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DENVER — In the last two weeks, more than 100 mostly tiny earthquakes a day, on average, have rattled a remote area of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, putting scientists who monitor the park’s strange and volatile geology on alert. Researchers say that for now, the earthquake cluster, or swarm — the second-largest ever recorded in the park — is more a cause for curiosity than alarm. The quake zone, about 10 miles northwest of the Old Faithful geyser, has shown little indication, they said, of building toward a larger event, like a volcanic eruption of the type that last ravaged the Yellowstone region tens of thousands of years ago. The area is far from any road or community, and the park is relatively empty in winter. Swarms of small quakes, including a significant swarm last year, are relatively common. But at a time when the disastrous earthquake in Haiti on Jan. 12 has refocused global attention on the earth’s immense store of tectonic energy, scientists say that the Yellowstone swarm, if only because of its volume, bears close observation: as of Sunday, there had been 1,608 quakes since Jan. 17. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “We’re not seeing a pattern that is really discernible yet,” said Henry Heasler, a coordinating scientist for the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, a joint venture of Yellowstone, the United States Geological Survey and the University of Utah. Dr. Heasler said plans were in place to intensify observations in case the swarm continued for a long time or got larger. “We’re ready to ramp up,” he said, including using flights to monitor the area. |
Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market,” As I Understand It I usually have to have poems explained to me, unless they are about, like, Drummer Hodge and how sad it is that his northern brains are somewhere because of (I assume) the Boer War, because in that case, I’m like, Ah, this poem is about Drummer Hodge’s northern brains. So the first time I read “Goblin Market” (for SCHOOL, obviously), my response went something along the lines of, “Nice poem. What industrious goblins. Fruit is an important source of vitamins and fiber.” My friend Jos who knows a lot about poetry said that usually people who read “Goblin Market” have to be talked out of thinking it’s just about sex into thinking it’s about something else. I forget what Jos said it’s actually about. (“Actually.” “About.” “Said.”) Death, maybe? Anyhow, I had to be talked into thinking it’s about sex first, because I kept delivering a blank stare when my professor started talking about Imagery and I was like, It’s just a list of fruit, my guy, don’t read too much into it. Anyhow, here’s “Goblin Market.” Goblin Market I don’t know how it is that goblins first got into fruitmongery. You wouldn’t expect it of them, necessarily, on account of the, I guess, troglodytism? Most people think of them as being miners, like dwarves, if they think of them at all. Which is not to say you should think more about goblins than you already do. However much you think about them is fine. Anyhow, they’re really solid fruit husbandrists, as a general rule. They have orchards! (I mean, obviously they have orchards. That’s where fruit comes from. You know what I mean.) So here are the fruits the goblins generally have on offer: Apples, quinces, lemons, oranges, cherries, melon, raspberries, peaches, mulberries, cranberries, crabapples, dewberries, pineapples, blackberries, apricots, strawberries, end of list. End of the fruit list. Shoot, there’s more fruit, there’s a subsequent fruit list, here is the Fruit Addendum: Grapes, pomegranates, dates, bullaces (which, don’t be intimidated, it’s just plums), pears, greengages (I don’t know what that is), Damsons, bilberries, currants, gooseberries, barberries, figs, citrons. So you can buy a lot of fruit from them. Anyhow, there were two sisters who were interested in becoming fruit-owners in the near and immediate future. Lizzie and Laura. For some reason they tingled a lot; maybe that’s not relevant to the story to include, so feel free to expunge that detail from your mind. Tingling or otherwise, the point is that they wanted to buy some fruit. And Lizzie said to Laura, “You should not peep at goblin men.” Which, fair enough! You shouldn’t. Just make firm, friendly eye contact for about as long as it takes to buy goblin fruit, and then move on with your day. Also, and this is unrelated to our primary narrative, their friend Jeanie was dead. So Laura bought some fruit, and I guess the goblins were polite enough to overlook her staring, and subsequently ate the fruit, and got home in plenty of time before dark because honestly, how long does it take to eat fruit? Even a lot of fruit, even an implausibly large amount of fruit. Even a bushel. Which, holy cats, I just looked up and that’s 64 pints! 64! You couldn’t eat that much fruit. I couldn’t, anyhow. Probably not even Johnny Appleseed could. (Do you think he was their brother? The poet wants us to figure that out for ourselves, I guess.) The maximum amount of time a person could spend eating fruit, even if they were really milking the situation, like pretending they were in an erotic novel, or whatever (Do you ever apologize when you’re eating a plum if you didn’t get a chance to slice it beforehand? Sometimes I do. Like, yikes, I promise I am not trying to be an Anaïs Nin novel at you. This will be over soon! Next time I will remember to slice it first!!!) is, at most, an hour. You can’t spend more than an hour eating fruit. Good Lord. Whatever amount of fruit she ate, eventually Laura had to go home, and announced her intention to eat more fruit the next day. Which, fine! And then Lizzie listed some more fruit. Including very cold melon, and seedless grapes, which I guess used to be a big deal instead of just “what grapes are.” Then they slept like how pigeons slept. Weirdly, the goblins sold most of their fruit in the late afternoon, which is not a great time for fruit-selling because most farmer’s markets are in the morning. But timely or not, that’s when the fruit was available. Lizzie tried to buy some fruit for her sister, and since the dwarves also stood to gain from the exchange, they definitely sold her some, instead of jamming cherries and whatnot into her face and ripping her hair out. Which would be a completely inappropriate response, as a seller of fruit, to someone who said, “Hey, can I buy some fruit?” So she went home and said, “Hey, there’s some more fruit in the bowl on the counter.” And Laura said, “Oh, is it goblin fruit?” And Lizzie said, “Yeah, I stopped by today.” And Laura said, “Oh man, thanks, they have exceptionally good fruit.” I mean, all fruit is pretty good, right? There’s not the same variety in quality you get. Like, bad meat is pretty bad. And bad dairy is awful. But the worst fruit I’ve ever had (outside of something spoiled, obviously) was still fine. And they kissed whatever was a socially appropriate amount for grown sisters in their particular cultural milieu, and no fire knocked on anybody’s hearts that day. Then later they had something else. Gyros, maybe. |
One (1) Adult Swim Messenger bag, olive green, 100% cotton and made in India so you know it’s legit One (1) American Apparel Adult Swim t-shirt, black, size XL for those who are big-boned or simply live large One (1) American Apparel Adult Swim t-shirt, black, size S for the special lady in your life or smaller friend One (1) Adult Swim notebook with a badass tiger on it that might tear your ass up so watch out Three (3) Adult Swim collectible Kid Robot figures, blind box so don’t even ask about the characters, jerk One (1) Assy McGee keychain for those who like to store their keys with a little bit of ass (you’ve got problems) One (1) Adult Swim pint glass to store liquids or whatever you choose to imbibe, there’s some art on there, straight up One (1) Meatwad dog collar that says “Fart You, Farthead” on it for some unknown reason, maybe check back? One (1) Space Ghost “limited edition” 7-track CD circa 1996 that we found behind the water heater, no street value One (1) Adult Swim In A Box DVD Box Set, the crown jewel of this here prize pack, look it up on Amazon, it’s fresh |
2014, acrylics, photography & digital 520 million years ago, Cambrian, Maotianshan Shale, Yunnan, China Strange creatures swarm in shallow sea off the northern fringes of the Gondwanan supercontinent. In the unimaginably distant future, this ancient seabed will be exposed as the Maotianshan Shale on the lush flanks of scenic hills in eastern Yunnan (Chengjiang, Jinning and Anning Counties), China. The fossils of the Maotianshan, collectively called the Chengjiang Biota, give a priceless glimpse into the Cambrian Explosion, the comparatively sudden appearances of a bewildering diversity of animal body forms that herald the arrival of the Phanerozoic. It represents one of a handful of Cambrian localities in the world, along with the Burgess Shale of Canada and Sirius Passet of Greenland, to feature extensive soft tissue preservation. The Chengjiang Biota currently includes well over 100 identified species, including creatures close to the ancestry of the vertebrate lineage. VERTEBRATE-PRECURSORS/STEM-CRANIATES (the phylogenetic positions of these animals are highly disputed) Myllokunmingia fengjiaoa = single fish-like critter with reticulated pattern. Haikouichthys ercaicunensis = numerous white fish-things Haikouella lanceolata = pair of striped fish-things in foreground. NON-CHORDATE INVERTEBRATES Anomalocaris saron = Dinocaridid. Huge animal dominating scene. This one is about 30 cm excluding the tail streamers. Eoredlichia intermedia = Trilobite in right middle distance. Canadaspis laevigata = Crustacean. Small shrimps floating to the right. Vetulicola cuneata = Vetulicolian. Trio of shelled creatures with flattened tails swimming on the left. Hallucigenia fortis = Lobopod. Spiky worm-like things crawling in the mud. Vetulocystis catenata = Stem-echinoderm. Look like littled stalked grapes growing on the seafloor. Leptomitis teretiusculus = tubular sponges in background. |
A Chula Vista woman who tried to end a relationship was strangled by her ex-boyfriend alongside her two children. Officers discovered Mary Catherine Alvarez, 41 and her children Hamid, 11, and Angelica, 12, Wednesday inside a townhome at 1746 Currant Way, in a complex located south of Olympic Parkway and east of State Route 125. Chula Vista police say a man whose body was found below a Spring Valley bridge early Wednesday strangled Alvarez, his girlfriend, and her two children before jumping to his death. Investigators said the mother and daughter also both suffered some sort of blow to the head. They have not identified a motive. Boyfriend Strangled Mom, 2 Kids Investigators say a Chula Vista woman who tried to end a relationship was strangled by her ex alongside her two children. (Published Thursday, June 2, 2011) Friends of Alvarez said Thursday that Mary Catherine had been trying to separate herself from her boyfriend. They say the special education teacher moved into a new apartment with her children about three weeks ago. A CHP officer found the man's body in a ravine near state Route 125 northbound, just south of Route 54 at about 5:35 a.m. An abandoned 2001 Hyundai Elantra was parked near the ravine, said Ken Jackman of the CHP. Though the man carried no identification, police conducted a registration check of the car. They traced the vehicle's owner to a Chula Vista apartment complex, but found that the owner had moved. After speaking with the manager of the building, officials attained the address of the owner, Mary Catherine Alvarez. It was after performing a welfare check at Alvarez' home that officers discovered the family. Alvarez was lying in a pool of blood, Jackman said. Mother, Kids Found Dead Inside South Bay Townhome Family and friends gather outside the Chula Vista townhome where a mother and two children were discovered dead Wednesday, sad but also angry - wanting to know why the family was killed. Mari Payton reports. (Published Thursday, June 2, 2011) “It’s a sad day when children are involved,” Jackman said. A next-door neighbor said she heard a strange noise Monday around 5 a.m. “It woke me up because it was really loud it was like a really loud scream,” said Patricia Manjarrez. Mother, Kids Found Dead Inside Townhome: Images Friends said the man who committed suicide is Mary Catherine Alvarez’s boyfriend. The couple had been together for about 5 years. He was not the father of the children. Through tears, Diane Vega, 12, remembered Angelica, a cheerleader and 6th grader at Corky McMillin Elementary. “We were best friends," she said. " We were best friends she was always there for me.” Mary Catherine Alvarez worked in the special education department at San Ysidro High School for the past five years. School principal Hector Espinoza said, “Her passion was working with kids and it was noticeable in the classroom. Tragic its as simple as that it's a waste, such a tragic waste.” Thursday was graduation day at San Ysidro High School. Administrators will hold a moment of silence at tonight's ceremony for Alvarez. At Corky McMillan school, where 11-year-old Hamid was a fifth grader, the principal sent home a letter to parents notifying them of the situation. Crisis counselors were on campus Thursday to talk to kids. The family has setup a fund for donations at Chase Bank under "Alvarez Family Memorial Fund". They say the money will help pay for the three funerals and any money leftover will be donated to a charity for victims of domestic violence. |
FILE PHOTO: A combination of file photos showing Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia, January 15, 2016 and U.S. President Donald Trump posing for a photo in New York City, U.S., May 17, 2016. REUTERS/Ivan Sekretarev/Pool/Lucas Jackson/File Photos The infamous dossier alleging collusion between Donald Trump’s campaign and officials from the Russian government was funded by an unknown Republican client during the GOP primary, then by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, the Washington Post reports. The research firm Fusion GPS—which commissioned former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele to investigate ties between Trump and Russia—was originally bankrolled by a Republican client, and was later hired by Marc E. Elias, a lawyer for the Clinton campaign and DNC. The unidentified Republican donor began funding the firm’s research during the Republican presidential primaries. Clinton and the DNC funded Fusion GPS’ research until just days before election day. After the election, the FBI agreed paid Steele to continue gathering information about Trump and Russia, according to the Post. The dossier is reportedly being used as a “roadmap” for multiple federal and Congressional investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign. It’s unclear how much of the dossier’s contents—which were published by BuzzFeed less than two weeks before Trump’s inauguration—were made known to people within the Clinton campaign. New York Times reporter Kenneth Vogel on Tuesday wrote on Twitter that when he originally tried to report the story, Elias “pushed back vigorously.” |
? The Kansas Senate on Tuesday advanced without debate a bill that would make teachers criminally liable for displaying sex education material deemed inappropriate for children. Senate Democrats were expected to voice fierce opposition to Senate Bill 56, which removes an exemption that public, private and parochial schools now enjoy from the crime of promoting material harmful to minors. The bill was a response to a controversy last year when a middle school teacher in the Shawnee Mission school district displayed a poster which listed words, including some explicit words depicting sex acts, to describe various ways in which people show affection. The bill was strongly opposed by many education groups who argued that it could drastically limit what material could be taught in classrooms, and some suggested it could even lead to the banning of certain books that are considered classic literature. Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook, R-Shawnee, the main sponsor of the bill, called those arguments ridiculous. “When you read the bill, it says that it would exclude any material that could be considered to have literary or scientific value,” she said. Tuesday afternoon, as the Senate was working through a number of bills, most Democrats, including Minority Leader Anthony Hensley of Topeka, were out of the chamber when the bill came up for debate. As a result, one senator gave an explanation of the bill, and the remaining senators advanced it to final action on a voice vote. Sen. Marci Francisco, D-Lawrence, said she was working at her desk on an amendment to another bill at the time and assumed that others would speak in opposition to the bill. “I heard concerns expressed and was surprised there was not someone to step up,” Francisco said. “I didn’t look around to see that most of the chairs were vacant behind me.” Francisco also said most Democrats felt there was no way to improve the bill with amendments. “I think the best thing to do is vote it down,” she said. The Senate is expected to take a final vote on the bill Wednesday. If it passes, it will be sent to the House for consideration. |
Though you might have missed The Zero Theorem and its colorful sci-fi wonders in theaters (it was this author’s #1 film of 2014), it comes to Blu-ray and DVD January 20th from Well Go USA Entertainment and is very much the multi-layered, ingenious head trip you would expect from director Terry Gilliam (Brazil, 12 Monkeys). We have an exclusive behind-the-scenes clip that shows the method in the madness, which you can check out below! In the clip, Gilliam talks about how he would not have been able to make the film without star Christoph Waltz, who plays introverted computer jockey Qohen Leth. The director tried for years to get the film off the ground–at one point with Billy Bob Thornton in the role–but could only pull it off once the two-time Oscar-winner (Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained) signed on. Featuring a screenplay by Pat Rushin, The Zero Theorem co-stars Mélanie Thierry, David Thewlis, Lucas Hedges, Tilda Swinton, Ben Whishaw and Matt Damon, and revolves around an eccentric and reclusive computer genius plagued with existential angst who works on a mysterious project aimed at discovering the purpose of existence or the lack thereof once and for all. However, it is only once he experiences the power of love and desire that he is able to understand his very reason for being. |
What we see are two end stones with powerful micro-magnets (about 1.3 teslas) that keep the balance staff centered, and even more, allows it to self adjust when the watch takes a shock. On top of that, the watch is completely anti-magnetic due the use of these micro-magnetic pivots, and the magnets don't impact the operations of the watch because all parts that would be affected are made of silicon. Clever, no? One of the magnets is actually stronger than the other, so one end of the staff touches the end stone while the other "floats" just above the other end stone. So when a shock occurs, the magnets automatically re-center the balance staff. It also means that the friction on the balance staff pivots is pretty much the same no matter what position the watch is in. Essentially, this magnetic field is an artificial gravity that ensures the 7727's regulating organ to be working flawlessly in any position. Sound familiar? Maybe a little like a tourbillon? Not at all the same solution mechanically, but indeed the very same problem that needs solving, and in my opinion, the magnetic pivot is a far more interesting, thoughtful, and indeed commercially viable solution than the tourbillon. It's also so very much less "ugh, really?" than a tourbillon. |
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (Reuters) - Republican tax writers from the U.S. House of Representatives promoted their legislative goals at a special gathering in California on Wednesday, but offered few new details about provisions that may end up in their long-sought overhaul plan. U.S. President Donald Trump speaks about the violence, injuries and deaths at the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville as he talks to the media with Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao (R) at his side in the lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan, New York, U.S., August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque As Wall Street analysts warned that President Donald Trump’s controversial statements about Virginia protests on Saturday that turned deadly were hurting Republicans’ prospects for progress on domestic policy, the lawmakers assembled in Santa Barbara to say their tax reform agenda is moving forward. Kevin Brady, chairman of the tax-writing U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, spoke in broad brushstrokes about the effort at Rancho del Cielo, the country home of former President Ronald Reagan, a Republican who oversaw the last major tax code overhaul in 1986. “If you look at today’s tax code you can’t even recognize the principles that made the Reagan reforms such a triumph for the American people,” Brady said. Asked whether the plan would have specific provisions, Brady said: “We’re working through the details of the overall tax plan with the White House, President Trump, and Senate tax writers as well.” “We have more work to do. I anticipate continuing to work through August with the White House and Senate, bring forward a tax reform plan at the Ways and Means Committee after we return,” Brady said, adding he wanted to get legislation to Trump before the end of the year. Brady was joined by Representatives Peter Roskam, David Schweikert and Carlos Curbelo, all Republican committee members. Market expectations for tax reform have declined in recent weeks, analysts said, and dimmed further after Trump’s Tuesday press conference, where he said both sides were to blame for a deadly rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, between neo-Nazis, white supremacists and counter-protestors. Before the event, Curbelo, the son of Cuban exiles who emigrated to the United States, told reporters that Trump’s remarks marked “the lowest point yet” in his presidency. “In a way we’ve become accustomed to working in a very distracting environment. That’s not new. Now this is on a whole different scale,” he said. “While you have all of these other headlines, the public isn’t going to be paying very much attention to the legislative agenda.” Still searching for his first major legislative achievement after 208 days in office, Trump has refocused on overhauling the tax code, but he has been constantly distracted by controversies involving North Korea, race relations and investigations of possible ties between his 2016 campaign and Moscow. Trump was forced to disband two high-profile business advisory councils on Wednesday after corporate CEOs quit the committees in protest over his remarks about the violence in Charlottesville. Brady has remained bullish on the chances for a tax overhaul even after a Republican push to dismantle Obamacare collapsed in July. At Wednesday’s event he told reporters the differences between a healthcare and tax overhaul are “just about everything.” As they did with Obamacare, the party has launched a nationwide publicity campaign for tax reform without first hammering out the final details of their proposal. FILE PHOTO: U.S. Representative Kevin Brady (R-TX), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, sits for an interview about upcoming tax legislation proposals with Reuters journalists in Washington, U.S. July 19, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst The 1986 tax overhaul under Reagan was the result of a multi-year, bipartisan negotiation. Republicans are seeking to do key portions of tax reform within months, without Democratic support. Republicans have not yet introduced tax legislation and party leaders have already discarded key pieces of their initial, ambitious plan. No revenue-raising provisions have been agreed upon to replace those that were discarded. Corporate lobbyists and independent experts have said Congress and Trump are far apart on critical issues, such as how to slash rates without ballooning the federal deficit. Brady downplayed those differences on Wednesday, saying they planned to unify behind “one bold plan.” |
