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Ben Shapiro speaking at Politicon 2016 in Pasadena, California. Gage Skidmore/Flickr CC
Ben Shapiro is a conservative columnist, former Breitbart editor-at-large, and Never Trump–er who’s now facing anti-Semitic threats from the alt-right. On The Gist, he spoke with Mike Pesca about Donald Trump’s election and what Steve Bannon really means for this country. The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Is Steve Bannon an anti-Semite?
No, I have no evidence that Steve’s an anti-Semite. I think Steve’s a very, very power-hungry dude who’s willing to use anybody and anything in order to get ahead, and that includes making common cause with the racist, anti-Semitic alt-right.
Is that anti-Semitism?
I want to be careful about attributing personal anti-Semitism to him. I will say that it is appeasement of anti-Semitism, which in my book is certainly not a good thing.
So whatever he has in his heart, he countenances it for either political or media gain.
He certainly did with the alt-right, for sure. And that doesn’t mean that Breitbart itself has been anti-Israel—it hasn’t been. It’s a very right-wing site when it comes to Israel. It also doesn’t mean that Jews who work there, like Joel Pollak for example, have been discriminated against, because they’ll say they haven’t, and I wasn’t when I was working there.* What it does mean is that he allowed the site to be taken over and used by a bunch of alt-right people who are not fond of Jews, are not fond of minorities.
Is this basically the comments section? I have heard him talk about how important it was to let the comments bubble up and drive the direction of the site.
I’m talking about that. I’m also talking about the relationship that he’s had with some of the popularizers of the alt-right, people who wouldn’t consider themselves overtly alt-right but have made a big deal out of providing popular appeal to it. People like Milo Yiannopoulos or the folks who they call the Meme Team who traffic in alt-rightness.
For folks who don’t know what the alt-right is, it might be worthwhile to just sort of start at the beginning and talk about what the alt-right is—because there are a lot of these various definitions floating around, nearly all of which are wrong.
Basically, the alt-right is a group of thinkers who believe that Western civilization is inseparable from European ethnicity—which is racist, obviously. It’s people who believe that if Western civilization were to take in too many people of different colors and different ethnicities and different religions, then that would necessarily involve the interior collapse of Western civilization. As you may notice, this has nothing to do with the Constitution. It has nothing to do with the Declaration of Independence. It has nothing to do actually with Western civilization. The whole principle of Western civilization is that anybody can involve himself or herself in civilized values. That’s not what the alt-right believes—at least its leading thinkers, people like Richard Spencer and Jared Taylor and Vox Day. Those kind of folks will openly acknowledge that this is their thought process.
Richard Spencer was just in a big alt-right conference, and his speech ended with a bunch of arm salutes, people yelling “Sieg Heil!” and him winking and quoting in the original German, and criticizing the press using a Nazi phrase.
Yeah, they’re not good people, I think that’s fair to say. Those people have been given this new intellectual veneer by folks like Milo Yiannopoulos. Milo wrote this piece called “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right.” It was given heavy play over Breitbart, and that piece basically made the case that these are just intellectuals who have made common cause of folks like paleo-conservatives—Pat Buchanan and other folks of that ilk.
What the alt-right is trying to do, and what they’ve been trying to do now ever since Donald Trump came to prominence, is a couple of things. One is they’ve been broadening the definition of alt-right; I just wrote this piece for National Review for the print edition this week. They’ve been trying to broaden the definition of alt-right so they can suck people into believing they’re alt-right even though they don’t believe the central tenets of the alt-right. So they’ll say things like, “Well if you just don’t like Paul Ryan, that means you’re alt-right,” or “If you just like memes, that means that you’re alt-right,” or “If you think that the Republicans are too weak-kneed, that means you’re alt-right.” No, that doesn’t mean that you’re alt-right; it means that you’re not an establishment Republican. I’m not a big Paul Ryan fan, per se, but that doesn’t make me alt-right. I’m their No. 1 target, according to the Anti-Defamation League, this year.
So they’ve tried to broaden the definition so they can suck people into believing they’re alt-right, and then make themselves seem indispensable by saying, “Look at all these alt-right people. They’re all out here, and if the Republican Party pushes them to the side, then they’re going to pay an electoral price for that.” And then you have people winking and nodding at them because they think they’re an important constituency. So it’s a couple-step process, and glomming onto Trump has been part of that because Trump, I don’t think, is alt-right. I don’t think that Trump is particularly racist. I think he’s an ignoramus. I think that more than anything, Trump is willing to pay heed to and wink at anybody who provides him even a shred of good coverage. So if the alt-right, which worships at the altar of Trump—if they provide him good coverage, he’s willing to wink and nod at them and not wreck them.
How much does Steve Bannon subscribe to those notions of European centrism? At what point will he stop?
I think that Steve will stop if it becomes politically convenient for him to stop. Steve is not a deeply principled guy on politics; it’s not like he’s coming in with this ramrod agenda. He’s coming in and he’s talking about big government spending. He’s talking about trillion-dollar infrastructure packages. If you had to peg Steve down on ideology or philosophy, you’d say he’s sort of like a European far-right leader. He’s more like Marine Le Pen or Nigel Farage than he is like a constitutional conservative. He doesn’t like constitutional conservatism; he thinks that it’s an obstacle in the way of building this new Third Way movement, this independent political movement that is focused on heavy spending—even some redistribution inside the country—but closed borders and tariffs for everybody outside. He calls himself an economic nationalist. They say, “Are you a white nationalist?” and he says, “No, I’m an economic nationalist.” And then when he’s asked about white nationalism and its effect on the far-right in Europe, he says that will sort of fade away as time goes on, and they’ll legitimize. I don’t think so. I’ve never seen a bad movement or a bad person, yet, given power and they become better people.
So you think that Bannon is using the alt-right to get his agenda passed? But do you think that the alt-right thinks it’s using Bannon to get its agenda through?
Yes, and they’ll say it openly—they’ll say, “Bannon isn’t one of us. Breitbart isn’t us. Trump isn’t one of us. But they’re the most useful tool we’ve ever found.”
And they’re not doing that just to distract attention to the media? They really don’t think that Trump is one of them, but he’s a useful idiot?
I think that’s right. I don’t think that they sit around thinking Donald Trump reads Jared Taylor. I mean, I don’t think they think Donald Trump reads books, right? They think that Donald Trump has positions. Those positions are sufficiently warm toward their positions. He’s not throwing them out of the tent. And because he won’t throw them out of the tent, that makes him their best ally.
You think Bannon is wrong morally to play footsie with this group. Do you think it’s wrong politically?
I think it’s wrong politically because I think that everyone’s taking the wrong lessons, right and left, away from this election cycle.
I think on the right, people are taking it like Trump won this big, broad victory; Trump lost the popular vote by over 1 million votes, and he won by very, very narrow margins in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Florida. And the fact is that when all is said and done, the groups that are growing demographically in the United States are minorities, women, young people—millennials will be 40 percent of the voting population in 2020. And so if you’re banking on this ever-shrinking group, the alt-right, in order to put you over the top, that seems like bad politics. It’s alienating politics; it’s not something that’s going to help.
By the same token, I think that the left is making a huge mistake by labeling everybody on the right “alt-right.” Because what they’re doing is they’re pushing people into the arms of the alt-right. You call people racist enough, and they begin to think OK, well, who’s not calling me a racist—I’ll side with that guy. So the worst thing the left can do is continue to suggest that everyone who backed Trump was a racist, sexist, bigot homophobe; everyone’s evil, everyone’s terrible. What they really should be doing is they should be saying, “Look, we understand one of the reasons that we lost is because Hillary Clinton was a uniquely terrible candidate”—she really was—“and because of that, we’re not trying to throw you guys out of the tent. We think it was a bad choice to choose Trump, but we would sort of appeal to the better angels of your nature—that if we think he’s divisive as time goes on, that you recognize that he’s being divisive.” I think it’s a big mistake to have the left pushing the notion that they’re just going to double-down on the Obama coalition and tell everybody else to go screw.
Can conservative populism succeed without playing footsie with some elements of what we now call the alt-right?
I think they can. I think the alt-right is a very, very small movement that has gained outsize credibility because they’re extraordinarily loud online.
I mentioned earlier this Anti-Defamation League study that said that I was the No. 1 target of anti-Semitism in the journalistic world this year. And that’s because one, I’m Jewish; two, I left Breitbart; three, I didn’t back Trump. I think they said there were, between January and September, something like 20,000 anti-Semitic tweets directed at journalists. And I was the personal recipient of 7,400 of them. So the top 10 was me by a landslide, and then a bunch of people coming in behind. They traced virtually all of these tweets, or a huge percentage of these tweets, to 1,600 accounts.
So it’s a very small but vocal group, and they’re making their presence felt using the echo chambers of Twitter and Facebook and online. And they’re waiting for the left to overplay its hand. And that’s what the left needs to not do.
I’ve been as critical of Steve Bannon as anybody in the media. I was the first critic of Bannon because when I left Breitbart in March, I specifically named Bannon as a nefarious influence at Breitbart, by name. And yet, I was forced last week to defend Steve Bannon. I think that he’s a terrible person. But because the left can’t just say, “This is a guy who made way for the alt-right, which is quite terrible, and he’s doing a real disservice to the nature of the country by doing so.” The left had to accuse him personally of racism and anti-Semitism, and they had to overstep. This is the big mistake.
You want to empower the alt-right? Keep overstepping. Again, it’s the overstepping by the left that’s driving people into this almost white tribalism. It’s really negative. I hate tribalism on all sides—I hate it on the left and I hate it on the right—and what I’m seeing is that increase across the board.
When you were at Breitbart, how much did you look around how much did what you see bother you? Before you quit, how much was it weighing on you?
The Trump move bothered me because it looked to me like a sellout of any sort of conservative principle on behalf of a guy who Andrew Breitbart rightly called in 2011—when I was wrong about Trump, he was rightly calling Trump a clown in 2011. So I thought that that was disturbing. I didn’t follow the comments section too much, because you guys know from being online, following comments sections is a quick way to the asylum. So I really didn’t spend a lot of time messing around in the comments, if any. I heard the rumors that the comments sections had become an alt-right cesspool, but I didn’t pay attention to it too much. The real obvious shift, to me, in terms of content, came after I left. I declared that I was #NeverTrump on Breitbart, actually, and then three weeks later was the Michelle Fields incident, and I left over that.
She was the reporter who was grabbed by Corey Lewandowski in Florida. And she was a Breitbart reporter, and Breitbart did not stand by her at all.
Not only did they not stand by her, they undercut her. They ran a piece suggesting that it never could have happened the way that she said it happened, and then they still have columnists at their website who claim that the whole thing was a hoax set up by me and Michelle and Ben Terris from the Washington Post—we got together in a dark room and decided to come up with the worst conspiracy in human history.* This kind of stuff is crap, obviously.
But to me, the major public move in favor of the alt-right came after I left. Not to be self-centered, but I think part of it had to do with the fact that I was one of the biggest-name writers on the site, just in terms of social media following. And after I left, they looked around at their staff, and they said, “Who can we elevate?” The next biggest name was Yiannopoulos. And so two weeks later, they come out with that alt-right piece glorifying Richard Spencer and such.
What was your relationship with Milo Yiannopoulos then, and what is it now?
I never had a relationship with Milo. We sort of would joke around with each other online. I thought that he was kind of—he’s a provocateur, so like all provocateurs, he did some stuff that was funny and some stuff I thought that was over-the-top. But I thought he was doing some stuff that was interesting, if over-the-top.
And then there was a breaking point where he said the Constitution and conservatism were done, and it was going to be replaced by this new rising alt-right movement that didn’t care about the Constitution—you’re cucks, you’re losers, all the rest of this stuff. And then it gradually got worse, to the point where, when my second kid was born in May, Milo—who pretends that he’s not alt-right—sent a tweet at me with a picture of a black kid. Because the way that this works is that if you are not alt-right, if you’re anti-Trump, then according to the alt-right you must be what they call a “cuck”—for those who don’t follow this sort of stuff—because you have two brain cells to rub together. Cuck, according to the alt-right, means that you’re a white person who wants to watch his wife have sex with a black man, right? Because you’re poisoning the racial stock of the United States, so you want your own racial stock “poisoned.” I always found the whole thing bewildering. I’m not interested in my wife having sex with a man of any race; I’m not sure why a black guy would be significantly worse, just overall! It seems pretty terrible all the way through.
That’s a little nuance I hadn’t really thought of. They’d be OK with the white man having sex with their wife? Again, one of those not-too-well-thought-out aspects.
As long as he’s a pure Aryan shtupping your wife, then you’re fine. The whole thing is—that’s asinine. But he tweeted a picture of a black baby of me on the day that my son was born because I’m a cuck, because I didn’t back Trump. As soon as Milo was banned from Twitter—by the way, I don’t favor bans on Twitter generally. Twitter’s a private company, and it can do what it wants, but I don’t like people getting banned on Twitter unless there’s active harassment. I think it’s dangerous territory. But I can say this: When Milo was thrown off of Twitter, 70 percent of the anti-Semitism in my feed disappeared immediately.
If one wants to oppose what one perceives as some of the possible excesses of the Trump presidency, what is the best way, knowing what you know about Bannon and Breitbart and the alt-right, to oppose those aspects that I’m certain almost all of the listeners on my show would want to oppose?
I understand why people are concerned about Trump being president; I’m concerned about Trump being president. I think that it’s up to everybody to hold him accountable. But if you’re asking what’s going to impact policy? As I said to Charles Blow on CNN, please do not turn everything up to 11. Everybody’s going deaf. If you’re all going to go nuts over a Hamilton tweet, wait until he’s using the White House to do business for Trump Inc. Look at what his people want. And I’m not talking about the alt-right; the alt-right is going to back him no matter what. I’m talking about the traditional Republican voter who wants to see him do certain things. Watch where he commits a heresy and then say, “If the shoe were on the other foot and this were Obama, you’d be ticked.”
So for example, if Barack Obama went to an event, was booed, and then started tweeting about how terrible the event was and how all the people should shut up and apologize, you’d be ticked. It wouldn’t mean that he was censoring anything, but you’d be ticked, and you’d have a right to be ticked.
The same thing is true for some of the Trump business reports. There’s a report today that may or may not be verified—we’re still finding out—about him trying to hit up the president of Argentina for a special favor on Trump Tower. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but we do know, according to the Washington Post, that Trump Hotel representatives have been telling ambassadors to use Trump Hotels when they come to town. That’s a serious conflict, obviously.
I think that the more the left focuses on the things that are actually serious regardless of your politics—like corruption, like policies that are self-directed, that kind of stuff—that will have more of an impact than just going around shouting, “Racist, racist, racist!” I think one of the big problems here is that if you called Mitt Romney a racist in 2012—as Bill Maher said, if you turned it all the way up to 11 for Mitt Romney—it’s very difficult for people to hear you when you turn it up to 12 for Trump.
Correction, Nov. 23, 2016: Due to transcription errors, this post originally misspelled Joel Pollak’s and Ben Terris’ last names. |
Let Physics Be the Dream It Used To Be
Or, how to make physics fun
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein Blocked Unblock Follow Following May 2, 2015
I received a very nice e-mail this week from an esteemed theoretical physicist who was concerned about tweets that indicated I have been feeling distressed about the world of physics. I say this was a very nice e-mail because in my life it is rare that someone senior has paid attention to how I am doing not just in terms of the product of my professional work (papers) but also in terms of how I was feeling about being involved with the process (the physics community).
We discussed it in person, and at the heart of what I told him is this: the astro/physics community has rarely let me enjoy the science. It began with an undergraduate curriculum that was designed for more highly resourced high school graduates than me, the adviser who spent four whole years telling me I wasn’t smart enough to be a theoretical physicist, and a school full of people intent on reminding me that I didn’t look like a physics major (for a bunch of smart kids, what an uncreative response to that piece of information).
For four years, I told myself it would get better later and also that I had to give up on some of my original plans because problematically, having had no one to counter the noise I was hearing, I partly believed the adviser. So, I ended up in the wrong graduate program, then went into what I thought was the right graduate program, only to discover that sometimes white male postdocs are really racist assholes and no one wants to do anything about it.
Through all of this, I was supposed to be enjoying the wonders of physics! Because physics is super fun when your study group is treating you like a low-IQ charity case because while they were enjoying leisurely study time in the library, you were at your work-study job. Because physics is super fun when your adviser tells you at almost every meeting that you’ll never make it. Because physics is super fun when you start to believe the stories that people are telling you about yourself, just a little, and you hate yourself for being that thing they keep telling you that you are. Because physics is super fun when you’re Black, queer and from a working class background and your classmates and eventual colleagues regularly say racially insensitive/blatantly racist, homophobic and classist things with an occasional (in my own personal experience) sprinkling of sexism/misogyny for good measure. Because it’s super fun to go to work or to visit a department and brace yourself for the regular barrage of questions about your race/ethnicity/Jewish parentage because apparently your skin color screams “different but ambiguous WHAT IS IT??!!!!” to various white people.
And of course there’s also the part where you don’t really get to choose where you live, and if you’re a Black (Caribbean American) Jewish, queer woman finding community will be incredibly difficult almost everywhere in North America that isn’t a select few cities. Living in places where you may end up feeling out of place is always fun times. FUN!!!!!!!!!
I’m not going to catalog every shitty thing that happened to me in grad school or as a postdoc even though I haven’t actually mentioned the worst stuff (because it’s not safe for me to), but the point is that I didn’t and still don’t fit into the dominant astro/physics culture, and this has really sucked a lot of the fun out of physics for me. White astro/physicists need to understand and take to heart that this is in fact a real issue that doesn’t magically go away with admissions and diversity initiatives that fail to address underlying cultural, structural issues.
At this stage, anyone reading this might ask, “well why are you still here?” And the answer is that increasingly I feel like I don’t know, which I guess is what lead to the disconcerting tweets.
I don’t know how to deal with a community that won’t acknowledge its colonialist and white supremacist past and present, thereby insisting on a colonialist, white supremacist future.
I don’t know how to deal with a community full of people who can hear a Native American woman and a Black woman say that the community discourse about an experiment is hurting them and not have a large number of people stop and say, “wait, let’s rethink what we’re doing here.”
I don’t know how to deal with a community where Native American students can bravely challenge a racist e-mail, only to be told by their classmates that their anti-racist stance was embarrassing to the community.
I don’t know how to deal with a community full of people who don’t understand that what they are demanding of us is that we assimilate to their sensibility of what’s “true” and “fair” in science.
I don’t know how to deal with people who do understand that it’s a demand for assimilation and think that it is ethical.
I don’t know how to deal with a community that expects me to be comfortable in departments that are not only dominated by people who are solely of European heritage but also sometimes are in locations where there is no cultural alternative to that dominant experience.
I don’t know how to deal with a community that values diversity for the “sake of science” but doesn’t value equal opportunity for the sake of fundamental human decency.
I don’t know how to deal with a community that has a job application process that is frankly fairly dehumanizing for most participants, especially those of us who for a host of reasons couldn’t be on “the perfect trajectory.”
I don’t know how to deal with a community that has never really considered what it’s like for someone like me to watch as the very few Black people ahead of her in the pipeline in her field disappeared from the mix.
I don’t know how to deal with a community that doesn’t understand my experience is different from theirs, that the racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism I deal with impacts my life 24 hours a day, not magically only during the hours when I am not working.
I don’t know how to deal with a community that is fundamentally empathy-deficient, even takes a kind of pride in that, and doesn’t seem capable of considering the epistemic consequences of that social structure.
I don’t know how to deal with a community where one of the most famous departments in the world is also home to three known sexual harassers, and it’s been like that for decades.
I don’t know how to have fun with that. How is that fun? It’s not fucking fun.
Yet, here I am. I believe that the cosmos don’t belong to straight, white, ablebodied cismen alone, even though for the last 500 years they’ve felt pretty entitled to it and with high frequency to use the knowledge gained about it to keep the rest of us in literal and metaphorical chains. I share Carl Sagan’s humanist belief that one of our greatest strengths as a species is our transcultural impulse to weave stories about our origins. And I like math, a lot. I still think the times table is a miraculous thing, 26 years later.
And I want little children of every shade, gender identity, sex identity, ethnicity, sexual orientation, romantic orientation, (dis)ability and religion to have access to that cosmos, to have fun with it, to have joy in it. And I still want that for myself.
But I tweeted a few weeks ago that the astro/physics community is ruining the fucking stars for me with their bullshit. I told the kind physicist that I can work on trying to enjoy myself more, I can work on shutting out the noise more, I can try to hold on for dear life to the occasional person who gets it, but ultimately what really needs to happen is that the whole community needs to start working with me and for people like me. And with far too few (but highly appreciated) exceptions, it is not.
Will I stick around? I don’t know. I may not be able to anymore. Because I was struggling to enjoy the work, because of the very real discrimination I faced, and because of random bad luck that can happen to anyone, I struggled to be as productive as many others. Does that signal I don’t have the capacity to make significant contributions to the field? Not particularly. Will it be read that way? Already has been. Actually, I think the fact that I have been able to make contributions to the field despite everything that has happened signals that I could do really wonderful things if given a more equitable chance.
I’m writing this to say that I want a chance, fellow scientists, to regularly have uninterrupted fun doing science. But that means making this field different. Making it so that I am not constantly putting out fires on all fronts, quietly soothing the concerns of students who are afraid to speak out publicly while pushing back publicly against some of the harmful crap that they are hearing while also trying to let those students know that it’s not them, it’s the hand they were dealt by a community hell bent on not changing too much.
Just because I’m good at all of those things doesn’t mean this stuff doesn’t sting. It more than stings. It hurts. And it also means that time I could be spending working is spent protecting my community. Lots and lots and lots of people will respond to this by saying that I need to be more selfish. But do people imagine what that decision is like? To actively say to myself, “I could help people like me and protect them from some of the bad experiences that I wasn’t protected from, but I’m not going to do it”? I want to be able to like myself when I go to sleep at night and selfishly ignoring the suffering of other marginalized people is not part of my personal vision of integrity. And imagine what we marginalized people could do if we were no longer marginalized and in a community of support. Imagine.
Abdus Salaam once said that when Blacks started to enter physics in large numbers, it would create something like jazz. The problem is that astro/physicists don’t really want jazz. They say they do, but they don’t want to do the work of learning a new way of doing things. They want to keep playing the same classical songs, exactly the same way. Sure maybe they are willing to include new looking people in their band, but only if we play to their beat, their way. Only if we do the work, not them. But I can’t live like that and so many marginalized people can’t live like that.
Do our lives and our ability to breathe, not just physically but also intellectually and emotionally, matter?
Does it matter that by forcing us into a box, the community is teaching us not to improvise, even though creativity is maybe the second most important quality for us to have as scientists (after persistence)?
I understand intellectually why my work on inflation and axions is interesting, but I am tired of the disjointed feelings of liking the ideas but finding it hard to breathe in the community that I have to share them with. Because I am human and not an objectivity machine, those two things are both part of doing science. Astro/physics loses so many people, including white men, because the community refuses to acknowledge this dual reality, that science is both a mathematical process and a human, social enterprise. We lose people because too often there aren’t enough victories and moments of joy and fun for those of us who are from communities that history kicked to the cotton fields, trails of tears, unsafe street corners, prisons and deaths at the hands of state actors.
I think that can change, but as Kiese Laymon likes to say, people have to be ready to do The Work to make it happen.
sankofa |
Nykerion Nealon, 17, of Dallas, Texas in shown in this booking photo provided by the Dallas County Jail, in Dallas, Texas, March 13, 2015. REUTERS/Dallas County Jail/Handout via Reuters
By Lisa Maria Garza
(Reuters) - Dallas police arrested a teenager in last week's fatal shooting of an Iraqi immigrant who was gunned down while taking pictures of his first snowfall, officials said on Friday.
Police said they do not see the killing as a hate crime. Ahmed al-Jumaili, 36, had only been in the United States for about three weeks to be reunited with his wife when he was shot in the chest as he stood in the parking lot with his family, enjoying the snow, according to police.
Al-Jumaili ran into his apartment and collapsed. He was pronounced dead later at an area hospital. Investigators found 15 bullet casings at the crime scene.
Nykerion Nealon, 17, was charged with murder in his death. Police said Nealon appears to have been trying to retaliate for a separate shooting that took place at his girlfriend's apartment.
"We don't believe that he knew Mr. al-Jumaili. We do not believe that he knew Mr. al-Jumaili's ethnicity," police spokesman Major Jeff Cotner said at a news conference.
Surveillance video released by police showed four men running away from a nearby apartment complex, with one man carrying a rifle.
More arrests are possible as police investigate whether the other three men in the video are at fault in the shooting death, Cotner said.
The possibility that al-Jumaili might have been targeted put Muslims on edge, said Alia Salem, executive director of the Dallas-Fort Worth chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has offered a $12,000 reward for information that identified the killer.
(Aditional reporting by Marice Richter) |
Football Association chiefs are ready to speak to surprise England candidate Ralf Rangnick for a second time as they weigh up their options following the departure of Sam Allardyce.
Telegraph Sport can reveal that Rangnick held talks with technical director Dan Ashworth, chief executive Martin Glenn and vice-chairman David Gill at Wembley after Roy Hodgson stepped down as manager.
Despite greatly impressing the trio, German coach Rangnick was eventually told that the FA wanted an Englishman for the post and appointed Allardyce but his swift departure means the permanent position is up for grabs again.
With the FA set to make a new approach to Arsene Wenger and Gareth Southgate already in position as caretaker and seemingly interested in the full-time job, Rangnick is currently the dark horse among the candidates.
Ashworth is a big fan of Rangnick, having attempted to appoint him as Roy Hodgson’s successor at West Bromwich Albion in 2012 and has followed his work ever since. |
This offseason, the Saints made a somewhat unexpected splash in free agency. By signing Adrian Peterson to a two-year, $7 million deal, New Orleans added some impressive veteran depth to its backfield. It surely wasn’t Peterson’s first choice, but he found out pretty quickly that there weren’t a ton of teams actively seeking out 32-year-old RBs with injury problems and a checkered past off the field – even if that RB is a future Hall of Famer.
For many years, Peterson was at the height of his game. He’s a once-in-a-generation athlete, 16th All-Time in Rushing Yards, and won the MVP in 2012. He’s just two years removed from leading the league in rushing, so it’s not inconceivable that he could regain his otherworldly form that earned him the nickname “Purple Jesus” during his time in Minnesota, but that’s not likely.
According to FantasyPros, fantasy-footballers are grabbing AP at a nice spot in their drafts. Currently coming off the board at the 69th pick, Peterson is being taken in the 6th round by some of you. The sixth! He’s being drafted ahead of safer bets like Kelvin Benjamin, Stefon Diggs, Cam Newton, and Frank Gore, in addition to a ton of other players with much higher upside.
Don’t draft him that early. Here’s why:
The Saints pass more than nearly every team.
This may be a surprise to some of you, but the Saints are a pass-first offense and receiving is hardly one of Peterson’s strengths. Last season, New Orleans threw the ball 63.44% of their offensive snaps – good for 5th most in the league. As long as Drew Brees is at the helm, the ball will spend more time in the air than in the hands of his backfield. That won’t change just because the front office brought in an aging superstar.
When the Saints do pass it to a running back, it’s incredibly unlikely that Peterson will be on the receiving end of Brees’ throws. Travaris Cadet is listed as the third back on the Saints’ depth chart, but he won’t be doing much running this season. Last year, Cadet had 4 rushes for 19 yards, but he corraled 40 of 54 targets for 281 yards. His role is likely to stay the same this year, which means Peterson won’t see the field on third downs.
Mark Ingram is better than Adrian Peterson.
The number one reason All Day will continue his gradual descent into insignificance has nothing to do with Peterson himself.
Mark Ingram is going to make sure you forget that #28 is even on the roster. He makes Peterson’s presence redundant because everything that AP can do, Mark can do better. Ingram is in his prime, and he enters 2017 following a season where he tallied 1362 total yards and 10 touchdowns. His last season average of 5.1 yards-per-carry is higher than all but one of Peterson’s seasons. His 46 receptions on 58 targets are more than Peterson ever had.
Again, Mark Ingram will not have a better career than Adrian Peterson. Please do not think that’s what I’m implying, but Ingram at 27 is better than Peterson at 32.
Fantasy Takeaway:
Adrian Peterson is a Mark Ingram insurance policy. Ingram will still continue to see the bulk of the workload, and he’ll have a much more productive fantasy season than Peterson. AP is an obvious handcuff, but should not be going in the 6th round.
It was a good signing by the Saints and a fine landing spot for Peterson. However, the only way Purple Jesus’ fantasy value is resurrected is if Ingram suffers a significant injury and doesn’t return.
Kory Schulte, Baseline Times
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FILE - In this Wednesday, March 11, 2017 file photo, Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar activists hold paper figures symbolizing victims of the Russian annexation of Crimea during a demonstration in Kiev, Ukraine. Russia's domestic security agency has charged six people in Crimea with involvement in an extremist organization it was announced on Wednesday, Oct. 11, a move that an activist describes as part of Moscow's crackdown on the Crimean Tatars. (AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov, File)
MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s domestic security agency said Wednesday it detained six people in Crimea accused of involvement in an extremist organization, a move described by one of the suspects’ lawyer as part of Moscow’s crackdown on the Crimean Tatars.
Emil Kurbedinov, a lawyer for one of the six detainees, said that police also rounded up nine other Crimean Tatars who protested the detentions in the Crimean town of Bakhchisarai.
The Federal Security Service or FSB, the main KGB successor agency, said it has stopped the activities of a local cell of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a radical Islamist group which Russia and several other ex-Soviet nations banned as a “terrorist” organization.
The FSB said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies that it has opened a criminal probe against six people suspected of involvement in the group.
Kurbedinov, a lawyer for Suleiman Asanov, whom the FSB accused of organizing the cell, described the charges as “absurd.” He said all six detainees were local Crimean Tatar activists who opposed Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea.
Russia has faced criticism for infringing on the ethnic group’s rights since the annexation.
“It’s yet another attempt to intimidate people with ‘terrorism’ and ‘extremism’ labels,” Kurbedinov said by phone from Bakhchisarai.
Kurbedinov said nine other Crimean Tatars who were protesting the detentions were taken into custody for holding an unsanctioned demonstration and were set to face court hearings Thursday.
Zair Smedlyayev, who heads an association of Crimean Tatars, also said the move was part of a continuing crackdown on the Turkic ethnic group.
On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was visiting the Ukrainian capital, said Turkey was monitoring the situation of Crimean Tatars and thanked Ukraine for defending their rights. |
Of the many false arguments deployed by the Bush Administration to justify war with Iraq, perhaps the most blatant was the completely untrue idea that Iraq was linked to 9/11.
Over the years, Dick Cheney has absorbed most of the criticism for making the false Iraq-9/11 link, thanks primarily to his December 9, 2001 appearance on Meet The Press in which he alleged that 9/11 hijacker Muhammad Atta had met with Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague.
There was no such meeting -- Cheney's claim was totally unsubstantiated fear mongering.
But the striking thing about all this is that when Cheney made his false claim, John McCain had already made the same baseless assertion in an interview on ABC News Nightline conducted on November 28, 2001.
That's right: John McCain falsely linked Iraq to 9/11 nearly two weeks before Dick Cheney. That means Cheney was repeating McCain's false claim -- not the other way around. Here's video: |
People in Georgia hate tuna salad more than anything else, Delaware has no love for Casey Affleck, and Nevada thinks feminism is horrible.
Hater, a dating app that uses your dislikes to find you the perfect match, compiled over 500,000 people’s opinions on over 3,000 topics to determine what each state in the U.S. hates the most. The outcome is a weird and wonderfully hilarious map.
After launching in February, Hater began collecting “swipes” on its 3,000 topics, trying to figure out what people hate the most. Bringing people together over their dislike for Polo shirts and lukewarm feelings on anal sex resulted in a map cataloging “the topic with the largest negative discrepancy in each state” in comparison to the rest of the world, Alex of Hater told Inverse via email. Overall, Alex says, Hater’s topics have been swiped over 100 million times.
On Hater, users swipe one of four ways — down to hate, up to love, left to dislike, and right to like — to add that opinion to their profile. “Every topic in the app has a score between 0 & 1 based on how our users (globally) swipe on it,” Alex said. “The lower the score, the more hated the topic.”
So, basically, people in Missouri hate “people who believe in aliens” more than people anywhere else in the world, and people in Illinois can’t stand it when others bite string cheese.
Arizona falls in Anakin Skywalker’s footsteps; people there don’t like sand.
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“Built on the philosophy that mutual dislikes can bring people closer than their shared interests,” Hater said in a press release, “Hater’s algorithm matches people by how much they like, dislike, love, or hate a given topic, ranging from cilantro to Trump.”
Sure, love may make the world go ‘round, but shared hatred is, apparently, the strongest bond (and it makes for funny maps). |
Getty Images
The Colts continue their search for a general manager, but the decision regarding what to do with the No. 1 overall pick in the draft may already be made.
ESPN’s Chris Mortensen says it is “certain” that Colts owner Jim Irsay has already decided to draft Andrew Luck No. 1 overall. (We’ve learned that declarations about the No. 1 overall draft pick this early can be dangerous.)
The Colts are waiting to find out about Peyton Manning’s health, but Irsay apparently believes Luck is too good to pass up. Irsay sees “symmetry” in having the pick.
In 1983, the Colts drafted John Elway before trading him. 15 years later, the Colts took Peyton Manning. And now 14 years later, they plan to take Luck.
Of course, the Colts are better off saying that Luck is atop their draft board no matter where this goes from here. They could conceivably still trade the pick or Luck if another team gave them a monster offer and if Manning was healthy. Huge if.
We find it odd that an incoming general manager wouldn’t be the one making this decision. Then again, most people interviewing for the job wouldn’t want to pass on Luck either. |
A simple “misunderstanding” allowed Google’s top executives to pay between $3.3 and $5.3 million less than market price for fuel to fly a fleet of private jets on both scientific missions and flights to some of the world’s most exclusive beaches.
Google billionaires Larry Page, Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin own as many as nine planes and helicopters that they operate at a government-run airbase mere steps from Google headquarters. Run by a secretive holding company called H211, the jets take NASA scientist on an occasional flight, and appear to carry Google's billionaire bosses to Tahiti, Hawaii and a host of private Caribbean hotspots on a regular basis.
A report released Wednesday by NASA’s Office of the Inspector General reveals that a "misunderstanding" let Page, Schmidt and Brin buy fuel for science missions and pleasure rides alike without paying state and local taxes, saving the Googlers millions.
[pullquote]
“H211 received a significant discount on fuel for its many non-NASA-related flights to which it was not entitled,” wrote Inspector General Paul Martin. “While this arrangement did not cause an economic loss to NASA or DLA-Energy, it did result in considerable savings for H211 and engendered a sense of unfairness and a perception of favoritism toward H211 and its owners.”
“We recommend that NASA explore with the company possible options to remedy this situation.”
Will the Google guys pay back the money? A spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a FoxNews.com e-mail posing the question, but Sen. Chuck Grassley, R.-Iowa and a senior member of the Congressional Budget Committee, said NASA ought to seek repayment.
“Given that a ‘misunderstanding’ between NASA and the Defense Department led to taxpayers’ losing out on $3.3 million to $5.3 million in this one contract, a look at these arrangements as a whole is definitely warranted,” Grassley said. “The Inspector General recommends that NASA explore ‘remedies.’ The obvious remedy would be for NASA to seek repayment to the taxpayers.”
According to the OIG report, the issue stems from a July 2007 contract between the Google executives and NASA to license approximately 70,000 square feet of space in Building N211, a large hangar near Moffett Federal Airfield at NASA’s Ames Research Center. The airfield was once a U.S. Navy base, and sits a convenient, 4-mile jaunt from Google’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters.
Part of the special deal with the billionaires let NASA use their fleet of up to nine aircraft to conduct Earth science research; in exchange, H211 bought aviation fuel at discount rates from the Defense Logistics Agency-Energy (DLA-Energy), an arm of the U.S. Department of Defense.
“In 2012, the … rate DLA-Energy charged H211 ranged between $3.05 and $3.81 per gallon, while the retail price at the San Jose airport fluctuated between $7.01 and $7.44 per gallon,” the report states. That discount fuel was meant for science trips. In reality, the Google guys used it for everything.
“We found that a misunderstanding between Ames and DLA-Energy personnel rather than intentional misconduct led to H211 enjoying the discounted fuel rate for flights that had no NASA-related mission,” the report states.
According to the Inspector General, when the contract expired on Sept. 1, a new contract was signed that lets NASA charge market rate for private flights, which the space agency will pay to the U.S. Treasury as “miscellaneous receipts.” |
Full Moon. Image: Gregory H. Revera, Wikimedia.
Life probably arose on Earth some 3.5 to 4 billion years ago, but all records of the momentous event have vanished—here on the Blue Marble, at least. Traces of our lost origin story might instead be buried on the Moon, according to new research published in the journal Astrobiology.
"Unlike the Earth, the Moon has been geologically quiet for billions of years, meaning there is a good chance these organic and volatile records remain relatively intact," Richard Matthewman, the study's lead author, told me.
Last summer, scientists concluded that escaped chunks of Earth could have brought fossil microbes to the Moon. But whether such critters could then be preserved for eons, creating a useful archive of early Earth life, remained unknown. Now we have evidence that they can. Matthewman and colleagues discovered that organic molecules can remain intact, possibly for a very long time, if they get trapped beneath ancient lunar lava flows.
"This shifts the debate forward," said Mark Burchell, an independent astrobiology expert who has conducted related research. "Up until now, most attention has focused on how to get material to the Moon, or if it will survive the impact when it hits the Moon. They are now asking the next question: Suppose it did arrive, will it survive its time on the Moon?"
The Earth's oldest fossils date back 3.5 billion years, but the very first cells and prebiotic molecules may have emerged a full half billion years earlier. Unfortunately, Earth's geologic record only stretches back about 3.8 billion years. Everything that occurred earlier has been overwritten by the recycling process of plate tectonics. This makes it extremely difficult to pin down exactly when, or how, the very first organic molecules began coalescing into cells.
Lucky for us, the time frame for life's emergence also corresponds with the Late Heavy Bombardment—a period during which Earth was being pummeled with asteroids, and large chunks of terrestrial material were slung into space. If enough fragments of Earth rained down on the lunar surface during this time, ancient life could have hitched a ride, as well.
Now, Matthewman and his coauthors are interested in whether organic compounds that made the trip from Earth to the moon during the Late Heavy Bombardment could actually have been successfully preserved. While some aspects of the lunar environment are highly conducive to organic preservation—it's bone dry, and it's a vacuum—constant exposure to the solar wind and cosmic radiation can shred fragile organics.
"What we need is a way to bury the meteorite containing the organic molecules to protect it from the harsh surface environment," Matthewman explained. "We think a lava flow might be a good way to do that."
Volcanic eruptions were a common occurrence on the Moon until approximately 3.1 billion years ago. As lava flowed and rapidly cooled over the Moon's ancient surface, transplanted Earth rocks would have been buried in place and effectively sheltered.
"If it were covered soon after arrival the [organic] material would be shielded to an extent," said Burchell. "But, this introduces a new hazard, namely the heat it is exposed to."
Lava fields like this one may contain buried organic materials from the ancient Earth. Image: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University
To test whether burial-by-Moon-lava could preserve life rather than cooking it, Matthewman and colleagues heated a range simple organic compounds and complex polymers up to 700 degrees Celsius in a vacuum. They did so in the presence and absence of JCS-1, a synthetic mixture of minerals intended to mimic regolith, the moon's fluffy surface material.
In the absence of lunar minerals, organic materials quickly burnt to a crisp. However, when lunar minerals were present, many organic compounds were able to survive high heat. The results suggest that prebiotic compounds, perhaps even early cells, can weather the brief but intense heat of a lunar lava flow long enough to become trapped and preserved.
"This is the first time the lava flow preservation mechanism has been tested, " Matthewman told me. Now, having demonstrated that it can work, Matthewman is excited about what a fossil discovery on the Moon might reveal.
"Potentially, if we found a whole series of lava flows and preserved lunar regolith layers with terrestrial meteorites inside, we could use radiometric dating to find out how old the layers are, and look at the meteorites to try and spot the first appearance of recognizable life," he said.
While we'd be very lucky to find such a record, any ancient organic compounds we do locate on the Moon at all could provide insight into the chemical evolution of early Earth, and help us fill in the long gap between the first organic molecules and the first living systems.
If there's one thing that's made clear in all this, it's that it's high time we started hunting for Moon fossils. |
Here are some new versions of the world map that we are used to seeing that might help us to get a fresh perspective on the way things are, and the way they are shown to us. In these maps, the square area of continents/regions corresponds to their proportion of conflict death tolls and of media coverage. Let’s start with some maps representing conflict death tolls, and follow with some maps representing media coverage. The media coverage maps are for the year 2000 for CNN, BBC, the New York Times, Le Monde and the Yomiuri newspapers.
Map of conflict-related deaths (1990-1999)
(What’s the big continent in the middle? Africa? That’s odd, we so rarely seem to hear about it…)
Map of conflict-related deaths (1990-2007)
(Note the relative growth in conflict deaths in the Middle East since 2000 – that’s the war in Iraq. The Middle East is still totally dwarfed by Africa, though, as is the rest of the world’s conflict).
The world according to CNN (2000)
(Coverage of the Middle East is more than double that of Africa)
The world according to BBC (2000)
(A little more on Africa than CNN, but that continent still looks pretty small)
The world according to the New York Times (2000)
(This does not include domestic news – news about the USA)
The world according to Le Monde (2000)
(This does not include domestic news – news about France)
The world according to Yomiuri (2000)
(This does not include domestic news – news about Japan)
Notes and disclaimers
Data is organized according to five continents/regions of the world: Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. In the conflict maps, the square area of each continent/region is proportionate to that continent/region’s percentage of the world’s total conflict-related death toll. There is no detail beyond that, so although Madagascar appears on the death toll maps, it is only there because it geographically represents a part of Africa (there were no conflict-related deaths recorded for Madagascar).
In the media maps, the square area of each continent/region is proportionate to that continent/region’s percentage of the coverage by each media corporation. As with the conflict maps, there is no detail beyond the continent/region as whole, so the shape of the Americas (no distinction is made between north, south or central), for example, was made roughly according to geographic scale and does not represent any internal proportion in news coverage. In the case of the maps for newspapers, the coverage is limited only to the international news on the front page and international pages – home/local news is not included. It should also be noted that the percentages for the media maps do not add up to 100 percent because a certain percentage of media coverage could not be categorized according to geographical location – coverage of global issues or United Nations conferences, for example.
Displaying these maps together here is not to suggest that levels of media coverage should be proportionate to the numbers of conflict deaths. Conflict-related events are not the only issues that become the source of international news stories. Furthermore, it is unrealistic to expect that the sheer scale of a conflict (death toll) will be the only factor considered in determining news coverage – although it should certainly be one of the major factors (alas, it is not).
It should also be noted that the timeframe of analysis is quite different. The death toll maps are based on cumulative data of death tolls since the end of the Cold War, while media maps are one-year snapshots of coverage – in this case, the year 2000. A number of the conflicts that make up the cumulative death tolls in the maps were not ongoing in the year 2000. By the same token, it should also come as no surprise that the deadliest conflicts of the year 2000 were occurring in Africa – the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Angola, Ethiopia-Eritrea and Sierra Leone. It is also critical to note that it was in the year 2000 when it became known (through a survey conducted by the International Rescue Committee (IRC)) that conflict in the DRC had claimed 1.7 million lives, making it by far the deadliest conflict in the post-Cold War world. This revelation didn’t seem to have any impact on media coverage.
Sources
Death toll data is generally very unreliable, as has been mentioned in a previous post. That shouldn’t stop us from trying. The sources for the death tolls in this map are from my book, but before they arrived there came from a multitude of sources, including projects and institutions that try to record, measure and compare death toll figures, epidemiological surveys, and sometimes the media. Where there are conflicting studies/records for death tolls, compromises have been made in some cases. None is more controversial than in that in the case of Iraq. The death toll for Iraq used here is a very conservative 400,000. Some death toll figures now are reaching the 1 million mark.
The sources for the media coverage maps are from a study I conducted some years ago of news coverage in the year 2000. I measured the square area of each international news article (including photos) for three newspapers (the New York Times (USA), Le Monde (France) and the Yomiuri (Japan)) each day for one year. I also measured the length (in seconds) of each news story for one 30-minute news program each day for CNN International and BBC. I wish I could provide more recent data, but this kind of study takes a huge amount of time to conduct and I have yet to find that kind of time to do a similar study. More results from the study (and analysis) can be found in an article I later published: Hawkins, Virgil ‘The Other Side of the CNN Factor: the media and conflict’, Journalism Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2002, pp. 225-240.
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What's the life of Bioshock 2's Creative Director like now that the game is finished? "I'm mostly doing stuff like this," Jordan Thomas tells me over the phone, referring to the interview. "It's stuff that's not necessarily natural to my character, such as looking at action figure designs, promotional materials... it's not the main thrust of game development." He assures us that there has been a short break, but the game is due out on February 9, just a few short weeks away.
This gives us an excellent chance to look back not only to the first game, but to the entirety of the development of Bioshock 2, and why the team decided to make the decisions that lead to this game. Hold your breath: we're going deep.
Would you kindly start from the beginning?
Where Bioshock enjoyed a now-iconic introduction featuring a plane crash and then a short lesson in the philosophy of objectivism before we first laid eyes on Rapture, the second game has the handicap of taking place in a world we may feel like we know well. Was there fear about losing the lasting impact that the first game's introduction had on players?
"Yes, is the most honest answer," Thomas tells Ars. Some people will play the sequel, but many already know about Rapture. The answer? Create a character that has some known qualities, and build from there. As a Big Daddy in Bioshock 2, your existence and history is a mystery that the player has to solve. In the first game, the world of Rapture is a complete unknown, whereas in the Bioshock 2 you're trying to discover your past and deal with what has happened since the ending of the last game, roughly ten years ago.
The second game also doesn't track your saved game from the previous title, and that seems to have been for practical reasons. "People like to switch platforms and things, we didn't want to force you into a dependency with the previous game." Don't worry though, this game will reference the first experience in many ways. Ten years have passed since the events in the first Bioshock, and they have had a lasting impact on the world.
"[The first game's protagonist's actions] have been mythologized by the splicers that have been stuck down there for ten years, going crazier and crazier." Your story from the first game has become something of a twisted religion in the last decade. "You will see paintings where your chain tattoos are turned into religious iconography. The plane crash is on a mural."
Thomas says that moving forward is the only way they could have explored Rapture while keeping the feeling of Bioshock. "To be perfectly honest, my feeling on the true prequel, if it were to be honest at all in trying to portray a living city, would be a very different game than Bioshock."
We will get a glimpse of a pre-Bioshock Rapture, however, via the game's multiplayer modes. "With the multiplayer we have gone in an honest prequel direction: in the year between 1959 to 1960, it precedes the events of Bioshock, and is the real year where the civil war of Rapture began in earnest."
You'll see things from the first game, but before they have been torn apart, giving you a sense of the grandeur of Andrew Ryan's grand experiment. "You take the role of a splicer whose life has been torn apart by that war, and see what it was like to be there when dozens and dozens of clever, self-interested mutants are competing over this miraculous resource—ADAM—and I feel like multiplayer is the best way to experience that part of Rapture's history. If you go back further than that, you're dealing with a very different interactive model that we didn't feel like played to the strengths of Bioshock, something that makes you feel alone, paranoid, and hunted."
There is no master plan for Rapture, no concrete idea of the space it inhabits. We ask if, somewhere deep in the bowels of 2K Marin, there is a map of the entirety of the undersea heaven/hell. Carlos Cuello, the Lead Programmer on the title, thinks about it for a moment. "Not that I can think of, Rapture is very fluid, the way it was developed."
Thomas agrees, noting that Rapture itself is almost a matter of perception. "Our attitude is a bit more subjective than that. Giving it a strict layout keeps you from being creatively agile." He points to the feeling of exploration and sense of isolation that Rapture gives the player. "Your mind is like a flashlight, only seeing glimpses of things, and you never have a perfect picture. It's very creatively liberating."
The moral choices may become a little grayer
The first game gave you a binary choice as the player: you could either "harvest" the Little Sisters for their ADAM, or liberate them and get the "good" ending. The problem is that this decision only determines what ending the game shows you; the actual amount of ADAM given to the player for upgrades throughout the game is almost even. The choice, from a gameplay standpoint, is meaningless.
Cuello defends the disconnect between the moral choices and impact on gameplay. "I like the fact I can play the game I want to play, and not have a disadvantage compared to someone else who played a different way," he explains.
Thomas points out that there are two types of players who will pick up the game. "You absolutely will get people who aren't involved in the fiction, and won't allow moral or aesthetic skinning to affect what they consider to be the optimal gameplay decision." There is a flipside, however. "Others called me up after seeing the sisters they rescued [at the end of the game] after having a daughter themselves, and they wept. We have a large and highly gradiated spectrum of players."
The choice in Bioshock 2 is not nearly as clear. "Because the player has the ability to adopt Little Sisters, and carry them around regardless of what he plans to do with them, you have opportunities to gain ADAM as a rescuer and a harvester." After you create the symbiotic relationship with Little Sisters you encounter and take a cut of the ADAM they find, you can then either harvest or rescue them. "Once you do resolve a certain number of Little Sisters, there are rewards which affect the amount of ADAM, and other non-ADAM quantities that you unlock. Those kind of make the strictly optimal path more of a judgment call, and people will disagree with which one was optimal."
You're not alone
Even now, with the game around the corner, some gamers are upset at the idea of a Bioshock title that incorporates multiplayer. Cuello downplays the criticism. "Fan concerns stemmed from the fear that the single-player game would get hurt from working on multiplayer at the same time. We were able to focus on the single-player, and Digital Extremes was able to focus on multiplayer."
Thomas agrees that the final product will be cohesive. "We had an internal representative who is a multiplayer specialist. She took broad creative direction from me, and became a liasion to the Digital Extremes team, and those guys took the high-level direction and made the game their baby. They layered as much love on that as we did the single player. Because of that person walking between worlds, there wasn't much lost creatively." He notes there was some "gentle guidance" when dealing with the tone of Rapture.
Concept art for the Big Daddy
"On the technical side, we always felt the game was in good hands... we knew we were working with professionals with experience with the engine." The two teams talked daily, and there was a lot of sharing of assets and expertise. "Their game is a little different, in terms of weapons and plasmids, so it didn't make sense to share everything, but where we did it helped out a lot."
Since its fiction takes place before the events of the first game, there is a hook to get players to at least sample the multiplayer. "The response has been positive, consistently so, among people who have actually played it. We're not going to convert every single person who is coming for the single-player, but those who try it are going to be pleasantly surprised," Thomas assures us. "From there, if they decide to devote themselves to it, that's up to them." In single-player, many of those tricks and emergent strategies found by combining weapons and plasmids are "for style" and not strictly required. Now, to survive in multiplayer, "you need to be a master of the systems."
Will it all work?
Bioshock seemed to work as a standalone game, which makes the quick turnaround on the sequel—with multiplayer, no less—something of a worry for gamers. The team behind the game has strong ideas about what does and doesn't work in the world of Rapture, however, and hopefully that will be enough to see it through. We'll have to wait until the game is in our hands for our final thoughts.
Bioshock 2 launches on the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 on February 9. |
Here’s a good one my mother was telling me yestetday and I gotta share this with you guys. Apparently the sister-in-law of my half sister was f~~~ing an amish guy. As we do live in the heart of amish country in Ohio.This bitch recorded these sexual acts on video and blackmailed this poor amish guy out of $50,000. She told him she was going to show the video to the bishop if he didn’t give her 50 grand. And this dumb f~~~er gives it to her. My mom was saying the bank was questioning him about such a large withdrawl. He apparently told them it was for a friend for medical bills. I know the guy was scared to death about being shunned by his people but come on man. My opinion I would have called her bluff. Now this bitch just bought a house is living large on the hard earned money of someone elses. I hope this f~~~er has learned his lesson not to be cheating on his wife. Bad thing is I know this bitch and I can about bet his wife is going find out when she gets an std. Cause this c~~~ is a whore. She has like 3 kids she lost custody to the state. That’s another example of how ruthless some women are. What I don’t understand is that I always thought that a large withdrawl like that the government would want to know where it’s going. But, I don’t know for sure. I hope somehow this all works against her. Then again he shouldn’t have been committing adultery but, $50,000 is a tough one to swallow. I just hope that atleast she swallowed. |
New York state's chief financial regulator, Benjamin Lawsky, has outlined the final version of rules for companies dealing in bitcoins at a business conference in Washington.
The 44-page rule book aims to add more oversight to the virtual currency that has gained in popularity and moved into the commercial mainstream.
Lawsky's office has worked for two years on stipulations requiring businesses to obtain a special license if they use bitcoin or other digital currencies with a view to preventing money laundering.
