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If you are not interested in this more complex solution and just googling for quick way how to do Rails mailer interceptor then in the “Copy Paste solution” at the bottom of this article you will find what you are looking for.
There is already good examples out there how you can create mail interceptors (e.g.: RailsCasts no 206.)
But in this article I will show you how to configure mail interceptor while inheriting from production environment as proposed in Beyond the default Rails environments article.
The core of the article is that all your Rails environments on servers should be as close to production as they can be, therefore you should inherit all server configurations from production and just configure minor differences.
Imagine you are configuring several Rails environments.
production should send emails as usual
staging should never ever send emails to real address, but to product-manager email address
demo server should never ever send emails to real address, but to product-manager email address
devel should never deliver email
test should never deliver email
Production environment
# config/environments/production.rb MyApp::Application.configure do # ... config.action_mailer.default_url_options = { :protocol => 'https', :host => 'my-app.com' } config.delivery_method = :smtp config.action_mailer.smtp_settings = { address: 'smtp.mandrillapp.com', .... } # production SMTP settings # ... end
Production is using real SMTP settings that deliver real emails:
Staging & Demo environment:
… or any other server based environment, like staging, UAT, QA, beta-server, demo-server, …
# config/environments/staging.rb # Based on production defaults require Rails.root.join('config/environments/production') require Rails.root.join('lib/server_mail_interceptor') # unless you are autoloading lib folder Validations::Application.configure do config.action_mailer.default_url_options = { :protocol => 'https', :host => 'my-staging-app.com' } ActionMailer::Base.register_interceptor(ServerMailInterceptor) # Intercepts emails end
# config/environments/demo.rb # Based on production defaults require Rails.root.join('config/environments/production') require Rails.root.join('lib/server_mail_interceptor') # unless you are autoloading lib folder Validations::Application.configure do config.action_mailer.default_url_options = { :protocol => 'https', :host => 'my-demo-app.com' } ActionMailer::Base.register_interceptor(ServerMailInterceptor) # Intercepts emails end
Now please pay attention how the staging and demo config is not setting delivery_method or smtp_settings …those are already set in production config that we are loading with require . We are only overwriting configuration values that are relevant.
Development environment:
# config/environments/development.rb require Rails.root.join('lib/development_mail_interceptor') # unless you are autoloading lib folder Validations::Application.configure do # ... config.action_mailer.default_url_options = { :host => '0.0.0.0:3000' } config.delivery_method = :smtp config.action_mailer.smtp_settings = { :address => '127.0.0.1', :port => 1025 } # development smtp settings # ... ActionMailer::Base.register_interceptor(DevelopmentMailInterceptor) # Intercept emails # ...
For development we don’t want to use production environment settings. We don’t want to pollute production delivery logs with every developer junk.
So for testing in our development we don’t load configuration from production, but we use configuration from scratch where we specify custom delivery SMTP settings.
I really like Mailcatcher gem. It’s local SMTP server where you can send and inspect your developer emails. But if you want to use something like Gmail, or custom cloud smtp solution like Sendgird, Mailchimp, … you are free to do it.
Test environment:
# config/environments/test.rb Rails.application.configure do # ... config.action_mailer.delivery_method = :test # ... end
Config option delivery_method = :test will stop emails being delivered, therefore in test environment you don’t need to set up smtp server or mail interceptor details
Same as in Development environment we don’t load production settings.
Interceptor files
# lib/server_mail_interceptor.rb class ServerMailInterceptor def self.delivering_email(message) message.to = '[email protected]' # ... end end
If you want to see more complex interceptor, in the “Copy Paste solution” section of this article you can find more options
# lib/development_mail_interceptor.rb class ServerMailInterceptor def self.delivering_email(message) message.subject = "#{message.subject} | TO: #{message.to}" end end
As you can see the “interceptor” is not only about intercepting emails. The can be used to place debugging information in them too. More on that in section “Enhanced production interceptor” in this article
Enhanced production interceptor
Let say you want your emails delivered as usual but every copy should be bcc’d to “archive” email address.
Mail interceptors can do that for you too:
# config/environments/production.rb require Rails.root.join('lib/archive_copy_mail_interceptor') # unless you are autoloading lib folder Validations::Application.configure do # ... ActionMailer::Base.register_interceptor(ServerMailInterceptor) # ... end
# lib/archive_copy_mail_interceptor.rb class ArchiveCopyMailInterceptor def self.delivering_email(message) message.bcc = '[email protected]' end end
We are not changing the message.to just adding the bcc part to email that will tell smtp server to send hidden copy to [email protected]
Check if interceptor is registered
Lunch rails console for each environment:
RAILS_ENV=test rails c RAILS_ENV=staging rails c RAILS_ENV=beta rails c RAILS_ENV=production rails c RAILS_ENV=development rails c
…and check your interceptors with this ruby code:
ActionMailer::Base::Mail.class_variable_get(:@@delivery_interceptors) # => (irb):10: warning: toplevel constant Mail referenced by ActionMailer::Base::Mail # => [DevelopmentMailInterceptor]
Warning message is due to fact that Mail is not publicly accessible constant. It’s required by ActionMailer::Base (Rails 4) as a part of mail gem where the interceptors are registered into class variable @@delivery_interceptors . It’s cool to use this to make sure if we set interceptors correctly, it’s not cool to directly access it in production code.
Copy Paste solution
This article is quite high when you google for term “Rails Mail interceptor”.
If you are just looking for quick easy copy-paste solution for Email Interceptor that just works and you are not interested in all that stuff I said previously:
# confix/environments/staging.rb # ... config.action_mailer.default_url_options = ... # whatever config.action_mailer.delivery_method = :smtp # whatever config.action_mailer.smtp_settings = { ... } # whatever config.mail_interceptor = 'SandboxMailInterceptor' # <<< this line ! String value, not class ! # ...
Or you prefer to have config/initializers file configuration you can crate file in it with content: ActionMailer::Base.register_interceptor(SandboxMailInterceptor) if Rails.env.staging?
# lix/sandbox_mail_interceptor.rb module SandboxMailInterceptor def self.delivering_email(message) test_email_destination = '[email protected]' development_information = "TO: #{message.to.inspect}" development_information << " CC: #{message.cc.inspect}" if message.cc.try(:any?) development_information << " BCC: #{message.bcc.inspect}" if message.bcc.try(:any?) if app_domain_email = message.to.to_a.select { |e| e.to_s.match(/my-app\.com/) }.first message.to = [test_email_destination, app_domain_email] else message.to = [test_email_destination] end message.cc = nil message.bcc = nil message.subject = "#{message.subject} | #{development_information}" end end
This interceptor ensures you don’t send emails outside the domain *my-app.com . All emails are also send to collection box [email protected] .
This is example of live code used in one application once, feel free to alter it any way you want
Source: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/action_mailer_basics.html
Keywords: Rails 4.0.2, Ruby 2.1.1, own environment configuration, mail interceptor, stop mails in staging
Article updated: 2017-12-19
Reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/7kstz4/mail_interceptor_for_different_rails_environments/ |
Quick deal alert, Amazon have discounted the on-contract price for the Lumia 1520, offering it up for free with a standard two year agreement with At&t; a pretty nice deal if you’re looking to grab the phone; given that it usually retails for $100-$150 when buying in on a contract.
If the 6″ phablet interests you, you can grab it from the link below:
If you’re interested in something with a little more Megapixels, you can also grab the Lumia 1020, with its 41 Megapixel camera for only a penny with a two year contract on At&t as well, from the link below:
And last but not least, if you just want a budget phone, without signing any contracts; you can still grab the Lumia 520 on At&t/Go-Phone contract FREE for only $54 which is the definition of a steal.
Source: Amazon |
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Dr Nathalie MacDermott carried out two stints working to stop the spread of ebola in West Africa.
Now returned home, she explains how although communities are beginning to return to some form of normality, death and tragedy are still poised to return.
She also writes of the her own emotions at the trauma she witnessed first hand.
I returned to Liberia again at the end of November following three weeks in the UK for interviews and presentations.
Shortly before my return to Liberia, the President had announced she was stepping the country down from a state of emergency as case numbers were down.
She also announced she hoped Liberia would be ebola free by December 25.
On my return to Monrovia the atmosphere was completely different – almost all businesses and restaurants were open again, people thronged through the streets and market places, and it was almost as if ebola no longer existed in Liberia.
Too confident?
Several facilities were no longer taking temperatures or ensuring people washed their hands before entering them.
The concept of “no touch” seemed to have disappeared for the people on the streets.
Unfortunately, ebola had not disappeared and it continued to lurk in small clusters throughout the city and other parts of the country.
But then how long can you remain in a “state of emergency”?
Five months is a long time to be subject to curfew, no touching policies and limited trading.
It was unnerving seeing people so relaxed, the thought that ebola might come roaring back at any moment played on many people’s minds.
Somehow, we have been fortunate and that has not happened; even with the festivities and potential travel over the Christmas period, re-opening of schools and the borders, numbers continued to fall and now we have reached the point where there have been no new confirmed cases of ebola in 19 days.
An exciting moment
The last patient unfortunately passed away and we are now nearly two weeks without any confirmed cases in country.
We are at an exciting moment, one I am not sure many of us thought we would reach so soon. It makes me want to shout for joy but also cry at the same time.
There has been so much death here; ebola has taken a toll on these nations in far greater ways than we yet understand.
It is only as the state of emergency ends in all three countries and people are able to relax that the true emotional toll will reveal itself.
The grief is hidden under the layers of stress that lie upon all of us – Liberians and international workers alike.
We remain in a state of constant vigilance chasing an enemy we don’t fully understand, hoping it is going but not daring to believe it might actually have gone. We wonder if it will raise its ugly head again in some remote area and trigger another outbreak.
We wonder when we might ever be able to relax – yes Liberia may soon be declared ebola free, but the borders remain a risk.
Until ebola is gone from Sierra Leone and Guinea, Liberia will not be safe. Even once it is gone from all three countries the potential for another outbreak remains high, maybe not immediately, but some years in the future.
Will we bury our heads in the sand again?
The questions remain: will the lessons learned in West Africa from this epidemic ensure that any future outbreaks will be controlled and prevented from escalating to this level?
Has the international community learned its lesson to not bury its head in the sand? Some days I am reassured the answers to these questions may be “yes”, but there are many days I despair at what I see and I question from a long-term perspective – what have we, national governments and the international community, actually achieved here?
I guess bringing the largest ebola epidemic in history under control is a great testimony to all that we have achieved, but if we have not learned lessons for the future then we are condemning ourselves and thousands of people to recurrent episodes such as this one.
On my return this time, I have not only been involved in constructing and overseeing the Samaritan’s Purse community care centres (CCC) but I have also been involved in developing and implementing the rapid isolation and treatment of ebola (RITE) strategy in three counties as well as training five counties in how to implement this response themselves.
We completed one full rapid response to a cluster outbreak in Gbarpolu county in December, quite an experience setting up a mobile treatment facility in the middle of the jungle.
We have also now set up six community care centres, operated four and closed two. Two others will likely not open as there is no longer the need.
We have trained more than 100 healthcare workers in the management of patients with ebola and how to operate an Ebola treatment facility.
'The most challenging thing I've ever done'
Our teams have also distributed close to 80,000 infection prevention kits to communities and reached more than one million people with ebola awareness messaging.
I look back at the last six months and wonder how we ever achieved anything on this level, perhaps it is why many of us have hardly slept during this time!
The experience has been incredible. It has been the most challenging thing I have ever done, on a professional, personal and emotional level.
The costs have been huge but the satisfaction of knowing Liberia may soon be declared ebola free make it all worth it.
The learning curve I have been on has been at times extreme, but the wealth of knowledge I have gained has been immense and could not have been gained in any other way.
There is also no doubt in my mind that this is exactly where God wanted me, at this particular time – as it reads in the Bible in the book of Esther “for just such a time as this”.
I wonder how it will feel when we are free of ebola in West Africa.
I wonder how I will feel when ebola is no longer a problem, or at least not a current problem.
It will haunt me forever
I wonder how I will re-adjust to a life that is not filled with the constant adrenaline that has propelled me through this response.
Eight months consumed with fighting ebola, what is left when it is gone?
One thing that is certain is that every affected nation will need a period of grieving and every individual involved will need that time also.
The toll ebola has taken on the individual, as well the three affected nations, is enormous.
That toll is greater than many will ever be able to understand and the sacrifices made on countless parts are incomprehensible to most.
It is so difficult to explain the cost of ebola unless you have experienced it.
The things I have seen, as have many others, will haunt me forever – no person should have to die as my patients died.
I can still see their faces, even from eight months ago; I remember their names and I remember how they died.
We have not had time to properly grieve for all that we have seen. There has been too much to do to end this epidemic, and that is what has kept us going all these months.
I dare not cry
But it means we have not given ourselves the time we need to decompress all that has happened.
I dare not start crying at the moment, because I don’t know when I will be able to stop.
I wonder when the nightmares will end and when a normal sleep pattern will return.
This is an expected response to the trauma we have all suffered over the last few months, our national colleagues even more so than our international ones.
Time will heal our wounds, but it won’t ever erase the memories of this period. I can only pray we never face an epidemic of any kind on this scale again. |
EPA Allows Cruise Ships to Dump Toxic Waste One Mile Off Shore...
Brad Friedman Byon 12/22/2008, 10:47am PT
With an apparent hat-tip to Saddam Hussein's post-Gulf War strategy, George W. Bush continues his scorched earth policy on the way out the door. Earlier this month his EPA announced a new last-minute rule allowing mining companies to dump their waste into mountain streams. Last Friday, he continued to take his dump on America, by issuing a permit to allow cruise ships to dump "untreated graywater" --- including oil, grease, metals, pesticides, viruses, fecal coliform bacteria from human sewage, medical and dental waste, detergents, and cleaners --- just one mile off shore of coastal U.S.A.
"A large cruise ship on a one-week voyage can generate one million gallons-which would fill 33 large swimming pools-of graywater," say Friends of the Earth in a press release issued last week (posted in full below) following the EPA announcement.
Hope you folks in Florida will remember to thank the Republicans in 2010...
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 19, 2008, 2:26 PM December 19, 2008, 2:26 PM CONTACT
Friends of The Earth (FOE), Nick Berning, 202-222-0748 Cruise Ships Allowed to Dump
Pollution a Mile from U.S. Shores WASHINGTON - December 19 - The Environmental Protection Agency today published a permit that will allow cruise ships to dump unlimited quantities of untreated graywater-a harmful pollutant-into the ocean just a mile from U.S. shores. "The Bush EPA is ignoring its own scientific findings by issuing this permit, which will allow harmful pollution near U.S. shores," said Marcie Keever, Clean Vessels Campaign Director at Friends of the Earth. "The Environmental Protection Agency knows that pollution from cruise ships and other vessels is out of control and getting worse. This permit will not protect the health of our oceans or the people who use them." The permit issued today was a final Clean Water Act General Permit for vessel pollution discharges. The permit allows ships to dump untreated graywater one nautical mile from U.S. shores if they are travelling at speeds above six knots. The permit also requires ships to monitor their graywater discharges only once every three months, leaving them free to ignore malfunctioning systems the other 361 days of the year. Cruise ship graywater contains contaminants such as oil and grease, metals, pesticides, viruses, fecal coliform bacteria from human sewage, medical and dental waste, detergents, and cleaners. A large cruise ship on a one-week voyage can generate one million gallons-which would fill 33 large swimming pools-of graywater. The EPA finds in an assessment report to be finalized this month that untreated graywater from cruise ships is above safe levels. Despite this finding, the permit issued today continues to allow cruise ships to discharge such graywater. Significantly, the EPA has also found that it would cost cruise ships only $7.09 per passenger to treat graywater using the best water treatment technology, and yet the permit fails to require treatment of polluted discharges beyond one nautical mile. The EPA developed the permit in response to litigation from environmental groups. Their lawsuit overturned an erroneous EPA regulation that for the past 35 years exempted all vessels from the permitting requirements of the Clean Water Act. The EPA permit is available online at http://cfpub.epa.gov/npd.../home.cfm?program_id=350. ### Friends of the Earth is the U.S. voice of the world's largest grassroots environmental network, with member groups in 77 countries. Since 1969, Friends of the Earth has fought to create a more healthy, just world. Friends of The Earth (FOE) Links: HomepageFOE (Press Center)FOE (Action Center)
Were it not for the 28 days this idiot still has left in office, we'd say this might be his final dump on our nation. But we've finally learned not to misunderestimate him. Lord only knows what else he'll still have time to fuck up in his final 28 days... |
I blame Sprint for starting this idiocy. Due to only a very small percentage of people knowing what 3G or 4G actually is, it was inevitable that the other carriers would have to follow suit and start calling their faster-than-the-3G-you're-used-to speeds 4G as well. What's really stupid about all this is that some of the not-actually-4G companies have the gall to call out competitor networks for doing the same thing they are.
In the end I suspect the most realistic solution will be for the ITU to reclassify what 4G is unless they want their standards to be totally meaningless. By the time any carrier actually has legit 4G they'll be forced to call it 5G or even 6G so the average consumer understands that it's faster...
Click to expand... |
Hey, Colorado Rapids. We're Burgundy Wave. You may have heard of us.
We seem to be having some kind of misunderstanding. We're getting the sense over here at the Wave that you, the Rapids, think providing information to us, and to Rapids fans at large, is a nuisance. Burgundy Wave, who published this highly unflattering opinion piece by our former editor, weren't invited to media day last week. I can't help but think our critical take on the Rapids highly frustrating off-season in articles like this, and this and this, are partly responsible.
Granted, access isn't really something we at the Wave desperately need. I personally have never received an email, a tweet, a piece of information*, or so much as a how-do-you-do from the Rapids.** And that is, to be honest, fine with me.
I don't want to replace the paid journalists who get the sit down interviews. Daniel Boniface at the Denver Post is an excellent journalist. So is Marco Cummings with mlssoccer.com. They both write about the team very well. They both get interviews and face time with players and coaches, on the record. I'm not a journalist. I don't want to be. I have two other jobs. And kids. This is my hobby.
The trade-off for Cummings and Boniface in covering the Rapids, though, is that they don't really have full license to be critical (some might say ‘honest') about the team's struggles or shortcomings. Because the team has historically had zero tolerance for unwelcome criticism from those that are close to the team.
Nonetheless, I feel like I have to state something that I think should be blatantly obvious: we're on your side, Rapids front office. We want what is best for the team. We are loyal, and we care about the club more than is rationally warranted. I stop to remind the front office of this because perhaps they hate us, or think we're out to torch the club. We're not. It's a lot like our political two-party system. I may disagree vehemently with adherents to another political ideology, but damned if I don't think they're as American as I am, with the same love of the flag and the constitution as me.
Burgundy Wave is loyal and true to the Rapids. We may disagree (or, in the comments, provide ample forum for disagreement) about the best direction of the club. But we, too, are behind this club 100%.
Let me list the ways in which Burgundy Wave is good for the Rapids for ya. Both because it's simple, and because readers love lists.
1. Nobody else in Colorado covers the Rapids, every single day. Nobody.
Denver has a daily paper, an independent rag, a sports magazine, four local news stations, and seven sports radio stations. None of them cover the Rapids more than a few mentions a year. The Post gives some pre-season ink to the club, but once the season starts, the score of the Rapids game gets three sentences in an AP wire report, win or lose. Local radio covers the team sporadically at best. I saw Drogba's free kick on the local news once. The only newsworthy item that dented this total media silence in 2015 was Pablo's mustache. Which the Wave laughed at briefly, and moved on from. Because it was a gimmick, and a distraction. We're here for the soccer. Once Broncos pre-season starts, though, you can kiss the Rapids goodbye in every media outlet in town, except here at Burgundy Wave. Where we are vaguely aware of other sports, and the many hordes of orange-clad nouveau-rugby enthusiasts in town. But couldn't be bothered with anything other than footy.
Burgundy Wave is writing articles, covering news, giving analysis and floating rumors every single day. We're looking in the back of a tweeted photo to figure out that Stephen Keel is lurking. We're breaking down a six second Vine to determine that Marlon Hairston's getting reps at right back. We're flying to Sacramento to cover a pre-season game. We're breaking down the post-game passing graphs to see long-term tactical trends. Because MLS and the Denver media barely do that for the Pids. And if they do, they are afraid they can't be too negative.
2. We are Jack's enraged spleen.
Fans need an outlet. They need a place to both vent their frustrations, and to read an honest description of the frustrations they witnessed on field. We are that outlet. Nobody wants to read a Pravda-style regurgitation of front office talking-points about why the team can't score. Nobody wants to hear Pablo Mastroeni's sound bytes after a 2 to 0 loss in Salt Lake about how the team ‘fought hard' or ‘just couldn't finish.' Fans need something more honest. If they don't get it, they'll go elsewhere.
Mark Kizla can rip Dick Monfort and the Rockies (the local baseball team, ICYMI) in the Post, and still have access on Monday. So can Woody Paige. Neither of them care about the Rapids. The people who cover the team closest - Marco Cummings for mlssoccer.com; Altitude Sports; Marcelo Balboa and Richard Fleming; are all paid-for or owned-by the Colorado Rapids and Kroenke Sports Enterprises. They are completely and totally incapable of saying something harsh about the Rapids, even if it's true, without getting reprimanded. I was impressed and proud that Matt Doyle, David Gass, and Andrew Wiebe could be critical of the Rapids on ExtraTime Radio, but as paid MLS employees, even they have a line they can't cross. For Burgundy Wave, there is no line.
That benefits the Rapids. It keeps fans engaged. It keeps the conversation going. It keeps us passionate. You may not like us when we're angry. You may not like Chris when he titles an article ‘$%^& the Rapids.' But we draw attention to the team in fat times and lean. Ain't nobody else in Denver can say that.
3. We do this for love, not money.
We don't get paid. I've never taken a thin dime for every article I've written for this blog. I do it because I love to write and think about this team. If people appreciate what I write, and say thanks once in a while, it's worth it. After I head out to DSGP for the night - have some beers, tweet with friends, put my head in my hands a few times - I come home and kiss my kids and then write an outline. Then I get up and rewatch the game Sunday night, and write a re-cap. How many people not getting paid by the Rapids willingly re-watch a 1-0 September loss?
Our Editor John's even crazier. He's on the hook for all breaking Rapids news. Those news stories often break with no warning and no details from inside Rapids headquarters. HE WENT TO A PRESEASON GAME IN SACRAMENTO. Even people in Sacramento don't want to go to Sacramento. Believe me, I've been there.
The lack of pay means we aren't accountable. I don't care if I get access or not. I don't care if 1 person reads my stuff or a 1 million (ok, I care a little - a million clicks would be pretty cool.) But it also demonstrates how much we truly care about the team- we do this because we think soccer is amazing and we support our local team, through thick and thin.
4. We do it without access.
The sports site Deadspin has had the tagline ‘Sports without access, favor, or discretion' since it launched. Burgundy Wave has discretion - we're not interested in salacious gossip about players, and I've had opportunities to write things that were passed to me a few times that I thought were harsh or hurtful, and so I didn't. Burgundy Wave does have to deal with that part about access, or the lack thereof, though.
The Rapids control information very tightly. Pablo Mastroeni's interview on ExtraTime showed that off perfectly. He stated that he didn't really know what happened with Alan Pulido. He said that, to his knowledge, the Rapids had never spoken to Tim Howard. He was mum on Alejandro Bedoya too. The Rapids didn't share a list of trialists until last Friday, AFTER most had already played in several scrimmages. The team hasn't shared much in the offseason about the strategy or the long term plan. The twitter account keeps things pretty buttoned up (think they're all like that? go check the Galaxy twitter). The Rapids Academy hardly tweets or shares any info at all - they've sent just 18 tweets since last August.
In my humble opinion, that's part of the problem. When the team keeps things so secretive, it appears like they've got something to hide. So Burgundy Wave naturally writes articles that are somewhat suspicious of what the team is up to. The Rapids traded down in the SuperDraft for allocation cash and to grab the number one spot in the allocation order. They shipped off popular goalkeeper Clint Irwin to Toronto. Some of that cash certainly got dropped on new midfielder Shkelzen Gashi. But the rest of the moves are a mystery. Staying silent on those moves means we're gonna speculate on them, kindly or not. So if you don't like what we write, help us. Give us something to go on here. Be honest. In lieu of that, we've got no recourse but to guess.
5. We are here to stay.
Jerry Seinfeld famously quipped that rooting for a sports team is like rooting for laundry. The players, coaches, executives, and even stadiums eventually move on. The fans are cheering for the colors. That's true with us at the Wave. I personally root for the Rapids and only the Rapids in Colorado. As long as I'm here, no matter who is on the field, how good or bad the team is, whether MLS begins promotion-relegation in 10 years and the Rapids get sent down to the NDPDWASL***, I'm a fan. Colorado for Life.
The front office staff, the players, the colors and the stadium are all fungible. They change. We'll still be here.
... ... ...
All this is my way of saying: ease up. We aren't your enemy. We're your friends. Your friend who tells you when your haircut is jacked up. Your friend who tells you your girlfriend is banging the bartender. Your friend that takes the keys when you're drunk. Sure, we might be obnoxious. Sure, you may not like everything we say. But we like the Rapids.
Our writers will continue to speak their minds, as all independent critics, fans, and writers will do. We might be able to share the club's side of the story more if you invite us into the tent a little. Give us an invite to media day. Share a transfer rumor. Give us a story that you know won't interest the Denver Post. Ask us to come out to practice. If not, that's fine. We don't care. We'll write what we see and what we think. Many Colorado soccer fans will read our stuff and make up their own minds. And most of them will probably conclude what we conclude, day in and day out: we should support our local club in burgundy. Through thick and thin.
---------------- ------------------ -----------------
* Whenever I've broken news about the Rapids, it usually comes from a bad Google Translation of a Greek or Spanish website. I'm not a reporter, I'm just a guy with an internet connection and a soccer addiction.
** I mean, except for my ticket rep, Thomas, who's a nice guy. But I'm pretty sure I'm just a guy in section 106 with a credit card to him.
*** That's the National Developmental Professional Divisional Western Association Soccer League. You probably haven't heard of it. |
Killing of Crimean Tatar alarms Turkey
ANKARA
Members of Crimean Tatar community pray over the grave of Reshat Ametov during his funeral in Simferopol on March 18. AFP photo
Turkey has warned against provocations that could cause further tensions in Crimea following the killing of a Crimean Tatar.Reshat Ametov, who was in his 30s, disappeared on March 3 when three men in military jackets led him away from the scene of a protest in the Crimean regional capital of Simferopol, witnesses said. His body was found nearly two weeks after his disappearance near the town of Belogorsk, 50 kilometers east of Simferopol, naked and showing signs of torture and beating.Ametov, whose murder has sparked anger and fear in a Crimean Tatar community bitterly opposed to Russia’s annexation of the Black Sea peninsula, was buried March 18.Turkey demanded that the murder be solved at once and that the perpetrators be brought to justice.“Crimean Turk-Tatars who were able to return to their homeland after suffering huge grievances in history have been voicing their views and demands on peaceful grounds. We find it unacceptable that our kin have been exposed to pressure and threats during ‘the referendum’ process and afterwards and have even been deprived of safety despite their responsible attitude,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a written statement released late March 19.Noting that Ankara had been informed of various other provocations that Crimean Turk-Tatars had encountered, the Foreign Ministry expressed particularly concern over news reports that referred to “official authorities” and which said Crimean Turk-Tatars would be evacuated from regions in which they currently reside.“We reiterate our expectation that provocations that would further complicate the current troubled situation in Crimea should not be given rise. We will continue closely watching for the serenity, welfare and security of Crimea Turk-Tatars,” the ministry said.Crimea declared independence from Ukraine and applied to join Russia on March 17, after 96.6 percent of the electorate voted in a referendum on unification with Russia.Many Tatars are thought to oppose unification with Russia, fearing their rights as a minority will be eroded.Turkey, a NATO ally, has said 12 percent of Crimea’s population consists of Turkish-speaking Tatars who are Sunni Muslims, like the majority of Turks.Crimea was part of the Ottoman Empire until it was conquered by Russia in the late 18th century. Tatars – the majority population at the time – were accused of collaborating with the Nazis during World War II and millions were forcibly removed from the area by Stalin in the 1940s, only returning to the peninsula following the death of the Soviet leader. |
Consumer confidence slips back after post-budget bounce
Updated
Consumer confidence has given up a short-lived budget bounce to fall back into negative territory.
The widely-watched Westpac-Melbourne Institute Index of Consumer Sentiment dropped back 6.9 per cent in June to 95.3.
That is below the key 100-point level that indicates when optimists are evenly balanced with pessimists.
In May the index had posted its first positive reading since February, hitting 102.4 on consumers' initial reactions to the federal budget and a cut in the official cash rate to a fresh record low of 2 per cent by the Reserve Bank.
"With these factors now behind us, sentiment has reverted back to a level more reflective of broader concerns about the outlook for the Australian economy," noted Westpac senior economist Matthew Hassan in the report.
"At 95.3, the index is 1 per cent below its pre-budget level and the weakest read since the start of the year."
The survey shows economic news dominated people's attention over the past month, with 50 per cent recalling news in that area, 45 per cent recalling budget and taxation stories and just under a third recalling interest rates.
Matthew Hassan said the Commonwealth Treasury secretary's recent comments that Sydney and parts of Melbourne are in housing bubbles do seem to have dented sentiment towards the property market, albeit from very high levels.
"The index tracking views on 'time to buy a dwelling' declined 1.6 per cent in June, but is still 3.4 per cent above its pre-rate cut level in April," he observed.
"Expectations for prices showed a sharper weakening: the Westpac-Melbourne Institute House Price Expectations Index fell 8.5 per cent in June following a 3.2 per cent decline in May. At 134.9, the index remains in solidly positive territory, well above its long run average of 125, but the 11.4 per cent drop over the last two months marks a shift to a much less bullish view.
"Just over 53 per cent of respondents expect prices to rise over the next 12 months compared to 61 per cent in May and 63 per cent in April."
People assessed their current family finances as better than at the same point last year, but there was a deterioration in expectations for the year ahead, and concerns around job losses remained well above historical averages.
Topics: economic-trends, money-and-monetary-policy, federal-government, budget, australia
First posted |
The most popular Democratic leader by far is still former President Barack Obama. Despite this popularity, many of the signature accomplishments of his modest legacy are being brutishly unraveled – being repealed, suspended or slated for extinction – by the Trumpsters. Donald Trump seems to revel in the destruction of consumer, investor, environmental, work and public land protections and standards. Whether at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration or the Securities and Exchange Commission, Trump’s big-business friends are running the very agencies tasked with regulating them.
Trump vehemently supports breaking the Iran nuclear accord – one of Obama’s highpoints that cooled off what could have been a rush to military conflict in that turbulent region. Abysmally ignorant about its contents, Trump is nonetheless impulsively determined to do just that in last year’s presidential campaign, alarming leading military experts.
What should Barack Obama be doing about the unfolding Trumpian nightmares dangerously enveloping so many defenseless and anxious Americans? Tradition has it that outgoing presidents go quietly, do not assail their successor in office, if only because the latter is in a position to strike back. Already, Trump has been actively waging war against his predecessor’s legacy.
But there are many other ways in which Obama can respond without getting into a messy Twitter war with the unstable Tweeter-in-Chief. Granted, Obama is spending time laying the groundwork for his presidential library to preserve his past. It is the future of this country that needs his high profile attention. Word has it that he is working with his former Attorney General, Eric Holder, to get candidates and voters ready for next year’s crucial Congressional elections. If so, he needs to be more media-visible to get the attention of millions of people.
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Here are some ways Obama can strengthen the people’s resistance to many of Trump’s destructive efforts which harm his own voters as well as those citizens who opposed his candidacy.
He can raise funds to expand the staffs and programs of existing citizen organizations straining to preserve and defend conditions that help people from all backgrounds. Obama, as president, went to nearly five hundred major fundraisers outside Washington to court campaign donors. By contrast, fundraising for civic action groups, ranging from civil rights/liberties to consumer, environmental and health initiatives, will not be dissipated on gouging political consultants, empty television ads and cowardly candidates unwilling to speak truth to power. He can elevate already declared positions to block Trump and his Wall Street collaborators from words to action. For example, earlier this year over 100 outdoor-recreation companies – led by Patagonia and REI – paid for full-page advertisements telling Trump in no uncertain terms to lay off the public lands. Obama can nudge them to hire some full-time lobbyists on Capitol Hill to provide them with early alerts and guidance as the looming assault on national forests, wilderness areas and national parks gets underway. Big majorities of Americans agree with these companies, but they are not organized to focus on a handful of Senators and Representatives who need some firm education. Obama can help start new civic advocacy groups. He has close contacts with people who are very rich and share his views. For example, there needs to be new organizations filling important vacuums on such important matters as what the Trump FCC wants to do to the Internet (end net neutrality), to increase concentration of ownership in the mass media – which is already in a few giant corporate hands – and to deliberately ignore the 1934 Communications Act which conditions licenses on providing public interest programming.
There needs to be additional civic groups to propose good directions and to oppose Trump’s forthcoming reduction of taxes for the rich, and, very importantly, to organize prominent retired military, national security and diplomatic officials who are against aggressive wars and seek dynamic diplomacy to wage peace, and to move toward full Medicare for all with free choice of doctor and hospital – with more efficient and better outcomes.
The reality is that Barack Obama is a big draw. No one comes close to playing such a role. He can get big media, attract large audiences, and raise large sums of money for the civic groups. The civil society has built and protected our democracy throughout history. Moreover, he can surely elevate public morale in an era of Trumpian gloom, flakery and attract new leadership to invigorate a leaderless Democratic Party down to the local levels.
If you agree, start petitions with your own ideas for Obama getting with America’s future and not just chronicling his eight year presidency’s past. His silent withdrawal has been astonishing and disturbing. He doesn’t yet realize what a historically crucial role he can play in the next few years. |
Hey there! My name is Amber but most people online call me Phedran!
I'm the creator of the Life in the Woods and Life in the Woods Renaissance modpacks
All of your support really does matter! Whether it's comments, clicks, views, favourites, follows, likes, emails, becoming a Patron, tips, thoughtful messages, or sending me cute kitten photos when I'm sad on Twitter, it all helps. Thank you!
If it wasn't for Patreon and the support of my awesome patrons I would have had to quit making videos in 2015. Thank you so much to everyone for the two years of amazing support so far and helping to allow me to keep creating!
Currently I've been streaming live on Twitch daily for over two months straight! I started streaming daily from my bed on October 1st 2017, not only playing Switch and PC games but also doing daily art practice! I completed a month of pen drawings for #Inktober, two full pencil portraits in November, and in December I'm focusing on Digital drawing with a tablet! January is going to focus on learning and playing with watercolour!
During the course of the past two years with this Patreon campaign:
➤ We've brought an amazing community closer together, got to know each other better, and made plenty of new friends!
➤ The Patrons and I collaborated on the testing, fine-tuning, and final development of Life in the Woods Renaissance, including the collaborative effort of the entire community to design and build all of the Ruins and buildings found in the modpack! Every non-Vanilla build you discover inside Life in the Woods Renaissance was designed and built by myself or a Patron!
➤ Launched the Life in the Woods Renaissance Minecraft modpack in 2016, which has had over 1.5 million unique downloads worldwide so far, two years after the original modpack launch.
➤ As a community, myself and the Patrons have all kept in close communication--sometimes on a daily basis--with various voice chat and text chat servers! Currently we primarily use TeamSpeak and Discord.
➤ I've hosted a dedicated Patron-exclusive Vanilla Minecraft server that I play on regularly with the Patrons since 2015, and through various hosts it has been reset four times to start building and exploring anew as Mincraft updates.
➤ We've had numerous Patron-exclusive events including four 'official' UHC tournament events, some of which were designed and the maps entirely custom built by teams of Patrons.
➤ I've live streamed and recorded numerous Vanilla server and other gaming events with my Patrons, including server resets, server tours, dragon and wither fights, special mini-game events custom built by Patrons, and other games like GMOD and Terraria, some of which can be viewed on my Youtube channel and in my Twitch past streams history!
➤ Patrons have organized and run a variety of their own events and weekly theme nights in the past, including movie nights, music sharing and listening nights, Vanilla building collaborations, various other multiplayer games, as well as Minecraft CTM maps, UHCs, and mini-game server nights!
➤ I've commissioned a number of original works of art, some of which became limited run merchandise releases, and some which became limited edition postcards designed and printed and shipped to Patrons with personal messages! I also got custom cut dice with my logo made and sent them as rewards, as well as putting them up for sale!
➤ Besides recording gaming content solely on the PC, I've received and invested in hardware, consoles, games, and gear over time that allows me to stream and record off of a number of consoles and handhelds, including 3DS, DS, Wii U, Vita, PSP, PS3, PS4, XBOX 360, and Wii.
➤ In 2016 I launched an ASMR channel with astonishingly great audio quality, without an astonishing investment in gear!
➤ I vlogged weekly for 32 consecutive weeks in 2016 and thanks to Patrons I was able to get a better vlogging camera, as well as an action camera, studio lights, a green screen, and other important recording gear for future projects!
➤ I became a Twitch affiliate, got a sub button, and have been streaming art and games live daily since September 2017!
In the last year or so I've discovered that I have a large number of undiagnosed health issues
Lately I've been directing most of my efforts towards
Some of my future planned projects
include
Twitch, If any of this sounds like your cup of tea, feel free to follow me on Youtube Twitter , or become a Patron so that you can participate in future gaming events and streams, join in on the Minecraft servers, hang out with us in voice chat, and become a more active part of the Phederation community!
With your support, I'd like to:
for Minecraft that have been downloaded an enjoyed by literally millions of people worldwide! I've been making indie gaming Youtube videos and let's plays since 2012 and first streamed on Twitch in 2013. I started out making videos as an escape from my own real-life problems, but since I started my Patreon in 2015 I've connected with my viewers more closely than I ever thought possible! The community we've brought together through Patreon is incredibly supportive, and with their support I try my best to provide welcoming and positive servers and spaces where people can relax, game, hang out, and help each other, with lots of laughter in between.that directly affect my ability to record or stream. I can't record or stream as often or for as long as I'd like to anymore, so at this time I can no longer release daily videos. Right now I've been streaming daily but I can't take that ability for granted and it takes a lot of preparation and management. I'm constantly learning how to better work within my health limitations and always searching for new ways to create that won't negatively affect my health long term.spending more time with my Patreon community members, streaming and doing art daily, doing some group streams with some of the Mindcrack boys as well as Coestar and Necomi, and focusing on maintaining and improving my health as much as possible with daily walks, an increased water intake, lifestyle and diet changes, and self care.launching my podcast, the next step of future Life in the Woods development, possibly rebooting the vlogs, a separate family-friendly Youtube channel, and more ASMR content, as well as a number of secret projects and all those weird little ideas that pop up out of nowhere.My aim is to revamp my Patreon campaign again completely once I can gauge my capabilities better, so that I know what I can physically and psychologically accomplish! |
Arsenal fear Alexis will push through Man City move
The Gunners had been hopeful of agreeing a new deal with the Chilean, or at least selling him abroad, but now believe he is desperate to join City
fear Alexis Sanchez is determined to leave the club this summer and are now braced for a bid from , Goal understands.
The Gunners had hoped to persuade Alexis to extend his current contract, which expires next summer, or at least to sell him abroad as a last resort.
Lukaku trains with Pogba in LA
But sources close to the situation have informed Goal that the Gunners are now deeply concerned they will lose the international to City following talks with his representatives.
Alexis' future had been on hold while he participated in the Confederations Cup, though Arsenal had prepared a huge pay rise in an attempt to keep him at the Emirates Stadium.
The Gunners now believe there is little chance of him even listening to their offer.
and had explored the possibility of signing the 28-year-old in recent months but he wants to be reunited with Pep Guardiola, who coached him for one season at . Any rumoured move by , therefore, is destined for failure.
City have long been confident they will eventually get their man and it is now thought unlikely that the Gunners will hold Alexis to the final year of his contract and lose him on a free next summer.
Alexis insisted last Friday that he had made a decision on his future, while his international colleague and City goalkeeper Claudio Bravo made it clear that a transfer will be discussed.
"Of course I would love to have him as a team-mate," he said. "But it's not a matter just for the two of us. It's something the clubs have to go through."
City have not yet made a formal bid but Arsenal are now preparing themselves for an official approach in the coming weeks.
Guardiola has made Alexis his top priority this summer and the Blues, having initially been happy to bide their time, will want to secure his signature as soon as possible.
A bid of £50 million may be necessary to persuade Arsenal to sell, albeit reluctantly.
How Real rage drove Man Utd to Lukaku
Sources close to the City hierarchy are concerned Arsene Wenger will delay the deal for as long as possible, perhaps with a view to depriving Guardiola of the Chilean's services for the opening games of the season.
Though this saga is set to run for several more weeks, City are ready to officially announce the signing of Dani Alves.
The right-back agreed a two-year deal with City over a fortnight ago but Guardiola was happy for him to enjoy his holidy before flying into Manchester to put pen to paper.
City are back in pre-season training on Monday and they expect to have Alves on board before their fly to the United States for the International Champions Cup on July 17.
The Blues are still working hard to tie up deals for full-backs Benjamin Mendy, Kyle Walker and Ryan Bertrand, as well as a centre-back. |
The Stack Archive
New algorithm creates 3D images from 2D 100,000 times more accurately
Tue 18 Aug 2015
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“In some ways optimization is the most important problem you’ve never heard of because it turns up in all areas of science, engineering and business.”
So says senior author Pedro Domingos, professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington.
In July, a paper co-authored by Domingos and Washington University Ph.D. student Abram Friesen shared the top prize at the biggest AI conference in the world, the 24th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, for its radical new approach to the field of optimisation, with methods described which significantly – and in some areas vastly – outperform rival approaches.
Optimisation is a mathematical way to find the optimal solution for particular variables, given certain parameters. People design an algorithm for a computer to use in order to optimise the required variables, and depending on the desired context, this can be applied to a great number of different things.
Domingos notes “But a lot of optimization problems are extremely difficult to solve because they have a huge number of variables that interact in intricate ways.”
In order to deal with this, Friesen and Domingos applied decomposition techniques (from artificial intelligence and puzzle solving) to continuous optimisation problems that are more commonly found in the areas of engineering, physics, and applied mathematics.
According to the paper [PDF] itself, “We first define local structure and then present our algorithm, RDIS, which (asymptotically) finds the local optimum of a nonconvex function (R)ecursively (D)ecomposing the function into locally (I)ndependent (S)ubspaces.”
On average, RDIS was between 100,000 and 10 billion times more accurate than the other methods
The RDIS algorithm takes an extremely complex problem and simplifies it into smaller, easier-to-solve pieces. While this approach is already common when the choices are in the form of ‘yes or no’, this is the first time it’s been applied to numeric variables.
By identifying the right variables, and then setting them to specific values, the algorithm can break the problem down into almost-independent sub-problems, which are treated as fully independent in order to reduce error.
RDIS was tested against current leading methods of optimisation. In the area of predicting the way in which a protein will fold, RDIS did significantly better, especially for large proteins. For the medical profession, the ability to predict this accurately can substantially speed up the development of new treatments.
In the realm of taking two-dimensional images (from the ‘eyes’ of a robot) and reconstructing them into three-dimensional ones (which is very important for, say, a robot performing surgery safely, or, as lead author Abram Friesen points out, a self-driving car knowing what to avoid in order not to crash), the new algorithm was phenomenally more successful. On average, RDIS was between 100,000 and 10 billion times* more accurate than the other methods.
So this means that RDIS is between 5 and 10 orders of magnitude more accurate than other methods at reconstructing 2D images into 3D. That’s astounding.
Domingos went on to highlight the significance of this research, by pointing out that compared to previous methods, which were very different, “This approach…does something magical, which is solve some problems exponentially faster. And anytime you can do that, that’s when you get a big win”.
Next, the researchers plan to apply the algorithm to other contexts, and see how it does. Domingos said, “This can be applied to pretty much any machine learning problem, but that’s not to say it’s going to be good for every machine learning problem,” adding, “That’s what we have to work on and find out.”
In the meantime, however, having made terrific progress at optimising methods of optimisation, Friesen and Domingos can count themselves as the best of the best.
* We can probably assume that this is a reference to an American billion, which is a thousand million, or 1,000,000,000; as opposed an English billion, which is a million million, or 1,000,000,000,000
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KANSAS CITY, Mo – James Phillip “Phil” Edwards, 60, is one happy looking sumbitch, huh? Surprising since a grand jury just indicted him on child pornography charges. This is one sick fuck, people. Not just because he was distributing child porn, but because of how he was making it. He would lace drinks and ice cream with Ambien, and give them to girls between the ages 0f 6 and 11. While unconscious, he would strip them and take photos and videos of them. Police seized his computer after they allege he advertised child porn on the Internet. They found images and video of the unconcious girls in folders titled Consuming the date rape drug and Phil’s kindergarten class ages 4-7. Even worse is the fact that he does not feel he has done anything wrong. “His view is that society places arbitrary lines (as in age restrictions) around sexual conduct, with which he doesn’t agree,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Katharine Fincham wrote in the motion.
His wife told reporters that her husband could have only done this within a short amount of time 3 to 4 years ago. She would not reveal how he knew the girls in order to protect their identity. She also stated that she was not aware of what her husband was up to.
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Star Citizen may be the world’s most ambitious Early Access project (and quite possibly the next textbook example of Development Hell). For those still holding their breath, the company has recently affirmed that VR support is still planned as an eventual feature, and the game’s developers say that a new UI design is made with VR in mind.
Beginning development as a 2012 Kickstarter project that raised a respectable $2.1 million, Star Citizen has in the years since ballooned in scope and scale, having now raised $156.1 million to date. The huge AAA budget hasn’t served to get the ambitious space action simulator out the door any sooner, with an initial release date planned for 2014, though now no firm date set even as of 2017.
Star Citizen is taking a very open development route compared to games of the same blockbuster scale, which means that players have been able to follow along as developer Cloud Imperium Games adds steadily to the alpha version of the title. The game has expanded quite a bit throughout the course of development, though one missing (but promised) feature has been VR support.
As it’s been more than a year since the launch of the Rift and Vive headsets (and because VR isn’t something you can simply slap onto an FPS and expect it to play well or comfortably) onlookers have been growing increasingly restless at the lack of even experimental VR support.
At the beginning of 2016 the studio said they planned to refocus their VR efforts in “early” 2016. When we last checked in with the game’s VR status in February 2017, a senior developer wasn’t sending very reassuring of signals, telling folks “don’t hold your breath” with regards to VR support.
We reached out to the company this week to ask if VR is still coming to Star Citizen. The response wasn’t inspiring, but the company at least says they are still committed to VR. A spokesperson offered the following:
Nothing new really to report here. We do plan on having VR support for Star Citizen. But it’s just having to fit in as a technology with all the other tech that we are currently incorporating into the game. As I’m sure you know, VR technology is evolving quickly. As with anything that fits this category, we are going to spend the time to make sure it’s integrated properly for our game.
There’s at least one hint that the studio is considering VR support as a factor in their design decisions: in the studio’s latest weekly update video, spotted by Reddit user KrisTiasMusic, the developers showed off a new UI that’s in development which they call mobiGlas—a wrist-mounted interface projection which appears in-world, rather than being attached to the player’s game camera. They say that one reason for this design approach is to ensure it makes sense with the first person view of a VR headset.
Fundamentally mobiGlas is a diegetically projected UI. And what this means is that the UI is meant to be seen by not just you as the player, but also is meant to be visible by your in-game character as well. So basically your player-character is aware of the UI just as you as the player are aware of it through your screen. And we do this for a couple of reasons. One is because the fact that we retain the visual connection between your player-character and the UI makes it much more immersive to use. Because we will be a VR capable game, we’re kind of forced to project the UI in 3D space, because otherwise it just wouldn’t work. In a traditional flat 2D menu you just wouldn’t be able to read it. So you need to project it at some sort of distance away for it to actually be usable. So we sort of do that from the get-go and that’s sort of always been our driving paradigm in UI design.