About This Game Experience a new game mode in OOTP 18: Challenge! This mode is available for newly created leagues (standard / historical / fictional) and adds a unique twist, along with new rewards, while playing OOTP. Your achievements are tracked in an (optional) online profile. Are you the best OOTP manager on the planet? Improved 3D Mode & Game Highlight Reels. With even more ballpark detail than before and enhanced player animations, the 3D game mode in OOTP has taken another leap forward. New Tournamanets & Fall Leagues. Set up your own national or international tournaments, choose from different tournament modes, and manage your favorite nation to international glory. Historical Negro Leagues. With the help of Seamheads.com, our historical database experts have been able to add most Negro leagues seasons to the historical minor league feature of Out of the Park Baseball 18, including accurate rosters and player statistics. Redesigned Injury System. Injuries in OOTP 18 has been reworked to be more realistic and interesting. A detailed injury history is tracked for players, the injury database has been enhanced, there are now nagging little long-term injuries, injuries to different body types have different long-term effects, and much more. Team Promotion & Relegation Support. Create a challenging new league setup where teams fight for promotion and try to defend against relegation to a lower league level. The ability to retain player salaries in trades. Improved AI throughout the game, for a more challenging experience than ever. Beautiful new interface design with three different skins. Many 2017 CBA rule changes are incorporated in modern MLB games Improved player morale / team chemistry system Improved player creation & development system Improved game recaps, enhanced play-by-play text and league news And much more... Out of the Park Baseball 18 is here. Greatness has no boundaries! Visit us on www.ootpdevelopments.com Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ootpbaseball Twitter: http://twitter.com/ootpbaseball Out of the Park Baseball 18 - the follow-up toand officially licensed through MLB.com and the MLBPA - is a baseball fan's dream come true!"OOTP is an astonishing accomplishment!" - Boston Red Sox Principal Owner John W. HenryStep into the shoes of a GM and/or field manager to own the future or rewrite the past of your favorite real-world baseball franchise. Build the team the way you want to. Start a new career with your favorite 2017 MLB team or span through almost 150 years of baseball history and run any team from the past! You can even set up your own fictional baseball universe or compete in online leagues against other OOTP players. The possibilities in OOTP 18 are endless.The brand new 2017 MLB roster set will include all projected Opening Day MLB rosters as well as the complete minor league system down to the rookie leagues and even future draft classes. Can the Chicago Cubs repeat as World Series winners, despite the loss of Aroldis Chapman and Dexter Fowler? Or did the Cleveland Indians' successful offseason set them up for at taking the World Series trophy home this year? Will the Boston Red Sox's rotation, anchored by Chris Sale and David Price, dominate in the AL East, or are the rebuilding Yankees already a contender? Which team will win the tight National League West Division, the powerhouse LA Dodgers, led by the best pitcher in baseball, Clayton Kershaw?On top of this, 8 international leagues (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, Italy, The Netherlands, Mexico and Cuba) and several international and US independent leagues return to OOTP 18 with accurate and projected 2017 rosters.Dive into the more hands-on management and set your team's lineups, pitching staffs, and in-game strategy. You can oversee your league at a high level, or play out each game, managing play by play or even pitch by pitch. OOTP players progress realistically over time. Build a team through the draft, or sign big free agents to put you over the top!New Features in OOTP 18 include: |
A parameterization of the prisoner's dilemma paradigm is constructed based on recent research on the theory of risk and risk preference. The conflict is cast as intrapersonal and in terms of a risk parameter and an inducement to accept the risk, sometimes interpretable as fear and greed respectively, both acting in the context of a level for the game relative to the status quo. These correspond to the independent variables directly under the control of the experimenter. The dependent variable is the strength of the tendency to defect. These variables are acting in the context of an experimental environment which includes the benevolence or hostility of another player which is assumed to contribute to the risk variable only. Some suggestions are made for the controlled study of conjoining a hostile environment. |
A summer which started with a planned takeover of the welterweight division ended with a failed attempt to defy logic and expectation against the most feared man in the sport for Sheffield’s Kell Brook. But in his showing on Saturday night he arguably gained more stock and credibility than he would have gained unifying the welterweight division over a streak of several fights. At first glance this sentiment may soundlike a worrying indictment of the sport of boxing. Brook’s deep rooted and impulsive lust for the big stage and the high pay scales, as well as the frustration of being ignored by close competitors, drove him towards an unexpected clash with a guy 2 weight divisions above him. In a fight nobody outside his family-like stable thought that he could win. The fight and the surrounding spectacle itself flew by in a blaze. Brook looked ready to go just a minute into the fight but by the end of the 2nd, but a fearless rally and effective counter punching from “The Special One” had the patriotic crowd delirious, salivating at the prospect of a potential upset. The 3rd was close but the power and relentless aggression of Golovkin shifted the fight in his direction. By the end of the 4th Brook’s resistance had gone from sustained to sporadic and midway through the 5th Dominic Ingle, to the anger of the crowd, threw in the towel with Brook taking flush right hands and ignominiously taunting Golovkin like a kid in a playground whilst leaning up against the ropes. The invigoration of the big fight adrenaline rush that both competitors filled fans with was felt in the immediate aftermath. Brook, whilst seemingly dissatisfied with the ending, left the ring with a new sense of self pride having been inundated with accreditation from all corners of the boxing world. This particular reaction maybe somewhat worrying or infuriating to a boxing cynic. Why is it that an undefeated champion close to his physical prime opts out of a pursuit to prove himself as the best in his division, in order to take a no-lose fight, primarily just for the allure of a large pay day? Should the reaction to defeat be so overwhelming and gracious? Journeymen, gatekeepers, and lower-end fighters travel far and near to make their living taking losses from young up-and-comers, and they’re lucky if their expenses are covered or if they receive acknowledgement from promoters and fans alike. A cynic would argue that what makes Brook different from these individuals is that he was properly compensated for the damage done to his health, career, and record. But payscale notwithstanding, one sentiment is consistent for all those within the hurt buisness. The towel being thrown in during the 5th round didn’t reverse the previous 12 mins of damage which left the Sheffield native with a fractured orbital bone, initiated after an early Golovkin left hand. An injury which has been the downfall of the careers of fighters before him and an injury which could curtail future plans and impact Brook’s health going forward. This sentiment is lost in the midst of those entrusted in planning his ring return. Profiting off the stock gained through his admirable showing last weekend. Only several months prior he watched his bitter rival Amir Khan gain similar praise and well wishes after a right hand from Canelo Alvarez dropped him like he had been shot. Months before that Brook was amongst many British boxers spearheading initiatives to raise money for former British Middleweight Champion Nick Blackwell, who’s battle with Chris Eubank Jr left him in a coma and saw his boxing career come to an end at the age of 26. The humanizing effect that in-ring damage brings breeds compassion. It is organic and indicative of the intimate ties the sport has with reality (even though its participants sometimes live in their own realm of delusion). And when you put yourself in a scenario like Brook did, the propension to damage increases noticeably. The cynic may bemoan a talented fighter delving into a no-lose situation, but the reality is that in boxing, a no-lose situation can swiftly turn into one where a fighter loses everything. It just happens to be that, on a big stage, the real, humanising nature of the sport meets the most eyes. |
Rajdeep Singh, who was then posted in the Crime Branch of Chandigarh Police, was one of the officers in the police teams who had gone to Moga to arrest some alleged contract killers who had assaulted a student at his paying guest accommodation in June last year. Though the Chandigarh Police has received a clean chit in the alleged encounter at Moga, the Sub-Inspector of UT Police, Rajdeep Singh, who suffered a bullet injury, is yet to get a clean chit to lead a normal life. While the S-I has resumed duty of an investigating officer at the Sector 39 police station, he says that he is walking with a “ticking bomb” as the bullet remains embedded in his spine. Advertising Rajdeep underwent three major surgeries. “My life is in the hands of this bullet,” he told Newsline. [related-post] “There is numbness in my right leg. I have not been able to walk properly ever since. I was asked to avoid a waist belt and any exercise that causes stress to my spine. Doctors have not even advised me any physiotherapy exercises,” he said. Rajdeep, who was then posted in the Crime Branch of Chandigarh Police, was one of the officers in the police teams who had gone to Moga to arrest some alleged contract killers who had assaulted a student at his paying guest accommodation in June last year. Two men were killed in the alleged encounter which happened on June 25 last year. Also, Rajdeep and a head constable had suffered injuries. Rajdeep was critical and admitted to the Dayanand Medical College. “The bullet which hit me had tore my intestine completely. The doctors performed the first surgery on June 25 (day of the incident) last year and stitched the tissues. I was put off diet for five days. After this, when they fed me liquids for the first time, the wastage spilled in the abdomen causing a panic amongst the doctors,” said Rajdeep. He added that the second surgery was performed on July 3, 2014, to try and repair the tissues again, but in vain. On November 3 last year, a colostomy was performed to give him time to repair the tissues which were not getting healed. “It is a procedure usually performed for colon cancer patients,” said Rajdeep. Till this time, the bullet remained in his spine rendering his lower limbs to function less. He was transferred to the Police Lines and was shifted for a regular duty in March this year. “The doctors at DMC had given a green signal to perform an operation to remove the bullet from my spine. However, I consulted some doctors who advised that it should not be removed at that time,” said Rajdeep. Advertising The S-I is now undergoing treatment at PGI and the spine centre in Delhi for the constant numbness in his right leg. “I will soon be taking an appointment with the doctors to take another opinion for removing the bullet. It has damaged some nerves, so the neurologist has to be consulted,” added the S-I. |
Flagfox 6.1.8 for Firefox 60+ has been released and is available for update and download from AMO. Flagfox 6.1.8 changelog: Added forward-compatibility for HTTP/3+ checking Added variant of insecure HTTP tooltip tag for FTP Fixed action list item selection colors in options under newer Firefox versions Reimplemented support for hotkeys using two ctrl/alt/cmd keys (upgraded WebExt API; requires Firefox 63+) Reimplemented middle-click on menu item to open in background tab (new WebExt API; requires Firefox 64+) Yet more minor code cleanups I decided to not wait until next month’s IPDB update to post this, as the broken selection color was annoying. (Mozilla changed the color for one of the “-moz” CSS values for a recent Firefox update; fortunately, it’s easily fixed) Additionally, I’ve added support for some of Mozilla’s tinkering around the edges of the WebExtension API, bringing back a few minor features that were previously in Flagfox 5.x: hotkeys aren’t required to be as dumbed-down anymore and middle-clicking in menus to open in background tabs is supported again. The hotkey support requires Firefox 63+ (current main release) and middle-click in menu support requires Firefox 64+ (next month’s update). (the middle-click support just adds back the ability to open actions in background tabs via the mouse; support still exists for using the keyboard by just holding ctrl when clicking and/or shift to open in a window, instead) Neither of these features is available if you’re using Firefox 60 ESR, as Mozilla doesn’t backport API improvements at all. The other change of note is that flag tooltips should now be able to detect HTTP/3 and later, in addition to HTTP/2. Yeah, nothing actually runs that yet, as it’s still so early in development as to have only been officially named HTTP/3 recently, but it’s simple enough to add forward-compatibility here by actually reading the version number out of the status line instead of just checking for “HTTP/2”. I decided against always putting the version in the tooltip for HTTP/1.x, as that’s not really useful information. |
The left won’t be satisfied until every academic subject is put through the progressive wood chipper. The College Fix reports: University to hire professor who can teach Shakespeare through social justice lens The wit and wisdom found within the works of William Shakespeare may soon be taught through the lenses of social justice and identity politics at one public university in Northern California. California State University East Bay seeks to hire an assistant professor of English who has an eye toward “diversity” while teaching renaissance and medieval literature, with a special emphasis on Shakespeare, according to a recent job posting. “Candidates must demonstrate awareness of innovative pedagogy and issues of diversity and social justice, as well as evidence of teaching effectiveness,” states the listing, posted earlier this month. “Candidates who bring global approaches to their teaching and scholarship are preferred. Candidates who engage with issues of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality in their teaching and scholarship are preferred.” Jesse Cantley, a spokesperson for Cal State East Bay, told The College Fix that the job requirements reflect the school’s mission. “As the fifth most diverse university in the United States, diversity and inclusion are paramount to the work we do at Cal State East Bay,” Cantley said via email. Cantley also stated the focus on social justice is consistent with their learning goals for graduates, approved by the University Senate, “which state that Cal State East Bay graduates should be able to ‘apply knowledge of diversity and multicultural competencies to promote equity and social justice in our communities.’” |
Keynesianism and market monetarism By Scott Sumner Paul Krugman has a new post that summarizes Keynesian economics: I would summarize the Keynesian view in terms of four points: 1. Economies sometimes produce much less than they could, and employ many fewer workers than they should, because there just isn’t enough spending. Such episodes can happen for a variety of reasons; the question is how to respond. 2. There are normally forces that tend to push the economy back toward full employment. But they work slowly; a hands-off policy toward depressed economies means accepting a long, unnecessary period of pain. 3. It is often possible to drastically shorten this period of pain and greatly reduce the human and financial losses by “printing money”, using the central bank’s power of currency creation to push interest rates down. 4. Sometimes, however, monetary policy loses its effectiveness, especially when rates are close to zero. In that case temporary deficit spending can provide a useful boost. And conversely, fiscal austerity in a depressed economy imposes large economic losses. If I were to do the equivalent for market monetarism, it might look something like the following: 1. Economies sometimes produce much less than they could, and employ many fewer workers than they should, because there just isn’t enough spending. Such episodes occur because monetary policy is too contractionary, causing NGDP to fall relative to the (sticky) wage level. [As an aside, economies can also produce too little due to real shocks, such as higher minimum wages. That’s also true in the Keynesian model.] 2. There are normally forces that tend to push the economy back toward full employment. But they work slowly; a hands-off policy toward depressed economies means accepting a long, unnecessary period of pain. [Notice this one is identical.] 3. It is often possible to drastically shorten this period of pain and greatly reduce the human and financial losses by “printing money”, using the central bank’s power of currency creation to boost M*V, i.e. NGDP, via the “hot potato effect”. 4. Monetary policy remains highly effective at the zero bound. As a result, demand-side fiscal policy is mostly ineffective in countries with an independent monetary authority—offset by monetary policy. Fiscal actions that shift the aggregate supply curve, however, can be effective. James Alexander has a new post with a really useful graph: HT: Dilip |
Running Before the Gale The Storm at Sea Acts 27:13 When a light wind began blowing from the south, the sailors thought they could make it. So they pulled up anchor and sailed close to the shore of Crete. 14 But the weather changed abruptly, and a wind of typhoon strength (called a “northeaster”) burst across the island and blew us out to sea. 15 The sailors couldn’t turn the ship into the wind, so they gave up and let it run before the gale. Running before the gale! When I was young, full of fire and adventure, I spent nine months becoming trained as an underwater welder, and I decided to join a company out of Key West named Treasure Salvors, headed up by a flamboyant man named Mel Fisher. Hunting Spanish treasure ships off the Florida Keys, it was a great adventure. Then, as God would have it, I had the opportunity to jump ship and join ‘The Illusion’ expedition, headed up by a man from Brazil. Tony had worked in the oil fields as a diver, and had built a 65 schooner, fully equipped as a dive vessal. He had been searching archives for many years, to unearth the plight of the many treasure ships that had sunk crossing the Atlantic. He had his eyes on a Dutch Schooner said to be sunk in the Madiera Island group off Portugal, and several other wrecks along the journey. So, not yet 21, I hired aboard this wild expedition, with two Swiss, a German, a French man from Gabon, Africa, a captain from Brazil, with his wife and two year old daughter, and two Doberman pinchers! We had many adventures, and some once in a lifetime experiences finding wrecks, spearfishing, and crossing the Atlantic under sail. We got caught in a force 10 storm, with 50-70mph winds. All we could see is blowing foam, and seas mounted to 40-50’ waves, with the tops being torn off of them by the high winds. We had to keep the boat running before the wind, carefully slicing the waves, or we would breach, overturn, and I might not be writing this story. For three days and nights, we could do nothing but hang-on! No food, no sleep as the waves were too violent, and would throw you out of your bunk. Dark, starless night, blowing rain, foam, mist, with one thought on all of our minds, survive. On the third day, the winds let up, and I ate a dry cracker, crawled into my bunk, and slept for a couple of hours. I was awakened to the sound of the baby laughing, with sun streaming through my porthole! I stumbled out of my bunk, being flung side to side, the entire boat creaking and groaning, crashing through the waves. I came above decks to behold a sight! The wind had stopped in the night, but because it was no longer tearing the tops off of the waves, seas were now 65-80’ tall! Our little schooner would surf up one side of a mountain of water, and launch into the air, to come crashing down the other side of these monstrous waves. We would hit the bottom of the trough, and the bow would turn submarine, plunging the front third of the ship underwater, with hatches groaning, like a cork we would bob up again, and head for the sky again. The baby was in her safety strap hugging one of the dogs, laughing hysterically! One of the Swiss had a camcorder, and he filmed that day: how I wish I had a copy of that video! We all began to laugh! A celebration of life! We were alive to face another day, the sun was shining, and it was going to be alright! Now, back to the Word of God: You know the story, Paul the mighty apostle with a burning zeal and a passionate fire to see his people saved, and right with God. He has met Jesus, and he is going to Jerusalem, capital of the world, to tell them the good news of who Yeshua really is! FAITH is Fantastic Adventures In Trusting Him. Let’s read: Acts 20:22 And now, behold, I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there: Bound in the spirit, Some question whether Paul heard the voice of God to make this particular trip to Jerusalem. Romans 8: 14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. Surely Paul is a son of God, and He heard God to go to Jerusalem. Yet we see an interesting interplay here between the office of the apostle, and the office of the prophet. Acts 21:11 And when he was come unto us, he took Paul’s girdle, and bound his own hands and feet, and said, Thus saith the Holy Ghost, So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles. Acts 21:12 And when we heard these things, both we, and they of that place, besought him not to go up to Jerusalem. Acts 21:13 Then Paul answered, What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. The prophetic word delivered to Paul was accurate, and for those around him that loved him, was interpreted that Paul should refrain from going up to Jerusalem. Yet, to Paul the apostle, ready to endure any hardship for the sake of the gospel, he was strengthened by the word! He hardened himself, recognizing imprisonment and a beating were in his future, but he did not flinch in the face of danger. Perhaps he read: Isaiah 50:7 For the Lord God will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed. So, as Paul Harvey would say, ‘and now for the rest of the story’. He made it to Jerusalem, underwent imprisonment, and the foretold beating. Yet, though his path was hard, their was an audience of One that he sought to obey and please. In His prison cell, that One, King Jesus showed up to personally comfort His servant: Acts 23:11 And the night following the Lord stood by him, and said, Be of good cheer, Paul: for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome How is that for an encouraging word. You obeyed me, now I am sending you to Rome – (in the belly of a slave ship) – running before the gale! So leader, the storms of life will come. You are either in one, finishing one, or headed into another one. It is the cost of the call, the price tag of leadership, the race run, before our audience of One. The lonely times leave a mark upon your soul. Perhaps it was this time in Jerusalem that caused Paul to pen these words: 2 Timothy 4:16 At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. https://chrisaomministries.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/leadership-lonliness/ When we enter into the perfect, sovereign assignment of heaven for our lives, all hell may well break loose to prevent us getting to our goal. Jesus faced the storm on the sea of Galilee, Paul, Joseph in the pit, Moses in the desert… Jesus suffered alone upon the cross…We who represent Him, will find ourselves alone with Him too. While no earthly help may seem to appear, there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother. One who knows, who cares, and who will never leave nor forsake you. We did make it to Portugal, and discover the 1611 Dutch trader with 54 silver bars on its manifest. Another story, for another day… You will make it too, if you are willing to abandon all for the sake of the call. Like Mary told her servants so many years ago, at the wedding feast: John 2: (KJV) 5 His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it. In your hour of trial, HE WILL APPEAR, AND HE WILL SPEAK! Do not settle for the mere words of men, obey Him, and walk upon the water of His Word. Make headlines in heaven so that this question in the heart of Jesus be answered: Luke 18:8 Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? Let your answer to this question be a resounding YES! You won’t have to look any further Lord Jesus, for I believe! Let’s pray: ‘Father, let me not shrink back for Your clear mandate for me. While the storms may rage, may I navigate them and run before the wind of Your Holy Spirit, running before the gale. In Your name and for Your glory I pray Lord Jesus, Amen’ PS: If you would like to read another adventure story type devotion from my treasure hunting days: https://chrisaomministries.wordpress.com/2014/11/19/a-shark-story/ Just in case you think this kind of stuff only happens historically, here’s one from this week when our jeep was stolen: http://www.fox23.com/videos/news/video-teens-commit-tulsa-crime-spree/vDW5k2/ If you would like to help us in our missionary adventures, please make a donation on Paypal: http://chrisaomministries.com/2016/02/27/newsletter-aomministries-feb-march/ http://chrisaomministries.com/2016/03/17/faith-sets-the-sail/ Share this: Twitter Facebook Google LinkedIn Tumblr Email Print More Reddit.com Reddit Pinterest Like this: Like Loading... |