He said firms dealing in bitcoin would now need a special compliance officer to make sure the new rules were adhered to.
Promoting innovation
"We are excited about the potential that digital currency holds for helping drive long-overdue changes in our ossified payments system," Lawsky said in a statement. "We simply want to make sure that we put in place guardrails that protect consumers and root out illicit activity - without stifling beneficial innovation."
Watch video 04:12 Share Virtual Currency for Smartphones Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/1Apr3 Virtual currency for smartphones
The rules only apply to businesses operating within New York state. But these firms can have customers from all over the US except from states that object to the use of digital currencies.
Also under the new stipulations, bitcoin companies will not need prior approval from regulators for standard updates to software and apps.
"We're not Apple", Lawsky said.
Firms also won't need approval for each new round of capital fundraising.
hg/cjc (AP, dpa) |
Statistics on petrol sniffing
Petrol sniffing: major regions of prevalence. source:
Petrol sniffing is a serious problem that has claimed over 100 Aboriginal lives from 1981 to 2003 across Australia . It is very common in Aboriginal communities across the Northern Territory and Western Australia and not restricted to Aboriginal youth.
The practice was first observed in 1951, and is rumoured to have been introduced by US servicemen stationed in the nation's Top End during World War II .
Of the Aboriginal population in 1994, 4% had tried petrol-sniffing but only 0.3% practised it at that time.
In 2005 there were some 700 petrol sniffers across central Australia , with the addiction linked to as many as 60 Aboriginal deaths in the NT between 2000 and 2006, and 121 deaths between 1980 and 1987.
The number of petrol sniffers in the Central Desert region dropped from 500 to fewer than 20 after legislation introduced in 2005 gave police powers to confiscate petrol and take sniffers to a place of safety .
The general age range of users is from 10-19 years with a mean of 12-15 years, but use by children younger than 10 is not uncommon.
Petrol sniffing leads to the death of an Aboriginal boy in the movie "Yolngu Boy".
Effects of petrol sniffing
Scene from the movie 'Yolngu Boy' where a youth sniffs petrol sitting on a bridge. Aboriginal people rarely sniff petrol out in the open as here. Most hide the flask in their clothes just underneath their nose.
Petrol sniffing produces a variety of short-term effects from pleasurable feelings of excitement, to alcohol-like intoxication, to loss of consciousness. The effects are experienced within a few minutes and only last for a short time (which is the main reason for its use), usually less than an hour.
Short-term effects include euphoria and excitement, feeling light, sensations of numbness, dizziness. These effects may be followed by giddiness, nausea, slurred speech, sneezing, coughing, shortness of breath, indigestion, chest pain, hallucinations, muscle weakness, loss of motor coordination and slowed reflexes.
Long-term use can damage internal organs, the brain and the nervous system because petrol is a solvent. When sniffed, its fumes travel up the nose and dissolve fatty tissue in the brain.
Some damage can be reversed by ceasing use of certain substances, but permanent damage can occur to the brain, liver and kidneys. The person becomes degraded, disabled or dies.
On a larger scale petrol-sniffing devastates not only the sniffer's health but also their families and the wider community by increased domestic violence and family breakdown .
Vandalism by sniffers cuts the life expectancy of a teacher's house in Pitjantjatjara lands to less than 2 years. — Andrew Stojanovski, The Sydney Morning Herald
Two boys die after break-in for petrol sniffing "Two teenage boys are dead and another is in a critical condition after they were poisoned by petrol fumes inside a fuel container in a remote Aboriginal community. Four boys from the tiny town of Oenpelli, north of Kakadu National Park, broke into the meat works about 7pm on Saturday night. The boys had reportedly planned to sniff petrol from two quad bikes and a large drum. Twelve hours after the group gained access through an old air-conditioning unit, a fifth teenager, worried because his friends had failed to respond to his calls, raised the alarm, police said. Using a bolt-cutter, one man opened the metal shipping container to find the four boys unconscious on the floor. Two, aged 15 and 18, died shortly after they were freed. A 16-year-old is in a critical condition in Royal Darwin Hospital and a 15-year-old was stabilised yesterday."
Ngukurr, a community at the edge of Arnhem Land, asked for eight months for help on chronic petrol sniffing among teenagers. One social worker with expertise in the problem arrived for one day. — Lindsay Murdoch, The Age
Overcoming petrol sniffing
To reduce petrol sniffing levels in Aboriginal communities a combination of measures is necessary.
South Australia's APY Lands (Anangu, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunyjatjara) reduced the problem by introducing non-sniffable fuel, harsher penalties for trafficking in petrol, extra police and youth workers, a mobile outreach service and more activities for young people .
Since the introduction of these measures sniffer numbers have fallen from 222 in 2004 to 38 in 2008 . The number of people sniffing fell 20% in 2005, 60% in 2006 and 46% in 2007.
Youth programs can provide an alternative to substance abuse, but they need to offer an attractive alternative to be effective.
Video: Katherine acts on petrol sniffing
The following video is an ABC news report from the year 2012 when Katherine experienced a spike in petrol sniffing cases.
Introduction of 'non-sniffable' fuel, Opal
These Opal fuel stickers are available from unleaded Opal fuel outlets. Note the translation into an Aboriginal language.
In an effort to reduce the epidemic of petrol sniffing in Indigenous communities, BP introduced a new petrol brand, called Opal in early 2005. It contains almost no lead and has only very low levels of the aromatic hydrocarbons ('aromatics'), which give the "high" sought by petrol sniffers.
This is the first time a product has been specifically designed to assist remote communities and in particular Aboriginal communities to fight petrol sniffing.
Prior to the introduction of Opal, Comgas (Avgas rebranded, from Aviation Gas) has been used in the 1990s in many communities to discourage misuse of fuel as an inhalant; however, unlike Opal, Avgas contains lead and was not accepted by communities due to doubts about its suitability.
All petrol stations in Alice Springs now sell the new fuel . Opal fuel is subsidised by the federal government to sell at the same price, costing about AUD 4 million a year.
Note that since 2008 the Australian government does not endorse the use of the term “non-sniffable” as low aromatic fuel is still a fuel product and can be a harmful substance if used incorrectly.
In 2010, 106 Aboriginal communities, roadhouses and other fuel outlets across the states of NT, WA, SA and QLD used Opal fuel .
Comparison sniffable vs. non-sniffable fuel
Fuel comparison Property Opal Avgas Unleaded Colour: yellow blue or green purple/bronze Aromatics: 5% 20% < 48%, typ. 25% Benzene: 1% < 3..5% < 5% Lead: < 0.005 g/L < 0.56 g/L < 0.005 g/L Sulphur: 150 ppm 500 ppm < 500 ppm Sniffable: no yes yes
Unleaded Opal performs as regular unleaded fuel and can be mixed with other fuel in a petrol tank without affecting the engine.
Success of Opal fuel
Throughout Australia the introduction of non-sniffable Opal fuel helps Indigenous communities to reduce petrol sniffing and improve health significantly.
Petrol sniffing on the lands of the Anangu, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara Aboriginal people (all in South Australia) "has more than halved in just 12 months" with 60% less people sniffing petrol. Compared to 2004 figures the 2006 data shows a huge 80% drop in incidence. A report published in 2014 also found that the number of petrol sniffers plummeted about 80%, from 546 in 2005-07 to 97 in 2011-12 across 15 sample Aboriginal communities . In other communities however it nearly doubled.
With petrol sniffing down, communities could also reduce money spent on policing and health initiatives which amounts to more than AUD 100 million .
We estimate that 13 lives have been saved by the introduction of Opal and through community actions. — Blair McFarland, Central Australian Youth Link Up Service
This could be achieved by a 'no tolerance' attitude of the Aboriginal people in the communities, similar to the 'no grog' attitude many communities have to reduce their alcohol consumption. All communities in Central Australia have now voluntarily switched to the new fuel.
The South Australian government has undertaken the following initiatives to reduce petrol sniffing :
harsher penalties for trafficking in petrol,
a mobile outreach service which offers assessment, counselling and education,
extra police,
new swimming pools at two communities.
BP promotional poster in a 2008 campaign advertising the health benefits of Opal fuel.
Swimming pools seem to be an interesting approach to provide positive community infrastructure.
Failure of Opal fuel
The introduction of non-sniffable Opal fuel is not all gold. Police reported that sniffable petrol is smuggled into communities where it sells for up to $100 a litre .
In April 2007 a boy died after sniffing a bottle of Opal fuel , the first known casualty from sniffing Opal fuel . A coronial investigation into the death found that Opal fuel "should not be marketed as a harmless substance". The description as "unsniffable" was "clearly wrong" . Like any valtile substance Opal fuel can be sniffed, and can be fatal when sniffed.
Young Aboriginal people who cannot sniff petrol anymore have been known to switch to other drugs like cannabis, ecstasy and amphetamines or paint. But there's another replacement for sniffable petrol, readily available in every supermarket: glue.
Very much like petrol, glue gives a feeling of euphoria and exhilaration when inhaled. It leads to dizziness, loss of co-ordination, slurred speech and mental deterioration . It is considered, in some ways, more dangerous than petrol. Concern was growing in 2008 in Alice Springs where children were increasingly starting to sniff glue.
Glue and petrol are classified as inhalants, and inhalants can be highly addictive and dangerous to one’s health.
Sniffers have also worked out ways to make Opal fuel addictive. Putting a piece of Styrofoam (for example from a coffee cup) into the fuel causes a chemical reaction which, for bio diesel, lets the foam dissolve "like a snowflake in water" according to scientists . From the resulting mix addicts can get their high .
But BP Australia, manufacturer of Opal fuel, says that "Opal fuel can’t be made ‘intoxicating’ by using polystyrene to alter the fuel" . This would only be possible if the added component itself was already intoxicating.
In Arnhem Land, people leave bowls of petrol on car bonnets, in the hope that sniffers will accept the gifts instead of ripping apart fuel lines. — Andrew Stojanovski, The Sydney Morning Herald
Help for petrol sniffers
If you want to know more about inhalant abuse, including petrol sniffing, you can check out the following web site:
Case study: Mt Theo Program for sniffers
Yuendumu is one of the largest Aboriginal communities in Central Australia, 290 km north-west of Alice Springs. In 1993, the situation in the community was dire as more than half the community's teenagers were sniffing petrol . The school's principal reckoned there were more children sniffing in the school grounds at night than attending class during the day.
Sniffers intimidated elders, set car tyres on fire, broke into ceremony camps, broke sacred tribal rules by calling out the name of the dead, pelted classrooms with rocks and encouraged mates and girlfriends .
Peggy Nampijinpa Brown at the Mt Theo turn-off. In its early days Peggy financed the program using her pension money . Photo: www.mttheo.org
Aboriginal elder Peggy Nampijinpa Brown and other elders from the community decided to take a zero tolerance approach. Previous initiatives such as banishment, public floggings of sniffers, night patrol and the replacement of petrol with aviation fuel had not stopped the youth from sniffing petrol.
In a last ditch effort Peggy offered to look after all of Yuendumu's petrol sniffers at Mt Theo Outstation, 130 kms north-west of the community, 480 kms from Alice Springs and 50 kms from the nearest main road.
Mt Theo is not only geographically isolated but also a spiritually powerful healing place with strong links to the Dreaming (Jukurrpa in Warlpiri Aboriginal language).
To take the peer pressure out of sniffing, ring leaders or chronic sniffers were removed and sent bush for a month at a time to give "bodies and brains" time away from petrol .
The Mt Theo Program started in 1994 and quickly turned into a mammoth task, a task that ultimately would become Peggy's life work.
Warlpiri elders and a dedicated support team looked after the young people and involved them in activities such as hunting, teaching bush skills and going on day trips into the bush, but also leadership development, diversion, respite, rehabilitation and aftercare.
"By the winter of the seventh year, the night air in Yuendumu was different: the smell of petrol was not on the wind," reports Andrew Stojanovski, author of Dog Ear Cafe: How the Mt Theo Program Beat the Curse of Petrol.
Since 1994 the program has extended across the Warlpiri region including many more communities. By 2002 there was no more sniffing in Yuendumu . The success of this program is based on the dedication of the staff and the support of the youth's communities.
The program, formally known as Warlpiri Youth Development Aboriginal Corporation (WYDAC) was created by and for Warlpiri people.
Peggy was presented with the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) in recognition of her invaluable work for the community.
I like the petrol sniffers... we want to make them a little bit strong, healthy ones, give them life. — Peggy Nampijinpa Brown
Fact Polly Anne Dixon used to be a girl who collapsed on the classroom floor reeking of petrol. After giving up sniffing she won the Triple J's 2003 Heywire competition for her story About life, petrol sniffing and strong voices .
Fact Nearly all the funding has been provided by the Warlpiri through mining royalties .
Mt Theo (WYDAC) programs poster outlining the structure of the service. For a large version go to www.mttheo.org.
Case study: Snuff Out Sniffing (SOS) campaign
"It was pretty bad, some nights he would come home smelling of petrol, he was sniffing glue and petrol, you couldn't reason with him or discipline him, we tried but nothing was getting through," remembers Steven Langton about his 10-year-old son . When Mr Langton himself was ten years old, he himself had started sniffing.
When the Cherbourg community realised they had a serious problem, elders, council, community leaders, government and, importantly, parents got together. They launched the Snuff Out Sniffing program which receives unprecedented support.
Initially no-one in the community wanted to talk about it, even with sniffers visible. But then came the numbers, between 20 and 70, and that some sniffers were as young as seven.
One father told me of putting two of his sons into the shower after they had been out sniffing, drenched in petrol and just bawling because he didn't know what to do. — Bruce Simpson, SOS campaign member
Once the community was aware of the sniffers they realised that there were no sniffing-specific rehabilitation centres, with most mainly targeting alcohol and other drugs.
That is why the real force of the SOS campaign lies solely in the community, who have gone all out to bring home the zero-tolerance message. "We have community leaders mentoring each other, families who buddy up with other families to support each other through. We've got dads who have been sniffers themselves going into schools to educate the young," reports Mr Simpson .
I hope Cherbourg children can see they have people behind them who care about them and support them through this, to stop the sniffing. — Lillian Gray, Cherbourg Elder
More resources
The Australian government has set up a website, Stop Petrol Sniffing, which provides further information, case studies and health resources. |
I first visited Kezar Stadium in August of 2015. I was on a business trip, and made my way over to Golden Gate Park after my meetings for the day had concluded. The Uber let me out near the Kezar Pub, located right across from the stadium. The words some posters on a popular Internet soccer forum used to describe Kezar Stadium were not kind, so my expectations were pretty low. As I entered by the peach hued columns, and looked across the field to see a lovely arch in the same color with Golden Gate Park as its backdrop, I thought it was a rather beautiful place. It had a comfortable feel and pretty views, with distinctive houses dotting the hills around it on one side, and the green of the park on the other. It seemed very much a part of the community, with locals running around the track, getting their daily exercise in.
Kezar was part of the reason why the USL’s California Victory failed, the forum posters wrote. It was supposedly a terrible place to watch a game, inconveniently located, and in general an unworkable situation for a pro soccer team. As I looked around, there was some evidence to support their opinions. The track was a liability as regards soccer sight lines, keeping the stands at a less intimate distance from the pitch. The state of restroom at the time is better not discussed. The wooden benches didn’t look to be in great shape, so to avoid getting a splinter, I sat in one of the 1000 old Candlestick Park seats that had been placed in the stadium. Based on a little online research, this place was the only venue in San Francisco about the right size for a Division II soccer team. It wasn’t perfect, but if the right group of people invested in it, maybe it could work. I imagined how fun it would be to watch my New York Cosmos play here, in my favorite city to visit.
Around the same time as my first Kezar visit, Ricardo Stanford-Geromel also sat in Kezar Stadium, with similar thoughts. Once a part owner of the Fort Lauderdale Strikers of the North American Soccer League, Ricardo envisioned a pro team playing in San Francisco. Via a chance encounter in March 2015, he met fellow Brazilian Fabio Igel, a venture capitalist with connections in the Bay Area. San Francisco is an expensive city to do anything in, and starting a team is an expensive endeavor in any city. A pro soccer team in San Francisco would require the backing of a billionaire like Igel to be successful. Igel was intrigued by Ricardo’s idea, and he knew just the right guy to lead the project.
Brian Andres Helmick was a co-founder of Algentis, an HR software company that Fabio Igel had invested in. Algentis was sold in 2014 to Hub International Ltd, and Helmick stayed on to help with the integration of his former company into its new owner. As time went on, Brian knew he needed a new challenge. In June 2015, Igel called Helmick and pitched him the idea of starting a soccer club as his next project. Fabio knew Brian was a huge fan of the sport, fitting with his Colombian upbringing. Some of Brian’s most precious memories involve watching the historic Colombian club Millonarios as a young boy with his grandfather. But Colombian soccer had for years been associated with corruption. FIFA itself had been scandal ridden recently. Brian was reluctant to risk his love for the game by diving into the business aspect of it. However, the potential for good in the project won him over. “Fabio saw the opportunity to create something special for San Francisco,” Helmick said, and he bought in, too. They worked together to assemble a team of investors who they trusted, and built the vision for the San Francisco Deltas as a club that would embrace the city’s history and reflect its culture of openness and innovation.
In October 2015, the North American Soccer League awarded a franchise to this San Francisco group. There were two other investor groups interested in bringing a NASL club to the city, though only one of them was a serious rival. The Deltas would not officially announce itself as a NASL club until six months later, but work began in earnest to make the project a success. I first spoke with Brian Andres Helmick about the project in April 2016, shortly after the official announcement.
On April 29, 2017, I got my wish to watch the Cosmos play against a San Francisco rival in a nicely renovated Kezar Stadium. The afternoon started with walk from SoMa over to Kezar Stadium with Ricardo Stanford-Geromel, who lives not too far from where I was staying. Ricardo gave me a behind the scenes look at the gameday operations for the Deltas, and I got to spend a little time helping Todd Dunivant and his crew set things up. The whole operation had the feeling of a tight knit group, while being extremely welcoming to outsiders, even ones wearing the opponent’s jersey. Prior to the game, I sat down with Brian Andres Helmick to learn about the journey launching the club. Here is our discussion:
***
1. What have been the best moments so far?
By far the home opener. We had over 4,000 people here. Right before the coin toss, the mayor called us the official soccer team of San Francisco. City Hall and Coit Tower were lit in Deltas’ red. I told the mayor there were over 4,000 people here of different backgrounds. Here they are from different worlds, standing side by side cheering together. It was really powerful. I went through waves of emotions that day. I was thinking about my grandfather the entire game, cheering from heaven. He was a big part of my inspiration.
Another was when the stadium was approved at City Hall. We had over 1,500 write in letters of support. We had 200 people show up, and 50 people went up to the microphone. That was super special. I didn’t know they were all going to show. The number of people and the diversity of the crowd really made the case.
Another high was interviewing Marc Dos Santos and finalizing the deal with him. I consider him a friend and a partner in this adventure. I was on my honeymoon talking Marc out of taking the job, to test his resolve for it. We talked about his long term goals, which include one day being the manager of the Canadian national team. I told him you might be better off coaching in Canada to achieve that. He persisted in his interest in the Deltas. I talked to his wife to make sure it would be a good fit for their whole family.
It came time to discuss terms. At first, I wouldn’t talk to his agent, I told Marc, I wanted to talk to him. He insisted that was the way these things are done, so I spoke with his agent and the guy kept on selling me on Marc. I told him, I am sold on Marc. That’s why I’m talking to you on my honeymoon and not my new, beautiful wife. Let’s get down to terms. We got down to terms and he kept saying, I have to check with Marc.
So I called Marc back and said, listen, if this is going to work, we have to do this together. You have to trust me. What do you feel from everyone you have spoken with from the club? “Honesty,” he said. He felt honesty from Todd Dunivant, from Fabio Igel, and everyone with the club. From there, in less than 45 minutes, the deal was done.
2. What have been the biggest challenges?
Awareness, by far. Today my gut tells me that 95% of people in San Francisco still don’t know we exist. The 5% that know us don’t just like us, they love us. In a startup, you want your first 100 users to adore your product. Before you scale, you need to make sure it works for them really well. They become your strongest advocates. With that in mind, we are improving at the operational aspects of the gameday experience each game.
But fans tell me, “Hey, what we can do?” Let’s say we have 2,500 people today. I say, “what would happen if every fan who came to a game brought one friend?” If that happened, we would double. Then if the 5000 people each brought one friend to the next game, we would sell Kezar Stadium out.
Our efforts have been very thoughtful, very grassroots. Let’s make sure we get to the right fans. The fans who feel very connected. Some fans have celebrated their birthday party at the office. With the core fans, we have something that is very special and valuable. If you engage like that with the core, then you can start tackling awareness on a larger scale with the help of those fans.
3. I remember sitting in Kezar Stadium two years ago thinking it would be great to watch a NASL game here one day. Clearly you had a similar experience, but you made it happen! Now here we are. It is a historic venue, and the club has made almost $1M in improvements to the facility that are congruent with the history of the place, bringing in 4000 more seats from Candlestick Park, for example. How as the community responded to this investment by the Deltas?
The people who know about it, recognize that we really care about San Francisco, we care about Kezar, we care about the sport. There is still some confusion with people thinking that the city did it. It was us. Peter Oquendo has been working for the city for 41 years, in Park & Recreations. We had him do the coin toss and honored him because he just retired. People like him see what we have done and they know we are sincere about this city.
I believe that the way to think about it is that pro sports was never meant to be a business. It was always about community. In this country, it is something wealthy people invested in the community. Baseball in the Great Depression lifted spirits. So with that in mind, we have affordable seating for the community. We try to keep costs reasonable for concessions and things like that. You don’t have to pay $20 for a Bud Light, or $10 for a pizza. We have high quality beers at $8-9. We have empanadas for $5.
4. You have built community service into the core of what the Deltas are about. For example, the meals at the games are run by a local charity. Can you share a little bit about what the Deltas are doing in the community?
We have three main causes: ending homelessness, empowering women and employing low income youth. We partner with La Cocina in the Mission so that our VIP seating features food from a different local, woman owned business each game. Part of the idea is that maybe one of the VIPs will love their food and invest in their business.
5. Marc Dos Santos has built a competitive team that sees the Deltas in second place in NASL going into tonight’s matchup vs the Cosmos. The style and results so far are very reminiscent of Marc’s 2015 Ottawa team that drew a lot in the Spring and then won the Fall season as the team gelled. Do you think the same thing can happen for the Deltas this year?
The key word is gel. Twelve, thirteen weeks ago, some of these guys didn’t know each other existed. You can’t truly accelerate a relationship, the dynamic of a soccer team. You can help that happen a little bit and there are some things you can do, but it takes time. Perhaps one thing that helps is that half the team lives in a building together. We leased a building for three years in Nob Hill, with beautiful views of the Bay Bridge and the TransAmerica Pyramid. These guys walk out the door, jump in a trolley and jump on BART to get to our training facility.
As far as results, if you don’t lose games while the team comes together it makes it a lot easier to get to the playoffs. Marc says, people say to him that we are lucky to have Romuald Peiser. But it’s not luck, it’s part of the strategy.
6. What do you think about the quality of play in the NASL. Are there particular players that you have enjoyed watching (Deltas and other teams)?
It’s really hard because I’ve gotten to know the guys, so now there is there an emotional connection there. Marc has done a great job of bringing in humble, hungry, club-comes-first style guys. If you notice as the roster was forming, we never announced one player, we announced in batches of 3 or 4. So I don’t want to say I like them all, because that would be cliche, but I know their stories. I know the effort they put in and the bonds between the players. I know some of the great things they are doing off the field. For example, Tyler Gibson delivered pizzas to the homeless with one of our fans.
The players have said this club is different. This club has a family feeling. We all get together once per month and have lunch after training. Cristian Portilla’s wife spoke with my wife for 2 hours without knowing it and later commented on how impressed she is with the level of humility we all have. We welcome the players and staff to bring their families around. So I can’t pick one of them. Salih Muhammad is out for the season, but he has health care for the year and housing for the year. I told his dad make sure he doesn’t come back too soon. Make sure he does the right thing for his long term career and life. So we are creating meaningful bonds. Because of that, I can’t pick one.
7. Attendance is off to a slower start than you would like. But one thing I was interested to learn today is that you report turnstile attendance whereas some sports teams report tickets sold regardless of how many show up, and still others inflate their attendance numbers with giveaways. It is not just soccer – if you even look at a Yankees game – there are many games where announced attendance is clearly much more than what is in the stands. Why do you report it this way, and what are you doing to improve attendance and general awareness of the Deltas in San Francisco?
We feel that reporting turnstile attendance is the right thing to do. The long term sustainability of any club comes from the fans who are engaged and show up to the matches. I feel that when a team inflates their attendance numbers, they are sending the wrong message to their fans and community. The fans need to be engaged in growing the club. I need each of the fans to be bought in and spread the word. As I mentioned, if 2,500 people come to a Deltas game, and each brings one person to the next game, then we will have 5,000. If the same thing happens again, we will sell out Kezar with 10,000. It can be that simple.
That being said, we are going to start doing ads on buses and the Muni. I think this kind of advertising helps from a reminder perspective, but real, sustainable attendance growth is driven by the fans and word of mouth. We need the fans to spread the word.
8. I walked around San Francisco quite a bit yesterday and saw a ton of people in San Francisco Giants gear. But the Giants weren’t always as popular in San Francisco as they are today. Their attendance has tripled since about the mid-1980s, taking a jump in the 1990s and took another jump when the moved into AT&T Park. Do you think the Deltas can grow like that over time?
To get there, people in the city need to feel emotionally connected. People need to feel like it’s their club. That’s one reason why we don’t use the term owner. We don’t use the term front office, it feels elitist. Fans feel comfortable coming to the office. Fans send ideas and we do some of them (of course, we can’t do them all).
For example, I love this home jersey. I think it came out awesome. Was I nervous when we turned the jersey selection over to the fans to choose? Yes! Were there options I didn’t personally like? Yes!
But I am really happy with what they chose. If this was about me, the club colors would have been blue and the club would have been called Millonarios since I am a Millonarios fan. I think that would have been a mistake. A secret to our approach is that we remember that we have two ears and one mouth. We listen to fans and if we continue to do that, we will create strong connections to the club.
9. Do the investors have the wherewithal to support the team for a long build up, and do they see this as a long-term project?
Yes. I’ve known Fabio Igel for a long time. He is a good friend, and was an investor in the last company I did. At first, I was hesitant to get involved because of corruption in Colombian soccer and FIFA, but Fabio saw the opportunity to create something special for San Francisco.
10. You were generous in inviting clubs in the greater Bay Area to observe your open tryouts, so they could find talent for their teams as well. How are your relationships with the clubs in the Bay Area?
Our relationships are better with some than others. All of them gave a puzzled look when we first invited them to the open tryouts. It’s similar to potential fans, the ones who have gotten to know us see that we’re generous and true. We played the East Bay Stompers and it was great. We are in this together. We want more teams, more players, more fans. I would like it to be like Colombia where there are many successful teams. But at the youth, amateur and pro levels here in America there is this lack of collaboration and cooperation that really hurts the sport.
11. There have been some rumblings that the USL may have a Bay Area group that is interested in putting a team in San Francisco (reportedly it is not San Francisco City FC). What are your thoughts on that?
I’ve spoken to groups who want to do pro teams in the Bay Area. Their first three questions are to feel me out because they are expecting me to be like no, no, no I don’t want you here. I allay those concerns. I want to be helpful, so they go into this with eyes wide open.
There are many challenges, especially in California: Workers compensation, housing costs, the Bay Area is a busy market and there are venue challenges. I’ve told this to people in all three pro leagues. My position is that we compete on the field on Saturday but every other day of the week we are business partners. I will tell you what was hard, and I will tell you what was easy. The financial side is hard because people underestimate costs. There’s nothing worse than something costing 3x more than you expected.
So I try to provide any potential investors with helpful information, but when it comes to teams in the area, my feeling is the more, the better. We aren’t getting a soccer specific stadium built in San Francisco one day down the road to support just one team. Having more than one team playing in it would make the case much stronger, and that is an example of something that would benefit everyone.
12. Have you partnered with any youth organizations to start building a pipeline of talent from the youth ranks to the pros in San Francisco?
We have partnered with youth clubs. We get our ball boys and girls from the youth clubs. We encourage them to wear their youth club jerseys, instead of a Deltas jersey. Some of the players help out with coaching and player appearances. We want to be equal and treat everybody in a fair way. A successful pro soccer team is good for the youth programs in terms of awareness of the sport, and when kids see our players being successful, it will give them something to aspire to one day.
13. Do you have plans to put a reserve team in NPSL, PDL or UPSL?
We have no plans to put a reserve team in a league. I would much rather have a good relationship with the clubs in the area and work with them. Instead of having one reserve team, I would rather work with the local clubs. I could see loaning players who need a few games to those clubs, or maybe even a younger player would go on a longer loan. And likewise, if they had a player who could help us, we could work something out with them. I would rather collaborate with them than compete with them.
14. There are expansion groups in talks with the league about joining for 2018, in greater Los Angeles/Orange County and San Diego. If those groups are successful in their NASL applications, what would it mean to the Deltas to have in-state rivals?
The first thing that comes to mind is travel. Not travel expenses, but wear and tear for the guys. It is just easier on them than going to the East Coast all the time. If you get hit with travel delays, it is going to affect your performance. I think having more balance to the travel schedule will be great. I would hope that the California clubs would work with us on marketing and preseason.
15. Last year you were in favor of an Oakland team. Now word is that there may be an Oakland NASL group on the horizon. Are you excited about the potential of a Bay Bridge derby?
I spoke with the Oakland pro soccer group last week or so. They sound like they are in pretty early stages, so we have offered our help. I invited them to come out to a game. I care about the soccer ecosystem working together. I think if we’re open about how we’re doing we can start making the right decisions for the sport. If there is a market where it makes sense to have two teams, we should do it.
16. Do you envision the Deltas ever starting a NWSL team?
I would love to do a women’s team some day. Once you get a men’s team working, you can leverage the same infrastructure. But we need to get this working first.
17. What haven’t we covered that you would like to share with soccer fans interested in the Deltas?
We spoke about two of the three pillars that make up the Deltas’ values. We spoke a lot about community. We spoke about transparency in the numbers. The only thing we haven’t spoken about is innovation.
I am excited about some of the things we’ve already done and that we are going to do. To be the first team in the world to broadcast all of our games in Portuguese, Spanish and English is cool. Jackson’s family in Brazil can watch his game in their home language for the first time since he’s played overseas. We’re trying to build awareness of not only this club but of this sport. That is where we take that Silicon Valley way of thinking to the sport. Silicon Valley is about openness and collaboration. Let people participate and engage, and that is what fuels the venture. We feel like with that approach, over time, we can build a great futbol club.
***
After we finished talking, Brian and his wife Maria Paula went for their pre-game ritual, to say a prayer of thanks on the field. As they left, they introduced me to a lovely young lady named Taylor, Romuald Peiser’s girlfriend. Taylor had met the Deltas’ goalkeeper during his time with the Ottawa Fury and she was enjoying living in San Francisco. She had a special role to play at the game that day, although not quite what she expected. She thought she was taking the honorary opening kick of the game. It turned out to be much more special than that. After she came out onto the field, Peiser said a few words to Taylor. Then he dropped to one knee, proposing to her in front of the whole Deltas community (of course she said yes).
The renovated Kezar turned out to be a beautiful place to watch a game. The 3302 in attendance created a good atmosphere, and the backdrop of the peach colored arch and columns, the houses on the hills and the green of the park made for a pretty setting. The primary highlight of the match itself was an Eric Cantona-like chip goal by the Cosmos’ Emmanuel Ledesma that Peiser had no chance at stopping. After the final whistle blew, Brian invited me to join for their post-game tradition at Kezar Pub. Despite the tough loss for the home crowd, the staff, the Delta Force supporters and a number of the players, including Peiser and his new fiance, showed up to hang out and share a few beers together. I watched the CEO of this club, his wife, the supporters and the players all there together, interacting and building bonds. Since I was still on East Coast time, I called an Uber to take me back to my hotel after an hour or so. Most of them were still inside, enjoying each other’s company.
I’ve shared my experiences before and after the interview with Brian Andres Helmick as well as the backstory on how the club got started because I feel like it provides a window into what they are doing. Visiting the San Francisco Deltas for a day felt like being part of a family. While my heart will always be with the New York Cosmos, I left San Francisco with the feeling that Brian, Ricardo and the team there are building something special, though it may take time to catch on. They aren’t just building a soccer club, they are building a community, bringing together people from different walks of life around a celebration of San Francisco and the beautiful game. They are doing it with an openness toward anyone who wishes to be a part of that community.
It is great to see people using the love of sport to bring people together and to do good for their community as their primary goal. You don’t get the sense from anyone at the Deltas that making money is their top priority. Money is a priority as it is important to the sustainability of their project, and they are certainly managing to that, but it is not the reason for being. Many things have been written about how difficult it is for a pro soccer club to succeed in a city like San Francisco, and most of those things are true. But if any group of people deserve to be the ones to take that bogey down, it is the folks behind the Deltas. How great would it be if across the country there were leagues filled with pro soccer clubs where the owners, staff, players and fans all came together as equals after games, united as a community? It is easy to root for these guys. Hopefully more people in San Francisco will discover this special movement, and find a place where they are welcomed home every other Saturday from March to November. |
Disney (DIS) has developed a winning movie strategy that trumps even its widely-criticized declining ESPN subscriber numbers, according to comScore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian.
"It's worth investing in for its studio business," he said. "The future is so bright and you hope that the rising tide will raise all of its ships."
The media company reported a 21% year-over-year increase for its studio segment operating income for Q2 to $656 million vs. the already optimistic $528 million expected. "Our studio's extraordinary run continues," Disney CEO Bob Iger said during Tuesday's earnings call. However studio revenue did take a slight dip of 1% year-over-year to $2.03 billion since last year had the benefit of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Zootopia.
Disney's movie business has benefited greatly from acquiring Marvel, Lucasfilms and Pixar, Dergarabedian noted. "Those deals have put Disney in an incredible position to always have a deep bench of varied films to release," he said. In fact, Disney has such a big slate of films to release each year that it has the high-class problem of having to move around release dates like a chess board, he said.
This year, Disney's Beauty and the Beast has broken a number of records, including highest-grossing March weekend release with $170 million at the box office domestically. As of May 7, the film also stole the title of highest-grossing PG-rated film from Pixar's summer 2016 release Finding Dory. Beauty and the Beast has now grossed $1.187 billion worldwide vs. Finding Dory's 1.03 billion. "When don't Disney's films hit $1 billion these days?" Dergarabedian said in good humor.
"Beauty and the Beast is the latest in an impressive list of wildly successful films including Maleficent, Cinderella and Jungle Book and we've got more on the way including The Lion King, Dumbo, Aladdin and Mulan," Iger explained in the earnings call.
The head of Disney is referring to Disney's successful reboot strategy that began with Alice in Wonderland in 2010, which garnered more than $1 billion worldwide. Other successes include Maleficent (2014, $758.5 million worldwide), Cinderella (2015, $543.5 million worldwide) and The Jungle Book (2016, $966.6 million worldwide). This is a good sign for Disney considering it has at least eleven classic film remakes planned for the next few years.
Disney has already had a second film pass the coveted $1 billion mark at the box office in 2017 -- Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. In addition, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 opened up at number one this past weekend and has already grossed $441.4 million at the box office. Disney is building on this momentum -- literally -- by opening a Guardians of the Galaxy attraction at Disney's California Adventure later this May.
The powerhouse studio's next two films are sequels to already successful film series.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge is due out May 26. The first four films in the Pirates of the Caribbean series starring Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow grossed $654.3 million, $1.1 billion, $963.4 million and $1 billion, respectively. The second Disney film due out this summer is Cars 3, due out July 14. The first two films in this animated series about talking cars generated $462.2 million and $562 million, respectively.
While at least a dozen sequels released last summer did not perform up to expectations, Disney seems to be the exception, Dergarabedian noted. "Disney is banking on sequels and it seems to work for them," he said. However, even Disney isn't immune to market forces. To stay in the game, Disney has an enormous pressure to turn out high-quality sequels and remakes. "Disney doesn't release small movies," he said.
Other upcoming films expected to add to the company's top line include Pixar's Coco, out this Thanksgiving, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, out in December, and four Marvel releases in the next 14 months: Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War and Ant-Man and the Wasp. "Fans are especially excited about Infinity War, which brings the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy together on screen for the first time ever, along with many, many more great Marvel characters," Iger commented. "We've been thrilled with the creative momentum at Disney's live-action Studio."
Further out, Disney expects to release Frozen 2 in 2019, which Iger refers to as "one of the most anticipated sequels in animation history." Since fans can't seem to 'let it go,' Disney is also opening Frozen the Musical in Denver this summer before moving it to Broadway next spring. |
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By Date By Thread [SE-2012-01] Yet another Reflection API flaw affecting Oracle's Java SE From: Security Explorations <contact () security-explorations com>
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:08:21 +0200
Hello All, Today, a vulnerability report with an accompanying Proof of Concept code was sent to Oracle notifying the company of a new security weakness affecting Java SE 7 software. The new flaw was verified to affect all versions of Java SE 7 (including the recently released 1.7.0_21-b11). It can be used to achieve a complete Java security sandbox bypass on a target system. Successful exploitation in a web browser scenario requires proper user interaction (a user needs to accept the risk of executing a potentially malicious Java application when a security warning window is displayed). What's interesting is that the new issue is present not only in JRE Plugin / JDK software, but also the recently announced Server JRE as well [1]. Those concerned about a feasibility of exploitation of Java flaws in a server environment should consult Guideline 3-8 of "Secure Coding Guidelines for a Java Programming Language" [2]. It lists the following software components and APIs as potentially prone to the execution of untrusted Java code: - Sun implementation of the XSLT interpreter, - Long Term Persistence of JavaBeans Components, - RMI and LDAP (RFC 2713), - Many SQL implementations. In Apr 2012 [3], we reported our first vulnerability report to Oracle corporation signaling multiple security problems in Java SE 7 and the Reflection API in particular. It's been a year since then and to our true surprise, we were still able to discover one of the simplest and most powerful instances of Java Reflection API based vulnerabilities. It looks Oracle was primarily focused on hunting down potentially dangerous Reflection API calls in the "allowed" classes space. If so, no surprise that Issue 61 was overlooked. Thank you. Best Regards Adam Gowdiak --------------------------------------------- Security Explorations http://www.security-explorations.com "We bring security research to the new level" --------------------------------------------- References: [1] Server JRE (Java SE Runtime Environment) 7 Downloads http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/server-jre7-downloads-1931105.html [2] Secure Coding Guidelines for the Java Programming Language, Version 4.0 http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/seccodeguide-139067.html [3] SE-2012-01 Vendors status http://www.security-explorations.com/en/SE-2012-01-status.html _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/ By Date By Thread Current thread: [SE-2012-01] Yet another Reflection API flaw affecting Oracle's Java SE Security Explorations (Apr 22) |
By Phil Hearse
August 22, 2009 -- Marxsite -- Most people sympathetic to radical politics outside the United States have probably never heard of Ayn Rand, and a brief introduction to her ultra pro-free market views would doubtless be enough to convince them they haven’t missed anything. Yet 27 years after her death, Ayn Rand continues to be seriously debated in the US, her books sell hundreds of thousands each year, her views are propagated by right wing think tanks and foundations and – bizarrely – Charlize Theron is in discussions to turn Rand’s 1088-page magnus opus Atlas Shrugged into a TV mini-series.
The Times Educational Supplement claimed in July that the Ayn Rand revival is gathering pace on US campuses. According to the TES:
The surge in interest has also been propelled by the millions of dollars given to 25 universities by the charitable foundation of banking giant BB&T, run by one of her adherents. But even this funding, handed out so institutions can teach and study Ms Rand and to establish centres for the advancement of American capitalism, has been controversial. The faculty at Meredith College in North Carolina rejected a $420,000 (£260,000) grant because it came on the condition that Ms Rand's work be taught there, and there was a similar uproar at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Even many of the professors who now teach Rand, Dr McCaskey said, "will preface their presentations with, 'I don't agree with this, but you should hear it'.
In her lifetime Rand strongly influenced Ronald Reagan, and long-time chair of the US Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan was part of her entourage as a young man and remained faithful to her views throughout his career (catastrophically so as far as the US economy was concerned). According to The Week magazine:
Rand attracted a group of disciples, known, with self-conscious irony, as the Collective...It wasn’t just her ideas that inspired the group, it was Rand’s charisma. At the height of her popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s, Rand cut a highly exotic figure with her bobbed hair, Russian accent, dollar-sign brooches, and long cigarettes, smoked through a holder. She saw smoking as a Promethean symbol of creativity and regarded health warnings as a socialist conspiracy. When she died of lung cancer, in 1982, a 6-foot-high floral dollar sign was erected by her open coffin (April 16, 2009).
Astonishingly, the advent of the world banking crisis has led to an upsurge in Ayn Rand book sales, with 300,000 copies of Atlas Shrugged sold last year, and in January 2009 it came in at number 33 in Amazon’s top 100 US book sales. The Ayn Rand Institute argued strongly against state money bailing out the banks, and unsurprisingly Randites have been to the forefront of opposing US President Barak Obama’s rather mild plans to extend health-care insurance.
Ayn (rhymes with mine) Rand was the pseudonym of Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum, an exile from Bolshevik Russia who stayed in the United States after a visit in 1926. She started off writing film scripts on anti-Soviet themes, and her links with the film industry enabled her to get her first major novel The Foutainhead turned into a 1949 film starring Gary Cooper, Patricia Neale and Raymond Massey. A film about her love life, The Passion of Ayn Rand, was released in 1999 starring Helen Mirren as Rand and Peter Fonda as her long-suffering husband Frank O’Connor. The same year she was even put on a US postage stamp.
Capitalist ideology
Rand propounded her views through her novels and a series of essays and interviews, but left no major single work outlining her political and social theory. Her appeal and her cult status is based on two central ideas that chime in perfectly with key aspects of US capitalist ideology. These are a) self-interest, not altruism, is the highest moral value and as a guiding thread leads to the best outcomes, and b) free-market capitalism is the system that leads to the best economic outcomes and allows the fullest development of individuals. It spontaneously leads to the best possible outcomes for everyone – this a version of Adam Smith’s ``hidden hand’'.
Free-market capitalism in this version is a system where the only function of the state is to exercise the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence, preventing violence between individuals thus allowing business to develop uninterruptedly. Nothing else – not healthcare, not the post office, not education of any type, not firefighting and rescue services, absolutely nothing whatsoever – is the business of the state. This is ultra-privatisation on a scale probably never seen in the history of capitalism, a point made frequently by Rand herself, although she didn’t understand the significance of this fact.
That self-interest not altruism happens to serve the highest good (though not any ``collective good’' which Rand regarded as a meaningless concept) is indeed a remarkably fortunate outcome for the many right-wing adherents of her ideas. Just do what’s good for yourself, don’t care about anyone else, and lo and behold you happen to be doing the morally right thing as well!
Ayn Rand’s writings reveal a consistent and utterly naive idea about wealth. Wealth is created by the effort, intelligence and inventiveness of ``men'’ who are prepared to stand out from the crowd and be true to their own visions. For her, capitalists, whom she regarded as a persecuted minority, are always self-made ``men'' (she was utterly consistent in never using any other pronoun to describe clever people); she did briefly discuss the issue of inheritance, but never acknowledged that power and wealth were due to class positions, rather than individual genius. Once the simple fact that most rich people are rich because they come from rich families is established, Rand’s whole system collapses.
The strivings of the talented against the holding back of the collectivist philistines is the theme of both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. The former’s main protagonist, Frank Roark, is an architect who from the time he is a student fights back against attempts to throttle his individuality and make him conform to stylistic fashion and consensus. In Atlas Shrugged, ``Atlas'' is the talented, the geniuses, the clever people who ``hold up the world''; their ``shrug'' is a worldwide strike organised by their international champion, the mysterious John Galt, who unusually for a modern novel makes a 60-page speech explaining what is in effect Ayn Rand’s philosophy.
Rand’s time and context
Ayn Rand became famous through The Fountainhead in 1943, and remained prominent until her death in 1982, speaking at numerous meetings, notably the Ford Hall Forums in Boston and appearing on radio and television. Her great ideological battle was against the mixed economy welfare state model of capitalism – Keynesianism – a battle waged by the US right during and immediately after the second world war. She described a trinity of ideological opponents – altruism, collectivism and mysticism. It was the latter that got her into trouble with many on the US right, then as now a Christian redoubt. To give Ayn Rand her due, she loathed and detested religion as not based on reason (obviously). This led her into many battles with more mainstream conservatives, for example William F. Buckley, influential editor in the 1960s of the National Review and a key intellectual behind the extreme right-wing Republican candidate for the presidency in 1964, Barry Goldwater. Ayn Rand was vicious in her denunciation:
The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive- a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence...Man's mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated to the will of God... Man's standard of value, say the mystics of spirit, is the pleasure of God, whose standards are beyond man's power of comprehension and must be accepted on faith....The purpose of man's life...is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question (For the New Intellectual).
Rand also annoyed mainstream conservatives with her views on abortion:
An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn)….Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?”
Rand made many searing attacks on the anti-abortionists not because she saw herself as a feminist – she told a Ford House Forum that on feminism and the Equal Rights Amendment she “disagreed with all that” – but because she saw it as a matter of individual rights. Philosophical individualism is the cornerstone of her system.
Basic fallacies
Ayn Rand’s system is made possible by a series of fallacies which underpin her system. As she herself said many times about her opponents, these errors are so glaring it’s difficult to believe anyone would make them in good faith
Fallacy 1 – Wages under capitalism
In her essay Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, Rand uses the following illustration of individual responsibility.
Imagine, she says, a “little stenographer” who spends all her money on lipstick and not microscopes. Her choices are not irrational if her individual values accord lots of importance to lipstick. However, if she later gets sick she may regret she didn’t allocate some money to ``microscopes'' -- here a metaphor for medical science and medical insurance. If she doesn’t have the health insurance it’s her own fault.
This of course is bog-standard free-market nonsense. The obvious fallacy is that any waged worker under capitalism could possibly earn enough to pay privately for every good and service they might need in a lifetime. As capitalism evolved its neoliberal phase the amount of discretionary income workers have at their disposal has diminished. In Britain privatisation of transport, gas, electricity, most forms of dentistry etc. has swallowed up workers’ incomes so that, unlike in Ayn Rand’s time, it needs two full-time workers to support a household – especially with the astronomic cost of housing. The complete privatisation of healthcare would lead to millions of workers being unable to afford to have many therapies and treatments. Just like in the United States where, as Michael Moore shows in Sicko, insured people are regularly ripped off by health insurance companies that specialise in not paying.
Fallacy 2: The source of wealth is individual effort and talent
Ayn Rand’s world, where the clever and industrious are the one’s who reap the rewards, was always a major caricature, even in her own times. In the neoliberal epoch dominated by finance capital it is ludicrous. Finance capital takes a chunk of the money paid for most commodities in the form of rents, interest etc. It’s money that makes money, and that may involve second-order artfulness and gambling techniques, but it probably does not involve anything very clever, inventive or productive.
But even in the sphere of industrial capital Rand’s ideas don’t work. The example of Carlos Slim, Mexico’s richest man and two years ago listed as the richest man in the world, is highly indicative about the source of wealth today. Slim got his $70 billion by owning Telmex, the Mexican telephone and communications giant. He was given it by his close friend Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who as Mexican president in the 1980s oversaw the advent of neoliberalism and privatisation. Rand’s model assumes that corruption and the use of the state apparatus for personal enrichment does not exist. But under capitalism it’s endemic, because the economic power of the capitalists enables them to further enrich themselves through non-economic power techniques like corruption and violence.
Ayn Rand waxes lyrical over the clever, the industrious and those who create things. But the people who make most things, whose billions of hours of labour make the world go round each day, are the workers – in industry, in services and on the land. Rand has nothing but contempt for them.
Fallacy 3: The state, class and society
Millions of people remember British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s famous adage that “there is no such thing as society, only individuals and their families”. This utterly shocking view, that there was no collective good, was highly damaging to Thatcher and the Tories. But it was not an aberration – Ayn Rand said it first:
The tribal notion of the ``common good'' has served as the moral justification of most social systems – and of all tyrannies – in history...The ``common good'' (or ``public interest'') is an undefined and undefinable concept; there is no such entity as ‘the tribe’ or ‘the public’; the tribe (or the public or ``society’'' is only a number of individual men. Nothing can be good for the tribe as such; ``good'' and ``value'' pertain only to a living organism – to an individual living organism – not to a disembodied aggregate of relationships. (What is Capitalism, p. 20)
Even if we accept Rand’s strange terminology and discuss the fate of tribes – for example Native Americans or pre-historic Europeans – it seems fairly obvious that the tribe as a collective had overall interests. For example, it had the collective interest of finding somewhere with accessible food and water; of not being massacred by white settlers; of moving somewhere warmer with the advent of harsh winters; of finding shelter; of not being eaten by predators etc. etc. This may seem a small and trivial example, but it goes to the heart of everything that is wrong with Ayn Rand thought.
It was in the interest of each individual member of the tribe to do all the above things. But individuals couldn’t do all of them on their own. So they banded together in groups who produced and reproduced their existence by working together collectively, by collaborating. (The social nature of humanity and the social nature of labour is of course the very basis of Marxist thought. Collaboration for the common good is essential for virtually any type of society to work, including capitalism.)
Even under advanced capitalism there are many things that individuals and private companies either can’t or won’t do – or if they do they run into trouble because it’s inherently unprofitable but socially necessary. A classic case is the Channel tunnel linking the UK with Europe. The investment needed was so vast it couldn’t be recovered in fares and charges over any reasonable time to recoup investors’ money. So the company effectively went bust and was bailed out by governments. Which shows that it should have been financed by the UK and French governments all along.
It is possible to argue that every road, bridge and museum should be built by private money for a profit, but then the system of tolls and charges would be so enormous and complex, that people would spend all day sorting out change and things would slow down in a major way. But there is a more important issue, another one that goes to the heart of Ayn Randism. If profit is the sole criterion of everything except the police and the army, then you radically limit the range of things that can and will be done. You will sabotage the arts, education, social security and health – and the quality of life for millions of real individuals. You will have massive unemployment, thousands of beggars on the streets and social explosions so vast that spending on the repressive apparatuses would skyrocket to repress the consequent riots and uprisings.
Capitalism has always needed the state, indeed capitalism was brought into existence in the mercantilist period under the aegis and protection of the state. So long as capitalism subsists there will be a permanent battle about the priorities of the state, especially state spending. As a rule of thumb, the higher state spending the lower the level of poverty.
A linked blind spot for Rand is class. The capitalist class, the working class and the petty bourgeoisie (middle class) are absent actors from her texts. Since there is no such thing as society, other ``disembodied aggregates'’ like social classes as disallowed too. Rand’s individualism is sustained by ignoring real collectives.
Fallacy 4: social solidarity and individual recognition
Rand saved some of her most persistent vitriol for ``altruism''. This issue divided her from many conservative contemporaries who at least saw charities and some state health and welfare spending as necessary. The sea of altruism – and the unworthy and lazy claiming the wealth of the creative and industrious through taxes to fund social spending – was rotting the moral fibre of the United States and preventing the adequate recognition of the worth of ``Atlas'' -- the talented and vigorous whose achievements ``hold up the world''.
Marxists however do not advocate altruism – being generous to the less fortunate in the manner of well-meaning aristocrats – but social solidarity. This proposes that people work for the common good, sure, but not only for that.
Even in an egalitarian, collectivist society, the question of the recognition of individual achievement would be an important one. The need for recognition, for positive feedback from peers, to have personal qualities of skill, hard work and inventiveness recognised by others is something built into human beings, part of ``human nature'' if you want. And it is clearly part of the motivation for the activity of billions of human beings. The esteem of others is always part of the self-esteem that everyone needs.
Recognition and esteem for individuals is not counterposed to social solidarity or collectivism. Ayn Rand’s vision of this, perhaps best explained in her dystopian novel Anthem, is that collectivism leads to the obliteration of individual recognition and individual personality – even individual names are replaced by numbers. This is a 1984-style vision of Stalinist totalitarianism, the kind of thing that is being wheeled out to oppose Obama’s health reforms, revealing the deeply paranoid style of the US right.
The question is not whether individual talent and achievement shoul be recognised, but whether hugely disproportionate financial rewards should accrue to those who make major contributions.
Fallacy 5: The capitalist free market equals freedom
According to Ayn Rand, freedom means only one thing – freedom from the threat of physical violence, and it is the role of the state to ensure that freedom. Everything else is a matter of contract – agreements freely drawn up between individuals on the basis of legal equality (Rand was a true daughter of John Locke).
This is an entirely restricted view of freedom, of course. Real freedom is the freedom to develop your own individuality and creativity on the basis of freedom from hunger, from poverty, from disease, from exploitation, from intimidation – and from the permanent exhaustion imposed by capitalist work regimes. (It is no accident that the centre of modern capitalist work regime methods, the United States, is the sleep deprivation capital of the world.)
