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Russian special forces officer surrounded by Isis calls in airstrikes on himself near Palmyra, Syria BelfastTelegraph.co.uk A Russian special forces officer has been killed near Palmyra in Syria after directing airstrikes to his location when he became surrounded by Isis fighters, a military representative at Russia's base in Syria has said. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/russian-special-forces-officer-surrounded-by-isis-calls-in-airstrikes-on-himself-near-palmyra-syria-34572514.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/incoming/article31477109.ece/885f4/AUTOCROP/h342/Palmyra007.jpg Email A Russian special forces officer has been killed near Palmyra in Syria after directing airstrikes to his location when he became surrounded by Isis fighters, a military representative at Russia's base in Syria has said. The officer was said to have been identifying major targets in the area and providing coordinates to Russian aircraft. The unnamed official at the Khmeimim base in Syria told Interfax that the officer died in the line of duty after he was spotted by Isis militants and surrounded. "An officer of Russian special operations forces was killed near Palmyra while carrying out a special task to direct Russian airstrikes at Islamic State group targets," the spokesperson said. "The officer was carrying out a combat task in Palmyra area for a week, identifying crucial IS targets and passing exact coordinates for strikes with Russian planes. "The officer died as a hero, he drew fire onto himself after being located and surrounded by terrorists." The date of the incident was not revealed. Last week Isis-linked media claimed that five Russian special forces officers were killed near Palmyra. Isis has destroyed many of the ancient ruins near the city. UNESCO denounced the destruction as a war crime. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday that Moscow expects the operation to retake Palmyra from Isis to be successfully concluded soon. Read more What’s Russia up to in Syria? I would wager they're after something big – retaking Palmyra from Isis Syrian president Bashar Assad hails recapture of historic Palmyra Advance on Palmyra By Press Association Syrian government forces, backed by Russian air strikes, have pushed into Palmyra, which has been held by the Isis since May, state TV reported. The advance came after the troops managed this week to capture several hills and high ground around the town, famed for its priceless archaeological site and Roman ruins. Syrian troops have been on the offensive for days in an attempt to capture the town. The state TV broadcast footage of its reporter, embedded with the Syrian military, speaking live from the entrance of Palmyra and saying that as of midday Thursday, the fighting was concentrated near the archaeological site on the south-western edge of the town. Cracks of gunfire and explosions echoed as the reporter spoke. The TV also aired footage showing soldiers walking and vehicles driving near a building that appears to have been a hotel. An unnamed Syrian soldier told the station he had one message for the Islamic State group: "You will be crushed under the feet of the Syrian Arab Army." Recapturing the town, a UNESCO world heritage site, would be a significant victory for Syria's army and its Russian allies. Russia withdrew most of its forces and aircraft from Syria last week after a months-long bombing campaign that succeeded in turning the tide of the war again in President Bashar Assad's favour. Turkey-based activist Osama al-Khatib, who is originally from Palmyra, denied that Syrian troops had entered the town. He said they were still on the edge of Palmyra and that the video seen on Syrian state TV shows the area about three miles from Palmyra. Read more Isis seize Palmyra: World mourns fall of Syria's 'Bride of the Desert' by sharing photos and memories Earlier in the day, Governor Talal Barazi said from the nearby city of Homs that the Syrian army has determined three directions to storm Palmyra and was clearing all roads leading into the town of mines and explosives. "We might witness in the next 48 hours an overwhelming victory in Palmyra," Governor Barazi said over the phone, adding that "the army is advancing in a precise and organised way to protect what is possible of monuments and archaeological sites". The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Syrian troops and Shiite militiamen helping them on the ground were facing tough resistance from Isis extremists as they try to penetrate the town's limits. The Observatory, which monitors the Syrian conflict through a network of activists on the ground, said the IS lost over 200 militants since the government campaign to retake Palmyra began 17 days ago. It did not have figures for government losses. In neighbouring Lebanon, the Al-Manar TV station, which belongs to the militant Hezbollah group that is fighting with Syrian troops, reported that Syrian government forces were in full control of the hotels area and farms on the western edge of Palmyra on Thursday. Palmyra attracted tens of thousands of tourists to Syria every year and is affectionately known by Syrians as the "bride of the desert". In a big blow to the government, it was overrun by the Islamic State group last May. In Palmyra, the Isis destroyed many of the town's Roman-era relics, including the 2,000-year-old Temple of Bel and the iconic Arch of Triumph, and also killed dozens of captive Syrian soldiers and dissidents from IS in public slayings at the town's grand Roman theatre and other ruins. Along with blowing up priceless archaeological treasures, among the first destructions Isis carried out in Palmyra was the demolishing of the town's infamous Tadmur prison, where thousands of Syrian government opponents had been imprisoned and tortured over the years. The advance on Palmyra comes against the backdrop of Syrian peace talks under way in Geneva between representative of the Damascus government and the Western-backed opposition. The talks, which have been boosted by a Russia-US-brokered cease-fire that has mostly held since late February, were to adjourn on Thursday - without having achieved any apparent breakthroughs. The negotiations are scheduled to resume later in April. In Moscow, US Secretary of State John Kerry called on Thursday for countries to boost efforts to fight Isis in Syria, Iraq and beyond in the wake of this week's deadly attacks in Brussels. He said the Brussels attack should put nations on notice that the terror threat emanating from the Middle East must be stopped. Mr Kerry is in Moscow for talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin and foreign minister Sergey Lavrov on Syria, Ukraine and the Brussels attacks. He will be seeking clarity from Mr Putin and Mr Lavrov as to where Russia stands on a political transition for Syria, particularly on the issue of Mr Assad's future. Despite its recent drawdown in Syria, Moscow has said it is keeping its bases in Syria and would continue to carry out air strikes against the Islamic State group and other extremists. The Russian air force has supported the Assad government advance with a fierce campaign of air strikes. Meanwhile, UN chief Ban Ki-moon arrived in Lebanon on Thursday for a two days visit during which he is expected to meet top Lebanese officials and discuss regional matters. Lebanon, which has taken in over one million Syrian refugees, is also host to a UN peacekeeping force that maintains security along the Lebanese-Israel border. Mr Ban is expected to address refugee support, youth unemployment, and private sector development. He will visit a Syrian refugee settlement in central Lebanon and the country's second-largest city, Tripoli, in the north. The secretary general will be joined by World Bank and the Islamic Development Bank Group representatives on a five-day regional tour that will also take him to Jordan and Tunisia. Belfast Telegraph Digital |
Image copyright iStock When Japanese people want a really good read they may not pick a spy thriller, a sci-fi fantasy or a throbbing romance - they may choose a novel about the world of business, with a besuited middle manager as its hero. Business novels now routinely feature in bestseller lists, and have even made the transition from the printed page to chart-topping TV drama. With a sharp kick, the young man in a sharp suit dodges a blow from a golf club. His attacker falls to the ground, golf club flying. He recovers and lunges again. But the young man draws a golf club and holds him back. Meet Hanzawa Naoki, a middle manager in the loans department of a fictional Tokyo bank. A white-collar worker, or "salaryman", who challenges his corrupt bosses and exposes their dodgy loan deals, he's the unlikely and eponymous hero of one of the most successful Japanese TV shows for decades. "He's sexy, he's savvy he's hardworking, he's on the fast-track to success. He's the can-do icon for young males who think 'Yeah, that's the sort of guy I want to be,'" says Jeff Kingston, professor of Asian studies at Temple University in Japan. The series is adapted from a series of novels by Jun Ikeido, who himself once worked in the loans department of a bank. He insists his stories are entirely fictional, and not closely related to his own experience. He just tries to write entertaining stories, he says, and isn't commenting on the state of banking in Japan. Image caption An advertisement for satellite TV shows salarymen in a samurai pose All the same, some readers do take his work seriously. "When I occasionally do autograph sessions, people come to me and give me their business cards and say, 'Come to me if you're looking for a story - there's a lot I could tell you,'" he says. Some of these people have had important jobs in finance, and been well-placed to know what is going on below the surface. But he says he never calls them. On the other hand, the information in business novels is often very well-sourced, according to critic Makoto Sataka, who helped define the emerging genre when he wrote a book about it in the 1980s. The Japanese business novel is a microcosm of all the anxieties and questions that Japanese people have Marika Nagai, Temple University He had developed an appreciation of the novels when he was a young journalist writing for an economics magazine, and was finding it hard to pen critical stories. "I found that writing about companies in Japan was a taboo. You can't write the truth in the media," he says. The bigger the business, the harder it is to criticise, Sataka says, as they have well-run public relations departments that do "a great job" to block any critical reports before they are published. The firms also put a lot of effort into keeping the journalists on side. "These companies really spoil the journalists, so they don't write anything negative about them." The wining and dining of journalists happens in many countries but it arguably has an extra dimension in Japan. The concept of harmony is an important feature of the culture, making it harder for journalists to dig far beneath society's smooth surface. Investigations and exposes are not good for harmony. In his spare time, Makoto Sataka began to go rooting through boxes at the back of bookshops. They were full of cheap paperbacks, which people had read once and thrown away. But in these books, Makoto Sataka, felt like he was finally getting the real story. "I found that there was no truth in factual stories. But in fiction, there was," he says. Image caption Jun Ikeido and an advertisement for his latest novel One early example of the business novel is Supermarket: A Novel by Satoshi Azuchi, published in 1981. Azuchi started his career in banking but was then brought into a supermarket chain to help turn it around, and this book is based on this experience. The story first appeared in serial form, published in monthly instalments in an industry magazine, with the name of the author withheld. It caused quite a stir. In the opening pages, the manager - newly-installed, after a career in a large trading firm - walks into a branch for the first time and discovers rotting fish and meat, and dried-up vegetables. This is just what Azuchi remembers from his first day at work. The novel follows the intrigues the new manager uncovers - staff taking food from the shelves without putting it through the till, suspect accounting practices, and crumbling premises. All this is the re-imagining of real problems Azuchi himself uncovered when he first entered the retail industry. "I wrote this book to share my experience with other people. Like this character, I went there from outside and I thought something here is very wrong. "I solved the problems one after another, just like in a suspense story. So it was like a real-life suspense story going on," he says. Today the business novel features strongly in Japan's best-seller charts. In one bookshop, I visited in the Jimbocho district of Tokyo, a novel by Jun Ikeido - The Lost Generation Strikes Back - was placed at number two. On its front cover, two men in suits stand in front of a skyscraper, and the title is a reference to those salarymen who missed the booming economic good times of 1980s Japan, starting their career after the bubble burst, and slogging their way through two decades of stagnant growth. At number four in the chart was a novel about the failure of a bank. Image copyright Thinkstock To understand the popularity of the genre, is in a sense to understand Japan, according to writer and lecturer in modern literature, Marika Nagai of Temple University. "The Japanese business novel is a micro[cosm] of all the anxieties and questions that Japanese people have," she says. The young generation wants to become businessmen, rather than salarymen Jin Mayama, Novelist After Japan's defeat in World War two, she points out, people began to ask questions about the country's future. "Where is Japan going to be? How can Japan be number one? And they knew that the only way they could be number one, or at least as good as they were, without the military, was through business. And so business embodied Japanese dreams: 'If you work hard you can be successful, you can have a happy life.'" The business novel, she says, is a natural extension of this outlook. Jun Ikeido's hero Hanzawa Naoki, who steps out of line to confront and triumph over his bosses, reflects a typical theme in the genre, she says. "It's a question of how you stay human when the system is so machine-like. That's the consolation - how do you stay human, in spite of it all?" Handily, paperbacks are just the right size to slip inside a suit pocket, giving the hard-pressed salaryman some mental release from the daily grind. Image copyright Thinkstock In another district of Tokyo, novelist Jin Mayama deliberately creates characters in his novels who challenge this model of working. He makes a distinction between the traditional Japanese wage-slave salaryman and the more go-getting "businessman" type. In his second novel, Hagetake (Vultures ), the main character is a salaryman who is preoccupied with his office romance, while his company is being bought. "One day he's made redundant and loses his girlfriend - my point being that while the company faces the fatal loss, the employees remain in their usual ignorance," Mayama says. "In contrast, there's a businessman character in my work, Tajima, who handles a project with the US and who has the ability to tackle situations at work flexibly. "The young generation wants to become businessmen, rather than salarymen. They realise the importance of using their initiative and it looks as though they are increasing in number. But there is one issue - the bosses don't give them the power. So the older generation is blocking those with potential to become businessmen." Image caption Business is a popular theme in Japanese comics - here manga artist Hisroshi Motomiya pens his famous Salaryman Kintaro character Jin Mayama also turned to writing novels after a career as a journalist and coming to the conclusion, like Makoto Sataka, that it would be easier to explore the truth in fiction than as a reporter. He meticulously researches the subjects of his novels and his writing has a reputation for being remarkably far-sighted. In one of his novels, he wrote about an accident at a nuclear power plant - three years before the meltdown at Fukushima. "There was a myth in Japan till March 2011 and the Great Tohoku earthquake - the myth of safety, the myth that a nuclear disaster could not happen," he says. "I interviewed a number of nuclear experts about what the most serious accident could be, but they kept saying such a thing couldn't happen. "I kept asking 'What happens if someone makes a mistake?' Seeing their reactions is how I got the sense that an actual disaster might happen." So if you want to know what is really happening in the world of Japanese finance or industry, don't just read the newspapers - pick up a novel. Listen to Ruth Alexander's radio documentary the Sexy Salaryman on Radio 4's In Business, or Global Business on the BBC World Service - or click on the programme websites to listen online. Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox. |
On This Day Thursday 12th November 1936 82 years ago Oakland Bay Bridge, crossing San Francisco Bay was officially opened. Among those in attendance were former U.S. president Herbert Hoover, Senator William G. McAdoo, and the Governor of California, Frank Merriam. Governor Merriam officially opened the bridge by cutting gold chains across the traffic lanes with an acetylene cutting torch. The San Francisco Chronicle report of November 13, 1936, read: "the greatest traffic jam in the history of S.F., a dozen old-fashioned New Year's eves thrown into one – the biggest and most good-natured crowd of tens of thousands ever to try and walk the streets and guide their autos on them – This was the city last night, the night of the bridge opening with every auto owner in the bay region, seemingly, trying to crowd his machine onto the great bridge. And those who tried to view the brilliantly lighted structure from the hilltops and also view the fireworks display were numbered also in the thousands. Every intersection in the city, particularly those near the San Francisco entrance to the bridge, was jammed with a slowly moving auto caravan. Every available policeman in the department was called to duty to aid in regulating the city's greatest parade of autos. One of the greatest traffic congestions of the evening was at Fifth and Mission Streets, with downtown traffic and bridge-bound traffic snarled in an almost hopeless mass. To add to the confusion, traffic signals jammed and did not synchronize. Police reported that there was no lessening of the traffic over the bridge, all lanes being crowded with Oakland- or San-Francisco-bound machines far into the night." |
I’m an ardent user of f.lux on all of my devices including mobile, but a few days ago I got to thinking about how the service aligns itself to the sun to keep your eyes healthy. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, f.lux adds a blue light filter to your devices, since studies have shown that exposure to blue light can inhibit melatonin production, one of the chemicals that triggers that sleepy effect. I’ve wanted a live wallpaper that does something similar, following the time of day in a 24 hour period with a specific scene. There are a handful of interesting live wallpaper apps on the Google Play Store that sort-of offer this, but none of them seemed to take the same scene and just alter the position of the sun and moon to give an interesting effect. That’s when I decided I’d make my own live wallpaper if I couldn’t find the one I wanted in the Play Store. A quick browse around reddit and I discovered a set of wallpapers that were designed for use on a desktop to achieve the exact same effect I wanted with programs that rotate wallpaper on an hourly basis. Here’s how to set it up properly: Download the 8BitDay Wallpapers and extract and store them on your device in an easily accessible location. Download Wallpaper Changer from the Google Play Store. Open the app and choose the folder where you saved the wallpapers as your album. Set the interval to change every two hours. Now we need to get the wallpaper to the right time of day according to when you’re setting it up. Check the ‘double tap to change wallpaper’ option in the settings and follow this guide to get the proper time of day set up. 5AM – 7AM: Pixel -O1.jpg 7AM – 9AM: Pixel-02.jpg 9AM – 11AM: Pixel-03.jpg 11AM – 1PM: Pixel-04.jpg 1PM – 3PM: Pixel-05.jpg 3PM – 5PM: Pixel-06.jpg 5PM – 7PM: Pixel-07.jpg 7PM – 9PM: Pixel-08.jpg 9PM – 11PM: Pixel-09.jpg 11PM – 1AM: Pixel-10.jpg 1AM – 3AM: Pixel-11.jpg 3AM – 5AM: Pixel-12.jpg This means if you’re setting up the wallpaper at 5PM local time, you’ll need to double tap on your home screen to change the wallpaper six times to get it to the proper image for your time of day. Once you have the images aligned with your time of day, uncheck ‘double tap to change wallpaper’ and the app will take care of the proper time of day change by itself. I have noticed that if you have a phone with aggressive battery saving measures like the ZTE Axon 7 or any of Huawei’s devices with EMUI, the app process may be killed preventing it from changing properly. You’ll have to exclude the app from those settings to prevent this from happening. |
A book co-written by an MIT professor takes a single line of code — the concise BASIC program for the Commodore 64, which also serves as the book's title — and uses it as a lens to examine both the phenomenon of creative computing and computer programs in culture. The book’s title, “10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10” (MIT Press, 2012), does not exactly roll off the tongue. But as computer code, it has the quality of concrete poetry in the eyes of Nick Montfort, associate professor of digital media in MIT's Comparative Media Studies/Writing program and the book’s lead author. Written for the Commodore 64, one of the earliest personal computers (released in 1982), the phrase “10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10” is a line of code in BASIC, the first widely popular programming language designed for use by non-scientists. When executed, the code randomly, and repeatedly, generates either a / or a \, filling the screen with a pattern that resembles a maze. “The emergent complexity from this deceptively simple work is part of its interest,” says Montfort, noting that while not all code can be considered poetic, 10 PRINT is special. “I believe it is a concrete poem, a found poem. It’s a cultural artifact.” Montfort identifies computer code in general as a culturally significant human language, just as deserving of close critical analysis as other products of culture. “No one would be startled to ask why a particular word is used in a literary text,” Montfort says. “Why can’t we do that with a line of code?” Language that executes Despite the title, “10 PRINT” is not a technical book of interest solely to programmers. Instead, the code is used as a jumping off point for examining a wide range of humanities questions, including the role the code’s maze plays in Western culture, and randomness in computing and the arts. The authors even plumbed the depths of the code by examining it in translation, meaning to try it out in other programming languages (a process called porting). They discovered, for example, that in some languages the characters from different lines don’t touch each other, and so no maze is formed. “This allows us to see why this is a particularly pleasing program on the Commodore,” Montfort says. Going to such lengths as to examine one small piece of code is a valuable exercise, Montfort says, because “code is a language that executes. It can have various kinds of significance, from artistic to economic to political." He points out that the content of code has already made headlines, such as when the source code for Diebold voting machines was leaked in 2003, and when hackers unveiled code from Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, fueling reports that anthropogenic climate change was a hoax. “We’re arguing that code is culturally significant — and that larger scale models of scholarship can be brought to bear on [fundamental] questions,” Montfort says. This work is central to the new wave of research called “digital humanities,” he adds. “The intersection of digital and humanities is not just in new modes of presenting scholarship, it’s not just in ways computer techniques can be used to study materials — it’s also in understanding the ways computation and digital media have been transforming the culture." ‘Massively co-authored scholarship’ “10 PRINT” (the book) emerged from an online workshop organized by the Critical Code Studies Group, a collaborative conference focused on applying critical theory and hermeneutics (the study of the interpretation of written texts) to the interpretation of computer source code. Invited to contribute code for discussion, Montfort submitted the one-line 10 PRINT code, which he remembered from his childhood. His post sparked a lively discussion among a wide range of experts — in art, writing, digital media, computer science and even library science. Montfort, who previously co-authored “Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System” (MIT Press, 2009), quickly recognized the potential for a book on the topic. He then tapped key contributors to join him in what he calls a “massively co-authored scholarship.” In total, “10 PRINT” has 10 authors, including Montfort and Patsy Baudoin, MIT Libraries liaison to the MIT Media Lab. Additional authors include John Bell; Ian Bogost; Jeremy Douglass; Mark C. Marino; Michael Mateas; Casey Reas SM ’01; Mark Sample; and Noah Vawter SM ’06, PhD ’11. Even so, the book is not a collection of essays by 10 different people, but one coherent narration, told in one voice. “We had a wiki and wrote it together. Certain people would be lead writers for certain chapters, and there was an internal review process,” Montfort says. “It was a very complex process.” Story prepared by MIT SHASS Communications Editorial and Design Director: Emily Hiestand Senior Writer: Kathryn O'Neill |