Jul 16, 2013 A distant galaxy cluster is said to exhibit evidence for an unknown force. Not a single reference is made to the most powerful known force in the Universe: electricity. The European Space Agency’s XMM Newton X-ray Telescope research team has found a grouping of galaxies containing more than 1000 times the mass of our own Milky Way in what they believe to be the most distant reaches of the Universe. The speed of light is used as a benchmark for defining cosmological distance calculations: the shifting of Fraunhofer lines into the red end of observed spectra determines “recessional velocity”. As standard theories dictate, the faster an object recedes from Earth, the farther away it is and the older it is because the Big Bang explosion is said to have imparted an inertial impulse that is causing the Universe to expand. Based on those theoretical parameters, a faster recessional velocity means greater distance, which means an earlier time period. According to Georg Lamar and his colleagues from the Astrophysikalisches Institut in Potsdam, massive galaxy clusters with such high redshift are rare when they shine so brightly at X-ray wavelengths. As the ESA press release states, the presence of “hot gas” encompassing the cluster with temperatures of 100 million Kelvin makes J083026+524133 the most energetic X-ray source at z > = 1 redshift – 100 times brighter than any other galaxy cluster at that distance. Such a massive cluster with a 7.7 billion year age estimate is thought to confirm the existence of dark energy because dark energy causes acceleration in the expansion of the Universe. That acceleration makes it more difficult for massive clusters like J083026+524133 to hold together in more recent times because the dark energy expansion wants to tear them apart. Astronomers made this disconcerting find ten years ago, that the Universe is expanding faster today than it did in the past. In order to accommodate anomalous redshift observations the existence of a force that exerts negative pressure on gravitational fields was proposed and later called “dark energy” because it cannot be detected with any instrument. Enzo Brachini from the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO) wrote: “This implies that one of two very different possibilities must hold true. Either the Universe is filled with a mysterious dark energy which produces a repulsive force that fights the gravitational brake from all the matter present in the Universe, or, our current theory of gravitation is not correct and needs to be modified, for example by adding extra dimensions to space.” Presumptions are difficult to overcome. The inability of conventional researchers to understand several factors hampers their ability to grasp the fundamental nature of the cosmos. The quoted comments are a perfect example of the absurd conclusions that can be drawn when electricity in space is ignored. Two of the most pressing issues in the modern approach to understanding the Universe are the adherence to redshift as the only tool for estimating distances and ages of stars and galaxies, and a lack of knowledge when it comes to electricity. First, in order to advance the catalogue of knowledge it often requires one’s reputation and livelihood be placed on the block and the axe allowed to fall where it may. It takes real courage to buck the system and stand on one’s convictions despite antagonism. Such is the case with Halton Arp, one of the grand masters in the field of astronomical research. Dr. Arp earned his place at the top of his field through years of research and many lonely hours on cold mountain peaks documenting far-flung celestial objects. As his galactic compendium grew, he noticed that there was something wrong with conventional time-speed-distance calculations – he found objects with higher redshift values in front of objects with lower redshift. Surely, such a conundrum should have immediately called into question the very nature of that “cosmological constant”. If redshift is not an indicator of distance, J083026+524133 may not be so far away and therefore not so massive or bright. As Arp and his colleagues have repeatedly shown, taking in a wider field of view often reveals similar objects on the opposite side of a nearby active galaxy. Many of these high-redshift pairs are connected across the galaxy with a bridge of radiating material. Theories of an expanding Universe, dark matter, and dark energy depend on the XMM Newton’s (and other observatories) extremely narrow field of view and how the data is selected. Second, by referring to material with a temperature of 100 million Kelvin as “hot gas” astrophysicists are highlighting their complete ignorance of plasma and its behavior. No atom can remain intact at such temperatures – electrons are stripped from the nuclei and powerful electrical fields develop. The gaseous matter becomes plasma, capable of conducting electricity and forming double layers. In 1986, Hannes Alfvén, in a NASA-sponsored conference on double layers in astrophysics, said: “Double layers in space should be classified as a new type of celestial object (one example is the double radio sources). It is tentatively suggested that x-ray and gamma ray bursts may be due to exploding double layers. In solar flares, [double layers] with voltages of 10^9 volts or even more may occur, and in galactic phenomena, we may have voltages that are several orders of magnitude larger.” Plasma is the first state of matter and makes up more than 99.99% of all that we observe in the Universe. Cosmological redshift has been shown to be a property of matter and not one of velocity. It is far past time that scientists actually look at what they see with critical eyes. Stephen Smith |
Wechat Secrets Revealed Not only can you send messages, gifs, and stickers with Wechat but you can do so much more! Here we want to teach you some things you might have not known about Wechat! Some highlights Buy Gold on Wechat Compare Product Prices Heat Map (Track Wechat Users) Send Postcards 1 Wechat Run (Step Tracker) Track your steps as if you would be wearing a tracker bracelet but save the money for it! WeRun-Wechat ” enable the step tracking and off you go. Simply search for the Wechat Account ID “” enable the step tracking and off you go. Compare the steps with your friends and try to beat them. New, you can also donate your daily steps for charity! 2 QQ Music Listen to music without having to download a music app and find any song you want! QQmusic follow them and search the artist or the song name. Search for Wechat ID:follow them and search the artist or the song name. 3 What song are you listening to? You like the song which is playing but don't know its name? No problem! Wechat shake can immediately tell you what song you are listening to. Open the shake option, click on music and shake your phone. PUBLIC SERVICES Now this is where the fun starts. Public Services are third party services which you can use directly on Wechat. The things you can do are unlimited. Here some examples 1.DIY postcard 2.Heat maps of your city! 3.Pollution Check 4. Book an appointment at a local hospital 5.Get documents notarized 6.See all sorts of transport schedules In order to find the public services you need to go to your Wechat Wallet. Find Public Services in your wallet. 4 Send a customized postcard Create your own postcard and send it to a friend anywhere in China for 5rmb. Choose a frame, select your picture, write a text, pay the fee and make your friends happy :) Enter the public services and follow the steps above to find the the right program. Follow the below steps to create and send the postcard. 5 Heat Map (See where the people are) This one is my favorite. Want to make sure the place you are going is not too crowded? Or want to see in which club more people are? With this heat map you can follow or avoid the masses! The Forbidden City is crowded Find other things you can do within the public service. Just click and discover. 6 Track your Kuaidi You want to know where your express delivery is at the moment? Wechat can help you. Scan the bar code on the delivery form and see where it is. 7 Compare product prices Are you getting ripped off? Not anymore! Scan the bar code of a product with the Wechat scanner and see the online price of the product and always get the cheapest deal. 8 Mobile Top Up No need to go to the shop to charge your mobile or internet anymore. It is easily done at on Wechat. Cool stuff is you can not only top up internet for your province but all China and even international. Going abroad soon? charge your internet in advance! Go to your wallet and find Mobile Top Up. 9 Transfer Money Transfer money to your friends either by simple transfer or with a hongbao. And if you transfer money to buy something make sure you secure your Wechat Wallet (Click here to see how it is done). You can not only receive or pay money to people in your contact list but also to people you don’t have on your contact list. For this you can simply make a QR code and either set the amount they should pay you or keep it open so the people can decide themselves how much they want to give you. To try the transfer I added my payment QR code in this post. if you like this post and want to support InternsInBeijing you can simply scan the QR Code below and Soyou can simply scan the QR Code below and send a random amount of money :) Long-press to scan QR Code Thank you very much for supporting us. We will continuously try to make your life in China a little bit easier. 10 Buy Gold buy some gold on Wechat. You are only a few clicks away from owning it! If you still have money left after donating to InternsInBeijing you canYou are only a few clicks away from owning it! Search for the Wechat ID: IDwx-Gold Don't send Money Hongbaos anymore! Now its time to share GOLD HONGBAOS to all your friends. Change your Wechat Money to Gold, start sending golden gifts to your friends and amaze them. Follow InternsInBeijing Want to learn more tips for your life in China? Follow us by clicking here. Do you have any questions about Wechat? Ask us in the comments below. For Cooperation add Jeff on Wechat ID: InternsInBeijing Whatsup Beijing? (Click for details) Beijing's Platform for Young Professionals Find Internships, Get Discounts, Attend Career Events, Party at Festivals Touch to Follow us Leave your comments and questions about Wechat below |
A weekly update of Haskell in Arch Linux. Arch now has 705 Haskell packages in AUR. That’s an increase of (again) 33 new packages in the last 14 days. Growth appears to be holding steady at just over 2 new packages a day on Hackage in the first part of November. Noteworthy haskell-icalendar-0.0: “Parser for iCalendar format (RFC2445)” haskell-hmatrix-0.5.0.1: “Linear algebra and numerical computations” haskell-flickr-0.2.2: “Haskell binding to the Flickr API” gitit-0.2.2.1: “Wiki using HAppS, git, and pandoc.” haskell-happs-server-0.9.3: “Web related tools and services.” haddock-2.4.1: “A documentation-generation tool for Haskell libraries” New and updated packages this week tiger-1.0: “Tiger Compiler of Universiteit Utrecht” haskell-ghc-syb-0.1: “SYB instances for the GHC API” haskell-icalendar-0.0: “Parser for iCalendar format (RFC2445)” haskell-hmatrix-0.5.0.1: “Linear algebra and numerical computations” haskell-zipfold-0.0: “Zipping folds” haskell-haskell-src-exts-0.4.1: “Manipulating Haskell source: abstract syntax, lexer, parser, and pretty-printer” haskell-peano-inf-0.5: “Lazy Peano numbers including observable infinity value.” haskell-colour-2.0.0: “A model for human colour/color perception” haskell-hcheat-2008.11.14: “A collection of code cheatsheet” haskell-xosd-0.1.1: “A binding to the X on-screen display” haskell-flickr-0.2.2: “Haskell binding to the Flickr API” haskell-classify-2008.11.13: “Library for classification of media files.” gitit-0.2.2.1: “Wiki using HAppS, git, and pandoc.” haskell-haskell-src-exts-0.3.11: “Manipulating Haskell source: abstract syntax, lexer, parser, and pretty-printer” haskell-hpapi-0.0.1.0: “Binding for the PAPI library” haskell-yjtools-0.9: “some tools for Monad, List, Tuple and so on.” haskell-delimited-text-0.0.1: “Parse character delimited textual data” haskell-process-1.0.1.1: “Process libraries” haskell-peano-inf-0.3: “Lazy Peano numbers including observable infinity value.” haskell-multisetrewrite-0.1.1: “Multi-set rewrite rules with guards and a parallel execution scheme” haskell-language-c-0.3.1: “Analysis and generation of C code” haskell-pugs-compat-0.0.5: “Portable Haskell/POSIX layer for Pugs” haskell-pugs-drift-2.2.3.0: “DrIFT with pugs-specific rules.” haskell-hssyck-0.44: “Fast, lightweight YAML loader and dumper” haskell-mucipher-0.5.0: “A library to produce simple ciphers for use with lambdabot.” haskell-haskell-src-exts-0.3.10: “Manipulating Haskell source: abstract syntax, lexer, parser, and pretty-printer” haskell-monadrandom-0.1.2: “Random-number generation monad.” haskell-uri-template-0.2: “URI template library for Haskell” haskell-peano-inf-0.1: “Lazy Peano numbers including observable infinity value.” haskell-metaobject-0.0.5: “A meta-object system for Haskell based on Perl 6” haskell-stringtable-atom-0.0.5: “Memoize Strings as Atoms for fast comparison and sorting, with maps and sets” haskell-reactive-fieldtrip-0.0.3: “Connect Reactive and FieldTrip” haskell-feed-0.3.5: “Interfacing with RSS (v 0.9x, 2.x, 1.0) + Atom feeds.” haskell-fieldtrip-0.2.2: “Functional 3D” haskell-debugtracehelpers-0.12: “Convenience functions and instances for Debug.Trace” haskell-workflow-0.1: “library for transparent execution of computations across shutdowns and restarts” haskell-utf8-prelude-0.1.6: “Variants of Prelude and System.IO with UTF8 text I/O operations” haskell-debugtracehelpers-0.10: “Convenience functions and instances for Debug.Trace” haskell-phonetic-code-0.1: “Phonetic codes: Soundex and Phonix” haskell-carray-0.1.2: “A C-compatible array library.” haskell-hake-0.9.5: “make tool. ruby : rake = haskell : hake” ehaskell-0.5: “like eruby, ehaskell is embedded haskell.” haskell-reactive-fieldtrip-0.0.2: “Connect Reactive and FieldTrip” haskell-cgi-3001.1.7.0: “A library for writing CGI programs” haskell-reactive-glut-0.0.4: “Connects Reactive and GLUT” haskell-fieldtrip-0.2.1: “Functional 3D” haskell-reactive-0.8.8: “Simple foundation for functional reactive programming” haskell-unamb-0.0.1: “Unambiguous choice” haskell-vector-space-0.5: “Vector & affine spaces, linear maps, and derivatives (requires ghc 6.9)” haskell-bytestring-0.9.1.4: “Fast, packed, strict and lazy byte arrays with a list interface” haskell-binary-0.4.4: “Binary serialisation for Haskell values using lazy ByteStrings” haskell-mime-0.3.0: “Working with MIME types.” haskell-tcache-0.5.4: “A Transactional data cache with configurable persistence” haskell-compact-map-2008.11.9: “Compact Data.Map implementation using Data.Binary” haskell-happs-server-0.9.3: “Web related tools and services.” haskell-happs-ixset-0.9.3: haskell-happs-state-0.9.3: “Event-based distributed state.” haskell-happs-util-0.9.3: “Web framework” haskell-hcheat-2008.11.6: “A collection of code cheatsheet” haskell-mps-2008.11.6: “message passing style helpers” haskell-stream-fusion-0.1.2.1: “Faster Haskell lists using stream fusion” haskell-stb-image-0.1.2: “A wrapper around Sean Barrett’s JPEG/PNG decoder” haskell-compact-map-2008.11.8: “Compact Data.Map implementation using Data.Binary” haskell-hsc3-dot-0.5: “haskell supercollider graph drawing” haskell-hsc3-unsafe-0.5: “Unsafe Haskell SuperCollider” haskell-hsc3-0.5: “Haskell SuperCollider” haskell-hosc-0.5: “Haskell Open Sound Control” haskell-pandoc-1.1: “Conversion between markup formats” ehaskell-0.4: “like eruby, ehaskell is embedded haskell.” haddock-2.4.1: “A documentation-generation tool for Haskell libraries” haskell-vec-0.9.4: “Fixed-length lists and low-dimensional linear algebra.” haskell-utf8-string-0.3.3: “Support for reading and writing UTF8 Strings” ehaskell-0.3: “like eruby, ehaskell is embedded haskell.” haskell-yjtools-0.8: “some tools for Monad, List, Tuple and so on.” haskell-caldims-0.1.0: “Calculation tool and library supporting units” haskell-curl-1.3.3: “Haskell binding to libcurl” haskell-parallel-1.1.0.0: “parallel programming library” haskell-syb-0.1.0.0: “Scrap Your Boilerplate” haskell-hake-0.9: “make tool. ruby : rake = haskell : hake” haskell-arrows-0.4.1: “Arrow classes and transformers” haskell-yjtools-0.7: “some tools for Monad, List, Tuple and so on.” haskell-openglcheck-1.0: “Quickcheck instances for various data structures.” haskell-utf8-prelude-0.1.4: “Variants of Prelude and System.IO using UTF8 text I/O operations and an UTF8 testing tool” haskell-infixapplicative-1.0: “liftA2 for infix operators.” haskell-utf8-string-0.3.2: “Support for reading and writing UTF8 Strings” htags-1.0.1: “A Haskell98 parsing tags program similar to ctags.” haskell-fgl-5.4.2.2: “Martin Erwig’s Functional Graph Library” haskell-refserialize-0.2.3: “Write to and read from Strings maintaining internal memory references” Advertisements |
Buy Photo Veterans line up for assistance as Delaware Congressman John Carney held his third and final State Veterans Office Hours Session at the Millsboro American Legion Post on Monday July 27th with representatives from various Veterans Offices to help veterans get their benefits. (Photo: Special to the News Journal/CHUCK SNYDER)Buy Photo MILLSBORO – If the Veterans Affairs community-based outpatient clinics can’t be adequately staffed with medical professionals, and veterans have difficulty using a program designed to give them non-VA treatment options, Congress and VA should consider easing program rules and getting rid of the clinics altogether, Rep. John Carney said Monday. “The reason for having the CBOCs (community-based outpatient clinics) was to bring care closer to the vets, so they didn’t have to travel all the way up to Elsmere,” Carney said, referring to the VA hospital in Wilmington, where more specialized treatments are available. If they’re not working, he said, “Should we think about doing away with them?” The VA clinic in Georgetown has been particularly vexed with staffing shortages, leading to excessive wait times for treatment over the past year, as reported by VA. Several vets told The News Journal during a well-attended, Carney-sponsored benefits event for veterans at American Legion Post 28 in Millsboro that the clinic has only one full-time doctor, a primary care physician, to deal with thousands of patients, and recently lost its only psychiatrist. They also complain, as have thousands of vets nationwide, that the Veterans Choice program introduced last year and trumpeted as a simple route to non-VA care for those facing long waits for care or who don’t live close to a health care facility, is useless for those who have specialized needs. The Choice card rules state that if a veteran lives within 40 miles’ driving distance of a facility – even a community-based outpatient clinic, or CBOC – they don’t qualify for Choice, even if that facility doesn’t offer the care they need. “I’m concerned that [CBOC understaffing is] eliminating the possibility of our vets using the card, and yet not delivering the service that we had anticipated,” said Carney, a Democrat. “The alternative would be to do away with the 40-mile limit. If it’s not working, we ought to change it, and create some flexibility.” Choice also needs to be expanded, vets and advocates said, because of the difficulty some Delaware veterans who are referred to Wilmington have in traveling there from downstate. Many are aging, can’t drive, have no one to drive them and have to rely on a free shuttle bus that VA runs from Georgetown to Wilmington four times a week. More limited service is provided by groups such as the nonprofit People’s Place in Milford. Either way, the ride is long. “I see old people waiting there at Georgetown – World War II vets – and getting on that bus,” said Patrick Moonan of Millsboro, a disabled Army veteran who gets some medical care at the clinic. “This is the way a World War II veteran is treated? Spend eight hours to go to a doctor’s appointment? Something’s wrong.” “The fact that these people are here today to ask for help is a disgrace, and it’s shameful to this country,” said Judy Mangini of Lewes, who wants to “give every veteran a card that they can use at any doctor’s office, any medical facility and any hospital. And it needs to be done.” Mangini’s husband Paul is a Navy veteran who served in the Vietnam War. VA, while cash-strapped and under the gun to more expeditiously serve veterans more than a year after the scandal over excessive wait times for appointments erupted at the Phoenix VA hospital, isn’t likely to agree to eliminating CBOCs. Carney agreed that even if officials determined that closure made sense, a legislative solution would be challenging. But even in a highly partisan House, he said, “It is an area where I think Democrats and Republicans can work together.” The VA, the nation’s largest integrated health care system, operates more than 1,700 hospitals and other facilities. More than 800 of these are CBOCs, such as the six operated by the Wilmington VA Medical Center. In February, the Georgetown clinic had the nation’s 10th worst average for patients waiting more than 30 days for treatment out of 940 facilities nationwide – a figure that saw a dramatic improvement in May, according to VA’s figures. The VA clinic in Dover has also had staffing problems, Carney said, with the two clinics accounting for much of the wait time problem that has affected the entire Wilmington network. Wilmington, like Phoenix, was also investigated by the VA Inspector General over that issue. The Wilmington report has not been released. “If we’re not spending the money, then we ought to think about structuring it in a way veterans can use it,” Carney said.To help alleviate those delays, Congress gave VA $10 billion to pay for the Choice program. Only a fraction of that money has been spent, due largely to the onerous rules. Citing the underuse, VA asked Congress to let it shift the funds to cover other needs, but was denied. Carney wants it spent for the intended purpose. The Millsboro meeting was the third and final “Veterans Office Hours” event Carney held during July in an effort to connect vets with organizations that could help them overcome difficulties in obtaining benefits or support services. Groups ranged from the VA to state agencies and service organizations. Contact William H. McMichael at (302) 324-2812 or bmcmichael@delawareonline.com. On Twitter: @billmcmichael. Read or Share this story: http://delonline.us/1MSxTJW |
I know my last post was heavy on the caramel as well but hey its caramel, who doesn’t love caramel? And in my book the more the better! Ages ago I made Millionaires Cheesecake as a take on the classic chocolaty caramel treat but recently I fancied a slice of the real deal. Of course I had to bling it up a little, by using dark, milk and white chocolate for the topping but essentially I have stuck to a classic traditional recipe. Crumbly shortcake base and a soft caramel centre with a lovely chocolate topping. This is a classic treat, not just in Scotland where I live (trust me its so popular here!) but worldwide. Some call it caramel shortcake, or millionaires caramel shortcake or just millionaires shortcake; whatever you call it I just call is delicious. Simple, sweet and a perfect snack. The thing I love about this recipe is that the caramel holds its shape really well, but it’s so soft to eat as well, so no hard chewing required. This treat does have 3 stages to it and it can take a little time but each stage is really simple to make. The shortcake is quick to make, back and cool. The caramel is pretty quick to make but takes a bit of time to fully cool and the chocolate topping is quick and simple to make but takes a little patience because it needs a bit of setting time. But don’t be put off by the steps, do as I did, I started it in the morning and just returned to it a couple of times during the day to do the next bit and it was ready by mid afternoon. And though this looks decedent its actually not an expensive recipe to make. A lot of these ingredients you will already have in your cupboards, and you can simplify this by using only one kind of chocolate for the topping, I had all three available but if I had only one I would have just used one I know it still would have tasted amazing. But if you can try to use all three it was really good 🙂 *All measurements in cups are a guide this recipe was made using metric weight* |
