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Everybody who's ever been funny is in it! The story begins during a massive traffic jam, caused by reckless driver Smiler Grogan, who, before kicking the bucket, cryptically tells the assembled drivers that he's buried a fortune in stolen loot, under the Big W. All of the motorists set out to find the fortune. Written by Jwelch5742 Did You Know? Goofs When Melville is driving the forklift into the storeroom, the stunt double is clearly visible driving. When Melville is driving the forklift into the storeroom, the stunt double is clearly visible driving. See more Quotes : That's the trouble, the doc's not sure. He says whatever it is, she's too sick even to be moved. She needs this special stuff and we haven't got a phone so I went to get it and that's when... Slow down, the turning is just up here. : Turning? You mean it's off the road? : Only a mile. : Now look, Pal, I'm in a hurry... : HOLD IT! Stop the car. Now listen, buddy, I'm sorry about your problems. But the doc said to hurry and this is my wife. Now come on, we turn right here... Otto Meyer : Miner : [...] See more » Otto Meyer : So, what's wrong with your wife? Miner : That's the trouble, the doc's not sure. He says whatever it is, she's too sick even to be moved. She needs this special stuff and we haven't got a phone so I went to get it and that's when... Slow down, the turning is just up here. Otto Meyer : Turning? You mean it's off the road? Miner : Only a mile. Otto Meyer : Now look, Pal, I'm in a hurry... Miner : HOLD IT! Stop the car. Now listen, buddy, I'm sorry about your problems. But the doc said to hurry and this is my wife. Now come on, we turn right here...[...] Crazy Credits When the globe explodes and credits fall everywhere, the credits of the animators who worked on the title sequence can be seen. When the globe explodes and credits fall everywhere, the credits of the animators who worked on the title sequence can be seen. See more |
Putin at Moscow's Vnukovo airport in December 6, 2014. REUTERS/Vasily Maximov/Pool Rapid changes in the financial markets and the Russian economy are forcing Vladimir Putin to change his calculus. Now the Russian president has a choice between doubling down on his aggressive foreign policy or concentrate on putting Russia in order. This week's plunge in the value of the ruble adds another layer of uncertainty to the ongoing faceoff between Russia and the West. The currency crisis, precipitated by US and EU sanctions against Moscow and a global decline in oil prices, threatens to crater the country's lucrative state-owned enterprises and send the economy into a nosedive. The question is how an ever-unpredictable Vladimir Putin will respond. Putin's nationalistic and often-aggressive policies have appealed to Russians' post-Cold War sense of grievance and won him soaring approval ratings at a time when the Russian president is loathed in most western capitals. But the ruble dive threatens to radically shift the conditions that have allowed Putin to maintain his internal popularity in spite of the western powers' opposition to him. As New York University professor and Russia expert Mark Galeotti explained to Business Insider, Putin's rule is predicated on a "social contract" that most Russians have found acceptable: "You stay out of politics. You show enthusiasm but don't think you actually get a meaningful say in government. In return for that your life will improve and continue to improve." Under Putin, Russia achieved perhaps the highest standard of living in the country's history while the government was able to replenish its coffers after periods of actual bankruptcy under Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s. Weaknesses remained: The new prosperity was largely distributed through Putin's hand-picked former KGB colleagues and much of the country's wealth depended upon robust oil prices and access to European markets. Record military spending also threatens to sap resources and hamstring any government response to a future economic crisis. The recent decline in oil prices, along with the economic consequences of international sanctions, could bring Putin's arrangement crashing down around him. "This social contract is being torn up," says Galeotti. "But Putin could tear it up more quickly and more assiduously if he's still determined to maintain his aggressive geopolitical stance. It really is one of those guns or butter moments." The ruble has declined in lockstep with global oil prices over the second half of 2014. Twitter/@Schuldensuehner Galeotti believes that Moscow may send additional troops to eastern Ukraine in the hopes of pressuring Kiev into a settlement that would result in the lifting of international sanctions. But the chances of immediate escalation — beyond the Kremlin's current spate of military mobilizations and provocative military flights near and even in European airspace — remain low. Putin has nothing to gain from fresh geopolitical turmoil, especially now. "If we assume that Putin and company want to maximize their chances of exiting this crisis with their fortunes and, ideally, their political power mostly intact, then they need to worry about how NATO and the markets will respond to fresh aggression," Jay Ulfedler, a political scientist and director of the Early Warning Project, told Business Insider. "At this point, I don't see many options for new aggression that carry serious domestic benefits for Russia and don't risk huge new costs, perhaps including a direct war with NATO." But that's only in the short term. The Russian state has enough money to backstop the ruble for the time being and Moscow has the ability to bail out some of the state's vital assets. "The country's strategic reserves may be (and I think will be) dispatched to help save some of the industries and businesses that are considered strategic (RosNeft and GazProm are first in that list), but others may be sacrificed," Hannah Thoburn, a Eurasia analyst at the Foreign Policy Initiative, told Business Insider. The alternative is economic collapse and the severing of Putin's social contract — a scenario that could lead to internal disruptions serious enough to put Russia on an even more more aggressive footing. In an economic worst-case scenario, Russia could see "an increasing tide of protest" and "an accretion of signs of concern" as popular discontent grows, Galeotti explains. In that situation, "the elite may also start to wonder if Putin is really the guy they want in charge." In the face of public backlash and internal revolt, the long-serving Russian president may feel he has little choice but to rally nationalistic sentiment and push his advantage over his western rivals, which currently resides in the Kremlin's willingness to violently impose its will and violate the sovereignty of Russia's European neighbors. Putin addresses the Federal Assembly, including State Duma deputies, members of the Federation Council, the heads of the Constitutional and Supreme courts, regional governors, heads of Russia's traditional religious faiths and public figures, at the Kremlin in Moscow, December 4, 2014. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin Geopolitical expert Ian Bremmer told Business Insider that if he feels he's backed into a corner, Putin's options include more cyberattacks, "more aggression/incursion around NATO borders, excuses found for expansion of military engagement beyond present zone in Russia, [and] closer ties/integration with China." And then there's the worst-case scenario, an economic meltdown bad enough to convince Putin that the continuity of his rule is under threat. Galeotti says that complete Russian economic collapse is "a possibility but not a probability." But as he notes, "imperial adventurism" in the face of political or social crisis is a Kremlin tactic dating back to the disastrous Russo-Japanese war in 1905. It's one that Putin could resort to if things get worse. And between eastern Moldova, eastern Ukraine, and parts of Kazakhstan, former Soviet possessions that many Russians believe to be part of the national patrimony, Putin wouldn't have a shortage of obvious targets. |
Student activists at Duquesne University are fearful over plans to install a Chick-Fil-A in the school’s dining hall, claiming it will put their “safe place at risk.” Students at Duquesne University are concerned over plans to bring Chick-Fil-A to their campus, citing concerns that the fast food chain’s upper management have publicly campaigned against gay marriage rights in the United States. “Chick-fil-A has a questionable history on civil rights and human rights,” Duquesne Student Senator Niko Martini remarked in a statement to The Duquesne Duke. “I think it’s imperative [that] the university chooses to do business with organizations that coincide with the [university’s] mission and expectations they give students regarding diversity and inclusion.” Rachel Coury, the president of Duquesne’s Gay-Straight Alliance organization, claims that Chick-Fil-A’s presence on campus will make some students feel unsafe. “I’ve tried very hard within the last semester and a half to promote this safe environment for the LGBTQ community. So I fear that with the Chick-fil-A being in Options [an on-campus food court] that maybe people will feel that safe place is at risk,” Rachel Coury explained, adding that at the very least her organization would like “someone” to “make a statement” on the issue. Duquesne administrators are taking the student’s concerns seriously. “Lambda’s leadership met recently with Auxiliary Services to share their concerns regarding Chick-Fil-A’s corporate position on LGTBQIA+ issues,” said Alia Pustorino-Clevenger, director for student life assessment and co-curricular community engagement, and also the Gay-Straight Alliance’s faculty advisor. “They will continue to have meetings in the upcoming weeks with Auxiliary Services and Parkhurst to address this matter further.” Duquesne’s student government president Olivia Erickson also claimed that she takes “this concern very seriously,” and that she is working with the student government on “gathering students’ opinions and getting all the facts we can so we can make the best decision.” Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com |
As St. Louis awaits a possible Plan B to become a Major League Soccer city, Cincinnati is squarely aimed at Plan A. There are a dozen cities hoping to become an MLS city, but no two are quite so similar to one another as the Queen City and the Gateway to the West. Of course, they are also the two with which I am most familiar. Prospective ownership groups in each city have followed a similar road. Saint Louis FC was founded in 2014, FC Cincinnati, 2015. Both play in the USL. However, Saint Louis plays in a 5,500-seat suburban industrial park stadium. Cincinnati plays at the University of Cincinnati’s Nippert Stadium, a top-tier 35,000-seat college football stadium, about two miles from downtown. While enjoying similar on-field success, Cincinnati has set the USL attendance record several times, most recently against Orlando City B at 24,376. An exhibition game against Crystal Palace drew 35,061. Larger crowds have witnessed soccer at Busch Stadium and the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, though those matches didn’t involve Saint Louis FC. Whether due to circumstances or planning, Cincinnati has clearly established a following not enjoyed by Saint Louis. One must assume that this matters when asking for public money. St. Louis is on to Plan B because a vote to support an MLS expansion bid by a group led by Saint Louis FC CEO Jim Kavanaugh, fell a few percentage points short (47/53 or 3,300 votes) of committing $60M toward a stadium. Only St. Louis City voters were asked to vote on a contribution of public money. The prospective ownership group spent $1.18M on that effort. Just getting the measure on the ballot saw plenty of drama and politics. The proposal eventually fought its way through the city’s 28-member legislative body, of which, only one represents the stadium site. Though not exactly a competing measure, voters weighed in on a transit and public safety tax as well. Its passage was required for the MLS funding to pass. In Cincinnati, the expansion effort is being led by Carl Lindner III, CEO of FC Cincinnati. Where the St. Louis effort required bringing in a big outside investor to do the heavy financial lifting, the Cincinnati effort is locally led. For those in St. Louis, the Lindner family is to Cincinnati what a blended DeWitt and Taylor family would be to St. Louis. And while the soccer fans in St. Louis know and appreciate the Kavanaugh name, and Dave Peacock, is well, someone everyone’s gotten to know through the NFL stadium effort, Mr. Lindner needs no introduction in Cincinnati. This gives the effort a different premise. In St. Louis, the stadium was sold as an economic development tool. It promised 450 construction jobs and 428 permanent jobs. Perhaps St. Louis City voters had grown cynical after four professional sports stadiums didn’t revitalize the city, or their neighorhood. And it hasn’t just been stadiums, big project after big project has promised to alter the trajectory of the city. They haven’t. In St. Louis, the stadium site was decided out of the public view, as such things are done. The proposal was all wrapped up and decided upon before given to voters as an all-or-nothing proposition, as such things are done. As the NFL stadium effort was done. In Cincinnati, there’s no expectation that the process will be fully democratic, but there’s a relatively huge engaged fan base that expects to be involved. In fact, season ticket holders will be presented with an “innovative” stadium design by Dan Mies at a June 12 event. Mies previously designed a pro soccer stadium for the Las Vegas effort. Architectural design may be subjective, but Mies’s Vegas design is better than the HOK effort in St. Louis (top image). While they may be getting the design/site process a little backward, three potential stadium locations are being publicly debated, if not publicly decided. The process has a different feel. Dan Mies Las Vegas MLS stadium design: But what matters, what is clear, is that the MLS wants what’s best for the MLS. While the league may very well want to be in St. Louis, whether or not that happens is up to a prospective ownership group. An expansion franchise depends on a stadium deal, with or without public money. Again, the parallels here between St. Louis and Cincinnati are significant. Both ownership groups have touted $250M in private investment and a $200M stadium. However, the St. Louis group stumbled on the MLS expansion fee, publicly penciling in $200M, then not adjusting the public ask when the fee was confirmed at $150M. The public vote in St. Louis was rushed, as such things are done. The contortions may only be beginning in Cincinnati, and a public ask in some form is coming. A new pledge from the prospective ownership group of no new tax increase has been made, leaving the source of public funds unanswered. The best guess is that the group is targeting a current tax that funds the NFL Bengal’s Paul Brown Stadium. There could be other options. Both cities have had painful NFL stadium deals, with Cincinnati (Hamilton County) owning perhaps the worst deal ever made. That said, there is still an NFL team in Cincinnati. And that is likely because Cincinnati is in Hamilton County. (Sidenote: while St. Louis City owns Scottrade, home of the NHL Blues, US Bank Arena in Cincinnati is privately owned, and is currently in a stalemate as political leadership has clearly stated no public funds will be used in its needed renovation) St. Louis City and Cincinnati share similar histories and today exhibit similar attributes of size, population, and demographics, but there’s one defining political difference. Cincinnati is the seat of Hamilton County. St. Louis City is its own County and Clayton is the seat of St. Louis County. Hamilton County has lost near 13% of its peak 1970 population over the past 40 years. Over the same period, a combined St. Louis City and County lost 16%. These are very similar places, save the political fragmentation. Ultimately, regional political fragmentation pitted St. Louis County against St. Louis City. The work required to adequately address multiple political constituencies wasn’t completed. Shortcuts were taken. It’s quite easy to imagine that is the April vote in St. Louis had been put to St. Louis City and County voters, the outcome would have been different. It’s not clear if Hamilton County voters will be asked to sign off on public money, or if the mayor and city council (which consists of nine members, each elected at-large, that is, they each represent the entire city and not a ward or district) could approve funding. Of course, the Cincinnati effort may still stall, but on the ground here, it doesn’t feel that way. |
Barcelona is one of the finest cities in Europe, and maybe the world. It has one of the best architectural sites, the finest football teams, and a high reputation among tourists. I myself have been there several times, both for business and pleasure and enjoyed my stays. The food is also good, and if you come at the right season, prices may not be that high. However, in August, the city suffered a major terror attack. ISIS succeeded in killing 24 people and injuring 130 others by using a van on the famous La Rambla boulevard. The incident has a detailed entry on Wikipedia. Spain has had its share of terror attacks, the largest “Muslim based” being “The 2004 Madrid train bombings”. This event had 192 casualties and over 2000 injured. Spain, during the late 20th century, also suffered from the Basque separatist organization ETA acts of terror. The Spanish MSM reaction was expected: “We are not afraid”, “We won’t stop living our lives, ” and how we must “watch out for Islamophobia”. This begs the question: why Spain? What is going on over there? Love migrants, hate tourists Barcelona and the Catalan state have been very eager to “embrace” migration. The Catalans have a long history of pro-leftist ideological support, starting even before the Spanish Civil War. The historian Stanley George Payne, who studied this war, came to the conclusion that the war was about a leftist revolution against a right-counter-revolution. It is worth mentioning that he shows how fascism has similarities to communism. The Catalans have never forgotten, and would like to start their own state. They are conducting a popular poll on the subject in mid-October. This is understandable, since this state suffered quite a bit under Madrid’s reign. However, sometimes that tone becomes far-left, radical, and anarchist. And your enemy’s enemy? Maybe your friend. Earlier this year, Barcelona mayor Ada Colau attacked her own government and claimed that it was preventing cities from accelerating the arrival of refugees. Barcelona would actually like to take in more refugees and less tourists. I do understand frustration of city folks when the rent keeps going up because of tourists, but the idea that not building new hotels will curb tourism is absurd. Actually by building more hotels you will have cheaper rents due to extended supply. That’s not all for Catalan politics. Colau supporters, the far-left party of CUP, has made friends in Venezuela. Yes, that same country which my colleague Quintus Curtius earlier this year named “A Total Disaster”. Well, if they keep it up, they may find themselves eventually at the same place. I would advise learning the lesson before one turns the country into a leftist dictatorship. Loading... Why bother investigating? Let’s sabotage The Spanish government was smart enough. After the events in Berlin and Nice they decided to put bollards to prevent this exact type of attack on tourist sites. All state and municipal police received those guidelines. Guess who “revised” them? That’s right – the same migrant enthusiastic Barcelona mayor. La Rambla is known to be a potential for terrorist attacks, but that did not stop Catalan’s Minister of Interior Affair to claim that “it is impossible to place it, as it would affect traffic”. I wonder if they heard about traffic engineering. The Catalan police and the national police do not cooperate or share information as they should. They basically ignore each other (as much as they can). I believe that politicians will use every incident for their political advantage. This means that Catalan authorities repeatedly refused help from the national government, putting lives at risk. As we know, “never let a good crisis go to waste”. So while we’re at it, the Catalan parliament adopted anti-Islamophobia measures. Those include restrictions on profiling by religion or ethnicity during police patrol as well as not using the phrase “Islamic Terror”. I think that the Spanish anti-Inquisition is at work here. And if there was a crisis, let’s use the court of law. If you have a convicted felon, who is not of your nationality, what would you do with him? No, they are not to be deported or restricted. They should be cuddled and “assimilated”. Don’t believe me? Here is a case study. After being convicted of drug trafficking, and sitting in jail for four years, you would expect that a known terrorist would be expelled, but no. He has a track record of being registered in the Spanish social security system for six years, four of which were in jail. His lawyer claimed that this means that this legalizes his stay in Spain. I have no idea how dumb that judge was, but it seems that he can probably compete with Spongebob Square Pants. What’s next We would all like to believe that the attack might have shaken up Catalan and Barcelona government. Not a chance. The left rejects efforts to harden the penal code. They still see the problem as being the war in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. This has common sense embedded in it, but we fail to see any solutions coming from them. Keeping up the message of peace, love, and harmony sounds good. Too bad convinced ISIS about that. Colau’s Twitter account is full of those platitudes stating that terror will not prevent Barcelona from remaining a united and open city. I think the 1970s taught us that that does not work. Staying ego-invested may take future lives of tourist and locals as well. It is possible that the Catalans are reenacting the Spanish civil war. They probably believe that they are the brave democratic republicans fighting the evil fascist monarch religious regime. It sure seems like that when one reads their rhetoric. However, if they don’t open their eyes, the result might be reenacting the 15th century Reconquista. But this time – the other way around. Read Next: Orange Bus In Spain Causes Political And Social Outrage For Stating There Are Two Sexes |
Many business leaders may feel discomfort in appearing to embrace the president. Awkward: Obama jobs panel MIA President Barack Obama’s Jobs Council hasn’t met publicly for six months, even as the issue of job creation dominates the 2012 election. At this point, the hiatus — which reached the half-year mark Tuesday — might be less awkward than an official meeting, given the hornet’s nest of issues that could sting Obama and the council members if the private-sector panel gets together. Story Continued Below For starters, there’s the discomfort many business leaders may feel in appearing to embrace the president with his reelection bid in full swing. ( Also on POLITICO: White House: Obama's plate too full for Jobs Council) Then, there’s the fact that some members of the commission have conspicuously declined to endorse him. And that Obama has conspicuously declined to endorse some of their recommendations. And that some of what Obama won’t endorse has been warmly embraced by Republicans, including likely GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. To cap it all off, several of the companies whose CEOs serve on the panel are involved to some extent in outsourcing — a fact that could undercut the ferocious attack Obama and his campaign are mounting on Romney over his alleged ties to the practice. One former administration official said the current political atmosphere could be prompting the CEOs and other business leaders to lie low. “The thing is supposed to be bipartisan, so a lot of times they don’t want to get into things that could be used by either side in the election,” said the former aide, who asked not to be named. “The businesspeople, for the most part, don’t want to get into the middle of political fighting.” ( Also on POLITICO: Pelosi: Democrats should skip the convention) The last official meeting of the 26-member President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness took place Jan. 17 in the White House complex. Obama and a slew of other administration officials attended, including his then chief of staff, Bill Daley. Obama named General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt to head the panel in January of last year as the president tried to mend his frayed relationship with the business community and highlight his commitment to job creation. Part of the council’s political value was to show Obama working closely with top business leaders on behalf of the American people. But the White House insisted that the council’s recommendations would lead to real action. The panel held three “quarterly” sessions last year with Obama: in February, June and October. “This has not been a show council. This has been a work council,” Obama declared during the January 2012 session, where the panel presented a report containing more than 60 recommendations aimed at stimulating job creation. “I have been tracking implementation of your recommendations. And we’ve seen substantial progress across the board,” Obama added. “Hopefully, we’ve at least met your expectations in follow-through and implementation; what we haven’t seen is a bunch of white paper sitting on a shelf somewhere collecting dust.” But the January meeting also exposed tensions. Moments before Obama arrived, one of the board’s two labor leaders, Joseph Hansen of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, publicly abstained from the tax recommendations in the report. The other labor representative, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, skipped the meeting and issued a scathing three-page dissent. ( PHOTOS: Obama over the years) “I disagree that reforming our regulatory system and reducing the statutory corporate tax rate are crucial elements of ‘competitiveness’ for the United States going forward, nor does empirical evidence support the claim that significant net new job creation would result from such ‘reforms,’” Trumka wrote. In what could be viewed as criticism of the White House, Trumka suggested the makeup of the panel was too skewed in favor of business to make balanced suggestions on regulatory, tax and energy policy. This article tagged under: White House Jobs Politics |
Image caption The man police want to trace was parked in the caravan owner's driveway Police have released a Google Street View image of a man which is believed to have been taken at around the time a caravan was stolen in Derbyshire. The white Abbey Adventura caravan went missing from outside a house in Cauldwell Road, Linton, in summer 2009. Its owner checked Google this year and spotted a man parked in the driveway. It is thought the Street View car could have been passing shortly before the theft, and officers want to hear from anyone who recognises the man. The theft took place sometime between 0930 BST and 1400 BST on 5 June. 'Clear image' Wheel clamps securing the caravan were removed and left behind, but despite forensic examination of the scene the stolen vehicle was never traced. Pc Adrian Mason, who is investigating the theft, said: "It is amazing that we have such a clear image of a man who we think will be able to give us information that would help the police inquiry. "It was an amazing coincidence that the Google Earth car was passing at that time. "I've made extensive inquiries since the image was discovered but because the registration plate of the 4x4 is blanked out we have been unable to trace the man through his car. That is why we are appealing for the public's help." Anyone with information should contact the Derbyshire force. |
EZRA KLEIN, VOX MEDIA: At a very core level, the Republican party is failing in most basic function of the political party. What a political party does in a very complex world like we have, is help voters decide who to trust. If you got into point where a political party says, trust this guy and voters say, that's actually a disendorsement, right? Then you got into very profound place of dysfunction because you've lost that function of organizing information for voters. Now they don't have very good ways to figure out who to trust. That is going to be really hard place to organize if the fact the establishment is becoming a boon for Donald Trump because it shows that he is standing up to Republican party that Republicans no longer like. |
The East Coast Greenway is an urban network of trails stretching 3,000 miles from Key West, Florida to Calais, Maine on the Canadian border. Founded in 1991 by a group of trail advocates, the East Coast Greenway (ECG) began as a vision to provide cyclists and pedestrians with a safe and continuous, traffic-free route connecting 25 major cities along the Eastern seaboard. Today, 25% of the route is complete with car-free trails. The remaining 75% travels on roads that have been studied for safety and, in many cases, use bike lanes or wide shoulders. Despite a weak economy, the East Coast Greenway saw impressive growth in 2009 and 2010, due in large part to stimulus funding for trail construction. East Coast Greenway Alliance Executive Director, Dennis Markatos‐Soriano stated in last year’s press release: If we continue to grow at this quick pace, our East Coast Greenway will be safe and accessible to millions of Americans within a few years. No doubt an ambitious project, the ECG is on the path to turning a dream into a reality and proving that communities are prepared to embrace this national resource. Continued development stimulates local economies and provides green jobs along the route. Other benefits include low-cost transportation, connecting people with local business, reducing traffic congestion, diminishing dependence on fossil fuels, and promoting health and well-being. It’s been designated by some users as the urban version of the Appalachian Trail. Commuters up and down the east coast use segments of the Greenway in their daily commute, while others take advantage of the recreational opportunities. Many cyclists have biked the entire route. Utilizing rail trails, canal towpaths, current greenways, and waterfront pathways, the East Coast Greenway is mostly paved, though some sections contain crushed stone surfaces. It is suitable for all muscle-powered transportation: cycling, walking, and wheel chairs. Some sections of the route allow in-line skaters and equestrians. For more information see the East Coast Greenway website. |
If ever you’re inclined to holiday in Eugene, Oregon, you should stay at Velo Bed and Breakfast. The riding nearby is superb, and apparently Eugene is a happening place. You could also hang out with Rob and Misha Dunlap English, the proprietors and find out a little more about English Cycles, makers of some of the most lithe bikes the custom world has seen. Rob’s latest is this Tron-inspired road bike for Irvin: a sprightly mix of True Temper steel and ENVE carbon tubes. It’s designed around Shimano’s Dura-Ace 9070 group, or Di2, a system Rob has extensive experience with when it comes to integrating seamlessly into the frame. When combined with the characteristic silhouette of Rob’s frames, the result makes for a very tidy unit. That slender rear end is carbon as well. It’s a development on Rob’s steel Superlight V3, which shaves an extra 40g from the weight which, with the ENVE SES 3.4 tubular wheels, comes in at 13lbs. The front end is a THM Scapula fork topped with a custom stem by Rob that carris the Di2 controller. Eric at Colorworks applied the paint, which gets better the closer you look at it. Special thanks to Tina Buescher for the fine photography. See more on the English Cycles website. |