Hi, we're Box Brown and Jared Smith, co-publishers of Retrofit Comics, and we're raising money to publish our next 6 graphic novels and comic books! Combed Clap of Thunder by Zach Hazard Vaupen by Zach Hazard Vaupen Steam Clean by Laura Ķeniņš by Laura Ķeniņš How To Be Alive by Tara Booth by Tara Booth Iceland by Yuichi Yokoyama by Yuichi Yokoyama Tales from the Hyperverse by Will Cardini by Will Cardini TRUMPTRUMP vol. 1: nomination to inauguration by Warren Craghead III Who are you guys? Box Brown is a New York Times bestselling cartoonist and creator of Andre the Giant: Life and Legend, Tetris: The Games People Play, and An Entity Observes All Things, among many others. He's the founder of Retrofit Comics and the editor. (Check out more of his comics at boxbrown.com ) Jared Smith is co-owner of the 4 Big Planet Comics stores in the Washington, DC area, and has been co-publisher of Retrofit Comics with Box since 2013. We've published almost 60 comics and graphic novels since we were founded in 2011. We actually started with a successful Kickstarter, and have been aiming to publish around 12 comics a year ever since. So why another Kickstarter? We've run 3 successful Kickstarters so far, including our biggest Kickstarter ever last year, and it's simply one of the best ways to reach a big comics-loving audience! We want to make sure the printed quality of our comics stays as high as possible to match the vision of all of our artists, but we also want to keep paying our artists advances upfront! Creating comics is a slow and difficult process, so paying advances helps the artists instead of waiting to be paid after their comic has been selling for a long time. What are these comics? In this Spring 2017 line, we're publishing 6 new comics and graphic novels, including the first English translation of a Japanese graphic novel. Here are the planned covers and some interior pages from them. Combed Clap of Thunder by Zach Hazard Vaupen 44 black and white pages, 7x9 inches (15.2x22.8 cm), stapled comic book Combed Clap of Thunder collects 3 short stories by Zach Hazard Vaupen: "The Lonely Autocannibal The Scientist", "Bodhisattva", and "The Real Jesuses", centered around themes of emotional and spiritual confusion. Zach Hazard Vaupen is a cartoonist and printmaker living and working in New York City. His work has appeared in several anthologies and websites in multiple countries since 2006. When he's not drawing comics, Zach enjoys experimenting with digital printing methods on rigid materials. He's ashamed that he doesn't keep a sketchbook so don't tell anyone. Instagram: @emo_sludge Twitter: @zachhazard Steam Clean by Laura Ķeniņš 84 color pages, 5.5x7.5 inches (14x19 cm), softcover graphic novel On a dark autumn night in northern Europe, a group of friends and strangers gather at a sauna for a women’s-only sauna night. Kaisa has been trying out dating apps after a breakup. Miika is conflicted about attending a women’s event as a nonbinary person. Maija’s work tensions bring up recollections of other events from the past. Laima feels torn between her role as goddess of women and her sexual orientation. As the sauna heats up, stories come out in the steam. Laura Ķeniņš is a comic artist and journalist who has lived and worked in Halifax, Toronto, Latvia and Hungary. Her short comic Alien Beings was published by kuš! komikss in 2016 and her comics have also appeared in Kuti Magazine, Truthout, The Puritan, Carte Blanche, the Los Angeles Review of Books and other publications. She has worked with the Ladydrawers and Femicomix Finland. Currently she resides in Toronto with her tuxedo cat. Website: laurakenins.com Twitter: @birch_control Tumblr: birchcontrol.tumblr.com How To Be Alive by Tara Booth 40 color pages, 7x10 inches (17.8x25.4 cm), stapled comic book How To Be Alive is a collection of Tara Booth's most recent gouache paintings. Straying from the narrative form of her first 2 publications, How To Be Alive is a series of densely patterned, colorful, one page vignettes. Tara Booth is an artist from Philadelphia, PA currently based in Portland, Oregon. Since she began making comics in 2015, her work has been published by küs! comics, Colorama Press, Brainfreeze Comics and in various anthologies. Tumblr: tarabooth.tumblr.com Instagram: @tarabooth Iceland by Yuichi Yokoyama 88 black & white pages, 6x8.5 inches (15.2x21.6 cm), softcover graphic novel A new surrealist tale by the creator of neo manga, the critically-acclaimed Yuichi Yokoyama. His frenetic visual style contrasts with the taciturn pace of the story and dialogue as a group of friends wander the high-latitude areas of the strange icy Far North looking for someone. Readers of Yokoyama's other stories may even recognize some characters. Yuichi Yokoyama is an Eisner Award-nominated artist who was born in 1967 in Miyazaki Prefecture, Japan. He graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Musashino Art University. Originally, he was making fine art paintings, but after 2000, started to release manga, feeling that through it he could “express time.” These unique works would go on to be called “neo manga” and receive high acclaim in many fields. Presently, he is also active as a contemporary artist. His other graphic novels include Color Engineering, Travel, Garden, and World Map Room. Website: urano.tokyo/en/artists/yokoyama_yuichi/ Twitter: @neomanga Iceland is translated from the original Japanese by Ryan Holmberg, an art and comics historian whose many translations include Yuichi Yokoyama's World Map Room, Osamu Tezuka's Mysterious Underground Men, and Tsuge Tadao's Trash Market. More writing by Ryan Holmberg: tcj.com/author/ryan-holmberg/ Tales from the Hyperverse by William Cardini 40 color pages, 7x10 inches (17.8x25.4 cm), stapled comic book Tales from the Hyperverse collects a series of short comics that Will Cardini has been sporadically drawing from 2009 to now. The comics are set in the same psychedelic space fantasy cosmos, the Hyperverse, where wizards and witches battle over strange artifacts left by ancient aliens. It includes comics published online at Study Group and Arthur Mag, in newsprint anthologies such as Smoke Signal and Secret Prison, and 14 new pages. All the comics that were originally black and white will now be in color and Cardini has enlisted his frequent collaborator Josh Burggraf to add his own painterly colors to 5 pages. William Cardini lives in Kansas City with his wife and daughter. His first graphic novel, Vortex, was published by Sparkplug Books in 2014. Most of his second graphic novel, Skew, was serialized on the Study Group Comics website from 2014 to 2016. Website: hypercastle.com Comics on Study Group: studygroupcomics.com/main/category/contributor/william-cardini/ Tumblr: hypercastle.tumblr.com Twitter: @williamcardini Instagram: @williamcardini TRUMPTRUMP vol. 1: nomination to inauguration by Warren Craghead III 192 black & white pages, 7x10 inches (17.8x25.4 cm), hardcover graphic novel In the summer of 2016 Warren Craghead began drawing and posting online daily grotesque portraits of Donald Trump, beginning when Trump won the Republican nomination for president. Craghead thought the project would be done that November, but when Trump won the election Craghead vowed to continue to draw Trump and his minions until “…this nightmare is over.” TRUMPTRUMP vol. 1: nomination to inauguration collects daily drawings from this ongoing series (with notes and commentary), beginning on July 21, 2016 through Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017. The drawings began as an offshoot of Craghead's LADYH8RS and USAH8RS projects, but over time have become more complicated, more narrative and more angry. Warren Craghead III is a Ignatz-nominated artist based in Charlottesville, Virginia. Over the past 20 years his internationally-exhibited drawings and comics have appeared in numerous anthologies, websites and books. Craghead is known for his seminal poetry comics work such as HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE and thickets, and is a three-time Virginia Museum fellow. He received an MFA in 1996 from the University of Texas at Austin, a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia in 1993 and attended the Skowhegan School in 1993. Website: craghead.com Website: trumptrump.biz Instagram: @wcraghead Twitter: @wcraghead When are these coming out? We will be printing and shipping 2 comics together, to get printing discounts and to save you shipping when they get mailed out! Plus this way you get lots of cool comics in the mail! Release Schedule: May 2017: Combed Clap of Thunder & Steam Clean June 2017: How To Be Alive & Iceland July 2017: Tales from the Hyperverse & TRUMPTRUMP vol. 1 Where is the money going? The money from this Kickstarter is going to printing costs and the artist advances. We also included an extra 5% for the Kickstarter fees, and an extra 5% for credit card processing fees. If we are lucky enough to meet our goal, any extra money will go towards publishing more cool comics in the fall! Who made your cool video? The uber-talented artist John Kinhart! Videos: https://vimeo.com/johnkinhart Comics: http://www.sorrycomics.com/ His documentary Pigheaded on the late great underground comix artist Skip Williamson is on the film convention circuit now: http://pigheadedmovie.com/ Anything else? Thanks for helping Retrofit Comics keep growing for over 5 years! (We turn 6 in June!) We really appreciate it. - Box & Jared |
Alex is like your personal spell-check, but for potentially offensive or harmful language. It's a script created by Holland developer Titus Wormer that automatically checks text and suggests more appropriate options for the words you're using. The JavasSript tool checks 218 patterns of language and suggests edits in real time. For instance, changing "master" to "primary," "slave" to "replica," and "maiden name" to "birth name." He began the project a month ago, and it was inspired by a tweet from a developer of color who called out offensive terms. “ Dunno how I feel about using the terms "Master" and "Slave" for describing various concepts in Software Engineering. #blackdeveloperproblems July 8, 2015 In order to figure out which loaded language to tag in the tool, Wormer said he did extensive research, and only programmed the tool to highlight subtly harmful language. Because words like "slut" and other profane words for women and people of color are obviously offensive and loaded terms, he didn't include them in the initial build. (He caught some flack for that from commenters on 4chan , and said he will add suggestions to edit clearly derogatory language.) "[I gathered the list] by reading up on what people find offensive," Wormer told the Daily Dot via email. "I searched the Internet for... 'gender equality writing,' 'bias-free writing,' 'considerate writing,' 'ableist language,' 'gender free writing,' and other lists." He also provided resources to this research at the bottom of Alex's website. Alex Beyond the subtleties like using male-gendered pronouns while writing code or other texts, it's not uncommon to find inappropriate language in open-source code. GitHub is rife with racist, sexist, and other derogatory terms inside code submitted by members of the tech community. To help combat offensive code, GitHub established an Open Code of Conduct for open-source communities designed to outline appropriate behavior and help people recognize and deal with harmful speech and harassment. And likewise, people are encouraged to suggest additions to Alex through email, Twitter , or GitHub. Alex isn't just a tool for programmers, however. Wormer said it can be used for many other types of writing. "Don’t use it before you text (but maybe do before you text when drunk)," he said. "Do use it when checking your thesis, run it over project documentation. Maybe use it when creating a job listing, or when sending your CV to a possible employer." Wormer does add the caveat that Alex isn't perfect, and might suggest changing a word when there's no error—but when it does suggest stronger phrasing, it should force people to change their wording, or at least rethink the words they're using to be more inclusive. |
I don’t mean for the blog to be all Hubble all week, but c’mon. Just look at that picture! Phil Plait Phil Plait writes Slate’s Bad Astronomy blog and is an astronomer, public speaker, science evangelizer, and author of Death From the Skies! What you’re seeing is the Tarantula Nebula, an unimaginably huge star-forming gas cloud. It’s located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way, about 170,000 light years away (as usual, you can grab a bigger shot, or even a ridiculously huge 16,600 x 15,000 pixel version). The picture looks a bit odd to me, but that’s because it’s a mix of visible and infrared light. This strongly accentuates gas and dust, and gives the nebula that overall pinkish color in the picture. (I’ve written about this nebula many times; see Related Posts below for more eye and brain candy.) Advertisement The Tarantula is one of the largest star-birth factories known, busily churning out hundreds of thousands of stars. Most nebulae produce stars in far smaller numbers. The Tarantula is so fecund, in fact, that astronomers think it may actually be creating a globular cluster, a massive spherical collection of stars. Most of these are very old (like billions of years old), so being able to see one in the process of formation is a real boon. There’s so much to see in that image! Let me point out a few highlights. First, right at the brightest part of the nebula (left of center in the big picture, detailed above) you can see a clump of stars. That’s R136, the main cluster of stars in the nebula. Several of the stars in it are huge, about 100 times the mass of the Sun. Stars get hotter the more massive they are, and those stars are so big they’re on the edge of tearing themselves apart. The cluster provides most of the energy lighting up this gas cloud, which is pretty impressive given that the Tarantula is 650 light years across! In the main image, see the two curves at the bottom, like a stretched-out W? Those are the edges of gigantic cavities in the cloud, carved out by the fierce light from the stars in R136. It eats into the gas and dust, eroding it, leaving those weird shapes like fingers and sandbars in a stream. In fact, when you zoom in, you can see more evidence of this: Advertisement That finger of gas on the left points directly at the cluster (“upstream”) and is what’s left after the erosion. There’s probably a denser knot of material at the tip, which has protected the material “downstream.” Sometimes that’s where stars are born, though in the powerful and deadly environment of the Tarantula, it’s possible all the gas will be stripped away before any stars can properly get going. The carving out of bubbles is happening on smaller scales, too; to the far right in the main photo is this little guy: You can see a small bubble on the right, almost certainly being blown by the winds and light of the stars forming inside it. That looks to me like a decent-sized gas cloud—20–30 light years across or so—but it’s positively dwarfed by the magnificence to the left. That seems unfair, but the Universe doesn’t really care about artistic justice. R136 is not the only cluster of stars in the nebula. To the upper left in the main photo is another tight collection of stars, called Hodge 301: Advertisement As you can see, there doesn’t seem to be much gas and dust around the cluster; it’s probably been cleared out by the stars within. Not only that, but Hodge 301 is somewhat older than R136 (probably 20 million years or so) which means many of its stars have already exploded, gone supernova, which has no doubt helped blow away material around the site. That’s just a taste of what’s going on here. There’s much more to see, and I leave it to you to scan the high-res image and discover what lies inside. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that many astronomers have devoted their entire careers to studying this massive and rich nebula. Looking over this picture, it’s easy to think there are far worse ways to spend your life. All photos by NASA, ESA, E. Sabbi (STScI) |
BY: A White House reporter asked spokesman Josh Earnest whether President Obama enjoyed himself at an infrastucture photo-op earlier Tuesday in Virginia, mocking Obama's claim last week about not visiting the border crisis because he wasn't "interested in photo ops." The assembled press corps laughed as Earnest asserted Obama was in good spirits. "And is he likely to be just as unhappy with the photo op he has planned later this week on infrastructure?" the reporter asked. A flustered Earnest said he didn't understand the question. "I'm getting back to his blowing off photo ops on the border," the reporter said. "Was he concerned that might send the wrong message to people in Central America if he went to the border?" "What the president's concerned about is focusing on solutions," Earnest said. "That's exactly what the president was focused on last week." "But he said he didn't like photo ops and he seemed to having a pretty good time," the reporter said. Earnest said the White House's opponents on this issue were more interested in appearing in front of cameras and had their "priorities mixed up," while saying Obama was only interested in putting forth positive solutions for problems like the border crisis. Obama's line about lack of interest in photo events was widely mocked, with the Washington Examiner and Independent Journal Review assembling a collection of times the president seemed more than happy to be in front of the camera. |
It's easy to get kids interested in technology when the technology is fun! And the options out there for fun outlets for kids to learn is growing every day. From building robots to programming games to building your own electronics, the line between play and learning is steadily blurring, and what's more, many of these platforms are built on open source. Meet Arun Gupta. He is Director of Developer Advocacy at Red Hat, where he focuses on JBoss Middleware. But when Gupta's not at work, one of his passions is the Devoxx4Kids program (he founded the United States chapter). Gupta will be speaking next week at OSCON, where he'll share his experience with Devoxx4Kids and provide some pointers for other parents wishing to get their kids involved. In this interview, we learned what Devoxx4Kids is all about, the children it reaches, and how you can get started with a chapter in your area. Tell us about Devoxx4Kids! What is it, and how did you first get involved? Devoxx4Kids is a global organization with a goal to introduce school kids to programming, robotics and engineering in a fun way. This is achieved by organizing sessions where children can develop computer games, program robots and also have an introduction to electronics. Different chapters around the world have conducted workshops on Scratch, Greenfoot, Alice, Minecraft modding, Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Python, NAO robots, and a variety of other topics. Devoxx is a professional developer conference based out of Europe. The founders of the conference tried to teach their kids on what they do for living and realized most of the material is in English, and not in their local language. That led to the birth of Devoxx4Kids. I've been speaking at the conference for a few years now and have delivered kids workshops for over a year now. I know the organizers for a few years and so it was very logical for me to build upon the effort and bring it to the USA. I founded the US chapter and its a non-profit and 501(c)(3) organization. A team helps me drive the Bay Area chapter and we've conducted several workshops here. You can take a look at them at our website. You can find more about the organization there. It sounds like there are projects for a wide range of ages. How young does Devoxx4Kids reach? Our workshops are targeted at kids from elementary to high school. Each workshop provides the recommended age and we've seen these are generally well honored by the attendees. Each workshop generally has a few volunteers to help the attendees move along. Each country has a different way to reach out to local attendees. Bay Area chapter reaches out using Meetup. Belgium, Holland, UK, and other countries use Eventbrite. And then these workshops are promoted using usual social media channels. Devoxx4Kids sessions have been delivered at different technology conferences around the world as well. We also have a free video channel that allows us to expand our reach beyond the physical workshops. So far, we've conducted about 120 workshops around the world with over 2,000 kids, and 30% of them are girls. We are very proud of that and certainly seeing interests in opening chapters in different parts of world. Take a look at our website if you are interested in opening a chapter. We encourage parents to let the kids explore on their own as kids become a lot more independent, apply their own wonderful mind to solve problems, and also helps a lot in morale boosting. Parents do stay with the kids in some workshops though and help kids catch up and move along with rest of the attendees. This is especially true if younger kids are participating in a workshop which has a lot more elder kids. Most of the times it's been an enriching experience, both for the attendees and us as the instructors. Every workshop is a new learning. What is the most kid-created, exciting project you've encountered so far? Each workshop has a different level of excitement and the sparkle in attendees' eyes is priceless. However there are certain workshops where the excitement level is high. Minecraft modding definitely stands out very prominently. We've seen some really creative mods from first time Minecrafters in the modding class. That is very encouraging! Scratch workshop is a big hit for kids in elementary/middle school. Their interaction with Leapmotion and ability to control sprites in Scratch using their hands is very exciting for them. You're giving another talk on Java EE 7. How can we bridge the gap so that skills learned in Devoxx4Kids continue into future careers as programmers or other related fields? Our goal is to expose technology to kids at an early age and more importantly in a fun way. Hopefully this will motivate them to stay engaged as they grow. In some of our workshops, we also make parents from hi-tech industry talk about their successful careers. This allows the kids to connect the dots from what they are doing to where they can be, hopefully. We only try to motivate kids and show them options when they are raw. What they ultimately choose in their career, could be completely different. But I'd like to say "If not us, then who. If not now, then when." Without giving too much away, what are some of the tips and best practices you plan to discuss for workshop organizing? If you are a newbie runner, then there are tons of questions. How much distance should I run? What should I eat? How many days/week I should train? What kind of cross-train ? Shoes, GPS, protein/fat/carbs ratio. And the list is endless. Similarly organizing workshop for the first time could be overwhelming but we've delivered several of them all around the world. This particular session will be answering questions like what does it take to run a workshop, what topic would be relevant, how many attendees should be invited, how to get volunteers, where is the training material, t-shirts, swag, sponsors, and similar questions. Is there anything else you'd like do add? I'm personally thankful to O'Reilly for giving us an opportunity to talk about Devoxx4Kids at OSCON. We are also organizing OSCON Kids Day on the Sunday before OSCON and so motivating more kids. Do check out our website and let us know if you are interested in opening a chapter. View the complete collection of OSCON speaker interviews. |
1. How do I know if my free 12 month or 90 day Social Pass is working? Your free Social Pass will start when you activate your new SIM, or your new plan is set up and ready to go. You can keep track of your Social Pass in the My Vodafone app under ‘Plan & Add ons’. Heads up - your free pass will be added to your plan every month, so you’ll see the pass countdown reset at the start of each new month. 2. What apps can I use? Each type of Pass is only valid when you’re using an official, included app, on an Android or iOS mobile device. Be careful not to use non-official or Lite versions of the apps, as they will use your data allowance! 3. Will the apps in each Pass ever change? Yes, apps included in Vodafone Pass can change without notice. Keep an eye on this page for an up to date list of apps that are included. 4. When you say “endless”… is it really endless? Yes, endless data does mean endless, with the exception of a small amount of data, outside Vodafone’s control, that will be taken out of your plan entitlement. For example, an ad served up from a third party while streaming a video. Standard charges will apply for the below, but are not limited to: - Advertisements and advertisement links that are displayed within apps - Analytics - Apps using features on your device. For example, your calendar may have permission to access data in the background or use location services. - External links and navigation to other websites, apps, news, blogs, walls, maps, app stores - GIF library - Maps and location services - Podcasts - RSS feeds - Software/application updates happening at the same time - Video and content hosted from other sites that are played in the app 5. What happens if I run out of data in my plan? You’ll need a positive data balance, or the ability to use casual data on your plan at all times to use the Pass. This is so that we can ensure you stay connected. Please refer to the above question, explaining that standard charges might apply for usage within apps, outside of Vodafone’s control. Your phone might also update other apps in the background, and this will consume data too. If you don’t have a positive data balance or casual data on your plan, you will need to purchase additional data to use the Pass. 6. Do I need a streaming subscription to access endless data? Yep! Subscription services are not included as part of a Pass. Luckily, there are lots of apps included in Vodafone Pass that don’t require subscriptions! 7. Can I use video calling on Chat Pass? Yes video calling is included with Chat Pass on Viber and Messenger on both Android and iOS devices. However Video Calling is only available on Android through WhatsApp. 8. How many Passes can I get? You can choose up to four Passes per connection (Video, Chat, Social and Music). Sorry, you can’t share it with another device. 9. Is there a fair usage policy? While we want you to use the data freely, if your usage is excessive then Vodafone will remove the Vodafone Pass. Excessive usage is defined as data usage that far exceeds the average. 10. Can I tether or hotspot my mates using Vodafone Pass? No sorry. Hot spotting and tethering are not allowed with an active Vodafone Pass. Each device much have their own Vodafone Pass to access endless data. 11. Can I watch in High Definition? Video content will be optimised to be similar to DVD quality (e.g. 480p/SD) on a smartphone/tablet. This includes all Video Pass content and Facebook videos within the Social Pass. If you need to watch in HD, you’ll need to cancel your Vodafone Pass. Any unused portion of a Pass is non-refundable. 12. Can I still use my Pass overseas? No sorry - Vodafone Passes are available for use within the Vodafone New Zealand network only. If you roam overseas, data charges will apply. This includes using your monthly data allowance as part of On Account mobile $5 a day roaming or your Prepay roaming bundle. 13. I’m a content provider, how do I join the offer? Please see http://www.vodafone.co.nz/pass/partnerportal/ to submit your interest. |
In late 2015 I had just arrived in London on sabbatical and was staying in a scruffy part of the city's north – full of cultural diversity and social disadvantage. On the first morning, as I emerged from my basement flat in search of the Sunday papers, a woman came towards me brandishing a greeting card and pen. "Would you like to sign?" she asked. Just up the road was the strangely incongruous sight of a group of photographers pointing lenses at a modest '60s maisonette. "It's a congratulatory card," she explained, "from his neighbours to Jeremy. He's won." Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn greeting supporters on the final week of the election campaign. Credit:Getty Images And then it dawned on me. I was lodging just along from the newly elected leader of the British Labour Party: Jeremy Corbyn. I signed the card, explaining I was only a temporary neighbour, but was overjoyed at his victory. Corbyn's rise is a most improbable political story. A complete outsider more at home marching with the comrades than debating in the Commons, he fought against apartheid, welfare cuts, privatisation and successive Gulf wars. He was on the progressive side of every major vote in his long parliamentary career. |
A few months ago, I was invited to give a talk, this coming March, about my book Vagina: A New Biography at a new women-only club in London, named Grace Belgravia. I was happy to discuss the subject in a private all-female setting, in a discussion moderated by a figure in British feminism whom I have long admired, Rosie Boycott. It was intriguing, too, that the club seemed designed to be a challenge to, or at least a twist upon, the network of all-male spaces that have so long supported British (and American) power hegemonies. But when the event changed to a more public one, my comfort level with an all-female invitation list changed as well. I asked the organizers to open the event to both genders, which, to their credit, they did. Viv Groskop, in the Independent, citing the women-only language on the invitation, wrote: "Presumably if Mrs Carter wanted to attend, Mr Carter would have to stay at home. How is this any different to a golf club in the 1970s? … I can understand that people are tired of all the rhetoric and of waiting for things to change and so they're taking drastic action by reviving the sisterhood in both thought and deed. But there is a very fine line being crossed here … you end up creating a mirror image of the exclusive and excluding public spaces that feminism once fought against." I agree with Groskop, in important ways – and, critically, when it comes to any public event or institution. Yet, I also see value for women, and men, too, even in a truly egalitarian world, in maintaining some kinds of same-sex spaces. The idea of a women-only club at all, or women-only schools and programs, at this stage of feminism, raises important questions about whether same-sex spaces in general have any value or validity any more. Is there, indeed, a line that separates valuable women-only spaces from those that are discriminatory or counterproductive? In my mind, there is such a line. Feminism in the 1970s was based on the truism that every woman needed "a room of one's own", a phrase that drew on Virginia Woolf's framing of the value of all-female colleges in the 1929 essay by that name. The phrase, in turn, became a cliché, spawning a thousand feminist books and college courses with "of their own" in the title. And indeed, all-female gatherings did radicalize the generation western feminists of the 1970s, who were fighting a self-concept that had defined them always in relationship to men and male needs. Whether it was the "aha!" about invisible discrimination realized in a consciousness-raising group, the awareness of same-sex passion discovered in a lesbian retreat, or the context of a group of women learning about their sexuality from feminist sex educators such as Betty Dodson, the insights that emerged from these women-only gatherings would have been unreachable in mixed groups. There are still breakthroughs in skills acquisition, learning and leadership that happen most easily in women-only settings. Grameen Bank has a record of great achievement with small business entrepreneurship by training low-income women in all female settings – so much so that it is a target for government seizure; as does the Barefoot College in Tilonia, India, founded by Bunker Roy in 1972, and the subject of a recent documentary by Jehane Noujaim, "Rafea: Solar Mama".This program turns desperately impoverished, illiterate women from Columbia, Kenya and Jordan into solar engineers within a six-month training period. The film shows how the sisterhood, support and freedom from male intervention and control liberate these women's capabilities and confidence. Similar boosts to female leadership and self-esteem have long been documented in graduates of all-female US colleges such as Smith and Wellesley, and from the until recently single-sex St Hilda's and St Hugh's. And I have seen the vast leaps in confidence and skill set acquisition that comes from all-female training settings in the young women's leadership program I co-founded, the Woodhull Institute. Counselors who work with male abusers know that an all-male setting allows for more personal responsibility to be taken on as men confront their peers. The Girl Guides' and Boy Guides' sex segregation allows both genders to focus on learning that supports their own development. For these reasons, I do see value in some single-sex programs and settings, even today. But when there is now a trend of female-to-male transgender Smith undergraduates raising questions about "what is a Smithie?" – and even what is a woman, or a man – how do we justify women-only events, training or ideologies? How do we justify them when the best and most appealing version of feminism on college campuses is one in which young men feel included in exploring gender issues, and have a place in championing fairness to women? And how do they make sense after what I saw when we sent young female alumni from Woodhull with new financial skills back to their low-income neighborhoods, and their boyfriends clamored, rightly, for a program of their own? Even on college campuses, young women and young men reasonably ask whether there should even be a "women's center" at all. My best sense is that all public institutions, events and gatherings should be open to all without discrimination. But is there is still a place for the occasional same-sex discussion group, training program and private gathering? I believe there is. In my ideal world, so long as we have a larger goal that what is learned separately is always directed back to a discussion that brings us all together. |