Revised school chaplaincy funding arrangements labelled 'arrogant and disgraceful' by High Court challenger Updated Ron Williams, the Queensland father who fought and won both High Court challenges against the school chaplaincy program, says he may challenge the program for a third time now the Federal Government has tweaked its approach to the funding. The Government has asked the states and territories to administer the $244 million scheme, after the High Court ruled it was unconstitutional for the Commonwealth to continue funding it. Mr Williams has slammed the moves to reroute the funding and is calling for a senate inquiry into the program. "I think it's all pretty disgraceful, the callous arrogance being displayed by the Federal Government on this," he told AM. "They seem to regard it as some bizarre kind of game of whack a mole or something that every time the High Court makes a decision, the next part in the game is to try to circumvent it." Mr Williams wants to see the detail of the funding arrangements, but he says if he can see a way, he will challenge the program for a third time. "The entire program has wafted across the past seven years on rhetoric and anecdote and has never been subjected to any scrutiny whatsoever," he said. In June, the court upheld a challenge to the National School Chaplaincy Program, saying providing funding directly to chaplaincy organisations was constitutionally invalid. The Federal Parliamentary Secretary for Education, Scott Ryan, said the High Court found the Commonwealth could not directly fund the program in schools. To get around this, Senator Ryan will write to the states and territories, asking them to administer the funds instead. If they agree, the $244 million program — to run over four years — will remain open to chaplains of any faith as long as they do not attempt to convert students. At least two states are keen, but other jurisdictions say they will not be taking up the offer because the funding is only for religious chaplains, not secular social workers. States divided on inclusion of secular workers Western Australia and Queensland have already put up their hand for a share of funds for the program. Both state governments already supply their own state funding towards school chaplains. West Australian Education Minister Peter Collier says his government will cooperate with the Federal Government's proposal. "The issue as far as the federal funding was concerned was always a technical issue. I'm just pleased that the Federal Government has continued their commitment to fund it and we will cooperate wherever possible to ensure that the chaplaincy program continues to be provided in Western Australian schools," he said. We will be happy to negotiate with the Commonwealth but have no interest in administering the scheme unless the schools have choice for a secular welfare or counsellor. ACT Education Minister Joy Birch "At the moment we have chaplains in around 600 of our 800 public schools and that's testament to the high regard that they are held in by the school communities throughout the state." Queensland Education Minister John Paul Langbroek says he is satisfied with the funding condition that chaplains are not allowed to try to convert students. "There are strict rules in place to ensure that chaplains don't evangelise. It is important to acknowledge the work that chaplains do in schools, and the support that they provide to our students is invaluable," he said. The Federal Government has reiterated that school chaplaincy funding is only for religious workers, not secular social workers. In some parts of Australia, that could see the program stall. ACT Education Minister Joy Birch says schools should have a choice. "We will be happy to negotiate with the Commonwealth but have no interest in administering the scheme unless the schools have the choice for a secular ... counsellor," Ms Birch said. "If the Commonwealth Government was serious about empowering schools and empowering local decision-making of schools, this should apply to the funding opportunities open to schools. "That means that if a school chooses a secular appointment, that should be supported by state and territory governments and Commonwealth governments." South Australian Education Minister Jennifer Rankine also says she will only consider the program if the Federal Government backs down and allows secular social workers to be funded. Topics: community-and-society, religion-and-beliefs, schools, public-schools, education, government-and-politics, federal-government, courts-and-trials, australia First posted |
We started to test Assets Management feature in ChronoMint, which allows creating your own token. Welcome to the Issue #3 of the Sunday TIMEs: Price Update, Dev updates, CEO and CTO in Philippines, Alexandra met up with NEM, new How-To article. Also we’re working on adding KYC (know your customer) and ‘time locked wallets’ features to ChronoMint. Know Your Customer (KYC) allows to identify a person. KYC is required when crypto currency is purchased with fiat (eg. USD, Euro). ChronoBank is working on giving on having this functionality in ChronoMint, which will allow its users to buy crypto currency with fiat money. Time locked wallets allows you to lock some ETH and ERC20 on it by some date. ChonoBank started to work on token crowdsale functionality in ChronoMint. Users will have ability to create their own crowdsales using ChronoBank platform. New ‘How-To’ User Guide We continue our ‘How-To’ series. This week we wrote about how to buy time with Changelly. Next week we are planning to write about all available ChronoMint features and how to use them. And if you have any requests or suggestions about “how-to”, please let us know in the comments or drop an email to info@chronobank.io NEM in Moscow Alexandra caught up with Jeff McDonald Vice President of the NEM Foundation in Moscow conference to discuss ChronoBank and NEM collaboration. News from the CEO Sergei (CEO) and Mike (CTO) were in Philippines this week. Comment of the week ChronoBank’s Walter White indeed works with Jesse Pinkman. Thanks for the idea, @CryptoInsiderX Stay tuned, guys! And, as always, thanks for your support! TIME is trading on the following exchanges: https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/chronobank/#markets It is also available via Changelly service: https://changelly.com/ Website https://chronobank.io/ Twitter https://twitter.com/ChronobankNews Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ChronoBank.io/ Telegram https://telegram.me/chronobank Slack https://chronobank.herokuapp.com |
On January 3, 1521, Pope Leo X issues the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem, which excommunicates Martin Luther from the Catholic Church. Martin Luther, the chief catalyst of Protestantism, was a professor of biblical interpretation at the University of Wittenberg in Germany when he drew up his 95 theses condemning the Catholic Church for its corrupt practice of selling indulgences, or the forgiveness of sins. He followed up the revolutionary work with equally controversial and groundbreaking theological works, and his fiery words set off religious reformers all across Europe. In January 1521, Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther. Three months later, Luther was called to defend his beliefs before Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms, where he was famously defiant. For his refusal to recant his writings, the emperor declared him an outlaw and a heretic. Luther was protected by powerful German princes, however, and by his death in 1546, the course of Western civilization had been significantly altered. |
It is important to consider the different types of settings where ayahuasca or DMT were administered or ingested, since they can be an important variable when evaluating the occurrence of the psychotic episodes reported in the present review. These settings could be basically divided between controlled and uncontrolled contexts. The controlled contexts include ritual or religious ayahuasca use, both within the setting of any of the Brazilian ayahuasca religions ( Santo Daime and União do Vegetal , for example) and in organized retreats and workshops; the controlled settings also include experimental and clinical contexts where ayahuasca or DMT are administered. In the controlled settings, some form of screening, preparation, guidance, and integration are usually present. The uncontrolled or recreational settings could be characterized in those contexts where ayahuasca or DMT are used outside a religious, ritual or experimental/clinical framework, and usually do not have any form of screening, preparation, guidance, and integration. Paterson presented the case of a 42-year-old man (apparently North American, not specified) that suffered a psychotic episode associated with repeated use of smoked DMT [ Paterson et al. 2015 ]. The subject had no personal psychiatric history, but had an extensive history of multiple substance use disorders [alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, 3, 4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, ecstasy), hydrocodone] associated with legal problems (e.g. driving while intoxicated, fined for cannabis possession). Moreover, he had a family history of alcoholism, bipolar disorder, and obsessive–compulsive disorder. When the subject was 39-years old, he had successfully completed a drug-treatment program, but resumed cannabis use afterwards. Just 3 weeks before his hospitalization (at age 42 years), he began smoking DMT, later informing that he had smoked DMT no more than 10 times. At the time of his hospitalization, the subject had several stressors occurring in his life, such as eviction from his apartment, unemployment, and his mother’s death. He arrived at the emergency department, brought by the police, presenting agitated, bizarre, and disinhibited behavior, time disorientation, disorganized thought, and delusions (e.g. being ‘navigated by the stars’). Due to his agitation, he need emergency medication (benzodiazepines) and was admitted to an inpatient psychiatry unit. Over the next 12 days, the subject was hyperverbal and intrusive, and presented paranoid and grandiose delusions (e.g. being able to read minds, interact with ‘aliens’, and control distant events and persons by adopting specific body postures). These body postures were performed by the subject before and for several days after his admission, and were possibly associated with the transient (5 days) elevated creatinine kinase level (2732 units/l) observed upon admission. During these 12 days, the subject was treated with antipsychotics (quetiapine, olanzapine, risperidone) and drugs for controlling impulsivity (divalproex sodium), anxiety (gabapentin), and to improve sleep (hydroxyzine). By day 14, he showed improved insight and judgment, and was discharged on day 21 to a residential drug-treatment program, with no further psychotic symptoms. At 6 months after discharge, he remained treatment compliant and started to reduce his antipsychotic treatment (quetiapine), and was drug and symptom free. Importantly, although the subject stated the he was a long-term cannabis user, and recent cannabis use could have contributed to the psychotic episode, urine toxicology performed 3 days after admission was negative for cannabinoids. According to the authors, since cannabinoids usually persist in the urine of chronic users for several days, this negative result could indicate that the subject had a lower level of cannabis use or was not using cannabis in the weeks before the psychotic episode. Moreover, the negative result suggests that DMT was the main drug associated with the patient’s psychotic symptoms. Warren and colleagues reported a brief description (letter) of a case of a 24-year-old man from rural South Australia that was admitted to hospital after suffering a psychotic episode associated with continuous use of a smokable powder made of DMT-containing plants [ Warren et al. 2013 ]. After being introduced to DMT by his friends and encouraged to investigate about the drug on the internet, the subject collected the leaves, bark, and seeds from two DMT-rich plants ( Phalaris aquatica and an unidentified Acacia species), dried and grounded the botanical material into a fine powder, and then added the powder to a pipe where he regularly used tobacco and cannabis. According to the authors, in the year before his admission the subject was smoking this material with increasing frequency, and in the last 6 months before the admission, the subject developed ‘a complex delusional spiritual belief system and was pursuing enlightenment.’ This pattern of increased use and delusional thinking led the subject to a hospital admission for presenting positive symptoms of schizophrenia. Importantly, the subject had a family history of psychotic disorder (not specified), and also an extensive prior experience with tobacco, cannabis, methamphetamines, and DMT. These factors complicate the assessment of the possible role of DMT in this episode. Umut and colleagues described the case of a 19-year-old North American male who experienced sudden and dramatic psychotic symptoms immediately after consuming a solution of DMT and cannabis (route of administration not specified, but probably smoked) [ Umut et al. 2011 ]. He had no personal or family psychiatric history, but had been using cannabis for the last 3 years before the episode: in the first 1.5 years, he used cannabis ‘rarely and irregularly’, but in the last 1.5 years he was using 1–2 joints/day. The subject lived in Turkey and had just returned from a 3-month period living abroad with his father, 40 days before the episode. In the evening when he returned home, the subject experienced an episode of psychotic mania characterized by continuous swearing, delusional ideas (such as believing that he was a king), increased speech, excessive money spending and joyfulness, inappropriate dressing and behavior (such as dancing in the streets and being rapidly familiar and getting friendly with people he did not know before). Because he had no psychiatric history, this psychotic mania episode was later associated with his 3-year period of continuous cannabis use. His mother thought that these symptoms were related to his happiness in returning home, and they did not seek any treatment. After this episode, the subject used cannabis a few more times and 15 days later, a friend offered him a DMT/cannabis solution (probably smoked). After using this solution, the subject experienced intense psychotic symptoms such as feeling that he was being directed by another power, seeing musical sounds in the sky, contacting creatures from outer space, and believing that people could read his thoughts and were saying numbers to him while he was walking in the street, among other symptoms. His mother got worried with these sudden and dramatic symptoms and started looking for help, taking him to a private hospital where cannabis metabolites were detected in the subject’s urine 20 days after DMT consumption. It is not clear in the report when exactly the subject went to this hospital or what happened in those 20 days, but it seems that the subject did not receive any treatment in this period. The subject received a prescription (not specified) in the private hospital, but did not use the medication. After being convinced, he was brought to another hospital 3 days later, where he received a 12-day inpatient antipsychotic treatment (haloperidol, risperidone). After being discharged, the subject continued to take his medications (risperidone) regularly and was followed for approximately 2.5 months, and the psychotic symptoms gradually remitted. The authors concluded that DMT exacerbated the psychotic symptoms of a previous ongoing cannabis-induced psychotic mania. Ayahuasca Lima and colleagues reported the incidence of psychiatric occurrences from data collected in an institutional study of the União do Vegetal (UDV) to monitor the psychological health of its members [Lima et al. 2002; Lima and Tófoli, 2011]. The UDV is a Brazilian syncretic religion that regularly uses ayahuasca in a ritual setting twice monthly, but often as frequently as several times per week [Labate et al. 2009]. In a conference abstract, Lima and colleagues reported results from UDV members from the period of 1996–2000 [Lima et al. 2002]. Lima and Tófoli reviewed and updated the previous data, presenting results from 1994 to 2007 [Lima and Tófoli, 2011]. Lima and colleagues reported seven cases of psychotic disorders in the UDV context [Lima et al. 2002]. According to their report, two cases did not present any relation with ayahuasca; in three cases, ayahuasca apparently increased symptoms of previous psychotic episodes; in one case, ayahuasca was associated with other factors (not specified), and only one case presented immediate temporal relation with ayahuasca and there were no psychotic antecedents. The authors affirmed that this incidence of psychotic disorders is similar to that of the general population, although they did not inform the sample size of the study nor how they calculated this incidence. Lima and Tófoli reported data from 1994 to 2007 and stated that there were 51 cases of psychiatric occurrences among UDV members, 29 of which were psychotic disorders: schizophrenia (n = 9), acute and transient psychotic disorders (n = 4), unspecified nonorganic (n = 2), severe depressive episode with psychotic symptoms (n = 4), substance-induced psychosis (n = 6), and bipolar affective disorder with psychotic manic episode (n = 4) [Lima and Tófoli, 2011]. Until 2007, 18 of these cases (62%) were subjects that were no longer participating in ayahuasca rituals, while 11 were still participating. Moreover, detailed evaluation of the cases showed that in only 19 of the 29 (65.5%) ayahuasca seemed to be the main contributing factor. In the other 10 cases, there was no immediate temporal relation between ayahuasca intake and the psychotic episode, suggesting that ayahuasca might not have significantly contributed for the development of the case. Among the cases related to ayahuasca intake, in four cases there was an immediate temporal relation between ayahuasca consumption and the psychotic episode, and subjects had no psychiatric history; in five cases there was an immediate temporal relation between ayahuasca intake and the psychotic episode, but subjects had a psychiatric history with or without an active symptomatology; in 10 cases there was no immediate temporal relation between ayahuasca consumption and the psychotic episode, but ayahuasca may have contributed with others factors for the development of the case. It is important to note that, according to the authors, even in the cases were ayahuasca may have produced a psychotic episode in subjects without a psychiatric history, the detailed examination of the cases suggested the presence of traces of premorbid personality factors that could also influence the occurrence of a psychotic episode. Gable made a comment on the data presented by the UDV in the legal battle that this group won regarding their right to use ayahuasca in the United States [Supreme Court of the United States, 2005; Gable, 2007]. Gable reported that over a period of 5 years, the UDV documented between 13 and 24 cases in which ayahuasca might have been a contributing factor in a psychotic incident. Although the exact years were not specified, it seems that the data were obtained from 2000 to 2005, since the Supreme Court report was published in 2005. Thus, it seems highly probable that at least part of this sample was previously reported by Lima and Tófoli, since they reported data from within the UDV context in this same period (from 1994 until 2007) [Lima and Tófoli, 2011]. According to the document from the Supreme Court of the United States [Supreme Court of the United States, 2005], the United States ‘government claims that hoasca (note from the authors: hoasca is the name of ayahuasca within the UDV context) has caused 24 psychotic incidents in Brazil over a period of 5–6 years’. Nevertheless, ‘a review of the entire record, however, reveals that only 8–13 arguably psychotic incidents have been documented’. These incidents occurred from an estimated total of 25 000 servings of ayahuasca according to Gable, but the document from the Supreme Court of the United States informed the total of 250 000 servings [Gable, 2007]. Both references failed to inform how these numbers were estimated. Gable reported that the rate of psychotic episodes in the UDV context is under 1% (0.052–0.096%, considering 13–24 episodes in 25.000 servings) [Gable, 2007], which is similar to the estimated prevalence rate of psychosis/schizophrenia in the general population [Stilo and Murray, 2010]. If we consider the 8–13 ‘arguably psychotic incidents’ occurring reported in 250 000 servings, as reported by the document from the Supreme Court of the United States, the rate is even lower: 0.0032–0.0052%. Furthermore, the document from the Supreme Court of the United States stated that ‘many or most of these psychological problems were transient and resolved’, and that ‘a review of the case histories in the record reveals that in many of those, either no truly psychotic incident was identified or no causal link to hoasca was found’. Dos Santos and Strassman reported the case of a 21-year-old Brazilian male who experienced two consecutive psychotic episodes after participation in ayahuasca rituals [dos Santos and Strassman, 2008]. The episodes were separated by 1 year from each other, and both occurred during the rituals but endured several days/weeks afterwards. Neither the subject nor his parents had a history of psychosis. The subject had used other hallucinogens (LSD and psilocybin) on several occasions, but did not report any adverse effects associated with these experiences. He was also a nearly daily cannabis user for the preceding 6 years before the first psychotic episode, with no significant adverse effects associated with this pattern of cannabis use. Before the first psychotic episode, the subject had already used ayahuasca ‘more or less twice per month, for about 2 years’, without incident. Sometimes he used cannabis concurrently, also without incident. However, during one particular ayahuasca ritual, the subject ingested ayahuasca and combined its use with cannabis, and sometime later (not specified) he experienced very intense paranoid and suicidal ideas. Moreover, the subject also superficially cut himself with a sharp-edged ceremonial item during the ritual. Psychotic/paranoid symptoms persisted for 2–3 weeks, and only subsided and resolved after a 1-year antipsychotic treatment (risperidone). During this year, the subject did not use ayahuasca, cannabis, or other drugs, and remained symptom free. At 1 year later, after the treatment had finished, the subject wished to continue participation in ayahuasca rituals. He ingested ayahuasca again in three separated ceremonies, and was not using cannabis any more. Although no adverse reactions occurred in the first two rituals, during the third one, he again experienced paranoid and suicidal ideation. As in the first episode, symptoms persisted for 2–3 weeks and only resolved after another year of risperidone treatment. The previous use of other hallucinogens and the concomitant use of cannabis by this subject with no personal or family history of psychotic disorders makes it difficult to establish the exact role of ayahuasca in this case, especially regarding the first episode. In the second one, although it happened a year later and there was no concomitant use of cannabis, the subject might have developed a sensibility or predisposition to psychotic experiences after his first episode. We had the opportunity to follow-up this case until 2016. After the second episode and treatment, the subject continued to use cannabis daily and occasionally used other hallucinogenic [LSD, psilocybin, ketamine, 2, 5-dimethoxy-4-iodophenethylamine (2C-I)] and nonhallucinogenic drugs [MDMA, γ-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), alcohol, tobacco, amphetamines, cocaine, heroin], but did not use ayahuasca anymore. Approximately 1 year after the second treatment, the subject experimented with MDMA on four occasions separated by 3–4 months, and had another paranoid/psychotic episode in the fourth occasion, followed by another year of successful risperidone treatment. Some months after this third treatment, the subject experimented the hallucinogenic phenethylamine 2C-I and had another paranoid episode, again followed by a year of risperidone treatment. A last psychotic episode occurred some months after the last treatment, and this time it was apparently associated with excessive alcohol intake. This episode was also successfully treated with risperidone for another year. The subject did not use any hallucinogen after this last episode and did not have other psychotic symptoms afterwards. Interestingly, he continued to use cannabis daily until 2016, including during all antipsychotic treatments, apparently without increases in psychotic symptoms. Szmulewicz and colleagues reported the case of a 30-year-old Argentinian man who developed a manic episode after participating in a 4-day ayahuasca retreat [Szmulewicz et al. 2015]. The subject had traveled to Brazil for 3 months before to learn about South American tribes, and 2 weeks before the travel he experienced a 10-day period compatible with a hypomanic episode: increased energy, self-esteem, and goal-directed activity, sleep disorder, pressured speech, and running thoughts. Although