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The Sunderland fan at the centre of a 'poo-gate' scandal has identified himself and responded to claims he defecated on his seat in the stands.
Baby-faced Callum Mawson, 17, was accused of defecating in the stands as his team were beaten 1-3 by Reading at the Stadium of Light on Saturday.
It came after footage and images emerged showing the teenager squatting over his seat, with his trousers and underpants around his ankles.
But Callum, who admits he was incredibly drunk, has come forward to set the record straight - insisting that he did NOT defecate on his seat.
He said he had only eaten two chocolates from his advent calendar before drinking 12 bottles of beer and six pints of fruit cider on the day of the match.
(Image: NNP)
Callum, a season ticket holder, said he couldn't recall the incident but believes he must have been so drunk he thought he was on the toilet.
The business admin apprentice, from Horden, County Durham, has now apologised amid fears he will be sacked from his job and banned from the Stadium of Light for life.
He said: "I am apologetic for it, I am sorry. I didn't defecate on the seat, that's the God's honest truth. I can't recall any of it.
"I got to the ground, sat in my seat and the next thing I remember was I was being in the holding cell in the stadium.
"I didn't find out about the whole incident until half 11 at night when my friend told me. It was all over Facebook. Gary Lineker had put it on his Twitter.
(Image: (c) North News & Pictures ltd)
"It's embarrassing, I'm ashamed. I didn't even know what I was doing.
'A lad who sat next to me put on Twitter saying it didn't happen. He said, 'I can confirm he didn't have a s*** in his seat'. He said, 'I can I can confirm he had a piss'.
"I'd rather it be that then having a s*** on the seat. But I'd rather it be nothing at all.
"I think I must have been so drunk I thought I was on the toilet. That's the only thing I can think of. I wouldn't have done it for no reason.
"I don't know what was going through my head when I did it, I really don't.
"There's been people messaging me giving me hate. I don't want people to think I don't care. I am ashamed of it.
"There is no excuse for what I have done, I regret my actions, but there is no need for such hurtful comments. I understand why it's had so much attention but I don't appreciate the lies."
Callum, who has had a season ticket for three years, drank 12 bottles of Budweiser and six pints of Strongbow Dark Fruit before travelling to the match.
He said he had nothing to eat that day apart from two chocolates from his Christmas advent calendar.
Callum said: "I was drinking at my house then I met up with mates at the pub and had a few there. I didn't carry on drinking when I got there.
"But I had been out all night the night before at a party - that probably didn't help. I got home at 8am and started drinking about 9am."
Callum said spent around eight hours in police custody after being arrested for being drunk at a football ground.
(Image: Get Reading)
He said: "I have been suspended from work because of it. I think I'm going to get sacked to be honest.
"I'm slightly worried it will affect getting a job. But it wouldn't affect my work life - I'm not going to come to work drunk.
"I'm not usually like that. It's just a one off, I'm not sure why it's happened. I'm going to have to watch what I am drinking in the future.
"My mam and dad are going to support me through the whole thing.
"I think the club will ban me. I'm going to be upset of I'm not going to be able to go to the home matches any more. But I can't feel hard done by - it's my fault, I have done it."
A Northumbria Police spokeswoman said: "Further to media reports reporting a fan defecated on his seat during the Sunderland v Reading match on Saturday, police would like to clarify that this was not the case." |
Yesterday we reported that according to Peter Jahrling of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease - one of the top authorities in the world on Ebola - and who is on the front lines fighting Ebola disease in Liberia, there is something different about the current Ebola outbreak in that not only does it spread more easily than it did before, but the viral loads in Ebola patients are much higher than they are used to seeing. "I have a field team in Monrovia. They are running [tests]. They are telling me that viral loads are coming up very quickly and really high, higher than they are used to seeing.... It may be that the virus burns hotter and quicker."
That is one observation on how different the current Ebola outbreak may be from the traditional fare. Another one comes courtesy of Operon Labs, which as cited in detail below, notes that "the current Ebola 2014 virus is mutating at a similar rate to seasonal flu (Influenza A). This means the current Ebola outbreak has a very high intrinsic rate of viral mutation. The bottom line is that the Ebola virus is changing rapidly, and in the intermediate to long term (3 months to 24 months), Ebola has the potential to evolve."
The question is evolve into what?
Submitted on Behalf of Operon Labs, Contributor to Spatiotemporal Modelling Project
Ebola 2014 is Mutating as Fast as Seasonal Flu
Background:
The current Ebola 2014 virus is mutating at a similar rate to seasonal flu (Influenza A). This means the current Ebola outbreak has a very high intrinsic rate of viral mutation. The bottom line is that the Ebola virus is changing rapidly, and in the intermediate to long term (3 months to 24 months), Ebola has the potential to evolve.
We cannot predict exactly what the Ebola virus will look like in 24 months. There is an inherent stochastic randomness to viral evolution which makes predictions on future viral strains difficult, if not impossible. One basic tenet we can rely on is this: Viruses tend to maximize their infectivity (basic reproduction number) within their biological constraints (Nowak, 2006).
These evolutionary constraints can be extremely complex, and can include trade-offs between virulence and infectivity, conditions of superinfection, host population dynamics, and even outbreak control measures.
One of the few statements we can make with confidence that the Ebola genome is changing at a specific rate, which is explained below.
Ebola Mutation Rate:
Analysis of the available research suggests that the Ebola 2014 virus is currently mutating at a rate 200% to 300% higher than historically observed (Gire, 2014).
Ebola Genome Substitution Rates (Gire, 2014)
Furthermore, the Ebola-2014 virus's mutation rate of 2.0 x 10−³ subs/site/year is nearly identical to Influenza A's mutation rate of 1.8 x 10−³ subs/site/year (Jenkins, 2002). This means Ebola 2014 is mutating as fast as seasonal flu.
Disclaimer: This paper contains no evidence (for or against) alternate modes of transmission for Ebola, nor is this paper postulating that genetic changes have impacted EVD clinical presentation (although evidence for this has started to emerge). This paper is simply demonstrating what appears to be a rapid rate of evolution in the Ebola 2014 Virus. Many recent Ebola viral mutations have been synonymous mutations, some have been in intergenic regions, while others are non-synonymous substitutions in protein-coding regions. All have unknown impact at the present time. Such questions should be the subject of future scientific research. This article simply points out that Ebola in 2014 is undergoing rapid mutation and adaptation. The future implications of Ebola's rapid evolution are unclear.
We chose to compare Ebola-2014 to Influenza A (Seasonal Flu) because Influenza is one of the fastest-mutating viruses (Jenkins, 2002). Unlike chickenpox (VZV), which people usually only contract once per lifetime, Influenza can infect a single individual many times repeatedly over the years. One of the reasons Influenza is able to re-infect humans each year is because the Influenza's high mutation rate allows the virus to generate 'escape mutants'. Escape mutants are Influenza viruses which are no longer recognized by human immune systems. Each winter presents us with a new mutated strain of the Influenza virus. Rapid mutation is beneficial to Influenza genetic fitness (in regards to antigenic regions), because it allows a 'new' Influenza virus to circulate year after year.
The benefit of a high mutation rate in Ebola 2014 is different -- the genetic changes in Ebola-2014 allow for rapid exploration of the entire fitness landscape in a brand new host -- humans. We need to be aware that the Ebola-2014 virus is undergoing rapid adaptation.
Ebola in Zoonotic Reservoir: Viral Genome adapted to Fruit Bats. (Green)
Ebola in Human Hosts: Viral Genome adapted to Humans. (Red)
Ebola Genotype will move Green -> Red during serial passage through Humans.
Until the Ebola outbreak is brought under control, the Ebola-2014 virus will continue to seed and adapt in its growing pool of West African human hosts. We need to consider that as the weeks and months go on, the rapidly-changing Ebola-2014 virus will undergo repeated export from the West African region to countries around the world.
As new Ebola cases grow in West Africa and elsewhere, we are effectively conducting 'serial passage' experiments of Ebola-2014 through human hosts. The repeated passage of Ebola-2014 through humans is exerting selection pressure on the Ebola-2014 virus to adapt to our species (instead of fruit bats). The introduction of Ebola-2014 into a large pool of West African human hosts (coupled with the complex dynamics of evolutionary selection pressure) may allow the Ebola-2014 virus to become more transmissible as the months go on, particularly in the absence of effective control interventions.
The high mutation rate we see in Ebola-2014 reflects its ability to rapidly explore the fitness landscape. The ability of Ebola to undergo rapid genome substitutions and SNPs, coupled with genetic recombination, will allow 'survival of the fittest' in Ebola-2014 genetic variants (on both the intra-host and inter-host levels). New Ebola sub-clades are created with each passing month (there are already four sub-clades as of August 2014). New Ebola genetic variants are created with each new infection, though most are selected against. Rapid adaptation emerges from the high intrinsic Ebola-2014 mutation rate, coupled with the virus's ability to undergo RNA recombination during superinfection.
Molecular dating of the Ebola-2014 outbreak (Gire, 2014).
Probability distributions for both 2014 divergence events are overlaid above.
This phylogenetic tree is based on 99 Ebola viral genomes deep-sequenced from 78 distinct patients in Sierra Leone (Gire, 2014). We can see in the figure above that there are at least four Ebola genetic clusters (or sub-clades) based on phylogenetic analysis: These Ebola clusters are called GN, SL1, SL2, and SL3 by Gire et al. The key takeaway is that even prior to July 2014, the current Ebola outbreak had already accumulated significant genetic diversity. Furthermore, the dominant circulating Ebola variants have changed over time. Up to four different Ebola-2014 viral sub-clades (groups of genetically related Ebola isolates) have circulated between humans since the onset of the 2014 Ebola outbreak.
As the number of people affected by the 2014 Ebola outbreak has grown, so has the number of Ebola unique viral mutations and unique viral genetic lineages. We can expect Ebola 2014 viral lineages to grow as some function f(i) proportional to the number of people infected with Ebola.
Ebola-2014: Acquisition of genetic variation over time (Gire, 2014).
Fifty mutational events (short dashes) and 29 new viral
lineages (long dashes) were observed.
The diagram above suggests that as the Ebola-infected host pool grows, so does the number of unique Ebola viral lineages (Gire, 2014). This implies that Ebola acquires genetic diversity as it infects more people, particularly if the virus undergoes recombination during superinfection (Niman, 2007). The growing number of new Ebola viral lineages will undergo natural selection for some 'optimum' balance of virulence, infectivity, tissue tropism, immune suppression, and other parameters which maximize the reproductive fitness of the Ebola virus in humans. What that final virus might eventually look like 2 years from now is anyone's guess. But the explosion of genetic variation suggests that the Ebola virus will become more difficult to contain as time goes on, which is why early action is important.
The idea that the Ebola-2014 Virus jumped species, but is now somehow 'static' or 'frozen in time' is a mistake. The Ebola-2014 virus is undergoing a period of rapid adaptation in human hosts, as evidenced by the Ebola RNA sequences deposited in Genbank, and the studies referenced with this article. Hopefully, interventions (like contact tracing) will be able to stop Ebola-2014 before the virus optimizes its genotype.
