. The used REMIX fuel is then reprocessed and recycled again, after low-enriched uranium top up. The wastes (fission products and minor actinides) are vitrified, as today from reprocessing for mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel, and stored for geological disposal. REMIX fuel can be repeatedly recycled with 100% core load in current VVER-1000 reactors, and correspondingly reprocessed many times - up to five times according to Russian nuclear fuel manufacturer Tenex, so that with less than three fuel loads in circulation a reactor could run for 60 years using the same fuel, with LEU recharge and waste removal on each cycle. Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics |
Over the last months of his life, the singer was able to shake off late career doldrums and, despite his illness, find a final creative surge For more than a decade before his death David Bowie seemed to disappear. Beset by ill health after an on-stage heart attack in 2004, he largely withdrew into a life at home in New York, becoming a ghost in the city where he had lived for a quarter of a century. Yet as the world comes to terms with his death this week, admirers are digesting a remarkable late burst of creativity, a dramatic 18-month flourish capped by an apparently exquisitely well-crafted exit. At 69, Bowie reasserted himself both as a musician – Blackstar, the album released two days before his death, is topping charts around the world – and as a questing creative figure whose vision is still playing out on the New York theatre stage. How did Bowie pull this off from the penthouse duplex he shared with wife, Iman, and 15-year-old daughter, Lexi, in the Nolita section of downtown Manhattan? The singer’s encroaching frailty meant he kept his life local. The theatre where his play Lazarus is running is no more than a few minutes walk away; Magic Shop, the studio where he recorded albums Blackstar and The Next Day, is even closer, on Crosby Street. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Magic Shop recording studio in Manhattan where David Bowie recorded Blackstar Photograph: Hannes Bieger Each place would offer Bowie a last opportunity to work in the musical and theatrical worlds that he had specialised in amalgamating throughout his career. “He wasn’t any single thing,” longtime collaborator Mick Rock told the Guardian. “He was the great synthesizer.” The picture that has emerged over the past few days is of a man who was able to shake off late career doldrums and, in spite of declining health, find a final, focused burst of creativity. First, in 2013, came The Next Day, an album that was a stylistic tour of his career; then the V&A’s David Bowie Is – an exhibit of 300 objects of Bowie memorabilia revealing the consideration with which he had preserved the artefacts of his career; the play Lazarus, now set for London’s West End; and finally Blackstar, a jazz record that launched with a video that appears to anticipate his death. David Bowie: The Next Day – review Read more According to Bowie’s longtime producer Tony Visconti, Bowie had known since at least November that his cancer was terminal. But even in his final weeks, Bowie had no idea how little time was left and was talking about a Blackstar follow-up. Pictures from the opening night of Lazarus on 7 December last year showed Bowie still handsome and immaculate but possibly showing signs that he may have been unwell. Theatre producer Robert Fox, who worked with him on Lazarus, said Bowie never complained. “The work was great and working with him was wonderful but it wasn’t great that he wasn’t well. It was not good at all. Some days he just wasn’t able to be around, but whenever he could be, it [his cancer] didn’t interfere with his contribution. It was just horrible for him, rather than difficult for us.” Fox believed the work was not specifically coloured by Bowie’s sense of his own mortality. “The struggle with mortality goes on whether or not you’re unwell. People write about that stuff even when they’re in perfectly good health,” he said. But Fox, who helped Bowie find a director and cast the actors, concedes it must have had some effect. “He would talk about his illness only to the extent that it affected his work. Not in any other way. He never grumbled. But I don’t think he planned on not being around. He was optimistic that something (a treatment) would come along that meant that he could be.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest David Bowie arrives at the premiere of the musical Lazarus. Photograph: BR/ dana press/PA Bowie had been battling cancer for six months when he entered Magic Shop’s expansive studio facilities in January 2015 to record his 25th album. The studio, which has also been used by Coldplay and Arcade Fire, was already known to him; he had recorded much of his previous album The Next Day there. But instead of rock musicians, he brought seven demos to progressive jazz saxophonist Donny McCaslin. The sessions were short and light-hearted, typically running from 11am to 4pm over three sessions of a week through to March. James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem came in to add synths and percussion and the tracks were finished off in Visconti’s own studio in April. Visconti, who produced the album over the first few months of 2015, told Rolling Stone that Bowie showed up for some Blackstar sessions without eyebrows or hair after undergoing chemotherapy. “There was no way he could keep it a secret from the band,” he told the magazine. “But he told me privately and I really got choked up when we sat face to face talking about it.” Bowie’s affliction had not dulled his enthusiasm for work. “His energy was that of a very young person diving into everything with fearless joy and abandon,” said recent Bowie collaborator Maria Schneider, the orchestral-jazz composer. “Not to say he wasn’t serious. He was very clear about what he did and didn’t like.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lazarus, from David Bowie’s last album, Blackstar – video Annie-B Parson, of New York’s Big Dance Theater company, was the choreographer on the Lazarus musical and worked in close proximity with Bowie from September until the opening night in December. She said she did not know he was ill and did not think the actors knew either as they worked quickly to develop the show in a tiny studio at the New York Theater Workshop. But the director of the musical, Ivo van Hove, told her something that she only now realises the significance of. “At the beginning, he said this was the saddest piece he had ever worked on,” she said. “It’s deeply connected to death and a person contemplating his own existence from the first moment we see him.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Choreographer Annie-B Parson, founder of Big Dance Theater. Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images During rehearsals, Bowie sat quietly, elegantly dressed in grey sweater and white shirt, writing with a stub of pencil on a piece of paper. Physically, “all criss-crossed”, the choreographer noted, his slender arms and legs twisted about each other in concentration. Bowie would not intervene, but the creative team would get feedback. “He insisted on spectacle. What struck me was that Bowie was from some other place, he wasn’t of this planet and he was cool with that,” Parson said. It only occurred to her with hindsight that a person’s knowledge that they may have limited time left might fuel their creativity. Bowie was suddenly prolific, driven. “There was almost an insistence that he had so much to say. He needed to get out these songs in time. And he did,” she said. How performing Starman on Top of the Pops sent Bowie into the stratosphere Read more Speaking on Friday from Warsaw, van Hove said: “The first thing that struck me when I met in a room in New York with David and Enda [Walsh, Bowie’s co-writer on the piece] and they read it to me and played some of the music was the existential theme – life and death and is there life after death or can you go on living just in your mind or your imagination?” When Bowie told van Hove, in strictest confidence, in November 2014, that he had cancer and might not survive the project, the songs he was writing became deeper, especially Lazarus, the song of the eponymous musical and single. “It is like his testament,” said van Hove. Bowie’s creative surge was stunning. When he was feeling ill after treatment, he would stay away from rehearsals, but was intimately involved when in attendance and a genuine collaborator who thrived off his cohorts’ ideas, van Hove said. “He was private about the details of his health situation. I didn’t question him, but I knew he did not want to die. He was in a struggle for life during those 18 months,” he said. Some of the songs in the musical convey huge inner rage and a protest about violence in society, overlaid with poetry and layers of sound. “But in person he was always the perfect gentleman,” van Hove said. As Bowie became sicker, later in 2015, van Hove said he saw fear in his eyes. “He was fragile,” he said. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sophia Anne Caruso and Michael C Hall in a scene from David Bowie and Enda Walsh’s Lazarus. Photograph: Jan Versweyveld/AP After the opening night of Lazarus, Bowie had to sit down backstage with van Hove and Iman, exhausted after taking his bow. “I escorted him to his car and I somehow knew it was the last time I would see him.” Music video director Johan Renck was already thrilled to be working with his childhood hero last July on the title track of the diamond heist TV drama The Last Panthers that he had directed in England, when the British pop icon told him there was more to the tune they had just recorded. A lot more – a version that turned out to be Blackstar, the towering single from the album Bowie had been writing. “I flew from London to New York and met with him at his office in Soho to listen to the full track. He put his hand on my shoulder and said with a grin – ‘I must warn you, it’s 10 minutes long’. There was no way I could say no. He had this warmth and this infectious smile and I knew it would be an interesting journey,” Renck said. Lazarus review – Bowie's baffling starman lands off-Broadway Read more The two began a fiercely intense and, as it turned out, all too short collaboration. “Over Skype he said ‘I feel I have to tell you this. I’m very ill and I may not make it’. I had been in this playful mood, pitching ideas back and forth with him like giddy 12-year-olds and I was absolutely shocked. He said: ‘I don’t even know if by the time we shoot this video you will have to have a replacement for me to perform in it’,” Renck said. Bowie gave Renck no details of his cancer, only that he would be in cycles of treatment that meant he would have “my good periods and bad periods”, the director said. Bowie asked Renck not to tell a soul – this is the first time he has spoken publicly since Bowie’s death. When Bowie and Renck came to shoot the video for Blackstar in September and, in November, the next single Lazarus, the mood was exuberant. They shot Bowie performing for one day for each video and just five hours on those days in a studio in Brooklyn. That was all his health would take, Renck said. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dovid Bowie as Button Eyes in the Lazarus video. Photograph: handout/Handout Bowie wanted it to feature an isolated village, then Renck came up with the idea of rituals that mixed the occult with a celebration of life. Bowie also wanted a scarecrow in the video, Renck said, and sent Renck his sketch for the macabre character Button Eyes that he plays in both videos. The sketch showed a bandaged head, buttons for eyes and just a small strip of a Mohawk for hair. “Bowie didn’t know if he would have hair left by the time of the shoot,” said Renck. In fact he did, a splendid shock of silvery grey hair – though he had to be careful or it came out in tufts because of his cancer treatment. David Bowie: Blackstar review – a spellbinding break with his past Read more Unlike the sweeping anthem Blackstar, Renck described Lazarus as a little gem. Bowie reappears as Button Eyes, tormented on a hospital bed. “I just thought of it as the Biblical tale of Lazarus rising from the bed. In hindsight, he obviously saw it as the tale of a person in his last nights,” said Renck. While working, Bowie talked of his family but kept himself quite private, while being very easygoing and friendly with the small crew that worked on the intimate shoot. He would arrive so suave in suit and fedora and sip cups of tea, Renck said, Despite the warning, he did not realise the star was so gravely ill because he seemed so spritely while shooting. He would get tired and take breaks, Renck said, but he seemed so happy. The video of Lazarus shows Button Eyes and also Bowie’s other “character”, a dancer in a slick suit, gyrating in classic Bowie camp style then writing frenetically, a man desperately running out of time. Finally the figure retreats into a wardrobe and shuts the doors behind him. It’s haunting but also witty, mocking death, Renck said. “So British, the wit, like a guilt thing, making sure it’s not coming across as too serious or pretentious – and yet that enhances the humanity of it.” Renck and Bowie also agreed that the joke was that the star, legendary for his gender-bending and fluid sexuality, was going “back into the closet”. “The closet, or coffin, if you will,” said Renck. |
According to The Washington Post, the Federal Communication Commission has just abandoned a 2013 proposal to finally drop the ban on using cell phones on airplanes. The proposal was introduced by then-chairman Tom Wheeler, and his argument was that new airplane technology had negated old concerns that people had about phones interfering with pilot equipment. Now, though, current FCC chairman Ajit Pai has decided not to move forward with that proposal, calling it “ill-conceived.” Though the timing may suggest that it’s part of a United-backed conspiracy to prevent people from filming its goons roughing up passengers, the decision reportedly has nothing to do with that. In Pai’s own words, he says reversing the proposal is “a victory for Americans” who “value a moment of quiet at 30,000 feet.” Basically, he’s putting his foot down and keeping outdated rules in place to create a small paradise free from what he perceives as the tyranny of cell phone use, and we’re all just supposed to ignore the fact that there’s no technological reason to keep your phones off while in flight. Advertisement As the Washington Post piece points out, this proposal was unpopular even under Wheeler, which is why he never did anything with it. Apparently, pilots and flight attendants pushed back hard against the proposal, explaining that annoying phone calls would bother passengers and make it harder for them to do their jobs. |
The deputy chairman of a Swedish-Turkish association has resigned after derogatory comments he made about Armenians last week. Barbaros Leylani, who called for death "to Armenian dogs" at a Stockholm rally, apologized Monday on the association's website saying he'd been misunderstood. Swedish legal watchdog Juridikfronten said it had reported the speech for incitement to racial hatred to police and an Armenian association says it also plans to make a police report. Tensions remain high between Turkey and Armenia over the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, widely viewed by genocide scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey denies genocide, saying the toll has been inflated, and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest. |
I recently learned that I could never make it as an NFL scout or coach. Now to be fair, I already strongly suspected this, given my lack of real football knowledge and experience. But those are mere details. Now I KNOW I could never do it. Why? Because I just spent roughly six hours re-watching the Chiefs offense in 2012. Even worse, I spent roughly six hours re-watching the Chiefs PASSING offense in 2012. Good God, what a mess. I feel a little bit like I used to after a three-week bender: exhausted, dirty, and with a vague feeling that I've done something illegal but won't remember what it was until I get arrested. Why subject myself to the abuse? Well, I'm a guy who just can't let a question hang in the air. And there are questions about the offense. DOES Jonathan Baldwin suck? What does the future hold for Jeff Allen and Donald Stephenson? DID Steve Breaston deserve to get benched? Who was worse, Matt Cassel or Brady Quinn (even I may stay away from that one)? Why exactly is Cyrus Gray awesome? And on it on it goes... I don't care about the fact that he was "overdrafted." I think he's got some skills that are very, very useful. Not everyone agrees. I want to answer some of those questions this offseason because... uh... what else are we gonna do around here? And first in my mind is the question of Dexter McCluster. Full disclosure: I'm a Dex fan. I like what he brings to the table. I don't care about the fact that he was "overdrafted." I think he's got some skills that are very, very useful. Not everyone agrees. Such is the way of things. But his ho-hum production last year had me a tad worried. Now don't get me wrong, I don't think that 52 catches for 452 yards is TERRIBLE by any means. But it falls short of what I'd like to see from a guy who is supposed to be a playmaker. I've heard it said he's not really a playmaker. I've heard it said he's just not that good. And on the flip side, I've heard it said he was open last year and was often the victim of garbage QB play and coaching. The truth likely lies somewhere in middle, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to look into it. Thanks to AP user jmcgoblue and NFL Rewind for access to the all-22 film. What that means (for those who don't know) is that I can see the WHOLE field when re-watching games, not just what the TV broadcast shows. It's a MARVELOUS tool for examining the WR/QB dynamic, and I decided to start with Dex. Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports The Process First, a word on what I was looking for. I focused on Dexter on passing downs (and occasionally on rushing downs). I wanted to answer a few questions... 1) How does Dex look as a route runner from the slot, and what kinds of routes was he running? 2) How often was Dex open? Were there times that he should have gotten the ball and didn't that took away from his overall production? 3) How much was Dex affected by poor throws by our quarterbacks? (I know, I know, no way that happened with our QBs, amirite? Guys?) 4) What are my overall impressions of Dex as a receiver/blocker, and how do I feel he should be used in Andy Reid's offense? I decided to take general notes and quantify two things: "times open and missed," and "times open and hampered by the throw." Times Open And Missed- I want to be clear that I'm aware every quarterback is going to miss the open guy from time to time. That's football. Nobody's perfect (except for Horseface if you ask Broncos fans, but I digress). Also, many plays a player could MAYBE be called open, but it's borderline. Or a player was open, but he was only a yard in front of the line of scrimmage on 3rd an 10. To take those things into account, I didn't count plays I felt were borderline, when the QB was under heavy pressure, when the QB passed to a different OPEN receiver, or when Dex was open within three yards of the line of scrimmage. Times Open And Hampered By The Throw- Here, I quantified the number of times Dex was open and was thrown to, but a terrible throw ruined the play. These ranged from "he had to stop and therefore didn't get the YAC he could have" to "he was wide open, would've scored a TD, and had the ball go three yards over his outstretched hands" (yes, that happened more than once). I ended up watching every route Dex ran in 12 games, along with a couple dozen plays where he was blocking in the secondary on a running play. I ended up at 332 route-running snaps total. So I feel I got a large enough sample size to judge what was going on. So let's look at the numbers (both Dex's and the ones I came up with), then move onto more general observations (Long side note. Watching those snaps, it was weird seeing how Brady Quinn and Matt Cassel could both completely suck yet do it in unique ways. Don't get me wrong, both of them stared down their primary for too long, but Matt was especially "good" at being bad in this way. And Quinn, when he HAD an open receiver, would almost always hesitate for an extra second or two. Long story short, the quarterbacks were TERRIBLE. Moving on...) Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports The Stats As mentioned, Dex had 52 catches for 452 yards this year ata 8.7 YPC average. He averaged 4.2 YAC (yards after catch) per reception, and also had 12 rushes for 70 yards at 5.8 a clip.. Neither are earth-shattering, obviously. ESPN has Dex targeted 78 times, whereas PFF has Dex targeted 70 times. I have no idea who to believe. The difference that would make in catch percentage is pretty big, going from about 67 percent to 74 percent. If you go by PFF's (which we have to do if we want to quickly compare to other players under their stats), Dex was 6th in the league in "percentage of passes caught" when thrown at. This kind of flies in the face of the current "dude drops everything" meme around AP. Anyways, onto the stats I counted during my journey into the dregs of a crappy season. Times Open And Missed- 41 (yes, you read that correctly...41) Might as well start with the most "seriously?" stat. Now again, no quarterback is perfect, I totally get that. But these were not "kind of" misses. These were "I need to close my laptop and walk away after seeing that" misses. I actually woke up one of my kids yelling at my computer, forgetting that the game I was viewing had been played months ago. That's how bad these misses were. And for the record, many of those misses were on plays that could have netted the Chiefs at least 10-15 yards of offense. Several were fly routes where he'd completely burned the CB and there was NO safety help over the top. Times Open And Hampered By The Throw- 11 This was actually lower than I expected when I started out. Doesn't make them not costly, though. Looking back at my notes, these particular plays cost the Chiefs over 150 yards of offense and at the very least two touchdowns. It's amazing what a difference it makes when a WR has to stop and wait for the ball while on a crossing route, especially when he's got three steps on a pursuing linebacker. A play goes from a 20 yard gain to a five yard gain. And once again, I was being kind here by not including at least a dozen more throws I thought of as "borderline." Watching the tape, I was stunned (well, maybe "stunned" is the wrong word. It's not like it was any big surprise that the QBs sucked) at how much offense the Chiefs left on the table when it came to Dex. Dude could've had another 400 yards receiving. And that's with him running routes that he shouldn't be running a large part of the time. But we'll move into that in a second. Overall, the stats I found make me really wonder if Dex couldn't have done a TON more for the Chiefs last year, and if he can't do more than "middling" stats this upcoming season. Supposedly Alex Smith can "see the field." Well, if that's the case, maybe Dex won't miss out on 41 opportunities this next year. Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports Film Observations -Dex is a really willing and able blocker in the running game. In fact, short of Bowe (who is just SO much more overpowering) he was far and away the best run blocking WR. The problem he had in pass pro as a RB was that he was trying to block guys who outweigh him by almost a hundred pounds and who LOVE contact. Against CBs, he was more often than not too physical for them (no, not a typo). It's almost comical in a sense, since those guys still outweigh him by 20-40 pounds. But you can just see that most CBs shy away from contact. I suppose, in a sense, Dex has always HAD to be a physical player to make it at his size. He's a real asset in that department. -(An in the moment note I made following an awful throw against the Falcons)- "Dex went R to L across the middle in a shallow route. Clearly had a couple of steps on an ILB, and any kind of decent pass yields a TD, as the only other CB in position to make a tackle had Bowe on him. Pass is literally 5 yards behind him. Oh well, who needs touchdowns?" -(Another in-game note following Dex's injury)- "Quick out to the R from the slot. Dex has TONS of room for YAC and an awful pass sends him leaping in the air for the ball. He lands awkwardly and injures his arm. That's a big gainer if 99 percent of NFL QBs are making the throw, and Dex isn't in a giant casty-looking thing for weeks. I hate everything." -Dex is really, really quick. I mean, freakishly quick. The problem was that on many routes he was running, the route looked for "speed" more than "quicks." Posts, corner routes, and fly routes do not take advantage of Dex's greatest strength -- his ability to cut incredibly quickly. He was running WAY too many routes like that this last year. If we want to get the most out of Dex, 90 percent of his routes should be short outs, ins, and comebacks. He's just way, way too quick to stay with on those routes, particularly when he throws in a fake (as in fakes an out and then cuts back in). -One area Dex falls short is schoolyard football, when the planned route doesn't get him open and the QB needs to get rid of the ball. Dwayne Bowe is EXCEPTIONAL in those situations. He's great at coming back to the ball and presenting the QB with an easy opening to get the ball into. Dex trusts his routes too much, and he needs to learn when to break off the route and get to an open area. He's also less adept than I'd like at finding those open areas against zone coverage. Again, he trusts the route too much. Hopefully he watches more of Bowe and sees why Bowe has managed to produce despite garbage QB play all these years. -Dex is so-so against the press. Sometimes he did an excellent job bouncing off or around the defender and then getting open very quickly. Others times he'd struggle to get away from the defender and be slowed way down. He's no Jonathan Baldwin, though. I'm very sad to say that my limited views of Baldwin were... well, let's just say I won't be stunned if he doesn't make it. Dex is significantly better at beating a press despite being about half JB's size. It's almost sad, really. Sigh... -Dex, when he ends up against LBs, is open within about half a second. Way, way, way too quick for them. That needs to be exploited more somehow. -Remember that game-losing interception against the Steelers on MNF? Yeah, Dex was coming open on a post route on the same side of the field that the QB was looking. Oh well, not like it cost the Chiefs the game or anything... -In case anyone thinks it was just Matt Cassel that was missing Dex when he was open, it wasn't. The Browns game featured four separate times Dex was wide open with running room over 10 yards beyond the line of scrimmage. Two of the times he would've had at least 30 yards. Remember when we thought Quinn might be an upgrade? Yeah, me too. Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports Conclusions You know, when Dex was switched to slot WR before last year started, I was nervous. After a year in which his contributions were middling at best, I was still a little nervous. After watching over 300 of his routes? I'm not nervous at all. Dex can play slot WR, and play it well. He needs two things to contribute more to the offense: 1) A coach who doesn't send him downfield multiple times a game. He needs to stick with multiple-cut routes between 5-15 yards of the line of scrimmage. Sure, every now and then he should pull a double move to keep CBs honest, but 90 percent of the time I want to see him cutting rather than sprinting. I'll say it again, CBs and (especially) LBs cannot stick with him through multiple cuts. 2) A quarterback who can both RECOGNIZE the open man and DELIVER the ball to him in stride (and yes, we're in Captain Obvious" mode at this point, but bear with me). If those two things had happened consistently last year, his production doubles. Guys like him (who are best served in shorter routes) are peculiarly dependent on QBs leading them and allowing them the chance at YAC. Now, can those things happen in Andy Reid's offense, with Alex Smith throwing him the ball? Sure. In fact, the Chiefs may have stumbled into the system that fits him best. To take the advice of one of AP's newest newbs, I'm gonna hang positive and think that things are finally gonna break Dex's way this next year. More reading: Chiefs listening to offers for Branden Albert? Sean Smith is a perfect fit for the Chiefs defense Geoff Schwartz is a guard who can play tackle Steve Maneri isn't coming back NFL free agency grades List of all the Chiefs free agents |
In the next branch of Haskell Platform we’ll be adding and removing packages from the specification for the first time. The Haskell Platform steering committee will make recommendations for additions and removals based on individual proposals to add and remove packages from the list. It is hard to come up with “notability” criteria for why a package should be added or removed. There are many competiting reasons why people use the Haskell Platform, and what packages they need. The goal though should be an almost fully automated criteria for determining when a package should be added, based on objective data. Then, combined with strategic and other concerns, packages will be added or, sometimes, removed. Possible Criteria for Notability A quick list of possible criteria by which to evaluate whether a package is “blessed”: How popular is the package in Hackage downloads? How many packages depend on it? Do any applications of note depend on it? Does it meet a stated end-user need? Do similar systems include such a library (e.g. Python)? Is it portable? Does it add additional C libraries? Does it follow the package versioning system? Is the code of good quality? Does it have a good development history? Is it on hackage? Does it provide haddock documentation? Does it come with examples? Does it have a test suite? Does it have a maintainer? Does it in turn require new Haskell dependencies? Does it have a simple/configure-based Cabal build? Does it conflict/compete with existing functionality? Does it reuse existing types? Does it follow the hierarchical naming conventions? Is it -Wall clean? Have declared correctness or performance statements? Is it BSD licensed? Is it thread-safe? A Point System One way of determining notability for a package would be to use a points system against an agreed-upon set of such criteria. Does anyone know of similar examples, or would like to code up some programs to experiment with these ratings? Distro Page Rank Another source of raw data may well be a sort of “Page Rank” across unix distros for how often a package is used. On the Arch Linux distribution, we have 3 level support for Haskell. In the core system some Haskell apps and tools are provided in binary form. In the “community” binary repo there are yet more packages. Finally, in the user-contributed repository are around 1300 other packages (~90% of Hackage). Does your distro have popularity statistics? Could you determine the top 100 Haskell package by vote? Most Popular Packages in Arch Linux Some users install packages with the ‘yaourt’ tool, and some of those users opt in to voting when they install. Here’s the top 100 packages sorted by votes in Arch Linux, with those that are in the Haskell Platform already, indicated: Now, one of the other constraints on the Haskell Platform is sustainable growth. We can’t add 1000 packages tomorrow and hope to maintain quality. Instead, something like 10-20% growth per release cycle seems plausible. This would mean adding 4 to 9 new packages. If we were to judge only on download popularity, the 10 new packages would be: Now, one of the other constraints on the Haskell Platform is sustainable growth. We can’t add 1000 packages tomorrow and hope to maintain quality. Instead, something like 10-20% growth per release cycle seems plausible. This would mean adding 4 to 9 new packages. If we were to judge only on download popularity, our first 5 new packages would be: Merely because one killer app, darcs, depends on them, and so they are widely built (they may also fail to satisfy many of the other critieria noted above). If we ignore those packages popular for being dependencies, we get a different top 5: Now we’re getting there. pandoc is both a library and a popular app, so we might treat it specially. gtk2hs is very popular, but not cabalised, so we might also set that aside, leaving (and I’ll ignore ghc-paths as it is used by ghc): Which is starting to look like a plausible list. In turn however, you can find fault with all these packages in various dimensions (utf8-string may be obsoleted by Data.Text, haxml is LGPL licensed). Coming up with an obvious list is non-trivial! Finally, this is clearly only one very small data set, which should only have a small influence. If we step over an look at the Hackage download statistics, sorted by popularity, our top 5 new packages would be: Popularity by Category If instead we thought that having a comprehensive library set was the key goal, we may choose to include libraries via category, no matter how popular in the global list. This would yield, according to Hackage, For example. What Is The Decision Model? So how do we decide what goes in? One model would be: Have people propose packages Sort them by category need Identify the top rank package in each category using a points system or page rank Add or remove packages based on this? What do you think? What is a good way to decide when a package is sufficiently notable to add to the Haskell Platform? What critieria would you use to determine when a package is blessed? Advertisements |
Steve Bannon (Photo: Screen capture) Julia Jones, a longtime collaborator with top White House political strategist Steve Bannon, has revealed that Bannon deeply admired the work of notorious Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. Speaking with the New Yorker about Bannon’s past career as a filmmaker, Jones said that her former screenwriting partner was very taken with Riefenstahl’s films, which included the famous Nazi propaganda movie The Triumph of the Will. “Her playbook was key for him,” said Jones, who co-wrote the script with Bannon for the pro-Reagan documentary In the Face of Evil. “I think he used her technique of fear, which you can see in that movie.” In addition to his Reagan documentary, Bannon’s other films include an anti-Baby Boomer movie called Generation Zero and a pro-Sarah Palin documentary called The Undefeated, which released in 2011, one year before Bannon became executive chairman of Breitbart News. |
Geno Smith made his first, and quite possibly last, start of the season for the Jets. He did better than expected, although it ended in tragedy as he left the game in the second quarter with a leg injury that was later diagnosed as a torn ACL. Let’s see how he did: Good Geno: 1) The defense is in a two deep safety look for a change, and the Jets come out with four receivers and a RB out of the backfield. The pre-snap read on this shows man coverage, with a tight coverage towards the right of the formation. If you look at the left side of the formation, you will notice that the defenders are playing back on this play, which means there is a better chance of a completion to this side. Geno Smith makes the right read and immediately attacks this side of the field, completing the pass to Robby Anderson. This is just a great pre-snap read, which was refreshing after weeks of seeing Ryan Fitzpatrick ignore pre-snap reads consistently. This is also the result of the speed of Anderson, because this is great respect for a rookie WR. 2) The defense is again in a two deep safety look, which if you read these articles on a consistent basis, is pretty rare for this offense. The Jets have the same set up as the above play, with one receiver to the right of the formation, and three receivers to the left of the formation. The pre-snap read on this play is again to Robby Anderson because he gets the most space between himself and the defender, and Geno Smith looks at him correctly. Anderson runs a good “pick” route, freeing up Brandon Marshall for the pass. This is a beautiful read and pass by Geno Smith, exploiting the weakness in the defense. This is just a great example of reading the defense at the pre-snap read and throwing a beautiful pass. 3) The defense is again in two deep safety look, and the Ravens have good coverage on this play. The pre-snap read on this play shows that the best chance of completion seems to be either of the outside receivers, but they have great coverage on this play. Geno Smith does a good job of recognizing the coverage and decides to run up the middle. Part of the spread system relies on the ability of a QB to move up field and run for positive yards, and Geno does well on this play. Fitzpatrick has taken advantage of this in the past year or so as well, so it’s encouraging to see Geno take advantage of this situation. No Help: 1) The defense is in a single high safety look on third down here. The pre-snap read on this play shows man coverage, with the only person to have a defender far off the line of scrimmage is Charone Peake. Geno Smith correctly surmises the situation, and looks for Charone Peake on this play and throws a good pass to him, but it’s dropped. It’s not a perfect pass by any means, but Peake does get two hands on the ball, and it’s dropped. This is a situation where Geno Smith reads the defense perfectly in terms of pre-snap reads but it fails here because Peake could not catch the ball cleanly. This play is about 80% fault on Charone Peake, while 20% fault on Geno Smith. 2) The defense is in a two safety look, although the second safety is moving up later in the play. The read on this play is absolutely beautiful knowing the WR routes, because Smith realizes that Marshall will have a one on one coverage down the field. Watch the attention garnered to Robby Anderson on this play, with two guys running back towards him. If you read the past film reviews, he usually has man coverage with teams conceding that he will run by them but the QB can not hit him deep. Notice Geno working through his progressions as well, looking at the middle of the field to hold the safety before passing to Marshall. This is another pass that has to be caught because this is a big yards after the catch opportunity. Sidekick Power: 1) The defense is in a two safety look again, on a second and 18 play for the Jets, with the Jets showing four receivers. The pre-snap read on this indicates that the right side of the formation shows the best opportunity for a completed pass, as the LB on Enunwa is off the line, and the defender on Anderson is further back as well. Those are the two receivers that end up open on this play as well. This is just a great read by Geno Smith, but it’s a better play by Quincy Enunwa, running after the catch for a great TD. Countless times in the 20 games, the Jets continually go against the pre-snap reads, so it’s really refreshing to see a QB make the correct reads because he’s taking advantage of what the defense is conceding. Ge-No: 1) The defense is in single high safety, and the Ravens make late adjustments to this blitz. Geno Smith looks at Brandon Marshall, and throws a back shoulder pass to him, but misses the throw. The pre-snap read on this indicates that the play was to the right of the formation with Robby Anderson, but Geno ignores that side of the field. This is just a bad throw to Brandon Marshall, since he was in a good position for a back shoulder pass. There is some questionable contact on this play by the defender but this has to be a better read and throw by Geno Smith. 2) The defense is in a two safety look, and as you recognize, is probably the last play for Geno Smith this season. The pre-snap read on this play is tricky because the Ravens make late movements on this play, throwing off the coverage. Prior to the late movement, the defender to the left of the formation was off the line of scrimmage, along with Robby Anderson on the right side of the field. Geno is looking towards his left side as his first read, but the Ravens bring a blitz from the right side forcing him to the left of the formation. This is just a bad read by Geno Smith, failing to recognize the coverage. The second best thing to do on this play was to throw to away the ball, but Smith tries to make something out of nothing and gets injured. Conclusion: Geno Smith looked the best at QB for the Jets since the Buffalo game with Ryan Fitzpatrick. He made good reads and made good throws, but was victimized by a couple of drops. It’s sad for the Jets because the start of the game indicated that Geno Smith had actually improved at the mental aspect of the game in terms of pre-snap reads. It’s a shame that they don’t get to see him progress more. Geno Smith Grade: B- Forum Questions: A) Where do you think Geno Smith lands in free agency? B) What did you feel about his performance before the injury? |