from R.C. Sproul Category: Articles When we talk about the vicarious aspect of the atonement, two rather technical words come up again and again: expiation and propitiation. These words spark all kinds of arguments about which one should be used to translate a particular Greek word, and some versions of the Bible will use one of these words and some will use the other one. I’m often asked to explain the difference between propitiation and expiation. The difficulty is that even though these words are in the Bible, we don’t use them as part of our day-to-day vocabulary, so we aren’t sure exactly what they are communicating in Scripture. We lack reference points in relation to these words. Expiation and Propitiation Let’s think about what these words mean, then, beginning with the word expiation. The prefix ex means “out of” or “from,” so expiation has to do with removing something or taking something away. In biblical terms, it has to do with taking away guilt through the payment of a penalty or the offering of an atonement. By contrast, propitiation has to do with the object of the expiation. The prefix pro means “for,” so propitiation brings about a change in God’s attitude, so that He moves from being at enmity with us to being for us. Through the process of propitiation, we are restored into fellowship and favor with Him. In a certain sense, propitiation has to do with God’s being appeased. We know how the word appeasement functions in military and political conflicts. We think of the so-called politics of appeasement, the philosophy that if you have a rambunctious world conqueror on the loose and rattling the sword, rather than risk the wrath of his blitzkrieg you give him the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia or some such chunk of territory. You try to assuage his wrath by giving him something that will satisfy him so that he won’t come into your country and mow you down. That’s an ungodly manifestation of appeasement. But if you are angry or you are violated, and I satisfy your anger, or appease you, then I am restored to your favor and the problem is removed. The same Greek word is translated by both the words expiation and propitiation from time to time. But there is a slight difference in the terms. Expiation is the act that results in the change of God’s disposition toward us. It is what Christ did on the cross, and the result of Christ’s work of expiation is propitiation—God’s anger is turned away. The distinction is the same as that between the ransom that is paid and the attitude of the one who receives the ransom. Christ’s Work Was an Act of Placation Together, expiation and propitiation constitute an act of placation. Christ did His work on the cross to placate the wrath of God. This idea of placating the wrath of God has done little to placate the wrath of modern theologians. In fact, they become very wrathful about the whole idea of placating God’s wrath. They think it is beneath the dignity of God to have to be placated, that we should have to do something to soothe Him or appease Him. We need to be very careful in how we understand the wrath of God, but let me remind you that the concept of placating the wrath of God has to do here not with a peripheral, tangential point of theology, but with the essence of salvation. What Is Salvation? Let me ask a very basic question: what does the term salvation mean? Trying to explain it quickly can give you a headache, because the word salvation is used in about seventy different ways in the Bible. If somebody is rescued from certain defeat in battle, he experiences salvation. If somebody survives a life-threatening illness, that person experiences salvation. If somebody’s plants are brought back from withering to robust health, they are saved. That’s biblical language, and it’s really no different than our own language. We save money. A boxer is saved by the bell, meaning he’s saved from losing the fight by knockout, not that he is transported into the eternal kingdom of God. In short, any experience of deliverance from a clear and present danger can be spoken of as a form of salvation. Ultimately, Jesus died to save us from the wrath of God When we talk about salvation biblically, we have to be careful to state that from which we ultimately are saved. The apostle Paul does just that for us in 1 Thessalonians 1:10, where he says Jesus “delivers us from the wrath to come.” Ultimately, Jesus died to save us from the wrath of God. We simply cannot understand the teaching and the preaching of Jesus of Nazareth apart from this, for He constantly warned people that the whole world someday would come under divine judgment. Here are a few of His warnings concerning the judgment: “‘I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment’” (Matt. 5:22); “‘I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment’” (Matt. 12:36); and “‘The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here’” (Matt. 12:41). Jesus’ theology was a crisis theology. The Greek word crisis means “judgment.” And the crisis of which Jesus preached was the crisis of an impending judgment of the world, at which point God is going to pour out His wrath against the unredeemed, the ungodly, and the impenitent. The only hope of escape from that outpouring of wrath is to be covered by the atonement of Christ. It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of a holy God Who’s wrathful Therefore, Christ’s supreme achievement on the cross is that He placated the wrath of God, which would burn against us were we not covered by the sacrifice of Christ. So if somebody argues against placation or the idea of Christ satisfying the wrath of God, be alert, because the gospel is at stake. This is about the essence of salvation—that as people who are covered by the atonement, we are redeemed from the supreme danger to which any person is exposed. It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of a holy God Who’s wrathful. But there is no wrath for those whose sins have been paid. That is what salvation is all about. This excerpt is adpated from The Truth of the Cross by R.C. Sproul. |
Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Kaine at a campaign rally last week at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. (Paul Sancya/Associated Press) As part of an appeal to millennials, Tim Kaine, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, shared this tidbit about his three children on Monday: One of them supported Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton during the party’s primary season. Kaine’s disclosure came during a well-attended rally at Iowa State University in Ames, where Kaine — Clinton’s running mate for the past two months — urged young voters to rally around the Democratic ticket in November. “Hey, we’re a big family on the Democratic side,” Kaine, a senator from Virginia, told his audience. [Clinton is losing some millennial voters to third-party contenders] Sanders, the now-75-year-old senator from Vermont, was a big hit among the millennial generation, consistently outperforming Clinton in Democratic primaries and caucuses among those under age 30. Kaine’s three children are in their 20s. Though Clinton is far more popular among young voters than Republican nominee Donald Trump, many of them eye her warily. A recent Washington Post-ABC poll found that a quarter of voters under age 40 are inclined to vote for a third-party candidate in November. On Monday, Clinton delivered a speech in Philadelphia during which she pledged to offer millennials “something to vote for, not just against.” [Clinton promises young voters ‘something to vote for, not just against’] During his remarks in Iowa — a battleground state this fall — Kaine said he sees millennials as “altruistic and patriotic and thinking globally.” “I see this in my own three kids, and I see this in you,” Kaine said. Sanders has also been back on the campaign trail in recent days, urging young voters to support Clinton. |
David Lingafelter, 22, was arrested on charges of robbery and obstructing. Photo courtesy Olympia Police Department OLYMPIA, Wash., April 10 (UPI) -- Maybe his next target was Scrooge McDuck's vault. Police in Washington state said they busted an alleged robber with an "unwise prop" -- a canvas bag printed with a dollar sign. The Olympia Police Department said officers responded April 8 to a report of a robbery at a Subway restaurant on the west side of the city and employees told investigators the suspect indicated he had a weapon in his pocket and left with money from the cash register and a worker's cellphone. The workers told police the man, who wore a red bandanna over his face, told them not to "do anything funny." The man, who employees said fled with a shopping cart, was located near the Grocery Outlet. Police said he was pushing a shopping cart loaded with consumer goods and was carrying $100 cash and a cellphone matching the description of the device taken from the Subway worker. The man also had a white canvas bag printed with a dollar sign tied to his pants. David Lingafelter, 22, was arrested on charges of robbery and obstructing. There was no word on whether the suspect has ties to the Beagle Boys gang. |
Sharon This post is not for my readers who have enthusiastically embraced the agrarian lifestyle, whether city farmers and suburban permaculturists or outright farmers or wanna-be farmers. This post is for your loved ones – your husband, wife, girlfriend, lover, parents, children and siblings…whoever you are hitched to, the people who have tied their lives to yours, and who are now wondering what on earth happened to their yoked partner? In some cases, they may be whether to unhitch and run in the opposite direction, since their beloved child/partner/sibling/best friend/whatever has gone completely ’round the bend and is talking about farms. Now I realize that some of you will look at any advice of mine on this subject with skepticism – after all, you may even blame me (quite correctly, perhaps), for your loved one’s going bonkers and talking about sheep and nut trees all the time. And yet, I do feel your pain. Or rather, my husband does, and he’s happy to tell me all about what it is like to look over at the person you love and wonder why on earth she’s babbling about soil. Eric got rather a shock around the time of our wedding – you see, he’d met this woman (me) who seemed to be a good match for his goals – both of us working towards academic careers, both of us happily living in the city, both of us planning an intellectual, urban life, complete with cats, futon and travel. And somewhere between the wedding and the honeymoon, his wife went a little insane. From my perspective, I can’t really remember what caused it. I’d had a garden everywhere I lived all through college – it was hugely important to me, and on balconies and in backyards, I always planted some things. We were living in Somerville Massachusetts, across the street from a major subway/commuter rail station. You could hear the trains rumbling under the building from our third floor apartment. And the balcony was covered with food and flowers – alpine strawberries in window boxes, herbs, letuce, peppers, even a few tomatoes, morning glories and moonflowers twining up the balcony. Every bit of dirt had been hauled up three flights of stairs, but it was beautiful. I occasionally mentioned how nice it would be to have some dirt on the ground somewhere, but that was really all. I liked my balcony. And yes, I liked animals, but hey, I had pet cats. The first thing I remember was a book – Paul Heiney’s beautiful British coffee table farm book _Country Life: A Handbook for Realists and Dreamers_ – I have no idea what led me to buy it, or even where I found it, but there I was in my apartment, staring at this book and thinking about chickens, to my new husband’s complete and utter disbelief. And unfortunately, I’m not the only one. Consider this excerpt from the very funny book _Hit by a Farm_ by Catherine Friend – she writes about her partner Melissa’s sudden shift into “wanna farm” mode: “I should have realzied what the future held the day I looked up and caught her giving me a dreamy look from across the kitchen table. Touched, I reached over and took her hand in mine. She squeezed it gently, and said, ‘God, I love chickens.’ But I still didn’t see it coming.” And just as I’m still a little mystified by my own sudden urge to farm, other wanna-bes can’t really explain it all very well themselves. Christopher Losee, coauthor with his wife Kimberly Schaye of _Stronger than Dirt_ writes, “It wasn’t that I’d ever fantasized about being a farmer. That thought was about as, say, becoming proficient in Chinese and leading tour groups to see the Great Wall. But between July and October 1994, I somehow became convinced that this was what I wanted to do and this was what I would do.” The farm dream hits someone, and in many cases, becomes intractable – and bloody annoying for the person not suffering from this weird disease. And it is a dis-ease – that is, all of a sudden you are dissatisfied with the life you’ve built. I think of it rather like (benign) malarial parasites – the infection could have come from anywhere, and once they build in your bloodstream, well, there’s not much you can do about it. They are always with you. In our case, my husband thought it would go away. I thought it would too – we talked about it, and agreed that eventually, someday, maybe we’d get some land. So a few months before Eli was born, early in our second year of marriage, we bought an apartment in a very, very urban place – Lowell Massachusetts, a wonderful city of immigrants, with an amazingly diverse culture, a long history and everything we thought we wanted. We had originally been shopping with a friend for a duplex, but he backed out, and then we purchased an apartment in an old mill building. It was a great apartment, a wonderful building, filled with wonderful people, a great neighborhood, we could walk to synagogue, it had everything we wanted, except one thing – no outdoor space. And about two months after we’d moved in, I realize that we’d made a terrible, terrible mistake – much as I loved everything else about the place, the lack of dirt was almost physically painful. The brain-altering parasites had reached critical mass, and now, nothing looked the same – it was all seen through the lens of the farm I didn’t have. Now Eric doesn’t like to move. In fact, he doesn’t like change at all. We joke that now (we’ve been together almost 13 years), if we left it to him, we might (might, I’m not sure I believe it) be engaged by now. I, on the other hand, like change – I get bored easily, and like a constant diet of new things. Eric’s job in our marriage is to try and get me to slow down. Mine is to drag him kicking and screaming on to the next things . It was painful for him to give up the apartment he’d been living in for almost 7 years and move to Lowell. Having done it, he planned to spend at least a decade there. And here was his crazy wife again, talking farms. He tried to pacify me – we looked into community garden plots – there was a two year waiting list. We looked into taking over some small part of the Mill building’s public space – management was not thrilled by the idea of eggplant instead of impatiens. If I knew then what I know now about urban farming and agriculture, I might have pushed harder or found other solutions. At the time, all I could think of was getting out to someplace where I could have poultry and a garden. My husband thought this was nuts. We didn’t know anything about chickens. How would we grow our own food – strawberries and basil were a lot different than a huge garden, wheren’t they? Wouldn’t it be too much work? What if he didn’t want to do any of it? Would it be weird? Would it be different? What if we screwed up? No, asking for a farm was too much, pushing him too far. And quite honestly, he was right. We would screw up. It would be weird. It would be more work than we understood. He would end up doing things he’d rather have skipped, frankly. Catherine Friend observes about the way the farm pushed her limits, “It turns out that, at age thirty-eight, I knew myself about as well as I knew the breeding habits of the Pygmy Butterfly, which is to say, not at all. So when I answered Melissa’s request to help her start the farm with a hearty yes, I might as well have stood on the center line of a four-lane highway and opened my arms. I would witness chicken sex. I would witness duck sex. I would even get frightfully involved in sex between two goats, something no feminist should ever have to face….Boundaries are good things; they’re the signposts we use during our lives to measure just how far we’ll go. My boundaries have always served me well. No touching worms or spiders or anything gross. No touching wild animals because they could be dangerous. No touching feces, urine, blood or any other bodily fluid. Definitely no stocking my hand up inside an animal’s body, or touching it anywhere I wouldn’t want to be touched myself.” Eric is no where near as squeamish as Friend, but he didn’t feel any particular need to ever, say shine a flashlight on a goat’s genitals to detect whether she’s in heat. Nor have any of his prior job choices involved nearly as much shit shoveling as agriculture (in teaching astronomy, the manure is mostly metaphorical ). And I think it is safe to say that most Americans would regard this lack of interest in these subjects as completely normal, perhaps even a sign of good mental health. But the thing about the farm-obsessed is that they manage, if they are even remotely persuasive, to make it seem completely normal that one would want to take on a life that involves early morning wakeups, picking vegetables on 100 degree days, more than ample manure, flies and blood, and examing goat pussy. Indeed, perhaps the most bizarre element of this is that the farm obsessed begin to try and make you feel weird for not wanting to live the agrarian life. This is a neurological symptom of the farm-thing. And, of course, they emphasize the benefits. “Think about all the delicious vegetables.” “The country life is so great for kids.” “It will be beautiful.” “The farm will pay for itself.” “You’ll hardly have to do anything.” Even I have to admit that the latter two of these points (which I used on my husband) are outright lies. The middle one is probably true, for a particular variation on “beautiful” – that is, real working homesteads and farms don’t usually make it house and garden unless there’s money enough to hire a lot of labor. It is beautiful – but you have to be the sort of person who can look past the clutter, the unmowed grass, the weeds, the manure and see the inner farm. The first two points are true, but it is worth noting that even the delicious vegetables don’t come without effort, and older kids, attached to their lives, may be less than enthusiastic when presented with “Here’s a creek, now you can play in it every day – no more wii, isn’t that great!” It is quite possible that some of you are the teenaged children of parents who have gone mad, and wondering what can be done about it. And that brings us to the central point. What can be done about it? Well, if your loved one has a mild case of the farm dream, there’s hope. One possibility is to simply draw the line “Me or the farm.” In some cases, you may actually stay together. The difficulty with this is twofold. First, it is easy to understate how compelling the farm dream actually is – you can’t make brain-parasites go away easily. Once the farm dream penetrates into someone’s inner life, it truly becomes their *dream* – and one stands in the way of a loved one’s dream at their peril. Maybe you have a dream or two also, and you know how fundamentally losing a dream can alter your life – there’s the horrible chance that they might decide that they pick the farm. And if you do win, your partner may end up behaving like someone who has seen his dream killed – and if you have a good marriage, you may find that’s not so desirable either. The next possibility is compromise – this will require you to actually get involved to some degree with the farm dream, because you are going to reshape it. Mom is dreaming of 50 acres and cows? Your job is to research urban farming, and bring her back to earth, convincing her that you could have a garden and chickens here, or that perhaps a 3 acre lot and 1 cow is sufficient. Here’s where the magic of the internet and the library come to your aid – “Honey, that’s a great idea, I’d love a farm (yes, it is permissable to lie through your teeth here)…but my dream is not to actually ever help birth a cow, plus to keep my job here – how can we both make it work? Have you seen this cool stuff on urban permaculture?” You might even find that there’s an element of this project that can hook into your dreams. Ok, you really don’t want a llama, not even a llama that your daughter thinks is super-cute. But you’ve always wanted a big workshop, with all the tools, or some justification for buying more quilt fabric - so perhaps, just perhaps, there’s a portion of this “let’s go live the self-sufficient life like freakin’ Thoreau” that might be turned to your own purposes. Think self-interest here. The next possibility for dealing with the farm dream is to accomodate, but draw firm lines about what belongs to whom. “Yes, honey, we can have a farm. It will be all yours. I’m going to keep on commuting, doing my stuff, etc… the farm is yours, and this is mine.” Inwardly, you think ”He can have pig shit on him, but that’s not going to happen to me.” This is an excellent plan, one that balances your needs against your crazy loved-one’s. I commend you for your being accomodating, and your loved one for his/her willingness to divide the labor. All I can say to this, however, is that you are kidding yourself if you think that’s actually going to happen. Ok, I know a couple of couples where the farm is mostly one person’s job – but even when they manage to keep those boundaries, the farm tends to leak into daily life. You see, farms suck up your life, whether little or big. There are a lot of jobs that can’t really be done easily by one person, particularly, most importantly, by one totally inexperienced person. So unless your loved one grew up on a farm and already knows how to castrate pigs, you will be drafted into helping. Welcome to pig shit central. You know those “honey-do” lists? Well, new and strange things are going to start appearing on them. It is only a matter of time until you are off to the Ag-way with a list of soil amendments to purchase, as you try to pretend that you have the faintest idea what greensand is, or why you would care about the color of your sand. The money you’d definitely planned to spend on a weekend meditation retreat is mysteriously gone – replaced by a big pile of stock fencing and orders to go pick up the gas powered augur, whatever that is. One day, Sweetie-pie comes wandering in, not with a small bag of peaches, but with three bushels, and expects you to help her do something with them. You can say “wait, this wasn’t in the deal” – good luck with that. Eric’s advice to all of you, if you have a spouse with a serious case of the farm dream, is simply “let go, complain a lot (so that he/she appreciates properly how much you are suffering, and feels guilty enough to be accomodating of *your* dreams and pleasures), but go with it – it really isn’t that bad.” Now this is perhaps a little self-serving of me (me, self-serving? ) to quote, but that’s his genuine take on it – that if the farm dream has penetrated too deep to be removed, you are about to begin a long, strange trip. And it is a lot more fun if you just try and enjoy it. And the funny thing is, it can be fun, and not just for the one with the dream. There’s something about learning new stuff, about building, making, growing and tending your own that is…well…neat. And neat not just to the person deeply infected by the crazy-agrarian-brain-parasite, but often, to the least likely people. Here’s Catherine Friend again, “One evening I watched one of my favorite movies, The Hunt for Red October. The submarine commander, played by Sean Connery, used a fascinating battle tactic: he turned his submarine toward the torpedo racing at him through the water. The sub and the torpedo met before the torpedo had armed itself, so it bounced harmlessly off the sub’s hull. Hey, what an idea. Why not move out to meet the farm, embracing it? I gave it a great deal of thought, then announced to Melissa I would do chorse two days a week. She was skeptical….Weekend after weekend, I trudged outseide. I think Melissa expected me to tire and give up after just a week or two….We argued over method, but I insisted that if the end result was teh same, why did I have to do things just like she did?…At one pointe, she literally stamped her foot, shouting ‘You can’t do chores anymore then!’ That would have been the perfect opportunity to utter one simple word. ‘Okay.’ But my response surprised us both. ‘This is my farm too, and I’m going to do chores.’” Kimberly Schaye, initially the reluctant partner to her husband’s flower farm dream eventually begins giving other people lessons in the dream and its realities – and of course, what’s funny about all of them is that most of them applied to her just a few years before: “I had developed a handy quiz to identify people who should think twice before they start looking for lad. Tehse are the people who would say any of the following: ‘I like money and feel that I need a lot of it.’ – This disqualifies you instantly ‘I hate bugs and when one lands on me, I tend to scream like I’m being brutally murdered until someone flicks it off. I’m not much fonder of dirt.” – Get used to both. As a farmer you will be covered with them most of the time. But you will get to learn which bugs are truly your friends and which you should kill with wild abandon. ‘I feel I might want to work for someone other than myself again someday.’ – Forget it. You will be completely ruined for this. And should you ever find yourself back in a corporate workplace environment, you will immediately wonder why everyone is dressed so uncomfortably and how they can take themselves so seriously …’How do I tell my friends about my workday and make it sound like I did something?’ – What you mean you don’t think ‘I kneeled in the dirt for eight hours and pulled tiny weeds out of a hole in the ground sounds like anything?’ Not everyone learns to, as Friend puts it, “stop worrying and love the barn” but it seems surprisingly common. Every time I go out among agrarians, I find that most couples or families are made up of people who are truly dedicated to farming, and their other relatives, lovers, partners, etc… who, well, weren’t. Maybe your spouse was raised on a farm, and the parasites lay dormant for a while. Maybe you just married a farmgirl or farmboy, and knew going into this meant “love me, love my muck-covered bottomland.” Maybe the parasites somehow infected your otherwise perfectly normal spouse or partner, Mom or roommate, and you keep thinking “I didn’t sign up for this.” My Mom is the perfect example of someone who got caught in someone else’s farm dream. First there was mine, but hey, she could be supportive, since she no longer had to live with me. What she didn’t realize was that the parasites were indeed contagious, and would infect her partner of nearly 30 years. Soon, there was the garden plot, the chickens, and the talk, after they retire, of “the baby farm.” My mother didn’t like bugs or worms. She liked her food properly encased in plastic. She thought chickens were weird, and didn’t really want to get to know her neighbors better, particularly around the subject of poultry. Fast forward a couple of years – my Mom has a community garden plot, three hens in the backyard, two chicks living in her kitchen and worms in the basement. She helps run open houses for future chicken owners. So far, she’s holding the line against goats on their 1/8 acre city lot, but even she admits that she no longer says “never” about much of anything. The funny thing is, she likes most of it, and everyone is happier now. So can’t blame you for trying to get out of it, or complaining, but it is important to know that real people do adapt all the time. Moreover, the brain parasites are contagious – it is surprisingly common for reluctant farmers to wake up one morning, go out into the dirt and think “Wait, I this doesn’t seem quite so insane.” The good food, the fresh air, the physical activity, the sense accomplishment – whether you’ve made your farm on your old lot or moved – these things suck people in, and soon, you can’t understand why your Mom thinks goat manure is so gross, and you are laughing at your Brother in Law, who swears he’d never actually eat eggs that came straight from a chicken’s butt. The thing is, farming, on any scale, really isn’t just a job – it is a way of life. Even if you keep your job as a mechanic, waiter, college professor or lawyer, there’s something oddly real about the time you spend in the woods securing your winter’s heat, or about the brush of feathers, or the taste of warm tomato – more real, many times, than the other work you do. And the realness is addictive – even to people who thought it couldn’t possibly be. If you can’t find a compromise position, if the tractor is coming straight at you, the best way is to climb on up and enjoy the ride. Here are some suggestions for doing so, while also maintaining what’s left of your sanity: 1. Do not believe anything your agriculturally besotted partner claims will “pay for itself” until you see actual numbers, and have actually done it. Assume upfront that everything will cost more than you think. Also, when your partner makes to-do lists, cut them in half, then in half again. Halve one more time if you have young children or a full time job. Then, you have a real shot at getting the stuff on your list accomplished…mostly. 2. Your definition of “gross” will change pretty rapidly. If it started out as “poop of any kind” it will now be “five acre chem-lawn lots that grow only grass that nothing eats.” If it started out as “Getting filthy and sweaty anywhere but the gym” it will now be “wearing your barn clothes more than two consecutive weeks or after they get sheep placenta on them.” If it started out as “the idea of eating some animal you once met” it will now be “the idea of eating factory farmed meat delivered on a styrofoam tray.” 3. You will do things you would have been willing to swear not that long ago, that you would never do. Absolutely, positive sure you’d never kill an animal? Wait until you have either a sick one that desperately needs to be put down, or some animal so obnoxious and unpleasant that the thought of eating them is actually kind of appealing (my three year old still announces, with some satisfaction “We ate Corey” – the mean rooster who kept attacking him.) Absolutely, positively sure you’ll never get a cow/pig/horse/tractor/business plan/worm bin/bees/truckload of manure/post hole digger/adze/quilting frame/orchard/llama/butter churn/chicken plucker/milking machine? Don’t speak quite so soon. The amazing thing is that you’ll end up feeling pretty good about it in a lot of ways – the funny thing is that when you finally fix that tractor, or when you actually do barn the hay or raise the turkeys – not only do you get the sense of accomplishment, but there’s an underlying “hey, I’m pretty cool to be able to do this.” That said, however, expect a steep learning curve, and plenty of screw ups. Try very hard to be good at laughing at yourself. Try very hard to remember that it is not always wise to laugh at your spouse, no matter how funny he looks with the raw egg dripping out of his pants pocket or covered in mud and G-d knows what else. 4. You may both find (assuming your relationship is a romantic one) agriculture strangely sexy. You wouldn’t think your partner would look especially handsome covered with little bits of hay, or holding a scythe, death style, but oddly, he seems to. Your wife, it turns out, looks really, really good with a sledgehammer, or perhaps less strangely, while holding a basket of ripe eggplants or a baby lamb. Country folk are, well, earthy, and there’s a good bit of sex in that. Admittedly, chicken sex is repulsive. But all those bees and flowers and rich fertility have their influence too – make sure you make time for love. 5. Your job is to say no. Even if you’ve been infected by the parasites, yours is probably still the voice of reason (scary thought, eh?). So no matter how much it makes perfect sense, you couldn’t have planned it better, and is such a great deal, it may not be the time to add 40 more sheep to your flock, to expand the CSA to 70 members (up from 12), to begin breeding Great Pyrenees dogs or to take down that old barn and rebuild it. Someone has to have a sense of perspective, and you are designated. At the very least, you should offer some resistance, a downpayment on the next crazy idea. 6. One of you should keep your job. I’m all for farming, however, if you are a beginner, the odds are very good that you are not going to fully support your family in the first year. Some of you will simply be looking to grow a little food and have a garden, some to make a little money on the side – to get the chickens to pay for their feed, make enough money from the produce sales to take a vacation, or offset the vet bills with your handspun yarn. But some of you will be looking to be FARMERS – the serious version of this. This is great. Farming is great. But it doesn’t come with health insurance, and it is not a reliable income stream at first for most people. Yeah, have a business plan and get started. But one of you keep the day job – you can always quit later when you are making money hand over fist. Ha! 7. The first step is probably not the last one. That is, just because you’ve let go and said “ok, we can have vegetables in the back yard, where none of the neighbors can see them, and maybe two chickens” do not think you are done. At a minimum, your pride and joy front yard perennial plantings are probably going to be replaced by hazelnuts and blueberries, and I’ll lay you good odds that there are a few more chickens, and maybe some bunnies in your future. 8. Once you eat the food, you are stuck for life. We all rhapsodize about the food – I mean, this is food money literally cannot buy. Unless you are rich enough to have your own private gardener rushing the asparagus from the ground, and bringing the heirloom tomatoes in warm from the garden, you will never quite get the perfection of taste. You can get close at the farmer’s market, but the best stuff comes straight off the plant, and is eaten within seconds of harvest. But now you are spoiled for life – your kids will never eat store jam again, after they’ve eaten Dad’s raspberry-blackberry. You will never be able to eat a grocery store tomato, or a salad of iceberg lettuce again. Even the lowly potato will be dead to you, if it comes from far away. 9. Your crazy loved-one will start out wanting to do everything – but will probably begin eventually to specialize. This is a process – expect it to take a while to shake out what your things are. That is, most of us come to this wanting to do it all – we’re going to have the chickens for eggs, the cows for milk, the huge garden, the… you get it. After a while, we find that there are some projects we do better than others and some we like better than others. I know some people who do it all – who produce nearly everything they eat or use. But most of us eventually settle down a little, and find that we’re happiest focusing on the things we like – the issue, of course, is that we don’t always know what we like until we try it, how much it costs, how much time it takes. That is, they find out whether they are a sheep person or a goat person by having sheep and goats. They find out whether they really want to cut hay or log with horses by working with horses. They find out if you like to sew their own clothing or build their own barn by trying these things out. Sometimes, they (or you) find out they are losing money, failing miserably or that they really don’t like coppicing trees nearly as much as you thought - they forgot they are afraid of heights. Ok, that’s fine, no need to make yourself crazy - they do like growing watermelons and making pickles. So just remember, if it sounds like you are being dragged every which way, you are, but it probably won’t last forever – sooner or later, you’ll only be dragged six or seven ways, and you’ll have time to get good at most of them. 10. There are a couple of ways you can come to share a dream. First, you can find a part of the farm that you love, too. Maybe you’ll never really be crazy about all those plants, but the chickens, now, those you do like. Or maybe you’ve always loved building and fixing things, or cooking and preserving – and that part is enough to make up for the parts you don’t always love. Or maybe you can find a way to integrate your dreams with one another, or simply to be happy that she’s happy, or he’s happy. That is, you love your daughter, and even if, left to yourself, you’d prefer to winter in Florida, not Ohio, and spend your retirement playing golf, rather than growing pecans, well, maybe it doesn’t matter – assuming that she too wants you to be happy, and is willing to give way on the things that really do matter most to you – say, making sure you have your shed to putter in or your books to read. Or maybe, just maybe, the little brain parasites will work their way up your bloodstream, until you no longer remember what it was like to live without a farm. Gradually the process of forgetting becomes so acute that you think a life without manure on your boots and the crow of a rooster, or the swoop of the barn swallows wouldn’t be worth living. You start looking forward to haying, or to going out the barn in winter to check on the rabbits. You start dreaming of the day you’ll retire, and can spend all day farming, or the day you can pick up your first beehives. I know that sounds crazy now, but sometimes you look up, and your dreams have changed, and that’s ok, even good. Sometimes there’s nothing more to dream of than being yoked together in the same harness, on the same land and doing the same good work for all the days of your life. |