there was no previous diagnosis of manic or depressive episodes, there was a prior history, as the subject stated that he had experienced this kind of hypomanic episodes several times before. Moreover, his father had been diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder type I. According to the subject and his mother, he did not present any manic symptoms before the ayahuasca ritual. At 2 days after the last ayahuasca use (the number of ayahuasca doses was not specified), the subject began to experience mystical and paranoid delusional ideas, auditory hallucinations, racing thoughts, disorganized behavior, elevated energy, and euphoria. Afterwards (time not specified), the subject was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Brazil, where he received antipsychotic/benzodiazepine treatment (risperidone and clonazepam) for a month. After this period, he was symptom-free, was discharged with the same medications, and traveled back to Argentina to continue treatment. When he arrived in a hospital in Argentina, the subject had a depressive episode characterized by significant anhedonia, hopelessness, apathy, ideas of ruin, and clinophilia (tendency to spend extra time in bed, without necessarily sleeping). Surprisingly, the authors suggested that this was not a case of a psychotic/mania episode induced by ayahuasca, but an ‘antidepressant-induced mania due to excessively prolonged use of a substance with antidepressant properties’ in a man with a personal history of hypomania and a family history of bipolar disorder. Interestingly, the authors stated that this ‘substance with antidepressant properties’ was harmine, one of the main ayahuasca components [McKenna and Riba, 2015]. It is not clear why the authors suggested that ayahuasca and harmine were not part of the same ‘substance’. One last unpublished case was reported by phone to one of us and involved a 40-year-old woman who suffered a psychotic crisis during an ayahuasca weekend retreat She attended the retreat for self-improvement purposes following the advice of a friend that told her that ayahuasca was a potential tool for helping to solve daily difficulties and that she could experience beneficial effects by participating in the retreat. The subject had no history of mental health problems nor had psychiatric family antecedents. She had a history of occasional cannabis use years before the episode, always in small quantities. Also, some months before the ayahuasca retirement, she experimented with a medium dose of MDMA in a house setting with her partner, having a good experience. The subject took ayahuasca on two occasions: on Friday night and in Saturday evening. The subject did not experience side effects during the Friday session and she spent all Saturday in a normal state. But just before taking ayahuasca in the Saturday session, she started to manifest an incoherent discourse, according to the friend that was with her at the retreat. About 10–15 minutes after taking ayahuasca, before the psychoactive effects have begun, she started to develop paranoid ideas, delusional thinking and aberrant behavior. The content of her speech was related with personal events involving aspects of her life and aspects of the life of some of her relatives and near friends, including possible past traumatic experiences not remembered until that moment. She remained in that state for more than 24 hours. All Sunday night she stayed awake, talking endlessly in a constant and incoherent monologue with evident suffering and uncontrolled movements. On Monday, a psychologist attending the ceremony suggested to the guides to administer an antipsychotic (2 mg of risperidone). Less than 30 min after taking risperidone her psychotic symptomatology disappeared, and she asked to the people in the retreat what has happened to her. In the following hours, she slowly remembered the content of the session, and after being almost 48 hours awake and in a psychotic state she finally slept. After 7 hours of sleep, she woke up again in a psychotic state that lasted for 2 days, when she was finally taken to a hospital, where she received antipsychotic treatment (haloperidol) and her psychotic state was again interrupted. The antipsychotic treatment was maintained for a few months, and she did not experience psychotic symptoms anymore. One of us had the opportunity to talk with her by phone at some moment while she was in the psychotic state and to interview by phone some other people present in the retreat and her partner along all the psychotic process. After the haloperidol treatment, we lost contact with the patient, but 1 year later, we could interview her again. The psychotic symptoms never came back and she had a normal life, although she preferred not to talk about what happened in the ceremony since she just wanted to forget it. Our institution does not require ethics approval for reporting individual cases, and the subject provided written informed consent for including the reported information in this article. |
(Reuters Health) - One in four children younger than age five who were infected with Salmonella got the disease from a pet reptile in a recent UK study. The children with reptile-associated infections were significantly younger than other kids with Salmonella infections, more likely to be hospitalized and more likely to have invasive infections that affected the blood or brain. “In a household with both toddlers (or young infants) and reptile pets, there is good reason to exercise reasonable caution,” Dr. Daniel Murphy of Royal Cornwall Hospital in England told Reuters Health by email. Salmonella is a type of bacterium most often linked with food poisoning, and generally causes symptoms such as nausea and vomiting. However, noted Murphy, who led the new study, more serious cases can cause blood poisoning, meningitis and bone infection. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1.2 million Americans are infected with Salmonella every year. People with compromised immune systems, as well as young children and infants are the most susceptible to infection, according to Dr. Christoph Berger of the University Children’s Hospital Zurich in Switzerland, who was not involved in the study. Murphy and another researcher used data on Salmonella infections in children under five years old in the South West area of the UK from 2010 to 2013. They examined the records to determine whether the infected child had been exposed to reptiles like lizards or snakes and whether he or she had been hospitalized for the infection. Of the 175 cases examined, 48 children had been exposed to reptiles. Among those with reptile exposure, about half were hospitalized – compared to less than one fifth of the children without reptile exposure. The median age of kids with Salmonella cases linked to reptiles was six months old, compared to about one year among kids not exposed to reptiles. The researchers write in Archives of Diseases in Childhood that there are multiple strains of Salmonella bacteria and the ones associated with reptiles tend to be different from those seen in food poisoning, which may explain the more severe symptoms seen in reptile-associated cases. Eight of the 48 children with infections linked to reptiles had blood infections, meningitis or colitis. In comparison, only four of 127 cases not associated with reptiles had such serious infections. Salmonella is transferred from pets to humans when a reptile excretes the bacteria out of its gut, Murphy said. This is especially dangerous for young toddlers, who may be in an “oral exploration phase” and are more likely to ingest the bacteria, he said. Berger recommended hand washing after any contact with turtles and other reptiles, but also noted that for children under one year, “there is a high risk for indirect transmission and disease caused by Salmonella (even if the baby has no direct contact with the reptile.)” Murphy and his coauthor caution that as indoor reptiles become more popular as pets, more children are likely to be hospitalized with Salmonella infections and doctors need to be aware of this risk. Murphy recommends that parents of young children with indoor reptile pets should consider restricting the reptile’s access to the same spaces the child uses. Parents of young children looking to get a reptile “should consider holding off on that until the child is past the oral exploration stage, stopped crawling and old enough to wash their own hands,” he said. SOURCE: bmj.co/1tBKYmd Archives of Diseases in Childhood, online December 22, 2014. |
4Chan, the imageboard whose name has since become synonymous with internet villainy, celebrated its 13th year online this past Saturday. A day later, the site’s owner, Hiroyuki Nishimura, posted a thread titled, “Winter is coming.” The message was simple: we’re broke. The options as he sees them are to inundate users with aggressive ads, sell more 4Chan Passes (a premium feature similar to Reddit Gold), or to cut down on file size limits and begin shutting down whole sections of the site. “4Chan could keep running because of many courtesies, users, volunteers, service providers giving us low rate, and advertisers. These are a kind of wheel. 4Chan stops without one of them,” Nishimura told Gizmodo over email. Banner ads, it seems, were the spoke that has apparently broken. “Ads don’t work well on [the] internet in [the] US. Actually, in Japan it still does. [The] Japanese don’t use ad block [as] much as here,” he wrote. Backtracking on part of his proposed plan he added, “I don’t think pop up and/or malicious ads work.” Advertisement So what’s 4Chan to do for money? Seemingly a couple well-wishers stepped forward, namely Minecraft billionaire Markus “Notch” Persson and pharma troll Martin Shkreli. While Notch’s tweet has since been deleted, Shkreli’s offer to buy out the floundering imageboard is being taken at face value. However, Nishimura admitted, “We have not received [Shkreli’s] offer yet. So it’s not serious. I think.” Some users suggested running 4Chan solely off donations. Nishimura hasn’t publicly written off the idea. “Donation-based is good for one time,” he told Gizmodo. “To pay running cost by donations are difficult. Only wikipedia can do it.” Advertisement Among the more pervasive suggestions, strangely, was a call to shut down the site’s massive /pol/ board (“politically incorrect”) a known breeding-ground for the alt-right. While /b/ (“random”) is more often associated with 4Chan’s influence, in recent years /pol/ has been the rotten core of a site which seems ready to move past its bad reputation. Elsewhere, the threat of 4Chan’s potential shuttering caused a stir in more radicalized splinter imageboards like the de-indexed 8Chan and GamerGate headquarters Endchan. While chaos on a reigning service could be seen as a good thing for competitors—Voat’s attempts to poach Redditors and Vid.me’s peerless thirst during YouTube drama—these sites are actively resisting the influx of 4Chan’s potential “refugees.” Advertisement Threads detailed potential “containment strategies” to ghettoize incoming 4Channers—often referred to derisively as halfchan or cuckchan as a form of imageboard elitism. “On the off-chance that something really does happen, and we (along with 8chan) get an influx of new shitposters, we’ll just jump ship yet again,” one Endchan user wrote. “Anyone who stuck with 4chan till this point is not someone I want to share my dank memes with.” Since buying the site from its founder Chris “moot” Poole almost exactly a year ago, Nishimura has tried to maintain the status quo, something he has experience in. (Nishimura is best known as the founder of Japanese imageboard 2Chan, the site that influenced 4Chan’s birth.) Now he claims he failed to do so. Does this signal the imminent death of one of the most hated sites on the internet? Advertisement “I have heard 4Chan have been always like this (sic),” Nishimura wrote to Gizmodo, implying the site’s operations have always been chaotic. It’s uncertain how 4Chan managed to evade its own destruction for the past 13 years, or if there’s a willingness among users or advertisers to let it cheat death one more time. Update 10/4/16 5:45pm EDT: Despite all the bluster about rampant server costs and the potential for shutting down boards, 4Chan created a new board today, according to the site’s blotter. /vip/ is viewable to all users, but only those who purchase a 4Chan Pass can post to it. Naturally, some people are rather unhappy about it. |
Turns out Inbox isn’t the only app Google had updates for today. The company announced a few new features for Keep – its note-taking app – that should help make a bit more sense of your reminders and tasks. First up, a new Chrome extension allows you to add a link to save directly in Keep, along with some information about the site. Alternatively, you could select some text to save it directly into a note as well. There’s an Android analog too: you can now use the ‘Share via’ function in Chrome (or other apps) to save information directly to Keep. Finally, you can now use hashtags to create labels. While it might look a little sloppier than the old implementation, it’s a whole lot easier. Previously, you’d have to use the left hand menu bar from your list of notes to create a new label, which isn’t very useful when you’re in the middle of writing a note. I basically have never used labels for this reason, but the new implementation makes that likely to change. The updates are rolling out to the Play Store and iOS now, and you can download the Chrome extension here. Stay on task with today’s updates in Google Keep on Google Docs Blog Read next: Facebook Messenger launches group calls globally [Update] |
Advanced Guide to Night Game This guide will lay out how to get extremely quick pulls from night game venues. The best type of venue to run this style of game in is medium to large size dance clubs. The following is a quick primer on how its done: 1) Dress Edgy. Learn how to dress (wearing clothes that fit, matches up with your skin tone, and makes you look more fit) and then add a sexual touch to it. This can be as easy as unbuttoning your shirt one more button than most guys do, wearing your clothes a bit tighter than most, showing off the good parts of your body, ect. You can find a more complete guide to dressing well here. 2) Have a sexual vibe. This is related to #1 and I have written about it before. Basically, be a man that is able to amp up sexual tension. Talk slow and sensually and add pauses to build intrigue, be flirty, exude strong sexual eye contact, and be in a sexual state. 3) Figure out the club’s rhythm. For example, if a club opens at 10 and closes at 3, most women wont be ready to pull until 12 at the earliest and most likely closer to 1. Women spend a lot of time getting ready before they go out. When they finally hit the club they wanna show themselves off, drink, hang with their friends, and blow off some steam. You have to let them accomplish all of this before they are ready to be pulled. 4) Have fun for the first few hours. Lets say the club’s hours are 10 – 3 and you get there at 11. Because of the cubs rhythm you know you should wait until 1 to try and pull. So what do you do? The same thing the women are doing. HAVE FUN. Drink beers, dance, have fun with your buddies, build momentum, and let off some steam. 5) keep an eye out for DTF girls. In “The Night Game Blueprint” I detailed what I call “DTF girls.” These are chicks that are dick hunting and are looking for a guy to go home with. Some DTF signals to look for: – Girls showing a lot of skin/dressed in a very sexual way – Eyes constantly wondering around (looking for hot guys) – Leaves her friends a lot to go to the bathroom (making it easy for guys to approach them) – Hold eye contact with you – Gives your proximity – Girls exhibiting overexertions (girls trying to get noticed so they will get approached) – Girls who take up a lot of space on the dance floor – Girls who are there alone 6) Approach. When the rhythm gets right (in our case 1 AM) its time to approach. By now you should have found many girls who meet the above criteria. Approach the nearest hottest one. 7) Test her compliance. As soon as you approach you need to test how compliant and open she is. – Hold up your hand for a high five (if its loud dont worry about speaking yet) – Spin her around – Pull her in close by her hips – Take a step back and then pull her in again – Move her hair back – Whisper something sexy in her ear That logical progression is to be done right after you approach and should be done very quickly. Doing the above things test her compliance and if any any point she doesn’t let you do one of the things, walk away and approach another girl. Remember, the goal of this method is to get no bullshit fast pulls. Your doing this in big clubs so their are many girls! 8) Isolate her. If she passes all the above compliance test its time to isolate her. This in itself is also a compliance test. If she wont isolate with you then walk away. “Lets move over there.” Thats all you have to say. I like to move girls over to a couch or chair. 9) Escalate very fast. Using my ESP Model of Escalation as a guide escalate on her very fast. If you move her to a couch or chair, have her sit on your lap. Use strong sexual eye contact and some “shock and awe.” If you correctly screen well and approached a chick who is looking for dick, passed your compliance test, isolated with you, and accepts your escalations you will be able to pull her very soon. Don’t waste time. Escalate for 10 minutes at max and then do “the trigger.” 10) Do The Trigger. The trigger technique is where you do one last major escalation move to trigger a major spike in sexual tension and making her very horny. Also, it is again a bit of a compliance test. In the above scenario where your sitting on a couch a good trigger technique would be picking her up without waring, walking over to the nearest wall, pin her against it, and go in for the kiss but stop right before your lips touch, give her very strong sexual eye contact for a few seconds, lick her lips then sensually whisper in her ear, “lets get out of here.” Be creative, do some experimentation, and you will find some of your own good triggers. All it has to do is immediately and effectively spike her horyniess up. 11) Pull immediately. As soon as you perform the trigger technique, pull her out of the club and back to the sex location. This can be your place, her place, even a bathroom. Putting it all together Here is what it look likes: You go to the local club with your buddies. You drink, dance, be social and have a killer time. Around 1 you approach a chick on the edge of the dance floor who was dressed super sexy, and glancing around a lot. You walk up, hold out your hand for a high five. When she gives you a high five you kept a hold of her hand and spun her around. You pulled her in, took a small step back and pulled her in more. You gave her some sexual eye contact and a slight smile before moving her hair back and whispering in her ear about how sexy she dances. You take her by the hand and tell her to follow you. Once over on the couch you sit her on your lap. You ask her name and give yours back. All the while your giving her sexual eye contact and feeling up her legs. You tell her that shes driving you fucking crazy and how its her fault (shock and awe). Out of nowhere, in the middle of one of her sentences you hoist her up and carry her fireman style a few steps, set her down and push her back into the wall (keep one of your hands behind her head so that her head doesn’t hit the wall hard) then you tease the fuck outta her with an “almost-kiss.” You take her hand and pull her out of the club, getting a sly, knowing smile from your buddies as you leave with her. Total elapsed time: 31 minutes. Many times it wont always go that smooth and often you may have to approach a few women but when your game gets tight the above method is great for getting super quick lays. To Learn even more about fast seduction and pulling women home quickly you can click here. Advertisements |
Herds of cows on British farms have killed 74 people in the past 15 years, new figures show, making them at least twice as dangerous as dogs. Farmers have been instructed to make their land safer to avoid further deaths. According to new data from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), 18 victims of attacks by cows were members of the public, with the remaining 56 people farmworkers. Of the 18 non-farmer victims, two were over 60 and four incidents took place during the summer of 2015. The National Farmers Union (NFU) distributed information urging dog-walkers to let their pets run away if a cow charges to protect themselves. Read more HSE’s agricultural advisory committee also urged farmers to beef up security by putting up signs alerting the public to potentially rogue animals and create “protected walkways.” The HSE report found that most of the deaths involved bulls or cows that had recently given birth, and suggested farmers make more of an effort to keep these animals away from public footpaths. “As 70 percent of these deaths involved either a bull or newly calved cow, activities with these… stock should be very carefully planned,” the report said. Janet Davis, policy officer at the Ramblers Association, said: “Farmers are under a legal obligation not to endanger people crossing their land.” The chairman of the National Farmers’ Union livestock board, Charles Sercombe, added that ramblers may also be to blame. “People don’t understand animal behavior,” he said. The report comes after the death of Mike Porter in 2013, who was trampled by cows while walking through fields in Wiltshire. The HSE is deciding whether or not to prosecute farmer Brian Godwin, who owns the animals. Porter’s death was the fourth cattle attack on his land. Another victim of Godwin’s cows, David Billington, survived to tell the tale, but said: “Until the death of Mike Porter, not enough had been done to protect the public.” While cattle may have killed twice as many people as dogs, the number of injuries caused by man’s best friend has also increased. New figures released in May showed that hospital admissions resulting from canine attacks have risen by 76 percent over the past decade. |
Hillary Clinton campaigned against Trump with the claim that at least half of his supporters could be put in what she called a “basket of deplorables.” Now, she’s admitted that her 50-percent estimate was overstated by about 49.5 percent. Apparently, that’s What Happened. Speaking with radio host Hugh Hewitt (via Breitbart) this week on her newly released book, “What Happened,” Clinton was asked if she actually believed if the 62.9 million Americans who voted for President Trump were white nationalists and racists. Hugh Hewitt: Of the 62.9 million people who voted for President Trump, do you have a number in your mind that you think are actually white nationalist racists of that 62.9 million, a real number? Hillary Clinton: No, I don’t. … Hugh Hewitt: Do you think there are more than a half million, you know, honest-to-God white nationalists running around the United States? Hillary Clinton: Probably not, no. Even Clinton, who embraced identity politics to bolster her popularity with the left, couldn’t bring herself to claim that such a small fraction of the people who voted for Trump were white nationalists. As of November 2017, an estimated 326 million people live in the United States of America. However, she expressed her opinion with the caveat that there are more white nationalists than she thought in the United States, citing the protest in Charlottesville as an example of their size. “They have made common cause with the President’s agenda out of their own mouth that he is someone that they are counting on to promote it,” she said, adding that she was worried white nationalists would receive a larger audience due to the Internet. “Unfortunately, their views, which used to be quite beyond the mainstream, you know, have a much broader audience now, because you know, of being online and having outlets and media presence that can promote those attitudes,” said Clinton. Over the past year, the mainstream media has given neo-Nazis like Richard Spencer a platform, manufacturing his popularity and celebrating him as both “dapper” and “charismatic.” Thoroughly disengaged from reality, Clinton doubled down on her calls for political correctness. “I think there are people who are unfortunately kind of reverting back to rather virulent attitudes about race in part because I think that it’s become ‘politically acceptable’ — no longer politically correct to try to overcome our own feelings that often block us from seeing each other as fellow human beings,” she said. Despite her loss at the polls, it’s clear that Clinton hasn’t learned a damn thing. Sources: Hugh Hewitt, Breitbart WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR, BITCH? BECOME A DANGEROUS VIP FOR AS LITTLE AS $3.95 A MONTH You get all our best writing, MILO’S VIP-ONLY podcast and a bunch of other decent stuff. SIGN ME UP! |