Teachers walk the picket line as they strike outside Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington September 9, 2015. REUTERS/Matt Mills McKnight By Eric M. Johnson SEATTLE (Reuters) - Seattle teachers and support staff marched in picket lines on Wednesday during what was supposed to be the first day of school, waging their first such strike in three decades after contract talks between the district and union failed. The 5,000-member Seattle Education Association had voted unanimously on Sept. 3 to strike on the first day of school for some 53,000 students in almost 100 public schools if an agreement could not be reached for a tentative contract, said union spokesman Rich Wood. The two sides remained at loggerheads over several key issues after extended talks collapsed late Tuesday, including teacher pay increases, teacher evaluations and the length of the school day. Picketing would continue on Thursday, Wood said. "Our message is that we are ready to go back into the classroom as soon as we can get a fair agreement," striking chemistry teacher Mark Landreville said at Roosevelt High School. The strike comes after Washington's top court ruled last week that state charter schools are illegal and, in a separate ruling last month, fined the state $100,000 per day for failing to put forward a plan to fully fund education. Teachers in the southeastern city of Pasco voted Monday night to continue a strike there and to defy a judge's order to go back to work, Wood said. Seattle Public Schools offered a proposed contract that included $62 million in wage increases, staff increases for special education and 30 minutes of additional instructional time after two years, said district spokeswoman Stacy Howard. This is still far short of the $172 million in increases sought by the union, she said. As of Wednesday, Howard said the union was demanding pay increases of 15.3 percent over two years plus state-paid cost-of-living increases, while the district sought increases of 14 percent over three years, plus those price allowances. It also agreed over the weekend to a union proposal that assures 30 minutes of recess, Howard and Wood said. But the union said the district was insisting on extending the school day by 30 minutes without paying teachers and staff for their time, and that teachers have seen about six years without a cost-of-living pay increase, even as Seattle has seen skyrocketing rents, Wood said. The city said it was holding all-day camps at several community centers to help parents with child care. (Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Bill Trott) |
When I first reported Henry Waxman’s comments that the House and Senate would conference informally on the health care bill and then pass amendments back and forth between chambers rather than have a formal conference, I really didn’t consider it a big deal. It wasn’t even the main part of my story. But many other news organizations picked up on it, calling it a “freeze-out” of Congressional Republicans. I really don’t understand the logic here. A formal conference committee doesn’t really give the kind of input to the minority party that the AP imputes above. When Republicans controlled Congress, they routinely used the conference committee to strip out anything laudable from bills that was passed through the various chambers. Here’s just one example from former Senator Jim Jeffords: “As we began 2001, I was hopeful. With a 50-50 U.S. Senate, I expected that moderates would be a strong force and that bipartisanship would prevail. At first, this seemed true. Moderate senators from both parties worked together to make significant changes to the president’s budget when it was considered in early April. We were able to reduce the size of the tax cut from $1.6 trillion to $1.25 trillion and to add $450 billion for education. But when we sent that bill to the House-Senate conference committee, all our work, including the $450 billion for education, was stripped out of the final compromise. There were no moderates on the conference committee; it was totally controlled by the Republican leadership and the White House. More than simply disappointing, the events were a clear signal to me that the Republican leadership had no intention of working with the moderate wing of the party. Something radical needed to happen.” Democrats are foregoing a conference committee for two reasons – to quicken the process on the front end (Republicans would have been able to delay the management of a formal conference committee for a few weeks) and to allow for flexibility between the proposals between the House and Senate, with the possibility of adding new compromise items. I have problems with Congress basically bypassing its own ethics reform law so new provisions can be air-dropped into a reconciled bill, and that’s why larger bills pretty much have opted for ping-ponging instead of conference committees. But that’s not really to cut Republicans out of the deal. They’ve made every intention known that they’re not voting for the bill anyway, and they would be outvoted in a conference committee regardless. That to me is just whining. I think C-SPAN’s request to televise negotiations between the House and Senate on the health care bill is laudable, but let’s be honest, it’s probably not going to happen. Many progressives are concerned that a back-room negotiation will cut them out of any dealmaking. The proper answer to that is for them to make it publicly known that they won’t vote for a bill without certain items. With such a narrow margin for error, this would have the effect of opening up the negotiations and forcing them to be carried out in public. So it’s not like progressives in Congress don’t have options. They’d certainly have plenty of backup. Health Care for America Now, the lead coalition of reform advocates, is clearly standing behind the House bill and even running ads along those lines. Any Democrat in the House or Senate could run with these proposals and demand their inclusion or else their vote is not assured. The response would be a one-way ticket to the negotiating table. 1. MAKE GOOD HEALTH CARE AFFORDABLE Low and middle income families must be able to afford health insurance, and employers must be asked to provide good health coverage for their employees so health care is affordable at work. Health care should not be paid for with a tax on health benefits. 2. HOLD INSURANCE COMPANIES ACCOUNTABLE If the insurance companies win, we lose. Insurance companies must be held accountable with strong regulations and consumer protections, and we must be given the choice of a national public health insurance option available on day one across the United States. Those aren’t the only areas, there are quite literally dozens of major discrepancies between the House and Senate bills, and on most counts the House’s is superior. I encourage you to read this report from the House Tri-Committee detailing all the differences, including some things I had previously missed. Just as an example, the Senate bill grandfathers in all employer plans offering their existing level of coverage, even if it falls well below the minimum benefit guarantee. The House bill gives employers five years to improve their coverage, and that’s it. The fact that leadership put out this document suggests they know well what needs defending in the House bill, and while they’re unlikely to get all of it, there will certainly be a negotiation. So there will be negotiations aimed at reconciling the two bills, beginning today with a leadership meeting. And because of the nature of the party-line vote, virtually everyone who voted for the bill previously will have a chance to shape that negotiation. It’s all a matter of what they’re willing to do to get what they want. UPDATE: David Waldman has some related thoughts. |
The love of a pet may be priceless to some, but not to this family - they bargained off their beloved puss for a cool $155,000. Melbourne family the Percevals were selling their home at auction when bidding closed at a fraction under the $2.3 million reserve price. During negotiations with the potential buyer, it was revealed one of their children had fallen in love with Tiffany, the Perceval's cat, during inspections of the house. "Tiffany decided she would sit on the couch," said Fran Perceval. "People would come through and she'd observe them and be patted. She loved all the attention - she does look a bit ornamental." Tiffany lived up to her lavish name and paid the ultimate price for her attention-seeking. The buyers agreed to increase their bid by $155,000 and buy the house - but only if the cat was chucked into the deal. The Percevals obliged. It was heart-breaking news for 19-year-old son Sam, who bought Tiffany from a pet shop. "She was at the pet shop, the last of the litter, and he felt sorry for her," Perceval said. "We're thinking we'll put $20,000 in a pile next to the cat and say to Sam, you choose." They'll be sad to see Tiffany go, she said. But the Percevals will still have their two dogs, two rabbits and a fish to keep them company, and a whole lot of extra cash to spend. "We're an animal-friendly family... She's a bit of a princess. She's beautiful to look at. "She's an expensive cat, but she's our cat. It is quite difficult to part with her." Real estate agent Glen Coutinho had never haggled with animals before, and said Tiffany was the last bargaining chip he had. "We offered [the buyers] a few TVs and a trampoline and a bar fridge to try and get them up to the price. At the end of the negotiation I just said, 'what else do you want', and they said we'll take the cat." The contract stipulated the family could have kept Tiffany and left a similar cat, but the Percevals chose to leave her as a show of good faith. "They said we think the cat is more attached to the house than it is to us, so let's leave it for them in good faith. "They thought the cat would run home anyway. Every time they had taken it somewhere it had run back. They thought when they bought a house not far from there the cat would just jump the fence and go back again." |
Louisiana's Premiere Boudin Event !!! Downtown Lafayette in Parc Sans Souci -- Saturday, Oct. 20, 2018 - 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM FULL SCHEDULE - October 20 10:00 Cook-Off Ticket Sales/Boudin Sampling Begin --- EAT! FREE Face Painting -- FREE Fun Jumps -- FREE Games w/prizes Bake Sale Begins Hand Pie Sales Cast Your Vote for "People's Choice" (until 3:30) The Specklers - Center Stage 11:30 Boudin Ball Eating Contest (stage left) - The only one in the state!!! Sign-Up for Boudin Eating Contest 12:00 Alligator Blue - Center Stage 1:30 Boudin Eating Contest (stage left) 1:30 FREE Ice Cream Sandwiches (stage right) 2:00 The Babineaux Sisters (Center Stage) 3:30 People's Choice Voting Closes 4:00 Winners Announced (Un-Linked/Specialty Category, Best Boudin, and People's Choice) LIVE MUSIC FROM: Sample Boudin From Across Louisiana at this Family-Friendly Event! As Always: Free Fun Jumps, Free Face Painting, Boudin Eating Contest, Free Games w/ Prizes, Free Entertainment, Unique Photo Opportunities, Free Ice Cream Sandwiches BOUDIN BALL EATING CONTEST (the one and only) BOUDIN EATING CONTEST The sample tickets (also good for drinks) are 8 for $5.. E-Mail: Linksters@boudinlink.com --OR-- Connect with us on: Entry form for 2018 Boudin Cook-Off: SPONSORED AND SUPPORTED BY: See Past Event Photos & Winners (Here) |
Like humans, Polistes fuscatus paper wasps recognize individuals by their unique facial patterns. This photo shows a paper wasp queen on an early nest. Credit: Michael SheehanANN ARBOR—Though paper wasps have brains less than a millionth the size of humans’, they have evolved specialized face-learning abilities analogous to the system used by humans, according to a University of Michigan evolutionary biologist and one of her graduate students. “Wasps and humans have independently evolved similar and very specialized face-learning mechanisms, despite the fact that everything about the way we see and the way our brains are structured is different,” said graduate student Michael Sheehan, who worked with evolutionary biologist Elizabeth Tibbetts on the face-recognition study. “That’s surprising and sort of bizarre.” The study marks the first time that any insect has demonstrated such a high level of specialized visual learning, said Sheehan, lead author of a paper on the topic scheduled for online publication in the journal Science on Thursday, Dec. 1. In earlier research, Tibbetts showed that paper wasps (Polistes fuscatus) recognize individuals of their species by variations in their facial markings and that they behave more aggressively toward wasps with unfamiliar faces. In 2008, Sheehan and Tibbetts published a paper in Current Biology demonstrating that these wasps have surprisingly long memories and base their behavior on what they remember of previous social interactions with other wasps. In their latest study, Sheehan and Tibbetts tested learning by training wasps to discriminate between two different images mounted inside a T-maze, with one image displayed at each end of the top arm of the T. Polistes fuscatus paper wasps have extremely variable facial patterns that they use to recognize each other as individuals. This montage displays some of the variation seen in female paper wasp faces in this species. Credit: Michael SheehanTwelve wasps were trained for 40 consecutive trials on each image type. The paired images included photos of normal paper wasp faces, photos of caterpillars, simple geometric patterns, and computer-altered wasp faces. A reward was consistently associated with one image in a pair. The researchers found that the paper wasps, which are generalist visual predators of caterpillars, were able to differentiate between two unaltered P. fuscatus faces faster and more accurately than a pair of caterpillar photos, two different geometric patterns, or a pair of computer-altered wasp faces. They learned to pick the correct unaltered wasp face about three-quarters of the time. Two simple black-and-white geometric patterns should have been easy for the wasps to distinguish, because the insects’ compound eyes are good at detecting contrast and outlines, Sheehan said. Yet the wasps learned complicated face images more rapidly than the geometric patterns. At the same time, introducing seemingly minor changes to a P. fuscatus facial image—by using a photo-editing program to remove a wasp’s antennae, for example—caused test subjects to perform much worse on the facial recognition test. “This shows that the way they learn faces is different than the way they seem to be learning other patterns. They treat faces as a different kind of thing,” Sheehan said. “Humans have a specialized face-learning ability, and it turns out that this wasp that lives on the side of your house evolved an analogous system on its own,” he said. “But it’s important to note that we’re not claiming the exact process by which wasps learn faces is the same as humans.” The ability to recognize individuals is important to a species like P. fuscatus, in which multiple queens establish communal nests and raise offspring cooperatively, but also compete to form a linear dominance hierarchy. Remembering who they’ve already bested–and been bested by–keeps individuals from wasting energy on repeated aggressive encounters and presumably promotes colony stability by reducing friction. Sheehan also tested a closely related species of wasp, P. metricus, which lacks the varied facial markings of the paper wasp and lives in colonies controlled by a single queen. In the T-maze test, P. metricus scored no better than chance when asked to distinguish between individuals of its own species. “Differences in face learning between the two species cannot be attributed to general differences in visual learning, as both species learned to discriminate between pairs of artificial patterns and caterpillars at the same rate and with the same accuracy,” Sheehan and Tibbetts wrote. “P. fuscatus and P. metricus differed only in their ability to learn normal face stimuli.” “The evolutionary flexibility of specialized face learning is striking and suggests that specialized cognition may be a widespread adaptation to facilitate complex behavioral tasks such as individual recognition,” they wrote. Funding for the project was provided by the University of Michigan and an E.S. George Reserve Scholarship to Sheehan. Related Links: |
Terrorist incidents in Indonesia[1][2] Year Number of incidents Deaths Injuries 2016 19 22 35 2015 28 19 17 2014 33 19 30 2013 32 23 16 2012 39 15 20 2011 21 20 70 2010 4 0 6 2009 19 15 62 2008 13 0 0 2007 2 0 1 2006 10 6 6 2005 15 66 171 2004 17 42 238 2003 18 26 166 2002 43 246 535 2001 105 134 176 2000 101 146 336 1999 61 67 91 1998 3 9 5 1997 28 102 99 1996 65 30 188 1995 24 41 51 1994 5 1 6 1993 0 0 0 1992 4 33 0 1991 7 21 60 1990 3 12 0 1989 2 85 27 1988 0 0 0 1987 0 0 0 1986 4 0 2 1985 2 7 14 1984 2 2 0 1983 0 0 0 1982 0 0 0 1981 1 4 0 1980 0 0 0 1979 0 0 0 1978 2 0 1 1977 1 1 1 1976 0 0 0 1975 0 0 0 1974 0 0 0 1973 0 0 0 1972 0 0 0 1971 0 0 0 1970 0 0 0 This is a List of terrorist incidents in Indonesia: |
WrestleMania Axxess takes over the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida, Thursday, March 30, to Sunday, April 2. Tickets for the year’s biggest WWE fan celebration are available to the general public now at Ticketmaster.com. Featuring WWE Superstar meet-and-greets, memorabilia displays and much more, WrestleMania Axxess is one event WWE fans of all ages will want to be part of. Check out details below, including the dates and times of the sessions, the WWE Superstar signing schedule, plus pricing information. AXXESS DATES AND TIMES (All times listed are local) Thursday, March 30 6-10 p.m. Friday, March 31 5-9 p.m. Saturday, April 1 Session 1 – 8 a.m.-12 p.m. Session 2 – 1-5 p.m. Session 3 – 6-10 p.m. Sunday, April 2 8 a.m.-12 p.m. WWE SUPERSTAR SIGNING SCHEDULES Premium VIP sessions: Thursday, March 30 Randy Orton – 8 p.m. Friday, March 31 Seth Rollins – 7 p.m. Saturday, April 1 Roman Reigns – 10 a.m. AJ Styles – 1 p.m. Dean Ambrose – 3 p.m. Sunday, April 2 Kurt Angle – 8 a.m. VIP sessions: Thursday, March 30 Sasha Banks – 6 p.m. Enzo Amore & Big Cass – 8 p.m. Friday, March 31 Shinsuke Nakamura– 5 p.m. Saturday, April 1 Samoa Joe – 8 a.m. Nikki Bella – 10 a.m. Chris Jericho – 1 p.m. Bray Wyatt – 6 p.m. Bayley – 8 p.m. Sunday, April 2 Edge – 10 a.m. General Admission sessions: Thursday, March 30 Cesaro, The Miz & Maryse, Sheamus, Kalisto, Bobby Roode, Mick Foley, Austin Aries and Raw Tag Team Champions Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson, plus Superstars from NXT, 205 Live, the WWE United Kingdom Championship Tournament and more! Friday, March 31 WWE Champion Bray Wyatt, Braun Strowman, SmackDown Tag Team Champions The Usos, Naomi, R-Truth, Goldust, Heath Slater, Rhyno and NXT Women’s Champion Asuka, plus Superstars from NXT, 205 Live, the WWE United Kingdom Championship Tournament and more! Saturday, April 1 Session 1, 8 a.m. – Mark Henry, American Alpha, Lana, WWE Cruiserweight Champion Neville, Jinder Mahal, Mojo Rawley, Bo Dallas and Summer Rae, plus Superstars from NXT, 205 Live, the WWE United Kingdom Championship Tournament and more! Session 2, 1 p.m. – Nia Jax, SmackDown LIVE General Manager Daniel Bryan, Charlotte Flair, Kevin Owens, SmackDown Women’s Champion Alexa Bliss, Dolph Ziggler, Carmella and Kane, plus Superstars from NXT, 205 Live, the WWE United Kingdom Championship Tournament and more! Session 3, 6 p.m. – Apollo Crews, Sting, Mickie James, Sami Zayn, The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express, Titus O’Neil, Zack Ryder and Rich Swann, plus Superstars from NXT, 205 Live, the WWE United Kingdom Championship Tournament and more! Sunday, April 2 The Brian Kendrick, Beth Phoenix, Finn Bálor, Alicia Fox, Tyler Breeze, Fandango and Kelly Kelly, plus Superstars from NXT, 205 Live, the WWE United Kingdom Championship Tournament and more! TICKET INFORMATION General Admission tickets – $55* General Admission tickets include: Autographs and photos with WWE Superstars and Legends Enjoy viewing matches, Q&As and contests in the Main Ring VIP tickets – $110* VIP tickets include: Autograph and professional photo with a VIP WWE Superstar Exclusive VIP line at the event entrance (1) 8x10 glossy photo of the appearing Superstar Premium VIP tickets – $190* PVIP tickets Include: Autograph and professional photo with a Premium VIP WWE Superstar Exclusive VIP line at the event entrance. (1) 8x10 glossy photo of the appearing Superstar Children 2 years and under – FREE *Prices are PER SESSION and do not include applicable fees Talent subject to CHANGE |