Many people know that diamond is actually pretty common when it comes to gemstones (you can find millions of them in your typical candle flame), but who among us can actually name any that are rarer? Here, we present to you a collection of ten of the rarest gemstones on Earth. Above: Benitoite, number 7 on our list, fluorescing under UV light | Photo Credit: Parent Géry 10. Painite In 2005, The Guinness Book of World Records called painite the world's rarest gemstone mineral. First discovered in Myanmar by British mineralogist Arthur C. D. Pain in the 1950s, for decades there were only two known crystals of the hexagonal mineral on Earth; by 2005, there were still fewer than 25 known specimens. Advertisement Today, painite isn't as rare as it used to be. According to Caltech's division of geological and planetary sciences, the identification of a new painite repository in Myanmar, "the recent discovery of the actual source of the original stones," and "the subsequent discovery of two major new localities in the Mogok area" have all led to the recovery of several thousand crystals and fragments, but painite nevertheless ranks among the rarest minerals on Earth. [Photo Credit: Rob Lavinsky | CC BY-SA 3.0] 9. Alexandrite Advertisement Alexandrite is renowned for its strange optical properties – it can actually undergo dramatic shifts in color depending on what kind of light it's in. To be clear: this color change is independent of your viewing angle; a gemstone that shifts colors when you rotate it in your hand is said to be pleochroic, and while alexandrite is strongly pleochroic, it can also change colors independently of viewing angle when viewed under an artificial light source. (In natural sunlight, the gem appears greenish blue; in soft incandescent light, the gem appears reddish purple, instead.) A variety of Chrysoberyl, alexandrite belongs to the same family of gemstones as emerald. It's color-changing properties (and its scarcity relative to diamond) is due to an exceedingly rare combination of minerals that includes titanium, iron and chromium. [Photo Credit: David Weinberg | CC BY-SA 3.0] 8. Tanzanite Advertisement The catchphrase you hear tossed around about tanzanite is that it's 1000 times rarer than diamond, which it very well may be, considering that it's found almost exclusively in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, and in limited supplies. Like alexandrite, tanzanite exhibits dramatic color shifts that are dependent upon both crystal orientation and lighting conditions. In this figure you can see how the tanzanite changes color when viewed in vertically polarized light, unpolarized light, and horizontally polarized light, moving from left to right. According to Caltech's geology division, these color variations are largely due to the presence of vanadium ions. [Figure via Caltech] 7. Benitoite Advertisement This striking blue stone has only been found, as its name suggests, near the head waters of the San Benito River in San Benito County, California ( some sources say it has also been unearthed in limited quantities in Japan and Arkansas, but that these specimens are not "gemstone quality"), and is also the state's official gem. One of the most distinctive features of benitoite is how positively awesome it looks under a UV light, where it fluoresces a brilliant color reminiscent of glowing blue chalk. What's strange is that, even though it was first described at the turn of the twentieth century, and we've known its chemical composition for decades, the origin of its color and its fluorescent properties still aren't well understood. [Photo Credit: Parent Géry] 6. Poudretteite Advertisement The first traces of poudrette were discovered in the mid 1960s in the Poudrette quarry of Mont Saint Hilaire, Quebec, but it wasn't officially recognized as a new species of mineral until 1987, and wasn't thoroughly described until as recently as 2003. According to some sources, it's likely that few people will ever encounter a poudretteite specimen in person, and many will likely never even hear of it. [Photo Credit: Scott Davies, courtesy of The Gemology Project | CC BY-NC-SA 2.5] 5. Grandidierite Advertisement This bluish-green mineral is found almost exclusively in Madagascar, though the first (and, presumably, only) clean faceted specimen (described here) was recovered from Sri Lanka. Like alexandrite and tanzinite, grandidierite is pleochroic, and can transmit blue, green, and white light. [Photo Credit: Don Guennie | CC BY-SA 3.0] 4. Red Diamonds Advertisement Technically speaking, red diamonds are diamonds, but they serve to highlight the fact that that diamonds actually come in a range of colors. They are, in order of rarity: yellow, brown, colorless, blue, green, black, pink, orange, purple and red. In other words, The clear diamonds you're liable to encounter at your local jeweler aren't even rare as far as diamonds go. As a point of reference, the largest red diamond on Earth — The Moussaieff Red, pictured here — weighs just 5.11 carats (about 1 gram). The largest traditional diamonds — such as those cut from the 3,106.75-carat Cullinan diamond — weigh in at well over 500 carats. [Photo Credit: The Gemological Institute of America] 3. Musgravite Advertisement This mineral was first discovered in 1967 at the Musgrave Range in South Australia, but has shown up in limited quantities in Greenland, Madagascar, and Antarctica. The very first specimen that was actually large and pure enough to be cut to shape (like the one pictured here, courtesy of the Gemological Institue of America) wasn't reported until 1993, and, as of 2005, only eight such specimens are believed to exist. [Photo Credit: De Agostini/Getty Images] 2. Jeremejevite Advertisement First discovered in Siberia at the end of the 19th century, gem-quality crystals of jeremejevite (i.e. minerals large and clear enough to be cut to shape) have since been recovered in limited supplies in Namibia. Pictured here is jeremejevite that has formed in a rare, clear-crystal form the largest faceted jeremejevite on Earth. [Photo Credit: Fred Kruijen | CC BY-SA 3.0] 1. Red Beryl Advertisement Red beryl (aka bixbite, "red emerald," or "scarlet emerald") was first described in 1904, and while it is closely related on a chemical level to both emerald and aquamarine, it is considerably rarer than both. (The mineral's red color is due to the presence of Mn3+ ions.) The mineral's known distribution is limited to parts of Utah and New Mexico, and has proven exceptionally difficult to mine in an economically feasible fashion. As a result, some published estimates say rubies of similar quality (rubies being a rare gem, themselves), are roughly 8000 times as plentiful as any given red beryl specimen. Consequently, prices on red beryl have been known to reach as much as 10 grand per carat for cut stones. [Photo Credit: Rob Lavinsky | CC BY-SA 3.0] A version of this article previously appeared in 2012 |
About 20 million years ago a 13-foot predator swam in warm, shallow seas across the globe. This extinct shark was recently discovered by an international team of researchers led by a DePaul University professor. The newly identified shark—Megalolamna paradoxodon—is “an exceptionally rare shark,” said DePaul University professor Kenshu Shimada, who discovered the new species. While exploring the University of California at Berkeley collections, Shimada said he “unexpectedly found” a yet-to-be studied fossilized shark tooth that was originally discovered in 1974. “Through communication with colleagues and amateur fossil enthusiasts around the globe, I found out that there were more examples of the species from other parts of the world,” he said. Teeth up to 1.8 inches tall have been discovered in California, North Carolina, Japan and Peru. Megalolamna paradoxodon had “acutely pointed front teeth,” suggesting the shark preyed on medium-sized fish, rather than large animals like whales, Shimada said. “The fact that such a large fossil shark with such a global distribution had evaded recognition until now was a big surprise to me,” he added. “This tells just how little we still know about our ancient marine ecosystem.” This new shark belongs to the same group of sharks (called Lamniformes) as modern-day great white and mako sharks, and could be considered a close relative of the massive megalodon that could reach well over 30 feet in length. Both Megalolamna paradoxodon and megalodon were members of the extinct Otodontidae family. “There are no close relatives [of Megalolamna paradoxodon] in the modern seas,” Shimada said. The discovery has also led to more questions about the evolution of sharks. When classifying the new species, researchers discovered a 45-million-year gap between the presumed origin of the Megalolamna lineage and the arrival of this new species. Scientists wondered if there were more unaccounted for sharks. “The gap suggests that there must have been one or more Megalolamna species present during the time span that we simply have not yet found or recognized,” he said. Follow Kristen Thometz on Twitter: @kristenthometz Related Stories Field Museum Fossil Identified as Early Relative of Dogs, Bears Oct. 14: Thanks to an inquisitive Field Museum researcher, a nearly 40-million-year-old fossil housed at the institution has been identified as one of the earliest relatives of dogs, bears and foxes known as a beardog. Field Museum Archaeologists Find Centuries-Old Crocodile Stone Sept. 2: Field Museum archaeologists made an unexpected find while excavating an the site of an ancient city in southern Mexico. Meet A Global Shark Tracker April 23, 2014: Chris Fischer of OCEARCH is a man who tracks great white sharks, enabling scientists to learn about the mating, migratory patterns of the oceans’ top predator. |
If you’d forgotten that Fark.com is a thing, here’s a reason to remember: The site just became one of the first original link aggregators to ban misogyny from its community. According to a message posted by Fark’s founder, Drew Curtis, the site’s moderators will now be responsible for making sure misogyny doesn’t make its way into headlines or comments. This includes: - Rape jokes - Calling women as a group “whores” or “sluts” or similar demeaning terminology - Jokes suggesting that a woman who suffered a crime was somehow asking for it Ya know, just in case anyone needed reminding that these things are bad. It’s a testament to the sad state of the internet that “don’t be a misogynyst” can’t go without saying. But it’s also a refreshing departure from the misguided free speech arguments that sites like Reddit bend over backwards making to defend the handful of misogynist communities that are among its ranks — not to mention the free-floating slut-shaming that snakes its way into regular comment threads. Unsurprisingly, users of other link-sharing sites are dubious — this has to be a PR scheme, a ploy for more ad revenue, another example of our descent into excessive political correctness! On Slashdot, one user is more concerned about misandry: “If they’re going to tackle sexism they need to make sure they tackle all sexism, so no dick, cock, or misandric jokes either.” I, for one, have a much better idea: Let’s just ban all men. It’s hard to imagine Fark’s community will suffer from the banning of easy rape jokes — if anything, it will make the community a safer space for women and might even elevate the quality of humor. And don’t worry, if you’re desperate to discuss how women who dress slutty deserve to be raped, there’s always r/mensrights. |
NECA/WizKids will release Star Trek: Attack Wing Wave 21 this month, and StarTrek.com has the exclusive First Look at the ships in the upcoming expansion packs, continuing with the Robinson. Discovered on Torga IV while Captain Sisko and members of his landing party were conducting a planetary survey, the derelict Jem’Hadar ship was claimed by the Starfleet officers by right of salvage. After some rather tense negotiations and close calls involving a Dominion rescue team, Sisko and his remaining team members were able to successfully defend their claim to the crashed vessel and returned with it in tow to Federation space where the ship was eventually repaired and studied. Once the Jem’Hadar attack ship was returned to fill functionality, it was christened the “Robinson” and charged with a dangerous mission behind enemy lines. A mission so secret, that not even other Starfleet vessels know the identities of the Robinson’s crew or its task, easily mistaking it for a solitary Dominion attack ship. The Robinson is converted into a Federation ship by adding one extra Shield and three extra Crew Upgrade slots while losing one Tech and one Weapon Upgrade slot. The Robinson’s special ability is a true gambling man’s dilemma. When defending, you may ignore up to 3 damage inflicted to your ship if you choose to suffer a “Warp Core Breach” critical damage instead. Depending on how lucky you feel, suffering a “Warp Core Breach” might be a small price to pay if you can keep the Robinson around for one more round. As you would expect, Benjamin Sisko is Captain of the Robinson. This time Sisko has a level 8 Captain skill and a special ability that will make your opponents think twice before attacking your ship. Each time your ship suffers 1 or more damage to its Hull, you may roll 1 attack die. A hit or critical hit result damages the attacking ship as normal. If the result is a battle stations, place a Battle Stations Token beside your ship. If you choose to roll this die, place an Auxiliary Power Token beside your ship. As a repurposed Jem’dar attack ship, the Robinson was able to conduct stealth missions deep in Dominion territory. The Elite Talent Infiltration allows you to conduct your own stealth missions by discarding this card to perform this action. If your ship is within Range 1-2 of at least 1 enemy ship, but is not within Range 1-2 of any friendly ships, your ship cannot attack or be attacked this round. When conducting top secret missions aboard the Robinson, Sisko often relied on his trusted crew members to get the mission done. Miles O’Brien allows you to discard this card to inflict one damage to a target ship’s hull at Range 1-2 if they are not cloaked and have no active shields. A risky maneuver, disabling your own shields to inflict one hull damage on an enemy ship, Miles O’Brien is ready to deliver that extra damage when it is needed most. Jadzia Dax on the other hand helps to ensure the Robison is not hit by adding an Evade Token beside your ship after performing a red maneuver. Each crew member on the Robinson brings along something special with them to help ensure the missions overall success. Adding an element of luck to the crew, you can discard Julian Bashir at any time to re-roll any 1 die. Nog brings adaptability to the crew by allowing you to spend a Scan Token as though it were an Evade or a Battle Stations Token. Elim Garak strengthens your captain skill, attack or defense rolls by allowing you to add +2 to your captain skill until the end phase or to discard this card to select up to 3 attack or defense dice and re-roll them. With his trusted crew members at his side, Captain Benjamin Sisko is ready to strike at the heart of the Dominion. You can join the crew by adding the Robinson to your fleet or by playing the special scenario included in this expansion pack. Join the Robinson on its latest mission to destroy the Dominion’s main storage facility for ketracel-white. Your success is just the type of thing that could cripple the Dominion and win the war once and for all. Visit NECA/WizKids at WizKids.com/Attack Wing for additional information about Star Trek: Attack Wing and keep an eye on StarTrek.com for more First Looks and previews coming soon. |
Steal Something from Work Day 2011 is just around the corner—this coming April 15! To prepare for it, you could print out copies of Heist, our full-length Journal of Workplace Reappropriation, to sneak into all the locker rooms and dish pits in your area. You could forward links to the original Steal Something from Work Day video and the impressive Submedia follow-up to all your friends and family, if perhaps not your coworkers. There’s even a Facebook page you could join. Or you could contact our friends at Wild Nettle Distribution, who will freely send you STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY stickers to spread the word where you live. They’ll be sending out packs of 25-50 at no cost—all you have to do is email distro@wildnettle.com. Don’t forget to include a name and address; donations help, but are not mandatory. If you’d like more than 50 stickers, please help cover printing and shipping costs; for example, a $10 donation for 100 stickers would be great. Perhaps you could go in on a big package with others in your town? You can donate by sending money via Paypal to distro@wildnettle.com. Unfortunately, Wild Nettle can’t afford to send international packages for free, so contact them if you live outside the US. Stories from the Front Lines Last year, we encouraged people to send in stories about workplace theft. Here are a few of the responses; you can read a great deal more in Heist. Steal from Work for Education The high school decided that to save costs, all teachers had to provide their own lined and graph paper for their students. Use of the copy machine is free, however. A single page of graph paper and a double-sided printer equals about 500 pages of paper for the math department. Sometimes making the teacher’s job easier at the cost of the administration is a genuinely philanthropic act. –Small-Town Educator Steal from Work to Stay Hydrated The man in the suit and his hostile smoldering eyes are on me. I’m standing in the corner of the movie theater lobby. After unloading the delivery, I hold the wooden palette in my hands. I have to bring it out to the dumpster in the ice rain. My hands sting from the splinters and the wind. I come back in and bring a cold sweat on my forehead. I go for a cup of water. “No drinking in the lobby,” the manager says. “I’m sorry,” I say. Since I can’t drink his tap water in front of the customers, then I’ll just mosey on down to the basement… where I just unloaded three cases of Vitamin Water. In the basement, all the concessions and supplies are in storage. My hands feel burned and raw as I take the cap off a Vitamin Water. I can sense the liquid energy hit my teeth, but it only makes my fatigue more vivid. I calculate the math of this steal. Minimum wage plus movie theatre overpriced drinks equals an almost living wage. Except the bosses are disrespectful and the job is dirty. Some of my immigrant friends tell me I’m so American—liking baseball, jeans, and quantifying things. But is financial oppression uniquely American? I decide to hunt down some paper towels and a box of large garbage bags for my house. Time to get even, but this can’t be the end. –Aspiring Author Dan Larkins Steal from Work to Party Summer 2000 was the most enjoyable example of employee theft I’ve experienced at the workplace. I worked at an alcohol distribution warehouse where employee theft was common. There was so much theft going on that it had become a point of tension between the owners and workers. They even hired a manager specifically to tackle the problem. This manager was universally despised among all workers. Some were alcoholics; some stole to sell beer and wine on the street. Still others simply stole to get drunk. In this particular instance, it was a bunch of teenagers barely out of high school looking to get beer for their party. I was working second shift in the truck, shipping; these new guys had been working there only a couple weeks and already had got the drift of how things worked. If a case of beer had a bottle broken in it, it was no good to ship, so it would go to the breaker pile, from which employees and friends of employees could buy $1 wines and $5 cases of beer. Needless to say, I had a technique for loading cases of beer where the case would drop on a corner and only one beer would break, effectively ruining the case, sending it to the breaker pile. So these teenagers came up to me saying, “We heard you were the guy to talk to if we wanted to get a case of beer from the breaker pile.” I asked them their beer of preference. About an hour later, sure enough, a case of beer fell, breaking one bottle, ruining the case. I quickly loaded it onto the pallet going to the breaker pile and rushed it over. However, the case had become so soggy that when I lifted it, it fell apart, and a second bottle fell, only to break, ruining the case. I said disappointedly, “Oh man!” and scrambled to gather the unbroken bottles from the ground. Half the workplace came over to see what was going on. The teenagers asked what was wrong, and I replied “It’s ruined. It isn’t any good now.” Frustrated, I grabbed a bottle, cracked it open, and began to chug it down. The teenagers paused, watching me drink, then grabbed bottles and joined in. After they started, everyone else rushed over, drinking down the “ruined” beer. I was on my second beer when the anti-theft manager came around the corner and saw the spectacle of all the workers drinking illegally. I looked him in the eye defiantly as I turned my bottle up in my lips, the beverage pouring down my throat in rebellion. He stood there for a second, realized it was a battle he could only lose, and walked away. We laughed about the incident and I promised the teenagers I’d get them a better case as soon as I could. –Argumentative Midwesterner Steal from Work to Stay Focused on the Job I got out of school and walked the 25 minutes to the Baskin Robbins downtown, passing my coworkers and heading to the back to grab an apron and a visor. As I got dressed, I checked the clock: 2:45, early. I was almost always on time, and always showed up for my shifts. While this may seem like the bare minimum expected of an employee, being where I was supposed to be when I was supposed to be there and not spending whole shifts on the phone shouting at my significant other qualified me as one of the best employees there. This is because my boss hired exclusively high school students. The advantage of that was that she could pay us very little (after nearly three years I was making 75 cents more than when I started); she even had a system for screwing us out of our tips from time to time. She could also mess with our schedules and push us around in all sorts of other ways. The disadvantage was that somebody like me, who was really quite bad at my job, could be a star employee. I clocked in and went to deal with the line of customers extending out the door. It was like this all summer, every summer, from opening till close: never-ending lines of customers, each more disrespectful than the last. Kids upset that their Shrek cups didn’t look like the one in the picture, parents furious that buying ice cream hadn’t stopped their bratty kids from being upset. I took the first order, two single scoops in cups. Those cost $1.80 each. I turned to the second register, the one facing away from customers: when you were using it, your back was to the web-cam which my boss watched from her home. I entered in one single scoop. The person paid with a five and I gave them back $1.40, making a mental note that there was now an extra $1.80 in the register. It wasn’t just that I thought that my time was worth more than I was being paid; this was how I kept from getting bored. This was how I kept from getting angry. I would do this over and over again throughout the afternoon and night. As customers verbally abused me and looked at me like I was an idiot, I smiled blankly, lost in the math of how much I could skim off their order. The real beauty of this trick was that even if one night there was no opportune time to swipe the money, few bosses will seriously investigate when there’s too much money in the register. There were a dozen games like this one could play to stay entertained during a shift. My coworker, Devon, was staying interested by selling weed out of the store. Double cupping single scoops with a bag in between the cups, his customers leaving twenty dollars in a crumpled cup beneath the dumpster in back for him to fetch on his next cigarette break. I had taught him that trick back before I’d figured out my new tricks with mental arithmetic. I had no fear that he would notice what I was doing, as he was fully preoccupied and probably high as well. Then there was the manager, Natalie, who happened to be my girlfriend and was no doubt in the process of doing the same thing I was. At the end of the night we’d compare figures, usually coming out with about $40 each. My friend, Wes, walked into the store and waited patiently for me to take a break. When I finally met him out back, I had a treat: “I finally figured out how to make the smoothies vegan!” I handed over the smoothie with a giant cup of granola from the toppings bar. This was my favorite part of the job, and of every food service job I’ve worked since: gift-giving. It’s so easy to be generous when you don’t actually own the things you’re giving away. Natalie stuck her head out the back door: “We’re gonna swap the kids at Nice Slice some milkshakes, what topping do you want?” I thought for a moment. “Broccoli and onions, and one that’s half no cheese for Wes.” We had relationships all over town. We traded ice cream products to the kids at Nice Slice for pizza, the kids at Starbucks for fancy coffee, and the kids at Bruegger’s for bagels; a couple of my coworkers had even swapped with the guy at the liquor store a couple of times. Food was the most common thing taken, given away, or traded, but it certainly didn’t stop there. Rubber gloves were in demand for those of us with graffiti habits; empty (and sometimes full) whipped cream cans were taken for recreational purposes (if they weren’t consumed on sight); for our friends who lived on their own, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, saran wrap and any other household items were always welcome. The thing about food service is that there’s so much waste that keeping track of supplies is extremely difficult, so the question about everything in the store was “Is this item useful to anyone outside of an ice cream shop?” Wes thanked me for the food and headed out to write his name on other people’s stuff until I got off at 10:30. When the door had been locked, the last customer served, the floor mopped, the windows wiped, and the register counted—$42.35 for me, and similar adjustments for Natalie—I turned to her: “How many folks are coming over?” “A lot.” I opened the freezer. “Vanilla chocolate chip?” “Sounds good,” she said, grabbing a sleeve of single scoop cups off the shelf beneath the counter. I pulled one of the 5 gallon tubs from the freezer in back and rolled it out the back door before setting the alarm—y’know, to stop burglars. –Star Employee Steal from Work for Downright Dadaism OK, so there’s your garden-variety stealing from work, which is basically about survival. Of course, it can never go past a certain point, since you also need the job for survival. Fair enough, right? But there’s another kind of stealing from work for people who can afford to lose their jobs or who just don’t care anymore. People who are so fed up with wage slavery they’re ready to abolish themselves if no one’s gonna abolish it. This kind of stealing from work isn’t about survival, it isn’t about accomplishing goals—so it doesn’t have any built-in limits. It’s a kind of psychological terrorism to make sure the bosses never know what to expect. It doesn’t help the ones who do it—working class revenge almost never does—but it shows the war is still on. Back in high school, I used to work in the dish room at a college cafeteria. We’d get three thousand, four thousand dirty dishes coming in on the conveyer belt every meal—people getting scalding water in their shoes, skin coming off, the whole nine yards. The only way I could handle it was to grab a dish about every half hour, go out the back door, and sling it against the trash compactor as hard as I could. Maybe that’s not stealing, exactly, but the only thing I wanted to do with anything in that place was destroy it. If we’d taken over our workplace, Argentina-style, I would have voted to burn it to the ground, not to self-manage it or whatever. That same year, my buddy “Bill” applied at a grocery store. First day on the job the manager shows him around, gives him the routine, and then puts him in the back room to move stock or some shit. There are big boxes of whipped cream there, and as soon as the guy is gone Bill huffs all the whipped cream and passes out. The manager comes back and sees him there, with all the cans and everything. Can you imagine what he must have thought? Like, “I have to run a business with these fuckups?” A few years later, “Chris” worked for a month behind the register at a gas station and spent the whole time calling Belgium on their land line. He ditched out just before the bill came in. He used to do shit like that a lot. But my favorite story is when “Zach” worked graveyard at UPS. All night, he would unload boxes off a conveyer belt with this camera pointed right at him. He did that shit for months, getting more and more pissed off. One night he comes in and he’s the only one working in the room, lugging all these boxes. Finally he picks up one of them, carries it over to the camera and sets it down, and cuts it open with his pocketknife. Inside it’s chewing gum, case after case of the stuff. He takes one of them out, opens it up, unwraps a stick of gum, and puts it in his mouth, looking right into the camera the whole time, and starts chewing, real slow. Then he walks out. –Class Warrior |
