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The Nerazzurri coach is confident that the experienced defender will soon return to match action after a lengthy spell on the sidelines
Inter coach Walter Mazzarri has stressed that it's only a matter of time before Javier Zanetti makes his comeback from injury.
The 40-year-old was included in the Nerazzurri's match squad for their 3-0 win over Udinese at the weekend for the first time since sustaining an Achilles tendon injury back in April and even though he did not feature against the Stadio Friuli side, Mazzarri is confident that Zanetti will be back in action shortly.
"Of course we have to be careful because Javier needs time, but I believe that he will make his comeback soon," Mazzarri told reporters.
"I was uncertain whether to let him enter the pitch or not because he seems to be in good condition.
"I've asked the other players not to put him under too much pressure during training because he has just got back, but he seems so comfortable with the ball that he could have featured if I had decided to play him."
The victory over Udinese leaves Inter fourth in Serie A, nine points off leaders Roma. |
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Who would have thought that winning the lottery could ruin your life? Marie Holmes, a struggling mom of four from North Carolina, never imagined her luck would change overnight. When the single mom realized she was the owner of a winning lottery ticket, she was filled with joy and excitement and knew that her life would never look the same.
However, with more money comes more problems and Marie found herself trapped in an impossible situation. The church that she loved and trusted had become her worst enemy and the millions that she earned have become the source to her problems. This is the story of the single mom who thought she had it all only to realize she couldn’t be more wrong.
Click ‘ Start Slideshow ’ to read this unbelievable story.
The Struggling Single Mom
Marie Holmes found herself growing up in a low-income neighborhood. Her family came from poverty, and she continued that cycle in her early adolescence. She worked hard for where she was, but she had a strained relationship with those closest to her. Young Marie Holmes chose to find comfort with her high school boyfriend to escape the rough childhood she had. One thing led to another, and Marie Holmes found herself pregnant with her first child. She had two additional children with her high school sweetheart before they parted ways. Marie found a new boyfriend, and eventually had another child with him.
At the time, with four children under the age of 6, the young mother was just 25 years old. She was struggling to make ends meet, and had little help from the two fathers of her children. Marie Holmes worked minimum wage paying jobs from McDonalds to Walmart to try and pay the bill on the trailer they lived in. She was at a loss of what to do, which led her to take advantage of small lottery tickets.
Click ‘Next’ to find out if Marie Holmes had the money to get the lottery ticket she needed.
Buying Lottery Tickets
One day, Marie Holmes asked her mother to pick her up some lottery tickets. She gave her mom $15 to do so, and she bought a few with this money. She later felt lucky, and decided to take a gamble. She gave her mom $15 more to purchase a few additional lottery tickets. The decision was made with a lot of thought because she didn’t have a lot of money to spare for these things.
Marie Holmes didn’t have a lot of money at the time, so this small and precious amount was all she had to try to win with the lottery’s impossible odds. She had a 1 in 170 million chance of winning, so Marie Holmes hoped, but didn’t expect much. She held on to those few tickets she purchased, and waited with baited breath as they called the lottery winners.
Did Marie’s tickets win? Click ‘Next’ to see how she actually won the lottery.
Winning the Reward
Marie Holmes was over the moon when the lottery read off her numbers. It was one of the happiest moments she had ever experienced. She couldn’t believe that one of the tickets she had purchased actually won. She told news stations that she scared her children half to death because she was screaming so loud. It felt like the wildest dream to her, and she knew their life was about to change.
The struggling single mom was running around their trailer telling her children that they would no longer struggle. The young kids may not have known what she was talking about, but Marie Holmes said it regardless. Tears of happiness streamed down her face as she checked those numbers on the ticket over and over again, just to ensure that she really did win.
You’ll never believe what she did next. Click ‘Next’ to find out!
Life Changing Circumstances
Winning the lottery changes your life in an instant, and Marie Holmes couldn’t wait to change hers. Leading a life of hard struggles, she was ready to get out of poverty. She was given the choice of receiving smaller payments over the next few years, or take a lump sum of cash. Knowing how hard her and her children had struggled, she chose to take the lump sum of $122 million dollars. This amounted to about $88 million dollars after taxes were taken out.
She went to accept the larger than life check on live TV, and she showed up looking like a different person. She went and got a makeover that was fit for the millionaire she had just become. With a spiffy new suit, she stepped out into the new world and became the millionaire version of Marie Holmes.
Marie made some big changes with her new fortune. Click ‘Next’ to see what happened.
Life Upgrades
Marie Holmes was determined to change her life, and she started upgrading by purchasing new items. The first thing to go was the trailer she was raising her children in. She moved into a large plantation style home in a gated community. Because she had this newly acquired fortune, she also hired security to watch over and protect the family from being looted or robbed.
Marie began buying new clothes for her children, herself, and her mother. She made sure that everyone looked the part of being a millionaire, and she was overjoyed they were no longer struggling. The lottery winner focused on creating a healthier environment for her four children, especially the oldest who had cerebral palsy. These were just the beginnings of her new life, but her fortune started slowly going down the drain.
Did she lose it all? Click ‘Next’ to find out!
Hard Times Ahead
Even though she was a huge lottery winner, Marie Holmes began to realize that life remained the same as it always had. The father of her youngest child, Ebony, was a known drug dealer throughout the area. Just because they suddenly walked into money didn’t mean that they left the harsh world of their gang behind.
Her boyfriend, Lamarr McDow, increased the amount of drug dealing he was doing, too. He believed that living in the house that they did, with the money they had, would diffuse the cops on their tail. Unfortunately, that outcome didn’t end up being true for Lamarr, and he was arrested multiple times.
You won’t believe how she spent her money. Click ‘Next’ to see the controversial decision.
Bailing Out Her Baby Daddy
The single mom’s boyfriend was in jail, stuck with a few million dollars in bail attached to his name. He was arrested multiple times, and Marie Holmes felt that she had nothing else to do but bail him out of jail. The news surrounding Marie Homes’ name quickly became negative, but she continued paying her boyfriend’s bail of $21 million.
Her fortune was on the line, but she chose to bail out the man who meant the world to her. She didn’t realize how quickly lottery money could diminish, but she kept her head high as she bailed him out. Marie Holmes grew up around gangs, and had multiple family members incarcerated growing up. She was no stranger to jail cells, so she wanted her boyfriend out as soon as possible. Time and time again Marie bailed out Lamarr.
Click ‘Next’ to see the first charge that Marie Holmes’ boyfriend was arrested for.
Boyfriend’s Drug Charge
Marie Holmes is the only lottery winner who has shelled out so much money for bail. The first time her boyfriend ended up in jail, Marie Holmes paid the $3 million bail without a second thought. He was arrested for drug charges, and he was a well known drug dealer in the area. The cops had wanted him to stay in jail, which was why the bail was set for so high.
However, the cops didn’t think that Lamarr “Hotsauce” McDow would have a girlfriend who just recently won $88 million from the lottery. She was working at the Walmart before, and Lamarr was dealing his drugs and staying home with the kids for the most part. She received a lot of attention for bailing him out with $3 million, but it would only continue to get worse.
You won’t believe why the bail doubles. Click ‘Next’ to find out!
Not Showing Up for Court
You would think that after having a girlfriend who shelled out $3 million for you that you would be a bit grateful. The least you could do would be attend your court date to make sure that you are not arrested again. Well, Lamarr McDow apparently doesn’t think that far ahead. Instead of making sure he would not be arrested again, he missed his court date completely.
Since that constituted as a violation of his parole, Lamarr McDow was sent to jail again. Now, many people would allow their man to rot in prison to teach them a lesson, but Marie Holmes is too kind for that. This time, she paid even more to get him out of jail! His bail was set at $6 million, and once again Marie Holmes paid it without a second thought. She was once again thrust into the public eye for her choices.
The bail doubles once again. Click ‘Next’ to see what Lamarr McDow did this time.
Illegal Street Racing
If you thought it couldn’t get worse, we hate to say that it does. One person might say third time is the charm, but not in Lamarr McDow’s case. Once again, he found himself in the wrong end of the police car. It was New Year’s, and Lamarr just wanted to have some fun with his friends. However, Lamarr’s idea of fun just happens to be illegal.
He was once again arrested, but this time it wasn’t due to drugs. He was arrested for illegal street racing. Determined to keep this man off the streets, Lamarr McDow’s bail was set even higher than before. They set his bail at $12 million this time. Marie decided to bail him out for the third time, which ended up making her spend $21 million on bailing out her boyfriend. When she started receiving even more flack for what she did Lamarr came out and said, “We are a couple, and I am the father of her youngest child… She has the money and she can do what she wants with it… People are just jealous because of how much she won and people want to see me locked up in jail.” Hopefully he was worth it.
After all Marie did for him you won’t believe how Lamarr is spending the money. Find out by clicking ‘Next.’
Boyfriend Misusing the Money
Besides the sprawling plantation style house and new cars that Marie Holmes bought, she was determined to use her money for the betterment of her children. While this ideal was met with a hiccup when she spent almost a fourth of her money on bailing out her boyfriend, she tried to turn her life around and donate to good causes.
However, it seems that her partner didn’t have the same idea. There were reports of Lamarr McDow misusing the money. Women on social media recorded videos saying that he was a cheater, and that he was using Marie Holmes’ money to pay for the rich neighborhood women to perform inappropriate acts on him. While this was never confirmed nor denied, there were some women set on making Lamarr McDow look even worse.
Would Marie shell out more money? Find out by clicking ‘Next.’
Paying Off Mistresses
When light was shed on the whole mistress situation, things seemed to get a little rocky between Marie Holmes and Lamarr McDow. Some thought that they would finally be calling it quits, but she decided to stick by him once again. Since Marie Holmes has children with him she wanted to try her best to keep their family together.
Many people think that Marie Holmes actually paid off the mistresses that Lamarr McDow was involved with. To keep their family name from being trashed even further, throwing a little money their way was not beyond Marie Holmes. Since the mistresses weren’t heard of again, it could be very possible that she did pay them off.
All of Marie’s efforts were wasted. Find out why by clicking ‘Next.’
Going to Prison Anyway
Unfortunately, Marie Holmes just can’t catch a break. Even though she spent $21 million on bail for Lamarr McDow, he is still going to prison. He’s going to be in the slammer for seven years. This time, the charges are due to drugs.
He was charged with conspiracy to distribute heroine. This is a very big charge, and Lamarr McDow is definitely going to be serving some time before he can be on parole. What a disappointment that must have been to Marie after spending so much on someone. It’s a figurative slap in the face.
Why did Marie Holmes have such a hard time? Find out why by clicking ‘Next.’
Harsh Feedback
What Marie didn’t realize was that everything she did was going to be blasted in the public eye. The stories online became increasingly negative, but the comments were worse. People were commenting on all of the online stories, and her social media accounts, about how her decision was stupid and immature.
Most women chided Marie Holmes, telling her that a man who lets her waste her fortune on bailing him out of jail is not someone she should want to be with. She soon became a viral story, her each and every move being analyzed. Throughout all the feedback and comments, Marie stood by her lover, and they remained a strong force.
Was that negative media coverage Marie’s fault? Click ‘Next’ to learn more.
Adjusting to the Spotlight
Many look at Marie Holmes and chastise her for the decisions she has made. While her decisions have been anything but great, she isn’t all to be blamed here either. Unless you’re a celebrity, no one is used to having every choice in their life broadcasted across the news.
Most of the unfortunate circumstances that came upon Marie Holmes and her money was because she was adjusting to the money and spotlight. She was the only lottery winner who wasn’t anonymous, so people were looking at her under a microscope to see what she would do with all of her money.
Click ‘Next’ to find out if Marie Holmes was as innocent as she seemed.
A Drug Possession Charge
While Marie Holmes’ boyfriend was charged multiple times with dealing drugs, it appeared that she wasn’t all innocent herself. In 2015, alongside with Lamarr, Marie Holmes’ found herself being charged with a drug possession charge.
When police showed up at her home, she was charged with the crime for the marijuana she possessed. All four of her children were home at the time this charge happened, and she made news once again. Her home was searched, and they found her in possession of less than an ounce of marijuana. She was not arrested, but she did have to pay a fine for the charge.
Did Marie turn her life around? Click ‘Next’ to find out!
Donating to Church
Marie Holmes’ life hadn’t been all rainbows after winning the lottery, but that didn’t stop her from thanking God. She was a woman who often attended her church services, and she thought it was time to pay back God.
With the millions of dollars she had left, Marie Holmes decided to donate roughly $700,000 dollars to her local church. This money was going to be used to help out the children in the area, and the church was going to expand its charity. The money was well received, and Marie Holmes felt good about her decision to donate to the church she loved.
Click ‘Next’ to see how Marie’s donation wasn’t enough.
Helping Form a Retreat
As time went on, Marie Holmes began talking to Pastor Kevin Matthews. Kevin Matthews came to Marie Holmes’ home on multiple occasions, meeting with her and providing prayer sessions. Holmes’ family would welcome this pastor to share spiritual messages, and give them church devotion when he came over.
Pastor Kevin Matthews approached Marie Holmes with talk of purchasing a large space of land. This purchased land was going to serve as the church’s new retreat facility, and was meant to help members become closer to God and Jesus Christ. The two supposedly talked about donating an amount anywhere between $1-2 million, and then they agreed that Marie Holmes would donate $1.5 million.
Would this donation appease God? Click ‘Next’ to find out!
The Lord’s Greedy Servant
Kevin Matthews and Marie Holmes allegedly made a verbal agreement to purchase the land with Holmes’ donated $1.5 million. Kevin Matthews wanted more, but Marie Holmes agreed upon that amount. As time went on, however, the money didn’t come through.
Kevin Matthews called Marie Holmes in hope of gathering the money she owed him. Instead, he was met with silence. Pastor Kevin Matthews became greedy, telling Marie Holmes that she promised to provide this money to better the church. He insisted that he owed her this, but Marie Holmes did not send over the money.
Click ‘Next’ to find out if it was really Marie who said no.
Family Controlling Money
When the money still didn’t come, Pastor Kevin Matthews became impatient. He reached out to Marie Holmes again, but instead was met with the voice of Marie’s aunt. Marie’s aunt was the chief executive officer of the lottery winner’s newly formed charity, and she took the opportunity to help out with her finances.
When Kevin Matthews demanded the money, Marie’s aunt was astonished that a pastor would even ask for such a large donation. She prodded the pastor and asked him if Marie had promised the money to him. Apparently being a man of his word, since he’s a pastor, he chose not to lie. He told Marie’s aunt that she had never said the word “promise,” but that the verbal agreement was there.
Find out what happens when they refused to donate by clicking ‘Next.’
The Jaw Dropping Law Suit
While Holmes believed the money donation was something that would be swept under the rug, they were astonished in early 2016 when a lawsuit came instead. Marie Holmes suddenly found herself on the wrong end of a $10 million lawsuit.
While the allegedly agreed upon amount was just $1.5 million, Kevin Matthews was suing for a far greater amount. He believed that he was owed more money because of what Marie Holmes had put him through during the whole experience.
Was the pastor insane? Click ‘Next’ to read why he filed a lawsuit.
Kevin Matthews’ Reasoning
Kevin Matthews was suing for far more than chump change, and the lawsuit became a viral story. He stated that he didn’t want some huge amount of money, he was just needing what was promised and owed to him. The whole experience was very stressful for Kevin Matthews, and he claimed that he had to increase the dosing of his antidepressant and antianxiety medications.
Because of the distress this situation with Marie Holmes caused him, he decided to create a $10 million lawsuit to try and remedy things. Not only was the family shocked behind his reasoning, but he also became a villain in the viral stories. Pastors are generally known for being kind and giving, but this pastor was coming off as greedy and selfish.
Did the lawsuit hold any water? Click ‘Next’ to find out!
What the Lawyers Say
Pastor Kevin Matthews filed the lawsuit without a lawyer, but Marie Holmes had one is her arsenal. The lawsuit of Kevin Matthews was generally dismissed by many as frivolous, but it still had the family in shock.
Marie Holmes lawyer, Ruth Sheehan, was no stranger to the legal problems the Holmes family had gone through. However, when asked about the pastor’s large lawsuit, she dismissed it and said she didn’t know much about it. They didn’t let the lawsuit bother them in the limelight, but Ruth Sheehan must have had some type of plan up her sleeve. The lawsuit wasn’t heard of much after the end of 2016, and the update on what happened is still up in the air.
The lawsuit really had no grounds. Click ‘Next’ to read what we think happened.
Lawsuit Unfounded
The lawsuit really didn’t make a lot of sense. Why would Marie Holmes decide to donate over a million dollars to someone she had hardly known? The church she had been going to for years only received $700,000 from her, so giving Mathews so much money seemed pretty hard to believe.
It would seem that the lawyers of Marie Holmes were probably right when they said that the lawsuit was seen as frivolous. Either Marie Holmes did some type of payoff, or it was settled away from the media because we don’t know what happened after the lawsuit was filed.
The story doesn’t end here. Click ‘Next’ to learn what happens next!
Controversial Lottery Winner
Marie Holmes may just be the most controversial lottery winner the world has seen. While her struggling story of being a young single mom to four children wooed the nation, her façade quickly came tumbling down. Her fiancé’s many arrests, and being known as a drug dealer, quickly snuffed out her sweetheart image to the press.
Her money was becoming less and less as time went on, and the things she spent it on were often considered wrong. Marie Holmes found herself becoming multiple viral stories, and she was painted as someone who was too immature to handle her money. The lottery winner was obviously overwhelmed with going from nothing to everything, and she didn’t know how to manage money. She gave up her education to become a young mom, so her financial skills were nonexistent.
You won’t believe where Marie showed up. Click ‘Next’ to find out.
More Money, More Problems
Marie Holmes was out of her element. With the large sum of money, she was met with many problems. She found herself with a strained relationship with her boyfriend turned fiancé, problems with her mother, and her money disappearing faster than she could imagine.
The lottery winner decided to seek help from a kind source who was eager to show her the ropes of managing money. She appeared on Fix My Life, where the host, Iyanla, tried to mend the relationship between Marie and her mother. Even though Marie had helped provide for her mother after winning the large sum of money from the lottery, she didn’t feel she could please her. Iyanla worked to help their relationship, and gave Marie advice on keeping her financials locked down tight.
More on how Iyanla helped Marie and her family in ways she could never imagine. Click ‘Next’.
A Lotto Drama
In case you’re not familiar with the show, Iyanla: Fix My Life is a reality show owned by the Oprah Winfrey Network where the host, Iyanla Vanzant tries to help different people overcome all kinds of problems they are faced with in life. The life coach meets with her guests at their homes while she tried to bring a new and fresh angle to an existing situation. She also keeps the audience updated on her guests’ progress.
The episode which featured Marie Holmes is named ‘Lotto Drama’ where she tries to help the single mom of four who might not be struggling financially anymore but is indeed struggling with other personal issues in her life after her big win. Marie’s life has become chaotic since winning the lottery and Iyanla is there to help her see things in different perspectives.
Will the famous mentor be able to save Marie, who was once a struggling single mother? Click ‘Next’ to find out.
Trying to Gain Clarity
When she went on the show Fix My Life, it was because she wanted to seek clarity in her life. Marie Holmes knew that she was not making the best choices with her money, and adjusting to being wealthy didn’t help her circumstances. Marie quickly found herself losing her grip on what she considered to be a normal and healthy life.
Going on the show was her way to try and adjust. While it isn’t as good as trying to get help from a licensed professional, it was a wake up call for what she needed to do to change her life around. Marie was hoping that the show could give her some clarity on how to adjust to her financial success.
When Iyanla finds out the truth about Marie’s property, she is completely shocked. Click ‘Next’ to find out why.
Living On A Plantation
Iyanla really has heard it all. She has met with all kinds of people throughout her career and it seems like nothing can really shock the life coach. However, when she arrived at the eye-popping estate that Marie has purchased for her family, she immediately felt something was off. The energy was sitting right and when she found out why, she was speechless.
Iyanla felt uncomfortable and the reason was that she realized Marie’s new property was actually a plantation. She felt like it was crucial to call Holme’s attention in regards to her property’s history. She said: ‘I believe that every location has an energy…So, it was important for me to help Marie recognize and understand that as a black woman living on a plantation, there was an energy that she was dealing with, sitting in, living through—in addition to what was going on in her own personal life.’
Marie’s childhood affected her decision making. How? Click ‘Next’ to learn more.
A Slap In The Face
Marie’s series of reckless decisions weren’t just due to her winning. They were also due to the very complicated relationship she had with her mother growing up. Marie admitted that her mom, Fontella, slapped her in the face when she was growing up and till this day the emotional and physical pain still echoes. Marie has kept her emotions to herself for years, but it took a toll on the relationship she had with her mom.
In one of the interviews on the show, Marie was very candid about her past when she said that she never really understood why she was the only one of the children to get slapped in the face. This made her doubt her own mother’s intentions. She didn’t feel like she deserved to be treated that way. Iyanla took the time to explain Fontella why slapping another person in the face is simply degrading and humiliating. Fontella then expressed how sorry she was for everything.
Could the lottery have lasting effects? Click ‘Next’ to see what Iyanla thinks.
Maybe She’s Depressed
When Iyanla saw Marie on the show, she realized that something was off with her. Iyanla thought that Marie Holmes seemed very numb to all the circumstances in her life. It was like she had detached herself emotionally and physically because it was all too much to deal with.
Iyanla thought that perhaps Marie is depressed from all the change in her life. Money doesn’t fix everything, and Marie is a prime example that it can sometimes make things even worse. Iyanla said, “So many people believe that if they had a certain amount of money, they’d be able to live a certain way… Marie is a prime example that if you don’t know who you are, if you don’t have a strong sense of identity and well-being, all the money in the world is not going to fix how you see yourself and how you live.”
How did Marie’s mother help her daughter win after all? Click ‘Next’ to read about the unsettling truth.
Were The Numbers Random?
When people fill out a lottery card, they either choose completely random numbers or they choose numbers that are meaningful to them in hopes to win the jackpot. As it turns out, the numbers on Marie’s ticket were chosen very carefully and they were everything but random. So who was responsible for those strong winning numbers?
While on the show, Fontella confessed that she was very selective with the numbers. She said: ‘I kept dreaming about your brother that we lost..His birthday, he was the third child, he’d have been 25 that year. Those were the numbers.’ Needless to say that Marie was shocked and overwhelmed when she found out this spine-chilling truth about the ticket that changed her life around.
Did Marie end up happy? Click ‘Next’ to see what she’s doing now.
Money Doesn’t Solve All Problems
It’s easy to say that Marie Holmes learned a lot from winning the lottery. She isn’t as rich as she was when she won, but chances are she still has a good arsenal in her savings. Considering that the lawsuit had not been settled yet, let’s hope her money isn’t gone if she owes the $10 million to the pastor.
Marie Holmes found out shortly after winning that money was not going to solve all her problems. Her tumultuous relationship with her fiancé, Lamarr, continued, and she struggled with her need to try and please her mother. Money couldn’t fix broken relationships, and it couldn’t fix the emotional problems she was experiencing throughout the whole ordeal. While the money did help assure her children’s future, she realized that you should know how to manage money correctly to keep yourself afloat. Hopefully the young mom learned how to effectively manage her money and continue to provide for her family. As of now, Marie Holmes is trying to stay out of the news for awhile to live her life as a stay at home mom.
That Was The Last One! Check These Cool Stories Below! |
A nurse practitioner describes what it’s like on the front lines.
2. Know the facts — and the fictions.
Read up on common concerns and be ready to discuss what they might be missing.
“Stand firm. Repeat the scientific evidence. Educate yourself on the antivax arguments and have very specific responses to any of these mistruths that patients will throw at you. Be prepared to accept that some people are as thick as 2 short planks and very selfish but will be straight back for help when their child is sick. And you will be there for them without question.”
General Practitioner
“Try to explain the risks without aggressiveness and the science behind the benefits. Also present the facts of the initial anti-vax reports and why they are not reliable sources.“
Thoracic Surgeon
“Parents will often ask about specific vaccines, so it’s important to have specific answers. Just saying ‘all vaccines are good’ is not, in my experience, convincing.“
Registered Nurse
“Especially with new laws coming in I let parents know if they plan to wait to the very last minute to vaccinate before school entry requires them, it will be not only more traumatizing to their child but also higher risks for side effects. It’s all about tone, approach, and making the parents feel like you respect their decision as a parent.”
Pediatric Nurse |
0 Law center finds 21 hate groups in Washington state
There are nearly 900 hate groups across the country, according to a new report that monitors hate groups and extremists in the U.S.
>> Read more trending news
The Southern Poverty Law Center defines a hate group as having "beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics."
The group found that 21 of those groups are from Washington state including four groups that identified as white nationalists, two neo nazi groups, and two Ku Klux Klan groups. However, the size of each group is not clear.
Five of the groups are in Western Washington. See SPLC’s map here.
Here are the states with the highest and lowest numbers of hate groups, according to the SPLC:
Highest California - 79
Florida - 63
Texas - 55
New York - 47
Virginia - 42
Lowest Wyoming - 2
New Mexico - 2
Vermont - 1
North Dakota - 1
Rhode Island - 1
The report says in 2016, there were 130 Ku Klux Klan groups and 193 black separatist groups active nationwide.
In 2011, the groups peaked at more than 1,000 active hate groups before decreasing to 784 in 2014. Last year's 917 was part of an increase.
The SPLC says the list was compiled using hate group publications and websites, citizen and law enforcement reports, field sources and news reports. Groups that appear in the center of states represent statewide groups.
Hate group activities can include criminal acts, marches, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafleting or publishing.
This report comes after Heather Heyer, 32, was killed in Charlottesville, Virginia, while counter-protesting during a “Unite the Right” rally organized by white supremacist groups.
James Alex Fields Jr., 20, is charged with second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding and one count related to leaving the scene of where he is accused of plowing into the counterprotesters.
© 2019 Cox Media Group. |
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Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was in Consett on Friday where he called on the Government to halt the roll out of Universal Credit.
Mr Corbyn met Citizens Advice staff who are preparing for the new benefits scheme to start next month in the area.
He listened to claimants’ problems as he talked through the issue in Geraldine’s Cafe over egg, chips and beans with a steaming coffee.
Mr Corbyn said many legitimate claimants did not have access to a computer but were being told to go online to access Universal Credit.
(Image: PA)
“The Government has a great opportunity on Wednesday week, which is the Budget,” he said.
“Why don’t they say: ‘We have looked at it, we have listened, we have heard the hardship, we are going to pause the roll out?’”
Mr Corbyn said there should then be consultations with experts including from Citizens Advice.
“We must pause and fix Universal Credit now, before millions of people are made worse off,” he added.
(Image: PA)
Mr Corbyn also met with local Labour MP Laura Pidcock, who has backed calls for the Government to pause the rollout of the new benefit system.
The Labour leader then went on a walkabout around Consett, where he posed for a picture with 18-month-old Callum Smith from Lanchester.
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Mr Corbyn knelt down by the chilly-looking toddler’s pushchair, and as the little boy did not smile for the cameras, he said: “Callum looks a bit sad here.”
There was laughter as he said: “Callum’s against Universal Credit too.”
Mr Corbyn was also pictured ordering a cheese and onion pasty from Greggs and standing outside the Barry’s Bargain store. |
Twenty years ago, on July 8, 1994, Kim Il Sung suddenly died – 17 days before what would have been the first inter-Korean summit. The weeks leading up to Kim’s death – even his funeral itself – were rare moments of opportunity missed by South Korea and the United States. Over two decades, he was first succeeded by his son, Kim Jong Il, until his death in December 2011, and then by his grandson, Kim Jong Un. However one assesses Kim Jong Un, present DPRK regime dynamics and the North’s intentions toward the South, the lost opportunities of a generation ago could once again present themselves. The junior Kim could find himself in a position to effect dramatic shifts in the trajectory of the North’s strategic policies, much as was the opportunity of his grandfather upon whose legacy he stands.
As I wrote for NK News in 2012, I met Kim Il Sung in his final weeks as part of a delegation of former heads of state and government led by a Washington-based NGO, the Summit Council for World Peace.* In April 1994, he appeared in reasonably good health for a man of 82. However, I later learned the North Korean leader suffered from heart disease** and that he knew he may not have much longer to live. By this point, most of Kim’s power had been assumed by his son, who evidently had complete control over domestic policy, but the father made the key decisions on the DPRK’s relations with South Korea, China, Russia, Japan, and the U.S., which were critical for its foreign policy.
THE GREAT LEADER’S LAST DAYS
Kim Il Sung knew that only he could make the strategic changes in North Korea’s relationships with the South, as well as with the U.S. and Japan. This could not be left for his son to attempt after his demise. When I met Kim, he spoke fondly of Kim Jong Il, calling him a filial son who daily tape-recorded reports on what was happening in the country because his father had difficulty reading. But only the founder of the North Korean state could change the trajectory of the country’s relations with its neighbors so that the entire leadership and population would be obliged to follow.
In his final years, Kim Il Sung had seen the collapse of the Soviet Union (preceded by the USSR’s recognition of the ROK), China’s establishment of diplomatic relations with South Korea, and the rise of the DPRK nuclear issue into crisis proportions by May 1994. He was quite aware that China, led by Deng Xiaoping, had embarked on a serious economic transformation creating a different socialist system than the communism of the past, where central economic control was loosened but the communist party retained political control. He observed that while communism in Eastern Europe collapsed in 1989, the party remained in power in China. He likely realized he could not have his son inherit an uncertain and unstable international environment if these trends continued without the North undertaking its own dramatic policy initiatives to ensure its survival, in a new era, continuing socialism with DPRK characteristics but accompanied by careful economic reforms.
Fall 1990 saw the mutual efforts of Japan and the North to improve their relations at a high-level, which bore little fruit. A year later, came the landmark “Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-aggression and Exchanges and Cooperation between South and North” (Basic Agreement), which remains a viable foundation upon which to build future inter-Korean relations.
By 1993, the gravity of the nuclear issue caused the United States to begin its first ongoing high-level diplomatic engagement with North Korea, represented by Amb. Robert Gallucci. From my 1994 meeting with Kim Il Sung, it did not appear he had detailed knowledge of the DPRK’s nuclear program and was dependent on others to inform him. Publicly, he denied their program had anything other than peaceful intentions, and that the use of nuclear weapons would only destroy the entire Korean Peninsula. However, Kim was shrewd enough to realize he could turn a brewing crisis into a strategic opportunity.
CARTER INTERVENES
From 1991, North Korea had issued several invitations to former President Jimmy Carter to visit Pyongyang. Each time Carter sought to accept the invitation the State Department shot down the idea, whether it was James Baker or Warren Christopher. Finally, in early June 1994, Carter made another appeal to President Clinton. Vice President Al Gore interceded for Carter and obtained Clinton’s reluctant approval for Carter to make the trip as long as he did so in a private capacity.
When Carter arrived in Pyongyang in mid-June at the height of the nuclear crisis, he built on the foundation of a discussion held a week earlier between scholar Selig Harrison and Kim Il Sung that broached the idea of freezing the North’s nuclear program in exchange for proliferation-resistant light-water reactors. To Carter’s surprise, Kim agreed to shut down the program in exchange for the LWRs, as long as the U.S. compensated the North for “lost energy production” through the provision of heavy fuel oil. Moreover, Kim agreed to meet with South Korea’s President Kim Young Sam for the first-ever inter-Korean summit.
With the assistance of the Summit Council, Carter fortunately brought a CNN film crew to Pyongyang, which enabled him to go live on international television to announce he had arrived at an agreement with Kim Il Sung that defused the nuclear crisis. Carter’s announcement also prevented the planned U.S. dispatch of 10,000 additional troops, along with stealth fighters, long-range bombers, an additional carrier battle group to the region and the evacuation of American civilians from the South. Carter’s visit preemptively limited the Clinton administration’s policy options, making a military response not credible and ensuring Russian and Chinese resistance to UN Security Council sanctions. Moreover, Carter in effect was telling the world that Kim Il Sung was a reasonable man who accepted a nuclear freeze, and that negotiations with the paramount leader in any society were preferable to confrontation and heightened tensions. Carter personally believed, as did many others (however reluctantly), that his visit prevented a second Korean War. Carter believed that power should be subordinated to diplomacy in solving conflicts among nations.
When Carter crossed the DMZ back to South Korea, he met with President Kim Young Sam, who readily accepted the proposal to hold a summit with Kim Il Sung, which was soon scheduled for July 25, 1994. In the meantime, the U.S. formally confirmed with the DPRK Carter’s agreement with the North Korean leader and began a months-long negotiation culminating with the October 1994 Agreed Framework and the establishment of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO). This agreement held, with difficulty, through 2002, when it finally fell apart due mutual accusations of non-adherence to its terms.
The immediate aftermath of Carter’s visit was highly auspicious for South Korea. For Kim Young-sam, a historical opportunity had fallen into his lap. He was to become the first South Korean president to meet with the North Korean leader. If Kim Il Sung was able to change the strategic trajectory of the North’s relations with the United States, a successful inter-Korean summit could conceivably yield numerous mutual benefits leading to ongoing inter-Korean engagement, exchange and commercial activity.
DEATH OF AN AGREEMENT
On July 7, my colleague, Antonio Betancourt, Summit Council’s secretary general, was in Pyongyang to discuss details with North Korean officials of opening an office there that had been agreed upon in principle. The next day he was scheduled to meet with Secretary Kim Yong Sun, the No. 3 figure in the North, to sign the agreement. However, the next morning, Kim’s staff people informed him that the meeting with Kim Yong Sun could not take place at that time. So Dr. Betancourt departed for Beijing at noon on July 8, but upon arrival at the airport, he was met by DPRK embassy officials who told him that President Kim Il Sung had died overnight. Now he knew why his scheduled meeting that day with Kim Yong Sun was cancelled.
Betancourt remained in Beijing and went to the North Korean embassy to offer his condolences. But shortly afterward, he unexpectedly received an invitation to attend Kim Il Sung’s funeral where he would become likely the only U.S. citizen to attend. I was in Washington where I alerted CNN International that Betancourt would be in Pyongyang for the funeral. Since no foreign TV crews were permitted to cover the funeral, CNN got hold of Betancourt by phone in Pyongyang (calls to the North in those days had to be routed through Canada), and he was interviewed live by Larry King, describing the atmosphere in Pyongyang on the day of the funeral.*** My colleague, who had met Kim Il Sung five times, later conveyed his condolences directly to Kim Jong Il in a reception after the funeral.
The inter-Korean summit scheduled for July 25 obviously could not take place, but it did not mean a summit was impossible for later that year. Kim Young-sam had a choice to make: With the North Korean leader’s death he could use this historic moment of opportunity and do the correct diplomatic courtesy – offer condolences for the person he was to meet in the summit – or he could assume, as his key advisors argued, that Kim Jong Il would not last long, and appease right-wing voters, mirroring their hatred of the North. Kim Young-sam not only refused to offer condolences, but his prime minister labeled the deceased North Korean president a “war criminal,” the ROK government blamed Kim Il Sung for starting the Korean War, and the military was put on high alert. Naturally, North Korea went ballistic and the possibility of building mutual trust at that time dissipated.**** At the United Nations, flags were at half-mast, and President Clinton and other world leaders extended their condolences, but Kim Young-sam not only declined to, but barred condolence visits to the North and even their private expression by citizens.
Alternatively, he could have made a statement along these lines:
“President Kim Il Sung, whom I was scheduled to meet in 17 days, has unexpectedly died. I therefore will travel to Pyongyang to pay my respects. This decision is something that transcends politics but is a most natural deed between people of the same ethnicity and between compatriots.”
Kim Young-sam should have gone to Pyongyang for the funeral and changed the trajectory of South Korea’s relations with the North. There, he at least would have had a courtesy visit with Kim Jong Il and received a commitment that the inter-Korean summit, after sufficient time to prepare it, would take place in the near future. Instead, because Kim Jong Il did not inherit his father’s posts, the ROK president presumed the summit was aborted and felt cheated. His actions in July 1994 rubbed salt in the North’s wound. The lasting personal impact upon Kim Jong Il of Seoul’s offense against his late father should not be underestimated. And, it blatantly showed how the ROK’s northern policy was submerged in domestic politics.
EPILOGUE: A LESSON FOR TODAY
In his final years, Kim Il Sung observed that Deng Xiaoping’s reforms were transforming China without the communist party’s loss of power. There were strong indications the elder Kim wanted to put North Korea on a new track to be led by his son, emulating certain Chinese reforms but with North Korean characteristics. Had Kim Young-Sam been attuned to the historic opportunities at hand, and had the Clinton administration appreciated the strategic benefits of encouraging North Korean reform, together they could have fostered a supportive environment where reforms could be undertaken by North Korea’s leader. If the Agreed Framework and KEDO had succeeded, who knows where potential DPRK reforms could have led? Kim Il Sung had already instructed Kim Jong Il to negotiate their nuclear program – their only real card – in exchange for significant political and economic benefits. Yet, after the elder Kim’s death, the Kim Young-sam government wrongly believed the North would quickly collapse and chose not to encourage the survival of its existing leadership to potentially engage in reforms.
Kim Il Sung’s untimely death and Kim Young-sam’s failure to realize the strategic opportunity that was at hand have haunted inter-Korean relations over the past 20 years, which remain filled with mistrust. Tense relations briefly ameliorated only after Kim Jong Il’s summit with Kim Young-sam’s successor, Kim Dae-jung, in June 2000. Grandson Kim Jong Un, has yet to meet even his first foreign leader. But a summit with his South Korean counterpart, President Park Geun-hye, could once again provide the opportunity to change the tragic and sorrowful trajectory of inter-Korean relations.
* The Summit Council for World Peace, an association of former heads of state and government, was founded in 1987 by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon (who was born in northern Korea).
** The severity of Kim Il Sung’s heart disease, largely unknown in June 1994, is even part of the story line in the currently airing SBS K-Drama, “Doctor Stranger,” popular in the South and also the North.
*** Betancourt, joining by phone a July 20 panel on CNN’s Larry King Live that included former U.S. ambassador to Seoul Donald Gregg, Syngman Rhee (Korean-American leader), and Dr. Stephen Linton (who accompanied Rev. Billy Graham to North Korea), told King that DPRK officials wanted to follow what Kim Il Sung had agreed with Jimmy Carter, but were furious that Kim Young Sam made it a crime for South Koreans to express condolences.
***Bradley K. Martin, in his Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (2004), writes that Kim Jong Il, in a recorded conversation with pro-DPRK Korean-Japanese officials in 1998, “…called Kim Young-sam “a filthy dirt-bag.” “One thing I feel sorry for him,” the North Korean leader told his visitors, “is that he surrounded himself with bad advisors. When Leader Kim Il-sung passed away, Kim Young-sam could not attend the funeral because of his advisors. I hear Kim himself regrets having bad helpers. When Leader Kim Il-sung died, I discussed with Secretary Kim Yong-sun what to do if Kim Young-sam wanted to attend the funeral, and made a detailed plan to receive him. But he did not come, and we were very upset with him. If he had any wisdom, he would have come to the funeral. If he had come, he might have taken over North Korea and become president of a united Korea. What an idiot!” [p. 510] |
OVIEDO, Fla. -- A Florida man spent 90 days in jail after police officers who stopped him for driving without headlights said white powder found in his car was cocaine.
Karlos Cashe walked out of jail last week after lab results determined the powder in the handyman's car was actually drywall.
Body camera video of the incident shows Cashe, 57, telling the officer in Oviedo that he didn't realize the lights weren't on and apologizing for the misunderstanding.
He denies having anything illegal in his car when an officer asks. Cashe says he repeatedly told officers the substance was drywall.
But after running a check they found he was on probation for marijuana and cocaine charges in 2015. Cashe says a K-9 alerted on his vehicle and an officer's field test was positive for cocaine.
Court records show he was denied bond because he was accused of violating probation.
Oviedo police told CBS affiliate WKMG prosecutors sent the substance to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for lab testing. When the results came back on May 16, they showed that substance was negative for any kind of drugs.
It took another month until Cashe was released from jail on June 19, the station reports. He told WKMG he blames racial profiling for the incident and that he's looking into a way to be compensated for the three months of work he missed while he was being held in jail.
"I was profiled. It wasn't the first time, it just was just the worst of those times," Cashe said.
The Oviedo Police Department told the station it plans to reevaluate its field testing procedures. They say their field test kits are 99 percent accurate.
"I was going to jail for something that night, and what it was they decided it would be cocaine," Cashe said. |
Rumors send Sauber’s Lewis Hamilton to Band A team in major trade.
Negotiations Ongoing
Sources close to Sauber’s management confirm that talks about a potential trade are ongoing, however would not comment on the practical details of such a deal. It’s likely that Hamilton won’t go cheap; one possible scenario would see Sauber receiving two drivers and a small amount of credits in exchanged for the best rated racer on the grid.
Mercedes the Prime Suspects
Earlier this week rumours surfaced that Mercedes are working on securing a partnership with another team, and the recent leak of the Sauber/Hamilton trade seems to confirm this rumour. If the connection is indeed true, we’ll see the current Mercedes drivers Valtteri Bottas and Nico Hülkenberg in Saubers for 2016. The question now is who will partner Hamilton at Mercedes?
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× Illinois Leads Project To Buy High Speed Locomotives For 5 States
(KTVI) – The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) named Illinois to lead the purchase of high speed rail locomotives for five states: Illinois, California, Michigan, Missouri and Washington.
The next-generation diesel locomotives are designed for high speed rail.
With approval from the partnering states, the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) will lead the effort to purchase at least 35 locomotives.
The FRA has allocated $808 million to build the next generation of passenger rail equipment, including 35 new locomotives and 130 bi-level rail cars.
IDOT will manage and oversee the procurement, involve the other states in planning and implementing the procurement process, develop a detailed project plan, and coordinate the review of the procurement among the involved states and FRA.
Last year, IDOT was part of a multi-state procurement of the 130 next-generation bi-level rail cars for high-speed service, an effort led by the state of California.
That procurement resulted in the selection of Nippon-Sharyo, which is building the rail cars from its plant in Rochelle, Illinois, including the 88 cars to be used on Midwest high-speed corridors. The Rochelle plant opened in 2012 and has created 250 jobs in Illinois.
Illinois has been working on a Chicago to St. Louis high speed rail line.
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Dear Rapidian readers,
This is my “swan song” letter, as I prepare to leave office after 12 years as Mayor of Grand Rapids and eight years before that as Third Ward City Commissioner.
I leave office deeply satisfied at the direction Grand Rapids is going and totally enthusiastic about the new leadership that will take it there. We have come through some tough times as a city in the past 12 years. The recession knocked the under-pinnings out of many citizens’ household income, it forced business shutdowns and it resulted in a 27% reduction in municipal workforce. Yet Grand Rapids is an amazingly resilient city, made up of hard-working and innovative people, and we came through the recession stronger and better.
We are a people who understand the importance of protecting our natural resources. We cleaned up our river, planted thousands of trees, began a mode shift from the private car to public transportation, biking and walking and launched a renewable energy future.
We are a people who care about our neighbor. When one of us is struggling the rest of us step up to support and encourage.
We are a people who care about children. We support public education, early childhood development systems and after school programs. We pull together, we sacrifice, to see that every child who wants to go to college can go to college.
Who wouldn’t want to be Mayor of a great city like Grand Rapids? We are a city recognized nationally– even globally– for innovation, commitment to the environment, compassion and cooperation.
I leave office without regrets. That’s not to say I wouldn’t have done a few things differently. I surely would have! But this city has risen to a vision, a progressive vision of health, security and prosperity for all. And– I still pinch myself when I say it– I have been its Mayor. What a gift you gave me. |
You probably didn't consider basing your Kentucky Derby bets on artificial intelligence -- but maybe you should have.
The artificial intelligence company Unanimous tested its new software platform, UNU, on last weekend's Kentucky Derby, as reported by TechRepublic. Twenty participants, convened by the company, first used the software to narrow the field of 20 horses down to four top picks. The participants then used UNU to predict the winning order -- and it turned out to be 100 percent correct.
1. Nyquist
2. Exaggerator
3. Gun Runner
4. Mohaymen
"I placed my $1 bet on the race at the Derby on Saturday and made $542.10 -- the odds of winning the superfecta [the top 4 finishers in order] were 540-1," TechRepublic reporter Hope Reese wrote. For comparison, none of the experts at Churchill Downs predicted the top four horses, let alone the top four horses in the correct order.
In a statement, Unanimous' chief information officer David Baltaxe said the whole process took the company's AI tool 20 minutes.
How does the system work? According to the company, the technology is built on a closed-loop system inspired by the insect swarm found in nature. The idea is that "many minds are better than one," therefore the act of pooling individual insights gives groups a better chance of reaching optimal decisions.
Although several prominent industry leaders remain wary of artificial intelligence, and a recent high-profile experiment with it went awry, the technology could revolutionize everything from smartphones to automobiles. In a recent 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll, more than half of Americans (53 percent) called society's quest to advance the field of artificial intelligence "important." |
If there was a question about whether we're headed for a second housing shock, that was settled last week with news that home prices have fallen a sixth consecutive month. Values are nearly back to levels of the Great Recession. One thing weighing on the economy is the huge number of foreclosed houses.
Many are stuck on the market for a reason you wouldn't expect: banks can't find the ownership documents.
Who really owns your mortgage?
Scott Pelley explains a bizarre aftershock of the U.S. financial collapse: An epidemic of forged and missing mortgage documents.
It's bizarre but, it turns out, Wall Street cut corners when it created those mortgage-backed investments that triggered the financial collapse. Now that banks want to evict people, they're unwinding these exotic investments to find, that often, the legal documents behind the mortgages aren't there. Caught in a jam of their own making, some companies appear to be resorting to forgery and phony paperwork to throw people - down on their luck - out of their homes.
In the 1930s we had breadlines; venture out before dawn in America today and you'll find mortgage lines. This past January in Los Angeles, 37,000 homeowners facing foreclosure showed up to an event to beg their bank for lower payments on their mortgage. Some people even slept on the sidewalk to get in line.
So many in the country are desperate now that they have to meet in convention centers coast to coast.
In February in Miami, 12,000 people showed up to a similar event. The line went down the block and doubled back twice.
Video: The next housing shock
Extra: Eviction reprieve
Extra: "Save the Dream" events
Dale DeFreitas lost her job and now fears her home is next. "It's very emotional because I just think about it. I don't wanna lose my home. I really don't," she told "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley.
"It's your American dream," he remarked.
"It was. And still is," she replied.
These convention center events are put on by the non-profit Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, which helps people figure what they can afford, and then walks them across the hall to bank representatives to ask for lower payments. More than half will get their mortgages adjusted, but the rest discover that they just can't keep their home.
For many that's when the real surprise comes in: these same banks have fouled up all of their own paperwork to a historic degree.
"In my mind this is an absolute, intentional fraud," Lynn Szymoniak, who is fighting foreclosure, told Pelley.
While trying to save her house, she discovered something we did not know: back when Wall Street was using algorithms and computers to engineer those disastrous mortgage-backed securities, it appears they didn't want old fashioned paperwork slowing down the profits.
"This was back when it was a white hot fevered pitch to move as many of these as possible," Pelley remarked.
"Exactly. When you could make a whole lotta money through securitization. And every other aspect of it could be done electronically, you know, key strokes. This was the only piece where somebody was supposed to actually go get documents, transfer the documents from one entity to the other. And it looks very much like they just eliminated that stuff all together," Szymoniak said.
Szymoniak's mortgage had been bundled with thousands of others into one of those Wall Street securities traded from investor to investor. When the bank took her to court, it first said it had lost her documents, including the critical assignment of mortgage which transfers ownership. But then, there was a courthouse surprise.
"They found all of your paperwork more than a year after they initially said that they had lost it?" Pelley asked.
"Yes," she replied.
Asked if that seemed suspicious to her, Szymoniak said, "Yes, absolutely. What do you imagine? It fell behind the file cabinet? Where was all of this? 'We had it, we own it, we lost it.' And then more recently, everyone is coming in saying, 'Hey we found it. Isn't that wonderful?'"
But what the bank may not have known is that Szymoniak is a lawyer and fraud investigator with a specialty in forged documents. She has trained FBI agents.
She told Pelley she asked for copies of those documents.
Asked what she found, Szymoniak told Pelley, "When I looked at the assignment of my mortgage, and this is the assignment: it looked that even the date they put in, which was 10/17/08, was several months after they sued me for foreclosure. So, what they were saying to the court was, 'We sued her in July of 2008 and we acquired this mortgage in October of 2008.' It made absolutely no sense."
Produced by Robert Anderson and Daniel Ruetenik |
Formula 1 veteran Rubens Barrichello is treating his debut outing in this weekend’s 24 Hours of Le Mans as a one-off for now, but would be open to an increased sports car program in the future.
The 45-year-old Brazilian will make his first start at Le Mans on Saturday in the latest chapter of his illustrious racing career which shows no signs of slowing down.
Barrichello holds the record for the most F1 starts, appearing in 322 races between 1993 and 2011 before enjoying stints in IndyCar and Stock Car Brasil, remaining active in the latter.
He will feature for Racing Team Nederland in the No. 29 Dallara P217 Gibson at Le Mans, and remains as competitive as ever, despite the chassis disadvantage in LMP2 this weekend.
“This year I got invited to do this, and I like the idea even though I could say, ‘OK, I could have been in an LMP1 car and this and that…’, but I think the way Jan Lammers put it to me was nice,” Barrichello said.
“You know me a little bit as far as setups are concerned, and I’ve been talking to Dallara for the whole week about why we’re not competitive and why they choose certain things, so we’ve been running a different package [in practice] to see how it goes.
“My target is to make the car as competitive as possible. We’ll see how it goes. I want the other guys to feel nice as well – Frits [van Eerd] and Jan – and I’m sure they’ll do their best to keep us on the lead lap.
“If a situation comes up with 23 hours to go and we’re still there, we might be in with a chance if you keep the car going.
“I love being with my friends and being able to do something with them – it might not be the most competitive way – but I am still very competitive and I will be doing my best.”
Le Mans will be Barrichello’s fourth 24-hour race following entries to the Rolex 24 at Daytona in 2013, 2015 and 2016, which he believes acted as a good springboard towards this weekend’s event at the Circuit de la Sarthe.
“I think that everyone who does Daytona dreams of doing Le Mans,” he said.
“Daytona is a great experience and I really enjoy being there. I like racing in the U.S.. The IMSA championship, for me, is quite a nice championship.
“But Le Mans is Le Mans. I felt like a Formula 1 driver when I came out of the paddock and had a lot of people around me. It’s nice.
“It must be nice for the public as well, and there’s a lot of people coming here from Brazil to get a good feeling for the race.”
While Barrichello has no immediate plans to increase his sports car commitments given his packed schedule in Stock Car Brasil, he did hint that a move into the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship would be of interest in the future.
“This is a one-off for now, and I haven’t spoken to anybody else, but I would be interested in looking at the IMSA championship,” Barrichello said.
“The family is a little bit more towards the U.S., so it would be interesting to look into that.”
Barrichello also said his maiden experience at Le Mans would help decide if he were to return to the race in the future.
“You never come in for just one time. If you like the restaurant, you come back and eat again,” he said.
Racing Team Nederland team boss Mark Koense spoke warmly of what Barrichello has brought to the squad for Le Mans, citing his experience and character as two key strengths.
“Rubens just adds so much. He adds a lot of profile to the team, he adds a lot of friendliness to the team, he’s very supportive,” Koense told Sportscar365.
“He brings a whole third perspective to what we are doing. He’s been doing Daytona last year, Formula 1 for ages.
“As always at Le Mans, when you have three drivers, no matter what, their combined speed is what your speed is. He brings to that not only his own speed, but his own point of views.” |
“To never die… And to conquer all. That is winning.” ―Illyria[src]
Illyria, also known as Illyria the Merciless, was one of the Old Ones, the powerful pure-bred demons that ruled Earth prior to and during the rise of humankind. In 2004, she reincarnated in the body of Winifred Burkle.
Upon her predestined resurrection, Illyria immediately went about her plan to unleash her army upon humanity, but these plans were thwarted when she discovered the destruction of her army. Lost and purposeless, and driven by the memories of Fred, Illyria struggled to find her place in the new world, and ultimately joined Team Angel in their fight.
However, after the reversal of the end of magic, Fred and Illyria were resurrected in London, with both sharing the same body.
Contents show]
Biography
Eons ago
Illyria was one of the legendary Old Ones that plagued the world before the time of man and was one of the most feared and worshiped in that time. She ruled over the area of modern California from her temple Vahla ha'nesh and commanded an Army of doom comprising thousands of demons, which she used to constantly make war on her rivals, as well as taking action on her own, such as when she destroyed the tribe of Eldre Koh so that the cult he belonged to would be disbanded after he was accused of the crime. She was loved and feared as few of the Old Ones were, so much so that she still had followers and acolytes in the modern day, arguably millions of years after her reign. When the Old Ones lost their claim and power over the world, Illyria was murdered by her rivals and her corpse was placed in a stone sarcophagus, her powers drained and placed in jewels embedded on her coffin. Her sarcophagus was placed in a mystical graveyard known as the Deeper Well along with the coffins of other Old Ones, to prevent her resurrection.