People do not confront one another in the market place on the basis of freedom and equality, but on the basis of deep structural inequalities – of class, race and gender. They do not have equal access to education, and as a result the education system in modern capitalist states tends to spontaneously reproduce existing structural inequalities. Social mobility is slowing down, not speeding up. The overwhelming majority will remain in the social class into which they were born.
Karl Marx said that being rich meant being rich in free time, which is what most full-time workers can’t get. The free marketeers point that nobody is ``forced'' to do a particular job is trivial and puerile. Yes, you have the right to be destitute; otherwise for most people it means having a full-time job, which for most people means an end to freedom.
Objectivism – the vacant heart of Ayn Rand thought
As befitting a cult guru, Ayn Rand topped off her system with a quack philosophy which she called ``Objectivism''. This says that a) ``Existence exists''; b) People should be guided by reason and not religious faith (mysticism): reason is the method in which information from the senses is integrated and synthesised; c) Reason determines that individualism, not altruism, shows the right way to live; and d) Each ``man'' must determine their own ``values'' on the basis of reason, but these values are contingent on time and circumstances, except that they must be conditioned by c).
The real problem which this system is the lack of any determination about what ``values'' might be, except the dogma about individualism. Lacking any secure concepts about history or society, lacking any engagement with Freud which might have yielded up something about individual motivation, it really says ``use your reason to determine your own best interests''.
Rand adds an ontology, which is peripheral to her system, but is as it happens completely wrong. She says contradiction in reality cannot exist: A = A. A thing is what it is and nothing else. This of course is a radical rejection of dialectical thinking that sees phenomena not as things in themselves, but in the process of their development and in the light of their interconnections with other phenomena.
It is this dynamic view of phenomena which enables Marxists to understand that everything – including capitalism fortunately – has a beginning and an end.
The cult of Ayn Rand
For a lot of people the success of cults – like Scientology for example – seems a mystery. How did Scientology manage to recruit all those Hollywood stars? It is less of a mystery when you realise that Scientology is really a self-improvement system. On the basis of mumbo jumbo, it aims to convince you that you are the centre of the universe, you can do anything, you must concentrate all your energy on being successful.
Thus with Ayn Rand thought. Individuals must be morally comfortable with unbridled self-interest, and use reason to think through the ways they can be most successful. This is deeply appealing because it links in with the great US myth – anyone can make it, on the basis of hard work, creativity, intelligence. It’s all up to you: individual and not collective solutions are the key.
All these systems fall on one central point. Stephen R. Covey says in his multimillion selling Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, “Highly effective people make their own world”. Covey is incapable of seeing that making our own world is just not available to the vast majority of the world’s population. How does a poor women in an Indian village make her own world? Or a peasant in a Mexican village? Or a Russian factory worker? The realities of class, of power and wealth – the deep structures of capitalism – prevent the vast majority of people exercising the kind of autonomy necessary to make real choices.
Capitalism does not make people free. It enslaves people.
Appendix: the world according to Ayn Rand
The New Left
"If concern with poverty and human suffering were the collectivists’ motive, they would have become champions of capitalism long ago; they would have discovered that it is the only political system capable of producing abundance. But they evaded the evidence as long as they could. When the issue became overwhelmingly clear to the whole world, the collectivists were faced with a choice: either turn to the right, in the name of humanity—or to the left, in the name of dictatorial power. They turned to the left—the New Left.
Instead of their old promises that collectivism would create universal abundance and their denunciations of capitalism for creating poverty, they are now denouncing capitalism for creating abundance. Instead of promising comfort and security for everyone, they are now denouncing people for being comfortable and secure."
Return of the Primitive
"Old-line Marxists claimed [falsely] that they were champions of reason, that socialism or communism was a scientific social system, that an advanced technology could not function in a capitalist society, but required a scientifically planned and organized human community to bring its maximum benefits to every man, in the form of material comforts and a higher standard of living .... [T]oday we see the spectacle of old Marxists blessing, aiding and abetting the young hoodlums [of the New Left] (who are their products and heirs) who proclaim the superiority of feelings over reason, of faith over knowledge, of leisure over production, of spiritual concerns over material comforts, of primitive nature over technology, of astrology over science, of drugs over consciousness."
Fascism and communism
``Fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory ... both are variants of statism, based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state.''
Lipstick and microscopes
``A microscope is of no value to a little stenographer struggling to make a living; a lipstick is; a lipstick, to her, may mean the difference between self-confidence and self-doubt, between glamour and drudgery.
``This does not mean, however, that the values ruling a free market are subjective. If the stenographer spends all her money on cosmetics and has none left to pay for the use of a microscope (for a visit to the doctor) when she needs it, she learns a better method of budgeting her income; the free market serves as her teacher: she has no way to penalize others for her mistakes. If she budgets rationally, the microscope is always available to serve her own specific needs and no more, as far as she is concerned: she is not taxed to support an entire hospital, a research laboratory, or a space ship’s journey to the moon. Within her own productive power, she does pay a part of the cost of scientific achievements, when and as she needs them.''
Conservatives
``Objectivists are not `conservatives.' We are radicals for capitalism; we are fighting for that philosophical base which capitalism did not have and without which it was doomed to perish ...
``Today’s culture is dominated by the philosophy of mysticism (irrationalism)—altruism—collectivism, the base from which only statism can be derived; the statists (of any brand: communist, fascist or welfare) are merely cashing in on it—while the `conservatives' are scurrying to ride on the enemy’s premises and, somehow, to achieve political freedom by stealth. It can’t be done.''
Collectivism
``Collectivism holds that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group ... and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force—and statism has always been the political corollary of collectivism.'' – The Virtue of Selfishnesss, p. 128
Altruism
``What is the moral code of altruism? The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.
``Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice—which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction — which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.
``Do not hide behind such superficialities as whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar. That is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime. The issue is whether you must keep buying your life, dime by dime, from any beggar who might choose to approach you. The issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence. The issue is whether man is to be regarded as a sacrificial animal. Any man of self-esteem will answer: `No.' Altruism says: `Yes.'''
Contradiction
``A contradiction cannot exist. An atom is itself, and so is the universe; neither can contradict its own identity; nor can a part contradict the whole. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.'' – Speech by ‘John Galt’, For the New Intellectual.
Free market
``In a free economy, where no man or group of men can use physical coercion against anyone, economic power can be achieved only by voluntary means: by the voluntary choice and agreement of all those who participate in the process of production and trade. In a free market, all prices, wages, and profits are determined — not by the arbitrary whim of the rich or of the poor, not by anyone’s `greed' or by anyone’s need — but by the law of supply and demand. The mechanism of a free market reflects and sums up all the economic choices and decisions made by all the participants. Men trade their goods or services by mutual consent to mutual advantage, according to their own independent, uncoerced judgment. A man can grow rich only if he is able to offer better values—better products or services, at a lower price—than others are able to offer.''
[Phil Hearse is a activist in the British socialist organisation Socialist Resistance, which publishes a newspaper of the same name. This article first appeared at Hearse's web site Marxsite.] |
Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to meddle in the U.S. elections through cyberattacks, the Obama administration said Friday, officially placing blame for the attack that struck the Democratic National Committee and other major political figures.
Hacks on state election systems also had some fingerprints of Russia, but U.S. officials said they couldn’t be certain that the Russian government was involved.
The Homeland Security Department and the U.S. intelligence community have long suspected Russian meddling, but the statement is the first official blame the government has placed.
“These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process,” the officials said. “Such activity is not new to Moscow — the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there.”
The officials didn’t blame Mr. Putin by name but said “only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”
The statement was released two weeks after members of Congress went on the record to publicly blame Russia for the hacks.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California, the ranking Democrats on their respective Senate and House intelligence committees, released a joint statement last month indicating that Russian intelligence agencies were “making a serious and concerted effort to influence the U.S. election.”
Both lawmakers on Friday applauded the administration’s decision to publicly name Russia as the source of the attacks.
“We should now work with our European allies who have been the victim of similar and even more malicious cyber interference by Russia to develop a concerted response that protects our institutions and deters further meddling,” Mr. Schiff said.
Ms. Feinstein called the hacks “intolerable” and said that if Russia will not cease the intrusions then the U.S. “must develop a strong response.”
The hacks have exposed the sordid inner workings of the DNC, including officials’ plotting to derail Sen. Bernard Sanders’ bid for the party’s presidential nomination.
More recently, emails stolen from former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s account revealed his thoughts on politics, including insulting opinions about the Clinton family and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. |
Insanity
Achieved all other trophies. 0.4%
Ultra Rare 4.12%
Ultra Rare
Alchemist
Removed the Shadow's residue in the entrance hall in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. 17.3%
Rare 26.20%
Uncommon
Escape Artist
Escaped the creature in the water in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. 11.8%
Very Rare 19.45%
Rare
Descendant
Taken a rough ride on an elevator in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. 7.6%
Very Rare 14.86%
Rare
Pipeworker
Lowered the water level in the cistern to reveal a new way out in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. 5.5%
Very Rare 12.07%
Rare
Restorer
Collected the pieces of the orb and rebuilt it in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. 4.2%
Ultra Rare 10.60%
Rare
Survivor
Killed Alexander and escaped the castle in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. 3.3%
Ultra Rare 9.57%
Very Rare
Sacrifice
Allowed Alexander to escape in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. 2.0%
Ultra Rare 8.19%
Very Rare
Benefactor
Rescued Agrippa in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. 2.5%
Ultra Rare 8.61%
Very Rare
Illuminatus
Picked up every tinderbox in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. 0.4%
Ultra Rare 4.45%
Ultra Rare
NOPE
Left when things were getting interesting in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. 20.9%
Rare 28.94%
Uncommon
Quitter
Failed to escape the cells and was consumed by the Shadow in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. 1.7%
Ultra Rare 6.92%
Very Rare
Egotist
Not a single victim survived in Amnesia: Justine. 1.2%
Ultra Rare 5.91%
Very Rare
Altruist
Not a single victim died in Amnesia: Justine. 0.9%
Ultra Rare 5.59%
Very Rare
Vacillator
Some victims died, some lived in Amnesia: Justine. 1.0%
Ultra Rare 5.77%
Very Rare
Still Alive
Became aware of the merits of A.S. Inc.'s Span-space Device in Amnesia: Justine. 1.4%
Ultra Rare 6.16%
Very Rare
The Teeth
Entered the cellars in Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. 7.3%
Very Rare 11.55%
Rare
The Throat
Entered the factory in Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. 4.7%
Ultra Rare 9.40%
Very Rare
The Gut
Entered the bilge in Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. 3.1%
Ultra Rare 7.96%
Very Rare
The Entrails
Emerged on to the streets in Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. 2.8%
Ultra Rare 7.74%
Very Rare
The Heart
Performed an act of self-butchery in Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. 2.6%
Ultra Rare 7.53%
Very Rare |
As previously reported, The Flaming Lips new album – their first of original material since 2013’s The Terror – is called Oczy Mlody and feature 12 songs, the long awaited “Listening to the Frogs with Demon Eyes” among them (revisit our album preview from this past August for the story of “Demon Eye’s” near-release in 2013 and other details on the new album). Lead single “The Castle” is now streaming on Spotify, as is follow-up “How??”
The album is set for release on January 13, 2017…
….Wayne Coyne’s birthday!
Click on the links below for more information on the album’s art, music video, pre-order options and its supporting tour.
Tracklist With Track Times
1. Oczy Mlody – 2:53
2. How?? – 4:24
3. There Should Be Unicorns – 5:49
4. Sunrise (Eyes of the Young) – 4:05
5. Nigdy Nie (Never No) – 4:10
6. Galaxy I Sink – 3:57
7. One Night While Hunting for Faeries and Witches and Wizards to Kill – 6:07
8. Do Glowy – 4:18
9. Listening to the Frogs with Demon Eyes – 7:35
10. The Castle – 4:50
11. Almost Home (Blisko Domu) – 4:53
12. We a Famly – 4:44
Follow updates on the album at twitter/TheFutureHeart and facebook/TheFutureHeart
“When asked (about our newest album Oczy Mlody) what does your new stuff sound like..?? My current response has been that it sounds like Syd Barrett meets A$AP Rocky and they get trapped in a fairy tale from the future.. Ha..Knowing full well that if you know who Syd Barrett is.. (original founder of classic rock/space opera group Pink Floyd) you probably DON’T know who A$AP Rocky is (current badass psychedelic rapper).. and if you know and like A$AP Rocky you probably don’t care or wouldn’t like Syd Barrett.. Ha..So yeah.. I think, perhaps, it is only within The Flaming Lips world that these 2 (Syd and A$AP) could accidentally find themselves, like Dorothy stumbling upon the scarecrow as she wondered down the yellow brick road towards Oz.. (not sure which one is Dorothy and which one is the scarecrow in this scenario..) But somehow they have gone through a hole in the night sky and arrived in a fucked up,day glow, fairy tale world in the future.. A future where Oczy Mlody is the current cool powerful party drug of choice and sleeping is the ultimate cure for everything.. sleeping for, like, 3 months.. Yeah sleeping.. So if you want to lose weight..Ping!! You are put to sleep for 3 months and you wake up thin.. If you are addicted to drugs.. Ping!! You sleep yourself out of withdrawals and cravings and wake up sober.. Ha..And it all takes place inside a gated community that has been made into a replicant fantasy fairy tale city where the mega-mega rich folks live and have self indulgent psycho parties (maybe I’ve been spending too much time around Miley Cyrus) where everyone takes Oczy Mlody (the drug uses your own sub-conscious memories and transports you to your perfect childhood happy mind) and everyone has sex while riding unicorns.. There are frogs and wizards and spiders and painful emotional therapy sessions where every primal desire is allowed and encouraged. Darkness in the dark while we listen with demon eyes on our way back home to our family.. WTF..”
– Wayne Coyne |
Tony Bloom will resist the temptation to make lavish changes to Brighton’s playing staff following the club’s return to the top flight and will instead use the rush of revenue to encourage further evolution.
Brighton’s long march ends in Chris Hughton’s completion of a job well done Read more
The Brighton owner, a fan of 40 years, has invested £250m in the club since 2009, building the Amex Stadium and the new training facility at Lancing as well as improving the squad to take the club from the third tier into the Premier League. Promotion could be worth up to £200m given increased media and commercial revenues, catapulting Brighton to a new level virtually overnight. Yet Bloom aims to maintain gradual progress as they prepare for a first season in the elite in 34 years.
The club’s wage structure will shift, with Brighton now able to offer more competitive salaries but they are likely to follow the models implemented by Bournemouth and Burnley rather than offer huge contracts to new recruits.
“The amounts of money in the Premier League does equalise things a bit,” said Bloom, who has already discussed targets for the summer with his manager, Chris Hughton. “We have to strengthen, that goes without saying, but we’re not looking to spend huge amounts. We’ll do things on a gradual basis as we have done. We have good players already and we want to strengthen from that position.”
Promotion is a reward for Bloom’s reluctance to sell key players last summer after Brighton had secured 89 points in the Championship and still missed out on automatic promotion on goal difference. Offers totalling around £20m were submitted for Lewis Dunk, Dale Stephens and Anthony Knockaert – the latter had attracted interest from Newcastle who are currently traipsing in behind Brighton in the Championship – but all were resisted, despite losses of £26m recorded for the 2015-16 financial year.
“It was really important we kept together those main players who had gone so close last season,” Bloom said. “You can’t guarantee anything but we did as much as we could. We kept all our main players, we strengthened, helped all the players believe this was going to be our season, and so it has proved. It is 11 months since I went into the changing room at the end of the play-off semi-final against Sheffield Wednesday and the players were on the floor. I was on the floor but I looked around and said: ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and we will come back from this and do it next season’. They’ve done it. It’s just an amazing performance.
“What will Brighton bring to the Premier League? A great city, a great fan base, an amazing stadium which will be sold out every game, and hopefully we will do the city and our supporters proud.”
The leader of Brighton and Hove City Council, Warren Morgan, has already suggested Bloom and Hughton should be granted freedom of the city. The achievement comes 20 years after the club fought off the threat of relegation into non-league football and liquidation, and were rendered homeless by the sale of the Goldstone Ground to property developers.
“What would the future have held if we were in the Conference without a ground?” Bloom said. “Words can’t describe what Chris and all the players have done this season. The teamwork, the camaraderie … it really is fantastic.” |
Preface
Exceptions are and should be an integral part of any general purpose programming language. PHP introduced them long ago (with the release of PHP 5 or 5.1), but it still seems that many of the concepts are not fully understood or ignored by the community. This post aims to be a solid introduction to exception architecture, handling and testing. At the end of the post you should be able to know when to raise an exception and how it should look like.
Of course, there are many opinions on a topic like this. If you have constructive feedback, feel free to comment below. Let’s get started!
Architecture & Best-Practices
Here’s a golden rule: use exceptions for what their name says: exceptional situations. Don’t use exceptions to control the flow of your application logic (like substituting if-statements or to control loops). This not only leads to confusion, but also my slow down your code.
Edit: Due to some confusions on reddit, I think I need to clarify what exceptional situations are. When they occur, your code/request normally can’t continue correctly. So, if your database is not ready and you rely on it, you can’t continue. If you validate a form and a validation for the “username” field fails, you can continue and present the user with an error message tied to that form field. This depends heavily on your use case, but I hope you get the point.
In PHP, you have no way of finding out what exceptions the called method may throw if it isn’t documented somewhere or you can look at the code (in contrast, Java provides an explicit “throws” notation in the method definiton). So if you want to make sure that your code catches everything, you need to catch exceptions from the “Exception” class (in PHP, all exceptions need to have the “Exception” class or a descendant of it).
Here’s another tip that might come in handy if you develop code that includes third-party libraries: make sure to “normalize” your exceptions as soon as possible. This allows you to handle them better up the stack. What do I mean by that? Consider the following example:
You are writing a database abstraction layer (not that there aren’t already enough…) and you need to integrate third party extensions that handle the lowlevel/protocol stuff. We want to implement two databases: “Foobase” and “BarSQL”. When each driver fails to open a connection (for example, we’ve provided an invalid hostname), it raises an exception. Foobase raises an “FoobaseConnectionException” and BarSQL raises an “InvalidHostnameException”. This is a nightmare to handle up the stack if we want to log them accordingly or write those exceptions to a third-party logging service. Here’s what you can do: catch them early and raise a “normalized” exception like “NetworkException” with the actual exception as the message. We’ll see later how to do this.
While providing different exception classes for different situations is fine, make sure not to over engineer it. In my opinion, you should plan your exception classes like you plan the overall architecture of your library. This way, you’re also forced to think about all possible exceptional situations that may occur and give you a hint or two where you should be careful. Also, it is often a good idea to refactor dangerous code in their own helper methods so they can be better tested and don’t mess up the rest of your code.
After a bit of theory, let’s get to something more practical. How does the exception class hierarchy in PHP look like?
- Exception - ErrorException - LogicException - BadFunctionCallException - BadMethodCallException - DomainException - InvalidArgumentException - LengthException - OutOfRangeException - RuntimeException - OutOfBoundsException - OverflowException - RangeException - UnderflowException - UnexpectedValueException
At the root of the class hierachy, we have the Exception class. All exceptions have to inherit from it (or a subclass), otherwise you can’t throw it. Down the hierachy, we have the ErrorException, the LogicException and the RuntimeException. The ErrorException is used to transform errors into exceptions (we’ll see later how). The other ones are the top two exception objects in the SPL hierachy. All other built-in exceptions inhiert from one of them. I won’t describe them here, since their names are pretty expressive. Just make sure to throw one of them if they fit your needs. Don’t try to invent similar ones when they are already defined. This helps you to keep your exception architecture clean and focused.
All built-in exception classes don’t use a specific namespace (most of them were introduced before PHP 5.3), but you can namespace them similar to normal classes. You’re forced to do this if you use a standard like PSR-0. For example, Lithium has the following exception defined:
<?php namespace lithium
et\http; class RoutingException extends \RuntimeException { protected $code = 500; } ?>
You can infer from the context that it has something to do with a Router and is thrown during runtime. The Router class who throws it is placed in the same namespace. Notice how the RuntimeException is prefixed with a backslash - this indicates that we want to use a class from the “root” namespace. The method who uses is looks like this:
<?php namespace lithium
et\http; use lithium
et\http\RoutingException; class Router extends \lithium\core\StaticObject { public static function match($url = array(), $context = null, array $options = array()) { // ... // code that handles url matching... // ... throw new RoutingException("No parameter match found for URL `{$url}`."); } } ?>
PHP doesn’t provide a way to define what kind exceptions may be thrown, so make sure to document them correctly. Most documentation tools like phpDocumentor provide a @throws annotation. For example:
<?php class MyClass { /** * This method just throws an exception. * * @throws RuntimeException */ public function foo() { throw new RuntimeException("Ooops..."); } } ?>
PHP Syntax
We’ve already seen the basic syntax of throwing exceptions, but here is the formal method definition:
throw new Exception($message, $code, $previous);
All arguments are optional, but you should at least provide a descriptive message. The code argument is an arbitary error code that you can provide. For example, you can define your own codes or use them with HTTP status codes. If you are rethrowing a exception, you can also provide the instance through the previous argument. This way, both exceptions get raised to the calling method.
After throwing it, you need to catch it somewhere. PHP provides the familiar try/catch construct, but without a finally block like in Java.
try { $object = new IThrowExceptions(); } catch(Exception $e) { echo "Caught " . $e->getMessage(); }
The code inside the try block is evaluated, and if an exception is thrown the catch block tries to handle it. If the exception can’t be handled, it bubbles up the stack. If the exception doesn’t get handled in your code, PHP terminates. If you expect different exceptions to be thrown, you can catch more than one at the same time:
try { $foo = new Foo(); $foo->bar(); } catch(InvalidArgumentException $e) { echo "Just InvalidArgumentExceptions"; } catch(RuntimeException $e) { echo "Just RuntimeExceptions"; } catch(Exception $e) { echo "I catch everything"; }
The last catch(Exception $e) is used when no previous catch succeeded. Make sure to go from special to general, because when you move the Exception block to the top, the exception would never sink down to the RuntimeException .
Alright, let’s get back to our example from the beginning. Imagine we get a lot of custom exceptions that all have the same meaning. We want to normalize them, so that only one specific type bubbles up the stack. In our example, no matter what kind of exception we receive during _connect , we want to throw a NetworkException . It’s pretty easy to rethrow the exception:
<?php /** * Our custom Exceptions. */ class FoobaseConnectException extends Exception {} class BarSQLException extends Exception {} class NetworkException extends Exception {} /** * A sample parent datasource. */ abstract class Datasource { public function connect() { try { $this->_connect(); } catch(Exception $e) { $message = "Could not connect: " . $e->getMessage(); throw new NetworkException($message, $e->getCode()); } } abstract protected function _connect(); } /** * Foobase datasource. */ class Foobase extends Datasource { protected function _connect() { throw new FoobaseConnectException("Holy moly, no DB available"); } } /** * BarSQL datasource. */ class BarSQL extends Datasource { protected function _connect() { throw new BarSQLException("Y U NO SQL SERVICE?"); } } ?>
If you execute the following code, a 'NetworkException' with message 'Could not connect: Holy moly, no DB available' is raised:
<?php $foobase = new Foobase(); $foobase->connect(); ?>
We not only rethrow a different exception, but also incorporate the original message to provide a more detailed error report.
The exception classes provide more accessor-methods like reading the current line or file, check out the docs here. In our example above we also added our own exception classes. If you like, you can also add methods and call them later (maybe you need custom stack traces or want to add more information to the exception).
The last thing that comes in very handy are error handlers. Recall the ErrorException from the beginning? Here’s what you can do with it (taken from here):
function exception_error_handler($errno, $errstr, $errfile, $errline ) { throw new ErrorException($errstr, 0, $errno, $errfile, $errline); } set_error_handler("exception_error_handler"); /* Trigger exception */ strpos();
PHP throws lots of errors and warnings from built-in methods like strpos . The problem is that you can’t do anything with them in your code until you translate them into exceptions. That’s why the ErrorException was implemented. Notice how different the constructor is to the Exception class, because it mirrors all variables that are passed to the error handler. This allows you to capture and handle everything that happens during code execution in a uniform way, being it exceptions or errors.
Testing Exceptions
Testing exceptions may seem daunting at first, since you need to verfiy that your code fails. This usually means that you need to write unit tests with try/catch blocks and then do some kind of assertion inside the catch-block like this (just assume we have some arbitary assert functions defined):
<?php class Foo { public function bar() { throw new RuntimeException("My Message", 123); } } $foo = new Foo(); try { $foo->bar(); } catch(RuntimeException $e) { assertEqual($e->getMessage(), "My Message"); assertEqual($e->getCode(), 123); } ?>
PHP 5.3 provides us with a very nice addition to the language: closures. We can write a handy method that lets us test this kind of code very elegantly. Here’s a simple helper method:
function assertException($expected, $closure) { try { $closure(); echo "Exception expected, but not thrown"; } catch (Exception $e) { if($e->getMessage() == $expected) { echo "Correctly thrown"; } else { echo "Exception thrown, but with a different message."; } } }
We run the closure inside the try/catch block and check if the correct message is raised. Now we can test a code snippet like this:
<?php class Foo { public function bar() { throw new RuntimeException("My Message", 123); } } // prints "Correctly Thrown" assertException("My Message", function() { $foo = new Foo(); $foo->bar(); }); ?>
Of course, in a real test suite you want to replace the echo statements with debug output and add more intelligence. Look here for a practical implementation. This allows you to test exceptions in a natural and convenient way. Here’s a real unit test from a Couchbase datasource for Lithium:
public function testConnect() { $result = new Couchbase($this->_dbConfig); $this->assertTrue($result->isConnected()); $this->assertTrue(is_string($result->connection->getVersion())); $this->assertException('/Unknown host/', function() { $result = new Couchbase(array('host' => 'invalidHostname')); }); }
You can see that the exception assertion is integrated tightly after the normal tests and no try/catch blocks are used. Pretty neat, right?
Edit: David Thalmann thankfully pointed out that you can also test exceptions through annotations on your test methods. Here’s how to do that in PHPUnit.
Wrapping Up
While exceptions are part of nearly every language, using them correctly and not throwing something just for the sake of it is not easy and requires some thought. Make sure to think of your exceptions while you design the API, test and document them correctly. A lot of frameworks do a very good job on this, so keep your eyes open and prepare yourself to learn something new.
Remember: You gotta catch em’ all! |
While similar, inter- and intra-service communication have very different needs, and you need multiple implementation options. Inter-service communication must use loosely-coupled protocols and message formats to maintain isolation and autonomy, while intra-service communication can take advantage of mechanisms that have less overhead and better performance.
Service calls, either synchronous or asynchronous (streaming), allow services to communicate with each other using published APIs and standard protocols (HTTP and WebSockets). Lagom services are described by an interface, known as a service descriptor. This interface not only defines how the service is invoked and implemented, it also defines the metadata that describes how the interface is mapped down onto an underlying transport protocol. Generally, the service descriptor, its implementation, and consumption should remain agnostic to what transport is being used, whether that’s REST, websockets, or some other transport.
import com.lightbend.lagom.javadsl.api.*; import static com.lightbend.lagom.javadsl.api.Service.*; public interface HelloService extends Service { ServiceCall<String, String> sayHello(); ServiceCall<NotUsed, PSequence<Item>> getItems(long orderId, int pageNo, int pageSize); default Descriptor descriptor() { return named("hello").withCalls( call(this::sayHello), pathCall("/order/:orderId/items?pageNo&pageSize", this::getItems) ); } }
When you use call, namedCall, or pathCall, Lagom will make a best effort attempt to map it down to REST in a semantic fashion, so that means if there is a request message, it will use POST, if there’s none, it will use GET. Every service call in Lagom has a request message type and a response message type. When the request or response message isn’t used, akka.NotUsed can be used in their place. Request and response message types fall into two categories: strict and streamed. A strict message is a single message that can be represented by a simple Java object. The message will be buffered into memory, and then parsed, for example, as JSON. The above service calls use strict messages.
A streamed message is a message of the type Source. Source is an Akka streams API that allows asynchronous streaming and handling of messages.
ServiceCall<String, Source<String, ?>> tick(int interval); default Descriptor descriptor() { return named("clock").withCalls( pathCall("/tick/:interval", this::tick) ); }
This service call has a strict request type and a streamed response type. An implementation of this might return a Source that sends the input tick message String at the specified interval.
Services are implemented by providing an implementation of the service descriptor interface, implementing each call specified by that descriptor.
import com.lightbend.lagom.javadsl.api.*; import akka.NotUsed; import static java.util.concurrent.CompletableFuture.completedFuture; public class HelloServiceImpl implements HelloService { public ServiceCall<String, String> sayHello() { return name -> completedFuture("Hello " + name); } }
The sayHello() method is implemented using a lambda. An important thing to realize here is that the invocation of sayHello() itself does not execute the call, it only returns the call to be executed. The advantage here is that when it comes to composing the call with other cross cutting concerns, such as authentication, this can easily be done using ordinary function-based composition.
Having provided an implementation of the service, we can now register it with the Lagom framework. Lagom is built on top of the Play Framework, and so uses Play’s Guice-based dependency injection support to register components. To register a service, you’ll need to implement a Guice module. This is done by creating a class called Module in the root package.
import com.google.inject.AbstractModule; import com.lightbend.lagom.javadsl.server.ServiceGuiceSupport; public class Module extends AbstractModule implements ServiceGuiceSupport { protected void configure() { bindService(HelloService.class, HelloServiceImpl.class); } }
Working with streamed messages requires the use of Akka streams. The tick service call is going to return a Source that sends messages at the specified interval. Akka streams has a helpful constructor for such a stream:
public ServerServiceCall<String, Source<String, ?>> tick(int intervalMs) { return tickMessage -> { FiniteDuration interval = FiniteDuration.create(intervalMs, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS); return completedFuture(Source.tick(interval, interval, tickMessage)); }; }
The first two arguments are the delay before messages should be sent, and the interval at which they should be sent. The third argument is the message that should be sent on each tick. Calling this service call with an interval of 1000 and a request message of tick will result in a stream being returned that sent a tick message every second.
If you want to read from the Request header or add something to the Response header, you can use ServerServiceCall. If you’re implementing the service call directly, you can simply change the return type to be HeaderServiceCall.
public HeaderServiceCall<String, String> sayHello() { return (requestHeader, name) -> { String user = requestHeader.principal() .map(Principal::getName).orElse("No one"); String response = user + " wants to say hello to " + name; ResponseHeader responseHeader = ResponseHeader.OK .withHeader("Server", "Hello service"); return completedFuture(Pair.create(responseHeader, response)); }; }
Publishing messages to a broker, such as Apache Kafka, decouples communication even further. Lagom’s Message Broker API provides at-least-once semantics and uses Kafka. If a new instance starts publishing information, its messages are added to events previously emitted. If a new instance subscribes to a topic, they will receive all events, past, present, and future. Topics are strongly typed; hence both the subscriber and producer can know in advance what the expected data flowing through will be.
To publish data to a topic a service needs to declare the topic in its service descriptor.
import com.lightbend.lagom.javadsl.api.*; import com.lightbend.lagom.javadsl.api.broker.Topic; import static com.lightbend.lagom.javadsl.api.Service.*; public interface HelloService extends Service { String GREETINGS_TOPIC = "greetings"; @Override default Descriptor descriptor() { return named("helloservice").withCalls( pathCall("/api/hello/:id", this::hello), pathCall("/api/hello/:id", this::useGreeting) ) // here we declare the topic(s) this service will publish to .publishing( topic(GREETINGS_TOPIC, this::greetingsTopic) ) .withAutoAcl(true); } // The topic handle Topic<GreetingMessage> greetingsTopic(); ServiceCall<NotUsed, String> hello(String id); ServiceCall<GreetingMessage, Done> useGreeting(String id); }
The syntax for declaring a topic is like the one used already to define services’ endpoints. The Descriptor.publishing method accepts a sequence of topic calls; each topic call can be defined via the Service.topic static method. The latter takes a topic name, and a reference to a method that returns a Topic instance. Data flowing through a topic is serialized to JSON by default. It is possible to use a different serialization format by passing a different message serializer for each topic defined in a service descriptor.
The primary source of messages that Lagom is designed to produce is persistent entity events. Rather than publishing events in an ad-hoc fashion in response to things that happen, it is better to take the stream of events from your persistent entities and adapt that to a stream of messages sent to the message broker. This way, you can ensure that events are processed at least once by both publishers and consumers, which allows you to guarantee a very strong level of consistency throughout your system.
Lagom’s TopicProducer helper provides two methods for publishing a persistent entity’s event stream, singleStreamWithOffset for use with non-sharded read-side event streams, and taggedStreamWithOffset for use with sharded read-side event streams. Both methods take a callback which takes the last offset that the topic producer published, and allows resumption of the event stream from that offset via the PersistentEntityRegistry.eventStream method for obtaining a read-side stream.
Here’s an example of publishing a single, non-sharded event stream:
public Topic<GreetingMessage> greetingsTopic() { return TopicProducer.singleStreamWithOffset(offset -> { return persistentEntityRegistry .eventStream(HelloEventTag.INSTANCE, offset) .map(this::convertEvent); }); }
To subscribe to a topic, a service just needs to call Topic.subscribe() on the topic of interest. For instance, if a service wants to collect all greeting messages published by the earlier HelloService all you should do is to @Inject the HelloService and subscribe to the greetings topic.
helloService.greetingsTopic() .subscribe() // <-- you get back a Subscriber instance .atLeastOnce(Flow.fromFunction((GreetingMessage message) -> { return doSomethingWithTheMessage(message); }));
When calling Topic.subscribe(), you will get back a Subscriber instance. In the above code snippet, we have subscribed to the greetings topic using at-least-once delivery semantics. That means each message published to the greetings topic is received at least once. The subscriber also offers an atMostOnceSource that gives you at-most-once delivery semantics. If in doubt, default to using at-least-once delivery semantics.
Finally, subscribers are grouped together via Subscriber.withGroupId. A subscriber group allows many nodes in your cluster to consume a message stream while ensuring that each message is only handled once by each node in your cluster. Without subscriber groups, all your nodes for a service would get every message in the stream, leading to their processing being duplicated. By default, Lagom will use a group id that has the same name as the service consuming the topic. |
There’s reportedly a joke going around among Iowa Republicans that Marco Rubio must be running for mayor of Ankeny, the Des Moines suburb where his sole Iowa office is located. Defying Iowa’s tradition of retail politics, Rubio also rarely holds campaign events outside of that area and is choosing to invest in television ads over staffers and offices in the state. Rubio is making a deliberate gamble that Iowans will brave the cold on his behalf this Feb. 1 simply because they saw his advertisements or debate performances on television, not because they have seen him in person or heard from his campaign.
The Rubio campaign particularly disdains field offices, the storefronts of retail politics: brick-and-mortar locations where volunteers assemble, local mailings are coordinated and paid staffers work late nights. Deputy campaign manager Rich Beeson has argued that staff can “set up in a Starbucks with wireless and get just as much done.” The tasks that staff and volunteers traditionally perform in these offices — dividing turf for volunteer canvassing, calling prospective voters and distributing information about the candidate — can now be accomplished using online tools without the cost and hassle of setting up a local presence.
Is Rubio right to bet against field offices? Are physical offices relics of a bygone age of retail politics, and is Rubio simply smart to realize it?
According to political science research, Rubio avoids the establishment of a ground game at his peril. Field offices work because they provide a location for the coordination and training that make voter contact valuable. Campaigns that can contact supporters personally to encourage them to vote should make every effort to do so. Knocking on doors can increase turnout by nearly 10 percent, and effective phone calls can encourage an additional 4 percent of voters to head to the polls. Without a field office in an area, candidates will find it much more difficult to translate these tactics into victory.
To be fair, neither canvassing nor phone calls technically require a field office. If a campaign’s main goal is merely to contact as many voters as possible, staff members will often spare themselves the time, effort and cost of training local volunteers by hiring professional callers and recruiting canvassers from out of state. But when campaigns take this shortcut, they often pay the price.
For example, professional callers are paid per call and often tend to read through prompts quickly, with no incentive to start a conversation. These impersonal phone conversations have no demonstrated effect on turnout. If a campaign farms out its calling operation without training the call center workers — admittedly a costly and time-consuming exercise — they are throwing their money away. When well-trained local volunteers make phone calls, they are more likely to connect with voters through a casual discussion. It is more cost-effective to train volunteers, and it is much simpler to conduct phone bank trainings in a field office than in a Starbucks.
When it comes to door knocking, not every visit is equally effective, as the 2004 Howard Dean campaign found out. Dean’s campaign brought in 3,500 out-of-state volunteers for the caucuses instead of building a team of Iowans to talk to Iowans. The kind of people who volunteer for campaigns, especially those who are willing to drive across state lines to canvass, tend to hold extreme views on the issues. They need coaching from campaign staffers if they are to stay on message. Wearing orange caps that read “The Perfect Storm,” Dean’s untrained and untested volunteers were unable to deliver Iowa. The research on this point is clear: If a campaign wants to mobilize voters in a particular area, local volunteers are more effective, and field offices are the best places to train them.
Over the past few presidential elections, field offices have clearly generated higher local turnout. Obama opened 786 field offices in 449 counties in 2012, and each office delivered him approximately an additional 0.3 percent of vote share — or roughly the equivalent of airing 1,000 additional campaign ads. In 2008’s battleground states, Obama earned about 200,000 votes — about 7 percent of his margin of victory in those states — from his network of field offices. These offices accounted for 50 percent of Obama’s margin of victory in Indiana, and they likely made the difference in his win in North Carolina.
These effects seem small, but they make a difference where it matters most. Rick Santorum won the 2012 Iowa caucuses by 0.03 percentage points, or 34 votes out of 121,501. Field offices can be expensive — the estimated cost per vote earned by having a field office is $49.40 — but the earned media and momentum benefits from a victory in Iowa are huge.
Assuming a per-ad cost equal to the average rate paid by the Obama campaign in October 2012, it cost $672,446 to earn the same increase in vote share using ads as by opening a new field office — which costs only about $21,000 to operate throughout an election season. In spite of this evidence, Rubio and his super PAC allies have made a $10.6 million bet on TV ads, while Ted Cruz and Donald Trump have spent less than a million combined on the airwaves.
Campaigns that choose to leave effective field tactics on the table are making a mistake. Field offices provide the training and coordination that make the most effective voter mobilization techniques work, and they cannot easily be replaced by the Wi-Fi in a coffee shop. If Rubio’s campaign comes to regret these choices, at least they’ll always have Ankeny.
Read more: The Fifth Republican Debate Ended In A Nine-Way Draw |
One of the highest-profile members of the British National party has been banned from sitting on his local council for a month and censured by the Greater London authority after giving false details about murders on a video blog.
Richard Barnbrook, who holds a seat on Barking and Dagenham council and is the BNP's only London assembly member, brought his position, the GLA and his council into disrepute, a disciplinary hearing found yesterday.
Barnbrook was suspended from the council for a month and must apologise, but the GLA stopped short of a ban, instead warning him about his behaviour and demanding a written apology.
The complaint against Barnbrook was first lodged last September after he claimed in an interview, posted on YouTube and his own website, that a girl had been murdered in the borough within the past three weeks.
"We don't know who's done it. Her girlfriend was attacked inside an educational institute," Barnbrook said in the prerecorded interview, in which he sought to highlight failings in tackling knife crime.
He also said that, two weeks previously, "there was another attack by knives on the streets of Barking and Dagenham where two people were murdered".
The Metropolitan police confirmed that there had been no murders or incidents resulting in critical injuries requiring intensive care in the period cited by Barnbrook, and said murders in the area were actually decreasing.
Valerie Rush, a Barking and Dagenham Labour cabinet member, accused Barnbrook of "openly and outrageously" lying to "whip up fears in the London community".
"I firmly believe that he outrageously and knowingly lied on the video," she told the hearing.
"I believe that he did that with the firm intention of whipping up fear on the streets of Barking and Dagenham and across London.
"We went, as a capital city, through about a year to 18 months of horrendous stories of young people losing their lives on the streets of London through knives, and I think councillor Barnbrook was trying, through his video, to whip up even more fear in the community."
After the hearing, Barnbrook described the process as a waste of taxpayers' money.
He said he would appeal against the findings, adding: "In that room there are quite a few academic, brilliant brains, I'm sure, but I think it was a total waste of taxpayers' money and resources to have this kangaroo court set up against me."
He said he had made "unintentional inaccuracies" because he was dyslexic and was confused by loud background noise as the film was made.
The first murder took place in another area, he said, and the other two "killings" were attempted murders.
Barnbrook apologised for using incorrect information and said he would continue to highlight the issue of knife crime. |
Misinformation in Las Vegas
Cyrus Clarke Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 12, 2017
Welcome to The SIFT, a weekly analysis of media coverage by the team at Media Sifter. Each edition provides a wide range of perspectives on a particular story, exposing sub-topics, undercurrents and bias.
The shootings in Las Vegas last week prompted a huge amount of analysis, competing narratives, as well as wider reflections on ongoing issues in the United States. In this week’s edition, we SIFT through some of the dominant narratives that emerged during a traumatic week in Las Vegas.
False Narratives
As news broke of the attack, theories quickly spread online about what was really going on. This became a race between the official account and the spread of alternative narratives.
InfoWars used footage from the attack to support their claims
The pixelated, shaky video footage captured by smartphones during the shooting was played across a wide variety of media channels. Some such as InfoWars used the footage to spread an array of narratives corroborated by eyewitnesses as well as mystery sources such as “High level CIA individuals” who (perhaps conveniently) cannot be named. These theories reportedly created on sites like 4chan, proved to be highly popular, spreading like wildfire across the internet in the immediate aftermath.
4chan was one of the early breeding grounds for theory production
The vacuum of information about the perpetrator, his motives and affiliations, created the opportunity for these theories to gain traction. Often they were supported by evidence and eyewitness reports. In Sign Of The Times we are given the case for the multiple shooter theory through an interview with Rocky Palermo, a victim of the attack;
“Palermo strongly believes there were between 3–5 active shooters during the attack because as he ran away from the initial gunfire, he describes bullets not only raining down, but flying horizontally at the crowd”.
SOTT go on to provide evidence for their source’s reliability,
“Palermo — an avid hunter familiar with guns and ballistics”
Now, accustomed to this battle for information, on the other side of the equation, some media channels were seemingly well prepared to analyse and disprove emerging stories. Buzzfeed created an ongoing update of hoaxes “as they came in” (currently the count is at 20).
Vine stars temporarily became victims
Other attempts to systematically disprove the theories were common. Vice used click-bait to pull in readers for their entertaining rather than informative article. In contrast Snopes provided a robust round up, responding to the numerous theories and claims, with evidence to support their arguments.
Rebuking some of the more outlandish theories
Systematic analysis however was rare. Rather than engaging in tit for tat, mainstream media and general interest news concentrated on a wide ranging discussion of the topic. Vox featured an article about misinformation, explaining that while these stories on their own mean little, they feed into “an ongoing war” online between proponents of these narratives and democratic society which includes the “mainstream media”.
With video the key media following the shooting, video ranking algorithms came under scrutiny as they briefly helped the spread of misinformation. The Verge reported on the boosting of the video “Proof Las Vegas Shooting Was a FALSE FLAG attack — Shooter on 4th Floor,” which received 1.1 million views before being pulled by YouTube, who later brought forward changes to their ranking algorithm. Facebook and Google also had issues with hoaxes, illustrating the growing challenge the internet establishment faces to verify claims and provide fact-based information.
Is the Guardian using bots for SEO optimisation?
Given that false narratives are a hot-topic, articles were carefully SEO optimised to pull in clicks. Specific titles were used in order to appear in search rankings for “Fake News” (a term we do not advocate at Media Sifter), which were then subtly altered when landing on the site, to include more credible terms.
The SIFT’s Take:
While this story did suffer from a huge amount of poor or simply misleading information, the reflex of the mainstream media to dismiss alternative media reporting as ‘fake news’ plays into the hands of the smaller players. They typically create content for those who severely distrust the traditional media. This audience are looking for ideas and ideals that fit their worldview.
The mainstream media are also quick to blame the public themselves for this state of affairs, claiming “never have people been so eager to spread and believe false information.” While we agree that holding on to opinions can make theories and “alternative facts” convenient, placing the blame on a particular audience seems to us as ill-advised. Rather than accusatory buck-passing, we would like to see media channels attempt to create tools for their communities to help them form evidence backed opinions.
Gun Control
After another shooting, a familiar debate around the Second Amendment sprung up. Party lines were immediately drawn and seemed to dominate opinion.
On the right, the media sought to undermine the Democrat response. Fox for example commented on the predictability of the Democrat line rather than focus on the message;
“Dems return to usual script on gun control after Las Vegas massacre”.
Democrat voices featured in articles were unanimously for increased gun control. The Hill, which featured a mix of views, foregrounded the comments of Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her quote about a “gun-happy country”,
“ ..I think there are many of us in growing numbers that don’t want a gun-happy country,”
The Republicans on the other hand were characterised again and again by their belief that guns are not the problem, a view summed up in this quote from an NBC transcript of Meet The Press with Republican Congressman Steve Scalise;
“The problem is not that there are too many guns. It’s that there are people that will go out and break the law, whether it’s a gun or some other weapon or a bomb.”
Bump Stocks are nothing to do with share prices, they are designed to increase a weapon’s fire rate
With nothing new really coming from either side, Bump Stocks emerged as a new term for us all to become familiar with. Despite the familiar disagreement over gun control, one thing nearly everyone agreed on was a review of Bump Stocks, including potentially the NRA.
It did appear that pro-gun groups were on the back-foot after this incident. While they maintained a tough line, with Executive Director Chris Cox claiming that “Gun Control Will Not Stop Attacks After Las Vegas” a quote and story covered by NBC and many more mainstream media channels in the US, there were few strong defences. Writers and channels that might otherwise stand up for the right to bear arms took the opportunity to focus their (and the reader’s) attention on theories and alternative narratives.
Opinion pieces calling for increased regulation on the other hand were abundant and fiery. Jeremy Scahill writing for the Intercept, produced one of the more visceral attacks on gun control under the banner “A Sick Country Filled With Guns”, playing on the quote from Senator Feinstein. While sensationalist, the article is filled with evidence to support the writer’s demands. Scahill manages to coherently address the NRA, interpretations of the Second Amendment as well as critique the media’s differential coverage and treatment of perpetrators based on ethnicity and religion;
“When it’s a Muslim shooter, it’s perfectly acceptable to talk about what the U.S. response should be: watchlisting, banning people from entering the country, surveillance of mosques. But when white people do the killing, don’t talk about guns.”
The SIFT’s Take:
The debate over gun control seemed stilted, particularly the coverage around it. It is in our opinion an incredibly important conversation to have in order to keep learning and advocating for improved measures, yet reporting seemed routine.
Maybe story fatigue set in. Or repetition. Both are possible explanations, but perhaps the excitement that alternative theories incite in people is part of the story. Journalists across the field seemed to throw their best into articles decrying false narratives, but that energy was missing, with a few noted examples, when it came to discuss gun control.
The Perpetrator
The shooter who killed 58 people and injured more than 500 was confirmed as Stephen Paddock. Since he took his own life and left little to provide information about his motives, his life and persona became the focus of reports across the media.
This article in the BBC exemplifies the typical ‘regular guy, gone wrong’ narrative seen in most accounts; a quiet accountant who some people found weird with a troubled past but no criminal record. These adjectives and descriptions abounded almost as much as the image of an unkempt Paddock in a white t-shirt smiling to camera, seemingly harmless and friendly in a slightly zany sort of way.
The other image circulated (beyond the false image of a sex offender) shows an older Paddock with his eyes closed. While the traditional media did point to a troubled past and went out of their way to report on Paddock’s father’s notoriety, given the scale of the crime, the picture painted was reasonably positive; a successful, wealthy man who had little reason to carry out such an attack.
It’s no surprise then that a lot of words were dedicated to explaining why he did this. The Daily Mail is a curious example, using obvious clickbait linking Stephen Paddock to prostitutes and “violent sex” while another article in the same publication tells us that Paddock “cared about everybody and tried to make people happy”. The Mail offers no link between the articles, two competing narratives on the same subtopic existing in silos on the same channel.
The Huffington Post were one of a few outlets we found that decried the type of “humanised Paddock” that the BBC and others describe. David Canter writing for Al-Jazeera was more preoccupied with the line between a shooting and a terrorist event:
“If he (Paddock) was not part of a network, but a “lone wolf”, isolated from the pack attacking the vulnerable where he can, does this still make him a terrorist?”
The article asserts that while we should not call Paddock a terrorist, very few attacks truly warrant that label, including those that are carried out by self-stylised jihadists. This idea is supported by “reserach” conducted by Canter. To add to his credibility the article ends with a brief, yet hyperbole filled resumé for “one of the UK’s most eminent applied social psychologists”.
One of the more original takes we found was the ‘White Male’ problem highlighted in Vox and presented as scientific analysis by Tristan Bridges and Tara Leigh Tober for Quartz. They initially state that “The truth cannot be boiled down to any single issue” before using a combination of statistics and social theory to argue that masculinity threat is to blame for this type of violence:
“Mass shootings need to be seen, in part, as enactments of masculinity.”
The SIFT’s Take:
In cases such as this it is vital to pay attention to the way in which the media portray those at fault. There does seem to be evidence that certain groups are treated differently than others in the press. As highlighted by Scahill the characterisation of the white ‘lone wolf’, brown ‘terrorist’ and black ‘thug’ has become almost cliché.
Much like the theories seeking to spread misinformation, claims about Paddock reflect an ongoing obsession in the media to concentrate on a killer’s motives. This might be considered simple human nature, to understand why something happened, and there is clearly value in improving our collective knowledge on such matters. However, wild, unfocused speculation based on hearsay and uncorroborated evidence does little to educate readers or help them form fact-based opinions.
The Victims
In an event like this the balance of focus between victim(s) and attacker(s) is worth paying attention to. In this case tragically 58 people were killed, each with their own life and story.
While the perpetrator received individual features, a host of angles and subplots, the media tended to try to focus on the victims as a group. A single story. The Guardian’s feature typifies this approach — a large image showing 21 smiling faces. We are told that victims included a Nurse, local government workers and student. Unlike the perpetrator we do not hear about any negative aspects from their history.
Tragedies involving large numbers of people, especially in the West, now seem to be followed by specially designed tribute pages telling the personal stories of the victims. This relatively new and carefully curated format uses non-traditional layouts and divergent colour schemes.
CNN’s tribute page to the victims of the shooting
The Washington Post had a special feature entitled The lives lost in Las Vegas featuring photos of many of the deceased, as well as the default avatar from Facebook for those they were unable to provide a photo for. CNN put together this special page allowing people to pay tribute to the victims and click through to learn more about the individual. In many cases we hear of the victim’s bravery during the event and very specific details about their lives such as being part of the “school-parents’ association.”
The SIFT’s Take:
In the sources analysed, the allocation of attention was skewed towards the perpetrator rather than the victims despite the huge disparity in numbers. This imbalance strikes us as problematic yet uncomfortably natural in the modern media landscape.
These incidents expose how the media game has become numbers oriented — the share of voice allocated based on clicks and shares. It’s worth reflecting on the fact that a large share of voice was given to the messages of celebrities totally unconnected with the events in Las Vegas, as well as the frankly bizarre sub-plot involving an Instagram star and a Medal of Honor recipient. These stories are optimised for algorithms, tagged for rankings and designed to capture your attention. We leave you to make up your own mind. |
The Veterans Affairs Hospital in Tomah is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs over claims that patients were overprescribed painkillers. Credit: Darren Hauck/ Center for Investigative Reporting
A top doctor at the Tomah Veterans Affairs Medical Center who has been dubbed the "Candy Man" is threatening to sue a whistleblower for comments about the doctor and his troubled facility.
David Houlihan — a psychiatrist who is chief of staff at the Tomah facility — was given that nickname by some veterans for his supposedly easy and widespread distribution of painkillers.
The Tomah facility is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. State regulators are also investigating complaints against Houlihan and two others at the medical center.
In a Jan. 30 letter, Houlihan's attorney, Frank Doherty, demanded that one of the whistleblowers retract at least seven of his public statements because they are "false and defamatory."
The whistleblower, Ryan Honl, has accused Houlihan of having a hand in the death of a 35-year-old Marine veteran at the Tomah facility in August as a result of "mixed drug toxicity."
"I am told that you have invited me to sue you on your Facebook page," Doherty wrote Honl. "You will likely get your wish."
Reached last week, Honl — a Gulf War veteran and former Tomah employee — said he stands by his statements.
As for the potential lawsuit, Honl said, good luck with that.
"I have no money for him to take, so he can work up as many billable hours as he'd like," said Honl, who said he earns $8 an hour as a donations assistant at a Goodwill store. "If he wants to sue a minimum-wage whistleblower, he can have at it."