Alex Wong / Getty Pro-life and pro-choice groups face off in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, DC. Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court legalized abortion in the U.S., abortion rates are at their lowest level in three decades which gives both sides in the culture wars something to celebrate and plenty to fight over, while the rest of us try to figure out what happened. According to the Guttmacher Institute's 2005 survey of abortion providers, the abortion rate fell 9% in five years, to 19.4 abortions for every 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44; the 1.2 million abortions performed in 2005 numbered 25% fewer than the high of 1.6 million in 1990. That would seem to be good news, whether you view abortion as an evil, or a necessary evil, or a routine medical procedure no more morally troubling than a tooth extraction. The problem is that no one can prove what complex chemistry of cause and effect, culture and calculation, explains the falling rates and for people who have devoted their lives to this issue, there's no glory in achieving one's ends if the means are anathema. Pro-choice groups credit comprehensive sex education and access to contraception, strategies that social conservatives often resist. Pro-lifers credit campaigns to tighten laws controlling access to abortion and to warn women about abortion's risks which the other side deplores. Meanwhile the vast majority of Americans watch from the sidelines and long for cease-fire, because the good news about falling abortion rates only illuminates the bad news underneath: Close to half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended, and 40% of those end in abortion. The U.S. still has one of the highest teen-pregnancy rates in the developed world nearly twice as high as England and Canada, eight times as high as the Netherlands and Japan and in December, the Centers for Disease Control reported that the teen birth rate rose for the first time in 15 years. Likewise, the U.S. abortion rates are disproportionately high: Rates in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands are less than half that in the U.S. fewer than 10 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44. With the two sides pulling in opposite directions, it's hard to see how progress comes. Groups like Planned Parenthood have fought hard to expand access to contraception, such as Plan B, the "morning after pill," which was finally approved for over-the-counter use in 2006. And they have fought for comprehensive sex education, which includes information about contraception as well as abstinence. A Guttmacher study in 2006 found that roughly "14% of the decline in teen pregnancy between 1995 and 2002 was due to teens' delaying sex or having sex less often, while 86% was due to an increase in sexually experienced teens' contraceptive use." Fewer unwanted pregnancies, pro-choice groups argue, is the key to fewer abortions: In fact, the abortion rate among teenagers has been falling most sharply. But pro-life activists can point to another set of statistics that suggests it is their crusade that has made the difference. Certainly, laws restricting access have had an impact, especially in a state like Mississippi, which now has only a single abortion provider. But attitudes matter as well. Sex education and contraception might account for fewer unintended pregnancies, but more women who become pregnant are deciding to carry the child to term. Guttmacher found that 22.4% of pregnancies (not including those that ended in miscarriage) ended in abortion, down from 30.4% in 1983. That would seem to be evidence that the quiet campaign for women's hearts and minds, conducted in thousands of crisis pregnancy centers around the country, on billboards, phone banks and websites, is having an effect, while the combination of tighter access, waiting periods and parental notification laws invite or force women to think twice about terminating a pregnancy. And, indeed, the Associated Press recently reported signs of a baby boomlet: The U.S. now has a higher fertility rate than most industrialized countries, and the 4.3 million births recorded in 2006 was the most since 1961. Some of this is due to a larger overall population and the high fertility rates among Hispanics the fastest-growing minority group in the U.S. but other groups showed increases as well. This leaves experts explaining why Americans are just generally more optimistic and child-friendly than many other countries. "Americans like children," Nan Marie Astone, associate professor of population, family and reproductive health at Johns Hopkins University, told the AP. "We are the only people who respond to prosperity by saying, 'Let's have another kid.'" America was already caught in a culture war when Roe was first decided: over Vietnam, over sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, over the place of women and the limits of government. In one sense, the story of the last 35 years is the tale of a subtle but sturdy consensus rising out of all the smoke and fire. The year after Roe, two-thirds of Americans favored abortion on demand. Now, after years of private and public debate, most people freely tell pollsters they'd prefer fewer abortions, but a majority embraces the inherent contradiction of "safe, legal and rare." "Safe" and "legal" speak to the sad fact of bad options: women who have been raped, whose pregnancy threatens their health, whose fetuses are fatally deformed. "Rare" speaks to a more widely acknowledged recognition that for many people the decision to end a pregnancy comes at a cost. It's not a comfortable position: The purists on both sides have much stronger arguments about morality and autonomy and consistency. But in the cloudy middle is where life is lived and laws are made and remade: Maybe the thing to celebrate 35 years after one of the most fateful judgments in the High Court's history is our willingness to continue to wrestle with the reasons long after the judges have ruled. |
Let’s switch things up here for a bit. Usually, WWE.com goes internal for its Editors’ Choice lists and gives our writers a chance to talk about not just why a match was special, but why it was special for them as a fan. Well, this time we’re riding shotgun to one of the biggest wrestling fans, and biggest Superstars, out there: Daniel Bryan. WWE.com initially approached the then-WWE World Heavyweight Champion about taking the helm on a “Superstar’s Choice” list wherein he would select his 15 favorites and we’d play rhythm section, adding our own observations and memories on top of his. Of course, then Bryan went down with a neck injury and the experiment was shelved in the name of good taste. But with The Beard back in action and headed to the Royal Rumble Match, we’re back on track and cooking with gas. So, without further ado, we give you Daniel Bryan’s 15 favorite Daniel Bryan matches, as selected in no particular order by the man himself. John Cena vs. Daniel Bryan — WWE Championship Match (SummerSlam 2013) WE SAID: If there was any one moment that cemented Daniel Bryan as a main eventer and an “A+ player” in the eyes of the WWE Universe, it was The “Yes!” Man’s WWE Championship clash against John Cena on Aug. 19, 2013. Hand-picked by The Champ himself to vie for the WWE Title at SummerSlam, Bryan faced his fair share of critics and detractors — including WWE management — as he approached the biggest match of his career at that point. WWE Network: The Beard battles The Champ at the summer classic | The forgotten, first Cena-Bryan match Despite the grueling uphill climb to the spotlight that would have emotionally exhausted most of his peers, Bryan gave the indomitable Cenation leader one of his most challenging matches yet. Countering Cena’s time-tested array of power moves with swift strikes and the very same mat tactics that dazzled more modest crowds in armories and high school gymnasiums, Bryan brought the capacity STAPLES Center crowd to its feet as he stunned Cena with an incredible running knee strike to score the pinfall and the title. Even though Randy Orton and the bout’s nefarious special guest referee, Triple H, would spoil Bryan’s WWE Championship celebrations with a Money in the Bank cash-in plot, no one could truly take away what The “Yes!” Man had earned in his clash at SummerSlam. Daniel Bryan as we know him had arrived. —JAMES WORTMAN HE SAID: “It was my first time really being in the main event of a pay-per-view as a singles wrestler. It was just an amazing moment, because SummerSlam was always my favorite event as a kid.” Daniel Bryan vs. Randy Orton — WWE App Vote Street Fight (Raw; June 24, 2013) Daniel Bryan and Randy Orton square off in a Street Fight during the main event of Raw. WE SAID: Give Daniel Bryan credit for his improvisational skills. Saddled with a “weak link” label after Team Hell No split unceremoniously, Bryan kicked off summer 2013 on a mission to prove he was a top player in WWE. Standing in his way was one of sports-entertainment’s entrenched standard-bearers, Randy Orton. Squaring off in this epic finale to their mini-rivalry, Bryan and Orton hit each other with everything but the kitchen sink in an App-voted Street Fight, but Bryan’s ability to adjust his skill set to Orton’s brutal style made his victory memorable. While trapped in the “Yes!” Lock, Orton reached for a Kendo stick to pound his way out of the hold. But Bryan blocked the first hit and stretched the foreign object on the bridge of Orton’s nose for a lethal twist on his signature hold. With splinters flying, Orton tapped, and the rest is history. — JEFF LABOON BRYAN SAID: “One of my favorite matches as far as my career advancement was wrestling Randy Orton on Raw. [A couple of] weeks before I was wrestling Randy and the match got stopped because I had a stinger. It was very frustrating and I thought, ‘Oh, come on.’ But it ended up being one of the springboards that led me into the match with John Cena at SummerSlam.” CM Punk vs. Daniel Bryan — WWE Championship Match (Over the Limit 2012) WE SAID: While the main event of Over the Limit 2012 was John Cena vs. John Laurinaitis, the longest and best match on the card was, without question, CM Punk defending the WWE Championship against Daniel Bryan. With the WWE Universe evenly split in their support of the indie veterans, the two overachievers put on wrestling clinic in front of a sold-out crowd. WWE Network: "LET'S-GO-BRY-AN/C-M-PUNK!" In the end, CM Punk countered the “Yes!” Lock by bridging and putting Bryan on his shoulders for a pin, only tapping a split-second after the three-count sealed the match in his favor. Was it a screwjob? A decisive win by the champion? Or a lucky break by the narrowest of margins for The Voice of the Voiceless? As if you didn’t have enough reasons to subscribe to WWE Network, the pleasure of reliving this match and deciding for yourself is one more. — @JOEYSTYLES BRYAN SAID: “It was really neat for me to be able to wrestle Punk for the WWE Championship on a pay-per-view because we’d had so much history on the independents. We went out there and we did a lot of wrestling, which you don’t see a lot of anymore.” Daniel Bryan vs. Takeshi Morishima — Fight Without Honor (Ring of Honor Final Battle 2008) WE SAID: A perfect example of bitter rivals coming to a brutal endgame, the bout was one of the best mixes of hardcore, technical and Japanese strong-style competition that sports-entertainment has ever produced. The two warriors pulling each other by chain off aprons and turnbuckles, Bryan hitting a man nearly twice his weight with a German suplex and the vicious chain-wrapped elbows to Morishima — followed by a Cattle Mutilation for the win — are moments that are forever etched in anyone who was lucky enough (myself included) to be in the crowd that night. The match’s stipulation meant anything was legal, and Bryan used it to showcase his abilities to go extreme and never say die. It was apparent the instant it was over that Ring of Honor couldn’t contain this man, and Daniel Bryan would one day take WWE by storm. — MIKE MURPHY BRYAN SAID: “This is where you’re going to start hearing the word ‘aggregate.’ I’m picking this match, but it’s really an aggregate of matches [I had against Morishima]. The match at Final Battle 2008 was nearly a year and a half in the making. It’s called a Fight Without Honor in Ring of Honor, which was essentially our Street Fight. It’s something I was very proud of because we were the main event of that show in New York City and we sold out the Manhattan Center of 2,500 people without any television, [because] that was before Ring of Honor had TV. That, to me, was really cool and special and shows just how into the product the fans were at the time.” Daniel Bryan vs. Seth Rollins - WWE App Vote Match (Raw; June 10, 2013) Daniel Bryan goes one-on-one with Seth Rollins on Raw. WE SAID: Asked to vote for Daniel Bryan’s opponent on the WWE App, WWE fans paved the way for the first WWE meeting of Daniel Bryan and Seth Rollins. Thank God they did. While the two had faced off on several occasions in Ring of Honor, the settings of those matches could not compare to doing battle on global television. Not surprisingly, it was a spectacular match that demonstrated to the world that a younger and hungrier group of WWE Superstars were ready to take over WWE’s main events. In the closing moments of the outstanding athletic contest, Randy Orton thwarted the interference of Roman Reigns, allowing The Beard to catch his opponent with a small package for the win. — @JOEYSTYLES Superstar roundtable: NXT's hungry young lions tell all BRYAN SAID: “Again, this is an aggregate pick. I picked this one because Seth Rollins is an interesting case for me. He was a fan of Ring of Honor when I was main-eventing Ring of Honor, so he would come to shows. And then he main-evented shows at Ring of Honor with me. And then here we are wrestling each other live on Raw. We went out there and had a great match. Our styles just meshed so well. Same thing with …” Daniel Bryan vs. Cesaro (Raw, July 22, 2013) Daniel Bryan squares off with Antonio Cesaro in the second round of the Gauntlet Match. WE SAID: Prior to squaring off with John Cena in SummerSlam 2013’s main event for the WWE Championship, Daniel Bryan competed in a grueling gauntlet of matches on the July 22 edition of Raw that would further validate The “Yes!” Man’s upcoming spot atop WWE’s summer classic. Facing the second of three opponents, The Beard went toe-to-toe with fellow indie legend and Ring of Honor veteran Cesaro in a bout that had an electric Austin, Texas, crowd chanting, “This is awesome!” Between The Swiss Superman’s jaw-rattling Very European Uppercuts and Bryan’s skin-smashing kicks, these two ring generals traded thundering strikes that could be heard throughout the Lone Star State. Just as Cesaro attempted to land yet another devastating Very European Uppercut, the resilient Bryan countered the impactful maneuver with a small package to overcome his hard-hitting foe in one of the year’s top matches. — SCOTT TAYLOR BRYAN SAID: “Being able to go out there with [Cesaro] and just wrestle in front of the WWE crowd and [having] them really be into it … it’s a different style than most WWE [Superstars] who come through NXT. It’s a different style of wrestling for those who have been on the independents and wrestled each other for years. And I really like that.” Daniel Bryan vs. Nigel McGuinness (Ring of Honor Unified 2006) WE SAID: In every competitor’s career, there are bouts that change them — sometimes physically, sometimes mentally, sometimes both. For Daniel Bryan, it took a trip across the pond to Liverpool, England, to learn a valuable lesson of what going too far truly means. The match had tremendous implications, as the winner would unify Ring of Honor’s two most significant singles championships: Bryan’s ROH World Title and Nigel McGuinness’s ROH Pure Title. The American Dragon, caught up in the moment, seemed determined to leave his opponent — then considered one of the world’s best — in a messy heap. The Englishman had his hometown country’s support, despite Bryan mounting a relentlessly vicious beating. Bryan’s victory foreshadowed his hoisting up the WWE World Heavyweight Title belts at WrestleMania 30, but the conquest ultimately provided an education in limits and the genuine dangers of ring battle. — ZACH LINDER BRYAN SAID: “Again, I picked this one, but there was a whole slew of matches with Nigel that I could have picked. This one in particular was memorable because we were in England. Nigel is English, and the crowd was just going crazy for him. They hated me. He was bleeding, the emotion was running high. It was a really cool match.” Daniel Bryan vs. KENTA (Ring of Honor Glory By Honor 2006) WE SAID: In the final months of his 462-day reign as Ring of Honor Champion, Daniel Bryan defended his title in New York City’s Manhattan Center against a Japanese sensation who would later emerge in WWE NXT as Hideo Itami. Then billing himself with the stylized handle of KENTA, the Pro Wrestling Noah standout possessed a style that was extraordinarily similar to Bryan’s — both favored heavy strikes, wrenching submissions and an unmistakable arrogance — and the resulting battle became one of The American Dragon’s defining bouts as champion. NXT: Hideo Itami takes over | Watch Itami vs. Curtis Axel In a match that “Stone Cold” Steve Austin may have described as “snug,” Bryan and KENTA exchanged blistering kicks that seemed capable of shattering bone. At one point, the champion became so frustrated with the challenger’s constant boots that he began throwing careless headbutts that cautioned his own wellbeing. Despite his recklessness, Bryan ultimately locked Itami in his Cattle Mutilation submission hold — after countless attempts — to secure the victory. It was ugly, but the war instilled a respect in both men that persists to this day. — RYAN MURPHY BRYAN SAID: “I’d just separated my shoulder and torn a couple of tendons maybe three weeks before going into the Manhattan Center again in New York City. The emotion was very, very high, everybody knew I was hurt, and KENTA kept kicking the crap out of my arm. My sister was in the crowd and she actually cried. I consider wrestling art. You want people to be entertained. If you can, make ‘em laugh, but when you really get ‘em, you make ‘em cry. And that was one of those matches that was able to do that.” Daniel Bryan vs. William Regal (‘WWE Superstars’, November 11, 2011) It's teacher vs. student as Daniel Bryan goes one-on-one with his mentor William Regal. WE SAID: One of the great things about Daniel Bryan is that he can pull off any type of match. And this catch-as-catch can clinic wasn’t the type of thing you’d typically see The Beard competing in on Raw or SmackDown. Bryan and William Regal have plenty of history together as the grappler from Blackpool, England, was very influential in the Aberdeen, Wash., native’s early career development. So, naturally, when WWE traveled across the Atlantic in 2011, Bryan and Regal treated the British fans to an old-style grappling match on “WWE Superstars.” Paying tribute to the style of British greats like Marty Jones and Pete Roberts, the student and the teacher proved you didn’t need top rope dives and tables to create a stirring classic in the squared circle. — TOM LIODICE BRYAN SAID: “When I think of my favorite matches, there are things I have an emotional connection to. And although this probably isn’t the best match we ever wrestled against each other, I was thrilled it was filmed for WWE TV, because we’ve had so many matches that I consider to be such a huge learning experience. He’s the reason why I’m the wrestler that I am today.” Team Hell No & Ryback vs. The Shield — Tables, Ladders & Chairs Match (WWE TLC 2012) WE SAID: At first glance, the Six-Man Tag Team Tables, Ladders & Chairs Match from WWE TLC 2012 appeared to be the night The Shield emerged as one of sports-entertainment’s most unstoppable factions — and it was. But take another look at the bout and you might notice a transformation that began on that evening. Up until that point in his WWE career, Daniel Bryan had been seen as a mix between a great in-ring technician and a lighthearted comedy act. It was TLC 2012 where he finally proved his tenacity. The brutality of the encounter would be a precursor to the year-and-a-half journey to the WWE World Heavyweight Championship that Bryan was about to embark upon. Whether he was shaking off a double superplex through a table or fighting back after getting his face crushed through a chair, one thing about Daniel Bryan became very clear on that night — he always got back up. — RYAN PAPPOLLA WWE Network: Bryan sent to hell at TLC BRYAN SAID: “I really liked the Tables, Ladders & Chairs Match from 2012. It was fun because it was The Shield’s first match and the tables, ladders, chairs and all that stuff added a certain element to it, an excitement, and people didn’t know what they were going to get out of The Shield. I think it set the precedent for what The Shield would go on to do from then, just having the best matches and stealing the show nearly every night.” Team Hell No & The Undertaker vs. The Shield (Raw, April 22, 2013) Undertaker returns to compete on Raw with Team Hell No to face The Shield in a Six-Man Tag Team Match. WE SAID: Behold, one and all, what may well go down as a once-in-a-lifetime event, never to be preceded or repeated again in this universe or any of the others that follow: Daniel Bryan, just weeks before reaching the peak of his powers and exploding out of the post-Team Hell No gate, uniting with not just his hug buddy Kane but his markedly-less affectionate brother, The Undertaker, against the most dominant faction there ever has been in WWE. WWE Network: The Deadman defends The Streak at WrestleMania 29 There were masterful performances by all six Superstars, but it was Bryan who truly rose to the occasion. As a collective, The Shield were beyond reproach even then, Kane and Undertaker are and have been institutions for years, but Bryan was still a bit of a wildcard. Much of his top-tier success had been predicated on chicanery and showmanship, not the pure, in-ring talent that brought him to the dance in the first place. The question of whether Bryan could truly,trulyhang with the big boys was still up in the air. He answered it, resoundingly, in this match, a black-sheep Brother of Destruction if there ever was one. — ANTHONY BENIGNO BRYAN SAID: “I loved teaming with Kane the whole time I was [in Team Hell No]. It was hard for me to pick only two matches with Kane. But the two I picked were both Six-Man Tags, and this one in particular was cool, because I had never gotten to share the ring with The Undertaker except for that one night. Doing it with Kane against The Shield was just a lot of fun.” Sheamus vs. Daniel Bryan — 2-out-of-3 Falls World Heavyweight Championship Match (Extreme Rules 2012) WE SAID:Even though Daniel Bryan and Sheamus’ 2-out-of-3 Falls Match came just weeks after the Dublin brawler Brogue Kicked Bryan’s skull and captured the World Heavyweight Title in a blink-and-you-missed-it 18-second match at WrestleMania XVIII, the rematch was anything but a carbon copy of their first World Title encounter. For more than 20 minutes, champion and challenger walloped the heck out of each other in a masterful bout that encapsulated the best of both Superstars. WWE Network: Bryan and Sheamus get "Extreme" Sheamus’ full-speed-ahead, pounding fisticuffs decimated Bryan’s comparatively small frame. (Case in point, Sheamus catching Bryan off the ring apron and driving him back-first into the barricade.) Bryan, meanwhile, was at his creatively cruel apex, kicking the bottom rope into The Celtic Warrior’s resting head and sacrificing the first fall so that he could further damage Sheamus’ shoulder en route to claiming the second. Repeat Brogue Kicks ultimately sealed the match for Sheamus, but Bryan’s vicious performance, though a losing one, confirmed the lopsided WrestleMania defeat was a total anomaly. — JOHN CLAPP BRYAN SAID: “We both felt really screwed at WrestleMania XXVIII. This was our chance to go out and just show them what we could have done. It was a really fun 2-out-of-3 Falls Match. It was really good.” Daniel Bryan vs. Triple H (WrestleMania 30) WE SAID: This was never supposed to happen. Triple H made it his goal to beat The Beard into giving up all hope of ever becoming WWE World Heavyweight Champion. But Bryan and his fans remained determined, hijacking Raw to get the leader of the “Yes!” Movement the title opportunity he deserved at WrestleMania 30. WWE Network: Bryan plays The Game in The Big Easy To get that chance, Bryan would have to get through The Game in the opening match on The Grandest Stage of Them All. With 75,167 passionate fans behind him, The Beard strode into battle with an injured shoulder. Triple H quickly targeted Bryan’s limb, slamming it into the announce table and wrenching away on it in the ring. But despite The King of Kings throwing everything he had at him, Bryan refused to give in. The Beard fought through it all, answering The Game’s every move. Although it seemed as if Triple H had finally beaten the life out of Bryan, The Beard escaped the Pedigree and a back suplex, catching Triple H with his trademark running knee for the win and setting the stage for one of the biggest nights in WWE history. — BOBBY MELOK BRYAN SAID: “ The whole WrestleMania 30 experience was incredible. Just to start off the show in that way was really incredible, with 70,000 people. Which leads into …” Randy Orton vs. Daniel Bryan vs. Batista — Triple Threat WWE World Heavyweight Championship Match (WrestleMania 30) WE SAID: The notion of destiny is something of an overused one. Somehow every fan favorite who climbs the mountain loses control of his own story and his accomplishments are attributed to the fates themselves, which, while certainly reassuring — who wouldn’t like to think that fulfilling their wildest dream will come down to a mere matter of time and place — takes away from the hard work required to overcome those odds in the first place. WWE Network: The dream comes true That said, it’s hard to argue that Daniel Bryan’s triumph at WrestleMania 30 wasn’t pre-ordained by some higher power. He’d already put in the work and reached his dream of the WWE Championship, but conspiring forces had robbed it away. And somehow, despite all that, it seemed that Bryan wasn’t just going to get back what was his by virtue of his talent, but that he was going to main-event WrestleMania and win it all. He had to. Anything less would have been an affront to the cosmos itself. Long story short, a few hurdles ( and one potential usurper) aside, he did. It was glorious. Some things were just meant to be. — ANTHONY BENIGNO BRYAN SAID: “Legitimately everything you’ve ever dreamed of ever since you were a kid. It’s main-eventing WrestleMania. It’s a Triple Threat Match, it’s a chance to win the WWE World Heavyweight Title in front of 70,000-plus people. You could feel the emotion from the crowd. At first they were just drained from the Undertaker-Brock Lesnar match and then you could just feel them getting back into it more and more and more. That was really cool.” Robbie Brookside vs. Daniel Bryan — EWP Intercontinental Championship Match (EWP Gilde Wrestling Festival 2003 — Tag 3) BRYAN SAID: “A match that nobody will ever be able to see but was one of my favorite matches I’ve ever done was against Robbie Brookside, who’s a trainer now down in NXT, in 2003 in Germany. In Germany they had these tournaments that would go on for weeks. And Robbie had talked to the promoter — he was the champion at the time — he said, ‘I’d like to bring Bryan in for just one match, just a title match.’ And the guy went, ‘I don’t know. He’s small.’ And Robbie said, ‘No, he’sreally, reallygood.’ They do rounds systems [in Germany], so we went out there and I want to say it was a match that was 10 rounds [Editor’s Note: Close. Brookside retained in Round 9]. And after the match the promoter went up to Robbie and said, ‘You were right, this guy was great.’ It was just one of those things where Robbie Brookside helped train me, he helped me be the wrestler that I am today. It’s also one of those moments where people don’t think you can do it, and then you come in and the promoter is like, ‘Holy cow, he is what you said he was.’ And that was really cool.” |
It has been almost three years since Alberta was shocked by plummeting oil prices in mid-2014. A province booming with industry and employment opportunities was suddenly faced with an economic collapse, characterized by capital flight and unemployment. Despite being responsible for creating 87 per cent of the net job growth in the country in 2013, Alberta has become an industrial ghost town. Between late 2015 and early 2016 Alberta began making headlines. Articles frequently came out detailing the damage that the province faced because of the crash in the oil market. This economic crisis has naturally placed enormous pressure on the workers whose jobs were cut because of it, and since then the epidemic has been referred to as “the death of the Albertan dream” (Maclean’s). In September 2014, an Edmonton worker stated, “Every time I was in a position where I needed to find a job, it didn’t take me long to find one… Jobs are open, they’re available… it’s pretty awesome” (CBC). By March 2016, another worker stated that he “knows how much pressure comes from working in the trades, describing it as a ‘sink or swim’ environment” (Edmonton Journal). Other interviews with workers revealed that some would need to completely leave the province to find new work elsewhere, while many had completely uprooted their lives to chase those jobs that now no longer existed. The pressures placed on the workers by this crisis have manifested, for many, in the form of suicide. In December of 2015, it was reported that in Alberta from January to June, there were 327 suicides, 75 more suicides than the same period in 2014. As of April 2016, a 60 per cent increase in suicides from the previous year had been reported. This ongoing suicide crisis has received little attention, in contrast to the extensive coverage of the broader economics. In Alberta specifically, counselors for the Calgary Distress Center reported 2015 as the hardest year they had yet to encounter, with demand for counseling services having increased by 80 per cent. Interviews with counselors at the distress center revealed the seriousness of mental health issues and suicide. It became clear that economic stress, combined with regular day-to-day stresses already present for many workers, could have been the final push. As one worker, Nancy Burgeron, stated, “People are just at wit’s end and they’re contemplating it, right?” Medicine Hat was hit especially hard by the suicide crisis in 2016: As of 15 April, the city reported a 60 per cent increase in suicides and attempts from that time last year, which would mean a suicide or suicide attempt every 2.8 days if the trend continued. While the Centre for Suicide Prevention has yet to release official statistics for provincial and national suicide rates in 2016, preliminary data suggests that rates have lowered, but not to their pre-crisis state. While it is no surprise that economic crisis has lasting economic effects (in March 2016, the Bank of Canada warned that recovery from the oil crash would take more than two years), it can be easy to overlook the impact crises have on actual lives. Beyond Alberta’s suicide crisis, a similar relationship emerged between economic crisis and suicide rates in Greece, Spain, and Italy, as each nation’s economy was hit hard by the financial crisis of 2007-2008. In June of 2015, Medscape reported that austerity measures in Greece were accompanied by a 35 per cent increase in suicide rates in the past two years, just as the country’s unemployment rate was reaching close to 30 per cent. "Our main finding was that after 2010, when harsh austerity measures were implemented in Greece, we noted a significant increase in suicide rates for the years 2011 and 2012 in comparison to the period between 2003 and 2010," stated George Rachiotis, MD, PhD. It is undeniable that the increasing suicide rate resulted from Greece’s economic crisis and the government’s austerity policies. Dr. Rachiotis continued, "Austerity heightens suicide risks directly by creating job losses, especially among public sector workers, and by increasing economic insecurity." Not only does austerity directly affect people’s lives by limiting their access to essential services and taking jobs, but it is also associated with diminished mental health and increased hopelessness, which in the most extreme cases can manifest as suicide. Spain reported a 20% rise in suicide trends since the economic crisis began, leaving suicide to cause more than twice the number of deaths as traffic accidents. This figure was reported in March of 2016, but suicide rates began to rise in 2007, just before Spain’s economy was hit. The economic crisis hit Spain in predictable ways: mass austerity and unemployment, followed by large-scale house repossessions. These factors are considered to have together contributed most to the spike in suicide rates. A psychiatrist interviewed by The Local stated, “In Spain we tended to equate psychological security with economic security and have sacrificed things like family, relationships and personal well-being along the way. Now we find such sacrifices have been in vain.” These words demonstrate the priority workers are forced to place on money, even over their own personal well-being. In June of 2013, it was reported that Italy had experienced a 40 per cent increase in “financially related suicides,” half of which were attributed, according to the Report on Global Rights 2013, to the “precarious” economic situation in the country, and 28 per cent linked directly with loss of employment. The state of the economy in Italy had been racing through a downward spiral for the past couple of years: In 2012 a quarter of the country’s population lived in “deprived families”, while this number was 16 per cent just two years prior. In addition to this, the unemployment rate had reached 12.2 per cent by May of 2013. Mental health experts in Italy were more reluctant to confirm the direct link between the economic crisis and suicide crisis, but they still could not deny that a strong relationship exists: “‘I believe that unbearable psychological pain is the main ingredient in determining suicide,’ Pompili said. ‘When you have hopelessness, and you don’t have expectations about what good can come in the future’” … “suicide stems from an ‘unbearable psychological pain’ that may arise from job loss or failure” (Aljazeera). Since experts are even starting to label these suicides as “financially related,” it seems that there must be something that can be done. While Alberta’s experts have created support groups and made resources more readily available to those who are experiencing suicidal thoughts, this is clearly not enough. When considering the options for intervention in Italy, experts muttered things like, “At the moment, municipalities are complaining that they don’t have enough money to assist the poor”. Similarly, in Greece it was reported, "The state provides Medicaid coverage, and there are mental health centers for outpatient mental health care, but they are all full to capacity, and the waiting time to get to see somebody can be months, which obviously doesn't do patients any good because the vast majority of them have acute mental health issues that need to be addressed within a week or two, not within six months." In an article on Alberta’s suicide crisis, the head of the Centre for Suicide Prevention stated, "In the budget we saw money specifically earmarked for mental health and we're hoping that some of it will be directly put into suicide prevention." Such statements only show the inability of the capitalist system to remedy the consequences of its own economic crises—we cannot even count on proper resources to be available when lives are at stake. This is not because the finances necessary to create these resources do not exist. The reality is that suicides directly linked to economic crisis would not exist outside of an economic system that is increasingly prone to instability and crises. The only way to end financially related suicide crises is to end the economic system that allows them to happen. |