These are two scenarios to outline what may happen in the future. The critical variable determining the global outcome of Ebola is the response in West Africa, not the response in the United States. Best Case Scenario: WHO immediately deploys contact-tracing teams on the ground in West Africa. The US Military is deployed as well, and constructs hospitals sufficient to care for the sick. The hospitals are staffed by qualified (read: well trained) caregivers. Teams on the ground track down and care for Ebola-infected patients across West Africa, distributing self-treatment kits, food, medicine, and expertise. An effort is made to involve local authorities and community leaders. These efforts cause measurable reductions in the basic reproduction number of the virus by the end of 2014. Within 3 months to 9 months, the outbreak in West Africa peaks, levels-off, and begins to fade. The Ebola virus never has the opportunity to acquire any significant mutations, due to its limited host pool. Ebola is fully under control by early 2015. Sporadic cases in other countries are dealt with by treatment and contact tracing. By Q4 2015, multiple Ebola vaccines and drugs are in the pipeline limiting the overall threat Ebola poses. Worst Case Scenario: The international response is perpetually behind the curve. Every response action is 8 to 12 weeks too late. Statistics from the WHO become volatile and are unreliable as the lack of deployed personnel make hard numbers impossible to pin down. By 2015 the number of infections is in the hundreds of thousands in West Africa. The West African region exports 'asymptomatic infectives' which go undetected by basic screening. These individuals 'seed' outbreaks in other countries. As more people become infected, a significant mutation arises that allows for a longer asymptomatic but infectious period, increasing the R-0. Globally, cases continue to double every 16 days, contact tracing infrastructure outside the West becomes saturated, and hospitals are overrun. By early-to-mid 2015, the global pool of Ebola-infected patients are in the millions, mainly centered in West Africa and Southeast Asia with multiple strains of varying virulence. A sudden change in the outbreak epidemiology caused by a recombinant Ebola strain causes confusion about how to respond. Efforts at developing treatments/vaccines become logistically complex and ineffective. The implication of the Ebola 2014 mutation rate is this: A single Ebola mutation doesn't necessarily mean the virus will become 'airborne', or that the virus has altered tissue tropism, or that the virus spreads more easily. But a high intrinsic rate of Ebola mutation means that such changes may become possible in the future. If the number of people infected grows into the hundreds of thousands, or even low millions, then the probability of a significant 'constellation' of accumulated Ebola mutations with phenotypic impact becomes more likely. The problem is that accumulated Ebola mutations will scale with the size of the population infected. Conversely, in a small population, such Ebola mutations are not likely to have a significant impact. It's a bit like the virus is buying lottery tickets... The more lottery tickets the Ebola virus 'buys', the more chances it has to 'win'. Next Steps: The general consensus in the scientific and epidemiological community is immediate intervention in West Africa is necessary in order to avoid taking the risky outcomes possible in a 'worst case' scenario. A suitable response would need to include airlifting self-treatment kits with thermometers, the distribution of life-saving drugs, the construction of Ebola treatment centers, hospital staffing, contact tracing teams, and so forth. A robust international response must happen soon in order to ensure that the current situation with the Ebola outbreak remains a 'best case' outcome.
References:
[1] Genomic surveillance elucidates Ebola virus origin and transmission during the 2014 outbreak. (Gire et al, 2014).
[2] Rates of Molecular Evolution in RNA Viruses: A Quantitative Phylogenetic Analysis. (Jenkins et al, 2002).
[3] Isolates of Zaire ebolavirus from wild apes reveal genetic lineage and recombinants. (Wittman et al, 2007).
[4] Ebola Recombination: Recombinomics Commentary. (Niman, 2007). |
Next Game: at Santa Barbara 9/9/2017 | 10:00 PM ET
Follow Akron Men's Soccer on Twitter and Facebook Purchase 2017 Men's Soccer Season Tickets Click Here A first-half goal by senior(Auckland, New Zealand) proved to be all the scoring the Akron men's soccer team needed as the 16th-rated Zips registered a 2-0 victory past No. 10 Washington on Friday, Sept. 1, at FirstEnergy Stadium – Cub Cadet Field.The Zips' (1-2-0) garnered the triumph in their 2017 home opener and dealt the Huskies (2-1-0) their initial setback on the campaign.Holthusen scored what proved to be the game-winning tally in the 31st minute (30:27) taking a pass at the top of the box from freshman(Lakewood, Ohio) and spinning past the defender before beating Washington goalkeeper Saif Kerawala from 15 yards out for his initial goal of the season. The assist was the first collegiate point for Strachan.Redshirt sophomore(Copley, Ohio) nearly opened the scoring at the 27:55 mark as he played a ball off his chest and to his feet where he delivered a strike that was pulled in for a save by Kerawala.Coming in as a defensive substitution in 33rd minute (32:08), redshirt junior(Asmeras, Eritrea) fired a shot in the box which nearly found the back of the net if not for Garrett Jackson clearing the ball off the line for a team save.Akron outshot Washington in the opening 45 minutes, 8-1, including posting a 3-0 advantage in shots on goal.Senior(Porto, Portugal) added another shot on goal for the Zips at the 50:49 mark, one that was saved by Kerawala.Senior(Liverpool, England), playing in his first game of the season, created his own offense in the 62nd minute (61:28) swinging a ball around the box and along the end line before connecting on a laser which bested Kerawala to the inside corner of the net for his first goal of the year.The Zips finished the evening besting the Huskies in shots, 15-8, including a 6-2 margin in shots on goal.Gainford led Akron with a game-high three shots, while Holthusen, Cordeiro and freshman(Enugu, Nigeria) added two shots apiece. Quentin Pearson and Joey Parish each recorded two shots each for Washington.Junior goalkeeper(Berlin, Germany) pulled in a pair of stops en route to collecting the clean sheet with his 12th career shutout at Akron. Kerawala registered a game-high three saves for the Huskies.The Zips return to action on Sept. 9 as Akron travels to Santa Barbara, Calif., for a 10 p.m. ET tilt at UC Santa Barbara. |
1. In a prospective study of 62 patients with hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) and their matched controls, HS was associated with an increased risk of subclinical atherosclerosis in patients 40 years or older when corrected for traditional risk factors.
Evidence Rating Level: 2 (Good)
Study Rundown: HS is a chronic, inflammatory skin disease that primarily affects the intertriginous areas and manifests as painful nodules that progress to abscesses, sinus tracts, and scarring. Many chronic inflammatory disorders are associated with increased risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular (CV) disease, with this relationship prototypically demonstrated by rheumatoid arthritis. Similarly, it is suspected that HS is associated with increased risk of CV disease. The subclinical phase of intima-media thickening that precedes the onset of clinically significant disease can be detected via ultrasound of the common carotid artery and can predict the onset of atherosclerotic diseases such as stroke and myocardial infarction. As previous epidemiological studies demonstrate an association between HS and CV outcomes, the purpose of this study was to assess the prevalence of subclinical atherosclerosis of the common carotid artery in patients with HS.
The study prospectively compared the presence of subclinical atherosclerosis in carotid arteries in 62 patients with HS and their matched controls via ultrasound. At the conclusion of the study, there was an increased association of subclinical atherosclerosis in patients with HS 40 years and older compared to controls. The results of this study suggest that strict control of atherosclerotic risk factors in patients with HS may be prudent. Matching of patients and controls with respect to age, gender, and smoking habit strengthen this study. However, this study was limited by the lack of matching of patients and controls for BMI, hypertension, or diabetes, as both HS and CV disease are associated with these factors. Furthermore, the sample size was small and only included patients of a single dermatology unit. Larger, multicenter prospective trials that match patients for these CV risk factors may improve the validity of the study results.
Click to read the study in JEADV
Relevant Reading: Increased prevalence of subclinical atherosclerosis in patients with hidradenitis suppurativa (HS)
In-Depth [prospective cohort]: This study prospectively evaluated the association between HS and subclinical atherosclerosis. Overall, this study enrolled 62 patients with moderate or severe HS (defined as Hurley stage II and III) and 62 controls matched for age, gender, and smoking habit from a single dermatology unit in Spain. Patients were assessed by B-mode carotid ultrasound for subclinical atherosclerosis, which was defined by the presence of plaques (focal thickening of the wall that is at least 50% greater than the thickness of the surrounding wall, a focal wall thickening penetrating at least 0.5 mm into the artery lumen, or a localized area with carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT)> 1.5 mm) or pathologic cIMT>0.9mm. Chi-square test was used to compare atherosclerosis between both groups and an odds ratio was calculated to quantify the magnitude of the association between HS and subclinical atherosclerosis. Six (9.7%) of the HS-patients vs. 3 (4.8%) of the control patients exhibited pathological cIMT (p=0.49), and 13 (21%) of the HS-patients vs. 10 (16.1%) of the control patients exhibited atherosclerotic plaques (p=0.49). Nineteen patients in the HS-group and 10 patients in the control group demonstrated subclinical atherosclerosis. For patients 40 years and older, univariate analysis revealed that HS was significantly associated with subclinical atherosclerosis (OR: 4.9; 95% CI: 1.8-13.1; p=0.001). However, in univariate analysis of patients of all ages, HS showed a strong tendency of association with subclinical atherosclerosis (OR: 2.3; 95% CI: 1.0-5.5; p=0.056), but was not statistically significant.
Image: CC/Wiki/Samuel Friere da Silva
©2016 2 Minute Medicine, Inc. All rights reserved. No works may be reproduced without expressed written consent from 2 Minute Medicine, Inc. Inquire about licensing here. No article should be construed as medical advice and is not intended as such by the authors or by 2 Minute Medicine, Inc. |
During Vladimir Putin’s visit to Beijing this week, he will be at pains to downplay the ongoing chaos in Chinese financial markets, drop in global crude prices, and lackluster Sino-Russian trade figures. Taken together, these developments are a huge disappointment for a Kremlin that just a few months ago was betting on China to serve as an economic lifeline for the Russian economy in the wake of Western sanctions.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. After being frozen out of Western capital markets by waves of sanctions, a great many top Russian government and corporate players had loyally heeded the Kremlin’s directive, “Go east, young man!” The Kremlin’s pivot to Asia was intended not only to form a Russia-Chinese alliance of likeminded authoritarian states, but also to re-orient the Russian economy toward the East. This effort was intended to provide Vladimir Putin with financial means to sustain himself in office and his current foreign policy course. Securing “a stable Chinese” alternative to Western capital markets was the key element in this game plan.
Now, with the devaluation of the renminbi (RMB) and the Shanghai and Shenzen indices off by roughly the equivalent of three times Russia’s current GDP, the Kremlin’s China dreams may be going up in smoke. Many in the Russian leadership are now worried sick that if Chinese growth quickly decelerates, Russian GDP and state coffers are bound to be among the biggest losers. After all, it is largely Chinese demand for oil, metals, and other commodities that drives the price behavior of the Russian economy’s main exports. The PBOC’s moves to adjust the mechanism for setting the RMB exchange rate have raised global worries about China’s prospects and triggered a selloff in global crude and commodities markets.
