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Posted July 20, 2015 at 9:52 pm The final version of this comic doesn't quite reflect its inspiration, but reflecting the inspiration was convoluted and overly wordy to make clear, so we get this. HUZZAH! Basically, the inspiration came from me considering that there are things myself and others like or dislike that we may be proud of and others might praise us for, but how it's entirely possible, even common, that we like or dislike those things for entirely personal reasons that have nothing to do with enlightenment of any kind. This is something I've considered a lot, but it was most recently in regard to myself and how I generally don't like things that take me out of the stories, and how my first personal objection to a lot of imagery other people might find offensive for more socially conscious reasons boils down to "it breaks my suspension of disbelief". So, yeah. The person I'm poking fun at via Rich today is myself. NO ONE IS SAFE FROM BEING RICH. This particular Rich, I mean. Many aspire to be Richard, or at least have his hair, but few succeed. And I'm sure there are lots of cool people named Rich reading this. In fact, if you are reading this, and your name is Rich, you are honorary cool. |
Artwork by Gian Galang The rematch between Donald Cerrone and Rafael dos Anjos should be one of the most anticipated fights of 2015. They don't talk a great deal of smack, they are fighting on TV rather than pay-per-view, and they haven't received much promotional push but the seasoned fans know that this match up is solid gold. Cerrone has always been a fan favourite for two reasons. He finishes fights and he fights a lot. No one ever found fault with what Anthony Pettis did in the cage and he should have been a superstar but he's fought twice in two years. It's the same with Cain Velasquez whom the UFC are flogging like a dead horse: no one has been drawn to him like the breakthrough star he was supposed to be because they rarely see him fight and it's even more rare to see him fight somebody new. I'll have plenty of opportunity to moan about the UFC's heavyweight division where 'the best fight the best three times a year' as we get closer to yet another title rematch in the first week of February, but for now my point is that inactivity kills any potential to be a star. With four fights in 2013, 2014 and 2015, Cerrone is one of the most active fighters in the UFC. While his fellow WEC alumni Benson Henderson and Anthony Pettis fought their way up to the title, Cerrone fell short. While considered one of the best strikers in the division and a skilled grappler to boot, Cerrone's game was lacking in certain areas. Young Cerrone was something of a bully—if his opponents retreated under fire he excelled. The running low kicks followed and hacked away at their trailing leg. Opponents who flinched at his feints were in for a shellacking. Nowhere was this more obvious than against Jeremy Stephens. But when his opponents stepped in on him, he struggled. What Cerrone suffered from was the weakness of every man with a height and reach advantage in his division. Those long levers mean that when the opponent gets close enough to throw their straights, the taller man is throwing awkward looping blows that bow out and are easily beaten to the mark. When he fought Nate Diaz, Cerrone took a hell of a beating in the opening round due to his insistance on trading punches with a man who punched straighter and cleaner, and almost always beat Cerrone to the target. The same thing could be seen at moments against Melvin Guillard, who quickly clipped Cerrone with punches before that switch kick put him down, and against Anthony Pettis who did an excellent job of being too far away for Cerrone to kick, or too close for Cerrone to comfortably punch. Cerrone has done a great job mitigating that with his successful incorporation of intercepting knee strikes in recent fights however. Evan Dunham, Eddie Alvarez and Jim Miller all winded themselves by driving onto Cerrone's knee and weren't keen to do it again. What's more, Cerrone's management of distance has proven much better. Rather than just throwing back, he'll concede ground and re-establish the distance which favours him. While backing up on a straight line is generally discouraged in boxing, there's a ton of exceptions. When you're a much taller fighter and fighting in a circular cage that almost no-one is competent in cutting off, you're a good deal safer. Now 9-1 since May of 2013, Cerrone's sole loss in that period of reinvention was to the man whom he fights this weekend for the UFC lightweight title, Rafael dos Anjos. The first match was far from one sided though Dos Anjos' pressure, body work and grappling earned him a unanimous decision in which neither man was close to being stopped. Now scheduled for a full five rounds, Cerrone and Dos Anjos have a chance to finish their business. Dos Anjos himself has been a fighter reborn. Up until his victories over Evan Dunham and Cerrone you would have a hard time describing Dos Anjos as anything but a hit-and-miss also ran. Since then Dos Anjos has bested Benson Henderson, Nate Diaz and Anthony Pettis. That most recent bout for the championship was easily the finest performance of Dos Anjos' career as he walked down Pettis and cut the cage on him. Pettis' incredible kicking game was completely defused and he found himself either panicking on the lead or waiting to be hit along the fence for five whole rounds. While many of Rafael Cordeiro's charges become known for their aggression, there is little of the wildness often associated with that trait in Dos Anjos and his work in constantly defending himself while moving forwards was tremendous. Ducking down behind his shoulders, stiff arming Pettis mid-combination to move out of punching range. It was tremendous. Dos Anjos here demonstrates the reverse shoulder roll which made Jersey Joe Walcott such a wonderful fighter along the ropes. The success that Dos Anjos found in the first fight with Cerrone was not in crowding him, but in measured kickboxing, focusing on attacking the body. Cerrone has often had trouble keeping his right arm in front of his liver when the opponent moves in on him and has that flinch reaction of getting the guard up high at the sign of a charge. Anthony Pettis connected repeatedly with the round kick to the liver, and Dos Anjos found success with the same. Dos Anjos also utilized the left hook and straight to the body to great effect. By repeatedly changing level to hit Cerrone's right side, Dos Anjos set up the low-high which culminated in a knockdown by his right hook. Here Dos Anjos counters a knee attempt by Cerrone. The wonderful thing about countering kicks with body shots is that because the opponent is out of stance, he is panicked and will almost always rush to protect his head at all costs, exposing his body. Tyrone Spong throws body hooks off of blocked kicks extremely well. The low high reaps its rewards. The same simple combination worked wonders when Anthony Pettis wanted to circle away from Dos Anjos' powerful left kicks along the fence. Cerrone, however, found the mark well with his lead leg low kick. With Dos Anjos being a southpaw, this served to connect on the outside of Dos Anjos' lead leg and often with the effect of throwing Dos Anjos' lead foot across his body. Furthermore, Cerrone's new front snap kick showed itself and at no point did he suffer a counter or a takedown attempt as a result of throwing it. The front snap kick is a brilliant technique for a tall kicker because it keeps a knee between the kicker and his target. Round kicks, meanwhile, have that awful moment when mistimed or telegraphed when the opponent can step straight inside of them and start punching. But the original fight wasn't all striking. One of Dos Anjos' keys to victory was his ability to take Cerrone down and hold him there. Cerrone had to that point only spent sixteen seconds on his back in the UFC. Dos Anjos held him there for a minute or so at a time, and was remarkably active from inside the guard. We don't see so many fighters ground and pound successfully from the guard in the modern era, but Dos Anjos has been able to pull it off against some of the highest level guards in his division. The fans haven't been so keen on Dos Anjos as they always have on Cerrone. I feel 'RDA' suffers from that same fault that Chris Weidman did and that Luke Rockhold and others will—he's a great all rounder but this in turn forces nothing to stand out. With Cerrone you know that you're waiting for the round kicks and then you can chant olé or take a shot. With Dos Anjos, he'll grind his man down wherever, normally through all stages of the game. There's no one thing to hang onto and that makes him hard for the average viewer to appreciate. Whether you like it or not, MMA fans like signature moves and finishers as much as pro wrestling fans. Donald Cerrone has to be the champion the UFC wants. He's active, he's well liked, he's got an exciting fighting style and as his enduring relationship with Budweiser even after all the nonsense of the Reebok deal will attest, he's marketable. Certainly it would be nice to see a fighter who takes so many risks in fighting so often be rewarded for it. Whatever the case, get back here Monday for our post mortem of the last major card of the year. Pick up Jack's new kindle book, Finding the Art, or find him at his blog, Fights Gone By. See more of the Gian Galang's amazing art on his website. Check out these related stories: How Conor McGregor Killed the King Aldo versus McGregor: A Clash of Kings How Holly Holm Killed Queen Ronda Rousey |
All three quarterbacks threw touchdown passes during Auburn's second scrimmage of fall camp, which emphasized true freshmen as well as select veterans. Jarrett Stidham, Sean White and Malik Willis each threw touchdown passes, while the defense had an interception and a safety at Jordan-Hare Stadium on Saturday. "I thought the offense did a good job today," Auburn coach Gus Malzahn said. "They had some explosive plays. I thought they rebounded from the last scrimmage. Our defense also did some good stuff. ... Overall I thought it was a very solid day." According to a source, Willis threw two touchdowns and White threw the interception while freshman Markaviest Bryant had the sack inside the end zone for a safety. Darius Slayton, Noah Igbinoghene, Nate Craig-Myers and Marquis McClain each had long touchdown receptions, according to a source, who said there were a series of plays where the ball was placed inside the 10-yard line to create a long field. Malzahn said the top two quarterbacks took "pretty much equal" reps with the first-team offense and saw time with the second team. Asked if there's been separation at quarterback yet, Malzahn said, "I'm not ready to say that yet," and denied knowledge of who threw the two interceptions during Monday's scrimmage, though a source confirmed it was White. Several players were out due to injury or to give less experienced players more reps. That group included defensive linemen Marlon Davidson (knee) and Andrew Williams (knee), safety Tray Matthews (undisclosed), defensive back Daniel Thomas (arm), wide receiver Kyle Davis (undisclosed) and running back JaTarvious Whitlow (ankle). "It's been very physical and that's been by design, too," Malzahn said. "And you're going to have guys banged up from time to time. You'll have a couple of guys you want to hold out just to get them healed up or whatever, but we expect everybody but possibly Whitlow, he had an ankle injury. On special teams, Igbinoghene and John Franklin III saw reps on kickoff returns and redshirt-sophomore Ian Shannon "had a good day," according to Malzahn, as the Tigers had 10 punts. |
MANAMA: A court in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday sentenced a woman to 70 lashes and a fine of 20,000 Saudi Riyals (SR) for insulting a man on instant-messaging application WhatsApp, said a report published on Gulf News. According to a source at the criminal court in Al Qatif, the court announced the verdict after it transpired that the 32-year-old woman was guilty of tarnishing the reputation of the plaintiff on WhatsApp, local daily Okaz has reported on Monday. The complainant filed the suit after an argument with the woman. The source did not disclose the nature of the disagreement between the two; however, the defendant admitted she had insulted the man but reportedly rejected the court ruling. Article Three of the Saudi Anti-Cyber Crime Law states that whoever defames or inflicts damage upon others through various information technology devices "shall be subject to imprisonment for a period not exceeding one year and a fine not exceeding SR500,000 or to either punishment." In another incident in July 2014, two women in Jeddah were sentenced to 20 lashes and 10 days in jail for insulting each other on WhatsApp. The case reached court after one of the women sued the other for allegedly slandering her reputation and insulting her. The judge had issued the verdict after viewing the exchange of messages between the two women who are reportedly cousins. The judge had sought to end the strife between the two cousins, however neither wanted to apologise. |
Homebrew Monk Subclass Way of the Broken Sky Monks of the Way of the Broken Sky respect the unbridled energies that lay dormant within the sky, and the pure power a storm wields as it crosses the land. These monks live and practice their martial arts high above the world, cloistered away in mountain temples. They train their bodies and minds with absolute focus in an attempt to understand, and even control, the chaotic forces of the sky itself. Step of the Broken Sky When you choose this tradition at 3rd level, you can tap into the raw energies of the wind as you move around the battlefield. Whenever you use your Step of the Wind to Dash, you can choose to apply one of the following effects: The first time you hit with a melee weapon attack before the end of the turn, your attack rings with thunder that is audible within 100 feet of you, and the attack deals extra thunder damage to the target equal to your Martial Arts die. You have advantage on the first melee weapon attack you make before the end of the turn. The melee attack deals lightning damage instead of its normal type. You do not gain any extra movement speed from the dash granted by Step of the Wind, and instead gain a flight speed equal to your movement speed until the end of your turn Fist of Roaring Thunder At 6th level, you gain the ability to channel your ki into a powerful blow that shatters the air itself. Immediately after you take the attack action on your turn, you can spend 2 ki points to cast the 1st-level spell thunderwave as a bonus action. You can spend additional ki points to cast thunderwave as a higher level spell. Each additional ki point you spend increases the spell’s level by 1. The maximum number of ki points (2 plus any additional points) that you can spend equals half your monk level (round down). Soul of the Storm At 11th level, you gain the ability to channel your ki and empower yourself with the might of the storm. As a bonus action, you can expend up to 3 ki points to grant your melee weapon attacks a bonus to damage rolls when you hit with them. The bonus equals the number of ki points you spent. This bonus last for 1 minute or until you use this feature again. While under the effect of this feature, you also gain resistance to lightning and thunder damage. Fury of the Broken Sky At 17th level, you gain the ability to channel your ki and let loose a bolt of lightning. As an action, you can spend 3 ki points to unleash a line of lightning that is 60 feet long and 5 feet wide. Each creature in the line must make a Dexterity saving throw, taking 6d6 lightning damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. You can then teleport to an unoccupied space touched by the line. You can increase the bolt's damage by spending ki points. Each point you spend increases the damage by 1d6. Art Credit - Jason A. Engle Student of Ojutai - Dragons of Tarkir |
Ubuntu on mobile phones has been a long standing project for Canonical and quite an ambitious one. Much like Microsoft and its new One Windows ideology, Canonical hatched the scheme for a unified cross-device application ecosystem long ago, but progress has been rather slow. Meizu has been a vital part of the new OS development with various demo builds and rumor of Ubuntu-powered Meizu handset popping up ever since the MX 3 was the company's flagship offer. Today the Chinese smartphone maker posted a rather interesting teaser on Facebook. The image hints at a new OS, which will join the ranks of Flyme and YunOS and probably be unveiled at this year's MWC. We can instinctively point a finger towards Ubuntu Touch, which we will hopefully see in mass-production devices. This hunch is further backed up by rumors of an Ubuntu MX4 hitting the market early 2015. The current flagship device has been a long-standing candidate for the Ubuntu experience, but we can definitely expect surprises. Last week Canonical threw a quite unexpected curve ball by announcing that the BQ Aquaris E4.5 will be the pioneer of the Ubuntu on a Smartphone. Keeping that in mind it is not certain if the MX4 or MX4 Pro will offer a high-end hardware home for the new OS or Meizu will bring an entirely new phone to the scene. In any case the news is exciting. The Ubuntu Touch platform itself is an interesting brain child of Canonical Ltd. The main idea behind it is a uniform kernel and set of base technologies that form a cross device application platform. What this implies is a high level of uniformity and compatibility, allowing you to use pretty much the same set of applications, both on mobile and desktop devices. To further add to the excitement, Ubuntu touch also promises a full desktop experience and perhaps even in the future a full desktop Ubuntu session running straight from the phone or tablet once hooked to a bigger screen. The latter, also known as "Full desktop convergence" is kind of experimental at this time, so it might be a while until we are actually able to dock our phone and use it as an everyday work PC replacement for example. There are also some hardware requirement for the feature to work but they are definitely not out of reach for current gen mobile devices so here's hoping we finally see a full-featured Ubuntu experience on a Meizu device in Barcelona. Source |
This BU-BC Charity Hockey Game Roster Is Bonkers The first annual Comm Ave Charity Classic is packing some serious star power. Get a compelling long read and must-have lifestyle tips in your inbox every Sunday morning — great with coffee! As long as Boston University and Boston College are in business, and a slow, sweaty Green Line branch runs between them, every meeting between the college hockey juggernauts is guaranteed to be a bitter, electric spectacular. Though both schools’ students are home for summer break, the Terriers and Eagles will do battle once again—this time, with rosters cobbled together with stars from days past. This Friday, the Comm Ave Charity Classic will pit the Hockey East rivals against one another at BU’s legendary Walter Brown Arena, to raise awareness and funding for Compassionate Care ALS in honor of former BC baseball captain Pete Frates, late BC sports information director Dick Kelley, late BC linebacker Ron Perryman, and Richard Armstrong. The charity game is the brainchild of former BC hockey captain Pat Mullane and his teammate Andrew Orpik. Here are the jerseys BC's squad will wear at Friday's Comm Ave Charity Classic! #WeAreBC pic.twitter.com/RmF6Jzk08W — BC Hockey (@BCHockeyNews) July 7, 2015 Peep these rosters. BC’s roster boasts one of the greatest American-born players of all-time in Brian Leetch, newly minted Bruin Jimmy Hayes and his brother Kevin, and Calgary Flames wunderkind Johnny Gaudreau. BU’s squad features enemy of Rhode Island nuns Matt O’Connor and journeyman Jay Pandolfo. Boston College Greg Brown, Buffalo Sabres, BC ’90 Brian Boyle, Tampa Bay Lightning, BC ’07 Stephen Gionta, New Jersey Devils, BC ’06 Brian Leetch, New York Rangers, BC ’87 Mike Mottau, Boston Bruins, BC ’00 Cory Schneider, New Jersey Devils, BC ’08 Dave Spina, Finland, BC ‘05 Joe Whitney, New Jersey Devils, BC ‘11 Brian Gibbons, Columbus Blue Jackets, BC ‘11 John Muse, Carolina Hurricanes, BC ’11 Jimmy Hayes, Boston Bruins, BC ’12 Paul Carey, Boston Bruins, BC ’12 Brian Dumoulin, Pittsburgh Penguins, BC ’13 Chris Kreider, New York Rangers, BC ’13 Kevin Hayes, New York Rangers, BC ’14 Bill Arnold, Calgary Flames, BC ’14 Patrick Brown, Carolina Hurricanes, BC ’14 Johnny Gaudreau, Calgary Flames, BC’14 Boston University Matt O’Connor, Ottawa Senators, BU ’15 Ben Rosen, Bridgeport Soundtigers, BU ’13 Ross Gaudet, BU ’12 Matt Ronan, BU ’14 Pat MacGregor, BU ’14 Anthony Moccia, BU ’15 Mike Pomichter, Anaheim Ducks, BU ’95 Sean Escobedo, Pittsburgh Penguins, BU ’13 Chris Kelleher, Boston Bruins, BU ’98 Tom Poti, Washington Capitals, BU ’98 Shawn McEachern, Boston Bruins, BU ’91 Scott Young, St. Louis Blues, BU ‘87 Jay Pandolfo, New Jersey Devils, BU ‘96 Freddy Meyer, Philadelphia Flyers, BU ’03 Charlie Coyle, Minnesota Wild, BU ‘14 Adam Clendening, Vancouver Canucks, BU ’14 Chris Bourque, New York Rangers, BU ’05 Special guests include Bruins legend Ray Bourque and UNH alum Stevie Moses, who holds the record for most goals in a season in Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League. Tickets are $10 and available here. Doors open at 6 p.m., and puck drop is at 7:05. |
ADVERTISEMENT Barely a week away from the anniversary of Donald Trump's election victory, it's worth considering what the Republican Party told voters to expect if it won. The Republicans were going to repeal every last word — the commas and periods too, presumably — of the hated Affordable Care Act and replace it with something much better, much cheaper, and much simpler. It didn't happen. They were going to fund, plan, and execute (not necessarily in that order) one of the largest infrastructure-cum-national defense building projects in the history of the world: the fabled 2,000-mile-long wall along the Mexican border. Astonishingly, that also failed. They were committed to "freeing financial markets" and to "an annual audit of the Federal Reserve's activities," perhaps on the off chance that Janet Yellen is bringing home government toilet paper in her messenger bag. Those things didn't pan out either. The only thing they have left to fail at now is "tax reform." The GOP is like a once-talented rock band who decided to move past the simple but popular 4/4 anthems upon which their success was built into less-explored territory — the psychedelic folk of medical care provision, the space jazz of pragmatic trade policy, the disco of building things other than missiles and airplanes — each time with no success. Now tired, fat, graying, many decades removed from their prime, they take the stage once more to perform their old hits. This is a concert nobody wants to go to. There is no significant constituency of Americans asking for their taxes to be cut — and certainly no sizable bloc of persons over the age of 50 who would agree to paying less in exchange for losing access to entitlement programs. Sure, there are any number of individual rich people who would very much like to pay less or nothing at all. There are any number of non-rich people who feel the same way. I am one of them. How much would I like the feds or the state government to take out of each of my paychecks? Nothing. In fact, if they have any extra change lying around — say six or seven grand twice a month — that they would like to hand me, I would be glad to have it. Republicans will be the first to point out that this has nothing to do with greed. In fact, they insist that their motivation is the opposite. They aren't interested in cutting taxes because they want to help rich people buy more helicopters and tacky vacation homes but because they want to help the working and middle classes. The best way of doing this, they say, is to give the money to rich people first and then let them hand it on to their social and economic inferiors. The wealthy are just the pizza delivery guy here. It's hard to say whether they are being cynical or not, but either way this is nonsense. The proposition that hacking away at tax rates will increase wages is an empirical one that can be tested. Indeed, it has been tested, during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and the results were negative. Real wages remained flat. If the GOP really wants wages to go up for everyone, not in a handful of boutique industries or among workers of a certain skillset, but throughout the American workforce as a whole, then they need to commit themselves to something far more radical than an arbitrary reduction in individual and corporate tax rates. Our entire economy needs to be reshaped, by a dexterous and powerful hand, into something more recognizably human. We need to get families out of what Elizabeth Warren has called the "two-income trap," in which they are at the mercy of car payments and commuting costs and daycare fees; we need to eliminate, by loan forgiveness and strict federal price controls on tuition and student housing, the crippling levels of college debt that have turned at least two generations into indentured servants holding worthless pieces of paper. We must increase rather than eliminate regulations on financial institutions — indeed, we must undertake a thoroughgoing definancialization of the economy. We need the infrastructure spending and heavy manufacturing jobs promised by Trump, but we also need young people to learn carpentry and other traditional crafts. People need more money, but they also need a lot less ugliness in their lives. Mitch and Paul and the boys need to dust off the Moog synthesizer, invest in a dizzying array of weird guitar effects pedals, and, who knows, maybe expand their minds by dropping some acid. It's time to make another weird album, one that doesn't suck. |