We lowered our $1k and higher Backer-Rewards in these last few hours. You can now be an Executive Producer on the film for $2k - Checkout what we're offering to the right! The Story ZEN DOG is an independent feature film about one man's quest across the United States to potentially OFF himself with a coin toss atop the Brooklyn Bridge. It's about abandoning the comforts of the modern world in order to press into the unknown and truly live. ZEN DOG will follow Mud Takashi, a complacent man in his late twenties who was adopted and raised by Japanese parents. Mud's dissatisfaction with life is fueled by circumstance and the idea that there must be something greater than himself out there to discover. Having never left California, Mud decides to sell everything, pack his bags and head out to the road less traveled. Along his path he encounters his own set of trials and tribulations and eventually meets Bel, a cosmic spark of energy equally lost in a world of her own. If Mud represents the past and the future, Bel most certainly is the idea of the NOW. She teaches Mud the true meaning of detachment and ultimately becomes the focal point of both desire and suffering. In order to get to his final destination, Mud purchases a used 1969 Volkswagen from a reformed ex-hippy at the beginning of our story. While on his journey, he discovers a box of leftover cassette tapes in the trunk. One of the tapes happens to be a spoken-word mix tape of the late philosopher ALAN WATTS. Watts soon becomes the pseudo-narrator throughout the film and propels Mud as well as the audience into a world of self-discovery and actualization. From the West to the East Unlike most Hollywood road movies, ZEN DOG will be shot entirely on the open road. We will actually shoot from the West Coast to the Brooklyn Bridge so that we can keep the experience and the film as authentic as possible. ZEN DOG will employee REAL people from small rural towns in America as we make our way to the East. ZEN DOG will also be shot in chronological order while we are on the road so that MUD can grow out his facial hair to subtly emphasize this theme of transformation. We plan to shoot for ONE WEEK in either Los Angeles or San Francisco and then THREE WEEKS to Brooklyn. Some cities we plan to pass through are Reno, Salt Lake City, Omaha, Chicago, Philadelphia and many smaller, rural towns. ZEN DOG walks the line between what is constructed and what is real and in some ways borrows the examples from the Dogme 95 movement with its technical execution. The Universe on tape I've always been a huge fan of the work of Alan Watts. He was known throughout the West in the 1960s and 70s for his lectures, publications and contributions to Eastern philosophy, namely Zen Buddhism. Watts brought the ideas of the East to the West during a time of cultural self-discovery and spiritual metamorphosis. I enjoy Alan Watts not only because of his delicate, yet cinematic speaking voice, but also because of the words and ideas he can so easily convey. Watts has a way of breaking things down and making them easily digestible without coming off as authoritative or pushy. He makes you think and just like Mud in ZEN DOG, I want the audience to come out of this film thinking differently and having a greater appreciation for this man's works. Never before has a narrative feature film attempted to utilize the works of Alan Watts in such a creative and telling way. My name is Rick Darge and I've been a filmmaker almost my entire life. I started making little short films and claymations when I was 12 years old. Encouraged by my loving family and with the help of my grandpa's borrowed videocamera, I made hundreds of little shorts all the way through high school, eventually breaking my first camera with all of the wear and tear. When I was 17, I gathered as many willing high school participants and made my first indie feature film entitled BROKEN STRINGS. I learned many invaluable lessons from that process that would later be applied to my 4 years of film school education at USC. Upon graduation I worked as a professional editor for 3 years, working for the likes of Madonna, MTV & HBO. Unhappy with sitting behind a desk all day long, I took my life savings and purchased a Red One digital cinema camera. My true passion was behind the lens so it wouldn't take long before I was operating and directing music videos, commercials and short films, eventually winning an EMMY award back in 2007 for my work as a cinematographer. Clouded by the working world of production, I always wanted to jump back into the pool of narrative feature filmmaking but I must admit, I was scared. I wanted the next movie that I would eventually set out to work on to be totally worthwhile. It took a few years of cultivation but eventually the idea of ZEN DOG hit me in the face like a brick. I knew what I had to do and it's been a non-stop rocket ride ever since. KICKSTARTER is the natural progression of this process and I truly believe that crowd-sourced financing is the future of filmmaking. Fueling ZEN DOG is a talented roster of crew members that have been working in the industry for many years. We so far have locked in our DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY, EDITOR, PRODUCTION SOUND, COSTUME DESIGNER, GAFFER & SUPER P.A. There's still a lot to be done but we have our core team and that's what's most important. Our crew share a passion and drive that will not only make ZEN DOG an amazing experience but also a one-of-a-kind film. One amazing aspect of our shoot is that we don't have to worry about renting expensive camera gear or compromise on quality in any way! For a 4-week shoot, this gear would easily cost us $39,000 in rentals. Money saved! Between myself, Rick Darge and the cinematographer, Richie Trimble, we have more than enough high-end gear to make this film amazingly beautiful. Our official gear list for the technically interested: • (2) RED EPIC Cinema Cameras • (1) RED ONE MX Cinema Camera • (2) ANGENIEUX OPTIMO Zoom Lenses • (5) Vintage Superspeed Prime Lenses • (20) Canon EF Still Lenses • LED Panels, Kino Flos, Sliders, Tripods, Matteboxes, Car Rigs To give you perspective, the gear we are using is the same exact camera gear that was used to shoot THE HOBBIT movies, Prometheus, Total Recall, The Social Network, Flight and many others... Visual Quality, thanks to Red Digital Cinema, is something that will never be sacrificed on ZEN DOG. Money, Money, Who's got the Money? Every film has costs no matter what the story. We are looking to just cover our BARE MINIMUM costs to get us out the door. After crunching all the numbers, we found that we could squeak by with a limited budget of $30,000. That might seem like a lot of money but in actuality it's nothing. That $30k will quickly be eaten up by our lodging & food costs. We plan on staying at the cheapest motels possible and with a core crew of 6 people, that means everyone will be sharing a room. We also need to feed the cast and crew while we are on the road. When you are making a low budget feature film, especially on the road, you need to make sure that everyone eats well. A nice meal goes a long way to boost morale and spirits, not to mention energy levels. Our other costs for this film will be the rental and fueling of a 15-person passenger van. This van will function as our home base that will not only transport the crew and cast, but also our luggage, camera gear and other basic necessities. Our fuel costs are estimated to be roughly $3000-$4000 which will provide enough fuel to get our PICTURE CAR and the passenger van to Brooklyn and back. We will also be using this money to purchase all of the hard drives that we will need to store the film on. Since the RED EPIC shoots 5k resolution to digital magazines, we need a place to store all that footage and part of this budget will be going towards that. Things that are not in this $30,000 budget are camera rentals (absorbed), my fee as the director/writer/producer, money for post-production, music licensing fees... We will cross this inevitable bridge when we get there but for now we just want to get this film in the can anyway we can. We think we have a truly great idea, intense passion and a drive to succeed and fully believe that all the cards will fall into place as long as we keep DRIVING to our destination. Of course if we are able to raise more than the $30k with this Kickstarter or outside sponsorship, we would be overjoyed, but for now we want to keep this as modest and simple as possible. Every single penny will go back into this film because its people like YOU that make this all possible. What's been accomplished? What's left? We've accomplished quite a bit so far but still have a lot to do before we begin principal photography. So far we've written the script and are undergoing revisions that will probably take us all the way through the actual shoot. It's my belief that a script should never be stamped as finished and should always be transforming organically depending on how the shoot wants to go. I believe in fluidity and with a title like ZEN DOG, we must stay fluid and open during this entire process. We've secured the use of Alan Watts' work throughout the film. Mark Watts, Alan's son, has been very generous and forward with helping us in anyway possible during this process. He was responsible for the compelling and very fitting sound byte that you will hear / heard in our trailer-test-shoot for ZEN DOG. We recently bought the picture car that Mud will drive cross country in. Originally we wanted a Vintage Volkswagen Beetle, however because of that car's tight quarters and popularity everywhere, we went with a car a little more off the beaten path. We found a beautifully restored 1969 Volkswagen "Squareback" instead. The Squareback is perfect for ZEN DOG because it allows for more creative shots being a hatchback and it's also unique and something rare that you normally don't see in a movie like this. In a sense, the vehicle becomes a silent character in the film that will literally propel and change the direction of the story. Over the course of these past several months we've been auditioning many talented actors in the Los Angeles area for the lead roles. We are currently about to begin the callback process early next year to narrow our search. We are considering anyone and everywhere for these roles and won't begin the film until we have the PERFECT fit. What we must accomplish before we say "action!" are the logistical things such as fundraising, location planning, map direction, final casting, scheduling, etc. We have much to do, however, fear not, we've been working hard at ticking away all our checkboxes each and everyday. Pre-production is always a full time job on any production. Digital Copy, Blu-Ray, Insider Access, Tickets... We've come up with a lot of really cool rewards for you guys if you decide this is something you want to be a part of. Checkout the REWARDS on the side bar and pick a level that you feel comfortable with. You can always change your donation at any time during our campaign and remember, if we don't meet our goal, you're charged nothing. Now the deeper question is, What kind of ZEN animal are you? 3 THINGS First thing, make a donation of any size. You can change your donation amount anytime before the campaign ends and you will not be charged anything unless we meet our fundraising goal. After you back us and completed your transaction, Kickstarter will give you the option to send a message out to your friends/followers on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. The message will say you just backed us and it will included a link to our project page (you can edit the text). Please send these messages! It only takes a second and will help tremendously! Find at least one other person to make a donation. We want to make this movie available to everyone and that's why you can see it before anyone else, just for $10. In closing, NONE of this would be possible without supporters like YOU and websites like KICKSTARTER. We thank you all for your time, energy and money and it is with our great hope that ZEN DOG will be a film that will not only change the way in which you view the world, it will inspire you to do the things you always wanted to do. So please sit back, relax and enjoy the ride... I know we will... |
× Plainfield mall to re-open Saturday after threat prompts evacuation PLAINFIELD, Ind. (December 19 , 2015) — UPDATE (2:30 a.m.): The Plainfield Police Department continues to investigate an active threat to The Shops at Perry Crossing. The shopping center was cleared around 1 a.m. Saturday. Officers determined there was no immediate or imminent threat to shoppers at the time of the call. The Shops at Perry Crossing will re-open for regularly scheduled business on Saturday. Extra police officers will be out patrolling the area. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ PLAINFIELD, Ind. (Dec. 18, 2015)– The Carmike 18 movie theater in Plainfield was evacuated Friday around 9 p.m. after a threat. The theater is located at 380 Cinema Boulevard at the Shops at Perry Crossing. Police said the mall and theater were evacuated after a threat was made on Facebook. The threat mentioned specific stores in the shopping center. Earlier this week, threats were made to Plainfield, Danville and Franklin high schools. The threats came in via social media, and the schools closed. Police confirmed the threats came from the same suspect who made threats against Plainfield High School. The Plainfield Police Deparment issued the following statement: On December 18th at approximately 9 p.m., the suspect/suspects from the threats at the Plainfield High School posted threats against the Shoppes at Perry Crossing on Facebook. The mall staff was contacted and made the decision to evacuate due to the threats. The Plainfield Police Department along with other agencies are taking every precaution possible to ensure the safety of the citizens while maintaining normal patrol operations throughout the Town of Plainfield. We plan to make every effort to have the mall reopen as soon as possible. |
Saturday’s 1-0 win at Crystal Palace ensured we’ve now taken maximum points from our last 11 Premier League matches, stretching back to 1 October, when the run began away at Hull City. Courtois, who has only been beaten twice in that period, kept a third clean sheet in as many matches at Selhurst Park. ‘It’s going very well,’ said the Chelsea goalkeeper. ‘I didn’t have so much work on Saturday, there was one save low down to my left and I came to claim a couple of high balls well, so after that they had to put the crosses further away from me. ‘In the first 20 minutes of the second half we suffered but I think when Cesc came on we found more balls between the lines and it became calmer for us. We had some good chances, we didn’t take them, but I think we deserved to win. ‘It was a good clean sheet, good work from all the team and another victory so we’re happy. Now we want to enjoy Christmas and after that we have another important game against Bournemouth.’ It was Diego Costa’s first-half header which proved decisive at the weekend, but the striker will miss our Boxing Day game against Bournemouth after picking up a booking. N’Golo Kante is also ruled out through suspension. ‘It’s a big blow because he’s a top striker,’ Courtois said. ‘He scored his 13th goal of the season and he’s in top form. He’s been one booking away for many games now, so if he’d had a bit more luck he would have stayed like that until the New Year, when it’s gone, but hopefully Michy, or whoever the manager plays there, will do well. ‘For the manager, it’s not easy to choose players. With Cesc, Michy, Pedro, Ivanovic and Zouma we had a good bench and to be champions you need not only 11 players, but 18 or 22, the whole squad. We have a good team and we try to prove that every week.’ Courtois went on to praise the response of the team following a couple of disappointing results in September. ‘That defeat to Arsenal hurt us but we’ve come back stronger with the new tactics and system,’ he said. ‘It works well, everybody is doing their job and we keep on winning. The spirit is very important. ‘This week was good because we played against smaller teams but they defend well and it’s hard to break them down. To win all three games 1-0 is very good and we’re happy. We now have two home games in front of our fans so we need to win them both.’ - Thibaut Courtois also features in the latest Chelsea Re-Seen video... |
The post-election issue of conservative rag National Review has nothing about Barack Obama's victory, having gone to press before this past week's election. This is a pity, but flipping through the print version of the venerable publication, you'll find some truly noxious points-of-view, the kinds of things NR doesn't trot out on its ever popular blog, The Corner. So it is with cultural critic Jay Nordlinger, who has decided that liberal "hissing" is a feature of the enemy.If you're not familiar with Nordlinger's usual anti-liberal ravings, you're missing the writings of an insane genius. Nordlinger believes liberals are something akin to the devil, and usually accuses them of being in league with Castro, Stalin or worse. And if you don't condemn atrocities constantly years after the fact like he does, you just don't care enough. (By the way, this is the guy who spends most of his time reviewing classical music for NR and other publications.) In this winning harangue against the liberal practice of hissing while in an audience, he fires one shell, over and over again: For example, it is common on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where I live, and where I saw the preview for W. Hissing, wherever it takes place, is always, or almost always, hateful. It is sinister, menacing, sneaky, insidious. (Note how those words sound like hissing itself.) It is sort of anonymous, hiding itself, rather than being out in the open. I like what another reader — not from Gilbert — wrote me: “Hissing is underhanded, and it expresses disapproval without accountability. People can hiss with their lips and jaws in a neutral position — and they can drown out that which is disapproved while obscuring the source." This cultural note is finely constructed — it cannot possibly be refuted, as anecdotal as it is, and it is the perfect brush with which he can paint different types of people. Nordlinger goes on to employ his favorite practice: he attributes acts to people who never committed them: One time, on the Upper West Side, there was no hissing — like the dog not barking. And it was so remarkable, I wrote about it in my NRO column, on June 24, 2002. An ad for the Marines came on before a movie. My stomach tightened: Uh-oh. And no one hissed. There was not so much as the beginning of an ess. I wrote that this showed something different about the culture, for surely they would have hissed pre-9/11. The non-hissing took place more than six years ago, of course. What would the Marines bring today? You see? Liberals hate the military, and worse, they've won't even own up to their hatred.. They just sit, sniveling onlookers. Considering that's what Nordlinger and his magazine are about to be, it's a little ironic. Don't you think? I apologize for subjecting you to more of this, but someone once hissed Jay Nordlinger: I myself have been hissed a number of times — and not just when speaking about politics. I was hissed at the Salzburg Festival once! What happened was this: I was conducting a public interview of a famous singer, and I mentioned what had happened to song recitals: Everyone had to have a “theme” now, rather than a mixed program. “You know, you have songs to texts of Rilke, or songs about water, or songs by left-handed Hispanics.” Most people laughed or chuckled — including the interviewee — but one woman (I think it was a woman, somehow) hissed. I have never forgotten that hiss: It cut through the general appreciation and good feeling like a knife. Everyone thought it was hilarious, Jay. Everyone. |
Since moving to a high-rise building along the Southwest waterfront a few weeks ago, Nick Hamlin and his wife, Lauren Pengrin, have asked one big favor of their neighbors: to help push a couch into their apartment. “I realized that if they opened their doors, we could get extra space to push it in,” Hamlin said. “They were really great about helping us.” Since then, it’s been little more than a “Hi” and “Bye” relationship. Their neighbors smile; they smile back. Some small talk, and that’s about it. “I like them, but I don’t know them,” Hamlin admitted. “Wow — the more I think about it, the more I realize how little I know them.” District residents talk to their neighbors, but they don’t feel like they truly know them, and they certainly don’t regularly ask each other for help. Those were the findings of a civic-engagement report the city commissioned through the National Conference on Citizenship. The group, as instructed through a law passed by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) in 2009, annually assesses civic engagement in all 50 states and the District. Among the indicators: volunteering, voter participation, discussions about politics and feelings about one’s community. Researchers found that about half of D.C. residents regularly discuss politics — well above the national average of 29 percent. About half frequently talk to their neighbors — slightly above the national average of 43 percent. But only one in three residents said they would “trust most or all” of the people around them, way below the national average of 56 percent. Only 11 percent would regularly ask them for a favor. The report concludes that if the District were to be compared with the 50 states — a dubious thing to do, demographically — it would rank as the least neighborly in the nation. “The difference was stark,” said Ilir Zherka, executive director of the National Conference on Citizenship. “We don’t see such a big gap anywhere else.” The distinct lack of trust seems especially apparent in some rapidly transforming D.C. neighborhoods, where tension can fester between older and newer residents. It arises during small grievances, such as when impromptu soccer games get kicked out by formalized recreation leagues, or large ones — like low-income housing projects being torn down to make way for urban renewal projects. The city has established an office to promote volunteer efforts in which neighbors can help neighbors — an effort that offers an anecdotal counterpoint to the study’s findings. Last winter, for example, nearly 200 volunteers signed up during the cruel weather to do a big favor for seniors: shovel their sidewalks and steps. “Service transforms communities for the better and, in that process, builds greater relationships within those communities,” said Jeffrey Richardson, executive director of the Mayor’s Office on Volunteerism, which helped commission the report. Hamlin’s Southwest neighborhood is a mix of high-rises, low-rise projects and townhouses along the Potomac River, anchored by a snazzy new Safeway. On a recent night, few residents there could say they fully trusted everyone around them, and even fewer would regularly ask someone for help. Their hesitance was driven by feelings of self-reliance and safety. Sometimes it was racial; sometimes generational. One woman in her 30s said she couldn’t possibly trust her neighbors “because some of the ones who have been here for a long time are bad neighbors.” She did not want to be identified because of safety reasons. “One of my friends came over three weeks ago, and her bike was stolen,” she said. “And I am pretty sure it was stolen by someone who lives in my building. Why would I have trust in them?” One block from the Safeway, Barbara Randolph, 72, recalled a time when the only thing residents could do was trust each other. More than a half-century ago, she moved to Greenleaf Gardens, a subsidized housing complex of two-story, attached brick homes. She raised eight children there. No one had a lot of money, so they would loan each other $20 or watch each other’s kids. When Randolph was hospitalized for four months in 1981 after suffering a stroke, her children never missed a meal. “All my neighbors kept on bringing them food,” Randolph said. “Because that’s what you do when you’re low-income. You look out for each other. You’re in survival mode.” Randolph said she had no idea why other neighborhoods wouldn’t do the same. Greenleaf Gardens still houses multigenerational, low-income black families. But across the street, the neighborhood is increasingly made up of white, affluent, first-generation Washingtonians. One of them, Dan Sullivan, stepped out of his shiny new apartment to smoke a cigarette shortly after Randolph finished speaking. He’s white, 39 and has lived in all parts of the city over 20 years. A “polite city” is how Sullivan described the District, but one where residents are constantly rushing and can be obsessed with their professions. And with that that, sometimes, community camaraderie falls by the wayside. “I think especially now, there’s just so much tension between black and white, and with gentrification,” said Sullivan, an administrator for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. “We live in a complex city.” Still, he said the way to create trust is not that complex. About a year ago, he asked a big favor from an older, black woman across the street. “Where do you go to church?” he asked. She told him and invited him to tag along. “She introduced me to all her friends, and said, ‘He’ll be coming to church with us from now on,’ ” Sullivan said. So now, that’s what he does. |
After Michael Gove gave copies of the King James Bible to every school in England, the British Humanist Association is this week sending out copies of The Young Atheist's Handbook to secondary schools in England and Wales. Subtitled Lessons for Living a Good Life Without God, the book is by science teacher Alom Shaha and tells of his upbringing in a Bangladeshi Muslim community in south-east London, "how he overcame his inner conflict surrounding his atheism, and the lessons he learnt in leading a good life, full of awe and wonder, based on humanist principles", said the Association. The BHA raised more than £11,000 to send the book to schools through public donations from "thousands of people" at Justgiving, and hopes the initiative will give young people "access to resources that enable them to come to their own decisions about their values and beliefs". A spokesperson for the BHA said it had received "loads of lovely responses", but that a couple of Catholic schools had said they would dispose of the book if the Association didn't provide a stamped addressed envelope to return it. "Which we think is a shame, as we only sent the books to state schools and we think all such schools should want their young people to be exposed to a variety of views and to make their own minds up in a spirit of free inquiry," said Sara Passmore, the BHA's head of education. The Association points out that the book was "well received" by RE Today – the magazine said that "this book will make you think and it's hard to give a greater compliment than that" – and says it "has been welcomed by RE teachers". The scheme was suggested to the BHA by the science teacher Ian Horsewell, who got in touch with the Association after it helped launch the title. Horsewell has said that he was "amazed by the evocative prose in [Shaha's] book and the challenges he faced moving from nominal believer to outspoken freethinker". "It made me realise how fortunate many of us are to be able to take for granted our own freedom to believe, or not, in the faith of our parents. It seemed to me that the very students who needed to read Alom's book would find it hard to buy for themselves, so instead I wondered if we could place a copy in every secondary school library," said Horsewell. BHA chief executive Andrew Copson added that "in a large number of schools, pupils will have access to a number of religious perspectives on life's bigger questions, but not to what most non-religious people believe and how they find happiness and satisfaction in their daily lives". "We believe schools should be places where pupils are free to encounter the full range of philosophies and world views available to them in modern Britain," said Copson. But Trevor Cooling, professor of Christian education at Canterbury Christ Church University, told the Times Educational Supplement that "the humanists seem to be behaving a bit like a persecuted minority. Children should be exposed to many and varied ideas, but this book seems to be an overreaction." "The evidence suggests that most children's understanding of science is already largely atheistic. The BHA itself says that most children have non-religious beliefs, so why do they feel it is so important to send out this book?" said Cooling. "The status of a handbook written by a science teacher from London cannot be compared with that of a sacred Christian text and it cannot in any way be said to be offering balance." The Young Atheist's Handbook is published by Biteback Publishing. The BHA said the initiative was not a response to Gove's Bible mailout, which cost £370,000 in private money, rather that Horsewell had felt The Young Atheist's Handbook is "a book that all young people should have access to". |