In response to a U.S. navy battle group being sent toward the Korean peninsula at the weekend, Pyongyang has responded with a warning of "catastrophic consequences”, adding that North Korea is "ready to react to any mode of war desired by the U.S." With China supposedly agreeing that some form of action now has to be taken on its ally, Statista's Martin Armstrong looks at the countries with the largest amount of active-duty troops in the world. You will find more statistics at Statista Should the increasing tensions with Pyongyang eventually equate to boots on the ground, the North Korean army is certainly not short on numbers. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (as reported by the New York Times), after China, India, and the USA, Kim Jong-un has the fourth largest amount of active-duty troops at his disposal. |
The Republican New Mexico state senator leading the charge against same-sex marriage wrote a blog post in which he suggested gay couples in the state should stop “whoring” and marry local women instead. State Sen. William Sharer wrote the blog post last Friday as county clerks began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in the state. He argued that defining marriage as something other than a union between a man and a woman could damage the basic foundation of society. “Procreation through the natural acts of men and women is the unique aspect of marriage,” Sharer wrote in the post. Sharer stressed to TPM on Wednesday that while he opposes defining gay marriage as anything other than between one man and one woman, he does not harbor any animosity toward gay couples and used the Alexander reference to argue his point that marriage should remain between a man and a woman.Marriage, Sharer argues, helps society avoid “violence and poverty.” “If we wanted to purposefully establish a culture of poverty and violence we would work to arrange for most children to be born to single teenage mothers with little or no family support. — Oh wait, that is exactly what we have done,” Sharer writes. Sharer’s post is full of historical references. He writes that “Marriage was a well established system long before any Bible totin’ Christian ever walked on this continent” and that the story of Pocahontas and John Rolfe was important because it was a marriage of love and also peace that linked the Powhatan Indians to the English colonists in Jamestown. Sharer went on to say that Alexander the Great “may have engaged in homosexual activity, but he married  a woman.” [Alexander the Great] directed his officers to stop “whoring” around and find a local woman to marry. WHY? BECAUSE “It is only through blood relations that hatred and war will end”. In other words, Alexander the Great thought that marriage was about creating and raising the next generation. This is the reason for Marriage – The creation and raising of children who have the best chance to grow to be peaceful, responsible citizens. Sharer also suggested that defining marriage as something other than between a man and a woman could upend society. “Marriage is important because it is the foundation of the family, the family of society. Marriage is a personal relationship with massive public significance,” Sharer wrote later on in the post. “Sex between a man and a woman produces babies – society needs babies – babies need both moms and dads.” As marriage goes, so go the children, so goes the nation, so goes the world. This is a simple foundational move. Defining marriage as virtually everyone on every continent and in every culture has always defined it. Marriage in New Mexico is between one man and one woman, period. Sharer and a group of Republican lawmakers in the state legislature are looking into legal action to prevent the six clerks who have begun issuing licenses to same-sex couples from continuing to do so. Sharer had originally planned to file an injunction to stop Doña Ana County County Clerk Lynn Ellins, the first to depart from the state’s old policy, to stop issuing marriage licenses. But after other counties followed Ellins’ example, Sharer and his lawyers said they are reassessing their options. |
According to a report by The Information, you may be seeing a few more Google apps preloaded on future Android devices. Confidential paperwork on new contract requirements details raising the amount of pre-installed software. Under the new guidelines, the number is set to total up to 20 apps-- more than doubling the current set of 9. What's more, Google's wares will also have to be displayed in strategic locations on home screens and in "prominent" folders. This means that Android device makers like Samsung, HTC and others would need to retool where the requisite apps are positioned and factor in the increased volume. As you may recall, Google aims to reign in customization of its software too, and ZTE has already opted for the Google Now launcher by default on its upcoming devices. |
The latest Gallup poll findings, and their catalysts, should be cited in every Republican stump speech from now until November. According to the latest survey, satisfaction with the state of the country has plummeted to a staggering 17 percent -- 12-points lower than last month and the lowest overall measure since 2013. Given the time correlation, it's no surprise that race relations have soared to the "most important problem" on the list, and of course, terrorism is ever-present on Americans minds as well. Gallup reports: Americans' satisfaction with the way things are going in the U.S. dropped 12 percentage points in the past month, amid high-profile police killings of black men and mass shootings of police. Currently, 17% of Americans are satisfied with the state of affairs in the U.S. These data are from Gallup's latest monthly reading of Americans' satisfaction, taken July 13-17. Between the June reading and now, the U.S. has been rocked by deadly shootings of black men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota, and the targeted killing of police at a protest in Dallas. Also since the last survey, a gunman killed 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando. World news has not offered much solace, with a terrorist attack across the Atlantic in Nice, France, involving a truck ramming into a crowd on Bastille Day in mid-July, killing 84. According to the poll, "the decline in Americans' satisfaction this month includes a particularly sharp drop among Democrats, whose satisfaction levels — after registering 51 percent last month — dropped 22 points to 29 percent in July." This poll may provide added fuel for Republicans as they hope to capture the vote of disenfranchised Democrats in November. |
Residents of Chinese city Mudanjiang were left shocked recently after hardcore porn clips were broadcast on a roadside mega screen for full 10 minutes, before the local police arrived at the scene and unplugged the cables. After two days of investigation, the police found that an operator of the company that owned the public display screens was watching the porn from his workstation. It emerged that the man forgot to unplug the output cable while watching the erotic content, reported the People's Daily Online. The mega screen in Mudanjiang is reported to have played the porn accompanied by sound for 10 minutes until it was turned off. Dozens of passersby stopped by and started recording the bizarre incident on their smartphones. Several videos of the incident were reportedly shared through social networking app WeChat. The People's Daily Online, citing a local resident identified as Wang, stated that several elderly people and young children witnessed porn being played out in public. "How can they play such a content in public," Wang asked expressing his surprise. People's Daily Online, which reported the incident on 24 June, said that pornographic content began airing on the public screen at 4pm (local time) and it went on till the alarmed residents called the police. The police traced the culprit, an operator at the corporate office of the company, which owned the public screens. Local residents said that the screens were rarely used for playing movies. The Daily Mail reported that the man responsible for the fiasco was arrested and he has admitted to the police that he made a mistake as he was not familiar with the system. Mudanjiang is a regional communications hub, located barely 248 km from Vladivostok in Russia. A similar incident took place in south Indian state of Kerala recently, as a cable operator mixed up his personal pen drive containing hardcore porn with public display ads. In Kalpetta - a small town lying on the Kozhikode-Mysore National Highway in Wayanad district of Kerala, the porn content was screened at a bus stand for 30 minutes. It finally stopped when the police cut the cables. |
One plays with such a fury it's like he's listening to the jarring beats of house music. The other plays with a smooth pace, like a jazz musician improvising on the big stage. Russell Westbrook, the Oklahoma City Thunder point guard, charges toward the rim at a sprite-like pace and shoots 3-pointers with a menacing look. James Harden, the Houston Rockets point guard, easily splits defenders, casually hits 3s and discovers cutting teammates for buckets. While their games and demeanors are different, the former teammates, who meet Wednesday night in Oklahoma City, are going through something that might change them for better or worse: becoming the faces of their respective franchises. "For sure," Harden said. "Honestly, I'm just trying to come out here and find ways to help my team and learn how to be a better leader and grow and how to get everybody on the same page to where we all got one goal, superstar or not, whoever is on the team, to make sure we're on the same page." Old teammates James Harden and Russell Westbrook have a lot in common. Bill Baptist/NBAE/Getty Images Dwight Howard left the Rockets this summer, tired of complaining for the ball on a team that was looking for a more agile center. The departure wasn't messy, but it was clear Howard wanted to go in a different direction. While there was speculation that Harden and Howard weren't getting along, Harden said, "We never got into a heated argument -- it just didn't work out." It left Harden as the lone superstar to carry the torch of a franchise coming off a 41-41 season. The Rockets built their team around Harden. In free agency, the Rockets devoted $133 million over eight years to sign Ryan Anderson and Eric Gordon, established shooters who have elevated Harden into the MVP conversation. Harden leads the league in assists, touches and points created off his assists while scoring 30.3 points per game. In OKC, there had not been plans to build solely around Westbrook. But Kevin Durant made his July 4 announcement that he was going to Golden State, suddenly changing the franchise's plans. It forced the Thunder -- a team coming off a Western Conference finals appearance -- to regroup. Durant and Westbrook had pushed the Thunder to a 3-1 lead, only to lose in seven games to the Warriors. Now, similar to Harden's situation in Houston, Westbrook is alone as the face of the franchise in OKC. "I like winning," Westbrook said. "The more we win, the better I feel like I become as a player. My teammates get better. I feel like I've done my job as far as coming back better and being a better leader." When Westbrook and Durant met on Nov. 3, there was no acknowledgement of each other. Westbrook walked into the arena wearing a photographer's vest, something he thought was cool after seeing it overseas during the summer. Some interpreted it as a slight to Durant, who took photos for the Players Tribune website during the Super Bowl in February. Harden thought Westbrook's attire was cool. "That’s Russ' swag, man," Harden said. "I don't know if he was shooting a shot [at Durant], that's his swag. He said he can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. I feel the same way." SIG graphic Harden and Westbrook have another thing in common -- their displeasure with Durant. Westbrook is upset at the star forward for leaving without giving him a final chance to talk. Harden is irked Durant didn't even give the Rockets a free-agent visit this summer; the organization was planning on such a meeting. So now without Howard and Durant, the Rockets and Thunder rely on these talented guards to carry their teams. Westbrook remains the best player on a younger Thunder team. His frustration levels are higher now with opposing teams focusing on stopping him late in games and forcing other players to step up. In the midst of a three-game losing streak, Westbrook was swarmed by Toronto, missed a rushed potential game winner to the Clippers and watched helplessly as former teammate Serge Ibaka returned to score 31 points for the Magic, spoiling Westbrook's triple-double. These are moments when Westbrook must show patience with his young group and new tag-team partner, Victor Oladipo. "I'm looking at everything," Westbrook said. "I'm looking at guys seeing if their confidence is high, seeing if they're engaged in the game, seeing if they're locking in on what's going on, seeing if they're reading the coverages. I'm looking at everything in itself and not worrying about myself but just worried about other guys and making sure they're ready to play and making sure they know what's going on. "Communication is key, not just for me, but for our team, when you're able to communicate what you see on the floor and make sure it happens." Harden's leadership skills have progressed so much that he welcomes voices. The Rockets never liked Howard's silence when things went wrong. Harden wants players to speak up so the team can grow. He will challenge his teammates on and off the floor to become better, especially younger players such as K.J. McDaniels and Sam Dekker. "It's OK to have more than one leader on the team," Harden said. "You guys have to be on the same page and have the same goal and that's it obviously. All the guys on the team are leaders, they have an opinion, a voice and they speak it. You got to be able to back that up and put the work in and prove to the team you're a leader -- not just talk about it." As the season moves forward, the leadership skills of Harden and Westbrook will be dissected. And that's one more thing the two very different players have in common. ESPN staff writer Royce Young contributed to this report. |
Border checkpoint relies on honor system We all know that security has been tightened at U.S. border crossings since 9/11. And that's why we were quite surprised when we found out the tale of one particular crossing on the border with Canada. This official U.S. Customs and Border Protection reporting station is on the border between Manitoba, a Canadian province, and Minnesota, and relies on the honor system. Yes, the U.S. government is counting on all people who cross into Angle Inlet, Minnesota, to report themselves via telephone. There are no permanent customs or immigration officials who work at the checkpoint. Angle Inlet is the northernmost city in the contiguous United States. To get there over land, you have to drive 40 miles within Canada to the other end of the Lake of the Woods, so the Minnesota town is in essence an enclave that sits within Canada. Because of that geographical quirk, and because very few people live up there, the checkpoint has always been laidback. But in this day and age, law enforcement officials in Lake of the Woods County, Minnesota, are very concerned. The sheriff there says he has intelligence that drug smugglers and potential terrorists take advantage of the "honor system" to cross into Angle Inlet illegally and then take a boat across the Lake of the Woods to go into "mainland" Minnesota. The checkpoint looks like a shack. You are supposed to stop your car when you get there, get out, and pick up a videophone that often doesn't work. When we got there, we picked up the phone and pushed a button that has the American flag on it. Nothing happened the first six or seven times I pushed the button. Finally, I heard a Customs employee's voice. She said her name was Officer Johnson, and she cordially told me she was in the Customs office in Warroad, Minnesota, about 50 miles away. She told me to stand in front of the camera so she could see me. Then video of her popped on the screen so I could see her. She asked for my name and my purpose for coming to the United States, and asked me to hold my passport in front of the camera so she could see it. I was then approved for entry into the United States. While we were at the border "shack," other cars just zoomed by; not necessarily because the motorists were up to no good, but because many perceive the shack with the faulty phone to be a cumbersome waste of time. Residents are given special permits to avoid going into the shack, but it's estimated by the local sheriff that 70 percent of the people who are supposed to stop don't bother doing so. So is this border checkpoint going to stay this way? That's what we asked U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials. They told us that this is not considered the "highest risk" area. But officials did tell us some changes are in store. Customs officers do make patrols to the checkpoint. They said those patrols will be increased. In addition, they said there will be technological changes, including the installation of cameras providing surveillance over the area, not just inside the shack. Before we left Angle Inlet, we met one motorist from Manitoba who did his law-abiding duty and picked-up the videophone to report his arrival into the United States. But it would not work for him, so he picked-up an old-fashioned payphone and called the office. They couldn't see him or his passport, but customs officials thanked him for trying, and then let him into the United States. We all know that security has been tightened at U.S. border crossings since 9/11. And that's why we were quite surprised when we found out the tale of one particular crossing on the border with Canada.This official U.S. Customs and Border Protection reporting station is on the border between Manitoba, a Canadian province, and Minnesota, and relies on the honor system. Yes, the U.S. government is counting on all people who cross into Angle Inlet, Minnesota, to report themselves via telephone. There are no permanent customs or immigration officials who work at the checkpoint.Angle Inlet is the northernmost city in the contiguous United States. To get there over land, you have to drive 40 miles within Canada to the other end of the Lake of the Woods, so the Minnesota town is in essence an enclave that sits within Canada. Because of that geographical quirk, and because very few people live up there, the checkpoint has always been laidback.But in this day and age, law enforcement officials in Lake of the Woods County, Minnesota, are very concerned. The sheriff there says he has intelligence that drug smugglers and potential terrorists take advantage of the "honor system" to cross into Angle Inlet illegally and then take a boat across the Lake of the Woods to go into "mainland" Minnesota.The checkpoint looks like a shack. You are supposed to stop your car when you get there, get out, and pick up a videophone that often doesn't work.When we got there, we picked up the phone and pushed a button that has the American flag on it. Nothing happened the first six or seven times I pushed the button. Finally, I heard a Customs employee's voice. She said her name was Officer Johnson, and she cordially told me she was in the Customs office in Warroad, Minnesota, about 50 miles away.She told me to stand in front of the camera so she could see me. Then video of her popped on the screen so I could see her. She asked for my name and my purpose for coming to the United States, and asked me to hold my passport in front of the camera so she could see it. I was then approved for entry into the United States.While we were at the border "shack," other cars just zoomed by; not necessarily because the motorists were up to no good, but because many perceive the shack with the faulty phone to be a cumbersome waste of time.Residents are given special permits to avoid going into the shack, but it's estimated by the local sheriff that 70 percent of the people who are supposed to stop don't bother doing so. So is this border checkpoint going to stay this way? That's what we asked U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials.They told us that this is not considered the "highest risk" area. But officials did tell us some changes are in store.Customs officers do make patrols to the checkpoint. They said those patrols will be increased. In addition, they said there will be technological changes, including the installation of cameras providing surveillance over the area, not just inside the shack.Before we left Angle Inlet, we met one motorist from Manitoba who did his law-abiding duty and picked-up the videophone to report his arrival into the United States. But it would not work for him, so he picked-up an old-fashioned payphone and called the office. They couldn't see him or his passport, but customs officials thanked him for trying, and then let him into the United States. |