Around 1850, if a visitor arrived in London and wanted to eat food distinctive to the city, it would be easy. This was the world’s most rapidly industrialised city. Its population was more than three times that of New York City and five times that of St Petersburg; its food supply was more eclectic and adulterated than anywhere in Europe (microscope analysis showed that it was impossible to buy mustard in 1850s London in a pure state). Yet every Londoner in 1850 still ate the same bread. As George Dodd noted in his panoramic book The Food of London in 1853: “A Loaf of wheaten bread is a London staple; [a worker] demands it as well as a peer”. Everyone knew that the standard loaf of London was a ‘quartern loaf’ weighing around two kilos, much bigger than a modern loaf. Despite London’s modernity, bread was still made by hand, kneaded by a man “straddling and wriggling on the end of a lever or pole”. George Dodd found it strange that “in the greatest city in the world, we have nothing that can be called a bread-factory”. Germans in London, such as the chemist Frederick Accum, found London bread to be poor quality – routinely adulterated with alum, a chemical to improve the rise. But compared to modern British supermarket bread, it was still a hearty, crusty loaf, made from a slow-acting ferment of boiled potatoes mashed with yeast. There were 2,500 bakers making and selling this quartern bread in London in 1853. It was the most basic way for a Londoner to satisfy hunger; a single flavour and texture uniting rich and poor. If someone asked us for ‘London bread’ today, where would we direct them? Would we offer them the chewy-warm bagels of Brick Lane or the flat moreish chapatis of the Indian restaurants on Drummond Street, near Euston? If we took them to Borough Market, we could feed them loaves lovelier and purer than those Victorian quarterns. There are now artisanal bakers in London who make sourdoughs of better quality than London bread at any time in the past: ovals of rye and wholemeal, long sticks studded with currants and hazelnuts, domes of sturdy white sourdough with concentric floured circles on top. But at £4 and upwards for a loaf, we couldn’t honestly pretend that such bread is a true London staple. For most of the eight million who live and work in London, ‘bread’ means an industrial sliced loaf bought from the local supermarket: flabby, hardly proved and packed with additives – the same unsatisfactory bread found everywhere in Britain. There were 2,500 bakers making and selling this quartern bread in London in 1853 Perhaps the biggest change in London food over the past 200 years is that it has become so diffuse, from the Vietnamese restaurants of Kingsland Road to the Full English eaten at formica tables at E. Pellicci on Bethnal Green Road. It is hard to say what constitutes a quintessential taste of the city. Even in 1853, George Dodd felt that the food of Londoners was “so infinitely varied as to meet all the caprices of taste”. London already had spicy curries from India and green tea from China. Thanks to the steam revolution, global delicacies were available to those with the money to buy them. Railways brought pineapples from the West Indies, lemons from Sicily and oranges packed in oblong boxes (London had a passion for oranges then, eating 100m a year, a quarter of them sold through street sellers and theatres and the rest sold by shopkeepers). In the fruit warehouses of Botolph and Pudding Lanes, there was a profusion of exotic and domestic produce in heaped-up pyramids: “grapes, chestnuts, pineapples, citrons, hazelnuts”. But when it came to seasonal produce, the whole city ate in sync. Sellers put notices in The Times to announce that Jersey pears had just come into season or that East Lothian potatoes had arrived. There used to be a common language of food in the city, whereas now we have incoherent Babel of many cuisines, often exciting but hard to decipher. Take sandwiches. Around 1851, according to Henry Mayhew, the great social investigator, 436,800 sandwiches were sold on the streets of London every year, but all of them were ham. It was a hard life for the ham sandwich sellers, whose customers stumbled drunk out of taverns and West End theatres. “I’ve been bilked by cabmen”, complained one ham sandwich seller, who told Mayhew that cabmen sometimes offered to fight him for a sandwich instead of paying for it. The sandwiches – which cost a penny – always consisted of boiled ham, sliced as meagrely as the seller could get away with, slapped between two slices of quartern bread with some mustard. This was another London staple. Fast forward to 1992, and sandwiches were more beloved than ever in this workaholic city, with 3m of them sold in a year from a single branch of Marks and Spencer, in Moorgate. Unlike in 1851, the ham for the sandwiches was not boiled by hand by the person selling them, but assembled in far-away factories by unknown workers. The London sandwich is now many things, from the damp sand-wedges sold in Boots or Pret a Manger to the more distinctive offerings such as Vietnamese banh mi in Broadway Market, or the bacon butties at Hawksmoor or St John. Fish and fowl London was once a city with clearly defined tastes. Where Paris was a place of poultry and melons, London was a metropolis of herrings and gooseberries. Londoners were fish-mad. In the summer, you could take a riverboat to Greenwich to eat a whitebait dinner. In 1849, 9.8m eels were sold at Billingsgate market – nearly four whole eels for every man, woman and child in the city. That year, Billingsgate also sold 250,000 barrels of fresh herring with 100 herring to the barrel, and 100,000 barrels of salted red herrings with 500 to the barrel (20 red herrings per person), not to mention all the bloaters from Yarmouth and mackerel and live cod and salt cod and oysters and whelks – the latter were sold cheaply from stalls, cooked in liquor. It’s still possible to get stupendously good fish in London, from the posh oysters at Bentleys to the fresh haddock and chips of the East End. But seafood has become a minority taste. Jellied eels now mainly persist for tourists eager for a taste of authentic olde London, and how often, if at all, do you see a whelk? The default cheap protein of the city is now chicken, sold in myriad fried chicken shops in the poorer parts of town. Rosie Boycott, chair of the London Food Board, has found that there are London schools with dozens of fast food places within a few metres of the gates. Often, they lower their prices at 3pm when the kids come out. In 2016, it’s possible for a London teenager to spend 70p on a portion of chips that contains 1950 calories, close to the total energy needed in a day. Many children in the city eat virtually no green vegetables, although many schools are trying to reverse this trend, with gardening and cooking clubs and improved school dinners. Some say it is unrealistic to expect poorer London households to eat ‘five-a-day’ but this only shows what short memories we have. We used to eat many more vegetables than today. In 1958, the average British person ate around 400 grams a week of fresh vegetables, compared with a paltry 189 grams in 2011. The Victorian working-class London diet included a lot of greenery. On a Saturday evening, from six pm to midnight, workers went to one of the city’s many food markets to get provisions for Sunday lunch. George Dodds observed these customers buying, very cheaply, “potatoes in their dirty jackets, cabbages of monster size, greens in straggling bunches, onions in arm-long strings, peas and beans and scarlet runners, if they be in season and cheap enough; parsley and celery, mint and sage, carrots and turnips, rhubarb, broccoli, cauliflowers, asparagus (or, in cockneydom, ‘sparrowgrass’)”. Such pleasures are still for sale in London, but they are now associated more with middle-class farmer’s markets. Plenty and hunger Londoners enjoy the worst and best food in Britain, perhaps in the world. For those with money, there are Ottolenghi salads more inventive, beautiful and health-giving than any to be found in San Francisco. The River Café in Hammersmith serves tagliatelle and white truffles more yolk-rich and luxurious than the Italian pasta that inspired it. Yet London also suffers worse rates of poverty and diet-related ill health than the UK as a whole. According to the charity Magic Breakfast, which organises breakfast clubs giving children protein-enriched bagels, more than 90 per cent of London teachers have reported children coming to school too hungry to concentrate. There are accounts of children eating breakfasts of leftover chicken nuggets, and of others who, living in tower-block flats too small for a dining table, eat nothing at all in the morning. In this most cosmopolitan of cities, Magic Breakfast encounters children who never tasted orange juice before they were given it as part of their free breakfast. Another new phenomenon is the rise of the food bank. In 2013, Joanna Biggs reported on the Kensington and Chelsea food bank for the London Review of Books. The donations at this particular food bank included caviar, Green and Blacks chocolate (handbag-sized) and looseleaf Orange Pekoe tea as well as the more usual tins of tomatoes, baked beans and rice. Here the two Londons meet, albeit briefly. Some Kensington residents are so wealthy that a cupboard clear-out may produce caviar. Others are so poor they cannot afford rice. bio-bean is a company that collects waste coffee grounds from King’s Cross, Liverpool Street and other big London train stations and converts it to biofuel The most wonderful thing about the food of London, said George Dodds in 1856, was that “nobody does it. No one, for instance, took care that a sufficient quantity of food should reach London in 1855, for the supply of two millions and a half of human beings during fifty-two weeks. And yet such a supply did reach London”. These facts seem all the more wonderful now that London needs provisions for eight and a half million. No one decided the total number of croissants and flat whites and bowls of porridge that will be needed in the city tomorrow to fuel sleepy office workers; but there they are. Yet sometimes this lack of planning is a drawback. London’s appetites generate a colossal amount of food waste: with better organisation, it could be reduced. bio-bean is a company that collects waste coffee grounds from King’s Cross, Liverpool Street and other big London train stations and converts it to biofuel. Muddling through In the life and food of London, some things remain constant. There are always cab drivers and sandwiches and millions of hungry people all needing to be fed each day at often strange and unsociable hours. There are splendid markets and coffeeshops, butchers and street sellers. There are cups of tea and slices of cake. There are men in clubs eating chops and puddings. There is cheese. There are still – as in Shakespeare’s day – people whiling away the long summer evenings by the Thames with frothy pints of beer. But what there is not – and maybe this explains why we sometimes feel disoriented when deciding what to eat – is anything resembling a staple London food. Unlike Tokyo, a vast city held together by slippery threads of ramen, or Rome, which speaks a common language of pasta and pizza, London has no distinctive taste to call its own. This is a city that has always felt confident in its ability to feed a diverse population without too much regulation. We never suffered the terrible hunger that Paris endured during its Siege of 1870–1 and so perhaps we became complacent about our food supply and its ability to self-correct. To some extent, the free eclecticism of London’s food has been a model for other great cities, from Melbourne to Hong Kong. Yet a laissez-faire attitude to food in London can no longer be justified. Child obesity levels in the capital are the highest in Britain, with one in five obese by the age of 11. Some London boroughs have finally started to act by turning down applications for new fast-food outlets within 400 metres of a school. Meanwhile, the Greater London Authority has part-funded Chicken Town, a new, healthier chicken outlet in Tottenham. These are small signs that London is realising that food is too important to leave to chance. For now, for all its diverse delights, it is a city in which rich and poor have no food to unite them. |
A "Los Angeles Times Magazine" story did a pretty good job of predicting the future. Still waiting on those robot cooks, though SCREENSHOT / DOCUMENTS.LATIMES.COM The future of L.A., as envisioned by Nicole Yorkin in a 1988 cover story for the "Los Angeles Times Magazine" We may not have robots doing our cooking, but a 1988 magazine story predicting what life would be like in 2013 got a lot of other things right, reports the Los Angeles Times. The Los Angeles Times Magazine’s April 3, 1988, cover story, “L.A. 2013,” profiled a day in the life of a fictional family living in the year 2013. Jerry Lockenour stashed the magazine on a shelf, and 25 years later, found that it came in handy as a teaching aid for his USC graduate class on technology development and applications. “I kept the article thinking it would be great to pull out 25 years later and see how we did,” Lockenour told the Times. (MORE: Whose Fault Is a Driverless-Car Crash?) The essay’s author, Nicole Yorkin, spoke with more than 30 futurists and experts, forecasting smart cars equipped with computers and navigation systems, video-chat systems and the smart card, “a personal portable computer about the size of a 3-by-5 card” that fits in the palm of your hand. Yorkin’s experts were right: luxury cars outfitted with GPS, Skype and smartphones have all become integral parts of modern-day life. Well, they were right on some accounts. The essay’s prediction that robots would be our most essential appliances by 2013 (the fictional family from the future had a robotic household helper and robot dog) hasn’t yet come to fruition. Until then, there’s always our Aibos and Roombas — and even better technology on the horizon. MORE: Finally, a Robotic Dog That Can Toss Cinder Blocks like They’re Beanbags |
"This Song" is the fourth track on George Harrison's 1976 album Thirty Three & 1/3. It was released as the first single from the album and reached number 25 on the American pop charts, although, like all three singles from the album, it failed to chart in the UK. History [ edit ] "This Song" was written after the week Harrison spent in a New York courtroom, unsuccessfully trying to convince a judge that his 1970 song "My Sweet Lord" did not infringe the copyright of the Chiffons' 1963 hit "He's So Fine". According to Harrison, the plaintiff's witnesses got ridiculously in-depth, breaking "My Sweet Lord" down into several melody lines, or "motifs", as they referred to them.[1] The plaintiff's expert also drew up several charts with large musical notes on it to prove the point.[1] Harrison said in his autobiography, I, Me, Mine, that after several days, he "started to believe that maybe they did own those notes".[1] After he lost the case, Harrison wrote "This Song", which released his frustration at the infringement case in the form of an uptempo, piano-driven boogie. It features Billy Preston on piano and organ, and Monty Python's Eric Idle calling out a falsetto "Could be 'Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch' – No, sounds more like 'Rescue Me'!" interjection right before the instrumental break. The company Bright Tunes owned the copyright to "He's So Fine", which inspired the line, "This tune has nothing Bright about it". Writing for Goldmine magazine in January 2002, Dave Thompson described "This Song" as "a brilliantly constructed commentary on Harrison's more recent travails".[2] The song also has a humorous music video (shown on the 20 November 1976 episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Paul Simon, in which Harrison was a special musical guest). The video features Harrison in a courtroom along with a cast of many of his friends (dressed up as the jury, bailiff, defense experts, etc.). Drummer Jim Keltner appears as the judge and the Rolling Stones's Ronnie Wood (dressed as a "Pepperpot" character) mimics Idle's aforementioned falsetto words. The video was directed by Michael Collins for Rosebud Films. Personnel [ edit ] Chart performance [ edit ] |
Ry pointed out this thread to me on ARFCOM. Probably many people will want to stop at the picture and move on after that but the more interesting part to me is solving the sighting problem. Here is my thought process on the problem: The drop is the same regardless of the gun orientation. Keep in mind that drop is independent of point of impact (POI) relative to point of aim (POA). To solve this problem in general look up the drop for this range on the ballistics table for your ammo. With the gun zeroed for this range the barrel is angled up such that it compensates for both the drop and the height of the sight (Sight Height or SH) above the bore. Suppose the drop is 2 inches and the sight height is 1.5 inches. Hence the angle of the barrel is such that the bullet rises, relative to the muzzle, 3.5 inches between the muzzle and the target. When you invert the gun you have the angle of the barrel giving 3.5 inches additional “drop” to the gravity induced drop for a total of 5.5 inches. But you have the sight below the barrel which means you “get back” twice the sight height of the total. So the gun will be shooting -5.5 + (2 x 1.5) or 2.5” low. Hence, the general solution for a gun zeroed at a given range when you turn it upside-down it will have a POI of: POI = POA + SH – 2 x Drop Or probably more useful is the POA relative to the POI: POA = POI + (2 x Drop) – SH Share this: Share Email Facebook Twitter Print Reddit WhatsApp Skype Tumblr Pinterest Like this: Like Loading... |
In my previous post, The Topic that Turns Smart, Creative People into Mindless Spouters of Clichés: Part 1, I quoted from Toure’s ode to marriage in the “daily rant” feature of the Dylan Ratigan Show. Go ahead and read that first part, so you will have in mind the context for this post. Here in Part 2, I will review just a few of the problems with Toure’s platitudes. Let’s start with the one about how people who are married are “being propelled each day to fight the good fight it takes to provide for your family, rather than wanting to succeed because it boosts your ego, your status, and your self-image.” So those are my two choices? Either I’m providing for my family or I’m out to boost my ego, my status, and my self-image? Toure, there are around 100 million adults who are not married, and that’s just counting the ones in the U.S. So Molly Ivins, Condoleezza Rice, Janet Napolitano, David Souter, Maggie Kuhn, Ralph Nader, every Pope, and all of the other lifelong singles were all out just to boost their egos? Consider, too, that many single people are providing for their family, including those who do not have children of their own. You have just insulted a whole lot of them. Plus, you do not flatter yourself by proposing this dopey dichotomy. What about Toure’s claim that by marrying, you help “perpetuate the human race”? Here I feel like Rachel Maddow explaining contraception to Mitt Romney, and that sort of naivete is not at all what I associated with Toure before I heard his rant. I feel embarrassed to spell this out but here goes: You don’t need to be married to have kids. Toure, do you really believe that it only occurs to married people to pick their socks up off the floor? And about needing to marry in order to learn to compromise, have you ever been in a workplace? Now let’s talk about the woman who looks at you with goo-goo eyes because you proposed to her, and only now believes that you have become a real man: That’s kind of sad. And, in my opinion, bigoted. Single men are not fake men. And commitment comes in many varieties other than the marital kind. I have a similar reaction to Toure’s wistful reflection that “There’s just something about the right woman that helps you mature into that man you’re supposed to be.” If a man can only mature with the help of the “right woman,” I think that’s a sorrowful statement about that man. I have much greater respect for the men who are all that they can be regardless of whether they ever marry. Is marriage not just a valuable experience, but a “transformative” one? For more than a decade, the claim has been made that marrying transforms single people – otherwise doomed to nasty, brutish, and short lives – into blissfully happy, healthy, and long-living couples. When I wrote Singled Out, I looked up the data supposedly supporting such claims, and found it stunningly unconvincing. I still read closely just about every new journal article purporting to show the transformative power of marrying, and continue to be unimpressed. In Singled Out (and in subsequent writings), I also took on Toure’s belief that marriage is especially transformative for men, pushing and shoving them to, at last, grow up. That’s a crock, too. I will, though, grant Toure one way in which marrying really is transformative: It transforms single people from targets of unapologetic stereotyping and discrimination into privileged members of the Married Couples Club. It grants them the keys to the kingdom of presumptuousness. As long as you have that certificate, you are in. Regardless of the stuff you are made of, getting married means that you are “mature,” “a real man,” or a complete woman. No matter how insular and greedy your married life may actually be, you are pronounced “part of something bigger than yourself.” You are, Toure maintains, a credit to your species. There are plenty of people who glorify married people, and in the process, degrade single people – however unwittingly. I’m picking on Toure for a reason. He’s smarter than that. He should know better. So should Matt Miller, the guest host who responded to Toure’s rant by exclaiming, “Toure, I love that!” and “I agree with all of this.” Matt Miller, who also uncritically highlighted some singles-bashing during a previous stint as Dylan Ratigan’s guest host, is, like Toure, not usually one to mindlessly parrot the conservative party line. Dylan Ratigan also fashions himself as a thinker, and often really is. But he, too, has been credulous about the links between marriage and happiness, and has reiterated such shaky statements with as much cautiousness as would Tony Perkins. The stereotyping, stigmatizing, and discrimination against single people – what I call singlism – is pervasive. So is matrimania – the over-the-top hyping of weddings and marriage and coupling. What’s more, singlism and matrimania slip by mostly unnoticed and unquestioned, even by progressives and by the intellectual vanguard of our society. That has to stop. In the most recent issue of Time magazine, Toure contributed an essay on “Black Irony,” one of the magazine’s “Top 10 Ideas that Are Changing Your Life.” (Living solo was #1.) In it, he said, “While our parents battled oppression, we’re left to explain that racism is still present to skeptical people who continue to benefit from white privilege but struggle to see how.” Toure, I would like to explain that marital privilege is present and always has been, and that you are benefiting from it. Briefcase photo available from Shutterstock. |
Co-op Atlantic is considering selling its grocery and gas assets to Sobeys in order to keep the business afloat. The grocery side of the business includes about 173 member-owned and franchised stores under supermarket banners such as Co-op, Valufoods and the convenience banner Rite Stop. In an email to CBC News, Co-op Atlantic spokesperson Monique Bourque said the only stores that Sobeys would own would be the nine that are "corporate stores", stores that are under the Co-op Atlantic banner. She also said member owned stores are independent. Under the proposed agreement, Sobeys would be their wholesaler. "They would purchase their food from Sobeys," she wrote. Members have until May 12 to vote. The recommendation came after an operational and financial review that took months. In a release, Co-op Atlantic board chair Adélard Cormier said: "Co-op Atlantic and its member-co-operatives have worked hard to remain viable in the increasingly competitive world of retail food and gas. This decision has been a difficult one for management and the board but is, we believe, the best option for the continued viability of the member-owner stores and the co-operative movement in Atlantic Canada." After the vote, Co-op Atlantic said it would be in a better position to assess the future of its remaining divisions including home energy and agriculture. |
Donald Trump last year targeted Vice President Joe Biden for his history of plagiarism, arguing that Biden’s past mistakes would give Trump an advantage if Biden entered the race. It’s now Trump who finds himself on the receiving end of similar accusations, after Melania Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention included a passage that appeared to borrow heavily from Michelle Obama’s convention address in 2008. Biden dropped out of the presidential race in 1987, acknowledging he “made some mistakes” that cast an “exaggerated shadow” over his campaign, the New York Times reported at the time. Biden had been accused of plagiarism as a law school student and as a politician, when he echoed—without attribution—the words of British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. In an interview with radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt in August 2015, Trump named his lack of involvement in plagiarism as one of the advantages he would have over Biden, who was at that time still weighing a presidential run. The Brief Newsletter Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now. View Sample Sign Up Now “If it’s Joe Biden, how do you match up against Joe Biden?” Hewitt asked Trump in the interview. “I think I’d match up great,” Trump said. “I’m a job producer. I’ve had a great record. I haven’t been involved in plagiarism. I think I would match up very well against Biden.” Write to Katie Reilly at Katie.Reilly@time.com. |