Prior to her death, Illyria planned her resurrection and revenge against the world. Illyria's army was locked in inside Vahla ha'nesh and the temple was put out of phase with our time-stream in order to keep it hidden. By unknown means, Illyria's sarcophagus would teleport itself back to California, where her Qwa Ha Xahn, her high priest, would resurrect her.
However, sometime in the passing centuries, the army was destroyed, leaving only dust in its place which caused Illyria to be confused and at a loss.
Wolfram & Hart
Illyria's resurrection was masterminded by her worshiper Knox, who chose Fred — with whom he had fallen in love — as the vessel for Illyria's reincarnation. However, due to geological changes and the continental shifting from place to place, the sarcophagus teleported outside of the United States. Somehow it was transported to U.S. soil, but it was held up at Customs at LAX airport. Knox plotted with Doctor Sparrow, who blackmailed Charles Gunn into using his restored knowledge of the laws to release the sarcophagus from Customs.
After its release, Knox had the sarcophagus delivered directly to Fred at Wolfram & Hart's science lab. In order to maintain his cover, Knox claimed the sarcophagus was impenetrable to lasers and imaging beams. When Fred touched one of the purple crystals embedded into the surface of the coffin, a gust of air (Illyria's essence) was released directly to her mouth. Instead of merely possessing Fred, Illyria manifestation was described as an infection that liquefied her organs, hardened her skin, and consumed her spirit. After hours of increasing agony, Illyria completely overtook Fred's body,[1] also absorbing Fred's memories (which she later likens to "sparks").[2]
With the aid of Knox, Illyria attempted to bring about the destruction of humankind by resurrecting her ancient army. Despite the best efforts of Angel, Spike, and Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, she managed to fight off all three of them and open the portal to where her army was waiting. But soon she discovered that the army was destroyed long ago. Lost and without purpose, Illyria agreed to learn how to adjust to the modern world with the help of Wesley, who was drawn to the ancient being that now occupied the body of his love. She spent her nights with the oft-drunk Wesley and her days wandering the corridors of Wolfram & Hart.
When Wesley mentioned to her that Gunn was trapped in Wolfram & Hart's holding dimension, Illyria opened a portal and rescued Gunn without hesitation, later noting the great debt that the group owes to her. In the process of finding Gunn, she destroyed eleven torture units, two troop carriers, an ice cream truck, eight "beautifully maintained" lawns, and "rendered useless" dozens of Wolfram & Hart employees, according to Marcus Hamilton. At this point, her pastimes included talking to plants and training with Spike (or, more accurately, beating him up while he tried to ask her how she felt when he hit her and recorded the details on a clipboard). Although she criticized Spike's adaptability, declaring adaptation to be a compromise, Illyria enjoyed beating him up, expressing her desire to keep him as a pet. On the other side, Spike (being immune to concussion damages and sort of masochistic) enjoyed as well his training with a goddess-like creature to improve his hand-to-hand combat skills.
Weeks afterward, Illyria's power became extremely unstable. To others, the Old One appeared to be going mad. In truth, Illyria was being thrown out of linear progression of the timeline, altering her perspective as her power sought a way to escape its shell. Initially, she killed Spike, Wesley, Lorne, and Angel in a confrontation, interpreting their actions as an attempt to kill her; however, during her time jumps she dragged an earlier version of Angel into the present, revealing what just took place before she detonated, potentially causing enough destruction to wipe out the continent. Fortunately, the explosion sent Angel backward in time to shortly before Illyria killed the others, allowing Angel to use his foreknowledge of their deaths to save his friends and calm Illyria down. Before Illyria could detonate again, Wesley used a Mutari generator to extract a large portion of her power, effectively ending the threat.[3]
As a result of the Mutari generator, Illyria was stripped of much of her super-strength, as well as her abilities to alter time. She grew bitter, withdrawn, and humiliated after the loss of her powers, which she considered a significant defeat, stating that "This fate is worse than death". Her primary emotional connection was with Wesley, who continued to help her adjust to the world. After recognizing Wesley's feelings for the "shell", Illyria wished to further explore Fred's relationship with Wesley; however, he rejected any possibility of accepting her in Fred's form. She also developed a connection with Spike, who related to her newfound situation and treated her with acceptance and dignity, communicating easily with her and helping her venture into the world. Spike also explained to her why Wesley was ignoring her after she masqueraded as Fred: she may consider herself extremely weakened, but for a lot of people, her ability to take on Fred's form and persona is her strongest ability due to the emotional ties everyone had to Fred. Spike also later invited Illyria to go demon hunting with him and she easily killed the demon with a kick.
After Team Angel received the recently attacked Drogyn, who believed Angel had been corrupted, Illyria was chosen to protect him. However, she was brutally beaten and humiliated by Hamilton, which fueled the Old One's extreme anger and motivated her to join the final battle against the Senior Partners.
Illyria, Spike, Wesley, Gunn, Lorne, Lindsey McDonald, and Angel each were tasked with eliminating the members of the Circle of the Black Thorn. After killing her targets, Izzerial and three human Black Thorns, promising to "make trophies from their spines," Illyria sought out Wesley and found him dying, having been stabbed by the demon warlock Cyvus Vail. Illyria admitted she came to help Wesley out of concern for him, and, perceiving his imminent death, she comforted the former Watcher by assuming Fred's form. Filled with unexpected and uncontrollable grief, Illyria violently dispatched Wesley's murderer, shattering his skull with a single punch — an action that did not begin to assuage her grief and left her with a strong desire to "do more violence." Her wish was granted when the Senior Partners sent their army against the surviving member of Angel's team; Illyria joined Angel, Gunn, and Spike in the final battle against the demon army sent by the Senior Partners to punish Angel.[4]
Fall of Los Angeles
“There's nothing human about her. She wants it! She's trying to force it... But there's nothing left but Illyria.” ―Noelle[src]
As punishment for Angel's attack, the Senior Partners condemned the entire city of Los Angeles to hell. In the chaos that ensued, Spike found what appeared to be Fred, only for her to transform back into Illyria. The new dimension was causing Illyria's powers to go out of control, and Fred's personality was seemingly surfacing at random in her body. As Spike and Illyria traveled through L.A., an ever-growing band of humans clung to them for protection, amongst them Jeremy Johns. Believing Fred to be vulnerable, Spike did his best to keep her in Illyria's form at all times to protect her from the carnage around them, denying her human contact and distracting her any way he could.
Spike and Illyria were eventually kidnapped by Non, a demon who absorbed power from humans. Non kept Illyria prisoner in a cage for over a month, before unsuccessfully trying to decapitate her. Illyria broke free and forcefully kissed Spike after hearing of his physical relationship with Spider. Spike was stunned by this action, but comforted Illyria by agreeing that 'she was his priority again.' Spike and Illyria battled Non and her minions, who were being controlled by a Sadecki Demon named Noelle. Noelle found herself unable to control Illyria because there was no humanity within her, and the manifestations of Fred were revealed to merely be Illyria attempting to be human. When Non began to draw power from Jeremy, Illyria quickly murdered him, a decision which horrified Spike. Becoming increasingly unstable due to her incertainty over whether or not she had done the right thing, Illyria began to skip through moments in time uncontrollably. With Non defeated, her minions began to follow Spike instead, who believed that their presence would encourage the mistrustful Illyria to remain in her demon form.
Illyria and Spike took Non's position as Demon Lords of Beverly Hills, with the other Lords too afraid of Illyria to attack them, using their new capacity as a cover to rescue innocents and evacuate them into the care of Connor, Nina Ash, and Gwen Raiden. Illyria's powers and mental state became increasingly erratic, and she battled Angel and his dragon when he tried to contact Spike. Spike told Angel that something was wrong with Illyria, and asked him to help her. Reuniting with the other members of Team Angel, Illyria reverted to Fred upon seeing Wesley, who had been returned to Earth in ghost form via his contract with Wolfram & Hart. She continued to alternate between personas, with "Fred" emerging when around those she cared about. Gunn — now an evil vampire — planned to capitalize on Illyria's instability. He wounded her in her Fred form before causing her revert back to her original, primordial form.
Gunn attempted to convince Illyria to rewind time so that the Fall of Los Angeles would not occur, but Illyria, desperate and frustrated at its inability to create order and having what it wanted, instead vowed to destroy time itself. It rampaged through Los Angeles, killing Groosalugg and many of Spike's minions, with Angel forming a plan to stop it. Telepath Betta George explained that Illyria believed its actions were what Fred would want; Angel then instructed George to fill Illyria's mind with Wesley and Spike's memories of Fred so that it could understand the person Fred really was. With Illyria momentarily stunned, the Senior Partners' army took the opportunity and brought it down. The dying Illyria was restored when the Senior Partners reversed time to undo Angel's death at the hands of Gunn.
When the world goes back right before the fall, Illyria regained her human body and continued to fight along the team. She realized that she was the cause of the downfall of Wesley because she took the one thing he loved, Fred, and mourned that Wesley was now gone forever. Spike described her new comportment as human.
Gunn's guardian
“Charles. You're awake. Healed. Good. I felt remorse for your situation. But what you did to me... She trusted you in the past, and it led to her death. I trusted you, and I almost fell. Her influence makes me want to protect you. But she is weak. That is why she died. I have to kill you, Charles.” ―Illyria[src]
After the temporal fold, Illyria disappeared only to reappear guarding the comatose Gunn from the former Lord of LA, threatening them with the head of one the other Lords. Spike stated that she had continued to become even more unstable than before. Illyria continued to protect Gunn throughout his hospitalized period. She apparently never left the hospital's grounds, and remained close to Gunn, watching over him. Her presence there was known by "everyone", according to Gunn himself. Illyria managed to save Gunn's life at least several times before his awakening.
Illyria found herself protecting Gunn from a T-Rex-like demon, at one point. This attack turned out to be a part of a larger plan, constructed by the resurrected Non. As Illyria fought off the T-Rex, Non made her way into Gunn's hospital room and used her unique demon abilities to heal him. Gunn awoke, and struck Non, throwing her, and himself, out of his room's window. The two landed safely, and Non tried to convince Gunn to join her; she drained the life of a human during her speech. This caused Illyria to intervene, telling Non to "Stop it." It is revealed that Illyria defeated the T-Rex, and does the same to Non (throwing her into the air with all of her strength).
Illyria turned to Gunn and explained that she is glad for his awakening. Yet she remembered the awful things Gunn had done. Illyria revealed that she wished to kill Gunn; he agreed, as Gunn felt that he deserved to die, and felt that Illyria will get comfort by ending his life. However, Illyria could not carry out the task of murdering Gunn, because of Spike's and Wesley's memories of Fred that were now within her own head.
Although Illyria restrained herself from "ending" Gunn, she wrote a list of ways to kill him on the walls of his hospital room; she said that she would consult the list if she was pushed. Illyria also took it upon herself to carry Gunn into the hospital and dress him. She spoke with Gunn once again and said that she could not comprehend how Fred was "worshiped" by others without threatening them. Illyria said that she tried to live up to Fred's face, yet failed, and felt that she will never be able to live up to it at all. Illyria went on, explaining to Gunn that killing him would not solve anything and that she wouldn't like doing it very much.
“I am infected with humanity.” ―Illyria[src]
Gunn and Illyria connected, relating to each others' faults and weaknesses. Gunn wished to be more human, whereas Illyria wanted nothing more than to rid herself of humanity. Illyria talked on with him, stating that it was too confusing to care. She also questioned Gunn, asking where she was to go now that he is awake. Gunn and Illyria decided to be a duo and help one another through their life struggles. The two stopped at "Mosaic Rehabilitation Facility for the Supernatural", where they drop Non off, trapping her there, powerless and harmless.
As Gunn and Illyria approached their car, he convinced her that human passions make people stronger fighters. This sparked an interest in Illyria, and she told Gunn that she wanted to learn how to drive the car. After some mental debate, Gunn agreed and allowed Illyria the chance to drive for the first time. As they readied for the ride ahead of them, Illyria stated that she was looking forward to learning more about her new humanity. The two set off together, searching for the humanity within them both.
World without magic
Following the battle with Rowant, Illyria apparently vanished, although Gunn expressed confidence that she was still around,[5] which proved to be correct. During her time on her own, she had managed to find a place in a Magic Council relating to the Siphon and other large-scale threats. Her abilities remained undiminished. Illyria easily teleported Buffy Summers to her Mystical Council in from San Francisco to Los Angeles, abruptly forcing her to join her.[6]
Illyria introduced herself to Buffy, who knew of her existence from Angel and Spike, and learned that Buffy already knew two members of the Council: D'Hoffryn and Eldre Koh, the latter of whom Illyria had promised the identity of his jailer in ancient times. Illyria convinced Buffy to join their campaign to put an end to the activities of Severin, known by demons as "the Siphon", whose rapid absorption of magic made him impervious even to Illyria's abilities over time and space. The team confronted Severin at his new home in Silver Lake, where he was prepared for their arrival.[7]
Illyria, Buffy, and Eldre Koh fought Severin but were easily overpowered, as their foe had been gaining strength. Severin tried to absorb Illyria's abilities, but she teleported away just in time and rescue her allies moments later as well. They returned to the Council's base of operations, and there Buffy revealed Severin's intentions: he manipulated the Council, and expected them to send Illyria to defeat him; he planned to absorb her time traveling abilities and go back in time to prevent his girlfriend's death.
Soon after Severin's plot was made known, he attacked the Council, having followed Illyria and the others. Illyria reasoned that she would confront him herself, and would teleport Buffy and Eldre Koh to her at the last moment, before Severin absorbed her abilities so that they could slay him. She appeared outside to Severin then and began to battle with him. As expected, he overpowered her once more, and began to absorb her abilities, but Illyria teleported Buffy and Koh, as planned—only they were teleported to the wrong place, Severin apparently interfering with her skills. Illyria screamed as Severin continued draining her of her power.
Once Severin was finished, Illyria lost consciousness. She awoke to Buffy and Koh standing over her and learned that the Council members fled, to save themselves from the Siphon. Illyria also realized that she had been completely robbed of her power, causing her appearance to revert back to that of Winifred Burkle's, her body's original owner. Not only was her appearance altered, but she stated that her new condition was one different than she has felt before; she had been reduced in power before, but never completely. Illyria's main concern was what Severin would do with her power, not her lacking of.
Illyria decided to assist Buffy with stopping Severin since the Council ran and accompanied the Slayer to her apartment with Koh. There, Illyria saw her state of being in a mirror for the first time and shared the fact that she should be dead. When Severin ripped her of her power, he should have left behind a hollowed shell, but didn't. For whatever reason, Illyria survived, and she was curious as to why and how. Tumble encountered the trio, and it was revealed to Buffy that her sister, Dawn Summers, is currently in a coma.
Illyria, Buffy, and Koh went to the home of Andrew Wells. There, Andrew and Xander Harris were trying to transfer Dawn's mind into a Buffybot, though the process was failing. Illyria pointed out that the lines on the computer were not Dawn's brain waves, but mystical energy leaving her body. Together, the group pieced together that Dawn was dying because the magic keeping the Key alive was fading since Buffy destroyed the Seed of Wonder.
Illyria, along with Koh, follows Buffy and the others to the Deeper Well. Buffy immediately rejected their assistance, mostly due to her lingering distrust of Koh and Ilyria to a lesser extent. Some convincing needed on her part, Buffy eventually allowed the two to help her. When Xander's betrayal was exposed to the core Scoobies, Illyria quickly noted the consequences of reversing Twilight. She revealed that Severin and Simone's plan would end in disaster, creating a reality tear in the universe that would ultimately end the world.[8] She decided to venture into the Well in support of Buffy's mission in spite of her full mortal frailty and stood by that pledge even when faced with the resurrected Old One Maloker.[9]
Sacrifice
Illyria became more concerned about Severin's intentions and took it upon herself to confront him. Koh discouraged it due to her mortal vulnerability, but Illyria was determined. As Severin began to lose more control of himself, she gave a speech to him about what he was doing for the one he lost. Illyria recalled Wesley's death and the bond he shared with Fred, stating it would be better to die saving the world than die with the world. Eventually, she got through to Severin and he agreed to help them. Illyria, Severin, and Willow worked together to use the magic on the new Seed to save Dawn.[10]
Illyria: “You must go. If you are right... If Severin accelerates the Seed, you can save The Slayer's sister. You must live.” Willow: “Gotta say. Not what I expected from someone with the last name The Merciless.” Illyria: “ It is not what I expected either. Now go.” — Illyria's new found compassion[src]
Illyria stayed by Severin's side as Buffy, Xander, Willow and D'Hoffryn made their escape from the Well. She was vaporized instantly by a powerful magical discharge at the moment the new Seed "took root". Her final words were of consolation, telling Severin: "Don't be [sorry]. You are giving this realm something it desperately needs."[11]
Illyria's demise was brought into question when Koh insinuated she was not truly "killed", stating Buffy knew little of Old Ones when the Slayer acknowledged her death. In relation to the Old One Maloker, who died in the same event, Giles would later explain that the most powerful Old Ones could never be fully killed and that their spirits remained outside of their corporeal bodies, awaiting opportunities to return to physical form.
Restoration of Fred
Following the restoration of magic, Angel discovered Fred walking around in Magic Town.[12] Talking with his new ally Nadira — a Slayer empowered with raw magic as a result of Whistler's early efforts to restore magic — Angel determined that Fred had apparently been brought back when the restoration of magic caused the old rules to be 'reset'. Fred has stated that she recalls everything Illyria did while using her body, and subsequently reveals that Illyria is still within her somewhere, granting her intermittent access to Illyria's memories, with Illyria even able to take control for a few moments when Fred is stressed or exhausted.
Angel and Faith take Fred to Zane Pharmaceuticals with the hope of identifying some means of containing Illyria, but the subsequent tests actually amplified the secondary brainwave representing Illyria's consciousness, allowing her to retake control and reveal her role in the deaths of Eldre Koh's family. However, despite her power and disdain for her old alliance with Angel, Illyria was defeated when Fred was able to take back control from inside, affirming that she had grown stronger after her restoration by the Seed, halting Illyria's rampage and regaining control of her body. Illyria's power remains in Fred, such as when Fred was threatened by a coven of demonic witches using the blood of a Gachnar demon to draw power from fear, but she remains the dormant persona of the dynamic between her and Fred.[13]
Personality and traits
Illyria was regal and had a very high superiority complex. Upon her awakening in Wolfram & Hart, she viewed those around her as ants and lesser beings compared to herself. She also, due to being the former ruler of the world, had a big problem with authority and people who tried to order her around, which is partly the reason for her initial distaste for Angel. Once she realized her people were destroyed, she lost her purpose and struggled to fit in with this new world she had awoken in.
Illyria was greatly confused by her surroundings and disgusted with the world, including the people. She understood next to nothing about it, causing her to feel lonely. Over time, though, instead of wishing to go back to her sarcophagus, part of her wanted to stay, which puzzled Illyria. She began to try to fit in in the world with great difficulty but began to get used to it.
Illyria was portrayed as initially emotionless and uncaring, as well as ruthless to those who stood in her way. Because of her lack of emotions, she did not understand human notions like love or loyalty for the longest time, shown in her confusion over Wesley's pained reaction to seeing her as Fred.[14] Despite her unemotional nature, she was shown to have the ability to care about others, which was seen in her bonds with Wesley, Spike, and later Gunn. She also began to somewhat resent herself for the fact that her resurrection brought upon Fred's death, coupled with the worthlessness and defeat she felt from losing her powers to the Mutari generator. She had an eccentric curiosity and desire to understand human ways, even though it is seen difficult for her to do so. Wesley has described her as "unpredictable" and at times emotionally unstable.[3][15] While she does have occasional instability, she was often seen composed and collected. One of her more notable traits was her distinct, precise speech pattern. Illyria had a wide vocabulary of large words uncommon in everyday language because of her extremely long life.
She also had a love for violence, as she thoroughly enjoyed beating up Spike when he was testing her abilities and never shied from a confrontation, making her be very overconfident. Because of her initial invulnerability, she was shown to almost never be afraid and when she was severely beaten by Hamilton, she reacted with anger and humiliation, as it had wounded her pride. Illyria did have a proud, arrogant nature which was why she never took a loss in battle well. She also tended to go into gory detail on how she'll kill someone or something,[4] which was often unsettling and disturbing to those around her.
Illyria has recently expressed a desire to be 'good' and help others, wanting to become a hero and champion in her own way. Since becoming accustomed to her current situation, Illyria has shown a greater capacity for having concern and respect for others and their well-being. She has since gotten in touch with her humanity and formed strong bonds with a good number of individuals, notably those comrades of hers from Angel Investigations. Her superiority complex has diminished significantly, allowing her to work well with others. She has even learned how to care for pets and treat them properly, as she did with the Yastigilian hounds that followed her. She even grieved for the death of one of them when it sacrificed itself for her.
Her eccentricities are still evident as she whisked Buffy away from her current location to introduce her to the Mystical Council, somewhat disregarding whatever situation would arise when she did so. This has been evidenced by her recent exploits in the Mystical Council she belongs to, working with the likes of Buffy to fight the growing threat of the Siphon and now, working to protect the universe from being torn apart by the Siphon's plans, despite her depowered form, alongside Buffy, Willow, Xander and Eldre Koh. Finally, among all the acts that show Illyria's growth, her decision to stay by Severin's side as he attempts to empower the new Seed of Wonder and allow Willow and the others the opportunity to escape whatever consequence shall occur stands out. This exhibits a strong degree of compassion on Illyria's part, known to be merciless and violent in the days of old.
After Fred and Illyria were restored, Illyria expressed disdain for her past alliance with Angel, proclaiming that the team had made her weak by encouraging her to admire human frailties when she should have crushed them. However, as Fred and Illyria have continued to co-exist, Illyria has returned to some degree of her old role on Angel's team, willing to assist him when circumstances call her out from Fred.
Illyria was referred to primarily with female pronouns after taking over Fred's body, but was referred to with the neuter "it" when discussing the Old One's original form.[1]
Powers and abilities
“So far, I've established that she can hit like a Mack truck, selectively alter the flow of time, and uh, possibly talk to plants.” ―Spike[src]
The full scope of Illyria's power is unknown, but is probably tremendous. She was apparently matched in power by certain fellow Old Ones and select gods.
Superhuman strength: When Illyria took over her new "shell", she possessed tremendous superhuman strength that surpassed that of vampires, demons, and Slayers; Spike likened a blow from Illyria to being hit by a Mack truck.[16] She was able to toss a car with one hand and throwing a large truck with two. [citation needed]
Superhuman mobility: Illyria could dodge attacks with perfectly-timed maneuvers; Angel and Spike charged at her with swords and she effortlessly avoided their blows simultaneously with simple movements before grabbing onto their swords and tosses the two vampires aside. She also dodged Wesley's bullets who shot at her from only several feet away, twirling out of the way at point-blank range. [citation needed]
Near-invulnerability: Her skin was a hardened shell, providing her superhuman durability and stamina. Even before gaining an armor, she was capable of withstanding blows from forged weapons, such as swords or axes. Wesley hit her over the head with an axe and it smashed to pieces while she barely flinched. According to Wesley, a "whole lot of bullets" would be needed to temporarily incapacitate her. However, Illyria was seen withstanding bullets shots from a SWAT team without being affected by it. Illyria was hit by a moving car which was massively damage upon impact, while Illyria's body barely recoiled. She was also unharmed by a truck thrown at her. Her durability is further enhanced through the usage of her armored suit.
Heightened perception: Illyria has some degree of heightened awareness, given how she could distinguish humans (or "primitives") from demons, vampires, and other creatures (e.g. Marcus Hamilton). Wesley hypothesized that at one point, Illyria was counting oxygen molecules.
Time manipulation: Illyria was aided in combat by her ability to selectively alter time, which allowed her to easily dodge both attacks and bullets; she could accomplish a goal and leave an area before her opponent even realized she has moved. She has been seen altering the flow of time to produce a slow motion effect as well as stopping time like she did when she froze the warlock Cyvus Vail, though it is possible that she can alter time in other ways like when Angel went to the future Illyria helped him to go back in time to help Connor and destroy Myresto Mor. When she became unstable, her abilities caused her to be thrown through time, accidentally dragging a past version of Angel along with her. When she exploded, Angel got flung back in time, but Illyria, while having died, seemed to retain the memory of what had happened.
Interdimensional travel: Illyria has the power to open inter-dimensional portals with it. She told Wesley Wyndam-Pryce that she traveled all of them as she pleased.
Shapeshifting: Illyria could alter her appearance on a basic level, and she was capable of recreating Fred's persona accurately enough to fool both Roger and Trish Burkle. She told Wesley that she could appear as she chooses.[14] This ability includes skin, hair, and clothing as well.[4]
Empathy: Illyria had empathetic abilities that allow her to perceive the emotional states of others. She was, for instance, capable of sensing Connor's lust for her,[16] Wesley's frustration with Angel, as well as his grief over Fred's death.
Flora communication/manipulation: Illyria communicated with flora, often spending hours at a time communing with a plant.
Illyria communicated with flora, often spending hours at a time communing with a plant. Teleportation: Illyria was able to teleport Buffy Summers from the middle of a fight in San Francisco to where she stood in Los Angeles.[6]
Energy projection: Illyria was seen firing a blue force blast from her hand while she was fighting the creature of magic in Magic Town.
Experienced combatant: Her strength and agility made her a formidable hand-to-hand combatant. Illyria used an ancient fighting style that Spike compared to taekwondo and Brazilian jujitsu. Although Spike's adaptability gives him an occasional advantage, Illyria dominated their sparring sessions.[16]
Expert tactician: Illyria retained the insights from her experiences as an Old One, which enable her to effectively analyze the power dynamics, personal motivations, and emotions that influence those around her.
Diminished Abilities
After being drained by the Mutari generator, Illyria's abilities were significantly diminished. She could no longer alter time, walk through dimensions or commune with plant life.
Superhuman Strength: Despite her reduced power, she still had sufficient advanced strength. She successfully killed several members of the Circle of the Black Thorn with minimal difficulty. Illyria was shown to hold her own unarmed against a grown dragon-like creature at full strength, enduring a blast of fire from its mouth and being swallowed by it without visibly losing her taste for the fight
Despite her reduced power, she still had sufficient advanced strength. She successfully killed several members of the Circle of the Black Thorn with minimal difficulty. Illyria was shown to hold her own unarmed against a grown dragon-like creature at full strength, enduring a blast of fire from its mouth and being swallowed by it without visibly losing her taste for the fight Superhuman Endurance: Wesley perceived that while Illyria was no longer as invulnerable as she once was and that her physical strength had decreases somewhat; both of which held true as she was later beaten unconscious by Marcus Hamilton. Despite that, she still possessed a form of enhanced durability. While sporting a stab wound to the torso she seemed to only be offend and irritate as opposed to hurt by the wound.
Wesley perceived that while Illyria was no longer as invulnerable as she once was and that her physical strength had decreases somewhat; both of which held true as she was later beaten unconscious by Marcus Hamilton. Despite that, she still possessed a form of enhanced durability. While sporting a stab wound to the torso she seemed to only be offend and irritate as opposed to hurt by the wound. Shapeshifting: She did retain the ability to morph her physical appearance.
Fluctuations
During the fall of Los Angeles, the limits placed on Illyria's powers no longer strictly applied. On separate occasions in her presence, both Angel[17] and Spike[18] found themselves thrown through history and into the future by unintentional time distortions. Due to struggles holding on to Fred's memories, Illyria also struggled to control her form, occasionally slipping into a Fred persona and appearance — in which she was able to sustain harm. When severely injured in this form, she reverted to her primordial form. Her powers became dangerously limitless: as a raging gargantuan beast, she possessed incredible strength in her tentacles and sufficient power to destroy time itself. After time was reverted, her power was returned to its diminished levels.
Upon meeting Buffy Summers some months later,[6] she informed her she was once again in possession of her full range of abilities.[7] These powers were later stolen from her by the Siphon, leaving her as mortal as an Old One could be. After the restoration of magic by the new Seed of Wonder, Fred appeared in Magic Town, carrying all of Illyria's memories, with Illyria able to take control of their body at times with her powers fully restored.
Relationships
Spike – After her resurrection, Illyria shared an emerging bond with Spike. Each was on a path from demon to hero, and they shared a love of violence. Their sparring sessions were mutually satisfactory; Spike honed his fighting techniques and Illyria was able to regularly inflict pain and dominate Spike in combat. She, at one point, expressed a desire to keep Spike as a pet. After Illyria's powers were diminished, Spike helped her regain confidence and venture into the world again. They developed mutual respect for one another. During the fall of Los Angeles, Illyria still considered Spike a pet, and came to his defense when Angel attacked him. Spike became very protective of Illyria once she started randomly transforming into a more vulnerable 'Fred' form. Demanding his undivided attention, Illyria forcefully kissed Spike out of jealousy after hearing of his physical relationship with Spider. Wesley asked Spike to continue to look over Illyria, as he couldn't do so himself, and he indeed kept this promise assisting Illyria during her existential crisis.
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce – Though their "relationship" was not a truly romantic one, the undertones of attraction being based mostly on Fred and Wesley's relationship, Wesley wanted to be around the one part of his deceased love and Illyria was influenced by Fred's memories. He confessed that he didn't love her, but felt he needed her, hinting that he might have had a crush her. When Wesley died at the hands of Cyvus Vail, Illyria took the form of Fred to ease his passing and teared at his demise, indicated that due to her memories of Fred, Illyria has come to care for Wesley in a similar, if not a platonic matter. Furious and grief-stricken, she took revenge on Cyvus by putting her fist through his skull, killing him instantly. Afterwards, Illyria informed the team about Wesley's death, that she felt uncontrollable grief, and wished "to do more violence". During the fall of Los Angeles, Illyria took ownership of Wesley's corpse, repeating "You're staying with me."[19]
Charles Gunn – Initially, Illyria had little contact with Gunn and rarely talked to him but did, however, on the eve of a fight against the Senior Partners, warned him not the die as he "was not unpleasant to her eyes", hinting a slight attraction towards him, likely because of Fred.[4] Illyria feels the need to protect Gunn while he is in a comatose state. She battles off various Demon Lords, saving his life, on several occasions. Once Gunn is healed by the demon Non, Illyria tries to murder him herself, as an act of revenge. Her attempt is unsuccessful, because of Fred's memories of Gunn within her head. Illyria and Gunn decide to become a duo and go off on their own. Once they return to LA, they rejoin Angel Investigations. Illyria refers to Gunn by using his first name, Charles, just as Winifred Burkle used to call him. Mentioned by Gunn, she appears to leave Gunn's company but he seemed unconcerned, positive she was alright. Gunn was proved to be right, as Illyria was very much alive and well.
Angel – Angel and Illyria disliked each other from the start, as she was the reason Winifred Burkle was dead, and he was in a higher ruling position than her. While hopping through time uncontrollably with Angel, Illyria ended up offering him advice that he used about being the master of your own fate and not letting others control you. This caused him to comment that she might "make the team yet." Over time, Illyria willingly accepted a place on Angel's team and fought under his command. Illyria also asks him to be her new guide, as she is now without Wesley to show her the way. Her respect for Angel is so great that, even in a possible future where their enemy James has conquered the world, the Illyria of that time swiftly agrees to work with a time-displaced Angel after he is brought to that time by Wolfram & Hart, noting that his motives are as noble as always. Although Illyria expressed disdain for her old alliance with Angel after she was restored once the Seed of Wonder was reborn, Angel attempted to assure Illyria that the team had valued her for who she was as well as her existing ties to Fred.
Connor – When the two met, Illyria sensed that Connor was lusting after her, prompting Connor to claim he'd always had a thing for older women, to which Angel mumbled "they were supposed to fix that" under his breath.
Winifred Burkle – Due to the circumstances, this relationship is obviously one-sided and posthumous. Initially, Illyria treats Fred's life and death with the same disregard she reserves for all other creatures. She also finds it preposterous that anyone would become angry when she refers to her new body as a shell instead of "Fred". After Wesley takes her in, she observes the group's reactions to Fred's death with a mixture of confusion and curiosity. Seeing how deeply the loss affects them individually, Illyria's perception of Fred changes from one of pointed indifference to one of quiet awe, pondering what kind of person it was who could elicit such strong and violent grief. As she grows closer to Wesley over time and her affection for him grows, she sees the extent of his misery and begins to develop feelings of guilt to the extent that she almost resents herself for her role in Fred's death. (This is also due to the feelings of worthlessness and defeat she develops after she loses the majority of her power to the Mutari Generator.) Following Wesley's death and L.A.'s banishment to Hell, Illyria becomes obssessed with trying to become Fred. She even goes on a rampage to destroy time itself under the belief that it was what Fred would have wanted (although she is wrong, of course). Following the time loop, Illyria contemplates killing Gunn for causing Fred's death, although this is more in revenge for Wesley's destruction than Fred's. After Fred and Illyria are restored to existence following the restoration of the Seed of Wonder, Illyria expressed disdain for Fred's human weakness, but Fred was able to regain control of their shared body, refusing to allow Illyria to harm her friends.
Buffy Summers – had enlisted the assistance of Buffy against the Severin, discovering the existence of slayers and how she had assumed she would need one. Without requesting her willing permission, she had teleported a disoriented Buffy from her home to LA at the Magical Council. Confused and indignant, she was not pleased at this development.[6] During the battle to gain entrance to the Deeper Well, Buffy was almost killed by a demon who had her in its grasp, if not for the intervention of Illyria and Eldre Koh, who both desired to aid Buffy in her mission to save her sister, implying a sense of honor on Illyria's part, as she willingly entered the fray with little to no power and was the key to finding out about the consequences of Simone and Severin's plan. Buffy gained great respect for Illyria after having a hand in restoring magic to Earth and saving Dawn, acknowledging the sacrifice she made.
Gallery
The Illyria article has a Photo Gallery .
Behind the scenes
She was portrayed by Amy Acker.
Illyria is the oldest main character from either Buffy or Angel , with the possible exception of Dawn Summers if her time as the Key is counted.
or , with the possible exception of Dawn Summers if her time as the Key is counted. Joss Whedon intended Fred and Illyria to appear on screen together, had Angel lived on for a sixth season on television. This would come to fruition on Angel & Faith ('United').
lived on for a sixth season on television. This would come to fruition on ('United'). Illyria's story shares some similarities to that of Psylocke from Marvel Comics. Psylocke's body was swapped with Kwannon's without their consent. Kwannon was a Japanese ninja with periwinkle purple hair. The transfer caused them to exhibit some of both women's respective traits, giving to Psylocke the problem of having to balance her two personalities, similar to Illyria when she preserved the personality of Winifred Burkle.
The name Illyria probably refers to the figure Illyrius in Greek mythology who ruled over Illyria and became the ancestor of the Illyrian people.
Illyria is also somewhat similar to Anya Jenkins. Both women are very crude when describing their murderous past, have a lack of social tact and searching to obtain human comprehension.
Amy Acker's character in Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard's horror film The Cabin in the Woods is grabbed by what appears to be a giant octopus, likely referencing Illyria.
Appearances
References |
Arsene Wenger insists he did not lie to the press about Danny Welbeck’s injury status despite the striker undergoing surgery just days after an imminent return to action had been hinted.
On 27 August, two days before Arsenal played Newcastle United, the boss remarked that, “Danny Welbeck is progressing well. He should be available, if all goes well, after the international break.”
Within a week – and just 24 hours after the transfer window closed – it was confirmed by the club that the England international had undergone surgery on the knee problem that has kept him sidelined since April. The 24-year-old isn’t expected to return until after Christmas and could be out as long as six months.
Clearly irked by the suggestion he’d deliberately misled media in his last press conference, the boss stressed that he only received the bad news about the ex-United forward later that day and that injuries to his squad didn’t change the fact he couldn’t source a player he actually wanted to purchase.
“It doesn’t change anything. You either find someone who strengthens your squad or not. Whether we have players injured or no doesn’t change the problem, that’s what I don’t understand from the media.
“I am surprised that people accused me of lying when I was in the press conference on Friday morning, [at that point] I did not know Welbeck had a bad setback. I did not lie to you, I gave you the information I had.”
Asked whether he’d come close to signing anybody as a replacement, Wenger continued: “I have made more than 300 transfers and every time it’s a decision to make. Do you buy the player because he strengthens his squad or not?
“The solutions we had were not convincing at all. In the end you do not buy to give one hope, you want to buy because the players who come in can help your squad to be stronger. Buying and selling is one way to strengthen your team but that’s not the only way.”
He added: “There is no need to talk about that too much now. We have to focus on what is in front of us.
“I said to you, and I didn’t lie, that we were ready to do something, but you have to be convinced that it’s not just to please people, that it [has to be] an efficient solution. And the efficient solution didn’t turn up. As well you have to be brave enough to say no.”
In a message to supporters still miffed by the fact he didn’t purchase an outfield player this summer, Wenger bullishly called on fans to back the existing squad.
“I think as well to support the club and support the team is to stand behind the players. It is not always expecting someone coming… to sort out all your problems. Support is believing in the players in the squad and this is a good opportunity to do that.” |
This essay on Leibniz’s metaphysics is from Chapter 13 of Metaphysics and the Meaning of Life (2010), reprinted here with permission.
Leibniz, with his encyclopedic knowledge, is influenced in his metaphysics by more concerns than your average philosophical specialist who is not a polymath, and I want to begin by listing six such concerns.
1.) If one strictly adopts Cartesian metaphysics, then the ancient problem of universals comes in the back door. This problem is one and the same as the problem of how reality is capable of being understood or comprehended. Leibniz thus tries to find a synthesis between the ancient knowledge of Aristotle, which states that reality is fundamentally made of particulars, and the modern, scientifically fruitful analysis of Descartes, which attempts to analyze reality simply into extension and motion. These concerns turn out to be logical in nature, and are perhaps the most important influences on Leibniz’s metaphysical thinking.
2.) Another set of related concerns has to do with physics. These can be grouped under two major headings: the nature of matter and the nature of motion. Can Descartes’ analysis of matter as extension hold in the physical world? What other attributes besides extension must the units of reality consist in? On the other hand, if reality were to consist in extended objects, motion would then have to be explained by some other principle or principles. A proper theory of metaphysics will, in Leibniz’s view, fit nicely with a theory of physics.
3.) A third problem that goes all the way back to Zeno is that of the continuum or of motion itself. How can it be possible for motion to occur at all, since space is infinitely divisible? Furthermore, how can substance consist in mere “extension” since the latter is admittedly divisible into infinity? What would that mean for the nature of substance?
4.) Contemporary concerns over mind-body causation and causation in general, upon which the occasionalists first bring emphasis. We must recall that Leibniz was intimately aware of these problems from his correspondence with occasionalists such as Malebranche.
5.) Problems that have to do with Spinoza, whom Leibniz had also met. If one first accepts the Cartesian project, then the logical rigor of Spinoza’s system seems to make his system the only plausible conclusion. Leibniz wants to find a better alternative that is not contradictory. This can be no easy task.
6.) Finally, there are a series of problems that correspond roughly to theological issues. How does one reconcile divine omnipotence and omniscience with human freedom? This problem goes all the way back to Augustine and the Pelagians. In theological works, Leibniz also demonstrates how his metaphysics can be applied to theological problems such as transubstantiation and miracles such as resurrection.
What results from these concerns—and certainly others as well—is a very important and elaborate system of metaphysics that may in fact better explain quantum physics than any other theory. We follow Nicholas Jolley in thinking the best way of beginning to understand this abstract system is with something more concrete: an image or metaphor.[2]
The Monad
The core of Leibniz’s metaphysics is the monad. Monads are said to be characterized by perception and appetite, something that can correspond roughly to our two qualities of the effection as being data and emotion. Monads are variously described as individuals, simple substances, souls, active, non-extended, and unique. We can start out with a mental image. Each monad should be pictured as a sphere that reflects everything around it, and the world is made up of an infinite number of these reflective spheres. In this sense, every individual monad is a microcosm of the entire universe.
We can find a similar metaphor in Eastern philosophy in Indra’s Net, described as follows.
Indra’s Net [is] a cosmic web laced with jewels at every intersection. Each jewel reflects the others, together with all the reflections in the others. In the deepest analysis, each “jewel” is but the reflection of other reflections. Likewise, every thing and every person in the world, like every jewel in Indra’s Net, because dependently arisen, is empty-of-own-being (lacking in self-existence).[3]
Leibniz may not agree with all of the details of this metaphor, but, since a picture is said to be worth a thousand words, placing a sort of picture of reflective spheres in the reader’s mind will be far more helpful than starting with an extended logical analysis. Indra’s net is to be compared with the following important passage in Leibniz.
Each substance is like a whole world, and like a mirror of God, or indeed the whole universe, which each one expresses in its own fashion—rather as the same city is differently represented according to the different situations of the person who looks at it. In a way, then, the universe is multiplied as many times as there are substances, and in the same way the glory of God is redoubled by so many quite different representations of his work. In fact, we can say that each substance carries the imprint of the infinite wisdom and omnipotence of God, and imitates them as far as it is capable of it.[4]
Why would Leibniz come up with such a scheme? The basic reasoning, I believe, is in response to the first “problem” listed above: a tension between Aristotelian and Cartesian metaphysics on the nature of substances. Aristotle proves that substances must be particulars. Descartes wants to reject this conception in order to advance the more scientifically profitable analysis of substances as mere “extension.”
Aristotle
Let us consider Aristotle first of all. According to Aristotle, this chair that I am sitting in exists in a fundamental way. What the chair is will be explained by causes, of which there are four. To rightfully identify this chair as a chair consists in expressing the “formal” cause of what it is. This might also consist in giving the precise dimensions of the chair, since “form” and “shape” are described by the same Greek word morphe. There is also a material basis for what this chair is, i.e. that it is made of wood. Explaining that it is made of wood, and even what kind of wood it is, consists in giving the “material” cause. Insight as to what the chair is for in the eye of the builder of the chair would consist in the “final” or “teleological” cause. Finally, the actual steps that took place in the building of the chair would consist in giving the “efficient” causation of the chair.
Here, it seems that Aristotle has all of his bases covered in his explanation. The problem with this, for Descartes, is that this “chair” cannot be a fundamental unit of reality because to have it thus would not be conducive to the scientific ideals that Descartes has in mind. Physics does not deal with tables and chairs, but merely with objects of certain sizes, dimensions, and masses. Descartes the scientist is only interested in the measurable qualities of the chair, that is to say, what about the chair can be quantified. Accordingly, Descartes views the chair as “extension.”
Here, then, we have a conflict over the fundamental units of reality (substances), and Leibniz is interested to solve it. Leibniz is dissatisfied with both explanations, and this is largely what makes Leibniz a seminal thinker in metaphysics.
Leibniz follows Aristotle in his proof that the fundamental units of reality must be individuals or particulars, but would deny that “this chair” is a particular. According to Leibniz, “this chair” is actually an aggregate of more simple substances. [5] The suggestion that aggregates cannot be fundamental substances can be considered as an important stipulation to Aristotelian philosophical logic. For, if (as we have suggested above) proper nouns describe individuals, there is no reason why, say, the “Fifth Infantry” could not be considered to be a fundamental unit of reality. The latter would indeed seem to satisfy Aristotle’s linguistic tests which pertain to predication.[6] But, on the other hand, the “Fifth Infantry” is actually just an aggregate of individual men. If we claimed that it were a fundamental unit of reality, a paradox would result in which each individual soldier were numbered among real items, and then the “Fifth Infantry” were also numbered, as if it had its own independent existence. The same would be true of a particular flock of sheep, gaggle of geese, posse of cowboys, or any group of individuals: they would all be numbered as their individuals plus one. It is still evident, according to Aristotle’s analysis, that the fundamental units of reality must be particulars or individuals, but the question then comes to be what the nature of these must consist in. This, I take it, is how the monad originates. The monad is the name Leibniz gives to whatever these true individuals must be.
For Leibniz, every perceived body is actually an aggregate. In a letter to Arnauld, he gives deep and persuasive argument to this end.
I think that a block of marble is, perhaps, only like a pile of stones, and thus cannot pass as a single substance, but as an assemblage of many. Suppose there were two stones, for example, the diamond of the Great Duke and that of the Great Mogul. One could impose the same collective name for the two, and one could say that they constitute a pair of diamonds, although they are far apart from one another; but one would not say that these two diamonds constitute a substance. More and less do not make a difference here. Even if they were brought nearer together and made to touch, they would not be substantially united to any greater extent. And if, after they had touched, one joined to them another body capable of preventing their separation—for example, if they had been set in the same ring—all this would make only what is called an unum per accidens [accidental unity]. For it is by accident that they are required to perform the same motion. Therefore, I hold that a block of marble is not a complete single substance, any more than the water in a pond together with all the fish it contains would be, even if all the water and all the fish were frozen, any more than a flock of sheep would be, even if these sheep were tied together so that they could only walk in step and so that tone could not be touched without all the others crying out. There is as much difference between a substance and such a being as there is between a man and a community, such as a people, an army, a society, or a college; these are moral beings, beings in which there is something imaginary and dependent on the fabrication of our mind. A substantial unity requires a thoroughly indivisible and naturally indestructible being, since its notion includes everything that will happen to it, something that can be found neither in shape nor in motion (both of which involve something imaginary, as I could demonstrate), but which can be found in a soul or substantial form, on the model of what is called me. These are the only thoroughly real beings.[7]
This being the case, one then wants to know how it is that these monads relate to the objects that we perceive all around us. Leibniz’s response is definitely open to debate. We recall that the existence of the monad is very much the result of logical considerations, and is thus quite certain. But the relation between what must be the case and what we experience to be the case is a grey area that requires speculation.
Experience as Phenomenal
Leibniz clearly believes that the objects of perception need not have substantial existence, but may be merely phenomenal, and uses the metaphor of a “rainbow” being the result of light reflecting off of water droplets. Here is where the metaphor of the reflective spheres, Indra’s net, or, as Jolley calls it, the “mirrors of God” comes into play. The simple substances necessarily exist because perceived substances, which are aggregates, exist, although the particulars of how the former compose the latter are still in question. Notice in the passage above that a version of the cogito seems to be employed, the “I” indicating our only accessible example of a genuine unity.
If I am asked in particular what I say about the sun, the earthly globe, the moon, trees, and other similar bodies, and even about beasts, I cannot be absolutely certain whether they are animated, or even whether they are substances, or, indeed, whether they are simply machines or aggregates of several substances. But at least I can say that if there are no corporeal substances such as I claim, it follows that bodies would only be true phenomena, like the rainbow. For the continuum is not merely divisible into infinity, but every part of matter is actually divided into other parts as different among themselves as the two aforementioned diamonds. And since we can always go in this way, we would never reach anything about which we could say, here is truly a being, unless we found animated machines whose soul or substantial form produced a substantial unity independent of the external union arising from contact. And if there were none, with the exception of man, there is nothing substantial in the visible world.
We now find ourselves at the crux of the problem, and we are also discussing something crucial to the science of metaphysics as a whole, which is the nature of substance, and its relation to our knowledge. I believe that this question should not be considered a historical artifact, but rather a question that is very much alive. If one goes one way on this topic, the result is a certain system of metaphysics. If one goes the other way, the end result is something quite different.
If we follow Leibniz’s reasoning and we grant that the substances we perceive are not the fundamental units of reality, then it would seem there are a few options, of which Leibniz was quite aware.
We must then come down either to mathematical points of which some authors constitute extension, or to the atoms of Epicurus, or Cordemoy (which things you reject along with me), or else we must admit that we do not find any reality in bodies; or finally we must recognize some substances that have a true unity.[8]
Physical atomism, which we shall treat in more detail later, is rejected along with Descartes’ “mathematical points.” The former is rejected for logical reasons and on account of the problem of the continuum. The latter are rejected for physical reasons and also on account of the problem of the continuum.[9] The monad is the alternative, and exhibits a genuine logical unity that is even more rigorous than that ascribed by Aristotle to real objects.
The only remaining problem, it would seem, would be the difficulty of actually imagining a monad. Monads are said to be non-extended substances. One then wants to ask: how many monads are there in a certain space? To employ an oft-quoted theological allusion: how many monads can fit on the head of a pin?
But just because the monad boggles the imagination does not make it problematic from the perspective of knowledge. As Stephen Hawking points out, four-dimensional space-time is difficult (if not impossible) to imagine, but this does not mean that it does not make for a good scientific theory. Indeed, there is a sense in which to even ask the questions given above is not-to-the-point. This, because of Leibniz’s expressed doctrine that space and time are merely phenomenal entities.
[S]pace and time belong to the realm of appearances only; they have no place at the ground floor of Leibniz’s metaphysics, the level of monads. Here of course it is important not to be misled by Leibniz’s claim that monads have points of view. This claim should not be interpreted literally as implying that they are in space. Rather, the picture that Leibniz wishes to defend is that, in modern jargon, space is a logical construction out of the points of view of monads where these are analyzed in terms of the distribution of clarity and distinctness over perceptual states. That is to say, the system of special relations of physical objects in the phenomenal world can in principle be derived from the properties of monads. The point can be made in theological terms. By knowing all the facts about the relevant monads, God can read off, for example, how the desk in front of me is spatially related to the other physical objects in my study.[10]
In all, Leibniz provides us with an excellent philosophical system, in many ways the flowering and crowning point of the rationalism. Logic, science, philosophy, and theology are all in ways satisfied by Leibniz’s system. I have strived to give an accurate depiction of the monad along with some of the major reasoning behind it, but we can hardly do him justice without dedicating a full volume to the man. I will conclude here with some final thoughts on Leibniz, and I will give some problems with his system in the following chapter.
In the Categories, Aristotle describes substances as “unities” that are “able to receive contraries.”
It seems most distinctive of substance that what is numerically one and the same is able to receive contraries. In no other case could one bring forward anything, numerically one, which is able to receive contraries. For example, a color which is numerically one and the same will not be black and white, nor will numerically one and the same action be bad and good; and similarly with everything else that is not substance. A substance, however, numerically one and the same, is able to receive contraries. For example, and individual man—one and the same—becomes pale at one time and dark at another, and hot and cold, and bad and good. Nothing like this is to be seen in any other case . . . .[11]
There is a sense in which Leibniz never strays from this sort of doctrine. Each individual can say to himself: “I am a monad, and I receive perceptions and I have appetites; the latter change from time to time according to the will of God, but I am a genuine substance.”
For Leibniz, nothing about reality as perceived is sufficient unto itself. The entirety of our experienced reality—the reality of the senses—is contingent upon the will of God, and can vanish just as easily as He wills it, or ceases to will it, mere images of him, reflected by our selves, the phantom of a dream. Leibniz’s metaphysics is thus a better framework for understanding the “weirdness” of contemporary physics as opposed to the Newtonian framework, which depicts reality as functioning as regularly as clockwork.
But, this does not mean that Leibniz cannot account for scientific laws. Indeed, he can. Jolley puts the point nicely.
The causality of God and the causality of monads operate on different ontological levels. We can clarify this picture by means of a familiar analogy. Imagine an author writing a novel. Within the framework of the narrative there is a complete story to be told about the causal sequence of events; a character dies in a fire, and the fire is in turn caused by the deplorable state of the wiring in the house, and so on. But there is also a sense in which the author himself is a cause; it is he or she who made the causes cause. In this way we might seek to reconcile the causal self-sufficiency of monads with their status as substances conserved and created by God.[12]
Finally, we can describe Leibniz as a response to Spinoza. While Spinoza is thoroughly monistic, Leibniz is genuinely atomistic, although his atoms are not physical, and nor are they merely logical. They are simple substances, and they are real. God created each individual monad, and each individual monad reflects His attributes, “as the same city is differently represented according to the different situations of the person who looks at it. In a way, then, the universe is multiplied as many times as there are substances, and in the same way the glory of God is redoubled by so many quite different representations of his work.”
All in all, Leibniz’s system is heavily influenced by philosophical logic; it strains metaphors, and our only direct apprehension of the monad is actually our apprehension of our very selves as unified, subjective beings. Thus, for Leibniz, in contrast to Spinoza and in agreement with Descartes, we exist, even if the whole world of experience were to slip away like a dream. For Leibniz, this is the way God made reality, and He fashioned it in the best possible way.
The philosophy of Leibniz is unique in the history of western philosophy, and, logical though it is, it is not without mystical appeal. For something similar, one might have to look to the single greatest philosopher of the east. I am speaking here of Gautama Buddha.
Within this body, six feet long, endowed with perception and cognition, is contained the world, the origin of the world and the end of the world, and the path leading toward the end of the world.
