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I am in Internet range for only a few minutes, so let me just type this right out:
Today a provision that would increase background checks for gun purchases was blocked in the Senate, even though consideration of the bill was supported by 54 senators representing states that make up (at quick estimate) at least 60 percent of the American population. The bill did not fail to "pass" the Senate, which according to Constitutional provisions and accepted practice for more than two centuries requires a simple majority, 51 votes. Even 50 votes should do it, since the vice president is constitutionally empowered to cast the tie-breaking and deciding vote, and Joe Biden would have voted yes.
It failed because a 54-vote majority was not enough to break the threat of a filibuster, which (with some twists of labeling) was the real story of what happened with this bill. Breaking the filibuster would have required 60 votes. Since the Democrats regained majority control of the Senate six years ago, the Republicans under Mitch McConnell have applied filibuster threats (under a variety of names) at a frequency not seen before in American history. Filibusters used to be exceptional. Now they are used as blocking tactics for nearly any significant legislation or nomination. The goal of this strategy, which maximizes minority blocking power in a way not foreseen in the Constitution, has been to make the 60-vote requirement seem routine. As part of the "making it routine" strategy, the minority keeps repeating that it takes 60 votes to "pass" a bill -- and this Orwellian language-redefinition comes one step closer to fulfillment each time the press presents 60 votes as the norm for passing a law.
Yes, this is the 20 millionth time I have made this point. (Recently here, with special Orwell-homage.) But here is why it is worth noting again. Just in the past few minutes readers have sent in these illustrations of the success of step No. 5, above:
From Business Insider (source of screen grab above):
GUN CONTROL VOTE FAILS IN SENATE -- Obama Speaks Now On Failure
With Vice President Joe Biden presiding over the Senate, an amendment to expand background checks on gun purchases failed to pass through the body, falling by a mostly partisan vote of 54-46... Sixty votes were needed to pass the legislation through the Senate.
No, 60 votes were needed to break the filibuster threat. Note that in the "mostly partisan vote of 54-46" the 54 senators were voting for the measure. |
Czech School of law, economics, politics and security CEVRO has started receiving tuition for three Master's programs in bitcoin digital currency.
The option is now available for students specializing in transition, Austrian economics, and international politics. All three programs are conducted in English, their teaching staff consisting of professors from the Czech Republic, Austria, Great Britain, the United States, Canada, and other countries.
The cost paid for the programs varies from 4,500 (for applicants from the Czech Republic and Slovakia) to 8,400 euros (for all other students). According to the Institute’s website, amount to be paid in bitcoins is dependent on market exchange rate of the cryptocurrency.
During their studies students will have a chance to examine the use of bitcoins and blockchain both from the market point of view and from the angle of government regulation.
CEVRO became the first institute in the Czech Republic to offer the possibility of paying tuition in bitcoins. Such option is yet to get widespread among universities around the world, though a few higher education institutions including King's College London and the University of Cumbria in Carlisle do accept bitcoins.
“We do not want merely to teach about the beauty of markets, modern technologies and innovation, we want to be innovators ourselves!” professor Josef Šíma, president of CEVRO Institute, said, adding that the idea to introduce a new payment method belonged to one of the foreign students who asked university administration if it was possible to pay fees in bitcoins.
The Czech Republic and, in particular, Prague is considered to be one of the leading bitcoin communities in Eastern Europe.
Elena Platonova |
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina – Even without Clint Dempsey, the US national team is still capable of competing against Bosnia-Herzegovina, according to veteran midfielder Michael Bradley.
The two nations meet on Wednesday for the first time ever at the Asim Ferhatovic Hase Stadium in Sarajevo (2:30 pm ET, ESPN2 and UniMas, live chat on MLSsoccer.com).
"Clint is one of our important players," Bradley told media at the USMNT's practice in Sarajevo on Monday. "We rely on him a lot to score goals and to set up goals. But I think one of the qualities that our team has always had is the ability that even when certain guys aren't playing on some days, to be able to play as a team and to still be able to come away with results."
That task will be a tall one against a Bosnia team ranked 13th in the FIFA rankings and flying at the top of Group G in European World Cup qualifying, with the likes of Greece and Slovakia trailing behind.
Several of the Bosnian players are world-renowned, from forwards Edin Dzeko (Manchester City) and Vedad Ibisevic (VfB Stuttgart) to midfielder Miralem Pjanic, who plays alongside Bradley at Italian side AS Roma and featured in the AT&T MLS All-Star Game two weeks ago.
"Yeah I'm excited to play against him," Bradley said about facing his club teammate (duo pictured above). "[Pjanic] says that it'll be a good match. Obviously we have a good team. Bosnia also. So for us it's something special to play against each other.
"For us it's a great opportunity to play against a very strong team," Bradley added. "We always step on the field to try to win. Bosnia have a good team, and many big players that play for big clubs across Europe. It's a friendly match, but we expect a good game." |
Federal Legislation Establishing the Fourth of July Holiday
Researched by James R. Heintze. All rights reserved.
The act of Congress establishing Fourth of July as a holiday, but without pay, for federal employees and the District of Columbia occurred in 1870. Senator Hannibal Hamlin (Dem.-Maine, and previously vice president under Abraham Lincoln) introduced a Senate Bill (referred HR no. 2224), issued through the Committee on the District of Columbia, Forty-first Congress, Session II, on 24 June 1870, and titled "Legal Holidays in the District." Hamlin presented his rationale for the bill: "There are no legal holidays here, and this bill merely provides for what I think are the legal holidays in every state of the Union." Apparently there was no opposition to the bill which "was reported to the Senate without amendment; ordered to a third reading, read the third time, and passed." It was reported in the Congressional Globe, Friday, June 28, 1870, and was printed as Chapter 167:
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that the following days, to wit: the first day of January, commonly called New Year's day, the fourth day of July, the twenty-fifth day of December, commonly called Christmas day, and any day appointed or recommended by the President of the United States as a day of public fast or thanksgiving, shall be holidays within the District of Columbia, and shall, for all purposes of presenting for payment or acceptance for the maturity and protest, and giving notice of the dishonor of b ills of exchange, bank checks and promissory notes or other negotiable or commercial paper, be treated and considered as is the first day of the week, commonly called Sunday, and all notes, drafts, checks, or other commercial or negotiable paper falling due or maturing on either of said holidays shall be deemed as having matured on the day previous. Approved, June 28, 1870.
On June 29, 1938, by joint resolution of Congress (HJ resolution No. 551; pub. res. no. 127), the Fourth of July was legislated as a Federal holiday with pay for its employees:
Resolved by the Senate and House of representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that hereafter whenever regular employees of the Federal Government whose compensation is fixed at a rate per day, per hour, or on a piece-work basis are relieved or prevented from working solely because of the occurrence of a holiday such as New Year's Day, Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, or any other day declared a holiday by Federal statute or Executive order, or any day on which the departments and establishments of the Government are closed by Executive order, they shall receive the same pay for such days as for other days on which an ordinary day's work is performed. Section 2. The joint resolution of January 6, 1885 (U.S.C., title 5, sec. 86), and all other laws inconsistent or ion conflict with the provision of this Act are hereby repealed to the extent of such inconsistency or conflict. Approved, June 29, 1938.
On January 14, 1941, it was brought to the attention of Congress by Robert Ramspeck, Chairman, Committee on the Civil Service of the House of Representatives (see 77th Congress, House of Representatives Report No. 532), that the 1938 Federal holiday law failed to specify that employees of the Government of the District of Columbia also have the Fourth of July designated as a holiday with pay. Harry B. Mitchell, president of the United States Civil Service Commission responded back on April 7 that his office, as well as the Bureau of the Budget, had no objection to amending the 1938 law to include District of Columbia employees. On May 13, 1941, a "Holiday Leave for Per Diem Employees of the District of Columbia" amendment was enacted with the following change made to the 1938 law:
In compliance with paragraph 2a of the Rule XIII, of the Rules of the House of Representatives, changes in existing law are shown as follows (present law is in roman and new matter is in italics): (Act of June 29, 1938, 52 Stat. 1246) "That hereafter whenever regular employees of the Federal Government or of the district of Columbia whose compensation is fixed at a rate per day, per hour, or on a piece-work basis are relieved or prevented from working solely because of the occurrence of a holiday, such as New Year's Day, Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Armistice Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, or any other day declar4ed a holiday by Federal statute or Executive order, or any day on which the departments and establishments of the Government or of the District of Columbia are closed by Executive order, they shall receive the same pay for such days as for other days on which an ordinary day's work is performed."
On September 22, 1959, an act was passed by Congress (H.R. 5752, Public Law 86-362) that if the Fourth of July and any other established holiday occurs on a Saturday, "the day immediately preceding such Saturday shall be held and considered to be a legal public holiday, in lieu of such day which so occurs on such Saturday, (A) for such officers and employees whose basic workweek is Monday through Friday, and (B) for the purposes of section 205 (d) of the Annual and Sick Leave Act of 1951 (65 Stat. 681), as amended (5 U.S.C. 2064 (d)). The act also provided for a day of release for employees "whose basic workweek is other than Monday through Friday."
Occasionally members of Congress have also either introduced bills or facilitated the passing of legislation which designated certain Fourth of July holidays with patriotic themes. In 1991, a joint resolution (H.J. Res. 278, 102nd Congress, 1st Session) was introduced June 21 by five congressmen that year as "July 4th Family Celebration Day," a bill which advocated for the importance of the family unit.
On February 27, 1992 a bill (SJR 262, 102nd Congress, 2nd session) was introduced by Senator Robert W. Kasten (R-WI) that would have designated July 4, 1992, as "Buy American Day."
On February 3, 1998, Congress approved legislation (Congressional Record, 3 February 1998, and Public Law 105-225) that designated the 21 days between Flag Day through Independence Day as "Honor America Days." Congress declared "that there be public gatherings and activities during that period at which the people of the United States can celebrate and honor their country in an appropriate way."
Additional significant legislation established the annual levee to take place at the president's house: Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee made a resolution in the Confederation Congress on June 28, 1786 for the first (national) governmental celebration of July 4. The text from the Library of Congress web site of page 368 of the Journals of Congress gave Lee's resolution: "On Motion of Mr. [Henry] Lee, seconded by Mr. [Pierse] Long, Resolved, That tuesday next, being the Anniversary of the declaration of Independence, there shall be a public Levee at the President's house, from the hours of twelve to two, to receive the ordinary congratulations, and that the Secretary of Congress take Order for due communication thereof." Footnoted: "This motion, in the writing of Henry Lee, is in the Papers of the Continental Congress, No. 23, folio 299. A letter dated June 29, from Charles Thomson to the Secretary for Foreign Affairs requesting him to inform the foreign ministers of the fact is in No. 55, folio 307." [This information was contributed by Judy Hynson, Director of Research & Collections, Stratford Hall]
This page last updated February 2012.
Go back to Fourth of July homepage |
"We flatter ourselves by imagining that we live in an age of endless invention and innovation," says Paul Kedrosky. A classic approach is applying Moore's Law to…everything, and then leaping to claims about unprecedented change in society more generally. I'm reading a number of commentators call bullshit. They are arguing that the number of new important innovations has been steadily declining and that the pace of change is slowing.
Here's Philip Longman in U.S. News & World Report:
There is a distinction to be made between inventions that are merely sophisticated–such as, say, personal digital assistants–and those that fundamentally alter the human condition. The invention of the light bulb created more useful hours in each day for virtually every human being. The electric motor directly raised the productivity in every sphere of life, from speeding up assembly lines to creating so many labor-saving devices in the home that millions of housewives were able to join the paid work force. The internal combustion engine allowed for mass, high-speed transportation of both people and freight while also opening up vast regions of cheap land to suburban development. The materials revolution that brought us petroleum refining, synthetic chemicals, and pharmaceuticals involved learning to rearrange molecules in ways that made raw materials fundamentally more valuable. Without the genetically improved seeds that brought us the "Green Revolution" of the late 1960s and '70s, there would be mass starvation. Can we make any parallel claim about the single greatest technology of our own time? It remains possible that networked computers and other new information technologies will one day create similar, societywide bursts in productivity, health, and wealth. Yet to date, the marginal gains computers have brought to communications are modest even compared with the improvements made by the telegraph. The first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable in 1866 reduced the time required to send a message from New York to London from about a week to a few minutes. Notes economist Alan Blinder: "No modern IT innovation has, or I dare say will, come close to such a gain!"
Here's Scott Sumner with a personal observation in a post about economic growth rates:
My grandmother died at age 79 on the very week they landed on the moon. I believe that when she was young she lived in a small town or farm in Wisconsin. There was probably no indoor plumbing, car, home appliances, TV, radio, electric lights, telephone, etc. Her life saw more change than any other generation in world history, before or since. I’m already almost 55, and by comparison have seen only trivial changes during my life. That’s not to say I haven’t seen significant changes, but relative to my grandma, my life has been fairly static. Even when I was a small boy we had a car, indoor plumbing, appliances, telephone, TV, modern medicine, and occasional trips in airplanes.
Michael Lind makes similar points in his Time magazine piece called "The Boring Age."
Here's Peter Thiel:
The question about what sorts of innovations we are likely to see in the next 10 or 20 years depends a great deal on what people do. The pessimistic view is that we are living in a society that depends on innovation and science and technology, but that is actually not focusing on these things nearly enough and that as a result, we are headed towards an extended period of stagnation and very slow growth throughout all the nations of the developed world. The more optimistic view is that we somehow figure out a way to restart the innovative engine that's probably gotten stalled. And my version of this would be that we go back to where the '50's and '60's ended and look back at the great technologies people were pursuing at the time; space, robots, artificial intelligence, the next generation of biotechnology and sort of look at where people thought the future of the world was going to be in 1968 and we try to take off from where things got detoured at that time.
Here's a different 10 min video of Peter Thiel in which he talks about the lack of innovation in the context of financial markets. There is an attitude that "someone else is doing it" but in fact no one is doing it. "There is a lot less going on than people think," he says.
So: Why is this happening?
Tyler Cowen once said, "If we had to build today's energy infrastructure working under the current regulatory and NIMBY burden, it probably could not be done." Can we extract from this a larger claim that a bloated government and burdensome regulatory environment are significantly dampening innovation? An ever-powerful bureaucratic class strangling creativity? Or is it that the government is not doing enough in funding basic research toward big innovation (as it did with Darpa and space program of the past)? Are there cultural norms around conformity that are causing too many to be too deferential to the status quo? Are too many smart young people going to school? (In the past boy-geniuses had more unconventional educations which helped lead to extreme innovation, perhaps.) What are other reasons?
One counter-argument to all of the above is that there is indeed accelerating change and new innovation, it's just that we don't yet see it. As David Dalrymple said to me in a tweet, "The exponential trend only applies directly to enabling technologies, not to technologically-enabled milestones like flight."
(thanks to Michael Vassar for helping brainstorm some of these ideas.) |
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According to a source, Tinder has been operating a special version of their classic app, called “Select”. This is reportedly a members-only version of Tinder and it is mainly destined for celebrities and people who are very popular on Tinder. They are the so-called “elite” users and include CEOs, models, actors, influencers and so on and so forth. Tinder has been inviting certain users to their Tinder Select app and has allowed other users to nominate people too. Users should know that Tinder Select is not an entirely different app which you can download. It is basically another layer within the main app which users can choose to turn on and off whenever they like.
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For the “elite” users
Nobody knows for now what are the criteria according to which the company is choosing who to invite on the app. Rumor has it that all those people who are on Tinder Select are attractive, rich and high-profile. So, maybe this is what a person must become in order to join the ranks. Some have said that this new Tinder Select is very reminiscent of the dating app called The League. That app used LinkedIn info in order to establish who could join it. The company refused to make any comments on this select dating app so, for now, there is no way for normal people to enter the ranks of the “elite”. Even if a user can nominate another, the nominated person cannot do this. So, the circle stops there. This is supposedly a way to prevent Tinder Select form becoming something common or to lose its “select” attribute.
However, there is a high possibility that the people who are getting invited to Select have a high Tinder Elo score. This is something that rates the users’ desirability. It is reportedly based on lots of signals from other users. So, if you have a high Elo score, you probably have a better chance to become part of the elite. The tech website TechCrunch has obtained some images of Tinder Select. One thing is sure: it looks a lot better than the classic app. Its main color is blue and it has a more elegant design. Users can also choose to toggle on the Select version from the top bar on their app. It is interesting that those users can switch back and forth, without any restriction from Tinder Select or from the classical one.
Future plans
As for Tinder’s future plans with their elite version of the app, rumor has it that even if it exists for over six months, the company may never officially announce it. This is understandable because it may upset the regular users of the app who may feel excluded. Interestingly enough, Tinder is not the only dating app who has introduced this invite-only procedure. Raya is another one of those select apps which gathers people with huge numbers of followers on Instagram, who have “cool” jobs or who are well-connected.
All in all, the exact purpose of this Tinder Select app is currently unknown. What we do know, is that it is destined for elite users who are apparently better than the rest of the people populating planet Earth. It will be interesting to see if the company is going to make public this layer of their app. Especially after those recent reveals.
Image source: here |
On November 27, Megan Lee’s representative revealed the reasons behind her lawsuit against Soul Shop Entertainment in an official statement.
The rep stated, “Since the end of February 2014, Kim Tae Woo’s wife Kim Ae Ri and mother-in-law Mrs. Kim took office as the management director and chief director, respectively. They let go of management employees that had been at the company for over 10 years, and pressured Megan Lee to debut in a difficult situation.”
“Since the management changed to Kim Ae Ri, Megan Lee didn’t receive a proper expense statement from March to August.”
Regarding the musical “All Shook Up,” the rep said, “Without prior discussion, the agency unilaterally signed on for the musical. When we received the musical contract that had been signed without permission in October, the decision was made that Megan Lee couldn’t trust in Soul Shop Entertainment anymore.”
The representative said that Megan Lee received unfair treatment from the management director and chief directors: “The vehicle that was set aside for Megan Lee was used by Kim Ae Ri for personal reasons, and the management director did not manage anything,” said Megan Lee’s rep.
Further, the rep revealed that Megan Lee, as a result of verbal abuse from the management director, fell into depression and even had a professional psychological consultation in June.
“We no longer see a future at Soul Shop, and we hope the same does not happen to others. Please understand that there was a lot of consideration and pain that led up to this decision.”
In the midst of this statement from Megan Lee, management director Kim Ae Ri has revealed her side of the matter. She said, “After seeing Megan Lee’s statement, I’m not sure what to do. There are a lot of false claims. I will be looking into possible legal action.”
Kim Ae Ri has denied using the company vehicle for personal reasons, as well as subjecting Megan Lee to verbal abuse.
Source (1) (2) |
The Polish parliament on Wednesday rejected a motion to hold a vote of no confidence against Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz put forward by the opposition Civic Platform (PO) party.
A total of 190 MPs voted in favour of the motion, with 238 voting against. The latter included 230 of the 234 PiS deputies who hold a majority in parliament. The other four PiS MPs did not vote.
In the motion, MPs from the opposition Civic Platform accused Macierewicz of “destroying the potential of the army's soldiers, slowing down the process of equipping the armed forces with modern weapons and equipment, as well as forcing through the malicious concept known as the Territorial Defence Forces.”
Macierewicz has served as defence minister since the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party won the 2015 general election and has often come under fire from the opposition.
Prime Minister Beata Szydło defended Macierewicz’s record, saying he was “rebuilding that which was ruined” by the previous coalition government led by the PO, which ruled for eight years.
Former defence minister and PO MP Tomasz Siemoniak said on Wednesday: "It is the ruling party which would like Antoni Macierewicz to be dismissed, and many opposition politicians would enjoy the fact that someone who provides so many scandals continues serving as defence minister for as long as possible."
Under Macierewicz, Poland announced that talks had ended with France’s Airbus Helicopters for 50 Caracal aircraft. It also introduced new Territorial Defence Force military units.
Meanwhile, Polish media reported that there has been an exodus of high-ranking army officials. All those moves drew criticism from the opposition.
Macierewicz has said that the wave of resignations in the country’s armed forces was eclipsed by that seen during the previous government.
Szydło said on Wednesday that Macierewicz was "making changes that restore Polish military strength and Poland's security." (rg/pk) |
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A Russian Soyuz rocket rolled to its launch pad in Kazakhstan early Monday aboard a specially-designed rail car, three days before sending a Russian cosmonaut and U.S. astronaut to the International Space Station.
The three-stage launcher emerged from the Soyuz integration building at the Baikonur Cosmodrome just before sunrise Monday for the journey to Launch Pad No. 1, where ground crews used a hydraulic lift to hoist the rocket vertical. Rotating work platforms raised into position around the Soyuz booster to give workers access to the vehicle for final preflight checks.
Technicians then rotated the Soyuz and its launch mount to align with the flight azimuth needed to reach the space station, a step seen in time lapse at the end of the rollout video posted at the top of this page.
The Soyuz MS-04 spaceship is closed up inside the nose cone of the Soyuz rocket, ready to carry commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and NASA flight engineer Jack Fischer to join the Expedition 51 crew on the space station.
The crew will board the Soyuz spacecraft and strap into their seats around two-and-a-half hours before liftoff, which is set for 0713:44 GMT (3:13:44 a.m. EDT; 1:13:44 p.m. Baikonur time) Thursday.
The craft will have just two crew members on-board — not the usual three — because Russia’s space agency is downsizing its crew complement on the space station until new Russian modules arrive at the complex, beginning with the launch of a long-delayed laboratory addition next year.
NASA has arranged to fill the empty seats on future Soyuz missions with U.S. astronauts.
The Soyuz-FG rocket will deploy the crew ferry craft in orbit around nine minutes after launch to kick off a fast-track six-hour approach to the space station. The capsule will dock with the research lab’s Poisk module at 1323 GMT (9:23 a.m. EDT) Thursday after a radar-guided automated rendezvous.
Yurchikhin, 58, is preparing for his fifth space mission, and his fourth long-duration stay on the space station.
Born and raised in Georgia, then a Soviet state, Yurchikhin moved to Moscow to attend school and worked as an engineer and instructor for RSC Energia, a Russian space contractor, on the Mir space station program in the 1980s and 1990s until his selection as a cosmonaut in 1997.
Yurchikhin’s first spaceflight was on the space shuttle Atlantis’s 11-day STS-112 mission to the International Space Station in 2002. He then completed three long-term stints on the outpost in 2007, 2010 and 2013, logging 537 days in orbit over his four missions.
Jack Fischer will make his first spaceflight after his selection to join NASA’s astronaut corps in 2009. The 43-year-old native of Louisville, Colorado, is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and MIT.
Fischer, a colonel in the U.S. Air Force, was a F-15 and F-22 test pilot and worked in the Pentagon before becoming an astronaut.
Expedition 51 commander Peggy Whitson, French-born flight engineer Thomas Pesquet and cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy will welcome the two-man crew after Thursday’s docking, boosting the station’s crew size to five.
Astronaut Shane Kimbrough and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko returned to Earth on April 10, temporarily reducing the station’s staff until Yurchikhin and Fischer’s arrival.
Thursday’s launch and docking of a new space station crew will come less than two days after a commercial Orbital ATK Cygnus supply ship blasts off from Cape Canaveral with 7,443 pounds (3,376 kilograms) of cargo and provisions. The Cygnus cargo carrier is scheduled to arrive at the space station Saturday after a four-day rendezvous profile following its Tuesday blastoff on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket.
Yurchikhin and Fischer will remain at the space station until early September, when they will land back in Kazakhstan with Whitson, whose stay was extended three months to ensure three crew members are at the complex in June and July after her crewmates Novitskiy and Pesquet return home in early June.
More photos of Monday’s rollout are posted below.
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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1. |
Learn fun and easy facts about burning calories; an average sized human will burn about 2400 Calories per day without doing any exercise. The results are based on an average 150 pound human.
Singing in the shower can burn an extra 10-20 Calories per song, depending on the volume and pitch of your voice. Laughing for 10 minutes can make you burn between 20 and 40 Calories. You burn about 200 Calories during 30 minutes of active sex. Banging your head against a wall uses 150 Calories an hour. On average, brushing your teeth for three minutes will burn 10 Calories. Pushing a shopping trolley up the aisles for half an hour will burn over 100 Calories, this number increases with the amount you put in your trolley and the heavier it gets. One hour spent sitting in front of the TV burns around 65 Calories. Smoking a cigarette burns roughly 10 Calories. Dancing on a Dance Mat for 10 minutes will burn 50-60 Calories. Hugging for one hour can burn 70 Calories. If you whip your head back and forth to Willow Smiths song, you will burn up to 50 Calories, depending on how crazy you go. A one minute kiss can burn between 2 and 4 Calories, depending on how intimate it is. A person will burn 7 percent more calories if they walk on hard dirt compared to pavement. You burn more calories than you consume when you eat celery. On average, if you walk your dog for 30 minutes, you burn 100 Calories. You burn more calories sitting in the cold, than heat. Chewing gum burns 11 Calories per hour. You can burn up to 350 more Calories per day if you fidget, rather than someone who remains stationary. Missing a night of sleep causes the body to burn about an extra 161 calories. Constant texting can burn 40 Calories per hour.
If you have any awesome ways you burn calories, let me know in a comment! |
This amazing video shows the Northern Lights passing over the Scottish Highlands overnight.
Created using a time-lapse technique to speed up a sequence of events, the clip was filmed by photographer Mark Appleton from the B&B he runs with his wife Jan - Croft 23 in South Erradale near Gairloch.
Despite being just 30 seconds long, it was shot between 11.30pm on Thursday and 6am on Friday – condensing the amazing six-and-a-half hour display into just half a minute.
“Oh my, here's the time lapse video from last night's Aurora,” Mark wrote on Croft 23’s Facebook page.
“If you didn't manage to go out and see it this will make you feel that you were there.”
The Northern Lights were visible in the UK thanks to a strong surge in geomagnetic energy, which made them visible far from their usual confines of the Arctic Circle.
Mark’s photography website is due to go live in the next few days.
Video/Photo credit: Mark Appleton |
Forget his “Transformers” co-star Megan Fox, actor Shia LaBeouf apparently thinks his mother is the “sexiest” woman he knows.
In a new interview with Playboy magazine, the actor reveals some unusual thoughts about the woman who gave him life, reports Star magazine.
"Probably the sexiest woman I know is my mother," he says. "She's an ethereal angel. Nobody looks like that woman. If I could meet my mother and marry her, I would. I would be with my mother now, if she weren't my mother, as sick as that sounds."
According to the interview, which Star magazine says it obtained, while the “Transformers” star was growing up, his mother often liked to walk around the house naked, even when young LaBeouf’s young friends were over.
"All of them would just be naked around the house,” LaBeouf tells Playboy of his mom and her friends in the June issue. “That was strange for me, and it was really bizarre when my friends were there. You've got your little buds over, and Mom's, like, playing naked connect the dots or whatever. She's in the middle of goddess-group time, where it's literally a bunch of naked women tracing auras around one another's bodies with incense and then sitting together and humming for prolonged periods of time."
The actor also said that marijuana use was casual, but that he saw what “drugs can do to you.”
RELATED: Click here for more from Star. |
The team's intro music fills the arena. The players make their way single file down the corridor. As Andrei Vasilevskiy's skate hits the ice, PA announcer Paul Porter sends the crowd into a frenzy with his trademark introduction.
The camera catches the players as they line up in the locker room tunnel and go through their final pre-game rituals for all to see on the gigantic video board.
The lights dim inside AMALIE Arena and it's almost time for puck drop.
According to founder Phil Esposito, when a contest was set up for fans to come up with the name for the newly-formed expansion franchise, Oceanics was one of the finalists.
"I said, 'What the heck is that?," Esposito recalled, laughing. "What are we, Jacques Cousteau?"
What would the mascot for a team named the Oceanics be? A cartographer?
The team takes the ice wearing sea foam green sweaters with a sextant on the front? (It's a marine navigational tool; Google it).
Another popular fan suggestion, Esposito remembered, was the Pelicans.
"I said, 'Oh yeah? We'll wear pink uniforms."
The Tampa Bay Gators was another
"We can't be the Gators," Esposito reasoned. That's football."
Truth be told, Esposito already had the team name picked out long before the fan contest ever came to fruition.
Video: How the Lightning got their name
In July, five months before Tampa Bay was awarded an expansion franchise, Esposito was at the home of business associate and local Tampa lawyer Bennie Lazzara for a barbecue. At some point during the evening, a dark, angry-looking thunderstorm started to form nearby (it was, after all, summer in Florida).
Lightning bolts lit up the sky.
"I mean, it was big and it was black and it was scary," Esposito recalled.
Lazzara informed Esposito Tampa Bay is considered the lightning capital of North America.
"At that time, Lazzara's mom, who was 84 or 85 at the time, she comes out the back door and she hears us talking about the name and says, 'You ought to name the team the Lightning,'" Esposito said. "And I turned around and I went, 'That's it. That's the name of this team.'"
So, to those fans who submitted 'Lightning' during the naming contest and thought they were the ones to establish the team's identity, Esposito says sorry, but Bennie Lazzara's mother beat you to the punch.
"There were two or three people that said the Lightning, so we took them aside and we did something with them," Esposito said. "But the name had already been given. As soon as (she) said that, I'm telling you, I turned around and I said, 'That's the name. What's wrong with us? We've been searching. Perfect.'"
Esposito said the biggest selling point to the Lightning name, besides being an accurate reflection of the area as well as having a menacing connotation, was that it didn't have an 'S' on the end.
"I wanted to be different," he said. "…Everybody else was the Bruins, the Rangers, the Hawks, the Red Wings. This was Lightning, no S."
Esposito was insistent the logo have a lightning bolt somewhere. He wanted the design of the pants to have bolts on the side.
"If I look and I see a bolt, I know that's my teammate," Esposito said. "There might be a split second that makes the difference between the pass getting on the guy's stick and being intercepted. That was my rationale. Anything to make it quicker for us that you could recognize who we were and what we were."
So, the next time you're at AMALIE Arena and you get a kick out of the Tesla coils firing and you chant "let's go Bolts" - Esposito hates that name by the way. "If I wanted to name it the Bolts, I would have named it the Bolts. You have bolts with Frankenstein." - and the sound of thunder rumbling after a big save makes the hair on your arms stand up, you have the Lazzara family to thank.
And Esposito for recognizing a great, unique name.
"Sometimes in life, you just know," Esposito said. |
browsing top links in all categories - promote links by digging
Walking robots [+ 19 digs]
These are walking robots that toyota has developed for disabled people. You basically sit in them and it walks so you can get around. Can you imagine these in robot wars?
[ category: robots | by: zerodrift24 (3) ]
Halo2: Scorpion Jump [+ 26 digs]
As a follow-up to popular sport of Warthog Jumping, now comes Scorpion Jumping! Hog jumping required you to pile a bunch of grenades under a warthog. For tank jumping, all you need to do is find a shield(s) and shoot it down. Then simply park your scorpion over the shield(s) and wait for them to re-generate. Hang on tight, its a wild ride.
[ category: gaming | by: k1ds3ns4t10n (3) ]
Video Blog promotes new movie [+ 9 digs]
Peter Jackson is letting web site visitors share in the making of Kong is King by submitting video blog entries on this site. He has also solicited requests from visitors for blog ideas making it very interactive.
[ category: movies | by: jkenzer (1) ]
U.S. Officials Raid Stores, Arrest 2 in Game Piracy [+ 23 digs]
Federal authorities raided three Washington, D.C.-area video game stores and arrested two people for modifying video game consoles to play pirated video games, a video game industry group said on Wednesday.
[ category: gaming | by: Fuzzeepimp (3) ]
The ZoomQuilt [+ 13 digs]
A collaborative art project. Just use your mouse to zooooooom in and out.
[ category: links | by: Fuzzeepimp (3) ]
E-Bay: Want it Now [+ 17 digs]
E-Bay has added a "Want It Now" feature that allows the user to post requests for particular items.
[ category: deals | by: JTSmagic (2) ]
Witness says Kazaa activity can be monitored [+ 18 digs]
A witness in the ongoing civil trial against peer-to-peer software provider Sharman Networks has added weight to testimony that logs can be maintained to trace users who are exchanging unlicensed music online using the Kazaa software.
[ category: music | by: kyle (1) ]
Binary Revolution Magazine - similar to 2600 Hacker Quarterly magazine [+ 46 digs]
Binary Revolution Magazine - similar to 2600 Hacker Quarterly magazine Magazine about Hacking, Phreaking, Security, Hardware Mods, Perl, Wi-Fi, Civil Rights, Linux, etc
[ category: security | by: anonymous ]
Free your iTunes Music Store music. [+ 25 digs]
"The purpose of hymn is to allow you to exercise your fair-use rights under copyright law. It allows you to free your iTunes Music Store (protected AAC / m4p) purchases from their DRM restrictions with no sound quality loss. These songs can then be played outside of the iTunes environment, even on operating systems not supported by iTunes."
[ category: software | by: anonymous ]
Programmer wrote vote-rigging program in Florida [+ 17 digs]
a programmer, Curtis Clinton signed an affidavit yesterday that states that he created vote rigging software for House Judiciary Committee member Tom Feeney.
[ category: technology | by: doug22 (1) ]
Sandscapes media file: sandsicaf.wmv [+ 16 digs]
It's a large download, about 18Megs. But well worth it. A guy is creating sandscapes... It's really hard to describe. But, well worth the download... It's amazing what he can do...
[ category: movies | by: azrichard (2) ]
Rat Brain Flies Jet [+ 28 digs]
A brain grown from a single rat embryo in a petri dish has been taught to fly a jet, even in hurricane-like conditions. No, really.
[ category: design | by: p3ngu1n (1) ]
Court agrees woman penned Matrix [+ 54 digs]
A CA judge has ruled in favor of a woman who says that the popular Matrix trilogy was based on a manuscript that she wrote in 1981.
[ category: movies | by: stoopeck (1) ]
Dual Core Powerbook G4 Rumor [+ 26 digs]
Rumors about Motorola's Freescales chips have been appearing, and it seems that they might make there way into a new Powerbook lineup
[ category: apple | by: fireface100 (1) ]
8GB USB memory key [+ 36 digs]
The Pretec i-Disk II 8GB is equipped with hi-speed dual channel technology that brings you the extremely high speed in read & write up to 16MB/sec and 12MB/sec. Pretec isn't even making the flash drives yet—they enter production next month—so there's no suggested price.
[ category: hardware | by: Bentinney (2) ]
[ Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 > Last ] |
The Tea Party has always been the GOP’s far-right flank. Despite its small membership and radical views, it has mustered up an undue measure of influence in the Republican Party due to its fanatical posturing and wealthy financial backers. Now a new study by the Pew Research Center sheds light on a profound split between Main Street Republicans and the deep right-field Tea Party. Pew’s research reveals that…
“Just 25% of Tea Party Republicans say there is solid evidence of global warming, compared with 61% of non-Tea Party Republicans.”
So a solid majority of Republicans recognize the reality of Climate Change that is affirmed by 97% of scientists who have studied the matter. But only 25% of Tea Partiers respect the peer-reviewed evidence of Climate Change. While some of the Tea Partiers say that they don’t have enough information as to whether the Earth is warming, a majority of the skeptics stubbornly insist that it’s “just not happening.”
This split between the Tea Party and the rest of their Republican pals in the public at large is not reflected in the GOP representation in Congress where a majority of the GOP caucus aligns itself with the deniers. Nor is it represented in the conservative media that stridently rejects any suggestion that the planet faces any climate risks. The inevitable result of that divergence is that a portion of the population is woefully misinformed about Climate Change. Even worse, the bias disseminated by right-wing media foments a distrust in science and scientists in general.
Consequently we see absurd departures from reality that are based strictly on partisan propaganda. When the White House issued an executive order to facilitate “efforts to improve climate preparedness and resilience; help safeguard our economy, infrastructure, environment, and natural resources,” Fox News covered the event by saying that “Obama uses executive order in sweeping takeover of nation’s climate change policies.” The report had an alarmist tone in warning that the order will “potentially skirt legislative oversight and push a federal agenda on states.” Fox ignored the actual substance of the order that explicitly stated that “This order shall be implemented consistent with U.S. obligations under international agreements and applicable U.S. law, and be subject to the availability of appropriations.” The language addressing appropriations specifically bows to the oversight authority of Congress that Fox denied existed.
Fox’s report further injected a partisan intent on the part of the White House to deliver climate policy implementation to a cabal of Democrats. Three separate times in the report Fox noted the presence of Democrats on the task force that the executive order created. Why that should surprise anyone is a mystery. The President is entirely within his rights to appoint members of his party to executive branch committees. More importantly, why would anyone go out of their way to put the sort of climate science deniers that dominate the Republican Party on a committee tasked with mitigating the effects of Climate Change? It would be like asking atheists to lead the Christian church’s membership drive.
By disseminating false and misleading information about Climate Change, Fox News has been a significant factor in dumbing down the small portion of the electorate that is glued to their network. The more gullible among them, specifically the Tea Party faction, have become ardent opponents of reform measures to address Climate Change. And now it appears that they have drifted so far from the GOP mainstream that they have little in common with the average Republican’s position on this issue.
Nevertheless, the Republicans in Congress will continue to obstruct reasonable reforms that are supported by the majority of America, and even the majority of their party. That defiance is directly attributable to their fear of Tea Party primary challenges and their dependence on Tea Party billionaires like the Koch brothers. Until the GOP unshackles itself from their extremist wing and exhibits a willingness to cooperate on issues where they share common ground, voters must replace them with either common sense Republicans or Democrats. And if the Pew study is any indication, Republican voters are getting ready to do just that. |
China wants Canadian canola shipments to have less non-canola material in it, a requirement a commodities analyst says producers here can meet.
Canada relies heavily on its trade relationship with China. The Chinese government is strong-arming Canadian canola producers into tightening up the amount of dockage.
That's the stuff other than canola seed — including weed seeds, weed stems, chaff, straw, or other types of grain — in each tonne shipped to China.
Right now the Canadian standard has a 2.5 per cent dockage regulation meaning for every tonne of canola shipped, farmers can have 2.5 per cent of that tonne as extra material that's not canola seeds.
China wants Canadian canola to come down to one per cent dockage and had set a deadline for Sept. 1 for Canada to meet these demands.
There appears now to be a little more breathing room for Canadian farmers. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who's in China, announced Wednesday that China has agreed to extend the Sept. 1 deadline.
There's a big number of farmers committed to canola right now. Farmers will look at what's happening right now with China and some may go and grow another crop. - Sylvain Charlebois , professor at Dalhousie University
China hasn't abandoned its one per cent requirement, however.
While critics have come out saying this change in regulation will end up causing a backlog in cleaning seeds and clog up the system, a commodity expert said Canadian farmers and grain companies already come very close to meeting China's standards.
"We can clean wheat dockage back to 0.5 per cent. Why can't we clean canola to one per cent?" asked Larry Weber, who's with Weber Commodities Ltd.
Grain analyst Larry Weber says Canada can meet China's strict new requirements for clean canola. (CBC News)
"If we can export 18 million tonnes of wheat with 0.5 per cent dockage, why can't we ship four million tonnes to the Chinese with one per cent?"
Weber added 2.5 per cent dockage on any export product is too much and he said the Chinese have a point here.
Statistics Canada said Canadian farmers anticipate producing 17 million tonnes of canola this year. That is down about one per cent from last year, but producers are said to be on track for the second- or third-biggest harvest on record.
Stakes high for canola farmers
Despite Weber's belief that this new regulation shouldn't hinder any production or exports, a professor of food distribution at Dalhousie University said the stakes are high for farmers who grow canola and rely on shipments to China because China represents 40 per cent of Canada's canola export market.
Sylvain Charlebois said at the heart of China's request is food security and the cleaner the exports the less chance of disease contaminating its crop, specifically blackleg, a deadly fungus known to kill livestock and found worldwide.
"Over the last few years China has had major biosecurity and food safety crisis and so anything that has to do with things like blackleg they react," Charlebois said. "We rely on China too much as a market for us and China knows it, that's the problem, and that's why they're trying to make a point here."
But if Canada cannot meet China's demands and China shuts its doors, it could be time for Canada to start exploring other customers like Latin America, Europe and the Middle East.
According to Charlebois, this agreement with China could mean farmers in Canada start to think about growing other crops besides canola.
"There's a big number of farmers committed to canola right now," he said. "Farmers will look at what's happening right now with China and some may go and grow another crop." |
Catching a Mathematical Error Using Haskell’s Type System
I found this worth sharing. It’s the story of an error in a mathematics paper. Perhaps not too terribly surprising, you might think. But it really is surprising. The paper in question is quite well-written and clear. It’s central to its field, and has been read in detail by, I’m sure, hundreds if not thousands of people. It’s 25 years old. It doesn’t involve a lot of references to other results, but rather builds its entire argument right there in this one paper. In other words, it’s exactly the sort of mathematics that you’d expect to be correct. (The error, by the way, is not major and is easily overcome, and the result is still true. So I’m not claiming that 25 years of research is invalid or anything like that!)
Here’s the story. John Franks published a central result in the theory of subshifts of finite type, in 1983. Here’s everything you need to know about that field:
Subshifts of finite type can be described by directed graphs (loops and parallel edges allowed.) There are some interesting operations that we can perform on these graphs: in-splitting, out-splitting, in-amalgamation, out-amalgamation, expansion, and contraction. These operations arise in a really cool way, but you don’t need to worry about that. The main point, for the moment, is that although they come about quite naturally, they are not easy to work with directly.
Franks noticed that a certain matrix of integers seems to come up quite a bit in understanding the structure of these subshifts: that matrix is A – I, where A is the adjacency matrix of the graph, and I is the identity matrix of the right size. (In other words, the (i,j) entry of A is the number of edges from vertex i to vertex j.) He also noticed that he can perform row and column operations on that matrix — adding or subtracting a row or column to/from another — by doing those other fancy operations above in a certain way. This was huge. Now if I want to get from one graph G to another graph H, using those splits and amalgamations and expansions and such, it actually suffices to get from the matrix A – I to the matrix B – I (where A and B are the adjacency matrices of G and H) by using elementary row and column operations!
(There are a few technicalities, but skip this paragraph if you don’t care about them. You first have to arrange for G and H to have a loop at every vertex, so that A – I and B – I are non-negative. Then you have to make sure that your row and column operations don’t leave you with negative entries in your matrices. These are handled correctly in the paper, but are not necessary for the point I’m making, so I won’t mention them again.)
Then Franks sets out to do this.
First, he shows that he can arrange so that the entire first column of the matrix A – I is equal to the greatest common divisor of all the entries. Starting from this, he uses an elimination algorithm similar to what you often see in introductory linear algebra courses: you clear out some row and column except for the single cell where they coincide, and then ignore that row and column and recursively perform the same operation on the remaining smaller matrix. Franks chooses, in particular, to clear out the first column and the second row.
But here’s the error. Elementary row and column operations on this sub-matrix carry over to the larger matrix… but when arranging for the first column to be equal to the g.c.d. of all of the entries, Franks accidentally used some different operation — namely, conjugation by a permutation matrix. A seemingly trivial operation, since it corresponds to a graph isomorphism. In a sense, it doesn’t even change the graph at all, so it’s hardly even an operation. However, when you delete the first column and second row, and then conjugate the resulting matrix by a permutation matrix, this does not correspond to any kind of good operation on the larger graph. The proof of this central result in the theory of subshifts of finite type, therefore, contains an error.
How did I find this? Actually, I found it because I was implementing Franks’ construction in Haskell, and Haskell has a type system that was remarkably helpful in reasoning about the result. I started by writing a type class (called FlowEquiv) for representations of graphs on which I can perform those weird operations: splits, amalgamations, etc. As I described in my last blog entry, I was able to capture a lot of higher level concepts by writing wrapper types that are instances of this type class. For example, these operations can be performed on the transpose of a graph, and when they are, they correspond to other operations on the original graph. I was able to write down that correspondence explicitly by having a wrapper type called Transposed implement the same type class.
Naturally, when I came to the point of needing to delete the first column and second row, I looked for a way to do the same thing. I couldn’t do it. I poked at this for a couple days, and reached the conclusion that, in fact, there is no obvious correspondence between these operations (splits and amalgamations and such) on a sub-matrix, and the corresponding operations on the larger matrix. Clearly, a new abstraction was needed, so I defined a new type class, ReducibleMatrix, defining just those operations that carry over nicely to sub-matrices: namely, the row and column operations. Then the huge insight of Franks, the ability to compose splits and amalgamations and expansions and the like to form elementary row and column operations, corresponds to this line of code:
instance FlowEquiv a => ReducibleMatrix a where
and Franks proof is realized by the definitions of the functions from ReducibleMatrix. So then I set out to implement those operations of Franks that need to be performed on submatrices in terms of the ReducibleMatrix type class. And that’s when I saw it. I could not convert my implementation of that one piece (turning the first column of A – I into the gcd of the entries) on the ReducibleMatrix type class in the way that Franks described it. Why? Because of that conjugation by a permutation matrix. In a sense, Haskell’s type system found the error in Franks’ proof.
Epilogue: it turns out there’s an easy modification of Franks’ proof that works around this issue. That corresponded to implementing the g.c.d. piece in Haskell in a different way. The correction is minor, and doesn’t really have an effect on any other results, so it will appear as a brief remark in an upcoming paper I’m writing on Leavitt path algebras.
Anyway, I thought that was worth sharing. In this case, Haskell’s type system did catch not just a programming error, but an error in a mathematical result that had to the best of my knowledge gone undetected by likely hundreds of people for 25 years.
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Manny Villar to poll losers: Move on
ABS-CBN News
Posted at 13 May 2016 08:10 PM | Updated as of 13 May 2016 08:54 PM
Photo courtesy of http://www.mannyvillar.com.ph
MANILA - Former Senator Manny Villar has some advice for electoral candidates who lose in the elections: move on.
In his May 10 column for the Manila Bulletin, Villar, a former congressman and Senate president, said elections are "never win-win affairs" and that there are more losers than winners after the polls.
"After the dust has settled, a few will celebrate and our media will focus almost exclusively on the victors. A great majority of candidates will silently lick their wounds," he said in his column.
Villar recalled his own presidential bid in 2010, wherein he placed third behind former President Joseph Estrada and then senator and eventual winner Benigno Aquino III.
The former lawmaker said running a national campaign is no joke since it requires a vast amount of resources and can be emotionally draining. He noted, politics somehow brings out the worst in people, even among allies and friends.
"Aspirants need to endure brutal attacks against their persons, and worse, their families. You go around the country and present your plans to uplift the condition of the Filipinos and your opponents fabricate lies after lies against you," he said.
In the book "Ambition, Destiny, Victory: Stories from a Presidential Election" by Miriam Grace A. Go and Chay Hofileña, Villar ran an expensive campaign - spending an estimated P1.4 billion on print and broadcast ads for the whole of 2009. He also secured the endorsements of Manny Pacquiao, Willie Revillame and comedy king Dolphy, and his "Dagat ng Basura" campaign jingle became famous.
By January 2010, four months before the elections, the Nacionalista Party candidate was statistically tied with Aquino before several negative issues derailed his campaign.
Among the attacks raised against him were the "pekeng mahirap" tag, his alleged alliance with then-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the C-5 road controversy, and alleged land-grabbing and stock manipulation issues.
In the book, Villar is described by insiders as the non-confrontational type who chose to let slide many of the attacks against him. Then-Senator Nene Pimentel Jr. recalled how Villar didn't fight back while he was harangued by Sen. Panfilo Lacson on the C-5 issue.
"He was being insulted frontally and he didn't insult back," Pimentel recalled.
In his column, Villar said he wasted no time accepting his defeat in the 2010 presidential race. He congratulated Aquino one day after the elections after the Liberal Party bet gained a four-million vote lead over closest rival, Joseph Estrada.
"When it became clear that the results would not favorable to us, I gathered my team together and discussed the situation, and I immediately called for a press conference to congratulate the eventual winner and wish the country good luck," Villar said.
"By lunchtime the following day, I was meeting with my Vista Land officers to discuss my return to the sphere I love the most: business."
Vista Land, the holding company that provided Villar the resources to seek the presidency, also registered 31 percent growth in net income by the end of 2010. Villar spent three more years in the Senate before stepping down in 2013.
Villar said it is important for losing candidates to move on.
"For the vanquished candidates, the important thing to do is to move on. Do not dwell on pain and disappointment. Conceding is a difficult thing to do for some, especially if they think they have been cheated. But the national interest is bigger than any individual interest," he said.
"It is important for losing candidates to move on. You can recoup the finances you spent. You can recuperate your aching body. You can make new allies. It’s not the end of the world." |
The Mirror Question
1. What Mirrors Do
Why do mirrors reflect left-right, but not up-down? Suppose we have a card with the letters
printed on it (as viewed from the front of the card). If we are going to view this card in a mirror we need to turn it so the front of the card faces the mirror. What we see in the mirror will then be the same as what we would see if you could view the printed letters from the back of the card (e.g., by holding it up to the light.)
But what we see will clearly depend on how we turned the card "over". If we rotated it about the vertical axis we will see
i.e., it will be reversed left-right, but if we rotate it about the horizontal axis we will see
i.e., it will be reversed up-down. This applies both to what we see in the mirror and what we see through the back of the card. In fact, we can dispense with the mirror altogether and just use a transparent plate with an image on it. We're free to rotate the plate about any axis (parallel to the plate) we wish in order to view the image from the other side. The axis of image-reversal will correspond to the axis of rotation we choose.
Of course when looking through a mirror at, say, our living room, we don't physically rotate the room. Instead, we re-orient ourselves, looking first at the room (the reference image), and then turning to look at the room's image in the mirror. To execute the turn we choose an axis of rotation which is usually vertical, resulting in a left- right image reversal. On the other hand, if we look at the room and then rotate about our horizontal axis to look at the mirror, the image we see will be reversed up-down relative to what we saw directly (because we are now standing on our heads).
There's actually an extensive literature on the question of "what mirrors do", and it has been discussed from many different points of view. It's generally accepted that the question is ambiguous because the entities (visual images) and operations (reversals) to which it refers are both inherently interpretative and of a higher conceptual order than the simple concept of a mirror. We can say without ambiguity that a mirror reflects incident rays of light, and the angle of reflection equals the angle of incidence, because the concepts of rays and angles are of the same order as mirrors. However, the notions of "visual image" and "reversal" are of a higher order, and their precise meanings are a matter of interpretation.
For example, a "visual image" may be regarded as a two-dimensional entity (which, in a purely geometric-optical sense, it is). In this sense the "effect" of a mirror can be defined as the mapping it gives between a 2D visual image viewed directly and the "same" 2D image viewed through a mirror. In these terms, the "reversal" seemingly effected by a mirror is really just a consequence of the rotation performed by the viewer as he re-orients his field of vision from the direct to the reflected image. These two fields are necessarily oriented at 180 degrees from each other, but this doesn't fully constrain how the field of vision is adjusted, because the field of vision consists not only of a direction in space but also an orientation about that direction.
Thus, if I first view an image due North, and then view the same image through a mirror due South, the axis about which the image will be reversed is precisely the axis about which I rotated my field of vision as I turned from North to South. If I turned about a vertical axis (as is most likely) the image will be reversed left-to-right, but if I turned about a horizontal axis (by standing on my head, for example) the image will be reversed top-to-bottom.
On the other hand, a "visual image" can also be construed as the 3D model that we psychologically associate with a particular 2D optical image. In support of this notion we can point out that our visual images actually consist of input from two eyes located at slightly different positions, so there is some justification for including "depth perception" as an inherent aspect of a "visual image". On this basis people sometimes say that the effect of a mirror is to reverse front-to-back, i.e., things that were furthest South in our 3D model of the direct view will be furthest North in our 3D model based on the reflected view.
However, although this approach seems plausible (and in fact it has been regarded by many people as the correct answer), there are several problems with it. On a purely formal level it can be argued that a visual image (singular) is properly defined relative to just a single point of view (eye), and that the human visual sense (for people with two eyes) is composed of two distinct visual images, from which we psychologically synthesize a mental image. Thus, we would argue that the 3D approach is answering a different question than the one that was asked (i.e., it's dealing with mental images rather than optical images).
More seriously, identifying the notion of "visual image" with the corresponding 3D model has a serious problem of non-uniqueness. It's well known that many optical images are ambiguous as to their 3D interpretation. For example, consider the image
Is this image convex or concave? In other words, are you looking at the top of a pyramid, or down into a triangular-shaped hole? Obviously this is just a 2D ASCII image, but there are real 3D objects and lighting conditions that present images just like this. If you look at such an object in a mirror, will it be reversed front to back? What if you interpret it as a pyramid when viewed directly, but as a hole when viewed through a mirror? In that case you would have to say the mirror did not reverse the image front to back. Nevertheless, the asterisk will appear to be on a different face, so clearly the mirror has done something. How can we characterize the effect of a mirror in a way that doesn't depend on subjective 3D interpretations?
All we can say for sure is that, in the 2D sense of pure optical images, an image is reflected about the axis around which our field of view is rotated as we turn from the direct view to the mirror. This is adequate to explain all the "reversals" that occur, including reversals of "handedness". For example, the image
will appear as some plane-rotated version of
when viewed through a mirror, but no plane-rotation will make it look exactly like the original, because one is left-handed and the other is right-handed. Thus, the notion of "handedness" doesn't require three dimensions. The change in handedness produced by mirrors is fully represented in the 2D optical approach. Furthermore, the 2D approach is absolute and unambiguous. In contrast, any 3D "front-to-back" effects that we may attribute to a mirror are necessarily based on ambiguous psychological interpretations.
2. Reflections on The Mirror Question
When looking in your rear-view mirror, objects in front of the mirror (as seen in the image in the mirror) are reversed left and right, but not up and down. Why are left and right reversed, but up and down are not? To answer this commonly-asked question, we need to first answer the question: "Reversed relative to what?" From the context of the original question we can infer that it refers to the image in the rear-view mirror being reversed relative to the image we would see if we turned around and looked directly out the back window. If so, then the answer depends on how we would turn around. Most likely we would rotate our field of view about a vertical axis, so the image we see will be reversed laterally (left-to-right). Of course, if we turn about a horizontal axis (difficult to do in a car, but not impossible), the image we see would be reversed top-to-bottom.
Another answer that is often given to this question is that mirrors reverse neither left-to-right nor top-to-bottom, they reverse front- to-back. This is actually the answer to a slightly different question than the one asked above, but it's such a cute answer that many people can't resist giving it whenever anyone asks anything about mirror images.
The reason there are consistently conflicting answers to "the mirror question" is partly due to the fact that the question is often poorly expressed, so that it can be construed in several different ways. The ambiguity is two-fold, because, first, the question often doesn't explicitly identify the two things that are posited to be "reversals" of each other, and second, the question often doesn't define the intended sense of "left" and "right", i.e., as relative directions or as designations of "handedness".
Thus, if someone asks "Why do mirrors reverse left-right?" we could imagine that he's asking
(0) Why, as I look at a mirror, do objects that are actually on my left appear to be on my right, and vice versa?
In other words, he's assuming a fixed set of relative spatial directions based on his current orientation as he looks at the mirror, and he's asking how the directions of the actual objects compare with the directions of their reflected images. Of course, on this basis we're forced to conclude that the premise of the question is totally erroneous, because it's obvious that objects to the left of the viewer appear to the his left in the mirror. Thus, if we assume this interpretation we have the fun of telling him that he's so stupid, even the premise of his question is wrong, i.e., he's asking for an explanation of why something occurs when in fact no such thing occurs! Hah! It's always deeply satisfying when we can slam someone like this, thereby demonstrating the clear superiority of our thought processes.
However, when answering questions - especially informally-posed questions in a non-adversarial context - there is a certain class imperative to at least consider the possibility that the question has a valid basis, and to seek a construal of the question that is consistent with such a basis. For example, in the case of "the mirror question" we must ask ourselves whether there is any sense in which mirrors could be said to effect a left-right reversal. Given how often "the mirror question" is asked by sincere people, it is perhaps not surprising to find that there is a way of construing the "left-right reversal" premise such that it isn't totally idiotic. In fact, there are two such ways, both of which assume the "reversal" in the mirror is relative to the image that would appear if the same objects were viewed directly.