So at least for the game’s interface, the developers are thinking a bit about how to approach it to ensure it makes sense for eventual VR support. Of course, there’s much more to Star Citizen than just the interface, and much to sort out in order to make it a truly viable VR title.
Do you think Star Citizen will get there? Let us know in the comments. |
“Wow! This book is basically one-stop shopping for OpenGL information. It is the kind of book that I will be reaching for a lot. Thanks to Dave, Graham, John, and Bill for an amazing effort.”
—Mike Bailey, professor, Oregon State University
“The most recent Red Book parallels the grand tradition of OpenGL; continuous evolution towards ever-greater power and efficiency. The eighth edition contains up-to-the minute information about the latest standard and new features, along with a solid grounding in modern OpenGL techniques that will work anywhere. The Red Book continues to be an essential reference for all new employees at my simulation company. What else can be said about this essential guide? I laughed, I cried, it was much better than Cats—I’ll read it again and again.”
—Bob Kuehne, president, Blue Newt Software
“OpenGL has undergone enormous changes since its inception twenty years ago. This new edition is your practical guide to using the OpenGL of today. Modern OpenGL is centered on the use of shaders, and this edition of the Programming Guide jumps right in, with shaders covered in depth in Chapter 2. It continues in later chapters with even more specifics on everything from texturing to compute shaders. No matter how well you know it or how long you’ve been doing it, if you are going to write an OpenGL program, you want to have a copy of the OpenGL® Programming Guide handy.”
—Marc Olano, associate professor, UMBC
“If you are looking for the definitive guide to programming with the very latest version of OpenGL, look no further. The authors of this book have been deeply involved in the creation of OpenGL 4.3, and everything you need to know about the cutting edge of this industry-leading API is laid out here in a clear, logical, and insightful manner.”
—Neil Trevett, president, Khronos Group |
Year Published: 2017 | Number of Players: 1-4 | Game Length: 20-270 minutes
I had wanted to play Zephyr: Winds of Change ever since I saw the look of the cards and ships during its Kickstarter campaign. The theme seemed original and it looked like a game I could get just about anyone to play. This Zephyr: Winds of Change review is based on one solo game, 3 two-player games, and 4 four-player games.
What is Zephyr: Winds of Change?
Zephyr: Winds of Change is a thematic cooperative adventure game designed by Aaron Kluck and Jon Mietling and published by Portal Dragon. In Zephyr, you are airship captains in a post-apocalyptic world attempting to keep the skies clear of air pirates, which include tough commanders and, in some cases, warlords!
Zephyr: Winds of Change Gameplay
When you begin a game of Zephyr: Winds of Change, you’ll get a ship of your own along with that ship’s basic action cards and some starting scrap (money). You’ll buy some starting items, including ship upgrades and crew, and then you’re ready to begin a mission.
Each ship has a hull, which represents its health. They also have slots for ship upgrades, which add new cards to your deck that represent attacking abilities, tech, and evasive maneuvers. Even better, you can add crew members, which give you two new abilities – one from the faction and one from the crew member’s personality – that you can use throughout the game. Every ship has a special ability, and they also have their own hull, ship system, and crew layouts.
Throughout each mission, you will be going on assignments, either by yourself or with members of your team. These assignments can include battles, reactions to events, or a mix of both. If you’re able to complete an assignment, you’ll usually get a nice reward.
You will be fighting in a lot of battles in Zephyr: Winds of Change. You’ll be using your action cards to deal damage and evade incoming damage in hopes of defeating enemy ships. After you’ve chosen your cards, you’ll roll dice to see what the enemy ships do. You and the enemies fight simultaneously, so you can receive damage even if you end up killing your enemy. If another player is on your assignment with you, you can both take on the ships in that area. When you defeat an enemy ship, you’ll roll for scrap rewards.
It’s not uncommon to fight commanders in these battles. When you see the commander symbol, you will place a commander card on top of an enemy ship, replacing its abilities. The commander will also usually bring additional ships to the fight. What’s great about defeating commanders is that you can get better rewards, including the Epic upgrades!
The toughest battles come when you go up against warlords. These battles are similar to the others, but warlords have their own wave cards (ships and, sometimes, commanders) and abilities. You’ll need to get past those waves of ships and take down the warlord’s hull to defeat him.
As you go from assignment to assignment, days will pass by and you’ll be moving to new regions and reaching higher tiers. With each tier come tougher enemies since each enemy ship will have more health and will gain crew members (more dice).
When you complete assignments, you’ll have a chance to go back to the resupply to repair your ship and buy new upgrades. After going to the resupply you have the option of trading crew members, scrap, and/or ship systems with other players.
Each mission tells you what you’ll need to do to be successful. If you aren’t able to upgrade your ship well enough throughout the game, you could just lose on the final day of that mission.
If you want to play more than one mission with your ship, you can keep the upgrades you’ve bought and play the game’s campaign mode.
Portal Dragon Check out Zephyr: Winds of Change at
Pros
Zephyr: Winds of Change is one of the best-looking co-op games we’ve played. The player boards are fantastic, the artwork on the cards is great, the look of the crew member cards on top of their faction cards is awesome, and even the dice add to the overall look of the game.
The steampunk theme is extremely cool and it’s the main reason why we’ll be playing this game a lot. The game does a great job of bringing the theme to life with the ship boards, the text on the event cards, and all of those battles you’ll be involved in.
There is a ton of replay value here. You can set up your ship any way that you want to, there are a ton of crew member personalities to choose from, and you never know who you’re going to have to fight.
It also scales really well. I haven’t played a three-player game yet, but it seems like the challenge and overall fun factor has been the same at one, two, and four players.
The campaign mode actually works really well in this game. You become pretty attached to your ship after upgrading it over the course of a mission, so it’s pretty awesome that you can continue using that same ship in future missions.
Cons
The Zephyr: Winds of Change rulebook looks fantastic, but it’s not formatted in the best of ways. I did learn the basics of the game by reading through the rulebook and the tutorial book (multiple times), but I had to get a lot of my questions answered at the game’s BGG page.
There can be some downtime in this game. You will run into situations where you’ve finished part of your assignment and you have to wait a while for others to go through their battles. It’s not boring by any means, but you can grow a bit impatient when this happens.
This is definitely a collaborative board game since you have a shared goal and you can fight in battles together, but you’re often out doing your own thing. This is especially true during missions when you have to complete a bunch of assignments. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but some people might prefer co-op games that have players work together a bit more.
Final Thoughts
Zephyr: Winds of Change is a solid co-op adventure game that has a theme most people will be able to get into. What we really like about Zephyr is that it feels like a unique cooperative experience and it looks amazing on the table. It’s also quite difficult to beat at times, which is always a good thing to us.
If the steampunk theme doesn’t interest you, you might want to pass on this one since it kind of requires you to role-play a bit to get the most out of the experience. Also, there’s less player interaction than in most other co-ops. If those things don’t bother you, then we definitely recommend playing this one!
Zephyr: Winds of Change Links
Thanks for taking the time to read our Zephyr: Winds of Change review! And thank you to Portal Dragon for providing us with a copy of this game. |
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray has been widely recognised to have striking resemblances with his uncle Bal Thackeray. One of the traits the MNS supremo and Bal Thackeray have in common is their affinity for irreverent doodling.
In a cartoon released on Gandhi Jayanti, Thackeray took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, comparing him with the Mahatma. The cartoon titled 'Two of the same soil', showed the Mahatma holding his autobiography 'My Experiments with Truth' and alongside stood Modi holding a book titled 'My Experiments with Lies.'
Thackeray has lashed out at the Modi government on several occasions recently. Shortly after the stampede at Elphinstone Road station, he questioned the ambitious bullet train project and said that it should not be pushed when existing rail infrastructure is inadequate. "While people are struggling to survive in the cities, Modi is asking them to do yoga and campaign for Swachh Bharat," he said.
He, further, called Modi a 'liar' who changed all his statements before and after the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Thackeray had recently drawn a caricature of Modi being dragged into India by underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.
Thackeray has alleged that Dawood Ibrahim, believed to be in Pakistan, is negotiating terms with the Modi government to return to India.
However, Raj Thackeray has not always shown hostility towards Narendra Modi. In 2011, the MNS chief had visited Gujarat when Modi was its chief minister to understand how it had addressed the issues of electricity supply and corruption. At the time, he had showered praises on Modi for his development work, as reported by DNA.
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Newt Gingrich has chided House Speaker Paul Ryan for his hesitancy in endorsing presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, saying that "if you are not for Donald Trump, you are functionally helping Hillary Clinton, it's just that straightforward."Appearing onSunday radio show on AM 970 New York hosted by John Catsimatidis, the former House speaker said he thought "the moment to say, OK, we have the leader of the team, let's pull the team together, let's go beat Hillary has arrived."Ryan and Trump met face to face on Thursday in an attempt to patch up their differences, after which the Speaker praised Trump but still did not give his endorsement.Stressing that "we are living in a period of remarkable chance," Gingrich said that various elements of disillusionment with Washington from both the right and left "have come together to create the most insurgent candidate of my lifetime Donald Trump."Commenting on Clinton's e-mail scandal, Gingrich said that "it's a little hard to imagine the FBI being this tenacious and this determined if there's nothing there" and said that "the weight of evidence is that any other person who would have done these things would already be in a jury trial on criminal charges."Gingrich, who has been touted as a possible running mate for Trump, was not asked about that by Catsimatidis, but told Fox News Sunday that he's open to the idea, although it's not "an automatic 'yes.'"Gingrich said he remains optimistic about the future of the United States despite the many difficulties facing the country, saying, "I have enormous faith that the American people are bigger than our problems." |
Turnbull will pay a high price if he sticks by embattled Mal Brough
Updated
Mal Brough's mere presence as Special Minister of State is dragging down the Government. If the Prime Minister stands by him, he will have a lame duck - indeed, a next to useless minister - on his hands, writes Barrie Cassidy.
Why has Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull not heard the deafening alarm bells around the Special Minister of State, Mal Brough?
It's troubling enough that he failed to see the risks in bringing Brough into the ministry even though the James Ashby/Peter Slipper affair was still to be resolved.
But not understanding that the situation for Brough had this week dangerously escalated brings his judgment further into doubt.
As Laura Tingle wrote in the Financial Review this week:
They [Brough and Wyatt Roy, Assistant Minister for Innovation] are being investigated by the coppers, for goodness sake. Brough's house has been raided.
And Brough is no ordinary minister. He is Special Minister of State, prompting the shadow attorney-general, Mark Dreyfus, to ask of the Prime Minister on Wednesday:
Is the Prime Minister's judgment so bad, or did he owe the member for Fisher so much, that he gave him responsibility for government integrity?
Then to exacerbate his problems, Brough gave clearly contradictory answers to precisely the same question: Did he ask James Ashby to procure copies of Peter Slipper's diary for him?
Last year, Brough told Liz Hayes on 60 Minutes that he did, and he went on to explain why he did it.
This week, he gave a flat answer - "No" - when the same question was asked in Parliament.
Staffers (like Peta Credlin) and ministers (like Mal Brough) should think seriously about their positions when their mere presence drags down the government. But they rarely do.
Prime ministers pay a high price when they, too, resist such obvious pressures.
The unfortunate fact for Malcolm Turnbull is that he has now been - albeit unwittingly - at the centre of two of the most sordid political exercises in the past six years.
The Godwin Grech episode in 2009 was the beginning of the end for him as Liberal leader the first time around.
Turnbull staked his reputation on the credibility of a Treasury official who forged an email in an attempt to ingratiate himself with the Coalition and try to bring down the Labor government.
When the facts were revealed, Turnbull's approval rating suffered the biggest single fall in Newspoll history.
Now, in standing by Brough, he immerses himself in yet another sorry saga where plainly Coalition figures - now ministers - went to extraordinary lengths to tear down the speaker, Peter Slipper.
Undoubtedly Slipper brought some of that on himself, but he was nevertheless subjected to the kind of persecution that hadn't been seen since Labor went after Senator Mal Colston in the late 1990s.
If Turnbull sticks by Brough then he will have a lame duck - indeed, a next to useless minister - on his hands.
Useless in this sense: Brough will not be able to hold a news conference - a basic requirement of any minister - without having to tackle questions like those Mark Dreyfus asked of him on Monday.
As examples:
Does the minister ask the Australian Federal Police to investigate when staff members employed under the Members of Parliament (staff) Act provide unauthorised access to a member of parliament's official diary?
On 29 March 2012 the minister texted his email address to James Ashby so that he could be sent a better quality copy of the speaker's diary. Ashby replied, and I quote: 'Done. Coming through in a minute.' Did the Minister receive those unauthorised copies of the speaker's diary? Is conduct of this nature consistent with the standards the Government applies to this Minister's portfolio?
On 29 March 2012, now former journalist Steve Lewis sent an email to the minister which read: 'On how many occasions has Peter Slipper travelled to New Zealand since July 2010?' Did the minister agree to obtain unauthorised copies of the speaker's official diary for a journalist?
And on and on it went.
And so will the controversy - until such time as Brough is able to openly and completely answer questions like those.
***
One final note on a story that hasn't yet drawn widespread national attention, but should.
Australian Border Force has suspended a program by a group of nuns in Melbourne who routinely take children from the Broadmeadows detention centre on outings to places like the Melbourne Zoo, the Collingwood Children's Farm and various parks for picnics.
They have done this because, they say, the nuns do not provide adequate supervision and some of the places they visit are inappropriate.
They would have been better off saying nothing and putting it down to "on playground matters".
Tony Abbott was right about one thing when he said that nothing changes when you change leaders.
No matter who is running the country, the Government is still capable of being cruel to the children of asylum seekers. On that issue, we remain an international embarrassment.
Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of the ABC program Insiders. He writes a weekly column for The Drum.
Topics: turnbull-malcolm, liberals
First posted |
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Obama: "I'm not particularly ideological; I believe in a good pragmatic five-year plan"
Shocker: Obama had no knowledge he'd been reelected until he read about it in the local newspaper last week
Server problems at HealthCare.gov so bad, it now flashes 'Error 808' message
NSA marks National Best Friend Day with official announcement: "Government is your best friend; we know you like no one else, we're always there, we're always willing to listen"
Al Qaeda cancels attack on USA citing launch of Obamacare as devastating enough
The President's latest talking point on Obamacare: "I didn't build that"
Dizzy with success, Obama renames his wildly popular healthcare mandate to HillaryCare
Carney: huge ObamaCare deductibles won't look as bad come hyperinflation
Washington Redskins drop 'Washington' from their name as offensive to most Americans
Poll: 83% of Americans favor cowboy diplomacy over rodeo clown diplomacy
GOVERNMENT WARNING: If you were able to complete ObamaCare form online, it wasn't a legitimate gov't website; you should report online fraud and change all your passwords
Obama administration gets serious, threatens Syria with ObamaCare
Obama authorizes the use of Vice President Joe Biden's double-barrel shotgun to fire a couple of blasts at Syria
Sharpton: "British royals should have named baby 'Trayvon.' By choosing 'George' they sided with white Hispanic racist Zimmerman"
DNC launches 'Carlos Danger' action figure; proceeds to fund a charity helping survivors of the Republican War on Women
Nancy Pelosi extends abortion rights to the birds and the bees
Hubble discovers planetary drift to the left
Obama: 'If I had a daughter-in-law, she would look like Rachael Jeantel'
FISA court rubberstamps statement denying its portrayal as government's rubber stamp
Every time ObamaCare gets delayed, a Julia somewhere dies
GOP to Schumer: 'Force full implementation of ObamaCare before 2014 or Dems will never win another election'
Obama: 'If I had a son... no, wait, my daughter can now marry a woman!'
Janet Napolitano: TSA findings reveal that since none of the hijackers were babies, elderly, or Tea Partiers, 9/11 was not an act of terrorism
News Flash: Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) can see Canada from South Dakota
Susan Rice: IRS actions against tea parties caused by anti-tax YouTube video that was insulting to their faith
Drudge Report reduces font to fit all White House scandals onto one page
Obama: the IRS is a constitutional right, just like the Second Amendment
White House: top Obama officials using secret email accounts a result of bad IT advice to avoid spam mail from Nigeria
Jay Carney to critics: 'Pinocchio never said anything inconsistent'
Obama: If I had a gay son, he'd look like Jason Collins
Gosnell's office in Benghazi raided by the IRS: mainstream media's worst cover-up challenge to date
IRS targeting pro-gay-marriage LGBT groups leads to gayest tax revolt in U.S. history
After Arlington Cemetery rejects offer to bury Boston bomber, Westboro Babtist Church steps up with premium front lawn plot
Boston: Obama Administration to reclassify marathon bombing as 'sportsplace violence'
Study: Success has many fathers but failure becomes a government program
US Media: Can Pope Francis possibly clear up Vatican bureaucracy and banking without blaming the previous administration?
Michelle Obama praises weekend rampage by Chicago teens as good way to burn calories and stay healthy
This Passover, Obama urges his subjects to paint lamb's blood above doors in order to avoid the Sequester
White House to American children: Sequester causes layoffs among hens that lay Easter eggs; union-wage Easter Bunnies to be replaced by Mexican Chupacabras
Time Mag names Hugo Chavez world's sexiest corpse
Boy, 8, pretends banana is gun, makes daring escape from school
Study: Free lunches overpriced, lack nutrition
Oscars 2013: Michelle Obama announces long-awaited merger of Hollywood and the State
Joe Salazar defends the right of women to be raped in gun-free environment: 'rapists and rapees should work together to prevent gun violence for the common good'
Dept. of Health and Human Services eliminates rape by reclassifying assailants as 'undocumented sex partners'
Kremlin puts out warning not to photoshop Putin riding meteor unless bare-chested
Deeming football too violent, Obama moves to introduce Super Drone Sundays instead
Japan offers to extend nuclear umbrella to cover U.S. should America suffer devastating attack on its own defense spending
Feminists organize one billion women to protest male oppression with one billion lap dances
Urban community protests Mayor Bloomberg's ban on extra-large pop singers owning assault weapons
Concerned with mounting death toll, Taliban offers to send peacekeeping advisers to Chicago
Karl Rove puts an end to Tea Party with new 'Republicans For Democrats' strategy aimed at losing elections
Answering public skepticism, President Obama authorizes unlimited drone attacks on all skeet targets throughout the country
Skeet Ulrich denies claims he had been shot by President but considers changing his name to 'Traps'
White House releases new exciting photos of Obama standing, sitting, looking thoughtful, and even breathing in and out
New York Times hacked by Chinese government, Paul Krugman's economic policies stolen
White House: when President shoots skeet, he donates the meat to food banks that feed the middle class
To prove he is serious, Obama eliminates armed guard protection for President, Vice-President, and their families; establishes Gun-Free Zones around them instead
State Dept to send 100,000 American college students to China as security for US debt obligations
Jay Carney: Al Qaeda is on the run, they're just running forward
President issues executive orders banning cliffs, ceilings, obstructions, statistics, and other notions that prevent us from moving forwards and upward
Fearing the worst, Obama Administration outlaws the fan to prevent it from being hit by certain objects
World ends; S&P soars
Riddle of universe solved; answer not understood
Meek inherit Earth, can't afford estate taxes
Greece abandons Euro; accountants find Greece has no Euros anyway
Wheel finally reinvented; axles to be gradually reinvented in 3rd quarter of 2013
Bigfoot found in Ohio, mysteriously not voting for Obama
As Santa's workshop files for bankruptcy, Fed offers bailout in exchange for control of 'naughty and nice' list
Freak flying pig accident causes bacon to fly off shelves
Obama: green economy likely to transform America into a leading third world country of the new millennium
Report: President Obama to visit the United States in the near future
Obama promises to create thousands more economically neutral jobs
Modernizing Islam: New York imam proposes to canonize Saul Alinsky as religion's latter day prophet
Imam Rauf's peaceful solution: 'Move Ground Zero a few blocks away from the mosque and no one gets hurt'
Study: Obama's threat to burn tax money in Washington 'recruitment bonanza' for Tea Parties
Study: no Social Security reform will be needed if gov't raises retirement age to at least 814 years
Obama attends church service, worships self
Obama proposes national 'Win The Future' lottery; proceeds of new WTF Powerball to finance more gov't spending
Historical revisionists: "Hey, you never know"
Vice President Biden: criticizing Egypt is un-pharaoh
Israelis to Egyptian rioters: "don't damage the pyramids, we will not rebuild"
Lake Superior renamed Lake Inferior in spirit of tolerance and inclusiveness
Al Gore: It's a shame that a family can be torn apart by something as simple as a pack of polar bears
Michael Moore: As long as there is anyone with money to shake down, this country is not broke
Obama's teleprompters unionize, demand collective bargaining rights
Obama calls new taxes 'spending reductions in tax code.' Elsewhere rapists tout 'consent reductions in sexual intercourse'
Obama's teleprompter unhappy with White House Twitter: "Too few words"
Obama's Regulation Reduction committee finds US Constitution to be expensive outdated framework inefficiently regulating federal gov't
Taking a page from the Reagan years, Obama announces new era of Perestroika and Glasnost
Responding to Oslo shootings, Obama declares Christianity "Religion of Peace," praises "moderate Christians," promises to send one into space
Republicans block Obama's $420 billion program to give American families free charms that ward off economic bad luck
White House to impose Chimney tax on Santa Claus
Obama decrees the economy is not soaring as much as previously decreeed
Conservative think tank introduces children to capitalism with pop-up picture book "The Road to Smurfdom"
Al Gore proposes to combat Global Warming by extracting silver linings from clouds in Earth's atmosphere
Obama refutes charges of him being unresponsive to people's suffering: "When you pray to God, do you always hear a response?"
Obama regrets the US government didn't provide his mother with free contraceptives when she was in college
Fluke to Congress: drill, baby, drill!
Planned Parenthood introduces Frequent Flucker reward card: 'Come again soon!'
Obama to tornado victims: 'We inherited this weather from the previous administration'
Obama congratulates Putin on Chicago-style election outcome
People's Cube gives itself Hero of Socialist Labor medal in recognition of continued expert advice provided to the Obama Administration helping to shape its foreign and domestic policies
Hamas: Israeli air defense unfair to 99% of our missiles, "only 1% allowed to reach Israel"
Democrat strategist: without government supervision, women would have never evolved into humans
Voters Without Borders oppose Texas new voter ID law
Enraged by accusation that they are doing Obama's bidding, media leaders demand instructions from White House on how to respond
Obama blames previous Olympics for failure to win at this Olympics
Official: China plans to land on Moon or at least on cheap knockoff thereof
Koran-Contra: Obama secretly arms Syrian rebels
Poll: Progressive slogan 'We should be more like Europe' most popular with members of American Nazi Party
Obama to Evangelicals: Jesus saves, I just spend
May Day: Anarchists plan, schedule, synchronize, and execute a coordinated campaign against all of the above
Midwestern farmers hooked on new erotic novel "50 Shades of Hay"
Study: 99% of Liberals give the rest a bad name
Obama meets with Jewish leaders, proposes deeper circumcisions for the rich
Historians: Before HOPE & CHANGE there was HEMP & CHOOM at ten bucks a bag
Cancer once again fails to cure Venezuela of its "President for Life"
Tragic spelling error causes Muslim protesters to burn local boob-tube factory
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu: due to energy conservation, the light at the end of the tunnel will be switched off
Obama Administration running food stamps across the border with Mexico in an operation code-named "Fat And Furious"
Pakistan explodes in protest over new Adobe Acrobat update; 17 local acrobats killed
White House: "Let them eat statistics"
Special Ops: if Benedict Arnold had a son, he would look like Barack Obama
IOTW Report
Terry Colon
The Fine Report
Professor Kurgman
kathy blog
FAQster
BestObamaFacts.com
Looking at the Left
Brain Terminal
Zombietime |
This is a page from one of Stanley Kubrick’s notebooks, on which he jotted down more than a dozen different titles for the movie that came to be called Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Among the rejected titles were:
Dr. Doomsday or: How to Start World War III Without Even Trying
Dr. Strangelove’s Secret Uses of Uranus
My Bomb, Your Bomb
Strangelove: Nuclear Wiseman
The Bomb and Dr. Strangelove or: How to be Afraid 24hrs a Day
The Passion of Dr. Strangelove
Fun titles, but they remind me of a chess quote I tweeted the other day: “When you see a good move look out for a better.” Glad Kubrick stuck with it.
The alternate titles made me curious to look at the script, which I’d never seen before. Even glancing at the first few pages are illuminating. I knew the main characters names were full of suggestive puns — General Buck Turgidson, President Merkin Muffley, General Jack D. Ripper — but that’s nothing compared to some of the names in the script, many of which do not appear in the film:
General “Buck” Schmuck
Admiral Percy Buldike
Ambassador de Sade (“Alexei de Sadeski” in the film)
Von Klutz
Frankenstein
Cadaverly
Didley
Crudley
Waffel
Funkel
Major Nonce
Lieutenant Quentin Quiffer
Lieutenant “Binky” Ballmuff
And under “General Notes”, Kubrick lays out how he wants the film to look and feel:
1. The story will be played for realistic comedy - which means the essentially truthful moods and attitudes will be portrayed accurately, with an occasional bizarre or super-realistic crescendo. The acting will never be so-called “comedy” acting. 2. The sets and technical details will be done realistically and carefully. We will strive for the maximum atmosphere and sense of visual reality from the sets and locations. 3. The Flying sequences will especially be presented in as vivid a manner as possible. Exciting backgrounds and special effects will be obtained.
Nailed it. (via @monstro) |
Fab Four Fan Fotos Pictures of the Beatles taken by the fans themselves. These pictures have never before been seen or published. Jim Ciminera Back in the late 60's, early 70's I was hitch hiking around the United States and Canada, and ended up at one point in Toronto. These were the hippy days and we went to the heart of the artist district to look for someone to put us up for the night. Two girls befriended us and took us home to their apartment. That night one of the girls went a little nuts. When she heard that I was a Lennon freak like her, she insisted that my initials meant I was Jesus Christ (?) and that I was sent to her for some reason. I just wanted to get the hell out of there! :-) As I was leaving she handed me these small instamatic photographs of the Beatles that she said her friend had personally taken when the Beatles visited Toronto or Montreal, I can't remember which. I told her I couldn't take such an important gift, but she insisted. She said at that time that she did not know if the negatives survived and I would doubt that they do to this day. -Jim Cim
Jay Boivin This picture was taken in February, 1967 after a Chuck Berry concert at the Seville Theater in London. At the time Brian Epstein used the Seville as a venue to promote his musical acts. On my way out, behind the theatre I saw John and Ringo rushing into a Mini Cooper. I said hello, they acknowledged, and then Brian walked up to the car to bid them good evening. That's when I took the picture, and you can see Brian's reflection in the car window. -Jay Note: Previously the woman in the picture had been identified as Ringo's first wife Maureen. By comparing this photo with other photos of Beatles wives, we now know that is Cynthia Lennon in the car with John and Ringo.
Richard Cook These photos were taken at the Las Vegas show of McCartney's New World Tour in 1993. The album Paul Is Live was recorded during this tour. Hamish Stuart, Robbie McIntosh, Wix Wickens, and Linda can all be seen with Paul in the first pic, group.jpg. The drummer, Blair Cunningham, can be seen behind Paul in the second to last pic, piano.jpg. These pictures were taken from 11th row center using a Nikon camera and a 70-120mm zoom lens. For more info on these files, contact Richard Cook at richcook@bellsouth.net.
Mark Jones My name is Mark Jones and I live in Northampton, UK. I had the chance to meet Paul twice in 1990. The first time I met Paul was on October 15, on a march to try and save Rye Hospital which was going to be closed. A friend of mine heard that Paul was going so we went just on the off chance of meeting him. He was polite but not into signing autographs or talking about any thing other than the hospital on the march, which is understandable, though I did shake his hand. We got about 54 pictures altogether. After the march he gave a speech from the top of an open top bus then started to leave. It was at this point that he did sign a few autographs and I got a 'Flowers In The Dirt' CD signed. The second time I got to meet Paul was at a TV Show recording in Wembley, London in December. I spoke to Paul half way through the recording when they had a break and as he was leaving some of us managed to get a few pictures of him. They were taken through glass though. -Mark
The photos on this page are the property of the owners. These files may be downloaded and shared with other Beatles fans for personal use only, and may not be commercially distributed. This page was last updated January 20, 2002. |
(In this Jan. 29 story, corrects quote of tweet by Canadian legislator Greg Fergus to ‘demonizing’ instead of ‘sermonizing’)
By Kevin Dougherty
QUEBEC CITY (Reuters) - Six people were killed and eight wounded when gunmen opened fire at a Quebec City mosque during Sunday night prayers, in what Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a “terrorist attack on Muslims”.
Police said two suspects had been arrested, but gave no details about them or what prompted the attack.
Initially, the mosque president said five people were killed and a witness said up to three gunmen had fired on about 40 people inside the Quebec City Islamic Cultural Centre. Police said only two people were involved in the attack.
“Six people are confirmed dead - they range in age from 35 to about 70,” Quebec provincial police spokeswoman Christine Coulombe told reporters, adding eight people were wounded and 39 were unharmed.
The mosque’s president, Mohamed Yangui, who was not inside when the shooting occurred, said he got frantic calls from people at evening prayers.
“Why is this happening here? This is barbaric,” he said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a statement: “We condemn this terrorist attack on Muslims in a center of worship and refuge”.
“Muslim-Canadians are an important part of our national fabric, and these senseless acts have no place in our communities, cities and country.”
The shooting came on the weekend that Trudeau said Canada would welcome refugees, after U.S. President Donald Trump suspended the U.S. refugee program and temporarily barred citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States on national security grounds.
A Canadian federal Liberal legislator, Greg Fergus, tweeted: “This is an act of terrorism — the result of years of demonizing Muslims. Words matter and hateful speeches have consequences!”
The premier of Quebec province, Philippe Couillard, said security would be increased at mosques in Quebec City and Montreal.
“We are with you. You are home,” Couillard said, directing his comments at the province’s Muslim community. “You are welcome in your home. We are all Quebecers. We must continue together to build an open welcoming and peaceful society”.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said police were providing additional protection for mosques in that city following the Quebec shooting. “All New Yorkers should be vigilant. If you see something, say something,” he tweeted.
‘NOT SAFE HERE’
French President Francois Hollande condemned the attack.
“The terrorists wanted to attack the spirit of peace and tolerance of the citizens of Quebec,” Hollande said in a statement on Monday. “France stands shoulder to shoulder with the victims and their families”.
People bring flowers at the scene of a fatal shooting at the Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre in Quebec City. REUTERS/Mathieu Belanger
Like France, Quebec has struggled at times to reconcile its secular identity with a rising Muslim population, many of them from North Africa.
In June last year, a pig’s head was left on the doorstep of the cultural center.
“We are not safe here,” said Mohammed Oudghiri, who normally attends prayers at the mosque in the middle-class, residential area, but did not on Sunday.
Oudghiri said he had lived in Quebec for 42 years but was now “very worried” and thinking of moving back to Morocco.
Mass shootings are rare in Canada, which has stricter gun laws than the United States, and news of the shooting sent a shockwave through mosques and community centers throughout the mostly French-language province.
“It’s a sad day for all Quebecers and Canadians to see a terrorist attack happen in peaceful Quebec City,” said Mohamed Yacoub, co-chairman of an Islamic community center in a Montreal suburb.
“I hope it’s an isolated incident.”
Incidents of Islamophobia have increased in Quebec in recent years. The face-covering, or niqab, became a big issue in the 2015 Canadian federal election, especially in Quebec, where the majority of the population supported a ban on it at citizenship ceremonies.
In 2013, police investigated after a mosque in the Saguenay region of the province was splattered with what was believed to be pig blood. In the neighboring province of Ontario, a mosque was set on fire in 2015, a day after an attack by gunmen and suicide bombers in Paris.
Zebida Bendjeddou, who left the Quebec City mosque earlier on Sunday evening, said the center had received threats.
Slideshow (10 Images)
“In June, they’d put a pig’s head in front of the mosque. But we thought: ‘Oh, they’re isolated events.’ We didn’t take it seriously. But tonight, those isolated events, they take on a different scope,” she said.
Bendjeddou said she had not confirmed the names of those killed, but added: “They’re people we know, for sure. People we knew since they were little kids.” |
By Sarah Dutton, Jennifer De Pinto, Anthony Salvanto and Fred Backus
Most Americans don't think the U.S. is obliged to intervene in the recent annexation by Russia of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea. A majority of 61 percent of Americans do not think the U.S. has a responsibility to do something about the situation between Russia and Ukraine, nearly twice as many as the 32 percent who think it does. There is widespread bipartisan agreement on this.
Public opinion about U.S. responsibility in Ukraine is similar to views about U.S. responsibility in other international conflicts. Majorities of Americans did not think the U.S. had a responsibility to intervene in Syria (68 percent), in the fighting and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia (65 percent) or in the mass killings in Rwanda (51 percent). In contrast, 54 percent of Americans believed the U.S. did have a responsibility to intervene in Kosovo, a situation where the U.S. began a bombing campaign against Serbian forces in cooperation with NATO.
More specifically, 65 percent of Americans do not think the U.S. should provide military aid and equipment to Ukraine in response to Russia's actions, while only 26 percent think the U.S. should. Majorities of Republicans (59 percent), Democrats (67 percent), and independents (69 percent) are opposed to providing military aid and equipment to Ukraine.
Air Travel Safety
As the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 continues, most Americans rate the overall safety record of commercial airline travel positively. Seventy-three percent describe it as excellent or good, while only a quarter (24 percent) rate it as fair or poor.
Even though majorities of both men and women have positive views of air travel safety, 45 percent of men rate it as excellent, compared to just 24 percent of women.
Americans rate the safety record of air travel more positively today than they did after domestic incidents such as the crash of American Airlines flight 587 (56 percent), which occurred in November 2001, just months after the 9/11 attacks, and the 1996 crash of TWA 800 (66 percent).
CBS News last asked about the safety record of commercial air travel in January 2002, just weeks after the thwarted attempt by "the shoe-bomber" to detonate a bomb aboard an American Airlines flight. Back then, 61 percent of Americans said the safety record of air travel was excellent or good; that percentage is 73 percent today.
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This poll was conducted by telephone March 20-23, 2014 among a total of 1,097 adults nationwide. Data collection was conducted on behalf of CBS News by Social Science Research Solutions of Media, Pa. Phone numbers were dialed from samples of both standard land-line and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. |
We analyzed data from 19 published studies, comprising 6261 subjects. The incidence of CDI in the probiotic cohort, 1.6% (54 of 3277), was lower than of controls, 3.9% (115 of 2984) (P < .001). The pooled relative risk of CDI in probiotic users was 0.42 (95% confidence interval, 0.30−0.57; I2 = 0.0%). Meta-regression analysis demonstrated that probiotics were significantly more effective if given closer to the first antibiotic dose, with a decrement in efficacy for every day of delay in starting probiotics (P = .04); probiotics given within 2 days of antibiotic initiation produced a greater reduction of risk for CDI (relative risk, 0.32; 95% confidence interval, 0.22−0.48; I2 = 0%) than later administration (relative risk, 0.70; 95% confidence interval, 0.40−1.23; I2 = 0%) (P = .02). There was no increased risk for adverse events among patients given probiotics. The overall quality of the evidence was high. |
Homestuck fans! The following tutorial is re-posted (with permission) from Mage W’s blog. It’s all about how to make a hidden headback troll horn attachment. This is a follow-up to her horn molding tutorial, which is also very good. You can find all her awesome and helpful stuff over at http://magebird.tumblr.com. Ok Magebird, take it away!
“For my horns, I used InstaMorph Moldable Plastic. The best way to put a screw into the base of these types of horns is to push it in while the plastic is still soft and let the horn harden around them. If this isn’t an option, you can simply drill directly into the horn (use a screw that says it will drill its own pilot hole or use a narrow drill bit before using the screw). If you’re using InstaMorph, the heat of the drilling may cause some melting, so be sure to let it harden again completely before you proceed from this step. Some plastic may squish out of the hole you drill and around the head of the screw, but as long as it isn’t sealed over completely, this isn’t a big problem. You can smooth it down or cut it off later, if you prefer.
Once you have the holes in your horns all set, you’re going to want to remove the screws and put them through your headband instead. Make sure you find the right placement for your head! This might take a little bit of fiddling and adjustment, so I strongly recommend not painting your horns until you’re sure you won’t need to make any adjustments to them in terms of curve, thickness, etc. (Please note: if you toss them back in the hot water while they have the screw in them, the screw will be hot, and will not cool as quickly as the plastic! Please be careful about potential burns.)
Once your screws are through the headband at the angles you want, secure the bases with a little hot glue or another smear of the plastic. This will ensure they don’t move around while you’re screwing the horn on later.
Next, you’re going to want to put the headband either on your own head or on a wig head. Because styrofoam heads don’t have exactly the same proportions as a real one, I recommend getting a buddy to help you out and using your own head for the process. This will also make sure everything is in the right spot.
Next is the kind of tricky part. carefully lower your wig over the top of the headband, and push the screws through the cap of the wig and up through the hair. Depending on how your wig is made, they may just slide through between the wefts, or you make need to poke a small hole. Don’t just shove them through, as this may cause damage or tearing to your wig! This is a part where it’s useful to have a buddy who can assist with positioning and snipping. Make sure to part the hair away from the screw as much as you can so it doesn’t get too caught under the base of the horn.
Once the screws are through your wig, take your horns and start to screw them on. Your screws should be secure, and it shouldn’t take long to get the horns seated properly.
Once the horns are screwed all the way down, arrange the hair around the base, then step back and give yourself a little round of applause. You’ve attached a horn! Finally, repeat the process with the other horn, and you’re all set.
As you can see, my horns here look a little wonky because the wig head is a lot smaller thank my head, and I’m not using my actual Kanaya wig for this tutorial, but you get the idea. This is a great way to attach horns of any size and to hide headbands of pretty much any style or color.” |
VANCOUVER (Reuters) - Canadian radio station have been warned to censor the 1985 Dire Straits hit “Money for Nothing,” after a complaint that the lyrics of the Grammy Award-winning song were derogatory to gay men.
Former "Dire Straits" lead singer Mark Knopfler performs during a concert in Bombay March 5, 2005. REUTERS/Punit Paranjpe
A St. John’s, Newfoundland, station should have edited the song to remove the word “faggot” because it violates Canada’s human rights standards, according to ruling this week by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council.
A unnamed listener to OZ FM in the Atlantic Coast province complained to the industry watchdog last year after hearing the song, which features Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler and fellow rock star Sting.
The council said it realized Dire Straits uses the word sarcastically, and its use might have been acceptable in 1985 when the best-selling “Brothers in Arms” album was released, but said it was now inappropriate.
“The decision doesn’t really relate to the Dire Straits song at the end of the day, the decision relates to the word in question,” Ron Cohen, the council’s chairman, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
OZ FM argued unsuccessfully that the song has been played countless times since it was released more than 25 years ago, has won various industry awards, including a Grammy in 1986, and remains popular with listeners around the world.
The ruling comes in the wake of an uproar sparked by a U.S. scholar who decided to publish an edition of Mark Twain’s novel “Huckleberry Finn” that would remove the word “nigger” to make it less offensive to some readers.
Although the Dire Straits ruling only sanctions the St John’s station, it means other Canadian radio stations could get in trouble it they air the song without censoring it.
The Broadcast Standards Council is a non-governmental industry group that administers ethical standards established by its members, Canada’s private broadcasters
Dire Straits dissolved as a band in the 1990s after a string of hit albums. |
Wild markets are here to stay argues Andrew Lo, an economist and finance professor at M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management.
(MONEY Magazine) -- You know that investing can be tough. Andrew Lo says it's even tougher than you think.
Lo, an economist and finance professor at M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management, challenges a core idea of financial theory: that markets are "efficient," meaning there's no point in trying to time your moves in and out of stocks, since everything you could know about them is already baked into the price.
Plenty of smart people think that Lo knows what he's talking about. In addition to teaching, he has advised the government on ways to limit the damage from future financial crises. He also runs a money-management firm that seeks to put his ideas to work.
Lo argues that the buy-and-hold method of investing (long considered gospel by index fund managers and this magazine) doesn't effectively limit the risks of today's markets. He explained his theories to contributor Charles P. Wallace; the conversation has been edited.
You reject the theory of efficient markets in favor of what you call adaptive markets. Meaning?
I don't entirely reject the idea of efficient markets. It needs updating. The adaptive markets hypothesis says that all economic institutions, like our own species, develop and change over time, depending on the population of investors that are engaged with them.
So what does that mean for investors?
In a normal market, you get the independent valuations of millions of buyers and sellers trying to evaluate a given security.
During periods of extreme fear or greed, you don't have the proper balance between those two to generate market efficiency and you get extremes in behavior.
When there's a strong trend upward, for example, the kind of skepticism that produces reasonable and accurate valuations of securities is not at work, and a bubble develops. It's very exciting when you're in the midst of it, but at some point the valuations aren't justifiable.
It seems as if big market shifts are becoming more common.
Yes. If you rank the top 50 one-day moves in the S&P 500, a fair number of those happened within the last five or 10 years. That tells you that we're in a different, riskier market now.
What's going on?
A combination of a lot of smart guys and technology. People have the ability to enact a trade instantaneously. And they have a lot of complex new tools, such as hedge funds and derivatives, at their disposal.
Technological innovations often have unintended consequences. My analogy is someone clearing some brush using a handsaw. You can clear a lot more brush using a chainsaw, but you might lose a finger, or suffer other attendant consequences. We now have everybody with chainsaws going after all sorts of opportunities, and that's really where the potential for crises can emerge.
Until we've learned how to develop better technologies, I think we're going to keep seeing more crises. There's a good chance we'll see a pretty important shock wave coming out of Europe if they don't get their act together with regard to European sovereign debt.
But doesn't a simple buy-and-hold strategy address a lot of these issues of risk?
Buy-and-hold doesn't work anymore. The volatility is too significant. Almost any asset can suddenly become much more risky. Buying into a mutual fund and holding it for 10 years is no longer going to deliver the same kind of expected return that we saw over the course of the last seven decades, simply because of the nature of financial markets and how complex it's gotten.
Okay, but even during the so-called lost decade (2000 to 2010) someone who regularly put money into a 60% stock/40% bond portfolio would have had about a 4% return. Why isn't that good enough?
Think about how that person earned 4%. He lost 30%, saw a big bounce-back, and so on, and the compound rate of return over the period was 4%. But most investors did not wait for the dust to settle. After the first 25% loss, they probably reduced their holdings, and only got part way back in after the market somewhat recovered.
It's human behavior. Ask actual individual investors what their net rate of return was over the last three years, and see if it's the same rate returned by the market. I bet you it's not.
So what choice do I have instead?
We're in an awkward period of our industry where we haven't developed good alternatives. Your best bet is to hold a variety of mutual funds that have relatively low fees and try to manage the volatility within a reasonable range. You should be diversified not just with stocks and bonds but across the entire spectrum of investment opportunities: stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities, and domestically and internationally.
Most of us didn't sign up for the kind of volatility we're seeing right now. So keep in mind that if you're holding equities, you are probably taking more risk than you thought.
Does the government have a role in preventing these crises?
It's not possible to prevent financial crises. But we can better understand what they are caused by, when they are likely to occur, and how we can prepare for them when they do happen.
In the same way you cannot legislate away hurricanes, but you can do a lot to prepare for the worst of their effects. I believe we should have an independent agency to study crises, the way the National Transportation Safety Board looks at airline crashes.
Some 2,000 pages of regulations came out of the last crisis.
The Dodd-Frank Bill [which significantly strengthened financial regulations] was like a "Fire, ready, aim." It was a reaction. Now, some of that reaction was quite useful. But the laws that have been proposed, like the Volcker Rule [which would prevent banks from making some speculative investments], have hosts of unintended consequences that we won't really understand for years until after those laws are actually implemented. |
On a recent Saturday morning, I settled in to make these Glazed Lemon Cream Scones from the Eats cookbook.
I live in Seattle—land of coffee and rainy days (although the latter are not quite as prevalent as our reputation suggests). Scones are the perfect food to complement both!
An Easy and Delicious Scones Recipe
First off, they were shockingly easy. While I do know my way around a baked good, I’ve never made scones. For some reason, I’ve associated their difficulty level with biscotti, which I tried to make once. Just once. But, these scones? Simple to make and simply sublime.
Because they have just the right amount of lemon—not overpowering—they pair well with your morning cup of coffee or tea or just a good ol’-fashioned glass of milk. What I also like about this recipe is the possible flavor combinations—the lemon taste is present, but subtle enough so that it could only be enhanced by the right addition. I’m thinking, next time around, about mixing some berries—blueberries, blackberries, or raspberries—into the batter. Or even, perhaps, some ginger, almond extract/flavoring, or white chocolate! Oh, the possibilities!
One final tip from the pages of Eats that helped me in my scone making: For light, fluffy scones, avoid kneading the dough too many times. A gentle touch is best.
Glazed Lemon Cream Scones
Batter:
2 cups all-purpose flour
⅓ cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into ¼-inch pieces
1 egg yolk
1 cup heavy or whipping cream, plus a spoonful or two for tops
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Lemon Glaze:
1½ cups confectioners’ sugar
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
1 tablespoon milk, plus more as needed
⅛ teaspoon lemon extract
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest, for garnish
For batter:
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Get out a large baking sheet.
Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and lemon zest in a large bowl and whisk to mix. Add the butter and, using a pastry blender or your fingers, cut it into the dry mixture to make very small pieces. Make a well.
Combine the yolk, cream, and vanilla in a small bowl and stir to blend. Pour into the well and stir until the dough pulls together. Set aside to rest for 3 to 4 minutes.
Lightly flour a work surface.
Scrape the dough onto the work surface and dust your hands and the dough with the flour. Knead the dough gently four or five times. It will be soft but manageable. Shape the dough into a ball, then flatten it into a disk about ¾-inch thick and 7 to 7½ inches in diameter. Cut the disk into eight equal pie wedges.
Flattening the dough with your hands is a cinch. Just work it out slowly and evenly, then cut with a knife like you would a pizza.
Place the wedges on the baking sheet, evenly spaced. Lightly brush the tops with cream.
Bake for 15 to 17 minutes, or until golden. Transfer to a cooling rack.
Sift the confectioners’ sugar into a bowl. Add the corn syrup and 1 tablespoon of milk and stir with a wooden spoon, until smooth. Add the lemon extract and stir to blend. Add additional milk, ½ teaspoon at a time, and whisk until the glaze is runny but still thick.
When the scones are barely warm, place them on a sheet of wax paper or plastic wrap and drizzle them generously with the glaze. Garnish with lemon zest.
Makes 8 scones.
Get a printable version of the Glazed Lemon Cream Scones recipe.
Get This Recipe and More in the Eats Cookbook
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Get Eats as a free gift with our Readers’ Best Recipes Cookbook at our online store. View three more recipes from Eats and three recipes from Readers’ Best Recipes. |
Shaun Weima hadn’t been home long from teaching for the day when he realized he’d left his guitar in the back seat of his car.
When he walked out to his vehicle a week ago today, he was met with perhaps the worst Christmas gift any musician could imagine.
“My car was right there at my own house,” he said.
“And someone had thrown a rock through my window and taken my acoustic.”
The Yamaha fg460 was Weima’s go-to guitar, both for playing in his popular band, Ianspotting, and for teaching guitar lessons at Kingston School of Music. But that isn’t all that made it a guitar he held close to his heart, both literally ad figuratively.
