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Marco Verratti will have to leave PSG to win titles, claims his agent. (Getty Images)
Chelsea have been handed a major boost in their pursuit of Marco Verratti after the midfielder’s agent admitted that the Italy international will have to leave Paris Saint-Germain in order to win titles.
The 24-year-old is in his fifth season with PSG and has won four Ligue 1 titles during his time in France.
But PSG still look some way short of challenging the top clubs in the Champions League after their 6-1 capitulation at the hands of Barcelona at Camp Nou two weeks ago.
Chelsea are understood to be keen on a move for Verratti, while Barcelona met with the midfielder to discuss a move last summer, according to reports in Spain.
‘The situation is extremely complicated, he’s tied to a very important contract until 2021,’ the midfielder’s agent, Donato Di Campli, told Gazzetta dello Sport.
Verratti’s agent says the player is unlikely to return to Italy. (Getty Images)
Verratti is wanted by Chelsea and Barcelona. (Getty Images)
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‘He wants to win and with PSG as they are, he cannot win.
“He’s been in Paris for five years and now has to make a decision: [does he want] to earn a lot without winning or earn and become a champion?
‘It’s not a question of money – anyone who buys Verratti would be paying a lot. Because at least one thing for sure – he leaves PSG, it will be for a top European club.’
Asked if there are Italian clubs interested in the midfielder, Di Campli replied: ‘There are, but I somehow doubt that this will be his final destination.’
MORE: Real Madrid keen on transfer of Chelsea wing-back Marcos Alonso
MORE: Diego Costa refuses to rule out leaving Chelsea for China this summer |
[photo via Bork Lord‘s twitter feed]
Yo La Tengo ended their most recent tour last Saturday at the shabby-chic Landmark Loew’s Jersey Theatre, a cavernous space made intimate by the positive vibes headed from the stage and to it. The usual contingent of longtime fans were out in force for this weekend show, and the band rewarded us with a setlist that reflected their Fade-era habit of dividing the show into acoustic and electric portions. As this tour wasn’t, strictly speaking, to promote last year’s Stuff Like That There, the band jumped around their catalog a good bit more, with the electric set a particularly sweet offering for the more improvisational-minded among us. The extended outro jam on “Before We Run” that led into the slow version of “Big Day Coming” was a strong moment there, as was the segue of “Sudden Organ,” “Autumn Sweater,” “Decora,” and “Ohm” that made up the bulk of the set. But that’s not to slight the acoustic set, either, where the acoustic treatment of “Deeper Into Movies” was particularly affecting, along with new favorites like “Rickety.” By the time the encore came around there were the usual calls for hyper-obscure covers (which the band has served up in abundance on multiple WFMU marathons), most of which were ignored, though we did get Wire’s “Too Late.” The band sent us off, as they often like to do, on a quiet note, with the noisy Electr-O-Pura classic “Tom Courtenay” rendered as a solemn coda with Georgia leading the way on vocals. Now it’s time for the band to enjoy a little downtime and recharge the batteries, as they await a handful of summer festival dates. Meanwhile, we’ll be excited for what they come up with next.
I recorded this set with a soundboard feed from Yo La Tengo engineer Mark Luecke, together with Schoeps MK41V microphones. Given the challenges of the venue acoustics, this relies heavily on Mark’s soundboard feed. The sound quality is, overall, excellent. Enjoy!
Download the complete set: [FLAC/ALAC/MP3]
Stream the complete set:
Yo La Tengo
2016-04-09
Landmark Loews Jersey Theatre
Jersey City, NJ USA
Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack
Soundboard (engineer: Mark Luecke) + Schoeps MK41V (at SBD, PAS)>KC5>CMC6>>Zoom F8>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, re-image SBD, adjust levels, mix down, compression, limiter, fades)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects, image)>Audacity 2.0.3 (track, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )
Tracks [Total Time 2:13:34]
Set One – Acoustic
01 My Heart’s Not In It [Darlene McCrea]
02 Periodically Double or Triple
03 Rickety
04 Automatic Doom [Special Pillow]
05 Did I Tell You
06 Black Flowers
07 Somebody’s In Love
08 I’ll Be Around
09 Deeper Into Movies
10 I Feel Like Going Home
Set Two – Electric
11 [intro jam]
12 Sugarcube
13 Let’s Save Tony Orlando’s House>
14 Shaker
15 Before We Run>
16 Big Day Coming
17 Sudden Organ>
18 Autumn Sweater>
19 Decora>
20 Ohm
21 Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind
22 [encore break]
23 Drug Test
24 Too Late [Wire]
25 Tom Courtenay (acoustic)
If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Yo La Tengo, visit their website, and buy Stuff Like That There and their many other fine releases from Matador Records. |
February 25, 2010: Lawmakers from both parties meet with President Obama at the Blair House to discuss health care reform. The meeting lasts for seven hours. Check out TPM’s full coverage of the summit.
Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson
Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius listen to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy
House Minority Leader John Boehner enters the room. Boehner and other Republicans said ahead of the meeting that the only compromise they would accept would be to scrap the current bills and start over.
Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy
Obama and Vice President Biden listen. The White House made clear before the summit that Democrats would not throw out the bills that have already passed.
Newscom/Shawn Thew
Boehner and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) chat.
Newscom/Shawn Thew
The Democratic leadership: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Newscom/Shawn Thew
Remember the Gang of Six? Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Mike Enzi (R-WY) at the summit. The other Republican senator in the “gang,” Olympia Snowe, declined an invitation from the White House.
Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
Newscom/Shawn Thew
Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Chris Dodd (D-CT) confer. Schumer is the highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate to sign a letter urging leadership to pass a public option via reconciliation.
Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy
Obama speaks with Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) after the summit, which went more than an hour over time. Watch Obama’s closing remarks.
Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
A small group of demonstrators protests outside the Blair House during the summit.
Christina Bellantoni/TPM |
The long-simmering debate in this country over gun rights took a dramatic turn Thursday when the National Rifle Association unexpectedly joined an effort to restrict a device used to accelerate gunfire in the Las Vegas massacre.
The NRA's announcement gave political cover to a growing number of Republicans who have indicated a willingness to consider regulating "bump stocks," devices that allow a legal semiautomatic rifle to mimic the rapid discharge of a fully automatic weapon. Less clear is whether the move signals an opening for further action on an issue that has divided the nation and produced virtually no new restrictions in recent years despite a steady stream of mass shootings.
"The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations," read a statement issued by the powerful organization Thursday.
Federal law enforcement officials have said that Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock fired weapons outfitted with bump stocks Sunday, leaving 58 dead and hundreds injured in a matter of minutes. Experts have said that audio of the attack makes clear that the shooter unleashed a torrent of bullets faster than he could have fired without adapting his rifles.
As the country's largest gun rights group, the NRA exerts considerable influence among conservative voters who support the organization — and on the GOP's approach to gun policy. Many Republicans have operated under the fear that opposing NRA positions could lead to primary challenges. But public opinion is also on the minds of Republicans as they head into a midterm election year that is expected to be contentious. Regulating bump stocks could help the party combat perceptions that it has done nothing to address the mass shootings.
The sheer carnage of Sunday's attack is fueling lawmakers' interest in the issue, said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). "Look at Las Vegas. That's how I account for it," McCain told reporters. "Americans are horrified by it. They're horrified, and they should be."
Still, even after the group's announcement Thursday, only a handful of Republicans had stepped forward to consider examining bump stocks.
[Gunman used modified weapons, tiny cameras to carry out attack]
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) all said Thursday that lawmakers will consider further restrictions on the devices. More than a dozen Senate Republicans said they were open to the possibility. A few of Congress's most conservative lawmakers — as well as some of its most avid supporters of gun rights — said the restrictions were worth consideration.
"I didn't know what a bump stock was until this week," Ryan said at a news conference in Chestertown, Md. "A lot of us are coming up to speed. . . . Having said that, fully automatic weapons have been outlawed for many, many years. This seems to be a way of going around that, so obviously we need to look how we can tighten up the compliance with this law so that fully automatic weapons are banned."
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders welcomed the NRA's position and said President Trump wants to be part of a "conversation" about cracking down on bump stocks. "We're open to having that conversation," Sanders said during Thursday's White House press briefing. "We think we should have that conversation, and we want to be part of it moving forward."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) stuck out as one of the only members of Republican congressional leadership who had not indicated he was on board. He told reporters Tuesday that it is "completely inappropriate to politicize an event like this" and declined to answer further questions on the subject.
The NRA's position Thursday reflected an about-face on a long-standing position of opposing most gun restrictions, a position founded on the philosophy of the "slippery slope" — that allowing such legislation would beget still more, until law-abiding gun owners were deprived of their Second Amendment right to bear arms.
On Thursday, the NRA blamed the Obama administration for authorizing the sale of bump stocks in 2010, based in part on the manufacturer's claim that the device was intended to assist people with "limited mobility" in their hands. At the time, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives concluded that the bump stock "has no automatically functioning mechanical parts or springs and performs no automatic mechanical function when installed," according to a letter from the bureau that the manufacturer, Slide Fire Solutions, posted to its website. "Accordingly, we find that the 'bump-stock' is a firearm part and is not regulated as a firearm under Gun Control Act or the National Firearms Act."
In the joint statement from the NRA's executive vice president and chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, and Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, the group called on ATF to again review "whether these devices comply with federal law."
[The forgotten NRA leader who despised the ‘promiscuous toting of guns’]
Advocates for greater regulations on guns questioned the sincerity of the NRA and Republican leaders, given their unwillingness to support more-substantial restrictions such as an assault-weapon ban.
"The gun lobby has for years boosted devices that effectively convert rifles into machine guns and boasted that you can get away with guns that mimic fully automatic fire," said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun-control advocacy group founded by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. "So it's hardly a surprise that they're calling for a review of bump stocks by a friendly regulatory agency rather than legislation from Congress."
The organization also does not have long-standing connections to the companies that make bump stocks, which do not have much history of lobbying. A recent search of contributions to federal political campaigns, for instance, turned up none from Slide Fire.
And few lawmakers knew what a bump stock was before this week. Talk of the device has taken over Capitol Hill since the shooting, the worst in modern American history. At least a dozen of the 23 firearms recovered from Paddock's hotel room were modified to include the accessories, which can be purchased online for a few hundred dollars.
Some lawmakers turned to YouTube to watch videos showing how the devices work.
"That's what I did yesterday," said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). "I don't think most people in the Senate were familiar with this."
Support for a possible ban has started to coalesce around several pieces of legislation. One measure, unveiled Wednesday by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), would ban the sale, transfer and manufacture of bump stocks, trigger cranks and other accessories that can accelerate a semiautomatic rifle's rate of fire.
[Will Congress ban bump stocks, a gun accessory used in the Las Vegas attack?]
Feinstein's bill had support from 38 Democrats as of Thursday morning, including Sens. Bill Nelson (Fla.) and Claire McCaskill (Mo.), who both face uphill fights for reelection next year in conservative states. "The notion that we're allowing an add-on that allows people to convert a semiautomatic weapon to an automatic weapon — we've got to address that," McCaskill said.
In the House, a bill from Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) would focus on bump stocks but leave out restrictions on other gun accessories. Curbelo said he had been "flooded" with requests from Republicans who want to sign on to the measure, which he planned to introduce Friday. "I think we are on the verge of a breakthrough where when it comes to sensible gun policy," said Curbelo, a moderate Republican who represents a Miami-area district.
Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.) introduced legislation similar to Feinstein's in the House. It had attracted 140 sponsors as of Wednesday night.
[The NRA’s game-changing decision to disarm on bump stocks]
Democrats' electoral map might complicate the debate. Ten Democratic senators, including McCaskill, face reelection bids in mostly rural states that Trump easily won in the 2016 election.
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), another such Democrat, said in a statement that she did not know much about bump stocks, "and I first want to learn more about them."
Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) said that Feinstein's idea "sounds sensible and reasonable to me," but he planned to consult hunters in his state before taking a position.
Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) issued a statement: "This is a critical and timely issue. I am very concerned about bump stocks, and I am closely reviewing recently proposed legislation."
In a sign of the far-reaching interest in the issue, even Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), an ardent conservative, suggested he is open to supporting the bill. "Not yet," he said. "I think I probably will eventually."
[Frantic switchboard calls, geometry of fire led police to killer]
On Thursday, a pair of lawmakers began an effort that could preempt legislation on bump stocks. Two House Republicans with military backgrounds, Reps. Mike Gallagher (Wis.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), were gathering signatures for a bipartisan letter asking ATF to revisit its 2010 administrative determination that bump stocks are legal. A group of Democrats made the same request in their own letter to ATF.
Former ATF assistant director Michael Bouchard said in an interview that bump stocks serve "no purpose other than someone to have it and say, 'This is cool.' "
"It serves no purpose for anything," said Bouchard, who ran the agency's regulatory and criminal field operations. "Not for sporting, not for target practice, not for hunting."
David Chipman, a former longtime ATF official who now works as a senior adviser to the gun-control group Americans for Responsible Solutions, said firearm technology has "outpaced the law."
"Our legislators move at a crawl, and our technology is moving at warp speed," he said.
Aaron Davis, Sean Sullivan, Sari Horwitz and Paul Kane contributed to this report.
Read more at PowerPost |
Getty Images
The Bears offense took a little while to get going against the Colts on Sunday, but they really took off once everything clicked into gear.
Quarterback Jay Cutler threw for 333 yards and two touchdowns while running backs Matt Forte and Michael Bush combined for three more scores in a 41-21 victory. That led to a lot of cheering at Soldier Field, some of which went on at the wrong time as far as Cutler was concerned. When the Bears first made a trip into the red zone, the crowd was making so much noise that it was hard for the offense to communicate. Cutler reached out to the fans for help.
“Please, please, please let’s tone it down a little bit when we’re down in the 20 you’re more than welcome to yell and scream and do whatever you want to do after we score, but please, let’s go ahead and quiet the stadium down and save it for after we score. Thank you. That’s my PSA,” Cutler said, via CBS Chicago.
Cutler did look frustrated on the field when the crowd didn’t respond to the universal “quiet down” signal he made with his arms and forced the team to call a timeout. You’d like to avoid such things, although it’s entirely possible that it will keep happening if the Bears keep executing on offense the way they did on Sunday.
Should that come to pass, go ahead and file it under good problems to have. |
J.J. Abrams Wants You to Host The First Screening Of Star Wars: Episode VII By Sean O'Connell Random Article Blend
J.J. Abrams is at it again. The director has posted yet another cool video from the set of Star Wars: Episode VII, promoting the exclusive fan-driven contest that is being sponsored by "Force for Change" while also revealing some amazing practical props AND offering an incredible offer for die-hard Star Wars fans. Watch the clip above, and we’ll break it all down for you.
As was previously promised, Star Wars fans who enter the online contest have a chance to travel to London to visit the set of Star Wars: Episode VII and be in the movie. Which is awesome. But J.J. Abrams just sweetened the pot. In the Star Wars: Episode VII "before it hits theaters." Abrams said, "Invite 20 of your closest friends and family."
Then an X-Wing pilot moved him out of the way and climbed into his spacecraft. I kid you not.
Get a closer look at the new type of X-Wing revealed in the video by
What incredible opportunities for gung-ho Star Wars fanatics. The chance to visit the set is a once-in-a-lifetime offer. But then turning around and telling a fan that they will be one of the first people on the planet to see Star Wars: Episode VII in their home town with 20 close friends and family? Man, Abrams really is doing this right.
The use of the practical effects in these videos serves a second purpose, though. It says to the fans watching at home, "See? We are paying attention. We are forgoing the digital effects. We’re bringing this world to life." You remember the puppet who meandered through Abrams’ first video, right?
And, on top of it all, this contest supports a great cause. What are you waiting for? Register now! Star Wars: Episode VII is moving to meet a December 2015 release date. The plot might involve J.J. Abrams is at it again. The director has posted yet another cool video from the set of, promoting the exclusive fan-driven contest that is being sponsored by "Force for Change" while also revealing some amazing practical props AND offering an incredible offer for die-hardfans. Watch the clip above, and we’ll break it all down for you.As was previously promised,fans who enter the online contest have a chance to travel to London to visit the set ofand be in the movie. Which is awesome. But J.J. Abrams just sweetened the pot. In the Youtube video , he says those who sign up ALSO are eligible to host a private screening of"before it hits theaters." Abrams said, "Invite 20 of your closest friends and family."Then an X-Wing pilot moved him out of the way and climbed into his spacecraft. I kid you not.Get a closer look at the new type of X-Wing revealed in the video by going here What incredible opportunities for gung-hofanatics. The chance to visit the set is a once-in-a-lifetime offer. But then turning around and telling a fan that they will be one of the first people on the planet to seein their home town with 20 close friends and family? Man, Abrams really is doing this right.The use of the practical effects in these videos serves a second purpose, though. It says to the fans watching at home, "See? We are paying attention. We are forgoing the digital effects. We’re bringing this world to life." You remember the puppet who meandered through Abrams’ first video, right?And, on top of it all, this contest supports a great cause. What are you waiting for? Register now!is moving to meet a December 2015 release date. The plot might involve this (SPOILERS). And you might be on the set, watching Harrison Ford on crutches and John Boyega, wielding a bad-ass lightsaber. Cool enough for you? Blended From Around The Web Facebook
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Anonymous source says Thomas Nilsen, who had extensively covered oil drilling in the Arctic, was sacked at the behest of the Russian intelligence
A Norwegian Arctic newspaper editor who has extensively covered oil drilling in the region was sacked at the behest of the Russian intelligence service, according to Norway’s public service broadcaster.
Thomas Nilsen told the Guardian he had no reason to disbelieve the report from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), and that it would be awful if it were true that the FSB, Russia’s security agency, was involved.
In what could develop into a scandal in the European Arctic, Nilsen was last week controversially fired as editor of the Barents Observer for having “acted disloyally” to the newspaper’s owners.
The title is owned by Norwegian Barents Secretariat (NBS), a local government body that promotes good relations with Russia in a region where the two nations cooperate and compete over fishing, oil and military strategy.
Remaining Observer staff, who publish the cross-border news service in English and Russian, initially lamented what appeared to be Norwegian government censorship. But the affair took a fresh twist on Saturday when the NRK quoted an anonymous government official who said the FSB had asked Norway’s government to silence the Observer.
“I don’t know what is behind this source. But I know the journalist [Tormod Strand] that has written it and he is one of the best journalists in Norway and the Norwegian broadcaster is not making up such stories, no way,” Nilsen said.
“The thought of any involvement by the Russian intelligence service into a Norwegian-based publication is quite awful ... That is, to my mind, a very dramatic situation.”
The Norwegian Foreign Ministry did not rule out the possibility that the report was true. A spokesman said the government had “no information supporting the anonymous allegation”. The Russian embassy in Norway told NRK it denied the accusation of meddling. The head of the NBS, who signed the letter firing Nilsen, said he had never been contacted by Russian authorities regarding the Barents Observer.
If the FSB were shown to have intervened for his sacking, it would not be the first time the Russian government had attacked Nilsen’s reporting work. In 2014 Mikhail Noskov, the Russian consul-general based in the Observer’s home town of Kirkenes, made a speech in which strongly criticised Nilsen’s writing and warned it may damage bilateral relations.
“Barents Observer is a mouthpiece for the Barents Secretariat, and is therefore in a way a vote for the official Norway. Then you should not distort facts and mention Vladimir Putin in such terms as you do,” said Noskov. He did not respond to questions from the Guardian about the FSB’s involvement in Nilsen’s sacking.
Nilsen said he had long been fighting the Barents Secretariat for “total independence between our owners and us as a newsdesk”. He added that Noskov had visited the Barents Observer offices on several occasions to complain in person about their reporting.
Frederic Hauge, president of the Bellona Foundation, an environment and human rights organisation with offices in Norway and Russia, said the alleged involvement of the Russian intelligence service was an escalation of what was already a serious matter of press freedom.
“What we are seeing here is at the best clumsy, maybe stupid. But I fear its also to silence voices. And that’s really ugly,” he said. “[In Nilsen] we are losing an important voice form the north. The Barents Observer has been a very reliable, neutral source of information and that has probably provoked someone.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Arctic oil rig Prirazlomnaya in the Barents Sea,owned by Russian energy giant Gazprom. Photograph: Dmitry Korotayev/Kommersant/Getty Images
He said Nilsen’s reliable, fact-based reporting on the oil industry was likely to have made him a target.
“Anyone who doesn’t sing hallelujah for the oil industry in Norway is a kind of outlaw,” he said. “[State oil company Statoil] are the biggest threat to democracy in Norway, because they are so enormous. This is a nice little selfish country of petroholics.”
Statoil and Russian state oil company Rosneft have plans to cooperatively explore for oil offshore in the Arctic - however progress has been stalled due to European Union sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Maintaining good relations with Russia is considered vital to Norwegian interests.
Russia reportedly houses a significant nuclear arsenal close to the Norwegian border and the two countries work together to store nuclear waste in the far north. The Norwegian government mantra for the Arctic, said Nilsen, was “high north, low tension”.
Nilsen said he was working with the Norwegian journalists union to build a case for reinstatement. “The fight is not over yet,” he said.
Note: The article has been amended to include a response from the head of the NBS. |
Despite a ban on advertising short-term rentals that comes with heavy punishments for anyone who tries, New York City had more Airbnb rentals than any other location in the world on New Year's Eve.
The San Francisco-based short term rental service told the New York Daily News that there were more than 55,000 rentals in the city on the final night of 2016, up from about 47,000 on last New Year's Eve. There were more Airbnb rentals in New York City than anywhere else on the globe as 2016 became 2017.
With perhaps the most famous New Year's Eve celebration in the entire world, it's no surprise that people flocked to the Big Apple on December 31, but the number of people using Airbnb in defiance of the city's ban should make officials question that policy and will likely upset hotel executive who pushed for the ban in order to limit competition.
The real heroes, though, are the residents of the city who flouted a silly law and risked fines of up to $7,500 for doing so. New York officials have promised to use the Airbnb ban to crack down on what they call "illegal hotels"—that is, locations used exclusively for short-term rentals year-round—rather than going after residents who rented-out their apartments or homes for the holiday weekend.
The only beneficiaries of New York's ban on Airbnb rentals are the city's hotels—which, naturally, were the driving force behind the passage of the ban in the first place. That's why hotel executives were toasting the ban after it passed.
In reality, though, the ban helps prop-up one of the worst hotels in America by giving tourists fewer, better options.
As New Year's Eve shows, visitors to The Big Apple are looking for other options and residents of the city are willing to freely exchange their space for money. Aside from protecting users against fraud and violance, there's little reason for the government to be involved in those transactions.
The lesson that city officials should take from all this is that Airbnb (and other short term rental services like VRBO and Home Away) can't be legislated out of existence. Visitors to New York, or any other city, have more lodging options than ever before—that's a good thing—and the marketplace is only going to get more diverse in the future.
Instead of fighting that tide, city planners should look for ways to accommodate new forms of accommodations. |
The link between math and architecture goes back to ancient times, when the two disciplines were virtually indistinguishable. Pyramids and temples were some of the earliest examples of mathematical principles at work. Today, math continues to feature prominently in building design. We’re not just talking about mere measurements — though elements like that are integral to architecture. Thanks to modern technology, architects can explore a variety of exciting design options based on complex mathematical languages, allowing them to build groundbreaking forms. Take a look at several structures past the break that were modeled after mathematics. Even if your idea of math is typing juvenile, upside-down messages in a calculator, or asking Siri to figure it out for you, we promise you’ll find something to be wowed by here.
Mobius Strip Temple
You probably made a Mobius Strip in grade school math class, so you should remember that the geometric form is unique in that there is no orientation. A similar twisty shape is applied to the design of Buddhist buildings. The temple is a mound-like shape known as a stupa — similar to a pagoda — and contains a central spire where Buddhists congregate. One architect wanted to modernize it for a soon-to-be built temple in China, and based the updated design on the Mobius Strip — which also happens to symbolize reincarnation. |
Hi there, ChaosOS again. I'm back with a more informative than analytical article. Today's topic is Scaling, which is how the numbers in Heroes of the Storm grow over the duration of a game. Part I will focus on how Heroes scale, while Part II (coming next week) will cover Minions, Monsters, Mercenaries, and Map Objectives.
Today's spreadsheet can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1igyk9SQHkA4JkjQPyV63ZNmP3leROK_ce_85CsCJGG8/edit?usp=sharing
Credit for assistance with this article goes to reddit users Ahli, DizzyMongoose, and greythepirate
History and Background
The current scaling system comes from the big “Scaling Patch” that came with Cho’Gall. These changes were talked about during the Blizzcon 2015 State of the Game Panel (Could not find an official VoD for this strangely).
(Almost) Every other game that has a leveling system uses a linear progression of statistics with each level. This is to say that base stats can be represented in y=mx+b format, or (Stat) = (Scaling) * (Level) + (Base). I’ll use a fighter in 5th edition D&D as my example here. A level 1 fighter (with 10 con) has 10 HP, and gains 6 per level after 1st. So a 2nd level fighter with 16 HP is 60% more durable than a 1st level fighter, while a 19th level fighter with 118 HP is only 5.36% more durable than an 18th level fighter with 112 HP. This means early level ups feel significantly more powerful than later ones, barring some compensatory measure such as major abilities unlocking at each of those later levels. (Side note: I hypothesize this contributes to the preference towards lower level play that D&D and many other RPGs exhibit, because those early level gains have a greater feeling of significance.)
Heroes of the Storm breaks this mold by using exponential scaling, (Stat) = (Base) * (1+Scaling)^(Level). This makes the % increase on the previous level completely flat (standardized to 4%, the exceptions to which we will investigate later in the article). This change also has the benefit of stabilizing ratios between damage and health. If an ability scales at the same rate as a hero’s health pool, it will always do the same percentage of their hit points. This normalizes the feeling of various character matchups, as you can count on attacks to retain the same effectiveness as a game goes on.
As explained in the 2015 State of the Game panel, the primary benefit was addressing early level leads having a disproportionate impact on game outcome. The level 4 vs. level 3 fight not only was accompanied by a talent advantage but also a potential 20% stat advantage in both health and damage. Now the difference in each is only 4%, making early fights much more even and comebacks more possible.
Deviations from 4%
The standard scaling in Heroes of the Storm is 4% per level, but the following numbers scale at some other percentage
Cho
Attack damage: 4.5%
HP: 4.5%
Hammer of Twilight (Active): 4.5%
Gall
Shadowflame: 5%
Dread Orb:
Twisting Nether: 5%
Likely reasoning : Cho’gall has high scaling because the downside of a single body becomes more relevant as counterpick talents become available
Falstad
Hinterland Blast: 4.75%
Likely reasoning : Intended to promote flashy late game plays and clips of teams getting deleted by Hinterland Blast
Greymane
HP: 4.5%
Reasoning (Dev confirmed): Greymane’s hp scaling is to help him “survive team fights later in the game” (without increasing his strong early game).
Gul'Dan
Fel Flame: 4.5%
Corruption: 4.5%
Likely reasoning : Gul’dans range becomes more of a liability as the game goes on, this helps keep him relevant
Kael'thas
Pyroblast: 5%
Likely reasoning : Similar to Hinterland Blast, Pyroblast has high scaling to promote flashy late game “Did you SEE how much damage that Pyroblast did?!?”
Li Ming
Magic Missiles: 3%
Arcane Orb: 3%
Calamity: 3%
Disintegrate: 5%
Wave of Force: 5%
Likely reasoning : Shifts her power budget into her ultimates late game? Also, Li Ming’s talents are major damage upgrades, so lower scaling gives more power budget to her talents, increasing the distinction between builds. Overall seems more targeted at the “feel” of the character than a specific balance motive.
Lunara
Nature's Toxin: 5%
Likely reasoning : DoTs like Nature’s Toxin are inherently stronger in the early laning phase when poking with basic attacks is much less risky compared to the late game.
Murky
Pufferfish HP: 5.5%
Likely reasoning : This is an attempt to allow Pufferfish to survive late game teamfights without being impossible to kill in lane.
Probius
Pylon HP: 5%
Disruption Pulse: 5%
Warp Rift Detonation: 5%
Likely reasoning : Probius’ kit is inherently stronger in the laning phase than in late-game teamfights, so this helps even out his power curve.
Sgt. Hammer
Blunt Force Gun: 3%
Likely reasoning : Orbital BFG is such a large upgrade to the ability that a lower scaling (but higher base) helps even out its power curve
Tracer
Pulse Bomb: 5.5%
Likely reasoning : Pulse bomb is an ultimate ability available from level 1, so a low base and high scaling helps keep it reasonable early while still feeling like an ultimate later in the game.
Varian
HP: 3%
Attack damage: 3.5%
Heroic Strike: 3.5%
Likely reasoning : Varian’s level 10 is such a large power spike and provides so much additional stats that high base and low scaling helps keep him relevant early game while still affording power budget to level 10.
Zagara
Creep Tumor HP: 3%
Hydralisk HP: 3.5%
Infested Drop Impact Damage: 3%
Infested Drop Roachling Damage: 3%
Infested Drop Roachling HP: 3%
Nydus HP: 3%
Likely reasoning : Zagara has been designated as a lane bully and as such has very high base stats but low scaling. This accentuates her kits natural power curve, unlike similar heroes (such as Probius) whose scaling is intended to smooth out their power curve
Quantifying the difference in scaling
TL;DR Each half percent change in scaling from 4% is ~10% gain/loss at level 20
Trying to understand the impact of what deviations from 4% scaling means can be a bit tricky, so I’ve provided some tables to help.
Increase relative to base stats
Level 3% 3.5% 4% 4.5% 5% 5.5% 5 15.9% 18.8% 21.7% 24.6% 27.6% 30.7% 10 41.1% 41.1% 48.0% 55.3% 62.9% 70.8% 15 55.8% 67.5% 80.1% 93.5% 107.9% 123.2% 20 80.6% 99% 119.1% 141.2% 165.3% 191.8%
Difference from 4% scaling
Level 3% 3.5% 4% 4.5% 5% 5.5% 5 -4.72% -2.38% 0.00% 2.43% 4.90% 7.42% 10 -9.21% -4.71% 0.00% 4.91% 10.04% 15.40% 15 -13.49% -6.97% 0.00% 7.46% 15.44% 23.96% 20 -17.57% -9.19% 0.00% 10.07% 21.09% 33.16%
Things that don’t scale
There are some numbers in HOTS that don’t scale. The general rule is that quest talent rewards do not scale, while non-quest damage and healing bonuses do. Anything that provides a % change acts as another multiplier on the end of the scaling equation. Furthermore, talents that modifies numbers that are not health or damage related do not scale (Eg mana talents do not scale unless they provide % mana return). Here is the list of talents that provide a damage or healing bonus and do not scale with levels.
Seasoned Marksmen (And its variants)
Regeneration Master (And its variants)
Alarak’s Chaos Reigns
Arthas’ Eternal Hunger
Auriel’s Increasing Clarity, Repeated Offense, Reservoir of Hope
Azmodan’s Taste for Blood and Sieging Wrath
Butcher’s Meat quest passive
Cassia’s Thunderstroke and Plate of the Whale
Chen’s Keg Toss
Gall’s Bombs Away
Chromie’s Compounding Aether, Deep Breathing
ETC’s Prog Rock bonus healing on E (The AOE healing quest reward does scale)
Falstad’s Gathering Power
Genji’s Shuriken Mastery
Greymane’s Incendiary Elixir
Kaelthas’ Convection
Malfurion’s Vengeful Roots (Treant HP scales, but damage is only from quest reward)
Medivh’s The Master’s Touch
Muradin’s Perfect Storm
Murky’s Slime Time
Nazeebo’s Voodoo Ritual bonus HP/Mana
Probius’ Warp Resonance and Gather Minerals (HP bonus)
Ragnaros’ Sulfuras Hungers
Samuro’s Way of Illusion
Thrall’s Crash Lightning and Maelstrom Weapon
Valla’s Puncturing Arrow
Varian’s Lion’s Maw, High King’s Quest
Zagara’s Serrated Spines
Zarya’s Give Me Twenty
Mana Scaling
Mana in Heroes of the Storm scales linearly and is uniform across all mana users (EDIT: Except for Probius, who has a flat 600 mana and regenerates 100 mana per second while in his power field). The max mana pool for heroes is equal to 490+10*level, while mana regeneration is equal to 2.9024+0.0976 per level.
Level Pool size Regeneration (mana per second) Time to recover full pool (seconds) 1 500 3.00 166.67 5 540 3.39 159.27 10 590 3.89 152.12 15 640 4.37 146.57 20 690 4.85 142.14
What this means is by level 20 mana users have a mana pool that is almost 40% larger and have over 60% more mana regeneration. Mana costs are constant, so as the game progresses mana becomes less and less of an issue.
There is a significant difference between how Heroes of the Storm and other MOBA’s handle mana, and that is because of items. In other MOBAs, (almost all) items that help with mana give a constant amount of max mana pool and or mana regeneration. Thus, mana costs and pools are balanced around how effective mana itemization should be at alleviating mana problems. DOTA 2’s Earthshaker has abysmal base mana and moderately high mana costs, but due to his long cooldowns choosing to itemize into mana can significantly alleviate his mana issues. Building for mana comes with the opportunity cost of not purchasing other items. By contrast, Skywrath Mage has much higher base mana, but his mana costs are also very high. Itemizing for mana regeneration on Skywrath Mage is still important, but gets him a less added casting time than it would Earthshaker. This makes comparing mana users much more difficult in other MOBAs, as the base stats do not tell the whole story. A mage and a tank may have the same base percentage consumption, but because a mage’s pool and costs are higher picking up a mana item will do less for them than it would a tank. This also plays into why flat mana burn is more effective on tanks than it is on mages, as it generally burns through a larger % of their mana pool than it does mages.
Heroes of the Storm, by contrast, makes it much easier to compare mana users. The only outside way to influence a hero’s mana pool is Malfurion’s Innervate, but the standardization of mana pools means that Innervate has a relatively standardized impact. EDIT: It has been pointed out that I forgot a few talents that affect mana. Probius at 13 has a talent "Power Overflowing" which grants 2 MPS to each ally in the field, Medivh's Arcane Brilliance is an activateable talent that provides 200 mana, and Malfurion's Serenity upgrade to Tranquility provides 5 MPS to each ally.
A Minor Exception: Mule and Healing Ward
One exception to all of this talk about level-based scaling is two talents: Mule, and Healing Ward. Each of these talents' HP scales with game time rather than the user's level, with mule having 140+43*(minutes elapsed) HP and Healing Ward having 50+15*(minutes elapsed) HP
Minions, Monsters, and Mercenaries
Non-heros (Minions, monsters, mercenaries, vehicles) scale strictly with game time. Some other MOBAs adjust jungle stats based on the levels of the heroes in the game, but that is not true for HOTS. Expect a full article on this topic next week. In the meanwhile, enjoy some work that has already been done by the community.
Haunted Mines Golem by Ahli: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uplOxnawBkKTuAi8tGUN5bXrOAptpwQPp_cU5LvYQgM/edit#gid=0
Experience by Ahli: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hh02bgzzpx8d6sg/Experience%20of%20the%20Storm.pdf?dl=0
Closing Thoughts
One of the best ways to create dynamic and interesting gameplay is by having different scaling. Card games know this by the difference between "Aggro" and "Control", whereby one deck is "on a clock" to finish out the game before the long term investments made by the other player pay off. Scaling, along with quests, can allow players to trade off early strength for power later in the game, an excellent way to ensure both players are incentivized to interact with each other. However, never forget that the base # scaling does not tell the full story. Many heroes have compensatory scaling, where they naturally are powerful in one stage of the game so the scaling differences are solely intended to balance that out. Varian may look like an early bully from his base stats, but his kit is too anemic pre-10 to actually exhibit any early dominance. Furthermore, talent-based power spikes play a role, where heroes such as Nazeebo don't have any particular high scaling factor but instead have extremely powerful 16 and 20 talents that make them late game beasts. |
Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski now says he will waive the $10 annual permit fees the city had planned on charging 3 homeowners whose dead-tree sculptures stand in the public right-of-way. Homeowner Donna Leibbert started a small local-media firestorm late last week after she received a permit renewal form in the mail for the sculpture of a Geisha that artist Jim Phillips had carved out of an oak tree outside Leibbert’s home at 1717 Ball St. After the Hurricane Ike storm surge killed an estimated 30,000 trees on the island, artists turned almost 2 dozen of them into sculptures. But Leibbert’s Geisha is one of only 3 of the works that sits on city property.
City spokesperson Alice Cahill, who has helped to publicize the sculpture program as a tourist attraction, tells Amanda Casanova of the Galveston County Daily News that the license-to-use fee is normally required for any designed object that occupies a portion of the right-of-way. “A carved tree is treated the same as a cafe table.” Leibbert tells Casanova she was aware of the permit requirement at the time the Geisha was carved — getting approval for the sculpture required a formal application with the city’s planning commission. But she notes that the tree had stood in the same position for about 100 years, and for free.
Over the summer, Swamplot photographer Candace Garcia tracked down 22 of the tree sculptures, including Leibbert’s Geisha. Here’s her photo tour:
***
Photos: Candace Garcia |
Hanukkah marked in Brisbane as giant menorah burns bright in CBD during Jewish Festival of Lights
Posted
A large menorah has been lit at Reddacliff Place in Brisbane's CBD to mark Hanukkah and to celebrate 150 years of the Jewish community in Brisbane.
Office workers, busy shoppers and commuters have been passing the six-metre-tall sculpture which will burn bright every night during the Festival of Lights.
It's really important for our community to publicly celebrate Hanukkah. Jason Steinberg, Queensland Jewish Board of Deputies
Hanukkah is the Jewish holiday that celebrates the miracle of oil; the ancient story goes that an oil lamp burned for eight days when there was only enough oil to last one.
The president of the Queensland Jewish Board of Deputies, Jason Steinberg, said the large menorah allowed the people of Brisbane to experience the Jewish holiday tradition.
"Our community was officially formed 150 years ago so it's really important for our community to publicly celebrate Hanukkah in the CBD," he said.
"Even though we're a small community, we've been part of every part of normal society — as doctors, lawyers, sports people and teachers ... we've been very active throughout the community.
"Hanukkah is about the Festival of Lights and it runs for eight nights and symbolises the triumph over light and darkness and the resilience of the Jewish people."
Fried food and candle light
Mr Steinberg said there were between 3,000 and 4,000 people in the local Brisbane Jewish community.
"In Cairns and on the Gold Coast and other parts of Queensland there will be other celebrations too," he told 612 ABC Brisbane's Emma Griffiths.
"[In] most Jewish homes around the world and in some public places the candles are being lit each night for the next eight nights at sundown.
"My family, for example, will light candles each night until the end of Hanukkah."
The menorah has nine holders for candles — eight for each night of the festival and one in the middle which is used to light the other candles.
Mr Steinberg said as well as light, food was a big part of the Jewish tradition.
"Fried food is an important way of marking this celebration so we eat a potato pancake called latkes and donuts and things like that that cumulate with oil," he said.
"There's also Hanukkah gelt which we give which is chocolate money.
"There's also a game with a spinning top called a dreidel which children play with to win little prizes, usually around chocolate and treats."
Happy holidays or Happy Hanukkah?
Mr Steinberg said Hanukkah played a bigger role in American culture than it did in Australia.
"Anyone that goes to America this time of year and walks into a supermarket, they will see Happy holidays, Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah; it's very much part of the culture in America," he said.
"Traditionally gifts are not part of the celebration but it has come into play in some families so that Jewish kids don't get as jealous during Christmas time.
"It's really about being part of the whole community."
However Mr Steinberg said Hanukkah was not the biggest Jewish festival.
"It's the best known due to its timing around Christmas, [but] certainly it's not the most important as that is usually the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur," he said.
The menorah will remain in Reddacliff Place until December 14.
Topics: judaism, religion-and-beliefs, community-and-multicultural-festivals, multiculturalism, human-interest, community-and-society, brisbane-4000 |
A biological patent is a patent on an invention in the field of biology that by law allows the patent holder to exclude others from making, using, selling, or importing the protected invention for a limited period of time. The scope and reach of biological patents vary among jurisdictions,[1] and may include biological technology and products, genetically modified organisms and genetic material. The applicability of patents to substances and processes wholly or partially natural in origin is a subject of debate.[1]
Biological patents in different jurisdictions [ edit ]
Australia [ edit ]
In February 2013, Judge Justice John Nicholas ruled in the Federal Court of Australia in favour of a Myriad Genetics patent on the BRCA1 gene.[2] This was a landmark ruling, affirming the validity of patents on naturally occurring DNA sequences. However, the U.S. Supreme Court came to the opposite conclusion only a few months later. The Australian ruling has been appealed to the Full Bench of the Federal Court; submissions in the case include consideration of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling.[3][4] This decision was decided in 2014, affirming Nicholas J's decision in favor of Myriad, confirming that isolated genetic material (genes) are valid subjects of patents.[5] As of June 2015 the case was pending hearing in the High Court of Australia.[6] In October 2015 the Australian high court ruled that naturally occurring genes cannot be patented.[7]
Europe [ edit ]
European Union directive 98/44/EC (the Biotech Directive) reconciled the legislation of biological patents among certain countries under the jurisdiction of the European Patent Organisation.[1] It allows for the patenting of natural biological products, including gene sequences, as long as they are "isolated from [their] natural environment or produced by means of a technical process."[1]
The European Patent Office has ruled that European patents cannot be granted for processes that involve the destruction of human embryos.[8]
Japan [ edit ]
Under the umbrella of biotechnology, applications for patents on biological inventions are examined according to general guidelines for patents. In response to requests for additional clarity, the Japan Patent Office (JPO) set forth specific guidelines for biology-related inventions. Over the years, the JPO has continued to amend these guidelines to clarify their application to new technologies. These amendments have broadened the scope of patents within the biotechnology industry. The Japanese Patent Act requires that patented inventions be “industrially applicable”, i.e. they must have market or commercial potential. The JPO explicitly lists “medical activities” among inventions that fall outside the scope of industrially applicable inventions, meaning that methods of surgery, therapy, and the diagnosis of human diseases cannot be patented.[9]
United States [ edit ]
In the United States, up until 2013 natural biological substances themselves could have been patented (apart from any associated process or usage) if they were sufficiently "isolated" from their naturally occurring states. Prominent historical examples of such patents include those on adrenaline,[10] insulin,[11] vitamin B 12 ,[12] and various genes.[13] A landmark ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2013 declared naturally occurring DNA sequences ineligible for patents.[14]
Ethics [ edit ]
The patenting of genes is a controversial issue in terms of bioethics. Some believe it is unethical to patent genetic material because it treats life as a commodity, or that it undermines the dignity of people and animals by allowing ownership of genes.[15] Some say that living materials occur naturally, and therefore cannot be patented.[16] The American Medical Association's stance is that gene patents inhibit access to genetic testing for patients and hinder research on genetic disease.[17]
While some feel that a patent on living material is unethical, others[who?] believe that not allowing patents on biotechnological inventions would also be unethical. Supporters of this idea suggest that patents allow the public, as well as policy makers, to hold the owner of the patent(s) accountable. They favor biological patents because they require disclosure of information to the public.[18] Agreements such as the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) require members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to have intellectual property protection laws in place for most biological innovation[why?], making it unlikely that many countries will prohibit patents on genes altogether.[16] Some[who?] say that patenting genes only commodifies life if a patent applies to an entire human being, arguing that[who?] patents on single body parts do not violate human dignity.[19]
Another area of controversy in genetic patenting is how gene samples are obtained. Prior consent is required to collect genetic samples, and collection of samples from people requires consent at the national and community levels as well as the individual level. Conflicts have resulted when consent is not obtained at all three levels. The question of benefit sharing also arises when obtaining genetic samples, specifically the potential responsibility of the collector to share any benefits or profits of the discoveries with the population or person from whom the sample came.[16]
The last major ethical issue involving gene patents is how the patents are used post-issuance. A major concern[who?] is that the use of patented materials and processes will be very expensive or even prohibited to some degree by conditions the patent owner sets.[20] Limiting access like this would directly impact agricultural institutes and university researchers, among others. Some[who?] fear that holders of biotechnology patents would exploit their rights in order to make larger profits, at the potential expense of farmers, healthcare patients, and other users of patented technologies.
The ethics of using patents to increase profits are also debated. A typical argument in favor of biotech patents is that they enable companies to earn money that the companies in turn invest in further research. Without these patents, some worry that companies would no longer have the resources or motives to perform competitive, viable biotech research.[16]
See also [ edit ] |
When it comes to cross-border payments, there is a reason that Bitcoin companies are trying to capture the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) remittances market. It is a tremendously large market, with an estimated $601 billion in remittances being sent in 2015 according to the World Bank, and it is riddled with inefficiencies. That is why many Bitcoiners have trumpeted the opportunity to put more money into the hands of the people who need it the most. However, where we stand today is not quite where we need to be to use Bitcoin as an intermediary payment rail for remittances across the globe.
Having worked at Bitwage since 2014, being in the Silicon Valley Bitcoin space and meeting lots of banking and government officials, I know why bitcoin will play a sizable role in P2P transactions.
Bitcoin Remittances Do Not Save Money…Currently
The infrastructure for using bitcoin as a pay-in or pay-out option is not feasible in most parts of the world; therefore, bitcoin can only really be used as an intermediary. Intermediaries just add friction and costs to any transaction, and bitcoin does not necessarily get rid of all them, but it just reduces the number of them. We would all like to live in a world where we could use the Airbitz app to buy Starbucks coffee and Target goods at a discount with bitcoin everywhere, but most people do not have that luxury.
Source: Luis Buenaventura, Bloom Solutions
A typical $50 remittance sent from Hong Kong to the Philippines is eaten up by 7% in fees, but only $0.50 comes from the forex exchange where bitcoin would play its role as an intermediary. In this scenario bitcoin does not make remittances cheaper, per se. The last mile is the most costly step in delivering any service, in remittances that means getting cash to the recipient since 2.5 billion adults in the world lack access to formal financial services.
Hong Kong to the Philippines is an extremely competitive corridor, and while competitive corridors like Hong Kong to the Philippines represent a vast portion of remittances, the cost of sending a remittance from a G20 country was still 7.46% in Q4 2015 according to the World Bank. The forex-fee-to-last-mile-fee ratio differs greatly depending on the market. Today in Africa, there are corridors with more than 20% in remittance fees. But even when we at Bitwage send money to Brazil, we notice how big the forex fee the bank charges compared to the amount of USD to BRL we give our customers. Reluctantly we have not seen as many bitcoin remittance companies tackling the corridors with the highest fees.
Africa may well be where we see bitcoin gain more adoption because it’s banking system is not up to par with the rest of the world. Africa’s banks have been some of the fastest-growing in the world. The Economist even went as far to say it is a “Continent of Dreams” for banks, but given the high costs of building banking networks, profits on those investments would not be seen for years. Africa may even leapfrog a whole generation of banking technology the same way the continent mainly skipped over landlines and went straight into building its mobile infrastructure.
Enter Mobile Money in the Equation
There needs to be a larger effort to disrupt each step in the remittance process, especially the last mile. For this, local digital currencies like M-Pesa in Kenya and East Africa have the most potential. Since M-Pesa’s introduction in 2007, 42% of Kenya’s GDP is now transferred through the mobile money platform. M-Pesa essentially made every individual’s phone a bank account making “bank transfers” as simple as a text message.
Photo by Ivan Small, CC
M-Pesa-like platforms will solve the last mile problem since the receiver does not have to go a kiosk to collect their payment. Additionally, if the remittance is sent with mobile money, the first mile also becomes cheaper because the sender could initiate the transaction online. Since these transactions are purely digital, the forex fee becomes more evident, and bitcoin could ease the total cost of a transaction more significantly.
This will open up the market for a digital-currency-to-mobile-money infrastructure, which is developing today. BitPesa, a universal payment and bitcoin trading platform for Africa, is targeting countries with high mobile money penetration rates, mostly notably in East Africa where the penetration rate is 55%, and this would reduce costs and increase the speed of remittances even further for those countries.
At Bitwage, we have been working to solve the issue of freelancers who do not have bank accounts by working with partners that can issue debit cards. Using bank pay-in options, bitcoin as an intermediary, and issuing debit cards to remittance receivers would be a creative work around to reduce costs for remittances between G20 countries and the developing world that is feasible today.
Interestingly enough, bitcoin is also helping fuel the growth of fiat mobile money. Tokenized fiat currencies are being put on Bitcoin’s blockchain. Companies like Tether have been working in beta to put the dollar on the blockchain and Bitt has used the Colored Coins protocol to put a version of the Barbados dollar on Bitcoin’s blockchain. Surely, this trend will continue and then make it easier for remittances to be purely digital and cheaper.
Competition Is And Is Not The Problem
Although there are markets with already fierce competition, bitcoin is still adding fuel to that fire because it is lowering the barriers to entry. Bitcoin does one thing great: instant cross-border settlements. Remittance companies today typically pre-fund a transfer which is how they are able to let a recipient collect a transfer immediately. Pre-funding presents currency exchange risks for operators the Bitcoin remittance companies do not face. By being able to move money faster across borders, companies can reduce the amount of capital they need to have sitting idly in bank accounts across the world waiting for remittances to take place.
Source: Luis Buenaventura, Bloom Solutions
This pre-funding dilemma plays a bigger role where currencies are less liquid and thus more volatile, namely in Africa. The liquidity problem in African currencies is paralleled in the African Bitcoin markets. Interestingly, unlike the correspondent banking infrastructure, companies leveraging bitcoin for remittances, or “Rebittance” companies, have direct relationships with entities on both sides. This means that Rebittances companies have direct access to the true exchange rates determined by supply and demand instead of relying on a chain of intermediaries to move and convert funds.
Photo by Fabian Figueredo, CC
As a result, while there may be low liquidity on the exchanges in the local African jurisdictions, there is a unique arbitrage opportunity presented to market makers. As the price moves further away from the mid-market rate, more opportunity arises for market makers to trade and boost liquidity or for funds moving in the opposite direction to be moved cheaper. So while there may be issues sending large payments through low liquidity corridors via market orders on the local exchanges, market makers have the opportunity to make a good deal of money on arbitrage.
Conclusion
In conclusion, bitcoin will increasingly be used as the invisible tool behind the scenes that helps individuals transfer money expediently and economically across the globe. The reasons are clear: it reduces the costs of starting up a remittance company, and it reduces the costs of transfers. P2P remittances are the opportunity of tomorrow because they still need to be streamlined to resemble bank-to-bank business payments with the help of innovative financial services like mobile banking. Right now, we are on the cusp of change, and once a few infrastructural pieces are put in place, bitcoin will take off as a remittance intermediary and perhaps a ledger for a plethora of tokenized fiat currencies. |
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CHICAGO -- It was the moment 15-year old Ryan Baker had been waiting for.
On Monday, the White Sox fan finally caught a foul ball. Then, a woman pulled it right out of his hand.
"She pries my fingers, takes the ball and says it's her ball because it almost hit her. I was in disbelief," said Ryan.
It all happened on live TV.
Ryan was at the game with his aunt while his mother, who is battling multiple sclerosis, and his father watched from the family's home in Montgomery.
The teen scored a ton of support on social media and sports talk radio for his reaction. The White Sox responded with all-star treatment for Ryan at Thursday's game.
"A young man had a ball taken from him," said Brooks Boyer, the Senior V.P. of Sales and Marketing for the Chicago White Sox. "We just wanted to correct that wrong." |
Suicide bombers have attacked two mosques in the Yemeni capital during the rush for Friday prayers, killing 137 people and injuring 345 others, sources told Al Jazeera.
Three blasts were heard in two central mosques used by Houthi Shia Muslims, sources said.
A report on the Houthi-funded Al-Masirah TV channel said the bombers attacked the Badr and al-Hashoosh mosques during midday prayers on Friday.
According to witnesses, one of the suicide bombers detonated his explosives inside the Badr mosque, causing panic as dozens of worshippers rushed toward the outside gates.
A second bomber then attacked amid the panicked crowds trying to escape.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) armed group, an offshoot of al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attacks on Twitter. It threatened that these attacks were "only a part of the coming flood".
However, Al Jazeera's Rosiland Jordan said that intelligence experts believe ISIL's claim was questionable, saying they suspect either al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) or anti-Houthi fighters were behind the attacks.
Nadwa Dawsari, a conflict analyst, said that it is "highly unlikely" that ISIL carried out the attack, and that it was politically motivated.
"I really don't buy the ISIL propaganda [...] Yemen doesn't have the grounds for ISIL, at least not yet. I think these attacks were politically motivated and whoever ordered them want people to believe its ISIL to achieve political goals".
RELATED: Yemen at the breaking point
The Imam of the mosque and leading Houthi religious leader, Al-Murtada bin Zayd al-Muhatwari was killed in the attack, a medical source said.
Senior Houthi leaders Taha al-Mutawakkil and Khalid Madani were also seriously wounded.
"Dozens of people have been injured or killed. We will understand the exact numbers of [the] dead and wounded soon. These are two very central and commonly used mosques," the editor-in-chief of the Yemen Post newspaper, Hakim Almasmari, told Al Jazeera.
Mohamed Qubaty, a Yemeni political advisor, blamed Saleh and his supporters for the attacks and the instability blighting the country.
"What we have seen today is a plot to widen the schism between the Sunnis and Zaydis," Qubaty said.
UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, condmened the attack urging all sides to "immediately cease all hostile actions and exercise maximum restraint."
"All sides must abide by their stated commitments to resolve differences by peaceful means", Moon said.
RELATED: The rise of the Houthis
The Houthis belong to the Shia Zaydi sect, whose followers make up about 30 percent of Yemen's population.
In another development, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a government compund in the Houthi stronghold of Saada province.
The Houthis, who are accused of being allies to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, descended from their heartland in northern Saada province last year, fighting their way towards Sanaa and defeating tribal and military rivals along the way.
In September, they flooded the capital, and raided major state institutions and military bases.
Earlier this year, they put Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the elected president, under house arrest; disbanded parliament and appointed Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, a cousin of the group's leader Abdel-Malik al-Houthi, as the new president.
Hadi has since fled to Aden and maintains he is the legitimate president. |
MCALLEN — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, waded into this Democratic stronghold Tuesday to celebrate the Fourth of July — and predictably got an earful from protesters, many upset with the Senate's efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Cruz, who has a knack for confrontation with his political opponents in Washington and far outside it, had to speak over the demonstrators for most of his speech at an Independence Day ceremony, twice pausing to address the commotion. They were countered by a similarly vocal group of Cruz supporters, who sought with varying success to drown them out with chants of "USA!"
"Isn't freedom wonderful?" Cruz said shortly after taking the stage. "Think about it: In much of the world, if protesters showed up, they would face violent government oppression. In America, we've got something different."
As he ended his remarks, Cruz again made reference to the protesters, addressing them as "our friends who are so energized today that they believe that yelling is a wonderful thing to do."
"I will say you have the right to speak, and I will always defend your right to speak and participate in the democratic process," Cruz said. "That's what makes us free, that's what makes us America."
Cruz received a calmer reception later in the morning as he participated in a parade through downtown McAllen, waving from the back of a convertible followed on foot by two security guards.
Yet Cruz's appearance in McAllen did not go unnoticed by local Democrats. Speaking after Cruz at the ceremony, U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen called on Cruz, who was seated behind the congressman, to join him in urging President Donald Trump to work to bring home military veterans who have been deported. Gonzalez recently met with Trump about the issue.
"Today I ask Sen. Cruz to support me on this idea — and all the others senators and members of Congress," Gonzalez said. "We should not leave one soldier behind."
Cruz's involvement in the July Fourth festivities had become something of a local story here in recent days. After the announcement of his participation drew a backlash, McAllen Mayor Jim Darling released a statement defending the senator's attendance at the event, which Darling called an "opportunity to engage in productive dialogue."
There appeared to be an initial possibility that Cruz could meet with La Union del Pueblo Entero, a local immigrant rights group, while in McAllen. But the organization ultimately declined to visit with Cruz, pushing instead for a town hall where the senator could hear directly from his constituents.
Cruz has made three trips to McAllen since December, part of an uptick in travel across the state after his 2016 presidential campaign — and a 2018 re-election race against U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-El Paso. For his part, O'Rourke was over 600 miles away Tuesday morning, participating in the July 4 festivities in Lubbock, an area as Republican as McAllen is Democratic.
"I think the fact [Cruz] has been in office so long and only recently taken interest in the Rio Grande Valley means that he's not really interested in listening," said John-Michael Torres, the communications coordinator for LUPE. "He's just trying to improve his image."
While the town hall did not materialize Tuesday, Cruz did get some face time with his critics. He worked the crowd for several minutes before the ceremony, though he stopped short of the most vocal group in the bleachers, where awaiting him were signs saying, "Ted wants us dead," and "Cruzin for a Bruzin 2018."
Speaking with reporters after his remarks, Cruz suggested the protesters were part of "a small group of people on the left who right now are very angry." Asked if he planned to directly acknowledge the protesters, he insisted he had visited with them when he greeted the crowd earlier and nodded to some common ground, noting he saw one sign about health insurance costs being too high.
"I tell ya, I agree," said Cruz, who has had a key role in negotiating the Senate's plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, though he remains a holdout on its most recent version. "I hear that from Texans all over the state who face premiums skyrocketing under Obamacare, who want relief."
Health care was a resonant issue for Matthew Martinez, a local accountant who was toting one of many signs in the crowd reading, "Health care is a human right," on one side and "Beto 2018," on the other.
"He wants to completely gut Obamacare," Martinez said of Cruz, "and he's one of the few people against the Trump plan because he wants it to be stronger, which is crazy."
Alex Gelman, a local GOP activist who had helped pass out pro-Cruz shirts and signs, said he and others wanted to show Cruz still has support in the Valley despite its strong Democratic tradition. Lingering on the sidewalk after the program, he said he found the protesters a bit disrespectful.
"If you want to protest us, fine, but just let him speak," Gelman said. "He might — might — say something you like."
________________________________________
From The Texas Tribune |
Iran claims to be an emerging new world power. But its president, now visiting Zimbabwe, is welcome in few capitals
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's friends: not the sort of people the west likes to do business with
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's friends are not all quite as controversial as he is on the world stage but like his host in Harare, Robert Mugabe, few of them are routinely welcome in western capitals.
Elsewhere in Africa the Iranian president has hobnobbed with the Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the international criminal court for war crimes allegedly committed in Darfur – a charge vehemently denied by Khartoum.
Last year Ahmadinejad is distrusted by the conservative, pro-western Arab states, who worry about him acquiring nuclear weapons. But in March 2008 he became the first Iranian president ever to visit Iraq, which fought a bloody eight-year war against the Islamic Republic in the 1980s. He has also held talks with another neighbour, the Turkish president, Abdullah Gul.
His closest ally in the Middle East is Syria's Bashar al-Assad, who inherited the strategic relationship between Damascus and Tehran from his father, Hafez, and refuses to bow to US pressure to end it. Last month Ahmadinejad held a summit with Assad and Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Lebanon's Hizbullah.
Europe is largely off limits to Ahmadinejad: he attended a UN food security summit in Rome in 2008 but was shunned by Silvio Berlusconi. The previous year he was a guest of President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, who is often described as Europe's last dictator and another of the world's most isolated leaders.
Appearances at the UN in New York are the closest he gets to North America, where his anti-Americanism, Holocaust denial and hostility to Israel are deeply disliked.
But he has been most welcome in Latin America. Brazil was his first foreign destination – President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva criticised attempts to isolate Iran over its nuclear programme.
Ahmadinejad's best friend is Venezuela's Hugo Chávez who has backed Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Chavez and Ahamdinejad have visited each other several times and co-operation between their countries has grown. Both are are oil producers and members of Opec.
Ahmadinejad boasted earlier this month that Iran was emerging as a "new power in the world" which would welcome better relations with any country "except the Zionist regime whose legitimacy has not been recognised." |
It wouldn’t be the biggest event of the year without a little bit of controversy after a drug testing debacle took place in Brazil on Thursday with featherweight champion Jose Aldo caught in the middle.
As part of the pre-fight testing procedures, the Nevada State Athletic Commission will show up unannounced at a fighter’s home or gym to get blood or urine samples to then be tested at a WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) lab for performance enhancing drugs and other illegal substances.
According to several reports, a testing agent named Ben Mosier showed up at Jose Aldo’s gym to collect a urine specimen. The featherweight champion’s coach and manager Andre Pederneiras decided to call the Brazilian MMA commission (CABMMA) to find out if they knew about the test being conducted.
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The test reportedly was only authorized by the Nevada State Athletic Commission, so the Brazilian commission didn’t need to be informed that the agent that would be in Brazil to collect the sample. But once Pederneiras raised the red flag, the entire situation turned volatile.
CABMMA officials reportedly arrived and confirmed that Mosier was working on behalf of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, but when he came to Brazil he hadn’t applied for a work visa, so technically he wasn’t allowed to participate in any job duties while in the country. The Brazilian government ultimately fined Mosier and explained that he had eight days to leave the country or risk deportation.
The sample Mosier collected was then discarded, according to reports.
CABMMA then reportedly decided to take over and informed Aldo that he would be tested 24 hours later and despite Mosier being threatened with deportation, they would allow him to be present and observe the test being conducted.
According to a separate report from MMAFighting.com, Aldo gave a urine sample on Friday to an accredited by WADA tester.
Whether there was any underhanded attempt to hide information after the tester showed up unannounced on Thursday is unknown, but Aldo’s opponent Conor McGregor and his coach were not amused by the antics that took place.