First, if some asks "why do mirrors reverse left-right?", it's possible to interpret the question in terms of left-right 'handedness', i.e., the chirality of real or apparent objects in real or imagined space. From this standpoint we would map the question to something like
(1) My friend Wally is right-handed, but when I see him reflected in a mirror, he appears to be left-handed. What gives?
This is a perfectly valid observation, and it's worth noting that imaginary-Wally is left-handed regardless of how we orient the mirror, the real Wally, or ourselves. Even if we arrange things so that imaginary-Wally appears upside down in the mirror, or so that his left hand is on our right side, he will still appear to be left-handed. This is because we're not using the words "left" and "right" here as relative directions, we're using them as designations of left and right-handed chirality of the viewed objects (real and imagined). When the question is interpreted as something like (1), the answer is that the imaginary "objects" contained in the fictitious space on the "other side" of the mirror are symmetrically reflected vis-à-vis the actual objects about the plane surface of the mirror.
Consequently we have a parity reversal that switches the 'handedness' of all the imaginary objects relative to their real counterparts. Thus the "left-right" handedness reversal of apparent objects in the mirror relative to the actual objects is a real effect on imaginary objects, i.e., a reversal of parity of all "objects" in the imaginary space "behind" the mirror. It isn't quite as much fun to give this answer as to give the "your-premise-is-wrong" answer, because here we have to admit that there is at least some rational basis for the question. However, it's still kind of fun, because we can phrase the answer so that it comes out sounding like "The left-right [handedness] reversal you've observed is actually the result of a front-back [directional] reversal. Hah!" Thus, although we can't make the questioner sound like a complete idiot, we can still make him sound very confused indeed.
Paraphrases (0) and (1) represent the two "fun" interpretations, but in order to present them plausibly it was necessary to truncate the question relative to how it is normally presented. Almost invariably when someone asks "the mirror question" he asks "Why do mirrors reverse left-right" and then adds the phrase "rather than up-down?" Hmmm...
In paraphrase (1) we assumed the term "left-right" referred to handedness (chirality), but it's hard to maintain that assumption if "left-right" is contrasted with "up-down", because the alternative to a left-right handedness reversal is not an up-down handedness reversal, but simply no handedness reversal at all. So if someone contrasts left-right with up-down, we need to consider the possibility that they are referring to left and right not as designations of chirality but as relative directions in the plane of their visual images. This suggests that we should map their question to something like
(2) If I look in the rear view mirror of my car, the image I see is typically reversed left-to-right relative to what I would see if I looked directly out the back window. (For example, the license plates read backwards in the mirror.) But surely a plane mirror is symmetrical about all directions in the plane, so why do I see backward images rather than upside-down images? In other words, why is there a left-right reversal rather than an up-down reversal, or even some diagonal reversal?
Note the similarity between this and the question posed at the start of this note. The answer to this question clearly has to do with the axis of rotation of our field of vision. When the person turns his field of vision from the mirror to the back window he is turning about some axis, and the relation between the two visual images depends on that axis. If, as is most likely, he turns his head about a vertical axis, then the image he sees out the back window will indeed be reversed left-to-right relative to the image he saw in the mirror. In other words, things that were on his left are now on his right, and vice versa. However, if he rotated his field of vision about, say, a horizontal axis (difficult but not impossible in a car) the two visual images at his retina would be related to each other by being "flipped" about a horizontal line, i.e., the images would be upside-down relative to each other. In general, the direct and reflected visual images are "flipped" relative to each other about a line parallel to the viewer's axis of rotation.
(Needless to say, our driver has probably looked directly out the rear window enough times that he can imagine how it will look even without turning, but the point is that when he talks about image reversals in the mirror he means relative to the image he would see if he turned around in some specific way, even though he may never have cogitated on the fact that his preferred choice of physical rotation axis is what determines the axis of reversal of the mirror image.)
Notice that although none of the above answers is based on "social expectations", they do involve consideration not only of "what mirrors do" but of what we do when we look in a mirror. In both cases (0) and (1), if we say mirrors "really" reverse front-to-back, we base this claim on the observer's (mis)interpretation of the visual image coming from the flat surface of the mirror as if he was looking into a three- dimensional region of space, and making inferences about the depth or chirality of imaginary objects (although case (0) is somewhat problematic considering that both the real and the reflected object may be in "front" of us, even without imaginary "depth" inferences). In case (2) our answer is based on the raw visual images, without any interpretation, but those images are understood to be functions of the observer's field of vision and relative directions, which change as he turns (or imagines turning) from the direct to the corresponding reflected image. Thus, none of these construals of the question allows us to avoid dealing with the observer as an active element in our description.
Without the observer, the only answer we could give to the question "What do mirrors do?" is that mirrors reflect rays of light symmetrically about the normal to the surface at the point of incidence, but this clearly is not responsive to a question about perceived image reversal. Furthermore, there's no valid reason to shy away from phenomena that involve the observer in some essential way. There was such a prejudice among physicists at one time, but quantum mechanics has taught us that physics can't always clearly separate the measurement process from the thing being measured, nor the observer from the observed.
As for which of our two non-idiot interpretations is more likely to be correct, I think the fact that people almost invariably contrast left- right with up-down when asking the question clearly implies that they have in mind something like (2) rather than (1), and certainly rather than (0).
3. A Mirror to Physics
Although to penetrate into the intimate mysteries of nature and thence to learn the true causes of phenomena is not allowed to us, nevertheless it can happen that a certain fictive hypothesis may suffice for explaining many phenomena.
Leonhard Euler, 1748
Question: "What does that sign say?"
Answer: "It doesn't say anything, you have to read it."
Traditional
Why does the image of an object appears reversed left-to-right rather than top-to-bottom when viewed in a mirror. By implication, the "reversal" in question is relative to how the object appears when viewed directly. The answer is simply that an image viewed through a mirror appears reversed about the axis around which the viewer rotated his field of sight in turning from the direct to the reflected image. Since we ordinarily rotate our field of sight about a vertical axis, mirror images usually appear reversed left-to-right. (For a fuller explanation, see What Mirrors Do.)
Sometimes, however, we come across a completely different "explanation" of "what mirrors do", the idea being that mirrors actually reverse things "front-to-back", as illustrated by a drawing like this:
The most interesting thing about this "explanation" is that it's clearly based on a counter-factual premise. The "chair" shown on the right side of this drawing does not exist. What really exists are reflected rays of light bearing a particular relationship to the direct rays of light from the chair. The corresponding images, which are 2D projections of those families of light rays for a particular observer, appear reversed about the axis of the observer's rotation. Nevertheless, the counter-factual explanation based on the fictive hypothesis of an imaginary chair with imaginary 3D properties appeals strongly to many people. It's actually given as "the answer", often citing an "explanation" given in one of Isaac Asimov's books.
This is a nice example of a "fictive hypothesis" that is quite successful at explaining things - up to a point. If we are standing next to the real chair we can deduce how the reflected image will appear from various points of view by *imagining* another chair in the fictitious "space" on the other side of the mirror, with the understanding that all "objects" in that "space" are reversed front-to-back, i.e. symmetrical with the real objects about the plane surface of the mirror. Of course, there's a point at which this fictive hypothesis ceases to be useful. For example, if we try to walk over to the reflected chair and sit down we quickly discover the limitations of conceptualizing reflected images as 3D objects.
The reason this counter-factual description seems so natural is that we are accustomed to dealing with our psychological constructions rather than with the primary sense perceptions on which those constructions are based. We normally presume a fairly reliable isomorphism between our perceptions and the associated mental constructs, but mirrors are somewhat unusual in that they present us with sense perceptions that we intentionally construe in a counter-factual way. A mirror is designed to simulate the sense impressions of things that really aren't "there". Notice that mirrors are among the few objects on which we almost never focus our eyes. We don't look at mirrors, we look in mirrors, with our focal lengths adjusted into the fictitious space on the "other side".
In addition to the natural tendency to deal with our mental constructs rather than our direct perceptions, the counter-factual explanation of what mirrors "do" is motivated partly by the traditional desire of physicists to separate the observer from the phenomenon. The original question asks what mirrors "do", and we tend to think this should be definable without reference to what the observer does (e.g., rotating his field of sight). However, a question about the appearance of images can only be properly answered by considering not only what mirrors "do", but also what we do when we look in mirrors. If we remove the observer from consideration, we can no longer deal with images and appearances (which is what the question asks about), because an image implies a point of view and an orientation. Without these concepts we can't really address the question at all. Oddly, many of the popular “answers” to the mirror question fail to even acknowledge the basic observation that prompts the question (reflected text appearing backwards but not upside-down), and never addresses the correlation between the observer's axis of rotation and the resulting appearance of the reflected image. |
It’s 5 day s until Christmas and I’m just starting to feel the peace and joy that comes this time of year.
Really….I am.
As a matter of fact, I’m soooo feeling the love this year, I’m going to give pajama boy, Ethan Krupp, a pass.
Yup, I’m giving this a pass:
Now, if you want to know more about this latest role model for men everywhere, the Washington Examiner provides a thorough introduction.
Lord knows I don’t want to be included as one the left claims is cyber-bullying this modern day John Wayne.
No, it’s 5 days until Christmas and I want to include Ethan in all my good will towards others.
So, I said to myself….”Self let’s pick a Christmas song just for little Ethan.”
It is extremely rare when you can give the perfect Christmas gift but, I found it. Let us all enjoy this special song for Ethan and remember, it really does come with love.
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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Mounties at UBC are warning people to be careful when out jogging in the dark.
It comes after an 18-year-old student was attacked while she was running through Pacific Spirit Park earlier this month.
She claims she was approached by an Aboriginal man asking her if she knew the time. She says he grabbed her and thre her to the ground before running away. The victim suffered scrapes to her knee.
“We are asking for the public’s assistance in identifying this suspect” says Sgt Peter Thiessen of the Lower Mainland District RCMP. ” The public is reminded to remain vigilant concerning their safety when out jogging or walking in any park in the Lower Mainland especially after dark.”
“UBC detachment officers have been conducting enhanced and directed patrols in the area of the assault along with our security partners responsible for public safety within the park,” says Sgt Thiessen.
The suspect is described as:
– Early to mid 20’s
– Five-foot-nine to five-foot-ten
– Heavy build
– Medium skin tone
– Short black hair which comes forward at the front
– Brown eyes
– Round face
– Black round framed glasses (not sunglasses)
– Wearing a black shirt with a white circular logo, baggy blue jeans, and shoes
Anyone with information is asked to call Cst Kevin McCarthy of the University RCMP at 604-224-1322 or Crime Stoppers. |
End the free rides for mining giants
Updated
Why should massive mining corporations like BHP, Rio Tinto and Glencore continue to get cheap fuel from the Government while everyone else suffers, asks Greens Leader Christine Milne.
The big miners get off scot-free in Tony Abbott's brutal budget. BHP is on track for a mind-boggling $13.5 billion profit, while last year Rio Tinto earned $10 billion and Glencore Xstrata had a $3 billion after-tax bonanza.
Mr Abbott is not content that we've already sacrificed desperately needed public services because the big three have by-and-large avoided paying any mining tax. He swears that there is still more to be done.
His next step was the repeal of the carbon price. That saved mining companies about $574 million for not having to pay for the heat-trapping methane that escapes from coal mines and coal seam gas wells.
But sadly, lost in all the bluster of the debate was something much more sinister. Buried within the repeal laws was the removal of the carbon charge that applied to petrol and diesel used by mining companies. It was pegged to the rate of the abolished emission trading scheme.
Now the mining companies, such as Clive Palmer's Mineralogy group and Gina Rinehart's Hancock Prospecting don't have to pay a single cent in tax for their fuel.
Of the $18 billion in lost revenue over the next four years from the abolition of the emissions trading scheme, $1.6 billion of that was purely a gift from Mr Abbott to the miners, or in the case of Clive Palmer a nice little present for his companies.
So much for a budget emergency. To put that $1.6 billion gift into perspective, it more than covers the $1.2 billion saving provided by the Government's cruel proposal to force those under 30 who can't find any work to live without any income for six months, denying them the dignity of purchasing their own food, seeing a doctor when sick or living in reliable and secure accommodation.
If a jobseeker filled up their car on their way to an interview they would pay 38 cents in each litre to the Government, just like everyone else. Meanwhile these multi-billion-dollar mining companies don't pay a single cent in tax. They call it a Fuel Tax Credit. We call it a Fossil Fuel Subsidy and a blatant rort.
When Parliament returns after the winter break, the Greens will be introducing a bill to take this joyride away so that the big miners no longer get off scot-free in Mr Abbott's brutal budget. The bill will abolish all fossil fuel subsidies, except for agricultural purposes, so farmers will not be impacted.
In this year's BRW Rich List, Gina Rinehart came in as Australia's richest person valued at $20 billion - clearly above the Government's tough-on-welfare income threshold. So she will be exempt in her recently signed $200 million deal with Caltex to provide her iron ore mine with 120 million litres of fuel.
Under our current laws, Joe Hockey will be writing her a cheque for $45.6 million for this agreement. Meanwhile the ABC and SBS are being handed $43.5 million in budget cuts.
To put it simply, the Greens want the big end of town to pay its fair share so that we can continue to improve the vital public services that Australians cherish.
The G20, IMF, OECD and World Bank have all urged governments to stop providing subsidies for fossil fuel use. These are the institutions that define what the economic orthodoxy is.
Australia made a commitment to the international community that we, like the other G20 countries would phase out our fossil fuel subsidies because they favourably distort the use of dirty sources of energy over clean ones. Mr Abbott has just placed this agreement on his pile of international agreements to be ignored.
By taking away miners' tax-free fuel the Abbott Government could uphold Australia's international commitment and raise $13 billion over the next four years alone. The offer is there for the Government.
Come on Mr Hockey, stop moaning, if you are serious about fixing the structural deficiencies in the budget, this bill can become law in a matter of weeks with our support in the Senate.
Mr Abbott was wrong to ask everyday Australians to dig deeper for his brutal budget. Now it is time for him to ask those that are already doing the digging to return some of our resources and share the wealth before the boom is over.
Christine Milne is the Australian Greens Leader and Senator for Tasmania. View her full profile here.
Topics: government-and-politics, mining-industry, budget
First posted |
Let’s get to know each other
In 2008 I created a site which accidentally started to bring me earnings of more than five-figures a month from WordPress themes.
As a student at that time, I wasn’t prepared for this, but it seems that exciting things in life often come when you least expect them.
I wasn’t a programmer at that time and I barely could slice a PSD file to XHTML/CSS, but I quickly adapted and was addicted to learn more and more about WordPress theming every day.
In just a month after releasing Yamidoo Magazine, my very first WordPress theme, I was already making $10k/month from sales of just a single theme. So you can imagine how the numbers increased after releasing my 2nd and 3rd themes.
I knew it was the beginning of the Premium Themes boom, so I didn’t want to miss this opportunity to build something big.
Shortly thereafter, I started to bring people onto my team and this resulted in what today is called WPZOOM, a popular WordPress theme provider |
Buy Photo The Ontario Power Generation's Bruce nuclear facility can be seen from a local beach off Lake Huron in Kincardine, Ontario. (Photo: Andre J. Jackson/ Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo
In a story Jan. 3 about a proposal to store nuclear waste underground near Lake Huron, The Associated Press incorrectly identified an organization that opposes the plan. The group’s name is Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump, not Stop the Nuclear Dump.
A corrected version of the story is below:
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — A Canadian company that wants to bury waste from nuclear power plants near Lake Huron said Tuesday a study of alternative sites had found none better than a location already targeted, which has drawn strong opposition on both sides of the border.
Ontario Power Generation said it had submitted additional studies ordered nearly a year ago by the Canadian Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, which twice has delayed a ruling on the company’s underground disposal plan. The agency said recently it expects to make a decision this summer or fall.
Related:
The company’s preferred site is on the grounds of the Bruce Power Generating Station near Kincardine, Ontario, the world’s largest nuclear power complex, which has eight reactors. The proposal calls for burying low- and intermediate-level waste such as clothing, brooms and discarded machinery — some of which could remain dangerously toxic for thousands of years — about 2,230 feet underground.
It would be encased in a limestone formation that the company says has been stable for 450 million years. The storage chamber would be much deeper than Lake Huron and the company says there is virtually no chance of radioactive pollution reaching the lake, which is less than a mile away.
Responding to a request by Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, Ontario Power Generation said it had examined two alternative sites — one in a crystalline rock formation in north-central Ontario and the other in limestone in the province’s south. The specific locations were not disclosed because of the study’s hypothetical nature, company spokesman Kevin Powers said, adding that both are farther from the lake than the Bruce Power site.
Although technically and economically suitable, they would be costlier and could affect the environment more than the preferred spot, the report said. Building a disposal facility at either of the alternative sites would create a new industrial footprint and boost greenhouse gas emissions for decades as waste is hauled from temporary storage canisters at Bruce Power to the permanent dump.
“And all for no assurance of greater safety to the environment or to the lake,” Powers said.
Opponents of the Bruce Power disposal plan remained unconvinced.
“Surely in the vast land mass that comprises Canada, there must be a better place to permanently store nuclear waste than on the shores of Lake Huron,” said U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, a Democrat from Michigan.
A review panel appointed by the Canadian government endorsed the project in 2015 after lengthy hearings that included testimony and reports from scientists.
But 186 cities, counties and other governments have passed resolutions and more than 150,000 people have signed petitions in opposition, according to a Canada-based group called Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump.
“Water is Life,” said Beverly Fernandez, the group’s spokeswoman. “No matter what process is followed, burying radioactive waste beside the Great Lakes, the irreplaceable drinking water for 40 million people, will always be a bad idea.”
Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/2hSepyj |
A GALAGA INSPIRED SHOOT 'EM UP
FOR COMMODORE 64 COMPUTERS
EARTH, 2017
We didn't listen to the warnings.
We decided to ignore the decline of our bee population,
and now their guardians have arrived.
You must pilot the 1981 Galencia Fighter and restore order.
Before its too late!
50 Action Packed Levels
Asteroid Fields
Challenging Stages
Boss Battles
Ebb and Flow difficulty curve
Siren enemy with Tractor beam for Double Ship Action
Introduction, Launch and Completion sequences
6 Brand new SID tunes, unique to this project
Load, Save and Reset High Scores
Extensive CRT options including 3 levels of Starfield Brightness
Three different Score Palettes
Tournament Mode
Music and Simultaneous Sound Effects or Sound Effects only
Joystick Port 2
F1 on title screen for options menu
SPACE to pause current game
Q to quit current game
Tournament mode is one life only and no way to earn more
perfect for fast moving Tournaments!
Loading Instructions
LOAD "*",8,1 then type RUN
Galencia will auto-detect PAL or NTSC
Galencia has been tested on and is supported on real hardware
as well as the Vice emulator
PLEASE SUPPORT C64 DEVELOPERS
YOU WILL BE REWARDED WITH GREAT GAMES!
PLEASE NOTE:
SALES TAX or VAT will be added to your order at checkout |
A healthy emotional life is not about never experiencing negative emotions, but learning how to channel them in positive and constructive ways.
Here are some activities that are often effective in taking emotions like sadness, anger, or grief, and then using them to learn something about ourselves or creating a more fulfilling and meaningful life.
50 ways to constructively channel negative emotions
2. Listen to music that fits your mood (see how to use music to manage your emotions).
3. Paint or draw as a way to express yourself through pictures (see creativity and happiness).
4. Create a personal diary, journal, or blog to keep track of your thoughts, feelings, and experiences (see the power of writing).
5. Dance as a fun way to exercise and release built up negative emotions and stress.
6. Go to the gym or workout (see the connection between physical and mental health).
7. Go some place where you can yell at the top of your lungs (sometimes it can be a helpful release of built up tension).
8. Watch a movie that echoes how you feel and provides a happy or inspirational ending.
9. Do yoga, tai chi, or some other mind-body exercise to release the physical stress behind your emotions.
10. Speak your thoughts and feelings to someone who is willing to listen.
11. Write a short story that focuses on similar thoughts and emotions to what you are experiencing.
12. Donate to a cause that you really believe in.
13. Ask yourself, “What are my emotions trying to tell me?” Often there is a thought process behind what we feel that we can learn from.
14. Learn how to reframe a negative situation in a more positive or productive light (see quick tips for reframing your perspective).
15. Do something kind for someone. Often creating pleasant feelings for others increases our own well-being (get started with one of these 30 acts of kindness).
16. Go out to your local park or a nature preserve. Nature can often help us get outside of our minds and appreciate the world around us more.
17. Photography, find a good place to take pictures. Then look through your set and find 1 or 2 photos that really speak to your current emotions.
18. Go for a drive with no particular destination in mind.
19. Lift weights or hit a punching bag to release stress.
20. Play a stimulating video game.
21. View anxiety or stress as motivators to act, not things that inhibit you (see the hidden power of anxiety).
22. Write a poem or song lyrics about what’s on your mind.
23. Practice a self-love meditation (see improve feelings of self-love in 5 minutes).
24. Try to solve a puzzle. It’ll help occupy your mind with something else, rather than just ruminating over the same problems (see challenge your brain – and other ways to maintain cognitive fitness).
25. Go outside for a light walk to help clear your mind.
26. Reflect on negative experiences and see what you can learn from them (read more at reflection improves learning).
27. Meditate on your thoughts and emotions without being judgmental. Don’t label them as “good” or “bad” – just accept them for what they are.
28. Channel your emotions into a competitive sport, like basketball or football.
29. Consider star gazing as an opportunity to stop and reflect on the bigger things in life (try the sky gazing meditation).
30. Respectfully confront someone who may be responsible for how you feel.
31. Engage in a simple pleasure to remind yourself of the finer things in life (such as a dessert or your favorite TV show).
32. Learn how to take criticism constructively, rather than letting it just get you sad or frustrated (see how to take criticism like a champ).
33. If a negative emotion is motivating you to do something destructive, try doing the exact opposite of what you feel.
34. Read a novel that temporarily takes you into a new world.
35. Join a forum or online support group that shares similar troubles.
36. Use negative relationships in the past as a resource to improve relationships in the future.
37. When reflecting on negative events in your life, try to see how they may have made you a better person. Often these experiences can build resilience in the long-term (psychologist refer to this as post-traumatic growth).
38. Channel your anger or other “high charged” emotions to drive you to be more productive.
39. Make tedious work more fun to help manage boredom or apathy (see blur the line between work and play).
40. Use stress or fatigue as a sign to take a break or enjoy some leisure time (see 50 stress relievers that take 5 minutes or less).
41. Wake up early and watch the sunrise. Learn to appreciate every new day as a clean slate.
42. Label your fears when you experience them and they become easier to face (see labeling negative emotions can help you overcome them).
43. Surround yourself with positive and supporting friends and family who can quickly turn your mood around.
44. Use your emotional energy to create positive affirmations that motivate you to grow and improve (see 75 affirmations for self improvement).
45. Find something to be grateful (see be grateful for your senses).
46. Channel your emotions and write your own daily prayer to help motivate and inspire yourself (see write your own daily prayer).
47. Think about role models in your life who may have overcome similar obstacles (see how we find motivation in other people’s struggles).
48. Use your energy to clean, organize, or redecorate your home or office space.
49. Read some inspirational quotes (see quotes I’ve collected).
50. Indulge in one of life’s simple pleasures (see 50 simple pleasures to brighten your day). |
Preliminary Design Of Free Electron Laser Weapon Completed
by Staff Writers
Albuquerque NM (SPX) Mar 19, 2010
has successfully completed the preliminary design of the U.S. Navy's Free Electron Laser (FEL) weapon system, a key step toward building a FEL prototype for realistic tests at sea.
During the preliminary design review held March 9 to March 11 at a Boeing facility in Arlington, Va., the company presented its design to more than 30 U.S. government and National Laboratory representatives. This electric laser will operate by passing a beam of high-energy electrons through a series of powerful magnetic fields, generating an intense emission of laser light that can disable or destroy targets.
"The Free Electron Laser will use a ship's electrical power to create, in effect, unlimited ammunition and provide the ultra-precise, speed-of-light capability required to defend U.S. naval forces against emerging threats, such as hyper-velocity cruise missiles," said Gary Fitzmire, vice president and program director of Boeing Directed Energy Systems.
"The successful completion of this preliminary design review is an important milestone in developing a weapon system that will transform naval warfare."
In April 2009, Boeing was awarded an Office of Naval Research contract valued at up to $163 million - with an initial task order of $6.9 million - to begin developing FEL.
The Navy is expected to decide this summer whether to award additional task orders to Boeing to complete the FEL design and build and operate a laboratory demonstrator.
Boeing Missile Defense Systems' Directed Energy Systems unit in Albuquerque and the Boeing Research and Technology group in Seattle support the FEL program. The company has partnered with U.S. Department of Energy laboratories, academia and industry partners to design the laser.
Boeing is developing laser systems for a variety of defense applications. Besides FEL, these systems include the Airborne Laser Test Bed, the High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator, and Laser Avenger, among others. |
[02:40:18] jonesy: and here u see hte condy tryin on her new lalonde shoes
[02:40:22] step on my neck tadpole mom: she big
[02:40:45] MLLYLY: idk about those shoes
[02:40:46] MLLYLY: i mean
[02:40:54] MLLYLY: wearing orbs on your feet is a major tripping hazard
[02:40:58] MLLYLY: very slippery
[02:41:35] jonesy: and here u see spades slick draggin around terezi like a cat tryin to make a dead mouse move
[02:41:54] jonesy: while other jack takes up schoolyard bullying
[02:42:05] jonesy: and dave makes himself at home with te floor
[02:43:18] jonesy: and here u have possibly the most badass girl in homstuck staring Death in the face
[02:44:18] jonesy: y did lord english not immediately annihilate EVERYTHING
[02:44:28] jonesy: like seriously this is basically the last dreambubble
[02:44:33] jonesy: he could have killed em all in 1 hit
[02:46:00] jonesy: HEIR OF GRIEF
[02:46:34] MLLYLY: i’m loving watching you re-experience this
[03:01:42] unanimously furious osaltmine: : O
[03:01:43] jonesy: this is such a good panel
[03:01:48] MLLYLY: it really is
[03:01:52] unanimously furious osaltmine: <es
[03:01:54] jonesy: i wonder if the johnroxrezi was adrienne’s idea or not
[03:01:54] MLLYLY: that roxrezi face
[03:02:14] jonesy: if they literally had it in the script
[03:02:42] jonesy: “draw john and terezi arguing with smirks on their faces while roxy and rose side-eye them with knowing smirks on their own faces”
[03:03:01] jonesy: this is the closest thing terezi got to resolution im taking it
[03:03:22] jonesy: “youre dating john now and also roxy likes you, this latter part is probably the more important one tbh”
[03:03:35] jonesy: “if roxy likes someone theyre 9 times out of 10 going to be ok”
[03:03:48] jonesy: “the 1 out of 10 is feferi”
[03:03:53] jonesy: “poor dear sweet precious fefeta” |
A Press of Atlantic City/Richard Stockton College poll of South Jersey voters shows Obama leading McCain by 9% in the region, while Democratic U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg leads Republican challenger Dick Zimmer.
The poll is the first non-partisan survey conducted of the 3rd Congressional District race, where State Sen. John Adler (D-Cherry Hill) is running neck-and-neck with Republican Medford Mayor Chris Myers.
Myers leads Adler 38.5% to 37.1% — within the poll’s 4.5% margin of error.
There are no surprises, however, in the less competitive 2nd Congressional Districts. Incumbent U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-Vineland) leads his challenger, Democratic Cape May Councilman David Kurkowski, by a margin of 62% to 26%.
The South Jersey poll echoes a recent Bergen Record poll, in which Obama led McCain by 9% — 50% to 41%, with 7% undecided.
In that poll, New Jersey voters overwhelmingly picked the economy as the most important issue the nation faces, and they felt Barack Obama was the better candidate to handle it by a margin of 51% to 37%. |
Come mix and mingle with other Financial Technologist's Tues April 18. Learn about the newest and fastest changes going on in financial technology. Finance is undergoing a massive change some call the "financial paradigm". Laws from 1930-1940 (old right?) are getting broken down with technological innovation in finance. Find partners, talk about your project, bounce ideas, discover LA Fintech.
Agenda:
7:00 pm Mix Mingle Network
7:30 pm Fintech Demos by:
@StartupMoola by Gaurav Bhatt: StartupMoola is a private, global funding network for a more efficient way for investment and management in early-stage emerging companies. We enable selected emerging companies to raise investments from the smartest investors by speeding up a close investment relationship in a radically new way. More here StartUpMoola.
@CFSInnovation by Ryan Falvey: The Financial Solutions Lab, managed by CFSI with founding partner JPMorgan Chase, is now accepting applications. We are seeking startups that improve Americans’ financial health. The Lab will provide companies $250k and industry expertise. Learn more and apply at FinancialSolutionsLab.com.
8:00 pm Continue Mix Mingle Networking
If you want to sponsor an event message me. If you want to do a future demo, sign up HERE (plan 1-3 months lead time). If you're an investor and want to talk, sign up HERE. Also, add your company to LA Fintech directory so others find you.
Free parking 3 hr validation w/ $10 purchase from the bar with the parking structure on 646 S. Olive St. |
The following is a press release direct from the Montreal Canadiens, the Kootenay Ice, and Saskatoon Health Region.
Update on condition of Kootenay Ice hockey player Tim Bozon
SASKATOON – Saskatoon Health Region provides the following update on the condition of Kootenay Ice hockey player and Montreal Canadiens prospect Tim Bozon at the request of his family.
Tim Bozon remains in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon after being admitted on March 1 with Neisseria Meningitis. He remains in ICU however doctors have indicated his condition remains critical but stable and improving. He has been in an induced coma since being admitted to the ICU but doctors are now working to slowly wake him. His family has indicated that Tim has responded to verbal stimuli.
Tim’s parents, Philippe and Helene, have been overwhelmed by the e-mail and social media messages from people around the world showing support for their son. The family is very appreciative and will respond sometime in the near future. The family also wants to express thanks to the doctors and staff at Royal University Hospital for the care Tim has received.
There have been many enquiries from individuals and organizations wanting to make donations to assist the family during this difficult time. The Western Hockey League (WHL) has established a trust fund to assist the Bozon family with medical and rehabilitation costs as insurance coverage is limited. Details regarding the “Tim Bozon Trust” will be released by the WHL later this week.
The family appreciates the media’s interest in Tim and in helping to educate the community about meningitis. They do not wish to provide any interviews at this time and will coordinate updates to media, when appropriate, through Saskatoon Health Region communications.”
We here at LWOS will continue to keep you informed as other developments break.
We hope for the speedy recovery of Tim Bozon, and keep him, his family, friends, and all impacted by his illness in our thoughts and prayers. |
An ancient judge holds a football trophy in a football drama. (Photo/Shanghai Morning Post)
(ECNS) -- Following China's recent football reform plan and increasing passion for the sport, a number of football-themed TV series and films, some with jaw-dropping plots, are expected to delight local audiences, Shanghai Morning Post reports.
An unofficial list of TV programs about football went viral on the Internet. It showed dozens of shows that would be aired, ranging from young adult dramas, to costumed equivalents, and time-travel series.
The newspaper said five dramas have confirmed filing with the press watchdog, the State General Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.
One time-travel series, originally released in 2001, has been remade. It starts by showing a golden boot found in Manchester in the 1990s dating from China's Song Dynasty (960-1279). The drama also ridicules football woes like match-fixing, crooked referees, and illegal gambling.
A TV drama, based on an online novel, tells the story of Zhang Tiehan travelling through time and playing for Manchester United in 2003. In the story, Zhang becomes a worldwide celebrity after beating superstars like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Sources also said China Film Group Corporation plans to produce a motivational children's film called "Journal of Football," and hopes to invite Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona to play a role.
Director Chen Guojun said the film would be based on the real story of students at a primary school attached to Tsinghua University. Maradona has been considered to star in the film because he promotes "patriotism, love of family and love of football," it was said.
Han Qiaosheng, a famous Chinese sports reporter and commentator, also joined in the campaign to promote the film "Love of Football", which will be directed by his son and would also show off his trademark commenting style. To increase public attention, the crew also plans to invite current football stars to take part.
This summer, a 35-episode TV series will feature a broken coach leading high school students to win football matches. The story will also include quirky plots of romance at school.
However, China's TV series sector is in dire need of quality scripts according to insiders, the newspaper adds. |
Mar 13, 2017 | By Tess
If self-driving cars are the future of the automotive industry, then Goodyear will be right alongside them, crafting and manufacturing the tires of the future. The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, which has been making tires for over a century, has unveiled its newest concept tire, the Eagle 360 Urban.
The futuristic tire, which was recently presented at the Geneva Motor Show 2017 in Switzerland, is a 3D printed, AI-equipped spherical tire. The tire, which is deserving of its awesome name, Eagle 360 Urban, is reportedly the first concept tire that is powered by artificial intelligence, giving it the ability to sense its environment, and to make decisions and transform based on that information.
“A revolution will take place at the intersection of autonomy, mobility and connectivity,” commented Jean-Claude Kihn, president of Goodyear Europe, Middle East and Africa. “As this unfolds, tire technology will be even more important than it is today. To safely navigate their surroundings, the autonomous vehicles of the future will need to learn to cope with the millions of possible unknowns we face in every day driving scenarios. To do so they will need access to data and the ability to learn and adapt.”
The 3D printed concept tire is showcased in a four-minute animated visualization, which shows the viewer how the tire is crafted using a number of robotic arms, and how it is then deployed to the road. Bearing the Goodyear brand name, the spherical tire is placed into a vehicle (unrecognizable by today’s auto-standards), which then takes to the road in a very futuristic-looking city.
As shown, the concept tire has the ability to interact with its passengers, and can recognize and adapt to its environment. For instance, if it starts raining, the tire’s bionic skin can morph to have dimples for extra traction, which can then revert to be being smooth when conditions are dryer. Similarly, if the tire suffers a minor damage, say by driving over a piece of glass, the Eagle 360 Urban can repair itself automatically.
One of the main concerns about driverless cars is their safety on the road. Unsurprisingly, Goodyear has accounted for this factor as it says its innovative concept tire offers fluid transport and motion on the road, thanks to a tire that can move in any direction, and a connected network of cars and infrastructure that allow the Eagle 360 Urban to navigate cities seamlessly.
Additionally, if the spherical tire becomes seriously damaged, drivers won’t have to worry about taking it into the auto shop or replacing it on their own with wedges and a jack, as the autonomous vehicle can drive itself to a service station, where magnetic levitation allows for a quick tire replacement.
As Goodyear explains, the concept tire’s “brain” will be able to:
“1. Continuously sense the road condition and the surrounding environment in real-time and check on its own status in real-time.
2. Process the information it captures using neural networks trained with deep learning algorithms to decide what to do and learn for the future.
3. Transform using its own morphing tread and tire/vehicle interface.
4. Interact with other vehicles and all of the elements making up the Internet of Things to share the information it has captured and lessons learned.”
Obviously, we are not expecting to see the Eagle 360 Urban on the roads anytime soon, as even the concept seems to need more fleshing out. The idea, however, is out there now, so this could very well be the tire of the future.
Posted in 3D Printing Application
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Bart Gaczorek wrote at 3/13/2017 1:36:05 PM:Hurry up, because Audi RSQ use them in 2035! |
The Michael Richards exhibition on Governors Island, curated by Alex Fialho and Melissa Levin, proves what an astonishing loss it was when the artist was killed on 9/11. Richards had spent the night in his World Views studio as part of his Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) residency; when a hijacked plane crashed into the 92nd floor of the World Trade Center’s north tower, it killed him. Rumors quickly swirled that he had foreshadowed his own death with the sculpture “Tar Baby vs. St. Sebastian” (1999), for which he had used his own body as a model. Photos of the work showed a fleet of mini airplanes piercing a Tuskegee Airman’s body, the jets uncannily similar to the one that destroyed Richards’s own body in the disaster.
That sculpture is the moral ballast of the current retrospective — LMCC’s 2016 summer exhibition on Governors Island — but the rest of Richards’s oeuvre displays the makings of a major artist whose life was tragically cut short. It shows his almost psychic ability to pick up on the imminently arriving apocalypse, while delving into issues of race, exclusion, and identity. As he wrote in a poignant artist’s statement on view in the exhibition:
My current body of work investigates the tension between assimilation and exclusion. By focusing on issues of identity and identification, I attempt to examine the feelings of doubt and discomfort which face blacks who wish to succeed in a system which is structured to deny them access. How do systems of representation, and the portrayal of success both seduce and repel? I wish primarily to give voice to the psychic spaces in which exist both hope and frustration, faith and failure, and the compromises which must be negotiated in order to survive.
After receiving his MA from New York University in 1991, Richards took part in the Whitney Independent Study Program and then landed a prestigious artist’s residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem. His output was fervid, tackling representations of black men throughout different stages of American culture. “History: Meditating on the Middle Passage” (1990), an installation featuring three life-size boats that resemble either coffins or slave ships, demonstrated his ability to engage with weighty issues of the African diaspora early on. “Al Jolson Dances Forever: Birth of a Nation” (1991), a mixed-media film and audio installation, deals with the first full-length sound film of Al Jolson singing “Mammy.” It uses four silk-screened mirrors as a metaphor to delve into how the self is perceived by others.
Much of his oeuvre also centers on the experience of black subjectivity. In “Let Me Entertain You” (1993), Richards emulates the experience of living as a black person by using light boxes with “black” skin pinned to them. His work “A Loss of Faith Brings Vertigo” (1994) consists of five plaster heads on pedestals with newspaper images of the police photo-transferred onto the surface of each bust. Though the work refers specifically to the beating of Rodney King by the Los Angeles police in 1991, the images and issue are unfortunately still fresh and relevant.
Images of airplanes began appearing in Richards’s work as early as 1996 with “Escape Plane 76 (Brer Plane in the Brier Patch),” which consists of five airplane sculptures wrapped in barbed wire, along with narratives from the Uncle Remus folklore that serve as metaphors for negotiating contemporary racial politics. In one of the stories, Brer Fox thinks he has gotten rid of rival Brer Rabbit by throwing him into a briar patch, but Brer Rabbit escapes, because he was born inside a briar patch and knows how to negotiate its difficulties. Richards uses this as an analogy for African American life, interweaving it with his own statement about planes: “Planes and other vehicles of escape are always caught in traps or crashed, abandoned signs of hope and promise.”
That same year he began exploring the conundrum of the simultaneous elevation and debasement of black men in “The Great Black Airmen (Tuskegee).” The installation commemorates the brave Tuskegee Airmen — an all African American unit during World War II — with a plinth of their feet, but tempers the honor with a second sculpture of a nude torso. The latter refers to the Tuskegee syphilis experiments of 1932–72, in which the US Public Health Service used black men as human test subjects to see the route that syphilis would take as it progressed, purposefully untreated, through their bodies.
The work “[Untitled] Free F’All” (1997), created during a fellowship at Socrates Sculpture Park, shows the origin of Richards’s use of nails. It consists of the life-size body of a Tuskegee Airman perched atop a 16-foot-high pole, with only a bucket to capture his downward plummet. (The entire installation is not recreated on Governors Island; just the main sculptural figure is displayed.) The metal pieces hammered into the airman refer to the Kongo people’s nkisi nkondi, medicinal power figures whose spirits were activated by the nails and blades stuck into their bodies. Each nail, placed by the nganga, or keeper of community harmony, represented an invocation pertaining to a specific person; their power was defensive and used to protect members of a community. Perhaps Richards imagined himself symbolically safeguarding his larger African American community through his art.
One of the most disconcerting and portending images in the show is “A view of Heaven…after” (1990s), a colored pencil drawing of a flaming building whose smoke plumes hauntingly evoke those of the 9/11 attack. It’s paired with a drawing of floating parachutes resembling bull’s-eyes. Left to their own devices, these pieces might seem like daydreams, but in light of Richards’s death during the conflagration of the World Trade Center, they become downright prophetic.
The motifs of parachutes, bull’s-eyes, and airplanes return in “Air Fall 1 (His Eye Is on the Sparrow, and I Know He’s Watching Me)” (1998). The sculpture contains 50 miniature airplanes wrapped in hair. The planes twirl in a death spiral, falling from a cloud of hair on the ceiling towards a mirrored bull’s-eye on the floor. The title refers to a religious hymn celebrating the all-knowing gaze of the creator, even on something as inconsequential as a sparrow. Though the sculpture fits in with a certain style of work in the ’90s that championed using more organic materials like eggshells and bones, the somber implications of airplanes hitting a bull’s-eye are too chilling to overlook. Richards uses hair in this piece to question double standards of race; he stated in his writings that he felt people judged him for his nappy hair.
Before his untimely death, Richards was included in a roster of rising African American artists. His work was shown in the Aldrich Museum’s 1996 No Doubt: African-American Art of the 90’s and in the De Beyerd Center of Contemporary Art’s 1998 Postcards from Black America, which also featured Glenn Ligon, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, Martin Puryear, Adrian Piper, Lyle Ashton Harris, and Kerry James Marshall. The Governors Island show exhibits pieces not seen for at least 15 years, and some of it never before in New York, as most of his art was stored in cardboard boxes at a cousin’s home after his death. It’s important that his brief life not be lost to history. Had he lived, Richards would have been a major force in the narrative of African American artists who came into their own during the 1990s.
Michael Richards: Winged continues at the Arts Center at Governors Island (Building 110) through September 25.
Corrections: An earlier version of this article included a number of biographical and material errors about Michael Richards and his works. We regret the mistakes. They have been fixed. |
SALT LAKE CITY, June 17 (UPI) -- A Utah woman is facing attempted murder charges after she allegedly tried to kill her neighbor with a 27-inch samurai sword.
According to 56-year-old Barney Salazar, Natasha Davis became upset when he asked her to quiet down.
"She came running down and said, 'you wanna go Barney?' I noticed she had a big samurai sword," Salazar said. "I was very mad, when I seen her come out like that. With my granddaughter right there, that's what really upset me."
The 24-year-old allegedly swung the sword at Salazar multiple times before her boyfriend was able to restrain her. Salazar's 14-year-old granddaughter was also present for the incident.
"I think her boyfriend stepped in just in time and was able to hold her back, so there was no further assault," Salt Lake Police Sgt. Robin Heiden told KUTV.
Salazar blocked one of the sword swipes with his arm and sustained a three-inch slash on his left forearm that required 10 stitches.
Davis is being held without bail. |
Facebook appears to be losing users in the U.S. and other major markets, though its user base in parts of Asia is growing, according to an investment company report.
Facebook saw its U.S. user base drop by 0.7% over the past three months and 1.7% over the last six months, according to a report from Rory Maher, a senior Internet analyst at Capstone Investments.
The report was based on research that used proprietary software to analyze Facebook user growth in more than 200 countries. The report also noted that Hong Kong had a 1.7% drop in users and Singapore had a 1.1% drop.
In all three areas -- the U.S., Hong Kong and Singapore -- Facebook has more than 50% market penetration.
The study also noted that of the 23 countries where Facebook penetration exceeds 50%, only nine showed increases in their user base during the past three months. The other 14 countries had declines in users or, in a few cases, growth of less than 0.5%.
"Facebook penetration estimates indicate that growth starts to flatten or decline once a market exceeds 50% population penetration," the report notes. "We believe this could be an issue for future Facebook growth since we estimate that outside of Southeast Asia and some countries in Latin America, most markets are approaching 50% penetration."
Facebook had no comment on the report. According to its Web page, Facebook has 901 million monthly active users.
Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group, said that if the Capstone study is accurate and the numbers show a trend over time, Facebook should be concerned.
"If there is a drop-off in users, it's important for Facebook to note it and work to understand the reasons behind it," he added. "It could show that there's a ceiling on user accounts."
Olds pointed out that Facebook has captured more than 50% of the population in multiple countries. "That's incredible, but they're never going to get 100%," he said. "Facebook realizes this, of course, and will be working toward becoming a bigger and more important part of their active users' lives. While the gross number of users is important, how deeply they engage with it, how long they stay on it, what they use it to do are all critical success factors for Facebook."
The Capstone report comes a day after a separate report that found that Facebook users are becoming less satisfied with the social network.
According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Facebook's user satisfaction rating dropped 8% over the last year to hit a record low of 61 on a 100-point scale. The report also noted that Facebook is not just the lowest-scoring social network; it also set a record-low score for the social media category.
But it's not all bad news for Facebook. The company saw dramatic growth in its user base in several countries. For instance, users in India grew by 20.3% in the last six months, while Brazil racked up a 45.6% increase and Japan grew by 60.3%.
Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin, on Google+ or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed . Her email address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.
See more by Sharon Gaudin on Computerworld.com. |
Police patrol Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. Photo by James Green/Getty Images
Crime is Slate’s new crime blog. Like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter @slatecrime.
“Good Cop/Bad Cop” is an occasional feature highlighting the best and worst in American law enforcement.
Name: Detective Sgt. Richard Sassi Jr.
Known for: Litigiousness, unwanted seductions, brutality allegations.
Fatal mistake: Ineptly seducing an informant.
The circumstances: In August 2012, Sassi, a detective sergeant in Beacon, N.Y., decided to visit one of his confidential informants. According to Sarah Bradshaw of the Poughkeepsie Journal, Sassi arrived at the informant’s apartment with beer and amorous intentions, allegedly touching her leg and fumbling with her shirt in what appears to have been an exceedingly awkward and creepy situation. (Talk about non-consensual encounters.) Sassi was interrupted when the uncomfortable informant heard a strange noise outside.
The noise turned out to be the informant’s boyfriend, who entered the apartment. A presumably nervous Sassi hid in a closet and, according to Bradshaw, here’s what happened next:
The boyfriend found Sassi in the closet, wearing only his boxers, court records said. He pushed the police officer and threw his clothes out of reach, and tried to take cellphone photographs of him. Sassi is accused of pointing his gun at the boyfriend, saying he was a police officer and the man should back up. Sassi then called 911 to report a robbery, identifying himself as “Mike Smith,” according to court records.
It wasn’t long before the authorities realized that there was no robbery, and that the mysterious “Mike Smith” was actually their colleague, Det. Sgt. Sassi. He was suspended from duty and faces a third-degree misdemeanor charge of lying to authorities, not to mention the bemused scorn of his co-workers. ‘“Our policy is a minimum of two officers have to be present when meeting with informants,”’ said Beacon’s current police chief, adding that “drinking is prohibited for on-duty officers and that sexual relations with informants ‘would not be proper.’ ” Well, it would’ve been nice to have known that at the time, you stupid chief!
Background: Where to begin? Sassi has been a Beacon police officer since 2001, and was promoted to detective in 2007, under controversial circumstances. He is the son of Beacon’s former police chief, also named Richard Sassi, who was suspended and demoted in 2006 by then-mayor Clara Lou Gould after, among other things, pursuing an internal affairs investigation against Beacon policeman Jose “Tony” Rios, who was promoted to detective ahead of his son. Mayor Gould accused Sassi Sr. of “gross insubordination” and said that his “misconduct has resulted in a complete lack of trust on all levels of City government.”
It’s not hard to understand why the younger Sassi was initially passed over for promotion. In 2007, Sassi Jr. was named in a lawsuit alleging that he and another officer beat and pepper sprayed a man during a 2002 traffic stop, then “grabbed his head and banged his face into the sidewalk.” (The city paid a $20,000 settlement in the case.) A U.S. District Court memorandum mentioned “a report by the local branch of the NAACP where unspecified ‘community members’ voiced concerns about Officer Sassi’s harassment and arrogance.” And in 2006, according to Beacon City Council Member Lee Kyriacou, Officer Sassi earned $90,000 of his $150,000 salary in overtime pay.
Despite all that, Sassi filed two separate discrimination lawsuits against the City of Beacon in 2006, claiming he had been denied a promotion to detective because of the city’s unfair anti-nepotism policy. Sassi explained that, because of his father’s status, he had been “humiliated, public embarrassed [sic], subjected to per se defamation, held up to public ridicule, impaired in his professional career, damaged financially, rendered anxious and upset, and otherwise rendered sick and sore.”
“Nepotism doesn’t apply here because Officer Sassi wasn’t qualified enough for the job,” said Kyriacou at the time, noting that, as opposed to the candidate who was ultimately promoted, “Officer Sassi has no detective training, is not bilingual, and did not get an award for heroism. The only thing that puts him above the rest is his last name.”
Good cop or bad cop?: Let’s give Det. Sgt. Sassi the benefit of the doubt here. It’s possible that he was denied a promotion because of discrimination. It’s possible that he never read the section of the cop manual that said it was inappropriate to seduce an informant. It’s possible that, back in 2002, that traffic violator really had it coming.
But it’s not likely. Bad cop. |
Below is a simple picture of a naked man on top of an (assumedly) dead shark.
Who is this man? Please RT, find him & ask him why he did this? Where is the humour in humiliating slaughtered animals? @ChrisGPackham pic.twitter.com/uHN37OywCx — Anneka Svenska (@AnnekaSvenska) May 5, 2017
That man looks quite a bit like Florida head coach Jim McElwain, especially thanks to his teeth. That compelled Deadspin to ask a Florida spokesperson if this was, in fact, Jim McElwain. The spokesperson said it was not.
On Tuesday night, McElwain spoke to the media before a booster club meeting and was asked the hard question by the assembled media. From the horse’s mouth, we had a denial thanks to the intrepid journalism of Edgar Thompson from The Orlando Sentinel.
"Well, first and foremost, I don't know who it is, but it isn't me,'' [McElwain] said. When a follow-up question was asked by Thompson about McElwain's thoughts on how something like that even becomes a story in today's age, McElwain remained firm. "I guess that's for you guys to answer,'' he said. "You know, in the world we live, what is a story? I just know this, it isn't me."
Days later:
Naked shark guy identified as former NYC police officer, Orlando TV reporter says https://t.co/qbr6Nmqh2O pic.twitter.com/K973iRsqCo — Orlando Sentinel (@orlandosentinel) May 12, 2017
WKMG-TV sports anchor David] Pingalore said the shark picture has been around for a couple of years, and also explained why the photo was taken in the first place. “That picture was on the internet two years ago. This woman from the United Kingdom had send the tweet out, then Deadspin, what they did, was [ask] ‘is this Jim McElwain or not?’ They didn’t say it was.” He said the photo was meant to be a parody. “They were mocking, according to this gentlemen, I guess in the UK there’s some websites that naked women get on sharks, so they were trying to mock what women were doing with sharks.”
If you took McElwain’s word for it, then this situation was done and dusted. But if you’re a conspiracy theorist, then you had ammo because, damnit, that guy looks a whole helluva lot like Jim McElwain.
But alas, McElwain was already on record as not being a fisherman, although he does have a boat on property in his native Montana. If he’d gotten over his fear and taken up the hobby now that he lives in the Sunshine State, then maybe you would’ve had something to go on. But it was pretty clear that it wasn’t him. |
Bieber nominated for black music award
Updated
Baby-faced Canadian teenager Justin Bieber has scored a nomination for a 2010 Black Entertainment Television (BET) award.
Bieber, 16, will compete in the best new artist category.
The BET awards typically honour black singers, actors, actresses and athletes, but officials described the white Bieber as a cross-over artist.
"Bieber has crossed the colour boundaries the same way hip-hop has crossed the boundaries the other way for a number of years," said Stephen Hill, BET's president of music programming and specials.
Bieber was signed to a music label with the help of Usher, who has drawn a nomination for best male rhythm and blues artist.
"He's had rhythm in his music," said Hill of Bieber. "He makes the type of music our audience likes."
The awards ceremony will be held on Los Angeles on June 27.
Rapper Jay-Z leads the field with five nominations. His wife Beyonce scored four.
- Reuters
Topics: music, arts-and-entertainment, awards-and-prizes, united-states
First posted |
QinetiQ has developed a system which helps protect the Royal Navy’s ships from mines, cuts the Ministry of Defence’s costs and allows vessels to spend more time on operations.
The defence and testing company is estimated to have saved the MoD hundreds of thousands of pounds in fuel costs alone by introducing a mobile test range which helps reduce ships’ magnetic fields and cut their acoustic signatures , both of which can trigger mines.
Previously ships had to use bases in Scotland operated by the company to have their magnetic fields measured - a process known as degaussing that was begun on ships during the Second World War and is explained here in detail - so equipment on board the vessels could be set correctly to counteract the magnetic fields produced by the warships.
This meant the Navy’s minesweepers operating in Persian Gulf had to sail back to the UK to make sure they were protected against the mines they were hunting to keep vital sealanes in the region clear.
QinetiQ also measured the noises emitted by the vessels, helping sailors locate and minimise sounds and vibrations emitted by the ships, which could also set off mines.
QinetIQ staff prepare to start testing the magnetic and acoustic signatures of a Royal Navy minesweeper
This meant burning expensive fuel - the minesweepers guzzle £1,000 worth a day - on the 7,000-mile, three-week long voyage back to the UK, as well as reducing the amount of time they were spent in action on their six-month tours.
The Navy has four of its Sandown and Hunt class minesweepers permanently based in the Gulf as part of Operation Kipion.
To reduce costs and make the minesweepers more efficient, QinetiQ built a mobile range made up of acoustic and magnetic sensors which can be placed around the vessels by a team of about 25 experts, rather than having the warships come back to the UK to make sure they are fully protected.
Since their introduction, QinetiQ estimates the system has eliminated more than 85,000 miles of sailing by the Navy’s minesweepers.
Sarah Kenny, managing director of the company’s maritime business, said: “Working with the customer we have created a transportable range, similar to the ones we use in the UK, and transport it anywhere in the world.”
QinetiQ says the system can be used on any vessel in the Navy’s fleet - even submarines - and can be set up anywhere where there is open water.
A Royal Navy spokesman said: “We always work closely with our partners to maximise efficiencies that allow us to deliver persistent Royal Navy capability where it is most needed.”
Follow the Telegraph on LinkedIn. Share this article with your network. |
It looks like I have a correction to make. Originally when I started blogging that I would be reading and reviewing Transformers comics, I posted the order these comics should be read. I got this information from several different online resources and it all seemed correct and it all matched, but when I sat down to read G.I. Joe and the Transformers issue 1 something was wrong. The story was not caught up with the previous Transformers comic, issue 24. Now, I have gone and read a few issues ahead and although I have not finished the G.I. Joe and the Transformers story line yet, I believe I know the correct order in which these are to be read. Basically, you just need to shift these books down one in the Transformers reading order. Instead of reading G.I. Joe and the Transformers Issue 1 after Transformers issue #24, you should read it after issue 23. So it goes:
Transformers issue 23
G.I. Joe and the Transformers issue 1
Transformers issue 24
G.I. Joe and the Transformers issue 2
Transformers issue 25
G.I. Joe and the Transformers 3 and 4
Transformers #26 – #37
Transformers Headmasters #1- 4
Transformers #38 – 80
I am still not 100% sure if your supposed to read G.I. Joe and the Transformers 3 and 4 then Transformers 26, but I will know soon enough. When I get to reading those book and I will post any corrections if there are any.
For those of you who want to read along and do not have the individual comic books you can pick up a copy of IDW’s G.I. JOE / Transformers Volume 1 which contains the G.I. Joe and the Transformers story line as well as the return of the Transformers in Generation 2 in G.I Joe Real American Hero, that we will be getting to at the end of this Transformers 80 issue run. In the mean time I have updated my previous post with the read order information on it.
With G.I. Joe and the Transformers issue 1, Marvel Comics started a cross over story that involves two of their most popular books at the time. A cross over that I understand affects the Transformers story line, but does not not follow over to the G.I. Joe story line. I am really eager to find out what happens. But first, lets check out this cover.
Starting at the top of the cover we have the G.I. Joe logo about the Transformers logo on top of a white background. “#1 IN A FOUR ISSUE LIMITED SERIES” is written above the logos. On the left side of the comic we have the Marvel 25th anniversary tag with Snake Eyes’ head above Bumblebee’s. Just underneath the logos, Bumblebee, who is sporting and updated facial design that I believe reflects more of like the cartoon version of Bumblebee, is being blasted apart by the Joe’s weaponry. Two green tanks fire upon the Autobot as Hawk is yelling out orders and Roadblock, Scarlett, Snake-eyes, and beachhead take offensive positions.