[1] Cf. p. 78 of this volume.
[2]Cf. Nicholas Jolley. Leibniz. 2-5. Jolley draws attention to this sort of metaphor at the start of his book, and calls it aptly the “mirrors of God” metaphor.
[3] Hudson Smith and Philip Novak. Buddhism: A Concise Introduction. 61-62.
[4] Discourse on Metaphysics, section 9.
[5] Cf. Nicholas Jolley. Leibniz. pp. 39-41.
[6] Cf. pp. 55-56 above.
[7] Letter to Arnauld, November 28, 1686.
[8] Letter to Arnauld, April 30, 1687.
[9] Cf. Daniel Garber. “Leibniz: Physics and Philosophy.” The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz.
[10] Nicholas Jolley. Leibniz. 87-88.
[11] Categories, section 5.
[12] Nicholas Jolley. Leibniz. p. 73. |
Aleks sends along this (by Robert Ghrist). It reminds me a lot of my class notes from high school.
I took a look at the book, starting on page 1 with the description of functions, and it made me think that maybe a more historical approach would be useful. The idea presented in this book, of a function as an arbitrary mapping from inputs to outputs, is a relatively modern idea (I associate it with Fourier in the 1800s, but my remembered history might be wrong here), and it might be helpful to build up to it from simpler ideas.
Similarly, instead of starting with definitions of limits etc., I suspect it would be better to start with the theorems and then motivate the definitions as the things you need to prove the theorems rigorously. That’s the historical order, right? Theorem, then proof, then defining the conditions of the theorem.
I sent the above paragraphs to Aleks, who commented:
Agreed strongly. But you’re assuming that theorems are intrinsically interesting, or that proving theorems is something one might want to do. History shows that all these tools have been developed to solve real problems in engineering – the same way Fisher developed his tools to solve real problems in agricultural experimentation and the same way probability was developed to make sense of gambling.
Yup. But then that just adds a couple more steps to the beginning of the process: first the real problem, then the series of possible solutions, then the theorem, etc. Definitions still come at the end.
That said, this attitude of mine is not new, yet it remains standard to teach math in this definition-theorem-proof style. So there must be some good arguments on the other side. To me, the Ghrist book looks like an excellent effort but from a backwards perspective. But I’m sure Ghrist could provide some good reasons why I’m wrong. |
Angry brides-to-be stormed a shop after failing to receive the dresses they had ordered for their weddings.
Angry brides-to-be stormed a shop after failing to receive the dresses they had ordered for their weddings.
A group of women, who had handed over substantial cash deposits for wedding dresses, rushed into the bridal shop and helped themselves to dresses on display in the shop.
The women said they complained to gardai about their problems in trying to secure the dresses they had ordered several months ago.
Around a dozen brides-to-be stormed the Robelle Bridal shop in Annacotty, Co Limerick, on Monday.
A number of customers waited outside the shop yesterday in the hope of meeting the owner, Shirley Flanagan (34), who opened the shop last December.
Her solicitor, Darach McCarthy, told the Herald he was "not in a position to comment at this time" about the claims made by the women.
When asked about the women's claims, Ms Flanagan said: "I've been advised I'm to simply reply with 'no comment'."
Gardai in both Henry Street and Castleconnell garda stations confirmed they have received a number of complaints, have taken several statements from those affected, and would be investigating the matter fully.
FURY
A number of Shirley Flanagan's customers went online to vent their fury after claiming they had still not received their dresses for their big day, despite parting with thousands of euro in deposits.
The shop, which was closed yesterday, was bare except for just five sample dresses.
The father of another distraught bride-to-be said his daughter met with Ms Flanagan and eventually received a dress similar to the one she had ordered.
In March 2013, Ms Flanagan pleaded guilty to fraud before Limerick District Court.
She admitted, dishonestly and by deception, inducing five men to give her money on the pretence they would be issued with a valid motor insurance policy, with the intent of making a gain for herself.
The five drivers were employed in Flanagan's father's taxi company.
Online Editors |
EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE: 3 P.M. (CT), MONDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2014
Media Advisory: To contact author Adam J. Spanier, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., call University of Maryland Medical Center Media Relations at 410-328-8919 or email media@umm.edu or call the University of Maryland School of Medicine,Office of Public Affairs, at 410-706-7590 or email dkohn@som.umaryland.edu. An author podcast will be available when the embargo lifts on the JAMA Pediatrics website at http://bit.ly/1adWrco.
To place an electronic embedded link to this study in your story The link for this study will be live at the embargo time: http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?doi=10.1001/jamapediatrics.2014.1397.
JAMA Pediatrics
Bottom Line: Prenatal exposure to bisphenol A (BPA, a common chemical used in some plastics) appears to be inconsistently associated with diminished lung function and the development of persistent wheeze in children.
Author: Adam J. Spanier, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, and colleagues.
Background: Asthma rates have risen in the past three decades. Environmental factors (such as tobacco smoke and airborne pollutants) have been identified as risk factors and some research has suggested that exposure to BPA may contribute.
How the Study Was Conducted: The authors examined whether BPA exposure was associated with lung function using forced expiratory volume in the first second of expiration (FEV 1 ) , with wheeze and with a pattern of wheeze in children during their first five years. The study involved a group of 398 mother-infant pairings. Maternal urine samples were collected during pregnancy at 16 and 26 weeks and child urine samples were collected annually to assess gestational and child BPA exposure.
Results: Every 10-fold increase in the average maternal urinary BPA concentration was associated with a 14.2 percent decrease in the percentage predicted FEV 1 at 4 years old but no association was seen at 5 years old. Every 10-fold increase in the average maternal urinary BPA concentration was marginally associated with a 54.8 percent increase in the odds of wheezing. While the average maternal urinary BPA concentration was not associated with the type of wheeze (phenotype), a 10-fold increase in the 16-week maternal urinary BPA concentration was associated with a 4.27-fold increase in the odds of persistent wheeze. Child urinary BPA concentrations were not associated with FEV 1 or wheeze.
Discussion: “We found that prenatal BPA exposure that occurred during early pregnancy was inconsistently associated with diminished lung function, increased odds of wheeze and a persistent wheeze phenotype in young children. … If future studies confirm that prenatal BPA exposure may be a risk factor for impaired respiratory heath, it may offer another avenue to prevent the development of asthma.”
(JAMA Pediatr. Published online October 6, 2014. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2014.1397. Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com.)
Editor’s Note: This study was supported by Flight Attendant Medical Research Foundation Young Clinical Scientist Award and from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Please see article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, etc.
# # #
For more information, contact JAMA Network Media Relations at 312-464-JAMA (5262) or email mediarelations@jamanetwork.org. |
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Here you'll find a list of hotfixes that address various issues related to the recently released World of Warcraft Patch 6.1.2. Hotfixes are updates made on our end without requiring a new client-side patch. Some of the hotfixes below take effect the moment they were implemented, while others may require the realm to be restarted to go into effect. Please keep in mind that some issues cannot be addressed without a client-side patch update. This list will be updated as additional hotfixes are applied.
The latest batch of hotfixes are listed below. Previous hotfixes have been compiled by category to provide a quick summary of all hotfixes that have been applied since the start of World of Warcraft Patch 6.1.2.
Tags may be added to some hotfixes to denote a special condition.
[Requires a realm restart] means the hotfix will not take effect until after a scheduled rolling restart or maintenance.
means the hotfix will not take effect until after a scheduled rolling restart or maintenance. [Hotfix in testing] means the hotfix is in early stages of testing and may not be implemented just yet. However, the change is important and is posted to provide as much advanced notice as possible.
May 22
Creatures and NPCs
Spires of Arak
Rukhmar now moves faster and can also move while channeling Solar Breath.
Elwynn Forest
Fixed an issue that could cause Hogger in Elwynn Forest to bug out if General Hammond Clay in Stormwind was slain.
Quests
Tanaris
Thunderdrome: Grudge Match! Fixed an issue where the quest would fail if Megs Dreadshredder deals damage to Steelspark LX-506.
Raids and Dungeons
Blackrock Foundry
Operator Thogar
Fixed a number of issues that could cause the Operator Thogar encounter to not start correctly.
Blackhand
[Requires a realm restart.] Slag Bombs' explosion now damages players in a 6 yard radius (down from 10 yards) on Normal and Heroic difficulties.
Slag Bombs' explosion now damages players in a 6 yard radius (down from 10 yards) on Normal and Heroic difficulties. Incendiary Shot's damage has been reduced by 25% on Normal, Heroic, and Mythic difficulties.
Blackhand's Shattering Smash now deals 25% less damage during Stage Two on Normal, Heroic, and Mythic difficulties.
PvP
Battlegrounds
Fixed an issue where players were receiving more Conquest and Honor than intended for winning a Strands of the Ancients match via Random Battleground.
Fixed an issue that could cause the Isle of Conquest Workshop to not work correctly.
May 11
Classes
Paladin
General
Hand of Freedom is no longer usable while stunned.
Glyphs
Glyph of Denounce is now removed completely by dispel effects (dispel effects used to only remove one stack at a time).
Bug Fixes
Blood-Soaked Invitations should now convert into the correct Horde equivalent for Alliance characters performing a faction transfer.
May 7
Raids and Dungeons
Blackrock Foundry
Blackhand Blackhand's Demolition ability now deals 20% less damage and his Massive Demolition ability now deals 5% less damage on Normal, Heroic, and Mythic difficulties.
World of Warcraft Patch 6.1.2, Consolidated Hotfixes
Table of Contents
Garrisons, Followers, and Outposts
Summoned Bosses
Teluur should no longer incorrectly despawn while in combat with the player after being summoned.
Quests
Legendary Ring Quest Line
An Inside Job : Reduced the number of guards present and amount for health on all guards in the quest area.
: Reduced the number of guards present and amount for health on all guards in the quest area. An Inside Job : Fixed an issue where Garona may sometimes fail to eliminate a target.
: Fixed an issue where Garona may sometimes fail to eliminate a target. Reverse Piracy: Fixed an issue where the map marker for Stolen Sha'tari Vault was not updated correctly after defeating The Iron Maidens.
Dun Morogh
Striking Back: Repaired Bomber should now correctly fly over Ironforge Airfield and allow players to complete the quest.
Southern Barrens
Run Out the Guns: Rageroar Rowboats should now continue to spawn.
Tanaris
Thunderdrome: Grudge Match! Fixed an issue where the quest would fail if Megs Dreadshredder deals damage to Steelspark LX-506.
Creatures and NPCs
Spires of Arak
Rukhmar now moves faster and can also move while channeling Solar Breath.
now moves faster and can also move while channeling Solar Breath. Solar Magnifier should now allow players to loot it and no longer immediately despawn after being defeated.
Elwynn Forest
Fixed an issue that could cause Hogger in Elwynn Forest to bug out if General Hammond Clay in Stormwind was slain.
Raids and Dungeons
Blackrock Foundry
General
The health and damage scaling of aspects of several encounters on Normal and Heroic difficulties have been adjusted to make them less punishing for smaller raid groups, to account for reduced availability of external cooldowns and the larger relative portion of the group that must deal with certain mechanics. Overall, these changes should make the encounters easier for groups with closer to 10 raiders, while having little noticeable effect for groups with closer to 30 players.
The Blast Furnace
Phase 1 Furnace Engineers should now throw a bomb at players roughly every 6 seconds. Throw Bomb is now instant-cast, but the range is now 40 yards (down from 50 yards). These changes are intended to diminish the relative benefit of having two or more priests, compared to one or none: Mind Control allows for more controlled targeting of the Bombs, but does not speed up the phase as a whole. Reduced the health of Heat Regulators.
Phase 2 Additional Bellows Operators should no longer incorrectly spawn after the fight has transitioned into Phase 2.
Phase 3 Fixed an issue where Heart of the Mountain's Tempered debuff could incorrectly persist on a player pet.
Operator Thogar
Fixed a number of issues that could cause the Operator Thogar encounter to not start correctly.
The Iron Maidens
The Iron Maidens should no longer incorrectly trigger a Dreadnaught phase if they reach 100 Energy and 20% health at around the same time.
Blackhand
[Requires a realm restart.] Slag Bombs' explosion now damages players in a 6 yard radius (down from 10 yards) on Normal and Heroic difficulties.
Slag Bombs' explosion now damages players in a 6 yard radius (down from 10 yards) on Normal and Heroic difficulties. Incendiary Shot's damage has been reduced by 25% on Normal, Heroic, and Mythic difficulties.
Blackhand's Shattering Smash now deals 25% less damage during Stage Two on Normal, Heroic, and Mythic difficulties.
Blackhand's Demolition ability now deals 20% less damage and his Massive Demolition ability now deals 5% less damage on Normal, Heroic, and Mythic difficulties.
Blackhand's Marked for Death ability should no longer target players that just got knocked away with Shattering Smash if there are other available targets.
Fixed an issue that was causing Blackhand's Slag Bombs to incorrectly explode instantly and the Slagged debuff to incorrectly persist on a character.
Blackhand's health has been reduced by 5% on Mythic difficulty.
Blackhand's Massive Shattering Smash ability now deals 25% less damage on Mythic difficulty.
Iron Soldiers' health has been reduced by 15% on Mythic difficulty.
Legacy
Siege of Orgrimmar
Galakras: Fixed an issue where players could not advance to Phase 2 because Anti-Air turrets were not spawning correctly.
Throne of Thunder
Durumu the Forgotten: Fixed an issue where the cones of light may incorrectly spawn high above ground during the Light Spectrum phase.
Dragon Soul
Warmaster Blackhorn: Fixed an issue that could cause the encounter to not drop loot if Goriona was damaged too quickly during the transition to Stage Two.
PvP
Conquest Catch-Up Cap Changes
Conquest catch-up cap received a change to how it's calculated that should result in a roughly 50% increase to the catch-up portion of the cap.
The formula used to calculate a player’s catch-up cap is now: <Number of weeks passed in the season> × 1500 - <Total amount of Conquest earned this season>
Further information on this change could be found in the forum thread titled: Changes to Conquest Catch-Up Cap.
Battlegrounds
Fixed an issue where players were receiving more Conquest and Honor than intended for winning a Strands of the Ancients match via Random Battleground.
Fixed an issue that could cause the Isle of Conquest Workshop to not work correctly.
Collections
Heirlooms
In response to player feedback, we have increased the power of Heirloom for levels 91-100. This change is intended to help Heirlooms be more competitive relative to Draenor dungeon gear.
Toy Box
Fruit Basket should no longer incorrectly have a chance to trigger trinket effects.
Items
Blood-Soaked Invitations should now convert into the correct Horde equivalent for Alliance characters performing a faction transfer.
should now convert into the correct Horde equivalent for Alliance characters performing a faction transfer. Checkered Flag 's mount speed bonus no longer works while inside of an instance such as dungeons, raids, Arenas, or Battlegrounds.
's mount speed bonus no longer works while inside of an instance such as dungeons, raids, Arenas, or Battlegrounds. Explorer's Notebook or Garrison Scout Report used by players that already have an Exploration mission available should now be informed that they're not eligible for additional missions of that type and no longer incorrectly consume the item.
or used by players that already have an Exploration mission available should now be informed that they're not eligible for additional missions of that type and no longer incorrectly consume the item. Primal Gladiator's Medallion of Adaptation should now convert into the correct faction version for characters that had undergone a Paid Faction Change.
Bug Fixes
Items
Players can no longer delete WoW Token letters in the mailbox with gold attached.
UI
Fixed an issue where whispers were not working correctly from the Mobile Armory chat client.
Achievements
Home Alone can now be completed using alternate versions of a Hearthstone such as The Innkeeper's Daughter or Garrison Hearthstone.
can now be completed using alternate versions of a Hearthstone such as The Innkeeper's Daughter or Garrison Hearthstone. Patrol Mission Specialist: Fixed an issue where characters were not receiving credit for completing the achievement.
Other
Fixed an issue that could cause Mistweaver Monks that had undergone a Paid Character Boost to deal less damage than intended while in the process of unlocking skills and abilities.
Fixed an issue that could cause looping flight paths used for quests to not work correctly.
Racial Abilities
Night Elf
Shadowmeld should now correctly drop the character from combat if another party member is in combat while in an Arena, Battleground, Rated Battleground, or outdoor PvP zone.
Classes
Druid
Armor Sets
Tier-17 4-piece set bonus for Feral Druids should now correctly have a chance to trigger from Multistrikes.
Paladin
General
Hand of Freedom is no longer usable while stunned.
Glyphs
Glyph of Denounce is now removed completely by dispel effects (dispel effects used to only remove one stack at a time).
Warlock
General |
A photograph showing a wind tunnel model of Manor’s 2017 Formula One car design has been posted on social media.
This image appeared after news broke that no buyer had been found for the team.
The model cannot be seen in full but appears to reflect the wider dimensions permitted by the 2017 regulations. Its front and rear wings, the latter with twisted supports similar to Ferrari’s 2017 test mule, are visibly different from those the team used last year. The rear wing is lower, in line with the new maximum height dimensions.
The total width of this year’s cars has increased from 1,800mm – the upper limit since 1998 – to 2,000mm. The maximum bodywork width has increased by the same amount, from 1,400mm to 1,600mm.
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This has been accompanied by an increase in front wheel widths from 245mm to 305mm and rear wheel widths from 325mm to 405mm.
Other changes to this year’s cars includes a smaller design ‘exclusion zone’ behind the front wheels which will allow for larger bargeboards. Little can be seen of this on the Manor.
The sloped leading edge of the sidepods and rear wing endplates also defined by the new regulations are also difficult to discern from this photograph.
F1 wind tunnel models are typically 60% scale. Manor had been using Mercedes’ wind tunnel as part of their deal to run the team’s engines during last season. They had not announced any drivers for 2017 at the time the team went under.
2017 F1 season |
TechBrainiacs founder Jeremy Bruner, left, teaches students Feb. 3 in his Introduction to Video Game Design class at the Centennial Hills Library, 6711 N. Buffalo Drive. Sandy Lopez/View
Kate Austin, 7, works on creating a video game during the Introduction to Video Game Design class Feb. 3 at the Centennial Hills Library. Sandy Lopez/View
Students work on creating video games in the Introduction to Video Game Design class Feb. 3 at the Centennial Hills Library. Sandy Lopez/View
Techbrainiacs founder Jeremy Bruner teaches students in his introduction to video game design class at Centennial Hills Library, 6711 N. Buffalo Drive, Feb. 3. Sandy Lopez/View
With all of the violence and the dismissal of reality, what could video games possibly teach our youths? A lot apparently, says northwest resident Jeremy Bruner, 36, founder of TechBrainiacs, a company that aims to promote learning in the fields of computer science and electronics.
Bruner teaches an introduction to video game design class that allows children to create and publish their own video games.
“The kids in my class create the type of games I used to beg my parents to buy me for Nintendo,” Bruner said. “This class is especially important because there are going to be so many more jobs created in the (science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields), especially in regards to computer programing. Even if kids don’t want to grow up to be a programmer, this class teaches them critical thinking skills and how to express themselves creatively in a completely new way.”
A class of approximately 16 students ages 7 to 15 met with Bruner on Feb. 3 at the Centennial Hills Library, 6711 N. Buffalo Drive. Each hour-long session teaches children the essential elements of video game design using the online Gamestar Mechanic platform.
Students come to the class equipped with laptops that can connect to the library’s Wi-Fi; Bruner also has a limited number of laptops available for those who need one.
Bruner explains that students start by editing an already designed game and fixing levels. After they overcome that initial challenge, students are able to create their own video game.
“At first, I thought this class was going to be hard, but it’s not that hard. You just have to try again and again to get it right,” said student Martina Bernhardt, 11. “There’s a lot of stuff you can do on it, and it’s really fun to see how video games start at first. You also get to see other games people create.”
As students dabble in the art of video game design, they sometimes give shouts of frustration followed quickly by laughter or proud giggles.
Most video games consist of simple techniques, such as the top-down perspective maze game; Bruner said it’s like the old Legend of Zelda game. There’s also the side-scrolling platform game, similar to Super Mario Bros.
By the end of the five-session classes, students are able to identify and define the five elements of game design, create balanced games that are fun and challenging, and playtest and effectively give feedback on one another’s games, Bruner said.
“It’s interesting that you can see how a game is made,” said Sean Lai, 12. “I’m a gamer. I like that the class teaches you how to make a video game, and Jeremy is patient and goes step-by-step.”
Students are encouraged to playtest their classmates’ games and provide feedback. Bruner also urges them to experiment and balance components in the game.
“For the most part, kids are fearless,” Bruner said. “They learn how to balance game design elements and create a challenge without making the design too messy.”
Bruner is a former elementary school teacher who started TechBrainiacs, 9523 Milkweed Canyon Ave., in fall 2014.
“I’ve always been a computer geek or video game nerd — whatever you want to call it,” Bruner said. “I love teaching children how to do something new and seeing them get it right. My company, TechBrainiacs, has allowed me to do something I love.”
After the session is finished, students are able to log into their Gamestar Mechanic account to continue learning about video game design.
“These are the types of games their parents played when they were kids, and my students learn how to create them in a matter of hours,” Bruner said. “Kids learn how to create and publish their own games within a couple of weeks. At the end of the class, I want students to be proud of their game.”
The next session is planned from noon to 1:15 p.m. for five Saturdays starting Feb. 20 at the Las Vegas Professional Institute of Technology, 2625 S. Rainbow Blvd. The cost is $149 for five sessions, with discounts available for siblings, referrals, military families and educators.
Additional sessions are planned from 2:45 to 4 p.m. for five Sundays starting March 6 at the Summerlin Library, 1771 Inner Circle, for $149 or $135 for those who register before Feb. 21; from 2:15 to 3:30 p.m. Saturdays starting April 2 at the Centennial Hills Library, 6711 N. Buffalo Drive, for $149 or $135 for those who register before March 20; and from 2:45 to 4 p.m. starting April 17 at the Centennial Hills Library for $149 or $135 for those who register before April 3.
TechBrainiacs also offers an introduction to computer science unplugged session for 7- to 12-year-olds. There are eight sessions ($25 each or $175 for all). The create with code session is for 9- to 15-year-olds and also has eight sessions ($185 for all).
After-school programs and camps are also available. Bruner said he has plans to expand his company to Reno and other Southwestern states in the future.
Visit techbrainiacs.com or call 702-233-5845.
— To reach North View reporter Sandy Lopez, email slopez@viewnews.com or call 702-383-4686. Find her on Twitter: @JournalismSandy |
The U.K.'s new Equality and Diversity Policy makes it unlawful for the Girl Guide organization to tell parents if their daughter's group is being led by a transgender man, even on overnight trips.
"It's shocking that if there is a man who believes he is a woman leading the group, it is forbidden that parents should be informed, even on residential trips," Amanda Gracey told The Christian Institute. Her daughter recently joined a group for girls aged 5 to 7 and she is concerned for her daughter's safety.
The regulations not only allow transgender men to lead girls groups, they allow "any young person" who "identifies as female" to join a girl's group.
The new guidelines also said it was not "best practice" to inform parents if their daughters will share bathrooms or sleeping areas with boy who believe they are girls.
Gracey says this goes against even the most basic guidelines.
"Every piece of safeguarding advice says you should provide separate sleeping and changing facilities for children of opposite sexes under the age of 18," she said.
Many believe the new regulations could be a major hit on the 107-year-old Girl Guide program.
"Sadly the result will be fewer girls joining the Girl Guides. There will be parents who won't let their daughters join because of this change," said Phillip Hollobone MP. |
Gojira! Those who have enjoyed James Stokoe’s psychopathically detailed art on Image Comics’or recently supported his Kickstarter hitare going to get a mega-dose of destruction in August when he chronicles 50 years of atomic lizard mayhem in, a look at what it would really be like to live with cinema’s most famous lizard constantly destroying Tokyo. We talked with Stokoe about his new work and Godzilla fandom, and even got some color and black-and-white preview images!
Newsarama: James, tell us about your Godzilla series – the basic set-up, potential non-Godzilla characters, etc.
James Stokoe: The series starts out in 1954, during Godzilla's first stroll through Tokyo. It follows Ota Murakami and his pal Kentaro Yoshihara, two soldiers who end up getting enlisted in the Anti Megalosaurus Force as experimental weapons testers after their run in with Godzilla.
Every issue takes place roughly 10 years after the last, so at the start they're totally fascinated and awestruck at this monster they're having to deal with, but as the years go on with no solution in sight, the frustration and desperation sets in.
When I started writing, I immediately thought about doing a Moby Dick-type story about dangerous obsession and what not, but scrapped that because it felt too cynical and didn't really reflect what I love about Godzilla.
I ultimately set it up as almost an unrequited love story, where the main character dedicates his existence to chasing this monster and in turn is barely noticed. Ota and company basically spend their lives doing that childhood thing of punching the pretty girl in the arm and then running away.
And of course, all this is wrapped up in big monster fights, masers, black-hole guns, absurd destruction, etc, which is the meat and potatoes of any good Godzilla story.
How did you come to work on the book?
Stokoe: I think my wonderful gentleman editor, Bobby Curnow, had been looking for artists for their first couple series and had seen one of my Godzilla fan comics online, and asked me to try out. I remember being in my Godzilla feet slippers, and drinking from my Godzilla coffee mug when I read the email, so I kind of flipped out and yelled "WELL, DUH!".
I did some samples off of a script (I think it was one of Eric Powell's?) and they dug it. Originally I was going to do one of the miniseries with a writer, but I got greedy and asked if I could pitch my own story, fully expecting to be turned down. But they didn't, and now I feel like I successfully pulled off the greatest scam of my career! Getting paid for drawing Godzilla!
Nrama: What's it been like working with IDW?
It's been really great, I can't say enough good things about them. When I've worked on things likeorthe editorial tends to be pretty hands off and I'm left to my own devices, which I enjoy for my more personal stuff, but onI've been working much more closely with my editor Bobby, whose been an enormous help. He helped tighten up the story a lot, mitigated what would or would not fly with Toho approvals, etc.
They're really great guys and gals over there, and I'd help them bury bodies out in the desert if they asked. My coloring assistant, Heather Breckel, should also be named, as she has probably saved me weeks of grueling toil.
Nrama: Tell us a bit about your fondness for Godzilla – what the character/films mean to you.
Stokoe: Godzilla vs Mothra was the first movie I ever remember seeing as a five-year-old kid, and the series has stuck with me for over 20 more years. I loved Godzilla before I got into books, comics, video games, whatever, and it's been the only thing that I've consistently been interested in for my entire life. I even had a Godzilla on my wedding cake!
It's hard to narrow down what exactly it is that I love about it, but it's just the epitome of cool and probably irreversibly ingrained into my being.
Nrama: What will set this apart from other Godzilla comics, such as the Art Adams one or the one where he fought Charles Barkley? Because that's a hard one to top, let me tell you.
Stokoe: I'm sad to say that Godzilla will not be slam dunking the Grand Canyon in this series, nor fighting the Spanish Armada.
I think your question answered itself, really. I just want to do a straight up, no frills Godzilla story. The themes and concept behind Godzilla are so perfectly simple and easy to jump into that you don't really need much to spice it up.
For a while there, the comics always seemed to assign themselves some kind of bizarre novelty. The Art Adams/Randy Stradley/and company's stuff definitely was the closest to what I want from a Godzilla comic. They seemed to be mining deeper into the Showa era of the films than I probably am, though.
Also, I read the first issue of Duane Swierczynski and Simon Gane's new ongoing and thought it was really brilliant, and am looking forward to where they're going to take it. If IDW keeps putting out different Godzilla series from different creators, I can't see how that is a bad thing.
You can do goofy heel-clicking Showa Godzilla, trippy acid flashback Hedorah Godzilla, paranoid Cold War 1985 Godzilla... if you treat Godzilla as a giant, walking theme then there's so much you can do with it.
Nrama: Will we be seeing other Toho monsters in this, or will you be creating any of your own creatures? If so, could you tell us about them?
Stokoe: I'm going to be sticking to the Toho stable of monsters for this one. I do kind of ashamedly think like a Godzilla purist, and am a bit annoyed whenever a non-Toho monster shows up. It's a new experience for me to approach working on a book as a fan first and a creator second, but that's been built into my DNA at this point, so there's no helping it.
This definitely won't be my most creative book from a new ideas standpoint, I'm more focused on trying to find ways on how to adapt what I love from the films into a comic book without making it a mess.
I've been kicking myself lately, because IDW just recently got the licenses for a slew of new Toho monsters which they didn't have when I started. I've had to rethink my big monster battle royale issue so I can include some of my favorites.
What do you feel is the fundamental appeal of a big lizard destroying balsa-wood cities?
Stokoe: On a more surface level, it's exactly that. It's that bizarre charm of watching those intricately made miniature cities being destroyed by a guy dressed up as an atom bomb/ecological disaster metaphor.
We don't get that kind of thing over here in North America, we seem to be stuck much more in believability than in charm. I'd rather see the wires and zippers than another uninspired CG robot doing a backflip.
Nrama: And a new printing of the Orc Stain trade just came out – with all your other projects, do you see yourself returning to that book in the near future?
Stokoe: Oh yeah, definitely. After Godzilla is wrapped up, I'm going back into Orc Stain full time. Get that dead horse back on its feet. I figure there's about five or six more trades of Orc Stain until I get to the end.
Godzilla (repeatedly) destroys Tokyo in Godzilla: Half-Century War this August. |
Two things were clearly reinforced during Sunday's game between the Bengals and Patriots: Rob Gronkowski is the best tight end in the NFL when healthy, and if Vontaze Burfict sees an opportunity to take a cheap shot, he will.
In the fourth quarter with the Bengals trailing 28-17, Burfict decided to add to his long résumé of dirty play. This time he dove at the back of Martellus Bennett's knee.
MORE: Bengals-Pats stats | Full Sunday scoreboard
There's no room for discussion here. This is a dangerous hit that could have seriously injured Bennett.
Vontaze Burfict going low on Bennett. Seemed unnecessary but what do I know. #Patriots pic.twitter.com/4DWnqa76TD — Will D. (@WAD1980) October 16, 2016
A couple of plays later, Gronkowski appeared to let Burfict know that hit didn't sit well with him.
Gronkowski jawing with Burfict and Adam Jones after making big first down catch. I like Gronks' odds in that fight. #Patriots #Bengals pic.twitter.com/6YbkNZSVTz — Kyle Sumner McKinnon (@Kyle_McKinnon6) October 16, 2016
Gronkowski and Burfict were separated, but Gronk did enough damage on the field. He finished with seven catches for a career-high 162 yards and a touchdown in a 35-17 victory. Sometimes success is the best revenge.
UPDATE: Bennett says Burfict did apologize for the low hit.
Bennett said Burfict apologized and said he didn't mean to get him in the back of the knee but added, "But he probably did." — Jeff Howe (@jeffphowe) October 16, 2016 |
The Chicago Blackhawks announced today that they have agreed to terms with defenseman Nick Leddy on a two-year contract.
“We are pleased to announce that Nick will remain a core member of our organization,” said Vice President/General Manager Stan Bowman. “Over the course of the past three seasons, Nick has shown continuous development and we think he will be essential to our long-term success.”
Leddy, 22, ranked third among Blackhawks defensemen with 18 points (6G, 12A) and a plus-15 rating in 48 regular-season games. The Eden Prairie, Minn., native set career highs in goals, power-play goals (2) and game-winning goals (2). He added two assists in 23 Stanley Cup Playoff games.
"I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to remain in Chicago and be a part of this special group of young, experienced players on a team in a winning environment," said Leddy. "The organization is first class both on and off the ice, and I am honored to be a member of the Chicago Blackhawks."
The 6-0, 191-pound defenseman has tallied 62 points (13G, 49A) in 176 career regular-season games with the Blackhawks from 2010 to 2013. He has recorded five points (1G, 4A) in 36 career postseason contests.
Leddy was originally selected by the Minnesota Wild in the first round (16th overall) of the 2009 NHL Entry Draft. He was acquired by Chicago from Minnesota on Feb. 12, 2010. |
Troy Baker confirms Tales of Vesperia PS3 localization (in video)
Tales of Vesperia‘s Troy Baker, who plays protagonist Yuri in-game, has already confirmed that Tales of Vesperia for PlayStation 3 is coming to the west in the past. However, after eight months of release in Japan, Namco Bandai has yet to announce a localized version of the game.
A video filmed back in April has been brought to my attention today. Apparently, none of the net picked this up, so here it is. The video shows Troy Baker during a Q&A session at Sakura-Con 2010 where he confirms Tales of Vesperia PS3’s localization. He even says himself that he doesn’t understand why Namco Bandai have yet to announce a street date for the release.
A transcript from the Q&A that I’ve put together can be read below. Please note that there are probably a few errors, as at some points it was hard to make out what Baker was saying.
I know you guys re-recorded the voices for Tales of Vesperia PS3. When are you guys going to announce the European release or do you know if it’s coming out in the US? Somebody asked me about that, there’s actually no – we didn’t re-record everything, they literally took what we did and just dropped it in and there was a couple of levels that they added. Uhm, so the new character, uhm, what’s her name? Patty. We mentioned in the expo recently actually about the PS3 version. So now the European release – I don’t know why they haven’t set a street date. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m ready for it to come out, too, because I’ve got a PS3 and I’m like “I want to ??? games”.
If you prefer video, the question is asked at 5:20.
Thanks, Tales Forums. |
The master of surrealism, Salvador Dali, left behind a vast collection of work when he died, and now some of his most prized works are heading to Richmond thanks to the Chasen Gallery.
The master of surrealism, Salvador Dali, left behind a vast collection of work when he died, and now some of his most prized works are heading to Richmond thanks to the Chasen Gallery.
DALI: THE ARGILLET COLLECTION features works straight from Pierre Argillet, the famed publisher of many DADA artists as well as Dali himself.
The works have traveled to museums around the globe and give a unique insight into the personal relationship shared between the surrealist and his publisher (pictured below).
“This collection reflects a constant endeavor and a close collaboration with the artists of these two movements, especially Salvador Dali,” wrote Madame Christine Argillet, the surviving heiress of the Argillet collection. “My goal is to have this collection presented in the finest museums and galleries in the world.”
The collection includes sketches and inked work as well as the chance to meet with Madame Argillet herself (pictured with Dali below)
DALI: THE ARGILLET COLLECTION opens at Carytown’s Chasen Gallery on April 23rd through April 30th. Your chance to meet happens Madame Argillet Friday, April 29th and Saturday, April 30th from 6-8 PM.
Chasen Galleries of Fine Art – Richmond, Virginia
3554 West Cary Street
Richmond, Virginia 23221
Check out some of the other images featured below: |
Zia Hoyos, 16, was struck by a vehicle and killed on North Gene Autry Trail in Palm Springs in May of 2012.
Zia Hoyos, 16, was struck by a vehicle and killed on North Gene Autry Trail in Palm Springs in May of 2012.
INDIO, Calif. - A woman charged in the felony hit and run death of 16-year-old Zia Hoyos in May of 2012 won't serve any jail time. Desert Hot Springs resident Heather Marie Brents, 31, pleaded guilty on Tuesday, but only received three years of probation due to a plea bargain.
If Brents violates the terms of her probation, she will serve four years in prison, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Dale Wells said.
Brents' 70-year-old father, Russell Ted Stienecker, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor accessory count for covering up the crime and was given a two-year probationary term.
According to a declaration filed by Palm Springs police Officer Stephen Woodward in support of an arrest warrant, Brents ``drank herself to blackout'' while celebrating with friends. She dropped off her companions, then struck the teenager on North Gene Autry Trail, north of East Via Escuela, while on the way home at about 1:35 a.m.
Brents stopped several hundred feet down the road, didn't see anything because it was dark and went home, according to the declaration. Later that morning, she noticed damage to the front of her vehicle and panicked when she saw news reports about the girl's death, Woodward wrote.
Officer Eric Goya wrote in another declaration that Brents told her father, the registered owner of the Toyota Tacoma pickup she was driving that night, that ``she believed she was responsible for killing the girl on the news.''
Stienecker removed the truck's damaged front grille and covered the vehicle with a tarp, according to Goya.
Neither called police, according to the officers.
A friend of Brents told police a few weeks after the crash that one of her friends may have struck the girl, according to Woodward, who said Brents later told investigators she remembered hitting something.
Police found a piece of a Toyota Tacoma at the scene.
Stienecker's attorney, John Patrick Dolan, said Brents and Stienecker met with authorities four days after the crash and gave them complete statements.
According to court records, Stienecker has no criminal record in Riverside County. Brents pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor embezzlement charge in 2009, and had finished probation for that crime shortly before the crash.
Brents and Stienecker were arrested nearly a year after the crash.
Zia Hoyos' mother, Senta Florez, launched a petition on change.org calling on local and state leaders to create stiffer penalties for hit-and-run drivers shortly after her daughter's death. Hundreds have shown their support on social media.
The teen's loved ones hope it will gain momentum and make it to a ballot measure. If it does go through, the family wants to call it "Zia's Law."
KESQ and CBS Local 2 met with Senta Florez when she was introducing the petition. She said, "I want her [Brents] to get the max penalty, which is only four years. It's disgraceful. And her father [Stienecker], three years. I cannot believe he would cover up a death," said Florez.
"This whole thing is disgusting, what it is, bottom line, is breaking the law and not being accountable for it," said Zia's aunt, Marie Espejo. "She didn't stop. She kept going and tried to keep it a secret. For that, give them more time," said Espejo. "We're hoping it gets signed then passed so people in the future who go through this don't have to suffer. It's a horrible feeling." |
Maybe you’re a bit of a lead-foot. Maybe you don’t like driving behind trucks. Or maybe you just really like the view from the left lane. Well, an increasing number of states have a message for you: Get over. Or pay up.
Oklahoma, Oregon and Virginia are racing to become the latest in a wave of states that have imposed higher fines and more restrictions on driving in the left lane of multilane highways. The crackdown is an attempt to enforce what legislators say drivers should already know: the far left lane of a highway is for passing, and only passing.
Since 2013, at least five other states — Florida, Georgia, Indiana, New Jersey and Tennessee — have also stiffened penalties for “slowpoke” driving or “left-lane camping.” While all states require slow vehicles to keep right, they do not all specifically require drivers to get out of the left lane after overtaking another motorist or set penalties for failing to do so.
“Left-lane cruisers, besides being dangerously oblivious to the other drivers around them, are annoying as heck,” said Kaye Kory, the Democratic Virginia state delegate who co-sponsored the legislation in her state.
“Left-lane cruisers, besides being dangerously oblivious to the other drivers around them, are annoying as heck.”
Her bill, written to take effect during summer vacation traffic in July, was passed by the House with a $250 fine for left-lane motorists driving slower “than the normal speed of traffic” and for drivers staying in the left lane when they are not passing another vehicle. But Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe wanted the fine reduced to $100, which Kory agreed to.
In Oregon, the bill now making its way through the Legislature would impose a $250 fine for driving in the left lane except when passing.
“People who hog the left lane lead to road rage and frustration, tailgating, passing on the right,” said Senate Majority Leader Ginny Burdick, a Democrat who previously championed Oregon’s ban on using hand-held cellphones while driving. “All of these are unsafe behaviors.”
Slowpoke driving bills are popular with constituents and attract media attention.
“I can’t tell you how many people come up to me from all walks of life, including ‘gun nuts’ who are just totally opposed to everything I’m doing on guns and say, ‘I hate everything you’re doing on guns but I love your left-lane bill,’ ” Burdick said.
But the measures aren’t always popular enough to become law. Since 2015, left-lane bills have been proposed in Mississippi, North Carolina and Ohio without winning approval. Questions remain about whether they really work to improve highway safety.
Dangerous or Just Annoying?
Burdick said stricter left-lane laws are needed in part because traffic fatalities are on the rise. Traffic fatalities have increased sharply: in 2015, traffic deaths rose by 7.2 percent over the year before, the largest jump in 50 years, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Traffic deaths rose 8 percent in the first nine months of 2016 over the first nine months of 2015, the agency estimates.
Traffic safety experts say there’s no specific research on the danger of left-lane driving. Speed and distracted driving, by contrast, are clearly identified threats to safety.
“It is not something that comes to the top of the list when it comes to traffic safety concerns,” said Andrea Bill, traffic safety engineer research program manager at the University of Wisconsin Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory.
“I have not seen any research that says that hogging the left lane is a major safety issue,” said Charles Farmer, vice president of research and statistical services at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a nonprofit research group funded by the auto insurance industry. “We definitely know that speeding is a major safety issue. The evidence is overwhelming on that.”
“I have not seen any research that says that hogging the left lane is a major safety issue. We definitely know that speeding is a major safety issue. The evidence is overwhelming on that.”
States have been raising speed limits in recent years. The national 55 mph speed limit, enacted in 1973 during a fuel crisis, was officially repealed in 1995, by which time many states had already raised the speed limit to 65 mph.
Now, Hawaii and Washington, D.C., are the only places where the maximum speed limit is less than 65 mph. Eleven states still have a top speed limit of 65 mph, and 38 states have higher speed limits on some roads. A handful of western states have an 80 mph limit. Texas has an 85 mph limit.
Legislators and police say that the danger of left-lane lingering is obvious. In Oregon, for instance, state police list “lane usage” as one of five main factors leading to serious injuries and fatal crashes. The others are speed, impaired driving, distracted driving and “occupant safety,” for example wearing seat belts.
Proponents of left-lane laws argue that slowpoke drivers cause unnecessary lane changing as faster traffic weaves around to pass on the right.
But the underlying problem is still speed, Farmer said. “Lane changing is a problem if you’re going too fast,” he said. “At normal speeds, and if you’re careful and you’re looking out, it’s not a problem. That’s why we have multilane highways.”
Choking Already-Congested Roads
Regardless of whether it is dangerous, left-lane driving impedes the smooth flow of traffic — and for commuters on often overcrowded roads, that is infuriating. Being a “left lane hog,” as Burdick calls it, has been among the top five most annoying driver behaviors for two years according to a survey commissioned by the travel booking site Expedia.
A left-lane law is a “relatively easy way” of curbing road rage, said Kory, the Virginia state delegate.
“Road rage is a very real phenomenon that is exacerbated by the increasing congestion on our major roads and highways,” she said. “Curbing left-lane cruising is a step towards smoothing the flow of traffic and reducing likely instances of road rage.”
In Washington state, Democratic Sen. Guy Palumbo introduced a left-lane bill after he was elected last year and started driving 80 miles to the state capital, Olympia, from his home in Snohomish. He saw plenty of left-lane drivers holding up traffic, he said. “They’re affecting mobility and they’re causing congestion where there doesn’t need to be.”
His bill died in committee, but Palumbo says he’ll try again. “It’s not a panacea by any means,” he said of the bill. “But if people drove like they were trained to drive in drivers ed, we would have less traffic because people would get out of the way.”
Just drawing attention to left-lane road hogging can have beneficial results, some advocates of cracking down on the practice say.
“Road rage is a very real phenomenon that is exacerbated by the increasing congestion on our major roads and highways,” she said. “Curbing left-lane cruising is a step towards smoothing the flow of traffic and reducing likely instances of road rage.”
In Michigan, 1st Lt. Chris McIntire, a state police post commander, has launched a two-month crackdown on left-lane drivers. A similar initiative last year, in four counties, resulted in 639 traffic stops and 56 tickets. Fines are set by the jurisdiction’s court and not by the state, but McIntire estimates they are about $100.
“It causes accidents, but one of the biggest things we see is it causes road rage,” he said of left-lane lingerers. “Right or wrong,” he said, “people are traveling faster than they are and they [the speeders] get mad.”
The crackdown last year was largely to educate drivers about staying out of the left lane except when passing, McIntire said. “We weren’t writing a lot of tickets unless it was so egregious we had to.” But, he said, the state police did get fewer calls from furious drivers reporting left-lane lingerers.
Burdick, the Oregon state senator, said she noticed a similar drop during two previous attempts to pass a “left-lane hog” bill, thanks to media coverage of the proposal. “I would notice an improvement. I think a lot of the value of this is educational,” she said. “People know: Hey, we’re on to you.”
In Indiana, which in 2015 passed a slowpoke law with a maximum fine of $500, warnings far outpace citations: 2,448 to 165 since July 2015. But the warnings have an effect, said Indiana State Police spokesman 1st Sgt. Richard Myers.
“Anytime someone is stopped, issued a ticket or warning, and given an explanation of the violation, we as law enforcement officials are educating the public — which in turn reduces accidents, congestion and road rage incidents,” Myers said.
Educating drivers on what is acceptable highway driving behavior can sometimes be as important as legislation, said Rich Jacobs, spokesman for Drive Smart Virginia, an insurance industry-funded safety advocacy group. His group has not taken a position on the Virginia left-lane bill and has instead focused, so far unsuccessfully, on stricter laws on distracted and impaired driving.
“You can’t just legislate it, you’ve also got to shift public opinion,” he said. “That’s the challenge.” |
This article is part of a series on Wilderness First Aid called First Aid Fridays. Skip to another post:
Overview
First Aid Fridays is a new segment Max and I are introducing. Our goal is to provide principles of wilderness first aid in a succinct, memorable format backed by professional medical data. Today’s FAF will focus on wounds.
Between knives, hatchets, sharp rocks, and vicious man-eating raccoons, there are many ways to sustain wounds in the backcountry. Most of these will be small cuts and scrapes, but every backwoods adventurer should be prepared to handle larger wounds.
The good news is, whether a paper cut or a gaping raccoon bite, the principles of wound management are the same.
Priority One: Stop the Bleeding
Use the cleanest material possible to hold pressure on the wound. A 4×4 gauze pad works great. I recommend carrying a few in your first aid kit. Do not constantly lift your hand to see if the bleeding has stopped. Hold a continuous and steady pressure. If the bleeding soaks through the gauze, do not change it, just add a new piece on top. Almost all bleeding can be stopped by holding pressure
If the bleeding is massive and pulsatile, meaning it is rhythmically pulsing out, you may be dealing with an arterial bleed, which is much more serious and life threatening. This is a situation that needs professional help ASAP. Elevate the extremity and apply a pressure dressing. If the wound still continues to bleed profusely, consider a tourniquet. Tourniquets should only be used in life threatening situations because they can cause considerable nerve and tissue damage, and possibly lead to limb loss. If you’re dealing with an arterial bleed, it’s time to bail on your backcountry adventure.
Priority Two: Clean the Wound
Most wound treatment revolves around one single concept: preventing bacteria from taking up residence in your wound. Bacteria need an environment that is warm, wet, dark, and has lots of nutrients for them to feed on. Create an inhospitable environment for them and you will be less likely to experience a wound infection. In the wilderness, infections can get out of hand quickly, so the key is prevention.
Forget everything you ever learned about hydrogen peroxide, iodine, and even soap. The single best way to clean a wound is by irrigating it with clean water using continuous pressure. Yep, you read that right: Plain old water. Clean tap water, when used correctly, is just as effective at reducing microbes in a wound as sterile saline is, and use of soap has actually been associated with a higher level of bacterium present in wounds. Do not scrub the wound – this actually damages tissue and creates a higher risk of infection.
I recommend keeping a 10-20 ml syringe in your first aid kit for these situations. Use the syringe to irrigate the wound with at least 200 ml of treated water (1 Liter is best). The idea here is to manually expel all bacteria and foreign objects from the wound bed, so pressure is an important factor. If you don’t have a syringe handy, you can cut a very small hole in the corner of an unused Ziploc bag and spray your water through it, or hold your water container at a short height from the wound. Make sure whatever you use has some oomph behind it.
Priority Three: Cover
The majority of wounds sustained in the wilderness should not be closed. Once a deep wound is closed, it provides all of the things bacteria appreciate: Warmth, moisture, and lots of yummy damaged tissue to eat. Even large, gaping wounds should be allowed to heal on their own until they can be evaluated by a professional. Leave your suture kit at home, amateur surgeons. Keeping the wound clean is much more important than keeping it closed.
Consider using skin glue for a minor wound in a pesky area, such as the webbing between your fingers or toes.
Dry the wound using clean gauze and cover it with gauze and tape or a bandage large enough to completely encompass it. Most commercial bandages are too small and come off easily. Leave the small, skinny ones behind. You need to stock your first aid kit with a wide variety of large bandages. Chances are you’re going to be sweaty and active, so I recommend keeping Mastisol or Tincture of Benzoin in your kit to help your bandages adhere. A small dab of antibiotic ointment can be applied to help prevent infection. The wound should be cleaned and redressed every day.
Sources and Further Reading:
Boring but Necessary Disclaimer
This is not a substitute for professional medical care. First aid is meant to provide assistance to an injured or ill person when medical treatment is unavailable. Do not delay seeking professional help in the event of a serious condition.
If you are interested in learning more about Wilderness Medicine, I recommend enrolling in a Wilderness First Aid course through your local REI. |
Quanum is bringing FPV to the masses with the DIY FPV Goggle kit! It’s time you start flying RC with a birds eye view and a sense of flight. Until now, an immersive FPV experience through goggles was out of reach for some. No longer is a cost a barrier between you and the blue sky above.
The Quanum FPV goggle kit is based around a custom built 4.3in NON-blue screen monitor, providing a clear, bright, non blue image in even the worst of conditions. It contains a custom Fresnel lens, making the monitor crystal clear with a minimal viewing distance. An ergonomic housing was custom molded to house the monitor and the lens, with adaptability to cater to various face types. The molded housing is made from EPP foam allowing you to carve and adjust the fit just right to your face and finishing it off with foam strips for a light tight seal. The goggles come with adjustable securing side straps and provisions for even a top strap. The top housing has a molded curved top for the option of attaching the goggle to the brim of your favorite ball cap for an even more custom DIY fit.
The monitor uses the common RCA style video in connections for video and audio, and has an included mini JST power adapter as well. The goggles can be switched between 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratios and comes with 3 lenses included to find the most comfortable FPV viewing experience for you.
With the Quanum DIY google’s large screen and broad immersive viewing angle, some will even prefer the view to other FPV options. The DIY kit is perfect to get into FPV or if you’re a seasoned FPV pilot who wants to give a bigger screen a try for a new feel in the sky. You could even use them as back up goggles or ride along goggles for spectators!
*Check out the build video by clicking here*
Specs:
Monitor screen: NON-Blue screen custom TFT LCD
Screen size: 4.3in (16:9 or 4:3 switchable)
Format: PAL/NTSC supported
Supply voltage: 7~13V
Resolution: 480px (w)
Fresnel lens: 3X and 4X included
Size: 140x95x120mm
Weight: 195g
*Note: This is the viewing goggles only, and needs to be paired with your favorite Video receiver, transmitter and camera for the full FPV experience. |
A snowplow tries to clear Halifax streets early Monday morning as a winter wallop hits Eastern Canada. (CBC )
A winter storm is pushing through parts of Atlantic Canada, bringing a mix of snow, rain and freezing rain that has shut many schools and hampered travel.
The system is expected to rapidly intensify as it crosses southwestern Newfoundland and moves into central Labrador later Monday.
"Strong winds gusting from 100 to 140 km/h are expected across all of Newfoundland," Environment Canada said in a late afternoon warning.
Blizzard warnings and blowing snow warnings are in effect in several areas of Labrador. Environment Canada said almost 30 centimetres of snow has already fallen over southeastern Labrador. It also said a further 10 to 25 centimetres are expected for central and northern Labrador tonight.
Nova Scotia was hit with snow on Saturday, and it changed into freezing rain and then back into snow on Monday, creating slushy roads for morning commuters.
Environment Canada said there's still a risk of freezing rain and blowing snow in the Halifax region.
Cape Breton isn't escaping unscathed either. "Blizzard conditions can be expected this afternoon and evening in the Cape Breton Highlands," warned Environment Canada.
Prince Edward Island is almost at a standstill as snow and high winds batter the province. Police are telling drivers to stay off the road.
A wind warning is in effect in central P.E.I. through tonight with gusts approaching 90 km/h.
Travel a challenge
High winds prompted Marine Atlantic to cancel ferry crossings on Monday, as a stormy system swept into much of Newfoundland and Labrador.
The Crown corporation had already cancelled crossings that had been set for late Sunday, forcing travellers and truckers to wait until conditions improved.
Winds on the Newfoundland side of the Cabot Strait hit 110 km/h on Sunday. Marine Atlantic said it will update its website when it makes a decision about Monday night's schedule.
Travelling by plane isn't much easier. The departure board at the Halifax Stanfield International Airport is a sea of red with dozens of cancellations and some delays.
Lois Preston said she left Truro, N.S., early Monday morning to catch a flight. Now she has a long wait ahead of her.
"I was to fly out of here this morning at 7:30 and then they booked me for the 9:30, and now I'm waiting for the 6:30," she said.
Many highways around Nova Scotia are slippery. The Confederation Bridge, which links P.E.I. and New Brunswick, is closed to high-sided vehicles, including transport trucks.