An inspection report from the Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General found last year that officials at the Tomah medical center were prescribing high amounts of opiate pain pills to patients.
Veterans who relied on the facility for care had begun calling it "Candy Land."
For months, Honl had tried to get three Wisconsin lawmakers — U.S. Sens. Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson and U.S. Rep. Ron Kind — to intervene.
Baldwin was even sitting on the inspection report since August but didn't act until the Center for Investigative Reportingpublished a story last month detailing some of the problems at the Tomah facility and disclosing the death of the Marine veteran, Jason Simcakoski.
Baldwin has since fired a top state staffer — the details of which remain secret — and visited Simcakoski's parents.
U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert McDonalddispatched a team of investigators to the Tomah facility late last month to look into allegations of rampant painkiller prescriptions, drug overdoses and abuse of authority by Houlihan.
In a separate probe, officials at the state Department of Safety and Professional Services confirmed that they are investigating Houlihan and a nurse and a pharmacist who worked with him at Tomah. The state has the authority to strip the trio of their state licenses and refer their cases to local prosecutors.
Doherty, the attorney for Houlihan, said the state must investigate any complaint it receives. State officials said they have received two complaints against Houlihan, one anonymous and the other initiated by the agency itself.
"Dr. Houlihan will fully cooperate with the investigation and will be cleared of any alleged wrongdoing, just as the VA cleared Dr. Houlihan of 32 mostly anonymous allegations after a two-year comprehensive investigation," Doherty said via email.
In his letter to the whistleblower, Doherty attacked Honl's comments regarding the Marine veteran's death.
Doherty said his client was not Simcakoski's physician.
At most, Doherty said, Houlihan was consulted about putting the patient on Suboxone, which is used to treat those with opiate addictions. The lawyer said Simcakoski's autopsy does not say this prescription — his 15th medication — was the cause of his death.
In his email, Doherty took personal shots at Honl, calling him "a disabled veteran discharged from the service due to mental health issues." The attorney also said his personal investigation led him to believe the local employee union is behind the attacks on his client.
"Unfortunately for Mr. Honl, he appears to be left holding the bag for others and is unwittingly working against his stated interest in improving health care for veterans," Doherty said in his email.
Honl responded by releasing a report showing that several individuals at the Tomah facility have accessed his medical records since he started raising his concerns in October.
An official with the Department of Veterans Affairs said the staffers looked through Honl's file for "treatment, payment or other health care operation purpose."
But Honl — a U.S. Military Academy graduate — said this makes no sense because he has never received treatment or medications from Tomah.
"It's amazing but not surprising that they are discrediting me due to mental health issues and that I'm being used by the union," Honl said. "So I'm just a mentally ill pawn? What a joke."
Lin Ellinghuysen, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 0007 for the Tomah VA facility, said she was baffled by Doherty's remarks.
First, Ellinghuysen said, the attorney didn't contact the union as part of his probe. She said Doherty also hasn't indicated what evidence he has against her local or even shown that the labor group has attacked Houlihan.
As for working with Honl, Ellinghuysen pointed out that the union doesn't represent him because he no longer works for the Tomah facility. She said she agrees with some of his positions but that he is focused on a much broader agenda than her organization.
"Mr. Honl is on his own as an advocate," she said.
Contact Daniel Bice at (414) 224-2135 or dbice@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanielBice or on Facebook at fb.me/daniel.bice. |
Discussions in the office about RESTful APIs flare up periodically around the same set of questions. Should we use HTTP status code 200 or 404 when an item isn’t found? How should we batch a collection of similar calls together? How do we version our APIs? A major reason why these discussions never really ends (aside from us being passionate and hard-headed) is that some of the mostly used RESTful APIs themselves deviate from one another in how they implement their APIs.
To help further the discussion, I researched some of the most popular APIs to determine how they implemented their RESTful APIs. I haven’t seen this done before so I hope you find this as insightful as I did.
Criteria
HTTP Verb Usage
Which HTTP verbs does the API implement? The common ones are [GET], [POST], [PUT], and sometimes [DELETE]. [PATCH] and [HEAD] isn’t used often so I call them out when an API implements them.
I also call out when an API is doing RPC calls (I’m looking at you Dropbox).
Resource Name
Do they use the plural form (cats) or singular form (cat) for their resource name?
Versioning
How do they version their APIs?
There are a few standard ways to pass version information
URL
Query string
Accept header
Batching
Does the API support batching of multiple HTTP requests?
Batching of multiple HTTP requests can be done using OData Batch Request. You can read more about it at oasis.
Response Type
Does the API return standard HTTP status code? How do they send additional response information?
Result
I spent some time going through the following companies API documentation. Please leave feedback if you find anything wrong or outdated.
Company HTTP Verb Usage Resource Name Versioning Batching Response Type Google (Drive) Common, No [PUT] but [PATCH] Plural URL OData Batch HTTP status codes Facebook Common Plural URL OData Batch Return OK, examine body Twitter [GET] [POST] Plural URL No batch request HTTP status codes Dropbox RPC [POST] NA URL NA HTTP status codes Yahoo Common, [HEAD] [OPTION] Singular/ Plural URL No batch request HTTP status codes Github Common, [HEAD] [PATCH] Plural Accept header No batch request HTTP status codes Venmo Common Plural URL No batch request HTTP status codes Spotify Common Plural URL No batch request HTTP status codes Amazon S3 Common, [HEAD] [OPTION] NA (uses host header) Query string No batch request HTTP status codes
Observations
The vast majority uses resource names and HTTP verbs. Dropbox uses RPC with HTTP endpoints.
The vast majority uses plural form of resource names.
The vast majority uses URL versioning.
Google and Facebook support OData Batch Request.
Everyone support getting collections of resources by Plural URL (/api/cats/).
The vast majority uses HTTP status codes as return values. In the body, they have custom codes and messages for errors.
Amazon S3 has an interesting way of implementing their RESTful API.
Takeaways
My general philosophy is to follow industry standards (Principle of Least Astonishment) and only deviate when necessary. The general observations above seem sound and I don’t see any reason to change them when I’m creating my own set of APIs.
Think in terms of nouns and resources. Design around them. Don’t think in terms of RPC.
Use the plural forms of nouns
Respect the HTTP verbs semantic
Version through the URL
Use HTTP status codes and return more detail status code and messages in the body
Implement OData Batch. In ASP.NET Web API, it’ll only take a few lines of codes to implement it.
For more information on how to design RESTful APIs, I recommend the following blogs.
References
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The Oscar-winning actor made the controversial statement on Sunday after being accused of making a sexual advance on a 14-year-old Anthony Rapp.
Kevin Spacey's world was turned upside down Sunday after Star Trek: Discovery's Anthony Rapp accused the double Oscar winner of making a sexual advance on him when he was 14, as reported by Buzzfeed News.
Spacey, 58, responded to the allegation in a statement on his personal Twitter account. In the statement, Spacey apologized to Rapp and wrote that he had no recollection of the incident, but described it as "what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior."
Spacey used the rest of the statement to come out as gay, writing that he's had romantic relationships with both men and women, and that he's now choosing "to live as a gay man."
Twitter reacted with fury at the notion that Spacey would try to deflect an allegation of sexual misconduct with news about his sexuality.
Kevin Spacey has just invented something that has never existed before: a bad time to come out. — billy eichner (@billyeichner) October 30, 2017
Bye bye, Spacey goodbye, it’s your turn to cry, that’s why we’ve gotta say goodbye. #ROSEARMY<...; rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 30, 2017
Kevin Spacey's comment was wrong on so many levels. https://t.co/5pFhiqMK5W — Larry Wilmore (@larrywilmore) October 30, 2017
This is not about you being gay, Mr Spacey, it's about you being an alleged paedophile. https://t.co/L92PwDsAB0 — Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) October 30, 2017
I keep rereading this statement and getting angrier. Coming out is a beautiful part of being gay. Attaching it to this vileness is so wrong. — realMarkHarris (@MarkHarrisNYC) October 30, 2017
This is changing the subject. Rapp's charge is pedophilia. https://t.co/FNSiSW27KB — Frank Rich (@frankrichny) October 30, 2017
Anthony Rapp: "Kevin Spacey tried to rape me."
Media: "Kevin how do you respond?"
Spacey: "uuh...uuhh... Hey everyone I'm gay!" pic.twitter.com/6LAEfsyRtF — Travon Free (@Travon) October 30, 2017
Kevin Spacey exploiting coming out as a gay man to try to distract from his assault on a 14-year-old is repugnant https://t.co/4yaYljlReX https://t.co/UUXOwZZaLf — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 30, 2017
Nope to Kevin Spacey's statement. Nope. There's no amount of drunk or closeted that excuses or explains away assaulting a 14-year-old child. — Dan Savage (@fakedansavage) October 30, 2017
"I'm sorry, Mr. Spacey, but your application to join the gay community at this time has been denied." — Dan Savage (@fakedansavage) October 30, 2017
How dare you implicate us all in this — Richard Lawson (@rilaws) October 30, 2017
It took 58 years for Kevin Spacey to cash in his gay out of jail free card. — Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) October 30, 2017
So I guess Kevin Spacey will be on Ellen this week to talk about how hard it is to come out as gay. — Joe Biggs (@Rambobiggs) October 30, 2017
In other news, Kevin Spacey didn't deny sexually assaulting Anthony Rapp when he was a 14-year-old boy. Also blamed drunkenness. Inexcusable — Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) October 30, 2017
"Sure, I may have tried to rape a 14-year-old boy when I was 26, but I'm gay!" is a pretty horrible defense. #Spacey — Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) October 30, 2017
Kevin Spacey: My sexuality is none of your biz.
Anthony Rapp: Kevin Spacey assaulted me when I was 14.
Kevin Spacey: I’m a proud gay man! — Lara (@LarzMarie) October 30, 2017
The fact that major news media would let Kevin Spacey conflate homosexuality & pedophilia proves how disingenuous and dishonest they all are — Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) October 30, 2017
I couldn't give two stuffs that Kevin Spacey is gay. Allegations he sexually harassed a child is what we SHOULD be talking about. — Sarah Harris (@SarahHarris) October 30, 2017
part of the horror of spacey’s cynical ploy to use his coming out to deflect abuse allegations is how well it is working — Julia Carrie Wong (@juliacarriew) October 30, 2017
No no no no no! You do not get to “choose” to hide under the rainbow! Kick rocks! https://t.co/xJDGAxDjxz — Official Wanda Sykes (@iamwandasykes) October 30, 2017
Hey @KevinSpacey you can choose to act like a pervert; you can't "choose" to be gay. — Clay Aiken (@clayaiken) October 30, 2017
Bye bye, Spacey goodbye, it’s your turn to cry, that’s why we’ve gotta say goodbye. #ROSEARMY — rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 30, 2017
Dear fellow media:
Keep focus on #AnthonyRapp BE THE VICTIM'S VOICE. Help us level the playing field. — rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 30, 2017
Gay = Gay Predator = Predator — rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 30, 2017
Just wanna be really fucking clear that being gay has nothing to do w/ going after underage folks — Cameron Esposito (@cameronesposito) October 30, 2017
The Kevin Spacey statement is disturbing on so many levels. None more than the fact that he doesn’t deny trying to seduce A 14-YEAR-OLD BOY! — andy lassner (@andylassner) October 30, 2017
Kevin Spacey, coming out as gay is not a BOGO with sexual assault. No savings here honey, you're a fucking creep. — Bryan Safi (@bryansafi) October 30, 2017
Kevin Spacey is trying to use coming out as a gay man to distract us from focusing on his predatory behavior toward a 14 year old boy. — Touré (@Toure) October 30, 2017 |
To begin with, according to official Mormon teaching, Jesus Christ is the first spirit child conceived and begotten by Heavenly Father and one of Heavenly Father’s many wives (commonly referred to as “Heavenly Mother”). Just as Heavenly Father before him progressed to godhood, so Jesus progressed through obedience to the status of a god (prior to his incarnation on earth). In the words of the late Mormon Apostle and General Authority Bruce McConkie, Jesus Christ through obedience and devotion “attained that pinnacle of intelligence which ranked him as a God.” As such, according to LDS authorities, Jesus is not to be worshiped or prayed to as one would worship or pray to Heavenly Father.
Furthermore, Mormons teach that Heavenly Father subsequently had other spirit children. We ourselves are thought to be spirit children of Father God and Mother God. As such, Mormons refer to Jesus as our “Elder brother.” As the official LDS teacher’s manual Gospel Principles explains, “We needed a Savior to pay for our sins and teach us how to return to our Heavenly Father. Our Father said, ‘Whom shall I send?’ (Abraham 3:27). Two of our brothers offered to help. Our oldest brother, Jesus Christ, who was then called Jehovah, said, ‘Here am I, send me’” (emphasis added).
Finally, it stands to reason that if Jesus is the first spirit child conceived and begotten by Heavenly Father; and if Heavenly Father and Mother subsequently conceived other spirit children including Satan; then Jesus and Satan logically are spirit brothers. While LDS spokespersons sometimes obfuscate this fundamental Mormon teaching, apostles of the Mormon Church and current official LDS publications clearly affirm it. As explained by the Mormon publication Ensign, “On first hearing, the doctrine that Lucifer and our Lord, Jesus Christ, are brothers may seem surprising to some— especially to those unacquainted with latter-day revelations. But both the scriptures and the prophets affirm that Jesus Christ and Lucifer are indeed offspring of our Heavenly Father and, therefore, spirit brothers.”
In sharp contrast to Mormon Christology, the biblical witness is clear and convincing: Jesus Christ is the eternal Creator God (John 1; Colossians 1; Hebrews 1; Revelation 1). Paul explicitly teaches that Jesus is the creator of all, including the angelic realm to which Satan belongs (Colossians 1:15–16; cf. John 1:3). Jesus is thus Satan’s creator, not his spirit brother.
For further study, see “Is Mormonism Christian?” p. 253; and “Is the Book of Mormon credible?” p. 257; and Hank Hanegraaff, The Mormon Mirage: Seeing Through the Illusion of Mainstream Mormonism (Charlotte: Christian Research Institute, 2008).
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.”
Colossians 1:15–16 |
China warned other countries Wednesday against threatening its interests in the South China Sea while at the same time extending an olive branch to the new Philippine government, after an international tribunal handed Manila a victory by saying Beijing had no legal basis for its expansive claims there.
Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin said Beijing could declare an air defence identification zone over the waters if it felt threatened, a move that would sharply escalate tensions.
The Philippines, under a UN treaty governing the seas, sought arbitration from an international tribunal on several issues related to its long-running territorial disputes with China.
The tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, rejected China's claims in a landmark ruling that also found the country had aggravated the seething regional dispute and violated the Philippines' maritime rights by building up artificial islands that destroyed coral reefs and by disrupting fishing and oil exploration.
'Emergency military measures' possible
While introducing a policy paper in response to the ruling, Liu said the islands in the South China Sea were China's "inherent territory" and blamed the Philippines for stirring up trouble.
"If our security is being threatened, of course we have the right to demarcate a zone. This would depend on our overall assessment," Liu said in a briefing. "We hope that other countries will not take this opportunity to threaten China and work with China to protect the peace and stability of the South China Sea, and not let it become the origin of a war."
Protesters display placards while marching in Manila, Philippines, as they chant anti-China slogans during a rally by different activist groups over the South China Sea disputes. (Romeo Ranoco/Reuters)
In 2013, China set up an air defence identification zone over disputed islands in the East China Sea, requiring all aircraft entering the area to notify Chinese authorities or be subjected to "emergency military measures" if they disobey orders from Beijing. The U.S. and others refuse to recognize the zone.
While blaming the previous Philippine government for complicating the dispute by seeking arbitration, Liu also sought to strike a conciliatory note with the Southeast Asian nation's new leadership. Liu said China remains committed to negotiations with the Philippines and noting new Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's positive remarks on the issue.
China extends olive branch, with a catch
"After the storm of this arbitration has passed, and the sky has cleared, we hope this day [of negotiations] will come quickly, but whether it can come, we still have to wait," Liu said, adding that China believed that co-operation would also bring Filipinos "tangible benefits."
He said, however, that China hoped the new government would not use the arbitration results — which China has declared null and void — as a basis for negotiations. China believes co-operation with other South China Sea neighbours, whether in fishing or in exploiting oil and gas resources in the waters, could be achieved by negotiations, he said.
Duterte has not directly responded to China's overtures since the ruling was issued Tuesday. China has been on a charm offensive and Duterte is navigating a tightrope in which he wants to revive relations with Beijing while being seen as defending the major victory the country has won through arbitration.
Although the decision is seen as a major legal declaration regarding one of the world's most contested regions, its impact is uncertain given the tribunal has no power of enforcement.
U.S. calls ruling 'binding'
Six regional governments have overlapping claims in the South China Sea, waters that are rich in fishing stocks and potential energy resources and where an estimated $5 trillion in global trade passes each year.
The disputes have increased friction between China and the United States, which has ramped up its military presence in the region as China has expanded its navy's reach farther offshore.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest encouraged all parties to "acknowledge the final and binding nature of this tribunal."
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One as President Barack Obama was flying to Dallas, Earnest said the United States seeks a peaceful resolution to disputes and competing claims in the region, while preserving freedom of navigation and commerce.
Earnest also urged the parties not to use the ruling as an opportunity to engage in escalatory or provocative actions.
China says 'null and void'
The five-member panel from the Permanent Court of Arbitration unanimously concluded China had violated its obligations to refrain from aggravating the dispute while the settlement process was ongoing.
It also found that China had interfered with Philippine petroleum exploration at Reed Bank and tried to stop fishing by Philippine vessels.
China, which boycotted the entire proceedings, reiterated that it did not accept the panel's jurisdiction. China "solemnly declares that the award is null and void and has no binding force. China neither accepts nor recognizes it," the Foreign Ministry said.
Beijing says vast areas of the South China Sea have been Chinese territory since ancient times and demarcated its modern claims with the so-called nine-dash line, a map that was submitted under the UN treaty. The tribunal said that any historical resource rights China may have had were wiped out if they are incompatible with exclusive economic zones established under the UN treaty, which both countries have signed.
It also criticized China for building a large artificial island on Mischief Reef, saying it caused "permanent irreparable harm" to the coral reef ecosystem and permanently destroyed evidence of the natural conditions of the feature. |
If your guitar practice time is focused and effective, you'll get much more from the same amount of hours you put in
How to focus and get more out of your guitar practicing time
Do you sometimes feel that your guitar practice time involves learning a bunch of unrelated things without knowing the reason why you’re learning them?
That you have to learn all this so that finally, one day, years from now, it will magically tie up together and “you can play guitar”?
I know exactly how this feels because I’ve been caught in such a trap for years, until I realized, that every time I practice something, there should be a specific purpose as to why I’m spending time practicing it.
When you know what you’re going to achieve with the particular practicing item you are learning, and have at least an idea on how it fits in the whole picture, some great things will start happening:
1.Your level of motivation to practice will increase – because you’re seeing results from your guitar practice time.
2.You will get more out of each guitar practice session – because having a clear purpose keeps you focused and your mind is less likely to start drifting away.
3.You will start seeing the bigger picture and connecting the dots – since you know the reason why you’re doing what you’re doing
4. You will spend more time actually practicing guitar, rather than searching randomly on Google and Youtube for exercises – because you know exactly what you need and what you should look for.
I’ll show you how to focus your guitar practice time through an exercise I’m sure you’ve encountered before in some variation or another:
I’ve spent countless hours practicing exercises like this and I’m sure they’ve somewhat helped my musical progress. However, I would have gained way more had I practiced these exercise with intentions more specific than training my fingers or playing faster
The aim of this lesson is to show how you can get more from even such a simple exercise if you know what to look for, and have specific goals you want to achieve while practicing it.
What you will do is, practice that same exercise but this time, you will ask questions to yourself while you’re doing it.
Ask these questions one at a time, and in the following order:
1. Is my left hand in the correct position while I’m playing each note? (consult with your teacher, or do an online search about correct hand positions. Incorrect hand positions will lead to inefficient playing, habits that will be hard to correct, and can even lead to hand injury)
2. Repeat question 1, this time focusing on the right hand.
3. Are my right and left hand well synchronized together? – Now that you have made sure both hands are in the correct position by observing them individually, the next step is to see how well they can work together. Is one hand going faster than the other? Is one hand having a really hard time playing at the present speed while the other can go faster with much less effort?
If you do find you have a problem with synchronization, it is possible that one of your hands needs more training to “catch up” with the other, thus you may need to revisit question 1 or 2 before moving forward.
4. Am I practicing on time? Many beginner guitar students play this exercise like this: 1 2 3 4 – pause – 1 2 3 4 – pause – 1 2 3 4 – pause etc.
The reason for this is that playing notes while changing guitar strings is harder than playing notes on the same string. When it comes to the string change there is this little pause that makes the whole exercise completely out of time.
In the exercise we’re using, every note gets one beat. You have to be careful that all beats are equal, not have a few short notes followed by a longer note.
The solution for this is simple – lower the speed of the whole exercise to the speed where you’re able to make the string changes correctly. Don’t worry if you have to play the exercise very slow, speed will come as we’ll see in the next section.
5. When you have the correct hand positions, when your hands are working in complete harmony between each other, and when you can play the exercise completely on time with a metronome, only then you should ask the question: Can I play it faster? Can I increase my speed?
Playing fast should be the last thing a beginner guitar player should focus on. However, once you have the ability to play something correctly, you can have some fun seeing how fast you can take it, and measure your speed with a metronome.
Focused guitar practicing time – knowing what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and devoting all your concentration on the task at hand is the only secret to getting results fast.
“Practice, practice, practice” is an advice you will hear over and over again
And it’s true of course. Quantity of guitar practice matters, and how!
However, the quality of guitar practice time tends to be ignored. An hour noodling aimlessly on your guitar and an hour fully concentrating on a song, a technique or an exercise do not yield the same results.
Focus your guitar practicing
Practice regularly.
Give it some time,
And you will see the rewards.
You may consider giving a donation, by which you will be helping a songwriter achieve his dreams. Each contribution, no matter how small, will make a difference. |
Casino Poker for Beginners: Playing With a Friend? There’s One Rule You Must Know
October 05, 2015 Robert Woolley
Sharelines Collusion between friends at the poker table can take many forms, all of which disturb the integrity of the game.
The only agreement you should make when playing poker with friends is to agree to try to win each other’s money.
This week I’m dipping back into my “Casino Poker for Beginners” series to warn about a practice that is common among players new to poker, who engage in it innocently, not realizing that it is both unethical and a violation of one of the most important rules of the game. That practice is collusion.
A typical example is two friends heading to the casino to spend a few hours playing poker together. They’re worried that the cutthroat nature of the game — a game in which the whole point, after all, is to win the other players’ money — may cause hard feelings and damage their friendship if they really go at each other hard. So they make a deal to prevent this.
The deal may take any of several forms.
Maybe if one of them puts in a raise, the other has to drop out of the pot.
Maybe they’ll never bluff each other, so that a strong bet always indicates a strong hand.
Maybe they’ll never slow play each other when dealt a monster hand.
Maybe they’ll use a secret hand signal to indicate “I’ve got the goods this time, so you should fold and let me take these other people’s chips.”
Maybe if they end up as the only two in a hand, they’ll always just check every street rather than betting and raising each other.
For our purposes, all of these agreements, plus many other forms they might take, are equal — and equally wrong.
Poker is not a team sport. It is an intensely individualistic, dog-eat-dog game. In fact, poker doesn’t even work right if the players don’t approach it with that attitude. Over the last ten years of the “poker boom,” many organizations have tried to put together forms of poker that use teams, often for the purposes of making exciting television. None has been that successful. Introducing collusion, wherein a player tries to help or at least not hurt specific other players, tends to distort the essence of the game so much the result is often barely recognizable as poker.
I think it’s important to state this bluntly: Collusion in poker between two or more players, in all of its many forms, is always cheating, pure and simple. You should never engage in it, never agree to it, and actively warn others against it if they propose that you join them. Furthermore, if you suspect that collusion is occurring at your table — whether the culprits are friends or strangers to you — you should report it to the poker room management. Both your personal integrity and the integrity of the game require these things of you.
As Mike Caro once correctly pointed out in an article on the subject, “when you soft play friends at the table others get hurt in the crossfire.” In other words, trying to make things easier for a friend often amounts to making things unfairly difficult for others at the table.
“Aggressive opponents, who are playing honestly, especially suffer,” Caro continues. “That’s because they mistake what’s happening through secret alliances as tactical traits exhibited by the group of friends. This causes those honest players to make poor decisions for the wrong reasons on future hands.”
There is only one kind of agreement you should make with friends before sitting down at a poker table with them: You will all do everything in your ability (and within the rules, of course) to win all of each other’s money, just as you will do against all of the other players. However the cards and chips may fall, there will be no hard feelings about it, and you will leave the game just as much friends as when you sat down, regardless of who won or lost.
If you can’t make and stick to that kind of deal with your friends, then you cannot play poker with them — period. And that’s perfectly fine! I understand and appreciate that, for example, some married couples just can’t stand to play hard against each other, because each finds it too stressful to inflict pain and loss on his or her partner. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having that kind of relationship. It just means that you can’t play poker against each other.
If you’re playing cash games, you can decide simply to be at different tables — problem solved. In a tournament, however, you don’t get to control table assignments, which means that you can’t enter a tournament with any other person against whom you cannot agree to compete full-bore.
It has been said that there are no friends at a poker table. I understand the point of that aphorism, but I’m too literal-minded to approve of it. Of course you can have friends at the poker table — both ones that you came with and ones that you make while playing. In fact, friends make poker more fun.
The only requirement is that you not play compete less fully against them because they’re your friends.
Robert Woolley lives in Asheville, NC. He spent several years in Las Vegas and chronicled his life in poker on the “Poker Grump” blog.
Want to stay atop all the latest in the poker world? If so, make sure to get PokerNews updates on your social media outlets. Follow us on Twitter and find us on both Facebook and Google+! |
MI5 boss Andrew Parker: UK terror threat evolving at scale never seen before
MI5 boss Andrew Parker: UK terror threat evolving at scale never seen before
The UK is facing a "multidimensional threat" that is rapidly evolving "at a scale and pace we've not seen before", the director general of MI5 has warned.
Andrew Parker said the security service is operating at an unprecedented level and has seen "a dramatic upshift in threats this year".
"It's at the highest tempo I've seen in my 34-year career," he said. "Today there is more terrorist activity, coming at us more quickly, and it can be harder to detect.
"We're now running well over 500 live operations involving around 3,000 individuals known to be currently involved in extremist activity in some way.
"As well as those we are looking at today, risk can also come from returnees from Syria and Iraq and also the growing pool of over 20,000 individuals we've looked at in the past in our terrorism investigations.
Parker: 'We simply can't stop everything'
"And there will be some violent extremists not yet known to us at all."
Speaking in central London during a rare public appearance, Mr Parker paid tribute to MI5's 4,000 intelligence officers and the agents who risk their lives operating undercover to protect the country.
"They get up and come to work every single day to make terrorist attacks less likely and to keep the country safe," he said.
"They're constantly making tough professional judgements based on fragments of intelligence, pinpricks of light against a dark and shifting canvas.
"That is the job of MI5. When an attack happens, everyone in MI5 is deeply affected, on a personal and professional level."
Separately, Mr Parker sat down for television interviews with the UK's three major broadcasters - the first time any serving British intelligence chief has done so.
Image: Mr Parker warned terror activity is 'at the highest tempo I've seen in my 34-year career'
He told Sky News that tech companies have an "ethical responsibility" to help counter terrorism, adding that he wanted to create partnerships with them.
"All those (technological) developments that we have give opportunities at the edges to terrorists as well," he said.
"I don't believe that any of these companies want those unintended side effects. They don't want to be helping terrorists acquire the materials that they need for online purchasing.
"They don't want to be helping them in encrypted communication avoid detection by MI5 and they don't want to have their social media platforms used for terrorist propaganda."
Mr Parker added that "some helpful action is being taken", but said there is "a challenge of pace, volume and reach as these technologies continue to develop so rapidly."
For the first time, the MI5 director general also revealed the existence of a European joint operational centre.
The facility is based in the Netherlands and brings together intelligence officers from Europe's major agencies.
Image: Tech companies have an 'ethical responsibility' to help counter terrorism, Mr Parker said
Mr Parker said the operational centre had prevented attacks and captured more than a dozen terrorists "who might not otherwise have been found in time".
He added: "We don't just stand with our European colleagues, we work with them. We share intelligence. We run joint operations every single day.
"Only last week I met again with my counterparts from 30 European security services, known together as the Counter Terrorism Group or CTG, as we decided on the next stages of collective action."
The joint intelligence centre operates separately to the EU, but the fact that Mr Parker dedicated a significant chunk of his speech to address European co-operation was no accident.
Brexit creates uncertainty for the intelligence agencies, as it does many British organisations.
Mr Parker was honest, he said the threat to the UK is evolving at a scale and pace not seen before.
It is a huge challenge to MI5 - a generational threat and there is no end in sight. |
I have a confession – peaches are not my go-to summer fruit. Strawberries? Yes. Watermelon? Absolutely! Peaches, though loaded with flavor and nutrients, always seem to be an afterthought in my vegan meal plan. That is, until I’m at a barbecue and find juicy little peach chunks hidden in a fruit salad. Then I kick myself for not using them in every possible way while they’re in season.
Don’t let this be you!
Not only are peaches juicy and delicious, they also happen to be really good for you. A large peach has fewer than 70 calories and contains 3 grams of fiber. Peaches are also a good source of vitamins A and C. What’s more, peaches have been shown to ward off obesity-related diseases such as diabetes, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease.
Honestly, I can’t say enough good things about peaches. The lone downside is that they’re only in peak season from June through August. I suggest loading up on them while you can! If you’re not quite sure how to incorporate peaches into your vegan meal plan this summer, start with the two recipes listed below. Though the first one may (definitely) contain some ingredients you aren’t yet familiar with, don’t panic. With a quick trip to your local health food store you’ll be in smoothie-making heaven in no time.
Super Peach Smoothie
From: Well Vegan
Serves: 2
Ingredients
3 cups fresh peaches, chopped
1 frozen banana
1 tbsp. chia seeds
1 tbsp. goji berries
1 tbsp. hemp seeds
1 1/2 cups coconut milk
1 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
Instructions
In a blender, puree until smooth, gradually adding the coconut milk to loosen the mixture.
Grilled Vanilla Peaches
From: Well Vegan
Serves: 8
Ingredients
8 peaches
1 lemon
1 tbsp. vegetable oil
1 1/2 tbsp. light-brown sugar, packed
2 tsp. water
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1/8 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp. coarse salt
1 quart vanilla non-dairy ice cream
Instructions |
Defense Secretary James Mattis James Norman MattisOvernight Defense: Trump to hold one-on-one with Kim | What to watch as summit kicks off | Top general dodges on Trump emergency declaration Retired officers express 'grave concern' with Trump's defense of transgender military policy Trump backs off total Syria withdrawal MORE warned North Korea in stark terms on Wednesday that it faces devastation if it does not end its pursuit of nuclear weapons
“The DPRK must choose to stop isolating itself and stand down its pursuit of nuclear weapons,” Mattis said in the statement, referring to North Korea.
“The DPRK should cease any consideration of actions that would lead to the end of its regime and the destruction of its people.”
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The Mattis remarks appeared intended to take on a complicated task: They both reined in Trump’s comments, while matching the president’s bellicose tone, which the administration argues has proven effective.
Trump on Tuesday warned North Korea of “fire and fury” if it takes aggressive steps toward the United States, words that caught much of the word off guard and raised concerns about escalating tensions between the two countries.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders later said that Trump discussed the “tone and strength” of his message with senior national security advisors before his remarks, but “the words were his own.”
The Mattis statement was just as tough in tone with North Korea, but it indicated mere threats from Pyongyang, which are routinely made by that country’s government, would not lead to military action.
“The United States and our allies have the demonstrated capabilities and unquestionable commitment to defend ourselves from an attack,” he wrote.
“While our State Department is making every effort to resolve this global threat through diplomatic means, it must be noted that the combined allied militaries now possess the most precise, rehearsed and robust defensive and offensive capabilities on Earth. The DPRK regime's actions will continue to be grossly overmatched by ours and would lose any arms race or conflict it initiates.”
Trump made his public comments at the outset of a Tuesday meeting on the opioid crisis hours after The Washington Post reported that Pyongyang had obtained the capability of creating a nuclear warhead small enough to place on a missile.
His remarks indicated the United States could strike the isolated nation based solely on spoken or written threats.
“[North Korean leader Kim Jong Un] has been very threatening beyond a normal state, and as I said they will be met with fire, fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before,” Trump said at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.
In two tweets on Wednesday, Trump said the U.S. nuclear arsenal “is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before.... Hopefully we will never have to use this power, but there will never be a time that we are not the most powerful nation in the world!”
Trump’s remarks have come under criticism from members of both parties.
Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Jack Reed John (Jack) Francis ReedTop general dodges on justification for Trump emergency declaration Senate Dems introduce bill demanding report on Khashoggi killing Papering over climate change impacts is indefensible MORE (D-R.I.) said Wednesday that the “fire and fury” remark was not helpful in defusing the North Korea threat compared to “smart, steady leadership and stronger diplomatic ties with our key allies.”
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Rex Wayne TillersonHeather Nauert withdraws her name from consideration for UN ambassador job Trump administration’s top European diplomat to resign in February Pompeo planning to meet with Pat Roberts amid 2020 Senate speculation MORE told reporters on Wednesday that Trump was seeking to send a “strong message” to North Korea that the United States was prepared to defend itself and its allies.
North Korea has responded to the remarks from the Trump administration with its own tough rhetoric. On Tuesday, it suggested it could launch an attack on Guam.
North Korea would have the capability to devastate much of South Korea in any military exchange with the United States. This knowledge has been a deterrent on any use of force against Pyongyang.
Mattis said Trump “was informed of the growing threat last December and on taking office his first orders to me emphasized the readiness of our ballistic missile defense and nuclear deterrent forces.”
Mattis's full statement:
"The United States and our allies have the demonstrated capabilities and unquestionable commitment to defend ourselves from an attack. Kim Jong Un should take heed of the United Nations Security Council's unified voice, and statements from governments the world over, who agree the DPRK poses a threat to global security and stability. The DPRK must choose to stop isolating itself and stand down its pursuit of nuclear weapons. The DPRK should cease any consideration of actions that would lead to the end of its regime and the destruction of its people.
"President Trump was informed of the growing threat last December and on taking office his first orders to me emphasized the readiness of our ballistic missile defense and nuclear deterrent forces. While our State Department is making every effort to resolve this global threat through diplomatic means, it must be noted that the combined allied militaries now possess the most precise, rehearsed and robust defensive and offensive capabilities on Earth. The DPRK regime's actions will continue to be grossly overmatched by ours and would lose any arms race or conflict it initiates." |
Pocket Physics just received an update with new chapter: Kinematics - velocity and acceleration.
Kinematics is the branch of mechanics concerned with the motion of objects without reference to the forces which cause the motion.
New chapter, Kinematics - velocity and acceleration, contains the following sections:
Velocity
Average velocity
Instantaneous velocity
Acceleration
Acceleration in a curvilinear motion
Instantaneous acceleration
Pocket Physics, an easy-to-use, educational application that covers common physics formulas and concepts was released over 2 years ago. The very first version of the application contained solutions of simple tasks and physics problems. In the following versions we started to focus more on theory of physics grouped into chapters. Current version of Pocket Physics contains over 20 chapters in two languages, English and Polish.
Pocket Physics for Android is available in the Google Play Store: |
Update 05/12/2014 13:30pm GMT: Bebe stores inc have now confirmed the below breach in a press release published on their website today. Based on its investigation to date, the Company believes the attack was focused on and limited to data from payment cards swiped in its U.S., Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands stores during a short window between November 8, 2014 and November 26, 2014.
Activity in carder shops on the dark side of the Internet suggests that there has been a payment card data breach at women’s clothing store Bebe Store Inc.
News of this possible breach was broken by Brian Krebs, who says he’s been gathering data from several financial institutions about a possible breach.
An east coast bank has been busy purchasing several of the cards that were available for sale to confirm their legitimacy and to see if they had any common patterns. The cards were purchased from ‘Goodshop’ on December 1 from a batch called “Happy Winter Update”.
The common denominator appears to be that all of the cards identified have been used at Bebe Stores in the United States.
Bebe Stores is yet to announce any information about the possible breach.
Subscribe to our Daily Sentinel to receive updates as and when they happen.
In order to protect customer data it is absolutely vital that organizations – businesses, banks, government agencies, retailers, and others – implement robust information security management systems (ISMSs).
ISO27001 is the international information security standard that ensures cybersecurity while maintaining a competitive advantage, and against which an ISMS can be certified. It also provides a solid framework that supports adherence to a number of US cybersecurity laws, including FISMA, HIPAA, and SOX.
Find out how IT Governance’s packaged solutions can help your organization become ISO27001 certified. |
Internet Ancient History Sourcebook:
Greece
See Main Page for a guide to all contents of all sections.
Contents
Back to Index
Back to Index
Back to Index
WEB Prehistoric Archeology of the Aegean [At Dartmouth]
A beautifully produced online course on Crete and Mycenae. It must be seen. Text and images.
Prehistoric Archeology of the Aegean [At Dartmouth] A beautifully produced online course on Crete and Mycenae. It must be seen. Text and images. WEB Images of Mycenae [At UCCS]
Back to Index
Back to Index
The Persian Wars (449-479 BCE)
Back to Index
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Documents of the Rise of Hellenic Tyranny, c. 650-550 BCE [At this Site]
From Herodotus Plutarch, about Corinth and Athens.
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The Peloponnesian War
(431-404 BCE) and After
Back to Index
Xenophon (c.428-c.354 BCE): The Battle of Leuctra, (371 BCE) from the Hellenica [At this Site]
Account of the defeat of Sparta by Theban forces and the ending of the Spartan supremacy..
Account of the defeat of Sparta by Theban forces and the ending of the Spartan supremacy.. Cornelius Nepos (c.99-c.24 BCE): From Life of Epaminondas (d.362 BCE)(written c. 30 BCE) [This Site]
Plutarch (c.46-c.120 CE): Life of Pelopidas (c.410- 362 BCE)[At MIT]
Xenophon (c.428-c.354 BCE): Anabasis, or March Up Country or Persia Expedition, full text [At this Site]
The story of a Greek army of mercenaries and their march into the Persian Empire.
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Philip II
of Macedon (r. 339-336 BCE)
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All the major Greek plays are online, as well as substantial amount of criticism and theorising. The links here are to the plain text version at various sites or here. [The old Virgina Tech gopher site has disappeared, but these files are from there.] In addition there are HTML versions of all text available at WEB MIT Classics Archive. Where more modern translations are on the net, they are indicated. See also
MIT Classics Archive. Where more modern translations are on the net, they are indicated. See also WEB Didaskalia: Play Texts Online [Website]
Back to Index
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Documents on Greek Slavery, c. 750 - 330 BCE [At this Site]
from Hesiod, Strabo, Antiphon, Demosthenes, and Aristotle.
Back to Index
Greek Law
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NOTES:
Dates of accession of material added since July 1998 can be seen in the New Additions page..
The date of inception was 4/8/1998.
Links to files at other site are indicated by [At some indication of the site name or location].
Locally available texts are marked by [At this Site].
WEB indicates a link to one of small number of high quality web sites which provide either more texts or an especially valuable overview.
The Internet Ancient History Sourcebook is part of the
Internet History Sourcebooks Project |
CLOSE Raw video: Police link I-25, Jacoby shootings Erin Hull/The Coloradoan
Buy Photo Law enforcement linked the John Jacoby investigation with that of the woman who was shot in the neck in April near Interstate 25 in Fort Collins. (Photo: Austin Humphreys/The Coloradoan)Buy Photo
Law enforcement has linked the John Jacoby homicide in Windsor to the case of a woman who was shot in the neck near Interstate 25 in Fort Collins.
Windsor Police Chief John Michaels said the shootings appear to be random. Speaking at a Friday press conference in Windsor, he would not discuss weapons used or ballistics from the two scenes.
As for whether people should feel safe traveling around Windsor and the I-25 northern corridor, Michaels noted the different locations, the amount of time between the shootings and the thousands of road miles traveled without incident.
He called the safety question "impossible to answer." The department asked people to be vigilant and aware of their surroundings.
A task force headed by the Larimer County Sheriff's Office has been formed to investigate the shootings. The FBI and Windsor police are assisting. The FBI is offering a reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction.
"All law enforcement is teaming together to try to solve this as quickly as possible," Michaels said.
Jacoby, a Windsor resident, was found shot to death May 18. He was shot twice while riding his bicycle on a county road north of Windsor.
FUNERAL: Hundreds honor slain Windsor cyclist John Jacoby
Cori Romero of Milliken was shot in the neck April 22 while driving onto the southbound I-25 on-ramp from Harmony Road, according to a release from the town of Windsor. Previous information from law enforcement had indicated Romero was shot while traveling on the interstate itself. She is recovering.
Officials would not discuss the evidence that Michaels said linked the two shootings to protect the integrity of the investigation. The multiple reports of broken windows on I-25 have not been linked to the case, though Michaels said they are not being discounted.
There is no indication that the victims knew each other.
Jacoby, a 47-year-old well-known resident of Windsor, died at the scene. Two rounds were also shot at Romero, 20, about 11:15 p.m. on April 22 while she was driving, including the round that hit her in the neck. She survived the attack.
The Larimer County Sheriff's Office has increased its patrol in that area as a result.
The Windsor Police Department asks residents to report any suspicious activity by calling 970-674-6400. Anyone with information about the shootings is urged to call 1-800-222-8477 or text 274637 and start the message with NOCO, followed by the message.
REMEMBRANCES: Windsor residents take to social media to remember Jacoby
INVESTIGATIONS: Time ticks on in Windsor, Larimer shooting cases
Read or Share this story: http://noconow.co/1HBixVU |
Phil Jay
New British middleweight champion Chris Eubank Jr has called off any post-fight celebrations in respect of recent opponent Nick Blackwell’s ongoing plight.
Eubank defeated Blackwell in ten rounds at the SSE Arena at Wembley on Saturday night, after which the bout took a turn for the worse. A battered Blackwell collapsed and was carried from the ring on a stretcher before being taking to hospital and placed in an induced coma.
The Eubank’s called an ‘informal chat’ on Tuesday to address the many media requests received since Blackwell’s suffered a bleed on the brain which gave Junior and Senior the chance to air their views.
It has been pointed out on more than one occasion since that Eubank Sr called for his son to go for the knockout, but ‘only to the body’ from the eighth round onwards and Junior then eased off in the ninth session before the doctor halted the encounter.
“No fighter goes in there to cause that sort of damage. The first thing I did was tweeted him, saying he’s a true fighter, he’s a true warrior,” said Eubank Jr.
“It’s not personal, it’s a business. I’ve tunnel vision when I’m in there and my dad could see he had nothing left and so he said ‘body’.
“This is in no way insensitive to the position of Nick Blackwell and no celebration by Team Eubank has happened and will not happen until Nick makes a full recovery, and I mean full recovery.
“When I saw him on the floor with the oxygen mask on after the match that’s when worry set in,” he added.
Blackwell’s family have asked for privacy since the incident occurred and only sketchy updates from fellow fighters and the British Board have been forthcoming.
Some reports are suggesting that Blackwell could soon be brought out of his coma, although nothing official has come from doctors treating the brave boxer. |
If this is the golden age of transit building in Toronto, why are the advocates and supposed beneficiaries so discomfited? Because too many of the projects are too politicized to give an independent observer — like the commuters and the citizens who pay the freight — any confidence that the right project is being built along the right corridor, at the right time, using the right transit mode, for the right price.
Royson James wonders if Mayor John Tory's transit announcement last week was merely to deflect attention from embarrassing low ridership numbers for the current Scarborough subway proposal. ( Rene Johnston / Toronto Star )
We love all the projects: Crosstown. SmartTrack. LRT. Relief line. Yonge subway to York Region. One-stop Scarborough subway. Malvern LRT that doesn’t go to Malvern. Love them all, but not effervescently so. We know we are being used. Our leaders have ground the confidence out of us and replaced it with cynicism. The fear is we’ll wake up 30 years hence to find that we squandered an opportunity to realign our transit needs and deliver a city region equipped to handle its burgeoning future. We fear we’ll fail — not because of lack of money or an appetite for improvements, but for lack of guts to speak the truth. This week the province boasted it will spend $160 billion on our transportation needs. Facts and careful consideration of the alternatives should determine where projects go.
Article Continued Below
On the day that embarrassingly low ridership numbers for the one-stop subway to Scarborough became public, the provincial government sprung into action, arm in arm with Mayor John Tory, with a curious transit announcement. Was it designed to deflect attention? Why announce $150 million for design studies of the downtown relief line, a transit route not yet approved? Within 24 hours another reason emerged. Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca assembled the media to tell citizens his government is spending $50 million for studies on pushing the Yonge subway line north to Highway 7, quickly using up the Yonge subway capacity freed up by the relief line. The flurry of announcements only muddled the thinking around the timing of the Yonge subway extension to York Region. And it failed to eclipse the fuzzy reasons for choosing to build a one-stop subway extension from Kennedy to the Scarborough Town Centre. A short summary to capture the tortuous path to this point, and explain why not even the loudest proponents sleep well with the Scarborough subway on their minds: The SRT (Scarborough Rapid Transit) opened in 1985. Left to rot, basically, it needs rehabilitation. Former mayor David Miller proposed an LRT replacement; the province agreed and said it would pick up the full $1.4-billion cost.
Enter Rob Ford. The late mayor pushed council to vote for a three-stop subway instead of LRT. The province balked and refused to pay. The project is now Toronto's cost. Enter a provincial byelection. The ruling Liberals back the subway and candidate Mitzie Hunter wins in Scarborough. Full election follows and sees Liberal candidates all promising a subway.
Article Continued Below
Enter John Tory. Campaign platform promises SmartTrack — essentially, frequent service on GO lines inside Toronto, including a route right next to the planed Scarborough LRT-subway route, already approved. Everyone points to the obvious conflict and argues that SmartTrack and the subway would cannibalize each other. Brad Duguid, the influential cabinet minister from Scarborough, refuses to back down on the subway. Tory has to salvage SmartTrack in the Scarborough corridor because the western segment proves absolutely unworkable. Enter chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat with a political compromise. She moves the subway farther east — to McCowan, adding cost, now pushing $2 billion. To check further cost escalation, the subway will not stop between the Kennedy-Eglinton station and Highway 401 — the system’s longest distance between stations. This means, even though the subway veers east to McCowan, it won’t stop at Lawrence, to capture the thousands who travelling to the Scarborough General hospital. The mayor, the chief planner, the province all cheerily quote strategically placed statistics and data to camouflage the conflicted, contemptible process. If the RT wasn’t orphaned; if Ford hadn’t killed the LRT replacement; if the provincial Liberals hadn’t bought Scarborough votes with promise of a subway; if Tory hadn’t campaigned on a competing transit line right next to the proposed subway; if Tory and Duguid hadn’t insisted on keeping their projects — then we might have a transit plan that actually serves all of Scarborough. Our leaders sow sadness where there should finally be joy. We should remember this every time we see them making announcements, bribing us with our own money. Royson James usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: rjames@thestar.ca
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File photo of RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan
Banks have sought government support in areas like empowering them in recruitment and compensation decisions for attracting better talent.
Top bankers of the country had gathered in Pune to draw up a blueprint for reforms of the banking sector and made presentations to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan also attended the retreat. In the two-day bankers' conclave, the government clearly asked the lenders to be free in expressing their views and ideas.
Stressing on the need for public sector banks to recruit young talent, train, and retain them, Mr Rajan said, "The government needs to have a relook at the campus recruitment which at present is banned because of a Supreme Court ruling."
Mr Jaitley also said there is a need to give greater autonomy to banks. "There is a need to get the best talent into the system. There is a need for far greater autonomy being given to them (state-run banks)," he said.
NDTV had earlier reported the bankers sought leeway to allow them to do campus recruitment like the way it is done by private sector banks.
Currently, the recruitment in public sector banks is done through Institute of Banking Personnel Selection or IBPS twice in a year. |
First, here’s an update on the status of the Alpha 1 network. As most of you know, it has been running nonstop since August 12, 2016, the date we released it. It’s been very stable over the last few months. It’s only a few days ago that we started noticing issues with it, such as the inability to login to some accounts, and to access some .safenet websites that had been previously created. The alpha network still works fine (e.g. you can create a new account and upload a new .safenet website), but you probably won’t be able to access accounts and websites created before last week.
@AndreasF explained what happened in this post:
Yes, several virtual servers on which the alpha nodes were running had shut down. We knew that this could potentially cause data loss (which is why we didn’t allow users to run vaults in that network), and that is what happened, unfortunately. We restarted the nodes on the rebooted servers and the network structure seems to be fine again. We’ll keep the alpha network running for now, but we can’t restore the lost data.
We are planning to implement ways to even completely restart a network and republish the data it had, and once that is in place, we will be able to make the content survive such failures, and even persist it between different alpha networks.
Short-term roadmap
We’re currently working on getting Test 12 ready. This will allow users to run vaults from home. This test won’t contain the new client API (with mutable data). It’s purely about the features related to the routing update (disjoint sections and resource proof). If this test is successful, we will move right to Alpha 2. If Test 12 shows issues, we’ll patch them and maybe have another testnet before Alpha 2.
After that, we will have other testnets (e.g. Test 13) until we reach Alpha 3, which will give us vaults from home along with the new client API and the updated SAFE Browser (which integrates the SAFE Authenticator directly so you won’t have to download a separate app).
SAFE Authenticator & API
Team leader: Krishna
The authenticator is now functionally complete and it’s been integrated with the SAFE Browser as planned. This makes it easier for users to download just one binary that contains both the browser and the authenticator. We will continue to test and improve the authenticator in the following week.
We have also made decent progress with the SAFE Node.js API for app developers. There were a few issues we faced while integrating with the FFI. We are hoping to wrap the API by early next week and then we’ll integrate it with a demo app. There are minor changes being made in the FFI exposed by the safe_client_libs to address the segfaults and ownership related problems. The authenticator will also be updated to use the FFI of safe_client_libs once these changes are completed.
SAFE Client Libs
Team leader: Spandan
This week we’re addressing concerns from the front-end team. With the C API, they are sometimes finding it difficult to not cause segfaults. We are trying to make it easier for them, considering that front-end developers don’t necessarily have a C background. Instead of giving the ownership of all heap-allocated data to the front-end and asking them to free it when they want, we are making it more restrictive in that everything that we give them (C-structs/strings, etc.), we expect them to immediately clone into their native types. We will free stuff as soon as control reaches back to us and leaves scope. That way, given less choice and a more restrictive approach, memory management becomes very simple (especially for memory-managed languages such as JavaScript, Java, etc.).
We are also discussing how to approach error recovery during composite operations. For example, if authenticator revokes an app, it has to perform a bunch of operations including re-encryption of data previously accessible to the revoked app and if this fails midway (because connection was lost or the user ran out of allowed number of mutations, etc.) then how do we recover this the next time authenticator starts. Do we store the state somewhere locally or restart from step 0, etc. It might not be either this or that kind of approach and might need to be taken case by case.
Routing & Vault
Team leader: Andreas
We implemented a simple recovery mechanism to synchronise sections that lost consensus during heavy churn, which is currently in review: The nodes in a section will now exchange their routing tables a while after a churn event, and any node that doesn’t agree with the quorum will update its own routing table accordingly. (Before disjoint sections we had something similar—“bucket refresh”, which is used in the alpha network and the previous test networks—, but this wasn’t applicable to the new paradigm anymore.)
With safe_core updated to work with the current routing library, and resource proof nearing completion, we are now testing everything together on droplets, including disjoint sections and the recovery mechanism, to expose any remaining issues and to calibrate the resource proof parameters.
Recruitment
Gabriel Viganotti (@bochaco) is the newest member to join the MaidSafe team! He’ll be working remotely from Argentina. He’ll be part of Krishna’s team (SAFE Authenticator & API).
Gabriel has been very active in the SAFE Network community over the last few months. He developed a few applications such as SAFE Wallet and SAFE Faucet. He’s also the organizer of the SAFEdev Córdoba meetup.
He’s planning to continue working on his own apps in addition to the work he’ll be doing for MaidSafe |
Eric: For an example, my biggest Valentine’s would be a call from our Webmaster saying, “You got around 600 unique visits to your site today.” That’s huge.
Tim: Well, that’s just another way of saying current of money. I should just say currency. We define currency in terms of web hits, mostly, but also in credits. Like online credits.
So under what conditions would you love then? Tim: If it grants us success, or money.
Tim: We believe in conditional love, and love for profit. But not an unconditional true love.
And is true love something that you’ve experienced? Tim: No, well, Eric and I both don’t believe in it. We don’t believe that it can exist.