Putting a brave face on the RMB devaluation, the Russian Central Bank issued a statement – which the markets swiftly ignored. “In the mid-term, it is to be expected that a weaker yuan will help China to increase exports and stimulate growth,” the Bank stated. “This will eventually have a positive impact on global commodity prices – including oil prices, which in turn will strengthen the ruble.”
Until recently the main disappointment for Kremlin decision-makers had been the paltry flow of investment and loans from its newly discovered partner in the East. In the first half of 2014 several high-ranking officials had made the rounds in Asian financial capitals to explore opportunities for Russian debt and equity listings. The chilly reception they received nearly everywhere surprised them a great deal. Perhaps the largest disappointment was Hong Kong. Despite being a “Chinese” stock exchange, Hong Kong market participants are too internationalized to cast a blind eye toward the attitudes of U.S. government and EU regulators. To cite just one example, Hong Kong banks are currently reluctant even to open bank accounts for Russian passport holders.
The only place where Russian officials received a warm welcome was Shanghai. Top-level Chinese officials reportedly entertained the guests by telling them that all bureaucratic obstacles for foreign listings would soon be removed. In response to these assurances, several of the largest Russian companies, including large state-owned banks like VTB, announced their interest in issuing new shares and bonds in Mainland exchanges.
Making matters even worse is the fact that many these false Russian hopes have also rested on the expectation that a stable RMB might offset the continued volatility of the ruble. Amid persistent fears that Russia’s ability to clear transactions through the U.S. and EU-based financial system might be targeted by future rounds of international sanctions, the idea of having a Chinese escape hatch has steadily grown in practical importance throughout the Ukraine crisis.
How important will the Chinese market turmoil and RMB devaluation be for the flagging Russian economy and Putin’s regime? It’s too early to draw definitive conclusions, of course, but Russian players now have plenty of basis to be skeptical about China’s ability to serve as a driver for global growth in the future or a trade partner, which may compensate for shriveling trade with the EU. In the first half of 2015, bilateral trade with China fell by 31 percent, and Chinese investment to Russia fell by 20 percent.
All told the latest events are an extremely depressing reality-check for Russian companies. Beijing still has enough money to buy assets in Russia (at knocked-down prices, of course) and to provide loans for Chinese companies doing business there. But the vision of a “Chinese version” of London for Russian companies in Shanghai is almost certainly dead. And so is the Russian vision of RMB as a stable global currency that sooner rather than later, many hoped, might replaced the much-maligned U.S. dollar.
Despite grave consequences for the Russian economy, China’s financial rout may paradoxically strengthen Kremlin’s grip over the Russian business elite – at least, for the short term. As the West closes loopholes in the sanctions regime and more Russian players wake up to the changing realities in China, many will face an uncomfortable situation of having nowhere else to turn other than the Russian government. That silver lining, of course, is probably not lost on anyone in the Kremlin.
Alexander Gabuev is chair of the Russia in Asia-Pacific program at the Carnegie Moscow Center. |
As his administration struggled to persuade Republican senators to fall in line behind a bill to repeal Obamacare, President Donald Trump on Tuesday night returned to the comfort of a campaign speech, promising a crowd in Youngstown, Ohio, that he would push forward with his agenda.
Trump responded to his critics, as he so often does, mentioning that pundits often lament that he is not “presidential.”
“It’s so easy to act presidential, but that’s not going to get it done,” Trump said. “It is much easier, by the way, to act presidential than what we are doing here tonight, believe me.”
He then ranked himself right behind Abraham Lincoln.
“With the exception of the late, great Abraham Lincoln, I can be more presidential than any president that’s ever held this office,” he said.
His comments at the rally come amid a public campaign by the President to tear down Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Still fuming over Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the Russia probe, Trump has relentlessly, publicly attacked Sessions this week, calling him “beleaguered” and suggesting he could let the attorney general go.
Trump treated the rally like a campaign stump speech, hitting on his usual topics of immigration, job creation, and infrastructure. He also threw in a few lines pressuring Republican senators to vote for a bill to repeal Obamacare.
As the President made promises to bring back jobs in the United States, Republican senators were back in Washington struggling to move forward on a plan to repeal Obamacare. After squeaking through a motion to proceed to debate on repeal, nine Republicans voted down the Senate GOP’s replacement plan, defeating the comprehensive bill. Now senators are left to vote on on a straight repeal bill and a “skinny repeal” bill that would punt negotiations back to the House.
Watch clips from Trump’s Tuesday rally via CNN: |
He also found that slum dwellers there collected their excrement in a plastic bag and disposed of it by flinging it, calling it a “flyaway toilet” or a “helicopter toilet.”
This inspired Mr. Wilhelmson to design the Peepoo, an environmentally friendly alternative that he is confident will turn a profit.
“People will say, ‘It’s valuable to me, but well priced,’ ” he said.
He plans to sell it for about 2 or 3 cents — comparable to the cost of an ordinary plastic bag.
In the developing world, an estimated 2.6 billion people, or about 40 percent of the earth’s population, do not have access to a toilet, according to United Nations figures.
It is a public health crisis: open defecation can contaminate drinking water, and an estimated 1.5 million children worldwide die yearly from diarrhea, largely because of poor sanitation and hygiene.
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To mitigate this, the United Nations has a goal to reduce by half the number of people without access to toilets by 2015.
The market for low-cost toilets in the developing world is about a trillion dollars, according to Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organization, a sanitation advocacy group.
As far as toilets go, “the people in the middle class have reached saturation in consumption,” said Mr. Sim, who calls himself a fan of the Peepoo. “This has created a new need, urgently, of looking for a new customer.”
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Since 2001, his organization has held an annual World Toilet Summit, and Mr. Sims said he was excited that in recent years there had been an emergence of entrepreneurs devising low-cost solutions.
At the 2009 meeting, Rigel Technology of Singapore unveiled a $30 toilet that separates solid and liquid waste, turning solid waste into compost. Sulabh International, an Indian nonprofit and the host of the World Toilet Summit in 2007, is promoting several low-cost toilets, including one that produces biogas from excrement. The gas can then be used in cooking.
But Therese Dooley, senior adviser on sanitation and hygiene for Unicef, said that inculcating sanitation habits was no easy task.
“It will take a large amount of behavior change,” Ms. Dooley said.
She added that while “the private sector can play a major role, it will never get to the bottom of the pyramid.”
A sizable population, poor and uneducated, will still be left without toilets, Ms. Dooley said, and nonprofits and governments will have to play a large role in distribution and education.
Meanwhile, Mr. Wilhelmson is pushing ahead with the Peepoo.
After successfully testing it for a year in Kenya and India, he said he planned to mass produce the bag this summer. |
MUMBAI (Reuters) - Thousands of people and lion mascots swarmed the weekend opening of a “Make in India” drive to attract foreign direct investment, pitched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as “the biggest brand that India has ever created”.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks during the inauguration ceremony of the 'Make In India' week in Mumbai, February 13, 2016. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui
The week-long event, the boldest since Modi launched the initiative to emulate China’s export miracle back in 2014, got off to an inauspicious start when a huge fire engulfed the stage at a cultural event on Sunday. Nobody was hurt.
Even as the Make in India hype scales new heights, some bosses questioned Modi’s delivery on promises to make it easier to do business, while marketing experts cautioned against creating unrealistic expectations.
“When you over-communicate and you under-deliver, the biggest risk is that you begin to lose trust,” said Chandramouli Nilakantan, CEO of Blue Lotus Communications, a branding and public relations consultancy.
On buzz alone, the effort got off to a great start, with the prime ministers of Sweden and Finland attending Saturday’s gala opening hosted by Modi.
On Sunday, delegates thronged the 10 pavilions erected for the event in Mumbai, India’s financial capital. Around 2,500 foreign and 8,000 domestic companies were expected to attend, organisers said.
Yet on the ground, the experience of businesses is more prosaic. Twenty months after Modi swept to power with a promise of growth and jobs for India’s 1.3 billion people, executives say more needs to be done, including improving infrastructure.
More pressingly, key legislation such as a goods and services tax and land acquisition bill are stuck in parliament, just as global competitors such as Vietnam step up their own reform efforts.
“Make in India is a great initiative and has created a lot of positive sentiments,” Vikas Agarwal, general manager of mobile phone maker OnePlus in India, told Reuters.
“Now the government needs to follow up with policies. That includes providing custom duty and export incentives, tax rationalisation and removal of ambiguous land acquisition policies.”
MAJOR WINS
Make In India has scored major wins, including a pledge by Taiwan’s Foxconn to invest $5 billion in a new electronics manufacturing facility.
That has helped foreign direct investment to nearly double to $59 billion last year, the seventh highest level in the world, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
Yet in critical aspects, India remains far behind its goals.
The proportion of manufacturing to gross domestic product has been stuck at around 17 percent for five years, below the government’s goal to ramp it up to 25 percent, according to the Boston Consulting Group.
India has only created 4 million manufacturing jobs since 2010, according to Boston Consulting. At the current rate, India may only create 8 million jobs by 2022, well below the government’s goal of 100 million.
Slideshow (4 Images)
Professor Ravi Aron, a U.S.-based expert in manufacturing, said India was ill-suited for a Chinese-style export boom, because it lacked the infrastructure and the skills for its exports to compete internationally.
“It should not be called ‘Make in India’ but ‘Make In Spite of India’,” said Aron, of Johns Hopkins University, advising the Indian government to scale back its ambitions and focus on its growing domestic market.
($1 = 68.2750 rupees) |
By Lasanda Kurukulasuriya*
Recent media reports in Sri Lanka reveal that a $13.7 million USAID-funded program for ‘democracy and accountability’ is to be implemented by a private US company alleged to have links to the CIA. This has raised questions regarding the nature of the government’s relationship with the US.
Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI) is said to be one of the largest US government contractors in the world, particularly active in Latin America. Its subversive role in Venezuelan politics has been thoroughly documented by Eva Golinger in her 2005 book ‘The Chavez Code – Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela.’ Golinger called on Venezuela to expel DAI, which she described as a CIA front and ‘an organization dedicated to destabilizing governments unfavourable to US interests.’
Sri Lanka’s Newsfirst TV channel exposed the company’s alleged CIA links after The Island newspaper, citing sources from the US embassy in Colombo, reported that DAI would ‘work closely with the Parliament, Independent Commissions and related ministries’ to carry out the ‘Strengthening Democratic Governance and Accountability Project (SDGAP).’
‘Good governance’ has been a dominant theme of the ‘unity government’ formed in 2015 by Sri Lanka’s two main rival political parties, the SLFP led by President Maithripala Sirisena, and the UNP led by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. The new leadership has pursued closer ties with the West, particularly the US.
In recent years the island’s strategic location, bordering international shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean, has made it a focal point of big-power rivalry in the region. The Chinese have made significant investments in the country’s infrastructure which India, Sri Lanka’s nearest neighbor, seeks to countervail.