“The guitar was my aunt’s. She passed away in 1990, and eventually it got passed on to me,” said Weima.
Weima said he is beyond upset at the loss of his guitar. On top of that loss, a lot of his music books in a blue MEC bag were also stolen, and he ended up with a broken window that had to be replaced quickly in the cold and wet weather.
Weima immediately filed a report with the Kingston Police, he said, and has been actively looking through pawn shops and music stores that carry used instruments.
His efforts have produced no results so far, and he is growing fearful he may never get the cherished six-string back.
The event has led Weima to one conclusion, however, and it’s a piece of advice he says other guitarists should heed.
“I’ve already taken photos of the serial numbers on all of my other guitars,” he said.
“Definitely, definitely a good idea to have that information.”
Weima has taken to social media, alerting his friends, students and fellow musicians of the theft, and is asking for people to keep their eyes peeled for the 1986 Yamaha fg460 acoustic guitar. His father, whose sister once owned the guitar, had this to say about the tragic incident that resulted in his son losing his favourite instrument:
“This is a very special, priceless guitar used by Shaun at every music gig he did, and played with passion! A guitar previously owned by my sister, Janet, who passed away in 1990, and also loved and sang with that guitar,” he wrote on Weima’s Facebook wall.
“I hope the person who took it acquires a conscience of some sort. Hang in there Shaun!”
In Shaun’s words, describing how awful it is to be without his instrument was best said by his father in that post.
“It was his sister’s guitar, and then his son’s,” Weima said.
“He knows how special it is.”
While Weima is happy that he can continue playing thanks to his other guitars and friends in the local music scene, nothing can replace the guitar that had become such a integral part of his life, he said. |
SYDNEY (Reuters) - The euro held onto lavish gains on Friday after boasting its biggest one-day surge in nearly seven years as the latest round of policy easing by the European Central Bank fell well short of investors’ lofty expectations.
The shadow of the logo of Euro is seen on a U.S. one dollar note in this picture illustration taken in Madrid March 10, 2015. REUTERS/Sergio Perez
Bears scrambled to unwind short euro positions on a bare-minimum easing package in which the ECB cut its deposit rate by a mere 10 basis points and extended its asset buys by six months.
Following recent dovish comments from ECB President Mario Draghi, markets had expected more aggressive measures including a larger cut in the deposit rate and perhaps even an increase in the monthly pace of asset purchases.
The euro last traded at $1.0937 EUR= after shooting up 3.1 percent, its biggest one-day gain since March 2009. It had been as low as $1.0523, a level not seen since April.
Against the yen, the common currency rallied 2.5 percent and was last at 134.13 EURJPY=R. It also posted handsome gains on sterling EURGBP=R and commodity currencies such as the Australian dollar EURAUD=R.
The euro’s explosive rally sent the dollar index .DXY reeling to a one-month low. The index shed 2.1 percent on Thursday, its worst performance since March 2009.
The magnitude of the move took some analysts by surprise.
“The extent of the move seems disproportionate both to the degree of disappointment delivered by the ECB and to positioning heading into the meeting,” analysts at BNP Paribas wrote in a note to clients.
“We expect to see good interest to sell euro into this latest move higher as we head into year-end, particularly if the Fed delivers a rate hike in December as we expect. Our $1.06 year-end target, which seemed perhaps too conservative just 24 hours ago, continues to look appropriate to us.”
A December U.S. rate hike seemed almost baked in, barring any shocks in Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report.
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, speaking before Congress’ Joint Economic Committee on Thursday, said the United States may be “close to the point at which we should be raising” rates.
Yellen also said the U.S. economy needs to add fewer than 100,000 jobs a month to cover new entrants to the workforce, perhaps setting an implicit floor for jobs growth that policymakers want to see.
In contrast, analysts expect the November payrolls report to show 200,000 jobs were added last month. ECONUS
Heavy selling in the dollar against the euro saw the greenback lose ground against many of its peers as well. Versus the yen, it slipped towards the bottom of a 122.23-123.77 range and last stood at 122.58 yen JPY=.
The Australian dollar climbed towards 74 U.S. cents AUD=D4 and flirted with its October peak of $0.7382, while the New Zealand currency briefly popped above 67 U.S. cents NZD=D4 for the first time in a month.
Australia’s retail sales data due at 0030 GMT may provide a bit of distraction in the Asian session ahead of the U.S. jobs data. ECONAU |
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The anger rises. The fury rages at a new economic order that rules our lives. American capitalism has now been redefined to mean the freedom of the rich to reap enormous rewards if the risks they take do work out and - more importantly - if those risks do not work out, for everybody else to bail out the rich. In the American financial world, we have an economic hybrid: free enterprise for the working majority and socialism for the privileged rich.
Listen to the good news for Goldman Sachs: In 2008, to save that New York investment firm from collapse, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) of the national government - underwritten by the tax dollars of waitresses, machinists and firefighters - came up with an emergency loan of $10 billion to keep Goldman afloat. But the insolence of wealth was not shaken. In that year when Goldman earned $2.3 billion - while tin-cupping $10 billion from the U.S. treasury - it still rewarded its top employees with (SET ITAL) bonuses (END ITAL) of $4.8 billion.
To be fair, Goldman Sachs has since repaid with interest its $10 billion life-saving loan to the U.S. Citigroup, which eagerly welcomed $45 billion in taxpayer help in 2008 while simultaneously running up a company loss of $27.7 billion - shockingly - still honored its failed corporate leadership with $5.33 billion in bonuses. Citigroup, let it be noted, is one-third owned by U.S. taxpayers.
Don't overlook JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, which between them, paid out to their brass $5.694 billion more in bonuses than the two organizations made in profits - while at the same time they were seeking and accepting some $35 billion in transfusions from their fellow taxpayers. The road to wealth is obviously using other people's money.
As that widely admired American philosopher Donald Trump once told us, "The point is that you can't be too greedy."
All of this took place while Americans' median income was falling $52,163 a year to $50,303, wiping out all the gains from the preceding decade and dropping to its lowest level since 1997, and the nation's unemployment rate is at its highest in 26 years.
Yesterday, 14,000 Americans lost their health insurance. Both today and again tomorrow, another 14,000 will suffer the loss of their health insurance. Every minute of this day, another seven American families - that means 424 each hour - will lose their homes to foreclosure. Unlike Bank of America and Morgan Stanley, two additional corporate welfare clients, these ordinary folks are obviously not "too big to fail."
And while a record 5.4 million citizens have been out of work for six months or more, the U.S. Senate - which obligingly rescued those bonus-addicted financial giants - has hesitated to even extend unemployment benefits to their fellow citizens.
Has official Washington somehow forgotten - in a society where too often we are what we do - just how cruel life can be when we are "doing nothing"?
"We have always known," the greatest American president of the 20th century told his fellow citizens, "that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics."
The question, some 70 years after Franklin Roosevelt made that statement, is do we agree and are we sufficiently outraged to rebel against taxpayer-subsidized socialism for the rich and a cold shoulder to our hurting brothers and sisters?
Mark Shields' column is syndicated weekly by Creators Syndicate. He appears regularly on "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer'' on PBS.
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(CNN) FBI Director James Comey's letter to Congress Friday alerting the world to the possibility of new emails in the investigation of Hillary Clinton's private email server certainly has upended the presidential race.
One question now: By doing so, did Comey violate federal law? Specifically the Hatch Act, a 1939 law intended to keep federal employees from directly supporting candidates. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid suggests he may have, as detailed in a Sunday night letter to Comey
Here's CNN's guide to the Hatch Act, what it prohibits, and how it is usually enforced.
What is the Hatch Act?
Congress passed the Hatch Act in response to concerns that federal employees had been used to support candidates during the 1938 congressional elections. Its general intent is to greatly restrict the ability of most federal employees to engage in political campaign activities (such as soliciting campaign donations or actively working on behalf of individual candidates), especially while on the job -- or to otherwise "use [their] official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election."
And as its text suggests, the law does not require that the employee's wrongful conduct actually interfere with or affect the result of an election.
Of course, laws that restrict speech will often implicate the First Amendment. But the Supreme Court has twice rejected First Amendment challenges to the Hatch Act, and it has, more recently, taken a narrower view of the First Amendment rights of government employees -- especially when speaking in their official capacity.
And although the law is 77 years old, it has been repeatedly amended by Congress, most recently in 2012 to, among other things, clarify the available penalties for violations of the Act and allow a broader class of employees to run for political office without resigning.
How is it enforced?
The Hatch Act is actually enforced on a fairly routine basis -- albeit usually in cases that do not attract the same kind of national headlines. Typical violations result in disciplinary action -- including suspensions, fines, demotions, duty restrictions, or, in especially serious cases, termination.
But violators aren't going to jail: the Hatch Act is not a criminal statute. Instead, it is an administrative constraint on government employees. The law is enforced by a special independent federal agency -- the Office of Special Counsel -- which is charged with investigating complaint allegations and, where found to be meritorious, either pursuing a settlement with the offending employee or prosecuting their case before the federal agency that oversees internal employment disputes -- the Merit Systems Protection Board. And for presidential appointees like Comey, the Office of Special Counsel submits a report of its findings along with the employee's response to the President, who makes a decision on whether discipline is warranted.
Finally, in addition to the Hatch Act itself, numerous federal agencies have issued their own guidance to employees about how to avoid Hatch Act violations, especially in the run-up to presidential elections.
Thus, as relevant in the case with FBI chief Comey, the Justice Department issued a memo in March 2016 (like similar memos in previous election years), emphasizing that employees "should be particularly mindful of these rules in an election year," and defining prohibited political activity to include all "activity directed toward the success or failure of a political party, candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group."
Did Director Comey's letter to Congress violate the Hatch Act?
The Hatch Act provision most commonly invoked in discussions of Comey's letter is 5 U.S.C. § 7323(a)(1), which prohibits a government employee from "us[ing] his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election."
The key text is the emphasized phrase -- which conditions a violation of the statute on whether the employee's purpose was to interfere with or affect the result of an election. Thus, the Hatch Act does not focus on the effect of the employee's conduct, but the intent. To that end, if Comey did not intend to interfere with or affect the upcoming election through his letter to Congress, then he did not violate the letter of the Hatch Act.
Of course, only Comey knows what his intent was. But Richard W. Painter, the chief White House ethics lawyer from 2005-07 (during the George W. Bush Administration), argued in a New York Times op-ed on Sunday that Comey's intent can be inferred from the absence of a good reason for sending the letter.
"Absent extraordinary circumstances that might justify it, a public communication about a pending F.B.I. investigation involving a candidate that is made on the eve of an election is . . . very likely to be a violation of the Hatch Act and a misuse of an official position," Painter wrote.
And Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid invoked the Hatch Act in a letter to Sunday night. "I am writing to inform you that my office has determined that these actions may violate the Hatch Act," Reid wrote. "Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law."
Painter on Saturday formally filed a complaint with Office of Special Counsel -- and with the Office of Government Ethics -- seeking to trigger an investigation of Comey's conduct. Whether those complaints have any traction remain to be seen -- but even if they do, there is no scenario in which they will be resolved by Election Day.
If he did not violate the Hatch Act, did Comey do anything wrong?
Even if the FBI director's conduct did not violate the letter of the Hatch Act, it may well have violated the spirit of the Act. After all, the animating purpose of the law is to minimize the ability of individual government employees to use their office in a manner that influences the electoral process.
Some have argued that it would have been just as problematic for Comey to not disclose the existence of the new e-mails before the election. But when faced with such a dilemma, the Hatch Act is best understood as requiring the relevant government employee to balance the importance of the disclosure to pre-election public discourse against its potential prejudice.
In this case, where Comey communicated with Congress knowing that none of the e-mails were to or from Secretary Clinton, is difficult to understand the argument that the value to public discourse outweighed the potential prejudice to Clinton.
That calculus could well have been different if the e-mails contained information tending to incriminate (or exculpate) Clinton, but Comey had no way of knowing whether they did at the time of his communication -- and, at least so far, they appear not to do either.
All the while, Comey's letter has inflamed public passions -- and reinvigorated the public debate -- over Clinton's e-mail scandal, a matter that, even with no substance, can only redound to the detriment of Clinton and the benefit of Donald Trump.
Finally, even if Comey's actions were consistent with the Hatch Act, there is the separate matter of federal ethics rules, and the broader claim that Comey has abused his power in his various public statements concerning the e-mail scandal -- including his public statement and press conference in July announcing that he would not be pursuing charges against Clinton.
Can Comey be fired for his conduct?
Formally, the Hatch Act does authorize the termination of the relevant federal employee as a penalty for an especially egregious violation of the law. But as noted above, absent some evidence of Comey's purpose, it will be difficult for the Office of Special Counsel to establish a violation—or for the Merit Systems Protection Board to order his removal.
But unlike most federal employees, the director of the FBI serves at the pleasure of the President (and for no more than 10 years). Although Comey's term will not expire until September 2023, nothing prevents President Barack Obama (or his successor) from terminating him.
And although the President does not need a reason to fire an employee who serves at his pleasure, it is quite possible that this latest episode will provide one, at least once the 2016 election is over.
If, that is, it ever ends.
Steve Vladeck is a CNN contributor and professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law. |
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – The New England Revolution has signed Jamaican outside back O’Brian Woodbine on a free transfer. A member of the Jamaica national team, Woodbine has been added to the team’s roster as an international player and is expected to join the Revs at training for the first time on Tuesday, Sept. 3. Per club policy, further details of the deal are not disclosed.
“O’Brian has both professional and international experience and we’re expecting him to come in, help push our team and provide depth the last few months of the season,” Revolution General Manager Michael Burns said.
Woodbine, 25, has played professionally in his native Jamaica, the U.S., and Finland. He began his career in 2005 with Reno of the Jamaica National Premier League. While with Reno, he spent two seasons (2009, 2010) on loan to the Charleston Battery of the USL-2 in the U.S.
In 2011, Woodbine signed with Vaasan Palloseura (VPS) of the Finnish Premier Division where he played for two seasons, including a brief three-month loan to perennial Finnish power, HJK Helsinki.
Woodbine is a veteran of Jamaica’s national team program, seeing time at the Under-17, Under-20, Under-23 and full national team levels. At the senior level, Woodbine has recorded 14 caps. He has started at left back in each of Jamaica’s last three FIFA World Cup Qualifiers, including his last appearance on June 12, 2013, in a 2-0 loss to Honduras.
Transaction: New England Revolution (MLS) – Signed D O’Brian Woodbine
O’BRIAN WOODBINE
Pronunciation: oh-BRI-an
Position: Defender
Date of Birth: January 11, 1988 (Westmoreland Parish, Jamaica)
Hometown: Westmoreland Parish, Jamaica
Height: 6-0
Weight: 170 lbs.
Previous Club: Vaasan Palloseura (FIN)
Nationality: Jamaica
Status: International
How Acquired: Signed as an international on a free transfer on Aug. 29, 2013
Jersey Number: 17 |
On a Quiet Saturday morning at the Mount Norquay lookout in Banff National Park, a long swath of the Bow Valley in the Canadian Rockies is on display. It’s still early, and the peaks of Sulphur Mountain and Mount Rundle cast long shadows across the forested valley. At the lookout, a colony of Columbian ground squirrels lounge in the sun, popping up to whistle shrill calls of warning to one another when a hawk flies overhead. Robins hop through the grasses on the warm, south-facing slope in search of insects, and the call of a loon echoes from the wetlands adjacent to the Bow River down below. The river’s turquoise waters snake their way past the wetland and through Banff, a ten-thousand-person town on the valley floor.
I’m sitting on a log at the lookout with sixty-three-year-old Peter Duck, president of Bow Valley Naturalists. He pulls out a map and starts pointing. There’s the Fairmont Hotel, there’s the Trans-Canada Highway, there’s the high school, the Canadian Pacific Railway, the power lines. There’s the recreation infrastructure—the trails, the campgrounds, the stables.
On the map, Duck points out the montane ecoregion, what he calls the “ecological oasis”—a combination of wetlands, rivers, marshlands, aspen and conifer forests that is arguably one of the most important regions for wildlife. The montane covers just 3 percent of Banff National Park (much of the remainder is rock and ice) and is the most popular part to visit. “We’re no different from the wildlife,” Duck says. The town of Banff lies smack-dab in the middle of the montane.
Duck gestures to two nearby red plastic Muskoka chairs. Parks Canada has installed these chairs in national parks and historic sites across the country, encouraging people to share photos of themselves sitting in the chairs on social media using the hashtag #ShareTheChair. To Duck, the chairs are symbolic of how Parks Canada has evolved in recent years. “They’ve spread these red chairs all across Canada,” he says, “with very little thought of the impact it would have on the ecosystem.”
Thousands of pairs of feet have evidently made their way from their cars to the chairs, trampling the surrounding vegetation. These particular chairs, perched on a grassy slope overlooking the spectacular scenery of the Bow Valley, now sit in the middle of large, eroded patch of dirt.
Forty-seven national parks currently span the country, from the red rocks and lighthouses of Prince Edward Island National Park to the surf and sand of Pacific Rim National Park Reserve in British Columbia to the musk oxen and tundra of Quttinirpaaq National Park in Nunavut. National parks are protected from industrial developments, new suburbs and logging, and cover more than 330,000 square kilometres.
In 1921, a report on Canada’s parks noted that “the increasing strain and complexity of city life make the necessity for recreation, change, escape into a simpler environment, greater each year.” Almost a century later, that sentiment continues to ring true. The sites managed by the Parks Canada Agency across the country—including national parks and national historic sites—welcomed over twenty-three million visitors during their 2015 to 2016 season, and that number continues to rise. Attendance in the seven mountain parks, the crown jewels of the parks system, has increased by nearly 20 percent in the last five years. (Disclosure: I have previously worked for Parks Canada, most recently as a children’s educator.)
This year, however, is poised to shatter all previous records. To celebrate the 150th anniversary of confederation, the federal government made admission to national parks and historic sites free for everyone throughout 2017. The new initiative was first revealed in the Liberal party platform back in 2015, and on New Year’s Eve 2017, Parks Canada unveiled the website they’d set up to dole out free park passes. The website, overloaded with requests, crashed almost immediately, but people kept logging on. By May, Parks Canada had received 3.3 million requests for free passes.
It has been noted that national parks aren’t really “free” this year. Though nearly $6 million in taxpayer funds were allocated in the 2017 budget to offset these free admissions, it won’t come close to making up for the loss of the tens of millions the agency brings in from entrance fees in a typical year.
Though Parks Canada is legally bound to protect the wilderness as its first priority, it relies on a visitor-funded model, and has an agency-wide goal of increasing visitation by 2 percent every year. To do this, it has embarked on a multi-million dollar research and advertising campaign aimed at attracting more tourists.
Some advocates argue that because there is a thriving and influential business community in and around our national parks—nearly every visitor spends money somewhere, whether on tours, campsites and firewood or on fine dining, spas and shopping—Parks Canada might be tempted to put a greater focus on increasing visitors and their business than protecting nature. Advocates have also raised concerns that encouraging so many more visitors may in fact degrade the conditions of local ecosystems. As John E. Marriott, a wildlife photographer and author who has lived in the Bow Valley for twenty-six years, told me, “We might love them to death.”
On the eve of Canada’s 150th birthday, a crowd had gathered on the shores of Lake Louise, in Banff National Park, well before 10 am. Attendants in yellow coveralls shepherded traffic as soon as cars turned off the Trans-Canada highway; spaces were already almost full in each of the parking lots, and a shuttle was running to an overflow lot.
For tourists who come to the Canadian Rockies, Lake Louise is one of the biggest draws—a picturesque, castle-like hotel on the shores of what is purportedly one of the most photographed lakes in the world. Some fifteen thousand people reportedly come here on a busy summer day. A paved sidewalk lines the edge of the lake, and people wait for a spot to open on the lakeshore, where they can smile for selfies with Mount Victoria and the vast, retreating Victoria Glacier behind them. People from across the country and around the world, holding selfie sticks and cameras, all tell me the same thing: “beautiful.” Most people don’t seem fazed by the crowds. “It’s a tourist resort,” one man from Toronto says. “We expect this!”
Curious chipmunks and whisky jacks line the walkway like hustlers, eyeing the hands of tourists for snacks. A woman armed with a bag of Planters peanuts reaches out to tempt a particularly gregarious bird. It works, and a crowd gathers almost immediately to take photos. A tour group leader pushes through the crowd and speaks into a mic connected to her group’s earpieces: “The woman on your right is feeding a bird called a whisky jack.” The “Aaahs” are audible.
It is, of course, illegal to feed wildlife in any national park, but there are no Parks Canada employees in sight. As I wander, I realize there are, in fact, Parks Canada employees here—stationed in a branded pop-up tent giving out brochures and selling tourist kitsch emblazoned with the Parks Canada logo. Racks of key chains, water bottles, umbrellas, notebooks, T-shirts and stuffed beavers are all on display, and business appears to be booming.
“Commerce and national parks are oil and water,” seventy-one-year-old Ben Gadd tells me. “You mix them together and you just get a mess.” Gadd is a retired interpretive nature guide and author of Handbook of the Canadian Rockies, a popular mountain guidebook. He has worked in the Rocky Mountain national parks for several decades, taking groups on backpacking trips, guiding bus tours and working as a Parks Canada naturalist. I visit him on a sunny June day at his home in Canmore, a town on the edge of Banff National Park. He’s wearing suspenders and boat shoes and has a neat white beard. He makes me a cup of coffee and settles into an armchair to talk about his decades working in mountain parks.
Gadd believes years of pressure from Ottawa have led Parks Canada to “put wallets before park protection.” Visitors expecting a tranquil experience in nature who enter the park gate are instead “thrust into the arms of the tourism industry.” While Gadd is adamant that entrance to national parks should be free for everyone, so no one is discriminated against on the basis of income, he argues that the mountain parks are already well beyond their ecological capacity.
A 2016 Parks Canada document revealed that nearly half of ecosystems measured in the national parks were rated as “poor” or “fair.” Banff is one of them; Parks Canada reports its forests are deteriorating. A 2016 report from the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS), a national charity dedicated to the protection of public land and water, criticized Parks Canada’s recent management of national parks, concluding, “developments in our Rocky Mountain National Parks pose a serious threat to sensitive wildlife and wilderness, and are out of step with Parks Canada’s legislative responsibility to prioritize ecological integrity in all aspects of park management.”
Gadd is especially concerned with the mandated visitorship increase of 2 percent per year. “Parks are finite,” he explains. “National parks are a bit like a theatre. When all the seats are filled, you don’t keep selling tickets. These theatres filled up a long time ago.”
I ask Gadd if he might be seen as anti-development and he laughs. “Yes! The definition of human development,” he says, “is the invasion of wilderness.”
Banff was Canada’s first national park, first protected back in 1855 at the behest of a man named Sir William Cornelius Van Horne. By the time the wealthy, American-born Van Horne set his sights on the Bow Valley, he was already the kingpin of a massive transportation empire—he’d sent steamships from Vancouver to Hong Kong, built a railway in Cuba to replace its mule-drawn tramways and, most famously, overseen the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Surveying the craggy peaks and bubbling hot springs of what would eventually become Banff National Park, it became clear to him that business would prosper in the dramatic landscape. “If we can’t export the scenery,” Van Horne declared, “we’ll have to import the tourists.” When he arrived at the now-renowned Cave and Basin hot springs, he announced, “These springs are worth a million dollars!”
He was right. If anything, Van Horne underestimated. By 1921, the Department of Interior estimated that “the mountain parks alone are worth $300,000,000 to the Canadian people.” James Harkin, who would become Commissioner of the Canadian Parks Branch in 1911, assigned a more specific dollar value to parkland. He estimated that parks were worth a precise $13.88 an acre, substantially more than fields of wheat, an acre of which he valued at a mere $4.91.
With so much value at stake, Canada’s first national park was quickly created. As Van Horne put it, he was looking “to protect the scenery from squatting and enable the CPR to monopolize development.” An act of parliament in 1885 to protect twenty-six square kilometres (over 6,400 acres) around the lucrative hot springs paved the way for what would eventually become Banff National Park in 1930. When Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald returned from a visit to the park, he reported back to parliament about the new park’s potential. “If carefully managed,” he declared, “it will more than many times recuperate or recoup the Government for any present expenditure.”
In 1917, a report from the Department of the Interior elaborated, “Canada needs as never before the volume of gold that accompanies tourist traffic.” The report placed a familiar emphasis on increasing visitor numbers and developing attractions to draw tourists.
With this logic in mind, the development of tourism infrastructure—hotels, restaurants, activities—was increased within park boundaries. At the same time, Indigenous people were blatantly and categorically pushed out. George Stewart, the first superintendent of Banff, didn’t mince words. “It is of great importance that if possible the Indians should be excluded from the Park,” he wrote. “Their destruction of the game and depredations among the ornamental trees make their too frequent visits to the Park a matter of great concern.”
An early explorer of Canada’s national parks, Walter Dwight Wilcox, described arriving in the recently developed town of Banff in his 1896 travelogue, noting “the traveller is confronted by a line of hack drivers and hotel employees shouting in loud voices the names and praises of their various hotels… The chorus of rival voices seems almost a welcome back to civilization.” Van Horne had succeeded in his vision—the tourists had been imported and the cash was flowing. Van Horne built his now-famous, castle-like Banff Springs Hotel, golf courses were created in Banff, Fundy, Jasper, Waterton Lakes and other parks across the country, and Banff National Park opened a zoo to guarantee visitors the chance to see wildlife. Alongside the caged wolverines and Canada geese, tourists could find some more exotic creatures: in the midst of the towering peaks of the remote Canadian Rockies, one could visit a polar bear and eight rhesus monkeys.
In the lobby of a hostel in Banff, a bulletin board helpfully details the costs of different outdoor recreational activities. Rafting is $110, a ride on the retreating Columbia Icefield is $195, “signature walks” are $35, a wildlife safari is $49. But not everyone wants to spend time in the backcountry with only birds and trees for company. On Canada Day, tens of thousands of people line the streets for an annual parade. At a bakery that sells BeaverTails, the line-up is out the door. A couple on a cross-country roadtrip from Ottawa is totally unfazed by the crowds, planning to check out the gondola and maybe visit Lake Louise. A family from Edmonton with relatives visiting from Korea is looking forward to barbecue and fireworks; a couple on a trip from Minnesota will be taking in some live music. As Tim Nokes, the general manager of a family-run business in Johnston Canyon, in Banff National Park, tells me, not everyone comes to Banff with the same idea of a wilderness experience.
“Just because you’re a business operator,” Nokes continues, “doesn’t mean you’re not a conservationist.” He’s tired of the dichotomy created between the two. Johnston Canyon, Nokes’ home base, was named after a prospector who spent a failed summer panning for gold in the area at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1927, Nokes’ grandfather started a small tourist outpost on the creek, a rest stop for horse-drawn carriages at the time. “The ironic part is my grandfather did discover gold,” says Nokes, “but it was in tourism.”
These days, the resort includes forty-two cabins, a restaurant, a café, a gift shop and an ice-cream stand. It’s in a wildlife corridor, and Parks Canada has restricted its operation to only seven months a year. “That’s absolutely fine with us,” says Nokes, whose parents now winter in the Caribbean.
A lot has changed in Banff since Nokes’ grandfather greeted trains to draw visitors into the canyon. These days, it’s also possible to paint pottery, go on a wine-and-cheese cruise, play tennis, peruse art galleries, ride a mechanical bull, attend a poetry reading or enter a wet T-shirt contest. Gap, L’Occitane, Billabong and Lululemon all have stores downtown, along with at least three separate storefronts for Ardene. Sushi, shawarma, vegan food, caribou fondue, Tony Roma’s, McDonald’s and Earls are all on offer. As I walk the streets, I stop to look at rows upon rows of solar-powered bobble heads—moose, beavers and Mounties—each wiggling and wide-eyed as they gawk invitingly from souvenir store windows.
Nokes grew up in Banff in the 1970s and has seen the changes in the park firsthand. I ask him if he’s concerned about more people coming to the park. “I don’t really feel there is as much impact in the area,” he says. “The volumes of people are all staying in the front country. They’re also seeking the attractions which are created for large industrial tourism already.” To Nokes, the biggest threat to the local ecosystem is the railway that runs through the park. He thinks Parks Canada has been doing an “admirable job” at “controlling all of the pressures of tourism, locals and conservation.”
Kevin Van Tighem, the former head of Banff National Park (who declined to be interviewed for this article), has offered a markedly different view. He has openly criticized the agency’s tourism-focused direction, telling the Globe and Mail that the parks are, increasingly, “a bundle of Disneyesque visitor attractions and marketing packages.”
“We don’t need to build tourist attractions in national parks,” says Alison Woodley, national conservation director at CPAWS. “Their natural beauty, their wildlife—that is the attraction.”
Woodley points to data that suggests Canadians do, indeed, value nature just for the sake of it. A 2011 Ipsos poll, for example, noted that 75 percent of Canadians felt that preserving natural areas is important to them—and that nearly nine in ten of us report increased happiness when feeling “closer to nature.” This sort of research, she says, demonstrates that people value the wilderness as it is.
“People come to Banff to enjoy nature, to have to the opportunity to see wildlife,” says Jim Pissot, a sixty-nine-year-old naturalist who has lived in the Bow Valley near Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies for more than fifteen years. “What they get instead is a moving parking lot, and shoulder-to-shoulder crowds at the most popular sites.”
Joel Reardon, the national spokesperson for Parks Canada’s 150th birthday celebrations, doesn’t see it that way. “We’re quite pleased with increased visitation,” he tells me, saying that the more people that visit national parks, the greater ability there is for the agency to “impart a sense of responsibility” for national parks. He’s optimistic about increased visitation, saying, “it’ll be busy, but there’s lots of space.” Audrey Champagne, a Parks Canada spokesperson, told me by email that the agency has “many tools at its disposal” for handling increased visitation, highlighting investments in infrastructure for visitors, improved garbage disposal, a program to advise visitors about parking and congestion, and a new app to encourage people to visit lesser-visited parks instead.
In 2010, Parks Canada adopted what it called a “sophisticated segmentation tool,” grouping Canadians into tidy categories that they could use to focus their marketing strategy. They found that they had attracted a disproportionate amount of “middle-aged achievers” (who they describe as people “looking to stay fit and youthful” and who “can afford a range of gadgets”) and “fledgling families” (those “less interested in cultural activities,” who “shy away from learning about the world around them”). The list of carefully arranged archetypes, neatly packaged for communications and promotion staff across the country, is called “PRIZM.”
Armed with PRIZM intel, Parks Canada has embarked on an aggressive marketing campaign to target groups it doesn’t think are making enough visits to national parks—including “young metros,” “new Canadians” and “starter nests.” The latter is described as “ethnically diverse, couples and families, single parents and some singles” that “tend to not be adventurous… [and] love keeping up to date with urban happenings.” In recent years, Parks Canada has tried to be part of these “urban happenings”—they’ve unveiled online learn-to-camp how-to guides aimed at their new target demographics (advising new campers to bring cutting boards, oven mitts and pet hair brushes on their first trip) and have started renting chic cabins in place of some campsites, to add more “homey comfort” to the camping experience.
Parks Canada’s promotional efforts and brand reboot are sophisticated and extensive, comparable to any corporate entity with which they are competing. A 124-page “Parks Canada Brand Book” outlines every foreseeable facet of image control with pep and bright colours. There are specific rules on everything from tone of voice to the official font (Helvetica Neue LT, “the friendly, modern face of Parks Canada”). “Parks Canada’s previous brand personality was seen as brown, boring and bureaucratic,” the Brand Book explains. “Canadians are looking for a more extroverted, energetic and nimble personality from us.” Its clothing line, unveiled in 2014, featured the slogan “This land is your brand.” The Brand Book also includes countless declarations of the Parks Canada Brand Identity: “we are increasing the prominence of the Beaver”; “we always connect our name to our places, experiences and products”; “we will always wear our corporate signature.”
Nearly $20 million was spent on Parks Canada market research and promotion in 2014. In its 2014 annual report, the agency claimed that its “competitive position” was at risk, citing international travel and increasing urbanization, and said it would continue “to make concerted efforts to improve its position in the tourism market by actively pursuing strategies with the tourism industry and other partners to significantly increase visitation and revenues.” All of this, according to the agency, has driven an increase in attendance, and enabled it to meet its visitation increase goals. Parks Canada reports that “protected heritage places” are a “significant economic driver” that contribute some $3.3 billion to the Canadian economy each year. Reardon is enthusiastic about the effect of 2017’s free admission on local economies, and Champagne adds that national parks and historic sites “help to generate billions of dollars annually and employ tens of thousands of people.”
While visitation has been steadily increasing, Parks Canada has been continuing its focus on attracting more people to the park. With official tweets like “#Glamping your thing?” and “[T]ake a #selfie with our giant inflatable beaver!” the agency is aiming to hone in on one of their underserved demographics. Parks Canada is also turning its attention to another underserved population: research has suggested that white people are more likely to have access to outdoor experiences than people of colour, and national parks have been criticized for being largely a playground of the white and privileged. Parks Canada acknowledges it faces challenges when it comes to staff diversity, and has committed to building a “workforce reflective of the diversity of the Canadian population.” Through the development of new programs like the “Learn to Camp” initiative, the agency is addressing the underrepresentation of new Canadians and people of colour at parks. Moreover, a new partnership between Parks Canada and local municipal governments has resulted in an affordable public transit option for visitors coming to Banff National Park from Calgary. Local advocates, like Pissot, praised Parks Canada’s efforts to attract a more diverse crowd, insisting that equitable access across race and income is essential; at the same time, they were hesitant to encourage a blanket increase in visitation without regard for the effects on the ecosystem.
One ongoing threat is major infrastructure upgrades (the legacy of the Harper government), which have meant bigger parking lots and more construction within park boundaries across the country. Private companies have been able to get permits for colossal attractions, like the approved expansion of a ski resort. In Jasper, a controversial glass skywalk now curves out from a cliffside near the highway. These developments, combined with increasing tourist volumes, have led some to conclude that the towering peaks and the bears and the birds are under siege. Critics warn that bears are being hit by cars and trains, deer are being fed Cheetos and some predators in the Canadian Rockies are acting more like stray dogs than wild animals, drifting around in search of food scraps strewn across campsites and picnic areas. John E. Marriott, the wildlife photographer, has seen this firsthand. “It’s terrible,” he says. “You get to know all these animals, you get attached to them, and they end up dead.”
Ben Gadd has also noticed changes to animal behaviour. He first spotted ravens begging at car windows a few years back. “Ravens begging!” he says, “Imagine that.”
Through signs, tweets and campfire programs, Parks Canada has an ongoing campaign to encourage visitors to keep “the wild in wildlife”—don’t feed wild animals, don’t approach them, don’t touch them, don’t try to ride them. Education programs like these fall under what’s referred to within the agency as “visitor experience”: sending staff to talk to people, armed with educational messages, as well as the brochures, signs, campsites, guided hikes—and ad campaigns. According to agency data, Parks Canada spent over $200 million on visitor experience during the 2015 to 2016 season, more than double what it spent on conservation (including science, restoration, monitoring and species recovery) in the same year.
CPAWS’ analysis of Parks Canada spending shows that, since 2012, spending on visitor experience has increased while investment in conservation programs had been cut by a third. “That is a telling sign of prioritization,” Alison Woodley says. “Parks Canada’s focus has shifted away from conservation to more of a marketing and tourism development focus. We think that’s out of step with the legal requirement that Parks Canada put conservation first.”
Peter Duck, president of Bow Valley Naturalists, agrees, arguing that the Park has too often used a fun and exciting “visitor experience” as the rationale for approving a new project, with little regard for conservation. This approach, he tells me, is a classic example of “the cart before the horse.” Infrastructure and new projects, he says, should be planned to fit within conservation and education goals, not solely because they may provide revenue and a short-term visitor experience. Champagne, the Parks Canada spokesperson, says that all development proposals are subject to a “rigorous development review and environmental assessment process” that ensures the park’s ecological integrity is maintained.
According to Woodley, reductions in spending on conservation have hampered Parks Canada’s abilities to counter, or even track, the effects of dramatic increases in visitation. But she also believes there is some reason for hope: the federal government has committed to protecting at least 17 percent of the country’s land and inland waters by 2020, a substantial increase if the promise is upheld. Woodley also attended the Canadian Parks Conference in Banff earlier this year, and heard the minister responsible for national parks, Catherine McKenna, speak about the future. “I want to make sure that protecting ecological integrity is front and centre in every decision I make about our national parks,” McKenna told the crowd to much applause.
Parks Canada, Duck says, shouldn’t be focusing on bringing more people to parks at all, especially Banff. “We have a private sector tourism industry which has the skills to bring people here,” he says. He believes it’s important that Parks Canada increases its distance from business interests. When the agency responsible for making decisions about new projects and evaluating ecological impacts is also poised to profit from those same projects, he says, “it muddies the waters.”
Marriott agrees. “Of course [businesses] want to expand,” he tells me. “It’s up to Parks Canada and the federal government to be regulating this stuff. To say ‘no, sorry, you can’t.’”
I ask Duck if he’s hopeful there will be change under the Trudeau government. He pauses. “I’m skeptical,” he says. “Governments are governments.”
“The greatest charm of the Canadian parks is that they provide the opportunity of getting back, in a greater or less degree, to nature,” declared a government report on Canada’s parks in 1917. “The nearer it is to primitive nature the more pleasure [people] feel.”
One hundred years later at Lake Louise, two visitors lean against a rock, looking off into the distance toward the Victoria Glacier. Dieter and his adult daughter Martika have come from Winnipeg to camp; it was Martika’s idea to “get away from [their] busy lives.” Dieter gestures at Mount Victoria on the other side of the lake. “I feel like I belong here in the mountains, breathing the fresh air,” he says. “I just don’t know how possible it is to really feel connected to nature with all the people and cameras around.” Nearby, Parks Canada employees continue to hawk branded merchandise, and visitors are lined up with their backs to the lake, smiling for selfies in the sun.
Research for this story was supported by the Access Copyright Foundation’s Marian Hebb Research Grant for literary arts. |
We’ve reported before on how technology oftentimes outpaces the law. But for the millions of people currently playing Diablo III™, Activision’s and Blizzard’s newest release, the opposite has occurred. Here we have older income tax laws catching up to technology in new, unexpected ways. In short, there is a serious likelihood that millions of online gamers are about to incur some federal income tax liability, and the vast majority of them seem not to know it yet. Whether you are a gamer yourself or whether you think gamers need a dose of reality, this post has something for you.
Before getting on with the show, we need to get a few tax disclaimers out of the way. Blame our lawyers for this.[1]
This post discusses federal income tax law, but should not be construed as tax advice. IRS CIRCULAR 230 NOTICE: Nothing contained in this website was intended or written to be used by any taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer by the IRS, and it cannot be used by any taxpayer for such purpose.
The backstory is — Diablo III™’s creator, Blizzard Entertainment, is world renown for publishing games that break new ground in their genres. Their titles include the ubiquitous World of Warcraft™ and Starcraft™ franchises. With Diablo III™, Blizzard has yet again done something new — this time by establishing an online market to buy and sell in-game items. For the unassimilated, Diablo III™ is a role-playing game in which your chosen character fights hordes of demons, finding items along the way that make your character more powerful. Using the online marketplace, dubbed the “real money auction house” (“RMAH”), players can buy and sell these items — not for in-game fake currencies, but for real U.S. dollars. Using the RMAH is optional for players, but more than 3.5 million people bought Diablo III in the first 24 hours it was offered for sale, and untold millions more have purchased the game since then. Items on the RMAH can go for as little as $1.25 and as much as $250. This adds up to millions of dollars in economic activity between players. Because Diablo’s RMAH is the first of its kind for any game, only a few players have so far recognized that their online sales may carry tax consequences. Even among those who have, uncertainty pervades.
Here at IBL, we think some basic tax 101 is in order for many of these players. The bottom line is that the IRS defines income very broadly. Section 61 of the IRS Code provides that “income” is taxable regardless of the source, and that income includes “[c]ompensation for services, including fees, commissions, fringe benefits, and similar items.” Money received in exchange for in-game items will probably always qualify under this loose definition. Even Blizzard recognizes this in their posted Terms of Use for the RMAH:
10. TAXES. You are responsible for taxes incurred when you use the Auction Houses. All auctions are deemed to occur in the United States of America and are subject to all applicable state and federal tax laws and regulations. Proceeds from auction sales may be considered income for tax purposes. You should consult with a tax specialist to determine your tax liability for these transactions.
A number of blogs have already tackled this issue, here, here, and here, but none have tackled the relative merits of different tax strategies. This is probably because the IRS doesn’t have much of a precedent for this scheme. The best example for players might be the IRS’ treatment of PayPal and Ebay sales, which have to be reported by sellers only if they earn more than $20,000 and conduct more than 200 transactions per year. The rationale for this reporting “floor” is that the IRS does not want to tax people for simply cleaning out their garage. The sellers are likely charging less than what they bought the items for, so in most transactions there would be no realized gain on the sale that could be taxed.
However, neither this $20,000/200 transactions floor, nor the policy rationale behind it, will work for the RMAH. Most sales are going to be for “gain.” Some gamers have cleverly reasoned that their earnings should be classified as hobby gains, which are taxable as income but can be offset by hobby losses — e.g., the money spent to purchase the game (and arguably part of the money spent to obtain a computer that meets the game’s minimum hardware requirements). There is a problem with this, however. Hobby losses are considered “miscellaneous deductions,” and therefore can only be deducted to the extent that they exceed 2% of your adjusted gross income (“AGI”).[2] This means that if you make $50,000, you could deduct only those expenses that exceed $1,000! Because most players won’t spend this much on their Diablo III hobby,[3] classifying their RMAH dealings as hobby income won’t alleviate their tax liability.
On the other hand, if they could convince the IRS that their RMAH transactions are part of a legitimate business, they could claim business deductions to offset their business gains. Unlike hobby income, there is no AGI floor for such deductions. The test for whether an activity is a business or a hobby is whether the taxpayer intends to engage in the activity for profit.[4] In this case, players could possibly use their business losses, including the purchase of in-game items and the game itself, to set off their business gains from item sales to arrive at little or no taxable gain. Of course, convincing the IRS that you play Diablo III to make money, not for fun as a game, is probably one hurdle most gamers will never clear.
One more issue to investigate is whether the income from RMAH sales is automatically
“realized” by the player. Income can only be taxed when it is “realized” — i.e., when the taxpayer gains an unqualified right to the money earned. Blizzard employs a distribution scheme whereby players can either take the money as a credit to their PayPal accounts, minus a %15 processing fee, or as Blizzard currency usable for the purchase of other in-game items or Blizzard games, but which cannot be cashed out. It seems fairly obvious that the former situation is immediately taxable, but the latter is less clear. Still, the latter situation looks like the tax payer has an unqualified right to the money, even if he/she can use the money only for certain purposes. It is a principal of income tax law that receiving a gift card as compensation, e.g., from your employer, is a form of taxable income. How is what Blizzard is doing here any different from that?
So, what’s next? The transactions fees on the RMAH are making Blizzard a lot of money, so I would wager that this game mechanism is here to stay, and we’ll see it emulated on other platforms in the future. How the IRS chooses to treat these transactions, either as business income, hobby income, or income subject to a floor (like their treatment of PayPal profits), is yet to be seen.
By Stephen Ramaley, Esq.
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[1] Please disregard the fact that we are, in fact, our own lawyers. [2] AGI is just a fancy tax term for “your total income minus any deductions or adjustments.” [3] This also assumes that the players would be itemizing deductions on their returns, but for most young people it makes more sense to the take the standard deduction, which does not allow taxpayers to claim additional miscellaneous deductions such as hobby losses. [4] The 7th Circuit in 1983 set forth this rule in Nickerson v. Commissioner.
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And to play the stock market game, you need to learn the rules of the game, when to buy and when to sell your stock, how to let your common sense prevail over your emotions, especially when the market is trending. I have visited many websites of Independent Members of World Games Inc and the one thing I’ve noticed that gets repeated about the virtual stock market game is that it is not influenced by external factors. Yes, granted, the stock market game is not influenced by external factors, but the movement of the stock price, which by the way is the single most important factor determining the value of your investment besides the number of shares that you own, is still subject to herd mentality of the members! And these members are living in the real world, subject to external factors, with real needs, desires, concerns and wants. 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This opportunity is the first of its kind in history where you can play a virtual stock on the Internet or be involved in a sweepstakes on the Internet, all from the comfort of your home or office. It is EXCITING, it is FUN and it’s a CHANCE for anyone to make a lot of money with little risk. Pete Billac, a best-selling author, in his book: Getting Rich on The Internet, World Games Inc., says that the WGI opportunity is “the most exciting work-at-home business concept on the Internet today: playing games to get rich on the internet! It will change the financial lives of many maybe for the rest of their lives.” |
Meghan McCain shut down her “View” co-hosts Thursday while defending President Donald Trump’s supporters. In response the other ladies busted out laughing.
“In 2011, he [Trump] said of [Barack] Obama, ‘how does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard,” Whoopi Goldberg said during a panel discussion about whether or not Trump was a smart man. “Let him show his records.’ Well, if you’re actually who you say you are new guy in the office, show your records. Show us how smart you are.” (RELATED: Joy Behar Cracks Bad Trump Joke On ‘The View’)
“The important thing is, the reason why he’s so fascinating though is he says, ‘I’m so wealthy, I went to an Ivy League school,'” McCain said. “All these things, if Mitt Romney had maybe tried it maybe he would have been more successful just owning himself.”
“The hardest thing about all this for me is I want to know when did having an education become a negative,” Goldberg asked. “Because when I grew up education was everything. Education is what got you where you’re going. The idea that suddenly now you’re an elitist if you went to this college or if you went to this school or you have a thought that’s different from this. So many people have worked their behinds off to go to these schools that I don’t understand why — I know conservatives kinda use that a lot like it’s a bad thing and I don’t know why.”
“He [Trump] doesn’t speak like a politician,” McCain explained. “He doesn’t seem scripted. I think he speaks like the average American who is sick of being told what to do.”
“I think the average American speaks much better than Donald Trump does, honestly,” Sunny Hostin interjected.
“Listen, I feel you know, I know we have to move on,” McCain responded. “But I think trying to understand him and his voters is a lot more productive than just simply attacking him for being stupid.”
The co-hosts then busted out laughing and went to commercial. |
http://www.cbs8.com/story/35976716/items-from-auschwitz-death-camp-to-tour-europe-america
Commentary by David Cohensteinberg
An exhibit of some items from the former Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz are going on a tour of Europe and North America to bring its tragic truth about the Holocaust to a wider audience. The exhibit — called “Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away” — will be the first-ever traveling show done by the museum and will include 600 original items. Most of them will come from the Auschwitz museum, but also from other collections, like Israel’s Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., and from survivors. “Today, when the world is moving in uncertain directions,” the exhibition can be a “great warning cry for us all” against building a “future on hatred, racism, anti-Semitism and bottomless contempt for another human being,” museum chief Piotr M.A. Cywinski said. The exhibit aims to tell victims’ stories through their personal items. It will also show an original barrack from the Auschwitz-Monowitz part of the camp and a German freight train wagon that the Nazis used to bring inmates to the camp in. The project will visit seven cities in Europe, starting in Madrid later this year, and seven in North America. The names of the cities in North America have not been released yet. Some 1.1 million people, mostly Europe’s Jews, but also Poles, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war, were killed in the camp’s gas chambers or died of hunger, disease and hard labor during World War II.
The world can never forget how evil the Nazis were. They gassed 60 million Jews for absolutely no reason.