Breitbart News has obtained the FY 2017 refugee resettlement proposals from the five leading resettlement agencies that operate in Michigan showing they plan to jam down a 40 percent increase in refugees from the “Middle East-South Asia” region, which includes Syria, on residents of Michigan in the fiscal year that begins on October 1. These plans in Michigan are completely consistent with the nationwide “refugee number determination” the Obama Administration presented to Congress on Tuesday: an increase of the FY 2017 ceiling by 29 percent to 110,000, up from the ceiling of 85,000 that was approved for FY 2016. The actual final number for FY 2016 is likely to reach or exceed the original ceiling number, if the run rate of the last few months continues for the final two weeks of the fiscal year. In their FY 2016 plans, these five agencies–Lutheran Social Services (which recently changed the name of its Michigan operation to Samaritas), Church World Service, Catholic Charities, HIAS (formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), and Episcopal Migration Ministries— proposed 4,060 refugees overall to be resettled in Michigan, 2,567 from the “Middle East-South Asia” region, which includes Syria. As of September 13, 3,783 total refugees, 1,217 of whom are from Syria, have been resettled in Michigan to date this fiscal year. At the accelerated run rate of the past few months, year end numbers are likely to hit or exceed the FY 2016 plan for 4,000 total refugees in Michigan, of which over 1,300 are Syrian refugees. The FY 2017 plans, obtained through Freedom of Information Act request made to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services by a local Michigan grassroots group (as were the FY 2016 plans), show that that these five resettlement agencies have proposed a 38 percent increase in overall refugee resettlement, up to 5,606 refugees. This includes a 40 percent increase in refugees from the “Middle East-South Asia” region that includes Syria, to 3,586. On Wednesday, taking advantage of Clinton’s absence from the campaign trail due to her own health problems after her recent diagnosis with pneumonia, Trump is visiting Flint, Michigan, site of a public health crisis arising from the city’s decision (led by a Democratic mayor) to switch its water source from Lake Michigan to the lead laden Flint River. According to the FY 2017 plan submitted by the Samaritas resettlement agency, 100 refugees from the Middle East-South Asia region will be sent to Flint, Michigan, the first time that city in the midst of a huge public health and financial crisis has received refugees. Trump’s arrival in Flint on Wednesday afternoon, focused on solutions to the city’s water crisis, offers a highly political juxtaposition to the Obama administration’s plan to bring refugees into the cash-strapped city. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services did not release these FY 2017 plans until this month, less than 30 days before the beginning of FY 2017 on October 1. The federal government and the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, who are required by the federal Refugee Act of 1980 to consult with states and localities prior to the placement of refugees in those states and localities, have largely ignored the statute’s consultation requirement in every state in the country in which the program operates. Instead of the legally required “consultation” process conducted in good faith to understand a state’s capacity to handle the economic, security, and public health burden imposed on taxpayers in that state, the federal government has conducted a series of window dressing meetings with state government representatives that fail to account for any of the state’s concerns. Even more significantly, the federal government and the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement have ignored their legal duty to consult with–or even meet with–county and other local governments in locations where the federal government has placed huge numbers of refugees. Oakland County, Michigan is one such ignored county government. The affluent suburb of Detroit, population 1.2 million, has been inundated with refugees over the past several years without its consent. As Breitbart News reported previously, over 486 refugees from Iraq were resettled in Oakland County in FY 2015, and another 408 refugees from Syria (more than forty states) and 329 refugees from Iraq have been resettled in Oakland County in FY 2016 as of September 14, with two more weeks to go in the fiscal year. As Breitbart News reported previously, Michigan is the state with second highest number of resettled Syrian refugees in FY 2016 to date, and the highest per capita rate. If the Obama administration and the Michigan resettlement agencies have their way, the number of refugees resettled in Oakland County. Michigan will skyrocket to 1,242 in FY 2017, up from the 920 planned for FY 2016. That resettlement has come at an economic and public health cost to Oakland County taxpayers. As Breitbart News reported previously, a refugee from Iraq who arrived in Oakland County in FY 2015 was diagnosed with active TB this March. In June, Oakland County executive L. Brooks Patterson told ORR director Robert Carey that he and the taxpayers in his county were tired of this continued federal over reach without their consent. In a letter to Carey, Patterson demanded and requested that ORR comply with the Refugee Act of 1980 and initiate consultations with Oakland County prior to the resettlement of any refugees there. Carey, in essence, told Patterson in his response that neither he nor the ORR intended to comply with the Refugee Act of 1980’s requirements to consult with local county governments. The huge influx of unwelcome refugees to Michigan and the strong grassroots opposition to the federally imposed program, is a key factor that now places the state in play in the November contest between GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Most recent polls in the Real Clear Politics average, conducted between August 22 and September 7, indicate that Clinton leads Trump in Michigan by 5 points. However, the combination of Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” gaffe, concerns over her health and trustworthiness sparked by her diagnosis with pneumonia and collapse leaving a 9-11 memorial event on Sunday, Trump’s aggressive campaigning in Michigan, and the intensity of opposition to the flooding of the state with refugees may mean that Trump has an opportunity to win the normally blue state in November. |
Mark Thies (Photo: Provided) I first met Sen. Marco Rubio at a Republican fundraiser in 2014 where he was the featured speaker. “Hi, my name is Mark Thies”, I said. “I’m an Engineering Professor at Clemson.” “Engineers!”, he said. “Boy, we sure need a lot more of them, don’t we!” I shook my head in wonder at his comment. Indeed, if you get your news from the mainstream media you might think there’s a big shortage of students in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The truth, however, is quite different. For example, Clemson’s engineering enrollment has reached almost 5,300 students – an 80 percent increase since 2008! In my 30 years of teaching, I’ve never seen classes so large – and so many bright students! Equally compelling data are stagnant STEM wages, with increases averaging a tiny 0.4 percent per year from 2000-2012 (cis.org/no-stem-shortage). In 2013, PBS ran a story called "The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage: How Guest Workers Lower US Wages". And last week in his blog, Professor Norm Matloff at University of California-Davis pointed out that computer science starting salaries went up a microscopic 0.06 percent last year. But if Rubio has his way, prospects for our STEM students will be getting substantially worse. That’s because of a bill he is co-sponsoring in the Senate: S. 153, the Immigration and Innovation (I-Squared) Act. If passed, S. 153 would be a game changer — a bill that should scare the heck out of parents paying for a STEM education for their kids. Let’s look at how I-Squared will make it even harder for Americans to get good-paying jobs. Work visas called H-1B visas are granted to foreign workers who have a bachelor’s or higher degree in a wide range of areas. S. 153 would increase the number of H-1B visas from 65,000 up to 245,000. Contrary to popular belief, there are no worker protections to prevent companies from firing American workers, replacing them with H-1B’s, and even forcing them to train their replacements (e.g., Disney). As pointed out in Trump’s on-line immigration plan, 87 percent of current H-1B holders are paid wages in the bottom third. Imagine what a quadrupling of these visas will do to wages! So this is all about cheap labor – not about top talent. But the worst aspect of the bill is the provision to give international students a lifetime work visa (a green card) for obtaining any advanced STEM degree. Thus, future immigration policy will be dictated by how many students decide to come to America and obtain/buy a STEM degree/green card and byhow many Universities set up/expand their STEM programs both to educate these students and to help their own bottom line. I can understand why corporations want legislation such as I-Squared so as to flood the labor market and thus lower STEM wages, but what I can’t understand is politicians such as Rubio who continually advance legislation that provides jobs for others at the expense of our own citizens, whom we pay dearly to educate. Rubio was originally elected by the tea party, but this bill shows him now to be totally in the pocket of corporate donors. His second attempt to destroy the job prospects of America’s STEM students (his first attempt was in the now infamous “Gang of Eight” bill in 2013) earns him an “F” in my class anytime. NEWSLETTERS Get the Top 5 newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong The five biggest headlines in your inbox each morning Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-736-7136. Delivery: Daily Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Top 5 Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters Mark Thies is a Professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Clemson. His research areas include advanced materials, biofuels, and renewable biopolymers. His email address is SCIM911@yahoo.com. Read or Share this story: http://grnol.co/1XcQXbt |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans in Congress unveiled a fiscal 2018 budget plan as a first step to major U.S. tax reform on Tuesday, only to face the same divisions between conservatives and moderates that helped killed their efforts to replace Obamacare. Rep. Diane Black (R-TN) announces the 2018 budget blueprint during a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., July 18, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein The $4 trillion spending blueprint, released by the House of Representatives budget committee, could become a new flashpoint for Republican in-fighting because it links future tax cuts for businesses and individuals with $203 billion in mandatory spending cuts that would reduce benefits for the poor. The Republican push to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare, collapsed in the Senate late on Monday after a tug-of-war between party moderates who wanted to preserve healthcare benefits for lower-income Americans and conservatives who wanted to scale them back. On Tuesday, House Republicans disagreed over the budget proposal in terms that could foreshadow a replay of the Senate healthcare debacle when lawmakers turn to tax reform. Representative Mark Meadows, chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said the budget measure would not get enough conservative votes to pass the House without bigger cuts to programs that the government is required to fund by law. “It’s still short of what it needs,” Meadows told reporters. On the other side, Representative Charlie Dent, a leader of the moderate Tuesday Group, called for an agreement with Democrats to establish higher spending levels for discretionary programs. “If we move too much in the mandatory area, then it will make tax reform that much more difficult to get. It’s that basic,” Dent told Reuters. House and Senate approval for a fiscal 2018 budget agreement would unlock a vital legislative tool called reconciliation that allows Republicans to pass tax legislation in the Senate with a simple majority. But the Senate’s inability to pass healthcare legislation even with reconciliation raised questions about how useful the strategy really is. One corporate lobbyist said some Senate Republicans privately question the reconciliation approach backed by House leaders, saying it appears to be “poisoning the well” in the Senate by alienating Democrats who might otherwise support tax legislation. Republicans have only a 52-48 Senate majority and can afford to lose no more than two votes on Republican-only legislation, with Vice President Mike Pence providing the tie-breaking vote. DEMOCRATS’ DELIGHT Democrats were delighted by the Republicans’ failure on healthcare and called for bipartisan discussions. “Using a partisan approach for the major issues of our time — healthcare and tax reform – is a prescription for trouble,” Senator Ron Wyden, top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said at a tax reform hearing on Tuesday. Senator Orrin Hatch, the panel’s Republican chairman, acknowledged that Republicans would also have difficulty passing tax reform legislation, even using reconciliation. “It’s going to be difficult to do. Hopefully, we can get that done,” Hatch told reporters. The Senate is under no obligation to accept the House budget language that would ultimately tie tax reform to mandatory spending cuts in the same piece of legislation. Senator John Thune, chairman of the Senate Republican conference, said senators will decide whether to add the same language to their own budget resolution. After six months in power, President Donald Trump has yet to score a major legislative victory, though financial markets have rallied since his election on expectations of pro-business measures, including tax reform and infrastructure spending. Pence, speaking to a gathering of retailers in Washington on Tuesday, reiterated that Trump plans to slash the corporate income tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent. But the failure of the healthcare bill in the Senate created uncertainty in financial markets, with the dollar hitting its lowest level against the euro in more than a year on Tuesday. Slideshow (6 Images) “The healthcare bill not coming through raises some continued concerns about the ability of Washington to push through favorable fiscal policies,” said Lisa Kopp, head of traditional investments at U.S. Bank Wealth Management. The S&P 500 stock market index has gained about 15 percent since Trump’s Nov. 8 election, while the benchmark Dow Jones industrial average has posted one record high after another on optimism of a Trump tax reform and other pro-business policies. The budget committee will hold a hearing on the budget resolution on Wednesday. Representative Diane Black, the panel’s chair, said the measure has the votes to reach the House floor. |
Next year is the 30th anniversary of one of my favorite long-running shonen manga. This manga has been published in multiple languages across the world but has never had much of a fair shake when it came to English speaking countries until recently. Which manga is this? Why, I’m talking about Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure! You might be asking yourself, “What is Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure? Isn’t that the manga where the characters make weird poses? Why should I get into it?” I’ll give you 5 good reasons. 1. A Constantly Fresh Storyline Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is unique among shonen manga because it is a sprawling, multigenerational story that follows the Joestar family and the various supernatural enemies they use their special abilities to fight. Whereas most shonen manga follow just one protagonist, each part of JJBA follows a different member of the Joestar family – each of whom has a name that can usually be abbreviated to Jojo. Each Jojo tends to be different from the next; the first Jojo, Jonathan Joestar, is a proper English Gentleman, whereas his grandson Joseph (the main character of the second story) is hotheaded and brash. The story is divided into 8 parts as of this writing, and each part brings something new to the table. From vampires in 1800s Great Britain, to Aztec gods in World War II era Italy, to a murder mystery in a quiet Japanese prefecture, to a horse race set in the wild west – JJBA has something for everyone to like. 2. The Ever-Evolving Art Style Hirohiko Araki, the mangaka behind JJBA, has constantly refined his art style over the years. Greek statues were a big influence to Araki when he was starting out, as was popular manga at the time like Fist of the North Star. (For example, Jonathan Joestar was a dead ringer for Kenshiro.) But as the years went on and JJBA grew in popularity, Araki began to experiment with his art. Fashion magazines were a huge influence on Araki’s evolving artstyle, as the huge muscular characters of the earlier parts gave way to slender and almost androgynous ones. If you compared the art from how it started out to where it is now, one would think JJBA is being drawn by a different person now. Araki’s new style was so successful that he was even approached by Gucci to create a unique manga, which was displayed at Gucci stores across the world in early 2013. 3. More Music References Than A Record Store Araki doesn’t just take cues from art and fashion – he is also an avid music fan. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure features characters with names heavily influenced by popular western music. Part one features characters with names like Dio, Ton Petty, and Robert E.O. Speedwagon. The villains of part two take their names from popular eighties bands like Wham!, AC/DC, and The Cars. Character names aren’t the only ones influenced by music; when Stands are introduced in the later parts of JJBA, they also feature musical names like Pearl Jam, Crazy Diamond, Red Hot Chili Pepper, and Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. When asked about this naming convention in interviews, Araki has said this is nothing more than a simple hobby of his. It’s just to show off how much he loves western music. 4. Easy Access The Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure manga has had a rough history in English-speaking countries. For a long time, the only way to experience JJBA was through a long out-of-print version of the third part of the manga by Viz, where certain volumes went for tons of money, or dodgy scans of the fourth part done by a Chinese high school class (I am not joking – Google “Duwang Jojo” and behold!). That all changed in 2012 when Jojo was picked up for an anime adaptation by David Production. The anime was a huge hit in Japan and was purchased for streaming by Crunchyroll in 2014. Viz not only put the volumes of Jojo they had previously done back into print, they also went back and translated the first two parts of the manga, releasing them in beautiful hardcover volumes with a promise of future parts to come. Viz has also stated that they will start releasing the JJBA anime on Blu-ray later this year, after an abortive attempt by Warner the previous year left much to be desired by Jojo diehards. The English dub will also be shown on Toonami starting in October, although it remains to be seen if this will be the dub produced by Warner or a new production. 5. The Posing The posing in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is in a league of its own. This is not something that started with Araki’s shift to a more fashion-based art style, however. Even as far back as the first part, characters would pose in ways that do not seem humanly possible. But that just adds to the appeal, in my personal opinion. Some manga feature fanservice; Jojo features bizarre posing. With multiple ways to experience the story, there is no better time to jump into Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure than now! Share this: Tweet |
Red Bulls midfielder Sacha Kljestan could be on the move soon. (Photo: Getty Images) Sacha Kljestan might be on the move but Los Angeles FC may not necessarily be the destination. On Tuesday, sources told Metro that Kljestan, the New York Red Bulls captain and star midfielder, was likely heading to expansion team LAFC. The deal, Metro was told, was for a significant influx of allocation money. Multiple other outlets including ESPN.com and MLSSoccer.com confirmed Metro’s reporting earlier this week of a possible deal between LAFC and the Red Bulls. Since that report, things have changed slightly for the Red Bulls. While LAFC remains a strong candidate to land Kljestan, other teams are stepping in with interest. Sources tell Metro that multiple teams in both the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference have expressed interest in the playmaker. Any deal, Metro understands, still is for allocation money. An MVP finalist in 2015, Kljestan has led the league in assists over the past two seasons. His form two seasons ago saw him return to the United States national team. |
China is predicted to overtake the U.S. economy by 2032, according to a new report. A report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research in London cited by Bloomberg News also shows that India is expected next year to overtake France and the United Kingdom to hold the fifth spot for the biggest economy in dollar terms. By 2027, India is predicted to be the world's third-biggest economy in that regard. ADVERTISEMENT In 2032, the four largest economies are predicted to be China, the U.S., India and Japan, according to the report. South Korea and Indonesia are also predicted to take spots in the top 10 by 2032. President Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE frequently touts the strength of the U.S. economy. Last week, the president tweeted about the accomplishments of his administration over the past year, including "Record Economy/Stock Market." He also said earlier this month that the tax cuts in the GOP tax bill he signed last week will "increase investment in the American economy and in U.S. workers." |
Yoga offers some obvious benefits: stress reduction, muscular flexibility, an enhanced sense of well-being, even cute clothes. But does it qualify as an aerobic workout? Aerobic activity, characterized by an elevated heart rate and increase in the body’s use of oxygen, is closely linked to improved health and prolonged life spans; current guidelines suggest that people get at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise each week. Scant research has examined whether yoga is exercise under those guidelines, though. Now two new studies in Complementary Therapies in Medicine indicate that it can be, at least if it’s done rapidly. The practice of yoga in America typically consists of bodily poses interspersed with or followed by breathing exercises and meditation. The most famous movements are incorporated into the sun salutation, a series of poses that includes the downward-facing dog, among others. These are usually performed near the start of yoga classes and can be among their most physically demanding segments. Yet according to a 2016 review of yoga research, the energy expended by those who move slowly during sun salutations generally compares to the demands of a stroll at three miles per hour. (This was the case for both standard yoga and the poses used in Bikram-style hot yoga.) |
Dylan Gandy, a former Lions lineman who’s now an assistant high school coach, shows a girl how to grip the odd-shaped ball. (Photo: Courtesy of Jeremiah Washburn) When three American football coaches, including Lions offensive line coach Jeremiah Washburn, arrived in northern Uganda to teach orphans the sport, among the first reactions was to laugh. The children wondered why the ball had its odd shape and why one side had white laces. By the third day of the camp, about 50 boys and girls had learned the new sport enough to play a scrimmage, one that ended with a last-second touchdown and an appropriate celebration. For Washburn, Dylan Gandy and Matt Burke, the chance to teach children in Africa quickly became more than just another day of coaching drills. "The kids just had a blast, and clearly we got more out of it than they did because it impacted us all in a big way," said Gandy, a former Lions offensive lineman who's now an assistant high school football coach in Indiana. The three coaches — Burke coaches the Cincinnati Bengals linebackers after holding the same job with the Lions from 2009-13 — along with Washburn's wife, 12-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son made the trek to work with orphans of the Restoration Gateway project in June. The Christian-based organization houses 127 orphans, most of whom are between ages 3 and 15, in the war-torn east African nation, and its goals center on orphan care, health care, community empowerment and ministry. UNICEF estimates that Uganda has around 2.5 million orphans. While AIDS plays some role, warlord Joseph Kony's attempts to abduct children and turn them into soldiers for the Lord's Resistance Army separated many kids from their parents. Restoration Gateway, which is funded by private donations, needs more money to finish building its hospital, but when Gandy said he wanted to go, staff members thought a flag football camp would be the best way to bring the children joy. "Kids are just kids," executive director Brint Patrick said. "They want to be taught something, they want to be able to participate and they want to play." More Lions chip in Gandy, whose 10 NFL seasons included 2009-13 with the Lions, first discovered Restoration Gateway a few years ago through a friend. At the time, Gandy and his wife were looking for a charitable cause where they could provide help spiritually and tangibly. In November 2013, the project held a fundraiser in Detroit, and in addition to Gandy, Patrick said more than a dozen Lions players provided donations. Traveling halfway across the world is a much bigger commitment, though. Last year, Gandy hosted a fundraising banquet in Indianapolis, and after talking to the coordinators about a potential trip, he started planning one last winter. Gandy reached out to Washburn because they became friends after both arrived in Detroit in 2009, with Washburn starting as an assistant offensive line coach before being promoted in 2013. Burke is a world traveler who helped inspire Lions linebacker DeAndre Levy's annual excursions, and Gandy thought his football expertise would help, too. After working with the children, Burke climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, Washburn said. When Gandy and his wife — who skipped the trip to watch their 1-year-old son — originally thought of making the trip, coaching football hadn't occurred. He had donated money to help with the hospital construction, which already has three of its buildings complete, and thought there were other ways to help the community. Patrick said the organizers like to hold sports camps every six months for the children. They'd work with soccer and basketball instructors in the past and even played kickball, which Patrick hopes can be a prelude for eventual baseball lessons. With a flat field on the grounds, an introductory flag football camp made sense. It also gave Gandy a chance to see the children using the 36 pairs of cleats he helped donate the year before. "The kids were really quick to learn throwing and catching, and it wasn't because of coaching," Washburn said. "But they were really quick learners, very athletic and they're very bright children. They got the concept of the game really quick." Coaching appreciated Restoration Gateway is about 160 miles north of Kampala, the Ugandan capital. Though Washburn said some roads were nice, others weren't and many lacked stoplights, so the drive from Kampala took about 7 hours — "a little bit of Thunderdome," he said. On the third day of camp, some 50 boys and girls played a scrimmage. (Photo: Courtesy of Jeremiah Washburn) The children live in groups of eight with four boys in one room, four girls in another and a house mother watching them. A typical day from them isn't much different than it is for American children as they go to school, do chores and play outside. However, most of the time their sporting experience is playing disorganized soccer. "They've never lived in environment with coaching," Patrick said. "What I really thought Jeremiah and Dylan could both do is really teach and really encourage and uplift and motivate these kids in a way they've never experienced before." Though Patrick runs the U.S. part of the operation from Waco, Texas, he spoke with some of the staff in Uganda, who said they saw the children discussing what the coaches taught them when they've played football again. Kicking, though, came natural to some children as some were kicking 30-yard field goals, Washburn and Gandy said. In addition to coaching football, Gandy, Burke, Washburn and Washburn's family spent some time doing yard work and other chores. Though about 250 volunteers visited Restoration Gateway for various amounts of time this summer, the 110 Ugandan staff members work with the kids daily. "We wanted to help people see, especially in the NFL, there's so much more than just the life we live in the NFL," Gandy said. "There's so much good we can be doing with the things that we've been very fortunate to have." Film was winner While the current and former players Gandy invited couldn't make the trip, some Lions helped ensure it was a success. Offensive linemen Riley Reiff and Travis Swanson and coach Jim Caldwell were among those who donated. Caldwell said he's actually planning a trip to the Middle East to do something similar in the future, and Swanson wants to take an expedition, too. And after Washburn told team president Tom Lewand, the coaches secured some Lions shirts, shorts and other gear to give to the children. "There's a lot of Lions fans there now," Washburn said. And it's not just because they're wearing apparel with a Honolulu blue lion. Washburn showed the children a highlight reel from the 2014 Lions season, which featured a lot of quarterback Matthew Stafford and wide receivers Calvin Johnson and Golden Tate. "It was neat because they loved Stafford, but they loved Golden so much more than Calvin," Washburn said. "Because they're soccer kids, they call it dodging. Golden Tate can dodge. Calvin just catches the ball, but Golden Tate can dodge everybody. Ugandan orphans learn about the camaraderie football can bring. (Photo: Courtesy of Jeremiah Washburn) The biggest reaction from the kids was when wide receiver Jeremy Ross hurdled a defender in last year's win over the Atlanta Falcons in London. "I actually got a little teary-eyed watching them watch American football and just get so into it," Washburn said. jkatzenstein@detroitnews.com twitter.com/jkatzenstein |