Further investigation reveals that this is not the first time DAI and other private US companies have been contracted to carry out USAID ‘projects’ in Sri Lanka:
In 2008 a contract to implement the USAID-funded ‘Supporting Regional Governance Programme (SuRG)’ was awarded to a company called ARD Inc. The 3 -5 year program’s main focus was Local Government institutions in the Eastern Province.
A contract to implement a USAID-funded project called ‘Reintegration and Stabilisation in the East and North (RISEN) from 2009 to 2013 was awarded to DAI Inc.
A contract to implement a USAID-funded project called ‘Increased Responsiveness in the Legal System Project (IRLSP)’ was awarded to a company called Development Professionals Inc. (DPI). Running from 2012 to 2015 it claimed to assist the Government, the Judicial Services Commission and the Judiciary to improve the management and the efficacy of the legal system.
A contract to implement a USAID-funded programme called ‘Civil Society Initiatives to promote the Rule of Law (CIS.ROL) targeting the Bar Association of Sri Lanka and the Legal Aid Commission, was awarded to a US company called Millennium DPI Partners. Running from 2013 to 2016 its objectives included legal and policy reforms and a ‘strategic plan’ for the BASL.
USAID’s ‘assistance’ to Parliament began in 2015 with a series of workshops with parliament’s staff and its financial committees, and on the Constitution. The three-year US$ 13.7 million SDGAP, contracted to DAI Inc. – the company alleged to be a CIA front – was a follow-up to the previous shorter programme.
It may be seen that US government-funded ‘projects’ over the past several years run the whole gamut of Sri Lanka’s institutions, including Local Government, the Bar Association, the Judiciary, Parliament and the Constitution. While many citizens agree that there is need for improvement in the country’s democratic institutions, it is a matter of concern that this task is being ‘outsourced,’ outright, to foreign agencies. If programmes are contracted to private US companies, selected by the US government, how can those who implement them be accountable to the people of Sri Lanka?
It’s relevant to note here that Sri Lanka is currently under pressure from the US to implement an unpopular UN resolution (of which the US was the main architect) calling for internal changes widely seen as interference in the affairs of a sovereign state. The new Sri Lanka government took the controversial step of co-sponsoring the resolution, which calls for an ‘international investigation’ into alleged rights abuses by security forces during the war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), defeated under the watch of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa.
The octopus-like manner in which the tentacles of US ‘assistance’ have reached every department of government was signaled by US Assistant Secretary Nisha Biswal in her address to a US Congress subcommittee in May, seeking an increased 2017 budgetary allocation for Sri Lanka. “…Our approach to make Sri Lanka’s economy stronger is truly whole-of- government. …. And the Treasury Department will soon embed an advisor in Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Finance, who will assist the ministry with public financial management reforms for the next two years” she said.
There are other reasons too, for concern that the CIA currently has a heightened interest, if not presence, in Sri Lanka. Some US institutes that hosted government representatives for discussions in the recent past, and others which have disbursed funds, are reported to have links to the spy agency.
In February 2016 Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera spoke on ‘Advancing Reconciliation and Democracy’ at the US Institute of Peace in Washington DC. USIP is funded by the US Congress, its board members include the US Secretary of State and Secretary of Defence and the director of the CIA may legally assign officers and employees to the Institute.
The above event was co-hosted by the right-wing think-tank ‘Heritage Foundation’ and moderated by Lisa Curtis, a former CIA analyst, according to her bio.
It is alleged that the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its grantees like the National Democratic Institute (NDI) which disburse funds to a number of NGOs in Sri Lanka, are ‘pass-through’ foundations for CIA William Blum, author of ‘Rogue State – A guide to the world’s only superpower’ quotes Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, saying that “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
The controversy regarding USAID contractor DAI’s alleged links to the CIA should draw the attention of Sri Lanka’s political leadership to the new reality in espionage: that what used to be done covertly, is now done openly. At a time when a country is desperately trying to attract foreign investment, how ingenious it would seem to embed spies in private ‘companies,’ whose employees would probably travel on business visas, avoiding scrutiny by immigration authorities!
*Lasanda Kurukulasuriya is an independent journalist based in Colombo, Sri Lanka |
K.N. Govindacharya refers to himself as a former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member, and modestly says that today he is only a foot soldier, one among the 40 lakh swayamsevaks who work on the ground to spread the Sangh’s Hindutva message. In the 1990s, though, he was the parivar’s celebrated ideologue who, in collaboration with mentor Lal Krishna Advani, shaped the BJP’s twin strategies of Ram mandir and social engineering. Indeed, journalists knew Govindacharya as the deceptively soft-spoken and friendly BJP strategist who would soon quit the party – which he argued had become an election-winning machine – to steer his own hardline path.
Today, away from the glare, Govindacharya is quietly working towards fulfilling his vision of ‘Bharat’ through the coalition group Rashtriya Swabhiman Andolan. On the agenda are of course issues dear to the Sangh, such as cow protection and women’s role in society. But, importantly, the bigger project, with far-reaching implications for India’s future, is to rewrite the Constitution with a ‘Bharatiya’ emphasis. And this emphasis will necessarily take into account what he says is the “violent” nature of Islam and how it is irreconcilable with the “peaceful” orientation of Hindutva.
Govindacharya, who until recently was a bitter critic of Narendra Modi, seems to have become more accommodating towards the prime minister – also a one-time pracharak and a co-traveller during the ideologically transformative Ram janmabhoomi movement. This softening, as was clear during the interview, is because of the perception that the Modi government’s policies are increasingly in sync with the Sangh’s ideology.
In a free-wheeling conversation with The Wire, the former RSS pracharak spoke of the gradual but sure process currently afoot towards incorporating Bharatiyata into the country’s cultural consciousness. This process, he said, would prioritise people’s duties towards the nation over their rights.
Excerpts:
What do you make of the BJP’s spin on the so-called ‘exodus’ from Kairana? Party chief Amit Shah indicated that it would be a key poll issue, when facts on the ground clearly contradict the claim of exodus.
The political responses in favour (of) or against the exodus cannot be seen in isolation, nor is it fair to blame one community or the other. What cannot be disputed though is the global nature of the turbulence in today’s world. Be it Islam or the markets, it is a global phenomenon with a global impact. So, whatever is happening in Orlando cannot be seen in isolation, it is happening in Kairana, even in Jammu and Kashmir .
What factors do you think are causing the distrust that you say exists in places like Kairana? Does the origin lie in the demolition of the Babri Masjid which shook the Muslims and made them feel insecure in their own country?
The appeasement (of Muslims) that happened during the Shah Bano case boosted the morale of the Islamic clergy here and that over-assertion led to reactions from the Hindus.
In other words, the so-called ‘appeasement’ has to be countered by deepening the distrust between Hindus and Muslims? Is this the BJP’s gameplan?
Blaming XYZ does not take us anywhere, this distrust is happening globally. How do you explain the recruitment of Indians in ISIS?
What about Hindutva terror groups? The Bajrang Dal is training with arms.
You cannot expect one community to be peaceful in the face of the other community’s belligerence.
What have you done to stop this action and reaction?
There were solutions in the 1990s which I was privy to. I initiated many dialogues. For instance, I sat with the government, in V.P. Singh’s time and we explored many alternatives during the Ram mandir dialogue. I gave several proposals to the so-called Muslim community leaders. We said the land is dear to Hindus, the structure to Muslims; so, with the technology available to us, I said we can shift the mosque brick by brick to another suitable location acceptable to them. They said it was not possible; then I proposed that, okay, let the structure be as it is, let it be covered till such time a decision can be taken and I proposed a structure above the mosque. They said it was not acceptable as the Babri mosque was a place of worship and it cannot have another structure above it.
Why is the Ram mandir so important, especially when it causes such divisiveness in society?
The question itself hurts. It is Rama’s birthplace and he is an embodiment of Bharatiya values. For any nation, its values and embodiment of values have to be venerated and if that doesn’t happen, then civilisation doesn’t march forward.
What about violence by Hindutva groups? Even assuming the Kairana ‘exodus’ is a fact – which it is not – is it not connected with the lynching of Akhlaq in a neighbouring district?
Our way of protest is different, we deal with it democratically and by peaceful methods, which is alien to Islam. Muzaffarngar (the region in UP rocked by communal violence leading to displacement of Muslims) also had so many (Hindu) grievances.
Are you justifying what happened?
For me, it is painful that Hindus have to resort to exodus in their own land.
Hindutva has forced Muslims into exodus or ghettos too and this is also their own land.
The important point is the rupture is there and it has to be noted and remedied. So many complaints have come from many parts of western Uttar Pradesh. The process of integration in the region has been disrupted over a period dating back to a 100 years. Let me explain: from 1707 to 1892, integration was proceeding apace because of the assimilating capacity of Hindu society. The year 1707 was the 10th year of Aurangzeb’s rule, 1892 was when the first riot broke out between Hindus and Muslims in Bijnor district in western Uttar Pradesh, provoked by British colonial masters who ruled by using one community against the other. Until then, the Hindu identity was acknowledged even by the British. For instance, in 1858, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, founder of the Aligarh Muslim University, said he was a Hindu because the term Hindu was related to the land, not religion. But in the first census of 1861, people were recorded as Hindu, Muslim, Christian. Hinduism was brought on par with Islam and Christianity.
What are you suggesting?
We must make a difference between Semitic and other religions, for if there is an amicable atmosphere, the mode of worship doesn’t count for Hindu society. If one or two gods are added it does not bother Hindu society, but the Semitic religions which are proselytising religions definitely threaten the overarching national identity.
You are part of discussions to make the directive principles of the Constitution into fundamental duties.
We believe that Indian society and its cultural reality should be included in the Constitution. There may be many gaps which need deliberations, and a cool, calm, dispassionate discussion needs the right atmosphere and a mechanism. However, this is just not possible in the media glare.
Can’t constitutional changes come through parliament?
Maybe, maybe not.
How can that happen?
For instance, the 1946 constituent assembly was not instituted by the people who were in the interim government, it was initiated by the British at the start of the process in 1935. So the constitutional exercise also has its own background and naturally a dispassionate discussion on all that happened at the time is necessary.
How do you propose to do it?
(laughs) We will do it, we are doing it.
How are you starting the discussion?
First those who have studied the Constitution will come together. Then we will look at the social realities, and see how to incorporate them. For example, in ‘Bharatiya’ society, family is the basic brick of society, and as in the Cuban Constitution, it is not the individual but family values that are crucial. Likewise, the exercise will begin to see what all can be included; it should not just be confined to issues like reservation.
You don’t believe reservations help social mobility?
Yes, they help to a certain extent, and reservation may be important emotionally, but we must discuss what more can be done to help people. Just ‘right to education’ is not enough. What is the point of reservation, if people can’t access schools in those deprived regions? Even normal schools may not work there because of their occupational difficulties, so we’ve got to change the education system and bring schools that suit them.
Similarly, in the bureaucracy, we must focus attention on why, in the last 70 years, it has become insensitive, (focussed on the) status-quo, corrupt and so centralised. To understand all these aspects, some sub-committee should be formed, people should come together and discuss continuously, it is not a one-day exercise.