McGregor states that he was tested with blood and urine taken on May 23. The test conducted in Brazil only took Aldo’s urine.
Multiple calls and emails to the Nevada State Athletic Commission by FOX Sports to ask about the situation that happened in Brazil as well as the clerical error for the tester not receiving his work visa before visiting Brazil were not returned on Friday.
The sample that was taken on Friday will be sent to the WADA accredited lab in Salt Lake City, Utah, where it will be tested with results returned within a few weeks.
The UFC recently adopted a new anti-doping policy with the help of United States Anti-Doping Agency that will go into effect July 1. A first-time offender could face a suspension of up to four years for non-specified substances such as steroids, growth hormones and peptides, blood doping, etc.
I was random tested on May 23rd. Blood AND Urine. @josealdojunior you little weasel. You and your weasel coach. #AndNew — Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) June 12, 2015 |
SSPX Vehemently Protesting Canonization of St. Peter
VATICAN––Members of the Society of St. Pius X have stormed the internet and radio waves in violent protest against the upcoming canonization of Pope Simon Peter I. The backlash was worse than expected by the Holy See, and the protesters have not pulled any punches. One commentator on a popular tridentine website morecatholicthanthepope.com wrote, “This is the guy who denied Christ three times in one night, and now they want to canonize him? This isn’t the way Christ instituted the Church. This man is not an example to me or my 14 children.”
An SSPX blogger accused the former Pope, who was martyred for his faith in the First Century, of liturgical abuses, saying, “Christ was crucified head-upward. That is the pattern He established. Then this Peter guy comes along and decides he wants to be crucified upside-down.”
Some have even accused Peter, born Simon, son of John, of heresy in his famous debate with Paul regarding circumcision, while others claim his attitude toward the “circumcision party” was not true heresy but an exaggerated ecumenism. |
This 245' square rigged Tall Ship is now offered for sale. The vessel's owners undertook an entire rebuild and system renewal in 2008 at a cost of over $9M Euros. It has been designed and built to the latest SOLAS specifications for international trade and can accommodate a complement of 90 in any trade (sail training, passenger, research etc). The interior is fitted out to a four star quality and the ship is a proven seagoing vessel with high quality assessments expressed by both passengers and crew. All equipment and infrastructure is new and the vessel is ready for sea. The owners invite all serious enquiries for the sale of the vessel with an asking price of $1.49M USD. We invite you to explore the details provided within this website and to make further enquiries as appropriate. |
Iran on Tuesday sent two warships to the Atlantic Ocean for the first time.
Iran’s Navy began its first deployment to the Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday, according to reports in local press.
The semi-official Fars News Agency, which is seen as close to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), reported on Tuesday that Iran has sent a navy flotilla consisting of the Khark helicopter-carrier and Sabalan destroyer to the Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday. The report said they would travel some 23,000 nautical miles over the next three months.
The Navy held a ceremony to celebrate the ships’ departure, which was attended by the commander of Iran’s Navy, Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, as well as his deputy, Rear Admiral Seyed Mahmoud Moussavi.
Iran has long discussed deploying naval assets to the Atlantic Ocean. As far back as 2011, Sayyari had threatened to deploy warships off the Atlantic Coast of the United States.
“Like the arrogant powers that are present near our marine borders, we will also have a powerful presence close to American marine borders,” Sayyari was quoted as saying at the time.
As The Diplomat previously reported, Iranian media outlets noted in August 2013 reports that Iran’s Navy “also plans to dispatch its 28th fleet to the Atlantic, Pacific or South Indian oceans in the near future.”
Iranian media have previously reported the Khark helicopter-carrier and Sabalan destroyer as making up the 27th fleet.
According to the Fars report this week, Sayyari said back in November: “The Navy’s next flotilla will be dispatched to either the Pacific Ocean or the Atlantic on January 21-Feb 20.”
Fars also quoted an Iranian naval official in December as saying: “The previous flotillas of warships were sent to the Mediterranean Sea and passed the Suez Channel and even sailed through the Pacific Ocean and the China Sea. Now we intend to enter the Atlantic Ocean and this will be materialized after dispatch of the next flotillas of warships.”
In that December article, Sayyari was noted as saying that the deployments to the Atlantic Ocean would be in order to protect Iranian oil tankers and cargo ships from pirates.
Iran’s Navy has increased the range of its deployments in recent years, making port calls as far away as China and India. It has also participated extensively in the United Nations’ anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden.
Still, at present Iran is not able to project significant power beyond its immediate waters, where Iran’s naval assets are mostly commanded by the IRGC rather than the regular Iranian Navy, which is tasked with the longer range deployments. |
Uh oh! Dean Esmay of A Voice for Men is outraged by the latest terrible calumny besmirching the good name of the Men’s Rights movement. That Big Lie? That Men’s Rights Activists are boycotting Mad Max: Fury Road.
As Esmay puts it, in his characteristically overheated prose, the very notion that there is such a boycott
is a completely fabricated story by a handful of elitists abusing their power in the media–and betraying their fellow journalists while doing it.
Using his powerful internet detective skills, Esmay has managed to track down “the source of the lie,” which, as he sees it, “appears to have originated from a discredited hate-blogger named David Futrelle … .”
I’ve left off the rest of his sentence, as it is straight-up libel. Well, so is the bit about me being a “discredited hate-blogger,” and the part about the “lie” originating with me. I will give him credit for managing to spell my name correctly.
I’ll cop to the fact that my post on a would-be boycott of Mad Max: Fury Road set off an avalanche of articles on the subject. The Mary Sue, I believe, was the first to pick up the story, and was quickly followed by a few others. And then other writers piggybacked off of them. For better or worse, that’s how it works in online journalism these days.
But if Esmay is looking for the source of the incorrect notion that self-described Men’s Rights activists were behind the “boycott,” well, he’s not going to find it in my post, which contained no mention of Men’s Right Activists at all.
Yep, I reported the 100% true fact that a Youtube bloviater named Aaron Clarey had written a post on Return of Kings urging men, in his words, to “not only REFUSE to see the movie, but spread the word to as many men as possible.” I described his readers on Return of Kings as misogynists, not MRAs, though clearly there is a massive overlap between those two groups.
The idea that this was specifically a Men’s Rights crusade was, to be sure, a bit of sloppiness on the part of the journalists writing about it, who are not quite as familiar as some of us are with all the different varieties of woman-hating shitheads there are in the “manosphere” — especially since their belief systems overlap considerably. As I noted in a previous post on this subject, writing about Esmay’s accusations against a writer for the Huffington Post,
You can almost forgive journalists for getting a bit mixed up.
Meanwhile, it’s clear that some MRAs, including some associated with AVFM, have views on the movie that bear a striking similarity to those of Mr. Clarey and his comrades at ROK. It was an AVFM staffer, not Aaron Clarey, who posted this meme on AVFM’s Facebook page. (It’s since been removed, possibly because it contradicts the narrative that Esmay is now promoting.)
And if you want many other example of MRAs saying they won’t go to see the film because feminism, you’ll find more than a few in this thread on the Men’s Rights subreddit. Oh, and in this thread (archived here) on … the official AVFM Forum.
Yes, that’s right: there are MRAs talking about boycotting Mad Max: Fury Road on AVFM’s own official forum. One declares himself “a (former) Mad Max fan,” another writes “going to skip this one. Mad Max is now dead to me.” “I’m out,” adds a third.
But Esmay seems to think that there is some vast conspiracy afoot, writing that
we are really serious with this question: was anyone paid to put this fake story in the press? If so, who was paid and who did the paying?
Don’t be silly. No money changes hands. At least no human money. We do it under direct orders from our feline over lords ladies.
But as long as we’re asking questions I have one for Mr. Esmay: Are you ever going to do anything about the Holocaust denier and Hitler fan you’ve published many times on AVFM?
Apparently, to Dean Esmay at least, posting that Mad Max: Fury Road is being boycotted by MRAs, when most of the boycotters are in fact merely MRA-adjacent, is a greater crime against truth than denying the Holocaust.
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A seven-year-old Israeli girl and her mother went for a walk earlier this week in the Beit Shean Valley, enjoying an afternoon in nature when the child stumbled on a strange object. She picked it up and handed it to her mother, who just happened to be a student of archeology at Haifa University. The mother didn’t need more than one look to identify the object as an ancient oil lamp dating back 2,200 years, meaning it would’ve been in use in the days of Judah Maccabee.
The two were thrilled to make such a discovery, especially so close to Hanukkah, but the mother’s suspicion soon arose: If such a priceless object was laying out in the open, she thought, that probably meant that antique robbers were out and about. She called Nir Distelfeld of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who arrived on the scene to investigate. When he did, he chuckled: The culprits who dug up the lamp, he said, weren’t robbers but porcupines, who like to burrow for the winter. They’re often drawn to excavation sites, he added, because they’ve been dug over by people and the earth is easier to turn. The young girl and her mother, Distelfeld said, will receive a certificate of commendation for their finding, while the porcupines, he added, will not face any criminal charges. It’s a Hanukkah miracle all around.
Liel Leibovitz is a senior writer for Tablet Magazine and a host of the Unorthodox podcast. |
This spring, WBUR is examining how the state budget crisis is reverberating in cities and towns across Massachusetts. In our report earlier this month, Hull students and parents have been forced to pay for extracurricular activities, such as theater, themselves. The tour continues with David Boeri in Gardner, where cuts have bitten deep into a once-thriving city's services.
A wrecking crew demolishes the S. Bent & Brothers, Inc., chair-making complex in Gardner. (David Boeri/WBUR)
GARDNER, Mass. — Across from the mill pond and the cemetery where the founders of S. Bent & Brothers, Inc., are buried, a wrecking crew has been knocking down the chair-making complex that once co-starred with a constellation of furniture makers that shone for a century and a half. And not just the buildings are disappearing. Still fresh is the imprint of the newly removed old tracks that once connected S. Bent & Brothers to the mainline that crossed Massachusetts.
As a 7,500-foot-long train full of freight rolls through here every night, it accentuates the economic decline of a city where once there was every reason to stop, when Gardner factories turned out four million chairs a year and it was the chair-making capital of the world.
"It used to be a booming city at one time," says city employee John Hallock.
MAP: Gardner's fiscal situation (Jesse Costa/WBUR) (Click to enlarge)
Even at mid-century, he recalls, when furniture makers started turning to North Carolina — as they've since turned to Asia — Gardner mills were still strong and hungry for workers.
"You could have a job and leave it and five minutes later, you'd be walking into another one," Hallock says. "Oh, yeah. We had a lot of employment here."
Powered by industry, the city of 20,000 — one of the smallest cities in Massachusetts — built its own municipal golf course and indoor swimming pool, a hospital, a community college, grand parks and stately buildings, like the Georgian red brick City Hall on the common.
Now the last big factory has pulled out and the trains roll by without stopping. And atop the long-term decline and loss of local revenues, the recession-triggered budget crisis has grown like weeds on the side tracks.
Gardner's young, upbeat second-term mayor, Mark Hawke, provides a downbeat tour of cuts, consolidation and streamlining necessitated by acute cuts in local aid now that the state's revenues have hit hard times.
"Engineer's office," he points out. "We used to have an engineer, assistant engineer, a surveyor, auto cad person and the clerk. Cut the staff in half here."
Down the quiet hallway, where his foot steps echo, he passes an empty office.
Children gather round 'Chair City's landmark. (David Boeri/WBUR)
"We used to have a local building inspector as well as a building commissioner," Hawke says, "but we had to let them go."
Hawke introduces me to department heads with no hands. Not even a part-time clerk.
"Scott Brown for Senate" signs tucked into his office reveal the mayor's lean-thinking, small-is-beautiful philosophy of government. But Mayor Efficiency notes you can only streamline and consolidate local government so much before it turns ridiculous.
"The department of municipal grounds, parks, playgrounds, cemetery, forestry, flood control, insect control, golf course and swimming pool," he points out. "One clerk."
And don't count on finding the department head in his office, either. Michael Gonyeo is too busy mowing grass, digging holes at the cemetery or cutting trees, where I caught up with him.
"We have a list on my desk right now — it's probably six-years-old — it's a list of people who have called because they need tree work. Branches and limbs have fallen in their yards or on their roofs," he says. "We haven't gotten to them."
If you live in Gardner and there's a death in your family, the grounds crew will make sure the hole gets dug in the cemetery. You'll have to wait for tree work. And don't even think about calling to get your cat out of the tree.
"I hate when they yell at you and swear at you and hang up the phone," Gonyeo says, who is as conscientious a city employee as you can find. "I understand their frustration but we're only four guys and we can only do so much."
That will change when the new budget comes in: They'll be only three, says Hawke.
What becomes apparent in Gardner, as I talk with the 37-year-old mayor, is how the core functions of municipal government are shrinking to the four corners of police, fire, schools and streets — which themselves are stressed and competing for available funds.
At a recent budget meeting, Hawke told his department heads to forget about their wish lists. They amounted to $2.5 million, and he still has to cut another $600,000 from the proposed budget to balance it.
"There's really nobody left in City Hall to cut," he observes.
'We can't afford to fix it, we can't afford to tear it down,' Mayor Hawke says of City Hall's auditorium. Now it's for storage. (David Boeri/WBUR) (Click to enlarge)
"You can only right (the) size of government so much — which I'm a big fan of — until it becomes the right size," he adds. "But, after that, as I said, you're just amputating."
It was time to say good-bye — in part because Gardner City Hall now closes at noon on Fridays to save a half day. But first Mayor Hawke wanted to show me the building's auditorium.
"Watch your step," he cautions as the door opens into a grand, high-ceilinged ballroom with a balcony befitting a place called "Chair City."
There's a hole in the floor, floor boards are warped, a once-leaky roof has flaked the paint off the ceiling, light streams through abundant single-pane windows, and there's been no working heat since the leaking underground oil tanks for the furnace were removed a few years ago.
"We can't afford to fix it, we can't afford to tear it down," Hawke says. "This is just a microcosm of what's happening across the state to local government as a whole. We can't afford to fix the buildings that we operate in and we can't afford to have staff in them (either)."
And soon when the Gardner finds out how much — or, more to the point — how little it's going to get in state aid, it may be emptying still more chairs in The Chair City. |
If it felt like Macklemore and Ryan Lewis' The Heist album took over the world in 2012, that's because it did. For a moment forget the GRAMMYs, forget the cultural appropriation debates, the truth is those were big issues were only within a select circle. The wider world, the millions and millions who played it, the proverbial mainstream, consumed that album voraciously and without hesitation. It went platinum in the U.S. and six other countries, double platinum in Australia, and produced two number one singles in the U.S. ("Thrift Shop" and "Can't Hold Us"). Purely statistically speaking, it was a very, very big deal.
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And so by contrast and by the numbers, the duo's latest album, This Unruly Mess I've Made, is a very not big deal. Despite now being a hugely famous act, as opposed to when The Heist was released and they were still a relatively underground duo, This Unruly Mess is a sharp statistical decline from The Heist, only selling 51K in its first week and has yet to produce any singles with close to the success of "Thrift Shop," "Can't Hold Us" or "Same Love."
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As I wrote before, it feels like understanding what happened in the space between those two albums could teach us all a valuable lesson about the workings of the music industry, and in an interview in XXL, Macklemore revealed his own theory:
"There’s a lot of contributing factors to that number. I think that we didn’t want to come out of the gate with singles. The strategy that we had around releasing this music wasn’t about sales. If it would’ve been about sales, I don’t think we would’ve put out a nine-minute song about White privilege and White supremacy five weeks out before the album drops. The reasoning for doing that had nothing to do with numbers. We wanted to give 'White Privilege II' its own moment. That was more important than a set-up single and I think that the numbers are reflective of not having a set-up single"
So he sacrificed sales for a statement - it's an interesting and potentially powerful idea, but not one that holds up to much scrutiny. The true lead single for This Unruly Mess was actually "Downtown," an obvious attempt to recreate "Thrift Shop" without literally recreating "Thrift Shop" and certainly a single designed to "set up" buzz around the album that they came out of the gate with. Then came "White Privilege II" followed by "Dance Off," another radio-ready track, then "Kevin," then the album release, and now most recently another pure fun single, "Brad Pitt's Cousin."
In comparison, the lead single for The Heist was "Wings," a song about anti-commercialism, then "Can't Hold Us," then "Same Love" and then, after the album dropped, "Thrift Shop," with "Otherside" serving as an unofficial single in that mix.
Those two album rollouts don't look much different to me. Sure, releasing a song like "White Privilege II" likely didn't help sales, but while I might be underestimating America's racism, it didn't feel like that controversial of a song, and they certainly got plenty of positive press for it. Especially surrounded by pure radio fodder like "Downtown" and "Dance Off," I just don't believe that "White Privilege II" moved the needle that much, certainly not enough to account for a more than 900,000 unit drop in album sales between albums.
I think the simpler truth is that Mackelmore and Ryan Lewis caught a pop music wave - no, scratch that, a pop music tsunami - and then as almost all pop waves do, it crashed. People moved onto the next pop wave. The Heist was simply a historical anomaly in terms of statistics, and This Unruly Mess is probably more indicative of the size of their true core audience, the ones who were likely on board before "Thrift Shop" and were going to buy the album regardless of singles about white privilege or not.
Ultimately though, while studying the response to these two albums can teach us a lot about the force with which cultural movements can come, and go, the numbers aren't the most important thing. "You know, I’ve sold millions of records and been miserable. The album is a piece of music that I’m really proud of—a number doesn’t reflect that, a comma doesn’t reflect that, some zeroes don’t reflect that," said Macklemore later in the interview, and that's a sentence I can't disagree with at all.
By Nathan S, the managing editor of DJBooth and a hip-hop writer. His beard is awesome. This is his Twitter. Photo by Zoe Rain. |
On Jan. 17, 2014, University of Pennsylvania runner Madison Holleran died by suicide. She was 19. Since this tragedy, the sports community has struggled to address the root cause of Holleran’s death: mental health.
To gauge the current climate inside locker rooms, FOX Sports interviewed more than 25 female student-athletes along with NCAA officials and mental health experts. Though these student-athletes told stories of resilience, they also revealed cautionary tales for the well-being of young women in college sports.
According to the American Psychiatric Association, women are “nearly twice as likely” as men to develop depression, anxiety and eating disorders. Add in the stress of sports commitments and you have a dangerous combination. The majority of women interviewed pointed to eating disorders related to their sport as the top issue.
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“We talk about [body image] every day,” said a group of University of Southern California lacrosse players. Anorexia or bulimia is twice as rampant among athletes versus the general population of women, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD).
The pressures of women to gain muscle in training but stay thin to uphold a standard of beauty outside of sports is irreconcilable. “I’ve never met a gymnast who was in love with their body,” a former D-I gymnast revealed.
In sports, the private issue of women’s body image becomes public. Dartmouth volleyball player Alexandra Schoenberger’s trainers would hook her up to a machine to track changes in her body fat percentage, which sounded like the sports equivalent of the “jiggle test.”
A D-I swimmer recalled men wore T-shirts that read “Whale watching” in reference to her team. Even in the coverage of Holleran’s death, many were shocked to see the media use photos of the young woman wearing a bikini, taken from her Instagram account.
Bottom line, mental health is a matter of safety, not only because of suicide risk but also the detriment to long-term physical health. Eating disorders are common causes of heart problems and osteoporosis. Anorexia and bulimia have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness according to ANAD. More women have eating disorders than breast cancer, yet every major women’s and men’s sport has a pink ribbon campaign while mental health issues go unnoticed.
So where do these student-athletes go for help? Few women interviewed had used on-campus psychological services because of the stigma surrounding mental health issues.
“No one wants to admit there’s a problem until it’s too late,” Duke basketball player Oderah Chidom said. Most student-athletes viewed professional help as a “sign of weakness.” Those who did seek help found the wait time was up to three weeks to book an appointment.
No one wants to admit there’s a problem until it’s too late. Duke basketball player Oderah Chidom
For a young woman suffering from deep depression, three weeks can be the difference between life and death.
The NCAA is one of the biggest red flags on this issue.
In 2013, Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Brian Hainline declared mental health as the No. 1 health and safety concern in the NCAA. There are more than 200 pages of mental health documents buried deep in the NCAA website — a quarter of which focus on women’s issues alone.
However, not a single student-athlete interviewed was aware of any tangible NCAA resources. This absence has not gone unnoticed. Holleran’s friend and teammate Eliana Yankelev posed the question, “How much is the NCAA willing to ignore as long as they are making money?”
When asked if the NCAA had a responsibility to take a direct hand in the mental health of student-athletes, Mary E. Wilfert, Associate Director of the NCAA Sport Science Institute, stated, “No, intervention cannot come out of the national office … we are not a medical organization.”
Yet every year, the NCAA holds mandatory medical screenings and trainings for all athletes. For example, Sickle Cell Anemia is now covered after a Division II basketball player died in 2011. The Center for Disease Control cites that Sickle Cell affects less than 1 percent of Americans.
Madison Holleran
By contrast, serious mental health issues plague 12 percent of the population, according to the National Eating Disorders Association. Furthermore, the NCAA’s own data states that heart problems (for women, often the result of eating disorders) and suicide as the second and third leading causes of death among student-athletes.
So why is mental health not part of the NCAA’s mandate? Associate Director of Public and Media Relations, Health & Safety Christopher Radford responded, “We can’t just decide to make this part of the guidelines, at every division they’d have to decide on legislation.”
“Concussions get more attention because of the media, the NFL, lawsuits, and Congress … it does not reflect the NCAA attention,” Wilfert added. In other words: money, bureaucracy, and not enough people have sued.
Certainly, Holleran is all the proof the NCAA should need to justify faster resolution.
The student-athletes and mental health experts interviewed largely agreed on the solutions to the mental health epidemic. First, the sports community needs to further the dialogue to stamp out the stigma. Second, the student-athletes themselves need to take better advantage of the on-campus support available. Most important, the NCAA needs to take responsibility as the governing body of college sports to raise awareness, offer tangible resources to students-athletes and set a national standard. Hopefully, all parties will step up to ensure a safer future for women in college sports.
Need help? Call 1-800-273-8255. You’ll be connected to a skilled, trained counselor at a crisis center in your area, anytime 24/7, or for more athlete mental health resources go to: www.ThinkEatPlay.org
Follow Justin Ching on Twitter @Justin_Ching |
Thank You
Monday 1 July 2013 09:00
The Club would like to thank all the Fulham players whose contracts expired on 30th June for their service to the Craven Cottage cause over the years.
Australian goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer was signed on a free transfer in 2008 after more than a decade at Middlesbrough and became a virtual ever-present in the side as our established number one. The stopper made his 500th top-flight appearance against Arsenal last season and, in doing so, became the first overseas player to reach that milestone.
Schwarzer made his Fulham debut against Hull City and played every minute of the 2008/09 campaign to pick up the Club’s Player of the Year award at the end of his first season. Playing a huge role in our run to the UEFA Europa League Final in 2010, he became a Cottage favourite and made three penalty saves last season - most notably in the 3-3 draw at the Emirates against Arsenal.
Previously our longest-serving current player, Simon Davies wrote himself into Fulham folklore by scoring vital goals against Hamburg and Atletico Madrid during our Europa League Final run. Having signed from Everton in 2007, he made his debut against Sheffield United and put in an impressive first full season thanks to his his pace and dynamism.
Davies’ international career with Wales ended in 2010, but his dramatic equaliser against Hamburg to help us get back to win the game 2-1 will forever be remembered by Fulham fans; as will his goal in the Final that almost saw us clinch glory.
Northern Ireland defender Chris Baird has been a valuable player for Fulham thanks to his incredible versatility and he started the Europa League Final at right-back. |
So a couple weeks back the fine people at Bob’s Red Mill sent me a lovely package filled with gluten-free goodies to turn into fantastic recipes. One of the bags was filled with hulled hemp seeds. Honestly, I didn’t even know you could eat hemp seeds. I knew you could make itchy jewelry and clothing that looks like burlap sacks….but food?
Hemp has commonly been confused with marijuana since the plants belong to the same family. While there are many differences between the hemp and marijuana, the most important is concentration of THC. Hemp has less than 1% of the psychoactive drug (marijuana can contain 20% or more). So, No. This meal won’t get you high, or even make you fail a drug test…but it is delicious.
So the first thing I did was open the bag, bury my face in it and inhale deeply (I have a problem with this, and often it happens to be sour milk. Blech!) The hulled hemp seeds smelled vaguely like fresh cut grass. Then, I tasted them…they have the crunch and mouth feel of sesame seeds but taste like fresh sprouts. Very fresh with a nice nutty, sweetness.
So I looked up a few recipes online to see what in the world people were cooking with hemp seeds. There are lots of recipes that seem…well…not very creative. Basically, they tell you to sprinkle them over a salad or throw a few tablespoons into a smoothie. I wanted something that would showcase the hemp seeds.
Then I came across a recipe on a blog called Gimme Some Oven for Hemp Crusted Baked Chicken Nuggets and they looked divine! So I glanced in my fridge to see what veggies I wanted to make for dinner and found my giant head of purple cabbage from the farmers market. My brain instantly went to Schnitzel & Braised Purple Cabbage, I am in Germany after all!
There are only about 8 net carbs per cup of these seeds! That makes them pretty low-carb in my book. One serving (2 tablespoons) also contains 882 mg of Omega-3 and 3500 mg of Omega-6 fatty acids! So this is really a nice item to have around your kitchen for healthy low-carb cooking. Just make sure you store them in the refrigerator or freezer because they can go rancid at room temp.
So the key to making a nice schnitzel is cutting your meat thinly and then gently pounding it flat. To me, this is easier when you see it. So here is a video tutorial I found for the same process I used.
Baked Hemp Seed Chicken Schnitzel Ingredients: 1 cup Bob’s Red Mill hulled hemp seeds
1 cup Bob’s Red Mill almond meal
2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon smoked paprika (or any paprika)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
pinch or two of cayenne pepper
3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, thinly sliced and pounded
2 large eggs, whisked
olive oil cooking spray (or you can also use olive oil in a Misto)
handful of fresh parsley, chopped
zest of 1 lemon
lemon wedges Method: Heat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together hemp, ground almonds, garlic powder, paprika, salt, pepper and cayenne until evenly combined. Set up your dipping stations in this order: (1) chicken cutlets (2) whisked eggs (3) hemp breading (4) parchment-lined baking sheet. Dip each chicken cutlet in the eggs until they are completely covered, then give them a little shake to let any extra egg drip off. Add the chicken cutlet to the hemp mixture, and gently toss until the chicken strip is completely covered. Remove and transfer the chicken cutlet to the baking sheet. Repeat with remaining chicken. Give the chicken cutlets a good shot of cooking spray so that they are all lightly covered. Then bake for about 20 minutes, turning once halfway through, until the chicken is cooked and no longer pink inside and the breading is golden. Remove and serve warm. Garnish with chopped parsley and lemon zest. Serve with lemon wedges to squeeze on top!
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Now, it's easy to jump to the conclusion that Donald Glover being spotted on the set of HBO's ' Girls ,' now shooting its second season out in Brooklyn, has to do with the recent controversy where the Lena Dunham / Judd Apatow series faced accusations of lacking diversity. But rather than level any further critiques of tokenism, can't we just be stoked that the amazing 'Donald Glover' will still be on TV while we wait for new ' Community ?'
From the New York Post today, photos of comedian, rapper and current 'Community' star Donald Glover have surfaced shooting scenes alongside 'Girls' star and writer Lena Dunham, as the show prepares its second season out in Brooklyn. The critically acclaimed-if controversial series received an order for a second season shortly after airing its second episode back in April. To date, the series is only half-way through airing its first season order.
Of course, in addition to accusations of nepotism for the show's core cast, 'Girls' faced numerous accusations of race for its lack of diversity within the core and peripheral characters, something many have taken Glover's casting as something of a response to. Previously, Dunham responded to the criticisms on NPR, saying:
Something I wanted to avoid was tokenism in casting. Each character was a piece of me or based on someone close to me. And only later did I realize that it was four white girls. As much as I can say it was an accident, it was only later as the criticism came out, I thought, 'I hear this and I want to respond to it.' All I want to do is sound sensitive and not say anything that will horrify anyone or make them feel more isolated, but I did write something that was super-specific to my experience, and I always want to avoid rendering an experience I can't speak to accurately.
Dunham had also spoken out prior the show's airing that if accusations of lacking diversity arose, she would look to correct the imbalance in a second season. Certainly, any implications of race won't be lost on Glover, who recently took to his Twitter to deliver a long, rambling diatribe of his feelings on the subject.
Check out a photo of the two on set, and tell us what you think of Donald Glover appearing in the second season of 'Girls' in the comments below! You should also check out our weekly talkback segment, 'Girls' Talk ! |
The combination of intimacy and broad strokes of bokeh with Grizzly Bear's "Alligator" is celestial, a hypnotic warmth spreading down to your toes. This magnificent sequence instills a poignant sense of closure as well as the notion that a firework, a film, a love, or a life are all just sparks in time.
Film editor and end title designer JIM HELTON details the process for us.
JH: Let me first start off by saying that I have known [director] Derek Cianfrance for a very long time. My friend Steve Hidinger and I actually created the title sequence for his first film, Brother Tied, back in 1998. That title sequence was all done on a dual gate 16mm optical printer at the University of Colorado in a closet inside a condemned archaeology building that no longer exists. We learned from a true master of that machine, experimental filmmaker Phil Solomon. He taught us about combining elemental and abstract images such as fire and water with more representational images through a process that he called “bi-packing” which involves placing two strips of film on top of each other and re-photographing them to create quite a different effect than a standard super-imposition. It is a tedious frame-by-frame process, but it can create pure magic. If you like the Blue Valentine title sequence, everything about it starts with Phil Solomon and his work, so check that out. Solomon’s sound was also a huge influence – nostalgic, distant, reverberating.
Other giant inspirations for me that are a bit more obvious are Saul Bass and Maurice Binder as well as the Goldfinger titles by Robert Brownjohn. I collected their work as a college student and would sit around and watch them with my friends Joey Curtis (co-writer of Blue Valentine) and Derek Cianfrance. That was our idea of a party back then! That and some cheap Paisano wine, wonderful food, and long pink summer sunsets in Boulder.
Fireworks frames
The thing I loved about those filmmakers’ title sequences was their ability to tell an abstract story and embed images within the abstractions. The abstractions seemed to create something less logical and more emotional or even poetic while at the same time leaving space for the titles and even highlighting them. Those qualities are very central to the creation of the Blue Valentine title sequence.
I’ll start with the first layer – the fireworks. I was editing Blue Valentine alongside Ron Patane and we were just trying to get it done for screenings so we were very focused on the narrative flow of the film. However, on a late night or two, I made some room for abstraction and delved into [cinematographer] Andrij Parekh’s beautiful fireworks footage and discovered rhythms in his camera work and the exploding light. He and Derek shot fireworks somewhere near Scranton, PA on July 4th of 2009. They threw images out of focus and sometimes even took the lens off. The film ends with a fireworks scene so it was always going to be fireworks. In the first rough cuts of the film it was just that – an abstract montage of fireworks. My first passes on that footage were all silent because I believe that if you can make something flow without music it will definitely flow with music and then you will actually have two pieces of “music” playing in harmony together.
View 2 images Davi Russo set photography
The second layer was the music by Grizzly Bear. The only parameters I was given in choosing the song is that it had to be by Grizzly Bear. I chose “Alligator” – what can I say? Everything about it was right, from the tone to the lyrics to the cinematic quality it lends to the sequence. I love it. Of course, I could’ve been overruled by Derek in that choice, but he loved it right away. Ironically, after the last day of shooting on the way back to New York, I rode in a car with Derek, Andrij, and still photographer Davi Russo. They told me that the final song should be a pop remix of “Two Weeks” and proceeded to play it very loudly and to drive very fast. Well, the “Two Weeks” remix is a good song, but to me it wasn’t right for the end of the film. I knew that then, but I bit my tongue because everyone was riding high after wrapping the shoot... sometimes it’s better to show people rather than to argue with them.
Davi Russo set photography - Michelle Williams
Davi Russo set photography - Ryan Gosling
The third layer was the amazing iconic photography that Davi Russo captured on set. Derek and I have been working with Davi for a long time now – since 2004 – and his still photography played a huge role in the documentary work we made prior to Blue Valentine, so right from the beginning Derek insisted that Davi be involved. I believe this was not only for his photography, but also his presence on set. Derek greatly values Davi’s “bullshit meter” and his eye. For a long time in the edit, Derek and I asked each other, “Where do the photos fit in?” It was not until the second or third rough cut screening that it hit me... I literally saw them inside of those fireworks – like memories. As these things usually happen, the ideas were in the ether because Derek and Cami Delavigne (co-writer of Blue Valentine) both walked up to me at separate times after the screening and said that something was missing in the end titles. I just grinned and said, “I got it.”
View 4 images Davi Russo set photography
The next night I stayed late and put the images “inside” the fireworks. I knew the images by heart and it happened very quickly because we had it narrowed down to our favorites. I wanted to create a sort of ode to the film: a story of togetherness, apartness, and love, ending with the wedding and ultimately, Frankie alone in the field. I looked for images that fit within the firework explosions, re-framed images, and at times even cut them up into details. I also looked for the proper amount of negative space within the images to make the titles really pop out so the image and the title could share time together without conflict. This was all done in Final Cut Pro. Of course, we kicked it up a notch in the color correct stage with the help of Technicolor ace colorist Tim Stipan, but the original was all created in Final Cut Pro using the composite feature and a lot of tweaking. I honestly can’t tell you exactly what I did but I discovered these techniques by trying to mimic some of the things I had learned while using the optical printer in film school. You can see examples of this discovery and exploration in my own films.
Fireworks frames
The fourth layer was the typeface created by artist and designer Chris Rubino, an amazing artist. Of course, I’m biased because Chris and I have collaborated on a film series called Love Kills Demons. We went through a serious exploration of typefaces, both curated and created by Chris. His interpretation of words is inspiring. A variation of the typeface that Derek, Chris, and I settled on is also used in the screen-printed limited edition pink Blue Valentine posters that Chris created for the Sundance Film Festival in 2010. Derek loved what he called the “like a Russian film” character of the small and large fonts. I love the boldness of the main title. Incorporating them into the picture was pretty simple... short fade in and long fade out, like exploding and disappearing light. The only title that cuts straight in is the main title, super bold with a long, long fade out.
Custom typeface by Chris Rubino
The fifth and final layer was the sound design created by Dan Flosdorf and mixed by Corey Melious over at Sound Lounge. Fireworks streaking into the sky and crackling in the distance, muted booms, children laughing, shouting, and screaming... they all help tie the title sequence to the last shot of the film and, in effect, create an interplay between the nostalgic past and the present that reflects the structure of the film itself.
Dan recorded his own fireworks and what he calls “the air of the night” in surround sound and we layered them in so that they worked with the rhythm of the images and tone of the song – echoing and abstract, lost in nostalgia, sometimes slightly out of sync, sometimes absent and allowing the music to completely take over.
There you have it! A great collaboration between Derek, Andrij, Davi, Chris, Dan, Tim, Corey, and myself as well as some sources of inspiration. That’s what this whole filmmaking thing is all about.
Limited edition pink Blue Valentine posters for Sundance
View the credits for this sequence |
Denis Malbec, former winemaker at Captûre Wines, dies in Napa County crash
A well-known North Bay winemaker was killed in an early morning crash Saturday in Yountville.
Denis Malbec, 46, of St. Helena, was driving a 2016 Mercedes-Benz west on Washington Street at an unknown speed around 1:10 a.m. when it ran off the road near Highway 29, according to the CHP. The vehicle struck a fence and a number of trees, according to investigators.
Malbec was pronounced dead at the scene. A passenger, Josh Phelps, escaped injury, but was taken to Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa as a precautionary measure. Both men were wearing seat belts, according to authorities.
Phelps, 30, is the winemaker and co-founder of Taken Wine Co in St. Helena.
The CHP said it was unknown whether alcohol or drugs were a factor in the crash.
Malbec, along with his wife, was a founding winemaker at Captûre Wines, with an estate vineyard on Pine Mountain near Cloverdale. In 2014, Jackson Family Wines purchased the brand. He formerly worked at Chateau Latour, a famed French winery in Bordeaux.
With his wife, May-Britt, Malbec owned Notre Vin, a small-batch winery offering premium wines sourced from Napa and Sonoma county vineyards.
(Editor's note: a previous version of this story stated that Malbec was still the winemaker at Captûre Wines.) |
Author’s Note: This article was originally published with a major data error, skewing salaries in favor of NBA positions. It has been corrected, and should now accurately reflect position comparisons across these leagues. In December 2017, when checking this site’s stats, I saw I was getting hits from a podcast website (District Trivia). After listening to the episode, reading this article again, and checking the data, I realized there was a significant mistake in these graphs. NBA positions appeared to be the highest yearly salaries, but some of the lower salaried players did not have a position listed! Many lower salaried players were lumped into a “blank” category, which skewed the other positions significantly upward. I was sad to see that, because I was excited to see my data crunching was used as a reference by someone. To correct the data, I manually went through the NBA section and updated player positions based on ESPN and Wikipedia rosters from 2016-2017. I also double-checked to make sure the other sports had positions listed properly. The current graphs shown below should now be accurate. I have also reached out to the podcast hosts to let them know about my mistake. My apologies to any readers, I definitely should have caught that before publishing.
Previously, wrote about salary data across the four major U.S. sports; NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL. In that first article, I explored the player salary totals, salary averages, per games averages, and per minute averages for each league and teams. I also discussed a bit on the methodology I used to calculate these amounts, which I recommend reading if you want to hear what caused me to look at this, where I got the data, and how I processed it. In this article, we’re going to look at the salary data for each individual player and by position.
For background, here’s the first post on this topic:
https://jonamdall.com/2017/09/03/u-s-sports-salaries-part-1-teams-leagues/
We’ll start with some charts, because visual representations are sometimes easier to interpret than data tables. These bar graphs group positions by their respective leagues, and are all in reference to salary data from the 2016-2017 season in each sport. We start with per season salary, then break it down per game, then per minute.
And here are the corresponding data tables for the above graphs. Yearly salaries seem to lean heavily in favor of the NBA and MLB, but once you start looking at per game and per minute rankings, several NFL positions join the party. In particular, per minute it pays to be an NFL QB, LB, and DE! In the MLB, DH and P both pay fairly well per minute too.
Next, I’ll include some data for individual players. It’s a little less interesting to me than the positional data. The big takeaway seems to be that, while the top yearly salaries are mostly NBA players, with some MLB players sprinkled in, the top per game/per minute earners are almost all NFL QBs.
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Regulation Comes Next as Most Legalization Measures Passed
California voters took the lead as they passed a measure legalizing recreational use of marijuana. Arizona voters defeated theirs, and results for Maine's legalization measure were too close to call on Nov. 9.
Now that voters in several U.S. states have passed legalization measures, either for recreational or medicinal use of marijuana, legislators and regulators in the states that did on Nov. 8 will get to work on drafting the rules for regulating and taxing these new industries, likely looking to the example of Colorado and possibly other legalization pioneers among the states.
California's Proposition 64 passed by a 56-44 majority with more than 4.9 million votes in favor. Voters in Nevada and Massachusetts also approved measures legalizing recreational use of marijuana and in Florida, Arkansas, and North Dakota, medical marijuana measures all passed. But the recreational marijuana initiative in Arizona was defeated, and the votes for and against Maine's recreational measure were too close to call it either way early Nov. 9, with the yes votes slightly ahead.
"Proposition 64 is just the beginning of essential work by government officials in California," The Los Angeles Times noted in a Nov. 9 editorial about the proposition's passage. "California has the opportunity to demonstrate that marijuana can be legalized with minimal harm to the public good." The editorial concluded, "It's up to lawmakers, regulators and advocates to ensure that this experiment in legalization works for all." |
A third observation wheel proposed for the Strip? Really?
Caesars Entertainment
As she prepared to vote on a zoning commission item Wednesday morning, Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani asked the presenter an innocuous final question.
“What is the London Thrill? It’s not another Ferris wheel is it?” she said with a hint of disdain in her voice.
Standing in front of the podium, Eric Smithers, who represents the site’s owners, responded with a sheepish laugh: “It’s an observation wheel.”
“But it’s more than just that,” he quickly followed. “That’s one component of an entire park.”
Indeed, a third observation wheel could be coming to the Las Vegas Strip, joining the under-construction 500-foot tall wheel near Mandalay Bay and the 550-foot tall wheel at Caesars Entertainment’s Linq project, which continues to grow skyward behind the Quad casino.
The third wheel would be built on the east side of Las Vegas Boulevard south of Harmon Avenue, in a spot currently occupied by parking and several retail stores, including a McDonald’s, a liquor store and a Tasti D-Lite.
The wheel would be part of a “London-themed thrill park,” and the project would cost about $50 million, according to testimony given to commissioners by Smithers and his attorney.
After the hearing, Smithers declined to reveal further details about the project. Any plans for an observation wheel would have to first be approved by the county.
Giunchigliani seemed skeptical of the viability of three observation wheels on the Strip.
“We’ve got to get past this stuff where someone comes in and says ‘I’ve got an idea du jour and we have to have four stadiums competing with each other and four of these and three of these,’” she said.
Details about the attraction were revealed as part of a request to allow temporary outdoor retail structures at the site until construction begins.
Smithers said the owner has acquired a parcel stretching from the Smith & Wollensky’s to the corner of Harmon Avenue and plan to make improvements to the entire area.
The commission voted to allow the developer to put five retail structures in the parking lot in front of the existing building for up to six months.
Commissioner Mary Beth Scow, whose district covers the southern part of the Strip, said she’s normally opposed to outdoor retail sales because they impede traffic and create clutter. But she said she voted to approve Smithers’ request because of future plans at the site.
“The fact that it’s a new owner and that you’re really going to do something wonderful on this property, we want to reward good behavior,” Scow said. |
"Conservative support for green energy has always been there, but the Democrats capitalized on it more than the Republicans," the former Republican congressman and Arizona legend told CNBC. "The Democrats did a better job of promoting it."
As a conservative, Goldwater has become a vocal advocate for solar energy in recent years. He currently serves as the chairman of "Tell Utilities Solar won't be Killed" (TUSK), a solar advocacy group that is pushing for energy independence across the country.
And he doesn't think there is anything odd about being a political conservative who also challenges utility companies for the right to choose solar over traditional forms of power. In fact, he finds it to be the natural outcome of true political conservatism.
"We promote the conservative philosophy of free market, choice and competition, because as the cost of things go down, the quality goes up," he said. |
HONG KONG -- The Chinese government is getting set to trim the fat of the economy, despite opposition by vested interests such as employees of such companies and local governments. Acting in concert with the administration of President Xi Jinping, the securities regulatory authorities have started addressing the long-standing problem of so-called "zombie" unprofitable state-owned companies that have been acting as a chronic weight on the Chinese economy.
The 13th Five Year Plan for 2016-2020, adopted by China in March at its National People's Congress, calls for restructuring or shutting down zombies.
First casualty
The Shanghai Stock Exchange decided on March 21 to delist ZhuHai BoYuan Investment, making the investment company the first casualty under stricter delisting rules introduced in 2014.
ZhuHai BoYuan was previously called Zhejiang Phoenix Chemical, one of the eight prestigious companies first listed on the Shanghai bourse when it opened in December 1990 as China's first stock exchange. But the company has since descended into a disgraceful state.
The company reportedly began to pad its assets, revenue and profit in around 2010. It even forged a bank bill to make up for a major shareholder's failure to pay 380 million yuan ($58.6 million), according to people familiar with the matter.
The revelation of highly fraudulent activities by Zhuhai Boyuan resulted in the transfer of investigating rights to the public security authorities from the securities industry watchdog at the end of March 2015.
The Shanghai exchange designated Zhuhai Boyuan as a "special treatment" stock to warn investors of the company's high risk of removal from the market. Trading in Zhuhai Boyuan shares has been suspended for almost a year as the bourse imposed a temporary halt in May last year. The stock was transferred to the liquidation post on March 29.
The survival of ZhuHai BoYuan on the stock exchange, despite its scandalous behavior, points to defects in China's capital market.
Loopholes
The Shanghai bourse has delisting rules applicable to companies such as those remaining in the red for four years in a row or posting sales of less than 10 million yuan for three years running. But few companies have actually been delisted, due to the presence of so many loopholes in the rules.
For example, a company can readily dodge the delisting rules if it sells its assets to an affiliated company or merges with an unlisted firm. The securities industry watchdog has continued to give tacit approval to such practices.
Local governments often help troubled companies remain listed through subsidies and other support, to avoid a decrease in the number of listed local companies.
Distortions are created on stock exchanges when companies that should be eliminated remain listed. On the Shanghai bourse, special treatment stocks have become targets for speculative investors.
Xi is trying to change the state of affairs in stock trading with his reform initiative. The Chinese government announced a set of measures in May 2014 to promote the development of capital markets in China roughly for the first time in 10 years, including reforms in the delisting system. In October of the same year, the securities regulator changed rules to enable the mandatory delisting of companies that have falsified earnings or committed legal violations.
It may be fair to say that 2014 was a turning point. In June, Nanjing Tanker of China Changjiang National Shipping (Group) was delisted after logging a net loss in the year through December 2013 for the fourth consecutive year. The removal of the stock drew strong attention as the first delisting of a state-owned company affiliated with the central government.
The China Securities Daily noted the presence of opaque companies, including so-called "phoenix" companies that arise out of the collapse of other companies and carry on with a facade of "business as usual." These compnaies, such as Zhuhai Boyuan, have been a source of disease in the country's stock market, and the newspaper stressed that the delisting of such stocks will help normalize the market.
Phoenixes must die
The removal of companies that should be delisted serves as a warning for investors whose gambling spirit tends to be incited by excessive stock price rises.
As the head of the China Securities Regulatory Commission was replaced earlier this year, some market players said the government is serious about cleaning up the Chinese stock market.
Nevertheless, Chinese individual investors have been able to indulge in risky money games because the targets of their investment were phoenixes. They will lose everything if the targets are delisted.
More than 80 companies are candidates for delisting, according to the Chinese newspaper Securities Times. In addition, 30 to 40 other companies are on the securities regulator's blacklist, according to a number of news media outlets.
But in the short run, investor sentiment may be dampened as a result of an increase in selling of stocks expected to follow the fate of ZhuHai BoYuan, said Huang Yongxi, head of Japanese brokerage house Toyo Securities' Shanghai office.
In fact, some securities companies have reportedly issued reminders to clients holding shares in companies that may be delisted.
While the thorough implementation of delisting rules is a positive step that will help improve the Chinese stock market in the long run, the move is highly likely to lead to an exodus of speculative money. The measure of the last resort tapped by the Chinese government is a double-edged sword. |
A hacker has stolen the upcoming fifth season of Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black, according to the Associated Press, and has reportedly released it via file-sharing websites.
The AP reports that a hacker called The Dark Overlord reportedly uploaded the first episode to file-sharing services earlier this morning and that they claim to have stolen shows from other studios. According to a release from the hacker, the remainder of the show’s stolen episodes have been made available through The Pirate Bay. The authenticity of the leaked episodes is not clear, and we’ve reached out to Netflix for comment.
Netflix released a statement to Variety, saying that it was “aware of the situation. A production vendor used by several major TV studios had its security compromised and the appropriate law enforcement authorities are involved.”
It’s not clear what impact this might have on Netflix’s viewing numbers
The fifth season of Orange Is the New Black is slated to be released on June 9th, and it’s not clear what impact a premature leak will have on its viewing numbers. It’s also not clear what other content might have been stolen from the other studios. The hacker claimed in a tweet that shows from ABC, Fox, National Geographic, and IFC were also among those stolen, and that they could be leaked as well.
The breach apparently happened several months ago. The AP notes that it had been in contact with The Dark Overlord in February, who at the time noted that the video “wouldn't be made publicly available after all, making the far-fetched claim that "no one really (cares) about unreleased movies and TV show episodes.” That seems to have changed. |
Canned beer turns 80 this week but still, for many, the very thought of beer in a can conjures up images of listless lagers favoured by lairy lads or super strength brews consumed by a less than discerning park bench crowd – miles away from the suave sophistication of continental bottled beers or the warm reassurance of real ale. The continued rise of craft breweries however, and their championing of the can, could see all this about to change.
It was the early 1900s when American brewers first hit on the idea of canning beers, but the challenge of creating a metal container that could withstand the pasteurisation process, as well as the pressures of carbonisation, proved problematic. And then of course came prohibition.
But on 24 January 1935 this goal was realised when Krueger Cream Ale became the first beer to be sold in a can. A further 36 American breweries went on to can their beers that year, as well as the Felinfoel Brewery in Wales which was the first outside the US.
The next few decades saw much experimentation as brewers tried out flat tops which needed to be punctured by a can opener, cone tops sealed with caps just like bottles, aluminium which was first used by Coors in the 1950s, the introduction of the ring pull in 1965 and, perhaps most importantly, a water-based lining to get rid of the much bemoaned metallic tang.
Despite these advancements, and obvious advantages over bottles, such as keeping out oxygen and light (two of beer’s biggest enemies), cans garnered a negative reputation that has been difficult to shake.
Thankfully a new breed of brewer is embracing aluminium with abandon, and doing so in style, with the humble can finally getting the kind of design love previously reserved for bottles.
And just as the first beer cans made their way to the UK from across the Atlantic 80 years ago, this trend currently making its mark on the British beer scene also has its roots in the US, with Oskar Blues Brewery’s Dale’s Pale Ale the first craft beer to be canned rather than bottled back in 2002.
Since then sales of craft beer cans in the US have soared, reportedly climbing 89 per cent last year alone compared to a nine per cent rise in bottle sales, while in the UK, which had been somewhat slower in uptake, growth has been even more pronounced of late, with sales up by more than 250 per cent in the first half of 2014.
Last year the UK even had its first Indie Beer Can competition, run by independent brewers body Siba along with Can Makers – the trade body for beverage can manufacturers – which attracted entries from more than 100 brewers.
The managing director of Siba, Mike Benner, explains cans offer brewers a new and exciting way to bring their beers to market, and that it is “undoubtedly a format that will continue to grow in the UK, as it has in the US”.
BrewDog’s James Watt meanwhile says it was a “no brainer” for the Aberdeenshire-based brewer and bar operator to get into cans, knowing from the get go “canning was never going to compromise flavour or quality of our beers”.
The increased demand for craft beer has meant more potential for brewers to can their beer, Watt tells us, and in the next few years he expects to see more craft brewers add canned beers to their offering. He also reveals that BrewDog has invested in a state of the art canning system at its brewery, which should be up and running in-house early this year. “You can expect not just more cans from BrewDog, but a wider range in cans too.”
BrewDog recently underwent a shift in its packaging design and now boasts a suite of eye-catching cans, but it is far from the only UK craft brewer showing a keen interest in graphic design, with London’s Beavertown Brewery, for one, regularly cited as a great example of beer can design, while the Camden Town Brewery has worked with artists such as Mr Bingo to create its Hells cans and Stuart Patience to create its IHL cans.
Alex Troncoso, head brewer at Camden Town, effuses “we love our cans” before offering a whole host of reasons why, including “they cool down super fast and don’t break in your bag, they take up less space in the fridges of restaurants and bars because you can stack them, they fit perfectly into the festival drinking scene, and, for busy urban cities like London where so many people rely on public transport, picking up a case of cans is so much lighter to get from the store to your fridge”. Not least, however, he says “they look great”.
“Craft breweries have set out to change people’s views on how beer should taste, so why not do it with packaging as well?”
Over at global design agency Jones Knowles Ritchie, they know more than a thing or two about can design, having styled tins for no less than Guinness, Boddington’s and Budweiser, and creative director Sean Thomas explains that, on a purely graphic level, “cans give you a 360° canvas to print on which, if you're a start-up brand looking to get noticed, is a huge plus”.
“Every inch of the design can be used to say something about who you are and what you stand for, hence why I think we are seeing so many craft beers adopt them of late.”
Christian Helms, whose brand design studio Helms Workshop is behind the designs of some of the US’s most celebrated and eye-catching craft beer cans including Austin Beerworks, Fullsteam Brewery and Modern Times Beer, continues this thought by explaining that where bottles “generally used to hold designs constrained within the dimensions of a paper label, cans offer a more holistic vehicle for sharing the heart of the brand with consumers”.
“Cans offer a wide open playing field for a host of aesthetics and approaches, and designers are really excited about the opportunity offered by the relatively recent growth in craft beer.”
Helms agrees the craft beer can has become a coveted job for designers and that everyone wants a shot. And with the way the industry is growing, who knows, maybe they’ll all get one.
This feature was first published in the 21 January issue of The Drum.
Below is a selection of some of our favourite craft beer can designs. Know of any better? Let us know in the comments.
Beavertown Brewery
Camden Town Brewery
Defiance Brewing Co
Austin Beerworks
Bauhaus Brew Labs
21st Amendment Brewery
Central Coast Brewing
Modern Times Beer |
The essay film, a form pitched between documentary and personal reflection, exploring the subjectivity of the cinematic perspective, has now become an accepted genre. Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet, Jean-Luc Godard, Errol Morris and Michael Moore are among its main recent exponents, but Chris Marker, who has died aged 91, was credited with inventing the form.
Marker's creative use of sound, images and text in his poetic, political and philosophical documentaries made him one of the most inventive of film-makers. They looked forward to what is called "the new documentary", but also looked back to the literary essay in the tradition of Michel de Montaigne. Marker's interests lay in transitional societies – "life in the process of becoming history," as he put it. How do various cultures perceive and sustain themselves and each other in the increasingly intermingled modern world?
He was born Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve, most likely in Neuilly-sur-Seine, on the outskirts of Paris, although one source gives the place of birth as Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia – a legend that Marker did nothing to dispel. His pseudonym is said to have been taken from the Magic Marker pen.
Chris Marker, left, with Alain Resnais. The pair collaborated on the propaganda film Far from Vietnam. Photograph: Getty Images/Gamma-Keystone
Marker fought in the French Resistance and supposedly with the American armed forces during the second world war. He emerged from the Parisian Left Bank intellectual climate, coming under the influence of two postwar figures, André Malraux and André Bazin, working with the latter on the theatre section of the magazine Travail et Culture, then under the aegis of the French Communist party.
He wrote a novel, Le Coeur Net, published in 1950 and translated the following year as The Forthright Spirit; a book of criticism on the playwright and novelist Jean Giraudoux; poems and short stories; and film reviews for Cahiers du Cinéma. But it was his lucid and committed leftwing documentaries, all of which he wrote and many of which he photographed, made from 1955 to 1966, that established him as a major film-maker. It was during this period that the poet Henri Michaux proclaimed: "The Sorbonne should be razed and Chris Marker put up in its place."
"I write to you from a far-off country," begins Marker's Lettre de Sibérie (Letter from Siberia, 1958), which uses cartoons, texts and voiceover. In the film, Marker questions the objectivity of documentaries by repeating one sequence three times, each with a different commentary. Depending on the commentary, Soviet workers building a road were either "unhappy", "happy" or "noble".
The passionate and influential Cuba Si! (1961) contains two interviews with Fidel Castro. It ends with the Bay of Pigs fiasco, which took place in April 1961, during the editing of the film, which had been shot a few months previously. The anti-American tone of the ending caused the French government to ban the film until 1963, but Marker published the text and stills before then. However, this could not amply communicate the expert use of sound, image and text that makes his films so special.
Marker brought the same foreigner's eye view to bear on his own city in Le Joli Mai (1963), which he compiled from 55 hours of interviews with the people of Paris (boiled down to around two and a half hours) with a linking commentary spoken by Yves Montand (replaced by Simone Signoret in the English version). The interviews assume the form of a dialectic during which Marker's tone is often ironic and judgmental. For example, when one interviewee says he wants material success, Marker remarks that his view of life is "a trifle limited".
Marker's La Jetée (The Pier, 1962), a roughly 30-minute post-third world war story, is made up entirely of stills, except for one brief moving shot of a woman opening her eyes. This futuristic photo-novel film, semi-remade by Terry Gilliam as 12 Monkeys in 1995, abstracts cinema almost to its essence in bringing to life the story of a post-apocalyptic man obsessed with an image from his past.
Set against the backdrop of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Le Mystère Koumiko (The Koumiko Mystery, 1965) consists of a series of conversations with an attractive, French-speaking Tokyo resident named Koumiko Muraoka. Through her, and modern Tokyo, Marker is able to comment on the loss of identity in the face of globalism. Koumiko considers her own features too Japanese, while the director interprets the aesthetics of contemporary Japanese fashion as a subconscious desire to neutralise Asiatic features and erase the otherness that attracts Marker himself to the culture (and to the heroine).
In 1966, Marker set up a company, Société pour le Lancement des Oeuvres Nouvelles, to produce new work. It financed Loin du Vietnam (Far from Vietnam, 1967), a timely propaganda piece with contributions directed by Godard, Agnès Varda, Alain Resnais, Joris Ivens and Marker himself.
Le Train en Marche (The Train Rolls On, 1971) was a documentary focusing on the director Alexander Ivanovich Medvedkin, and his CineTrain of the 1930s, on which film crews travelled through the Soviet Union making documentaries. Using archive footage and photographs, Marker illustrates how the CineTrain functioned as the means by which films could include and educate the masses in Russia at the start of the revolution. More than 20 years later, after the fall of Soviet communism, Marker returned to Medvedkin in Le Tombeau d'Alexandre (The Last Bolshevik, 1992). The film is a series of video letters to Medvedkin (who died in 1989) and provides a broader, incisive meditation on the nature of reality, fiction, art, ideology and history.
Taking an even wider perspective was his 1977 film Le Fond de l'Air est Rouge (a slogan from the May 1968 protests). It was given the English title The Grin Without a Cat. Divided into two 90-minute parts, it tells the story of the New Left activist movement, from its birth as a byproduct of the Vietnam war to the CIA's ousting of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, which sounded the death knell for ideological hope. For Marker, truth is always a matter of an individual's point of view: history does not exist apart from through our personal experience and interpretation of it.
"You never know what you're filming until later," remarks one of the film's many narrators, summing up Marker's distinctive way of working both within the moment and out of it. In Sans Soleil (Sunless, 1983), a fictional cameraman (a Marker surrogate) tries to make sense of the cultural dislocation he feels in Japan, West Africa and Iceland. Using diverse images, letters, quotes and musings, Marker continued to extend the limits of the documentary, making use of new video technology and image-processing by Hayao Yamaneko, credited with special effects. The result is a film that Marker described as like "a musical composition, with recurrent themes, counterpoints and mirror-like fugues".
"I remember that month of January in Tokyo, or rather, I remember the images I filmed of the month of January in Tokyo," says the narrator. "They have substituted themselves for my memory. They are my memory … the act of remembering is not the opposite of forgetting."
Apart from the Medvedkin documentaries, Marker made further films on directors. AK (1985), profiling the location shooting of Akira Kurosawa's Ran on the slopes of Mount Fuji, included an interview with its 75-year-old director. This reverential impression of the Japanese master at work is revealing about Kurosawa's methods and his relations with his crew. Marker also uses the subject for his own brand of poetic-philosophical celluloid essay on the Japanese and on the making of a film. For the French TV programme Cinéastes de Notre Temps, Marker paid homage to Andrei Tarkovsky in Une Journée d'Andrei Arsenevitch (One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich, 2000).
In the 1990s, Marker expanded into multimedia installation work such as Zapping Zone for the Pompidou Centre. In the film Level Five (1997), he made use of the new video technology and paid homage to Resnais' films on memory and the unconscious. Gradually, a woman called Laura (named after the eponymous heroine of the Otto Preminger film) attempts to reconstruct a true historical event through information derived from a global virtual network known as Optional World Link (or Owl, a wry reference to Marker's production company Argos Films and its emblematic mascot).
That decade, Marker, always the innovator, made a CD-Rom called Immemory, composed of stills, film clips, music, text and fragments of sound. It is over 20 hours long and can be viewed in many different ways.
Throughout his career, Marker, who was notoriously secretive about his private life, was rarely interviewed or photographed, often responding to requests for his photograph with a picture of a cat – his favourite animal.