As Messenger continues its steady growth as a communications channel distinct from its social network parent Facebook, the company today is taking the wraps off a new version of the platform that will give developers some new tools for how they present content in it, but it also opens the door wider to a new phase of how Messenger is evolving: get ready for more Messenger traffic from advertisers. As part of a new update to the platform, version 1.3, Facebook today said that it would making sponsored messages — where advertisers are able to send you messages on the platform — generally available to all advertisers. The move comes about six months after we reported that Facebook was starting to test the feature among a small group of brands and users. The news — announced on stage today by VP of product for Messenger, David Marcus, at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon — comes with interesting timing: just earlier, Facebook paused its intention to share data between its platform and its other big messaging product, WhatsApp, at the request of the UK’s data protection watchdog, the ICO. The data relationship between WhatsApp and Facebook is also being scrutinised at the European level, and has rubbed many users the wrong way, coming as it does after numerous assurances from Facebook, when it acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion, that it would run it as a completely independent business. But we digress! When we first wrote about sponsored messages in Messenger in April of this year, we noted the risk of them feeling spammy, especially in an environment where you usually only get messages from people you want to hear from (usually…). Sponsored messages could feel like they are breaking that experience by arriving to you unsolicited. Facebook is putting some “controls” in place to try to counteract that. For starters, for now, businesses cannot start sending you messages if you weren’t already in a thread with that business. And if you were in a thread but forgot about it and suddenly it’s been revived by an advertiser to your dismay, you can block that message, or the person or advertiser who sent it to you. Facebook tells me that the block is forever, until you reverse it. So how would a business get into a conversation with you in the first place? That might be through a bot interaction, or a subscription for some updates that you might have made in the past. Or, through a response to a Facebook News Feed ad, by way of click to message ads. These were first announced in September during our Disrupt conference, and today Marcus said that they were also widely available. Some early users of these ads include Absolut Vodka, Tommy Hilfiger and Activision, Facebook said. Click to message News Feed ads tap into an interesting bit of linkage between Facebook and Messenger: now when an advertiser catches your attention through an ad in your News Feed, instead of taking you to a website, off Facebook’s network, you can essentially stay within Facebook’s walled garden and continue the conversation through Messenger, most likely using one of the bot-based interactions that power many business services on Messenger. The other updates that Facebook is announcing today for version 1.3 of the platform include several updates for bots. Per Facebook: Reference Params for M.me Referral Links: Developers can now add reference params to their m.me vanity link, allowing them to determine where their bot traffic is coming from Deep Linking for M.me Referral Links: With the new reference param, developers can also deep link someone into a particular bot experience. For example, if someone clicks on the m.me link from a particular section within a website, a developer can now send a message that references that section. List Templates: Developers can now leverage new list templates, which showcase information in an easy-to-digest list. You can add a CTA or image to items in the list to customize the look and feel of the template. Pre-Checked Plugin: Developers can now add a checkbox plugin to easily allow customers to opt into a Messenger conversation with their business. Improvements to Search Results: We’re also releasing improvements to our bot search results, which will make it easier for people to find and discover bots. Updated with more detail on blocking advertisers, and also to clarify that the sponsored messages are open to “developers” — who work on behalf of advertisers. |
It was back in 2014 when I first published about USB cable resistance as one reason why your phone or tablet might be charging slowly. At the time, quality cables with good gauge wires were hard to find, and many “cheap” 28AWG cables were bought by unsuspecting consumers without knowing the downsides. Since then, it has become one of the most-viewed articles on this site, and the market has responded positively by advertising cable specifications more frequently. However, this is only one part of the puzzle, and it is something I had realized almost right after I posted that article. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the motivation to explain the technicalities at the time. Since then, a number of comments and reviews later, I feel that I’m better prepared to explain another issue which has existed since the dawn of USB but has gotten worse as we attempt to push more current through our cables. Is that USB connector designed correctly? USB at its introduction specified the ability to transfer up to 500mA at 5V over the USB A and B connectors. Throughout the iterations, the number of connector types have increased, and so has the current demanded by end-devices. USB “legacy” connectors still remain with us today and still remain relevant to many chargers which feature a USB-A socket. Unfortunately, the design of USB focused on making things cost-effective, and as a result, these legacy connectors tend to be less-accurately specified from a dimensional standpoint. This means that connector sizes can vary significantly between manufacturers, but “it should still work”. How well this works in practice is a different story. I’m sure that many readers may have experienced a headphone socket which crackles and might need you to turn the plug a little or pull it out slightly before a good connection is made. Others may have even experienced a USB charging cable which refused to charge until a little lateral pressure is applied to the connector, and then it worked. Or maybe, you needed to pull it out just a tiny bit. These are all manifestations of contact resistance which may arise due to connector incompatibility. The design of the USB connector is such that this problem should be minimised in properly-designed connectors. I will focus on the USB-A connector, although the principles hold true for most types of connectors. The first feature to look at is the shape of each of the pins in the connector. Properly formed connectors have a tapered design at the front, which leads to a “raised ridge” in the centre. This whole pin is gold-plated to avoid oxidation and maintain good contact. When mated with its appropriate mate which contains gold-plated contact springs, the raised ridges concentrate the pressure to “break through” any surface dirt. The plastic tongues on the undersides provide a stable “backing” and increase the pressure between the spring surface and the contact while enforcing connector alignment. The outer shell keeps the connectors from pulling apart, provides a continuous shielding path and maintains the alignment of the pins. This all sounds pretty simple, but in reality, I’ve seen a lot of things go wrong: Some connectors I’ve seen have absolutely no gold plating whatsoever , which makes them liable to oxidation and potentially depositing dirt onto perfectly-good connectors. Others have false “gold-coloured” plating which wears off after only very few uses. , which makes them liable to oxidation and potentially depositing dirt onto perfectly-good connectors. Others have false “gold-coloured” plating which wears off after only very few uses. Others have tongues which are too “thin” in the vertical dimension, and thus the plug doesn’t make good contact unless it’s tilted downward or upward. A cost-saving measure seems to be the use of “thinner” and more “flexible” shell materials for the plug, which are liable to bending and mis-shaping after the application of a mild amount of mechanical stress. This jeopardizes the tightness of the connection and can lead to premature contact wear due to intermittent contact. Some are “cost-reduced” in manufacturing resulting in “flat” pin profiles that do not achieve as reliable contact as the raised-ridge profile which it should have. This is common on “PCB” style plugs. There are some completely unconventional plugs (e.g. a “reversible A” or a “shell-less A”) which violate the standard and thus rely on other parts of the socket to compensate in order to make the connection work. Another point is that connectors are not designed to be used forever. Most connectors have data-sheet lifetime specifications of about 10,000 cycles to a maximum contact resistance of 30mohms. This sounds plenty, right? For 10 cycles a day, it’s almost three years to failure. The truth is that this data-sheet stated lifetime is for ideal circumstances. This means not exceeding any current ratings, using their appropriate mating partner connector, under perfectly clean circumstances with no added mechanical stress. Once you add reality into the mix, these ratings can go right out the door. For starters, any trapped particles can act as an abrasive compound wearing away the precious gold plating and serve to impact resistance. Any contamination from atmospheric deposition can result in corrosion where the plating is broken. Arcing from “loose” connections due to poor “partner” sockets can destroy the coating. Damaged sections increase contact resistance. Once you add the possibility of the outer shell being dimensionally affected by bending due to stress, a good connection is hard to ensure. Hopefully, now, you can begin to appreciate that a USB connector is not as simple as it appears. But you might not be convinced that this is a problem. A look at the cable resistance shows that for a 1m 24AWG cable, the cable contributes about 168mOhm of resistance. The connectors are supposed to be up to 30mOhm each at the end of life, or 60mOhm total. This isn’t entirely negligible, especially if we improve the cable. A better cable can be hamstrung by poor connectors! “QC2.0/3.0 and higher voltages eliminates the problem!” Really? One of the biggest push-backs I’ve had in regards to the original cable resistance article is a misconception that higher charging voltages solves the problem. The problem is that there are two problems in reality and neither of them are completely solved by higher voltages. The first problem is under “regular” 5V charging, some devices may show slow charging or no charging at all when connected to long cables. When they upgrade to a QC2.0 charger, they see the device can now take a charge, and think that the problem is solved. Instead, it hasn’t – and it’s merely been masked. From a simplistic view, to convey the same power at a higher voltage requires less current, therefore the resistance of the cable causes less voltage and loss. This is true. However, the other half of the story is that Quick Charge is developed to help speed charging of the phone, and instead, it tends to use currents in the 1.2-2A region to best optimize the charging where possible. This is, coincidentally, similar to the currents drawn by regular 5V charging and hence results in a similar amount of voltage drop. However, people then seem to think that because it runs at a higher voltage, a 0.25V drop isn’t going to be a problem because it’s a smaller percentage of the voltage. This is NOT true, and the reason is simple. Any voltage dropped over the whole cable assembly’s resistance is produced as heat. This is dependent on current and resistance only, so P=I^2*R. As 5V “regular” charging and Quick Charging nominally operate in similar current regimes, the voltage drop and power lost in the cable is pretty similar. The two dark green lines indicate the maximum resistance of a single connector and two connectors at end of life. The light-green lines are an estimate of a 50cm 24AWG cable with two connectors, and 1m 24AWG cable with two connectors at end of life. Note that at 1.5A for the cable, expected voltage drop is 0.21 to 0.255V, which is right on borderline acceptable for regular 5V charging. The power dissipated in the cable and connectors is 0.315-0.383W. It’s not an unsubstantial amount – it’s about the same as holding your hand in front of a small battery-operated 3 x COB LED torch. If you are to expect that 12V charging, being about twice as high of a voltage as 5V, can tolerate twice as much voltage drop, this would increase the power loss to about 0.63-0.766W. This is not a wise move, because the heat has to go somewhere, and now the cable gets twice as much energy dissipated per unit length. Where the cable is well made, the power should be somewhat “evenly” distributed across the cable, but if there is a fault with a contact, the lion’s share of the resistance can concentrate at that point. In the worst case, blindly pulling current despite a falling voltage compounded with a localized resistance in the connector can result in melted connectors and damage to devices. A higher charging voltage does not fix the issue of power being dissipated in and along the cable and connectors! Practical Effects – A “slow” quick-charge? If this graph looks a little familiar, it’s because it’s basically the graph from my Mi Power Bank Pro review, just with two traces added to the graph. In order to test charging current profiles, I grab an appropriate wall-charger and throw a modified charger doctor current shunt in line to measure the current with a Keysight U1461A multimeter connected to a PC. When first testing the “regular” 2A charger, there was no problem. The unit clocked in a 5 hour and 45 minute charge time. But then I tried to test the QC2.0 charging ability and got the grey curve, clocking in a charge slower than with the non-quick charge adapter. Thinking this was a compatibility issue, I decided to use a different QC2.0 source, namely the old Mi Power Bank Pro. As a 10,000mAh power bank can’t fully charge a 10,000mAh power bank due to losses in conversion, I took advantage of the simultaneous charging ability. I connected a regular 2A charger to the first power bank to keep it “topping up” while it output QC2.0 to the power bank under test. Because of the close proximity of the output port to the charge port, I fitted a 20cm 24AWG USB extension cable. Interestingly, the charge was still slower than just doing it from a regular 2A charger. The fault was not with the power bank, as I reverted to the original QC2.0 wall-charger (to be shown in a future posting), but with a small modification. I noticed that the shunt was not making quite a solid contact with the USB port on the QC2.0 charger only, so I decided to “crimp” the USB socket to flatten it slightly. This increases the contact pressure, which should improve contact resistance. Guess what? It worked and produced the ~3 hour 40 minute curve. This is a practical illustration of the following points: Having quick-charge does not necessarily overcome USB cable and contact resistance as this is a dynamic function of the “mating” of the two connectors. Each plug and unplug can produce slightly different results. USB connectors are not made equal – what worked with my Xiaomi 2A charger did not work properly with my QC2.0 wall adapter. While a known good source of the old Mi Power Bank Pro was used, the addition of an extension lead added additional contact and cable resistance, nullifying any benefits. As a result, it’s hard to know if you’re improving the situation or not when juggling around cables and chargers. While it might be easy to fault the charger doctor’s connector as being “cheap and out-of spec”, chances are, most products have connectors which vary in dimensioning enough to create problems at high currents. The device sensed the resistance and backed-off its current draw appropriately to prevent any damage . However, compared to a proper contact with the 2A charger, quick charging proved to be (ironically) slower prior to this “hack”. While pinching the connector does improve the contact pressure and contact resistance, it is not advisable to do. This is only a “temporary fix”, as by pinching the connector, you can cause permanent damage to the mated connector. This can happen by “grabbing” the tongue too tightly such that it fractures on applied stress or attempted disconnection, additional fatiguing of the contact springs through over-pressure and wear to the plastic tongue which can cause it to “thin” more rapidly and fail to apply proper pressure to other connectors. It will also cause the plug’s pin’s to be “flattened” more quickly, and the gold plating on both plug and socket to wear rapidly. Other Issues with USB cables While I have mentioned cable and contact resistance, there is another element of resistance that can come about from the connection of the wire to the plug itself. This point is usually soldered, and depending on the quality of the cable-strip and solder operation, the resistance can vary. It should be quite small by comparison, however, there has been some evidence to suggest that poor quality connections can occur in cheap cables due to over-stripping of conductors resulting in a few strands being fractured at the strip and not making connection. This produces a localized area of increased resistance, and could be responsible for cases where the connector-plug side shows melting. Some other cables have been made with non-copper wires as well, which will likely have a higher resistance for the same wire gauge. Be careful! There are “charge only” cables with only the two power conductors connected, but no data connections. Some may have them locally shorted to present as a dedicated charger to the end device. These cables are incompatible with Quick Charge technology which requires the use of the D+ and D- lines for signalling. Another issue is with insulation wear-out. As USB cables get flexed quite frequently, areas near the plug may be flexed sufficiently for insulation between wires to break within the outer sheath. This is especially probable for specially “thin” or flat cables where regular PVC insulation is replaced by enamel coating (as with headphone cords). While not directly observable from the outside, such loss of insulation results in an internal short circuit within the cable, which can serve to heat the cable and cause it to burn. I suspect this may be what happened in this “viral” image of a burnt cable on a bed. Regular chargers are generally current-limited to source a total of 5 or 10W, whereas fast-chargers can source up to 18W. This is not insignificant, as a hand-held glue gun or battery-operated soldering iron needs just 7W to operate. This isn’t as rare as it might seem either – I have been approached by a friend who claimed the Xiaomi power bank I recommended was poor because it charged the phone slowly and kept discharging on its own when connected to the cable with nothing attached. The truth was, the cable had a high-ish resistance internal short which was not enough to cause visible damage, but enough to waste energy. Had the cable worn further, a more drastic result may have eventuated, but the power bank was not at fault. Conclusion While the market was quick to respond to the wire gauge problem, it turns out connector resistance is equally as important, or even more important. Problems with connector resistance can arise due to improper connector design, improper dimensions in manufacturing and wear and tear to gold plating on contacts. Simply upping the voltage may help the symptoms, but does not solve the underlying inefficiency of energy being lost as heat. Where quick-charging is used to improve charge times, the current flow magnitude is roughly the same and there is still a risk that poorly constructed cables with poor contact resistance can heat-up and melt. As a result, even if higher voltages are employed, devices are still sensitive to voltage drops in cabling and connectors to avoid the possibility of excess heat build-up which could lead to fire risk and property damage. Traditional USB connectors were not specified with close tolerances for dimensions, which results in such problems in ensuring good contact between connectors of different makes. Cost reduction, by reducing materials used, and unconventional USB connector designs also can cause issues. Connectors wear out and become damaged over time. Newer connectors such as USB-C are much tighter on tolerances and should improve the situation, despite the smaller connectors and contact areas. The solution to the issue is, unfortunately, not so simple for existing “legacy” USB connectors. Most of the time, consumers have absolutely no say about the connectors used in their devices, chargers, cables, etc. and take it for granted that it works well as it’s “USB” standard. Ensuring that products use “name brand” connectors from trusted connector companies (e.g. Amphenol, Molex, Foxconn, Pheonix Contact, etc) that are properly terminated can help. Reducing unnecessary connection/disconnection to avoid wear and avoiding physical strain on the connector is also advised. In a pinch, the situation might be helped by “crimping” the connector slightly, but that is likely to cause accelerated connector wear and is not advised. Aside from the connector, the wire-to-connector joint is also a potentially vulnerable point, as well as the insulation within the cable assembly. Reports of “phone fires” and “connector melting” often fail to distinguish as to the true cause. Like it? Share it! 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AUGUSTA — On behalf of Maine’s business community, I would like to sincerely thank Sen. Susan Collins for her role in strengthening the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and urge her to continue her stewardship of the tax package agreed to by the Senate-House conference committee. The conference committee reached agreement on a final tax reform bill at midday Wednesday. This historic bill is a step in the right direction to bring about needed tax changes that are absolutely critical to Maine’s families, Maine’s economy and Maine businesses. The House and Senate recently passed their own versions of the tax reform package. Because the House and Senate bills were different, Congress appointed a conference committee earlier this week to examine both versions of the tax bill and come up with a compromise. On Wednesday, agreement was reached. We understand there are many provisions that made it into the final compromise. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dana Connors is president of the Maine State Chamber of Commerce in Augusta. TERRITORIAL TAX SYSTEM Originally, both House and Senate bills doubled the child care credit to $2,000 and the standard deduction to $24,000 per family. Both bills also lowered the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, and converted the present system the United States uses to tax companies that operate overseas from a worldwide to a territorial system. We understand the corporate tax rate is being lowered to 21 percent and companies will be taxed based on a territorial system. (The United States is the only G-7 country that does not operate under a territorial tax system. By converting to a territorial tax system, U.S. companies will now compete on a level playing field with foreign competitors.) The agreement would also allow small businesses that operate as partnerships, sole proprietors and others whose business income flows through to the individual income tax to deduct 20 percent of their income before paying taxes. Originally, both bills differed on the number of individual income tax brackets, income tax rates, whether to keep or repeal the alternative minimum tax, the expiration of key tax breaks and the expensing of business capital purchases. From what has been reported, the final bill would repeal the alternative minimum tax; expand a deduction for state and local taxes to allow individuals to deduct income taxes and up to $10,000 in property taxes, and cut the top rate for individuals from 39.6 percent to 37 percent. Tax reform is long overdue at the federal level. It has been 30 years since the tax code was last updated. Obviously, on a global scale, a lot has happened since that time. For years, companies left the United States and relocated to other countries because of our high taxes. The United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world at 35 percent. This impacts the ability of companies in the U.S. to compete globally and has no doubt cost the United States in terms of investment and jobs. BOOST TO MAINE ECONOMY Here in Maine, tax reform will boost our economy and help Maine’s businesses grow. Tax reform will result in increased investment and added jobs, as well as providing Maine consumers with more disposable income to put back into our economy. The Tax Foundation has estimated that, if passed, these tax changes will result in an additional 3,800 jobs for Maine and add approximately $1,933 in after-tax income for Maine’s middle-class families. That’s a significant number, and Maine businesses support putting more money in the pockets of Maine people. Remember, the package may not be 100 percent perfect. It does, however, move us in the right direction, and it does remind us of Sen. Collins’ national leadership. In fact, the compromise package that has come out of the conference committee is stronger and more comprehensive as a result of her work. We strongly encourage Sen. Collins to continue her stewardship of tax reform. Failure to pass tax reform will continue to hold companies in the United States on an unlevel playing field and impact their ability to compete globally, which will cost jobs. Maine can’t afford that. Early next week, Congress will be voting on this issue. Ultimately, we are confident that Sen. Collins will do what’s right for the people of Maine. Share filed under: |
Magisk Receives an Update to v14, Adds New Install Method and More A little less than a month ago we covered a big update to Magisk beta when it was brought up to version 13.5. That beta update focused on bringing back Busybox, although only to be used internally, and added some stock Samsung kernel workarounds for improved compatibility. Naturally, you can install the Busybox binary thanks to a convenient Module if you want to use it, but this update added it for internal use only. As we typically see with new features being tested in the beta version, XDA Recognized Developer and Recognized Contributor has brought those two big changes to the stable channel today. So if you have had issues with Busybox or Samsung devices in the past then you may want to give version 14 a try and see how it works. Along with those two features, this update also brings a method of hiding the Magisk Manager application as well. topjohnwu says the approach is pretty naive and there are still ways of detecting it, but it should work in many cases. The developer has also been working on a new installation method for ADB. This is useful for those cases where a device doesn’t have a custom recovery (or maybe you just want to preserve the stock recovery for accepting OTA updates) and this has now been integrated into Magisk Manager. So you can provide your stock boot image (in both raw image format or tar-ed up ODIN flashable format) to Magisk Manager and it will patch it so that you no longer need a custom recovery to install Magisk. For those interested in this new install method, be sure to check the updated installation instructions in the original post of the official XDA thread. This is a big update and also includes some new features for Magisk Manager, a new Magisk Module template and versioning scheme, a small update to MagiskHide and some work has been done to include support for the Google Pixel phones as well. |
A "regular" spindle configuration (top) with all chromosomes attached to microtubules, and the O. tauri spindle (bottom) with chromosomes bundled together and attached to just two short, incomplete microtubules. Source: Caltech Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have obtained the first high-resolution, three-dimensional images of a cell with a nucleus undergoing cell division. The observations, made using a powerful imaging technique in combination with a new method for slicing cell samples, indicate that one of the characteristic steps of mitosis is significantly different in some cells. Mitosis During mitosis, two sets of chromosomes get paired up at the center of the cell's nucleus. Then hollow rods of proteins called microtubules, which make up a cellular structure called the spindle apparatus, grab on to the chromosomes and essentially pull each set away from the center in opposite directions, so that both daughter cells end up with a full copy of the genetic material. Typically, in the cells of plants, fungi, and many animals, one or more microtubules attach to each chromosome before the spindle will separate the sets of chromosomes from each another. But when the Caltech researchers observed this step using their new technique, what they saw was not business as usual for a dividing cell. "We've found the first clear example of a cell where there are fewer microtubules used than chromosomes," says Grant Jensen, professor of biology at Caltech and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. The group's findings appear online in Current Biology and will be published in the September 27 issue of the journal. Read more within the original publication: Lu Gan, Mark S. Ladinsky, Grant J. Jensensen: Organization of the Smallest Eukaryotic Spindle. Current Biology, 08 September 2011 or at http://media.caltech.edu/ |