When it comes to our smartphones, many of us don't shy away from slapping a less-than-attractive case on top just to protect them form what feels like an inevitability – sooner or later (usually sooner), youdrop that phone , and if you're unlucky, it'll be all kinds of messed up. But when manufacturers like Apple, HTC, and Sony are working as hard as they are to introduce fancy-looking, thin flagships, we do have a dilemma at our hands – do we still add that layer of protection in the form of a case, or do we go "commando" in order to appreciate our buy as much as possible? It's up to you to decide, but if you plan on going without a case, the below drop test will give you some idea as to the kind of structural endurance you can expect from the Sony Xperia Z3 . It's rather lengthy and it is in a language foreign to us, but that won't stop you from extracting the gist of it. In this case, it's fair to say that the Xperia Z3 is plenty tough, all things considered. |
To participate in Comic-Con 2017 Open Registration, you must have your own personal registration code to access the Expo Logic waiting room. Registration codes help keep out members who are not eligible for the sale and block nettling bots that aim to crash the system. Comic-Con Member ID account and selecting the “Registration Info” tab. Registration codes will be available in your Member ID account by April 6, 2017. If you are eligible to participate in Open Registration, your personal registration code will be sent to you via email at least 48 hours prior to the sale. You will also be able to access your personal registration code and link to the waiting room by logging in to yourand selecting the “Registration Info” tab. Registration codes will be available in your Member ID account by April 6, 2017. Your personal registration code will only authorize one device and one browser to enter the waiting room. Do not share your registration code or attempt to enter it on multiple devices and browsers! Doing so will authorize the most recent device the registration code was entered on, and you will receive an "Unauthorized" message on your other device. Registration codes are good for one entry into the waiting room only. If you are accidentally removed from the Expo Logic waiting room or temporarily lose connectivity, Don’t Panic. As long as you entered the Expo Logic waiting room prior to 9:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time (PDT), simply return to the waiting room link and re-enter your registration code. Removal from the waiting room will not impact your chances of being randomly selected for a registration session. Avoid the back button, the refresh button, multiple browser tabs, and incognito mode to steer clear of technical issues. If you are a family with multiple eligible attendees using the same computer, use a different browser for each registration code. DO NOT use different tabs within the same browser OR confront the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. Make sure to only use either a laptop or desktop computer. Comic-Con International cannot guarantee that mobile devices, including iPads and other tablets, will behave as expected. It is important that you arrive on time! The Expo Logic waiting room will open for registration code authorization at 8:00 AM PDT on April 8, 2017. You must authorize your registration code for entry to the waiting room prior to 9:00 AM PDT. The waiting room will close for entry promptly at 9:00 AM PDT and if you did not enter your code in time, you will be shut out! Make sure you arrive at least 10 – 15 minutes prior to 9:00 AM PDT. This gives you about 42 minutes to contemplate the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything. And finally, you’ll need a few things, aside from a towel, before Open Registration begins. Make sure you have your registration code, the link to the Expo Logic waiting room, your Member ID, the Member IDs/Last Names of those you plan to purchase for, and your Visa/MasterCard/American Express payment information. We do not accept PayPal, Altairian dollars, or Flanian Pobble Beads. |
The Ultimate Noir FPS Game You play as Michael Thane, a private investigator living a life of regret and loneliness. Mike heads home one cold dark night when he comes across a women being assaulted. After chasing the Mugger off the women tells Mike that a man has sent men out to kill her. Mike sets out on an investigation of a conspiracy so large that it will send the city into a towering inferno. Play through this new FPS game. Heavily inspired by film noir, Dive into the City of Umburgh, a city with crime lurking in every alleyway. Listen to Noir-like voice over given by Mike. Experience a Mature storyline and choose which way you want to explore the world. Figure out the mystery as you play and shoot up some mobster scum with a variety of weapons at your disposal! |
Rated 5 out of 5 by bxelect from great rifle first I bought the 10 22 break down and was jamming a lot. I took apart and cleaned it Put a thin layer of grease on the action and it works great now. I use EWG lube but any should work . I also know that some of the ammo can create problems like federal auto match. I also bought the 10/22 carbine and didn't lube it and it shoots great but when I looked at the action it was lubed very well. It shoots anything I put in it and I shot about 500 rounds with 2 or three ftf .I believe it was due to the ammo. Want to see if I can make 1000 rounds before I have to clean it. Easy to take apart and clean. Cant beat the price and all the after market parts you can get Rated 5 out of 5 by kwarbington from Nice rifle! No issues! Everything about the performance of the rifle is as expected or better. After maybe 15-200 rounds, no issues at all cycling SV or HV ammo. Nice gold bead front sight and fully adjustable rear sight that is extremely precise and very accurate even out to 50 yrds. Only issue for me is that sight is so low on the rifle I have a hard time getting my eye that low on the stock - cannot use the open sights with over ear hearing protection, but the rifle is not very loud and the ear plugs worked ok for me. The wood stock has a synthetic looking appearance that looks a little cheap, but not bad and quite alright for the price. Very happy with this purchase! Rated 5 out of 5 by blues4545 from Super Fun, Accurate Right Out Of The Box Been a shooter for many years, mostly handguns. When my wife and I first got married we used to go shooting together but then came family and other commitments. She recently said that she wanted to get back into it so I got her a really nice .22 handgun and then I got to thinking that a .22 rifle would also be fun. Started looking and was going to get a less expensive one and then Dick's put the Ruger on sale. No brainer. Really nice finish, and comfortable to hold. Extremely accurate out of the box, I was shooting 2" groupings with stock sights and with no adjustments to the sights. The wife loved it and we had a great time. She's already asking when can we go again. Highly recommend. Get the additional magazines, saves time having to reload the same one. Rated 4 out of 5 by justlittleoldme from My Son LOVES it...a quick word of warning though. Bullet brand does matter. Shoots great, it's accurate, fun to shoot. great beginner gun, and it's even a great gun for the old seasoned pro. super for plinking, there's tons of accessories available to buy to make it yours. run with it....which brings up a good point about christmas gift ideas. if your 20 year old has one of these, an extra magazine or two would be a great gift idea so would a couple boxes of bullets. SPEAKING OF **BULLETS**This rifle will shoot winchester 22L's all day long. I bought those because they were cheapest to be totally honest. and they worked great. no probs...i picked up some remington 22L's at walmart later, the gun jammed before the magazine was emptied.....immediately tried the winchester bullets again because we still had some, luckily again, no problem. tried the rem's one more time again it jammed.i'm no gun expert and i guess it's possible to get a bad box of ammo sometimes. and thats is why his rifle jammed with the remmingtons....but i'm sticking with winchesters Rated 5 out of 5 by Lcmech from My first 10/22 This is my first Ruger 10/22 rifle and I purchased it mainly to get my wife envolved in recreational shooting and it has her addicted. I own several other rifles that I don't think she would handle the recoil well so this rifle works perfectly. Plus, it is so cheap to shoot for hours without breaking the bank. Great quality wood stock and love the amount of after market accessories for this rifle. Truly a timeless classic that will be hopefully passed down through the family Rated 5 out of 5 by Ton C from American 22 classic rifle Every gun owner should have one of these in their collection. I picked up mine are Dick's for $199 on sale. It's accurate and has a solid build it's very easy to take down and clean I absolutely love it. I added a Nikon 3 x 9 x 40 scope and it's pretty much all set to go. Rated 5 out of 5 by Jim789 from Nice rifle. I bought this over a month ago and have already run 300 rounds through it. Hard to believe how much is available for this rifle. Put a Nikon 3-9 x 40 (22 specific) scope on it (old dude, old eyes) and was very happy with the results. If I had to do it over again, I would have done a Williams peep sigh instead (half the price and just as accurate). Love the rifle and the cost of 22lr. |
Grimes’ campaign comes as the incumbent Republican's numbers are weak. Grimes: 'The goal is to win' BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — Alison Lundergan Grimes was 6 years old when Mitch McConnell started his Senate career, and she’s held elected office for not even two years. But the fresh Democratic face could give the Senate minority leader the fight of his political life. Story Continued Below A once-bitterly divided state party is embracing Grimes, who rallied big and energetic crowds this week at her first campaign events following her botched July 1 announcement. The Kentucky secretary of state’s stump speech focused heavily on McConnell — she roused supporters with a stampede of attacks against the GOP leader’s nearly three-decade tenure in Washington. And Grimes’s campaign comes as McConnell’s poll numbers are weak, he faces a primary challenge from a deep-pocketed businessman and he’s leading a group of Senate Republicans increasingly at war with itself. ( PHOTOS: Mitch McConnell’s career) According to a new Democratic polling memo obtained by POLITICO, McConnell’s troubles could be real. Democratic pollster Mark Mellman’s survey for Grimes’s campaign shows her leading McConnell by 2 points in a head-to-head matchup, buoyed by self-described moderate voters and disapproval of McConnell’s leadership. It marks the challenger’s biggest lead yet in the race and is the second Democratic survey to show Grimes edging out the GOP leader. In her first national interview since becoming a candidate last month, Grimes is clearly bullish about her prospects. “The goal is not just [to keep it] close, the goal is to win,” Grimes told POLITICO. And Grimes warned that she is “not going to be bullied” by McConnell’s tough campaign tactics, adding that she is prepared to fight the onslaught of GOP attacks attempting to link her to President Barack Obama, who is deeply unpopular in the Bluegrass State. “I think the voters of Kentucky are tired of that play,” Grimes said, speaking on her campaign bus. “It seems as if Sen. McConnell wants to run against anyone but me, including the president, the Senate majority leader, leader [Nancy] Pelosi. And, unfortunately, I’m the one who filed my paperwork.” ( QUIZ: How well do you know Mitch McConnell?) The Kentucky Senate race will be the country’s most closely watched contest of 2014, something that will be highlighted this Saturday when the candidates share the stage at the state’s annual Fancy Farm Picnic. While they dismiss the Democratic polls, Republicans readily acknowledge the race will be tight through next fall, assuming McConnell defeats businessman Matt Bevin in a primary. But the largely untested Grimes must also survive a formidable political machine McConnell has methodically built for the past three decades. Grimes knows full well that the key to victory is to make the race a referendum on McConnell. She’s quick to attack McConnell for being the leader in a “dysfunctional” Washington, but she’s reluctant about revealing her own positions on issues such as abortion, taxes or gun control. Whether her own forthcoming policy views can pass muster with conservative Kentucky voters could very well be the biggest challenge of her candidacy. In a state in which Obama lost 116 out of 120 counties last year, Republicans argue that once Grimes begins to stake out her more liberal-leaning positions, Kentucky’s conservative voters will return to McConnell. ( Also on POLITICO: McConnell vs. Collins in spending bill) “This campaign will be about issues, not the platitudes and vague generalities Ms. Grimes prefers,” said Jesse Benton, McConnell’s campaign manager. “Given the issue matrix, she is in a near impossible position as she will have to either explain to Kentucky voters why she is against them on so many issues or mislead them about her true beliefs.” Indeed, in some ways she’s taken pages straight from the McConnell playbook, sticking closely to her talking points and aggressively staying on message. In the interview, Grimes hardly strayed from her anti-McConnell rhetoric, calling him the “guardian of gridlock,” the leader of the GOP — or “Gridlock, Obstruction and Partisanship”— and at the center of D.C., or, as she says, the “Dysfunctional Capital.” Grimes, who would be the first female elected senator from the Bluegrass State, plans to make an aggressive appeal to women voters, repeatedly citing an episode when McConnell allegedly denied a Kentucky woman from a teachers association a meeting with him. “Simply saying, ‘I’m married to a woman’ doesn’t speak loud enough,” Grimes said of McConnell. “Your actions, what you do in the course of 28 years, indicates where you will and how you will stand up for women.” |
When the renderings of the proposed stadium in Carson, California to house the Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers came out one of the most impressive features was a giant eternal flame for late owner Al Davis that was to be included in the construction of the stadium. A touching tribute to one of California’s legendary figures when it comes to professional football in both Oakland as well as in Los Angeles despite Davis leaving both cities during his lifetime as an owner. However that eternal flame plan may be scrapped for good even if the Raiders wind up in Carson as according to insider reports the NFL weren’t too happy to see a massive shrine to Al Davis in the stadium plans. Even if the team is still owned by the Davis family and ran by Al’s son in Mark Davis. The league not happy with the potential of honoring a deceased owner who spent much of his life battling with the league, even if he is beloved by fans of the franchise. According to Daniel Kaplan of Sports Business Journal, the central feature of the Davis eternal flame is now off of the table for any Carson stadium proposal as the league was “not happy” with the Davis tribute when they discovered it. Signalling that NFL brass don’t exactly want a move back to Los Angeles to be centered around the Davis family, even with Al’s passing ending much of the battles between the Raiders and the league. remember that giant eternal flame 2 Al Davis 2 b central feature 4 planned Carson NFL stadium.Its gone after league not happy w/ Davis honor — daniel kaplan (@dkaplanSBJ) May 26, 2015 It is strange, but not surprising that the NFL would nix an Al Davis tribute if the Raiders moved to Los Angeles. After all, Davis sued the league to move to the city in the first place before ultimately fighting with the city officials and leaving once he couldn’t get a new stadium in Southern California. There is a good chance the league does not want to honor that first Raiders relocation to Los Angeles even if Al is always going to be a loved franchise figure in both cities. The eternal flame is something that should be kept wherever the Raiders move as it is a fixture at the Coliseum, but just don’t expect it to be a giant central feature of a stadium in Los Angeles should the team eventually move back down south. |
Pro-President Trump “America First” candidates across the country are banding together in the 2018 election to put up a united front against their Republican establishment and Democratic opponents. Big League Politics has learned that at least four major American nationalist candidates will appear together at a rally on August 26 in Pennsylvania to introduce their team-effort approach. This rally marks the first concerted effort to build a Trump Caucus within the United States Congress — something that is desperately needed as the Republican National Committee shows disinterest or outright hostility toward the Deplorable faction. The America First Rally, organized by a former Trump campaign staffer, will be held at Green Grove Gardens in Pennsylvania near the Maryland border, and will feature Pennsylvania Senate candidate Bobby Lawrence, Maxine Waters’ California congressional opponent Omar Navarro, Joe Manchin’s West Virginia challenger and coal miner Bo Copley, and Elizabeth Warren’s “Real Indian” opponent V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai from Massachusetts. Kelli Ward — who primaried John McCain last year and is now running against NeverTrump Senator Jeff Flake in Arizona — is also in talks to appear. Other candidates are expected to sign on as we get closer to the rally. The rally organizer is also meeting with Michigan Senate hopeful Kid Rock in several days. Trending: Conservative Journalist Jacob Engels Suspended On Twitter For Calling Out Radical Islam “This is about the America First agenda laid out by President Trump during his campaign,” Bobby Lawrence told Big League Politics. Lawrence, a commercial glass company owner, announced his campaign to potentially unseat Senator Bob Casey here on the pages of Big League. “There’s going to be 2 to 5 thousand people there, and different candidates talking about the pro-Trump message. I think we’ll get a lot of national attention,” Omar Navarro, Maxine Waters’ opponent in the California 43rd, told Big League Politics. “What distinguishes us and makes us different is, we’re outsiders. We’re people from the outside who want to see change in our country, in our government. Changes are not happening. We need people working with the administration to get the job done. Maxine Waters is constantly touting impeachment. Impeach 45, impeach 45. These things are not related to the 43rd district. You have Toyota, Honda, many other companies that are leaving the 43rd district. So she’s interested in pushing a hoax to try to impeach the president?” “I’m working very hard every single day,” Navarro said. “I’m raising money, that’s part of the game. I’m doing it without the Republican Party through small donors. I’m endorsed by Larry Elder, I have Roger Stone working on my campaign as a political strategist. We are picking up momentum. I’m going to be at PolitCon with Roger Stone, we’re going to be talking to different people. I know that Maxine Waters is not going to win next year. If I keep fundraising the way I’m fundraising she’s not going to win. People are saying this has the potential to be the next Ossoff race.” Elizabeth Warren’s “Real Indian” challenger V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai is running hard against the establishment in Massachusetts, accusing his primary opponent Geoff Diehl — who was handpicked by NeverTrump governor Charlie Baker — of being a fake Trumper and member of the “controlled opposition” who even Photoshopped a picture of himself with President Trump. Shiva announced his candidacy at the “Bull Moose Party” at Washington’s Shelley’s Back Room during CPAC, which was hosted by nationalist writer Mike Cernovich and Deplorable mover-and-shaker Jeff Giesea. “What we’re witnessing is, Trump’s win was a disruption to the establishment Republicans and Democrats,” Shiva told Big League Politics. “The Deplorables is a rightful term. The elites in Washington, Cambridge and Hollywood think they know better but they have no idea the anger that people feel. It’s an anti-establishment movement.” “When the first shot in Lexington was fired in 1775, at Bunker Hill they were defeated but that was the beginning of a movement. Trump winning has to be seen in a much larger context. A much larger victory took place. Someone like me doesn’t have to do this, Kid Rock doesn’t need to do this, but the zeitgeist is, we love this country and we need to save it. Every day that Trump is out there is a victory.” “Every day Donald Trump survives another day, we win. We can’t get caught in their mindset, oh he didn’t pass bills. They’re bullshit bills anyway. That’s not going to change the history of the world. Movements change this world,” Shiva said. “They’re going to block everything. They’re the Deep State. The mark of success is how many people come out of the woodwork and start raising a flag.” “Think about Elizabeth Warren and Debbie Stabenow, who both voted for the Monsanto Protection Act, which allows Monsanto to pollute the food in this country. It’s building a multi-pronged movement so Trump’s win has many legs to it besides just him fighting against Ryan,” Shiva added. West Virginia coal miner Bo Copley, who was laid off as politicians in both parties turned their backs on coal, is determined to defeat Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who has been flogging the dead horse of the “Russia” conspiracy theory against President Trump. “President Trump was able last election to open the door for people like us to bring forth a movement. We’re going to surprise a lot of people. We fully expect to win,” Copley told Big League Politics. “We’ve run into a lot of positive supporters and a lot of people who are appreciative of what we’re trying to do, we offer something different. So far the response has been very uplifting,” Copley said. “We’re a grassroots effort, everybody knows that. We’re talking to people on the ground and making phone calls.” Copley remembers meeting with Hillary Clinton last year and “standing up to her.” “Joe Manchin was at that very table, I told him — with no political aspirations in mind at that time — that he was making a big mistake in the state by supporting Hillary Clinton. “Don’t overlook the little guy. Just because political pundits think they know the way this country should be run and won’t want to give the new people a chance, that doesn’t mean we should be overlooked. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing,” Copley said. Great America Marketing head Teresa Unruh, who designed the backdrop for every Donald Trump rally during the presidential campaign, told Big League that Trump “has always said we need to unify, because he can’t do everything alone. Everybody knows that, and they’re saying ‘Trump Train.’ But really he’s trying to get help in the Senate to be able to do this and the RNC isn’t helping. It’s no longer two parties, it’s just everybody against Trump.” As Big League reported, the RNC scolded their own pro-Trump Montana House candidate Greg Gianforte (the man behind the widely-praised “Bodyslam” of a liberal Fake News reporter) in the announcement certifying his special election victory. Don Trump Jr.’s stump speeches were credited with putting Gianforte over the top in the nationally-watched race. “So many good people are trying to come out and there’s no way for them to fight the establishment that has been in power for so long,” Unruh said. “We’re following what we’ve learned about government, and there’s no way that these candidates can fight the money and the establishment without one unified platform. This is not a new party. History shows that we would be taking away from the win if we start a new party. So instead of doing that I just want to give support and be the middle-man to help these people collaborate to do what they want to do for Trump. We want people in there who have their hearts in the right place.” Unruh, who is meeting with Kid Rock in a few days, said that “I think his run will bring in so many young voters.” “It’s a long process but it’s coming together now,” Unruh said. “We’re doing a presidential campaign for the Senate.” Can President Trump build a Deplorable caucus within the House and Senate to push for populist-nationalist policy items — from Wall funding to protectionist trade policies? If he hopes to fully succeed in the White House and build a legacy that will continue after his presidency — rather than watch his agenda get undone by Koch-funded globalist “conservatives” in the factional Republican Party — he will have to focus special attention on this task. But maybe, as Shiva the Real Indian said, passing the bills doesn’t matter so much, because the first shot has already been fired at Lexington and now the mark of success is how hard the movement fights to get people out in the streets. That next battle will get mapped out on August 26 in Pennsylvania. |
This article is about the city. For the region, see San Fernando Valley City in California San Fernando is a city in the San Fernando Valley, in the northwestern region of Los Angeles County, California in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. It is an enclave of the city of Los Angeles. History [ edit ] Mission Hotel in San Fernando, c. 1888 The city was named for the nearby Mission San Fernando Rey de España (which in turn was named after St. Ferdinand), and was part of the Mexican land grant of Rancho Ex-Mission San Fernando. In 1874 Charles Maclay, San Fernando founder, bought 56,000 acres (227 km2) of the Rancho. In 1882, cousins George K. Porter and Benjamin F. Porter of future Porter Ranch each received one-third of the total land. In 1885, Maclay founded the Maclay School of Theology, a Methodist seminary in his newly founded town of San Fernando.[8] After his death it became an affiliate and moved to the campus of the University of Southern California and then the Claremont School of Theology. While most of the towns in the surrounding San Fernando Valley agreed to annexation by Los Angeles in the 1910s, eager to tap the bountiful water supply provided by the newly opened Los Angeles Aqueduct, San Fernando's abundant groundwater supplies allowed it to remain a separate city. In the first half of the 20th century after incorporation in 1911, the city of San Fernando has tried to annex their city limits to Sylmar, Mission Hills and Pacoima, but the city of Los Angeles has kept up their rapid annexation and caused many failed attempts; and by the 1950's, the city said that annexation was hard to do, due to the large beaucracy of Los Angeles. They said that it can never be done again, unless someone makes a petition to LA city neighborhoods to seceede from LA to join with San Fernando in the far or near future. Even as the San Fernando Valley transformed itself from an agricultural area to a suburban one in the decades after World War II, San Fernando retained its independence. As with much of the San Fernando Valley east of the San Diego Freeway, the city of San Fernando has seen a significant demographic shift in recent years. Declining birth-rates and an aging population of middle-class Caucasians, who once dominated the area in the 1950s, has contributed to the movement into other parts of the San Fernando Valley. There has also been movement into the Santa Clarita and Antelope Valleys to the north. Latinos became the majority population (the largest percentage in the Greater Los Angeles area at 90 percent as of 2015). Since late 2004, the city has been going through a series of planning development projects, that can be defined as gentrification.[citation needed] Geography [ edit ] San Fernando is completely surrounded by the city of Los Angeles, with the neighborhoods of Sylmar to the north, Lake View Terrace to the east, Pacoima to the south, and Mission Hills to the west. It is served by the Golden State (Interstate 5), Foothill (Interstate 210), Ronald Reagan (State Route 118), and San Diego (Interstate 405) freeways. Demographics [ edit ] Historical population Census Pop. %± 1920 3,204 — 1930 7,567 136.2% 1940 9,094 20.2% 1950 12,992 42.9% 1960 16,093 23.9% 1970 16,571 3.0% 1980 17,731 7.0% 1990 22,580 27.3% 2000 23,564 4.4% 2010 23,645 0.3% Est. 2017 24,714 [9] 4.5% U.S. Decennial Census[10] 2010 [ edit ] The 2010 United States Census[11] reported that San Fernando had a population of 23,645. The population density was 9,959.9 people per square mile (3,845.5/km²). The racial makeup of San Fernando was 12,068 (51.0%) White (5.3% Non-Hispanic White),[12] 222 (0.9%) African American, 314 (1.3%) Native American, 248 (1.0%) Asian, 33 (0.1%) Pacific Islander, 9,877 (41.8%) from other races, and 883 (3.7%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 21,867 persons (92.5%). The Census reported that 23,531 people (99.5% of the population) lived in households, 46 (0.2%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 68 (0.3%) were institutionalized. There were 5,967 households, out of which 3,247 (54.4%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 3,282 (55.0%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 1,098 (18.4%) had a female householder with no husband present, 592 (9.9%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 476 (8.0%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 34 (0.6%) same-sex married couples or partnerships. 731 households (12.3%) were made up of individuals and 295 (4.9%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.94. There were 4,972 families (83.3% of all households); the average family size was 4.18. The population was spread out with 6,941 people (29.4%) under the age of 18, 2,659 people (11.2%) aged 18 to 24, 7,132 people (30.2%) aged 25 to 44, 4,920 people (20.8%) aged 45 to 64, and 1,993 people (8.4%) who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 30.7 years. For every 100 females, there were 100.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 98.2 males. There were 6,291 housing units at an average density of 2,649.9 per square mile (1,023.1/km²), of which 3,252 (54.5%) were owner-occupied, and 2,715 (45.5%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 1.1%; the rental vacancy rate was 3.9%. 13,425 people (56.8% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 10,106 people (42.7%) lived in rental housing units. According to the 2010 United States Census, San Fernando had a median household income of $55,192, with 16.9% of the population living below the federal poverty line.[13] 2000 [ edit ] As of the census[14] of 2000, there were 23,564 people, 5,774 households, and 4,832 families residing in the city. The population density was 9,880.7 inhabitants per square mile (3,822.7/km²). There were 5,932 housing units at an average density of 2,487.4 per square mile (962.3/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 42.76% White, 0.98% African American, 1.69% Native American, 1.12% Asian, 0.11% Pacific Islander, 49.35% from other races, and 3.98% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 89.28% of the population. There were 5,774 households out of which 52.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 59.1% were married couples living together, 16.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 16.3% were non-families. 12.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 5.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 4.07 and the average family size was 4.33. In the city, the population was spread out with 34.4% under the age of 18, 11.4% from 18 to 24, 32.1% from 25 to 44, 15.0% from 45 to 64, and 7.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 27 years. For every 100 females, there were 101.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 99.9 males. The median income for a household in the city was $39,909, and the median income for a family was $40,138. Males had a median income of $26,068 versus $22,599 for females. The per capita income for the city was $11,485. 15.3% of families and 19.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 22.5% of those under age 18 and 15.6% of those age 65 or over. Government [ edit ] Municipal government [ edit ] The City of San Fernando is governed by a city council. Members of the City Council are elected and serve four year terms. The mayor is appointed every year, on a rotating basis, by a majority vote of the Council. The Council meets on the first and third Monday of each month at 6:00 pm in the Council Chambers. State and federal representation [ edit ] In the California State Legislature, San Fernando is in the 18th Senate District, represented by Democrat Robert Hertzberg, and in the 39th Assembly District, represented by Democrat Luz Rivas.[15] In the United States Senate, San Fernando is represented by California's Senators Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris.[16] In the United States House of Representatives, San Fernando is in California's 29th congressional district, represented by Democrat Tony Cárdenas.[17] Infrastructure [ edit ] The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services operates the Pacoima Health Center in Pacoima in Los Angeles, serving the City of San Fernando.[18] The United States Postal Service operates the San Fernando Post Office.[19] Police [ edit ] Police services in San Fernando is provided by the San Fernando Police Department. The police department has 35 sworn police officers and 25 non-sworn personnel. The department is also augmented by 20 sworn reserve police officers. In times of need, the police department can deploy a total of 55 sworn police officers.[citation needed] The San Fernando Police Department is a member of the Los Angeles County Disaster Management Area "C". Area "C" consists of the cities of Burbank, Pasadena, Glendale, San Fernando, San Gabriel, Monterey Park, Alhambra and South Pasadena.[20] The San Fernando Police have, in the past, requested mutual aid from the LAPD during major incidents.[citation needed] Fire [ edit ] The Los Angeles Fire Department provides fire protection services for the city of San Fernando, which serves the community from three nearby fire stations (Station 75, Station 91, and Station 98), all of which are located in the City of Los Angeles.[21] Fire Station 75 in Mission Hills serves western San Fernando.[22] Fire Station 91 in Sylmar serves northeast San Fernando[23] Fire Station 98 in Pacoima serves southeast San Fernando.[24] Transportation [ edit ] The Sylmar/San Fernando Metrolink station serves the city on the Antelope Valley Line that passes through the city on a route adjacent to and parallel with San Fernando Boulevard. The officials and citizens have expressed their concern about the impact of the California High-Speed Rail if it follows the same route through the city.[25] The city will become the future northern terminus of the East San Fernando Valley Transit Corridor, the valley's first light rail line by 2027.[26][27] Economy [ edit ] Top employers [ edit ] According to the City's 2015-2016 annual financial report,[28] the top ten employers in the city (not including the city itself as an employer) are: As of 2016, the City of San Fernando has a total labor force of 11,700 with 3,632 working for the top ten employers listed. The City of San Fernando also employs 165 people as of 2016.[29] Education [ edit ] San Fernando is served by the Los Angeles Unified School District. San Fernando is served by the following LAUSD schools: The nearest community college to San Fernando is Los Angeles Mission College in the Sylmar neighborhood of Los Angeles. PUC Schools operates some charter schools in San Fernando. They include Nueva Esperanza Charter Academy (MS and HS) and PUC Inspire Charter Academy.[31][32] At one time Lakeview Charter Academy and Triumph Charter Academy, both of PUC Schools, were located in San Fernando now they are located in Sylmar.[33][34] A private school, The Concordia Schools San Fernando, was in the city.[35] First Lutheran Schools was previously located where Concordia San Fernando was later now located.[36] In 2011 the middle and high school consolidated into Concordia Junior Senior High School.[37] Public libraries [ edit ] The County of Los Angeles Public Library operates the San Fernando Library at 217 North Maclay Avenue.[38] See also [ edit ] Notable people [ edit ] |