• Chris Marker (Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve), film director, born 29 July 1921; died 30 July 2012 |
Arsenic poisoning is a medical condition that occurs due to elevated levels of arsenic in the body.[4] If arsenic poisoning occurs over a brief period of time symptoms may include vomiting, abdominal pain, encephalopathy, and watery diarrhea that contains blood.[1] Long-term exposure can result in thickening of the skin, darker skin, abdominal pain, diarrhea, heart disease, numbness, and cancer.[1]
The most common reason for long-term exposure is contaminated drinking water.[3] Groundwater most often becomes contaminated naturally; however, contamination may also occur from mining or agriculture.[1] It may also be found in the soil and air.[5] Recommended levels in water are less than 10–50 µg/L (10–50 parts per billion).[1] Other routes of exposure include toxic waste sites and traditional medicines.[1][3] Most cases of poisoning are accidental.[1] Arsenic acts by changing the functioning of around 200 enzymes.[1] Diagnosis is by testing the urine, blood, or hair.[1]
Prevention is by using water that does not contain high levels of arsenic.[1] This may be achieved by the use of special filters or using rainwater.[1] There is not good evidence to support specific treatments for long-term poisoning.[1] For acute poisonings treating dehydration is important.[4] Dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA) or dimercaptopropane sulfonate (DMPS) may be used while dimercaprol (BAL) is not recommended.[2] Hemodialysis may also be used.[4]
Through drinking water, more than 200 million people globally are exposed to higher than safe levels of arsenic.[3] The areas most affected are Bangladesh and West Bengal.[3] Exposure is also more common in people of low income and minorities.[6] Acute poisoning is uncommon.[3] The toxicity of arsenic has been described as far back as 1500 BC in the Ebers papyrus.[7]
Signs and symptoms [ edit ]
Symptoms of arsenic poisoning begin with headaches, confusion, severe diarrhea, and drowsiness. As the poisoning develops, convulsions and changes in fingernail pigmentation called leukonychia striata (Mees's lines, or Aldrich-Mees's lines) may occur.[8] When the poisoning becomes acute, symptoms may include diarrhea, vomiting, vomiting blood, blood in the urine, cramping muscles, hair loss, stomach pain, and more convulsions. The organs of the body that are usually affected by arsenic poisoning are the lungs, skin, kidneys, and liver.[9] The final result of arsenic poisoning is coma and death.[10]
Arsenic is related to heart disease[11] (hypertension-related cardiovascular disease), cancer,[12] stroke[13] (cerebrovascular diseases), chronic lower respiratory diseases,[14] and diabetes.[15][16] Skin effects can include skin cancer in the long-term but often prior to skin cancer are different skin lesions.[5] Other effects may include darkening of skin and thickening of skin.[17]
Chronic exposure to arsenic is related to[clarification needed] vitamin A deficiency, which is related to heart disease and night blindness.[18] The acute minimal lethal dose of arsenic in adults is estimated to be 70 to 200 mg or 1 mg/kg/day.[19]
Cancer [ edit ]
Arsenic increases the risk of cancer.[20] Exposure is related to skin, lung, liver, and kidney cancer among others.[1]
Its comutagenic effects may be explained by interference with base and nucleotide excision repair, eventually through interaction with zinc finger structures.[21] Dimethylarsinic acid, DMA(V), caused DNA single strand breaks resulting from inhibition of repair enzymes at levels of 5 to 100 mM in human epithelial type II cells.[22][23]
MMA(III) and DMA(III) were also shown to be directly genotoxic by effectuating scissions in supercoiled ΦX174 DNA.[24] Increased arsenic exposure is associated with an increased frequency of chromosomal aberrations,[25] micronuclei[26][27] and sister-chromatid exchanges. An explanation for chromosomal aberrations is the sensitivity of the protein tubulin and the mitotic spindle to arsenic. Histological observations confirm effects on cellular integrity, shape and locomotion.[28]
DMA(III) is able to form reactive oxygen species (ROS) by reaction with molecular oxygen. Resulting metabolites are the dimethylarsenic radical and the dimethylarsenic peroxyl radical.[29] Both DMA(III) and DMA(V) were shown to release iron from horse spleen as well as from human liver ferritin if ascorbic acid was administered simultaneously. Thus, formation of ROS can be promoted.[30] Moreover, arsenic could cause oxidative stress by depleting the cell's antioxidants, especially the ones containing thiol groups. The accumulation of ROS like the cited above and hydroxyl radicals, superoxide radicals and hydrogen peroxides causes aberrant gene expression at low concentrations and lesions of lipids, proteins and DNA in higher concentrations which eventually lead to cellular death. In a rat animal model, urine levels of 8-hydroxy-2’-desoxyguanosine (as a biomarker of ROS DNA damage) were measured after treatment with DMA(V). In comparison to control levels, they turned out to be significantly increased.[31] This theory is further supported by a cross-sectional study which found elevated mean serum lipid peroxides (LPO) in the As exposed individuals which correlated with blood levels of inorganic arsenic and methylated metabolites and inversely correlated with nonprotein sulfhydryl (NPSH) levels in whole blood.[32] Another study found an association of As levels in whole blood with the level of reactive oxidants in plasma and an inverse relationship with plasma antioxidants.[33] A finding of the latter study indicates that methylation might in fact be a detoxification pathway with regard to oxidative stress: the results showed that the lower the As methylation capacity was, the lower the level of plasma antioxidant capacity. As reviewed by Kitchin (2001), the oxidative stress theory provides an explanation for the preferred tumor sites connected with arsenic exposure.[34] Considering that a high partial pressure of oxygen is present in lungs and DMA(III) is excreted in gaseous state via the lungs this seems to be a plausible mechanism for special vulnerability. The fact that DMA is produced by methylation in the liver, excreted via the kidneys and latter on stored in the bladder accounts for the other tumor localizations.
Regarding DNA methylation, some studies suggest interaction of As with methyltransferases which leads to an inactivation of tumor suppressor genes through hypermethylation, others state that hypomethylation might occur due to a lack of SAM resulting in aberrant gene activation.[35] An experiment by Zhong et al. (2001) with arsenite-exposed human lung A549, kidney UOK123, UOK109 and UOK121 cells isolated eight different DNA fragments by methylation-sensitive arbitrarily primed PCR.[36] It turned out that six of the fragments were hyper- and two of them were hypomethylated.[36] Higher levels of DNA methltransferase mRNA and enzyme activity were found.[36]
Kitchin (2001) proposed a model of altered growth factors which lead to cell proliferation and thus to carcinogenesis.[34] From observations, it is known that chronic low-dose arsenic poisoning can lead to increased tolerance to its acute toxicity.[20][37] MRP1-overexpressing lung tumor GLC4/Sb30 cells poorly accumulate arsenite and arsenate. This is mediated through MRP-1 dependent efflux.[38] The efflux requires GSH, but no As-GSH complex formation.[39]
Although many mechanisms have been proposed, no definite model can be given for the mechanisms of chronic arsenic poisoning. The prevailing events of toxicity and carcinogenicity might be quite tissue-specific. Current consensus on the mode of carcinogenesis is that it acts primarily as a tumor promoter. Its co-carcinogenicity has been demonstrated in several models. However, the finding of several studies that chronically arsenic-exposed Andean populations (as most extremely exposed to UV-light) do not develop skin cancer with chronic arsenic exposure, is puzzling.[40]
Causes [ edit ]
Organic arsenic is less harmful than inorganic arsenic. Seafood is a common source of the less toxic organic arsenic in the form of arsenobetaine. The arsenic reported in 2012 in fruit juice and rice by Consumer Reports was primarily inorganic arsenic.[41][42] Because of its high toxicity, arsenic is seldom used in the Western world, although in Asia it is still a popular pesticide. Arsenic is mainly encountered occupationally in the smelting of zinc and copper ores.
Drinking water [ edit ]
Arsenic is naturally found in groundwater and presents serious health threats when high amounts exist.[43] Chronic arsenic poisoning results from drinking contaminated well water over a long period of time. Many aquifers contain high concentration of arsenic salts.[44] The World Health Organization (WHO) Guidelines for drinking water quality established in 1993 a provisional guideline value of 0.01 mg/L (10 parts per billion) for maximum contaminant levels of arsenic in drinking water.[45] This recommendation was established based on the limit of detection for most laboratories' testing equipment at the time of publication of the WHO water quality guidelines. More recent findings show that consumption of water with levels as low as 0.00017 mg/L (0.17 parts per billion) over long periods of time can lead to arsenicosis.[46][47]
From a 1988 study in China, the US protection agency quantified the lifetime exposure of arsenic in drinking water at concentrations of 0.0017 mg/L (1.7 ppb), 0.00017 mg/L, and 0.000017 mg/L are associated with a lifetime skin cancer risk of 1 in 10,000, 1 in 100,000, and 1 in 1,000,000 respectively. WHO asserts that a water level of 0.01 mg/L (10 ppb) poses a risk of 6 in 10000 chance of lifetime skin cancer risk and contends that this level of risk is acceptable.[48]
One of the worst incidents of arsenic poisoning via well water occurred in Bangladesh, which the World Health Organization called the "largest mass poisoning of a population in history"[49] recognized as a major public health concern. The contamination in the Ganga- Brahmaputra fluvial plains in India and Padma-Meghna fluvial plains in Bangladesh demonstrated adverse impacts on human health.[50]
Mining techniques such as hydraulic fracturing may mobilize arsenic in groundwater and aquifers due to enhanced methane transport and resulting changes in redox conditions,[51] and inject fluid containing additional arsenic.[52]
Groundwater [ edit ]
In the US, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the median groundwater concentration is 1 μg/L or less, although some groundwater aquifers, particularly in the western United States, can contain much higher levels. For example, median levels in Nevada were about 8 μg/L[53] but levels of naturally occurring arsenic as high as 1000 μg/L have been measured in the United States in drinking water.[54]
Geothermally active zones occur at hotspots where mantle-derived plumes ascend, such as in Hawaii and Yellowstone National Park, USA. Arsenic is an incompatible element ( do not fit easily into the lattices of common rock-forming minerals). Concentrations of arsenic are high mainly in geothermal waters that leach continental rocks. Arsenic in hot geothermal fluids was shown to be derived mainly from leaching of host rocks at Yellowstone National Park, in Wyoming, USA, rather than from magmas.[55][56]
In the western USA, there are As (arsenic) inputs to groundwater and surface water from geothermal fluids in and near Yellowstone National Park,[57] and in other western mineralized areas.[58] Groundwater associated with volcanics in California contain As at concentrations ranging up to 48,000 μg/L, with As-bearing sulfide minerals as the main source.[59] Geothermal waters on Dominica in the Lesser Antilles also contain concentrations of As >50 μg/L.[60][56]
In general, because arsenic is an incompatible element, it accumulates in differentiated magmas,[57] and in other western mineralized areas.[58] Weathering of pegmatite veins in Connecticut, USA, was thought to contribute As to groundwater.[56]
In Pennsylvania, As concentrations in water discharging from abandoned anthracite mines ranged from <0.03 to 15 μg/L and from abandoned bituminous mines, from 0.10 to 64 μg/L, with 10% of samples exceeding the United States Environmental Protection Agency MLC of 10 μg/L/[61][56]
In Wisconsin, As concentrations of water in sandstone and dolomite aquifers were as high as 100 μg/L. Oxidation of pyrite hosted by these formations was the likely source of the As.[62][56]
In the Piedmont of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, groundwater in Mesozoic age aquifers contains elevated levels of As—domestic well waters from Pennsylvania contained up to 65 μg/L,[63] whereas in New Jersey the highest concentration measured recently was 215 μg/L.[64][56]
Food [ edit ]
In the United States, Schoof et al. (1999)[65] estimated an average adult intake of 3.2 μg/day, with a range of 1–20 μg/day. Estimates for children were similar.[66]
Food also contains many organic arsenic compounds. The key organic arsenic compounds that can be routinely found in food (depending on food type) include monomethylarsonic acid (MMAsV), Dimethylearsenoicacid (DMAsV ), arsenobetaine, arsenocholine, arsenosugars, and arsenolipids. DMAsV or MMAsV can be found in various types of fin fish, crabs, and mollusks, but often at very low levels.[67]
Arsenobetaine is the major form of arsenic in marine animals, and, by all accounts, it is considered a compound that is nontoxic under conditions of human consumption. Arsenocholine, which is mainly found in shrimp, is chemically similar to arsenobetaine, and is considered to be “essentially nontoxic”.[68] Although arsenobetaine is little studied, available information indicates it is not mutagenic, immunotoxic, or embryotoxic.[69]
Arsenosugars and arsenolipids have recently been identified. Exposure to these compounds and toxicological implications are currently being studied. Arsenosugars are detected mainly in seaweed but are also found to a lesser extent in marine mollusks.[70] Studies addressing arsenosugar toxicity, however, have largely been limited to in vitro studies, which show that arsenosugars are significantly less toxic than both inorganic arsenic and trivalent methylated arsenic metabolites.[71]
It has been found that rice is particularly susceptible to accumulation of arsenic from soil.[72] Rice grown in the U.S. has an average 260 ppb of arsenic, according to a study; but U.S. arsenic intake remains far below World Health Organization-recommended limits.[73] China has set a standard for arsenic limits in food (150 ppb),[74] as levels in rice exceed those in water.[75]
Arsenic is a ubiquitous element present in American drinking water.[76] In the United States, levels of arsenic that are above natural levels, but still well below danger levels set in federal safety standards, have been detected in commercially raised chickens.[77] The source of the arsenic appears to be the feed additives roxarsone and nitarsone, which are used to control the parasitic infection coccidiosis as well as to increase weight and skin coloring of the poultry.[78][79]
High levels of inorganic arsenic were reportedly found in 83 California wines in 2015.[80]
Soil [ edit ]
Exposure to arsenic in soil can occur through multiple pathways. Compared with the intake of naturally occurring arsenic from water and the diet, soil arsenic constitutes only a small fraction of intake.[81]
Air [ edit ]
The European Commission (2000) reports that levels of arsenic in air range 0–1 ng/m3 in remote areas, 0.2–1.5 ng/m3 in rural areas, 0.5–3 ng/m3 in urban areas, and up to about 50 ng/m3 in the vicinity of industrial sites. Based on these data, the European Commission (2000) estimated that in relation to food, cigarette smoking, water, and soil, air contributes less than 1% of total arsenic exposure.
Pesticides [ edit ]
The use of lead arsenate pesticides has been effectively eliminated for over 50 years. However, because of the pesticide's environmental persistence, it is estimated that millions of acres of land are still contaminated with lead arsenate residues. This presents a potentially significant public health concern in some areas of the United States (e.g., New Jersey, Washington, and Wisconsin), where large areas of land used historically as orchards have been converted into residential developments.[82]
Some modern uses of arsenic-based pesticides still exist. Chromated copper arsenate (CCA) has been registered for use in the United States since the 1940s as a wood preservative, protecting wood from insects and microbial agents. In 2003, CCA manufacturers instituted a voluntary recall of residential uses of CCA-treated wood. the EPA 2008 final report stated that CCA is still approved for use in nonresidential applications, such as in marine facilities (pilings and structures), utility poles, and sand highway structures.
Copper smelting [ edit ]
Exposure studies in the copper smelting industry are much more extensive and have established definitive links between arsenic, a by-product of copper smelting, and lung cancer via inhalation.[83] Dermal and neurological effects were also increased in some of these studies.[84] Although as time went on, occupational controls became more stringent and workers were exposed to reduced arsenic concentrations, the arsenic exposures measured from these studies ranged from about 0.05 to 0.3 mg/m3 and are significantly higher than airborne environmental exposures to arsenic (which range from 0 to 0.000003 mg/m3).[85]
Pathophysiology [ edit ]
Arsenic interferes with cellular longevity by allosteric inhibition of an essential metabolic enzyme pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) complex, which catalyzes the oxidation of pyruvate to acetyl-CoA by NAD+. With the enzyme inhibited, the energy system of the cell is disrupted resulting in cellular apoptosis. Biochemically, arsenic prevents use of thiamine resulting in a clinical picture resembling thiamine deficiency. Poisoning with arsenic can raise lactate levels and lead to lactic acidosis. Low potassium levels in the cells increases the risk of experiencing a life-threatening heart rhythm problem from arsenic trioxide.[citation needed] Arsenic in cells clearly stimulates the production of hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ). When the H 2 O 2 reacts with certain metals such as iron or manganese it produces a highly reactive hydroxyl radical. Inorganic arsenic trioxide found in ground water particularly affects voltage-gated potassium channels,[86] disrupting cellular electrolytic function resulting in neurological disturbances, cardiovascular episodes such as prolonged QT interval, neutropenia, high blood pressure,[87] central nervous system dysfunction, anemia, and death.
Arsenic exposure plays a key role in the pathogenesis of vascular endothelial dysfunction as it inactivates endothelial nitric oxide synthase, leading to reduction in the generation and bioavailability of nitric oxide. In addition, the chronic arsenic exposure induces high oxidative stress, which may affect the structure and function of cardiovascular system. Further, the arsenic exposure has been noted to induce atherosclerosis by increasing the platelet aggregation and reducing fibrinolysis. Moreover, arsenic exposure may cause arrhythmia by increasing the QT interval and accelerating the cellular calcium overload. The chronic exposure to arsenic upregulates the expression of tumor necrosis factor-α, interleukin-1, vascular cell adhesion molecule and vascular endothelial growth factor to induce cardiovascular pathogenesis. Pitchai Balakumar1 and Jagdeep Kaur, "Arsenic Exposure and Cardiovascular Disorders: An Overview", Cardiovascular Toxicology, December 2009[88]
Tissue culture studies have shown that arsenic compounds block both IKr and Iks channels and, at the same time, activates IK-ATP channels. Arsenic compounds also disrupt ATP production through several mechanisms. At the level of the citric acid cycle, arsenic inhibits pyruvate dehydrogenase and by competing with phosphate it uncouples oxidative phosphorylation, thus inhibiting energy-linked reduction of NAD+, mitochondrial respiration, and ATP synthesis. Hydrogen peroxide production is also increased, which might form reactive oxygen species and oxidative stress. These metabolic interferences lead to death from multi-system organ failure, probably from necrotic cell death, not apoptosis. A post mortem reveals brick red colored mucosa, due to severe hemorrhage. Although arsenic causes toxicity, it can also play a protective role.[89]
Mechanism [ edit ]
Arsenite inhibits not only the formation of acetyl-CoA but also the enzyme succinic dehydrogenase. Arsenate can replace phosphate in many reactions. It is able to form Glc-6-Arsenate in vitro; therefore it has been argued that hexokinase could be inhibited.[90] (Eventually this may be a mechanism leading to muscle weakness in chronic arsenic poisoning.) In the glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase reaction arsenate attacks the enzyme-bound thioester. The formed 1-arseno-3-phosphoglycerate is unstable and hydrolyzes spontaneously. Thus, ATP formation in Glycolysis is inhibited while bypassing the phosphoglycerate kinase reaction. (Moreover, the formation of 2,3-bisphosphoglycerate in erythrocytes might be affected, followed by a higher oxygen affinity of hemoglobin and subsequently enhanced cyanosis) As shown by Gresser (1981), submitochondrial particles synthesize Adenosine-5’-diphosphate-arsenate from ADP and arsenate in presence of succinate. Thus, by a variety of mechanisms arsenate leads to an impairment of cell respiration and subsequently diminished ATP formation.[91] This is consistent with observed ATP depletion of exposed cells and histopathological findings of mitochondrial and cell swelling, glycogen depletion in liver cells and fatty change in liver, heart and kidney.
Experiments demonstrated enhanced arterial thrombosis in a rat animal model, elevations of serotonin levels, thromboxane A[2] and adhesion proteins in platelets, while human platelets showed similar responses.[92] The effect on vascular endothelium may eventually be mediated by the arsenic-induced formation of nitric oxide. It was demonstrated that +3 As concentrations substantially lower than concentrations required for inhibition of the lysosomal protease cathepsin L in B cell line TA3 were sufficient to trigger apoptosis in the same B cell line, while the latter could be a mechanism mediating immunosuppressive effects.[93]
Kinetics [ edit ]
The two forms of inorganic arsenic, reduced (trivalent As(III)) and oxidized (pentavalent As(V)), can be absorbed, and accumulated in tissues and body fluids.[94] In the liver, the metabolism of arsenic involves enzymatic and non-enzymatic methylation, the most frequently excreted metabolite (≥ 90%) in the urine of mammals is dimethylarsinic acid or cacodylic acid, DMA(V).[95] Dimethylarsenic acid is also known as Agent Blue and was used as herbicide in the American war in Vietnam.
In humans inorganic arsenic is reduced nonenzymatically from pentoxide to trioxide, using glutathione (GSH) or it is mediated by enzymes. Reduction of arsenic pentoxide to arsenic trioxide increases its toxicity and bio availability, Methylation occurs through methyltransferase enzymes. S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) may serve as methyl donor. Various pathways are used, the principal route being dependent on the current environment of the cell.[96] Resulting metabolites are monomethylarsonous acid, MMA(III), and dimethylarsinous acid, DMA(III).
Methylation had been regarded as a detoxification process,[by whom?] but reduction from +5 As to +3 As may be considered as a bioactivation[clarification needed] instead.[97] Another suggestion is that methylation might be a detoxification if "As[III] intermediates are not permitted to accumulate" because the pentavalent organoarsenics have a lower affinity to thiol groups than inorganic pentavalent arsenics.[96] Gebel (2002) stated that methylation is a detoxification through accelerated excretion.[98] With regard to carcinogenicity it has been suggested that methylation should be regarded as a toxification.[34][99][100]
Arsenic, especially +3 As, binds to single, but with higher affinity to vicinal sulfhydryl groups, thus reacts with a variety of proteins and inhibits their activity. It was also proposed that binding of arsenite at nonessential sites might contribute to detoxification.[101] Arsenite inhibits members of the disulfide oxidoreductase family like glutathione reductase[102] and thioredoxin reductase.[103]
The remaining unbound arsenic (≤ 10%) accumulates in cells, which over time may lead to skin, bladder, kidney, liver, lung, and prostate cancers.[95] Other forms of arsenic toxicity in humans have been observed in blood, bone marrow, cardiac, central nervous system, gastrointestinal, gonadal, kidney, liver, pancreatic, and skin tissues.[95]
Heat shock response [ edit ]
Another aspect is the similarity of arsenic effects to the heat shock response. Short-term arsenic exposure has effects on signal transduction inducing heat shock proteins with masses of 27,60,70,72,90,110 kDa as well as metallotionein, ubiquitin, mitogen-activated [MAP] kinases, extracellular regulated kinase [ERK], c-jun terminal kinases [JNK] and p38.[28][104] Via JNK and p38 it activates c-fos, c-jun and egr-1 which are usually activated by growth factors and cytokines.[28][105][106] The effects are largely dependent on the dosing regime and may be as well inversed.
As shown by some experiments reviewed by Del Razo (2001), ROS induced by low levels of inorganic arsenic increase the transcription and the activity of the activator protein 1 (AP-1) and the nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) (maybe enhanced by elevated MAPK levels), which results in c-fos/c-jun activation, over-secretion of pro-inflammatory and growth promoting cytokines stimulating cell proliferation.[104][107] Germolec et al. (1996) found an increased cytokine expression and cell proliferation in skin biopsies from individuals chronically exposed to arsenic-contaminated drinking water.[108]
Increased AP-1 and NF-κB obviously also result in an up-regulation of mdm2 protein, which decreases p53 protein levels.[109] Thus, taking into account p53's function, a lack of it could cause a faster accumulation of mutations contributing to carcinogenesis. However, high levels of inorganic arsenic inhibit NF-κB activation and cell proliferation. An experiment of Hu et al. (2002) demonstrated increased binding activity of AP-1 and NF-κB after acute (24 h) exposure to +3 sodium arsenite, whereas long-term exposure (10–12 weeks) yielded the opposite result.[110] The authors conclude that the former may be interpreted as a defense response while the latter could lead to carcinogenesis.[110] As the contradicting findings and connected mechanistic hypotheses indicate, there is a difference in acute and chronic effects of arsenic on signal transduction which is not clearly understood yet.[citation needed]
Oxidative stress [ edit ]
Studies have demonstrated that the oxidative stress generated by arsenic may disrupt the signal transduction pathways of the nuclear transcriptional factors PPAR's, AP-1, and NF-κB,[95][110][111] as well as the pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-8 and TNF-α.[95][110][111][112][113][114][115][116] The interference of oxidative stress with signal transduction pathways may affect physiological processes associated with cell growth, metabolic syndrome X, glucose homeostasis, lipid metabolism, obesity, insulin resistance, inflammation, and diabetes-2.[117][118][119] Recent scientific evidence has elucidated the physiological roles of the PPAR's in the ω- hydroxylation of fatty acids and the inhibition of pro-inflammatory transcription factors (NF-κB and AP-1), pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-1, -6, -8, -12, and TNF-α), cell4 adhesion molecules (ICAM-1 and VCAM-1), inducible nitric oxide synthase, proinflammatory nitric oxide (NO), and anti-apoptotic factors.[95][112][117][119][120]
Epidemiological studies have suggested a correlation between chronic consumption of drinking water contaminated with arsenic and the incidence of Type 2-diabetes.[95] The human liver after exposure to therapeutic drugs may exhibit hepatic non-cirrhotic portal hypertension, fibrosis, and cirrhosis.[95] However, the literature provides insufficient scientific evidence to show cause and effect between arsenic and the onset of diabetes mellitus Type 2.[95]
Diagnosis [ edit ]
Arsenic may be measured in blood or urine to monitor excessive environmental or occupational exposure, confirm a diagnosis of poisoning in hospitalized victims or to assist in the forensic investigation in a case of fatal over dosage. Some analytical techniques are capable of distinguishing organic from inorganic forms of the element. Organic arsenic compounds tend to be eliminated in the urine in unchanged form, while inorganic forms are largely converted to organic arsenic compounds in the body prior to urinary excretion. The current biological exposure index for U.S. workers of 35 µg/L total urinary arsenic may easily be exceeded by a healthy person eating a seafood meal.[121]
Tests are available to diagnose poisoning by measuring arsenic in blood, urine, hair, and fingernails. The urine test is the most reliable test for arsenic exposure within the last few days. Urine testing needs to be done within 24–48 hours for an accurate analysis of an acute exposure. Tests on hair and fingernails can measure exposure to high levels of arsenic over the past 6–12 months. These tests can determine if one has been exposed to above-average levels of arsenic. They cannot predict, however, whether the arsenic levels in the body will affect health.[122] Chronic arsenic exposure can remain in the body systems for a longer period of time than a shorter term or more isolated exposure and can be detected in a longer time frame after the introduction of the arsenic, important in trying to determine the source of the exposure.
Hair is a potential bioindicator for arsenic exposure due to its ability to store trace elements from blood. Incorporated elements maintain their position during growth of hair. Thus for a temporal estimation of exposure, an assay of hair composition needs to be carried out with a single hair which is not possible with older techniques requiring homogenization and dissolution of several strands of hair. This type of biomonitoring has been achieved with newer microanalytical techniques like Synchrotron radiation based X ray fluorescence (SXRF) spectroscopy and Microparticle induced X ray emission (PIXE).The highly focused and intense beams study small spots on biological samples allowing analysis to micro level along with the chemical speciation. In a study, this method has been used to follow arsenic level before, during and after treatment with Arsenious oxide in patients with Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia.[123]
Treatment [ edit ]
Chelation [ edit ]
Dimercaprol and dimercaptosuccinic acid are chelating agents that sequester the arsenic away from blood proteins and are used in treating acute arsenic poisoning. The most important side effect is hypertension. Dimercaprol is considerably more toxic than succimer.[citation needed][124] DMSA monoesters, e.g. MiADMSA, are promising antidotes for arsenic poisoning.[125]
Nutrition [ edit ]
Supplemental potassium decreases the risk of experiencing a life-threatening heart rhythm problem from arsenic trioxide.[126]
History [ edit ]
In addition to its presence as a poison, for centuries arsenic was used medicinally. It has been used for over 2,400 years as a part of traditional Chinese medicine.[127] In the western world, arsenic compounds, such as salvarsan, were used extensively to treat syphilis before penicillin was introduced. It was eventually replaced as a therapeutic agent by sulfa drugs and then by other antibiotics. Arsenic was also an ingredient in many tonics (or "patent medicines").
In addition, during the Elizabethan era, some women used a mixture of vinegar, chalk, and arsenic applied topically to whiten their skin. This use of arsenic was intended to prevent aging and creasing of the skin, but some arsenic was inevitably absorbed into the blood stream.[citation needed]
During the Victorian era (late 19th Century) in the United States, U.S. Newspapers advertised "Arsenic Complexion Wafers". These wafers promised to help get rid of blemishes on the face such as moles and pimples.[128]
Some pigments, most notably the popular Emerald Green (known also under several other names), were based on arsenic compounds. Overexposure to these pigments was a frequent cause of accidental poisoning of artists and craftsmen.
Arsenic became a favored method for murder of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, particularly among ruling classes in Italy allegedly. Because the symptoms are similar to those of cholera, which was common at the time, arsenic poisoning often went undetected.[129]:63 By the 19th century, it had acquired the nickname "inheritance powder," perhaps because impatient heirs were known or suspected to use it to ensure or accelerate their inheritances.[129]:21 It was also a common murder technique in the 19th century in domestic violence situations, such as the case of Rebecca Copin, who attempted to poison her husband by "putting arsenic in his coffee".[130]
In ancient Korea, and particularly in Joseon Dynasty, arsenic-sulfur compounds have been used as a major ingredient of sayak (사약; 賜藥), which was a poison cocktail used in capital punishment of high-profile political figures and members of the royal family.[131] Due to social and political prominence of the condemned, many of these events were well-documented, often in the Annals of Joseon Dynasty; they are sometimes portrayed in historical television miniseries because of their dramatic nature.[132]
Legislation [ edit ]
In U.S 1975, under the authority of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), U.S. Environment Protection Agency determined the National Interim Primary Drinking Water Regulation levels of arsenic (inorganic contaminant - IOCs) to be 0.05 mg/L (50 parts per billion - ppb).[133]
Throughout the years, many studies reported dose-dependent effects of arsenic in drinking water and skin cancer. In other to prevent new cases and death from cancerous and non-cancerous diseases, SDWA directed EPA to revise arsenic's levels and specified the maximum contaminant level (MCL). MCLs are set as close to the health goals as possible, considering cost, benefits and the ability of public water systems to detect and remove contaminants using suitable treatment technologies.[133][134]
In 2001, EPA adopted a lower standard of MCL 0.01 mg/L (10 ppb) for arsenic in drinking water that applies to both community water systems and non-transient non-community water systems.[133]
In some other countries, when developing national drinking water standards based on the guideline values, it is necessary to take account of a variety of geographical, socio-economic, dietary and other conditions affecting potential exposure. These factors lead to national standards that differ appreciably from the guideline values. That is the case of countries such as India and Bangladesh, where the permissible limit of arsenic in absence of an alternative source of water is 0.05 mg/L.[45][135]
Challenges to implementation [ edit ]
Arsenic removal technologies are traditional treatment processes which have been tailored to improve removal of arsenic from drinking water. Although some of the removal processes, such as precipitative processes, adsorption processes, ion exchange processes, and separation (membrane) processes, may be technically feasible, their cost may be prohibitive.[133]
For underdeveloped countries, the challenge is finding the means to fund such technologies. EPA, for example, has estimated the total national annualized cost of treatment, monitoring, reporting, record keeping, and administration for reinforce the MCL rule to be approximately $181 million. Most of the cost is due to the installation and operation of the treatment technologies needed to reduce arsenic in public water system.[136]
Pregnancy [ edit ]
Arsenic exposure through groundwater is highly concerning throughout the perinatal period. Pregnant women are a high-risk population because not only are the mothers at risk for adverse outcomes, but in-utero exposure also poses health risks to the infant. There is a dose-dependent relationship between maternal exposure to arsenic and infant mortality, meaning that infants born to women exposed to higher concentrations, or exposed for longer periods of time, have a higher mortality rate.[137]
Studies have shown that ingesting arsenic through groundwater during pregnancy poses dangers to the mother including, but not limited to abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, skin pigmentation changes, and cancer.[138] Research has also demonstrated that arsenic exposure also causes low birth weight, low birth size, infant mortality, and a variety of other outcomes in infants.[138][139] Some of these effects, like lower birth-rate and size may be due to the effects of arsenic on maternal weight gain during pregnancy.[139]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
Computing Thoughts
Python Decorators III: A Decorator-Based Build System
by Bruce Eckel
October 26, 2008
Summary
Most build systems start out with dependencies, then realize they need language features and eventually discover they should have started with language design.
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I've used make for many years. I only used ant because it produced faster Java builds. But both build systems started out thinking the problem was simple, and only later discovered that you really need a programming language to solve the build problem. By then it was too late. As a result you have to jump through annoying hoops to get things done.
There have been efforts to create build systems on top of languages. Rake is a fairly successful domain-specific language (DSL) built atop Ruby. And a number of projects have been created with Python.
For years I've wanted a system that was just a thin veneer on Python, so you get some support for dependencies but effectively everything else is Python. This way, you don't need to shift back and forth between Python and some language other than Python; it's less of a mental distraction.
It turns out that decorators are perfect for this purpose. The design I present here is just a first cut, but it's easy to add new features and I've already started using it as the build system for The Python Book, so I'll probably need to add more features. Most importantly, I know I'll be able to do anything that I want, which is not always true with make or ant (yes, you can extend ant but the cost of entry is often not worth the benefit).
While the rest of the book has a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license, this program only has a Creative Commons Attribution license, because I'd like people to be able to use it under any circumstances. Obviously, it would be ideal if you make any improvements that you'd contribute them back to the project, but this is not a prerequisite for using or modifying the code.
Syntax The most important and convenient thing provided by a build system is dependencies. You tell it what depends on what, and how to update those dependencies. Taken together, this is called a rule, so the decorator will also be called rule. The first argument of the decorator is the target (the thing that needs to be updated) and the remaining arguments are the dependencies. If the target is out of date with the dependencies, the function code is run to bring it up to date. Here's a simple example that shows the basic syntax: @rule("file1.txt") def file1(): "File doesn't exist; run rule" file("file1.txt", 'w') The name of the rule is file1 because that's the function name. In this case, the target is "file1.txt" and there are no dependencies, so the rule only checks to see whether file1.txt exists, and if it doesn't it runs the function code, which brings it up to date. Note the use of the docstring; this is captured by the build system and describes the rule on the command line when you say build help (or anything else the builder doesn't understand). The @rule decorators only affect the functions they are attached to, so you can easily mix regular code with rules in the same build file. Here's a function that updates the date stamp on a file, or creates the file if it doesn't exist: def touchOrCreate(f): # Ordinary function "Bring file up to date; creates it if it doesn't exist" if os.path.exists(f): os.utime(f, None) else: file(f, 'w') A more typical rule is one that associates a target file with one or more dependent files: @rule("target1.txt","dependency1.txt","dependency2.txt","dependency3.txt") def target1(): "Brings target1.txt up to date with its dependencies" touchOrCreate("target1.txt") This build system also allows multiple targets, by putting the targets in a list: @rule(["target1.txt", "target2.txt"], "dependency1.txt", "dependency2.txt") def multipleBoth(): "Multiple targets and dependencies" [touchOrCreate(f) for f in ["target1.txt", "target2.txt"]] If there is no target or dependencies, the rule is always executed: @rule() def clean(): "Remove all created files" [os.remove(f) for f in allFiles if os.path.exists(f)] The alFiles array is seen in the example, shown later. You can write rules that depend on other rules: @rule(None, target1, target2) def target3(): "Always brings target1 and target2 up to date" print target3 Since None is the target, there's nothing to compare to but in the process of checking the rules target1 and target2, those are both brought up to date. This is especially useful when writing "all" rules, as you will see in the example.
Builder Code By using decorators and a few appropriate design patterns, the code becomes quite succinct. Note that the __main__ code creates an example build.py file (containing the examples that you see above and more), and the first time you run a build it creates a build.bat file for Windows and a build command file for Unix/Linux/Cygwin. A complete explanation follows the code: # builder.py import sys, os, stat """ Adds build rules atop Python, to replace make, etc. by Bruce Eckel License: Creative Commons with Attribution. """ def reportError(msg): print >> sys.stderr, "Error:", msg sys.exit(1) class Dependency(object): "Created by the decorator to represent a single dependency relation" changed = True unchanged = False @staticmethod def show(flag): if flag: return "Updated" return "Unchanged" def __init__(self, target, dependency): self.target = target self.dependency = dependency def __str__(self): return "target: %s, dependency: %s" % (self.target, self.dependency) @staticmethod def create(target, dependency): # Simple Factory if target == None: return NoTarget(dependency) if type(target) == str: # String means file name if dependency == None: return FileToNone(target, None) if type(dependency) == str: return FileToFile(target, dependency) if type(dependency) == Dependency: return FileToDependency(target, dependency) reportError("No match found in create() for target: %s, dependency: %s" % (target, dependency)) def updated(self): """ Call to determine whether this is up to date. Returns 'changed' if it had to update itself. """ assert False, "Must override Dependency.updated() in derived class" class NoTarget(Dependency): # Always call updated() on dependency def __init__(self, dependency): Dependency.__init__(self, None, dependency) def updated(self): if not self.dependency: return Dependency.changed # (None, None) -> always run rule return self.dependency.updated() # Must be a Dependency or subclass class FileToNone(Dependency): # Run rule if file doesn't exist def updated(self): if not os.path.exists(self.target): return Dependency.changed return Dependency.unchanged class FileToFile(Dependency): # Compare file datestamps def updated(self): if not os.path.exists(self.dependency): reportError("%s does not exist" % self.dependency) if not os.path.exists(self.target): return Dependency.changed # If it doesn't exist it needs to be made if os.path.getmtime(self.dependency) > os.path.getmtime(self.target): return Dependency.changed return Dependency.unchanged class FileToDependency(Dependency): # Update if dependency object has changed def updated(self): if self.dependency.updated(): return Dependency.changed if not os.path.exists(self.target): return Dependency.changed # If it doesn't exist it needs to be made return Dependency.unchanged class rule(object): """ Decorator that turns a function into a build rule. First file or object in decorator arglist is the target, remainder are dependencies. """ rules = [] default = None class _Rule(object): """ Command pattern. name, dependencies, ruleUpdater and description are all injected by class rule. """ def updated(self): if Dependency.changed in [d.updated() for d in self.dependencies]: self.ruleUpdater() return Dependency.changed return Dependency.unchanged def __str__(self): return self.description def __init__(self, *decoratorArgs): """ This constructor is called first when the decorated function is defined, and captures the arguments passed to the decorator itself. (Note Builder pattern) """ self._rule = rule._Rule() decoratorArgs = list(decoratorArgs) if decoratorArgs: if len(decoratorArgs) == 1: decoratorArgs.append(None) target = decoratorArgs.pop(0) if type(target) != list: target = [target] self._rule.dependencies = [Dependency.create(targ, dep) for targ in target for dep in decoratorArgs] else: # No arguments self._rule.dependencies = [Dependency.create(None, None)] def __call__(self, func): """ This is called right after the constructor, and is passed the function object being decorated. The returned _rule object replaces the original function. """ if func.__name__ in [r.name for r in rule.rules]: reportError("@rule name %s must be unique" % func.__name__) self._rule.name = func.__name__ self._rule.description = func.__doc__ or "" self._rule.ruleUpdater = func rule.rules.append(self._rule) return self._rule # This is substituted as the decorated function @staticmethod def update(x): if x == 0: if rule.default: return rule.default.updated() else: return rule.rules[0].updated() # Look up by name for r in rule.rules: if x == r.name: return r.updated() raise KeyError @staticmethod def main(): """ Produce command-line behavior """ if len(sys.argv) == 1: print Dependency.show(rule.update(0)) try: for arg in sys.argv[1:]: print Dependency.show(rule.update(arg)) except KeyError: print "Available rules are:
" for r in rule.rules: if r == rule.default: newline = " (Default if no rule is specified)
" else: newline = "
" print "%s:%s\t%s
" % (r.name, newline, r) print "(Multiple targets will be updated in order)" # Create "build" commands for Windows and Unix: if not os.path.exists("build.bat"): file("build.bat", 'w').write("python build.py %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7") if not os.path.exists("build"): # Unless you can detect cygwin independently of Windows file("build", 'w').write("python build.py $*") os.chmod("build", stat.S_IEXEC) ############### Test/Usage Examples ############### if __name__ == "__main__": if not os.path.exists("build.py"): file("build.py", 'w').write('''\ # Use cases: both test code and usage examples from builder import rule import os @rule("file1.txt") def file1(): "File doesn't exist; run rule" file("file1.txt", 'w') def touchOrCreate(f): # Ordinary function "Bring file up to date; creates it if it doesn't exist" if os.path.exists(f): os.utime(f, None) else: file(f, 'w') dependencies = ["dependency1.txt", "dependency2.txt", "dependency3.txt", "dependency4.txt"] targets = ["file1.txt", "target1.txt", "target2.txt"] allFiles = targets + dependencies @rule(allFiles) def multipleTargets(): "Multiple files don't exist; run rule" [file(f, 'w') for f in allFiles if not os.path.exists(f)] @rule(["target1.txt", "target2.txt"], "dependency1.txt", "dependency2.txt") def multipleBoth(): "Multiple targets and dependencies" [touchOrCreate(f) for f in ["target1.txt", "target2.txt"]] @rule("target1.txt","dependency1.txt","dependency2.txt","dependency3.txt") def target1(): "Brings target1.txt up to date with its dependencies" touchOrCreate("target1.txt") @rule() def updateDependency(): "Updates the timestamp on all dependency.* files" [touchOrCreate(f) for f in allFiles if f.startswith("dependency")] @rule() def clean(): "Remove all created files" [os.remove(f) for f in allFiles if os.path.exists(f)] @rule() def cleanTargets(): "Remove all target files" [os.remove(f) for f in targets if os.path.exists(f)] @rule("target2.txt", "dependency2.txt", "dependency4.txt") def target2(): "Brings target2.txt up to date with its dependencies, or creates it" touchOrCreate("target2.txt") @rule(None, target1, target2) def target3(): "Always brings target1 and target2 up to date" print target3 @rule(None, clean, file1, multipleTargets, multipleBoth, target1, updateDependency, target2, target3) def all(): "Brings everything up to date" print all rule.default = all rule.main() # Does the build, handles command-line arguments ''') The first group of classes manage dependencies between different types of objects. The base class contains some common code, including the constructor which you'll note is automatically called if it is not explicitly redefined in a derived class (a nice, code-saving feature in Python). Classes derived from Dependency manage particular types of dependency relationships, and redefine the updated() method to decide whether the target should be brought up to date with the dependent. This is an example of the Template Method design pattern, where updated() is the template method and _Rule is the context. If you want to create a new type of dependency -- say, the addition of wildcards on dependencies and/or targets -- you define new Dependency subclasses. You'll see that the rest of the code doesn't require changes, which is a positive indicator for the design (future changes are isolated). Dependency.create() is what I call a Simple Factory Method, because all it does is localize the creation of all the subtypes of Dependency. Note that forward referencing is not a problem here as it is in some languages, so using the full implementation of Factory Method given in GoF is not necessary and also more complex (this doesn't mean there aren't cases that justify the full-fledged Factory Method). Note that in FileToDependency we could assert that self.dependency is a subtype of Dependency, but this type check happens (in effect) when updated() is called. The rule Decorator The rule decorator uses the Builder design pattern, which makes sense because the creation of a rule happens in two steps: the constructor captures the decorator arguments, and the __call__() method captures the function. The Builder product is a _Rule object, which, like the Dependency classes, contains an updated() method. Each _Rule object contains a list of dependencies and a ruleUpdater() method which is called if any of the dependencies is out of date. The _Rule also contains a name (which is the decorated function name) and a description (the decorated function's docstring). (The _Rule object is an example of the Command pattern). What's unusual about _Rule is that you don't see any code in the class which initializes dependencies, ruleUpdater(), name, and description. These are initialized by rule during the Builder process, using Injection. The typical alternative to this is to create setter methods, but since _Rule is nested inside rule, rule effectively "owns" _Rule and Injection seems much more straightforward. The rule constructor first creates the product _Rule object, then handles the decorator arguments. It converts decoratorArgs to a list because we need it to be modifiable, and decoratorArgs comes in as a tuple. If there is only one argument it means the user has only specified the target and no dependencies. Because Dependency.create() requires two arguments, we append None to the list. The target is always the first argument, so pop(0) pulls it off and the remainder of the list is dependencies. To accommodate the possibility that the target is a list, single targets are turned into lists. Now Dependency.create() is called for each possible target-dependency combination, and the resulting list is injected into the _Rule object. For the special case when there are no arguments, a None to None Dependency is created. Notice that the only thing the rule constructor does is sort out the arguments; it has no knowledge of particular relationships. This keeps special knowledge within the Dependency hierarchy, so adding a new Dependency is isolated within that hierarchy. A similar guideline is followed for the __call__() method, which captures the decorated function. We keep the _Rule object in a static list called rules, and the first thing to check is whether any of the rule names are duplicated. Then we capture and inject the name, documentation string, and the function itself. Note that the Builder "product", the _Rule object, is returned as the result of rule.__call__(), which means that this object -- which doesn't have a __call__() method -- is substituted for the decorated function. This is a slightly unusual use of decorators; normally the decorated function is called directly, but in this case the decorated function is never called directly, but only via the _Rule object.
Running a Build The static method main() in rule manages the build process, using the helper method update(). If you provide no command-line arguments, main() passes 0 to update(), which calls the default rule if one has been set, otherwise it calls the first rule that was defined. If you provide command-line arguments, it passes each one (in order) to update(). If you give it an incorrect argument (typically help is reserved for this), it prints each of the rules along with their docstrings. Finally, it checks to see that a build.bat and build command file exists, and creates them if it doesn't. The build.py produced when you run builder.py the first time can act as a starting point for your build file.
Improvements As it stands, this system only satisfies the basic needs; it doesn't have, for example, all the features that make does when it comes to manipulating dependencies. On the other hand, because it's built atop a full-powered programming language, you can do anything else you need quite easily. If you find yourself writing the same code over and over, you can modify rule() to reduce the duplicated effort. If you have permission, please submit such modifications back for possible inclusion.
Next In the last installment of this series (chapter), we'll look at class decorators and whether you can decorate an object.
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About the Blogger
Bruce Eckel (www.BruceEckel.com) provides development assistance in Python with user interfaces in Flex. He is the author of Thinking in Java (Prentice-Hall, 1998, 2nd Edition, 2000, 3rd Edition, 2003, 4th Edition, 2005), the Hands-On Java Seminar CD ROM (available on the Web site), Thinking in C++ (PH 1995; 2nd edition 2000, Volume 2 with Chuck Allison, 2003), C++ Inside & Out (Osborne/McGraw-Hill 1993), among others. He's given hundreds of presentations throughout the world, published over 150 articles in numerous magazines, was a founding member of the ANSI/ISO C++ committee and speaks regularly at conferences.
This weblog entry is Copyright © 2008 Bruce Eckel. All rights reserved. |
Action heroes save the day. Sometimes, they even save a whole city, a whole country, and if they’re especially great, the whole world. Not every hero gets to save the entire galaxy from eons of cyclical destruction: That honor goes to Commander Shepard, one of science fiction’s ultimate action heroes.
Commander Jane — or possibly John, if you chose to play as a man — Shepard, the star of the Mass Effect games, is pretty much whoever you want them to be. That’s part of Shepard’s appeal as an icon of action. Players could make Shepard her or him, black or white or Asian, handsome or plain, gay or straight, a badass normal, or technological genius, or superpowered psychic. They could insert a little of themselves into the Shepard shell, and then go and take on the galaxy and save the future. Shepard inspires, because so many of her (or his) fans can place themselves in their space-boots. Many action heroes can be people we admire intangibly, but everyone who plays Mass Effect likes to think they know “their” Commander better than anyone.
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That inherent mutability of who Commander Shepard could be however, could never change one thing: what a hero they really are. No matter which side of the “Paragon” or “Renegade” morality spectrum (Mass Effect’s answer to a Good/Bad scale based on dialogue choices you made) you play Shepard as, they’re always a decisive, charismatic and strong willed badass who’s just as talented at debate as at charging headlong into a firefight, just as capable of putting a bad guy down with a clever quip, or a bullet to the face.
Shepard is willing to risk great sacrifices when the mission is at stake, to lead by example — and to always do so at the ground level of a conflict, no matter how important Shepard becomes by the climax of the series. Whether in command of a squad, a crew, or even whole armies, Shepard will be there at the vanguard, gun in hand. Shepard saves lives, takes them too, and by the time Mass Effect 3 comes around, gives it all to change the fate of billions of people. One ordinary soldier, standing up and becoming the ultimate action hero.
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Shepard is also fond of some occasional alien headbutting, too. Frankly, anyone who has the guts to straight-up headbutt a giant slab of angry, alien muscle like Mass Effect’s Krogan, just to prove a point, is pretty high up on the Action Hero scale of awesomeness. After that, saving the galaxy is child’s play. |
Abstract
The French philosopher Gilbert Simondon (1924-1989) was the first true philosopher of information, yet he remains relatively unknown outside of his native France. This situation is curious, given the warm reception his work has received from a small group of internationally renowned thinkers. Simondon’s lifelong project was to expound the appearance of what I call an “informational ontology,” a subject that deserves to be addresses at length. This article limits itself by focusing on three aspects of Simondon’s philosophy of information. First, it situates Simondon within the French intellectual scene in post-World War II Europe to get sense of his cultural milieu. Second, it positions Simondon’s work in the context of the American cybernetic tradition from which it emerged. Finally, it offers an exegesis of Simondon’s informational ontology, a radically new materialism that stands to change contemporary debates surrounding issues related to information, communication, and technology. |
Description Photo Gallery ***Sorry, this piece has been sold. Please inquire about similar offerings if you like this particular model*** Light tan leather with red piping and stitching, the headrest has an embossed prancing horse logo on it. Removed from a 360 track conversion car, this seat is the optional "Daytona" model. Wide seat base with a deep and comfortable back, the ribbed design in the leather keeps cool while sitting all day. The headrest is adjustable in both height and angle. The entire chair tilts back from the base however the rear seat back tilt and lumbar can be set with the connection of the included wall power adapter. Shown here with a silver base, your order includes a custom base color of your choice (shown here with an unfinished plain silver). We have only 1 in this color combination available! Features
Each chair we build is unique and it starts with the metal base and frame being painted separately for each order with a professional automotive quality paint job in a deep, high gloss metallic paint. Your order includes a custom color of your choice: match it to your existing car's paint, a trim color in your office or anything else you desire, we only need a paint sample or paint code to finish your base. We always have a few metallic silver and metallic black bases in stock for rush orders, and the normal delivery time to match your custom color is less than three weeks. ***After you place your order, you will be contacted to discuss and pick your custom base color*** The mechanics of the bases are a Synchro knee-tilter from Global's Ride collection. They are a full metal base and frame with sculpted sport wheels. The smooth synchronous tilting action maintains constant contact and support for your body in all postures. There are sculpted shift levers at the side of the seat to control the synchro tilt mechanism and seat height. The rotating pivot arms are height adjustable as you see illustrated in with the green arrows in the picture above.
Global, Synchro knee-tilter and The Global Ride chair are registered trademarks of The Global Group, CANADA. All logos, names, images and references appearing on this site are for nominative and informational purposes only. Ferrari is a registered trademark of Ferrari NA and Ferrari SpA. |
President Obama has promised action to confront climate change. To do that, he must end the detrimental "all of the above" energy policy of his first term and reject the Keystone XL Pipeline.
Please add your name as a co-signer on our open letter urging him to take bold action to confront climate change now.
Dear President Obama:
It was with great relief and gratitude that we welcomed, at long last, a clarion call in your inaugural address to "respond to the threat of climate change" -- the greatest threat, challenge, and opportunity of our time.
We thank you for these words, because your words are powerful, and necessary for change. But words are not enough. We need action.
Mr. President, you are the first leader in our history who will be judged by what you do -- or do not do -- to protect your people from the already-begun ravages and disruptions brought about by fossil fuels.
So far, Mr. President, you are failing in the face of our earth heating up, and the damage is accelerating.
Just a few months ago, we witnessed New York and New Jersey swallowed up by our still-rising oceans. Our worsening nationwide drought, after the hottest year on record, is clear evidence that our planet is not healing, but is hurtling toward greater climate disruption.
The simple truth is that you will continue failing in the fight against climate change, as long as you continue an energy policy which treats equally the fuels that are hurting us and those that will save us. To meet your call on climate change, your "all of the above" energy policy must end.
Your support for fracking and drilling, coal mines and pipelines, continues to obliterate the progress you could be making with your administration's gas mileage rule, or your investments in renewable energy. Even if you finally issue a carbon pollution rule that addresses existing sources of pollution, it will mean nothing if you are simultaneously lighting the fuses on carbon bombs by approving the Keystone XL pipeline, Arctic drilling, or fossil fuel export projects.
You must use the power of your office and our federal lands to stop promoting fossil fuel development, and reject these projects outright.
While we recognize that a majority in the House of Representatives are clearly not on the side of science or sanity, you can and must find a way - within Congress or the power of your office - to end fossil fuel subsidies and giveaways, and put a price on all greenhouse gas pollution, so that fossil fuel executives can no longer get rich from the destabilization of our climate, and so fossil-free energy can thrive. If Congress remains in the way, you must fight to change Congress.
You must invest significantly in sustainable sources of energy as part of a plan to rapidly transition our nation from fossil fuels. And these efforts should be coupled with resources to help our cities, states and industries prepare for the damage that climate change is already bringing. (The $50 billion Sandy relief package and the drought's impacts on food prices are just two painful reminders that the cost of inaction is enormous, and untenable.)
Confronting climate change also happens to be our best opportunity to create the broad-based economic revitalization that your policies have largely failed to achieve. This is not simply an empty trope of idealistic environmentalists, it is the truth.
Mr. President, we are urging you to do as our other Illinois president did when confronted with the great moral issue of his time: to take bold, decisive action to end one great societal ill, changing the economy in the process, and usher in a new era of American freedom, security and prosperity.
This is the moment. We will support you. But you must lead and take action, starting first and foremost with your rejection of the presidential permit required by the Keystone XL pipeline, which is your decision and yours alone.
Sincerely,
Becky Bond, Political Director, CREDO
Michael Kieschnick, President and CEO, CREDO
Elijah Zarlin, Senior Campaign Manager, CREDO
Bill McKibben, Co-Founder, 350.org |
In 14 months, Randall Woodfin went from a city attorney with little name recognition to Birmingham's mayor-elect. And he triumphed by running a campaign for the digital age, using strategies never before seen in the Magic City.
Woodfin's campaign pooh-poohed traditional campaign tactics like blanketing neighborhoods with literature and paying uninspired volunteers to knock on doors in favor of an analytics-based approach that helped the campaign target potential voters who were most likely to vote for the former school board president. The campaign did use some traditional methods like campaign signs, but they were not the focus of the campaign.
Through campaign software the Woodfin team was able to license through the state Democratic Party , "we built a really solid voter target after a lot of experience and a lot of testing," said Daniel Deriso, the campaign's field and operations manager. While the mayoral election was nonpartisan, Birmingham is a Democratic city, so the software was helpful.
At first, the campaign found that the typical Woodfin voter was young and on the lower end of the income spectrum.
"As Randall got more name recognition, that line bled," Deriso said, and the campaign started attracting old and young African-American voters and Hispanics in addition to white millennials. "Out of nowhere, come June or July, our support was doubling at an incredible rate."
When campaign volunteers canvassed neighborhoods, they weren't having one-way conversations with potential voters.
"On Randall's campaign, we stressed having full conversations with people," said Taylor Packer, a Woodfin field organizer. "We really got to know the issues that each voter was having in that area. People knew that we cared."
Woodfin's embrace of modern campaign strategies gave him an advantage over incumbent Mayor William Bell, who has been involved in local politics for decades, according to Deriso.
"People stay with what they think is tried and true, and its 2017, and there's so many aspects to campaigning now - social media, emails, fundraising online," Deriso said. "You have to make things as accessible as possible for people."
For example, Bell's campaign didn't have an online donation platform, instead asking potential donors to mail checks to a post office box. Meanwhile, Woodfin's campaign embraced ActBlue, a grassroots Democratic online platform that gives campaigns access to small-money donors who previously contributed to campaigns through ActBlue. As a result, the Woodfin camp tapped into a network of millions of potential donors, and amassed 4,000 small-dollar donors - the most of any Birmingham municipal campaign.
The campaign's fundraising appeals included one pitch that explained how $30 donations were going to be used to buy radio air time for the campaign. The connection between a donation and its impact empowered donors, Deriso said.
Woodfin heavily targeted prospective first-time voters as part of his campaign strategy. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who endorsed Woodfin, made a robocall on his behalf that appealed to 12,000 such voters, Deriso said. The phone calls turned out more than 1,000 voters, with the Sanders appeal being the only contact from the campaign to that voting bloc.
The strategy was an efficient one for the Woodfin campaign: In the Oct. 3 runoff between Woodfin and Bell, 11,500 voters never voted in a municipal election before. Of those voters, 1,500 were between 18 and 24 years old, and 5,000 were between 18 and 35 years old.
But even with the campaign's in-depth approach to courting voters, Deriso said the effort would have been for naught if not for the candidate.
"Randall's message - we couldn't have done anything, any of this stuff, without the candidate. I need to throw full credit to Randall," he said. "He's personable, he's young, he's good looking, and he knows what he's talking about. Every single person he talked to .... he just has genuine conversations with everybody, which is not something I see in politicians at all. Without Randall's message and policy agenda, none of this would have been popular." |
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In today's highly deodorized world, we assume that to be without smell is to be clean. But throughout the long and pungent history of humanity, smelling "good" has been as delightful as it has sometimes been disgusting.
To get to the root of body odor, you have to start with sweat. But human sweat by itself typically barely smells at all. "The problem is that bacteria living on our body like to eat some of the compounds that come out in our sweat," says journalist Sarah Everts, who's conducted extensive research on the science of perspiration. Eccrine glands, all over the body, and apocrine glands, found mostly in the armpit and genital areas, secrete various compounds that are consumed by bacteria, which in turn release molecules with a smell we recognize as body odor.
Of course, humans were unaware of such compounds throughout most of recorded history, which is why the first efforts to smell civilized consisted of smothering the odors with more favorable scents. "The ancient Egyptians applied concoctions made of ostrich eggs, tortoiseshell, and gallnuts to help improve their personal body pong," Everts says. Fragrances made during this time were often worn on the head, neck, and wrists as thick pastes, or as oil-based salves incorporating ingredients from fragrant plants like cardamom, cassia, cinnamon, lemongrass, lily, myrrh, and rose.
Egyptians also burned fragrant incense and developed jewelry that incorporated scented materials, a tradition still practiced by cultures throughout northern Africa. Hieroglyphics depict men and women wearing small cones atop their wigs that are believed to have been made of perfumed wax and animal fats.
In ancient Greece and Rome, aromatic spices and perfumes gained traction as coveted luxury goods, spreading along trade routes between the Mediterranean and the Middle East. The earliest known perfumeries date to the Roman Empire, a rare period in history when it was normal to bathe daily, both as a social custom and for religious purposes. Following a soak, the body was typically anointed with scented oils, and these salves were sometimes carried in small bottles tied around the wrist.
Early fragrance concoctions incorporated floral scents like jasmine, rose, iris, lavender, violet, or chamomile, as well as spicy smells from natural materials such as yellow amber, camphor, and cloves. Perfumes derived from animals included civet (from civet cats), musk (found in musk deer), or ambergris (a secretion of the sperm whale). Scented powders made from talc were carried in fabric sachets, and garments were sewn from fabrics steeped in perfume.
By the 5th century A.D., scented oils and incense had become entwined with religious rituals across Europe, including those of Judaism and Christianity. The mixing of various social classes at public worship spaces meant that everyone brought their own particular smells, and incense helped to mask the God-fearing funk. "Priests were so overwhelmed by the stench of their worshipers that they would avidly burn incense to counteract the worshipers' body odor," Everts says.
Even while the clergy were exalting religious incense, they sometimes derided perfume as a sinful indulgence. For several centuries, many Christians rejected bathing for its connection to the sin of pride or vanity.
While Christians preferred not to wash, Islamic communities kept the tradition of bathing alive. In the eastern part of the Byzantine Empire, Roman bathing customs evolved into the hammam, or Turkish bath. Around the 11th century, the return of Crusaders brought the hammam tradition back to Europe along with scented treasures like musk and civet.
At the time, most soaps were rough and smelled like the ash and animal fats they were made from, so they were rarely used on the skin. But then Middle Eastern inventors developed better formulas incorporating vegetable oils, and soap making became the primary application for perfumes.
By the 13th century, chemists had mastered the art of distilling, in which a natural substance is boiled in water, extracting its essential oil. Inventors combined these essential oils with alcohol to create the stable, quick-drying perfume that we know today. The first major alcohol-based fragrance was a late-14th-century rosemary perfume known as Hungary water, since it was designed for Queen Elisabeth of Hungary.
Most of Europe's public bathhouses had been closed because of the bubonic plague, which killed more than a third of the population. Without a scientific understanding of germs, people believed that diseases like the plague were contagious through the air.
Thus the stinking smell of sickness was fought with the sweet scent of aromatics. "Specific diseases, like plague, believed to be conveyed by impure or corrupt air, were frequently countered by building bonfires in public spaces, and in private by burning incense or inhaling perfumes such as rose and musk," says Jonathan Reinarz, a professor of medical history who published a book called Past Scents: Historical Perspectives on Smell. Small bouquets of herbs and flowers called posies, nosegays, or tussie-mussies became popular accessories carried to overcome the stench of death.
Meanwhile, the true antidote to major epidemics — better hygiene via bathing and hand washing — was unattainable as long as most Europeans believed that bathing was dangerous to one's health. In the 15th and 16th centuries, prominent scientists helped spread the false idea that water's ability to soften skin and open pores actually weakened the flesh. With this in mind, the few who did bathe regularly took special precautions, like anointing the body with oil and wrapping themselves in a scented cloth. Hair could be rubbed with aromatic powders, and bad breath was improved by chewing pungent herbs.
As more refined herbal or floral scents became trendy, France came to dominate the international perfume industry. One of its most popular fragrances was eau de cologne, a recipe originally produced as protection against the plague, which included rosemary and citrus essences suspended in a grape-based spirit.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the French aristocracy took perfumery to a new level, installing scented fountains at their dinner parties and making their own custom essences. Leather gloves infused with neroli, an orange-blossom fragrance, were one of the country's most successful products.