The new version of Windows is now available on store shelves, and we have the complete lowdown on Microsoft's latest operating system. Join us as we thoroughly dissect the Windows 8 UI (Metro), Apps, Desktop, Gestures, IE10, SkyDrive, and Windows Store. During the past year, all corners of the technology community were abuzz with news, rumors, and opinions regarding Windows 8. The vast majority of that chatter involved the operating system's completely new tile-based user interface. Up until the end of this summer, the new UI was referred to as Metro. But Microsoft's marketing department decided to change the interface's name to Windows 8 UI. Big logo, right? Well, perhaps that's fitting, since Windows 8 is the biggest thing to happen to Windows since...well, windows. At this point, Microsoft could quite justifiably change the operating system's name to Tiles. Getting Acquainted With Windows 8 As the resident “Linux guy,” I'm no stranger to drastic changes and bizarre user interfaces, though. I've seen plenty of both in Linux, and the shift to something new no longer scares me. Naturally, then, I was tasked with writing our Windows 8 review. My first foray into Windows 8 was with the Developer Preview released back in September of last year. Like (seemingly) everyone else, I was taken aback by the changes being Microsoft presented in its then-Metro UI. But I thought, "Hey, it's just a developer preview. Most of this will probably change anyway." Next came the Consumer Preview in February. This release actually moved Windows 8 further away from the classic Windows experience. I rationalized the changes yet again. After all, it was just a beta, and carrying the label of Consumer Preview, maybe it would yield enough negative feedback that Microsoft would have no choice but to reverse direction. Then, in May, Microsoft released its Windows 8 Release Preview. Surely this one would address the serious workflow and usability issues that bloggers were publicly skewering. Nope, not even close. Finally, a 90-day trial of Windows 8 Enterprise Edition was made available this past August, and I grabbed that too. Very quickly, I realized that Microsoft had no plans to pull the plug and back out of its bold design departure. Which brings us to the here and now: Window 8 is officially available for purchase. If you were waiting for Microsoft to jump out from behind a bush and yell "April Fools!" after all of those early peeks at the operating system, you're no doubt flabbergasted by the operating system's final form. But don't count Microsoft out too quickly. I didn't take Windows 8 very seriously until a few days ago either. But, during the course of writing this review, found my stubborn disdain turning into something else. Along with Windows 8 RTM, I had early access to two genuine Windows 8-based notebooks from Toshiba: the Satellite S955 and P845t. Between my time with those two laptops and installing Windows 8 on every x86-based platform I could find, I finally understand Windows 8, and I'm confident that I can explain it to you, too. Over the next 20 pages, we'll break down the Windows 8 UI, piece-by-piece in sometimes-sickening detail. We'll use the keyboard, mouse, and touch. We cover the installation and setup. We have the apps, the Store, and the settings. Then, we get into the "classic" desktop, following up with an exploration of how Windows 8 affects the traditional Windows experience. Plus, we show you how to either create synergy between Windows 8 UI and the desktop, or to ignore the new stuff altogether. Let's kick this story off by going over the vitals: system requirements, upgrade paths, available versions, and pricing. |
The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutras community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. The Swindle's Procedural Generation has a weird flaw that causes people to get angry and tell me it's broken. It isn't broken, it works exactly as intended, but still the comments come in. I thought it might be useful to share the mistake I made, because I think it's quite an interesting case study in how people read games, and how people react to this new-and-unusual tech you're implementing. I took a decision early on in The Swindle's development that I hate tutorials, and in games I prefer to work things out for myself. That's the ethos, that's what indie development is all about: making the games you want to see. It's not going to be to everyone's tastes, but that's fine, not everything has to be. For what it's worth, I think it was the right decision, I think The Swindle is a better game for not leading the player by the hand, and I think the players who got the most out of the game enjoyed working things out for themselves. Here's the issue: no one has ever complained to me about a locked door. Not once. At the start of the game, cash is really tight and you need to specialise in one field or the other – Hacking to get you through locked doors, or Explosives, to get you... well, wherever you want. Both have perks – hacking sets you down an upgrade tree to bigger and better manipulation of computer stuff, explosives are handy for impromptu escape routes and taking out tough enemies. It's the player's choice, and an important one. The way the game generates building is – by and large – to create a room and then block it off, either with a DOOR or with a SOLID WALL. Doors are locked, and on approach a notification pops up that says you need a higher hacking skill. Walls are solid walls like any other wall found in the game. The idea was to lead people in the right direction, rather than overtly telling them, to get them thinking on the fly like a real thief: you see a locked door, you think “I need to increase my hack skill”, you see a wall you think “I could access that room if I had explosives” and choose to spend your ill-gotten gains on bombs. Now: no one has ever complained to me about a locked door. People see a wall and their first thought is to complain that the Procedural Generation is buggy, it's broken, it creates rooms you can't access. As far as the code is concerned, placing a door or a wall is functionally the same thing – it's a room that has its access point blocked - but the way players read it is very very different. The solution would be just to stick a UI on, right? A big “BREAKABLE” icon on any wall that leads to a room but... eugh, isn't that less fun? Isn't that just me telling you what to do? There's no satisfaction in that – it's the equivalent of endless fetch quests in Assassin's Creed – go to a location and press X to dig up a relic and move on. There's no satisfaction in that process, it's ticking items off a list. That's not the game I wanted to make. (side note: the issue here is compounded by The Swindle's 100 Heist Limit. It freaks people out despite the fact it's generous, and can be extended, but people feel a need to steal 100% of the cash in every level, for fear of having to start over) So, I have people telling endlessly me the Procedural Generation is broken and yes, I will probably learn from this mistake and think where to make my next PG game more user-friendly for fear of people not being able to think for themselves, and as a result I suspect it'll be a little bit less interesting. It's pretty obvious in hindsight, but that's the lesson I learned, and I thought it might come in handy for others: consider showing what your procedural generation has done, overtly. Because 'subtlety' can be mistaken for 'broken'. |
The state of Arkansas is facing an existential threat to academic freedom. That threat, however, is of a type that normally doesn’t receive public attention. The press typically writes about speech codes and political interference with research on controversial subjects, but as serious as those threats are, they are nothing compared to that posed by central administrators. In our state, lawyers working for the University of Arkansas are rewriting the rules governing tenure in ways that fatally undermine academic freedom. The purpose of academic freedom is to protect freedom of speech, thought, and expression in the university setting so that learning and knowledge can flourish. Tenure is the primary mechanism by which academic freedom is ensured. It prohibits the termination of faculty for any reason that could plausibly be used to stifle academic speech and inquiry. These protections recognize the critical role of professors as truth-finders and truth-tellers. Tenure and academic freedom have been bedrock principles in higher education for a century. Unfortunately, in recent decades some university administrators have engaged in an all-out assault on academic freedom by seeking to (1) replace outspoken full-time faculty with part-time adjuncts, and (2) gut the rules governing academic freedom and tenure. Adjunct professors have virtually no job protections. Indeed, rather than serving as employees of the schools where they work, they are independent contractors hired to teach a specific course or courses. Because of this, adjuncts are far less likely to engage with controversial subjects. And they virtually never speak out publicly or even internally about issues of university governance. After all, a single comment disapproved of by college administrators can cost adjunct faculty their jobs—and we have seen it happen. The second type of attack is rule changes. Some administrators are pushing for definitions of tenure that provide no assurance that dismissal will be limited to causes unrelated to the content of a professor’s research, teaching, or public service. The assault on academic freedom in Arkansas is of this latter variety, and it is being directed by the in-house attorneys for the University of Arkansas. They have circulated a proposal—drafted without any input from faculty—that would eviscerate tenure and academic freedom in this state. Consider three of the most problematic changes they recommend. First, under the proposal, a lack of “collegiality” is a standalone basis for termination. The policy states that failing to “work cooperatively with others” justifies instantaneous dismissal. This means that uncollegial behavior would be one of several emergency-type grounds for immediately firing professors. It places such behavior on the same plane as “threats or acts of violence.” The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has long rejected collegiality requirements in tenure determinations of any type, including decisions to grant tenure or to terminate a teacher, because such requirements have a documented history of abuse in academe. Second, under the proposal, a single unsatisfactory annual evaluation by a single administrator is sufficient for dismissal, if the administrator determines that the faculty member is not being sufficiently “cooperative” in trying to remedy the “unsatisfactory” performance. So, again, the University’s Counsel—who, it so happens, is the chief prosecutor in faculty dismissal proceedings—wants to leverage “cooperation” as a tool to eject tenured professors. The upshot of this change is striking: if a faculty member resists a single negative review, appeals that decision internally, or objects to colleagues or administrators about that review, he can be fired for lack of “cooperation.” This incredible danger to the very foundations of the academic enterprise reveals why the AAUP has made it clear that using “unsatisfactory” as a standard is not sufficient to protect academic freedom. The word is highly subjective, making it prone to manipulation by administrators displeased with any aspect of a faculty member’s work, including dissent regarding school operations. A professor could be fired merely for commenting publicly or internally about a school’s alleged financial improprieties or admission practices. Third, under the current rules, comprehensive free speech rights for faculty aptly extend to all subjects. Under this proposal, however, such rights encompass only teaching and research—eliminating protections for speech associated with public and university service. This means, for example, that a professor could be fired merely for commenting publicly or internally about a school’s alleged financial improprieties or admission practices. The proposal constitutes a major constriction of academic freedom. If adopted, what impact would it have? First, faculty recruitment and retention will be severely damaged. When candidates ask about tenure and academic freedom in Arkansas, hiring officials will be legally and morally obligated to explain to them that their tenure rights are heavily circumscribed in comparison to those at other colleges. And faculty currently working for the university will be more likely to leave, causing a brain drain, as other schools have experienced in similar circumstances, such as the University of Wisconsin. Second, faculty will be restricted in their activities. In particular, Arkansas professors will be far less willing and able to research, teach, and perform public and university service relating to controversial subjects. That is because when academic freedom and tenure protections are undermined, it becomes easy for administrators to find legally plausible pretexts to punish faculty for protected speech in research, teaching, and service. Recall that the proposal permits termination if a faculty member is not sufficiently “cooperative.” It takes little imagination to see how such a standard will be used to deem professors “uncooperative” if they express unpopular views in any domain of their work. One might respond by saying that no administrator or faculty body would ever abuse the authority granted by the proposal. History indisputably demonstrates otherwise. Third, the impact of the changes will be felt most keenly by minorities—racial minorities, religious minorities, and political minorities. That is what happens when individual rights are limited as in the proposal, whether in higher education or other institutional settings. Thus, one of our greatest fears is that the proposal will put conservative faculty in the cross-hairs because they are a distinct minority on campus. All of those problems together will critically damage the University of Arkansas. Most importantly, the education of our students will be diminished in countless ways. And the research we produce will be less helpful to society. This weakening of teaching and research will injure our entire state—a state starved for college graduates who learned to think critically from faculty who can speak freely. Given the dramatic harm the proposal will cause, why are the university attorneys pushing for these changes? They claim that the school needs more flexibility so that it can dismiss ineffective faculty rapidly. That is both false and disingenuous. The university has already admitted the following: (1) over many years, it has confronted only a tiny number of ineffective faculty—meaning that the vast majority of Arkansas professors are fully effective, and (2) the current tools have successfully removed ineffective teachers. Has the university somehow recently hired a critical mass of yet-undiscovered incompetent professors, requiring a gross diminution of tenure and academic freedom rights? Not a shred of evidence supports such a conclusion. Let us present an alternative theory. Undermining tenure and academic freedom will make the lives of University Counsel easier. In particular, the proposal grants the school and its lawyers a plethora of excuses to fire professors who “rock the boat” in ways disapproved of by central administrators. The proposal also removes due process rights ensured by the current rules, emasculating termination hearings. Last but not least, by eliminating protections for service-related speech, the proposal enables the school to quash faculty commentary regarding university operations. The assault on tenure and academic freedom in America is part of a long-standing trend toward the consolidation of power within university central administrations. College officials all too often prefer a compliant faculty who teach, write, and speak only on uncontroversial subjects. But that fundamentally contradicts the essence of higher education. Unfortunately, attorneys for the University of Arkansas appear set on dragging our state back to the 19th century, a period when universities were all too often marked by the imposition of stultifying conformity. |
Councilman Darius Brown is known around town as the “tech councilman.” Wielding a nickname like that bears the burden of meeting high expectations held by the community you’re claiming to represent. In his two-and-a-half years on council, Brown has made some leeway in getting the city to adopt certain programs and practices implemented in larger cities. “I’m always trying to advocate for the immersion of technology in how we govern and how we solve problems within city government,” Brown said. “I believe that our government should be integrated with those technologies.” Like what? Take ShotSpotter, for example. It’s the much buzzed-about gunshot location system that can pinpoint where a shot has been fired with precision. Brown said one of his current projects is trying to get city government to embrace that technology. “We’re looking to use that technology to notify police officers while they’re out on patrol when shots are fired and where they’re fired,” Brown said. The technology allows officers to dispatch to their destination much more efficiently. “It’s a specific address and location that would tell them not only that you’re at 831 Northwestern, but it would also tell you that the shot was fired in the backyard.” That’s what Brown is working on. But what has he done? Advertisement In late January, Brown and Mayor Dennis Williams launched Tweet My Jobs, a free social media platform designed to address unemployment in Wilmington by connecting potential job seekers with employers. According to Brown, over 3,800 individuals and 120 businesses have signed up. They’ve garnered a collective 60,000 views. “We’ve had small mom-and-pop manufacturing companies like Franklin Fibre all the way to corporations like AstraZeneca, Starbucks and AT&T all on the site posting jobs, looking for employees here in the city of Wilmington,” he said. It’s all about creating economic opportunity with Brown. That’s why he hopes businesses will start using city data to their advantage. “Open data is a resource that the city can use to cultivate more tech businesses, small business, entrepreneurship and grow our local economy,” he said. But how? And why aren’t businesses doing it? “I just don’t think the city infrastructure is in place where they have access to it to utilize it,” he said. At the same time, he said, “We have as much fiber running through our streets as Wall Street.” And with all of the banks that call Wilmington home, Brown said the city has an opportunity to become a leader in financial technology. “We’re able to be the back office and handle the tech side of banks in our industry,” he said. But most of all, Brown said Wilmington needs to do more around open data. A good model? “Austin, Texas.” -30- |
The Financial Institution First off, we need to understand what a financial institution is. A financial institution is basically an establishment that conducts financial transactions such as investments, loans and deposits. There are five main types of financial institutions. 1.Commercial banks 2. Investment Banks 3. Insurance Company 4. Brokerage 5. Investment Company You can see the definitions for all of them here. The primary role of financial institutions is to provide liquidity to the economy and permit a higher level of economic activity than would otherwise be possible. According to the Brookings Institute, banks accomplish this in three main ways: offering credit, managing markets and pooling risk among consumers. If you are familiar with GDP, the investment portion is heavily influenced by financial institutions, as they facilitate how much people save and invest in an economy, which is an ingredient for economic growth. Without financial institutions, people wouldn’t be able to take advantage of rising and falling interest rates and there would be no saving of money, other than the stacks you stuff under your mattress. Like this: Like Loading... |
Ford Motor Co. is recalling 31,867 vehicles in the U.S. and Canada because their driver’s side air bags may not inflate properly. The recall affects the 2016-2017 Ford Edge, the 2016-2017 Lincoln MKX and the 2017 Lincoln Continental. Most are in the U.S. but 4,336 are in Canada. The air bags were made by Takata Corp., but they don’t have the same deadly problem that has led to a recall of millions of Takata air bags. In that case, air bags can inflate with too much force and shower occupants of the vehicle with pew shrapnel. In Ford’s case, the air bags may not fill completely because of misaligned components. Ford said it is not aware of any accidents or injuries associated with the defect. Takata notified Ford after it discovered some production problems. Ford will begin notifying customers the week of March 13. Dealers will replace affected air bags for free once parts become available. |
Anti-LGBT Bible-bearing Christians entered Target stores in Tennessee, Illinois, and Oregon this week telling customers they need to repent for shopping there because of the transgender bathroom policy. Here’s a video from Portland, in which the Bible beater parades around the Target store screaming at people. Watch: Says the man: “Target this is your wake up call. The Bible says that from the beginning God made them male and female. He didn’t make them transvestites. He made them male and female…Target, this is your warning. You will be judged according to God’s standards. Not man’s, but God’s…You need to repent…You will be judged. And if there are Christians in here, supporting this abomination, shame on you! … But you justify this place. You have to stand by the bathrooms because perverts can go in there. Because transvestites allowed.” The customers aren’t amused, many of them telling him to “shut up and leave.” In Bradley, Illinois one of these “Christians” put a mall on lockdown and prompted a massive police response because store shoppers thought the man was an “active shooter”, NBC Chicago reports: Michael Merichko was charged with disorderly conduct following a disturbance inside a Target store at 1615 N. State Route 50 in Bourbonnais, about 55 miles south of Chicago, according to the Bradley Police Department. Merichko was allegedly protesting Target Corporation’s newly announced policy on letting transgender people use the bathroom that conforms to their identity. Police said his actions caused “panic among store employees and customers.” Just after 1 p.m., multiple police agencies responded to the Target after receiving a 911 call about an active shooter inside the store, according to authorities. Watch: And here’s another in Tennessee. “Wicked. Wicked. It’s time to repent,” he yells. “Rip up your target cards. It’s time to get rid of the rainbow. The rainbow belongs to God, not to you. Target is the lowlife of places to work. You need to repent. Homosexuals shall not inherit the kingdom of God!” And here’s another sicko (I believe he’s in St. Louis): |
WTVM.com reports on senate candidate’s thoughts on medical marijuana. In our special Your Voice, Your Vote, News Leader 9′s Roslyn Giles talked to four of the hopefuls. We asked the question: “What are your thoughts on using marijuana for medicinal purposes in the state of Georgia? Candidate Derrick Grayson’s response: “An absolute yes…It should not have been a question. However, the way in which the game of politics is constantly played with the lives of people there are folks that attached other things to that bill, causing it to not pass. It’s just a shame, but those are the things that the American people are not aware of. They play games with people’s lives and they shouldn’t.” Candidate Jack Kingston’s answer: “I oppose it. The legislature looked at it this time and voted it down, but we’ll let the legislature make that decision.” Candidate Paul Broun‘s response: “Though there are valid uses of marijuana for medical purposes under the direction of a doctor being available for indicated purposes.” Candidate Karen Handel‘s answer: Fortunately, here in Georgia, the state is really looking at a way to make it available, especially for those young children who are suffering seizures over and over again during the day. We want to make sure we can use every tool at our disposal to make them as comfortable as possible.” |
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 662, 23 May 2016 Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) Clonezilla Live "Wily" One of my favourite open source utilities is Clonezilla Live. The Clonezilla project creates tools to assist people in making copies of their hard drives and disk partitions. This can be useful at home for transferring an operating system from one computer to another. It's also a quick way to backup a system's packages and configuration files. In office environments it can be a big time saver to be able to clone one generic operating system onto multiple computers quickly. While installing, configuring and updating an operating system from scratch might take anywhere from half an hour to several hours, Clonezilla can transfer a copy of an operating system across a network in ten to twenty minutes. The Clonezilla project develops two products, a server edition and a live disc edition. They are described on the project's website as follows: Clonezilla is a partition and disk imaging/cloning program similar to True Image® or Norton Ghost®. It helps you to do system deployment, bare metal backup and recovery. Two types of Clonezilla are available, Clonezilla Live and Clonezilla SE (server edition). Clonezilla Live is suitable for single machine backup and restore. While Clonezilla SE is for massive deployment, it can clone many (40 plus!) computers simultaneously. Clonezilla saves and restores only used blocks in the hard disk. This increases the clone efficiency. With some high-end hardware in a 42-node cluster, a multicast restoring at rate 8GB/minute was reported. Clonezilla Live is available in two different flavours, one is based on Debian while the other is built from Ubuntu packages. The project's website explains the Ubuntu edition is required when working on computers that feature UEFI/Secure Boot technology. When Secure Boot is disabled, users should be able to get along with the Debian-based flavour of Clonezilla Live. I downloaded the Ubuntu-based version of Clonezilla Live, which was provided as a 194MB ISO file. Booting from the Clonezilla Live media brings up a series of text-based menus. We are asked to select our preferred language from a list and, optionally, select our keyboard's layout. We are then asked if we would like to run a command line shell session or run the Clonezilla software. Assuming we decide to run the Clonezilla software, we are then asked if we would like to transfer data directly between disks/partitions. This is a handy option if we have two hard drives plugged into the same computer and want to mirror one onto the other. However, most of the time we will want to take the second option which is to work with image files. An image file is a binary copy of a hard drive or partition which can be saved to another location and then copied (or restored) back to as many other hard drives as we want. I decided to work with disk image files for the duration of this review. Clonezilla Live "Wily" -- Selecting a storage location for the disk image (full image size: 11kB, resolution: 800x600 pixels) The Clonezilla wizard then asks us where disk images should be saved. The software supports a lot of methods of storing disk images, including on a local disk, a server running secure shell, a Samba share, an NFS network share or a WebDAV server. Clonezilla will even attempt to store images in RAM, though it is not a recommended option as disk images are usually large and RAM relatively small. Also, storing an image in RAM means we cannot use it after the computer reboots, so a more permanent storage area is recommended. Once we have selected which storage method to use, we are asked to provide our security credentials for that location. As an example, choosing to save data on a server running OpenSSH causes Clonezilla to prompt us for the remote server's address, our account name and password. We are then asked if Clonezilla should connect to the network using automatic (DHCP) settings or if we would like to manually provide network settings. Clonezilla then asks if we would like to save a copy of an entire disk or just a single partition. We can then name the copy of the data we are making. Clonezilla wraps up its questions by asking if we would like to check the file system we are backing up for errors and if we would like to encrypt the disk image we are creating. I especially like the availability of the encryption option as it is possible some of our data will be sensitive and I like having an extra layer of protection for anything that will be saved to a network share. Having collected our input, Clonezilla starts copying our data to a remote image file. We are shown progress bars indicating how much work has been done. There are also "time elapsed" and "time remaining" clocks. In my scenarios I found Clonezilla tended to take from ten to twenty minutes to save a hard drive image. When Clonezilla is finished it asks if we would like to re-run the Clonezilla wizard, reboot, power off the computer or drop to a command line prompt. The saved image data ends up being placed in a directory, usually on a remote server. The directory carries the name we provided for the image. Inside the directory we find a collection of files, one for each partition we imaged and a few other files containing meta-data. I generally found the image data Clonezilla created was around one-eighth of the size of the original partitions I had cloned. Clonezilla Live "Wily" -- Saving a disk image to a remote server (full image size: 10kB, resolution: 800x600 pixels) One of the nice aspects of Clonezilla is that restoring a disk or partition from an image is virtually the same process as creating an image of a disk. The wizard's steps are almost identical. We boot from the Clonezilla live media, select where Clonezilla can find disk images, connect to the network, provide the Clonezilla wizard with our credentials for the remote server and then, instead of choosing to clone a disk, we ask Clonezilla to restore a disk. We are then shown a list of disk images Clonezilla was able to find on the remote server and we select one. Then we choose which local disk or partition to over-write with the image and Clonezilla goes to work. I found that having the restore process almost identical to the cloning process makes Clonezilla easy to navigate as the steps and their order are the same each time. Conclusions There are several things I like about Clonezilla. One positive characteristic is that the project exemplifies doing one task and doing it well. Clonezilla is a very focused project, it clones hard drives and partitions and that is all. It provides many ways to save and restore these images and Clonezilla can work in several different environments, but ultimately it just saves and restores disk images and I like that. Another thing I like is that Clonezilla fills an important and practical niche. I personally have saved myself hundreds of hours of work by using Clonezilla rather than manually installing operating systems to new computers. This is a utility I highly advise system administrators and computer enthusiasts keep on hand. Third, and perhaps most importantly, I find Clonezilla easy to use. The concept of imaging disk drives and, often times, the practice of imaging drives can be complex. To save an image of a partition, compress it, encrypt it and send it over the network to a remote server would require several steps from the command line. With Clonezilla's step-by-step wizard and on-screen hints the process is relatively short. The steps are orderly and the prompts usually provide good default options, making it relatively easy to save and restore partition images. In short, if you need to deploy a lot of machines quickly, or archive hard drive data, Clonezilla is a wonderful, time-saving tool to have. I have been using it for several years now and it is one of my favourite Linux-based utilities. Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) New Fedora community repository, LPS website switches to HTTPS, Webconverger introduces commercial option, DragonFlyBSD runs Wayland and a live edition of Slackware People who use the Fedora distribution will have an additional way to gain access to third-party software and packages which are not compatible with Fedora's licensing restrictions. The UnitedRPMs project provides a software repository with multimedia packages and other items which are not available through Fedora's official repositories. " What is the purpose of this project? Well, maintain a solution for people with unstable Fedora distributions, increase technical skills, create a Copr-like build system for packages with licensing problems. UnitedRPMs it's not a branch maintenance of other projects, it is only a road to give the user a fast solution without fool bureaucracy where everyone can help. " Adding the UnitedRPMs repository to Fedora requires running just a single command which can be found on the project's website. * * * * * The Lightweight Portable Security (LPS) distribution, a live CD developed by the United States of America's Department of Defence, has updated its website. The LPS project no longer accepts plain HTTP connections to its website with these connections simply being dropped. People who wish to learn about LPS and download the distribution will need to connect to the website using the HTTPS protocol. (Updated links are available on our LPS information page.) Visitors to the LPS website will note that the Department of Defence is using a security certificate which cannot be verified so the authenticity of the LPS website cannot be confirmed. * * * * * The Webconverger project, in an effort to fund continuing development and handle rising costs, is introducing a commercial aspect to the web kiosk distribution. " From yesterday, configuring a device requires payment authorization. The new Stripe based billing system should make it painless for new subscribers who have just one or two machines to purchase a subscription. If you do encounter a problem, please email support. The trial is 30 days and the initial price is 9.99USD a month. Our pricing is flexible and for large deployments and for the likes of non-profits and charities, we ask you please to get in contact with sales@webconverger.com. We are hoping this new revenue stream will give us the resources to tackle our issue list, improve the Raspberry PI & Android versions and grow. " The distribution can still be downloaded and tried for free and the source code is still publicly available, the commercial aspect deals with customizing the operating system. The project's announcement has more details. * * * * * Support for the Wayland/Weston display server has been moving forward on DragonFlyBSD to the point where several applications will run on the Wayland display software. This mailing list post provides the steps needed to get the software up and running. It's not a smooth, easy process yet, but one developer was able to get the Nautilus file manager, Xfce terminal and Firefox running on Wayland thanks to the XWayland compatibility software. " In summary: I am very much impressed. On this machine, Wayland/Weston feels faster than X. It's stable, or at least so far. With Xorg I can't switch between VT and graphical screen more than twice; the screen hangs after two switches. With Wayland it just works. " * * * * * Last week Eric Hameleers released version 1.0.0 of his live edition of Slackware, called liveslak. The new live edition will likely form the base of Slackware's official live disc when Slackware 14.2 is released later this year. Hameleers writes, " For demonstration purposes I have generated a new set of ISO images using liveslak version 1.0.0. There are ISO images for a full Slackware (64-bit and 32-bit versions), 64-bit Plasma 5 and MATE variants and the 700MB small Xfce variant (also 64-bit). They are based on Slackware-current dated `Thu May 12 01:50:21 UTC 2016'. " Further information on this live edition of the venerable Slackware distribution along with download links can be found in Eric's blog post. * * * * * These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page. Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) Comparing kernel components Looking-for-a-more-responsive-system asks: I was wondering why CFS/CFQ is used in the main kernel instead of BFS/BFQ, which has advantages overall. Also why the pf-kernel patch is not integrated in the main kernel? DistroWatch answers: There are a few reasons the BFS process scheduler did not make it into the kernel before now. One was that the CFS process scheduler was in place and worked fairly well. Another was that the kernel developers appeared to not want to include two schedulers in the kernel, preferring, it seems, to let distributions such as Zenwalk and PCLinuxOS patch BFS into their kernels as desired. Perhaps the most important reason though for BFS not being included in the mainline Linux kernel comes from the BFS developer himself. He wrote the following on the BFS scheduler's frequently asked questions page: Are you looking at getting this into mainline? LOL. No really, are you? LOL. Really really, are you? No. They would be crazy to use this scheduler anyway since it won't scale to their 4096 CPU machines. The only way is to rewrite it to work that way, or to have more than one scheduler in the kernel. I don't want to do the former, and mainline doesn't want to do the latter. Besides, apparently I'm a bad maintainer, which makes sense since for some reason I seem to want to have a career, a life, raise a family with kids and have hobbies, all of which have nothing to do with Linux. The BFQ I/O scheduler faces a similar issue. CFQ already exists and works fairly well. Rather than have two competing I/O schedulers in the kernel at the same time, it looks as though the kernel developers want to slowly merge BFQ in, replacing CFQ. For people who really want to explore BFQ and its impact on performance, there are a number of distributions which have adopted the BFQ scheduler. As for why the pf-kernel patches have not been merged, pf-kernel is actually a collection of changes rather than one particular feature. The main benefits to using pf-kernel are the BFS and BFQ scheduler patches, which as we covered above, face their own roadblocks. * * * * * Desiring-good-hardware-support-in-other-kernels asks: Why don't other open source projects like Haiku and FreeBSD port Linux kernel drivers to their operating systems? DistroWatch answers: I hear this question come up semi-frequently in conversations about MINIX, Haiku and FreeBSD. There are two main reasons drivers from the Linux kernel cannot be ported to the kernels of other operating systems. The first hurdle is the license. Linux kernel code is licensed under the GNU General Public License (version 2), which is a relatively restrictive open source license. Unless a Linux developer is willing to dual-license their code under a more permissive license, their driver code cannot be used by other, more permissively licensed projects. The second issue is that kernels are designed in different ways and, while they perform similar tasks, their pieces are not interchangeable. Asking why FreeBSD does not use Linux drivers is roughly equivalent to asking why a Volkswagen Beetle owner doesn't put a 18-wheeler engine in their car so it can pull more weight. The idea sounds nice in the abstract, but starts to fall apart when you look at the design of the two items being worked on. Cooperation can happen between kernel projects. Code, designs and specifications do sometimes flow between various open source kernels. But the situation does not allow code to simply be copy and pasted from one kernel into the other. * * * * * Past Questions and Answers columns can be found in our Q&A Archive. Torrent Corner Weekly Torrents Bittorrent is a great way to transfer large files, particularly open source operating system images, from one place to another. Most bittorrent clients recover from dropped connections automatically, check the integrity of files and can re-download corrupted bits of data without starting a download over from scratch. These characteristics make bittorrent well suited for distributing open source operating systems, particularly to regions where Internet connections are slow or unstable. Many Linux and BSD projects offer bittorrent as a download option, partly for the reasons listed above and partly because bittorrent's peer-to-peer nature takes some of the strain off the project's servers. However, some projects do not offer bittorrent as a download option. There can be several reasons for excluding bittorrent as an option. Some projects do not have enough time or volunteers, some may be restricted by their web host provider's terms of service. Whatever the reason, the lack of a bittorrent option puts more strain on a distribution's bandwidth and may prevent some people from downloading their preferred open source operating system. With this in mind, DistroWatch plans to give back to the open source community by hosting and seeding bittorrent files. For now, we are hosting a small number of distribution torrents, listed below. The list of torrents offered will be updated each week and we invite readers to e-mail us with suggestions as to which distributions we should be hosting. When you message us, please place the word "Torrent" in the subject line, make sure to include a link to the ISO file you want us to seed. To help us maintain and grow this free service, please consider making a donation. The table below provides a list of torrents we currently host. If you do not currently have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients. Operating System Torrent MD5 checksum Slackware "liveslak" slackware64-live-current.iso de6dbd88d51e7f822e36138d642f774d Webconverger 35.1 webc-35.1.iso 266507849975515e9ead59513e119bd2 Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found here. All torrents we make available here are also listed on the very useful Linux Tracker website. Thanks to Linux Tracker we are able to share the following torrent statistics. Torrent Corner statistics: Total torrents seeded: 196 Total data uploaded: 36.2TB Released Last Week Linuxfx 7.4.2 The Linuxfx team has launched a new version of their Ubuntu-based distribution. The new release, Linuxfx 7.4.2, features mostly improved hardware support, productivity software and media support. An English translation of the project's release announcement (Brazilian Portuguese) reads: " This new version of Linuxfx is the latest 7 series and brings several new features included. Start using the new CTOs interface and all the features of the systems developed by Linuxfx Software for the area of biometrics and access control. This version contains the most current tools for production and even Internet browsing, as well as providing extra security against malicious websites or other content potentially harmful to your computer. " This release features support for running in a VirtualBox environment. Download (MD5): linuxfx-ctos-7.4.2.iso (1,776MB). ChaletOS 16.04 Dejan Petrovic has announced the release of ChaletOS 16.04, a desktop distribution based on Ubuntu and designed for Linux newcomers. The new release focuses mostly on the look and feel of the distribution's desktop environment: " What is new in new release of ChaletOS? New LTS support, new kernel and new Software Center. But beside that, with what is ChaletOS so different from other distributions? Themes are improved so they can work with GTK3 and GTK2 engine. Also, now they are more complete, and include details for many applications. Icons are redesigned. We used Emerald icons and we redesigned them so they are more suitable for ChaletOS style. Style Changer is rewritten and templates are made from scratch. Many community derived Conky styles are rewritten and adapted for ChaletOS. Start Point is new application that can help new users to start using ChaletOS or Linux. It contains collection of video material, articles from websites and recommendations for different applications. " The full details and a screen shot can be found in the project's release announcement. ChaletOS 16.04 -- Displaying the default desktop and application menu (full image size: 511kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels) ReactOS 0.4.1 Ziliang Guo has announced the availability of ReactOS 0.4.1, a minor release of the built-from-scratch operating system which tries to clone the design of the Microsoft Windows NT platform: " The ReactOS team is proud to announce the release of version 0.4.1 a mere three months after the release of 0.4.0. The team has long desired an increased release tempo and the hope is that this will be the first of many of faster iterations. Due to the brief period of time between the two releases, 0.4.1 is ultimately a refinement of what was in 0.4.0. That is not to say that there are no new features of course, and a few highlights of both categories are listed below: Activation Context - a fix that came in just a tad too late for 0.4.0, this resolved a problem in the loader that prevented applications depending on various versions of the MSVCRT library from working properly; BTRFS support - initial read and write support introduced via importing of the WinBtrfs driver; shell - general usability improvements such as properly rendering icons and improved folder views.... " Here is the complete release announcement. ExTiX 16.2 The ExTiX project has released a new version of their Ubuntu-based distribution. The new version, ExTiX 16.2, features the KDE desktop and is based on packages from Debian's development branches and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. " ExTiX 16.2 KDE DVD 64-bit is based on Debian 8.4 Jessie/Debian 9 Stretch and Ubuntu 16.04. The original system includes the desktop environment Unity (Ubuntu). After removing Unity I have installed KDE Frameworks 5.15.0 with KDE 4.15. KDE Frameworks are 60 addon libraries to Qt which provide a wide variety of commonly needed functionality in mature, peer reviewed and well tested libraries with friendly licensing terms. " The new version ships with version 4.4 of the Linux kernel. Additional information on ExTiX 16.2 can be found in the project's release announcement. pfSense 2.3.1 Chris Buechler has announced the release of pfSense 2.3.1, an updated version of the project's FreeBSD-based operating system designed for firewalls and routers. This is minor bug-fix release, although it also includes a number of important security updates: " We are happy to announce the release of pfSense software version 2.3.1. This is a maintenance release in the 2.3.x series, bringing a number of bug fixes, two security fixes in the GUI, as well as security fixes for OpenSSL, OpenVPN and FreeBSD atkbd and sendmsg. This release includes a total of 103 bug fixes. 79 regressions in 2.3 have been fixed, mostly minor issues in the new GUI. Several of these are significant issues, and have resolved nearly all the post-upgrade problems encountered in 2.3-RELEASE. 24 issues affecting 2.2.x and prior versions have also been fixed. "" Read the release announcement and check out the features and changes page for further information. Webconverger 35.1 The Webconverger project has released a new version of its Debian-based web kiosk distribution. The new release, Webconverger 35.1, features better hardware support (courtesy of the Linux 4.5 kernel), Firefox 46 and various security updates. This release also introduces a commercial aspect: " From yesterday, configuring a device requires payment authorization. The new Stripe based billing system should make it painless for new subscribers who have just one or two machines to purchase a subscription. If you do encounter a problem, please email support. The trial is 30 days and the initial price is $9.99USD a month. Our pricing is flexible and for large deployments and for the likes of non-profits and charities, we ask you please to get in contact with sales@webconverger.com. We are hoping this new revenue stream will give us the resources to tackle our issue list, improve the Raspberry PI & Android versions and grow. " The Webconverger software is still free to download and try. Further details can be found in the project's release announcement. Calculate Linux 15.17 The Calculate Linux project has announced a new version of their Gentoo-based distribution. The new release, Calculate Linux 15.17, features the KDE Plasma 5 desktop, faster compression via XZ and the default Python version is 3.4. " We are happy to announce the release of Calculate Linux 15.17. Calculate Linux Desktop, featuring either the KDE (CLD), the MATE (CLDM) or the Xfce (CLDX) environment, Calculate Linux Scratch (CLS), Calculate Directory Server (CDS), Calculate Scratch Server (CSS), Calculate Media Center (CMC) are all available for download. Main changes: Calculate Linux Desktop was updated to KDE 5. Testing and stable updates now coming separately and labelled as such. Multiple instances, built with different USE flags, are available in a special repository (binpkg-multi-instance). The main Git mirror migrated to Github. Faster XZ compression on multi-core processors. The XZ algorithm will be used from now on for initramfs, the kernel and its modules. File moving and renaming issues fixed for OverlayFS. Defaulting to Python 3.4. More efficient mirror selection for updates... " Additional details and screen shots can be found in the project's release announcement. * * * * * Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases Manjaro Linux 16.06-rc1 Tiny Core Linux 7.1-rc2 Fuguita 5.9-20160518 LinHES 8.4.1 Q4OS 1.4.10 Upcoming Releases and Announcements Opinion Poll Self-hosted services These days more and more people are becoming concerned about their privacy and the implications of large companies having access to their digital information. As a result, some people like to self-host many of the on-line services they find useful. Projects such as ownCloud make it fairly easy to set up synchronized storage at home, and there are many solutions for running e-mail services, backup storage and websites from home. This week we would like to find out how many of our readers self-host some or all of their on-line services. Please leave us a comment describing your self-maintained services. You can see the results of our previous poll on Alpha/Beta testing here. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives. Self-hosted services I do not host any of my own on-line services: 541 (59%) I host one on-line service: 121 (13%) I host a few services: 182 (20%) I host all of my own on-line/cloud services: 70 (8%) DistroWatch.com News |
Source: Ben Swann Vermont has become the most recent state to take a stand against the federal government and nullify the federal ban on hemp cultivation. Governor Shumlin signed the new bill into law in June. Vermont has become the most recent state to take a stand against the federal government and nullify the federal ban on hemp cultivation. Governor Shumlin signed the new bill into law in June. Hemp is an agricultural product which may be grown as a crop, produced, possessed, and commercially traded in Vermont pursuant to the provisions of this chapter. The cultivation of hemp shall be subject to and comply with the requirements of the accepted agricultural practices adopted under section 4810 of this title. -Senate Bill 157 According to VoteHemp, a hemp advocate website, Vermont is actually the 9th state to lift the ban on hemp, and 20 states have introduced industrial hemp legislation for the 2013 legislative season. However, what makes Vermont unique is that the new law does not hold a stipulation or amendment requiring the federal government to first lift the ban on hemp cultivation. Much like Colorado, Vermont will proceed regardless of the federal law banning hemp cultivation. Mike Maharrey, national communications director for the Tenth Amendment Center, tells us: “I like hemp. The Vermont bill is more aggressive than the other bills we’ve seen pass. I’ve been heavily involved in Kentucky with the passing of their hemp bill, but they are waiting for the feds to actually lift the ban. This means that farmers still wont be able to cultivate. Vermont’s bill allows farmers to go straight ahead regardless of the federal law. This is a straight nullification bill. It gives them the green light as soon as they receive the licence from the state. I think this development is extremely important for the states because you will see markets develop and flourish. If more states begin to follow this path then the federal government may be forced to lift the ban. The US is the only industrialized nation that doesn’t allow cultivation of hemp. We have to import all of it. In fact, the US imports 1/2 of all Canada’s hemp. We have thousands of manufacturing companies and stores importing raw hemp and hemp products.“ Maharrey says that many opponents argue the market for hemp doesn’t exist in America. “How can you say there isn’t a market when you have never allowed one to exist,” he counters. Maharrey adds, “If we are importing 1/2 of another country’s entire production- there is obviously a market. If not let’s lift the ban, and if the market isn’t there then it will simply vanish.” According Ray Hanson with the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center: “The combined retail value of hemp food and body care products sold in the United States in 2010 was $40.5 million, up more than 10 percent from 2009, according to the market research firm SPINS. (The same firm estimated that 2009 sales of hemp products reached $36.6 million.) The Hemp Industries Association (HIA) estimated that the retail value of North American hemp food, vitamin and body care products was in the range of $121 to $142 million in 2010. When clothing, auto parts, building materials and other non-food or body care products are included, the HIA estimates that the total retail value of U.S. hemp products is about $419 million.“ |
'The Big Gundown' Blu-ray Announced The classic 1966 spaghetti western will ride onto Blu-ray in December. In an early announcement to retailers, Grindhouse Releasing is preparing 'The Big Gundown' for Blu-ray on December 10. Jonathan Corbett is a gunman so brave to have eliminated all the bandits of Texas. For this he is proposed for the candidacy to the Senate of the United States. In exchange he has only to support the construction of one railway line. Only after he accepts does he come to know that the Mexican Cuchillo has raped and killed a 12 year old girl. Corbett leaves on a long manhunt during which he gets to know his adversary better and discovers a variation on the crime for which the accused Cuchillo may not be as guilty as he first thought. The release will be a Four Disc Deluxe Limited Edition Combo Pack (Two Blu-rays, one DVD and one bonus CD) individually numbered and limited to 3000 copies and will feature a spectacular new 2k digital restoration of the original uncensored english language version, Newly Expanded With Three Additional Scenes. Supplements will include: LA RESA DEI CONTI - The Complete, 110 Minute Director's Cut Presented In Italian With Optional English Bubtitles And Special Musical Subtitles; Bonus CD - THE BIG GUNDOWN - Original Soundtrack By Ennio Morricone; Compelling In-Depth Interviews With Director Sergio Sollima, Star Tomas Milian And Screenwriter Sergio Donati (ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST); Audio Commentary By Western Film Experts C. Courtney Joyner And Henry C. Parke; Liner Notes By C. Courtney Joyner And Euro-Music Expert Gergely Hubai; Extensive Still Galleries, Trailers And TV Spots; And Other Surprises... You can find the latest specs for 'The Big Gundown' linked from our Blu-ray Release Schedule, where it's indexed under December 10. See what people are saying about this story in our forums area, or check out other recent discussions. |
Springfield native and former New England Patriots defensive tackle Ron Brace has passed away at age 29. A cousin, Shaunta Brace, confirmed the news to MassLive Sunday afternoon. The cause of Brace's death was not suspicious, according to Police Capt. Robert Strzempek. Police were called to Brace's home in Springfield shortly after 9 p.m. Saturday for an unattended death. When police arrived there were no obvious signs of the cause of his death. The case has been turned over to the Hampden County Medical Examiner's Office. A 6-foot-3, 330-pound nose tackle, Brace was selected by the Patriots in the second round of the 2009 NFL Draft. He played in 39 career games with the Pats before he was released in December, 2012. He signed with Washington in 2013, but did not make it through final cuts. Brace, who starred at Boston College from 2005-08, grew up in Springfield and attended Burncoat high school in Worcester, where he earned All-State honors in football and track and field. Friends and family members wrote tribute posts on social media Sunday to honor Brace's life. Al Washington, who played defensive tackle at Boston College from 2002-05 and now works on the coaching staff, posted this note to Twitter "Words cannot express how deeply saddened I am at the loss of my teammate my friend and my brother Ron Brace. Just two weeks ago we connected when you expressed interest in becoming a coach. It pains me to think about all the lives you would have impacted and changed for the better." Former Boston College running back A.J. Brooks wrote on Facebook: "Just got a call that God has called one of my brothers home with him. Ron Brace was one of us, he was a goodfella and this definitely hurts. 2004 we all came into BC together and we'll always be connected. Prayers go out to the Brace family. Cherish each day God has given you on this earth because you never know when it's your last. Rest easy big guy." Brace was active in the Springfield community throughout his professional career. In 2011, he hosted a charity event to aid Springfield's tornado relief efforts. "That's where I was born and raised," Brace told NESN in June 2011. "That made me the person I am today. That's why I got it tattooed on my back. I can't forget where I came from. Everybody I love lives there. I can't look at it like it is now. I've got to have it back to the way I know it is and the way I know it could be." In a 2012 interview with MassLive, Brace's aunt, Rhonda Brace, recalled the family's reaction when the Patriots nabbed him in the second round of the draft. "Here he is, on the phone with (Patriots owner) Bob Kraft and (coach) Bill Belichick," Rhonda said. ""We were not looking for his name to be called. We were just awestruck, and so ecstatic." Before Super Bowl XLVI, Brace said his career with the Pats was a "blessing." "I'm living every Massachusetts football player's dream -- went to BC, got drafted by the hometown team and now we're on the verge of going to the Super Bowl and trying to win it," Brace said, via The Herald. "I'm lucky, and I've got to live up every moment." Springfield Republican staff writer Jeanette Deforge contributed to this report. |
Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Disturbing news comes from Ned Stuckey-French, an old friend who directs the program in publishing and editing at Florida State University: on May 24, new University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe announced he was shutting down the University’s press and laying off its staff of ten. As Ned notes, the press, perhaps best known for publishing the collected works of Langston Hughes, cost the university $400,000 a year. The head football coach’s salary? $2.7 million. Because you can always find the money for the things you really want. Ad Policy Ned’s book The American Essay in the American Century was published by the University of Missouri Press last year. Here’s his take: Wolfe, a former software company president with no experience in academics, was named president last December. He has acknowledged that he made his decision without visiting the press, talking to its employees, consulting with faculty, or looking for any new donors to help support it. Authors with books on the spring 2013 list have been told their contracts are being cancelled, never mind that this may include the tenure books of junior faculty, thereby derailing their careers. In one interview, Wolfe compared the situation to an independent store going bankrupt and a Walmart moving in. The same products are sold, he explained, but Walmart has a better business model. The press, which was founded 54 years ago, has published about 2,000 titles for both scholars and the general reader, everything from a biography of St. Louis Cardinals’s Hall of Famer Stan Musial to the Collected Works of Langston Hughes. It has also published the letters and autobiography of favorite son Harry Truman, and now Missourians and others have decided to “give ’em hell.” Authors, teachers, librarians, Missouri alums, and readers from across the state of Missouri and the country have voiced their outrage. In the short time since Wolfe’s announcement, a “Save the University of Missouri Press” Facebook page has attracted over 1700 followers and over 2500 people have signed an online petition in support of the press. Articles about the massive reaction to the closing have appeared already in Chronicle of Higher Education, Publishers Weekly, Inside Higher Ed, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Kansas City Star and the Columbia (MO) Daily Tribune. Scores of supporters have shared the letters they’ve written to Wolfe and the University’s Board of Curators. The authors make it clear that when they are supporting the press they are supporting not just Missouri books and authors, but also debate, scholarship, and the preservation of a broader cultural past. Letters of support have come in from scholars as far afield as Louisiana and Belgium praising the press’s publication of the collected work of German philosopher Eric Voegelin. Distinguished Mark Twain scholars Tom Quirk and John Bird wrote to bemoan the damage that the closing of the press’s Mark Twain and His Circle series will do to Twain scholarship. All ten of the editors of the Collected Works of Langston Hughes issued a statement explaining that such work “contributes to the larger, ongoing project among scholars of African American literature to recover texts by black American writers that have been historically marginalized from the American literary canon. This large-scale process of textual recovery and publication, begun on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement when students and scholars were advocating for representation of African American literature, history, and culture in American universities, is truly one of academe’s most important success stories. Without the work of scholars engaged in this project, African American literary studies in the academy simply would not exist.” Many critics have questioned the priorities of a university that shuts down its press to save (according to the University’s press release) a $400,000 annual subsidy, while paying its head football coach $2.7 million each year. They point out that Missouri will now be the only university in the Southeastern Conference (its athletic conference) that does not have a university press. President Wolfe’s spokesperson, Jennifer Hollingshead, said that comparing the press’s subsidy to the football coach’s salary makes no sense. It’s like “comparing apples and bowling balls,” she said. Of course, you can compare any two things—a university press and Walmart, for instance. And apples, we know, are natural, various, and the source of humanity’s knowledge, while bowling balls are uniform, unyielding and used to knock things over. |
Kofun – Ancient Burial Mounds in Japan An aerial photograph over the Saki Tumuli Area (top). It was taken in 1961 by the Geographical Survey Institute of Japan (retouched). The ground view of Gosashi Kofun, known as Empress Jingû’s tomb (bottom left). The corresponding part from a woodblock-printed map of the 19th century (bottom right). Kofuns fall into a few types according to shape. These include the circular empun, the square hôfun, and the keyhole-shaped zempô-kôen-fun. The last type is peculiar to Japan. While most circular and square mounds are relatively small at under 50 meters in diameter, keyhole-shaped mounds are sometimes very large, even exceeding 400 meters in length. The largest keyhole-shaped kofuns are mostly located in the Osaka Plain, next to the west of the Nara Basin. On maps, we can see that kofuns are typically densely situated in specific areas. These clusters, or tumuli areas, are believed to have been related to regional political-economic organizations led by powerful ancient clans. The above aerial photograph shows an example of such a tumuli area, i.e. the Saki Tumuli Area, in the northern part of the Nara Basin. It includes several keyhole-shaped mounds with moats and lengths exceeding 200 meters. The mounds in this area are believed to have been built in the 4th century. Preceding the construction of the above kofuns, several large keyhole-shaped mounds, accompanied by many additional smaller ones, were built in the southeastern part of the Nara Basin. This region is considered the cradle of the early Yamato Kingdom, the predecessor of the Japanese court. The system of rice paddy cultivation, introduced in Japan in the Yayoi period (5th century BC ~ 3rd century AD), grew remarkably advanced and larger in scale in the Kofun period. Technologies brought by immigrants from the Korean peninsula contributed to these advances. Legends from this period, recorded in the histories (Kojiki and Nihon-shoki) compiled in the 8th century, include many stories about the construction of reservoirs and irrigation canals. Minakami Pond in the above aerial photograph is believed to be the ‘Saki-no-Ike’ referred to in Nihon-shoki (see Nihongi translated by W. G. Aston, p.183). Such large-scale construction for irrigating wide areas of rice paddies, naturally, required mobilization of many people and hence concentration of power. Accordingly, construction of large burial mounds can be seen as a reflection of advanced civil engineering and systematization of society. In excavations of kofuns, various treasures, including personal adornments, bronze mirrors and weapons, were discovered. Clay figurines called haniwa, which were originally placed around the mounds, are famous as historical finds. However, excavated inscriptions from kofuns are relatively few and seldom inform us who were buried. Although large keyhole-shaped mounds in the above aerial photograph are designated as Imperial mausolea and associated with ancient members of the royal family, true buried persons are unknown from the academic viewpoint. Because they are Imperial estates, even archaeologists and historians are not permitted to enter them. On February 22, 2008, newspapers reported that the Imperial Household Agency allowed archaeologists and historians to enter Gosashi Kofun for an academic overview for the first time. We can expect that academic research on the large Imperial mausolea will advance gradually in the future. In the 6th century, the attitude of the Japanese toward burial began to change. While large kofuns decreased in number, small burial mounds for the common people built in clusters increased sharply. In the 7th century, the earlier effort to build large burial mounds gave way to construction of Buddhist temples and Chinese-style capitals. By Noboru Ogata, Kyoto University Kofun Culture by Charles T. Keally of Sophia University, Tokyo References Tsude, H. (1987) ‘The Kofun Period,’ in Tsuboi, K. ed. Barnes, G. L. trans. Recent Archaeological Discoveries in Japan, UNESCO, pp. 55-71. Brown, D. M. (1993) ‘The Yamato kingdom,’ in Brown, D. M. ed. The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 1, Ancient Japan, Cambridge University Press, pp. 108-162. Last updated: July 31, 2016 |
Editor's note: Below are the video and transcript to remarks given by Congressman Brian Mast (R-FL 18th District) at the David Horowitz Freedom Center's 2017 Restoration Weekend. The event was held Nov. 16th-19th at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. Brian Mast: That is the truth. American Majority did help give me a start on this. When I was thinking about running way back in the day, before I was ever even a candidate, literally years before becoming a candidate, my wife said, "Hey, there's this group, American Majority, that's putting on this event at our church." We were worshiping at a place called Calvary Chapel, and they tell you information about how to become an activist, how to go out there and run a campaign, how to do things like that. And she said, "Why don't you go to that since you're thinking about doing this. This is something you're considering." And I did, and they gave me some great pointers and something that I hold on to till this day. They said, "Be organized, develop a great plan of attack," and they said, "Find a way to become a pillar of your community," and those were the things that stuck with me from that very moment. It's great to have the opportunity to be here with you all again. I'm very proud of everything that happened yesterday. We had a very historic vote on tax reform, and it wasn't without its hurdles, and there's still going to be a few hurdles yet to come. One of the folks that we had the opportunity to speak to throughout this whole arduous process of looking at tax reform was Vice President Pence. Vice President Pence does a great job coming and speaking to us in the House, and I would say this was probably about a month ago. We had this behind-closed-doors meeting of all people from the Republican conference. It was off the campus of the House of Representatives, and we were doing nothing but talking about tax reform all day long, different meetings about what it was going to do on the corporate side and the individual side and all these other things, and the last speaker for us was Vice President Pence. And Vice President comes up to the microphone, and he normally doesn't use a prepared speech. He's normally very off-the-cuff in speaking to us, but for whatever reason he had some prepared remarks that he was going to give to us. And I can see him flipping through his book as he's giving his remarks to us. And in the middle of his remarks was this joke that he had to tell, and it was this joke about people staying together. And so I'm sitting in the front row almost right in front of the podium. Almost right where you're sitting right there, sir, is where I was sitting compared to Vice President Pence. And so I don't think he knew what he was getting himself into, but he's reading this joke and he's talking about this guy falling into the water and they're trying to save him. And they try to grab him and pull him out at first. And they grab him. They grab his toupee and his toupee comes off. And then they try to grab him and they grab his arm and his arm pulls off. And then they try to grab his other arm. His other arm -- it's a guy with prosthetics right? So he's looking at me and he's midway through this joke. And I could just see the wheels turning in his mind. Can I finish this joke? Is this insensitive? Am I going to be in the media for the rest of the media cycle this week? Anyways, long story short, I could care less. I wasn't offended by it in the slightest. Needless to say, I got back to my office after all those meetings had ended, and my chief of staff comes up to me and he says, "I don't know what's going on, but you're supposed to get a call from the Vice President in about 30 minutes." And I knew what was going on. I thought it was hilarious, so that was probably one of the funniest hurdles that I saw going through tax reform. I was asked to come here and speak to you a little bit about the perspective of being a freshman member of Congress. I was elected on the same day as our great president on November 8th of 2016 of last year. And sworn in just a couple of weeks prior to him being sworn in on January 3, 2017. And I have three questions that come up to me constantly. I get these same three questions all the time. No. 1 is, "Is it as bad as they say?" People always ask, "Is it as bad as they really say it is? Is it as bad as what we see on TV?" No. 2 people ask, "What is it that you're working on? What are you doing for back home? What are you doing for the country?" And the third and the most frequent question that I get from people is, "Are you having fun? Is it a good time? Are you having a blast?" And so I'm going to address those three questions briefly. I don't want to give you too much information. My father always told me the one thing people remember about speeches is if you talk for too long, so I don't want to do that for you all. But to that first question, is it as bad as they say it is? I think if I said to all of you in here that people in Washington, D.C. lie, I would probably get a laugh out of many of you. Well, of course, they do. Politicians, people in Washington, Congressmen, Senators, of course they lie. They lie all the time. And I'm here to tell you that that's true. I knew I would get a laugh out of you. But it's not true in the way that most people think of it all the time. The way that I see people lying in Washington is at a completely different level than somebody giving a fact or a statistic that's not true, even though they know that it's not true. People in Washington are incredibly inaccurate, incredibly false with what their emotions are about issues. And I think if you are lying about what your emotions are about something that is a completely different level of dishonesty that exists here. And I'm going to give you some concrete examples on this. You can see it play out over the last week. I would hear people come to the House floor from the other side of the aisle that were saying people from my side of the aisle were the worst people for what we were doing with tax reform and we were going to do this to people and we were going to do that to people. And I'd hear them say the same things about other issues. You name it, that I'm terrible because this is what I want to do, that I don't care about women, that I don't care about this. And then as soon as they get done giving a speech about something like that or they get done giving an interview about something like that, because we give interviews all day long. Every time we walk out of votes or out of conference meetings, there's a dozen reporters waiting there to ask us questions, media, video cameras, you name it. And so they say things like this and I'd hear these interviews being given nonstop. And as soon as they finish giving their interview saying that I'm the worst person in the world, the camera would turn off and they turn around and they'd see me standing there, and they'd say, "Hey, Brian how's it going? How's your wife, Brianna? It was really great when you had your son, Magnum, up here a couple weeks ago I really enjoyed meeting him. When are you going to bring one of your boys up here again? Hey I've got this piece of legislation that I've been working on. Would you consider signing on to this piece of legislation with me?" One of those two emotions is not real. And the emotion that isn't real is that emotion that they're going out there before the camera displaying to everybody else across the country, and I think it is the biggest thing that leads to this divide in this country. And I think it is the most irresponsible use of the voice as a Representative that we could possibly have because as Representatives we are given a very special access to media. And if I want to go out there and message something, all I have to do is have my communications director reach out to a dozen reporters, and a dozen reporters will show up to my office waiting to hear what I have to say. And if I say something that is false about how I really feel about things, that is emotionally false, then I'm going out there and I'm using my amplified voice to divide the country. And that's what I think when I look at it and people say, is it as bad as they say it is? I think it is the most negative thing I can tell you about Washington, D.C. The way people are going out there and negatively impacting the breath of this country with their amplified voice. I wish I could tell you it was about to stop. But I won't be party to it myself. So, on to the second question: "What are you working on Brian? What is it that you're doing? How can we help you through this?" I worked out a number of important things. You heard them mention that I work on transportation and infrastructure and I do things with our water here and that's a great deal of the work that I do. But another great deal of the work that I do is with our veterans. I served a dozen years. The people that made me want to serve in the first place were our service members that served in the Ardennes Forest or in the Pacific or in North Africa in some tank during World War II. It's the people that served at the chosen reservoir. The people that served in the jungles of Vietnam, Panama, Kosovo, Bosnia, Grenada, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria. Those are the people that made me want to serve in the first place. They're my favorites. I'm sorry for anybody that doesn't fall into that. I hope we're all allowed favorites. One of the biggest things we've been working on, which I'm incredibly proud of, is that we have had the opportunity to open up an office in our VA Hospital. The reason that that's so important is because no other Congressman has been able to open up an office in a VA Hospital and that becomes incredibly important when you consider the great number of our veterans that have to find special transportation just to get to the hospital. The largest stack of casework that I get comes from veterans saying, "I'm having this issue with the hospital, I'm having this issue with the VA. Can you help us out? Can you help me in this front? Can you help in that front?" Also one of the largest stacks that we get is people saying, "I had really positive issues with the VA and I want you to know that this is the positive thing that happened." But those are the two largest stacks that we get are the positive and the negative with what's going on in the VA. So we said it make sense to allow the representation to go out there and have offices in the VA and let the people that are being seen at the VA come directly to our office instead of having to drive down the road, wait 2 weeks, 3 weeks to get an appointment to come see somebody. If you want to address all the issues in the VA or anyplace else you have to be present for the problems. You have to witness them. You have to see them with your own eyes. So my hope in what we're working on is that we can inspire all 435 Members of Congress to go out there and open up an office space in their own VA so that their staff and that they themselves can go out there and see what's going on in the VA each and every day, because the one thing that I can tell you about the VA is this and about any other bureaucratic place that we can go to in the government system: It's not good, but it is what it is. When the Congressman shows up, the answers change immediately. When the Congressman shows up into the VA, oh how's it going today, sir? Oh this veteran is having an issue? We're going to get on that. We weren't aware that that issue was going on. Let's get on that right away. Can we help this person? What can we help you with? I mean it changes. The response is immediate, and I think if we get 435 Members of Congress into their VA Hospitals across the country you are going to see some amazing fire for change within each of those buildings. So that's what I'm working on. And to the last question: "Are you having fun?" The answer is yes and no. The truth is serving in Congress is very much like serving in the military. Not always in the ways that people think, but when I was serving in the military, it wasn't always fun to have 100 pounds on your back. It wasn't fun to yoke your body with a 9-pound rifle, 30 pounds of body armor, grenades. It wasn't fun to be targeted by snipers. It's not fun to be blown up. It wasn't fun to see friends of mine that would fly across enemy lines and be shot down. For anybody that served during Vietnam or some other time, they know that it was not fun to know that there were people that were prisoners of war or to be a prisoner of war. The work that we do in the service is not always fun. But pleasure is not the intent of what we do. The work that we did in the military is incredibly serious. It's always dangerous. It's very often deadly, and it's on behalf of every single American that you go out there and serve and on behalf of each one of your brothers and your sisters to your left and right in combat, and if you make the wrong decision that may mean the life of one of your brothers and sisters to your left and right in combat. It's not always fun. But when you get the job done, when you get the mission accomplished, when you do something great for your country, every single bit of that that was dangerous and exhausting and arduous, it all fades away. And that's the same way that Congress is. Pleasure is not the intent of what we do. It affects people's lives at every single level. The ability of their children to get a good education. It affects people's livelihood. How many dollars they can get in their pocket, as you see us having the conversation of in the recent weeks, it affects their taxes. It affects their healthcare. It affects every single aspect of somebody's life. Us having fun is not the intent of it. It is to make sure that we're going out there and we're having the back of every single American just like we have the back of all of those brothers and sisters of ours in combat. So when we get the job done, like we did yesterday, and having that vote in the House of Representatives on tax reform, everything that was targeting us, those people that were trying to snipe us in the media, it all fades away, and it makes it incredibly worth it, and it makes it just like the military where we have that purpose inside of us where we got something incredible done for the people that asked us to go out there and serve. So those are the three questions that I get. I'll just close by telling you all this. I think there's a great deal to be hopeful about out there. When I look at Congress and ways to be hopeful, I look at it like this. I think of it kind of like hourglasses with sand dripping down in them. And there's an hourglass of hope that's sitting right here. And that hourglass of hope, we haven't necessarily been able to flip that over yet. And next to that hourglass of hope we have this other hourglass that has healthcare in it and it's dripping down. And we have this hourglass that has tax reform and it's dripping down. And we have another hourglass that has infrastructure. And another hourglass that has social programs and welfare and entitlement programs in it. And if we get to flip one of those hourglasses over, we get to flip over that hourglass of hope. If we get to flip over infrastructure, we get to flip over that hourglass of hope again. If we get to flip over that healthcare and get that done, we get to flip over that hourglass of hope again. But we just flipped over that hourglass of tax reform in the House of Representatives. And I think that means we got to flip over that hourglass of hope. And so in that there's a great deal to be hopeful for. I think it's a great impetus. It's a wind in the sails of many people in the House of Representatives to say this is the way we need to work together. This is the way we have to come together to be a team, to fight in a way that everybody asked us to go out there and fight, expected us to go out there and fight on November 8th of last year. I think you're going to see people come together. I'm proud of it. You're going to have a great speaker coming up to you, Devin Nunes. I'm proud to serve with him. He's going to give you some great words and he's a part of the team. I love him. It's great to have him down here in our neck of the woods. In that, thank you for letting me speak to you all this morning. I hope you have a great weekend. |
of Castile (daughter of ) which secured a vital alliance for the Algarve. Information: Capital: Silvas Currency: Ouros Head of State: King Afonso XIII, de Bourgogne ----------------------------------- Thinking of continuing and making colonial maps of the Algarve... we'll see. Also Afonso IV is a real person... well he wasn't king: Information:Capital: SilvasCurrency: OurosHead of State: King Afonso XIII, de Bourgogne-----------------------------------Thinking of continuing and making colonial maps of the Algarve... we'll see.Also Afonso IV is a real person... well he wasn't king: Afonso After the death of Afonso III of Portugal and the Algarve, his two sons: Dinis (Denis I "Lavrador" of Portugal) and Afonso (Afonso IV "Poeta" of the Algarves) succeeded his Kingdoms. The realm was split between the de jure lands, apart from the barony of Portalegra which was rightfully inherited by Afonso IV of the Algarve.Afonso IV marriedSurviving till the present day, via what appears to be divine intervention, we see the nation in all its glory. |
An 18-year-old Palestinian man was killed was another was wounded overnight Tuesday from IDF fire near the Gaza border fence, according to Palestinian reports. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The IDF said that three Palestinians were spotted making their way towards the Gaza border fence in southern Gaza and arouse the suspicion of IDF lookouts. The three appeared to be doing something on the ground and were in a no-go area, the IDF said. The Gaza border fence In response, an IDF tank fired shells in their direction, and one of them was hit. The IDF is investigating whether the three were trying to plant an explosive device. The incident overnight is the latest of a series of incidents on the Gaza border fence since February. Earlier this month, the IDF neutralized explosives planted near the fence. In another incident, an IDF engineering force operating near the fence came under fire. In a third incident, a Hamas drone trying to infiltrate Israel was shot down by the Israel Air Force. In addition, five rockets fired from the Gaza Strip fell inside Israel during the same time period. |
New Research Published in the European Journal of Social Psychology Shows Intersectionality Results In Tribal Conflict, Reduces Social Cohesion A recent paper by the European Journal of Social Psychology argues that collective victimhood (intersectionality) fosters intergroup conflict and a lack of social cohesion. From the abstract: Groups that perceive themselves as victims can engage in “competitive victimhood.” We propose that, in some societal circumstances, this competition bears on the recognition of past sufferings—rather than on their relative severity—fostering negative intergroup attitudes … Overall, these studies provide evidence that struggle for victimhood recognition can foster intergroup conflict. Elliott Hamilton of the Daily Wire explains what competitive victimhood means within the study: The researchers defined “competitive victimhood” as the act of various individuals trying to rank their identity group’s suffering in comparison with another group’s suffering. As noted in the study, social scientists have found evidence that such activities result in intergroup conflicts. The study shows the obvious: identity politics undermines social fabric. By playing the Victim Olympics, different groups can grow to resent each other over time, and the cohesion of society is mutated from one based on ideas, to one based on tribal boundaries, where members are expected to follow along with the rest of their particular group. The Democratic party is notorious for playing identity politics (because they’ve largely lost the battle of ideas). This has led to many democrats lambasting minority groups who disagree with them. For example,Democratic commentator Marc Lamont Hill called his fellow black Americans who met with then President-Elect Trump “mediocre negroes.” Among those “mediocre negroes” was comedian and beloved TV host Steve Harvey. This is actual racism. As Ben Shapiro eloquently put it: Just because Harvey didn’t agree with Hill that Trump ought to be boycotted, he has to be silenced as “mediocre.” That’s actual racism. Race isn’t destiny, and race isn’t a political mandate. Anyone who disagrees is promoting bigotry. Statements like Lamont Hill’s exemplify these identity politics and are (in part) the reason Democrats have been losing numerous state legislatures and governorships over the past decade. At the heart of identity politics is competitive victimhood. All this does is fragment our society, and contribute to racial tensions. For the the US to continue on as a secular, pluralistic republic, we need to prioritize the competition of ideas—not tribal boundaries. |
Over Christmas (as sported by their novelty hats) lead game designer of Dying Light Maciej Binkowski and producer Tymon Smektale streamed 90 minutes worth of gameplay footage via Twitch. Now that gameplay footage has been uploaded to YouTube for all those that may have missed the initial streaming. During the gameplay demonstration the guys give us developer commentary talking about the many aspects of the game, such as the “Magic Fortress” side-quest chain, an exploration of the Old Town area and much more. Also as a little bonus, a live-action parkour video has been released for Dying Light which you can checkout below (WARNING this footage features flesh eating zombies!). Dying Light will release for the PC, PS4 and Xbox One on January 27th in North America and the 30th across Europe. Dying Light – 90 Minute Gameplay Footage, Live-Action Parkour Trailer was last modified: by |