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Companies planning to fly tourists or scientists to the edge of space for brief exposure to low-gravity conditions still face potentially serious liability issues depending on how U.S. courts view the nascent industry, insurance underwriters said. Despite the efforts of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation in licensing new commercial space ventures, and initiatives in several states to promote and protect the new businesses, the financial exposure of these companies in the event of an accident remains unknown, insurers said. Addressing the World Space Risk Forum here May 13-15, Global Aerospace President Jeffrey Cassidy said “no one really knows” what would be the likely outcome of a lawsuit filed on behalf of a wealthy space passenger. In addition to the U.S. government, at least six state legislatures have enacted immunity statues aimed at protecting the industry, Cassidy said. Not all have extended these protections to the vehicle manufacturers. All include exceptions for negligence and all are written in broad language, he said. “On the one side, the government is working with the [space transport] operators to keep liability controlled and constrained, to help grow the industry,” said Cassidy, who said his company, which underwrites satellite and launch insurance policies, is structuring insurance policies for the sector. “On the other side, we have plaintiffs’ attorneys and the risk of common-carrier designation.” In some legal jurisdictions, being labeled a “common carrier” means you are held to stricter liability standards than might otherwise be applicable. How various U.S. courts will rule on this will not be known, but the case precedent in the airline industry is not promising, Cassidy said. Four criteria generally are used to determine whether a transportation service gets common-carrier designation when transporting goods or people: It must have a regular place of business, provide regular services, offer a schedule of prices and advertise to the public. Companies that meet all four criteria would be viewed as common carriers in at least some jurisdictions. Railroads have been considered common carriers since they began, as were commercial aircraft services. Courts have nonetheless ruled that adventure travel involving transportation — the helicopter taking skiers to places with no designated slopes, the aircraft carrying skydivers — should not carry the common-carrier label. But Cassidy said the adventure-travel precedent is not a good legal fit for space tourism because the adventure-travel businesses are using transportation only as a means to the real event, which is skydiving or heli-skiing. “Going into space could be considered an adventure,” Cassidy said, but legal precedent in California, at least, makes that less likely. California courts in the 1930s determined that a company offering sightseeing flights over the Grand Canyon and other attractions were in fact common carriers. If that precedent holds for suborbital space travel, then “the whole notion of informed consent — the waivers that participants have signed — would be called into question in the event of an accident,” Cassidy said. “A liability award may be higher than you anticipated under the regulations.” The companies now planning to take passengers to edge of Earth’s atmosphere have required passengers to sign liability waivers intended to prevent one accident from causing the business to shut down or go bankrupt. The question — which has animated many debates among space lawyers — is whether such a policy can withstand sustained assault by lawyers representing families claiming millions in lost income because their chief breadwinner has been killed or incapacitated during a flight. Three companies — Virgin Galactic and XCOR Aerospace, both operating from Mojave, California, and Blue Origin LLC of Kent, Washington — are developing suborbital vehicles to carry passengers. Khaki Rodway, XCOR’s director of payload sales and operations, told an April conference in Paris that the company would be flying the first iteration of its Lynx vehicle experimentally later this year. XCOR commercial flights are scheduled to start in mid-2015 for both payloads — Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is a major payload customer — and passengers. Rodway said XCOR likely will pursue a full commercial operator’s license from the FAA, and that insurers have approached the company to discuss how to structure policies. “Do we have insurance that will cover the [passengers]? Yes, that is part of the insurance we have on the vehicle.” Cassidy agreed that insurance underwriters are already discussing how to approach the industry despite the ongoing questions about liability. “From an insurance perspective, we’re excited about this business,” Cassidy said. “This is coming up [as an insurance topic] in the next year or two and I am sure the aviation and satellite insurance markets will figure out the right place to put this.” Follow Peter on Twitter: @pbdes |
A decade-old al Qaeda propaganda video is a reminder of the true origins of ISIS and its ties to the militant group founded by Osama Bin Laden. Photo: Associated Press HE’S been described as the “Crown Prince of Terror” and the fear is Osama bin Laden’s son is about to launch a new reign of terror on the world to avenge his father’s death. With ISIS crumbling, its parent terror organisation al-Qaeda is about to be taken over by the only son of Bin Laden’s favourite wife. Hamza Bin Laden, now believed to be aged 28, and regarded as the “poster boy” of al-Qaeda’s re-emergence on the world terrorism front, may be about to strike. Like his father, he is intelligent and a devotee of violent, radical jihad. Hamza Laden, as he is sometimes called, was a child in Afghanistan when his father changed the world by launching al-Qaeda’s deadly 9/11 terror attacks on America. He grew up hating everything about the USA — aside from a secret childhood love for Coca Cola — and was reared as his father’s designated heir. He is married to the daughter of Abu Mohammed al-Masri, the former head of al-Qaeda’s training camps. He is wanted by the United States for his alleged role in the 1998 American embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. In May, a chilling audio recording indicated he was staging a deadly comeback for al-Qaeda, which has been all but forgotten in the rise of ISIS in Syria and the Middle East. Hamza’s voice, described by the Washington Post as “vintage Osama bin Laden” sonorously intones the words: “Prepare diligently to inflict crippling losses on those who have disbelieved. “Follow in the footsteps of martyrdom-seekers before you.” But it is not the first time Hamza has stepped up and out of the shadow of his father’s stewardship of al-Qaeda. Two years ago, he was introduced by the group’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri as “a lion from the den of Al-Qaeda.” In an audio message recorded in mid-2015, Hamza’s voice can be heard praising terror leaders and denouncing then president Barack Obama as “the black chief of [a] criminal gang”. Hamza called on jihadis to strike and “take the battlefield from Kabul, Baghdad and Gaza to Washington, London, Paris and Tel Aviv.” The audio threats are of no surprise to the FBI, whose al-Qaeda investigators have analysed letters written by Hamza to his father. The letters were found in the Abbottabad hideaway in Pakistan where US Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011. They suggest that Osama was grooming Hamza as his successor. In one letter, written by Hamza at the age of about 21, he expresses his desire for vengeance, according to a former FBI who was the lead al-Qaeda investigator post 9/11. “American people, we’re coming and you’re going to feel it. And we’re going to take revenge for what you did to my father … Iraq … Afghanistan,” the letter said. Hamza is the eighth born of around 20 Bin Laden siblings and the only son of Osama’s third of six wives, Khairiah Sabar. Sabar, one of three Osama bin Laden widows captured in the Abbottabad operation, is a child psychologist with a PhD in Islamic studies. Seven years Bin Laden’s senior, she was favoured for her “regal quality” and commitment to jihadism. From a wealthy and distinguished family, Khairiah was known as “strong-willed”, a quality she had passed on to their son. At the time of the 9/11 attacks when Osama bin Laden went into hiding, Hamza was aged about 11. Hamza and his mother fled to Iran, where they were safe for a while until they were to become valuable bargaining chips for that country. The mother and son, along with three key al-Qaeda officials which included Hamza’s future father-in-law, were imprisoned in a Tehran dungeon. Hamza was to spend most of next decade under house arrest in an apartment compound with limited contact with the outside world. Hamza grew up, deeply missing the father he idolised. “How many times, from the depths of my heart, I wished to be beside you,” Hamza wrote to him in one letter, Newsweek reported. “I remember every smile that you smiled at me, every word that you spoke to me and every look that you gave me.” Schooled by his mother and inspired by a father who perpetrated the world’s most infamous days of terror, Hamza was a jihadi leader in the making. In the months before his father’s death, Hamza and his mother were released from Iran. When Khairiah finally reached the secret Abbottabad compound, according a new book, Osama’s other wives feared she may have been tracked by Iranian intelligence revealing his hideaway. In the early hours of May 2, 2011, when the SEALs shot both Osama and another son, Khaled, dead, it was Hamza that was reported as having been killed alongside his father. The White House announced his death, before further analysis showed that it was the older son, Khaled, who had been killed. During Hamza’s early twenties, al-Qaeda’s hate child ISIS rose up. Its brutality of beheadings and violence played out on video and social media convinced the world ISIS had trumped all terror groups. ISIS and al-Qaeda split and the latter’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri lacked Osama bin Laden’s charisma. Enter Hamza Bin Laden. The west’s attacks on ISIS and bombing of the territories of the so-called new Islamic state caliphate have weakened it, perhaps fatally. But as the letters found at Abbottabad show, at the time of his death Osama bin Laden was planning a sequel to 9/11. And al-Qaeda hopes that Hamza will represent a “new generation of al-Qaeda followers”, Business Insider reported. Bruce Riedel at US research group, The Brookings Institution, wrote after Hamza’s 2015 audio release that he was both an “attractive” spokesman for al-Qaeda and “an articulate and dangerous enemy”. “He carries the legacy of his father’s name and life’s work,” Riedel wrote. “… Hamza provides a new face for al-Qaeda, one that directly connects to the group’s founder.” With the 2017 audio release, Hamza Bin Laden’s time might be coming soon. candace.sutton@news.com.au |
WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union today sent a letter to President Trump informing him that only Congress can authorize the use of military force against North Korea. The letter comes amidst escalating threats made by President Trump against North Korea over the past month. In the letter, Deputy Director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office Christopher Anders said: “The Congress, as representatives of the American citizenry, has exclusive authority under the Constitution to decide whether the President may use military force. This drumbeat of threats over the past several weeks has raised concerns across the country about whether President Trump will abide by the check on his power that is fundamental to the Constitution’s separation of powers.” The full text of the letter is available below. It can also be found here: https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-letter-president-trump-congress-alone-has-constitutional-authority-decide-whether-united xxx Dear President Trump, The American Civil Liberties Union strongly urges you to uphold the Constitution, and the fundamental principle of separation of powers, by recognizing the sole authority of Congress to declare war — and to refrain from the use of force against North Korea in the absence of explicit congressional authorization for the use of force. Despite recent threats by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and the reported firing of test missiles by North Korea, you as President have no constitutional authority to use force against North Korea. The one exception to the Constitution’s delegation to Congress of the power to declare war is the President may unilaterally order the use of force to, in the words of James Madison, “repel sudden attacks,” which is a factual scenario that does not apply to North Korea. The ACLU is particularly concerned by recent threats you and Administration officials have made publicly, including: In a tweet on September 3, you stated, “South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they understand one thing!” Also on September 3, when asked if the United States would attack North Korea, you replied, “We’ll see.” Secretary of Defense James Mattis stated, on September 3, “Any threat to the United States or its territories, including Guam, or our allies will be met with a massive military response, a response both effective and overwhelming,” and “We are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely North Korea, but as I said, we have many options to do so.” In a tweet on August 30, you stated, “The U.S. has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money for 25 years. Talking is not the answer!” On August 9, you stated that “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States” and that further threats “will be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.” On August 10, you said, in reference to his previous statement on North Korea, “Maybe it wasn’t tough enough,” and that North Korea should be “very nervous…Because things will happen to them like they never thought possible, OK?” In a tweet on August 11, you stated, “Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!” This drumbeat of threats over the past several weeks has raised concerns across the country about whether you will abide by the check on the President’s power that is fundamental to the Constitution’s separation of powers on war authority. Article I of the Constitution explicitly and exclusively reserves for Congress the power to declare war. Article 1, Section 8 provides that only the Congress has the power “To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water,” among other war powers. Any use of force against either North Korea without a declaration of war or explicit authorization by Congress would strike at the very heart of the fundamental principle of separation of powers that is at the core of the Constitution and is the undergirding of our democratic form of government. The ACLU does not take a position on whether military force should be used against North Korea. However, we have been steadfast in insisting, from Vietnam through the war in Afghanistan, both wars in Iraq, the military action against Libya, and the ongoing use of force in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia that decisions on whether to use military force require Congress's specific, advance authorization. Absent a sudden attack on the United States that requires the President to take immediate action to repel the attack, the President does not have the power under the Constitution to decide to take the United States into war. Such power belongs to the Congress alone. As Thomas Jefferson once wrote, this allocation of war power to Congress provides an “effectual check to the Dog of war” by “transferring the power of letting him loose from the Executive to the Legislative body . . . .” Letter from Jefferson to Madison (Sept. 6, 1789). Congress alone has the authority to say yes or no on whether the United States can use military force in North Korea or anywhere else. The structure of the Constitution reflects the framers' mistrust of concentrations of power and their consequent separation of those powers into the three branches of our government. The framers well understood the danger of combining powers into the hands of a single person, even one who is elected, particularly a person given command of the armed forces. In order to prevent such an accumulation in times of war or emergency, the framers split the war powers between the Executive and Legislative branches, giving the Congress the power to declare war, i.e., make the decision whether to initiate hostilities, while putting the armed forces under the command of the President. In giving the power of deciding whether to go to war to Congress alone, the framers made clear that the President's powers as Commander in Chief, while "nominally the same [as] that of the king of Great Britain . . . in substance [is] much inferior to it." The Federalist No. 69 (Alexander Hamilton). As Alexander Hamilton explained, the power of Commander in Chief "would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces; while that of the British king extends to the DECLARING of war and to the RAISING and REGULATING of fleets and armies, all of which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature." Id. Chief Justice Marshall made clear, as early as 1801, that the Executive Branch did not have the power to decide whether the country will use military force. In a series of cases involving the seizure of vessels during an undeclared naval war with France, the Supreme Court made clear that Congress, not the President, was the ultimate repository of the power to authorize military force. See Little v. Barreme, 6 U.S. 170 (1804), Talbot v. Seeman, 5 U.S. 1, 28 (1801); Bas v. Tingy, 4 U.S. 37 (1800). As Marshall made clear, “The whole powers of war being, by the constitution of the United States, vested in congress, the acts of that body can alone be resorted to as our guides in this inquiry.” Talbot, 5 U.S. at 28 (1801). In The Prize Cases, 67 U.S. 635 (1863), the Supreme Court found that a “state of war” may exist without a declaration of war. But the peculiar context of the Civil War explains those cases. Indeed, the Court reaffirmed that, in contrast to the President's power to suppress insurrections, “By the Constitution, Congress alone has the power to declare a national or foreign war.” Id. at 668. Although some supporters of unlimited Presidential war making power argue that the President, as Commander in Chief, has the ability to use military force whenever he deems it necessary in the “national interest” and need not obtain either a declaration of war or Congressional approval, this view is based on a misreading of history. Proponents of this view make much of the fact that the drafters of the Constitution had considered giving Congress the sole power to “make War,” but in the end decided its power would be to “declare War.” Some supporters of Executive power claim this means the President has the power to make war regardless whether Congress has acted. However, James Madison explained that this change was made simply to leave “to the Executive the power to repel sudden attacks.” Debates in the Federal Convention, Aug. 17, 1787. According to Hamilton, “anything beyond” such use of military force “must fall under the idea of reprisals and requires the sanction of that Department [i.e., the Congress] which is to declare or make war.” Letter from Hamilton to Sec. of War James McHenry. May 17, 1798. As this history makes clear, the correct view of the Constitution, and the unbroken view of Congress, has been that the President's power to engage in large-scale military operations without Congressional approval is limited to the power “to repel sudden attacks.” Any other use of military force requires a declaration of war or other explicit Congressional authorization. The War Powers Act does not provide a route around the Constitution. Some analysts wrongly claim that the War Powers Act, which was enacted in 1973 as a response to presidential overreaching in expanding and extending the Vietnam War, somehow gives a president a 90-day free pass to go to war without congressional authorization. The War Powers Act provides that, if Congress does not consent to the use of military force within 60 days of the President first reporting to Congress on a military action, then the President must withdraw American forces within 30 days. 50 U.S.C § 1544(b). But the timetable in the War Powers Act is a statutory safeguard and not a free pass to get around the Constitution. It is a backstop for remedying presidential wrongs, and does not override the Constitution’s allocation of war powers between the Executive Branch and the Congress. Moreover, the use of force against North Korea at this time would also violate the most critical provision of the most critical treaty that binds the United States and all other nations. Just as the Constitution is the cornerstone of our government and sets our commitment to the rule of law, the Charter of the United Nations is the foundational document in international law. Ratified by the United States in 1945, the UN Charter embodies the most fundamental elements of international law. Within the UN Charter, art. II, para. 4, forms its very core, as it provides: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations,” unless acting in self-defense or as authorized by a resolution of the UN Security Council. Use of force against North Korea, in the current absence of a Security Council resolution, would violate the most fundamental provision of the most fundamental treaty in international law. You cannot — and should not — unleash Jefferson’s “Dog of war” in North Korea or elsewhere, without congressional authorization and compliance with the law. The Congress, as representatives of the American citizenry, has exclusive authority under the Constitution to decide whether the President may use military force. Particularly in the wake of your recent threats of military action against North Korea — with allusions to the possible use of nuclear weapons against another country for the first time since World War II — we urge you to make clear that you will refrain from use of force outside the scope of the Constitution and the law. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions regarding this matter. Sincerely, Faiz Shakir, Director, ACLU Washington Legislative Office Christopher Anders, Deputy Director, ACLU Washington Legislative Office |
After putting their music to work for more than three decades, the surviving members of the Tragically Hip received one of Canada's top honours on Friday: appointments to the Order of Canada. Governor General Julie Payette presented the order's insignia to Robert Baker, John Philip Fay, Paul Joseph Daniel Langlois and Robert Gordon Sinclair in a ceremony at Rideau Hall. They received the distinction of members of the order. Lead singer Gord Downie, who died from an incurable form of brain cancer called glioblastoma last month, received his insignia during a ceremony honouring leadership in Indigenous issues in June. The longtime Jeopardy host talks to CBC News about receiving one of Canada's highest civilian honours, going home to Sudbury, Ont., and discovering a crack in his Walk of Fame star 9:24 "From hockey to history, the band's lyrical references to Canadian topics created a sense of what it's like to love — and live in — this country," said Rideau Hall. It was a star-studded ceremony with longtime Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek in the crowd. The Sudbury-born Trebek became an officer of the Order of Canada for instilling "a love of learning in millions of people around the world. Off-camera, he is a champion of geographic literacy in the United States and Canada through his work with their geographic societies." They joined close to 40 other recipients at Rideau Hall for the ceremony. For a complete list of recipients click here. |
Star Wars: The Force Awakens actor John Boyega, known by millions as Stormtrooper-turned-Resistance fighter Finn, thinks that Star Wars: Battlefront needs a story mode. No, seriously. @EAStarWars Will fans get a full on offline story mode? It's more of an enjoyable way to learn controls. — John Boyega (@JohnBoyega) March 2, 2016 EA’s Star Wars account tried to get Boyega onto the game’s missions, but our man Finn wasn’t buying it. @EAStarWars yeah thought it was great! But definitely leaves you wanting to engage within a narrative. Can I visit your base in the uk? — John Boyega (@JohnBoyega) March 3, 2016 A lack of story mode — and other content — was something we flagged in our review. Admittedly, Battlefront has always been pushed as a multiplayer title. Star Wars: Battlefront‘s “Outer Rim” DLC, sans story mode, heads to Windows PC, Xbox One and PS4 soon. Thanks, Aaron! |
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.-- Police need the public's assistance locating a man wanted in connection with the stabbing of a 9-year-old Mariners Harbor boy Friday, according to a written statement from the NYPD's Deputy Commissioner for Public Information office. Police describe him as a black male who was wearing dark clothing, the statement says. He is referred to as a suspect in the the written statement. The NYPD released a surveillance video that shows the man following the victim, r, while he was walking in the vicinity of Union Avenue and Leyden Avenue Friday at about 7:42 a.m The suspect then walked up behind up and stabbed him in the neck, shoulder and head before fleeing the location, police said. The victim was able to run home, where 911 was called. He was then transported to Richmond County University Medical Center where he was treated for his wounds and released, according to the statement. Anyone with information is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 800-577-TIPS. The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers Website or by texting tips to 274637(CRIMES) then enter TIP577. |