Those of you you have been Rainbow Pilled are familiar with my great uncle Harold’s story, so I won’t repeat it. It’s really hard for me to talk about it anyway. But, he was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp and barely survived. He was in the gas chamber inhaling the poisonous pesticide when the allies raided the camp. A Chinese soldier found him on the floor and gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and saved his life. He had been dead for exactly 14 minutes.
After he was revived, my emaciated great uncle had to walk 20 miles to safety. He hadn’t eaten or drank anything in almost 3 months. It was in the dead of winter and he was barefoot. But he was tough because he was a Jew. He even carried his best friend who was too weak to walk on his shoulders. A Nazi German Shepard chased him the last 2 miles, but he outran it.
It’s truly an amazing story, but I don’t like talking about it because it brings back bad memories of my childhood. My mom would get drunk and tell us great uncle Harold’s Holocaust stories at bedtime. We would have nightmares. Even insomnia. Especially about the lampshades. But it was all true. My great uncle Harold was there and there’s no way he would get drunk and lie about something like that.
Besides, he hated to talk about it unless he was drunk. But when he got drunk he had to let it out. That was his therapy. Drink a liter of kosher vodka and talk about the horrors of the Holocaust. How evil the Nazis were. He even thought about writing a book about his experience, but the brain experiments Goebbels did on him messed up his memory.
When the Nazis knew they were going to lose the war, Hitler had Goebbels and Himmler do brain surgeries on Jews to remove their memories. That way they couldn’t testify against them at Nuremberg. But it didn’t work. My great uncle remembered everything. Even those 20 minutes he was dead on the shower floor.
I know some people like to get drunk and make up lies, but not my great uncle. He’s Jewish and Jews just don’t like about the Holocaust. Period. And if for one second the thought enters your mind that a Jew would like about the Holocaust, then fuck off! Cause you’re obviously an anti-semite.
Sorry. Nothing gets me more pissed off than freakin anti-semites. But, I went and made me another stiff drink, so I’m cool now.
Anyway, so that’s how I know so much about the Holocaust. Because great uncle Harold got drunk and told my mom all about it when she was a kid. Then my mom got drunk and told me and my brother the stories at bedtime when we were little kids. And now I’m sharing with you.
So if anybody asks how you know so much about the evil Nazis, just tell them your great, great, great step uncle Cohensteinberg told you a bedtime story when you were a little kid. |
Why We're Happy Being Sad: Pop's Emotional Evolution
Enlarge this image toggle caption R. McPhedran/Getty Images R. McPhedran/Getty Images
Six years ago, Glenn Schellenberg decided to do an experiment.
Schellenberg works at the University of Toronto, where he studies the psychology of music. The idea behind his experiment couldn't have been more straightforward: He simply wanted to play music for people and get them to rate how happy or sad that music made them feel.
These two emotions — happy and sad — are relatively easy to identify in music, and though there are different ways for music to convey emotion (through lyrics or what kind of instruments are used), Schellenberg says the tempo of a song and whether it's in a major or minor key often strongly influences which emotion the song conveys.
People have come to appreciate sadness and ambiguity more. Life is more complicated, and they want the things that they consume as pleasure to be complex similarly.
"Happy-sounding songs typically tend to be in a major key, and they tend to be fast, [with] more beats per minute," he says. "Conversely, sad-sounding songs tend to be slow in tempo, and they also tend to be in a minor key."
So Schellenberg sat down with a grad student and told him to find both happy-sounding fast music in a major key and sad-sounding slow music in a minor key. Essentially, they were looking for emotionally clear music that they could play for their future research subjects.
But while the grad student had no trouble finding fast, happy-sounding music in a major key when he looked at older musical eras — from the classical period up through the 1960s — it got a lot harder when it came to contemporary pop music.
There were plenty of fast-tempo songs, but almost all of the songs he found were in a minor key, and didn't sound unambiguously happy; they were more emotionally complicated than that.
"After the second or third time, he came back with songs that — in terms of their musical characteristics — were actually mixed rather than purely happy-sounding," Schellenberg says. "I started to think, 'What's going on here?' "
Had there been some kind of shift, Schellenberg wondered, in the emotional content of music since the 1960s? How had the psychology of our music changed?
The Emotional Evolution Of Pop
To find out, Schellenberg did a totally different study. He analyzed more than 1,000 songs — every Top 40 hit from 1965 to 2009 — in terms of tempo and whether the song was in a major or minor key.
Though there was plenty of dark music in 1965, Petula Clark's "I Know a Place" is pretty typical of that year. The tempo is upbeat, and like every other Top 40 song of 1965, it is in a major key: "All [Top 40 songs] published by Billboard, every single one was a major-key song," Schellenberg says.
YouTube
As a result, many of those songs, like "I Know a Place," communicate a sense of happiness — a sense that good times are just around the corner.
But through the 1980s and '90s, the dominance of the major key in the Top 40 began to shift, slowly at first and then quite radically: "By 2009," Schellenberg says, "only 18 out of [the Top] 40 [songs] were a major key."
That means that the majority of the Top 40 songs, 22 of 40, were in a minor key — the official sound of complexity and sadness.
Consider "Dead and Gone" by the rapper T.I., which hit No. 12 on the charts in 2009. In a way, the message of the song is pretty positive; it's a song about leaving behind self-destructive behavior. But the minor key makes the song sound foreboding.
YouTube
According to Schellenberg's study, in the latter half of the last decade, there were more than twice as many hit songs in a minor key as there were in the latter half of the 1960s.
"People are responding positively to music that has these characteristics that are associated with negative emotions," he says.
Sophisticated Pop
The question, of course, is why? Why would consumers connect more to conflict and sadness now than they did in the '60s and '70s? Schellenberg says he doesn't think it's because people today are any sadder.
"I think that people like to think that they're smart," he says. "And unambiguously happy-sounding music has become, over time, to sound more like a cliche. If you think of children's music like 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' or 'The Wheels on the Bus,' those are all fast and major, and so there's a sense in which unambiguously happy-sounding songs sound childish to contemporary ears. I think there's a sense in which something that sounds purely happy, in particular, has a connotation of naivete."
If you use a minor key, though, you can make even something with a positive message and fast tempo sound emotionally complicated.
"It's more emotionally complex in the sense that it's expressing both sadness in terms of one dimension and happiness in terms of another dimension at the same time," Schellenberg says.
That complexity makes both listeners and composers feel sophisticated instead of naive. In that way, Schellenberg says, the emotion of unambiguous happiness is less socially acceptable than it used to be. It's too Brady Bunch, not enough Modern Family.
"People have come to appreciate sadness and ambiguity more," Schellenberg says. "Life is more complicated, and they want the things that they consume as pleasure to be complex similarly."
Sadness and ambiguity: the latest emotional fashion. |
This website is archived for historical purposes and is no longer being maintained or updated.
Media Statement For Immediate Release: Monday, March 13, 2017
Contact: Media Relations,
(404) 639-3286
CDC has identified a potential risk of Zika virus transmission starting on June, 15, 2016, to present in Miami-Dade County, Florida, that also could affect risk for residents of Broward and Palm Beach counties. CDC recently collaborated with the Florida Department of Health to conduct additional analysis of locally acquired Zika cases, including analysis of resident travel patterns between Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties. This analysis has led to CDC identifying that since June 15, 2016, there has been a potential increased Zika risk for residents in Broward and Palm Beach counties because of local travel to areas of active transmission in Florida and challenges associated with defining sources of exposure. This increased risk is particularly relevant for semen because of evidence regarding the persistence of Zika virus in this reproductive tissue.
This update aligns the identification of risk related to blood and tissue in the tri-county area with the time period identified in CDC travel guidance for Miami-Dade County as stated in the Health Alert Network (HAN) of August 1, 2016.
This potential increased risk of Zika virus exposure associated with semen may be attributed to:
Local transmission of Zika virus in Miami-Dade County
Evidence confirming that Zika virus can persist in semen longer than in other body fluids
The ongoing concern about Zika virus infections that go undiagnosed because people have mild or no symptoms
Challenges defining the source and location of Zika virus exposure
The regular movement of people between and within the three counties
Blood donations throughout the United States are tested for Zika with laboratory testing, resulting in the removal of Zika virus positive collections in multiple states and Puerto Rico. Testing for tissue donors, including semen donors, is not currently available; however, tissue donors are asked travel history questions, and if they have traveled to or live in an area of active Zika virus transmission they would be determined ineligible under current FDA guidance.
CDC encourages women and their partners, in consultation with their healthcare providers, to consider this potential risk when trying to conceive. Additionally, healthcare providers should counsel their pregnant patients who might have been exposed to semen from men potentially infected with Zika virus about this risk. Zika virus infection during pregnancy can cause brain abnormalities, microcephaly, and congenital Zika syndrome, a pattern of conditions in the baby that includes brain abnormalities, eye defects, hearing loss, and limb defects.
In collaboration with the Florida Department of Health, CDC has issued guidance to prevent Zika transmission for residents and visitors to the tri-county area.
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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES |
1. Using only social media account to target your audience
2. Link Wheel: not linking all your social media accounts to your brand platform
If you take nothing else from this blog, please remember the most important thing in every social media campaign is to link your social media accounts to your website; creating what's called a link wheel. If your audience is directed to one social site, they should be easily connected to every social media platform controlled by your brand. When visiting your blog, Facebook page, or website, a visitor should see links to all your accounts at the top of each account in order to ensure easy access.
3. Use an appropriate avatar to represent your social identity
4. Posting more than one status update a day on Facebook
I was intrigued with this next tip. The key to social media is having a presence and engaging your audience. However- I have found this pitfall spread across numerous websites/articles. Businesses who post more than one status update on Facebook a day are found to annoy its audiences. Nonprofit Tech for Good recommends that in order to avoid being hidden on your follower's news feeds, post no more than 1-2 statuses on Facebook ( www.nptechforgood.com ) If your nonprofit brand has any insight into this tip, I would love to hear back from you on how many posts a day on Facebook works for your target audience.
5. Storytelling vs. Content Marketing
Marketing is storytelling. People have been told this time and time again. It's the implementation of this concept we struggle with. Social media marketing is not about marketing your brand. It's about the people. This isn't the case of "build it and they will come." You need to engage in storytelling to inspire, engage and interact with your audience. Meaning no boring, cliche content marketing. "Check out our pictures on Flickr" "Like us on Facebook" posts aren't going to cut it. That doesn't elicit engagement- which doesn't lead to earned media. Sharing meaningful stories that engage your audience with your brand is how people connect.
6. Blogging
Blogging is a small thing that not very many nonprofits are adding to their social profiles. Yet its one of the essentials. Blogging is a way to build a connection for a brand's audience. Whether it's content concerning the blog or related topics, it's important that your brand establishes a blog to create content and engage their audience. Once you've created a blog, you can then link back to your website to further the relationship and sharing of information. The blog is not only designed to create meaningful content that adds value to your communities, but it will also build your networking on connected social media accounts. Blogging is the icing on the top of the cake to every social media campaign.
As nonprofit social media beginners, how do you decide which social media is the best for your audience? How do you decide how many and which ones you should create accounts on? These questions are going to be specific to your brand and the social media behavior of your target audience. However, I think it's important to note that your audience is spread out on more than one social media account and its essential that you connect with them on different platforms. You are going to be able to reach and connect with your audiences in different ways depending on the social media. Facebook and Twitter present a great way to share short updates about your brand. Flickr and Slideshare allow you to connect with pictures and blogs allow you to create meaningful content that adds value to your community. The list is endless. The point is that you need to understand how your audience behaviors and interacts on social media and then join the conversation.A social media avatar (profile picture) is in an important representation of your social identity. It should convey the tone and message of your brand. It's important that the same or similar avatar is used across all social media accounts to convey a consistent identity for your brand. Your audience will associate this profile picture with your brand, therefore, it's important that your avatar is unique and representative. For more tips on creating the perfect avatar for your nonprofit social media platform visit the following link. ( 9 Tips for Choosing a Social Media Avatar |
Washington Nationals pitcher Jordan Zimmermann will miss Thursday's game against the New York Mets because of flu-like symptoms, the team announced.
Tanner Roark started in his place in the finale of the opening three-game series. He had been slated to start Washington's home opener Friday against the Atlanta Braves.
Jordan Zimmermann will miss Thursday's start against the New York Mets. AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Nationals manager Matt Williams said Zimmermann was being sent back to Washington ahead of the team and being given fluids. He said the pitcher, who went 19-9 with a 3.25 ERA last year, was feeling fine Wednesday but took ill after the game.
"He's running a fever. He was up all night throwing up," Williams said. "Evidently he's feeling pretty under the weather."
It was to be Zimmermann's first start of the season after a stellar spring training in which he allowed one run on 11 hits and a walk in 18 innings. He also struck out 15 batters during Grapefruit League action.
Roark, a 27-year-old right-hander, was 7-1 with a 1.51 ERA in five starts and nine relief appearances as a rookie last year, striking out 40 and walking 11 in 53 2/3 innings.
Williams hopes Taylor Jordan is ready to pitch Friday on short rest. While his last exhibition appearance was March 24, he threw a simulated outing this week and would be starting on short rest.
Washington's second option would be a series of relievers.
"If he's not ready to go tomorrow, then that's going to have to be our option," Williams said.
The Associated Press contributed to this story. |
Length of Reign Emperor 40 years 31 years 24 years 22 years and 7 months 22 years and 6 months 21 years 20 years 19 years and 5 months 19 years and > 1 month 19 years 18 years and 10 months 17 years and 10 months 16 years and 6 months 16 years and 20 days 16 years 15 years, 11 months, and 29 days 15 years and 4 days 15 years and 1 day 15 years 14 years 13 years and 9 months 13 years and 8 months 13 years 11 years 10 years 8 years 7 years 6 years and 3 months 6 years and 1 month 6 years
Length of Reign Emperor 5 years 3 years and 10 months 3 years and 9 months 3 years and 4 months 3 years and 3 months 3 years 2 years and 5 months 2 years and 3 months 2 years 1 year and 4 months 1 year and 2 months 1 year 1 year 10-11 months 9 months and 24 days 9 months 8 months 7 months and 7 days 7 months and 10 days 4 months 3 months and 7 days 3 months and 1 day 3 months 2 months and 27 days 2 months and 4 days 2 months 21 days (Committed Suicide after his son died) 21 days 17 days |
WEST POINT, N.Y. -- The New York Knicks have had just four practices, so it’s too early to make any grand conclusions. But, so far, Jeff Hornacek has been impressed by Kristaps Porzingis’ shooting.
“I think he’s improved greatly from last year just watching him shoot,” Hornacek said Thursday. “He’s really feeling confident about the shot. His corner 3s seem like they're automatic. The one 3 that he made and the other 3 that he missed that went in and out [in Thursday’s scrimmage], they both were from about 4-5 feet from behind the line. So he’s got the range.”
Porzingis shot 42 percent from the floor in his rookie season. He made 45 percent of his two-point attempts and 33 percent of his 3s. The Knicks believe those numbers can improve, particularly if the offense can create easier shots for Porzingis and his teammates. Hornacek says the staff has also encouraged Porzingis to use more arc in his shot.
“The biggest thing for him is being a tall guy [he is 7-foot-3], they have a different perspective on how they're looking at the rim and they have a tendency to shoot the ball a little flat,” said Hornacek, one of the NBA’s top shooters during his 14-year playing career.
Porzingis shot most of his 3-point attempts from above the break (above where the 3-point arc turns into a straight line) last season. It’s a shot that the Knicks have encouraged him to attempt early in the shot clock. Porzingis attempted two of those shots -- one as a trailer -- in the portion of Thursday’s scrimmage that was open to the media.
“I think that’s a high-percentage shot for me,” he said. “Last year Phil Jackson, he told me that he likes that shot. I wasn’t so sure about it at first. It was early in the offense. I didn’t know if it was the best shot. But once we saw the percentages, he said it’s a pretty good look if I get that. The bigs a lot of times, they’re giving me that space, then just take that shot. Once he said that I have his confidence in me, and it was just, 'Let it go.' I’ll probably do the same thing this year.”
Kristaps Porzingis, shown with Courtney Lee at a practice Tuesday, has shown a confident, improved shot so far in training camp, said Knicks coach Jeff Hornacek. Seth Wenig/AP Photo
Getting stronger? Hornacek said he’s already seen some benefits of Porzingis adding strength to his lower half. “ We saw a couple of times today that when he drove to the basket. I think last year he was getting a little bump and kind of falling away and throwing up something wild,” the coach said Thursday. “And this year, he’s taking the bumps and he’s falling to the basket. So that’s a sign of strength.”
Porzingis enters camp this season at around 240 pounds after finishing last season at 233 pounds. He said he focused on strengthening his core and lower body in the offseason, in part, to help him hold position in the post and defend on the interior.
Hornacek plans to use Porzingis both in the post and on the perimeter this season in an attempt to take advantage of the natural matchup problems the big man presents to opponents.
“We're having him run down the middle of the court if he’s the first big [to reach the paint in transition]. And then if he doesn’t get it, he’s got to figure out where to go. He has the ability and he has the permission to either stay in the post or float out to the 3-point line,” Hornacek said.
Hornacek wants to improve EFG%: Here’s something for those wondering how much Hornacek uses advanced stats. He mentioned Thursday that one area where he wants the Knicks to improve is effective field goal percentage, a measure that incorporates the added value of 3-point attempts. Last season, the Knicks ranked 28th in effective field goal percentage at 48 percent.
“I thought that for a team, it was pretty low last year for guys,” Hornacek said. “That should be above 50 percent. And I think if you look at their effective field-goal percentage from last season, I think all of them are going to improve on that because they’re not going to have to take tough, hard shots. Our hope is we have enough talent out there on the court [to draw and take advantage of double teams and create open shots].” |
Gallup reports, "At least half of Americans since 2005 have said the federal government has too much power, whereas in the three years prior to that, Americans were more inclined to believe federal power was 'about right.'"
More on that there.
Welcome to the 21st century, in which a majority of Americans seem dissatisfied with the role of government. Gallup notes elsewhere that even unpopular government outfits such as the CIA, Homeland Security, and the Federal Reserve pull higher approval ratings than the IRS, of which just 27 percent of Americans have a highly favorable view. Only one of nine agencies rankes had a "net positive" score over 50 percent (the Centers for Disease Control). Read more.
So what happens when negativity toward government becomes the new normal? In The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong With America, Matt Welch and I argued that widespread dissatisfaction with partisan politics (as evidenced by massive declines over the past several decades in party affiliations) would be followed by motivated people routing around politics and creating ad hoc, single-issue interest groups that would start pushing back on government power. School choice, the Tea Party, pot legalization, gay marriage, the effort to stop SOPA/PIPA - all support the idea that when the gap between the general progress in our commercial and cultural lives and the general lassitude in the areas dominated by politics (education, health care, retirement) gets too great, all hell will break loose. People get pissed and pissed people create the change they want to be (hmm, that sounds familiar), whether they're given permission by the powers that be or not.
What say you, Reason.com readers? Are we on to something? Or just on something?
Related: Newest Reason-Rupe Poll says about 20 percent of Americans qualify as libertarian based on views of economic and social issues.
Watch a video summary of the results with Emily Ekins and me. |
Official Google Science Fair Logo
The Google Science Fair is a worldwide (excluding Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Myanmar/Burma, Syria, Zimbabwe and any other U.S. sanctioned country[1]) online science competition sponsored by Google, Lego, Virgin Galactic, National Geographic and Scientific American.[2][3][4] It has occurred annually since 2011.
The first Google Science Fair was announced in January 2011; entries were due on April 7, 2011 and judging occurred in July 2011. The competition is open to 13- to 18-year-old students around the globe, who formulate a hypothesis, perform an experiment, and present their results.[2][3] All students must have an internet connection and a free Google Account to participate, and the projects must be in English, German, Italian, Spanish, or French.[5] The final submission must include ten sections, which are the summary, an "About Me" page, the steps of the project, and a works cited page.[6] Entries are judged on eight core criteria, which include the student's presentation, question, hypothesis, research, experiment, data, observations, and conclusion.[7] Prizes are awarded to three finalists. The grand prize includes a National Geographic trip to the Galapagos Islands, a US$50,000 scholarship, and an "experience" at a small broken shack for a small organization;[8] finalists will receive a US$15,000 scholarship and assorted packages from sponsoring organizations.[9] While Larry Page and Sergey Brin were PhD students at Stanford University in California, they created Google in January 1996 as a research project; Google employee Tom Oliveri highlighted the company's early days: "Science fairs help students to explore their vision and curiosity through science. Our company was founded on an experiment. We firmly believe that science can change the world," he stated.[10]
Guest interviews [ edit ]
The on-line site also contains a number of highlighted guest interviews with selected individuals, each well established and prominent in their field of science, with the aim being for them to act as inspiration to young students.[11] The individuals chosen include Mitch Resnick, Spencer Wells, Kevin Warwick, and Mariette DiChristina.
2011 winners [ edit ]
Shree Bose, a 17-year-old girl in Texas, won the grand prize and $50,000 for her research on the chemotherapy drug, cisplatin, that is commonly taken by women with ovarian cancer, tackling the problem of cancer cells growing resistant to cisplatin over time.
Naomi Shah of Portland, OR, won the age 15–16 category with a study of the effects of air quality on lungs, particularly for people who have asthma. Ms. Shah recruited 103 test subjects, performed 24-hour air quality measurements at their homes and workplaces and had each blow into a device that measured the force of their breath.
Lauren Hodge of York, PA, won the age 13–14 category for research on whether marinades reduce the amount of cancer-causing compounds produced by the grilling of meat. She found that lemon juice and brown sugar cut the level of carcinogens sharply, while soy sauce increased them.
People around the world (90 countries) had the opportunity to vote for their favorite projects in Google's online voting gallery. Google has had more than 100,000 votes [12] and the competition was really tight. Nimal Subramanian won the People's Choice Award for receiving the most among the 60 semi-finalists. The public really loved Nimal's project on Cancer Busters.[13] Nimal received a $10,000 scholarship.[14]
2012 winners [ edit ]
Brittany Wenger, who was 17, won the grand prize with her "Global Neural Network Cloud Service for Breast Cancer". Designed to noninvasively diagnose malignant cancerous tumors, it successfully detected over 99% of malignant breast tumors in a test set. She received $50,000, a trip to the Galapagos Islands, mentoring and internship opportunities for winning the competition.[15]
Iván Hervías Rodríguez, Marcos Ochoa, and Sergio Pascual, all of Spain, won the 15-16 age group using microscopy to examine microscopic creatures in aquatic ecosystems.
Jonah Kohn won the age 13-14 group by designing and building a device designed to enhance the listening experience of those with hearing loss. His device attached to different parts of the body, translating sound into tactile stimulation.[16]
2013 [ edit ]
The winners of the 2013 Google Science Fair were:
13-14 age category: Viney Kumar (Australia) — The PART (Police and Ambulances Regulating Traffic) Program. Viney's project looked for new ways to provide drivers with more notice when an emergency vehicle is approaching, so they can take evasive action to get out of the emergency vehicle's way.
15-16 age category: Ann Makosinski (Canada) — The Hollow Flashlight. Using Peltier tiles and the temperature difference between the palm of the hand and ambient air, Ann designed a flashlight that provides bright light without batteries or moving parts.
17-18 age category Grand Prize Winner: Eric Chen (USA) — Computer-aided Discovery of Novel Influenza Endonuclease Inhibitors to Combat Flu Pandemic. Combining computer modeling and biological studies, Eric's project looks at influenza endonuclease inhibitors as leads for a new type of anti-flu medicine, effective against all influenza viruses including pandemic strains.
2014 [ edit ]
The 2014 Google Science Fair started accepting entries on February 12, 2014 and the entries closed on May 13, 2014. And the results for the local, regional and Science in Action award nominees were declared. The Grand Prize was won by three girls from Ireland, Ciara Judge (16), Emer Hickey (16) and Sophie Healey (17). They were the first group winners of the competition and the youngest winners to date (they also won the 15-16 age category prize). Their project was entitled 'Combating the Global Food Crisis: Diazatroph Bacteria as a Cereal Crop Growth Promoter.'
The 13-14 age category was won by Mihir Garimella (14) from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with a project titled 'Fruit-fly Inspired Robots.' Hayley Todesco (17) of Canada won the 17-18 age category with her project titled 'Cleaning up Oil Sands Waste.'
Along with the overall prizes for each category, a number of special awards were also announced. Kenneth Shinozuka (15) was declared as the Science In Action Award winner in recognition of the practical potential of his project 'Wearable Sensors for Aging Society.' Arsh Shah Dilbagi (16) from India won the Voter's Choice Award for creating an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device that converts breath into words, enabling mute people to speak.[17]
2015 [ edit ]
The 2015 Google Science Fair closed for entries on May 18, 2015 with regional finalists announced in London on July 7, 2015. These included Lauren McKenzie (14) who built an automatic soil watering system, Shadab Karnachi (14) who designed a low-cost gaming device for people with visual impairments and Peter He (14) who developed an innovative wireless virtual reality system.[18]
The global finalists were announced on August 4, 2015 and the winners on September 21, 2015. The Grand Prize was won by Olivia Hallisey (16) with her project ‘Temperature-Independent, Portable, and Rapid Field Detection of Ebola via a Silk-Derived Lateral-Flow System’. The Google Technologist Award was won by Girish Kumar (17) for his project ‘Revup: Automatically Generating Questions from Educational Texts’ and the Incubator Award was won by Elliott Sarrey (14) with his project ‘Bot2karot: Manage Your Vegetable Garden via Your Smartphone’. The Lego Education Builder Award won by Anurudh Ganesan (15), the Virgin Galactic Pioneer Award won by Jeff Cheema (15), the Scientific American Innovator Award won by Krtin Nithiyanandam (15), the National Geographic Explorer Award won by Deepika Kurup (17) and the Community Impact Award won by Lalita Prasida.[17]
2016 [ edit ]
The 2016 Google Science Fair closed its entries on May 17, 2016, the Global 16 Finalist were announced on August 11, 2016. The final event took place during 24 to 27 September 2016 at Mountain View, California.[19] Sixteen finalists competed for top five awards. The first two rounds had two age groups 13-15 and 16-18. However, unlike previous years, top awards during the finalist event did not distinguish between the two age groups of the previous rounds, thus making it particularly challenging event for the contestant compared to all previous years.
The Grand Prize was won by Kiara Nirghin (16) of South Africa for her project 'Fighting Drought with Fruit'.[20] The Lego Education Builder award was won by Anushka Naiknaware (13) of United States, the youngest contestant to win a top award ever, for 'Smart Wound Care for the Future'.[21] The National Geographic Explorer award was won by Mphatso Simbao (18) of Zambia.[22] The Scientific American Innovator Award was won by a team of three for 'Fighting Foam Waste with Recycled Filters' from the US [Ashton (14), Luke (14) and Julia (14)]. The Virgin Galactic Pioneer award was won by Charlie Fenske (16) for 'Making Rockets more Efficient', also from the United States.[23]
2017 [ edit ]
The competition did not begin as usual in May, 2017. Starting from the late summer, the official website stated that "We're conducting some experiments" and "Coming Fall 2017".[24] The submissions of competition in 2018 began on 13 September 2018.
See also [ edit ] |
Make money with Google Ads... just like me!
KARMIC DICTIONARY: Past Life Causes of Present Life Disorders Tree-Man Syndrome
(Physical - Excessive Warts)
...... To Make an Appointment for a Session, click here! For Quick Access: [For How We Can Help] Short Description
Causes
Symptoms
After Effects
Advice
Case History
Short Description: Tree-Man Syndrome
Tree-Man Syndrome is a disease where sufferer's body is covered with thick warts (depicted above). This leaves the sufferer's skin looking like tree bark/tree roots, hence the name Tree-Man Syndrome (TMS). Causes: Tree-Man Syndrome starts with a simple, single wart spreading out of control until the entire body is covered with warts. Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is the physical cause of the warts spreading. Yet the karmic causes of Tree-Man Syndrome relate to the karmic balancing or these types of past life experiences:
* Barbarian Camouflage: The Celts in Ireland, the Angles in England, the Vandals in Africa, the Huns in Europe, the Mongols in Asia... soldiers in all of these armies routinely inserted tree bark, dirt, worms, and other organic materials into their skin to blend into their environment. This intentional abuse of the skin by altering it via camouflage in past lives becomes balanced by Tree-Man Syndrome.
* Pirate Terror: Pirates from around the world (including the Caribbean) would intentionally fill their skin with tattoes, jewelry, and other objects to inspire terror with their looks. Some pirates would insert live bugs in their skin so that the insect's death struggle under their skin would inspire terror in those around them. This intentional abuse of the skin becomes balanced by Tree-Man Syndrome.
* Flogging/Flaying: Those who suffered severe torture by being flogged with whips or being flayed with lashes usually carried open sores that never properly healed. These sores would become infected and attract all manner of bacteria and insects. This can cause the individual to reincarnate with both a weak immune system and a unconscious program for abnormally thick skin. The result then can be contracting Tree-Man Syndrome to work off this past life karma.
* Bugging: Often those who were tortured had insects intentionally inserted into their skin to keep the torture process going day and night. This was unnecessary cruelty (in other words, bugging was not usually specified by government orders). The"Bugging Karma" from past lives becomes balanced by Tree-Man Syndrome.
* Leeching: In past lives, many medical practitioners knew that bleeding the body by applying leeches was not only ineffective but it often worsened the patient's condition. Those, who performed leeching knowing that it was harmful, carry a heavy burden of soul guilt. Tree-Man Syndrome is one way for an individual to balance the past life karma of knowingly doing the patient harm by leeching. Symptoms: In TMS, the warts grow quickly both inside and on top of the skin. TMS causes the skin to grow out of control. The skin becomes thick and hardened. Old skin dies as new skin in created. Those who immune systems are weak and cannot fight HPV are vulnerable to contracting TMS. After Effects: Although TMS is caused - physically - by a virus, the bad news it is not cured by skin grafting, genetic manipulation, or skin removal treatments. The TMS symptoms can be alleviated by increased intake of vitamins and anti-viral medication. The good news is that the TMS person's experience is never wasted. Every moment of their life is rich in experience and karmic burnoff. The best news is TMS is only experienced by an individual once during their trail of incarnations. Since this is a very intense form of karmic correction it can only be experienced once regardless of whether the karma is balanced or not. Advice: While past life exploration can help the TMS sufferer understand why they have this disorder, the karma is likely to be so severe... that TMS will remain a life sentence. The best thing that a TMS sufferer can do is surround themselves with loving people who can see past their warts into the heart of the person inside. Case History: the cause, the challenge for Tree-Man Syndrome sufferers is to become spiritually tough and to love and accept themselves at the deepest levels. In today's looks conscious society, TMS sufferers are bound to have a tough time... so if you see one, do not look away... stop and thank them for their courage. Before using any of this advice, click here for a "Word of Caution" Credits: from channeled information. |
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism.
Since Obama’s Arab Spring, over a million Christians have fled Iraq and Syria. The number of Iraqi Christians fell by two thirds. Obama wouldn’t call it genocide. He wouldn’t hammer ISIS.
And so the people of this country elected a president who would do the job that Obama wouldn’t do.
After ISIS took Fallujah, Obama infamously dismissed the Islamic State as a “jayvee” team that wasn’t worth paying attention to. A few months later, the ISIS jayvee team took Mosul and made it a key stronghold. Beyond being the third largest city in Iraq, Mosul and the Nineveh plains were an ancient center of Christian life. But the Islamic State had a simple message for Mosul’s Christians.
“After this date, there is nothing between us and them but the sword.”
When President Trump came into office, he made it clear that there would be nothing between America and ISIS except the bomb. He vowed to “demolish and destroy ISIS”. And he kept his word. He unleashed the full firepower of our military and
Now that the American bomb has broken the sword of Islam, Iraqi Christians are celebrating their first Christmas since the ISIS capture of Mosul.
“We offer them three choices,” ISIS had declared. The Christians could become ‘dhimmis’. That would mean accepting an inferior status in the Islamic State and paying jizya protection money to Muslims. And if they didn’t want to pay, the Christians could always convert to Islam. But, the Islamic group warned, “If they refuse this they will have nothing but the sword.”
ISIS was bringing back all the old and ugly traditions of Islam: Jizya and the dhimmi codes, sex slavery and child rape. And the Christians of Iraq were among the first to experience the consequences of Islam. Their houses were branded with the Arabic “N” for Nassarah and they fled for their lives.
"For the first time in the history of Iraq, Mosul is now empty of Christians," Patriarch Louis Sako announced.
On another hot summer, three months later, ISIS was driven out of Mosul in a battle that could never have been fought and won under the last occupant of the White House. The furious airstrikes that smashed the Islamic State’s hold on the city, neighborhood by neighborhood, driving ISIS fighters from their temporary bases in buildings every time the forces on the ground needed help, made victory possible in some of the toughest urban battles since Stalingrad. The unleashed United States Air Force battered the beheaders and child rapists of ISIS in a way that Obama would never have allowed.
Over a year after the fall of Mosul, our forces still had their hands tied tightly behind their backs. Even when it came to taking out the tanker trucks that carried the financial lifeblood of the Islamic State, our pilots were not allowed to just bomb them. Instead they had to make low passes while dropping leaflets that warned the drivers of the ISIS trucks in Arabic and English that airstrikes would happen 45 minutes later.
The goal was to “to kind of shoo people away without harming them.” But trying to “shoo” away the jayvee team without harming them didn’t bring down ISIS or free the oppressed Christians of Iraq.
75% of bombing runs against ISIS didn’t even drop leaflets, let alone bombs.
All of that changed when President Trump unleashed the full firepower and might of our military. The media and its leftist allies moaned that Mosul had been devastated by the punishing raids. But buildings can be rebuilt. Those who were murdered by ISIS, which had escalated its torture and butchery as it sensed its inevitable defeat, could not be put back together again. If it had been up to Obama, Mosul would still belong to ISIS. Drone strikes would not have been reclaimed the city. It took real airstrikes.
After Mosul fell, the Iraqi government asked Obama to carry out airstrikes against ISIS. And he refused. Before the fall of Mosul, “Iraqi officials at the highest level said they had requested manned and unmanned U.S. airstrikes this year against ISIS camps.” And they got nothing. ISIS was able to overrun Iraq because it took years to get Obama to agree to do anything. Including dropping leaflets.
During that time, the Christian population of Iraq fled or huddled in beleaguered territories, fearing that if the Kurdish firewall fell, there might be nowhere for them to run. President Trump was not afraid to bomb ISIS. He was not afraid to let our military do everything they needed to do to win. Instead of lawyers in suits deciding whether we could bomb ISIS, men in military uniforms began making those decisions. And that is why ISIS is on the run.
The Islamic State was not afraid of Obama’s lawyers. It’s running from Trump’s bombs. And as the Islamic terrorists who once swore to rule the world try to sneak back into Europe and Russia, Christian families who fled their reign of supremacist terror are slowly returning to Mosul. And these returning Christians are able to celebrate their first Christmas since the horrifying years of the Arab Spring.
The number of Christians in Mosul remains small. And ISIS has destroyed many of the old churches where the Christians of the city once worshiped. But the presence of Christians in Mosul is a Christmas gift from President Donald J. Trump to a persecuted population written off by his predecessor.
Even if Iraq’s Christians never feel secure enough to return to Mosul in their previous numbers, they know that they can find sanctuary in the United States. Under Obama, Muslim migrants outnumbered Christian refugees for the first time. While Christians remained trapped in the Middle East, the terrorists of tomorrow swarmed through our airports to be resettled next door to their victims.
While American firepower smashed their Islamic persecutors, the gates of our nation opened once again to the tormented Christians of the Middle East instead of to their Islamic tormenters. Once again a great nation came into its own by sheltering the weak and destroying evil.
After the liberation of Mosul, President Trump declared that, “The victory in Mosul, a city where ISIS once proclaimed its so-called “caliphate,” signals that its days in Iraq and Syria are numbered. “ And since then the Islamic rulers who once threatened to put Trump and the Christians of Iraq to the sword have instead become refugees. And in Mosul and across Iraq, the Christian refugees are coming home. |
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain will “continue to play a full role until we leave”, Prime Minister Theresa May told fellow leaders at her first EU summit; but for many Britons in Brussels that is a forlorn hope.
British Prime Minister Theresa May (L) is welcomed by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker at the EC headquarters in Brussels, Belgium October 21, 2016. REUTERS/Yves Herman
Formally, yes, the heads of European Union institutions say Britain and its citizens will keep seats at council tables and in Parliament or go on with EU civil service careers in the two to three years left before it quits the 28-nation bloc.
In reality, say British lawmakers and officials in Brussels - some of whom were offered trauma counseling by employers after the Brexit referendum four months ago to the day - they are already being sidelined, and expect further isolation.
“Why should anyone listen to us?” said a British member of the European Parliament who forecast a December mid-term reshuffle of posts such as committee chairs will see many compatriots lose out. “People are polite, sympathetic,” the MEP told Reuters. “But in the end, of course, we are leaving.”
Although May cautioned fellow leaders not to bind Britain by decisions taken without her, as at last month’s summit of 27 in Bratislava, they insist the EU must move on and are annoyed, for example, by London trying to thwart more EU defense cooperation.
The leader of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right bloc in the European Parliament took to the BBC’s flagship news show during last week’s summit to warn Britons that such awkward tactics risk poisoning May’s efforts to cut the kind of divorce deal she wants, keeping trade ties while curbing immigration.
“That is creating a lot of anger,” Manfred Weber said of British opposition to new plans for EU defense cooperation that London says might hamper NATO. “Please don’t block it because that would have a lot of impact on the Brexit negotiations.”
Acknowledging Britain retains veto powers and votes in the EU for now, Weber said: “It’s a question of behavior, whether you respect each other, not a question of rights.”
“WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?”
Most British MEPs, including most of May’s Conservatives, opposed Brexit. There has been anger at those who did not; EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker demanded of UKIP leader Nigel Farage in the chamber in June: “Why are you still here?”
A German MEP, speaking anonymously since parties have yet to take positions on December’s jobs round, sees a rout of British influence: “The mid-term changes may reflect the new balance of powers, with UK MEPs probably being removed from positions.”
But despite some pressure from fellow MEPs to exclude the British now, lawyers advise that the 73 Britons in the 751-seat chamber must stay - and be able to vote, even on laws that may not affect Britain, or indeed those such as the form of the final divorce that affect it very particularly. Few expect the British to take part in the 2019 EU elections, however.
British officials representing London in the many councils of the European Union in Brussels say they are aware of the delicacy of their position but must defend the national interest on a range of issues - from fishing quotas to budget amendments - that have immediate impacts, before Britain leaves.
Yet as negotiators on both sides are preparing for formal talks to start by March in which continental and British diplomats will find themselves on opposite sides of the table, Britain’s backroom envoys in Brussels are avoiding taking too much of a role in discussions on longer-term policy issues.
That would be “a bit weird”, one acknowledged.
So far, British officials say, attitudes to them in meetings have not changed hugely, as long as they get “the tone right”.
PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE
Britons are keeping especially active in discussions on issues where there will continue to be close cooperation post-Brexit, such as foreign and defense policy - as May herself did during summit talks on Syria, Russia and migration.
May’s predecessor David Cameron even appointed a new British member to Juncker’s European Commission to replace an ally who, like Cameron, resigned after the Brexit vote; Julian King is now running security policy for the EU executive.
British civil servants in Brussels have been assured by Juncker that for now their jobs are safe. But as non-EU citizens they will need special dispensations to work for the Union and many are considering their options.
One EU job not so far open to them, and unlikely to be, is that of Brexit negotiator. Former French foreign minister Michel Barnier, the man Juncker has appointed to run the talks, and his German deputy have not appointed any Britons to their team.
People familiar with the new operation say security will be tight, including to prevent leaks to London, and Barnier has told colleagues he would like negotiations to be held in French - though he denied on Friday being set on the idea.
British Prime Minister Theresa May (L) is welcomed by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker at the EC headquarters in Brussels, Belgium October 21, 2016. REUTERS/Yves Herman
Britons near retirement are expected to stay on. Of others, some have dual nationality and can switch their official passport. Many in mid-career are looking at the private sector - or at what many expect to be a major expansion in parts of Whitehall, the British government’s administration.
One mid-ranking EU official said he had seen at least one fellow Briton passed over for what, pre-referendum, had seemed a certain promotion: “It’s clear we have no future here,” he said.
“Leaving sooner rather than later may make sense.” |
While president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Timothy F. Geithner pressed British regulators to reform the way a critical global benchmark called the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, is calculated, according to a June 1, 2008, e-mail obtained by The Washington Post.
Writing to the head of the Bank of England, among others, Geithner made six recommendations, which included eliminating incentives that could encourage banks to manipulate the rate and establishing a “credible reporting procedure.”
“We would welcome a chance to discuss these and would be grateful if you would give us some sense of what changes are possible,” Geithner wrote.
It’s unclear what other steps Geithner took and whether his efforts stopped any wrongdoing by banks. Last month, London-based Barclays, one of Europe’s largest banks, admitted that it schemed to manipulate Libor during the financial crisis — and its chief executive has asserted that regulators knew about its activities but didn’t do much to stop them. The scandal has led to the resignation of Barclays’s senior executives.
With the Libor scandal threatening to migrate from London to Washington, pressure is growing on regulators and Geithner, who is now the Treasury secretary, to explain what they knew and when.
On Thursday, several key Democratic senators called on the Justice Department to hold accountable bankers and regulators who failed to “stop wrongdoing that they knew, or should have known, about.”
In an effort to address some of these questions, the New York Fed, which Geithner led from 2003 until he joined the Obama administration, is set to release a trove of documents Friday morning detailing its response to concerns raised as early as 2007 about Libor, which helps set the standard for $10 trillion worth of corporate bonds, credit cards, mortgages and other loans around the world.
Andrea Priest, a spokesperson for the New York Fed, said the documents to be released Friday “will show that the New York Fed took prompt action four years ago to highlight problems with Libor and press for reform.”
The New York Fed played a marginal role in driving the inquiry, according to a source familiar with the U.S. and British investigation. During years of investigation briefings on Libor, the New York Fed’s name rarely, if ever, came up, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
In the byzantine world of banking regulation, the New York Fed is perhaps the most powerful player. Yet during the time that allegations about Libor were reported to the Fed, it was also in the middle of handling a metastasizing crisis in the financial sector.
The investment bank Bear Stearns collapsed just weeks before Geithner had a meeting on April 28, 2008, titled “Fixing LIBOR,” according to his schedule. Events continued to go downhill that summer and fall.
Officials at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission first began looking into the Libor issue after the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times ran stories in early 2008 raising questions about market manipulation. The CFTC approached the Justice Department. The Financial Services Authority in Britain joined in later that year.
A former regulator, Sheila C. Bair, who was head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. during the financial crisis, said the New York Fed — as well as other regulators, such as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — has a privileged view into the inner workings of the banks.
“They both have scores of examiners in these banks, so it’d be easier for them to conduct this kind of investigation than the CFTC,” Bair said.
Nevertheless, the joint investigation among the Justice Department, the CFTC and British regulators found that throughout the financial crisis, Barclays routinely reported artificially low borrowing rates. The falsified data masked the level of trouble that Barclays was in during that time and may have helped keep Libor rates low. That, in turn, may have allowed Barclays to borrow money more cheaply.
The investigation is now focusing on another bank, but this part of the probe may not be completed until the fall, according to the source familiar with the matter. Nearly 20 of the world’s largest banks — including Citigroup, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase — help set Libor rates.
Geithner as well as other banking regulators have been criticized in the past for siding too closely with the banks under their watch.
Geithner is also scheduled to testify before the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee in two weeks during regularly scheduled hearings. Lawmakers who requested the documents now being released by the Fed are likely to pepper him with more questions as they try to piece together the timeline during that chaotic period in 2008. |
Venezuelan petrotyrant Hugo Chavez has renewed his denunciations of biofuels. According to an Associated Press story dated April 26, 2008:
“Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says a U.S. push to boost ethanol production during a world food crisis is a ‘crime.’
The socialist leader says he’s concerned that so much U.S.-produced corn could be used to make biofuel, instead of feeding the world’s poor.
Chavez says the corn needed to fill an average car with ethanol would be enough to feed seven people for a year.”
Actually, since a bushel of corn yields 2.8 gallons of ethanol, the corn needed to fill a 20 gallon SUV tank is 7 bushels, which at the current market price of $5/bushel, costs a total of $35. According to Mr. Chavez, then, the cost of feeding one person for a year is $5. With oil hitting $120/barrel, Mr. Chavez’s government this year will receive about $88 billion in revenues taxed from the rest of the global economy, while the OPEC governments collectively will tax the world to the tune of $1400 billion.
(Omitted from Chavez’s analysis is the fact that the ethanol program has actually stimulated corn production so much that, after the part used for ethanol is taken away, the net US corn harvest available for food and feed is up 34% since 2002. Furthermore, contrary to claims in many articles, this has not been done at the expense of soy or wheat production. In fact, U.S. soy plantings this year are expected to be up 18% to a near record of 75 million acres, wheat plantings are up 6%, and overall, US farm exports are up 23%. Much more can be produced as demand requires, since of 800 million acres of US farmland, only 280 million are actually being farmed. This is why – $5 per person per year feeding price aside –  the entire Malthusian conceit underlying Chavez’s fuel vs. food argument is nonsense.)
Chavez’s remarks reinforce those made by the Saudi Arabian oil minister in a speech made in Paris April 8, wherein he expressed his deep concern that biofuels could contribute to global warming. Chavez and the Saudi’s negative assessments of biofuels were also strongly supported by arch Malthusian Lester Brown in an op ed in the Washington Post April 22.
The fundamental unity of the Islamist, the petrotyrant, and the Malthusian positions was made clear by pro-OPEC propagandist Robert Bryce, in a debate with me that aired on the Mike Medved Show April 21. (Which can be heard by clicking here.)
When hard pressed, Bryce finally emerged with the following argument: Biofuels are to be shunned because they threaten to lower the price of oil, and thus encourage economic growth, particularly in the third world, and thus global warming.
So apparently we should all be thankful to OPEC, which by taxing the world economy into a recession, is doing so much to curtail uncontrolled human aspirations, while concentrating power in the hands of those who would eliminate all freedom forever.Â
Robert Zubrin, author “Energy Victory: Winning the war on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil,” www.energyvictory.net
UPDATE:
A reader writes in with an example of how innumerate Chavez’ statement is:
“If the $88 billion/year Venezuelan oil revenue figure is correct (and I have no reason to suspect otherwise), then Hugo Chavez can singlehandedly end global hunger – $88 billion/$5 per person = 17.6 billion people that can be fed on Venezuelan oil revenue alone. What a humanitarian gesture that would be! And as there are only 6.6 billion people on Earth, he can still pocket $55 billion dollars for his own personal needs…” |
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At 2 pm local time on February 22, police started forcing out protesters from an encampment in Standing Rock, North Dakota, who had been trying for months to block the completion of Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Though the water protectors won multiple victories stalling construction during their multi-month stand, in late January President Donald Trump announced executive actions calling for expedited construction of the highly contentious pipeline project, owned by Energy Transfer Partners. Trump’s decision, which also streamlined the permitting process for the once defunct Keystone XL pipeline, spelled emphatic support of large-scale oil and gas projects, the type of which are expected to increase under his administration.
The rush to build massive pipelines began before the election of President Trump, spurred in part by Congress’s repeal of a 40-year-old ban on oil exports in December 2015 (backed by then-President Barack Obama). Even before that decision, the United States was already the world’s largest exporter of diesel, gasoline, and aviation fuel, and a net exporter of coal. With a glut of oil and gas discoveries in the Marcellus, Barnett, and Bakken shale formations, an increase in American large-scale fossil fuel production has long been in the works and is expected to flourish in the coming years. Pipeline construction will likely expand under President Trump’s new infrastructure plan; maps of pending projects for crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids show just how extensive this development will be. And the rollback of environmental regulations will only encourage new construction. “It is the policy of the executive branch to streamline and expedite,” Trump announced in his executive order on pipelines.