Small scent boxes designed to hold liquid perfumes soon became the accessory of the moment. Called "smelling boxes," "pouncet boxes," and, later, "vinaigrettes," these decorative perforated cases held small sponges or fabric swatches soaked with alcohol- or vinegar-based fragrances hailed for their medicinal qualities, which also worked to defend against unpleasant odors encountered on city streets.
Yet even with access to perfumes, wealthy people often still stank. "Descriptions of Versailles by a lot of people visiting the court of Louis XVI and his bride, Marie Antoinette, just before the revolution are really striking," Reinarz says. "They described it as a stinking cesspit."
During the French Revolution, clothing styles shifted toward simpler silhouettes, fewer layers, and lighter fabrics made from cotton, which could also be more easily washed. Bathing had finally come back into vogue, as doctors now believed that accumulated filth prevented the body from releasing corrupt fluids.
Outbreaks of cholera in the mid-1800s inspired cities across Europe to improve their sanitation by expanding access to fresh water, systematizing garbage disposal, and constructing new sewer systems. As better hygiene took over, strong perfumes were no longer essential to combat stench, and their association with the aristocracy was becoming a hindrance to sales, so the industry aligned itself more with fashion.
When perfumes moved from the pharmacy to the cosmetics counter, their use was increasingly linked with the feminine, especially as Victorian-era notions about separate spheres for each gender took hold. While some scents, like tobacco and pine, remained connected to masculinity, the general concept of good smell was increasingly associated with the world of women.
Americans had been as reluctant to bathe as Europeans, but by the late 19th century, the U.S. had adopted novel cleaning devices like showers and toothbrushes, which were supported by the latest studies on hygiene. America's clean regime was also made possible by the young country's abundant space. "Water mains and sewers were more easily installed in new cities than in ancient ones," Katherine Ashenburg writes in The Dirt on Clean. "Houses with bathrooms became the domestic norm, in contrast to Europe's old, crowded apartments."
The earliest successful brand of commercial deodorant was developed in 1888 by an inventor in Philadelphia and dubbed Mum, as in "keeping silent" or "Mum's the word." The first patented version of Mum was sold as a waxy cream that quickly inspired imitations, but these cumbersome products were unpleasant to apply and often left a greasy residue on clothing. In 1903, Everdry introduced the world's first antiperspirant, which used aluminum chloride to clog pores and block sweat. These early antiperspirants were highly acidic, so they, too, often damaged clothing, and left the wearer with a stinging sensation.
Early in the 20th century, a Cincinnati surgeon wanted his hands sweat-free while operating, so he invented an antiperspirant called Odo-Ro-No. In 1912, his daughter Edna Murphey hired an ad agency to boost the company's sales, and their first successful ad positioned excessive sweating as a medical disorder. A few years later, the company tried a new tack: convincing self-conscious women that their body odor (which it dubbed B.O. for short) was a problem nobody would directly tell them about.
Similar campaigns were soon waged against every imaginable imperfection, whether it was flawed makeup, gray hair, torn stockings, acne, underarm hair, bad breath, or the ultimate — bad "feminine hygiene." To describe the "life-destroying" impact of bad breath, an oral antiseptic brand called Listerine coined the now ubiquitous phrase "Often a bridesmaid, but never a bride."
By the 1930s, American deodorant companies had secured a female customer base, so they began including subtle advertising copy referencing men's body odor. In 1935, Top-Flite, the first deodorant targeted at men, hit store shelves in its sleek black bottle, followed by other stereotypically male designs, like the Seaforth bottle resembling a miniature whiskey jug. Advertisements for men's deodorant products often focused on financial insecurities, positing that foul body odors might ruin one's career.
Meanwhile, the delivery method of deodorant was shifting from messy creams to more pleasant roll-on sticks, like the 1940s applicator developed by Mum employee Helen Diserens, based on the design of a ballpoint pen. In the early 1960s, Gillette introduced Right Guard, the first aerosol antiperspirant.
Today, we're bombarded with a cornucopia of deodorants, antiperspirants, soaps, colognes, perfumes, and douches, all aiming to eradicate smells associated with the human body — even if those odors are the result of healthy processes. "I think my favorite weird patent was based on baker's yeast," Everts says. "I just don't think I'd want to put baker's yeast in my armpit."
Excerpted from an article that originally appeared in CollectorsWeekly.com. Reprinted with permission. |
At least 11 people died and more than 100 people were injured at an annual spring festival in eastern Pakistan celebrated with the flying of thousands of colorful kites, officials said Monday.
The deaths and injuries were caused by stray bullets, sharpened kite-strings, electrocution and people falling off rooftops on Sunday at the conclusion of the two-day Basant festival, said Ruqia Bano, spokeswoman for the emergency services in the city of Lahore.
The festival is regularly marred by casualties caused by sharp kite strings or celebratory gunshots fired into the air. Kite flyers often use strings made of wire or coated with ground glass to try to cross and cut a rival's string or damage the other kite, often after betting on the outcome.
Authorities temporarily lifted a ban on kite flying that was imposed following a string of deaths at the festival last year. Lahore Mayor Mian Amier Mahmood said the two-day permission to fly kites ended Sunday and that the ban has been re-imposed.
Police arrested more than 700 people for using sharpened kite strings or firing guns, and seized 282 illegally held weapons during this year's festival, said Aftab Cheema, a senior Lahore police officer.
Five of those who died on Sunday were hit by stray bullets, including a 6-year-school boy who was struck in the head near his home in the city's Mazang area, Bano said.
A 16-year-old girl and a school boy, 12, died after their throats were slashed by metal kite strings in separate incidents. Two people were electrocuted while they tried to recover kites tangled in overhead power cables, Bano said.
A 13-year-old boy fell to his death from the roof of his home as he tried to catch a stray kite, and a 35-year-old woman fell off the roof of her home trying to stop her son from running after a stray kite, Bano said.
Basant — which means yellow in Hindi — symbolizes the yellow mustard flowers that usually blossom in Pakistan at this time of the year. |
Not that long ago, American teen-agers were handed the keys to two tons of trouble and loosed upon on the roads. This is one man's story about the fun he had not getting killed despite himself. — Ed.
Wild and rumbly, the car was an impostor, and when we sped together over back-county mountains, I knew it tried damned hard to keep me from killing myself. It was a $1,400 maroon behemoth, a 1978 Mercury Cougar with a cracked windshield that spent it's original years under a tarp in some old codger's barn, taken out only before the occasional Sunday worship. I never wanted to admit that it was a lemon –- it was -– and after the sting it gave my parents' wallet on day one, it spent the next 28 months driving deep and hurtful wounds into the tiny one I sat on. A transmission, an engine, wheels, tires and all manner of mechanical voodoo beset our short courtship –- if only I'd tried to get fresh maybe I'd feel a little better about all that shelling. Big fat tires and unnecessary shocks kicked the car's ass skyward, a street cobra with no venom, ready to pounce and brutalize some poor pedestrian. I tortured it every day with misadventure; one would think auto-abuse was a hobby. No, I was just 15 years old, which means if it wasn't masturbation or a disregard for automotive safety, my underdeveloped brain couldn't get around it.
Hours flittered by as I mothered the thing, bathing the car like a surgeon preparing for a tonsillectomy on bubble boy. I only saw the other kids and their wheels from the end of my nose – terrible abominations of expense and decay -– not near enough knuckle and wax to show that you had copious amounts of free time. Pop had some weird fetish for spotless autos – so along with my third-hand "this is good, and this is shit," knowledge on foreign and domestic car sales – I'd picked up that washing the beast must involve no less than seven bottles of chemicals. You need to start with a double wash -– clean the thing with hose-water and a liberal application of soap -– and get those britches off too, we're going to do this Nebraska style and get filthy. Rinse the car off, then decide if you need to do the soap again — with the special way the birds aim those arcing gray ropes out in the plains, you often do. Next comes the wax. Cherry smelling gunk goes on in deep layers, then left to bake to a yellow crust under the relentless Midwestern sun. Now we buff it all out, first with the machine and then with your elbows -– this stuff goes everywhere. Half a bottle of window cleaner now, get every piece of mirror and glass – inside and out – then wipe it all down, twice. The interior comes at the finish of the ceremony -– vacuum, wipe, vacuum, polish, and wipe again. It all ends with me sitting in the driver's seat, surveying everything, nauseous on the compounds now inside of my skin.
"That's one fine looking auto," the occasional old timer would say, "looks brand new." My chest always swelled a bit more after this, clicking in the seatbelt then slamming the gas while parked just for his benefit. You couldn't beat that ball-rumbling song. The Cougar growled deep perfect threats every time I'd poked a stick in the cage, and when idle, the luh-luh-luh-luh –- the power plant barely keeping conscious –- got nods from those who'd remembered real go-fast cars from their youth. I'd throw around terms like "air shocks" and "351 Windsor" like they had actual meaning to me. The car was a scary old Sean Connery type of thing; it looked terrible and suave and sounded like it could dissolve panties – but when put to the heat, it lisped through braces and struggled to do a pushup. I'd get it to scream though -– it just took some patience. "Highway geared," was the quick explanation for it's sluggish take-off, whatever that meant. I was caught up in this world of muscle car language where I didn't even understand the idioms I was slurring. "Yeah, that's got a hemi charged dual piston crack-stop. You'll probably need a double geared timing chain if you don't want to burn out third in a quarter, and God help you if the crank over-fuels." I could really sling some nonsense in those days.
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The easy way to get it screaming was out on the dippy highways – I just kept my foot to the floor and gravity did the rest. On the boiling pavement I played a dicey game with friction, watching the needle limp to the right and praying that everything held fast. You can't do one hundred and ten miles an hour in a beast like that and expect to live –- but I did -– and when I'd got the car home for it's bi-weekly wash down, the brakes hissed clouds of steam up over everything, a reminder that without those, me and some poor bastard's livestock would've been fused to the engine block about six miles back. You give a kid some junk car at 16 not because they're mature enough to drive it properly. You give a kid some junk car at 16 because their stupid pink bodies are still malleable enough to bounce back from minor impact. The cars need to be cheap too, for this very reason, but without those terrifying drivers education videos, things could be much worse. Maybe if we'd spent our teenage weekends looking at more corpses slung over car windows via videotape, things might be a little safer, at least on the roads. Blinkers come on five hundred feet before a stop-sign now because all the little bastard can think about is his bloody eyeball, hung from the mirror by reckless gristle.
“Bring it on,” it seemed to say, thumping it’s chest in defiant confrontation, “I can do this all day.”
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The back roads were the most dangerous parts of the fun. Fucking mountains, man, these gravel roads. They dipped and dived in every mile, and were mercilessly straight in most parts — ripe and perfect for some teenage mutiny. I'd take the thing at double whatever limit sign was gun-shot down ages ago, and more than once I saw my passenger's hair touch the top. I got it airborne too, just the once. I summoned Bo Duke and hollered a dixie horn, speeding over a hump while making way to various high-school graduation parties. The guy in the back seat was holding a cup of soda, and everything around him just slowed down, like the projector malfunctioned. All four wheels broke gravity for just a fraction, and from the rear mirror I watched the guy with the soda go astronaut -– brown fluid climbing straight up in front of his face, shirt collars and tight haircuts lifting skyward a few inches. We landed hard, stupid hard. Teeth rattled and thirty white fingers gripped onto armrests while we wore shocked faces, bringing the car to a reasonable speed for once, just before the next party house. The Cougar was largely untouched, dual exhaust pipes (with cheap chrome tips) just an inch or so higher than moments before. While mechanical failure plagued the car, the elements did little to ruffle it's feathers. A Camry hit it from behind once, totaling the import, while the Cougar suffered but two hair-line bumper scratches. "Bring it on," it seemed to say, thumping it's chest in defiant confrontation, "I can do this all day."
I'd sold it to my brother's friend once I'd turned 17 and financed something that didn't eat up three tanks of fuel every week. Watching him drive off in my Cougar was difficult -– I hadn't prepared to come so close to tears, and almost went full-bitch right there in my parent's driveway. It was a real punch in the guts, one of the top ten bummers of my high school years, and I can relive the feeling with startlingly easy recall. I had a thousand dollars in my pocket, but I'd lost a devilishly expensive and untrustworthy cohort in that car. I wish I'd been reading books or spending my folding money on more than car parts back then, but when you're 15 years old with wheels, there's a whole world of backwoods ways to try and kill yourself.
Photos: Nashworld, thejcgerm via Flickr
This story originally appeared on The Wayward Irregular on Sept. 19, 2011, and was republished with permission.
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Bloomberg News
A major theme of 2013 is carrying over into the new year: Hacks are a regular reality of digital life.
The Syrian Electronic Army, a group that supports Syria’s president and has hacked a series of websites, appeared to have taken over Skype’s blog, Twitter account and Facebook page. Those accounts posted messages purporting to be from the SEA criticizing Microsoft, which owns Skype, for sharing user data with governments. (The Skype Facebook account has since been restored to normal.)
“Don’t use Microsoft emails (hotmail, outlook), They are monitoring your accounts and selling the data to the governments. More details soon.” read a message posted on Skype’s Twitter account, and signing off with the hashtag “SEA.” The post had more than 6,500 retweets as of 6:15 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday. |
Second-Amendment advocate Guy Relford, opposes the proposed stolen gun ordinance (Photo: Star Staff)
The City-County Council is expected to vote on a new gun ordinance Monday.
The ordinance would require a person who owns or possess a firearm that is lost or stolen to report it within 48 hours to IMPD, Fox59 reports.
Sounds simple, but it’s not. Some say it’s actually illegal.
City attorneys say the ordinance violates state law that prohibits local governments from regulating firearms.
Attorneys also say Indianapolis could face drastic financial penalties and could be held liable if it passes and goes into effect.
At-large Councilman Kip Tew says the proposal doesn't violate state code and doesn't hold the city liable.
“I’m gonna try to pass it and force the mayor to deal with it because I think it’s a good idea, IMPD testified in committee that it would helpful,” said Tew.
Second Amendment attorney, certified firearms instructor, author and radio host Guy Relford says the proposal is a waste of time and money.
“It unquestionably violates the Indiana Firearms Preemption Act and there’s really no dispute about that.”
Relford also does not believe this ordinance will reduce violent crime in Indianapolis because the proposed ordinance is not enforceable.
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There is no gun registration on the federal or state level tracking firearms ownership.
It is also a federal offense to steal a firearm.
City attorneys say many owners already report lost or stolen firearms and want that to continue, but requiring them to do so is against Indiana law.
Violators would face a $50 fine.
Mayor Greg Ballard has been advised not to support this ordinance.
This story originally appeared at Fox59.com.
Read or Share this story: http://indy.st/1QGpFIy |
The European Union is urging Moscow to resume negotiations quickly in an effort to resolve its latest pricing dispute with Kiev that has suspended gas to Ukraine for the fourth time in the past decade.
Addressing Ukraine’s Parliament on July 3, Martin Schulz, the president of the EU Parliament, referred to the breakdown in the talks in Vienna on Tuesday over the reduced size of the discount that Russia’s Gazprom was offering cash-strapped Ukraine.
As a result, Aleksey Miller, the CEO of Russia’s state-run energy giant Gazprom, was ending gas deliveries to Ukraine effective July 1 because Naftogaz had refused to pay in advance for further gas deliveries. “Gazprom will not deliver gas to Ukraine at any price without prepayment,” he said.
Related: BP Agrees To Pay $18.7 Billion To Settle Deepwater Horizon Spill
Gazprom had planned to keep offering Ukraine a discount for its gas, though a smaller one. The plan was to have Naftogaz pay $247 per thousand cubic meter of gas, $40 below Gazprom’s current market rate. Until now, Naftogaz had had a $100 discount on the same volume of gas and wanted keep paying the lower price.
Aleksander Novak, Russia’s energy minister, said maintaining the larger discount would have been “unjustified” because it would be selling its gas to Ukraine below the rate Gazprom charges other Russian neighbors.
As a result, Volodymyr Demchyshyn, Ukraine’s energy minister, said at the Vienna talks that Naftogaz would look elsewhere for its gas supplies. And Naftogaz issued a statement saying, “Since … the terms of further Russian gas deliveries to Ukraine were not agreed at today’s trilateral talks in Vienna, Naftogaz is suspending purchases from the Russian company.”
For now, at least, Kiev has room to make such bargains because, with summer just begun, the country’s demand for gas is at an annual low, giving it the opportunity to bargain for better terms.
Related: Is Saudi Arabia Leaving The U.S. Behind For Russia?
Ukraine says it is not as reliant on Russian gas as it once was. Its representatives at the Vienna talks said it has imported no more than one-third of its gas from Gazprom so far this year because it has found less expensive gas from other countries in Europe.
That gas, in fact, was originally supplied to these nations by Russia, and the customers were reselling it to Ukraine. Moscow, however, says it is illegal for its customers to sell these “reverse supplies,” as they are called.
In the meantime, Naftogaz said that despite the halt in Russian gas to Ukraine, it would continue supplying the energy to Russia’s customers in Western Europe, for which the Ukrainian company earns a transit fee. But that’s no guarantee that flows to the EU won’t be affected eventually.
Related: Alberta’s Government Kicking Oil Industry While It’s Down
This is the fourth time in the past decade that a pricing or political dispute between Kiev and Moscow has halted the flow of gas to Ukraine. Similar disagreements led to delivery suspension in 2006, 2008 and 2014.
These cutoffs didn’t hurt only Ukraine. Gazprom’s customers in Western Europe occasionally suffered from low gas supplies in the midst of winter. This has prompted the EU to search for alternative sources of fuel. At the same time, and Russia is exploring alternative pipelines to accommodate its valuable European customers.
By Andy Tully Of Oilprice.com
More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: |
Someone who gives himself the title of king should surely live up to it. While this 18-year-old ginger kid from the United Kingdom doesn’t look the part — with his gangly body and skater-prep look — his unique sound and unusual approach to story-telling through rare, awkward, and sometimes weird visuals could soon build him a bigger fan base.
Archy Marshall, also known as King Krule, first drew industry attention at 16 for his speak-sing style. Through a baritone drawl — an unexpectedly deep, strong voice issuing from a bony and delicate frame — Krule’s songs tell stories of his youth with a maturity that is rare for his age.
“There was a time and place / that was alive in faith / but just as time to pray is to eliminate the afraid to participate in this play / Well, I guess I stayed too long,” sings Krule in 2012’s “Octopus”.
Krule is a leader in a new era of music-making marked by a lack of structure in both words and visuals. His audience is forced to pay close attention in order to to figure out what Krule is saying, because his lyrics aren’t always clear from his loud jaunts and soft endings. His videos are similarly enigmatic, featuring slow, sweeping camera movements following him through often lonely and haunting settings.
With an eloquence and an old-soul confidence lifting him a level above other acts of his generation, Krule has fans coming back for more: his recent single, “Easy Easy”, has marked 160,000 YouTube views since being uploaded in early July. His debut album, 6 Feet Beneath The Moon is scheduled for release on August 24, 2013 (Krule’s 19th birthday); a North American tour starts in New York in September. See more: http://kingkrule.co.uk |
San Andreas found extremely sensitive to stress SEISMOLOGY
Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close San Andreas found extremely sensitive to stress 1 / 3 Back to Gallery
Parts of the San Andreas Fault are so sensitive to stress that the faint gravitational tug of the sun and the moon may be enough to cause tiny tremors 15 miles underground, a team of UC Berkeley seismologists has found.
Water under extremely high pressure apparently acts as a lubricant for the rock, allowing even the smallest stresses to cause a measurable slippage.
"For the first time, we're getting a picture of what's going on beneath where earthquakes are happening," said Robert Nadeau of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, one of the authors of a report appearing today in the journal Nature. "This is information from a region we've been virtually blind to in the past."
Unlike earthquakes, which can be large and generally short-lived jolts, the nonvolcanic tremors deep underground may last for many tens of minutes at the level of a magnitude 1 earthquake, making them detectable only with sensitive instruments.
The tremors were first discovered in Japan about seven years ago, and seismologists began looking for them along the San Andreas fault in 2005. Working at Parkfield, a tiny community in a geologically active part of southern Monterey County, scientists placed sensitive seismometers more than 600 feet underground, shielded from the clutter of movement at the surface.
Using years of readings from Parkfield and other sites, Nadeau, along with Roland Bürgmann, a UC Berkeley professor of earth and planetary science, and Amanda Thomas, a UC Berkeley graduate student, found that tremor activity varied with the effects of the sun, the moon and the ocean tides, which are driven by the moon.
When sun, moon align
Since the strongest effects were seen when the pull of the moon and the sun was aligned with the direction of the fault's break (Los Angeles toward San Francisco in the case of the San Andreas Fault), the researchers reasoned that water trapped deep underground was the likely explanation for the tremors, lubricating the rock to make it move easier.
The tremors so far have been found in only a relatively small number of fault zones, suggesting that underground water isn't found everywhere.
If the tremors have an effect on the earthquake zone closer to the surface, it's hard to find, Bürgmann said.
"These tremors represent slip along the fault 25 kilometers underground, and this slip should push the fault zone above in a similar pattern," Bürgmann said in a statement released by UC Berkeley. "But it seems to be very subtle, because we actually don't see a tidal signal in regular earthquakes."
But it's a reasonable conjecture that the tremors are affecting the fault zones above them, Nadeau said, because the deep San Andreas fault is moving faster when the tremors are more active, presumably placing more stress on the seismogenic zone, where earthquakes happen.
Looking for a link
If scientists can find a link between these almost undetectable tremors and the destructive quakes that are geologically inevitable along the huge fault zones that riddle California and other parts of the world, it could help them understand the processes taking place deep below Earth's surface.
"Clearly they are connected, since it's the same fault zone," Bürgmann said in an interview Tuesday. "But how they relate is a question that still has to be answered."
The next step is to expand the research to find other places, particularly in California, where these tremors occur, Nadeau said. There's also a need for more sensitive equipment to take a higher-resolution look at what's happening deep underground.
"We need to understand the mechanism," he said. "As we get a better picture of how each part of the Earth works together, we get closer to understanding what's going on with earthquakes." |
After posting a link to Paul Litwinovich’s Zenith Transoceanic article, SWLing Post reader, Bob LaRose (W6ACU) sent me the following message:
“Just a quick story to follow-up on the excellent Zenith Transoceanic article today. It brought back a lot of great memories!
About twenty years ago I decided to collect some of the things that I couldn’t afford when growing up. I acquired quite a number of Hallicrafters receivers and other “heavy metal” including several transmitters (including my Viking I AM Transmitter). In the process of our last move, I got rid of a lot of the collection. One part of the collection that I did keep was my Transoceanics. If I remember correctly I have every major model except the military one mentioned in the article and the very last one.
Here is my story is about obtaining a “Bomber” as described in the article. I was visiting a gun show at the North Carolina Fair grounds in Raleigh (I went there with a friend who is into Civil War collectables). Anyway, we were walking around and I spotted a small dusty suitcase on a table in the back of a booth. It was closed and to anyone else it looked like an old carrying case. However, by the size and the brown leatherette-grained case I thought it just might be a “Bomber”.
I tried not to act too excited and asked the seller what it was. He said it was an old radio and I asked him to bring it out. Sure enough, it was a Bomber! Still trying not to act too excited, I tried to let on that I didn’t know what is was and asked him if it worked. He said he didn’t know. I made a point of saying that it was missing the dial cover (but the pointer was there and unbent and the inside looked pretty clean and even had its “Wave Magnet”).
I asked him how much he wanted and he said $100. We haggled a bit over the condition and I finally got it for $75. I walked away very happy and excited! |
More than 900 Mauritanian women have been trafficked to Saudi Arabia in 2015, where they are trapped working in jobs they did not sign up for, a local activist has told Middle East Eye.
The women believed they were going to be employed as nurses or teachers, but on arrival in Saudi Arabia they were forced to work as domestic workers in homes across the kingdom, Elmehdi Ould Lemrabott, who is based in Mauritania’s capital Nouakchott, told MEE.
“Some of these women who objected were subjected to rape attempts, sexual harassment, physical abuse and starvation – as well as being confined to tiny rooms,” Lemrabott said.
Saudi Arabia began letting workers from Mauritania into the country at the beginning of 2015. Riyadh’s Ministry of Labour advertised jobs specified for men (drivers, waiters and domestic workers) and jobs specified for women (nurses, primary schoolteachers and domestic workers).
The opportunity attracted a high number of applications due to Mauritania’s high unemployment rate - currently above 30 percent - and widespread poverty, which is experienced by more than 40 percent of the North African country’s nearly four million people.
A black market quickly sprang up to take advantage of local interest in Saudi-based jobs, according to Lemrabott, which the government did not pick up on.
“A group of people opened secret employment offices not in accordance with the law and away from the sight of authorities,” Lemrabott said. “Women are being trafficked one by one secretly so the authorities do not take notice.”
Before the women travel to Saudi Arabia, they sign contracts that promise them a salary of 1,200 Saudi riyals per month ($320), more than double the average national wage in Mauritania. The contract includes a stipulation that the employee must repay their travel costs once in Saudi Arabia.
“This allows the manager of the employment office the right to receive the employee’s salary for the first few months of their employment until the money is repaid,” Lemrabott told MEE.
The salary is often much lower than the one originally promised, Lemrabott added, as on arrival the women have their identity documents seized and contracts “replaced with one that effectively turns them into slaves in the households they work in".
MEE spoke to one woman who was trafficked to Saudi Arabia, but after a brief phone call she said that she was too scared of the repercussions to be quoted in the media.
Many of the women have desperately spoken out about their suffering, primarily to a new campaign group set up in the Mauritanian capital called the Popular Initiative against the Violation of the Haratin Women Workers’ Rights in Saudi Arabia.
The Initiative, of which Lemrabott is a member, says the workers in Saudi Arabia claim that they have been forced to work 18 hours a day with no breaks and are not granted time off at weekends or paid overtime. Others have accused their Saudi employers of physical abuse and sexual harassment, including attempted rape.
The initiative is named after the Haratin ethnic group, which comprises 40 percent of Mauritania’s population. Many Haratins are descended from slaves - a practice abolished in 1981 and only criminalised in 2007 by Mauritania – but poor access to education has led to reports some have returned to their former masters out of necessity and been returned to slave-like conditions.
For the Haratin women who have sought a better life in Saudi Arabia, but been thrown into allegedly abusive conditions, they have fallen off the radar for Mauritanian authorities.
The workers are not registered with employment offices in Saudi Arabia, which means Nouakchott is not aware of their presence in the kingdom.
“This is due to the fact that the process is done individually and illegally by anonymous offices [on the Mauritanian black market],” Lemrabott said.
Out of the nine million migrant workers in Saudi Arabia, almost a third are undocumented. In 2013, the Saudi government embarked on a two-year long deportation campaign in which as many as half a million undocumented migrant workers out of nearly three million were kicked out of the country.
Despite migrant workers constituting over half the workforce in Saudi Arabia, they remain vulnerable to exploitation and abuse by their employers and are not protected by labour laws.
Many of these workers suffer from excessive working hours, wages withheld for months or years on end, food deprivation, and severe psychological, physical and sexual abuse.
When, or if, Mauritanian authorities try to confront alleged abuses of their citizens in Saudi Arabia, Human Rights Watch has warned it may be a significant challenge for such a poor country.
“It is cheaper for Saudi Arabia to import labour from countries such as Mauritania, who are poor and do not have the resources with which to protect trafficked citizens,” said Adam Coogle, Middle East researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“Whereas, with somewhere like the Philippines, we have seen the government successfully negotiate minimum salaries and improved working conditions for their citizens who are working in Saudi Arabia.”
After numerous reports of Filipino workers being abused in Saudi Arabia, authorities in the southeast Asian country moved to demand Riyadh uphold a minimum wage of $400 per month and safeguard living standards including a weekly day off and the right for workers to keep possession of their passport.
Although Saudi authorities banned all Filipino workers for one year, they eventually ceded to the demands.
For now, the newly established initiative to protect Haratin workers is calling on Mauritanian authorities to intervene and have the women trapped in Saudi Arabia returned home. A demonstration was recently held in front of the Saudi embassy in Nouakchott, but Lemrabott said the response was negative.
“It was suppressed violently by riot police, and a number of activists from within the initiative were arrested,” he said. “And the authorities have not responded to any of the demands.”
“The government is turning a blind eye to the issue,” he added, saying more protests are being planned for the future.
Local trade unions – including the General Confederation of Workers of Mauritania and the Najda Organisation for Slavery – are also trying to pressure authorities into shutting down illegal traffickers. The unions have also called for an official process to be established protecting people who want to work in Saudi Arabia.
The International Trade Union Confederation, which receives daily reports on trafficking from their Mauritanian counterparts, has called on Nouakchott to confront the issue immediately.
“Mauritania needs to act immediately to free the women who have been trafficked to Saudi Arabia and trapped in domestic slavery there, and to stop the traffickers and bring them to justice,” Sharan Burrow, ITUC general secretary, said in a statement.
The Saudi and Mauritanian embassies in London did not respond to requests for comment at the time of publication. |
Image caption Farmland is another place for which "business as usual" has been judged untenable
Major changes are needed in agriculture and food consumption around the world if future generations are to be adequately fed, a major report warns.
Farming must intensify sustainably, cut waste and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farms, it says.
TheCommission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Changespent more than a year assessing evidence from scientists and policymakers.
Its final report was released atthe Planet Under Pressure conference.
The commission was chaired by Prof Sir John Beddington, the UK government's chief scientific adviser.
We need to develop agriculture that is 'climate smart' - generating more output without the accompanying greenhouse gas emissions Prof Sir John Beddington, Commission chairman
"If you're going to generate enough food both to address the poverty of a billion people not getting enough food, with another billion [in the global population] in 13 years' time, you've got to massively increase agriculture," Sir John told BBC News.
"You can't do it using the same agricultural techniques we've used before, because that would seriously increase greenhouse gas emissions for the whole world, with climate change knock-ons."
Farming is probably responsible for about one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, although the figure is hard to pin down as a large proportion comes from land clearance, for which emissions are notoriously difficult to measure.
Although there are regional variations, climate change is forecast to reduce crop yields overall - dramatically so in the case of South Asia, where studies suggest the wheat yield could halve in 50 years.
"We need to develop agriculture that is 'climate smart' - generating more output without the accompanying greenhouse gas emissions, either via the basic techniques of farming or from ploughing up grassland or cutting down rainforest," said Sir John.
The techniques needed in different regions vary according to what is appropriate, said Dr Christine Negra, who co-ordinated the commission's work.
"In places where using organic methods, for example, is appropriate or economically advantageous and produces good socio-economic and ecological outcomes, that's a great approach," she said.
"In places where, using GMOs, you can address food security challenges and socio-economic issues, those are the right approaches to use where they've been proven safe."
Waste matters
The commission's recommendations go a long way beyond farming methods, however.
It says the economic and policy framework around food production and consumption need to change to encourage sustainability, to raise output while minimising environmental impacts.
Image caption Policies enacted now will help future farmland bear the weight of a growing population's needs
Farmers need more investment and better information; governments need to put sustainable farming at the heart of national policies.
Prof Tekalign Mamo, who advises the Agriculture Ministry in Ethiopia, said models already existed for many of the transformations needed.
One, highlighted in the report, is Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme, inaugurated in 2003 with the involvement of the government and international partners.
"One [aspect of it] is household asset building, so people don't deplete their resources in times of chronic food shortage," Prof Mamo told BBC News.
"Another is working on community assets such as building small-scale irrigation or watershed development; the communities own such activities and also allocate free labour, and the government provides incentives like food or cash for those participating.
"It has lifted about 1.3 million of the population from poverty and into food security, and at the same time they also conserved and rehabilitated the environment."
India's guarantee of employment in rural areas, Vietnam's progress with no-till rice farming (which reduces greenhouse gas emissions from soil), and moves to give women secure land ownership in five southern African countries are also highlighted in the report.
But it also recommends changes in developed nations - for example, around food waste.
"The less we waste food, the less food we have to produce, the less greenhouse gases are emitted," noted Dr Negra.
Before last December's UN climate conference in South Africa, the commissioners had advocated incorporating sustainable agriculture into the UN climate convention's discussions.
The eventual decision - to start talks on a "work programme" - is viewed by the commission as being weaker than it might have been.
The commission was established by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the global network of institutions working on food and poverty issues.
The Planet Under Pressure conference is a four-day gathering of academics, campaigners and business people in London designed to inform policymaking in the run-up to the Rio+20 summit in Brazil in June.
Follow Richardon Twitter |
TUNIS - Human Rights Watch on Wednesday called on Tunisia to "urgently" repeal its criminal defamation law, which can lead to two years in jail and which it said has a "chilling effect" on freedom of speech.
"Tunisian authorities should urgently amend the country’s law on defamation to make it conform to international norms on freedom of expression," the New York-based press watchdog said.
"These standards hold that defamation should be considered a civil matter, not a crime punishable with imprisonment," it added.
"Criminal defamation laws have a chilling effect on freedom of expression and work against the public interest by deterring people from speaking out about corruption or other misconduct by public officials," said Eric Goldstein, HRW's deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa region.
The press watchdog highlighted the case of Olfa Riahi, a blogger who posted information about the alleged squandering of public funds by former foreign minister Rafik Abdessalem, before he stepped down earlier this month.
It also cited the defamation charges brought against Raja Ben Slama, a university professor, for accusing an Islamist MP overseeing the drafting of the new constitution of attempting to limit freedom of expression.
They face up to two years in jail if convicted of mistakenly accusing an official of wrongdoing.
Tunisia's secular opposition has regularly accused the ruling Islamist party Ennahda of seeking to restrict freedom of expression and Islamise society, relying in particular on repressive laws dating back to the regime of deposed president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. |
The researchers' cultural evolutionary model forecasts where and when the largest-scale sophisticated societies emerged in human history.
According to a news release from the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBIoS), math explains history.
Researchers have solved the mystery behind the evolution of human societies from small groups to complex societies mathematically, correctly matching the historical record on the rise of sophisticated states in the ancient world.
Researchers at the University of Connecticut, the University of Exeter and NIMBIoS report that extreme warfare is the evolutionary fuel of big sophisticated societies.
The researchers’ cultural evolutionary model forecasts where and when the largest-scale sophisticated societies emerged in human history.
Imagined within a representative landscape of the Afro-Eurasian landmass during 1,500 BCE to 1,500 CE, the researchers tested their mathematical model against the historical record. Between 1,500 BCE to 1,500 CE, horse-related military inventions ruled warfare within Afro-Eurasia. Additionally, Nomads residing in the Eurasian Steppe impacted nearby agrarian societies, thus extending extreme forms of offensive warfare out from the steppe belt.
The research concentrates on the interplay of ecology and geography, as well as the expansion of military advancements and forecasts that choice for ultra-social institutions that allow for mutual effort in large groups of genetically unrelated individuals and large-scale sophisticated states, is better where warfare is more extreme.
According to the researchers, the model-forecasted expansion of large-scale societies resembled the observed one. In fact, the model was able account for two-thirds of the difference in determining the emergence of large-scale societies.
“What’s so exciting about this area of research is that instead of just telling stories or describing what occurred, we can now explain general historical patterns with quantitative accuracy. Explaining historical events helps us better understand the present, and ultimately may help us predict the future,” said co-author Sergey Gavrilets, NIMBioS director for scientific activities, in a statement.
The study’s findings are described in detail in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
What do you think of the study’s findings? Share your thoughts in the comments section. |
, some of them women and children
Terrorists have brutally executed a total of 3,027 people in just 12 months
Sadistic jihadis fighting for the Islamic State in Syria have brutally executed more than 3,000 people over the past year, including 86 women and 74 children, a new report has revealed.
Of the 3,027 people killed, 1,787 were civilians according to research by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which doesn't take into account murders over the border in ISIS-held areas of Iraq.
Since claiming to have established a caliphate in the Middle East last June, the extremists have carried out a huge number of sickening public executions - ranging from beheadings, shootings and stonings to crucifixions, beatings and being pushed from the roofs of high buildings.
Scroll down for video
Brutal: Of the 3,027 people killed, 1,787 were civilians according to research by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which doesn't take into account murders over the border in ISIS-held areas of Iraq
Bloody: Since claiming to have established a caliphate in the Middle East last June, the extremists have carried out a huge number of sickening public executions
According to the report, 74 children have been brutally murdered by ISIS since the terror group self-declared the establishment of a caliphate and claimed leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was the head of the world's Muslims during a sermon in Mosul's grand mosque on June 29 last year.
Members of Sunni Shaitat tribe account for around half the civilians killed.
ISIS brutally executed 930 members of the clan in Deir Ezzor last year after they rose up against the extremist Sunni Muslim group.
The toll also includes recent mass killings by ISIS in the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane, which the terror group re-entered briefly this week after being expelled in January.
The monitor said it had counted at least 223 executions in the Syrian border town this week.
Tragic: According to the report, 74 children have been brutally murdered by ISIS since the terror group self-declared the establishment of a caliphate on June 29 last year
Abuse: As well as executing them, ISIS is well known for forcing young boys to become frontline fighters
MEN THROWN TO THEIR DEATHS BY ISIS BARBARIANS FOR ‘BEING GAY ISIS have released sick photographs of militants hurling four men, accused of homosexuality, off the top of a building in Iraq. The jihadi group has previously carried out the punishment in their de-facto capital, Raqqa, in Syria. Now the inhumane death sentence has been used in the Iraqi province of Fallujah. With their arms bound tightly behind their backs and their eyes fully covered with a makeshift blindfold, each victim is shown being led to the edge of the tall building. At the command of a senior ISIS officer, the two militants appear to grab their victim around his wait and hoist him to the edge of the rooftop. All four victims are then dropped from the lofty height to their deaths. Several photographers appear to have been used by ISIS's media team in order to capture the victims on the roof and on the ground. The gruesome propaganda photos appear to be an attempt by the depraved militant group to reinforce its rule of fear.
The Observatory also documented 216 ISIS executions of rival rebel factions and Kurdish fighters, as well as the bloody killings of nearly 900 soldiers loyal to President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
ISIS has also executed 143 of its own members it accused of crimes including spying - many of them captured as they were trying to desert the group, the Observatory said.
Meanwhile at least 8,000 jihadis have been killed in fighting and US-led air strikes in recent months.
ISIS emerged in Syria in 2013, growing from Al-Qaeda's one-time Iraq affiliate and initially seeking to merge with Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate Al-Nusra Front.
When Al-Nusra refused the merger, the two groups become rivals, and IS went on to announce its 'caliphate' in territory in Syria and Iraq last year, proclaiming al-Baghdadi as 'Caliph Ibrahim'.
The news comes as aid agencies warned that the number of Syrian children being forced to work keeps growing as the conflict drags on, with those as young as six reportedly working in Lebanon.
Syrian refugee children have become the joint or sole breadwinners in almost half of the households surveyed in Jordan, the United Nations Children's Fund and Save the Children said in the first comprehensive report on child labour among Syrian children across the region.
'Based on all of these surveys...it's clear that child labor has increased substantially since the Syrian conflict began,' UNICEF spokesperson Juliette Touma revealed.
Terror: ISIS announced its 'caliphate' in territory in Syria and Iraq last year, proclaiming leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (pictured) as 'Caliph Ibrahim' and claiming he is the head of the world's Muslim population
Jihadis: ISIS has also executed 143 of its own members it accused of crimes including spying - many of them captured as they were trying to desert the group, the Observatory said
Children keep being recruited as soldiers in the five-year-old conflict, they are being sexually exploited and trafficked according to the report, which draws on data collected in recent years.
The war in Syria has killed more than 220,000 people and displaced around half of the population. U.N. aid agencies have described it as one of the worst refugee crises since World War Two.
The conflict has pushed thousands of children into the labour force.
They now harvest potatoes in Lebanon, work in shops and restaurants in Jordan, bake bread and fix shoes in Turkey and are exposed to multiple hazards in quarries and construction sites.
Three out of four working children surveyed at the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan said they suffered from health problems, according to the report. |
A FATHER has been charged with child abuse after he chucked his two-year-old daughter into a swimming pool to teach her a lesson.
Corey McCarthy’s actions were picked by a surveillance camera at the pool in Phoenix, Arizona, reported AZFamily.com.
McCarthy reportedly told police that he threw his daughter Mia into the pool after she had dropped a five-month-old puppy dog in the pool and it drowned.
He allegedly wanted to teach Mia a lesson about playing around in water. The footage shows a woman thought to be McCarthy’s girlfriend, who was in the pool at the time, racing across to grab Mia before she sinks to the bottom of the pool.
PARENTING: The only good discipline technique you will need
Mia’s mother Samantha, who is separated from her husband, alleged that McCarthy did more than just throw her into the pool.
“You see him taunting her, like throwing her like he’s gonna, then he’s not, throwing her like he’s gonna, then he’s not,” she told AZFamily.com.
“What people don’t know is also in the beginning of the video, he hoses her down with a water hose to kind of torture her that way.
“I am very angry and I’m very hurt ... People make mistakes, but this is past a poor decision and a mistake. This is a child.”
According to court documents, Phoenix Police Department responded to a child abuse call from Mia’s mother.
Sergeant Trent Crump said the surveillance video, given to him by Mia’s mother, shows the child was left unattended by the pool for about 25 minutes. During that time Mia threw two dogs into the water. One of them apparently drowned, said Sgt Crump.
Witnesses allegedly told police that when McCarthy was told about the dogs, he threw Mia into the water to teach her a lesson.
When interviewed by police, McCarthy admitted to throwing the toddler into the pool and then dropping her in a second time, saying he was trying to teach her to be afraid of the water after she had gone near the pool earlier.
Phoenix Police said two counts of child abuse charges were filed as in the state of Arizona discipline must be considered reasonable and not carried out in anger.
McCarthy remains in jail. |
Final Fantasy Opus 3 Draft Start: August 20th, 2017 12:00
End: August 20th, 2017 19:00
Get excited and get ready for an Opus 3 draft for the Final Fantasy TCG, hosted at Dice Saloon Brighton. This is a great chance to play with new cards in preparation for constructed events and for casual play alike.
Players will be split into PODs of 4 and given 4 boosters each Players will then draft each booster, alternating direction each time a new pack is opened Players will then build a deck and play in a best of 1 or best of 3, dependant on turnout, in a Swiss format.
The following rules are in effect for the draft games: Decks must contain at least 40 cards. Victory is attained by inflicting 6 points of damage as opposed to 7. Backups Dull for their own colour CP Unlike a normal constructed tournament, players can make changes to their deck between games. 1st Place and 2nd place will receive 1 booster as a prize.
Sign-ups are limited and will be done on a 1st come, 1st serve basis. Don’t miss out, sign up now!
Please Note: Refunds can only be issued on tickets up to 14 days before the event. |
Hillary Clinton's campaign has decided to delay a $63,000 ad buy on the Weather Channel after facing backlash for being insensitive to the millions of people in the path of Hurricane Matthew, Fox News reported.
"We have requested that stations in Florida delay any of those ads on the Weather Channel until after the storm passes," Fox quoted spokesman Jesse Ferguson from a statement Thursday.
As Politico first reported, the proposition was risky from the get-go as political campaigns must refrain from exploiting suffering while at the same time make the most of the situation. The Weather Channel, with a surge in viewership, would provide a broader outreach.
Hurricane Matthew is currently forecast to approach the Florida East Coast late Thursday or early Friday.
Matthew could turn the election in other ways, too. Campaign operations in Florida, North Carolina and neighboring states may become inactive as volunteers, staffers and their families could need some time to recover from the storm.
During times of natural disasters, presidents are supposed to monitor disaster responses, coordinate with ground officials and exercise their authority in a positive way, rather than look for photo-ops.
"You need to strike a balance between looking presidential but not looking like you're a politically crass politician who's parachuting in for a photo-op," Ryan Williams, who advised Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign, said.
Meanwhile, Brett Doster, who advised Bush's reelection campaign in Florida, said, "Certainly there's an effect that occurs when a chief executive is looking like a chief executive at a time of crisis. You just can't divorce politics from it."
Doster also elaborated that both George Bush and Jeb worked intensely during a string of brutal hurricanes in 2003 and 2004. The result that followed was of mutual political benefit.
In this case, as neither Trump nor Clinton have an official role, their role is unclear. Hence, strategists believe President Barack Obama and Florida Gov. Rick Scott will have to perform the task.
"The two candidates are going to have to be very careful because there's a tremendous risk if it looks like they're politicizing it in the least," Doster said.
The last major hurricane made landfall in the United States nearly 11 years ago. Hurricane Wilma — which made landfall along Florida's southwest Gulf Coast in October 2005 as a Category-3 storm — killed five people in Florida and caused a damage of $21 billion in damage. |
Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 79 Caption Close
Image 2 of 79 Texans safety D.J. Swearinger upends Miami tight end Dustin Keller, causing a knee injury for Keller. Texans safety D.J. Swearinger upends Miami tight end Dustin Keller, causing a knee injury for Keller. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
Image 3 of 79 Texans tight end Owen Daniels celebrates after scoring on a touchdown catch during the first half. Texans tight end Owen Daniels celebrates after scoring on a touchdown catch during the first half. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
Image 4 of 79 Miami cornerback Brent Grimes intercepts a pass intended for Texans wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins. Miami cornerback Brent Grimes intercepts a pass intended for Texans wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
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Image 6 of 79 Texans linebacker Trevardo Williams sacks Miami quarterback Matt Moore. Texans linebacker Trevardo Williams sacks Miami quarterback Matt Moore. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
Image 7 of 79 Garrett Graham celebrates after scoring a touchdown. Garrett Graham celebrates after scoring a touchdown. Photo: Edward A. Ornelas / San Antonio Express-News
Image 8 of 79 DeAndre Hopkins is hit by Miami's Jimmy Wilson during first half action. DeAndre Hopkins is hit by Miami's Jimmy Wilson during first half action. Photo: Edward A. Ornelas / San Antonio Express-News
Image 9 of 79 Texans wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins leaves the game during the second quarter. Texans wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins leaves the game during the second quarter. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
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Image 11 of 79 Dustin Keller reacts after being injured on a play during the first half. Dustin Keller reacts after being injured on a play during the first half. Photo: Edward A. Ornelas / San Antonio Express-News
Image 12 of 79 Dustin Keller is taken off the field after being injured. Dustin Keller is taken off the field after being injured. Photo: Edward A. Ornelas / San Antonio Express-News
Image 13 of 79 Texans defensive tackle Daniel Muir loses his helmet as he puts pressure on Miami quarterback Aaron Corp. Texans defensive tackle Daniel Muir loses his helmet as he puts pressure on Miami quarterback Aaron Corp. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
Image 14 of 79 Miami quarterback Aaron Corp is chased out of the pocket by Texans defensive lineman Daniel Muir. Miami quarterback Aaron Corp is chased out of the pocket by Texans defensive lineman Daniel Muir. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
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Image 16 of 79 Texans quarterback Matt Schaub is sacked by Dolphins defensive end Cameron Wake. Texans quarterback Matt Schaub is sacked by Dolphins defensive end Cameron Wake. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
Image 17 of 79 Texans linebacker Willie Jefferson tries to knock down a pass by Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill. Texans linebacker Willie Jefferson tries to knock down a pass by Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
Image 18 of 79 Texans general manager Rick Smith, left, owner Bob McNair, center, and vice chairman D. Cal McNair, have a good view from the sidelines as Dolphins wide receiver Mike Wallace (11) beats Texans cornerback Johnathan Joseph on a long pass. less Texans general manager Rick Smith, left, owner Bob McNair, center, and vice chairman D. Cal McNair, have a good view from the sidelines as Dolphins wide receiver Mike Wallace (11) beats Texans cornerback ... more Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
Image 19 of 79 Texans running back Ben Tate is stopped by Miami defensive end Jared Odrick. Texans running back Ben Tate is stopped by Miami defensive end Jared Odrick. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
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Image 21 of 79 Dolphins wide receiver Brian Hartline has a pass knocked away by Texans defensive back Brandon Harris. Dolphins wide receiver Brian Hartline has a pass knocked away by Texans defensive back Brandon Harris. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
Image 22 of 79 Texans outside linebacker Trevardo Williams celebrates with Sam Montgomery after sacking Dolphins quarterback Matt Moore. Texans outside linebacker Trevardo Williams celebrates with Sam Montgomery after sacking Dolphins quarterback Matt Moore. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
Image 23 of 79 Texans linebacker Trevardo Williams sacks Dolphins quarterback Matt Moore. Texans linebacker Trevardo Williams sacks Dolphins quarterback Matt Moore. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
Image 24 of 79 Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill slips away from Texans inside linebacker Brian Cushing. Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill slips away from Texans inside linebacker Brian Cushing. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
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Image 26 of 79 Brian Cushing pressures Miami quarterback Ryan Tannehill. Brian Cushing pressures Miami quarterback Ryan Tannehill. Photo: Edward A. Ornelas / San Antonio Express-News
Image 27 of 79 Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill slips out of the grasp of Texans linebacker Brian Cushing. Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill slips out of the grasp of Texans linebacker Brian Cushing. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
Image 28 of 79 Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill slips away from Texans inside linebacker Brian Cushing. Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill slips away from Texans inside linebacker Brian Cushing. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
Image 29 of 79 Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill slips out of the grasp of Texans inside linebacker Brian Cushing. Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill slips out of the grasp of Texans inside linebacker Brian Cushing. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
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Image 31 of 79 Texans cheerleaders perform during the game with the Dolphins. Texans cheerleaders perform during the game with the Dolphins. Photo: Edward A. Ornelas / San Antonio Express-News
Image 32 of 79 Dolphins wide receiver Brandon Gibson Brandon Gibson catches a pass around Brice McCain. Dolphins wide receiver Brandon Gibson Brandon Gibson catches a pass around Brice McCain. Photo: Edward A. Ornelas / San Antonio Express-News
Image 33 of 79 Lester Jean scores a touchdown ahead of the Dolphins' Will Davis. Lester Jean scores a touchdown ahead of the Dolphins' Will Davis. Photo: Edward A. Ornelas / San Antonio Express-News
Image 34 of 79 Dolphins running back Lamar Miller can't hold onto a pass. Dolphins running back Lamar Miller can't hold onto a pass. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
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Image 36 of 79 Texans defensive end Antonio Smith celebrates a sack during the first quarter. Texans defensive end Antonio Smith celebrates a sack during the first quarter. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
Image 37 of 79 Texans quarterback Matt Schaub (8) gets some support from running back Arian Foster. Texans quarterback Matt Schaub (8) gets some support from running back Arian Foster. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
Image 38 of 79 Texans tight end Owen Daniels celebrates after scoring on a touchdown pass. Texans tight end Owen Daniels celebrates after scoring on a touchdown pass. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
Image 39 of 79 Texans fans cheer as wide receiver Lestar Jean scores on a touchdown pass during the second quarter. Texans fans cheer as wide receiver Lestar Jean scores on a touchdown pass during the second quarter. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
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Image 41 of 79 Texans quarterback Case Keenum (7) gets a hand from wide receiver Andre Johnson after throwing a touchdown pass. Texans quarterback Case Keenum (7) gets a hand from wide receiver Andre Johnson after throwing a touchdown pass. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
Image 42 of 79 Texans running back Arian Foster reaches over and changes the volume on headset of quarterback Matt Schaub. Texans running back Arian Foster reaches over and changes the volume on headset of quarterback Matt Schaub. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
Image 43 of 79 Texans tight end Garrett Graham makes a catch in front of Dolphins safety Kelcie McCray. Texans tight end Garrett Graham makes a catch in front of Dolphins safety Kelcie McCray. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
Image 44 of 79 Texans defensive ends Antonio Smith (94) and defensive end J.J. Watt (99) chat with a Houston Police officer on the sidelines. Texans defensive ends Antonio Smith (94) and defensive end J.J. Watt (99) chat with a Houston Police officer on the sidelines. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
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Image 46 of 79 Texans defensive tackle Terrell McClain forces a fumble by Dolphins quarterback Aaron Corp. Texans defensive tackle Terrell McClain forces a fumble by Dolphins quarterback Aaron Corp. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
Image 47 of 79 Texans running back Deji Karim dives for extra yardage against the Dolphins. Texans running back Deji Karim dives for extra yardage against the Dolphins. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
Image 48 of 79 Texans defensive back Brandon Harris breaks up a pass intended for Dolphins wide receiver Rishard Matthews. Texans defensive back Brandon Harris breaks up a pass intended for Dolphins wide receiver Rishard Matthews. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
Image 49 of 79 Texans cheerleaders perform during halftime. Texans cheerleaders perform during halftime. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
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Image 51 of 79 Texans cheerleaders walk off the field after performing during the second half. Texans cheerleaders walk off the field after performing during the second half. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
Image 52 of 79 Texans tight end Garrett Graham is chased out of bounds by Dolphins safety Kelcie McCray. Texans tight end Garrett Graham is chased out of bounds by Dolphins safety Kelcie McCray. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
Image 53 of 79 A penalty flag flies into the play as Miami running back Lamar Miller is brought down by Texans cornerback Johnathan Joseph. A penalty flag flies into the play as Miami running back Lamar Miller is brought down by Texans cornerback Johnathan Joseph. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
Image 54 of 79 Miami head coach Joe Philbin argues a call during the first half. Miami head coach Joe Philbin argues a call during the first half. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
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Image 56 of 79 Texans quarterback Case Keenum high-fives fans as he leaves the field. Texans quarterback Case Keenum high-fives fans as he leaves the field. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
Image 57 of 79 Photographer Scott Halleran, left, shows Texans running back Arian Foster a photo of the running back. Photographer Scott Halleran, left, shows Texans running back Arian Foster a photo of the running back. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
Image 58 of 79 Texans quarterback T.J. Yates gets a block from offensive tackle David Quessenberry as he throws a pass past Dolphins defensive tackle Kheeston Randall. Texans quarterback T.J. Yates gets a block from offensive tackle David Quessenberry as he throws a pass past Dolphins defensive tackle Kheeston Randall. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
Image 59 of 79 Texans quarterback T.J. Yates sits with quarterback coach Karl Dorrell during the second half. Texans quarterback T.J. Yates sits with quarterback coach Karl Dorrell during the second half. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
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Image 61 of 79 Texans quarterback Matt Schaub is sacked by Dolphins defensive end Cameron Wake. Texans quarterback Matt Schaub is sacked by Dolphins defensive end Cameron Wake. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
Image 62 of 79 Texans linebacker Brian Cushing high-fives fans as he leaves the field. Texans linebacker Brian Cushing high-fives fans as he leaves the field. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
Image 63 of 79 Texans linebacker Brian Cushing takes the field. Texans linebacker Brian Cushing takes the field. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
Image 64 of 79 Texans cornerback Johnathan Joseph leaps into mascot Toro as he is introduced before the game. Texans cornerback Johnathan Joseph leaps into mascot Toro as he is introduced before the game. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
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Image 66 of 79 Texans linebacker Brian Cushing gathers his teammates before the game. Texans linebacker Brian Cushing gathers his teammates before the game. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
Image 67 of 79 Texans running back Arian Foster flips a football in the air during warmups. Texans running back Arian Foster flips a football in the air during warmups. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
Image 68 of 79 Houston Texans fan Regina Brower holds up a clear bag with her belongings as he goes through security screening. Houston Texans fan Regina Brower holds up a clear bag with her belongings as he goes through security screening. Photo: Houston Chronicle
Image 69 of 79 Texans fans line up before the gates open. Texans fans line up before the gates open. Photo: Houston Chronicle
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Image 71 of 79 Texans fan Mark Baughman shows off his clear plastic bag, complete with at strip of Texans logo duct tape across the top. Texans fan Mark Baughman shows off his clear plastic bag, complete with at strip of Texans logo duct tape across the top. Photo: Houston Chronicle
Image 72 of 79 Texans fan Steve Straboski ride down on a zip line before the game. Texans fan Steve Straboski ride down on a zip line before the game. Photo: Houston Chronicle
Image 73 of 79 Sean Arment has a Texans logo painted on his face before the game. Sean Arment has a Texans logo painted on his face before the game. Photo: Houston Chronicle
Image 74 of 79 Texans fans carry the new official clear bags as they enter the stadium. Texans fans carry the new official clear bags as they enter the stadium. Photo: Houston Chronicle
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Image 76 of 79 Texans cornerback Kareem Jackson, left, stretches before the game. Texans cornerback Kareem Jackson, left, stretches before the game. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle
Image 77 of 79 Texans fan Chantry Evans runs a 40-yard dash in the Fan Zone before the game against the Dolphins. Texans fan Chantry Evans runs a 40-yard dash in the Fan Zone before the game against the Dolphins. Photo: Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle
Image 78 of 79 A worker looks over his creation after putting the finishing touches on the Texans logo at midfield of Reliant Stadium. A worker looks over his creation after putting the finishing touches on the Texans logo at midfield of Reliant Stadium. Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle |
Democrats might want to consider opening their minds to the potential of another midterm nightmare.
I remember dozens of conversations with GOP candidates and strategists prior to the 2012 elections. Republicans simply couldn’t wrap their minds around the possibility that 2008 could ever be repeated. That failure in comprehension contributed to inaccurate polling and wrong assumptions as the two electorates ended up being remarkably similar.
Now, I’m starting to feel a sense of deja vu when talking with Democrats. Anytime 2010 comes up in a conversation, it is quickly dismissed as an aberration. Most Democrats can’t even imagine another election cycle where President Barack Obama is as unpopular and as much of a drag on Democrats as he was in his first midterm.
But I’m not sure we can rule out the possibility that next November will be a very bad year for Democrats.
In 2010, President Barack Obama’s job performance ratings were 44 percent approve/55 percent disapprove, according to the national exit poll. Today, the president’s job rating stands at 41 percent approve/55 percent disapprove, according to the Real Clear Politics average.
More troubling for Democrats is the evidence that Democrats could be vulnerable in places and races that should not be competitive unless there is an electoral wave.
In a recently released Quinnipiac University poll in Colorado, Democratic Sen. Mark Udall polled in the mid-40s against a handful of underwhelming and unknown Republicans. This is in a race currently rated by the Rothenberg Political Report/Roll Call as Safe for Democrats.
We don’t have comparable public data for too many other supposedly safe Senate races, but there are at least 10 other Democratic Senate seats that are structurally more vulnerable than Colorado. Of course, as I’ve written before, Republicans only need to win states that Mitt Romney carried in 2012 to get back to the Senate majority. The GOP won’t likely need victories in Michigan, Iowa, Colorado or New Hampshire. Those would just be icing on the cake.
Of course the midterm elections are more than 11 months away, and it’s always wise to note that things could change dramatically, as they have since the middle of October. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth noting the difficult position Democrats are in.
As National Journal’s Alex Roarty pointed out, the chances of Obama’s job rating bouncing back significantly are slim.
“Historically, presidents whose approval plummets in their second term don't recover,” he wrote, “In fact, no president in the last 60 years has watched his approval ratings bounce back during their second term. Either they didn't make it to another stint in office (Ford, Carter, and George H.W. Bush), never dipped in the first place (Eisenhower and Clinton) or were removed from office at the nadir of their popularity (Nixon). Lyndon Johnson recovered somewhat, but only after announcing he would not seek another term. Ronald Reagan dropped from the low 60s to the high 40s amid the Iran-Contra scandal, and his popularity never recovered entirely until his last months in office. But it also never fell to lows experienced by Truman or Bush.”
On the House side, Republican chances of capturing another 63 House seats is virtually zero. Maybe most importantly, the GOP starts this cycle with 234 seats rather than the 179 seats they had in 2009. And redistricting has further narrowed the universe of competitive races. To have gains the size of the one reached in 2010, Republicans would likely have to win districts that the president carried with about 57 percent in the last election and a couple dozen districts where he performed worse but where Republicans aren’t even contesting right now.
The Senate is where the most dramatic changes could occur if a GOP wave develops next year.
In 2010, Republicans gained six Senate seats including two states that Sen. John McCain carried in 2008 (Arkansas and North Dakota) and four states that then-Sen. Obama won (Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin). The only Democrat to win a Senate race in a McCain state in 2010 was Joe Manchin III in West Virginia. A six-seat takeover wasn’t enough for a majority in 2010 but would be enough next year.
Democrats have demonstrated their ability to win close Senate races in the past. But it’s worth noting that the party won six races last cycle with 51 percent of the vote or less in what was likely a more favorable environment than 2014. Incumbent Sen. Jon Tester was re-elected with 48.6 percent in Montana and Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown won with 51 percent. Open seat Democratic candidates such as New Mexico’s Martin Heinrich and Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin won with 51 percent, and Indiana’s Joe Donnelly and North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp just cracked 50 percent.
Readers beware, this is not a projection. It’s too early for that. But Democrats ought not simply dismiss out of hand that 2014 could be another bad year — even a very bad year — for their party. |
Generations before 3D printing was available to museums and institutions of higher learning, father and son glass-makers Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka were working tirelessly to produce thousands of glass models of invertebrate animals and plants. With clients as illustrious as Harvard University, Cornell University, and the Natural History Museum of London and Dublin, the Blaschka’s put tremendous emphasis on conveying, through glass, as much detail and accuracy as possible.
The models they produced from the mid-1800s until the 1930s were not intended for public sale. They were highly-specialized 3D models used by researchers to aid in species identification and study at time in which almost all such information was stored as text and drawings.
Due to their rare and fragile nature, the institutions who acquired these magnificent models have considerable restrictions in place in order to protect and preserve them and access is extremely limited.