In many parts of the East, teachers and schoolchildren at least won't have to travel in the stormy weather because of school closures, including many in Nova Scotia, all on Prince Edward Island, and in Labrador and on Newfoundland's Burin Peninsula.
Government offices and dozens of businesses have closed for the day on P.E.I.
New Brunswick remains mainly unaffected. |
Consumer rebound: No 'sugar rush' - it's 'protein'
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- American consumers are finally opening their wallets again, according to an exclusive CNNMoney survey, raising hopes that the long-suffering economy could get a boost.
The survey of 27 leading economists forecasts that personal consumption, a measure of consumer spending, jumped by 4% in the fourth quarter. If that forecast is correct, it will be the strongest increase in that key reading since 2006.
"Those who were employed during the recession were often afraid of spending due to fears of losing their jobs," said Jharonne Martis-Olivo, director of consumer research for Thomson Reuters. "I do think they opened up during the fourth quarter."
The bullish outlook for consumer spending is the reason why economists now forecast that Friday's reading on gross domestic product, the government's main measure of the economy's strength, grew at a 3.5% annual rate in the fourth quarter -- a significant increase from a 2.6% rise in the previous quarter.
"You won't see this kind of pop every quarter -- we're not going to have Christmas again in the first quarter. But the worst is over," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's. "I think there has been a corner turned here."
The spending improvements are broad-based, including a strong holiday shopping season and a rebound in demand for new cars. Consumers finally bought big-ticket items that they had held off on during the recession, with Thomson-Reuters forecasting a 24% annual rise in spending for such purchases.
"There was a big release of pent-up demand in the fourth quarter that has been building up for a couple of years, at least," said George Mokrzan, senior economist, Huntington National Bank, who is forecasting that personal consumption jumped by 4.5% in the period.
He expects the gains in consumer spending to continue throughout 2011 as employers add more workers to meet increased demand, and workers benefit from the partial holiday in payroll taxes and greater credit availability.
Improvements in the stock market have also helped give consumers more confidence, reducing the drive to choose saving over spending. The savings rate, which had climbed to 7.2% in early 2009, had fallen to near 5% by the end of 2010.
"People got bored with being frugal. It's much more fun to go out there and spend money," said Wyss.
The 3.5% growth forecast for GDP is solid but not spectacular -- the economy grew at a faster rate at the end of 2009 and the start of 2010. But those gains came with little help from consumers, driven instead by government stimulus spending and a restocking of business inventories that had been slashed during the recession -- what Robert Brusca of FAO Economics calls a sugar rush.
"This growth isn't a sugar rush. It's protein," he said of the current strength of the recovery. His prediction for personal consumption is the most bullish -- up 4.7% -- even though he's expecting a more modest 3.8% gain in overall GDP.
"There are all kinds of little indicators like this that suggest people who have jobs are more secure and starting to spend," Brusca said. |
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Security contractors see opportunities, and limits, in Mexico
MEXICO CITY — With the Iraq war over and the American presence waning in Afghanistan, U.S. security contractors are looking for new prospects in Mexico, where spreading criminal violence has created a growing demand for battle-ready professionals.
After years of lucrative work in the Middle East and Central Asia, where their presence has been occasionally marred by incidents of excessive force and misconduct, contractors and private security firms of varying sizes and specialties are being drawn into a conflict closer to home. But Mexico’s restrictive gun laws mean that foreign contractors must enter the bloody drug war unarmed as they take jobs ranging from consulting and technical training for the Mexican military to guarding business executives from kidnapping gangs and extortionists.
Virginia-based DynCorp International has job openings in Mexico for aviation instructors and mechanics. The New York consulting firm Kroll hires anti-kidnapping specialists to protect Mexican business executives.
The companies are beckoned by swelling pots of public and private contracting gold. In November, the Pentagon’s counter-narco-terrorism program office solicited bids on more than $3 billion in contracts worldwide, with an unspecified amount destined for operations in Mexico. The State Department has pledged nearly $2 billion in drug war aid to Mexico since 2008, much of it available to U.S. companies that can provide equipment or services to the besieged Mexican state.
Security spending by private companies in Mexico and the Mexican government has also surged. Since President Felipe Calderon deployed Mexico’s military against the country’s drug kingpins in December 2006, the number of armed private security firms in the country has doubled, Mexican federal police statistics show. But while there are 1,400 licensed firms in good standing, analysts say there may be an additional 10,000 operating without proper authorization.
Still, despite Mexico’s potential for highly remunerative work, experts caution that it will never equal the bonanza that U.S. companies found in Iraq and Afghanistan.
For one, the money available in Mexico doesn’t measure up to the cash that flowed through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the U.S. government spent more than $200 billion on private contractors over the past decade.
Gun law restrictions
Then there’s the issue of Article 27 of Mexico’s firearms code, necessary reading for anyone tempted to make a transition from Kabul or Baghdad to Mexico’s urban badlands. It essentially bans foreigners from carrying guns in Mexico — a deal-breaker for many would-be soldiers of fortune, despite their growing interest in the country, said Michael Braun, former DEA operations chief and now a partner with Spectre Group International LLC, a private security firm based in Alexandria.
“The Mexican government is not going to allow U.S. contractors to be armed in Mexico, and I can tell you that alone will cause many companies large and small to not even consider performing work there,” Braun said.
“The Mexican government and the Mexican people are extremely sensitive when it comes to these questions of sovereignty, and we need to respect that,” he added.
Mexico maintains some of the tightest gun-control laws in the hemisphere, even as drug gangs amass formidable arsenals of AK-47 assault rifles, grenade launchers and other military-grade weapons. While foreigners who are permanent residents in Mexico can get permits to own certain firearms for hunting or home defense, Mexican law prohibits non-citizens from working as armed security guards or carrying concealed weapons for self-defense.
That has a broad, chilling effect on U.S. contractors contemplating work in Mexico, even among those who do not directly work in security details as bodyguards, analysts say. Many private security contractors are military veterans who are accustomed to keeping at least a handgun for self-defense, and they balk at the thought of going unarmed into one of Mexico’s hot zones, such as Ciudad Juarez or Nuevo Laredo.
“A lot of guys ask me: ‘How do you carry down there?’ And when I say I don’t, they can’t believe it,” said Rick Sweeney, chief executive of California-based SECFOR, which provides personal security services to business executives in several of Mexico’s manufacturing centers, mostly along the border.
Sweeney said he worked as a security contractor in Iraq until 2006. Today, all of his 15 or so contractors are deployed in Mexico. Most are ex-soldiers from Britain and Australia. None is allowed to carry a weapon, so they team with local Mexican companies that can provide firepower.
“Everyone thinks if they worked in Iraq and Afghanistan they can work in Mexico, but it’s a different ballgame,” Sweeney said. “I’m not looking for the guys who come to me and say they’re an expert shot or a black belt. I’m looking for guys who can plan and stay out of trouble, rather than blast their way out of trouble once it starts.”
Partners vital — and risky
Armed private security is a booming business in many parts of Latin America, and demand for personal protection services in Mexico is growing at least 20 percent a year, driven by foreign and local business executives looking to safeguard their families and employees, according to Robert Munks, a senior Americas analyst with London-based IHS-Jane’s, which tracks global security trends.
Foreign contractors who partner with Mexican firms to provide armed guards typically subject those workers to extensive background checks, according to Munks, but contractors are still exposed to considerable risk.
“They have to be incredibly careful about who they partner with,” he said. “A very large percentage of people working in private security are suspected of working with organized crime networks.”
Still, the huge volume of trade between the United States and Mexico often necessitates that American executives cross the border. Companies that do not have much experience in Mexico are especially concerned about sending their staffers, even for short trips, according to Robert Oatman, a Maryland-based security consultant.
“You’re not going to see many executives traveling to Tijuana, or if they do, they’re not spending the night,” Oatman said.
A boom in training
A growing number of former and current U.S. military personnel are also training Mexican security forces in counterinsurgency, electronic surveillance and other techniques honed by the long American engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan.
American security aid pays for some of those programs, while other contractors are paid by the Mexican government, whose spending on security jumped from $1.7 billion in 2005 to more than $12 billion in 2011, according to the think tank Mexico Evalua.
There are no precise figures on the number of U.S. security contractors working in Mexico, but the Pentagon and the State Department spent $635.8 million on counternarcotics contracts in Latin America in 2009, a 32 percent increase from 2005, according to an analysis prepared by the office of Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) in June.
The report found that the United States awarded more than $170 million in counternarcotics contracts in Mexico between 2005 and 2009, much of that from the nearly $2 billion in security assistance that Congress has allocated through the Merida Initiative.
Still, analysts say the U.S. role in Mexico will always be limited by sensitivities to the bitter legacy of armed American troops south of the border.
“The U.S. government is afraid of overstepping, given the limited welcome it has in Mexico,” said Nick Schwellenbach, an investigator at the Project on Government Oversight, a District-based watchdog group. “And given the history,” he added.
More world news coverage: - Iran is ready to revive talks, Ahmadinejad says - Russian television veers back to familiar ground - U.S. military presence in Asia may expand - Read more headlines from around the world |
Though Portland has been justly praised for regularly making it through many calendar years with zero deaths of people biking, it is clearly the most dangerous of the four cities recognized as the nation’s bike-friendliest.
For the years 2009-2013, Portland’s fatality rate per bike commuter was 75 percent higher than the officially listed average for the League of American Bicyclists’ four “Platinum” cities: Portland; Fort Collins, Colo.; Boulder, Colo.; and Davis, Calif. Its reported collision rate per bike commuter was 94 percent higher.
The figures above for Portland come from five-year averages, tracked by the City of Portland and Oregon Department of Transportation. The figures for other cities come from their most recent applications to the League, which asks only for the most recent year of fatality and collision data. However, Portland has been well above average in other one-year snapshots by the League, too.
Both the collision and fatality figures are based on the estimated number of daily bike commuters to work in each city. That’s an imperfect measure of the total amount of biking in a city, but it’s considered the best available because it’s tracked closely by the Census Bureau.
These figures don’t reflect collisions or fatalities from 2014 or 2015, including the death of Ryan Egge in 2014, at NE Cully and Killingsworth, or the death of Mark Angeles last week at SE Gladstone and Chavez. That’s because the final collision and ridership figures for 2014 aren’t available yet.
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The number of reported collisions per estimated bike commuter in Portland has ticked up 16 percent since 2009, with the biggest rises in 2012 and 2013. But that’s not beyond the margin of error, so bike collision rates in Portland over the last few years since Portland received its “Platinum” designation would be best described as flat, like its rate of bike commuting.
On its ridership and fatality rates, Portland’s “key outcomes” more clearly resemble those in the cities the League rates as “Gold.” On its collision rates (which vary more by city because of different police reporting standards) Portland’s outcomes more clearly resemble those in the cities the League rates as “Silver.”
On Monday I asked Bill Nesper, vice president for programs at the League, if these figures lend any credence to the campaign by some Portland biking advocates for the League to downgrade Portland to “Gold” when the city’s status comes up for renewal next year.
“Davis is the real outlier here with over 20 percent of people biking and zero fatalities reported in the last application, so this effects those averages,” Nesper said in an email. “Like you, we’d definitely like to see more growth in bicycling. The Platinum BFCs are looking towards Diamond, which has a minimum of 15 percent ridership as well as minimum requirements for safety and comfort (public survey component).”
By those measures, only one city in the country, Davis, stands a chance of achieving “Diamond” status. If Davis were promoted to that status this year — its status is up for renewal in 2015 — the average performance of the League’s three remaining Platinum cities would indeed drop, but Portland would remain the most dangerous of the three.
In the larger picture, of course, every top-rated biking city in the country remains a dramatically safer place to ride a bicycle than almost anywhere in the United States. Here’s what the chart of fatalities looks like when you include the national average, too.
Data: League, ODOT, PBOT, Census, FHWA . National fatality data is for 2009-2012. Gathered here
Update 11:55 pm: The Portland Bureau of Transportation responds with the following chart from the Alliance for Biking and Walking showing a different set of peers: The 50 largest U.S. cities. Among that group, Portland’s biking fatality rate is the best.
Active Transportation Manager Margi Bradway said Tuesday that a city like Fort Collins or Davis is less likely to see bike-related fatalities than Portland is because Portland has more large vehicles on many streets throughout the city rather than just a few, and because Portland’s role as a transportation hub adds to the amount of freight trucks.
However, Bradway added that as part of the city transportation bureau’s Vision Zero action plan, the city has secured a $150,000 grant from the Oregon Department of Transportation to study the best practices of major European cities, some of which have fatality rates even lower than those in Fort Collins or Boulder.
“We’re one of the safest if not the safest large cities in the country,” PBOT Safety Manager Gabe Graff said. “But that’s not acceptable to us, which is why we’re embarking on this Vision Zero action plan.”
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After his third loss, in 1908, as the Democratic presidential nominee, William Jennings Bryan enjoyed telling the story of the drunk who three times tried to enter a private club. After being tossed out into the street a third time, the drunk said: “They can’t fool me. Those fellows don’t want me in there!”
Mitt Romney might understandably think that a third try would have a happy ending in a successful presidency. First, however, he must be a candidate. In 1948, when Democrats considered offering their presidential nomination to Dwight Eisenhower, the former and future Democratic speaker of the House, taciturn Sam Rayburn, said of Eisenhower: “Good man but wrong business.” Two landslide elections and an admirable presidency proved that Rayburn was spectacularly mistaken, but he was right that not every good man is good at every business. Romney, less than nimble at the business of courting voters, lost a winnable race in 2012.
The nation was mired in a disappointing recovery, upward mobility had stalled and the incumbent president’s signature achievement was unpopular and becoming more so. Barack Obama, far from being a formidable politician, was between the seismic repudiations of 2010 and 2014. Running against Romney, Obama became the first president to win a second term with smaller percentages of both the popular and electoral votes. He got 3.6 million fewer votes and a lower percentage of the electoral vote. Yet Romney lost all but one (North Carolina) of the 10 battleground states. He narrowly lost Florida, Virginia and Ohio, but even if he had carried all three, Obama still would have won with 272 electoral votes.
If it seemed likely that the Republican field of candidates for 2016 would be unimpressive, this would provide a rationale for Romney redux. But markets work, and the U.S. electoral system is a reasonably well-functioning political market, with low barriers to entry for new products.
For all the flaws of a nominating process that begins with the Obnoxiously Entitled Four (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, with 4 percent of the nation’s population), those states do not require immediate substantial financial muscle, and they reward retail campaigning, so lesser-known and underfunded candidates can break through. Furthermore, campaign finance laws designed to limit competition are, fortunately, porous enough to allow a few wealthy contributors to enable marginal candidates to be heard. These are among the reasons the Republicans’ 2016 field will have more plausible aspirants than any nomination contest since the party’s first presidential campaign in 1856.
America does not have one presidential election every four years, it has 51 — in the states and the District of Columbia. A Romney candidacy, drawing on his network of financial supporters and other activists, might make sense if the GOP were anemic in the states. But Republicans as of this week control 31 governorships, including those in seven of the 10 most populous states (Florida, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia and Ohio — all but California, Pennsylvania and New York). Republicans control 68 of the 98 partisan state legislative chambers. (Nebraska’s unicameral legislature is chosen in nonpartisan elections.) In 23 states, with 251 electoral votes, Republicans control the governor’s office and the legislature. (Democrats have such control in only seven states.) Republicans have their most state legislative seats since the 1920s.
This mirrors Republican strength in Congress. The party holds more House seats than at any time since 1931. (Democrats, after winning the House in 20 consecutive elections from 1954 to 1992, have lost it in nine of the last 11.) Republicans are one Senate seat shy of equaling their highest total since the 1920s.
In the six presidential elections beginning in 1992, Democratic candidates have averaged 327 electoral votes, Republicans just 211. Republicans have lost the popular vote in five of the last six and have not won a decisive popular-vote victory since 1988. And no candidate before Romney lost while winning 59 percent of the white vote, which was almost 90 percent of his support. George H.W. Bush won about that portion in 1988 but captured 426 electoral votes. Romney got just 206. The white portion of the vote has shrunk 15 points to 72 percent in the six presidential elections since 1992. With the fastest-growing ethnic group, Asian Americans, Romney did even worse (21 percent) than he did with Hispanics (27 percent).
One more discouraging word about Romney 3.0: Massachusetts. Only two presidential candidates, James Polk in 1844 and Woodrow Wilson in 1916, have been elected while losing their home states.
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Private developers have temporarily shut down 5.1 kilometres' worth of roads, sidewalks and bike lanes in Toronto, infuriating some residents who are finding it harder to get around.
"Wow. Those numbers are quite alarming," said Coun. Kristyn Wong-Tam, who represents a downtown ward. "You can imagine removing five kilometres of sidewalks away from downtown, midtown Toronto. You're almost shutting the city down."
CBC Toronto requested that the city compile a list of where the closures exist, which developers are responsible for them and the length of each temporary closure.
72 shutdowns in the city
The only full street shutdown is on Helendale Avenue for an expected 13-month closure to build a condo at 2388 Yonge St., in north Toronto.
The longest shutdown is 4½ years, for a condo being built at Bloor and Yonge, a major downtown intersection. The sidewalk and one lane of traffic will be closed on Hayden Street on the south side of the construction site.
'I say that they've been lazy,' councillor says
Wong-Tam's riding, Ward 27 Toronto Centre-Rosedale, is the epicentre of the occupations. Of the 72 projects in play right now, 27 of them are in the ward, many of which dot the busy Yonge Street corridor.
Private developers in Toronto are currently occupying more than five kilometres of public space in Toronto, sometimes on arterial lanes like this site on Richmond Street West. (Chris Glover/CBC) Wong-Tam said she receives almost daily complaints about the road closures. What people don't know, she said, is that before any road occupancy permit is approved it goes through a very "rigorous" technical review and negotiation between the city and the developer.
The councillor said she believes some developers have been "lazy" and have a sense of entitlement, but it has gotten better.
"Over the six years that I've been at city hall, I have seen planning staff and others get a little bit tougher on this matter," she said. "[The developers] haven't necessarily responded to the pressures on their own — they've been forced to respond to the pressures. So that's why I say that they've been lazy [and] not as innovative as they can be."
Closing a main road is 'last resort'
Kyp Perikleous, director of Toronto Transportation Services, said the city works to avoid shutdowns of arterial roads.
Transportation Services estimates that main roads see 2,500 vehicles per hour during rush-hour traffic.
Perikleous acknowledges that even a one-lane shutdown can significantly worsen congestion.
"It's got to be a means of last resort. We need to make sure that if it's for a main arterial roadway that we have looked at the site to confirm it can't be done on a local road where there is less of an impact," Perikleous said.
A 'smack in the face' for residents
Nathan Grundy, 38, has filed more than a dozen complaints with the city over private developers shutting down public bike lanes and streets, but he said the five-kilometre figure astonished him.
"That's a lot of space. That's a long way of laneway, and I can't even picture five kilometres in my head," he said. "I think that is absolutely ridiculous and kind of a smack in the face to residents of the city."
Nathan Grundy says the amount of public roads and sidewalks taken over by private developers is a 'smack in the face' to citizens. (Chris Glover/CBC)
Grundy, who has lived in Toronto his entire adult life, said the shutdowns don't just affect drivers but pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders, too.
"I don't blame the developers, they are playing within the rules," Grundy said. "I think that city councillors should really take a look at the rules and adjust them to reflect today's facts on the ground. We are at an age where we have the skills and resources to build great buildings without having to have a significant impact on commute times."
Last month, Mayor John Tory vowed to get tough on applications from developers seeking to close public space.
Tory's office highlighted three projects where the city has worked to reduce the inconvenience caused by construction — two on Richmond Street and one on Bathurst Street.
The mayor's office pointed to the condo being built at 604-618 Richmond St. W., which is currently shutting down one lane of traffic on a main arterial road. It's been adjusted to reduce the width of the shutdown, maintain the Richmond Street bicycle lane and reduce the construction time from 24 to 18 months.
Other major cities like Dublin, Philadelphia and Montreal make developers pay more to occupy priority streets than side streets. Chicago also takes into account the duration of the shutdown and initial fees can go up by as much as eight times by the 18-month mark, according to a City of Toronto report.
Permit fee hike in Toronto raises $4.84M in 2016
In Toronto, builders need to acquire a permit to build on public spaces, but prior to 2015, a sidewalk off the beaten path and a lane of traffic on a main road cost the exact same amount to close for construction.
In October 2015, council voted to introduce a new fee structure depending on the importance of the road. The new rules increased fees from $5.77 a month for each square metre of space occupied, to as much as $107.94 a month per square metre for priority roads.
In 2014, street occupation permit fees generated approximately $2.5 million for general revenue, and in 2016, the first full year after the fee increase, revenue from the fees rose to $4.84 million.
Steve Deveaux, chairman of the Building Industry and Land Development Association, said the fee increase led to more than just more money for the city.
"It did force builders and developers to think a bit more creatively about the life cycle of the construction process," said Deveaux, adding that many builders have become more careful about occupying space as needed.
"But you could double, triple, quadruple the price and it still would not negate the need for that staging in the right of way, as we're trying to build the kinds of buildings the city is asking us to build right up to the street line." |
Johannesburg - The ANC is a "complete mess" and its young cadres have no interest in history, but simply want access to jobs and personal enrichment, according to a United States embassy cable obtained by City Press through the whistleblower website WikiLeaks.
Download the cable here.
According to the cable, the ANC's Gauteng spokesperson Dumisa Ntuli told a US diplomat that crippling divisions were plaguing the ruling party.
Ntuli, who has denied discussing internal ANC issues with the US embassy, did not mince his words about the party, according to the cable, which is dated October 29 2009.
He reportedly said the party was deeply divided not only between supporters of Zuma and former president Thabo Mbeki, but "along multiple other lines", City Press reported.
"There are die-hard Zuma supporters, the pro-labour people, the Communists, the pro-Mbeki people and no one speaks for the same things," Ntuli is quoted as saying in the cable.
"Party leaders are seeking ways to restructure and unify the party so that younger members understand the history and values of the ANC.
"However, according to Ntuli these efforts are not going well and will only lead to failure.
Personal enrichment
"He said: 'The younger cadres have no interest in the history of the ANC. They want access to jobs and personal enrichment.'
"Worse than the lack of interest in history, [Ntuli] claimed, is that they will not listen to, or respect senior officials."
Ntuli apparently told the diplomat party members were "mostly focused on jockeying for positions to be decided upon at the 2012 national congress".
He said: "The party isn't even focused on the 2011 elections."
Ntuli, who the diplomat came to regard as an Mbeki loyalist, said the "Zuma government will not come close to delivering" on the party's resolutions.
He said the ANC was concerned that it would lose to the Democratic Alliance in the Tshwane metro during the 2011 local government elections.
"We have big internal problems in Tshwane," he is quoted as saying.
He reportedly attributed the "problems" to "infighting over government positions".
Ntuli said this week that he had not seen the cable.
"I am just surprised, because I never had any meeting with the embassy about those issues," he told City Press.
Bling
On Saturday, Beeld newspaper reported that according to a diplomatic cable published on WikiLeaks, ANC treasurer general Mathews Phosa told US ambassador Donald Gips on December 17 2009 that he was worried about "continuing tension" between the ANC and its alliance partners.
The conversation took place amid a bitter dispute between senior members of the ANC-led alliance.
A few weeks earlier, ANC Youth League president Julius Malema had described SA Communist Party deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin as a "white Messiah".
This, after Cronin noted that Malema and others only thought of "bling" when they spoke about the nationalisation of mines.
Phosa said even though the "anti-communism" call in the ANC was increasing, the clashes had more to do with personalities than with anything else.
Phosa also revealed details of a closed meeting where Malema accused Mantashe of having a conflict.
Phosa said the ANC needed time to cool off, otherwise the 2012 party congress would be "worse than Polokwane".
Phosa said last week that he would not comment on the cable.
"As a lawyer I do not have to authority to comment on documents that I have never seen, and which have been written by a third party." |
Photograph by Rebecca Greenfield for Fortune
How Ulta and Mary Dillon Are Winning the Beauty Battle
Can the fast-growing cosmetics empire keep outmaneuvering the big drugstores and department stores? That’s up to CEO Dillon.
It didn’t take Mary Dillon long to realize she was in over her head.
Six months into her tenure as CEO of Ulta Beauty, Dillon wanted to see what it felt like to work on the retailer’s front lines on the craziest shopping day of the year. So on Christmas Eve in 2013, during a family ski holiday, she picked up a six-hour sales-floor shift at an Ulta store near Salt Lake City.
Inconspicuous in dress-code-compliant black shirt and pants and an Ulta name tag, Dillon found herself besieged with questions from customers—about this facial mask or that hair-coloring treatment—and overwhelmed by just how much she didn’t know about the 20,000 different products Ulta sells. Eventually, at the store manager’s suggestion, she took a spot at the front of the store. “The only thing I was qualified for was handing out shopping bags,” she recalls.
That’s what she was doing when she had an epiphany. Another customer came up with a stack of coupons and asked Dillon how to apply them, given their mazes of terms and conditions. Dillon couldn’t decipher the discounts either. But what really ignited her agita was what those coupons said about Ulta’s marketing—its focus on the constant discounting that she calls a “race to the bottom.”
Photograph by Rebecca Greenfield for Fortune
“It really hit me that day,” Dillon says. “I didn’t want Ulta to be thought of as the retailer for discounts. I wanted Ulta to be known as a beauty retailer.”
That may sound like a hair’s-breadth distinction to a layperson, but it’s a big deal to Dillon and Ulta Beauty ulta .
Ulta’s formula for selling beauty products—put them all under one roof and offer deals, deals, deals—turned the chain into a fast-growing juggernaut, a very rare success story in a gloomy decade for retail. Though it’s largely invisible in posh urban shopping districts, the Bolingbrook, Ill., company now ranks as the country’s biggest specialized beauty retailer. “They understand how American women buy beauty,” says Wendy Liebmann, CEO of WSL Strategic Retail.
Since 2008, Ulta’s store count has tripled—it recently opened its 900th location—and sales have followed suit, reaching $3.9 billion in 2015. Comparable sales growth, which strips out results from newly closed or opened stores, has also soared, rising an astonishing 14.4% year over year in Ulta’s most recent quarter, head and shoulders above even the best-performing chains (most of which would be thrilled to hit 2%). Investors have salivated over the results: Ulta’s stock is up more than 250% since Dillon became CEO, and its market capitalization now exceeds $15 billion, towering over retailers like Macy’s m , Kohl’s kss , and Nordstrom jwn , whose sales are several times greater.
But all that growth has brought Ulta to a critical juncture. Competition is getting hotter, as rivals from drugstores to department stores to specialty chains like Sephora chase the fast-growing spending of beauty-product buyers. Shareholders’ expectations are sky-high—maybe unsustainably so. And Ulta remains unknown to a large swath of America.
To keep winning in this arena, Ulta is striving to redefine itself—making its image more about customer experience and convenience, less about coupons. That challenge and many others fall to Dillon, a 55-year-old marketing veteran with an easygoing air—and a deep well of experience at huge brands ranging from Gatorade to McDonald’s mcd . Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks sbux , whose board Dillon joined in January, says she has the kind of savvy that will help Ulta stand out in a crowded retail field: “She understands the theater and the romance.”
That savvy has helped Dillon keep the momentum going, despite her lack of a beauty background: The Ulta CEO job is her first in the industry since she was 16. “Ulta was not even on my radar” when she was approached about the gig in 2013, she tells Fortune at Ulta’s headquarters, 30 miles southwest of Chicago. But that, she adds, was a good thing: It gave her a clean slate. Any speculation Dillon might be a don’t-rock-the-boat leader was quashed in 2014, when she announced that Ulta planned to expand to 1,200 stores by 2019. En route to that goal, she has already rewritten much of Ulta’s playbook—the first steps in a transition she hopes will elevate the company from strip-mall secret to household name.
To see the full 2016 Most Powerful Women list, click here.
Ulta owes its success so far to an all-inclusive ethos. It sells everything from mass-market brands to high-end cosmetics to professional hair-care products, all in a format that lets customers try before they buy. Ulta offers salon services too, so in one trip you theoretically could get your hair done and get a facial, and then buy a curling iron and moisturizer to maintain the look at home.
Photograph by Rebecca Greenfield for Fortune
The chain was the brainchild of a group of former executives at Osco, a Midwestern regional drugstore, whose insight was that busy women didn’t want to go to a drugstore, then a mall, then a salon to shop for beauty products. The idea, recalls Terry Hanson, an Ulta cofounder, was “to save women time.” That may sound obvious today, but it wasn’t the norm in 1990, when Ulta opened its first five stores. Nor was it the founders’ only prescient idea: In 1994, Ulta introduced a shopper-rewards program, a relatively new concept in retail at the time. The program, now called Ultamate, is one of the nation’s biggest loyalty programs, with 20.6 million members—and members account for an astounding 80% of its sales.
Ulta opened most of its early locations in strip malls. That was initially a function of how little rent it could afford, but it sped up the chain’s expansion. The strip-mall locations became an even greater asset after the Great Recession, as traffic at conventional malls dropped off. Along the way, Ulta developed a reputation as an oasis for women where shopping is a kind of playtime for the suburban mom. (“It’s not a chore,” is how Dillon describes an Ulta break.) Stores are relatively roomy—typically 10,000 square feet, with about 10% of that taken up by salon stations—and Ulta says three-quarters of customers spend at least 15 minutes there per visit.
Photograph by Rebecca Greenfield for Fortune
Ulta went public in 2007 and kept expanding aggressively. But growth was almost too easy, company directors now say: Ulta was moving a lot of product but falling behind on e-commerce and its supply chain—and, above all, on taking the company’s image up a notch. When CEO Chuck Rubin departed in 2013 to lead arts-and-crafts retailer Michaels Stores, the board opted for a fresh start. “We knew how to open doors,” says Charles Philippin, Ulta’s nonexecutive chairman. “The next big task was to figure out how to make our customers more loyal and get our brand awareness up.”
Enter Mary Navins Dillon.
You could almost believe Dillon was predestined to lead Ulta. The fourth of six children of a Chicago steelworker and a homemaker, Dillon got her first paycheck from Jewel-Osco. At a store in Darien, Ill., as a 16-year-old in 1977, Dillon first worked in candy and tobacco before moving on to cosmetics. There she was full of suggestions for ways to improve product layout—but managers were uninterested in employee feedback, so she kept them to herself.
She paid her way through college with odd jobs, working as a bank teller, cleaning houses, and waitressing at a comfort-food joint called R.J. Grunts. In 1984, a year after graduating from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a degree in marketing, Dillon started an executive training program at Quaker Oats. Her $29,000 starting salary floored her father, who had taken many years to reach that level.
Photograph by Rebecca Greenfield for Fortune
Dillon became known for going to great lengths to get inside customers’ heads. “She uses her empathy to understand their hearts and what might motivate them,” says Margaret Stender, a colleague and mentor at Quaker Oats. After becoming head of marketing for pet-food brand Kibbles ’n Bits, Dillon, who didn’t own pets, started the Good Doggie Club—meeting regularly with dog parents so she could learn what they loved, hated, and needed. In 2000, when she took over Gatorade’s marketing, Dillon signed up to run the Chicago Marathon to better understand distance runners’ needs. It was her first, and so far only, 26.2-mile race, but Dillon stunned her jock coworkers with an overachieving finishing time. The next day at work, she recalls, “everyone was looking at the newspaper and was like, ‘You just qualified for the Boston Marathon.’ ”
For family reasons, Dillon wanted to keep her career rooted in Chicago. (She and her husband, Terry, have four grown children, and Terry, a biochemist, was a stay-at-home parent.) In 2005 she landed with one of the city’s biggest corporate names, becoming global chief marketing officer at McDonald’s. McDonald’s chairman emeritus Andy McKenna, a mentor and fixture of Chicago’s business community, says Dillon mixed data-driven rigor with creativity; among her innovations was a “Global Moms Panel” that helped her vet the fast-food chain’s campaigns. Because of McDonald’s structure, however, Dillon didn’t have responsibility over a profit-and-loss line, and she didn’t have the hands-on authority she craved. Today she describes the job as feeding her “a big dose of humility.” But McKenna recalls her having big ambitions, saying, “She wanted to be a CEO.”
Photograph by Rebecca Greenfield for Fortune
In any case, when U.S. Cellular, a wireless carrier based in Chicago, came knocking in 2010, Dillon jumped at the chance to lead a company. The stint was a tough one. Regional carriers in general were struggling, and in three years as CEO, Dillon was unable to move the company’s stock. She also made an early misstep: She decided the carrier wouldn’t offer Apple’s iPhone, saying it was too pricey. She reversed herself 18 months later amid falling customer counts. (Dillon calls her initial rejection “the right decision at the time.”) Still, the job gave Dillon even more executive expertise, including a better understanding of technology and experience running U.S. Cellular’s 400 retail stores—and it all added up to make her the leader that Ulta wanted.
Read More: Fortune Live: Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Special Edition
On a tour of a store in Naperville, Ill., Dillon is a warm whirlwind, hugging store managers and greeting stylists by name. She makes store visits around the country at least once a month, but her drop-ins are more frequent here, just a few miles from Ulta’s headquarters. Her visits often include mini focus groups with staff, during which Dillon asks for the brutally frank feedback she didn’t feel entitled to give as a teenage drugstore clerk.
Dillon’s own tastes in beauty products could be called Midwestern Put Together—stylish but not showy. (Last year on an Ulta trip, she bought a pair of Ardell false eyelashes—only to immediately remove them, satisfied that “I can do this if I need to.”) On store visits she adopts a customer’s mind-set: She’s in the market for a good red lipstick and considers herself a hair-product aficionado, boasting that she’s “great at braids” and does a mean updo. But she’s also quick to boast about improvements. Just inside the store sits a stack of catalogs for Ultamate members. These used to be glorified coupon-clipper books with dull fonts and drab design. Now it looks like something a shopper might actually want to read. “It’s not just price, but about product and teaching the customers about beauty,” Dillon says.
“[Dillon] understands the theater and the romance that are necessary in all aspects of the customer experience.”
Though the company was soaring when she became CEO on July 1, 2013, Dillon saw that there were cracks in Ulta’s mirror. Market research at the time showed a 75% overlap between Ulta’s offerings and Amazon’s beauty assortment. That meant Ulta was “Amazon-able” and needed to compete on much more than price. The board gave Dillon a mandate to elevate Ulta’s presentation, marketing, and product lines and generally catch up with the times on the e-commerce front.
Those catalogs represent just one tiny brushstroke in the makeover. Ulta’s in-house brands, which account for only about 3% of sales, are getting an upgrade. Dillon has overhauled the Ultamate loyalty program, introducing new perks like one that offers some items exclusively to members. The more Ultamate shoppers Ulta has, the better its analytics for deciding on new products and new store locations. And Ulta has just launched its first-ever store credit card—yet another way to gather better shopper data.
Dillon has also strengthened Ulta’s technical backbone. In 2014 she set a long-term goal for e-commerce to double from 5% of Ulta’s sales to 10%; since then, it has grown at a searing pace of about 50% a year. Dillon’s team has opened two new distribution centers to support e-commerce, along with a suite of IT systems to improve merchandising (the art of what to stock and when). To better understand the supply-and-delivery process, Dillon has been known to show up in jeans and tennis shoes to work on Ulta loading docks.
Few elements of Dillon’s strategy are as important as her efforts to ramp up Ulta’s higher-end beauty-product offerings. It’s easy to see why: Last year, sales of prestige beauty products rose 7%, according to NPD Group. Dillon and chief merchandising and marketing officer Dave Kimbell, with whom Dillon worked at U.S. Cellular, have introduced 200 new brands, including luxury lines like Estée Lauder, Clarins, and Jessica Alba’s Honest Beauty. Ulta is rolling out souped-up in-store boutiques for upmarket brands like Lancôme and Clinique at 500 of its stores.
Photograph by Rebecca Greenfield for Fortune
Brands like these used to shun Ulta because of its down-market locations. That began to change in the 2000s, and now, in a virtuous circle that Dillon wants to perpetuate, Ulta’s success is giving it more clout with developers in finding prime locations for new stores—helping her expand store count while gussying up the chain’s overall image. “Over time our real estate is getting better, not worse,” says Ulta’s chief financial officer, Scott Settersten. You’re likely to find older Ulta stores next to, say, a 99-cent store or a convenience store. But Ulta’s preferred neighbors are retailers like T.J. Maxx and Target—because of the middle-class shoppers they attract—and now some stores can be found next to a Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods wfm .
Regardless of the store address, Ulta’s reliable growth has contrasted favorably with the ongoing department-store meltdowns, making it easier to lure luxury brands. “There is nothing wrong with strip malls if Ulta has a nice presentation, traffic, training, and experience,” says Fabrizio Freda, CEO of Estée Lauder. In other words: Down-market stigma be damned.
Read More: How Ulta outruns bigger retailers in the beauty-products race
Ulta is far from the only company that has noticed “the lipstick effect,” beauty’s status as a recession-proof revenue driver. According to Euromonitor International, the $80-billion-a-year U.S. beauty industry has been growing 4% a year since 2010—much faster than other areas of retail. Hispanic and African-American women make up a disproportionate share of the market, and featuring more diversity in Ulta’s marketing is among Dillon’s big goals.
Ulta commands about 3% of the beauty and salon market, and Dillon thinks she can double that. But Ulta will have to keep raising its game in a tough competitive field. Sephora, owned by French luxury giant LVMH, skews more urban and high-end, but 45% of Ulta customers also shop there, according to Kantar Retail. It’s keeping the heat on by testing high-tech features like iPad stations that offer beauty classes and virtual makeup try-ons. On the department-store front, J.C. Penney jcp is opening more Sephora locations within its stores and upgrading its in-house salons. Struggling Macy’s m , meanwhile, is speeding up the expansion of its Bluemercury luxury-beauty chain.
Photograph by Rebecca Greenfield for Fortune
Drugstore chains and retail giants are also in the mix. Target tgt and Kohl’s have “beauty concierges” to help their customers. By year-end, CVS cvs will have upgraded the beauty areas at 4,000 stores, and Walgreens wba will have deployed the full skin-care and cosmetics offerings of its higher-end Boots No. 7 line at 1,800 stores. “Drugstores are doing more in beauty than any other retail channel,” says Kantar Retail director Brian Owens. “They want to convert shoppers who may have gotten ideas at Sephora or Ulta,” stealing the patronage of customers looking to simply restock familiar brands.
For now, investment analysts seem to think Ulta can keep its edge. “The burden is on Ulta” to keep its product line fresh, says Oliver Chen, a retail analyst with Cowen & Co., but thanks to “the solid management team, the very good concept, and the scale, the momentum bodes well.”
How Ulta’s Growth Is Exceeding Sales Expectations:
Of course, no company’s momentum is infinite. Last year, Ulta’s stock rose 37%, and the board rewarded Dillon with a compensation package of $18.6 million. That made her the sixth-best-paid U.S. woman CEO in 2015, ahead of the likes of Mondelez International’s Irene Rosenfeld and HP’s Meg Whitman, according to the Associated Press. But numbers like that won’t be easy to replicate.
Dillon has begun readying Wall Street for a future in which Ulta posts comparable sales growth of 5% to 7% a year. That’s a figure that most retailers can only dream of attaining. Still, for Ulta, that will represent a slowdown, resulting from the law of big numbers, potential cannibalization from its new stores, and, yes, stiffer competition.
“We’re doing well,” Dillon tells staff during her Naperville store visit. “So now is the perfect time to ask, ‘What are we doing right?’ ” That’s not the only relevant question, however. Ulta has to fight the temptation to go into autopilot mode and coast on what works. “We are never complacent,” Dillon tells Fortune. “My job is to make us look 10 years out and be prepared.”
Read More: These 11 Powerful Women Are on Our Radar
A version of this article appears in the September 15, 2016 issue of Fortune with the headline “More Than Skin Deep.” |
10 Delicious Egg Recipes WITHOUT The Eggs
Sarah Von Alt |
Eggs are loaded with cholesterol, saturated fat, and animal suffering. Here are 10 vegan egg dishes that are delicious, cruelty-free, and easy to make!
1. Eggless Egg Salad
Use this scrumptious salad in sandwiches, spread on crackers, or eat straight from the bowl!
2. Morning Scramble (and Breakfast Burritos!)
Everyone loves breakfast burritos! Why not throw this tasty filling in a tortilla with your favorite veggies?
3. Devilish Potatoes
A family favorite around Easter, this recipe is a new, compassionate twist on a cruel classic.
4. French Toast
Try this delicious breakfast dish with almond milk and sliced banana!
5. Omelet
Yep, you read that right. A vegan omelet. Check out this mouthwatering recipe by the Post Punk Kitchen.
6. Quiche
Never had vegan quiche? You haven’t lived until you’ve tried this gourmet recipe!
7. Eggs Benedict
Why not start the day with a recipe that will impress even the pickiest eaters!
8. Egg Fried Rice
Great any time of day! This recipe is sure to please!
9. Tofu Rancheros
Egg-cited? We sure are! Tofu rancheros are here to stay!
10. Fried Egg
And last, but certainly not least, the classic fried egg. Serve with tempeh bacon and toast for a trip down memory lane. |
These are all changing times in Tamil Nadu's politics.
A state, which saw massive and rabid anti-Hindi agitations, is now giving birth to a political party that openly says Hindi should be taught in government schools up to the fifth standard.
R.C. Paul Kanagaraj (49), president, Madras High Court Advocates' Association, and founder president of Tamil Maanila Katchi, a new political outfit, also said his party will fight for bringing an end to the "discrimination" of Brahmins in Tamil Nadu's political and social life.
"As a father, I am feeling the pinch of not only my ignorance of Hindi but also the loss of my son not knowing the national language. Not knowing Hindi is creating huge impediments in my son's developments. This is the reason for me to think and start a political party with like minded people in this direction. We will fight for the state government to make Hindi a compulsory subject at least up to Class V," Kanagaraj told Indiatoday.in.
He said by shunning Hindi and adopting two-language formula of Tamil and English has taken away opportunities for Tamil Nadu students.
"If I go to any other part of the country, people understand Hindi. Whatever may be their mother tongue, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi or Bengali - they can converse with each other because they knew Hindi. But we Tamilians are solely dependent on English and since many of those coming from the rest of India are not able to speak English, it has become increasingly difficult to share our feelings and thoughts. We feel the pinch," said Kanagaraj.
Another objective of the new outfit is end "discrimination" against Brahmins.
"There is a deep-seated animosity prevailing against Brahmins in Tamil Nadu. They are sidelined and wounded in the state's social life. Openly, political parties accuse them and curse them in public rallies. These parties are using the age-old divide and rule policy by raking up Aryan-Dravidian theories though these became outdated long ago. We want to create an atmosphere where our Brahmin brothers too feel they are not being looked upon with prejudiced eyes."
Kanagaraj was a member of the DMK till February 2009. He quit the party after a clash between lawyers and police on February 19, 2009, at Madras High Court.
The clashes left several lawyers with injuries and even a sitting judge was subjected to police lathi-charge.
Later, Kanagaraj joined the AIADMK and was active in the party's lawyers' wing. But he was expelled from the AIADMK after he allegedly created a ruckus in the DGP's office in connection with an issue related to a tussle between lawyers and police. |
App Description wrote:
The popular card game comes to Android to test your strategic thinking skills The popular card game Tichu is now available on your Android device!Tichu is a strategic partnership card game whose goal is to be the first to use all of your cards.It may seem like a simple game, but ask any Chinese bus driver and he'll tell you it is a challenge for beginners and experts alike.Your computer opponents will pull no punches, calling Tichu or Grand Tichu nearly 90% of the time.They also look for ways to go out at every opportunity.This does not mean the gameplay is incredibly slow.The computer players will go as fast or slow as you can handle.If the difficulty proves to be too much, you can turn on the in-game hints and a view of your opponents cards to see why they make the plays they do.Whatever your skill level, you will find Tichu to be a fun and challenging game!Post any bugs/suggestions at http://tichuapp.freeforums.org and I will have a look.Features:• Fully licensed and authorized by publisher Fata Morgana Spiele• Full implementation of the card game• Expert-level gameplay• Advanced statistics to track your play• Customizable settings to play the game at any speed• Optional hints help you to improve your game• Developer mode lets you cheat and see all cards and play reasons |
By way of a recent tweet from Red Hat’s Paul Wouters we learned the great news that the next release (21) of the Fedora operating system will include a DNSSEC-validating DNS resolver enabled by default. According the Fedora 21 release schedule, if all goes according to plan Fedora 21 should be generally available in October 2014. This will mark the first of the major Linux distributions that I am aware of that will offer the added security of DNSSEC validation by default. With Linux, you can of course always add a DNSSEC-validating DNS name server such as DNSSEC-Trigger, Unbound, dnsmasq or another DNSSEC-validating DNS server, but this move by the Fedora project will have the validation occurring by default.
From the Fedora 21 Proposed System Wide Change message:
There are growing instances of discussions and debates about the need for a trusted DNSSEC validating local resolver running on 127.0.0.1:53. There are multiple reasons for having such a resolver, importantly security & usability. Security & protection of user’s privacy becomes paramount with the backdrop of the increasingly snooping governments and service providers world wide.
People use Fedora on portable/mobile devices which are connected to diverse networks as and when required. The automatic DNS configurations provided by these networks are never trustworthy for DNSSEC validation. As currently there is no way to establish such trust.
Apart from trust, these name servers are often known to be flaky and unreliable. Which only adds to the overall bad and at times even frustrating user experience. In such a situation, having a trusted local DNS resolver not only makes sense but is in fact badly needed. It has become a need of the hour.
Going forward, as DNSSEC and IPv6 networks become more and more ubiquitous, having a trusted local DNS resolver will not only be imperative but be unavoidable. Because it will perform the most important operation of establishing trust between two parties.
All DNS literature strongly recommends it. And amongst all discussions and debates about issues involved in establishing such trust, it is unanimously agreed upon and accepted that having a trusted local DNS resolver is the best solution possible. It’ll simplify and facilitate lot of other design decisions and application development in future. |
Protesters fill up hall, then leave prior to Allen West speech at SLU
ST. LOUIS (KTVI) – Some St. Louis University students walked out on a speech delivered by conservative commentator Allen West on Thursday evening.
West is a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army and a former congressman from Florida. He was invited to speak by a conservative group and a campus republican organization.
West recently called SLU students “cupcakes” who needed a “safe space” after learning flyers advertising his visit could not include the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.”
Protesters arrived early for the speech and filled up most of the seats on the floor of the old West Pine gym. Once West began his speech, protestors stood up and walked out of the building. They also sold cupcakes promising proceeds would benefit Syrian refugees.
West has referred to the Muslim Student Association as a stealth jihad radical Islamic campus organization. During West’s speech, he criticized U.S. leaders for not addressing the issues of Islamic inspired terrorism.
“For whatever reason, we are allowing this incredibly violent ideology to come to these shores,” West said.
Azfar Shaik, one of the leaders of the campus Muslim Student Association, considers recent comments by West to be hate speech. Shaik said West’s comments have no place on campus.
“They are not part of the oath of inclusion, which St. Louis University holds so dearly,” Shaik said. |
I recently decided to purchase an Asus Transformer Infinity. Normally I’d make this purchase online however it was Friday and I live on the East coast in the past of Sandy which would make getting it delivered early next week difficult. Checking online I found that the local Best Buy had everything in stock. Out of impatience I went to the Best Buy in [redacted], NY (store [redacted]). I quickly found the model Asus Transformer Infinity, the model dock/keyboard and screen protector. Although I found the models the actual merchandise was nowhere to be found. After a short look around the tablet/laptop area I stood in front of the model hoping to attract some attention. After about 5 minutes no one offered any assistance and the blue/pink/green shirts scrambling around all seemed preoccupied. So I did another lap around the area hoping to either attract attention or find what I was looking for, then went back to the model and waited, and repeat a few more times. After about 15 minutes of no help I was running quite low on patience.
From many of the articles in the news in the past few years Best Buy has been faced with numerous issues one of which is competition from online retailers. Quite often the point is raised people go to Best Buy and try out products then go online to buy them. The one advantage that Best Buy has is personalized service face to face.
So after 15 minutes I break out my phone and go online. At this point I think at the very least this should draw the attention of any employee within eyesight. If the biggest threat to Best Buy is online sales then it would be policy that if a customer has a phone out then they need immediate attention in order to try to make the sale in person. Over the course of the next 8 minutes I visit a few online retailers and at no point does any employee make any contact with me. Ultimately I made my purchase at Amazon.
In conclusion the lack of customer service I received cost Best Buy a sale of about $700 for the Infinity and accessories. I am now thinking that the articles were wrong about why people are ordering products online. It isn’t that they visit Best Buy to try them out and then order online, it is they go to Best Buy to buy them but no employees will approach them and make the sale. I’d suggest a policy that employees who see a customer on a smartphone approach that customer and offer aid as quickly as possible in order to win that customers business. Thank you for your time, even though I feel like Best Buy wasted mine. |
Like other web giants, Google constantly experiments with new technologies to hedge its chances of stumbling across the next big thing. But one ambitious pet project has apparently turned into something much more, attracting the attention of the U.S. Department of Energy’s DARPA-inspired internal research arm.
That’s the highlight of the latest of the search giant’s alternative energy patent applications to have reached its disclosure date, which has been earmarked with funds from ARPA-E. The contribution gives the government certain rights to the invention, a tethered kite with onboard turbine generators based on technology that Google gained through its acquisition of a startup called Makani two years ago.
The core concept hasn’t changed much since the buyout, with the kite – which is in reality a drone save for the aerodynamics – hovering in a circular pattern that emulates the motion of the blades on a regular stationary turbine. But the focus of the patent filing is the base station, or perch as Google refers to it, which has received a much-needed revamp.
The company came up with an alternative to the basic peg-like structure used to anchor the kite in the early prototypes shown to the public so far that features multiple curved racks set up in a way that makes it possible to smoothly reel the kite into its perch. The landing gear of a wing then simply slides into place using the momentum from the landing.
Every such practical improvement, of which there are no doubt many more waiting in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s long backlog, brings airborne wind turbines closer to reality. That’s encouraging not only for the project but also the renewable energy movement as a whole, which has found an unlikely yet invaluable backer in Google. |
Among the things one learns as time passes is that everyone has to age, but not everyone has to get old. One of the best ways to stay young is to keep learning.
That’s one of the reasons I’ve spent the better part of the past two years trying my hand at developing a mobile app. To be more precise, I’ve been working with a team of developers to bring into the digital age a card game that dates back to at least the Second World War, and perhaps earlier. Starting this week, I’m pleased that it is now going to have a new life thanks to modern technology.
My involvement in this game — an incredibly devilish version of solitaire — starts with one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century at one of the most tumultuous times in world history. This is that story.
On May 10, 1940, Nazi tanks overran Belgium. Hitler’s invasion of Western Europe had a number of consequences. One was for a man named Winston Churchill to become Prime Minister the day after his predecessor, Neville Chamberlain, resigned in humiliation. Another consequence was to force into exile a young Belgian government aide named André de Staercke. As they plotted to turn back the Fascist tide, De Staercke came to know Churchill under incomprehensible stress: the Luftwaffe’s nightly bombing raids of London, an America reluctant to be dragged into another world war, and an entire world that looked to be on fire.
Winston Churchill, then in his mid-sixties, was opinionated, forceful, and determined, and ever ready with a colorful quip. Once a young photographer told him that he hoped he’d be able to shoot Churchill’s picture on the prime minister’s 100th birthday. Churchill immediately replied, “I don’t see why not, young man. You look reasonably fit and healthy.”
Churchill appreciated many things — a good book, a bottle of scotch and a cigar, games of all kinds, and perhaps above all else, a keen mind. He found that last quality in young André de Staercke, then in his late twenties, who became something of a protégé to Churchill.
André de Staercke, Joyce Rumsfeld, and me, c. 1974.
I have no doubt that Prime Minister Churchill taught André number of things — but the one thing I know about for sure Churchill taught him was how to play a uniquely challenging game of solitaire. I know this because I met André de Staercke some thirty years later in 1973, after President Richard Nixon nominated me to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and de Staercke, then an esteemed senior Belgian diplomat at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, taught Churchill’s game to me.
I can remember de Staercke sitting across from me on a plane somewhere over Europe playing the curious game, dizzying columns of miniature cards arrayed on the table between us. I asked him what he was playing and he proceeded to tell me the origin of the game he called Churchill Solitaire after the man we both very much admired, and the diabolical rules that make it the hardest game of solitaire — and probably the most challenging and strategic game of logic or puzzle — I’ve ever played.
Most people have played some version of Solitaire in their lives. The Churchill version, like the man himself, is far more demanding and complex. Instead of using a single deck of 52 cards, Churchill Solitaire uses two decks. Instead of the traditional 7 rows of cards, there are 10. Instead of simply moving cards so that they fit back into single-suited piles from Ace to King, Churchill Solitaire includes an extra row of six cards — the Devil’s Six — that a player has to liberate as well.