For other people named Otto of Bavaria, see Otto of Bavaria (disambiguation) Otto (German: Otto Wilhelm Luitpold Adalbert Waldemar; 27 April 1848 – 11 October 1916) was King of Bavaria from 1886 to 1913. However, he never actively ruled because of alleged severe mental illness. His uncle, Luitpold, and his cousin, Ludwig, served as regents. Ludwig deposed him in 1913, a day after the legislature passed a law allowing him to do so, and became king in his own right. Otto was the son of Maximilian II and his wife, Marie of Prussia, and the younger brother of Ludwig II. Childhood and youth [ edit ] Prince Otto was born on 27 April 1848, two months premature, in the Munich Residenz. His parents were King Maximilian II of Bavaria and Marie of Prussia. His uncle, King Otto I of Greece, served as his godfather. Otto had an older brother, Crown Prince Ludwig. They spent most of their childhood with servants and teachers at Hohenschwangau Castle. Their parents were distant and formal, and they were at such a loss about what to say to Otto and Ludwig that they often ignored and even avoided them.[1] Their mother took an interest in what the brothers wore: she ordered for Ludwig to be always dressed in blue and for Otto to wear always red. Their father was strict with the brothers, particularly Ludwig, the heir apparent. Between 1853 and 1863, the brothers spent their summer holidays at the Royal Villa in Berchtesgaden, which had been specially built for their father.[2][3] Otto served in the Bavarian army from 1863. He was appointed sub-lieutenant on 27 April 1863 and admitted to the Cadet Corps on 1 March 1864. On 26 May 1864, he was promoted to full lieutenant. On 10 March 1864, Otto's father died and his brother, Ludwig, succeeded as King of Bavaria. Between 18 June and 15 July 1864, the two brothers received state visits by the emperors of Austria and Russia. Otto I at a young age Otto was promoted to Captain on 27 April 1866 and entered active military service in the Royal Bavarian Infantry Guards. He participated in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and as colonel in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. His experiences on the battlefield traumatized him and caused him to suffer from depression and insomnia.[4] When Wilhelm I was proclaimed German Emperor on 18 January 1871 at the Palace of Versailles, Prince Otto and his uncle, Luitpold, represented King Ludwig II, who refused to participate.[5][6] Otto then criticized the celebration as ostentatious and heartless in a letter to his brother. Ludwig and Otto despised their ambitious Prussian relatives and cordially disliked their Prussian mother and so they were appalled by the creation of the new German Empire. The hostility of both was no secret to the Prussian government. Otto and Ludwig were often seen together during the early years of Ludwig's reign, but they became estranged over time. Ludwig was shy and introverted and eventually became a recluse. Otto was cheerful, outgoing and extroverted until the Franco-Prussian War. In 1868, Otto received the Royal Order of Saint George for the Defense of the Immaculate Conception, the house order of the House of Wittelsbach. In 1869, he joined the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, on the initiative of Cardinal Karl-August von Reisach.[7] Mental incapacity [ edit ] After the Franco-Prussian War, Otto became very depressed and anxious, which worried his family. Otto had spells during which he slept poorly for days and acted out followed by periods of time during which he was perfectly normal and lucid. His illness progressively grew worse. Ludwig was horrified because he had been counting on Otto to marry and have a son who could eventually inherit the throne. Otto was placed under medical supervision, and reports about his condition were sent by spies of Prussian Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. Doctors reported that Otto was mentally ill in January 1872. From 1873, he was held in isolation in the southern pavilion of Nymphenburg Palace. His attending physician was Dr. Bernhard von Gudden, who later diagnosed Otto's brother, Ludwig, as mentally ill without bothering to examine him and without asking him a single question, which raises questions about his competence and his motives. Both Ludwig and Otto despised Prussia, and their uncle, Luitpold, and Gudden supported Prussia's rise to dominance. Some contemporaries believed that Gudden's diagnoses of Otto and Ludwig were motivated by political considerations and that more could and should have been done to help and treat Otto. Some contemporaries also believed that Bismarck did not want Ludwig or Otto to remain in power and decided to replace the brothers with their malleable uncle, Luitpold.[8] During Corpus Christi Mass in 1875 in the Frauenkirche in Munich, Otto, who had not attended the church service, rushed into the church wearing hunting clothes and fell on his knees before the celebrant, Archbishop Gregor von Scherr, to ask forgiveness for his sins. The High Mass was interrupted, and the prince did not resist when he was led away by two church ministers. Otto was then moved to Schleissheim Palace and was effectively held prisoner there, much to his dismay. Gudden made no effort to treat him; it is possible that Otto was heavily drugged. Otto's last public appearance was his presence at the side of his brother at the King's parade on 22 August 1875, at the Marsfeld in Munich. From 1 June 1876, he stayed for a few weeks in the castle at Ludwigsthal in the Bavarian Forest. In the spring of 1880, his condition worsened. In 1883, he was confined under medical supervision in Fürstenried Palace near Munich, where he would remain for the rest of his life. The palace had been specially converted for his confinement. Ludwig occasionally visited him at night and ordered for no violence to be used against him. Otto became king after Ludwig died, but he was never truly allowed to reign. In 1886, the senior royal medical officer wrote a statement declaring that Otto was severely mentally ill.[9] It has been claimed that Ludwig had a schizotypal personality disorder[citation needed] and that Otto suffered from schizophrenia.[10] It has also been persuasively argued that Otto's problems were the result of contracting syphilis, which would also account for his physical problems, particularly the paralysis from which he suffered from in later years.[11] King of Bavaria [ edit ] 20 Mark coin from 1905 with portrait of Otto Sarcophagus of King Otto I in the St. Michael's Church in Munich On 10 June 1886, the Bavarian cabinet declared King Ludwig II unable to rule and appointed his uncle, Luitpold, as Prince Regent. Ludwig died only three days later under unexplained circumstances. That meant that Otto became king on 13 June 1886. He was, however, unable to rule. The official explanation "the King is melancholic". The proclamation of his inauguration was read to him at Fürstenried Castle the next day, but he failed to understand it.[citation needed] End of reign and death [ edit ] Luitpold kept his role as Prince Regent until he died in 1912 and was succeeded by his son Ludwig, who was Otto's first cousin. By then, it had been obvious for some time that Otto would never emerge from seclusion or be mentally capable of actively reigning. Almost as soon as Ludwig became regent, elements in the press and larger society clamoured for Ludwig to become king in his own right. Accordingly, the constitution of Bavaria was amended on 4 November 1913 to include a clause specifying that if a regency for reasons of incapacity lasted for ten years, with no expectation that the King would ever be able to reign, the Regent could end the regency, depose the King and assume the crown himself with the assent of the legislature. The following day, Prince Regent Ludwig ended the regency and proclaimed his own reign as Ludwig III. The parliament assented on 6 November, and Ludwig III took the constitutional oath on 8 November. King Otto was permitted to retain his title and honours for life. Postcard photograph from 1916 of King Otto's body in repose. Otto died unexpectedly on 11 October 1916 from a volvulus (an obstruction of the bowel). His remains were interred in the crypt of the Michaelskirche in Munich. Bavarian tradition caused the heart of the king to be placed in a silver urn and sent to the Gnadenkapelle (Chapel of the Miraculous Image) in Altötting, beside those of his brother, father and grandfather. Titles, styles and honours [ edit ] Titles and styles [ edit ] 27 April 1848 – 13 June 1886 : His Royal Highness Prince Otto of Bavaria : Prince Otto of Bavaria 13 June 1886 – 5 November 1913 : His Majesty The King of Bavaria : The King of Bavaria 5 November 1913 – 11 October 1916: His Majesty King Otto of Bavaria Honours [ edit ] Ancestors [ edit ] References [ edit ] Cajetan von Aretin: Die Erbschaft des Königs Otto von Bayern. Höfische Politik und Wittelsbacher Vermögensrechte 1916 bis 1922 , in the series Schriftenreihe zur bayerischen Landesgeschichte , vol. 149, C. H. Beck Verlag, Munich, 2006, ISBN 3-406-10745-1, also: thesis, University of Munich, 2006 , in the series , vol. 149, C. H. Beck Verlag, Munich, 2006, ISBN 3-406-10745-1, also: thesis, University of Munich, 2006 Heinz Häfner: Ein König wird beseitigt. Ludwig II von Bayern , C. H. Beck Verlag, Munich, 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56888-6, p. 330 ff , C. H. Beck Verlag, Munich, 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56888-6, p. 330 ff Greg King, The Mad King: A Biography of Ludwig II of Bavaria , Birch Lane Press, 1996, ISBN 1-55972-362-9 , Birch Lane Press, 1996, ISBN 1-55972-362-9 Christopher McIntosh: The Swan King: Ludwig II of Bavaria , I.B. Tauris & Co., Ltd., 2012, ISBN 978 1 84885 847 3 , I.B. Tauris & Co., Ltd., 2012, ISBN 978 1 84885 847 3 Catherine Radziwill, The Tragedy of a Throne , Cassell and Company, Ltd., 1907. , Cassell and Company, Ltd., 1907. Arndt Richter: Die Geisteskrankheit der bayerischen Könige Ludwig II. und Otto. Eine interdisziplinäre Studie mittels Genealogie, Genetik und Statistik , Degener & Co., Neustadt an der Aisch, 1997, ISBN 3-7686-5111-8 , Degener & Co., Neustadt an der Aisch, 1997, ISBN 3-7686-5111-8 Alfons Schweiggert: Schattenkönig. Otto, der Bruder König Ludwig II. von Bayern, ein Lebensbild, Ehrenwirth, Munich, 1992, ISBN 3-431-03192-7 |
Oakland Needs Good Jobs; Can We Trust Uber to Provide Them? Orson Aguilar Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jun 20, 2017 Coauthored by Gay Plair Cobb, CEO of Oakland Private Industry Council When The Greenlining Institute joined with other Oaklanders to launch No Uber Oakland this month, we got lots of attention — including widespread media coverage and over 1,500 visitors to the campaign website in just the first two days — but also some criticism. Some of that criticism came from people correctly pointing out that Oakland urgently needs good jobs, and that criticism deserves a response. One person, for example, wrote: “We should be joyous that companies want to locate here… How else are jobs going to be created here except by encouraging businesses to locate here?” Everyone wants good jobs for Oaklanders. And that’s exactly why we need to hold companies like Uber accountable. From what Uber has said, the company seems likely to employ 2–300 people at first, and possibly many more later. Right now there’s no guarantee that even one of those jobs will go to anyone who actually lives in Oakland. If Uber imports workers from Silicon Valley or recruits them from universities where few Oakland students attend, Oaklanders will gain nothing. Actually, that’s not true. An imported Uber workforce will leave Oaklanders worse off, because those imported, highly-paid workers will compete with Oakland residents for increasingly scarce and pricey housing. And the pressure Uber’s arrival has already put on commercial rents is already costing our city lots of nonprofit jobs that traditionally have belonged to people who live here. That’s why No Uber Oakland’s demands put jobs front and center. We’ve asked Uber to make concrete, measurable commitments to recruit and hire local workers — both current residents and those who’ve already been driven out by skyrocketing housing costs. We’ve asked Uber to invest in the training of local workers and students by supporting “pipeline programs” to train Oakland adults and young people for meaningful careers at Uber and other tech companies coming into the area. And we’ve asked Uber to help preserve and expand the jobs provided by existing Oakland-based businesses by thinking proactively about what vendors it contracts with. All large companies need to buy lots of goods and services, and Uber will be no exception. If those contracts go to local businesses, that means more jobs for local workers and a stronger homegrown business community. We agree with our critics that Uber could be good for Oakland, but only if it chooses to act in partnership with Oakland’s residents and businesses. If it comes in like an invading force — which, to be honest, has been Uber’s business model as it expands its ride-hailing service into new territories — it will leave our city’s workers worse off, not better. No one wants to turn away companies that could bring jobs to our town, but all we have to do is look across the bay to San Francisco to see what happens when a tech boom includes no social responsibility: Rents and evictions soar, wealthy tech workers displace the nurses, teachers, cooks and plumbers who form the backbone of our communities, and longtime residents end up worse off or get forced out entirely. No sane person wants that kind of future for Oakland. A real Oakland jobs agenda must include a meaningful commitment to the local workforce by Uber and other major corporations coming into our city. If you support a real jobs agenda in Oakland, please join us. Orson Aguilar is president of The Greenlining Institute. Gay Plair Cobb is CEO of Oakland Private Industry Council, Inc. |
Source: Getty Excluded? A low position in the academic hierarchy can result in everyday slights Are you a university administrator who is left out of lunch invitations by your academic colleagues? Or are you a junior lecturer who feels ignored in a meeting with professors? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, you may have been a victim of a “hierarchical microaggression” – an everyday slight which, according to a study, devalues an individual because of the role that they hold in an institution. And you’re not the only one. In fact, the researchers who explored the prevalence of the put-downs at a university in the US found that staff were more likely to face this sort of treatment based on rank than they were because of race, gender or language combined. Of 191 microaggressions listed as having been witnessed, perpetrated or received by employees at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, 42 per cent related directly to hierarchy, compared with 40 per cent for other issues, according to a paper published online last month by the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. Other examples of unfair treatment given in the article, “Hierarchical microaggressions in higher education”, include a lecturer who remarked “I didn’t know staff could learn things so quickly!” when a member of non-academic staff demonstrated a good memory, and faculty who were happy to greet each other in the hallway but chose to ignore administrators. In another case, a senior academic shouted at departmental reception staff for failing to inform him of a change in meeting location, only to be informed that it had been the chair of the department who had requested the venue move at the last minute. Shortly afterwards, the same lecturer was spotted joking about the change in venue with the chair, “acting like the lack of notification was no big deal”. Authors Kathryn Young and Myron Anderson, of MSU Denver, and Saran Stewart, of the University of the West Indies, say hierarchical microaggressions are “of a unique type” in higher education because its strict pecking order is based on perceived intellectual standing. This separates lecturers and administrators, who often have lesser or no degrees, and divides academics too – particularly, in the US, between tenured and non-tenured staff. Dr Young told Times Higher Education that it was “shocking” how many of the comments directly related to role, since it had not been expected to come up at all. She added that the findings were particularly concerning because she considered MSU Denver to be a “very egalitarian place”. “If we are doing it like this, how are other places doing?” she said. chris.havergal@tesglobal.com |
Sign up now for Papa John's Student Rush 2016-17! Sign up for the Papa John's Student Rush by visiting CoyotesStudentRush.com or by downloading our app! Show the ticket on your mobile device and your valid student ID at the Papa John’s Student Rush door, located at the Gate 4 entrance to Gila River Arena, and you're IN! Here's how it works: STEP 1. We'll text you If tickets for a game become available, we'll text you with the option to purchase passes.. STEP 2. Click to buy Click on the link we text you to purchase Passes. Act fast! Passes are first come first serve. IMPORTANT: Your seat location will be determined the day of the game. STEP 3. Receive your Passes Your purchased Passes will be available for you at CoyotesStudentRush.com on your iPhone or Android mobile phone. STEP 4. Get ready for game day A few hours before the game, head back to CoyotesStudentRush.com to see your updated Passes with a specific seat location. STEP 5. Enjoy the game! Present the barcodes on your Passes and your valid student ID at the Papa John’s Student Rush door, located at the Gate 4 entrance to Gila River Arena to enter the game. |
The push to raise court fees and fines to help pay for the state’s cash-strapped judicial system is not letting up – and that includes not only criminal cases but civil ones. The Oklahoma House passed a bill Tuesday that would charge a $25 fee for lawyers and parties who represent themselves in civil court. Other bills would increase criminal fees. House Bill 2306, which passed 51-42, creates the fees when someone issues a subpoena or files a motion in civil cases to “enter” – a routine move in which the plaintiff formally notifies the court they are ready to move to the trial stage. These will be tacked on to the flat fee, which can be up to $183 depending on the case, and 10 other fees that are used to supplement funding for county courts. Some lawmakers are concerned that this could be the latest step to put civil court out of reach of the thousands who can’t afford to hire a lawyer many non-criminal cases such as divorce, child custody, discrimination, housing and employment. A 2015 state-commissioned report declared this to be a crisis that’s “shocking in its depth and breadth.” Minority Floor Leader Rep. Scott Inman, D-Del City, said although the new $25 fee might be modest, it is part of a larger trend that is gradually restricting access to the courts to those who can afford a lawyer. Lawmakers, for instance, passed a bill last year that added a $5 fee in all civil court cases, increased fees for divorce filings and imposed a 15 percent charge on all fees that benefit non-court entities. “My question … as a practicing lawyer and someone who cares about our citizens’ rights to access the courts without tremendous financial burdens, is, ‘Should this Legislature stop making people pay to access the courthouse and we in the Legislature should properly fund our courts?’” Rep. Chris Kannady, R-Oklahoma City, presented the bill on behalf of Speaker Charles McCall, R-Atoka, who is the lead sponsor. Kannady said he still believes the legislation will keep fees at a “reasonable” level and won’t prevent people from filing lawsuits. With state appropriations for the judiciary dropping 13.2 percent since 2013, adequate fees are needed to make sure the courts can operate, he added. “The courts have to run and it’s expensive to run cases, so I think this will help ensure people do continue to have access to the court system by keeping the courthouse open.” A legislative analysis projects the $25 fee to issue a subpoena in civil cases will bring in about $65,000 for counties each year. But an estimate was unavailable for the motion-to-enter filings since the number of those filings couldn’t be determined, according to the analysis. Similar efforts to increase criminal fees are also moving through the Legislature. These include: >SB 38 (passed out of Senate Appropriations Committee): Increases the forensic science improvement assessment from $5 to $10 for convictions of all offenses, except parking violations. >SB 39 (passed full Senate): Increases a fee for the automated fingerprint identification system fund from $5 to $10 for convictions of all offenses, except parking violations. >HB 1670 (passed out of House Appropriations and Budget Committee) – Adds a $1 fee for any criminal conviction; money goes to the Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training and the General Reserve Fund. In recent years lawmakers have also incrementally increased court fees instead of using general revenue funds to pay for court-related programs. Last year the Legislature approved a bill that increased fines for dozens of criminal and traffic crimes. Critics, including judicial representatives who spoke at an interim hearing in October, say this policy is doing more harm than good. A 2015 Oklahoma Watch investigation found thousands of Oklahomans convicted of non-violent crimes routinely struggle to pay off their debts after leaving jail or prison. The fees begin at the time of arrest and can include costs for each day in jail, a public defender, a jury, a court reporter, a probation officer, an ankle monitor and more. There are some signs that lawmakers are trying to rein in these fees. A bill that passed the Senate Public Safety Committee and is awaiting a floor vote would create a task force to study existing fees, fines and court costs and issue a report by Nov. 30, 2019. Another proposal would offer a one-year grace period for all outstanding fines, fees and costs in criminal cases for those who have served their prison time and completed their probation or supervision requirements. After that time, judges could extend the grace period, set up an installment plan or waive all the fees. That legislation is also awaiting a Senate floor vote. |
GERMANY RECORDED A sharp rise in politically-motivated crimes by foreigners includingjihadists and Kurdish militants last year, a trend branded “unacceptable” by Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere this week. Some 3,372 such cases were recorded last year, up 66.5% from 2015, according to the latest crime statistics unveiled by deMaiziere. They include “criminal offences carried out in the name of foreign extremists of the so-called IS, or the (outlawed Kurdish militants) PKK”, said the interior minister. Germany was hit by a string of jihadist attacks last year, with the deadliest being last December’s assault on a Christmas market in Berlin. A Tunisian suspect had rammed a truck into the crowded market in the attack claimed by the Islamic State organisation that killed 12. But beyond jihadist attacks, Germany has also seen a rise in violence pitting its sizeable minority communities of Turks and Kurds, as Turkey was increasingly split over President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rule. Overall, the number of politically driven crimes was also up in Germany, reaching 41,549 such offences in 2016, 6.6 percent more than a year ago. - © AFP 2017. |
Could Josh Duggar soon be a father for the fifth time? The disgraced reality star’s long-suffering wife, Anna, reportedly believes she is expecting after an overnight visit to her troubled hubby’s rehab facility. “Anna announced that she thinks she is pregnant again,” a family insider told Life & Style. “She believes the baby is a sign that God has forgiven Josh for his many sins, and she’s vowed to stand by her husband.” PHOTOS: Josh Was Just The Beginning! 19 More Dark Secrets The Duggars Don’t Want You To Know About: Sex, Abuse Claims, Pills & More It may seem shocking that the 28-year-old mother of four would be excited by the discovery. As RadarOnline.com reported, Josh, 27, confessed to cheating and harboring a secret porn addiction in August, following the shocking news he was a member of affair-seeking website Ashley Madison. He was promptly shipped off to Bible-based treatment center Reformers Unanimous in Rockford, Illinois, where he will likely remain until late February. In the midst of all his troubles, porn star Danica Dillon, 28, has sued Josh for $500,000, alleging he assaulted and battered her during two paid sex sessions last year. (Josh denied ever meeting the adult film actress, and his lawyers claimed to have photos and videos proving his innocence.) PHOTOS: No Shame! Josh Duggar’s Porn Star Lover Hits The Beach While He Checks Into Rehab Despite Josh’s disgraceful behavior, Anna has publicly declared she will stay with her husband of seven years. “My prayer and my heart’s desire is for our marriage to be restored,” she said on sisters-in-law Jessa and Jill‘s recent TV special. Anna and Josh are already parents to Mackynzie, 6, Michael, 4, Marcus, 2, and Meredith, 5 months. |
Central to the Nelson Mandela money drama are his daughters Zenani Dlamini and Makaziwe Mandela, top and bottom right, his former lawyer, Ismail Ayob, centre back, Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale, back left, Madiba's lawyer Bally Chuene, front left, and advocate George Bizos SC. Graphic: Wilson Mgobhozi Johannesburg - Nelson Mandela’s daughters Makaziwe and Zenani Mandela are suing their father for the rights of his artworks and control of his millions. They intend to fight an April 2004 Johannesburg High Court order which gave Mandela the right to instruct his then lawyer, Ismail Ayob, to stop managing his financial, personal and legal affairs. The sisters are now being represented by Ayob. This was revealed in the Johannesburg High Court last week by Mandela’s lawyer, Bally Chuene, in his answering affidavit to a lawsuit filed against him by Makaziwe and Zenani. “Makaziwe and Zenani have sought leave to file answering affidavits in the interdict application (Mandela’s 2004 application) on the basis that they are the sole authorised representatives of Harmonieux, Magnifique and Tinancier Investments and Holdings (Pty) Ltd (also wholly owned by the Mandela Trust),” Chuene said in papers filed on Wednesday. Last month, the sisters filed papers in the High Court asking for an order instructing Chuene, advocate George Bizos SC and Minister of Human Settlements Tokyo Sexwale to remove themselves as trustees and directors of the Mandela Trust. They also asked the three to resign as directors of the two companies with immediate effect. Chuene, in his replying affidavit, contends that the tiff began in August 2011 when he, Bizos and Sexwale refused to release the trust’s money to the daughters without a legal justification. According to Chuene, this prompted Makaziwe and Zenani to file papers in the High Court claiming that the three had not been appointed by Mandela to become trustees and directors in companies owned by him. He said the daughters were intending to challenge an April 2004 court order which barred Ayob from selling any of Mandela’s artworks. The court also ordered Ayob to hand over to Chuene any documents and financial statements of companies owned by Mandela. In his court papers, Chuene said the daughters are arguing that they were not party to their father’s 2004 court application against Ayob. In his bid to prove that Ayob was behind the lawsuit against them, Chuene stated that Ayob served them with summonses last August asking them to resign as directors in Harmonieux and Magnifique. He also said the daughters had amended the trust deed on April 15, 2005 and declared themselves as the only two directors of the two companies. “I have referred to these inter-related demands for the resignation of the trustees of the general trusts as it is plain that Makaziwe and Zenani and Mr Ayob had set about a general plan to have all of Mr Mandela’s independent trustees removed from their office in these trusts in order to gain control thereof. The current application is a further step in such plan. “It is clear from the background that Mr Ayob has always resisted the immediate and complete implementation of the wishes of Mr Mandela. “He actively took steps to subvert those wishes and behaved in a manner which was improper. “He is a guiding hand behind this application. “Given his role in this application, the opposing respondents (Chuene, Bizos and Sexwale) will pursue a special costs order against him, in the event the application is dismissed,” Chuene said. In his 46-page affidavit, he gave a detailed account of how Ayob allegedly failed to comply with the court order. He also stated that a financial audit of Harmonieux and Magnifique Investment Holdings began only in March this year – nine years later. It is not known what Mandela is worth. Chuene is adamant that Ayob was behind the court application by Makaziwe and Zenani. “Makaziwe and Zenani’s belated attempt to support Mr Ayob’s opposition to the interdict application forms part of the ulterior purpose of unlawfully securing control of the Mandela Trust and its subsidiary companies in order to circumvent the refusal by the independent trustees to effect a general distribution of the assets of the trust,” Chuene said. Nelson Mandela’s lawyer Bally Chuene is arguing that: * Ayob must pay for the costs of thecourt application for his complicity in deliberately deviating from Mandela’s wishes. * Ayob has been complicit in the clandestine appointment of Makaziwe and Zenani as trustees and directors. * He was complicit in drafting the amendment to the trust deed. * He is behind misleading correspondence and attempts to assist Makaziwe and Zenani to improperly gain control of the trust. * He lacks independence in his attempts to assist Makaziwe and Zenani in matters in which he is interested as a witness and litigant. Ayob said he would file answering affidavits at court. [email protected] [email protected] The Star |