Despite those barriers to access, photographer Guido Mocafico was able to spend the last several years carefully photographing exemplars of the Blaschka glass models. The photographs from those three years of work went display in an exhibition at Hamilton’s Gallery (London) on March 18, 2016.
In describing his project, Mocafico states,
“What I thought would be one years work… has become an obsession, which is the attitude the Blaschka’s had in their work. We must not forget they spent 30-50 years each of their lifetimes, day and night, creating glass models. So for them the commitment was just unbelievable. I am not scared to face that kind of long term job because it is like a homage to the Blaschka’s.”
Though they are obsolete with regards to their utility as a scientific aids, the approximately 4,400 surviving Blaschka biological models maintain an enduring value as glasswork masterpieces and as magnificent products of the ‘golden age’ of natural history. |
It aimed its spotlight and lingered on what it referred to as a shift in position: “… the nation’s largest teachers’ union on Monday affirmed for the first time that evidence of student learning must be considered in the evaluations of school teachers around the country.”
In fact, there was little in the way of concessions by N.E.A. on this point, as The New York Times article itself conceded: “But blunting the policy’s potential impact, the union also made clear that it continued to oppose the use of existing standardized test scores to judge teachers…”
And the Times added that the N.E.A. went on to insist that only those tests that have been shown to be “developmentally appropriate, scientifically valid and reliable for the purpose of measuring both student learning and a teacher’s performance” should be used. This qualification eliminates almost, if not all, conventional tests.
The N.E.A. is right to be cautious about basing teacher evaluations and the fate of teachers on the test scores of their students, as the Obama administration has been single-mindedly promoting. We know that students’ standardized test scores are correlated above all with their economic standing. As Joe Nocera recently pointed outin an op-ed New York Times article: “Going back to the famous Coleman report in the 1960s, social scientists have contended — and unquestionably proved — that students’ socioeconomic backgrounds vastly outweigh what goes on in the school as factors in determining how much they learn.”
With the growing inequalities in wealth in the U.S., where money is increasingly concentrated at the top while the working people and poor are losing ground, it becomes even more irrational and even criminal to hold teachers responsible for low test scores. But the Obama administration, which is dominated by the interests of those at the top, is studiously ignoring this point.
The bigger problem with all tests, however, is that they rest on subjective values regarding which skills are important and which are not. Tests that place an emphasis on the ability to regurgitate random information rest on one set of values. Tests that encourage critical thinking and the challenging of basic assumptions rest on a different set of values. The problem with standardized tests is that they do not allow students to challenge the significance, relevance or clarity of the questions being asked them on these tests.
The framework of the standardized test does not allow for the give and take that can transpire between a teacher and a challenging student. In other words, these tests rule out one of the most important educational skills a student can acquire: the ability to challenge the test-giver. They instead reflect the kind of values employers often prize at a workplace: willingness to follow directions —no matter how unethical or irrational — without raising troubling questions.
And this takes us back to the N.E.A. convention. The most significant step taken with a vote of almost 2 to 1 — and the point that should have been the major focus of The New York Times article — was the decision to endorse Barack Obama for his election run in 2012.
Did two-thirds of the teachers at the N.E.A. convention suddenly lose their critical thinking faculties simultaneously? Did they really feel compelled to accept the conventional political framework where they must always endorse either a Democrat or Republican, choosing the lesser of two evils?
Without doubt, the Obama administration has been the bane of public education. Its emphasis on standardized tests as the determining factor in evaluating teachers throws rationality and critical thinking aside by ignoring the scientific data that proves student test scores do not provide a simple correlation with a teacher’s abilities.
The Obama administration’s avid promotion of charter schools has actually lowered the quality of education, if one uses the criterion that the administration loves most: standardized test scores.
And when a charter school replaces a traditional public school, the teachers’ union is de facto eliminated, which is often the hidden motive behind the charter school campaign. Teachers’ unions are what stand between teachers and slave wages, which is what many in the corporate world would prefer.
And the unions protect senior teachers with higher salaries from being replaced by new, lower paid teachers who are just beginning their careers. Cash-strapped schools often take advantage of this practice if there is no union to stop it.
With someone like Arne Duncan as Obama’s Secretary of Education promoting all these policies and operating as a kind of a role model to students and teachers alike while creating an environment that is hostile to any real learning, it is nothing short of a miracle that eager students and teachers are still exercising their critical thinking skills at all.
As long as the N.E.A. as well as organized labor in general remain tied to the corporate-dominated Democratic Party, public education will deteriorate, critical thinking will be undermined, wages will remain low, and the working class will continue to suffer a decline.
But there is an alternative. Organized labor has the resources to pursue its own political agenda where it defends the interests of all working people in the face of this current historic corporate attack.
As a start, it could mobilize working people in massive demonstrations to demand that the politicians respond to the needs of the majority of Americans: full funding for public education and social services, no cuts but a stronger Social Security and Medicare, a massive federal job creation program, and raising taxes on Wall Street and the rich in order to fund these programs.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has already called for a strong independent labor movement. Massive demonstrations could be a first step in this direction, because working people will be standing up for themselves, not sitting back and relying on the politicians.
But the logic of this first step will then lead to a second step: the creation of a labor party whose goal would be the defense and promotion of the interests of all working people.
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
Ann Robertson is a Lecturer at San Francisco State University and a member of the California Faculty Association. Bill Leumer is a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 853 (ret.). They can be contacted at sanfrancisco@workerscompass.org. |
It turns out that scattering cash into the wind would have been more efficient than the U.S. system for awarding reconstruction contracts during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. A two-year inquiry by a congressionally created panel finds that at least 15 percent of the $206 billion-with-a-B spent on wartime contracts thus far has been lost to waste, fraud and abuse. That very conservative estimate is likely to grow – and it amounts to an indictment not just of wartime contracts, but the wars themselves.
The Commission on Wartime Contracting (.pdf) concludes that "vast amounts" of contract money in Iraq and Afghanistan provided "little or no benefit" to the war efforts. The commission confirmed $31 billion in contractor cash lost to corruption or dysfunction. But it warned that the true figure could be as high as $60 billion, or "$12 million every day for the past 10 years."
And even that massive figure – almost 30 percent of all wartime contract dollars – isn't the whole story. Iraq and Afghanistan remain riddled with corruption. That corruption endangers all the "apparently well-designed projects and programs" that the U.S. has launched in both countries. Untold "billions of dollars" are liable to "turn into waste" in the future, says the report, "if the host governments cannot or will not commit the funds, staff, and expertise to operate and maintain them" – especially money spent on the Afghan military and on Iraqi healthcare centers.
How did wartime contracting turn into a sludge of waste and fraud? It's not just the Pentagon's sole-source contracting jones, which Sharon Weinberger has shone a spotlight onto all week long here at Danger Room. (The commission does, however, write that the U.S. has "awarded task orders for excessive durations without adequate competition.") It's also the sheer ignorance of U.S. war planners.
"U.S. officials lack an understanding of the need to reconcile short-term military and longer-term development goals and objectives," the commission finds, "realistically assess host-country conditions and capabilities, and work within the constraints of local economies’ absorptive capacity for influxes of cash."
Afghanistan's GDP is about $27 billion. Yet onto that barren economic landscape, the U.S. has dumped about $450 billion in war-related cash.
Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies incisively observed last year that the huge cash infusion made corruption "an 'existential necessity' for those who could get the money." Yet the U.S. never considers its own war spending to be a systemic driver of the corruption that squanders it.
Nor does prolonged time on the ground in either Iraq or Afghanistan rectify that ignorance. "Lack of knowledge of local contractor and subcontractor companies" is rampant, the commission finds. Look no further than the warlords and insurgent pals that the U.S. has hired to guard its military bases, a trend that's accelerating for special-operations forces in Afghanistan. Not only can that ignorance undermine the very goals of the war, but it's a "major contributor" to wasted money.
And on top of all of that is another systemic failure. The commission finds that the Pentagon still lacks sufficient numbers of dedicated personnel to perform basic oversight of its mega-contracts. There aren't "acquisition personnel and structures needed to manage and oversee an unprecedentedly large contractor force that at times has outnumbered troops in the field."
That helps explain how a company like Blackwater could set up a shell company called Paravant to win a contract training Afghan soldiers without anyone at the Pentagon noticing. Astonishingly, the supposed watchdogs at the Defense Contract Audit Agency have a backlog of unaudited incurred costs that will "exceed $1 trillion in 2016."
Ten years of war haven't changed the Pentagon's acquisitions mindset. War contracts get less emphasis than big-ticket items like planes and ships. "More than half of defense-contract spending is for services and not for hardware procurement," the commission finds. "Yet Defense's culture and processes remain focused on weapons systems."
One major oversight of the commission's own: it doesn't focus on the CIA's contract personnel. CIA cash receives extremely little public scrutiny, and it can go to things that undermine U.S. war goals, like, say, propping up Afghan warlords such as Ahmed Wali Karzai.
The commission provides numerous recommendations for what it calls "urgent" reform, from hiring tons more contract overseers to curbing the use of private security contractors. And one of the commission's sponsors, Sen. Jim Webb (D-Virginia), a Reagan-administration Navy secretary, promises that its report will be more than unhappy bedtime reading. "I would like to express my strong view that these recommendations will be listened to and, when appropriate, acted on by the United States Congress," Webb told reporters Wednesday.
But it's been 10 years of waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan, and both wars are winding down. If there ever is any contractor reform, it may come too late for the wars the U.S. is actually waging. And the commission finds that a major driver of all the wasted cash is basic ignorance – a problem that can't be solved by implementing any well-intentioned set of reformist bullet points.
Photo: mikeporesky/Flickr
See Also:- Yearly Bill for Pentagon’s No-Bid Contracts: $140 Billion |
No European Union personnel injured during raid in capital Bamako which leaves at least one attacker dead
Gunmen have attacked the European Union military training mission’s headquarters in the Malian capital, Bamako, in what appeared to be the latest in a string of attacks on Western interests in the region.
Armed forces killed at least one man. It was not immediately known how many people had launched the assault.
Sgt Baba Dembele from the anti-terrorism unit in Bamako said it was believed some attackers had entered the Hotel Nord-Sud, where the mission is headquartered.
The EU mission later said on Twitter that no personnel had been wounded and its forces were securing the area.
eutmmali (@eutmmali1) EUTM-MALI HQ has been attacked. No EUTM-Mali personnel has been hurt or injured during the attack. EUTM-Mali is at the securing the area.
EU soldiers, the Malian army, national police and other security forces stood outside the hotel.
The assault comes about four months after jihadis attacked the Radisson Blu hotel in Mali’s capital, killing 20 people. Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and al-Mourabitoun claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was their first joint attack since al-Mourabitoun joined al-Qaida’s north Africa branch in 2015.
In January, other extremists from the same militant groups attacked a cafe near a hotel popular with foreigners in Burkina Faso’s capital, killing at least 30 people. And last week al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility for an assault on a beach in Ivory Coast that left at least 19 dead, identifying the three attackers as members of al-Mourabitoun and Sahara units.
This week marks the fourth anniversary of the coup that unleashed widespread chaos in Mali. After the overthrow of the democratically elected president, extremists in the northern half of Mali took over the major towns and began implementing their strict interpretation of Islamic law. The amputations and public whippings only ended when a French-led military mission forced them from power in 2013.
Over the past year, the jihadis have mounted a growing wave of violent attacks against UN peacekeepers who are trying to help stabilise the country. |
This is an easy way to make vegan feta cheese at home. Now, vegan food can be made even more delicious with this quick and simple feta recipe. Perfect for meatless recipes & vegetarian recipes.
I have a huge love of feta cheese
Who doesn’t, right?
The only thing standing between me and being full-time vegan is…..
I have been meaning to post this how-to recipe for homemade vegan feta cheese, but, I kept changing and experimenting with different ingredients.
My ultimate goal was to get the perfect blend of sour and spice.
Now, I think I have finally found the right ingredients. The main ingredient I have added was spicy peppers. I went with Thai chili and habanero. It may sound like it will be a very spicy feta cheese but it really wasn’t. The peppers added just the perfect amount of spice, so, don’t be afraid of the peppers.
The base of this vegan feta cheese is extra firm tofu. The tofu is very close in consistency with feta cheese, so, it is perfect ingredient.
I have tried making vegan cheese before like this vegan buffalo mozzarella recipe and it came out pretty good. My next experiment is going to make a vegan pepper jack cheese.
This feta cheese goes great in meatless recipes, that is given. However, I would love to know how it will taste in non-meatless recipes.
Try this vegan feta cheese with my Gyros recipe, Mediterranean couscous salad or Greek Nachos.
How To Make Vegan Feta Cheese
Homemade Vegan Feta Cheese Make feta cheese at home by marinating tofu
Print Pin Prep Time: 10 minutes Cook Time: 50 minutes Total Time: 1 hour Servings: 2 Cups Calories: 162 kcal Author: Healing Tomato Ingredients 1 extra firm tofu block (14oz)
2 Thai chili deseeded, quartered
1 green habanero pepper deseeded, cut in half
1/4 cup lime juice
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup fresh parsley
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 cup water (1/2 cup at a time)
pinch of garlic powder Instructions Use tofu press to squeeze the liquid out of it.
If you don't have a tofu block, place a paper napkin on a plate and place the tofu block on it.
Place another napkin on top and place a chopping board on it. Add some something heavy on it to weigh it down and set aside
Place both peppers in a bowl.
Add the lime juice
Add the apple cider vinegar, parsley, sea salt, black pepper, dried oregano, water and garlic powder
Mix well and set aside for 30 minutes
Cut the squeezed tofu into cubes and place them in the bowl
Shake the bowl to cover the tofu with the liquid. I try not to touch the tofu much because it will crumble before it has time to marinate.
Let the tofu marinate for at least 2 hours before using it
Notes Nutrition Facts Homemade Vegan Feta Cheese Amount Per Serving (2 g) Calories 162 Calories from Fat 54 % Daily Value* Total Fat 6g 9% Sodium 674mg 28% Potassium 507mg 14% Total Carbohydrates 9g 3% Sugars 4g Protein 16g 32% Vitamin A 1.7% Vitamin C 28.5% Calcium 7.4% Iron 13.8% * Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet. I placed the tofu in a glass jar and let it marinate in the refrigerator. It will stay in the fridge for about a week. Nutrition Serving: 2 g | Calories: 162 kcal | Carbohydrates: 9 g | Protein: 16 g | Fat: 6 g | Sodium: 674 mg | Potassium: 507 mg | Sugar: 4 g | Vitamin A: 1.7 % | Vitamin C: 28.5 % | Calcium: 7.4 % | Iron: 13.8 % Tried this recipe? Follow me @healingtomato1 and mention #healingtomato1
MORE FROM HEALINGTOMATO |
www.masud.co.uk > Shaikh Abdal-Hakim Murad
Quicunque Vult, or, A teenage journey to Islam
(reproduced courtesy of www.lastprophet.info)
© Abdal-Hakim Murad [October 2008]
In a former church, my heart is a mihrâb,
Urging me to repent, the erasure of old but remembered sins.
(Sünbülzâde Vehbî)
This memoir is offered, at the persistent request of some Turkish friends, by a monotheist whose formative life was shaped by Anglican Christianity, but who has made his home in Islam. Like the kilisâ-camii metaphor in the old Ottoman poetry, which describes a church which has been made into a mosque, such a man is architecturally distinctive, but a symbol of undeserved improvement: he is the mühtedî, the object of guidance, at once a spiritual migrant and a symbol that Islam, battered by despisers on all sides, is still Refuge of the World (‘âlem-penâh). Richard Bulliet flatteringly believes that the vigour of Islam has always been secured by the mühtedîs, who bring the energy and the sometimes annoying zeal of the proselyte ‘on the edge’ into the formalised traditional world of inherited religion.[1] Perhaps, he implies, such newcomers are like the desert dwellers who, in Ibn Khaldun’s view of things, periodically invade the sedate, bourgeois citadels to establish a new, often rather puritanical, reconnection with God.
The reality, of course, is that the man whose qibla-niche lies cattycorners, at an angle to the larger temple, typically takes more than he gives. Particularly under modern conditions, the refugee into Islam, who crawls gratefully onto the lifeboat, brings rather little to those who are already aboard. In earlier ages, when the likes of Ibrâhîm Müteferrika, Ali Ufki, and Abdullâh al-Tarjumân joined the Muslim world (and should we not go back further still, to Salmân and Suhayb?), rival cultures were sacred cultures, and the Islamic neophytes had been trained in great civilisations whose purpose was the service of one or several Gods. Today, what riches, what energies can the Western mühtedî truly bring? For we are sons and daughters of Mammon, nurtured by an increasingly absolutist liberal capitalism to be
that deadly modern type, the consumer, who wants to be flattered for his discriminating taste but whose taste amounts to nothing more than liking what will get him flattered, taking refuge in brand-names and high-end merchandise, much as the snob does in high-end people. A whole society looms where no one is or even wants any more to be ‘who one is’ - another Nietzschean nightmare.[2]
Wild talk of a new Islamic hermeneutic hatching in the Muslim communities of the West has been with us for some years, with sadly insufficient justification. It is not clear how religiously fertile the Occident can be, when its crops grow in soil that has been so long polluted. The ancient trope of ex Oriente lux is perhaps more true than ever. For one British Muslim poet of the last age:
Thousands of years hath the sun rose,
In the glow of its Eastern hues,
Thousands of years doth the West close
It in gloom, and in tears, of its dews.
Even so, in the Orient morning,
Faith, true! – pure, of Allah, The One,
Rose, Earth, with its beauty, adorning,
And sank, Westward – and darkened, its sun.
O, Believers! Have faith in Faith’s morning,
Know ye, Allah knoweth the best!
See, the Light of the Orient, returning
Pure Islamic beams, over the West.[3]
From my middle teenage years, I recall living in a deep alienation from the modern condition, with a restless desire to be free of its brilliant mediocrity. This was the modernity which, as Max Weber acknowledged, seemed to be trapped in a ‘shell as hard as steel’, where the iron of natural limitations had been replaced by steel bonds of our own making, a terrible alienation from which no mere political solution can release us. Pessimistically, Weber was sure that human happiness and fulfilment must be increasingly restricted in the machine-age, whose logic seeks to reconstitute the human subject as a consumer and producer, and nothing more.[4] The very principle of individuation which the West, since the Enlightenment, has taken to be the basis of personal fulfilment, has allowed us to view ‘the Other’ increasingly as an object good only for manipulation, and the results have been disastrous. Family, neighbourhood and community are as inappropriate to those caught in the steel shell as are contemplation, prayer, and art which exists for any sake other than itself. Herbert Marcuse, in the 1960s, spoke of One-Dimensional Man, trapped by the very rhetoric of choice and freedom in a technologically-enabled totalitarian reality, the power of whose chains stems from their ubiquity, technical competence, and invisibility.
Mid-twentieth century pessimism in the face of science-based totalitarianism seemed paradoxically abated by the collapse of Marx’s deterministic optimism (the idea that natural selection has a moral outcome), and for a short while there was a sense that the original dream of the Enlightenment might be realised after all. However the decay of the Eastern Bloc, already sensed in the popular culture of the 1970s, has simply underlined the aimlessness of the West’s hi-tech pleasuredrome. The natural environment offers only one theatre in which our technology threatens us with the very cleverness developed to protect us. As Walter Benjamin concluded:
Mankind, which in Homer’s time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian Gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order.[5]
And in our new, turbo-charged yet doubt-ridden millennium, who can deny that we live under the shadow of hazards more numerous and imponderable than those which worried Benjamin? Martin Rees, president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, offers this assessment: ‘I think the odds are no better than fifty-fifty that our present civilisation on Earth will survive to the end of the present century.’[6] Serious art, poetry and theatre reflect this persistent unease.
Why, then, ask the mühtedî whose story is Western to bring gifts? Spiritually, and indeed in terms of all of the accomplishments which once defined human flourishing, our ‘Abendland’ has made itself infertile, having turned against the sources of its own flowering for the sake of an individualistic project whose consequences have turned out to be a trivialisation so extreme that we fear to consider its destination. Islam’s ‘grand refusal’ of the puerilization project is the great fact of our age; and the stubborn persistence of Muslims in respecting historic human normalcy in areas such as gender, sexuality, prayer, art and the meaning of nature, is an unmistakeable sign of God’s ongoing favour. But the mühtedî communities have so far played at best a marginal role, a walk-on part in this gripping drama.
My ancestors, according to family lore, were always troublemakers. On my father’s side, some Scots forebears allegedly fought against Julius Caesar, and another was executed by Robert the Bruce. Two sainted maiden aunts in my mother’s family were proud of their descent from Philip Doddridge (d.1751), a preacher and hymnwriter who rejected the Anglican church in favour of a radical Nonconformism. Like others in his day, he took the Reformation demand for a return to the beliefs of the first Christians to entail a serious reaction against received orthodoxy. His most famous hymn recalls the Hebraizing mood of his time.
O God of Bethel, by whose hand
thy people still are fed;
who through this earthly pilgrimage
hast all our fathers led: Our vows, our prayers, we now present
before thy throne of grace:
O God of Israel, be the God
of their succeeding race.
My school chaplain, Willie Booth, taught me to consider carefully the Jewishness of the early Christian church. Were the Anglicans, truly, the ‘succeeding race’ to Israel’s God? Booth, with immense fair-mindedness, accepted our cynical challenge to this notion. Jesus, clearly, had been Jewish. An honest reading of the Old Testament slowly forced us to see that the Trinitarian God we daily worshipped was something new.
We prayed as worried Anglicans, but Nonconformity was in my blood, and I grew up with fresh family memories of strict Sabbaths when children might only play games involving the Bible. Until my grandfather’s time, too, the men of the family had ‘taken the pledge’, swearing off alcohol for life. My grandfather was the last, until, in middle age, he found that occasional social drinking might be good for business. In his time that was still a momentous decision. His was a now unimaginable England of temperance hotels, deserted Sunday high-streets, and no kissing before putting on an engagement ring. To the Blair generation, it sounds like a far foreign place. Yet the mühtedi knows that there is a paradox here. Faced with England’s desertion of its own identity, may one ask whether an English move to Islam is a farewell to one’s heritage – or its unlooked-for revival. Certainly for me, there has always been a pleasing irony in the fact that the small church on Chapelfield Gardens in Norwich, in which my family worshipped, married and attended Sunday School in my grandparents’ time, has been converted into a mosque. When I visit to pray, am I the last surviving upholder of the family tradition?
Booth weaned me from official credal Christianity, and unintentionally helped me rediscover the Nonconformist legacy. This was reinforced indirectly by my sister, who was attending a school founded by the Unitarian minister William Channing (d.1842), whose influence remained strong in the school’s ethos and worship. Channing was a hero of true Dissent, who wished to take the Reformation back beyond the manipulations of Athanasius and the political bishops of the fourth century, to discover and revive the beliefs of the earliest Christians. This was the way he thought:
we believe […] that there is one God, and one only. We object to the doctrine of the Trinity, that, it subverts in effect, the unity of God. According to this doctrine, there are three infinite and equal persons, possessing supreme divinity, called the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Each of these persons, as described by theologians, has his own particular consciousness, will, and perceptions. They love each other, converse with each other, and delight in each other's society. They perform different parts in man's redemption [… none] doing the work of the other. The Son is mediator and not the Father. The Father sends the Son, and is not himself sent; nor is he conscious, like the Son, of taking flesh. Here, then, we have three intelligent agents, possessed of different […] perceptions, performing different acts, and sustaining different relations; and if these things do not imply three minds, we are at a loss to know how three minds are to be formed.
We […] protest against the irrational and unscriptural doctrine of the Trinity. To us, as to the Apostle and the [original] Christians, there is one God, even the Father. We challenge our opponents to [point out] one passage in the New Testament, where the word God means three persons.
This doctrine, were it true, must, from its difficulty, singularity, and importance, have been laid down with great clearness […] and stated with all possible precision. But where does this statement appear? From the many passages which treat of God, we ask for one, one only, in which we are told, that he is a threefold being, […] So entirely do the Scriptures abstain from stating the Trinity, that when our opponents would insert it into their creeds they are compelled to leave the Bible, and to invent forms of words altogether unsanctioned by Scriptural phraseology.
We have further objections to this doctrine, drawn from its practical influence. We regard it as unfavorable to devotion, by dividing and distracting the mind in its communion with God. It is a great excellence of the doctrine of God's unity, that it offers to us ONE OBJECT of supreme homage, adoration, and love, One Infinite Father, […] to whom we may refer all good.[7]
Channing also speaks passionately against the injustice implied in the Blood Atonement. This resonated with me also. I recalled how, as a schoolboy aged perhaps nine, I had sat in services at an Anglican church in Hampstead, gazing at an enormous and bleeding Christ. How small, and how guilty I felt! The message was, as the hymnal confirmed, that this suffering was the consequence of my own sinfulness. How ungrateful I would be, a voice would whisper, not to accept this heroic deed! Later, as a frank and turbulent teenager, I was able to call this kind of religion ‘blackmail’. The gruesome image was oppressing me into faith. But was there a God who could forgive directly?
Later I was to discover the words of Ruqaiyyah Maqsood: ‘God does not need a sacrifice in order to forgive anyone. The split-second of turning from Christianity to Islam is the realisation of the truth of the parable of the Prodigal Son.’[8] In the parables, God is loving enough to forgive directly. That was the whole glory of the Judaism which Jesus upheld.
When, in 1976, a Hayward Gallery exhibition unveiled the arts of Islam, I looked for an equivalent to the penitential moods of Christianity. Not one religious painting in the National Gallery offers a smile (unlike the pagan gods, who reappear, apparently amid much relief, at the Renaissance). But in Ottoman miniatures, of religious or profane subjects, everyone smiles. The calligraphy, too, the arabesques, tessellations and vegetal curlicues of Muslim decoration, all recall the fact of a benign creation and a merciful God. The world is woven from the true signs of God, and that God is smiling! Such were my discoveries, as I attempted, crudely but intensely, to compare the aesthetic spirit of the two worlds.
Evening classes in Arabic, at London’s Morley College, followed. I was a lone schoolboy in a class of pensioners, and stood out as an eccentric. The mosaics and the arabesques I had seen were clearly submissive to the mysterious writing above: but the art historians hardly bothered to translate it. What was its secret? What was the formal message of this art, which breathed the presence of a loving God, Who told us of His presence and beauty more than of evil and of sin?
It was, of course, the Koran. In that still insular age, the Koran meant Rodwell, or (the copy with which I began) Zafrullah Khan. Sir Zafrullah’s sectarian leanings veiled the text grievously: Surat Yasin began ‘O Perfect Leader’, and worse was to follow. In fact, the Koran, that ‘shy bride’, would take years to unveil herself. At the outset, she seemed to dazzle me with her unworldly strangeness, and the purity of her ego-less diction. Much of the Bible comprised stories whose purpose seemed ambiguous or even absent, punctuated by occasional flashes of pure light; the Koran was giving me the light alone. Even after joining, I found the text ‘hot’, and some suras too challenging to recite often. The early Meccan sequences, commonly learned before the rest, are absolute in their demands. Total sincerity, monotheism, love of the poor, denial of the self. How can one recite such words, presenting them to God, when one’s heart and habits deny them? The one who ‘pushes away the orphan’, Sura 107 declares, ‘calls religion a lie.’ Who has the courage to repeat such a line? While facing God, without the comfortable defence of a pew? Why is God so absolute?
A lonely search through the shelves of Foyles yielded few guides in that still insular age. Maxime Rodinson’s paperback Life of Mohammed gave the view of a confident French Communist. No less than medieval monks, Rodinson was committed to reducing and explaining away the figure he portrayed. And yet the drama and heroism of the story shone through. The Prophet, wholly and uncomplicatedly human, changed his world forever, while living as a prayerful pauper. Rodinson shut out the supernatural, and stressed class and economics; yet the sheer magnificent suspense of this story, so successfully concealed from young people in my culture, was itself a revelation, astonishing even where it was apparently mundane.
Reading Rodinson, trying to find God between his lines, I found myself thinking about forgiveness. Religious searching always seems driven by a consciousness of sin and alienation. Which forgiveness is higher, I was obliged to ask: the forgiveness of one crucified, who has no power in his hands, or the forgiveness shown by the Blessed Prophet at the Conquest of Mecca, at the highest moment of his political life, when his ancient enemies were in his hands and he forgave them? This, I discovered, is the virtue of al-‘afw ma‘a al-qudra: to forgive when in a position to punish.[9] It is the virtue of Nelson Mandela, perhaps the greatest of modern moral icons, who forgave his tormentors despite being in power. To this, I also learnt, there is to be a coda at the end of time. Who is the more merciful: the Pantocrator-Jesus of the Book of Revelation, who wrathfully judges and consigns people to hell,[10] or the Muhammad of the Hadiths, whose entire work at the Judgement will be to intercede for sinners, thus showing Islam as, finally, the religion of God’s forgiveness and mercy? As I came to see it in my teenage years, the Cross is not a symbol of forgiveness at all: on the orthodox view, it denotes the repayment of a debt, as the infinity of Original Sin is atoned for by the infinite sacrifice of God’s own temporary death. What humanity urgently needs, as we contemplate our long record of disobedience, is a model of true forgiveness by a God who does not calculate, who gives bi-ghayri hisâb (‘without reckoning’, in the Koran’s idiom), who imposes no mean-spirited ‘economy of salvation’ worthy only of accountants and bookkeepers. The letter killeth – the spirit giveth life.
On this stage of my wandering, I came across Matthew Fox, a Catholic priest and theologian who had left the church in protest at its doctrines of blood atonement and the ‘fallenness’ of creation, to found an influential Centre for Creation Spirituality. He emphasised joy rather than guilt, and gratitude for the body, rather than sexual anxiety. Fox urges that in the light of our moral rejection of the ungenerous idea of ‘full repayment’ for sin, we let go of the ‘fetish’ of the Cross, which is ‘profoundly linear’, in favour of the more open symbol of the empty tomb.[11] That symbol, I thought, might resemble the Crescent, which is open, and also cyclical, in distinction to the Cross, which seems to diminish God’s providence with its symbolic insistence that over the hundreds of thousands of years of human existence, full salvation has been made available only once, a doctrine which true religion, insisting on the divine love and mercy, should surely regard as tragically inadequate. Once, when still a student, I visited an Anglican church with a Turkish friend. Seeing the cross on the altar, he spontaneously exclaimed: ‘No!’ In my ignorance I assumed that he was expressing a prejudice. But he explained to me that his idea of a loving God made the whole notion of a single once-and-for-all salvation seem monstrous. ‘More than once!’ was what he passionately believed.
None of my discoveries was at all original. The growing number of theologians who, overcoming an allergy to ‘Semitism’, were prepared to set ancient misunderstandings aside and acknowledge the integrity of Judaism (and now, more slowly, Islam), proved a source of real encouragement, and was clearly a historical shift of immense importance. It seemed to reflect some deep sea-changes in the way Christians perceived virtue. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the martyred pastor of Berlin, was so horrified by his hierarchy’s insistence on Luther’s doctrine of non-intervention in politics that he issued his famous call for a ‘Christianity without religion’. And I myself, growing up when memories of the war were still all around me, often heard of the martyred Stauffenberg’s attempt to kill Hitler, but could not name a single German bishop who was remembered for rebelling against the Reich.[12] Certainly for my own spiritual journey, the old images of Christ, solace of pacifists and ineffectual dreamers, were less impressive than the new icons of a truly socially responsible human being drawn by Bonhoeffer and, more especially, the liberation theologians. Sometimes I believe that there is significance in the fact that I was baptised by Father Jack Putterill (1892-1980), best known of all radical priests in his day, who insisted that true religion is not pacifist or apolitical, but must be a revolutionary challenge to the rich and the autocratic.[13] Putterill, to my knowledge, went to his grave without knowing the Prophet whose Lord was Lord of the Poor, who actively championed their cause and adopted their way of life, who challenged great empires instead of meekly submitting to them. That Prophet, hailed by the socialist Bernard Shaw as ‘a princely genius’,[14] turns out to be a spiritual type close to the urgent but hidden needs of a comfortable, bourgeois consumer culture, which in its heart yearns not for faint chanting in distant oratories, but a willingness to engage in a virile way with the real issues of poverty and injustice. Such, of course, was the motivation which drove Roger Garaudy, whose Communism was of the empathetic kind, and who therefore broke with Stalinism and entered the free, non-hierarchical space of Islam. For Garaudy, like Putterill and Shaw, secularity could only produce freedom within the confines of the ‘cage of steel’. True freedom lay beyond, but it had to be promote itself, and therefore incorporate a willingness to challenge those who degrade God’s earth and His servants. Faced with radical evil, preaching and witnessing alone are tragically inadequate.
Liberation from the cage, whether that cage be capitalist or Marxist, should be a real liberation for society as well as for the spirit. At the age of sixteen I heard my history teacher, a devout, celibate Catholic, heaping praises on the Ottomans as authors of the most tolerant and religiously-diverse society in Europe before modern times. Coupled with my religious agitations, this helped me to see that the growing acknowledgement of Judaism and (slowly) Islam by European theologians has had much to do with the sense that Latin Christian thought historically produced societies and intellectual systems characterised by a massive exclusivism. The radical division of humanity into saved and unsaved, being coterminous with the frontiers of the Church (extra ecclesiam nulla salus), seemed to engender a world which, unlike traditional China, India and Islam, could not tolerate internal diversity.[15] It is not surprising, then, that the first explicit appreciation of the Prophet in the English language was by a Puritan who saw the Ottoman system as more open to diversity, and also to religious sincerity, than the England of his day, with its established church and insistence on religious conformity. This was Henry Stubbe (1632-1676), whose book An Account of the Rise and Progress of Mahometanism, with the Life of Mahomet, and a Vindication of him and his Religion from the Calumnies of the Christians could hardly be published during his lifetime, but indicated a subterranean philo-Islamism that is deeper than images of an islamophobic Britain will admit.[16] Several Muslims have pointed to some of these possible precursors for British Islam in Unitarianism and allied forms of Dissent.
Goethe’s fragmentary Mahomets Gesang is a hymn to the radical freedom and purity which, Goethe believed, Islam brought from its desert origins. In fact, many great advocates of freedom who were also in love with God seem to have been attracted to Islam. Here, for instance, is a neglected passage in Rilke, whose Duino Elegies were, as he later acknowledged, inspired by Islamic angelology:
Muhammad was immediate, like a river bursting through a mountain range, he breaks through to the One God with whom you can talk so wonderfully, every morning, without the telephone called ‘Christ’ into which people constantly shout, ‘Hallo, is anyone there,’ and no-one replies.[17]
Certainly I was receiving no answer to my phone calls. Daily I would choose a Person of the Trinity to address. The ‘person’ of the Holy Ghost was the most alien of all. But to address the wandering Messiah, now back ‘at his Father’s right hand’, also burdened me with impossible conundrums. It seemed much more natural to pray only to ‘God’, or perhaps to God the ‘Father’, and when I did this there was certainly an awareness that He was watching and waiting. And as months and years went by, I could not help but recognise the ‘conscious’ nature of the Absolute, as I played chess with Him. I would advance an argument, and He would show me an answer. All events acquired a religious meaning, as I entered what the Sufis call the ‘hidden game.’ In gently liberating me from the Greek web of the Trinity, He certainly showed me His existence.
The quest for information also continued, and, unsurprisingly, I sought it in my heritage. I found that the questions I was asking were none of them new.
Stubbe himself had been part of a pro-Unitarian trend;[18] and the greatest English poet, Milton, is now known to have been a closet Unitarian.[19] John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Charles Dickens, were further examples of men who had publicly rejected Trinitarian theology. In Nonconformist England, more than in any other European context, the doctrine of the Trinity had come under sustained criticism. I visited the Unitarian chapel at Rosslyn Hill, in Hampstead. ‘The Religion of Jesus, not the Religion About Jesus,’ proclaimed the poster. The Trinitarian obstacle was gone; but where was his Jewishness? Did it have no meaning at all?
The wider culture, still then sometimes interested in theology, was reporting on these tensions. In the seventies, a large crop of new writing revived the old Dissenting challenge to the Trinitarian position. Surveys indicated that a growing number of clergy held ‘heretical’ views on the Triune God.[20] Trinitarianism, which posits three centres of consciousness within one God, which love one another, was a paradox which an increasing number of educated people seemed to find oppressively difficult. Like Channing, they were asking whether ultimate reality should not be ultimately simple. Some responded with despair, and ended in Buddhism, ‘alternative spiritualities,’ or agnosticism. But this metaphysical question also began to open Christian theology up in a fresh and insistently Unitarian direction.[21]
Side by side with this came the growing awareness that a full admiration of Jesus is only possible when he is regarded as exclusively human. In 1977 I was fascinated by the controversy when a group of theologians and Biblical experts published a book called The Myth of God Incarnate, drawing angry but agonised hostility from defenders of the fifth-century creeds.[22] I remember reading the text during a balmy summer on the Norfolk coast. It was not difficult to sympathise with the editor, John Hick, a Methodist minister whose study of the historical Jesus, and whose openness to other religions, had taken him far from his earlier born-again Evangelicalism. One of the lessons I drew from the book was that the orthodox creeds had removed Jesus from any possibility of real human understanding or empathy on our part. Classical church doctrines held that he was entirely human as well as entirely divine, but the newer theologians were pointing out that those limitations which constitute our humanity, including forgetfulness, and lack of full knowledge of past and future, and the capacity to make mistakes, cannot exist properly in the orthodox Jesus, in whom God and man are together. As Geoffrey Turner complains:
It is not easy, in one’s devotions, to see him as one of us, with all our bodily and mental functions: eating and excreting, sleeping, learning languages, laughing, getting headaches, being exhausted, experiencing fear, being puzzled, and, of course, dying.[23]
The Gospels, in passages which as a child I had found immensely powerful, dramatically told that the Devil tempted him, and that, faced with the possibility of punishment, he prayed: ‘Father, take this cup from me!’ Yet the orthodox theologian utterly confounds the pathos of this moment, insisting that ‘Christ enjoyed in his human knowledge the fullness of understanding of the eternal plans he had come to reveal.’[24] Despite the outward drama, he knew everything; which, I concluded, was precisely to say that he was inhuman, unlike us in any respect.
He is hence neither recognisably human (and hence a fairly accessible figure), nor is he straightforwardly God (difficult, but coherent), but exists as some third entity utterly strange to us. Hence, in one recent book, a theologian has the courage to write: ‘The traditional view of Jesus Christ actually demeans both his accomplishments and his heroism by attributing to him ‘intrinsic deity’ that essentially eliminates the possibility of either authentic temptation or failure.’[25] In Jewish-Christian dialogue, in particular, the ‘christological idolatries’ of the traditional view have been frankly acknowledged.[26]
From Hick’s collection I learnt that these undercurrents were being facilitated not only by the awareness that Jesus is made alien and God made more complex by the traditional ideas, but also by the braver spirits of biblical criticism. Muslims have always been distressed by the casualness of the methods by which the biblical texts were transmitted to the Bible’s eventual compilers.[27] B.D. Ehrman’s book The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture[28] is one of the more recent scholarly demonstrations of the fragile obscurity of the methods by which the Gospels in particular were handed down. Professor Burton Mack, and others in the celebrated ‘Jesus Seminar’, have sought to reconstruct the original unitarian teachings of Jesus, a process fraught with extreme difficulty.[29] The debates rage on, but over the course of the last century it was clear that the traditional picture was regarded as untenable by a steadily-growing number of researchers. Sometimes this has resulted in further expansion for the Unitarian church, or other sects that do not accept the Trinity, such as the Quakers and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Often, too, I encounter Anglicans who privately deny the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, and agree wholeheartedly with my understanding of Jesus’ self-belief. The consequences for Islam have been particularly interesting; in 1999 the Daily Express published a series of articles predicting the leading trends which would be visible in the new millennium. One of these thinkers, the best-selling biographer of Jesus, A.N. Wilson, wrote as follows:
Islam is a moral and intellectual acknowledgement of the lordship of God without the encumbrance of Christian mythological baggage […] That is why Christianity will decline in the next millennium, and the religious hunger of the human heart will be answered by the Crescent, not the Cross.[30]
Most ordinary churchgoers are not informed of the conclusions of the bible-scholars and the theologians, and continue to practice a naive faith.[31] Yet not everyone is protected by such ignorance. Certainly, my own migration towards Islam was facilitated, if not entirely supplied, by those questers for the historical Jesus who doubt that he would have accepted the abstruse metaphysical conundrums of the Athanasian Creed. How would the charismatic wandering rabbi of Galilee have voted, had he found himself at the Council of Chalcedon?
Other blessings deserve to be recounted. Already in love with Islam, but still nominally Anglican, I visited Cairo in the spring of 1979. I spent two weeks photographing and sketching in the mosques, attracting the attention of the invariably-polite but curious Egyptians who worshipped there. One afternoon I was sitting against a pillar in the mosque of Imam al-Shafi’i, telling a young man of my troubles with the Trinity and the Incarnation, and hearing his courteous reflections which, without compromising Islam, reminded me of God’s mercy and His respect for the ‘People of the Book.’ Looking back to that afternoon, I recall the verse addressed to the Blessed Prophet: ‘Had you been harsh, and hard of heart, they would have scattered from round about you.’ (3:159) Today, in those mosques, as Saudi influence grows, are they all so courteous to guests? Are they adorned still by that absolute Abrahamic virtue?
In Cairo’s mosques I saw more than architecture. I saw religion in its classical majesty. For me, one of the greatest gifts has been Islam’s miraculous steadiness. Today, entering an English church, one cannot know what will be presented. The Anglican liturgy, once based on Cranmer’s fine Book of Common Prayer, has been ‘updated’ by men manifestly unworthy of the task, provoking division and rancour, often leaving congregations with shallow performances in the place of ancient beauty. Sometimes one receives the distinct impression that the committees have placed ‘relevance’ above considerations of beauty and truth. Disputes over which prayer-book to use are now common. Even in Catholicism, which often has a better sense of the dignity and beauty of ritual, there has been a crisis since the forced abandonment of the Tridentine Latin Mass at the Second Vatican Council in 1965; as Pope Benedict has acknowledged: ‘One shudders at the lacklustre face of the post-conciliar liturgy as it has become; or one is simply bored with its hankering after banality and its lack of artistic standards.’[32] Whatever political disasters may have overtaken some Muslim lands, the core doctrines and practices are miraculously intact. In a mosque, one experiences not a hankering after banality, but a ritual inherited from a great age of faith, a Rock of Ages, into which one can submerge and be annihilated as one seeks for God. It may be said that no other religion practices as its founder did; no other religion is so liturgically united both geographically and to its sainted past. If I have one recommendation for Turkish readers, it is that they do not neglect the immense gift of worshipping in congregation in the mosques. For us refugees, the Muslim liturgy is an astounding, irreplaceable gift; it is the ‘banquet of God’, as the hadith describes the Holy Koran and its reverent reception in the midst of our worship.
‘Going up’ to Cambridge allowed me to attend Unitarian services on a regular basis. It also brought me closer to some debates that were raging in the Divinity School. Geoffrey Lampe, professor of divinity, had just published a detailed and iconoclastic account of the doctrine of the Trinity, God as Spirit. This was a systematic manifesto aiming to rescue Christian belief and worship from baffling doctrines which, he felt, were hastening the secularisation of England. The Church’s various ‘myths of redemption,’ he wrote, ‘receive, on the whole, little support from the New Testament writers.’[33] The Trinitarian model, an obstacle to worship, should be reinterpreted to signify the three modes by which a non-Triune God operates. ‘We need no mediator’,[34] he went on to say: God is, by definition, enough; there is nothing in the ‘Son’ that is not also fully present and powerful in the ‘Father’. In fact
The personal distinctions have no content, and are therefore meaningless, so long as they are understood to consist solely in the relations themselves. If religion is to be Trinitarian, they have to be filled out with content; yet to do this is impossible.[35]
‘Taking Shahada’, I found, was indeed ‘witnessing’ to God. The hypocrisy of my final months, when I worshipped as a Unitarian but walked near and around mosques, not knowing how to go in, or whom to approach, was thankfully swept away by the ceremony, which God’s wisdom has kept simple. All that I had enviously learnt, I now placed at the centre of my way of life. Hitherto, leaving church after Evensong had been a relief from ritual, now leaving the mosque, or ending the prayer said in a college room with a friend, gave me a sense of enormous humility and calm.[36] There was much of ancient Rome in the Church’s priestcraft, I concluded, including a love of theatre; in the namaz, there was the ancient simplicity of surrendering the ego to Abraham’s God, Alone, without partner. The complexities were stripped away by the ‘light words’ of the Witnessing, and I felt that I now had the reality of what I had once only claimed to have: a personal relationship with God. The beloved had lifted her Greek veil.
As the Muslim years pass, one’s sense of gratitude and humility increases, usually with the realisation that one still knows little. Theory becomes (attempted) practice. There are meetings with remarkable men: the beauty and compassion of Sufism; and the lessons learned from the tragic superficiality of Wahhabism. There is the fellowship with a true global community, and also, without compromising that fellowship, a commonalty with others of one’s world who have been taken through the same gate. Six years after the Witnessing, I turned to the man beside me in a London mosque, and saw that he was an old school-friend, the son of an atheist Jewish MP. And although I have protested against the tendency to place the mühtedis on a pedestal, I have formed a cautious sense that as inhabitants of both worlds, we may be a legitimate source of information and - who knows? wisdom - to some in the Umma, who struggle to understand the modern West in its imperial mode.
Is any of this story of larger significance or helpfulness? Muslims often ask me what they should study; and are perplexed when I usually warn them against joining the legions of believers now populating departments of politics or social science. The crisis of our age produces political and social disruptions, but it is not their consequence. Religion is about truth, and unless truth be properly discerned and defended, nothing else will come right.
Despite appearances, and the urgent but mistaken desire of many Muslims to engage in dialogue with purely secular thinkers and ideologies, we are primarily called to speak to the ‘People of the Book’. Years ago, as I turned away from the machine age to consider alternative voices, I expected to find the heirs to the monotheist scriptures as the most serious prophetic dissidents of our time. By no means is that always the case, as there are many churchmen who are willing to lower the price of their goods in the hope of selling them to a trivial and lazy world. Yet I take heart from conversations with other scripturalists, and experience the accompanying fellowship as momentously important. I find, too, that God has placed Muslims in a privileged situation in such environments. Followers of Ishmael, who revere the founders of the other monotheisms not just for reasons of conviviality or diplomacy, but as a doctrinal necessity, are better-placed than Jews or Christians to benefit from the eirenic and mutually-affirming ethos which is informally demanded in such encounters.[37] The clarity and apostolic authority of our doctrines proves a no less precious advantage. It is helpful, and not difficult, gently to help the People of the Book confront their inherited misunderstandings about our faith, which are often based on errors already challenged in the Koran. In earlier centuries, and in certain right-wing Christian circles even today, a furious and hate-filled polemic existed based on utterly erroneous information,[38] and it is still not unusual to hear, even from reputed mainline theologians, wild opinions based on hearsay or long-dead scholarship. Pope Benedict XVI’s various pronouncements on Islam, for instance, seem to be drawn not from consultations with the Vatican’s established Islam experts, but on concerns shared, to a visible degree, with right-wing activists and journalists such as Oriana Fallaci.[39] He hardly condescends to listen to us; any more than the Roman emperors spoke to the new Christian believers multiplying in their inner cities.. But there are many others, perhaps very numerous, who seek humbly to listen and to learn. Many of them are seekers. Many of them, too, harbour the doubts about Christian doctrine which once precipitated my change.
Two inspiring examples of Christians ‘troubled by Islam’ might witness to the importance of this project.
To the loss of the world, there is currently no great Christian theologian of Islam who can match the depth and wisdom of the French priest Louis Massignon. Massignon (1883-1962), author of some of the most enduring classics of Islamic studies in the West, was himself an active theologian. Representing without doubt the high-point of Christian attempts to understand Islam, his immense erudition was very nearly matched by his spiritual acuteness and humility. Unusually for a Christian of his time, and following a deep study of primal Islam and its spiritual consequences, he recognised the authenticity of our Prophet’s mission from God, although he took the view that it was primarily a mission to the Jews.[40] Some persist in the belief that Massignon was privately a Muslim; the belief is based on the story of his conversion at the Üsküdar Mevlevi Lodge in Istanbul. The last incumbent (post-nisin), Remzi Dede, apparently told him: ‘Inwardly, you are a Muslim. Outwardly, if you continue to wear your priest’s cassock you will serve Islam more successfully’.[41] Massignon’s leading pupil, Vincent Monteil (d.2005), formerly professor of Arabic at the Sorbonne, would not be drawn on the story of his mentor’s conversion; but he himself took Massignon’s wisdom to its logical terminus, and accepted Islam. I still treasure the memory of Vincent’s guidance and his quick, erudite humour.
Another, contemporary example has been Benedict’s great adversary, the ‘silenced’ priest and reformist theologian Hans Küng, who like Massignon is seeking to overcome ancient judgements and recognise the spiritual integrity of Islam and its founding texts. Looking at the new mood of militant hostility to Islam, he laments that ‘the crusader mentality is currently being revived;’[42] the problem, he thinks, is America’s ‘aggressive imperialistic foreign policy.’[43] To deflate the current Christian triumphalist mood in Washington, moderate Christians like himself must proclaim what, on an honest reading, they find to be the case. ‘Today,’ he insists, ‘Christians too can recognise the Koran as the word not simply of a human being but, in principle, of God himself’.[44] Where Massignon found God in Sufism; Küng finds Him in ‘the suffering of the West’s victims’. His example, too, has borne fruit.
Islam is making progress, as it always does. Yet no-one should assume that our present task is an easy one. Humanity is now being programmed from an early age by an insistent materialistic culture, driven ultimately by the greed of large corporations, and to join Islam has become a more radical, absolute step than ever before. Yet human nature has not changed, and those religious needs which were so central to the lives of our species for ninety-nine percent of our history have certainly only been suppressed, not removed. Monotheism is the most coherent form of the religious life; and Islam is its purest expression. Given human need, God’s good intentions, and the miraculous preservation of the divine gift, there are immense grounds for optimism.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Richard Bulliet, Islam: the view from the edge (New York, 1994). [2] Robert B. Pippen, The Persistence of Subjectivity: On the Kantian aftermath (Cambridge, 2005), 328n. [3] W. Ubeidullah Cunliffe, ‘The Orient Sun of Islam,’ The Crescent I (1893), 118. [4] Peter Baehr, ‘The “Iron Cage” and the “Shell as Hard as Steel”: Parsons, Weber, and the stahlhartes Gehäuse Metaphor in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,’ History and Theory 40 (May 2001), 153-69. [5] Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (repr. London, 1967), 244. [6] Martin Rees, Our Final Century (London: Heinemann, 2003), 8. [7] William Ellery Channing (ed. I. Bartlett), Unitarian Christianity and other essays (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1957). Even today Sunday Schools may teach children the verse ‘For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one’ (1 John 5:7). However almost all scholars now agree that this verse was inserted later into the Bible by Trinitarians. It has been removed from many modern Bibles. Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (London: United Bible Societies, 1971), pp. 716-718. [8] Ruqaiyyah Maqsood, The Mysteries of Jesus: a Muslim study of the origins and doctrines of the Christian church (Oxford: Sakina Books, 2000), 60. [9] See Ahmad Shawqi, al-Shawqiyyat (Cairo: Maktabat Misr, 1939), p.23: ‘And when you forgave, it was as a man empowered, so that the ignorant could not despise your clemency.’ [10] ‘And a sharp sword with which to smite the nations proceeds from his mouth, and he will rule there with a rod of iron; and he treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of Almighty God.’ (Revelation 19:15.) [11] Matthew Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1979), 111-7. [12] For the myth of one bishop’s active opposition to Nazism see Beth A. Griech-Polelle, Bishop Von Galen: German Catholicism and National Socialism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002); for his collaboration with the Nazis see especially pp.96-135. [13] Fr. Jack Putterill, Thaxted quest for social justice: the autobiography of Fr. Jack Putterill, turbulent priest and rebel (Marlow, 1977). [14] Dan H. Lawrence (ed). Bernard Shaw: Collected Letters 1926-1950 (London, 1988), p.305. [15] Islam is ‘a far more tolerant and peaceful faith than Christianity’ (Karen Armstrong, in The Guardian, Sept 18, 2006). [16] Reprint Lahore: Orientalia, 1954. [17] Quoted in Minou Reeves, Muhammad in Europe (Reading: Garnet, 2000), 275. [18] For the background see Philip Dixon, ‘Nice and Hot Disputes’: the Doctrine of the Trinity in the seventeenth Century (London: T & T Clark, 2003). [19] Michael Bauman, Milton’s Arianism (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1987). [20] Or rejected it outright. The proportion continues to grow. In 2002, a quarter of Anglican priests stated that they did not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. See Daily Telegraph, 31 July 2002. See also E.L. Mascall: ‘One of the most surprising recent theological phenomena has been the recrudescence at a high professional academic level, especially in the more ancient English universities, of the views commonly known as unitarianism and adoptionism.’ (Journal of Theological Studies XXIX (1978), p.617. [21] For a recent example of this genre see J. Gwyn Griffiths, Triads and Trinity (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996). For a more popular example of this large literature see Anthony Buzzard and Charles Hunting, The Doctrine of the Trinity: Christianity’s Self-Inflicted Wound (Lanham: International Scholars Publications, 1998); for the weakness of the claim of a Biblical basis for the doctrine see Robert L. George, The Trinity’s Weak Links Revealed (iUniverse, 2007); Patrick Navas, Divine Truth or Human Tradition? A Reconsideration of the Roman Catholic-Protestant Doctrine of the Trinity in the Light of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures (Bloomington: AuthorHouse, 2006). [22] John Hick (ed.), The Myth of God Incarnate (London: SCM, 1977). [23] Geoffrey Turner, ‘Jon Sobrino, the CDF, and St Paul,’ New Blackfriars 88/1017 (September 2007), 542. [24] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 474. [25] Mark H. Graeser, John A. Lynn and John W. Schoenhurst, One God and One Lord: Reconsidering a Cornerstone of the Christian Faith (Indianapolis: Christian Educational Services, 2000), as paraphrased on the cover. [26] A. Roy Eckhardt, Jews and Christians: the contemporary meeting (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1986), 153 for Christianity’s ‘christological idolatries’. See also Luke T. Johnson, ‘The New Testament’s Anti-Jewish Slander and the Conventions of Ancient Polemic’, Journal of Biblical Literature 108/3 (1989), 419-41. [27] In Islamic terms, the Gospels lack an isnad – they are ‘maqtu’, obtained through ‘wijada’. [28] Oxford, 1993. [29] Burton Mack, The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins (San Francisco, 1993). [30] A.N. Wilson, ‘The Dying Mythology of Christ’, Daily Express 21/10/99. Wilson’s biography, Jesus (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992), explains how his research caused him to reject his formerly devout Anglican faith, in favour of an image of Jesus who considered himself to be messiah, prophet, and pure monotheist, but not a person in a Trinitarian God. He writes, for instance: ‘The ultra-orthodox Christians – whether Catholic or Protestant – are so anxious to preserve their religious faith intact that they do not dare to confront the conclusions of the last two hundred years of New Testament scholarship.’ (p.xv). [31] Professor John Rogerson of Sheffield University, in The Expository Times, 113/8, p.255: ‘Most congregations are kept in ignorance of the findings of biblical criticism.’ [32] Joseph Ratzinger with Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report (San Francisco, 1985), 121. [33] G.W.H. Lampe, God as Spirit (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 16. [34] Lampe, 144. [35] Lampe, 226. [36] A further recollection. Converts often remark on the unexpected benefits of gender separation in worship; and this certainly applied to me. At school prayers I had been anxious to sit beside, or behind, the young Imogen Stubbs, later to become a well-known actress. Such distractions in gender-mixed churches were the subject of many a joke. I recall my amusement on learning of John Betjeman’s careful positioning of himself in the Grosvenor Chapel in a place from which he could observe the beauty editor of Harper’s Bazaar: How elegantly she swings along
In the vapoury incense veil;
The angel choir must pause in song
When she kneels at the altar rail.
(‘Lenten Thoughts of a High Anglican’) [37] For a persuasive list of reasons for Muslim participation in dialogue, see Mustafa Alıcı, Müslüman-Hıristiyan Diyalogu (Istanbul: Iz Yayıncılık, 2005), 365-386. [38] Norman Daniel, Islam and the West (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1960); Aftab Ahmad Malik (ed.), With God on Our Side: Politics and Theology of the War on Terrorism (London: Amal, 2006). [39] www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/ahm/AHM-Benedict.htm [40] David Kerr, ‘He Walked in the Path of the Prophets: Towards a Christian Theological Recognition of the Prophethood of Muhammad’, in Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Wadi Haddad (eds.), Christian-Muslim Encounters (Gainesville, 1995), 426-446. [41] Ahmed Yüksel Özemre, Üsküdar, Ah Üsküdar (Istanbul, 3rd edition, 2005), 54. Massignon would thus have joined the ranks of the so-called ‘submarines’, priests secretly converted to Islam. The present author has encountered several examples of this interesting and ambivalent spiritual type, which believes it appropriate to continue working as a priest, while removing references to the trinity and the Blood Atonement from sermons. [42] Hans Küng, Islam: past, present, future (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007), 311. [43] Küng, 453. [44] Küng, 520.
www.masud.co.uk | More by same Author |
Government Linking Various Criminal Behaviors to Certain Racial and Ethnic Groups, Documents Obtained by ACLU Reveal
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org
NEW YORK – The FBI has been targeting American communities for investigation based on race, ethnicity, national origin and religion according to documents released today by the American Civil Liberties Union and its affiliates that were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
The documents show that FBI analysts across the country are associating criminal behaviors with certain racial and ethnic groups and then using U.S. census data and other demographic information to map where those communities are located to investigate them.
"The use of profiling as a tool to address crime and national security threats is not only unconstitutional, it is ineffective and counterproductive," said Michael German, ACLU senior policy counsel and a former FBI agent. "Targeting entire communities for investigation based on erroneous stereotypes produces flawed intelligence. Experience shows that terrorists and criminals do not fit into neat racial or religious stereotypes – law enforcement programs based on evidence and facts are effective, and a system of bias and mass suspicion is not."
The documents are being released as part of a new ACLU initiative called "Mapping the FBI," which aims to expose misconduct and abuse of authority by the bureau. Instances of profiling revealed in the FBI memos and intelligence notes include:
• Noting an increase in the "black/African American populations in Georgia" and non-violent protests by the African-American community in the state after police shootings to identify potential threats from "Black Separatist" groups.
• Using the fact that San Francisco is "home to one of the oldest Chinatowns in North America and one of the largest ethnic Chinese populations outside mainland China" to justify opening an investigation involving racial and ethnic mapping because "[w]ithin this community there has been organized crime for generations."
• Using the threat posed by the criminal gang MS-13, which was originally started by Salvadoran immigrants, to justify broad investigations targeting a wide variety of Latino communities in Alabama, New Jersey and Georgia.
• Seeking to collect information about Muslim and Arab communities in Michigan, arguing that "because Michigan has a large Middle Eastern and Muslim population, it is prime territory for attempted radicalization and recruitment by… terrorist groups."
"The FBI's own documents confirm our worst fears about how it is using its overly expansive surveillance and racial profiling authority. The FBI has targeted minority American communities around the country for investigation based not on suspicion of actual wrongdoing, but on the crudest stereotypes about which groups commit different types of crimes," said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU National Security Project. "It is entirely within Attorney General Holder's power to put an immediate end to these unconstitutional practices by changing the internal Justice Department and FBI rules that permit them to occur."
In 2003, the Justice Department issued its “Guidance Regarding the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies,” which prohibited racial and ethnic profiling in all contexts except in national security and border integrity investigations. Exploiting this loophole, the FBI claimed the authority to analyze the geographic concentrations of racial and ethnic communities in an internal manual called the “Domestic Investigation and Operations Guide,” which was issued in December 2008. This program, called "Domain Management," is not limited to national security investigations, and the ACLU believes that it violates the Constitution. Today, the organization sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder urging him to address the problem.
The documents also reveal FBI counterterrorism training materials portraying Arab and Muslim communities in the U.S. as primitive, violent and supporters of terrorism. The documents show that these materials have been in use since at least 2003 through this year.
A 2008 textbook, produced by the FBI and West Point's Combating Terrorism Center, contains essays claiming that Islam is inherently violent, that Muslims and Arabs are intrinsically "different" from other Americans and should be treated with suspicion, and that religious practices and political activism by Muslims and Arabs are signs of increasing danger. The FBI has committed to reviewing its training materials, and the ACLU has written to request that faulty intelligence products be included within this review.
A detailed description of the FBI's use of racial profiling, including links to the FOIA documents, is available at:
www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-eye-fbi-fbi-engaged-unconstitutional...
A detailed description of the FBI's use of training materials biased against Muslims and Arabs, including links to the FOIA documents, is available at:
www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-eye-fbi-fbis-use-anti-arab-and-anti-...
The ACLU's letter sent today to Attorney General Eric Holder about racial profiling and the FBI's investigation guidelines is available at:
www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-letter-attorney-general-holder
More information about the ACLU's new initiative, "Mapping the FBI," including a searchable database of FOIA documents, is available at:
www.aclu.org/mapping-fbi |
VIDEO: Muslim Sings Koran Verse Denying Christ Is God In St. Mary’s Cathedral
Offensive Koran Verse Sung In Cathedral
A passage from the Koran was sung at St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow that denied that Christ is the Son of God sparking outrage from Christ followers around the world.