Girls cool off with a water fight in a fountain near the Washington Monument in 2012. (Linda Davidson / The Washington Post) After a record-setting winter, this is the question we’ve been asked the most (by far). Washingtonians gave up on “when is it going to snow” weeks ago. We’ve moved on to sweating over summer. We don’t blame you! It was 80 degrees on March 1. Things are weird. But we don’t quite have enough information to know whether that means summer is going to be just as strange. Looking back at similarly warm winters, it’s hard to see a link. First, we should note that this winter — Dec. 1 to Feb. 28 — was the third-warmest on record in the District and the warmest winter of the 21st century so far. The season’s average temperature, 43.9 degrees, was 5.7 degrees warmer than normal (<– that’s a lot!). With that, four out of the top 10 warmest winters have occurred since 2000. Last month was the warmest February on record, and as we noted Thursday, it was also warmer than a typical March. It was only the second time since 2000 that Washington had zero measurable snow in the month of February, and the rainfall total was just 0.68 inches — nearly two inches below normal. [Last month was the warmest Feb. on record. It was also warmer than a normal March.] With just 6.04 inches of precipitation, this meteorological winter — December through February — was the third driest and the least snowy since 2000. It only snowed twice with a combined accumulation of 1.4 inches in January, which is certainly more than the record-low of 0.1 inches from 1997-1998 — but far from our average of 14 inches. We still have chance to pick up a little more snow in March or even early April, but the lack of sustainable cold weather this season is really challenging that prospect. (Commodity Weather Group) Despite the capital’s precipitation shortfall, the United States as a whole clocked in a relatively wet winter thanks to the huge surplus of precipitation that fell on California and the Southwest, where it was desperately needed. And while a majority of the Lower 48 was warm this winter, the Northwest, western Canada and a large part of Europe was actually colder than normal. But on to the point. The big question. What does this all mean for our summer weather? Will it continue to be way warmer than normal, or are things going to regulate? @capitalweather I've been loving this spring weather, but if it's 70s in February, how unbearably hot are July/August going to be…? — Joe Herbert (@herbertmath628) March 2, 2017 If we look at the top 10 warmest winters in Washington, we’re not seeing an obvious connection. Of course that makes sense because there are perhaps an infinite number of ways we can get a very warm winter and they aren’t all going to translate to a hot summer (or even a cool summer). In fact, the top 10 warmest winters were followed by a hotter-than-normal summer exactly half the time. But we know you don’t like a coin toss, so we’re going to try to give you more. Warmest winter rank Year Summer temps Summer rainfall 1 1932 Cool Dry 2 1890 Cool Wet 3 2017 ??? ??? 4 2012 Hot Dry 5 2002 Hot Dry 6 1950 Cool Wet 7 1998 Cool Dry 8 1949 Hot Wet 9 1991 Hot Dry 10 2016 Hot Dry The interesting thing we can glean from this data is that after the three most recent warm winters — 2002, 2012 and 2016 — Washington experienced a hotter-than-average summer. This isn’t a statistically rigorous prediction, but those years give us some confidence in saying this summer is more likely to be hot than cool. Of course, what we don’t have a lot of data on is basically everything else, and like we said, there are a lot of factors that come together to influence the weather in any given location. It looks like El Niño is coming back in 2017 after a brief hiatus, though that phenomenon doesn’t have much of an impact on summer weather as it does winter weather. Still, last year we were in a weak El Niño / neutral scenario, and it ended up being much warmer than normal. Again, that isn’t nearly enough to draw a conclusion, but it’s another data point we can keep in the back of our minds. The final thing we will note is what our seasonal forecaster Matt Ross pointed out last year: Cooler-than-average summers just don’t happen anymore. “Ten out of the past 11 summers have been above normal,” Matt wrote in his summer outlook last May. “It is hard to bet against a warmer-than-average summer, especially with Washington’s urban heat-island effect consistently elevating overnight lows, even in air masses that are yielding average afternoon highs.” Given all of this, we’d have to go with a warmer than average summer. Whether it will be miserably hot is still in question. Ian Livingston contributed to this post. |
Bruno Knight is now free after serving 23 months in jail British gay porn star Bruno Knight who was jailed for smuggling crystal meth to the United States up his butt has been released. Real name Patrick Gizzie, he served 23 out of 24 months of his sentence. He was released a month early for good behavior. The 33-year-old was arrested by customs officers at Los Angeles International Airport in June 2014 after the Drug Enforcement Administration received an anonymous tip-off. He was then forced to expel three bags of methamphetamine weighing a total 226 grams. Gizzie, who was scheduled to depart LA to London after a weekend of partying, in which time he admitted to taking methamphetamine, cocaine, marijuana and GHB. He pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute meth. Gizzie, who said he was addled by drugs at the time of the crime, said he was grateful for the sobriety he found during a federal lockup. Since being deported back to London (he is unlikely going to be allowed to ever travel back to the US), he has been making the best of free life. He posted a picture with friends with the hashtag ‘freedom’ and has apparently also bought a new car. #friends #hot tub #freedom #instamuscle #brunoknight #pornstar A photo posted by Philip Gizzie (@brunoknight_official) on May 29, 2016 at 5:40pm PDT He also told a porn blog that he was doing well after his release from prison. In porn film Security Control, Gizzie plays an airport security guard who searches a man’s body for drugs. GSN has contacted Gizzie for further comment. |
It’s on almost every locker-room whiteboard, and it’s shorthand slang among NBA players and coaches. But one of the wonkiest phrases in the league has yet to penetrate public discourse about the NBA: “to 2.9.” Coaches want players away from the ball “to 2.9” on defense, and the meaning is simple: Stay in the paint for as long as possible without committing a defensive three-second violation. It’s a tenet that has swept across the league during the last few seasons in the form of ultra-aggressive help defense, a sea change that has inspired a slower but perhaps more important evolution in the way NBA teams approach offense. In short: If defenses pack the lane to take away an offense’s first option, that offense better be creative enough to adjust. “Getting to the hole is getting harder and harder,” says Chicago’s Carlos Boozer, who should know, considering the identity of his coach. “A lot of the defensive strategies you see now are a natural evolution from rule changes,” says Houston GM Daryl Morey, in reference to the league’s decision a decade ago to abandon illegal defense rules and essentially allow zone defenses. “First the defense evolved by overloading the strong side, and now the offenses are evolving to beat that.” The Heat are the most obvious example of a team that has torn down and rebuilt its entire offense over 18 months to counter defenses committed to clogging the lane, sending an extra defender toward the ball, and forcing offenses into second, third, and fourth options. It’s no coincidence Miami plays in the same conference as Boston and Chicago — the two teams most associated, via Tom Thibodeau, with that strangling defense. Thibodeau didn’t invent this system, and he’s loath to take any public credit for it, but coaches, scouts, and executives all over the league agree he was the first coach to stretch the limits of the NBA’s newish defensive three-second rule and flood the strong side with hybrid man/zone defenses. Other coaches have copied that style, and smart offenses over the last two seasons — and especially this season — have had to adapt. The evolution will have long-lasting consequences on multiple fronts — on the league’s entertainment value, the importance of smart coaching, and the sorts of players that GMs seek out in the draft and via free agency. “There are a whole bunch of new-wave things teams are doing to beat that ‘Pack the paint’ mentality,” says Dwane Casey, who has tried to turn Toronto into one of the league’s most aggressive help teams. “When I study all the things these coaches are doing, it’s like calculus sometimes,” Denver GM Masai Ujiri says of the lengths to which coaches are now going to deal with better NBA defenses. “You sit in those coaches meetings and just try to absorb.” It’s no longer accurate to reduce NBA offense to truisms like “Everybody runs the same stuff” and “The NBA is a pick-and-roll league.” Offenses are more complex now than they were even at the start of last season. The NBA may still be a pick-and-roll league, but the pick-and-roll a team really wants to run might come after several different “fake” actions designed to confuse defenders or get their momentum moving in the wrong direction. Predictable offenses just aren’t good enough anymore against elite competition; that’s why Miami no longer runs simple LeBron James–Chris Bosh pick-and-rolls while the other three Heat players just stand around — something that happened a lot in the 2011 Finals against Dallas. Predictable offenses with otherworldly talent can still get a team far; the Clippers can win a lot of games with 45 Chris Paul–Blake Griffin pick-and-rolls and 45 Griffin post-ups. And no amount of X’s-and-O’s brilliance can make up for the absence of a top-15 overall player. Morey concedes the Rockets might have to add some spice to their simple high pick-and-roll system next season. “I do feel like in a playoff series, it might put us at a disadvantage,” he says, “because we’re a little less sophisticated.” (The Rockets’ high pick-and-roll offense ranks as one of the league’s half-dozen most efficient, and Morey says the relatively simplistic style is mostly the result of the organization’s focus on acquiring James Harden in a trade finalized just before the season.) The margin for error drops in the playoffs against elite defenses geared toward a single opponent; stagnant predictability in that context can cost an offense just enough points to swing a game, and then a series. “The bad teams in our league are the ones who don’t pass the ball well,” says Kelvin Sampson, the Rockets’ lead assistant. “Teams that just play on one side of the floor are going to struggle against defenses that load up on that side.” The league overall understands this, though some coaching staffs have been quicker than others in adjusting their systems. The percentage of offensive possessions that end with isolation plays and post-up shots has declined every season for the last five years, per Synergy Sports. In 2008-09, the year after the Celtics used a Thibodeau-designed system to create one of the stingiest defenses ever, 27 of the league’s 30 teams still finished at least 9 percent of their offensive possessions via an isolation play, according to Synergy Sports. The Magic, at 7.4 percent, were the least isolation-prone team in the league that season. This season, 15 teams — half the league — are below that 9 percent isolation mark, and a whopping 11 have lower isolation shares than Milwaukee’s league-low number from 2008-09. The drop in post-ups has been similar, and the numbers would seem to indicate an increase in ball movement. But those plays aren’t really disappearing from the league at that rate, according to coaches and general managers. Teams instead are using them at the start of possessions, in order to suck that extra defender toward the ball, pass it to the other side, and get a defense scrambling until it cracks. Teams used to drive the strong side and post up there in order to score; now they’re doing so in order to pass, knowing the lane will be too crowded on one side of the floor for that simpler attack. Posting up isn’t a dying art; it’s still enormously important, only now it’s as a means to start a cascade of events all over the floor. “Players are penetrating now with no intention to score,” Casey says. Post-up players, including James and Carmelo Anthony, have gotten better at reading help and skipping the ball immediately to the other side of the floor instead of just hitting the closest player and starting a series of passes, Casey and other coaches say. “Guys like Andre Miller and Kevin Garnett — they’re posting up hoping a second guy will run at them, so they can pass,” Sampson says. “You’re better just playing one-on-one in the post if you can.” Teams are also better at disguising their true intentions. Ray Allen running across the foul line to the left side of the floor might be just a decoy designed to get the defense to bend to that side right as Miami runs something deadlier on the other side. And a pick-and-roll on the right side of the floor with 15 seconds on the shot clock might represent the first in a series of pick-and-rolls rather than a scoring attempt in its own right. Every coach has his own terminology for this kind of thing. Jim Boylan, the Bucks’ coach, wants his offense to get the ball to the “third side” of the floor — to move the ball from the left side to the right side, and then back to the left side (that “third” side) before shooting. “The league has gotten so different today,” Boylan says. “You just have to move the ball from one side to the other against the really good defensive teams.” Smart defensive coaching has put a premium on smart offensive coaching. Several sources at all levels suggest the NBA is becoming more like the NFL — with more of an emphasis on trickery, scheming, and anticipating how teams will respond to particular actions. “There is a lot of misdirection, and it’s a lot of fun to watch,” Sampson says. “Coaches are getting a lot better, and a lot smarter, and they’ll have to continue to do that.” Coaches with stale offenses — think Utah, Brooklyn, the Clippers — are hurting their teams, even if those teams have enough talent to produce some solid overall scoring numbers. It has only been three years since Boozer left Utah, but from his perspective, the league in 2013 is almost unrecognizable from the one he left behind in Salt Lake City in 2010. “It’s extremely different,” he says. “In Utah, you were kind of on your own on defense. It was almost just one-on-one. There was no help concept. Here, there’s a help concept, and it works.” Boozer has watched offenses adjust to Thibodeau’s trendsetting defense. “Teams try to set us up now,” he says. “It’s like football. You gotta give ’em one play that’s like a decoy, when you really want something else on the other side. It’s like a magic trick.” Casey warns his Toronto players about the “fluff” in opposing offenses — all the decoy “plays” an offense will cycle through before arriving at the “real” play. Good defenders must be smart enough to separate the fake stuff from the real thing — to avoid taking the bait on the first pick-and-roll in a way that would get that defender out of position for the second and third pick-and-rolls that are coming soon. “You gotta be able to tell the fluff from the real,” Casey says. Coaches have a stake in making their game sound more complicated than it really is. But players also agree defense is more demanding now, and that offenses have become more complicated as a result. “Coaches all want you to 2.9 now,” Ben Gordon says. “And offenses have had to adjust to that.” Coaches and GMs are looking harder for specific skill sets that fit within this evolution: • Brains. Players have to understand a five-man team scheme on defense, and, if they manage to get that down, how to react almost instantly to dozens of different variables that govern how they should react at any given moment. Monty Williams, the Hornets’ coach, has his young team packing the paint more aggressively this season, and opposing offenses have responded by using an inside-out attack to shoot a scorching 37.5 percent from deep on a ton of attempts. Williams says he knew he was risking that kind of long-distance death, because so many of his players are young and don’t yet understand basic NBA things — how to rotate on the spot, which shooters demand closer attention, etc. “We just had to get back to ground zero and protect the rim,” Williams says. “We’re not trying to give up 3s. But sometimes you give up 3s due to lack of experience and mental breakdowns. My first two years, we had guys who had been on teams where they really defended. Now you bring in young guys who played AAU and all these college zones, and it’s just a work in progress.” Look at the various open 3s the Warriors might have gotten here, with all five Hornets in the paint, had Jarrett Jack passed the ball: You have already seen teams dump players with surface talent in part because people in charge of those teams have deep concerns about that player’s basketball intelligence. That’s not the last you’ll see of moves like that. Smart perimeter defense matters, even if it might matter a bit less than smart big-man defense. Perimeter guys need to know how to slide into the paint, deter some penetration there, and sprint back out at their original mark — a guy who can presumably both shoot and attack off the bounce. That’s not easy. “The hardest thing to do in the NBA,” Boylan says, “is to help in the paint and then rush back out to the 3-point line to get your guy.” • Versatility. Ask coaches what the next logical step in the evolution of defense might be — the counter to the counter, so to speak — and many of them will suggest an uptick in switching, both on and off the ball. There is almost a reflex distaste for switching, among both coaches and fans; it just looks so obviously stupid to voluntarily get yourself into a situation in which Kevin Durant is posting up Ty Lawson. But switching can be a natural antidote to offenses designed specifically to bait defenses into help contortions and uncomfortable rotations; defenses that switch everything can avoid overhelping and/or sending two defenders to contain one player — or at least avoid such compromising moves until late in the shot clock. George Karl has told me he would like to switch even more than Denver already does, and several coaches agreed we’ll probably see more of it going forward. In the last week, the Knicks have unveiled a switch I don’t ever recall seeing in the last five years or so as part of a consistent and coordinated scheme. Watch in the below clips as the player guarding the shooter in the corner jumps out to stop a ball handler, while the guy guarding the ball handler darts immediately to the corner shooter: This is a novel attempt at protecting the rim — stopping the drive — without yielding an open 3. It’s a way of trying to contain two offensive players with just two defensive players, instead of adding a third defender to the equation and opening up a hole someplace else. This would mark almost a selective reversal to the aggressive, Thibodeau-style help concepts that have troubled offenses over the last half-decade. • Shooting. The cat is out of the bag on this one. Players who can’t shoot will find it harder and harder to get minutes, unless they bring an elite brand of defense or some other rarely found skill. There are lots of reasons that coaches place greater emphasis on shooting and spacing now, the simplest one being that three is greater than two. But those Thibodeau-style defenses are near the top of the list. Defenders can’t stray quite as far off of knockdown shooters, or they might be afraid to do so, even when a team’s defensive scheme suggests they should. “Players are sometimes afraid to leave their own guy,” says Micah Nori, a longtime assistant with the Raptors. • Passing. This is the one that came up over and over in conversations with coaches and executives. Passing is obviously a good thing, and always has been. But the people running teams increasingly value above-average passing at every position, and express a deeper distaste for players — again, at any position — who are either unwilling passers or just don’t show a sophisticated understanding of passing, timing, angles, and reading layers of defense. “Passing is just becoming so, so important,” Boylan says. “If you want to be a good offensive team, you have to have good passers.” The league, as always, is evolving. No sort of evolution will ever change the fact that All-Star talent is the most important ingredient in building a champion. But evolution will make subtle changes in what defines a real top-10 or top-15 player, and teams that understand and exploit long-term changes the fastest will gain real competitive advantages when the talent gap narrows. The smartest teams are already thinking ahead to what the next changes might be — even if we haven’t seen them on the court just yet. 10 Things I Like and Don’t Like 1. Cleveland’s Hurt-the-Helper Defense If Byron Scott is really on the hot seat, even though he’s on the books for $4.5 million next season, it will be because the Cavaliers’ defense has shown zero improvement. They’re 27th in points allowed per possession after finishing in the same spot last season, and though it’s tempting to blame the Anderson Varejao injury, the difference defensively without him on the floor has been negligible, per NBA.com. There are obviously some mitigating factors. The Cavs are young, and young players are generally overmatched on defense in their first couple of years in the NBA. Starting Tyler Zeller at center is a big disadvantage; bullies can push him around, and like most rookies, he has found NBA-level help-and-recover stuff confusing. But the lack of improvement in the big picture is alarming. Kyrie Irving is almost no better in Year 2 than he was in Year 1 (which is to say, he’s not good), and there is just a general lack of coordination to Cleveland’s defense that would worry me if I worked for the team. The Cavs can usually execute the first step of help defense without any problems, but the steps that must take place behind that first line of defense are a complete mess. Nobody helps the helper at the right time, guys are way out of position, miscommunication is rampant, and teams generally score easily against them. Again: Bad defense from inexperienced teams is expected. But the Cavs haven’t shown any improvement, and mass confusion of this sort is alarming. 