Reddit 12 Pin 252 Shares The latest Coast Mountain Culture Magazine article about BC’s search-and-rescue program and its funding has sparked media attention. CBC Victoria and CBC Vancouver recently interviewed the story’s author Jeff Davies and politicians are beginning to take note about SAR’s cost benefits. Here is the story that started it all. Julie Abrahamsen doesn’t look like a troublemaker. In news photos, she looks, in fact, like the picture of Scandinavian innocence: eager smile, long, blonde hair, blue eyes. But in the British Columbia court of public opinion, Abrahamsen was sentenced to swift justice. On a mild and overcast day in January 2015, with temperatures hovering around freezing, the 20-year-old Norwegian ventured out into the backcountry of Blackcomb Mountain, following a group of hikers, past a sign warning them to be prepared and take the proper safety gear. She soon became separated from the group and lost her way. But rather than backtracking, she simply continued downhill, searching for a way out; a natural inclination, perhaps, to anyone used to travelling in the more populated mountain terrain of Europe, but it is dangerous and potentially fatal in the vast British Columbian backcountry. For three days, Abrahamsen plodded on, finding shelter the first night under a rock, the second under a log and the third under a tree. Incredibly, she even tried to cross a swollen and icy stream and ended up wading and swimming downstream. Abrahamsen had been in the mountains alone two nights before the authorities were alerted. And by this time, the weather had closed in. Vincent Massey, a 30-year veteran of Whistler Search and Rescue (SAR), describes the conditions as “hosing torrential West Coast rain.” Whistler SAR had to wait another day to get a chopper in the air. By the time searchers headed out, they had little hope of finding her alive. But they spotted her tracks leading to the stream, up and over a log jam, and then re-emerging downstream. “So we got out of the helicopter at one of these big long jams,” Massey recalls, “and we put on our touring gear and went after the tracks for an hour, hour-and-a-half, until we found her hunkered down under a tree.” She was exhausted, wet, but very much alive “and grateful to know her three-day ordeal was over,” says Massey. The searchers whooped with joy. Abrahamsen was sheepish about having to be rescued. “Very, very humble,” Massey says. Her remarkable story of survival in the wilderness made news internationally. Later, fielding questions from reporters, the young Norwegian came across as “calm, almost blasé,” according to one news report. She said she’d do things differently in the future, take the proper precautions, but she might well go out of bounds again. In the media, her words came across to many as cavalier and reckless. The reaction in online forums was harsh. Stick her with the bill for the rescue, many demanded. Send her back to Norway ASAP. One letter published in a Whistler newspaper said search-and-rescue officials were rewarding bad, stupid behaviour by not billing Abrahamsen. But that, of course, is the policy for SAR teams across British Columbia, and it’s one Vincent Massey supports. And, he notes, one fact not in the news reports: Julie Abrahamsen’s father actually took the time to fly to British Columbia from Norway to thank the searchers personally—and give them a $5,000 donation. On the one hand, Massey says, Julie Abrahamsen’s misadventure was a classic case of someone making bad decisions in the backcountry: going alone, not telling her friends her plan, not heeding warnings to carry avalanche gear, failing to retrace her steps when she got in trouble. But she also showed she was tough and tenacious, earning the respect of her rescuers, particularly Massey, the first to reach her. “When you hear somebody is from Norway, you think she’s got to be part Viking to do this.” Bring on the horned helmet. But, says Massey, spare us the debates on social media of the “who-are-these-idiots-taking-risks-and-why-should-my-tax dollars-pay-to-rescue-them?” nature. “I wish people wouldn’t say that,” he says. “They don’t really understand that people do make mistakes and it can happen to anybody.” Keep in mind, it’s the SAR members who are putting their lives on the line to perform rescues. And, as Massey says, “we’re mountain people.” These are people who spend their spare time climbing and hiking, whitewater kayaking and backcountry skiing. You don’t get to be a SAR team member by skiing the groomers. Take Finbar O’Sullivan. He’s 63, greying, a little portly, with a walrus moustache. He speaks the language of one who has spent a lifetime in the backcountry mountaineering and skiing. “Unless there’s some element of risk, there’s no adventure,” he says. “It’s like going shopping on Black Friday.” The BC Wilderness Tourism Association says its industry puts $1.5 billion dollars a year into the economy and generates more than $400 million in tax revenues. The cost of search and rescue must be seen against that backdrop. In his early days, O’Sullivan was struck by avalanches three times, twice knocked unconscious. His friends dug him out. Today he’s giving back, as a searcher, ski patrol and avalanche trainer at Apex Mountain, near Penticton, British Columbia. Now he ponders the big questions once more: Would you take a fee from someone you rescued, especially if that person made foolish decisions? It’s tough, he says. Who gets to decide what kind of behaviour is foolhardy? He cautions against judgements made “from the comfort of the couch.” However, he says, “There are some who are blatantly idiotic, the guy who is pissed drunk and decides to do the Grouse Grind, as opposed to the guy who is well equipped and slips and breaks his ankle.” In the end, O’Sullivan says, he would never charge stranded skiers or hikers to go out and save them. But he might sit them down later for a little tough talk. Others in O’Sullivan’s crowd suggest billing skiers or hikers for mishaps in the backcountry is a slippery slope, no pun intended. Relaxing after a day in the powder at Apex, Johnny “Smoke” Matthews asks about people with unhealthy lifestyles? “It’s probably a mistake to start smoking or to eat that many potato chips and sit on the sofa and become a beast. Those kinds of expenses are probably much more expensive than these one-time [SAR] expenses.” If the search-and-rescue community in western Canada has hallowed ground, you’ll find it in a nondescript grey building, beside a railway line in North Vancouver. It is the city’s municipal works yard. But this is also the base of the iconic North Shore Rescue. NSR was involved in 139 rescue operations in 2015. Only two—that’s right, two—involved out-of-bounds skiers, despite the fact those stories tend to dominate the media. Fourteen were “walkaways,” a category that can include anything from lost kids to wandering seniors struggling with dementia. One was a hang-glider pilot, three were climbers, five mountain bikers, one a suicide attempt. But the majority, 89, were hikers, an activity that’s perfectly legal in an area dotted with parks and crosshatched with hiking trails, albeit trails that can be dangerous for the ill prepared. Step into NSR’s lobby and you enter a shrine: on the wall is a framed photo of the late Tim Jones, the long-time team leader of North Shore Rescue. A ruddy-faced and barrel-chested man, Jones might pass for a barroom bouncer. Indeed, he’s dubbed “Knuckles” in the photo. An Order of BC medallion hangs around his neck. Jones is credited with saving 1,600 lives. He spent his professional career as a paramedic, but he also devoted 26 years to volunteering with North Shore Rescue. Like all others team members named on the plaque below his photo, he never took a cent for his work. Sadly, Jones died suddenly of a heart attack in January 2014 at age 57. But his presence is still felt throughout the base, the North Shore and the whole search-and-rescue community. On the walls, there are clippings, photos and letters, awards and testimonials. Some tell haunting stories, such as that of the 22-year-old British hiker Tom Billings, who ventured into the mountains and vanished without a trace for almost three years before his remains were found, despite a massive manhunt on the North Shore. But perhaps the most arresting is a simple card with a handprinted message from someone named James Martin, rescued from Mount Seymour in 2008. “Dear North Shore Rescue, your efforts will never be forgotten. As I stare at the beautiful mountainside you saved me from, I can’t help the tears. You are the bravest people I know. Forever in my heart.” It’s a stark reminder that the North Shore, British Columbia’s most accessible wilderness recreation area, is, ironically, among its most dangerous. The tourist websites usually show those mountains bathed in sunshine and capped with snow, and they beckon visitors. The reality, for much of the year, is quite different: extreme weather changes, sun that gives away to dense fog and driving rain, and rugged terrain punctuated with cliffs and chasms. Take a wrong turn on the North Shore and you can pay for it with your life. That’s where NSR comes in. With Tim Jones now gone, the job of team leader has fallen to Mike Danks, a young man with a lean build, a boyish grin and a shock of dark hair. By day, he’s a North Vancouver firefighter, as well as a husband and father to three young girls. “Sorry, it’s a bit of a mess in here,” Danks says, as we enter the cavernous storeroom. There’s a sign on the wall proclaiming “The Embassy, home of North Shore Rescue.” Helmets, running shoes and backpacks are strewn on the floor. Racks are stacked almost to the ceiling with brightly coloured duffels and drybags. Three sturdy rescue vehicles, packed with everything from first-aid gear to oxygen, blankets and body bags, are ready to go. One fact not in the news reports: Julie Abrahamsen’s father actually took the time to fly to British Columbia from Norway to thank the searchers personally – and give them a $5,000 donation. I’ve arrived in the middle of a training session; members are learning the ropes, literally, so they be recertified for swift-water rescues. There are a dozen team members present, some standing, a few sitting, some slumped on the couch, but all eyes are on the professional trainer, Scott Streadwick, of Raven Rescue. There is little of the belly-bumping bravado one might expect in this all-male gathering. “It’s a dedicated group of people,” Streadwick says. “It’s a huge commitment and a way of giving back to the community.” How big a commitment? “I don’t keep that close a track,” says team member Jim Loree, “but 400 hours a year is not out of possibility. Training every Tuesday. There’s usually a training day one weekend a month, there’s fundraiser stuff, there’s call-outs, educational things, equipment maintenance… It’s a challenge.” So why do it? “Because I love it,” Loree says. “It helps other people. It’s a great experience. It’s pretty amazing to see somebody who thinks they are going to die and not be rescued, and all of a sudden you show up and they’re so happy and grateful to see you.” If there’s one other point on which all SAR members agree, it’s the insistence that SAR teams not charge user fees to anyone they rescue. It’s simply impractical, they say, and would make rescues more difficult and dangerous. Tim Jones was passionate on this issue all his life. He had no hesitation calling out reckless hikers or skiers, those who were ill prepared or who were endangering their own lives or those of SAR teams. But he would not accept payment. Today, North Shore Rescue’s website cites half a century of experience to back up its policy: “We have seen many calls where family have been under the impression that they would be charged, and delayed their calls for help. Another situation we run into is a subject being under the impression they would be charged and avoiding rescuers.” One way or another, SAR team members fear, if they`re operating on a fee-for-service basis, the calls will come late, and they’ll end up performing rescues in the dark, under far more difficult and dangerous conditions, with the subjects now hypothermic, incoherent or worse. As one search trainer in the Okanagan puts it, if we charge fees we recover bodies. If it’s free we rescue living people. They’re not idle fears. Almost every searcher can cite examples of searches that were delayed because stranded adventurers or their families feared being billed. An incident last winter at Whitewater Ski Resort, near Nelson, British Columbia, is a good illustration. Joe Vingo, a veteran member of Nelson Search and Rescue, was ski touring in the backcountry in January with some buddies when they saw another party of skiers who appeared to be in trouble. They were expert skiers from Washington State, very well equipped and experienced, Vingo says, but one had apparently torn a knee ligament. An orthopedic surgeon also skiing nearby performed first aid, but the skiers were trying to make their own way out. It would have taken until well after dark. “I said, ‘We really should get you a helicopter,’” Vingo recalls. “And they said, “We can’t afford it.’ And I laughed and said everything is free in Canada. And then I said, ‘Do you want me to get a helicopter?’ And they said, ‘Can you do that?’ And I said, ‘You bumped into the right guy.’” As they headed out later, Vingo says, a member of the party gave one of Vingo’s buddies all his cash. “Just about enough to buy a pitcher of beer and poutine.” The day ended well. A ruddy-faced and barrel-chested man, Tim Jones might pass for a barroom bouncer. Indeed, he’s dubbed “Knuckles” in the photo. An order of British Columbia medallion hangs around his neck. Jones is credited with saving 1,600 lives. He spent his professional career as a paramedic, but he also devoted 26 years to volunteering with North Shore Rescue. It might have been different south of the border. Search and rescue in Washington State, as in British Columbia, is performed by volunteers who don’t charge fees. But if they have to contract a private helicopter, the bills can be in the thousands. The BC Search and Rescue Association has spent years listening to taxpayers’ demands to levy fees but came to the conclusion it would be counterproductive. “It would be a burdensome process likely resulting in very little incremental revenue,” BCSARA said in a submission to the provincial government. As BCSARA President Chris Kelly points out, the provincial government has the legal right to seek payment from anyone who causes an emergency. But neither he nor Special Projects Director Jim McAllister, who drafted the brief, can recall a case where Emergency Measures BC has actually billed someone for a backcountry rescue. McAllister disputes the notion popular in online forums that anyone who needs a rescue must have done something stupid or illegal. “I’ve probably been out on 350 calls while I was active in the field,” says McAllister, “and people often talk about these stupid people out there, and I often go on blogs and say that in 350 calls, I’ve never run across a stupid person.” He goes on to explain that he’s seen people “who have had misfortune, or somebody who has made a bad decision, but I’ve never run across a stupid person.” Also, as McAllister and Kelly note, those who are rescued are typically very grateful and often donate generously to SAR. It’s a major source of income: about $1.5 million a year comes from donations and fundraising. Consider the case of Sebastien Boucher. In December 2012, he was headed to Cypress Mountain, on Vancouver’s North Shore, to carve a few quick runs in some fresh powder. On his way up, he got a call telling him his best friend had died. A distraught Boucher sought solace in the backcountry. But an overhang collapsed, leaving him injured and floundering in three metres of snow. Boucher thought he was going to die. Then, on the third day, Tim Jones and a couple of his SAR teammates showed up to rescue him. Boucher doesn`t want to judge others who get in trouble in the backcountry, but he says, “If there’s one thing I can say, it’s that if somebody is going to put their lives at risk to help you, maybe you should do something for them to show appreciation.” Although SAR teams don’t issue bills, ski-resort operators can do so to recover their own costs. The operators of the Cypress Mountain ski area said they would bill Boucher $10,000. He decided to take matters into his own hands. He and his family and friends organized a fundraising hockey tournament back in Ottawa with a bar and canteen. They topped up the receipts with their own cash and presented a cheque for $10,000 directly to North Shore Rescue. If there’s one other point on which all SAR members agree, it’s the insistence that SAR teams not charge user fees to anyone they rescue. It’s simply impractical, they say, and would make rescues more difficult and dangerous. It’s worth noting that out-of-bounds skiing is subject to different rules at different ski resorts, according to the terrain and the proficiency of the skiers. Cypress Mountain warns skiers not to cross ropes or boundaries whatsoever. But at Whistler Blackcomb, the backcountry is a major part of the resort’s marketing pitch. Skiers and boarders are told they can venture outside the boundaries, but they’re required to take avalanche gear. “The Whistler backcountry is magical and an incredible place to spend time. As life around us speeds up, the appeal of solitude and silence becomes that much greater. Don’t be fooled by the beauty, however; you need to know what you’re doing out there.” Then there’s the Whitewater Ski Resort, near Nelson, which lures powder hounds to the backcountry by offering a discount if they just want to ride the lift once and venture out of bounds. That is, if they first sign a legal waiver and understand the risks. Also consider that 94 per cent of British Columbia is Crown land, much of it open to recreation with few restrictions, and promoted as “Super Natural BC.” The world has heeded the call: the BC Wilderness Tourism Association says its industry puts $1.5 billion dollars a year into the economy and generates more than $400 million in tax revenues. The cost of search and rescue must be seen against that backdrop. Certainly the demand is growing faster than a sturdy hiker climbing the Grouse Grind. Rescue operations have increased by nearly 400 per cent in 25 years. But BC Search and Rescue says funding has not kept up. It’s now about $9.4 million a year, $3 million less than the association estimates it needs. If the searches were performed by professionals, BC Search and Rescue estimates, the cost, “based on RCMP constable wages, would exceed $20 million; including training and administration this would likely exceed $50 million, a good return on investment!” As it is now, the only paid staff member is a part-time receptionist. Gaming grants, donations and fundraising cover about 45 per cent of the search-and-rescue budgets. The remainder comes from a host of government agencies and programs, much of it from Emergency Measures BC, but organizers have to reapply every year for those grants. Jim McAllister of BCSARA says that makes it very difficult to plan ahead. How are you supposed to know how many people will get stranded in the outdoors? What the SAR teams really want is stable, predictable funding. BCSARA’s brief lists a number of options to raise money, including surcharges on hunting and fishing licences, alpine ski-lift tickets, snowmobile registration, camping fees and sales of outdoor equipment. But it pointedly does not endorse any of those ideas. The reaction, it says, from some user groups has been “very negative.” Ski hills, for example, felt a surcharge on lift tickets would be bad for business and would be unfair because only 3 per cent of searches involve out-of-bounds skiers. The association also questions whether it would be practical to require rescue insurance, a common practice in some European countries. Abrahamsen had been in the mountains alone two nights before the authorities were alerted. And by this time, the weather had closed in. Vincent Massey, a 30-year veteran of Whistler Search and Rescue (SAR), describes the conditions as “hosing torrential West Coast rain.” Naomi Yamamoto, British Columbia’s minister of state responsible for Emergency Measures BC says she’s listening to BCSARA and considering their brief. “We have to respect the folks who are actually going out and volunteering and that’s their wish,” she says. The minister agrees search and rescue should be a free service and adds searchers “shouldn’t have to hold bake sales” to buy equipment or get training to save lives. Last winter, Yamamoto announced a one-time boost of $10 million dollars for just those purposes. And so the province’s search-and-rescue teams must depend on public and political goodwill, as well as the gratitude of those they have rescued. Back in North Vancouver, it’s a big night for the search-and-rescue community: a fundraiser for the Tim Jones Legacy Fund at Seymour’s Pub. The beer and conversation are flowing. Politicians are schmoozing. Diners are munching burgers and noodles. There’s a silent auction. And money is coming in. Organizers are hoping to raise $15,000 or more to go into a long-term investment. Tim Jones’ framed photo is a centrepiece in the silent auction. There’s a special announcement: BC Parks has posthumously named Jones winner of its 2015 volunteer legacy award. His son, Curtis Jones, is there to reflect on his father’s legacy. Like his dad, he’s a powerfully built man and a member of NSR. He wants to continue the policy of not charging for rescues. “It’s his idea that search and rescue is better done by volunteers who have an outdoor recreation background. My dad was passionate about that,” says Jones. “It’s about letting people know they’re safe when they’re out there. If something goes wrong you can count on North Shore Rescue, Squamish Search and Rescue, whoever, they’ll come and get you.” Jeff Davies is a freelance writer and retired CBC political reporter based in Victoria, British Columbia. He left the legislative press gallery in 2012 to spend more time enjoying the great outdoors and writing about it. He once flipped a canoe in the Cowichan River and the local search-and-rescue team was alerted. Davies’ mailbox in the BC legislature carried the tag “Mr. Canoe Head” for the remainder of his time there. This is Jeff’s first story for Coast Mountain Culture Magazine. |
A man walking along the 1700 block of Wharton Street ran for his life after being shot June 25, and two surveillance cameras caught the incident and the aftermath. If you know anything about the two suspects, call 911. Check it out: According to 6 ABC: Both suspects fled the scene in a silver colored vehicle heading east on Wharton Street from 17th street. The victim was transported to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania with a gunshot wound to the left thigh. Police describe the suspects as: Suspect #1: Black male, 6’0 tall, 20 years-old, muscular build, full beard. He was wearing blue jeans, white tank top and an orange hat. Suspect #2: Black male, wearing a jacket, blue jeans and a black shirt. Anyone with information about the suspects or the shooting is urged to contact Philadelphia Police immediately at 215.686.TIPS (8477) or text a tip to PPD TIP (773847). |
Wonkette writer Evan Hurst told White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to “go f**k” herself in a profanity-ridden screed published Wednesday. While Wonkette doesn’t shy away from profanity and insults, this particular article makes the writer seem deranged and possibly even obsessed with Sanders. The headline of the piece is “Go F**k Yourself, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, You Debased Redneck Motherf**ker” and Hurst writes, “We can scarcely believe we haven’t devoted a post in our beloved series of children’s bedtime stories ‘Oh Go F**k Yourself (INSERT ASSHOLE’S NAME HERE)’ to Our Lady Of The Tablecloth-Wearing Lie Mouth, AKA Sarah Huckabee Sanders. But we haven’t, so here we go.” Hurst ripped on the fact that Sanders is from Arkansas and has a southern accent, and accused her of frying squirrels and called her a “PUS-FILLED WHITE TRASH SCAB ON THE TINY DICK OF DONALD TRUMP’S HUMANITY.” Hurst wrote another angry piece defending his comments about Sanders on Thursday titled, “Give Sarah Huckabee Sanders A Break? The F**k We Will.” Hurst claimed that he would never support people making fun of Sanders’ appearance, writing, “Wonkette will be the first to call you dicks out for making fun of Sanders’s appearance. The only fair criticism on that front is that SHE WEARS TABLECLOTHS TO WORK.” Nonetheless, he continued to bash her southern roots and said she sounds like she fell off a “turnip truck.” Follow Amber on Twitter |
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отхожее место Тюрьма — узилище Фактически — в действительности Фактический — действительный Фарватер — стрежень Фестиваль — празднество Форма — образ Форум — собрание Фрукты — плоды Фундаментальный — основополагающий Хобби — увлечение Шеф — глава Шопинг — покупки Шоу — зрелище Эгоист — себялюбец Эксклюзивный — исключительный Эксперимент — опыт Экспозиция — выкладка Экспорт — вывоз Элоквенция — красноречие Эмбрион — зародыш Эмоциональный — чувствительный Эмоция — чувствование Эра — летосчисление Эстуарий — устье Юриспруденция — правоведение Прошу внимательно читать комментарии — дабы не повторять многократно уже обсужденное и два основных положения: 1. список этот приведен как иллюстрация проблемы, для примера, он не идеален и никому не навязывается 2. безусловно, международные устоявшиеся термины заменять смысла нет 3. наверняка, вы можете привести более актуальные примеры, за что все будут вам лично благодарны PS В некоторых комментариях к статье использованы примеры неудачных заимствований из ЖЖ gab_garevoi |
By: Matt Barbato ( @RealMattBarbato The 2013 AFC Championship game between the Denver Broncos and New England Patriots was supposed to be another epic battle between Hall of Fame quarterbacks Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. But, the Broncos had other ideas and controlled the entire game en route to an eventual beating at the hands of the Seattle Seahawks in MetLife Stadium. That game not only crowned Denver as champions of the weaker AFC, but also sparked the conversation about the losing quarterback’s ability. Brady’s performance itself wasn’t worthy of dethroning him from the ranks of the top-tier quarterbacks --he went 24-of-38 with 277 yards and one touchdown -- but after a less than staggering 2013 regular season, during which he threw only 25 touchdowns (his lowest total since 2006), many were claiming Tom Brady was no longer an elite quarterback. The “eliteness” of a quarterback is something that has been debated more-and-more over the years. Perhaps it started in 2011, when Eli Manning made a decree of eliteness (and then proved it by winning the Super Bowl that season), but for years, football fans have tried to assemble this group of superb quarterbacks. While younger quarterbacks like Russell Wilson and Colin Kaepernick were storming the palace of the elite gun-slingers, Brady was being shoved out by some football pundits. Tom Brady. Yes, Brady was listed higher than Wilson, or Aaron Rodgers, or Tony Romo or Cam Newton and others. The point I made in February and will make in more detail below is that although Brady’s numbers may have declined, his status as an elite quarterback hasn’t changed. For the past two seasons, I have ranked the top 32 quarterbacks after season’s end. My top three last season were Peyton Manning, Drew Brees and. Yes, Brady was listed higher than Wilson, or Aaron Rodgers, or Tony Romo or Cam Newton and others. The point I made in February and will make in more detail below is that although Brady’s numbers may have declined, his status as an elite quarterback hasn’t changed. Numbers don’t always tell the story: Many people look at Brady’s 2013 regular season as a sign of his regression. Yes, 2013 was one of the worst years of his career, but how much is that really saying? Brady completed only 60.5 percent of his passes, the second-lowest percentage of his career, but also threw 628 passes, the second-highest total of his career and fifth-most in the league. Unless a quarterback is incredibly accurate, a higher volume of throws usually results in a lower completion percentage. Brady threw for 4,343 yards (sixth in the NFL) and 25 touchdowns (11th in the NFL) and only threw a touchdown on four percent of his attempts last season. These numbers are uncharacteristic of Brady, but without completely devaluing the statistic, here are some quarterbacks who had more touchdowns than Brady in 2013: Andy Dalton, Phillip Rivers, Matthew Stafford and Matt Ryan. Ryan Tannehill and Carson Palmer weren’t far behind with 24 touchdowns. Many people look at Brady’s 2013 regular season as a sign of his regression. Yes, 2013 was one of the worst years of his career, but how much is that really saying? Brady completed only 60.5 percent of his passes, the second-lowest percentage of his career, but also threw 628 passes, the second-highest total of his career and fifth-most in the league. Unless a quarterback is incredibly accurate, a higher volume of throws usually results in a lower completion percentage. Brady threw for 4,343 yards (sixth in the NFL) and 25 touchdowns (11in the NFL) and only threw a touchdown on four percent of his attempts last season. These numbers are uncharacteristic of Brady, but without completely devaluing the statistic, here are some quarterbacks who had more touchdowns than Brady in 2013: Andy Dalton, Phillip Rivers, Matthew Stafford and Matt Ryan. Ryan Tannehill and Carson Palmer weren’t far behind with 24 touchdowns. A telling stat from last season was that Patriots receivers were tackled at the 1 yard line eight times, three more times than the next highest team. If half of these completions were touchdowns, Brady would have ranked 8th in the NFL in TDs. A telling stat from last season was that Patriots receivers were tackled at the 1 yard line eight times, three more times than the next highest team. If half of these completions were touchdowns, Brady would have ranked 8th in the NFL in TDs. There’s more to a touchdown than just a quarterback throwing the ball. Brady’s touchdown statistic is misleading and shows that what’s being put around Brady hasn’t been up to par with previous rosters. It is also quickly forgotten that in 2012, Brady threw for 4,827 yards, 34 touchdowns and only eight interceptions. That was easily Brady’s third-best statistical season of his career. He ranked in the top-three among quarterbacks in yards, touchdowns and Total QBR that season. The group around Brady hasn’t been great since 2011, but last year hit rock bottom: It’s hard to argue that the wide receiver and tight end groups surrounding Brady didn’t have an effect on Brady’s numbers in 2013. The Patriots thought Danny Amendola would be a suitable replacement for Wes Welker, but injuries plagued the speedy wide out and he shifted in and out of the