So, you are asking for a second constituent assembly, to take another look at reservations?
In which there is power to the people and veto for the poor. And as many Constitution framers have pointed out, merely a good document is not enough – fundamental duties, not just rights, must also be incorporated.
For instance, cow protection is in the directive principles, would you like it to be a fundamental duty/right?
Not merely a fundamental right, the plank has to be eco-centric not anthropocentric development. I mean not just rights of the cow, but a holistic view of zamin, jal, janwar, jungle; for only in this protection lies the well-being of man. All the five must have sacred rights, and this should not just be rights-based but duty-based, and not just be components of state power. The cow is part of our civilisational past and it reflects those values, it should be a civilisational continuity in the preamble. The cow, environment protection, all this requires constitutional protection. It is part of Hindu ethos, culture – like Bishnois who embrace death by hugging those trees, this all ‘Bharatiya’ culture. Instead of assuming man is conqueror of nature, it is the duty of humans to protect nature, and all this must be incorporated in the Constitution.
What is missing or lacking today?
Our constitution is so vague, non-specific and basically a continuation of western philosophies of Hobbes, Locke and Kant. It is individual-centric and focused on his physical wellbeing. Our civilisation goes back 4,000-5,000 years.
How long will it be before you come up with a framework?
In a couple of years.
Before 2019?
See, I would not like to confine it to the electoral arena, I abhor that.
On the Modi government’s first anniversary last year, you said there was no difference between the National Democratic Alliance and United Progressive Alliance (UPA). Do you still hold the same views on Modi’s second anniversary?
I do not doubt the Modi government’s intentions and its grappling with the inert and insensitive bureaucracy and the problems arising from Centre-state relations. I’m no one to judge but I’d like to give it more time before judging its performance. Last year, I meant that there was a dialogue and trust deficit between the bureaucracy, legislatures and Centre. I also believed that their priorities are like the UPA’s, like smart cities and bullet trains, which is a view I still hold. I would rather the government focused more on decentralising food processing for instance, as agriculture, with its allied activities is the largest employer and best possible for many employment generation projects and it needs massive public investment.
You also pointed to the Modi government’s close proximity to industrialists? You had pointed at Adani.
At present, I think, more importance should be given to rein in corporates. As for Adani, there’s no need to emphasise on it, I’ve already said it… and I believe there is some distance now. I believe corporates should be reined in for several reasons. Take the call drop issue, the government should file a review petition in the court. The Supreme Court gave an adverse judgment on compensation and if the government feels the judgment was unfair, then it must come to the aid of consumers and go in appeal, which it has not done so far. Or, if the government feels the court was right, then it should come with an ordinance in the interests of the people. The government has done neither of the two, naturally questions arise in people’s minds.
But you are against ordinances. You disapproved the Modi government resorting to it in the Land Acquisition Bill for instance.
Ordinances are crucial sometimes, and here it is of urgency. The Telecom Commission continues to loot.
You shared a lot of time with Modi in the 90s, when both of you were pracharaks.
The prime minister is a very hardworking man and he’s trying his best to tackle the bureaucracy. We worked hard. I don’t remember much, it is so long ago, 16 years have passed since that time.
Do you believe that being a pracharak and a prime minister pulls him in different directions?
There is no contradiction in that. I don’t know what’s going on in his mind, but there is no tension or contradiction in this. I don’t think he has a problem here.
What is the relationship between Modi and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat?
Frankly, I don’t know. It must be cordial.
What are the BJP’s prospects in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Bengal?
It will have a ripple effect slowly, as it happened in 1977. It always takes five to ten years for a situation to mature.
The BJP was doing quite well in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana where it seems to have faltered.
Yes, especially in Telangana, but again just counting the number of MLAs and MPs does not speak of the strength of the (Hindutva) movement.
How has your movement influenced the government?
If Rs 80 lakhs have been sanctioned for each gram panchayat for five years in this year’s Budget, it is very much in sync with our Swabhiman Andolan’s agitation. That 7% of the Budget should go as untied funds to panchayats is part of our vision. Likewise, if we talk of promotion and the role of cow and its progeny in agriculture, then the ministries of agriculture and animal husbandry are looking at improving quality breeds, plans are going ahead in research centres. For example, in Varanasi, there are seven-eight projects for cow breeding as well as low cost, low capital agriculture and research. Then (there is) the unique project in Kaneri, Kholapur, which presents the idyllic village life before the Mughals came, our advice is being heeded to. We are also organising farmers, women’s movements in states. Lots of things are going on.
You were once famously quoted as saying Prime Minister Vajpayee was a mask? It is ironical that Modi’s election campaign was so much about masks!
I deny I ever said that about Atal ji. However, both have qualities of their own. |
WASHINGTON -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), in his second public appearance following his exit from the presidential race, struck a somewhat surprising populist tone Thursday, railing against the housing bubble burst and subsequent financial meltdown.
"Success on Wall Street shouldn't come at the expense of Main Street," said Perry.
"No one was watching the ratings agencies, the triple 'A' ratings to complex securities, and the market crashed," he said. "Folks on Wall Street who saw it coming, they made millions; folks who didn't see it coming, they got bailed out."
Perry also mentioned a Bloomberg News report that revealed that the Federal Reserve had committed $7.77 trillion to rescuing the financial system, saying the TARP bailout had been "kind of paltry" compared to the Fed loans.
"It's wrong, it's unfair and it's weakening America," said Perry. "We need to clean up the corruption from K Street to Wall Street so they can't gamble with our children's future again."
Perry also sounded more predictable conservative notes, discussing limiting the size of government and claiming that the Obama administration was attacking religious freedom.
He briefly discussed his failed presidential campaign at the start of his speech, referring to his alma mater, Texas A&M. "Aggies never lose, we just run out of time -- you could say my presidential campaign just ran out of time." Earlier, talking with reporters, he said, "I haven’t left the fight. I went home, I reloaded my mag, and I am fighting on different front."
Left out of the speech was former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whom Perry endorsed after dropping out. |
Jack LaLanne, the seemingly eternal master of health and fitness who first popularized the idea that Americans should work out and eat right to retain youthfulness and vigor, has died. He was 96.
LaLanne died of respiratory failure due to pneumonia Sunday afternoon at his home in Morro Bay, Calif., his agent, Rick Hersh, told the Associated Press
Though for many years dismissed as merely a "muscle man" — a notion fueled to some extent by his amazing feats of strength — LaLanne was the spiritual father of the health movement that blossomed into a national craze of weight rooms, exercise classes and fancy sports clubs.
LaLanne opened what is commonly believed to be the nation's first health club, in Oakland in 1936. In the 1950s, he launched an early-morning televised exercise program keyed to housewives. He designed many now-familiar exercise machines, including leg extension machines and cable-pulley weights. And he proposed the then-radical idea that women, the elderly and even the disabled should work out to retain strength.
Full of exuberance and hyperbolic good cheer, LaLanne saw himself as a combination of cheerleader, rescuer and savior. And if his enthusiasm had a religious fervor to it, well, so be it.
"Well it is. It is a religion with me," he told What Is Enlightenment, a magazine dedicated to awareness, in 1999. "It's a way of life. A religion is a way of life, isn't it?"
"Billy Graham was for the hereafter. I'm for the here and now," he told The Times when he was almost 92, employing his usual rapid-fire patter.
Our complete news obituary can be found here.
--Claudia Luther
Photo: Known for his exuberance and good cheer, LaLanne saw himself as a combination cheerleader, rescuer and savior. |
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Virtual reality is being used to prepare soldiers for warfare and help them recover from stress after they return home.
Exhibits at a three-day Virtual Reality Show in Angel include an igloo-type marquee where British armed forces train on mock battlefields.
Up to 1,000 service personnel can fit inside Igloo Vision’s largest structure as footage is projected around them in an experience likened to “stepping inside a giant VR headset”. There is even enough space to fit a tank inside or fix motorised rollers to the floor so soldiers feel like they are marching. VR headsets will also give visitors to the show, which opens today, a taste of what it was like to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan via Bravemind software, which is viewed through an HTC Vive headset.
Bravemind is being used by psychologists as an exposure therapy tool to help treat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. While inside the VR experience, soldiers can sit in any seat of a convoy vehicle to repetitively relive their trauma as the 3D world tricks the mind into thinking the body is there.
As part of ongoing research into Bravemind, some soldiers retell their story using VR while others in a control group relive it from memory only to research the technology’s effectiveness.
Virtual reality has previously been used to treat Vietnam veterans and also burns victims of the 9/11 terror attacks.
For more details, go to virtualrealityshow.co.uk |
Detail of a stained-glass window from Malaga, Spain, depicting the wedding at Cana. (Shutterstock/Nancy Bauer)
Does Synod’s ‘Way of Accompaniment’ Put the Church at Risk of De Facto Schism?
COMMENTARY: Allowing different regional practices regarding reception of Communion will cause grave disunity and confusion among the faithful. Second of four parts.
E. CHRISTIAN BRUGGER
The Catholic Church cannot adopt the synod final report’s suggested “way of accompaniment and discernment” with respect to reception of Communion by divorced-remarried Catholics, without failing in her mission to teach Jesus’ disciples to observe all that he commanded (Matthew 28:20).
By doing so, the Church will cause grave disunity and confusion among the faithful, give scandal (that is, would serve as an inducement to sin) and be unjust to the faithful spouses and innocent children of those who civilly remarry without a legitimate and certain demonstration of the nullity of the first marriage.
If the Church were authoritatively to approve the “way of accompaniment and discernment” as set forth in Paragraphs 84-86, it would strike at the heart of ecclesial unity. Some Catholics would interpret the failure to reassert the traditional exclusion from holy Communion through a “hermeneutic of continuity,” and others would interpret it through a “hermeneutic of rupture” (the two terms, as applied to this issue, were first proposed by Dominican Father Thomas Michelet in his article “What does the synod really say about the divorced and remarried?” available online here). The former would argue that, since excluding the divorced and remarried from Communion has been the firm and traditional practice of the Church, it does not need to be repeated here; in other words, “silence equals consent” — consent, that is, to that traditional practice. These Catholics would conclude that remarried divorcees could only rightly return to the Eucharist when they sincerely resolve to live in a way that’s no longer in contradiction with the indissolubility of marriage.
Others, however, would conclude that “silence means dissent.” To them, the fact that the Church does not repeat the traditional exclusion would mean that the exclusion no longer obtains; that the traditional norm is obsolete. These would conclude that the final report’s “way of accompaniment and discernment” can lead to a return to the Eucharist without requiring remarried divorcees to cease living within the sexual intimacy proper to married persons.
The fault lines of the ecclesial rift would intersect at national Church communities. The bishops’ conferences in Central Europe would publicly interpret the “way of accompaniment and discernment” in an emancipationist fashion for the divorced and remarried. The bishops’ conferences in North America, Eastern Europe and Africa would presumably interpret it consistent with the ancient practice.