The Muslim disrespect occurred on the Feast of the Epiphany.
From Breitbart:
The passage from Surah 19, which specifically denies that Jesus was the Son of God and says He should not be worshipped, was sung during a Eucharist service at St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow to mark the feast of the Epiphany. A video of the recital was posted on YouTube showing a girl singing the passage in a typical Islamic style. It narrates the Islamic account of the birth of Jesus, which includes the claim that Mary was “ashamed” after giving birth, and the infant Christ miraculously spoke from the cradle – something not found in Christian scripture. She then concludes by singing verse 35, which states in translation: “It befitteth not the Majesty of Allah that He should take unto Himself a son,” and then verse 36, which has the infant Jesus saying: “And lo! Allah is my Lord and your Lord. So worship Him. That is the right path.” The cathedral praised the reading in a Facebook post, calling it a “wonderful event”… …The cathedral’s Facebook page also proudly publicises a press report on the provost’s Christmas sermon, in which he compared U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump to the biblical King Herod, who ordered the massacre of children.
This is absolutely outrageous.
Who in their right mind would allow a Muslim to sing in a Cathedral? Muslims are murdering Jews and Christians around the world and this Cathedral allows them to sing a song that is blasphemous to their own beliefs?
The Facebook Page has taken down the post. |
Sen. Luther Strange Luther Johnson StrangeDomestic influence campaigns borrow from Russia’s playbook Overnight Defense: Senate bucks Trump with Yemen war vote, resolution calling crown prince 'responsible' for Khashoggi killing | House briefing on Saudi Arabia fails to move needle | Inhofe casts doubt on Space Force Five things to watch in Mississippi Senate race MORE (R-Ala.) is racing to win more help from President Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE ahead of the Alabama Senate primary runoff, as Trump keeps his distance from the intraparty fight.
Trump endorsed Strange before Alabama’s Republican primary in August, helping Strange reach second place and secure a spot in the runoff against former Alabama state Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore. But Trump has hardly lifted a finger since, frustrating the senator’s allies.
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The president still has not announced plans to travel to Alabama to stump on Strange’s behalf. He has promised to do so, Politico reported Friday, but the two sides haven’t been able to agree on a date with only two weeks left before the Sept. 26 runoff. (Whoever wins the Republican nomination will be the heavy favorite in the Dec. 12 general election.)
With polls suggesting that Strange is behind in the race, time is running out for Trump to boost Strange’s campaign.
Meanwhile, Trump’s relationship with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration Senate Dems seek to turn tables on GOP in climate change fight Pence meets with Senate GOP for 'robust' discussion on Trump declaration MORE (R-Ky.), Strange’s most prominent Washington backer, continues to sour as Trump allies and congressional GOP critics of the Republican leadership have started to back Moore.
Strange has spent the past week trying to tie himself more closely to Trump, backing Trump’s call to end the Senate filibuster and hoping to nudge the president back into the fray.
“[Strange] has been fighting for Donald Trump from day one on the floor of the United States Senate,” said Perry Hooper, a Strange supporter and a former Alabama co-chairman for Trump’s presidential campaign.
“Hopefully, that message will resonate with the president and he’ll fly into the great state of Alabama to tell the great people here that he needs Sen. Strange as his leader on the floor,” Hooper said.
The senator, who was appointed in February to fill the seat after Trump tapped Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsFormer Trump refugee director did not notify superiors about family separation warnings Court rejects challenge to Mueller's appointment Trump says he hasn't spoken to Barr about Mueller report MORE for attorney general, has pointed to the presidential endorsement as proof that he’s the best candidate to carry out Trump’s agenda in Congress.
Moore has the backing of hardcore Republican activists and evangelical voters, thanks to his role in high-profile religious liberty clashes. Now Strange hopes to use the Trump endorsement to generate some excitement for his own side.
But with Trump on the sidelines, Strange has to make the case himself. Since recording a robocall for the senator, Trump hasn’t significantly engaged with the race.
The morning after the primary election, Trump struck an uncommitted tone on the race by tweeting congratulations to both Moore and Strange. Later, he sent a follow-up message calling Strange “Strong on Wall & crime,” but he hasn’t publicly commented on the race since.
A Trump trip to Alabama could go a long way to help Strange, who finds himself trailing in all five public primary runoff polls.
The president’s favorability ratings are still sky-high among Republicans, and Trump’s presence could help to turn out voters who are passionate about Trump but lukewarm on his pick for the Senate seat.
Politico reported late Friday evening that Trump had promised to hold a campaign rally in Alabama to support Strange — similar to the campaign rally he held recently in Arizona amid a feud with Sen. Jeff Flake Jeffrey (Jeff) Lane FlakeBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Poll: 33% of Kentucky voters approve of McConnell Trump suggests Heller lost reelection bid because he was 'hostile' during 2016 presidential campaign MORE (R-Ariz.). But the report notes that Strange’s sagging poll numbers are making White House aides wary of tying Trump to a potential loser. The rally promise, so far, remains unfulfilled.
Trump might be out of the picture, but Strange is still trying to tie himself to the president. The clearest example of Strange’s Trump-ward tilt came last week, when the senator bucked McConnell and backed Trump’s call for an end to the Senate’s legislative filibuster.
The rule, which allows the minority party to mandate a 60-vote threshold on most legislation, has frustrated Trump throughout the early months of his presidency. He’s attacked the rule as an unfair impediment to his agenda, even though his ObamaCare repeal legislation would only have required 51 votes to pass the Senate.
Strange initially came out in support of the filibuster, siding with McConnell’s push to protect the rule. But he announced in a statement last week that “conversations with the president” led him to change his mind “in order to help President Trump’s agenda through Congress.”
Moore campaign chairman Bill Armistead seized on the reversal as proof that Strange is running scared.
“Desperate people do desperate things, and he obviously thought he was doing what Mitch McConnell wanted him to do when he signed on to support the 60-vote rule,” he told The Hill.
“When he saw that wasn’t going his way, he tried to jump out.”
Strange’s campaign has been in a flurry of activity in an attempt to prevent Moore from framing himself as a outsider and Strange as a creature of the “swamp.”
Moore is a firebrand who regularly courted controversy from the bench, first for disregarding a court order to remove a Ten Commandments statue he commissioned for public land and more recently for refusing to follow the Supreme Court’s landmark 2013 case legalizing same-sex marriage.
Through the campaign, the religious conservative has framed himself as a Washington outsider and painted Strange as a politician corrupted already by Washington and McConnell, a frequent target for conservatives.
Moore’s attacks on McConnell have wooed a handful of antiestablishment Republicans into his corner. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R), an avid Trump supporter, backed Moore last week. A few days later, House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) backed the judge after meeting with Breitbart News head and former Trump chief strategist Stephen Bannon, another Moore supporter.
Strange has sought to undercut that dynamic with his latest messaging meant to pull Moore down into the “swamp” with the rest of the politicians. Last week, in his first television ad of the runoff, Strange’s campaign ran down a laundry list of alleged improprieties by Moore.
“Investigated for using his office to raise money for personal gain [and] fought to increase his taxpayer-funded salary. Spent 80 percent of his Christian foundation’s contribution to pay himself in one year, paid himself $1 million, traveled on private jets,” the ad’s narrator says. “Forty-year politician Roy Moore in the Montgomery swamp. Roy Moore: it’s all about him. That’s risky for us.”
Strange’s campaign launched a digital ad needling Moore for attending a fundraiser hosted by conservative pundit Alan Keyes, who has repeatedly criticized Trump. The ad includes a mash-up of some of Keyes’s most critical television interviews about Trump.
The push is funded with Strange’s overwhelming monetary advantage in the race. The senator outraised Moore by more than $2 million during the first round of the primary, and continues to outspend him during the runoff.
But even as he blankets the airwaves and builds what is described by observers as a better ground game, the complicated dynamics of a special election runoff make the race hard to predict. That’s why Strange and his allies hope that Trump starts putting some force behind his endorsement.
“Hedging your bets in politics doesn’t work — the fact that he hasn’t tried to revisit the endorsement means he clearly supports Luther Strange,” said one Senate GOP aide supportive of Trump.
“Luther Strange can very well win this, and Donald Trump would look like a kingmaker.” |
Ali Carter has won three rankings events in his professional snooker career
Ali Carter has been given the all-clear by doctors after he was diagnosed with a cancerous tumour on his lung in May.
Carter, 35, a two-time World Snooker Championship finalist, was fighting cancer for a second time after he had battled testicular cancer in 2013.
He said on Twitter: "Two beautiful words that I've been waiting for 'all clear'. I can now concentrate on getting my life and career back.
"I will be glad when this year is over. Some better things to come in 2015."
Carter's manager Steve Daintry told BBC Sport: "He went in for tests on Monday and had full body scans and blood tests.
"He has been on tenterhooks all week and on Friday, professor Neville Davidson said he was completely all-clear, with nothing to worry about. It couldn't have gone any better.
"Although things had been looking good, this was the biggest test to see how his body had responded to the treatment.
"It's a big weight off Ali's mind. He can get back to a normal life and put the cancer behind him."
Essex-based Carter, who has won three ranking events during his professional career, finished as runner-up in the 2008 and 2012 World Championships.
After his diagnosis in May, he missed the first five months of the 2014-15 snooker season, before winning the General Cup, a non-ranking event held in Hong Kong in October.
He then played in the Champions of Champions event in November and got a standing ovation from the crowd in his first ranking event match at the UK Championship later that month.
"It has been a crazy, hard year for Ali and this is just a massive relief for him," added Daintry.
"He is a very down to Earth guy and he is very popular - the reaction and support he has had from his family, his friends, his fans and from the snooker family has been brilliant.
"The main thing for him is to get some normality back in his life. He wants to get back playing snooker and has a different perspective on life now." |
Everyone who hasn’t drunk the progressive Kool-Aid is aware that during elections Democrats resort to the race card to scare African Americans, for whose intelligence they have limitless contempt, into voting for them. If Republicans are elected, their propaganda claims, “black churches will burn” or the racial clock will be turned back to the era of segregation, an era that Democrats happen to have been directly responsible for.
This year it’s the mythical threat white policeman allegedly pose to black youth, as Democrats and their media enablers encourage a “lynch mob” mentality — as Howard Kurtz put it recently — in a desperate attempt to pocket black votes.
A flyer distributed by the Georgia Democratic Party (Ferguson is in Missouri) warns: “On August 9, 2014, an unarmed 18-year old African-American named Michael Brown was fatally shot six times and killed by a white police officer, his body left in a pool of blood for four hours. Ferguson Missouri’s population is 67% African-American. But the city’s mayor, 5 of its 6 city council members, and 94% of its police force are white. What are we going to do about it? If we want a better, safer future for our children, it’s up to us to vote for change.”
Note first that this flyer was distributed in Georgia, not Missouri. In other words, according to Democrats: Republicans everywhere are racists. Moreover, if 67 percent of Ferguson citizens are black and they elect a white mayor and city council members shouldn’t that be applauded as a sign that they are committed to America’s inclusive ideal, and are not voting along racial lines? Wouldn’t Democrats be saying that if white majority populations were voting for blacks (as they in fact do)? Once again the claim that this reflects white racism is a itself a racist claim, one that is typical of self-hating progressive whites.
The flyer’s timing couldn’t have been worse. The just released autopsy report shows that Michael Brown was only unarmed because he failed to wrestle Officer Darren Wilson’s gun from his holster, when he attacked Officer Wilson in his police car. How many innocent citizens attack a policeman in his police car and attempt to grab his gun from him?
According to the very liberal St. Louis Post Dispatch, “A source familiar with Wilson’s version of events, as told to investigators, said the ‘incredibly strong’ teen punched Wilson and then pressed the barrel of the cop’s gun against the officer’s hip and fought for control of the trigger.” You think the officer might have been in fear for his life after that?
The autopsy report further shows that Michael Brown’s hands were not in the air in a posture of surrender when he was shot – as the Ferguson lynch mob claims — but that the 6’4” 292lb individual was advancing on the much smaller officer, less than twenty feet away. In other words, the autopsy report supports Officer Wilson’s claims that there was a violent struggle and that he shot Wilson first with the intent to warn him to stop and finally – when he failed to do so — to stop him.
Then there is the evidence provided by the convenience store security video, which shows that the 6’4 292lb Michael Brown had committed a strong-armed robbery earlier that day. Not exactly the poor “unarmed teen” of media and leftist fantasy.
What we are dealing with in these episodes of deadly lies is a nation so paralyzed by its fear of being the target of racial smears that it will not call a lynch mob a lynch mob, or racist Democrats racists. This is a result of 30-years of race baiting by the Democratic Party and the so-called civil rights movement, which has become a lynch mob itself (the Duke lacrosse kids, George Zimmerman, Paula Deen and many others). These modern day racists are in the thrall of a progressive delusion in which white people are guilty before the fact, while black people are innocent even after the facts show they are not. It’s time Americans said enough to such racism and its violence to reason and tolerance, and reclaimed the pluralistic vision that once made this country great.
David Horowitz is the author of the recently published Take No Prisoners: The Battle Plan For Defeating The Left. |
Tulsi Gabbard had a sit-down with Jake Tapper today to self-promote her own brand of rah-rah about Syria and military strategy in general. During the interview, Jake Tapper asked her about whether she had any concern about the number of generals chosen to serve in Trump's cabinet.
Her answer was authoritarian, delivered in a scolding tone.
I don't share their concerns. As a veteran and as someone still serving in the Hawaii National Guard, I found it pretty offensive for people to outright discriminate against veterans. Here you have generals who have literally spent their whole lives serving our country, putting service before self, putting their lives on the line to defend democracy. Yet people are criticizing them and discriminating against them saying, just because you served as a general previously you are disqualified from serving in a high position of leadership in our government. These people, arguably, have put far more on the line and are far more deeply personally committed to upholding and protecting our democracy than their critics.
That last sentence, in particular, takes on a creepy, menacing tone. What she is saying there is that those generals are somehow more American than ordinary citizens. That their service and sacrifice means more than ordinary Americans who might not serve in the military, but serve their communities, or work for peace, or are just good citizens every day.
And let's talk about this notion that it's somehow discriminatory to criticize an administration which has at least 3 cabinet-level generals in it. There was true concern on the part of the country's founders about even having a standing army, much less having the government run by military officers. The constitution didn't rule it out, of course, or George Washington would have been disqualified. But at the same time, there are good, solid reasons for not filling a cabinet with career generals, too.
Josh Marshall noticed it was weird too.
The real kicker in my mind comes at the end when Gabbard says that these men are "far more deeply personally committed to upholding and protecting our democracy than their critics." The suggestion here is not about the particular individuals, who I believe are deeply committed to America and its democratic institutions. But what Gabbard is suggesting here is that as generals they are more committed than civilians.
↓ Story continues below ↓ That is the kernel of an idea that has destroyed many democracies, the idea that career military officers are simply better, more patriotic, more efficient than civilians. That is a deeply dangerous idea that needs to be snuffed out whenever it raises up its head. It is completely at odds with the entire American tradition. It's something I'd expect to hear from some militarist Fox News yahoo. Not from an elected members of the House, certainly not from a Democratic member of the House.
Yes, well. Tulsi Gabbard is a party of one. She doesn't really play on the team very well. But that aside, she really could use a crash course on the U.S. Constitution and the thinking behind why civilian government is so very important. |
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The market has been dealt a historic hand and the global stakes have never been higher.
For the last eight years, the ace up the Federal Reserve's sleeve has been the U.S. dollar. They let the greenback devalue with hopes that a legitimate economic recovery would supplant the credit expansion that dominated this decade.
"The wishbone will never replace the backbone." -- Will Henry
Since 2002, the world's reserve currency declined 35%, while everything measured in dollars reacted in kind. While that sneaked by stateside players largely unnoticed, it's been a constant source of stress for foreign holders of dollar-denominated assets.
We call this "asset class deflation vs. dollar devaluation" in Minyanville, which is to say we'll toggle between the two as policymakers pull fiscal and monetary strings. While both sides of the equation can potentially falter, the deck is stacked against the dollar and asset classes rally in synch. See link.
While near-term nuances are difficult to digest, the big picture has come down to a simple question: Will foreigners allow the dollar to devalue further, paving the way towards potential hyperinflation, or will capital drain from the system and induce a prolonged period of deflation?
Critical crossroads
What's clear is that the game itself experienced has a seismic shift. Central banks have been extremely proactive in what they do and how they do it. This has gone on for years, but the efforts increased appreciably since 2007. We opined at the time that something was afoot and the pieces have fallen into place. See link.
The credit contagion brought this conundrum to bear, and all that remains to be seen is where the bears will settle. I'm an optimist by nature, but a realist when it comes to the current financial condition. In my humble view, two potential scenarios exist as we edge down this prickly path.
The first is the continued socialization of markets, bearded nationalization of troubled institutions and the specter of hyperinflation. A significantly lower dollar is a necessary precursor to -- but no guarantor of -- this dynamic, and it could potentially "jack" anything denominated by this measuring stick. If that occurs, it would paradoxically punish savers who preserved capital.
This scenario is presumably preferred by the powers that be as an alternative to watershed deflation. The "haves" would fare better than the "have-nots" as the costs of goods and services could skyrocket and spur the velocity of money, paramount in a finance-based economy.
The other option is the orderly destruction of debt, deflationary pressures and an eventual path toward an "outside-in" recovery that paves to the way towards true globalization. The result would be a higher dollar and lower asset classes in the intermediate term, but a sustainable foundation for economic expansion thereafter.
Deflation in a fractional reserve banking system means policymakers have, for all intents and purposes, lost control of the economy. It would also impact the top tier of our societal structure tied to the marketplace, problematic for politicians and the constituencies that bankroll them.
No easy answers
The banking system, stymied with credit dependency, is not operating normally. Hidden behind bailouts, stimulus packages, super-conduits, term-auction financing, mortgage rate freezes, foreclosure freezes, working groups and Public-Private Investment Programs are politicians attempting to engineer a business cycle that long ago lost its way. See link.
The qualifier of this discussion is the elasticity of debt, stretched by historical standards. Total outstanding credit obligations are 350% of GDP and consumers, who account for 70% of GDP, are hamstrung by wealth destruction and depleted savings. As such, I would place back-of-the-envelope odds at 3-1 that deflationary forces continue to manifest.
This process will take years to unwind but ultimately will yield positive results. The destruction of debt will allow world economies to rebuild a solid foundation for future expansion that is entirely more secure than what we currently have in place.
While it would cause paper wealth to evaporate, rich nations will be forced to pour real money -- as opposed to cheap debt -- into developing economies as a redistribution mechanism. While the path might be painful, the destination will be entirely more palatable for future generations.
A marked difference exists between taking our medicine as a function of time and price, and injecting the system with drugs with hopes that the symptoms will pass. The latter continues to be the diagnosis of choice but the economic patient would be well served to understand both sides of the prognosis. |
The Bet: Gold=$1,650 by 2011; The Wager $1M
My S. African pal Prieur du Plessis informs us of this interesting wager from Jim Sinclair: A $1 million wager for the price of gold over the next 3 years.
Assuming this is more than a marketing stunt, here are Sinclair's terms:
My position on timing and price is that Gold will trade at USD $1650 before the second week of January 2011. I am offering a $1,000,000USD wager to a financially qualified party that this will occur within the stated timeframe. Any party on Bloomberg, CNBC or CNN-Business stating an opposite opinion on the price of gold should be informed of this challenge. Please communicate to ANY vocal bearish so-called gold expert that I challenge them to put their money on their views. Any commentator unable to financially meet this challenge should not be opining. If they really knew the gold and currency market they could easily meet the challenge. The technical procedure of a serious wager is: Prove you can in fact wage the challenge by an attorney's letter. Segregate the funds in cash or near cash kind in the hands of your attorney. Execute an agreed upon binding contract stating the terms of the wager.
I have been a bull on commodities and Gold for quite some time. But there are plenty of Gold Bears out there. Will any of them rise to the bait?
~~~
UPDATE: April 3, 2008 6:43am
Neal informs us this is not a marketing ploy for several reasons:
1. Jim Sinclair is the CEO of TRE
2. His website www.jsmineset.com is a free website
3. He has been bullish on gold since the upper $200's
4. He has been dead on with his accuracy of where gold is going.
5. He is tired of the top callers of gold anytime gold has a correction
6. He is one of the country's top gold traders.
>
Source:
A $1 million wager for gold bears
Prieur du Plessis
Investment Postcards from Cape Town, April 2, 2008
http://www.investmentpostcards.com/2008/04/02/a-1-million-wager-for-gold-bears/
Wednesday, April 02, 2008 | 02:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (52) | TrackBack (1)
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Not unless they would like to depart with their $1M. Sinclair should have them take out $1M in gold futures and DELIVER those ozs as payment instead of $1M in cash as the NPV only be $750K by then.
Posted by: Stuart | Apr 2, 2008 2:08:58 PM |
Tofu, tempeh, and seitan are usually staples in a vegetarian's diet, but if you're new to the meat-free world, preparing and eating these foods can be really intimidating. The chart below should clear up the mystery, so you know how to choose the right one for your nutritional needs and what to expect from your first bite.
3 oz. serving Firm Tofu Tempeh Seitan Calories 70 173 90 Fat (g) 3.5 6 1 Sodium (mg) 20 8 380 Carbs (g) 2 12 3 Fiber (g) 9 1 Protein (g) 8 16.6 18
Now that you know the nutritional stats, learn how these meat alternatives are made, what they taste like, and discover yummy recipes for preparing them after the break.
Tofu
This spongy, smooth, wet white food is made by curdling fresh hot soy milk with a coagulant. Yummy, huh? But really, it is, especially when cooked right. Tofu comes in block form and is often stored in water to prevent it from drying out. Tofu is sold in a variety of consistencies, ranging from silken (very soft) to super-extra firm. Since tofu has an extremely mild taste, when added to recipes, it takes on the flavor profile of whatever you're making. Tofu can be eaten plain and raw, marinated and baked, browned in a pan, grilled (yum!) or freeze-dried.
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Here are some ways you can make tofu at home:
Tempeh
his brownish and more textured soy product is made by fermenting cooked soybeans. Sounds pretty unappetizing, but it makes for a firm and chewy texture people might prefer over the often squishy tofu. Sold in long, flat rectangular cakes, it tastes so sweet, nutty, and almost earthy that you can just cube it and eat it raw. Tempeh can also be stir-fried, baked, breaded, or grilled. Although it's firm, it still absorbs the flavors around it, so it's an easy and versatile ingredient to add to any dish.
Check out these tempeh recipes:
Seitan
Also called wheat meat or mock duck, this animal alternative is made from wheat gluten, so it's a no-no if you're on a gluten-free diet. That also means it's an excellent option if you're trying to avoid or cut down on soy products. It's made by washing wheat flour dough with water until all the starch dissolves, which leaves an elastic mass that's cooked before being eaten. More similar to the look and consistency of meat, those who miss meat might prefer eating seitan. It's brownish in color, has a chewy texture, and just like tofu and tempeh, can take on whatever flavor you add to it. Wheat meat is delicious grilled, baked, or pan fried, and if you don't like it plain (and don't have time to marinate it yourself), many brands sell flavored seitan such as barbecue and teriyaki.
If you need some ideas, check out the recipes below:
Which meat alternative do you eat more often? |
The actress, who will appear in Nichols' festival premiere 'Loving,' is the definition of a decadelong overnight success: "I have not been aggressive in my pursuit of being a star."
Ruth Negga's recent rise is one of those 10-year overnight success stories. A decade before her breakout roles on AMC's new comic-book series Preacher (debuting May 22) and in Jeff Nichols' Cannes premiere Loving, the Ethiopian-Irish actress (her dad was a doctor, her mom's a nurse) caught director Neil Jordan's eye on the Dublin stage. He cast her in 2005's Breakfast on Pluto, which led to a string of small roles and now a breakthrough year that also includes Universal's June 10 debut of Warcraft.
Why has it taken Hollywood so long to really discover you?
I have not been aggressive in my pursuit of being a star. I've never had a plan. Maybe I need to be more aggressive, because it's quite tough!
Your parents are in medicine. How did you become an actress?
You know when you're a kid and you get to pick a movie every Friday? I watched everything. There's no particular genre that was appealing. I just loved the idea that you could dress up and play.
In Preacher you play Tulip, a tough character popular in the comics. What was your audition like?
I didn't want her to be this cliched sexy badass or broken Nikita kind of character. There can be a lot of subtleties and nuance in comics that you can miss if you don't think about it. That's what I wanted to do in the audition: make her as nuanced as possible and distance myself from cliches that are unapologetically violent.
Vital Stats
Age: 34
Born: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Big break: Breakfast on Pluto (2005)
Reps: ICM Partners; Markham, Froggatt and Irwin (U.K.); Principal Entertainment
This story first appeared in the May 13 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe. |
Last week, when asked about the commitment Canada will be making at the United Nations climate change summit in December, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said, “It’s unlikely our targets will be exactly the same as the United States’.” Canadians could be excused for being surprised, given the abrupt change in direction. For over six years, the government has been telling Canadian citizens that its approach on climate change is to harmonize with the United States. The day after President Barack Obama was elected, the Canadian government announced that it wanted to work with the new administration and explore an integrated, continental approach on climate change. Within three months the two countries had created the Clean Energy Dialogue to continue the integration process.
Just last month, Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq sent a letter to the provinces that cited the alignment of Canadian climate policies with those of the U.S. But now that the U.S. has taken a more aggressive approach to climate change, writes Tim Gray, that alignment no longer seems to be an issue for the Tories. ( Sean Kilpatrick / THE CANADIAN PRESS )
Since then, the prime minister has repeatedly touted a harmonized, continental approach. So has every environment minister. Just last month, current Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq sent a letter to the provinces that cited the alignment of Canadian climate policies with those of the U.S. In 2010, her predecessor, Peter Kent said there was “no practical alternative” to a harmonized approach. Before him, Environment Minister John Baird justified the abandonment of his proposal for a cap-and-trade system because Canada had to match the U.S. regulatory approach. And Jim Prentice, Canada’s environment minister when Obama first came to office, actually weakened Canada’s 2020 carbon reduction target so that it would be “aligned with the final economy-wide emissions target of the United States.” So what happened? Why has the government suddenly changed course? The reality seems to be that harmonization has just been an excuse the federal government used to justify doing nothing, and then quickly abandoned as soon as it meant doing something. When Obama directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon pollution from heavy industry using the Clean Air Act, Canada’s environment ministers — initially Baird and then Kent — refused to adopt the same approach. The claim was that Canada would “reach the same outcome,” in other words the same target, but use a different approach. But Canada has not come close to reducing emissions on the same level.
Article Continued Below
The EPA moved forward with regulations to address the U.S.’s biggest source of pollution, coal-fired power plants. Those regulations will reduce carbon pollution by an estimated 18 per cent by 2020, compared to business-as-usual. But the Canadian government has yet to regulate Canada’s most polluting sector, the oil and gas industry. The coal plant regulations that were passed in Canada and heavily touted by the federal government will reduce carbon pollution from coal plants by an estimated 4 per cent by 2020, compared to business-as-usual. Now we have one more example where U.S. harmonization doesn’t fit into the Canadian government’s plan to do as little as possible to reduce carbon emissions. So what will our government propose for the U.N. climate negotiations in Paris? After the Prime Minister’s U-turn on U.S. harmonization, he said that Canada’s target will be “of similar levels of ambition to other major industrialized countries.” Apparently, the government is now looking for today’s climate laggard to harmonize with. Top candidates for new dance partners: Japan or Australia. Neither has submitted pledges for Paris yet, but both have floated very weak 2030 targets that are roughly similar to ones the world agreed to in 1992 at the Rio summit: stabilization of carbon pollution at 1990 levels. When this global commitment was made, Wayne’s World was in the movie theatres, “My Achy Breaky Heart” was playing on the radio, and Stephen Harper was a university student. Now, more than two decades later, it may become a commitment that will take yet another decade and a half for Canada to achieve. That would be discouraging. Instead Canadians deserve to have their government show leadership on this most important of issues. Tim Gray is executive director of Environmental Defence.
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Megan Connelly | The Daily Star, Lebanon
On Nov. 1, 2017, President Massoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Regional Government, in accordance with legislation passed by the Kurdistan Parliament several days before, stepped down and devolved many of the powers of his office jointly to his nephew Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani, Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani, the speaker of Parliament and the Judicial Council. The bill at first appeared to be a significant concession by Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party to relieve the impasse surrounding his extralegal retention of office and raised the possibility of democratic reforms. However, it is instead an attempt by the KDP to maintain its dominance over the KRG in the wake of the independence referendum, and for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan to preserve what remains of its long-standing and exclusive power-sharing relationship with the KDP in an increasingly volatile and polarized political environment.
After Oct. 16, when the Iraqi central government began to reassert federal authority over the disputed territories in retaliation for the KRG’s independence vote, confidence in the KRG as a political system plummeted and calls increased in volume and urgency for President Barzani, the referendum’s mastermind, to resign. In addition to driving a wedge between the KDP and the PUK, the referendum galvanized the opposition. The Gorran Movement – the KRG’s second-largest political party, which was expelled from the government in 2015 – along with other Sulaimaniyah-based parties Komal and the Alliance for Justice and Democracy, called for dissolving the government and establishing a “national salvation government” to replace what they regard as a dysfunctional, partisan oligarchy. However, on Oct. 25, Gorran agreed to return to Parliament after receiving guarantees that a legislative proposal would provide for President Barzani’s resignation and the dissolution of the presidency.
While Gorran approved of Barzani’s decision to step down from the presidency, it raised objections to the proposal’s content and to the legislative process that drafted it, which Gorran claimed merely packaged a joint KDP-PUK decree as a law to be retroactively approved by Parliament. The proposal was drafted in an inter-politburo summit between the KDP and PUK, along with the Islamic Union. While devolving the president’s powers under the 2005 Presidency Law, which granted the president of the KRG expansive executive powers, the new bill would only remain in effect until the next round of presidential and parliamentary elections, which had been scheduled for Nov. 1 but were postponed for eight months in late October by act of a PUK and KDP-dominated Parliament.
This draft law provided that until elections, “no law or decision shall be made in contradiction of this law,” precluding amendments to the 2005 law until at least June 2018. During the Oct. 29 session, these provisions raised objections from Gorran lawmakers, who have consistently demanded that the Presidency Law be repealed and that elections proceed on Nov. 1. Protests from the Gorran and Komal delegations demanding further debate before a vote were met with violence from KDP MPs and journalists, and later that evening KDP supporters stormed the Parliament hall, attacking journalists and threatening opposition MPs while crowds in Dohuk and Zakho burned Gorran and PUK party offices.
According to the new law, Nechirvan Barzani in his capacity as prime minister will assume most of the powers of the presidency, including the authority to represent the KRG at the federal level and abroad. Yet, in the spirit of prior power-sharing agreements between the KDP and PUK, he will share the powers to dissolve Parliament, declare a state of emergency, and assume legislative powers during emergencies with Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani of the PUK. Therefore, in addition to ensuring that the Barzani family remains in control of the KRG’s legal institutions, the PUK can also lay claim to a shared presidential mandate.
The law also delegates the power to veto all or part of legislation passed by Parliament, to the “speakership” of Parliament – notably not to the “speaker.” This terminology indicates that the KDP and PUK elites who drafted the law intend for these duties to fall jointly to Secretary of Parliament Begard Talabani of the PUK and to Deputy Speaker Jafar Eminki – a member of the KDP who has assumed the duties of the speaker in the absence of Speaker Yusuf Mohammad. Yusuf Mohammad, of Gorran, has been prevented from entering the capital Erbil since Barzani forcibly dissolved Parliament in 2015. Therefore, the text of the law circumvents the issue of Yusuf Mohammad’s readmission to Parliament, which the KDP has steadfastly resisted. Additionally, the KRG’s Judicial Council, led by and comprised mostly of KDP loyalists with some seats reserved for PUK members, will be able to appoint judges and public prosecutors.
The text of the new law does not, however, order the resignation of Deputy President Kosrat Rasoul of the PUK, whose own term expired in 2015. Furthermore, it does not delegate the president’s duties as general commander of the peshmerga or his supervisory powers over the KRG Security Council. The latter appears to be a compromise between Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani and the council’s chair, Masrour Barzani, PM Barzani’s cousin and Massoud Barzani’s son, who is unlikely to accept Nechirvan Barzani’s authority over his own paramilitary units. It is possible that Massoud Barzani’s Cabinet, which the statute enjoins to “continue with its duties and responsibilities,” will simply retain these powers. Additionally, Barzani remains the president of the KDP politburo, and therefore will continue as a de facto source of political and military authority within the KDP-controlled areas of the Kurdistan Region.
Massoud Barzani will also remain in his capacity as the head of the High Political Council. The HPC is the “grand coalition” that succeeded the High Referendum Council, the body established to carry out the independence referendum in the Kurdistan Region. It is comprised mostly of KDP members and a few PUK executives close to the KDP, such as Mala Bakhtiar and Kosrat Rasul. It has no accountability to Parliament or any other official institution, but nonetheless declared it would “protect the stability of Kurdistan from any type of threat” and represent the Kurdistan Region in Baghdad and abroad. Therefore, Barzani will remain the head of a parallel government that can act independently of the KRG’s legally established institutions. However, the prime minister and deputy prime minister have the advantage of being recognized as the legitimate heads of government by the international community, including the United States, which had been the primary external source of President Barzani’s power and legitimacy in the past three years in lieu of voter confidence.
As Barzani steps down as president, the power of the KDP and PUK politburos will continue to eclipse that of the KRG’s democratic institutions. Yet notwithstanding continued bipartisan participation in the Cabinet, Parliament and HPC, the Iraqi federal government’s reassertion of control over the region’s border points, airports and the oil-rich disputed territories has resulted in a weakened KRG that has lost its sources of revenue – and therefore there are fewer incentives for Kurdish parties to cooperate with each other. The fallout from the referendum empowered hard-line factions within the PUK politburo who used the KDP’s failed gamble as a pretext to cleanse Erbil of KDP influence. The president’s resignation has exposed similar fault lines within the KDP.
Prime Minister Barzani derives the greatest benefit from the devolution of presidential powers. Yet although he maintains cordial relations with PUK moderates and has the diplomatic experience to control the referendum’s damage to relationships with the United States, Iran and Turkey, he is confronted with Massoud and Masrour Barzani’s increasingly hawkish stance on their party’s relationship with the PUK. The use of provocative rhetoric, including accusations that PUK security forces committed “treason” for withdrawing from Kirkuk, and the eruption of violence by KDP supporters in the wake of Massoud Barzani’s transfer of executive power has escalated tensions between the parties. This will further polarize moderates and invigorate hard-liners – placing Nechirvan Barzani in the awkward position of putting out fires started by his cousin and uncle.
Yet, while moderate KDP and PUK elites attempt to preserve their ties, the opposition will continue to regard this exclusive partnership as the source of the failure of KRG governance. Citing the violence at Parliament on Oct. 29, Gorran has rejected the prime minister’s invitation for Gorran ministers and MPs to return to the government and renewed its calls to dissolve the KRG and establish a provisional government to oversee a transition to a parliamentary democracy. Yet while Gorran has the ability to mobilize massive strikes and demonstrations, it cannot compete with the ability of the KDP and PUK to bargain through the use of force. Thus, Gorran and other Sulaimaniyah-based opposition parties may be forced to align with more powerful brokers in the PUK in order to regain political influence – and in the process subvert their objective to build a parliamentary democracy independent of intense partisan influence.
Massoud Barzani’s resignation and the devolution of executive power from the presidency to the KRG’s other political institutions is not a substantial change in the KRG’s governance. Rather, it is an attempt by moderates in the KDP and PUK to salvage what remains of their mutually beneficial power-sharing relationship. However, the independence referendum has changed the political landscape, bringing latent rivalries to the fore and transforming the KRG from a predictable, relatively stable, bipolar system to an unpredictable, unstable, multipolar system in which the KDP and PUK are divided against each other and within themselves.
Megan Connelly is a Ph.D. and J.D. candidate at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Follow her on Twitter @meganconnelly48. This commentary first appeared at Sada, an online journal published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (www.carnegieendowment.org/sada).
The article first published at The Daily Star
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The Vatican alleged on Thursday that Pope Francis was the victim of an internal plot to undermine his authority after a false story was leaked to the Italian press claiming that he was suffering from a brain tumour.
The front-page story was published by Quotidiano Nazionale, an Italian daily, on Wednesday, but was indignantly denied by Vatican spokesmen.
It took to new heights the atmosphere of skulduggery and Machiavellian intrigue that swirls around the Holy See at the best of times.
Cardinals and others within the Catholic Church hierarchy suggested that the unfounded story about the tumour was an attempt by “enemies” of the 78-year-old Pope to discredit him and to suggest that his judgment was impaired.
Photo: REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi
They said the timing of the leak was deeply suspicious – it came just days before the conclusion of the Synod, a three-week meeting of 270 bishops and cardinals at the Vatican which has been discussing delicate issues such as divorce and the Church’s attitude towards homosexuality.
The bishops are due to present their final report to the pontiff on Saturday.
In a forthright notice, L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s own newspaper, called the story about the tumour “false” and “unfounded”.
“The moment (that was) chosen reveals an attempt to raise a cloud of dust in order to manipulate," the broadsheet said.
Walter Kasper, a liberal cardinal from Germany who is closely in step with the Pope’s views, said: “It's evident to me that some people don't like this Pope. Maybe they were trying to influence us (in the Synod).”
“Certain people, both inside and outside the Church, are nervous about the outcome of the Synod," he said.
The tumour story was an attempt to “upset” the final days of deliberation at the gathering, the cardinal said.
Italian newspapers speculated about “the shadow of a plot”, alleging that it may have been the work of conservatives within the Church who are aghast at Pope Francis’s reformist agenda and the sympathetic line he has taken towards homosexuals, diverging from the traditional Vatican view that they are “intrinsically disordered”.
“Who wants the Pope dead?” was the headline of Il Giornale, a conservative daily, which said the Church was “in chaos”.
Whoever leaked the tumour story to Quotidiano Nazionale was aiming to undermine the “legitimacy” of the Pope, said Massimo Franco, a leading Vatican expert.
“This nasty story seems to have been concocted by the enemies of Jorge Mario Bergoglio (as the Pope was known before his election in 2013) to let him know that he is in their sights,” he wrote in Corriere della Sera.
The underlying aim may have been to cast doubt on the Pope’s mental acuity, insinuating that his actions and statements were a result of “his brain not functioning properly,” Mr Franco suggested.
It was a “subliminal and disturbing” message that the Pope’s enemies were hoping to spread, amid a growing conservative backlash against some of his statements and decisions.
Antonio Spadaro, the editor of Civilta Cattolica, a Jesuit publication, said: “After various other lies that have been put out there, they are now inventing an illness. They don’t know what else to do. They’re getting desperate.”
But it remained unclear who exactly was behind the alleged plot.
Most Vatican observers believed that if it really was engineered by insiders, it may have been the work of conservatives at the Synod.
They have been particularly alarmed by the Pope’s suggestion that the Church should show more compassion towards Catholics who have divorced and then remarried without seeking an annulment.
They are currently banned from taking Communion because the Church teaches that they are living in sin and committing adultery with their new spouses.
A group of 13 cardinals wrote to the Pope during the Synod to complain that they felt it was being rigged by the pontiff in order to ensure a more liberal outcome.
Victor Manuel Fernandez, a bishop from the Pope’s native Argentina, called the alleged attempt at spreading false rumours “the strategy of the Apocalypse”.
It was a bid to “discredit some who is in power, to speak ill of him, to disseminate absolutely false stories about him. To speak of someone in this way shows the intention to destabilise him.”
In its story, Quotidiano Nazionale claimed that the Pope had been secretly visited at the Vatican by a Japanese surgeon, who had found a benign, treatable, brain tumour.
But the Holy See issued three, increasingly exasperated denials of the story and the brain cancer specialist, Dr Takanori Fukushima, released a statement saying that he had never medically examined the Pope.
The Rev Federico Lombardi, the chief Vatican spokesman, said the report was “totally unfounded,” calling the story “seriously irresponsible and not worthy of attention. As all can see, the Pope continues to exercise his intense activity without interruption and in an absolutely normal way".
But the newspaper continued to stand by its story. Andrea Cangini, the editor, said his journalists had worked for months to double-check the information and make sure their sources were reliable.
The Synod was hit by scandal before it had even started. The day before it opened, a Polish priest who had held a senior Vatican position for years, sparked outrage in the Church hierarchy by publicly came out as gay.
Krzysztof Charamsa was dismissed by the Vatican within hours, and on Wednesday he was defrocked by the Polish Church.
Monsignor Charamsa, 43, who revealed that he had a Spanish boyfriend, was a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican department responsible for safeguarding doctrine.
He said the majority of priests were gay and lambasted what he called “institutionalised homophobia in the Church”. |
Humanist ideas are not a recent phenomenon, but have been around for millennia, says Andrew Copson , chief executive of Humanists UK. He explains why it's worth making a positive choice to be a humanist and recommends a great humanist reading list.
What is ‘humanism?’ Is it just another word for atheism?
It’s not just another word for atheism. The word ‘humanism’, like all words with long histories, has had lots of meanings at different times in different places. In English, it started being used in the 19th century. Since then, it’s had two uses. One is a historical one, to refer back to the culture and scholarship of the Renaissance. We usually call that ‘Renaissance humanism’.
The second use of the word has been to refer to a non-religious worldview: a set of beliefs and values that together constitute a certain approach to life. The precise content of those beliefs and values is up for debate and up for negotiation—just like any idea in the history of ideas. But, broadly speaking, humanists are people who don’t look outside of reality for moral guidance or ways to understand the universe. They try to understand the world that we live in by the use of reason, evidence, and experience all bundled together in the scientific method.
Humanists are people who think that morality is not some unnatural thing that comes from outside, but something that’s in us, having its basis in biology and then built on by culture. Morality doesn’t come from outside, from tablets of stone, but is inside us. It’s generated by humanity itself. When we think about questions like right and wrong, we don’t need to look for rules and commandments and authorities; we need to think for ourselves, about the consequences of our actions, and have a this-world, contextual approach to morality.
“Humanist beliefs are almost like the common sense of large parts of the Western world today”
And, I suppose, there’s also the idea that the universe itself doesn’t have a purpose or a meaning or a direction. There’s no meaning of life, in that sense, but human beings are able from our own capacities to endow our own lives with meaning and create meaning.
So, it’s: science rather than religion in understanding the universe; morality as something natural and cultural rather than something from God; and the idea that meaning is not something out there in the universe to be discovered but something that is created. It’s not a simple thing to describe but altogether those values are what we mean by ‘humanism’ today.
If I’m wandering down the street and I’ve decided for whatever reason that I no longer believe in God—maybe someone I really love has died dreadfully, or maybe I have been reading lots of religious history and have decided that it doesn’t fit with there being a God—what does humanism have to offer me? Why would I come in here and say, ‘Okay I’m going to embrace humanism instead?’
There are a lot of people—especially in the UK and the Western world—who live their lives by a sort of implicit humanism. Humanist beliefs are almost like the common sense of large parts of the Western world today, as they have been in other parts of the world at other times.
But I think that an explicit commitment to humanist ideas or recognition that your own ideas are humanist can be extremely helpful.
For a start, I think that a lot of people—especially if they were raised religious—can be cast a little bit adrift if, as you suggest, one day they just stop believing. John Stuart Mill said, in the mid-19th century, that a lot of people give up their beliefs and then worry that the values will go with them as they are no longer rooted in anything. If they’ve had a religious upbringing and then realise their beliefs aren’t there—if all they’ve ever been taught is that the values of right and wrong are based on these beliefs—they can be in danger of losing that grounded-ness in their lives. If, instead, people realise there are other ideas that they can actively understand and maybe recognise in themselves, that gives them greater moral security.
And in general, I think it’s always good to know yourself, as well.
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The question you’ve asked is not an uncommon one. At an event where I was interviewing him, I asked Michael Rosen, who wrote a book for children on humanism, ‘Why do you think it’s important that people have the word ‘humanism’ to apply to these things? Why is it important that children know this word?’ He said, ‘It’s the same reason that children learn anything at school. When you’re in school, this is the time of the naming of things. And by naming things, you understand things. And by understanding things, you can apply them in your life.’ I thought that’s a good explanation for everyone, actually, not just for children.
So that’s why it’s important. I think we can learn from humanist ideas, not just in their modem manifestations but in their more ancient ones as well. And I think that doing so consciously is better than doing so unconsciously.
What about the actual word? The fact that it’s humanism: is it very much focused on human beings? What’s the attitude towards other animals?
The point of the word ‘human’ in ‘humanism’ is to emphasise human things as opposed to divine things, because the great contrast of the age was between those two ways of thinking. Either you locate your thinking out there in the divine sphere—ever so elevated, looking to the world to come—or you locate your thinking in the human sphere—it’s today, it’s here and now, deal with today’s problems, and find your meaning in this earthly sphere.
The word is a bit of a problem, first of all because humanism isn’t really an ‘-ism.’ It’s not a doctrine that is rolled out. It’s a post hoc label applied to a certain set of pre-existing beliefs and attitudes.
The ‘human’ part of the word also causes difficulty, but I think that humanist thinking has actually broadened our moral sympathies beyond just human beings. Today, a lot of religious people like to say that their theology gives them an environmental bent. But, through most of history, that has not been true. Monotheistic religions have tended to encourage their believers to adopt a grab-it-and-take-it view of the world: the world is there for you to mine and farm and to spoil, essentially, and not to worry because there will be another one to come afterwards.
“Humanists are people who think that morality is not some unnatural thing that comes from outside, but something that’s in us”
Humanist thinking starts to become influential, especially in the 19th century, with people like Jeremy Bentham in the UK. He is the first person to really construct a philosophy of the moral duties that we owe to other animals.
He points out that people have been arguing for a long time about how other animals should be treated, and they always ask, ‘Can animals reason like human beings?’ If so, then we might think them worthy of moral attention and, if not, then we wouldn’t.
But Jeremy Bentham says, ‘the question is not whether they can reason, but can they suffer?’ And he sets off that humanist tradition of moral thinking for the last 150 years in a very pro-other-animals direction.
So, although the word does have ‘human’ in it, actually, because of its emphasis on moral responsibility and avoiding harm and the question of suffering, it has been part of enlarging our sympathies to other animals too.
For a humanist, what is the approach to national borders? If we are all human beings, why are Syrian refugees not allowed to come freely into, say, the UK to take shelter? Does humanism have something to say about how we separate people?
I think it does, very strongly. That’s really apparent today, and it’s true in one of the books that’s on my list. Two strange things are happening today that highlight the importance of humanist thinking in this regard.
Firstly, it’s become even more clear that borders are artificial because we can now, with globalised communication technology, talk to people everywhere. People who migrate are able to keep in touch with people in their place of origin much more easily. And, in fact, through modern infrastructure, they are able to move around a lot more easily, as migrants and refugees are at the moment.
Technology is allowing people to do that and that’s a good thing. It unifies human beings and is also the product of human beings working hard and having the vision to develop these technologies in the first place. Although it doesn’t always seem so, that is actually the good news buried underneath the bad news that is the consequence of that good news.
Secondly, one response to these technologies and this movement of people and of ideas has been a huge resurgence in nationalism, in nativism, and in anti-cosmopolitanism around the world.
Humanism has a great deal to say about that. It has a lot to say about that because humanist thinking stresses the unity of humanity. It was possible—two or three hundred years ago—to believe that human beings were a variety of different tribes and even species. Some Jews and Christians and Muslims thought we are, literally, different creations related to different types of ancient human beings.
“We know that we all are related, not just to each other as human beings, but actually to the rest of the natural world. And that has a way of framing your thinking.”
We know now that’s not true. We know that we have a single origin. We know that we all are related, not just to each other as human beings, but actually to the rest of the natural world. And that has a way of framing your thinking. It can be very powerful if you accept that and look at things through that frame.
So, the essential unity of humanity is important to humanists. The fact that we’ve only got one planet, one life, and one chance should be a motivator to thinking seriously about the problems of the world, and not just throwing our hands up in despair.
But, also, the commitment that humanists have to moral equality between human beings has a political dimension. It’s not just that we should treat everyone kindly, it’s a more urgent call to justice than that, I think. If we take all those ideas seriously together, then we do have the same obligation to a refugee at our borders as to a homeless person in the street around the corner. And I believe that very strongly. That’s powerful thinking and it’s not just at a theoretical level. There are many humanitarian workers who, motivated by these beliefs, have taken them into the world.
Read 1 Two Cheers For Democracy by E M Forster Read
Let’s look more at some of these issues as we go through your books. The first one is Two Cheers for Democracy by E M Forster and it’s a book of essays. I think of him primarily as a novelist but it turns out he became incredibly politicised in the 1930s, in the face of xenophobia and totalitarianism. Tell me why this is on your list.
You’ve touched there on why he’s interesting. It’s partly because the context in which he writes these essays, in the 1930s, is eerily similar to the context in which we find ourselves today, unfortunately. Not to be hysterical about it, but a lot of the geopolitical factors are very similar. The crisis of liberal democracy that we’re living through is the same as the crisis of liberal democracy of the 1930s.
You seem to get this cycle in democratic life when people just get bored, almost, of democracy. They just think, ‘it’s hard work and it’s not very glamorous.’ It’s no surprise, I think, that when ISIS are trying to recruit people in Britain and around the world, they make great play of the crusade and dramatic Lord of the Rings-style stuff. Democracy, by contrast, is rather dull. And, although it has great results, these results are the results that people get used to and don’t value in the long term, like peace and security and reduction of inequality. Once you’ve got used to those, you don’t value them.
“The crisis of liberal democracy that we’re living through is the same as the crisis of liberal democracy of the 1930s”
E M Forster is writing in a similar context. You’re right that most people remember him for his novels. His novels are beautiful and every one of them is a humanist work of genius, emphasising the connections between people and what holds us together, relationships, the possibility of human contact. You have that famous phrase from Howards End “only connect” that resounds down the ages. He is a good example of a humanist writer in his novels, for all those reasons.
But he wrote his novels quite early in his life. I don’t think he wrote another one after the age of 45 and he lived to 90. They were over quite quickly, and he spent the rest of his life as a public intellectual.
He’s similar, in that sense, to Bertrand Russell. E M Forster and Bertrand Russell were both patrons of the Humanist Association. They said, at the time, that if Bertrand Russell was the head of humanism, then E M Forster was the heart. And I think that that’s quite true.
The essays in Two Cheers for Democracy span a period of about twenty years—through the 30s and the 40s—and they’re incredibly humane. He touches on the prejudices of the day, the emerging totalitarianisms, and he has a wonderful essay on anti-Semitism. Very gently and with a novelist’s skill, he lays bare how stupid anti-Semitism it is—how baseless and groundless and foolish.
“You seem to get this cycle in democratic life when people just get bored, almost, of democracy”
When you start the essay, you think it’s going to be an essay about being bullied at school, because he starts it by saying, ‘When I was at prep school, it was incredibly shameful to have a mother. The rumour would go round and people would say Smith’s got a mother!’ And, then, when he was at his next boarding school, having a mother was accepted as inevitable but it was shameful to have a sister.
You think this is going to be an essay about irrelevant childish prejudices, and then he says, ‘I thought I’d escaped all of this with school but now today I find, all of a sudden, it’s a terrible shame to know a Jew or to be a Jew.’ And suddenly, it brings into sharp relief the stupidity of prejudice. He’s incredibly good at that.
He writes about dictators. He’s writing, of course, about Mussolini and Hitler. Today, it would be Erdogan and Putin. You can read that essay and it’s the same thing. He talks about how dictators want to grind the people down into a single person but they’ll never win because humanity is stronger than that. Diversity is stronger than that. The liberal attitude is stronger than that.
He’s not a wild optimist. He does think that most of human history is pretty awful and the light is in the bits in between. He thinks there are liberal people who are good in every age but that sometimes they are very few in number.
You said at the beginning that humanism is not an ‘-ism’. E M Forster writes “I don’t believe in belief” but then he says that, unfortunately, that’s not enough at the moment, we do need something to believe in—to counter all the other stuff that is going on.
He says, ‘I do not believe in Belief. But this is an Age of Faith.’ People can’t get enough of it so you have to defensively adopt a creed of your own. I think that’s important. That’s what Forster’s essays make clear. It’s what we’re experiencing again today, and we don’t have the solution to it. There needs to be a drama and romance to democracy that we don’t have. They maybe have a touch of it in America with the idea of the town hall and the ballot box, but it hasn’t done them much good recently. The last people, I think, to have a good, powerful mythos of democracy were probably the Athenians.
The other thing he says is that he “starts with personal relationships”. I found that quite interesting—to dip into the mind of somebody who’s thinking about the same things that I’m trying to figure out. E M Forster is writing almost a hundred years ago, and yet we’re grappling with the same things, ‘The world is really big—if I want to make it a better place, where do I start? Well, I’ll just start with the people around me.’
That’s a very humanist thought as well. Even big lofty concepts like world peace start with our own relationships. There’s nothing coming down from the top. We build it all from the bottom up. Connecting with people, building relationships with people, building social peace and then civic peace and then, hopefully, world peace at the end of it, that’s the only way it’s going to happen.
When Eleanor Roosevelt was drawing up the Declaration of Human Rights, she said that human rights began in the “small places” of people’s lives. That’s the same sort of thinking.
But equally you mustn’t exhaust yourself on these things. Another way in which E M Forster’s values of morality are very relevant is that he’s putting a value on helping others, and doing your best, but he’s also putting a value on making sure that’s not to the detriment of everything else. You still live. You’ve got to keep yourself intact. Harold Blackham—who was one of my predecessors here as Chief Executive of Humanists UK—said, “One has to be friends with oneself before one is fit to be a friend” and I think that’s good thinking.
Read 2 Adam Bede by George Eliot Read
Let’s go on to your next book: Adam Bede (1859) by George Eliot.
It could almost have been any of her novels, but Adam Bede is her first so I chose that. I remember at Humanists UK when we were celebrating the 150th anniversary of 1859; that was the year Darwin published On the Origin of Species which transformed biology and our sense of ourselves as animals. Also in 1859, John Stuart Mill published On Liberty–again, an incredible work that transformed political and liberal thought across the world.
So, we were celebrating those two books and the humanist philosopher Richard Norman pointed out that this was not fair because, also in 1859, George Eliot published Adam Bede and completely changed the novel. And that’s true. I’m making up for it now by putting it in this list.
“It’s incredible, these complicated creatures that human beings are, born animals, and then throughout our lives we are making a character all the time, we’re developing.”
George Eliot was a great 19th century humanist. She moved from being quite devout in her early years—growing up in a very Christian culture in the Midlands—but then losing her faith. I don’t usually like that phrase, ‘losing your faith,’ because I think you’re gaining something, but, in her case, it’s appropriate. She actually felt this loss of her faith.
She then constructed for herself an almost romantic but humanist creed of duty and personal relationships and moral responsibility. It had a big part in it for freedom of choice. She famously chose to live in a very unconventional way for the time.
What’s so humanist about her novels? In what way do they embody a humanist attitude?
It’s the way they concentrate on character. They are driven by character. If you read Adam Bede, the characters are all so familiar—within a few words. They’ve got huge depth and richness and she really understands people.
I don’t know whether it was being raised in a very stable domestic environment like the Midlands of the 19th century (much like the Midlands today!). Nothing much happens, but what does happen happens within families and relationships.
Although it would be wrong to say that humanism is somehow the deification of human beings—it’s certainly not that, though some of its detractors like to accuse humanism of putting human beings on a pedestal—but one of the things that lots of humanists feel is a fascination with the human being, with their character, and the preciousness of it.
“George Eliot was a great 19th century humanist”
It’s incredible, these complicated creatures that human beings are, born animals, and then throughout our lives we are making a character all the time, we’re developing. We develop through relationships with others but also as a result of our experiences. Everyone is different. And she just observes that beautifully. Her characters are so well drawn.
It’s a good moral universe that she inhabits. There’s peace and a sort of reward for good behaviour in this world, which is something that she thought, by this point, would never come in another world. I also like this call to be happy with a simple life.
But it’s also full of tragedy. In the 19th century, a lot of critics romanticised her novels as being beautifully observed scenes of country life. Actually, there’s infanticide and all sorts of terrible things going on, which they didn’t mention at the time, but now perhaps we do.
We’ve interviewed a lot of philosophers on Five Books and they often recommend George Eliot. They say Eliot was a good philosopher and even translated Spinoza from Latin.
She did. And Spinoza is remarkably influential on British humanism. He is essentially humanist in his thinking. Of course we’re in the 17th century so, like a lot of people at the time, he does believe there may be some divine principle out there moving the universe. His thought is very complicated. He was influential, for example, on John Locke and his idea about the separation of church and state in England. Rebecca Goldstein has an excellent book on Spinoza where she makes it clear just how influential Spinoza was.
Read 3 On Humanism by Richard Norman Read
Book number 3 is by the humanist philosopher that you mentioned—Richard Norman—and it’s called On Humanism. Is this the book to read if you want to understand what it is?
It is. It would have been easy to give you a list of five books about humanism but humanism is about life, not about humanism. Still, I think it’s only right to have one book.
What Richard Norman’s book does is to lay out the normal beliefs and values of humanists, but he pays particular attention to the making of meaning in life. This is one of the areas that’s really very important today.
This is especially because, in terms of morality, even religions in the West have now accepted humanist principles. If you boil down religious people’s morality today, you find it’s often quite humanistic. It’s nothing like the religious morality of 500 or 600 years ago. In their moral reasoning, religious people often, like the rest of us, will use consequences of actions rather than just adherence to, say, commandments. The effect of humanism on religion and religious morality has been very profound. That’s been a great success of humanist moral thinking in the last couple of hundred years.
“If you boil down religious people’s morality today, you find it’s often quite humanistic. It’s nothing like the religious morality of 500 or 600 years ago.”
But one of the areas where that same effect hasn’t been felt, is in the area of meaning in life. Some people might call it a ‘spiritual’ aspect of their lives, a sense of connection with the natural world, or a sense of purpose: these are all associated with this broad topic of ‘the meaning of life.’
I think it’s important that we engage with that because people do question—not every day, of course—their place in this world, the purpose of their existence, and what meaning they have. And I think that when people think about meaning in the humanist way, they find it very fulfilling. They think, ‘There is no purpose to the universe, but what I’m doing right now is actually making meaning. The worthwhile goals that I’ve adopted, the relationships that I’m forming, the experiences that I’m having, the meaning that I’m giving to those experiences in my mind as I move through life, the story of my life that I’m building in my head—this is all a source of meaning.’
They don’t think about that idea every second of every day, but it’s in the back of their minds and they proceed through their lives on this basis. I think that that’s a powerful humanist idea that has not yet had its day.
Richard Norman, in his book, engages with this very well and he—not uniquely but perhaps unusually—focuses a lot more on the arts and the creative side of human life than he does on science. I find that appealing, personally.
He thinks that the arts can give us this meaning and fill the void?
Yes, I think that’s true. And not just visual arts but also the novel, film, music, and all the rest of it. There’s also a world of aesthetics beyond arts that we create. The aesthetic appreciation of the natural world can also offer that sense of connection, that sense of timelessness, of stepping outside of yourself, that is very fulfilling and gives a warmth and a colour to life. Richard Norman understands that.
Read 4 His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman Read
Next on your list is His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman’s fantasy trilogy.
The three books are incredibly rich and dense—full of allusion and cultural references. I think I could read the passage where they go through the underworld every day of my life and still not feel like I’ve picked up every important aspect or cultural reference in it. Philip is brilliant, of course, and we’re all looking forward to his next book at the end of this year.
I was too old to read these books as a child, so I read them as an adult and loved them. They are three of the few children’s books that I read as an adult that made me feel like a child. Our former education officer here—Marilyn Mason—wrote a lot about moral education for children and was in her late fifties when she read His Dark Materials. And she said the same. When Lyra is riding on the polar bear, she said she could imagine snuggling into the polar bear’s fur. So, the first thing is that they are brilliant stories.
“The children in these stories are brave, they try hard to do the right thing even though it’s difficult, they’re concerned for others, they’re loving, and they question authority in order to do the right thing. They are just excellent moral exemplars.”
The relevance to humanism, however, is in the values that the children model and in the themes that the stories explore. There’s always a worry, when it comes to non-religious morality, that somehow it will become strict utilitarianism and dry consequentialism. The idea is that, somehow, moral education in a non-religious sense might lose some of the story aspect that religious moral education has often had: the parable aspect.
I think that that’s complete nonsense. The humanist moral education of children doesn’t lose any of those things. But I agree that moral education has to have warmth and colour and depth and story attached to it. So, I think if you were going to tell children stories, then these stories are brilliant ones.
The children in these stories are brave, they try hard to do the right thing even though it’s difficult, they’re concerned for others, they’re loving, and they question authority in order to do the right thing. They are just excellent moral exemplars.
Other children’s books often have children behaving in terrible ways. Philip himself has acknowledged that his His Dark Materials is, to some extent, a response to the Chronicles of Narnia which has children behaving in all sorts of slavish ways, obeying authority because it is authority, and setting all sorts of poor moral examples.