lineup. Brady’s only reliable wide out was Julian Edelman, who caught 105 passes for 1,056 yards and six touchdowns in his breakout season. Brady was also without his favorite red-zone target in Rob Gronkowski, who missed nine games with multiple injuries. It’s hard to argue that the wide receiver and tight end groups surrounding Brady didn’t have an effect on Brady’s numbers in 2013. The Patriots thought Danny Amendola would be a suitable replacement for Wes Welker, but injuries plagued the speedy wide out and he shifted in and out of the lineup. Brady’s only reliable wide out was Julian Edelman, who caught 105 passes for 1,056 yards and six touchdowns in his breakout season. Brady was also without his favorite red-zone target in Rob Gronkowski, who missed nine games with multiple injuries. New England hoped for big years debuts from rookies Kenbrell Thompkins and Aaron Dobson, but neither panned out as a dependable second or third option. It was the perfect storm in a sense. Without Welker, Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez, Brady was forced to adjust to three rookies, a newly signed free agent and two tight ends, Michael Hoomanawanui and Matthew Mulligan, who aren’t known as pass-catching tight ends. Certainly, Brady deserves some responsibility for the problems in the passing game and he has done a lot with very little in the past, but the Patriots organization did him no favors by letting Welker walk, assuming Gronkowski would stay healthy and failing to bring in any other veterans besides an unstable Amendola (who had only been in the league for four seasons upon signing him). Certainly, Brady deserves some responsibility for the problems in the passing game and he has done a lot with very little in the past, but the Patriots organization did him no favors by letting Welker walk, assuming Gronkowski would stay healthy and failing to bring in any other veterans besides an unstable Amendola (who had only been in the league for four seasons upon signing him). The good news is Brady will have an entire offseason to work with these new receivers and the addition of Brandon LaFell will, at the very least, give Brady an experienced wide out to work with alongside Amendola (when healthy) and Edelman. Before you attribute Brady’s low numbers to a regression, be sure to take a look at the outside circumstances first. Success does not lie: Many have said the Patriots are an overrated franchise that is annually over-hyped. The rationale behind that is because they haven’t won a Super Bowl since 2004. The even more ludicrous argument is that this falls on Brady more than anyone else. Since when does two Super Bowl appearances and five AFC Championship games in the past eight seasons make a franchise or a quarterback overrated? Many have said the Patriots are an overrated franchise that is annually over-hyped. The rationale behind that is because they haven’t won a Super Bowl since 2004. The even more ludicrous argument is that this falls on Brady more than anyone else. Since when does two Super Bowl appearances and five AFC Championship games in the past eight seasons make a franchise or a quarterback overrated? Brady has been one of the most successful quarterbacks since 2004, when he won his last Super Bowl. In those following eight seasons (excluding 2008 when he injured his knee), Brady has led the Patriots to a combined record of 108-37 in the regular season and playoffs, a .744 winning percentage. To compare, Peyton Manning has a 109-34 record and a .762 winning percentage. Brady has one less win than Manning in those same eight seasons (Manning missed all of 2011 with a neck injury), yet only Brady seems to be the one falling out of the elite ranks. That span also includes six regular seasons with at least 12 wins and a perfect, 16-0 regular season. During that same stretch, the Pats haven’t had a season with less than 10 wins, which is extremely impressive when considering the constant parity that exists in the NFL. New England has won the AFC East division in every season except 2008, when the Miami Dolphins accidentally won 11 games behind Tony Sparano and Chad Henne. Brady’s numbers may be declining, but that regression happens to every quarterback with age, especially when the roster around him is inadequate like it was in 2013 and could be in 2014. Yet, despite the tough circumstances, Brady continues to put up consistent top-10 statistics in a league where throwing the ball is rapidly becoming more popular. Until Brady’s numbers consistently decrease in accordance with a drop off in his team’s performance, he is still an elite quarterback. Agree or disagree with Matt thinking Tom Brady is still elite? Leave a comment below the link. Be sure to follow Matt on Twitter ( @RealMattBarbato The Sports ReKap, hosted by Nick Kapetan and DJ Vogt, will begin airing again in September on MarquetteWire.org. Follow Us On Twitter Facebook Like Us On Be sure to visit Sobelman's this summer, the official sponsor of The Sports ReKap, and try their array of mouthwatering burgers. Visit their website: http://www.milwaukeesbestburgers.com/ It is still over 9 months away but please start considering joining a Relay For Life team at your school next year. For more information on how to join a team at Marquette please contact Kristen Krawczyk at kristen.krawczyk@marquette.edu The Sports ReKap is happy to announce the additions of Matt Barbato, Michael Felish, Chris Linskens, Kevin Saad, Kevin Clancy, and Brendan Garrity as full-time contributors to the show. If you want to be a part of the show this year email Nick at nicholas.kapetan@marquette.edu. |
A calculated “bug hunt” is underway at iTriage in downtown Denver. With laptops and tablets on a desk, contract employees Antonio Rozier and Amelia Dickerson scan through the backbone of a health symptom and information website and mobile app, using screen readers that convert text to Braille or speech to determine how well they work with assistive technology for the vision-impaired. Rozier and Dickerson, both blind, went to iTriage via the Blind Institute of Technology, a fledgling Denver-based nonprofit founded to place workers with vision impairments in the information technology sector. The goal: To boost the number of blind people in the workforce. In June, the workforce participation rate of 16- to 64-year-olds who are blind or have difficulty seeing was 37.7 percent, according to an American Foundation for the Blind mining of U.S. Census data. That compares with an overall labor force participation rate of 62.6 percent and sits just a shade above the median rate of 37.5 percent from June 2009 to June 2015. “The opportunity that BIT has is truly solving for a national epidemic of unemployment with very capable, very talented, really passionate individuals,” said Mike Hess, who founded BIT two years ago. “You have the greatest, untapped resource in America just champing at the bit.” Hess speaks from experience. Prior to launching the organization, he earned six figures at Broomfield-based Level 3 Communications Inc. as a software engineer. “I believe that I was a very successful engineer managing seven-figure projects because of my blindness,” he said. “Not despite my blindness, but because of my blindness.” He said his work was precise and efficient, and he was a strong listener. Knowing that others offered similar skill sets but faced hurdles in landing a job, Hess saw the need for a way to serve as an intermediary. “This is absolutely the right thing to do,” he said. “The more folks that we get off Social Security benefits and we get into gainful employment, … it’ll reduce the burden on Social Security, and they’ll be contributing back into that system.” More placements After a slow start — it took a few months for BIT to place its first worker — the organization is gaining steam. BIT placed 15 individuals in 2014 and is on its way to potentially tripling that number this year. Some of Colorado’s largest employers, including Aetna and DaVita, have hired BIT-connected individuals for contract, part-time and full-time positions. DaVita HealthCare Partners Inc.’s information technology engagement manager Matt Kissinger called partnering with the BIT a “no-brainer.” The addition of Eric Arther to the Denver-based company’s IT team in October took minimal accommodations. The ZoomText accessibility software that Arther uses ran less than $500, Kissinger said. “To me, there’s really no reason not to,” he said. “It was another avenue of talent, another source of finding good-quality IT folks we weren’t exposed to before.” Arther, 28, was diagnosed with vision impairment about 11 years ago. With a blind spot in his center of vision, Arther can see only what’s in his periphery. After earning a master’s degree in business administration, Arther became discouraged by his inability to land a job. He went into business with his father running a repair outfit for animal-cremation equipment. But he desired other opportunities. After pairing with BIT, Arther was hired by DaVita and now works on the company’s Launch, Learning & Development team. “With BIT, there’s full disclosure,” he said. “(Blindness) is not a problem; it’s part of who you are.” Using ZoomText software, Arther can scroll in to enlarge the text by more than 50 times and also can have the software read words back to him, if needed. To provide a little extra assistance, Arther stuck clear rubber nodes on certain buttons to map out his keyboard for his fingers. Aetna’s iTriage hired Dickerson and Rozier to make the mobile health app easier for blind clients to use. Dickerson tests the Android platform, and Rozier tests Web and iOS platforms after each iteration, “a two-week sprint of software development,” said Kelly Shuster, accessibility leader at iTriage. The two spend hours analyzing how the readers react to the code in each platform and sit with the developers to relay the feedback. “When we started working with BIT, developers wanted to make accessible applications, but they didn’t really know what it meant to program for accessibility,” Shuster said via e-mail. “Now that we’ve had a chance to work with BIT, all of us are much more familiar with common pitfalls and have been able to start coding defensively from the get-go.” More businesses appear to be mindful of producing accessible technologies, said Chris Danielsen, spokesman for the National Federation of the Blind. While technology has helped to level the playing field for the blind, it also has created some barriers of its own, he said. Assistive technologies can’t always keep up with the frenzied pace of innovation. “Just when the legal and regulatory standards get all hooked up with technology as it is … some new technology or protocol comes along that just throws everything back to zero again,” Danielsen said. The National Federation of the Blind encourages companies to consider accessibility from the start rather than having to backtrack and build in work-arounds. Danielsen’s organization also is working closely with technology developers and startups to advance the products coming on the market. But the biggest obstacle remains the perception that people who are blind have a reduced capacity to be independent, he said. When one of the questions in a job interview is “How will you be able to find the bathroom,” it exemplifies the amount of progress that needs to be made, Danielsen said. “When the potential employer is setting the bar that low — you’re having to get past the question of whether you can do what a 5-year-old child can do — that really puts an interview back quite a ways,” he said. Joe Strechay, CareerConnect program manager for the American Foundation for the Blind, said applicants, too, sometimes need help putting their disability in context. “We’re still battling with some of the same attitudes going on before — on both sides,” he said. “Don’t get stuck in the details of your medical condition. Talk about the practicality of how your vision impacts your work.” Changes to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 two years ago that set a goal for federal contractors to have at least 7 percent of their workforce consist of individuals with disabilities are helping create opportunities, Strechay said. And gains are being made in the private sector. “We’re moving to a more accessible world,” Strechay said, “but it’s taking time.” Dickerson of iTriage worries about falling behind in the meantime. “We talk about how much of our world comes to us through technology, so people need to be ready to move and change and learn,” she said. “I am ready to do all of that. But since I cannot see, I need people to provide another way for me to access it.” Alicia Wallace: 303-954-1939, awallace@denverpost.com or twitter.com/aliciawallace |
The announcement follows on from the UK government’s similar investigation, which was presented yesterday, finding levels of NOx emissions were up to six times the prescribed legal limit in lab tests. However, the Department for Transport did not immediately back up its findings by calling for a voluntary recall. However, following the German government's action, Secretary of State for Transport Patrick McLoughlin said: “I am pleased to hear today’s announcement from Germany that Mercedes, Opel, Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche are able to offer consumers changes to their cars which will reduce emissions. I will be seeking urgent clarification from these manufacturers that they will be offering the same fix to car owners in the UK.” It is not clear if McLoughlin will also call on the other car makers listed by the German government as having excessive emissions in the real world to take action. Vauxhall/Opel had already announced in March that it had instigated plans to improve NOx emissions of SCR (Selective Catalytic Reduction) diesel engines. Meanwhile, Audi announced it will go beyond the formal request for action in Germany and recall 65,700 cars with six-cylinder diesel engines throughout Europe. "Cars will be tooled up with a overhauled software in a voluntary service action," the firm said. "The technology is used in EU5 and EU6 models of production-series Q5, A6 and A8 with a manual gearbox." The following cars have voluntarily been recalled already in Germany: Audi Q5 (22,000 cars); Audi A6 (29,000); Audi A8 (15,000); Opel Zafira (58,000), Opel Insignia (31,000); Opel Cascada (1000); Mercedes A-Class and B-Class (211,000); Mercedes V-Class (36,000); Porsche Macan (32,000); VW Amarok (70,000); VW Crafter (124,000). It has not been alleged that any of the manufacturers have broken any legal requirements for emissions. However, the German and UK governments have now asked that the real-world emissions levels, which are outside of European regulatory requirements, should be investigated and improvements to the emissions reductions systems be made. It is understood the German investigation - as with the UK government's - uncovered concerns regarding the operating temperatures of emissions-reducing recirculation systems and particulate filters. The tests showed that manufacturers shut down the filter systems at different temperatures in order to prolong the life of the parts involved. It has been reported that Mercedes diesels shut down the EGC after treatment systems at 10deg C while Opel’s is shut down at 17deg. This means that, while the systems would run at full effectiveness in the official laboratory emissions tests, they would regularly not be effective in everyday use. In response to the announcement, Daimler, owner of Mercedes, said the test results do "not indicate the use of non-permissible software". It added there were technical reasons for deviations from the certified values and that it welcomed the EU's forthcoming introduction of Real Driving Emissions (RDE) test methods. Until now, Mercedes had only said it would offer German customers of the A-Class, B-Class and V-Class a voluntary recall. The entry-level engines affected also include the 1.5 dCi Mercedes-sourced Renault engine, which is understood to be affected on the Kadjar model. A Nissan statement read: "We are aware of the KBA report and its findings relating to the vehicles they tested in the German market. We have no plans at this time to recall any Nissan vehicles mentioned in the report." |
Wednesday, December 7, 2016 at 5:01PM Featuring: Cassie Jaye, Paul Elam, Warren Farrell, Marc Angelucci, Harry Crouch and Dean Esmay. Director: Cassie Jaye. Rating: 1.5/5 The jagged histrionics of documentarian Cassie Jaye’s disjointed pro-Men’s Right advocacy film, The Red Pill, serves two masters well. Her softly-softly proselytizing and spurious arguments serve to sweeten the image of Men’s Rights mouthpieces and the ‘regressive progress’ platform they present. And speaking directly to her own camera as she journeys from feminist to ‘enlightened humanist’ serves Jaye as well, her frowns and tears recalling an acting class show reel. As she painstakingly overstates, Jaye’s body of work outwardly presents an empathetic view of society – patriarchal rule within dogmatic Christian lives, with specific adherence to pre-marital abstinence (Daddy I Do, 2010); the impact of ‘food insecurity’ on the upper-middle class and those that serve them in Marin County (Faces Overlooked, 2010); and, the struggle of two gay white guys to raise a family as California’s Proposition 8 debate raged (The Right to Love: An American Family, 2008). But even if you include a couple of shorts about women’s issues (Blackeye, 2009; The Story of GoldieBlox, 2012), her oeuvre is one of narrow experience rife with hot button issues and moderate-right conservatism. Jaye would have her audience believe that she stumbled upon the Men’s Right Movement with a wide-eyed innocence; we get to see her literally type ‘Men’s Rights’ into a search engine. She barely registers vile online misogyny (the kind that has seen MRA advocates labelled ‘rape apologists’) as if it was a dirty limerick. In no time at all, she is in warm conversation with the likes of Paul Elam, President of A Voice for Men, a voice that spoke the now infamous call-to-action quote, “I am proclaiming October to be Bash a Violent Bitch Month”; Dr. Warren Farrell (pictured, top; with Jaye), author of the MRA diatribe, The Myth of Male Power and spouter of wisdom pearls like, “Women are the only 'oppressed' group that is able to buy $10 billion worth of cosmetics each year,”; and, Harry Crouch and Marc Angelucci, executives from The National Council for Men, MRA heavy-hitters who once lobbied to defund domestic violence programs if men’s rights were not addressed. So follows a whirlwind of male-perspective theories and twisty statistics eager to convince how work place deaths, suicide rates and financial hardship have impacted men since the Women’s Liberation uprising of the 1960’s (seen as a monochrome montage of screeching girl-power rallies with some laughable hippy-funk backing track). Elam and his brothers are presented as warm, composed, homely types; in one moment of un-ironic inspiration that could have come from a Christopher Guest-penned satire, Farrell (who greets his director with, “I thought you’d be a man! But I’m glad you’re a woman!”) all but serenades his director in his living room ‘man-cave’, striving to convey a portrait of perfect patriarchal stability yet coming off as desperate and smug. Jaye will claim that non-MR dissenters are giving equal voice in her film. The likes of Feminist Majority Foundation executive director and MS. magazine editor Katherine Spillar and USC academic Dr Michael Messner get air time, but are portrayed as tsk-tsking, head-shaking elitists who simply perpetuate anti-MRA myths about it being a ‘man’s world’ and how the white male paradigm is more powerful than ever. More troubling is the footage chosen of anti-MR rallies, seemingly peopled solely by extremist gay and/or ‘feminazi’ activists bent on some form of pro-feminist anarchy. Or the extreme close-up afforded ‘male genital mutilation’, aka circumcision, used to convey how abhorrent MRA guys find it to have the fate of their body parts dictated by standards and traditions (a view probably shared by pro-choice supporters and those who have had their p***y grabbed by The President-Elect). An extended mid-section about the lack of balance in the U.S. family court system seems to be from another documentary entirely, legitimately raising issues of gender inequality. But any insightful analysis is muted by the purely outrageous, none more so than the ‘Disposable Male’ theory. It posits that because only men traditionally take on roles such as soldier, fireman, oil rig worker, coal miner, etc., the male of the species is now perceived as disposable. A litany of statistics are presented, indicating the greater mortal sacrifice men have made in the last 100 years of societal formation (the disrespect afforded slain U.S. female soldiers, their deaths reduced to a percentage to drive home how many more men died, is breathtaking). What Cassie Jaye and her all-white male chorus wilfully ignore is that the patriarchal stronghold on modern western life was not dictated by women or gays or lefty academics or any one else at whom Elam or Farrell or Cassie Jaye wag a disingenuous finger. It was determined by those in power i.e. the straight, white men of means who were the very forefathers of the MRA executives, who deemed that men of lesser standing be the ones who fought and died, worked and died. Once, men were viewed as warriors, not whiners, sent to die for the society, however flawed, that their leaders were forming. The best of these bygone men fought and died for the rights of every man and woman in a unified society. Cassie Jaye’s men, and by association the filmmaker herself, are not serving a greater good or inspiring discourse, but instead fuelling a social divide and dishonouring their respective genders. |
Want a kiss with that skillet of sizzling fajitas? TGI Fridays' UK division today announced plans to release the drones — mistletoe-carrying drones, that is. The company plans to fly robotic drones carrying small bundles of mistletoe — that symbol of Christmastime romance — around the dining rooms of select restaurants. The drones will suggestively hover over tables and between couples. They are part of a marketing campaign the company is calling #Togethermas. Citing a statistic that says nearly half of all Britons have never kissed under mistletoe, TGI Fridays is bravely attempting to encourage the tradition and get more people to participate in PDA. The Daily Mail spoke with marketing manager Rachel Waller who noted: "Everyone loves a good Christmas party, but we all know things can be a bit awkward until someone breaks the ice." So, unlimited appetizers aren't enough? What about those small plates, which are perfect for sharing? More importantly: What happens when you're sitting at the table next to your boss and the drone hovers overhead? TGI Fridays cites another statistic to convince any doubters: "63 per cent of those working in hospitality said they would kiss a colleague, with the property industry coming a close second at 62 percent and those in the media not far behind at 56 per cent." So that other 40-odd percent might just want to avoid the chain for the next couple of months — or at least until the drones fly away. |
Why Picking Your Berries For $8,000 A Year Hurts A Lot Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of Seth Holmes Courtesy of Seth Holmes As the supply chain that delivers our food to us gets longer and more complicated, many consumers want to understand — and control — where their food comes from. But even if we meet farmers at the farmers market, urban consumers are still largely divorced from the people who grow, pick and package our food. And we may even willfully ignore their suffering, argues Seth Holmes, a medical anthropologist and professor of health and social behavior at the University of California, Berkeley, in his provocative new book, Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies. For two summers between 2003 and 2005, Holmes lived on a farm in the Skagit Valley of Washington state. The farm produces strawberries, apples, raspberries and blueberries to sell to berry companies like Driscoll and dairy companies like Häagen-Dazs. He traveled there with a group of Triqui Indians, across the border from their hometown of San Miguel in Oaxaca, Mexico. As Holmes soon learned, the Triquis make up the very bottom rung of the agricultural labor ladder and earn between $5,000 to $8,000 a year. Holmes stayed in the camp with the other laborers, in a shack with a tin roof and no insulation. Over the winter, he traveled with the Triquis to Madera, Calif., to prune grapevines in a vineyard. In 2005, Holmes went back to medical school, but he has continued to visit the same workers nearly every year since. On the berry farm, Holmes picked fruit once or twice a week; the Triqui workers picked seven days a week, rain or shine, without a day off. And that took a heavy toll on their bodies: back and knee pain, slipped disks, Type 2 diabetes, premature births. As one Triqui worker he calls Abelino told him, "You pick with your hands bent over kneeling, your back hurts; you get knee pains and [hip] pains ... You suffer a lot." We talked to Holmes about his time with the Triquis; here's part of our conversation, edited for brevity and clarity. What was the most surprising or shocking aspect of the food system that you uncovered in your research? "Before I did the research, I had a sense of the hierarchy of people involved in the food labor chain. But over the course of the first five months, it became clear that the hierarchy is much more detailed and subtle. There are indigenous Mexicans [like the Triqui] who occupy the rung with the most demanding physical labor — they're the ones who are bent over picking. The mestizos operate the machines — that's not quite as demanding. Then the U.S.-born Latinos are in charge of some things, and use English and Spanish. The white Americans have the most control. "What was troubling was that people on every rung of hierarchy are legitimizing and justifying it. Farmworkers are doing that, too." Do you think that hierarchy is representative of farms in other states in the U.S.? "I think it is. The indigenous people from Mexico and Central America have the least powerful position. The system is different in California, because farms tend to hire a contractor to get big fields picked or pruned. The contractor goes out and finds laborers, and in my field research, I found that system to be worse in the sense that farmworkers are not paid directly by the farm. There's no paper trail. When we were in California, every time we pruned, we were paid less than minimum wage. With that system, labor laws are less likely to be enforced. But in Washington state, the farmworkers were hired directly by farmers, who were more likely to pay minimum wage." Do you think that the American public cares about the labor required to produce our food? "We talk so little about the people who do the work that gives us the fresh fruit and vegetables that we want. Farmworkers are pretty hidden, and there's a concept from Jean-Paul Sartre, the French philosopher, called bad faith, meaning self-deception. My simplified version of that is that we consciously hide from ourselves the difficult realities of the workers. We somewhat know them, but we don't think about them much. In that way it seems like 'communal bad faith.' " Why do you think the people in the food movement calling for changes in the industrial food system don't talk much about the labor issues? "On some level, a lot of the food movement is concerned with: How does this food affect me and my body? Are there hormones in it? Antibiotics? Pesticides? But the workers who are harvesting the food and spraying the pesticides — their bodies are human, too. Ideally, we would think about them and what's going into that work. If there are ways that we, as consumers, can lend a voice towards farmworkers having health care that will protect the bodies that are working so hard to give us the healthy food we can eat, I think that's really important." So you think the health care available to farmworkers is deficient? "In Washington state and California, the people I met were pretty lucky to have independently run, grant-funded, nonprofit clinics to go to. But it's unclear what will happen with the Affordable Care Act. The law is wonderful in lots of ways, and will increase access for a lot of people, but there are no provisions for immigrants. Meanwhile, immigration reform is stalled, and it looks like part of the reason is that several representatives won't vote for reform unless newly legalized immigrants will not be eligible for full health care. But the people who are getting sick to help us get a healthy diet deserve health care." It's clear from the book that you don't really blame the farm owners for the poor living and working conditions of berry pickers. As you write, "The corporatization of U.S. agriculture and the growth of international free markets squeeze growers such that they cannot easily imagine increasing the pay of the pickers or improving the labor camps without bankrupting the farm ... many of the most powerful inputs into the suffering of farmworkers are structural, not willed by individuals." "Sometimes it is fair for us to blame farm owners. But sometimes it isn't. We also have to look at the North American Free Trade Agreement, and other free trade agreements. In general, the problems in agriculture are long-standing." What do you think is the most important thing for consumers to know about the people behind their food? "Farmworkers help us be healthy by harvesting fruits and vegetables, and they're helping the health of our economy by paying sales taxes and Social Security. But we are not prone to value their health or bodies or well-being. That seems disrespectful and unfair." |