The disunity would not merely pertain to optional “pastoral” practices. It would also, necessarily, be doctrinal. The Church has always held that, given the holiness of the Blessed Sacrament, to receive holy Communion in a state of mortal sin constitutes the sin of sacrilege (see 1 Corinthians 11:27, 29); it has also taught that sexual intercourse with someone other than one’s true spouse is adulterous and that adultery always constitutes grave matter. To affirm the emancipationist practice would entail a denial of either the holiness of the sacrament or the moral truths that sexual activity with someone other than one’s true spouse is always adulterous or that adultery is always wrong.
Thus on both doctrine and practice, national episcopates and the faithful in those regions would be divided; individual episcopates inevitably would be internally divided; national episcopates would be divided from the Pope; and the Pope invariably would be seen as siding with one of the positions. This would constitute a de facto schism.
(In his article, Father Michelet writes: “Ultimately, if in one territory the priests encouraged by the ‘guidelines’ of their bishop end up establishing practices that are uniform but divergent from those of other territories, this could lead to a de facto schism, legitimized for both sides by a dual possible interpretation of [the final report, Nos. 84-86].” Pope Francis suggested in his concluding address to the synod that different pastoral conclusions reached by different regional Church communities would amount to a strength and not a weakness: “We have also seen that what seems normal for a bishop on one continent is considered strange and almost scandalous … for a bishop from another; … what for some is freedom of conscience is for others simply confusion. Cultures are, in fact, quite diverse, and every general principle … needs to be inculturated if it is to be respected and applied.” The address is available here.)
Some compare the situation to the dissent from Humanae Vitae (The Regulation of Birth). But the fallout from this would be much, much graver. When Humanae Vitae was finally published, all knew clearly the authoritative teaching of the Church. Many rejected it, including bishops, priests and religious. But at least there was a clear doctrinal norm in relation to which the views of defenders and dissenters were relative.
If the “way of accompaniment and discernment” is approved, both the progressive and the traditional interpretations would be officially sanctioned. But since the progressive interpretation is in clear opposition to the unambiguous teaching of the Church, repeated continually by the hierarchy in the past four decades, its authorization would badly undermine the Church’s evangelical credibility. Here are six examples of recent reassertions of the traditional judgment by the magisterium:
At the end of the Sixth Synod of Bishops in 1980, John Paul II declared: “[Those who are divorced and civilly remarried] are unable to be admitted [to holy Communion] from the fact that their state and condition of life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and his Church, which is signified and effected by the Eucharist.”
One year later, in his landmark apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio (The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World), the same pope taught: “The Church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon sacred Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried” (84).
When Cardinal-then-bishop Walter Kasper and two fellow German bishops proposed an almost identical version of the “way of accompaniment and discernment” for the Church in Germany in the early 1990s, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1994 responded as follows: “If the divorced are remarried civilly, they find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God’s law. Consequently, they cannot receive holy Communion as long as this situation persists.”
Three years later, the Catechism of the Catholic Church taught (and still teaches): “[The divorced and remarried] cannot receive Eucharistic Communion as long as [they find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God’s law]” (1650).
And in response to objections to the 1994 CDF teaching and the 1997 teaching of the Catechism, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith again reaffirmed in 1998 what it had authoritatively taught just four years earlier: “The Church cannot sanction pastoral practices — for example, sacramental pastoral practices — which contradict the clear instruction of the Lord. In other words, if the prior marriage of two divorced-and-remarried members of the faithful was valid, under no circumstances can their new union be considered lawful, and therefore reception of the sacraments is intrinsically impossible. The conscience of the individual is bound to this norm without exception” (emphasis added).
Finally, in 2007, Pope Benedict XVI — who as the CDF’s prefect had been author of the 1994 and 1998 teachings and the closest collaborator to John Paul II in the preparation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church — reconfirmed the traditional exclusion in discussing the integral relationship between the Eucharist and the indissolubility of marriage, in Paragraph 20 of his apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis (The Eucharist as the Source and Summit of the Church’s Life and Mission): “If the Eucharist expresses the irrevocable nature of God’s love in Christ for his Church, we can then understand why it implies, with regard to the sacrament of matrimony, that indissolubility to which all true love necessarily aspires. … The Synod of Bishops confirmed the Church’s practice, based on sacred Scripture (Mark 10:2-12), of not admitting the divorced and remarried to the sacraments, since their state and their condition of life objectively contradict the loving union of Christ and the Church signified and made present in the Eucharist” (emphasis added).
The judgment of the Church as expressed in these addresses and ecclesiastical documents is unambiguous, definite and authoritative: Living in a marital-type relationship with someone other than one’s true spouse objectively contradicts the meaning of the holy Eucharist. Why? Because de facto adultery contradicts what Jesus willed to symbolize and make present in the Eucharist: namely his marital-type communion with his body, the Church. Adultery is the anti-sign of the Eucharist.
If the Church were now to approve the “way of accompaniment and discernment,” it would cast doubt on her credibility as a teacher and lead to serious confusion, not only in regard to the issue of Communion for remarried divorcees, but in regard to her other teachings reaffirming the intrinsic wrongness of every form of non-marital sexual behavior.
E. Christian Brugger, the senior fellow in ethics and director of the fellows’ program
at the Culture of Life Foundation in Washington, holds the
Stafford Chair of Moral Theology at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver. |
Hong Kong’s government has abandoned plans to force school children to take Chinese patriotism classes, after more than 100,000 protesters denounced the classes as an attempt at brainwashing by mainland China.
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AFP - Hong Kong's government on Saturday backed down on a plan to force school children to take Chinese patriotism classes, after weeks of protests and on the eve of crucial legislative polls.
"The amendment of this policy means that we are giving the authority to the schools," the city's leader, Leung Chun-ying, told reporters a day after activists said more than 100,000 protesters rallied at government headquarters.
"The schools are given the authority to decide when and how they would like to introduce the moral and national education," he added, blaming the mandatory nature of the policy on his predecessor's government.
The proposal to introduce mandatory "national education" classes in all schools from 2016 was condemned as brainwashing by students and teachers, and sparked weeks of protests that brought scores of thousands onto the streets.
The government said the subject was important to foster a sense of national belonging and identity, amid rising anti-Beijing sentiment in the semi-autonomous southern city of seven million people.
Schools were meant to adopt the subject voluntarily this year but many said they wanted more guidance from the government about how it should be taught.
A survey released last week showed 69 percent of students opposed the classes.
Course material funded by the government extolled the benefits of one-party rule, equated multi-party democracy to chaos, and glossed over events like the bloody Tiananmen crackdown and the mass starvation of Mao's regime.
Lawmaker Anna Wu, who chaired a committee studying the policy, said the government had decided on a course of action that was "the most inclusive and most liberal".
"It is also very consistent with academic freedom and therefore I support this move," she said.
The former British colony goes to the polls on Sunday to elect a new 70-seat legislature, which will play a crucial role on the city's path to direct elections for its leader in 2017 and the legislature by 2020.
Pro-democracy parties were using the education furore to galvanise their supporters, hoping to boost their representation in parliament and maintain a veto over constitutional amendments.
Leung took office in July after being put in power by a small committee of mainly pro-Beijing elites. |
This past Sunday I met up with Moa Andreasson and Wilma Randler who study at the Royal Ballet School in Stockholm for a photoshoot at Rålambshovsparken. We decided to meet up at 8:00 in the morning, so we would have some time before everyone else showed up. Our plan was to first do some photos under Västerbron where there is a skateboard park, and then to head over to the nearby Smedsuddsbadet.
For those curious about the blog post name: Terpischore is the Greek goddess of dance.
We also recorded a few video clips that I edited into a short long video. Have a look!
A big thank you to Moa and Wilma for a really fun photoshoot!
For more dance photos, see the dance category on the blog or on Instagram.
Instagram: @moa.andreasson, @wilmarandler, @johanneshjorth
— Johannes |
OAKLAND — Federal prosecutors have placed their crosshairs on an international company based in Hayward, for allegedly selling iPhone accessories with forged Apple logos on them.
On Monday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office filed charges of trafficking counterfeit goods and covering or obscuring a required mark of importation against the company Bizslink LLC and its owner, Sean Tang, of Boston. The trafficking charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison and a fine of $500,000, while the second charge, a misdemeanor, carries a maximum one-year term.
Federal authorities describe Bizslink as an import business that sold electronics, car parts and Apple products, including iPhone accessories like protector shells and screen covers.
Phone calls and emails to the company seeking comment were not immediately returned.
Charging documents allege that the business, and Tang, “knowingly used the counterfeit iPhone mark, the counterfeit Apple mark and the counterfeit Apple logo on and in connection” with iPhone products.
The company’s website says it has offices in Hayward, the United Kingdom, as well as Shenzhen and Shanghai, China. A section of the site boasts it pays “particular attention to product quality control.”
“We will only continue a working relationship with the supplier as long as their products are of high quality,” the site reads. “Our purchase department will personally sample and examine products before each shipment.” |
I've got a bite... Beastly Brutus gives tourists a scary snap
The tourists had paid for a close-up view of crocodiles – and when this beast burst from the water they certainly got their money’s worth.
For when it comes to crocs, they don’t come much bigger than Brutus.
Lured by a tour guide dangling kangaroo meat from a pole, the 18ft, two-ton monster was, er, snapped by photographer Katrina Bridgeford, who was on the Adelaide River cruise with her family.
Snap! This monster crocodile sent tourists rearing back as it soared out of the water in Australia to grab a chunk of meat offered on a stick by a ranger
‘It got the adrenaline going,’ Australian Mrs Bridgeford said. ‘It was so close you could almost touch it.’
ANIMAL MOST LIKELY TO EAT A HUMAN
The largest crocodile on Earth, saltwater crocs - or 'salties' - are often said to be the animal most likely to eat a human.
The average male tends to be around 17 ft (five metres) in length and weighs 1,000 lbs (450 kg) but salties of up to 23 ft (seven metres) and weighing 2,200lbs (1,000 kilograms) are not uncommon.
In the wild, they usually live to the age of 70 and populate the brackish and freshwater regions of eastern India, Southeast Asia, and northern Australia.
They are excellent swimmers and have often been spotted far out at sea.
Classic opportunistic predators, they lurk patiently beneath the surface near the water's edge, waiting for potential prey - including water buffalo, monkeys, wild boar, and even sharks - to stop for a sip of water.
With a thrash of their powerful tails, they grasp their victim and drag it into the water, holding it there until it drowns.
She recalled that when her son Dylan, 11, saw the massive creature rise out of the water he had only two words to utter - 'Holy crap!'
Brutus is missing his front leg following what is believed to have been a confrontation with a shark in the river's estuary - leaving many people to wonder just how big the shark was.
'When it came up out of the water there were a lot of "Oos" and "Ahs",' said Miss Bridgeford.
'I wasn't expecting anything like this. I couldn't believe how close it got to us.
'If you had put your hand out you would have been able to touch it - if you'd dared.'
Jumping crocodile cruises are a major tourist attraction in the Northern Territory, where the Crocodile Dundee movies, starring Paul Hogan, were shot.
Thousands of the monsters live in waterways around the Darwin region, resulting in the local government erecting signs in tourist areas warning people not to swim or wash their vehicles in the water.