The comic stats of with the Joe’s on assignment protecting Power Station Alpha. It’s the world’s first solar/nuclear power station. The Joe’s are not only worried about the possibility of Cobra attacking, but they are also worried about all the protesters who are objecting to the device for various political and environmental reasons. The Autobots, who understand the potential of Power Station Alpha, believe that the Decepticons might also attempt to steal the device. Optimus Prime sends forth Bumblebee to monitor for Decepticon activity.
Cobra’s Dreadnoks do start and attack on the power station that the Joes are able to ward off, but this leaves Cobra Commander furious that he has lost the element of surprise.
Thanks to News reports, Megatron has also witnessed the attack and sends Dirge and Bombshell to the station. As the station prepares to launch, Bombshell injects a cerebro-shell into young Anthony Duranti. He’s the son of one of the protesters. Bombshell commands him to step in front of the station’s treads. Bumblebee watches in vehicle mode and feels forced to break his cover to save the boy’s life. The Joes misunderstand Bumblebee’s actions as threatening and open fire destroying the Autobot.
The situation becomes even more threatening as Bombshell invades Power Station Alpha and Superion arrives to collect the body of Dirge.
My Thoughts On This Issue
Personally, so far, I think this issue has some of the best art I have seen yet. I am loving the updated Bumblebee look. Thought, this may be the last time we see our favorite yellow bug.
So far it’s been a lot of fun to read this cross over comic and how they reference things that happened in G.I. Joe’s past or the Transformers’ past.
The book does feel a little G.I. Joe heavy and I wonder if that’s just because of the story they came up with or if someone at Marvel felt that G.I. Was more popular then Transformers they should be a larger part of the story. It would be so interesting to know how this book came to be.
Still a good solid build up to a story. Can’t wait to find out what happens next.
New Ads This Issue
Cap’n Crunch Lazer Tag Dungeons & Dragons |
- A Dearborn Muslim man has filed a $100 million lawsuit against Little Caesar's after he says his neighborhood restaurant gave him pork pepperoni instead of halal pepperoni.
Mohamad Bazzi's attorney filed the lawsuit in Wayne County against the pizza chain on Thursday, the day before Ramadan.
According to the lawsuit obtained by FOX 2, Bazzi ordered a halal pizza from the location on Schafer near Warren in Dearborn on March 20. Bazzi ordered the pizza and took it home to share with his wife.
The lawsuit claims that after a few bites, the family realized that they were eating pork pepperoni. The consumption of pork is strictly forbidden under Muslim law.
Three days later, Bazzi went to the Dearborn police department to file a complaint against the pizza place and said he was 'defrauded and wondered how many other people may have been unknowingly eating “Pork” that defendants sold as “Halal”.'
On May 24, Bazzi returned to the Little Caesar's Pizza on Schaefer to order another pizza. Once again, he said he specifically asked for halal pepperoni. He said the receipt and label on the box both said 'halal' but when he opened the box, he said he once again found pork pepperoni.
Bazzi said he returned to the store and the manager confirmed that the pepperoni was pork. He claims that the manager told him that he asked for regular pepperoni and that he "told the employee to put the [halal] sticker" on the box.
Bazzi maintains that he asked for halal but received pork.
In the lawsuit, his attorney claims that Little Caesar's has failed to "provide proper training to employees on the magnitude and emotional distress that is caused by feeding “Pork” to Muslims, under the guise that it is “Halal”."
FOX reached out to Little Caesar's for a comment on the case. This is the statement they released:
"Little Caesars cherishes our customers from all religions and cultures, and the communities we serve are very important to us. While we can't comment on pending litigation, we take this claim very seriously. At this time, we believe it is without merit."
The class action lawsuit was filed for $100 million in economic and punitive damages. |
One ritual closes, another opens in its sacred space. Cosmic Triggers old and new sign and declare their solemn pledges to The Cosmic Book of Will, a beautiful leather bound tome of great sentimental, and not inconsiderable economic value, which will be burned should any of the pledges remain unfulfilled by the 23rd July 2016.
My pledge: TO CREATE ‘ The Money Flame ’ — a currency collage made of £230.
I’m 50 now. I made my last collage when I was eight years old. ‘Dog Heaven’; a felt collage of dogs, bones and lamp-posts. Teacher was dubious about the idea when I planned it out. But in the end it looked good and she said so. Collages, and the making of them, reach deep for me.
The doing of it makes me think. How is cutting money up and gluing it down different to burning it? Both are ways of destroying money’s value. I realize that in the process of creating a collage there is no guarantee of success. If The Money Flame ends up with neither aesthetic nor economic value, is that the same as burning it?
The Money Flame — A currency collage of £230 measuring 230mm x 230mm
Alongside The Money Flame, I also make a more direct invocation in the form of BURNING ISSUE — the world’s first magazine exclusively for money burners.
To spell the magic out for you (no pun intended); in the future world, where The Staff [All Hail, The Staff] is properly venerated, everything will be in one way or another under dominion of Money Burning. It will be as ubiquitous as ‘the day and date’ is today. Any act I undertake to invoke that future is by definition, a magical act. Whether that act is successful or not, is another thing.
A rule I set myself from my first burning, is that I should never ask or tell anyone to burn money. The full potential of money burning is most accessible to those who come to it of their own free will. So any pressure I put on people might diminish their experience. The difficulty with this rule — which seems to make sense both morally and rationally — is that it stands in conflict with my duty as The Holder of The Staff to do what I must, to manifest a future world more appropriate to The Staff’s being. [All Hail, The Staff x 2]
In short, the universal adoption of ritualized money burning is rather tricky to achieve, if you can’t ask people to burn their money.
BURNING ISSUE then, is the compromise between those two opposing positions — the magic in the middle. It’s addressed exclusively to people who are already money burners.
I talk about it on social media. A stranger asks, “Is there really a community of money burners? The mere act of asking proves that a space for possible becoming has already been hewn from the mindscape.
I email all the money burners I know to ask for contributions. And of course, as happens in magic, the mycelia spread.
Someone I’ve never met before comes up to me at the #ArtMoneyCrisis conference and tells me an amazing money burning story. She writes it up for me. I’m there with another money burner. He writes up his story. Things get tough. Up against it with time and money. Then a random email. A money burning story and an article. Things start to flow. More contributions. More writing. Then, just crossing publishing deadline there is one final contribution needed, one last page to fill.
HILLARY BILLARY (left) DOLLAR DONALD (right) by Mark Wagner (These are NOT the pieces in the magazine)
My experience making The Money Flame forces an amendment. I broaden the magazine’s audience to ‘money burners (and other destroyers of currency)’. This allows me to ask the currency collage artist Mark Wagner if he’d like to contribute.
Mark’s been published in The New York Times, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal and Harpers. In progress in his studio are two portraits of the nominees for the US Presidency. He’s wondering what he’ll do with them after they’ve been exhibited at his forthcoming show in New York (Sept 8th to Oct 15th 2016). Unknown to either of us, there is a symmetry in our positions. I’ve been burning money for years and I’m now creating a money collage. Mark has been creating money collages for years and he’s now thinking about burning money. As my request arrived he’d decided that the loser of the election would burn.
Under those circumstances it would have been difficult for him to say ‘no’. |
× Purdue police search for missing giant pencil, thief leaves no trace
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (November 17, 2015) – Purdue University police are investigating a report of a missing giant pencil at Pickett Park, which is on the northwest edge of Purdue’s campus.
According to the Purdue Exponent, The sculpture was reported missing Monday afternoon by a Purdue University library staff member.
The 12-foot-tall structure is made of cedar wood and weighs about 200 pounds. It is worth an estimated $9,000.
It was originally placed outside of Beering Hall near the Loeb Fountain in 2010 as a way to highlight the accomplishments of Purdue’s Online Writing Lab. The pencil was relocated to Pickett Park this fall.
Purdue police are continuing to draw from clues, but the thief left no trace.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Purdue Police Department at 765-494-8221. The WeTip anonymous hotline, which is used by all Greater Lafayette law enforcement agencies, also is available at 1-800-78CRIME (1-800-782-7463). |
The LGBT Conversation Latinos Need to Have With Their Parents
Dave Trejo Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jun 11, 2017
What did I do wrong? How can I fix him? Why me? Do you think it’s because…(fill in the blank)? Why did they choose to be this way?
These are all questions that have been posed to me by Latino parents (including my own family) after their child came out of the closet. To be fair, most of the parents I have come across eventually convince themselves to tolerate their child’s sexuality and love them despite it. That right there, is a sentiment packed full of good intentions and misconceptions. For too many Latinos of my generation, we have grown accustomed to holding our parents and grandparents to such a low bar when it comes to the acceptance of our LGBT brothers and sisters. We feared they would be subject to the worst contempt and outright exile, that we have settled for apprehensive tolerance.
Acceptance is not the same as tolerance. Our generation and the millennial generation needs to push back and challenge our parents and grandparents to evolve their views on sexuality and gender. We need to not let prejudicial statements go unchallenged or justify them because, “That’s just how papa is, he’s old school.” We accept outdated views from our parental figures because our upbringing did not encourage challenging authority. We need to stop believing the lie we tell ourselves: that they are not capable of change. It is a condescending thought that would offend us if it were directed our way.
Prejudice is born from ignorance, and the only cure is education. Who better to educate them, than the generation whose education they made so many sacrifices for? Being a well-rounded, holistically educated, global citizen is no longer just about academic achievement and securing a sustainable job. The acquisition of knowledge is not like the acquisition of gold bars, it is not something to hoard away in a secure vault. With a quality education comes the responsibility to educate others.
Sexuality in the Latino culture is ever present and aggressive. There is a new trend emerging in the aesthetic profile of the American news meteorologist. Latin America however, has been doing the sexy weather-girl for decades now. Heck, even our used car infomercials feature scantily clad, young women in an effort to entice the attention of the latino male, the straight latino male that is. Our telenovelas rarely feature LGBT characters, and it is not uncommon for mainstream latino comedy shows to feature outdated, stereotypical effeminate portrayals of gays for the purpose of comedy.
As overt as heterosexuality is in the latino mainstream, the complete opposite is too often true when it comes to homosexuality. Pop icon Juan Gabriel was never comfortable enough to outright say that he was gay. It is perceived as a burden of shame on the family and something to talk about amongst comadres over pan dulce and cafe when it “happens” to one of the neighbors. We must do a better job of not allowing sexuality to become the sole identifier of our LGBT brothers and sisters. They cannot become the gay primo, or la pobre prima that never got married.
Now more than ever, young latinos are making their voices heard and fighting back against vitriol-spewing politicians and hate groups. It’s time we admit that despite their big corazones, a lot of our parents, tios, tias and grandparents have outdated views on sexuality and gender. In my own family, I have seen the views of my own mother and aunts evolve as members of my family came out of the closet. It is possible to expand their empathy, and bring their mindsets into the 21st century. Si se puede! |
I’ve noticed a growing trend of people having Icelandic magical staves tattooed on them lately. Some of the choices, alas, range from weird to unintentionally funny and inappropriate.
On its own having such a stave tattooed is not a bad thing at all. Icelanders themselves often get them as tattoos and it’s not considered insulting if a foreigner does the same, but there are dangers there that you’re well to be aware of. The most important one might be that just because a culture is Western does not make adapting its symbols any safer than getting a tattoo in f.ex. hanzi/kanji. To avoid embarrassing mistakes you’ll have to do your research first, and for the love of everything do not trust any chart that you see at a tattooist or floating around online, especially if they describe the meaning of the stave in only one or two words!
One such example can be found here, a picture that’s been going around Tumblr for a while now and unfortunately seems popular. The irony behind is that the person who put the chart together did it precisely to warn people against getting the wrong kind of a tattoo (source), and many of the staves on that picture are examples of that. Some won’t work alone, such as Gapaldur and Ginfaxi. They have to be present at the same time to have any effect at all but that’s not enough, they also have a specified location. Gapaldur has to be placed under the heel of the right foot, and Ginfaxi goes under the toes of the left one. Worn in this manner they will ensure their bearer victory in battle!
That’s if you’re a pro wrestler. Gapaldur and Ginfaxi are not generic battle staves, they only help in the ancient Icelandic wrestling, Glíma.
Well, you could argue that at its origin Glíma used to be a duel to death…
I’d also like to point out that although good, this person’s list of stave explanations is not exact. The Svefnþorn (= sleep thorn) for example, that’s stated to give restful sleep, is according to the book Huld (= hidden/secret) indeed accurate. The book then adds though that if the staves are not removed there’s a chance that the sleeper will never wake up again, so perhaps it’s a good idea to list these ones as “do not self-medicate”.
Another interesting fact about Icelandic magical staves is that they’re not entirely Icelandic, nor entirely for Ásatrú. A part of them definitely are Icelandic in origin but many come from the continental Europe, which may mean that the meaning behind some of them may differ in the place of the stave’s origin – be aware of that when making permanent choices. Some of them (such as all the swastika variants and some of the other sun wheels) may even be illegal and/or offensive in some countries. As for the latter point, Christians in Iceland have also used these staves and have done so for centuries. There’s nothing in the generic idea of using them that Icelanders have seen as immoral or heathen as such, and to create some you’ll have to include a very Christian prayer! Here’s a good example of that:
The above one’s translated name “End Strife” is accurate, its Icelandic name is similarly “að stilla alla reiði” (= to calm all anger). First of all, it’s place-specific, meant to be drawn on your forehead and no other place. Secondly it has a very detailed way in which it has to be made: you draw it with the first finger of your left hand (instructions don’t state that it has to be visible, so perhaps just tracing the symbol will do). Then you recite: “Ægishjálm ég ber milli augna mér. Reiðin renni, stríð stemmi. Verði mér svo hver maður feginn sem María varð fegin sínum signuðum syni þá hún fann hann á sigurhellunni. Í nafni föður og sonar og anda heilags.” (= I bear Ægishjálmur [another magical stave] between my eyes. Anger to drain, fighting to reconcile. May I with others be as glad as Mary became when she found her son victorious in the cave. In the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.)
…and it’s not yet done. You still have to do a small incantation in the end and for those in Ásatrú, note that this incantation may be thought of as being insulting to Óðinn.
What about something that sounds really epic, such as the Óttastafur (= fear stave) that’s supposed to strike fear in your enemies? Well… there’s a few reasons why it might be a bad idea. First of all most stave and rune workers agree getting a negative stave such as this one tattooed on you, or even using one, is not smart. What if you draw it wrong? Icelandic staves have a direction to which they have to go or you’ll risk turning the effect of the stave against yourself, meaning that instead of striking fear in your enemies the stave may perhaps make you deadly ill, or paranoid for life, neither of which is probably the warrior-like quality you were after. It may also have a different effect on other people than you wished for: in the sagas the use of attack staves tends to mean that the user is a weakling who would not inspire fear in anyone, thus the need for magic.
Besides that creating Óttastafur, like all Icelandic magical staves, is a serious business ritual and not just a fancy scribble. It’s not only place-specific but also material- and usage-specific: to make it work in your favour you’d have to carve it to a shield made of oak and then manage to throw it at your enemy’s feet.
These ones protect you from magic. Magically.
The staves were drawn for many reasons from preventing barrels to leak, creating the famous necropants (link)(link is safe for work), helping you become a great rower, or to assist you in cutting hay. Yet no matter how strange they now seem to us they were once made for a reason, and for example the cutting hay -stave was seen so important that to make it work it had to be carved to the scythe and then coloured in blood from the main artery of one’s left hand.
It’s important to bear in mind that the descriptions on how the staves were to be created were written down by Christian authors, which means that especially the dark magic ones may have some added flair to the creation just to underline how evil they are and/or confuse a reader who would want to try making one, thus ensuring they’ll make a mistake in creating the stave. However, since many staves were considered perfectly acceptable the authors have had no particular motive to colour their making further. It’s also good to remember the time in which they were created, and that certain things such as oaken shields were perhaps a little more common then than today. Some things like strengthening a stave with blood will also seem a lot more dramatic to us than to the people back then: Egill Skalla-Grímsson himself drew runes/staves on the side of a drink he suspected poisonous and filled them with his blood, and all this in the middle of a party.
Vegvísir
But does any of the above really matter if you’d just like a stave for decoration and don’t particularly believe in Icelandic magic? Tattoos are taken for one’s own self first and foremost after all, some may even be in places you would rarely show to another human being. The answer to this is maybe and maybe not, it entirely depends on why you’re getting that tattoo. If you’re following any religion you may want to see that they don’t go against it. If you believe in magic be doubly careful. If your motive is that you like to study the staves or runes you might also want to wait for a few months and read up on your choices, maybe ask a specialist before getting inked, because getting the wrong kind of a stave or a misspelled piece of runic text tattooed on you will be your eternal reminder of getting that tattoo before you had earned it. Still, there are some staves that are positive in their effect and therefore safe choices so why not pick one of those?
Ægishjálmur
The Vegvísir (= route shower) will help you find your way to your destination no matter what. It’s a popular protective tattoo; Björk, for example, has a vegvísir tattooed on her. Ægishjálmur (= helm of awe/terror) is also considered void of negative effects to the bearer despite its name. I’ve come across translations such as “making you irresistible” and while correct, it only grants you one kind irresistibility – it’s worn to inspire awe and fear in people who oppose you and simultaneously keep you safe from your own higher-ups using their position to abuse you. The difference between ægishjálmur and óttastafur is in their basic use: while óttastafur is meant to be used as a weapon, ægishjálmur, like its name suggests, is meant for defense and protection.
Names of various magical staves and short descriptions on their usage. 🙂
If you’re interested in the subject there are some original Icelandic books on magical staves available on the net such as Huld (here) and Galdrakver (here). I also found a really interesting article about ægishjálmur here.
Source of the images used in this entry here, the rest of the images belong to me.
Hulda recommends music
If you don’t already know of Svavar Knútur, now’s definitely the time to find out! He’s often described as a troubadour, which I’m full ready to agree with, and has one of the loveliest voices I’ve ever heard. Also check his band Hraun – in fact since their song Ástarsaga úr fjöllunum (= love story from the mountains) is somewhat popular it’s possible you already have. 😀
Ástarsaga úr fjöllunum (link). Lyrics here, English translation available.
Ölduslóð (link). You can find the lyrics to this and the next song here. English translations available.
Yfir hóla og yfir hæðir. (link) |
Thursday was not Wade Miley’s night.
The Boston Red Sox left-hander was roughed up by the Baltimore Orioles for five runs on nine hits through four innings — including home runs by Adam Jones, Nolan Reimold and Manny Machado — in his team’s 6-5 loss. Miley labored through 69 pitches and 20 batters in those four innings, and while he wasn’t wild (he didn’t walk or hit any batters), the home runs alone underscored his inability to hit his spots.
Steven Wright was warming in the Red Sox bullpen to open the bottom of the fourth, which began with Boston trailing 4-3. Miley quickly retired the first two batters but threw a 90-mph fastball down the pipe for Machado, who crushed it deep into the left-center field bleachers.
Miley recovered with his third and final strikeout of the night, sitting Reimold down on three pitches. Red Sox manager John Farrell had seen enough, though, and decided to pull Miley after the inning.
When Farrell told Miley, the southpaw looked less than pleased.
Wade Miley and John Farrell seemed to have some words between innings in the fifth. http://t.co/CeSPBmVjBV —
Pat Bradley (@PatBradley_) June 12, 2015
The argument continued down the dugout. http://t.co/3kD38qp3gQ —
Pat Bradley (@PatBradley_) June 12, 2015
Miley left the dugout infuriated. Farrell followed. Miley returned shortly after, but Steven Wright replaced him. http://t.co/mPeOmg3qHM —
Pat Bradley (@PatBradley_) June 12, 2015
Miley returned to the dugout for the bottom half of the inning and appeared to be much calmer. But still, if this is what it looks like, it’s not a good situation for the Red Sox and really is a microcosm of the frustration that’s probably boiling inside the clubhouse.
Stay tuned for reaction from Farrell and Miley. |
A DIY Guide to Staying Relevant in Data Analysis/Science/Architecture/etc.
Benjamin Korallus Arnold Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 30, 2016
The idea of intelligent machines is one that has been a myth since antiquity. Yet in a single lifetime has gone from mainstream science fiction to mainstream science. We’ve gone from Alan Turing’s machine to an era where cars drive themselves and machine learning algorithms are almost commonplace.
How do you stay relevant in an industry that changes this rapidly?
For most of us, it’s not within reach to commit to a formal learning program such as grad school. The rest of us elect for online mediums, but you can watch tech webinars and read articles until your eyes bleed and not absorb a thing.
Instead, I suggest a do it yourself, hands-on approach to staying relevant. Spend a couple of hours each week following this three step approach and you will have no problem keeping up with this dynamic landscape.
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them. ― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics
Step 1: know where to start… and when to move on
Working in tech and especially within the data space, you can play office buzzword bingo every time a new solution is mentioned in earnest. There is so much out there, how do you know which ones are worth the time and which ones aren’t?
The answer is simple, if not a little cynical: you don’t know, you can’t know, and no one else can tell you.
My argument is this: just pick one.
In my opinion, what you choose to invest time into matters much less next to how much time you choose to invest in it. Pick what interests you, what gets mentioned the most at your office, or best yet, pick that technology that you are always talking about yourself, but have never actually implemented.
The key here is to actually pick something, and then, know when to move on.
Your professional life will dictate when you need to go into the extreme details on a technology. If you do the same with your personal time, that cool-hip-new technology you are diving into will be just one speck among billions by the time you are done.
Step 2: skip to step 3
No seriously, the most important thing to do in step 2 is to skip to step 3. If you get stuck, come back to step 2 for a brief visit, but the goal should be on building something tangible.
Of course, if you don’t understand the basic concepts of the technology you are attempting to study, you may get stuck before you start. I promise you, the Wikipedia articles, YouTube videos and online courses will be much easier to digest if you’ve actually attempted to play with the tech yourself.
Google is, and for the foreseeable future will remain, the king of search and the primary way we begin our searches for new information. If you need something more structured, some of my favorite resources include DataCamp, Coursera, stuDIY. If you are willing to spend a little cash, Lynda and Pluralsight are other great options.
Step 3: build something
This seems daunting, especially if you are just starting this method for the first time, but let me give you some pointers on where to start.
First, you will need a development environment. You can use your personal laptop or your work computer, but why not buy a Raspberry Pi and for $25 you already have your first project. Even easier, sign up for a Microsoft Azure account for free and get a $200 credit to start learning how to deploy web applications, analytics and data platforms on the cloud.
No time attempting to build something is wasted time. You are learning here.
Here are a couple of starting ideas:
Build a bot for your favorite instant messenger and deploy it on a server you set up yourself
Deploy an open source database (such as PostgreSQL) on a Raspberry Pi. Build a script to scrape a website (Twitter is a good option) and then use R or Python to ‘science’ your data.
Build an arcade from an emulator (we have one of these at our office thanks to our very hands-on CTO)
Build a custom function for your Amazon Echo or Google Home
Rinse and Repeat
Take action. Be hands on. Manage you free time by investing in only what is important (what is interesting to you). Know when to move on. Repeat and always keep learning. |
E-Citizenship Can Benefit From Blockchain Technology
The idea of becoming e-citizen of a specific country sounds very appealing to lots of people. However, there is only one country offering such a service right now, which is Estonia. While it may seem strange for a former Soviet Union country to be one of the frontrunners in terms of e-citizenship, there is still a lot of work to be. But one thing’s for sure, e-citizenship holds a lot of promise for the future, and blockchain technology could make it even better.
Also Read: Blockchain-based Smart Contracts Are The New Form of Buyer Protection
Possible Benefits of Obtaining E-Citizenship
There are some vast distinctions to be made between being an actual citizen or an e-citizen of a specific country. E-citizenship will not entitle owners to all of the benefits regular citizens have in that country, but the tone has been set for moving towards a digital form of proving citizenship.
Estonia is a European country exploring the option of extending e-citizenship to people from all over the world. At the time of publication, there are roughly 10,000 Estonian e-citizens around the world, and government officials hope to increase that number to 10 million by the end of 2025.
A little-known fact is that Estonia has been using digital ID cards for many years now, which can be used for the country’s online voting system. Additionally, there is a huge startup scene in Estonia, most of which is focused on the technology industry. One could even go as far as saying that Estonia might become one of the major tech hubs of the future.
These digital ID cards issued by the Estonian government use open source public key-private key encryption, which was recently upgraded to 2048-bit RSA. Various governmental functions are tied to these digital ID cards, such as online financial transactions and issuing public transport tickets. All in all, the Estonian digital ID card system shows a lot of promise for the future.
However, none of these benefits is present for e-residents, as their benefits are fairly limited at this time. Granted, it is technically possible to start an Estonian company within half an hour, although doing so requires obtaining a legal address in Estonia, a process that is far more complicated than it sounds on paper.
On top of that, acquiring e-citizenship for Estonia requires the user to visit their local Estonian consulate, or embassy, to pick up the card. Ordering the card itself, and applying for e-citizenship, can be done through a dedicated website. Payment for the card can be done online as well, which makes the entire process a bit more user-friendly.
Fingerprint Scans and a Passport Copy Are Required
Even though e-citizenship is not in the same league as being an actual citizen, there are certain requirements that have to be met. In the case of Estonian e-citizenship, a copy of your passport, as well as digital scans of your index fingers, are required after your application has been reviewed and approved. These fingerprints are required for digitally signing and encrypting documents, which is one of the bonuses of applying for Estonian e-citizenship.
Despite the idea of digitally sounding documents being quite fun, there are some hurdles to overcome. If the person you are sending these documents to can not receive them in the same manner as they are being sent, there is no use for such a feature. At this time, digital signing documents as an Estonian e-citizen has limit use, as only other Estonian (e-)citizens can receive them.
It is safe to say that the Estonian e-citizenship is far from perfect, and not suitable for just about everyone. There is very little use for obtaining an e-citizenship for people not living in Estonia or any of the other Baltic states. However, the potential is there to create a whole new standard for the entire European Union, and even the world.
Implementing Blockchain Technology To Expand Use Cases
Coming up with additional use cases for e-citizenship is not an easy task. Every country has its own laws, regulations and requirements to grant citizens digital rights, let alone people who aren’t physical residents of that country. Estonia has proven that it is possible to offer e-citizenship to people all over the world, all the while being compliant with European Union laws.
One option that could be explored is the implementation of blockchain technology. The blockchain works borderless, just like the e-citizenship is trying to do. Digital rights can easily be issued over the blockchain, as all it would require is the creation of a digital token tied to that e-citizen. Even sensitive information, such as the index finger scans, could be part of this token, paving the way for an entirely new digital rights standards.
Considering Estonian digital ID cards allow online financial transfers between users and the government, the blockchain seems to be a perfect fit in this regard as well. After all, blockchain technology has been powering a peer-to-peer virtual currency called Bitcoin for many years now, and has never failed to do so.
What are your thoughts on e-citizenship in general, and do you see a future for blockchain technology in this regard? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: Ars Technica
Images courtesy of E-Estonia, Adweek, Wired, Shutterstock |
Mollison said he hopes Grand River Transit will further simplify Route 7 to make it easier for people to take the bus.
"Just saying 'the light rail transit will make everything better,' is just kicking the can down the road," Mollison said.
The Region of Waterloo is preparing for its light rail transit system scheduled to start running in 2017. Part of that is building transit ridership and creating connections for the future light rail system.
Officials envision an integrated system of buses and light rail and the 202 iXpress is a step toward that.
Cicuttin said 202 iXpress will also help with some of the Route 7 issues.
"It's a step forward to a grid pattern," he said. "We're pretty excited with the change."
Along with several small upgrades on local routes, the iXpress will add more than 48,000 hours of service and will require 15 new buses on the roads.
East and west Waterloo routes will be realigned to reduce duplication with the new iXpress. Some will provide more service and greater access to certain destinations.
The current 201 iXpress, running from Forest Glen Plaza to Wilfrid Laurier University, will be extended to Conestoga Mall.
Other impacted routes are Route 29-Keats Way, Route 5-Erb West, Route 6-Bridgeport, Route 35-Eastbridge, Route 31-Lexington, Route 13-Laurelwood, Route 12-Conestoga Mall and Route 9-Lakeshore.
Grand River Transit undertook several public consultation sessions last fall to hear from riders on the proposed route and other service changes.
pdesmond@therecord.com |
The Wachowskis' latest science fiction experience, Jupiter Ascending, may stumble as a film, but it's certainly a feast for the eyes. As we join Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) on her journey across the galaxy, we're treated to glimpses of far away worlds and space-age cities. Most of all, we become intimately familiar with the spectacularly intricate ships that whisk humans across space.
Many of those designs came from the mind of conceptual designer George Hull. Over the years, his work has helped shape the visual language of sci-fi films. He got his start at George Lucas' legendary visual effects studio, Industrial Light & Magic, and has had a hand in everything from the special edition of The Empire Strikes Back and The Matrix sequels to Avatar, Elysium, Cloud Atlas, and a couple of the Transformers films.
"The Wachowskis are always striving for over-the-top aesthetics."
Hull tells io9 in an interview (edited here for clarity) that the Wachowskis "are always striving for over-the-top aesthetics." He notes that they "wanted a visual style for their film that was unlike anything they had seen before." But, as Hull explains, that's no easy task. "Creating something fresh — even slightly — in a genre that has a lot of movie spaceships, robots, and technologies, was the most challenging aspect!"
But he wasn't starting from scratch — Hull tells The Verge that the concepts and ideas in the Wachowskis' script "were already bold and unique by the time I began designing." He adds, "They drive everything visually and had already imagined the big picture from day one."
As a key conceptual designer for the film, Hull had to take the Wachowskis' outline of the visual world of Jupiter Ascending and turn it into a cohesive whole. As he says, "my job is to bring fresh shapes, textures, and details to their ideas."
Hull's focus was on the ships in the film — a massive team is responsible for the final product that made it on screen, including nearly 20 additional conceptual designers and art directors under production designer Hugh Bateup. A large visual effects team brought the concepts to life on the big screen.
To create a unique visual language for the film's vehicles, Hull turned to some seemingly contradictory sources for inspiration. For some ships, Hull drew from forms in nature, like moths, butterflies, and even peacocks. But he also incorporated aspects of an architectural movement known as Brutalism. The result is massive, hulking ships with many delicate floating wings.
Despite the challenge, Hull says Jupiter Ascending was a "dream assignment" precisely because the Wachowskis were so demanding. "To be asked to help invent a bold new visual vocabulary for a world ... [that's] the highest prize for a conceptual designer."
George Hull's original concept art for Jupiter Ascending has been republished here with permission. For more of his work, check out his website and Facebook page. |
On Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, Scheduled Tasks are stored as binary files with the “.job” extension. They are also stored in this manner on Windows Server 2008. Also, the jobs are stored in the same location in both operating systems, namely, “C:WindowsTasks”. So if you want to copy jobs from one to the other, you should just be able to copy the files, right? No, that would be too easy. For whatever reason, Microsoft chose to make it much more difficult to migrate jobs than this.
To successfully import jobs, several steps are required.
First of all, copy all “.job” files on the XP/2003 box into a folder of your choosing on the 2008 box. I’ll create “C:temptasks” for this example.
Next, copy two files – schtasks.exe and schedsvc.dll – from C:WindowsSystem32 on the source box into the C:temptasks folder on the destination box.
Thirdly, copy (don’t move) the job files from the C:temptasks folder into the C:WindowsTasks folder on the destination box.
Now for the fun part. To import a job, the following command must be issued from the Command Prompt:
schtasks /change /TN <<Scheduled Job Name>> /RU <<Username>> /RP <<Password>>
This command will only import one job – the one with whatever name you put in the command. If you have many jobs to import, this will not be practical. You’ll need a script to do this, but fortunately the script is simple.
By using a for loop and a basic regular expression, this can be done at the command line:
c:temptasks>FOR /R . %F in (*.*) do schtasks /change /TN “%~nF” /RU <<Username>> /RP <<Password>>
This will import all of your job files into the Task Scheduler. The tasks may be in an enabled state, so be sure to check this if you don’t want them to run yet.
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A mixing section with removable dams can adjust melting capability to the viscosity of the material.
Robert Dray, a well-known screw designer and builder, has long held that there’s no such thing as a “general-purpose” injection molding screw—calling it rather a “no-purpose” screw because, in his view, it can’t do an adequate job of plasticating any polymer. Now Dray is offering a screw design that he says can properly process a wide range of polymers. His firm, R. Dray Mfg., Hamilton, Tex., is offering the APS, or “All Purpose Screw” (patent pending). The key to this screw is a mixing section with one or more removable dams that can be interchanged to alter the balance of distributive and dispersive mixing, depending on the viscosity of the material. The dams are keys inserted into slots and held by cap screws. This development also is suited to extrusion applications where a variety of resins are processed, according to Dray. (More details on the APS next month.) |
To appear in Nous, August 1996
Analyticity Reconsidered 1
Paul Artin Boghossian
New York University
I
This is what many philosophers believe today about the analytic/synthetic distinction: In his classic early writings on analyticity -- in particular, in "Truth by Convention," "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," and "Carnap and Logical Truth" -- Quine showed that there can be no distinction between sentences that are true purely by virtue of their meaning and those that are not. In so doing, Quine devastated the philosophical programs that depend upon a notion of analyticity -- specifically, the linguistic theory of necessary truth, and the analytic theory of a priori knowledge.
Quine himself, so the story continues, went on to espouse far more radical views about meaning, including such theses as meaning-indeterminacy and meaning-skepticism. However, it is not necessary, and certainly not appealing, to follow him on this trajectory. As realists about meaning, we may treat Quine's self-contained discussion in the early papers as the basis for a profound insight into the nature of meaning facts, rather than any sort of rejection of them. We may discard the notions of the analytic and the a priori without thereby buying in on any sort of unpalatable skepticism about meaning.
Now, I don't know precisely how many philosophers believe all of the above, but I think it would be fair to say that it is the prevailing view. Philosophers with radically differing commitments -- including radically differing commitments about the nature of meaning itself -- subscribe to it: whatever precisely the correct construal of meaning, so they seem to think, Quine has shown that it will not sustain a distinction between the analytic and the synthetic. Listen, for example, to Bill Lycan:
It has been nearly forty years since the publication of "Two Dogmas of Empiricism." Despite some vigorous rebuttals during that period, Quine's rejection of analyticity still prevails -- in that philosophers en masse have either joined Quine in repudiating the "analytic/synthetic" distinction or remained (however mutinously) silent and made no claims of analyticity. This comprehensive capitulation is somewhat surprising, in light of the radical nature of Quine's views on linguistic meaning generally. In particular, I doubt that many philosophers accept his doctrine of the indeterminacy of translation...
Lycan goes on to promise that in his paper, he is going to
make a Quinean case against analyticity, without relying on the indeterminacy doctrine. For I join the majority in denying both analyticity and indeterminacy.... 2
Now, my disagreement with the prevailing view is not total. There is a notion of 'truth by virtue of meaning' -- what I shall call the metaphysical notion -- that is undermined by a set of indeterminacy-independent considerations. Since this notion is presupposed by the linguistic theory of necessity, that project fails and must be abandoned.
However, I disagree with the prevailing view's assumption that those very same considerations also undermine the analytic explanation of the a priori. For it seems to me that an entirely distinct notion of analyticity underlies that explanation, a notion that is epistemic in character. And in contrast with the metaphysical notion, the epistemic notion can be defended, I think, provided that even a minimal realism about meaning is true. I'm inclined to hold, therefore, that there can be no effective Quinean critique of the a priori that does not ultimately depend on Quine's radical thesis of the indeterminacy of meaning, a thesis that, as I've stressed, many philosophers continue to reject.
All of this is what I propose to argue in this paper. I should emphasize right at the outset, however, that I am not a historian and my interest here is not historical. Think of me rather as asking, on behalf of all those who continue to reject Quine's later skepticism about meaning: Can something like the analytic explanation of the a priori be salvaged from the wreckage of the linguistic theory of necessity?
Belief, Apriority and Indeterminacy
We need to begin with some understanding -- however brief and informal -- of what it is to believe something and of what it is for a belief to count as a priori knowledge.
Let's work with a picture of belief that is as hospitable as possible to Quine's basic outlook. According to this 'linguistic' picture, the objects of belief are not propositions, but rather interpreted sentences: for a person T to believe that p is for T to hold true a sentence S which means that p in T's idiolect. 3
Against this rough and ready background, we may say that for T to know that p is for T to justifiably hold S true, with a strength sufficient for knowledge, and for S to be true. And to say that T knows p a priori is to say that T's warrant for holding S true is independent of outer, sensory experience. 4 The interesting question in the analysis of the concept of apriority concerns this notion of warrant: what is it for a belief to be justified independently of outer sensory experience?
On a minimalist reading, to say that the warrant for a given belief is a priori is just to say that it is justified, with a strength sufficient for knowledge, without appeal to empirical evidence. 5 On a stronger reading, it is to say that and that the justification in question is not defeasible by any future empirical evidence. 6 Which of these two notions is at issue in the present debate?
My own view is that the minimal notion forms the core of the idea of apriority and, hence, that it would be achievement enough to demonstrate its possibility. However, in this paper I will aim to provide the materials with which to substantiate the claim that, under the appropriate circumstances, the notion of analyticty can help explain how we might have a priori knowledge even in the strong sense. A defense of the strong notion is particularly relevant in the present context, for Quine seems to have been most skeptical of the idea of empirical indefeasibility.
Before proceeding, we should also touch briefly on the notion of meaning-indeterminacy. In Chapter Two of Word and Object, Quine argued that, for any language, it is possible to find two incompatible translation manuals that nevertheless perfectly conform to the totality of the evidence that constrains translation. This is the famous doctrine of the indeterminacy of translation. Since Quine was furthermore prepared to assume that there could not be facts about meaning that are not captured in the constraints on best translation, he concluded that meaning facts themselves are indeterminate -- that there is, strictly speaking, no determinate fact of the matter as to what a given expression in a language means. This is the doctrine that I have called the thesis of the indeterminacy of meaning.
An acceptance of meaning-indeterminacy can lead to a variety of other views about meaning. For instance, it might lead to an outright eliminativism about meaning. Or it might be taken as a reason to base the theory of meaning on the notion of likeness of meaning, rather than on that of sameness of meaning. 7 In this paper, I am not concerned with the question what moral should be drawn from the indeterminacy thesis, on the assumption that it is true; nor am I concerned with whether the indeterminacy thesis is true. I am only concerned to show that a skepticism about epistemic analyticity cannot stop short of the indeterminacy thesis, a thesis that, as I have stressed, most philosophers agree in rejecting.
Analyticity: Metaphysical or Epistemological?
Traditionally, three classes of statement have been thought to be the objects of a priori knowledge: logical statements, mathematical statements and such 'conceptual truths' as, for example, that all squares are four-sided. The problem has always been to explain what could justify us in holding such statements true on a priori grounds.
The history of philosophy has known a number of answers to this problem, among which the following has had considerable influence: We are equipped with a special evidence-gathering faculty of intuition, distinct from the standard five senses; by exercising this faculty, we are able to know a priori such truths as those of mathematics and logic.
The central impetus behind the analytic explanation of the a priori is a desire to explain the possibility of a priori knowledge without having to postulate such a special faculty, one that has never been described in satisfactory terms. The question is: How could a factual statement S be known a priori by T, without the help of a special evidence-gathering faculty?
Here, it would seem, is one way: If mere grasp of S's meaning by T sufficed for T's being justified in holding S true. If S were analytic in this sense, then, clearly, its apriority would be explainable without appeal to a special faculty of intuition: mere grasp of its meaning by T would suffice for explaining T's justification for holding S true. On this understanding, then, 'analyticity' is an overtly epistemological notion: a statement is 'true by virtue of its meaning' provided that grasp of its meaning alone suffices for justified belief in its truth.
Another, far more metaphysical reading of the phrase 'true by virtue of meaning' is also available, however, according to which a statement is analytic provided that, in some appropriate sense, it owes its truth value completely to its meaning, and not at all to 'the facts.'
Which of these two possible notions has been at stake in the dispute over analyticity? There has been a serious unclarity on the matter. Quine himself tends to label the doctrine of analyticity an epistemological doctrine, as for example in the following passage from "Carnap and Logical Truth":
the linguistic doctrine of logical truth, which is an epistemological doctrine, goes on to say that logical truths are true purely by virtue of the intended meanings, or intended usage, of the logical words. 8
However, his most biting criticisms seem often to be directed at what I have called the metaphysical notion. Consider, for example, the object of disapproval in the following famous passage, a passage that concludes the official discussion of analyticity in "Two Dogmas":
It is obvious that truth in general depends on both language and extralinguistic fact. The statement 'Brutus killed Caesar' would be false if the world had been different in certain ways, but it would also be false if the word 'killed' happened rather to have the sense of 'begat'. Thus one is tempted to suppose in general that the truth of a statement is somehow analyzable into a linguistic component and a factual component. Given this supposition it next seems reasonable that in some statements the factual component should be null; and these are the analytic statements. But for all its a priori reasonableness, a boundary between analytic and synthetic statements simply has not been drawn. That there is such a distinction to be drawn at all is an unempirical dogma of empiricists, a metaphysical article of faith. 9
Now, I think that there is no doubt that many of the proponents of the analytic theory of the a priori, among them especially its positivist proponents, intended the notion of analyticity to be understood in this metaphysical sense; very shortly I shall look at why.
Before doing that, however, I want to register my wholehearted agreement with Quine that the metaphysical notion is of dubious explanatory value and possibly also of dubious coherence. Fortunately for the analytic theory of the a priori, it can be shown that it need have nothing to do with this discredited idea.
The Metaphysical Concept
What could it possibly mean to say that the truth of a statement is fixed exclusively by its meaning and not by the facts? Isn't it in general true -- indeed, isn't it in general a truism -- that for any statement S,
S is true iff for some p, S means that p and p?
How could the mere fact that S means that p make it the case that S is true? Doesn't it also have to be the case that p? As Harman has usefully put it (he is discussing the sentence 'Copper is copper'):
what is to prevent us from saying that the truth expressed by "Copper is copper" depends in part on a general feature of the way the world is, namely that everything is self-identical. 10
The proponent of the metaphysical notion does have a comeback, one that has perhaps not been sufficiently addressed. If he is wise, he won't want to deny the meaning-truth truism. What he will want to say instead is that, in some appropriate sense, our meaning p by S makes it the case that p.
But this line is itself fraught with difficulty. For how can we make sense of the idea that something is made true by our meaning something by a sentence?
Consider a sentence of the form 'Either p or not p'. It is easy, of course, to understand how the fact that we mean what we do by the ingredient terms fixes what is expressed by the sentence as a whole; and it is easy to understand, in consequence, how the fact that we mean what we do by the sentence determines whether the sentence expresses something true or false. But as Quine points out, that is just the normal dependence of truth on meaning. What is far more mysterious is the claim that the truth of what the sentence expresses depends on the fact that it is expressed by that sentence, so that we can say that what is expressed wouldn't have been true at all had it not been for the fact that it is expressed by that sentence. Are we really to suppose that, prior to our stipulating a meaning for the sentence
Either snow is white or it isn't
it wasn't the case that either snow was white or it wasn't? Isn't it overwhelmingly obvious that this claim was true before such an act of meaning, and that it would have been true even if no one had thought about it, or chosen it to be expressed by one of our sentences?
Why, if this idea is as problematic as I have claimed it to be, did it figure so prominently in positivist thinking about analyticity?
Much of the answer derives from the fact that the positivists didn't merely want to provide a theory of a priori knowledge; they also wanted to provide a reductive theory of necessity. The motivation was not purely epistemological, but metaphysical as well. Guided by the fear that objective, language-independent necessary connections would be both metaphysically and epistemologically odd, they attempted to show that all necessities could be understood to consist in linguistic necessities, in the shadows cast by conventional decisions concerning the meanings of words. Conventional linguistic meaning, by itself, was supposed to generate necessary truth; a fortiori, conventional linguistic meaning, by itself, was supposed to generate truth. Hence the play with the metaphysical concept of analyticity.
But this is, I believe, a futile project. In general, I have no idea what would constitute a better answer to the question: What is responsible for generating the truth of a given class of statements? than something bland like 'the world' or 'the facts'; and, for reasons that I have just been outlining, I cannot see how a good answer might be framed in terms of meaning, or convention, in particular.
So I have no sympathy with the linguistic theory of necessity or with its attendant Conventionalism. Unfortunately, the impression appears to be widespread that there is no way to disentangle that view from the analytic theory of the a priori; or, at a minimum, that there is no way to embrace the epistemic concept of analyticity without also embracing its metaphysical counterpart. I don't know whether Gil Harman believes something of the sort; he certainly gives the impression of doing so in his frequent suggestions that anyone deploying the notion of analyticity would have to be deploying both of its available readings simultaneously:
It turned out that someone could be taught to make the analytic-synthetic distinction only by being taught a rather substantial theory, a theory including such principles as that meaning can make something true and that knowledge of meaning can give knowledge of truth. 11
One of the main points of the present paper is that these two notions of analyticity are distinct and that the analytic theory of the a priori needs only the epistemological notion and has no use whatsoever for the metaphysical one. We can have an analytic theory of the a priori without in any way subscribing to a Conventionalism about anything. It is with the extended defense of this claim that much of the present essay is concerned.
The Epistemological Concept
Turning, then, to the epistemic notion of analyticity, we immediately confront a serious puzzle: How could any sentence be analytic in this sense? How could mere grasp of a sentence's meaning justify someone in holding it true?
Clearly, the answer to this question has to be semantical: something about the sentence's meaning, or about the way that meaning is fixed, must explain how its truth is knowable in this special way. What could this explanation be?
In the history of the subject, two different sorts of explanation have been especially important. Although these, too, have often been conflated, it is crucial to distinguish between them.
One idea was first formulated in full generality by Gottlob Frege. According to Frege, a statement's analyticity (in my epistemological sense) is to be explained by the fact that it is transformable into a logical truth by the substitution of synonyms for synonyms. When a statement satisfies this semantical condition, I shall say that it is 'Frege-analytic'. 12
Now, it should be obvious that Frege-analyticity is at best an incomplete explanation of a statement's epistemic analyticity and, hence, of its apriority. For suppose that a given sentence S is Frege-analytic. How might this fact explain its analyticity? Clearly, two further assumptions are needed. First, that facts about synonymy are knowable a priori; and second, that the truths of logic are. Under the terms of these further assumptions, a satisfying explanation goes through. Given its Frege-analyticity, S is transformable into a logical truth by the substitution of synonyms for synonyms. Facts about synonymy are a priori, so it's a priori that S is so transformable. Furthermore, the sentence into which it is transformable is one whose truth is itself knowable a priori. Hence, S's truth is knowable a priori.
Frege tended not to worry about these further assumptions, for two reasons. First, Frege thought it obviously constitutive of the idea of meaning, that meaning is transparent -- that any competent user of two words would have to be able to know a priori whether or not they meant the same. Second, Frege also thought it obvious that there could be no substantive epistemology for logic -- a fortiori, not one that could explain its apriority. As a consequence, he was happy to take logic's apriority for granted. For both of these reasons, he didn't worry about the fact that an explanation of apriority in terms of Frege-analyticity simply leaned on these further assumptions without explaining them.
I think the jury is still out on whether Frege was right to take these further assumptions for granted. There is certainly a very strong case to be made for the transparency of meaning. 13 And there are well-known difficulties providing a substantive epistemology for something as basic as logic, difficulties we shall have occasion to further review below. Nevertheless, because we cannot simply assume that Frege was right, we have to ask how a complete theory of the a priori would go about filling in the gaps left by the concept of Frege-analyticity.
I shall have very little to say about the first gap. The question whether facts about the sameness and difference of meaning are a priori cannot be discussed independently of the question what meaning is, and that is not an issue that I want to prejudge in the present context. On some views of meaning -- for example, on certain conceptual role views -- the apriority of synonymy is simply a by-product of the very nature of meaning facts, so that no substantive epistemology for synonymy is necessary or, indeed, possible. On other views -- for example, on most externalist views of meaning -- synonymy is not a priori, so there is no question of a sentence's Frege-analyticity fully explaining its epistemic analyticity.
Since this issue about the apriority of synonymy turns on questions that are currently unresolved, I propose to leave it for now. As we shall see, none of the analyticity-skeptical considerations we shall consider exploit it in any way. (Quine never argues that the trouble with Frege-analyticity is that synonymies are a posteriori.)
Putting aside, then, skepticism about the apriority of synonymy, and, for the moment anyway, skepticism about the very existence of Frege-analytic sentences, let us ask quite generally: What class of a priori statement would an account based on the notion of Frege-analyticity fail to explain?
Two classes come to mind. On the one hand, a priori statements that are not transformable into logical truths by the substitution of synonyms for synonyms; and, on the other hand, a priori statements that are trivially so transformable.
Taking the first class first, there do appear to be a significant number of a priori statements that are not Frege-analytic. For example:
Whatever is red all over is not blue. Whatever is colored is extended. If x is warmer than y, then y is not warmer than x. These statements appear not to be transformable into logical truths by the appropriate substitutions: the ingredient descriptive terms seem not to be decomposable in the appropriate way.
The second class of recalcitrant statements consists precisely of the truths of logic. The truths of logic satisfy, of course, the conditions on Frege-analyticity. But they satisfy them trivially. And it seems obvious that we can't hope to explain our warrant for belief in the truths of logic by appealing to their analyticity in this sense: knowledge of Frege-analyticity presupposes knowledge of logical truth and so can't explain it.
How, then, is the epistemic analyticity of these recalcitrant truths to be explained? As we shall see below, the solution proposed by Carnap and the middle Wittgenstein turns on the suggestion that they are to be viewed as implicit definitions of their ingredient terms. When a statement satisfies this semantical condition, I shall sometimes say that it is 'Carnap-analytic'. However, before proceeding to a discussion of Carnap-analyticity, I want to re-examine Quine's famous rejection of the much weaker concept of Frege-analyticity. 14
II
"Two Dogmas" and the Rejection of Frege-analyticity
For all its apparent limitations, the concept of Frege-analyticity is not without interest. Even though Quine made it fashionable to claim otherwise, the sentence "All bachelors are male," does seem to be transformable into a logical truth by the substitution of synonyms for synonyms and that fact does seem to have something important to do with its apriority. If, then, appearances are not misleading here, and a significant range of a priori statements are Frege-analytic, then the problem of their apriority is reduced to that of the apriority of logic and synonymy and, in this way, a significant economy in explanatory burden is achieved.
It was, therefore, an important threat to the analytic theory of the a priori to find Quine arguing, in one of the most celebrated articles of this century, that the apriority of no sentence could be explained by appeal to its Frege-analyticity, because no sentence of a natural language could be Frege-analytic.
It has not been sufficiently appreciated, it seems to me, that "Two Dogmas," is exclusively concerned with this weaker notion of Frege-analyticity, and not at all with the more demanding project of explaining the apriority of logic. But this is made very clear by Quine:
Statements which are analytic by general philosophical acclaim are not, indeed, far to seek. They fall into two classes. Those of the first class, which may be called logically true, are typified by: (1) No unmarried man is married.
The relevant feature of this example is that it is not merely true as it stands, but remains true under any and all reinterpretations of 'man' and 'married'. If we suppose a prior inventory of logical particles...then in general a logical truth is a statement that remains true under all reinterpretations of its components other than the logical particles. But there is also a second class of analytic statements, typified by: (2) No bachelor is married.
The characteristic of such a statement is that it can be turned into a logical truth by putting synonyms for synonyms. (pp. 22-23)
Quine goes on to say very clearly:
Our problem ... is analyticity; and here the major difficulty lies not in the first class of analytic statements, the logical truths, but rather in the second class, which depends on the notion of synonymy. (p. 24)
Most of the rest of TD is devoted to arguing that no good sense can be made of such analyticities of the 'second class'.
None of this would make any sense unless Quine were intending in "Two Dogmas" to be restricting himself solely to the notion of Frege-analyticity. Of course, it is the point of two other important papers of his -- "Truth by Convention" and "Carnap and Logical Truth" -- to argue that there is no non-trivial sense in which logic is analytic. We will turn to that issue in due course. Relative to the Fregean notion, however, the logical truths are trivially analytic; and so, given his apparent desire to restrict his attention to that notion in TD, he simply concedes their 'analyticity' in the only sense he takes to be under discussion. What he wishes to resist in TD, he insists, is merely the claim that there are any non-trivial instances of Frege-analyticity. 15
Skeptical Theses about Analyticity
What form does Quine's resistance take? We may agree that the result being advertised isn't anything modest, of the form: There are fewer analyticities than we had previously thought. Or, there are some analytic truths, but they are not important for the purposes of science. Or anything else of a similar ilk. Rather, as a very large number of Quine's remarks make clear, the sought-after result is something ambitious to the effect that the notion of Frege-analyticity is, somehow or other, not cogent. TD's many admirers have divided on whether to read this as the claim that the notion of Frege-analyticity does not have a well-defined, determinate factual content, or whether to read it merely as claiming that, although it has an intelligible content, it is necessarily uninstantiated. I'll call the first claim a Non-factualism about analyticity:
(NF) No coherent, determinate property is expressed by the predicate 'is analytic' (or, since these are correlative terms, the predicate 'is synthetic'); consequently, no coherent factual claim is expressed by sentences of the form 'S is analytic' and 'S is synthetic.'
And the second an Error Thesis about analyticity:
(ET) There is a coherent, determinate property expressed by 'is analytic', but it is necessarily uninstantiated; consequently, all sentences of the form 'S is analytic' are necessarily false. 16
Regardless, however, of how TD's skepticism about Frege-analyticity is understood, I don't see how either thesis can plausibly stop short of a radical indeterminacy about meaning.
Non-Factualism about Frege-Analyticity
Let's begin with the non-factualist version. To say that there is no such property as the property of Frege-analyticity is essentially to say that, for any sentence, there is no fact of the matter as to whether it is transformable into a logical truth by the substitution of synonyms for synonyms. Presumably, this itself is possible only if, either there is no fact of the matter as to what counts as a logical truth, or no fact of the matter as to when two expressions are synonymous. Since the factuality of logic is not in dispute, the only option is a non-factualism about synonymy.
But, now, how can there fail to be facts about whether any two expressions mean the same -- even where these are drawn from within a single speaker's idiolect, so that no questions of interlinguistic synonymy arise? Wouldn't this have to entail that there are no facts about what each expression means individually? Putting the question the other way: Could there be a fact of the matter about what each expression means, but no fact of the matter about whether they mean the same? 17
Let's consider this question first against the background of an unQuinean relational construal of meaning, according to which an expression's meaning something is a relation M between it and its meaning, the meaning C. Someone who held that a non-factualism about synonymy could co-exist with a determinacy about meaning would have to hold that, although it might be true that some specific word -- say, "cow" -- bears some specific relation M to some specific meaning C, there is no fact of the matter about whether some other word -- some other orthographically identified particular -- bears precisely the same relation to precisely the same meaning.
But how could this be? How could it conceivably turn out that it is intelligible and true to say that "cow" bears M to C, and not merely false but nonfactual to say that some other word -- "vache" as it may be -- also does? What could be so special about the letters "c", "o", "w"?
The answer, of course, is that there is nothing special about them. If it is factual that one word bears M to C, it is surely factual that some other word does. Especially on a relational construal of meaning, it makes no sense to suppose that a determinacy about meaning could coexist with a non-factualism about synonymy.
The question naturally arises whether this result is forthcoming only against the background of a relational construal of meaning. I think it's quite clear that the answer is 'No'. To see why, suppose that instead of construing meaning facts as involving relations to meanings we construe them thus: "cow" means cow just in case "cow" has the monadic property R -- a history of use, a disposition, or whatever your favorite candidate may be. Precisely the same arguments go through: it remains equally difficult to see how, given that "cow" has property R, it could fail to be factual whether some other word does.
The Error Thesis about Frege-Analyticity
I think, then, that if a plausible skepticism about Frege-analyticity is to be sustained, it cannot take the form of a non-factualism. Does an Error thesis fare any better? According to this view, although there are determinate facts about which sentences are transformable into logical truths by the appropriate manipulations of synonymy, this property is necessarily uninstantiated: it is nomically impossible for there to be any Frege-analytic sentences. Our question is: Does at least this form of skepticism about Frege-analyticity avoid collapse into the indeterminacy doctrine?