What do you guys think of Valentine’s Day? Tim: I don’t believe in it. I think you have to believe in true love first… then maybe you start believing in Valentine’s Day.
Did you guys plan on spending your Valentine’s doing all this promotional-type stuff? Tim: I wish we had more promotional stuff, but you’re our only guest today.
Love is such a strange and varied thing. Some people love their families and friends, some love money and success, but one thing is for certain, we all need something to love. On Valentine's Day, I spoke with Tim and Eric (Tom Goes to the Mayor, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, Timanderic.com ) about what love means to them and their February 26th appearance at The Knitting Factory
How else could you combine the Internet with Valentine's Day?
Tim: Well, I guess probably the biggest one is if you Valentine’s Google, you can get sent/someone can send you a Valentine card to your Myspace comment. And they can have like an animated GIF that would sparkle, and would say like, “Happy Valentine’s Day” on it, and it’ll be a heart. So if you Google that, there’s tons of cool animated GIF sites.
Eric: What else is also nice is animated lips that’ll make a smacking sound. Like, “I wish I could kiss you. Happy Valentine’s.”
Tim: You could embed that right into a Myspace comment, send it to all your friends or people you don’t even know that well.
Eric: There’s ways of getting that embedded HTML code, and just linking that right up to one of your Blogs, or someone else’s profile.
That sounds like the sort of thing that would be on an old Angelfire or Geocities site, did you guys have one of those?
Tim: Yeah, we're trying to get back into that. We’re into retro-web stuff, if you’re familiar with that concept. There’s a cool side of websites that people forgot about. Totally, Geocities is one of our favorite sites. We can go on there and just explore, creatively. You know, using web-design as a creative element.
Eric: It’s more going back to templates. One thing Geocities has is: "Alright, I want a checkered border." Or, "I want to pick travel," and there’ll be different cars and trains, and hot air balloons. And that’s the border of your website. It’s like art deco.
Outside of the Internet, you also have a podcast, and the television show. Are there any other mediums that you’re interested in conquering? Perhaps radio?
Tim: Well, we’re releasing an analog version of our website, that you can buy on our website for $3, and basically it’s a printed out version of the site. We have laptop technology which enables us to be mobile with our communication and our computers, but, let’s take it one step further, and make an analog version so you can print it out – not literally print it out, but get it sent to you – and then you can travel with it.
Eric: So if you don’t have wireless on your PDA or on your laptop, you just pull out our website, and it’s like a folder of papers.
Speaking of radio, you guys work with Tom Scharpling quite a bit. How’d you get involved with him?
Tim: We applied. He has an application process where if you want to be on his radio show, you have to fill out an application. We just kinda came up in the lottery with him.
Eric: Yeah, to be honest with you, we sent applications out to every radio show. We tried to limit the college/indie-kind of thing. Tom Likus, out in L.A., that’ll be a great place for us.
Tim: Our goal is to get on Tom Likus and to get on the Ryan Seacrest show out here. He has a morning radio show. He plays the kind of music we like, which is Top 40. And if you listen to his show, he’ll have big stars on. Sometimes they’ll call in to promote whatever movie they’re in or even if they’re just on a TV show. But apparently, the show we do doesn’t have the ratings to deserve us going on the Ryan Seacrest morning show, which sucks. Because the top goal, for us, right now, is to get on his show.
Eric: It’s highly political out here, and, a radio show like Tom Scharpling's is a step. It’s just a step in, not necessarily the direction we want to go in, but it’s getting some exposure out there for us.
So, would you settle then for Rachel Ray, or is that not good enough?
Eric: She’s awesome, and I would go on her show in a second. But we can’t even get her people calling us back.
Tim: Yeah, in other words, Eric’s a Tom Likus guy, I’m a Ryan Seacrest guy. And neither of them are calling us back.
Eric: They’re different styles, but if you check out their numbers and their demo, it’s just like right down the middle. It’s pretty cool stuff.
Rachel Ray was recently accused of making racist comments about Oprah. Did you hear about this?
Eric: No.
Tim: Who was?
Rachel Ray.
Eric: She has a cooking show.
Tim: That’s terrible.
Eric: Why would Oprah come up in her cooking show?
They were talking about how Rachel Ray said something about Oprah always running around in slave-garbs.
Tim: Awwww.
It seems like that could be done for promotion.
Eric: Oh, absolutely. Remember the Rosie O’Donnell scandal? With his hair, talking about his hair.
Tim: Eric, how would we forget that?
Eric: Oh, I know, I’m saying, you didn’t forget it, but I don’t know what Ben’s into.
What sort of outrageous lengths would you be willing to go to promote your endeavors?
Eric: I’ve frequently told the press that Tim’s died. And we just hired outside talent for his voice appearances and it’s all been extremely tough.
Tim: My son, Michael, has leukemia. And, you know, I think one thing the show can do is bring a little awareness to that. And if there’s an outreach program we can get involved with where – he’s not going to be with us much longer – but while he’s here, let’s make sure his dad has a successful, highly-rated, well-promoted show. Maybe that’ll help him beat the cancer. I don’t know.
Eric: Also, we’ve put on our website, several times, that we’re going to be on the Ryan Seacrest show next week, just in hopes that we’d actually get it that week. But we didn’t. But, what matters is when you Google Ryan Seacrest, you’ll go right to Timanderic.com, and in our news, it’ll say, “Next week Tim and Eric are going to appear on Ryan Seacrest.” So it brings in traffic. It’s a little white lie.
Tim: Well, in a very small-type font we write, “Hopefully…question mark?”
Do you think this tactic of making racist comments – do you think that’s maybe not the best route to go, in terms of promotion?
Tim: It doesn’t seem like a good idea. I mean, we always say, “Use children. Use cancer. Use celebrity. But, don’t use race.”
Eric: But you know, we haven’t seen the numbers on that yet. Let’s talk when we see Rachel Ray’s numbers next week, and if they skyrocketed, then that worked. You know, Tim and I – we’re not going to pull the race card – but we’ll talk about Tim’s dead son and that problem.
I wanted to know, you guys went to an art school?
Tim: Film school. Temple University. Hooty-hoo – Temple Owls.
Eric: It wasn’t an art school though, we have a Bachelor of Arts degree. But you might be confused because the Bachelor of Arts degree, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an art school.
Tim: Not art like, a painting.
Eric: That’s just what they call the degree, because it’s a liberal arts school.
Did you go to a school with a lot of people that were say, very pretentious?
Tim: Uh, we went to a school with a lot of blacks. There were a lot of black people in our school. If that’s what you mean by pretentious, I don’t know.
Well, I guess the sort of people that would say, dismiss television as a medium of expression entirely.
Tim: Uhm, I wouldn’t say that was in any of our classes.
Eric: I don’t even understand what that means.
It seems like that’s a popular thing to do among artsy-types.
Tim: Oh, no, no. We all watch TV in college.
Of your college memories, how much of time would you say was dedicated to watching television?
Tim: Most of the time.
And did you ever see any live comedy?
Tim: No, the only live comedy we saw was when Bill Cosby gave our speech at graduation.
I know that both Paul F. Thompkins and Todd Glass are from Philadelphia. You never saw them while you were living in Philly?
Tim: No, we weren't allowed to.
Why was that?
Eric: Just part of the film program. It was just frowned upon to go see comedy.
Tim: Part of the Temple code.
How do you feel about the city of Philadelphia?
Tim: It’s small. You know, compared to other cities.
Eric: A little chubby, to be honest with you.
But would you say that you love Philadelphia?
Tim: Well, we don’t believe in love, unless it translates into a financial gain. If Philadelphia wants to give us 100,000 unique web hits today then, yes, we love Philadelphia for their web hits.
Eric: Yeah, if Philadelphia.com wants to link directly to our online store, we’d be happy to go on record to say, “We love the City of Brotherly Love.” But, we’re not going to go on the record for nothing.
Tim: It’s give and take.
But could you say that you love the new show that you did, or Tom Goes To The Mayor? Are those things that you love?
Tim: Yeah, sure, because it provides us with an income, and it has its own value.
Eric: It puts food on the table for us. And people say, “Oh, this is great. This is your dream show. You’re doing exactly what you want to do. Your unfiltered comedy.” You know, we gotta eat, we both have families and children. So, it’s important we get those paychecks, it’s important we get that repeat-traffic to our site, it’s important people buy our t-shirts and our calendars.
Tim: We’re not in this business to make anybody laugh, in other words. We’re in this business to make a buck.
Are you going to love the tour that you have coming up?
Tim: It will bring us financial success. So, yes, we love the tour.
Eric: You know what I’m going to love? The breakfast the next day, when we’re talking to our tour manager about how much money we made at the door. How many t-shirts did we sell? You know, what’s going to be a bummer is meeting our fans directly after the show.
And why is that?
Eric: “Oh hey, I love your show. It speaks directly to me, it’s so innovative, and creative.” Thanks a lot! Why don’t you buy a t-shirt on the way out? Let’s save this chat. Maybe Blog about this instead.
Tim: I’ll tell you right now, we’re getting some figures in. There’s a good chance, for example, the New York show, we might make $300 to $400 that night. Which is a lot of money.
Eric: Split that two ways, you’re looking at $150, $200 each.
Tim: If it’s $400, that would be $200 each. Which would be a lot of money for one day’s work. And it’s not even a full day. It’s like two hours.
Eric: Ten percent goes to agent, and we’re looking at anywhere from $140 to $180 take home, easy.
And what should people expect to see at the show?
Tim: Well, it’s a mix of live, musical, and sketch comedy.
Eric: We’re going to show some clips from The Awesome Show, our new TV show.
Tim: We’re going to show a lot of clips that people haven’t seen yet. And some special surprises from Tom Goes To The Mayor, as well.
Is there, perhaps, some sort of way that you can make a deal with your fans to make additional money?
Tim: We’re going to start a Michael’s Fund, which is a fund for my son. Some of it will go to him, but a lot of it will go to – since Eric is letting me do it, I gotta give him some, and then I’m gonna take a little bit off it. So if everybody comes in with $35, you know, $3 or $4 of that is going to go to Michael’s fund, and Eric and I split the rest, as profit.
Eric: We also proposed another idea for the live tour. Instead of coming to a venue and paying $12 to get in, we would sell DVDs for $10 of a pre-recorded concert. So, in L.A., we’d go to a studio and record the whole thing. And then instead of buying a ticket, you just get a DVD sent to your house of the live thing. That means that Tim and I don’t have to spend money on travel, and they get the show to take home. They don’t have to find a parking spot, and stand. You know, stand at a club – you know, some cities still allow smoking in clubs, if you can believe that.
Is that something you’re going to do?
Tim: Well, there’s a lot of legal hoops we that gotta to jump through to make that happen.
It seems like, if people don’t see your show or support you, they’re going to have to deal with knowing that they’re depriving Michael, of, I guess –
Eric: They’re depriving him of a chance to live. Which is a big deal.
Tim: It’s a big deal for me, for my wife.
Eric: It’s important.
What do you want to tell the people reading this interview, then?
Tim: I would say this: our doctor took me aside the other day and said, “If Michael doesn’t get that money from Michael’s Fund when you go on the road, I can’t see a way for him to live another six months.”
Eric: It’s as easy as this: if you want to save a child’s life, come to Tim and Eric’s Awesome Tour. That’s what you should be thinking when you’re buying tickets and shirts and stuff like that.
Tim: I looked at Eric, and I said, “Buddy, I need you to cut me a break on the forty percent out of Michael’s Fund you’re taking.” And he went down to thirty-five percent.
Eric: I did it for his son, you know?
I haven't seen Pay it Forward, but I know the gist of it: do three good things for three different people and they will do three good things for three different people and eventually your son will die. But if we follow Eric's example, we can make a difference in one person's life and no one has to get hurt. Please, buy tickets to see the Tim and Eric Awesome Tour at The Knitting Factory on the 26th of February. |
On October 29, the Flaming Lips will celebrate Halloween a bit early with a party at the Womb Gallery in Oklahoma City. In anticipation of the event, Wayne Coyne has shared a snippet of a new mashup he’s working on. He’s blended Tame Impala’s “New Person, Same Old Mistakes” (from Currents) with A$AP Rocky and Schoolboy Q’s “Electric Body” (from At.Long.Last.A$AP). He also appears to be mashing up Kanye West’s “Monster” with another track he does not identify. Watch Coyne test out his mashups below.
The Flaming Lips recently announced a new album, Oczy Mlody (out January 13 via Warner Bros. Records). They also shared its first song, “The Castle.”
Read our feature, “Cosmic Neurotic: The Heady Perfectionism of Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker.”
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Listen to Tame Impala’s “New Person, Same Old Mistakes” and A$AP Rocky’s “Electric Body”:
Watch Wayne Coyne on Pitchfork.tv’s “Over/Under”: |
The Public Prosecutor has filed today a complaint against Cristiano Ronaldo and not a claim, which implies a substantial change.
The Public Prosecutor understands that CR is participating in an off shore structure, similar to that of other players, when most of the revenues were obtained directly by the player, without the participation of any of his societies. The rest of his revenues were paid to the player and declared in Spain according to the terms that the player’s advisors considered applicable.
There is no off shore structure for evading taxes. Tollin is 100% owned by Cristiano Ronaldo since its foundation in 2004. It was founded when the player arrived at Manchester United, six years before his signing for Real Madrid, and the net profits were 12.753.685,28 euros, distributed according to the following years:
1.159.472,65 euros, in 2004
556.571,69 euros, in 2005
1.477.602,17 euros, in 2006
2.205.285,55 euros, in 2007
2.769.165,02 euros, in 2008
4.585.588,20 euros, in 2009
When Cristiano Ronaldo signs for Real Madrid, he maintains the same structure he had in UK. NO other structure was created at that moment. Throughout all of the above mentioned years, CR never had a tax problem, contrary to what the Spanish Prosecutors insinuates. All contractual modifications to such structure have been made to guarantee that the incomes fully observe the Spanish tax regulation.
Cristiano Ronaldo signs for Real Madrid in 2009 under the Law of Impatriots, legislation in force and prevailing then, and he was taxed only for the incomes that were attributable to Spain. Therefore, the universal taxation is not imputable in this case.
The Prosecutor’s Office says that the player declared the income derived from the transfer of image rights as income from movable capital to evade taxes. The laws applicable to Cristiano Ronaldo are the Personal Income Tax Law and the Impatriots Law. In Articles 25.4 and 13.1.F3, respectively, it is clear that the player’s income for image rights is considered to be as movable capital, and will only exceptionally be income from an economic activity, without being considered a performance of a sport activity in any case.
The player declares to the Tax Authorities Finances 100% of the part attributable to Spain of Tollin’s income and his image rights during the periods 2009-2014 and 2015-2020. All this according to the criteria set by the United Kingdom Treasury to determine that part of the image transfer revenue was originated in that country, which shows that there was no intention to defraud.
No additional tax declaration was done, as the press says. The player declared when Tollin paid him, on 12/31/2014. According to the Spanish law, taxes must be paid when the income is required, and so did the player.
The concealment he is accused of, not having communicated to the Spanish Treasury all the image rights incomes, is not attributable to the player since the declaration of impatriot does not allow declaring any income obtained outside Spain. The player hides nothing at all and in fact, he voluntarily declared his property abroad by presenting the official tax document model 720. He was not obliged to do, but as soon as he was requested for inspection, he presented all his tax information. There has never been concealment, or the slightest intention to conceal.
The paragraph regarding the sale of image rights, from 2015 to 2020, to ARNEL and ADIFORE (Peter Lim group companie’s with which the player has nothing to do) is tendentious. There is no interposed companies or deferral. The player personally received the whole amount, and he fully declared taxes for it. There can be no deferral since, in 2014; he paid taxes for all the incomes to be received in the oncoming years until 2020.
Cristiano’s lawyers consider that regarding what the solution to this case ends up being – as well as their consequences- they should be confined to the administrative field rather than the criminal one. The discrepancy comes from a very complex legal matter, and it is clear that, at any moment, there is no bad faith to be attributed to the player. In his opinion:
The main discrepancy between the revenues and what the Prosecution claims lays in qualifying in a different way the image transfer earnings “obtained in Spain” and, in this matter:
The player declared the income as income from movable capital, the classification that, in general, foresees the Spanish law and which the Administration and the Courts have ratified.
The player quantified the part attributable to Spain following the criteria established by the British Tax Authority, which was more favourable to Spain than the one which derived from expert reports.
In conclusion: the declared amount can be discussed, but it is clear that the football player did not try to evade taxes.
The second discrepancy refers to when the image transfer rights from years 2011 to 2013 had to be declared and paid (since in 2014 there was no deferral). Neither can be presumed intentionality here, since:
This alleged deferral comes from the player’s full confidence that his contract structure was perfectly legal, since it had been followed since 2004 (six years before the player came – or was thinking of coming – to Spain) and was recognized and validated by the English Treasury (an EU country).
It was the usual structure among players in England. Today, about 180 Premier players operate with this
In the case of Cristiano Ronaldo, no income was hidden at all, since the taxpayer settled and paid taxes at the time he collected the income (within the period legally established and previous to any tax inspection).
Having he declared in a yearly basis under the criteria his advisors considered legally in force, based on the English experience, he would have paid less taxes. |
A US judge has revoked Chris Brown's probation after looking at details of a hit-and-run accident although he has not been ordered to go to jail yet.
The singer is accused of crashing into another car in California, refusing to share his insurance information and driving without a valid licence.
The driver of the other car also says the musician "went ballistic" at her after the crash in May.
Chris Brown has been on probation since attacking his ex-girlfriend, Rihanna.
He has not entered a plea in the hit-and-run case.
If he is found guilty of breaking the law he may have to spend time in prison for disobeying the terms of his assault probation.
His lawyer, Mark Geragos, suggested that the matter may be resolved informally without a major probation hearing.
It's not a hit and run if u get out the car, exchange information (who has NO DAMAGE to either cars). This is really ridiculous Chris Brown
Deputy District Attorney Mary Murray did not ask for the singer to be jailed and the judge allowed him to remain free.
In an accident on 12 May, Brown is suspected of rearing a car stopped at a red light.
The woman in the other car, identified in court documents only as Olga G, said she called her husband and was told to exchange driver's licences and insurance identification.
She said Brown was polite at first but as she continued to ask for identification he started confronting her.
The female driver said Brown's companion, thought to be Karrueche Tientrese Tran, offered her driver's licence and said the car belonged to her.
Just a moment ago he was a nice guy. After screaming some insulting nonsense for a while longer, he slammed a door and drove away fast and noisy Olga G
In her written statement, the woman said when Brown refused to provide his identification, she took a picture of the couple "and then they went ballistic".
She said Brown began swearing and grabbed for her camera.
"I jumped back, the girl screamed, 'Don't touch her. Don't touch her,'" she said in the statement.
"I was so shocked that I was speechless.
"Just a moment ago he was a nice guy. After screaming some insulting nonsense for a while longer, he slammed a door and drove away fast and noisy."
The woman didn't know the identity of the man until a friend told her after seeing online reports.
After being charged Chris Brown tweeted: "It's not a hit and run if u get out the car, exchange information (who has NO DAMAGE to either cars). This is really ridiculous.
"I have a valid drivers license and I gave the woman the right info. She saw cameras and wanted to make a scene."
Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter |
As you know if you’ve been reading this blog, Obamacare cuts $716 billion from Medicare in order to pay for its $1.9 trillion expansion of coverage to low-income Americans. It’s one of the reasons why seniors are more opposed to the new health law than any other age group. So why is it that the group that purports to speak for seniors, the American Association of Retired Persons, so strongly supports a law that most seniors oppose? According to an explosive new report from Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), it’s because those very same Medicare cuts will give the AARP a windfall of $1 billion in insurance profits, and preserve another $1.8 billion that AARP already generates from its business interests.
(DISCLOSURE: I am an outside adviser to the Romney campaign on health-care issues. The opinions contained herein are mine alone, and do not necessarily correspond to those of the campaign.)
Here’s how it works. AARP isn’t your every-day citizens’ advocacy group. The AARP is also one of the largest private health insurers in America. In 2011, the AARP generated $458 million in royalty fees from so-called “Medigap” plans, nearly twice the $266 million the lobby receives in membership dues.
Medigap plans are private insurance plans that seniors buy to cover the things that traditional, government-run Medicare doesn’t, like catastrophic coverage. Medigap plans also help seniors eliminate the co-pays and deductibles that are designed to restrain wasteful Medicare spending.
AARP blocked Medigap reforms, saving the group $1.8 billion
Adding catastrophic coverage to Medicare, while restraining the ability of Medigap plans to waste money, is a key to Medicare reform, one that has been a big part of bipartisan plans in the past. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Medigap reforms that AARP blocked would have saved the average senior as much as $415 in premiums per year.
But the AARP aggressively, and successfully, lobbied to keep Medigap reforms out of Obamacare, because AARP receives a 4.95 percent royalty on every dollar that seniors spend on its Medigap plans. Reform, DeMint estimates, would have cost AARP $1.8 billion over ten years.
Cuts to Medicare Advantage could earn AARP over $1 billion
Not only did AARP succeed in getting Democrats to balk at Medigap reform. Obamacare’s cuts to Medicare Advantage will drive many seniors out of that program, and into traditional government-run Medicare, which will increase the number of people who need Medigap insurance.
That means more royalty profits for the AARP. Reps. Wally Herger (R., Calif.) and Dave Reichert (R., Wash.) estimated that the change “could result in a windfall for AARP that exceeds over $1 billion during the next ten years.”
AARP Medigap plans exempted from Obamacare’s insurance mandates
It gets worse. AARP Medigap plans are exempted from most of Obamacare’s best-known insurance mandates. AARP Medigap plans are exempted from the ban that requires insurers to take all comers, regardless of pre-existing conditions. The plans are exempted from the $500,000 cap on insurance industry executive compensation; top AARP executives currently make more than $1 million. AARP plans are exempt from the premium tax levied on other private insurers. IPAB, Medicare’s rationing board, is explicitly barred from altering Medicare’s cost-sharing provisions, provisions that govern the existence of Medigap plans.
And AARP Medigap plans are allowed to have twice the administrative costs that other private insurers are allowed under Obamacare’s medical loss ratio regulations. This last point is key, because AARP’s 4.95 percent royalty is a significant administrative cost.
Democrats routinely excoriate private insurers for supposedly putting profits above people. "No American should ever spend their golden years at the mercy of insurance companies," President Obama told the AARP yesterday. But the typical private insurer gets by on a profit margin of about 5 to 6 percent. AARP’s 4.95 percent royalty, on the other hand, doesn't do anything to make a health plan operate more smoothly: it's just pure profit for AARP.
Publicly, the AARP poses as an independent, non-partisan organization. But privately, the organization strongly favored Obamacare. “We will try to keep a little space between us,” one senior AARP executive told the White House in November 2009, according to records unearthed by DeMint. “[Our] polling shows we are more influential when we are seen as independent, so we want to reinforce that positioning…The larger issue is how best to serve the cause” of Obamacare.
Kim Strassel at the Wall Street Journal goes through 71 pages of emails uncovered by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which "show an AARP leadership...that from the start worked to pass Obamacare, before crucial details pertaining to seniors had been addressed." AARP had "long lambasted cuts in fees to Medicare doctors," she notes, but the lobby reversed itself for Obamacare, claiming that Obamacare's provider cuts were just fine.
AARP has a multibillion-dollar 'conflict of interest'
This week, the AARP hosted a convention in New Orleans, at which President Obama and Paul Ryan spoke about Obamacare and Medicare. When Rep. Ryan spoke to the AARP about the importance of repealing Obamacare, he was booed. Small wonder, given the AARP’s extreme financial interest in the law. According to DeMint, during the Obamacare debate in Congress, the AARP’s phone logs from seniors registered more than 50 to 1 against the law.
Remember these issues the next time someone points out that the AARP supports Obamacare’s Medicare cuts, and opposes the Romney-Ryan plan. The Romney-Ryan plan would dramatically reduce the need for Medigap plans, because it would encourage the formation of comprehensive insurance plans within the Medicare program itself.
Obamacare, on the other hand, saved the AARP from $1.8 billion in Medigap reforms, while potentially earning the group an additional $1 billion in royalties from seniors who are forced out of Medicare Advantage. That’s a swing of $2.8 billion over ten years, all thanks to Obamacare.
"There's an inherent conflict of interest," says Marylin Moon, who served as director of AARP's Public Policy Institute from 1986 to 1989. "A lot of people there are trying to do good, but they're ending up becoming very dependent on [Medigap royalty] sources of income."
It’s a testament to AARP's political power—and our broken health-care system—that the lobby is allowed to carry on a half-billion-a-year business that’s based on increasing the premiums that seniors pay, and draining money from the taxpayers who get billed for wasteful Medicare spending. Sen. DeMint has done a public service by bringing these problems out into the open.
Follow Avik on Twitter at @avik.
UPDATE 1: In its 2014 annual financial statement, AARP reported receiving $297 million in dues, and approximately $528 million in Medigap royalties from UnitedHealth.
UPDATE 2: In the Fall 2012 issue of National Affairs, Daniel Kessler of Stanford does a nice job of explaining AARP's strong financial incentives to oppose premium support-style Medicare reform: |
Updated: September 23, 4:40 p.m. ET
Five Democratic senators introduced legislation Tuesday that would require any federally-funded hospital to provide emergency contraception to rape survivors.
The Emergency Contraception Access and Education Act of 2014 was introduced by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), with Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) signing on as co-sponsors. The bill would ensure that any hospital receiving Medicare or Medicaid funds provides accurate information and timely access to emergency contraception for survivors of sexual assault, regardless of whether or not they can pay for it. It would also require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to disseminate information on emergency contraception to pharmacists and health care providers.
“As we saw in the aftermath of the Hobby Lobby decision, and as we’ve seen in state legislatures across the country, Republicans are intent on standing in the way of women and their ability to make their own decisions about their own bodies and their own health care,” Senator Murray told TIME. “This means, now more than ever, it is our job to protect these kinds of decisions for women, their families, and particularly for survivors of sexual assault. Emergency contraception is a critical part of these family planning choices and it’s time Republicans join us in supporting this safe and responsible means of preventing unintended pregnancies.”
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“It is unacceptable that a survivor of rape or incest can be denied access to emergency contraception in the emergency room, and therefore forced to carry a pregnancy caused by her attacker,” Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards said in a statement. “Decisions about emergency contraception, like all forms of birth control, should be between a woman and her doctor, not her pharmacist, her boss, or her Congressman.”
The bill may face opposition from congressional Republicans, and comes just two months before the midterm elections, in which many expect women to be a decisive voting bloc.
Write to Charlotte Alter at charlotte.alter@time.com. |
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued a decision freeing businesses that provide free Wi-Fi internet access to their customers from being held responsible for copyright infringement committed by their patrons. The decision by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg serves as a new precedent in case law across the European Union.
In 2010, Sony had brought legal proceedings against a shopkeeper in Germany after a customer used free internet access to illegally download a music album covered by Sony's copyright stipulations.
The court found that the owner of the business had no say in the perpetrator's decision to illegally download the data in question.
The European Court of Justice did concede, however, that those providing free online access could be obliged secure their networks with a password or to have users sign in with their names to establish their identities.
'Partial win'
The district court in Munich, which initially was in charge of the case, had turned to the CJEU to ask for assistance in the case, as the alleged copyright infringement was covered by European law.
The owner of the shop meanwhile commented that he found the court decision to be "disappointing" because it would serve as a further hindrance to establishing free Wi-Fi across Europe. He referred to the ruling as a "partial win."
ss/kms (dpa, epd, AFP) |
Our economic future looks increasingly rocky. But thanks to a hapless government, many Australians remain blissfully unaware, writes Ian McAuley.
A cynic might believe that the government has deliberately concentrated its embarrassments in one short period in order to distract attention from a flow of bad economic news and a swag of unpopular policy proposals.
The government has been doing some hard travelling – the Abbott-Turnbull stoush over pre-selection, Sinodinos’s hints about the return of Abbott as Prime Minister, Gleeson’s resignation and the revelation of Paul Grimes’ sacking. That all follows the government’s “gun week”, and has continued to push economics off the mainstream media’s front pages.
The bad economic news started in late September when the ABS released housing price data, showing that our housing boom shows no sign of cooling.
Almost everyone who isn’t a property speculator or a member of the Coalition front bench warns that the longer the bubble expands the worse will be the consequences when it collapses. But Treasurer Morrison’s response was a speech dismissing the influence of tax-privileged property “investors”, defending negative gearing and suggesting that the solution lies in states reducing regulation and releasing more land on the margins of our already over-sprawled cities.
Then, on October 20, the ABS released September labour force data, revealing a one-month loss of 53,000 full-time jobs (confirming a trend evident for the last year) and a continuing fall in the participation rate. For an in-depth analysis of the labour force, I commend Greg Jericho’s Guardian article “How the unemployment rate hides what is happening in the economy”: drawing on ABS data it reveals some worrying trends that the government would prefer not to talk about.
To cap it off, last Wednesday saw the release of the September quarter Consumer Price Index, revealing CPI inflation of 1.3 per cent over the year. In times past governments would have been thrilled by a low CPI, but one doesn’t have to drill down very far to see what lies behind these headline figures.
There have been big price rises in electricity (remember Abbott’s promise when he repealed the carbon tax?), health care, and school education. These are all areas where privatisation and cuts in public funding have forced more costs on to consumers – often the most vulnerable. As Miriam Lyons and I point out, we pay a high price for the conservatives’ obsession with “small government”.
These high price rises are offset by price falls or price stagnation in the rest of the economy. It looks like the 2015 Christmas sales will morph into the 2016 Christmas and post-Christmas sales.
Undeterred by signs of a languishing economy, however, the government has pressed ahead with its poorly-considered proposals on paid parental leave and taxes on young visitors on working holidays (perhaps they’re really trying to protect us from young foreigners who will corrupt our native youth with stories about free universities and generous child care).
News of the collapse of Senator Bob Day’s building company and illegal operations by Melbourne property developers who destroyed a heritage building without approval has not deterred the government from pushing ahead with its proposal to resurrect the Australian Building and Construction Commission – a body with powers that override the normal safeguards of the law, that in its time did nothing to resolve the systemic problems in the industry and that focussed its attention almost entirely on the building unions.
Undaunted, the government is once again pressing for company tax cuts – cuts which, because of our dividend imputation system, would be of most benefit to foreign firms.
These cuts attempt to prolong the life of an economic model that may have had some justification in the 1950s, but which is now taking us towards a national debt crisis. That model relies on foreign investment inflows to support a deficit on current account, or in simple terms, borrowing from the rest of the world to support our material standard of living.
It got us some car plants and it got Menzies through a few elections, all the while accumulating a huge foreign debt – overwhelmingly private debt – and a liability to pay dividends to foreign investors.
Looking at the past week, our cynic may be forgiven for thinking that Turnbull has cleverly kept Barnaby Joyce and George Brandis in his cabinet as foils to make Morrison (and himself) look competent. But when conspiracy theories and sheer stupidity are competing explanations for bad policies, one should always go for stupidity, particularly in an outfit as disunited as the Turnbull Government.
In contrast to the din of confusion and political spin emanating from Canberra, the last few days have seen two significant non-partisan contributions to our economic debate.
One is from France’s Thomas Piketty, here to speak at Monash University and the Sydney Opera House, warning about the consequences of widening inequality. His 2014 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century carries a plain message: when the rate of return on capital is greater than economic growth, inequalities in wealth go on expanding, wrecking any principles of meritocracy, and leading eventually to social disruption (his Lateline interview with Emma Alberici conveys his main warnings on inequality). His book was prescient, because when he wrote it there was no sign of the coming Brexit and Trump phenomena.
Australia fits Piketty’s model of a country with self-perpetuating inequality. Thirty-five years of neoliberal policies have seen widening disparities in income, leading to widening (and comparatively intractable) disparities in wealth. Ours is no longer the land of the “fair go”; rather, we have become a land where there is little connection between one’s contribution and reward – a connection without which any economic system, capitalist or socialist, will fail.
Piketty suggests we re-introduce inheritance taxes (we had state inheritance taxes until 1977 when Queensland’s premier Bjelke-Petersen abolished them, leaving other states with no option but to follow suit). They would go some way to rectifying intergenerational inequities and would provide some protection against the development of a plutocracy sustained by inheritance.
Inheritance taxes send a message that just as society has contributed to whatever wealth we may have accumulated over our lifetime, we have an obligation back to society, not just to our immediate descendants.
They also remind us to bring up our children as members of society, rather than as members of a small family tribe. The term “family first” is not only the name of a far-right political party; it is also shorthand for the idea ,“Look after #1, #2, #3, #4 and perhaps the family dog, but don’t become concerned with anyone beyond the white picket fence – young people struggling to buy a house, people living in impoverished rural communities, refugees….”
The other policy contribution, along related lines, is from Tim Costello, releasing the Community Council’s Report The Australia We Want. In its introduction, Costello asks us to “imagine a humane and sustainable Australia, where people are more connected and engaged in the communities they live and work in, and where this involvement is reflected in the way we form policies and laws”.
Costello’s message is that we may be more decent and caring than the people we elect to our governments, in a process manipulated by rent seekers and other narrowly-focussed interest groups. In his Radio National interview introducing the work he stresses that life is “not just about me”. Rather “we’re in this together”, and we need a sense of connectedness.
It’s refreshing when someone from a faith-based background reminds us of our community obligations. After all, nowhere in the New Testament or in other religions’ scriptures do we find the term “family values” or the notion that we should confine our affections to our small tribe. In fact the message is entirely the opposite.
And it’s a welcome contrast to the espoused philosophy of Turnbull and his colleagues (many of whom also claim to have faith-based values) who assume that public policy must be based on the premise of individual short-term greed.
The Australia we want is something better – far better – than is envisaged by those who dominate our political debate. |
CRAIG Lingard believes League One is the most competitive it has ever been as Cougars prepare for a difficult run-in to the regular campaign.
Victory over London Skolars last weekend kept them on course to secure a top-eight finish before the third tier splits into two.
But Keighley still have work to do with Sunday's home game against York City Knights followed by consecutive trips to Cumbria to face Whitehaven and Workington before ending with a visit from Oxford.
As expected, new team Toronto Wolfpack have swept all before them at the top, while Haven and Barrow look like they are battling it out for second place.
But just six points separate fourth-placed York from 13th-placed North Wales Crusaders as the race ahead of the Super 8s intensifies.
Lingard, whose side sit in sixth spot after their 45-26 win over Skolars, said: "This is the most competitive League One has ever been. There's never been a Toronto before and three Cumbrian teams in there.
"Then you’ve got the heartland teams, including ourselves, and expansion teams, who have had five, six, seven years to get going and are now finding their feet and stronger.
"Every team in the league has got players who have ability and like to play a bit of rugby.
"If the defence is good then they are going to score points against you, so it is very difficult at the minute.
"You have no God-given right to be in the top eight or the top four. You've got to fight for every point you get."
With neighbours Bradford Bulls looking like they are heading for relegation to League One – assuming the RFL keep the current structure in place – Lingard expects next season to be just as tough.
He said: "As it stands at the minute, you'll have Bradford and Dewsbury coming down from the Championship.
"You’ll have Toronto going up and one of the other big teams but they look like they could be replaced by big teams coming down.
"It’s not going to get any easier, so it's massively important for us to try and get out of this league as soon as we can and try to establish ourselves in the Championship."
Sunday's visitors York will provide a stern test, having won six on the bounce before only losing to second-placed Whitehaven 18-16 last weekend.
James Ford's men are currently two points above Cougars but victory for the hosts would see them leapfrog Knights. Keighley have the fourth-best points difference, with only Toronto and Barrow having scored more.
Lingard said: "The points difference we have got at the minute is almost worth an extra point."
Meanwhile, Josh Casey has joined Hemel Stags on an initial month’s loan.
The centre made his senior debut in the March defeat to Toronto Wolfpack but has struggled to cement a place in the first team and has been loaned out to gain more experience.
Casey made his debut for the Stags in Sunday's 32-20 home defeat to the All Golds. |
Welcome to my set review, a ritual I revisit every time a new set is released. I go through the entire set, rating each card on the following guidelines:
Constructed
5.0: Multi-format All-Star (and undoubtedly worth too much money). [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card]. [card]Tarmogoyf[/card].
4.0: Format staple. [card] Mana Leak [/card][card]Cavern of Souls[/card]. [card]Moorland Haunt[/card].
3.5: Good in multiple archetypes, but not a format staple. [card]Inkmoth Nexus[/card]. [card]Primeval Titan[/card] [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card].
3.0: Archetype staple. [card]Gut Shot[/card]. [card]Tempered Steel[/card].
2.5: Role-player in some decks, but not quite a staple. [card]Think Twice[/card]. [card]Curse of Death’s Hold[/card].
2.0: Niche card. Sideboard or currently unknown archetype. [card]Celestial Purge[/card]. (Bear in mind that many cards fall into this category, although explanation of why is obviously important)
1.0 It has seen play once. [card]One with Nothing[/card]. (I believe it was tech vs Owling Mine, although fairly suspicious tech at that.)
Limited
5.0: I will always play this card. Period.
4.5: I will almost always play this card, regardless of what else I get.
4.0: I will strongly consider playing this as the only card of its color.
3.5: I feel a strong pull into this card’s color.
3.0: This card makes me want to play this color. (Given that I’m playing that color, I will play this card 100% of the time.)
2.5: Several cards of this power level start to pull me into this color. If playing that color, I essentially always play these. (Given that I’m playing that color, I will play this card 90% of the time.)
2.0: If I’m playing this color, I usually play these. (70%)
1.5: This card will make the cut into the main deck about half the times I play this color. (50%)
1.0: I feel bad when this card is in my main deck. (30%)
0.5: There are situations where I might sideboard this into my deck, but I’ll never start it. (10%)
0.0: I will never put this card into my deck (main deck or after sideboarding). (0%).
As usual, I caution you to both look at the rating and read the comments, since even cards rated the same might have very different evaluations. Enjoy!
Alchemist’s Apprentice
Constructed: 1.0
When this card cost half as much and made you discard, it was way more interesting. Given that this isn’t enabling anything too broken, it’s just a really bad Elvish Visionary. There will be no turning lead into gold with this one.
Limited: 1.5
This reminds me of one of my favorite cards from Champions block drafts, Floating-Dream Zubera. All I wanted to do was chump and draw a card, and this does that quite admirably. It unfortunately can’t block, trade, and draw, but it’ll still gain you three to five life against a deck with groundpounders, which at the least makes it a sideboard card. No matter what, you won’t pay a huge price if you play this and it isn’t great, since it cycles.
Amass the Components
Constructed: 2.0
I guess this will still be legal when Guillaume Wafo-Tapa gets unbanned, which probably makes this way more playable than it would be otherwise; the man has never met a Sift he didn’t like. For those of us who operate in a world where you get to play colors other than blue, this might actually still be reasonable. It draws three cards, which isn’t too shabby, and even though bottoming a card is worse than discarding, this still helps you amass many of the components you will need to win the game.
Limited: 3.5
Common card draw that lets you peel three or more has always been great, and this is no exception. Unless the format is blisteringly fast, which it doesn’t appear it is, I’m going to be picking this quite early and amassing as many as I can.
Arcane Melee
Constructed: 1.0
TSG and I discussed this at length on Magic TV, and I’m afraid my opinion hasn’t changed. While the text on this card is obviously quite dangerous, I’m certain that it’s costed in such a way that it won’t be absurd in any format. Statements like that tend to be dangerous, but in any format with a ton of Rituals, you can play Past in Flames, and playing this as a value card just doesn’t work. Cards like this are cool, and good for the game, but rightfully shouldn’t show up in Constructed very often.
Limited: 0.0
Unless there is a Dampen Thought deck I’m missing, this just isn’t a realistic card to ever play.
Captain of the Mists
Constructed: 2.0
El Capitan here has a glimmer of hope of being played in Block. He’s got a reasonably-sized body, a decent ability, and can both attack and tap down their biggest threat. All of those things in concert may make a role-player in a U/W Humans deck of some kind, even if it isn’t the most likely outcome.
Limited: 3.5
Tappers don’t come much more solid than this, as the Captain sails back and forth from the front lines to defensive duty. He’s obviously sick even without Humans, and it won’t take much (or any) effort to pick up a couple over the course of the draft.
Crippling Chill
Constructed: 1.0
If this cost two mana and could target lands, you could cripple their mana development or stop two attacks, which would be pretty sweet. At two mana, it might even be good just targeting creatures, as a cycling kind of Vapor Snag. It’s funny how close this is to being a playable while at the same time having absolutely no chance. A mana is a big game, and on cantripping value cards it is even more impactful.
Limited: 3.0
This is by no means an all-star, but I doubt I’d ever cut it from a blue deck. It’ll be pretty hard not to get some mileage out of it, and at the very worst it stops two attacks. The more I think about it, the more I like this card. Maybe it is an all-star, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it ended up being one of the better commons in blue.
Deadeye Navigator
Constructed: 2.0
So white gets Restoration Angel, and blue gets this. Seems fair. I guess that’s why this is the Angel set, though this card isn’t completely dead. I have an eye for value, and if you can untap with this, it opens up a whole buffet of possibilities. It protects itself, something else, and given enough mana, a lot of something elses. Any card with this kind of recursive power shouldn’t be ignored, and despite the fairly conservative mana cost, I like it.
Limited: 4.0
It does not seem at all unrealistic to get to the point where this just dominates the board, especially since there are so few ways to kill it even when you are tapped out. If you can wait until eight mana, all the better, but even if you can’t, things are likely going to be fine. This card seems awesome to play with, and will undoubtedly lead to some sweet stories.
Devastation Tide
Constructed: 1.0
A miracle card where I don’t really want to cast either half? I’m devastated. Would it really have been that bad if this was an instant? The answer is probably yes, since I can’t imagine it wasn’t tested as such, and as a result we get a potentially powerful card instead of a slightly better potentially powerful card. This doesn’t seem like it gives enough value to really be awesome, and if I’m Miracle’ing something like this, why not just make it Terminus?
Limited: 1.0
I’m thoroughly underwhelmed by this. Sorcery speed bounce that hits everything is pretty hard to get value from, and unlike an actual Wrath, if you slowroll guys and cast this, you’ve accomplished nothing. If you have a super slow deck that is absurd in the lategame, maybe you play this is as a stall mechanism, but that isn’t going to be the normal case.
Dreadwaters
Constructed: 1.0
It’s cards like this that make me dread set reviews.
Limited: 1.0-3.0
Unsurprisingly, this card is absolute garbage until it becomes the best card in your deck. Where on the scale that deck falls isn’t something I’ll be able to tell without drafting it, but I can say that mill decks are always exciting. Hopefully this is a good niche archetype, like Mill in triple INN instead of a trap, like Mill in M12.
Elgaud Shieldmate
Constructed: 2.0
As gaudy as a 2/3 for four isn’t, this is definitely an interesting card for Constructed. Its natural habitat certainly appears to be the land of 40 card decks, but double hexproof isn’t something to be shrugged off so easily. I’m not optimistic about playing a good creature, having it survive, and then landing a 4-drop, so hopefully someone can solve that equation. Perhaps Birthing Pod is involved, perhaps I’m just crazy, or perhaps this is going to run rampant in conjunction with some absurd creature (I’d bet on option two).
Limited: 3.0
With the dearth of removal in this set, this card might not be as awesome as in others, though it still has good enough stats to make it interesting. Most decks will have some targeted effects, and even beyond that actual protection, knowing that your guy is safe lets you make plays that would normally be too risky. That isn’t an insignificant advantage, and this should be a solid pick.
Favorable Winds
Constructed: 2.5
Fine, I guess banning Lingering Souls was probably for the best. That would have been absurd in block, and this card might still be great, powering up Midnight Haunting and Drogskol Captain, among others. In Standard, we have a wealth of Anthems to choose from, with this, Honor of the Pure, and Intangible Virtue all somewhat overlapping. Now Wrapter can put back together his Delver Honor of the Pure deck, and this time it won’t be (as) ridiculous. It’s hard to imagine that there won’t be some spots for this, and already it’s probably being tried out in Spirit Delver decks.
Limited: 2.0
It doesn’t take many flying creatures before this goes from “playable” to “awesome”, with the added bonus of it being awesome in decks that are already pretty sick. Granted, 5/5 Angels might not need +1/+1 quite as much as other fliers, but there are plenty of smaller fliers that are going to be favorably affected. This card may as well have cost UW to cast, given how it’s likely to play out in Limited.
Fettergeist
Constructed: 2.0
Has it really been that long since Serendib Efreet was awesome?
Trick question; Serendib Efreet is always going to be awesome, though at this point it clearly isn’t good.
I could see this as a Steel Golem-esque creature in some control decks, and with the Pro Tour just weeks away, my thoughts naturally keep drifting to Block. The rate on this is good enough that it being a real card seems more likely than not.
Limited: 3.5
The upkeep on this isn’t irrelevant, but unless you curve a 2-drop into this into a 4-drop, I don’t see it being that horrible. If this is your first play, you don’t pay anything, then you smash for three and play a 4-drop, at which point they are under a ton of pressure. If this is your last play, the mana probably isn’t a huge deal, so it really only screws you when you have the perfect curve, in which case you are probably fine. Long story short, 3/4 fliers are good, and this drawback doesn’t change that.
Fleeting Distraction
Constructed: 1.0
As much as I like value, the effect provided is way too fleeting to be more than just a distraction for your opponent.
Limited: 2.0
I was always a fan of this in Rise draft, even though that was partially due to Kiln Fiend. If you have no combos with the card, it’s just filler, but reasonably filler at that. If you do have some synergies, it’s an easy play, since the worst case scenario just involves you cycling. It turns out that cards with cycling are easy to justify. Who knew?
Galvanic Alchemist
Constructed: 1.0
Some day, there is going to be a sick Alchemist, and I’ll be more than happy to announce that it has finally changed lead into gold. Until then, lead into lead is pretty much all we’ve got.
Limited: 2.0
Horned Turtle I like, even with all that distracting text. The matchup is mainly what is going to determine how good this is, so don’t be afraid to side it out. The ability isn’t even completely irrelevant, since jokes aside, it does threaten to untap your largest guy.
Geist Snatch
Constructed: 1.0
One of the surest ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory is to sit on this turn after turn, losing to opposing Planeswalkers and/or sorceries (not to mention actual efficient creatures).
Limited: 2.5
I warn you not to judge this based on how unplayable Summoner’s Bane was, because that existed in a world of one mana 4/5’s and two mana 5/5’s, a terrible world known as Zendikar. In a reasonable format, a civilized format, I’ll happily draft and play one of these, though playing multiples is probably asking for trouble.
Ghostform
Constructed: 1.0
Even if I didn’t mention how bad spells that reference blocking are, I’m sure you could form your own opinion on this card.
Limited: 1.0
You’ve got to be pretty beatdown before this has a ghost of a chance of getting played, but when you are, it gets the job done.
Ghostly Flicker
Constructed: 1.0
I’m really tempted to talk about how this saves your guys from Wraths, but even my trolling has limits. Unless you manage to live the dream and flicker two value targets, it’s not really going to get the job done in Constructed.
Limited: 1.5
I’d like this more if you could target up to two guys, since needing to have two in play really limits the opportunities you have to play this. Sorry, sorry, couldn’t help myself.
Anyways, this is a fine trick, but it will mostly be a one for one and doesn’t have a ton of offensive potential. It’s going to be very satisfying when you successfully set this up, and against removal-heavy decks, it obviously gains value.
Ghostly Touch
Constructed: 1.0
Well, I think I’m losing my touch. I’ve gotten to the third ghost card in a row, and I just can’t do it.
Limited: 2.0
Ghosts are getting pretty aggressive these days. As a repeatable effect, this is clearly much more dangerous than Ghostform, and can easily lead to pretty hopeless games for your opponent.
Gryff Vanguard
Constructed: 1.0
I’ll mull it over, but I’m drifting towards calling this just unplayable. As much as I like value, you just can’t pay five mana in this day and age and expect things to go well.
Limited: 3.5
How can you resist such value? I know I can’t, and will take this guy whenever I can. Card advantage and large fliers are good, and once you combine the two they are even better.
Havengul Skaab
Constructed: 1.0
Reviewing cards like this is like picking a skaab; painful but ultimately satisfying.
Limited: 1.5
A 4/5 for six is nothing to write home about, but I kind of like the ability. It’s more often a bonus than a drawback, assuming you’re playing him, and worst comes to worst it costs a bit of mana. I wouldn’t play him without good interactions, or if you desperately need the body.
Infinite Reflection
Constructed: 1.0
Upon reflection, the last time I gave a 1 to this kind of card it made infinite copies of Pestermite, but what’s the fun in learning from your mistakes?
Limited: 3.0
I think this card could secretly be a bomb. Slamming this on something scary could be a huge blowout, much like a permanent Overrun, and if this resolves you are left with a good squad even if they later kill the big dude. Plus, it continually provides value, making new monsters every time you play something else. The biggest drawback to this card, and the reason it isn’t a 3.5, is that it’s a win-more. For it to work, you need to untap with something good in play and an actual team, and that is by no means guaranteed.
Into the Void
Constructed: 1.0
I’d avoid this at all costs.
Limited: 3.0
It’s pretty easy to undo their board in one fell swoop, and whether you are defensive or offensive, this will do what you want. Multiple bounce effects have always been good in Limited, and this no exception.
Latch Seeker
Constructed: 1.0
If you are seeking good three-drops for blue, I’d recommend against latching on to this one.
Limited: 3.0
Talk about aggressive. It’s going to be hard to not die to a couple of these, though it being uncommon makes that not incredibly likely. Three-power unblockables are scary.
Lone Revenant
Constructed: 2.0
I hope the Lone Ranger is good, but the lack of evasion is a bit worrisome. Hexproof is awesome, and the Impulse makes this dangerous. If this is the next Morphling, I’ll be quite happy.
Limited: 3.5
Talk about scary! This is the biggest Ophidian I’ve ever seen, and even if you have other guys in play, which you often will, it still is a huge hexproof dude. I wouldn’t call it a bomb rare, but it looks pretty sweet.
Lunar Mystic
Constructed: 2.0
Welcome to value town. An easily-killed 2/2 isn’t something you want to pin all your hopes and dreams on, which is a bit awkward, yet the rewards are definitely there. Untapping with this in play is a big game, and especially in smaller formats *cough* Block *cough*, this looks like a nice build-around.
Limited: 2.5
Seeing as how this is only slightly overcosted, it really only takes one instant before you’ve gotten value, and it stacks up quickly once you cast multiples. I don’t know yet if I’d slam this early, but at this point I probably would, just to see what happens. Eh, who am I kidding? I’m slamming this at basically any point.
Mass Appeal
Constructed: 2.0
At two cards this isn’t great, at three it becomes quite interesting, and at four or more it’s excellent. Whether that makes it a great card, I don’t know, but what it does do is make it worth trying. Gather the Townsfolk in particular makes this appealing, and there’s no way this doesn’t at least warrant some test runs.
Limited: 1.0
The card isn’t bad, but when you want it, you know you want it, and nobody is going to fight you for it. This likely is playable at 10 Humans, and great at 12-13+, but it also heavily depends which Humans they are, taking account their casting costs and likelihood of surviving.
Mist Raven
Constructed: 1.0
Despite how adept this guy is at bouncing, he needs a better body before he becomes a real man o’ war.
Limited: 3.5
Constructed talk aside, this might be the best common Man-o’-war we’ve seen, since not only are you getting the awesome bounce effect, but the body is a real card. Aether Adept was always a high pick, but a 2/2 dork is much different from a 2/2 flier. This is easily one of the best commons, and like most bounce dudes, you can never have too many.
Misthallow Griffin
Constructed: 2.0
At first, I thought this card was just weird. It isn’t undercosted, has a very strange ability, and I couldn’t really fathom what it was doing. I was then enlightened by Caleb Durward, who submitted an article that combos the Griffin plus Food Chain (article is going up Sunday, by the way), which provides infinite mana of any color. That mana can only cast creatures, but Emrakul should do just nicely. He has some other tricks too, but I’ll not spoil the full article.
In non-Legacy formats, I’m still not sure what the Griffin does, since just casting it is certainly not good enough, and having protection from exile effects isn’t a significant bonus. A card this strange probably does something, and maybe even in non-Eternal formats.
Limited: 3.5
This is just a [card]Phantom Monster[/card], plain and simple, but that really is enough for Limited. I suggest that you do a victory dance anytime the exiling ability comes up, which will not be often, if ever.
Nephalia Smuggler
Constructed: 1.0
I like the super-cheap mana cost, and if the ability was a little more aggressively costed, I suspect I’d try and smuggle a few into our playtesting decks. At four mana, I just can’t do it, as much as I like doing tricky things.
Limited: 3.0
This card might not be the nuts, but it’s pretty sweet. It protects your guys from removal and provides infinite (if costly) blockers, with the real value being in recycling ETB abilities. Without any combos, it’s more like a 2.5, and the 3 rating reflects the sheer chance of picking up those combos. Once you already have cards that work with this, feel free to pick it highly.