Putting his money where his mouth is to the tune of $1 billion during the final week of January 2014, Carl Icahn bought $500 million of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) shares today despite December’s unfavorable earnings report. At a moment when the technology giant’s unstoppable image may have been somewhat shaken by a morning plunge in stock prices, with the price of a share slipping by as much as 7.55% during the first hours of trading on February 28th, the billionaire investor’s robust optimism about its future potential may prove to be key to halting the decline of share prices and restoring investor confidence in the firm. Just a few hours before the purchase, investment sites such as the Motley Fool were discussing the possibility that Mr. Icahn might regret backing Apple (AAPL) as strongly as he has, in light of the recent earnings developments. However, Mr. Icahn completed his massive purchase shortly after markets opened today, using Twitter to instantly announce his decision to the investing world. Declaring that he “just bought $500 mln more $AAPL shares,” he also noted his strong and continued support for Apple’s buyback program. Mr. Icahn already held approximately $3.5 billion worth of Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) shares, according to Forbes magazine. A full one quarter of his current holdings of the company’s shares were acquired within the past seven days. His January 23 purchase, which matched today’s in size, was accompanied by a seven page open letter to his fellow investors. In this missive, he stated that Apple’s shares are actually seriously undervalued, pegging their true worth at close to 200 percent of current prices. This calculation was based on the Standard & Poor’s 500 price to earnings ratio. The prominent Apple backer’s Tweet appeared to cause investors to sell off even more of the AAPL shares in their portfolios, at least initially, since company stock prices dipped immediately after his Twitter post. The investor remains sanguine, however, putting his faith in Apple’s history of success and the forward-looking product choices Tim Cook has slated for the coming year. In a followup statement to MSNBC, Mr. Icahn declared “The long-term picture is completely unchanged. To me, it’s even more compelling for Apple to buy back stock now,” and appears to be prepared to take full advantage of the temporarily depressed prices following in the wake of yesterday’s earnings report. For more Apple news follow PFhub on Twitter or bookmark this page. |
Superheroes today are a lot more shredded than they used to be. The original Superman and Batman look almost willowy compared to our muscle-bursting modern-day versions. That’s no coincidence. America is in the midst of a cultural shift in terms of the ideal male body image, and as the ideal man grows more muscular, men stuck in the real world with real bodies are growing less satisfied with theirs—with potentially dangerous medical consequences. “If you think about the changes over the last 30 to 45 years in how men are depicted in Hollywood, cartoons, magazines and action toys, you’ll see that men’s bodies [today] appear much more muscular,” says Dr. Harrison Pope, director of the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts. These unrealistic media images have contributed to low body image satisfaction among men—usually just considered a problem for women. A study last year found that American men are just as likely as women to feel unsatisfied with their physiques, while another study found adolescent boys who are dissatisfied with their body shape may be more likely than girls to self-criticize and feel distress. Studies have even shown that men feel worse about their bodies after playing video games with ripped characters. “There’s this drumbeat that muscularity equals masculinity, and so we’re seeing more and more young men with muscle dysmorphia,” says Pope. The consequences of this kind of thinking can be dangerous. As more and more men hit the gym in the hopes of transforming themselves into the Rock, many are also turning to anabolic steroids to achieve the muscle mass they associate with masculinity. Up to 4 million Americans—nearly all of them male—have tried steroids at some point, according to Pope’s recent research. TIME Health Newsletter Get the latest health and science news, plus: burning questions and expert tips. View Sample Sign Up Now “There’s a widespread misperception that anabolic steroid use is an issue of cheating in sports, but the vast majority of anabolic steroid users in this country are not athletes,” says Shalender Bhasin, a men’s health researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Pope’s co-author on a new article in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “Most young men using these drugs are doing it to improve their appearance.” The potential side effects of anabolic steroids include premature death and neurobehavioral disturbances, like problems with thinking and attention. But Pope says the links to heart problems are the most worrying. “There’s a growing body of literature that suggests long-term steroid use can cause cardio myopathy, where the heart doesn’t pump or fill with blood efficiently.” That could lead to heart attack or stroke, he says. It’s not yet clear just how significant these heart risks are, because steroid use is a relatively new phenomenon. Pope says few men used them before the 1980s, and those early adopters are just now hitting their 50s and 60s—ages when heart problems take their toll. Another big risk of steroid use is hormone dysfunction. “If you’re taking steroids, your body sees all this testosterone coming in from the outside, and so it stops producing it,” Pope explains. Bhasin says that can lead to psychiatric problems, from “roid rage” to suicidal thoughts. Also, when men stop using steroids, their bodies’ testosterone production often struggles to ramp back up. The resulting lack of the sex hormone can lead to depression, irritability, erectile dysfunction, low sex drive and more, Pope explains. Few doctors or psychologists realize how common steroid use and abuse has become, say Pope and Bhasin, and almost none are trained to treat steroid addiction or dependence. Men taking steroids who want to quit therefore have few professional resources, which may lead many to go back on steroids or try other substances—like cocaine or opioids—in order to feel better, Bhasin says. “Until we see greater awareness of this problem and more attention paid to treating it,” Pope says, “most of these men are on their own.” Contact us at editors@time.com. |
We of the Blades of Altea are an independent military unit led by Alabaster the Crucible. Our mission is to ensure the safety of the peoples who lie within the lands of Ala'altea. Our reach extends beyond the borders of the Five Domains to help the people in need. Currently, we are splitting our forces into five units to attend to the needs of the Five Domains. Although three months have passed since the Pelian-Sothesian War over the central stretch of land of Ala'altea, there are still people who are under prey of maurading bandits and require our protection and help as they recover from the war. We will also extend our resources to help the people with any task they need that they cannot ask for from their respective lords. May the blessings of Altea be upon you all. Squads Spoiler Show Irema - Crowstone Pegasus Knight Level: 1 HP: 18 (100) STR: 5 (40) SKL: 3 (65) SPD: 8 (65) LCK: 4 (65) DEF: 3 (35) RES: 5 (35) MOV: 7 Ira - evil09 Mercenary Level: 1 HP: 17 (110) STR: 3 (50) SKL: 2 (65) SPD: 5 (45) LCK: 3 (35) DEF: 2 (55) RES: 3 (50) MOV: 5 Sorma - inkWanderer Mage Level: 1 HP: 14 (115) STR: 2 (45) SKL: 5 (55) SPD: 3 (25) LCK: 5 (50) DEF: 5 (40) RES: 4 (45) MOV: 5 Cirsi - Intox Fighter Level: 1 HP: 16 (95) STR: 3 (40) SKL: 2 (55) SPD: 2 (40) LCK: 4 (30) DEF: 4 (45) RES: 2 (35) MOV: 5 Gotel - Boogeyman Archer Level: 1 HP: 17 (80) STR: 4 (45) SKL: 2 (65) SPD: 3 (45) LCK: 3 (40) DEF: 3 (40) RES: 4 (35) MOV: 5 - CrowstoneLevel: 1HP: 18 (100)STR: 5 (40)SKL: 3 (65)SPD: 8 (65)LCK: 4 (65)DEF: 3 (35)RES: 5 (35)MOV: 7- evil09Level: 1HP: 17 (110)STR: 3 (50)SKL: 2 (65)SPD: 5 (45)LCK: 3 (35)DEF: 2 (55)RES: 3 (50)MOV: 5- inkWandererLevel: 1HP: 14 (115)STR: 2 (45)SKL: 5 (55)SPD: 3 (25)LCK: 5 (50)DEF: 5 (40)RES: 4 (45)MOV: 5- IntoxLevel: 1HP: 16 (95)STR: 3 (40)SKL: 2 (55)SPD: 2 (40)LCK: 4 (30)DEF: 4 (45)RES: 2 (35)MOV: 5- BoogeymanLevel: 1HP: 17 (80)STR: 4 (45)SKL: 2 (65)SPD: 3 (45)LCK: 3 (40)DEF: 3 (40)RES: 4 (35)MOV: 5 Spoiler Show Geth - Chosenwaffle Cleric Erikkin - Erikkinbob Cavalier Ebenezer - DopeyDragon Knight Ethrone - Vanheim Mercenary - Chosenwaffle- Erikkinbob- DopeyDragon- Vanheim The recent war has left many villages and towns in hard times. You are part of an effort to travel to these villages along the Sothesian-Pelian border to meet with the outfit traveling south from Pelia. However, a cataclysmic event will soon shift your attention to a threat far older than the vestiges of war...As part of the Pelian relief effort you meet at the capital of Peliangarde and head south to provide aid to villages still suffering from the effects of the war. But as you head to meet with the Sothesian outfit, your efforts are mysteriously shadowed by an unknown organization... Chapter 1 - Meeting at Night Spoiler Show Emilia - Singularity3 Cleric Balthaz - Benedict Knight Steve - Gnauga Recruit Lite - LiteTheIronMan Mage Wolfwood - kohula Shaman - Singularity3- Benedict- Gnauga- LiteTheIronMan- kohula A group of scholars have uncovered a mysterious ruin in the mountains of Erida. You have been tasked to escort and defend these scholars as they explore the depths of the ruins. However, what you find here may have greater implications beyond the borders of the Domain... Chapter 1 - Gateway to Knowledge Spoiler Show Aven - Renegadier Myrmidon Svare - Peekatchu1997 Mercenary Walden - Pnorm24 Cavalier Veera - FluffyOwl Mage - Renegadier- Peekatchu1997- Pnorm24- FluffyOwl A missive from a wandering group of pilgrims send for help. You are hired by the High Priestess to find and aid these pilgrims. However, what began as a simple retrieval errand turns into a race against time to stop a shadowy organization from unleashing a darkness upon the world... Chapter 1 - In Her Hands You are hired by several merchants to help them carry out transactions with an up-and-coming business on the outskirts of the Ruan countryside. However, what was supposed to be a simple journey has become a complicated quest to find mysterious runes before they fall into the wrong hands... Chapter 1 - A Bad Deal Signups If you wish to apply, please send your application here . You will be added to each campaign as they go on. Mission Structure There are two modes that occur in each mission. Standby Mode Here, you will be given a short brief of your situation, then you are left to go about your way. In this mode, you are allowed to interact with anything on the map. Each person will state an action they wish to do. Once everyone has decided what to do, I will return the results of your actions. When a certain amount of time has passed, or if a certain action is done, then Battle Mode will begin. Battle Mode During Battle Mode, you and the enemys will take turns in combat. During Player Turn, each member of the squad will have the chance to post their move and action. Once they have declared an action, the others must wait until the results of that action is given. Player Turn will end once each character has completed each of their actions. During Enemy Turn, the enemies will make their moves one by one. Player Turn and Enemy Turn will alternate until either the Players complete their objective or if the Players all die. Player -> Results -> Player -> Results ... -> Enemy -> Player ... How to play Stats HP STR/MAG SPD SKL LCK DEF RES Movement You are allowed to move anywhere within the blue squares, which signifies your maximum movement. You may only move once per turn. Certain terrain will limit your movement range Flying units are able to move over any terrain except indoor walls and over villages. However, they do not get the defense or avoid bonuses from these tiles Terrain Effects Certain terrain will give effects to the person standing on it. Code: Terrain DEF AVO Plain 0 0 Bridge 0 0 Floor 0 0 Stairs 0 0 Ruins 0 0 River 0 0 Sand 0 5 Desert 0 5 Village 0 10 House 0 10 Sea 0 10 Lake 0 10 Forest 1 20 Pillar 1 20 Mountain 1 30 Fort 2 20 Peak 2 40 Gate 3 20 Throne 3 30 Certain terrain will give effects to the person standing on it. Action - Amount of health- Strength or Magic depending on the unit- speed in battle- accuracy and crit rate- dodge and crit dodge- defense against physical attacks- resistance against magical attacks You may perform one of the following actions per turn. Once these actions are performed, then your turn is over. Attack enemy Open Door (Must have Key in inventory or have Nimble Fingers skill) Open Chest (Must have Key in inventory or have Nimble Fingers skill) Use item from inventory Rescue ally/NPC Trade items with ally Enter House/Gate Combat You are allowed to attack anywhere within the red squares, which signifies your maximum range Combat will occur automatically once you have decided to attack an enemy Weapons have a certain range determined by their type Enemies will counterattack after you have made your turn, and vice versa If your SPD exceeds the enemy's by 5 or more, then you are able to execute a second attack after the opponent's counter. You will receive experience and weapons experience after each battle if you do not die Battle Forecaster Weapon Ranks Each unit are assigned certain weapons They are able to gain access to more powerful weapons as their weapon ranks increase You will gain weapon experience no matter the outcome of the battle You are only able to have one weapons with an S rank You soon will be provided with ato better plan your moves and strategies. To get an estimation of the upcoming battle, you need to insert your stats and the enemy's stats. Remember to add any bonuses that are not added with certain skills. Rank - WExp D - 30 C - 40 B - 50 A - 60 S - 70 Weapons Triangle Swords, Axes, and Lances exist in a triangle, where one is stronger and weaker to another. Magic Triangle Anima, Light, and Dark Magic exist in a triangle, where one is stronger and weaker to another Equipment The following list will be continually updated throughout the game. Weapon Name Rank | Might | Range | Hit | Crit | Uses | WExp | Price Stave Name Rank | Range | Uses | Exp | WExp | Price | Effect Item Name Uses | Price | Effect Spoiler Show Swords Spoiler Show Iron Sword E | 5 | 1 | 90 | 0 | 46 | 1 | 460 Slim Sword E | 3 | 1 | 100 | 5 | 30 | 1 | 480 Iron SwordE | 5 | 1 | 90 | 0 | 46 | 1 | 460Slim SwordE | 3 | 1 | 100 | 5 | 30 | 1 | 480 Axes Spoiler Show Iron Axe E | 8 | 1 | 75 | 0 | 45 | 1 | 270 Hand Axe E | 7 | 1-2 | 75 | 0 | 20 | 1 | 300 Iron AxeE | 8 | 1 | 75 | 0 | 45 | 1 | 270Hand AxeE | 7 | 1-2 | 75 | 0 | 20 | 1 | 300 Lances Spoiler Show Iron Lance E | 7 | 1 | 80 | 0 | 45 | 1 | 360 Slim Lance E | 4 | 1 | 85 | 5 | 30 | 1 | 450 Javelin E | 6 | 1-2 | 65 | 0 | 20 | 1 | 400 Iron LanceE | 7 | 1 | 80 | 0 | 45 | 1 | 360Slim LanceE | 4 | 1 | 85 | 5 | 30 | 1 | 450JavelinE | 6 | 1-2 | 65 | 0 | 20 | 1 | 400 Bows Spoiler Show Iron Bow E | 6 | 2 | 85 | 0 | 45 | 1 | 540 Iron BowE | 6 | 2 | 85 | 0 | 45 | 1 | 540 Anima Tomes Spoiler Show Fire E | 5 | 1-2 | 90 | 40 | 1 | 560 FireE | 5 | 1-2 | 90 | 40 | 1 | 560 Light Tomes Spoiler Show Lightning E | 4 | 1-2 | 95 | 35 | 1 | 630 LightningE | 4 | 1-2 | 95 | 35 | 1 | 630 Dark Tomes Spoiler Show Flux E | 7 | 1-2 | 80 | 45 | 1 | 900 FluxE | 7 | 1-2 | 80 | 45 | 1 | 900 Staves Spoiler Show Heal E | 1 | 30 | 11 | 2 | 600 | Heals MAG+10 HP to a single ally HealE | 1 | 30 | 11 | 2 | 600 | Heals MAG+10 HP to a single ally Items Spoiler Show Vulnerary 3 | 300 | Restores 10 HP to user Antitoxin 3 | 450 | Removes Poison status Mine 1 | 500 | Stops movement and does 10 damage to anyone who crosses it Red Gem 1 | 5000 | Can be sold in stores for Gold Vulnerary3 | 300 | Restores 10 HP to userAntitoxin3 | 450 | Removes Poison statusMine1 | 500 | Stops movement and does 10 damage to anyone who crosses itRed Gem1 | 5000 | Can be sold in stores for Gold |
IBM will launch a range of servers that process data faster (and 20% less expensively) than Intel Xeon v3 Processor-based servers, the company said in a statement. The Power8 processor-based servers, which IBM will make generally available at the end of the month, are built to handle big data workloads. IBM claims the servers, particularly the top-of-the-line GPU-accelerated S824L, can run millions of data computations in parallel. IBM will also launch the Power System S822L, which is built to deploy NoSQL databases at a lower cost by combining Redis Labs software, Canonical's Ubuntu Linux operating system, and Altera's FPGAs with IBM's FlashSystem 840. The cost savings occur because the combined systems enable one server to be used to manage an infrastructure typically required for two dozen Intel servers, IBM said. The new Power E870 and Power E880 Systems offer support for up to 1,000 VMs per system. Companies can choose from 32, 40 or 48 processor cores and up to 4 TB per compute node. IBM's server strategy IBM sold its x66 server unit to Lenovo for $2.1 billion in January. As part of the acquisition, IBM relinquished its System x, BladeCenter and Flex System blade servers and switches, 86-based Flex integrated systems, NeXtScale and iDataPlex servers and associated software, blade networking and maintenance operations. IBM remains a major server manufacturer with the following lines-of-business: System z mainframes, Power Systems, Storage Systems, Power-based Flex servers, Pure Application and PureData appliances. Worldwide server revenue is expected to eclipse $50 billion worldwide in 2014, according to IDC. HP is the market leader in the space, with 25.4% of total revenue. IBM, which is a close second at 23.6%, saw revenue decrease 10% in Q2. |
Armstrong Baillie is sticking his neck out for a good cause. Twice a week for the past six months, the 32-year-old Scotland native has dressed up in an elaborate homemade giraffe costume and carried out random acts of kindness, the BBC reports. Calling himself "the Good Giraffe," Baillie, has cleaned up litter, handed out free coffee, cleaned animal shelter cages, and even bought gifts for needy children. “I give out cards with my phone number and ask people to text me ideas," the Good Giraffe told the Edinburgh Evening News. He said the idea first came to him when he happened upon a man in a gorilla suit playing the drums. "I decided to get my own costume," he told the paper, "but I went for a giraffe as it’s my favorite animal. I think it suits my personality too -- my head is in the clouds but my heart is in the right place.” The Good Giraffe has been spotted not only in his home city of Dundee, but also in Aberdeen, Stonehaven, Forfar, the Black Isle, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Baillie is currently unemployed, but busks with his kazoo and djembe drum in order to raise money for his good deeds. "It would be good to get sponsors so I could make this my full-time occupation," he told HuffPost UK. |
If you’re really serious about your application you have to collect and analyze its statistics. You can use Google Analytics or any other tool to track visits and basic events, or you can send specific events on demand. There’s also a way to automatically track ActiveRecord model creations and in this post I’ll show you how easy it is. The solution Let’s dig into the most important source code: # config/initializers/creation_listener.rb module CreationListener def inherited ( subclass ) super class_name = subclass . name subclass . after_commit :on => :create do Rails . logger . info "[ #{ Time . now . to_s } ] Model created: ' #{ class_name } '" end end end ActiveRecord :: Base . extend ( CreationListener ) I think you already know what it does - it binds to ActiveRecord::Base’s callback and puts appropriate message with time of creation and class name of created model. Then log messages are parsed with the following rake task: # lib/tasks/creations.rake task creations: :environment do creation_entry_regexp = /\[([\w\W]+)\] Model created: '([\w\W]+)'/ log_path = File . join ( Rails . root , "log" , "development.log" ) date_to_calculate = Date . today result = Hash . new { | hash , key | hash [ key ] = 0 } File . open ( log_path , "r" ) do | f | f . each_line do | line | if line =~ creation_entry_regexp creation_time = Date . parse ( $1 ) model_name = $2 . strip if creation_time == date_to_calculate result [ model_name ] += 1 end end end end puts "Statistics for: #{ date_to_calculate } " result . each_pair do | key , value | puts " #{ key } : #{ value } " end end I just define how to look for and parse creation messages, which log file I want to check and for which date. Then both parsing and calculating result happens - if line matches to regexp and given date is one we are looking for it increments result for given model. So as a result you get the list of all model classes which instances were created on given day. You can check how it works using this sample project. Logger? Seriously?! In this example I assume, that the only method to persist information about created model is to use log messages. Of course it’s just a simplification. In real world you don’t want to gather all statistics in log: it can be time consuming to calculate the results, logs can be really big or rotated. For alternative persistence method you have to be aware of 2 things: It shouldn’t slow down response time too much. It should be threadsafe. |
EAST HARLEM— A burglar swiped nearly $3,500 in jewelry and electronics from a home on East 129th Street amid a surge in break-ins across the neighborhood, the NYPD said. The 25-year-old victim told police she arrived at her apartment on May 18 around 8:15 p.m. to discover her apartment ransacked and several items missing. The suspect stole the victim’s Apple MacBook, a digital camera, a necklace, ring, watch and a suitcase, all totaling $3,460, the police said. The victim told police the front door was locked when she arrived home, but that the back door was unlocked and a window in the apartment was broken. There had been no arrests as of Tuesday. The incident comes amid a whopping 325-percent increase in reported burglaries in the 25th Precinct for the most recent 28-day period through May 14, compared to the same period last year, NYPD data shows. The precinct recorded 17 burglaries over the most recent period, compared to just four during the same time last year. There were back-to-back burglaries earlier this month — one on the same street as the May 18 incident — in which a thief netted more than $1,400 in valuables and another was scared off by his victim’s screams, police said. In a third case earlier this month, another victim reported that a thief burglarized his apartment by pushing out the window's air-conditioning unit. |
If you ask most hockey fans what the outcome will be of the Pens-Isles playoff series, you’ll get a variety of responses, and most end with the predictions of a very short series ending after 4 or 5 games. Most people cite Iginla, and Malkin, and Morrow, and Neal, and Letang and blah blah blah… Here’s how this writer thinks it will go down. John Tavares, who has had a Hart-worthy season, will be in the post season for the very first time in his young career. He and his Islander team mates have absolutely nothing to lose. And Tavares is looking forward to having the spotlight directly on him. Nothing would please coach Jack Capuano’s upstart squad more than to take out the mighty Penguins. Here’s the rub. The Pens acquired Jarome Iginla late in the season, and he might just become the new Ray Bourque. And then there’s the possibility of Sid Crosby coming back from injury. Then there’s all those other names that would be franchise players any place else in the league. All those names cannot make up for the biggest question the Pens have, and that’s the guy in goal. Which Marc-Andre Fleury will show up this post season? Will it be the one that back stopped the Pens to a Stanley Cup in 2009? Or will it be the sieve that showed up in last season’s first round barn burning loss to the Philadelphia Flyers? The guy in the net across from Fleury is no peach, either. Evgeni Nabokov has a lot to prove. The San Jose Sharks cast him off after years of post season failure following stellar regular season performances. No one expected Nabby to play as well as he has, and likewise, no expected the Isles to get into the post season. Will Nabokov continue his solid play, or will he live up to the futility of post-seasons long past. Expect the Isles defense to push hard in front of Nabokov. But, how much will this young group, anchored by Mark Streit, Travis Hamonic, Lubomir Visnovsky, and Andrew McDonald, be able to stop the apparent onslaught of this high octane Pens forward corps? Will the Pens intimidate these upstarts? As I said before, the Isles have nothing to lose, and Tavares could be a game changer. Look for Matt Moulson, Brad Boyes, and Josh Bailey to make meaningful contribution. The aforementioned Streit is an interesting case, as he is playing for a contract. One has to wonder if his performance in this series won’t determine how long, and how rich, a contract he gets offered by the Isles. These Penguins have a lot of the playoff spotlight, adding big names at the deadline to shore up their depth, and, as a result, had a lot of people planning another parade in Pittsburgh. Don’t etch the names into the cup, yet, boys and girls. Even when Fleury folds like a cheap house of cards in a stiff wind (and he will), the Pens will still prevail in the end. But, rest assured, the Isles will give these Penguins a good scare before the end. Penguins in 7. Here’s what some of our other writers think: Mitch Tierney: Penguins in 4 – While it is nice to see the Isles making some progress they will be swept aside my a hungry Penguins team. Ben Kerr: Pittsburgh in 5. The Pens are just too strong for the Islanders, and will take them out. We’ll give the Isles a game though. Max Vasilyev: John Tavares has pulled the Islanders into the playoffs with an MVP type season, but he is only one man. Penguins in five. (See what I mean?) Schedule: Wednesday, May 1 7:30 p.m. NY Islanders at Pittsburgh NBC Sports Network, TSN Friday, May 3 7 p.m. NY Islanders at Pittsburgh NBC Sports Network, TSN Sunday, May 5 Noon Pittsburgh at NY Islanders NBC, TSN Tuesday, May 7 7 p.m. Pittsburgh at NY Islanders NBC Sports Network, TSN *Thursday, May 9 7 p.m. NY Islanders at Pittsburgh TSN *Saturday, May 11 TBD Pittsburgh at NY Islanders TSN *Sunday, May 12 TBD NY Islanders at Pittsburgh TSN Thanks for reading – as always feel free to leave comments below and follow me on twitter @BigMick99. Give the rest of the hockey department a follow while you’re at it – @lastwordBKerr, @IswearGaa and @LastWordOnNHL, and follow the site @lastwordonsport. Interested in writing for LastWordOnSports? Visit our Join our Team page and be heard! Photo Credit: IslesPunkFan via photopin cc |
Even as President Donald Trump noted today that he is close to a decision on what he would like to do about Obama’s “DREAMer” program, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce admitted that it stands against the president’s immigration policies. President Trump announced on Friday that he soon might have a decision on what he wants to do about President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that gave legal status to millions of young people who were brought into the country illegally when they were children. Many have expected the president to announce the end of Obama’s policy. But perhaps sending mixed messages, during a Friday presser, Trump insisted, “We love Dreamers.” Whatever the president decides to do, the Chamber of Commerce is admittedly struggling to figure out where it fits in with the administration’s goals. And in a recent interview, the Chamber seemed to prove that it is at odds with Trump’s immigration agenda. Speaking to the Washington Examiner, the Chamber’s senior vice president for labor and immigration policy, Randy Johnson, pointed out that the business organization has no specific written policy paper on immigration. But, he also noted that the Chamber is more or less an open borders advocate. “Immigration across the board, with some limitations, is a benefit to this country and that is the position of the Chamber,” Johnson said. The Chamber spokesman also said that the group would debut a full policy position on immigration sometime this month. Still, in contrast to what analysts imagine Trump will do, Johnson went on to say that the Chamber does not want to see DACA ended. Johnson said: Let me just say on this point that if immigration wasn’t a benefit to this country, you wouldn’t have cities across this country such as St. Louis, Philadelphia, Detroit, and others actively reaching out to immigrants. The reason they are doing that is that these individuals, in the view of the people who run those cities, re-activate the economies in those cities. They are not seen as a burden on social welfare services. Johnson added that the Chamber is committed to engaging with the Trump administration on merit-based immigration plans. However, he also said the Chamber would not back off its support for family-based immigration policies. This is far from the only time Johnson has spoken out in opposition to Trump’s stated stance on limiting immigration. Last month, for instance, Johnson said the Chamber opposes reductions in immigration. “Dramatically reducing overall immigration levels won’t raise the standard of living for Americans,” he exclaimed “In fact, it will likely accomplish the opposite, making it harder for businesses, communities and our overall economy to grow, prosper and create jobs for American workers,” Johnson said. In 2016, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce also released a booklet purporting to bust the “myths” about illegal immigrants. It was released under Johnson’s name and decried the “indiscriminate targeting” of unauthorized immigrants. The booklet ended asserting that illegal immigrants “do not pose a danger to American citizens.” Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston. |