Those with a sharp eye who visited the Geneva motor show or who own a Model S in Europe may have already noticed a connection between Telefonica and Tesla by way of the “car connected by Telefonica” signs on the sides of cars, or through the in-car navigation system that played Spanish ads. Now the two are making it official: Telefonica says that it will be providing the wireless connectivity for Tesla cars across the UK, Germany, Netherlands and Spain, covering telematics and infotainment services. This is not the first carrier deal for Tesla in Europe; in November 2013 it announced a deal with Telia Sonera for the carrier to power in-car systems in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Estonia and Latvia. But Telefonica tells me it is likely the biggest in terms of geographical footprint and customers: Tesla paid Telefonica “millions” to seal the deal, a spokesperson tells me. It follows another, similar carrier deal Tesla inked with AT&T in January of this year. In terms of how it will work for users, it is not unlike Amazon’s Kindle service: users get a wireless connection as part of their purchase of the item (in this case a car), without having to sign a separate contract for that connection. The service is powered by Jasper and will provide the Internet connectivity for various in-car “infotainment” and telematics, including navigation, streamed music, Internet browsing and remote vehicle diagnostics. For Telefonica, a deal with an aspirational brand that epitomizes forward-thinking innovation is a big win at a time when it continues to try to position itself not as a stuffy old carrier, but a forward-thinking technology company in its own right. It comes at a challenging time, about a month after Telefonica scrapped a standalone division called Telefonica Digital, reintegrating those services back into the main company. “As we accelerate our transformation into a digital telco we see lots of opportunities to empower consumers,” Jose Luis Gamo, CEO at Telefonica Multinational Solutions, said in a statement. “Connected cars that provide drivers with more information and a better and safer driving experience is a perfect example of this. Tesla is one of the world’s most forward thinking and exciting businesses. We share their passion for innovation and are thrilled to be working with them to deliver a superb connected in-car experience to Tesla drivers across Europe.” Connected cars are still a relatively small part of the bigger automotive picture — and Tesla even more niche — but their numbers are only growing at the moment. Telefonica estimates that connected cars account for 10 percent of all cars on the market, but that number will grow to 90 percent by 2020. |
A few months back I published a blog post where I asked 41 influential designers to list their top 3 current favorite typefaces. Most of the designers seemed eager to name their favorites. However, after I published the article I heard comments along the lines of “if you have a favorite font you are doing it wrong”—meaning that without context it’s pointless to have a favorite font. This got me thinking about what it means to have something be your “favorite” and whether or not context is always required for a designer to have a personal preference for something. Are Fonts Nothing More Than Tools to Complete a Job? After I published the favorite typefaces article I came across the following comment on Twitter: Akin to asking carpenters what their favorite tool is. Never mind what they’re building. Twitter Guy in response to designers listing their favorite fonts I definitely understand the point that person was trying to make however I disagree with the general sentiment. I think a typeface is more than a tool to complete a specific task or solve a particular problem. I think it’s certainly possible to have a favorite typeface outside of any specific context. A designer might like the way the lowercase g is drawn in a typeface or love the italic ampersand in Baskerville. Designers regularly describe certain typefaces as “beautiful” which is a completely subjective term. The italic ampersand from Baskerville and the g from Newzald. These types of things touch on the more intangible aspects of design. The things that “feel right” even if there isn’t always a proper explanation of why. There is a place for logical and data-driven design decisions but I think a designer’s intuition is still important. Type designer Erik Spiekermann has even said he admires type like other people might admire girls’ bottoms. Okay that might be taking it a little too far but maybe that is why Spiekermann is considered one of the most important type designers in history. I’m obviously a typomaniac, which is an incurable if not mortal disease. I can’t explain it. I just love, I just like looking at type. I just get a total kick out of it: they are my friends. Other people look at bottles of wine or whatever, or, you know, girls’ bottoms. I get kicks out of looking at type. It’s a little worrying, I admit, but it’s a very nerdish thing to do. Erik Spiekermann in the movie Helvetica Erik Spiekermann really likes type. So I think a typeface can stand on its own as a work of design—it doesn’t need to be actively solving a particular design problem for a designer to appreciate it. Also to go back to the carpenter analogy, I would imagine that many carpenters could name a favorite tool regardless of what they are building. There might be a certain hammer they like that is perfectly balanced and made from the highest quality materials. And goddamn they just love that hammer. And it might be for reasons only a carpenter would understand. I think the same thing can be applied to a designer having a fondness for a particular typeface. Is Akzidenz Grotesk the Only Typeface You Need? Early in my design career there was an older designer I worked with who used Akzidenz Grotesk almost exclusively. Whether it was a real estate client or a tech startup it didn’t matter. Other designers would spend hours on typeface selection but he always just went straight to his beloved Akzidenz Grotesk. Fortunately he was a master at making the same typeface work in almost any context. Just by setting the type differently and applying color he could completely transform the look and feel of a design. Our clients always loved his work. I don’t think our project managers ever realized it was all just Akzidenz Grotesk every time. I’m not saying that every designer should just stick with one typeface forever but I think there is something to be learned from one-typeface-is-all-you-need designers like him. It’s possible for a single typeface to work in almost any context. The perfect font combination—Akzidenz Grotesk combined with more Akzidenz Grotesk. Does the World Really Need Another Grotesque Sans-Serif? Every year some type foundry releases another sans-serif influenced by 19th century/early 20th century grotesques. Some designs clean up the “quirks” found in earlier typefaces to add “balance and consistency” while others purposefully add quirks to give the typeface “warmth and character” and prevent it from feeling too “sterile.” Atlas Grotesk, Graphik, Vaud, Post Grotesk and Founders Grotesk are newish sans-serifs that probably look the same to 99% of the population (and even to some designers—I once worked with an art director who thought Arial and DIN looked identical). Even if most non-designers wouldn’t explicitly notice the difference between these typefaces, I’d be willing to bet that on some level a design using these different typefaces would “feel” different to them, even if it is more on a subconscious level. Atlas Grotesk. Graphik. Vaud. Post Grotesk. Founders Grotesk. Does the world need more grotesques? Yes, please. So Why Are There New Typefaces Being Released Every Year? Are there constant “improvements” being made? Is each new typeface released even more legible and finely balanced? Will there someday be a “perfect” typeface? I think the reason we keep seeing new typeface designs every year is simply because each new design has a different aesthetic feel to it. Type designers look back into type history and combine ideas in new and interesting ways. New typefaces allow designers to create more distinctive work, even if on a very subtle level. Granted, there have been new typeface releases that are created for specific uses, like reading on small, low-res screens (although this is less important with the rising popularity of high-density displays) . However, most new releases we see are not created specifically for solving new design problems that pop up every year. They are purely aesthetic in nature. Designers Shouldn’t Be Afraid to Have a Favorite Font A typeface is more than a tool to complete a task—it’s a highly subjective form of communication and can even be considered an object of beauty. I think it’s totally okay for designers to have a favorite font. If a typeface feels right to you and you connect with it on some level, then there is no shame in saying it is your favorite and there is no need to make up a pretentious explanation of why it is your favorite. “I just like it” is fine. My favorite typeface is Newzald and my favorite color is blue. |
I’m excited to share a big network milestone with you today. Our VoLTE network (Voice over LTE) covers more than 295 million Americans. That includes more than 27 million active subscribers – more than any other U.S. carrier. We’ve set up the network so customers in covered areas who have capable devices get instant access to VoLTE as soon as the coverage is live. You’ve been talking and surfing the web simultaneously on AT&T for years. But now VoLTE lets that happen at 4G LTE data speeds. VoLTE also lets us offer HD Voice. HD Voice produces more natural sounding audio by extending the frequency range of the audio signals, resulting in remarkably clearer calls. We’re rolling out VoLTE market-by-market and testing each market before launching. This gives customers the best possible experience. To see if HD Voice is available in your area, check out http://www.att.com/coverageviewer. You might remember John Donovan mentioning we were working to let our customers enjoy clear HD Voice audio quality and video calling features when placing VoLTE calls to customers of other carriers, and vice versa. Well, I’m pleased to report this month we saw the first VoLTE exchange between our customers and another carrier in limited, select areas. We’re working with others on this same feature, too. Staying connected is everything. Here’s more we did this year to help you stay in touch with the people that matter most: Wi-Fi Calling complements our already great network coverage and is an option for making calls in areas where a cellular signal is tough to get. It’s available on compatible devices with iOS 9 installed. We plan to offer it on other operating systems in the future. complements our already great network coverage and is an option for making calls in areas where a cellular signal is tough to get. It’s available on compatible devices with iOS 9 installed. We plan to offer it on other operating systems in the future. NumberSync uses the power of our network to link your compatible devices to your primary mobile number. This means you can send and receive texts, as well as make and receive calls, from a secondary device using the same number that your contacts already recognize. This will work when your smartphone isn’t with you, nearby or even powered on. We launched NumberSync first on the Samsung Gear S2 and plan to bring the feature to other devices in the future. uses the power of our network to link your compatible devices to your primary mobile number. This means you can send and receive texts, as well as make and receive calls, from a secondary device using the same number that your contacts already recognize. This will work when your smartphone isn’t with you, nearby or even powered on. We launched NumberSync first on the Samsung Gear S2 and plan to bring the feature to other devices in the future. Video Call is now available in VoLTE coverage areas if you have a Samsung Galaxy S 6 Active. There’s no need for a separate app. You can also switch between a HD Voice call and Video Call without hanging up. is now available in VoLTE coverage areas if you have a Samsung Galaxy S 6 Active. There’s no need for a separate app. You can also switch between a HD Voice call and Video Call without hanging up. Advanced Messaging, like video calling and VoLTE, is part of AT&T’s Rich Communication Services (RCS) platform. Advanced Messaging has some cool features, making your texting even better. If you and the person you are texting both have a Samsung Galaxy S 5 mini or Samsung Galaxy S6 Active, it shows you when your message is delivered, when it’s read and when the other person is typing their reply. You can also send larger files up to 10 MB. It’s been a busy year for us and our network. But we’re excited to bring you new ways to interact with friends, families and colleagues. There are more innovations coming in the future. I’m looking forward to sharing the news with you later on. In the meantime, you can visit http://www.att.com/hdvoice to learn more. |
The rivalry between Dominick Cruz and Cody Garbrandt has hit a fever pitch. Garbrandt stormed off from a television interview with him and Cruz on Wednesday, threatening to come to the room where Cruz was sitting. The exchange aired on The Fight Network in Canada. When talk between the two turned to Garbrandt's girlfriend and Cruz commenting on her Instagram, it got heated. "She shouldn't be hollering at me on social media," Cruz said. "Keep her to yourself. As far as I'm concerned, I did you and her a favor. She obviously wears the pants in the relationship or else she wouldn't be having to defend you." Garbrandt then said he'd go to Cruz at that very moment. "I'll come across there right now," Garbrandt said. "You're a room away." Cruz egged him on, saying, "C'mon, turd. Let's go." At that point, Garbrandt got up from his chair and asked manager Ali Abdel-Aziz to help him take off his microphone. Garbrandt left the room with UFC public-relations officials, apparently in search of Cruz. Cruz stayed on camera the whole time, saying he could hear Garbrandt throwing things outside. "He has to do this, because this is what an alpha, a savage does," Cruz said mockingly. |
Michael Emenalo has been technical director at Chelsea since 2011 Chelsea technical director Michael Emenalo has defended the club's controversial loan policy. More than 30 players have departed Stamford Bridge on a temporary basis, including Victor Moses, Juan Cuadrado and Mohamed Salah. The club has faced accusations of stockpiling talent. Emenalo said: "We have the difficult job of trying to balance being successful with making sure we have the right players at the right time." Speaking to the club's in-house TV station, the former Nigeria international added: "Sometimes we know there are players whose development is not finished, just like Victor [Moses], who we want to keep with our squad but who maybe needs to play more football to get to the level we think he can get to, because he is very, very talented." Salah scored nine goals for loan club Fiorentina last season and Emenalo believes such success is a vindication of Chelsea's policy. "These players go to top clubs and when they get there they prove we don't recruit bad players, just like Salah did last season," he said. Emenalo said that Cuadrado - a £23.3m signing from Fiorentina in February - had been allowed to join Juventus on loan in order "to go and rediscover his confidence". "Sometimes the timing is not right for them," he said. |
Doesn’t really fit the personalities does it? If it were me?Tyler = ApplejackEarnest and good-hearted. Solid ’Hero’ characters.Shelby = RarityLittle full of herself but still has big heart. Passion drives them. (Tailoring for Rarity and archaeology for Shelby)Chase = Rainbow DashEgocentric and competitive. Drives others through example.Riley and Koda are a bit harder. If we’re keeping to the Core Five = Mane Six rule, Riley would probably be Twilight.Studious, analytical and a lot of their skills are self-taught.Koda = PinkieSimple in desires. Probably the biggest heart of their respective groups. Sees them more as family than friends.Fluttershy would ve the odd mare out. The closest she would come to would be Albert. Love of nature, cowardly until given a chance to prove their courage. Plus I can’t help but feel Fluttershy would give up her Ranger powers just like Albert if given a chance.Now the Auxillary Rangers are more interesting.Ivan = Now, the obvious first choice is Luna. Old fashioned, honorable. Seriously out of touch with modernity. But the Luna-redemption arc kind of muddles the comparison seeing as how Ivan… Doesn’t have that. While Luna is a good choice, I would also say Shining Armor could be a potential parralel. The honorable knight archetype.Prince Phillip = Prince BluebloodA jerk royal who learns to be a better person because of an example set by better people. (If you count the comics as canon)Kendall = MoondancerCold, distant but opens up to their respective groups over time. Incredibly intelligent.James = Seeing as how Applejack would be Tyler… Applejack’s dad? Big Mac?…Granny Smith?Xenowing = … I haven’t gotten that far in the show yet so… I don’t know. |
Jesse Harding Pomeroy (; November 29, 1859 – September 29, 1932) was a convicted American murderer, possibly serial killer, and the youngest person in the history of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to be convicted of murder in the first degree. He was found guilty by a jury trial held in the Supreme Judicial Court of Suffolk County in December 1874. Contents Background Edit Jesse Harding Pomeroy was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, to Thomas J. Pomeroy and Ruth Ann Snowman. He was the second of two children; his brother Charles Jefferson Pomeroy was two years older. Thomas J. Pomeroy (1835-1898) was a veteran of the U.S. Civil War. Reported attacks in 1871–1872 Edit In 1871–1872, there were reports that several young boys were individually enticed to remote areas and attacked by a slightly older boy. However, no one was ever arrested. The attacks were noteworthy because of the extreme amount of brutality used by the assailant. The young boys were beaten with a fist and a belt and, in at least two of the attacks, a knife. Some of the boys were physically scarred permanently. In 1872, Ruth and the two children moved to South Boston. Pomeroy's attacks on young boys continued, and he was finally arrested and his case heard in front of a Juvenile Court judge. Pomeroy was found guilty and sentenced to the State Reform School for Boys at Westborough, Massachusetts, for his minority (i.e., until he turned 18). The Boston Globe covered this story; the last line of the article: "It is generally concluded that the boy is mentally deficient." The crime Edit Reward poster issued by the City of Boston for information about Katie Curran's abductor In February 1874 at the age of 14, Pomeroy was paroled back to his mother and brother in South Boston. His mother ran her own dressmaking shop, and his brother Charles sold newspapers. In March 1874, a ten-year-old girl from South Boston named Katie Curran went missing. On April 22, 1874, the mutilated body of four-year-old Horace Millen was found on the marsh of Dorchester Bay. Immediately, the police detectives sought out Pomeroy, despite lacking evidence implicating him in the crime. The body of Katie Curran was found later, in the basement of Pomeroy's mother's dress shop. Her remains were hastily and carelessly concealed in an ash heap. The trial Edit Pomeroy was taken to view Millen's body and asked if he committed the murder. At the coroner's inquest, Pomeroy was denied the right to counsel. The case of Commonwealth v. Pomeroy was heard in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (Suffolk County, Boston) on December 9 and December 10, 1874. At the trial, the Attorney General argued for a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree. In his closing arguments, he urged an alternative charge of murder with extreme atrocity, which, according to Massachusetts law, is first degree murder, but differs from the original charge in the requirement of premeditation. Pomeroy was pronounced guilty on December 10, 1874, with the jury's recommendation of mercy on account of the prisoner's youth. Pomeroy's attorney, Charles Robinson, filed two exceptions which were overruled in February 1875, at which point Pomeroy was sentenced to death by hanging. After the trial Edit In popular culture Edit Jesse Pomeroy appears in the novel The Alienist by Caleb Carr, and was subsequently featured in the TNT television adaptation, played by Stephen Louis Grush. by Caleb Carr, and was subsequently featured in the TNT television adaptation, played by Stephen Louis Grush. Fiend: The Shocking True Story of America's Youngest Serial Killer by Harold Schechter. by Harold Schechter. The Wilderness of Ruin: A Tale of Madness, Fire, and the Hunt for America's Youngest Serial Killer by Roseanne Montillo, HarperCollins, 2015. by Roseanne Montillo, HarperCollins, 2015. My Favorite Murder episode 116 - Robot Grandma is partially about Jesse Pomeroy. |
Our BatchGeo world MAP shows the locations of green architecture, green building and renewable energy projects featured on Solaripedia. A windcatcher is an architectural device used for many centuries to create natural ventilation in buildings. The function of this tower is to catch cooler breeze that prevail at a higher level above the ground and to direct it into the interior of the buildings. It is not known who first invented the windcatcher, although some claim it originated in Iran and it can be seen in. Windcatchers come in various designs, such as the uni-directional, bi-directional, and multi-directional. Examples of windcatchers can be found in traditional Persian influenced architecture throughout the Middle East , Pakistan and Afghanistan. Central Iran has a very large day-night temperature difference, ranging from cool to extremely hot, and the air tends to be very dry all day long. Most buildings are constructed of very thick ceramics with extremely high insulation values. Furthermore, towns centered on desert oases tend to be packed very closely together with high walls and ceilings relative to Western architecture, maximizing shade at ground level. The heat of direct sunlight is minimized with small windows that do not face the sun. The windcatcher functions on several principles: First, a windcatcher is capped and has several directional ports at the top (traditionally four). By closing all but the one facing away from the incoming wind, air is drawn upwards using the Coanda effect, similar to how opening one facing the wind would push air down the shaft. This generates significant cooling ventilation within the structure below, but is not enough to bring the temperature below ambient alone - it would simply draw hot air in through any cracks or windows in the structure below. Therefore, the key to generating frigid temperatures seems to be that there are very few cracks at the base of the thick structure below, but there is a significant air gap above the qanat (a water management system used to provide a reliable supply of water to human settlements or for irrigation in hot, arid and semi-arid climates). A qanat has quite a lot of water inside, because there are frequent well-like reservoirs along its path. Completely shaded from the sun, a qanat also aggregates the cold, sinking air of the night, which is then trapped within, unable to rise up to the less dense surface air. A windcatcher, however, can create a pressure gradient which sucks at least a small amount of air upwards through a house. This cool, dry night air, being pulled over a long passage of water, evaporates some of it and is cooled down further. Finally, in a windless environment or waterless house, a windcatcher functions as a Solar or thermal chimney that uses convection of air heated by passive solar energy. It creates a pressure gradient which allows less dense hot air to travel upwards and escape out the top. This is also compounded significantly by the day-night cycle mentioned above, trapping cool air below. The temperature in such an environment can't drop below the nightly low temperature. These last two functions have gained some ground in Western architecture, and there are several commercial products using the name windcatcher. When coupled with thick adobe - a natural building material made from earth, shaped into bricks using forms and dried in the sun - that exhibits high heat transmission resistance qualities, the windcatcher is able to chill lower-level spaces in mosques and houses in the middle of the day to cooler temperatures. So effective has been the windcatcher in Persian architecture that it has also been routinely used as a refrigerating device. Many traditional water reservoirs, or ab anbars, are built with windcatchers that are capable of storing water at near freezing temperatures for months in summer. High humidity environments destroy the evaporative cooling effect enjoyed in the dry conditions seen on the Iranian plateau; hence the ubiquitous use of these devices in drier areas such as Yazd, Kashan, Nain, and Bam. A small windcatcher (badgir) is called a "shish-khan" in traditional Persian architecture. Shish-khans can still be seen on top of ab anbars in Qazvin, and other northern cities in Iran. These seem to be more designed as a pure ventilating device, as opposed to temperature regulators, as their larger cousins in the central deserts of Iran are. Wind Catchers in the Persian Gulf Countries The emergence of a traditional Bahraini and Persian Gulf style of architecture arose as people migrated to Bahrain with the growth of the pearl trade. With newfound wealth, the merchants built houses of note in the 18th and 19th centuries. The people of Ahvaz in Iran, for example, came and brought with them new architectural designs, including the distinctive wind tower which can be seen so prominently in the Awadiya area and elsewhere in Bahrain. This distinguishing feature was adapted locally with its own distinctive decorative motifs. The wind tower, an early and very effective form of air conditioning, has in fact been around for about 500 years and was developed from the early Wind Scoops first built about 2,000 years ago in Iran. In Muharraq and also in parts of Manama there are many buildings, which are no more than two stories high and houses built with natural ventilation, using wind towers and badghirs, the devices for speeding up the flow of air and which consists of horizontal slats in the lower part of the walls. Badghir means ‘wind trap’ and is also the word used to describe the wind tower. Relevant book on Persian Gulf architecture: Traditional Architecture of the Arabian Gulf: Building on Desert Tides Documents Iranian Wind Catcher and Natural Ventilation White Paper (780 kb) Iranian Wind Towers Article (129 kb) Wind Towers Article (170 kb) Solar Chimney Fact Sheet (162 kb) |
During the preseason, the New England Patriots placed two players on the non-football injury list who are now eligible to return: defensive lineman Armond Armstead and wide receiver Mark Harrison. Harrison, an undrafted rookie out of Rutgers, has an intriguing mix of size and athleticism. He could be an option for the Patriots if they’re looking to bolster their depth at receiver. While there’s been no indication of the direction the Patriots will go with him, I don’t think the Patriots need another unproven player at the position. Remember, Harrison didn’t participate in training camp, so he’s likely going to be behind in his development. He’s an intriguing developmental prospect for 2014. Armstead, on the other hand, is a player that the Patriots could use as soon as possible. With Vince Wilfork out for the season and Tommy Kelly out for an unknown amount of time, the Patriots started two relatively unknown rookies at defensive tackle yesterday against the Saints: Chris Jones and Joe Vellano. While Jones and Vellano have shown flashes, both would probably be better suited to sub-package duties. Armstead is a player with intriguing length, athleticism and upside. While the Patriots probably didn’t envision him as a starter in his rookie season, he’d be an upgrade at this point considering the state of the roster. If Tommy Kelly, upon his return, could take on a gap-occupying role, Armstead could slide in nicely as the penetrating defensive tackle. Both Armstead and Harrison are eligible to begin practice this week. If/When they begin practice, the Patriots will have a three week window to sign them to the active roster, similar to the PUP list. |