Well, I suppose that if we are being very strict about it, we may have to admit that it is barely logically possible to combine a denial of indeterminacy with an error thesis about synonymy, so that we can say that although there are determinate facts about what means what, it is impossible for any two things to mean the same thing. But is such a view plausible? Do we have any reason for believing it? I think not.
Let's begin with the fact that even Quine has to admit that it is possible for two tokens of the same orthographic type to be synonymous, for that much is presupposed by his own account of logical truth. 18
What about two tokens of different types? Here again, our own argument can proceed from Quine's own admissions. For even Quine concedes that two expressions can mean the same thing, provided that they are explicitly stipulated to mean the same thing. 19 So his skepticism about synonymy has to boil down to the following somewhat peculiar claim: Although there is such a thing as the property of synonymy; and although it can be instantiated by pairs of tokens of the same orthographic type; and although it can be instantiated by pairs of tokens of distinct orthographic types, provided that they are related to each other by way of an explicit stipulation; it is, nevertheless, in principle impossible to generate instances of this property in some other way, via some other mechanism. For example, it is impossible that two expressions that were introduced independently of each other into the language, should have been introduced with exactly the same meanings.
But what conceivable rationale could there be for such a claim? As far as I am able to tell, there is precisely one argument in the literature that is supposed to provide support for it. It may be represented as follows:
Premise: Meaning is radically holistic in the sense that: "What our words mean depends on everything we believe, on all the assumptions we are making." 20 Therefore, Conclusion: It is very unlikely that, in any given language, there will be two words of distinct types that mean exactly the same thing.
I am inclined to agree that this argument (properly spelled out) is valid, and so, that if a radical holism about meaning were true, then synonymies between expressions of different types would be rare.
However, I note that "rare" does not mean the same as "impossible," which is the result we were promised. And, much more importantly, I am completely inclined to disagree that TD provides any sort of cogent argument for meaning holism in the first place.
It's easy to see why, if such a radical meanig holism were true, synonymies might be hard to come by. For although it is not unimaginable, it is unlikely that two words of distinct types will participate in all of the same beliefs and inferences. Presumably there will always be some beliefs that will discriminate between them -- beliefs about their respective shapes, for example.
But what reason do we have for believing that all of a word's uses are constitutive of its meaning?
Many Quineans seem to hold that the crucial argument for this intuitively implausible view is to be found in the concluding sections of TD. In those concluding sections, Quine argues powerfully for the epistemological claim that has come to be known as the Quine-Duhem thesis: confirmation is holisitic in that the warrant for any given sentence depends on the warrant for every other sentence. In those concluding sections, Quine also assumes a Verificationist theory of meaning, according to which the meaning of a sentence is fixed by its method of confirmation. Putting these two theses together, one can speedily arrive at the view that a word's meaning depends on all of its inferential links to other words, and hence at the thesis of meaning-holism. 21
This, however, is not a very convincing train of thought. First, and not all that importantly, this couldn't have been the argument that Quine intended against Frege-analyticity, for this argument for meaning holism is to be found in the very last pages of TD, well after the rejection of Frege-analyticity is taken to have been established.
Second, and more importantly, the argument is not very compelling because it depends crucially on a verificationism about meaning, a view that we have every good reason to reject, and which has in fact been rejected by most contemporary philosophers.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, any such holism-based argument against the possibility of synonymy would need to be supported by something that no one has ever provided -- a reason for believing that yielding such an intuitively implausible result about synonymy isn't itself simply a reductio of meaning holism. 22
III
The Analyticity of Logic
If the preceding considerations are correct, then there is no principled objection to the existence of Frege-analyticities, and, hence, no principled objection to the existence of statements that are knowable a priori if logical truth is. 23
But what about logical truth? Is it knowable a priori? And, if so, how? 24
In the case of some logical truths, the explanation for how we have come to know them will be clear: we will have deduced them from others. So our question concerns only the most elementary laws of sentential or first-order logic. How do we know a priori, for example, that all the instances of the law of non-contradiction are true, or that all the instances of modus ponens are valid?
As I noted above, Frege thought it obvious that there could be no substantive answer to such questions; he was inclined, therefore, to take appearances at face value and to simply assume the apriority of logic.
What Frege probably had in mind is the following worry. 'Explaining our knowledge of logic' presumably involves finding some other thing that we know, on the basis of which our knowledge of logic is to be explained. However, regardless of what that other thing is taken to be, it's hard to see how the use of logic is to be avoided in moving from knowledge of that thing to knowledge of the relevant logical truth. And so it can come to seem as if any account of how we know logic will have to end up being vacuous, presupposing that we have the very capacity that's to be explained.
Michael Dummett has disputed the existence of a real problem here. As he has pointed out, the sort of circularity that's at issue isn't the gross circularity of an argument that consists of including the conclusion that's to be reached among the premisses. Rather, we have an argument that purports to prove the validity of a given logical law, at least one of whose inferential steps must be taken in accordance with that law. Dummett calls this a "pragmatic" circularity. He goes on to claim that a pragmatic circularity of this sort will be damaging only to a justificatory argument that
is addressed to someone who genuinely doubts whether the law is valid, and is intended to persuade him that it is....If, on the other hand, it is intended to satisfy the philosopher's perplexity about our entitlement to reason in accordance with such a law, it may well do so. 25
The question whether Dummett's distinction fully allays Frege's worry is a large one, and I can't possibly hope to settle it here. If something along these general lines can't be made to work, then any explanation of logic's apriority -- or aposteriority, for that matter -- is bound to be futile, and the Fregean attitude will have been vindicated.
However, the question that particularly interests me in the present essay is this: Assuming that the very enterprise of explaining our knowledge of logic isn't shown to be hopeless by Frege's straightforward argument, is there any special reason for doubting an explanation based on the notion of analyticity? Quine's enormously influential claim was that there is. I shall try to argue that there isn't -- that, in an important sense to be specified later on, our grasp of the meaning of logical claims can explain our a priori warrant for holding them true (provided that the Fregean worry doesn't defeat all such explanations in the first place).
The Classical View and Implicit Definition
It's important to understand, it seems to me, that the analytic theory of the apriority of logic arose indirectly, as a by-product of the attempt to explain in what a grasp of the meaning of the logical constants consists. Alberto Coffa lays this story out very nicely in his recent book. 26
What account are we to give of our grasp of the logical constants, given that they are not to explicitly definable in terms of other concepts? Had they been explicitly definable, of course, we would have been able to say -- however plausibly -- that we grasp them by grasping their definitions. But as practically anybody who has thought about the matter has recognized, the logical constants are not explicitly definable in terms of other concepts, and so we are barred from giving that account. The question is, what account are we to give?
Historically, many philosophers were content to suggest that the state of grasping these constants was somehow primitive, not subject to further explanation. In particular, such a grasp of the meaning of, say, 'not', was to be thought of as prior to, and independent of, a decision on our part as to which of the various sentences involving 'not' to count as true. We may call this view, following Wittgenstein's lead, the doctrine of
Flash-Grasping: We grasp the meaning of, say, 'not' "in a flash" -- prior to, and independently of, deciding which of the sentences involving 'not' are true.
On this historically influential picture, Flash-Grasping was combined with the doctrine of Intuition to generate an epistemology for logic:
Intuition: This grasp of the concept of, say, negation, along with our intuition of its logical properties, explains and justifies our logical beliefs involving negation -- e.g., that 'If not not p, then p' is true.
As Coffa shows, this picture began to come under severe strain with the development of alternative geometries. Naturally enough, an analogous set of views had been used to explain the apriority of geometry. In particular, a flash-grasp of the indefinables of geometry, along with intuitions concerning their necessary properties, was said to explain and justify belief in the axioms of Euclidean geometry.
However, with the development of alternative geometries, such a view faced an unpleasant dilemma. Occupying one horn was the option of saying that Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries are talking about the same geometrical properties, but disagreeing about what is true of them. But this option threatens the thesis of Intuition: If in fact we learn geometrical truths by intuition, how could this faculty have misled us for so long?
Occupying the other horn was the option of saying that Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries are talking about different geometrical properties -- attaching different meanings to, say, 'distance' -- and so not disagreeing after all. But this option threatens the doctrine of Flash-Grasping. Suppose we grant that a Euclidean and a non-Euclidean geometer attach different meanings to 'distance'. In what does the difference in the respective psychological states consist? Officially, of course, the view is that one primitive state constitutes grasp of Euclidean distance, and another that of non-Euclidean distance. But absent some further detail about how to tell such states apart and the criteria that govern their attribution, this would appear to be a hopelessly ad hoc and non-explanatory maneuver.
The important upshot of these considerations was to make plausible the idea that grasp of the indefinables of geometry consists precisely in the adoption of one set of truths involving them, as opposed to another. Applied to the case of logic, it generates the semantical thesis that I shall call
Implicit definition: It is by arbitrarily stipulating that certain sentences of logic are to be true, or that certain inferences are to be valid, that we attach a meaning to the logical constants. More specifically, a particular constant means that logical object, if any, which makes valid a specified set of sentences and/or inferences involving it.
Now, the transition from this sort of implicit definition account of grasp, to the analytic theory of the apriority of logic, can seem pretty immediate. For it would seem that the following sort of argument is now in place:
1. If logical constant C is to mean what it does, then argument-form A has to be valid, for C means whatever logical object in fact makes A valid. 2. C means what it does. Therefore, 3. A is valid.
I will return to various questions regarding this form of justification below. 27 For now I want to worry about the fact that neither Carnap nor Wittgenstein was content merely to replace Flash Grasping with Implicit Definition. Typically, both writers went on to embrace some form of anti-realism about logic. Intuitively, the statements of logic appear to be fully factual statements, expressing objective truths about the world, even if necessary ones, and even if (on occasion) highly obvious ones. Both Carnap and Wittgenstein, however, seemed inclined to deny such an intuitive realism about logic, affirming in its place either the thesis of logical Non-Factualism or the thesis of logical Conventionalism, or, on occasion, both theses at once.
By logical Non-Factualism 28 , I mean the view that the sentences of logic that implicitly define the logical primitives do not express factual claims and, hence, are not capable of genuine truth or falsity. How, on such a view, are we to think of their semantic function? On the most popular version, we are to think of it as prescriptive, as a way of expressing a rule concerning the correct use of logical expressions. By contrast, logical Conventionalism is the view that, although the sentences of logic are factual -- although they can express truths -- their truth values are not objective, but are rather determined by our conventions.
Despite this important difference between them, there is an interesting sense in which the upshot of both views is the same, a fact that probably explains why they were often used interchangeably and why they often turn up simultaneously in the analytic theory of logic. For what both views imply is that, as between two different sets of decisions regarding which sentences of logic to hold true, there can be no epistemic fact of the matter. In short, both views imply an epistemic relativism about logic. Conventionalism implies this because it says that the truth in logic is up to us, so no substantive disagreement is possible; and Non-Factualism implies this because it says that there are no truths in logic, hence nothing to disagree about.
Nevertheless, for all this affinity of upshot, it should be quite plain that the two views are very different from each other -- indeed, incompatible with each other. Conventionalism is a factualist view: it presupposes that the sentences of logic have truth values. It differs from a realist view of logic in its conception of the source of those truth values, not on their existence. Therefore, although it is possible, as I have noted, to find texts in which a rule-prescriptivism about logic is combined with Conventionalism, that can only be a confusion.
The important question is: Why did the proponents of Implicit Definition feel the need to go beyond it all the way to the far more radical doctrines of Non-Factualism and/or Conventionalism? Whatever problems it may eventually be discovered to harbor, Implicit Definition seems like a plausible candidate for explaining our grasp of the logical constants, especially in view of the difficulties encountered by its classical rival. But there would appear to be little that prima facie recommends either Non-factualism or Conventionalism. So why combine these dubious doctrines with what looks to be a plausible theory of meaning?
Apparently, both Carnap and Wittgenstein seem to have thought that the issue was forced, that Implicit Definition entailed one or the other anti-realist thesis. It seems quite clear that Carnap, for example, believed that Implicit Definition brought Conventionalism immediately in its wake; and Quine seems to have agreed. What separated them was their attitude towards Conventionalism. Carnap embraced it; Quine, by contrast, seems to have been prepared to reject any premise that led to it; hence his assault on the doctrine of implicit definition.
But if this is in fact the correct account of Quine's motivations, then they are based, I believe, on a false assumption, for neither form of anti-realism about logic follows from the thesis of Implicit Definition.
I will proceed as follows. First, I will argue that Implicit Definition, properly understood, is completely independent of any form of anti-realism about logic. Second, I will defend the thesis of Implicit Definition against Quine's criticisms. Finally, I will examine the sort of account of the apriority of logic that this doctrine is able to provide.
Implicit Definition and Non-Factualism
Does Implicit Definition entail Non-Factualism? It is certainly very common to come across the claim that it does. Coffa, for instance, writes that from the new perspective afforded by the doctrine of Implicit Definition, the basic claims of logic are
our access to certain meanings, definitions in disguise, devices that allow us to implement an explicit or tacit decision to constitute certain concepts....From this standpoint, necessary claims do not tell us anything that is the case both in the world and in many others, as Leibniz thought, or anything that is the case for formal reasons, whatever that might mean, or anything that one is forced to believe due to features of our mind. They do not tell us anything that is the case; so they had better not be called claims or propositions. Since their role is to constitute meanings and since (apparently) we are free to endorse them or not, it is better to abandon the old terminology (a priori "principles", "laws," etc.) that misleadingly suggests a propositional status and to refer to them as "rules." (pp. 265-266)
I have no desire to engage the exegetical issues here; as far as I can tell, the middle Wittgenstein seems very much to have been a non-factualist about the implicit definers of logic, just as Coffa says. What I dispute is that it follows from the fact that a given sentence Q is being used to implicitly define one of its ingredient terms, that Q is not a factual sentence, not a sentence that "tells us anything that is the case." These two claims seem to me to be entirely independent of each other.
To help us think about this, consider Kripke's example of the introduction of the term 'meter'. As Kripke imagines it, someone introduces the term into his vocabulary by stipulating that the following sentence is to be true:
[1] Stick S is a meter long at t.
Suppose that stick S exists and is a certain length at t. Then it follows that 'meter' names that length and hence that [1] says that stick S is that length at t, and since it is that length at t, [1] is true.
Knowing all this may not be much of an epistemic achievement, but that isn't the point. The point is that there appears to be no inconsistency whatsoever between claiming that a given sentence serves to implicitly define an ingredient term and claiming that that very sentence expresses something factual .
Similarly, I don't see that there is any inconsistency between supposing that a given logical principle -- for instance, the law of excluded middle -- serves to implicitly define an ingredient logical constant, and supposing that that very sentence expresses a factual statement capable of genuine truth and falsity. 29
Implicit Definition and Conventionalism
So far I have argued that it is consistent with a sentence's serving as an implicit definer that that very sentence come to express a fully factual claim, capable of genuine truth and falsity. Perhaps, however, when implicit definition is at issue, the truth of the claim that is thereby fixed has to be thought of as conventionally determined? Does at least Conventionalism follow from Implicit Definition? 30
It is easy to see, I suppose, why these two ideas might have been run together. For according to Implicit Definition, 'if, then', for example, comes to mean the conditional precisely by my assigning the truth value True to certain basic sentences involving it, for example, to
If, if p then q, and p, then q.
And in an important sense, my assigning this sentence the value True is arbitrary. Prior to my assigning it that truth value, it didn't have a complete meaning, for one of its ingredient terms didn't have a meaning at all. The process of assigning it the value True is simply part of what fixes its meaning. Had I assigned it the value False, the sentence would then have had a different meaning. So, prior to the assignment there couldn't have been a substantive question regarding its truth value. And after the assignment there couldn't be a substantive question as to whether that assignment was correct. In this sense, then, the sentence's truth value is arbitrary and conventional. Doesn't it follow, then, that Implicit Definition entails Conventionalism?
Not at all. All that is involved in the thesis of Implicit Definition is the claim that the conventional assignment of truth to a sentence determines what proposition that sentence expresses (if any); such a view is entirely silent about what (if anything) determines the truth of the claim that is thereby expressed -- a fortiori, it is silent about whether our conventions determine it.
Think here again of Kripke's meter stick. If the stick exists and has such-and-so length at t, then it is conventional that 'meter' names that length and, therefore, conventional that [1] expresses the proposition stick S has such-and-so length at t. However, that stick S has that length at t is hardly a fact generated by convention; it presumably had that length prior to the convention, and may continue to have it well after the convention has lapsed. 31
I anticipate the complaint that the entailment between Implicit Definition and Conventionalism is blocked only through the tacit use of a distinction between a sentence and the proposition it expresses, a distinction that neither Carnap nor Quine would have approved.
Such a complaint would be mistaken, however. The argument I gave relies not so much on a distinction between a sentence and a proposition in the technical sense disapproved of by Quine, as on a distinction between a sentence and what it expresses. And it is hard to see how any adequate philosophy of language is to get by without some such distinction. 32 Even on a deflationary view of truth, there is presumably a distinction between the sentence 'Snow is white' and that which makes the sentence true, namely, snow's being white. And the essential point for my purposes is that it is one thing to say that 'Snow is white' comes to express the claim that snow is white as a result of being conventionally assigned the truth value True; and quite another to say that snow comes to be white as a result of our conventions. The first claim is Implicit Definition (however implausibly applied in this case); and the other is Conventionalism. Neither one seems to me to entail the other.
Quine against Implicit Definition: Regress
As I noted above, I am inclined to believe that erroneous opinion on this score has played an enormous role in the history of this subject. I conjecture that had Quine felt more confident that Implicit Definition could be sharply distinguished from Conventionalism, he might not have felt so strongly against it.
In any event, though, whatever the correct explanation of Quine's animus, we are indebted to him for a series of powerful critiques of the thesis of Implicit Definition, critiques that have persuaded many that that thesis, and with it any explanation of the apriority of logic that it might be able to ground, are fundamentally flawed. We must now confront Quine's arguments.
According to Implicit Definition, the logical constants come to have a particular meaning in our vocabulary by our conventionally stipulating that certain sentences (or inferences) involving them are to be true. For instance, let us assume that the meaning for 'and' is fixed by our stipulating that the following inferences involving it are to be valid:
A and B A and B A, B [2] -------------- -------------- -------------- A B A and B
Now, Quine's first important criticism of this idea occurs in his early paper 'Truth by Convention'. 33 As Quine there pointed out, there are an infinite number of instances of schema [2]. Consequently, the inferences of this infinitary collection could not have been conventionally stipulated to be valid singly, one by one. Rather, Quine argued, if there is anything at all to this idea, it must be something along the following lines: We adopt certain general conventions from which it follows that all the sentences of the infinitary collection are assigned the value Valid. Such a general convention would presumably look like this.
Let all results of putting a statement for 'p' and a statement for 'q' in 'p and q implies p' be valid.
However, the trouble is that in order to state such a general convention we have had, unavoidably, to use all sorts of logical terms -- 'every', 'and', and so on. So the claim, essential to the proposal under consideration, that all our logical constants acquire their meaning via the adoption of such explicitly formulated conventional assignments of validity must fail. Logical constants whose meaning is not fixed in this way are presupposed by the model itself. 34
This argument of Quine's has been very influential; and I think that there is no doubt that it works against its target as specified. However, it is arguable that its target as specified isn't the view that needs defeating.
For, surely, it isn't compulsory to think of someone's following a rule R with respect to an expression e as consisting in his explicitly stating that rule in so many words in the way that Quine's argument presupposes. On the contrary, it seems far more plausible to construe x's following rule R with respect to e as consisting in some sort of fact about x's behavior with e.
In what would such a fact consist? Here there are at least a couple of options. According to a currently popular idea, following rule R with respect to e may consist in our being disposed to conform to rule R in our employment of e, under certain circumstances. On this version, the notion of rule-following would have been reduced to a certain sort of dispositional fact. Alternatively, one might wish to appeal to the notion of following a given rule, while resisting the claim that it can be reduced to a set of naturalistically acceptable dispositional facts. On such a non-reductionist version, there would be facts about what rule one is following, even if these are not cashable into facts about one's behavioral dispositions, however optimal.
For myself, I am inclined to think that the reductionist version won't work, that we will have to employ the notion of following a rule unreduced. 35 But because it is more familiar, and because nothing substantive hangs on it in the present context, I will work with the reductionist version of rule-following. Applied to the case we are considering, it issues in what is widely known in the literature as a "conceptual role semantics."
According to this view, then, the logical constants mean what they do by virtue of figuring in certain inferences and/or sentences involving them and not in others. If some expressions mean what they do by virtue of figuring in certain inferences and sentences, then some inferences and sentences are constitutive of an expression's meaning what it does, and others aren't. And any CRS must find a systematic way of saying which are which, of answering the question: What properties must an inference or sentence involving a constant C have, if that inference or sentence is to be constitutive of C's meaning?
Quine against Implicit Definition: Constitutive Truth
Now, Quine's second objection to Implicit Definition can be put by saying that there will be no way of doing what I said any CRS must do -- namely, systematically specify the meaning-constituting inferences. Quine formulated this point in a number of places. Here is a version that appears in 'Carnap and Logical Truth':
if we try to warp the linguistic doctrine of logical truth into something like an experimental thesis, perhaps a first approximation will run thus: Deductively irresoluble disagreement as to a logical truth is evidence of deviation in usage (or meanings) of words....[However] the obviousness or potential obviousness of elementary logic can be seen to present an insuperable obstacle to our assigning any experimental meaning to the linguistic doctrine of elementary logical truth....For, that theory now seems to imply nothing that is not already implied by the fact that elementary logic is obvious or can be resolved into obvious steps. 36
Elsewhere, Quine explained his use of the word "obvious" in this connection thus:
In "Carnap and Logical Truth" I claimed that Carnap's arguments for the linguistic doctrine of logical truth boiled down to saying no more than that they were obvious, or potentially obvious -- that is, generable from obvieties by obvious steps. I had been at pains to select the word 'obvious' from the vernacular, intending it as I did in the vernacular sense. A sentence is obvious if (a) it is true and (b) any speaker of the language is prepared, for any reason or none, to assent to it without hesitation, unless put off by being asked so obvious a question. 37
Quine's important point here is that there will be no substantive way of distinguishing between a highly obvious, non-defining sentence and a sentence that is an implicit definer. Both types of sentence -- if in fact both types exist -- will have the feature that any speaker of the language will be prepared to assent to instances of them, "for any reason or none." So in what does the alleged difference between them consist? How is distinctive content to be given to the doctrine of Implicit Definition? 38
Now, there is no doubt that this is a very good question; and the impression that it has no good answer has contributed greatly to the rejection of the doctrine of Implicit Definition. Jerry Fodor and Ernie Lepore, for example, base the entirety of their recent argument against a conceptual role semantics on their assumption that Quine showed this question to be unanswerable. 39
If Quine's challenge is allowed to remain unanswered, then the threat to the analytic theory of the a priori is fairly straightforward. For if there is no fact of the matter as to whether S is a sentence that I must hold true if S is to mean what it does, then there is no basis on which to argue that I am entitled to hold S true without evidence.
But that would seem to be the least of our troubles, if Quine's argument is allowed to stand. For what's threatened is not only the apriority of logical truths but, far more extremely, the determinacy of what they claim. For as I've already pointed out, and as many philosophers are anyway inclined to believe, a conceptual role semantics seems to be the only plausible view about how the meaning of the logical constants is fixed. It follows, therefore, that if there is no fact of the matter as to which of the various inferences involving a constant are meaning-constituting, then there is also no fact of the matter as to what the logical constants themselves mean. And that, again, is just the dreaded indeterminacy of meaning on which the critique of analyticity was supposed not to depend.
The simple point here is that if the only view available about how the logical constants acquire their meaning is in terms of the inferences and/or sentences that they participate in, then any indeterminacy in what those meaning-constituting sentences and inferences are will translate into an indeterminacy about the meanings of the expressions themselves. This realization should give pause to any philosopher who thinks he can buy in on Quine's critique of implicit definition without following him all the way to the far headier doctrine of meaning-indeterminacy.
There has been a curious tendency to miss this relatively simple point. Jerry Fodor seems a particularly puzzling case. For Fodor holds all three of the following views. (1) He rejects indeterminacy, arguing forcefully against it. (2) He follows Quine in rejecting the notion of a meaning-constituting inference. (3) He holds a conceptual role view of the meanings of the logical constants. As far as I am able to judge, however, this combination of views is not consistent. 40
Part of the explanation for this curious blindness derives from a tendency to view Quine's argument as issuing not in an indeterminacy about meaning, but, rather, in a holism about it. In fact, according to Fodor and Lepore, the master argument for meaning holism in the literature runs as follows:
A. Some of an expression's inferential liaisons are relevant to fixing its meaning. B. There is no principled distinction between those inferential liaisons that are constitutive and those that aren't. (The Quinean result.) Therefore, C. All of an expression's inferential liaisons are relevant to fixing its meaning. (Meaning Holism)
Fearing this argument's validity, and seeing no way to answer Quine's challenge, they spend their whole book trying to undermine the argument's first premise, namely, the very plausible claim that at least some of an expression's inferential liaisons are relevant to fixing its meaning. 41
But they needn't have bothered, for I don't see how the master argument could be valid in the first place. The claim that all of an expression's inferential liaisons are constitutive of it cannot cogently follow from the claim that it is indeterminate what the constitutive inferences are. If it's indeterminate what the constitutive inferences are, then it's genuinely unsettled what they are. And that is inconsistent with saying that they are all constitutive, and inconsistent with saying that none are constitutive and inconsistent with saying that some specified subset are constitutive.
Fodor and Lepore are not alone in not seeing the problem here. Let me cite just one more example. In his comments on an earlier version of the present paper, Gil Harman says:
Can one accept Quine's argument against analyticity without being committed to the indeterminacy of meaning? Yes and no. By the "indeterminacy of meaning" might be meant an indeterminacy as to which of the principles one accepts determine the meanings of one's terms and which simply reflect one's opinions about the facts. Clearly, Quine's argument against analyticity is committed to that sort of indeterminacy. [However] that by itself does not imply full indeterminacy in the sense of Chapter Two of Word and Object. 42
As Harman correctly says, Quine has to deny that there is a fact of the matter as to which of T's principles determine the meanings of his terms and which simply reflect T's opinions about the facts -- that, after all, is just what it is to deny that there are facts about constitutivity. However, Harman insists, this denial in no way leads to the indeterminacy thesis of Chapter Two of Word and Object.
But this is very puzzling. Against the background of a conceptual role semantics, according to which the meaning of T's term C is determined precisely by a certain subset of the principles involving C that T accepts, an indeterminacy in what the meaning-determining principles are will automatically lead to an indeterminacy in what the meaning is -- in the full sense of Chapter Two of Word and Object. If a subset (not necessarily proper) of accepted principles is supposed to determine meaning; and if there is no fact of the matter as to which subset that is; then there is, to that extent, no fact of the matter as to what meaning has been determined.
I think there is really no avoiding the severe conclusion that meaning is indeterminate, if the Quinean challenge to constitutivity is allowed to remain unanswered. I'm inclined to think, therefore, that anyone who rejects radical indeterminacy of meaning must believe that a distinction between the meaning-constituting and the non-meaning-constituting can be drawn. The only question is how.
Well, that is not the task of the present paper. Although there are some good ideas about this, I don't have a fully thought-through proposal to present just now. 43 My main aim here is not to solve the fundamental problem for a conceptual role semantics for the logical constants; rather, as I have stressed, it is to show that, against the background of a rejection of indeterminacy, its insolubility cannot be conceded.
Pending the discovery of other problems, then, it seems open to us to suppose that a plausible theory of meaning for the logical constants is given by something like the following:
A logical constant C expresses that logical object, if any, that makes valid its meaning-constituting inferences.
Implicit Definition, Justification and Entitlement
Now, how does any of this help vindicate the analytic theory of the apriority of logic, the idea that logic is epistemically analytic? Let us consider a particular inference form, A, in a particular thinker's (T) repertoire; and let's suppose that that inference form is constitutive of the meaning of one of its ingredient constants C. How, exactly, might these facts help explain the epistemic analyticity of A for T?
To say that A is epistemically analytic for T is to say that T's knowledge of A's meaning alone suffices for T's justification for A, so that empirical support is not required. And it does seem that a conceptual role semantics can provide us with a model of how that might be so. For given the relevant facts, we would appear to be able to argue as follows:
1. If C is to mean what it does, then A has to be valid, for C means whatever logical object in fact makes A valid. 2. C means what it does. Therefore, 3. A is valid.
Now, it is true that this is tantamount to a fairly broad use of the phrase "knowledge of the meaning of A," for this knowledge includes not merely knowledge of what A means, strictly so-called, but also knowledge of how that meaning is fixed. But this is, of course, both predictable and unavoidable: there was never any real prospect of explaining apriority merely on the basis of a knowledge of propositional content. Even Carnap realized that one needed to know that a given inference or sentence had the status of a 'meaning postulate'.
But isn't it required, if this account is to genuinely explain T's a priori justification for the basic truths of logic, that T know the premisses a priori as well? Yet, it hasn't been shown that T can know the premisses a priori.
It is quite correct that I have not attempted to show that the relevant facts about meaning cited in the premisses are knowable a priori, although I believe that it is intuitively quite clear that they are. I have purposely avoided discussing all issues relating to knowledge of meaning facts. My brief here has been to defend epistemic analyticity; and this requires showing only that certain sentences are such that, if someone knows the relevant facts about their meaning, then that person will be in a position to form a justified belief about their truth. It does not require showing that the knowledge of those meaning facts is itself a priori (although, I repeat, it seems quite clear to me that it will be). 44
Isn't it a problem for the aspirations of the present account that a thinker would have to use modus ponens to get from the premisses to the desired conclusion?
Not if Dummett's distinction between pragmatic and vicious circularity is credited with opening a space for an epistemology for logic, as discussed above.
Finally, how could such an account possibly hope to explain the man in the street's justification for believing in the truths of logic? For such a person, not only would the relevant meaning facts be quite opaque, he probably wouldn't even be capable of framing them. Yet such a person is obviously quite justified in believing the elementary truths of logic. Thus, so our objector might continue, this sort of account cannot explain our ordinary warrant for believing in logic; at best, it can explain the warrant that sophisticates have.
I think that, strictly speaking, this objection is correct, but only in a sense that strips it of real bite. Philosophers are often in the position of articulating a warrant for an ordinary belief that the man in the street would not understand. If we insist that a person counts as justified only if they are aware of the reason that warrants their belief, then we will simply have to find another term for the kind of warrant that ordinary folk often have and that philosophers seek to articulate. Tyler Burge has called it an "entitlement":
The distinction between justification and entitlement is this. Although both have positive force in rationally supporting a propositional attitude or cognitive practice, and in constituting an epistemic right to it, entitlements are epistemic rights or warrants that need not be understood by or even be accessible to the subject. ....The unsophisticated are entitled to rely on their perceptual beliefs. Philosophers may articulate these entitlements. But being entitled does not require being able to justify reliance on these resources, or even to conceive such a justification. Justifications, in the narrow sense, involve reasons that people have and have access to. 45
When someone is entitled, all the facts relevant to the person's justification are already in place, so to say; what's missing is the reflection that would reveal them.
Just so in the case at hand. If a conceptual role semantics is true, and if A is indeed constitutive of C's meaning what it does, then those facts by themselves constitute a warrant for A; empirical support is not necessary. A can only be false by meaning something other than what it means. But these facts need not be known by the ordinary person. They suffice for his entitlement, even if not for his full-blown justification. This full-blown justification can be had only by knowing the relevant facts about meaning.
Conclusion
Quine helped us see the vacuity of the metaphysical concept of analyticity and, with it, the futility of the project it was supposed to underwrite -- the linguistic theory of necessity. But I don't see that those arguments affect the epistemic notion of analyticity that is needed for the purposes of the theory of a priori knowledge. Indeed, it seems to me that epistemic analyticity can be defended quite vigorously, especially against the background of a realism about meaning.
On the assumption that our warrant for believing in elementary logical truths cannot be explained, the outstanding problem is to explain our a priori knowledge of conceptual truths. For this purpose, the crucial semantical notion is that of Frege-analyticity. I have argued that this notion is bound to be in good standing for a meaning realist.
If the project of explaining logic is not ruled hopeless, then I have tried to show how the doctrine that appears to offer the most promising account of how we grasp the meanings of the logical constants -- namely, Implicit Definition -- can explain the epistemic analyticity of our logical beliefs and, hence, our a priori warrant for believing them. As long as we are not prepared to countenance radical indeterminacy, we should have every confidence that this form of explanation can be made to work. 46
Footnotes
1. This is a shorter, and somewhat modified, version of a paper entitled "Analyticity," which is to appear in Crispin Wright and Bob Hale (eds.): A Companion to the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge: Blackwell's, 1996). I am grateful to Blackwell's, and to the editors, for permission to use some of that material here.
2. "Definition in a Quinean World," in J. Fetzer, D. Shatz, and G. Schlesinger(eds.): Definitions and Definability: Philosophical Perspectives (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991), pp. 111-131.
3. As I say, I am going to work with this linguistic picture out of deference to my opponents. I would prefer to work with a propositionalist picture of belief, according to which the objects of belief are propositions in the technical sense -- mind- and language-independent, asbtract objects which have their truth conditions essentially. Most of the crucial notions developed in this paper, and much of the argument involving them, can be translated, with suitable modifications, into this propositionalist framework. Thus, even those who believe, as I do, that knowledge is not a matter of knowing that certain senteces are true can find use for this account.
4. The inclusion of the word "outer" here is partly stipulative. I have always found it natural to regard a priori knowledge as encompassing both knowledge that is based on no experience as well as knowledge that is based purely on inner experience.
5. In the interests of brevity, I shall henceforth take it as understood that "justification" means "justification with a strength sufficient for knowledge."
6. Even this strong notion is not as demanding as many have supposed. For instance, it is consistent with a belief's being a priori in the strong sense that we should have pragmatic reasons for dropping it from our best overall theory. For illuminating discussion of the modesty of the notion of the a priori see Crispin Wright: "Inventing Logical Necessity," in Butterfield (ed.) Language, Mind and Logic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) and Bob Hale: Abstract Objects (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), ch. 6.
7. See Gilbert Harman, Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973).
8. The Ways of Paradox (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), p. 103.
9. From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), pp. 36-7.
10. "Quine on Meaning and Existence I," Review of Metaphysics 21: 124-151,
p. 128. I am grateful to Paul Horwich for emphasizing the importance of this point.
11. "Doubts About Conceptual Analysis," MS, p. 5. See also his "Quine on Meaning and Existence I."
12. See G. Frege (Austin, trans.): The Foundations of Arithmetic, sec 3, Oxford: Blackwell, 1950). (Some may regard the attribution of precisely this notion to Frege controversial. What matters to me is not who came up with the idea, but rather the philosophical role it has played.)
My use of the term 'analytic' in connection with Frege's semantical notion as well as with the preceding epistemic and metaphysical concepts may be thought ill-advised. But I do so deliberately, to highlight the fact that the term has been used in the literature in general, and in Quine in particular, to stand for all three different sorts of notion, often without any acknowledgement of that fact. This terminological promiscuity has undoubtedly contributed to the confusion surrounding discussions of this issue.
13. For some discussion see my "The Transparency of Mental Content," in Philosophical Perspectives, v.8, 1994, pp.33-50.
14. What follows is a compressed discussion of Frege-analyticity. For a fuller treatment see "Anayticity," op. cit.
15. Exegetically, this does leave us with a few puzzles. First, TD does contain a brief discussion of the implicit definition idea, under the guise of the notion of a "semantical rule." Given that, why does Quine insist that he intends only to discuss the notion of Frege-analyticity? Second, the notion of a semantical rule is discussed only in connection with non-logical truths; since, however, the deployment of this idea would be exactly the same in the logical case, why is the analyticity of logic expressly excluded? Third, given that the analyticity of logic is expressly excluded, on what basis does Quine allow himself to draw morals about logic's revisability towards the end of TD? I think there is no avoiding the conclusion that, on this and other related issues (see below), TD is confused. It would, in fact, have been surprising if these rather tricky problems had all been in clear focus in Quine's pioneering papers.
16. In this context, nothing fancy is meant by the use of such expressions as 'property' and 'proposition'. For present purposes they may be understood in a thoroughly deflationary manner.
I have sometimes been asked why I consider just this particular weakening of a non-factualist thesis, one that involves, problematically from Quine's official point of view, a modal notion? Why not rather attribute to him the following Very Weak Thesis:
(VWT) There is a coherent, determinate property expressed by 'is analytic', but as a matter of fact, it has never been instantiated; consequently, all tokens of the sentence 'S is analytic' have been false up to now.
There are two reasons. First, the VWT is not a philosophically interesting thesis and, second, it could not have been argued for on the basis of a philosophy paper -- i.e., on the sorts of a priori grounds that Quine offers. So although Quine may not be entitled to precisely the ET, I am going to ignore that and not hold it against him.
17. This question was first asked by Grice and Strawson in their "In Defense of a Dogma," reprinted in Grice: Studies in the Way of Words (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989). Grice and Strawson didn't sufficiently stress, however, that Quine was committed to a skepticism even about intralinguistic synonymy, and not just about interlinguistic synonymy, for the theory of apriority doesn't care about the interlinguistic case.
18. See Peter Strawson, Logico-Linguistic Papers, (London: Methuen, 1971), p.117.
19. See the discussion of stpulative definitions in TD. For further discussion see "Analyticity."
20. Harman:Thought, op. cit., p. 14 , emphasis in the original.
21. Recent formulations of this argument may be found in Fodor: Psychosemantics, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), pp 62ff; Fodor and Lepore: Holism: A Shopper's Guide (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), pp. 37ff; Devitt: Coming to Our Senses, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p.17. None of the authors mentioned approve of the argument.
22. A further TD-based argument for meaning holism, this time invalid, will be considered further below, in connection with the discussion of the thesis of Implicit Definition.
23. As before, subject to the proviso about the apriority of synonymy.
24. I am ignoring for now the class of a priori truths that are neither logical nor Frege-analytic. As we shall see, the very same strategy -- implicit definition -- that can be applied to explain our knowledge of logic can be applied to them as well.
25. The Logical Basis of Metaphysics, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), p.202.
26. Coffa, A.: The Semantic Tradition, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), ch. 14. In the next three paragraphs, I follow the general contours of the account that Coffa puts forward. However, the formulations are mine and they differ in important respects from Coffa's, as we shall see further on.
27. Readers who are acquainted with a paper of mine of mine entitled "Inferential Role Semantics and the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction," Philosophical Studies, Spring 1994, pp. 109-122, will be aware that I used to worry that Implicit Definition could not generate a priori knowledge because of the falsity of something I called "The Principle." The Principle is the thesis that it follows from a sentence's being an implicit definer that that sentence is true. This is a tangled issue that I cannot fully discuss here. I will have to settle for a few brief remarks. I stand by the letter of what I said in the earlier paper. However, part of the problem there highlighted for the theory of the a priori is taken care of here by a reformulation of the thesis of Implicit Defintion; another part is taken care of by a reformulation of the relation between Implicit Defintion and the a priori; and, finally, a residual problem, not discussed in this paper, is met by the section entitled "A Pragmatic Solution" in "Analyticity," op. cit.. Readers for whom this footnote reads darkly may ignore it in its entirety.
28. Not to be confused with the non-factualism about Frege-analyticity discussed earlier in the paper.
29. Someone may object that the two cases are not relevantly analogous. For the meter case is supposed to be a case of the fixation of reference, but the logical case an instance of the fixation of meaning. Doesn't this difference between them block the argument I gave?
I don't see that it does. First, the two cases really are disanalogous only if there is an important difference between meaning and reference; yet, as is well-known, there are many philosophers of language who are inclined to think that there isn't an important such difference. Second, it seems to me that even if we allowed for a robust distinction between meaning and reference, the point would remain entirely unaffected. Whether we think of an implicit definer as fixing a term's reference directly, or we think of it as first fixing its meaning, which then in turn fixes its reference, seems to me entirely irrelevant to the claim that Implicit Definition does not entail Non-Factualism. As long as both processes are consistent with the fixation of a factual claim for the sentence at issue -- as they very much seem to be -- the important point stands.
30. Certainly many philosophers seem to have thought so. Richard Creath, for example, sympathetically expounds Carnap's view that the basic axioms of logic implicitly define the ingredient logical terms by saying that on this view "the postulates (together with the other conventions) create the truths that they, the postulates express." See his "Carnap's Conventionalism," Synthese 93: 141-165, p. 147.
31. This point is also forcefully made by Nathan Salmon in "Analyticity and Apriority," Philosophical Perspectives, 1994, and by Stephen Yablo in his review of Sidelle,Philosophical Review 1988.
32. Notice that conventionalists themselves need to make crucial use of such a distinction when they describe their own position, as in the passage cited above from Creath:
the postulates (together with the other conventions) create the truths that they, the postulates, express.
As Hilary Putnam pointed out some time ago,it's hard to see how distinctive content is to be given to Conventionalism without the use of some such distinction. For a conventionalism merely about linguistic expressions is trivial. A real issue is joined only when the view is formulated as a claim about the truths expressed. See Putnam, "The Refutation of Conventionalism," in his Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers v.2 (NY: Cambridge University Press, 1975)
33. Quine's argument here is offically directed against a Conventionalism about logical truth, that is, against the idea that logical truth is determined by our conventions. This idea we have already rejected in our discussion of the metaphysical concept of analyticity. However, Quine attacks Conventionalism by attacking the semantical thesis of Implicit Definition. Hence, the need for the present discussion.
34. Quine claims that this argument may also be put as follows: The claim that the sentences of logic lack assignment of truth value until they are conventionally assigned such values must fail. For logic is needed in order to infer from a formulated general convention that the infinitely many instances of a given schema are true. Hence, sentences of logic whose truth value is not fixed as the model requires, are presupposed by the model itself.
It's unclear to me that this is a formulation of precisely the same argument. However, to the extent that it is distinct, it is also addressed by the proposal I put forth below.
35. For discussion see my "The Rule-Following Considerations," Mind, 1989, pp.507-549.
36. p. 105, op. cit.
37. "Reply to Hellman," in Schilpp (ed.): "The Philosophy of WVO Quine," (La Salle: Open Court, 1975), p. 206.
38. For all its influence, it is still possible to find the force of the Quinean point being underestimated by the friends of Implicit Definition. Christopher Peacocke, for example, in a recent, subtle defense of an inferential role semantics claims that what makes the inferences involving the logical constants constitutive is that a thinker finds those inferences "primitively compelling" and does so because they are of those forms. He goes on to explain:
To say that a thinker finds such instances primitively compelling is to say this: (1) he finds them compelling; (2) he does not find them compelling because he has inferred them from other premises and/or principles; and (3) for possession of the concept in question ... he does not need to take the correctness of the transitions as answerable to anything else.
A Study of Concepts (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), p. 6. I think it is plain, however, that these conditions are insufficient for answering the Quinean challenge: a non-constitutive, though highly obvious, form of inference may also be found compelling because of its form, and not on the basis of inference from anything else. So these conditions cannot be what distinguish between a constitutive and a non-constitutive inference.
39. "Why Meaning (Probably) Isn't Conceptual Role," op. cit.
40. For Fodor's views on the mentioned issues, see his Psychosemantics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989) and The Elm and the Expert (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994).
41. See Fodor and Lepore: Holism: A Shopper's Guide (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993).
42. Harman, "Comments on Boghossian," APA Symposium on Analytic Truth, Boston, MA, December 1994.
43. For a good start, see Peacocke: A Study of Concepts ,op. cit.
44. For a discussion of why the second premiss is a priori see "Analyticity," op.cit..
45. Burge, "Content Preservation," The Philosophical Review, October 1993. |
Daniel "Kid Poker" Negreanu (; born July 26, 1974) is a Canadian professional poker player who has won six World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelets and two World Poker Tour (WPT) championship titles. The independent poker ranking service Global Poker Index (GPI) recognized Negreanu as the best poker player of the decade in 2014.[4]
As of 2018, he is the 2nd biggest live tournament poker winner of all time, having accumulated over $39,500,000 in prize money.[5] He was named the WSOP Player of the Year in 2004 and again in 2013, making him the first (and only) player in WSOP history to win the accolade more than once. He was also the 2004–2005 WPT Player of the Year. He is the first player to make a final table at each of the three WSOP bracelet-awarding locations (Las Vegas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific) and the first to win a bracelet at each.[6] In 2014, he was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame.[7]
Personal life [ edit ]
Negreanu was born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1974, seven years after his parents, Annie and Constantin, emigrated from Romania.[8] The Negreanus had hoped to start a new life in the United States, but ended up settling in Toronto, where Constantin worked as an electrician and sold confectionery.[9] Daniel is five years younger than his brother Mike.[9] Even at an early age, Negreanu was extremely ambitious, stating in a 2009 interview "From the age of four, I thought I'd be rich. I told my mom I'd build a house out of Popsicle sticks, and move to California."[10]
He attended Pineway public middle school in North York, where the principal complained to his mother about Daniel's "poor manners or behavior" and threatened to expel him for "ignoring the school rules."[10] While nursing dreams of a career as a professional snooker player, the then 15-year-old learned how to play poker. At the age of 16, he was spending time in pool halls, hustling, sports betting, and playing cards.[11]
When he was several credits short of graduation, he dropped out of high school and began his life as a rounder playing at local charity casinos, usually at Casino Country and Fundtime Games, and looking for illegal games around the city.[11] While in Toronto, he met and began dating Evelyn Ng,[12] who would also become a well-known professional poker player. After building up his bankroll, he left for Las Vegas at the age of 22 to pursue his dream of becoming a professional poker player. However, "The Strip" got the better of him and he was forced to move back home to Toronto to rebuild his bankroll.
In August 2005, he married Lori Lin Weber; they separated in November 2007.[13]
On New Years Eve 2018, Negreanu and poker host Amanda Leatherman became engaged. [14]
Negreanu has a blog at Full Contact Poker where he posts his thoughts and feelings about life, politics, and the poker world. He is also a heavy National Hockey League (NHL) fan, once claiming on Poker After Dark at the dream table he was thinking of declining the offer because the tournament was in the middle of hockey season. He is often seen wearing NHL jerseys of the Toronto Maple Leafs and other teams. Daniel became a vegetarian in 2000 and has been vegan since 2006.[15][16] After many years living in the United States, he received his green card on July 15, 2009. On November 23, 2009, his mother died in her sleep after being ill for many months.[17]
Philanthropy [ edit ]
Negreanu has a history of philanthropy. In addition to frequent appearances in charity events such as "Ante Up for Africa", which raises money for the crisis-torn region of Darfur, Negreanu is the founder of the annual "Big Swing" charity golf event.[18] The first Big Swing event was held on June 25, 2009 at the Harrah's Rio Secco Golf Club. Professional poker players paired with celebrities who donated $3,000 to the Lili Claire Foundation, a Las Vegas charity that serves children born with special needs and their families.[19]
Poker career [ edit ]
Negreanu is an accomplished tournament and cash game player. He has amassed six World Series of Poker bracelets (WSOP), two World Poker Tour (WPT) championships, and reached numerous WSOP and WPT final tables, and won various other tournament titles. Negreanu was named the 2004 Card Player Player of the Year[20] and the WSOP Player of the Year.[2] He was also named the 2004-05 WPT Player of the Year. In 2006, Negreanu was named "Favorite Poker Player" at Card Player Magazine's Player of the Year Awards Gala. In 2013, he captured two WSOP bracelets as well as another WSOP Player of the Year award, becoming the only player to win the award twice.[21] In November 2014, Negreanu was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in Las Vegas.
In the past, Negreanu has regularly played the "Big Game" in Bobby's Room, in the Bellagio casino, Las Vegas, where the limits are $400–$800 or greater and the games are mixed. He is a self-admitted action junkie who always seeks new challenges and sets high goals for himself, not only at the poker table but also on the golf course. Unlike many other players, he is very outspoken about his poker results and regularly posts updates in the forums at the Full Contact Poker website. Some of Negreanu's success is attributed to his ability to read opponents. When asked about this, Negreanu explained that the most important skill he employs is observing what hands his opponents play and how capable they are of playing them.[22]
Tournament Poker [ edit ]
World Series of Poker [ edit ]
Negreanu's first cash at the WSOP was also his first WSOP bracelet. Negreanu won $169,460 in the $2,000 Pot Limit Hold'em event in the 1998 World Series of Poker, becoming the youngest WSOP bracelet winner in history — a record he held until 2004 (Scott Fischman). Negreanu has since captured another five bracelets. He has 36 career WSOP final table appearances, including two apiece at the WSOP Europe and at the WSOP Asia-Pacific, and 103 money finishes.[2]
An "A" following a year denotes bracelet(s) won at the World Series of Poker Asia-Pacific
An "E" following a year denotes bracelet(s) won at the World Series of Poker Europe
In addition to his 6 bracelets, he also won a WSOP Circuit ring in 2006.
World Poker Tour [ edit ]
World Poker Tour Titles Year Tournament Prize (US$) 2004 $10,000 Borgata Poker Open $1,117,400 2004 $15,000 Five Diamond World Poker Classic $1,795,218
Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) [ edit ]
SCOOP Titles Year Tournament Prize (US$) 2013 $5,200 PL Omaha [6-Max] $216,000
World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) [ edit ]
WCOOP Titles Year Tournament Prize (US$) 2016 $2,100 HORSE Championship $200K GTD $61,865.47
Other notable tournaments [ edit ]
Negreanu's first major successes on the tournament poker scene came in 1997 with three tournament wins, including two events at the World Poker Finals at Foxwoods Resort Casino, earning $55,064 and being named the tournament's best all-around player.
In November 2008, Negreanu won the fourth-annual British Columbia Poker Championships main event, topping a field of 690 players (a personal high for Daniel), and earning $371,910 CAD ($299,951 USD).[23]
Negreanu won $1 million as the winner of the 2016 Shark Cage tournament organized by PokerStars.net.[24]
As of 2018, his total live tournament winnings exceed $39,500,000.[25] His 103 cashes at the WSOP account for over $16,000,000 of those winnings.[2]
Cash games [ edit ]
In addition to Negreanu's regular appearances in the big game at Bobby's Room, he played in all seven seasons of the television show High Stakes Poker. He also played in two seasons of PokerStars Big Game.
Online poker [ edit ]
In December 2005, Negreanu became the professional spokesperson for an online poker site called Poker Mountain. He played at this cardroom under the screen name "KidPoker". In June 2005 he announced his decision to terminate that relationship due to software issues that were problematic enough to cause a shutdown of the site.[26] In 2006, he used Full Contact Poker to launch a competition to select a protégé, whom Daniel would attempt to mold into a world-class live tournament poker player. He agreed to pay the protégé's entry fee into four $10,000 buy-in events. Daniel's first protégé was Brian Fidler. In 2007, Daniel ran a second protégé promotion, which was won by Anthony Mak.
In June 2007, Negreanu signed with PokerStars, joining Chris Moneymaker and many other professional poker players as a member of Team PokerStars.[1] His Full Contact Poker site has since returned to being a forum and informational site. After "Black Friday" (the 2011 US government crackdown on online poker), Negreanu moved back to Canada in order to continue playing online poker on PokerStars.
Other poker activities [ edit ]
Upon opening, the Wynn Las Vegas resort recruited him as their "Poker Ambassador" to play for any stake in their poker room. The arrangement lasted until October 2005, when he opted out because it was restricting his ability to play for high stakes outside the Wynn.
Negreanu has played poker on various TV shows such as Late Night Poker, Poker After Dark, and High Stakes Poker, as well as serving as a commentator and stand-in host on Ultimate Poker Challenge. He also appeared in the third season of Poker Superstars Invitational Tournament. In January 2007, Negreanu appeared in the Fox Reality original series Rob and Amber: Against the Odds, in which he mentored reality television personality Rob Mariano in his bid to become a professional poker player.
In May 2008, Negreanu's book Power Hold'em Strategy was released. The book resembles the Doyle Brunson book Super/System in that it has contributions from several other poker players, including Evelyn Ng, Erick Lindgren, Paul Wasicka, Todd Brunson, and David Williams. Negreanu's section presents and explains the strategy of small ball poker. Negreanu is also featured in the 2006 poker video game Stacked with Daniel Negreanu, providing tips and hints as to how to play effectively. He has written over 100 articles for CardPlayer Magazine and contributed to Doyle Brunson's revised book, Super System II. He has tutored on the web as part of Poker School Online and also personally given lessons to celebrities such as Tobey Maguire and Shannon Elizabeth. In addition to his poker books, Negreanu has created a 38 section Master Class teaching poker theory and play through video lessons.[27]
Other ventures [ edit ]
Negreanu made a cameo appearance as a poker player playing against the mutant Gambit in the film X-Men Origins: Wolverine as well as a poker player in The Grand, and as himself in the film Lucky You. On season two of Sports Science, he attempted to fool a lie detector. He also appeared in Katy Perry's music video for "Waking Up in Vegas" as a poker player. On March 20, 2013 he appeared on an episode of the CBC Television program Mr. D, playing himself. Besides that, he also appeared in a TV series dedicated to poker called Tilt in 2005. Daniel was a major advocate of the move to bring the National Hockey League to Las Vegas, along with Malaysian billionaire and fellow poker player Richard Yong.[28]
Negreanu is also an avid fan of Hearthstone: Heroes of WarCraft. After picking up the game in 2015, he began streaming it alongside poker on Twitch and was invited to a showmatch during the Hearthstone World Championship at BlizzCon 2015 in Anaheim, California against former StarCraft: Brood War pro and fellow WSOP and WPT champion Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, which he won 3-1.[29]
In September 2015 Negreanu posed for a PETA vegan campaign.[30]
Bibliography [ edit ]
Hold'em Wisdom for all Players (2007) ISBN 1-58042-210-1
(2007) ISBN 1-58042-210-1 Power Hold'em Strategy (2008) ISBN 1-58042-204-7
(2008) ISBN 1-58042-204-7 More Hold'em Wisdom for all Players (2008) ISBN 1-58042-224-1 |
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin hailed "unprecedented levels of cooperation" with China, including $7 billion in new investment deals, as he kicked off a two-day visit to Beijing Tuesday.
The main item still under negotiation: a potential $1 trillion contract to export Siberian natural gas to China's industrial heartland, which would see Russia providing a third of China's energy needs by the end of this decade.
Though the main substance of the burgeoning Russia-China relationship remains trade – Chinese cash and consumer goods for Russian arms, hydrocarbons, and engineering products – the strategic dimension is becoming more important, experts say.
Putin, who's expected to return to his previous job as Russian president early next year, is making his 16th visit to China since becoming Russia's top leader almost 12 years ago.
"While Putin remains prime minister, the focus of Russia-China relations will stay on economics," says Alexander Khramchikhin, an expert with the independent Institute of Political and Military Analysis in Moscow. "The main subject today is gas. The political dimension will wait until Putin's president again."
China overtook Germany as Russia’s biggest trading partner last year. Annual turnover in Russia-China commerce may exceed $70 billion in 2011 and reach $200 billion in 2020, up from $59 billion in 2010, Putin told journalists.
[ Video is no longer available. ]
Putin's 'Eurasian Union' ...
But the crucial political subtext of Putin's visit is an article he published last week in the Moscow daily Izvestia calling for the creation of a "Eurasian Union," a confederation of former Soviet states that might eventually rival the European Union or the United States.
"We suggest creating a powerful supra-national union capable of becoming a pole in the modern world, and at the same time an effective bridge between Europe and the dynamic Asia-Pacific Region," Putin wrote.
That suggests Russia may be moving away from its previous priority of building relations with the European Union, and seeking to build stronger ties with China and the wider Asian region.
"Putin's proposal of creating a Eurasian Union is the necessary political background for this visit to China," says Andrei Klimov, deputy chair of the Russian State Duma's international affairs commission. "And after Putin voiced his ambition to return to the presidency, it must be noted that he's not just an ordinary head of government or party leader making this trip."