Even though protesters didn’t ultimately stop the completion of DAPL, don’t expect the resistance movements to go away quietly. Native and environmental activists are now taking the lessons and tactics learned at Standing Rock and applying them across the country, gearing up to battle big pipeline projects in their own backyards.
Here are eight new oil and gas pipeline projects in the works:
Trans-Pecos pipeline: Another Energy Transfer Partners production, the Trans Pecos is 148 miles of highly contested line slated to cross the Rio Grande River through Big Bend, hallowed ground for many Texans. Coming with a $770 million price tag, the pipeline will carry 1.4 billion cubic feet of fracked natural gas daily to Mexico for industrial use and power generation. Construction began in May, and is now nearing completion, with an estimated 93 percent of the line already in place.
But groups like the Big Bend Conservation Alliance continue to voice strong concerns about how the pipeline could threaten undeveloped stretches of wilderness, while contributing little to local communities. The Society of Native Nations, a subgroup of the American Indian Movement, has established the Two Rivers Camp near the construction site, where protesters, some traveling directly from Standing Rock, are camping out, endeavoring to stymie completion by locking themselves to construction equipment.
Bayou Bridge pipeline: Another ETP joint, the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, a $670 million project, will run 162 miles connecting an oil hub in Nederland, Texas, with refineries in St. James parish in Louisiana. The pipeline will also cross through the country’s largest wetland (931 square miles), jeopardizing the watershed and the livelihood of hunters and fishermen who have relied on the land for generations, as well as the water supply of the indigenous United Houma Nation. Opposition from protesters reached a fever pitch on February 9 when a natural gas pipeline owned by Phillips 66 (a 40 percent stakeholder in the Bayou Bridge) blew up in St. Charles Parish, killing one worker and resulting in a fire that took four days to finally extinguish.
Environmental advocates urged the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality to refuse to issue the remaining permits still needed for Bayou Bridge to be completed. During public comment, Louisiana resident Cherri Foytlin, director of the environmental advocacy group Bold Louisiana, noted that “Energy Transfer Partners came here to talk about energy independence and how this is supposed to be for ‘our people.'” Yet, she noted, the company’s SEC filings denote the Nederland, Texas facility as an “export project” meant to “balance the market by 2018,” a reference to the low price of domestic crude oil. Bayou Bridge remains in the permitting process, per the US Army Corps of Engineers website.
Mariner East 2 pipeline: A $2.5 billion natural gas liquids pipeline being built by Sunoco Logistics, a subsidiary of ETP, the Mariner East 2 was permitted on February 15, amid outcry from environmental groups. The 20-inch pipeline will move 275,000 barrels of propane, butane, and ethane 306 miles from the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia to a processing facility near Philadelphia. The permits allow for water crossing and earth moving, which environmentalists claim will deforest more than 1,500 acres and cross hundreds of streams and aquifers used for farmland. While construction is already underway, Mariner East 2 still needs Army Corps of Engineers permits to legitimize its plans to drill horizontally beneath navigable waterways, and is mired in a series of legal appeals from environmentalist over the permits its currently holds.
Sabal Trail pipeline: Commonly called “Florida’s Dakota Access pipeline,” Sabal Trail is a $3 billion project totaling 515 miles. The pipeline, authorized by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in February, will carry fracked natural gas from eastern Alabama to Florida. It is a joint endeavor of NextEra Energy, Duke Energy, and Spectra Energy, the last of which was purchased for $28 billion in September by Enbridge, a co-investor in the Dakota Access Pipeline. Opponents have expressed concern about the threat posed to local waterways, as drilling mud has already leaked into the Withlacoochee River in south Georgia. They’re also concerned about the health of the Floridian aquifer, one of the nation’s largest freshwater aquifers which is encased in fragile limestone.
According to Spectra Energy spokesperson Andrea Grover, the pipeline is already 78 percent complete, and reports indicate that it will be fully operational by June. Opponents recently called on Senate Democrat Bill Nelson to acknowledge a petition with 98,000 signatures opposing the pipeline. On February 22, two protesters lodged themselves in the pipe in an attempt to halt construction.
Diamond pipeline: The $900 million project will consist of 440 miles of 20-inch pipe, shipping 200,000 barrels per day of crude oil from Cushing, Oklahoma to Memphis, Tennessee. Fear that the pipeline will interfere with burial sites of those killed during the Trail of Tears, which is alongside the pipeline’s route, Native activists have founded the group #NoPlainsPipeline. Per cofounder Ashley McCray: “It’s very disrespectful to disturb those remains even if it’s just jewelry or even if it’s clothing—to interfere with that spirit passing on to the next world really does a lot, spiritually, to our people.”
The Little Rock, Arkansas branch of the Army Corps examined 491 water crossings along the pipeline’s proposed route, approving 443 in May while deeming the others to be permit-exempt or beyond their jurisdiction. Environmental and Native groups Bold Oklahoma, the American Indian Movement, and #NoPlainsPipeline have teamed up to fight the pipeline, promising to create a Standing Rock style encampment in Oklahoma. Already, protests over the Valero owned project have led to twelve arrests in Arkansas.
Atlantic Sunrise pipeline: The $3 billion expansion of the Transco natural gas transport system, Atlantic Sunrise will add roughly 200 miles of new pipe conveying fracked natural gas from the Marcellus Shell in Pennsylvania to a liquid natural gas shipping hub in Maryland and as far south as Alabama. The project has faced fierce opposition from local residents in Pennsylvania, where protesters were arrested for trespassing in anti-pipeline demonstrations as early as January 2015.
Atlantic Sunrise has now cleared all regulatory hurdles, but activists are ramping up their opposition. Mark Clatterbuck, founder of the environmental group Lancaster Against Pipelines, helped initiate a DAPL-style encampment on an Amish farm in Lancaster County, which sits in the path of the planned pipeline. With eminent domain hearings recently underway, the farm will likely be a target for expropriation. The group is gearing up for a long battle, and, borrowing from techniques learned at Standing Rock, promising to stand pat until the pipeline has been defeated.
Pacific Connector pipeline: This proposed 232-mile pipeline will transport 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day from central Oregon to a terminal in Coos Bay, where it will be liquefied and exported to Asian markets. After two denials, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission accepted the pre-filing application on February 10. Sixty percent of the pipeline would reside on public and timberland, with the remaining 40 percent crossing privately held land.
The Karuk, Yurok, and Klamath tribes all voiced their opposition to the project in November. “With our fisheries and water quality already compromised, we simply cannot afford the risks associated with running a natural gas pipeline beneath the Klamath River,” said Karuk Chairman Russell ‘Buster’ Attebery.
Agua Prieta pipeline: The line—a project of Sempra Energy—will transport gas from Arizona to the Mexican states of Sonora and Sinaloa. However, the construction plans were ratified without consent from the indigenous Yaqui tribe, who are currently protesting its crossing of their water source, Rio Yaqui. Protests have been particularly violent, and one protester was shot and killed during a clash in late October. In December the tribe’s lawyer, Anabela Carlon Flores, and her husband were kidnapped by masked gunmen of unknown origins and held for days before eventually being released. |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein, said on Tuesday she has seen no evidence that Russian spies helped former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden steal U.S. eavesdropping secrets.
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the chair of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, speaks to the media regarding confirmation hearings of CIA Director nominee John Brennan in Washington March 5, 2013. REUTERS/Gary Cameron
The Democrat’s comments on the MSNBC TV channel contrast with statements by her Republican counterpart in the House of Representative Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers.
Rogers suggested earlier this month that Russia had acquired influence over Snowden before he left his job as an NSA contractor and traveled to Hong Kong, where he leaked tens of thousands of classified documents describing U.S. and British eavesdropping operations.
“I have no information to that effect. I’ve never seen anything to that effect. I’ve asked some questions since and nothing has been forthcoming,” Feinstein said.
A senior U.S. official familiar with the matter said that he had seen no evidence Snowden had been recruited or influenced by Russia to acquire and leak U.S. eavesdropping secrets. Other U.S. security officials have privately offered similar assessments in recent weeks.
Rogers said on television 10 days ago that Snowden had likely been collaborating with Russia before he fled there last year.
“Let me just say this. I believe there’s a reason he ended up in the hands, the loving arms, of an FSB agent in Moscow,” Rogers said, referring to Russia’s intelligence service.
Rogers described Snowden as a “thief who we believe had some help.”
A Rogers’ spokesperson, Susan Phalen said on Tuesday that the House Intelligence Committee chairman stood by his earlier statement.
Earlier this month, in what was described as an interview conducted by encrypted means from Moscow, the New Yorker website quoted Snowden as denying claims that he had earlier spied for Russia. |
As a matter of constitutional rights and basic decency, prisoners — including military prisoners — are entitled to proper care for their serious medical conditions. Yet, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and other officials continue to deny medically necessary care to Chelsea Manning, the military prisoner formerly known as Pfc. Bradley Manning, who was convicted in August 2013 of leaking a vast cache of classified government documents.
Her ill-treatment is no minor lapse. On the day after her sentencing to a 35-year prison term, Private Manning publicly declared herself a transgender woman, along with her wish to begin hormone therapy “as soon as possible.” Clinical evaluations since have confirmed the need for care that includes hormone treatment, psychotherapy with someone qualified to treat gender dysphoria, and access to grooming standards for female prisoners — allowing her to grow longer hair, for example, to express her gender identity. A failure to follow this standard protocol for people with Private Manning’s medical condition can have a dire impact — creating a growing risk of serious depression, self-mutilation and suicide.
The military’s backward policy against providing hormone therapy or sexual reassignment surgery has left Private Manning, who is incarcerated at the military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., without essential treatment for well over a year now. Repeated requests for treatment have been denied or totally ignored.
In September, Private Manning filed a federal lawsuit seeking to compel the missing medical treatment. The complaint filed on her behalf by lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union and her court-martial attorney, David Coombs, asserted that the withheld medical care amounts to a violation of her constitutionally protected rights. |
The Lord Mayor of Dublin Gerry Breen said he will be writing to the new minister for justice requesting that legislation be brought in to abolish the Smithfield horse fair in Dublin.
Mr Breen was speaking after two men were injured yesterday at a shooting in the market, which was attended by about 4,500 people.
Dublin City Council and the Dublin Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (DSPCA) have urged the incoming government to introduce emergency legislation to shut down the market.
The Army bomb disposal team was called to the scene following the discovery of a suspect device a short time after the shooting at 11.30am. On examination of the device a bomb disposal officer identified it as a home-made shotgun. The shotgun was made safe at the scene and handed over to the Garda. A man arrested by gardaí remains in custody today.
Gardaí this afternoon appealed for witnesses, particularly anyone with photographs or video footage of the incident - to contact them.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Mr Breen said yesterday’s violence pointed to the unsuitability of the site for a horse fair. "God forbid if the horses panicked because of the gun shots. We’ve a Luas line running through there and a lot of people," he said. "It should be abolished. It’s a dangerous event nowadays and there are also significant animal rights issues."
He claimed the event was a haven for people “unloading horses to anyone who would take them” saying young people were using them almost like bicycles. He said Dublin City Council didn’t have the resources to provide an alternative location.
The council has for more than a decade sought the closure of the fair, but it has been blocked by an ancient market right to hold sales on the land, asserted by horse traders.
Horses were sold on a regular basis in Smithfield from the late 1800s onward, but the horse fair in its current incarnation dates from the early 1960s, when the area was in a state of considerable dereliction.
The council temporarily banned the fair in 2002 after a horse bolted and hit a car on the quays which was occupied by a woman and a child.
However, the traders returned to the plaza, citing their market right. The fair also drew attention in 2009 when an injured horse was sold to an 11-year-old boy for €8.
Representations were made by the council to the outgoing Government to introduce primary legislation to extinguish the market right at Smithfield, but it said “these representations did not achieve their desired goal”.
In addition to the very serious public safety concerns, the council would have to spend up to €3,000 cleaning up after yesterday’s event, a spokesman for the council said. On most months the council spent €1,500-€1,800 on the clean-up, he added.
Pavee Point, an organisation supporting Traveller rights, said it was shocked at the violence and urged anyone with information to make it available to the gardaí.
In a statement this afternoon, the organisation said the fair needed to be regulated in the interests of animal welfare. "Enforcement of high standards is in everybody's interests, and would be welcomed by the Traveller community," it said.
However, it said said it would be a "disaster" if a single - "admittedly serious" - incident should end a longstanding tradition for the Smithfield area.
People at the fair said the shooting yesterday was an isolated incident and should not influence the future of the market. Several traders and spectators at the monthly market who did not wish to be named said the shooting, and the fighting with horse crops, was related to a feud involving two families believed to be based in Co Offaly.
“Nothing like this has ever happened before. People come here to enjoy themselves and conduct business, there is never any trouble,” a long-time horse trader said.
Another horse dealer explained there were no specific organisers of the event because it was a well-established gathering that did not usually require any management. “This fair has been going on for hundreds of years, there are people here from Scotland, everyone knows about it – it’s big business," he said. “It was a terrible thing that happened here today, but it never happened before, and a small group shouldn’t be allowed spoil things for everyone.” |
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What does a woman want in a man? The question has long baffled many single males, leading some to bitterly conclude that handsome guys have an insurmountable advantage.
Not so, concludes a newly published study. It shows women do indeed find good-looking men desirable — but if they have to choose, they'll probably pick the altruistic guy over the hunk.
The results provide "further evidence of the importance of altruism in women's mate choice preferences," a research team led by the University of Worcester's Daniel Farrelly writes in the journal Evolutionary Psychology. It confirms that selflessness is "a highly important characteristic trait women look for in long-term partners."
The study featured 202 straight women recruited online, most of whom were in their early 20s. They looked at 12 sets of photographs, each of which showed the faces of two men — one handsome, the other much less so.
The images were accompanied by scenarios, eight of which described situations where altruism — or its absence — played a key role. One typical scenario read as follows: "Two people are walking through a busy town, and notice a homeless person sitting near a cafe. Person E decides to go into the cafe to buy a sandwich and a cup of tea to give to the homeless person outside. Person F pretends to use his mobile phone and walks straight past the homeless person."
The altruistic behavior was ascribed to the handsome man in some scenarios, and the not-so-handsome man in others. In still others, neutral behavior was attributed to both, allowing researchers to determine the importance of looks when the guys were described in similar terms.
After scanning the photos and reading the scenarios, the women rated (on a one-to-five scale) how attractive they found each man, for both a brief affair or a committed romantic relationship.
"Individuals who displayed high levels of altruism were rated significantly more desirable overall," the researchers write. While the self-absorbed guys were viewed as more attractive candidates for a one-night stand — suggesting a night with a "bad boy" retains its short-term appeal — altruistic guys were rated as "more desirable for long-term relationships."
"Men who were just altruistic were rated as more desirable than men who were just attractive," Farrelly and his colleagues add. "If a man possesses only one of those traits, it is altruism that is more valuable."
Pacific Standard grapples with the nation's biggest issues by illuminating why we do what we do. For more on the science of society, sign up for its weekly email update or subscribe to its bimonthly print magazine. |
Abstract Running amok is considered a rare culture-bound syndrome by current psychiatric classification systems, but there is evidence that it occurs frequently in modern industrialized societies. The historical origins of running amok as a psychiatric condition are reviewed in this article, and its relevance to modern day episodes of violent behavior is discussed. Psychotic illnesses, personality disorders, and mood disorders are all possible causes of amok, and the identification and treatment of patients who are at risk for manifesting violent behavior are discussed.
The general public and the medical profession are familiar with the term running amok, the common usage of which refers to an irrational-acting individual who causes havoc. The term also describes the homicidal and subsequent suicidal behavior of mentally unstable individuals that results in multiple fatalities and injuries to others. Except for psychiatrists, few in the medical community realize that running amok is a bona fide, albeit antiquated, psychiatric condition. Although episodes of multiple homicides and suicide by individuals with presumed or known mental disorders occur with alarming regularity today, there are virtually no recent discussions in the medical literature about the recognition and treatment of these individuals before their suicidal and homicidal behavior occurs. The psychiatric literature classifies amok as a culture-bound syndrome based on its discovery 2 centuries ago in remote primitive island tribes where culture was considered the predominant factor in its pathogenesis. The primitive groups' geographic isolation and spiritual beliefs were thought to produce a mental illness not observed elsewhere in the world. DSM-IV,1 which is the current consensus opinion on psychiatric diagnosis, depicts amok as a cultural phenomenon that rarely occurs today. However, characterizing amok as a culture-bound syndrome ignores the fact that similar behavior has been observed in virtually all Western and Eastern cultures, having no geographical isolation. Furthermore, the belief that amok rarely occurs today is contrary to evidence that similar episodes of violent behavior are more common in modern societies than they were in the primitive cultures where amok was first observed.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Amok, or running amok, is derived from the Malay word mengamok, which means to make a furious and desperate charge. Captain Cook is credited with making the first outside observations and recordings of amok in the Malay tribesmen in 1770 during his around-the-world voyage. He described the affected individuals as behaving violently without apparent cause and indiscriminately killing or maiming villagers and animals in a frenzied attack. Amok attacks involved an average of 10 victims and ended when the individual was subdued or “put down” by his fellow tribesmen, and frequently killed in the process. According to Malay mythology, running amok was an involuntary behavior caused by the “hantu belian,” or evil tiger spirit entering a person's body and compelling him or her to behave violently without conscious awareness. Because of their spiritual beliefs, those in the Malay culture tolerated running amok despite its devastating effects on the tribe. Shortly after Captain Cook's report, anthropologic and psychiatric researchers observed amok in primitive tribes located in the Philippines, Laos, Papua New Guinea, and Puerto Rico. These observers reinforced the belief that cultural factors unique to the primitive tribes caused amok, making culture the accepted explanation for its pathogenesis in these geographically isolated and culturally diverse people. Over the next 2 centuries, occurrences of amok and interest in it as a psychiatric condition waned. The decreasing incidence of amok was attributed to Western civilization's influence on the primitive tribes, thereby eliminating the cultural factors thought to cause the violent behavior. Modern occurrences of amok in the remaining tribes are almost unheard of, and reports in the psychiatric literature ceased around the mid-20th century. Inexplicably, while the frequency of and interest in amok among primitive tribes were decreasing, similar occurrences of violence in industrial societies were increasing. However, since the belief that amok is culturally induced had become deeply entrenched, its connection with modern day episodes of mass violence went unnoticed. The following case reports illustrate the typical violent behavior reported in amok episodes in Malay tribes: In 1846, in the province of Penang, Malaysia, a respectable elderly Malay man suddenly shot and killed 3 villagers and wounded 10 others. He was captured and brought to trial where evidence revealed that he had suddenly lost his wife and only child, and after his bereavement, he became mentally disturbed.2 In 1901, in the province of Phang, Malaysia, a 23-year-old Muslim man who was formerly a member of the police force stole a Malay sword and attacked 5 individuals while they were sleeping or smoking opium. He killed 3, almost decapitating 1 victim, and he seriously wounded the others.2 Contemporary descriptions of multiple homicides by individuals are comparable to the case reports of amok. In the majority of contemporary cases, the slayings are sudden and unprovoked and committed by individuals with a history of mental illness. News media, witnesses, and police reports describe the attackers as being odd or angry persons, suggesting personality pathology or a paranoid disorder; or brooding and suffering from an acute loss, indicating a possible depressive disorder. The number of victims in modern episodes is similar to the number in amok despite the fact that handguns and rifles are used in contrast to the Malay swords of 2 centuries ago. The outcome for the attacker is also analogous to amok, being death, suicide, and less commonly, apprehension. The following report demonstrates the resemblance between amok and contemporary violent behavior: In 1998 in Los Angeles, Ronald Taylor, aged 46, killed 4 of his family members and a friend, and then jumped to his death from a freeway overpass. The police discovered Taylor's victims when they went to his home to inform them of his death. Court records revealed that Taylor was experiencing financial problems, was filing for bankruptcy, and had debts of more than $64,000, including a $21,302 personal loan from his employer and a $5,547 Sears credit card debt.3 Amok was first classified as a psychiatric condition around 1849 on the basis of anecdotal reports and case studies revealing that most individuals who ran amok were mentally ill. Prior to that time, amok was studied and reported as an anthropological curiosity. Historically, observers described 2 forms of amok, but DSM-IV does not differentiate between them. The more common form, beramok, was associated with a personal loss and preceded by a period of depressed mood and brooding; while the infrequent form, amok, was associated with rage, a perceived insult, or vendetta preceding the attack. Based on these early case reports, beramok is plausibly linked to a depressive or mood disorder, while amok appears to be related to psychosis, personality disorders, or a delusional disorder. The early case reports suggest that amok in all likelihood is not a psychiatric condition, but simply a description of violent behavior resulting from another mental illness. The multiple homicides and injuries that occur in amok may represent an unusual manifestation of a depressive condition, a psychotic illness, or a severe personality disorder. It is also probable that certain individuals are predisposed to exhibiting extremely violent behavior when they are suffering from mood disorders or personality disorders.
CONTEMPORARY EXPLANATIONS OF AMOK From a modern perspective, amok should not be considered a culture-bound syndrome, because the only role that culture plays is in how the violent behavior is manifested. An individual's behavior is influenced by environment and culture even in situations where those actions are the product of a mental illness. Thus, the behavior observed in amok 200 years ago in the primitive tribes will necessarily differ from that seen in contemporary cases of violent behavior. Characterizing the violent behavior in amok as the product of another mental illness dispenses with its culture-bound origins and reconciles it with the violent behavior observed in contemporary cases. Previous psychiatric investigators also questioned the culture-bound classification of amok, indicating disagreement with the consensus opinion that was developing circa the first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Pow Meng Yap,4 a psychiatrist for the Hong Kong Government, wrote in 1951 that amok behavior was preceded by a period of brooding, and if the attacker was not killed in the process, it ended when the individual became exhausted and collapsed (and frequently had amnesia for the event). Yap's description of amok suggests a psychotic type of depressive disorder or a dissociative disorder. By the time of Yap's comments, violent behavior similar to amok had been observed in most countries. For a condition to truly be culture bound, it could not be found in other distinct cultures, and culture must be indispensable to its pathogenesis. This has never been the case with amok, or for that matter, with most other psychiatric conditions. Jin-Inn Teoh, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Aberdeen in London, reported in 1972 that amok behavior existed in all countries, differing only in the methods and weapons used in the attacks.5 According to Teoh, culture was a modulating factor that determined how amok was manifested, but not whether or not it occurred. The individual's culture and the weapons available naturally influenced the method of the attack. Teoh's report of amok was one of the last in the psychiatric literature. In the subsequent quarter century, the incidence of violent behavior similar to amok has increased dramatically in industrialized countries, surpassing its incidence in primitive cultures. This increase may be the result of better case reporting and heightened public awareness and interest in violence, combined with an increase in the psychopathology responsible for amok. Teoh's findings and the increase in violent behavior in industrialized societies are further evidence against characterizing amok as a culture-bound syndrome. Amok was thought to be related to suicide, a violent behavior that has never been considered a culturally bound psychiatric condition. In fact, suicide and suicidal behavior are not considered psychiatric conditions at all under present psychiatric classification systems. Suicide is a self-destructive behavior that can occur in a variety of psychopathologic states such as psychotic depression, personality disorders, and schizophrenia. In 1934, John Cooper, a professor of anthropology at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., analogized amok to suicide in an attempt to disprove its classification as a culture-bound syndrome.6 Cooper stated that neither racial, ethnic, nor environmental factors played a role in the pathogenesis of mental diseases and that amok had the same etiology in primitive and industrialized people. Cooper postulated that running amok in primitive tribes was an indirect means of committing suicide.6 Suicide was a rare occurrence in primitive cultures as opposed to industrialized societies. He thought that the same psychosocial stressors leading an industrialized European to commit suicide caused amok in the Malay tribesman. However, Cooper's conceptualization of amok as an expression of suicidal urges does not explain why violent behavior similar to amok is so common in Western cultures like the United States, where societal prohibitions against suicide are not strong. Cooper's theory also implies that suicide and amok are alternate phenomena where culture determines which behavior the individual will manifest. Thus, Cooper's characterization of amok makes culture a necessary factor in its pathogenesis, which is the premise he was attempting to disprove. Suicide and amok share common features and risk factors, but they are nevertheless distinct behaviors.
PREVENTING AMOK Today, amok should be viewed as one possible outcome of an individual's undiagnosed and/or untreated psychiatric condition with psychosis or severe personality pathology. Considering the large number of individuals who have psychotic psychiatric conditions, mood disorders, and personality disorders, amok is still a statistically uncommon occurrence. Nevertheless, the emotional damage that it causes to the victims, their families, and communities goes beyond its small numbers and has an enduring effect. Since it is virtually impossible to stop an amok attack without risking one's life or limb, prevention is the only method of avoiding the damage that it causes. shows the characteristics found in contemporary individuals who run amok. Table 1. Open in a separate window Viewing amok from this new perspective dispels the commonly held perception that episodes of mass violence are random and unpredictable, and thus not preventable. Characterizing amok as the end result of a psychiatric condition reveals that, like suicidal behavior, there are risk factors that can be used to assess a patient's potential for amok and for planning treatment. Identification Preventing episodes of amok requires early recognition of susceptible individuals and prompt treatment of the underlying psychopathologic condition. Medical intervention is virtually impossible once an individual is running amok, and the outcome of his or her violent behavior is no different today than it was 200 years ago before the advent of modern psychiatric diagnosis and treatment. The first step in intervention is identifying those individuals whose psychiatric conditions or psychosocial stressors predispose them to running amok. Identification entails assessing patients for risk factors that are known to be related to violent behavior. General and family practitioners are in a unique position as frontline clinicians to identify these patients. Most individuals who manifest violent behavior similar to amok have had recent contact with medical practitioners preceding their homicidal and suicidal behavior.7 Many of these patients preferentially consult general and family practitioners instead of psychiatrists owing to the perceived stigma attached to consulting a psychiatrist, denial of their mental illness, or fear of validating their suspicion that they have a mental disorder. The limited literature on amok concludes that psychiatric conditions, personality, pathology, and/or recent losses are all important factors in its pathogenesis. However, none of the reports has determined which particular psychiatric conditions or personality disorders are responsible for this susceptibility. Based on the psychiatric literature reports and evidence from contemporary case reports of violent behavior, the factors that should be considered as creating a risk for amok are as follows: a history of a psychotic condition, prior episodes of violent behavior or making violent threats, recent personal losses, violent suicide attempts, and significant personality traits or personality disorders. The more risk factors that a patient has, the greater that patient's potential for acting violently. These risk factors are presented in more detail in . Table 2. Open in a separate window Each risk factor should be assessed through a history taken from the patient supplemented by information collected from family members or observations from those persons familiar with the patient and his or her situation such as friends, neighbors, coworkers, and employers. Medical records obtained from prior health care providers are also useful for uncovering precursors of amok behavior. Patients with psychotic disorders may not be capable of providing reliable and coherent information, while those with personality disorders may minimize or conceal their violent impulses and past behavior. An ongoing interpersonal conflict, especially occurring in school or at work, should be regarded as a significant warning sign for a potential amok episode. Many of the risks factors for amok are similar to those for suicide, and the 2 behaviors frequently converge when the individual's intent is to kill himself or herself following a homicidal spree. The most significant risk factors for suicide are presented in for comparison. Table 3. Open in a separate window Treatment of Underlying Conditions The second step in intervention is treating the patient's underlying psychiatric condition or personality disorder so that running amok never occurs. A primary care practitioner can initiate medical intervention in patients who are susceptible to running amok, but it should be supplemented with a prompt referral for psychiatric or psychological evaluation and treatment, because these patients pose complicated and challenging clinical management cases. The treatment can also be initiated by a nonmedical source through a referral to an employee assistance program, the patient's health insurance provider, or a community mental health clinic. Involuntary psychiatric hospitalization is an option for those patients who are imminently suicidal or homicidal as a result of their mental condition, but patients whose risk factors do not include a major mental illnesses may not qualify for involuntary treatment. This is typically the case with patients who have personality disorders. Proper treatment of the patient at risk for running amok requires that the clinician make an accurate diagnosis that can be used to determine which treatment modalities are best suited for each patient. To date, there is no medication that has been proven to specifically treat violent behavior, and since violence results from multiple factors, it is unlikely that any such medication will be developed in the near future. The mass violence observed in running amok may be caused by a variety of psychiatric conditions, and medical treatment should therefore be aimed at a diagnosable mental disorder or a personality disorder. In general, depressive disorders can be treated with antidepressants and supportive psychotherapy. Antidepressants are effective in alleviating depressive symptoms and depressive disorders in 85% of cases.7 Antidepressants should be started in therapeutic doses, and the patient should be monitored for symptom improvement within 6 to 8 weeks. The selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors should be the first-line treatment choice because of their rapid therapeutic response as compared with tricyclic antidepressants and evidence that serotonin depletion plays a role in suicidal and violent behavior.8 The supportive psychotherapeutic goal is to prevent violent behavior, and the clinician should take an active role in the therapy and enlist the help of the patient's family and social support network. If the patient has signs of psychosis along with the depressive disorder, then an initial treatment period with antipsychotic medications may be necessary until the antidepressant's mood-elevating effect is achieved. While most patients can be managed in outpatient settings, those with severe psychotic symptoms or with homicidal or suicidal urges occurring during their depressive illness may require hospitalization. Patients who have psychotic disorders such as paranoid schizophrenia or delusional disorder should be treated with antipsychotic medications. Antipsychotic agents are effective in reducing the thought disorder, hallucinations, and delusions in schizophrenia, mania, and nonspecific psychotic disorders.9 The antipsychotic agents are only modestly effective in controlling violent behavior resulting from nonpsychotic conditions such as borderline personality and antisocial personality disorders.10 Anticonvulsants have been used and found effective to control violent behavior in limited series of patients.11 However, their use, like that of the other medications discussed for treating violent behavior, is still considered experimental and off-label.12 The only exception to the general statement regarding off-label usage is when anticonvulsants such as valproate or carbamazepine are used to treat violent behavior associated with mania. The antimanic agent lithium is still the first line of treatment for bipolar disorder and mania. Hospitalization may be necessary to prevent these patients from harming themselves or others, and most state laws provide for involuntary commitments. After hospitalization, or if the symptoms do not warrant it, partial hospitalization and day treatment programs are useful as a means of monitoring patients' behavior and adjusting their medications in response to it.
SUMMARY In summary, running amok should no longer be considered an archaic culture-bound syndrome. A more useful and modern approach is that amok represents an extreme form of violent behavior occurring as a result of a mental disorder, personality pathology, and psychosocial stressors. Early recognition of the risk factors for amok and prompt treatment of the underlying psychiatric condition or personality disorder offer the best chance of preventing it. Finally, conceptualizing the mass violence of amok as the manifestation of another mental disorder provides a framework in which future occurrences of mass violence can be analyzed. Drug names: carbamazepine (Tegretol and others), lithium (Eskalith and others). |
Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp is said to be pursuing Dinamo Zagreb midfielder Ante Coric.
Coric has established himself as a key member of the Dinamo midfield, making 28 appearances in the Prva HNL in 2015/16, after making his debut for the club in 2014.
At just 19, Coric is one of Croatia’s finest young talents, and was awarded the Croatian Hope of the Year last year.
Now, Coric is believed to have garnered the interest of Klopp, who is looking to add the attacking midfielder to his Liverpool squad this summer, in an £11.5 million deal.
This is according to Croatian publication Sportske Novosti, who claim Klopp has contacted Coric and is pushing for a meeting with the youngster.
Coric is said to be attracting a number of top European clubs this summer, including Tottenham Hotspur and Man City, but Liverpool are leading the race to secure his signature.
The former Red Bull Salzburg youth is reportedly “at the top of the list of signings for next season,” and Klopp would look to use a fellow Croatian, Dejan Lovren, to ease Coric’s transition into life at Liverpool.
Coric is a versatile attacking midfielder most comfortable in the No. 10 role, but also able to operate on either wing and in a deeper position in midfield.
At just under 5’8″, Coric may initially struggle to adapt to the Premier League, but as an intelligent, creative talent, he may look to navigate this in much the same way as Philippe Coutinho.
Best picking up the ball from deep and driving at defences with skill and pace, Coric could fit into Klopp’s fast-moving attacking system, though he would need to improve on his defensive contribution.
With 80 senior appearances to his name at the age of 19, however, Klopp would be acquiring an experienced young player in Coric, and could look to mould his talents to fit his vision.
With Marko Grujic arriving this summer and Liverpool already having a plethora of midfielders among their ranks, the question is whether they really need yet another young midfielder? |
GREENVILLE, N.C. - East Carolina junior quarterback Kurt Benkert has decided to transfer out of the Pirates' program according to an announcement from head football coach Scottie Montgomery on Monday afternoon.
Benkert, who was sidelined during the entire 2015 season after suffering a knee injury last Aug. 25, did not immediately indicate where he would finish his collegiate career.
"While it was initially disappointing to hear, our immediate focus needs to remain on Pirates who want to be Pirates," Montgomery said. "We had a very competitive spring at many positions and the objective is for that energy, work ethic and ambition to continue throughout the summer and into preseason camp. I am impressed by the leadership we currently have in place on this team and my confidence in those young men grows on a daily basis."
After successfully completing a rehabilitation assignment last fall and winter, Benkert was fully cleared to participate this spring and competed against senior Philip Nelson for the Pirates' starting position. Montgomery and offensive coordinator Tony Petersen were in the midst of an ongoing evaluation process at the time Benkert informed both coaches about his decision to depart ECU.
Benkert played in three games as a redshirt freshman behind Shane Carden in 2014, completing eight-of-10 passes for 58 yards and suffering one interception. He also scored a pair of touchdowns on five carries.
"I am saddened to announce that I am transferring from East Carolina University," Benkert said. "I am very blessed for the opportunity that ECU has given me in obtaining my degree, and am forever thankful for the support from such great coaches, teammates, faculty and fans. This was a very tough decision that came from a lot of sleepless nights and conversations from those close to me. With that being said, I feel it is in my best interest to explore other options for graduate school. Thank you again Pirate Nation for the support throughout the last three years, it was never unnoticed and I will forever be grateful for it."
Benkert, who has two years of football eligibility remaining, is on track to earn a bachelor's degree in business administration with a concentration in finance during ECU's Spring Commencement on May 6. |
I’m sure I don’t need to tell all of our American readers that your income taxes are due on April 17 (it’s usually April 15, but since that was a Sunday this year, we got a short little extension). While you might have made some seemingly strange deductions on your income taxes in the past, chances are that you’ve got nothing on these ballsy write offs, although, surprisingly, many of them have been accepted by the IRS. Image Via kenteegardin [Flickr]/Senior Living
9 That Have Been Accepted:
Fancy Dresses. The catch here is that the dresses that TV star Dinah Shore was able to write off could only be used on her show as they were so tight that she couldn’t even sit down on them. Being as how they could only be used for her work, the IRS let her keep the deduction.
Boob Jobs. Not just anyone can write off a breast enhancement, but if you’re a stripper who gets the surgery so you can make more tips, you might just qualify. After all, Chesty Love already won a battle with the IRS over whether or not her 56 FF enhancement should count, the court agreed that if she didn’t get them she could lose money to other dancers. This same principal applies to lingerie, make up, and other accessories that dancers in this trade might need for work, as long as they can prove the items aren’t being used for personal purposes outside of the club.
Image Via Caza_No_7 [Flickr]
Body Oil. It’s not just women who get to claim deductions related to their appearance. Professional body builders are allowed to claim (legal) products they use to keep their muscles looking great. While steroids don’t qualify, body oil and tanning sessions do. Clarinet Lessons. Don’t get too ready to sign up for music lessons. This deduction was only allowed in one specific circumstance where a doctor recommended a patient take up the instrument because it has been known to help lessen the pain associated with an overbite. Since it was considered a legitimate medical expense at that point, the patient’s parents were allowed to write it off.
Swimming Pools. Like the clarinet, this isn’t a deduction most people will be qualified to take, but in the case of one patient with osteoarthritis, it was considered a valid medical expense. That’s because his doctor recommended he start swimming for physical therapy. After that, the installation, the chemicals, the cost to heat the pool and the insurance were all considered legitimate medical expenses. I wonder if swimming could help treat my migraines…
Image Via snowpea&bokchoi [Flickr]
Evian Water. Believe it or not, swimming pools and clarinet lessons aren’t the craziest medical deductions by any stretch of the imagination. One woman managed to get a prescription for three bottles of Evian water a day, allowing her to deduct $1,095 of bottled water from her taxes.
Cat Food. No, the IRS hasn’t started letting people claim their pets as dependents (although many people have tried), but if your business has a cat for a legitimate business reason, you can deduct the price of cat food. Unfortunately, book store kitties don’t count; the cats actually have to do something to help your company. In the case of two junkyard owners though, a kitty was able to be deducted since he helped them keep their property free from snakes, rats, and other vermin. While the IRS originally tried to fight the deduction, the tax court agreed with the couple and let them write off the price of cat food.
Image Via L'Yoshka [Flickr]
Carrier Pigeons. While most people who keep carrier pigeons these days do it more as a hobby, there are some people so distrustful of technology that they refuse to use telephones or computers. When one such person turned to carrier pigeons to communicate with his business partner who lived across town, he thought it was only fair that he get to write off the price of the pigeons, along with their food, care and housing. His CPA determined the pigeons were a legit expense, given that it was the only way the man kept in touch with his business partner.
Beer. No, you can’t get drunk and claim it was a medical or business expense, but when a gas station owner offer offered free beer as part of a promotion to entice customers, it was accepted as a legitimate business expense.
8 That Have Been Rejected:
Image Via deege@fermentarium.com [Flickr]
Therapeutic Sex. Even if sex with prostitutes can cure your erectile dysfunction and erotic massages can get rid of your osteoarthritis (as one retired lawyer claimed when deducting $113,537 worth of therapeutic sex services), if prostitution is illegal in your state, you can’t write it off because you can’t deduct illegal expenses. For the record, the same applies to medicinal marijuana, seeing as how it is still illegal on the federal level.
Drug Dealing Expenses. Speaking of drugs, if you work in an illegal industry, like, say, drug dealing, you can’t write off your business expenses. To be fair, most drug dealers don’t pay taxes, but when one drug dealer was already facing prison time, he decided he didn’t want to risk having to serve more time for tax fraud. So, he hired a CPA and recorded all of his income, which must have been difficult without any receipts or 1099s.
Recreational Drugs. It might not come as a shock to you that you can’t write off the cost of recreational drugs like cocaine or ecstasy given that you can’t write off prostitutes or the cost of selling drugs. Of course, that doesn’t mean people haven’t tried. One rock band tried to write off almost $100,000 worth of drugs as part of their “travel and entertainment” expenses. The group’s bookkeeper had concluded that for a rock band, recreational drugs are considered a necessary and ordinary expense. Fortunately, their accountant had the good sense to realize that the IRS would see things differently and removed the deduction from their return.
Image Via Beacon Radio [Flickr]
Arson. If you think therapeutic sex services and drugs are ridiculous deductions, wait until you hear about the business owner who tried to write off arson as a business expense. The man hired an arsonist to burn his failing furniture store down and received $500,000 in insurance money as a result. Unsatisfied with his ill-gotten gain, the man went ahead and wrote off $10,000 for “consulting services” on his tax return and when he was audited, the truth came out that his “consultant” was actually a paid arsonist. Both of the men went to jail and the furniture store owner was also fined $6,000 by the IRS.
Babies. They already count as a dependent, so it hardly seems fair for them to also qualify as a business expense, but one woman from Arizona thought that because she used her baby in her marketing materials that she should be able to write off its clothing, food, nanny, diapers and baby powder to the tune of $26,000. While her CPA agreed that the photographer who took the pictures of the baby and its onesies that bore her company logo could count, that was about it.
Whiskey. While free beer might have qualified for a deduction, free whiskey didn’t. Of course, it was more likely a result of how the product was deducted rather than what it was. That’s because one man decided to write off the price of a few cases of whiskey he gave to clients as gifts. Unfortunately the gift violated state laws and didn’t count as “client entertainment,” the category he listed the deductions under.
Image Via flaringshutter [Flickr]
Pole Dancing Classes. These might be a great way to spice up a marriage, but you can’t write them off because seeing your wife pole dance helps you relax after work. One man tried using the deduction under the “meals and entertainment” category, but his CPA told him that the $800 classes would certainly not qualify under IRS rules.
Painting Spatulas. At first glance, this seems like it would be a reasonable deduction for a painter. Unfortunately, while you can write off tools of your trade and you can write off business trips, you can’t take a vacation to Brazil, buy some spatulas while there and consider it a business expense. I know we probably have some accountants that read our site. Do any of you have any tales of crazy tax deductions? Of course, you regular readers are invited to include yours as well, but please don’t mention anything that’s liable to get you in trouble if it caught the attention of the IRS. I certainly don’t want to be responsible for someone getting audited.
Sources: Mental Floss, Turbo Tax Blog, PT Money, CNN, Wise Bread and Bank Rate |
Exceptional British 1950s Scifi Artwork
Quintessential Space Pulp Art by Ron Turner and others
Toy Robots to Have and to Hold
Share your life with a bunch of cute Japanese toy robots!
Retro Future: Glorious Transportation Update
Making you hate your current family car since 1951
Giant Robots!
Giant Robot Structures Around the World... Standing... Waiting...
Nuclear Everything!
Atoms in the Air, on Wheels, Rails, etc.
Retrofuture Transportation Showcase!
Part 2 of the highly popular series
Where's My Jetpack?
The greatest invention that never was
The Eccentric Brilliance of Stan Mott
The craziest vehicle ideas you ever likely to see
Gigantic City-Structures of Paolo Soleri
Not just really big cities... Cities the size of mountains
Amazing Submarine Concepts
Every kind, except the yellow ones
Luigi Colani Radical Designs Update
These forms cry out "FUTURE!" in a way that cannot be ignored.
Extravagant Designs by Luigi Colani
Love them, or hate them, there is no middle ground
Airship Dreams
Extreme Dirigibles for the modern age
Retro-Future:
Mind-boggling Transportation
Not your average Jetsons flying car
Retro-Future: Glorious Urbanism
When living in mega-cities was considered a privilege
Future of the Urban Transport
Would you ditch your car for one of these systems?
Future Tech Review
Exciting Innovations in Transportation |
The racism of a recent Chinese advertisement that portrays a laundry detergent as so strong it can wash away the skin color of a black man has caused some backlash on the internet.
In the ad, a Chinese woman is doing laundry when a paint-streaked young black man leans on the door and whistles appreciatively at her. She beckons him toward her and as he gets close, she pops a packet of Qiaobi detergent into his mouth and shoves him into the washing machine. A few seconds later, out pops a clean, pale-skinned Chinese man, apparently much more to her liking.
The ad, a knock-off of an Italian commercial, seems to confirm what many have experienced in China: blunt prejudice and racism towards anyone with dark skin, including darker toned Chinese. And indeed, racism endures in China, where blacks are often referred to as heigui, or “black ghost,” a reversal of the traditional derogatory term for foreigners of baigui, or “white ghost.” Africans say they are regularly ignored by taxi drivers. Even Chinese state media are frequently tone deaf when it comes to US president Barack Obama.
But that’s not the full story. The internet outrage about the ad has obscured one more hopeful development—criticism within China to its racism. In fact, most Chinese users discussing the commercial (registration required) on the microblogging platform Weibo agreed that it was ”racist,” “horrible and disgusting.”
One user wrote, ”This is undoubtedly racial discrimination. Those that can get on YouTube [which is blocked in China], should denounce the ad and make clear that it is the producers of this video who are racist, not the majority of Chinese.”
Calls to the investor relation hotline shown at the end of the commercial went unanswered. The Qiaobi brand is owned by Shanghai Leishang Cosmetics Co. Ltd, according to the brand’s Sina Weibo profile. Messages to that account were also unanswered.
“The advert is a stark reminder of China’s conservative, agrarian, inward-looking culture, despite its new-found commercial ambitions and rapid ascension onto the global stage,” says Solange Chatelard, a research associate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology who studies China-Africa relations and migration.
Commercial depictions of Africa or Africans in China often associate the continent with exoticism, but few have been as blatant as this ad, said Giovanna Puppin, a lecturer in media and communications at the University of Leicester, who has studied Chinese media portrayals of Africans. ”It is quite striking how this Chinese ad for Qiaobi fuels sexual and racial stereotypes in a very explicit and unprecedented way,” Puppin says.
What the ad doesn’t show is years of evolving attitudes toward blacks in some parts of China, as a result of thousands of Africans moving to China since the early 2000s.
There are as many as 300,000 Africans (link in Chinese) in China’s southern economic hub of Guangzhou. They mingle with local Chinese people, doing business with them, and in many cases forging friendships. Beijing and Shanghai are also home to pockets of Africans who have come to learn Chinese or find work.
In some ways, Chinese attitudes toward Africans are actually more welcoming than other host countries, according to a study released last month by Min Zhou from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Zhou found that the overwhelming majority of the over 500 Chinese surveyed did not see Africans as a threat to their jobs, neighborhoods, or way of life. Rather, most believed that African migrants contributed positively to the local economy as well as the globalization and the multiculturalism of their city.
One interviewee, a 32-year-old woman selling jeans in the Xiaobei neighborhood known for its many African traders, said:
I was a little scared at first sight of these black men coming to my store, especially when they looked right into your eyes and grinned. The Chinese don’t do that. After a while, I got used to them. They are just people who look different. They are polite and respectful, bring good business. In business, I’d say they need me and I need them… [I] later became friends with a couple of them and introduced them to my other friends who sell electronics. We used to hang out in McDonald’s for lunch.
The ad also comes at a time when more African-Chinese couples are being seen in Chinese news reports, film, and documentaries, according to Puppin.
“I consider this to be a downturn in the representation of Africans in Chinese media,” she says. ”Nonetheless, we need to keep in mind that that many ad campaigns are created just to create controversy, and also that advertising relies on stereotypes everywhere in the world.” |
The Gains of Drudgery
From The Making of Manhood, 1894
By William James Dawson
By drudgery, I mean work that in itself is not pleasant, that has no immediate effect in stimulating our best powers, and that only remotely serves the purpose of our general advancement. Such a definition may not be perfect, but it expresses with reasonable accuracy what we usually understand by the term.
Now, if this is what we mean by drudgery, it is clear that we are all drudges. We all have to do many things, day by day, which we would rather not do. Even in the callings that seem to present the most perfect correspondence between gifts and work, such as those of the writer or the artist, drudgery dogs the heels of all progress…We show some perception of these facts in our common sayings, that easy writing makes hard reading, and what costs a man little is usually worth little. But few of us have any adequate sense of the immense toil which lies behind the brilliant successes of the great artist or famous writer. And the same thing might be said of the lives of great statesmen, politicians, reformers, merchants, and memorable men in all walks of life. Examine such lives, and the amount of prolonged toil which lies behind all the glitter of public fame is enormous, and to the indolent even appalling. If any man of the Elizabethan period gives the impression of having achieved great things with a certain airy ease and instinctive facility of touch, it is Walter Raleigh. Yet it was of Raleigh that Elizabeth said, “he could toil terribly.” The same thing may be said of every great man, so that it is small wonder that we have learned to believe that genius itself is simply an infinite capacity for taking pains.
When a man grumbles about the drudgery of his lot, then I am entitled to conclude that he has not learned the discipline of work, and that it is native indolence rather than suppressed genius which chafes against the limitations of his environment. Browning, in his poem of The Statue and the Bust, has laid down the doctrine that it is a man’s wisdom to contend to the uttermost even for the meanest prize that may be within his reach, because by such strenuous contention manhood grows, and by the lack of it manhood decays.