2. Tobias Harris Attacking Close-outs Harris shouldn’t be shooting quite this much, especially from 3-point range; he’s often one or two confused steps out of position on defense; and he’s totally unproven as a pick-and-roll ball handler. But he’s done well in Orlando overall, and he’s especially effective as a scorer when he attacks the rim after someone else has done some legwork for him. One example: When Orlando runs some action that sucks Harris’s defender into the paint and then kicks the ball to Harris, he’s shown a real knack for catching the ball, reading his defender rushing back out toward him, and then blowing by that defender with a well-timed drive. And once he’s in the lane, Harris can finish with both hands, rip off a nasty dunk, or unveil a surprisingly nifty floater. 3. MarShon Brooks’s Defense Oof. Brooks in Year 2 just hasn’t grasped the complexities of NBA defense outlined above, and that’s the primary reason two different Brooklyn coaches have been mostly hesitant to play him big minutes — even though he’s capable of scoring in bunches, as he did putting up 27 versatile and creative points in the Nets’ destruction of Cleveland last week. He too often fails to help in the lane on pick-and-rolls, or does so too late; he has a tendency to open his stance in one-on-one situations; and he can take poor angles when returning from the paint (when he does help) back to his guy on the perimeter. Brooks is never going to be a stopper, but he won’t play much so long as he’s a liability. 4. Washington’s Music for Road Team Pregame Intros When the Raptors visited Washington on Easter, the Wiz in-arena crew played the theme song from Barney (another purple dinosaur) as their public address announcer introduced the Toronto starters. The Wizards actually have a different mock theme song for each opponent. The Cavs get the delightful Cleveland tourism parody from 30 Rock, the Bobcats suffer through the “Meow Mix” theme song on a loop, and the Wizards pick at the whole Dallas–Washington, D.C., football thing by taunting the Mavs with “Hail to the Redskins.” The team-by-team approach is so much more fun than using a catchall song, with “Who Are You” being the classic (and rather boring, at this point) example of the latter. Props for creativity, Wiz! 5. Players Mistiming Dramatic Introductions I’m a sucker for starting-lineup introductions: the more dramatic, the better. It’s the NBA’s less goose bump–y version of a boxer striding to the ring before a big fight. Local feeds should show the intros for every big game (the return of a now-loathed, once-beloved hometown star, for instance), and the league should let teams drag out the process a bit for the Finals. Kobe Bryant’s ultraslow stride through the high-five line is probably a calculated piece of image creation — the stone-faced gunslinger, eerily calm before battle — but I admit to enjoying the showmanship. And, so, a pet peeve: when players sabotage their own starting-lineup moment by standing up and running through the line before the PA announcer even begins the “and at guard ” portion of their intros. This is particularly sinful if the player in question is the anchor leg of the starting-five introductions. Some guys almost catch up to the previous player in rushing toward the huddle. I normally prefer humility and professionalism, but I demand WWE-style spotlight-hogging drama in only this moment. 6. Omer Asik’s Outlet Passing He’s not quite Kevin Love or Tim Duncan, but a season in Houston’s go-go system has transformed Asik into a very nice outlet passer. Any Rockets game will feature at least two or three of those classic big-man outlet passes in which Asik almost turns upcourt and starts his passing motion in midair after grabbing a rebound. 7. Randomly Tight Camera Angles I have no idea why this happens on some broadcasts, but I hate when the main camera will zoom in an extra bit for an extended stretch of the game, obscuring part of the action in the process. During two recent games — Atlanta–New York on the MSG Network, and the Houston broadcast of a Pacers-Rockets game — viewers on at least one feed couldn’t even see players moving around a certain distance above the 3-point arc during half-court action. Please, eliminate this. 8. Orlando’s Road Blues It might be time to discontinue my like/dislike of various NBA uniforms, because an obvious pattern has emerged: I generally prefer non-black road uniforms to standard black ones, and most non-white home uniforms to standard home whites. There are exceptions, of course; I’ve given coveted “like” status to Chicago’s black alternates and Brooklyn’s roadies, but the Brooklyn version of the Nets have never presented me with a regular non-black alternative to their snazzy road duds. Beyond those, I’ve given “likes” to blue alternate roadies the Clippers and Sixers wear; the red road jerseys of the Hawks, Blazers, Bucks, and Heat; and the Kings’ purple road uniforms. Add the Magic blues to the list as a much-preferred alternative to their “blah” black road jerseys. Their Sunday game in Cleveland pitted those pleasing blues against the dynamite Cleveland gold home uniforms — a non-white versus non-black jersey clash that represents the height of basketball fashion. The Michigan-Syracuse national semifinal at the NCAA level was similarly pleasing. 9. When Shooters Get Cranky Deadeye shooters want the ball when they’re open, and if you look past them a few times in a row, they get cranky. Watch J.J. Redick in the left corner before and after Samuel Dalembert grabs an offensive rebound, looks right at a wide-open Redick, and passes the ball elsewhere: Fantastic. 10. Ty Corbin’s Handkerchief Game This is some aggressive fashion from Utah’s head coach: That has to be the largest in-pocket suit accessory I’ve seen from any head coach this season. |
Honda has announced the world's fastest lawn mower. Honda UK and Team Dynamics have partnered on one of the most peculiar products of the year: a lawn mower capable of speeds well over 100 mph. “What do you get if you take one lazy Sunday afternoon, one British Touring Car champion and the world’s fastest lawn mower?" Honda's ad for the lawn mower asks. "Well here’s your answer.” The aptly named Mean Mower will only cut grass at 15 mph, thank goodness, but for lawn warriors off to the race-tracks the performance goes up considerably. Still, 15 mph is twice the speed of the HF2620 model that was used as the blueprint for the Mean Mower's design. No word yet on when the novelty mower will be available for public consumption. Consumers with very, very large yards will simply have to wait. The ad, featuring race-car celebrity Gordon “Flash” Shedden (not to be confused with Flash Gordon) is actually very clever: Honda UK upgraded the base HF2620 with a 1000 cc motorcycle engine and used fiberglass in the body to keep the mower light. A high capacity oil cooler and secondary water cooling radiator have also been added. When in grass-cutting mode, Honda's newest mower uses two 3 mm steel-cutting cables running at 4000 rpm. All told a very cool, and totally pointless, piece of machinery. And now all I can think of is the lawn mower scene from AMC's Mad Men. Follow me on Twitter or Facebook. Read my Forbes blog here. |
Rico Gagliano: Each week you send in your questions about how to behave, and here to answer them this week is RuPaul. Not sure he needs an introduction, but suffice it to say he’s probably the best-known drag queen in the world — RuPaul: Best known drag queen in the world?! I am the most famous drag queen in the history of the world! Brendan Francis Newnam: We were just about to say that! RuPaul: OK, bitch, now don’t get it twisted. Rico Gagliano: …Possibly of all time. RuPaul: Possibly of all time? Possibly?! I don’t understand you people! Brendan Francis Newnam: I’m gonna finish up this lead. You’ve released a slew of hit records. Is that true? RuPaul: Yeah. Brendan Francis Newnam: Dueted with Elton John. RuPaul: Yeah. Brendan Francis Newnam: And last year, you won an Emmy for hosting the competition show “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” RuPaul: Uh huh. Rico Gagliano: You’re much easier on Brendan! Brendan Francis Newnam: Well, because I didn’t say that he was “probably!” RuPaul: “Probably.” “Possibly.” Brendan Francis Newnam: The ninth season of that show debuts March 24th on VH1. RuPaul, it’s an honor to have you here. RuPaul: Oh, thank you. Brendan Francis Newnam: I know you’re the best-known drag queen of all time. Rico Gagliano: Don’t make me the enemy! RuPaul: You are the enemy, I’m afraid. Rico Gagliano: I’m down with RuPaul as well! Actually, let’s ask you this: If you ask, I think, the average person in the world to name one drag queen, they would name you. Maybe the late Divine. And they might be unable to name anyone else. What do you think made you, above all other drag queens, a household name? RuPaul: Probably my breath. Brendan Francis Newnam: Which is marvelous, by the way, radioland. Rico Gagliano: It’s a delight. RuPaul: No, I don’t know if they’d be able to name Divine. Most people are really dumb. And — I’ll speak frankly — most people don’t remember anything. Actually, I DJed at a party last night for Planned Parenthood, a benefit. And I really thought people my age — I’m 56 — would come out. It was from 7 till 11. Rico Gagliano: Not a late night. RuPaul: Yes. And I brought a playlist that was really suited for them. Well, the people who came were all children who watch our show! Children who can get into a night club. Brendan Francis Newnam: The young people really like you. They like the show. RuPaul: They like me, but they don’t know who Divine is. They don’t know. And that’s one of the reasons our show, “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” is so important because we end up teaching them about Divine. I think one of the seasons we had a Divine challenge, where the kids dressed up as Divine. You know in my day we had mentors and — Brendan Francis Newnam: Who was your mentor? RuPaul: I had several. When I found my tribe, I had gay mentors, who were like 12 years older than me, who taught me about Fellini, and Tallulah Bankhead, and Truman Capote, and all of the important things. Rico Gagliano: All the cultural touchpoints that sort of undergird gay culture. RuPaul: Exactly. But after the plague of the ’80s [AIDS], those people moved away, and the young people didn’t have mentors. So, what’s happened is our show has taken up the slack and really taught a generation of kids about “Grey Gardens,” the documentary, and lots of things that they should know about. Rico Gagliano: What do you think is the hardest thing that you end up teaching them? What’s the hardest thing about drag that maybe the casual viewer or maybe the amateur performer doesn’t realize? RuPaul: Well, what they really don’t realize is that the big message with drag is not about being a woman. It’s a commentary and an act of social treason, really, to say, “You are not the body you think you are. You are not what it says you are on your driver’s license. You are an extension of the power that created the whole universe.” The season 9 cast of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” (Photo Credit: VH1) We are not separate from one another. We’re one thing. And that one thing we are, for lack of a better word — I’m not religious — for lack of a better word, we like to use the word “God.” That’s what we are. We’re God playing dress up. That’s what drag is about. We’re mocking the ego. We are mocking identity. The concept of an identity. “I am a Catholic white from Devore, New Jersey.” Whatever. All those things. Throughout the ages drag has been that: with shamans or witch doctors or court jesters who remind you that you are more than what you think you are. You are an extension of the power that created the whole universe. Don’t forget it. Brendan Francis Newnam: I feel empowered right now. RuPaul: You are, you should. Good! My work is done here. The protocol on drag names Brendan Francis Newnam: Our first etiquette question comes from David in New Orleans. David writes, “What’s the protocol for addressing someone by their drag name as opposed to their name at birth?” RuPaul: You know, it’s not important. Nothing’s really important. When you are a sweet sensitive soul on this planet, what happens is, there are these stages of realization. The first stage of realization is that you’ve been lied to. That this whole world is really a hoax. So, initially you get angry. And then you become bitter and you become cynical. And then the next stage beyond that is where you don’t take anything all that seriously. You can laugh about it. A lot of people get stuck in the cynicism and the bitterness, but if you’re really an ascended human you go on to the laughter and not taking everything too seriously. Brendan Francis Newnam: I’m glad to know that’s next for me. RuPaul: Exactly. So, in the laughter phase of this, all the pronouns and all that stuff is like, “Whatever. It doesn’t matter, it’s not important.” Rico Gagliano: You don’t mind if they use your drag name or your name at birth. RuPaul: It doesn’t matter. Brendan Francis Newnam: David, I think you have your answer. Dessert dictator Rico Gagliano: Here’s something from Rachel in San Francisco, California. Rachel writes, “Say you’re hosting a dinner for a few friends. You send out an email to guests the day before with a menu that consists of say, Greek chicken, rice pilaf, a cucumber salad, and for dessert, peanut butter pie. Then you receive a response from one of the guests that says, ‘Just so you know, I don’t like peanut butter.’ How do you respond to that?” RuPaul: I don’t respond. You know, your little things that you have going on inside of you… Brendan Francis Newnam: Your little peanut butter problem… RuPaul: Yeah. That ain’t none of my business. Bitch, you don’t have to eat the peanut butter pie! You can have a nice glass of ice water. How about that? Rico Gagliano: Dumped on your head! Brendan Francis Newnam: You would give them ice? That’s nice of you! I would just give them water. RuPaul: People are very particular. You know, there’s a generation of young people who grew up, whose parents, you know, I guess they helicopter them. And everything is so particular and, “Me, me, me! What about me? What about my special needs?!?” Listen, that’s up to you and your life coach or your therapist. That ain’t got nothing to do with me. Annoyed by PDA, regardless of sexual orientation Brendan Francis Newnam: This next question comes from Iris in Chicago. That’s a great name — I’ve always loved the name. RuPaul: Iris? I do too. Brendan Francis Newnam: So Iris writes, “My brother came out of the closet last year and now has a boyfriend. My family is 100 percent accepting of his sexuality and happy to welcome anyone he cares for into the family. But they” — [her] brother and his boyfriend — “are very, very affectionate to the point that it makes everyone uncomfortable. Now we would be uncomfortable if he were doing this with a woman, but we feel like we can’t say anything without coming off as homophobic. Is there a way to ask them to tone it down without making him question our acceptance?” RuPaul: Oh, see now, the problem with that question is that she is worried about what he might say afterward. And that’s in the future. You have to stay in the now. If your focus is what might happen down the road, that’s already a problem. You just come out and say, “You know what? I don’t want to see that! Man, woman, I don’t care. I’m trying to eat my peanut butter pie over here!” Rico Gagliano: “My delicious peanut butter pie!” RuPaul: “Delicious! Followed by a glass of ice cold ice water!” Brendan Francis Newnam: “Do you want some ice water on your lap? Because you guys are getting too close!” RuPaul: That is exactly right. You know, in acting class there’s this thing where you’re taught about a phone conversation. A phone conversation when there’s another person in the room. Say you’re sitting over there, and I’m talking to Rico on the phone. Everything I’m doing on the phone, talking to Rico is actually for your benefit. They teach that in acting class. So, when people are doing that public display of affection, it’s not for them, it is actually for the other people in the room. RuPaul and Lady Gaga in the season 9 premiere episode of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” (Photo Credit: VH1) Rico Gagliano: Whether they say so or not. RuPaul: Whether they say so or not. So it’s important for the other people to say, “Listen, I’m onto you. I got your number, hussy. I know what you’re doing. And you know what? Don’t.” Brendan Francis Newnam: Iris, I think you have your answer. You just come out and say it. Rico Gagliano: Do it. Stay in the now. Bachelorette parties in LGBTQ spaces Brendan Francis Newnam: Justin writes, “What are your thoughts on bachelorette party etiquette at drag shows/gay bars?” RuPaul: You better check yourself before you wreck yourself. You know, this is an important thing: People who live in the mainstream and the status quo think that everyone else is there to serve them. So I’m a brown-skinned gay man. You know, I do drag. Early on, I learned that I could do it well and make money. So people automatically ask me about beauty tips. And I get kids who write me and say, “I wish you could do my makeup for my prom?” Or, “I wish you could do my makeup for my wedding?” I’m like, “Bitch, I’m not a makeup artist. I’m an enter-taint-er! OK?” But people don’t know how to place me in their consciousness. They think “Oh, you must be here to make me look good. That’s what gay guys are, right? You’re an accessory for my straight life.” Just because your limited view is that everyone’s there to serve you and that you’re the only person in the world. It doesn’t work that way. Brendan Francis Newnam: But on the one hand, a bachelorette party going to a gay bar, in a way, could expand their consciousness. RuPaul: But if they’re going as a group of girls, traditionally — not always, but traditionally — they’re going as a group of girls as a way of saying “Oh, let’s go together, let’s go together!” So that they don’t really have to go outside of their wheelhouse. They’re tourists. It’s not really saying, “You’re fierce, and I’m going to respect you, you queen, for who you are.” It’s like they’re there as a party clown. Brendan Francis Newnam: “So entertain us.” Rico Gagliano: How do you think they should express their appreciation in a more respectful way do you think? RuPaul: Oh, I can tell you in one word: cash. Cash. Rico Gagliano: All that philosophy, and it boils down to “cash.” RuPaul: Get the money up front girls! Drag gear etiquette Rico Gagliano: Do it. Here is something from Connie in San Francisco. It’s a beautiful and sort of heartbreaking question. “My husband recently passed away,” writes Connie. “He was just getting interested in drag. When, if ever, is it appropriate to give his wigs and makeup away? We have some friends whose car got broken into, and all their drag stuff was stolen. Is it weird for me to offer my husband’s things to them? Will they feel compelled to accept it because I’m grieving? What is the etiquette here?” RuPaul: I’m sorry to hear that about her husband. You know, nobody gives us instruction books with life. And handling grief, and all of that stuff… we have to unfortunately learn it on our own. And this is less to do with the clothes, and more to do with holding on to the people that we love. And those people who we love and move on, they stay in our hearts, not in the things. So it doesn’t matter what you do with [the clothes], you know, you could throw them away. You can throw it away. Rico Gagliano: Or offer it to these people, it sounds like. Brendan Francis Newnam: You can offer them up and say, “Hey if you don’t want these, you can throw them away.” RuPaul: Sure. Sure. We want to put this importance on things. Things are just things. The things that really matter, that stick, are — I’m gonna get teary eyed, I get choked up when I say this — the love that we give and the love that we allow ourselves to receive. Those are the things that stick. Brendan Francis Newnam: So things aren’t important. RuPaul: Nope. Brendan Francis Newnam: Can I have your Emmy award? RuPaul: Sure! [He laughs.] Brendan Francis Newnam: RuPaul, thanks for telling our audience how to behave. |