"I am sure the Chinese are very interested in this [Eurasian Union] idea," Mr. Klimov adds. "If I were them I'd have a lot of questions about the prospect of such a powerful union appearing near China's borders."
Russia and China have long been working together on central Asian security matters through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and have held several joint military exercises under its aegis.
But political dimensions seem certain to grow as Putin, heading into what may be 12 more years as Russia's supreme leader, looks for ways to develop Russia's underpopulated and largely untapped Siberian and far eastern regions, which abut some of the world's most populous and economically active zones in eastern Asia.
... and how it ties into China strategy
"It's not a coincidence that Putin published his article about a Eurasian Union just a week before visiting China," says Andrei Ostrovsky, deputy director of the official Institute of Far Eastern Studies in Moscow. "Russia has been developing in a European direction for the past 20 years, while largely ignoring Asia. The difference in development levels between Russia's Asian areas and those in China is now striking. There is a growing recognition that we need each other. A Chinese role in developing Siberia and the Russian far east could be of huge significance."
In recent months Moscow has advocated a pipeline that would run through North Korea to South Korea, which together with associated rail links would bring Russian commercial power into the heart of the far east.
After meeting his Chinese counterpart, Premier Wen Jiabao, on Tuesday, Putin said the two had discussed investment projects and global affairs, and had discovered a "mutual desire to find compromise on difficult questions which inevitably arise .... In political, humanitarian spheres we have no problems at all. We have reached unprecedented levels of cooperation," he said.
Deals to be signed
Among the deals to be signed during Putin's visit are a $4 billion joint investment fund, a $1.5 billion deal for a Russian aluminium smelter in Taishet, and other cooperation agreements in energy-saving technology, high-speed railways, nanotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and the development of fast-neutron nuclear reactors, according to Russian media reports.
But disagreements over the price of gas are holding up the biggest deal, which would commit China to growing dependence on Russian natural gas, worth an estimated $1 trillion over the next decade.
Russia's state gas monopoly Gazprom wants China to pay prices similar to Europe, which gets almost 30 percent of its energy needs from Russia, but the Chinese are said to want a better deal.
"Those who sell always want to sell at a higher price, while those who buy, want to buy at a lower price," Putin told journalists in Beijing Tuesday, suggesting a deal was near at hand. "We need to reach a compromise that will satisfy both sides." |
In January it was reported that U.S. House of Representatives Member David Schweikert will speak at a Washington blockchain event, organized by the Chamber of Digital Commerce – the first time a sitting Congressman on the finance committee will be addressing the bitcoin community in the American capital.
Now we bring you an interview with the creator of the event and the founder of of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, a DC-based trade association promoting acceptance digital assets, Perianne Boring.
Join the iFX EXPO Asia and discover your gateway to the Asian Markets
Please tell us about your background and what led you to create the Chamber of Digital Commerce
I began my career as a legislative analyst in the US House of Representatives, advising on finance, economics, tax and healthcare policy.
This gave me a chance to see firsthand how important the dialogue is between policy makers, regulators and industry in developing pro-growth legislation and regulation. I’ve also learned how to facilitate that dialogue and what happens when industry is not included in the policy discussions.
Prior to forming the Chamber, I was a television host and the anchor of “Prime Interest,” an international finance program that aired in over 100 countries to over 650 million viewers. I was also a contributor at Forbes, and authored the column “Boring Economics.”
Bitcoin was one of my favorite topics to cover on my show. Then 2013 happened – the year bitcoin’s reputation was crushed – which lead to multiple federal rule-makings and Congressional hearings. In my work, I often called for formal representation for the blockchain industry in DC. I eventually came to realize that this was my calling, which led to the formation of the Chamber.
Suggested articles Why Brokerages Outsource Their Broker TechnologyGo to article >>
What are the perceptions of U.S lawmakers about bitcoin?
It is quite a mixed bag at this point and education is key. A big focus of the Chamber is to help close the education gap within government to ensure those who are creating policy do so with industry input and a knowledge and appreciation of the potential promise of blockchain technology.
Some say Washington has the most to lose if the current system changes. Is that really an issue?
In my view, Bitcoin is not meant to replace the USD; it’s an alternative.
The Chinese central bank wants its own cryptocurrency. Do you think that is something we can see the Fed doing?
David Andolfatto, Vice President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, did publish a post on his blog advocating for a “Fed Coin.” Central banks certainly could benefit from blockchain technology. However, I don’t expect Chairwoman Yellen to give her monetary powers over to a consensus model anytime soon. A more likely scenario would be for the Fed to phase out paper money and move to a full digital currency economy. If this were to happen, as a central bank, I would expect to see the Fed operate a centralized system.
Above and beyond monetary and fiscal policy, blockchain tech can strengthen many other areas within the public sector. And it’s not just me saying this. The UK Chief Scientist, Sir Mark Walport recently outlined a number of instances where distributed ledgers could strengthen public services.
The blockchain provides state-of-the-art cryptology. Data security, health records, social security records, birth certificates, voting records and many other assets commonly found in the public sector could benefit from blockchain technology.
What do you plan to achieve with the Summit?
The DC Blockchain Summit is the keystone event in Washington. The Summit will feature representatives from leading companies in every industry who are pioneering with bitcoin, blockchain and distributed ledger technologies. We are bringing together Congressional leaders, federal agencies, technologists, and industry leaders to improve the policy dialogue, and close the education gap on all sides. |
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A brave 12-year-old Warwickshire boy – set to travel to America for life saving treatment to treat his rare form of cancer – is battling to raise £10,000 so that his mum and dad can join him.
The NHS is funding Adrian Secareanu’s medical care in Florida to rid him of Mucoepidermoid Carcinoma – a tumour in his neck and jaw.
And charity Kds ‘N’ Cancer has launched an appeal, supported by Adrian, to raise the cash to fund his parents Corina and Constantin to stay with him while he undergoes proton beam therapy at the University of Florida in Jacksonville.
Adrian, from Rugby, is expected to spend at least three months in the US.
Adrian, who celebrated his 12th birthday in March, said: “This is an opportunity to stop the tumour completely and get back to a normal life. Having the Proton Therapy will be a step closer to achieving that.”
He was diagnosed with the rare form of cancer after his concerned mum, Corina took him to the dentist when she discovered a lump in his cheek in December 2012.
Dismissed at first as an infection- the persistent growth would not go away – and the Princethorpe College pupil was referred to a specialist who confirmed the family’s worst fears.
Corina, a 48-year-old nurse at Rugby’s St Cross Hospital said: “You think something like this wouldn’t happen to you and that it can’t touch you. But we now know this is not the case.”
The inspirational youngster had several operations at Coventry Hospital.
Constantin, a fork lift truck driver, aged 58, said: “He can become frightened and needs our support and encouragement. We need this funding to allow us to be with him over the coming months and help us keep things normal back home in the UK.
“I need to be strong for him. Adrian really deserves this opportunity. All children in this situation deserve that chance. Children are very resilient and Adrian copes with it better than I do.
“Hopefully we can help raise awareness of the condition because another child could have to go through the exact same situation as Adrian.
“Adrian is a wonderful child, very polite. We want to have his life back. He has hardly missed a day at school. They said he has been wonderful with it all.
“Once we realised Proton Therapy would help Adrian, I called Kids ‘N’ Cancer on the Friday and they were at our home the next day offering their support. You could not find better people to help us.”
Mike Hyman, founder of Kids ‘N’ Cancer, said: “We try to be there as an emotional crutch for the family and ensure the funding is reached as soon as possible. Time is important, so we try to help get the fundraising up and running as quickly as we can.
“Adrian’s parents work long hours and do everything they can to give him a good start in life. We are here to help them in any way we can.”
To support Adrian Secareanu in his fundraising effort, visit www.kidsncancer.co.uk or donate at www.justgiving.com/Adrain-Secareanu. |
Skeptic Conference Battles Sexual Harassment Allegations
The skeptic conference this weekend in Las Vegas has reportedly seen a drop in attendance by women, and the reason may be due to sexual harassment allegations. Several atheist groups have put policies in place in the last few weeks to combat the growing problem of unwanted sexual advances occurring at conferences.
The annual conference, includes panels and workshops with such names as "Promoting Skepticism at the Local Level," "The Future of Skepticism Online: Crowd-Sourced Activism" and "Promoting Skepticism in Classroom Settings." Interestingly, these types of discussions are clearly looking to promote the "religion" of skepticism, and even works to indoctrinate high school kids.
Last year, women made up 40 percent of the attendees at The Amazing Meeting (TAM), and this year it is expected to be at 31 percent of the 1,200 attendees. Although the organizers of the skeptics, atheists and humanist gathering point to other possible reasons, like the fact that women are "caretakers" and cannot get away, some believe women are shying away from the conference due to unwanted sexual advances.
Several female skeptic bloggers have made it clear that they will not be attending, as reported by the Washington Post. Rebecca Watson, for example, canceled her TAM appearance because "she does 'not feel welcome or safe.'"
http://news.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474981474118
Scheduled workshops:
http://www.amazingmeeting.com/TAM2012/workshops July 14, 2012 08:15 PM EDTThe skeptic conference this weekend in Las Vegas has reportedly seen a drop in attendance by women, and the reason may be due to sexual harassment allegations. Several atheist groups have put policies in place in the last few weeks to combat the growing problem of unwanted sexual advances occurring at conferences.The annual conference, includes panels and workshops with such names as "Promoting Skepticism at the Local Level," "The Future of Skepticism Online: Crowd-Sourced Activism" and "Promoting Skepticism in Classroom Settings." Interestingly, these types of discussions are clearly looking to promote the "religion" of skepticism, and even works to indoctrinate high school kids.Last year, women made up 40 percent of the attendees at The Amazing Meeting (TAM), and this year it is expected to be at 31 percent of the 1,200 attendees. Although the organizers of the skeptics, atheists and humanist gathering point to other possible reasons, like the fact that women are "caretakers" and cannot get away, some believe women are shying away from the conference due to unwanted sexual advances.Several female skeptic bloggers have made it clear that they will not be attending, as reported by the Washington Post. Rebecca Watson, for example, canceled her TAM appearance because "she does 'not feel welcome or safe.'"Scheduled workshops: 2 Tweet |
From SGUTranscripts
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SGU Episode 384 24th November 2012 SGU 383 SGU 385 Skeptical Rogues S: Steven Novella B: Bob Novella J: Jay Novella E: Evan Bernstein Guest RW: Richard Wiseman Quote of the Week The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom but to set a limit to infinite error. Bertolt Brecht Links Download Podcast Show Notes Forum Topic
Introduction [ edit ]
You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.
S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Saturday October 27th 2012 and this is your host Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.
B: Hey everybody.
S: Jay Novella.
J: Hey guys.
S: Evan Bernstein.
E: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
S: And we have a special guest this week, Richard Wiseman, Richard welcome back to the Skeptics' Guide.
RW: Bonjour, ça va?
S: You are the host, the MC of CSICon two thousand and twelve.
RW: Yes.
B: Twenty twelve.
S: Twenty twelve, and you're doing and excellent job, we're enjoying it very much and thanks again for joining us on the show.
Special Report: Richard Wiseman on his Dream Research (0:44) [ edit ]
Richard updates us on his dream research and the iPhone app - Dream:ON
S: So, we were chatting a while ago about your recent work that you've been doing, you're working on something to do with dreams.
RW: I am, I'm working on Dream:ON which is an iPhone app which everyone can download because it's free, and it's an idea that came to me I guess about a year and a half ago when I looked at some very bizarre research from I think it's the early '70s from Stanford I think it was, and it was a guy who was waiting until people were in dream states, he was a sleep researcher.
B: Mr. LaBerge? Stephen LaBerge?
RW: No.
B: No?
R: No, no no. It's William Dement.
S: And we should mention before we go on that you are a psychologist.
RW: We should mention that.
S: Yes.
RW: Yes. Shall we?
S: Yes.
J: (laughs)
RW: Let's mention that. I'm a psychologist.
S: And author of several books, we'd like to...
RW: Oooh the books, Paranormality. That's very good, they were very kind, they gave me a little prize for that at this very conference.
S: Is that right?
RW: It was very nice.
S: A very prestigious prize I understand.
RW: Very prestigious prize, the Robert Bales critical thinking.
S: Yeah, you're following in the footsteps of some very prestigious recipients.
RW: I understand the previous recipient is not very far from me now.
S: That's right.
(laughter)
RW: Did it change your life?
S: Oh tremendously, yes. It altered the trajectory of my life in numerous ways.
RW: But I tell you what's nice is the money that comes with it. Ten thousand dollars, lovely.
(laughter)
E: Dollars or Euros, or Lira? Yen?
RW: So yes, I'm a psychologist, and I got interested in dreaming because of Paranormality actually, there's a chapter on precognitive dreams, so I got into the work of a guy called William Dement and he did this great experiment, best experiment ever, so in a sleep research lab, he waited until people were in dream state, showing REM, Rapid Eye Movement, and then he played in audio sounds, as audio uh, sounds...
S: As opposed to non-audio sounds.
RW: As opposed to those audio-visual images... of things like a steam train for about 20 seconds, and then he woke people up and they were dreaming about, they'd incorporated the sound into their dream.
S: Yeah.
RW: And about 50% of people he got this effect on. So I read about that and I thought, "wouldn't it be great if we could take that and roll it out on the iPhone and influence the whole world's dreams?" So I went to an iPhone company and they said, "that's insanely difficult" but they were prepared to try it, and we worked for a year and basically you take your iPhone at night, before you go to bed, you decide what time you want to wake up and then you put it on your matress next to you and it monitors movement in the half an hour, 30 minutes, before you wake up, it monitors movement very very closely and when it feels that you are very maximally still, i.e. dreaming because you're paralized in your dream, it plays in the sound scape of your choice, could be walking on a beach, could be out in nature, could be on an aeroplane, and that influences your dream, it wakes you up in a nice gentle way and then you're asked to report your dream into our dream bank, called the dream catcher.
S: The dream catcher.
J: Oh, that's very clever.
E: Yeah.
RW: It's good hey?
J: Yeah, that's good.
RW: So we rolled that out and currently, I just checked last week, we currently have 10 million dream reports.
J: Oh my god, wow.
RW: Isn't that scary? And the main finding is that when people wake up in the mornings, they can't spell.
(laughter)
RW: But it's lovely, and it doesn't work with everyone by any means, we're still changing the algorithms on it, because we can do that remotely, it's very scary what you can do on iPhones, over time you log on your iPhone, we send you a different algorithm but you don't know it and we get the data back and so on. And for some people it works very very well so we have people who are almost adicted to it, there's one woman whose dreams I read actually, almost every morning because she's having a long-term affair with George Clooney in her dreams.
S: Mmhmm. In her dreams.
RW: And she met him in Walmart, not for real, in her dream, about a month ago and now she dreams about him every night using the dreamscapes.
J: So really, this whole app was launced because you're just a really creepy voyeur.
RW: Pretty much, or that's also true, but it's incidental.
(laughter)
RW: But! But, but, but. So we've got a new dreamscape coming out this very week, I've completely lost track of time so I think it's coming out either the next couple of days or the couple of days after that, because we ask people what dream would you most like to have? And we ask guys and the answer was, we want to be part of a zombie attack.
B: Really? Wow, awesome!
S: Really?
E: Surprising.
J: Which side of the fence though?
RW: Oh, as a human.
J: OK.
B: Living human.
RW: Yep. So we have a well known news reader who is reading out this sort of news and suddenly there's a zombie attack and he takes you how to kill zombies, so that's the latest dreamscape. And then we're going to premium dreamscapes later on in the year which basically are sexually oriented. So you can have intercourse, as I refer to it as a psychologist...
(laughter)
RW: With celebrities. Yep.
J: How, how is your app going to make people dream those things?
RW: Voiceover artists.
J: So it's going to be basically like, "hey, this is J.Lo, we're gettin' it on."
S&E: (laughs)
RW: Yep. I'm doing the Elvis one.
J: Awesome.
(laughter)
S: Are you doing all dead celebrities, so you can avoid the...
RW: Precisely.
S: Aaah.
RW: Very good. Here we go: Uh huh huh.
(laughter)
E: Wow.
B: Nailed it.
E: I'll tell you.
S: I'm getting a little hard.
E: I'm in Nashville.
(laughter)
J: So that's the first thing that Elvis says. And then five minutes later he goes, "oh, oh."
RW: (laughs) No he only goes, "Uh huh huh" because that's all I can do.
J: Oh, OK (laughs)
RW: So that's the full extent of it. So it is a rather limited sexual dream. So yeah, so that's what I'm doing at the minute. I love it. I love messing around with all of these things.
J: That's cool.
B: Richard, that reminds me, I remember reading research, I think it was Stephen LaBerge, who was studying lucid dreaming and how to induce lucid dreams, he came up with the dream light which created these visual images having to do with sight, as opposed to the ones that don't.
(laughter)
B: So basically it determines when you're in REM sleep, it produces a light and if you're going to sleep you know that if you see a blue light then that means you're dreaming, so you will actually see the blue light in the dream, then you know this is a dream and then hopefully become lucid and then get some sort of control.
S: Well you could probably easily add a lucid track to say, "you are dreaming".
RW: Correct, we do have those.
B: Awesome.
RW: But lucid dreaming is so hard to do, but if you use the tracks a lot then the gentle voice whispers, "you're now dreaming" and you take control of it.
B: Oh, I'm going to try that.
RW: Um, we had a bit to do with Stephen, who is a big lucid dreamer, trying to develop these things, and I didn't know this about lucid dreams, it's so real to them that they have to do things to see whether or not they're lucid...
B: Yes. Reality testing, yeah.
RW: Reality testing. One of the things is looking into a mirror.
B: Really?
RW: Because if you look into a mirror you won't see your own reflection in a lucid dream, I think because the cognitive architecture to produce an image is too much for the brain, so that seems to be their number 1 test, you look into a mirror.
B: I'm familiar with two other ones.
S: To clarify, when they're awake?
RW: Yep.
S: They do these things to make sure they're not lucid dreaming?
RW: No, when they're dreaming, because they can't tell the difference. So yes, that's right. So when they're awake they'd do it, because they think, "oh I might be dreaming" and then see their reflection and think, "no this is reality I'd better not jump out of the building".
S: That's odd.
B: No it's not.
J: No it's not.
S: I mean I could see not knowing, if you're dreaming not knowing if you're dreaming or not, but when you're awake, really? They can't tell if they're awake?
J: No Steve, you're training yourself because if you do it enough, it becomes a habit and then you'll do it in your dream.
B: Right, that's the whole idea.
J: You're conditioning yourself.
S: No I get that. That's what I was trying to clarify. They're not looking in the mirror when they're awake to make sure that they're really awake.
RW: Well they would be because otherwise if they knew that they were dreaming, there'd be no point in looking in the mirror.
S: Yeah, so they're talking about something different from what you're talking about.
RW: OK.
S: They're talking about training yourself to do something when you're awake so that you'll do it in your dream and that will enable you to achieve a lucid state.
RW: No.
S: You're talking about, when they're awake, they're like "hey, am I really awake, or is this a lucid dream?"
RW: Correct.
S: And they'll look in the mirror to check themselves.
RW: That's correct.
J: OK.
S: Now that seems amazing to me.
B: What I've learned with lucid dreaming is that you get in the habit of asking yourself, "am I awake or am I dreaming right now? How do I know I'm not?". And the two ways that I read about, one is to read, open a book, read anything and invariably in a dream if you read something and look away and look back, the words will have changed and be jumbled up and I've done it many times and for me it works every time, the words always change. The other way to test it is to test physics really, you jump up in the air and you try to extend your fall and if you extend it even a fraction of a second, you know you're dreaming or in some kind of microgravity.
J: There's the rub though, because your detection of reality is compromised is dreaming, right? That's the whole thing.
B: But you're not going to read words and then look away and then read back and then you're going to see the same words, they will change.
J: No I agree with you, but what I'm saying is that when you're dreaming, for the most part all these crazy things are happening, and it's not occurring to you that you're dreaming because your brain is not fully functioning.
B: Right, you need a certain level of lucidity just to think about doing that, and people who have good dream recall in general can kind of get into that state more often than people that can't do it because they never really reach a level of lucidity where they can question reality.
RW: That's right, I mean what was quite funny with the Dream:ON app is, because I was actually the main pilot for it, and it's a very difficult thing, the algorithms, the movement, the volume, so the thing is that as you start to move, it lowers the volume in the dreamscape and so on. Anyway, so I'm testing all of this stuff, and so I'm sleeping with Caroline, my partner, who is a very light sleeper, and so I put this iPhone down one night and say, "oh, we're doing a test tonight" and she'd go, "oh, fine" and stuff, and then about you know, 3 am it would zip on with, "you are currently asleep!"
E: Oh gosh.
(laughter)
RW: "You are currently asleep and you can control..." and she was furious! And so I used to wake up with the iPhone in very interesting places. But um...
(laughter)
RW: But I'm quite a heavy sleeper, so I slept through the whole thing.
B: There's an app for that.
RW: Yes. So she had a very tough time with it, but we think we've got it right now, it's not bad.
J: OK, so what's your ultimate goal here?
RW: Well I'll tell you what it is. One is there's loads of research showing the mood that you're in for the day is often set by your final dream, so you have a rough dream and then you're in a bad mood. So trying to change that. The other thing is I really got in to the literature on depression and dreaming, I didn't realise that there's such a strong tie-up. So depressives dream about five times as much as normal people as it were, non-depressives. And then in their dreams they're doing the same as they do in real life, which is ruminating, they're going over their problems time and again. So the idea of kind of going in and giving them a more positive dream experience is sort of an interesting one, it's quite curious.
J: Yeah.
S: Mmhmm. Are you controlling for medication with that? I know medications for depression can give you very vivid dreams.
RW: I don't know the literature well enough to answer that question.
B: Do they dream five times as much or do they have five times better recall?
RW: Well this would be coming from sleep labs, so I would think that it would be about five times as much time in the classic...
S: in the REM...
RW: ... in the REM state.
B: That's amazing.
RW: There's also illusory insomniacs. So these are people who think that they're having a rough night's sleep and in fact you put them into a sleep lab and they're having a perfectly normal night's sleep, but they're dreaming about being awake.
B: Oh, awesome.
RW: It's the weirdest thing. So I've really got into dreaming and sleep, I think it's fascinating.
J: So a couple more questions because I'm totally blown away by people who think that they're not sleeping well. What about people, they think that they don't sleep well and they're also feeling tired during the day, but can you're, is there something about the quality of your dreaming that can affect your wakefulness.
RW: Well part of it is the emotional tone of the dream, so if you're having anxiety dreams, particularly if you wake up from them, you just feel pretty bad, so I just like the idea of trying to sort of tinker with it, and it's not my area or expertise so I know the literature a little bit but not especially well, so I guess what I bring to the party is the mass participation thing, I'm not afraid to roll this out to half a million people and to take risks. I'm sure a lot of sleep and dream researchers would go, "Well, that's all very fringey and weird" but I think you know, let's try it, let's see what happens. And let's just be honest about the results, if it doesn't work, what's it matter? We've all had fun with it.
S: Yeah that's cool, that's interesting. I just, just getting that many data points, you said millions of people, I mean something's got to emerge from that, it's interesting.
RW: Over time, I love the fact that we can change the algorithms, we can change the dreamscapes, getting real-time reports back, and we may develop something, who knows?
S: You know the term dream catcher, you know that was a reference an Indian art form where they make these dream catchers that you.
RW: Precisely, to stop bad dreams coming through the window, yeah. So we had that and we developed a new app which spins off of the one which I can't talk about but it's a big thing at the moment, it's taking up a lot of my time.
S: Cool.
E: Very neat.
S: Good to have a hobby (laughs).
RW: I think so, yeah. It's good to have something you're interested in, other than pornography.
(laughter)
S: Well before we go on to other news items...
RW: Uh huh huh.
This Day in Skepticism (13:34) [ edit ]
November 24, 1859: On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, is published
S: Well before we on to other news items, or do news items, we're going to do This Day in Skepticism, Evan you're taking over since Rebecca's not with us today.
E: Yep. Yep. So this show's going to air on November 24th, on November 24th in 1859, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Darwin's ground-breaking book was published in England, are you familiar with that Richard?
RW: England, yes. I've heard of it.
E: Yes, once or twice. The British naturalist Charles Darwin detailed the scientific evidence he had collected during his voyage on the Beagle in the 1930s (sic) and he presented his idea that species are the result of gradual biological evolution in which nature encourages, through natural selection, the propagation of those species best suited to the environment, or their environemtns I should say. He'd been prompted to publish it at the time by Charles Lyell and he was the one who advised them that Alfred Russel Wallace, who was also a naturalist, he was approaching the same conclusions and he was about to get ready to publish his own results and he said to Charles, "hey you'd better get on the stick here, you're going to wind up in second place in this contest."
S: Yeah, well what happened was Wallace, being a younger, maybe naive, researcher sent his manuscript to Darwin to say, "hey, am I on to something here? Am I crazy? What do you think about this?" and Darwin was like, "uh, duh, this is, I'm just..." he saw that this guy was ready to scoop him on the thing he's been working for decades on, and it was his friends who said, "do it" so they presented both papers at I think it was the Royal Society and they made sure that Darwin's paper went first.
E: Yep, and on day 1 of the publication, they printed as many copies as they did and it sold out immediately, it was an instant success and hit and the rest is history from there, the controversy, creationism and all that.
S: Yeah, it's amazing how much Darwin got right. He, such a huge idea, evolution through natural selection, and if you read back, and you can actually now, you can get the whole book online for free, so if you want to read any part of The Origin of Species, you can get to it[1][2]. He really thought through a lot of different things about the evolutionary process and it was, I mean obviously he didn't get everything right, we've come a long way since Darwin in terms of evolutionary theory, but he gave a huge start to that field. Usually you have these fledgling, like a new scientific discipline will start out with just some ideas and it's very preliminary, but he did spend a lot of time developing his theories to a pretty advanced degree before then publishing it, so the whole evolution through natural selection thing hit the ground running in a way, it's interesting.
E: Hit the ground running, definitely, definitely did.
RW: He also did a lot of work on facial expressions of course, as well. It was he who put electrical currents into an alcoholic's face to contort his face into various expressions and take photos and then when people would come around to visit him at his house, he would show them the photos and they had to guess the expression, he was looking at reliability of facial expressions. Apparently it really hurts to have electrical current applied to your face.
J: Yeah, right?
(laughter)
RW: It's true! Tha's why he used an alcoholic, because he couldn't feel the pain.
B: Did you make that up?
RW: It's absolutely true, it's absolutely true. Yeah. I found out some trivia, do you want some David Hume trivia?
S: Yes. sure.
E: Oh.
RW: So David Hume, the sort of founder, in some ways skepticism and humanism and so on...
S: We quote him frequently on the show.
RW: Oh, OK. Right, so I live in Edinburgh for a lot of the time and Hume was in Edinburgh two streets away from where I live and so I thought I'd go and see his house, so I went round and his house is there, and the funny thing is that the part of Edinburgh it's in is called New Town, which was built in the Enlightenment, so all of the streets have very kind of modern names as it were, there's no old names like Saint whatever, except the street that he's in which is Saint David's Street. So what the council did, because they didn't like him because he was an athiest, when he moved into the street, they renamed the street Saint David's Street after him, as in Saint David Hume, so every time he had to give the address he had to write Saint David. So they actually renamed the whole street just to annoy him. I think that's great!
(laughter)
E: A badge of honour.
RW: Yeah. How annoyed would you be though if you moved in as an athiest and so on and they rename the whole street after you but give you a sainthood. So there we are. That's my little bit of trivia, it's not much but it's something.
E: Fascinating.
S: All right, well the first news item we're going to talk about is...
RW: I've got a dead dog in my garden.
(laughter)
RW: I've got a dead dog in my garden. I moved into this house...
(laughter)
S: Now you're just f-ing with us.
(laughter)
RW: No! I'm not! I haven't got my... I haven't got my iPhone with me, otherwise I'd show you, well not the dog. So I moved into this house, we moved into this house, we had to move out of the old house because Caroline wasn't sleeping very well there...
(laughter)
E: Something to do with an iPhone app or something.
RW: Every single morning! So, and it comes with a little bit of garden which is very unusual right in the middle of town, and it's covered in ivy. So I go out to cut down the ivy, being the manly chap that I am, and it's very difficult, have you ever tried to cut ivy and get rid of it?
S: No.
E: You need a machete or something.
RW: It's hard work, it grows into the ground and everything. So I'm working away and I hit my foot on something, I look down and it's a gravestone for a dog! I've got a dead dog in my garden.
E: Wait, how did you know it was a gravestone for a dog and not something else?
RW: So it said on it.
E: "This is a gravestone for a dog"
RW: Yeah.
E: Well there you go.
RW: Yeah.
J: So did you dig it up?
RW: I'm not going to dig up a dead dog!
E: Why not?
RW: It's 200 years old.
S: Oh that's cool.
RW: The gravestone's 200 years old.
J&S: Oh that's awesome.
RW: So I've got a dead dog that is 200 years old in my garden.
J: That is so English.
(laughter)
RW: It's Scottish. Believe me...
(laughter)
J: It is? OK.
RW: You don't want to make that mistake. Yeah, it's very Scottish, so yes. So I've got a dead dog in my garden.
S: I have a dead dog story too. So I was visiting my wife's mother with my two daughters for some holiday a few years ago and we were exploring in the back yard because they have lots of shale and every now and then you can find a little fossil leaf or something in the shale, and we came across a skull of some kind of animal, and then over there was a rib, and over here was something else, so we gathered all of the bones, it took us like an hour to find as many bones as we can, we laid them all out together and I started going through pictures to figure out what it was and I eventually figured out that it was a dog, then I...
RW: You laid out the bones.
S: Well I put them into the position, you know.
RW: How old are your daughters?
S: She was like 10 at the time, 9 or 10. They're good with that.
(laughter)
S: My daughters have had...
E: They're palaeontologists, right?
S: They're all nerded out and they're good with that whole macabre thing.
RW: It's not nerded up, it's strange.
S: My younger daughter loves her uncle Bob, loves Halloween, her favourite colours are orange and black.
B: Awesome.
S: She already has picked out her favourite weapon for in case of a zombie apocalypse, she's good.
B: (laughs)
RW: It's like living in another world.
(laughter)
S: Love it. So anyway, we figured out it was a dog, and it was the exact size of a dog that my mother-in-law owned.
RW: Oh!
S: That had died, like twenty years previously, fifteen years previously.
J: So you dug up your family's dead dog.
S: I didn't dig it up, this is what happened. The dog just vanished one night and they never found it, and it was sick. I think the thing just went away to die, but it was like right over the hill in the back yard, so they didn't realise that the dog had died like 50 feet from the house.
J: Oh my god, talk about lazy, like they didn't explore the woods right around the house?
S: It was in the woods right outside the house.
J: That's pathetic.
S: So I solved that mystery for them, I solved that twenty year old lost-dog mystery.
RW: So your daughters would have gone to school and they would say "what did you do at the weekend" and they'd say "daddy reassembled a dead dog."
(laughter)
S: Yes.
E: They didn't reanimate it or anything, you know, just...
RW: Well this brings me to one of the biggest mysteries. There are two things, my dead dog joke, this won't work except here. So a man's driving along and he knocks over a dog and he thinks "well that's terrible" so he goes and knocks on a house nearby and he says "I think I've just knocked over your dog" and they said "well what did it look like?" and the guy goes "well it's kind of"...
(laughter)
RW: And the person said "no I meant before you knocked it over" and so so the guy goes "well I think it was kind of"...
(laughter)
RW: So anyway, what I'm wondering...
S: Those are great visual jokes for a podcast.
(laughter)
RW: I realise now the error of my ways. Yes.
(laughter)
RW: But you can tell from the laughter in the room just how good that joke was.
E: It's playing well.
RW: So, I occasionally go into the countryside, I don't really like the countryside but I occasionally go out there. It's full of animals. Where are all their bones? Where are all the cow bones, the fox bones? Where? They're big boned animals.
S: They're there.
RW: They're not!
J: They get eaten?
E: Dragged away?
RW: No it's a genuine question, I haven't got an answer. Like you take a horse, that's a big boned animal, it would take years for that thing to degrade or whatever it does.
S: Scavengers do break up the bones and eat the bones.
B: Marrow, the bone marrow.
RW: Scavengers, you mean people like Steve who goes along and assembles...
(laughter)
RW: "Hey kids, stop! There's a horse over there, it'll take some time but I'll put it all right!" Scavengers? Foxes?
S: I don't know if foxes are scavengers are they? Don't they hunt like...
RW: Well what's a scavenger then?
S: In England? What's a scavenger in England? Well, probably vultures...
J: Wolves...
RW: There aren't any vultures!
E: Wolves, Irishmen, I don't know.
(laughter)
RW: Oooooh! Don't come and visit! Not after that line! Irishmen! Fantastic.
E: The day I cracked Richard up.
J: No, it is a good question though.
RW: There aren't any vultures.
J: OK. But let's start with the logical idea that something is happening to them, because you're right, they're not piled up high, knee-high in the woods.
RW: I have never seen the skeleton of a cow or a horse in the countryside.
E: Yeah, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.
S: I saw the skeleton of a deer once when I was walking through the woods, more than once.
RW: OK.
J: Yeah, but OK but.
S: For what it's worth.
RW: But not hundreds of them. You see hundreds of deer.
S: Not hundreds, yeah.
J: I've gone hiking in dozens and dozens of times in very heavily populated woods as far as animals are concerned, and very, very infrequently will I find a scull of something or whatever, you'd figure yeah there'd be a lot of bones kicking around. Nobody, I'm sure that people aren't picking them up.
S: Do you look? Do you like really make a concerted effort to look?
RW: It could be like your dog. Maybe they go and hide 50 meters from where they were last seen.
S: 20 years, 50 feet, not even meters, and they didn't find it.
RW: Feet. That's just weird.
S: Well it was kind of over a little hill, it was probably in the bushes.
J: Whatever Steve.
E: We measure things in feet.
S: I'm was surprised, I'm not defending it. But yeah, so I think it was partly, bones don't last for long in the wild.
RW: No they do, you can dig up a human skeleton a couple of hundred years later and it's still...
S: Yeah but that's not out in the open, that's under the ground, that's a big difference.
RW: No, if you put a horse skeleton in a field, it would be there for must be tens of years.
E: Many wild horses in England?
RW: Yeah, they're furious a lot of them.
B: Really?
RW: They are. Yeah. No we have horses, we have deer, we have cattle, I have never seen like, you know a skeleton of one. Something odd is happening.
S: You're saying this is a genuine mystery.
E: What fallacy is that, Steve?
RW: It's a genuine mystery which we need... it could be the Irishmen, that's the only...
E: See?
S: The conventional answer that I'm familiar with is that it's scavengers. I don't know what scavengers are in England, we could look that up.
RW: Crows?
S: Crows... yeah.
E: Birds.
RW: A horse is a big thing.
S: Some scavengers eat bones, I mean they actually break up the bones and get the marrow and destroy it but I don't know again which ones would still be extant in England.
B: Maybe animals bury their dead and we're just not aware of it?
S: No.
B: Is that possible?
J: Maybe invisible, psychic, teleporting bigfoot take care of the bones.
S: Yeah.
E: That's an explanation, all right.
S: But that argument comes up with bigfoot because then we say "well why don't we find any bigfoot remains?" And people say "well you don't find remains of animals out in the wilderness." And to an extent that's correct.
E: Yeah.
J: OK, well why don't we do some research and we'll revisit this one.
S: OK, well we are going to move on to some news items.
RW: What?
E: Any other non sequeters Richard you'd like?
S: Yeah, any other interjections or ejaculations you want to get out?
J: Well the other application that Richard was developing that he didn't want to mention is called the Porn Catcher.
S: The Porn Catcher?
E: Yes.
S: He's working on that with you is he?
E: What it is, it's an app that asks people to send him the link to their favourite porn.
S: Yeah.
E: And he analyses all of this. Psychologist.
B: Over and over.
RW: I'm just chatting.
(laughter)
RW: If you don't want me to chat...
News Items [ edit ]
Aspartame Study (26:30) [ edit ]
S: So there was a, there was a recent study published on aspertame. Aspertame is an artificial sweetener. It's been very controversial, since the internet, because people believe that aspertame is to blame for all sorts of horrible things because it ain't natural, right? But it's been widely studied, hundreds of published studies about it, and, in fact, it's perfectly safe. Not just the FDA, but multiple organizations, the WHO, and certainly in the UK and in Europe, have reviewed the data on aspertame and have concluded that there are no health risks when the product is consumed as intended, they always say. Which means, I guess, you're not eating buckets and buckets of it, but you're just using it as a sweetener. But there was a recent study looking at the incidence of lymphoma and leukemia in men and women drinking sugary sodas versus artificially sweetened drinks, and the study concluded that it was a slightly increased risk, risk in men only but not women who drank soft drinks sweetened with aspertame for leukemia and lymphoma. The Brigham and Women's Hospital put out a press release, the title of the press release was "The Truth Isn't Sweet When It Comes to Artificial Sweeteners" (an irresistible pun, right?), promoting the study. Just a couple days later they retracted their press release. They essentially said to the media, this is actually a rather weak study; we apologize for wasting your time. Please ignore our previous press release.
B: Is that unprecedented?
S: I don't know if it's unprecedented. It's good that they did it.
E: It's good that they retracted it.
B: Surprisingly good.
E: Had the damage been done, though?
S: Yeah, the damage is done. But it's, I mean, what happened was the press office was looking for news to put out and, so, one of their researchers was involved with this study and they put out the press release. But, we've talked about this before, the notion that there's always a lot of this research going on in the background, biomedical research and every field, most of it's crap, or preliminary, or the kind of data that's only interesting to other researchers in terms of an area perhaps of further research. And really, you have no business promoting the results of this study to the public. Not that you're trying to hide it from the public, but it does not rise to that level of public interest. It's just too preliminary. And essentially, they were called on this and they acknowledged that, yup, this is not the kind of study that should be getting a press release to the public, because the data was exceedingly weak. And I looked over it, and it is an extremely weak study. The correlation was very small. Easily the kind of thing that could be due to chance alone. It is not in line with other research which shows that there is no increased risk from any of these things, from consuming diet soda. It was only in certain subgroups, only when you're looking at the data in a certain way. So it was not robust at all.
RW: You've also got a correlation-causation issue, even if it is. . .
S: Yeah. Even if the correlation is true, it doesn't show you that there's a causation there. But it's interesting, because this is the kind of thing that often, like we do all the time, is you get either a press release or something that's in the news cycle, but it's a really preliminary, crappy study, and it is getting blown out of proportion or over-hyped, or scare mongering, in this case. So it's interesting that they did it to themselves. Where they sort of withdraw and say, whoops, we really shouldn't have done that, sorry. This was not an appropriate . . . I wonder, I wonder what the back story is on that. How that really happened.
E: Yeah, yeah.
J: Like, you mean, that they didn't do it with good intentions; maybe they were forced to do it?
S: I bet , I think, I don't know, I'm just inferring, you know, something, it's possible that the researcher himself contacted the press office and said "What the hell are you doing? This is not the kind of study that we wanna go shouting around to the public. This is a preliminary study with very soft findings. It's not worth it. Maybe he was worried that he would get embarrassed by it or something. But, it's interesting. I wonder how much of this kind of things is due to the internet. The web. Because there's this news cycle, and then there's often a blogging cycle immediately after that where you have a lot of science bloggers who know what they're talking about criticizing the media for misrepresenting studies. And the media's paying attention to that. I get contacted all the time by journalists or outlets who are responding to the backlash to the original horrible reporting about stories.
J: If that's true, Steve, then why aren't things getting better?
S: Yeah, well, you know, it, certainly subjectively it seems that way. I mean, I don't know if we're actually tracking it in any kind of objective way, but I think there are bright spots. But overall, the media reporting is getting worse it seems. And I think the conventional wisdom is that it's the, essentially the collapse of the business model of journalism because of the internet.
J: Um hmm.
S: But there are good reporters out there, and I do think that they're increasingly getting onto the idea that scientists can directly bypass them and write to the public and write blogs, et cetera. And that if they want to be relevant, remain relevant, they've gotta stay on board with that. Otherwise they're just gonna be blog fodder, you know, for scientists who are blogging directly.
J: Um hmm.
S: Interesting, but you know, the asptertame thing comes up frequently. I don't think we've really tackled it thoroughly on the show before, but still it's one of those urban legends, the idea that aspertame causes all of these horrible things. The primary thing they claim about aspertame now is the whole formaldehyde angle. Have you ever heard about this, Richard? One of the breakdown products of aspertame is formaldehyde and they sort of link formaldehyde to all kinds of horrible diseases and outcomes. But . . .
J: So wait, Steve, to clarify, when you digest aspertame, part of the digestion process converts it to formaldehyde, or parts of it to formaldehyde.
S: Yes.
E: Part of it.
S: Yeah, it's one of the metabolic breakdown products. But it just, like a lot of things, you know, a lot of foods that we eat, it gets broken down in to formaldehyde along the way to its ultimate breakdown products. But it insignificantly contributes to the amount of formaldehyde in your body and doesn't have any harm associated with it.
B: It's normal and natural.
S: Yeah, it's part of normal metabolism. But you tell people, aspertame gets broken down into this horrible, dangerous, scary sounding chemical, then the fear mongering goes from there.
Being a Psychopath (32:57) [ edit ]
S: So Jay, you're going to tell us next about why it's fun to be a psychopath.
J: Yeah, it's not just why it's fun to be a psychopath. It's more examining aspects of what psychopaths have at their disposal and how maybe the average person can learn something from it. But they did, this was written in a playful way. So we have a British psychologist at the University of Oxford named Kevin Dutton, and he asks the question, would we be better off as psychopaths, right?
S: Do you know guy?
RW: Oh, I know Kevin, yeah.
S: You do.
J: I don't think that he's actually saying, he was not being, like, honest, saying yes, I think we're gonna be better off as psychopaths. He's just using it playfully to start a talking point here.
RW: Well, he's got a new book out, doesn't he? Called The Wisdom of Psychopaths.
J: Yeah, he does.
RW: That might be behind his question. (laughter)
E: Ya think?
RW: Remarkable coincidence.
S: Psychologists promoting their own books?
RW: It is disgusting.
B: I thought there was only one.
J: So he states, and this was funny, this article that we're referencing, the actor that plays Dexter. Anthony
E: Michael C. Hall?
J: Michael C. Hall? Yeah, I always confuse him with that other actor
S: Anthony Michael Hall (laughter and talking)
J: They were interviewing the author of the book named Dutton, and the actor, and they were chit-chatting about it, and it was interesting to hear some of the things that the guy that plays Dexter was saying about what it's like to play that character and everything. What Kevin Dutton is saying here is that someone, a psychopath, they lack empathy, they lack compassion, they don't really have a conscience, and these are the things that direct most of our actions, right? So we're limited by the social constructs in our head. Very interestingly he said that dumb, extremely impulsive psychopaths often end up dead or in prison. However, he said that the other psychopaths can thrive if they're smart and if they're disciplined. Which is a very interesting thing to observe. In the end he mentions that being a psychopath is on, the spectrum is like autism. There's extremely psychopathic all the way to normal people, right? And there's all these infinite shades of gray in there.
S: You can't say normal, Jay.
J: Aw, Christ. Okay. So he's saying that the spectrum is there from an extremely psychopathic person
S: Psycho typical.
J: Psycho typical. Want me to start over or
S: No. Semi-joking.
J: Okay.
S: But there's the neurotypical movement, in terms of talking about things like autism and neurological, recognized neurological disorders. As an aside, it's kind of a huge aside, maybe Richard can tell me what he thinks about this. This is also happening in the UK. The notion that it's very hard to say in terms of human psychology and behavior, and even just how our brains are hardwired, what's quote unquote normal, as if anything outside of those parameters are abnormal. Sometimes we talk about healthy and unhealthy. Or we talk about people who have disorders, defined as something that's causing a definable problem. You know, there are people who very seriously advocate, they, saying things like "Well, autism is not a disorder, it's just, they're just different" than the neurotypical arrangement of neurons. So I was just sort of playing off of that. I wonder if people would get upset at saying that psychopaths are abnormal or unhealthy. Maybe we should call non- psychopaths psycho typical.
J: Whatever.
(Several people talking at once)
S: Does this kind of political crisis occur in your . . .
J: It's bullshit.
RW: Before we get to that, I should point out, so that your listener can join in, if they search for "sexy goat" (laughter) they will get a sheep wearing women's clothing. Which is what I just did a few moments ago on your iPad. Where do I stand on the normal thing? I find that I actually did it earlier on in the podcast actually. 'Cause I said "depressives and normal people" and then I changed it to "non-depressives." I think it depends. You know if you've got somebody who's deeply strange, is a proper psychopath, genocide, murdered millions of people and doesn't give a monkey's, I'm happy to call them abnormal.
S: Um hmm.
J: Yeah.
RW: And then you, so I, I, I don't know. It's political correctness gone mad.
S: Yeah.
RW: I remember the days when you used to use the words "guinea pigs," now you have to call everyone "participants." (laughter)
E: Why, did the guinea pigs get upset by that?
RW: They did. They did. They sued. It was a class action. Who knew? I was nearly sued by a gorilla.
E: The one that walked through with the basketball?
RW: No. No, no, no, I was writing Quirkology and Coco the gorilla can sign language. And so she was the first gorilla to take part in an AOL live chat. Inter-species chat. So people put questions, and Coco signed the answers. And I quoted some of the chat in my book. I didn't clear the copyright. And so, I was approached by Coco's representatives, who said that "you hadn't cleared it." I said, Hold on a second, you don't own that copyright, Coco does. And so if she wants to sue me, I'd be happy to go to court . . .
E: That's right!
RW: about it. 'Cause I wanted to be sued by a gorilla. (laughter)
E: Have her hire an oranguan.
RW: It would have been the best thing ever to be sued by a gorilla, because I thought the judge may sort of give two bunches of bananas in damages. (laughter) But
E: Now that's not politically correct.
RW: I don't know, do they even eat bananas, gorillas?
S: I think so. They're vegetarians. Sure.
RW: That reminds me about panda branding. I had this idea. I think I mentioned this. Is that zoos, Edinburgh have got pandas, and financially are struggling. And I had the idea of using the white space on the panda as kind of advertising space.
? A billboard. Billboards, yeah.
RW: And you could spray on something. Beet juice or something and the Nike, kind of logo or whatever, and that would be advertising space. But oooohhhhh no. (laughter)
J: Allright, so I'm going to agree with Richard, I'm going to agree with Richard on the whole, like, you know, there are people that have mental disorders, and some of them are called psychopaths. And then there are people that we consider to be normal.
S: Non-psychopaths.
J: No, but why is the word "normal" bad? That's ridiculous.
S: It's just very hard to define.
J: The average person, I would, okay.
S: Typical
(several people talking at once)
J: Typical. Yeah, okay. And every kid wins in a war. Nobody…. Yeah, whatever.
S: I know, Jay, I know it's tough. It's a slippery slope.
J: Yeah. I'm not a scientist or a doctor, and I can be stupid.
E: We know it's lame.
J: . . . just not as educated as you. So anyway, the, I don't even remember where the f--- I was, now. (laughter) So Dutton is describing psychopaths, and he says that they tend to be fearless, ruthless, capable of extraordinary focus. They're cool and decisive under high-pressure situations that non-psychopaths would tend to be anxious
S: So they're like Animal Mother in Full Metal Jacket. They're great in a war. And like what do they say? All they need is for somebody to throw grenades at him for the rest of his life. But in a normal society
J: No, no, no. Hold on. Hold on. This is very, that's interesting. And he continues to say that they're very good at reading other people's facial expressions and manipulating people's emotions and taking advantage of things they perceive about that person. They have a better than average ability to detect when people are lying and where they're emotionally vulnerable.
S: Yeah.
J: You know I'm not sure how accurate this is, but it sounds very interesting.
RW: How'd he find that out?
J: How did he find that out?
RW: Yeah.
J: It's in his book. I don't know, he read his book.
RW: But you need a group of psychopaths and a group of non-psychopaths. And then give them a lie detection task.
J: I think you're. . . and I don't even trust lie detection. I don't think those lie detector machines are that accurate.
RW: Well, no, but even if you're just showing them videos and saying "spot the liars." It seems a bit strange study, has that been done?
J: Apparently he did do some studying on this.
RW: Really.
J: So then he goes on to say that there are psychopathic traits found in CEOs, lawyers, media personalities, special forces soldiers, and surgeons. It's a pretty impressive list, a very accomplished list, a list where you would think the people are intelligent. And he's making a claim that they have some psychopathic traits, and he thinks that those traits are the things that make them, give them the ability to be successful in these areas. I found that to be a little disturbing. But it also is very provocative. If you think about it, if our sanity is on a spectrum, if we have all these levels that we can measure ourselves by, and you put being a psychopath in there and say, okay, how psychopathic is someone? Maybe the first five percent of it isn't so bad for you.
S: Well that's probably true of most things, psychologically, is that there's a survival advantage to certain traits, and they still exist, you know, the more extreme ones still exist because the milder versions are adaptive. And certainly the ability to be cool and fearless and ruthless when necessary, it seems pretty obvious how that could have a survival advantage. And in order to keep the genes for those traits around, every now and then you're gonna have a psychopath. You know what I mean? Evolution is messy.
RW: What worries me, and I like Kevin a lot, I'm sure the book's great, but worries me about this whole thing is that it seems to be you get a best seller, a popular book, by simply taking common sense and just arguing the opposite. So you think, well, being a psychopath is bad, and now he's saying that it's good. But, that just seems to me the formula for a best seller or a popular book. Say if you took Buddhism, the book could be Why Buddhism Will Kill You
S: Yeah.
E: Yeah, right.
RW: And so it's just a very well worked formula. Which is why it's a good talking point, is that it turns out it's the exact opposite. How Puppies Are Evil.
(laughter)
J; Well, it's like Kevin Trudeau, you know. Everything that the government doesn't want you to know, you know like that type of . .
S: What Your Doctors Won't Tell You
E: Yeah.
J: I would hope that the title of the book, or the provocative entry point that the author has created isn't rampant throughout the book. Maybe that's just the eye catcher that gets people to buy it.
S: The hook.
J: But it is an interesting idea. To me it's a thought experiment. "What do you thing about that?" You know, there are, being that these types of conditions, it's all subjective, well, maybe that's not the right term. How do you gauge these things? Like, how psychopathic is someone?
S: There's a psychopath test.
J: Right. Kind of like the test
S: Remember we talked about it with Jon Ronson, who wrote a whole book about it.
J: That's right, yeah.
S: And he said, like, get a number. You're a 28, you know, or whatever. You're over a certain number and you go to prison for the rest of your life.
(laughter)
B: Cool.
E: Yeesh.
J: What do you mean, if you get . . .
S: If you are arrested for committing a crime and they give you the psychopath test and you score over a certain number, the you get in the booby-hatch for the rest of your life. 'Cause you are deemed a danger to society, and good luck ever getting out again.
J: Wow, I didn't know that. I didn't remember that.
S: You should read Jon Ronson's book.
J: I probably should. It's probably a good book.
RW: The most psychopathic group I've worked with are stand-up comedians.
S: Is that right?
RW: I think they're a bunch of psychopaths. I mean, if you listen to the language they use when they talk about their audiences, "I killed tonight, I slayed them." Really aggressive language. They don't give a monkey's about anyone.
S: Is that right?
RW: Yeah. There you go. It's official. If a stand-up comedian ever kills, they should be locked up for the rest of their lives. (laughter)
J: Richard, do you think that part of their ability to be funny comes from that?
RW: What, mine?
E: Clearly, yes.
RW: No, I'm a very caring person, and not particularly funny. But if you actually meet somebody who is funny . . . No, I think it is, I think there's a ruthlessness to comedy, stand-up comedy.
S: Yeah.
RW: And we shouldn't get into the horrible sort of picking on people in the audience and all of that. I honestly think that they absolutely could not give a monkey's about their audience . . . their humor doesn't come from a nice place.
J: Yeah, okay.
RW: Which is why they're all so weird.
J: Actually I've had some experience. I've gotten to know comedians, and I, I have to agree with you. I think that, what you're saying, there's a, there's a note in there that I can agree with. It's that, the psychopathic thing about them is that they actually just don't give a shit.
RW: Yeah.
J: Which is kind of scary when you're talking to someone, they're just "whatever, whatever, tomorrow, whatever, I don't even know where I'm gonna be." I agree with you.
RW: There we go.
Type Ia Supernova (45:19) [ edit ]
S: We're gonna change pace a little bit here. We're gonna get away from the social sciences for a moment, and Bob, you're gonna tell us something about supernova.
B: Yeah. This news item caught my attention. I found it very interesting. There's a new idea, new theory or model for the progenitors of a very special class of supernova, a one, a supernova 1a. I don't know how many people have heard of this type of supernova. If you're familiar with it it might not be what you think, 'cause when you think supernova you think a sun explodes, a star explodes and it's usually a super-giant star but, but these are actually different. The supernova 1a type of star, or explosion, happens when a white dwarf, which is a burnt-out ember of a star, when it accretes matter from a stellar companion that is in orbit, they're in orbit around each other. And when this matter is siphoned off, and gathers on the white dwarf, it reaches a certain critical threshold and the outer layer of the white dwarf just explodes into a supernova giant explosion. These are very special supernovas because they're standard candles using, because the, everything about it is based on laws of physics that are pretty much invariable so that the explosion, no matter where it is is pretty much identical, right? So by examining these types of supernovas you can determine how far away it is. So it's a standard candle of distance. And this was really huge in the news, I think it was in 1998 when they-
S: Yeah.
B: -when they found that using this type of supernova as a standard candle, they determined that the universe is not only expanding but it's expanding at an ever-increasing rate. Expanding faster and faster and faster. And that brought in the whole idea of dark energy which it looks like is the major constituent of the entire universe, so it was a huge, huge discovery.
RW: Who comes up with these words, though? If you discover something, and you call it a white dwarf, what, "it's a green elf". (laughter) "I got a pink pixie". Who comes up with these things? Is there someone who decides what is and isn't acceptable?
J: You mean: is there a committee for the naming of ...
S: There is. There's the International Astronomical Union.
RW: So you go up to them and you say "I've got, I've come up with this idea. And I'm gonna call it a turquoise elf."
S: Um hmm.
RW: And they go, "No." (laughter)
E: Right. That's exactly correctly.
RW: You can have a white dwarf, no (inaudible). (laughter) The thing is so arbitrary.
S: There are red giants as well.
RW: You say red giants. These are all things that sound impressive.
E: Black holes.
S: Black holes, yup.
RW: Got a slightly effeminate elf. (laughter) If you have a slightly effeminate elf, (in a feminine voice) "why, hello." (laughter)
S: The Keebler elves, I think, all fit that description.
RW: The what?
S&E: The Keebler elves.
J: They make the cookies.
S: Blank stare from the Brit, nothing.
E: They live in the tree and make the cookies.
"(extreme laughter from audience)
E: Richard is looking puzzled.
S: Biscuits, you call them biscuits.
RW: No, no, that wasn't the bit that I was querying. (laughter) Out of that sentence it wasn't the cookie bit that I was querying. It was the elves in the trees. There's a mythical creature,
S: Yeah.
RW: that lives in a tree.
S: and makes cookies.
RW: and makes cookies.
S: The Keebler elves.
RW: The Keebler elves.
S: It's not really mythical, it's more of a marketing thing.
RW: I see. The Keebler thing is a brand or something.
S: Yeah.
E: Exactly. Now you're getting it.
S: Apparently not in the UK.
RW: No.
J: It's so weird to like, something that I've been seeing my entire life, since I was a kid, and you look, it's like you live in another country, we know each other, and you're like no f---ing idea what you're talking about.
RW: No idea. At all.
J: (laughing) It's so weird.
RW: So would the astronomical committee allow a Keebler elf? (laughter)
E: Potentially.
RW: Could we brand these? That would be great!
S: It's just that
RW: Could Nike like brand a black hole?
J: Yeah.
RW: Look at the Nike hole. (laughter) Make some money.