Churchill Solitaire is not a game for everyone. It takes patience and perseverance, cunning and concentration, and strategy and sacrifice.
It’s a card game that can frustrate even the most skilled player because a single move can make or break an entire game. A number of hands are simply unwinnable. But the most steadfast players will gamely soldier on to find their way to victory.
As my friend Andre de Staercke once put it to me, “What one needs in life are the pessimism of intelligence and the optimism of will.” Play a couple hands of Churchill Solitaire, and you’ll know precisely what he meant.
Over the ensuing four decades, I played this game with two miniature decks of cards across a wide table, in much the way I envision Churchill playing it (except without the cigars and the Red Label.) On long flights across the world, or when I found a quiet moment at the end of a busy day, I would clear my mind and refocus by playing a few hands of the game. I’ve found it helps improve concentration and sharpens instincts. To succeed in Churchill Solitaire, you have to envision a variety of scenarios and think a good many moves ahead.
Up until a few years ago, there were probably a dozen or so people in the entire world who knew how to play this game. These were mostly people I taught the game to — my wife, Joyce (the second best living Churchill Solitaire player I know), our children, and some assorted colleagues and friends. That was it. Winston Churchill was gone. André de Staercke, as well. And I knew I wouldn’t be around forever. There was every chance the game Churchill so enjoyed could be lost to the ages.
Then I was approached about turning this game into an “app.” I can’t say I had much of an idea of what an app even was. I had played the regular version of solitaire on my iPad, but turning Churchill Solitaire into an app of its own wasn’t something I’d ever envisioned. It wasn’t something I was sure the Churchill family would even want us to contemplate.
In January 2014, I wrote a letter to Sir Winston Churchill’s great-grandson, Mr. Randolph Churchill. I had known Randolph’s father during my days as a diplomat. I told Randolph the background of the game, my interest in calling it “Churchill Solitaire,” and wondered if the Churchill family would have any objection.
To the contrary, the Churchill family was enthusiastic about the idea — Randolph called it “a marvelous way to bring this back to life”— and they agreed to lend their name to it as well. This is not a profit-making endeavor on either of our parts. The Churchill family’s profits from the game, like mine, will go to charity. |
Behind the Death Squads: An exclusive report on the US role in El Salvador's official terror
by Allan Nairn (The Progressive, May, 1984)
[From the Editor's page: "The rising level of political violence in El Salvador and the increasing military involvement of the United States began making front-page headlines in this country about five years ago. But as Allan Nairn reports in his carefully researched article, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon set their intervention in motion much earlier. They have been actively aiding official terror in El Salvador for more than two decades—often in violation of US law, always in violation of Washington's pious rhetoric calling for an end to the violence.
Allan Nairn, a twenty eight year old free-lance writer, lives in New York City but has spent much of his time these last four years in Central America. His reporting from the region has been used by such varied outlets as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, In These Times, The Guardian of London, Multinational Monitor, and CBS News.
Nairn's work on this article, which he hopes to expand into a book, began late last year and included a five-week stay in El Salvador, where he conducted dozens of interviews with military officers, civilian officials, members of the security forces, US diplomats, and other sources."]
Today, even as the Reagan Administration publicly condemns the Death Squads, the CIA—in violation of US law—continues to provide training, support and intelligence to security forces directly involved in Death Squad activity.
Interviews with dozens of current and former Salvadoran officers, civilians, and official American sources disclose a pattern of sustained US participation in building and managing the Salvadoran security apparatus that relies on Death Squad assassinations as its principle means of enforcement.
Evidence of US involvement covers a broad spectrum of activity. Over the past twenty years, officials of the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the US armed forces have:
conceived and organized ORDEN, the rural paramilitary and intelligence network described by Amnesty International as a movement designed "to use clandestine terror against government opponents." Out of ORDEN grew the notorious "Mano Blanco," the White Hand, which a former US ambassador to El Salvador, Raul H. Castro, has called "nothing less than the birth of the Death Squads";
conceived and organized ANSESAL, the elite presidential intelligence service that gathered files on Salvadoran dissidents and, in the words of one US official, relied on Death Squads as "the operative arm of intelligence gathering";
enlisted General Jose Alberto "Chele" Medrano, the founder of ORDEN and ANSESAL, as a CIA agent;
trained leaders of ORDEN in surveillance techniques and use of automatic weapons, and carried some of these leaders on the CIA payroll;
provided American technical and intelligence advisers who often worked directly with ANSESAL at its headquarters in the Casa Presidencial;
supplied ANSESAL, the security forces, and the general staff with electronic, photographic, and personal surveillance of individuals who were later assassinated by Death Squads. According to Colonel Nicolas Carranza, director of the Salvadoran Treasury Police, such intelligence sharing by US agencies continues to this day;
kept key security officials—including Carranza, Medrano, and others—on the CIA payroll. Though the evidence is less conclusive about Major Roberto D'Aubuisson, presidential candidate of the right wing ARENA party, some of his close associates describe him as a former recipient of CIA funding;
furnished intelligence files that D'Aubuisson used for a series of 1980 television broadcasts in which he denounced dozens of academics, trade unionists, peasant leaders, Christian Democrats, and members of the clergy as communists or guerrilla collaborators. Many of the individuals D'Aubuisson named in his television speeches were subsequently assassinated. The broadcasts launched D'Aubuisson's political career and marked the emergence of the paramilitary front which later became ARENA;
instructed Salvadoran intelligence operatives in the use of investigative techniques, combat weapons, explosives, and interrogation methods that included, according to former treasury police agent, "instruction in methods of physical and psychological torture";
and, in the last decade, violated the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, which prohibits spending US funds "to provide training, or advice or provide any financial support for police, prisons or other law enforcement forces for any foreign government or any program of internal intelligence or surveillance on behalf of any foreign government."
Up to the early 1960's, El Salvador's security forces had been little more than loosely coordinated barracks units in the service of local land owners and political "caudillos." "They had very, very limited political orientation, if any," says Robert Eugene Whedbee, who served as CIA station chief in El Salvador from 1962 to 1964. That began to change with the Kennedy Administration's Alliance for Progress, founded on the assumption that national security systems working side by side with capitalist development would preempt communist revolution in Latin America.
In El Salvador, the US State Department, the CIA, the Green Berets, and the Agency for International Development (AID) all participated in the effort to suppress dissent.
The United States was "developing within the civil security forces ... an investigative capability for detecting criminal and/or subversive individuals and organizations and neutralizing their activities," wrote Byron Engle, director of the AID Public Safety Program, in a 1967 memo to his staff. "This requires a carefully integrated effort between the investigative element and the regular police, paramilitary or military force, operating separately or in conjunction with each other." Engle, himself a former CIA official, referred to thirty-three countries, including El Salvador, in which the Public Safety Program was operating.
The landmark event in the formation of the national security apparatus in El Salvador and the rest of Central America was the Declaration of San Jose, issued on March 19, 1963, at the conclusion of a meeting of six Central American presidents. "Communism is the chief obstacle to economic development in the Central American region," proclaimed President Kennedy, who had chaired the meeting.
The Declaration of San Jose triggered a series of follow-up meetings among Central American ministers of the interior, who held jurisdiction over police and internal security. These meetings—organized and run by the US State Department with assistance from the CIA, AID, the Customs Bureau, the Immigration Service, and the Justice Department—"were designed to develop ways of dealing with subversion," recalls William Bowdler, who represented the State Department at the sessions.
For El Salvador, Washington assigned a central role to General Medrano, then a senior officer of the National Guard and the army general staff.
Medrano is something of a legend in Salvadoran politics. Rank and file National Guardsmen still revere him as a fearsome "jefe" and the hero of the 1969 war with Honduras. To his supporters, he is "the founder of Salvadoran nationalism." But to Christian Democrat Jose Napoleon Duarte, Medrano is something else—"the father of the Death Squads, the chief assassin of them all."
Medrano, now retired, prides himself on moving about El Salvador unaccompanied by bodyguards. He drives through the countryside armed only with a .45 caliber pistol and a glove compartment stocked with hand grenades. In a recent series of interviews spanning some twelve hours, he spoke freely about the origins and growth of the security system.
"ORDEN and ANSESAL—the Salvadoran National Security Agency—grew out of the State Department, the CIA, and the Green Berets during the time of Kennedy," Medrano told me. "We created these specialized agencies to fight the plans and actions of international communism. We organized ORDEN, ANSESAL, and counterinsurgency courses, and we bought special arms—G3 automatic rifles—to detain the communist movement. We were preparing the team to stop communism."
The meetings of the interior ministers resulted in the formation of ANSESAL and parallel domestic security agencies in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras and Costa Rica. These forces "would meet every three months under the supervision of the State Department and exchange information and methods of operation," says Medrano. "They had direct radio teletypes from office to office."
According to a US advisor who helped install the teletype system, known as the Central American Communications Network, it was part of a broader plan "to reorganize the intelligence effort and get Central Americans to work together against subversion. At the meetings, you'd say to them 'Well, if I had this sort of equipment, I'd do this and this,' — sort of ease them along."
The State Department and AID's Public Safety office in El Salvador had administrative responsibility for establishing the ANSESAL network, Medrano says, but the substantive day-to-day intelligence work was coordinated by the CIA: "The CIA was already participating in connections with us. The CIA would work with us and give us reports."
"Medrano was the CIA's boy," says one current State Department official. Indeed, Medrano himself says he was on the CIA payroll, a fact confirmed by ORDEN colleagues. "he came to my house regularly. He was a close friend," recalls Raul Castro, US ambassador to El Salvador from 1964 to 1968. "And he was a good friend of the United States."
Medrano flew frequently to Washington for consultations at CIA headquarters. In July 1968, he received a silver Presidential medal from Lyndon Johnson "in recognition of exceptionally meritorious service." Medrano refuses to discuss the particular service he performed though he recalls Jonson's words as the President presented him with the medal: " 'I know all about you Medrano. You're doing good work. I know your pedigree'—like I was a bull!"
The US government also sent Medrano on a three-month tour of Vietnam, were he traveled with Army units, the Green Berets, and CIA operatives. As he recalls it, Medrano "studied every aspect of warfare from primitive jungle fighting to psychological civic action to strategic bombing."
Medrano gave Washington ample return on its investment. In El Salvador, he organized an intricate, many-tiered intelligence and paramilitary network that extended from the remotest mountain hamlets to the presidential palace. The rural component of this network was ORDEN (Spanish for "Order"), a group funded in Medrano's words, to "indoctrinate peasants regarding the advantages and the disadvantages of the communist system."
Green Beret Colonel Arthur Simons was instrumental in the development of ORDEN, says Medrano. In 1963, Simons, then commander of the 8th Special Forces group in Panama, dispatched a team of counterinsurgency trainers to El Salvador. (According to his service record, Simons had recently completed a stint as commander of the White Star Mobile Training Team, a Green Beret unit that had been sent to Laos to work with indigenous troops. Previously, he had served as chief of staff at the Army Special Warfare Center in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, which was originally called the Psychological Warfare Center and was later renamed the John F. Kennedy Center for Military Assistance.)
"Colonel Simons sent me ten men to begin training us," recalls Medrano. After "talking among ourselves and with Simons, the idea occurred to us to catechize the people. We talked about how we had to indoctrinate the people, because he who had the population wins the war.
"The army can easily annihilate guerrillas in the urban zone," says Medrano, "but the peasants are tough. They are good in the mountains. They can walk at night, see in the dark, see among the trees. We couldn't let them be deceived the guerrillas."
Medrano says the Green Berets helped him plan the structure and ideology of ORDEN, and then stayed on to train a team of Salvadoran soldiers, among them Colonel Carranza, who now heads the Treasury Police, and Colonel Domingo Monterrosa, currently chief of the Third Brigade and El Salvador's star combat commander. The soldiers went to the countryside to instruct civilian ORDEN leaders, who in turn established the organization's local chapters. At its peak, ORDEN membership reached and estimated 100,000. "It was almost like a religion," Medrano recalls.
ORDEN had the dual mission of teaching anticommunism and gathering information on individuals deemed suspicious. "You discover the communist by the way he talks," says Medrano. Generally, he speaks against Yankee imperialism, he speaks against the oligarchy, he speaks against military men. We can spot them easily." Once identified, they would be reported to ORDEN's central office, where a staff of eighty would record the information and relay to ANSESAL. There, "we could study it and pass it on to the president, who would take appropriate action." says Medrano.
"In this revolutionary war, the enemy comes from our people," Medrano says. "They don't have the rights of Geneva. They are traitors to the country. What can the troops do? When they find them, they kill them."
Sometimes the killings were carried out by ORDEN itself, other times by the army, the National Guard, or the "Mano Blanco" Death Squad. Former ambassador Castro says Mano Blanco was an offshoot of ORDEN, and the same people in ORDEN were to some extent the same people in the Mano Blanco. Even today some of the same people are in the Death Squads. That was the origin."
According to US and Salvadoran officials, the close relationship between the security forces and the US government was sustained over the next twenty years.
Edgar Artiga, a civilian leader of ORDEN, says he and eighty other ORDEN officials participated in a two-month CIA course in 1969. The course, held at the headquarters of the Salvadoran National Guard, was taught jointly by General Medrano and three CIA instructors from the US embassy, who brought along movies about life in the Soviet Union. The curriculum says Artiga, included "anti-communism, democracy, detection and identification, and self-defense." Trainees were instructed in the US of 9-millimeter revolvers and such weapons ad the M-16 rifle, which was not yet generally available. All the students were paid daily in cash, according to Artiga. A number of Artiga's classmates continued on the CIA payroll after the course was completed, he says.
Training was also conducted in the United States. Among those who received such schooling was Carlos Sosa Santos, the leading explosives expert for the Salvadoran armed forces, who was instructed by the AID Public Safety Program. Sosa has trained dozens of army and security force members in "techniques for secretly placing bombs in houses, cars, and individuals' personal belongings," according to a National Police intelligence officer who studied under Sosa.
The US contribution extends far beyond training. American intelligence services have actually furnished the names, photographs, and whereabouts of suspected dissidents, say Salvadoran security officials.
This March, during a tour of the political intelligence archives of the National Police Center for Analysis and Investigations, I spoke with Captain Rafael Lopez Davila, who displayed files on leftist political leaders. The dossiers included entries reporting on their travels to foreign cities, specifying what flights they took, whom they visited, and where they stayed. The CIA provided such information, Lopez says.
According to General Medrano, the CIA regularly kept ANSESAL posted on the activities of Salvadorans working or studying abroad. In important cases, the CIA supplied photographs and tapes of conversations.
A Salvadoran who served as an aide to a senior intelligence official in the 1970's says he was shown CIA photographic and electronic surveillance reports on many dissidents. "With this information, we knew exactly what we were doing, who was who," he says, adding that many of the subjects were later assassinated by Death Squads.
A former staff member of the Casa Presidencial reports that an American CIA officer told him the CIA and the Salvadoran forces kept Rutilio Grande, a prominent Jesuit priest, under surveillance before his March 1977 assassination. The CIA agent claimed to have seen the dossier on Father Grande, which reportedly included photos and accounts of his visits to other Central American countries as well as his activities in his home parish of Aguilares. A former Treasury Police officer who goes by the name of Rene Hurtado says that he was told by ANSESAL members that their agency was responsible for killing Grande.
When a reformist junta briefly came to power in El Salvador in 1979, it abolished ORDEN and ANSESAL and condemned the organizations for committing human rights abuses. Since then the Salvadoran military have continued to maintain and expand their surveillance and record-keeping activities. And as in the 1960's and 1970's, when US agents and technicians invented and oiled the intelligence machine, US personnel remain at the center of the system.
According to a Salvadoran colonel involved in the process, the United States routinely receives copies of all major political surveillance reports compiled by Salvadoran security officers. In turn, US officials provide the security forces with information. Colonel Carranza confirmed this relationship.
"The Americans would directly receive all the information on a case even before we had developed the activity, before we had decided how we would terminate a case," Carranza says, referring to the procedure in effect before 1983. "Now we give everything—in relation to captures that the Treasury police have made—to the general staff and THEY give it to the embassy."
US intelligence officials "have collaborated with us in a certain technical manner, providing us with advice," says Carranza. "They receive information from everywhere in the world, and they have sophisticated equipment that enables them to have better information or at least confirm the information we have. It's very helpful." Carranza says he processes the information with "a small computer, and we also work with the general staff's computer for developing a workable inventory and index."
Colonel Adolfo Blandon, the armed forces chief of staff, says "six or seven" US military advisors—several of them specialists in intelligence and psychological warfare—are currently working with the general staff.
The National Guard now concentrates on monitoring "unions and strikes and the penetration of the education system, where they are brainwashing our students," says Colonel Aristedes Napoleon Montes, director of the National Guard. Reynaldo Lopez Nuilla, director of the National Police, says he has an intelligence staff of 200, including a thirty-man "operations group." He too, cites unions as an area of concentration, but also mentions the Salvadoran Human Rights Commission (the nongovernmental one, that is; the government maintains its own "human rights commission," of which Lopez Nuilla is a member). And the Catholic organization Socorro Juridico (legal assistance), "we know to be organized precisely by the guerrillas," says Lopez Nuilla. "it's evident in the things they say."
In the National Police political intelligence archive, originally organized by US AID Public Safety advisors, Captain Rafael Lopez Davila, the investigations chief, showed me a special section on unions and their members. The three story filing room also contained a "library of subversive literature," which along with Karl Marx's "Das Kapital" and Lenin's collected works, held the publications of UCA, El Salvador's Catholic University.
According to the Salvadoran armed forces "Guide to Normal Operating Procedures," a confidential policy manual, each army and security force outpost is required to maintain a "Special Archive of S-2 Intelligence." The file covers "the disposition of the subversive delinquents (their location ... styles of action and mobilization)," lists "militants and sympathizers," and carries a miscellaneous "register of personalities of the enemy."
Names enter the archive through surveillance reports from officers and informants or through reports from troops who have detained an individual for questioning. To qualify for a place in the files, and individual may commit such divers offenses as "carrying or moving subversive propaganda of whatever type ... insulting authority ... carrying notebooks, papers or symbols related to subversive organizations [or] traveling in cars destined for points of concentration of the subversive delinquents—unauthorized demonstrations and rallies, etc., especially if the attitude is suspicious."
Surveillance reports compiled by local intelligence units are retained for their own files while a copy os forwarded to the central archives of the service involved. Individual subjects are interrogated, says Colonel Montes, first at the local post and then, if the case warrants it, at the intelligence section of the security force. "All of this information is then turned over to the general staff, with whom we retain a very close coordination," Montes says.
This intelligence system serves as the nerve center of Death Squad operations. "We worked with written orders," recalls one former National Guardsman, a fifteen-year veteran who says he went on Death Squad missions while stationed in the province of La Libertad. "We got names and addresses and were told to pick them up, get information, and kill them later." In important cases, he adds, special troops or security force agents would come from San Salvador with the lists.
"Every garrison of any size had Death Squads. It's that simple," says a US official in San Salvador who studied the Death Squads last year. "All of this comes out of a military intelligence function."
When the Reagan Administration launched a publicity campaign against the Death Squads last December, it pointed a finger at individual officers, leaking their names to the press and demanding their removal. Three of those officers were the directors of the intelligence departments of the Treasury Police, the National Guard, and the National Police.
Asked why the Administration chose to blame those specific individuals while leaving the institutions untouched, the US official in San Salvador responded: "Things generated in Washington create certain necessities that don't necessarily reflect the true problems here, but are done for political purposes up there, and this is a good example." The official, heavily involved in the publicity campaign, considered it a success.
"These men were done an injustice," says Colonel Blandon, the chief of staff. "We kept asking the embassy for proof against them but they never gave it. The American's sacrificed them to avoid their own problems."
The use of the term "Death Squad" has, in some respects, fostered a profound misunderstanding of El Salvador's official terror apparatus. It conjures up images of discrete bands of gangsters randomly cruising the countryside in search of opportunities to kill. In fact, the term more meaningfully applies to a system that can dispatch a soldier at any time to kill a selected victim.
Another misunderstanding about the Death Squads arises from the fact that they came to public notice in the United States in connection with the spectacular emergence of Roberto D'Aubuisson as a powerful political figure. US officials who want to shield the Salvadoran government from culpability in the Death Squads, as well as some liberals who want to undermine D'Aubuisson's electoral prospects, have promoted the mistaken notion that the Death Squad phenomenon—this sprawling institution with a twenty year history and tens of thousands of victims, is the personal instrument of one diabolical man.
In March, Roberto Eulaio Santivanez, a former colonel who had been paid $50,000 by critics of US policy in El Salvador, began circulating to the mass media a detailed account of Death Squad operations. Speaking as an unnamed source from "the highest level of the security police," Santivanez told The New York Times that D'Aubuisson was "the man who organized and continues to direct the Death Squads."
Santivanez charged that former Defense Minister Jose Guillermo Garcia and Colonel Carranza, director of the Treasury Police, helped organize and operate D'Aubuisson's Death Squad network. In a CBS News interview with Walter Cronkite, Santivanez said Carranza had been on the CIA payroll. The New York Times confirmed the CIA connection, citing US intelligence sources. They reported that Carranza had received $90,000 per year for the past five or six years. (Two colleagues of Carranza had said he was a CIA agent weeks before Santivanez did.)
According to Santivanez's version as reported in The Times, the Death Squads did not exist before D'Aubuisson rose to prominence in the wake of the 1979 reformist coup. Because of a commitment to protect Santivanez's anonymity, the story identified him as a source with "personal knowledge of these crimes because his government post had put him in direct contact with top military leaders." In fact, Santivanez was the director of ANSESAL and D'Aubuisson's immediate superior from 1977 to 1979, a period of mounting government repression that culminated in the fall of the Carlos Humberto Romero government and the abolition of ANSESAL for its role in the Death Squad killings.
Santivanez was "Romero's black man," says the US embassy official who studied the Death Squads. "He kept the files and took care of people when there was dirty work to be done. His hands are as bloody as anybody's." The official nonetheless confirms that Santivanez's account of involvement in the Death Squads by Carranza and the high command was "substantially correct," though he says it exaggerated D'Aubuisson's personal role.
The story of the relationship between the US government and the D'Aubuisson branch of the contemporary Death Squads is complex, paradoxical, and far from complete.
D'Aubuisson, a Medrano protege whom the General remembers as "a fine officer who was loved by the people," made his mark in the ORDEN-ANSESAL network, organizing ORDEN chapters as a National Guard officer and rising to second in command of ANSESAL under Santivanez.
"Roberto was an officer of ANSESAL, which is affiliated with the CIA," says Major Oscar Serrato, one of a small group of Salvadorans who began secretly collaborating with D'Aubuisson soon after the reformist junta came to power in October 1979. Two years later, Serrato helped found ARENA, the rightist political party D'Aubuisson heads. "He worked with the CIA for years, and that's how he was able to learn all the machinations, the people, national as well as international, that were working to establish the communist scheme."
Two of D'Aubuisson's former associates from the National Guard and ANSESAL claim he received US government money, one saying it came from the CIA, the other from either the CIA or the Defense Intelligence Agency. State Department officials in El Salvador during the 1970's say that although D'Aubuisson had "a disturbingly close relationship" with one US military attache (who could not be reached for comment), they did not know whether he had received payments.
When D'Aubuisson officially left the army after the 1979 coup, he launched his political movement with a series of television speeches. He assailed the junta for abolishing ORDEN—"born in the bosom of the armed forces," D'Aubuisson declared. "ORDEN has ceased to function with that name," he said, "but its principles live and are newly serving the fatherland with the Frente Democratica Nacionalista (Democratic Nationalist Front, D'Aubuisson's new political organization)."
D'Aubuisson openly defended the security forces for their role in the spate of disappearances and assassinations in late 1979 and early 1980. "In no moment should you feel culpable for fighting these terrorists," he said. "If our commanders have captured people like this, they are committing no fault." And he quoted from Napoleon: "Nothing done to defend your country is against the law."
Having established the principle, D'Aubuisson got down to specifics, marshaling charts, photos, videotapes, and computer graphics for an intricately detailed, name-by-name, face-by-face tirade against "El Salvador's terrorist conspiracy."
D'Aubuisson denounced union leaders, priests, academics, peasant organizers, students, professionals, government officials, and Christian Democrats. Among those he named was Archbishop Oscar Romero, whom he told, "You still have time to change your ways." He also attacked Mario Zamora, a leading Christian Democrat and member of the government who—like others identified in the broadcasts—was assassinated in a matter of weeks.
"Unfortunately, when we mentioned a person, POOM, they'd shoot them," says Alberto Bondanza, a D'Aubuisson intimate and one of the founder of ARENA. "Then they started linking us with the Death Squads. If by chance the army arrived and happened to shoot one of these people in a battle, then everybody threw the blame on us."
D'Aubuisson was pointing out the communists so the troops could kill them," Medrano says. "He had good information. He was speaking the truth."
"He had everything—photos and complete personal histories—direct from the ANSESAL files," says Major Serrato, who participated in the planning meetings out of which the broadcasts grew. He said D'Aubuisson made copies of the ANSESAL material shortly before the agency was dissolved and its archives transferred to the general staff. "The proofs he presented were concrete and irrefutable: photos and documents that were prepared by the CIA, documents from the archives of the CIA. All of the material was passed back and forth constantly."
D'Aubuisson maintained CIA contacts in 1980 and 1981, according to Jimmy Nixon, an American citizen and ARENA activist who ferried visitors and private messages to D'Aubuisson while he was staying in Guatemala during that period. Nixon says he is uncertain of the current relationship.
Another American closely associated with D'Aubuisson, Billy Murphy, complains of the treatment ARENA received at the hands of the US embassy under the Carter Administration and its last ambassador, Robert White. "Those sons of bitches were doing everything they could against us," he says.
But Murphy adds that ARENA enjoyed amiable relations with one political officer at the embassy who "would always let us know in advance what was going to happen in the junta. "He and other D'Aubuisson aids, met regularly with "good friends" from the US military group and the embassy's military attache, he says. "You had a wonderful man here" in the Military Group, says Murphy. "He did his best, but he couldn't do anything."
Clandestine US ties with the Salvadoran security apparatus remain firm, and appear to have been strengthened in the 1980's. National Guardsmen Luis Alonzo Bonilla claims that US military and civilian personnel helped train members of the security forces as bodyguards in 1980. Bonilla, who says he took a similar course in 1985, says it included instruction in combat and ambush techniques. A National Police detective and member of the elite explosives unit established by AID's Public Safety Program says four of his associates visited the United States for an explosives course in November 1983.
"I've been visited by some members of the embassy with whom I've always maintained good relations," Carranza told me last september, "and I have the promise that they are going to help us train our personnel." He said he also needed investigation and interrogation equipment, and was unruffled by the fact that US law prohibits such aid.
"Yes," he remarked, "but by means of other ways, by let's say friendship with some members of the American embassy, I think I can get not only equipment but training." He said he would obtain them through "outside channels," adding, "I don't know whether it would be wise to put this out for the knowledge of the American people."
Once the Treasury Police received the lie detection, fingerprinting, and ballistic equipment he requested, "we would have a better way of doing an investigation than putting pressure on the victim," Carranza said. "Now when you have a prisoner, you have to put pressure on him, questioning him again and again, day and night."
This March, Francis Stanley Martinez a corporal in the National Police intelligence department, said he and nine colleagues in the security forces—three from the Treasury Police, three from the National Guard, and three from the National Police—were about to depart for an in-depth CIA training course in the United States. He subsequently said the departure date had been postponed until some time in April. The course would cover investigation, surveillance, weapons, and interrogation, Martinez said.
"You have to know all the aspects to work in intelligence here," he said. "It's very different from the United States. Here intelligence is hard to get, and the delinquent is very different. Here, the first thing you have to do is grab them by the neck."
In the 1960's, when the United States was building a Salvadoran security system based on surveillance and assassination, the enterprise enjoyed unified support within the US government. With State Department officials and CIA operatives presiding, General Medrano and his counterparts from Anastasio Somoza's Nicaragua and Peralta Azurdia's Guatemala would gather around a table and give speeches about "who the communists were," as Medrano puts it, "what they were up to, and what we should do about them."
Over time, changing political conditions opened something of a rift between the State Department professionals and their Pentagon and CIA colleagues. During the Carter Administration, their disagreements were often clear and pronounced. Under Reagan, the State Department has been brought back into line. Public and Congressional pressures, however, have compelled the Administration to voice public criticism of the Death Squads even as it secretly funnels aid and intelligence to the military and security forces that run them.
US complicity in the dark and brutal work of El Salvador's Death Squads is not an aberration. Rather, it represents a basic, bipartisan, institutional commitment on the part of six American Administrations—a commitment to guard the Salvadoran regime against the prospect that its people might organize in ways unfriendly to that regime or to the United States.
"You Learn How To Torture ..."
Rene Hurtado is the pseudonym of a former member of the Salvadoran Treasury Police who now lives in a Minneapolis suburb. In an interview in late March, he said that the Treasury Police, a branch of El Salvador's security forces, would routinely kidnap, interrogate, torture and then kill political suspects. He claims to have participated in torture sessions and provides a detailed account of the methods employed.
According to Hurtado, US personnel conducted an intelligence course for Treasury officers that included training "in methods of physical and psychological torture." He claims to have met with the US instructors. Though he refuses to say whether he himself received training from them, he asserts that some of his associates did.
The intelligence course was given for one month in 1980 at the headquarters of the Salvadoran army general staff, Hurtado says. The instructors did not observe or participate in actual torture sessions, nor did they visit Treasury Police headquarters, he explains. But in the classroom, he says, they discussed such techniques as psychological torture, manual beating, and electric shock, occasionally supplementing the lectures with Spanish-language written material that was more generalized than the oral presentations. The instructors were sometimes in military uniform, sometimes in civilian dress.
Hurtado, who gave his real name but asked that it not be used, showed documents and photographs verifying his military and Treasury Police service.
At one time, Hurtado held a sensitive position for which he was carefully screened. Following a fight with a superior officer, he was expelled from the military in 1981, he says. he resides in the United States without legal immigration status and is being sheltered by the religious sanctuary movement. He was contacted directly and independently after another former member of the Salvadoran military provided his home telephone number.
What follows is Hurtado's account of the interrogation and torture methods used by the Treasury Police:
First, you try to torture him psychologically. If he's a Marxist or a revolutionary, it's not easy to make him talk, so you have to psychologically harm the prisoner. If the person is important—if he's, let's say, a journalist or a teacher or a labor or student leader, or if he's a person with some leadership or has something to offer—he isn't treated cruelly at the beginning. Well, of course, they may hit him at some time, but after that, when he's taken to one of the interrogation rooms, you start by talking to him as a friend, you try to convince him that you understand his idealism.
You might say: "Who are the companeros in your organization and why do they kill us? How many people have you killed?" Things like that. You try to trap the person psychologically. You'll say:
"Don't be a fool. Those bastards want to f--- you over, they're using you. We could kill you right here and now, but we're not killers, we're not your enemy. If you collaborate with us, we're going to get you out of the country. Where would you like to go. Europe? Spain? England? We'll send you to one of those countries. We'll give you money, but you have to talk to us, because if you don't, we're going to f--- you over."
When you are trying to interrogate for the first time, you try to come across as a sensitive decent person—not as a killer. You say you are not a bastard like the other interrogators. You make friends with him. You offer him a soda and some food. You ask him where his mom and dad live, you talk about his wife and kids. It has a tremendous impact when he knows his kids have been captured but he doesn't know where they are.
But after using these methods for a few days or a week or two, you start getting tough. You will say:
"Look, those bastards are giving me a lot of sh--. Because they want you to talk, they're going to beat the sh-- out of you. And I don't want those bastards to think I'm screwing up. So if you don't talk, I'm going to turn you over to those f---ers and they're going to beat the piss out of you."
After these sessions, the physical torture begins. First, you put the prisoner in a small, completely dark room, and you don't let him sleep. You place him, naked and handcuffed, on a bed frame. The room stinks horribly because of the urine and excrement of former prisoners, and you keep him there for a week without sleep so that his nerves will be shot when you start to torture him.
When the actual physical torture begins, there are a lot of different methods: cutting off pieces of his skin, burning him with cigarettes. They teach you how to hit a person in the stomach, but in a sophisticated way so the person suffers a lot of pain but you don't see signs on the outside. Or sometimes you just beat his hands and beat him in the stomach, either with fists or with heavy sticks. Beat him, and beat him, and beat him.
After that, if he still doesn't talk, you take him to a toilet filled with excrement. You put on gloves and shove his head in the toilet for thirty seconds or so. You pull him out, then shove his head in again. You do this over and over.
Then you wash him and take him to the electric shock room. There's a special torture room in the Treasury Police; only the intelligence section can enter, no uniformed men are allowed. It's soundproof so they don't hear anything outside.
You learn how to give electric shocks, shocks to the brain, shocks to the stomach. There are some very sophisticated methods for this kind of torture. It's a little machine; you use a cord like a telephone, like an old phone with a crank and you start turning the crank. You do it with different wires; they're small. There's a more sophisticated one that looks like a radio, like a transformer; It's about fifteen centimeters across, with connecting wires. It says General Electric on it.
It's like if you have a stereo and you don't know how to use it, you learn: This generates twenty volts, this forty volts, this will give a serious blow, this less so, this one will kill a person.
You put the wires on the prisoner's vital parts. You place the wires between the prisoners's teeth, on the penis, in the vagina. The prisoners feel it more if their feet are in water, and they're seated on iron so the blow is stronger. If you put mineral water on them and then do the shock, it's agonizing.
In general, you will kill the prisoners because there's an assumption they shouldn't live. If we pass them to the judge, they'll go free and we'll maybe have to pick them up again. If there's lots of pressure—like from Amnesty International or some foreign countries—then we might pass them on to a judge, but if there's no pressure, then they're dead. When it's over, you just throw him in the alleys with a sign saying Mano Blanco, ESA (Secret Anticommunist Army), or Maximiliano Hernandez Brigade [three names commonly used by Salvadoran Death Squads].
You learn how to torture, how to cut the balls off a person when he's still alive. These are the things that happen in war.
Back To History Is A Weapon's Front Page |
As befits an incumbent running for re-election in tough times, Preident Obama spends the bulk of his energy defending his own record and attacking his opponent Photograph by Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images.
The biggest myth of the 2012 campaign is the idea that Barack Obama doesn’t have a second-term agenda. In defense of the misguided conventional wisdom, it’s largely the president’s own fault that he’s allowed this impression to exist. Obama’s second-term agenda is something we can specify in unusually precise detail because, unlike last time around, it doesn’t particularly hinge on Congress. It’s all about exploiting what’s already scheduled to happen thanks to the past four years worth of legislative activity.
It’s true that if you pay close attention to the president’s speeches you’ll find scarce mention of any new ideas. As befits an incumbent running for re-election in tough times, he spends the bulk of his energy defending his own record and attacking his opponent. And when he does talk about his vision for the second term, he often veers into wishful thinking as when he told the Des Moines Register editorial board that after the election Republicans would suddenly want to start compromising with him on immigration reform. Maybe they will, but it seems unlikely—if anything polarization will increase as Republican moderates Olympia Snowe, Richard Lugar, and perhaps Scott Brown depart the Senate. But that’s okay, because Obama’s real second-term economic agenda has nothing to do with passing new laws and everything to do with taking advantage of laws congress has already passed.
In the shortest term, that means President Obama will use the so-called “fiscal cliff”–the scheduled series of mandated tax increases and spending cuts. Centrists have been hoping the cliff would prompt a grand bargain, but in fact the cliff will make the grand bargain question irrelevant. Obama’s been trying for years to get Republicans to agree to higher taxes on the rich, but if he gets re-elected he doesn’t need to persuade anyone to do anything: Those taxes are going up automatically.
And 2013 continues another automatic process will shift to the center stage: implementation of the main portions of the Affordable Care Act. The health care overhaul was the dominant political fight of 2010. But as a matter of substantive transformation of American health care, barely anything’s happened yet. Thanks to the ACA, senior citizens are getting a slightly better deal today on prescription drugs than would otherwise be the case and many Americans in their early 20s are able to piggyback on their parents’ insurance. Both have been useful in cushioning the recession, but the practical impact is small enough that you can be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss was about.
The fuss will happen in 2014. Starting in 2014, all uninsured Americans who earn between 133 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty line will become eligible for subsidies to purchase health insurance on new regulated markets for individual insurance plans. What’s more, Americans who don’t get insurance through their employer or a government program will be required to participate in these markets to ensure the stability of the risk pool. Meanwhile, large employers who don’t offer their employees health insurance will pay a tax penalty. That all adds up to far-reaching changes in business practices and household finances.
But just because this is scheduled to happen, doesn’t mean there’s no policy to be made. The plans offered in the new insurance markets will essentially be regulated utilities, meaning the details of the regulations will be enormously important. The vast majority of currently insured Americans won’t see an immediate change, but the goal is over time to transition everyone into the new individual markets and break the link between employment and insurance status. This means the final three years of an eight-year Obama presidency will entail fundamentally reshaping the enormous health care portion of the economy.
A closely related issue is expansion of Medicaid. The health care law provides generous federal financing for states to expand their Medicaid programs to cover everyone up to 133 percent of the Federal poverty line. But the Supreme Court has ruled that states have the right to reject this funding, and even though Uncle Sam is offering to foot over 90 percent of the bill, many conservative states will at least initially say no.
That said, the pot of money involved here is too large for any but the craziest government to just shrug and ignore it. The key wrinkle is that the Department of Health and Human Services has a fairly wide mandate to grant “waivers” to existing Medicaid rules in order to allow for policy experimentation. Mitt Romney financed his state-level universal health insurance plan in large part through just such a federal Medicaid waiver. Presidents have long had this tool in their back pocket, but the Affordable Care Act’s passage means Obama will have a much larger purse of money to work with than his predecessors. Direct bargaining between the Obama administration and Republican governors will produce substantial shifts in states’ approaches to providing health care to the poor.
This is hardly the full extent of a second-term Obama agenda. Implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul continues to roll through the regulatory agencies. K-12 education policy will—as with Medicaid—be shaped by executive branch decisions about which states can get waivers from No Child Left Behind’s unrealistic student achievement goals. Heck, Obama’s prediction that “there’s going to be a war going on” inside the GOP that lets him pass new laws might even come true. But what we know for sure is that the topics of taxes and health care that dominated talk during the first Obama administration will be the scene of action if he’s re-elected. |
The Rutgers coaching staff will have at least two new faces in 2018.
Four days after offensive coordinator Jerry Kill retired, defensive line coach Shane Burnham resigned with plans to take another job after two seasons at Rutgers, NJ Advance Media has confirmed.
ScarletNation.com first reported that Burnham is leaving to take the same post at Central Florida, which just hired Josh Heupel as head coach when Scott Frost left for Nebraska on the heels of an undefeated regular season. Heupel, who left Oklahoma, and Burnham share Big XII roots.
Jerry Kill reveals why he had to retire: 'Football is an addiction'
Burnham, who welcomed his fourth child with his wife during the season, grew up in Tallahassee, Fla. when his father Wally was a longtime defensive coordinator at Florida State under Bobby Bowden. He played college football at South Carolina.
The younger Burnham was hired by Rutgers coach Chris Ash in December 2015 after they worked together as assistants on the Iowa State defensive staff in 2009. Ash moved on to Wisconsin, Arkansas and Ohio State while Burnham remained at Iowa State through 2015.
Burnham handled Florida recruiting for Iowa State but Rutgers has lessened its focus on Florida under Ash. He also has family in the Sunshine State.
Rutgers said goodbye to two senior defensive line starters (Kemoko Turay and Sebastian Joseph) and a third contributor (Darnell Davis). The position group figures to be among the youngest and most inexperienced on the 2018 team.
Rutgers signed Matthew Thomas and Jamree Kromah to national letters of intent earlier this week. Rutgers lost defensive lineman Khris Banks of DePaul Catholic to Temple and commit Kaymar Mimes chose not to sign on the eve of signing day.
National predict a join mass exodus of assistant coaches across college football in the final days of the month, delayed from the usual end of the season because of the inaugural early signing period.
Burnham earned $275,000 in 2017, on the first year of a two-year extension received last offseason.
Rutgers changed three assistant coaches last offseason: Offensive coordinator Drew Mehringer, cornerbacks coach Aaron Henry and running backs coach Zak Kuhr. The search for a ninth offensive coordinator in nine years is underway, with Ash still conducting first interviews with potential candidates.
Ryan Dunleavy may be reached at rdunleavy@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @rydunleavy. Find NJ.com Rutgers Football on Facebook. |
School-issued laptops are becoming more and more common these days, but thanks to the action of one high school, students and parents might have second thoughts about bringing them home. The parents of a Pennsylvania high school student, Blake J. Robbins, have filed a lawsuit against his school district after discovering that school officials had allegedly been remotely accessing the laptop in order to take webcam photos of the students at home (via BoingBoing). There are a number of unanswered questions about this story, but if true, it could mean serious penalties for the Lower Merion School District.
According to the complaint, the school in question (Harriton High School) had issued laptops equipped with built-in webcams to every student so that they could have "24/7 access to school based resources" and the ability to work seamlessly between school and home when it comes to research and projects. In November of 2009, however, Robbins was disciplined by the Assistant Principal of his school, Lindy Matsko, for engaging in "improper behavior" in his home. At that time, Matsko cited a photograph from the built-in webcam on the laptop.
Robbins' father Michael supposedly confirmed with Matsko that the school has the ability to remotely activate the webcam "at any time it chose to view and capture whatever images were in front of the webcam." Needless to say, Robbins' parents were outraged at this development, as neither the school nor the district had told parents about this capability. As a result, the Robbins have filed a class-action lawsuit against the district, charging it with interception of electronic communications under the ECPA, theft of intellectual property under the CFAA, violations of the Stored Communications Act, violations of the Civil Rights Act, invasions of privacy, and violations of the Pennsylvania wiretapping and electronic surveillance act.
Ars tried to get clarification from Harriton High School about its laptop policy, but were told that no one at the school would be willing to discuss it with us. (Merion School District has not responded to our request for comment either.) As such, we're left speculating as to what else could have happened to led up to this seemingly surreal series of events.
It's possible that things may have played out differently than the complaint alleges, though. If it was a MacBook, for example, Blake may have used the built-in Photo Booth software to take a picture of himself doing something questionable while at home, which may or may not be against the school's policy. If that photo got posted online or even synced back with the school's admins the next day, it's possible that Matsko was given access to the photo for disciplinary purposes. This, of course, doesn't account for the claim that Matsko confirmed with Michael Robbins that the school could (and had) spied on Blake remotely, but we haven't heard the school's side of the story yet.
If the Robbins' allegations are true, then it certainly looks as if there were serious privacy violations at hand. The school may have the right to retain admin control over its own laptops, but spying on kids at home without their knowledge is likely not one of them. This is similar to a case from 2008 when a Florida woman took her laptop in for repairs and eventually discovered it was rigged up to take webcam photos of her at home without her knowledge. The Peeping Tom in that case ended up confessing to the deed and getting arrested, but things could get far more complicated if a government entity (in this case, a public school) was the one guilty of the peeping. |
The pastor of the poorly named Good News Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota was charged with assault yesterday after beating a 12-year-old boy who “wanted to test God.” The pastor’s son was also implicated in the abuse.
Dong Wook Kim, 51, of Good News Church, at 3000 W. Broadway Av., was charged with two counts of assault in the second- and third-degree, and a single [count] of malicious punishment of a child, all felonies, prosecutors said. His 19-year-old son, Joo Seong Kim, faces the same charges. Police say that father and son repeatedly struck the young victim with various objects — a 2-by-4 piece of lumber, electrical cord and a wooden closet rod — and forced him into a “push-up position and plank” for long periods, because the youngster was misbehaving in school and had rejected his faith.
It was worse than that . In addition to those incidents, the boy was also “kicked in the head” and punched in the head and stomach by the pastor. Wook Kim also slammed the boy’s “head into the doorframe multiple times.”
Wook Kim said the boy’s parents gave him permission to beat the child. One of the bruises found on the boy’s body, however, was the “size of a football.” Even Michael Pearl would call that a step too far.
When the boy spoke to police later, he said his sister had been subject to the same sort of abuse. She is currently in protective custody.
In a letter sent to the judge by Wook Kim’s wife, she asked for a more lenient sentence because the beatings were “out of greed of wanting to make [the boy] a better person.”
If the judge ignores that, however, the two men face up to seven years in prison in addition to a five-figure fine.
(Thanks to @MorseAuthor for the link) |
Walt Disney Animation Has Found Its Own John Ratzenberger-Style Good Luck Charm By Eric Eisenberg Random Article Blend
Audiences will soon see the great character actor take on his fourth Walt Disney Animation role with a part in next year’s
He’s so damn funny and he’s so versatile and he’s such a nice guy and just a great actor. He’s really funny, so glad that Jen [Lee] and Chris [Buck] used him on Frozen, and then Don [Hall] and Chris [Williams] picked him up. And we were like, what’s Alan going to play? And I know that on Moana, they’re talking about, ‘Well, what’s Alan’s part going to be?' ... You couldn’t ask for a better kind of good luck charm actor.
Alan Tudyk is probably best known for playing pilot Hoban 'Wash' Washburne on the beloved cult series Firefly, but has wound up with a special niche in the world of Disney Animation. He first voiced the hilarious/villainous King Candy in
We released the cast the other day and the Duke Weaselton thing is the biggest thing. Of all the stuff they could talk about, people are just like, ‘Duke Weaselton, Duke Weaselton! It’s like the Duke of Weselton! I found the first Easter egg in Zootopia!’
At this point, we don’t really know much about Alan Tudyk’s role in Zootopia, let alone who he will be playing in
Zootopia arrives in theaters on March 4, 2016. Pixar is well-known for including all kinds of Easter eggs in their films, but certainly one of the most notable is the consistent presence of actor John Ratzenberger. The great Cheers star began the streak playing Hamm in the 1995 hit Toy Story, and he has been a part of every production since, often referred to as the studio’s good luck charm. This is all common knowledge amongst movie fans – but what you may not know is that the folks over at Walt Disney Animation Studios have spent the last few years cultivating a good luck charm of their very own with the consistent inclusion of the fantastic Alan Tudyk.Audiences will soon see the great character actor take on his fourth Walt Disney Animation role with a part in next year’s Zootopia , and it was while recently talking with directors Rich Moore and Byron Howard that I got confirmation of his particular "good luck" status. Acknowledging that Tudyk has been a part of each of the studio’s movies since Wreck-It Ralph , I asked the filmmakers if they view the actor’s presence as more than just another name in the cast list, and they both smiled while answering in the affirmative. Said Moore,Alan Tudyk is probably best known for playing pilot Hoban 'Wash' Washburne on the beloved cult series Firefly, but has wound up with a special niche in the world of Disney Animation. He first voiced the hilarious/villainous King Candy in Wreck-It Ralph , but has followed that up playing the Duke of Weselton in Frozen and Alistair Krei in Big Hero 6 . Even beyond just his presence, his role in Zootopia is also its own kind of fun callback, as his character’s name (and species) is a reference to his Disney past. As Byron Howard explained,At this point, we don’t really know much about Alan Tudyk’s role in Zootopia, let alone who he will be playing in Moana , but one thing is for sure: we will be keyed in and listening for his voice.Zootopia arrives in theaters on March 4, 2016. Blended From Around The Web Facebook
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In February I wrote about a planning activism project I and my like-minded friends – we now call our group Urban Helsinki – initiated to promote dense urban living for a development site in Pikku Huopalahti on the northern edge of Helsinki’s inner city. In a nutshell, the story is that the land developer hired three architecture firms to draft ideas for transforming the site from its current rather useless state into an infill neighborhood. The city will eventually make a detailed plan for the site reflecting the ideas and discussions that follow the proposals. Gratefully, the city gave us a chance to submit our proposal along with the so-called official ones.
At the time of my earlier blog post we had just handed in our work. Nothing like this had been done before, so what would follow was a mystery for everyone.
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Click here to review our proposal “Haaganpuro” in more detail and click here to download it for yourself (only available in Finnish unfortunately).
Fast forward a few months and I’m happy to say that our proposal has now been published on the City Planning Department’s website and open to comments from the public. We’re very excited to see our ideas being presented on par with the official proposals and the City Planning Department deserves a big thank you for this.
However, at the same time it must also be noted that our proposal didn’t entirely get the same treatment as the official ones. It did get shown to residents in the development project’s first public consultation event and apparently it also got looked at by the Department’s internal review group. But the intensity and seriousness of the look was is in all likelihood lighter than with the rest. Whereas the architecture firms have been in dialogue with the Department since the review, we only got our feedback last week.
Nonetheless, in late April we also got invited to present our work at the Department’s Pikku Huopalahti seminar where the architecture firms revealed their final proposals to all stakeholders (except residents) of the development project. That was the first time we saw the other plans whereas we decided to make ours public already months ago.
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The three architecture firms are AJAK Architects, helsinkizurich, and Serum Architects.
As said, all four proposals can now be reviewed and commented online until June 6 and afterwards the city will draw its conclusions and lay down principles for drafting a detailed plan. The principles should get published in the fall.
The final analysis of the impact and role of our intervention can naturally only be made after the city’s detailed plan is drafted and ultimately gets political approval. Still, in the meanwhile, I have three observations and thoughts I’d like to bring up for discussion.
Firstly, I find it alarming how wide the gap between the Strategic Urban Planning Division (yleiskaavaosasto in Finnish) and the Town Planning Division (asemakaavaosasto) is within the City Planning Department. Physically they work on different floors of the same building, but they might as well be on different planets. The strategic urban planners have been working on a new city plan for a good while now and really no one can have missed the future course of the city to seek ways to make Helsinki more urban. Key elements of this project include expanding the inner city further out and to transform the main arteries leading into the city into urban boulevards.
And it just so happens that Pikku Huopalahti generally and this site in particular both lie next to one of those arteries and are right at the edge of the inner city. Moreover, the development we’re talking about will even take place on a practically empty piece of land. In other words, this piece of land is screaming for the kind of development that would support those future trends. Realizing something different would certainly be a blow below the belt for the introduction of the kind of vibrant urban areas the strategic planners are envisioning.
But the town planners feel differently. From the get go, they’ve directly and indirectly communicated parameters (e.g. number of new residents & density) the architecture firms and we should follow to end up with acceptable proposals. Despite rhetoric about expanding the inner city and being open-minded, those were the kind that support building more suburban city fabric – or semi-urban at best. Low densities and a lot of cars. This attitude is best illustrated through the official feedback the city gave us.
Secondly, the gap between the mentalities of the two planner groups also leads to further imbalances. As it stands, the town planners follow the teachings of the modernist “neighborhood unit school” which seeks to create leafy and low-density suburbs. This has been the dominant ideology for building cities for decades (and still largely is) and the City Planning Department was actually created in the first place during the emergence of this planning model. This approach to planning is also grounded on a strong belief in unity and the valuing of social equity which has led to a belief that we all want and are happy with the same living conditions designed to provide healthy and high quality living for everyone.
Real life has however proven that this certainly is not the case. Some of us want to live in urban areas, some in the suburbs and some in the countryside. And some somewhere in between. This of course is common sense that everyone knows, but in recent years the idea has slowly come to the attention of public authorities too. Thanks to recent empirical studies on the subject this thought now has scientific support and can be dealt with officially. The strategic planners are the most visible group to have taken these thoughts seriously while they are working on the new city plan.
It however is problematic if the folks at the town planning division only have the passion and know-how to zone for suburban urban fabric. Since it is all the more clear now that the city officially recognizes that not all areas need to cater for just one median lifestyle, could the town planners also be organized accordingly? What I mean is that planners who have the passion to create areas for urban lifestyles and neighborhoods would be in charge of them and the ones interested in suburban areas would stick to catering for them? Urban development is a profession where “one-size fits all” is never a good idea.
Finally, the third point I want to highlight is that even if Pikku Huopalahti’s planning process is not over yet, there are signs that our planning activism is making a difference. According to our voices on the streets, our Haaganpuro proposal has been able to shift the discussions about the development project towards a more urban direction. We’ve been told that at the public consultation event some months ago the preliminary proposals of the architecture firms had a very suburban character and for example had more stand-alone residential towers than urban blocks. Our proposal was the same already then and suggested to introduce more than twice as many new residents than the others and reflected an urban character similar to the way the inner city is built. We received supportive feedback from the public and surprise, surprise, when the plans were officially published last month they had taken a turn towards a more urban approach.
Of course it’s impossible to say if this is only thanks to our agenda and efforts for promoting better urbanism. Most likely it’s not. But nonetheless, even if it’s difficult to evaluate the extent we’ve influenced different stakeholders it is certain that our entry has shaken the business-as-usual way of doing things within the City Planning Department. The true value of our proposal is that it has forced planners as well as the private consultants to reflect their thinking against ours and check the validity of their arguments for creating great cities.