The clerk who does not strive to be the best clerk in the office, the carpenter who is not emulous of being the best carpenter in the workshop, is not likely to achieve excellence in any other pursuit for which he imagines his superior talents better fitted….I have little faith in the youth who is always crying out against his condition, and telling an incredulous world what great things he could do if his lot were different. The boast of general talents for everything usually resolves itself into particular talents for nothing. The incompetent clerk, in nine cases out of ten, would be equally incompetent as writer, artist, or speaker. If I were adjured to help a youth to some sphere supposed to be better suited to his gifts, I should first of all need to be convinced that he had performed faithfully the duties of the inferior sphere in which he found himself. The superior talent always shows itself in the superior performance of inferior duties. It is the man who is faithful in little things to whom there is given authority over larger things. He who has never learned the art of drudgery is never likely to acquire the faculty of great and memorable work, since the greater a man is, the greater is his power of drudgery.
But the gains of drudgery are not seen only in the solid successes of life, but in their effect upon the man himself. Let me take in illustration a not infrequent case. Suppose a man gives up his youth to the struggle for some coveted degree, some honour or award of the scholarly life. It is very possible that when he obtains that for which he has struggled, he may find that the joy of possession is not so great as the joy of the strife. It is part of the discipline of life that we should be educated by disillusion; we press onward to some shining summit, only to find that it is but a bastion thrown out by a greater mountain, which we did not see, and that the real summit lies far beyond us still. But are we the worse for the struggle? No; we are manifestly the better, for by whatever illusion we have been led onward, it is at least clear that without the illusion we should not have stood as high as we do. So a man may either fail or succeed in gaining the prize which he covets; but he cannot help being the gainer in himself. He has not attained, but he has fitted himself for attaining. It is better to fail in achieving a great thing than to succeed in achieving a little one, and the struggle that fails is, in any case, to be preferred to the stolidity which never aspires. And why? Because the struggle is sure to develop certain great and noble qualities in ourselves. Thus, though such a man may not gain the prize he sought, he has gained a command over his chance desires, a discipline of thought, a power of patient application, a steadiness of will and purpose, which will stand him in good stead throughout whatever toils his life may know in the hidden years which lie before it. And even if he gain the prize he sought, the real prize is found not in a degree, a certificate, a brief taste of applause on a commemoration day, but in the deeper strength of soul, the wider range of wisdom, which the long discipline of unflagging effort has taught him. So true is this, that Lessing, who was among the wisest of thinkers, said, that if he had to choose between the attainment of truth and the search for truth, he would prefer the latter. The true gain is always in the struggle, not the prize. What we become must always rank as a far higher question than what we get. |
by
There are three reasons why Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie probably took first place on io9’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2013 and why it deserves to be at the top of such a list. Even if you don’t care for io9 and their selection, this is a book that you should give a chance for the following reasons (they’re the same reasons Leckie’s work topped io9’s list).
One – Ancillary Justice is a novel of manners set in space. That’s not to say it’s Pride and Prejudice with the Bennet sisters talking about Mr. Darcy will sipping space tea in their space manor. Leckie is such a capable author that she has been able to distill the fundamental issues with cultural clashes into a piece of genre fiction. Don’t take that to mean there aren’t guns or spaceships, because there are plenty of those. But in a galaxy-spanning series the human race is not going to be a homogeneous entity, and Leckie has a keen eye for the plethora of differences that can arise across such a distance. Leckie is admirably compared to Iain M Banks for her depictions of an intergalactic culture and what that would be comprised of, along with the scope and scale of the story itself. And it’s nice to see a story where misunderstandings abound, traditions are not those of the modern United States, and violence isn’t the immediate answer.
Two – It’s a story of revenge, but not as you know it. Ancillary Justice is not a simple story of a human seeking to right a slight or see their family name restored. It’s about a singular spaceship wanting to bring down the very empire it’s a part of. That’s right; a spaceship is out for revenge – not its crew, or captain, but the AI that runs the ship. Where the idea that this book is a novel of manners may have put you off, the fact that it’s also a revenge story will keep you reading just to find out how the ship, Justice of Toren, gets its revenge. And because it’s a story of vengeance that means there are fights. Some are with words as various forces maneuver through the complexities and minutiae of social strata, while others are with fists and guns. The beauty of a story like this is the advanced nature of the society, the characters involved and the technology make it so a gun, knife or vial of poison aren’t always the most immediate answer when conflict resolution is needed.
Three – Gender biases have been thrown out the airlock in Ancillary Justice. Gone are the proscribed roles of modern, western culture. Gone is the predominate use of the masculine pronoun. Gone is any real sense of gender in the book. That’s not to say gender isn’t a factor at times, but given this is a novel of manners it requires the main characters to navigate through the murky cultural associations that locals ascribe to different genders such as roles, physical attributes and behavior. Leckie has replaced most pronouns with she and her, illustrating wonderfully how easy it is to use another gender at no loss to the story. Leckie herself may be trying to make a point about the biases of science fiction and in doing so adding significantly to the discussion on gender issues within the genre; regardless, she has managed to create a supremely convincing culture where it seems only natural to refer to everyone as a she.
Ancillary Justice is a book that should be read. Not just because it’s building on the discussion of modern issues, but because it’s an entertaining read that anyone, regardless of gender identification, would find hard not to enjoy. At three hundred some pages for the e-book edition, Leckie has turned out a superb space opera that has opened a whole new universe. Anyone in the need for a good read should pick up Ancillary Justice or gift it to a friend who’s never read any science fiction to show them the possibilities the universe holds.
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Review by: Gregory Pellechi |
Unity Editor Download Assistant
Component Installers Windows
Component Installers Mac
We are happy to announce Unity 5.3.4p4. The release notes and the corresponding issue tracker link for issues fixed in this release are as shown below.
As always, patch releases are recommended only for users affected by those bugs fixed in that patch.
Improvements
Asset Management: Introduced AssetDatabase.GetAssetDependencyHash method which returns the hash of all the dependencies of an asset.
OpenGL: ComputeBuffer now uses the same data layout as DX whenever automatically translated shaders are used. Therefore no more special layout handling for ComputeBuffer.SetData/GetData is needed based on the graphics API and any such user code should be removed. The only exception is with manually written GLSL shaders. In that case the OpenGL data layout rules must be taken into account.
Fixes
(767741) - Added support for IPv6 networks in UdpClient::Recieve .
(763755) - Android: Fix for GPU skinning on Adreno GPUs.
(771542) - Android: Fixed incorrect width/height when changing orientation after changing antialiasing settings.
(761744) - Android: Fixed Standard Shader lighting issue caused by half-precision overflow on Mali GPUs.
(787491) - Android: Fixed a crash in the Development build for some Android devices with PVR GPUs (e.g. Asus Memo Pad).
(751530) - Android: Fixed crash when load scenes intermittently.
(777617) - Android: Workarounds for OpenGL ES 3 shader compiler problems on Adreno GPUs.
(786873) - Animation: Fixed crash when an animation key tried to activate a gameobject which had animator attached to it.
(783821) - Animation: Fixed crash when calling Animator.Update(0) in an AnimationEvent.
(774484) - Animation: Fixed an issue where the scale was not working in editor on GameObject with OptmizeGameObject.
(747800) - AssetBundles: Fixed a crash while loading asset bundle asynchronously.
(782773) - AssetBundles: Fixed a potential crash when decompressing corrupted lzma bundles.
(768965) - AssetBundles: Print build size stats also for normal asset bundles.
(none) - Compute: Do not log warnings/errors when current build target does not support compute shaders.
(738249) - Core: ArgumentCache.TidyAssemblyTypeName is alloc-free if the type name is already clean.
(750423) - Editor : Fix for core assemblies not being reloaded after encountering errors in user scripts.
(759288) - Editor: Fixed a crash when padding ASTC texture when building from command line.
(588531) - Editor: Fixed an inconsistency between visible and hidden meta file modes, where empty folders were recreated in 'visible' mode.
(746964) - Editor: Fixed crash on launch if "metadata" folder is deleted before launching.
(709059) - Editor: Fixed performance issue in SpriteInspector.
(784727) - Editor: Fixed wrong error message when returning license via command line.
(782752) - Editor: Improved error messages for unsupported target platform in batch mode.
(763231) - Editor: Remove SelectionBase from LOD Group.
(none) - Editor: Sped up importing of some Fonts by updating progress bar less often than "crazy often".
(664953) - GI: Clamped DynamicGI.indirectScale to allowed range.
(662572) - GI: Disabled LightProbeGroup components no longer display visualization in the scene view.
(753822) - GI: Fixed errors when using baked lightmaps & multi-scene editing.
(743273) - GI: Fixed realtime GI texture coordinates sometimes going wrong on static-batches meshes.
(757575) - GI: Fixed some cases of scenes not referencing the correct lighting data asset after bake.
(none) - GI: Improved wording of various Enlighten error messages.
(753822) - GI: Now properly initialize baked scenes in some code paths to avoid error on console.
(769539) - Graphics: Fixed internal profiler for static batching on Android, iPhone and Metro.
(765378) - Graphics: Fixed material index not being used when calling Graphics.DrawMeshNow with rotation.
(768171) - Graphics: Fixed PackTextures crash if called on a Crunch-compressed texture that is not marked as readable.
(775261) - Graphics: Fixed static batching errors when meshes have additional vertex data streams with mismatching vertex count.
(766992) - Graphics: Upgrading a shader with a DX11 [annotation] at the start of the file now doesn't crash.
(767741) - IL2CPP: Now correctly return the remote end point from a UDP socket receive call in an IPv6 network.
(781921) - IL2CPP: Now generate proper code for COM marshaling of a struct that contains a field of type object array.
(778668) - iOS: Do not export non-prefixed freetype2 symbols now.
(774544) - iOS: Fixed the incorrect ABI for int64 types on iOS.
(774685) - iOS: Ensure that our symbols are not overridden by user libraries.
(none) - MacDownloadAssistant: Fixed window focus issue after security prompt.
(767348) - OpenGL: Fixed a bunch of compute shader structured buffer access corner case issues.
(none) - OpenGL: Fixed invalid shader code generation when using gl_PrimitiveID or bitFieldInsert().
(none) - OpenGL: Fixed multiple simultaneous append/consume compute buffers usage.
(765905) - Particles: Do not restart simulation when becoming visible, and use bigger timesteps, to reduce performance spike.
(774931) - Particles: Fixed a crash when material is missing and mesh colors are requested.
(757377) - Particles: Fixed a crash when using SubEmitters with separate rotation axes.
(496494) - Particles: Fixed culling when using SetParticles.
(783433) - Particles: Fixed a crash caused when using Inherit Velocity Module.
(776143) - Particles: Fixed an issue where the Material Property Blocks not working with mesh particles.
(786032) - Physics2D: Fix to ensure that changing a Collider2D property via the inspector doesn't reset the OnCollision or OnTrigger state back to 'Enter'.
(none) - Physics: Ensure that OnTriggerExit2D is not called when changing Rigidbody2D 'isKinematic' property.
(766891) - Physics: Provide feedback to allow working around crashes occurring when input meshes contain invalid vertices.
(788037) - UI: Fixed Selectable not handling when the EventSystem is null.
(none) - Wii U: Added crash fixes, memory efficiency and 16-bit texture support.
(784466) - Windows Editor/Standalone: SystemInfo.deviceModel will now report model name and manufacturer.
(787522) - Windows Store: Fixed Screen.orientation returning AutoRotation on startup.
(785743) - Windows Store: Fixed .NET native compiler crash when using managed plugin that already has an assembly initializer defined. One of such assemblies was "Rewired_Core.dll".
(784912) - Windows Store: Fixed a crash when de-serializing a struct with a list or an array inside from an empty json string.
(784908) - Windows Store: Fixed building player when there are plugins in the project that are marked "read-only".
(755238) - Windows Store: Microsoft .NET compiler will always ouput errors in english ignoring OS region settings, the same way as Mono compiler.
(760391) - Windows Store: When building scripts using Microsoft C# compiler on il2cpp scripting backend now identical references are passed to it compared to when using Mono C# compiler. This fixed issues that resulted in compiler errors saying "SupportClass is already defined in another assembly".
Revision: 43a3882ae25c |
What's happening: Public anger has been the most uniform signal from the raft of U.S. and European elections won by anti-establishment figures since 2016. As sociologists and other researchers have sought reasons why, a common answer has been a sense of loss of accustomed community and stature — a rising number of immigrants, a cratering of jobs from automation and the movement of factories abroad, and a feeling of siege by menacing outside forces.
As we've reported, a number of experts call this tribalism, a feeling of attack on a person's elemental identity. Now, CEOs and academics are looking for how to restore the lost sense of security.
As my colleague Erica Pandey wrote, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said earlier this month, "When someone walks into Walmart, I want them to feel, 'I belong here.'"
In "The Future of Capitalism," British economist Paul Collier writes that people need a renewed sense of purpose. They lost the one many felt from World War II through the 1970s. Instead, the economic system has beaten them down.
The problem, Collier argues, is that the advanced economies have truncated the lessons of Adam Smith, the father of capitalism. They have focused on the invisible hand — self interest — and neglected their need to belong to a job or community. Capitalism fails, he writes, when it is "tainted by relying on the single drive of greed."
The upside of bowling: While McMillon suggests the answer is more trips to Walmart and Collier a rehabilitated sense of purpose, Samuel Abrams, a professor at Sarah Lawrence College, calls for more visits to traditional local hangouts.
Abrams spent three years conducting a survey of 2,411 people along with the American Enterprise Institute and the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.
A major finding: If you want to create a sense of belonging, a bowling alley is a great place to start. "They are booming. People want to go somewhere," he told me this morning. "In bowling alleys there is real interaction. There is not texting. You are standing around doing something together."
What is a bowling alley? A shared space where people can gather physically — versus virtually — and connect with their neighbors.
This may sound superficial, but it's not, says Abrams. A survey of people who answered some 60 pages of questions found a correlation between the presence of a library or bowling alley close to a person's residence, and their feeling of community. And when they had that feeling, they tended to speak positively about their neighbors and neighborhood.
"When you have [a bowling alley] in your community, the sense of belonging number goes up," Abrams said.
This is full circle from Robert Putnam's classic "Bowling Alone," which, as a metaphor for lost community, bemoaned a shrinkage in the number of bowling leagues.
But, but, but: A lot of people — perhaps lacking a nearby bowling alley — are still finding their anchor in partisan politics, according to Bruce Mehlman, a political lobbyist in Washington, DC. "Politics increasingly fills the void previously served by rotary clubs and bowling leagues," he says, "with partisan tribalism replacing communitarianism." |
Just after midnight on Jan. 23, 2014, a blaze broke out in the kitchen of the Résidence du Havre nursing home in L'Isle-Verte, Que.
Thanks to the inept response that followed, 32 seniors – who had moved to an institutional setting in order to be safe and cared for, let's not forget – died horrific deaths.
A year later, we need to wonder aloud if we actually learned anything from yet another preventable tragedy. The orgy of inaction and excuse-making that has followed suggests the answer is a resounding "No."
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There has been an extensive police investigation, but no criminal charges have been laid. The Crown prosecutors' office is still mulling things over, but history suggests no one will be going to jail.
The obligatory coroner's inquest, headed by Cyrille Delage, wrapped up just before Christmas. He heard testimony from 60 witnesses over eight days and, while Mr. Delage has not yet produced a final report, some key facts emerged. (And, remember, a coroner can only make recommendations, he cannot point fingers of blame.)
Initially, the fire was blamed on 96-year-old Paul-Étienne Michaud, an occasional smoker. But crime scene investigators found that the fire started in the kitchen just below Mr. Michaud's room and he was, in fact, the first victim.
There was one worker responsible for the overnight care of the 52 residents of the nursing home, even though most were over 85 and suffering from mobility and cognitive challenges. The actions of that employee, Bruno Bélanger, on the fateful night were head-scratchingly bizarre.
After the fire started, he ran by the rooms of at least a dozen residents without notifying them, saying he was in a rush to get to the room of his employer/girlfriend at the opposite end of the complex, because that was "protocol."
Mr. Bélanger, however, had never participated in a single fire drill and said he didn't even know how to operate a fire extinguisher, even though he was a fire extinguisher salesman for 15 years – a palpable irony.
The front door of the nursing home was locked and could not be opened from the inside. Several bodies were found there; most others were found on balconies, where residents prayed for help that did not come fast enough. The bodies were so badly burned that they had to be identified by the serial numbers on their artificial hips and false teeth.
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It took 18 minutes for volunteer firefighters to arrive on the scene and the fire chief did not call in reinforcements until 19 minutes after he arrived on-site, and the closest professional firefighting crew, in Rivière-du-Loup was never called. Once again, the excuse was "protocol." Turns out that most of the firefighters didn't have proper training either; the municipality said it didn't want to impose on volunteers. (The insurance company for the property is suing L'Isle-Verte for $2.3-milliion, arguing the response was inadequate.)
The most disturbing testimony of all, however, came from Lise Veilleux of the Régie du bâtiment, the provincial agency responsible for building standards.
A key contributing factor to the disaster was that there was no sprinkler system in the part of the building where everyone died. When asked if sprinklers were mandatory, Ms. Veilleux gave such a Byzantine and bureaucratic explanation, that the mild-mannered Mr. Delage exploded with anger : "Does anyone understand these [rules] other than you?"
The law should be simple and straightforward: Every institutional facility like a nursing home should have an automatic sprinkler system. Period.
Mr. Delage first made that recommendation in 1969, when he conducted an inquest into the Repos du Vieillard nursing home fire in Notre-Dame-du-Lac that killed 38 seniors.
Since then there have been too many similar tragedies with mass casualties, including the Chafe's Nursing Home fire in Petty Harbour, Nfld., on Boxing Day 1976 that left 21 people dead, and the 1980 fire at the Extendicare home in Mississauga that claimed the lives of 25 seniors. And that is without mentioning the incidents that occur all too often that claim "only" a couple of lives.
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How much more carnage do we need before taking decisive action? There are more than 400,000 Canadian seniors living in institutional settings, and they deserve to be in a safe setting. Yet, in Quebec, fewer than half of nursing homes have sprinkler systems.
As Mr. Delage is fond of saying : "The best way to fight fires is with prevention."
But there have been far too many inquiries and far too little action on their recommendations. |
Waste-to-energy technology can work in two ways: either by burning bio waste directly or by heating solid waste material until it becomes a gas that can be converted it synthetic fuel. In the case of the Owego plant, the eventual goal is to build a sorting facility that can take municipal waste headed for the landfill, remove the recyclables, and convert the remaining biomass to fuel using Concord Blue's Reformer technology. Because the biomass fuel is heated in an oxygen-free environment, Lockheed says it far exceeds environmental requirements.
For now, however, the plant has already helped reduce carbon emissions by 9,000 metric tons per year by recycling discarded wood chips from nearby lumber mills into fuel for a wood-fired biomass system. While burning wood sounds like a downright low-tech solution, Lockheed claims this locally sourced energy is carbon-neutral and has saved the facility $1 million per year in heating and cooling costs. The company is also working to install a small-scale version of the system at a Veterans Affairs Hospital in upstate New York, enabling the hospital to provide its own heat and power. Meanwhile, in Herten, Germany, Concord Blue and Lockheed Martin are working together to build a 5 megawatt biofuel power plant that will convert 50,000 tons of feedstock into power for 5,000 homes and businesses. |
Bin Laden Papers Show Him Frustrated, Marginalized
Enlarge this image toggle caption Department of Defense via AP Department of Defense via AP
Documents found at Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan reveal an al-Qaida leader who had come to feel marginalized and frustrated with actions taken by affiliated terror groups he had helped inspire.
The man responsible for the 9/11 terror attacks is seen struggling to limit attacks that killed mostly Muslims, and to keep the international jihad movement focused on what he viewed as the main target: the United States.
Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make [Joe] Biden take over the presidency for the remainder of the term. Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis.
The glimpse inside this secretive organization comes just after the first anniversary of the killing of bin Laden in Abbotabad, Pakistan, by a Navy Seal team.
That team gathered up everything it could find, from electronic documents to pocket litter. Over the past year, intelligence officials have been combing through thousands of documents, hoping to better understand al-Qaida.
On Thursday, researchers at West Point's Combating Terrorism Center released 17 documents it had translated that have been declassified.
They include lengthy letters between bin Laden and other terror leaders. The center also prepared an analysis of the documents, to help give context to these often rambling conversations.
In many letters, it's unclear who the sender or recipient is. In others, correspondents make reference to documents that either were not found or have not been released.
Wary Of Links To Somali Extremists
The documents come from the final five years of bin Laden's life, 2006-2011. Bin Laden and his family have been on the run for years. He and his lieutenants engage in lengthy colloquies about the activities of groups like Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, a Somali group that was seeking a formal alliance with al-Qaida.
In a correspondence with Mukhtar Abu al-Zubayr, al-Shabaab's leader, bin Laden states his concerns over the negative fallout of such an alliance for the Somali population.
"The matter is that some Muslims in Somalia are suffering from immense poverty and malnutrition, because of the continuity of wars in their country," bin Laden writes. "Therefore, by not having the mujahidin [holy warriors] openly allied with al-Qaida, it would strengthen those merchants who are willing to help the brothers in Somalia, and would keep people with the mujahidin."
Bin Laden appears worried that an alliance will scare away foreign investors and dry up desperately needed foreign aid. Here as elsewhere, the master of attacks that killed thousands of Westerners is almost tender in his concern for Muslims in Somalia.
At the same time, Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's second in command, writes in favor of an alliance with al-Shabaab, in the hopes of spreading al-Qaida's influence. After bin Laden's death in May 2011, Zawahiri formalized the association between the two groups.
Upset With Attacks In Iraq
In the years after 9/11, bin Laden watched in dismay as afflilate groups such as "AQI," al-Qaida in Iraq, pursued strategies he found repugnant. AQI was the only franchise officially blessed by bin Laden.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Sajjad Qayyum/AFP/Getty Images Sajjad Qayyum/AFP/Getty Images
But he and his lieutenants expressed deep concern as AQI fomented hatred among different Muslim groups in Iraq and mounted attacks on Muslims.
Adam Gadahn, the American-born media adviser for the group, writes in January 2011: "I was not at ease with al-Zaraqwi's [once the leader of AQI] moves, which he took in the name of al-Qaida."
Gadahn questions the bombing of a Catholic church in Bagdhad, asking: "Is this the justice that we are talking about, and that the Shiekh [bin Laden] talks about in his statements and messages?"
Gadahn goes so far as to suggest that the large number of Muslim casualties in Iraq might be a reason to cut ties with al-Qaida in Iraq.
At other times, the letters focus on fine points of procedure, such as whether certain tactics violate Muslim law.
One writer asks whether it is OK to take money from Palestinian groups, such as Fatah and Islamic Jihad. "Is it permitted to invest funds in the stock market, buying and selling shares, for the goal of supporting jihad, or investing some donation-derived funds in stock markets and shares?"
No Advance Knowledge Of Times Square Plot
In another correspondence, bin Laden reveals that he apparently had no knowledge of the 2010 attack on Times Square by Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani American who pleaded guilty to a failed car bombing. Shahzad received training from the Pakistani Taliban.
Bin Laden chastis1es Shahzad's handlers when he learns that Shahzad admitted in court that he lied on his citizenship application when he vowed not to harm the U.S. Bin Laden says this is not a circumstance when a person is permitted to lie.
Throughout the letters, bin Laden keeps his eye on his ultimate goal: another big attack against the United States.
He tries to turn other groups away from operations inside Muslim countries. In a May 2010 letter, he urges his chief of staff to marshal forces for an assault on a plane carrying either President Obama or Gen. David Petraeus, who was then the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan and is now head of the CIA.
"The reason for concentrating on them is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make [Joe] Biden take over the presidency for the remainder of the term," bin Laden says. "Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis. As for Petraeus, he is the man of the hour in this last year of the war, and killing him would alter the war's path."
There are no indications that bin Laden's preparations for that plot ever got past this letter. Within a year, Obama would authorize the attack that would kill bin Laden. |
If you’re anything like me, chances are you are an absolute sucker for replicas, nic-nacs and other pieces of merchandise that look like they’ve fallen straight out of your favourite game worlds. Some of the very rarest and coolest physical goodies can only be found in the plethora of collectors editions that release alongside the base game. Here are a few of my personal favourite collectors editions, along with a few others, all of which contain some of the best pieces of merchandise not sold separately.
Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood – Limited Codex Edition
Rolling off the wild success of Assassin’s Creed II, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is heralded as possibly one of the best games in the series. For me, it’s also had one of the best collectors editions money can buy. Among less meaningful items like a bunch of cards detailing the “backstories” of the Templar identities players could adopt in the multiplayer modes, and a map of Rome, the Codex Edition contains a beautifully-crafted “replica” of Altaïr’s Codex, a series of writings from the great Assassin himself that players assemble as Ezio in AC II. Bound in a leather-effect cover with an intricate Assassin crest on the front, each page has an exact copy of the in-game equivalent, printed on pages made to look weathered and rugged. It also doubles as an artbook, with stunning pieces of concept art making up an additional segment at the end of the Codex.
To top it all off, this edition is contained within an very beautiful “Assassin Chest” made out of plastic with a fabric interior, which on paper doesn’t sound all too impressive but I can personally say that in the flesh it’s a fantastic display piece due to the way it’s been formed, detailed and finished, and a piece still I have out on display to this day.
Destiny – Ghost Edition
It’s safe to say that this one should pretty-well speak for itself – in fact, it can speak. The primary draw for Destiny‘s Ghost Edition is of course the Ghost replica it contains, charged by USB and featuring motion-activated light & sound effects from the game. Of course now it holds a further special value to hardcore Destiny fans, as the Ghost’s speech is provided by the original Ghost voice actor Peter Dinklage prior to his complete replacement later on.
Also of interest to fans should be the well-presented Guardian Folio, containing an annotated handbook on weapons within the Destiny universe and a collection of postcards, patches, and images straight from the game.
The Division – Sleeper Agent Edition
If you’ve played The Division, it’s likely crossed your mind just how badass it must be to be a hyper-lethal Division agent. Now you can quietly live out those fantasies, or just own an extremely cool piece of geek gear, with the Sleeper Agent Edition. Containing an SHD agent armband and more importantly, The Division‘s signature watch, you can “activate” yourself on a daily basis with a unique timepiece designed to look just like the one that calls your agent to action. Featuring all the functions of a standard digital watch housed in a both visually-accurate and genuinely stylish body, this watch is a truly special piece of merchandise that fans of The Division simply need in their lives.
I should add that this isn’t the first time Ubisoft has included an attractive timepiece in a collectors edition – prior to The Division there has been a pocket watch in the style of Arno’s included with Assassin’s Creed Unity, and my personal favourite, a snazzy wristwatch included with Splinter Cell Blacklist designed to look like it belongs to Mr Fisher himself.
Halo: Reach – Limited Edition
Whaaaaaaat? But Ty, you know there’s a Legendary Edition of Halo: Reach, right?
Yes, I’m well aware that there’s a Legendary Edition of the game which includes a statue of NOBLE Team, which may be all well and good, but I’m not featuring Reach for that.
The true gem included with Halo: Reach across its various edition (in my opinion) is the journal of Dr Catherine Elizabeth Halsey, lovingly created to tell her personal story as she rises from ONI spook to one of the key figures in the Halo Universe. It’s a truly marvellous piece of Halo merch not only telling some of the best known stories from an all-new perspective, but contained within a work of art in its own right. The drawings add a lot of realism to the journal whilst the extra pamphlets, news cuttings and letters give it more of a 3D feel. To top it all off, the journal is presented in an ONI storage unit, within packaging labelled all over with classified warnings and documentation, truly giving the owner the feeling that they have something extremely important in their hands.
Call of Duty – Prestige Editions
Everybody loves awesome high-tech gadgets, right? Right. That’s exactly why I’m featuring some of the Call of Duty Prestige Editions. Whilst they carry a hefty price tag, some of the most high-tech pieces of merchandise to ever appear alongside a videogame release are available in these special editions. MW2‘s fully-functioning night vision goggles kicked things off, soon to be followed by a working replica of Black Ops‘s RC-XD, a remote controlled vehicle that delivered an explosive device to your unlucky enemies in multiplayer.
Of course, this version doesn’t feature a bomb, however it did have a camera attached allowing you to see through the eyes of your new toy, or perhaps a large mouse. Among other gadgets and big-kid toys in later editions, Black Ops II‘s “Care Package” edition featured a quad-rotor drone, a remote-control replica of the Dragonfire drone from the game. What’s not to love? (Be quiet, wallet, I don’t need to hear your complaints.)
Dead Space 2 – Collectors Edition
Now, this one may be a cool concept, and no doubt a great collector’s piece for Dead Space fans, but it comes with a catch. Dead Space 2‘s collector’s edition featured a replica of Isaac Clarke’s signature limb-removal weapon, the Plasma Cutter. This replica did feature some moving parts and working LEDs, however, it was very much a to-scale model. The in-game Plasma Cutter has a handle not dissimilar to that of a standard handgun in terms of size and shape, whereas this Plasma Cutter by comparison has a handle which can be held by around just 2-3 fingers. To some fans, this was a disappointment, however as a collectible, there’s no doubt it would look awesome on any hardcore Necromorph hunter’s mantlepiece or shelf.
Halo 3 – Legendary Edition
No doubt several of you may have the above item in your possession, perhaps even in the same room as you, Halo 3‘s Legendary Edition really needs no introduction. Alongside a plethora of additional content contained on two extra discs, the display “case” for the bundle’s content was in-fact the signature piece. Contained in the Halo 3 Legendary Edition was a scale model of Master Chief’s MJOLNIR Mark-VI helmet, displayed on a Halo-stylised base which contained the game and additional content. The helmet itself was not wearable as standard, due to the size & shape of the slot in the bottom, however that doesn’t stop it from being one of the coolest things a Halo fan can have on display.
Fallout 4 – Pip-Boy Edition
Highly popular from the date pre-orders became available, the Fallout 4 Pip-Boy Edition is a very self-explanatory collector’s edition. Housed in a beautiful collector’s case, a wearable Pip-Boy was included with this bundle that was able to accommodate a variety of smartphones within its casing, and effectively acted as your in-game Pip-Boy thanks to a companion app that replicated the experience. To a die-hard fan of the series, merchandise doesn’t get much more exciting than this, as the Pip-Boy plays such a central role in the games, and can be displayed on the included stand when not in use. (Provided you have a spare smartphone lying around to maintain the look!)
Those were just a few of the coolest pieces of merchandise included in a game’s collector’s edition over the years. In an increasingly digital age, it’s great to see the stunning works of art and imagination that still appear in physical releases, and I personally hope there are many more to come.
Do you own any of these? What other amazing items have we missed?
Be sure to let us know in the comments or on our subreddit! |
Leading a fleet is not an easy thing to do. You are dealing with everything from fleet positioning and situational awareness, to ensuring you have targets and keeping your fleet mates focused. By far the worst (and possibly hardest) part of fleet command is knowing what to do when your fleet dies in a fire, or when to make a timely strategic withdrawal.
It may come to pass that while your fleet is roaming, or undertaking the objective you formed the fleet for, that you receive intel of a superior enemy fleet (in number or by composition) approaching your location at speed. As the FC you make the decision, based on your fleet composition, to flee rather than fight. However, your opposition chases you relentlessly, trying their very best to catch you. If in null sec and confident they lack the ability to bridge (jump or titan) ahead of you, then have interdictors drop bubbles on every gate your fleet passes through – this will slow the hunters down considerably. Trust me, once I was leading a ragtag fleet consisting of Navy hulls and we got chased around 30 jumps by a considerably more organised fleet. Using the bubble trick combined with killing their forward tackle helped us get away with minimal losses. If your enemy can use bridges to get ahead of you to try and box you in, you need to play smarter than simply running. Only align yourself, have your fleet approach you as you do so, then warp as soon as you can; never call an align openly (walls have ears!). Utilise tools like dotlan effectively and whenever possible minimise who engages whom. Have frigates focus down interdictors or tackle, while cruisers hit that lone heavy interdictor that is trying to block your way out. Eventually you will get away from a group that is trying to pen you in while they will be spread over multiple systems, considerably thinning their firepower vis a vis your own. When making a strategic withdrawal, you will at some point decide to stand and fight. Your rear scouts could for instance report that the opposition has thinned out, maybe the battleships they have are lagging behind, or their capital support has gone. Form up on a ground of your choosing and let them come in, then following my guide to what to target and when , start the fight. Stay focused, keep your troops on target and you may well emerge victorious. Do not be afraid to engage and focus on smaller, flimsier targets, then withdraw again. In this manner you can keep up a running engagement across many systems until the enemy gives up or overwhelms you.
“They’re all dead, everybody’s dead Dave.” – Holly (Red Dwarf)
A skirmisher is already off grid at a safe, if so get the survivors to warp to them. Keep the skirmisher moving in a random direction at speed, this is known as a rolling safe . Everytime they get 150km from the survivors they warp to them again. Then you start looking at an evacuation route, or dock up if the system allows it.
. Everytime they get 150km from the survivors they warp to them again. Then you start looking at an evacuation route, or dock up if the system allows it. Survivors get out of any bubbles, or burn out of tackle range as a fighting unit, and then warp to random celestials (NOT THE SUN!) at varying ranges while their aggression drops. You then evacuate them through any safe gates, and get moving towards friendly space.
Again using the off-grid skirmisher, you reform your remaining combat vessels and fight way your way out of the system, making sure bubblers and other tackle are primary targets. This diversion should allow fleet mates in their pods to get out of system.
You and your fleet are out roaming, you find what looks like a manageable engagement with an enemy fleet. You engage and then brown stuff hits the round spinny thing; they successfully bubble you up or bring in major reinforcements, and your fleet dies in a fire. What do you do? What do YOU do hotshot? No matter what, in the immediate aftermath of an event like this your first priority is to get the remains (if any) of your fleet to safety. You have a few options for this:Whatever you do, you do not rage. Now is not the time for recriminations. Believe me, nothing makes a fleet fall apart faster following a major loss than its FC losing their cool, when they should be focusing on the task at hand; survival. As I covered last week , how you address your fleet is as important as getting the job done. Never forget that. I have been FC-ing for several years and have lost many fleets. Usually I try to keep my calm while getting any survivors safe and ready to reform as you can see from this video – of one of my more notable defeats when losing a sniper fleet to a bomber gang a couple of years back:
If you can keep a positive attitude that gets your fleet to reship and go back out into space immediately, then you truly have what it takes to be a great FC. |
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RICHARD Keys last night quit Sky with a grovelling apology for his sexism shame.
But the presenter said “dark forces” helped oust him and Andy Gray. He left after clips emerged of him making lurid remarks to Jamie Redknapp about an ex.
In a radio chat Keys said: “I am deeply sorry.” Gray plans to sue Sky for £3million over his sacking.
WITH his sidekick sacked and a new tape of him making more disgraceful sexist remarks, Richard Keys faced a major struggle to repair his shattered image.
Even a grovelling apology during a rambling radio interview yesterday could not take the heat off the Sky Sports football presenter and he quit his £1million-a-year job.
But the 53-year-old said “dark forces” were behind a campaign to oust him and Sky pundit Andy Gray who was sacked on Tuesday after a tape emerged of him asking co-presenter Charlotte Jackson, 33, to “tuck him in” while he pointed at his crotch.
And Keys said he felt he could not carry on in the job he has been doing for the past 20 years without his pal Gray by his side.
The writing was on the wall for Keys when lurid off-air comments he made to Jamie Redknapp about his ex-girlfriend were put out on the internet.
After he quit, he said: “I am deeply sorry for my remarks and the offence they have caused; it was wrong and should not have happened.
“I have thought long and hard and reached the decision that it is time to move on.
“Going forward without Andy would have been almost impossible.”
Managing director of Sky Sports Barney Francis added: “It is disappointing that Richard’s career at Sky should end in these circumstances.
“However, Richard recognises his comments at the weekend were unacceptable and we note that he has made a full and public apology.
“We thank him for his time in helping make Sky Sports the success it is today.”
Keys had earlier made a desperate bid to keep his job during his 65-minute interview with Talksport. Talking of the remarks he made about Redknapp’s ex – where he asked him if he “smashed it” – he admitted he needed professional help.
The former presenter added: “Horrible. Out of order. Wrong. Old-fashioned. No place. Behavioural problems that need to be attended to, yeah. Reconstruction, yeah.
“But again it is a very selective moment from that studio that night, read into that what you will. It shouldn’t have happened. It is something I am enormously upset about. It’s obviously something that needs to get sorted out.
“There is a process and I am willing to take it. It will take far more than me coming behind this microphone saying ‘I am changed’.”
Speaking of the “dark forces” he believes were undermining his position, Keys claims insiders at Sky had been looking for more embarrassing tapes to plunge him and Gray, 55, who earned £1.7million a year, further into the mire.
He said: “If you dig deep enough you will find what you are looking for. With success comes envy. The clips are fairly selective. They have targeted two individuals.”
Keys found himself embroiled in the sexism row after he and Gray made remarks about match official Sian Massey before last weekend’s Wolves versus Liverpool clash where she was running the line.
And he told the radio interviewer he feared he could have been fired like Gray, despite apologising to Sian. Asked if there was any reason why he shouldn’t be, he replied: “None I suppose, but that’s for others to make a decision on. I have to ask myself, ‘Do I want to carry on without him?’ That’s something I havebeen doing.”
After saying sorry to Sian on Sunday, Keys claimed he was banned from making his apology public. He added: “I was told no, and 24 hours passed by which time the world had gone mad. I don’t know why I was told no.”
The sexism furore exploded after the two presenters made their remarks about Sian off-air. Ex-footballer Gray sneered that she “wouldn’t know the offside rule”.
And Gray found himself in more hot water when he asked co-host Charlotte to “tuck him in” as he fitted his microphone before a transmission. He laughed as she ignored him.
Gray was sacked by Sky Sports on Tuesday for “unacceptable behaviour”.
The new video of Keys making lurid remarks came as he chatted to Redknapp, Ruud Gullit and Graeme Souness in a studio at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge ground after a match.
Keys also made disparaging remarks about West Ham vice-chairman Karren Brady who he called “love”. He said he tried to call her but could not get through.
But Brady last night hit back, branding him a “dinosaur”. She said: “Perhaps Richard thought I was too busy making the tea and washing up to take his call.” |
RICHMOND, Ky. – Eastern Kentucky University softball pitcher Leanna Pittsenbarger was rated as the preseason's top NCAA Division I pitcher by Fastpitch News. The rankings were derived from numerous statistics to formulate a total score. The statistics used were ERA, hits per seven innings, shutouts, strikeouts and strikeouts per seven innings.
. – Eastern Kentucky University softball pitcherwas rated as the preseason's top NCAA Division I pitcher by Fastpitch News. The rankings were derived from numerous statistics to formulate a total score. The statistics used were ERA, hits per seven innings, shutouts, strikeouts and strikeouts per seven innings.Here is what the web site had to say about EKU's senior pitcher:"She may not have been the first person that came to mind, based on our criteria she came out on top. In 2014 she was named to the NFCA All-Region Team and was All-OVC. Statistically she had a strong season posting a 1.35 ERA with 297 strikeouts. Pittsenbarger also had 11 shutouts and is second nationally among returning pitcher in hits per seven innings at 3.29. Look for another strong season from her in 2015."Pittsenbarger was rated ahead of pitchers from schools such as Oregon, Florida State, Georgia, Oklahoma, UCLA, Florida, Alabama and Kentucky. Click here for complete rankings.As a junior, the native of Urbana, Ohio set three program single-season records – strikeouts (297), shutouts (12) and opponent batting average (.139). Pittsenbarger's career strikeout total of 727 is 27 shy of tying the program mark set by EKU Athletics Hall of Famer Jonelle Csora-Clark (2000-03).Eastern Kentucky finished 29-22 overall and 15-10 in Ohio Valley Conference play in 2014. The Colonels return six starting fielders as well as Pittsenbarger in the circle. The Colonels begin the 2015 season on Feb. 5 against Jackson State at the Sand Dollar Classic in Gulf Shores, Alabama. |
If you’re looking for a good deal on a new phone, T-Mobile might have just what you’re looking for with their newest deal. Currently, the Samsung Galaxy S7 , Galaxy S7 Edge, and the LG V20 are all reduced down to just $360 full price, or $15 a month if you prefer to add them to your current T-Mobile bill.
If you don’t currently have a T-Mobile plan a T-Mobile starter SIM will be added to your bill at checkout so the grand total will come to $380. I don’t think there’s any way to order the phone without a SIM unless you’re already a T-Mobile customer, so that’s kind of a bummer for those looking to pick up a phone on the cheap without a SIM.
Still, this is one of the best deals we’ve seen on these handsets as new devices are slated to be revealed next week. |
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — The city’s crosswalks are about to receive a makeover with the intention of making them safer.
While the newer, bigger crosswalks are statistically safer than conventional crosswalks, which have just the two guide-lines on either side, they will cost about three times more to prepare.
LA Walks Founder Deborah Murphy described the importance of the upgrade, which includes a “limit line” for cars to stop with space to spare in front of the crosswalks.
“We’re getting the continental crosswalk, along with what we sometimes call “stop bar”, “limit line”, it has a million different names,” Murphy said. “As people feel more safe, they’ll be out on the street, walking their kids to school, causing less traffic congestion.”
Continental crosswalks are said to reduce pedestrian accidents by 25 percent when compared with conventional crosswalks.
Last year, Murphy, along with former mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced a project to test the system by upgraded 50 of the most dangerous intersections, including 7th Street and Alvarado Street, Hollywood Blvd and Highland Avenue, Slauson Avenue and Western Avenue, as well as others.
The city plans to upgrade 19,770 crosswalks across Los Angeles. The cost is of the project is said to be $50 million, the average equivalent to $10,000 per intersection.
The cost goes toward the cleaning, repaving, and application of the thermal plastic stripes of the crosswalks.
The funding for the project comes from the Measure-R fund’s half-cent sales tax.
“Relatively, the cost is low relative to the impact of really affecting drivers’ visibility to pedestrians,” LADOT Pedestrian Coordinator Magot Ocanas told CBS2’s Art Barron. |
A breeze wafted the scent of roses towards our table.
The sound of music wafted softly into the yard from our neighbor's house.
The smell of chicken soup wafted up to my bedroom.
Recent Examples on the Web: Verb
Aromas of curry and turmeric wafted through the kitchen and dining room, as employees swept and set up tables. Louis Hansen, The Seattle Times, "One way to keep food-service workers in pricey places: Pay their rent," 17 Aug. 2018
Workers are capping the 11th and last well at the plant to prevent toxic gases from wafting out after lava entered, then stalled, on the property near one of the new volcanic vents. Fox News, "The Latest: Lava destroys warehouse at power plant site," 22 May 2018
Workers were capping the 11th and last well at the plant to prevent toxic gases from wafting out after lava entered, then stalled, on the property near one of the new volcanic vents. Jae C. Hong And Sophia Yan, chicagotribune.com, "Workers plugging energy wells at geothermal plant as lava from Hawaii volcano flows nearby," 22 May 2018
Or, simply waft between wonderful meals at Taj’s three restaurants, enjoying the particular giddiness that comes with a good hotel. Ella Riley-adams, Vogue, "Why India’s Andaman Islands Could Be the New Maldives," 4 Jan. 2019
In Pahoa, a counterculture outpost where ganja smoke wafts through the air, a lava flow in 2014 threatened the town, but in the end destroyed just one home, stopping at the recycling facility. Simon Romero, New York Times, "Madame Pele, Hawaii’s Goddess of Volcanoes, Awes Those Living in Lava’s Path," 21 May 2018
Then see whether the news ever wafts your families’ way. Carolyn Hax, The Seattle Times, "How can parents protect child, conceived with donor egg, from toxic relatives?," 30 July 2018
The view isn’t spectacular, given that the roof is only up one floor, but the bar smells good, thanks to aromas wafting up from the restaurant’s smokers. BostonGlobe.com, "5 of the best rooftop bars and restaurants in Boston," 2 May 2018
Firefighters are steadily beating back several massive autumn blazes in California, as smoke originating from the wildfires is now blanketing the state’s southern coast and wafting east. Umair Irfan, Vox, "California’s wildfires are hardly “natural” — humans made them worse at every step," 12 Nov. 2018
Recent Examples on the Web: Noun
From the Los Angeles design studio Commune comes a clever ruse: a terra cotta disc, designed to hold scented oil, that nestles like a halo on a lightbulb, sending unseen wafts into the air. Laura Regensdorf, Vogue, "10 Utterly Perfect Home Fragrances for the Holiday Hostess with the Mostest," 20 Nov. 2018
Opera music wafts through the air, and a television set shows a stage with a full choir joining together in song. Julia Felsenthal, Vogue, "Personable, Popular, Pragmatic: Is Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar the Democrat’s Secret Weapon?," 15 Jan. 2019
The waft of cigarette smoke and hint of manure in Santa Rosa air usher me back into the restaurant. Hartford Courant, courant.com, "The Poems Of Aaron Caycedo-Kimura: Honoring Ones Parents," 13 June 2018
There is much for her, and audiences, to soak in here: the hanging laundry, the wafts of roasting chestnuts, the rumbling Fiat 1100s, and the theatrical conversations. Jason Horowitz, Vogue, "Meet the Adorable Italian Stars in HBO’s Elena Ferrante Adaptation, My Brilliant Friend," 14 Aug. 2018
As intense, eye-watering smoke wafts from incense coils hanging overhead, stop to admire golden deities, murals and Chinese wood carvings. Janice Leung Hayes, Condé Nast Traveler, "23 Best Things to Do in Hong Kong," 27 Feb. 2018
Passing country cottages, the smell of cinnamon wafts out of open windows, and then disappears into the air beyond. Sebastian Modak, Condé Nast Traveler, "The Best Way to Experience Austria's Wine Country Is By Bike," 7 Sep. 2018
Perkins is a poetic sorceress whose authorial wand wafts over the pages of her book and gently probes the depths of children’s souls. Ellen Handler Spitz, New York Times, "What Should Your Kid Read This Summer? Here Are Three to Start With," 1 June 2018
Keep a Lid On It The mussels cook when hot steam produced from the simmering liquid wafts through the pot. Rochelle Bilow, Bon Appetit, "How to Cook Mussels Like Some Kind of Professional Mussel-Cooker," 9 Apr. 2018
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'waft.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback. |
ST. PETERSBURG — A police officer has been suspended for four weeks after he showed up to his shift under the influence of alcohol Nov. 11, according to a memo from Chief Tony Holloway.
Officer Todd Laslo, 44, reported to a read-off at the department's command bus about 4 p.m., police spokeswoman Yolanda Fernandez said. He did not show obvious signs of impairment, she said, but at some point during the read-off, a sergeant smelled alcohol on him.
"She detected the odor and then she asked him to do a breath test," Fernandez said. Laslo registered a 0.17 blood-alcohol content. A driver in Florida is presumed impaired at 0.08.
The command bus was at the corner of Fremont Terrace and 28th Street S.
Laslo was not arrested, Fernandez said, because no one actually saw him operating a vehicle that day, though his take-home department car was parked near the bus.
"No matter what assumptions you might make, by law that's the requirement," she said.
When Laslo took the Breathalyzer test, he was doing so for an administrative, not criminal investigation, according to police spokesman Mike Puetz.
As an employee, he was compelled to submit to the breath test. Puetz said the results were therefore technically coerced and could not be used against Laslo in court. In standard DUI cases, Puetz said, smell is used to presume intoxication only in conjunction with other symptoms such as glassy eyes or slurred speech.
In addition to the suspension, Laslo was removed from the take-home vehicle program for one year. He will have to report face-to-face with a supervisor at the beginning of each shift for the next year as well.