Outwit
Constructed: 2.0
I like this one. Not only does it do some good things against the kind of decks that deserve to get punished, how awesome is it to straight up Outwit someone. With a different name, this card would be much worse, and as is it seems pretty sweet. I suspect it won’t be played a ton, but it’s nice to have the option.
Limited: 0.5
The odds of siding this in are so low as to be irrelevant, though if it’s free to pick up, you might as well. The first time I cast this in a team draft, everyone is gonna know about it, I’ll guarantee you.
Peel from Reality
Constructed: 1.0
The reality is that this is never going to be good in Constructed; under what circumstances are you going to hope to peel this off the top?
Limited: 2.5
I like this card a lot, but I don’t think it’s quite an auto-include. If your deck has zero ways to abuse it (ETB abilities mainly), and isn’t very fast, this doesn’t do all that much. It is great against removal, so it’s a reasonable card to play, and at the very least you can sideboard it in.
Rotcrown Ghoul
Constructed: 1.0
If I were to give a crown for the most rotten card in the set, this would probably win.
Limited: 1.5
A five-mana 3/3 is never that bad, even if the ability is a blank in most decks. If Dreadwaters makes a mill deck real, that deck will actively want these, unlike the rest of the table.
Scrapskin Drake
Constructed: 1.0
This piece of scrap is about as far from Constructed playable as just about every other Drake. Has there ever been a playable Drake?
Limited: 3.0
The Drake may have his head in the clouds, but he’s still quite the beater. Even defensive decks want him, particularly with how many Angels seem to be running around.
Second Guess
Constructed: 2.0
This is cute, but until Mana Leak leaves, there really is no room for discussion. I would have liked to see this at one mana, but I don’t want to second guess R&D too much, since I assume they tested that and found it lacking.
Limited: 0.5
Unless you have knowledge of your opponent’s deck, I wouldn’t play this, making it a strict sideboard card. It’s just too situational to be good, and counterspells aren’t usually great to begin with. If they ever play a second spell, you basically have to counter it, making this hard to use and providing you with little choice in the matter.
Spectral Prison
Constructed: 1.0
This isn’t quite the same as Ice Cage, with the notable differences being that it just stops untapping and that it takes a spell to knock it off, not just an ability. The main characteristic it does share is that it is not remotely playable.
Limited: 2.5
Stopping a guy from untapping is a reasonable power, even if you have to take a hit before it works. The Prison being broken by spells isn’t all that bad, since it at least takes a card to do so, which makes this a fine card, if not exciting.
Spirit Away
Constructed: 1.0
I’m just about the biggest fan you can find of Volition Reins, and even I don’t like this card. The main drawback is the dealbreaker, and that’s the inability to steal Planeswalkers. Stealing and Ultimate’ing a Planeswalker is the biggest game possible, and this not doing that makes it too weak by far.
Limited: 4.5
This format is going to have to be ridiculously fast before I’m talked out of slamming this every time I see it. Not only does it steal their Angel and upgrade it into a full-on Dragon, it steals their anything and does the same. It is also quite relevant that you can just slam this onto one of your own guys, not that I would ever forfeit value in such an embarrassing way. If this isn’t one of the best cards in the format, I’m going to be very unhappy.
Stern Mentor
Constructed: 1.0
I’m going to give you a stern warning: Do not play this card.
Limited: 3.0
Unlike the rest of the mill cards, I can’t imagine not playing this. It is clearly better in an actual mill deck, but even by itself, it does enough that it’s a real plan. If they don’t kill this, they are getting hit for four cards a turn, and that’s a fast clock. If they do kill it, oh well. In a mill deck, this is a very high pick, and it may well be a reason to draft the deck in the first place.
Stolen Goods
Constructed: 1.0
The idea here is sweet, but it isn’t good. No deck is without it’s cheap utility spells, most of which aren’t exciting, and some of which are downright misses (Mana Leak, anyone?). Even against decks that play huge monsters, there are just too many ways that this goes wrong, despite the possibility of a stolen game or two.
Limited: 0.5
The value here is just too low. Though I doubt I’ll try it, if they somehow have the all-creature/removal deck, with no tricks and few low drops, maybe, just maybe you can go for it. At the very least it’ll be a sweet story, right?
Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
Constructed: 3.0
I have a soft spot for Kamigawa Block. Despite being heralded as one of the worst blocks of all time, I still loved drafting it, and my first good PT finish was with Champions-Betrayers draft. Tamiyo certainly evokes feelings of nostalgia, and her actual mechanics aren’t bad either. I like what she does in control mirrors, and I like how she interacts both with and against Lingering Souls. I’m planning on trying her in multiple decks, and even if she isn’t Gideon Jura (another card she combines very well with), she might be an Elspeth Tirel.
Limited: 4.5
Planeswalkers aren’t known for being bad at Limited, and Tamiyo didn’t come all the way from Kamigawa to not get first-picked. As a combination of Icy Manipulator and Tidings, she does her job, and getting to the can’t-lost ultimate is definitely within grasp.
Tandem Lookout
Constructed: 2.0
The dream of turn two Invisible Stalker, turn three Tandem Lookout is probably a bit ambitious, but any card that instantly replaces itself is worth considering. I’d lookout for sweet combos, since if you can get a few things going, this might just be a good support card. Spirit tokens definitely seem like they have potential, and even if this only sees the light of play in Block, that’s more than most cards.
Limited: 3.0
I like this as pseudo-equipment, sending in guy after guy, curious as to what may occur. Worst comes to worst, the Lookout can pitch in and bring the beats, making this an effective card in the early and late game.
Temporal Mastery
Constructed: 5.0
The next coming of Time Walk! Ban this, ban Brainstorm, and ban Mystical Tutor!
Constructed: 1.0
Completely unplayable, and anyone who tries it is going to lose horribly!
I’ve seen both those reactions, and as usual, the truth lies somewhere in between.
Constructed: 2.5
That may seem like a conservative rating, but I’m a conservative guy. I love that this card was printed, both for excitement value and because it really showcases how Miracle does and doesn’t work. While I don’t think that there is NO risk in printing this, since this could be the card that gets Brainstorm banned, what it won’t do is get Personal Tutor banned. That combo is just the biggest trick I’ve ever seen, and I chuckle every time I hear about Personal Tutor being sold out. There are plenty of unfair things this card can do, and in Legacy, they might well happen a little too often.
In Standard, this won’t be ruining anything. It looks like it could be good, and definitely worth trying, but the sky is most certainly not falling. The highest potential seems to lie with a UR deck featuring this and the Loothouse, plus possibly Thunderous Wrath, just trying to go deep on Miracles. Whether that much durdling actually accomplishes anything is yet to be seen, and I’m interested to watch what happens.
Limited: 0.0
I just don’t see it. The risk of drawing an unplayable 7-drop aren’t outweighed by the times you miracle it, especially since most of those times it’s just going to cycle, and possibly be an Explore. Sorry to be the fun police, but this was not a card designed for Limited.
Vanishment
Constructed: 1.0
The odds of this seeing play seem vanishingly small, especially given that you can just play removal that costs one or two mana all the time.
Limited: 3.5
This being an instant moves it way up in my book, and as a bad Griptide it was already playable. Miracle’ing it out seems awesome, and I’d be happy to run as many of these as I could get my hands on.
Wingcrafter
Constructed: 2.0
Weaker one-drops than this have seen play, and with Curiosity, in the format, you never know. I really doubt this shows up anywhere, but someone may craft the perfect blue aggro deck.
Limited: 2.0
In an aggressive enough deck, this seems passable. A 1/1 flier is nothing to write home about; granting your best creature at any moment flying is. People will play this more than they should, but that isn’t a huge mistake.
Top 5 Commons
5. Crippling Chill
4. Scrapskin Drake
3. Amass the Components
2. Gryff Vanguard
1. Mist Raven
These top three commons are insane, and I’d be shocked if they didn’t all make it onto a list of top commons in the set, overall. The 4th and 5th are significantly worse, but still solid, which makes blue look very powerful. Looks like things are as they should be…
Top 5 Constructed Cards
5. Deadeye Navigator
4. Misthallow Griffin
3. Favorable Winds
2. Temporal Mastery
1. Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
Getting a nice planeswalker is always awesome, and nobody can argue that Time Walk isn’t powerful, so blue has that at least. Favorable Winds isn’t the most exciting, but will definitely see play, after which things drop off a little bit. The last two cards are a bit wackier, with the Griffin appearing in a prospective combo deck and the Navigator just looking sweet to me. Hey, it’s my review, right?
I’ll be back on Sunday with black, where due to a family visit, I’m missing my first prerelease since Mirrodin. Despite my set reviews not being done by the prerelease, you should just approach the event with exploration in mind, and not worry about what I would have said. That, or just play blue-white, since those are what I’ve done so far!
Enjoy the prerelease,
LSV |
We know that a jury found he was guilty of violating securities laws. One of his subordinates, a Swede named Jon Horvath, testified that he believed Steinberg wanted him to "cultivate sources of non-public information"—although he admitted that Steinberg never directly asked him to break the law.
But even if we agree with the jury on the facts, it's worth asking the deeper question: Why is this a crime?
In many ways, Steinberg's is a pretty typical insider trading case. He was accused of trading the stock of Dell and Nvidia after obtaining information about their quarterly earnings of prior to their release to the public. Horvath supposedly passed the earnings information on to Steinberg, after having obtained it from a group of hedge fund analysts who apparently got it from someone inside the company.
Which makes this a very good case to investigate what we're doing when we criminalize insider trading. There's no need for fancy legal theories here. This is a case of getting confidential corporate information and using it to trade. And it's very hard to figure out exactly what harm has been done.
(Read more: Why insider trading should be legal)
Who was the victim here? In some cases involving tips about confidential information, a case can plausibly be made that the victim is the company whose confidential information is leaked. Leaks of merger negotiations, for example, might harm the companies involved by undermining the deal before it is ready to be announced to the company.
But it's hard to see how Steinberg's acquisition of Dell's earnings a day early hurt the company in any way. His trading may or may not have moved the stock price a bit but the actual release of the earnings moved it more.
Does Dell have an intellectual property right in its earnings? We don't really recognize all corporate secrets or corporate information as protected intellectual property, much less property whose unauthorized use gives rise to criminal sanctions. There are certain categories—trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights—that are protected. But earnings aren't trade secrets. Dell released them the very next day.
So were the shareholders the victims? Not one shareholder of Dell or Nvidia was made worse off by Steinberg's trades, much less by his acquisition of the information.
What about the people who bought the shares of Dell on the day Steinberg was selling? Again, they would have been in exactly the same position regardless of whether Steinberg traded or not. Arguably, they were able to buy at a slightly better price because Steinberg's trades would have pushed the stock slightly in the direction the stock actually moved when the earnings became public.
You'll sometimes hear it said that the people on the other side of Steinberg's trades were harmed because they wouldn't have bought the shares if they had the same information he had. But that's precisely the wrong test. The question isn't what would they have done if they also had inside information. It's what would they have done if Steinberg hadn't had his information? The answer is: exactly what they did anyway. Steinberg's possession of inside information didn't affect them one bit.
That's hard for people to grasp so let's run through a couple of scenarios.
Let's say Dell is going to announce disappointing earnings and no one has the information. Steinberg holds his shares and Mr. Retail Investor buys some the day before earnings. That the "no leaks, no insider trading" situation. Mr. RI suffers a loss of, say, $5 a share when the news comes out.
Now lets say Steinberg gets a hold of the earnings report but doesn't trade. Mr. RI buys some the day before earnings and suffers a loss of $5 a share when the news comes out. That's "yes leaks, no insider trading" situation. The outcome for the uninformed investor is exactly the same.
In the third situation, Steinberg gets hold of the earnings report and trades. Mr. RI buys some and suffers a loss of $5 a share when the news comes out. Actually, if Steinberg sold enough to move the market, perhaps Mr. RI's loss is a little less because the price would be lower when he bought. In any case, there's no plausible way Mr. RI is worse off because of the insider trading. The loss is the same or perhaps a bit less.
What's really going on, I think, is something simpler, more primitive. In some way that is difficult to articulate, trading based on confidential corporate information seems unfair. Somewhere in our gut, this seems wrong. Morally repulsive. We don't think that someone should be able to make a lot of money through something so unfair. So we've banned it.
In other words, our ban on insider trading isn't really about protecting investors or making markets function better. It's about expressing a moral view, much like we do with Blue Laws that ban the sale of alcohol on Sundays.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with encoding morality into securities laws. But should Steinberg really be facing a possible sentence of 85 years for violating our moral sentiments? |
Spanish Test: Mediterranean Diet Shines In Clinical Study
Enlarge this image toggle caption hiphoto40/iStockphoto.com hiphoto40/iStockphoto.com
Editor's note: On June 13, 2018, the New England Journal of Medicine retracted the study that was the subject of this story. You can read about the reasons here.
Pour on the olive oil in good conscience, and add some nuts while you're at it.
A careful test of the so-called Mediterranean diet involving more than 7,000 people at a high risk of having heart attacks and strokes found the diet reduced them when compared with a low-fat diet. A regular diet of Mediterranean cuisine also reduced the risk of dying.
The findings, published online by The New England Journal of Medicine, come from a study conducted right in the heart of Mediterranean country: Spain.
A group of men and women, ages 55 to 80 at the start of the study, were randomly assigned to a low-fat diet or one of two variations of the Mediterranean diet: one featuring a lot of extra-virgin olive oil (more than a quarter cup a day) and the other including lots of nuts (more than an ounce a day of walnuts, almonds and hazelnuts).
The Mediterranean diet is rich in fish, grains, nuts, fruits and vegetables. The diet is low in dairy products, red meat and processed foods.
In this study, funded mainly by the Spanish government, the researchers made sure people got regular training sessions in the particulars of each diet. They also checked people's actual consumption of olive oil and nuts with lab tests.
One thing the researchers didn't do was set any limits on calories or targets for exercise.
While lots of research has found benefits from the Mediterranean diet, many of the studies have observed what people have eaten and looked for associations. One of this study's strengths is that it randomly assigned people at high risk of developing cardiovascular disease to diets that stood to help them.
The study was stopped early (after a median follow-up of 4.8 years) because the benefits from the Mediterranean diet were already becoming apparent. Overall, the people consuming the diets rich in olive oil or nuts had about a 30 percent lower risk of having a heart attack, stroke or dying from a cardiovascular cause.
In absolute terms, there were about 8 of those problems for every 1,000 person-years in the Mediterranean diet groups compared with 11 per 1,000 person-years in the low-fat diet group.
How does the Mediterranean diet work? The prevailing theory is that it lowers bad cholesterol and triglycerides while increasing protective good cholesterol. It may also also help the body's ability to process sugar. |
Using productive farmland to grow crops for food instead of fuel is more energy efficient, Michigan State University scientists concluded, after analyzing 17 years' worth of data to help settle the food versus fuel debate.
"It's 36 percent more efficient to grow grain for food than for fuel," said Ilya Gelfand, an MSU postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the study. "The ideal is to grow corn for food, then leave half the leftover stalks and leaves on the field for soil conservation and produce cellulosic ethanol with the other half."
Other studies have looked at energy efficiencies for crops over shorter time periods, but this MSU study is the first to consider energy balances of an entire cropping system over many years. The results are published in the April 19 online issue of the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
"It comes down to what's the most efficient use of the land," said Phil Robertson, University Distinguished Professor of crop and soil sciences and one of the paper's authors. "Given finite land resources, will it be more efficient to use productive farmland for food or fuel? One compromise would be to use productive farmland for both -- to use the grain for food and the other parts of the plant for fuel where possible. Another would be to reserve productive farmland for food and to grow biofuel grasses -- cellulosic biomass -- on less productive land."
He, Gelfand and Sieglinde Snapp, another co-author and an MSU associate professor of crop and soil sciences, analyzed data collected from 1989 to 2007 at the W.K. Kellogg Long Term Ecological Research site. That National Science Foundation-funded project studies ecology and environmental biology to provide a better understanding of both natural and managed systems. It is the only agricultural program in the 26-site NSF national LTER network.
The scientists compared the energy inputs and outputs of producing corn, soybeans and wheat grown using four systems: conventional tillage, no-till, low chemical input and organic, and then using all harvested plant material for either food or biofuel production. They also looked at energy balances for growing alfalfa, an important forage plant that can be used either for biofuel or for beef cattle feed.
The analysis showed that using no-till production to grow grain for food was the most energy-efficient system for food or fuel production. Avoiding plowing with no-till management reduces tractor fuel use during production.
Producing a kilogram of corn for human food provides more energy than converting the corn to either ethanol by processing or to meat by feeding it to animals. Growing alfalfa for biofuel is 60 percent more efficient than using it as cattle feed, according to the study.
Robertson and Gelfand also are members of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, a partnership between Michigan State and the University of Wisconsin-Madison funded by the U.S. Department of Energy to conduct basic research aimed at solving some of the most complex problems in converting natural materials to energy.
The U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 calls for biofuels to comprise 22 percent of the nation's transportation fuels by 2022.
"This research is aimed at policymakers who have to decide how and where biofuels should be grown and the best way to encourage farmers to follow those suggestions," Robertson said.
Research by MSU agricultural economics professor Scott Swinton earlier found that the most profitable cellulosic biofuel crop right now is corn stalks and leaves.
"Our research suggests that this is an energy-efficient strategy as well, so long as the grain is used for food," Robertson said. "But there are not enough corn stalks to meet expected energy needs and federal policy also may decide to offer incentives to grow crops that offer more environmental benefits than corn, including incentives to grow grasses on less productive land.
"The promise of biofuels made from biomass is huge, from both climate mitigation and economic perspectives," he continued. "But the promise could come up short if we don't pay attention to details such as the land on which they are grown."
The research is funded by the GLBRC, the NSF and the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station. |
Washington (CNN) — President Donald Trump's senior aide Jared Kushner and ousted adviser Michael Flynn met with the Russian ambassador to the United States at a time when the Trump administration's relationship with the Russians was under close scrutiny.
Kushner and Flynn sat down in December at Trump Tower with Sergey Kislyak , according to a senior administration official, who described it as an "introductory meeting" and "kind of an inconsequential hello."
The meeting lasted for about 10 minutes, the official added.
Flynn was fired from his role as a national security adviser after he misled the administration about his conversations with Kislyak, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday said he would recuse himself from investigations into the Trump campaign relationship with Russia after news emerged that he too had spoken privately with the ambassador.
Kushner's involvement in a meeting was first reported by The New Yorker, and Flynn's by The New York Times.
The administration official disputed the idea that accepting a meeting with the Russian ambassador could be cause for concern in light of the discussion about Russian meddling in the US election , characterizing the meeting as merely an attempt to meet key international players during the transition to power. The official added that Kushner met with dozens of other ambassadors.
Another national security adviser to the Trump campaign, J.D. Gordon, also disclosed Thursday that he had met with Kislyak, this time during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July. That meeting was first reported by USA Today
Gordon told CNN that along with national security advisers Carter Page and Walid Phares, Gordon stressed to the Russian envoy that he would like to improve relations with Russia. Gordon added that at no time did any inappropriate chatter come up about colluding with the Russians to aid the Trump campaign.
"This is not any different than anything I said publicly and on panels," Gordon said.
Gordon had advocated for language in the GOP platform that the Ukrainians not be armed in their battle against pro-Russian separatists, an effort was ultimately successful. But Gordon says he was simply advocating what Trump himself had expressed -- that he did not wish to see major war break out over the situation in Ukraine.
In a statement to CNN, Page said he would not comment on any meetings and added that he "never did anything improper" with regard to Russia.
Page did confirm that he met with Kislyak in Cleveland, however, in an interview with MSNBC's Chris Hayes on Thursday night.
"I do not deny that," Page said. |
It’s an indication of what now seems an almost immutable law of the Trump presidency. There are signs that Mr. Trump’s support among Republican leaders and some Republican voters is weakening. But in an increasingly tribal America, with people on the left and the right getting information from different sources and seeing the same facts in different ways, it reflects the way Mr. Trump has become in many ways both symbol and chief agitator of a divided nation.
Moral outrage at Mr. Trump’s response to Charlottesville continues to glow white hot, but it has a largely partisan tinge.
From Ms. Hicks’s perspective, the president simply pointed out a fact: Leftists bore some responsibility for the violence, too. Of course, Nazis and white supremacists are bad, she said. But she does not believe Mr. Trump has any affinity for them. He said so himself. But she is exasperated that a significant part of the country seems to think otherwise. The week’s frenzied headlines read to her like bulletins from another planet.
“I feel like I am in a bizarro universe where no one but me is thinking logically,” she said. “We have gone so off the rails of what this conversation is about.”
Ms. Hicks, who is black and grew up in Charlotte, N.C., welcomes the public soul-searching on the meaning of Confederate monuments. She believes that the statues were erected to intimidate black people and that they should be taken down. But instead of focusing on that, she sees opponents of Mr. Trump focusing on Mr. Trump.
“This is not about me as a black person, and my history,” she said. “This is about this president and wanting to take him down because you don’t like him.”
Mr. Bannon’s departure was more noise that didn’t mean much, she said. “The show is going to go on.”
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Much of what powers the love for Mr. Trump among his core supporters is his boxer’s approach to the political class in Washington and to the news media, a group that in their eyes has approached them with a double standard and a sneering sense of superiority for years.
Larry Laughlin, a retired businessman from a Minneapolis suburb, compares Mr. Trump to a high school senior who could “walk up to the table with the jocks and the cheerleaders and put them in their place.” That is something that the “nerds and the losers, whose dads are unemployed and moms are working in the cafeteria,” could never do. Mr. Trump may be rich, he said, but actually belonged at the nerd table.
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“The guys who wouldn’t like me wouldn’t like Trump,” he said. “The guys who were condescending to him were condescending to me.
“I feel like I’m watching my uncle up there. Where me and Chuck Schumer — that’s like going to the dentist,” he added, referring to the Democratic leader in the Senate.
Gregory Kline, 46, a lawyer in Severna Park, Md., who is a Republican, said he did not vote for Mr. Trump but understands that part of the president’s support comes from fury at the left, particularly the media. When there is an attack by Muslim terrorists, for example, the media reaches for pundits who say most Muslims are good. But when it is a white supremacist, “every conservative is lumped in with him,” he said.
“It’s not that people are deaf and dumb and don’t see it,” he said of Mr. Trump’s sometimes erratic behavior. “It’s that they don’t care. I’ve heard rational people I really respect make the craziest apologies for this president because they are sick of getting beat on and they are happy he’s fighting back.”
Is there anything Mr. Trump could do that would change the minds of his supporters? For the most loyal, probably not. A recent Monmouth University poll found that, of the current 41 percent of Americans who approve of the job he is doing, 61 percent say they cannot see Mr. Trump doing anything that would make them disapprove of him. (A similar share of the other side says there is nothing Mr. Trump could do — other than resigning — to get them to like him.)
But for many others, support is conditional. (Mr. Trump’s poll numbers have dropped considerably since he took office in January.) Michael Dye, a 52-year-old engineer who is the treasurer for the Republican Party in Annapolis, Md., said he was “a bit stunned” that Mr. Trump had not focused more on condemning what was a large neo-Nazi march through the middle of the University of Virginia, Mr. Dye’s alma mater.
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“At best it is naïve to think that the people showing up for the original protest were there simply because they were upset that this statue was being taken down,” said Mr. Dye, who said he voted reluctantly for Mr. Trump.
Of the chant “Jews will not replace us,” he said: “You can argue that it was 10 percent of the crowd. But there are those types in there and I’ve got a problem with that and I wish he’d specified that.”
Even with his reservations, Mr. Dye said he would still vote for Mr. Trump. He wants his party to hold the reins and steer policy, and if Mr. Trump is the only route to that, he will take it.
Partisanship is now so deep that what we see depends entirely on who is looking. So when Mr. Trump said there had been “violence on both sides,” Democrats — and some Republicans — heard a dangerous moral equivalence between neo-Nazis and the people who opposed them. But for many Trump supporters, his words appealed to a basic sense of fairness.
“Anyone who was fair-minded could see that there was violence on both sides,” said John McIntosh, 76, who lives in New Bern, N.C., and voted for Mr. Trump. He said that did not excuse the driver of the car that killed a counter protester and injured many others.
When those who were horrified tried to convince those who were not, it did not go well.
“Everybody is like, how can you not see it, he’s a total white supremacist, a total Nazi,” said Debra Skoog, a retired executive in Minneapolis and a lifelong Democrat who voted for Mr. Trump. “I just don’t see it that way. I don’t find his language as incriminating as some people do.”
Yascha Mounk, a political scientist at Harvard University who writes about democracy, said partisanship in the United States today is dangerously deep.
“It’s now at a stage where a lot of Americans have such a loyalty to their political tribe that they are willing to go along with deeply undemocratic behavior,” he said. “If their guy says, ‘I think we should push back the election for a few years because of a possible terrorist attack,’ I fear that a significant part of the population would go along with it.”
And in a polarized nation, many see a moment, full of passion on both sides, in which actions like taking down statues in the dead of night — as happened in Baltimore on Wednesday — are just bound to lead to more division.
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“People who see this stuff going down the memory hole as quickly as it is happening feel unsettled by it,” Mr. Kline said. “The left doesn’t realize that the reaction a lot of people would have is to sit back and say, ‘Wait a minute, what’s going on here?’ ” |
Why did the US launch an airstrike on a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in Afghanistan, killing 22 people, including three children?
The Pentagon has changed its story and now calls the attack a mistake. The Justice Department is investigating. And Doctors Without Borders says the incident may constitute a war crime, an assertion that rankles some experts and has provoked a spirited discussion on Reddit.
“Under the rules of international humanitarian law, a hospital is a hospital and the people inside are patients — to target a medical facility in this way is a violation of that, whatever the circumstances,” Vickie Hawkins, executive director of the UK branch of Doctors Without Borders, tells The Takeaway. “The statements that have been coming out of the Afghan government in the past 24 hours would lead us to believe that there was some kind of intent behind the attack. We can only presume, on this basis, that that constitutes a war crime.”
Join in the conversation Why did the US launch an airstrike on a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in Afghanistan, killing 22 people, including three children? The Pentagon says it was a mistake. Reddit
On Wednesday, the group urged a probe by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission, created by the Geneva Conventions. “It is unacceptable that the bombing of a hospital and the killing of staff and patients can be dismissed as collateral damage or brushed aside as a mistake,” the group's international president, Joanne Liu, said. “This was not just an attack on our hospital. It was an attack on the Geneva Conventions. This cannot be tolerated.”
The US says the strike in Kunduz, which is under investigation, was issued after Afghan forces came under fire near the hospital and then called for help. Nonetheless, hitting the hospital was a mistake, the American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John F. Campbell said. "We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility," Campbell said.
The general said that he was not in a position to provide more details about what happened, including who may have failed to follow military guidelines to avert attacks on hospitals, according to the BBC.
The White House on Tuesday announced that Department of Justice would investigate the air strike.
During a press briefing on Monday, Campbell acknowledged he was taking a different tack from initial statements, "which indicated that US forces were threatened and that the airstrike was called on their behalf.”
Though the aid group repeatedly said that there had been no fighting around the hospital, the building was hit over and over again, despite the fact that Doctors Without Borders sent the US military the precise GPS coordinates so the hospital could be avoided.
“When the bombing started, we were indeed in contact with military representatives in both Kabul and in Washington, but the bombing continued for another half hour to 40 minutes after those initial calls were made,” says Hawkins.
The hospital is the only facility of its kind in the northeast region of Afghanistan, and Hawkins says the compound where it sits was “precisely targeted,” adding that the intensive care unit and the emergency room were hit the worst. For four years, Doctors Without Borders has been using this facility to provide free high level trauma care to civilians in the area.
RELATED: How does a relief worker in the world's worst war zone find hope?
“For our medical staff, it was an absolutely terrifying experience,” says Hawkins. “The hospital itself had been very busy over the previous days [before the airstrike] — there’s been an uptick in the conflict around Kunduz, and we’ve had 400 patients over the last four days or so.”
According to Doctors Without Borders, more than 22,000 patients received care at the hospital in 2014, and more than 5,900 surgeries were performed during the same time period. When the hospital was hit, medical workers were in midsts of caring for patients.
“After the attack was over, we found one of our patients that was killed still on the operating table,” says Hawkins. “You can imagine for the medical staff that’s going about their night’s work, this is an absolutely a devastating experience for them.”
The group is now planning to leave the area, something that could be devastating to civilians in the area — Hawkins describes the trauma center as a “vital lifeline” for the community.
“A hospital should represent a place of sanctuary — it’s where people come when they’re at their most vulnerable,” she says. “Given the fact that the intensive care unit was targeted, we can presume that the most sick and vulnerable of our patients have been killed.”
But a war crime?
“I don’t think we know yet,” says Charlie Dunlap, a former Deputy Judge Advocate General for the US Air Force. He’s now a professor and director of the Center for Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University’s Law School. He says even in war time there should be a presumption of innocence until proven guilty.
“What surprises me,” says Dunlap, “about what Doctors Without Borders is saying — an organization I previously had a lot of respect for — is they’re making conclusions before the facts have even been gathered.”
“In war zones there’s a lot of complexity about the application of force,” adds Dunlap, “and (about) what’s going on on the ground. We’ve all heard about the chaos, and fog and friction of war. And that’s what’s going on.”
“We need to assemble the facts before we start making very, very serious accusations against people.”
Doctors Without Borders says there were repeated attacks, about every 15 minutes, over the course of more than an hour. Neighboring buildings were unharmed. “That would seem to indicate that they were deliberately targeting that building,” says Dunlap. “But I don’t know if that means they’re deliberately targeting because it was a hospital.”
“International law does not prohibit conducting an attack, even when you know for an actual fact that civilian casualties will occur. What international law only prohibits is that they not be excessive in relation to the military advantage anticipated. And that’s to preclude incentivizing parties to actually use civilians as human shields. Unfortunately though we’ve seen adversaries who nevertheless do it, and I think that is really one of the complications of 21st century warfare.”
“One of the things we need to look at, is of course whether it (the hospital) was being used in any way by the Taliban as a military position to shoot or launch attacks against Afghan and other allied forces.”
“Then we also have to explore whether a mistake was made,” says Dunlap. “In other words, it’s not a war crime if people are acting reasonably and doing the best they can in what we would all agree would be a very chaotic and difficult situation, and something you don’t want to happen, happens.”
“If a hospital is being used for military purposes, it can become a target. You still have to do a proportionality analysis. In other words, you have to make a determination that the anticipated military advantage you’re going to gain will not cost excessive civilian casualties.”
This report was based upon an interview on PRI's The Takeaway, a public radio program that invites you to be part of the American conversation. T.J Raphel is a digital producer for The Takeaway. Christopher Woolf is a producer for PRI's The World. Listen to host Marco Werman's interview with Charlie Dunlap, former Deputy Judge Advocate General for the US Air Force here. |
Chris has gone on at length about the corporate “welfare queens” on Wall Street and the right (they’re almost always Republican) who took billions in federal bail out money in late 2008 and early 2009, and now turn around and tell the rest of us that we need to tighten our belts by cutting Medicare and Social Security, and increasing the age of eligibility for each program.
Just like the Republican wars, there’s always money to be found when corporations need a bailout. But when American citizens need the support of their government, such as when they reach 65 and (hopefully) are able to retire, suddenly the money’s all gone (until the next war).
Citigroup is a perfect example. Remember how shortly after the bailout Citi wanted to raise salaries as the entire country was losing jobs? And how Citi wanted to pay one energy trader $100 million in 2009, in the midst of the crisis? And how later in 2009, Citigroup increased the salaries of its executives? At the same time Citigroup just couldn’t say “no” to its employees, it jacked up interest rates exorbitantly on its own credit card customers. See, it’s never a problem asking you to pay more.
From Senator Bernie Sanders, writing in the Huffington Post, we learn that Citigroup hasn’t paid federal taxes in four years.
In 2010, Bank of America set up more than 200 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands (which has a corporate tax rate of 0.0 percent) to avoid paying U.S. taxes. It worked. Not only did Bank of America pay nothing in federal income taxes, but it received a rebate from the IRS worth $1.9 billion that year. They are not alone. In 2010, JP Morgan Chase operated 83 subsidiaries incorporated in offshore tax havens to avoid paying some $4.9 billion in U.S. taxes. That same year Goldman Sachs operated 39 subsidiaries in offshore tax havens to avoid an estimated $3.3 billion in U.S. taxes. Citigroup has paid no federal income taxes for the last four years after receiving a total of $2.5 trillion in financial assistance from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis.On and on it goes. Wall Street banks and large companies love America when they need corporate welfare. But when it comes to paying American taxes or American wages, they want nothing to do with this country. That has got to change.
I love the Senator’s next point about these companies being American in name only:
Here’s the simple truth. You can’t be an American company only when you want a massive bailout from the American people. You have also got to be an American company, and pay your fair share of taxes, as we struggle with the deficit and adequate funding for the needs of the American people. If Wall Street and corporate America don’t agree, the next time they need a bailout let them go to the Cayman Islands, let them go to Bermuda, let them go to the Bahamas and let them ask those countries for corporate welfare.
It’s a point we’ve raised before. If these companies, like Mitt Romney, want to pay foreign taxes – which often are no taxes at all – then why turn to the US government when they’re in trouble and need to be bailed out? Are they American or aren’t they?
Reuters notes that in 2011, Citigroup didn’t get any less generous with its own senior employees as it was in 2009 and 2010. Citigroup was one of 26 companies that paid its CEO more in 2011 than it paid in taxes that year:
* Citigroup, the financial services giant, with a tax refund of $144 million based on prior losses, paid CEO Vikram Pandit $14.9 million in 2011, despite an advisory vote against it by 55 percent of shareholders. * Telecoms group AT&T paid CEO Randall Stephenson $18.7 million, but was entitled to a $420 million tax refund thanks to billions in tax savings from recent rules accelerating depreciation of assets. * Drugmaker Abbott Laboratories paid CEO Miles White $19 million, while garnering a $586 million refund. Abbott has 64 subsidiaries in 16 countries considered by authorities to be tax havens, the institute said.
It Mitt Romney is correct that corporations are people. Then they’re clearly very greedy people.
And now we get to the fun stuff. Who used to work at Citigroup? Treasury Secretary nominee Jack Lew. And what did he do to avoid taxes? Lew had up to $100,000 invested in the Cayman Islands, in order to save on taxes. From Chris writing the other day:
Surprise! President Obama’s new Treasury Secretary nominee, Jack Lew, had up to $100,000 in investment in an offshore tax haven in the Cayman Islands. The investment fund “home” was a PO Box. As I said when President Obama first nominated Jack Lew for Treasury Secretary, Lew is part of the banking problem, not the solution. Jack Lew may not have dumped as much money into offshore locations as, say, Mitt Romney, but like many others from the banking world, he was using the tax-avoidance tools mostly available to only 1% types. Lew didn’t create the offshore fund, but you have to love thatonce again, Citi – the bank that loves taxpayer money so much it’s practically addicted to it – offers easy ways for employees to once again avoid paying their fair share to the country that kept them alive to the tune of $336.1 billion.
Who did have to pay taxes the past four years? You and me. Who didn’t get a bailout? You and me. |
The popular shopping event features handcrafted goods from more than 800 artisans and vendors, including jewelry, ceramics, furniture, clothing and accessories. Nov. 28 to Dec. 8, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. (Sundays til 6 p.m.) at the Direct Energy centre, $12, Senior/Youth: $7, Children 12 and under: Free. Link: http://www.toronto.com/events/one-of-a-kind-christmas-show/
The annual holiday street market takes over the Distillery District, with local vendors and craftsmen, family-friendly entertainment, inspired by European-style Christmas Markets. Nov. 29 to Dec. 15, noon to 9 p.m., The Distillery Historic District, free. Link: http://www.toronto.com/events/toronto-christmas-market
Cavalcade of Lights
Nathan Phillips Square celebrates the holidays with the lighting of Toronto’s official Christmas tree, fireworks and live music, followed by a dance party to close out the festivities. Nov. 30, 7 p.m., Nathan Phillips Square, free. Phone: 416-392-2489. Link: http://www.toronto.com/events/cavalcade-of-lights/
More information at Toronto.com
Erica Salyi-Pannozzo Toronto.com |
Dragon Age has never had the same sense of direction as Mass Effect. Its sci-fi stablemate was a point-to-point race through a single narrative, escalating in scale as success translated into publisher support. Dragon Age: Origins was, in many ways, the last game from pre-EA BioWare, an oldschool fantasy RPG that grew organically over a protracted development period. Its popularity seemed to catch the studio's new publisher off-guard, leading to a sequel that – while it retained much of its predecessor's soul – lost all of its scope.
“We have a much greater opportunity in terms of time on this one than we did on DAII,” says producer Cameron Lee, who joined BioWare from Dead Space developers Visceral Games in early 2012. “We also have the opportunity with the engine change to rebuild everything from the ground up. We're trying to bring across the same feel, the same vibe, and the same sort of storytelling, but DAII was more of a framed narrative – Inquisition is definitely Origins-style. Much bigger.”
'Origins-style' scope doesn't mean oldschool, however: what I've seen of Inquisition indicates a modern game that wears its influences – and ambitions – openly. The first area I'm shown is an open-world take on Ferelden, an expanse of fields and frosty mountainsides that suggests that the success of Skyrim hasn't gone unnoticed. It's still Dragon Age, however, and the party-of-four system and adjustable third-person perspective all reflect that. Combat is broadly similar to Dragon Age II, but the pause interface has been improved to allow for more fluid issuing of orders before time resumes. You'll still be able to program friendly AI behaviour, but this wasn't shown.
Dragon Age: Origins introduced the Warden, DAII starred the Champion, and Inquisition will be led by, well, the Inquisitor. You are an individual given charge of a fledgling faction after the Veil – the barrier between the real world and the realm of dreams and magic – is torn apart by a mysterious enemy. The Inquisitor can be male or female, and either human, dwarf, elf, or – for the first time in the series – a grey-skinned qunari giant. The Inquisitor I saw was human, male and fully voice-acted.
The party you assemble over the course of the game will include, according to Lee, “a significant returning cast.” In the demonstration, the Inquisitor was joined by Varric Tethras, DAII's dwarven narrator, and Cassandra Pentaghast. Cassandra was the character who interrogated Varric in the second game's framing narrative, and her presence suggests that the two have found some kind of common cause. The fourth character was Vivienne, a mage and First Enchanter of one of the Orlesian Circles. If you've been following the series, you'll be able to piece together what this says about the Inquisition itself: that it's removed from the broader conflict between Templars and mages, for one, and also that its direction is shaped by the player's own preferences and affiliations.
The nature of the Inquisition will affect the resources the player has available. There'll be multiple open-world zones in the game, representing an area of Thedas that includes Ferelden, Orlais, Nevarra and the Free Marches. Securing territory for the Inquisition in each zone is a key activity, based around the capture of a network of fortresses. I was shown a desert area west of Orlais where a series of side objectives – poisoning water supplies, raiding caravans – culminates in the brief siege of a rundown Grey Warden outpost. Once claimed, the player has the choice to transform the outpost into a military fortress, an espionage centre, or a mercantile hub. Fortresses also grant the player access to agents, who can be assigned to various tasks to expand the Inquisition's power base. Examples given included rebuilding an ancient colossus to stand as a testament to the faction's strength, or reopening an old Tevinter gate to access a new area.
This system encapsulates the ways that Inquisition builds on the foundations of its predecessors. The player's faction has always been key: in Origins, you were tasked with rebuilding the shattered Ferelden Grey Wardens, and Dragon Age II is, in essence, the story of a revolutionary cell forming in a backwater town. The Inquisition is the logical next step, giving the player charge of a Wardens-style company from its outset and letting them decide what kind of organisation it turns out to be. At the same time, it also demonstrates that BioWare have been paying attention to how open-world action games like Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood have approached the same topic. It might upset purists, but it's promising nonetheless.
“Changing with the times is certainly an influence,” Lee says. “The open world is a trend that we see in a lot of genres – there's a level of technology you can get to where you can open up experiences you couldn't do previously. We think we've found a way to present a really strong narrative in an open world.”
The key new technology in this case is the Battlefield-powering Frostbite engine which makes its RPG debut in Dragon Age: Inquisition. It brings environmental destruction and previously-impossible landscapes to the series: stick some pylons and a fighter jet in Ferelden and it could be Caspian Border. Nevertheless, it still looks like Dragon Age: the characters and equipment are substantially more detailed but the art style hasn't changed. It bodes well for Mass Effect 4, which will be built on the same engine, but for the first time it feels like it's Dragon Age leading the way into the future. |
The result is as amazing as you think it would be. Search your feelings. You know it to be true!
Sure, the Star Wars opening title crawl is iconic. You don't mess with what works.
But what if you did tempt fate using another iconic title sequence style—from the Bond films?
That's just what Kurt Rauffer did with The Empire Strikes Back for his School of Visual Arts senior thesis. Get ready to have your force awakened.
Beyond creating an homage to The Empire Strikes Back through the lens of a Bond title sequence, Rauffer taps into emotional journey of our hero Luke Skywalker grappling to accept his new role as a Jedi and his inextricable link to Darth Vader. Using Bond title sequence hallmarks of calling back to the previous story and foreshadowing significant events about to unfold, Rauffer gets to the heart of Empire—Luke's search for identity which he can only understand once he sees himself through his father's eyes. Radiohead's rejected Bond song Spectre certainly helps with the feels, too. And now that the Force has awakened, the familial significance of the lightsaber that Rauffer deftly uses to frame the sequence rings with even more resonance (and a nod to 2001: A Space Odyssey to boot!).
Rauffer credits the Facepunch community and Ash Thorp's Main Title Design class on Learn Squared as key resources that helped him finish his senior thesis. In addition to those resources, be sure to check out our previous articles on creating title sequences. And if you just need more Radiohead, we've got you covered there, too.
What do you think about Rauffer's homage to The Empire Strikes Back via the Bond title sequence? Share your thoughts with us in the comments. |
ELBA, N.Y. – Parents and a school board member foiled a plot by a group of 4th graders to kill their teacher.
Police say a group of three students hatched a plan to put anti-bacterial products – specifically hand sanitizer – around the classroom because she “is highly allergic to them,” according to NBC 2.
When the students were questioned – with their parents and school administrators present – one girl allegedly said the teacher “yells at us and that the class has problems with her.”
There are accusations of bullying in the teacher’s classroom. The sheriff’s incident report states the children “had problems working together.”
Elba Superintendent Jerome Piwko released a statement saying:
It has been widely reported that certain fourth grade students had been discussing a way to harm a teacher in the Elba Central School District. This event has been a shock to our community and school. The District cannot comment on the specifics of this event, including discipline, as the information is protected from disclosure under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. The reports in the media and on social media do not accurately reflect the entire event.
A school board member contacted police after she heard of the plan from another parent and her son.
Mike Hare, an Elba parent, tells WHEC, “We know some of the parents and the children and we’re disappointed in it.”
He adds, “Part of me wants to take it and say it’s just kid shooting their mouths off doing what kids do, but to take action as they did – it’s a little extreme.”
ABC 7 reports at least one parent said the children knew “the teacher could become very sick from contact with hand sanitizer.”
While several parents reportedly knew of the scheme, only one contacted the school.
Administrators say the sheriff’s department has closed its case and the school district is taking over the investigation.
“The District does not condone any of the behaviors that have been reported and is in the process of working alongside the Sheriff’s Department to use this incident as a vehicle for educating the District’s students regarding appropriate behaviors,” Piwko’s statement concludes. |
Easter gave fans either a wall-to-wall weekend of racing or a headache
Sports cars at Silverstone and Oulton Park courtesy of the FIA World Endurance Championship and British GT, touring cars at Donington and superbikes at Brands Hatch. An odd clash of so many events, two of which were vying for the same small but firm group of fans.
It was of course possible to do both, and most likely some did. Such is Oulton Park's noise rules that racing is permitted only on Saturdays but for two weekends a year, claimed by the BTCC and BSB. So Easter Monday provides a free day to exploit, and that's exactly what they do every year. The fans follow, too, the spectator areas on the grey, damp and cold Monday were four or five deep in parts. Maybe motor racing in a spectator sense isn't quite done just yet.
Silverstone, meanwhile, quoted an attendance in excess of 50,000 for its weekend, down slightly on 2016. Most likely that's not because of Audi leaving just two marques fighting over LMP1, it could simply be the general UK fanbase. It will fluctuate slightly with each year, often on matters as slight as the weather.
There was a noticeably more commercial presence at the WEC with sponsor banners blocking viewing points. Initially the excellent Becketts was hidden behind Ford banners, but come Saturday they were removed and fans could again watch the cars flicking spectacularly through, jinking left then right, right foot planted. The bank on the inside of the Loop suffered too, the previously part-panoramic view from the right-hander up to the Loop and sweeping back onto the Wellington Straight blocked by DHL.
But motor sport is a commercial marketing platform, and the viewing audience all around the world trumps the paying punters.
In that respect – and many more – Oulton Park is a far purer experience. Few places match it, and there's simply no better place in the UK to watch GT cars. It's our answer to the 'Glen. Undulating, fast, green and a real challenge, it's a rewarding wander for fans too; from Knickebrook’s expansive view, popular with fans, via the on-the-limit Druids to the visceral experience of Deer Leap as cars clip past thundering into the next lap.
The scores of fans were treated at Oulton Park, British GT headlining, with three races of BRDC British F3 in support – barrier damage on the Saturday left the circuit unsafe for single-seaters meaning the three races were shuffled to Sunday. That left a busy schedule, yet one overheard visitor bemoaned the 'dithering’ between races.
Probably best to avoid F1, then.
Families made up most of the crowd on the banks, something not often said about the one-man-and-his-dog club events. The 'artisan market’ and kids' entertainment put on to provide some light relief most likely made the day an easier sell. But when the GT cars came around, all wide eyes were trained on the track.
A double win for the underrated Phil Keen and his 'Am' Jon Minshaw belies the on-track entertainment provided. Granted, those two weren't involved in much of it, disappearing off into the distance, their Lamborghini suited best to the mixed conditions. In its sizeable wake was a Bentley and Aston Martin battle that saw the two local Crewe products (albeit via M-Sport in Cockermouth) collide in race two, Seb Morris’s Continental GT tagging Callum Macleod's own and locals' hands were on heads all around the Knickebrook viewing bank.
Jonny Adam and Matt Griffin starred, having both started at the back of the grid due to them being at Silverstone for the weekend until then.
“It's been full on,” said Adam after his third race and second podium of the weekend. His WEC appearance with Darren Turner and Daniel Serra in the 97 Aston Martin GTE was a tricky one, unable to match the Porsches, Fords and Ferraris he was then clouted from behind by the ByKolles LMP1 in a pit entry mix up. “It was just a racing incident. I was committing to pit, pulled across and we collided.”
Heftily. They're probably still picking bits of ByKolles and Armco from the boot of the Vantage now.
Being April, this is just the start of it for Adam and the rest GT racing's busiest pros. “I've got six weekends on the bounce. Monza next with Blancpain. But I'm not as busy as Matt [Griffin], he's bonkers.”
Griffin explained, “I have 31 race weekends this year, maybe more if we do Asia.”
His WEC weekend was more successful than Adam’s – and busier – dragging his Ferrari into the lead in an excellent battle with Pedro Lamy, pitting, and returning to the lead on the final lap as the front two clashed. That was a day after finishing fourth in the European Le Mans Series 4 Hours of Silverstone. He then disappeared off from Oulton Park to go testing at Spa...
What a way to make a living. |
Antonio Fini Forum Member
Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: New York, NY Posts: 3,140
Re: We need to start a new secret society Skull & Bones was a pretty groovy secret society until they went all PC. They had a swell club house and all their members got primo jobs like running the CIA or becoming President.
The thing is, you want this done PRE-revolution, not POST-revolution. Duh.
The members need to infiltrate every department and bureau they can, Freemason style, and help other members to get hired. You're weaving a net, invisible, yet broad and strong.
The other essential point is to devise some kind of cryptic initiation ceremony with costumes and braziers of flaming oil, and weird chanting.
That way people know they're getting into something serious and not some goofy WP club that collects dues and sells boring old Hitler books out of a catalog. It would also be nice to have a large stone castle on a hill for a hangout, but there aren't too many of those in North America.
"When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky." -Siddhartha Guatama
"There is no free speech in the real world and you will be suppressed for telling the truth that is not supported by the system." -Nasim Aghdam __________________ Last edited by Antonio Fini; 06-22-2012 at 02:03 AM . |
This is my first publicly available map, an open world expansion to Far Cry 3. Every available inch of the level editor has been used to create a whole new environment to explore and play in.Unfortunately one of the secret areas I designed for the map caused the enemy ai pathfinding to glitch, so two separate versions exist:-The AI version has this area removed and hostile pirates placed around the map, as well as wildlife. (Some pathfinding errors can still happen on the oil rig)-The non AI version has all secrets but no hostile pirates, but it does include all the wildlife to hunt and survive.Features--Designed to be played how you want to play it.-Six radio towers with unique weapons to use placed on top.-Four fully realized towns, and dozens more small locations.-Roads are designed to race on with an emphasis on flow and handbrake use.-Fully detailed ocean floor.-Treacherous wildlife placed throughout.-Hidden shortcuts and stunt jumps.-Easter eggs and secret locations.-And much, much more.To play the map--Extract the 7zip file, then find the Far Cry 3 level editor on your pc and launch the application.-Load the Breakneck Bay file you wish to play in from wherever you extracted it too, then go to the 'Game' tab on the top of the editor and hit 'Test inGame'More info can be found in the readme.NOTE: I'm concerned about the performance impact this level has, my pc is a pretty old and can only run it on HIGH settings in the editor. I would appreciate anyone who wants to volunteer information on their hardware and framerate, as well as AI performance.Installer with full-screen play option and limited ammo coming soon!
Contact me about any bugs, glitches, or suggestions at [email protected] © 2014 Travis Howell |
To be continued...
For all the good that the latest Hitman game has, a lot of people are turned off by the episodic structure of its content. I suppose there isn't much IO can do to actually change how the game is coded, but you'll soon only have a single option for purchasing the game before season two kicks off.
In two weeks time, Hitman will be sold as a complete experience. The introduction pack and upgrade option will be discontinued in favor of a single option that includes everything. Individual episodes will also no longer be available on PC, though if you have only certain episodes, you'll be given discount pricing based on what content you have when buying into the full game.
On consoles, things are a little bit less clear. Xbox One owners will get a discount on "The Complete First Season" if they own any of the previous episodes. All episodes will still be available for regular purchase. PS4 owners won't receive any kind of legacy discount, but can still opt to buy episodes individually.
As for why this is now happening, IO has taken to their blog to explain the decision. "These changes have been planned since early March and will make it easier and simpler to buy the game. These changes will help us to lay the foundations for our future plans for Hitman." Hopefully this means that season two will release as a full game, but who knows?
Hitman is ditching its episodic model in two weeks [Eurogamer]
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Treasure hunters scouring the woods above the tunnel where the Nazi train is said to be hidden have claimed to have found a Nazi Eagle, gold coins and other WWII memorabilia which they say is 'proof' it may really be packed with priceless jewels.
The local two men, who refused to be named, recovered the 'treasure' from the hill in Walbrzych, Poland, which has become the centre of fevered speculation over the last two weeks, ever since it was revealed two men had 'discovered' a Nazi train hidden in a secret tunnel underneath it.
They showed MailOnline pictures of coins, a German helmet and a Nazi Eagle they found at the site, adding: 'There is still a lot of treasure like this lying around. If that train is in the tunnel, it could well contain more of this, a lot more.'
Scroll down for video
Evidence: Treasure hunters have shown MailOnline a series of items they claim were discovered around the site where the gold train is supposedly hidden - including this Nazi Eagle
Haul: They say coins like these could be just a fraction of what is hidden in the tunnel
Spotted: The Polish authorities have poured fuel on the fire by saying they have now seen proof of a 100 metre train under the hill which left them '99 per cent' convinced it really does exist. But doubts now persist
Tales: There are many legends about the tunnels which stretch out under the Ksiaz castle, and some locals are dismissing the latest excitement as just another storm in a teacup over nothing at all
To the casual observer their pictures are hardly concrete evidence that under the earth there lies the find of a century; an armoured train that could be filled with gold, jewels, priceless artwork or even the plundered walls of a £250million ornate Amber Room stolen from a Russian palace.
But such is the excitement that has surrounded Walbrzych ever since it emerged the men had lodged a claim for 10 per cent of the loot, that people are willing to overlook the fact it is not unusual to find Nazi items in an area where they once had their headquarters.
Even the Polish government poured fuel on the fire, with one minister saying they were 99 per cent certain the train was hidden under a hill.
Poland's Deputy Minister of Culture, Piotr Zuchowski described the find as 'unprecedented', adding: 'We do not know what is inside the train.
'Probably military equipment but also possibly jewellery, works of art and archive documents.