VIDEO – Spokane, Washington Will Have the First Retail Marijuana Store in the State Kouchlock Productions will be the first recreational marijuana store in Washington state. Owner Scott O’Neil will open his doors on July 1, over a year and a half since voters made recreational pot legal in the state. Washington voters passed legal recreational marijuana in the November of 2012 election, the same election year that voters in Colorado did the same. But while Colorado has had recreational pot shops open since January 1, it has taken until now for Washington’s Liquor Control Board to finally give the green light to the first store. Supply will be short for Washington’s lone pot shop. The Liquor Control Board allowed growing to start just four months ago – only enough time for two grow cycles to complete. Considering there is one store and not a lot of pot, prices will be high and there will be limits imposed on customers until more weed can be harvested. O’Neil told KREM news in Spokane that customers would probably be able to get an eighth of an ounce at most. New pot shops will open in a staggered roll out as the government approves a handful at a time. It will not be like January 1 was in Colorado, when a good number of stores all opened on that first day of sales in the state to a celebratory crowd of customers. During the first few months of recreational sales in Washington, buyers can expect to see high prices for pot compared to Colorado. With new shops opening a few at a time,, limited supply, and higher state taxes on marijuana, the Washington retail cannabis market price will be notably higher. But as more shops open and new grow operations harvest their crops, prices will eventually come down. The supporters of legal recreational marijuana in Washington state have been watching Coloradans enjoy their new industry for six months while waiting for theirs to start. The slow, deliberate roll out in Washington has been a “major buzzkill”. This first sign of the new industry is a real reason for them to celebrate. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook or check back often to stay informed about Washington’s recreational marijuana scene. We will be adding Washington to our exclusive Recreational Pot Shops directory, as well as launching our popular Cannabis Tripz & Tourz in Washington as they open their stores. Stay tuned…. |
Anti-fracking protesters in upstate New York outside a hearing on natural gas development. Gas is a clean, abundant, domestic fuel. But thanks to a slew of missteps, the industry may be blowing its chance to make the most of it. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- When Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley issued an executive order banning fracking earlier this month, the state joined the ranks of New York, Quebec, Germany, France and South Africa to halt the controversial technique for extracting natural gas from shale rock. A series of public relations missteps is partly responsible for these bans on hydraulic fracturing -- the procedure that injects thousands of gallons of water, sand and chemicals deep underground to crack the shale rock and allow the gas to flow. Failure to disclose what's in the fracking chemicals, opposition to a tax that could ease the impact on communities, the endorsement of a patchwork of sometimes inadequate regulations and a string of accidents are turning public opinion against the industry. In many ways that's too bad. Used to generate electricity, among other things, natural gas is the cleanest burning fossil fuel and available in vast quantities in the United States. Plus, most analysts and major environmental groups feel shale gas can be produced safely if the right regulations are in place. Yet even big players in the industry admit they're in trouble. "The opposition has been out in front of the shale gas issue," Jack Williams, president of Exxon Mobil's shale gas unit XTO Energy, said last week at an industry conference. Exxon (XOM, Fortune 500) is one one the bigger players in the shale gas business, but it's hardly the only company. Other big oil companies like Chevron (CVX, Fortune 500), ConocoPhillips (COP, Fortune 500), Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA) and BP (BP) are in on the game, as well as a string of smaller firms like Chesapeake (CHK, Fortune 500) and Devon (DVN, Fortune 500). "We have not done a very good job explaining where and how hydraulic fracturing fits into the shale gas development process," Exxon's Williams continued. "We must do all we can to restore the public's trust...our industry depends on it." Restoring that trust won't be easy. Ever since shale gas development took off in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area over a decade ago people living near the fields have been pointing to problems. As the shale gas phenomenon spread from Texas' Barnett shale to Louisiana's Haynesville, Arkansas' Fayetteville and, most recently, up to the Northeast via the giant Marcellus Shale, the problems have mounted. Traffic, noise and air pollution from all the trucks, drill rigs and diesel generators are usually the first complaints. Then there's the water. Some fear the fracking process itself, which occurs thousands of feet below the earth's surface, could contaminate the ground water. So far those fears have not been borne out, as miles of solid bedrock often separates the water table from the layer of rock where the gas lies. But there have been dozens of cases where companies have paid large fines for water contamination that has occurred closer to the surface. The cement and steel casings that line the wells as they pass through the water table, usually just a couple of hundred feet below ground, have failed. This has allowed gas or water tainted with naturally occurring radiation, high concentrations of salt, or heavy metals that often comes up with the gas to foul nearby drinking wells. Spills of the fracking fluids or tainted water have also occurred during transport to or from the drill sites, as has the disposal into rivers of improperly treated water. The effects -- people getting sick, animals dropping dead, tap water catching fire -- have been well-documented in a slew of press reports and in movies like the Oscar-nominated Gasland. Yet the industry's response to all this has been to mostly highlight the economic benefits of natural gas drilling. "They haven't addressed the environmental issues strongly enough," said Brenda Wrigley, head of the public relations department at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. "People still aren't convinced this can be done safely." Wrigley, who lives in a part of New York State where shale gas development is hotly debated, said the industry has been speaking at people by taking out expensive television ads touting the economic benefits of drilling. "Good public relations isn't just changing people's minds," she said "It's listening to people and adopting your actions to be mutually beneficial." What a lot of people want is a disclosure of what's in the fracking chemicals, a severance tax on natural gas production in Pennsylvania, and tighter regulations on the industry in general. The industry's response to these demands has been mixed, at best. On the disclosure issue, the industry fought hard to not be regulated under the Clean Water Act in 2005. They won, and as a result did not have to disclose what chemicals they are using in the fracking fluid, which the industry considers proprietary. Yet that effort turned into fodder for anti-drilling activists. They dubbed the exemption the "Halliburton (HAL, Fortune 500) loophole" after the oil services company that's a big supplier of frack fluids and who's former CEO, Dick Cheney, was Vice President of the United States when the effort passed. The industry recently set up a disclosure list known as FracFocus, but critics say it's only voluntary and doesn't provide a complete list of wells or chemicals. On the severance tax, the industry also fought hard to keep one out of Pennsylvania, even though most other energy-producing states have one in place. A severance tax could be used to build better roads to handle the increase in truck traffic, or hire more inspectors to make sure the regulations are being followed and there's not an accident. "Their opposition to these types of things has really hurt them," said Melanie Kenderdine, executive director at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Energy Initiative. The record is a bit better when it comes to tightening regulations. Pennsylvania has strengthened its regulations from a few years back, when shale gas development was virtually unheard of in the state. Those efforts were generally supported by industry, according to Nitzan Goldberger, a natural gas analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. Goldberger suggested that some of the better companies were even hoping for tighter regulations as a means of keeping out some of the bad actors who were causing accidents and giving the industry a bad reputation. A spokesman for Exxon Mobil, now a major player in the shale business thanks to last year's $41 billion purchase of XTO Energy, said the industry is always improving its practices and that the company is supportive of new regulations when they are warranted. But others pushing for tighter regulations say the industry as a whole has been less than receptive. "There's been steadfast opposition to any meaningful improvements," said Kate Sinding, an attorney and natural gas expert at Natural Resources Defense Council. The NRDC wants stronger regulations, which are are left to cash strapped states, to come from the federal government. For Sinding, the biggest mistake the industry is making is insisting the fracking process itself is safe despite the many accidents that have occurred around well drilling and water disposal. "They've got to stop relying on that old 'oh, there's never been a problem' line," she said. "People just don't believe it." |
Have you ever wondered how fast and far a Raspberry Pi robot runs throughout the day and night? With GPS capabilities and a Linux computer such as Raspberry Pi, you can track a robot or a multirotor and locate these on a map. But in general speaking, with a Raspberry Pi and a GPS unit you can build limitlessness indoor and outdoor applications. In this article, I explored the most popular GPS systems compatible with Raspberry Pi boards and used in the DIY area. In the list are included GPS add-ons, expansion boards, dongles, shields and other modules such as RasPiGNSS, EM-506, NEO-7M-C, BU-353, the Adafruit Ultimate GPS, 3DR uBlox, and Navigatron v2 – I2C. If some GPS units cost as much as four cups of coffee at Starbucks, there are also less accessible modules that exceed the price of 100.00€ ($113.00). In this collection, I present you 14 GPS units with support for Raspberry Pi Model A+, B or B+. So fire up Raspberry Pi and get ready to get your hands dirty. 01. GPS add-on The 25.75€ ($29.92) add-on for Raspberry Pi B is based on the NEO-6 GPS module. With an input voltage of 3.3V and UART interface, the module returns information such as the current location and time. The add-on is also compatible with the Raspberry Pi Model B+. How to setup the add-on: Raspberry Pi + ITead Studio GPS; 02. RasPiGNSS If the price is a problem, the 149.00€ ($173.00) RasPiGNSS is an expansion board that certainly is not on the top of the shopping list for any maker. Otherwise, the board is one of the most advanced tracking modules that provide precise positioning for the Pi models A, B, and B+. Installation guide here; 03. GPS expansion board Specially designed for Pi Model B+, the GPS board provides general information about the position and time. At a price of 47.00€ ($55.00), the board is based on the low power usage and high-performance positioning module called Ublox MAX-M8Q. On top of the board can be attached a battery to keep on the settings in the event of power loss. 04. USB GPS Dongle The easiest way to turn your fruit-named single board computer into a navigation device is to use a USB GPS dongle. At a price of 39.00€ ($46.00), the small piece of hardware supports Linux and ARM architecture. Also, it’s based on the high sensitive GPS chipset called SiRF Star III. A tutorial to start working with the USB electronic device: Getting GPS to work on a Raspberry Pi; 05. GPS shield Using the standard NMEA protocol to provide information like speed, position and altitude, the GPS shield works great both inside and outside. It is available at a price of €82.00 ($94.00) and enables the data via serial port. It’s not cheap, but it has great features. Step-by-step tutorial to start using the shield: GPS Module for Raspberry Pi Tutorial; 06. EM-506 The €35.00($40) GPS module is another receiver based on the SiRF StarIII chipset. Like the USB GPS dongle described above, the EM-506 provides the position very accurate even in urban canyon and dense foliage environment. The features include a position accuracy of 2.5m, and without any network assistance, it can predict for up to three days the satellite positions. 07. NEO-7M-C With 56 receive channels and an IPX interface, the NEO-7M-C is easy to use and has a price of €24.00 ($28.00). The receiver is engineered to support a large variety of software like Google Earth, u-center and more. 08. Dexter Industries GPS With an accurate position of 2.5 meters and a velocity of 0.1 m/sec, the Dexter Industries GPS is a good solution to build an all-in-one tracking application. The €39.00($45.00) shield can work on Raspberry Pi only with the Arduberry shield. The Arduberry shield is compatible with the Raspberry Pi and allows you to attach the receiver shield. An instructables tutorial that shows you how to setup and start receiving the data from the Dexter Industries shield: GPS and the Raspberry Pi; 09. BU-353 Designed to work with any Linux computer, the €29.00 ($33.00) USB GPS receiver has a high sensitivity and an accurate position of 10 meters. Short guide to install the BU-353 on a Raspberry Pi: Raspberry BU-353 installation; 10. Adafruit Ultimate GPS With a position accuracy of 1.8 meters and a velocity of 0.1 m/s, the Adafruit GPS Breakout is a very sensitive device for high speed movements. It has a price of €35.00($40.00) and a power consumption of only 20 mA during navigation. A guide to connect the module to Pi board: Adafruit Ultimate GPS on a Raspberry Pi; 11. 3DR uBlox Designed for multicopters and rovers, the €79.00($90.00) GPS module is based on the HMC5883L digital compass. And because it’s a system for flying robots, the uBlox supports configuration to work with 3DR APM 2.6 autopilot system. Tutorial to connect the uBlox with Pi: How to connect 3DR GPS uBlox to Raspberry Pi; 12. GSM/GPRS & GPS shield At a price of 11.50€ ($13.00), you have an expansion shield that provides you GSM, GPRS and GPS data. The shield is engineered to expand the Raspberry Pi functionalities for mobile applications, and because our focus is the GPS functionality, the stackable shield is definitely a good device for robot applications. Step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to add GSM, GPRS and GPS functionality to Raspberry Pi: A GSM/GPRS & GPS Expansion Shield for Raspberry Pi; 13. 3G/GPRS shield The 3G/GPRS shield is a device designed for Internet of Things applications. And because we are talking here about GPS data, the shield also provides the location and stay connected to the 3G network. The price is huge, about €149.00 ($158.00), and it’s compatible with Pi, Intel Galileo and Arduino boards. Here is a tutorial to start working with the 3G/GPRS shield: New 3G + GPS shield for Raspberry Pi tutorial; 14. Navigatron v2 – I2C With v2 – i2c we enter into the open-source area. The module has MultiWii 2.0 support and is a solution for low speed microprocessors. It has a price of €45.00 ($51.00). |
Yes. Which is also to say, as you probably already figured, that Plinko "illustrates the binomial distribution, expectations of linear combinations of random variables, and conditional expectations." And this can, if you care about conditional expectations, work to your advantage. So that's Plinko-gaming-strategy No. 1: Basically, if you're in it to win $10,000, stick to the middle slots. Simple enough. And here's the second strategy. You can also rig a Plinko board to remove the "random variables" in the equation. [NB: Use this method only for fun. The Atlantic does not condone the actual rigging of TV game shows, particularly when those shows are beloved and culturally defining and happy to reward their contestants with Winnebagos.] This method, should you undertake it, will require fishing line or some other transparent, thin, and bendable material. First, you remove the plexiglass from the Plinko board. (This will require more than one Plinko-gamer -- the Plinko board, again, being comically large.) Then you weave the fishing line among the Plinko pegs, wrapping the transparent wire around the pegs and creating a path that will lead a chip down to the slot you prefer. [NB: If you use this method and do not rig the peg to fall into the $10,000 slot, you probably shouldn't be in the business of Plinko-rigging in the first place. Perhaps a rigging of Cliff Hangers is more suited to your talents.] Got that done? Good. Then repeat the weaving pattern one peg over, all the way down, to line the path of the chip. Trim the ends of both wires. Replace the plexiglass. Await your riches. This method can go wrong—or, depending on your perspective, it can go wonderfully right. The Plinko board is often carted around for commercials and promotions outside the CBS studio, during which the fishing-line rigging method is often employed to ensure that chips will land in the $10,000 slot. In 2008, after taping one of these ads, producers forgot to remove the wires from the board. The redditor pacifictime told the story of his friend "N," allegedly the first "Price Is Right" contestant to be called to the board after it was rigged. Pacifictime describes what happened next: N ascends the staircase, and drops her first token on the board. It bounces down, around, and holy shit hits the 10,000 in the center! We already can't believe it, we're going nuts. The crowd is on their feet cheering. N drops her second token, and it bounces down a distinctly different random path, but at the last minute makes a beeline for... the 10,000 slot again!! Everybody goes apeshit. Even Drew is showing some genuine excitement. She drops in her third token, it bounces down and hits the 10,000 again, and all hell breaks loose. Everybody's screaming, Drew is literally jumping up and down. She drops her 4th token... And then the math—the "binomial distribution," the "expectations of linear combinations of random variables," the "conditional expectations"—kicked in. N's three—three!—$10,000 drops were very far removed from the realm of possibility. Producers did not need equations or variable charts to realize this. They interrupted the game. They discovered the wire. They reshot the segment. They also let "N," however, keep her money—the $30,000 she'd Plinko'ed, plus the few thousand she won from her subsequent, aired-on-TV chip drops. Which is, by the way, the third way to game Plinko: Be very, very lucky. We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com. |