Laslo, who joined the force in November 2010, received an employee notice in his personnel file and was referred to the employee assistance program, according to Holloway's memo, dated March 30.
His record is otherwise unblemished, with no prior reprimands on file. Supervisors through 2013 were almost universally positive in their reviews of Laslo, save for noting some attendance issues involving excess sick time early in his career.
A police union official could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday. |
Mtbr has been riding a FOX Float X2 for the past few months. This shock has received accolades from many riders, and we were anxious to see how an air shock sans climb switch handled our everyday riding. Yes, the X2 has been available for a while now – however, there was a bike missing from the fit list: late model Specialized Enduro. FOX has remedied that situation; as soon as a production unit was available, I stopped by their headquarters in Scotts Valley to pick one up (the test mule is a 2014 Enduro 29).
Adjustability: low/high compression and rebound Price: $595 Weight: 8.5×2.5: 493g Rating: 5 Chilis-out-of-5
Superbly balanced feel No climbing switch for All Mountain riding Tunable air spring curve (via volume reducers) Need tools to make any adjustments Independent low and high speed damping adjustments for rebound and compression Plenty of adjustment range (even when running 250psi, over 1/3 of the range still available) Well-sorted look complements bike appearance
One of our key wishes for this shock has been fulfilled. The Float X2 and DHX2 shocks are now available with an optional 2-position X2 lever. New X2 2-position Open/Firm lever retains high- and low speed compression adjustment. X2 2-position lever available as an upgrade kit for any X2 shock.
Wow – the Float X2 looks amazing! Its form factor is great, with the adjusters easily accessible and includes all damping adjustments that I’d hope for. Sturdy construction is immediately apparent when handling the shock.
EVOL Air Sleeve: The air can has a higher volume that is more tuneable. This allows a lighter spring rate when high in the travel (requiring less force to move the rear tire – good for small bumps), and via tuning the volume, the rider can modify how quickly the air spring’s rate increases during travel (to reduce bottom-out). FOX includes additional volume reducers with the shock, installation of which is discussed later in this review.
RVS – Rod Valve System: The RVS introduces an intermediate shim stack to help when transitioning between the high speed and the lower speed paths. The two paths are quite different, with high speed utilizing a shim stack and the low speed using a valve. The goal is to slide between the two paths, rather than flipping a switch and having the damping characteristics change immediately.
HSC, LSC, HSR, LSR: Four damping adjustments are provided, with 24 clicks of range. Damper adjustment on the bike is easy, but hex keys are required. The adjusters are angled, making access much easier than many competing products.
Both audible and haptic feedback are the best on the market. I never wondered if I’d really heard/felt a notch, it’s a definite CLICK even when muddy.
The compression and rebound adjusters are nested together. The high speed adjustors are the outer 6mm hex heads, modifying preload applied to the shim stacks. The low speed adjustors are the nested 3mm hex heads and modify the orifice size for the low speed valves. Each path (compression and rebound) have one-way check valves to isolate them. |
Friday the 13th is a 1980 American slasher film produced and directed by Sean S. Cunningham, and written by Victor Miller. It stars Adrienne King, Betsy Palmer, Harry Crosby, Laurie Bartram, Kevin Bacon, Jeannine Taylor, Mark Nelson, and Robbi Morgan. The film tells the story of a group of teenage camp counselors who are murdered one by one by an unknown killer while attempting to re-open an abandoned summer camp.
Prompted by the success of John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), director Cunningham put out an advertisement to sell the film in Variety in early 1979, while Miller was still drafting the screenplay. After casting the film in New York City, filming took place in New Jersey in the summer of 1979, on an estimated budget of $550,000. A bidding war ensued over the finished film, ending with Paramount Pictures acquiring the film for domestic distribution, while Warner Bros. secured European distribution rights.
Released on May 9, 1980, Friday the 13th was a major box office success, grossing over $39.7 million in the United States alone and $20 million international, making it the highest grossing film in the franchise in adjusted dollars. Critical response to the film was divided, with some praising the film's cinematography, score, and performances, while numerous others derided it for its depiction of graphic violence. Aside from being the first independent film of its kind to secure distribution in the U.S. by a major studio, its box office success led to a long series of sequels, a crossover with A Nightmare on Elm Street, and a 2009 series reboot.
Plot [ edit ]
In 1958 at Camp Crystal Lake, counselors Barry and Claudette sneak inside a storage barn to have sex, where an unseen assailant murders them. Twenty-one years later, camp counselor Annie Phillips is given a lift halfway to the reopened Camp Crystal Lake by a truck driver named Enos. Before they reach the truck, an elderly man named Crazy Ralph warns Annie that "Camp Blood" is cursed. While driving, Enos tries to persuade Annie to turn back and leave, warning her about the camp's past. He informs her about a young boy who drowned at Crystal Lake in 1957 and several other suspicious deaths. After being dropped off, Annie hitches another ride from an unseen person. The driver drives past the road to Crystal Lake at full speed. After her urgent requests to turn back are ignored, Annie panics, jumps out of the vehicle, and is pursued into the woods, where the driver slashes her throat.
At the camp, counselors Ned Rubenstein, Jack Burrell, Bill Brown, Marcie Cunningham, Brenda Jones, and Alice Hardy, along with the owner Steve Christy, refurbish the cabins and facilities. As a thunderstorm approaches, Steve leaves the campground to stock supplies. Afterward, Ned sees someone walk into a cabin and follows. While Jack and Marcie have sex in one of the cabin's bunk beds, they are unaware of Ned's body above them, with his throat slit. When Marcie leaves to use the bathroom, Jack's throat is pierced with an arrow from beneath the bed. The killer follows Marcie to the bathroom and slams an axe into her face. Brenda hears a child's voice calling for help and ventures outside to the archery range, where the lights turn on. Later, Steve returns to the camp and is confronted by the unseen killer, who stabs him.
Worried by their friends' disappearances, Alice and Bill leave the main cabin to investigate. They find a bloody axe in Brenda's bed, the phones disconnected, and the cars inoperable. When the power goes out, Bill goes to check on the generator. Alice heads out to look for him and finds his body pinned with arrows to the generator room's door. She flees back to the main cabin to hide, only to be traumatized further when Brenda's body is thrown through the window. Soon after, Alice sees a vehicle pull up and rushes outside, thinking it is Steve. Instead, she is greeted by a middle-aged woman named Mrs. Voorhees, who claims to be an old friend of Steve.
Mrs. Voorhees sees Brenda's body and begins to reminisce that her son Jason was the young boy who drowned in 1957. She blames his death on the counselors who were supposed to be watching him, but instead were having sex and not paying attention to Jason drowning. Revealing herself as the killer, Mrs. Voorhees attempts to kill Alice with her bowie knife, but she knocks her unconscious. Finding Alice at the shore, Mrs. Voorhees tries to kill her again with a machete, but Alice gains the advantage and decapitates her. Exhausted, Alice boards and falls asleep inside a canoe, which floats out on Crystal Lake. The next morning, just as Alice wakes up, Jason's decomposing body attacks her. She awakens in a hospital where a police officer and medical staff tend to her. When Alice asks about Jason, the officer says there was no sign of any boy. Alice says "Then he's still there", as the lake is shown at peace.
Cast [ edit ]
Production [ edit ]
Development [ edit ]
Friday the 13th did not have a completed script when Sean S. Cunningham took out this advertisement in Variety magazine did not have a completed script when Sean S. Cunningham took out this advertisement inmagazine
Friday the 13th was produced and directed by Sean S. Cunningham, who had previously worked with filmmaker Wes Craven on the film The Last House on the Left. Cunningham, inspired by John Carpenter's Halloween, wanted Friday the 13th to be shocking, visually stunning and "[make] you jump out of your seat." Wanting to distance himself from The Last House on the Left, Cunningham wanted Friday the 13th to be more of a "roller-coaster ride."
The original screenplay was tentatively titled A Long Night at Camp Blood. While working on a redraft of the screenplay, Cunningham proposed the title Friday the 13th, after which Miller began redeveloping. Cunningham rushed out to place an advertisement in Variety using the Friday the 13th title. Worried that someone else owned the rights to the title and wanting to avoid potential lawsuits, Cunningham thought it would be best to find out immediately. He commissioned a New York advertising agency to develop his concept of the Friday the 13th logo, which consisted of big block letters bursting through a pane of glass. In the end, Cunningham believed there were "no problems" with the title, but distributor George Mansour stated, "There was a movie before ours called Friday the 13th: The Orphan. It was moderately successful. But someone still threatened to sue. Either Phil Scuderi paid them off, but it was finally resolved."
The screenplay was completed in mid-1979 by Victor Miller, who later went on to write for several television soap operas, including Guiding Light, One Life to Live and All My Children; at the time, Miller was living in Stratford, Connecticut, near Cunningham, and the two had begun collaborating on potential film projects. Miller delighted in inventing a serial killer who turned out to be somebody's mother, a murderer whose only motivation was her love for her child. "I took motherhood and turned it on its head and I think that was great fun. Mrs. Voorhees was the mother I'd always wanted—a mother who would have killed for her kids."[8] Miller was unhappy about the filmmakers' decision to make Jason Voorhees the killer in the sequels. "Jason was dead from the very beginning. He was a victim, not a villain."[8]
The idea of Jason appearing at the end of the film was initially not used in the original script; in Miller's final draft, the film ended with Alice merely floating on the lake. Jason's appearance was actually suggested by makeup designer Tom Savini. Savini stated that "The whole reason for the cliffhanger at the end was I had just seen Carrie, so we thought that we need a 'chair jumper' like that, and I said, 'let's bring in Jason'".[10]
Casting [ edit ]
A New York-based firm, headed by Julie Hughes and Barry Moss, was hired to find eight young actors to play the camp's staff members. Cunningham admits that he was not looking for "great actors," but anyone that was likable, and appeared to be a responsible camp counselor. The way Cunningham saw it, the actors would need to look good, read the dialogue somewhat well, and work cheap. Moss and Hughes were happy to find four actors, Kevin Bacon, Laurie Bartram, Peter Brouwer, and Adrienne King, who had previously appeared on soap operas. The role of Alice Hardy was set up as an open casting call, a publicity stunt used to attract more attention to the film. King earned an audition primarily because she was the friend of someone working in Moss and Hughes's office, and Cunningham felt she embodied the qualities of Alice. After she auditioned, Moss recalls Cunningham commenting that they saved the best actress for last. As Cunningham explains, he was looking for people that could behave naturally, and King was able to show that to him in the audition.
I didn't even really think of this movie as a horror film. "To me, this was a small independent film about carefree teenagers who are having a rip-roaring time at a summer camp where they happen to be working as counselors. Then they just happen to get killed. —Jeannine Taylor on how she viewed Friday the 13th
With King cast in the role of lead heroine Alice, Laurie Bartram was hired to play Brenda. Kevin Bacon, Mark Nelson and Jeannine Taylor, who had known each other prior to the film, were cast as Jack, Ned, and Marcie respectively. It is Bacon and Nelson's contention that, because the three already knew each other, they already had the specific chemistry the casting director was looking for in the roles of Jack, Ned, and Marcie. Taylor has stated that Hughes and Moss were highly regarded while she was an actress, so when they offered her an audition she felt that, whatever the part, it would "be a good opportunity."
Friday the 13th was Nelson's first feature film, and when he went in for his first audition the only thing he was given to read were some comedic scenes. Nelson received a call back for a second audition, which required him to wear a bathing suit, which Nelson acknowledges made him start to wonder if something was off about this film. He did not fully realize what was going on until he got the part and was given the full script to read. Nelson explains, "It certainly was not a straight dramatic role, and it was only after they offered me the part that they gave me the full script to read and I realized how much blood was in it." Nelson believes that Ned used humor to hide his insecurities, especially around Brenda, whom the actor believes Ned was attracted to. Nelson recalls an early draft of the script stating that Ned suffered from polio, and his legs were deformed while his upper body was muscular. Ned is believed to have given birth to the "practical joker victim" of horror films. According to author David Grove, there was no equivalent character in John Carpenter's Halloween, or Bob Clark's Black Christmas before that. He served as a model for the slasher films that would follow Friday the 13th.
I went in to audition for [Moss and Hughes] for something else. They said, "you know, Robbi, you're not really right for this, but there's a movie called Friday the 13th and they need an adorable camp counselor. —Robbi Morgan on how she obtained the role of Annie
The part of Bill was given to Harry Crosby, son of Bing Crosby.[16] Robbi Morgan, who plays Annie, was not auditioning for the film when she was offered the role; while in her office, Hughes looked at Morgan and proclaimed "you're a camp counselor." The next day Morgan was on the set. Morgan only appeared on-set for a day to shoot all her scenes. Rex Everhart, who portrays Enos, did not film the truck scenes with Morgan, so she had to either act with an imaginary Enos, or exchange dialogue with Taso Stavrakis—Savini's assistant—who would sit in the truck with her. It was Peter Brouwer's girlfriend that helped him land a role on Friday the 13th. After recently being written off the show Love of Life, Brouwer moved back to Connecticut to look for work. Learning that his girlfriend was working as an assistant director for Friday the 13th, Brouwer asked about any openings. Initially told casting was looking for big stars to fill the role of Steve Christy, it was not until Sean Cunningham dropped by to deliver a message to Brouwer's girlfriend, and saw him working in a garden, that Brouwer was hired.
Estelle Parsons was initially asked to portray the film's killer, Mrs. Voorhees, but eventually declined. Her agent cited that the film was too violent, and did not know what kind of actress would play such a part. Hughes and Moss sent a copy of the script to Betsy Palmer, in hopes that she would accept the part. Palmer could not understand why someone would want her for a part in a horror film, as she had previously starred in films such as Mister Roberts, The Angry Man, and The Tin Star. Palmer only agreed to play the role because she needed to buy a new car, even when she believed the film to "be a piece of shit." Stavrakis subbed for Betsy Palmer as well, which involved Morgan's character being chased through the woods by Mrs. Voorhees, although the audience only sees a pair of legs running after Morgan. Palmer had just arrived in town when those scenes were about to be filmed, and was not in the physical shape necessary to chase Morgan around the woods. Morgan's training as an acrobat assisted her in these scenes, as her character was required to leap out of a moving jeep when she discovers that Mrs. Voorhees does not intend to take her to the camp. Betsy Palmer explains how she developed the character of Mrs. Voorhees:
Being an actress who uses the Stanislavsky method, I always try to find details about my character. With Pamela ... I began with a class ring that I remember reading in the script that she'd worn. Starting with that, I traced Pamela back to my own high school days in the early 1940s. So it's 1944, a very conservative time, and Pamela has a steady boyfriend. They have sex—which is very bad of course—and Pamela soon gets pregnant with Jason. The father takes off and when Pamela tells her parents, they disown her because having ... babies out of wedlock isn't something that good girls do. I think she took Jason and raised him the best she could, but he turned out to be a very strange boy. [She took] lots of odd jobs and one of those jobs was as a cook at a summer camp. Then Jason drowns and her whole world collapses. What were the counselors doing instead of watching Jason? They were having sex, which is the way that she got into trouble. From that point on, Pamela became very psychotic and puritanical in her attitudes as she was determined to kill all of the immoral camp counselors.
Cunningham wanted to make the Mrs. Voorhees character "terrifying", and to that end he believed it was important that Palmer not act "over the top." There was also the fear that Palmer's past credits, as more of a wholesome character, would make it difficult to believe she could be scary. Palmer was paid $1000 per day for her ten days on set.[16] Ari Lehman, who had previously auditioned for Cunningham's Manny's Orphans, failing to get the part, was determined to land the role of Jason Voorhees. According to Lehman, he went in very intense and afterward Cunningham told him he was perfect for the part. In addition to the main cast, Walt Gorney came on as "Crazy Ralph", the town's soothsayer. The character of Crazy Ralph was meant to establish two functions: foreshadow the events to come, and insinuate that he could actually be the murderer. Cunningham has stated that he was apprehensive about including the character, and is not sure if he accomplished his goal of creating a new suspect.
Filming [ edit ]
The film was shot in and around the townships of Hardwick, Blairstown and Hope, New Jersey in September 1979. The camp scenes were shot on a working Boy Scout camp, Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco which is located in Hardwick, New Jersey.[20] The camp is still standing and still operates as a summer camp.[21][22] The cinematography in the film employs recurrent point-of-view shots from the perspective of the villain.
Savini was hired to design the film's special effects based upon his work in George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978).[16] Savini's design contributions included crafting the effects of Marcie's axe wound to the face, the arrow penetrating Jack's throat, and Mrs. Voorhees's decapitation by the machete.[16]
During the filming of the fight sequences between King and Palmer's characters, Palmer suggested rehearsing the scene based on her training in theater: "I said to Adrienne that night 'Why don't we rehearse this scene, I have to slap you,' because on-stage when you slap somebody, you slap them."[20] While rehearsing, Palmer slapped King in the face, and she began crying: "She collapsed to the floor, crying, 'Sean! [Cunningham] She hit me.' I said, well, of course I hit her, we were rehearsing the scene. He said, 'No, no, no Betsy, we don't hit people in movies. We miss them."[20]
Music [ edit ]
When Harry Manfredini began working on the musical score, the decision was made to only play music when the killer was actually present so as to not "manipulate the audience".[24] Manfredini pointed out the lack of music for certain scenes: "There's a scene where one of the girls ... is setting up the archery area ... One of the guys shoots an arrow into the target and just misses her. It's a huge scare, but if you notice, there's no music. That was a choice."[24] Manfredini also noted that when something was going to happen, the music would cut off so that the audience would relax a bit, and the scare would be that much more effective.[citation needed]
Because the killer, Mrs. Voorhees, appears onscreen only during the final scenes of the film, Manfredini had the job of creating a score that would represent the killer in her absence.[24] Manfredini borrows from the 1975 film Jaws, where the shark is likewise not seen for the majority of the film but the motif created by John Williams cued the audience to the shark's invisible menace. Sean S. Cunningham sought a chorus, but the budget would not allow it. While listening to a Krzysztof Penderecki piece of music, which contained a chorus with "striking pronunciations", Manfredini was inspired to recreate a similar sound. He came up with the sound "ki ki ki, ma ma ma" from the final reel when Mrs. Voorhees arrives and is reciting "Kill her, mommy!" The "ki" comes from "kill", and the "ma" from "mommy". To achieve the unique sound he wanted for the film, Manfredini spoke the two words "harshly, distinctly and rhythmically into a microphone" and ran them into an echo reverberation machine.[24] Manfredini finished the original score after a couple of weeks, and then recorded the score in a friend's basement. Victor Miller and assistant editor Jay Keuper have commented on how memorable the music is, with Keuper describing it as "iconographic". Manfredini says, "Everybody thinks it's cha, cha, cha. I'm like, 'Cha, cha, cha? What are you talking about?'"[26]
In 1982, Gramavision Records released a LP record of selected pieces of Harry Manfredini's scores from the first three Friday the 13th films. On 13 January 2012, La-La Land Records released a limited edition 6-CD boxset containing Manfredini's scores from the first six films. It sold out in less than 24 hours.[28]
Release [ edit ]
Distribution and promotion [ edit ]
A bidding war over distribution rights to the film ensued in 1980 between Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., and United Artists. Paramount executive Frank Mancuso, Sr. recalled: "The minute we saw Friday the 13th, we knew we had a hit." Paramount ultimately purchased domestic distribution rights for Friday the 13th for $1.5 million. Based on the success of recently-released horror films (such as Halloween) and the low budget of the film, the studio deemed it a "low-risk" release in terms of profitability. It was the first independent slasher film to be acquired by a major motion picture studio. Paramount spent approximately $500,000 in advertisements for the film, and then an additional $500,000 when the film began performing well at the box office.
A full one-sheet poster, featuring a group of teenagers imposed beneath the silhouette of a knife-wielding figure, was designed by artist Alex Ebel to promote the film's U.S. release. Scholar Richard Nowell has observed that the poster and marketing campaign presented Friday the 13th as a "light-hearted" and "youth-oriented" horror film in an attempt to draw interest from America's prime theater-going demographic of young adults and teenagers. Warner Bros. secured distribution rights to the film in international markets.[35]
Box office [ edit ]
Friday the 13th opened theatrically on May 9, 1980 across the United States, ultimately expanding its release to 1,127 theaters. It earned $5,816,321 in its opening weekend, before finishing domestically with $39,754,601, with a total of 14,778,700 admissions. It was the 18th highest-grossing film that year, facing competition from other high-profile horror releases such as The Shining, Dressed To Kill, The Fog, and Prom Night. The worldwide gross for the film was $59,754,601.[38][39] Of the seventeen films distributed by Paramount in 1980, only two: Urban Cowboy and Airplane!, returned more profits than Friday the 13th.
Friday the 13th was released internationally, which was unusual for an independent film with, at the time, no well-recognized or bankable actors; aside from well-known television and movie actress Betsy Palmer. The film would take in approximately $20 million in international box office receipts.[42] Not factoring in international sales, or the cross-over film with A Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy Krueger, the original Friday the 13th is the highest-grossing film of the film series.[43]
To provide context with the box office gross of films in 2014, the cost of making and promoting Friday the 13th—which includes the $550,000 budget and the $1 million in advertisement—is approximately $4.5 million. With regard to the US box office gross, the film would have made $177.72 million in adjusted 2017 dollars.[44] On July 13, 2007, Friday the 13th was screened for the first time on Blairstown's Main Street in the very theater which appears shortly after the opening credits.[22] Overflowing crowds forced the Blairstown Theater Festival, the sponsoring organization, to add an extra screening. A 30th Anniversary Edition was released on March 10, 2010.[45] A 35th-anniversary screening was held in the Griffith Park Zoo as part of the Great Horror Campout on March 13, 2015.[46]
Critical response [ edit ]
Contemporaneous [ edit ]
Linda Gross of the Los Angeles Times referred to the film as a "silly, boring, youth-geared horror movie," though she praised Manfredini's "nervous musical score," the cinematography, as well as the performances, which she deemed "natural and appealing," particularly from Taylor, Bacon, Nelson, and Bartram.[47] Variety, however, deemed the film "low budget in the worst sense—with no apparent talent or intelligence to offset its technical inadequacies—Friday the 13th has nothing to exploit but its title."[48] The Miami News's Bill von Maurer praised Cunningham's "low-key" direction, but noted: "After building terrific suspense and turning over the audience's stomachs, he doesn't quite know where to go from there. The movie begins to sag in the middle and the expectations he has built up begin to sour a bit."[49] Lou Cedrone of The Baltimore Evening Sun referred to the film as "a shamelessly bad film, but then Cunningham knows this. This is sad."[50]
Many critics compared the film unfavorably against John Carpenter's Halloween, among them Marylynn Uricchio of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who added: "Friday the 13th is minimal on plot, suspense, and characterization. It's not very original or very scary, but it is very low-budget."[51] Dick Shippy of the Akron Beacon Journal similarly suggested that Carpenter's Halloween played "like Hitchcock when compared to Cunningham's dreadful tale of butchery."[52] The Burlington Free Press's Mike Hughes wrote that the film "copies everything, that is, except the quality" of Halloween, concluding: "The lowest point of the movie comes near the end, when it exploits the genuine grief and madness of the villain. By then, things simply aren't fun anymore."[53] Ron Cowan of the Statesman Journal noted the film as a "routine "endangered teenagers" exploitation movie," adding that "Cunningham betrays a rather plodding approach to suspense for most of the film, sometimes allowing his camera to act as the killer, sometimes as the victim. And the victims, of course, deliberately put themselves in peril."[54]
A significant number of reviews criticized the film for its depiction of violence: The Hollywood Reporter derided the film, writing: "Gruesome violence, in which throats are slashed and heads are split open in realistic detail, is the sum content of Friday the 13th, a sick and sickening low budget feature that is being released by Paramount. It's blatant exploitation of the lowest order."[55] Michael Blowen of The Boston Globe similarly referred to the film as "nauseating," warning audiences: "Unless your idea of a good time is to watch a woman have her head split by an ax or a man stuck to a door with arrows, you should stay away from Friday the 13th. It's bad luck."[56] The film's most vocal detractor was Gene Siskel, who in his review called Cunningham "one of the most despicable creatures ever to infest the movie business." He also published the address for Charles Bluhdorn, the chairman of the board of Gulf+Western, which owned Paramount, as well as Betsy Palmer's home city and encouraged fellow detractors to write to them and express their contempt for the film. To convince people not to see it, he even gave away the ending.[58] Siskel and Roger Ebert spent an entire episode of their TV show berating the film (and other slasher films of the time) because they felt it would make audiences root for the killer.[59] Leonard Maltin initially awarded the film one star, or 'BOMB', but later changed his mind and awarded the film a star and-a-half "simply because it's slightly better than Part 2" and called it a "gory, cardboard thriller...That younger viewers made it a box-office juggernaut is one more clue as to why SAT scores keep declining. Still, any movie that spawns this many sequels must have done something right".
Retrospective [ edit ]
Contemporary internet review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes awards the film a 63% approval rating, based on 51 critic reviews, with the consensus reading: "Rather quaint by today's standards, Friday the 13th still has its share of bloody surprises and a '70s-holdover aesthetic to slightly compel."[61] Bill Steele of IFC ranked the film the second-best entry in the series, after Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981).[62]
Critic Kim Newman, in a 2000 review, awarded the film two out of five stars, referring to it as "a pallid Halloween rip-off, with a mediocre shock count and a botched ending ... As the bodies pile up amongst this testy crowd of horny teens, there remains a vacant hole were someone scary should be. In a strange way, this film stands unique amongst all slasher films as one where the killer is nearly intangible."[63] Jeremiah Kipp of Slant Magazine reviewed the film in 2009, noting "a kind of minimalism at work, eschewing anything special in terms of mood, pacing, character, plot, and tension."[64] Further commenting on the revelation of the killer's identity, Kipp observed:
The murderer turns out to be a middle-aged woman named Mrs. Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) with a butch haircut and a gigantic bulky sweater, whose line readings are akin to nails on a chalkboard ("They were making love while that boy drowned! His name was Jason!") and a predilection for speaking to herself in the mincing voice of her dead child ("Kill her, Mommy! Kill her!"). It's only in this last 20-minute appearance of this scene-stealing harpy (not to mention the memorable cameo by her rotting zombie son) that Friday the 13th becomes memorable as high camp.[64]
Why did it make such a splash? Theories abound, but here's mine: Friday the 13th succeeded because it was brazen enough to steal so many tricks from the many brilliant horror films that came before it. —Critic Scott Meslow on the film's legacy[65]
In 2012, Bill Gibron of PopMatters wrote of the film: "This movie feels at least twice as long as its 90 minute running time and not always in a good way. There are far too many pointless pauses between the bloodletting. On the positive side, Tom Savini's make-up work is flawless, and Betsy Palmer's turn as big bad Pamela V. has to go down in history as one of the meanest 'mothers' in the entire horror genre. For those who think it's a classic–think again. Of a type? Absolutely. Of faultless movie macabre? No way."[66]
Scott Meslow of The Week reviewed the film in 2015, assessing its original critical reception in a contemporary context: "Before it became an absurdly prolific franchise, Friday the 13th was a cynical, one-off attempt to make a fast buck on a sleazy slasher movie that accidentally ended up spawning a decades-spanning, multimillion-dollar phenomenon ... What's most striking about Friday the 13th is how little regard anyone but its fans seem to have for it."[65]
Home media [ edit ]
Friday the 13th was first released on DVD in the United States by Paramount Home Entertainment on October 19, 1999. The disc sold 32,497 units. On February 3, 2009, Paramount released the film again on DVD and Blu-ray in an unrated uncut, for the first time in the United States (previous VHS, LaserDisc and DVD releases included the R-rated theatrical version).[67] The uncut version of the film contains approximately 11 seconds of previously unreleased footage.[67]
In 2011, the uncut version of Friday the 13th was released in a 4-disc DVD collection with the first three sequels.[68] It was again included in two Blu-ray sets: Friday the 13th: The Complete Collection, released in 2013, and Friday the 13th: The Ultimate Collection, in 2018.[69]
Legacy [ edit ]
Crowds attending a revival of screening of the film in Blairstown, New Jersey, where it was filmed
Contemporary scholars in film criticism, such as Tony Williams, have credited Friday the 13th for initiating the subgenre of the "stalker" or slasher film. Cultural critic Graham Thompson also considers the film as a template, along with John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), that "instigated a rush" of films of its type, in which young people away from supervision are systematically stalked and murdered by a masked villain. While critical reception of the film has been varied in the years since its release, it has attained a significant cult following. In 2017, Complex ranked the film no. 9 in a list of the best slasher films of all time.[73]
Film scholar Matt Hills wrote of the film's legacy: "Friday the 13th has not just been critically positioned as intellectually lacking, it has been othered and devalued in line with the conventional aesthetic norms of the academy and official film culture, said to lack originality and artfulness, to possess no nominated or recognized auteur, and to be grossly sensationalist in its focus on Tom Savini's gory special effects." The film was nominated in 2001 for AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Thrills.[75]
In April 2018, Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco, where the film was shot, held "Crystal Lake Tours," an event dedicated to the making of the film which brought attendees to nine of the filming locations on the property.[76] The event was attended to actress King, who recounted the making of the film to fans.[76]
Related works [ edit ]
Sequels, crossover and reboot [ edit ]
As of 2018, Friday the 13th has spawned ten sequels, including a crossover film with A Nightmare on Elm Street villain Freddy Krueger. Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) introduced Jason Voorhees, the son of Mrs. Voorhees, as the primary antagonist, which would continue for the remaining sequels (with exception of the fifth movie) and related works. Most of the sequels were filmed on larger budgets than the original. For comparison, Friday the 13th had a budget of $550,000, while the first sequel was given a budget of $1.25 million. At the time of its release, Freddy vs. Jason had the largest budget, at $25 million.[80] All of the sequels repeated the premise of the original, so the filmmakers made tweaks to provide freshness. Changes involved an addition to the title—as opposed to a number attached to the end—like "The Final Chapter" and "Jason Takes Manhattan", or filming the movie in 3-D, as Miner did for Friday the 13th Part III (1982). One major addition that would affect the entire film series was the addition of Jason's hockey mask in the third film; this mask would become one of the most recognizable images in popular culture.[82]
A reboot to Friday the 13th was released theatrically in February 2009, with Freddy vs. Jason writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift hired to script the new film.[83] The film focused on Jason Voorhees, along with his trademark hockey mask.[84] The film was produced by Michael Bay, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller through Bay's production company Platinum Dunes, for New Line Cinema.[83] In November 2007, Marcus Nispel, director of the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, was hired to direct.[85] The film had its United States release on February 13, 2009.[86]
Adaptions and literature [ edit ]
In 1987, seven years after the release of the motion picture, Simon Hawke produced a novelization of Friday the 13th. One of the few additions to the book was Mrs. Voorhees begging the Christy family to take her back after the loss of her son; they agreed. Another addition in the novel is more understanding in Mrs. Voorhees' actions. Hawke felt the character had attempted to move on when Jason died, but her psychosis got the best of her. When Steve Christy reopened the camp, Mrs. Voorhees saw it as a chance that what happened to her son could happen again. Her murders were against the counselors, because she saw them all as responsible for Jason's death.
A number of scenes from the film were recreated in Friday the 13th: Pamela's Tale, a two-issue comic book prequel released by WildStorm in 2007. In 2016, the book On Location in Blairstown: The Making of Friday the 13th was released detailing the planning and filming of the movie.[89]
Analysis [ edit ]
Teen sexuality [ edit ]
Film scholar Williams views Friday the 13th as "symptomatic of its era," particularly Reagan-era America, and part of a trajectory of films such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Race with the Devil (1975), which "exemplify a particular apocalyptic vision moving from disclosing family contradictions to self-indulgent nihilism." The film's recurring use of point-of-view shots from the killer's perspective have been noted by scholars such as Philip Dimare as "inherently voyeuristic." Dimare regards the film as a "cautionary tale that succeeds in warning against the sexual impropriety even as it fetishizes violent transgression."
Film critic Timothy Shary notes in his book Teen Movies: American Youth on Screen (2012) that where Halloween introduced a "more subtle sexual curiosity within its morbid moral lesson," films such as Friday the 13th "capitali[zed] on the reactionary aspect of teen sexuality, slaughtering wholesale those youth who deigned to cross the threshold of sexual awareness." Commenting on the film's violence and sexuality, film scholar David J. Hogan notes that, "throughout the film, teenage boys are hideously dispatched, but not with the same buildup and attention to detail that Cunningham and makeup wiz Tom Savini reserved for nubile young girls."
Gender of villain [ edit ]
The film has spurred critical discussion in regard to its villain being female, a plot point examined at length by film scholar Carol Clover in her book Men, Women, and Chainsaws. Clover notes the revelation of Pamela Voorhees as the killer as "the most dramatic case of pulling out the gender rug" in horror film history. Commenting on the first-person point-of-view shots from the killer, Clover writes: ""We" [the audience] stalk and kill a number of teenagers over the course of an hour of movie time without even knowing who "we" are; we are invited, by conventional expectation and by glimpses of "our" own bodily parts—a heavily booted foot, a roughly gloved hand—to suppose that "we" are male, but "we" are revealed, at the film's end, as a woman."
On the killer's identity, Dimare has noted:
Because Cunningham avoids revealing anything about the psychotic killer beyond the fact that the figure is dressed in men's gloves and boots, the audience assumes the slayer is a man ... Cunningham sustains the eerie indeterminacy of the killer's age, social status, and gender deep into his film. The use of this cinematic process of abstraction allows the film to linger over the ambiguous nature of evil until 'sits climactic last act.
Scholar and author Nick White examined the film in the context of queer studies in a 2017 essay, noting the villain, Mrs. Voorhees, as a reverse of the Norman Bates character in Psycho: "The effect of her being the killer is queerly destabilizing. For one, we cannot underestimate the import of having a woman be the architect and cause of such gruesomely creative murders. It's a radical departure from other slasher flicks, like Halloween, which was released a few years before, where the killer is almost always male and perversely hellbent on punishing sexually-active teenagers."[93]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
Via the Right Sphere. Am I reading this correctly? President Dronestrike, who’s been known to liquidate people from the air in places like Pakistan with no more evidence than that their movements show the “signature” of a terrorist, now won’t go in and grab five jihadis whom the feds have reason to believe murdered a U.S. ambassador?
What?
U.S. officials say they have identified five men they believe might be behind the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, last year. The officials say they have enough evidence to justify seizing them by military force as suspected terrorists — but not enough proof to try them in a U.S. civilian court as the Obama administration prefers. So the officials say the men remain at large while the FBI gathers more evidence. The decision not to seize the men militarily underscores the White House’s aim to move away from hunting terrorists as enemy combatants and toward trying them as criminals in a civilian justice system.
First things first: How much do you suppose the AP enjoyed kneeing Obama in the groin by publishing this after finding out that the DOJ was peeking at their phone records? Imagine the subpoenas being prepared at this very moment to find out who leaked them this scoop on Benghazi.
Not for a minute do I believe that O really wants these guys tried in federal court. His whole counterterror M.O. has been to kill suspected jihadis on sight precisely so that he doesn’t have to deal with the headache of housing and trying them. If he sends in the SEALs to grab the five and they succeed, suddenly Gitmo and military tribunals are back front and center and the headache starts anew. More than that, he risks a second Benghazi-related humiliation if any of them go to federal court and are acquitted. There’s no reason to take that risk when he can check the “rule of law”/civilian trial box for his base by prosecuting Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in Massachusetts. Also, giving the Benghazi five a soapbox by trying them in federal court hands their lawyers an opportunity to conduct discovery and try to turn the trial into a referendum on the feds’ handling of security in Benghazi, which would only feed the embarrassment Obama and the State Department have already suffered for last September’s lapse. According to polling, the American public is just fine with drone strikes on suspected terrorists abroad, and no doubt would be especially understanding of strikes aimed at people suspected of killing a U.S. ambassador. The fact that O’s allegedly willing to ignore all that and demand criminal procedures suggests something else is up.
Theory: The Libyan government is resisting U.S. officials’ requests to either authorize a drone strike or let special forces hit the ground to round these people up. Acquiescing in a heavy-handed American military action against the locals could be dangerous for a weak regime that’s surrounded (sometimes literally) by jihadists and various militias. If O ignores their warnings and attacks the Benghazi five anyway, and the government there is consequently destabilized, he’ll take all kinds of heat for that. If he holds off at their request and blames them for obstructing him via leaks to the media, he’ll take all kinds of heat for not insisting upon justice for the murderers of an American diplomat. So, possibly, he’s chosen the middle course — hold off on attacking but claim it’s because he’s building a criminal case, which at least promises future action. Or maybe I’m overthinking this and The One really has gone cuckoo for federal trials. We’ll know the next time he drops a bomb on someone in Yemen, won’t we?
Exit question: The timing of his big Gitmo/drone speech on Thursday just got a lot more interesting, didn’t it?
Update: Yep.
So DOJ is building criminal cases against both James Rosen and the Benghazi terrorists.Great. — Guy Benson (@guypbenson) May 21, 2013
Update: The AP has now expanded its original article to add detail. A key bit:
The U.S. has decided that the evidence it has now would be enough for a military operation to seize the men for questioning, but not enough for a civilian arrest or a drone strike against them, the officials said. The U.S. has kept them under surveillance, mostly by electronic means. There was a worry that the men could get spooked and hide, but so far, not even the FBI’s release of surveillance video stills has done that.
Enough to put troops in harm’s way but not enough for a drone strike? |
Progress
Before our white brothers came to civilize us we had no jails. Therefore we had no criminals. You can’t have criminals without a jail. We had no locks or keys, and so we had no thieves. If a man was so poor that he had no horse, tipi or blanket, someone gave him these things. We were too uncivilized to set much value on personal belongings. We wanted to have things only in order to give them away. We had no money, and therefore a man’s worth couldn’t be measured by it. We had no written law, no attorney or politicians, therefore we couldn’t cheat. We were in a really bad way before the white man came, and I don’t know how we managed to get along without the basic things which, we are told, are absolutely necessary to make a civilized society.
-- Lakota Sage Lame Deer (from John Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions) |
With 1:35 to play in the third quarter of Tuesday’s game against the New York Knicks, head coach Dwane Casey called Norman Powell’s number.
The high-energy second-round pick with a shade over 10 minutes of NBA experience to that point was checking in as the Raptors held an 80-76 lead, opposite a Knicks lineup that contained no starters. The tight score and late juncture made it a somewhat high-leverage situation but the relative lack of competition quality made it a reasonable time to see what Powell could provide.
After all, Casey is going to need to see what Powell can do in meaningful minutes some time over the next two-plus weeks. Terrence Ross is out at least a fortnight after suffering a ligament injury in his left thumb, DeMarre Carroll continues to deal with plantar fasciitis in his right foot, and Powell, with his defensive acumen, appears the best bet of the team’s four de facto rookies to be called into action on the wing as a result.
Powell would close out the quarter and head to the bench for the remainder of the game, the Knicks having gone on a 9-5 (really, 9-4 since Cory Joseph was already at the line when Powell entered) to end the frame. That’s no real fault of Powell, who missed a corner three in his 95 seconds of action but otherwise did nothing to earn his -5.
Instead, the blame for the poor end to the quarter could be assigned to Casey, who put his rookie in no position to succeed. Powell played his minutes as part of an all-bench unit, so his quality of teammates matched the quality of competition (in relative terms – I’m borrowing terminology from hockey here that doesn’t marry perfectly). Powell was slotted at the two, Cory Joseph at the one, with a laughable Anthony Bennett-Patrick Patterson-Bismack Biyombo trio making up the frontcourt.
All coaches go to all-bench units at times. Casey seems a proponent of the “hockey change” in non-blowout situations, and the Raptors averaged 3.42 minutes per game with no starters on the floor last year, per data from the excellent Seth Partnow of Nylon Calculus. While that may seem like a lot or a little depending on your basketball worldview, it’s almost exactly the league average (3.41). Partnow also found that the start of the second quarter and the end of the third-start of the fourth are the times where teams average the fewest starters, and even in games classified as “close,” teams only averaged 1.6 starters in the final minute of the third.
But 1.6 is a fary cry from zero, and the Raptors may have punted an opportunity to grow or at least hold their lead. Lineups with zero starters are outscored by 3.07 points per-48 minutes on average, more than 1.5 points per-48 worse than lineups with even a single starter. To get really specific using Partnow’s data, when a home team has one starter and a visiting team has none, the home team outscores the visiting team by 2.7 points per-48 minutes. That effect is tiny over 95 seconds but it speaks to the general strategy of matching an all-bench unit with one that contains some of your better players.
The Raptors turned a potential edge – Derek Fisher using a full bench mob – into a neutral situation, one that may have even skewed New York’s way given how thin the Raptors were Tuesday. Again, it was a lineup with Joseph, a struggling Patterson who hasn’t hit an open triple in Bruno Caboclo’s lifetime, and three players who don’t offer a ton on the offensive end. It’s surprising that unit even scored. The quality of the second unit doesn’t fall on Casey, especially given the injuries and the unseasonable cold spell that’s befallen Patterson (and previously, Ross), but an over-reliance on Joseph making chicken salad out of chicken shit does.
In Casey’s defense, he was already facing a situation in which Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan were being used heavily. They wound up playing 37 and 39 minutes, respectively, and are averaging 34.9 and 36.3. Keeping those players under 40 minutes is a worthwhile goal, even in a tight game, but Casey has to find a way to better stagger their minutes, as the team simply can’t afford to have them both off the floor in a game that’s remotely close right now.
When Lowry and DeRozan share the floor, the Raptors are outscoring teams by an estimated 7.5 points per-100 possessions (PPC). With only one of them on the floor, the Raptors are outscoring teams by an estimated 6.6 PPC. With neither, the Raptors are being outscored by 30.5 PPC, and their offense is only managing 70.4 PPC.
O-Rtg Net Rating Both 104.3 7.5 One 104.1 6.6 Neither 70.4 -30.5
Again: When Lowry and DeRozan hit the bench together, the Raptors score at the rate that me, William Lou, and any three commenters would score at, and the net outcome is sub-Sixersian. Thirty-and-a-half points per-100 possessions is an insane rate, and the Raptors are averaging 4.9 minutes per game with their starting backcourt on the pine together. Considering they’ve only played one blowout to inflate those numbers – the Raptors only played two minutes with an all-bench unit against Miami – that’s simply too high.
This isn’t the reason the Raptors lost on Tuesday. There are a number of strange, small things that the game ended up hinging on, and the last 95 seconds of the third quarter was a potential marginal gain that the Raptors eschewed. That’s an important lesson for tight games in the future – Lowry and DeRozan can’t play 48 minutes, but their minutes need to be staggered such that one of them is always on the floor. |
Posted 02 December 2013 - 02:20 PM
Project Update:We are currently changing some of the avenues for community information updates and plan to get this stuff out ASAP. One of the changes is to the Ask the Devs format of Q and A.Current plans are to shift the regular forum updates to a video format which will hopefully be a little less time consuming as the current method of communication. Our first video is targeted for mid-December if everything works out as planned. Stay tuned for updates around that time.We are currently working toward a release candidate of UI 2.0 which is to bring the functionality of the current UI with the improved flow and experience as well as the new store interface. A large part of the dev studio is involved in this process and the hard work of all involved is now showing a better polished version of the UI as each milestone is put up on the Public Test Server. The upcoming Public Test Server build of UI 2.0 will include the updated Pilot Tree screens, Mech Efficiency screen, the XP>GXP conversion tool and the preview version of how Artemis will be working in MechLab.We would like to take this opportunity to thank the community for the feedback so far on UI 2.0 and with each new build, we have been implementing a lot of the community’s feedback into UI 2.0. With each release we put on the Pubic Test Server, we gather both detail metrics from the servers as well as valuable feedback in the feedback thread. It is this information that allows us to make sure we are hitting key points in the delivery of UI 2.0 to make sure we’re on target for its live release.Our target is to launch UI 2.0 as soon as possible and iron out the kinks over the next few months. I can tell you this, it will be buggy (not game-breaking) and we’ll be addressing both internal requirements and your feedback on a week by week basis. This means we’ll be splitting the UI2.0 team to have some people working on nothing but bug fixes, and the other group will be working on core feature items and updates. The bug team is the team that will be doing to a weekly cycle and we’ll be able to track updates a lot faster as we push the fixes into the normal patch process.The first set of features for Community Warfare have been broken down and reviewed by engineering. The systems engineers have a roadmap and schedule in which they will start addressing the needs of all new systems required by Community Warfare and are working on the core layout for faction/unit gameplay. What this sums up is… engineering has done all project management breakdowns and specs for the upcoming feature and code clean-up and preparation is being worked on in a special new branch build (much like PTS). Some of the core new features, like database sharding for improved load handling, have been completed and are in that branch now.We will update as each feature of Community Warfare enters development so you will know what order to expect things to start appearing. Right now all development is heavily, under the hood.Another feature that will be updated is the Match Maker. A full analysis has been performed on the current system and fixes/updates are now planned. This is not a trivial update and may be included with the release of Phase 1 Community Warfare. Tonnage limits, grouping, Elo calculations are all reliant on these changes and we will fill you in with more detail, as these tasks move into production.A new game mode is being added.will be released mid-December which is essentially Team Death Match. The inclusion of this mode is the first game mode specific step toward Community Warfare and the game modes that will be required for planetary control and community conflicts. It’s also a way for us to gather metrics on what may eventually turn into a Solaris game mode further down the line.Theis in progress and we have some functioning turrets that will be fortifying Forward Operating Bases in the mode and the game mode is being investigated for any retrofit issues with the older maps. This game mode in particular will have to take into consideration special rules or functionality for Community Warfare and how defensive positions operate and are possibly upgraded. This will be the first game mode to see a potential “respawn” system. We will update when we prep this mode to go live.All BattleMechs are going through micro-tuning in terms of their hit boxes, quirks and abilities. We have just completed the first draft of upcoming new modules and pilot talents that will allow us to further refine the roles that the various BattleMechs partake in. We are also looking at chassis/role specific module slots being added to BattleMechs so that they do not occupy general module slots which can be considered as generic modules. As an example, players who equip a specialized Scouting module may receive higher XP/CB gains when performing scouting actions and players who equip a specialized Brawler module may receive higher XP/CB gains when performing support actions etc. Our plan is to start ramping up generation of these new modules and talents as soon as possible.Design has started to focus on Clan Tech. It is at this time that we must stress once again that we will not be bringing Clan Tech into the game as it was originally written. Game balance is going to take precedence over any values/behaviors found previously in other MechWarrior/BattleTech titles. Yes, there will be growing pains but we will make sure that Clan Tech does have a unique flavor when compared to InnerSphere Tech but not to the extent of everything just being over powered out of the gate.Currently on the hot-seat is a discussion as to how Clan BattleMechs will be customized. We will update everyone once the final call has been made and who knows, maybe one of the planned BattleMechs will be announced soon™!New layouts have been done for spawn locations and base/resource collector locations across all maps. The motivational drive was to keep the spawn locations fair and at the same time have players able to enter combat sooner. This is more evident on the larger maps.The art team has proven technically that cock-pit glass is now functional. This means a little more immersive effect when you’re sitting in the cockpit of your BattleMech. I’ve seen the effect and it’s very cool and non-intrusive so expect to see this coming soon with the next few new BattleMechs appearing on the battlefield. Previously released BattleMechs will be retrofitted over the coming months with their own glass treatments.The new map HPG Manifold has gone through some major polishing since you last saw a sneak peak of it and is ready for release.Please provide your feedback at the following thread: http://mwomercs.com/...22013-feedback/ |
We may not have gotten a new Kendrick Lamar album tonight (it’s instead coming next week), but here’s a nice substitute: Jack White has unveiled a surprise new single called “Battle Cry”.