They are also told not to camp near rivers because crocodiles roam up to a mile inland.
Several people have been killed by the reptiles over the years. |
MPAA Directly & Publicly Threatens Politicians Who Aren't Corrupt Enough To Stay Bought
from the sickening dept
"Those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,"
Public Knowledge welcomes constructive dialog with people from all affected sectors about issues surrounding copyright, the state of the movie industry and related concerns. Cybersecurity experts, Internet engineers, venture capitalists, artists, entrepreneurs, human rights advocates, law professors, consumers and public-interest organizations, among others should be included. They were shut out of the process for these bills.
We suggest that in the meantime, if the MPAA is truly concerned about the jobs of truck drivers and others in the industry, then it can bring its overseas filming back to the U.S. and create more jobs. It could stop holding states hostage for millions of dollars in subsidies that strained state budgets can’t afford while pushing special-interest bills through state legislatures. While that happens, discussions could take place.
Reinforcing the fact that Chris Dodd really does not get what's happening, and showing just how disgustingly corrupt the MPAA relationship is with politicians, Chris Dodd went on Fox News to explicitly threaten politicians who accept MPAA campaign donations that they'd better pass Hollywood's favorite legislation ... or else:This certainly follows what many peoplewas happening, and fits with the anonymous comments from studio execs that they will stop contributing to Obama, but to be so blatant about this kind of corruption and money-for-laws politics in the face of an extremely angry public is a really, really,tone deaf response from Dodd.It shows, yet again, that he just doesn't get it. People were protesting not just because of the content of these bills, but because of the corrupt process of big industries like Dodd's "buying" politicians and "buying" laws. To then come out and make that threat explicit isn't a way to fix things or win back the public. It's just going to get them more upset, and to recognize just how corrupt this process is. If Dodd, as he said in yesterday's NY Times, really wanted to turn things around and come to a more reasonable result, this is exactly. It shows, yet again, a DC-insider's mindset. He used Fox News to try to "send a message" to politicians. But the internet already sent a much louder message... and, even worse for Dodd, he bizarrely sent his message in a way that everyone who's already fed up with this kind of corruption can see it too. It really makes you wonder what he's thinking and how someone so incompetent at this could keep his job.The MPAA doesn't need a DC insider explicitly demanding the right to buy laws and buy politicians. The MPAA needs a reformer, one who helps guide Hollywood into the opportunities of a new market place. The MPAA needs someone who actually understands the internet, and helps lead the studios forward. That's apparently not Chris Dodd.Public Knowledge issued a fantastic statement that not only highlights the ridiculousness of Dodd's threats, but also the hypocrisy of the Hollywood studios on this issue:
Filed Under: campaign finance, chris dodd, corruption, pipa, politics, protect ip, sopa, threats
Companies: mpaa |
The Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the United States (U.S.) is part of the U.S. –Canada Smart Border Action Plan. Under the Agreement, refugee claimants are required to request refugee protection in the first safe country they arrive in, unless they qualify for an exception to the Agreement. The Agreement helps both governments better manage access to the refugee system in each country for people crossing the Canada– U.S. land border. The two countries signed the Agreement on December 5, 2002, and it came into effect on December 29, 2004. To date, the U.S. is the only country that is designated as a safe third country by Canada under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The Agreement does not apply to U.S. citizens or habitual residents of the U.S. who are not citizens of any country (“stateless persons”).
Where the Agreement is in effect
The Safe Third Country Agreement applies only to refugee claimants who are seeking entry to Canada from the U.S. : at Canada- U.S. land border crossings
land border crossings by train or
at airports, only if the person seeking refugee protection in Canada has been refused refugee status in the U.S. and is in transit through Canada after being deported from the U.S.
Exceptions to the Agreement
Exceptions to the Agreement consider the importance of family unity, the best interests of children and the public interest. There are four types of exceptions: Family member exceptions
Unaccompanied minors exception
Document holder exceptions
Public interest exceptions Even if they qualify for one of these exceptions, refugee claimants must still meet all other eligibility criteria of Canada’s immigration legislation. For example, if a person seeking refugee protection has been found inadmissible in Canada on the grounds of security, for violating human or international rights, or for serious criminality, that person will not be eligible to make a refugee claim.
Family member exceptions
Refugee claimants may qualify under this category of exceptions if they have a family member who: is a Canadian citizen
is a permanent resident of Canada
is a protected person under Canadian immigration legislation
has made a claim for refugee status in Canada that has been accepted by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB)
has had his or her removal order stayed on humanitarian and compassionate grounds
holds a valid Canadian work permit
holds a valid Canadian study permit, or
is over 18 years old and has a claim for refugee protection that has been referred to the IRB for determination. (This claim must not have been withdrawn by the family member, declared abandoned or rejected by the IRB or found ineligible for referral to the IRB .)
Unaccompanied minors exception
Refugee claimants may qualify under this category of exceptions if they are minors (under the age of 18) who: are not accompanied by their mother, father or legal guardian
have neither a spouse nor a common-law partner, and
do not have a mother, a father or a legal guardian in Canada or the United States.
Document holder exceptions
Refugee claimants may qualify under this category of exceptions if they: hold a valid Canadian visa (other than a transit visa)
hold a valid work permit
hold a valid study permit
hold a travel document (for permanent residents or refugees) or other valid admission document issued by Canada, or
are not required (exempt) to get a temporary resident visa to enter Canada but require a U.S. –issued visa to enter the U.S.
Public interest exceptions
Refugee claimants may qualify under this category of exceptions if: they have been charged with or convicted of an offence that could subject them to the death penalty in the U.S. or in a third country. However, a refugee claimant is ineligible if he or she has been found inadmissible in Canada on the grounds of security, for violating human or international rights, or for serious criminality, or if the Minister finds the person to be a danger to the public.
Making a refugee claim under the Safe Third Country Agreement
For detailed information on making a refugee claim for protection in Canada at the Canada– U.S. border, please refer to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).
Designation of Safe Third Countries
Section 102 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) permits the designation of safe third countries for the purpose of sharing the responsibility for refugee claims. Only countries that respect human rights and offer a high degree of protection to asylum seekers may be designated as safe third countries. To date, the United States is the only designated safe third country.
Review of Safe Third Countries
The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) requires the continual review of all countries designated as safe third countries. The purpose of the review process is to ensure that the conditions that led to the designation as a safe third country continue to be met. Specifically, the legislation requires that the review of a designated country be based on the following four factors: whether it is party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1984 Convention Against Torture; its policies and practices with respect to claims under the 1951 Refugee Convention, and its obligations under the 1984 Convention Against Torture; its human rights record; and whether it is party to an agreement with the Government of Canada for the purpose of sharing responsibility with respect to claims for refugee protection. In addition, the Governor in Council may issue directives to provide greater clarity on the review process. The current directives came into effect in June 2015. Under these directives: For the United States: The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration will monitor, on a continual basis, the four factors described above and report to the Governor in Council should circumstances warrant. For any other countries that may be designated as safe third countries in the future: The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration will review on a continual basis the four factors described above and will report to the Governor in Council regularly. Reviews incorporate information obtained from a number of sources, including United Nations organizations, international human rights organizations, government agency reports, statistical records and policy announcements, relevant academic research, and media reports.
Ongoing Designation of the United States
The United States continues to meet the requirements for designation as a safe third country.
Factor 1: Whether the United States is party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1984 Convention Against Torture
The United States is signatory of two international treaties that provide protection to people fearing persecution or at risk of torture in their countries of origin: the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, and the 1984 Convention Against Torture.
Factor 2: Policies and practices with respect to claims under the 1951 Refugee Convention and obligations under the 1984 Convention Against Torture
There exists in the United States an extensive administrative system, subject to judicial checks and balances, for assessing refugee protection applications. The refugee status determination system offers a high degree of protection to refugee protection claimants.
Factor 3: Human rights record of the United States
The United States meets a high standard with respect to the protection of human rights. It is an open democracy with independent courts, separation of powers and constitutional guarantees of essential human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Factor 4: Whether the United States is party to an agreement with Canada for the purpose of sharing responsibility with respect to claims for refugee protection
The Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the United States was signed on December 5, 2002, came into force on December 29, 2004, and remains in force.
Definitions
Safe third country
A safe third country is a country where an individual, passing through that country, could have made a claim for refugee protection. In Canada, subsection 102(2) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act outlines the criteria for designating a country as a safe third country.
Family member
The Safe Third Country Agreement recognizes a family member as the following: spouse
legal guardian
child
father or mother
sister or brother
grandfather or grandmother
grandchild
uncle or aunt
nephew or niece
common-law partner
same-sex spouse |
All season long, Toronto players and fans had been campaigning for then-Raptors guard Lou Williams to win the Sixth Man of the Year award. Even recording artist Drake got involved by dropping Williams’ name three times in his appropriately titled song, “6 Man.”
So when Williams succeeded and became the first Raptor to win a major NBA award since 1999 Rookie of the Year Vince Carter, it would seem like a major personal accomplishment for a career sixth man who finished second for the honor in 2012. But Williams maintains that this wasn’t the case.
“The only reason it was important for me to win it last year was because my teammates were so supportive,” Williams said. “They wanted me to get it more than anything. From day one, Kyle Lowry told me he wanted me to average 15 points a game on that team and try to win the Sixth Man.
"This was from day one, and throughout the season those guys were really pushing me to really play as much as I can and do as much as I could. But for me, it wasn’t really that important.”
Heading into his first season with the Lakers, the 10-year veteran insists that the award isn’t on his radar. Having started at least 10 games in just one season in his career, Williams has carved out a role as one of the league’s best off-the-bench playmakers. But he has also made it out of the first round of the playoffs just one time, furthering his taste for victories instead of individual achievement.
“It’s not that important if we don’t win games,” he said. “I want to be successful. I want to be able to win. … It was a great accomplishment for me to have. I was honored to win it. But I’m not going into the season trying to do it again.”
In fact, Williams claims that he is open to altering his role if head coach Byron Scott wishes to. He has started just 54 of his 634 career games but is willing to step into the starting lineup if asked.
Furthermore, Williams — who averaged 4.2 assists in Philadelphia in 2009-10 — saw that number halved last season in Toronto. But at the same time, he was also able to pour in a career-high 15.5 points per game. The 28-year-old sees this as a testament to his ability to adapt to his offense’s needs.
“I’m open to whatever,” Williams said. “I think in Toronto my job was to score just based on the system that we had. We played a lot of iso basketball — a lot of one-on-one basketball. And here the system is more free-flowing for guys to have the opportunity to make plays and put guys in position to score the basketball, as well as yourself. So whatever’s asked of me, I’m willing to do it.”
Williams’ versatility can be seen in his 1.03 points per play as the pick-and-roll ballhandler — which led the league — as well as his 265 total isolation points — which ranked fourth. Still, he feels that he is often pigeonholed as just a scorer.
“For sure, but I’m not the only one,” he said. “There are a lot of guys in my position that are capable of making plays and capable of doing more than just scoring the basketball; they just put you in this role of a sixth man that comes in and scores the basketball. I’m used to it at this point.”