Introduction At its CES 2016 press conference, Huawei went on to showcase three devices - a phone, a tablet, and a smartwatch. The Mate 8 phone sees its international launch, the Mediapad M2 10 is a new device entirely, while the Huawei Watch Elegant and Jewel are two new editions of the Huawei Watch this time with the ladies in mind specifically. Huawei spoke at length how much its brand awareness has gone up around the world and that it has become the #3 smartphone maker worldwide. With ambitions to jump over Apple and take #2, of course. Flagships like the Huawei Mate 8 and the Nexus 6P will help raise awareness and push sales even further. The Huawei Mate 8 was the first device that was shown off on stage. Not technically new, but we havent had a chance to handle it yet so check out the hands-on on the next page. The Mate 8 features an all-metal body with razor-thin bezels around the large 6" screen. Huawei compared its size to the 5.5" iPhone 6s Plus. It also focused on the new Kirin 950 chipset the first with Cortex-A72 and Mali-T880, promising double the performance over the Kirin 925 in the Mate 7. Then there's the 16MP camera with f/2.0 aperture, OIS and phase detection just the right recipe for low-light shots. The Huawei MediaPad M2 10.0 is a brand new product. A 10" tablet with stylus support and strong focus on audio the partnership with Harman/Kardon brought a 4-speaker, 4-watt setup promises sound like you've never heard before from a tablet. Then there's the Huawei Watch, one of the prettiest Android Wear devices is coming in two new designs aimed at the fairer sex. The Jewel and Elegant versions are adorned with Swarovski-made zirconia and feature a premium Rose Gold case. Oh, and there's a new color version of the Huawei Nexus 6P, the Matte Gold. But we start with the Mate 8, which has a unique color too Mocha Brown. Head to the next page for our hands-on impressions. |
Mr. Zimmerman described feelings of distress: He yelled ‘help me’ probably 50 times, he said. Several witnesses said they saw Mr. Martin on top of Mr. Zimmerman. On the police videotape that showed Mr. Zimmerman re-enacting the crime, Mr. Zimmerman’s injuries — two bandages on the back of his head and a broken nose — are obvious. But the extended conversations between Mr. Zimmerman and the Sanford police also show that detectives, particularly the lead investigator, Chris Serino, raised questions about parts of Mr. Zimmerman’s version of events. The police expressed puzzlement over inconsistencies or hard-to-explain moments in his statements. Why wasn’t Mr. Zimmerman’s head more profoundly injured from repeated slams to the pavement, Mr. Serino asked. Why did Mr. Martin have only one wound to his hand, he asked. Why did Mr. Zimmerman, who said he was too afraid to roll down his car window when Mr. Martin approached, then get out of the car to follow him, he asked. And what provoked Mr. Martin’s anger? “What if, in his mind’s eye, which I can’t get into because he has passed, he perceives you as a threat,” Mr. Serino said, drawing no answer from Mr. Zimmerman. “He perceived you as a threat; he has every right to defend himself, especially if you reach into your pocket to grab your cellphone.” The questions, and answers, are important because they speak to Mr. Zimmerman’s credibility in a case that rests squarely on his account of what happened that night. The Sanford Police Department was widely criticized after the shooting for failing to fully investigate the case, especially on the first night. Law enforcement did not immediately bring charges in the case, setting off a national outcry about race and Florida’s self-defense laws. On Wednesday, Bill R. Lee Jr., Sanford’s police chief, was fired. But, by and large, Mr. Zimmerman stuck to his account during the questioning. Mr. Martin circled his car while he was on the phone to police dispatch. Mr. Martin reached for his waistband and then walked away. At that point, Mr. Zimmerman got out of the car and walked in the same direction to see the name of the street to phone it in. On his way back to the car, Mr. Martin appeared out of nowhere and asked him, “Do you have a problem?” The answer was no. “You do now,” Mr. Zimmerman said Mr. Martin told him. Mr. Martin then attacked Mr. Zimmerman as he tried to use his cellphone to dial 911. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. Mr. Zimmerman was firm in his central self-defense claim: He did not show his gun before the fight and he did not provoke Mr. Martin. Advertisement Continue reading the main story During the questioning on Feb. 26, 27 and 29, Mr. Serino did not seem aggressive or hostile. Calling Mr. Zimmerman a “good guy,” he repeatedly gave him a chance to explain portions of his statement that troubled the police. Mr. Serino is heard in one of the recordings repeatedly warning Mr. Zimmerman that public opinion, already tilting against the crime watch volunteer, would pillory him unless he could explain exactly why he felt justified in pulling the trigger at an unarmed “kid with a future.” Mr. Martin was no “goon,” Mr. Serino told Mr. Zimmerman. He was an athlete. His parents cared about him. He had no violent history, and he was armed with only a pack of candy and a can of iced tea. “Everybody wants to know what sets him off,” Mr. Serino said. “He’s not on PCP. He’s not on anything. He’s on Skittles.” At one point, Mr. Zimmerman mentions that he had received a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as a child and takes 20 milligrams of Adderall twice a day. He cites his disorder as one reason he could not remember one of three major streets in his community when he called the police. “To be honest with you, I have a bad memory anyway,” he told Mr. Serino. Describing the climax of the evening, Mr. Zimmerman said he felt fear when Mr. Martin pressed down on his mouth and nose, “suffocating” him. But Mr. Serino challenged that account, pointing out that on the 911 tapes of calls by witnesses, Mr. Zimmerman’s repeated screams can be heard until just before the gunshot. Other statements bothered Mr. Serino. Mr. Zimmerman said he was so afraid of Mr. Martin that he did not roll his window down to tell Mr. Martin that he was a neighborhood watch leader and to ask why he was walking in the rain. “I did not want to confront him,” Mr. Zimmerman said. Yet, after Mr. Martin ran away, Mr. Zimmerman said, he got out of the car and followed to see what street the teenager fled down. Mr. Zimmerman said he wanted to be precise. “So you basically jumped out of the car to see where he was going,” Mr. Serino said. “That’s not fear. You know what I mean. That’s one of the problems I have with the whole thing.” |
(Image: Carter Roberts) Hard-up astronomers are raising funds for research by selling the only wares they have: the stars. A nonprofit organisation has started an adopt-a-star programme to raise money for an international research consortium to analyse data from NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler mission. The programme, which is not affiliated with NASA, is called “Pale Blue Dot” to echo Carl Sagan’s description of Earth as seen from space. It encourages donors to pick one of 100,000 stars in Kepler’s field of view that show promise for hosting planets. Advertisement For $10, you – and you alone – can plant your personal flag in that star on Google Sky. As Kepler makes new discoveries, you will get email updates about your star and its potential planets. “There are plenty of phony name-a-star things on the web, but I think we were the first scientists to use this sort of model for fundraising, and as a public outreach tool,” says project leader Travis Metcalfe of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. “We’re trying to educate people about what the Kepler mission does, and to get them excited about the quest for other Earths.” Measuring sizes The money raised will go to the Kepler Astroseismic Science Consortium, an international group of researchers who study the seismology of stars. The group cannot get NASA funding to support its research because the agency can’t fund foreign organisations. “We’re always short of funding, of course, as scientists,” says consortium leader Jorgen Christensen-Dalsgaard of Aarhus University in Denmark. The consortium will help the Kepler mission pin down the size of the planets it finds. Kepler finds planets by watching for the dip in a star’s brightness when the planet crosses in front of it. Known as transits, these events can only reveal the ratio between the planet’s size and that of its star. To find the planet’s absolute size, they’ll need to know the size of the star. Sound waves But Kepler will observe some stars frequently enough that scientists will be able to detect pulsations in the star. Convection on the star’s surface can cause these pulsations by sending waves echoing through the star’s interior. “We’ll use those pulsations the way seismologists use earthquakes on Earth to measure the internal properties of the star,” Metcalfe says. Scientists can use pulsations to measure the radius of the star to within a few per cent, giving NASA a way to determine the size of the planet. Pulsations can also help determine the stars’ ages, which can help give an idea of how planetary systems form over time. The researchers may even be able to detect non-transiting planets that the main Kepler team would miss, if the planet is massive enough to make the star wobble towards and away from Earth. Stellar scientists see Kepler’s data as a windfall. “We see this as a fantastic opportunity to get data on stellar interiors and stellar processes basically for free, because it’s the same kind of data we’re using,” Christensen-Dalsgaard says. $1 million “With Kepler’s sensitivity, we’ll get unprecedented observations of these variable stars that we’ve tried to understand from the ground,” Metcalfe says. Christensen-Dalsgaard roughly estimates that the consortium will need about $1 million, give or take a factor of two, to pay scientists’ salaries and bring them together at conferences. If all 100,000 stars sell, they’ll make exactly that. Interest has been high so far, but Christensen-Dalsgaard doubts they’ll sell all of them. What about the planets that Kepler has already detected? Last week, the Kepler team announced they had detected three previously known planets, confirming that the telescope is operating as it should. “Those are reserved for a special purpose,” Metcalfe says. Initially he tried to get television personality Steven Colbert to adopt one, but the comedian hasn’t responded. Metcalfe isn’t sure what to do with those planets yet – but he says, “it’s gonna be good”. |
There are many benefits of utilizing wood mulches for groundcover. From moisture retention, erosion control to weed prevention and aesthetic beauty. The list is constantly growing. Many major cities in North America have made it mandatory to mulch around new plantings in efforts to significantly reduce the need for watering. Studies have shown growth rates of trees and shrubs to increase by as much as 15% when mulch is used. ECO Bales highly compressed bale of Western Red Cedar Mulch is naturally rot resistant. WRC fibers contain oils which act as natural preservatives making it out last most all other wood mulches. The refreshing fragrance contains naturally occurring organic compounds called (thujaplicin) which give off the distinctive aroma. Although it is pleasant to humans it is proven to be a deterrent to most insects ranging from moths and beetles, to cockroaches and silverfish. Shredded mulch intertwines and locks together forming a "mat" which keeps it from blowing or washing away and is virtually mold free. In addition Western Red Cedar mulch is very lightweight and fluffy when ground properly, making it incredibly thermally efficient which helps moderate soil temperatures. WRC has become the premium mulch of choice by numerous professional landscapers. |
Play one wrong note and you die. A pianist with stage fright endures a performance under the eyes of a mysterious sniper, who will shoot and kill him if a wrong note is played. Did You Know? Trivia The closing credit roll takes up 12 minutes of the 90-minute film. The closing credit roll takes up 12 minutes of the 90-minute film. See more Goofs The big concert starts at 9:30 PM, a strange time for any concert, let alone a standard classical one. The big concert starts at 9:30 PM, a strange time for any concert, let alone a standard classical one. See more Quotes via earpiece ] You think you can bargain with me? You're not in control, Tom. The audience is control. And right now, I'm your audience. See more » Clem : [] You think you can bargain with me? You're not in control, Tom. The audience is control. And right now, I'm your audience. Crazy Credits At the end of the credit roll we hear The Impossible Piece being played while the title shows. At the end of the credit roll we hear The Impossible Piece being played while the title shows. See more |
We are very grateful indeed to Mrs Clare Short of DiClara Vestments for sharing with NLM this account of her recent meeting with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI; on this occasion, she presented him with a new set of vestments as a present for his 90th birthday, which he celebrated on Easter Sunday, April 16th. Making the front section of the chasuble. Our Lady of Altötting I managed to incorporate these into my own design, which was then embellished with fresh water pearls and garnet. At the base of the back of the chasuble I embroidered his Papal coat of arms. Part of the embroidered inscription from the lining of the chasuble The list of donors who offered the vestment to Pope Benedictis sewn into the lining. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI with Alessandra Dee Crespo, Clare Short and Alex Short To have Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI hold your hand and thank you, and describe your vestments as “…wonderful, beautiful…” is something I never dreamed could happen 18 months ago when I started my vestments business - Di Clara.With my husband recovering from long-term illness and unable to work, I knew I had to do something to provide our family with some income. And with 3 young children, I knew the only viable option was to work from home.Running a small business from home wasn’t a new thing for me. I had experience of working from home before with a wedding cake business that I was forced to close due to the change in the marriage laws. And after a priest friend suggest I “have a go at making some vestments…” I realised that there was a need in the market for good quality, affordable vestments that brought beauty and reverence to the liturgy.I share Pope Benedict’s belief that beauty is a highly important and spiritual thing in the liturgy; as he once said, “Beauty, then, is not mere decoration, but rather an essential element of the liturgical action, since it is an attribute of God himself and his revelation. These considerations should make us realize the care which is needed, if the liturgical action is to reflect its innate splendour.”Beauty is something that draws us out of ourselves into an encounter with the transcendent. C.S. Lewis gets to the heart of the matter when he says that “created beauty provokes in us a longing to be united with, to receive into ourselves, and to enter into that infinite Beauty of which all created beauty is but a reflection.”It was my aim with this 90th Birthday set of vestments to surpass anything I have ever made previously. For the design of the embroidery, I was inspired by one of Pope Benedict’s favourite Marian shrines – Our Lady of Altötting. On her dress you can see a sunflower, edelweiss and vines.The full set includes a Roman style chasuble, spade end stole and maniple, chalice veil, burse and pall.I can imagine you asking – how did you manage to present the vestments to Benedict himself, and at such a short notice? That’s where my friend Alessandra Dee Crespo comes in.She is Maltese and a great admirer of Benedict, and runs a very successful Facebook page dedicated to him . I asked her for suggestions on what design to use, and she immediately came back with Our Lady of Altötting. In fact, when she saw my post on crowdfunding the vestments, she got in touch and offered to advertise the project among her thousands of followers on her page. She then asked the inevitable question. How are you going to give it him? When I told her “By post” she was horrified, and offered to get me an appointment, which she managed in record time.Approaching the Pope Emeritus was one of the most surreal moments of my life. When greeting him we each knelt and kissed his hand and ring. There was nothing but joy and love in his eyes. He kept insisting on holding our hands as he spoke to us, which just confirmed his kind and gentle nature.Archbishop Georg Gänswein was very friendly and accommodating, and did everything he could to put us at ease and help the meeting to run smoothly. I noticed how he anticipated every need of Pope Benedict and was always one step ahead of what was required. He seemed to be a truly humble servant of God who obviously adores Pope Benedict.When I took out the chasuble from the suit bag and wished him a Happy 90th Birthday, Benedict’s face shone. When Archbishop Gänswein saw it, he exclaimed “Altötting!” I explained the design, and Benedict particularly loved the Edelweiss motif. I then told him the most important bit about the chasuble, showing him the list of the donors embroidered in the lining and read out the inscription inside. We all know that Benedict is a man of a few words ,so when he saw the names of the people who donated on the lining in the chasuble, he (obviously moved) blushed and said in a soft voice, “Thank you, thank you.”It was a tremendous honour to be able to make this set and then present it to Pope Benedict on the anniversary of his Papal inauguration. He is one of my personal heroes, as he is for so many of us. I was also honoured to bring along my 10 year old son – something he will remember for the rest of his life. True to his knack for making people feel at ease, Benedict spoke to Alex with disarming simplicity, and in no time, both of them starting talking about cats.It is traditional when you have a private audience with a Pope to bring along a white skull cap called a zuchetto, which he will then take and wear for a time. It will then be delivered back to you with an inscription stating that this zuchetto has been worn by a particular Pope; my son was in charge of this duty and Pope Benedict was more than happy to oblige! The Pope Emeritus asked to be called ‘Father Benedict’ in one of his interviews, but when speaking to Alex, he was more like a kind grandfather.One thing that was foremost on my mind was to tell him about was my very recent formal entry into the Discalced Secular Carmelites (Third order). I wore my ceremonial brown scapular and told him my Carmelite name, Magdalene of the Resurrection. He was delighted I had taken that step, and really was interested in everything we had to say.Alessandra and I both chose to wear mantillas out of respect, and also because they too are just extremely beautiful – something different from ordinary life, something reverent. So many women want to veil and it just takes one person in a parish to have the courage to be the first one. I wanted to offer mantillas to my customers as they too, in their own way, bring beauty and reverence to the liturgy. What is going on in the outside is simply a reflection of what is going on in the inside. Certainly all of our communities could stand to reflect more deeply on what we are doing to make the liturgy, and our faith life, something that draws us out of ourselves into an encounter with the transcendent.The fact that an invitation to meet with Pope Benedict was issued almost immediately was in my opinion all down to Our Lady. The Carmelite order is the order of Our Lady and everything I have and do, including all my talents and my business, have been consecrated to her. The vestment set, although it is not blue, is still a Marian set, and as we knelt to be blessed by Pope Emeritus at the end of the meeting, I could only thank our Blessed Mother for her intercession in all of this.You can see more of my vestments at www.diclara.co.uk , or contact me directly at info@diclara.co.uk . Worldwide shipping available. |
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