Clocking in at two and a half minutes, it’s your prototypical Jack White rock anthem brimming with gnarly-as-fuck guitar licks. However, aside from a few chants, its strictly an instrumental.
“Battle Cry” was released on Friday without much fanfare, and at the moment it’s unclear whether it’s a one-off track or part of a larger project. Stream it below.
Update: “Battle Cry” was written specifically for a new promotional film from sporting good company Warstic, of which White is a co-owner. White himself also appears in the film alongside MLB all-star Ian Kinsler, which you watch below. “Battle Cry” will also be released on limited edition, one-sided, gold colored 7-inch vinyl for Record Store Day 2017 (April 22nd).
Stream the song in its entirety via Apple Music or Spotify:
In a recent interview with the New Yorker, White revealed that he was working on new music. He’s set up shop in a small Nashville apartment, where he records on “a reel-to-reel tape recorder that he bought when he was fourteen with money he made mowing lawns.” He’s “going to try to write songs where I can’t be heard by the next-door neighbor. And I want to write like Michael Jackson would write — instead of writing parts on the instruments or humming melodies, you think of them. To do everything in my head and to do it in silence and use only one room.” White reportedly spends “several hours a day” crafting in this space.
White’s last solo album came in the form of 2014’s Lazaretto. Last year, he released an acoustic rarities compilation and contributed to Beyoncé’s Lemonade. |
The hairy-ball theorem says that there is no continuous non-zero vector field on the surface of a sphere. There are lots of popular accounts that tell you what this means, giving great examples. Here's a Youtube video for example:
My goal is to show why it's always true.A simply connected domain in the plane is one with the property that any loop in it can be shrunk down to a point. Here's an example of a domain D with an example loop L being shrunk down to a point P:Here's an example of a domain that's not simply connected. It has a hole in the middle. I've drawn a L loop around the hole. You can't shrink that loop to a point because the hole gets in the way:Here's a simply connected domain with a vector field on it:Think of the vectors as being drawn literally in the surface so that if we were to pick up the surface and stretch it like a piece of rubber the vectors would get stretched with it. Remember that a vector field is defined everywhere in the domain so the arrows are just a random sprinkling of examples to show what's going on. For this to be an accurate picture you want to imagine an infinity of arrows, one at every single point of the domain.Let's put a loop, starting and ending at P, in our simply-connected domain:Now imagine travelling along the loop, starting at P and ending at P. As you move along there's an arrow at each point in your journey. Here's what the arrows look like as you travel from P to P anti-clockwise, plotted as a kind of graph:The vectors start off pointing to the right. They swing anti-clockwise by about 45º and then swing back to where they started. As the journey is a loop they clearly must end where they started. A different, really swirly vector field, might have resulted in arrows that that rotated around hundreds of times along your journey. But by time you reach the end of the journey they must swing back to where they started. What's slightly less obvious is that they'd also have to rotate back to cancel out the hundreds of swings. You might think "the vectors could rotate round a hundred times but as long as they make exactly 100 turns they'll return to where they started and there's no need for them to unwind". But actually, every bit of rotation in the journey must be unwound. The total amount of rotation, adding all the positive rotations, and subtracting off the negative rotations, is called the winding number for the loop. We count anti-clockwise rotation as positive and clockwise as negative. So I'm claiming that the winding number for a closed loop in a simply-connected domain is always zero.(Note: in most books the winding number normally refers to how many times the loop itself winds around a point. I'm using it to refer to how many times the vector winds around itself you follow the loop. To help with your intuition: the hour hand of a working clock normally accumulates a winding number of -2 in one day. If it ran forward for a day, but then ran backwards for half a day, the winding number would be -1.)Here's why the winding number for simply connected domains must be zero: firstly - it's pretty clear that the winding number for any loop must be an integer. If the winding number was a half, say, the arrow wouldn't end up pointing 180º from where it started which makes no sense for a closed loop. Now the domain is simply connected, so the loop can be shrunk to a point. Now imagine doing the shrinking really slowly and keeping track of the winding number as the loop shrinks. As the loop shrinks, the graph of the vectors along the loop must vary slowly. The total winding number depends continuously on the vectors in the graph so the winding number must vary slowly as the loop shrinks. But the winding number is an integer. It can't change really slowly, it can only change by amounts of a whole integer. So the winding number can't change at all. Every loop in a simply-connected domain must have a winding number that's the same as the winding number of a loop that is just one point ie. zero.On to the sphere. Here's a sphere with a vector field where all of the vectors point along lines of longitude to the north pole:(Sorry about my poor quality drawing but I'm sure you know what vectors pointing north look like.)At this point you may be tempted to say "aha! That's a continuous vector field on the sphere that's non-zero everywhere!" Alas, it's not defined everywhere. It's a vector field everywhere except at the north and south poles. If you're at the north pole, no non-zero vector can point north. And at the south pole every non-zero vector points north with no continuous way to pick just one.Given any vector field on the Earth we can imagine slicing the earth through the equator and flattening out the surfaces of the northern and souther hemispheres as two separate disks. Here's what you get if you do this with the north vector field (ignoring the problems at the poles for now):You reconstruct the Earth again by gluing the two disks together according to the orange arrows, and then inflating. Any vector field on the surface of the Earth gives rise to a pair of vector fields on disks like this. But there will be a constraint. The vectors around the boundary of the two disks will match. In fact, vectors at the opposite ends of the orange arrow have to match. But they won't necessarily be equal as drawn in this diagram because the disk for the southern hemisphere corresponds to a view from below.Suppose we start at the point P and follow a loop eastwards along the equator. That's an anti-clockwise loop round the upper disk and simultaneously a clockwise loop round the lower disk. Here are the graphs:In the upper map the loop gives rise to winding number one. But in the lower map we get winding number minus one. So here's an important lesson: the winding number makes perfect sense for a flat domain in the plane. But on the surface of 3D objects it depends on how you flatten out your map. In this case, the winding number on the upper map is 2 more than the winding number for the lower map. (Remember, these fields aren't defined at the poles so we haven't contradicted the original theorem that the winding number is zero for any vector field defined in a simply-connected domain.)But here's the most important thing in this proof: the winding number for the upper hemisphere loop will be two more that the winding number for the lower hemisphere loop, no matter what vector field you have. This is because if you've travelled an angle θ around the equator, the vectors at opposite ends of the orange arrows will differ by an angle of 2θ. For example, once you're 90º around the earth, the north arrow is draw as a down-arrow in the upper graph and as an up-arrow in the lower graph. They're already 180º apart. You can see this is true for north pointing vectors literally by tracing with your fingers around the loops. It's also true for vectors pointing east. I'll leave that as an exercise for you, but here's a picture of some eastward vectors to get you started:Along the equator, every vector on the surface is a linear combination of north and east vectors. So if it's true for both the north and east vectors then it must be true for all vectors. But if the graph for one picture of the equatorial loop has vectors that are 2θ more than the vectors for another graph, the first one must complete two revolutions more than the second one. So the first has a winding number two more than the second.If you had a continuous vector field that really was non-zero over the entire sphere, cutting the sphere in half would give a pair of continuous vector fields defined on disks. As disks are simply-connected, the theorem we started with tells us they must both have winding number zero as you loop around them. But we've also just shown that looping round one has winding number two more than looping around the other. This is a contradiction. So there is no continuous vector field that is non-zero everywhere. ∎If you get stuck above I strongly recommend trying to draw some continuous non-zero vector fields on the sphere, transferring them to disks, and counting winding numbers.Notice how we've done more than prove the theorem. We now know that if we have a continuous vector field on a sphere we can find out whether to look for its zeros in the northern or southern hemisphere by computing the winding numbers as above. At least one of the two winding numbers must be non-zero and that tells us which hemisphere we can be sure contains a zero. The fact that the two winding numbers differ by two, and not by just one, also tells us a bit about the nature of the zeros. But that's another story. That two is also related to the fact that the Euler characteristic of the sphere is two. It's also related to the Lefschetz indexThis proof is based on proofs I studied years ago relating to Chern classes . I recently became interested in Chern classes again because they play an important role in understanding phenomena in solid state physics such as the quantum Hall effect . That argument about slowly shrinking a loop leaving its winding number unchanged tells you a lot about slowly changing certain types of quantum system.It's possible I completely messed up. Here 's an "elementary" proof. It looks much harder than what I did. But I feel like I did faithfully capture, in pictures, an argument that's buried in Lectures on Riemann surfaces . And it seems to correctly reproduce the Lefschetz number of 2. |
Sen. John McCain said Sunday he is “speechless” over President Trump’s recent decision to allow top Russian officials into the Oval Office and is struggling to explain many of the commander in chief’s actions.
Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” the Arizona Republican and frequent critic of the administration said he’s perplexed by Mr. Trump’s decision to fire FBI director James Comey and by the approach the White House has taken to questions about its involvement with Russia.
“Honestly, I cannot explain a lot of the president’s actions,” Mr. McCain said. “Mr. Comey was highly respected and highly regarded, so I can’t explain it. I don’t think it was a smart thing to do.”
Mr. McCain has been highly critical of Mr. Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak. During that meeting, the president reportedly discussed classified information with the officials, called Mr. Comey a “nut job” and said firing him had taken pressure off of his administration.
“I’m almost speechless because I don’t know why someone would say something like that,” Mr. McCain said. “But I know this: Mr. Lavrov is the stooge of a thug and a murderer … He had no business in the Oval Office.”
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. |
When euro zone leaders meet on Thursday to discuss the latest episode of their crisis, the room will be divided between coldly rational realists and ideologically driven Utopians. The champions on either side will be Greece and Germany. Yes, it will be German idealism against Greek realism.
The Germans hold to a utopian view of how international financial markets work – that the market is a moral universe where everybody keeps their word and all debts are paid. But the overwhelming weight of empirical evidence is that this is a fantasy. Not only are debt write-offs quite common, but they work.
Says who? Well, let’s try Germany’s own leading experts on the question. A study by Carmen Reinhart and Christoph Trebesch, published in October by the University of Munich, looks at negotiated debt deals in the periods after the first World War and between 1979 and 2010.
In these two periods alone, they count 47 “default and restructuring episodes”. These involved both debts owned by countries to private lenders (largely like Ireland now) and debts owed to other governments (like Greece). They ask the €300 billion question: what happens to countries that have debt written off?
Untrustworthy countries
There’s a gut answer to this question and it’s the one that dominates German thinking at the moment: countries that have debt written off are like known criminals that get away with a crime. They will go on with their nasty behaviour and no one will trust them again.
This is why causing pain in Ireland or Portugal or Greece is the moral thing to do – it is being cruel to be kind. If a country does not honour its debts, it will suffer even more deeply in the long term because no one will want to lend to it again.
But the gut answer is demonstrably wrong. The outcome of organised restructuring of debt – in other words, of negotiated default – is almost always good.
In the 1930s, no fewer than 18 advanced economies defaulted on debts they built up during the first World War and in post-war reconstruction. These debts were owed almost exclusively to the US and UK. Just one country, Finland, paid the war debts as scheduled. In 1931, the US introduced a moratorium on the servicing of these war debts and in 1934 all the debtors except Finland defaulted.
In the post-1979 period, meanwhile, 29 middle-income economies negotiated defaults on their debts in various stages over the succeeding decades.
In some cases, these write-offs were enormous. France’s default in the early 1930s, if we were to translate it into what it would mean in relation to Ireland’s current national debt, would be the equivalent of us getting a write-down of around €90 billion.
So what happened, on the whole, to these countries? Did they all go to hell in the same handcart? Were they locked out of international financial markets because nobody could trust them ever again? Mostly not. In fact, in a great majority of cases, they were much better off.
The study looked at what had happened to these economies four years after the final resolution of their debts. For both the 1930s defaults and the post-1979 episodes, the picture is broadly the same: GDP rose in the defaulting countries by between 9 and 16 per cent. Of 47 countries studied, 39 had positive growth, six stayed flat, and just two economies declined.
Higher income, lower debt
The authors conclude that “the economic landscape after a final debt reduction is characterised by higher income levels and growth, lower debt servicing burdens and lower government debt”.
Something even more remarkable emerges from this study. We are told repeatedly that countries that don’t pay all of their debts get terrible ratings from the big agencies and thus get locked out of the international financial markets. This turns out to be nonsense.
Reinhart and Trebesch looked at 30 episodes of agreed default between 1979 and 2010. And here’s the thing: the ratings of the countries that defaulted didn’t fall but rose, by an average of 38 per cent after four years.
This is worth repeating: a structured and decisive default on unpayable debts doesn’t make it harder for a country to borrow money internationally. It makes it easier. Lenders see countries that have dealt with their overhang of debt as a better risk than those that haven’t.
The researchers stress the word “decisive”. The benefits of default come from a sense of finality. This problem has been dealt with; these debts are gone. On the other hand, partial, temporary deals – the kind of ad hoc crisis management we have at the moment – is associated with “longer default spells and protracted slumps”.
In a way, what’s happening in Europe right now is another round in a battle that’s been raging since telescopes were pointed at the skies – the battle between science and religion. The true believers know in their hearts that Hell awaits us if we depart from the path of financial righteousness. Those who believe the evidence are heretics. Angela Merkel is the pope; Alex Tsipras is Galileo. |
As key provisions of the Patriot Act are about to expire in June, Congress is in a big hurry to figure out how to reform surveillance. The House just overwhelmingly voted in favor of the USA Freedom Act, a bill that’ll limit the NSA’s bulk data collection.
Unfortunately, it may not be able to fix the United States’ broken surveillance apparatus.
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What Is It?
The USA Freedom Act would prohibit using Section 215 to authorize the NSA’s bulk data collection program, as well as FISA’s pen/trap statute and national security letters. What that means is that if the bill passes, the NSA won’t be able to scoop up data en masse from telecom companies like it did before; instead, it would be required to request data using keywords. The act also declassifies big FISA court opinions.
Those are good things! And with its patriotic name engineered to garner bipartisan support, USA Freedom is getting pushed as a way to curb government oversteps, with support across the aisle and from big tech companies like Google and Facebook.
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Unfortunately, the USA Freedom Act concedes far too much. It doesn’t touch the Drug Enforcement Agency’s surveillance programs. The transparency requirements are lax, so the government won’t have to say how many people it snooped on. It expands surveillance of foreign nationals coming in and out of the country, and increases penalties for people caught providing “material support” to terrorists.
Reform or More of the Same?
Many civil liberties groups believe that the USA Freedom Act doesn’t go far enough. “This bill would make only incremental improvements, and at least one provision—the material-support provision—would represent a significant step backwards,” ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer said in a statement. “The disclosures of the last two years make clear that we need wholesale reform.”
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Jaffer wants Congress to let Section 215 sunset completely, a common sentiment among privacy activists who are USA Freedom Act skeptics—they’d rather let it expire and wait for a better reform package than endorse something half-baked.
Even supporters admit that the USA Freedom Act has its problems. The Center for Democracy and Technology endorses the bill, but it points out that it doesn’t limit data retention for information collected on people who turn out to have no connection to a suspect or target, and emphasizes that this is not an omnibus solution.
The Other Doomed Surveillance Bills
There were two bills competing with the USA Freedom Act before today’s vote, but both are highly unlikely to be passed. The first bill, introduced by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, would keep everything about government spying just the way it is. It doesn’t have a name yet but it might as well be called the Snowden Nightmare Act.
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McConnell’s bill extends the Patriot Act to 2020, including Section 215, which is what the NSA used to justify mass surveillance. His bill disregards any need for intelligence community reform, to the point where it almost seems like he doesn’t care about public opinion (or, obviously, letting people get spied on). It’s an irresponsible piece of legislation that reinforces institutional privacy abuses.
The other bill was the Surveillance State Repeal Act, a sweeping reform advocated by members of the anti-surveillance Civil Liberties Coalition. They are dismissing the USA Freedom Act in support of the Surveillance State Repeal Act, a far more comprehensive piece of legislation in the House that completely repeals the Patriot Act, as well as 2008’s FISA Amendments Act.
What now?
It’s clear that the USA Freedom Act is no cure-all for surveillance abuses. It may not even be a cure-some. Yet better alternatives, like the Surveillance State Repeal Act, have no real chance of garnering support in Congress precisely because they are so much more comprehensive that they will invariably alienate the intelligence community.
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Incremental reform is usually better than nothing, but the USA Freedom Act presents a conundrum: Is this like accepting a Band-Aid for a gunshot wound? Or is it a realpolitik
baby-step away from surveillance abuses? |
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Bernie Sanders supporters responded to an ugly smear campaign carried out by a pro-Clinton super PAC by donating $1.2 million to the Sanders campaign in less than 48 hours.
The Sanders campaign announced the donations:
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In just 48 hours, Sanders’ donors gave $1.2 million to his Democratic presidential campaign after Correct the Record, the Clinton-backing super PAC, attempted to link Sanders and the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. The average donation was $23.
“I hope that sends a very clear message that the American people are sick and tired of politics as usual and negative campaigning,” Sanders said in the email thanking his supporters.
“We’ve never seen an immediate donor response like what the Sanders campaign received on Tuesday. At one point, it drove 180 contributions through our platform per minute,” said Erin Hill, executive director of ActBlue, the fundraising firm. “Over its 11-year history ActBlue has sent money to over eleven-thousand campaigns and committees — and the Bernie Sanders campaign holds the record for the two biggest donor days ever for a campaign on our platform.”
The reaction was to the attempt by David Brock of the Clinton super PAC to link Sanders and Chavez. The “connection” was that Sanders and former Rep. Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass.) worked together to help provide Vermonters and other low-income New England residents with affordable home heating oil supplied by the Venezuelan state-owned oil company, CITGO.
“Frankly what the Clinton Super PAC is doing is nothing new. It’s the same-old, same-old negative politics that has gone on for years: throw mud and hope some of it sticks,” Sanders wrote. “We are fighting for a different kind of politics. Instead of hurling dishonest or out-of-context charges, we are trying to run an issue-oriented campaign – focusing on the most important concerns of the American people.”
Sanders was right. The attempt by the super PAC was more of the same old failed politics. The attack on Sanders was based on a strategy of trying to lower the Senator from Vermont’s favorability ratings with Democrats.
The result of their attack was that supporters are opening their wallets and fighting back against the smears.
Anyone who watched the Republican debate on CNN can see the value in Democrats running a campaign that is based on issues and forward thinking vision for the future of the country. Republicans spent three hours on Wednesday night disagreeing and tearing each other apart.
Democrats don’t have to engage in such behavior. In fact, there should be no room in the Democratic primary for these attacks. Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton should be judged based on their records, not whispers and memos leaked to the media.
Bernie Sanders supporters sent a message. Attacking them only makes them stronger and more determined. The Democratic primary should be about issues. Save the smears for low brow candidates like Donald Trump.
If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human: |
Two Transportation Security Administration employees have been fired and two others reassigned after they allegedly set up a system to allow a male screener to pat down attractive men going through security at Denver International Airport, authorities said.
The employees were not identified, and there will be no criminal charges because no victims have come forward, according to a police report.
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Denver Police got involved in March, after a tipster brought it to the attention of the TSA in November, which conducted an investigation and contacted police.
The male screener would give a signal to a female employee when a male passenger arrived that he thought was attractive …
Read the rest of the story from our partners at NBC News
Contact us at editors@time.com. |
When Danielle, Este, and Alana Haim began work on the follow-up to 2013’s Days Are Gone, they regrouped in the family living room where they played music as kids. This was partly because they had nowhere else to go coming off of months on the road. “We were living out of suitcases,” says Danielle, 27, the group’s lead guitarist. But they also wanted to preserve their creative independence after a few marathon years that saw them sign with Jay Z’s Roc Nation management, tour stadiums with Taylor Swift, and dominate critics’ best-of lists with their fusion of classic rock, old-school R&B, and modern pop. “We decided we were going to do what we’ve always done,” Danielle says. “We wanted to get back to our so-called roots. We needed just it be the three of us in the beginning. We just wanted to get back in the zone.”
As a result, the sisters say their new album strips away some of the bells and whistles of their debut in favor of a more organic, live band feel. “I played a fretless five-string [bass], and I haven’t played a fretless five-string since I was a 12-year-old listening to Korn,” says Este, 30. The trio made extensive demos on GarageBand, taking each song as far as they could before bringing the material to a small circle of producers. Pop tastemaker Ariel Rechtshaid, who worked on the bulk of Days Are Gone, and ex-Vampire Weekend member Rostam Batmanglij are the album’s only outside collaborators. “There’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen anyway,” says multi-instrumentalist Alana, 25. “There are three perfectionists in our band, and to add any more people would be too much of a party.”
For more First Looks, pick up Entertainment Weekly‘s First Look Issue, on stands Friday, or buy it here — and subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.
Those perfectionist tendencies are to blame for the album’s shifting arrival date. Originally, the group had hoped to release the album this past fall, but they’re now looking at a summer release. “We write everything, we play everything, and we help produce everything,” Danielle says. “These things take time, and we refuse to put out anything we’re not 100 percent in love with.” But the band is eager to share the music as soon as possible—they already road-tested two new songs, the hooky call-and-response tune “Nothing’s Wrong” and the twinkling “Little of Your Love,” at festival dates this summer. “To get to Days Are Gone, it took us seven years,” Alana says. “We’re super excited for the next chapter, to just tour our hearts out and really hit the ground running in 2017.” Adds Este: “You don’t even know what’s coming for you. I’m warning you. You. Don’t. Even. Know.” |
Well, it was fun while it lasted. If you're looking to flex your creative muscles and possibly trying out some game creation, you're going to have to look somewhere other than Microsoftat least, if you're in that gray area between 'have no idea what you're doing" and "planning to develop and sell games for real." The company has officially cancelled its Project Spark half-game, half-platform, which allowed buyers to create their own little games within one big sandbox.
"This was an extremely difficult decision for our team that we do not take lightly. When 'Project Spark' transitioned away from active development last fall, many of our team members moved to other projects within Microsoft Studios. While this means there have been no layoffs at Microsoft, it also means it's simply no longer feasible to continue the behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping 'Project Spark' up and running with meaningful updates and bug fixes, so we have come to this hard decision," reads a blog post from Microsoft yesterday.
Microsoft is officially pulling the plug on Project Spark on August 12. After that date, the company notes that the game's online services will no longer be available. And, as a result, those who already own Project Spark will be unable to to both upload their own content and download anybody else's. You'll still be able to play anything you've already downloaded offline, but should you ever delete it (or should your Xbox or PC up and die), you won't have any way to reacquire the mini-games.
"Despite this news, we want to celebrate the accomplishments of our team and community of creators and players. Our team released 46 content packs, thousands of assets and 16 updates since launch (averaging more than one update every two months). We produced hundreds of livestreams and videos to educate and celebrate our community. In turn, our passionate fans have then gone above and beyond supporting 'Project Spark' by uploading hundreds of thousands of creations and dreaming up millions of objects, behaviors, and experiences. Outside the game, they created fan sites, tutorials, forums, apps, and more! We thank everyone who has played or created anything within 'Project Spark,' as it would have never existed without you," Microsoft notes.
Microsoft is also offering a bit of a gift to those who recently purchased Project Spark since, you know, you won't really be able to do much with it in a few months. Anyone who bought the (sort-of) game and redeemed the Project Spark Starter Kit code after October 5 of last year will receive an automatic credit that they can use on either the Xbox or Microsoft store. (Those who purchased it between June 28 and October 5 should have already received a credit from Microsoft.) |
A Washington, D.C., bar is opening its doors early Thursday morning to broadcast former FBI Director James Comey's highly anticipated testimony in front of Congress.
Shaw's Tavern will open at 9:30 a.m. for "The Comey Hearing Covfefe." The bar will feature $5 "Russian Vodka flavors" and a $10 "FBI" sandwich.
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"Come on... you know you want to watch the drama unfold this Thursday," a Facebook post for the event reads. "We will be opening early at Shaw's Tavern at 9:30am and the hearing starts at 10am on all 5 tv's with sound."
This is Comey's first appearance in front of Congress since he was fired by President Trump last month. He will testify in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee amid its ongoing probe into Russian election interference and is expected to address reports that Trump asked him to drop the FBI's investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
News of the event quickly spread on Twitter.
Featuring "$5 Russian Vodka flavors.” And all five TVs tuned into the hearing. https://t.co/wCnhBXmGLN — Matt Viser (@mviser) June 5, 2017
I am way more here for this than I am the DC bar trend of using corny and/or offensive political puns for drink names. https://t.co/4A1sAr4rTa — Marin Cogan (@marincogan) June 5, 2017 |
Could antioxidant that also inhibits cholesterol biosynthesis be more effective than statins?
Researchers in Israel have identified an antioxidant that can lower cholesterol levels as well as eliminating free radicals. This compound could be a promising alternative to statins, the most prescribed cholesterol-lowering drugs in the world.
High cholesterol and excess free radicals in the body are major risk factors for developing cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Healthy lifestyle and low cholesterol intake certainly help prevent CVD, but people still often fail to maintain the levels of cholesterol required.
Most cholesterol in the body does not come from food, but is produced internally. Statins reduce cholesterol levels by acting as competitive inhibitors of 3-hydroxy-3-methyl-glutaryl-CoA (HMG-CoA) reductase, an enzyme that catalyses cholesterol biosynthesis. Yet, some people do not respond to statins.
Now, Adi Haber, Zeev Gross and colleagues at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, have proposed a new alternative to statins. Combining pure chemistry, biochemistry and animal studies they found that the catalytic antioxidant, 1-Fe, an iron(III) complex of an amphipolar corrole, and its analogues, inhibit HMG-CoA reductase in a way quite different to statins. ‘These compounds have nothing to do with statins,’ says Gross, ‘they are completely different entities.’
The macrocycle in 1-Fe is important for binding to HMG-CoA reductase at points where the body’s chemicals do not usually bind to inhibit the catalytic activity of the enzyme. ‘We have found a new mode of action – corroles and statins inhibit the same enzyme, but use a different mechanism,’ adds Gross.
‘Our antioxidant eliminates free radicals in a catalytic fashion,’ explains Gross, ‘antioxidants from food, wine and vitamins fight free radicals in a one-to-one reaction, where one molecule eliminates one radical. Catalytic antioxidants can take care of thousands of radicals.’
Bato Korac, who studies redox regulation mechanisms in health and disease at the University of Belgrade in Serbia, recognises the advantages of the new complex. ‘This antioxidant affects the metabolism and controls cholesterol homeostasis at multiple points – lower cellular uptake, better removal, and decreased de novo synthesis of cholesterol. These results reveal a new perspective in the treatment of hypercholesterolemic disease.’
Gross and his group now plan to study 1-Fe efficacy in other cholesterol-related diseases like diabetes. |
Labour has been threatened with a ban on holding future conferences in Brighton unless it tackles anti-Semitism.
Brighton and Hove's Labour council leader Warren Morgan said he was very concerned at "the anti-Semitism being aired publicly in fringe meetings and on the floor of conference".
In a letter to Labour Party general secretary Iain McNicol, Mr Morgan said: "As the Labour leader of Brighton and Hove City Council, I will undoubtedly face questions as to why we allow any event where anti-Semitic views are freely expressed to happen in the city, particularly on council premises.
:: Corbyn should be embarrassed by anti-Semitism row
"As a Labour Party member, I expect the inquiry announced today to take firm action; as leader I will need reassurances that there will be no repeat of the behaviour and actions we have seen this week before any further bookings from the party are taken."
Jeremy Corbyn: The full interview
The letter, which Mr Morgan posted on Facebook, added: "I must apply the same standards to Labour as I would to any other party conference or political event; whilst none of us can control what is said at meetings we do not run, I have to make the strongest possible representation on behalf of the residents of the city who are Jewish.
"We are a city of sanctuary and I have to speak up against any form of racism as and when it is given a platform in the city."
An anti-Semitism row threatened to overshadow the third day of Labour's conference after a fringe event speaker reportedly said people should be allowed to question whether the Holocaust happened.
Activists were also claimed to have cheered calls for Jewish and pro-Israel groups to be expelled from the party.
The chair of the Jewish Labour Movement said Jeremy Corbyn should be "acutely embarrassed" by the row, while the party was told to "do more to establish that it is not a racist party" by Britain's equality watchdog.
Party members backed a move to toughen Labour's regulations on "incidents involving racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or otherwise racist language, sentiments, stereotypes or actions" in a conference vote on Tuesday. |
A band of white nationalists, pseudoacademic and academic racists plan to come together tonight at the ninth annual H.L. Mencken Club conference just outside of Baltimore.
The Club, founded as an annual gathering for “independent-minded intellectuals and academics of the Right,” has hosted some of America’s most prominent white nationalist ideologues in the past, and serves as a safe space for professors to vent their racist views, something they clearly had to keep quiet during their time in academia.
The theme of this year’s event is “The Right Revisited,” which seems fitting, considering the recent mainstreaming of the Alt-Right during the 2016 election. The “Alt-Right” is a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that “white identity” is under attack by multicultural forces using “political correctness” and “social justice” to undermine white people and “their” civilization.
Mencken Club founder Paul Gottfried, professor emeritus of humanities at Elizabethtown College, actually coined the term back in a 2008 during his inaugural speech at the first Mencken Club gathering where he talked of his hope for the Club members, “to gain recognition as an intellectual Right—and one that is critical of the neoconservative-controlled conservative establishment.”
Robert Weissberg, addressing a previous Mencken Club conference.
Gottfried’s almost decade-old call has not come to fruition, with “intellectuals” in the Alt-Right movement remaining marginalized and widely discredited, despite the attention to the movement the 2016 election has brought.
Gottfried once argued that Martin Luther King Jr. had pushed the nation onto a path that “had more to do with political coercion and relentless indoctrination than with appeals to conscience.” Many of the others attending the conference are no different.
English white nationalist John Derbyshire is scheduled to talk about the Alt-Right. Derbyshire, a regular at the Mencken Club gatherings, was formerly a contributor for National Review before being banished for writing an essay suggesting that white and Asian parents should warn their children that black people pose a threat to their safety.
“A small cohort of blacks –– in my experience, around five percent –– is ferociously hostile to whites and will go to great lengths to inconvenience or harm us,” Derbyshire wrote in the paleoconservative TakiMag in 2013. “They will do this out of racial solidarity, the natural willingness of most human beings to be led, and a vague feeling that whites have it coming.”
Another scheduled speaker is Robert Weissberg, a retired professor of political science at the University of Illinois who was also fired from National Review in 2013. Weissburg has called African-Americans “the stupid black” and has addressed the annual American Renaissance gathering, another pseudoacademic racist conference, headed up by white nationalist Jared Taylor.
Also scheduled to speak is Stanley Payne, well-known professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Payne is a historian of modern Spain and European fascism, whose lengthy bibliography includes books on Spanish fascism, the Spanish Civil War, and one on Spanish dictator Franco and Hitler. Payne will be speaking on "The Right and the Fascist Experience."
Fellow English white nationalist Peter Brimelow is also scheduled to speak. Brimelow is head of the anti-immigrant hate website VDARE, named after Virginia Dare, the first white child born in the “New World.”
William Lind (screenshot from video)
Brimelow’s site is a hub for anti-Semites, nativists and Alt-Right figures. At a previous Mencken Club conference, Brimelow said, “The way to win is to get white votes. If [Republicans] did that, even without actually cutting off immigration, they could continue to win national elections for quite a long time.” At the 2016 event, Brimelow will speak on “The Right and American Conservatism.”
William Lind, a well-known figure on the Christian Right will speak for the first time at the club on “The Right and Foreign Policy.” Lind, a contributor to right-wing magazine American Conservative, addressed a 2002 Holocaust denial conference, organized by Willis Carto, one of the most active and influential white nationalists of the past century. Though Lind admitted during his 2002 speech that he did not deny that the Holocaust happened, he did talk about a small group of people he claimed have poisoned American culture.
"These guys," he explained, "were all Jewish.” The audience included internationally known Holocaust deniers and a former SS officer. A strange choice, perhaps, for this gathering, given that Gottfried and Weissberg are Jewish. |
Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” former Department of Homeland Security official Philip Haney insisted terrorism in Orlando, FL and San Bernardino, CA might have been prevented had the his former agency not deleted a list he compiled linking some Muslims with terrorism.
Haney told host Sean Hannity he was able to link a mosque where San Bernardino shooters Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik worshiped to a network that tied the mosque where Orlando shooter Omar Mateen worshiped, but under the leadership of President Barack Obama, that database was deleted.
“Farook would have been put on the no-fly list and not allowed to travel, or his pending fiancé would have been denied a visa because of his affiliation with an organization with plausible ties to terrorism,” he said.
Follow Breitbart.tv on Twitter @BreitbartVideo |
Toronto and Vancouver. Neither city is an easy place in which to buy a home. But Canadians could do worse when it comes to the cost of renting — not much worse, though.
Toronto today is seeing its worst affordability levels since 1990, according to a report released by RBC on Thursday.
Home ownership costs as a share of household income hit 64.6 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2016.
The trend comes amid skyrocketing home prices that saw the average price of a home in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) reach $875,983 last month, a jump of 27.7 per cent from the same month in the previous year, according to stats provided by the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB).
READ MORE: Looking for an affordable home? You may want to buy in Calgary
Meanwhile, housing affordability improved in Vancouver for the first time in nearly three years in the West Coast city, RBC said.
Housing costs there made up 84.8 per cent of household incomes — eight months after the city registered the worst affordability ever recorded anywhere in Canada, according to the bank.
Living isn’t easy in either city; there’s no question.
But data compiled by Rentseeker shows that neither can quite hold a candle to at least two other cities that top the price of rent in every housing category.
The real estate listings site released an infographic on Tuesday that shows the top 10 most and least expensive cities to rent an apartment across Canada.
(Click the graphic below to enlarge)
Rentseeker drew up in the infographic by combining data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s (CMHC) fall Rental Market Survey and information gleaned through its own website.
It shows that Yellowknife, N.W.T. — a city that doesn’t appear in RBC’s affordability index — is the most expensive place to rent, with bachelor apartments going for an average of $1,159 per month.
It’s followed by Wood Buffalo, Alta., a municipality that includes the oil sands hub of Fort McMurray. There, a bachelor apartment can go for as much as $1,070.
READ MORE: 12 of Canada’s 15 most expensive homes for sale are in Metro Vancouver
In Vancouver, a bachelor apartment can be rented for $1,013, according to CMHC data. In Toronto, it’s $957.
Neither Vancouver nor Toronto rank near the top of any type of housing when it comes to the cost of renting.
They rank sixth and seventh, respectively, in rankings of three-bedroom homes.
Of course, it’s one thing to be able to afford an apartment; it’s quite another to find one.
And that’s a challenge in a place like Vancouver, where the aggregated apartment vacancy rate was 0.7 per cent in the Rental Market Survey.
It’s less of a challenge in Toronto, where it was 2.8 per cent.
READ MORE: Here’s what $500K homes look like in 14 Canadian cities
But Rentseeker didn’t just account for the most expensive places to rent. It also listed the cheapest.
Out of the 10 cheapest cities to rent an apartment in Canada, eight are located in Quebec.
The very cheapest in Shawinigan, where a bachelor condo can cost you as little as $344 per month.
Check out the infographic above and see how your city stacks up. |
Jim Ross is the greatest announcer in the history of professional wrestling, full stop. This is not in dispute. And when he was relieved from his position from the WWE in 2013, no one would have faulted him for riding into the sunset.
But Ross has not only kept busy, he’s experienced a career renaissance—becoming the lead English announcer for upstarts New Japan Pro-Wrestling, host a popular podcast, and a one-man live show where he regales in wrestling stories, as well as dabble in boxing announcing. That circle was complete when, just last Friday, Ross re-signed a two-year contract with the WWE.
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It’s also been a time of tremendous sadness for the 65-year-old Ross, whose wife Jan unexpectedly passed away in March. Nevertheless, he fulfilled all his appearances this past weekend in Orlando, home of WrestleMania 33, including a surprise return to announce The Undertaker’s retirement match. It was therapeutic, he said, to be among friends during his grieving process.
Ahead of his “Ringside” Chicago show at Zanies Rosemont May 21 (tickets go on sale Saturday morning), we spoke with Ross about his whirl-windiest of whirlwind weeks.
The A.V. Club: So you’re doing your one-man show in Chicago, and the venue is just three miles from the Rosemont Horizon, now called the Allstate Arena. A lot of wrestlers have said their favorite arena to work is the Rosemont Horizon. What is it about that venue that wrestlers enjoy?
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Jim Ross: It’s got an indescribable feel, quite frankly. The building’s got a personality, and it reflects the personalities of those sitting in the seats. For me, I’ve never performed or worked in a more memorable arena. And selfishly for me, I was sitting in that arena when I found out I was going into the WWE Hall Of Fame in 2007. The building’s got a personality that’s living and breathing, and the atmosphere is really amazing. It makes you glad to come to work that day.
AVC: Any favorite matches from the Rosemont Horizon?
JR: The WrestleMania 13 card with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin vs. Bret “The Hitman” Hart, with Ken Shamrock as the referee, which often times gets overlooked. It was one of the best WrestleMania matches in my view. And I would have to say, with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, that my resounding victory over ESPN SportsCenter star Jonathan Coachman in a Country Whipping match would also rank high on my list of distinguished athletic accomplishments.
AVC: What other fond wrestling memories do you have about Chicago?
JR: In ’89, Magnum T.A. and I called the Ricky Steamboat-Ric Flair match at the UIC Pavilion. As a rule, I never needed to know the finishes—it wasn’t something I needed to precondition myself with. So I remember walking to the announcing position before the show, and George Scott was the booker. He pulled me off aside and said, “You know what we’re doing tonight?” And before I said, “No, I don’t want to know,” he said, “We’re going to change the belt.” It didn’t kill it for me, but I didn’t need to know that. But they went out there—the two Ricks—and had a masterpiece. It was a pay per view event, and that match really will always resonate. That year in 1989, I called three Flair-Steamboat matches with three different partners, and I loved them all. I had the opportunity to see these guys write this amazing classical music, and they’re depending on me and Magnum to give them the lyric to fit that music. It was a memorable night in Chicago, and there were a lot of them, honestly.
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AVC: How did your deal come together with WWE? What will your role be?
JR: Talks with WWE began around six months ago. I never had any reservations about going back to WWE, it just wasn’t the right time based on other things I had committed to do in my career at that time. Talks escalated a couple months ago, and my wife was very excited about the opportunity for us to go home, as she termed it. She was excited about going to WrestleMania and seeing all her old friends, and I shared her optimism. I didn’t get a chance to get her to the red carpet, but I do believe she was present when I called the Undertaker match.
Anyhow, my contract was signed Friday night of WrestleMania weekend. I did most of my negotiations with [executive vice president] Kevin Dunn. But [chairman and CEO] Vince McMahon was also very involved, and I did speak with him. I spoke to [executive vice president] Paul Levesque. It was a team effort.
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I think I’m going to do 30-40 dates in my first 12 months of my deal. Those dates are to be determined. There’s nothing they can assign me that I haven’t done before. How many wrestling matches you think I’ve called in my lifetime—100,000? If they want me to do U.K. or NXT or Main Event, I don’t care. It’s all good to me. My days of being the lead guy, the No. 1 voice—all that is way yesterday. Guys who’ve had those issues like I have had in my career, they have self-esteem and confidence issues. I have both those. Totally happy to admit it, but I ain’t got them no more. I’m 65 years old. I feel great, I just lost my wife, I’m trying to get back on my feet here, and I’ve said this and I truly mean it: I’m happy to get my jersey back. I’m happy to re-sign with my old team. Whatever role I need to play, I’m fine with.
AVC: Will you still be involved with the ITV show? And how about your New Japan announcing with AXS TV?
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JR: No, I’m not gonna be involved with ITV. Yes I’m going to be involved with AXS TV and New Japan. I’ll continue to work with them and fulfill my contractual obligations with AXS. But I’m not going to be part of the World of Sport relaunch for ITV. I would have been, but I’m not able to do that now. I’ve got plenty on my plate as it is.
AVC: How about the G1 Long Beach shows with New Japan?
JR: If they do a special, I’m under contract. I’ll go to work.
AVC: You’ve had an awful few weeks, with the unexpected passing of your wife, Jan. No one would have faulted you if you missed WrestleMania weekend—and yet, you showed up for all your bookings. What was it like to be amongst fans and colleagues and friends who obviously loved and care for you so much?
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JR: It was the perfect medicine. It’s what the doctor ordered. Some people, I understand, had a problem of my grieving technique. Apparently my grieving was not approved by everybody. I don’t know the formula or have the manual on grieving. All I know is that I was shaken to my core, my life changed forever, in a way that did not have to happen to a beautiful, healthy woman who was the love of my life. I only had the option of moving forward, and trying to fulfill her wishes as best I could. It was timely and heartwarming.
The love that I received in Orlando was overwhelming, and sometimes I got to my room and I was spent. There’s only so much emotion you can dip into. I did my show on Sunday, kept it to myself without confirming where I was going to go after the show was over. I went back to my hotel, took a shower, ironed my shirt, pressed my suit, got another car from the WWE and they took me to the Citrus Bowl. It was a whirlwind of a day. Monday I did my podcast production. I was really busy, really tired, had three hours of sleep. Then Tuesday was when it hit me. There’s no more noise, no more neon, no more adulation, no more hugs. It was just me and an empty house. That was a challenging day. That’s the first time I come from a booking in WCW or WWE that my wife wasn’t there.
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AVC: I can’t help but go back to that moment at the Citrus Bowl, when Boomer Sooner played, and the crowd erupted as you walked down that ramp. Take me back to that moment.
JR: I was completely impervious. I was so focused on taking a step at a time, not wanting to trip and fall like an old fool and break my hip. It was a surreal, slow motion, distorted audio thing. I haven’t watched it back yet, but I will. I’m just preparing myself for that. But I was told it got a real good reaction, but I need to hear it back on TV to hear how it sound. A lot of my friends were in the arena, so it was really neat.
I was thinking about my wife, but I didn’t want to fixate on that. Because I didn’t want to start crying about it, to be frank. Those that say, “Oh, he’s just a wrestling guy.” They have, unfortunately, never experienced the love of their fan base like I’ve experienced from mine. And I feel for them, because there’s nothing really like it in the world. People I’ve never even met believe they know me because they grew up with me. I feel a certain obligation to not let them down, which was why I kept my bookings in Orlando. I met all my obligations. My wife would have wanted that, and it was a great moment in her memory.
AVC: You called what appeared to be The Undertaker’s retirement match. Did you have any interactions with him after the show backstage?
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JR: Yes, I did. And I had interactions with him before. He used an RV as his dressing area. I went in his RV when I arrived hours before we were going on. So we had a very good personal conversation. We’ve been joined at the hip for a long, long time, even back to the WCW days. I helped get him into WCW from World Class Championship Wrestling. I thought at the time, you don’t see too many 6-foot-9, 300-pound guys who were athletic. Young Mark Calaway was an athletic beast. So we had a nice conversation. [And after the match], a big hug afterward. I cried, he didn’t want to cry, though he might have had a tear. It was very emotional for him afterward, and I didn’t want to monopolize his time. It sure as hell wasn’t about me, it was about him. What he helped facilitate for me was the greatest honor I have received in wrestling. I’ve been in three Halls Of Fame, and they pale in comparison to having a legendary guy wanting to bring me back—whether I was under contract or not—to be part of the broadcast team, so I can add to his soundtrack of that match. It was a really emotional day.
AVC: The Undertaker specifically asked for you?
JR: I was told by others that Mark and Vince collaborated, and they talked about it. Mark had a suggestion, VInce thought it was a great idea. Look, there’s one captain of the ship, and I give Vince a hell of a lot of credit, because if it wasn’t for him facilitating it, it wouldn’t have happened. I’m very grateful for both guys. It was quite the honor.
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AVC: Any talents on the WWE roster you’re most intrigued by coming out of WrestleMania?
JR: I like the guys who were in the main event tag team match on Raw: Kevin Owens, Finn Bálor, Seth Rollins, and Samoa Joe. You can’t go wrong by giving those guys increased playing team and more valuable minutes in the hopes that as their evolution continues, that the fans will accept them on the level that they would have accepted Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Steve Austin, or The Rock. Big stars. Somebody on the roster—hoping more than one—have got to have a breakthrough and become the next big thing. It might be Roman Reigns, it might be A.J. Styles, I don’t know. The fans have got to connect with the talent. The good news is, the WWE has several talents that are on the cusp, that their work will certainly support the increased role, but they still have to make that all important emotional connection to the audience. And there’s just no formula for that, it either happens or it doesn’t. But it’s largely up to the talents to make the connection to that audience.
AVC: If you watched Smackdown on Tuesday, it certainly looked like Shinsuke Nakamura could be the guy. He felt like the most over guy on the roster on his first night there.
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JR: He’s a phenomenal talent. I saw him at Wrestle Kingdom 9 at the Tokyo Dome. I told everybody when I got back that he’s a fascinating talent. He has the most amazing charisma, he’s an MMA guy, a tough guy, spoke some English. He told me he was influenced by Freddie Mercury and Michael Jackson, and I loved that. But here’s the deal: He’s got to work on his English. He has to communicate with the biggest part of his audience. He doesn’t need to be a skilled orator, he doesn’t need to be Paul Heyman, he’s got to convey his message and feelings verbally to his audience. That’s the only missing piece he’s got. And the good news there is that can easily be addressed and solved.
AVC: The last two years you’ve had a crash course in Japanese pro wrestling. What do you know now about the Japanese style of wrestling that you didn’t know two years ago?
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JR: My experience with Japanese pro wrestling has been on a need-to-know basis. I didn’t chase down the videotapes back in the day. Since they’ve become more accessible digitally, I’ve become a big fan of it. When Mauro Ranallo came to the WWE and AXS brought me in, I was solidly versed, but not expertly versed.
The difference is, by and large, they’re still very much invested in the concept of telling an understandable, transferrable, meaningful, bell-to-bell story. They still have the entrances and all the sizzle, but some promotions, and some talents, rely more on the sizzle than the steak. I love the fundamental soundness of New Japan. I think every promotion can learn from one another, and people can learn from New Japan how they’re trained, how they approach the game, the realness of it. And I like the booking that on a given night, no one is untouchable. On a given night, a wrestler who executes his finisher could beat anyone else with that finish. It’s fundamental, old-school soundness, and I enjoy it.
AVC: Which New Japan wrestler do you think could transfer his talent to the WWE?
JR: The easy answer there is [Kazuchika] Okada. He’s 29, their number one guy. He’s a fascinating athlete and performer. I’m a fan of [Katsuyori] Shibata, I like [Tomohiro] Ishii, I enjoy watching [Yujiro] Kushida. Of the Japanese national guys, there’s a lot of guys I enjoy. I’m also a big fan of Will Ospreay, Ricochet…
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AVC: And Kenny Omega?
JR: Well, obviously. Kenny’s a big timer, there’s no doubt. He’ll be able to pick his poison when he’s ready to make that decision.
AVC: Have you spoken to Mauro Ranallo since he took his leave of absence?
JR: No, I did not. I’m respecting his privacy. But I did send him a text message. I saw how he tweeted out me being at WrestleMania, which was thoughtful and very kind. But I haven’t picked up the phone and called him, simply out of respect for him. He knows I care about him, he knows I’m there for him. And if he ever wants to talk, I’m always available to him, night or day. Mauro fights a tough battle every day with his mental illness. The bipolar disorder he’s talked about publicly a great deal, it’s no day at the beach, especially when you’re in a profession that’s packed with pressure and anxiety. No matter how good people think a guy like Mauro is, and Mauro is very, very good, or they say “J.R. does this all the time, he can’t be nervous”—well none can be farther from the truth. We all have to hold up to our highest standard, which is ourselves. I’ve always believed you’re only as good as your last show. Every time I go out there, I haven’t earned the right to coast.
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