The children in Philip’s books are thoughtful, intelligent, and morally concerned. They are motivated by love and loyalty. And they are very complex. He doesn’t shy away from the moral complexity, the difficulties of choice, the lesser of two evils. That is also something that comes up in his books. There is no perfect solution, you struggle to truth.
They are very real even though, in another sense, they are completely fantastical, as all children’s literature should be. The morals are good. They are about seeking an integrated, honest, eyes-wide-open life. The theme is good too: the defeat of God, the defeat of authority, the opening of our eyes to the realities of the universe and living facing it squarely on.
Did he explicitly have a humanist message in mind when he was writing it?
Philip’s mind is too broad and the story is too wide-ranging to be confined to any one worldview! He is a member and a patron of Humanists UK and all the messages in his novels and all the themes are very humanist ones. But he’s not preachy. Good children’s authors can’t be preachy. I guess the messages are there for those who want to hear them and discern them.
I remember listening to it with my kids in the car, and wondering, ‘Is he very religious or very unreligious?’ It was hard to figure out.
His stories are full of what you might call religious themes. He famously loves Blake. He uses creative and very spiritual language in his writing and deals very well with the intangible.
But I think we’re wrong to associate those elevated ideas and cultural concepts purely with religion. As Richard Norman says, that language isn’t just religious language. It’s an essential part of human experience—that religions have purloined and that we have got to reclaim. I think Philip does that really well.
Can you say a bit about the way he deals with ‘sin,’ because that seems to be a central theme?
Philip’s ideas about sin, in particular, and right and wrong, and the nature of the human being are really important. They are a powerful part of his stories, although they’re definitely subtext for children and not right there in the text.
He nevertheless got into a bit of trouble for them. His books were banned in Catholic schools and decried by Catholic educationists because they killed God—the ‘Authority’ in his books—and also because of the perspective they take on sin and the human person.
For example, a veil is thrown over it, but there’s a point in the book where it seems as if Lyra and Will are physically intimate. It’s done in a very natural sort of way and it’s portrayed as this wonderful and beautiful thing, because what human beings are about is the connections between us. The idea that Philip is representing is that the point of human life is to develop, to grow, to mature. That can be intellectual—in thinking about the world in a curious and realistic way—and it can also be emotional—living an integrated life, self-actualising. It’s about being the best person you can be and living to the fullest that you can live.
“If you want salvation from outside, you have to believe you’re not capable of it yourself”
If there is no other world in which completeness will be attained by human beings in the life to come, whatever completeness there will be will have to be attained in this life. The key concept is that we should try to achieve our fullest development.
The view, in Philip’s books, is that we have the resources in us for this. His narrative romanticises it. We are cosmic beings and there’s this dust that binds us all together and is part of our life force and gives us consciousness. We open our eyes and we are part of the universe.
The Magisterium, in his books—which he says is not necessarily the Roman Catholic church but certainly reminds me of it and I think reminded the Roman Catholic church of itself—is an organisation that is dedicated to preventing that sort of self-realisation, that self-development and that self-actualisation. They have a view that people are fallen. They have the same Adam and Eve story in this fictional universe that Christianity has in our world. Eve is the great villain which, of course, pans out into woman as the great villain. And everything stereotypically about women, like that sense of human nurturing and self-development that we’ve talked about is also completely out of the question.
The Magisterium is, like the Roman Catholic church in our world, run by men and they want to prevent this sort of full physical, emotional and mental development.
And so, quite specifically in the first book, they have invented a way to essentially stop puberty—although it’s heavily coded in the text. They cut human beings off from their demons, in this plot that they have. It’s all an attempt to stunt this human development and hold people back, instead of being able to realise their fullest self. To tie them back, instead, to a vision of human beings as in need of saving by an external source. It’s self-development versus salvation from outside. If you want salvation from outside, you have to believe you’re not capable of it yourself.
Of course, no human being can be completely self-sufficient. We are all embedded in human relationships and social contexts and all the rest of it. But what’s important, I think, is to understand that the help that we can seek is from other people, not from nonhuman sources. That’s the difference.
Read 5 Mengzi: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries by Mengzi Read
Your last choice is The Works of Mencius. Tell me why this millennia-old book made the list.
It’s a very common misconception that humanist ideas and humanism itself is purely a recent, modern, European phenomenon. In fact, the ideas that we talked about at the beginning–that morality is a natural thing, for example—can be found around the world and across time. You find them in ancient China, you find them in classical India, you find them in ancient Europe.
Of course, there are large parts of the history of the world where we don’t have them—either because they’re not there, or because there is no surviving writing, or because the historical record has been censored. Christians and Muslims, in particular, went through long historical periods where they just loved to destroy books as their favourite pastime. A lot was destroyed.
But almost everywhere that we have a record of ideas, humanist ideas have been present. I chose Mencius because he’s a good illustration of that. He was a follower of Confucius, 2300 years ago, but with some slightly different ideas than Confucius.
“It’s a very common misconception that humanist ideas and humanism itself is purely a recent, modern, European phenomenon.”
To stereotype, Confucius thought that people needed to be controlled and needed hierarchy and that they were not essentially good. Mencius did not believe that. Mencius thought that human beings were essentially good and, given the right social conditions, they would choose the good. He seems strikingly ‘modern’ and very much in tune with today’s humanist ethical thinking. He’s almost like a Chinese David Hume. They are separated by 16 centuries but their thought is strikingly similar.
In speaking about the natural basis for human morality, Mencius gives the example of a child falling down a well. He says, ‘When a child falls down a well, what do people do? They don’t just run away, they run towards it.’ They almost can’t help themselves–it’s something they just do. And he observes this and builds part of his moral philosophy on it. He says this is the natural tendency of mankind.
And they do it purely out of instinct, not out of hope for any reward.
Exactly. Of course he says these tendencies have got to be developed. It doesn’t just come naturally forever that you always do the right thing. You’ve got to think about it, and you’ve got to build on it. But he says that when people are given the chance to do that, and when they’re encouraged to do that, they will be good.
And I think that idea is one that is at the heart of humanism and contrasts so much with the Christian idea that people are basically bad and fallen and need to be controlled, constrained, and instructed. I chose Mencius just to remind us that this idea is older than a lot of the religious ideas that hold sway all over the world today. It’s not just modern. It’s a timeless idea that people have always come to when they’ve looked at the facts and thought for themselves about the nature of human beings. I think that’s one of the reasons why humanism always will be an approach to life that is part of our experience and our culture and society in the future, even if things turn out as badly as they could in E M Forster’s wildest nightmares. It will still be with us because it’s not only an optimistic and values-led approach to life, it has its basis in truth—the truth about our own nature.
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Premier League teams are making more use of sports scientists and fitness experts as they look to optimise their conditioning work before the new season
Mick McCarthy laughs as he recalls one of his early pre-season memories as a player with Barnsley. "It's a bit of a legendary story this one," the Wolverhampton Wanderers manager says, smiling. "We were doing a road run and we ran so far in Barnsley that a few of us got lost. As we had fallen such a long way behind the others, a small group of us decided to hitch a lift back to the ground. By the time everyone else got back, me and three others were already in the bath."
It is a stunt that a few have tried over the years, although there was no chance of anyone in the Wolves squad repeating the trick during their pre-season training camp in Ireland this week.
The days of gruelling long-distance road runs are a thing of the past because of the growing influence of sports science, while the introduction of state-of-the-art technology, including GPS tracking devices, means that there is no hiding place on the training ground, let alone in the back seat of a passing car.
This week the Guardian spent a day with Wolves in the grounds of the luxurious Carton House Hotel in Maynooth, near Dublin, where the Midlands club have started their preparations for the new season.
The behind-the-scenes access provided a fascinating insight into the way that a Premier League club approaches pre-season training, revealing just how much the landscape has changed, including the sort of attention to detail that would have been unimaginable only a few years ago.
One of the most significant factors driving the shift in emphasis is that it is often a fitness coach, rather than the manager or his assistant, that takes the first couple of weeks of pre-season training. "I almost feel like I'm pinching a living during the first fortnight," Terry Connor, McCarthy's assistant, says as we walk down to the training pitches, where Tony Daley, the former Aston Villa and England winger who is Wolves' fitness and conditioning coach, is setting up the equipment for his second session of the morning.
The Wolves players, who were in the gym between 8.30 and 9.30am lifting leg weights, step on to the scales, which they do before and after every training session to monitor fluid loss. They are then issued with their heart-rate monitors and GPS units, which are linked to a laptop on the side of the training pitch that provides real-time results. It is an incredible tool that is used by the top clubs in Europe and allows coaches to access a broad range of data on every player at the touch of a button.
"GPS is a big thing at the moment, in terms of finding out the intensity players are working at, what distances they are covering and comparing that with their Prozone stats in games," Daley says. "If, for instance, we know that Christophe Berra covers 9km in a game and he only does 250m of that as high-intensity runs, then why are we, as a club, asking him to cover distances much different to that in training? We want to replicate in training what players are doing in matches."
This also helps to explain why the longest run that the Wolves players will do during pre-season will last no longer than three minutes. "Players don't run for 25 minutes at a time, it's stop-start and it's all about recovery," Daley says.
One of the other reasons that players have stopped plodding around for mile after mile, Daley says, is that runs of that nature were designed to shed a few pounds and get players back into shape. The Wolves players, however, are never out of shape.
Daley tells them to take a complete break for a fortnight at the end of the season but for the next four weeks they are expected to train every other day for about 45 minutes. It is easy to see whether or not they have been following the programme because they undergo four different physical tests four times a year, including at the start and end of the season, measuring their speed and agility, fatigue levels after sprinting, leg strength and aerobic capacity. Anyone whose results appear outside their normal range will stand out like a beacon.
Not that there is much chance of that happening. "I think the players are so much more professional now, and you can probably put that down to the foreigners that have come into the game," Karl Henry, the Wolves captain, says. "Before they came over, I think the drinking culture in the older players was something that was quite widespread, and people would come back out of shape, whereas now people come back and are weighing in at the same weight as they were when they left."
Henry has just finished several attempts at the speed and agility test, which requires players to sprint around four cones, laid out in a T-shape, in about nine seconds. Daley shouts out the times, which are all logged, as the players cross the line.
It is quite a contrast from the days when Henry remembers "running myself into the ground" as a youngster at Stoke. "It's still hard now but it's much more specific," he adds. "There's nothing specific about running up a hill or in a forest for a day and killing ourselves."
Having been split into two groups, the remainder of the Wolves players are taking part in games of head-tennis before they swap over to the physical work. The atmosphere is fairly relaxed, although the club's match analyst, James Lovell, who has been given the thankless task of refereeing, could do with some help from Hawk-Eye to prove to George Elokobi that he is not giving all the debatable points to the other team just because McCarthy is on their side. "You're not watching the game," barks Elokobi, much to the amusement of everyone else.
There was a time when McCarthy would have had a whistle around his neck and a stopwatch in his hand during pre-season but those days are long gone. "I've got guys who have gone to university and studied sports science and strength and conditioning," McCarthy says.
"Tony Daley is brilliant and so is Steve Kemp, the physio, and Matt Perry, the doctor. They head that team and I let them run it. And why would I not listen to them? It's like getting a builder in to do your house and then telling him how to do it. It's just not right."
McCarthy smiles when asked about some of the methods of yesteryear. "I remember being given salt tablets and told that would stop me getting cramp. Well, actually, stopping running seven miles in a morning would have stopped me getting cramp.
"It's more structured and scientific now. I've no doubt when I was doing pre-season my managers would have had it all planned what we were going to do: running, weight sessions, press-ups and sit-ups. But it just appeared that we always did it to exhaustion; players being sick. I've never seen players here being sick."
Training finishes at midday, giving the players an hour break before lunch and then a further two hours before they return for the tougher afternoon session.
When they come back they are once again divided into two groups, half of them starting off with Daley. A large square is set out for them to run around with a ball at their feet, dinking it over hurdles and dribbling around cones. By introducing the ball to a physical exercise the players have to maintain their technique while becoming fatigued. They work for four minutes before swapping over, completing the exercise three times in total.
The others are working with Connor, who stations half a dozen of them on the outside of a small grid and tasks them with keeping the ball from the two in the middle. The ball fizzes around, leaving Dave Edwards and Berra chasing shadows, before a few wayward passes prompt Connor to remind the players that, although pre-season has only just got under way, he still expects high standards. "I am not going to start chewing on my first day but I will get ratty," the Wolves assistant says.
All the while Neil Dallaway, who has recently joined the club as a GPS analyst intern, is standing over the laptop on the edge of the pitch, scanning his eyes across the figures that the small units on each player's back are registering with every step that they take. As the data is instant, it means that Daley can run across and take a quick look to check that the session is having the desired effect. "That's just what I was after," he says, after asking to take a look at a few of the players' heart rates.
Daley points out that "sport science doesn't rule the training field" but he also appreciates the value of using the technology to support his work. "It's a great tool," he says, "and the players have bought into it. We produce a rough report after every training session and it says distance covered, what their heart rate was, sprint distances. And, although it's not intended to be a competition, it becomes like that, because you hear players saying: 'I did X amount'. It's really about educating them. Some aren't bothered about it, but others will want to know why their stats are different to someone else's."
Kevin Doyle is one of those. The Irishman wanders over to Dallaway to inquire about his heart rate and how that compares with the other players after the first of three 800m runs that have to be completed in under three minutes, with a three-minute rest in between. It is the last exercise and the hardest part of the day by far. By the time the second run is over, there are a few people bent over, no doubt wishing there was not another 800m to come. "Come on lads, one more," Sylvan Ebanks-Blake says, trying to lift the mood.
Andy Keogh, Elokobi and Henry seem to be the pick of the runners, although there is little to choose between them, which is credit to someone like Jody Craddock, who turns 36 this month and is taking part in his 19th pre-season. "That was quite hard this afternoon," Craddock says after the players have finished their warm-down. "The running with the ball is designed to keep your concentration when you're a bit tired. It wasn't too hard – it's only the second day. We did the 800m and we'd knocked 30 seconds off each run from the day before. But it will get harder."
Not as tough, though, as when he started out with Cambridge United, in 1993. "One of the first few pre-seasons with Cambridge we would go to an army camp for a week. It was like you see in films – a lot of shouting, graft, running with logs on your shoulders, until they break you basically. And here we are now with everyone wearing heart monitors. It's beneficial to the player; they can take you to your limit and then hold you there as long as they want without pushing you over. I think the tendency when you were younger was to do too much too soon, because it wasn't monitored, and then you couldn't walk for a week with sore legs and blisters."
Any of the Wolves players who have aches and pains after the end of their second day of pre-season have the medical staff on hand to offer them a massage. Most, however, are just keen to get back to their rooms and cross off another training session. "Pre-season is the one horrible part of being a footballer, and some of the runs are terrible but look at the facilities here," Henry says, surveying the surroundings. "We are here on a lovely day with nice pitches to train on. There's not much to moan about really."
Training day
Wolves' first week of pre-season training made summer holidays seem a distant memory
7-8am Light breakfast (optional)
8.30-9.30am Players report to gym and are divided into two groups, alternating between doing the jump test (measures leg strength) and a leg-weight session. Players given a protein recovery shake immediately afterwards
9.30-10.30am Breakfast (cereal/fruit/eggs)
11am – noon Stretching. Players divided into two groups, alternating between the T-test (speed/agility) and head-tennis
1pm Lunch (carbohydrate and protein-based)
3.15pm-3.35pm Dynamic stretching session (on the move rather than static)
3.35pm Players divided into two groups, alternating between an endurance session with the ball (dribbling around cones, lifting it over hurdles and running with it at their feet for four minutes) and a keep-ball session, when they are, in effect, recovering from the other exercise. Three times through on each exercise
4.10pm-4.25pm Players have to complete three 800m runs each inside three minutes, with three minutes of rest in between the runs
4.25pm A 10-minute cool down followed by ice baths, massage and rest
6pm Dinner (carbohydrate and protein based) followed by rest for the players
Tests and checks
Heart-rate monitors and GPS
Heart-rate monitors have been used for some time but hi-tech GPS (Global Positioning System) units and the real-time software that come with them are not so common. The instant data that the GPS devices provide allows the coaches at Wolverhampton Wanderers to monitor the physical performance of their players on the training ground while the session is taking place and tailor training to replicate each player's work on a match day
Close-season training
The Wolves players are told to take a complete break from exercise for two weeks at the end of the season, but they are given a programme to follow over the next four weeks that requires them to train for 45 minutes every other day, ensuring that they report back for pre-season in reasonable shape and close to their normal level of fitness
Regular testing
Wolves carry out four tests four times a year – the start and end of pre-season, the end of December (depending on the match schedule) and the end of the season – to measure players' speed/agility, endurance, leg strength and aerobic capacity. The results are logged and the players are expected to stay within a specified range whenever tested
Weighing and body-fat testing
The players are regularly weighed, including before and after each training session during pre-season, when the club monitor fluid loss. Measuring the players' body composition in millimetres gives the club an idea of lean-muscle mass and what percentage of their body is fat. The players are measured in eight areas and, as with the physical testing, need to maintain their target levels |
Shona Banda 37, (who published a book about her use of cannabis for her Chron’s disease and has undergone 17 surgeries) had custody of her son taken away from her after he disagreed with things being said at a “drug education” talk at his school.
Marijuana Speech
It’s hard enough being a single divorced mom raising a family. But for Shona Banda it’s particularly difficult right now. Bonda is the author of a book “Live Free or Die: Reclaim your Life . . . Reclaim your Country!” that recounts her use of a concentrated cannabis oil to treat Crohn’s Disease. Banda had her son taken away from her simply because he made some comments at “drug and alcohol” talk at his school where they undoubtedly told him that marijuana was bad. They often tout this plant as being far worse than booze or even the habitual use of cigarettes. Thankfully a GO FUND ME page has raised more than $28K for her legal defense.
After her son challenged the education talk they went to search the house because, well that’s just how things go in the United States these days. From the article on how they searched her private residence:
“Banda refused to allow officers to search the home, and police stayed at the scene and denied her entry to it until they could obtain a search warrant. A search subsequently found about marijuana and a lab for manufacturing cannabis oil on the kitchen table and counters, drug paraphernalia and other related items, police said. Authorities said the items were within easy reach of the child.”
So earlier this week we had a veterinarian in Texas who shot a neighbors 6 year old pet kitty Tiger, dead in a back yard with a bow and arrow (through his head) and posted it a picture of it on Facebook, but we cannot get a search warrant on that to get the body of the cat or even an arrest, but if a child mentions his mom makes Cannabis oil from a plant for Chron’s disease they’ll sit there at her front door while that warrant is being issued. Something is terribly wrong here, not just with this incident, but in this country, where a plant that helps people is demonized while the majority of the general public believes that it should be legalized.
We hope Shona will gain custody of her child back and cannot imagine how tough it must be knowing he’s in “child protective services” when he was probably far safer with his mother.
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Lurid insect imagery secures prize for The Shape of Her, just ahead of Alastair Campbell, who was disqualified for wanting to win
With one killer sentence using the image of a butterfly collector – "like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her" – the novelist Rowan Somerville demolished all comers and secured this year's coveted Literary Review Bad Sex award.
The Shape of Her is Somerville's second novel. He graciously accepted the honour, presented by film director and food critic Michael Winner, saying: "There is nothing more English than bad sex, so on behalf of the entire nation I would like to thank you."
The judges were also impressed by his nature notes, such as the pubic hair "like desert vegetation following an underground stream", and the passage: "He unbuttoned the front of her shirt and pulled it to the side so that her breast was uncovered, her nipple poking out, upturned like the nose of the loveliest nocturnal animal, sniffing the night. He took it between his lips and sucked the salt from her."
Somerville narrowly defeated Alastair Campbell, nominated not for his political diaries but his novel Maya. The judges felt his naked enthusiasm for winning disqualified him.
In this week's Observer, Campbell explained: "People have wondered if I am bluffing when I say I want to win. I do know that on Monday night they will have a very good laugh if they read certain passages out aloud. There is a bit where my central character describes a pair of breasts as 'perfect desirable objects' and they may well think that is a wanky line. But Steve is an unreliable narrator and that is the way he sees it. If some people get aroused by reading the sex scene, then fine, but these lines are mainly about the significance of this moment for the character."
The award was established in 1993 by the late Auberon Waugh to draw attention to the "crude, tasteless, and often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in contemporary novels, and to discourage it". The judges felt that far from putting Campbell off, they would risk merely encouraging him to further excesses.
The prize usually goes to painfully serious prose. Campbell is one of the few who has also written explicit erotica – which is barred from the prize – in his pre-Blairite spin doctor incarnation as a columnist for the magazine Forum.
He does have the satisfaction of beating his former boss Tony Blair to the shortlist. Many readers felt Blair should have walked it for the excruciatingly unforgettable description in his autobiography, of himself with his wife Cherie on the night of 12 May 1994: "I devoured it to give me strength. I was an animal following my instinct."
The judges did consider making The Journey the first non-fiction book ever nominated, but finally concluded that the passage was too brief to merit it. The other contenders for this year's award included the hugely-acclaimed Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, Booker prize shortlistee The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, and poet Craig Raine's first prose novel Heartbreak.
In 2003, the columnist and former Today editor Rod Liddle was dropped from the shortlist when some of the judges felt his sex scenes were actually rather well done. He argued that they were unqualified to assess this since nobody on the Literary Review had had sex since 1936 in Abyssinia. He was duly reinstated, but in the event lost out to the Indian author Aniruddha Bahal, for his novel Bunker 13 – whose publishers, Faber and Faber, were so proud of the honour that they flew him over from Delhi to accept the award.
Previous winners include Rachel Johnson, for her novel Shire Hell. Johnson is now editor of the Lady, where the formidable owner Julia Budworth recently remarked: "You can never get her away from penises. I think it comes from growing up with all those boys" . |
Back in 2000, scientists discovered one of the largest icebergs ever detected. Named B-15, it measured 170 miles (270 km) long and 25 miles (40 km) wide. Now, some 15 years later, the iceberg has broken up into a number of smaller fragments, but one chunk is still surprisingly large.
At its height, iceberg B-15 was nearly as large as the state of Connecticut. Icebergs typically get caught up in the swirling Antarctic currents and fall apart, but some, like this one, stay trapped in the cool coastal waters and remain there for decades.
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The largest surviving fragment of B-15, named B-15T, was recently spotted by NASA's Operational Land Imager. The object is located amid sea ice off the Princess Astrid Coast and measures 32 miles (52 km) long and 8 miles (13 km) wide. The U.S. National Ice Center (NIC) reports that eight chunks from the original are still around, but none compare to B-15T.
[ NASA Earth Observatory ]
Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. |
Maximum Overdrive This is the only film ever directed by gajillionaire horror author Stephen King, and according to the cheesy trailer, he decided to get behind the camera for this 1986 bomb because after watching the film adaptations that others had made of his stories, he finally decided, “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” Well, if Brian De Palma and Stanley Kubrick got King “wrong” with Carrie and The Shining, and King got himself “right” with Maximum Overdrive, then maybe King’s work was meant to be butchered. Based on his own mediocre short story “Trucks,” King’s film depicts cars, semi trucks, and other machinery coming to life and killing people, apparently because of a passing comet (although it’s later revealed in a terrible anti-twist that it was actually a UFO that caused all the craziness). This movie is big, dumb, and loud, though not quite as much fun as a big, dumb, loud movie should be. King has claimed he was “coked out of [his] mind” when he made Maximum Overdrive, but then again, he was also a raging addict when he wrote masterpieces like The Stand, too, so that may just be a lame excuse.
The Car Before Christine, there was The Car. This 1977 camp classic stars James Brolin as the deputy of a small town that’s being terrorized by the titular car, which is killing bike riders and hitchhikers in the area. Although you can’t really tell because of its tinted windows, the car—which is actually a heavily customized 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III—has no driver (dun-dun-DUN!). It’s some sort of demonic sedan that has come straight from Hell to run over a couple people and make an annoyingly loud honking noise (Church of Satan leader Anton LaVey got a “Technical Advisor” credit on the film, so he must have been the expert who confirmed that that’s what cars from Hell sound like). The driving stunts aren’t half bad, and the cheese factor is high enough to make this a pretty fun beer-and-pizza movie. Invite some friends over and enjoy watching a car try to kill Josh Brolin’s dad.
Death Proof Quentin Tarantino’s least successful film (both commercially and critically), Death Proof is actually an entertaining-enough slasher film that stars the eternally awesome Kurt Russell as a retired stunt driver named Mike, who still rides around in his old 1971 Chevy Nova SS 396. The vintage stunt car is rigged with a safety cage that makes it “death proof,” though only for the driver (hint hint). Released in 2007 as a double feature with the admittedly superior Planet Terror, this movie includes some good action, more than an earful of Tarantino’s trademark dialogue, and fun tropes lifted from the exploitation films of the 70s. This movie also comes highly recommended for automotive enthusiasts, who will definitely share the main characters’ love of muscle cars.
Christine Oh look, another Stephen King movie! And fortunately, this time it’s a better one. In fact, back in 1983, Christine was a pretty huge deal for horror fans: it tasked one of the genre’s favorite directors (John Carpenter) with bringing to life a classic tale from its most prolific writer (King). Christine tells the story of a nerdy kid by the name of Arnie who gets his hands on a decrepit 1958 Plymouth Fury, the titular Christine, and sets about toward the goal of restoring her to her former glory. Christine is cherry all right, but that’s largely because she has the ability to regenerate herself to showroom quality…as well as track down and brutally murder the bullies who vandalized her. Christine is an appropriately spooky yarn that’s capably directed by Carpenter (here clearly closer to his prime than, say, Ghosts of Mars form). The acting verges on hokey more often than not, but the presence of Harry Dean Stanton manages to balance a lot of that out (since he’s always a welcome presence). The score, as in every Carpenter film from the ‘80s, is great, and there’s more than enough ‘50s nostalgia to go around. Long and short: Christine has a little something for everyone, and it’s well worth a look. |
Brace yourself, America – the Democrats may be about to pull Hillary Clinton from the 2016 presidential ticket. And that could mean it’s “Biden Time.”
Clinton, once thought the inevitable nominee, looks weaker than ever. As Donald Trump unites the GOP and wins the support of onetime enemies like Marco Rubio, Clinton is still mired in an unexpectedly brutal primary with 74-year-old socialist Bernie Sanders.
Then a scathing new report from an inspector general for the State Department suggested the legal and political fallout from the email scandal is just beginning.
And Clinton’s huge lead in the polls has vanished, with some polls even showing Trump pulling ahead.
All this is leading to speculation the Democrats will try to substitute Biden as the nominee at the Democratic convention.
What do YOU think? Will Clinton be the Democratic Party presidential candidate? Sound off in today’s WND poll
Well-known investigative reporter and political commentator Carl Bernstein argued on CNN his own reporting has revealed people in the Clinton camp knew Hillary Clinton set up a private email server so she would not be subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
Bernstein said the former first lady’s problems are “about lying” and called her actions “reckless.” Bernstein also added the explosive claim Democratic Party leaders are “terrified” Hillary’s campaign “is in freefall.”
National Review Online’s national-affairs correspond John Fund reports Democrat leaders are quietly “laying the groundwork to implement Plan B [a Biden/Warren ticket] if they think it will be necessary.”
In a recent column, Ann Coulter pondered whether Barack Obama, widely believed to have a contentious relationship with Hillary Clinton, would allow Clinton to be indicted.
This would pave the way for a Joe Biden/Elizabeth Warren ticket. At a recent rally, Donald Trump suggested such a plan is already being widely discussed.
“I hear they’re going to actually slip Joe Biden in, and he’s going to take Bernie’s place,” Trump said.
Mike Towle, a veteran reporter who has written more than 15 books, suggests there’s a 50 percent chance it could actually happen, even with the general election less than six months away.
Related articles (story continues below):
Trump to Savage: I’d rather face Hillary than Bernie
‘Crazy’ Bernie, ‘goofy’ Biden or ‘crooked’ Hillary?
Clinton impeachment could determine election
Donald Trump turns to Hollywood for campaign help
‘Never Trump’ crowd hints at candidate David French
“In the ‘old normal’ world of politics, that would be too short a time to run a substitute candidate, but this is the ‘new normal’ world of Trump and Sanders so throw out the rule book,” Towle told WND. “Throw out the rule book. Replacing Hillary with Biden – or even Liz Warren – could take place as late as July without further dragging down the Dems’ chances of keeping the White House.”
Towle has chronicled some of Joseph Biden’s most outrageous and baffling declarations in his book “Biden Time: Crazy Uncle Joe In His Own Words.” Despite Biden’s well-known history of putting his foot in his mouth, Towle argues Biden will not face the same criticism for his gaffes as does Donald Trump.
“What benefits Biden politically in terms of his verbal missteps – such as the infamous Indians/Dunkin Donuts remark he made years back – is the double standard ‘progressives’ (a misleading term if ever there was one) have when it comes to political incorrectness,” Towle said. “Biden or any other Dem politician will always be forgiven by party loyalists for anti-PC statements, while the likes of Trump get slammed from all sides for anti-PC comments, even when they’re based in truth. In that regard, the Dems’ general lack of objectivity grates at me.”
Is this who the Democrats are really going to run in 2016? A hilarious look at Joe Biden, in his own words. “Biden Time” available now in the WND Superstore.
However, Towle suggested no matter how long the odds, Hillary Clinton will tenaciously fight to keep the position to which she believes she is entitled.
“Hillary still gives off the vibe she is entitled to the presidency, and you know she and Bill will fight to the gates of hell to keep her in the race,” he said. “The Clintons together are a very formidable force in the Democratic Party, where many Dem power brokers cower before them.”
But if Hillary Clinton stays in the race, some Democrats are terrified she will be crushed by Trump. And the mainstream media are reluctantly admitting Hillary may not have what it takes to defeat The Donald.
David Bernstein at Politico calls it a “terrifying moment” for Democrats and warns “panic is beginning to set in.”
In a piece praising Elizabeth Warren’s attacks on Trump, Jim Newell at Slate concedes Clinton backers have an “inability to settle on an overarching story about Trump” even as Trump revels in blasting Clinton as “Crooked Hillary.”
And press outlets normally favorable to Hillary are beginning to criticize the Democrat front-runner, with the editors of the Washington Post lambasting Clinton’s “inexcusable, willful disregard for the rules” when handling her communications as secretary of state. In a blistering editorial, the paper urged the FBI to finish its investigation quickly “so all information about this troubling episode will be before the voters.”
If the Democrats pull Hillary at the last minute, it wouldn’t be the first time the party used an emergency substitution to win an election. In 2002, notorious Democratic Sen. Robert “The Torch” Torricelli of New Jersey pulled out of an election he looked likely to lose after being enmeshed in scandal. Former Sen. Frank Lautenberg took Torricelli’s spot as the Democrat nominee and was able to keep the seat for his party in the general election.
Towle argues Biden offers certain advantages over Hillary, especially in competing with Trump for white working-class voters.
“That’s one area in which he can cut into Trump territory,” Towle observes. “Biden grew up upper middle class, but he doesn’t come from high-rolling privilege or wealth. While Biden in no way would ever be considered blue-collar, he can connect with working class folks because he has worked hard to get to where he is, overcoming setbacks and not being blessed with a lot of book smarts. Plus he’s kept putting one foot in front of the other despite several personal tragedies in his life as well as his own near-death experience. He is approachable and he is flawed, yet he is a person of accomplishment. Many people recognize that in him.”
Towle also believes Biden has a certain authenticity that Hillary lacks.
“What Biden has going for him that Hillary doesn’t is transparency – he’s human,” Towle says of his subject. “He says some dumb things at times, but he has the ability to laugh at himself and he has a good heart. He’s a good man, and voters from both parties know deep down that to be true.”
But it’s by no means certain Biden is a much better candidate overall than Hillary.
“Biden has a cleaner bill of political health and a lot less baggage than Hillary does, but he’s also been a dreadful candidate numbers-wise the two times he has run in 1998 and 2008,” said Towle. “The question Dems have to ask themselves, is it better to run with goofy (Biden) or ‘crooked’ (Hillary)? If I were a Democrat, I would lean to the former, because at least now Biden has seven-plus years of VP on his resume and that, pardon the expression, trumps whatever Hillary can put on an application.”
Towle says it is impossible to overstate what a weak candidate Hillary Clinton really is.
“The most amazing thing about the 2016 election cycle is not the Donald Trump factor – it is how a fringe, relatively unknown candidate such as Bernie Sanders has lasted this long in the ring with Hillary when she should have been trouncing him by 30 or 40 points in every state along the way,” he told WND. “Mind-boggling. It goes to show how disliked she really is, a horrible candidate even without the email scandal thrown in.”
For that reason, some Republicans anxious to take back the White House in 2016 may actually be hoping Hillary Clinton can hang on to her lead in the polls – for a little bit longer, at least. But if Biden does become the nominee, Towle says it at least guarantees an entertaining campaign with two notoriously outrageous candidates competing for the nation’s highest office.
“Maybe one of the reasons Biden hasn’t taken Hillary’s place yet is because the shorter his campaign is, the lesser the odds he will screw up in a town hall, a forum or a debate,” Towle said. “Debates between Trump and Biden would be classic. Biden’s debating Paul Ryan in the 2012 VP debates was meaningless in speculating how debates with Trump would play out. Ryan’s almost-boring academic/intellectual approach is totally the opposite of El Trumpo.
“Trump would be hammering away at Joe, belittling him right and left, while Biden would just keep shaking his head and flashing that million-dollar smile while scolding Trump every chance he got. Trump’s dynamic stage presence would disarm Biden at first but also would bring out another combative side of Biden we really haven’t seen but which I believe is buried in there somewhere.
“Let the games begin!”
Is this who the Democrats are really going to run in 2016? A hilarious look at Joe Biden, in his own words. “Biden Time” available now in the WND Superstore. |
Be Quiet! Announces Shadow Rock LP CPU Cooler
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| Source: Be Quiet Author: Mark Campbell
Be Quiet! Announces Shadow Rock LP CPU Cooler
be quiet!, the market leader in PC power supplies in Germany for nine consecutive years*, extends its cooler range with a new model in a smaller size: the Shadow Rock LP is characterised by its compact low-profile design and high cooling capacity, making it ideal for use in space-saving but powerful desktop systems and home theatre PCs (HTPCs).
The Shadow Rock LP has been developed with a focus on a perfect ratio of power to noise level. It can cope with a TDP of up to 130 watts despite its compact dimensions of 134 x 122 x 75.4 millimetre (L x W x H). Even then, it produces a maximum noise level of no more than 25.5 decibels. be quiet! achieves this through an optimal interaction between the numerous aluminium fins, four powerful 6 millimetre heat pipes and the Pure Wings 2 fan. The latter comes in a 120-millimetre PWM-version and has nine airflow-optimised fan blades and a durable rifle bearing. As a result, the manufacturer guarantees an optimal operating noise and long-term reliability.
Top-design and broad compatibility
be quiet! has equipped the Shadow Rock LP with a brushed aluminum top cover to bring the elegant design of its cooler range to this model. The ends of the heat pipes have been equipped with fitting aluminum caps as well. In addition to this special design, the high performance and the low operating noise, the Shadow Rock LP offers broad compatibility and supports all popular Intel and AMD sockets.
Wide application range and favourable price
Due to its compact design and excellent performance, the Shadow Rock LP is a real space saver and stands out as the best cooling solution for many applications; whether it be in low-profile HTPCs, small multimedia configurations or entry-level gaming systems - the Shadow Rock LP is a good match for all these systems. The installation could hardly be easier, since assembly is done from the front side of the motherboard.
The be quiet! Shadow Rock LP is available now at a suggested retail price of €48,00.
You can join the discussion on the Be Quiet Shadow Rock LP CPU cooler on the OC3D Forums.
Meet Be Quiet's Shadow Rock LP CPU Cooler, a low-profile design with high cooling capacity. http://t.co/VmgKgB8uM8 pic.twitter.com/LSoTHAW0xq — OC3D (@OC3D) April 14, 2015
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Review: Ant Raid
Score:
75%
If 90s animated films have taught us anything, it is not easy being a colony of ants. The peaceful little insects just want to live together in harmony but instead always find themselves tormented by bigger and badder bugs. Another fact that animated children's films have shown is that humans are always the bad guys. These two life lessons have combined to make the premise of Ant Raid; an opening sequence sees an ill-fated attempt at pest control turn the game's other insects from happy bugs to mutant ant-killers.
Buy Link | Download / Information Link
Players take control of ants to defend their bases, using fairly basic RTS (Real Time Strategy) elements to fight off waves of rabid bugs. Tapping on the screen brings up a circular select area, which can be expanded to highlight more ants through a longer press. The more ants that attack an incoming bug, the quicker it is knocked out. It is a deviously simple concept that is given depth through different types and colours of bugs.
Each attacking insect poses a different challenge, from the snails that knock out the ants that are attacking them to beetles that flip over and must be attacked twice. It is here that strategy really comes into Ant Raid as your defending army of ants must be carefully micromanaged to deal with multiple threats at the same time, ensuring that both no insects reach the base nor all ants get wiped out. As each type of bug is introduced slowly through the story, players are faced with an excellent learning curve, with the latter levels proving extremely challenging and thoroughly rewarding upon completion.
Another layer of complexity comes through the colours of the attackers, which represent power-ups that can be harvested when killed. Activating a blue power-up revives all ants and makes them indestructible, making taking care of snails and beetles a breeze. The red power up makes ants quicker and can be combined with the blue power to transform ants into golden super-soldiers that destroy enemies in moments, turning hectic waves of attacks into a much more doable task.
Finally there is the green power-up, which changes the game completely. Control of the ants is relinquished as the player becomes an all-powerful being, able to squash attacking bugs with a tap of the screen. Players must be careful not to miss a strike though, as the lightning bolt sent down will strike the ground, causing an earthquake and damaging the home base.
In its best moments, Ant Raid brings all these elements into a challenging and fun strategy game. Unfortunately, it feels unable to truly reach its entertainment potential, with every-so-slightly clumsy controls. In moments of screen-filling, frantic, attacks, controls and instructions can be inaccurate, leading to frustratingly missing attackers and failing a level. It is a problem not helped by the lack of pinch-zoom, as map adjustments are certainly missed when the going gets tough.
Ant Raid is comprised of two modes, story and survival. The story mode brings together objective-based levels with a loose storyline, using comic-book style cut scenes to keep things flowing. Whilst it is a good method of slowly introducing new gameplay elements, some of the collection missions are uninspired and the story becomes very repetitive. For players looking to test their RTS skills there is a pure survival mode, which pits the ants against endless waves of enemies in a bid to get as high a score as possible.
Visually, Ant Raid is great, with the crisp and detailed models complemented nicely with a vibrant colour palette and musical score. Each little ant really feels like they have their own personality, making the task of protecting their base all the more important.
Ant Raid isn't a ground-breaking RTS game and it certainly isn't without its flaws. It is, however, a great little game, ideal for play in short bursts. Simple enough to pick up and play, yet challenging enough to keep players coming back, Ant Raid is definitely a game worth checking out. |
Over the course of his career, Kim Stanley Robinson has written some of the best known — and most plausible — works of science fiction: Red Mars, 2312, and Aurora, just to name a few. Robinson’s books are incredibly detailed, chock-full of realistic science, and almost always carry with them a relevant message about the present.
In his latest novel, New York 2140, Robinson takes a look at the future of the planet as sea levels rise due to a warming climate and the changes civilization needs to make in order to survive. It’s surreal to be reading this book right now, especially against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s dismissal of the dangers that climate change poses. There’s already a number of fairly bleak novels out there about the affects of climate change. (Look no further than Paolo Bacigalupi’s excellent novels The Windup Girl and The Water Knife.) But Robinson’s book feels like the most optimistic take on our future yet. Sure, the water levels will rise, the Earth is going through a mass extinction event, and a lot of people will die as a result, but when things get really bad, society, he seems to suggest, can still manage to survive.
Robinson imagines a world where humanity doesn’t react in time to slow down climate change. In 2140, New York City is the new Venice, with canals replacing its streets, and people going about their lives in this new world. Robinson depicts that life with a multitude of characters, all of whom come together around the building that they all inhabit, Manhattan’s MetLife Tower. There’s Mutt and Jeff, a pair of programmers who are kidnapped after they unleash a bug in the financial markets, while Inspector Gen, an imposing and well-connected city police officer, sets off to look into their disappearance. Franklin is a hedge fund manager who’s making a decent living betting on a housing bubble with real estate prices in the drowned coastlines, while 12-year-olds Stefan and Roberto are looking to literally strike it rich when they come across a centuries-old sunken treasure under the ruins of the Bronx. Amelia is a bubbly nature video blogger who travels the world in an airship, documenting the fragile nature of the world’s biosphere. Charlotte is a social advocate who helps run the Met building, and Vlade is the building’s super. Finally, there’s an anonymous, sarcastic “citizen” who helps narrate, outlining the events that led up to novel.
Robinson has a ton of plates up in the air for this story, and he largely pulls off this enormously ambitious, complicated narrative by following an unconventional structure that creates a mosaic of events instead of a straightforward plot. That complexity adds to the feeling of realism as the characters come together to fend off hostile takeovers of their home building and the rising floodwaters of New York City, and all of this happens as the forefront of Robinson’s larger exploration of humanity’s impact on the planet.
The book is heavily influenced by the 2008 financial meltdown
The result is a compelling, if at times, complicated read. New York 2140 is an intriguing book that’s part thought experiment, part character drama, and part world-building exercise to look at the varied impact that climate change will have on human society. He plays with a number of ambitious ideas here, linking climate change to centuries of destructive economic policy and the financial and social impact of climate change. This is a book influenced by the 2008 financial crisis that occurred the beginning of the Obama administration, and it’s keenly aware of the relationship between the state of the economy and the world’s climate. By the end of the novel, Robinson comes up with some ideas that would make the Bernie Sanders / Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party pretty happy: putting the brakes on unfettered capitalism to help save the planet.
There are a couple places where Robinson takes his eyes off the story right in front of him, and a big, climactic storm feels a little too convenient for the plot. However, the flaws in this novel are outweighed by the glorious future New York City that Robinson has lovingly put together. It’s a setting that feels completely real, vibrant, and visceral as he takes us up and down a city that’s adapted to water life: buildings have installed waterproofing measures and garages for boats, while people walk overhead in skywalks that connect the buildings to one another. The city is easily a character in its own right.
The Earth’s climate is changing: the oceans are growing more acidic, hundreds of animal species are going extinct, and the atmosphere is growing warmer and warmer. New York 2140 points to the reasons for why: humans simply can’t recognize how their short-term actions play out on a geologic scale, and now that we’re starting to reap the consequences, his characters are trying to make the world better in their own ways. Robinson’s novel is a dire warning for the future that likely faces us if enormous, civilization-changing fixes aren’t made. It doesn’t seem likely that those fixes will be made anytime soon, but he’s at least optimistic that people will eventually come around and start to do something. Better late than never. |
In looking for an add-on lens for my S7, I wanted both a fisheye lens for panoramic stitching and a macro lens for magnifying stuff (like bugs). This set of lenses fits the bill. One of the key features of this product is that it seems like it will work with a lot of different phones. Other current options for add-on lenses are often limited to a few brands or even specific phone models. The downside to a generic lens like this one, is that you have to carefully adjust the clip/lens over the camera lens at first and because it's not super-tight, you will have to adjust from time-to-time as the clip moves around. Another downside with a universal clip lens is that it doesn't always lie exactly parallel to the camera lens. This leads to some distortion on the edges of an image. One final thing I'd like to point out is that for macro shots, the phone's LED flash is not too useful as-is because the clip-on lens blocks a lot of the light on the object of interest. One solution is to use an external lamp.
Read more |
Two adolescents listening to music Adolescents of diverse ethnicities in Oslo
Adolescence (from Latin adolescere, meaning 'to grow up')[1] is a transitional stage of physical and psychological development that generally occurs during the period from puberty to legal adulthood (age of majority).[1][2][3] Adolescence is usually associated with the teenage years,[3][4][5][6] but its physical, psychological or cultural expressions may begin earlier and end later. For example, puberty now typically begins during preadolescence, particularly in females.[4][7][8][9][10] Physical growth (particularly in males) and cognitive development can extend into the early twenties. Thus, age provides only a rough marker of adolescence, and scholars have found it difficult to agree upon a precise definition of adolescence.[7][8][11][12]
A thorough understanding of adolescence in society depends on information from various perspectives, including psychology, biology, history, sociology, education, and anthropology. Within all of these perspectives, adolescence is viewed as a transitional period between childhood and adulthood, whose cultural purpose is the preparation of children for adult roles.[13] It is a period of multiple transitions involving education, training, employment, and unemployment, as well as transitions from one living circumstance to another.[14]
The end of adolescence and the beginning of adulthood varies by country. Furthermore, even within a single nation state or culture, there can be different ages at which an individual is considered mature enough for society to entrust them with certain privileges and responsibilities. Such privileges and responsibilities include driving a vehicle, having legal sexual relations, serving in the armed forces or on a jury, purchasing and drinking alcohol, voting, entering into contracts, finishing certain levels of education, marriage, and accountability for upholding the law. Adolescence is usually accompanied by an increased independence allowed by the parents or legal guardians, including less supervision as compared to preadolescence.
In studying adolescent development,[15] adolescence can be defined biologically, as the physical transition marked by the onset of puberty and the termination of physical growth; cognitively, as changes in the ability to think abstractly and multi-dimensionally; or socially, as a period of preparation for adult roles. Major pubertal and biological changes include changes to the sex organs, height, weight, and muscle mass, as well as major changes in brain structure and organization. Cognitive advances encompass both increment in knowledge and in the ability to think abstractly and to reason more effectively. The study of adolescent development often involves interdisciplinary collaborations. For example, researchers in neuroscience or bio-behavioral health might focus on pubertal changes in brain structure and its effects on cognition or social relations. Sociologists interested in adolescence might focus on the acquisition of social roles (e.g., worker or romantic partner) and how this varies across cultures or social conditions.[16] Developmental psychologists might focus on changes in relations with parents and peers as a function of school structure and pubertal status.[17] Some scientists have questioned the universality of adolescence as a developmental phase, arguing that traits often considered typical of adolescents are not in fact inherent to the teenage years.
Biological development
Puberty in general
Upper body of a teenage boy. The structure has changed to resemble an adult form.
Puberty is a period of several years in which rapid physical growth and psychological changes occur, culminating in sexual maturity. The average age of onset of puberty is at 11 for girls and 12 for boys.[18][19] Every person's individual timetable for puberty is influenced primarily by heredity, although environmental factors, such as diet and exercise, also exert some influences.[20][21] These factors can also contribute to precocious and delayed puberty.[12][21]
Some of the most significant parts of pubertal development involve distinctive physiological changes in individuals' height, weight, body composition, and circulatory and respiratory systems.[22] These changes are largely influenced by hormonal activity. Hormones play an organizational role, priming the body to behave in a certain way once puberty begins,[23] and an active role, referring to changes in hormones during adolescence that trigger behavioral and physical changes.[24]
Puberty occurs through a long process and begins with a surge in hormone production, which in turn causes a number of physical changes. It is the stage of life characterized by the appearance and development of secondary sex characteristics (for example, a deeper voice and larger adam's apple in boys, and development of breasts and more curved and prominent hips in girls) and a strong shift in hormonal balance towards an adult state. This is triggered by the pituitary gland, which secretes a surge of hormonal agents into the blood stream, initiating a chain reaction to occur. The male and female gonads are subsequently activated, which puts them into a state of rapid growth and development; the triggered gonads now commence the mass production of the necessary chemicals. The testes primarily release testosterone, and the ovaries predominantly dispense estrogen. The production of these hormones increases gradually until sexual maturation is met. Some boys may develop gynecomastia due to an imbalance of sex hormones, tissue responsiveness or obesity.[25]
Facial hair in males normally appears in a specific order during puberty: The first facial hair to appear tends to grow at the corners of the upper lip, typically between 14 and 17 years of age.[26][27] It then spreads to form a moustache over the entire upper lip. This is followed by the appearance of hair on the upper part of the cheeks, and the area under the lower lip.[26] The hair eventually spreads to the sides and lower border of the chin, and the rest of the lower face to form a full beard.[26] As with most human biological processes, this specific order may vary among some individuals. Facial hair is often present in late adolescence, around ages 17 and 18, but may not appear until significantly later.[27][28] Some men do not develop full facial hair for 10 years after puberty.[27] Facial hair continues to get coarser, darker and thicker for another 2–4 years after puberty.[27]
The major landmark of puberty for males is spermarche, the first ejaculation, which occurs, on average, at age 13.[29] For females, it is menarche, the onset of menstruation, which occurs, on average, between ages 12 and 13.[20][30][31][32] The age of menarche is influenced by heredity, but a girl's diet and lifestyle contribute as well.[20] Regardless of genes, a girl must have a certain proportion of body fat to attain menarche.[20] Consequently, girls who have a high-fat diet and who are not physically active begin menstruating earlier, on average, than girls whose diet contains less fat and whose activities involve fat reducing exercise (e.g. ballet and gymnastics).[20][21] Girls who experience malnutrition or are in societies in which children are expected to perform physical labor also begin menstruating at later ages.[20]
The timing of puberty can have important psychological and social consequences. Early maturing boys are usually taller and stronger than their friends.[33] They have the advantage in capturing the attention of potential partners and in becoming hand-picked for sports. Pubescent boys often tend to have a good body image, are more confident, secure, and more independent.[34] Late maturing boys can be less confident because of poor body image when comparing themselves to already developed friends and peers. However, early puberty is not always positive for boys; early sexual maturation in boys can be accompanied by increased aggressiveness due to the surge of hormones that affect them.[34] Because they appear older than their peers, pubescent boys may face increased social pressure to conform to adult norms; society may view them as more emotionally advanced, despite the fact that their cognitive and social development may lag behind their appearance.[34] Studies have shown that early maturing boys are more likely to be sexually active and are more likely to participate in risky behaviors.[35]
For girls, early maturation can sometimes lead to increased self-consciousness, though a typical aspect in maturing females.[36] Because of their bodies' developing in advance, pubescent girls can become more insecure and dependent.[36] Consequently, girls that reach sexual maturation early are more likely than their peers to develop eating disorders (such as anorexia nervosa). Nearly half of all American high school girls' diets are to lose weight.[36] In addition, girls may have to deal with sexual advances from older boys before they are emotionally and mentally mature.[37] In addition to having earlier sexual experiences and more unwanted pregnancies than late maturing girls, early maturing girls are more exposed to alcohol and drug abuse.[38] Those who have had such experiences tend to perform not as well in school as their "inexperienced" peers.[39]
Girls have usually reached full physical development around ages 15–17,[3][19][40] while boys usually complete puberty around ages 16–17.[19][40][41] Any increase in height beyond the post-pubertal age is uncommon. Girls attain reproductive maturity about four years after the first physical changes of puberty appear.[3] In contrast, boys accelerate more slowly but continue to grow for about six years after the first visible pubertal changes.[34][41]
Approximate outline of development periods in child and teenager development. Adolescence is marked in red at top right.
Growth spurt
The adolescent growth spurt is a rapid increase in the individual's height and weight during puberty resulting from the simultaneous release of growth hormones, thyroid hormones, and androgens.[42] Males experience their growth spurt about two years later, on average, than females. During their peak height velocity (the time of most rapid growth), adolescents grow at a growth rate nearly identical to that of a toddler—about 4 inches (10.3 cm) a year for males and 3.5 inches (9 cm) for females.[43] In addition to changes in height, adolescents also experience a significant increase in weight (Marshall, 1978). The weight gained during adolescence constitutes nearly half of one's adult body weight.[43] Teenage and early adult males may continue to gain natural muscle growth even after puberty.[34]
The accelerated growth in different body parts happens at different times, but for all adolescents it has a fairly regular sequence. The first places to grow are the extremities—the head, hands and feet—followed by the arms and legs, then the torso and shoulders.[44] This non-uniform growth is one reason why an adolescent body may seem out of proportion.
During puberty, bones become harder and more brittle. At the conclusion of puberty, the ends of the long bones close during the process called epiphysis. There can be ethnic differences in these skeletal changes. For example, in the United States of America, bone density increases significantly more among black than white adolescents, which might account for decreased likelihood of black women developing osteoporosis and having fewer bone fractures there.[45]
Another set of significant physical changes during puberty happen in bodily distribution of fat and muscle. This process is different for females and males. Before puberty, there are nearly no sex differences in fat and muscle distribution; during puberty, boys grow muscle much faster than girls, although both sexes experience rapid muscle development. In contrast, though both sexes experience an increase in body fat, the increase is much more significant for girls. Frequently, the increase in fat for girls happens in their years just before puberty. The ratio between muscle and fat among post-pubertal boys is around three to one, while for girls it is about five to four. This may help explain sex differences in athletic performance.[46]
Pubertal development also affects circulatory and respiratory systems as an adolescents' heart and lungs increase in both size and capacity. These changes lead to increased strength and tolerance for exercise. Sex differences are apparent as males tend to develop "larger hearts and lungs, higher systolic blood pressure, a lower resting heart rate, a greater capacity for carrying oxygen to the blood, a greater power for neutralizing the chemical products of muscular exercise, higher blood hemoglobin and more red blood cells".[47]
Despite some genetic sex differences, environmental factors play a large role in biological changes during adolescence. For example, girls tend to reduce their physical activity in preadolescence[48][49] and may receive inadequate nutrition from diets that often lack important nutrients, such as iron.[50] These environmental influences in turn affect female physical development.
Reproduction-related changes
Primary sex characteristics are those directly related to the sex organs. In males, the first stages of puberty involve growth of the testes and scrotum, followed by growth of the penis.[51] At the time that the penis develops, the seminal vesicles, the prostate, and the bulbourethral gland also enlarge and develop. The first ejaculation of seminal fluid generally occurs about one year after the beginning of accelerated penis growth, although this is often determined culturally rather than biologically, since for many boys first ejaculation occurs as a result of masturbation.[44] Boys are generally fertile before they have an adult appearance.[42]
In females, changes in the primary sex characteristics involve growth of the uterus, vagina, and other aspects of the reproductive system. Menarche, the beginning of menstruation, is a relatively late development which follows a long series of hormonal changes.[52] Generally, a girl is not fully fertile until several years after menarche, as regular ovulation follows menarche by about two years.[53] Unlike males, therefore, females usually appear physically mature before they are capable of becoming pregnant.
Changes in secondary sex characteristics include every change that is not directly related to sexual reproduction. In males, these changes involve appearance of pubic, facial, and body hair, deepening of the voice, roughening of the skin around the upper arms and thighs, and increased development of the sweat glands. In females, secondary sex changes involve elevation of the breasts, widening of the hips, development of pubic and underarm hair, widening of the areolae, and elevation of the nipples.[54] The changes in secondary sex characteristics that take place during puberty are often referred to in terms of five Tanner stages,[55] named after the British pediatrician who devised the categorization system.
Changes in the brain
The human brain is not fully developed by the time a person reaches puberty. Between the ages of 10 and 25, the brain undergoes changes that have important implications for behavior (see Cognitive development below). The brain reaches 90% of its adult size by the time a person is six years of age.[56] Thus, the brain does not grow in size much during adolescence. However, the creases in the brain continue to become more complex until the late teens. The biggest changes in the folds of the brain during this time occur in the parts of the cortex that process cognitive and emotional information.[56]
Over the course of adolescence, the amount of white matter in the brain increases linearly, while the amount of grey matter in the brain follows an inverted-U pattern.[57] Through a process called synaptic pruning, unnecessary neuronal connections in the brain are eliminated and the amount of grey matter is pared down. However, this does not mean that the brain loses functionality; rather, it becomes more efficient due to increased myelination (insulation of axons) and the reduction of unused pathways.[58]
The first areas of the brain to be pruned are those involving primary functions, such as motor and sensory areas. The areas of the brain involved in more complex processes lose matter later in development. These include the lateral and prefrontal cortices, among other regions.[59] Some of the most developmentally significant changes in the brain occur in the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in decision making and cognitive control, as well as other higher cognitive functions. During adolescence, myelination and synaptic pruning in the prefrontal cortex increases, improving the efficiency of information processing, and neural connections between the prefrontal cortex and other regions of the brain are strengthened.[60] This leads to better evaluation of risks and rewards, as well as improved control over impulses. Specifically, developments in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex are important for controlling impulses and planning ahead, while development in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is important for decision making. Changes in the orbitofrontal cortex are important for evaluating rewards and risks.
Three neurotransmitters that play important roles in adolescent brain development are glutamate, dopamine and serotonin. Glutamate is an excitatory neurotransmitter. During the synaptic pruning that occurs during adolescence, most of the neural connections that are pruned contain receptors for glutamate or other excitatory neurotransmitters.[61] Because of this, by early adulthood the synaptic balance in the brain is more inhibitory than excitatory.
Dopamine is associated with pleasure and attuning to the environment during decision-making. During adolescence, dopamine levels in the limbic system increase and input of dopamine to the prefrontal cortex increases.[62] The balance of excitatory to inhibitory neurotransmitters and increased dopamine activity in adolescence may have implications for adolescent risk-taking and vulnerability to boredom (see Cognitive development below).
Serotonin is a neuromodulator involved in regulation of mood and behavior. Development in the limbic system plays an important role in determining rewards and punishments and processing emotional experience and social information. Changes in the levels of the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin in the limbic system make adolescents more emotional and more responsive to rewards and stress. The corresponding increase in emotional variability also can increase adolescents' vulnerability. The effect of serotonin is not limited to the limbic system: Several serotonin receptors have their gene expression change dramatically during adolescence, particularly in the human frontal and prefrontal cortex .[63]
Cognitive development
Adolescence is also a time for rapid cognitive development.[64] Piaget describes adolescence as the stage of life in which the individual's thoughts start taking more of an abstract form and the egocentric thoughts decrease. This allows the individual to think and reason in a wider perspective.[65] A combination of behavioural and fMRI studies have demonstrated development of executive functions, that is, cognitive skills that enable the control and coordination of thoughts and behaviour, which are generally associated with the prefrontal cortex.[66] The thoughts, ideas and concepts developed at this period of life greatly influence one's future life, playing a major role in character and personality formation.[67]
Biological changes in brain structure and connectivity within the brain interact with increased experience, knowledge, and changing social demands to produce rapid cognitive growth (see Changes in the brain above). The age at which particular changes take place varies between individuals, but the changes discussed below begin at puberty or shortly after that and some skills continue to develop as the adolescent ages. The dual systems model proposes a maturational imbalance between development of the socioemotional system and cognitive control systems in the brain that contribute to impulsivity and other behaviors characteristic of adolescence.[68]
Theoretical perspectives
There are at least two major approaches to understanding cognitive change during adolescence. One is the constructivist view of cognitive development. Based on the work of Piaget, it takes a quantitative, state-theory approach, hypothesizing that adolescents' cognitive improvement is relatively sudden and drastic. The second is the information-processing perspective, which derives from the study of artificial intelligence and attempts to explain cognitive development in terms of the growth of specific components of the thinking process.
Improvements in cognitive ability
By the time individuals have reached age 15 or so, their basic thinking abilities are comparable to those of adults. These improvements occur in five areas during adolescence:
Attention. Improvements are seen in selective attention, the process by which one focuses on one stimulus while tuning out another. Divided attention, the ability to pay attention to two or more stimuli at the same time, also improves.[69][70] Memory. Improvements are seen in both working memory and long-term memory.[71] Processing speed. Adolescents think more quickly than children. Processing speed improves sharply between age five and middle adolescence; it then begins to level off at age 15 and does not appear to change between late adolescence and adulthood.[72] Organization. Adolescents are more aware of their thought processes and can use mnemonic devices and other strategies to think more efficiently.[73] Metacognition.
Studies since 2005 indicate that the brain is not fully formed until the early twenties.[74]
Hypothetical and abstract thinking
Adolescents' thinking is less bound to concrete events than that of children: they can contemplate possibilities outside the realm of what currently exists. One manifestation of the adolescent's increased facility with thinking about possibilities is the improvement of skill in deductive reasoning, which leads to the development of hypothetical thinking. This provides the ability to plan ahead, see the future consequences of an action and to provide alternative explanations of events. It also makes adolescents more skilled debaters, as they can reason against a friend's or parent's assumptions. Adolescents also develop a more sophisticated understanding of probability.
The appearance of more systematic, abstract thinking is another notable aspect of cognitive development during adolescence. For example, adolescents find it easier than children to comprehend the sorts of higher-order abstract logic inherent in puns, proverbs, metaphors, and analogies. Their increased facility permits them to appreciate the ways in which language can be used to convey multiple messages, such as satire, metaphor, and sarcasm. (Children younger than age nine often cannot comprehend sarcasm at all.)[75] This also permits the application of advanced reasoning and logical processes to social and ideological matters such as interpersonal relationships, politics, philosophy, religion, morality, friendship, faith, fairness, and honesty.