With that being said, whether you’re in Finland or elsewhere in the world, I warmly encourage you to get active with the development of your city or neighborhood. You don’t need to be an “official stakeholder” to make a difference. |
Even as Capitol Hill remains consumed by the legal fallout of President Donald Trump’s travel ban and the on-going confirmation of his cabinet picks, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) on Tuesday returned to their regular drumbeat: pushing for paid family leave for all Americans.
The two lawmakers announced their plans to reintroduce the Family And Medical Insurance Leave (FAMILY) Act that would create a shared fund to make paid leave affordable to all employers. The legislation would guarantee workers receive at least two-thirds pay for up to 12 weeks when they take time off for their own health conditions—including pregnancy and childbirth—or to care for others.
The bill calls for a paid leave system that’s modeled on already-existing programs in California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island that have created self-sustaining funds to ensure workers can earn a portion of their wages for up to 12 weeks of leave. New York will implement a similar program next year.
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Access to paid family and medical leave should not be “a lottery based on where you happen to find work,” DeLauro said in a call about the legislation Tuesday. “It should be a fundamental right for all Americans.”
This is the third time Gillibrand and DeLauro have introduced the FAMILY Act. It also went before Congress in 2013 and 2015. In the last session, the bill was read twice in the Senate and was referred to the Committee on Finance, but got no farther. In the House, it got as far as the Subcommittee on Social Security.
This year’s family leave bill goes before a Congress and executive branch controlled by Republicans, which would typically be a death knell for such legislation. The difference now is that the Republican Party has a leader who has voiced support for government-mandated paid leave.
During his campaign, President Trump proposed a policy that would provide new mothers with six weeks of paid leave—a radical departure from the GOP’s orthodoxy of small government. While Trump’s plan was unprecedented for a Republican, it was panned as being discriminatory since it would only apply to birth mothers and not fathers or adoptive parents. A Washington Post story Monday said that Trump aides are considering a broader parental leave policy that would also cover dads; the White House did not confirm the report.
The United States remains the only member nation in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development without a national policy mandating paid maternity leave. In the absence of a federal policy, more employers have stepped up to provide their workers with paid time off.
A new study out Tuesday from the Boston Consulting Group laid out the business case for providing paid family leave. After examining 250 companies that offer the benefit, it found that the pros of a paid family leave policy—greater ability to attract and retain talent; improved employee morale and productivity; more diverse company leadership teams; and better alignment with company values—outweigh the cons, namely cost. “The companies we studied consistently reinforced the message that paid family leave offers a healthy return,” the report says.
While more employers like Ikea, Hilton, Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group, and the U.S. Department of Defense are catching on to the upside of paid leave, the benefit remains rare.
Just 14% of the U.S workforce is currently covered by an employer-sponsored paid family leave program and access to the benefit falls starkly along income lines. Workers in the highest income quartile are 3.5 times more likely to have access to paid family leave than those in the lowest income quartile. “[A] national policy would almost certainly be required to provide full and equal access to paid family leave for all U.S. workers,” the report says. |
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Why does America love to hate the Tennessee Vols? It is the same kind of dislike reserved for a few other teams like the Dallas Cowboys, the L.A. Lakers, the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.
Now we add the Vols. They own a proud tradition of SEC football that has been ongoing for over a century. How did this great team that regularly has over 100,000 fans attend their home games get to this point?
Is it that America is beginning to realize that this team never stays down long? Is that old UT confidence starting to show up in the staff and players this year? Is this a team that is starting to remember that it knows how to win? Starting to realize that winning is an attitude that begets more winning.
More winning, like a 35-7 romp over No. 2 Miami in the Sugar Bowl, Like shelling a No.1 Auburn team 38-20, when it was double-digit underdogs. Like 18.5-point underdogs knocking No. 2 Florida out of a chance to go to a national championship game in The Swamp by a narrow 34-32 margin. There are others too, but you get the idea.
Here are nine of the other top reasons why the rest of America loves to hate the Volunteers: |
Quick, name the easiest way to grab headlines in 2017. If you said, "bash President Trump," go to the front of the line.
So you'd expect a bomb-throwing rapper, someone who has shocked pop culture for nearly 20 years, to have something different to share that doesn't involve the former "Apprentice" star.
Nope. Not if the rapper in question's name is Eminem.
The "8 Mile" star, now 45, is out with a new rap album. "Revival" is getting some brutal reviews, alas. Meanwhile, he targets Trump anew in a track dubbed, "Like Home."
Here's a sample ... be careful not to yawn.
The swastika with your name carved in it
Should be your trademark, 'cause it's all you played off
And you just took the plate off
So I guess it pays to feed off of chaos
So basically, you Adolf Hitler
Trump is Hitler? That was edgy (and dumb) in 2015. Wanna truly be edgy? Rap about Trump's appeal or how mainstream Democrats like Hillary Clinton lost their common touch. Or perhaps why the personally popular President Barack Obama couldn't convince voters to essentially vote for his third term.
Now that would be edgy. Daring. Bold. Only Eminem wouldn't get all the fawning press he's received on his current anti-Trump publicity tour.
Here's more:
"Someone get this Aryan a sheet/ Time to bury him, so tell him to prepare to get impeached..."
Things get murkier when it comes to Trump's daughter. The new album offers up a lovely image of Ivanka Trump getting trapped in the rapper's trunk. Alert NOW? Just kicking. That group rarely lifts a finger if a GOP-friendly woman is under attack of any kind. |
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong’s pro-democracy lawmakers appeared to be standing firm on Wednesday in their pledge to veto Beijing-backed electoral reforms, as the Asian financial centre’s legislature debated the package that will define its democratic future.
The former British colony has reinforced security after mass protests crippled parts of the city late last year, presenting China’s ruling Communist Party with one of its biggest political challenges in decades.
More than a thousand people converged outside government buildings as debate began on a blueprint that would allow a direct vote for Hong Kong’s next leader in 2017, but only from pre-screened, pro-Beijing candidates.
Opponents want a genuinely democratic election for the city’s chief executive in line with Beijing’s promise of universal suffrage made when the territory returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
Pro-democracy activists climbed over metal fences separating them from the Beijing supporters, many of whom were wearing numbered shirts, the significance of which was not immediately clear. The two sides cursed and threw garbage and fights broke out.
The council adjourned in the evening without a vote which is expected no later than Friday. Democracy activists swore at pro-establishment lawmakers as they filed out of the building.
“You don’t represent us, you represent the central government!” one middle-aged woman shouted, using a common and colourful Cantonese expletive.
Hong Kong’s 27 “pan-democrats”, who hold a crucial one-third veto bloc in the 70-seat Legislative Council, have vowed to oppose what they call a “fake” democratic model. Three democrats who spoke early during the debate reiterated that pledge.
If the reform proposals are passed unexpectedly, pro-democracy groups have vowed to protest.
Related Coverage Hong Kong lawmakers adjourn electoral reform debate
“This morning I got a very long and well-written letter, which was from a student. (They) hope I will support the proposal,” democrat Ronny Tong, who was close to tears, told reporters before the debate began.
“I cannot think of anyone in Hong Kong who is happy today. I have been a legislator for 11 years, with an aim to fight for universal suffrage. Today I will cast a negative vote for an incomplete and unsatisfactory political reform proposal.”
Democratic lawmaker Claudia Mo called the package a “maggot-eaten apple”.
“This motion, this resolution is a fraud,” Mo said. “This bill makes nonsense of the word democracy. It is a very bogus version of universal suffrage.”
Last year’s protests revealed sharp divisions in Hong Kong and public opinion on the reforms remains split.
The final round of a rolling poll conducted by three Hong Kong universities showed 47 percent of respondents backed the reform proposal. Thirty-eight percent were against, while 15 percent were undecided.
“CANNOT GO ON LIKE THIS”
Beijing supporters easily outnumbered the roughly 400 pro-democracy protesters on Wednesday. Activist groups had said they expected 100,000 protesters to show up.
“The bill needs to go through. We have to support Hong Kong stability. We cannot keep carrying on like this,” said a 60-year-old man surnamed Chan, who declined to give his first name.
Pro-democracy lawmakers carrying signs symbolizing veto to a Beijing- backed electoral reform, while protesting outside Legislative Council in Hong Kong, China June 17, 2015. REUTERS/Bobby Yip
“We have worked so hard all these years,” said Chan, who was waving a Chinese flag. Pro-Beijing supporters also played the Chinese national anthem through loudspeakers.
One pro-democracy protester wearing a black T-shirt which read “Reject Fake Suffrage” held a black-and-white banner that declared: “Overthrow the Communist dictatorship”.
Inside the legislature, democrats stood in a row with signs with crosses on them as they pledged to vote down the plan.
Tension has been running high, especially after 10 people were arrested this week on suspicion of explosives offences. Six of them appeared in court on Wednesday charged with conspiracy to cause an explosion. The six were not asked to enter pleas.
A 29-year-old woman was let out on bail of HK$20,000 (1,639 pounds). Five men were remanded in custody.
The Communist Party’s official People’s Daily said in a front-page commentary that the vote was fundamentally about ensuring long-term prosperity and stability.
The proposed package, it added, was designed to be a broadly representative one all sides could accept.
“Looking around the world, some countries’ and regions’ universal suffrage systems are not in line with the actual situation on the ground, causing social chaos, economic hardship and difficulties too numerous to mention,” the paper said.
Beijing has tried to lobby pro-democracy lawmakers to back the blueprint.
Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption has also said it is investigating allegations by an unidentified legislator that he was offered a bribe to vote for the package.
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Hong Kong returned to China under a “one country, two systems” formula that gives it a separate legal system and greater freedoms than the party-ruled mainland - and the promise of universal suffrage.
Thousands of activists blockaded major roads across Hong Kong for 79 days last year, defying tear gas and pepper spray, to press China to honour that promise.
While flawed, the package is still the most progressive electoral model ever offered by China’s leaders in what might be a pilot for other cities within mainland China, according to a source close to Beijing’s leadership.
If the plan is vetoed, Hong Kong’s next leader will be selected as before by a 1,200-member committee stacked with pro-Beijing loyalists. Beijing would be unlikely to offer any fresh concessions to Hong Kong anytime soon. |
During the second half of the 20th century, the skies above northern central India dried up.
Across vast swathes of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha, and Uttar Pradesh, the monsoon rains between June and September went into decline. Since 1950, the daily rainfall average had dropped by 0.18 millimetres (mm) per decade. This was portentous as the monsoon rains, which account for 80% of the annual rainfall in the subcontinent, are the lifeline for millions of people, agriculture, and livestock. There were even fears that the resultant droughts would become more severe and frequent. A number of theories were proposed to explain this phenomenon of declining rainfall, including large-scale deforestation and pollution.
Then, in 2002, it all changed.
Since that year, the drying trend has reversed, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found after parsing more than six global precipitation data sets. Starting from 2002, the daily rainfall average in northern central India has increased by 1.34 mm per decade. In fact, the analysis found that, with the exception of southeast India (around Tamil Nadu), monsoon rainfall has increased throughout the subcontinent.
“The Indian monsoon is considered a textbook, clearly defined phenomenon, and we think we know a lot about it, but we don’t,” said Chien Wang, who, along with MIT colleague Qinjian Jin, conducted the study. “Here, we identify a phenomenon that was mostly overlooked.”
Nature Climate Change Monsoon rainfall trend across northern central India.
This revival was accompanied by a significant change India’s land and sea temperatures, the researchers found. These temperatures are significant because the monsoons are thought to be a result of the unequal heating of the Indian subcontinent and the Indian Ocean. Since 2002, the entire Indian subcontinent has warmed rapidly, data suggests. It has heated up by between 0.1 to 1 degree Celsius per year, while the surface temperature of the Indian Ocean has increased at a much slower rate during this period.
“It is this strong, enhanced warming over land, combined with a slowdown of warming over the Indian Ocean, that has caused the drastic increase in the land-ocean temperature gradient and subsequently resulted in the enhancement of the monsoonal precipitation,” the MIT scientists wrote in a recent article in the Nature Climate Change journal.
Precisely why India’s land temperature has jumped is still unclear, although the researchers have observed a thinning of low-altitude cloud cover over the subcontinent. These clouds typically help reflect sunlight, so any reduction could potentially lead to an increase in surface temperatures. Rising pollution levels may be a reason for a depletion in cloud cover, but the MIT scientists aren’t quite sure yet.
“…these aerosols have been around even during the drying period, so there must be something else at work,” Wang explained. “This raises a lot more questions than answers, and that’s why we’re so excited to figure this out.” |
Ukraine, former home of Demonoid and current home to many torrent and similar file-sharing sites, has been subjected to regular criticism by the United States over copyright. This year the U.S. went further still, listing Ukraine as a priority in its Special 301 report and opening up the country to sanctions. Now Ukraine says it will address its online piracy problems, but states that it will not deny its citizens their right to freely access information.
Every year the United States government produces its Special 301 report. Prepared by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), the report identifies countries which are under-performing on issues such as intellectual property protection.
After being present on the standard ‘Watch List’ in 2011, Ukraine found itself upgraded to the Priority Watch List in 2012. The United States complained that Ukraine had done little to address counterfeiting and piracy and in some cases had actually taken steps backwards, such as when it took down large file-hosting site EX.ua and then allowed it to reopen days later. The U.S. said that Ukraine had also failed to introduce a formal notice-and-takedown regime.
By 2013 things had failed to improve, in fact so much so that in May Ukraine was designated a Priority Foreign Country by the USTR, meaning that the United States government could impose trade sanctions.
“This designation is the culmination of several years of growing concern over widespread
IP theft, including the growing entrenchment of IPR infringement that is facilitated by government actors,” the damning report read.
Amid an extremely long list of criticisms, the USTR said Ukraine needed to establish a “predictable and transparent system” to combat online piracy, including consultation with rightsholders, legal reform, and deterrent-level sentences for infringement.
Now, three months after its 301 disaster, the Ukranian government says it’s prepared to address its online piracy issues.
“Today, all countries have to solve a complex dilemma between the free dissemination of information and the violation of intellectual property rights. Many are forced to take legislative measures against piracy on the Internet,” says Volodymyr Seminozhenko, head of Ukraine’s State Agency on Science, Innovations and Information.
“It is logical, because with more rapid development of information technology general Internet users are able to share any audio visual material, texts or computer programs online. It is clear that among the array of information available will be pirated content, which naturally causes concern to rightsholders.”
Seminozhenko, a former Vice Premier Minister of Ukraine and current head of the Association of Ukrainian Scientists, says that a similar law to the one just implemented by Russia is being prepared by the State Intellectual Property Service.
However, having seen the backlash over Russia’s site and content blocking provisions (and a failure to properly engage the information technology sector when preparing legislation) it seems likely that Ukraine will tread more cautiously.
“The status quo on this complex issue can only be achieved when taking into account all stakeholders – that includes rightsholders, representatives of the IT community, and users of the network. The fact that such a compromise is necessary is confirmed by the recent events surrounding the Russian anti-piracy law,” the minister adds.
Semynozhenko has worked hard for more than a decade promoting innovation and a thriving business environment in Ukraine and says that in any regime the interests of citizens should be paramount, including their right to freely access information.
“Fighting Internet piracy should not create artificial conditions for blocking of Internet resources that are fully transparent and legitimate, and even more so should not restrict the freedom of citizens to access information,” Seminozhenko says.
The exact system Ukraine has mind is still not finalized, but there are suggestions that current law will be amended to allow rightsholders to file complaints against pirate sites with the State Intellectual Property Service. Within 10 days of receipt of the complaint an investigation will be launched to determine if content is indeed online illegally.
In the final step – and one likely to cause controversy if it’s pushed through – there are suggestions that those putting content online illegally will be required to pay some kind of fee for the items listed in copyright complaints, with the money raised being transferred directly into state coffers.
Since the USTR has already criticized the Ukranian government for allowing “rogue” music collection societies to operate freely in the country (even going as far as stating that one such outfit has “strong ties” to government officials), further enrichment of the state at the expense of copyright holders isn’t likely to be well received.
Only time will tell if the reforms will be enough to downgrade Ukraine in the 2014 Special 301 report, or if they will be viewed by the U.S. as a day late and a dollar short. |
Man airlifted to safety after fall on Carrick-a-Rede island BelfastTelegraph.co.uk A man in his 60s has been airlifted to safety after falling at a well-known tourist attraction. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/man-airlifted-to-safety-after-fall-on-carrickarede-island-31440402.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/article31440401.ece/76608/AUTOCROP/h342/PANews%20BT_P-c7d3c730-c5b5-41db-9f5a-417e5c7a4972_I1.jpg
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A man in his 60s has been airlifted to safety after falling at a well-known tourist attraction.
He is believed to have suffered facial injuries after an incident on Carrick-a-Rede island, near Ballintoy, Co Antrim.
A Royal Navy search and rescue helicopter was scrambled from HMS Gannet base in Prestwick, Scotland, and flew the man to the Causeway Hospital in Coleraine.
The incident happened just after 12.15pm.
A spokeswoman said crews from Coleraine and Ballycastle Coastguard were also involved in the rescue operation.
She said: "At this stage we do not know the circumstances of the fall. He fell on the island. He had walked across the rope bridge.
"It is safer and easier to take someone who is injured off the island by helicopter rather than going back across the rope bridge - no matter what the extend of their injuries."
A spokeswoman for the Causeway Hospital said the man was in a stable condition. |
Some good news for Kyle Goodwin and Megaupload users: the Court stated today that it will hold a hearing to find out the details about Mr. Goodwin's property - where it is, what happened when the government denied him access to it, and whether and how he can get it back. The Court has asked Mr. Goodwin and the government to each propose a format for the hearing, which remains unscheduled at this point.
Today's news is one more step toward getting innocent users their rightful property back - something that is long overdue. We are glad that Mr. Goodwin will finally get to make his case in court and we look forward to helping the judge fashion a procedure to make all of Megaupload's consumers whole again by granting them access to what is legally theirs. |
Raiders of the Lost Ark
United States, 1981
U.S. Release Date: 6/12/81 (wide)
Running Length: 1:55
MPAA Classification: PG (Violence)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Cast: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, Ronald Lacey, John Rhys-Davies, Denholm Elliott, Alfred Molina, Wolf Kahler, Anthony Higgins
Director: Steven Spielberg
Producer: Frank Marshall
Screenplay: Lawrence Kasdan, based on a story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman
Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe
Music: John Williams
U.S. Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Spoilers Ahoy!: The assumption is that everyone reading this review has seen Raiders of the Lost Ark. The review discusses in frank detail things about the ending, so, if you haven't seen the film and don't want its secrets spoiled, watch the movie before reading this review.
Despite what the DVD marketeers are currently claiming, the title of this movie was, is, and always shall be Raiders of the Lost Ark, not Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. There are times when revisionism can be taken too far, and this is one of those instances. I don't need all of my Indiana Jones titles next to each other in my DVD library. I'm perfectly capable of going to the "R" section for Raiders rather than having it alongside the sequels, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
You have to love a movie that is so devilishly clever as to make the hero's every effort, no matter how Herculean, irrelevant to the conclusion. Had Dr. Jones elected to go on an extended vacation to Mozambique and never have anything to do with the Ark of the Covenant, nothing would have changed. Jones doesn't save the day. In fact, he doesn't come close to rescuing it, unless one considers his having failed as being the key to success. (Although he does get the girl.) Yes, the movie ends with melting faces, but, underneath all of that liquefying flesh and exploding heads, there's an abundance of irony just waiting for the attentive movie-goer to unearth. When was the last time that an action hero has been so utterly, completely inconsequential as Indiana Jones?
But, in discussing the ending, I'm getting ahead of myself. Better, instead, to go back to the beginning. Where that is, is anyone's guess. It could be back in the late '40s, when a young George Lucas was enthralled by the cliffhanger serials that would inspire this film. It could be in 1975, when Steven Spielberg made a little movie about a not-so-little shark and suddenly became a big name in Hollywood. It could be in 1977 when Lucas' Star Wars singlehandedly revived science fiction and solidified the concept of the summer blockbuster. Or it could be later in that same year, when Lucas and Spielberg, while both vacationing in Hawaii, decided that they had to work together on a project. That project would become Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Action movies were a different breed in the pre-1981 years than they are today, and one of the reasons for their transformation had to do with Raiders of the Lost Ark. Before this movie, James Bond ruled the roost and the Bond formula was the accepted path that any self-respecting action movie would follow. The first Indiana Jones outing changed that. The film was constructed as a series of cliffhangers with narrow, death-defying escapes. Not since the era of serials have audiences so often asked the question, "How's he going to get out of this one?" It's unfair to claim that the 007 outings were unexciting, but, compared to Raiders of the Lost Ark, they come across as sedate. Raiders transformed the action movie landscape. In the years that followed, nearly every action movie would try to generate the same sense of suspense and tension. Even the Bond movies would catch on.
As played by Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones represents a different kind of action hero. By hearkening back to the protagonist from those black-and-white serials, Lucas and Spielberg created the model for the future. Jones is as close to an "everyman" as you're likely to find in an action movie. He's tough, but not that tough; he has women problems; he wears natty, "lived-in" clothing; he doesn't drink martinis, regardless of whether they're shaken or stirred; he frequently gets bumped, beaten, and bruised; and he doesn't have biceps like a Mr. Universe. One has to wonder if someone like John McClane (Die Hard's fly in the ointment) could have existed if Ford hadn't trailblazed this road. Certainly, there wouldn't have been any Jack T. Colton (Michael Douglas' character in the best of the Raiders re-treads, Romancing the Stone) or Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser in The Mummy).
The film, which transpires in the late 1930s, opens with a wonderfully tense, pulp-inspired sequence inside a ruined temple as archeologist adventurer Indiana Jones seeks to avoid a number of pitfalls and traps on his way to recovering a priceless artifact. Tarantulas, gaping pits, lethal spikes, arrows, and a huge rolling boulder are a few of the dangers he overcomes, only to lose possession of the statuette to his arch-rival, Rene Belloq (Paul Freeman), once he emerges. Indy escapes relatively unscathed, but returns home with his tail between his legs, disappointed at being unable to retrieve the prize. His consolation, however, is that the U.S. government would like him to track down the Ark of the Covenant, and they are willing to pay handsomely for him to do so.
Indy's journey in search of the Ark reunites him with an old flame, Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), who holds a key piece of the puzzle necessary to pinpoint the artifact's location. Then it's on to Cairo, where he teams up with an old friend, Sallah (John Rhys-Davies), who gives him information on the Nazi dig site, supervised by none other than Belloq. It becomes a race between Indy and Belloq for the prize - a race that Indy wins before Belloq steals away the spoils, leaving Marion and him trapped in near-darkness surrounded by thousands of hissing snakes. But Indy isn't finished, and, after escaping from Belloq's trap, a chase ensues involving planes, trucks, ships, and a submarine. In the end, the Nazis get the Ark, but learn that sometimes it's better to lose than to win.
Certainly, Raiders of the Lost Ark is a breathless, white-knuckle experience of a movie. It is also perfectly paced. There's enough time in between the frequent action scenes to provide the minimum of exposition and character development for us to understand what's going on and to appreciate the relationships between the individuals who populate the screen. There's none of the frantic quick-cutting that has since become a staple of action movies (thank you, editor Michael Kahn!), and the production does not seem frenzied and out-of-control. This isn't a case of cardboard figures running around in circles and blowing things up. We care about Indy and Marion in ways that we rarely care about protagonists in this genre. When Marion "dies," it stings.
Which brings us to one of Raiders' great strengths: the performances. No Oscar nominations were awarded, but it's hard to imagine any group of actors doing a better job. By the time Raiders of the Lost Ark was made, Harrison Ford had filed off the rough edges that were apparent in his first outing as Han Solo. Ford is completely at home in Indy's rough-and-tumble skin - a rogue, scoundrel, and mercenary with a heart of gold. (Sound a little like his Star Wars alter ego, doesn't it?) We know and like Indy from the start of the movie, primarily because he doesn't seem like an indestructible superhero, doesn't try to hide his many faults, and has a self-deprecating sense of humor. A lot of that is Ford.
Then there's his damsel-who's-not-always-in-distress, Marion. Sure, she screams from time-to-time, but she's no wallflower. The punch she delivers to Indy may be the hardest one thrown in the movie, and she's no less gentle with the bad guys. Karen Allen plays the part with spirit and spunk, and the attraction between the two leads is palpable. Marion is heads-and-shoulders above the other two women Indy flirted with, and her absence is one of the key missing ingredients from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Here's hoping she returns if there's an Indiana Jones 4, with just as much fire.
One of the great, underrated aspects of Raiders of the Lost Ark lies in the near-perfect casting of the supporting players. Is there a better choice than the imposing, good-natured John Rhys-Davies as Sallah, Indy's desert cohort? These days, Davies may be playing Gimli the dwarf, but this is the movie in which he first gained widespread international attention. As Belloq, Paul Freeman is the cultured villain, cut from the mold of those who are used to getting their way but don't like dirtying their lily-white hands. The scene in which he and Indy engage in a verbal sparring match (right after Marion's supposed death) is one of the movie's highlights. Ronald Lacey is deliciously creepy as the Nazi Toht, and he plays the part in full Peter Lorre form. It's impossible to forget the gag when he turns an apparent instrument of torture into a coat hanger. Finally, other actors with minor parts include veteran Deholm Elliot as Indy's mentor, Marcus Brody, and Alfred Molina as Indy's companion on the temple heist.
One thing that makes Raiders of the Lost Ark so fresh is a sense of spontaneity, some of which is the result of on-set changes and ad-libs. The action scenes were rigorously storyboarded and planned, but that wasn't always the case with the less rigorous material. One of Indy's most frequently quoted lines, "It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage," was added by Harrison Ford on the spot. The famous shooting of the fearsome sword wielder in the Cairo bazaar was another last-minute change, replacing a lengthy fight sequence. (That scene routinely got big laughs when the movie was played in theaters.) Throughout filming of Raiders, Spielberg encouraged an atmosphere of collaboration and companionship, and it works to the film's advantage.
Although there are plenty of special effects in the movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark was made in an era when stunt work was more critical than anything added in post production. Ford did many of his own stunts, and ended up with the cuts and bruises to show for them (not to mention a torn ACL). The most intensive stunt sequence - the fight on the truck that ended up with Indy being dragged along the ground behind the vehicle - employed both the actor and his double, and remains a thrilling sequence because we recognize that this isn't the result of computer animation - it's really happening.
For composer John Williams, who has long been favored by both Spielberg and Lucas, the chance to work on Raiders of the Lost Ark offered him an opportunity to collaborate with them both, and to add another memorable theme song to his list of credits. In the five-year period from 1977 to 1982, Williams created five of movie-dom's most popular title tracks: Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T.
The deserved popularity of Raiders of the Lost Ark resulted in a huge box office bonanza for Paramount Pictures. This is the kind of movie that, even today, audiences immediately fall in love with. It has all the right ingredients: a smart script, a likable hero, a dash of romance, more than a touch of comedy, and a lot of fast-paced action. In 2003, it's a formula, but Spielberg and Lucas were the ones who established the recipe by using ingredients both old and new. The two sequels are vastly inferior - Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is too ponderous and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is unforgivably fatuous. Yet, because the first entry of the series leaves such an indelible imprint, the existence of lesser chapters to the Indiana Jones saga does nothing to dilute its impact. Raiders of the Lost Ark is a movie to be savored by viewers of all ages and all persuasions.
© 2003 James Berardinelli |
A recent article in Niner Times contained inaccurate information regarding parking permit increases for the 2018-2019 academic year. Here is the correct information on the topic.
Is it true parking permits are going up 6 percent next academic year?
It is true there will be a modest increase to parking permits for the 2018-2019 academic year. However, a decision has not yet been made on the exact increase. Parking and Transportation Services (PaTS) is evaluating several scenarios and will share more information with campus as soon as a decision is made.
Why is an increase happening?
The cost of a parking permit has not changed in four years even though operating and administrative costs continued to rise during that time. Additionally, in 2017-2018, PaTS committed more than $24M to provide additional services for customers, including the expansion of Union Deck and Lot 8, and parking and permit management hardware and software. These funds came from reserves that must be replenished because as the University continues to grow, some existing parking will have to give way to new buildings and new parking will be needed in other areas.
Why do students have to pay for parking on top of tuition?
No state funding or tuition dollars are used to build and maintain parking facilities. The University has to pay for building the parking decks needed to accommodate those who use them, which includes students, faculty and staff. Everyone with a regular, full-time permit pays the same. A large percentage of permit fees goes toward design and construction of new parking decks and maintenance of existing decks/lots.
The Truth About Parking page on the PaTS website provides additional information about parking funding and how proceeds are spent.
Did SGA advocate for lower parking this past year with PaTS?
SGA never formally approached PaTS to discuss a decrease in permit costs. There was discussion about adding another discount remote permit in either North Deck or CRI Deck. PaTS listened to that suggestion and will add a discount remote permit for North Deck for commuters beginning in fall 2018.
Is UNC Charlotte the most inexpensive school in the system?
UNC Charlotte is not the most inexpensive school in the system, nor does it claim to be. It is, however, committed to value and accessibility for its students. A comprehensive list of 2018-2019 tuition and fees for the UNC System shows that eight of the 16 system institutions have higher total tuition and fees for resident students than UNC Charlotte. Additionally, of all 16 institutions, UNC Charlotte is the fastest growing university in the system.
Are parking services the same across all universities in the UNC System?
No, they are not. Each school implements programs differently.
About ten years ago, the University developed a Campus Master Plan, which included placing parking primarily on the periphery of campus and building decks. This decision allows the University to maintain more open land space, makes the campus more pedestrian friendly and reduces congestion. However, parking decks are more expensive to build and maintain than surface lots. Other universities in the system do not offer deck parking like UNC Charlotte does.
There are other differences in parking at UNC Charlotte versus other system institutions. For example, some universities ban freshmen from bringing cars to campus; others don’t have enough parking for their students and rely on a lottery system to determine who gets a permit or who goes on a waitlist for parking.
Are there are alternatives to parking on campus?
Yes! Light rail brings the opportunity for students and employees to avoid parking on campus. Students are encouraged to take advantage of their CATS all-access transit passes to use the train and bus systems to travel to campus. Faculty and staff can purchase a pass through PaTS. |
1. Mainers don’t ask “what are you doing?”…they say “Chuppta?”
2. Maine weather doesn’t get “windy”…it gets “breezed up.”
3. Things don’t “break” in Maine…they get “stove up.”
4. Mainers don’t eat until “full”…they get “mugup.”
5. Maine roads are never “icy” or “slippery”…they’re “greasy.”
6. Mainers don’t “go to the country”…they “go out in the willie-wacks.”
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7. Mainers don’t say someone is “flamboyant” or “eccentric”…they say they’re “a rig.”
8. Mainers don’t take their boots off in the “foyer”…they use the “dooryard.
9. Mainers don’t have “midnight snacks”…they have “bed lunches.”
10. Mainers don’t drive small distances…they go “up the road apiece.”
11. Mainers don’t say “I don’t know”…they say “hard tellin’ not knowin’.”
12. Mainers don’t “get stuck” or “get in trouble”…they “get in a gaum.”
13 Mainers don’t put things “in the basement”…they go “down cellar.”
14. Mainers don’t take out the “trash”…they deal with the “culch.”
15. Mainers don’t say “that was good”…they say it was the “finest kind.”
16. Mainers don’t move things in small amounts…they move them “just a dite.”
17. Mainers don’t say “I lost it”…they say “it’s down cellar behind the axe.”
18. Mainers don’t get “get drunk”…they “catch a buzz on.”
19. Mainers don’t get “sick”…they get “pekid.”
20. Mainers don’t “steal”…they “kife.”
21. Mainers don’t say something’s “awesome”…they say it’s “savage.”
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22. Mainers don’t “hurry”…they “book it.”
23. Mainers don’t say “that’s cute”…they say “that’s cunnin’.”
24. Maine doesn’t have “tourists”…only “flatlanders.”
25. Mainers don’t become “senior citizens”…they become “old timers.” |
Sinclair Lewis famously said, “Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation,” a calling pursued by a number of mythological personalities, notably the Viking Jokul Frosti (more commonly known by his Old English psuedonym “Jack Frost”), the Russian Ded Moroz, and the Japanese Yuki-Onna. Eventually Jack Frost became a friendly imp “nipping at your nose”. Ded Moroz became associated with Santa Claus. Yuki-Onna remained malign, but has become a popular modern figure in Japanese literature and animation. Humanity’s discovery of luxuries like centrally-heated homes, well-stocked supermarkets, indoor plumbing, and Gortex jackets have taken the bite out of winter. Cozy in front of our Amish fireplaces with adequate supplies of Tamiflu, we tend to forget that for most of human history life was edgy to begin with, and winter pretty much sucked, as a desperate struggle where getting wet before a fire was actually lit was probably fatal, everybody prayed the food supplies didn’t run out before Spring rolled around, and the wolves in the woods tended to get a little more aggressive after depleting the existing rabbit supply. Understandably, until the modern era, anthropomorphic representations of winter tended towards the monstrous. Winter is generally no longer a struggle to survive in the Western world, consequently, our winter mythology is less horrifying. Take away our creature comforts in the middle of winter and a fiendish Jokul Frosti may yet again announce his presence by painting our windows with lacelike frost, proving the Inuit proverb, “You never really know your friends from your enemies until the ice breaks”. Nobody knows snow like an Eskimo.
In Norse mythology, understanding the origins of the winter spirit requires an awareness of the complex genealogy of the Norse Pantheon. There are actually two separate Norse pantheons that compete with each other, the Æsir (such as Odin, Frigg, Thor, Balder and Tyr) and the Vanir (such as Njörðr, Freyr and Freyja). The Vanir tend to be associated with fertility, wisdom, and prophecy, whereas the Æsir are the war gods. The gods fight the Æsir–Vanir War, resulting in the eventual dominance of the Æsir, which makes logical sense, what with their being war gods and all. Odin, Wili, and We supposedly murdered the primeval god Ymir, from whose flesh they fashioned the Earth, from his blood the ocean, from his bones the hills, from his hair the trees, from his brains the clouds, from his skull the heavens, and from his eyebrows the middle realm in which mankind lives. Before his untimely demise, Ymir spawned a few children, the descendants of which comprised a race distinct from, but no less powerful than the Æsir and Vanir, generally regarded as relatively evil, and referred to as the jǫtnar (singular “jötunn”, often called “the thurse”, or more familiarly, “giants”, although puzzlingly, some of the jǫtnar are dwarves), in particular the mythologically important antagonists, the frost giants that are considered the children of Kari (deity of wind).
Ymir, like Odin, bears many surnames—Oergelmir, Brimir, Fornjotr, Neri, Thirwald, Thrigeitr, Alwald—all of which convey the meaning of storm, and some of which become family names of his descendants. An obscure tradition attributes three patriarchal sons to him, corresponding to the patriarchal trilogy of gods—Odin, Wili, We, or Odin, Honir, Loki. These are Kari, Hler (Oegir),Logi. They represent the three elements—air, water, and fire—in their violent, untamed nature. Kari is thus dimly regarded as the Thursen equivalent and opponent of Odin, and the sire of all wintry inclemencies. Among his children are Frosti, Jb’kull (Iceberg), Snor (Snow), Fb’nn (Dense Snow), Drifa (Snow-storm), Mib’ll (Fine, Glistening Snow). What a blizzard family! (Stern, 1898, p.121)
One jötunn in particular was Frosti (full name Jokul Frosti, Old Norse for “Ice Frost”), bearing a striking resemblance both in folk traditions and moniker to our winter friend the Anglos-Saxon Jack Frost, a sprite-like personification of frost and cold weather. In contrast with the mischief-making trickster Jack Frost of holiday cartoon specials, Jokul Frosti the frost giant was the evil and violent foe of both men and gods, although some folklorists have pointed out that winters in Scandinavia are considerably more brutal than in western Europe, which may account for Jack Frost’s slightly less dastardly undertones., including his reduction in stature from fearsome frost giant destined to wage apocalyptic war in Ragnarök to harmless, artistic blue elf. In Viking mythologies, he takes his punches and keeps on swinging.
Kari was the father of a numerous race, and his most powerful descendant, Frosti, ruled over a great empire in the far north. Now Frosti often made raids and incursions into neighbouring states, and on one occasion he went to Finland, where King Snar (snow) reigned. There he saw the king’s daughter, fair MioU (shining snow), and at once fell in love with her. But the haughty monarch refused him the hand of the maiden. He therefore sent a message to her secretly to tell her : ” Frosti loves thee, and will share his throne with thee.” To which she replied : ” I love him also, and will await his coming by the seashore.” Frosti appeared at the appointed time and took his bride in his strong arms. Meanwhile the plot had been discovered ; Snar’s fighting men lay in ambush to attack the lovers, and shot innumerable arrows ,at the bold warrior. But Frosti laughed at them all ; the arrows fell from his silver armour like blunted needles, his storm horse broke through the ranks of the enemy and bore the lovers safely over the sea and over mountains and valleys to their Northern realm (Wägner , 1917, p.46)
The Russian version of Jack Frost and Jokul Frosti is Ded Moroz (Father Frost or King Frost in some folktales), who developed into an amiable fellow if treated respectfully, but prone to freezing those who displease him to death. Traditionally Ded Moroz was a wicked, evil sorcerer fond of carrying away children in his sack, but Eastern Orthodox overlays transformed him into a typical Santa Claus figure. Santa’s stylish red velvet sartorial choices (urban legend incorrectly attributes them to Coca-Cola advertisements in the 1930’s) owe a lot to the historical appearance of Ded Moroz. Interstingly, Ded Moroz is often pictured as a tall, slender gentleman, rather than a portly grandfather figure, and travels around accompanied by his granddaughter Snequrochka , the “Snow Maiden”. Ded Moroz nonetheless has deep roots in Russian paganism and it is only really since the late 18th Century that he has come to be associated with Santa Claus (while religion was generally suppressed after the Russian Revolution, Joseph Stalin resurrected Ded Moroz in 1935, but ordered that his coat be changed from red to blue, so as not to be confused with Santa Claus). The older Ded Moroz is hard to confuse with Santa, as he can be a slightly more homicidal when disrespected. We’re not talking about a lump of coal in your stocking, rather engineering your death by hypothermia.
There was once upon a time a peasant-woman who had a daughter and a step-daughter. The daughter had her own way in everything, and whatever she did was right in her mother’s eyes; but the poor step-daughter had a hard time. Let her do what she would, she was always blamed, and got small thanks for all the trouble she took; nothing was right, everything wrong; and yet, if the truth were known, the girl was worth her weight in gold–she was so unselfish and good-hearted. But her step-mother did not like her, and the poor girl’s days were spent in weeping; for it was impossible to live peacefully with the woman. The wicked shrew was determined to get rid of the girl by fair means or foul, and kept saying to her father: ‘Send her away, old man; send her away–anywhere so that my eyes sha’n’t be plagued any longer by the sight of her, or my ears tormented by the sound of her voice. Send her out into the fields, and let the cutting frost do for her.’
In vain did the poor old father weep and implore her pity; she was firm, and he dared not gainsay her. So he placed his daughter in a sledge, not even daring to give her a horse-cloth to keep herself warm with, and drove her out on to the bare, open fields, where he kissed her and left her, driving home as fast as he could, that he might not witness her miserable death.
Deserted by her father, the poor girl sat down under a fir-tree at the edge of the forest and began to weep silently. Suddenly she heard a faint sound: it was King Frost springing from tree to tree, and cracking his fingers as he went. At length he reached the fir-tree beneath which she was sitting, and with a crisp crackling sound he alighted beside her, and looked at her lovely face.
‘Well, maiden,’ he snapped out, ‘do you know who I am? I am King Frost, king of the red-noses.’
‘All hail to you, great King!’ answered the girl, in a gentle, trembling voice. ‘Have you come to take me?’
‘Are you warm, maiden?’ he replied.
‘Quite warm, King Frost,’ she answered, though she shivered as she spoke.
Then King Frost stooped down, and bent over the girl, and the crackling sound grew louder, and the air seemed to be full of knives and darts; and again he asked:
‘Maiden, are you warm? Are you warm, you beautiful girl?’
And though her breath was almost frozen on her lips, she whispered gently, ‘Quite warm, King Frost.’
Then King Frost gnashed his teeth, and cracked his fingers, and his eyes sparkled, and the crackling, crisp sound was louder than ever, and for the last time he asked her:
‘Maiden, are you still warm? Are you still warm, little love?’
And the poor girl was so stiff and numb that she could just gasp, ‘Still warm, O King!’
Now her gentle, courteous words and her uncomplaining ways touched King Frost, and he had pity on her, and he wrapped her up in furs, and covered her with blankets, and he fetched a great box, in which were beautiful jewels and a rich robe embroidered in gold and silver. And she put it on, and looked more lovely than ever, and King Frost stepped with her into his sledge, with six white horses.
In the meantime the wicked step-mother was waiting at home for news of the girl’s death, and preparing pancakes for the funeral feast. And she said to her husband: ‘Old man, you had better go out into the fields and find your daughter’s body and bury her.’ Just as the old man was leaving the house the little dog under the table began to bark, saying:
‘YOUR daughter shall live to be your delight; HER daughter shall die this very night.’
‘Hold your tongue, you foolish beast!’ scolded the woman. ‘There’s a pancake for you, but you must say:
“HER daughter shall have much silver and gold; HIS daughter is frozen quite stiff and cold.” ‘
But the doggie ate up the pancake and barked, saying:
‘His daughter shall wear a crown on her head; Her daughter shall die unwooed, unwed.’
Then the old woman tried to coax the doggie with more pancakes and to terrify it with blows, but he barked on, always repeating the same words. And suddenly the door creaked and flew open, and a great heavy chest was pushed in, and behind it came the step-daughter, radiant and beautiful, in a dress all glittering with silver and gold. For a moment the step-mother’s eyes were dazzled. Then she called to her husband: ‘Old man, yoke the horses at once into the sledge, and take my daughter to the same field and leave her on the same spot exactly; ‘and so the old man took the girl and left her beneath the same tree where he had parted from his daughter. In a few minutes King Frost came past, and, looking at the girl, he said:
‘Are you warm, maiden?’
‘What a blind old fool you must be to ask such a question!’ she answered angrily. ‘Can’t you see that my hands and feet are nearly frozen?’
Then King Frost sprang to and fro in front of her, questioning her, and getting only rude, rough words in reply, till at last he got very angry, and cracked his fingers, and gnashed his teeth, and froze her to death. But in the hut her mother was waiting for her return, and as she grew impatient she said to her husband: ‘Get out the horses, old man, to go and fetch her home; but see that you are careful not to upset the sledge and lose the chest.’ But the doggie beneath the table began to bark, saying: ‘Your daughter is frozen quite stiff and cold, And shall never have a chest full of gold.’ ‘Don’t tell such wicked lies!’ scolded the woman. ‘There’s a cake for you; now say: “HER daughter shall marry a mighty King.” At that moment the door flew open, and she rushed out to meet her daughter, and as she took her frozen body in her arms she too was chilled to death (“The Story of King Frost”, The Yellow Fairy Book Story 29, ed. Lang, 1894).
In Japan, a spirit called Yuki-Onna (“Snow Woman”) is associated with frost and winter weather, a tall, beautiful woman with long black hair and blue lips (sometimes nude or in a white kimono) who delights in leading mortals astray to die of exposure, then using her icy breath to coat the corpses with frost, but occasionally she can show a softer side, setting children free. There is a degree of debate over whether Yuki-Onna is simply there when you freeze to death, actively tries to lead you out into blizzards to die, invades your home, has vampiric or succubus qualities such as sucking out your life-force, but until the 18th Century she was thought of as a figure of evil. Later representations emphasize her ghostly beauty, but it’s difficult to get past the whole draining your life force and coating your corpse in frost thing. The stories of Yuki-Onna highlights a North-South geographical rivalry in Japan, as observed by Richard Gordon Smith who explains the myth as resulting from a need to account for unexplained disappearances in winter. “Mysterious disappearances naturally give rise to fancies in a fanciful people, and from time immemorial the Snow Ghost has been one with the people of the North ; while those of the South say that those of the North take so much sake that they see snow-covered trees as women” (Smith, 1908, p.307).
In a village of Musashi Province, there lived two woodcutters: Mosaku and Minokichi. At the time of which I am speaking, Mosaku was an old man; and Minokichi, his apprentice, was a lad of eighteen years. Every day they went together to a forest situated about five miles from their village. On the way to that forest there is a wide river to cross; and there is a ferry-boat. Several times a bridge was built where the ferry is; but the bridge was each time carried away by a flood. No common bridge can resist the current there when the river rises.
Mosaku and Minokichi were on their way home, one very cold evening, when a great snowstorm overtook them. They reached the ferry; and they found that the boatman had gone away, leaving his boat on the other side of the river. It was no day for swimming; and the woodcutters took shelter in the ferryman’s hut,–thinking themselves lucky to find any shelter at all. There was no brazier in the hut, nor any place in which to make a fire: it was only a two-mat [1] hut, with a single door, but no window. Mosaku and Minokichi fastened the door, and lay down to rest, with their straw rain-coats over them. At first they did not feel very cold; and they thought that the storm would soon be over.
The old man almost immediately fell asleep; but the boy, Minokichi, lay awake a long time, listening to the awful wind, and the continual slashing of the snow against the door. The river was roaring; and the hut swayed and creaked like a junk at sea. It was a terrible storm; and the air was every moment becoming colder; and Minokichi shivered under his rain-coat. But at last, in spite of the cold, he too fell asleep.
He was awakened by a showering of snow in his face. The door of the hut had been forced open; and, by the snow-light (yuki-akari), he saw a woman in the room,–a woman all in white. She was bending above Mosaku, and blowing her breath upon him;–and her breath was like a bright white smoke. Almost in the same moment she turned to Minokichi, and stooped over him. He tried to cry out, but found that he could not utter any sound. The white woman bent down over him, lower and lower, until her face almost touched him; and he saw that she was very beautiful,–though her eyes made him afraid. For a little time she continued to look at him;–then she smiled, and she whispered:–“I intended to treat you like the other man. But I cannot help feeling some pity for you,–because you are so young… You are a pretty boy, Minokichi; and I will not hurt you now. But, if you ever tell anybody–even your own mother–about what you have seen this night, I shall know it; and then I will kill you… Remember what I say!”
With these words, she turned from him, and passed through the doorway. Then he found himself able to move; and he sprang up, and looked out. But the woman was nowhere to be seen; and the snow was driving furiously into the hut. Minokichi closed the door, and secured it by fixing several billets of wood against it. He wondered if the wind had blown it open;–he thought that he might have been only dreaming, and might have mistaken the gleam of the snow-light in the doorway for the figure of a white woman: but he could not be sure. He called to Mosaku, and was frightened because the old man did not answer. He put out his hand in the dark, and touched Mosaku’s face, and found that it was ice! Mosaku was stark and dead…
By dawn the storm was over; and when the ferryman returned to his station, a little after sunrise, he found Minokichi lying senseless beside the frozen body of Mosaku. Minokichi was promptly cared for, and soon came to himself; but he remained a long time ill from the effects of the cold of that terrible night. He had been greatly frightened also by the old man’s death; but he said nothing about the vision of the woman in white. As soon as he got well again, he returned to his calling,–going alone every morning to the forest, and coming back at nightfall with his bundles of wood, which his mother helped him to sell.
One evening, in the winter of the following year, as he was on his way home, he overtook a girl who happened to be traveling by the same road. She was a tall, slim girl, very good-looking; and she answered Minokichi’s greeting in a voice as pleasant to the ear as the voice of a song-bird. Then he walked beside her; and they began to talk. The girl said that her name was O-Yuki [2]; that she had lately lost both of her parents; and that she was going to Yedo (2), where she happened to have some poor relations, who might help her to find a situation as a servant. Minokichi soon felt charmed by this strange girl; and the more that he looked at her, the handsomer she appeared to be. He asked her whether she was yet betrothed; and she answered, laughingly, that she was free. Then, in her turn, she asked Minokichi whether he was married, or pledge to marry; and he told her that, although he had only a widowed mother to support, the question of an “honorable daughter-in-law” had not yet been considered, as he was very young… After these confidences, they walked on for a long while without speaking; but, as the proverb declares, Ki ga areba, me mo kuchi hodo ni mono wo iu: “When the wish is there, the eyes can say as much as the mouth.” By the time they reached the village, they had become very much pleased with each other; and then Minokichi asked O-Yuki to rest awhile at his house. After some shy hesitation, she went there with him; and his mother made her welcome, and prepared a warm meal for her. O-Yuki behaved so nicely that Minokichi’s mother took a sudden fancy to her, and persuaded her to delay her journey to Yedo. And the natural end of the matter was that Yuki never went to Yedo at all. She remained in the house, as an “honorable daughter-in-law.”
O-Yuki proved a very good daughter-in-law. When Minokichi’s mother came to die,–some five years later,–her last words were words of affection and praise for the wife of her son. And O-Yuki bore Minokichi ten children, boys and girls,–handsome children all of them, and very fair of skin.
The country-folk thought O-Yuki a wonderful person, by nature different from themselves. Most of the peasant-women age early; but O-Yuki, even after having become the mother of ten children, looked as young and fresh as on the day when she had first come to the village.
One night, after the children had gone to sleep, O-Yuki was sewing by the light of a paper lamp; and Minokichi, watching her, said:–“To see you sewing there, with the light on your face, makes me think of a strange thing that happened when I was a lad of eighteen. I then saw somebody as beautiful and white as you are now–indeed, she was very like you.”…Without lifting her eyes from her work, O-Yuki responded:–“Tell me about her… Where did you see her? Then Minokichi told her about the terrible night in the ferryman’s hut,–and about the White Woman that had stooped above him, smiling and whispering,–and about the silent death of old Mosaku. And he said:–“Asleep or awake, that was the only time that I saw a being as beautiful as you. Of course, she was not a human being; and I was afraid of her,–very much afraid,–but she was so white!… Indeed, I have never been sure whether it was a dream that I saw, or the Woman of the Snow.”…O-Yuki flung down her sewing, and arose, and bowed above Minokichi where he sat, and shrieked into his face:–“It was I–I–I! Yuki it was! And I told you then that I would kill you if you ever said one work about it!… But for those children asleep there, I would kill you this moment! And now you had better take very, very good care of them; for if ever they have reason to complain of you, I will treat you as you deserve!”…Even as she screamed, her voice became thin, like a crying of wind;–then she melted into a bright white mist that spired to the roof-beams, and shuddered away through the smoke-hold… Never again was she seen (“Yuki-Onna”, Hearn , 1904, p.109).
Jokul Frosti, Ded Moroz, and Yuki-Onna are monsters very closely tied to specific climates. “Myths and legends of the ancient world largely reflected the landscape and climate where the stories originated. The ancients continually had to battle the elements. Those in cold countries battled frost and ice. Those in the hot countries battled heat, lightning, and fire. The forces of nature overpowered the world, yet people still tried to control them. Believing that nature powers acted through will made it necessary to placate them…the worship of nature, then involved the reverence of natural phenomena as animated, conscious forces” (Andrews, 2000, p.XII-XIII). We’re not so concerned with placating nature, and wariness of the evil spirits of bad weather. When it comes to winter, in the colder climates we may remark on the beauty of the first snow, when the whole world turns white and pristine, but after a day or two, when we’ve spent enough time shoveling, and the lovely snow has turned to a gray slush, we tend to echo Carl Reiner, who said, “A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water”. Santa might respond with a hearty “Ho, Ho, Ho”. Jokul Frosti, Ded Moroz, and Yuki-Onna are plotting a frosty revenge.
REFERENCES
Andrews, Tamara. Dictionary of Nature Myths: Legends of the Earth, Sea, and Sky. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Hearn, Lafcadio, 1850-1904. Kwaidan: Stories And Studies of Strange Things. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1904.
Lang, Andrew, 1844-1912. The Yellow Fairy Book. [New York]: Gosset & Dunlap, 1899.
Smith, Richard Gordon, 1858-1918. Ancient Tales And Folklore of Japan. London: A. & C. Black, 1908.
Stern, Herman Isidore, 1854-1926. The Gods of Our Fathers: a Study of Saxon Mythology. New York: Harper, 1898.
Wägner, Wilhelm, 1800-1886. Asgard And the Gods: the Tales And Traditions of Our Northern Ancestors, Forming a Complete Manual of Norse Mythology. Eighth edition, January, 1917. London: G. Routledge & sons, limited, 1917. |
One student's online "prank" ended Sunday evening with a knock at the door, a confession and an arrest on charges of terroristic threats.