American writer Harlan Jay Ellison (May 27, 1934 – June 28, 2018)[4] was an American writer, known for his prolific and influential work in New Wave speculative fiction,[5] and for his outspoken, combative personality.[6] Robert Bloch, the author of Psycho, described Ellison as "the only living organism I know whose natural habitat is hot water".[7] His published works include more than 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, comic book scripts, teleplays, essays, and a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media. Some of his best-known work includes the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever", his A Boy and His Dog cycle, and his short stories "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" and " 'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman". He was also editor and anthologist for Dangerous Visions (1967) and Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). Ellison won numerous awards, including multiple Hugos, Nebulas, and Edgars. Biography [ edit ] Early life and career [ edit ] Amazing Stories, has never been included in an authorized collection or anthology. Ellison's 1957 novella "The Savage Swarm", cover-featured in, has never been included in an authorized collection or anthology. Amazing. It also remains uncollected. A few months later, another Ellison novella, "The Steel Napoleon", also took the cover of. It also remains uncollected. Fantastic Science Fiction. Another uncollected Ellison novella, "Satan Is My Ally", was the cover story on the May 1957 issue of Fantastic under the Ellison wrote "The Wife Factory" forunder the house name "Clyde Mitchell". The novella has never been republished. Fantastic, also remains uncollected. Ellison's "Suicide World", the cover story for the October 1958, also remains uncollected. Fantastic, appears in Ellison collections as " Ellison's "The Abnormals", the cover story for the April 1959, appears in Ellison collections as " The Discarded ". Ellison was born to a Jewish family[8] in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 27, 1934, the son of Serita (née Rosenthal) and Louis Laverne Ellison, a dentist and jeweler.[9] His family subsequently moved to Painesville, Ohio, but returned to Cleveland in 1949, following his father's death. Ellison frequently ran away from home, taking an array of odd jobs—including, by age 18, "tuna fisherman off the coast of Galveston, itinerant crop-picker down in New Orleans, hired gun for a wealthy neurotic, nitroglycerine truck driver in North Carolina, short-order cook, cab driver, lithographer, book salesman, floorwalker in a department store, door-to-door brush salesman, and as a youngster, an actor in several productions at the Cleveland Play House".[10] In 1947, a fan letter he wrote to Real Fact Comics became his first published writing.[11] Ellison attended Ohio State University for 18 months (1951–53) before being expelled. He said the expulsion was for hitting a professor who had denigrated his writing ability, and over the next twenty or so years he sent that professor a copy of every story he published.[12] Ellison published two serialized stories in the Cleveland News during 1949,[2] and he sold a story to EC Comics early in the 1950s. During this period, Ellison was an active and visible member of science fiction fandom, and published his own science fiction fanzines, such as Dimensions (which had previously been the Bulletin of the Cleveland Science Fantasy Society for the Cleveland Science Fantasy Society, and later Science Fantasy Bulletin.[13]) Ellison moved to New York City in 1955 to pursue a writing career, primarily in science fiction. Over the next two years, he published more than 100 short stories and articles. The short stories collected as Sex Gang—which Ellison described in a 2012 interview as "mainstream erotica"[14]—date from this period.[15] He served in the U.S. Army from 1957 to 1959.[16] His first novel, Web of the City, was published during his military service in 1958, and he said he had written the bulk of it while undergoing basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia.[17] After leaving the army, he relocated to Chicago, where he edited Rogue magazine.[4] Hollywood and beyond [ edit ] Ellison speaking at an SF convention, 2006 Ellison moved to California in 1962, and subsequently began to sell his writing to Hollywood. He co-wrote the screenplay for The Oscar (1966), starring Stephen Boyd and Elke Sommer. Ellison also sold scripts to many television shows: The Loretta Young Show (using the name Harlan Ellis),The Flying Nun, Burke's Law, Route 66, The Outer Limits,[18] Star Trek, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Cimarron Strip, and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Ellison's screenplay for the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" has been considered the best of the 79 episodes in the series.[19] In 1965, he participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches led by Martin Luther King, Jr.[20] In 1966, in an article that Esquire magazine would later name as the best magazine piece ever written, the journalist Gay Talese wrote about the goings-on around Frank Sinatra. The article, entitled "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold", briefly describes a clash between the young Harlan Ellison and Frank Sinatra, when the crooner took exception to Ellison's boots during a billiards game.[21] Ellison was hired as a writer for Walt Disney Studios but was fired on his first day after Roy O. Disney overheard him in the studio commissary joking about making a pornographic animated film featuring Disney characters.[22] Ellison continued to publish short fiction and nonfiction pieces in various publications, including some of his best known stories. "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" (1965) is a celebration of civil disobedience against repressive authority. "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (1967) is an allegory of Hell, where five humans are tormented by an all-knowing computer throughout eternity.[23] The story was the basis of a 1995 computer game; Ellison participated in the game's design and provided the voice of the god-computer AM.[24] Another story, "A Boy and His Dog", examines the nature of friendship and love in a violent, post-apocalyptic world and was made into the 1975 film of the same name, starring Don Johnson.[25] Ellison served as creative consultant to the 1980s version of The Twilight Zone science fiction TV series and Babylon 5. As a member of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), he had voiceover credits for shows including The Pirates of Dark Water, Mother Goose and Grimm, Space Cases, Phantom 2040, and Babylon 5, as well as making an onscreen appearance in the Babylon 5 episode "The Face of the Enemy".[26] Ellison's short story "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore" (1992) was selected for inclusion in the 1993 edition of The Best American Short Stories.[27] In 2014 Ellison made a guest appearance on the album Finding Love in Hell by the stoner metal band Leaving Babylon, reading his piece "The Silence" (originally published in Mind Fields) as an introduction to the song "Dead to Me."[28] Ellison's official website, harlanellison.com, was launched in 1995 as a fan page;[29] for several years, Ellison was a regular poster in its discussion forum.[30] Personal life and death [ edit ] Ellison married five times; each relationship ended within a few years, except the last. His first wife was Charlotte Stein, whom he married in 1956. They divorced in 1960, and he later described the marriage as "four years of hell as sustained as the whine of a generator."[31] Later that year he married Billie Joyce Sanders; they divorced in 1963. His 1966 marriage to Loretta Patrick lasted only seven weeks.[32] In 1976, he married Lori Horowitz. He was 41 and she was 19, and he later said of the marriage, "I was desperately in love with her, but it was a stupid marriage on my part." They were divorced after eight months.[33] He and Susan Toth married in 1986, and they remained together, living in Los Angeles, until his death 32 years later. Ellison described himself as a Jewish atheist.[34][35] In 1994, he suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized for quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery.[36] From 2010, he received treatment for clinical depression.[37] In September 2007, Ellison made his last public appearance in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, for the Midwestern debut of the documentary Dreams with Sharp Teeth at Cleveland Public Library.[38][39] On about October 10, 2014, Ellison suffered a stroke.[40] Although his speech and cognition were unimpaired, he suffered paralysis on his right side, for which he was expected to spend several weeks in physical therapy before being released from the hospital.[41] Harlan Ellison died at his home in Los Angeles in the morning of June 28, 2018.[42][43] Pseudonyms [ edit ] Ellison on occasion used the pseudonym Cordwainer Bird to alert members of the public to situations in which he felt his creative contribution to a project had been mangled beyond repair by others, typically Hollywood producers or studios (see also Alan Smithee). The first such work to which he signed the name was "The Price of Doom", an episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (though it was misspelled as Cord Wainer Bird in the credits). An episode of Burke's Law ("Who Killed Alex Debbs?") credited to Ellison contains a character given this name, played by Sammy Davis Jr.[44] The "Cordwainer Bird" moniker is a tribute to fellow SF writer Paul M. A. Linebarger, better known by his pen name, Cordwainer Smith. The origin of the word "cordwainer" is shoemaker (from working with cordovan leather for shoes). The term used by Linebarger was meant to imply the industriousness of the pulp author. Ellison said, in interviews and in his writing, that his version of the pseudonym was meant to mean "a shoemaker for birds". Since he used the pseudonym mainly for works he wanted to distance himself from, it may be understood to mean that "this work is for the birds" or that it is of as much use as shoes to a bird. Stephen King once said he thought that it meant that Ellison was giving people who mangled his work a literary version of "the bird" (given credence by Ellison himself in his own essay titled "Somehow, I Don't Think We're in Kansas, Toto", describing his experience with the Starlost television series).[45] The Bird moniker became a character in one of Ellison's own stories. In his book Strange Wine, Ellison explains the origins of the Bird and goes on to state that Philip Jose Farmer wrote Cordwainer into the Wold Newton family the latter writer had developed. The thought of such a whimsical object lesson being related to such lights as Doc Savage, The Shadow, Tarzan, and all the other pulp heroes prompted Ellison to play with the concept, resulting in "The New York Review of Bird", in which an annoyed Bird uncovers the darker secrets of the New York literary establishment before beginning a pulpish slaughter of the same.[46] Other pseudonyms Ellison used during his career include Jay Charby, Sley Harson, Ellis Hart, John Magnus, Paul Merchant, Pat Roeder, Ivar Jorgenson, Derry Tiger, Harlan Ellis and Jay Solo.[47] Controversies and disputes [ edit ] Temperament [ edit ] Ellison had a reputation for being abrasive and argumentative.[a] Ellison generally agreed with this assessment, and a dust jacket from one of his books[which?] described him as "possibly the most contentious person on Earth." Ellison filed numerous grievances and attempted lawsuits; as part of a dispute about fulfillment of a contract, he once sent 213 bricks to a publisher postage due, followed by a dead gopher via fourth-class mail.[49] In an October 2017 piece in Wired, Ellison was dubbed "Sci-Fi's Most Controversial Figure."[50] At Stephen King's request, Ellison provided a description of himself and his writing in Danse Macabre: "My work is foursquare for chaos. I spend my life personally, and my work professionally, keeping the soup boiling. Gadfly is what they call you when you are no longer dangerous; I much prefer troublemaker, malcontent, desperado. I see myself as a combination of Zorro and Jiminy Cricket. My stories go out from here and raise hell. From time to time some denigrater or critic with umbrage will say of my work, 'He only wrote that to shock.' I smile and nod. Precisely."[51] Star Trek [ edit ] Ellison repeatedly criticized how Star Trek creator and producer Gene Roddenberry (and others) rewrote his original script for the 1967 episode "The City on the Edge of Forever". Despite his objections, Ellison kept his own name on the shooting script instead of using "Cordwainer Bird" to indicate displeasure (see above). Ellison's original script was first published in the 1976 anthology Six Science Fiction Plays, edited by Roger Elwood.[53] The aired version was adapted for the Star Trek Fotonovel series in 1977.[54][55] In 1995, Borderlands Press published The City on the Edge of Forever,[56] with nearly 300 pages, comprising an essay by Ellison, four versions of the teleplay, and eight "Afterwords" contributed by other parties. He greatly expanded the introduction for the paperback edition,[57][58][59] in which he explained what he called a "fatally inept" treatment.[60] Both versions of the script won awards: Ellison's original script won the 1968 Writers Guild Award for best episodic drama in television,[61] while the shooting script won the 1968 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.[62] On March 13, 2009, Ellison sued CBS Paramount Television, seeking payment of 25% of net receipts from merchandising, publishing, and other income from the episode since 1967; the suit also names the Writers Guild of America for allegedly failing to act on Ellison's behalf.[63] On October 23, 2009, Variety magazine reported that a settlement had been reached.[64] Vietnam War opposition and Aggiecon I [ edit ] Ellison was among those who in 1968 signed an anti-Vietnam War advertisement in Galaxy Science Fiction.[65] In 1969, Ellison was Guest of Honor at Texas A&M University's first science fiction convention, Aggiecon, where he reportedly[66] referred to the university's Corps of Cadets as "America's next generation of Nazis", inspired in part by the continuing Vietnam War. Although the university was no longer solely a military school (from 1965), the student body was predominantly made up of cadet members. Between Ellison's anti-military remarks and a food fight that broke out in the ballroom of the hotel where the gathering was held (although according to Ellison in 2000, the food fight actually started in a Denny's because the staff disappeared and they could not get their check), the school's administration almost refused to approve the science fiction convention the next year, and no guest of honor was invited for the next two Aggiecons. However, Ellison was subsequently invited back as Guest of Honor for Aggiecon V (1974)[67] and Aggiecon XXXI (2000).[68] The Last Dangerous Visions [ edit ] The Last Dangerous Visions (TLDV), the third volume of Ellison's anthology series, was originally announced for publication in 1973 but remains unpublished.[69] Nearly 150 writers (many now dead) submitted works for the volume. In 1993, Ellison threatened to sue New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA) for publishing "Himself in Anachron", a short story written by Cordwainer Smith and sold to Ellison for the book by his widow,[70] but later reached an amicable settlement.[71] British science fiction author Christopher Priest criticized Ellison's editorial practices in an article entitled "The Book on the Edge of Forever",[69] later expanded into a book. Priest documented a half-dozen unfulfilled promises by Ellison to publish TLDV within a year of the statement. Priest claims he submitted a story at Ellison's request, which Ellison retained for several months until Priest withdrew the story and demanded that Ellison return the manuscript. Ellison was incensed by "Book on the Edge of Forever" and, personally or by proxy, threatened Priest on numerous occasions since its publication.[72] I, Robot [ edit ] Shortly after the release of Star Wars (1977), Ben Roberts contacted Ellison to develop a script based on Isaac Asimov's I, Robot short story collection for Warner Brothers. In a meeting with the Head of Production at Warners, Robert Shapiro, Ellison concluded that Shapiro was commenting on the script without having read it and accused him of having the "intellectual and cranial capacity of an artichoke". Shortly afterwards, Ellison was dropped from the project. Without Ellison, the film came to a dead end, because subsequent scripts were unsatisfactory to potential directors. After a change in studio heads, Warner allowed Ellison's script to be serialized in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and published in book form.[73] The 2004 film I, Robot, starring Will Smith, has no connection to Ellison's script.[74] Allegations of assault on Charles Platt [ edit ] In 1985 Ellison allegedly publicly assaulted author and critic Charles Platt at the Nebula Awards banquet.[75] Platt did not pursue legal action against Ellison, and the two men later signed a "non-aggression pact", promising never to discuss the incident again nor to have any contact with one another. Platt claims that Ellison often publicly boasted about the incident.[76] 2006 Hugo Awards ceremony [ edit ] Ellison was presented with a special committee award at the 2006 Hugo Awards ceremony. When Ellison got to the podium, presenter Connie Willis asked him "Are you going to be good?" When she asked the question a second time, Ellison put the microphone in his mouth, to the crowd's laughter. He then momentarily put his hand on her left breast.[77][78][79] Ellison subsequently complained that Willis refused to acknowledge his apology.[77] Lawsuit against Fantagraphics [ edit ] On September 20, 2006, Ellison sued comic book and magazine publisher Fantagraphics, stating they had defamed him in their book Comics As Art (We Told You So).[80] The book recounts the history of Fantagraphics and discussed a lawsuit that resulted from a 1980 Ellison interview with Fantagraphics' industry news magazine, The Comics Journal. In this interview Ellison referred to comic book writer Michael Fleisher, calling him "bugfuck" and "derange-o". Fleisher lost his libel suit against Ellison and Fantagraphics on December 9, 1986.[81] Ellison, after reading unpublished drafts of the book on Fantagraphics's website, believed that he had been defamed by several anecdotes related to this incident. He sued in the Superior court for the State of California, in Santa Monica. Fantagraphics attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed. In their motion to dismiss, Fantagraphics argued that the statements were both their personal opinions and generally believed to be true anecdotes. On February 12, 2007, the presiding judge ruled against Fantagraphics' anti-SLAPP motion for dismissal.[82] On June 29, 2007, Ellison claimed that the litigation had been resolved[83] pending Fantagraphics' removal of all references to the case from their website.[84] No money or apologies changed hands in the settlement as posted on August 17, 2007.[85] Copyright suits [ edit ] In a 1980 lawsuit against ABC and Paramount Pictures, Ellison and Ben Bova claimed that the TV series Future Cop was based on their short story "Brillo", winning a $337,000 judgement.[86] Ellison alleged that James Cameron's film The Terminator drew from material from an episode of the original Outer Limits which Ellison had scripted, "Soldier" (1964). Hemdale, the production company and the distributor Orion Pictures, settled out of court for an undisclosed sum and added a credit to the film which acknowledged Ellison's work.[87] Cameron objected to this acknowledgement and has since labeled Ellison's claim a "nuisance suit".[18] Ellison publicly referred to The Terminator as "a good film."[88] Some accounts of the settlement state that another Outer Limits episode written by Ellison, "Demon with a Glass Hand" (also 1964), was also claimed to have been plagiarized by the film, but Ellison explicitly stated that "Terminator was not stolen from 'Demon with a Glass Hand,' it was a ripoff of my OTHER Outer Limits script, 'Soldier.'"[89] On April 24, 2000, Ellison sued Stephen Robertson for posting four stories to the newsgroup "alt.binaries.e-book" without authorization. The other defendants were AOL and RemarQ, internet service providers who owned servers hosting the newsgroup. Ellison alleged they had failed to halt copyright infringement in accordance with the "Notice and Takedown Procedure" outlined in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Robertson and RemarQ first settled with Ellison, and then AOL likewise settled with Ellison in June 2004, under conditions that were not made public. Since those settlements Ellison initiated legal action or takedown notices against more than 240 people who have allegedly distributed his writings on the Internet, saying, "If you put your hand in my pocket, you'll drag back six inches of bloody stump".[90] A lawsuit involving the film In Time (2011), which Ellison contended plagiarizes his short story "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" (first published in 1965), was withdrawn after Ellison viewed the film.[91] As part of the agreement to dismiss his lawsuit, Ellison agreed that each party would bear its own attorneys' fees.[92] Works [ edit ] Main article: Harlan Ellison bibliography. Awards [ edit ] Ellison won eight Hugo Awards,[93] a shared award for the screenplay of A Boy and his Dog that he counted as "half a Hugo",[94][95] and two special awards from annual World SF Conventions;[93] four Nebula Awards of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA);[93] five Bram Stoker Awards of the Horror Writers Association (HWA);[93] two Edgar Awards of the Mystery Writers of America;[96] two World Fantasy Awards from annual conventions;[96] and two Georges Méliès fantasy film awards.[96][97] In his 1981 book about the horror genre, Danse Macabre, Stephen King reviewed Ellison's collection Strange Wine and considered it one of the best horror books published between 1950 and 1980.[98] Ellison won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1993.[99] HWA gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996[100] and the World Horror Convention named him Grand Master in 2000.[99] He was awarded the Gallun Award for Lifetime Achievement in Science Fiction from I-CON in 1997.[101] SFWA named him its 23rd Grand Master of fantasy and science fiction in 2006[102] and the Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted him in 2011.[103] That year he also received the fourth J. Lloyd Eaton Lifetime Achievement Award in Science Fiction, presented by the UCR Libraries at the 2011 Eaton SF Conference, "Global Science Fiction".[104] As of 2013 , Ellison is the only three-time winner of the Nebula Award for Best Short Story. He won his other Nebula in the novella category.[99] He was awarded the Silver Pen for Journalism by International PEN, the international writers' union, in 1982.[105][96] In 1990, Ellison was honored by International PEN for continuing commitment to artistic freedom and the battle against censorship.[96] In 1998, he was awarded the "Defender of Liberty" award by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.[106] In March 1998, the National Women's Committee of Brandeis University honored him with their 1998 Words, Wit, Wisdom award.[107] Ellison was named 2002's winner of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal's "Distinguished Skeptic Award", in recognition of his contributions to science and critical thinking. Ellison was presented with the award at the Skeptics Convention in Burbank, California, on June 22, 2002.[108] In December 2009, Ellison was nominated for a Grammy award in the category Best Spoken Word Album For Children for his reading of Through the Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There for Blackstone Audio, Inc.[109] Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films (USA) Golden Scroll (Best Writing – Career 1976)[110] American Mystery Award Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine Reader's Poll I, Robot screenplay (Special award, 1988)[93] Audio Publishers Association The Titanic Disaster Hearings: The Official Transcript of the 1912 Senatorial Investigation (Best Multi-Voiced Presentation, 1999) [96] (Best Multi-Voiced Presentation, 1999) City of Darkness (Best Solo Narration, 1999)[96] Best American Short Stories "The Man who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore" (included in the 1993 anthology)[111] The Bradbury Award Bram Stoker Award British Fantasy Award British Science Fiction Award Deathrealm Award Chatting with Anubis (best short fiction, 1996)[96] Edgar Allan Poe Award Georges Melies Fantasy Film Award Hugo Award International Horror Guild Award 1994 Living Legend Award[96] Jupiter Award (Instructors of Science Fiction in Higher Education) Locus Poll Award Nebula Award[99] Prometheus Award Saturn Award Writers Guild of America Writers Guild of Canada World Fantasy Award J. Lloyd Eaton Lifetime Achievement Award in Science Fiction Parodies and pastiches of Ellison [ edit ] In the 1970s, artist and cartoonist Gordon Carleton wrote and drew a scripted slide show called "City on the Edge of Whatever", which was a spoof of "The City on the Edge of Forever". Occasionally performed at Star Trek conventions, it features an irate writer named "Arlan Hellison" who screamed at his producers, "Art defilers! Script assassins!"[119] Ben Bova's novel The Starcrossed (1975), a roman à clef about Bova and Ellison's experience on The Starlost TV series,[120] features a character "Ron Gabriel" who is a pastiche of Ellison. Bova's novel is dedicated to Ellison's pseudonym "Cordwainer Bird", who was credited as series creator on The Starlost per Ellison's demand. In the novel, "Ron Gabriel" requires the fictional series producers to credit him under the pseudonym "Victor Lawrence Talbot Frankenstein".[121] In Murder at the ABA (1976) by Isaac Asimov, the protagonist, Darius Just, was based on Ellison, as stated by Asimov in footnotes to the book itself, and in his autobiographical volume In Joy Still Felt. Robert Silverberg named a character in his first novel, Revolt on Alpha C, for Ellison, who was Silverberg's neighbor in New York City at the time he was writing the book. This was confirmed in a special edition on the occasion of Silverberg's 35th year in the business.[122] Sharyn McCrumb's mystery novel Bimbos of the Death Sun (1988) featured a cantankerous antagonist-turned-murder-victim based on Ellison. Fans of Ellison sent him copies of the book, and upon meeting Ellison later that year at the Edgar Awards, Ellison told McCrumb he had read the book and thought it was good.[123] Ellison is a recurring minor character in the television show Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated (2010-13), playing a fictionalized version of himself modeled on his appearance in the 1970s.[124] In the series he is a professor of literature and a colleague of H. P. Hatecraft, a parody of H. P. Lovecraft. In his initial appearance ("The Shrieking Madness", 2010) he is a target for the episode's monster, but in the series finale ("Come Undone", 2013) he reveals that his writings in speculative fiction give him a unique understanding of alternate timelines and place him in the role of an advisor to the protagonists.[125] Ellison appeared as himself in an episode of The Simpsons ("Married to the Blob", 2014).[126] in which he meets Bart and Milhouse, and parodies his contention that the film The Terminator used ideas from his stories.[18][87] References [ edit ] Informational notes ^ [48] In his Introduction to "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream", Theodore Sturgeon describes Ellison as: "...a man on the move, and he is moving fast. He is, on these pages and everywhere else he goes, colorful, intrusive, ABRASIVE ... and one hell of a writer." Citations |
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