S: You could create a fake organization, and then sell the naming rights to things you don't have the right to name and people would give you money.
RW: Yeah, but why can't we go to the astronomical people, and say that we got, a million from McDonald's if we called it the McDonald's Nebula. They'd take the money, wouldn't they.
E: McNebula.
RW: McNebula.
S: McNebula!
RW: And we could order one. You could go in and say "I want a McNebula!"
E: with cheese.
RW: Yeah. Then they can super-size and you go, it's already big enough. (laughter)
J: I really don't want the corporate
(laughter and people talking at once obscure what is being said for awhile)
RW: . . . America . . .out there in the universe. I think that'd be great.
J: One of my big ridiculous fears is that someone's gonna create a laser that's big enough to cast advertisements on the moon. I don't wanna look up and see, like
E: Coca-Cola
J: Billion dollar advertisements in the sky. I don't
RW: I don't want that, but I think they should be able to name things. I think that would be all right.
J: If they gave an amazing amount of money.
E: Well, sure, that's
RW: KFC
S: That reminds me of a short story, science fiction short story I read, really quickly, where our first contact with aliens, and they come in and they offer us some international currency, I forget what it was. Not international, inter-galactic
E: Qwatludes?
S: Yeah, qwatludes, whatever. And to do, they wanted the right to do something in Jupiter, and they wouldn't exactly explain what it was. And we went along with the deal for whatever reason. And what they wanted to do was they wanted to plaster an advertisement across Jupiter. And they did it, they put some kind of laser effect, or whatever. And it was in an alien language so you couldn't understand what it said, but they wanted to use Jupiter as a bulletin board.
E: Go for it.
S: An inter-galactic bulletin board.
RW: I think that's all right.
S: Yeah. I think it's good.
J: All right. I would go with that if everybody got rich, right, so now we're all rich?
S: In the end, well it was good for us, yeah. Of course it was probably like the beads to the Indians.
E: Right. Where are you gonna spend these qwatludes?
RW: You see I think if aliens came down and visited us, and, they'd have to judge us. And the question is, would they judge our society because we'd found the white dwarf somewhere, or would they think better of us because we typed in "sexy goat"? (laughter) And got a picture of a sheep wearing women's clothing. (laughter) I put it to you, any alien worth its soul would go with sexy goat.
S: That reminds me of another science fiction. This is a little short. I saw it on RV. It was Penn and Teller, where the aliens came down, they were gonna destroy the earth unless, we had like 24 hours to prove to them that we deserved to live.
E: Yup.
S: You saw that one?
RW: No, I haven't but
J: I saw that, it's awesome.
B: What was the series?
S: I don't know, it was some science fiction series.
B: Okay.
S: And then Penn and Teller saved the planet by showing them the invisible string trick. And they thought that was the best thing, that if we as a species could be entertained by the invisible string trick, we deserved to live.
RW: I think sexy goat is better.
S: Sexy goat is better?
RW: What happens when you put "sexy goat" into the world's greatest search engine? I think they'd respect that.
S: Yeah, I think so.
J: But, Steve, I think that, Douglas Adams, his idea that they wanted to put a super inter-galactic highway is more likely than
S: Yeah. So, Bob, what's the new bit with the supernova?
B: You know what. When I prepare these news items I try to anticipate tangents that we can go on and have fun with. (laughter) I never would have thought of McNebula or sexy goat, I never would have thought of that, but
S: You lack imagination.
B: Yeah. I'm lacking something.
J: Richard, Richard
B: Shut up!
J: A company could name one of the oceans KF C (groans)
RW: Oh, that's good! KF Sea would be fantastic, we should let them do that! The money. The Atlantic – how much should we charge them? I'm flying over KF Sea.
J: Yeah.
B: All right, so there's two problems. You remember what I was talking about, 'cause I don't. (laughter) There's two problems with this kind of supernova. You've got the white dwarf. Everyone pretty much agrees that there's a white dwarf in there, but there's something else in orbit that are in orbit around each other – what is that thing? They're not really sure exactly what this thing is.
S: Isn't it just another sun?
B: What kind? I mean, there's lots of different possibilities. There's the single degenerate model, which means that there's one degenerate star, which is the white dwarf, and there's a younger star, and it's siphoning matter off of that. So that's one possibility. The other one is a double degenerate model, where you have two white dwarves around each other and they're, either they collide
S; They're feeding off each other.
B: Yeah, they're feeding off each other. They collide and create this titanic release of energy. Something like that. But there's a problem with these two models: they don't match, when you look at the spectra of these supernovas, it doesn't match what these degenerate models say the spectra should be.
S: Yeah.
B: They're looking at all the squiggles and they're not lining up. There's a progression that it should match and they're not matching up. So there's a problem with these ideas. We don't know really what's going on over there. So this Craig Wheeler, he's an astronomer, he came up with a twist on the idea of this degenerate model. He's saying that it's a white dwarf and it's an M dwarf. Is it "M" or "W"?
S: Class M dwarf.
B: It's an M dwarf. Which is a red dwarf, but much more common. Very, red dwarf is just lots of infrared heat. Very, very tough to see. There's good reasons why this model makes a lot of sense. The red dwarves are the most common star in the sky. If you look up in the sky, well, you're not gonna see any of these 'cause they just too dim, but if you could see them (laughter) there's lots, there's 70
S: If you look up in the sky, the most common star you won't see (laughter)
B: Yeah. But if you could see them, if you could see the infrared better than the Hubble can, you would see, 70 percent of the Milky Way is red dwarves. I mean, so, all right, they're all over the place.
J: Now, why, why can't we see them?
B: Because they're too dim. They're too dim even for the Hubble
J: But what if you took a boat way out on the KF Sea? (laughter)
B: Yeah, okay, whatever.
J: Try to leave it in, Steve, he's not listening.
B: All right. So, these are very common. White dwarves are very common. So this is one of the ways that his theory is much more plausible. And there's also this other thing about the red dwarf being magnetic, and because it's magnetic, and if the white dwarf was magnetic it would siphon this material much faster and create these supernovas. So, this is just an interesting idea. I liked what he called it, maybe, Richard, you might like this. He calls it a white widow system. (laughter) Isn't that fascinating?
E: Not to be mistaken with the black widow.
B: No. Something else. This is a play on words on a black widow system, which is two neutron stars that annihilate each other, and that's called a black widow, so this guy thought it would be amusing to call this a white widow 'cause it's a white dwarf.
(Many comments at once)
B: So, the interesting thing is that if we learn more about these 1a supernovas then we might learn more about the standard candles, we might learn more about the expansion of the universe and dark energy, which I think would be pretty interesting to know.
J: Cool. What've we got next?
Fecal Transplants (55:56) [ edit ]
S: All right. A little different. We're going to talk about fecal transplants. I know you guys' favourite topic.
B: Just a little different.
S: Richard was looking over my shoulder at my topic and made a very funny facial expression of disgust, a very common basic human emotion, disgust. So one of the problems with antibiotics is that it wipes out your intestinal flora, it kills not just the bad bacteria but it kills the good bacteria that keep your ecosystem in balance.
RW: Do you ever do a good news story? Every time it's doom and gloom.
E: Or poop.
S: Nah, it's pretty much doom and gloom.
RW: It's all doom and gloom. Do some happiness.
S: Well if there wasn't a problem, we wouldn't need a scientific solution right? We have to start with a problem. The problem is you take antibiotics, it kills your good bacteria and then you get bad bacteria take advantage of that situation and you get an infection and the most common and difficult one is Clostridium difficile, C. difficile and they're very difficult to treat because what do you do? You give more antibiotics to kill that bacteria...
E: Compouding the problem.
S: Potentially compounding the problem, so it's tough, it's a very difficult problem in hospitals.
J: So of course this doesn't happen to everybody, it's....
S: No, but it's common.
J: OK.
S: Like it's really, really common.
J: Tell me what happens when you get it, like do you feel sick?
S: You get diarrhoea, yeah. So imagine you're in the hospital sick with something, you get antibiotics for that and now on top of it you get horrible diarrhoea, and then you have to go into isolation if you weren't already because you've got C. diff and you know, everyone has to glove up when they go into see you now. So it's a big problem, one of the approaches to treat this is, well is there anything we can do to establish or restore or support the gut bacteria to help fight the C. diff infection, and there's been a lot of studies with probiotics right, you take the yoghurt with the bacteria in there and can that decrease the C. diff infections? And the data on that is pretty weak, the answer is generally no, maybe in some studies where they use like the highest colony counts and early, early on like before it even sets in, maybe it helps a little bit, but it's not really the answer, you still have to take antibiotics to treat the C. diff, it's still a problem. One step beyond probiotics is a fecal transplant where they take a stool...
B: I think it's obvious.
S: ...donation from a family member.
E: It has to be a family member?
S: Family members will tend to have the same ecosystem as you so...
J: But I thought your ecosystem was replaced by the bad stuff, the antibiotics killed it, now some other crazy-ass thing came in and took its place.
S: Well it was there, and now it just goes out of control because.
B: The balance has been lost.
S: The normal flora's not keeping it at bay.
J: OK, so you want to get people back to where they were.
S: Yeah, you want to give them back their ecosystem quicker by giving them some bacteria, now that that the antibiotics are gone. So you give them a fecal donation from their family member that probably has the same ecosystem, the same combination of bacteria and it works. It does help.
J: All right, so question number one. What's the delivery mechanism?
S: You liquefy it, you dilute it in water and then you give it through an NG tube down the nose into...
E: Aaah.
J: Does that mean nose tube because that's nasty.
E: Aaah, down the nose!?
S: Nasogastric tube, yeah.
J: They actually pump shit through your nose?
S: Yes.
J: Why don't they do it the other way?
E: Go backwards?
S: Well, it's because it's too close to the, you want to get it from the top so it will work its way all the way through your system.
J: Oh OK so it's starting from the top. OK. That's disgusting.
S: Everyone has that reaction, you know. It is disgusting.
E: Well correctly so, they have that reaction.
J: Now not to get graphic here, are they pumping shit into your stomach?
S: Well, into the intestine.
J: So they actually go past your stomach into your large intestine.
S: Yes. Which is what we do most of the time.
J: OK. We, meaning you've done this?
S: I haven't done a fecal transplant but I've put NG tubes in people. So they did a recent study in mice where they were looking at fecal transplants and they were tyring to identify the bacteria that were most helpful and they identified six bacteria in the Bacteroides/Lactobacillus species and they found that giving these six species of bacteria was very effective in shortening and even curing the C. diff infection, so that's a good step forward, and what we were talking about before, with the probiotics is that you give one or two different bacteria, it doesn't really help that much, my favourite quote about that is from Mark Crystal who said it's like planting corn in the rainforest, you have an ecosystem, planting some corn is not going to change the ecosystem. But what if you give more? How many bacteria do you ahve to give? How many different species do you have to give in what numbers before you are influencing the ecosystem, you are bringing back the normal flora? Well they found six may be enough, and if that's the case, the hope is that you can culture those six bacteria, you don't need a fresh stool sample, you just culture the six bacteria and you could just literally give a pill with the bacteria in there and not the fecal down the NG tube.
E: Much better.
S: Yeah, much better.
B: and they can survive the gastric acids?
S: Well that's why you give it in the intestine and not the stomach. Some bacteria can survive gastric acids but they're different from the bacteria that live in the intestine.
B: Right, so how would a pill help then?
S: Well because the capsule wouldn't dissolve until it's past the stomach, yeah.
B: OK.
S: So this is a mouse study, it really was identifying the bacteria so now hopefully they could develop like a probiotic type of treatment with those six bacteria in a pill form or something like that, not having to require stool and still have the effectiveness on the C. diff infection. But that remains to be seen, that is now the next step in terms of researching this, but...
RW: I used to, in my younger days I used to do quite a lot of reasearch in India. And once I got Campylobacter.
S: That's nasty.
RW: And so I had chronic diarrohea and I had to fly, and so I took off, as we were going along the runway, I thought "well I need the bathroom" and the attendant said, quite rightly, "you need to sit down". And I said, "if I sit down, we're all going to regret this," and he realised what was wrong and let me in the bathroom. And so I took off, inside the bathroom, as the plane climbed.
E: The angle, yes.
RW: With chronic diarrohea.
S: Yeah.
J: Oh god.
RW: You don't want to be doing that.
J: Yeah, it's amazing how having a horrible biological even on an aeroplane makes it a million times worse.
RW: A million times worse. In retrospect I should have shut the door on the toilet.
(laughter)
RW: When I was in India...
S: Before or after the C. jejuni?
RW: It was probably before actually, this was 20-something, 26 years ago.
S: And you didn't get Guillain–Barré from that, you're lucky.
RW: Oh really? I don't even know what that is.
B: (laughs)
E: Oh that's a bad thing to get, a neurological disorder.
B: Maybe he does have it.
S: Inflammation of your nerves, and that's a bad form of it, if you get it after a C. jejuni infection.
RW: Oh right, so anyway so this interesting thing, this was about 26 years ago in India, I'm sure it's changed now but at the time it was a very very poor country so they had to come up with very novel solutions some of the time, and this was the best one they ever came up with. The security guards used to search your bags before you got onto the plane. And boy they were thorough, they were really thorough and I could not work out why they were so motivated because clearly they weren't on very much money, and the answer was so brilliant. They got on the plane with you.
B: Oh, I like it. That'd motivate you.
RW: So they really cared. And this was a time when there was a lot of terrorism going on so I though it was a really interesting solution to motivation.
S: They had some skin in the game, huh?
RW: Absolutely.
Science or Fiction (1:03:30) [ edit ]
Voiceover: It's time for science or fiction.
J: Each week we come up with some questions that are truthful and one or maybe more which are not. I'm not gonna . . .
(laughter)
S: Are you serious?
E: He's only been saying it for 330 episodes.
J: Oh, you wanna say it again, go ahead.
S: No, but I mean "one or maybe more"???
(laughter)
J: Hey, I'm in charge of science or fiction this time.
S: All right then do it. Do it, then.
J: All right. So we have a theme this week and the theme is sharks.
S: Okay.
J: So I'm going to be telling you guys, I'm going to read off five shark facts, one of
S: Five.
J: Five. And one of them is fake. The reason I went to five is, there isn't like a big explanation for each one of these.
E: Okay.
J: It's either true or not, I have a little bit . . .
S: Five.
J: Yeah.
S: Breaking new ground with this.
E: Setting a precedent. That's unprecedented.
J: I am. I am.
S: Unprecedented, hence, breaking new ground.
J: So, okay. First one is, ready? Some sharks can change their shape by inflating their bodies with water or air to make themselves bigger and rounder.
RW: True.
(Pause, then laughter)
S: So we need to explain to you how this game is played.
RW: I have no idea. I have no idea what's happening.
(laughter)
S: Jay's gonna read all five items. And then we'll go one by one.
RW: Oh, yes.
S: And then you can give your thoughts on all of those items and which one you think is the fake. Is the fiction.
RW: Okay.
S: Right, so hold your comments until we read all five and it's your turn.
RW: Do you have a game over here, where you say, it's like a letter, and so you say, "What D is an animal?" and you have to say "Dog."
S: No.
J: Yeah, yeah, we do that. No, we do that.
RW: Okay. Well, I was playing at Christmas with my family once, and it was B, letter B, and it was, and the question was "What B turns women off?" And the answer is body odor. My dad said "blindness."
(laughter)
RW: And then went on to justify it through the entire Christmas day. Horrible.
(laughter continues)
J: (still laughing) Okay. So, the second one.
RW: It's true. My entire life's like this, you know. Nothing makes sense
S: You are a cliché, you know that.
RW: Yeah. I amuse myself, endlessly, all the time. I love, everywhere I go, I giggle. (laughter)
J: Some sharks' poop comes out in a spiral pattern.
RW: True.
(laughter)
E: Steve, explain.
S: He'll go first.
J: Some sharks can vomit out their own stomachs.
RW: True.
J: Number four. Number four. Sharks do not get cancer which is why cancer researchers frequently study them. Five. Sharks are affected by the Moon, leading them to kill more people. The moon. Do you want me to interact with the audience on this, Steve? Do you want me to get their opinions?
S: Sure.
J: You guys, okay. I'm gonna read the first one again. Before any of, other than Richard, who can't keep his mouth shut, we're gonna talk and ask you
RW: You did invite me onto a radio show. So, opening seemed to be reasonable thing.
(laughter)
J: Some sharks can change shape by inflating their bodies with water or air to make themselves bigger and rounder. Who here thinks that's true?
S: No, no, no no. The fiction
J: Oh, who here thinks that's the fiction?
S: Applaud, please, if you think that's the fiction.
E: Applaud.
(Silence)
S: Nobody.
J: Okay, everybody thinks that's true. Some sharks' poop comes out in a spiral pattern. Fiction.
(Silence)
J: Okay.
S: This is just the audience, Richard.
RW: Okay.
J: Some sharks can vomit out their stomachs.
(Silence)
J: Sharks do not get cancer which is why cancer researchers frequently study them.
(some applause)
J: Sharks are affected by the Moon, leading them to kill more people.
(some applause)
J: Okay, now Richard.
RW: Oh, it's obvious.
J: Which one is the fake?
RW: I would go with, not with the audience, but with the last one. I can't believe a shark's affected by the Moon, causing them to kill more people. I think that rubbish.
J: Gotcha. See, this is gonna go quick. Okay. Go ahead, Steve, which one do you think is fake?
S: You want me to go next?
J: Yeah.
S: The audience is correct. Sharks do get cancer. I am dubious about the Moon one, but I strongly feel that the sharks don't get cancer one is fiction.
J: Evan.
E: You said, the last one, Moon or moonlight?
J: The Moon.
E: The Moon. Okay. Then it's the cancer one that's the fiction.
J: Bob.
B: I was thinking the Moon, and that didn't make much sense to me because look. For a full moon, extra light wouldn't matter 'cause they don't really use their sense of sight anyway, it's all about, they can detect parts per billion of blood or parts per million. It wouldn't matter. But the cancer one, yeah, I've read different things about it but I think the current understanding is that they do get cancer, even though for years people thought they did not. So I'm gonna go with the cancer one.
J: Okay. So, I'll ask the audience again. Do you think the cancer one is the fake?
(applause)
J: Okay. Three holdouts. There's thousands of people here, three people didn't, okay.
(laughter)
J: Okay. All right, so, I'll just take them in order. The first one about some sharks can change shape by inflating their bodies with water or air to make themselves bigger and rounder. That is true. And, it's very interesting. One of the sharks that can do this is called the swell shark.
(laughter)
E: Wow.
B: So creative.
J: And the reason why they do it is to prevent predators like seals and larger sharks from pulling them out of the rocky reefs where they live, or under ledges or crevasses, so
B: Oh, cool.
J: So, the predator will come near them, and then they will expand their bodies so, in essence, making themselves impossible to pull out of that crevasse.
E: Snug.
J: Yeah.
S: They wedge themselves in.
J: Yep. They can suck the water in, and they significantly change the size of their body, which is very cool. All right, the second weird one about some sharks' poop comes out in a spiral pattern. This one is very interesting, I learned a lot from reading this
S: Is it true?
B: Is it true?
J: Yeah, it's very true. A spiral valve in the lower portion of the intestine of some sharks, which is a modification of the ile'um
S: Il'eum
J: Thank you. It's my job to pronounce things wrong. This valve is internally twisted and coiled to increase the surface area of the intestines, to increase nutrient absorption. But a few more things are very interesting about shark intestines. The shark intestines are much, much smaller than most mammals. The sharks have compensated for this by having it be a spiral effect and what that does is it increases the surface area inside, and a couple of other things. The sharks can't pass large and hard objects, like bones, through their, their
B: Yeah.
J: They can't absorb them and they can't break them down. So what happens is sharks will actually have a build-up of material in their stomachs, and they can actually invert their stomach and push all that stuff out.
B: Whoa.
J: Now sharks will do this for a couple of different reasons. Sharks will do this
S: Well now you're getting into the next item.
J: No. I am, yes.
S: Yes.
(laughter)
S: So it was funny, the first time you said sharks can vomit out their stomachs, what I thought was, well what else are they gonna vomit out of, their ass?
(laughter)
J: I'm sorry. Because, yeah, actually these two items are connected, so I'm gonna
S: Yeah. But you meant they can vomit so their stomach is outside their body.
J: So they can, they can actually vomit their stomachs out, meaning that their muscles are able to do it.
E: . . . inside out
J: Right. But check this out. Sharks don't, they do that like I said, to expel matter that they can't digest. They also do it when they get anxious, and some predators go after the things that are in their stomach and not them. So they could actually have some legitimate food
E: Oh, it's a defense mechanism.
J: Yeah. And they're actually pushing out food into the water, and then they swim away and then a bigger predator will come and eat that.
E: That's a good idea.
S: Yeah.
J: That's a really, really cool evolutionary
B: Well, maybe they need help with their intestinal __________ and that's why they're going after that.
E: It's like launching countermeasures.
S: Yeah, it's countermeasures.
B: The spiral though, the internal spiral, how is that gonna influence the spiral when it exits?
S: It's like, don't you ever watch Bugs Bunny when they shoot the cannon and they twist it and the cannonball goes in a circle
B: Yes. So why would it continue in spiral
S: Wait, that's not real?
(laughter)
J: Bob, Bob, it's literally, if you think about it, think about a spiral, right? And there's the butt and the poop comes out and it just comes out in that spiral.
B: Oh, in the shape of a spiral.
J: Yeah. The poop comes out
B: Oh, I thought it moved, not the shape.
J: No, no, no, it's shaped like a spiral.
B: I'm glad I misunderstood
J: All right, so well quite obviously, sharks do get cancer. The cancer thing started in the 1970s when Henry
E: So that was fiction.
S: That's the fiction.
J: Yeah, that's fiction. Henry Brem and Judah Folkman
S: I've taught the audience well.
(laughter)
S: Better than my brother, apparently.
(laughter)
J: These two guys from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine first noted that the cartilage prevented the growth of new blood vessels in the tissues. And what happened was that study that they did led another doctor, Dr. I. William Lane to write a book called Sharks Don't Get Cancer: How Shark Cartilage Could Save Your Life. What happened from the writing of that book is terrible. Because that guy wrote the book, 80% of certain shark species have been fished, and there are a lot of shark species that are on the brink of extinction because
E: Misinformation.
J: people are trying to eat the shark cartilage.
S: Shark cartilage became a snake oil treatment for cancer. In fact sharks get cancer of the cartilage.
E: Right.
S: Yes.
J: So, there's a lot of interesting information on that particular chain of events that led to people taking that as a supplement and everything, which I think, I suggest that you read. There's a lot of interesting nuances in there that I found. But, the end result is that, you know, ridiculous supplementation of animal body parts and what not, it causes a lot of damage. And there, here, and this is the other one that I love, that sharks are affected by the Moon, leading them to kill more people. I wrote that one kind of funny because I just wanted to be difficult. But they tracked shark movements, scientists used devices to track where sharks go and when. And they observed that large congregations of sharks, during specific lunar cycles, have intensified feeding habits and the other big thing is that, depending on the phase of the Moon, it pushes the sharks into shore because of the tide.
B: The tide.
J: So when these things combine, so the Moon, and the, so these two effect basically have to coincide in order for, so the Moon has to be pulling the sharks because of the tide, and the sharks are affected by the, I guess,
B: the light?
J: I think it is the moonlight. It makes them feed more intensely.
B: Interesting.
J: It doesn't happen that often, but when those two things kinda happen
E: Perfect storm.
J: and there are people in the water, yeah. It happens.
B: Cool.
Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:14:14) [ edit ]
S: Jay, do you have a quote this week?
J: I have a quote sent in by a listener named Joseph Miñones, he basically gave me how to pronounce his name and I can't pronounce it. Miñones. Check out this quote: "The aim of science..."
B: He wrote it phonetically for Jay and he still can't say it, I love it.
J: He did, and I still can't read it.
The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom but to set a limit to infinite error.
E: Hear, hear.
RW: Yeah, I agree with that.
B: You'd agree with anything.
J: And this was a quote written by Bertold Brech? Bertold Brecht? Brech?
E: Brecht?
J: Why don't you come here and yell his name?
S: Bertold...
Audience member: Bertolt Brecht!
(laughter)
B: There you go.
J: Awesome. Thank you!
S: Richard, thank you so much for coming on the show.
RW: A pleasure! Thank you guys!
S: and until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.
Voiceover: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information on this and other episodes, please visit our website at www.theskepticsguide.org. You can also check out our other podcast the SGU 5x5 as well as find links to our blogs and the SGU forums. For questions, suggestions and other feedback please use the contact us form on the website or send an email to info@theskepticsguide.org. If you enjoyed this episode then please help us spread the word by leaving us a review on iTunes, Zune or your portal of choice. |
You know when you buy a carton of buttermilk but you only use one or two cups and you don’t want the rest to go to waste? Well-now you have your answer! This quick bread is so delicious. We have been eating it plain, smeared with butter, topped with peanut butter and toasted with honey.
The original recipe calls for white sugar and white flour. I easily replaced the white flour with white whole wheat flour but wasn’t sure what to use to replace the sugar. I have been using honey a lot and that would probably have been delicious as well, but instead I wanted to try something with a slightly different flavor profile. Jaggery ! Jaggery is also known as coconut palm sugar. Read more about jaggery here (thanks Wikipedia!). This specific brand of jaggery I buy is a very damp sugar, which is why I feel that you could easily replace it in the recipe with honey or even maple syrup.
Cinnamon Raisin Quick Bread
Adapted from The Kitchn
Ingredients:
1 cup buttermilk
1 large egg
1/4 cup salted butter, melted
1/2 cup jaggery (palm sugar) or honey
2 cups white whole wheat flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 Tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 cup raisins
Directions:
1. Pre-heat oven to 325º.
2.Grease a 9 x 5 loaf pan with butter or spray with cooking spray.
3. Whisk together buttermilk, egg, melted butter, and jaggery or honey.
4. Add in remaining ingredients and stir until well combined.
5. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 50-60 minutes.
6. Let bread cool in pan for a few minutes before turning it out on a wire rack to cool.
7. Slice and enjoy!
Makes 1 loaf, but recipe easily doubles (then freeze your extra loaf)
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By now you’ve probably heard that the Los Angeles Rams are paying Tavon Austin $10.5 million per year to be a gadget player. You probably also noticed that he was barely on the field Sunday against the Minnesota Vikings.
Austin played a total of two snaps this week, by far his lowest total of the season. He had carved out a nice role as a change-of-pace back for the Rams, but he was hardly needed against the Vikings.
Todd Gurley only received 15 carries himself in a game where the score was tied after three quarters, but the offense simply wasn’t in a rhythm at all. That, Sean McVay says, is the reason Austin hardly saw the field.
“It really was just tough to get in any sort of rhythm. Because I think they did a good job getting us off the grass, we didn’t really get enough plays off and you’d like to be able to get some of those substitutions and things like that,” McVay said after the loss. “With our inability to sustain drives, it was tough to get him going.”
Austin only has two yards on five touches in the last two games, playing a total of 13 snaps. After he was on the field for 29 plays against the Giants, it’s a bit surprising to see how far the Rams have gone away from him in recent weeks, especially after McVay said his role would grow.
The coach blamed himself for not getting Austin more involved, saying he has to be better about that in the future.
“He’s a player that we have to do a good job of – I’ve got to get him involved in the game, and it starts with being able to get more opportunities, which we didn’t get and is a credit to their defense,” he continued. |
Erwin Chemerinsky named dean of Berkeley Law
Erwin Chemerinsky, speaks to the media after a hearing on California's three-strikes law outside the Supreme Court in Washington, in this Nov. 2002 file photo. Erwin Chemerinsky, speaks to the media after a hearing on California's three-strikes law outside the Supreme Court in Washington, in this Nov. 2002 file photo. Photo: AP Photo/Rick Bowmer / / Photo: AP Photo/Rick Bowmer / / Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Erwin Chemerinsky named dean of Berkeley Law 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
Erwin Chemerinsky, an influential legal scholar, author and founding dean of UC Irvine School of Law, was named the dean of UC Berkeley School of Law, officials said Wednesday.
Chemerinsky, 64, is a constitutional law scholar and will serve as Berkeley Law’s 13th dean, replacing interim Dean Melissa Murray, who took the job after Dean Sujit Choudhry resigned in March 2016 amid sexual-harassment allegations.
“I believe he will be a phenomenal leader for our law school, someone who will ensure that Berkeley Law remains not only a powerhouse of legal scholarship and training, but also a community built on mutual respect and inclusion,” UC Berkeley interim Executive Vice Chancellor Carol Christ said in a statement.
Chemerinsky attended Harvard Law School after getting his bachelor’s degree at Northwestern University. He went on to teach for 21 years at the University of Southern California School of Law, and also taught at UCLA School of Law, DePaul University College of Law and Duke Law School.
Chemerinsky is considered one of the country’s top legal minds in constitutional law, federal practice, civil rights and civil liberties.
He has argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals. Chemerinksy is the author of 10 books. He frequently contributes opinion pieces to newspapers and is a commentator on national news broadcasts.
Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky |
The ruling Democratic Party of Japan has long championed granting voting rights to permanent foreign residents in local government elections, but, absurdly, a kink in its internal voting system conceivably could hand aliens the opportunity to help pick the next prime minister.
DPJ legislators will have the biggest say in whether to keep Naoto Kan as premier or usher Ichiro Ozawa into the prime-ministerial ejector seat, but with their loyalties seeming to be pretty evenly split, votes (about one-third of the total number of available points) by the DPJ’s 2,382 regional assembly members and about 350,000 rank-and-file members and supporters could decide the victor in its September 14 leadership poll.
This appears to be perfectly reasonable until you look at the small print of internal DPJ regulations, which state that foreign party members and supporters living in Japan are qualified to vote for the party leader (and in this case, the prime minister).
While many senior party members, including Kan and Ozawa, have made it clear they favour local suffrage for foreigners (a thorny issue that has divided liberals and conservatives, and provoking some anger among some of those in the latter political persuasion), it’s inconceivable to picture the two candidates standing on soap boxes advocating the opportunity for foreign citizens to pick the nation’s leader. Yet this is exactly what their party’s regulations state.
The party claims that the rule allowing foreign members to vote in leadership elections is part of a policy of openness, but the regulations were drawn up during its long years in opposition, and never before has the party’s membership been able to directly influence the choice of prime minister.
Other parties, including the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party, have rigid rules that permit only Japanese nationals to become party members. It isn’t even a right-left issue, as is borne by the fact that the Japanese Communist Party also has a strict Japanese-only membership policy.
The DPJ has said it doesn’t know how many foreign members it has (the number is thought to be small), provoking the right-leaning Yomiuri Shimbun to slam the party’s electoral administration as ‘far too sloppy’ in an editorial Sunday.
The local enfranchisement of foreigners with permanent residency (the attainment of which has stringent screening conditions and requires, in principle, at least ten consecutive years living in Japan) is an issue that should be discussed rationally in the Diet and by the electorate at large.
But the DPJ has dropped its guard in allowing foreigners to vote for the head of government. If the Kan-Ozawa showdown is as tightly fought a contest as many predict, it could leave the party open to accusations of alien influence. |
In his first major move since taking over the top spot for FireEye Inc., Chief Executive Kevin Mandia plans to cut hundreds of jobs and chop spending in several areas in order to find profit at a security firm where growth is slowing down.
In his first media interview since taking over the CEO role from David DeWalt in June, Mandia detailed restructuring plans Thursday that seek to cut about $80 million in annual expenses. Specifically, FireEye FEYE, -1.30% hopes that $20 million in cuts in the fourth quarter will help the security-software firm achieve its stated goal of recording adjusted profit in that period.
“We always knew somewhere around 2016, we’d have to change this company as we got scale, and we want to maintain the timeline for achieving non-GAAP profitability,” he said from the company’s Milpitas, Calif., headquarters in a telephone interview. “I want to balance growth with profitability, and we’re serious about that path to profitability.”
Chief Financial Officer Michael Berry said FireEye did not yet know exactly how many workers would lose their jobs, but that the company hopes to chop about 9% of its controllable costs, and cuts in the workforce are likely to mirror that percentage, which would mean about 300 to 400 positions eliminated.
“We’ll do our best to go after infrastructure costs, discretionary spending and things like that, but unfortunately we will have to reduce employees as well,” Berry said.
The cuts were announced along with earnings that disappointed relative to expectations and included a decline in FireEye’s annual forecast for the second consecutive quarter. The company reported a loss of $139.3 million, or 86 cents a share, on revenue of $175 million; after adjustments for stock-based compensation, restructuring charges and other costs, FireEye reported a loss of 33 cents a share. The company’s billings—an important metric for companies focused on cloud software, which reflects future revenue under contract—came in at $196.4 million.
While FireEye’s losses were less than expected, revenue and billings came in lower than forecasts. Analysts on average expected FireEye to report quarterly adjusted losses of 39 cents a share on sales of $181.6 million, with billings of $209.6 million, according to FactSet.
After bringing down its annual revenue forecast to a range of $780 million to $810 million from a previously stated range of $815 million to $845 million last quarter, FireEye brought down its 2016 target farther Thursday, to a range of $716 million to $728 million. Analysts on average are modeling 2016 revenue of $793.5 million, according to FactSet.
FireEye shares fell as much as 14% in immediate late trading after the report was released. The company's shares, which once topped $80, have fallen 19.2% so far this year to Thursday’s close of $16.75, while the S&P 500 index SPX, -0.08% has gained 5.9% in the same time period.
While revenue growth is slowing, Mandia believes that FireEye will return to stronger growth, even with the cuts. He voiced strong support for FireEye’s security initiatives, the side of the business with which he is most familiar. Before serving as COO of FireEye, he started his own security business called Mandiant that first exposed Chinese involvement in hacks of U.S. government servers. That company was acquired by FireEye.
Despite financial issues, Mandia said he feels confident.
“I see the opportunity we have, I see the people we have, feel responsible for many of the people being here. I'm committed to them being successful," he said. |
Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny helped found the Anti-corruption Foundation, which published an investigation accusing Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev of funneling more than $1 billion worth of bribes. (Sergei Ilnitsky/European Pressphoto Agency)
Anyone following the uproar in Washington over allegations of inappropriate ties to Russia within the Trump administration might be interested in Moscow’s reaction to sweeping corruption charges the country’s most recognizable Kremlin opponent has leveled against Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
Crickets, pretty much.
Alexei Navalny, who has said he will run for president in 2018, released last week a report and a 50-minute video detailing allegations that Medvedev has funneled more than $1 billion in bribes through companies and charities run by his associates to acquire vineyards, luxury yachts and lavish mansions. The Russian government quickly dismissed the accusations as an attention-grabbing stunt by a self-proclaimed presidential candidate with no chance of winning.
That came out on Thursday, the same day Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from any investigation into possible Kremlin interference in the U.S. presidential election after The Washington Post’s report that he had met with Russia’s ambassador to the United States despite telling senators at his confirmation hearing that he had not met with Russian officials during the campaign.
Official Moscow quickly characterized the Sessions affair as a witch hunt motivated by anti-Russian hysteria, and the Internet was peppered with tweets poking fun at the furor and pictures of Americans real and imaginary who have met Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. (Yekaterina Shtukina/AP)
[Moscow blames anti-Russian hysteria for Sessions’s plight]
Online Russia has been far less dismissive of Navalny’s video, which has more than 5 million views on YouTube, and more than 400 comments, many of which appear to have been written by Russians who support its conclusions. The allegations, which Navalny said were put together relying on publicly available documents, were also reported by online news portals and a few influential newspapers.
But they were ignored or dismissed by government-controlled television and most major print publications, following the lead of Medvedev’s spokeswoman, Natalya Timakova, who said there was no point in commenting on “propaganda insinuations,” and President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, who backed Timakova’s remarks, referring to Navalny as a “notorious convicted citizen.”
And that highlights a major difference between the political state of affairs for dissidents in Russia and the United States at the moment.
Navalny, who emerged as an anti-corruption whistleblower and took a leading role in the street protests that accompanied Putin’s 2012 return to the presidency, has been the target of fraud and embezzlement probes he calls politically motivated. In 2013, he was convicted of siphoning money off a lumber sale, a verdict that the European Court of Human Rights declared “prejudicial,” saying that Navalny and his co-defendant were denied the right to a fair trial.
In November, Russia’s Supreme Court declared a retrial, and Navalny was convicted of embezzlement and handed a five-year suspended sentence in February, which by Russian law would prevent him from running for president.
Navalny’s conviction is one of a long line of misfortunes that befall vocal opponents of Putin. Boris Nemtsov, a charismatic former deputy prime minister and opposition leader, was gunned down in sight of the Kremlin walls in 2015. Vladimir Kara-Murza, another opposition activist, was in a medical coma in the hospital last month after a suspected poisoning, the second since 2015. Others have been discredited by hidden camera videos aired on state television.
The Kremlin denies involvement in any of this, and it would seem unnecessary for Putin to worry about his opponents when his popularity rating, according to one polling center, hasn’t dipped below 80 percent in three years.
[How to understand Putin’s jaw-droppingly high popularity rating]
That same pollster, the Levada Center, in February reported that 47 percent of 1,600 Russians surveyed had heard of Navalny, but only 10 percent said they might vote for the 40-year-old whistleblower.
Asked Friday whether the Russian parliament would look into the report, pro-Kremlin legislator Vyacheslav Nikonov dismissed it as a desperate attempt to get attention by an unpopular candidate. He also poured scorn on the way Navalny built his case against Medvedev, which relies on connections to the premier’s former classmates, Instagram photos that appear to place Medvedev on one of the yachts or at one of the estates, and garishly colored sneakers and shirts that were sent to one of the companies and were identical to ones worn by Medvedev in pictures and videos shown in the video.
Piecing together the evidence, Navalny concluded that without a doubt, Medvedev, who has frequently spoken of the need to fight official corruption, is “one of the richest people in the country and one of the most corrupt bureaucrats.”
One former classmate linked to companies and charities mentioned in the scheme denied any connection, and Nikonov countered that Navalny’s accusations boiled down to the fact that “Medvedev wears pink sneakers.”
In an interview on Ekho Moskvy radio, Ilya Shumanov, a deputy head of the Russian branch of Transparency International, agreed that Navalny has failed to make an irrefutable case that Medvedev benefited financially from his acquaintances.
Navalny decried what he called public indifference to corruption in Russia.
“I try to do things in a way they should be done in a normal world,” Navalny told the station. “In Russia we see an absurd situation in which we publish on the Internet that someone received 70 billion [rubles] in bribes, and everybody’s reaction is like, ‘yeah, nothing interesting here.’ ”
Read more:
Putin foe Alexei Navalny found guilty in retrial, threatening 2018 presidential run
Interview with Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny
Inside Trump’s financial ties to Russia and his unusual flattery of Putin
Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news |
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk: "These security forces [in Odessa] are inefficient and violated the law"
Ukraine's interim PM has accused the security services of failing to stop violence in the southern city of Odessa that left more than 40 people dead.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk, on his way to Odessa, told the BBC there would be a "full, comprehensive and independent investigation" into Friday's events.
Most of the victims were pro-Russian separatists who had barricaded themselves inside a building.
Mr Yatsenyuk has blamed pro-Russian groups for "provoking the unrest".
Dozens of people were arrested after the unrest. On Sunday, hundreds of pro-Russians gathered outside Odessa's main police station demanding their release, and there were reports of scuffles breaking out on the streets.
'Real war'
Some 42 people died in Odessa on Friday, most of them in the fire at the Trade Unions House, where separatist protesters had barricaded themselves in following running street battles with pro-Kiev activists.
Mr Yatsenyuk said the security service and law enforcement office had done "nothing to stop this crackdown", saying they were "inefficient and they violated the law".
The police chief of the Odessa region had been removed, he said, and the prosecutor's office had started an investigation into "every single police officer".
He accused Russia and pro-Russian protesters of orchestrating "real war... to eliminate Ukraine and eliminate Ukrainian independence".
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Some 42 people died in Odessa on Friday, most of them in the fire at the Trade Unions House
Image copyright AFP Image caption Members of the public toured the building on Sunday to inspect the damage and mourn those killed.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Mourners have placed flowers and tributes at the building - some in front of a Russian flag hung on one wall
Image copyright Reuters Image caption The deaths sparked protests from pro-Russian groups, including here at a governor's office in Donetsk on Saturday
Asked about pro-Russian groups who have taken over many buildings in towns in the east, Mr Yatsenyuk said: "We haven't entirely lost the control... much will depend on the local population, whether they support peace and security."
Mr Yatsenyuk was speaking as Ukrainian troops encircled Sloviansk in the east, where the government is trying to wrest control from the separatists.
The BBC's Sarah Rainsford, in the regional capital, Donetsk, says that while it appears the Ukrainian forces have sealed off the roads in and out of the town, they are moving around it and concentrating on smaller towns nearby.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Ukrainian troops have sealed off roads into Sloviansk
Our correspondent spoke to a resident of Sloviansk who said people there were expecting it to be stormed.
Analysis It appears for the moment that the Ukrainian troops are leaving aside the stronghold of Sloviansk. Kiev talks of it being encircled and the fighting does appear to be concentrated in towns outside. I spoke to one person last night in Sloviansk who said people there were extremely nervous. They were expecting the place to be stormed and that it could be their last night in control, with heavy fighting. But that did not happen. We have seen pro-Russian groups in Donetsk and Luhansk and places to the south of here reacting very angrily to the deaths in Odessa - trying to take over government buildings once again.
Gunfire was reported overnight in Kostyantynivka, where one separatist checkpoint was dismantled, and in Mariupol as Ukrainian forces tried to reclaim government offices.
There was heavy fighting in the town of Kramatorsk on Saturday, with the interior ministry saying the army had retaken a television tower.
Kiev officials said at least two people were killed in the town, although Russian state television reported 10 deaths.
Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council chief Andriy Parubiy said on Sunday that the military would expand the "active stage of the operation in towns where extremists and terrorists are carrying out illegal activities".
Ukraine's pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown by pro-Western protesters in February.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Pro-Russian activists break into a building in Donetsk as a response to the deaths in Odessa
Russia responded by annexing the Crimean peninsula - part of Ukraine but with a Russian-speaking majority - in a move that provoked international outrage.
Moscow has said it will act to protect Russian speakers wherever they are threatened, but denies it is engineering the unrest. |
Janet Napolitano gave a disturbing speech last week at the University of California, during The New York Times Health For Tomorrow Conference. In the speech she announced the college will be receiving a government grant of $26 million, which will be used to develop a brain implant that could rewire the brain of a human being.
Napolitano said that this project would be specifically targeted at mentally ill people, and used the recent mass shooting at the campus as a pretense for taking these sorts of measures. She claimed an implantable microchip that could rewire an individual’s brain would prevent tragedies like this from occurring in the future.
However, many are finding this announcement to be disturbing, considering the United States government’s criteria for what makes an individual mentally unstable. According to the US government, and most other governments throughout the world, showing resistance towards authority and thinking for one’s self are both considered to be signs of mental instability.
With that being the case it does not take a stretch of the imagination to see the possibility that this technology could be used to stifle dissent and to rewire the brain of anyone who questioned the government.
According to an article on the UCSF website, the $26 million dollar grant that will fund this project is a part of a a $100 million Obama Administration initiative to fund technological treatments for neurological and psychiatric diseases.
Source:
UC president highlights research to retrain brains of mentally ill |
Story highlights The country music star wrote more than 1,000 songs in his 60-year career
He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2012 by President Barack Obama
(CNN) Country music legend Mel Tillis died early Sunday morning, according to a statement from his publicist. He was 85.
Tillis died at the Munroe Regional Medical Center in Ocala, Florida, after battling intestinal issues since 2016, said spokesman Don Murry Grubbs. The suspected cause of death was respiratory failure.
Tillis was a prolific singer-songwriter who penned more than 1,000 songs and recorded more than 60 albums in a career that spanned six decades. Many of those songs were recorded by other country music stars such as Kenny Rogers, George Strait and Ricky Skaggs.
His commercial peak came in the 1970s when he had a string of top 10 hits, including "Good Woman Blues," "Heart Healer" and "Coca Cola Cowboy." In 2007, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame
Before making his way to Nashville, Tennessee, the songwriter briefly attended the University of Florida. He joined the US Air Force to serve in the Korean War and was stationed in Okinawa, where he spent his time cooking and singing on Armed Forces Radio. |
People around the United States have decried the white nationalist movement after three people lost their lives when violence erupted in Virginia over the weekend, and San Franciscans have also made it known that racism and hatred are unwelcome in their hometown. Christie Smith reports (Published Friday, Aug. 18, 2017)
The National Park Service on Wednesday granted a permit for a hotly-debated rally at Crissy Field this weekend.
Right-wing group, Patriot Prayer, last week applied for a permit to host "Freedom Rally San Francisco" on Saturday.
Despite criticism from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Superintendent London Breed, the National Park Service said, "We cannot deny a permit to anyone planning to exercise their First Amendment rights based on their political stance or beliefs."
Wary of whether the rally will draw white nationalists and invite violence, San Franciscans have made it known that racism and hatred are unwelcome in their hometown.
And the City by the Bay isn't stopping there. Residents have begun organizing counter-protests with unusual themes.
Up first is "Leave your dog poop on Crissy Field" from 12 p.m. Aug. 25 through 10 a.m. Aug. 26.
Organizers wrote on Facebook that the idea behind the event is to "leave a gift for our Alt-Right friends."
They continued: "Take your dog to Crissy Field and let them do their business and be sure not to clean it up! Watch out for landmines, friends! We can get together Sunday and clean up the mess and hug each other!"
San Francisco artist Tuffy Tuffington, who has two dogs, came up with the curious way to protest the Crissy Field rally, without needing direct conflict.
"I was walking around and had this idea of people marching around in fields of poop," Tuffington said. "I thought that would be a nice form of civil disobedience and a way to not actually be there when they’re there."
He didn't know it would generate the interest it has, but is committed to making a stink — both literally and figuratively. So far, 525 people have demonstrated interest in this gathering, which has piqued the interest of nearly 3,000 more.
"I really intended for it to be a joke for my friends and I didn’t realize I made it public," Tuffington said. "A few hours later, there was 500 people interested."
Other counter-protesters, in true San Francisco style, are encouraging people to dance as "an alternative to hate, confrontation and aggression."
The "SF LovedUp Mobile Dance Counter-Rally" will last from 1 to 5 p.m. Aug. 26 at Marina Green Park. Attendees will not interrupt the white supremacist rally, but will dress in their "amazing colorful fabulous best" and "groove to cheesy, party pop dance athems," organizers wrote on Facebook.
More than 1,000 people have said they will be at the event and nearly 6,000 more are interested.
Meanwhile, Stop the Violence, Galeria de la Raza, Queer Nation-San Francisco, Castro Community on Patrol, Unafraid, and a slew of other community organizations have teamed up with the Rev. Dr. Megan Rohrer for what is described on Facebook as "San Francisco Peacefully Unites Against White Nationalists."
Organizers have issued a special invite to "all drag performers and sparkly freaks" to counter "violent behaviors" from 12 to 5 p.m. Aug. 26.
They wrote: "Believing hate groups are coming to San Francisco to bait folk into helping them recruit others to their cause and to instigate violent behaviors so lawsuits can fund their hate work, we are uniting with diverse advocates and leaders around San Francisco who are urging safety, peace, and events that will help preserve the fragile diversity of Crissy Field."
However, this peaceful gathering will not occur at Crissy Field. It will be held at Civic Center, and roughy 2,300 people have signed up to attend and another 6,200 have expressed interest.
Supporters are also encouraged to attend a march for equality called "Come Together" at Harvey Milk Plaza between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m.
As Saturday's controversial rally nears, a growing number of unique protests are coming out of the woodwork.
"Sheetcake Picnic - Protest Alternative" invites people to Hellman Hollow at Golden Gate Park to — you guessed it — eat cake between 2 and 5 p.m. Saturday.
"I'm a left handed, Jewish homosexual. I don't always love labels, but I do love myself. And in these times of tension, that's something to celebrate," the event's organizer, Simon Betsadel, wrote on Facebook.
Instead of adding to hateful rhetoric at Crissy Field, Betsadel has invited people to lay on blankets, listen to music, and enjoy food and each others' presence.
By way of extravagence, "sparkles and eye makeup" are suggested, but attendees are free to "just do whatever gives you joy," he wrote.
Betsadel urged: "Let's think about everything we have that makes us diverse, fabulous, and totally unique."
At the same time, Resistence SF is hosting "Calling All Clowns: Fascism is no laughing matter" from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at Crissy Field Beach.
The gathering is a call to action for "anti-racist, anti-fascist clowns" to "mercilessly ridicule any neo-nazis, white supremacists, or alt right trolls who dare show their face in San Francisco," according to its Facebook page.
The group's Facebook page also advertises an event simply called "Resist SF" between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. at Crissy Field Beach.
Organizers wrote: "Racism is evil. It must be eradicated from the face of the earth. We will not let facist, racist, morally bankrupt degenerates invade our beautiful city and spew hate. The time for passive tolerance is over. It's time to stand our ground. Its time to stand up."
Stressing the importance of relaying to protesters that there is no room for bigotry and hate in San Franciso, Resist SF cautioned: "We are not advocating violence or physical conflicts. We are advocating (participants) -- young, old, brave, bold; show up in force, create signs and disrupt the agenda of the unwelcomed hate groups.
"One voice. One people. One love. United we will stand."
It appears that San Franciscans also refuse to rob children of the opportunity to stand up for their home.
"The Cutest Lil Counter Protest" is billed as a peaceful, family-friendly protest.
The goal is to "smother hate with as much love and cuteness as possible," starting at 11 a.m. at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers, according to Facebook.
A so-called "Cuties Parade" will start at 11:30 a.m. and end with a group photo in front of the de Young Summer of Love wall. Donations for the Southern Poverty Law Center will also be accepted.
An organization called Brown Lives Matter is hosting an "Anti-Racist Rally," which will start at 490 Marina Boulevard at 9 a.m. Saturday.
The effort has picked up the attention of more than 300 people and aims to directly oppose Patriot Prayer's protest at Crissy Field.
The Human Rights Commission has also spent days brainstorming on non-violent responses to the controversial free speech rally. To that end, the organization is setting up Help Against Hate stations across San Francisco and holding a peace festival, empowerment conference, community conversations and more.
A full list can be found here: |
It’s 2017 — time to rethink the way websites are loaded.
Raphael Blocked Unblock Follow Following Sep 19, 2017
Web technologies are fast paced and it’s often very hard not to re-invent the wheel every three months. So I tried to avoid the re-inventing-wheel problematic and head over to the how to enable the power of the latest tools enrolled in frontend technologies to make our wheel faster and better using the new tools like IntersectionObserver or Webpack’s Dynamic Import.
The problem with the computation and payload waste
Nowadays an average page rendering looks like this:
Browser: “Hey server, give me the content for https://example.com”
Server: “Yes, Sir. Here it is — btw. it’s an HTML Document.”
Browser: “Thanks. Just saw it, I need a main.css and a bundle.js next. Do you find it somewhere?”
Server: “Here they are, the main.css file is a Stylesheet weight 89kb while the heavy duty comes now with a bundle.js weight 654kb. Hope you can use them.”
Browser: “Thanks mate. It’s what I needed, but honestly I think they contain unnecessary selectors and features. Anyway — see you soon.”
Sure, the communication between client and server never actually happen like this in reality, but there is some truth in it for a lot of websites:
Assets are very often bundled into a single file for the whole project
Bundled JavaScript or CSS files mostly contains the code for every page of the entire website / application no matter if it is used on this page or not
So we usually load functionalities and styling rules that are unused on the actual page and much more often a user don’t see because he doesn’t scroll all the way down. (Nice read: UX Myth — People don’t scroll)
What if a website would only load features and styles within the viewport?
In fact, this would be the most effective way and reduces the payload waste to a minimum. But this is hard to achieve manually. And how shall a developer know exactly which components are loaded on the website? Impossible to have a 100% guarantee there.
Let us think about this track and what’s necessary to make this a success story:
Code must be splitted into small pieces for each feature.
See: Webpack’s code splitting approach. An element must be able to tell that it appears in the DOM and in the Viewport.
See: MutationObserver and IntersectionObserver There must be some kind of a registry that knows which element needs which assets to be loaded.
See: Gluebert.js and Dynamic Import A critical path css should be loaded from within the HTML-Document to avoid a FOUC (Flash of unstyled content)
process visualization of lazy loaded web components
What’s the benefit of such an approach
The user experience increase massively by improving the perceptual speed index since the code size is reduced to a minimum and lazy load everything when needed (like the common lazy load approach for images — but for whole components).
That way we will significantly improve the time until the first meaningful paint, first Interactive and consistently Interactive over a classical approach. All of them are key performance indexes in Googles Lighthouse audit.
Ok, you made me curious, how to start?
First, let’s create a simple Webpack setup with the following settings:
The necessary part above is just the chunkFilename property at output. So Webpack will create a single chunk file for every feature you import using dynamic imports in your code.
Everything else in the example above can be overwritten by your regular Webpack configuration.
Next we need to install Gluebert.js. Gluebert enables this whole flow and makes a hassle free usage of MutationObserver and IntersectionObservers as well as module binding, when a component appears in the viewport.
The npm-package can be installed easily like:
npm install gluebert
Next in our src/app.js entry point we start bootstrapping the app like:
See: https://github.com/wildhaber/gluebert-getting-started/blob/master/src/app.js
The module signatures are the essential part, that interlinks actual DOM components with the application. A module signature could look like:
Once this module is registered in the main instance, when an element with a matching selector to .c-lazy-img appears within the viewport, content from ./lazy-img.controller.js as well as the stylesheets ./lazy-img.styles.scss are loaded on demand.
I don’t want to go too much into detail of gluebert.js-detail. You can find everything and a getting-started in the following repositories:
To see this approach in the wild, just open your terminal when while browsing through https://gluebert.com
mascott of gluebert.js
So, we have found a universal cure?
Well, obviously not — but it’s at least one approach worth challenging. Looking forward to get your thoughts about the approach above. |
Sporting Kansas City announced on Tuesday that the club has waived midfielder James Marcelin and mutually agreed to part ways with midfielder Jorge Claros.
Claros appeared in eight MLS matches (including postseason) and four games during the 2014/15 CONCACAF Champions League group stage since being acquired by Sporting Kansas City last July. The 29-year-old played at the 2008 Summer Olympics and 2014 FIFA World Cup as a member of the Honduras Men’s National Team.
Marcelin was acquired by Sporting Kansas City in December and appeared in three preseason matches for the club. The 28-year-old has twice represented Haiti at the CONCACAF Gold Cup, as well as in Olympic and World Cup qualifying, and has 39 career MLS appearances over two seasons with the Portland Timbers and FC Dallas.
Claros and Marcelin have been removed from Sporting Kansas City’s roster, making available two international roster spots. To view a complete list of Sporting Kansas City transactions in 2015, visit SportingKC.com/tracker. |
SAN JOSE, Calif. – Through the first two months of the 2014 season, describing the San Jose Earthquakes’ offense at any given point in time has boiled down to one critical question.
Is Yannick Djaló on the pitch, or not?
In Djaló’s 119 minutes’ worth of play so far, spread over four matches, the Quakes have two goals, for an average of 1.51 per 90 minutes. The rest of the time, San Jose are averaging barely more than half that figure, 0.86 goals per 90 minutes.
The winger, who turns 28 on Monday, hammered home the point Saturday with a volleyed finish for his first goal since joining the Quakes last month on loan from Portuguese side Benfica. It was only the third goal in five league matches for San Jose, but that was still enough to secure the Quakes’ first win of the season.
“Yannick’s been a great boost when he’s been in the game,” said Quakes winger Shea Salinas, who has been roaming the left flank opposite a revolving cast on the right including Djaló, Cordell Cato and Atiba Harris. “The biggest factor is, when he beats a guy, he draws defenders to him, so it opens up guys on the opposite side of the field, which is me sometimes.”
The longest Djaló has gone in a single match thus far is just 45 minutes, the byproduct of a lingering hamstring issue. With a three-matches-in-eight-days stretch beginning Saturday on the artificial turf of Vancouver (7 pm ET, TSN2 in Canada, MLS Live in US), it doesn’t appear that Djaló – who was given Tuesday off from training to recuperate – is going to be rushed into the starting lineup.