Jong Seong Shim, who posted the HUB shooting threat on the anonymous social media app Yik Yak this weekend, was "surprised" when Penn State Police showed up shortly after 9 p.m., Penn State Police Chief Tyrone Parham said at a press conference Monday afternoon outside the university police station.
Shim, a 20-year-old sophomore from Tinton Falls, New Jersey, was arraigned Monday and charged with misdemeanor counts of terroristic threats and disorderly conduct, Penn State spokeswoman Lisa Powers said via email.
When asked if Shim would be expelled, Parham said he did not know of Shim's status as a student.
Shim posted the message on Yik Yak Saturday night. In the post, he threatened to perpetrate a shooting at the HUB Monday at noon, Powers said. Shim called the threat — to “kill everyone in Penn State main” — a "prank."
Police found no weapons in a search of Shim’s Vairo Boulevard residence, Parham said, but he could not speak to whether any weapons were registered to Shim's name.
Police were prepared to have a large presence at the HUB Monday. And even after Sunday's arrest, additional officers were stationed there today, Parham said.
At about 9 a.m. Sunday morning, police were tipped off to the threat by a student who had seen the post and took a screen shot of it before it was taken down from the app. Police thought the post might be a joke, Parham said, but took it seriously nonetheless.
Officers remained on "high alert" Sunday evening as they alerted the regional FBI office and the State College Police Department. They worked with Yik Yak officials to locate Shim and the mobile device used to post the threatening message.
Shim told police he did not mean to cause harm or a commotion, Parham said.
Shim was being held at Centre County Correctional Facility Monday since he did not post his $100,000 bail, Powers said.
“We are grateful to our very alert and diligent students who first discovered this threat and raised their concerns with police,” Steve Shelow, Penn State’s assistant vice president for Police and Public Safety, said in a press release. “It is quick reporting by observers and strong cooperation among law enforcement agencies that allowed us to move swiftly to identify and apprehend the suspect.”
Parham said police have experienced issues with Yik Yak posts referencing deaths or injuries before, but nothing this serious.
Shim's next hearing is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. on Oct. 22 at the Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte, Powers said.
Read Tuesday's edition of The Daily Collegian for more information. |
Normally, details on the Bellator preliminary card weigh-ins aren't really that newsworthy, but today is one of those days where it undeniably is. The leading prelim on tomorrow night's Bellator 143 show in Hidalgo, Texas is former UFC and Strikeforce fighter Ryan Couture against Legacy FC veteran Nick Gonzalez. To preface this, Gonzalez hasn't fought since getting submitted by Leonard Garcia in 2013, because his last scheduled fight on a Titan FC show was cancelled when Gonzalez fainted while cutting weight. Against Garcia, he missed the featherweight limit so badly that they held it at a 153 lbs catchweight.
At today's weigh-ins, Gonzalez outdid himself. He tipped (and probably broke) the scales at a whopping 172.75 lbs for a LIGHTWEIGHT fight vs. Couture. Gonzalez missed weight so badly that he literally also went over the welterweight limit. If you don't believe me, you can watch the video for yourself at the top of the page. Fast-forward to the 8:07 timestamp, if not to solely to see Jimmy Smith's own reaction to it a few seconds after Gonzalez gets off the scale.
Gonzalez is guaranteed to be fined by Texas' commission, and chances are this fight will be cancelled, in which case we'll update the post accordingly if/when it is.
UPDATE: The fight has been cancelled. What a surprise.
Following Nick Gonzalez missing weight, the scheduled lightweight bout between Ryan Couture & Gonzalez has been scratched from Bellator 143 — Jason Floyd (@Jason_Floyd) September 24, 2015 |
Parents and students in B.C. are gearing up for a three-day strike by the province's teachers.
The teachers are demanding a 15 per cent wage increase and improved benefits, but the government is refusing to budge from its commitment to negotiate public sector contracts that don't include cost increases.
A strike vote by teachers passed by 87 per cent and the union announced it would walk off the job Monday in accordance with a recent ruling by the Labour Relations Board allowing teachers to strike for three days this week and one day in each subsequent week.
Education Minister George Abbott says the ministry is working to support the province's school districts during the labour withdrawal.
"We are hoping all of this leads to what will be a respectful, mature, constructive way of proceeding over the next three days," he said Sunday. "I guess we'll see, but I hope we will all set good examples for the children that we serve in our conduct in the next three days."
B.C. teachers plan to start a three-day strike on Monday. (CBC)
The planned walkout has left many parents scrambling for child care.
School administrators are preparing to open their doors with skeleton staffing to watch over any students who do show up and recreation centres are calling in staff to run day camps — but many parents are trying to rearrange their work schedules.
Small inconvenience
Jason Harrison, a 43-year-old stay-at-home dad in Vancouver, was already expecting to be taking care of his preschooler next week.
He'll now be watching his other two children, in kindergarten and Grade 3, along with two of his friends' children he has agreed to take care of during the teachers' walkout.
Harrison said the small inconvenience facing parents is worth it if it means the provincial government starts listening to teachers.
Strike plans B.C. school districts publish their plans for students during the strike.
"I think the province is taking a really hard line on it," said Harrison. "They've been decreasing funding to education for quite a while, which I'm not very happy with."
Teachers have been conducting job action since school started in September, refusing to do administrative tasks like filling out report cards.
Last week, a fact-finder concluded the two sides are still too far apart, despite a year of negotiations, to hope for a negotiated settlement.
Education funding
On Tuesday, the province introduced legislation banning further strikes and forcing a six-month cooling-off period in the contract dispute.
The government's house leader has said he has no plans to rush the back-to-work bill and it probably won't be passed into law until after next week.
The B.C. Teachers Federation has characterized the government's back-to-work legislation as "bullying."
The level of provincial funding for education is just one of the points of contention in the education debate.
The provincial government argues education funding has increased, even as enrolment is decreasing. The latest budget includes an additional $165 million over three years to address classroom composition.
The teachers' federation, on the other hand, says education funding has not kept up with inflation, which the union argues is the same as a funding cut.
On Friday, hundreds of elementary and high school students staged their own walkout, leaving school early to rally in the pouring rain to support their teachers. |
The men who interrogated Aleksey Bida were known only by nicknames: one was called “Bear”, another “Cossack”, a third “Citizen”.
After enduring hours of beatings at the hands of these pro-Russian insurgents, Mr Bida decided to flee the Ukrainian city of Luhansk.
“It’s not safe to be in Luhansk for those who oppose the pro-Russian activists,” he said.
“Ordinary citizens are in danger. People who are disobedient have been taken away. Some people have been 'advised’ to give them money.”
The rebels who now hold sway in a dozen towns and cities across the neighbouring regions of Donetsk and Luhansk will on Sunday ask voters in both Russian and Ukrainian to say “yes” or “no” to the “act of self-rule”.
Yet the insurgents have shown their attitude towards dissent by targeting their critics, real or imagined, for abduction and assault.
In areas controlled by self-appointed tribunes of the “People’s Republic”, anyone who dares to advocate a united Ukraine, or who backed the revolution that swept away Viktor Yanukovych’s pro-Russian regime in February, runs the risk of being “disappeared”.
Mr Bida, a 40-year-old computer specialist, was kidnapped in the street at 6pm last Saturday.
An armed pro-Russian militant checks a car at a checkpoint in Slaviansk (ROMAN PILIPEY/EPA)
His offence was to have helped to organise demonstrations against the previous government earlier this year.
“My face was recognised and I was surrounded by six people. My hands were tied and I was dragged into a car,” he recalled.
He was driven to the regional government headquarters, which pro-Russian insurgents seized last month.
As well as being a barricaded base for scores of armed men, the evidence suggests this building also serves as a detention and interrogation centre.
Mr Bida was taken to a room on the fourth storey where his captors threw him to the floor and cut off his clothes with a knife.
“Then the torture started,” he said. “They began to beat me without any reason or explanation.”
After this first assault, apparently designed to break his will to resist, Mr Bida’s captors began firing questions.
“They wanted to know who had organised the demonstrations in Luhansk. They wanted to know my address and the names of my relatives,” he said.
To compel him to answer, one man pointed a handgun directly at his head.
Other rebels in the corridors outside were dressed in camouflage fatigues and armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles.
At one point, the interrogation was interrupted by the scream of a jet fighter swooping low overhead.
Briefly forgetting about their prisoner, Mr Bida’s tormentors rushed to the windows and began firing at the aircraft.
They kept up this furious barrage until an order was passed to stop shooting because the jet was supposedly Russian.
But after this respite, Mr Bida’s interrogation continued until 1am on Sunday. He was dragged, bruised and bleeding, into another room and left alone for a few hours before being released at 7am.
Soon afterwards, he left Luhansk for the safety of another region of Ukraine.
“My back, my chest and legs have all been injured,” he said. “But I saw a doctor and he said my internal organs are OK and my bones are intact.”
Similar treatment has been meted out to dozens of others.
Quietly, a steady trickle of pro-Ukrainian activists and known opponents of a Russian takeover have been forced to leave the areas under rebel control.
As a result, Sunday’s referendum will take place without any dissent or opposing voices.
Those who believe their home area should remain part of Ukraine have either fled or chosen to keep silent.
At least 24 people are now being held by insurgents in Donetsk region, according to Human Rights Watch.
“Armed men affiliated with anti-Kiev forces have been snatching up activists, journalists and local officials,” said Anna Neistat, the associate director of emergencies at Human Rights Watch.
“Some who’ve been released are bruised and injured – while the fate of dozens of others is not known.”
Aleksandr Vovk, 49, was abducted last Sunday along with five other officials from the independent mineworkers’ trade union.
Aleksandr Vovk following his release (HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH)
He was taken to the regional government building in Donetsk, which has been occupied by insurgents and turned into the headquarters of the “People’s Republic”.
On the 11th floor of this gloomy, Soviet-era edifice, Denis Pushilin, the self-proclaimed “prime minister”, holds press conferences attended by scores of journalists.
Meanwhile, on the 5th and 6th storeys, Mr Vovk said that prisoners of the “People’s Republic” are held for interrogation and assault.
His own ordeal involved hours of beatings, which left his eyes so badly swollen that he could barely see.
Mr Vovk believes that he was abducted because of his prominence as a trade unionist and his known opposition to separatism. “It was very cruel and strange for people to do such things in the 21st century,” he said.
As Mr Vovk was being questioned, he could hear screams of other prisoners in nearby rooms. “They were being terribly beaten: I heard the sound of punches,” he remembered.
He was released at 1am last Monday and has also now left Donetsk.
“There is an atmosphere of extreme fear. There are criminal elements ruling over the area,” he said.
“I want to make an appeal for all those kidnapped by separatists. I want to address Vladimir Putin to stop this piracy of separatism and rebellion.”
In the rebel-held town of Slavyansk, captives of the “People’s Republic” are held in the basement of the building that once served as the local headquarters of the SBU, Ukraine’s version of MI5.
Denis Grishchuk and Pavel Yurov vanished in the town on April 25 – and neither has been seen since. The reason for their abduction is unclear.
Pavel Yurov (left) and Denis Grishchuk
Unlike some of the “disappeared”, neither played an active role in February’s revolution, or served in Ukraine’s security forces.
Both are Russian-speaking natives of eastern Ukraine: Mr Grishchuk’s family is from Donetsk, Mr Yurov’s from Luhansk.
However, there is no doubt they are in the hands of pro-Russian insurgents: Vyacheslav Ponomarev, the self-styled “people’s mayor” of Slavyansk, has confirmed as much to their families.
Mr Yurov is a Kiev-based theatre director; Mr Grishchuk, a 29-year-old medical graduate who now works at the Myatetskyi Arsenal, the capital’s leading modern art centre.
Mr Grishchuk’s mother, Irina, speculated that both men might have fallen under suspicion because they were due to travel to Kiev and possessed the necessary rail tickets.
“We simply don’t know. Maybe they thought they were journalists from Kiev. But neither of them are journalists. Maybe it the Kiev train tickets raised suspicions,” she said.
Mr Grishchuk spoke to his parents by phone at 3pm on the day of his disappearance, shortly before he was due to leave Slavyansk for the capital.
“At half past four, his wife called him, and he said they were on their way to the station. At 5.30 his older brother called, and he didn’t pick up. That is the last we heard from him,” said his father, Alexander.
What happened in the hour between those last phone calls is a mystery.
No witnesses have come forward, but Mr Ponomarev, the “mayor”, later spoke to the family by telephone.
“He said, 'Yes, they’re with us, they’re not guilty of anything serious and they are currently working with our interrogators,’” said Mr Grishchuk’s father, Alexander. “We don’t know what 'nothing serious’ means.”
Mr Ponomarev has not issued any demands, or explained what might be done in exchange for the prisoners’ release. Like many others, the Grishchuk and Yurov families are reduced to waiting helplessly for the return of their loved ones. |
My Secret Santa knew the perfect mix of gifts for all the nerdy stuff I'm into.
The Groot bobblehead will go great with the Star-Lord one currently on my desk at work. I think she thought this one might be a toss-up between me and my son, but no. I'm taking this one, no questions asked. I don't even feel bad.
Speaking of kids, my SS obviously knows how important it is for kids to feel included. So she sent along two Guardians of the Galaxy coloring books for my son. Sure enough as soon as he saw he saw Rocket and Groot he got super excited.
She gave me the newest trade paperback for Brian K. Vaughan's Saga comic series. This one picks up pretty much right where I'd left off, and this leaves me one trade short of the currently released set. Awesome.
And since I mentioned I love tabletop games she sent me a card game that I hadn't heard of, but has great reviews and a stellar rating on boardgamegeek.com. This is definitely coming out at the next game day.
Thanks so much Stax4985 for making my first Secret Santa such a great experience. And thank you for being a regifter. It's wonderful knowing there are still people who understand the satisfaction of being a giver. |
By Jon Herskovitz
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - U.S. Representative Randy Weber, a Republican from Texas, apologized on Tuesday for a tweet he issued comparing President Barack Obama's decision not to attend a rally in Paris to Adolf Hitler's visit to the city after the Nazis invaded.
Weber, known for his anti-Obama rhetoric, tweeted on Monday: "Even Adolph Hitler thought it more important than Obama to get to Paris. (For all the wrong reasons.) Obama couldn't do it for right reasons."
Critics came out in force on Tuesday and said comparing a presidential visit to the Nazis' deadly advance through Europe in World War Two was in poor taste. They slammed Weber for his lack of historical perspective and for misspelling the name of the former German leader.
"Rep. Weber’s tweet is vile and stoops to a new low level by desecrating the victims of the Holocaust to make a political point," Steve Israel, a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York, said in a statement before the apology was issued.
In his apology, Weber said it was not his intent "to trivialize the Holocaust nor to compare the President to Adolf Hitler."
"I now realize that the use of Hitler invokes pain and emotional trauma for those affected by the atrocities of the Holocaust and victims of anti-Semitism and hate," he said in a statement on Tuesday.
A smaller number of supporters said Weber was on the mark with his comments and criticized Obama for not attending.
The White House conceded on Monday the United States should have sent a higher-level representative to a Paris unity march after deadly Islamist militant attacks there.
Other Republican lawmakers and U.S. media outlets criticized Obama's administration for not sending a top official to Sunday's march, which featured leaders from France, Britain, Germany, and Israel and the Palestinian territories.
In a tweet last year, Weber called Obama a "socialistic dictator," referring to the president as the "Kommandant-In-Chef."
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Peter Cooney) |
Crimefighter Bantam and his sidekick Little Pecker must save Cockham City from a deranged villain, The Jerker. And as if The Jerker weren’t bad enough on his own, Bantam and friends soon learn that there’s an even badder bad guy in town. Will they be able to save the city, or are they too…chicken?
I wrote and drew this zany sendup of Batman years ago and made some mini-comics of it to include in an art project with friends. I sold every copy. Later I reformatted, self-published it as a perfect-bound book, and ordered 100 copies to sell at comic conventions. It sold out again. Now I’m happy to say that it’s easier than ever for anyone to read–it is available digitally on Comixology and Kindle. Or you can order an actual physical copy on Amazon |
It’s October, so it’s not only pumpkin season, but also Halloween season! So say hello to these cuties aka. Halloween owl cupcakes. Aren’t they just super adorable?! Plus, they’re vegan, incredibly chocolatey, and pretty easy to make!
It might sound weird, but I actually feel kinda bad about eating them. Haha! I mean they look so cute you just don’t wanna ruin them. Even as a kid I wouldn’t eat my chocolate Easter bunnies but keep them for months until someone of my family finally asked if they could eat them. Or even worse, they’d just go bad in one of my cupboards…
We had so much fun decorating these owl cupcakes. We don’t have kids yet, but I’m sure they’d love making them too. I’d sure gone crazy about these when I was a kid! I mean who doesn’t love cute-looking owls, right?! They’re also great for kids birthday parties, school events, or cake sales.
So all you need to make these vegan owl cupcakes are some chocolate muffins or cupcakes, Oreos, skittles, and a little bit of creativity. You can also use other yellow and orange candies, such as M&Ms, but skittles were the only vegan ones I could think of. I think it could also work with food coloring, but I haven’t tried this yet.
Start by coating the chocolate muffins or cupcakes with melted dark chocolate. Then carefully separate the Oreos with a knife and press the halves with the filling onto the melted chocolate to make the eyes. Use yellow skittles for the eyeballs. Again be careful not to break the Oreos. Then make a little hole between the eyes with a knife and add an orange candy nose in the middle. Then cut ears out of the leftover Oreo halves and tuck them into the top of each chocolate muffin behind the eyes. Put the first one on the melted chocolate and the second one on top of the first one. Use some more melted chocolate to glue them together. That’s it!
I know these Halloween owl cupcakes don’t like very scary like so many other Halloween treats. I love them as cute owls, but if you want them to look scarier, you could also use green or red skittles instead of yellow ones. This way you get evil Halloween owls. Haha!
So either way, I hope you like these vegan Halloween treats. Have a great weekend, everyone!
Sina – xx |
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A MAN was asked to prove his age when buying booze at a supermarket.
That’s not too surprising – until you find out that Charles Brown is a 50-year-old dad!
Mr Brown, of Bradley, was ordered to produce ID while attempting to buy a bottle of whisky at Morrisons in Jubilee Way, Elland.
And the fresh-faced father-of-three says he still won’t carry proof of age – despite being refused by a checkout assistant and two managers.
After some convincing the forklift truck driver, whose two older children have been legally able to buy alcohol for more than 10 years, managed to walk out of the store with his bottle of Grant’s.
While it is legal in the UK for anyone over 18 to purchase alcohol many retailers follow the Challenge 25 protocol.
Challenge 25 encourages anyone who is over 18 but looks under 25 to carry acceptable ID when they want to buy alcohol.
Mr Brown, who was last asked for ID when buying booze two years ago, said: “I take it as a compliment but it’s getting a bit frustrating. I think they need to retrain their staff.
“I know I don’t look my age but there’s no way I’m 24.”
A spokesman for Morrisons said: “We are required by law to police the sale of alcohol and take our responsibility very seriously.
“As part of this, we have adopted Challenge 25, a policy of asking for identification from anyone who doesn’t look over the age of 25.
“We hope Mr Brown took the request as a compliment as he must look very young for his age”. |
On the topic of shortwave radios in automobiles, SWLing Post reader, Chris, writes:
“Seven years ago, I purchased a Sony Car Stereo with a Shortwave receiver from the Shortwave Store in Canada. It works remarkably well especially on those summer trips to Northern Wisconsin and Michigan when I can get away from the city noise. Last summer while driving from Chicago to Copper Harbor Michigan (a 10 hour drive) I listened to Radio Australia, Radio New Zealand, Radio Havana Cuba, Radio Exterior Espana and the BBC (Ascension). It certainly made a long drive more enjoyable. Below is a video I took last night of a relatively weak signal of Radio Exterior Espana (due to local electrical noise and weather) then followed by a nice strong signal of Radio Romania. The signals were recorded next to Lake Michigan in Chicago. If you can’t afford a BMW with a Shortwave receiver or you don’t have an appetite for a Smart Car you can always install a receiver easily found for sale on Ebay.”
Click here to view the Pioneer DEH-X2650UI Shortwave Car Auto Radio on eBay.
Of course, the receiver is only as good as its antenna. Chris admits that, “the [radio] installation was a hassle and I had to install an aerial whip antenna (which required drilling).” Obviously, your investment in the whip antenna is paying off, Chris. I’m impressed.
Resources:
I have created an eBay search string to search for shortwave car radios: Click here to search eBay for a mobile shortwave radio.
You can also search for the Pioneer DEH-X2650UI Chris suggested by clicking here.
Related |
Copy Edit
How the Other Half Lives
At Bwog, we know that not all Columbia students are the same. And we know that most people’s classroom experiences are not the same. What we wanted to find out was just how different they can be. So, in a form of cruel experimentation, we sent an English major to an engineering lecture, and an engineer to an English class. This is what happened.
An engineering student attends a lecture on James Joyce’s Ulysses…
Full disclosure: I have an unfair advantage because I read the first four pages of Ulysses two summers ago. Someone was shaving or something…
Anyway, when I walked into the classroom, I was pleasantly surprised that it was brightly lit. And didn’t smell like armpit. There was a shockingly large number of people over the age of 60. I’m not entirely sure why they feel that returning to school in pursuit of an English degree is the best use of their waning time or money, but hey. Oddly, most of the students are female. So this is where they’ve been hiding.
I was midway through counting the number of people wearing scarves (~18) when the class began. As the professor began discussing the assigned chapter, which she referred to as Circe even though it’s 15 (apparently English majors really don’t like numbers), things got real. The prof quite persistently made references to The Odyssey. The word “unknowability” was used. A potato was discussed. Potatoes are Irish, so I guess that makes sense. There was talk of mirrors and the theme of “sight,” which past experience tells me is a theme in every written work ever.
The Circe/15 chapter is notable because it is in the form of a play (a play within a novel—madness!) and because it is more than slightly sexual. The professor began putting slides of naked women up on the projector, presumably because English majors are sexy. This discussion of sexual deviance and fetishes went on for some time, and the word “sex” was likely uttered more times than it has been in Mudd throughout the building’s existence.
Because sex is not abstract enough for a humanities lecture, the professor then posed two questions: “What does it mean to finish something?” and “Do details matter?” After elaborating on the questions, she launched into a discussion of time (but not before uttering the phrase “individualized psychic phenomena,” which I won’t even try to unpack). During the discussion of Time, it was questioned whether we can apply actual chronological sense to things that have occurred in the past (or is it all just the same, taking space inside our heads?) and if anything exists other than the present. This didn’t seem to jive with my limited knowledge of general relativity, but I wasn’t about to ask questions.
These mini discussions were bending my empirical mind in strange ways, and what was weirder was the fact that the class seemed to be enjoyable, both to me (I’ll admit) and to the regular attendees. After it ended, I reflected that I couldn’t remember the last time I found a lecture genuinely enjoyable. I chuckled, and then walked out the door. I had a problem set to do.
An English major walks into an operating systems class…..
The rooms of Mudd don’t have adequate lighting. This upsets me. As we take our awkward side seats (most suitable for surreptitiously texting), I am reliably informed by the SEAS contingent of Bwog that this class has something to do with memory. I know memory! Memory is important in Ulysses! It’s a theme!
It smells a little funky in here. Might be the lack of proper air circulation and lighting. I am one of maybe 3 girls in here. The professor’s wearing a microphone?! This doesn’t happen in English lectures; the professor’s voice just naturally rises in enthusiasm for parallax! WOW: not one but TWO projector screens. Oh god what if he sees my look of bewilderment and knows I’m not supposed to be here?
First incomprehensible phrase uttered. What’s a multilevel paging scheme? At least they’re talking about pages. This is so familiar. I read pages too.
Hold on.
Wait.
Oh. Not the same kind of page.
After a few moments of careful deliberation, I am reasonably confident that we’re talking about web pages. I’m starting to see that engineering works by taking normal, everyday words like flag and bit and doing terrible things to their original meaning. Hehe, “dirty bit.” The pgd seems really important, as does the pte. BUT WHAT DO THEY STAND FOR?
25 minutes in and still don’t really know what a page is. Also: what da fuq is segmentation.
Programs! Codes! Now we get into the nitty gritty. Here goes…… What? I didn’t even understand that enough to write it down phonetically. And now the professor’s so excited he’s actually showing facial expressions! With enough scary words floating around, I turn my attention to people watching. Everyone’s more polite about their lack of attention than in humanities lectures. The funky smell is kind of gross now. Oh, SEAS contingent is taking notes, this must be important. Virtual AND physical addresses? RAM?? Wait I know what RAM is from that time my computer was threatening to shut down on me. So we’re talking about computers! Aha.
The sum total of my knowledge so far: we are talking about computers, which maybe (?) have pages that I don’t think are like pages in a book. Their size is important. RAM. Memory is also important. You use charts to learn things about pages. Linux. There’s a victim now! So much personification. Is the victim dirty? I’m confused. Lots of sudden diligent note-taking. Apparently you want different kinds of storage. This seems to relate to money. Ahhhh, money. Jobs. A sense of contentment.
OKAY COME ON NOW HE’S JUST DRAWING SCRIBBLES. THIS IS BULLSHIT, HE JUST SCRIBBLED A FREAKING PENTACLE. I think he just admitted these scribbles aren’t supposed to make sense. AND NOW THERE’S TIME TRAVEL. HOLY SHIT. ARE WE TALKING ABOUT TIME TRAVEL FINALLY??? Awww, we’re not.
I can feel the restlessness climbing as it gets closer to 11:25. The sun is starting to shine into the room. Even the sleepers have woken; all classes are really the same during the last three minutes. This has sufficiently gone all over my head. I couldn’t even be terrified because I didn’t understand enough to be terrified. So all in all, a positive learning experience. Except for the fucking pages. I still don’t know what they are.
Arbitrary depictions of fields of study via Wikimedia Commons and Shutterstock |
Posted by
Ian Clarke ,
September 7, 2014 Email
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As the European transfer window has closed, and MLS teams are looking for one last chance to make deals heading into the playoff push, the results of these moves can make a significant change in the fortune's of the club as well as the player acquired. From a Canadian perspective, many seasons begin looking at the CMNT depth chart wondering if a player will be signed by a new team before the start of the year, or if a season has not worked out as expected, will he get a chance somewhere else? Approaching the 2015 Gold Cup and next World Cup Qualifying cycle, much can be learned from the past decade. What has been one characteristic, which one would think the most obvious, is ensuring our Men's National Team members are competing and getting minutes week in week out. For a larger soccer nation with a bigger player pool, that might not always be an issue as the sheer quantity allows that to never become a real problem. However, the struggles Canada faces with player depth and reasons behind it are well documented. That being said, it is one reason why when players are part of the professional ranks it is critical from the perspective of building a greater depth and pool of players available, that our players are in healthy situations club-wise and getting minutes on a regular basis. While the list is not an exclusive one, there are a handful of Canadians who are currently unattached or in less than desirable club situations. Below are some players that are a mix of ones that can currently be key players in the starting eleven, or if they find a good club, can become quality depth or starters in the future. The intention is to keep these names in the forefront as they all have had complications in their careers that often are behind the scenes and effected the perception of their abilities. All of whom could benefit from finding a club that is the right fit and allows them to become or continue to be valuable members of the National Team.
Milan Borjan
What a year it has been for Borjan who burst onto the scene as the rare case of a potential international player choosing to play for Canada over his country of birth. After committing verbally to Canada and playing in a 2011 friendly against Greece, the Yugoslavian-born player earned a move from FK Rad to Sivasspor in the Turkish Super League. Up and downs with the club, highlighted with a strong 2012 loan spell at Romania’s FC Vaslui and the following year taking his team to the semi-finals of the Turkish Cup, finished with new coach Roberto Carlos favoring his counterpart Korcan Celikay in goal. The biggest disappointment for Borjan over the last year was the Turkish FA not allowing his release date from contract at the start of 2014 to be amended to fit within the transfer deadline. Italian Serie A Napoli were in desperate need of a backup keeper and Borjan fit the profile, but the deal did not go through as a result. Now the Canadian keeper, at 27 years of age, is nearing his prime development years and without a club. The offseason saw rumours of interest from the UK from English Championship sides, but nothing concrete yet. As he is currently unattached, Borjan can go to any club requiring his services, but his next move should be one that fits him, not a desperate team needing depth. As he is heading into the years where experience should begin to show, Borjan should focus on the right fit, at a team and in a league that will make his improvement a priority and willing to stick with his growth. His time in Turkey was neither in a league or at a club where defence and defending was a priority, and finding a team with balanced tactics and approach would benefit Borjan’s further development and improve the Canadian keeper position.
Julian De Guzman
After leaving Toronto FC, the black mark on what was a solid professional resume, De Guzman continued on with his career back in Europe. The midfielder had good showings for Canada since leaving TFC in 2012 and also had a brief renaissance with FC Dallas to finish that season. The last two years has seen him both in Germany helping Jahn Regensburg try to avoid relegation from the 2.Bundesliga and then Skoda Xanthi remain in the Greece Super League. At 33 years of age, De Guzman still has something to offer for club and country. His first real breakout in the professional game came at Hannover 96 in Germany and this region might be where he can fit in easily. Even though Canada is going through a transition period, his time in Spain with Deportivo La Coruna translates well with Benito Floro’s approach, and De Guzman can offer experiences to his teammates that can bridge the language and footballing culture barrier. With the 2015 Gold Cup likely his last important fixtures for Canada, finding a club this season is imperative for him to remain match-fit and an important piece of the midfield.
Kyle Bekker
While the first two names are clearly the unattached, with Canada having a spotty track record of solid depth, underutilized players also become a real concern. Kyle Bekker was already known after four years in the NCAA at Boston College, but specifically after an impressive MLS Combine that catapulted him into speculations of a first round draft selection, wanted by several of the top teams in the league and eventually the third pick overall by Toronto FC. There was much hype around his growing potential as a midfielder and technique on the ball, but over the last two seasons it has rarely been on display for his local club. Toronto FC have a long history of taking players out of their positions of strength, and Bekker is no exception. What will be interesting to see in the coming weeks is if new head coach Greg Vanney sees in Bekker what Ryan Nelsen’s tactics failed to cultivate. There is no question that anyone who follows TFC could see that Bekker was not suited for Nelsen’s brand of football. It has become confusing why if he was not in the plans, would Toronto not move him to a club that is a better fit tactically? With four years in the NCAA, Bekker is a known commodity in the United States and certainly could still garner value given his age and position. From a Canadian Men’s National Team perspective, especially considering Bekker is in key years for development that require competitive minutes played, having him sit on the sidelines at Toronto FC, a Canadian club no less, is a true disappointment. Hopefully Vanney and his new staff either see what Benito Floro does, or if not, look to move him where he can continue his development.
Ashtone Morgan
It was the end of 2010 when in a meaningless Champions League fixture against Arabe Unido that Ashtone Morgan made his first appearance for Toronto FC. He showed great pace down the left side of the pitch, tidy passing and willingness to attack. The next two years under Aron Winter and Paul Mariner, Morgan flourished as an overlapping fullback who was able to bomb down the wing and cross in several passes onto the likes of Danny Koevermans for goals. The transition from Winter’s Dutch attacking brand to Ryan Nelsen’s defence-first 4-4-2 stripped Morgan of his strengths and exposed a part of his game that was clearly still in need of development. The start of 2013 was especially difficult, most notably a 2-1 loss at home against New York where Tim Cahill scored the final goal leaping over Morgan. To Morgan’s credit, once TFC signed Jonas Elmer to compete for the left back position, he was much more steady than the first half of the season, but the impression from the start resulted in Justin Morrow being brought in during the offseason. There is no debating that anyone who has followed TFC that Ashtone Morgan has been frozen out of the team, so much so Ryan Nelsen preferred to have a natural right back start over him at left back. With Greg Vanney now the head coach, we have seen one game where he was brought back in, but questions remain regarding his future. In the right environment, Morgan should still be able to show the strengths he demonstrated through 2011-12. At 23 years of age, he has almost 70 professional MLS games under his belt when most North American players are in their rookie year. Like Kyle Bekker, there are several teams in the league one can envision a better fit and with the number of games he has already played, is a known commodity. As well, if he is not even in the plans to get playing time at Wilmington on a consistent basis, should Vanney not prefer him in the coming weeks, finding a team where he can rediscover his game, confidence and get minutes will be essential for Canada who are lacking quality depth at the left back position.
Kyle Porter
A long discussed attacking player from the Vancouver Whitecaps Academy, Kyle Porter is still grinding through his career looking for the right place to play week in week out. After a promising youth career that looked to be on route to a solid professional one, Porter made his way to Germany and Energie Cottbus before returning back to Vancouver in 2010. Not in the plans once the Whitecaps came into MLS he spent two years at FC Edmonton where on his best days looked to be a player who could compete at a higher level. This was confirmed when DC United brought him in, a statement considering Canadians still count as foreign players. However, after a positive 2013 season at DC where he made 27 appearances (18 starts), 2014 has not been as encouraging with few minutes both with DC and their USL Pro affiliate Richmond. The quick rebuild DC United went through the offseason was going to leave players on the fringe, but from a Canadian perspective, we need as many of them getting minutes as possible. Porter is a player who might be looking at the coming expansion with anticipation as there will be many moves happening and could be a good piece for a club building up. At 24 years of age, he still has his prime years ahead of him and has looked good for Canada over the last year. The right fit for him in the next year would be a big boost to the attacking options for the Men's National Team. |
Brandy Naomi is unsure of her footing as she takes her first steps in high heels down a dark Chicago street. Though she’s trying to project confidence, she steals nervous glances at the camera following her progress.
Her trepidation is easily forgiven. It’s her first time being a woman.
A few hours prior, before makeup and hair, Brandy had been Michael Alexander, a film editor at research and innovation agency The Sound, making a documentary about "drag mothers" (drag queens who mentor others in the lifestyle). It’s the third such film from the agency’s media arm, The Sound Media, about cultures that are "probably quite fringe," says Ian Pierpoint, founder & chief ideas officer.
The idea is that by examining extreme outliers of human behavior, The Sound Media can help clients and brands like Unilever, Kellogg’s, Vans and MillerCoors better understand how to market to all kinds of populations. The films, which have a distinctly Vice-like tone, shine "a spotlight on people and trends and ideas that are interesting and are going to have an impact on the world," Pierpoint said. Ostensibly, a previous film about a couple that lives like actual Victorians — corsets, wood stoves and sans electricity — can offer insights about groups ranging from environmentalists to cosplayers to backpackers.
Alexander and his team had traveled to Chicago to meet with Gilbert Naomi, an experienced drag queen known for flashy dance moves and a strong hair game. Performing under the name Saya Naomi, she had nurtured many budding drag queens, and Alexander was her latest pupil. During the 8-minute film, Gilbert discusses the often challenging life of a drag performer, then spends two hours applying Alexander’s makeup and explaining the finer points of testicle placement before their stroll through Chicago.
"I didn’t anticipate how much work was actually involved in making the transformation — the head-to-toe shaving of my body," Alexander said, a point driven home in the film by Gilbert’s careful pedagogy. But that process proved to be easier than others.
"The physical part wasn’t as bad — or hard, I should say — as the mental, because there are almost two competing personalities once you change your physical appearance," Alexander said. "There’s a set of gender norms that are thrown on you once you look like a woman that I felt like I had to conform to, and also wanted to express."
It’s an experience he’s happy to have had, but he admits he hasn’t gone through the transformation again since filming, and does not "have the urge."
After Alexander was tasked with the "Drag Mother" film, he decided the best way to tell this story was to go through the process himself. "I had never actually thought about it until this piece, actually," Alexander said. "I have thought about gender expression, and kind of suppressing femininity within my own life, and this was an avenue for me to explore that and learn more about the subculture."
In the film, Alexander talks about wanting to express more femininity as a child but facing disapproval because of it. "I learned very quickly from society that that wasn’t OK, that Michael shouldn’t act like that, Michael’s a boy."
This immersive reportage is in keeping with The Sound Media’s nontraditional filmmaking style. For a piece on branded marijuana in the Pacific Northwest, Pierpoint tried out the product himself. And "underground antiquers" in London were given cameras to film themselves for another short.
The Sound Media has 10 to 15 films currently in production, according to Pierpoint, and intends to release between one and three each month on YouTube. Some of the films will also be broadcast by media partners like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. "We’re intending to show and further illuminate changes within gender," he said about the "Drag Mother" film. "We’re hoping that marketers and, indeed, anyone who sees it thinks a bit differently about gender norms."
That goal informs the topic selection of all the films. "I guess what we’re looking for is for people to think differently, feel differently, and have a bit more empathy," Pierpoint said. "Marketing is about having empathy and understanding people." |
As a young mother — barely out of her teens — Sarah DuCloux-Potter found herself trying to juggle a baby, a job, her college classes … and seizures.
“My epilepsy actually started from pregnancy or childbirth, maybe from the hormones, nobody knows for sure,” says the St. Paul woman, now 38.
At first, she was in denial.
“I actually ignored it,” she says. “I blamed it on nightmares. People kept telling me to get help.”
Eventually, she did.
“I was 20 when I got the diagnosis of epilepsy from a neurologist,” she says. “I got very angry and upset. That meant no driving. I was sure life was over, that this was the end of things. I looked into assisted living. I was sure that I was disabled, that everything was done.
“It took me a long time to realize that this wasn’t a death sentence.”
Eventually, she found hope.
“Art helped, actually,” she says. “I wrote a lot and I drew a lot and I worked with our Epilepsy Foundation here in Minnesota and learned that there are other people who are doing just fine with epilepsy.”
Eventually, she found a way to take back some control.
“I started running,” she says.
At first, it was a secret.
“I hid it from my family because I was embarrassed,” she says. “I’d just throw on sweatpants and just really quietly run laps in my kitchen to try to get healthy. I thought if I could get some things under control, I wouldn’t feel so out of control. Seizures rob you of control; I was trying to take back some control.
“Slowly, things fell into line. It was a confidence boost. Once I got my confidence back, it was all uphill from there.”
Due to another health condition that affects her muscles — dystonia — DuCloux-Potter has had to leave running behind in favor of stair climbing, yoga and boxing. She also had to undergo brain surgery — not due to the seizures, but due to trigeminal neuralgia, a chronic pain condition that affects a nerve in the face. In her case, it was severe and debilitating. It’s also been enlightening.
“When someone says they are having pain or are uncomfortable, I don’t take that lightly,” she says. “I try to help them find their way without diminishing what they are feeling.”
In the midst of all these struggles and lessons, DuCloux-Potter decided to return to school.
“That was a really difficult decision because I have memory issues from the meds and the epilepsy,” she says. “I didn’t want to fail.”
She didn’t fail:
In fact, she has been awarded the 2016 UCB Family Epilepsy Scholarship through UCB, a global biopharmaceutical company, which is helping her pursue a degree in health management at the University of Minnesota.
“Once I finish my bachelor’s and go on to earn my master’s, I’d love to work somewhere in ethics or project managing for epilepsy or dystonia or both,” she says.
Meanwhile, she hasn’t left behind her first coping mechanism: art.
“At the Creative Arts Showcase for the Epilepsy Foundation of Minnesota (in November), I read my poem, ‘Independence’:
“Dear Epilepsy,
“It’s time we had a chat. I know you thought you had me. For a while, I almost gave in to you. I nearly surrendered in defeat. I started to walk away from everything that made me ‘me’ as you stole bits and pieces of my personality both directly through your misfires in my brain and indirectly through your need of medications that altered my state of self.
“Not so fast dear epilepsy. You don’t get such an easy pass into my life. I demand some authority. You may rob me of control for blips of time but you cannot strip me of my spirit. I am taking it back.
“I sure fooled you didn’t I? You lost your hold on me epilepsy! I have you in the crossfire now. You don’t OWN ME. I am the master of my destiny. I have proof that I can conquer the likes of you. I reached for the stars and swung amongst them. I laughed in your face and felt no fear. I smiled a thousand smiles.
“You told me I couldn’t, but I did. You told me I would never, but I made it.
“I ran 50 miles. I crossed the finish line. I conquered you. You will never own me.”
The best part of the reading, she says:
“A lot of people came up to me afterward and talked about how what I faced and accomplished in the face of epilepsy motivated them to try, too,” she says.
FYI
2017 UCB Family Epilepsy Scholarship Program
Details: UCB — a global biopharmaceuticals company — will offer 30 scholarships of up to $5,000 and two scholarships of up to $10,000 in 2017 to people living with epilepsy, their family members and caregivers, to help them achieve their goals of pursuing higher education.
Info: Applications are due by March 10. Get more information and apply at www.ucbepilepsyscholarship.com |
Cork CIty 2-0 Dundalk
Cork City have drawn first blood against rivals Dundalk by claiming the President’s Cup courtesy of a 2-0 win over the Premier Division champions at Turner’s Cross.
Goals in either half from Gavan Holohan and former Dundalk man Sean Maguire saw the Leesiders beat their rivals for the first time in 11 attempts in front of a crowd of 1,850 in the curtain-raiser ahead of the start of the SSE Airtricity League season next weekend.
Holohan’s goal was a neat finish after lovely play from Maguire in particular and while Dundalk had some half-chances, they failed to trouble their rivals and it was their former front man that sealed the win with a top-class header on the hour mark.
The home side made an impressive start with new signings Stephen Dooley, ex-Lilywhite Maguire, Greg Bolger and Kenny Browne all involved early on. Returning midfielder Gearóid Morrissey also made his mark from the centre of the park.
Bolger was fouled by Stephen O’Donnell at the edge of the Dundalk box with two minutes gone but Ian Turner – another former City boy back at the Cross this season – planted the set piece into a black and white wall.
Eoghan O’Connell headed over from Dooley’s cross moments later before a Maguire flick sent Turner clear only for the ex-Limerick man to see his effort knocked away for a corner.
Daryl Horgan had his first opportunity to stretch the hosts on seven minutes, the winger racing clear down the left only to be tackled at the last moment by O’Connell.
The subsequent corner saw Dane Massey flick a header to Brian Gartland; however, the defender’s shot at the far post was well to the left of Mark McNulty’s goal.
Despite the men in green pushing forward in numbers, the next decent chance went the way of the visitors on 16 minutes with only a finger-tip block from McNulty and clearance from O’Connell preventing Kilduff from breaking the deadlock.
Celtic man O’Connell – on loan with John Caulfield’s outfit until the summer – fired an effort straight at Gary Rogers at the other end three minutes later, and the opening goal finally arrived with 20 minutes on the clock.
Dooley’s initial shot was saved by Rogers but a ball back inside from Maguire found Holohan unmarked at the far post and the Kilkenny man had the easiest of finishes from close range to put the FAI Cup runners-up ahead.
Dooley and Maguire combined again to great effect shortly afterwards to feed Turner, who closed in on an open goal but failed to get the vital touch.
The first half ended with a booking apiece for either side.
Massey tackled Bennett rather heavily as the defender went to clear danger from the City box, and it was Andy Boyle and McNulty that were spoken to and shown yellow by referee Graham Kelly once the pushing and shoving subsided.
The second half took a little while to catch fire with bookings for Morrissey, O’Donnell and Gartland before the first shot in anger was notched up.
Morrissey’s effort from 30 yards was spilled by Rogers after 57 minutes but he gathered the rebound before Maguire could get involved, while a bullet header from Browne – directly from a Turner corner - saw Finn make a superb clearance off the goal line two minutes later.
The game’s second goal arrived in the 61st minute.
The move started with Morrissey, who broke down the right before passing inside to O’Connell. The full-back’s cross to Maguire had pin-point accuracy and the striker guided an excellent diving header beyond Rogers’ reach to the back of the Dundalk net.
Stephen Kenny immediately introduced John Mountney for Sean Gannon, with Chris Shields moving to full back. Ciarán Kilduff registered a shot a minute later in response, but it was O’Connell that cleared his line.
Steven Beattie replaced Dooley on 71 minutes and made a telling impact when he was tackled by Gartland nine minutes later, after sprinting through from midfield.
The Dundalk man was shown yellow for a second time and then red for the challenge and only a double save by Rogers – from Turner’s free kick initially and then Sheppard’s follow-up effort – prevented a third for Caulfield’s team.
Cork City: Mark McNulty; Eoghan O’Connell, Alan Bennett, Kenny Browne, John Dunleavy; Ian Turner, Greg Bolger, Gavan Holohan (Steven Beattie ’71), Gearóid Morrissey, Stephen Dooley (Karl Sheppard ’76); Sean Maguire (Mark O’Sullivan ’86).
Substitutes: Colin Healy, Danny Morrissey, Michael McSweeney, Alan Smith.
Dundalk: Gary Rogers; Sean Gannon (John Mountney ’62), Brian Gartland, Andy Boyle, Dane Massey; Chris Shields; Patrick McEleney (Paddy Barrett ’81); Stephen O’Donnell, Ronan Finn, Daryl Horgan; Ciarán Kilduff (David McMillan ’84).
Substitutes: Gabriel Sava, Shane Grimes, Robbie Benson, Darren Meenan.
Referee: Graham Kelly. |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic and Republican U.S. senators introduced legislation on Wednesday to end the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ communication records and set other new controls on the government’s electronic eavesdropping programs.
An undated aerial handout photo shows the National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters building in Fort Meade, Maryland. REUTERS/NSA/Handout via Reuters
The measure introduced by Democrats Ron Wyden, Mark Udall and Richard Blumenthal, and Republican Rand Paul, is one of several efforts making their way through Congress to rein in sweeping surveillance programs.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is holding a public hearing on Thursday when the panel’s leaders are expected to discuss their surveillance reforms, the Senate Judiciary Committee is addressing the issue and several members of the House of Representatives have also introduced legislation.
“The disclosures over the last 100 days have caused a sea change in the way the public views the surveillance system,” said Wyden, a leading congressional advocate for tighter privacy controls, told a news conference.
The surveillance programs have come under intense scrutiny since disclosures this spring by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the government collects far more Internet and telephone data than previously known.
The legislation introduced on Wednesday combines several surveillance reforms that legislators had introduced separately.
Besides banning the bulk collection of Americans’ records, it would create the position of “constitutional advocate” to represent the public in the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that oversees the eavesdropping programs.
And it would let Americans affected by the eavesdropping sue for damages in U.S. courts and allow companies to disclose more information about cooperation with government surveillance.
“These reforms are the right thing to do, but they are also essential to the public believing that the system is complying with the law,” Blumenthal said.
Many members of Congress staunchly defend the surveillance programs as an essential defense against terrorist attacks, but support for change has been growing.
In a 217-205 vote in July, the House narrowly defeated an amendment to an appropriations bill that would have sharply limited the NSA’s ability to collect electronic information.
The strong support for the amendment - bolstered by an unlikely alliance of liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans - surprised many congressional observers because House leaders and members of the Intelligence Committee had strongly opposed it.
Given the level of dissent - and widespread public concern - lawmakers said they expected some reforms would be included in the National Defense Authorization Act, which Congress is due to pass late this year to authorize Defense Department programs. |
Montreal’s Olympic Stadium will be housing asylum seekers after a spike in the number of people crossing at the United States border in recent months.
The stadium is being transformed into a refugee housing centre to deal with the influx.
READ MORE: ‘Illegal entry is illegal entry’: Quebec premier responds to U.S. asylum seekers
According to recent federal government data, including preliminary figures for June, there was a “pronounced shift” in the number of people crossing at the Quebec-U.S. border.
WATCH BELOW: Asylum seekers are heading to Montreal
“I’m Haitian and that [this situation] has touched me a little bit. That’s why I came here to see how I can help,” said Guillaume André, Centre Communautaire Multi-Ethnique de Montréal Nord director.
Francine Dupuis, who oversees a government-funded program to help seekers get on their feet, tells Radio-Canada the numbers are unprecedented.
READ MORE: Quebec and Prairies see biggest spike in asylum seekers in February
Volunteers from the Quebec Red Cross are helping set up the cavernous facility for a temporary stay with 150 cots in the rotunda with a food court, showers and WiFi.
Among the claimants are men, women and children from many different countries including Chad, Eritrea and Haiti, who all entered Quebec through the American border.
The first people are expected to arrive at the stadium Wednesday. |
Sen. Bernie Sanders ahead of President Obama's State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress on Jan. 12 at the Capitol. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Hillary Clinton's campaign on Tuesday accused rival Sen. Bernie Sanders of following Republican cues to launch attacks on her.
Republicans, including super PACs allied with major candidates, would rather run against Sanders in the fall and are trying to help his insurgent primary challenge to Clinton now, Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri said in a statement. Sanders took advantage of the help, she said, by using an attack produced by GOP operative Karl Rove.
“While Senator Sanders tries to make a case on electability based on meaningless polls, Republicans and their super PACs have made clear the candidate they’re actually afraid to face" is Clinton, Palmieri said.
"The Sanders argument falls apart when the GOP spokesman is trying to help him and the Republicans run ads trying to stop Hillary Clinton in the primary. Now he’s taking his cues from them."
American Crossroads, which Rove helped to found, has paid for an ad in Iowa that supports the Sanders claim that Clinton is too cozy with Wall Street, and Sanders has now incorporated the meat of the Rove claims in his stump speech, she said.
Sanders is surging in Iowa, and with fewer than two weeks until voting has erased Clinton's once-formidable lead there. He is ahead, and by some polls far ahead, in New Hampshire. Clinton remains the overall Democratic favorite, but a Sanders victory in Iowa would be an enormous setback. The close race and high stakes have spurred a much more combative stance for each candidate.
Asked about the Clinton campaign statement at a stop in Underwood, Iowa, Sanders was initially dismissive of it.
“Look, in the next two weeks, you’re going to hear a lot of statements from a lot of people," he said.
He then proceeded to rattle off a number of recent national polls and polls from battleground states that showed him beating Trump by a larger margin in a general election than Clinton.
Asked why Republicans are putting out supportive statements about him, Sanders said: "I don’t know that they are putting out supportive statements about me, but I think at the end of the day, we stand a much better chance of defeating Republicans.”
“And it’s not just the polls," Sanders said. “You tell me, which campaign, objectively speaking, is creating the energy and the enthusiasm for a large voter turnout? Everybody knows that it is our campaign.”
He continued with this advice for Clinton: “If I were Secretary Clinton and I had started this campaign as the inevitable, kind of anointed candidate in the Democratic party, and I started 50 points up, and today I’m struggling to win in Iowa, struggling to win in New Hampshire, seeing many polls showing the Sanders campaign is closing the gap, yeah, I would be nervous.”
Palmieri's statement noted other instances when Republicans have sought to bolster Sanders, or in the case of Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer, acknowledge the goal.
During Sunday's Democratic debate, Spicer tweeted "feelthebern" and later did the Twitter version of a forehead slap when Sanders spoke of normalizing relations with Iran.
“Uggggghhh .... phone a friend @berniesanders -- #iran is the number sponsor of terror," Spicer said. "Come on, we are trying to help you."
Spicer later declared Sanders the debate winner, and the RNC blasted out emails citing pundits and others who also credited Sanders with a victory.
Conservative super PAC America Rising released a web video of news clips critical of Chelsea Clinton’s campaign statements on her mother's behalf, Palmieri added.
John Wagner in Underwood, Iowa, contributed to this report. |
Here's one quick way to rob a bank, over and over again.
Find an ATM running Windows XP. Skeptical? Don't be, they're still installed all around the world. Next, cut a piece from its chassis to expose its USB port. On your own USB stick, you'll have malware stored that will load the moment you force the ATM to reboot, rewriting the old operating system's registry.
From that point, it's easy. Replace the cut-out chassis piece. Wait a day or two until the ATM is reloaded with cash. Then step right up, use the hidden menu you've installed to cut the machine's network connection, extract its cash and wipe your tracks completely.
Easy enough? A pair of German security researchers speaking at the Chaos Communication Congress (CCC) demonstrated precisely this system on Friday, reconstructed from malware discovered in the wild on an undisclosed number of ATMs.
It's hardly a new vector of attack. Indeed, ATMs have been vulnerable to high-tech theft for years. What was striking, the researchers said, was that so many banks were still using such old, vulnerable technology, leaving themselves open to increasingly sophisticated high-tech criminal groups.
The researchers – who asked that their names be withheld, citing concerns about revealing their identities to a criminal organization – said they had been contacted earlier this year after the malware was found, and asked if they could recreate its functions or discover how the hack had taken place.
Provided with an infected image from an infected machine, the pair spent considerable time reconstructing the features of the malware. As demonstrated here at the CCC, it allowed an attacker to enter a code into an infected ATM and bring up a menu giving direct manual access to the machine's money-dispensing functions.
Along with recreating the malware itself, the team conducted a forensic analysis offering some additional insight into the as-yet-unidentified group responsible. Creation of the code would have required a large team with varied programming skills, they said. A fairly significant amount of time and money had almost certainly been invested in the project.
"For sure, they had to have a profound knowledge of ATMs," said "S," one member of the research team. "Most likely they actually had one to test. Either they stole one and reverse engineered the cash client, or most likely, they had someone on the inside."