Every single one of us who has ever had a job knows the rules. If we stop performing our jobs, and we don’t or can’t improve, ultimately we will be held accountable by our employers and asked to move on. Those are the rules we live by. Top managers in city government should not be entitled to their own set of rules in which they can continue on indefinitely even if they are no longer performing their jobs well. Particularly when it comes to our top managers, our loyalty must be to the community these well-compensated department heads are hired to serve, not just to the individuals themselves. In the case of Police Chief Greg Suhr, who has now been police chief for over five years, we have preliminary reports from an independent panel of judges that he has been unable over those five years to change a culture in the San Francisco Police Department that undermines the ability of the police to serve every community. We see the dangerous results, with community members organizing against the department. To make our city safer, we need our community to cooperate with the police, not to become so alienated that they are taking to the streets to protest against the police and the chief. We have a city in conflict over the role of the police chief instead of one united to addressing our shared challenges. Rather than working together to improve training for officers, provide needed reforms or respond to the spike in property crimes, the city establishment has circled the wagons. We have to move forward, and to do that we need new leadership. The hard reality is that one of the most important jobs a police chief must perform is to earn and keep the trust of the public. To lower crime the entire community must be involved. If the chief can’t work with the community, then he or she simply can’t succeed. For those of you who don’t know Greg Suhr, let me say he is a highly dedicated public servant who has served this city for over 30 years. I have no trouble thanking him for his service, and I think almost everyone who knows Greg well would agree he is a skilled and caring professional. But this isn’t about Greg. This is about the hard reality that if, after five years of trying, he can’t change a negative culture, then we can’t seriously expect him to succeed now, particularly when the community is so deeply alienated. This is what would happen to you in your job. Certainly that is particularly what happens to any well-compensated leader. If the Apple CEO stops selling products, he will be asked to move on. When politicians stop listening to their constituents, they are asked to move on by the voters. That’s the way it works — for everybody seemingly but top brass in San Francisco, where there is a culture of protecting “the city family.” Well, what about your family, and all the families of San Francisco who deserve Police Department leadership that is trusted in every neighborhood? There cannot be one set of rules for those in the City Hall establishment and one set for everyone else. In the modern era of San Francisco, police chiefs have served an average of just over three years. Chief Suhr has seen his fifth year in office marked by a scathing independent report about the culture in his department, rising property crime and widespread protests against his leadership. It is time to initiate a comprehensive search for a new chief who can win the respect of officers and the public. Jane Kim is a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. |
LA Galaxy II announced today the full staff and roster ahead of the team’s opening match of the 2017 United Soccer League (USL) Regular Season. On Saturday, Los Dos will kick off their fourth season in USL at 2:00 p.m. PT against Vancouver Whitecaps FC 2 at StubHub Center Track & Field Stadium. The match, presented by Bare Republic, will see fans receive a free LA Galaxy II T-Shirt and LA Galaxy II magnet schedule upon entry. For more details about the team’s Home Opener, click here. Click here for Los Dos season opener tickets Buy! After three seasons with LA Galaxy II in which he led the team to three straight USL playoff appearances and a 2015 USL Western Conference Championship, Curt Onalfo was named Head Coach of the LA Galaxy ahead of the team’s 2017 MLS season. To take Onalfo’s place, LA Galaxy named former Galaxy Academy Director Mike Muñoz Head Coach of LA Galaxy II. To accompany him in his first season as manager, Muñoz has appointed Assistant Coach Laurent Courtois and Goalkeeper Coach Claine Plummer to help Los Dos build on the team’s success of developing players within the Galaxy organization while maintaining the club’s level of success within the USL. To start the 2017 season, 13 players are signed to USL contracts with LA Galaxy II. Seven of those players return from the 2016 roster, six of which are former Galaxy Academy members. Former Academy standouts Ryo Fujii (MF), Adrian Vera (MF), Ethan Zubak (FW), Bennett Sneddon (GK), Adonis Amaya (FW) and Eric Lopez (GK) all return for 2017, while Georgetown graduate and MLS SuperDraft selection Josh Turnley (DF) accompanies the group. Six players were added to Los Dos’ roster this offseason. Two of them have recent MLS experience: Miguel Aguilar (MF) joins from D.C. United and Tyler Turner (DF) joins from Orlando City. Galaxy II acquired two talents from Kadji Sports Academy in Cameroon: Andre Zanga (MF) and Jean Engola (DF). The team also added former Academy member and Cal Poly graduate and standout Justin Dhillon (FW) in addition to Robert Castellanos (DF), a young American defender signed from Liga MX’s Atlas FC. In total, seven players on LA Galaxy II’s 2017 roster are former members of the LA Galaxy Academy. As part of the 2017 schedule, Los Dos will face each team in the USL Western Conference at least twice in the 2017 season (one home, one away). With the four remaining games, Los Dos will take on Phoenix Rising FC, Orange County SC and Rio Grande Valley FC Toros in a third, additional match. And in a rare piece of scheduling, LA Galaxy II will play New York Red Bulls II in a regular season meetup of Eastern and Western Conference sides, a match paired as a doubleheader to the LA Galaxy and New York Red Bulls MLS match on May 14 at Red Bulls Arena. The top eight teams in each conference will qualify for postseason play that will include Conference Quarterfinals (Oct. 20-22), Semifinals (Oct. 27-29) and Final (Nov. 3-5). The 2017 USL Cup Final will be played the weekend of November 10-12. LA GALAXY II ROSTER GOALKEEPERS (2): Bennett Sneddon, Eric Lopez DEFENDERS (4): Tyler Turner, Robert Castellanos, Jean Engola, Josh Turnley MIDFIELDERS (4): Ryo Fujii, Adrian Vera, Miguel Aguilar, Andre Zanga FORWARDS (3): Ethan Zubak, Adonis Amaya, Justin Dhillon ROSTER BREAKDOWN NEW SIGNINGS (6): Tyler Turner, Robert Castellanos, Jean Engola, Miguel Aguilar, Andre Zanga, Justin Dhillon RETURNING (7): Bennett Sneddon, Eric Lopez, Josh Turnley, Ryo Fujii, Adrian Vera, Ethan Zubak, Adonis Amaya LA GALAXY ACADEMY PRODUCTS (7): Bennett Sneddon, Eric Lopez, Ryo Fujii, Adrian Vera, Ethan Zubak, Adonis Amaya, Justin Dhillon BIRTHPLACE: United States (9): Bennett Sneddon, Eric Lopez, Tyler Turner, Robert Castellanos, Josh Turnley, Adrian Vera, Ethan Zubak, Adonis Amaya, Justin Dhillon Cameroon (2): Jean Engola, Andre Zanga Mexico (1): Miguel Aguilar Hong Kong (1): Ryo Fujii USL ROSTER REGULATIONS Per USL rules, a total of 30 players are allowed on a USL team’s roster at any time. In addition to those 30 roster spots, five Academy players are permitted to be members of that roster, for a total of 35. With 13 players currently signed to USL contracts with LA Galaxy II, LA Galaxy and LA Galaxy Academy players will fill out the remaining space on the LA Galaxy II roster. At any point in the season, the Galaxy’s MLS and Academy players are allowed to be made inactive or active on LA Galaxy II’s roster, with USL rules allowing the club to fluidly move players in and out of the 30-man roster throughout the season. LA Galaxy players that are available and likely to feature throughout the 2017 LA Galaxy II season include: Jon Kempin (GK), Hugo Arellano (DF), Jaime Villarreal (MF) and Bradford Jamieson IV (MF), among others. All LA Galaxy Academy players are available to feature throughout the 2017 season. Click here for the Galaxy Academy U-17/18 roster, and here for the Galaxy Academy U-15/16 roster. To view Galaxy Academy U-17/18 individual and team statistics for the 2016-17 USSDA season, click here. To view Galaxy Academy U-15/16 individual and team statistics for the 2016-17 USSDA season, click here. For a breakdown of Los Dos’ roster, see the table below. LA GALAXY II ACTIVE ROSTER BREAKDOWN (*30-35 total players) MLS Contracted Players USL Contracted Players (13) LA Galaxy Academy Players *Up to 17 of LA Galaxy’s rostered players LA Galaxy Roster Bennett Sneddon Eric Lopez Tyler Turner Robert Castellanos Jean Engola Josh Turnley Ryo Fujii Adrian Vera Miguel Aguilar Andre Zanga Ethan Zubak Adonis Amaya Justin Dhillon Galaxy Academy U-17/18 Roster Galaxy Academy U-15/16 Roster The LA Galaxy II’s season opener, presented by Bare Republic, will see Los Dos take on Vancouver Whitecaps FC 2 on Saturday, March 25 at StubHub Center Track & Field Stadium (2:00 p.m. PT). Fans save money when they purchase LA Galaxy II tickets online, available here. LA Galaxy II Season Ticket Memberships are on sale now. Los Dos Season Ticket Memberships start at $6 per game, half the price of a $12 ticket at the gate. For more info on the benefits of a Los Dos Season Ticket Membership, click here. |
× Missouri House opts to give voters say on red light cameras JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) _ Voters would get to decide whether any governments in Missouri should be able to use red light cameras under a measure moving forward in the Missouri House. The House on Wednesday gave initial approval to a bill that would a question on the 2016 ballot banning automated traffic enforcement. Supporters of the ban say red light cameras are used by cities to generate revenue and that there is limited evidence on whether they improve safety. The measure comes up at a time when legal cases challenging the use of red light cameras in the state are awaiting a decision by the Missouri Supreme Court. The bill was approved 141-14 and faces another vote before heading to the Senate. |
This article is over 8 years old Facebook is put on the curriculum for student detectives Detectives will be taught to track down criminals using Facebook and Twitter, police leaders said yesterday. Training has been changed to cover how to gather information from computers and mobiles and includes new guidance on investigating "honour" crimes, domestic violence and rape. The course is taken by about 3,500 student detectives a year. Deputy Chief Constable Nick Gargan, the acting head of the National Policing Improvement Agency, said: "This programme is a vital part of the career pathway for detectives and the new training covers sensitive areas of policing where limited guidance existed previously. "These improvements are exactly what detectives need to tackle the challenges and complexities of modern policing effectively. "The changes underline the importance to having a national agency to provide guidance and train detectives to a single high standard so they can work on investigations in any part of the country and give their colleagues and the public the best quality service in fighting crime." The escaped prisoner Craig Lynch mocked police with clues about his whereabouts on Facebook during four months on the run this year. In London, detectives are examining posts on Facebook and Twitter relating to the murder of 17-year-old Marvin Henry on Wednesday during a suspected fight between rival gangs. The revised training also includes material linked to a national collection of footprints made by specific shoes and information on how to collect financial information. |
A soldier from Takoma Park died Tuesday at Walter Reed National Medical Center in Bethesda of wounds from a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan last month, the Defense Department said. Sgt. First Class Allan E. Brown, 46, was assigned to the headquarters unit of 1st Special Troops Battalion, 1st Sustainment Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. Details of Brown's service record were not immediately available. Brown is the second soldier from Takoma Park to have been killed in Afghanistan since October. Staff Sgt. Adam Thomas, 31, was taking part in a mission against the self-declared Islamic State's Afghan branch Oct. 5 when he was killed by a improvised bomb blast. Takoma Park, a Montgomery County town that borders the District of Columbia, has a popoulation of some 17,000 people. Brown and Thomas are the only two service members from Maryland killed overseas this year. Brown was wounded in a Nov. 12 suicide attack on Bagram Air Base that also killed two other members of his unit and two military contractors. Sgt. John W. Perry, 30, of Stockton, Calif., and Pfc. Tyler R. Iubelt, 20, of Tamaroa, Ill., both died on the day of the attack, the Defense Department said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Perry's father said last month he was booed when pilots helped him and his wife get off a plane quickly to make a connection as they journeyed to meet their son's remains. Three other service members from Maryland have died this year in non-combat incidents. Spc. Ronald L. Murray Jr. of Bowie died in a vehicle accident in Kuwait in November. Airman 1st Class Nathaniel H. McDavitt of Glen Burnie died in a building collapse in Jordan in April. Pfc. Victor J. Stanfill of Fulton died in May during a training exercise with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Polk, La. iduncan@baltsun.com twitter.com/iduncan |
Red Stars captain goes out on World Cup triumph, first ever NWSL playoff appearance By Gunnar Berndt Chicago, Ill. – Four-year Chicago Red Stars captain Lori Chalupny today announced her retirement from professional club soccer. The step comes six weeks after the defender-midfielder played in her final match for the U.S. Women’s National Team and five months after winning her first ever FIFA Women’s World Cup. Chalupny also led the Red Stars to a National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) postseason appearance this past September, the club’s first at the pro level. “For a lot of the last couple of years, I was just trying to stay in the moment and take it day by day,” explained the St. Louis native. “That said, I had a pretty good idea of my decision by the end of this past NWSL campaign. After the World Cup, I wanted to let all the buzz about it play out and get back to normalcy a bit to see where I was at. So I definitely took a lot of time to think about it and came to a decision that I’ve felt really good about during this offseason. That’s why I’m ready to announce it. “After winning the Word Cup, which was something I had dreamt about my whole life, it was tough to come off that high and continue. At the same time, I have some chronic injuries and things I’ve been dealing with for a while now, and my body was simply telling me that it was time. To be honest, those two factors coming together made the decision a lot easier.” The Chicago fan favorite looks back on a career that saw her participate in the 2007 and 2015 World Cups, win Olympic gold in 2008 and make a triumphant return to the Stars and Stripes squad in December 2014, following half a decade away. After earning her 100th international cap back in May and lifting the most coveted of trophies in July, Chalupny reunited with Chicago to complete her final season with the club that she joined during its amateur days in the 2012 edition of the Women’s Premier Soccer League Elite (WPSL Elite). Said the long-time Red Stars captain, “This year has truly been a whirlwind, from getting back onto the national team and winning the World Cup to coming back to the Red Stars and making the NWSL playoffs. With all that coming together, it just feels like my career is complete and has a period to it. I guess there’s just a bit of closure now, which makes this a good time to go out.” Following the collapse of Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) in 2012, Chalupny preferred temporarily playing unpaid for Chicago to continuing her pro career abroad. Ever since then, she has been Head Coach Rory Dames’ undisputed right hand on the field. “Lori has won at the highest level and is a fantastic player, leader and ambassador for soccer,” offered the man in charge of the Red Stars. “Over the years, she has done so much for the game and for this organization. When she joined us, that added instant credibility to the Red Stars and the WPSL Elite, and she has been the face of the team ever since. On a personal level, I owe her my gratitude because she helped me grow leaps and bounds as a coach during the time we spent together. “Lori’s leadership is certainly what we’ll miss the most going forward. It’s truly been a privilege coaching her and having her as our captain. She will always be a part of the Red Stars family and we wish her nothing but the best as she enters the next chapter of her life.” After starring for the University of North Carolina and graduating in 2005, Chalupny laced up for WPS outfits St. Louis Athletica (2009-10) and Atlanta Beat (2010-11). She also enjoyed a brief stint abroad with Swedish top tier side AIK Fotboll Dam following the 2012 campaign with the Red Stars. In reflecting on her highly successful career, the now 31-year-old didn’t focus primarily on her participation in two World Cups, nor on winning Olympic gold or even this summer’s World Cup trophy. “Championships are what you play for, but I think those moments are kind of fleeting,” she said. “They’re really exciting for a while and then the excitement wears off and time goes on. What really sticks with you are the friendships and relationships. To this day, one of my favorite seasons of playing soccer was our amateur year in 2012 because of the people that I was around and because of how we bonded over playing the game we loved. That’s just one of the reasons Chicago holds a special place in my heart.” Chalupny is one of four Red Stars left over from the club’s WPSL Elite campaign, the others being Michelle Lomnicki, Alyssa Mautz and Vanessa DiBernardo. As one of the team’s longest-tenured players, she will vehemently disagree with anyone claiming it’s impossible to simultaneously love both the Windy City and her hometown of St. Louis. “Chicago really feels like a second home to me,” she said. “I’ve grown so close to the coaching staff, the owner, the fans and so many of the players and front office members that it feels like I’ve been here my whole career. While I know it’s the right time to go, what does make it difficult is saying goodbye to all the fantastic people, to the amazing fans and to the city of Chicago. I’ll be eternally grateful for the wonderful years I’ve had here and will miss everybody tremendously. “My connection to the Red Stars runs much deeper than just that of a former player. I’m good friends with so many people connected to the organization that it’s impossible for me not to stay emotionally invested. Even though I won’t be suiting up anymore, of course I’ll continue to cheer on the team and I’m sure I’ll be back sooner or later to check in and say hello to everyone.” One front office member who has been there with Chalupny since the WPSL Elite days is Alyse LaHue. The Red Stars General Manager left no doubt that adapting to life without the team’s hard-nosed U.S. international will be a challenging task. “Lori is irreplaceable,” LaHue offered. “She’s been our captain and rock for four years. It’s rare to find her combination of tenacity, flexibility on the field, quiet leadership and humility. She truly represents what we strive for as a club: teamwork, grit, community and kindness. “While I regret we didn’t send Lori out as league champion, she had the opportunity to end her career on her terms as a world champion. She’ll go down as one of the greatest players to ever wear a Red Stars jersey and it’s impossible to express how much we’ll miss her. When we win a championship, it will be in part because of the foundation she built and the legacy she leaves behind.” As for possible future endeavors, Chalupny says she has enjoyed her side gig as an assistant coach with Maryville University in St. Louis and could see herself pursuing a related career path. When asked whether she may find it difficult watching high-level soccer and no longer being able to actively participate, the Chicago legend closed her remarks by emphasizing once more that she is at peace with all the decisions she has made over the course of her professional life, including this latest one. “I guess I’ll see what I’m feeling after some time goes by, but right now I’m just really in a good place,” she said. “I’m happy with how my career went and have no regrets. I still love soccer and would love to stay involved in the game.” The Chicago Red Stars look to honor the legacy of newly retired long-time captain Lori Chalupny by bringing the 2016 NWSL trophy home to Chicagoland. Season tickets may be purchased by clicking here or by calling 773-697-8699. Like this: Like Loading... |