She’s ready for her close-up, Mr. Gates. Gloriously healthy in tiny bikinis, 29-year-old Cindy Margolis has young men around the world pointing and clicking and downloading enough of her pictures to make her the “Sexiest Woman Online,” according to the Yahoo! Internet Life magazine. Thanks to the 5 million visitors to her site, http://www.cindymargolis.com, she has become the goddess of the Web. The 5’7″ Margolis couldn’t be happier talking to her cyberbuds on her two-year-old site (annual membership: $29.95). “I can be on at 3 a.m. in my pajamas, with my cats bugging me, and I don’t need a makeup artist or anything,” she says. The self-made model/actress, who began posing for her own line of greeting cards while studying business at California State University at Northridge in the late ’80s and did a turn as one of the robotic androids armed with shooting bras in 1997’s Austin Powers, has “the all-American look,” says M.J. Roark, director of programming for Extra Online. “Cindy’s just Mom, Pop and apple pie.” In the era of less-is-too-much in beauty care, Margolis is unabashedly product-oriented. “Makeup artists are always giving me their stuff,” she enthuses. “My favorite thing is free stuff. I’ll take anything.” Her boyfriend, Guy Starkman, 27, an L.A. restaurateur, genially complains, “She’s taken over the bathroom counter.” He has also gotten used to Cindy’s obsession with oil-blotting paper. “On our first date we were at a Lakers game, and I was trying to blot without getting caught,” she says. “It was embarrassing when he said, ‘What are you doing?’ But now I blot around him all the time.” Her biggest beauty flaw, says the longtime San Fernando Valley resident, is her posture when she’s not in front of the camera. “Sometimes I see myself in the mirror, and it’s ‘Oh, God!’ But the minute you stick out your butt a little bit and suck it in, you go from a 6 to a 10. If only I could walk through life posing,” she says with a sigh. “It really makes a difference.” |
The bankruptcy filing by a key supplier is the latest obstacle in Chicago's Divvy bike-sharing program, which has been beset by delays and allegations that clout influenced the award of the $65 million contract. The reports yesterday that Montreal-based Public Bike System Co. would seek protection from creditors comes about two months after Mayor Rahm Emanuel said he would expand the federally funded bike rental program, which has more than 3,000 bicycles in the city. The filing comes amid a dispute that pits the company against the Emanuel administration and Portland, Ore.-based Alta Bicycle Share Inc., which runs the program in Chicago and seven other metropolitan areas. In March 2012, Alta Bicycle was given a 15-year bike-sharing contract by the Emanuel administration. The Chicago program, which has proved particularly popular with tourists, was launched in June, about a year later than expected. Public Bike, called Bixi for short, is a subcontractor of Alta, providing not only the bikes but the computer system that keeps track of the equipment and processes payment. Since August, the city has withheld more than $2.1 million in payments to Alta because of delays in the delivery of equipment and software updates, according to a spokesman for the Chicago Department of Transportation. Alta, in turn, has withheld payments to Bixi, he says. Payments to Bixi totaling about $3 million have also been withheld for operations in New York, according to a report yesterday by the Montreal Gazette. “Payments have been withheld in (New York) and Chicago due to software deficiencies on the back end,” Mia Birk, a vice president of Alta Bicycle, said in a brief emailed statement. She declined to answer questions. With “certain clients” holding back on payments totaling $5.6 million, the company became insolvent, according to a statement issued yesterday announcing the bankruptcy filing. The announcement was made by Denis Coderre, mayor of Montreal, which controls the company after a financial bailout three years ago. A spokesman for New York's Department of Transportation referred questions to Alta Bicycle, saying payments to Bixi are Alta's responsibility. PLANS TO EXPAND Mr. Emanuel plans to expand the program to 475 docking stations next year, up from 300 currently. The increase would be financed with a $3 million federal grant, which comes on top of $25 million in federal funding. “The delays in updating the software have not impacted the operations or expansion of the system, the Transportation Department spokesman says. In the statement, Ms. Birk says Alta “has been working with the subordinate suppliers and also researching alternative suppliers.” The $2.1 million withheld by the city is 16 percent less than the $2.5 million that Divvy brought in during its first five months of operations, according to published reports. The city has not yet received a full accounting for 2013. Alta was awarded the contract despite a protest by a rival bidder who alleged that the selection process improperly favored Alta, which once employed former Chicago Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein. He stepped down in November. City officials and company executives have denied any impropriety in the selection process. In April 2013, the Emanuel administration awarded a separate, $1.3 million contract to a sister company, Alta Planning & Design Inc., for marketing transportation options. In her statement, Ms. Birk said there is “no direct connection” between the two contracts, "although bike share helps achieve part of the goals intended in the marketing contract, which is to help increase bicycling, walking and transit use.” |
The game always seems to move in unreasonably slow speed for the great players, in cruelly rapid speed for the lost. Mark LeCras has gradually made the transition between these two worlds, his GPS of adequacy slowly but surely losing its coordinates. It was uncomfortable watching LeCras last Saturday night, a weary silk salesman asked to sell his product in a fiery hell-pit. His two most notable contributions were a pair of kicks off the side of his boot – the first in the opening stages, a sad sprayed dart of a regulation set shot that missed woefully right, the second at the death, a kick ‘forward’ off the ground that was hopeless more than desperate. LeCras did not belong in the game, and he often looks like he no longer belongs in the league. He is the antithesis of the style of football that a team like Richmond plays. The Tigers play with relentless, decapitating fury – the Frenchman, with all of his 41 tackles across 18 games, just wants to whisper things to you across the pillow. Rumours of LeCras’s demise this season began with a four-game goalless stretch in the middle of the season. An insipid round 18 performance against Collingwood, where LeCras combined an inability to trouble the scoreboard with an inability to be much more than occupied air in disrupting Magpie players, had the vultures circling. A solid final three games kept them at bay, seven goals bringing the season tally to an underwhelming but eminently bearable 30 majors in 17 games. The magic was gone, though, and LeCras was merely surviving out there. He was a wonderful player and has had a brilliant career. In his prime, he was an elite small forward, ultra-skilled, dynamic in his movement and reading of the play. He was unusually strong over his head and had perhaps the purest set shot in the game. His technique was immaculate – the same routine every time, the calm walking back, the singular preparatory raise of the ball to eye level, the implausibly straight, narrow and perfect run-up, a simple ball-drop and then a right leg skying up and to the left as the ball invariably went straight. There are still flashes of that skill, but LeCras is now on the outskirts. He lingers around packs and contests in space, waiting in hope. He used to hunt the ball, now he hopes it finds him by serendipity and mercy. His first moment, sprayed kick #1, in last week’s final was illustrative. He was paid a free kick 30 metres from goal with minimal angle. He went back, did the singular ball raise, a bleak nod to a former artist. He commenced his run-up but stopped midway, worried about men encroaching on the mark. One sensed he wanted to go back and start it all again, but time was leaking away. He kept going, dropped the ball, and skied his leg up and to the left. But the ball timidly drifted far right, never given a chance. LeCras meekly pointed towards the men near the mark, men who were gone and may never have been there. He saw that his protests were futile, and disappeared slowly into the night. |
That’s the eternal question about Rob Ford, voiced this week by Councillor Maria Augimeri to the Star: The occasion was the opening of a playground near Jane and Sheppard, a playground residents said the mayor took credit for building (“his exact words: ‘I started this,’” Talisha Ramsaroop said) even though he had voted against it. No matter, there he was last weekend, cutting the ribbon and bragging about his largesse. Only days later, I found myself repeating that question as, during a debate in East York, the mayor insisted that the only “revenue tool” he’d support to build transit was the 0.25-per-cent property tax increase — $7 per household, he said — already approved by council for the Scarborough subway extension. There’s an obvious problem with his logic. That plan council approved is actually a 1.6-per-cent increase phased in over three years, which will cost the average household about $41 per year for the next 30 years. Well, that’s the question once you disregard the carnival funhouse of mayoral misfortune. When you gaze upon the profound lunacy of the crack smoking on video and the police investigation and the blitz tackling of a fellow councillor and the bragging about the all-you-can-eat buffet of marital bliss in his home, and so on and so forth, the only sane question to ask is: What! The! Hell!?! Take that same Scarborough subway extension, which he claimed to support because the LRT option would “rip up the streets” and cause traffic chaos. The LRT on that route, of course, would run in an already existing off-street corridor. Its tracks and vehicles would not go onto the road at any point. Meanwhile the subway construction would tear up and shut down whole swaths of Scarborough’s busiest streets for a decade or more. Does he not understand that? But if you put those sideshows aside, and focus on his “record” as he’s always asking us to do, then you’re left to ponder either the soaring heights of his shameless dishonesty or the bedrock-cracking depths of his ignorance. Or his often-repeated claim to have saved a billion dollars: for the numbers to work you have to consider user fee increases as a savings, and also consider user fee decreases as a savings. You have to consider raiding reserve funds as a savings. You have to consider low interest rates as a savings. You have to count a police budget increase as a savings (compared to a phantom number representing a possible increase that could have been). In other words, it’s nonsense. The biggest Ford-era budget miracle, the one that has allowed property tax increases to remain modest, is the doubling in revenue from the land transfer tax, a tax he promised to repeal. And still promises to repeal. He claims taxes are lower now in Toronto than ever before, when in fact they have gone up. He claims to have improved TTC service, when in fact bus service was cut. He’s claimed, “We have not had a union strike since I’ve been mayor,” when in fact the library workers went on strike in 2012. He claims he never had a seat on the Waterfront Toronto board, even though every record shows he did have a seat for two years and never attended a meeting. Shameless? Or ignorant? Some people call this nit-picking. But when you shave the beast to rid it of such nits, you realize there’s nothing left. The record Rob Ford lays claim to is a giant animal shape constructed entirely of nits. Is he shameless, or ignorant? Those seem to be the options. If he knows what he is talking about, then he is being brazenly dishonest. If instead he is attempting to be truthful, then he suffers from an ignorance so profound as to be worthy of an Adam Sandler movie treatment. To put it another way, is Rob Ford lying, or is he bone-crushingly stupid? The answer is yes. Yes, he is shameless. Yes he is ignorant. But even after he is confronted with the facts that would dispel his ignorance, he continues to make the same false claims. It seems impossible for any person to be as simultaneously unencumbered by knowledge of the facts as Rob Ford is, yet so belligerently certain in his insistence that he is correct. And yet, here we are. And here he is, opening playgrounds and running for re-election and hosting thousands of adoring supporters at his Ford Fest. The truth is that the distinction between dishonesty and ignorance makes no difference in the case of Rob Ford. The effect on the city is the same either way. And by now we already know that very well through four years of hard experience. Which raises another big question, one for those supporters of his, and the 40 per cent or so of voters who say they’ll still consider casting a ballot for him. Are they ignorant? Still, after all this time? Or do they just not care? |
The following is a presentation I delivered at the Pop Culture Association conference last month in Indianapolis: “Like a cultural barometer, the rise of ska indicates when and where social, political, and economic institutions disappoint their people and push them to reinvent the process for making meaning out of life. When a group embarks on this process, it becomes even more necessary to embrace expressive, liberating forms of art for help during the struggle. In its history as a music of freedom, ska has flowed freely to wherever people are celebrating the rhythms and sounds of hope,” wrote Editor Scott Calhoun in the foreword to my book, Ska: The Rhythm of Liberation. Perhaps no social, political, and economic condition better prepared America for their rise of ska in the 1980s and 1990s more than the Cold War. The Cold War began on August 6, 1945 — the day that nuclear terror was introduced to the world when the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan, according to Peter J. Kuznick and James Gilbert, editors of the book, Rethinking Cold War Culture. Though the fear of nuclear annihilation was present in the decades that followed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that fear reached a new height in 1980 with election of Ronald Reagan who declared the Soviet Union an “Evil Empire” and took the Cold War to space with Star Wars, or the Strategic Defense Initiative. Kuznick and Gilbert suggest that the Cold War ended in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union but state, “What is usually thought of as Cold War culture outlasted the Cold War itself and likely will be with us for a long time.” The effect was a culture of vulnerability, suspicion, and subversion. This was the culture that welcomed the upbeat tempo, lively horns, and energy of dance and entertainment that was ska. It was the same respite from struggle and tension that had produced ska in Jamaica in the early 1960s, in England in the late 1970s, and now in America in the 1980s and ’90s. Though each country reinvented the genre of ska through their own lenses, blending it with other familiar musical forms and elements of the culture, threads remained the same. The ska beat, with the stress on the upbeat, the beat on the two and the four, instead of the one and the three in a quarter note measure, remained the same. The horns — trumpet, saxophone, trombone — remained the same. The fast tempo remained the same. In addition to the music itself, ska culture from Jamaica to England to America also shared commonalities, such as dance, dress, and attitude. These commonalities bound together fans of ska into a subculture with a shared identity. Central to this ska identity was the rude boy with origins in Jamaica, and the spy, with origins in America. The Cold War spy character that emerged in American ska and culture was, in part, an evolution of the rude boy character of Jamaican ska and culture that appeared decades earlier. Jamaican Ethnomusicologist Clinton Hutton situated the rude boy as a manifestation of Kingston gangs and lumpenproletariat. The rude boy was a scofflaw, a criminal, one who defied authority. They were aligned with gangs and identified themselves as part of this subculture through their dress — sharp suits, sunglasses, porkpie hats, and pants hemmed high on the ankle. They carried German ratchet knives and were known to break up the dances where ska music played, since gangs aligned themselves with the soundsystem operators who ran the dances. It was a competition of soundsystem against soundsystem, and the one who drew the largest crowd was crowned the king. Rude boys were the henchmen who ensured their soundsystem operator would win that title, by mashing up the competitor’s dance — breaking needles from the turntable, starting fights in the audience, or worse. The prowess of the rude boy or “rudie” was glorified by some vocalists, as well as used as a warning for others. Songs like, ”007 (Shanty Town)” by Desmond Dekker and the Aces, “Tougher Than Tough (Rudies Don’t Fear)” by Derrick Morgan, “Rude Boy” by the Wailing Wailers, and “Johnny Too Bad” by the Slickers, among dozens of others, chronicled rude boy badness. “Symbols of his culture are appearing everywhere,” wrote Jamaican music historian Garth White in 1967. White identified that, “Rudie culture items such as shoes, hats, music . . .” were means of identification for this subculture, a “lower class youth” that is “totally disenchanted with the ruling system.” The image of the rude boy and rudeboy style carried over the ocean to England as West Indian immigrants populated neighborhoods of Coventry and London. The rude boy appeared in the lyrics of British artists like The Specials, Madness, and even The Clash. But the style of the rude boy became iconic when Jerry Dammers, leader of The Specials, drew a stylized version of Peter Tosh’s rude boy portrayal on the cover of the Wailing Wailers album. The result was Walt Jabsco, a character used to represent the 2Tone label that recorded most British ska during the late 1970s and early 1980s. This character, wearing sunglasses, porkpie hat, sharp suit, and cropped pants became, quite literally, a cartoon, an animation. The character/logo appeared on more than just record labels — it was a way to identify the subculture of ska fans, the self-proclaimed rude boys and rude girls, who belonged to this group. And it is this character, both the rude boy and Walt Jabsco, who influenced the character of the spy in American ska — a character wearing sunglasses, porkpie hat, suit, and possessing the same amount of mystery, intrigue, and badness. Spies had been part of American culture for decades, as Michael Kackman observes in the introduction to his book, Citizen Spy: Television, Espionage, and Cold War Culture. He writes, “Spies were everywhere in 1950s American media culture. Books, magazines, film, radio, and television were filled with the exploits of secret agent, real and imagined.” And I want to be careful to point out here that the spy in American ska was more an offshoot of the rude boy character, as well as a response to the Cold War itself, which I will discuss in a minute, rather than a continuation of the spies that exist in early Jamaican ska. To explain, a number of Jamaican ska songs covered spy movie themes or identified them in their song titles. This is because Jamaican culture during the 1950s and 1960s, and even beyond, shared an affinity for American film and culture. Musicians adapted some spies and other men of mystery into their ska and subsequent musical forms as a sign of that adulation. So Desmond Dekker’s “007,” and Roland Alphonso’s “James Bond Theme,” were more a link to American film — as much so as the Skatalites “Guns of Navarone,” Carlos Malcolm’s “Bonanza Ska,” or King Stitt’s “Lee Van Cleef.” In American ska in the 1980s and 1990s, the link to bad guys and spies was something different. It was not as much tied to American film and TV, although there was that link, but it was also because spies were very much part of worldwide culture due to the intensity of the Cold War. And American ska treated these characters very differently than British ska because the cultures of these two countries were very different. Whereas British ska popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s treated social and political issues with a somber tone, American ska popular in the 1980s and 1990s addressed these issues with humor, camp, and novelty. Historian William M. Knoblauch writes of the difference between British and American music during periods of political discord. He says there is a “key difference: Whereas American artists remained upbeat during a tense Cold War period, British groups seemed more serious.” The Cold War terror of nuclear annihilation and fear of global destruction were alleviated in American ska through the theatre of the absurd. Martin Esslin, theater critic who coined the term, “Theatre of the Absurd” in 1962 states, “Theatre of the Absurd does not provoke tears of despair but the laughter of liberation.” Songs like Fishbone’s “Party At Ground Zero,” recorded in 1985, demonstrate well this absurdity in the face of despair. The music video, the stage in this theatre, is set in a club called the Atomic Underground and partygoers hold up martini glasses against backdrops of Soviet MIGs, newspapers with headlines proclaiming, “Russia has A-Bomb,” and footage of missile tests. The lyrics proclaim, “Time to sing a new war song . . . Just have a good time the stop sign is far away.” It should be noted that there is a clear distinction between the absurd, and a theater of the absurd and define how American ska used the later. Ska music evolved in Jamaica in the late 1950s, early 1960s as a blend of indigenous mento, American R&B, and jazz. Because Jamaican ska began before the recording industry on the island was largely underway, it had originated as a live form of entertainment, and as such, the entertainment aspect of ska was a key component. So humor and levity as a means of entertainment became intertwined with some artists’ presentation of the music, in Jamaica, but more so in British ska as well as American ska. But the theater of the absurd was different. It was, as Esslin indicates, to liberate in times of despair, so this specific sort of ridiculousness, found largely in American ska in the 1980s and 1990s, was in response to the threats and fears of the Cold War. American ska used the theater of the absurd differently than the playwrights of this original movement whose commentary was more on a meaningless existence. Instead, this concept in American ska was used as a way to critique imperialism and mock the key players in the Cold War in order to bring relief to audiences and demean the power of the authority. The spy in American ska was a key character in this theatre of the absurd. The spy became central in American ska whose fans were more akin to followers as this particular genre strongly aligned with identity. It was a subculture. Dress, dance, and style were crucial to ska culture as a way to define the self. Philip Gentry in the introduction to his book, What Will I Be: American Music and Cold War Identity, poses the question, “What is the relationship between these waves of new postwar political movements and the musical revolutions that seem to dovetail so neatly? The cultural transformation at work here is more fundamentally the project of self-making called ‘identity.’ It is a project that is at once both psychological and sociological, a process by which an individual knows him or herself in relation to others in a specific historic moment. . .. Music — performing, composing, organizing, listening, and so on — became a space, and perhaps the most important one, for collective articulations of self. . .. In using it we lay contemporary claim to age-old philosophical speculation: Who am I? We similarly invoke the question of social allegiance: With whom do I share my lot?” For the youth who lived in fear of nuclear war during the later Cold War era, that identity was ska. Michael Kackman writes that the spy in American culture was satirized and parodied by some television and film writers as a way to subvert “norms, narratives, and authoritative truth claims.” He states, “After the 1962 release of the first Bond film, Dr. No,” which incidentally was filmed in Jamaica and featured the ska band Byron Lee & the Dragonaires in a key scene at Pussfeller’s Club, as well as on the entire soundtrack, “many espionage programs quickly incorporated elements of self-referentiality, parody, and humor. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was a self-conscious send-up of both the Bond films and earlier espionage dramas, while Get Smart was a spoof created by Mel Brooks.” Kackman continues that the spy in these instance “becomes the principal source of humor and critique.” It is no wonder then that this is the character who appears in American ska during the Reagan and post-Reagan Cold War years. The Untouchables were perhaps the first to bring together ska and the spy in their recording of “I Spy For the FBI,” whose lyrics use the spy as a device for stalking and a paramour’s infidelity. This song was first recorded in 1966 by American soul artist Luther Ingram, then called Luther Ingram & His G-Men. Ingram later went on to record the classic hit, “If Loving You is Wrong (I Don’t Want to Be Right).” The song had greater success the same year when Jamo Thomas recorded it with more spy style, both in publicity photos, on the record sleeve, and in television appearances. Thomas’s style was also similar to rude boy style as he appeared on dance shows in cropped pants, skinny tie, pork pie hat, and sharp suit. This song was then recorded in 1985 by The Untouchables, a ska band from Los Angeles. The group was named after the television show about Special Agent Eliot Ness, his battles with the Chicago Mob, and the takedown of Al Capone. The Untouchables, who appeared in the movie Repo Man because one of the band’s fans was Emilio Estevez, continued with the spy theme, including the 1988 album “Agent Double O Soul,” and the song “Bond.” Other American ska bands in the 1980s and 1990s found intrigue with the spy; including Let’s Go Bowling’s song “Spy Market” in 1996; LA’s Goldfinger payed homage to the spy with their name; Save Ferris of Orange County recorded “Superspy” in 1997; Agent 99 formed in 1994, named after Maxwell Smart’s partner in the TV program Get Smart; and Undercover S.K.A. Band of San Francisco recorded the song “Our Man Flint” from a movie of the same name which was a parody of James Bond staring James Coburn, as well as the songs “Conspiracy” and “Agent 13.” The Toasters of New York City, whose founder Rob Hingley established Moon Ska Records, the most prominent American ska label of the 80s and 90s, recorded “Matt Davis Special Agent,” “Maxwell Smart,” and they covered the Bar-Kay’s song “Soulfinger” as “Skafinger” in 2001. The song “Soulfinger” is perhaps best known for its inclusion in the movie the Blues Brothers, and perhaps less known for its appearance in the 1985 movie, “Spies Like Us,” as it featured prominently in the scene between the U.S. and Russian spies in a missile standoff. In 1990 the Toasters released their album, This Gun For Hire with a large illustration of a spy in a porkpie hat and trench coat on the cover. New Jersey’s Catch 22 recorded the album Keasbey Nights in 1998 which featured a spy scene on the cover and the song “9mm and a Three-Piece Suit.” The album was re-recorded in 2006 by ska band Streetlight Manifesto. The Interrupters, a ska punk band formed in LA in 2011, continues the Cold War spy theme in their song, “Can’t Be Trusted,” set in the post-Bush/Cheney era of America. The lyrics state, “I don’t trust no one, under my pillow there’s a loaded gun. The CIA, they wanna put me away, the FBI just sent another spy. The FBI, get your hands off me. There’s no judge, no jury — Patriot Act took our liberty.” American ska bands appropriated the spy in ska music through their lyrics, imagery and style on their albums and in their videos and live shows, and in zines. One zine called Rude Tales in 1997 portrayed the comic book narrative of a spy who doubled as a ska musician. His gun case featured the tools of his trade — six types of guns, swords and knives, and a trombone, saxophone, and trumpet. Another zine, Rude International, published in 1998, featured an order form for t-shirts depicting a rude boy/spy character holding a briefcase. Now that Cold War culture has subsided, we are at another flashpoint again in our global political climate in many ways with many of the same conditions — growing threats of nuclear war, racism and hate, divisiveness. The Cold War ended when we tore down walls and now we build them back up, so will we see a new interpretation of ska to relieve our suffering spirits? There certainly have still been spies in recent ska bands, like the group Spies Like Us who formed in 2014 in San Antonio, and the Ska Vengers of New Delhi, India formed in 2009 and tour the world, singing their song, “Frank Brazil,” about an assassin. And we have certainly seen spy activities still make global news, as just this month a former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned by a nerve agent, and intelligence in the U.S. and Russia have been embroiled in investigations over meddling in our most recent election. Perhaps we will we see another character representing badness, like the rude boy or the spy, morph its way into ska — perhaps a superhero or a hacker, who knows? Only time will tell. Share this: Facebook Twitter Tumblr LinkedIn Google Pinterest Reddit |
The "Pripara Christmas Dream Live 2016" event in Chiba revealed on Friday that the Pripara franchise is getting a new anime starting in April. The event also revealed a new visual for Laala, and stated, "starting in April, Pripara might become completely different from the Pripara up until now." Similar "Pristmas" Pripara events were held on Christmas in 2014 and 2015. The first anime series inspired by Syn Sophia's PriPara arcade game for girls premiered in July 2014. The franchise's first film, Gekijō-ban PriPara Mi~nna Atsumare! Prism Tours, premiered in March 2015, and the second TV anime season premiered in April 2015. The second anime film, Tobidasu PriPara ~Miina de Mezase! Idol Grand Prix (Spring Out PriPara ~Aim for the Top, Eeeeveryone! Idol Grand Prix), premiered in Japan in October 2015. The anime's third film, PriPara Mi~nna no Akogare Let's Go PriPari (PriPara Eeeeveryone's Longing Let's Go PriPari), premiered on March 12, and the third television anime season followed in April. The anime franchise is also getting a fourth film, titled Gekijōban PriPara: Mi~nna de Kagayake! Kirarin☆Star Live , that will premiere on March 4. Additionally, the franchise has inspired two musicals. The second musical will run for eight performances at the Zepp Blue Theatre Roppongi in Tokyo from January 26-29. The first musical ran from February 4-7. The story of the television anime revolves around Laala, an elementary school girl who wants to become an idol in PriPara, a sport that judges girls on their song, dance, and fashion. The invitation to the sport is through a PriPara ticket. Even though elementary school students at her school are not allowed to become PriPara idols, through many events, she passes the audition, and becomes an idol. Image © T-ARTS/syn Sophia/TV Tokyo/IPP Production Committee Source: Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web |