Of course, the length of time coach Mark Watson can wait on that move will also depend on how the Quakes’ offense does without the diminutive product of Sporting CP's academy system.
Catch the latest Quakes headlines at SJEarthquakes.com
“When he’s not on the field, we still need to be confident and know that we can play and possess the ball and other guys just have to step up,” Salinas said after training Tuesday. “I need to try to beat guys a little bit more and then draw the defenders and then switch it. But hopefully Yannick stays healthy and stays on the field.”
The assist was Salinas’ team-high fourth of the season, and highlighted the fact that the 27-year-old’s growth in his seventh MLS season is giving the Quakes their most dangerous set of wingers since Marvin Chávez and Simon Dawkins roamed the San Jose flanks in 2012.
That’s an ironic twist for Salinas, who was making a leap early on in 2012 before a body slam from former New York Red Bulls defender Rafa Márquez broke his collarbone, opening the door for Dawkins to walk through en route to an eight-goal campaign.
“When I got back, Simon Dawkins was in full form, and Marvin Chávez was, too,” Salinas said. “I don’t think I was or will be ever good enough to beat Simon Dawkins out of a lineup. That was more of the setback – I just wasn’t getting games like I was before.”
When Dawkins went back to Tottenham Hotspur at the end of his loan stint, Salinas grabbed hold of the job on the left wing and hasn’t let go, fulfilling some of the potential San Jose glimpsed when they drafted him in 2008, then re-acquired him from Vancouver in 2011 two years after he departed for Philadelphia in the 2009 Expansion Draft.
“It’s one of the more rewarding things in the game: to see someone who’s got ability and a bunch of promise, and then to see them develop into a very good professional,” Watson said.
“It’s a daily, weekly, yearly process where you just keep working on little things to help them get better, and when you see them do that, see the end product on the field, it’s pretty rewarding.”
Geoff Lepper covers the San Jose Earthquakes for MLSsoccer.com. |
× Expand Drones in North Carolina: What would the Wright Brothers think?
If you're feeling paranoid, turn to page 41 in the newly approved state budget. Sandwiched between rather innocuous passages on motor fleet management and tax programs are the drones.
Budget section 7.16.(e) includes a ban on the purchase or operation of the unmanned aircrafts by state and local government agencies, including law enforcement, through July 2015. That's when the Federal Aviation Administration is expected to open national airspace to widespread use of drones.
But the ban contains a notable exception, allowing the little-known state chief information officer to seek exceptions to the ban if he deems the drones are necessary.
"It sounds a lot more nefarious than it really is," says N.C. Rep. Jason Saine, the Lincoln County Republican who chairs the state House's budget subcommittee on information technology. Saine says the temporary moratorium gives the state time to weigh security and privacy concerns.
However, the language also grants broad powers to state CIO Chris Estes, who is charged with managing the North Carolina's information technology systems. Estes was appointed by Gov. Pat McCrory in January. As of last year, Estes worked in the Charlotte office of Booz Allen Hamilton, the Virginia-based tech firm, defense contractor and former employer of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Snowden's leak included allegations that Booz Allen assisted the NSA in developing mass surveillance systems in the U.S. According to Estes' state government bio, his work in Charlotte focused on technology and innovation.
Under the budget provision, Estes could plannow or laterfor the use of drones in coordination with the N.C. Department of Transportation. Estes would then present a proposal to the joint legislative committees on transportation and information technology by March 2014. Even though law enforcement would ostensibly use the drones, the bill's language omits any mention of the secretary of public safety or a legislative judicial committee. Nor is it clear if private entities could use the aircraft.
There already could be an exception to the state's two-year drone ban. Richard Walls, deputy transit secretary for the N.C. DOT, told the Associated Press this week that he expects his agency will soon receive permission to develop a $2.5 million drone test site in Hyde County, a small, rural county in eastern North Carolina. Walls said the facility would test drones capable of thermal imaging for potential use in commercial farm operations.
Saine, a volunteer firefighter who backs drone usage in emergencies, says Estes shares his concern for privacy. "Someone who has concerns probably needs to get to know the CIO a little better," he says.
Estes could not be reached for comment on this story, but a spokesman with his office said he has no information yet on how Estes will handle the drone provision.
According to a Congressional Research Report published in April, an estimated 30,000 drones could fly in the U.S. within 20 years. The FAA Modernization and Reform Act, the report says, accelerates integration of drones into national airspace by 2015.
Already federal customs agents and the FBI have used drones in the U.S. The FAA has approved the use of drones for several local police departments, state and private colleges and small cities and towns. Earlier this year, the report says, a police force in North Dakota conducted the nation's first drone-assisted arrest.
There is a growing push from law enforcement agencies across the state to buy the relatively low-cost devicessome as light as 2 poundsto assist in local police work. The drones can be equipped with many kinds of surveillance equipment, including cameras, thermal imaging equipment and license plate readers.
In March, the Monroe City Council, which governs a growing suburban city near Charlotte, approved and then revoked a vote to purchase a small battery-powered drone to assist in crime scene investigations and natural disasters.
The drone language in the budget was approved four months after the Monroe City Council denied the purchase.
The move by the Monroe City Council spurred the bipartisan House Bill 312 in March. Its primary sponsors included powerful Asheville Republican Tim Moffitt and Wake County Democrat Duane Hall. Saine also co-sponsored the failed legislation, which stalled in a House rules committee. It would have prohibited law enforcement from using drones without a warrant in most cases. However, the new drone language in the state budget excludes any mention of a warrant.
Saine says the ongoing concerns over privacy prompted the budget item. "There certainly are legitimate uses for the technology," he says. "But I also understand there is public concern."
Hall says he is surprised HB 312 failed, adding he believed he had the support of numerous GOP leaders.
"I'm a Democrat, but it's a libertarian issue," he says. "It's a privacy issue. Let's follow the Constitution, the Fourth Amendment. Don't let people run amok just because there's new technology. There will always be new technology."
Sarah Preston, policy director for the North Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, says her organization backed more stringent legislation such as HB 312. What they got in the state budget, she says, is an "extra layer of bureaucracy."
"Our purpose has not been that there is no use for drones," says Preston. "But if you are going to use it to collect information on an individual, you should abide by the Fourth Amendment and get a warrant."
The Congressional Research Service addressed the privacy issue in its April report. It cited Supreme Court cases in which the justices ruled that for manned surveillance vehicles, searches are constitutional in areas open to public view. For example, law enforcement officials don't need a warrant to fly over residences to search for marijuana plants in backyards and gardens because the airspace is open to the public.
In another ruling, the Court decided the Environmental Protection Agency did not need a warrant to photograph a Dow Chemical facility from navigable public airspace.
Since the state budget language is so vague, it's also uncertain what information about the drone program would be public.
Hall says he did not know of Saine's budget addendum. While Hall backs a drone ban, he's puzzled by the powers reserved for the CIO.
"My bill included exceptions too, if there's imminent harm to life or serious property damage or a fleeing subject," Hall says. "But those were judges. Those were law enforcement. It wasn't a CIO."
This article appeared in print with the headline "Flying under the radar." |
Green activists display placards during a demonstration in New York against Donald Trump. (AFP)
As the Mayor of Pittsburgh, I can assure you that we will follow the guidelines of the Paris Agreement for our people, our economy & future. https://t.co/3znXGTcd8C - bill peduto (@billpeduto) June 1, 2017
Empire State Building shines green in protest.
When US President Donald Trump announced America's abandonment of the Paris climate deal Thursday, saying he was elected to represent "Pittsburgh, not Paris," several US cities and states responded with a defiant counter-declaration: We're staying in."As the Mayor of Pittsburgh, I can assure you that we will follow the guidelines of the Paris Agreement for our people, our economy & future," Democrat Bill Peduto tweeted in a swift, widely read retort to Trump's move.The Democratic-led states of California, New York and Washington also asserted an environmental independence of sorts, pledging to uphold the global accord's goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming."I don't believe fighting reality is a good strategy," California Governor Jerry Brown said in a statement announcing the formation of the United States Climate Alliance."If the president is going to be AWOL in this profoundly important human endeavor, then California and other states will step up."Brown, who championed environmental causes when he first served as governor in the 1970s, oversaw an expansion of California's greenhouse gas reduction standards since returning to the post in 2011.Trump's critics have fumed that exiting the Paris deal puts the United States at a disadvantage on the world stage.Several major US corporations had urged Trump to honor the agreement, while Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs's chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, in his first tweet ever, blasted Trump's decision as "a setback" for US leadership in the world.Governor Andrew Cuomo said his state of New York was committed to complying with the Paris standards -- which call for US reduction of its emissions by 26 to 28 percent from 2005 levels -- "regardless of (the capital city) Washington's irresponsible actions.""We will not ignore the science and reality of climate change," he said, adding that Trump's "reckless" decision could have "devastating repercussions" for the planet.California is the US's most populous state. Along with New York and Washington, the three represent more than one-fifth of US gross domestic product. They have urged other states to join their movement.The governors said the alliance would work to sustain and strengthen existing climate programs, promote the sharing of information and best practices, and implement new programs to reduce carbon emissions from all sectors of the economy.Democratic cities and states, aware that the American public as a whole is increasingly concerned about climate change, are taking their stand, perhaps in recognition that the issue could become a pivotal one in the congressional and governor elections in 2018, and perhaps the presidential race in 2020."Make no mistake, climate change is on the ballot for every election until we reverse this immoral action," said Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii.The island state's governor, David Ige, said in a statement Thursday that Hawaii was "already taking concrete steps to implement the Paris Accord" and will continue to do so.The US Conference of Mayors, an umbrella group for leaders of the 1,200 American cities with 30,000 or more inhabitants, issued a call to action similar to that of the tri-state alliance."Climate change is one of the greatest threats to our coastal communities, nation and world, and we need coordinated action at all levels of government to meet the scale of its challenge," said New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, a conference vice president.The coastal Louisiana city faces a triple threat of subsidence, coastal erosion and sea level rise, Landrieu explained."If unchecked, New Orleans, like many coastal cities, will cease to exist. A federal withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is shortsighted and will be devastating to Americans in the long run."Hours after Trump's announcement, Pittsburgh's mayor took to the airwaves to highlight the potential for grassroots climate change action by communities across the country."The actual implementation of Paris wasn't going to happen in Washington anyways," Peduto told CNN. "It was going to happen in the cities around this country, and we'll double down and make sure it does." |
Thanks for all the compliments everybody! Still excited about how it turned out, nd th new owner is thrilled as well. Its a tallish seat tube for a mixte at 53/54 I forget off hand for certian.
The Dura Ace group came almost entirely from a Univega Super Strada, and yes 7200 EX, not 7400. Bar cons were eBay sourced, the Univega had dt shifters.
The chainstay protector is a bit clunky, and I dont usually run one, but after buffing and waxing, the paint turned ot so wonderfully that I felt thee need to protect it, used what I had around before giving it to the new owner.
Same with the pedals, rebuilt the proprietary set that came with the group. We know about the adapters, but the new owner is gonna see if there is a need to change the pedals, or if they suit her fine, before doing so. Her husband has a bike with the same crankset/pedal combo (The green libertas ive posted here before) and has no problem with them so were gonna try them out. I should probabrly get a few sets of those adapters anyway, as I always seem to run accross these cranks.
Thanks,
Kevin |
In a recently resurfaced 2005 interview with "Pride and Prejudice" stars Keira Knightley and Matthew MacFadyen, a bit of trivia regarding their co-star Dame Judi Dench stood out.
The 78-year-old Oscar-winning actress, perhaps best known to younger generations as M from the James Bond franchise, is apparently far raunchier than most soft-spoken English royalty.
"But perhaps the most arresting memory that they take away from being on set with living legend Judi Dench is not her boundless fascination with acting but her penchant for subversive needlework," reads the passage from Premier Magazine. "'She makes these like needlework embroideries on set in the tedium of filming', says MacFadyen, 'but they are all: 'You Are a Cunt'. And she gives them as presents. And it's Dame Judi Dench. And she is doing this beautifully, intricate, ornate (work). You kind of see the work materializing as the shoot goes on. Like: 'You Are a Fucking Shit.'"
Judi Dench, you are a delight.
h/t Jezebel |
On June 13th, Apostle Oaks and Historian Turley gave a fireside at my stake in Idaho “to answer some faithful questions and to minister to some disabling doubts.”
In this fireside, the couple responded to several questions that are most relevant to those that agree with Denver Snuffer and Rock Waterman. In my view, that is that today’s church has strayed from many of the key concepts taught by Joseph Smith. Apparently there is a decent group in the Boise/Meridian/Eagle/Star area that ascribe to that view, and this fireside seems to be an attempt to protect the active members from those ideas.
I was very underwhelmed by the responses given by Oaks and Turley — below I’m including some of their statements and my thoughts on their words. For the full audio, go listen to the Mormon Stories bonus episode, or read the transcript.
Oaks starts the fireside explaining how to know if someone is “on the Lord’s side:”
“In determining on who’s on the Lord’s side on these latter-days, there are two major questions. First, for most non-Mormons, and for some Mormons, the key question is how they feel about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. For most Mormons, the key question on who’s on the Lord’s side is how they feel about the church’s current prophetic leadership. If those feelings are sufficiently negative, they take members into what we call apostasy.”
I don’t believe that many active members base their testimony on “how they feel about the church’s current prophetic leadership.” The current leaders are not what bring in the converts. In fact, I remember of at least one investigator during my mission that loved everything we taught until we provided him with a video of the church leaders bearing their testimonies. He said it was not at all what he expected from prophets and apostles, it was very disappointing, and he didn’t want to continue toward baptism.
Still, I completely understand Oaks’s statement, and it is accurate. There have been and there are many other sects of Mormonism that also accept Joseph Smith, Jr. as the restoring prophet and accept the Book of Mormon. What makes the LDS church unique from the others is the set of people leading since Brigham Young to today. If you accept them and their teachings, then you are bound to the authority dependency that the LDS church requires. The church clearly places the ordinances and priesthood authority between the members and Christ, in that Christ is unable to save members unless you have taken all the right steps in “His” church.
Here are my top 10 problematic statements of Oaks and Turley from this fireside:
Turley: “I have a doctorate level of education, and I write books. I have computers to help me, I have a staff to assist me, and, with all of that, it still takes numerous drafts and often several years for me to write a significant book. Now realize this: The Book of Mormon, essentially as we have it today, was dictated by the prophet Joseph Smith, a man with perhaps one year of formal education, in just a single draft over a period of less than 90 days. Brothers and Sisters, I don’t care how smart you are, I don’t care how much education you have or how good you are as a writer. I defy anyone to sit down and, in just one draft, dictate in a period of ninety days or less, a book of the power and complexity of the Book of Mormon.”
–I wavered on including this — it is such an old argument that has been argued ad nauseam. Saying he had 90 days is absurd. He had much more like 5 years to develop the story. See MormonThink’s explanation of this. Also see #4 below. Oaks: “[T]he idea that the established Prophet has strayed and needs to be replaced is an idea Satan has planted in the minds of apostates from the very beginning. For example, at the time of Christ, the Savior was challenged by those who claimed allegiance to Abraham and Moses using the teachings of prophets past to criticize the Lord himself.”
–Oaks is arguing that a newer prophet has no need to be consistent with the teachings of any prior prophets. For example, Brigham Young taught “Blood Atonement” as official doctrine and or course that polygamy was required to become a god — there are many other examples of conflicting teachings between prophets. Having changing doctrines and a teaching that the current Prophet “cannot lead us astray” are not compatible. One of the prophets must be wrong, otherwise God’s laws are not unchanging. Oaks: “The so-called ‘new prophet’ may pursue his or her correcting mission by a variety of means; organizing a new church, advocating a change of doctrine, or opposing some church policy. We have seen all of these tactics and many more in our lifetime. The content of the new message may be more than what is true and correct, or it may be less. But it is always: ‘I have a better way than the Lord’s current leaders.’”
–These references are describing Denver Snuffer, Kate Kelly, and John Dehlin. Each is elevated, beyond what they claim to be, to being a “false prophet” by Oaks. I am certain at least that Kate and John do not claim any sort of prophecy. Oaks is unfairly painting them as usurpers rather than what their actions portrayed: expressing discontent from within the prescribed order and lines of authority (until excommunicated). Oaks: “Such questions, questions we call them, are asked with the real intent of better understanding and more fully obeying the will of the Lord.” Turley: “One difference between questions asked in faith and doubts is that questions lead to faith and to revelation whereas doubts lead to disobedience, which in turn renders people less able to receive revelation, or in other words, doubt is darkness. Questions asked in faith lead to light.”
–This is so arbitrary and just wrong. I personally set out investigating issues in order to “save” a friend of mine who had apostatized. My questions were completely in order to obtain a “better understanding” and “more fully obey the will of the Lord.” Yet, as I diligently sought answers, I began to doubt. It was not because of any disobedience — it was because there are serious issues. I understand why Oaks and Turley state “doubts lead to disobedience” and “doubt is darkness.” It categorizes those who doubt as unworthy and as the “others” that cannot be trusted. It makes those that feel such feelings as doubt and uncertainty to define such feelings as evil and avoid them at all cost. Turley: “The previous year, when the 116 pages disappeared, Joseph learned the lesson that all of us with computers learn, which is back-up, back-up, back-up.”
While this was one of Turley’s more amusing quips, it highlights the just how ludicrous the LDS narrative is regarding the lost pages (see the South Park “reenactment”). Joseph, of course, claimed to have the “back-up” of the 116 lost pages in the golden plates. The idea of a conspiracy is nonsense — being able to re-dictate the 116 pages would have reinforced Joseph’s position as translator, not weakened it. Oaks: “The first answer to this claim is that modern apostles are called to be witnesses of the name of Christ in all the world, Doctrine and Covenants 107:23. This is not to witness of a personal manifestation. To witness of the name is to witness of the plan, the work, or mission such as the atonement and the authority or priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ, which an apostle who holds the keys is uniquely responsible to do.”
–I found this to be quite the statement to make… Oaks has essentially differentiated “modern” from “ancient” apostles, which is in contrary to Article of Faith 6. Still, this distinction of “name of Christ” rather than of “Christ” is also very interesting. There are many opinions contrary to Oaks’s, even on LDS.org in the Bible Dictionary and the Apostle Testimonies, that apostles are, by definition “Special Witnesses of Christ,” and must see Christ’s body, resurrected. Without this special witness, apostles have no stronger testimony than any member, which is exactly what Oaks goes on to say after this quote — without the special witness, there is no purpose to the apostolic calling. Turley: “Joseph Smith’s family was literate, but it was largely a family of oral tradition. […] This awkward first journal entry of Joseph Smith was written three and a half years after Joseph completed the translation of the Book of Mormon. Contrast Joseph the man, writing this journal entry, to Joseph the seer, dictating the Book of Mormon. With the 1832 journal entry, Joseph struggled to write a single page of text. But with the 1829 Book of Mormon manuscript, Joseph rapidly dictated what became a 588 page printed book in a single draft over a period of less than 90 days. The only way that was possible, Brothers and Sisters, is in the way he said he did it, which is by the gift and power of God.”
–This is so high on my list because Turley is pointing out the key difference — the Smith’s were a family of “oral tradition.” Of course Joseph would be able to dictate a story with immensely more ease than writing it himself. His comparison is ridiculous. That Turley does not see this obvious point and even uses it as evidence in favor of the LDS narrative shows him to either be deceitful or willfully ignorant. Turley: “We read in the Book of Mormon that plain and precious truths would be removed from the Bible. Here [Luke 22:43–44, regarding Christ sweating blood] is an instance in which some of the early manuscripts don’t have those verses in them. Now some scholars will look at the various manuscripts and say, ‘well, if some manuscripts have these verses in them and some do not, these verses must be questionable.’ And so they read these verses as a C-level passage rather than as an A-level passage. In other words, they cast doubt on them. But we, Brothers and Sisters, have another testament of Jesus Christ. […] The Book of Mormon confirms the authenticity of important New Testament details about the atonement of Jesus Christ, the key event in all of human history. This passage and a similar one in section 19 of the Doctrine and Covenants serve as second and third witnesses to the atonement of Jesus Christ that we covenant each week to remember as we participate in the ordinance of the sacrament.”
–Once again, Turley is presenting evidence against the Book of Mormon and the Church as if it were evidence in favor of the Church. Christ sweating as it were blood was not removed from the Bible, it was added many years after the fact. See wikipedia’s article on it, Here’s one of the various quotes on it from there: Bruce M. Metzger (2005): “These verses are absent from some of the oldest and best witnesses, including the majority of the Alexandrian manuscripts. It is striking to note that the earliest witnesses attesting the verses are three Church fathers – Justin, Irenaeus, and Hippolytus – each of whom uses the verses in order to counter Christological views that maintained that Jesus was not a full human who experienced the full range of human sufferings. It may well be that the verses were added to the text for just this reason, in opposition to those who held to a docetic Christology”. Turley’s point is strong evidence that the Book of Mormon is completely dependent on the King James bible — and is not from an ancient, unadulterated document. Turley: “One claim that we sometimes hear is that the church is no longer the church that was restored to the earth by Prophet Joseph. That it fell into apostasy and that the priesthood keys were not passed to Brigham Young.” Oaks: “Answer– then who held them? If there are no priesthood keys then the authority of the priesthood cannot be used upon the earth.”
–Oaks has to make make fun of this point, because he doesn’t have really any other angle. The idea that the twelve apostles had all the keys of the restoration was a post hoc development. See wikipedia’s “Succession crisis.” When Brigham Young heard about Smith’s death while serving a mission in Boston, his first reaction was to ask himself “whether Joseph had taken the keys of the kingdom with him from the earth.” Even assuming the keys were real and passed on, who were they passed on to? D&C 43:3–7 states that Joseph Smith, Jr. needed to appoint his successor. This was an important issue to the early Saints, and it was widely accepted that Joseph Smith appointed one of his sons to succeed him. Brigham Young was in agreement with it, that he and the twelve were essentially just guardians of the church under the premise “that young Joseph would eventually take his father’s place.” Later, with the Saints established in Utah, Brigham decided he should be the leader instead of the rightfully appointed. Oaks: “[W]hile some early apostles and other members of the church have had the sublime spiritual experience of seeing the Savior and some have made a public record of this, in the circumstances of today we are counseled not to speak of our most sacred spiritual experiences, otherwise with modern technology that can broadcast something all over the world, a remark made in a sacred and a private setting can be said abroad in violation of the Savior’s commandment not to cast our pearls before swine.”
–I’ve listed this as my #1, not because it is anything new — we have heard them say such things before. It is because of the sheer brazenness of the statement. Similar to what we discussed with #5, the point of apostles is to be witnesses, to go and tell everyone that will listen their spiritual experiences that are unique to them as the living apostles on the earth. Modern technology makes that job much more efficient, and should be harnessed to spread their spiritual experiences in order to reach the greatest number possible. The point of the New Testament is to share the sacred experiences of the apostles to all the world. Having living apostles that do not share their special witness is nonsensical. This is a weak excuse to cover up the fact that they do not have the same type of spiritual experiences of the leaders of the past. By abiding by this advice, they can continue to insinuate of such experiences without outright lying. It is still dishonest and not Christlike. They get to cover their rear, while also calling all the rest of the world swine, so I suppose that’s a win-win in their book.
Do you agree with my ranking? Let me know in the comments! |
The Vatican on Tuesday announced the resignation of a Kansas City, Mo., bishop who was convicted of a sex abuse coverup but remained in office – a fact that particularly horrified abuse survivors and their advocates. Bishop Robert Finn’s resignation will be seen as a key achievement for Pope Francis, who has said his papacy would show more accountability for abuse within the church.
The Vatican announced the resignation of Finn, 62, in an unspecific, brief note in its daily bulletin:
“The Holy Father has accepted the resignation from the pastoral ministry of the diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, U.S.A., presented by Bishop Robert W. Finn, in accordance with canon 401 para. 2 of the Code of Canon Law.”
That section of the code reads: “A diocesan bishop who has become less able to fulfill his office because of ill health or some other grave cause is earnestly requested to present his resignation from office.”
Finn, in an e-mailed statement from the diocese, said, “It has been an honor and joy for me to serve here among so many good people of faith.”
Kansas City, Kan., Archbishop Joseph Naumann will be the Missouri diocese’s administrator until a new bishop is appointed, according to Kansas City, Mo., diocese spokesman Jack Smith.
Naumann said in an e-mailed statement that he wanted the next few months to be a “a time of grace and healing” for the Missouri diocese.
Finn was the only U.S. bishop to be criminally convicted in an abuse coverup. He received two years of probation in 2012 for not telling authorities after a computer technician found hundreds of images of child pornography on a priest’s laptop and told Finn. Finn remained in office for three more years.
While rare, it is not unprecedented for a pope to accept the resignation of a bishop after confirmation of his complicity in clergy abuse.
Anne Barrett Doyle, the co-director of clergy abuse watchdog Bishop Accountability, said in a statement that the resignation was “a good step but just a beginning.”
Doyle urged the pope to demonstrate the beginning of “a new era in bishop accountability” by making a public statement that Finn’s resignation was a result of the bishop’s “failure to make children’s safety his first priority.”
In a statement, David Clohessy, national director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, called Finn’s resignation “a tiny but belated step forward.”
“After centuries of abuse and cover up done in secrecy, and decades of abuse and cover up done somewhat in public,” Clohessy said, “one pope has finally seen fit to oust one bishop for complicity in clergy sex crimes. That’s encouraging. But it’s only a very tiny drop of reform in an enormous bucket of horror.”
Particularly outspoken about Finn was Marie Collins, who sits on Francis’ advisory commission on abuse. Collins and others have helped keep Finn in the spotlight as a powerful symbol of what critics see as the church’s lack of accountability.
Bishop Finn has resigned. Things are moving slowly as I have said many times but they are moving in the right direction! — Marie Collins (@marielco) April 21, 2015
Collins was quoted in a piece this week, published before Finn’s resignation on Crux, a Catholic news site, as saying the pope’s advisory panel had given him a proposal for how to punish bishops who failed to protect minors from sexual abuse.
“I cannot understand how Bishop Finn is still in position, when anyone else with a conviction that he has could not run a Sunday school in a parish. He wouldn’t pass a background check,” she said in an interview with Crux. “I don’t know how anybody like that could be left in charge of a diocese.”
A three-year-old petition calling for the resignation of Finn had collected 263,588 signatures as of Tuesday. The petition’s initiator, a local Catholic named Jeff Weis, said in an email to The Post that the “prayers of this hurt community have been answered” by Finn’s resignation.
Finn will remain a bishop, Crux reported, but won’t lead a diocese. Francis will name his successor.
[This post has been updated multiple times]
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Cardinal steps down over sexual impropriety allegations, a first since 1927
Vatican defends appointment of Chilean bishop accused of sex-abuse cover-up
Is Pope Francis doing enough on sex abuse? Vatican abuse commission members question case of Chilean bishop. |
Your science fiction fantasy may be coming a reality, if IBM has anything to say about it. The company was recently granted a patent for bionic body armor, originally filed last March, that's intended to bestow the wearer the power to dodge bullets. The device works by constantly emitting electromagnetic waves that bounce off any fast-moving projectiles, and it uses the data to calculate risky trajectories. If the object in question is determined to be a threat, muscle stimulators activate and cause the wearer's body to contort in such way to avoid being hit. It works under the idea that a sniper typically fires from a distance, given the armor time to detect the oncoming bullet and react accordingly. Check out an image of from IBM's filing after the break. Here's hoping it can detect lasers , too.[Via The Firearm Blog ; thanks, Chris!] |
James Honeybone is 20 years old, has plugs in his ears, tattoos, a lip ring, loves heavy metal, and is on the Great Britain Olympic fencing team. As soon as I saw his awful mugshot-style official portrait, my heart skipped a beat and I knew he was my favorite fencer since Kat from Real World: London.
There's 3 different types of fencing -- épée, saber, and foil -- with slightly different rules about where on the body you can hit and if hits with the side of the sword or just the tip count. Honeybone's event is individual sabre fencing (there's also a team version), where you can hit with the sides of the sword as well as anywhere on the opponent's upper body, including arms.
Here's why you should be hoping James Honeybone stabs the other guys as hard and as often as possible with his sabre. Win that gold! |
You can count on average five pieces of marine litter every step you take on Northern Ireland beaches – that’s according to a shocking new report by the environmental charity Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful.
The newly released report of litter on Northern Ireland beaches by the environmental charity Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful summarises key findings from quarterly litter surveys taken on 10 beaches around Northern Ireland over a four-year period. The findings show that on average of 528 items of litter were observed per 100m of beach around Northern Ireland.
From September 2012 to October 2016 over 2000 volunteers took part and surveyed beaches from Runkerry Strand in the North West to Rostrevor in the South East covering a total of 56 km. Over the course of the four years they counted and removed 4,187 bags of rubbish.
The numbers are pretty shocking and this problem is replicated on beaches all around Ireland. Rubbish from over flowing bins, microbeads in our care products, litter dropped on the beach, items flushed down the toilet all ends up on our beaches and seas. This litter has a terrible impact on marine life, it contaminates fish and shellfish and damages boats.
You can read the full report here.
Coast Monkey’s view: It’s up to all of us to change our habitats and protect our beaches for the future. |
A principal in Alabama is asking students to bring cans of food to throw at would-be intruders.
A US high school has asked parents to arm their children with cans of food as part of its response plan against gun-armed intruders.
School officials from W.F. Burns Middle School in Valley, Alabama, wrote a letter to students’ parents, asking them to buy their children “an 8 oz canned food item (corn, beans, peas etc.) to use in case an intruder enters the classroom”.
“We hope the canned food items will never be used or needed, but it is best to be prepared.”
The strategy was inspired by the ALICE Training Institute, a company founded by a former police officer and a former primary school principal.
The institute follows the mantra of: Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate, and the cans of food are only a small — but still important — part of the whole procedure, school officials wrote.
“We realise at first this may seem odd; however, it is a practice that would catch an intruder off-guard,” the letter read.
“The canned food item could stun the intruder or even knock him out until the police arrive. The canned food item will give the students a sense of empowerment to protect themselves and will make them feel secure in case an intruder enters the classroom.”
Since the letter was sent out, it has been shared thousands of times, with some questioning its effectiveness.
But Chambers County School Superintendent Kelli Moore Hodge told CNN via email that the point of the training “is to be able to get kids evacuated and not be sitting ducks hiding under desks”.
Since the year 2000, the US has suffered through more than 100 school shootings, including the horrific 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, which claimed the lives of 27 people, 18 of them children.
The letter comes as some states, such as Washington D.C, finalise changes to its concealed gun laws by restricting areas where permit owners can carry guns, such as places of worship.
But new Washington DC mayor Muriel Browster has come out blazing against guns, telling the Washington Interfaith Network that they “have a mayor who hates guns,”
“If it was up to me, we wouldn’t have any handguns in the District of Columbia. I swear to protect the Constitution and what the courts say, but I will do it in the most restrictive way as possible,” the Washington Post reported.
The ALICE training program, whose mission statement reads: “To improve chances of survival”, advocates that even when barricaded in a room, students should still take steps to save themselves, such as hiding and grabbing items with which to defend themselves against the assailant.
The creators of ALICE say more than 1500 schools use their plan. |
Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie committed a faux pas on 25 October as he travelled from Washington DC to New York. The New Jersey governor was booted from the quiet car on his Amtrak Acela train after he was heard having a loud phone conversation.
Fellow passenger Alexander Mann, who witnessed Christie yell at his New Jersey State Police detail, told Gawker:
He got on last minute yelling at his two secret service agents I think because of a seat mixup, sat down and immediately started making phone calls on the quiet car. After about 10 minutes the conductor asked him to stop or go to another car. He got up and walked out again yelling at his secret service. He was drinking a McDonald's strawberry smoothie.
Mann also told Gawker that Christie also had a very animated phone conversation, which included the phrases, "this is frickin' ridiculous" and "seriously?! seriously?" Christie's campaign was quick to offer an apology for breaking the "cardinal rule of the quiet car," NJ.com reported.
"On a very full train this morning, the governor accidentally took a seat in Amtrak's notorious quiet car," campaign spokeswoman Samantha Smith said. "After breaking the cardinal rule of the quiet car, the governor promptly left once he realized the serious nature of his mistake and enjoyed the rest of his time on the train from the cafe car. Sincere apologies to all the patrons of the quiet car that were offended."
According to The Associated Press, Amtrak urges passengers sitting in the quiet car to maintain a "library-like atmosphere", with conductors commonly asking noisy passengers to switch cars. The GOP candidate was in DC for an early appearance on CBS's Face the Nation. The latest election poll released by ABC/Washington Post revealed Christie is polling at 3% among his fellow Republican candidates. |
Pretty soon, the Dallas Cowboys brass is going to have to make a tough decision at quarterback. Tony Romo officially returned to practice Thursday, taking another step toward returning to the field.
But what will happen to rookie sensation Dak Prescott, who has helped the Cowboys to a surprising 5-1 start, when Romo is cleared to play? The team hasn’t said who will be under center once Romo’s back, which he injured in the preseason, completely heals.
Whatever decision the team ultimately makes, Prescott is saying all the right things.
Article continues below ...
“He’s looked sharp every time we get out there,” Prescott said of Romo. “That’s a vet who takes care of himself and is going to get back healthy and is doing all the right things to do that.”
Many thought the Cowboys’ season was sunk when Romo suffered a broken bone in his back during the third preseason game. Before this season, Dallas struggled mightily without its franchise quarterback, winning just twice in the past five years.
Then Prescott emerged as a viable long-term solution at quarterback this season, accounting for 10 touchdowns (3 rushing) while throwing just one interception. For now, it's Prescott's job, but will that remain the case? |
The Dark Works Loricatus Mk. II Heavy Armor kit for loyalist Land Raiders.
I really, really like The Dark Works, and the work Subtle Discord posts on the Bolter and Chainsword in general. So, when I was thinking of what products I’d like to review first, this Loricatus Land Raider armor kit was a no-brainer. I wanted to do an unboxing of sorts, but my fiancée is so cool she opened the box for me while I was at work and sent me a dozen pictures because I couldn’t contain my excitement.
The bottom line: Amazeballs.
This kit is amazing. I could talk about it for days. But, you know what? I’m going to put this YouTube video here because it took forever to make. I basically just learned how to use Adobe Premiere CC to do this video review, but I think it turned out pretty well for my first attempt at this kind of thing.
I’d really like you to go look at it. I’ll write up a text review as well, for those of you at work or if you simply don’t like watching videos like this (yes, I read BoLS comments and I see how upset people get about it).
When your Land Raider needs a little extra beef…
Why would you need something like this? Well, for starters, extra armor has been a vehicle upgrade option for ages but there’s never been much in terms of official ways to model it. This has, over the years, given rise to a ton of admittedly cool conversions and plenty of DIY scratch builds. This kit, however, is nothing if not an insanely professional-quality way to represent it. Also, there’s a lot to be said for the rule of cool, if we’re being honest. And this armor is very, very cool looking.
While The Dark Works has its roots planted firmly in the blood-soaked loam of a Dark Mechanicum forge world somewhere within the Eye of Terror, they’ve now begun producing loyalist kits as well due. Thank the Emperor. As you’ll see in the video, the entire kit is very cleverly designed and pro-produced. For a fun drinking game, take a shot every time I say the word clever or clean in the video. I didn’t notice until post-production, but I started chuckling every time I heard them.
So fresh and so clean.
The one thing I cannot stress enough is just how slick and clean this is. SD posts a ton of progress shots on the forums, and he’s about as transparent about his process as you can imagine. You can watch these kits take shape, from the plastic card to the green stuff, right down to the molding and casting. He puts it all out there. Looking at the finished product, it’s hard to imagine it wasn’t designed on a computer and 3D printed, honestly. Every line is razor-straight and he’s so exacting that you’d swear you were looking at an official product from Games Workshop or Forgeworld. In fact, I’ve heard people claim that his work is cleaner than FW and I believe it could be.
Let’s have a look!
Okay. Say it with me: “Damn that’s clean!” I really dig the heavy, reinforced look he’s going for here. It meshes very well with the original model’s aesthetic, but it kicks it up a notch. It’s not fancy, per se, but it could be. Talk about a great surface for some serious freehand work, right?
I’m no resin expert, but I’m certain that this is the best I’ve ever seen. Admittedly I don’t have a lot of resin in my collection, but I’ve seen buckets of pics online and usually in closeups you can see all kinds of flaws and imperfections. There are so few of those in this kit they’re almost not worth mentioning. There are some very small air bubbles, but they’re all on the back of the pieces so they’ll be invisible when you assemble the kit. The flat areas are glossy-smooth, and each and every rivet is perfectly molded. He uses a pressure degasser and it shows.
Fitting the armor
I’ll be posting another video soon, explaining how you need to modify your Land Raider to get the right fit. It was designed in such a way that, in order to fit properly, you need to shave away certain elements of the surface detail. In addition, you need to be sure you don’t glue your sponson weapons in place before you fit the armor. While you could pretty easily hack it up to rectify the latter (albeit it might look a bit funny) there’s no getting around the former.
The shaving of rivets was perhaps the only hangup I had when I was first looking over this kit, but it didn’t take long for me to get over it. After all, look what I did with my knight… I’m no stranger to cutting up my most expensive models. I will say this was the first time I can remember willingly defacing an aquila, machina opus, and crux terminatus. It felt a little weird for me, but this is just a game anyway. Right? RIGHT?!
If you’re getting hung up on it, I’ll tell you right now it’s not that bad. A few rivets, some of those weird rectangle blocks, and some other bits just need to be shaved down with a hobby knife. Keep your eyes peeled for my next video if you’re hesitating, and I’ll show you which bits need to go.
Pros and cons?
Hard to do with this kit. There really aren’t any cons at all, unless you consider the price a con. I feel like you get what you pay for, but some people will never see it that way as it’s essentially a cosmetic thing. For me, this is for people who want something really special in their army, on what’s likely the biggest tank you’ve got. And, as mentioned, there’s no better platform for freehand. If you’re rocking a chapter master and honor guard, they’d better ride in style is all I’m saying.
As for pros, I just mentioned a bunch. As far as 3rd-party kits go, this one avoids pretty much every single pitfall you might normally worry about, and manages to exceed the original model in many ways.
Okay, I thought of a con: I’m pretty sure Subtle Discord really created this to force loyalists to deface aquilas and machinas opus. Ever a loyal servant of the dark gods, that one.
UPDATE: Part 2 is up.
I uploaded the second video, finally. This one focuses on what you need to do to get a proper fit, including trimming down elements of the Land Raider and cleaning up the Loricatus kit. It’s a long one, but you should be able to do all the prep work you need to assemble and prep your Land Raider before you even get the armor kit in the mail! Enjoy. |
I’ve always known that a handful of people judge Margaret Beaufort guilty of the death of the Princes in the Tower. But until I published my series on Richard III – and incurred the wrath of the Ricardians – I had no idea just how widespread the theory was.
Absolutely no contemporary source links Margaret to the crime. An obscure 17th century biographer attempting to redeem Richard III links the deaths to a ‘certain Countess’ (presumably of Richmond) but offers nothing by way of evidence. I can’t shake the feeling that this view is currently so popular because of the ‘White Queen’ TV series in 2013.
It is, I believe, credible to suggest that Margaret had a motive. With the sons of Edward IV out the way, nothing would stand in the way of her son making an alliance with Elizabeth of York, uniting their claim to the throne and over throwing the tyrannical Richard. But a motive is not proof. It isn’t even close.
At the heart of this debate, in my opinion, is a correct understanding of how closely guarded the Princes were. Mancini tells us that Richard dismissed the boys’ servants and drew them closer into the tower. Only Richard’s loyalist men had access to them in the context of a high security prison.
How could Margaret possibly have gained access to the Princes, even if she had wanted to? The usual arguments go like this:
She was a wealthy woman who could have bribed the guards – She was a woman of some means. But what on earth could she have given Richard’s most trusted men that would trigger abandonment of their master. Killing princes, even ones deem illegitimate, is a pretty risking business – one you would answer for with your head. I just can’t believe that you would do it under the orders of anyone but the ruler of the day.
Her husband, Lord Stanley was a mover and shaker at court – Yes he was. But it does not equate that he would have access to the Princes. He was powerful; but he was not part of Richard’s inner circle.
I’m worried about the way some people are thinking about the Wars of the Roses at the moment. I consider myself a feminist and I agree that for too long, historians neglected the powerful impact that women have made throughout the ages. But we do no favours to anyone when we try and make the facts match our values. Women were not the key players in the 15th century. Perhaps they should have been. But they weren’t.
When engaging with people on this debate, I keep hearing people argue Margaret’s guilt with lines such as ‘she was a powerful woman in a man’s world.’ Perhaps she was; but it’s disturbing that people are almost suggesting that the murder of two young boys is somehow a display of power that we feminists should be proud of.
There’s much we don’t know about Lady Margaret Beaufort. But what we do know suggests she was a kind, generous, pious, if a little austere figure. Child murder was not something that was likely to appeal to her and even if it had, she could not have had the means.
Only one man had access to the Princes – only one man can reasonably be assumed to have murdered them.
What do you think geeks? Am I underestimating Margaret’s ambition? Have I been naive to the means or access she might have had? I want to know what YOU think! |
The United Kingdom's telecom regulator, Ofcom, wants to strengthen an industry code that lets Internet customers exit contracts without penalty when broadband providers fall short of their advertised speeds.
Ofcom's proposed changes would also improve the accuracy of speed information provided to customers before they sign up for broadband. Ofcom intends to add the new guidelines to its existing codes of practice for residential and business broadband speeds, which already "commit Internet companies who have signed up to them to give customers an estimated range of speeds they are likely to receive, as well as the right to exit their contracts penalty-free if their speed falls below a minimum level."
The regulator described proposed additions to the code on Friday, saying that its plan is to:
Improve speed information at the point of sale and in contracts by reflecting the slower speeds people can experience at 'peak' times; and by ensuring providers always give a minimum guaranteed speed before sale. Strengthen the right to exit if speeds fall below a guaranteed minimum level. Providers would have a limited time to improve speeds before they must let customers walk away penalty-free. For the first time, this right to exit would also apply to contracts that include phone and pay-TV services bought with broadband. Increase the number of customers who benefit from the codes, by expanding their scope to apply to all broadband technologies.
"We plan to close the gap between what’s advertised and what’s delivered, giving customers a fuller picture before they commit to a contract," Ofcom Consumer Group Director Lindsey Fussell said. "We’re also making it easier to walk away from a contract, without penalty, when companies fail to provide the speeds they promise.”
Under the revised code, ISPs would "have to give people a minimum, guaranteed speed at the point of sale—not just if requested and in after-sale information, which are already requirements," Ofcom said. ISPs would get a maximum of one month to improve speeds before customers can exit contracts without penalty.
The right to exit contracts without penalty would be triggered when a customer's actual download speed falls below the minimum guaranteed speed "on a daily basis for at least three successive days (whether continuously or intermittently)," according to a draft.
ISPs would have to implement a "robust process" to evaluate speed problems and "take all reasonable steps to ensure the speed problem is corrected within 30 calendar days" in cases when the cause of the problem is under the ISP's control.
The current code lets customers exit contracts without penalty within three months of signing up for service if actual speeds are significantly lower than estimated speeds.
Ofcom is taking comments on its proposed changes until November 10 and says it intends to issue a final decision early next year.
In a separate proceeding, Ofcom also plans to require automatic refunds for landline and broadband customers for problems such as slow repairs or missed deadlines and appointments.
UK ISPs on board with voluntary code
While the code of practice is voluntary, the biggest ISPs, including BT, Sky, and Virgin Media, have signed on to the current version of the code. Ofcom regularly commissions "mystery shopping" tests and issues reports detailing ISPs' compliance, giving UK residents helpful information for choosing an ISP.
BT is already on board with the changes. "We remain firmly supportive of Ofcom's voluntary code of practice on broadband speeds, including the latest proposed changes which we hope will make things even clearer for our customers," BT said, according to the BBC. "We have been working with Ofcom and other ISPs to improve the code."
The Internet Services Providers' Association (ISPA), an industry lobby group, is also generally supportive of the proposal. "ISPA supports the consultation and the direction of travel that is being proposed by Ofcom," an ISPA spokesperson told the BBC.
ISPA pointed out that some of the factors affecting Internet speeds "are outside the control of the provider," but the group said it "agree[s] with Ofcom that speeds need to be communicated in a transparent manner."
US eliminating consumer rights
UK broadband customers have more choices than US-based users because of unbundling rules that let UK ISPs lease access to network infrastructure from BT subsidiary Openreach, instead of installing their own wires into each home. In the US, residential customers can't easily shop around for service because they are generally limited to ISPs that have built their own last-mile infrastructure.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai also plans to deregulate US broadband providers, eliminating the right of consumers to complain to the FCC about "unjust" or "unreasonable" rates and practices. Pai's FCC has also suggested lowering the standard it uses to evaluate broadband deployment progress.
Separately, the FCC issues an annual report comparing broadband providers' advertised speeds with actual speeds, but it doesn't give consumers a "right to exit" broadband contracts when speeds fall short.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is suing Charter and its Time Warner Cable (TWC) subsidiary, alleging that the ISP promised Internet speeds that it could not deliver. Broadband industry lobby groups recently asked the FCC for protection from such lawsuits, saying that the commission should declare that advertisements of speeds "up to" a certain level of megabits per second are consistent with federal law.
Guarantees for copper and cable users
The UK codes mostly apply to broadband over copper-based phone lines, because speeds are slower when buildings are farther from local telephone exchanges or cabinets. But the new proposal will offer protections for cable Internet users as well, Ofcom said.
"The proposed new codes require estimates that reflect speeds at busy times, which can be a particular issue on cable networks, such as the one operated by Virgin Media," Ofcom said. "So in future, cable customers will also benefit from these protections." |
The Obama administration is anxious to impose its autocratic, ad hoc, and unconstitutional authority on the population of Arizona — again.
Reason magazine reports:
State and federal officials in Arizona are fighting just the latest skirmish in a long-running war over just how restrictive rules should be over human use of forest and desert areas. The locals want fewer and uniform restrictions, while their D.C. counterparts like to play "What will we cite people for this week?" with campers, hunters, and pretty much anybody who likes the outdoors. The most recent battle is over a federal rule-switch, requiring hunters to move their camps every 72 hours. Decades-long practice, as the Arizona Game and Fish Department points out, is to allow campers to stay in place for 14 days.
The federal government’s arrogance informs everything it does when it comes to relations with the state governments, which it regards as nothing more than its administrative subordinates.
Reason copies a press release issued by the U.S. Forest Service, demonstrating the official disregard for state authority to legislate within its own sovereign boundaries. The announcement reads:
Flagstaff, Ariz. — The Coconino National Forest is asking all northern Arizona-bound hunters to refrain from leaving their trailers unattended in the forest during the upcoming hunting season. In previous seasons, law enforcement officers have found numerous trailers parked in the forests for the purpose of reserving a location for the entire hunting season and also because the individuals did not want to haul their trailers back and forth.
Parking a trailer in the forest for this purpose violates Forest Service regulations. If trailers are left unattended for more than 72 hours, the Forest Service considers them abandoned property and may remove them from the forest. Violators can also be cited for this action. Enforcing these regulations protects the property and allows recreational users equal access to national forests.
This regulation applies to all national forests in northern Arizona, including the Coconino, Kaibab and Prescott forests.
There’s a big problem with this edict, however. It violates the “long-standing policy” of the Grand Canyon State regarding the regulation of camping in its expansive wilderness area.
Arizona's director of Game and Fish tried explaining this to his would-be overlords, in what Reason describes as a “very nice letter.” State official Larry D. Voyles writes:
Having worked as a game warden for more than 30 years, I am aware that many hunters are forced to hunt in chunks of days. Keep in mind that some hunters wait for years, if not decades to be drawn for a particular big game tag. There are many times when a hunter may be in camp for a few days, have to leave for work, and then return a few days later to finish his or her hunt.
In a victory for states’ rights, “the whole Arizona Sheriffs Association adopted a formal resolution saying its members oppose and won't help the feds enforce their restrictions, including the new 72-hour rule.”
As is so often the case, state sheriffs are exercising their historical role as the ultimate defenders of the Constitution and the rights of citizens within their counties to be free from federal tyranny.
This effort by Arizona county lawmen would be strengthened if Arizona state lawmakers would exercise their constitutional check on the federal government by nullifying an act of the latter not specifically authorized by the Constitution.
Nullification, whether through active acts passed by the legislatures or the simple refusal to obey unconstitutional directives, is the “rightful remedy” for the ill of federal usurpation of authority. Americans committed to the Constitution must walk the fences separating the federal and state governments and they must keep the former from crossing into the territory of the latter.
The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions plainly set forth James Madison’s and Thomas Jefferson’s understanding of the source of all federal power. Those landmark documents clearly demonstrate what these two agile-minded champions of liberty considered the constitutional delegation of power. Jefferson summed it up very economically in the Kentucky Resolutions:
The several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour [sic] of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.
Madison and Jefferson recognized that honest men could and would disagree about the proper interpretation of this or that constitutional provision. Not all of these men would be trying purposefully to enlarge the size and scope of the central government; some would merely be applying their own set of principles to resolving issues of constitutional construction. In these cases, Madison and Jefferson recommended the "Principles of ’98" as an accurate lens through which adversaries should view the Constitution.
No serious debate should be entertained as to whether the national authority has repeatedly attempted to break down the boundaries placed by the Constitution around its power. From the beginning, our elected representatives have overstepped the limits drawn around their rightful authority and have passed laws retracting, reversing, and redefining the scope of American liberty and state sovereignty. Our sacred duty is to tirelessly resist such advances and exercise all our natural rights to restrain government and keep it within the limits set by the Constitution.
In his speech on the bank bill delivered in 1791, Madison said, “In controverted cases, the meaning of the parties to the instrument, if collected by reasonable evidence, is a proper guide.”
Thomas Jefferson similarly argued that the Constitution should be interpreted “according to the true sense in which it was adopted by the states, that in which it was advocated by its friends, and not that which its enemies apprehended.”
If one were to assume that the Constitution is not an agreement among equals, then one must also accept the corollary that the states are mere subordinates of the federal government without the right to seek a remedy to the wrongs perpetrated by the plutocrats on the Potomac. The states, as dissatisfied children, would have to submit to their parent government, with no more morally acceptable remedy than to complain and to bristle.
However, sovereignty is not an either/or proposition. The states are the possessors of original governing sovereignty (as an aggregation of the popular political will) and they created another government with powers derived from their own. The government of the United States was not created ex nihilo.
The facts of its formation demonstrate that although the government of the United States is a separate entity, it is not — indeed cannot be — superior to the states. Such a suggestion is illogical and there is not a single sentence of support for this supposition in all the annals of the history of the creation of the federal government.
It’s that simple. State governments could not create a central authority with any degree of power unless they held that power in at least an equal degree prior to the latter’s creation. Put another way, could the states give the central government something they themselves did not already possess?
Should, however, states continue relenting and recognizing a warped concept of federal “supremacy" that is not supported by the Constitution, the federal government will continue its consolidation of all powers, until not a single tree, not to mention an entire forest, will grow free from federal regulation.
Photo of Coconino National Forest in Arizona
Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state. He is the host of The New American Review radio show that is simulcast on YouTube every Monday. Follow him on Twitter @TNAJoeWolverton and he can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |
July 1915, in the first successful aerial engagement in an aircraft fitted with a synchronised machine gun Kurt Wintgens' Fokker M.5K/MG "E.5/15" Fokker Eindecker, flown by him on 1July 1915, in the first successful aerial engagement in an aircraft fitted with a synchronised machine gun
The Fokker Scourge (or Fokker Scare) occurred during the First World War from August 1915 to early 1916, when the Imperial German Flying Corps (Die Fliegertruppen), equipped with Fokker Eindecker fighters, gained an advantage over the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and the French Aéronautique Militaire.
The Fokker was the first service aircraft to be fitted with a machine gun synchronised to fire through the arc of the propeller without striking the blades. The tactical advantage of aiming the gun by aiming the aircraft and the surprise of its introduction were factors in its success.[1][2]
This period of German air superiority ended with the arrival in numbers of the French Nieuport 11 and British Airco DH.2 fighters, which were capable of challenging the Fokkers, although the last Fokkers were not finally replaced until August–September 1916.[3][1]
The term "Fokker Scourge" was coined by the British press in mid-1916, after the Eindeckers had been outclassed by the new Allied types.[4] Use of the term coincided with a political campaign to end a perceived dominance of the Royal Aircraft Factory in the supply of aircraft to the Royal Flying Corps, a campaign that was begun by the pioneering aviation journalist C. G. Grey and Noel Pemberton Billing M.P., founder of Pemberton-Billing Ltd (Supermarine from 1916) and a great enthusiast for aerial warfare.[5]
Background [ edit ]
Early air warfare [ edit ]
Stangensteuerung" synchronisation mechanism Diagram of Fokker's "" synchronisation mechanism
As aerial warfare developed, the Allies gained a lead over the Germans by introducing machine-gun armed types such as the Vickers F.B.5 Gunbus fighter and the Morane-Saulnier L.[6][7] By early 1915, the German Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL, Army supreme command) had ordered the development of machine-gun-armed aircraft, to counter those of the Allies. The new "C" class armed two-seaters and twin-engined "K" (later "G") class aircraft such as the AEG G.I were attached in ones and twos to Feldflieger Abteilungen (artillery-observation and reconnaissance detachments) for "fighter" sorties, mostly for the escort of unarmed aircraft.[1][8][9]
On 18 April 1915, the Morane-Saulnier L of Roland Garros was captured, after he was shot down behind the German lines.[10] From 1 April, Garros had destroyed three German aircraft in the Morane, which carried a machine-gun firing through the propeller arc. Bullets that hit the blades were deflected by small metal wedges.[11] Garros burned his aircraft but this failed to conceal the nature of the device and the significance of the deflector blades. The German authorities requested several aircraft manufacturers, including that of Anthony Fokker, to produce a copy.[10]
Synchronisation gear [ edit ]
Stangensteuerung gear, connected directly to the oil pump drive at the rear of the engine. Detail of an early Fokker Eindecker: the cowling is off, showing thegear, connected directly to the oil pump drive at the rear of the engine.