The code was clean and written in a sophisticated style, and had clearly gone through several generations of improvements, they said. The malware's programmers had created hurdles to forensic analysis, trying to cover their tracks, but had clearly not been entirely successful in this regard.
As researchers working solely with the malware itself, the team said they had no clear sense of how widespread the attack had been. The malware they had worked with had been written specifically for a single bank's cash-delivery software. But virtually any such software running on an unprotected Windows XP-based system would conceivably be vulnerable, they said.
The malware evidently had at least the theoretical capability to intercept information such as customer PIN numbers or account data. However, it did not do so, the researchers said. Rather, it was designed primarily for the immediate extraction of cash.
Since the discovery of the attack, some banks have implemented upgrades preventing their teller machines from booting directly from a USB port. However, given the vast number of ATMs worldwide, and the tendency for such fixes to filter relatively slowly from advanced to developing counties, the number of vulnerable machines will likely remain large for some time to come, the team said.
"I'm not sure this is the end attack, or the end game," said "S." "We'll probably see this kind of malware on another bank, in another city, on another continent."
The team did not disclose which bank had been affected, or which country or countries the malware had been discovered in. Revealing the means of attack was itself controversial, they said, but should ultimately help make ATMs more secure.
"It's no use keeping vulnerabilities secret," said "T", the second member of the research team. "They should be talked about openly, so they can be fixed." |
To say the draft did not go how I anticipated would be a vast understatement. In fact, I was so dead set on the Broncos picking 8 defensive linemen, that I was openly critical about second round picks, and was simply disgusted with the draft strategy. However, with some time to look over the class as a whole, I feel like the Broncos did a fantastic job of staying true to their board, and come hell or high water, they were sticking to their plan of taking the best players and not just taking the best defensive tackles on the board.
This strategy, as I've mentioned, didn't sit well at first, but unlike every other draft I have ever watched, we have to take into account that teams were planning for free agency after the process. It's easy to say that the Broncos failed in this draft because they didn't take a defensive tackle, but now they have the whole free agency period to go out and get their guys.
I also think this draft shows the Broncos' confidence in Kevin Vickerson and Marcus Thomas to be starting tackles if the need arises. Both guys are absolutely huge, with Big Vick standing at about 6'5" 330, and Thomas at roughly 6'3" 315. If the Broncos can add two starters in free agency, Vickerson and Thomas should be more than enough depth for the time being.
The Broncos significantly upgraded their pass rush and pass defense in this draft, and adding pass rush is something they have not even really attempted in a few years.
1. First Round, 2nd overall: Von Miller, Linebacker, Texas A&M
6'3" 250
At this point, my mock draft was looking great.
In all seriousness, when the Broncos picked Von Miller, they picked easily the best linebacker in the draft, and pound for pound arguably the best athlete in the draft. Kudos to John and all of you on the site who predicted this months ago. I have always been of the philosophy that we should build inside out, meaning defensive line first, but I also acknowledge that our number one need this offseason was upgrading the pass rush, and you can reference some of my oldest mock drafts for that.
Von Miller is bar none the best pass rusher in the draft, and the Broncos can use him in creative ways. They will be a 4-3 base defense, and Miller will likely start out as the SAM linebacker in that defense, but he doesn't have to always stay there. The Broncos can move him down to defensive end on third downs and slide Robert Ayers inside to rush the quarterback, they can disguise Miller at the line of scrimmage and drop him into coverage, and he is also athletic enough to hang with tight ends and running backs.
We're not talking about your average linebacker here--we're talking about a guy who ran a sub-4.5 second 40 yard dash, and put on one of the most impressive displays of athleticism you will see at the Scouting Combine. Many of the scouts I talked to, including Chris Steuber who said that Miller is a lock to be the defensive rookie of the year.
For those worried about Miller's coverage abilities, perhaps his comments after being selected will put them to rest. Miller says he is willing to cover the opposing team's number one receiver:
"I've always covered running backs and tight ends, and I've always dropped back into coverage. It was just my role on the Texas A&M team to get after the quarterback, where they needed me most, so on third downs I was always in a rush. If you put on the film, I think I was playing quite a bit, and I can drop back in coverage and cover a slot receiver, cover the No. 1 receiver and get on those running backs."
There were many scouts who said that Miller was probably a much better fit in the NFL for a 3-4 defense, but I whole-heartedly disagree. As I always say, great football players fit in any scheme, and Von Miller is exactly that--a great football player.
We can talk at length this offseason about how the Broncos are going to use him, but this was a pick where the Broncos could not go wrong picking between Miller, Patrick Peterson, Marcell Dareus, or Nick Fairley, and I think they picked a great one. As you have seen on Twitter and other news outlets, the Broncos are still glowing after picking Miller. The front office is already very pleased with this pick on paper, and so should Broncos fans. The possibilities of what Miller could do in this defense are incredible. He has been compared to Derrick Thomas, the late great linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs. That is a very lofty comparison, so Miller already has some big shoes to fill.
He has never lacked for production in college. For four straight years, he has been a top of the line producer. He was a Freshman All-American in 2007 when he had 22 tackles, four tackles for a loss, and two sacks to go along with his first career forced fumble.
As a sophomore, Miller started four of 12 games in 2008 and had 44 tackles while leading the team with 3.5 sacks. He also had 7.5 tackles for a loss, two forced fumbles, and two fumble recoveries. Miller also started to show his prowess on special teams in 2008.
As a junior in 2009, Miller absolutely exploded onto the scene, this time for good. He was a first-team All-American after leading the nation with 17 sacks while also having 20 tackles for loss and four forced fumbles. He was a finalist for the Hendricks award and a semi-finalist for the Butkus award.
In 2010, Miller built off of his excellent junior season with another double-digit sack season, finishing with 10.5 in 13 games. He also had 17.5 tackles for loss and three forced fumbles along with an interception. He also had a career high 68 tackles on the season.
**Following analysis from my review on Friday night**
2. Second Round, 45th overall (from 49ers): Rahim Moore, Safety, UCLA
6'0" 202
I was very critical of this pick at first not because of the player, but because of his position. Still, this pick shows the Broncos placed a great value on creating turnovers with their first two picks. The first pick was used on the best pass rusher in the draft, and the second was used on a guy in Moore who has 11 interceptions the last two years.
Granted, he picked off 10 passes in his junior season, but teams really shied away from Moore in 2010, and he could really be a ball hawk for the Broncos' defensive backfield. Perhaps what sold me the most on Moore was his post-selection commentary:
"I knew I wasn't going to be a first-round draft pick, which is fine because I never planned to be one. I knew my range; I knew what I was going to be coming out of college. The overall experience has been spectacular. Today I feel like I went No. 1 overall. I'm so excited. I can't wait to get to work and get to Denver."
Moore also talked about the influence that Champ Bailey and Brian Dawkins have had on him as a player, and he can't wait to get to Denver. So what does this guy bring to the table?
Well, Moore is a little undersized in terms of his muscle mass, but he has all of the skills necessary to be an elite safety in the NFL. He's not a Troy Polamalu type of tackler, but he has improved in this area, and is simply a playmaker. He's definitely not going to be an "in the box" type of safety in the NFL. John Elway described him best when he called him a center fielder. Moore is going to be the guy on the back end of the defense--similar to what Renaldo Hill does now-- that makes plays left by his teammates. With the Broncos significantly improved pass rush (at least on paper), it will free up guys like Moore to make plays on the back end.
Definitely an undercut tackler who is quicker than fast, and a guy who isn't a liability against the run, but will definitely benefit from having powerful players in front of him.
This is a guy who is really going to benefit from the additions of Von Miller and Elvis Dumervil, and we'll see what the Broncos are able to do tomorrow to continue to add to the front seven.
"Defense wins championships...Von Miller is a big-time talent. He has every little bit of a second (overall) pick you can think of. He's just that type of guy. I can't wait to make plays on the field with him."
3. Second Round, 46th overall (from Miami): Orlando Franklin, Offensive Lineman, Miami
6'6" 316
At this point in our draft, I was pretty mad, but further review shows that Franklin was a solid pick as a guard, and is a guy who will absolutely start for the Broncos from day one. He can play pretty much anywhere on the line, but here's what his role will be with the Broncos:
"They told me they see me playing right tackle."
The soft spoken Franklin doesn't lack for fire on the football field. He will be 24 at the start of the season, so he's a little older than most rookies, but that's not a problem because he can probably play in the NFL for a long time as long as he checks out medically.
Franklin was asked back to Indianapolis for the Combine medical re-check, and apparently that is of no worry to the Denver Broncos, who used a very top tier choice on him. Here is a medical report from ESPN, making this pick somewhat curious:
In 2007, suffered left wrist injury vs. FSU and underwent surgery to repair fracture and two torn ligaments. Sat out spring practice in 2008 while rehabbing from surgery. In 2009, tore meniscus in left knee. Did not have an MRI until three weeks before 2010 camp. Played 2010 season with the injury and then underwent surgery on left meniscus. Did not run second 40-yard dash at combine because of the surgery.
"I like to think of myself as the most physical offensive lineman that was in this draft, and I am looking forward to bringing that nature to the Denver Broncos."
Indeed the Broncos will need some of that physical nature. They are going to be moving to the zone blocking scheme, and the plan is that Franklin will start for them at right tackle or left guard in the process, which means it's bye-bye for Ryan Harris, who has had a solid run as a Bronco. This is the question I have--are the Broncos willing to open up the competition between Beadles and Franklin at right tackle? This is no longer a power offense where Franklin might be useful as a tackle, so we will see if he can be effective in that role early on, and if not, will Beadles kick outside to block Tebow's blind side?
This is definitely a tough guy who will help the Broncos' atrocious running game with his overall power and sheer size. If the Broncos can keep him in check physically and mentally, this could be an outstanding pick and a guy who can play for a long time. I like this scouting report:
Relentless player who wants to finish every block like its his last. Franklin has the physical gifts and on-field smarts to be selected early in the draft.
4. Third Round, 67th overall: Nate Irving, Linebacker, North Carolina State
6'1" 241
Fast linebacker who plays bigger than his listed size. He probably gives the best scouting report of himself:
"For those people who don't know me, I'm just a physical linebacker who likes to impose my will and punish the ball carrier or get a blocker out of my way to get to the ball carrier."
Not only that, but Irving brings some much needed intensity and leadership that the Broncos have lacked for a long, long time at the linebacker position. This selection really solidifies the Broncos' linebacker corps, at least on paper with D.J. Williams at the WILL, Von Miller as the SAM, and now Irving as the MIKE, and that's apparently where the Broncos told him he would be playing.
"I talked to the coaches, and they like me in the middle."
Quick, instinctive, hard hitting guy who finishes plays. He offers upside as a blitzer on passing downs and has a fantastic resume' from his time at North Carolina State. This is a guy who is constantly around the ball, constantly making plays, and he has overcome adversity to get where he is today. Irving missed the entire 2009 season due to being in a serious car accident, but came back in 2010 with a vengeance.
As a senior, Irving had 92 tackles, 21.5 tackles for loss, seven sacks, six pass breakups, three forced fumbles, and two fumbles recovered. Like I said, if this guy wasn't around the ball, it's because the NC State offense was on the field.
Very good range against the run, and has been big time proucer for the Wolfpack since he was a redshirt freshman in 2007. What Broncos fans should be most excited about are the intangibles Irving brings to the table. This could finally be the fiery leader the team has lacked at the MIKE linebacker position for so long.
Irving is a fast linebacker that makes plays all over the field. Well prepared player that reads keys quickly and has a nose for the football in run support. Drops smoothly in coverage, has terrific ball skills and the closing burst to get after the quarterback on blitzes. Vocal leader and fierce competitor.
"I was looking at the earlier pick, and I saw Von Miller, and I'm just looking forward to getting out there and playing alongside him. With me in the middle and him on the edge, we could wreak some havoc on every offensive team in the league."
We can only hope, Broncos fans.
5. Fourth Round, 108th overall: Quinton Carter, Safety, Oklahoma
6'1" 211
In the 2nd round, the Broncos picked up the top overall safety in the draft in Rahim Moore. In the fourth round, they got the consensus second best safety in the entire draft, and a first team All American in Oklahoma's Quinton Carter.
The former All-American and playmaker for the Sooners said he was a little surprised the Broncos picked him, but he is excited for the competition as well as the ability to learn from Brian Dawkins, one of the best safeties of all time.
"Honestly, yes, I am very surprised. I wasn't sure if they would pick me or him, but obviously they picked him, and now they picked me. Whatever situation I'm going into, I'm very excited for the opportunity to be a part of any team. I'm ready to go to work. I'm going to be a part of the Denver Broncos, and with Rahim and myself coming, I'm sure we're going to have a strong backfield and also learn from Brian Dawkins who is my favorite safety in the game."
Carter is a hard-hitter from Las Vegas, NV, who brings great upside to the Broncos' defensive backfield. He is known for his closing speed and "bone-jarring" mentality. He is not fast in a straight line, but he is rarely out of place, is very quick and instinctive, and has everything you would look for in an NFL safety. At 6'1" 211 pounds, he is a bigger guy who can cover in the slot, play in the box, or play a free safety look.
He will also help the Broncos initially as a special teams player. Here is a nice scouting report from NFL Draft Scout:
Carter is exactly the type of versatile defensive back NFL teams are looking for to slow down the pass-happy offenses in today's game. He has played strong and free safety in Bob Stoops' defense at Oklahoma because of his physicality and speed; his ability to make the big hit, support the run, play centerfielder, or even line up in man coverage is rare among college safeties. He should one of the top two or three safeties selected in April. Exceptional leader on the field and in the locker room. Receiving degree in sociology with a non-profit organization studies, but already has started has own non-profit called SOUL (Serving Others with Unity and Leadership) to help kids in the Las Vegas area.
Carter does have some injuries in his past, which could have been one reason for his fall, but he started every game in 2010, and showed how impactful he can be on a game. This was a high value selection in the fourth round, and while not a pertinent need, the Broncos have solidified their depth at the safety position with guys who are very talented and have great intangibles and versatility.
6. Fourth Round, 129th overall: Julius Thomas, Tight End, Portland State
6'5" 250
Julius Thomas was a guy that many people on here thought we might take after we showed so much interest in him prior to the draft, and sure enough, Thomas is headed to Denver.
This guy was a popular player around MHR, and for good reason. After lighting up the East-West Shrine Game, Thomas grew a reputation as one of the most athletic and high-upside tight end prospects in the class, and he can thank his draft spot in part to San Diego Chargers tight end Antonio Gates and Falcons tight end Tony Gonzalez, who really paved the way for basketball players at the tight end position.
Thomas played four years of round-ball at Portland State, and walked on to the football team as a senior. Not a bad hobby for the young man, who wound up as a fourth round draft pick in the NFL and really impressed one of the league's top tight end coaches in the process. Clancy Barone helped in the development of Gates in San Diego, and he was reportedly very impressed with Thomas "on the greaseboard". According to most reports, Thomas showed a very advanced knowledge of the game of football only having played one year.
His visits with the Broncos went very well, and Thomas says the Broncos showed more interest in him than any team, and the feeling was mutual:
"I probably talked to the Broncos more than I talked to any team. Coach Barone came and worked me out at Portland State. We had a great workout, a great meeting, and that was really my favorite meeting with any of the teams. I talked with Coach (Clancy) Barone several times after that and expressed to him how much I enjoyed that meeting and how I felt that if we happen to get together that it would be a great fit for myself. I think that he's a coach that the way he thinks (about) the game is exactly the way I think, and I feel like he is going to be great at helping me understand what is expected of me. That's all you can ask for."
So how does he fit in with the Broncos?
"I haven't really spoken with them about my role, but some things that I'm really going to have to focus one is to really just learn the different things that you are going to need to do in the NFL. It's a more complicated game coming from the scheme we played in college to the scheme in the NFL, so that's going to be my main focus early on, just learning and making sure I have everything down; and then, some of the technique things that I haven't had as much experience with as some of the other guys have because I've only been playing for a year. I'll get with (Tight Ends) Coach (Clancy) Barone, and we'll start working on the technique things we need to address immediately. I'm pretty sure we'll have a plan, and we'll go about it."
Thomas was the only player the Broncos traded up for in 2011, the second straight year they have traded up at one point or another in the draft to take a player with that name. He is a raw tight end prospect with huge upside as a pass receiver, and is a surprisingly sound blocker. He has better than average technique in terms of blocking, and has the frame to add 10-12 pounds without losing his quickness or speed, and that's how GM Brian Xanders envisions him, right at the 260 pound mark.
I think this was a phenomenal pick, and one that fans will absolutely love as time goes along. Is Thomas raw? Sure, but the upside is there, and the measurables are off the charts. The Broncos will now rely on their coaching staff to make him into the player we all hope he can be.
7. Sixth Round, 189th overall: Mike Mohamed, Linebacker, California
6'3" 239
The Broncos went with a guy here who is going to come to Denver with a chip on his shoulder and a blue-collar mentality. Mohamed played in a 3-4 in college, but is a very smart player who will be depth at linebacker right away and contribute as a rookie on special teams.
One of the better coverage linebackers in the back end of the draft, Mohamed can really help the Broncos as a MIKE or WILL linebacker lining up with tight ends or taking running backs out of the backfield.
Mohamed is a leader in every sense of the word, and was considered the "unquestioned" captain of the Cal Bears defense, and hopefully he can bring some of that intensity to the Denver Broncos. So, what does this guy really bring to the table?
"I think the first thing that stands out is that I'm a ball hawk. I'm relentless. I'll always try to get to the ball, obviously within the parameters of the defense. I'm never giving up on plays; my motto is, ‘All or nothing.'"
That's good news for the Broncos, who completed the revamping of their linebacker corps with the selection of Mohamed. He was a very productive player at Cal who was durable for the most part and simply made plays at all costs.
8. Seventh Round, 204th overall: Virgil Green, Tight End/H-Back, Nevada
6'3" 245
This was a very exciting pick in the seventh round. Virgil Green was one of the top performers at the NFL Scouting Combine, and people thought he could sneak into the second day of the draft after his display of elite athleticism. Adding another weapon to the passing game was essential for the Broncos, who are bringing on a young quarterback in Tim Tebow. Virgil Green can certainly help that, and he feels like he is much more than just a speed demon and receiver:
"I think I am a great in-line blocker. At Nevada, we ran the ball a lot. So in our offense, if you couldn't block, you couldn't play."
Fair enough.
Green will come along slowly with the Broncos, who likely chose him to play a Dallas Clark type of role. He is raw as a route runner, but he does have a lot of experience blocking and he can be a real asset in the passing game. The Broncos can use Green the same way they did with Tony Scheffler when he was in Denver.
9. Seventh Round, 247th overall: Jeremy Beal, Defensive End, Oklahoma
6'2" 265
Beal is a very cool story, and a very sound selection in the seventh round. After starting his career at Oklahoma as a walk-on (go figure, because he tested poorly athletically), he finished with 27 sacks in three seasons, including a couple of All American teams along the way.
This is not a speedy player by any means, but he has a quick initial burst as well as great instincts and closing ability. In order to succeed with his lack of speed, Beal will need to continue to improve his technique and quickness.
The Broncos can use him in pass rushing situations, and I think he will earn himself a spot on the roster in training camp. He is a long-armed player with a strong upper body who can make an impact as a rotational player. Again, the Broncos went with the value pick here, and Beal is great value if nothing else. Very productive college player, but an average athlete and an overachiever. He is a hard worker and will compete on every play. |
Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump faces his most critical week of statesmanship so far -- and it will reflect sharp changes of direction he has already wrought in US foreign policy.
Trump will hold his most important meeting with a world leader yet when he welcomes Chinese President Xi Jinping to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Friday, after putting Beijing on notice that if it does not do more to rein in its ally North Korea over its nuclear program, the US will take tough action.
"China has great influence over North Korea. And China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won't," Trump said in an interview with the Financial Times published Sunday. "And if they do that will be very good for China, and if they don't it won't be good for anyone."
Before his crucial first encounter with Xi, Trump will meet Egypt's President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi at the White House on Monday, ending a chill in relations that descended following the Obama administration's pointed criticism of Sisi's human rights record.
Trump will also have talks on Wednesday with another key US Middle Eastern ally, King Abdullah II of Jordan, which are likely to focus on the campaign against ISIS that the Trump administration has escalated across the Jordanian border in Syria and Iraq.
Trump's performance in the trio of meetings will be closely watched — not least because the President's temperament and blunt political style often seem ill-fitted to the well-grooved formalities of international diplomacy. Other world leaders are still trying to get the measure of Trump and are trying to figure out exactly how his "America First" philosophy will reshape the way the United States applies power abroad.
The President's low approval ratings and deepening intrigue over alleged links between his campaign and Russia at a time when Moscow was accused of interfering in the US election have sent his presidency into an early spiral.
Amid the turmoil, Trump has taken some shaky first steps on the global stage.
His most important visitor so far, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, appeared baffled by the President's decision to make a joke about the former US practice of tapping her phone — as he stuck by his baseless allegations that he was wiretapped by former President Barack Obama.
There were also some awkward moments in the Oval Office when Trump failed to shake the German leader's hand before the cameras.
Trump's first foreign visitor was British Prime Minister Theresa May, and the President put her in an awkward political position back home after announcing the first iteration of his travel ban hours after she left the White House.
On the other hand, Trump's meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the White House and round of golf down in Florida went off without a hitch. The Japanese were delighted that Trump reaffirmed US security guarantees to its ally and that Trump's campaign trail demands for Tokyo to pay more of the cost of housing US troops on its soil appeared to be off the table.
A China pivot?
No global relationship is more important than the one between China and the United States. Beijing has never been more powerful in the modern era and Xi is the strongest Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping, who set his country on the course to capitalism that has helped it emerge as a rising regional superpower more and more ready to challenge US influence in Asia.
US policy towards China is also at a crossroads. Successive US Presidents have sought to bind China into a rules-based system of global trade in a bid to manage its rise and head off a conflict with the incumbent global superpower — the United States. But it is not clear if Trump buys into that formula. His withdrawal from the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal is seen by many US allies in Asia as handing the diplomatic and economic initiative there to Beijing.
On the campaign trail, Trump accused China of committing "rape" against the United States and "killing" the US economy with its trade policies. After he was elected, he alarmed mainland leaders by accepting a call from Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen and suggested he may not sign up to the "One China Policy" that acknowledges the nationalist island as part of China.
Xi reportedly refused to speak to Trump by telephone once he was inaugurated President until he recommitted his administration to the policy — a step he took in a call with the Chinese leader in February, in an early concession to the Chinese side.
The summit at Mar-a-Lago is somewhat of an unknown quantity given Trump's inexperience and unpredictable nature, the lack of a relationship between the two men and uncertainty over the path the White House wants to take with China. The divisive nature of the issues on the table, including trade, Beijing's territorial maneuvers in the South China Sea and Trump's demand for China to do more to rein in North Korea's fast developing missile and nuclear program also mean that it will be tricky to come to common positions.
"The meeting next week with China will be a very difficult one in that we can no longer have massive trade deficits ... and job losses. American companies must be prepared to look at other alternatives," Trump warned in a pair of tweets last week.
But there have also been signs of restraint from the administration going into the meeting. Trump once vowed to brand China a currency manipulator on the first day of his administration but has not done so. There has also been no repeat to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's apparent warning in his confirmation hearing that China should be denied access to artificial islands it has been building in the South China Sea. In fact, after meeting Xi in Beijing last month, Tillerson used language about the need to avoid confrontation in the relationship that closely mirrored China's own terminology in what some foreign policy observers saw as another diplomatic victory for Beijing.
Warning on North Korea
In the interview with the Financial Times, Trump struck a tough bargaining position, warning, "if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will," in remarks that could hint at a tougher economic sanctions policy that China might oppose or even military action against the Stalinist state.
Successive US Presidents have chafed at China's attitude towards North Korea and called on its leaders to do more to bring unpredictable leader Kim Jong-Un and his late father Kim Jong-Il to heel.
Although China has often expressed irritation with North Korea, it has not so far changed its basic calculation on the issue — namely that it believes the chaos and refugee flows resulting from a collapse of the regime under pressure from the US and its allies would amount to a hugely destabilizing crisis. China also fears that a unified Korea would effectively mean a US-allied neighbor across its border.
Given his rhetoric, Trump is also under pressure to drive a hard bargain with Xi on trade, though at this point it appears the administration is more inclined to target China with enforcement actions rather than slapping tariffs on Chinese goods in a manner that could ignite a trade war that would hurt both nations.
The President is also sending mixed messages, predicting in the Financial Times interview that he could forge a breakthrough with Xi.
"I have great respect for him. I have great respect for China. I would not be at all surprised if we did something that would be very dramatic and good for both countries and I hope so."
Egypt
On Monday, Trump's focus will not be on Asia but on the Middle East. He will engineer a US rapprochement with Sisi, who was heavily criticized by the Obama administration over the coup that overthrew the elected Muslim Brotherhood government and subsequent crackdown on dissent.
Republicans have long seen the Egyptian leader as the kind of strongman in the region who is preferable to the Brotherhood or the kind of chaos that has ripped apart some nations since the Arab Spring uprisings.
Although the Obama administration released aid and military equipment to Egypt that was frozen after the coup, Sisi did not get a trip to the White House under the former President. His invitation so early in the Trump administration is a sign that from now on, the US government will not make Sisi's political behavior an impediment to its relationship with the most populous Arab nation.
And that does not just go for Egypt. White House officials say Trump will take a "private" and "discreet" approach in raising human rights with his foreign counterparts — an issue the administration says is best discussed behind closed doors.
The Trump administration wants to reboot ties to Egypt, according to the officials, primarily through security ties. But economic issues will also be discussed.
The meeting with Abdullah will take place days after the administration appeared to make the fight against ISIS its top priority in Syria, and putting less of an emphasis on the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad, whom the previous administration branded a war criminal and demanded his ouster. |
A Taiwanese LGBT book publisher has come out against the Hong Kong book fair for banning several of its titles for being “indecent,” despite depicting no nudity or violence.
The book fair has strict regulations against selling any materials that fall under the Class II (indecent) distinction defined in the Control of Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance. According to the rules, books or articles can be labeled Class II if they include “violence, depravity [or] repulsiveness.” If an author or publisher knows their work would fall under the Class II label, they’re required to adhere a warning sticker to the front cover and keep the work in a plastic seal.
Despite complying with these requirements, Taiwan’s G Books claimed that nine of its 15 titles set up at the Taiwan Indie Publishers Alliance stall had been removed from the fair by organizers this week, including A Gentleman’s Wedding, Gay Soldier’s Diary and Crying Girls.
“We’ve never been faced with this kind of order in previous exhibitions,” wrote the publisher on Facebook. “We felt extremely stunned.”
“An annual cultural publishing fair in the ’Pearl of the Orient’… does not permit diversity of speech,” the post continued. “Publishers cannot reach their readers in a proud way, without twisting or disguising themselves.”
A G Books spokesperson explained more to the Hong Kong Free Press: “The Book Fair suddenly gave its order on the third day of the fair. We managed to sell the books on the first two days. This is really unreasonable. Some say that a Christian stall nearby filed a complaint against us, but we can’t prove it.”
Organizers refused to comment on the specific situation, but did say that “exhibitors should submit articles concerned to the Obscene Articles Tribunal for classification if necessary.”
The highest court in Taiwan recently ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, setting the country on the course to become the first place in Asia to embrace marriage equality. Just across the South China Sea, the city of Hong Kong continues to stall discussions on marriage equality and refuses to write anti-discrimination protections into law. |
But shouldn’t that be the other way around?
Like Thomas Wyatt, who can’t quite let go, I can’t quite let go of that Wyatt poem about what she hath deserved. He says in it that love was not just a dream: “It was no dream, I lay broad waking.” The last two words are an obvious yet pleasantly unfamiliar double-synonym for wide awake.
But what’s so wide about it?
To see the link between alertness and vast side-to-side extent—and why we’re also said to be speedy asleep—the place to start is with awake. The “a-” is a weakened form of the preposition on or in, by the same verbal laziness that turned one into the article an, and then before consonants into a, pronounced “uh.” To go on board or on shore, to be in bed or on a slant, is to be aboard, ashore, abed, aslant, not to mention astern, abreast, ahead (originally nautical as well), afoot, aloof (on the luff side, to windward, steering clear), far afield, run aground. We don’t think of them as contractions of preposition + noun anymore, but many of our location and direction words have this form: afar, amid, atop, athwart, askew, awry, gone astray, and less obviously across, away, apart, around, aside, taken aback.
The same thing happened to time phrases. There’s a-nights and a-days, surviving in nowadays; in five dollars a day or twice a week, it looks like the “in” has been dropped from twice in a week, but actually it’s the article that disappeared. And sometimes these forms preserve old etymologies: aloft (“in the air”—German Luft), among (“in the crowd”—German Menge). Bonus points if you can spot the prepositional phrases in akin, anew, amiss, anon, aghast, agog.
Finally, “a-” meant in as in “in a state of” (asleep, awake, alive or “in life”—the f and v wavered, which is why we have the word lives). The second part of the “a-” word was always a noun, even where it seems not to be, such as in afloat or adrift (“in a drift,” “on float”: float was originally a noun for the state of floating, like a fleet). Since all these nouns also look like verbs, though, the pattern was falsely extended to any verb, which is why we can now be atremble, aquiver, aflutter, awash, abloom, ablaze, aflame, aglow.
Wake, too, was a noun, meaning “awakeness”—Wyatt uses the noun waking. (He didn’t lay broadly waking up: he lay awake, in awakeness, just as “every waking hour” does not mean every hour that wakes up.) Add a verb of motion to the “a-” noun forms with “-ing” and you get go a-begging, set the bells a-ringing, a-hunting we will go. Thoreau called Time “the stream I go a-fishing in” and mentions going a-strawberrying and a-huckleberrying in the woods, but he was just about the last person who could get away with it: the construction is too olde fashion’d now. (A-tweeting we will go? A-refinancing?)
The question remains: Why “wide” awake? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, wide awake is a relatively recent term, defined as “awake with the eyes wide open; fully awake,” and going back only to Shelley in 1818. That must be wrong. Wyatt’s “broad waking” has Shelley beat by three centuries. Wide also meant “extensive, inclusive, or broad in scope”—“wide fame” is in Milton—so wide awake means “deeply, fully in the waking state,” nothing to do with eyes open wide. The dictionary lists nothing under broad waking, but broad daylight, equally nonspatial, goes back to the fourteenth century, and far and wide, in the sense “affecting many things,” goes back to Beowulf. The lovely term far nights, with its obsolete genitive, meaning “late in the night,” goes back to Wyatt’s time, and far days even farther.
“Fast asleep” is easier to make sense of than “wide awake.” The original meaning of fast is “firmly fixed, immobile”—fastened with a fastener, held fast, color-fast, steadfast, a fast friend. As an adverb, fast meant doing something steadily, earnestly, tenaciously. We are firmly asleep far nights, fully awake far days. To “sleep fast” goes back to 1200; today we say “sleep tight.” The meaning “quick” or “speedy” for fast came later, apparently as an offshoot of “running fast,” i.e., “running hard.” Work hard, play hard; sleep fast, run fast. It seems that the thing a person had to do most tenaciously a thousand years ago was run away, and so fast turned into its opposite. To be fast asleep is to be soundly in sleep, sound asleep—hard and fast, safe and sound. “Steady asleep” and “quick awake” may seem to make more sense, but they just don’t sing with the music of English.
Damion Searls, the Daily’s language columnist, is a translator from German, French, Norwegian, and Dutch. |
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) at a press conference at the Knesset in Jerusalem, on May 6, 2015, after announcing the formation of a coalition government (AFP Photo/Gali Tibbon)
Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed an agreement Thursday giving a senior role to the far-right Jewish Home that firmly opposes a Palestinian state, hours after forging a new government.
Following six weeks of intensive negotiations, Netanyahu formed a lineup, just an hour before a Wednesday midnight deadline.
His rightwing, religious coalition marks a new shift to the right by giving increased prominence to Naftali Bennett's nationalist-religious Jewish Home party, which strongly backs settlement activity.
The move looks likely to complicate Israel's damaged relationship with the Palestinians and further strain ties with the international community.
US President Barack Obama, who has had a testy relationship with Netanyahu, said in a statement that he "looks forward to working" with the new government.
But with a majority of only 61 of the Knesset's 120 seats, the coalition looked set to face an uphill battle for survival, and commentators said Netanyahu would seek to broaden it out in the coming months.
Analysts said there was not likely to be any immediate change in Israel's policy towards the Palestinians, while Bennett would likely strengthen the settlement drive.
As the new government took shape, Israel gave the green light for construction of another 900 new homes in Ramat Shlomo, a settlement neighbourhood in east Jerusalem, the Peace Now watchdog said.
- Denounced by Palestinians -
The Palestinians denounced the new government, with chief negotiator Saeb Erakat saying it was clear it would not be working for peace and would seek to expand settlements.
This coalition "will be one of war which will be against peace and stability in our region," he said.
"This government will set its sights on killing and reinforcing settlement activities," he said of Israeli construction on land the Palestinians want for a future state.
Senior Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi said Jewish Home "represents the most extreme and racist elements within Israeli society".
The new government could "wreak havoc in the region," she warned.
But Jonathan Rynhold, a political analyst from the Begin-Sadat Centre, cautioned against jumping to conclusions, saying the cabinet lineup could change "very quickly" in the coming months.
"Assuming that the government starts off narrow and rightwing, the international position of Israel will obviously become more difficult," he said.
Under the terms of the agreement, Bennett and his party will take several key portfolios including justice and education, as well as control of the World Zionist Organisation's settlement division, which transfers money to settlements.
The party will have two seats in the security cabinet and the position of deputy defence minister, with responsibility for the Civil Administration that runs civilian affairs in most of the occupied West Bank.
Robbie Sabel, an expert at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, said the new government would not be popular with the international community but noted that Netanyahu would be careful to keep foreign policy matters out of Bennett's hands.
"Intentionally, Netanyahu is keeping the foreign ministry in his own hands for the meantime which means there will be no change in Israel's foreign policy," he said.
- Netanyahu 'bought time' -
Sabel said Washington would likely express its concerns privately while judging Netanyahu on the basis of his actions.
"In the past he has restrained the extreme rightwing, he has restrained settlement building."
Experts agreed that were Netanyahu to secure a deal to bring in Isaac Herzog's Zionist Union in the coming months, it would change the picture on the international front.
But Herzog said he would not be swayed.
"We won't be a fifth wheel and we do not intend to save Netanyahu from the hole he has dug for himself," he told reporters.
"If he thinks he can wave one portfolio or another (to convince me otherwise) he is making a bitter mistake."
With such a slim majority, Netanyahu was likely to be already seeking ways of expanding his fragile administration, which is to be sworn at the Knesset on Monday, commentators said.
"To a great extent, Netanyahu didn't succeed in forming a government, but has bought time to form a different government," one political observer told the left-leaning Haaretz daily. |
Features
Todo
Instructions
Unlock & install a recovery
Wipe data & cache partitions
Flash ZMoD.
Optional: Install the Google Apps addon package.
Just install the latest ROM zip. If you had Google Apps installed, you need to re-flash it as well.
Downloads
Bugs
XDA:DevDB Information
ZMoD, ROM for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus
Contributors
Version Information
ZMoD is an AOSP-based Android 5.1 ROM focused to bring the most popular features to a clean, AOSP-based ROM.A bit of history: when 5.1 released, I was impressed by the memory management fixes it brought us - it's a lot better than 5.0 was. Since I use my phone heavily, mostly for texting with multiple apps, it was clear that I couldn't go back to 5.0 anymore - however, there were no feature-filled 5.1 ROMs yet, so an idea popped into my mind: why not create one? This is how the first version of ZMoD born.- RRO theming support- screenshots: quick delete action- configurable wakeup on charger connect- configurable volume button wake- advanced reboot- show application's package name in the "App info" screen- statusbar clock and date customizations- option to hide USB debugging icon- clock and time clickable in statusbar- battery icon customizations- alarm clock: increasing volume option- alarm clock: flip and shake actions- materialized gallery, calendar, browser and sms (not fully done yet) app- material default wallpaper- swipe in AOSP keyboard- battery and notification light customizationsFirst time flashing ZMoD to your maguro (or coming from another ROM)?Updating from a previous build?Latest build: see the downloads section.Google Apps: [URL="http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Gapps[/URL] (CM12.1) or any other gapps package for 5.1[SIZE="5"][/SIZE]- thin purple line(s) on the edge of some recorded videos freshgiammi , Everyone else who helped me: AOSP, Hashcode, ...5.1.x LollipopLinux 3.0.xAOSPBeta2015-03-212016-02-12 |
The Courier has published an interview with director Colm McCarthy, talking to him about his current and upcoming projects, including the “Krypton” TV series set to air on Syfy next year.
Tell us more about the new origin story of Superman’s home planet you’re developing. How is the scope of that sinking in?
“It’s really big. There’a a lot of visual effects to think about. But it’s quite a lot of fun when you’re playing with a world that on the one hand is sort of familiar to people, because everyone has a relationship with Superman. Either with Man of Steel, the recent film that Goyer wrote, or with Donner’s Superman films of the 70s and 80s, which are the ones that I grew up with. So they have an idea and Krypton is very much a known name. But what Krypton is as a planet means very different things to different people. Our job with DC is to work with the representations in the comics first; they’re presented in a really diverse array of ways, which is exciting because it means that creatively the world-building was very much an open assignment.
What sort of story do you want it to tell?
“We’ve been thinking about every aspect of Kryptonian life. How did these people eat? What do they work as? How do they dress? What’s the environment of the city? I can’t say too much about it but I think it will be a really exciting and unique journey for people.”
“It’s a really corny Hollywood thing, but I remember hearing somebody say ‘your job as a storyteller is to take people somewhere they’ve never been before and show them something they already know.’ I think there’s an element of truth in that; people like to go and have an experience where there investigating a surprising, different world, yet the human experience resonates. I think that’s at the heart of storytelling.”
You’ve been scouting for locations and we’ve caught you in the middle of casting, what more can you tell us?
“Mostly, we’ve got giant sets and then there’s a lot of special effects work. The world will be created with photographic elements but it’s going to be a completely bespoke universe. Mind-alteringly different to anything people have seen before on telly. It’s a lot of fun; the pilot is double the budget of the film I just made, for 40 minutes of TV. It’s all just applying the same approach of: What do you want to say? What’s the world like? How do you make the thing feel real and also feel epic?
“Krypton” will be produced by Warner Horizon Television. The pilot is written by David Goyer (Man of Steel) with Ian Goldberg (Once Upon A Time, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles). Goyer will executive produce through his company Phantom Four with Damian Kindler (Sleepy Hollow), who will serve as showrunner. Colm McCarthy (Peaky Blinders) will direct the pilot.
Thanks to Dave Kerr for the lead on this interview.
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Liverpool have moved closer to completing their £30m deal for Sadio Mane, with the Southampton forward set to undergo his medical on Monday.
The Senegalese international had emerged as a major transfer target for Jurgen Klopp, who is prepared to make Mane one of the most expensive signings in the club’s history.
The 24-year-old will be on Merseyside for his medical, as well as negotiating personal terms, with a deal expected to be completed this week.
Klopp is a keen admirer of the Saints star, who scored 15 goals last season – including four against Liverpool – and has kept tabs on him since his Borussia Dortmund days.
His performance in Southampton’s 3-2 win over Liverpool in March, scoring two goals after coming on as a half time substitute, is thought to have impressed the German coach.
Read: The forgotten factors in Liverpool's 2016/17 pre-season preparations
The Reds were close to signing Mane themselves in the summer of 2014, but manager Brendan Rodgers denied the chance to sign him, paving the way for Mane to join Southampton in a £12m deal.
He would add yet more firepower to a strike force that already includes Daniel Sturridge, Divock Origi and Danny Ings.
Christian Benteke, however, remains likely to depart this summer.
Mane has scored 25 goals in 75 games for the South Coast club, and is set to become the fifth player to make the move from St Mary’s to Anfield in the last three years.
Southampton, still without a manager after Ronald Koeman’s departure to Everton, have already signed Nathan Redmond from Norwich in anticipation of Mane’s departure. |
What do I “feel”? Forgive the Star Trek references, but the characters I connected with most were Data and Spock. Especially Data. He was intrigued by the emotions felt by the biological humanoids. Spock could feel them, he just chose to suppress them.
Why would those characters resonate with me? A week or so ago I found this website. http://www.alexithymia.us/ I took the survey, and got “emotionally dumb” not the lower intelligence dumb, the not able to speak them dumb. It’s like I know the response I’m supposed to have in situations, but I don’t know how to properly share them with others.
I’m a parent and husband, and it has taken a while for my family to understand how I operate. I’m a horrible gift giver, and may not every call or send a card for a special occasion, but I think they know they’re on my mind.
I see what everyone around me is excited about, loves, and is interested in, but I fell like an outside observer… |
This page contains information on the HD Version of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for Wii U.
On November 12th, Nintendo announced during a Nintendo Direct event that The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD would be coming to the Wii U with high-definition graphics, and possible small changes much like the HD port of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.
Twilight Princess HD, is being developed by Tantalus Media for the Wii U, and has been confirmed to support Amiibo functionality in addition to its enhanced visuals. The game will be released in North America and Europe on March 4 2016, and in Japan on March 10 2016. A bundle containing the game, a Wolf Link Amiibo, and the game's soundtrack will be made available at launch.
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HD Version Differences
[ edit ]
Reduced Tears of Light Count
[ edit ]
In a Famitsu article[1] about Twilight Princess HD, it was noted that in a screenshot of the Twilit Bloat boss fight in Lake Hylia, Link's Vessel of Light - used to collect Tears of Light - had a reduced amount of slots in the vessel: 11, down from 15. Nintendo has not made any official comment as of yet, but this would go in line with The Wind Waker HD's addition of the fast sail to speed up slower parts of the game.
Ghost Lantern
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Seen in a Nintendo Minute video, Link is equipped with a different colored lantern, shown as purplish blue that differs from the traditional gray lantern with the yellow oil-filled interior. This has been confirmed to be a new lantern - the Ghost Lantern, which will glow when near a Poe enemy
Increased Rupee Count
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In another screen presented in the Famitsu article on Twilight Princess HD, a fully decked out Link can be seen inspecting his tree home. In the bottom right corner, it appears that his current rupee is sitting at 2,000, which is double what the best wallet could let you hold in previous versions after collecting bugs for Agatha. Another recent purported leak from a Famitsu points to the Wolf Link Amiibo - unlocking a new dungeon known as Trial of the Beast. Apparently if completed, Link will gain a bottomless wallet capable of holding 9,999 Rupees.
Better Controls and improved mobility
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In an interview, Director Eiji Aonuma confirmed that both the controls for Epona and swimming are now more responsive, and Link will have increased mobility when in the water.
In addition to this, Link move much faster when climbing and navigating ladders, vines, and other climbable walls - making him much more responsive and able to scale areas incredibly fast.
Hero Mode and Inverted Map
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When playing the game normally, Link will control as he did in the GameCube version (left-handed) and the map will be normal. However, when playing in Hero Mode, not only will Link take double damage and hearts stop dropping, Link and Hyrule will take on the Wii's version of inverted swapping, with a right-handed link, and all locations swapped to opposite sides.
Easy Transformation
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Revealed during a Nintendo Minute video, Link will no longer need to speak to Midna every time you wish to transform into Wolf Link and back. Instead, this can be done by simply tapping the Wii U Gamepad's touchscreen.
Chests Remain Open
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Also confirmed by Aonuma was the fact that while in previous versions a chest of rupees would reclose if Link's wallet was full, these chests will now remain open so as not to confuse players wondering if they've already investigated the area or now.
Amiibo Functionality
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Announced alongside the HD version of the game was a new Amiibo of Midna riding Wolf Link, to be used alongside other Legend of Zelda themed Amiibo. At this time it is unknown whether the effects can be used once a day or not. According to a promotional video from Nintendo, the following Legend of Zelda Amiibos will have several effects:
Link and Toon Link Amiibo: Replenish Arrows when tapped on the Gamepad.
Zelda and Sheik Amiibo: Replenish hearts when tapped on the Gamepad
Ganondorf Amiibo: Turns Link's heart blue - which causes Link to take double damage from enemies.
Wolf Link Amiibo: Unlocks the Cave of Shadows dungeon - which appears similar to the Cave of Ordeals in Gerudo Desert, only Link is confined to his wolf form. Upon completion the bottomless wallet is unlocked, and the amiibo is rumored to have additional function of replenshing the amount of hearts that Link survived the dungeon with.
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Bill Clinton Campaigns As Obama's No. 1 Surrogate
toggle caption Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
Former President Bill Clinton and President Obama used to have a famously rocky relationship. But the days when Clinton tried to help his wife, now secretary of state, defeat Obama in the 2008 primaries are ancient history.
Former Clinton strategist Carter Eskew says the ex-president is almost always an asset for Obama.
"Bill Clinton can do a lot of things for Barack Obama," Eskew says. "He can raise a lot of money. He has very good political instincts and good political ideas. And in an interesting way, Bill Clinton may be able to carry the positive narrative for Barack Obama better than Obama can."
As Obama tries to explain his economic plan to cut the deficit while investing in clean energy, education and infrastructure, he can look to the script Clinton wrote in the 1990s. And Clinton, as a former commander in chief, can help in other ways. He appeared in the first Obama re-election campaign ad — describing the risk Obama took when he ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
And the former president can skewer Republican challenger Mitt Romney. In this example, Clinton was speaking at a fiscal policy summit: "It's like Romney said, 'I'm running for the president of the student body of this extreme right-wing group, and the real argument was that I couldn't be their president because I wasn't right wing enough, so I had to get over there and pretend that I was.' "
Clinton's point was that it's hard to know who Romney really is.
But sometimes Obama's No. 1 surrogate messes up the talking points. Like the other day on CNN, when Clinton undercut the Obama campaign's attacks on Romney's record as a businessman and a governor.
"There's no question that, in terms of getting up, going to the office and basically performing the essential functions of the office, a man who's been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold," Clinton said.
It would be hard to keep the active and voluble former president off the political scene, and for better or worse, he has become the president's highest-profile advocate. But what's more surprising is that he has been given a role in Romney's stump speech.
In Des Moines, Iowa, recently, Romney reminded voters that almost a generation ago, Clinton announced that the era of "Big Government" was over.
"President Clinton was signaling to his own party that Democrats should no longer try to govern by proposing a new program for every problem," Romney said. "President Obama tucked away the Clinton doctrine in his large drawer of discarded ideas, along with transparency and bipartisanship."
After the laughter subsided, Romney went on, "It's enough to make you wonder if maybe it was a personal beef with the Clintons, but probably it runs much deeper than that."
Was Romney trying to revive the feud between the Obamas and the Clintons? That seems unlikely. Instead, says Republican strategist Keith Appell, Romney is trying to target Clinton fans — rural, white, working-class voters in swing states.
"The Romney campaign sees an opportunity to get those people in his column, and not only in states like West Virginia, which is probably going to go for Romney anyway, but people across the border in Ohio and in Pennsylvania," Appell says. "A lot of those folks are Hillary Clinton supporters and fans of Bill Clinton, and they're up for grabs."
Those voters, says Appell, remember that under Clinton, budgets got balanced and welfare was ended — the kinds of positive economic news they're not seeing under Obama.
But former Clinton adviser Paul Begala says that tactic could backfire on Romney.
"All he's doing is setting himself up for a fall," Begala says. "So he goes to, say, southern Ohio, critical swing area, pretty Republican area but the kind of place where President Clinton is very popular, even though it's a pretty Republican area, and he says things like that — well, then Bill Clinton can come in and he'll have the last word."
And the last word from Bill Clinton will be: Vote for Barack Obama. |
The Major League Soccer Players Union released updated salary information up to May 1 today. Among the raw data in that list lies a treasure trove of conclusions that can be drawn.
First, a few disclaimers:
This analysis is based on base salary information only , not total guaranteed money.
Not all players are in the document , for various reasons, and players such as the Sounders' Fredy Montero are listed, although they are out on loan.
The information isn't 100 percent up-to-date because players are constantly signing contract extensions, and the first MLS transfer window of the year doesn't close until tonight.
Finally, as the MLSPU lists on its site: "These figures include compensation from each player's contract with MLS. They do not include any compensation from any contracts with individual teams or their affiliates ." That would include bonuses and sponsorship deals.
Also, a note on Designated Players: Some of the guys in the document make over $350,000 but are not Designated Players — and vice versa. MLS roster rules are complicated to say the least, but in most cases, allocation money can be used to buy down how much the player counts against the salary cap, but transfer fees and other miscellaneous tidbits can count in the calculation.
Basic salary information
The MLSPU document included 557 players' salary information. Most of them are under contract with specific clubs, but two MLS pool goalkeepers and five released players were also included.
The average player will make $141,903.13 this year. Robbie Keane has overtaken Thierry Henry as the player with the highest base salary in the league ($4 million to Henry's $3.75 million). In an increase from last year, 62 players will make the minimum $35,125 (43 did last year).
That minimum number is up from $33,750 last year, signifying a 4 percent increase.
Taking Designated Players out of the equation, the average player will make $102,661.81 in 2012. Making the federal minimum wage, working 40 hours per week, it would take over 88 months (over seven years) to make that.
We can also look at the average salary over the years, which is currently trending downward. However, midseason Designated Player signings should boost the number higher. Keep in mind, though, that David Beckham and Rafael Marquez were two of the highest-paid players in the league last year, and they are no longer in MLS.
Pay by position
Forwards are still the highest-paid players, and goalkeepers are still the lowest paid — both by quite a margin. The same trends would likely hold true no matter which league in the world is sampled.
Making the money count
One of the more interesting tables we can make is a points-versus-salary breakdown.
Notably, Seattle has the third-highest salary in the league, but it is in next-to-last place in the Supporters' Shield race. The Portland Timbers are nearer the opposite end of that spectrum: tied for sixth in the league, but down at 13th in the salary standings.
Looking at the total salary numbers, the New York Red Bulls and Los Angeles Galaxy continue to run away with the lead. That's also no surprise, as they are in the two largest markets in the country.
However, Seattle fans can take some solace in the fact that their ownership group is trying to keep pace — while still being realistic. For comparison, Chivas USA's average salary is almost $15,000 lower than the second-lowest Colorado Rapids despite also being in the rich Los Angeles marketplace.
Conclusions
Your turn. Fill in the blank here. What does this all mean? Anything? Everything? Nothing?
Leave us a comment.
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OAKLAND — Immigrants riding BART, regardless of their legal status, will now be able to breathe a little easier.
The agency’s governing board on Thursday approved a “Safe Transit” policy that closely mirrors the spirit of sanctuary city policies in the Bay Area, including San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose, where police officers are directed not to expend resources enforcing federal immigration laws.
BART’s policy would also forbid employees, including its police officers, from questioning riders or other employees about their immigration status. The same is true for prospective vendors or new hires. And, it forbids BART employees from using someone’s immigration status to deny or threaten to deny benefits for employees or riders, or sharing information regarding a detainee’s custody status.
All of the provisions in the policy could be nullified if the state or federal government were to pass a law requiring such cooperation, or if BART was ordered to do so by a judge. Currently, it’s largely voluntary.
The board voted 8-1 to approve the policy, which was introduced earlier this year by directors Nicholas Josefowitz and Lateefah Simon. At the meeting, Simon emphasized the policy is primarily about improving safety on BART by focusing police officers’ attention on fighting crime, and employees’ efforts on operating the system, rather than enforcing federal immigration laws.
“It’s important as we move forward, and I don’t care who is president, to make sure the culture of this agency is that everyone who pays their ticket and gets on the train understands our responsibility is to get them there safely,” Simon said.
BART Director Debora Allen was the lone dissenter. She criticized what she described as inconsistencies in the policy and questioned whether it did anything to change what the agency already does. Currently, BART police are not allowed to stop patrons solely to determine their immigration status, but the officers’ manual does direct them to “assist in the enforcement of federal immigration laws.” In practice however, officers rarely, if ever, interact with federal immigration agents, Deputy Police Chief Jeff Jennings said at a February meeting.
“The resolution doesn’t really accomplish that much,” Allen said.
Nearly three dozen people spoke at the meeting, all but two of them supporting the proposal. Many said they are fearful riding BART as an undocumented immigrant, especially since what they described as racist and xenophobic language coming from President Donald Trump and other public officials.
In the wake of Trump’s inauguration and some of his public statements and executive orders surrounding immigration, many people are afraid, said Saira Hussain, a staff attorney with the Asian Law Caucus.
“Since the election, my organization has been out in the community trying to quell the fear and panic and equip communities with information about their rights,” she said. “Families are afraid to send their kids to school or even leave their homes. The fear is palpable in our immigrant communities.” |
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