If the New York Times’s latest article is to be believed, artificial intelligence is moving so fast it sometimes seems almost “magical.” Self-driving cars have arrived; Siri can listen to your voice and find the nearest movie theatre; and I.B.M. just set the “Jeopardy”-conquering Watson to work on medicine, initially training medical students, perhaps eventually helping in diagnosis. Scarcely a month goes by without the announcement of a new A.I. product or technique. Yet, some of the enthusiasm may be premature: as I’ve noted previously, we still haven’t produced machines with common sense, vision, natural language processing, or the ability to create other machines. Our efforts at directly simulating human brains remain primitive. Still, at some level, the only real difference between enthusiasts and skeptics is a time frame. The futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil thinks true, human-level A.I. will be here in less than two decades. My estimate is at least double that, especially given how little progress has been made in computing common sense; the challenges in building A.I., especially at the software level, are much harder than Kurzweil lets on. But a century from now, nobody will much care about how long it took, only what happened next. It’s likely that machines will be smarter than us before the end of the century—not just at chess or trivia questions but at just about everything, from mathematics and engineering to science and medicine. There might be a few jobs left for entertainers, writers, and other creative types, but computers will eventually be able to program themselves, absorb vast quantities of new information, and reason in ways that we carbon-based units can only dimly imagine. And they will be able to do it every second of every day, without sleep or coffee breaks. For some people, that future is a wonderful thing. Kurzweil has written about a rapturous singularity in which we merge with machines and upload our souls for immortality; Peter Diamandis has argued that advances in A.I. will be one key to ushering in a new era of “abundance,” with enough food, water, and consumer gadgets for all. Skeptics like Eric Brynjolfsson and I have worried about the consequences of A.I. and robotics for employment. But even if you put aside the sort of worries about what super-advanced A.I. might do to the labor market, there’s another concern, too: that powerful A.I. might threaten us more directly, by battling us for resources. Most people see that sort of fear as silly science-fiction drivel—the stuff of “The Terminator” and “The Matrix.” To the extent that we plan for our medium-term future, we worry about asteroids, the decline of fossil fuels, and global warming, not robots. But a dark new book by James Barrat, “Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era,” lays out a strong case for why we should be at least a little worried. Barrat’s core argument, which he borrows from the A.I. researcher Steve Omohundro, is that the drive for self-preservation and resource acquisition may be inherent in all goal-driven systems of a certain degree of intelligence. In Omohundro’s words, “if it is smart enough, a robot that is designed to play chess might also want to be build a spaceship,” in order to obtain more resources for whatever goals it might have. A purely rational artificial intelligence, Barrat writes, might expand “its idea of self-preservation … to include proactive attacks on future threats,” including, presumably, people who might be loathe to surrender their resources to the machine. Barrat worries that “without meticulous, countervailing instructions, a self-aware, self-improving, goal-seeking system will go to lengths we’d deem ridiculous to fulfill its goals,” even, perhaps, commandeering all the world’s energy in order to maximize whatever calculation it happened to be interested in. Of course, one could try to ban super-intelligent computers altogether. But “the competitive advantage—economic, military, even artistic—of every advance in automation is so compelling,” Vernor Vinge, the mathematician and science-fiction author, wrote, “that passing laws, or having customs, that forbid such things merely assures that someone else will.” If machines will eventually overtake us, as virtually everyone in the A.I. field believes, the real question is about values: how we instill them in machines, and how we then negotiate with those machines if and when their values are likely to differ greatly from our own. As the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom argued: We cannot blithely assume that a superintelligence will necessarily share any of the final values stereotypically associated with wisdom and intellectual development in humans—scientific curiosity, benevolent concern for others, spiritual enlightenment and contemplation, renunciation of material acquisitiveness, a taste for refined culture or for the simple pleasures in life, humility and selflessness, and so forth. It might be possible through deliberate effort to construct a superintelligence that values such things, or to build one that values human welfare, moral goodness, or any other complex purpose that its designers might want it to serve. But it is no less possible—and probably technically easier—to build a superintelligence that places final value on nothing but calculating the decimals of pi. The British cyberneticist Kevin Warwick once asked, “How can you reason, how can you bargain, how can you understand how that machine is thinking when it’s thinking in dimensions you can’t conceive of?” If there is a hole in Barrat’s dark argument, it is in his glib presumption that if a robot is smart enough to play chess, it might also “want to build a spaceship”—and that tendencies toward self-preservation and resource acquisition are inherent in any sufficiently complex, goal-driven system. For now, most of the machines that are good enough to play chess, like I.B.M.’s Deep Blue, haven’t shown the slightest interest in acquiring resources. But before we get complacent and decide there is nothing to worry about after all, it is important to realize that the goals of machines could change as they get smarter. Once computers can effectively reprogram themselves, and successively improve themselves, leading to a so-called “technological singularity” or “intelligence explosion,” the risks of machines outwitting humans in battles for resources and self-preservation cannot simply be dismissed. One of the most pointed quotes in Barrat’s book belongs to the legendary serial A.I. entrepreneur Danny Hillis, who likens the upcoming shift to one of the greatest transitions in the history of biological evolution: “We’re at that point analogous to when single-celled organisms were turning into multi-celled organisms. We are amoeba and we can’t figure out what the hell this thing is that we’re creating.” Already, advances in A.I. have created risks that we never dreamt of. With the advent of the Internet age and its Big Data explosion, “large amounts of data is being collected about us and then being fed to algorithms to make predictions,” Vaibhav Garg, a computer-risk specialist at Drexel University, told me. “We do not have the ability to know when the data is being collected, ensure that the data collected is correct, update the information, or provide the necessary context.” Few people would have even dreamt of this risk even twenty years ago. What risks lie ahead? Nobody really knows, but Barrat is right to ask. Photograph by John Vink/Magnum. |
Story highlights The Bay area and Detroit have the most arrests and child rescues The FBI says the three-day undercover operation is its biggest to date 105 children across the country are rescued in the nationwide operation The ages of the children involved range from 13 to 17 They are mostly teenage girls, often from broken homes where no one misses them. Their world is one of drugs and abuse -- emotional and physical -- in which they are forced to sell their bodies. In announcing the FBI's latest crackdown on child prostitution, officials Monday described a dark underside of society that has grown through Internet sites that provide pimps easy access to johns in hotels, motels, at truck stops and just about anywhere else. The nationwide operation over the weekend resulted in 150 arrests, with 105 children between the ages of 13 and 17 rescued, according to Ron Hosko, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division. Overall, the three-day undercover Operation Cross Country took place in 76 cities and involved 230 law enforcement units, Hosko told a news conference. It was the largest such sweep to date, he said, with 28 searches and 129 seizures of cash, drugs, vehicles and firearms. Those arrested face a variety of federal and state charges, including pimping. JUST WATCHED 105 rescued in sex trafficking ring bust Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH 105 rescued in sex trafficking ring bust 01:57 JUST WATCHED Video shows undercover sex ring bust Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Video shows undercover sex ring bust 03:26 JUST WATCHED Human trafficking survivor: Go after johns Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Human trafficking survivor: Go after johns 04:05 This seventh iteration of Operation Cross Country also was the most successful, with a 30% to 40% increase in "identifying both victims and pimps" compared with previous operations, Hosko said. He credited the success in part to an expansion of the probe to websites such as www.backpage.com, which he called a forum "where pimps and exploiters gather." Authorities also have learned more about how the market thrives. For example, Hosko explained that major sporting events such as the Super Bowl and the NCAA Final Four attract tens of thousands of visitors with money who want to party, and pimps with prostitutes ready to cash in. "We have had children recovered from each of those events, multiple children from each of those events in the past," he said. While technology has changes methods of procurement, the underlying demographics of the child victims of the prostitution industry remain little changed -- young girls around 13 to 16 years old with few or no family ties. "That tends to be the age that many of us as loving and caring parents occasionally find some differences with our teenage daughters, and exploiters will exploit that gap," Hosko said. A breakdown of cities where the latest arrests took place, and where child prostitutes were recovered, reveals some unexpected findings. The San Francisco-Oakland region in California had 17 arrests and 12 recovered child prostitutes, while Detroit, which just declared itself bankrupt, had 18 arrests and 10 rescued children. Meanwhile, New York City had none of either, Las Vegas had one of each and New Orleans had five arrests and four recovered children, compared with 13 arrests and three child prostitute rescues in Oklahoma City. "This operation serves as a reminder that these abhorrent crimes can happen anywhere," Hosko said. Operation Cross Country is part of the FBI's Innocence Lost National Initiative, which seeks to identify children lured or forced into prostitution and remove them from risk, according to Hosko. The circumstances of the situation make finding victims especially difficult, he explained. "Commonly some of these children have stepped away from their families," he said, adding that "there is no one to call and report 'my daughter is missing.'" Other major problems are the culture of abuse, both physical and emotional, and the drug use prevalent in child prostitution. "We have victims whose new normal is abuse and is drug-infected," Hosko said, explaining there is an environment of instability in which "the expectation of somebody who cares about them may last for 30 minutes or an hour before the abuse starts again." |
Richard Dawkins, the British biologist and prominent atheist, has found himself in a firestorm of controversy over recent comments about Muslims. Back in July, Dawkins took to Twitter to declare: “Islam needs a feminist revolution. What can we do to help?” While well-intentioned, the tweet was criticized for its condescending tone, as well as Dawkins’ ignorance of the history of women’s movements in Islamic society. Islam needs a feminist revolution. It will be hard. What can we do to help? — Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 23, 2015 This weekend, Dawkins doubled down in an interview with frequently controversial TV host Bill Maher, saying “to hell with their culture” while criticizing liberals who defend Islam. “If we talk about them at all or criticize at all, it’s somehow hurting or humiliating Muslims,” he argued. “It’s a ridiculous idea.” There is a concerning trend in secular thought to attack religion as “the root of all evil” (which also happens to be the name of a Dawkins-led BBC documentary series about religion). And in his comments, Dawkins seems to be targeting the treatment of women in many Islamic countries—which use religion to justify stoning rape victims and criminalize homosexuality. Dawkins is wrong, however, to target the Quran as the source of these atrocities: Atheists shouldn’t hold an entire religious community responsible for the actions of governments and fundamentalist state religions. As we can see from Dawkins’ tweet, there’s a thin line between combating prejudice and creating more of it. If there’s any doubt about Dawkins’ pull on the Web, let Reddit’s popular atheism subreddit—which boasts over two million subscribers—clear it up for you. Richard Dawkins adorns the forum’s front page banner. Although atheism is (by its very definition) a decentralized ideology, Dawkins has become the largest figurehead for the so-called “New Atheism” movement that gained popularity in the early aughts—with the rise of the social Web. His 2006 bestseller, The God Delusion, is a seminal handbook for questioning theists across the Internet. Dawkins, along with philosopher Sam Harris, biologist Daniel Dennett, and the late conservative columnist Christopher Hitchens, were often billed as “The Four Horsemen” of a new brand of secularism—and remain very popular with online secular communities.Atheists shouldn’t hold an entire religious community responsible for the actions of governments and fundamentalist state religions. Thus, it’s unsurprising that the active community quickly leapt to Richard Dawkins’ defense after his appearance on Maher’s show. “Cultures aren’t equal,” commented Redditor flekkzo on a post about Dawkins’ comments. “Cultures that do not stone women for being raped are better than those that do.” User warlock4u further suggested that “their culture must be very fragile indeed” if Muslims were offended by Dawkins’ comments, and KnowMatter wrote: “Not every culture deserves to exist in the modern world, that is the sad truth.” Screengrab via r/Atheism Instead, Dawkins and his followers should attack the structures that allow for the systematic oppression of women and LGBT people. As Salon’s Steve Neumann explains, blaming Islam is exactly the wrong response—as religion usually functions as a scapegoat for man’s will to power. According to Neumann, religious fundamentalism “arises primarily out of a preoccupation with power. Not power in the sense of brute physical dominance over others…. but power as the basic psychological drive of the human animal. The thwarting of that drive is the root cause of both terrorism and violence generally.” Attacking religion, thus, addresses the symptom, not the cause. And this problem is not exclusive to Christianity—or even religion itself. Dawkins and his defenders are likely aware of the many atrocities committed in the name of Christianity—from the Crusades and the slaughter of Native Americans up to the bombing of abortion clinics. Likewise, Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung slaughtered tens of millions without a whiff of religious influence. The sheer variety of governments and leaders that have been responsible for genocides and mass oppression should combat the idea that any religion could be to blame for the worst of human behavior—and this is why Dawkins’ continued crusade has met with considerable pushback from Twitter users. Twitter user @redbeansrule criticized Dawkins for his “patronizing white savior paternalist Islamophobia.” User @bagelsmalls answered Dawkins plea to help Muslim women with “we can start with the fact that nobody wants your help” and prominent Muslim lawyer Qasim Rashid suggested, “This is where you follow through on ‘how to help’ by being quiet & listening.” Hey @RichardDawkins this is where you follow through on “how to help” by being quiet & listening https://t.co/42KMBHSipo — Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@MuslimIQ) July 24, 2015 Dawkins’ solution to Islam’s problems—namely, by abolishing it altogether—may be alarming but it’s also not new—and it’s hurting the movement. As author Chris Hedges points out, Dawkins brand of “secular fundamentalism” tends to find itself with odd ideological bedfellows. “Its political agenda dovetails with the most retrograde elements of the Christian Right,” Hedges said in a recent interview. Dawkins and his followers should attack the structures that allow for the systematic oppression of women and LGBT people. Prominent secular thinkers like particle physicist Peter Higgs (of the Higgs boson) have also criticized Dawkins for a one-size-fits-all approach to criticizing people of faith, punishing the middle for its extremes. Higgs called Dawkins’ anti-religious furor “embarrassing”: “What Dawkins does too often is to concentrate his attack on fundamentalists. But there are many believers who are just not fundamentalists.” Here, Higgs important recognizes the wide diversity of practitioners in every religion. In addition to being factually inaccurate, Dawkins’ methods are ideologically dangerous for atheism to be associated with in the current religio-political climate. Anti-Muslim sentiment is spreading across Europe—following the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January and the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis. In recent surveys, 43 percent of French citizens said they see Islam as a threat to France’s national identity, and between 66 and 74 percent of Germans also confess to having “negative attitudes towards Muslims.” These are countries that are far more secular than the United States, yet they—like Richard Dawkins—seem to echo the worst sentiments of Christian conservatives. In recent weeks, GOP presidential contender Ben Carson has said Islam is not compatible with the U.S. Constitution and that the Founding Fathers would never have supported a Muslim president. He is currently polling second in the race. Atheists should be wary of turning their disdain for religion into a disdain for the religious, especially at a time when reactionary bigotry is gripping both America and Europe. Dawkins is not wrong to call for a stronger defense of human rights in the Arab world—or anywhere else—but Dawkins, and atheists as a culture, should be aware of the slippery slope of their own fundamentalism. Whether he means to or not, Richard Dawkins is leading the rest of secularism down a hole of xenophobia and cultural bigotry. Gillian Branstetter is a social commentator with a focus on the intersection of technology, security, and politics. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Business Insider, Salon, the Week, and xoJane. She attended Pennsylvania State University. Follow her on Twitter @GillBranstetter. Photo via DaveFayram/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0) |
Victory Day is a holiday observed in the United States state of Rhode Island with state offices closed on the second Monday of August. Furthermore, in 2017, WPRI-TV claimed that Arkansas and Rhode Island were the only two states to ever celebrate the holiday, though Arkansas's name for the holiday was "World War II Memorial Day."[1] Originally, the official name was "Victory over Japan Day" and "V-J Day", as proclaimed by then President Harry S. Truman and was officially observed on September 2 nationwide. At some point, the name was changed to "Victory Day" in light of the modern post-war Japan emerging in economic importance. Further name changes were attempted later, but were unsuccessful, at which point, the name "Victory Day" remained the official name. The holiday celebrates the conclusion of World War II and is related to Victory over Japan Day in the United Kingdom. Rhode Island retains the holiday in tribute to the disproportionate number of sailors it sent and lost in the Pacific front.[3] In 2015, the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama honored 500 veterans on the 70th anniversary of the end of the war.[4] History [ edit ] Life magazine Scene made famous bymagazine photograph Victory Day has commemorated the anniversary of Japan’s surrender to the Allies in 1945 which ended World War II. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, and the Soviet Union’s invasion of Manchuria in the previous week led to the eventual surrender. President Truman's announcement of the surrender started mass celebrations across the United States, which was when he declared September 2 as the official "VJ Day" in 1945. In 1975, the holiday was abolished at the Arkansas state level leaving Rhode Island as the only state in the U.S. where the holiday is a legal holiday.[1] Rhode Island has observed this day since 1948. Initially observed on August 14, the Rhode Island General Assembly enacted legislation in 1966 to observe the holiday on the second Monday in August annually.[1] According to WPRI-TV, Rhode Island has had debates over whether to retain the state holiday, with opponents citing Japan's growing "economic might" in the 1980s and offense to Japanese Americans, but all efforts to remove or rename the holiday have been defeated by "veterans and traditionalists," as well as labor unions.[1] References [ edit ] |
The Republican replacement plan for Obamacare hurts the most vulnerable people in our society: poorer and older Americans. But the Republican plan does benefit some people, albeit at the expense of 24 million who would lose insurance by 2026. So where do you fit into this? That’s what this calculator is for. How we made it To create this calculator, we worked with Urban Institute researcher Linda Blumberg, who extrapolated how much insurance premiums would cost on average for all people under 64. She used the Congressional Budget Office’s projections of how much premiums would be in 2020 under current law and under the Republican replacement plan. We couldn't take everything into account. For example: 1) Geographic differences don't affect how affordable a plan is under current law, but it would under the Republican plan, and 2) we didn't take into account the 30 percent premium surcharge some people would face if they didn't maintain coverage under the Republican plan. That said, this calculator should give you a decent idea of whether you benefit from this plan — and, if so, who is hurt on the other end. The calculator Obamacare did the opposite of what the Republican plan would do One of the more important accomplishments of Obamacare was that it disproportionately helped low-income people. If you played around with the calculator, you can see why: Through various policies — like expanded Medicaid, cost-sharing subsidies, and premium caps — Obamacare tried to make sure low-income Americans were able to afford relatively decent health care plans. But look at the number of people that CBO thinks this Republican plan would take insurance away from. A chunk of these people are low-income Americans: Another chunk of these people are older Americans, who would be on the hook for much higher premiums — and potentially decide not to buy insurance. In a twisted way, it would benefit younger and wealthier people in the insurance pool. Without older people who tend to have higher medical bills, it would lower premiums for everyone else. Go back to the calculator and play around with different scenarios so you get a sense of how you fit into this Republican replacement plan, where the most vulnerable people get less help. |
Robots are getting scary intelligent. Take one look at Hound and you’ll understand how advanced artificial intelligence has gotten. Hound, a new program developed by SoundHound Inc., takes voice queries and responds more quickly, more accurate and more detailed than the most popular artificial intelligence program to date — Apple’s Siri. SoundHound Inc. Founder and CEO Keyvan Mohajer uploaded a YouTube video, asking the program questions such as, “What’s the monthly payment on a million-dollar home?” to which it responds, “What is the down payment?” before spitting out the answer. “Hound can’t do everything, of course, but, for users who believe that speaking to connected devices should be like how we speak normally – this shows that it’s now possible,” the video’s description said. The app is currently available on Android and will be available on iOS soon. |
An 'Adventure' For Kids And Maybe For Their Parents, Too Enlarge this image toggle caption Cartoon Network Cartoon Network Count plenty of grown-ups among the millions of fans of Adventure Time, a kids' show on Cartoon Network. Some are surely Emmy voters. (It's won three.) Others are very possibly stoners. Still others are intellectuals. Lev Grossman falls in the last category. He wrote two best-selling novels, The Magicians and The Magician King, and he's Time's senior book critic. Grossman's critique of Adventure Time? "It's soooo smart! It's sooo intelligent!" Hang on. He's just getting started. "I am a little bit obsessed with it," Grossman continues. "It's rich and complicated the way Balzac's work is, which is a funny thing to say about a cartoon." For the uninitiated, Adventure Time is set in a surreally pastel post-apocalyptic kingdom crawling with mutated candy creatures, bizarre princesses — think Slime Princess and Lumpy Space Princess — and our two heroes. They're Finn and Jake, a gangly human boy and his moon-eyed yellow dog. The show's creator, Pendleton Ward, modeled Jake partly after Bill Murray's sardonic camp counselor in the 1979 movie Meatballs, a cooler-than-cool older-brother figure who can laugh at his charges without being mean and whose teachable moments are anything but cloying. "Jake sees his own death in one episode," says Ward. "And Finn has to deal with that. Jake's a hip guy. He can watch his own death, and he's comfortable with it, and that's a weird thing, especially for Finn, who's superyoung, and it's really hard on him." In the episode, called "New Frontier," Jake experiences a vision during which he's taken to an afterlife of stars and darkness by a little bananalike creature (voiced by Weird Al Yankovic). "When I die, I'm gonna be all around you," Jake reassures Finn. "In your nose. And your dreams. And socks! I'll be a part of you in your earth mind. It's gonna be great!" "That episode was really tough to tackle, writing it for a children's television show," Ward remembers. "It was hard for us to really not make it so sad and scary that you feel really sad and scared watching it." Adventure Time insists on emotional honesty — even in its bad guys, usually depicted as cardboard villains in kids' cartoons. Grossman offers the shrill, socially maladapted Earl of Lemongrab as an example. An unlikable character, his story is movingly explored and raises questions nearly every kid has wondered about: Why do I seem weird to other people? Why do I seem weird to myself? Or take the buffoonish, bandy-legged and morally compromised Ice King. "[He's] psychologically plausible," Grossman observes. "He's an old lecherous man who has a magical crown. It's made him into this strange, awful individual who goes around capturing princesses." The king's crown wiped his mind and warped his body. He'll die if he takes it off. "Which is this rather moving tension, and he doesn't remember who he used to be, but other people do," Grossman says. "It's very affecting. My dad has been going through having Alzheimer's, and he's forgotten so much about who he used to be. And I look at him and think this cartoon is about my father dying." In spite of the critical admiration, the warm feelings of fans and the prestigious awards, Adventure Time nearly never aired. "It actually felt like a great risk," says Rob Sorcher, the Cartoon Network's chief content officer. "It's not slick. It doesn't feel manufactured for kids, so who's it for?" Um, perhaps partly for the kind of grown-up who might watch Yo Gabba Gabba with a little chemical assist? "For me, it doesn't come from that place," says Ward. "For me, it comes from my childhood, wandering in my mind. You can't really go anywhere when you're a kid. I don't have a car, I don't have anything. I just have my backyard and my brain. And that's where I'm coming from when I'm writing it." He pauses. "I can't speak for all the writers on the show." Ward and his mother used to watch cartoons together when he was a kid, but he claims today he's not writing specifically for a co-viewing audience of parents and kids. Still, author Grossman says Adventure Time works for him and his 8-year-old daughter, Lily, equally. "It's really important for us to have something we can enjoy together and talk about together. It gives us in some ways a common language for talking about more important issues," he says. Adventure Time's world used to be our world. Then it was destroyed by a war. It's strewn with detritus such as old computers, VHS tapes and video games from the 1980s. "It takes my childhood, the shattered pieces of it, and builds it into something new, which is now part of Lily's childhood," he says, almost in wonder. |
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