'Armoured trains from this period were used to carry extremely valuable items and this is an armoured train, it is a big clue.'
It sparked a frenzy with treasure hunters as far away as Japan descending on the area. With a fear that there are still booby-traps in the area left by the Nazis and that people may be tempted to start digging for the so-called treasures themselves, authorities have now closed off the 4km site.
And when MailOnline visited the site yesterday, burly plainclothes operatives were spotted setting up sophisticated monitoring equipment near an unmarked black van sitting next to the location identified by a town council source - said to be '200 metres away' from the official from the site where the Nazi gold train is believed to be hidden.
Abandoned: Finds like this helmet could just be what was left behind when the Nazis fled in 1945
History: It probably isn't surprising that coins from the Third Reich are in the area, considering the regime set up its local headquarters at the castle, even preparing for a visit from Adolf Hitler
Secret service: Government agents in a blacked out van were at the site seen setting up sophistacted monitoring equipment to keep out prying eyes ahead of military investigations into what is inside the tunnel
Investgiation: But the authorities seem to be taking the 'discovery' increasingly seriously, and have set up new equipment to look into the ground - albeit two kilometres from where they officially say the train is hidden
Closed: Meanwhile, treasure hunters are being ordered to keep out of the area - ostensibly for their own safety
Doubt: Experts have pointed out it is very difficult to see anything clearly with a ground penetrating radar, as this example - looking just two metres underground - apparently proves
One of the officers then came over and ordered: 'Get away from here. The whole area is sealed. Go now and don't come back. Stay away.'
It is unclear whether the equipment was just CCTV to keep out prying eyes, or whether it was the start of official attempts to investigate what is inside the now-fabled tunnel.
But it seems they aren't in a huge rush either: digging for the Nazi gold train won't begin until spring, an official told local media today.
A military spokesman told RMF FM radio that soldiers would not be moving into the area until after military experts had carried out a survey of the location where the train is said to have disappeared.
He added that if the experts found something then specialised units would be brought in to begin excavation work, but that this was unlikely to happen until early Spring.
In recent days, local authorities have shown they are less convinced and experts have called on them to 'end the madness' and start excavation work immediately.
Mayor of Walbryzch Zygmunt Nowaczyk noted the only thing he had seen was 'an old map' and a letter – hardly rock solid proof.
'This is not the first and probably not the last such claim about an unusual discovery in our area,' he said. 'Walbrzych and Lower Silesia are full of secrets.'
The tunnels themselves have always been the stuff of legends: no one knows quite why they were built.
Local lore says Nazi Germany ordered the vast underground network, which snakes around the massive Ksiaz Castle, be built to hide Third Reich valuables, V2 bombs and even Hitler himself - or, even more unlikely, evidence of UFOs.
The train was one small aspect of the stories, tales which emerged in the dying days of the Nazi invasion.
Some say there is more than one, claiming three went into a tunnel one night, never to be seen again.
Fenced off: Police are now guarding the site, which has been inundated by treasure hunters from all over
Expert: Walbrzych resident Tadeusz Slowikowski has been hunting for the mysterious Nazi gold train ever since he first heard of its existence back in the 1950s, from a man he rescued from being attacked. Here he shows a picture of where he believes the the tunnel entrance used to be
Murdered: Slowikowski claims this family were shot dead by the Nazis because they saw them hiding the train
Discovery: The train is said to be hidden under this forest in southern Poland - and people are now calling on the authorities to dig it up once and for all, to stop people flooding into the area
Fame: There is even a song dedicated to the train, courtesy of Edyta Nawrocka, 28, who was born in Walbrzych
They could, it is said, contain treasures stolen from the Jews murdered by the regime during the Second World War, precious artwork from the great galleries of Europe - or secret Nazi documents.
It has also been suggested it could hold the Amber Room, which has not been seen since 1945 - four years after Nazi soldiers looted it from a palace near St Petersburg.
The legends do not stop in 1945, however.
Tadeusz Slowikowski, who has devoted decades of his life to the hunt, even building a replica of the entrance in his Walbrych home, believes a family was murdered who lived near the tracks after they saw the Nazis hiding the train.
Slowikowski claims his dog was poisoned by Polish secret services when he got too close to digging the train up in the early 2000s.
Others claim they have had mysterious and threatening phone calls, telling them to keep away.
It is enough to tempt even the most level-headed of treasure hunters, including the two men who meet MailOnline in a coffee shop to show off their finds.
Presenting photos as evidence of what they had found in the last few weeks, one of the men said: 'We found all this very close to where the train disappeared.
'We don't know how valuable it is, but some are definitely gold. It stands to reason that there could well be a lot more of this still undiscovered.'
In one photo, a gold coin of uncertain origin is seen lying in one of the finders' hands.
Another reveals an old German helmet lying on some ageing railway tracks, while a third shows a collection of coins and medals.
The finds were hardly on the scale that is being talked about in connection with the mysterious missing train, but it is unlikely to dampen the gold-rush fever anytime soon.
The train even has its own song, courtesy of local pop star and TV celebrity Edyta Nawrocka, 28, who was born in Walbrzych.
Different kind of treasure: There is some speculation it may not be gold inside the train, but pieces of art - and even the long-lost Amber Room, stolen from Russia in 1941, which has not been seen since 1945
HOW AN AMBER CABINET BECAME THE AMBER ROOM The Amber Room was originally just a cabinet, given as a gift to Peter the Great The Amber Room was originally supposed to have been an amber cabinet, a gift from Friedrich-Wilhelm I of Prussia to Peter the Great, who admired the work on a visit to his castle in 1716. But instead of a cabinet, it was decided to use the panels as wall coverings, surrounding them with gilded carving, mirrors and yet more amber panels. In total, the room used 450kg of amber, and was finally completed in 1770. The room was so fragile it had a permanent caretaker, and when the Russians tried to hide the crumbling walls behind wallpaper. But the Nazis knew what was behind the mundane covering, and went about dismantling the room - a process which took 36 hours. They believed, as a Prussian gift, it belonged to them. But the room, taken back to the castle where it had originally been created for Friedrich-Wilhelm, was never seen again after 1945. Some claimed it had been destroyed in the bombings, but others say the panels were spirited away by the Nazis keen to keep hold of their loot. But the Russians weren't willing to give up on this crowning glory, and began a replica in 1982. It took more than 20 years and cost more than $12million, but visitors to the Catherine Palace, near St Petersburg, can now see the grand room for themselves. Sources: Catherine Palace and the Smithsonian
Disappeared: Some suspect the spectacular wall coverings were whisked away by the Nazis as the Red Army marched on East Prussia (pictured: the replica Amber Room)
The 39 second clip shows her holding a microphone as she looks into the camera and warbles 'The train comes from far away and the gold is dripping from it' to an old classic Polish melody.
Businesses are certainly making the most of the situation - not least the 13th century castle itself, under which some of the tunnels are believed to be.
It is now advertising special tours to the city's underground tunnels, with the tours' logos emblazoned a sparkling steam train.
Manager Krzysztof Urbanski said visitor numbers were on the up, thanks to the 'Loch Ness' effect.
'I don't have any concrete evidence to show the train exists, but reliable sources have confirmed it to me and I would love for it to be true,' he said.
'No one's seen the monster but that doesn't stop it from attracting people.'
Hotel barmaid Kasia, 25, said: 'We have never seen so many visitors to our town. It is amazing. People from all over the world are coming here, spending money and enjoying what we have to offer.
'The place has gone tunnel crazy. It's great.'
Others are less convinced it is 'great', and even less convinced the train ever existed in the first place.
They are pressuring the government to reveal what it knows amid claims made in a German newspaper that the Culture Ministry was made aware of the find in March.
Local man Darek, 36, told MailOnline: 'Why won't they show us the evidence? If they have seen the photos and the proof, tell us. The papers have been full of speculation but now it's time to show us what they know.'
Many in Walbrzych - and across the world - have gone further, pointing out the entire thing would be resolved very quickly if someone just dug it up.
Rumours: Local legend says three armoured trains disappeared under the hill never to be seen again in 1945
Boom: Ksiaz is welcoming more visitors than ever, thanks to the tunnels underneath the 13th century castle
Lawyer Piotr Lewandowski, of the Thesaurus Foundation, which specialises in the legal protection of heritage sights, was clear about his feelings when told local radio: 'It is time to break this madness.
'And now, rather than in two or three weeks time because the government is beginning to look like a joke.
'First, they actually have to check the credibility of all this information, and secondly, if it turns out that such an object is there, get involved.
'Otherwise it's just dreaming of great treasures and then finding out that there are just, for example, factory documents.'
The gold rush has come with its own problems: signs have been put up around the site telling people to keep out, for fear the tunnel could be booby-trapped with mines laid 70 years ago.
'Half of Wałbrzych's residents and other people are going treasure hunting or just for walks to see the site. We are worried for their security,' said police spokeswoman Magdalena Koroscik.
People walking down the tracks could not escape 'a train that emerges from behind the rocks at 70km/h [43mph]', she said.
A man taking a selfie on the tracks reportedly narrowly missed being hit.
For some, a fire which broke out near the location of the track was the last straw when it was dubbed 'mysterious' and thought to be linked to the train.
Cafe worker Magda said: 'When it 37C like now there are lots of fires in the forest. It was probably a treasure hunter who dropped his cigarette, rather than deliberate arson.
'But now anything that happens there is treated as part of the mystery.'
Danger: The proximity of the train to the tracks is worrying police, who fear gold hunters may be killed
Safety first: Guards are even patrolling the tracks to ensure people are not injured
And questions are also beginning to be raised about the quality of the evidence presented by the two men who claim to have found the secret location of the Nazi gold train - especially the reliability of the Ground-Penetrating-Radar (GPR) used to detect the train.
MailOnline has seen the quality of the images produced by GPR and they show nothing more than a set of blotchy colours.
Jacek Adamiec from the Association for the Exploration and Rescuing of Monuments told local TV: 'In my opinion to get an accurate reading of objects so far down is very unlikely.
Professor of Applied Geophysics from the University of California at Berkley, James W Rector said: 'Any competent geophysicist would have examined the near surface conductivity of the rocks. I believe (very cursory) that GPR wont work here and the 'image' is bogus.' |
WASHINGTON, D.C. - When U.S. Rep. Richard Hanna walks away from Congress next week after six years in office, the Upstate New York Republican will leave behind a GOP that he says has become too intolerant and extreme, drowning out moderates like himself.
Hanna, 65, a fiercely independent voice within the GOP who repeatedly broke ranks to stand up to hardline conservatives, told Syracuse.com in an exit interview that he worries the traditional moderate Republican from the Northeast faces extinction in Congress.
"I never left the Republican Party that I originally joined," Hanna said. "I can only say that they've left me. It's really gone to the far extremes on social issues. They've become judgmental and sanctimonious and authoritarian on their approach to people. They talk about personal freedom, but they also want to define what that is for you and me."
Hanna, of Barneveld in Oneida County, stood out as the only Republican in Congress to support a combination of abortion rights, same-sex marriage and the Equal Rights Amendment, guaranteeing equal rights for women.
After announcing plans for his retirement, he gained national attention this year when he became the only GOP member of Congress to say he would vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton for president over the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.
Rep.-elect Claudia Tenney, R-New Hartford, a conservative Trump supporter who has received Tea Party backing, will succeed Hanna in office when the 115th Congress begins on Tuesday.
In a wide-ranging, two-hour interview this week, Hanna reflected on his career in Congress, the presidential election and the future of the Republican Party. He also said he would consider making a bid for the GOP nomination for New York governor in 2018. Here are excerpts from the interview.
Do you have any regrets about your decision to retire from Congress?
No, not for a moment. Not at all. I've been fortunate. I have things to go back to. I've made great friends in Congress. I've stood out in ways that I didn't intend to go there to do, but I wasn't going to walk away from who I was or what I believed. I think in many ways people have been angered by that - my support of women's health care, Planned Parenthood, and gay rights, the environment, and things like that.
One of the problems with Congress for me is you really are one of 435 people. And unless you really adapt the orthodoxy of being a Republican or a Democrat, you find yourself somewhat marginalized.
For a lot of people, it's a great job. But when it becomes all about you and you need it to survive, I think one should question why they got in it or whether they should stay. I don't see enough people asking that question because it's hard to give up.
You represented Central New York in Congress for six years. What do you view as your best accomplishment?
The thing I'm proud of is that on those votes which I regard as civil rights -- government minding its own business and staying out of people's personal affairs which it has no right to pursue -- like LGBT rights and the environment and things like that, I have been myself.
I have been willing to all along find myself widely disagreed with -- by not the majority, but by some people -- and I've been able to navigate that, be upfront about it, and leave my job intact as I went.
You were part of a group of moderate Republicans in Congress that has steadily dwindled over the past decade. Do you think it's possible for moderate Republicans like yourself to still have a meaningful role in the party?
I think it's difficult because nobody wants to be one of 10 out of 200 and something. Everybody wants to feel like they have an opportunity to make a difference. But if you have to be on the Science Committee and not believe in global warming or something like that, it's hard.
Think about this, (former North Country Rep.) John McHugh couldn't get elected today. Sherry Boehlert (who represented Central New York in Congress for 24 years) couldn't get elected today. And Jim Walsh (who represented the Syracuse area in Congress for 20 years) couldn't get elected today. These are three moderate members from Upstate New York, and they couldn't get the nomination today.
What's wrong with the Republican Party today?
Everyone is entitled to their own belief system, religiously and socially. But I think the lack of broad tolerance and appreciation for the diversity of this society we live in, and the benefits that it's brought us, have escaped or are not talked about or respected enough.
The Christian right, or far right, can be very authoritarian and fundamentalist, and plays a big role in the party. I think they're entitled to their personal beliefs, and I'd defend that completely. But the real tough test of success for me, and for the future of the Republican Party, is that pluralism matters, that tolerance matters.
I feel like the orthodoxy of the party, the authoritarian nature of it, has made it very judgmental and often very sanctimonious. Because that's what it is today, it's actually attracted a lot of people that appeals to. They are completely on board for it. They are judging everything and everybody, but they are the last to be judged.
What do you attribute Donald Trump's victory to?
I've never taken exception to the people who have voted for him. There are a lot of people who haven't seen their wages go up. Maybe for the first time, I think about 50 percent of young people are making less than their parents did. Those are huge issues. And then you see the government bureaucracy and the rules and regulations. They've taken the fun out of being in business. They've disincentivized entrepreneurs like me. They've kind of taken the heart out of people.
So you see a guy like Trump, and he comes along, and one way or another he speaks to a lot of those issues people feel strongly about. So they're willing to ignore a lot of those things they may not like about him.
I wish him well. I mean, he's the president. I think there are areas he will do well in. I think the Democrats played a role in his success too. They didn't need to put up somebody who by all accounts they all wanted to see as president - Mrs. Clinton - and yet she was a candidate that was probably the most beatable candidate, just like Trump was the most beatable candidate from the Republican side. I don't think they thought it through very well.
Did Trump win the election or did Clinton lose it?
I think both are true. The working middle class has been put upon and feels left behind. I think the Democrats haven't figured out the difference between helping people and empathy. Most people I know don't want anything from the government. They just want to take care of themselves.
Part of the problem I think the Democratic Party has is that it's become a party of redistribution instead of an uplifting model. They have this notion that things aren't fair and they want to make it fair.
If you could have a few minutes alone with Donald Trump, what advice would you offer him?
I don't think he'd listen because he hasn't yet. But I would tell him not to be dismissive of those people he disagrees with, simply based on the fact he disagrees with them. You know, he has become the most powerful man on the planet. I think that his success isn't going to be measured just by how well the economy comes back, if it comes back. But this country has survived because of its differences, not in spite of them. It's important to listen and to show respect.
If you want to make people angry - whether it's your wife, your children or anybody - just pretend you don't give a damn what they say. That's the projection he gives and that's the attitude some of the people around him seem to have. But that's not a recipe for success. You don't have to do everything that everybody wants, but you have to at least make them understand that you understand.
What's your advice for Claudia Tenney, your successor in the 22nd Congressional District?
The problem with Claudia is that I don't think she was very relevant in Albany (where she served in the state Assembly) and I don't think she will be very relevant in D.C. I don't say that to be a slap to her. But I know that in life that past performance is the best determinant of future performance.
My advice to Claudia is to embrace this job in a way that isn't about you. At the end of the day, you'll always be appreciated or respected by the far right and the Tea Party groups and those people that supported her. But there are 720,000 people in the district and you work for every damn one of them. Find a way to connect and listen.
If you could change anything about your six years in Congress, what would it be?
I had a habit every night: I would go home and read. And a lot of members go out and they meet one another, and they drink a little bit, and they get to know one another. I never took the time to build very many friendships down there. I have a few good friends.
It always bothered me that the Republican Party - they supported me and I'm grateful - but I could never quite check all of the boxes that they wanted me to. I have to say it bothered me that they were where they were, and that I had to push back so much. I guess that's my way of saying I thought I was right about a few things. I wish I could have convinced people that pluralism and tolerance are also values, and this anger and vitriol that is so easily flung around today...really bothered me and still does.
Is there any particular vote you are most proud of?
The Violence Against Women Act, the alternative that the Republican Party put out there, I thought was really anathema to the intent of the original act. It excluded lesbian women, it excluded illegal immigrants, it excluded American Indian women. And yet these are typically poor women, maybe marginalized, maybe running under the radar, likely needing more help than others. They wanted to exclude those categories.
Well, a woman is a woman. And abuse is abuse. If you want to deport somebody, that's one thing. But based on somebody's sexual preference, or the fact they may be here illegally, that should not be how we rewrite our attitude towards women who are being abused.
That vote came to the floor and I think to the surprise (of GOP leaders) there were maybe 18 or 20 of us at the time who didn't support it at the time. I was behind that. I just planted my feet and we worked the room. And after three months of trying, the historical version passed and got funded as it was about to expire.
What was the worst thing about serving in Congress?
The people I didn't like, and the worst part about Congress, was hearing people say to me I hate this vote but I'm going to vote the party line. That bothered me because I saw that as the purest form of dishonesty and hypocrisy in government. That's what I hated the most, the people that I saw who had an opportunity to have a voice and change outcomes and speak to their truth, and they chose not to.
What's the biggest misconception the public has about you?
That I'm not conservative. And I am. I think the definition of being conservative often means minding your own damn business. Being conservative means being tolerant of other peoples' freedoms and notions that you don't like, but you're willing to accept it because they accept yours.
I'm a fiscal conservative and I think I'm a conservative the way conservatism was designed, not by the Christian right, but by the American belief in pluralism and tolerance.
People say I'm not conservative. I think I'm more conservative than most conservative members of Congress because I actually live the way I talk.
Your son, Emerson, and daughter, Grace, are both under 10 years old. Years from now, when they grow up, what will you tell them about their father's service in Congress?
What I hope to tell them is not as important as what I hope other people tell them. I would be more than happy to have somebody walk up to my children and say: You know what, I didn't agree with your father on a number of issues. But he wasn't a hypocrite and he wasn't a liar. He actually stood for something. And he never made that job about him, and got out intact.
Contact Mark Weiner anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751 |
Try the gravity-defying adventure before its 2017 release, and watch the anime tie-in from 26th December
Greetings and Happy Holidays Gravity Rush fans! We’re less than one month away from the release of Gravity Rush 2, and I’m thrilled to bring you an update on some of the high-falling action that’s headed your way before launch.
First and foremost, we have an original anime production ‘Gravity Rush Overture’ created by the famed anime studio Studio Khara that bridges the gap in story that takes place between Gravity Rush and Gravity Rush 2. I’m happy to announce that the anime will be available for all to see on our PlayStation YouTube Channel on 26th December from 4pm. Please take a look at the teaser to below for a quick glimpse of what’s to come:
Last but certainly not least, we wanted to leave you with a special surprise leading into the holidays. Our PlayStation fans have been itching to get a taste of Kat’s new adventure before the New Year, so I’m happy to announce that the Gravity Rush 2 Demo will be available to download on PlayStation Store tomorrow, 22nd December from 6pm GMT.
There are two paths through this demo – one for those who are new to Gravity Rush, and another for those that are more familiar with Kat’s powers – so no matter your level of gravity-defying experience please be sure to give it a shot!
We’ll have more about Gravity Rush 2 as we fall into 2017, so please stay tuned to the PlayStation Blog and have a wonderful holiday season. |
Mice with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) have been successfully treated using gene-editing injections – a breakthrough in treatment for genetic disorders.
A group of scientists at Duke University cloned the CRISPR-Cas9 system in adeno-associated virus serotype-9 (AAV9). This was then injected into adult DMD mice, first directly into the muscles and then intravenously so that it was delivered to even the cardiac muscles. The mice regained their muscular strength with improved functions of the heart and lungs. Thus, the symptoms were similar to that of Becker muscular dystrophy, a milder form with late onset . Similar results were observed in the team of scientists at Harvard and Texas , .
DMD is a genetic disorder causing muscle weakness. It primarily affects males at a rate of 1 in 3500-5000. DMD is caused by an alteration in the dystrophin gene in the X chromosome. Dystrophin is normally present in the skeletal and cardiac muscles of the body. Along with many other proteins, it forms a complex in these cells that help strengthen the muscles and protect and repair them from the damages caused due to contraction and relaxation. In the absence of any functional dystrophin, these cells retain the damage and eventually die off. This causes muscle weakness and eventually muscle wasting or atrophy. By adolescence, a person with DMD is confined to a wheel chair, unable to use his limbs. Death occurs usually in the twenties, and often because of the complications in the heart .
CRISPR-Cas9 utilizes the amazing bacterial immune system that uses the enzyme Cas9 to cleave off any viral sequences that might have infected them. CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. They are complimentary to certain sequences and when they bind to these sequences, Cas9 forms a complex with it, snipping that region just like we snip off those unwanted weeds in our gardens . AAV9 is a non-pathogenic virus that doesn’t cause any immune reaction in the human body. In the experiment, the viruses infected the muscle cells, releasing the CRISPR-Cas9 enzyme complex into the cells. This complex then binds to the targeted region in the dystrophin gene containing the mutation, and snips it. Thus, the protein further produced from it will be partially functional, even though truncated.
Developments like this raise a lot of hope in the treatment of the ‘incurable’ genetic disorders that affect millions of people around the world. It is amazing how every small discovery leads to new opportunities with scientists all around the world striving to cure the proclaimed ‘incurable’ disorders. In just 4 years, CRISPR-Cas9 technology has been able to achieve this feat. This technique doesn’t pose an ethical dilemma as alteration in the genome was post-natal. As no germline editing was performed, this technique dodges questions about transmission of the gene edits to the subsequent generation.
There is still a lot of work to be done and there are a myriad of technical difficulties in using and delivering genome editing systems in the required cells. Yet hope is there that one day, after all the clearance of ethical and technical issues, we may have a cure for the life-wrenching genetic disorders, like DMD, Huntington disease, and germline cancers like Li-Fraumeni syndrome.
Edited by Sarah Spence |
Beijing: The Japanese government has released a map and aerial photos detailing Chinese oil and gas exploration platforms it said proved Beijing was accelerating plans to unilaterally exploit an oilfield that straddles disputed waters in the East China Sea.
The move adds to the fresh round of heightened tensions between the two Asian powers and in the region, as China, which has also come under international pressure for its rapid island building in the disputed South China Sea, prepares for a large-scale military parade in September to mark the 70th anniversary of Japan's defeat in World War II.
One of a number of Chinese offshore platforms in the East China Sea in June, in a photo released by Japan's defence ministry on Wednesday. Credit:AP
It also comes as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seeks to win public opinion over the need to pass legislation to give Japan's military a greater role. |
Bath Abbey has sparked a backlash among churchgoers who are upset that it has replaced its 400-year-old Sunday service with a version said in "familiar" modern English.
The church was among a handful to retain the Matins service, which is based on the Tudor Book of Common Prayer.
After Easter it will be replaced by a modern choral Eucharist.
The Abbey said it decided to change the service to make it more accessible as more people are familiar with the modern service.
In a letter to the congregation sent in December, the Rector of the Abbey, The Reverend Prebendary Edward Mason, said: "Generations of Anglicans have now grown up with Eucharist not Matins.
"Few are now sustained in their faith by Matins these days. Casual attenders, visitors and those returning to faith are much more likely to be familiar with a Eucharist."
But some worshippers are upset by the changes, which they say are based on making the service more "fashionable" and will drive older members of the congregation away.
Ann Taylor, who is in her seventies and has been attending the service for 20 years, said she would not be attending the new Eucharist because it was in "supermarket" English. She said around 300 or 400 people currently attended.
"We think it's been changed for fatuous reasons," she said.
"The lady who sits in front of me turned around last week and said 'have a good Easter, but I don't know when I'll see you after that'. It's very sad." |
Many say it’s a sign of abusing democracy. A Calgary woman running for the public position of school board trustee in wards 12 and 14 is getting a lot of backlash following a controversial social media post.
In the post, Draper places blame on the LGBTQ community for this past weekend’s attack in Edmonton that injured five people.
The post by Karyn Draper sparked outrage by people who support all students and are concerned she would represent them. A member of the LGBTQ community, Tet Millare, said it’s worrisome.
“I was shocked and scared that someone would make those connections to put the blame on our community,” Millare said. “How could this be our fault?”
READ MORE: York University fires faculty member after alleged anti-Semitic social media posts
Julie Hrdlicka is the current school board trustee for wards 11 and 13 and is seeking re-election. She’s concerned about the comments targeting marginalized students.
“I wouldn’t want hate to propel people to go to the ballots you want people to go because they’re inspired,” Hrdlicka said. “But we know sometimes hate motivates but there is no role for hate in the role of trustee.
“We accept everybody in public education.”
Organizations who advocate for students said this might engage apathetic voters. Barbara Silva is with the Support Our Students Alberta campaign.
“As much as we dislike and be offended by those positions — they exist and they’re feeling emboldened enough to run for political office so if anything this is a call and red flag to citizens to get engaged,” Silva said.
READ MORE: Wildrose staff member alleges party members sent him anti-gay messages for planning to attend Pride event
Global News reached out to Karyn Draper, who said she wasn’t available for an interview Monday. Draper provided this statement Monday night:
“The backlash was anticipated but I am shocked at the volume,” she wrote.
“My post was somewhat in response to the private and public slandering I have had from the LGBT community over my opposition to the GSA and SOGI123 curriculum.”
GSAs refer to gay straight alliances in schools. The SOGI 123 curriculum is a sexual orientation and gender identity initiative that’s intended to help school districts support LGBTQ students.
“I understand I have created some high emotions over that statement and am sure that as I go forward, I can clarify again my intentions for running and confirm that I am here looking out for a fair representation to all children and all parents. ”
Draper also posted this response on Facebook following the backlash: |
Fairtex BGV1 Boxing / Muay Thai Gloves Review
Brett C. Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 23, 2016
After using the gym’s gloves for my first couple of classes, I knew I was going to have to buy my own as soon as possible. It’s the first thing I recommend to people other than buying handwraps.
Before buying anything I tend to read as much as possible on the subject and I spent hours and hours debating what my first boxing gloves would be. I‘ve written this article to hopefully spare you some time digging online for more information on these gloves.
First things first, you have to choose what size of gloves you want to train with. I do a lot of muay thai and boxing and I would say 80% of the time I’m hitting thai pads / focus mitts and 20% of the time I am working the heavy bag. I personally bought 14oz Fairtex BGV1’s but they actually weighed almost exactly 16oz each.
There’s a lot of different opinions online about what weight of gloves your training gloves should be but it all depends on hand size, weight, type of training and most of all your personal preference.
I now have 10 oz Cleto Reyes that I use for light bag work and all of my padwork and I absolute love them. The Cleto’s (which I’ll be reviewing next) are sublime but if you have large hands you’ll never be able to fit them in the 10 ounce or small size Cleto Reyes Hybrids.
I recommend trying different weights and choosing what to buy accordinly. Important note : If you’re only going to be able to afford one set of gloves and you intend on sparring; buy 16oz gloves and you’re good to go.
For me, I think having a nice light pair (10 ounces) and a heavy pair for sparring (16 ounces) would be perfect.
Now onto the actual review of the Fairtex BGV1’s…
Quality
First things first, these gloves are beautiful…I had never owned a pair of boxing gloves but had checked out tons in person and online and these were definitely some of the nicest of the bunch.
The build quality is excellent and there’s actually no double stitching whatsoever and not a single thread out of place that I’ve seen. The leather is beautiful and I have nothing but positive things to say about the finish of these gloves.
Score : 10/10
Performance
As far as fit goes, I have mixed feelings about the BGV1’s. I found the hand compartment to be way too big but I also have relatively small hands. If you have large hands and use long hand wraps you would most likely find the fit to be just fine. Because of the large hand compartment, I never felt like my knuckles were in the correct position. I found that my knuckles were too far back and too high up and I actually think this led to me eventually having a knuckle injury.
Of all the gloves I’ve used so far, the hook and loop that the BGV1’s have are the best. My Cleto Reyes Hybrids are worth $100 CAD more and the hook and loop and velcro is nowhere near as strong or high end as the one on my BGV1’s.
The protection on these gloves is very different than on most boxing gloves because they are a Muay Thai glove. Muay thai gloves have more padding on the top hand of the glove and also on the sides in order to protect from kicks. This means that a Muay Thai glove can weigh as much as a boxing glove but the padding is more spread throughout whereas a boxing glove has padding focused primarily at the front of the glove.
These gloves are very stiff… after weeks of using them, I still found them to be very hard. They did eventually soften up but I had a lot of hand and knuckle pain throughout the use of these gloves. I don’t believe that there is a lack of padding in the knuckle area, I just think that the padding used is too dense. Compared to my Cleto Reyes with 6oz less padding, the Cleto’s feel like pillows and the Cleto’s are considered to be “Puncher’s Gloves”.
The lack of grip bar in the glove did not bother me when I first bought these gloves. The lack of grip bar was not an issue because I hadn’t used many other gloves and didn’t realize how much I love having a grip bar. Some people find the lack of a grip bar as a positive so I will chalk this one up as personal preference and not as a negative.
Score : 6/10
Value
I have a really hard time judging the value of these gloves. The gloves were purchased for $120 CAD and the build quality is worth every penny but I just don’t feel that the performance of the gloves justifies the price.
After paying $220 CAD for Cleto Reyes Hybrids and using them for a couple of weeks, I can truly say they are 10 out of 10 for build quality and performance and the price is justified.
It’s hard to say that the BGV1’s are a great value from my experience because the hand compartment was so large and the padding was so dense that I had to move onto a new set of gloves. I also believe that someone with larger hands that likes a harder glove may find these to be perfect. It all boils down to to personal preference and for me, spending the extra $100 CAD was worth it for the Cleto Reyes Hybrids.
Score : 6/10
Pros + Cons
Pros :
Build Quality is phenomenal
Padding on the top of the hand and wrist is great
Aesthetically the best looking gloves out of Thailand
Lack of grip bar
Cons :
Large hand compartment (if you have smaller hands)
Dense padding in the knuckled area
On the higher end price-wise
Lack of grip bar
Verdict
I think to some people, these gloves could be the perfect boxing / muay thai glove. I think the important thing when buying BGV1’s is that you try them on first. People who have always used gloves with grip bars may love/hate the lack of one in the BGV1’s. Some may find the padding to be too dense and some may not. Smaller individuals with small hands may find them to have too much room in the hand compartment and others may enjoy the extra room.
Overall Score : 7/10 |
Episode 467: Tires, Taxes And The Grizz
toggle caption Josh Kenzer/via Flickr
The price of tires has risen by about 40 percent in the past five years. That's partly because rubber prices have gone up. But it's also due to a tariff the U.S. imposed on Chinese tire imports.
As tire prices have risen, more people have been renting tires rather than buying them outright. And renting tires, it turns out, is often a bad deal in the long run.
On today's show: How a celebrated attempt to help one group of people ended quietly hurting a much larger group. Also on the show: The Grizz.
For more, see our story Why More People Are Renting Tires. And see the paper we mention on the show, U.S. Tire Tariffs: Saving Few Jobs at High Cost. Music: Karmin's "I Told You So" Find us: Twitter/ Facebook/Spotify/ Tumblr. Download the Planet Money iPhone App. |
Foto: Facebook
"TIJEKOM Domovinskog rata samostalnost i sloboda bili su ultimativni ciljevi, no državnom vodstvu nije dugo trebalo da u svoj svojoj poniznosti Katoličkoj crkvi dozvoli da polako i sukcesivno preplavi sve segmente života u Hrvatskoj, od visoke politike, školstva, zdravstva, pa sve do intime bračnog kreveta. Nedugo nakon završetka rata, u ilegali diplomacije, nastaje cijeli niz sporazuma između RH i Svete Stolice koji nas je odveo u novo, trajno ropstvo.
Jednim Tuđmanovim potpisom Crkvi je omogućeno aktivno i agresivno uplitanje u sva politička, ekonomska i ina zbivanja u Hrvatskoj. Pod krinkom vjekovne predanosti katoličanstvu, potpisivanjem Vatikanskih ugovora Katoličkoj crkvi je olakšano bezdušno i beskrupulozno pražnjenje džepova svih građana – poreznih obveznika u Hrvatskoj. Za potrebe dušebrižničkog promicanja općeg dobra Tuđman je Crkvi otvorio samoposlugu u kojoj je poslovođa, prodavač i blagajnik Sveta (milosrdna) Stolica. Potpisom na jedan od Ugovora predsjednik Tuđman je stavio i potpis na legalizaciju protuzakonitog djelovanja Kaptola te omogućio bespoštednu grabež od strane duhovnih otaca“, kaže dragovoljka i veteranka Domovinskog rata, inženjerka Vesna Grgić. Za sve one koji će sada, kao za džokerom iz rukava, posegnuti za otrcanim pitanjem – a gdje je ona bila devedeset i prve, Vesna odgovara - na frontu, u Sunji kao borac, a u Posavini kao topnički izviđač. Po Registru branitelja iza Vesne je ukupno 1066 dana u borbenom sektoru. No, iako višekratno ozljeđivana, ova inženjerka strojarstva nema priznat status RVI te je danas umirovljenica rada.
„Crkva minorizira količinu sredstava koju konstantno, parazitski srče iz ionako jadnog državnog proračuna!“
„Tvrde da državu koštaju „tek parstotinjak“ milijuna kn godišnje. No, da je i tako, zapitajmo se koliko bi se od tih „parstotinjak“ milijuna moglo uplatiti za potrebe bolesne djece, djece invalida, invalida rada, koliko bi se moglo sagraditi vrtića, škola, bolnica, bi li se na račun toga mogla povećati socijalna davanja najsiromašnijima? Uostalom, zar smo ginuli u Domovinskom ratu da sve više ljudi u Hrvatskoj trpi neimaštinu, živi od milostinje i biva prozivano za bogohuljenje, samo ako šapne da šopanje prebogate i prebahate Crkve nije bila ideja vodilja u ratu? Jesmo li krvarili po rovovima da, umjesto lijekova za djecu, plaćamo nove crkvene oltare? Jesmo li ginuli za to da nam beskućnici, nezaposleni, umirovljenici i djeca po školama gladuju, dok mi plaćamo ugradnju centralnog grijanja po crkvama? Moraju li svi ateisti, gnostici i ljudi drugih vjeroispovijesti biti kažnjeni i plaćati zbog svoje različitosti, ako smo se borili upravo za toleranciju različitosti“, pita dragovoljka, koja je Vatikanskim ugovorima javno progovorila i na društvenim mrežama.
Završetkom Domovinskog rata u Hrvatskoj, kad je Tuđman dignuo ruke i viknuo „Imamo je“, trebalo je, kaže Vesna, početi novo sretnije doba, doba slobode od sužanjstva, brutalnog kažnjavanja i protjerivanja neistomišljenike, gaženja ljudskih prava, no desilo se, tvrdi, upravo suprotno.
„Sporazumi između RH i Svete Stolice odveli su nas u novo, trajno ropstvo!“
„U sveopćoj euforiji dokazivanja cijelom svijetu da smo sami sposobni krenuti dalje, da smo sad „svoj na svome“ i da nam više nitko nikada neće oteti ni djelić onoga što je naše, predsjednik Tuđman potpisuje niz Ugovora sa Svetom Stolicom vraćajući nas u mrak ovisnosti, poprilično sličan onome iz kojeg smo tek iskoračili. Primjerice, Crkva je samo jednim od Ugovora, oslobođena plaćanja poreza na sve milodare, poklone, sredstva namaknuta za krštenja, potvrde, vjenčanja, sprovode, plaćene mise … Uz to je i nametnuta obaveza da svaki porezni obveznik u RH, htio to ili ne, svojim obaveznim doprinosom u Državni proračun RH plaća dvije prosječne bruto plaće po svakoj župi u Hrvatskoj, do nedavno uvećanih 20 posto za svećeničke mirovine, te osigurava prihod za 2049 pravnih subjekata Crkve, pripomaže izgradnji i obnovi sakralnih objekata te karitativnoj djelatnosti, itd.“, kaže Grgić te smatra da je krajnje vrijeme da se zajedno sa svojim suborcima zapita zašto su se uopće borili.
„Moji prijatelji, suborci, veterani Domovinskog rata i ja, okupljeni oko Inicijative Dosta je Ja se vas ne bojim zastupamo isti stav - vrijeme je za promjene. Ugovori sa Svetom Stolicom su štetni i zbog svoje savjesti ih moramo mijenjati! Naša borba je bila za slobodnu Hrvatsku, a ne za Hrvatikan! Stoga, podržavamo prosvjedni skup „RASKID!4“ jer vjerujemo da nas, osim borbe za istinom, ujedinjuje i jedna jedina religija: - zdrav razum!“, poručuje Vesna Grgić, odnedavno i jedna od administratorica stranice „Dosta je Ja se vas ne bojim“ koja je u kratko vrijeme prikupila više od 23 tisuće fanova.
Tekst se nastavlja ispod oglasa |
I want to follow up a little on my discussion of the liquidity trap that we are have been in. Brad Delong has an excellent post today called “Four Years After the Wakeup Call”. In it he shows some graphs which illustrate very well our the liquidity trap.
Delong first serves us two graphs on the Federal Funds rate since early 2007:
The daily gyrations of the usually-placid Federal Funds market starting in late 2007 told us all that banks were really worried that other banks had jumped the shark and turned themselves insolvent.
The Federal Funds rate is the interest rate that banks pay to each other when they borrow reserves from each other. Despite the name, the rate isn’t set by The Fed. It’s set by market supply-and-demand. It’s a large and brisk market. When the Fed Funds rate is high (or at least rising), we can infer that banks need and are desperate for reserves, typically because they have profitable opportunities to make loans based on those reserves. When The Fed Funds rate is low and/or dropping, it means that a lot of banks have excess cash on their hands and don’t see any useful or profitable ways to use that money. In other words, a low Fed Funds rate means banks are willing to lend their reserves to other banks because it’s better than nothing and they don’t see any good ways to loan out the money. At the same time, a low rate also shows that few banks are interested in borrowing – again because they don’t see much useful to do with it. While The Federal Reserve doesn’t set the funds rate, it does set the interest rate for the alternative: direct borrowing from The Fed.
What we see from the first graph is that things were cruising along in early 2007 and then mid- to late 2007 (August to be exact), the rate starts dropping. We’re moving toward a recession. Banks are finding it harder to make good loans so they don’t want to borrow more reserves. Banks start hoarding their cash and assets. So instead of balance sheets that are full of loans, bonds, and securities, the banks decide they want/need more cash. Their reserves grow in order to provide a cushion for what was then being seen as the inevitable losses on mortgages and mortgage securities. Things appear to stablize and then in Sept 2008 comes the Lehman moment. Fed Funds rate goes virtually to zero. It’s been stuck there ever since. Banks have plenty of reserves. They have the cash to lend. There’s no willingness to lend (banks don’t see many credit-worthy borrowers) and there’s little interest or demand to borrow.
The Federal Reserve has responded during the same period by creating new base money like crazy. [NOTE: Contrary to the fears of the inflation-fearful crowd, it’s not really “money” until it’s in circulation with the public. It’s only bank reserves – the monetary base. It creates the ability to create money for the public, but that would necessitate having a bank lend it first. ] Again Delong shows up graphically just how The Fed has been willing to create new monetary base:
And while the Federal Reserve has taken the monetary base to previously-unimaginable levels–up from $900 billion to $1.7 trillion in late 2008, up to $2 trillion in let 209, and up to $2.7 trillion in early 2011–it has never adopted Milton Friedman’s recommended policy that it start buying bonds for cash and keep buying bonds for cash until nominal spending is on the path that the Federal Reserve wants it to be on:
We only need one more graph: GDP. More precisely a comparison of GDP to an estimate of what GDP could be if we were at full employment and operating at our long-term trend. Again Delong:
And so right now nominal GDP is $15 trillion/year when it ought to be $16.7 trillion/year:
I’ll save inserting the employment graph here. I’m sure you all know what it looks like. Same story.
And that story is that we had signs of trouble 4 years ago. Three years ago things went really into the tank. The economy seriously declined until mid-2009. Ever since then, it’s struggled to hold on. There really isn’t any recovery. It’s just going sideways. We have, in effect, taken a huge chunk of the economy, a huge number of workers, put them on the sideline and said “we’re not interested in you participatin anymore. We don’t want or need your contribution. We’re happy being smaller”.
So we’ve had monetary stimulus efforts, we’ve had low interest rates, we’ve had the central bank create base money. There’s plenty of cash out there. But it’s all in the banks. It’s in deposit accounts. It’s in reserves. It’s not working. It’s not being used to buy things. It’s not being used for consumption or investment. It’s just sitting around impotent. That’s a liquidity trap.
Mainstream economic theory, the stuff called “New Classical” or “New Keynesian” (never confuse “New Keynesian” as being “Keynesian”), says keeping interest rates this low for this long would /should fix everything by now. For over 30 years now, the dominant, orthodox view in the academic and professional world of economists has been that monetary policy exercised by a wise central bank can fix all. Any weakness in the economy can be solved via lowering interest rates and having the central bank create new bank reserves. These “modern” theories told us that the concept of a “liquidity trap” was nonsense, a relic of some past era and/or the invention of some crank called Keynes. These theories claimed that everybody was perfectly rational, all markets (particularly financial markets) were efficient, and uncertainty/risk about the future was unimportant. They were wrong. We are left with the ideas of the mid-20th century, the stuff that we were told to forget about. Again Delong:
Four years ago nearly all mainstream economists would have said that, even though the situation appeared serious, by now the economy would be back to normal. … Very few of us thought that it would be long and nasty… And as it turned out to be long and nasty, recent economic theories of macroeconomics have fallen like tropical rain forests. The–already implausible–claims that downturns had real causes? Fallen. The claim that downturns lasted only as long as workers misperceived their real wage? Fallen. The claim that the labor market cleared in a small number of years? Fallen. Those of us who believed that the long run came soon, that the cause of downturns was transitory price-level misperceptions, or that downturns had real causes need now to be looking for new jobs, or at least new theories. And we are left with the live macroeconomic theories being those of the 1960s, at the latest. This is embarrassing for those of us who want to belong to a profession that is a progressive science, rather than an analogue of medieval barbering. So what would the economic theories of the 1960s and before tell us to do? Milton Friedman: monetary expansion, and more monetary expansion–quantitative easing as deep and as broad as necessary to get nominal GDP back to its trend.
John Maynard Keynes (or at least one of the moods of Keynes): have the government borrow and buy stuff, and keep buying stuff until real economic activity is back to some normal trend value.
Jacob Viner: Why choose? Do both! Print lots of money and have the government use it to buy stuff and hire people. The odd thing is that none of those three recommended policies–all of which are sponsored by economists with the purest of purebred pedigrees–have been followed.
It’s time to do two things. At the policy level we need to go back and try the policies that we understood back in the 50’s and 60’s (economy did pretty well back then, BTW). Some serious, bold attempts at effective government spending would be nice instead of the weak, too-small, too-timid, niggling efforts dominated by tax cuts we’ve been doing. And even on the monetary front, it would be more useful to do as Friedman suggested: actually have The Fed keep buying bonds for cash (real circulating money instead of just bank reserves) and keep it up until people start spending it.
On the economics side, we need to get past the perfect rationality and rational expectations stuff (and it’s absurd mathematics) that has dominated the profession. It would be a good idea to take a more serious look at the heterodox ideas and theories that actually did foresee the crash, the ones based upon realistic models of human behavior and models instead of the perfectly rational, knows-the-future home economicus of the New Classical and New Keynesian models. We need to seriously look at ideas of Modern Monetary Theorists (MMT), Minsky, the Post-Keynesians, and the behavioral economists. |
That's what was going through my mind... Eyeballing it, I said aloud: "I didn't order anything from Society 6..." And the canister sat there, ominous but deadpan... I left it be and went to the kitchen to prepare a drink before returning, drink in hand, to continue to meditate on the tube before me. After two sips of meditation I threw caution to the wind and took the parcel to my desk, where a box cutter was handy, and cut it free from its binds. Cautiously, the paper wadding was removed to reveal... a thin tube. I slid it out from inside the parcel and discovered that "it" was a "they"; two tubes of a heavy stock paper. It clicked. These had to be posters of some sort and it was an Arbitrary Day gift! Upon further exploration, and mind blowing, they turned out not to be posters but art prints based on gaming. Since photos speak a thousand words, I will let them tell the rest of this tale; and since my photography skills are slim to nil, I will use the photos from the site. |
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Katharine Close during the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee
Close to 300 boys and girls will be stepping up to the mic at this week’s Scripps National Spelling Bee. They hail from across the United States, as well as from countries like Germany, Jamaica, the Bahamas, New Zealand, and Canada. Wait, do non-English-speaking countries have spelling bees, too?
Not exactly. Spelling bees are a particularly British and American phenomenon. The orthography of some Romance languages, like Spanish, is so regular that one can easily figure out the spelling of a word just by hearing the way it sounds. English, on the other hand, contains Latin, Greek, Germanic, and other roots, not to mention whole words borrowed from other languages. That’s why an American schoolchild might get stuck with tricky words like ursprache and appoggiatura.
Francophone nations aren’t satisfied with mere spelling; they test for correct grammar, too. French speakers around the world enter Quebec’s Dictée des Amériques, an international competition started in 1994. Contestants take a local multiple-choice test on grammar before moving on to the next rounds. At the finals, they’ll hear a passage—composed for the contest by a famous author—read aloud four times. Each contestant must scribble down the text of the passage (word for word) in about an hour. Each mistake is a point, so zero—the score of Bruno Dewaele, one of the 2006 champions—is the best possible outcome. (Who says Americans are monolingual? The United States sends about 10 finalists to the dictée each year.) The Canadian dictée takes after France’s Dicos d’Or, a contest that was discontinued a couple of years ago after more than two decades. The televised contest was so popular in France that families often took the dictée together. The Dutch also have a similar contest called Het Groot Dictee, which pits 30 regular folks and 30 celebrities against one another.
Nonalphabetic languages have their own competitions. Chinese kids join dictionary contests, where they look up words as fast as they can. Unlike English, you can’t completely decipher a Chinese character’s pronunciation just by looking at it, and characters can have many components. Thus there are several ways to find words in dictionaries. Students can look for the character’s radical, or semantic, root and search by the number of strokes in the character. If they know what the word sounds like, they can choose instead to look up the pinyin, or Romanized version, of the character. A third way involves a sort of Dewey Decimal System of words: By examining the strokes in the four “corners” of the character, expressing each corner as a number (a square is a six, for example), they can then use the resulting four-digit code to find a word in a special dictionary. Students also enter typing contests, where again the complexity of Chinese characters poses challenges.
In Japan, where Chinese characters known as kanji are part of the language, you might see entire families entering the Kanji proficiency exam, known as the Kanken. There are 10 levels, each testing for skills like writing, pronunciation, and stroke order. Level 1 is the hardest and requires knowledge of about 6,000 kanji; in 2000 just 208 people passed this test.
Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer.
Explainer thanks James Maguire, author of American Bee: The National Spelling Bee and the Culture of Word Nerds; Sylvio Morin of Dictée des Amériques; Corinne Noirot-Maguire of Goucher College; and Jeff Wang of Asia Society.
Correction, May 30, 2007: The caption on the photograph accompanying the piece originally misspelled the name of 2006 spelling bee champion Katharine Close. |
I just wanted to flag two important articles on Europe. First, Simon Wren-Lewis reminds us that while extreme austerity is being imposed on Europe’s periphery, the core has also pursued contractionary fiscal policies. Here’s the IMF’s estimate of the cyclically adjusted primary balance — a measure of what the non-interest budget balance would have been at full employment:
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Basically, faced with a huge blow to private demand from a burst housing bubble and deleveraging, Europe has responded not as 75 years of economics said it should, with temporary stimulus, but with Herbert Hoover — or, better, Chancellor Brüning — policies of retrenchment. And policy makers pronounce themselves shocked both to find that the bottom is dropping out of Europe’s economy and that their perceived authority and wisdom is being rejected by voters.
Meanwhile, Mark Mazower, an actual European historian, says better and with more authority than I could what I’ve been trying to get at: the Chancellor Brüning reference is not a joke: |
But San Jose's captain not only suited up, he reached a career milestone by becoming the 78th player in NHL history to score 1,000 points. Thornton planted himself near the crease and was in perfect position to bat a Logan Couture rebound out of midair and past Phoenix goalie Ilya Bryzgalov 9:27 into the third period to make it 4-2 and jump-start a late rally for the Sharks.San Jose came up short, losing 4-3 and failing to clinch second place in the Western Conference in the process -- so the individual celebration was muted for Thornton, who now has 11 straight 20-goal seasons and more points (752) than any NHL player since the 2002-03 season."You have to be blessed with a good supporting cast, and luckily I've been blessed with a lot of good friends and family and good linemates and good players to play along," Thornton told the San Jose Mercury-News after the game. "There's so many different variables that go into getting that many points and I have so many people to thank."Thornton, the No. 1 pick in the 1997 Entry Draft by Boston, has 306 goals and 694 assists in 994 regular-season games. He won the NHL scoring title in 2005-06 with 125 points -- 92 of which came after the Sharks acquired him from Boston in late November.Thornton has 579 points as a Shark after getting 421 with Boston. He joined Vincent Damphousse as the only players to reach 1,000 points while playing for San Jose -- and became the second player to reach 1,000 points this month; Calgary's Jarome Iginla did it on April 1.Thornton has more points of any player since the start of the 1997-98 season and currently ranks ninth in points among active players. Friday's goal gave him 69 points (21 goals, 48 assists) this season. His first NHL point, also a goal, came against Philadelphia and goaltender Garth Snow on Dec. 3, 1997."A thousand points is a thousand points," Sharks coach Todd McLellan said when asked if the Sharks' loss dampened the accomplishment. "You'll take it any way you can get it. It's something he should be extremely proud of and our organization should be proud to have a player of that caliber playing as long as he has here in San Jose. We are all very proud of him."For the second straight game, Thornton didn't take a single faceoff – an indicator that he's still nowhere near 100 percent. But San Jose was already down two forwards and forced to play seven defensemen with Ryane Clowe injured and Devin Setoguchi suffering an undisclosed injury in pregame warmups. Despite San Jose's first back-to-back regulation losses since mid-March, he's optimistic about a long postseason run."We feel good about our club and we feel confident," said Thornton, who nearly had the historic point an hour earlier but rang a second-period shot off the post."We've got three more periods (Saturday) before the big party starts. We go home and play these guys (Phoenix) right back again and I think we'll be sharper tomorrow." |
Notts County are delighted to announce that John Sheridan has been appointed as the club’s new First Team Manager.
Notts County are delighted to announce that John Sheridan has been appointed as the club’s new First Team Manager.
Sheridan, a former Republic of Ireland international, joins the Magpies from Oldham Athletic where he steered the club to 17th place in League One having taken over in January with the team in 22nd position and five points from safety.
The 51-year-old, who has signed a three-year contract, has a proven track record in the Football League, winning the League Two title and Football League Trophy with Chesterfield, whilst guiding both Oldham and Plymouth Argyle to the play offs.
Mark Crossley also joins the club as Assistant Manager, having previously worked alongside Sheridan at Chesterfield. Alan Smith, Mike Edwards and Kevin Pilkington complete the Magpies backroom setup, whilst retaining their playing registrations.
Smith will continue his development as a coach by working towards obtaining his UEFA B Licence during the season.
The club can also confirm that Richard Dryden leaves Meadow Lane with immediate effect and would like to place on record huge thanks for his hard work and service.
Chief Executive Jason Turner said of the appointment of the new managerial team: “I’m absolutely thrilled that we have secured John Sheridan as Notts County manager and very much look forward to working with him again when he takes up his position on Tuesday.
“He’s vastly experienced with a proven track record at this level, so to attract somebody of his calibre is a real statement of intent by the club.
“As a League Two title winner and having taken Plymouth Argyle to the play offs, as well as changing fortunes at sides such as Oldham and Newport, I’m confident that we’ve found a manager who can have us challenging for promotion at the top-end of the League Two table.