In the lead-up to the 2013-14 NBA season, Grantland will examine key players — X factors — for contending teams. The series begins today with the San Antonio Spurs’ Kawhi Leonard. The lasting image of the 2013 NBA Finals, an all-time classic series, will always be Ray Allen’s season-saving corner 3 — a shot both impossible and inevitable, ludicrously difficult under the most intense pressure that can exist, but also a shot you (and he) could map out in your brain the minute Chris Bosh rebounded LeBron’s miss with Allen just to Bosh’s right. It was probably the single most important shot in NBA history, and indisputably the most painful moment in the Spurs’ franchise history. But the second-most potent image from that series gives San Antonio legitimate hope that 2012-13 wasn’t the last gasp of a proud, aging group. And that image is: HOLY CRAP, KAWHI LEONARD. Leonard was wonderful all season, at least when he was healthy enough to play. But his seven-game, two-way masterpiece against Miami was a discrete event that changed the perception of Leonard both leaguewide and within the Spurs. Parts of his game that had emerged only in tantalizing glimpses burst through when the Spurs needed them most: against an elite defense that brings a destructive speed for which it is almost impossible to prepare, and with Tony Parker ailing in the back half of the series. Manu Ginobili wilted against the Heat’s blitzing defense; the Spurs simply would not have survived without the emergence of some other creative force. Leonard supplied it. He used his rebounding to manufacture offense with coast-to-coast adventures once permitted only for Parker and Ginobili. He attacked off the dribble much more aggressively for floaters and drives at the rim, though always within the flow of San Antonio’s motion offense. He took six shots working as the screener in pick-and-roll plays — normally a big man’s job — after attempting just three such shots combined during the regular season, per Synergy Sports. He posted up Mike Miller, a carryover from doing the same against smaller Golden State players in the conference semifinals. Two years later, we look back on a hugely important trade between the Spurs and Pacers He embarrassed LeBron James and Dwyane Wade on the offensive glass, outworking them for essential second-chance rebounds and then making heady scoring cuts into open spaces during the ensuing chaos. How was this even allowed on a team that pioneered the idea of punting on the offensive glass in order to get the heck back in transition defense? “If there was one area where we did have high expectations for him,” says R.C. Buford, the Spurs’ longtime GM, “it was offensive rebounding. And that was a bit concerning, because we’re not an offensive rebounding team. We’ve never been an offensive rebounding team with our [small forwards]. Bruce Bowen was always the first man back on defense, and that allowed for more penetration from Manu and Tony.” Offensive rebounding wasn’t the only un-Spurs-ian thing Leonard pulled when the stakes were highest. He sought easy baskets by leaking out early from defense to offense, sometimes even before the Spurs had secured a defensive rebound — a once-unthinkable no-no for a key rebounder on a Gregg Popovich team. He gambled for steals, bending or breaking classic San Antonio rules that emphasize sound positioning over risk. Leonard won a huge percentage of these bets because he has a sophisticated and hard-to-teach understanding of when in-the-moment conditions — the placement of each player, the trajectory of the ball, the location of a shot — increase his odds of success. What appears reckless is not necessarily so for a player with brains and athleticism. Leonard in this way is the heir to Ginobili as the Spur to whom traditional Popovichian precepts do not always apply. “Those aren’t really Spurs things,” Leonard says with a laugh. “But as long as I’m in my spots on the defensive end, Coach gives me some leeway now.” The Spurs need this Finals version of Leonard, this all-around force, to emerge as a consistent weapon if they want to make yet another improbable push for a championship. The field around them is deeper, in both conferences, and there will come a day when age really does take a permanent bite out of Tim Duncan. Manu Ginobili looks great right now by all accounts, but he has never been more vulnerable to the combination of age, lingering injuries, and ultra-athletic defense that disrobed him for all but one game of the Finals. We may have already seen the offensive ceilings of both Tiago Splitter and Danny Green, and none of the other young pieces here look ready to make a huge contribution against the best postseason competition. That leaves Leonard as a bit of a wild card, and his performance in the Finals earned him the trust level necessary — from Popovich and the Big Three — to stretch himself on offense in the coming season. “There is no doubt,” Buford says, “that Pop now has the confidence in him to expand his role.” “Hopefully I’ll get some plays called for me,” Leonard says, chuckling again. Popovich will call plays for him, and perhaps even end-of-game plays, but that’s not really the point — and Leonard knows it. The Spurs are a system team, not a play-calling team. They run a continuous, side-to-side motion offense centered on Parker’s pick-and-roll brilliance, canny screening from Duncan and Splitter, Duncan’s post game, and killer spot-up shooting. The Spurs at first limited Leonard’s involvement within that system to standing in the corners and shooting open 3s — even though they had no clue when they drafted him, just before the lockout, if he’d turn into an even serviceable 3-point shooter. “Our expectations weren’t necessarily for him to be a 3-and-D guy,” Buford says. “His track record didn’t lead you to believe he could extend out to the 3-point line. I don’t think any of us thought he was going to be this kind of building block for us.” But the Spurs’ offense, just through the automated whirring of its parts, spits out opportunities for Leonard to catch the ball and do something with it. And if he can do more stuff when he does get the ball within the workings of that system, it will mean Duncan, Parker, and Ginobili have to do a bit less. It will make the Spurs a hair less predictable. It will put a crucial bit of increased mental and physical stress on defenders who have to be concerned about another damn thing the Spurs might do. It will limit the number of possessions on which an aging Spur has to create something, anything, with the shot clock ticking down. That stuff can be small, and hard to spot, and it may not show up at all in the Spurs’ big-picture metrics — which have been beyond healthy for years. But it’s the kind of in-house evolution that becomes crucial when you’re trying to squeeze out enough points for 16 postseason wins against a gauntlet of defenses that might include Houston, Memphis, Miami, and other potentially elite outfits. Here’s a simple example: A lot of Spurs possessions include a classic Utah-style “flex” sequence in which Leonard will set a pick for Duncan under the rim, dart out toward the perimeter around a pick set for him at the foul line, and then catch the ball about 20 feet from the rim: The sequence isn’t really designed for Leonard; he might not even catch the ball if his first pick for Duncan hits flush enough to spring Duncan for a post-up on the block. And if Leonard does get the ball, as in the photo above, his first job has typically been to reverse the ball back to Parker on the wing so that the machine can continue on to its next phase. But there is system-based opportunity for Leonard here. When Leonard makes that catch, the Spurs’ second big man is usually lurking nearby, ready to set a screen for an impromptu pick-and-roll if the situation favors it. Leonard took only 49 shots out of the pick-and-roll all season, per Synergy; what if he can do a little bit more? In a similar vein, the Spurs’ offense also features sets within sets that involve Leonard starting in the left corner, jetting around two picks, and catching the ball near the left elbow: We’ll see more of that this season, and the Spurs will give Leonard freedom to attack if he can find a crease. Leonard is at the top of the arc, having just passed the ball to Parker on the left wing after Parker had scampered around two screens — a reliable move that triggers a lot of San Antonio possessions by getting Parker the ball on the move with a head start on his defender. And Kevin Durant, guarding Leonard, has thwarted option no. 1, a Parker drive, by sliding down from Leonard and planting himself at the foul line. Parker’s natural next move is to kick to Leonard up top, continue running around to the other side, and catch the ball again. But there’s a built-in second option here: Duncan, standing near the right elbow, can move up to set a pick for Leonard so that Parker’s pass leads right into a fast-moving Leonard-Duncan pick-and-roll. The Spurs’ half-court offense doesn’t relegate Leonard to Bruce Bowen duty. Instead, it quite naturally produces chances for him to work off the dribble. This is where Leonard has only begun to prove himself, and it’s the area of his game about which talent evaluators were most skeptical ahead of the 2011 draft, according to several executives whose teams picked near the middle of the first round. Leonard’s a good athlete, but not a devastating one, and teams were concerned he would not be able to blow past (or over) NBA athletes. And the thing is, they were pretty much right. Leonard has a hard time creating meaningful separation off the bounce, and though he’s capable of highlight facials (ask Mike Miller), he’s not yet an explosive off-the-dribble threat. (As an aside, I asked Leonard how it was possible to have literally zero visible reaction to cramming on poor Miller like that in the freaking Finals. Leonard’s response: “I’ve dunked on a lot of people, so there wasn’t really a reaction I had.” OK!) But he has learned to compensate with trickery and a well-honed sense of how to use a defender’s momentum to his own advantage. If Leonard drives hard to his right and senses his defender sliding hard in that direction to keep up, Leonard will stop on a dime, watch that defender keep on sliding toward the baseline, and rise up for an easy floater. He can work the same trick, only with a right-to-left Euro step: And if he’s driving left, Leonard can stop, pivot away from the flailing defender, spin to his right into the paint, and toss up that same floater. Basically: Leonard’s go-to move is stopping, and he has used it to create openings he can’t create the way a superstar might. “People in the NBA are just as athletic as you,” Leonard says. “That’s the game. You have to have the change of pace. You have to change speeds to get around people.” Now the Spurs need to see if he can do it over the long haul, and against defenses that will pay him more attention. Nobody knows the answer. The glimpses are promising, but they are just glimpses, and Leonard has shown very little ability to throw effective passes on the move at the NBA level. Leonard averaged fewer than two assists per game last season, which is a very hard thing to manage for a perimeter player logging 30-plus minutes a night. Only 17 players leaguewide last season managed that double — at least 30 minutes per game, fewer than two dimes — and 13 played either power forward or center. In other words, they were big-man finishers — Omer Asik and Tyson Chandler types. The remaining four players were a catch-and-shoot specialist (Kyle Korver), an aging wing who logged significant time at power forward (Metta World Peace), a general non-threat with the ball (Alonzo Gee), and Leonard. That’s not necessarily a damning thing; the Spurs have given primary on-ball duties to other players during Leonard’s brief career, deflating his assist numbers. And Leonard reads the floor when he’s holding the ball on the perimeter, monitoring the movements of nine other players, and even when he catches the ball in traffic after a cut. But he has done very little passing off the dribble as a primary option, both one-on-one and via the pick-and-roll. In his limited chances, he has focused on scoring, and he’s shown a tendency on the pick-and-roll to pull up early for long 2-point jumpers — shots that come before he has really punctured the defense or engineered open passing lanes to shooters. The Spurs always have shooters someplace, but Leonard has to prove he can find them with the kind of rapid-fire, inside-out passes Parker and Ginobili use to generate open 3s. The same caveat applies to his burgeoning post game. One area in which Leonard definitely can pass: in transition, when the floor is a bit clearer. And that’s another phase in which Leonard might naturally grasp a larger role. Per Synergy, about 22 percent of the possessions Leonard finished via a shot or turnover came in transition, a very large share and the highest among all Spurs — even the roadrunner Parker. Duncan and Splitter both run the floor hard, so that even if a Leonard fast break doesn’t lead to a shot, it could easily flow right into a pick-and-roll in semi-transition — that sweet spot early in the shot clock when the defense is still scrambled. The Sixers, for instance, stopped Leonard on this attempted break, but what if 2014 Leonard is more prepared to create something off the impromptu pick-and-roll Duncan offered here with 18 seconds still on the shot clock? Again: It’s a little thing, a play that might happen just once or twice a game. But the expansion of Leonard’s offensive game amounts to hundreds of such little things over a season, with the end result being a healthier, more well-balanced team unleashing more varied means to attack primed postseason defenses. You’ll note we haven’t discussed Leonard’s defense. There isn’t much to discuss. The guy is already insanely good, though I’m sure the San Antonio coaching staff finds places to nitpick here and there — an ill-advised gamble, a back screen that catches him peeking at the ball and unprepared, a less-than-urgent response to a cut. But that stuff is rare, and Leonard is so long, and so wonderfully balanced, that he can recover almost immediately from an early hiccup that leaves him a half-step behind. He is like a phantom, slithering between and around bodies, appearing on the other side of screens that looked to be insurmountable a half-second ago. You know of whom he reminds me in terms of on-ball defense? LARRY SANDERS! In discussing the extension SANDERS! signed with Milwaukee, I noted that point guards who tried to get him off-balance on the pick-and-roll, as SANDERS! slid over to contain them, just couldn’t do it. If they threw a hesitation dribble at him, SANDERS! acknowledged it by moving slightly in the direction of that dribble, but no farther. If they gave him a head fake left, he’d take a mini-step there without lurching or losing his balance, so that he was still right in front of the point guards upon their inevitable crossover dribble. It looked as if point guards were trying to dribble by a mirror image of themselves. Leonard is like the wing version of SANDERS! in that regard. His movements are so in sync with ball handlers — from LeBron James to Tayshaun Prince — that it almost appears as if he’s moving exactly in concert with them, instead of in reaction to their moves. He’s always on his toes, always on balance. Leonard credits his ability to mimic opposing ball handlers to his years playing defensive back in football through high school, responding to every move wide receivers made without falling behind. “Playing football helped me a lot,” he says. “Just reading the quarterback’s eyes and reading receivers, figuring out what they want to do.” Every perimeter defender in the NBA falls behind now and then; that’s the entire point of a pick, after all. But Leonard stays closer than almost anyone, and even when he has to trail a guy around a pick, Leonard’s arms are so long that he can challenge shots from behind: Bottom line: His defense is already elite. His ability to reach a new level on offense, and with the ball in his hands, will be a huge factor in determining whether the Spurs get a chance to nab the ring they barely missed last season. Even being in the title conversation is a win for the Spurs in the big picture, considering Duncan is 37 and Ginobili 36. They needed Leonard to stay in that stratosphere last season, and they’ll need even more from him to win their fifth title in franchise history. |
Narendra Modi’s first hundred days in power may not have brought big bang economic reforms or sweeping social initiatives, but the shift in dynamics across political, bureaucratic and corporate circles has been huge. Except for the period of the Emergency four decades ago, which turned everything upside down, never have the customary power equations of Lutyens Delhi become so redundant. 1. The Bharatiya Janata Party The biggest impact of Modi’s arrival at the seat of power has been on his own party. The Bharatiya Janata Party today is looking like a punctured balloon. This was one of the few remaining political outfits in the country that still routinely practiced internal debate. After Modi’s victory, the hush among the BJP leadership has been deafening. The party is under Modi’s thumb and is now feeling the pressure of Amit Shah’s palm as well. Apart from the overwhelming presence of these two leaders, no one is quite sure about the hierarchy in the party. Party members don’t know whom to approach for what, since everybody else seems so powerless. There is surprisingly little triumphalism or celebratory swagger among BJP leaders in the aftermath of such an astounding electoral victory. 2. The council of ministers In the beginning there was some envy about those who got plum ministerial positions. But a few of them, such as power minister Piyush Goel, and environment and information minister Prakash Javdekar, were reported to have been ticked off like schoolboys. As a result, a ministerial post does not look so inviting anymore. Individual ministers have never before been so devoid of the powers to dispense favours. In the past, some politicians were able to wrangle such favours even if they were in opposition. The ministers are instead driven to work relentlessly from early in the morning to late in the night, driving teams of sleepless bureaucrats, some of whom appear to have more direct access to the prime minister’s office than their political superiors. The word out is that Big Brother is watching and any sign of laxity will not go unpunished. 3. Parliament There also appears to a conscious decision by the new prime minister to bypass conventional parliamentary processes for policymaking. Standing committees were set up very late. Such is the apathy to parliament that even seat allotments to different parties in the new Lok Sabha are yet to begin. Clearly, Modi does not have much inclination for parliamentary debate and review to make policies. 4. The bureaucracy Significant changes in the corridors of power are also evident. The bureaucracy, from top to bottom, is still struggling to cope with the drastic departure from the slow pace of government. Office hours are not only being imposed in terms of punctuality, but can also get extended indefinitely. Two stories doing the rounds in bureaucratic circles are illustrative. The first relates to a presentation to the prime minister by a power ministry team. This was scheduled late afternoon but got delayed to 8.30 in the evening. Half an hour after the presentation started, Modi had to suddenly leave for some urgent work. After waiting for a while, the power ministry team left for home, assuming that they would finish the presentation the next day. Much to their horror, they were woken up at 1.30 in the morning to be told that the prime minister had returned, asking what happened to the presentation. All of them had to troop back. By the time they had finished, it was three in the morning. The second story underlines the difficulty in imposing office discipline on the bureaucracy, particularly at the middle and lower levels. It seems that in the Home Ministry, one of the largest, middle and lower level employees have found a novel way of following new punctuality rules. Many of them live in the far suburbs of Delhi and find it nearly impossible to finish their baths and breakfast before travelling several hours to reach office in the morning. So instead of coming late to office, they have started reaching office on time without bathing or eating, and then disappearing from their desks for a few hours to finish their personal routines at the office. Ultimately as a senior bureaucrat pointed out, the staff is still available for the same number of hours as when they used to come late. Nevertheless, some senior bureaucrats in key economic ministries are very happy with the new prime minister’s style of functioning. Most of them are used to working for long hours, and appreciate that the person right at the top is personally interested in their work and is accessible. They are no longer at the beck and call of the minister. Most importantly, they do not have to accommodate corporate lobbying. A top bureaucrat of a sensitive economic ministry said that for the first time in his career, he faces virtually no interference from outside in framing policy and making decisions. 5. India Inc The relationship between corporate groups and the Modi government in the first hundred days has belied fears, particularly of liberal-left opinion makers, that it would be a willing instrument for crony capitalists. So far this has not been the case. It has become increasingly clear that the country’s largest industrial magnate Mukesh Ambani, who was supposed to be one of the main moneybags to bankroll the Modi campaign, is not calling the shots. Even Gautam Adani, known to have been personally close to Modi when he was Gujarat chief minister, has not been patronised. Power minister Piyush Goel was said to have been pulled up for publicly hobnobbing with the industrialist whose power company was also slapped with a clear energy cess in the budget. This is not to suggest that the new prime minister has turned his back on industrialists. He has had individual meetings with a number of them including Cyrus Mistry of the Tata group, Anil Agarwal of Vedanta and Anil Ambani, although mysteriously not the latter’s elder brother, Mukesh. The message so far has been clear. The new government was ready to consider all proposals as long as they fit into the regime’s scheme of things, but would not be manipulated through fear or inducement on specific projects or policies. Ever since the new government came to power, the vast army of corporate lobbyists in Lutyens Delhi have been sitting idle. 6. Sycophants and cheerleaders Finally, the most striking difference between the Modi regime and previous ones, is the way the new prime minister has spurned a long queue of sycophants and cheerleaders who had expected to be rewarded for their services to the Modi campaign. Quite a few of them are in the media, or experts who are hoping to be accommodated in think tanks now that they have been overlooked for plum government posts. The impression, however, is that the prime minister is adamant about horses for courses, and will only elevate someone he feels will be able to do the job. Those close to Modi have assiduously cultivated the image of a prime minister who has his party leaders by the scruff of its neck, the bureaucracy on tenterhooks and business magnates at an arms distance – “a tough guy who does not dance”. It remains to be seen whether this is just a temporary ploy till Modi finds his feet, or if it will develop into a full-fledged style of governance for the long haul. |
(CNN) -- A treasure map to a baby? Meredith Kolk, shown with her husband and son, has tried alternative fertility methods. That's just one of many things Meredith Kolk tried when she had problems getting pregnant. At age 40, the mother of one longed for another child but knew the odds were against her. Kolk says a poster board with cutout images of happy babies kept her focused on her goal. "Making this board helped me feel like I could have a vision to look at every morning and every night about what I wanted for my family. It helped keep me centered because the process is frustrating and it can be very nerve-wracking." Kolk turned to in vitro fertilization and also used alternative approaches in hopes of increasing her chances of getting pregnant. She did 30 minutes of meditation each morning before going to work. "I would visualize me pregnant with a healthy baby and a doctor saying 'yes, you're pregnant.' " Watch for more on infertility among older women » Kolk also received weekly acupuncture and made changes to her diet. She added wheat germ and nuts and swapped low-fat dairy foods with whole-milk foods. CNN American Morning Want to start a family? American Morning looks at cutting-edge fertility treatments, surrogacy and adoption this week. 6- 9 a.m. CNN American Morning » Kolk says that doing these things helped her to stay calm. Dr. Alice Domar, executive director of the Domar Center for Mind/Body Health in Waltham, Massachusetts, says her research shows a medical link between stress and infertility. "The part of the brain that controls all aspects of reproduction is called the hypothalamus. It's also the part of the brain that controls how we respond to stress. And so it made sense to me intuitively that there could be a connection between stress and infertility," she said. Domar specializes in women struggling with infertility. She says that if a woman can learn stress management through relaxation techniques, her chances of getting pregnant will double. On the day we visited the center, 39-year-old Sarah Weatherhead underwent acupuncture. She's had in vitro fertilization three times without success and is waiting to hear if her fourth try has worked. She believes being more relaxed could help her chances of getting pregnant. "I tend to be very positive about it, but it's difficult, especially when I've had so many failed cycles." Don't Miss Single men turning to surrogates Weatherhead is playing the ultimate game of beat the clock. In fact, one study shows that 33 percent of women are infertile by age 40. That number increases to 87 percent by age 45. Doctors say the best hope for older women is donor eggs. "A lot of women initially are very reluctant to go down the route of donor egg because they'll lose that genetic connection with the child," says Dr. Jane Ruman, an infertility specialist with Reproductive Medicine Associates of New York. "But the fastest way to get a child into your home is usually with a donor egg." The technology is so successful that a 70-year-old woman in India gave birth to a baby girl in November. While no age limits are enforced in the United States, most fertility centers maintain a cutoff of between 50 and 55. Health Library MayoClinic.com: How to get pregnant Domar says her research shows that women over 40 make good mothers. "They tend to be more comfortable with their role as parents. They can provide more financial opportunities. So from a psychological perspective, it's a good situation." Weatherhead believes she has more to offer a child at her age. "I think I'm smarter. I like myself better. I'm more accepting of myself," she said. Weatherhead says that if in vitro fertilization doesn't work, she is open to adoption. After three cycles of in vitro fertilization, Kolk did become pregnant and gave birth to twin girls, Calliope and Josephine, in October. She says she ended up with exactly what she had visualized with her treasure map: happy, healthy babies. All About Pregnancy and Childbirth |
A couple of days ago, there were rumors that Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 820 chipset has overheating issues just like its predecessor SD810, and Samsung - which is manufacturing the SoC - is working to fix to the problem. Now, Qualcomm has responded to the aforementioned rumors, clarifying that there are no such issues with the chipset. The company also said that the SoC currently meets its design specifications, and will continue to be enhanced. FYI, Qualcomm's response on the matter came in the form of a Weibo post. The said rumor came over a month after Qualcomm revealed details about the chipset at an event where Snapdragon 617 and Snapdragon 430 SoCs were also announced. For those who aren't already aware, Samsung is reportedly busy testing the SD820 for integration inside its next Galaxy S7 flagship. Via |
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