The Friday Five Top Five Ways to Tell If Your Law Firm Is Successful If you want to run a successful business, you’re going to need some key performance indicators. All businesses focused on growth pay attention to certain key pieces of data that indicate the health of the business. Law firms offer professional services with uncertain outcomes for clients, some of whom are in crisis situations. So how do you measure success in such circumstances? 1. Your clients return or recommend you. Probably the biggest indicator of your ability to generate results for your clients is whether they’d retain you in the future or recommend you to their friends. Clearly, if they return to you, they’re satisfied. Many lawyers, however, come across people only during major life events, so return business is not a good indicator of success. One way to gauge how you’re doing is to use a survey that’s becoming the standard among companies focused on customer service. It’s called the “Net Promoter Score,” and you’ve likely seen one of these surveys or taken part in one yourself. The core question is, “On a scale of 1-10, would you recommend our service to a friend or colleague?” Usually companies include one follow-up question that asks for a little exposition to explain the previous answer. The Ultimate Question 2.0, from Harvard Business Review Press, goes into Net Promoter methodology, which includes evaluating your distribution of scores to determine how many of your clients are your promoters, are neutral about you or are your detractors. 2. Your clients pay your bills. When clients pay your bills in full and on time, that indicates a number of healthy vitals about your business. First of all, it means that you have an effective billing system in place that allows you to collect your time and generate invoices. One of the tenets in professional services is that the longer you wait to bill for services, the less likely you are to get paid for your work. So if you’re slow to send out invoices and end up hitting your clients for work done two or three months ago, good luck collecting on all of that time. You’re going to get a haircut. Another reason good billing realization (collection of billed time) is important is that it tells you how well you’re communicating with your clients and matching their expectations. If you find your clients are routinely asking for trims on their invoices, you might consider that a gap exists in the work you’re doing and the work your clients think you’re doing. 3. You spend 75 percent or more of your time on billable activities. Whether or not you bill by the hour, each minute of the day has value. You are a highly educated and experienced professional. You should have an intrinsic or extrinsic hourly rate regardless of whether those hours ultimately appear on an invoice. Let’s say your hourly rate is $350, whether that hits the client or whether you backed into that number based on your target revenue numbers. When you are working, always ask yourself, “Is what I’m doing right now worth $350?” Or should someone else run to Costco for the office supplies? According to recent data from the Florida Bar’s economics and law office management survey, the lawyers surveyed spent approximately 30 hours out of an average 50-hour work week on billable activities. That’s a 60 percent ratio, which is a colossal waste of time and money. With today’s tools and technology, there’s no reason that number can’t be at 75 percent. Consider that 75 percent of a 50-hour work week would translate to an extra 7.5 hours of billable time per week. If your time is worth $350 an hour, that extra 7.5 hours equates to $2,652 — or a whopping $131,250 for a 50-week work year. 4. You don’t waste time on things that don’t require your time. By now, the message should be clear: If you need administrative help, get it and start getting your billing percentages up with relentless focus. There’s no reason your law firm should shut down for a day or two to generate invoices when modern technology can knock that stuff out in 30 minutes. It’s like ordering a pizza. There’s no reason to dig through emails, calendar events and legal pads to reconstruct your time entries at the end of the month. Top-revenue-generating lawyers bill as they work, and are able to capture time and expenses from anywhere at anytime, without paper. And there’s no reason you should keep a paper filing system, either. Consider the amount of time required to look for a physical file, pull it and then put it back. Think about the waste and collisions that occur when multiple people need the file at the same time. Contrast that to being able to view a file from anywhere at anytime from a laptop or mobile device. 5. You enjoy being a lawyer. Let’s face it, the profession has a high percentage of depression — by some estimates, it’s 35 percent of all practitioners. So to me, the biggest sign of all to tell that you’re successful? You enjoy what you do and you’re proud of your law firm. Larry Port is the CEO and Chief Software Architect of Rocket Matter, an online legal software platform for time and billing and practice management. He also runs Rocket X1, an Internet marketing agency for professional service firms. Larry writes on technology, business and marketing topics for legal publications and speaks at legal conferences around the country. Sponsored Links »Top cloud-based practice management software: Free 30-day trial! »Manage my legal practice from anywhere on any device—HoudiniEsq. »Learn more about the easiest way to get paid. »Manage your practice with ease, for one small fee. »Work from anywhere. Intuitive legal practice management software. Free trial. »See who’s speaking at Lawyernomics 2014. April 23-25, Las Vegas. |
At least 17 states took advantage of the allowance SNAP makes for matching qualifications. GOP ready to quell food stamp revolt Republican leaders are threatening to take congressional action to stop state governors from flouting the food stamp cuts contained in the 2014 farm bill. The governors of at least six states — New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Montana and Oregon — have now taken measures to protect more than a combined $800 million in annual Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, and more states are expected to follow suit. Their actions threaten — over time — to wipe out the more than $8 billion in cuts over 10 years to the food stamp program that were just passed by Congress as part of the 2014 farm bill. Story Continued Below But those who initially supported the food stamp cuts are warning that retaliatory actions may be coming. ( Also on POLITICO: Full agriculture policy coverage) “Since the passage of the farm bill, states have found ways to cheat, once again, on signing up people for food stamps,” Speaker of the House John Boehner told reporters Thursday. “And so I would hope that the House would act to try to stop this cheating and this fraud from continuing.” Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), one of the 2014 farm bill’s four principal architects, warned: “I suspect that this will create a call for action from members of the House and … these governors now will cause a new set of hearings, a new set of bills, a new set of appropriations amendments.” Lucas likened the governors’ actions at the center of the controversy to mining dollars from the U.S. Treasury. “What becomes of it, I do not know, but if they’re going to try to keep mining, then this becomes a live issue,” he said. ( Also on POLITICO: Cheney: Obama favors food stamps) In the ramp up to passing the farm bill early last month, the House of Representatives initially put forth a bill that would have cut food stamps by $40 billion over 10 years, but the four principal negotiators — Lucas and Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) — agreed, in conference, to a compromise that included a smaller — yet substantial reduction. Their solution: Raise the threshold for participation in a program — known as “heat and eat” — that allows states to qualify households for as much as $90 per month in additional food stamp benefits by providing them with benefits, no matter how small, from the federally funded Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. ( Also on POLITICO: GOP's confused inequality message) At least 17 states took advantage of the allowance SNAP makes for matching qualifications, providing their residents with as little as $1 per month in federal heating assistance to also qualify them for the additional food stamps, a Government Accountability Office report found. However, by simply requiring states to provide more than $20 in LIHEAP assistance in order to qualify a household for the added SNAP benefits, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the farm bill’s four principals could cut food stamp spending by more than $8 billion over 10 years. The farm bill’s four principal negotiators grabbed the CBO estimate and ran. They included the change in the farm bill conference report, which was then passed by the full House and Senate. |
Among the many issues people have with transgender identities and the process of transitioning, one especially mystifying notion is that this is somehow selfish or vain. This is a difficult accusation to counter, because the concepts of “selfishness” and “vanity” are slippery things. In common usage, whether something is seen as selfish or vain is largely based on an individual’s subjective opinion, something which can widely vary. This makes it hard to refer to any kind of objective standard of selfishness or vanity and show them, “no, it’s not.” But it often seems like they don’t even really intend to demonstrate how this is selfish or vain. They don’t actually bother to explain why it must be so, they just declare it to be so. Rather than making a serious argument, they may simply be using these labels to signal disapproval. They have some kind of problem with people being trans, and to justify this, they have to come up with a reason for why it’s bad. So they just pick any random thing that’s commonly seen as bad and which sounds vaguely plausible. They think being trans is wrong. Being selfish is a thing that’s wrong. Therefore, they’re going to argue for the bad-ness of being trans by saying that it’s selfish. In this process of thinking in reverse, they overlook the need to identify which aspects of being trans actually coincide with the distinguishing features of selfishness or vanity. They’re just trying to pass off a hollow imitation of a reason as though it were a real basis for their claims. But despite how subjective people’s standards may be, there is still generally some minimal – if vague – consensus on what actually constitutes selfishness or vanity. Selfishness is typically understood as an excessive focus on the self, at the expense of concern for others. Someone’s gender identity and the process of transitioning are necessarily focused on the self, but that alone is not enough to make this selfish. Not everything that has to do primarily with the self is selfish just for that reason. There must also be some kind of negative impact on others as a result of that emphasis on the self. It’s common for people to lower the threshold of selfishness on a situational basis so that they can attack almost anything for allegedly being “selfish”. For instance, someone might decide that my daily medications, which cost less than a cup of coffee, are a selfish indulgence because I could have sent that money to developing nations. Of course, we probably wouldn’t see them going to a Starbucks to berate the patrons for their “selfishness”. At some point, we have to recognize that it is often acceptable for us to do certain things for ourselves, and most people understand this when they aren’t trying to use the accusation of selfishness for dishonest purposes. Things we choose to do for ourselves rather than others, but which are not actually selfish, might be better described as self-centered, self-focused, or self-oriented. But even this still carries the connotation of being selfish in a bad way, because the choice to describe it as pertaining to the self at all is often perceived as being in contrast to an unspoken baseline standard of appropriate balance between self-interest and concern for others. Any emphasis on the self thus implies that this is now out of balance, which makes it difficult to talk about anything that has to do primarily with the self without this being read as some kind of transgression. But regardless of the difficulties in discussing this, it’s still not clear what exactly about being trans must be selfish. For this to be selfish in a bad way, there would have to be some element of it which adversely impacts others to an unacceptable extent, and which is disregarded so that the individual can pursue their own desires. Again, merely choosing to work toward their own goals is not enough to make this selfish. So, does this cause any harm to others? If so, what are these harms? And are they genuine harms, or just harms that have been imagined and constructed? Finally, are these harms so substantial that they should outweigh the need for trans people to live as their true selves? Only then can we conclude that being trans is unacceptably selfish. So what might these supposed harms be? When might someone have such an important obligation to others that it overrides their own need to identify and live as they wish? Many of these supposed “harms” seem to be of the same nature as the harm suffered by a Catholic mother who must endure the presence of gay people holding hands at a public park where her children can see, or the injury inflicted upon a Muslim who is exposed to an illustration of Muhammad. These are not actually harmful things. Plenty of people are able to be in the presence of gay people or drawings of Muhammad without acting like this constitutes some kind of real damage to them. Those who pretend that this is a genuine harm seem to think that because they hold particular beliefs, everyone else is obligated to live their lives in accordance with these beliefs, and if they don’t, their unwillingness to let someone else’s beliefs deter them from living the life they want must mean they’re selfish. But this is not a legitimate obligation that anyone else is required to accept. The fact that you’re prejudiced does not mean that anyone is actually harming you by being part of a group that you’re prejudiced against. And the fact that you follow a certain religion does not mean anyone is harming you just by not following that religion. People object to these things, not because they’re really causing injury to anyone, but because they choose to be bothered by them, and they believe the rest of the world must therefore honor that choice and tiptoe around it. But being gay, or doing something the religion of Islam wouldn’t approve of, does not deprive these people of anything other than their desire to control the lives of others to a clearly unacceptable degree. And the only burden it imposes upon them is one which all of us must already learn to live with: being part of a world full of people who won’t always agree with you. It is not selfish to be gay, or to disagree with Islam, just because some people don’t like that. And likewise, it is not selfish to be trans merely because some people may vigorously disagree with it or claim that we’ve offended their delicate sensibilities. But considering the serious burden they seek to impose upon trans people by discouraging them from being themselves on the grounds that this is “selfish”, it truly is selfish for them to prioritize their personal comfort and inexplicable need for everyone not to be trans over another person’s identity and self-fulfillment. It’s difficult to fathom how someone’s strong feelings on the matter could be important enough to obligate someone else to closet themselves, silence themselves, and disguise themselves every day as a gender they don’t identify with. Our choice to live our lives as we wish does not inflict any real harm upon those who demand we do otherwise. But their expectation that our life decisions should never stray from their standards would cause unacceptable harm to us. Such expectations really are selfish in a bad way. There are certain situations where there could be more concrete harms tied to being trans, such as circumstances where it might have a significant impact upon someone’s partner or children and their relationships with them. This won’t be applicable to every trans person, and it isn’t something I have much experience with, because my partner and her entire family have always known me as a woman. At this point, it would be a surprise to everyone if I came out as a man! And again, it’s possible for people to be tempted to exaggerate the harm of someone close to them being trans in order to make it seem unacceptably selfish. But when this does come out of nowhere, and nobody is sure of how best to work through it, the effects can potentially be similar to any other disruptive or destabilizing event that changes the nature of the family. Families are supposed to be a place where love, stability, and being there for each other are paramount, and choosing to be a part of a family represents an implicit agreement to maintain this and further these goals. To that extent, the feelings of one’s close family can be somewhat more relevant here than the opinions of random people. For example, Dan Savage once claimed that it was selfish for a woman not to postpone her transition until her son was 18, because he was greatly distressed about this. If someone has children, how they’re affected by such decisions is certainly something to take into account, although it’s hard to see how the supposed harms that were previously compelling enough to demand that she delay her transition would suddenly cease to enter into the moral equation as soon as her son turns 18. If its impact on her children warrants such a delay, then isn’t it possible that she might be obligated to postpone this indefinitely? And if not, why would it necessitate such a delay now? If transitioning were to lead to a breakup, then the effects this would have on one’s partner and children need to be considered as well, but to argue that this is unacceptable just because it would cause a breakup is essentially the same as arguing that divorce is always too selfish to be permissible. But sometimes divorces and breakups do end up being the better option once everything is taken into account. Similarly, each family’s situation is different in ways that make it impossible to issue blanket pronouncements of when being trans is or isn’t okay, or how it should be handled. This is something to be worked out on an individual basis. And while it may seem easy to say that one person should be expected to make sacrifices for the sake of the rest of their family, it’s also important to consider the negative effects of having a member of the family repress and closet themselves for a lengthy period of time, in terms of how this impacts the health of the individual and everyone else. This is not something that can be simply ignored out of existence. Just imagine what kind of difficulties could arise from forcing a cis person to identify, present, and live in the role of the opposite sex for years at a time, in order to avoid disrupting their family. The very idea would likely be offensive to many people. And no matter how noble the intention might be, this could end up being quite unhealthy for themselves and the rest of the family. All of these factors need to be weighed against one another, and many of them can be too complex to quantify in a straightforward way. This decision isn’t easy enough to be made by advice columnists and other amateur ethicists. It’s a deeply personal matter to be worked out by the individual and their loved ones. And if someone does choose to make a personal sacrifice in terms of hiding who they are for the sake of their family, that’s their choice. But it doesn’t mean that anyone who chooses otherwise is necessarily selfish. Being trans is not something that’s reliably harmful to one’s family. Not everyone finds it to be so flagrantly unacceptable, and not everyone believes their own needs are important enough to compel someone to pretend to be something they’re not. And if they do, there’s still the potential for selfishness in their belief that the individual’s need to live openly is not important and can be disregarded. In any case, people outside of these situations probably don’t have enough information to evaluate whether the impact of someone being trans is so severe that they should have kept it secret in order to please their family. And just as with selfishness, the concept of vanity is usually misunderstood, misused, and mostly subjective. Most people care about how they look to some extent, so the accusation of vanity can easily be used to criticize anyone for caring about their appearance at all. Given that presenting as a certain gender is closely tied to how we look, it’s no surprise that trans people are often singled out and accused of being vain for altering our appearance. But simply caring about how we look is not enough on its own to conclude that we’re vain. Just as how selfishness describes an excessive fixation on the self, vanity describes an excessive fixation on one’s appearance – not simply caring about it at all. At first glance, it’s easy to see why people might think that changing your appearance to that of another gender is so drastic that it can only be described as excessive. But the magnitude of that change on its own does not mean that it must therefore be in excess of what’s reasonable. In the case of someone who’s trans, the desire to live and present as their preferred gender is entirely reasonable. This is only excessive if people wanting to be seen as their gender is excessive. Do we call cis men and women vain for getting haircuts or buying clothes and makeup? Most of the time, we see nothing wrong with this. So how vain is it when I wear women’s clothes, compared to a cis woman wearing women’s clothes? If you consider all of the trappings of gender that people spend time and money on over their entire lifetime, it might start to seem pretty incredible no matter whether they’re cis or trans. Yet in the case of cis people, this isn’t usually treated as an excess focus on their appearance, but an acceptable focus. Of course, one key difference is that trans people often take certain steps to present as their gender which most cis people will never have to. But this is simply the nature of the condition, and the various procedures associated with transitioning are considered by medical authorities to be necessary treatments as part of the standards of care. When cis people have to correct their appearance due to a medical condition, this generally isn’t seen as objectionable. If a cis woman with PCOS seeks to remove her excess facial hair, does anyone have a problem with that? Do they have to rock that beard or else risk accusations of “vanity”? So why should we consider it vain when a trans woman wants her facial hair gone? If a cis man with gynecomastia wants to have his breast tissue removed, is he just being vain? So why would it be vain for a trans man to have chest surgery? Sure, these can be major, costly procedures. But again, that doesn’t mean they’re excessive or unwarranted given the circumstances. In the case of genital surgery, some people may consider it an act of vanity to operate on organs which are undesired but otherwise functional. But the need for genitals that match their body image is no less legitimate in trans people than it is in cis people. Consider the case of male combat veterans who have suffered disfiguring injuries to their genitals. If it’s easier to construct a vagina rather than a phallus, as it very well may be in some cases, would it be mere vanity for these men to prefer a functional phallus – or for them to have any preference at all? Should they have to settle for whatever they can get regardless of their desires, or else be considered vain? Whether people seek genital surgery because of their gender identity or because of involuntary disfigurement is immaterial. Just as in the case of undesired facial hair or breast tissue, the legitimacy of their preferences is what matters, and if these preferences are legitimate for cis people, they should be considered legitimate for trans people as well. Simply living as your identified gender is not normally considered an example of selfishness or vanity. Yet this is all too often considered an outrageous act of self-absorption when trans people do it. The expectation that anyone should have to abandon their gender to avoid being seen as selfish or vain is never applied to cis people, because it’s plain to see how unreasonable this is. I’m entitled to my gender, just as you’re entitled to yours. But I’m not entitled to anyone else’s gender – and you’re not entitled to mine. One of the most important things my mother shared with me was her realization that she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life living purely for other people just to keep them happy. Is that selfish? No. They have their own lives to live, and I have mine. |
Feb 20, 2019 After a brief stint as a professional bowler, Jack McClelland spent the rest of his career working in poker. He started out at the bottom cleaning ash trays and running chips before moving up the ladder to dealer, shift supervisor, and eventually tournament director. McClelland spent more than 30 years as one of the most respected figures in the industry, running tournaments all over the world. The Ohio-native was in charge of the World Series of Poker for most of the 80’s and 90’s, and made Bellagio one of the flagship casinos of the World Poker Tour from 2002 until he retired in late 2013. McClelland was inducted to the Poker Hall of Fame in 2014 alongside Daniel Negreanu. Highlights from this interview include starving on the PBA Tour, from Russia not with love, learning cards from Grandma, moving to Vegas for the weather, the big games at the Sahara, breaking in at the WSOP, dealing with Johnny Moss, Stu Ungar, and the mob, the trouble with Sam Grizzle, heads-up penalties with Men The Master, Mrs. McClelland the bracelet winner, the lake in the middle of The Strip, his poker Mount Rushmore, a summer job at the copper factory, and the $300-$600 stud pot with Sarge Ferris that ended his playing career. To download this episode or to subscribe to the podcast check out the link below: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/card-player-poker-podcasts |
Joss Whedon created the online sensation Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog in 2008, proving independent television online is feasible while simultaneously thumbing his nose at the establishment. In defiance of limited resources and frustrating studio politics, Whedon proved you can produce good product cheaply, distribute it for free, and still make money – Dr. Horrible was a huge hit. It was a new paradigm and one that inspired rabid fan response. Cut to 2010. Director Andy Lowe of Chinese Pirate Productions fretted, “Why doesn’t someone do a live Dr. Horrible show?” Finally someone asked, “Andy, why don’t YOU just do it?” He licensed the title from the surprisingly laid-back and gracious Time Science Blood Club (managers of Mutant Enemy properties), found musical director Brian Hammond via the San Diego theatre scene, and the rest is more than crazy random happenstance. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfEvPvyxU8I[/youtube] The fruits of their labors were shaping up at a warm Sunday rehearsal when the Pixelated Geek staff stopped by for a chat. Check Brown Paper Tickets now and get your seats before they are all gone! With only 107 seats and 16 performances, your chance to see this premiere is limited. There is a double feature on 7/17 with Gam3rs: The Play as part of Gam3rCon, so try and check that out. While the book for Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog Live! is basically a direct transcription, Lowe, Hammond, and their team have built new stage work from the robust flesh of the original. Featuring design team members from top San Diego regional theatres and a tremendous cast of singer-actor-comedians, this is the genuine article – not just some shadow-cast karaoke of a beloved geek classic, which I’m sure some fans are concerned about. Unlike published musicals, you don’t get a nice prepared package with sheet music to match actors to. Echoing the pioneering spirit of the original, they crowdsourced the music and other elements from a wealth of fan work, making the libretto, as Hammond says, more of a “wiki-score.”. Chinese Pirate Productions cast parts with an eye toward the larger-than-life archetypes of the characters, and the actors contributed a great deal to the new versions of the cast. The music could also be tailored to showcase the actor’s vocal ranges — Thomas Lokensgard (Max/Bad Horse Trio) can sing a low D and Susan Hammons (Doris) uses her full Sondheim-level vocal range — rather than simply mimicking the original. The cast described its first rehearsal as a merry, cohesive “talent show” to showcase the actors’ unusual talents. Revealed skills (such as half the cast having improv experience and Michael Nieto’s nose flutes) promise to spice up the show. Jane Lui (in her stage debut as Penny) is a bit of a YouTube musical sensation, and her random instrument prowess has added new features that I won’t ruin for you here. The show will also feature a four-player band rocking out stage right. Finally, the cast adds color you won’t be expecting. Let’s just say I clapped my hands and giggled a lot during this interview. It’s fun to imagine the cast’s professionalism on the cool two-story set while they’re relaxed and silly together in the tiny room, wearing their Captain Hammer shirts, Bad Horse mustaches, and evil goggles. The whole ensemble is used to the absolute maximum in the show — it’s not just three leads with some backup singers, but a fully realized community made from ten players. I envy them getting to sing and dance this show, but not having to step into the enormous shoes of the original cast’s. As Nathan Turner (Dr. Horrible/Billy) pointed out: after Neil Patrick Harris has delivered a line as perfectly as he has, there’s little to no room for improvement. However the spirit of the line must be kept alive. Reinterpreting characters that are so current and iconic, especially for the finicky geek crowd, can be a challenge. Lowe and company take that familiarity and honor embrace it, and then make room for the actors to put their stamp on it. It’s a common enough conundrum for any stage show produced after a movie version, but one key difference here is the rabid fan base audience. Having the premiere run during San Diego Comic-Con is both brilliant and brave. “This is going to bring people to the theatre who don’t usually go to the theatre.” — Susan Hammons. The cast’s hidden skillsets helped overcome some of the interesting technical challenges in the story. Some creative and surprising decisions were necessary to transition staging between screen and stage and expand the scope of the cast, and I think audiences will be tickled by the results. Karen Li (Hammer Fan/Choreographer) handles group movement and dance, but she also is responsible for some cool physical visuals that require a different sort of choreography. Her eyes glittered with excitement as she talked about her role in the staging. Everyone in this show is thrilled to be here and is having “super fun.” As you know from the show (and I can tell you from personal experience), such energy does more to make a show unforgettable than all the technical wonders a big budget can provide. Casting was totally color-blind, inspired by show co-creator Maurissa Tancharoen’s song “Nobody’s Asian in the Movies” from Commentary: The Musical (the sung commentary track for the DVD of Dr. Horrible). Lowe and Hammond advertised roles based on broad types but with no concern for sticking with the same looks as the original cast. Lui says that for her, it made it easier for her to put her own stamp on Penny’s character without needing to make it all about her ethnicity. Michael Minto (Captain Hammer) did “a superbombastic last-ditch effort” via email to get an audition: “Oh I heard you guys had auditions, but I’m supposed to be Captain Hammer.” SEND. Perhaps because of the sheer Hammertude of such a play, they let him come to callbacks; all agreed that he really was the only Captain Hammer. The premise is simple: A villain (Dr. Horrible) loves a girl (Penny), but his arch-nemesis (Captain Hammer) gets in the way of his nefarious goals. Dr. Horrible is the hero of the story, and in true Whedonesque style, the whole shebang is irreverent and unexpectedly sober. If you’re not familiar with Dr. Horrible, you should be. Introduce yourself to the phenomenon by seeing this show: it’s a rare opportunity. Coming down to the 10th Avenue Theatre is well worth your time. |
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