“We will now work together to build a squad capable of taking up that challenge for the 2016/17 season.
“In Mark Crossley, we are bringing in an assistant who knows this level of football well and enjoyed success at Chesterfield working alongside John.”
On joining the club Sheridan said: “I’m delighted to be joining Notts County and relishing the opportunity to get the club challenging for promotion to League One.
“The decision to leave Oldham was not an easy one and I will always retain my affection for the club and its fans.
“Notts County is a big club - far bigger than its current league position suggests and having taken Chesterfield to the League Two title, I know what is required to succeed and get the club back to a higher level.”
Speaking of his previous visits to Meadow Lane, he said: “As both an opposition player and manager over the years, the tremendous home support has always made it a tough place come – this passion can make a real difference and give us a huge advantage in our endeavours next season.”
Notts County would like to express thanks to both Oldham Athletic and Chesterfield for dealing with our approaches in a professional and amicable manner. |
There's electioneering, and then there's what Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Thursday on the campaign trail.
"We will eradicate Twitter," Erdoğan told a rally in Bursa in the west of the country. "I don’t care what the international community says. Everyone will witness the power of the Turkish Republic." There are roughly 10 million Twitter users based in Turkey.
To drive the point home, Erdoğan added: "Twitter, mwitter!" — although there appears to be some dispute about how to translate that — it's either a "semantically empty phrase" or an indication that Erdoğan will shut down Twitter and similar websites.
What happened next was no laughing matter. The Prime Minister's office issued a statement saying that Turkish officials had "no option" other than to ban Twitter, according to Reuters.
Shortly afterwards, tweets and screenshots began to show that Twitter (and possibly also Facebook) was being blocked in Turkey, as of 4:30pm ET:
At 11:30pm the turkish government has blocked access to twitter. #Turkey #Censorship — RedHackEditor ★ (@RedHackEditor) March 20, 2014
I'm told that the Twitter ban is slowly being rolled out in Turkey. Will update when I know more. https://t.co/AhMy4gdOU0 — Tim Pool (@Timcast) March 20, 2014
Many Twitter users were sharing a forum on Wikileaks with advice on how Turkish Twitter users can still access the site.
Twitter told Mashable it was investigating claims that its service is blocked. Meanwhile its governmental division responded by posting this tweet — once in English, and again in Turkish:
Turkish users: you can send Tweets using SMS. Avea and Vodafone text START to 2444. Turkcell text START to 2555. — Policy (@policy) March 20, 2014
"#TwitterisblockedinTurkey" and "#DictatorErdogan" were the top trending hashtags worldwide on Twitter by Thursday afternoon.
Erdoğan appears to have made use of a recent and highly controversial law, passed by the Turkish Parliament, that allows the government's Telecommunications Board to "shut down" websites based on anything it judges to be "privacy violations." Two weeks ago, he also threatened to shut down Facebook and YouTube.
"Some known circles immediately rebelled against this Internet law," Erdoğan said in a TV interview on March 6. "We are determined we won’t let the Turkish people be sacrificed to YouTube and Facebook." He claimed that "those people [the social media services] incite any kind of immorality or espionage for the profit of these institutions."
Erdoğan has been down on social media ever since the summer of 2013, when protesters filled Taksim Square in Istanbul to complain about the closure of a local park — and were met by police with tear gas. The Prime Minster described Twitter as a "troublemaker" that helped organize those protests.
In February, he claimed that Twitter bots — or as he put it, a "robot lobby" — were targeting the government.
"The robot lobby that they set up on social media hits with tweets," Erdoğan told parliament on Feb. 25. "They tell them to increase the number of tweets." This was around the same time that a number of phone calls were leaked online, purporting to show the corrupt dealings of Erdoğan's government.
Twitter has been shutting down fake accounts based in Turkey, according to the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily.
Erdoğan's words stand in stark contrast to those of the Turkish President Abdullah Gül, a prominent social media user. "The closure of them is out of the question," Gül told reporters in response to the earlier threats against Facebook and YouTube. "Both are very important platforms. We always take a pride in enlarging freedoms."
Meanwhile, it was announced Thursday that Twitter CEO Dick Costolo would receive this year's PEN award for contributions to "digital freedom".
Here's Erdoğan's speech from his rally Thursday:
*The red Twitter bird image tweeted by @Mashable was brought to our attention by Andy Carvin. It was originally hosted on this url.* |
When I was 14 years old, I used to work alternate Saturdays with my best mate Spencer in the Glasgow record store Rubadub. I was a massive fan of Daft Punk at the time, and on one of my first days there, a promo of the hugely anticipated Digital Love single came into the shop. When I asked if I could have it, Barrie, my mentor at the time, picked up the record and snapped it over his knee (so casually as to make it obvious he had done it many times before) and proceeded to launch it into the bin before handing me a record by a Detroit outfit known as Optic Nerve, ordering me to “Get yourself upstairs and listen to this”.
Afrofuturism takes flight: from Sun Ra to Janelle Monáe Read more
That’s how seriously they took their music in Rubadub and how little time they had for bullshit. One name I kept on noticing in the techno end of the shop was Drexciya. This was at a time when I would spend up to six hours a night on Napster and I eventually ran a search for them and the first file that came up was an MP3 that turned out to be The Journey Home from their 1995 EP on Warp. It blew my mind. Creatively it was like nothing I had ever heard because at that point I was into mainstream house and trance. It was the equivalent of an Abba fan hearing Larry Levan for the first time. I’d never really heard much dance music made on analogue machines before, at least not music that had so much feeling.
There was a real mystique to Drexciya because they were completely anonymous – they were never photographed, rarely gave interviews and if there was any extra text on their artwork it usually just said “Thanks to GOD”. Instead of revealing anything personal about themselves, they came up with an Afrofuturist mythology which cast the Drexciyans as a race of sea-dwelling humans descended from Africans thrown off slave ships in the mid-Atlantic. As a result, most of their tracks carried evocative, aquatic/sci-fi-inspired titles like Hydro Theory, Darthouven Fish Men, Deep Sea Dweller, Funk Release Valve and Water Walker.
The heavy subject matter and scientific leanings didn’t mean their music had to be was cold or impersonal; in fact it’s quite the opposite. Unlike most of today’s techno, which aims for a singular mood – white noise, crescendos and big drops – Drexciya made their own rules. Their tunes will often change every few bars, showcasing a particular mastery of melancholic melody and an ability to sway from playful to heartbreaking in the space of a minute. Elements don’t drop in and out neatly every four, eight or 16 bars as seems to be the status quo template with dance music, they’re it’s much more idiosyncratic and inventive. I often draw parallels in my head between Drexciya and Prince; both could achieve astounding emotional range in their songs and both operated completely in their own bubble. Drexciya’s James Stinson was a long-distance truck driver and he said in what I think is his only interview that in his truck he only listened to jazz, because he didn’t want any contemporary music to influence or interfere with his own vision.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jackmaster on Dopplereffekt, one of many Drexciya side projects: ‘The heavy subject matter and scientific leanings didn’t mean their music had to be cold or impersonal; in fact it’s quite the opposite.’ Photograph: PYMCA/UIG via Getty Images
Like many of their Detroit peers, both members of Drexciya maintained equally prolific side-projects including Dopplereffekt, Japanese Telecom and of course my favourite, Arpanet. One of my favourite Drexciya-related albums is 2001’s Lifestyles Of The Laptop Cafe, made by Stinson in the guise of The Other People Place. It was thrust into my hands when I was in Rubadub with the words “this is one of the best records you’ll ever hear” shortly after I had been sacked by the guys for turning up late too many times. I put the needle down on Let Me Be Me and I was sold. I don’t think I even listened to the rest of the album before buying it.
At first I didn’t make the connection with Drexciya because conceptually it’s so different – it’s really personal and heartfeltwhereas the Drexciya and Dopplereffekt music I had been collecting was colder and stark. The album tells the story of a relationship gone sour prematurely, ending in heartache. Something we can all relate to. The music of The Other People Place is fairly simplistic in its make-up – one or two drum machines (the classic Roland TR-808 prominently features), pads, bass and trippy, otherworldly vocals or effects – but what they do it does with those few elements is far greater than the sum of its parts and at times simply devastating in a club environment.
In the early 2000s, there were rumours of a Drexciya live tour, including a date in Glasgow. But then sadly James Stinson died of heart complications shortly before this tour began and that was the end of the Drexciya project. That was the first time that the death of a musician had a profound affect on me. My friends even did a Stinson tribute party in Glasgow that night in an illegal warehouse space. When I hear The Other People Place album I feel sad for many reasons. Not only because its message resonates with me but because I know how much more he had to give. There will never be another Drexciya.
Jackmaster’s five favorite Drexciya-related tracks
Drexciya – Funk Release Valve
This is from their 1999 album Neptune’s Lair, which is probably their most well-rounded album and also the one that goes deepest into the Drexciyan mythology. This track starts really upbeat and playful, but then it ushers in these more introspective themes. It’s a real trip moving from pop sensibilities into hard techno tracks that wouldn’t sound out of place at Berghain or of course Tresor, the club whose in-house label released the album.
The Other People Place – Let Me Be Me
Lifestyles Of The Laptop Cafe was such an important album for me. It didn’t sound like anything else I’d heard in dance music before – it’s so rich and warm and seductive, sexy, almost sleazy.
Arpanet – Infinite Density
This is one of Gerald Donald’s guises. There’s a lofty concept behind it about the promise and also the dangers of a fully connected world. This track is so cold and scientific, as if made in a laboratory rather than a studio, but the melody is just so incredible.
Dopplereffekt – Superior Race/Master Organism
The first time I heard this, it was being sampled by ghetto house producer DJ Deeon, on a track called Shake Dat Ass. But when you hear the original the context and energy is very different.
Elecktroids - Algorithm
Elecktroids is is a mid-90s side project, again on Warp, apparently featuring both Drexciya members. It’s a tribute to Kraftwerk, so the songs are full of these haunting, austere, melodies. It’s such a cliche to say it, but this tune will take you on a real journey. It really gets inside you and dictates your mood.
The reissue of Lifestyles Of The Laptop Cafe by The Other People Place is out now on Warp; Drexciya’s Grava 4 will be reissued by Clone in March
Interview by Sam Richards |
Joe Burbank-Pool/AP Photo
The book written by one of the attorneys who prosecuted Casey Anthony is now in the works to be adapted into a TV movie.
The movie will be based on the new book “Imperfect Justice, Prosecuting Casey Anthony” by retired Florida prosecutor Jeff Ashton, according to Fox Television Studios spokeswoman Leslie Oren, who said that the studio has optioned the book.
Oren said that the film is being developed for the Lifetime cable network, but is in its early stages. Lifetime has yet to give the green light to the project.
Ashton spent three years preparing for the prosecution of 25-year-old Anthony, who was accused of killing her two-year-old daughter Caylee in 2008. The prosecution asked for the death penalty in the case, but Anthony was eventually acquitted of the murder charge.
In the book, Ashton gives insider information into the investigation, the criminal trial and eventual not guilty verdict that captured the attention of the nation. The career prosecutor feels that Anthony got away with murder, according to People magazine, and in the book takes jabs at Anthony’s defense attorneys and jurors.
“I have seen my share of liars, but never one quite like this,” Ashton writes in the book, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
Read ABC News’ full coverage of the Casey Anthony trail here. |
So I dug out my 5+ year old netbook, and updated the Ubuntu to release 14.04 (from 10.04) and now it can see the wireless connection and it says it connects to it, but it does not load any pages in the browser, nor does it load the router's site either. I can connect via ethernet.
Please note that I'm a linux newb, I only know to post these commands from googling this problem and seeing that other people posted them - please let me know if there's anything else I should post as well, and if you could explain solutions like I'm a 5-year-old, it'd probably help out a lot!
Solutions I've already tried:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer
sudo iwconfig
wlan0 IEEE 802.11abg ESSID:"aterm-f78fa8-g" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.457 GHz Access Point: 10:66:82:4D:34:DC Bit Rate=26 Mb/s Tx-Power=200 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Encryption key:off Link Quality=70/70 Signal level=-22 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt: 0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0 lo no wireless extensions eth0 no wireless extensions
sudo lspci -v
05:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adaptor (rev 01) Subsystem: Askey Computer Corp. Device 7179 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16 Memory at f0100000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) {size=16K] Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [58] Vendor Specific Information: Len=78 <?> Capabilities: [48] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [d0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting Capabilities: [13c] Virtual Channel Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number 00-00-9f-ff-ff-52-b4-74 Capabilities: [16c] Power Budgeting <?> Kernel driver in use: wl
sudo lshw -c network |
Construction began last year and the firm is starting operation in areas of the facility as they are completed
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The US loses at least 1.5 million acres of productive farmland to urbanization every year.
In order to combat the loss of land, AeroFarms builds indoor vertical farms and is set to open its ninth facility in Newark, New Jersey – one hour outside of Manhattan.
Believed to be the world's largest vertical farm, this 70,000-square-foot facility has the potential to harvest 2 million pounds of food a year and will use 95 percent less water than field farmed-food.
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In order to combat the loss of land, AeroFarms builds indoor vertical farms and is set to open its ninth facility in Newark, New Jersey – one hour outside of Manhattan. Dubbed the world's largest vertical farm, this 70,000-square-foot facility has the potential to harvest 2 million pounds of food a year
AeroFarms has been on a mission to combat the global food crisis since 2004 using its aeroponic growing systems.
This technology providers 'faster harvest cycles, predictable results, superior food safety and less environmental impact,' AeroFarms explains on the website.
Not only will this massive farm produce millions of pounds of nutritious greens and herbs, it will produce 75 percent more yield than a traditional outdoor farm that is the same size, reports Urbanist.
AeroFarms is able to achieve this by staggering crops, a strategy that allows them to switch between 22 crops per year – regardless of the season.
The cutting-edge farming systems that are used in all of the facilities do not contribute to the effects of soil erosion, pesticides, water overuse and carbon emissions are heavily reduced – and sometimes completely eliminated.
HOW DOES AEROFARMS GROW PRODUCE? The facility in Newark will be be 70,000-square-foot with the potential to harvest 2 million pounds of food a year and will use 95 percent less water than field farmed-food. Specialized LED lights and climate controls have been specifically designed to grow a 250 variety of greens, all without the need for sunlight or soil. These unique lights allow AeroFarms to control size, shape, texture, colour, flavor and nutrition of the leafy greens and herbs grown in the facilities. AeroFarms uses aeroponic growing systems that mist the roots of the greens with 40% less hydroponics and zero pesticides. Plant scientists monitor more than 30,000 data points from every harvest at each facility. During this event, researchers will review, test and use predictive analytics to better improve the systems. The firm has also developed a patented, reusable cloth medium for seeding, germinating, growing and harvesting. Each cloth is developed using 24 post-consumer, recycled plastic water bottles, which can be fully sanitized after every harvest.
AeroFarms is able to achieve this by staggering crops, a strategy that allows them to switch between 22 crops per year during, including baby kale, regardless of the season. The aeroponic system is a closed loop system, using 95% less water than field farming, 40% less than hydroponics, and zero pesticides
Specialized LED lights and climate controls have been specifically designed to grow a 250 variety of greens, all without the need for sunlight or soil.
These unique lights allow AeroFarms to control size, shape, texture, colour, flavor and nutrition of the leafy greens and herbs grown in the facilities.
'We use aeroponics to mist the roots of our greens with nutrients, water, and oxygen,' explains AeroFarms.
'Our aeroponic system is a closed loop system, using 95% less water than field farming, 40% less than hydroponics, and zero pesticides.'
The facility is getting closer to completion after a year of construction and the firm is opening up areas that are ready for operation.
The aisles are filled with tall shelves that can only be accessed using a forklift crane and farmers must suit up before getting close to the produce – gloves, lab coat hairnet and disinfected shoes are mandatory attire.
'We are building the world's largest indoor vertical farm in Newark, New Jersey, and we have farms in development on four continents,' said AeroFarms.
'There has never been a greater need for safe, dependable, nutritious food.'
'That is why we are committed to growing locally on a global scale.'
The firm says the proximity to Manhattan will cut costs for transportation and holds a large market that is eager for fresh locally grown produce.
Plant scientists monitor more than 30,000 data points from every harvest at each facility.
During this event, researchers will review, test and use predictive analytics to better improve the systems.
'With remote monitoring and controls in place, we have minimized the typical risks associated with traditional agriculture,' explained AeroFarms.
The firm has also developed a patented, reusable cloth medium for seeding, germinating, growing and harvesting.
The firm uses specialized LED lights and climate controls, all without the need for sunlight or soil. These unique lights allow AeroFarms to control size, shape, texture, colour, flavor and nutrition of the leafy greens and herbs grown in the facilities
'We are building the world's largest indoor vertical farm in Newark, New Jersey, and we have farms in development on four continents,' said AeroFarms. The firm says the proximity to Manhattan will cut costs for transportation and holds a large market that is eager for fresh locally grown produce
Each cloth is developed using 24 post-consumer, recycled plastic water bottles, which can be fully sanitized after every harvest.
This system also acts as a barrier between the mist and the plants, allowing the firm to harvest a clean, dry and ready to eat product.
AeroFarms is able to grow over 250 different varieties of leafy greens and herbs, which they has has a longer shelf life and highest highest possible food safety controls from seed to package.
Chief Marketing Officer Marc Oshima (left) laid out the reasons why New Jersey is the perfect place to grow our company and even had governer Chris Christie (left center) stop in for a visit. Oshima (right) also took visitors on a tour of the new facility in Newark sometime in March 2016, dressed in the proper mandatory attire
AeroFarms has been on a mission to combat the global food crisis since 2004 using its aeroponic growing systems. It has also developed a patented, reusable cloth medium for seeding, germinating, growing and harvesting The aisles are filled with tall shelves that can only be accessed using a forklift crane and farmers must suit up before getting close to the produce
The firm doesn't just aims to make up for the farm loss in the US, but help combat the global food shortage.
The World Bank predicts that there will be a global population of 9 billion by 2050, which will require at least 50 percent more food than is needed today.
And climate change is also expected to cut crop yields by more than 25 percent over this time period, which is said to hit the poorest areas of the world the hardest. |
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle
By Leo Babauta
If you could just pick one or two (or seven) habits to create in the next few months — habits that will have the most impact on your life — what would they be?
I often get asked this question, because people are overwhelmed when it comes to starting positive life changes.
They ask me: what one or two habits should they start with?
It’s not an easy question. There are so many changes I’ve gone through, from quitting smoking to simplifying my life to reducing debt to many more. And they’ve all seemed life-changing, and they’ve all seemed important.
But if I were to start again, and had to pick one or two, it would be the one or two listed below. The list that follows is in order of what I think I’d do the first 6-7 months of changing my life … but realize that every person is different. No one should follow my choices exactly — you’ve got to figure out what works for you.
That said, if you followed the program below, and worked to develop these habits, you’d probably do pretty well.
“Men’s natures are alike; it is their habits that separate them.” – Confucius
How to Develop the Habits
I’ve written a number of times about developing habits, but here are the basics:
Do a 30-day challenge, focusing on just ONE habit.
Write it out on paper, along with your motivations, obstacles, and strategies for overcoming them.
Commit fully, in a public way.
Log your progress.
Remain publicly accountable — report on your progress each day.
Have support for when you falter — either in real life or online.
Reward every little success.
If you fail, figure out what went wrong, plan for it, and try again.
Read more:
The Seven Little Habits That Can Change Your Life
OK, so now you know how to form a habit — and remember, only do them one at a time — but you want to know the seven little habits. Here they are, in my order of preference (but yours may be different):
1. Develop positive thinking. I put this first because I think it’s the keystone habit that will help you form the other important habits. Sure, positive thinking by itself won’t lead to success, but it certainly goes a long way to motivate you to do the other things required.
I learned this when I quit smoking — when I allowed myself to think negative thoughts, I would end up failing. But when I learned how to squash negative thoughts and think positive ones instead, I succeeded. This discovery lead to me practicing this over and over, until I was able to form just about any habit I needed. It’s been invaluable to me, and I think it could be to most people.
Focus on this habit first, and you’ll have a much easier time with any of the others. Start by becoming more aware of your negative self-talk — do a little tally sheet throughout the day, marking a tally each time you notice a negative thought. Soon you’ll recognize them, and you can squash them.
Read more:
2. Exercise. People who’ve been hearing me harp on about exercise might roll their eyes. Sure, exercise is healthy and all that, but how exactly is it life changing? I’m glad you asked:
It makes you feel better about yourself, and more confident. That leads to better success with other positive changes.
It reinforces the positive thinking habit — you need to think positive in order to sustain exercise.
It relieves stress and gives you time to think — this leads to better mental well-being in your life overall.
It helps with creativity. Don’t ask me to prove it, except to say that my best ideas and brainstorming sessions come from when I exercise.
Here’s how:
3. Single-tasking. The opposite of multi-tasking — you’ve heard me harp on about this one as well. Why is it life-changing? A couple powerful reasons:
You’ll be more effective with your tasks and get more done. It’s hard to achieve important things if you’re constantly switching tasks and distracted by other “urgent” things.
You’ll be less stressed overall and (in my experience) happier throughout your day.
Read more:
4. Focus on one goal. Just as focusing on one task at a time is more effective, and focusing on one habit at a time is more effect, so is focusing on one goal at a time. While it might seem very difficult, focusing on one goal at a time is the most powerful way of achieving your goals. When you try to take on many goals at once, you’re spreading thin your focus and energy — the two critical components for achieving a goal.
What if you have 5 goals you want to achieve? Pick one to focus on first. Break it into a mini-goal you can accomplish this month, if it’s a longer-term goal. Pick an action you can do today. Keep doing this until the goal is accomplished — do an action every day, finish the mini-goal, pick the next mini-goal to work on. Then, when your One Goal is completed, focus on the next goal.
Some goals are ongoing ones — like blogging every day, or exercising every day. In those cases, turn them into habits — focus exclusively on turning the goal into a habit, until the habit is ingrained. Then focus on the next goal.
Read more:
5. Eliminate the non-essential. First, identify the essential — the things in your life that are most important to you, that you love the most. Then eliminate everything else. This simplifies things and leaves you with the space to focus on the essential. This process works with anything — with your life in general, with work projects and tasks, with emails and other communication.
This will change your life because it will help you to simplify, to focus on what’s important, and to build the life you want.
Read more:
6. Kindness. Yes, kindness is a habit. And it can be cultivated. Focus on it every day for a month and you’ll see profound changes in your life. You’ll feel better about yourself as a person. You’ll see people react to you differently and treat you better, over the long run. It’s karma.
How do you develop the kindness habit? First, make it a goal to do something kind for someone each day. At the beginning of the day, figure out what that kind act will be and then do it during the day. Second, each time you interact with someone, try to be kind, be friendly, be compassionate. Third, try to go beyond small kindnesses to larger acts of compassion, volunteering to help those in need and taking the initiative to relieve suffering.
Read more:
7. Daily routine. It’s so simple, but creating a daily routine for yourself can make a big difference in your life. The best routines, I’ve found, come at the start and end of the day — both your workday and your day in general. That means, develop a routine for when you awake, for when you first start working, for when you finish your workday, and for the end of your evening.
How will that change your life? It will help you get a great start to your day, and finish your day by preparing for the next day. It’ll help you firmly root the productive habits you want to firm in your everyday life. It’ll help you focus on what’s important, not just what comes up. It’ll help you make sure you get done all the things you really want to make sure gets done everyday. And that can mean a lot. |
Israel is a pioneer of marijuana as medicine, but its non-medical cannabis laws lag behind. Could this be a step in the right direction?
Israel has a global reputation for being one of the most cannabis-forward countries in the world, having pioneered research in medical marijuana since the 1960s. Yet despite the country's advancements in cannabis science and medicine, its policy for non-medical marijuana consumers is surprisingly conservative.
In the spring, the Israeli Knesset, or parliament, announced what was ultimately a shoddy "decriminalization" policy, under which personal use is still illegal and enough to land you in jail, should you have committed a prior violation or been caught four times. And the smell of weed alone would still be license for law enforcement to search your home.
Recently, however, an internal police order was leaked, indicating a policy shift that would distinguish between "personal use" and "commercial use" among people growing cannabis in their residences.
Cannabis, Israel's largest 420-friendly media conglomerate, originally broke the story. Editor-in-chief Oren Lebovitch — also chairman of Ale Yarok (Green Leaf), Israel's legalization party — uncovered the internal memo issued over the summer by the ‘police prosecution department,’ stating that growing small quantities of cannabis at home for private consumption would be treated as a minor violation of "personal use," instead of as a more serious violation like "growing a dangerous drug" or "possession not for personal use." Currently, Israelis who grow cannabis at home are suspected of possession not for personal use, no matter whether they have an entire garden or a single plant.
The directive is meant to clarify Israeli law enforcement's stance on classifying cases of residential cannabis grows, and allow police to focus instead on dealers and distributors, rather than regular, everyday consumers — of which Israel has many. Around 27 percent of the population between the ages of 18 and 65 has consumed cannabis in the past year.
"Since 2015, we have seen that the Israeli courts are aligning themselves with reality, and have begun imposing lighter sentences against Israelis caught growing cannabis at home for their own use," Lebovitch tells MERRY JANE. "This approach is now joined by the police, according to the new secret internal document that we have uncovered. It appears that the professional elements in the country — the judiciary and the executive branches — understand that cannabis consumers are not criminals, while the legislature, the Israeli parliament (Knesset) still lags behind."
What Lebovitch calls the "half-decriminalization reform" was supposed to go into effect eight months ago, but the Israeli public has still seen no real change. This specific internal police order, however, which was not meant to be public knowledge, could perhaps be interpreted as a more sincere gesture. "It seems that they are starting to understand that someone who grows a cannabis plant or two on his or her porch is not a criminal," says Lebovitch."This is certainly news of tremendous legal significance. Unfortunately, this does not mean that the police are now directing their efforts to [more] serious crimes, but only that the police prosecution will not file indictments for such offenses, or that it will only require light sentences."
Nonetheless, he says it's a welcome step in the right direction toward more legitimate decriminalization or legalization policies, as seen in Canada and certain American states.
Gil Luxenbourg, former chairman of the Israel Medical Cannabis Association and CTO of IsItWeed Rolling Papers, is a little more skeptical. Now that the leak is set to make headlines, it'll surely be swindled into another PR stunt, he says, like Israel's decriminalization policy back in the spring. Cultivation is still a criminal offense and the law itself hasn't changed, Luxenbourg reminds us.
"Just last month a grow shop owner was arrested for allegedly importing materials for drug production — because of importing a routine shipment of grow boxes, as they have been for years without any problems," he says. "So in fact, we see the police targeting home grow operations and prosecution is still same as it has always been — a criminal prosecution over production of an illegal drug in a drug lab (cultivation under grow lights is considered a drug production lab), regardless of the personal use issue." Only if the courts make a definitive ruling permitting cannabis cultivation, followed by legislative reform, will there be actual cannabis policy change in Israel, Luxenbourg says. "For now, it is more of the PR stunts we have seen in the past with a large smokescreen hiding the reality."
Currently the maximum sentence for cultivating cannabis is 20 years behind bars; meanwhile, the maximum sentence for personal use is only three years, though most people caught with very small qualities aren’t punished for a first-time offense.
The internal order outlines just how common home grows of cannabis have become: “In recent years, we have witnessed a non-negligible increase in the number of suspects involved in committing the offense of growing the dangerous drug cannabis in limited quantities, with no sophisticated means of cultivation, in planters on their porch or yard, who until this slip were considered normative citizens...On the other hand, there has been a significant increase in the number of suspects growing cannabis in significant quantities, with advanced planning, including the purchase of specialty items (such as fertilizer, chemicals, drip irrigation equipment, special lamps, etc), or who were renting apartments/houses solely for this purpose."
Thus, now there's more direction for Israeli police on differentiating between these two kinds of cases, such as the number of plants and the kind of setup involved. Going forward, it remains to be seen how many cannabis users in Israel will ultimately benefit from this reform. |
Idol Death Game TV is a death game set in a desolate mansion
The new game from D3 Publisher and Witchcraft.
The latest issue of Weekly Famitsu has first details on Idol Death Game TV, the newly announced PS Vita game from D3 Publisher and Witchcraft.
The game centers around an unscripted event called “Dream of Dreams,” set within a desolate old mansion, where a center idol is to be decided from the members of a popular idol group called “Project 47,” including the year’s low ranking members. Within Project 47 are units, such as “Team Happy” and “Team Smile,” and in total the group has over 200 members. The player will choose to play as one idol from those appearing, and the story will change accordingly.
There are exploration, judging, and “Death Concert” elements. During exploration, you’ll look for items throughout each stage as well as exchange information with idols. And it seems that it’s important to both raise your own spirits while lowering those of your opponents. During judging parts, you’ll be judged on your dancing and performance. And during “Death Concerts,” the idols that didn’t make it through to the final judging are killed. However, it seems that by clearing the trials of Doripaku (voiced by Kappi Yamaguchi), a costumed character with pink hair who leads the event (and while cruel supposedly values human life), the defeated can somehow be revived.
The magazine introduces some of the game’s appearing idols, including:
Mariko Kamata (voiced by Azumi Asakura) – Rank 88. A comforting idol part of the first graduating class who has a 10-year career.
Chiharu Chigasaki (voiced by Emi Uema) – Rank 5. An orthodox idol who puts in great effort.
Shirase Tsubaka (voiced by Yurika Kubo) – Rank 15. A mood maker and younger sister-type idol who adores Mariko and Chiharu.
Ayaka Tennouji (voiced by Yu Serizawa) – Rank 6. The leader of Team Smile and a woman with a strong sense of justice.
Rito Karasuma (voiced by Asuka Nishi) – Rank 43. An air-headed idol talented in acting who admires Ayaka.
Development on the game is currently 69 percent complete (hehe). It features illustrations by Metawo Ueda, script and supervision by Shoujiro Endo, and is produced by Yujiro Usuda.
Idol Death Game TV will launch for PS Vita in Japan on October 20.
Thanks, [email protected]. |
TORONTO -- The sun has set outside the Canadian Football League's headquarters, perched on the third floor of a red brick warehouse near the eastern edge of this city. It's 10:45 p.m., halfway through a long night of work, and Marc Cobb is staring at the 20-inch video screen on the table in front of him.
The Calgary Stampeders and BC Lions are slugging it out some 2,500 miles away in Vancouver, a listless matchup that will end in a 37-9 Stampeders victory, when Cobb sits up straight. He begins barking into his headset.
"Other hash, Timmy! Other hash! Ball goes on the other hash!"
On the screen, the Lions are still huddling. If you watch closely, you can see referee Tim Kroeker nod, pick up the ball, and move it to the far hashmark. Play continues without interruption. Few realize that the CFL's eye in the sky has rescued the spot.
Jake Ireland, a retired referee and CFL Hall of Fame member, is sitting to Cobb's right. He gives a demonstrative thumbs-up. Darren Hackwood, the CFL's director of officiating, is excited as well. "Great catch, guys," he says as the Lions line up for their next play.
The future of football officiating at the game's highest level has arrived, courtesy of the CFL.
On this warm August evening, Cobb is the CFL's video official. Sitting in the league's tiny Command Centre, a 12-by-20-foot room separated from the rest of the league office by a glass wall, he is empowered to fix obvious mistakes while watching the same high-definition broadcast that fans see at home. He can overrule unreviewable penalty calls, alert referees to administrative errors, and ensure accurate identification of players who commit fouls.
The pilot program, part of the CFL's dramatic expansion of replay review in 2016, is being watched closely by the NFL. It is not without its faults and limitations, and CFL commissioner Jeffrey Orridge used the word "trialing" to describe the experiment. But it is an effort that all sports leagues will consider over time as a method for marrying technology with tradition in the era of HD home viewership.
"We are starting to service a group that has much greater expectations on levels of accuracy based on what they see," said Glen Johnson, the CFL's senior vice president of football. "I fundamentally believe that when you're watching the game at home, you don't care about, 'Oh, yeah, the official is out of position. Rats. Oh well.' It's, 'I just saw, on my fancy expensive television, that the call is clearly wrong. I don't understand why they can't fix it. I don't get it.' So that's what we're focused on here."
CFL video official Marc Cobb, left, and replay official Jake Ireland closely monitor the Montreal-Ottawa game from the CFL Command Centre in Toronto on Aug. 19. Kevin Seifert/ESPN.com
Using technology to 'close that gap'
The CFL's moderate size allows it to be flexible and nimble in ways that the larger and more heavily scrutinized NFL cannot. Orridge considers the league to be "a big enough brand to have significant equity, but small enough to be nimble and to be able to investigate and adopt innovation."
The video official project is the latest stage in an approach that started in 2013, when the CFL added defensive pass interference to its list of reviewable plays.
It marked a foray into reviewing more than simple objective calls such as ball possession and whether a pass is complete. Pass interference is a judgment call that traditionally relies on an official's instantaneous assimilation of the action relative to rules. NFL owners, for one, have no appetite for taking it away from on-field personnel. But after three trial seasons of practice in the CFL, Johnson felt confident about its progress -- boosted in large part by a critical turn of events in the 2015 Grey Cup -- and proposed an expansion.
For this season, the CFL added offensive pass interference, illegal contact and roughing the kicker/passer, among other "subjective" penalties, to its list of reviewable plays. The intent, Johnson said, was to fix "obvious mistakes" that the common home viewer could see.
That mantra is quite literally painted on the wall of the CFL Command Centre. As he described the project, Johnson was sitting underneath a message that read: "The purpose of instant replay is to correct rulings where there is indisputable visual evidence that an incorrect call has been made on the field."
The point, Johnson said, is to "get better at the very, very small percentage of stuff we're not getting right." Just as important: Avoid attempting to correct the vast swath of debatable and/or 50-50 calls in a way that would bog down the flow of the game.
"We can use technology today to close that gap," Johnson said. "But whatever is in that gap, we really only want to deal with the big and obvious things."
CFL replay officials are not looking for a slight tug of the jersey or a glancing blow to the helmet. Instead, as demonstrated in the 2015 Grey Cup, they're looking to correct the kind of call that sends teams and fans into an exasperated frenzy.
With four minutes, 20 seconds remaining in that game, then-Edmonton Eskimos coach Chris Jones challenged an incompletion on a pass to receiver Dorel Walker. The replay showed Ottawa Redblacks defender Brandon Sermons slamming into Walker and shoving him out of the way of the pass.
It was a clear example of pass interference. Back in the Command Centre, the replay official agreed and assessed a 37-yard penalty. The Eskimos, who had been trailing 20-18, were now in position for what turned out to be the championship-clinching touchdown.
"Had the coach not had the ability to challenge that, we might still be talking about that call," Johnson said. "So guess what? He challenged it. We fixed it. It was the right thing, and no one talked about it for more than a week after the game. They just remember that it was a great game and the right team won."
But coaches look for every advantage imaginable, of course, and they pounced this season on the newly reviewable penalties. If they didn't have one already, CFL teams assigned an intern-level employee to the coaching booth during games, utilizing a custom video tablet -- complete with toggling and scrubbing functionality -- to scour plays for potentially reviewable calls.
Consider a Week 9 game this year in which Hamilton Tiger-Cats coach Kent Austin challenged an interception that his quarterback had thrown in the end zone to the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Austin's complaint? A missed illegal contact penalty on the far side of the field, some 40 yards away from the interception and in a direction that quarterback Zach Collaros never looked.
"But perfection is not the right thing to chase. What we want to keep chasing is the obvious mistakes that are missed for some unknown reason, the ones that you would just expect to be made. Whether you put an 8-year-old in the room who doesn't know a whole lot about it, but kind of has a sense of what's right and wrong, or you put a really avid fan in the room, we want them to both think the same thing. We want to get to that good commonsense factor." Glen Johnson, the CFL's senior vice president of football
The replay official reversed the interception. Instead of the Roughriders taking over after a touchback, the Tiger-Cats had first-and-goal because of contact that was technically illegal but had no impact on the play.
"In the end it worked out, but you kind of have a receiver coming off the field on every play saying he was grabbed," said Collaros, a former University of Cincinnati star. "If you're all of a sudden in a second-and-10 situation, you can be like, 'Hey, somebody probably got grabbed,' and challenge the call. So I'm not a fan of it. I think you need some human element in the game."
Indeed, reviews nearly doubled in the first 10 weeks, from 1.25 per game in 2015 to 2.43 thus far in 2016. Just as important, the CFL's average time per game swelled by just under three minutes.
"To be honest, I hate it," Collaros said. "[Replay expansion] sucks. It just slows the game down. It just slows it down too much, in my opinion. I don't want to get fined for saying that, and we benefited from it once tonight. But it seems like it always just takes too long."
I witnessed what can be a tense process from the inside during my visit to the Command Centre. As soon as a review was initiated, a red digital timer appeared at the bottom of a 60-inch screen on the front wall. Two 55-inch screens were below. One showed the live broadcast of the game, and the other projected the screen that Ireland used at his table.
On this occasion, the Montreal Alouettes challenged an Ottawa Redblacks completion. Technician Louie Polyzois started the timer and shouted its progress at regular intervals.
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When an alternative view became available via the TSN broadcast, Polyzois captured and titled it.
"New angle!" he shouted. "Angle B!"
"I'm not seeing anything that tells me anything," Ireland said.
"45 seconds!" said Polyzois.
"Are there any other angles?" Ireland asked. Speaking directly to the TSN broadcasting truck, he repeated: "TSN, do you have any other angles?"
"Come on, guys," Hackwood said.
Unofficially, the CFL has a soft cap on replay reviews at 90 seconds.
"Anything else?" Ireland said one more time.
"One [minute], fifteen [seconds]!" Polyzois shouts.
"I see no mistake here," Ireland said.
"Me either," Cobb added.
"Tommy, the call is confirmed!" Ireland said through his headset to referee Tom Vallesi.
The review is over in one minute and 16 seconds.
Midseason tweak
Amid consistent complaints about the number and duration of challenges, from players and fans alike, the CFL took rare midseason action. A week after my visit, the league convened an emergency meeting of its board of governors. Effective immediately, it changed the challenge rule.
Now, a team loses a timeout if its first challenge fails. (Previously, a timeout was taken only if a second challenge failed.) Some might have viewed the change as an admission that the league had allowed replay to grow too large, but CFL officials considered it in the context of their corporate culture.
In a statement, Orridge said in part: "We are proud of the innovation we have brought to our game, including innovation in the use of replay, and the fact that these advances are being followed by other leagues. But innovation in any pursuit is often followed by adjustments and alterations."
The NFL is far too conservative to expand replay to this degree. Senior vice president of officiating Dean Blandino has said he wants judgment calls to remain with on-field officials, and there isn't much support among players for a radical change.
Washington Redskins veteran defensive back DeAngelo Hall, for one, said he couldn't fathom such a transition to reviewing pass interference.
"No," Hall said during a training camp interview, his eyes growing wide at the mere mention. "No. No. No. It's too hard. It's one thing when you're reviewing something that is black and white: Is it a foul or not a foul? But judgment calls? The guy in the booth might see it differently than the guy on the field, and he might see it differently than someone in an office. Who's right? There's such a fine line and such a judgment call there, I think it would be really hard to do. Almost impossible."
Ten saves per game
Reasonable people can debate the limits of replay review and whether it should include judgment calls. But for the CFL -- and the NFL, for that matter -- the video official concept makes too much sense to ignore. Why should coaches, fans and players see easily fixed mistakes, once undetected but now visible on HD screens and scoreboards, go uncorrected?
Johnson's short answer: There is no reason to. His video official, in fact, is tasked in part with maintaining the public's trust.
Hamilton's Brandon Banks catches a pass in front of Saskatchewan's Ed Gainey. Plays like this are being evaluated closely in the CFL's Command Centre in Toronto. Dave Chidley/CFL Photo
On the night of my visit, Cobb toggled between the live broadcast feed and an all-24 angle -- CFL rules allow 12 players per side -- every time he saw a flag. One of his jobs: identifying the number of the player who committed the foul.
Sometimes, he simply told the referee: "It was No. 90, nine-zero, if you need it."
On other occasions, it was clear that the referee was asking him for help.
"I'm looking now," Cobb replied to one query. "Switching to the other angle. Yes. No. 56. Definitely. Confirmed."
It might sound simple, Johnson said, "but there's nothing worse than us announcing, 'Holding on No. 35,' and our broadcast partner going to the replay and No. 35 is not even touching a guy. There is an awkward silence, and people watching at home are like, 'These guys can't get it right!' In fact, it was No. 36 or No. 38. Just fixing a number can help."
Cobb's job is aided by the CFL schedule, which never has more than one game underway at a time. And for now, video officials are limited only to penalties that are not otherwise reviewable. They also can't initiate penalties that weren't called, even if they are obvious, although Johnson said that day might soon come.
Regardless, Hackwood estimated that the video official has contributed between eight and 10 fixes per game this season. Some might be simply flipping the hashmarks or correcting a player's number. On other occasions, the video official helps on-field officials spot the ball after penalties on kick returns.
"That's one of the most difficult things for our officials on the field to do," Hackwood said. "You're watching the penalty and then you have to immediately find where the ball is so you know how to mark it off. The video official has been very helpful with that. We were finding that we were consistently 4 or 5 yards off on those plays before we started this."
Said Johnson: "Nobody notices that. There's no credit given. But I can tell you the outcome is people think we're getting better. They believe the officiating product is getting better because of that. So there's some real benefit to fixing a bunch of those things in the background."
The big payoff, of course, is when the video official overrules an erroneous penalty called on the field. The system was designed for these instances to occur infrequently -- remember, the CFL is targeting only the "obvious" mistakes -- and through 10 weeks it has happened seven times.
Four of the seven have corrected the CFL's tricky offside rule for receivers who are in motion before the snap. On the field it appeared that the receivers were past the line of scrimmage when the ball moved. A quick look at the replay revealed they were not.
On one occasion in Week 5, the Edmonton Eskimos had a 40-yard touchdown play against Hamilton called back on an offside penalty. After a few minutes, it was announced that the video official ruled there was no offside and the touchdown would stand.
Marshall Ferguson, a former quarterback at Canada's McMaster University and now the Tiger-Cats' radio analyst, sat in the booth stunned.
Painted on the wall of the CFL's Command Centre is this line about instant replay for all league officials to take note. Kevin Seifert/ESPN.com
"At that point," Ferguson said, "the conspiracy theorist in me is going, 'They just want a lot of scoring to happen so they're going to help teams score lots of points.' But when we saw the frame frozen, we could see there was no offsides."
Said Collaros: "There's times when it looks like the call is easy and they still don't change it, so it just feels weird to me. The conspiracy theories start to click in there."
The NFL experienced a similar reaction last season when a number of officiating sources theorized that league executives were "whispering" in the ears of referees during games to help avoid mistakes. The NFL has granted Blandino, senior director of officiating Al Riveron and/or the designated replay official formal authority this season to consult with the referee on application of rules, proper assessment of penalties, the proper down and the status of the game clock. The NFL made clear, however, that no one can advise referees about penalty calls as the CFL does.
The future
The CFL Command Centre hardly resembles a bustling hive of innovation.
It is about the size of a college dorm room, with seating for no more than six people. Two window air conditioning units help cool the overflow of video and communications equipment. Keeping the door open helps air circulation, and Hackwood closes it only when the cleaning crew arrives to vacuum the rest of the CFL office.
Occasionally, the occupants raise their voices to be heard over the sounds of a busy city three stories below on Wellington Street. Tim Hortons coffee cups dominate the decor. Standing against the back wall, Hackwood quietly ticked off the league's observations near the season's midpoint.
CFL officiating is running a 94 percent accuracy rate, about two points higher than 2015, based on internal grading of every play. On average, the system -- on-field officials combined with video and replay men -- is allowing two incorrect penalties to stand per game and missing six that should have been made.
"The victory for us is that we feel the officiating is better this year," Johnson said. "But perfection is not the right thing to chase. What we want to keep chasing is the obvious mistakes that are missed for some unknown reason, the ones that you would just expect to be made. Whether you put an 8-year-old in the room who doesn't know a whole lot about it, but kind of has a sense of what's right and wrong, or you put a really avid fan in the room, we want them to both think the same thing. We want to get to that good commonsense factor."
It's easy to imagine similar conversations in the boardrooms of other sports leagues. How best to incorporate the inevitable creep of technology while maintaining tradition, transparency and humanity? Among major North American sports, the CFL has jumped in most aggressively.
Orridge invoked the Japanese expression kaizen -- "continuous improvement" -- to illustrate the league's motivation. Both he and Johnson acknowledge that there is a limit to how accurate officiating can be, and neither man can foresee a day when a football game is fully administrated from the Command Centre rather than the field.
But the tension between the home audience and the view on the field, Orridge said, must continue to be addressed.
"Technology has provided us the opportunity to be more critical and to scrutinize to a level that has been unprecedented," he said. "We can see multiple camera angles at various speeds and literally dissect a play, and the on-field official has to make a split-second decision in real time. So therein lies the tension between what the home audience sees, and even the in-stadium audience, because we've been able to transport that type of technology in-stadium as well. But the tension is always going to have an element of human error. That's because of who we are. There has to be an allowance and acceptance of that.
"But we're always trying to get better." |
It's just another episode in the long history of moral depravity of US foreign policy
In this report by noted investigative journalist Ben Swann, he presents documentary evidence of what everybody has long known or believed, namely, that the US was the primary force behind the emergence of Islamic State.
The Pentagon document leaked to Judicial Watch talks of creating a "Salafist principality" in eastern Syria, which would serve as a counterweight to the Shiite influence in the region as represented by the Alawite (a Shiite sect) al-Assad government and their Iranian allies.
Not to mention ISIS also provides a very convenient excuse for further US intervention in Syria - the real goal of which is removing Assad at any cost, including even the deaths of tens of thousands, the laying waste to a country and subjecting large territories to the scourge of medieval barbarism.
But the United States of America has never shirked from the hard decisions needed to defend freedom.
Sometimes killing millions is what it takes. You know, the general in Vietnam who said "We had to destroy the village, in order to save it." Hiroshima and Dresden. Or Madeleine Albright telling 60 Minutes that killing 500,000 Iraqi children was "worth it" just to depose Saddam Hussein:
In one of the recent GOP presidential deabtes, Hugh Hewitt made it clear what is expected of a US president: being able to "kill innocent children, by not the scores, but the hundreds and the thousands" if that's what it takes to acheive US policy objectives. The audience wasn't even shocked by the question. They only booed when Hewitt attacked Carson personally:
We shouldn't be surprised then that the United States considers it "worth it" to create ISIS and kill many thousands more, just to depose Bashar al-Assad. This is the total moral depravity which charaterizes US foreign policy and has done for at least a century.
And we equally shouldn't be surprised at Washington and the MSM's intense hatred of Vladimir Putin, who actually had the gall to fight and destroy ISIS rather than let their savagery spread to Russia (and Europe).
The CIA (with Zbigniew Brezinski) provoked a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, then created the Mujahadeen which morphed into al-Qaeda.
Yesterday in Brussels we saw another example of the blowback from Western regime change operations. We shall surely see more.
But the CIA and Mossad never think that far ahead. Or more likely they just don't care. |
Trump Blasts Arpaio Critics: Dems Pardoned Marc Rich, Susan Rosenberg, Chelsea Manning
GOP Rep Writes Rider for Spending Bill that Would End Mueller Probe
Tucker Carlson debated a Democratic strategist who supports a California bill that would suggest jail time for elder care workers who "willfully" misuse pronouns when referring to transgender residents.
Robin Biro said he supports State Sen. Scott Wiener's (D-San Francisco) bill.
"It doesn't sound very American," Carlson said. "You go to jail if you say something someone doesn't want you to say."
Biro said the bill is essentially a way to extend the Patient Protection Act to cover transgender individuals.
He said 28 percent of transgender elders in nursing homes suffered such harassment from their providers.
Carlson said Biro was ignoring the principle of free speech for political reasons.
"You can be put in prison for saying what you think is true," he said of the bill. "This bill criminalizes speech."
"If you use the wrong pronoun, you can be put in jail. That's grotesque."
Biro said there is a difference between a one-off accident and intentionally misusing a patient's preferred pronoun.
Carlson then asked how many iterations of verbal misidentification would "send police to my house."
Watch more above.
Exclusive: Parents Speak Out After Children Upset By Transgender Kindergarten Lesson
'This is Crazy - It's Scary': TX Woman Talks Leaving Her Home as Harvey Floods Approach |
Watching the best riders in the world mow down the Alps and Pyrenees in the Tour de France inspired Chris Baldwin from DaybyDay Coaching to write about a very popular objective among his athletes: improving their climbing.
This is second to none when it comes to desired areas of improvement. And while those super humans in the Tour make all but the steepest ascents look flat, anyone can make quantum strides in climbing ability with the right strategy.
The road to climbing greatness can be simplified into two aspects – power output and weight – but there are some nuances involving technique which can accelerate progress and are fun to work on! These are Chris Baldwin's favourites.
Don't forget to check out more of our Training Day by Day features.
Use appropriate gearing
Compact cranks and 28+ tooth cogs have become commonplace on the pros' bikes, and for good reason. Being overgeared is a quick way to explode, forcing you slow down or even stop. Cadence is like footsteps up a mountain; breaking the work into smaller 'steps' shifts the stress to the cardiovascular system, saving your legs for the next climb or effort. Be wary of your rpm (revolutions per minute) dropping below 80 and shoot for 85 to 90rpm on moderate grades. Pedaling fast requires rewiring your brain to fire your muscles more rapidly.
Try this workout:
Two sets of 10 minutes on a moderate climb, alternating between an exaggerated cadence of 100rpm-plus two minutes, then recovering at a comfortable pace and cadence for 30 seconds. Focus on relaxing your legs as much as possible, while pedaling smooth circles. The effort should be 'tempo', meaning your breathing is in a hard rhythm but no gasping, and your legs should not be binding up or becoming 'heavy'. Recover completely, then repeat another 10-minute set.
Standing for extended periods
While climbing seated is the best way to maximise efficiency, standing can be a great 'turbo' for attacks or conquering steep pitches. I’ve found athletes naturally gravitate towards a harder pace every time they stand but this doesn’t need to be the case. If you self-monitor and stay within your limits while standing, it can be a great way to tap into fresh muscle groups, use your upper body and provide a much needed stretch and change of rhythm. The best way to work on this is to just do it – long sets of standing teach you to moderate your pace and strengthen new muscle groups needed in this position.
Try this workout:
On a steep climb, rise smoothly from the saddle and stand on the pedals. Start with four to five minutes and build to 10 or more as you get comfortable. Repeat up to three or four times. Choose a gear that allows your cadence to drop to 60 to 70rpm. Focus on activating your core for stability and use your arms to sway your bike slightly from side to side, pulling against the pedal stroke. The key here is to slow down and feel how to incorporate core, glutes, calves and other muscles into your pedaling.
Use those back muscles, but not too much!
Cyclists really span the gamut on this one. Some riders thrash their heads side to side reminiscent of bobbing for apples, wasting energy. Others look like statues, with their upper bodies perfectly still, their legs doing all the work when back muscles could be chipping in. While effective form can be very personal, the ideal is usually a two- to four-degree swaying motion, with your nose aiming towards one brake hood, then the other. The downward component should be coordinated with the downstroke. Stay relaxed, but use the muscles around the spine and core to stabilise and contribute to your momentum.
Try this workout:
On your favourite climb, execute two or three sets of eight minutes, alternating 30 seconds at your maximum controlled effort with 30 seconds of very easy recovery. Stay seated throughout. The trick here is to accelerate at the beginning of each repetition with your own perfect seated pedaling form. It’s only 30 seconds – so PERFECT FORM!
Pace yourself and anticipate
Time and time again, Chris climbs with athletes who drill it on one steep section but over extend themselves, costing them big energy and forcing them to pay the price down the road. Your breathing is the best power meter in the world – as your respiration gets laboured, you’re on borrowed time. Stay within yourself, with steady manageable breathing.This is especially important if there are challenging sections coming up – you’ll need that energy there. A lot of the time, you can make up any lost ground from slowing down a bit, as you’ll still have some juice left when the grade lessens.
Try this workout:
Choose a nice long climb and complete your own personal time trial of 15 to 20 minutes. Incorporate all the components above, staying 'on top' of the pedals, standing on steeper sections and using your back muscles. Practise staying just under your limit, 'listening' to your body's signals closely. Again, no gasping or binding in the legs. Slow down a tad and learn how great technique and form can pay off with improved ascending.
In future articles, Ben Day and Chris Baldwin will continue to share with you methods for improving your cycling, whether mental, physical or just technique related. Do you have any methods for improved climbing? Share them with the guys on Twitter – their handle is @daybydaycoachin.
Chris Baldwin recently retired from professional racing after 15 years. His results include two US national time trial championships, a Pam Am games silver medal and top placings in many stage races. Always a training nut and student of the sport, he now coaches with his friend Ben Day at DayByDay Coaching, sharing his experience and passion for all things cycling. |
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