The Fokker company produced the Stangensteuerung (push rod controller), a genuine synchronisation gear. Impulses from a cam driven by the engine controlled the firing of the machine-gun so it could fire forwards without damaging the propeller.[12] Unlike earlier proposed gears the Stangensteuerung was fitted to an aircraft and proved in flight. In a postwar biography, Fokker claimed that he designed and built the gear in 48 hours but it was probably designed by Heinrich Lübbe, a Fokker Flugzeugbau engineer. Among several pre-war patents for similar devices was that of Franz Schneider, a Swiss engineer who had worked for Nieuport and the German LVG company.[12][13]
The device was fitted to the most suitable Fokker type, the Fokker M.5K (military designation Fokker A.III), of which A.16/15, assigned to Otto Parschau, became the prototype of the Fokker E.I.[14] Fokker demonstrated A.16/15 to German fighter pilots, including Kurt Wintgens, Oswald Boelcke and Max Immelmann in May and June 1915.[15] The Fokker, with its "Morane" controls, including the over-sensitive balanced elevator and dubious lateral control, was difficult to fly; Parschau, who was experienced on Fokker A types, converted pilots to the new fighter.[16][17] The early Eindeckers were attached to the normal FFA in ones and twos, to protect reconnaissance machines from Allied machine-gun-armed aircraft.[14]
Operational service [ edit ]
The Eindeckers enter service [ edit ]
Otto Parschau's second Eindecker, E.1/15, with experimental "mid-wing" modification which became standard on production E.Is
Fokker Eindecker E.5/15, the last of the pre-production series, is believed to have been first flown in action by Kurt Wintgens of FFA 6.[18] On 1 and 4 July 1915, he reported combats with French Morane-Saulnier L (Parasols), each time well over the French lines.[17] These victories were never confirmed, although later research has shown that the first claim matches French records of a Morane forced down on 1 July near Lunéville with a wounded crew and a damaged engine, followed three days later by another.[19] By 15 July, Wintgens had moved to FFA 48 and scored his first recognised victory, another Morane L.[20] Parschau had received the new E.1/15, which became the prototype for the Fokker Eindecker line of aircraft, when it was returned to the Fokker Flugzeugbau factory in Schwerin–Gorries, for development.[21]
By the end of July 1915, about fifteen Eindeckers were operational with various units, including the five M.5K/MGs and about ten early production E.I airframes.[21] At first, the pilots flew the new aircraft as a sideline, when not flying normal operations in two-seater reconnaissance aircraft.[21] Oswald Boelcke, in FFA 62, scored his first victory in an Albatros C.I on 4 July.[22] M.5K/MG prototype airframe E.3/15, the first Eindecker delivered to FFA 62, was armed with a Parabellum MG14 gun, synchronised by the troublesome first version of the Fokker gear. At first, E.3/15 was jointly allocated to him and Immelmann when their "official" duties permitted, allowing them to master the type's difficult handling characteristics and to practice shooting at ground targets.[23] Immelmann was soon allocated a very early production Fokker E.I, E.13/15, one of the first armed with an lMG 08 Spandau machine gun, using the more reliable production version of the Fokker gear.[24]
The Scourge begins [ edit ]
RFC aircraft losses
(July 1915
to January 1916) [25] Month Total June 6 July 15 August 10 September 14 October 12 November 16 December 17 January 30 Total 120
The Fokker Scourge is usually considered to have begun on 1 August, when B.E.2c aircraft of No. 2 Squadron bombed the base of FFA 62 at 5:00 a.m., waking the German pilots, including Boelcke and Immelmann, who were quickly into the air after the raiders.[23] Boelcke suffered a jammed gun but Immelmann caught up with a B.E.2c and shot it down. This aircraft was flown as a bomber, without an observer or Lewis gun, the pilot armed only with an automatic pistol.[20] After about ten minutes of manoeuvring (giving the lie to exaggerated accounts of the stability of B.E.2 aircraft) Immelmann had fired 450 rounds, which riddled the B.E. and wounded the pilot in the arm.[26] By late October, towards the end of the Battle of Loos, more Fokkers (including the similar Pfalz E-type fighters, which were also called "Fokkers" by Allied airmen) were encountered by RFC pilots and by December, forty Fokkers were in service.[27][28][29]
The new fighters could make long, steep dives and the fixed, synchronised machine gun was aimed by aiming the aircraft. The machine gun was belt-fed, unlike the drum-fed Lewis guns of their opponents, who had to change drums when in action. The Fokker pilots took to flying high and diving on their quarry, usually out of the sun, firing a long burst and continuing the dive until well out of range. If the British aircraft had not been shot down, the German pilot could climb again and repeat the process. Immelmann invented the Immelmann turn, a zoom after the dive, followed by a roll when vertical to face the opposite way, after which he could turn to attack again.[30]
The mystique acquired by the Fokker was greater than its material effect and in October, RFC HQ expressed concern at the willingness of pilots to avoid combat. RFC losses were exacerbated by the increase in the number of aircraft at the front from 85 to 161 between March and September, the hard winter of 1915–1916 and some aggressive flying by the new German "C" type two-seaters.[31][32] Boelcke and Immelmann continued to score, as did Hans Joachim Buddecke, Ernst von Althaus and Rudolph Berthold from FFA 23 and Kurt von Crailshein of FFA 53. The "official" list of claims by Fokker pilots for the second half of 1915 was no more than 28, many of them over French aircraft. Thirteen aeroplanes had been shot down by Immelmann or Boelcke and the rest by seven other Fokker pilots.[8][33] January 1916 brought thirteen claims, most of them against the French, followed by twenty more in February, the last month of the "scourge" proper. Most of the victories had been scored by aces rather than the newer pilots flying the increased number of Fokkers. Allied casualties had been light by later standards but the loss of air superiority to the Germans, flying a new and supposedly invincible aircraft, caused dismay among the Allied commanders and lowered the morale of Allied airmen. In his memoir Sagittarius Rising (1936), Cecil Lewis wrote,
Hearsay and a few lucky encounters had made the machine respected, not to say dreaded by the slow, unwieldy machines then used by us for Artillery Observation and Offensive Patrols.[34]
Restored FE2b, Masterton, New Zealand, 2009
The RFC changed tactics for the sedate B.E. types and the newer F.E.2b pusher fighters. On 14 January, RFC HQ issued orders that until better aircraft arrived, long and short-range reconnaissance aircraft must have three escorts flying in close formation. If contact with the escorts was lost, the reconnaissance must be cancelled, as would photographic reconnaissance to any great distance beyond the front line. Sending the B.E.2c into action without an observer armed with a machine gun also became less prevalent.[35] The new tactic of concentrating aircraft in time and space had the effect of reducing the number of reconnaissance sorties the RFC could fly in support of the army.[36]
New defensive formations were devised; a II Wing RFC method was for the reconnaissance aircraft to lead, escorted on each side 500 ft (150 m) higher, with another escort 1,000 ft (300 m) behind and above.[37] On 7 February, on a II Wing long-range reconnaissance, the observation pilot flew at 7,500 ft (2,300 m); a German aircraft appeared over Roulers and seven more closed in behind the formation. West of Thourout, two Fokkers arrived and attacked at once, one diving on the reconnaissance machine and the other on an escort. Six more German aircraft appeared over Courtemarck and formed a procession of 14 aeroplanes stalking the British formation. None of the German pilots attacked and all the British aircraft returned, only to meet two German aircraft coming back from a bombing raid, which opened fire and mortally wounded the pilot of one the British escort aircraft. The British ascribed their immunity to attack during the 55-minute flight to the rigid formation, which the two Fokkers were unable to disrupt.[38] On 7 February, a No. 12 Squadron B.E.2c. was to be escorted by three B.E.2c, two F.E.2 aircraft and a Bristol Scout from 12 Squadron and two more F.E. and four R.E. aeroplanes from No. 21 Squadron. The flight was cancelled due to bad weather but twelve escorts for one reconnaissance aircraft demonstrated the effect of the Fokkers in reducing the efficiency of RFC operations.[39]
British and French reconnaissance flights to get aerial photographs for intelligence and ranging data for their artillery had become riskier, in spite of German fighters being forbidden to fly over Allied lines (in an attempt to keep the synchronisation gear secret).[40] This policy, for various reasons, prevailed for most of the war; the rarity of German fighters appearing behind the Allied lines limited the degree of air superiority they were able to attain.[41][42]
End of the Scourge [ edit ]
Guardian of Verdun The red Nieuport 11 of Jean Navarre
The beginning of the end of the scourge came at the Battle of Verdun (21 February – 20 December). In February, German air superiority created by the Fokkers meant that preparations for the offensive had mostly been concealed from French aerial reconnaissance. The German aircraft had established a Luftsperre (air barrage) a systematic blockade against French aircraft, relying as much on chasing their opponents away as shooting them down. During the battle, new French Nieuport 11 fighters, which were superior to the Eindeckers in almost every respect, arrived in increasing numbers. The Nieuports were organised in escadrilles de chasse, specialist fighter squadrons that could operate in formations larger than the singletons or pairs normally flown by the Fokkers; the French quickly regained air superiority over Verdun.[43]
British F.E.2b pusher aircraft had been arriving in France from late 1915 and in the New Year began to replace the older F.B.5s. The pilot and observer had a good view forwards from their cockpits and the observer could also fire backwards over the tail. No. 20 Squadron, the first full F.E. unit, arrived in France on 23 January 1916, for long-range reconnaissance and escort flying. The Fokker pilots attacked the F.E.s without hesitation but soon found that the new aircraft were formidable opponents, particularly when flying in formation. What the F.E. lacked was sufficient speed and manoeuvrability to pursue and attack the Fokkers.[44]
D.H.2 taking off from airfield at Beauval, France
Another pusher, the D.H.2 single-seat fighter, began to arrive at the front in February 1916. This aircraft had a modest performance but its superior manoeuvrability gave it an advantage over the Eindecker, especially once a clamp was fitted to its Lewis gun so it could be fixed to fire forwards. On 8 February, No. 24 Squadron (Major Lanoe Hawker) arrived with D.H.2s and began patrols north of the Somme; another six D.H.2 squadrons followed. On 25 April, two of the D.H. pilots were attacked and found that they could out-manoeuvre the Fokkers; a few days later, without opening fire, a D.H. pilot caused a Fokker to crash onto a roof at Bapaume.[45] The Nieuports proved even more effective when the first Nieuport 16s in British service were issued to No. 1 and No. 11 Squadrons in April.[46]
By March 1916, despite frequent encounters with Fokkers and the continued success of the German Eindecker aces, the scourge was over.[47] The bogey of the Fokker Eindecker as a fighter was finally laid in April, when an E.III landed by mistake on a British aerodrome. The captured aircraft was found not to have the superior performance it had been credited with.[48] The first British aircraft with a synchronisation gear was a Bristol Scout, which arrived on 25 March 1916 and on 24 May the first Sopwith 1½ Strutter aircraft were flown to France by a flight of No. 70 Squadron.[49]
End of the Eindecker [ edit ]
Halberstadt D.II, said to be one of Boelcke's aircraft
The impact of the new Allied types, especially the Nieuport, was of considerable concern to the Fokker pilots; some even took to flying captured examples.[50] Idflieg was sufficiently desperate to order German firms to build Nieuport copies, of which the Euler D.I and the Siemens-Schuckert D.I were built in quantity.[51][52] New D type single-seat biplane fighters, particularly the Fokker D.II and Halberstadt D.II, had been under test since late 1915 and the replacement of the monoplanes with these types had begun by mid-1916.[53]
In February 1916, Inspektor-Major Friedrich Stempel began to assemble Kampfeinsitzer Kommando (KEK, single-seat battle units). The KEK were units mostly of two to four fighters, equipped with Eindeckers and other types which had served with FFA units during the winter of 1915–1916. By July 1916, KEK had been formed at Vaux, Avillers, Jametz and Cunel near Verdun as well as other places on the Western Front, as Luftwachtdienst (aerial guard service) units, consisting only of fighters.[54] In the second half of May, German air activity on the British front decreased markedly, while the commander of the new Luftstreitkräfte, Oberst Hermann von der Lieth-Thomsen, reorganised the German air service.[55] The fighters of the KEK were concentrated into fighter squadrons (Jagdstaffeln) the first of which, Jagdstaffel 2 (Jasta 2) went into action on the Somme on 17 September. By this time, the last of the Eindeckers, long outmoded as front line fighters, had been retired from the front line.[56]
Aftermath [ edit ]
Analysis [ edit ]
Flight for 3 February 1916, satirising exaggerated accounts of its capabilities in other publications.[57] Caricature of Fokker Eindecker published infor 3 February 1916, satirising exaggerated accounts of its capabilities in other publications.
Among British politicians and journalists who grossly exaggerated the material effects of the "Scourge" were the eminent pioneering aviation journalist C. G. Grey, founder of The Aeroplane, one of the first aviation magazines and Noel Pemberton Billing M.P., a notably unsuccessful aircraft designer and manufacturer.[2] Their supposed object was the replacement of the B.E.2c with better aircraft but it took the form of an attack on the RFC command and the Royal Aircraft Factory.[1] C. G. Grey had orchestrated a campaign against the Royal Aircraft Factory in the pages of The Aeroplane, going back to its period as the Balloon Factory, well before it had produced any heavier-than-air aircraft.[58]
Before the unsuitability of the B.E.2c for air combat was exposed by the first Fokker aces, criticism was not primarily aimed at the technical quality of Royal Aircraft Factory aircraft but because a government body was competing with private industry. When the news of the Fokker monoplane fighters reached him in late 1915, Grey was quick to blame the problem on orders for equipment that the latest developments had rendered obsolete. Grey did not suggest what aircraft might have been ordered instead, even supposing that the rapid development of aviation technology during the war could have been foreseen. Pemberton Billing also blamed the initially poor performance of British aircraft manufacturers on what he saw as the favouritism shown by the RFC, an arm of the British Army, towards the Royal Aircraft Factory, which, while nominally civilian, was also part of the army. Pemberton Billing claimed that,
... hundreds, nay thousands of machines have been ordered which have been referred to by our pilots as "Fokker Fodder" ... I would suggest that quite a number of our gallant officers in the Royal Flying Corps have been rather murdered than killed. Pemberton Billing[59]
Even among writers who recognised the hysteria of this version of events, this picture of the Fokker scourge gained considerable currency during the war and afterwards. In 1996 Grosz wrote,
The epithet Fokker Fodder was coined by the British to describe the fate of their aircraft under the guns of the Fokker monoplanes, but given [its] acknowledged mediocrity, it comes as something of a shock to realise how abysmal the level of British aircraft performance, pilot training and aerial tactics must have been.... P. M. Grosz[53]
Subsequent operations [ edit ]
The period of Allied air superiority that followed the Fokker Scourge was brief. By mid-September 1916, the first Albatros D.I fighters were coming into service. The new aircraft were again able to challenge Allied aircraft, culminating in "Bloody April" during the Battle of Arras (9 April – 16 May 1917).[60] In the next two years, the Allied air forces gradually overwhelmed the Luftstreitkräfte in quality and quantity, until the Germans were only able to gain temporary control over small areas of the Western Front. When this tactic became untenable, development of new aircraft began, which led to the Fokker D.VII. The new aircraft created another "Fokker Scourge" in the summer of 1918 and as a condition of the Armistice, Germany was required to surrender all Fokker D.VII aircraft to the Allies.[61]
References [ edit ]
Citations [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ] |
Royal F J
Royal F J, a popular campaigner who paid his way under the guidance of trainer Jack Carava for most of his lengthy career, has been retired from racing after his 102nd start in Thursday's eighth race at Santa Anita.
The 10-year-old gelded son of Royal Academy bred in Kentucky finished seventh at odds of 4-1 in the six furlong sprint for $6,250 claimers, beaten 11 lengths after steadying when in tight after the start.
“He was in bad form when I originally claimed him some time back, and when I did, I told myself if he ran better we would continue to race him, and as soon as he tells us he doesn't want to run anymore, we'll take care of him and find him a good home,” Carava said.
“He had a little trouble early in the race yesterday, but it was the first time he acted like he wasn't happy running, so it's time. He's still very, very sound for a horse his age with that many races, and that's probably the most amazing thing about him.
“He's going to have a good life ahead and we're going to find him a good spot. It's yet to be determined where he's going, but we've had tons of offers so we're going to go through those and find him a good home, but he won't run anymore.
“The good thing is he leaves here sound. All the years I had him, he was always at the barn with me. I never turned him out, he never missed any training. He still wouldn't be the kind of horse that would miss any training.
“He hits the ground good, he likes going to the track, but it's just time. I don't want to keep running him for $6,000 and $8,000 and not have him run well. We ran him all this year and basically he was finishing one, two, three, but now he's kind of gathered up a few bad races in a row so I don't want to keep running him.
“I bought him as a yearling and he's 10 now. He was out of the barn for about six months (after being claimed), so we had him the better part of nine years.”
Royal F J picked up $345 for his efforts Thursday, finishing with earnings of $568,150 from nine wins, 19 seconds and 18 thirds.
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As 2016 shapes up to be a pivotal year in player and coaching development in the United States, Planet Fútbol dives into just what American clubs and the federation are doing in their quest to evolve as a soccer nation. This is the first of a three-part series on the subject.
The company that helped turn Germany into a world champion and Belgium into the current top-ranked team in the world is now working with the United States. Double PASS, an offshoot of the University of Brussels Department of Sport Management, is a group of the most detailed football auditors on the planet. By mid-2017, every Major League Soccer franchise and each member of the U.S. Soccer Development Academy will go through its process, which started in August 2015.
So far, Double PASS has visited the New York Red Bulls, Philadelphia Union, FC Dallas, LA Galaxy, Seattle Sounders, Vancouver Whitecaps, New England Revolution, Columbus Crew, Portland Timbers, Sporting Kansas City, D.C. United and Chicago Fire in MLS, as well as Colorado Rush, Players Development Academy (New Jersey), St. Louis Scott Gallagher, Dallas Texans SC, Capital Area (North Carolina) Railhawks, De Anza (California) Force, Real So Cal and Kendall SC (Florida) among non-MLS academies. The assessments continue this spring.
Club visits are the last step of the process, which will have taken about two years by the time the cycle is complete. First, clubs uploaded a vast number of documents that cover every aspect of their operations to Double PASS’s servers for review. Next, one of three Double PASS teams of three assessors interviewed multiple staff members. Observation of multiple training sessions and games, both live and on video, followed to create a complete picture that allows for an accurate assessment.
The general response from clubs has been positive, U.S. Soccer director of sport development and project lead Ryan Mooney said.
“It’s about wanting to know what they need to do to get better. I think that the overwhelming majority of our clubs and their leaders are not adverse to constructive criticism,” Mooney told SI.com in January. “They understand the reality of where they are at and where we are at this moment in time, and that if there are things that need to be improved upon, they want to be part of making those improvements.”
Details from Double PASS's presentation to U.S. clubs
Before setting foot on a training ground, though, Double PASS had to know exactly what it needed to assess. Its general model is based on eight areas of evaluation: strategic and financial planning; organizational structure and decision-making; talent identification and development; support staff, including medical, social and educational; technical staff; internal and external communication; facilities; and productivity, or effectiveness of the club.
“The first thing we do … is always what we call customization,” said Hugo Schoukens, CEO of Double PASS. “What we first do is discuss these [eight categories] with experts from the country in which we are going to do these audits.”
The names behind the partnership
Within its eight critical areas, Double PASS has identified between 700 and 800 specific standards of measurement. To ensure proper focus on the right aspects for the U.S. market, the company assembled a task force of 15 experts from U.S. Soccer and MLS to synthesize the assessment tool in a manageable way.
Mooney, Development Academy director Jared Micklos, director of coaching development Dave Chesler, director of scouting Tony Lepore and technical adviser Dave van den Bergh represented the federation on the task force. Executive vice president Todd Durbin and vice president of competition Jeff Agoos represented MLS. Directors Luchi González (Dallas), Pete Vagenas (LA) and Craig Dalrymple (Vancouver) represented the MLS academies, while Kansas City head coach Peter Vermes represented the first teams. Chicago Sockers FC president and technical director David Richardson represented the non-MLS academies, while Schoukens, Jo van Hoecke, Frank Rits and Henk Mariman represented Double PASS and U.S. Soccer youth technical director Tab Ramos represented the federation to round out the task force.
“It was important for us to recognize that we’re not Holland, we’re not Belgium, we’re not Germany, we’re not England. We’re unique,” Mooney said. “Whether it’s our soccer landscape culture, whether it’s our size, whether it’s just our own culture as a nation, there are lots of different factors that we need to account for [in] how it is we would evaluate our environment.”
At the same time, those involved wanted to ensure they kept the essence of Double PASS intact.
“At the core of this project,” Mooney said, “there’s also an interest in having a better understanding as to how we compare internationally.”
Details from Double PASS's presentation to U.S. clubs
A wide-ranging checklist and questionnaire resulted from the customization process and was sent to each club, detailing the documents to be submitted by Aug. 15, 2015. They included broad requirements such as defining the club’s on-field philosophy and job descriptions for each member of the staff, down to details such as the club’s policy regarding confidential personnel files and describing the structure of meetings with the club’s players’ council or senior members of the first team.
“The model, the process itself, doesn’t change a lot. Of course, we are confronted with some approaches that are for us in Europe totally different,” Schoukens said. “So we adapted the system, but all the critical success factors that we have in Europe are used also in the States.”
In Germany, clubs are preparing for the fourth cycle of Double PASS assessments (the company is known as Foot PASS in Europe), the first of which began in 2005. Academies there are rated on a scale from zero to three stars. The English assessments, going on their second cycle after beginning in 2012, set clubs into Category 4 through Category 1. In Belgium, youth academies are put into leagues only with others that receive similar marks, serving as a de facto promotion-relegation system.
“We had one period where we had only two stars. There were some problems because they decided, for example, it’s a must to have a sports psychologist also in the club; we didn’t have that in 2009,” said Sebastian Dremmler, Bayern Munich Under-16 coach and head of academy match operations. “[During the assessments,] we show our life, our mentality. For example, we have clubs in Germany that have big, big history—St. Pauli, for example, [and] Hamburg. They are the fighting machines. The fans with tattoos. … Foot PASS cannot say, ‘That’s not good enough for us,’ because that’s their own style. This style is also important for German football.”
According to Double PASS documentation, the average number of homegrown players in the Bundesliga has grown by 23%, and club investments in development have increased 51% since the first assessment. The national team also went from being ranked No. 16 by FIFA in 2005 to winning the 2014 World Cup.
In Belgium, Double PASS’s home country with which it has worked closely since 2003, the results have been nothing short of astounding. The nation of 11 million is the world’s top-ranked team after a quarterfinal finish at the World Cup, after failing to qualify for five successive World Cups and European Championships. RSC Anderlecht went from finding 8% of its first-team squad in its own academy in 2004 to 52% in 2014.
“This is a long-term plan,” Schoukens said. “You can imagine with the European model working already 12 or 13 years, the bar today to run an academy is very high.”
Closing the standard gap
The U.S. remains far away from the standard in Germany and Belgium, but like the creation of the Development Academy in 2007, bringing in outside help such as Double PASS marks a step on the path toward becoming a heavyweight soccer nation. The term “world-class” might seem to lose some of its meaning with U.S. Soccer’s use of it to promote the Academy, but that doesn’t mean federation officials believe they’ve developed any players that fit the moniker so far.
“We haven’t. We are closer now than we were eight years ago when the program started, but we’ve got a lot more work to go,” Mooney said. “There’s no doubt after eight years that we’ve made a lot of progress in that program. Some of it’s anecdotal, which is fine. For this, we had a real chance to have a very experienced and objective and formal process be applied to give us more information, more data points for us to continue to move the program forward and, ultimately, to help influence and support those club environments that are really involved on an everyday basis with developing players.”
Contracting a Belgian company in Double PASS is one of several nods to the European football process that Americans have made in recent business decisions in the game. U.S. Soccer hired Nico Romeijn from the Netherlands as its director of coaching education in June 2015 to overhaul its licenses.
Since 2013, MLS also maintains a partnership with the French Football Federation for coaching education.
“It all starts with creating awareness, and that’s also why it’s good to compare [American soccer] with Europe … and then look how you can take things and modify it and implement it in the U.S. soccer culture,” Romeijn said. “The biggest mistake we can make is just copy things.”
Details from Double PASS's presentation to U.S. clubs
In its presentation to U.S. clubs ahead of launching the assessments, Double PASS eschewed any comparisons and simply stated its goal as a series of progressive steps: create a “state-of-the-art first-team environment and talent development system,” which leads to improved players, professional clubs and national teams, a more attractive MLS and “higher popularity and more business opportunities.”
The U.S. youth national teams are also being assessed, though the U-17s with their residency program currently have the only everyday environment similar to a club team. Still, Mooney said the process remains generally the same.
“We want to hold ourselves and those environments to a higher standard,” Mooney said. “So for us, we’re very much part of this process as well, and we need to make sure that we’re improving over the next five, 10-plus years.”
After the Double PASS assessment, each club receives a written report and presentation detailing each aspect of the study and its resulting conclusions. The written report deals largely with the documents submitted before the on-site visit, coupled with whether the observed environment accurately reflects those documents, while the presentation covers the specific training sessions and matches seen.
“For years, [club name] teams have succeeded in regional, national and international tournaments,” reads one final assessment, shared with SI.com by one official on the condition of anonymity. “To ensure continuity, it is important that all procedures and future ambitions are formalized. This process, together with a formal technical structure, a detailed curriculum, making a start of individual development of the academy players, extra staff to undouble roles, an increase of practice time, acquiring a centralized data management system will make the level of [club name] high also during [the coming] years.”
The presentation on games and training details multiple aspects of Double PASS’s defined “game canvas” that includes attacking, defensive and transition moments and the club’s effectiveness compared to academies in major European nations. It details how many sessions Double PASS observed, the average number of exercises per session, average training time and the average number of coaches involved in each.
Finally, a series of graphs close out the report, detailing the distribution of training content, number of game-realistic exercises, the type of interaction coaches have with players and other session characteristics. A few recommendations on how to improve the club’s training environment follow.
Clubs who went through the process in 2015 received their assessments and had their closing discussions with Double PASS during the MLS Combine and NSCAA Convention in January.
How is development incentivized?
One area of lingering uncertainty remains how Double PASS’s assessments will be used to incentivize development, and whether the final reports will carry with them any consequences, such as Belgium’s promotion-relegation system or Germany and England’s financial rewards that come with having higher-ranked academies.
The German federation parses out a section of its annual UEFA Champions League solidarity funding to the Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga academies. In his recent book, Das Reboot, Raphael Honigstein reports that three-star academies receive €400,000, while those with zero stars receive €100,000. Champions League-qualified clubs receive no money beyond what UEFA pays them for their participation and results.
In England, the Premier League provides funding on a sliding scale according to a club’s assessment. In the first cycle of assessments, Category 1 clubs received £750,000, but they had to match the league’s funding by earmarking the same amount for development. Clubs could choose which categorization to aim for, depending on how much they wanted to invest on their own into their academy with the knowledge that it would be doubled.
For now, U.S. Soccer hasn’t decided what its final measurement system will be, let alone whether a certain grade would carry with it any reward.
“The incentive side is also interesting to us,” Mooney said. “In fairness, at the moment, it’s probably a little premature for two reasons. One is that we don’t yet know enough—we haven’t basically evaluated enough clubs—to have an understanding of what an incentive program would really look like for our environment. It’s also the case where we have a unique environment with a combination of professional and amateur clubs, and how those clubs are funded and resourced in different ways.”
Double PASS believes the incentive system connected with its certification is a big reason for the success of the nations with which the company works in Europe. Its CEO, Schoukens, mentioned return on investment as a major driving factor for the work academies do.
“For us, it’s a little bit strange that Development Academies end their development at [age] 18. What is the next step?” Schoukens said. “The objective of setting up an academy is to bring them to your first team, in Europe; that’s the basic idea.”
In the U.S., college soccer remains a major draw for players graduating from Development Academy teams. However, if players don’t sign homegrown player contracts out of MLS academies and expenses-paid clubs aren’t compensated for moving players on, Schoukens said it’s difficult to find any return on the clubs’ investment in development.
“If you consider not the pay-to-play system—if you consider it as for-free development—well then, the return on investment should be provoked by the transition of players into the first team,” he said. “So the business model of the Development Academies today is a business model, I think, for 50% of these clubs based on the pay-to-play system; 50% are already evolving into for-free development. But then my question is, where are they going to find their return on investment? Because at 18, thank you very much, I got a good education or a good development in your club and now, what is the next step?”
A financial incentive, Schoukens said, could be a step in the process toward eradicating the pay-to-play system that limits participation in elite soccer only to those who can afford the costs and rewarding all academies, whether they are connected to MLS franchises or not, for developing players.
“Why should [the academies] do this [work without reward]?” he said. “There is always the intrinsic motivation, but there is also the extrinsic motivation. By the end, people can be idealists, but at a certain moment, that ends.”
Mooney said the federation hasn’t ruled out some sort of incentive system.
“I think that our first steps in that would be wanting to find ways for the incentives to be based on those areas that they need to improve,” Mooney said. “Maybe that’s the incentive that we connect with a particular star rating: to make sure that they have increased access to an opportunity, or that there’s a potential scholarship program for those coaches.”
As it stands, without a measure of reward or punishment, clubs could simply disregard Double PASS’s recommendations. Of course, U.S. Soccer constantly evaluates its academies formally anyway, admitting and dropping clubs based on the federation’s standards, so these assessments aren’t purely an exercise in accountability.
U.S. Soccer also hasn’t decided when the next round of Double PASS evaluations could be. With only around one-quarter of its Development Academies going through the process so far, Mooney said it’s far too early to tell what the future of the partnership could look like.
“While there are certainly ideas projecting forward about having assessments that are conducted on an every-two-year basis and that there becomes a formalized ranking, rating and/or incentive scale, a lot of that’s premature,” Mooney said. “As we continue through this process, the real hope is that if I think of it as a checklist—so I’ve got 10 things that I really need to improve on—it’s less realistic to think that I can solve all 10 problems between my first assessment and my second one. For us, it’s about formalizing that strategy and that plan to say, ‘Can I solve one of these things each year over the next 10 years?’”
The countries that have seen the most reward from their partnerships with Double PASS needed multiple cycles of evaluation to reach their current heights. As it stands, that means the U.S. might not be in a position to make much progress in the current World Cup cycle, but long-term adherence to the Double PASS model of meta-development would likely bring far greater results than a one-time assessment of the American environment.
“We put the bar already very high in Europe, and probably, we have set the bar at this moment not at the same level [in the U.S.],” Schoukens said. “They will still have a lot to do, but there is already a strong base. It’s now a question to optimize it.” |
TorrentFreak has some nice technical details on Bahnhof, the Swedish ISP that hosts (among other things), Wikileaks. The firm responded to IPRED, Sweden's batshit copyright spying law, by switching off its logs, so that putative copyright holders would not get anything if they tried to use IPRED's easy-peasy sneak-and-peek warrants. Now that Sweden is about to adopt the EU's rules that require all ISPs to begin logging, Bahnhof will insist that all its customers use an anonymizing proxy, so it can no longer tell what its customers are doing. Customers who want to make it easy to be spied upon can opt out for about $8/month.
Since the service will encrypt user traffic, not even Bahnhof will know what their customers are doing online. If the ISP doesn't know about their activities, then there's not much to log. Nothing to log means there's nothing useful to hand over to authorities and anti-piracy companies.
"Technically, this is a stealth section, we will store all data up to this point of invisibility," adds Karlung, referring to the first-hop connection the customer makes with the company's servers when going online.
"What happens after that is not our responsibility and is outside Bahnhof. So the only thing we are going to store is very little information, which in practice will be irrelevant." |
The United States is experiencing quite a shakeup in both DEA and Attorney General leadership, and the moves could mean big things for the cannabis movement. The first notable change is happening at the Drug Enforcement Agency, where tough-on-cannabis Michele Leonhart, who built her career on becoming the first female DEA agent to head up a field office and currently serves as the chairwoman, administrator, and head of the administration, will be retiring in May amid scandals over sex parties in Colombia featuring DEA agents, cartel-funded prostitutes, and some very poor judgment.
The resignation appears to be a long time coming — an internal Department of Justice watchdog report found that the majority of lawmakers in the House Oversight Committee voted that they had “no confidence” in Leonhart's leadership. She has faced scrutiny for years, particularly from the Obama administration. During her tenure as head of the DEA, Leonhart used the example of escalating border violence, including the deaths of over 1,000 children killed in the War on Drugs, as a “sign of success in the fight against drugs.”
In 2012, during a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, Representative Jared Polis (D-CO) pressed Leonhart about whether drugs like methamphetamine and crack caused greater harm to public health when compared to marijuana, but she repeatedly dodged the question, refusing to make any concessions about cannabis and whether it is less harmful than heroin. Cannabis advocates across the United States are cheering Leonhart’s departure, recognizing that her adamant anti-cannabis stance was only hindering progress for legalization.
However, Leonhart's departure comes with a swinging door as another anti-cannabis figure, Loretta Lynch, enters the ring. Lynch has officially been sworn in as the replacement for Attorney General Eric Holder. Leonhart’s departure from the DEA has the potential to influence upward mobility for the cannabis movement, but only so far as Lynch will allow it.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder’s stance on cannabis was mostly laissez-faire, leaving the states to do as they please without interference. If Lynch wanted to shake things up and crack down on medically and recreationally legalized states, she would be well within her rights as Attorney General to do so. However, while Loretta Lynch may not approve of cannabis, she is far more likely to take the backseat regarding state cannabis laws, à la the laissez-faire position of Eric Holder.
What do these personnel changes mean for the cannabis movement? It's too early to tell, but from the DEA's standpoint, the organization appears to have considerably softened its stance on cannabis, so this could be a great opportunity to bring in new leadership that has a progressive view paralleling that of the rapidly-growing cannabis movement. As for the new Attorney General, we'll have to see whether Ms. Lynch's personal opinion of cannabis clouds her duties or if she'll respect the legal framework that's being built across the country. |
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
If we imagine the internet as a physical realm, perhaps a futuristic city, with giant Amazon shops and Wikipedia libraries, then Salty Bet is one of the trashiest dive bars. It’s a noisy den in the Squalid Quarter, full of loutish cackling and people throwing money at the bar staff. In the centre of the bar, an illicit cage fight is about to start, between an anime princess and a weird creature spawned from MS Paint. I feel dirty just walking into this place, so why do I keep coming back?Well, playing with fake money is always fun. For anyone confused, Salty Bet is a website where you can bet on fights between weird AI bots, battling in M.U.G.E.N, an old 2D fighting game engine. The contenders are stripped from generations of fighting games, or sometimes simply inspired by them. You can find Jin from Tekken, or Marvel’s Dr Strange, or any of the Mortal Kombatants. Some of the brawlers are horrible monstrosities – huge scorpions or blobs. Others are Sailor Moon characters or Ninja Turtles. These copyright-skirting bots are often overpowered maniacs with unlikely moves and weapons. Lasers, swords, robots, missiles. Everything is allowed, so long as it doesn’t “break” the fight. And a tier system keeps everything (mostly) in check. The perfect Salty Bet fight is quick and close, and upsets are wonderful.
I don’t recognise the majority of the characters. Fans of both anime and fighting games have created their own sub-culture here, and that’s part of the appeal as a stranger. You have no idea who to bet on. The tiny animal with a smile is just as viable as the demon breathing fire. But don’t rely on the Twitch-based chat for help. This is a raucous place, sometimes offensive. A kind of Jabba’s Palace for the year 2017. But if you can ignore the worst of it (or if you’re happy to turn chat off entirely), you might still enjoy one of the grubbiest, weirdest bloodsports available on the horrible streets of this Internet city. |
Climate change is with us, and we need to think about the next big disturbing idea — the potentially disastrous consequences of massive numbers of environmental refugees at large on the planet. At a recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, experts described a world struggling to cope with one of the largest migrations in history. In 2020, the United Nations projects that we will have 50 million environmental refugees, mostly from Africa, Asia and Latin America. The threat of increasing floods, disease and famine sparked by climate change could nullify meaningful and sustainable development in poor countries. These people will be left to seek new homes in an era where "asylum" has increasingly become an unwelcome term.
At this writing, Europe is under siege by one of the largest Syrian war-induced migrations in history. The war has dragged on for over four years now, taking more than 200,000 lives and causing untold destruction to the Syrian environment. Well over a million refugees have entered Europe, adding a complex religious and mix to the already complicated issue of climate refugees ("Trump envoy Haley tells refugees she cares, but defends cuts," May 24). These streams of migrants may literally change the face of the continent in a generation. Optimists hope that through resettlement and education the issues can be resolved. Others believe that this might be the time when things begin to fall apart in our global system. At present, while a dangerous situation unfolds, many world leaders have chosen paralysis and mutual recrimination. At this juncture, members of the EU nations of Europe are discussing ways to keep further immigration limited to "documented" refugees.
In 2009, only 30 percent of Americans believed that the world climate was changing. By 2012, surveys revealed that 70 percent of the American people had come to believe that greenhouse gases had altered the planet. A new age of environmental change — and subsequently refugees — had dawned.
Environmental refugees in an age of sectarian violence, civil war and economic recession are not a flashy public policy project. Most policymakers wish that the subject would go away. But in an age when the world is being forced to bear witness to the fact that millions are fleeing their homes owing to sea rise, desertification, drought, unprecedented hurricanes, tsunamis and war the topic is stubbornly resistant to the kinds of public amnesia so often in effect in the world theater of nations.
We do not know how soon reality will trump ideology. At present, there are lots of back and forth discussions between national and international leaders that haven't been very productive. What is certain, however, is that climate change is not just changing the planet, it is changing human lives. As early as 1971, Richard Falk, a professor of international law at Princeton, argued that environmental change was a security issue and outlined what he called his first law of ecological politics: the faster the rate of change, the less time to adapt, the more dangerous the impact will be. We are now living in an age of resource shocks. Unbridled world consumption of food and water and other resource conflicts combine with xenophobia to make a toxic brew.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees with a lean staff of 7,600 workers is already stressed by refugee crises of some 37 million in Africa and the Middle East. Add millions of people displaced by climate change and you have a crisis of governance and management that will sorely tax the wisest solons at the UN and other governmental agencies.
It is not rocket science to conclude that as the century progresses there will be a glaring need for more farms and more farmers to feed the planet's burgeoning population. Meanwhile, major countries like China are buying farmland in whatever country they can find it, and food stocks on Wall Street such as ConAgra and General Mills are soaring. Access to supplies like water and grain will become major concerns to countries with diminished rainfall. By 2020, warns Chatham House in its Resources Futures report, "yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by 50 percent in some areas. The highest rates of loss are expected to be in Africa, where reliance on rain-fed farming is greatest, but agriculture in China, India, Pakistan and Central Asia is also likely to be severely affected." Heat waves will diminish the flow of rivers, which will mean diminishing supplies of water for irrigation and hydroelectric power. Long range, in addition to setting waves of population migration in motion, a changed environment in the future will transform infrastructures of government out of recognition from their older patterns.
Presently, in the safe affluent confines of our homes, we watch on our television or read in our newspapers of the relentless march of hundreds of thousands of refugees out of Africa and the Middle East bound for the sanctuary and prosperity of England and Western Europe. They are people who cannot hold on to a livelihood in their forsaken homelands because of drought, soil erosion, desertification, floods and war. They are desperate people willing to risk the violence of nativist Europeans or drowning in a tempest of the Mediterranean Sea. Unlike other refugees of yesteryear, these have abandoned their homeland with little hope of a foreseeable return.
Environmental refugees are a problem of development policy beyond the scope of a single country or agency. The problems are fraught with emotion, human agency and political controversy. How will people be relocated and settled? Is it possible to offer environmental refugees temporary or permanent asylum? Will these refugees have any collective rights in the new areas they inhabit? And lastly, who will pay the costs of all the affected countries during the process of resettlement?
Developed western nations like the United States also have already begun to feel the shock of environmental stresses and catastrophes. A decade ago, Hurricane Katrina put New Orleans under water and more recently, Hurricane Sandy decimated the Middle Atlantic coast and flooded New York City. Today, the Southwest languishes in one of the worst droughts in recent memory while environmental historians point out similarities with the Dust Bowl of winds that roared across of the drought-ridden plains of Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma in the 1930s and covered distant cities like Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia in a choking mantle of dust and dirt. |
The Sudanese Stand Up
What’s happening in Sudan is nothing short of amazing. This is the country that has been ruled since 1989 by President Omar al-Bashir — the man who faces a global arrest warrant after being charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court for his country’s exterminationist policies in Darfur. This is a guy who was willing to kill millions of his compatriots — and not only Darfuris — in order to keep himself in power. Now, thousands of Sudanese are taking to the streets to defy him and his regime. Many have already disappeared into torture chambers for their efforts.
You could be forgiven if you hadn’t noticed. Western media coverage has been thin. CNN aired just a few grainy videos — which is actually pretty commendable, considering that even the New York Times can’t bring itself to do more than printing a few terse Reuters dispatches. (Unless you count their excellent blog The Lede, which finally brought out a good piece on the protests late yesterday.)
But there are a few news organizations that have been doing their best to report on the developing situation: the BBC, Bloomberg, and Agence France-Presse. It’s surely no coincidence that some of their correspondents have run into trouble with the authorities. On Tuesday the Sudanese authorities deported Salma El Wardany, a Bloomberg reporter who was arrested by the security services for several hours last week. An AFP journalist was also detained by the police until Western diplomats intervened on his behalf.
The Sudanese government has very good reasons for targeting the handful of foreign journalists in Khartoum. How the outside world covers the uprising in Sudan — billed by some as the latest installment of the Arab Spring — will have a major impact on what happens there next.
That was the most important takeaway from my conversation this week with Yousif Elmahdi, a young oppositionist in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. His activism really began in January 2011, when the Tunisian uprising first inspired Sudanese students to demonstrate against the Bashir government. Elmahdi was arrested and tortured by Bashir’s secret police. This time around he’s decided to confine his protest to the realm of social media rather than participate directly in the protests, but he has no illusions about what’s likely to happen next. After our conversation he sent me a text:
Thank you — I’m going to eventually get detained anyway if this thing increases so I’m trying to do as much as I can in the meantime without doing anything crazy to hasten the arrest.
And yet he was willing to let me use his name. That says something important, I think, about the grit of the people behind the protest movement now under way in Africa’s third-largest country.
The current wave of unrest was started by women. On June 16, a group of female students at the University of Khartoum launched a public protest against drastic hikes in the prices of food and public transportation. Their male classmates joined them, and together they marched into the center of the city, where they were met by the combined forces of the police and the infamous National Intelligence and Security Service, who attacked the demonstrators with tear gas and iron rods. Courts have sentenced some of the detainees to lashes — in some cases as many as 60.
But this failed to stop the revolt, which soon spread to other universities in Khartoum and then outside of the capital. Since then there have been demonstrations around the country, including places as far afield as Omdurman and Kasala. And the protests are no longer only about the high cost of living — contrary to some of those headlines about "austerity protests." In the eastern town of Gedaref, members of the crowd chanted, "the people want to overthrow the regime" — the mantra of the Tunisian and Egyptian protesters. Observers say that political demands have come to the forefront as the demonstrations have progressed.
Bashir responded by declaring that his government would push ahead with planned price rises. He denounced the demonstrators as a few criminal malcontents under foreign guidance and vowed to unleash his "jihadis" on anyone who persisted in taking to the streets. That last threat was enough to send a chill through many Sudanese, who understood Bashir to be referring to the Popular Defense Forces, a fanatical Arab militia with a particular record of viciousness in Sudan’s myriad civil wars. "These are the people we’ll see if this thing really spirals out of control," says Elmahdi. "These are the people who will shoot on sight."
Simple fear might explain why the demonstrations in Khartoum itself have ebbed somewhat over the past few days (though they’re still going on). Yet the protests have continued unabated in other parts of the country. And it’s not like the Sudanese are inexperienced. They take great pride in their past revolts against unpopular leaders.
So far, however, Sudan has not found its Tahrir Square. The demonstrations have been widely dispersed, usually amounting to a few hundred people at a time — apparently a conscious tactic to avoid reprisals by the security forces. There’s a risk of atomization. People won’t keep it up if they think they’re the only ones.
Hence the importance of the media. Most Sudanese rely on outside sources for their news. By far the most popular outlet is the Qatari-financed satellite TV broadcaster Al Jazeera. But there’s a problem: The Qataris are friendly with the Bashir regime, and so Al Jazeera’s Arabic programming has been notably coy in its reporting. For the first few days Al Jazeera barely deigned to mention the demonstrations. Saudi-owned Al Arabiya has been notably more forthcoming, but not as many Sudanese watch it. Elmahdi credits Al Arabiya — as well as Arabic radio broadcasts from the BBC, Radio Monte Carlo, and U.S.-financed Radio Sawa — with pressuring the Qataris to provide more balanced coverage of the events. But there’s still a ways to go. "Ultimately it’s Al Jazeera that’s going to make or break this," says Elmahdi. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but only a bit.
Media coverage, of course, not only connects the Sudanese with each other but also imposes at least some constraints on Bashir, who has shown a certain degree of sensitivity to international criticisms of his government. Oppositionists have organized an information campaign around the Twitter hashtag #SudanRevolts to boost international attention to the protests. (Even in this impoverished country, it turns out, there are many Sudanese who can access the internet through their mobile phones, though few have computers.) Still, the activists are under no illusions: Social media, they say, still can’t compete with good old-fashioned TV.
The worst thing the West can do, according to Elmahdi, would be to impose additional sanctions on Sudan, which merely tend to rally people around the regime. By far the most effective means of ratcheting up the pressure, he says, would be to help the Sudanese get a clear picture of what their own government is doing to its citizens.
Western countries can help. Governments that sponsor Arabic-language news broadcasts should step up their coverage wherever possible and boost signals to ensure that more Sudanese can receive their programming. Perhaps they could even lobby the governments in Riyadh and Doha to beam more footage into Sudan. (And along the way, Washington and Brussels could tactfully point out to the Chinese that having a new leader in Khartoum might enable the oil from South Sudan to flow again. Bashir’s negotiations with the year-old government in Juba about bringing the South’s oil to market clearly aren’t going anywhere.)
Meanwhile, editors at the big Western media outlets should send more reporters to illuminate the latest events in Sudan — and not because that would support budding democrats. Quite simply, there’s a huge story in the making here. Omar al-Bashir is now Africa’s longest-serving autocrat. Like Qaddafi, he’s been the instigator of countless conflicts — not only against his own citizens in places like Darfur or South Kordofan, but also among his neighbors. (He even lent his support to Joseph Kony, the leader of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army.) His fall would offer the opportunity of a fresh start not only to Sudan but to an entire region. Surely that’s a story worth covering. |
President Donald Trump meets with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani at the Palace Hotel during the United Nations General Assembly, Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2017, in New York
Arab states may want their turn at the helm of UNESCO, but the barbs hurled by Egypt at rival candidate Qatar during the vote highlights the fractious geopolitics paralysing the workings of the U.N. cultural agency.
The vote for a new leader of UNESCO, comes amid U.S. President Donald Trump's threats to pull the U.S. out of the agency over an alleged anti-Israel bias. Trump intervened in the crisis between Qatar and its Arab Sunni neighbors on the side of Saudi Arabia and has since had a contentious relationship with Qatar, which is seen as trending towards Iran in the region.
The Paris-based body is known for designating World Heritage sites like the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria and Grand Canyon National Park, but it has struggled for relevance as it becomes increasingly hobbled by regional rivalries and a lack of money.
After two days of a secret ballot that could run until Friday, Qatar's Hamad bin Abdulaziz al-Kawari leads France's Audrey Azoulay and Egyptian hopeful Moushira Khattab. Three other candidates, including from Lebanon, trail.
The row between Qatar and Egypt has its roots in the crisis engulfing Qatar and its Gulf Arab neighbours which have severed diplomatic, trade and travel ties with Doha after accusing it of sponsoring hardline Islamist groups, a charge Qatar denies.
"The dispute has been bubbling for several months, but what we're seeing with the Arab candidates is that they are extremely divided. Some of the clashes are quite virulent," said one UNESCO ambassador.
Egypt, the Arab world's most populous state which has joined the boycott of Qatar, has not shied from making its feelings about Qatar's UNESCO bid clear.
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In an interview with Egypt Today and retweeted by the foreign ministry, Egypt's top diplomat Sameh Shoukry suggested Qatar was using its financial power to influence UNESCO's 58-member executive council.
"It is an organisation that is owned by international society and cannot be sold to a particular state or individual," he was quoted as saying when asked about the Qatari candidate's campaign logo "I'm not coming empty handed."
A diplomat at Qatar's embassy in Paris declined to comment. A Qatari official at UNESCO's headquarters also declined immediate comment.
Egyptian candidate Khattab's first message on Twitter in three months was a re-tweet of an article in the Israeli press entitled "Israel bemoans emerging Qatari victory in UNESCO leadership vote."
Kawari, the Qatari candidate, has so far not reacted to the Egyptian allegations, simply tweeting on Wednesday: "Al-Kawari tipped to head UNESCO".
Voting lasts over a maximum five rounds. If the two finalists end level, they draw lots.
"You get the impression that some are playing politics and competing for the sake of having a post rather than actually wanting to secure the future of the organisation," said a European diplomat. |
Image: Vyo
The way to make a social home robot seems to be pretty standardized: basically, you cram a tablet computer into a cute robot body with some degrees of freedom and do your best to make sure that your voice recognition and conversation algorithms are as good of an experience as you possibly can, using a screen to help you out when necessary. This is fine, if you can get it to work well, but there’s a concern that it’s just going to turn into an experience that’s essentially talking to a gussied-up version of your phone.
A group of researchers including Michal Luria, Guy Hoffman, Benny Megidish, Oren Zuckerman, Roberto Aimi, and Sung Park from IDC Herzliya, Cornell, and SK Telecom have developed a prototype social robot called Vyo. Vyo is “a personal assistant serving as a centralized interface for smart home devices.” Nothing new there, but what sets Vyo apart is how you interact with it: it combines non-anthropomorphic design with anthropomorphic expressiveness and a tactile object-based control system into a social robot that’s totally, adorably different. But is it practical?
We spoke with Professor Guy Hoffman from Cornell University and IDC Herzliya in Israel (you probably recognize his name from the work he did at the MIT Media Lab on the AUR robotic desk lamp and, more recently, on the Shimi musical robot) about where the idea for Vyo came from, and what’s behind the unique design:
The idea for Vyo stemmed from a number of roots. First, both social robotics and smart homes are technologies which seem on the brink of market feasibility. The original vision for the future of domestic technology was for it to be calm, ubiquitous, autonomous, and transparent, and most importantly unified. In reality we find a bunch of unrelated, separately controlled devices. Many of the suggested interface solutions for smart homes are split between voice control and touch screens. In my mind this betrays the “domestic” aspect of home technology. I found it eerie to have to speak to your walls or into space, and didn't want to add another bright glass square for you to touch at home. A social robot offers a very different kind of relationship with your home and domestic technology. That’s when the idea came up to make Vyo ride the brink between an “investigative tool,” like a “microscope into your home” and a social presence. The social presence should be quiet, peripheral, and respectful (like a butler) and not quirky and playful, since - after all - it is representing the wellbeing of your home. Most importantly, though, I wanted the user to be in control and the robot to recede into being a “lens” for the user to operate on, that's why we took the "microscope" route, where you place objects of interest under the lens to get more information. As a result, the screen is not the main interface component, but is just revealed when the robot bows down and offers it to you. An additional “physical pun” was that you could look into the robot’s thought process when you do this.
With those general design considerations in mind, the researchers also identified a series of five design goals for Vyo based on prior research, experience, and user studies:
Engaging – A smart home interface should promote the user’s sense of connection with their domestic environment. This sense can be evoked by engaging the user and bringing back “excitement of interaction.” Unobtrusive – Domestic technology should be at least semi-automated, aspiring to as few disruptions as possible. Thus, our second design goal is to design a robot that will draw attention only when it is essential. Device-like – Most domestic robot designs see the robot primarily as a social agent, often with humanoid or anthropomorphic form. We aim for a more device-like domestic robot design, striking a fine balance between device and social agent. This point is also supported by [a study], where participants preferred a home robot characterized as a “butler-like” assistant (79 percent) or as an appliance (71 percent). Only few wanted a home robot to be their friend or mate. Respectful – People expect the robot to have “etiquette”, “politeness”, and “sensitivity to social situations”. We therefore suggest robotic assistants should evoke a sense of respect towards their “employer.” Reassuring – Finally, our interviews strongly suggested people need the domestic robot to be reliable, reassuring, and trustworthy. This cannot rely solely on fault-tolerance, but should also be embodied in the design of the robot’s morphology, [nonverbal behaviors], and interaction schemas.
Putting all of that stuff together into a physical robot isn’t easy, and the design process was a complex one, with the researchers exploring two different form factors: one of the microscope-like social robot (which ended up close to the final design for Vyo), and another that was more heavily influenced by consumer electronics:
As with any social robot, the way it looks is only a part of the experience. What will really capture your attention and emotion is how the robot behaves, or more fundamentally, how it moves to express itself. “Vyo was designed using a multi-disciplinary movement-centric design approach,” Hoffman told us. “With the help of Michal Luria, we used actors, puppeteers, and animators to simultaneously design the appearance and the expressive movements of the robot. Just as an example, we went through many versions of the neck angle in animation trying to show a respectful attentiveness in animation, before actually building the mechanical joints for the robot.”
Photo: Michal Luria
“We were inspired by domestic rituals, like placing your keys on a bowl by the entrance…. The ‘giving’ of objects traditionally is associated with ‘passing responsibility.’ This was another novel interaction paradigm between humans and robots. You literally ‘give’ the robot the task.” —Guy Hoffman, Cornell / IDC
The final piece here is the way in which users can interact with Vyo: by placing little objects that represent connected home systems directly on the robot, and then manipulating them to control those systems. This is certainly a unique approach, but it seems like it would be less efficient than voice commands or using a touchscreen, so we asked Hoffman about it:
The connection between social robotics and tangible user interfaces (like the physical icons) has never been suggested, and my collaborator Oren Zuckerman (an expert in [tactile user interfaces]) and I wanted to offer that relationship as a new HCI approach. Tangible icons representing information offer several interaction benefits such as quick overview of the status with a short glance, bimanual/simultaneous operation (you could swipe off all the icons in a hurry, to turn all the devices off), and fine motor control. We were also inspired by domestic rituals, like placing your keys on a bowl by the entrance. Furthermore, the “giving” of objects traditionally is associated with “passing responsibility.” This was another novel interaction paradigm between humans and robots. You literally “give” the robot the task. Finally, placing things is a very democratic interface, for example for populations who would have a harder time navigating a complex on-screen menu or a voice interface.
Hearing about this process is absolutely fascinating to me, because it gives such insight into all of the careful thought and design decisions that go into creating a social robot, and how those decisions can result in something completely different from what we’ve seen so far in the context of connected home devices.
For a much more detailed look at what it’s like to interact with Vyo, here’s Guy Hoffman himself giving a 7-minute demo with the Vyo prototype:
Right now, the researchers are experimentally comparing Vyo’s interaction technique with more traditional ones (screen-based and voice-based interfaces) to see which ones come closer to meeting the design goals of the robot. South Korean mobile operator SK Telecom has already taken some of the lessons that were learned during Vyo’s design process and is applying them to its smart home business strategy. Hoffman also told us that they’re “working on designing a more furniture-like version of the robot.” I have no idea what that’s going to be like, but sign me up anyway.
“Designing Vyo, a Robotic Smart Home Assistant: Bridging the Gap Between Device and Social Agent,” by Michal Luria, Guy Hoffman, Benny Megidish, Oren Zuckerman, and Sung Park from IDC Herzliya, Cornell, and SK Telecom, will be presented at IEEE/RAS RO-MAN 2016 in August.
[ Vyo ] |
Imagine you are on a crowded beach on a sunny summer day and you start building a wonderful sand-castle. You put in a lot of effort to make it look just perfect. But then you notice that the other people around you aren't participating. They either just build imperfect small sand-castles, or none at all. Except for your perfect little corner the beach is just a random mess of footprints in the sand. That makes you all angry, and you start berating the other people on the beach as being clueless or jerks . But are those the only two possible explanations? I would say it is far more likely that the majority of people on that beach simply don't care. They are there to get a tan and relax, not to put any effort into sand-castle building.If you followed that link above, the article about people being either clueless or jerks is of course about players of World of Warcraft. Blizzard recently said they would consider putting in a skill test as a requirement for running heroic dungeons, requiring a "silver" score in the Proving Grounds to access those. That is supposed to solve the problem of players in dungeons being "clueless". Talarian quotes another player whoBut just like on that sunny beach, I would say that the majority of players of World of Warcraft are neither clueless nor jerks. They are simply not interested in putting in a lot of effort. I mean, why would they? Didn't WoW teach them for hundreds of hours that progress is something that comes automatically for just playing effortlessly? The idea that at the end of simply enjoying your sunny beach or cruise holiday you would suddenly be forced to put in some effort is really quite ridiculous. You could call it a bait & switch scam. The majority of players aren't clueless or jerks, they are simply tourists. They regard the kind of people who take that game very seriously with the same bemused look as tourists on the beach give to somebody who is working hard there.It isn't for me to decide who is right or who is wrong here. Obviously heroic dungeons and raids require players to perform at a certain level for the venture to be successful. But I can't really blame the tourists walking into them and wondering what the fuzz is all about. A performance requirement *IS* out of place in a casual game like World of Warcraft. I just seems to be part of the game because the developers failed to come up with a better idea for the endgame which would have been more fitting with the rest of the game. If WoW had that sort of performance requirement starting from level 1, the heroic dungeons and raids would fit a lot better, but then WoW wouldn't have millions of players. |
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