Metacognition
A third gain in cognitive ability involves thinking about thinking itself, a process referred to as metacognition. It often involves monitoring one's own cognitive activity during the thinking process. Adolescents' improvements in knowledge of their own thinking patterns lead to better self-control and more effective studying. It is also relevant in social cognition, resulting in increased introspection, self-consciousness, and intellectualization (in the sense of thought about one's own thoughts, rather than the Freudian definition as a defense mechanism). Adolescents are much better able than children to understand that people do not have complete control over their mental activity. Being able to introspect may lead to two forms of adolescent egocentrism, which results in two distinct problems in thinking: the imaginary audience and the personal fable. These likely peak at age fifteen, along with self-consciousness in general.[76]
Related to metacognition and abstract thought, perspective-taking involves a more sophisticated theory of mind.[77] Adolescents reach a stage of social perspective-taking in which they can understand how the thoughts or actions of one person can influence those of another person, even if they personally are not involved.[78]
Relativistic thinking
Compared to children, adolescents are more likely to question others' assertions, and less likely to accept facts as absolute truths. Through experience outside the family circle, they learn that rules they were taught as absolute are in fact relativistic. They begin to differentiate between rules instituted out of common sense—not touching a hot stove—and those that are based on culturally-relative standards (codes of etiquette, not dating until a certain age), a delineation that younger children do not make. This can lead to a period of questioning authority in all domains.[79]
Wisdom
Wisdom, or the capacity for insight and judgment that is developed through experience,[80] increases between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five, then levels off. Thus, it is during the adolescence-adulthood transition that individuals acquire the type of wisdom that is associated with age. Wisdom is not the same as intelligence: adolescents do not improve substantially on IQ tests since their scores are relative to others in their same age group, and relative standing usually does not change—everyone matures at approximately the same rate in this way.
Risk-taking
Because most injuries sustained by adolescents are related to risky behavior (car crashes, alcohol, unprotected sex), a great deal of research has been done on the cognitive and emotional processes underlying adolescent risk-taking. In addressing this question, it is important to distinguish whether adolescents are more likely to engage in risky behaviors (prevalence), whether they make risk-related decisions similarly or differently than adults (cognitive processing perspective), or whether they use the same processes but value different things and thus arrive at different conclusions. The behavioral decision-making theory proposes that adolescents and adults both weigh the potential rewards and consequences of an action. However, research has shown that adolescents seem to give more weight to rewards, particularly social rewards, than do adults.[81]
Research seems to favor the hypothesis that adolescents and adults think about risk in similar ways, but hold different values and thus come to different conclusions. Some have argued that there may be evolutionary benefits to an increased propensity for risk-taking in adolescence. For example, without a willingness to take risks, teenagers would not have the motivation or confidence necessary to leave their family of origin. In addition, from a population perspective, there is an advantage to having a group of individuals willing to take more risks and try new methods, counterbalancing the more conservative elements more typical of the received knowledge held by older adults. Risktaking may also have reproductive advantages: adolescents have a newfound priority in sexual attraction and dating, and risk-taking is required to impress potential mates. Research also indicates that baseline sensation seeking may affect risk-taking behavior throughout the lifespan.[82][83]
Given the potential consequences, engaging in sexual behavior is somewhat risky, particularly for adolescents. Having unprotected sex, using poor birth control methods (e.g. withdrawal), having multiple sexual partners, and poor communication are some aspects of sexual behavior that increase individual and/or social risk. Some qualities of adolescents' lives that are often correlated with risky sexual behavior include higher rates of experienced abuse, lower rates of parental support and monitoring.[84]
Inhibition
Related to their increased tendency for risk-taking, adolescents show impaired behavioral inhibition, including deficits in extinction learning.[85] This has important implications for engaging in risky behavior such as unsafe sex or illicit drug use, as adolescents are less likely to inhibit actions that may have negative outcomes in the future.[86] This phenomenon also has consequences for behavioral treatments based on the principle of extinction, such as cue exposure therapy for anxiety or drug addiction.[87][88] It has been suggested that impaired inhibition, specifically extinction, may help to explain adolescent propensity to relapse to drug-seeking even following behavioral treatment for addiction.[89]
Psychological development
G. Stanley Hall
The formal study of adolescent psychology began with the publication of G. Stanley Hall's "Adolescence in 1904". Hall, who was the first president of the American Psychological Association, viewed adolescence primarily as a time of internal turmoil and upheaval (sturm und drang). This understanding of youth was based on two then new ways of understanding human behavior: Darwin's evolutionary theory and Freud's psychodynamic theory. He believed that adolescence was a representation of our human ancestors' phylogenetic shift from being primitive to being civilized. Hall's assertions stood relatively uncontested until the 1950s when psychologists such as Erik Erikson and Anna Freud started to formulate their theories about adolescence. Freud believed that the psychological disturbances associated with youth were biologically based and culturally universal while Erikson focused on the dichotomy between identity formation and role fulfillment.[90] Even with their different theories, these three psychologists agreed that adolescence was inherently a time of disturbance and psychological confusion. The less turbulent aspects of adolescence, such as peer relations and cultural influence, were left largely ignored until the 1980s. From the '50s until the '80s, the focus of the field was mainly on describing patterns of behavior as opposed to explaining them.[90]
Jean Macfarlane founded the University of California, Berkeley's Institute of Human Development, formerly called the Institute of Child Welfare, in 1927.[91] The Institute was instrumental in initiating studies of healthy development, in contrast to previous work that had been dominated by theories based on pathological personalities.[91] The studies looked at human development during the Great Depression and World War II, unique historical circumstances under which a generation of children grew up. The Oakland Growth Study, initiated by Harold Jones and Herbert Stolz in 1931, aimed to study the physical, intellectual, and social development of children in the Oakland area. Data collection began in 1932 and continued until 1981, allowing the researchers to gather longitudinal data on the individuals that extended past adolescence into adulthood. Jean Macfarlane launched the Berkeley Guidance Study, which examined the development of children in terms of their socioeconomic and family backgrounds.[92] These studies provided the background for Glen Elder in the 1960s, to propose a life-course perspective of adolescent development. Elder formulated several descriptive principles of adolescent development. The principle of historical time and place states that an individual's development is shaped by the period and location in which they grow up. The principle of the importance of timing in one's life refers to the different impact that life events have on development based on when in one's life they occur. The idea of linked lives states that one's development is shaped by the interconnected network of relationships of which one is a part; and the principle of human agency asserts that one's life course is constructed via the choices and actions of an individual within the context of their historical period and social network.[93]
In 1984, the Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA) became the first official organization dedicated to the study of adolescent psychology. Some of the issues first addressed by this group include: the nature versus nurture debate as it pertains to adolescence; understanding the interactions between adolescents and their environment; and considering culture, social groups, and historical context when interpreting adolescent behavior.[90]
Evolutionary biologists like Jeremy Griffith have drawn parallels between adolescent psychology and the developmental evolution of modern humans from hominid ancestors as a manifestation of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.[94]
Social development
Identity development
Identity development is a stage in the adolescent life cycle.[95] For most, the search for identity begins in the adolescent years. During these years, adolescents are more open to 'trying on' different behaviours and appearances to discover who they are.[96] In an attempt to find their identity and discover who they are, adolescents are likely to cycle through a number of identities to find one that suits them best. Developing and maintaining identity (in adolescent years) is a difficult task due to multiple factors such as family life, environment, and social status.[95] Empirical studies suggest that this process might be more accurately described as identity development, rather than formation, but confirms a normative process of change in both content and structure of one's thoughts about the self.[97] The two main aspects of identity development are self-clarity and self-esteem.[96] Since choices made during adolescent years can influence later life, high levels of self-awareness and self-control during mid-adolescence will lead to better decisions during the transition to adulthood.[citation needed] Researchers have used three general approaches to understanding identity development: self-concept, sense of identity, and self-esteem. The years of adolescence create a more conscientious group of young adults. Adolescents pay close attention and give more time and effort to their appearance as their body goes through changes. Unlike children, teens put forth an effort to look presentable (1991).[4] The environment in which an adolescent grows up also plays an important role in their identity development. Studies done by the American Psychological Association have shown that adolescents with a less privileged upbringing have a more difficult time developing their identity.[98]
Self-concept
The idea of self-concept is known as the ability of a person to have opinions and beliefs that are defined confidently, consistent and stable.[99] Early in adolescence, cognitive developments result in greater self-awareness, greater awareness of others and their thoughts and judgments, the ability to think about abstract, future possibilities, and the ability to consider multiple possibilities at once. As a result, adolescents experience a significant shift from the simple, concrete, and global self-descriptions typical of young children; as children they defined themselves by physical traits whereas adolescents define themselves based on their values, thoughts, and opinions.[100]
Adolescents can conceptualize multiple "possible selves" that they could become[101] and long-term possibilities and consequences of their choices.[102] Exploring these possibilities may result in abrupt changes in self-presentation as the adolescent chooses or rejects qualities and behaviors, trying to guide the actual self toward the ideal self (who the adolescent wishes to be) and away from the feared self (who the adolescent does not want to be). For many, these distinctions are uncomfortable, but they also appear to motivate achievement through behavior consistent with the ideal and distinct from the feared possible selves.[101][103]
Further distinctions in self-concept, called "differentiation," occur as the adolescent recognizes the contextual influences on their own behavior and the perceptions of others, and begin to qualify their traits when asked to describe themselves.[104] Differentiation appears fully developed by mid-adolescence.[105] Peaking in the 7th-9th grades, the personality traits adolescents use to describe themselves refer to specific contexts, and therefore may contradict one another. The recognition of inconsistent content in the self-concept is a common source of distress in these years (see Cognitive dissonance),[106] but this distress may benefit adolescents by encouraging structural development.
Sense of identity
Egocentrism in adolescents forms a self-conscious desire to feel important in their peer groups and enjoy social acceptance.[107] Unlike the conflicting aspects of self-concept, identity represents a coherent sense of self stable across circumstances and including past experiences and future goals. Everyone has a self-concept, whereas Erik Erikson argued that not everyone fully achieves identity. Erikson's theory of stages of development includes the identity crisis in which adolescents must explore different possibilities and integrate different parts of themselves before committing to their beliefs. He described the resolution of this process as a stage of "identity achievement" but also stressed that the identity challenge "is never fully resolved once and for all at one point in time".[108] Adolescents begin by defining themselves based on their crowd membership. "Clothes help teens explore new identities, separate from parents, and bond with peers." Fashion has played a major role when it comes to teenagers "finding their selves"; Fashion is always evolving, which corresponds with the evolution of change in the personality of teenagers.[109] Adolescents attempt to define their identity by consciously styling themselves in different manners to find what best suits them. Trial and error in matching both their perceived image and the image others respond to and see, allows for the adolescent to grasp an understanding of who they are.[110]
Just as fashion is evolving to influence adolescents so is the media. "Modern life takes place amidst a never-ending barrage of flesh on screens, pages, and billboards."[111] This barrage consciously or subconsciously registers into the mind causing issues with self-image a factor that contributes to an adolescence sense of identity. Researcher James Marcia developed the current method for testing an individual's progress along these stages.[112][113] His questions are divided into three categories: occupation, ideology, and interpersonal relationships. Answers are scored based on extent to which the individual has explored and the degree to which he has made commitments. The result is classification of the individual into a) identity diffusion in which all children begin, b) Identity Foreclosure in which commitments are made without the exploration of alternatives, c) Moratorium, or the process of exploration, or d) Identity Achievement in which Moratorium has occurred and resulted in commitments.[114]
Research since reveals self-examination beginning early in adolescence, but identity achievement rarely occurring before age 18.[115] The freshman year of college influences identity development significantly, but may actually prolong psychosocial moratorium by encouraging reexamination of previous commitments and further exploration of alternate possibilities without encouraging resolution.[116] For the most part, evidence has supported Erikson's stages: each correlates with the personality traits he originally predicted.[114] Studies also confirm the impermanence of the stages; there is no final endpoint in identity development.[117]
Environment and identity
An adolescent's environment plays a huge role in their identity development.[98] While most adolescent studies are conducted on white, middle class children, studies show that the more privileged upbringing people have, the more successfully they develop their identity.[98] The forming of an adolescent's identity is a crucial time in their life. It has been recently found that demographic patterns suggest that the transition to adulthood is now occurring over a longer span of years than was the case during the middle of the 20th century. Accordingly, youth, a period that spans late adolescence and early adulthood, has become a more prominent stage of the life course. This therefore has caused various factors to become important during this development.[118] So many factors contribute to the developing social identity of an adolescent from commitment, to coping devices,[119] to social media. All of these factors are affected by the environment an adolescent grows up in. A child from a more privileged upbringing is exposed to more opportunities and better situations in general. An adolescent from an inner city or a crime-driven neighborhood is more likely to be exposed to an environment that can be detrimental to their development. Adolescence is a sensitive period in the development process, and exposure to the wrong things at that time can have a major effect on future decisions. While children that grow up in nice suburban communities are not exposed to bad environments they are more likely to participate in activities that can benefit their identity and contribute to a more successful identity development.[98]
Sexual orientation and identity
Sexual orientation has been defined as "an erotic inclination toward people of one or more genders, most often described as sexual or erotic attractions".[120] In recent years, psychologists have sought to understand how sexual orientation develops during adolescence. Some theorists believe that there are many different possible developmental paths one could take, and that the specific path an individual follows may be determined by their sex, orientation, and when they reached the onset of puberty.[120]
In 1989, Troiden proposed a four-stage model for the development of homosexual sexual identity.[121] The first stage, known as sensitization, usually starts in childhood, and is marked by the child's becoming aware of same-sex attractions. The second stage, identity confusion, tends to occur a few years later. In this stage, the youth is overwhelmed by feelings of inner turmoil regarding their sexual orientation, and begins to engage sexual experiences with same-sex partners. In the third stage of identity assumption, which usually takes place a few years after the adolescent has left home, adolescents begin to come out to their family and close friends, and assumes a self-definition as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.[122] In the final stage, known as commitment, the young adult adopts their sexual identity as a lifestyle. Therefore, this model estimates that the process of coming out begins in childhood, and continues through the early to mid 20s. This model has been contested, and alternate ideas have been explored in recent years.
In terms of sexual identity, adolescence is when most gay/lesbian and transgender adolescents begin to recognize and make sense of their feelings. Many adolescents may choose to come out during this period of their life once an identity has been formed; many others may go through a period of questioning or denial, which can include experimentation with both homosexual and heterosexual experiences.[123] A study of 194 lesbian, gay, and bisexual youths under the age of 21 found that having an awareness of one's sexual orientation occurred, on average, around age 10, but the process of coming out to peers and adults occurred around age 16 and 17, respectively.[124] Coming to terms with and creating a positive LGBT identity can be difficult for some youth for a variety of reasons. Peer pressure is a large factor when youth who are questioning their sexuality or gender identity are surrounded by heteronormative peers and can cause great distress due to a feeling of being different from everyone else. While coming out can also foster better psychological adjustment, the risks associated are real. Indeed, coming out in the midst of a heteronormative peer environment often comes with the risk of ostracism, hurtful jokes, and even violence.[123] Because of this, statistically the suicide rate amongst LGBT adolescents is up to four times higher than that of their heterosexual peers due to bullying and rejection from peers or family members.[125]
Self-esteem
The final major aspect of identity formation is self-esteem. Self-esteem is defined as one's thoughts and feelings about one's self-concept and identity.[126] Most theories on self-esteem state that there is a grand desire, across all genders and ages, to maintain, protect and enhance their self-esteem.[99] Contrary to popular belief, there is no empirical evidence for a significant drop in self-esteem over the course of adolescence.[127] "Barometric self-esteem" fluctuates rapidly and can cause severe distress and anxiety, but baseline self-esteem remains highly stable across adolescence.[128] The validity of global self-esteem scales has been questioned, and many suggest that more specific scales might reveal more about the adolescent experience.[129] Girls are most likely to enjoy high self-esteem when engaged in supportive relationships with friends, the most important function of friendship to them is having someone who can provide social and moral support. When they fail to win friends' approval or couldn't find someone with whom to share common activities and common interests, in these cases, girls suffer from low self-esteem. In contrast, boys are more concerned with establishing and asserting their independence and defining their relation to authority.[130] As such, they are more likely to derive high self-esteem from their ability to successfully influence their friends; on the other hand, the lack of romantic competence, for example, failure to win or maintain the affection of the opposite or same-sex (depending on sexual orientation), is the major contributor to low self-esteem in adolescent boys. Due to the fact that both men and women happen to have a low self-esteem after ending a romantic relationship, they are prone to other symptoms that is caused by this state. Depression and hopelessness are only two of the various symptoms and it is said that women are twice as likely to experience depression and men are three to four times more likely to commit suicide (Mearns, 1991; Ustun & Sartorius, 1995).[131]
Relationships
In general
The relationships adolescents have with their peers, family, and members of their social sphere play a vital role in the social development of an adolescent. As an adolescent's social sphere develops rapidly as they distinguish the differences between friends and acquaintances, they often become heavily emotionally invested in friends.[132] This is not harmful; however, if these friends expose an individual to potentially harmful situations, this is an aspect of peer pressure. Adolescence is a critical period in social development because adolescents can be easily influenced by the people they develop close relationships with. This is the first time individuals can truly make their own decisions, which also makes this a sensitive period. Relationships are vital in the social development of an adolescent due to the extreme influence peers can have over an individual. These relationships become significant because they begin to help the adolescent understand the concept of personalities, how they form and why a person has that specific type of personality. "The use of psychological comparisons could serve both as an index of the growth of an implicit personality theory and as a component process accounting for its creation. In other words, by comparing one person's personality characteristics to another's, we would be setting up the framework for creating a general theory of personality (and, ... such a theory would serve as a useful framework for coming to understand specific persons)."[133] This can be likened to the use of social comparison in developing one's identity and self-concept, which includes ones personality, and underscores the importance of communication, and thus relationships, in one's development. In social comparison we use reference groups, with respect to both psychological and identity development.[134] These reference groups are the peers of adolescents. This means that who the teen chooses/accepts as their friends and who they communicate with on a frequent basis often makes up their reference groups and can therefore have a huge impact on who they become. Research shows that relationships have the largest affect over the social development of an individual.
Family
Adolescence marks a rapid change in one's role within a family. Young children tend to assert themselves forcefully, but are unable to demonstrate much influence over family decisions until early adolescence,[135] when they are increasingly viewed by parents as equals. The adolescent faces the task of increasing independence while preserving a caring relationship with his or her parents.[110] When children go through puberty, there is often a significant increase in parent–child conflict and a less cohesive familial bond. Arguments often concern minor issues of control, such as curfew, acceptable clothing, and the adolescent's right to privacy,[136][137] which adolescents may have previously viewed as issues over which their parents had complete authority.[138] Parent-adolescent disagreement also increases as friends demonstrate a greater impact on one another, new influences on the adolescent that may be in opposition to parents' values. Social media has also played an increasing role in adolescent and parent disagreements.[139] While parents never had to worry about the threats of social media in the past, it has become a dangerous place for children. While adolescents strive for their freedoms, the unknowns to parents of what their child is doing on social media sites is a challenging subject, due to the increasing amount of predators on social media sites. Many parents have very little knowledge of social networking sites in the first place and this further increases their mistrust. An important challenge for the parent–adolescent relationship is to understand how to enhance the opportunities of online communication while managing its risks.[99] Although conflicts between children and parents increase during adolescence, these are just relatively minor issues. Regarding their important life issues, most adolescents still share the same attitudes and values as their parents.[140]
During childhood, siblings are a source of conflict and frustration as well as a support system.[141] Adolescence may affect this relationship differently, depending on sibling gender. In same-sex sibling pairs, intimacy increases during early adolescence, then remains stable. Mixed-sex siblings pairs act differently; siblings drift apart during early adolescent years, but experience an increase in intimacy starting at middle adolescence.[142] Sibling interactions are children's first relational experiences, the ones that shape their social and self-understanding for life.[143] Sustaining positive sibling relations can assist adolescents in a number of ways. Siblings are able to act as peers, and may increase one another's sociability and feelings of self-worth. Older siblings can give guidance to younger siblings, although the impact of this can be either positive or negative depending on the activity of the older sibling.
A potential important influence on adolescence is change of the family dynamic, specifically divorce. With the divorce rate up to about 50%,[144] divorce is common and adds to the already great amount of change in adolescence. Custody disputes soon after a divorce often reflect a playing out of control battles and ambivalence between parents. Divorce usually results in less contact between the adolescent and their noncustodial parent.[145] In extreme cases of instability and abuse in homes, divorce can have a positive effect on families due to less conflict in the home. However, most research suggests a negative effect on adolescence as well as later development. A recent study found that, compared with peers who grow up in stable post-divorce families, children of divorce who experience additional family transitions during late adolescence, make less progress in their math and social studies performance over time.[146] Another recent study put forth a new theory entitled the adolescent epistemological trauma theory,[147] which posited that traumatic life events such as parental divorce during the formative period of late adolescence portend lifelong effects on adult conflict behavior that can be mitigated by effective behavioral assessment and training.[147] A parental divorce during childhood or adolescence continues to have a negative effect when a person is in his or her twenties and early thirties. These negative effects include romantic relationships and conflict style, meaning as adults, they are more likely to use the styles of avoidance and competing in conflict management.[148]
Despite changing family roles during adolescence, the home environment and parents are still important for the behaviors and choices of adolescents.[149] Adolescents who have a good relationship with their parents are less likely to engage in various risk behaviors, such as smoking, drinking, fighting, and/or unprotected sexual intercourse.[149] In addition, parents influence the education of adolescence. A study conducted by Adalbjarnardottir and Blondal (2009) showed that adolescents at the age of 14 who identify their parents as authoritative figures are more likely to complete secondary education by the age of 22—as support and encouragement from an authoritative parent motivates the adolescence to complete schooling to avoid disappointing that parent.[150]
Peers
Top: Above: Students study in a U.S. university library, using books and Students of a U.S. university do an outdoor class, where they discuss topics while walking.Students study in a U.S. university library, using books and laptops
Peer groups are essential to social and general development. Communication with peers increases significantly during adolescence and peer relationships become more intense than in other stages[151] and more influential to the teen, affecting both the decisions and choices being made.[152] High quality friendships may enhance children's development regardless of the characteristics of those friends. As children begin to bond with various people and create friendships, it later helps them when they are adolescent and sets up the framework for adolescence and peer groups.[153] Peer groups are especially important during adolescence, a period of development characterized by a dramatic increase in time spent with peers[154] and a decrease in adult supervision.[155] Adolescents also associate with friends of the opposite sex much more than in childhood[156] and tend to identify with larger groups of peers based on shared characteristics.[157] It is also common for adolescents to use friends as coping devices in different situations.[158] A three-factor structure of dealing with friends including avoidance, mastery, and nonchalance has shown that adolescents use friends as coping devices with social stresses.
Communication within peer groups allows adolescents to explore their feelings and identity as well as develop and evaluate their social skills. Peer groups offer members the opportunity to develop social skills such as empathy, sharing, and leadership. Adolescents choose peer groups based on characteristics similarly found in themselves.[110] By utilizing these relationships, adolescents become more accepting of who they are becoming. Group norms and values are incorporated into an adolescent's own self-concept.[152] Through developing new communication skills and reflecting upon those of their peers, as well as self-opinions and values, an adolescent can share and express emotions and other concerns without fear of rejection or judgment. Peer groups can have positive influences on an individual, such as on academic motivation and performance. However, while peers may facilitate social development for one another they may also hinder it. Peers can have negative influences, such as encouraging experimentation with drugs, drinking, vandalism, and stealing through peer pressure.[159] Susceptibility to peer pressure increases during early adolescence, peaks around age 14, and declines thereafter.[160] Further evidence of peers hindering social development has been found in Spanish teenagers, where emotional (rather than solution-based) reactions to problems and emotional instability have been linked with physical aggression against peers.[161] Both physical and relational aggression are linked to a vast number of enduring psychological difficulties, especially depression, as is social rejection.[162] Because of this, bullied adolescents often develop problems that lead to further victimization.[163] Bullied adolescents are more likely to both continue to be bullied and to bully others in the future.[164] However, this relationship is less stable in cases of cyberbullying, a relatively new issue among adolescents.
Adolescents tend to associate with "cliques" on a small scale and "crowds" on a larger scale. During early adolescence, adolescents often associate in cliques, exclusive, single-sex groups of peers with whom they are particularly close. Despite the common[according to whom?] notion that cliques are an inherently negative influence, they may help adolescents become socially acclimated and form a stronger sense of identity. Within a clique of highly athletic male-peers, for example, the clique may create a stronger sense of fidelity and competition. Cliques also have become somewhat a "collective parent", i.e. telling the adolescents what to do and not to do.[165] Towards late adolescence, cliques often merge into mixed-sex groups as teenagers begin romantically engaging with one another.[166] These small friend groups then break down further as socialization becomes more couple-oriented. On a larger scale, adolescents often associate with crowds, groups of individuals who share a common interest or activity. Often, crowd identities may be the basis for stereotyping young people, such as jocks or nerds. In large, multi-ethnic high schools, there are often ethnically determined crowds.[167] While crowds are very influential during early and middle adolescence, they lose salience during high school as students identify more individually.[168]
An important aspect of communication is the channel used. Channel, in this respect, refers to the form of communication, be it face-to-face, email, text message, phone or other. Teens are heavy users of newer forms of communication such as text message and social-networking websites such as Facebook, especially when communicating with peers.[169] Adolescents use online technology to experiment with emerging identities and to broaden their peer groups, such as increasing the amount of friends acquired on Facebook and other social media sites.[152] Some adolescents use these newer channels to enhance relationships with peers however there can be negative uses as well such as cyberbullying, as mentioned previously, and negative impacts on the family.[169]
Romance and sexual activity
Romantic relationships tend to increase in prevalence throughout adolescence. By age 15, 53% of adolescents have had a romantic relationship that lasted at least one month over the course of the previous 18 months.[170] In a 2008 study conducted by YouGov for Channel 4, 20% of 14−17-year-olds surveyed revealed that they had their first sexual experience at 13 or under in the United Kingdom.[171] A 2002 American study found that those aged 15–44 reported that the average age of first sexual intercourse was 17.0 for males and 17.3 for females.[172] The typical duration of relationships increases throughout the teenage years as well. This constant increase in the likelihood of a long-term relationship can be explained by sexual maturation and the development of cognitive skills necessary to maintain a romantic bond (e.g. caregiving, appropriate attachment), although these skills are not strongly developed until late adolescence.[173] Long-term relationships allow adolescents to gain the skills necessary for high-quality relationships later in life[174] and develop feelings of self-worth. Overall, positive romantic relationships among adolescents can result in long-term benefits. High-quality romantic relationships are associated with higher commitment in early adulthood[175] and are positively associated with self-esteem, self-confidence, and social competence.[176][177] For example, an adolescent with positive self-confidence is likely to consider themselves a more successful partner, whereas negative experiences may lead to low confidence as a romantic partner.[178] Adolescents often date within their demographic in regards to race, ethnicity, popularity, and physical attractiveness.[179] However, there are traits in which certain individuals, particularly adolescent girls, seek diversity. While most adolescents date people approximately their own age, boys typically date partners the same age or younger; girls typically date partners the same age or older.[170]
Some researchers are now focusing on learning about how adolescents view their own relationships and sexuality; they want to move away from a research point of view that focuses on the problems associated with adolescent sexuality.[why?] College Professor Lucia O'Sullivan and her colleagues found that there were no significant gender differences in the relationship events adolescent boys and girls from grades 7-12 reported.[180] Most teens said they had kissed their partners, held hands with them, thought of themselves as being a couple and told people they were in a relationship. This means that private thoughts about the relationship as well as public recognition of the relationship were both important to the adolescents in the sample. Sexual events (such as sexual touching, sexual intercourse) were less common than romantic events (holding hands) and social events (being with one's partner in a group setting). The researchers state that these results are important because the results focus on the more positive aspects of adolescents and their social and romantic interactions rather than focusing on sexual behavior and its consequences.[180]
Adolescence marks a time of sexual maturation, which manifests in social interactions as well. While adolescents may engage in casual sexual encounters (often referred to as hookups), most sexual experience during this period of development takes place within romantic relationships.[181] Adolescents can use technologies and social media to seek out romantic relationships as they feel it is a safe place to try out dating and identity exploration. From these social media encounters, a further relationship may begin.[152] Kissing, hand holding, and hugging signify satisfaction and commitment. Among young adolescents, "heavy" sexual activity, marked by genital stimulation, is often associated with violence, depression, and poor relationship quality.[182][183] This effect does not hold true for sexual activity in late adolescence that takes place within a romantic relationship.[184] Some research suggest that there are genetic causes of early sexual activity that are also risk factors for delinquency, suggesting that there is a group who are at risk for both early sexual activity and emotional distress. For older adolescents, though, sexual activity in the context of romantic relationships was actually correlated with lower levels of deviant behavior after controlling for genetic risks, as opposed to sex outside of a relationship (hook-ups)[185]
Dating violence is fairly prevalent within adolescent relationships. When surveyed, 10-45% of adolescents reported having experienced physical violence in the context of a relationship while a quarter to a third of adolescents reported having experiencing psychological aggression. This reported aggression includes hitting, throwing things, or slaps, although most of this physical aggression does not result in a medical visit. Physical aggression in relationships tends to decline from high school through college and young adulthood. In heterosexual couples, there is no significant difference between the rates of male and female aggressors, unlike in adult relationships.[186][187][188]
Adolescent girls with male partners who are older than them are at higher risk for adverse sexual health outcomes than their peers. Research suggests that the larger the partner age difference, the less relationship power the girls experience. Behavioral interventions such as developing relationship skills in identifying, preventing, and coping with controlling behaviors may be beneficial. For condom use promotion, it is important to identify decision-making patterns within relationships and increase the power of the adolescent female in the relationship.[189] Female adolescents from minority populations are at even higher risk for intimate partner violence (IPV). Recent research findings suggest that a substantial portion of young urban females are at high risk for being victims of multiple forms of IPV. Practitioners diagnosing depression among urban minority teens should assess for both physical and non-physical forms of IPV, and early detection can help to identify youths in need of intervention and care.[190][191] Similarly to adult victims, adolescent victims do not readily disclose abuse, and may seek out medical care for problems not directly related to incidences of IPV. Therefore, screening should be a routine part of medical treatment for adolescents regardless of chief complaint. Many adults discount instances of IPV in adolescents or believe they do not occur because relationships at young ages are viewed as “puppy love,” however, it is crucial that adults take IPV in adolescents seriously even though often policy falls behind.[192]
In contemporary society, adolescents also face some risks as their sexuality begins to transform. While some of these, such as emotional distress (fear of abuse or exploitation) and sexually transmitted infections/diseases (STIs/STDs), including HIV/AIDS, are not necessarily inherent to adolescence, others such as teenage pregnancy (through non-use or failure of contraceptives) are seen as social problems in most western societies. One in four sexually active teenagers will contract an STI.[193] Adolescents in the United States often chose "anything but intercourse" for sexual activity because they mistakenly believe it reduces the risk of STIs. Across the country, clinicians report rising diagnoses of herpes and human papillomavirus (HPV), which can cause genital warts, and is now thought to affect 15 percent of the teen population. Girls 15 to 19 have higher rates of gonorrhea than any other age group. One-quarter of all new HIV cases occur in those under the age of 21.[193] Multrine also states in her article that according to a March survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, eighty-one percent of parents want schools to discuss the use of condoms and contraception with their children. They also believe students should be able to be tested for STIs. Furthermore, teachers want to address such topics with their students. But, although 9 in 10 sex education instructors across the country believe that students should be taught about contraceptives in school, over one quarter report receiving explicit instructions from school boards and administrators not to do so. According to anthropologist Margaret Mead, the turmoil found in adolescence in Western society has a cultural rather than a physical cause; they reported that societies where young women engaged in free sexual activity had no such adolescent turmoil.
Culture
Summary
gyaru girls in Tokyo Japanesegirls in Tokyo
There are certain characteristics of adolescent development that are more rooted in culture than in human biology or cognitive structures. Culture has been defined as the "symbolic and behavioral inheritance received from the past that provides a community framework for what is valued".[194] Culture is learned and socially shared, and it affects all aspects of an individual's life.[195] Social responsibilities, sexual expression, and belief system development, for instance, are all things that are likely to vary by culture. Furthermore, distinguishing characteristics of youth, including dress, music and other uses of media, employment, art, food and beverage choices, recreation, and language, all constitute a youth culture.[195] For these reasons, culture is a prevalent and powerful presence in the lives of adolescents, and therefore we cannot fully understand today's adolescents without studying and understanding their culture.[195] However, "culture" should not be seen as synonymous with nation or ethnicity. Many cultures are present within any given country and racial or socioeconomic group. Furthermore, to avoid ethnocentrism, researchers must be careful not to define the culture's role in adolescence in terms of their own cultural beliefs.[196]
In Britain, teenagers first came to public attention during the Second World War, when there were fears of juvenile delinquency.[197] By the 1950s, the media presented teenagers in terms of generational rebellion. The exaggerated moral panic among politicians and the older generation was typically belied by the growth in intergenerational cooperation between parents and children. Many working-class parents, enjoying newfound economic security, eagerly took the opportunity to encourage their teens to enjoy more adventurous lives.[198] Schools were falsely portrayed as dangerous blackboard jungles under the control of rowdy kids.[199] The media distortions of the teens as too affluent, and as promiscuous, delinquent, counter-cultural rebels do not reflect the actual experiences of ordinary young adults, particularly young women.[200]
Autonomy
The degree to which adolescents are perceived as autonomous beings varies widely by culture, as do the behaviors that represent this emerging autonomy. Psychologists have identified three main types of autonomy: emotional independence, behavioral autonomy, and cognitive autonomy.[201] Emotional autonomy is defined in terms of an adolescent's relationships with others, and often includes the development of more mature emotional connections with adults and peers.[201] Behavioral autonomy encompasses an adolescent's developing ability to regulate his or her own behavior, to act on personal decisions, and to self-govern. Cultural differences are especially visible in this category because it concerns issues of dating, social time with peers, and time-management decisions.[201] Cognitive autonomy describes the capacity for an adolescent to partake in processes of independent reasoning and decision-making without excessive reliance on social validation.[201] Converging influences from adolescent cognitive development, expanding social relationships, an increasingly adultlike appearance, and the acceptance of more rights and responsibilities enhance feelings of autonomy for adolescents.[201] Proper development of autonomy has been tied to good mental health, high self-esteem, self-motivated tendencies, positive self-concepts, and self-initiating and regulating behaviors.[201] Furthermore, it has been found that adolescents' mental health is best when their feelings about autonomy match closely with those of their parents.[202]
A questionnaire called the teen timetable has been used to measure the age at which individuals believe adolescents should be able to engage in behaviors associated with autonomy.[203] This questionnaire has been used to gauge differences in cultural perceptions of adolescent autonomy, finding, for instance, that White parents and adolescents tend to expect autonomy earlier than those of Asian descent.[203] It is, therefore, clear that cultural differences exist in perceptions of adolescent autonomy, and such differences have implications for the lifestyles and development of adolescents. In sub-Saharan African youth, the notions of individuality and freedom may not be useful in understanding adolescent development. Rather, African notions of childhood and adolescent development are relational and interdependent.[204]
Social roles and responsibilities
Portrait of a noble girl c. 1571
The lifestyle of an adolescent in a given culture is profoundly shaped by the roles and responsibilities he or she is expected to assume. The extent to which an adolescent is expected to share family responsibilities is one large determining factor in normative adolescent behavior. For instance, adolescents in certain cultures are expected to contribute significantly to household chores and responsibilities.[205] Household chores are frequently divided into self-care tasks and family-care tasks. However, specific household responsibilities for adolescents may vary by culture, family type, and adolescent age.[206] Some research has shown that adolescent participation in family work and routines has a positive influence on the development of an adolescent's feelings of self-worth, care, and concern for others.[205]
In addition to the sharing of household chores, certain cultures expect adolescents to share in their family's financial responsibilities. According to family economic and financial education specialists, adolescents develop sound money management skills through the practices of saving and spending money, as well as through planning ahead for future economic goals.[207] Differences between families in the distribution of financial responsibilities or provision of allowance may reflect various social background circumstances and intrafamilial processes, which are further influenced by cultural norms and values, as well as by the business sector and market economy of a given society.[208] For instance, in many developing countries it is common for children to attend fewer years of formal schooling so that, when they reach adolescence, they can begin working.[209]
While adolescence is a time frequently marked by participation in the workforce, the number of adolescents in the workforce is much lower now than in years past as a result of increased accessibility and perceived importance of formal higher education.[210] For example, half of all 16-year-olds in China were employed in 1980, whereas less than one fourth of this same cohort were employed in 1990.[210]
Furthermore, the amount of time adolescents spend on work and leisure activities varies greatly by culture as a result of cultural norms and expectations, as well as various socioeconomic factors. American teenagers spend less time in school or working and more time on leisure activities—which include playing sports, socializing, and caring for their appearance—than do adolescents in many other countries.[211] These differences may be influenced by cultural values of education and the amount of responsibility adolescents are expected to assume in their family or community.
Time management, financial roles, and social responsibilities of adolescents are therefore closely connected with the education sector and processes of career development for adolescents, as well as to cultural norms and social expectations. In many ways, adolescents' experiences with their assumed social roles and responsibilities determine the length and quality of their initial pathway into adult roles.[212]
Belief system development
Adolescence is frequently characterized by a transformation of an adolescent's understanding of the world, the rational direction towards a life course, and the active seeking of new ideas rather than the unquestioning acceptance of adult authority.[213] An adolescent begins to develop a unique belief system through his or her interaction with social, familial, and cultural environments.[214] While organized religion is not necessarily a part of every adolescent's life experience, youth are still held responsible for forming a set of beliefs about themselves, the world around them, and whatever higher powers they may or may not believe in.[213] This process is often accompanied or aided by cultural traditions that intend to provide a meaningful transition to adulthood through a ceremony, ritual, confirmation, or rite of passage.[215]
Sexuality
Many cultures define the transition into adultlike sexuality by specific biological or social milestones in an adolescent's life. For example, menarche (the first menstrual period of a female), or semenarche (the first ejaculation of a male) are frequent sexual defining points for many cultures. In addition to biological factors, an adolescent's sexual socialization is highly dependent upon whether their culture takes a restrictive or permissive attitude toward teen or premarital sexual activity. In the United States specifically, adolescents are said to have "raging hormones" that drive their sexual desires. These sexual desires are then dramatized regarding teen sex and seen as "a site of danger and risk; that such danger and risk is a source of profound worry among adults".[216] There is little to no normalization regarding teenagers having sex in the U.S., which causes conflict in how adolescents are taught about sex education. There is a constant debate about whether abstinence-only sex education or comprehensive sex education should be taught in schools and this stems back to whether or not the country it is being taught in is permissive or restrictive. Restrictive cultures overtly discourage sexual activity in unmarried adolescents or until an adolescent undergoes a formal rite of passage. These cultures may attempt to restrict sexual activity by separating males and females throughout their development, or through public shaming and physical punishment when sexual activity does occur.[166][217] In less restrictive cultures, there is more tolerance for displays of adolescent sexuality, or of the interaction between males and females in public and private spaces. Less restrictive cultures may tolerate some aspects of adolescent sexuality, while objecting to other aspects. For instance, some cultures find teenage sexual activity acceptable but teenage pregnancy highly undesirable. Other cultures do not object to teenage sexual activity or teenage pregnancy, as long as they occur after marriage.[218] In permissive societies, overt sexual behavior among unmarried teens is perceived as acceptable, and is sometimes even encouraged.[218] Regardless of whether a culture is restrictive or permissive, there are likely to be discrepancies in how females versus males are expected to express their sexuality. Cultures vary in how overt this double standard is—in some it is legally inscribed, while in others it is communicated through social convention.[219] Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth face much discrimination through bullying from those unlike them and may find telling others that they are gay to be a traumatic experience.[220] The range of sexual attitudes that a culture embraces could thus be seen to affect the beliefs, lifestyles, and societal perceptions of its adolescents.
Legal issues, rights and privileges
General issues
Adolescence is a period frequently marked by increased rights and privileges for individuals. While cultural variation exists for legal rights and their corresponding ages, considerable consistency is found across cultures. Furthermore, since the advent of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989 (children here defined as under 18), almost every country in the world (except the U.S. and South Sudan) has legally committed to advancing an anti-discriminatory stance towards young people of all ages. This includes protecting children against unchecked child labor, enrollment in the military, prostitution, and pornography. In many societies, those who reach a certain age (often 18, though this varies) are considered to have reached the age of majority and are legally regarded as adults who are responsible for their actions. People below this age are considered minors or children. A person below the age of majority may gain adult rights through legal emancipation.
The legal working age in Western countries is usually 14 to 16, depending on the number of hours and type of employment under consideration. Many countries also specify a minimum school leaving age, at which a person is legally allowed to leave compulsory education. This age varies greatly cross-culturally, spanning from 10 to 18, which further reflects the diverse ways formal education is viewed in cultures around the world.
In most democratic countries, a citizen is eligible to vote at age 18. In a minority of countries, the voting age is as low as 16 (for example, Brazil), and at one time was as high as 25 in Uzbekistan.
The age of consent to sexual activity varies widely between jurisdictions, ranging from 12 to 20 years, as does the age at which people are allowed to marry.[221] Specific legal ages for adolescents that also vary by culture are enlisting in the military, gambling, and the purchase of alcohol, cigarettes or items with parental advisory labels. It should be noted that the legal coming of age often does not correspond with the sudden realization of autonomy; many adolescents who have legally reached adult age are still dependent on their guardians or peers for emotional and financial support. Nonetheless, new legal privileges converge with shifting social expectations to usher in a phase of heightened independence or social responsibility for most legal adolescents.
Alcohol and illicit drug use
Prevalence
Following a steady decline, beginning in the late 1990s up through the mid-2000s, illicit drug use among adolescents has been on the rise in the U.S. Aside from alcohol, marijuana is the most commonly indulged drug habit during adolescent years. Data collected by the National Institute on Drug Abuse shows that between the years of 2007 and 2011, marijuana use grew from 5.7% to 7.2% among 8th grade students; among 10th grade students, from 14.2% to 17.6%; and among 12th graders, from 18.8% to 22.6%.[222] Additional, recent years have seen a surge in popularity of MDMA; between 2010 and 2011, the use of MDMA increased from 1.4% to 2.3% among high school seniors.[222] The heightened usage of ecstasy most likely ties in at least to some degree with the rising popularity of rave culture.
One significant contribution to the increase in teenage substance abuse is an increase in the availability of prescription medication. With an increase in the diagnosis of behavioral and attentional disorders for students, taking pharmaceutical drugs such as Vicodin and Adderall for pleasure has become a prevalent activity among adolescents: 15.2% of high school seniors report having abused prescription drugs within the past year.[222]
Teenage alcohol drug use is currently at an all-time low. Out of a polled body of students, 4.4% of 8th graders reported having been on at least one occasion been drunk within the previous month; for 10th graders, the number was 13.7%, and for 12th graders, 25%.[222] More drastically, cigarette smoking has become a far less prevalent activity among American middle- and high-school students; in fact, a greater number of teens now smoke marijuana than smoke cigarettes, with one recent study showing a respective 15.2% versus 11.7% of surveyed students.[222] Recent studies have shown that male late adolescents are far more likely to smoke cigarettes rather than females. The study indicated that there was a discernible gender difference in the prevalence of smoking among the students. The finding of the study show that more males than females began smoking when they were in primary and high schools whereas most females started smoking after high school.[223] This may be attributed to recent changing social and political views towards marijuana; issues such as medicinal use and legalization have tended towards painting the drug in a more positive light than historically, while cigarettes continue to be vilified due to associated health risks.
Different drug habits often relate to one another in a highly significant manner. It has been demonstrated that adolescents who drink at least to some degree may be as much as sixteen times more likely than non-drinkers to experiment with illicit drugs.[224]
Social influence
Irish teenagers over 18 hanging around outside a bar. People under 18 are not allowed to drink outside the home; this is not strictly enforced in Ireland.
Peer acceptance and social norms gain a significantly greater hand in directing behavior at the onset of adolescence; as such, the alcohol and illegal drug habits of teens tend to be shaped largely by the substance use of friends and other classmates. In fact, studies suggest that more significantly than actual drug norms, an individual's perception of the illicit drug use by friends and peers is highly associated with his or her own habits in substance use during both middle and high school, a relationship that increases in strength over time.[225] Whereas social influences on alcohol use and marijuana use tend to work directly in the short term, peer and friend norms on smoking cigarettes in middle school have a profound effect on one's own likelihood to smoke cigarettes well into high school.[225] Perhaps the strong correlation between peer influence in middle school and cigarette smoking in high school may be explained by the addictive nature of cigarettes, which could lead many students to continue their smoking habits from middle school into late adolescence.
Demographic factors
Until mid-to-late adolescence, boys and girls show relatively little difference in drinking motives.[226] Distinctions between the reasons for alcohol consumption of males and females begin to emerge around ages 14–15; overall, boys tend to view drinking in a more social light than girls, who report on average a more frequent use of alcohol as a coping mechanism.[226] The latter effect appears to shift in late adolescence and onset of early adulthood (20–21 years of age); however, despite this trend, age tends to bring a greater desire to drink for pleasure rather than coping in both boys and girls.[226]
Drinking habits and the motives behind them often reflect certain aspects of an individual's personality; in fact, four dimensions of the Five-Factor Model of personality demonstrate associations with drinking motives (all but 'Openness'). Greater enhancement motives for alcohol consumption tend to reflect high levels of extraversion and sensation-seeking in individuals; such enjoyment motivation often also indicates low conscientiousness, manifesting in lowered inhibition and a greater tendency towards aggression. On the other hand, drinking to cope with negative emotional states correlates strongly with high neuroticism and low agreeableness.[226] Alcohol use as a negative emotion control mechanism often links with many other behavioral and emotional impairments, such as anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem.[226]
Research has generally shown striking uniformity across different cultures in the motives behind teen alcohol use. Social engagement and personal enjoyment appear to play a fairly universal role in adolescents' decision to drink throughout separate cultural contexts. Surveys conducted in Argentina, Hong Kong, and Canada have each indicated the most common reason for drinking among adolescents to relate to pleasure and recreation; 80% of Argentinian teens reported drinking for enjoyment, while only 7% drank to improve a bad mood.[226] The most prevalent answers among Canadian adolescents were to "get in a party mood," 18%; "because I enjoy it," 16%; and "to get drunk," 10%.[226] In Hong Kong, female participants most frequently reported drinking for social enjoyment, while males most frequently reported drinking to feel the effects of alcohol.[226]
Media
Body image
Teenage girl texting
Much research has been conducted on the psychological ramifications of body image on adolescents. Modern day teenagers are exposed to more media on a daily basis than any generation before them. Recent studies have indicated that the average teenager watches roughly 1500 hours of television per year.[227] As such, modern day adolescents are exposed to many representations of ideal, societal beauty. The concept of a person being unhappy with their own image or appearance has been defined as "body dissatisfaction". In teenagers, body dissatisfaction is often associated with body mass, low self-esteem, and atypical eating patterns.[228] Scholars continue to debate the effects of media on body dissatisfaction in teens.[229][230]
Media profusion
Because exposure to media has increased over the past decade, adolescents' utilization of computers, cell phones, stereos and televisions to gain access to various mediums of popular culture has also increased. Almost all American households have at least one television, more than three-quarters of all adolescents' homes have access to the Internet, and more than 90% of American adolescents use the Internet at least occasionally.[231] As a result of the amount of time adolescents spend using these devices, their total media exposure is high. In the last decade, the amount of time that adolescents spend on the computer has greatly increased.[232] Online activities with the highest rates of use among adolescents are video games (78% of adolescents), email (73%), instant messaging (68%), social networking sites (65%), news sources (63%), music (59%), and videos (57%).
Social networking
In the 2000s, social networking sites proliferated and a high proportion of adolescents used them: as of 2012 73% of 12–17 year olds reported having at least one social networking profile;[233] two-thirds (68%) of teens texted every day, half (51%) visited social networking sites daily, and 11% sent or received tweets at least once every day. More than a third (34%) of teens visited their main social networking site several times a day. One in four (23%) teens were "heavy" social media users, meaning they used at least two different types of social media each and every day.[234]
Although research has been inconclusive, some findings have indicated that electronic communication negatively affects adolescents' social development, replaces face-to-face communication, impairs their social skills, and can sometimes lead to unsafe interaction with strangers. A 2015 review reported that "adolescents lack awareness of strategies to cope with cyberbullying, which has been consistently associated with an increased likelihood of depression."[235] Studies have shown differences in the ways the internet negatively impacts the adolescents' social functioning. Online socializing tends to make girls particularly vulnerable, while socializing in Internet cafés seems only to affect boys academic achievement. However, other research suggests that Internet communication brings friends closer and is beneficial for socially anxious teens, who find it easier to interact socially online.[236] The more conclusive finding has been that Internet use has a negative effect on the physical health of adolescents, as time spent using the Internet replaces time doing physical activities. However, the Internet can be significantly useful in educating teens because of the access they have to information on many various topics.
Transitions into adulthood
A broad way of defining adolescence is the transition from child-to-adulthood. According to Hogan & Astone (1986), this transition can include markers such as leaving school, starting a full-time job, leaving the home of origin, getting married, and becoming a parent for the first time.[237] However, the time frame of this transition varies drastically by culture. In some countries, such as the United States, adolescence can last nearly a decade, but in others, the transition—often in the form of a ceremony—can last for only a few days.[238]
Some examples of social and religious transition ceremonies that can be found in the U.S., as well as in other cultures around the world, are Confirmation, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, Quinceañeras, sweet sixteens, cotillions, and débutante balls. In other countries, initiation ceremonies play an important role, marking the transition into adulthood or the entrance into adolescence. This transition may be accompanied by obvious physical changes, which can vary from a change in clothing to tattoos and scarification.[218] Furthermore, transitions into adulthood may also vary by gender, and specific rituals may be more common for males or for females. This illuminates the extent to which adolescence is, at least in part, a social construction; it takes shape differently depending on the cultural context, and may be enforced more by cultural practices or transitions than by universal chemical or biological physical changes.
Promoting positive changes in adolescents
At the decision-making point of their lives, youth is susceptible to drug addiction, sexual abuse, peer pressure, violent crimes and other illegal activities. Developmental Intervention Science (DIS) is a fusion of the literature of both developmental and intervention sciences. This association conducts youth interventions that mutually assist both the needs of the community as well as psychologically stranded youth by focusing on risky and inappropriate behaviors while promoting positive self-development along with self-esteem among adolescents.[239]
Criticism
The concept of adolescence has been criticized by experts, such as Robert Epstein, who state that an undeveloped brain is not the main cause of teenagers' turmoils.[240][241] Some have criticized the concept of adolescence because it is a relatively recent phenomenon in human history created by modern society,[242][243][244][245] and have been highly critical of what they view as the infantilization of young adults in American society.[246] In an article for Scientific American, Robert Epstein and Jennifer Ong state that "American-style teen turmoil is absent in more than 100 cultures around the world, suggesting that such mayhem is not biologically inevitable. Second, the brain itself changes in response to experiences, raising the question of whether adolescent brain characteristics are the cause of teen tumult or rather the result of lifestyle and experiences."[247] David Moshman has also stated in regards to adolescence that brain research "is crucial for a full picture, but it does not provide an ultimate explanation."[248]
Other critics of the concept of adolescence do point at individual differences in brain growth rate, citing that some (though not all) early teens still have infantile undeveloped corpus callosums, concluding that "the adult in *every* adolescent" is too generalizing. These people tend to support the notion that a more interconnected brain makes more precise distinctions (citing Pavlov's comparisons of conditioned reflexes in different species) and that there is a non-arbitrary threshold at which distinctions become sufficiently precise to correct assumptions afterward as opposed to being ultimately dependent on exterior assumptions for communication. They argue that this threshold is the one at which an individual is objectively capable of speaking for himself or herself, as opposed to culturally arbitrary measures of "maturity" which often treat this ability as a sign of "immaturity" merely because it leads to questioning of authorities. These people also stress the low probability of the threshold being reached at a birthday, and instead advocate non-chronological emancipation at the threshold of afterward correction of assumptions.[249] They sometimes cite similarities between "adolescent" behavior and KZ syndrome (inmate behavior in adults in prison camps) such as aggression being explainable by oppression and "immature" financial or other risk behavior being explainable by a way out of captivity being more worth to captive people than any incremental improvement in captivity, and argue that this theory successfully predicted remaining "immature" behavior after reaching the age of majority by means of longer-term traumatization. In this context, they refer to the fallibility of official assumptions about what is good or bad for an individual, concluding that paternalistic "rights" may harm the individual. They also argue that since it never took many years to move from one group to another to avoid inbreeding in the paleolithic, evolutionary psychology is unable to account for a long period of "immature" risk behavior.[250]
See also
References |
Illustration FØrtifem
Le décolleté n’est plus un artifice réservé aux femmes. Non, il n’est pas question ici de poitrine pigeonnante, même si certains tee-shirts pour homme sont fendus quasiment jusqu’au sternum. Il y a longtemps, les porteuses de baskets ont découvert les joies du décolleté de cheville grâce aux mini-chaussettes qui enveloppent le pied en toute discrétion jusque sous la malléole. Cet accessoire est désormais disponible en 43 fillette (et plus) et trouve sa place dans le tiroir à chaussettes des garçons.
L’effet n’est pas très viril : la mini-chaussette sur maxi-pied avec os malléolaire en majesté peut même décourager toute tentative de drague. Mais alors pourquoi ce contraceptif vestimentaire rencontre-t-il tant de succès, y compris chez les mâles ordinairement dotés d’un sens du style respectable ? Selon certains, la mini-chaussette relève de l’arsenal anti-odeurs, les pieds nus et les matières techniques qui composent les baskets étant susceptibles de produire des effluves fort désagréables.
L’outil du petit
Ce parti pris fait peu de cas des avancées en termes de soins des pieds : de bonnes semelles et un spray anti-transpirant vaporisé sur la plante sont au moins aussi efficaces. La mini-chaussette constitue également un trompe-l’œil : la dernière arme en date découverte par l’Homme Petit en réaction aux chaussettes montantes, qui rendent ses jambes encore plus courtes que dans la réalité. Dommage, l’exposition de ses chevilles épaisses n’arrange rien à son look.
Enfin, il existe une raison bien plus perverse au succès mystérieux de ces accessoires : une petite amie jalouse. Elle connaît tous les codes d’accès à Facebook, Twitter et Instagram de son compagnon ; c’est elle qui lui a trouvé sa nouvelle assistante, que l’on ne surnomme pas « sauvez Willy » sans raison. Astucieuse, elle encourage son conjoint à porter les mini-chaussettes qu’elle lui a offertes afin qu’il ne fasse l’objet d’aucune convoitise. Cette forme de castration douce finira par se retourner contre son auteure qui, soudain, ne sera plus très sûre de vouloir faire tous ces efforts pour ce garçon qui frétille de la malléole, assis à la table du petit déjeuner. |
Details surrounding Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell’s suicide were published Friday by The Detroit News, which obtained a copy of a report filed by officers who responded to the scene.
According to the article, the report says Cornell’s wife, Vicky, asked his bodyguard to check on the singer after a telephone conversation in which he repeatedly said, “I am just tired.” The bodyguard, Martin Kirsten, went to Cornell’s room at the MGM Grand Hotel shortly after midnight and found the main door and a door to the bedroom suite locked; he forced both doors open. He found Cornell on the bathroom floor, “with blood running from his mouth and a red exercise band around [his] neck,” the report says.
Cornell’s family issued a statement Friday morning disputing that his death was a suicide and may have been exacerbated by Ativan, which he had been prescribed for anxiety. Michael Woody, director of media relations for the Detroit Police, told Variety that the report had been leaked and an official version will not be available until the medical report is complete, probably several weeks from now.
Kirsten had been in Cornell’s room shortly before he received Vicky’s call. He helped the singer fix his computer and then gave Cornell two Ativan pills, “which victim takes for anxiety.”
At around 12:15 a.m., Vicky Cornell phoned Kirsten and asked him to check on her husband, “because he did not sound like he is okay,” the report said. She said her husband sounded “groggy and just kept saying, ‘I am just tired,’ and hung up the phone.”
Kirsten went to the singer’s suite and called security twice when he found the doors latched. Security personnel refused to allow him access, but Kirsten kicked down the doors and found the singer unresponsive. An MGM medic arrived at 12:56 a.m., according to the report, and “untied the red exercise band from [the] victim’s neck and began CPR on [Cornell, who] was not breathing.”
EMS personnel arrived minutes later and also unsuccessfully attempted CPR. Cornell was pronounced dead by a doctor at 1:30 a.m. Homicide detectives arrived and began an investigation, but foul play is not suspected in the case.
Cornell, who struggled with substance abuse for much of his life, admitted in 2009 that he had been in rehab for an addiction to OxyContin. He said he had been sober since 2002. |
On June 17, 2015, Malcolm Graham learned that his sister, Cynthia Graham Hurd, a librarian and a devout Christian, was one of nine victims shot and killed at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. Here is Graham, a politician who recently lost a congressional bid in North Carolina, speaking to The Trace’s Jacqueline Thomsen, about what it was like to lose “the glue” that held his family together.
I was at home getting ready for bed in Charlotte and I saw the news scroll at the bottom of the TV. It said that there was a shooting in Charleston at Emanuel and people were feared dead.
I automatically called my sister Cynthia. Emanuel was our home church, has been for our family for some 50 years, and Cynthia’s my contact for all things Charleston. She didn’t answer so I just assumed she was trying to figure out what had happened, lending support to the church. When she didn’t call me back in an hour, I started to get concerned simply because, with something of that magnitude, she would have called and said she was OK. And then my niece called and said that they could not locate Cynthia, that there were rumors she’d attended Bible study that night. And obviously those rumors were true.
It was awful because we had to prepare a funeral service and do those things that families do when they lose a loved one, and we had to do it in a very public way because the whole nation was watching what we were doing.
During the first court hearing, some of the victims’ family members told the shooter that they forgave him. So we had to deal with this whole notion of forgiveness of the shooter two days after the incident, while my sister was still in the morgue. I simply do not forgive. I don’t think you can forgive someone for a hideous act like that two days after it occurred. Forgiveness is a journey, it’s just not granted, especially when they never asked for it.
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My focus has been remembering how Cynthia lived versus how she died. Cynthia lived an extraordinary life, a storybook life. She was personable, she was sharp, she was candid. She cared about her community, cared about her church, cared about her God.
I put it upon myself to be her advocate. I wrote editorials for newspapers and appeared on radio and cable news shows. I went to the National Association of Black Journalists and was a keynote speaker there. I just kind of engulfed myself as a form of therapy, talking about what had gone wrong in our society and what we must do as a community to regain trust. I also wanted to call attention to the elephant in the room: racism and hatred and discrimination. I don’t call it gun violence. Certainly the gun was the tool the perpetrator used to commit the crime, but the crime itself was hate and racism and discrimination. To simply call it gun violence disregards what happened that night.
Anytime you talk about racism or race it makes people very uncomfortable, but I believe it was a conversation that needed to be had so I took it upon myself to talk about those issues. And at the same time, it gave me an opportunity to make sure that people knew my sister as more than a victim at the church, that she was a sister, a cousin, an aunt, a librarian, a commissioner, a friend — she was so many other things than a victim.
Our parents passed away in ’84 and ’86, and so in many respects Cynthia was the matriarch, she was the glue that held everybody together. It was tough for all of us, particularly my sister Jackie. The Friday before Cynthia passed, Jackie was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. So there was a lot of family stuff going on and we were concerned about Jackie’s health and Jackie’s life when Cynthia was taken from us.
We’re all doing better now. I don’t think we’re fine but we’re better. We are getting used to living without Cynthia. It gives our family pride and honor to know that other people have recognized her. The University of South Carolina, where she got her masters degree, has named a masters scholarship after her. And the housing authority, where she served as a commissioner for 21 years, also has established a scholarship after her.
There’s still a void there. She was someone I would talk to every day, every other day, by phone or text. I think that’s the biggest difference — no more pep talks from her, no more encouragement from her, no more “how you doing brother” from her. It’s like losing a cell phone because that’s your information pack. I can’t recharge it, I can’t get it back.
It would be motherly conversations, it would be sisterly conversations, it would be encouraging conversations as I went about my political career. I served for six years in the Charlotte City Council in North Carolina and 10 years as a member of the state senate, so I’m a political animal, I love politics and government. It’s something that Cynthia encouraged me to do and be involved in.
Cynthia was always helping me — she was a librarian, a great researcher, a great wordsmith — she edited speeches for me and would say, “Hey, you might want to say it this way,” or “You know what, I’m gonna rip this up, I’m gonna do it for you.”
At her funeral service, I gave her eulogy and it was the first time I needed that type of assistance and she wasn’t there. Certainly she would have been the person I would have called to say “I need your help to write this thing,” or “proofread it for me.”
The last time I saw Cynthia, she visited to help celebrate my oldest daughter Nicole’s college graduation. And one of the things she kept saying to my youngest daughter, Cortney, is, “You’re up next.” Cortney graduated from college this year, and Cynthia wasn’t there.
I see Cynthia every day because she’s on my cell phone screenshot. There was a picture of her that an illustrator did for the alumni magazine at the College of Charleston where she worked part-time, and it’s a beautiful picture. I saved it as a part of my screensaver. So every time I pick up the phone to make a call, there she is, with me everywhere I go.
We may be back here again soon. Not in Charleston, not in a church, but somewhere in our country someone is going to experience some type of pain simply because of the proliferation of guns, and the Achilles heel of our country, racism, that we can’t seem to get past. So we got to not just forgive and forget, but we have to remember to continue to fight for those things that make our society better today than it was yesterday.
Graham first spoke with The Trace last Thursday. On Sunday, a gunman shot and killed 50 people at an Orlando, Florida, nightclub.
[Photo: Logan Cyrus for The Trace] |
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