Now as he preps for Lakers training camp, Williams says he is looking forward to being an influence on the Lakers’ young crew of guards, including Jordan Clarkson and D’Angelo Russell.
Going through offseason workouts with this group, Williams recalls his time as a rookie with Philadelphia in 2005. Then a second-round pick out of Georgia’s South Gwinnett High, Williams credits part of his NBA success to the mentorship he received from Allen Iverson and Kevin Ollie. He also sees much of himself in the young Lakers.
“They’re just ready to work,” Williams said. “One thing I can say about these guys is they come in with their ears open, eyes wide and ready to listen and learn. At the same time, they’re trying to prove themselves against veteran guys such as myself.
"It’s been some of the same experiences I remember from when I was coming into the league; just trying to prove my name and, at the same time, trying to learn from everybody else.” |
Yo, it's been awhile!! I've been out a couple of weeks messing around with photoshop trying some things. You see, up until now all my pictures followed the same steps: pencil and ink on paper, scanning and colouring on PC. But these past days I decided to go all digital, drawing directly with the tablet(wich is difficult as hell xDDD), so this time it may look a little different^^
This is Lianshi from TecmoKoei series Dynasty Warriors^^ She was a new Wu character in the 7th game but they gave her a cool redesign in the 8th so I decided to use it for this pic xDDD She also started with a crossbow as a weapon wich was terrible to use but in the expansion she now use Mandarin Duck Hooks, and she kicks ass with them xDDD
Hope you like it!! |
Why Cling to the Past? Exclusive essay by Stephen King's publisher about Joyland
Charles Ardai looks to the past, and past angry internet message boards, to find something worth cherishing in a new novel.
Originally, we were only going to publish Joyland in paperback.
Steve grew up buying paperbacks for fifty cents from the wire spinner racks at his local drugstore in Lisbon Falls, Maine, the sort with sexy cover paintings and lurid cover copy and breathless storytelling that kept you glued to the page well past your bedtime. I did, too, though in my case it was in New York City rather than Lisbon Falls, and by the time I came around the wire spinner racks had vanished and the era that produced them was gone, too. When I found these paperbacks it was at flea markets and library sales, at used book stores and on my father’s bookshelves. (My grandmother’s too – this proper old lady had been a big fan of Mickey Spillane back in the day.) Like Steve, I fell in love with them, discovered they scratched a powerful itch I hadn’t even known I had. And when, years later, I found myself reminiscing about them with a friend over drinks, we decided the world needed more books like that, damn it. That’s how Hard Case Crime was born.
The idea from the start was to replicate a pleasure from the past – not just the type of stories told in those old books but the physical artifact itself. Painted covers, and not digitally painted ones either. (One of our painters offered to digitally clean up some schmutz on his canvas and I told him I’d break both his arms if he did.) Old typefaces that existed in the hot-metal-type days. Graphic design that isn’t arch or ironic or campy but rather duplicates in a proper and workmanlike fashion what books looked like back in the day. Our goal was to give the impression that Hard Case Crime had started publishing sometime around 1945 and just somehow never stopped. We didn’t want to look old-fashioned -- we wanted to look old. And if no one but us gave a damn about books like that, well, fine. We’d publish half a dozen of the things, sell no copies, and hang up our hats proud of a job well done.
But it turned out we weren’t the only ones who gave a damn. And here we are almost a decade later, still at. Part of the reason is that these things of the past, these yesterday-flavored objects, give pleasures that other presentations even of the same material do not. Salt is salt is salt, but spooning grains from a salt cellar feels different from grinding them out of a salt mill, which in turn feels different from upending a shaker. Presentation matters. Another part of the reason is that one of the people who gave a damn, and gave it early enough in our existence for it to make a big difference, was Stephen King. He decided he wanted in on the fun and when he wrote a book called The Colorado Kid – an unsettling little mystery about the nature of mystery – he invited us to be its publisher. It became our top-selling title ever (not surprisingly) and inspired a TV series called Haven that’s going into its fourth season on SyFy this fall. That book’s success enabled us to publish five dozen other books that didn’t sell nearly as many copies, by authors not yet known or long forgotten but in each case ferociously talented and with great stories to tell. And it allowed us to stick to our guns stylistically. We publish the books we want to publish, and we make them look the way we want them to look, and if some people think that’s dopey or quixotic or bad business, so be it. They can think what they want. We make what we make, and we’re proud of it. Buggy whips in the age of cars? Yeah, maybe. But they’re damn fine buggy whips and maybe there’s still some value in remembering a time before the Interstates turned the country into one giant strip mall.
Which brings us to Joyland, and the decision to tell readers they’re going to have to read it the old way, as ink on paper, not pixels on a screen. We did wind up expanding beyond just the paperback, though that will still be the book’s true first edition, more than a million copies strong. A bit later, we’ll also put out a tiny hardcover run for collectors, about two thousand copies, featuring special art and other catnip. But that’s it – you’ve got your paperback and you’ve got your hardcover, the same two choices you had for books when Steve was growing up and when I was. There may be an ebook edition down the road, but for now it’s paper or…paper.
And why? Part of it is the desire to support traditional booksellers, something Steve and I both care a great deal about – it’s frightening to see the decline in the fortunes of bookstores over the last handful of years. (Anecdotal example: New York used to have four or five mystery bookstores, now there’s only one left. And that’s New York.) But as some people have pointed out online, our print edition is available through online booksellers such as Amazon and BN.com, not to mention from bricks-and-mortar retailers that aren’t bookstores. So clearly the desire to support bookstores, though genuine, isn’t the only reason.
For me, at least, the other reason is that some stories just beg to be experienced in a certain way, and Joyland is one such. Joyland is framed as the reminiscence of a 61-year-old man about events he experienced four decades earlier, in the summer before his senior year of college. It’s about memory; it’s about the passage of time and its impact; it’s about ways of life that existed once and are gone now, ones that deserve not to be forgotten. It’s about all the things that led us to create Hard Case Crime in the first place.
There’s a reason that Michel Hazanavicius filmed The Artist, his Academy Award-winning Best Picture about the early days of Hollywood, in black-and-white and (largely) silent, and it’s not because he thought all movies should be filmed that way. That, too, was a story about a moment in the past, and it benefitted from making the audience experience the story the way audiences would have back in the silent-picture days. Hard Case Crime books are many things, and to the extent that you’re just looking for a good read, they can certainly be enjoyed on Kindles and Nooks. But one thing our books are is a shrine to a particular way of consuming stories and the particular object that for decades delivered that experience to millions of people. An object that has dimensions and heft and feels a certain way when you handle it, that looks a certain way when you thumb its pages back, creases a certain way when you jam it in a jacket pocket or a lunch bucket. Shape and form and texture matter. The past matters. Preserving things we love matters. And insofar as we want people to remember something we love, putting an example of it in their hands is a powerful way to do so.
So: Joyland. A book. A paperback book, by and large, and one I cherish and that I hope other readers will cherish as well. Not those who angrily proclaim on Internet message boards, “I’ll never read a paper book again!” – there isn’t any hope for those, their souls are too tattered for repair – but those who see our little bit of yesterday and feel their hearts beat faster, scent a bit of their own younger days on the backward-blowing breeze.
“1973 was the year of the OPEC oil embargo, the year Richard Nixon announced he was not a crook, the year Edward G. Robinson and Noel Coward died,” Steve writes. “It was Devin Jones’s lost year. I was a twenty-one year-old virgin with literary aspirations. I possessed three pairs of bluejeans, four pairs of Jockey shorts, a clunker Ford (with a good radio), occasional suicidal ideations, and a broken heart.” And so it begins. For just one day, unkindle your Kindle and nook your Nook, lie back in the bath or on your sofa or beach chair or with your head on the grass, and read the way we used to.
Tomorrow will still be there when you’re done.
Joyland |
A recent blog highlighted business processes and trends of the past, so this week I thought I’d turn the tables and write my wish list for future business inventions I’d like to see. Here they are, in no particular order.
1. A teleporter
Remember when Star Trek’s Captain Kirk would say ‘Scotty, beam me up’ and he’d be instantly transported to wherever he wanted to go? I need one of those machines. I’d never have to sit in traffic again, I could go anywhere in the universe, any time I wanted. Massive productivity enhancer.
2. Bulls#@t siren
You know when you’re in a meeting or talking to a colleague or supplier and you know they are talking utter rubbish? What I need is an alarm that lets everyone know not to take any notice of what the offender says. Huge reduction in time wasting for everyone concerned.
3. PhD in a pill
Forget going to uni – just pop a pill.
4. Foldable laptop
Laptops are heavy and cumbersome. If you’re going anywhere for any length of time you also have to take a charger, which is also unwieldy. So what I need is some sort of device that maybe you could screw up into a little ball. The material would be solid when you wanted it to be, so you could type on it, but when you wanted to throw it in your bag, it would scrunch up into something like one of those stress balls. It would also weigh as much as a stress ball. In fact it would be great if it doubled as a stress ball.
It would also be good if the one device was your laptop and your phone. Yes, I know you can already use your laptop as your phone with Skype. But I need a device, sort of like a Transformer toy, that could be smartphone-size one minute, then fold out to be laptop-size the next.
5. Immediate sickness cure
Never suffer through a cold or the flu again. Just apply this patch to your skin and you’re better straight away. I realise the pharmaceutical companies have probably been trying to invent this for, oh, a hundred years or so. But for the record, I came up with the idea first.
6. Sleep injection
Need a nana nap? Take this injection and you’re suddenly refreshed.
7. “Get out of/into my office” force
Someone’s in your office and you really can’t be bothered talking to them anymore. All you need to do is blink twice and the person’s chair suddenly shoots back and out the door. Leaving you in pleasant solitude.
Want someone in your office? No need to buzz them to come in. Blink three times and that person’s chair whizzes around to your desk and they are suddenly in front of you.
8. Spell to eliminate time wasting
You know when you do something like submit an application for finance, or send your accounts to your bookkeeper, or have to line up in the post office to send a parcel? I need a spell that completely eliminates the time wasted waiting for the result. The spell would mean you would immediately get your finance approval (or rejection), your accounts would be instantly done and your parcel at its final destination. Then you would get on with whatever task that depended on the completion of the first action.
9. A clone
How useful would a clone be? The clone could do all the boring stuff while I would just do the interesting things, like finding stories and writing. All right, who am I fooling? The clone could do the lot. I would just relax.
10. Dump button
This isn’t really an invention as it already exists, but wouldn’t it be great if you could invoke the dump button that radio hosts can use when a caller’s language gets blue? Except I wouldn’t use it for foul language, I’d use it for oxygen thieves. You know the type – people with too much time on their hands who ring you up and go on about something completely trivial, because they haven’t got anything better to do. In my Utopia, I’d just be able to dump the call, with no ramifications, no questions asked. That would be heaven.
What would you invent to make your working life easier? |
By Roger Annis, Feb 17, 2014–Rank and File.ca has reported on the two sawmill explosions in northern British Columbia in January and April of 2012 that killed four workers and injured dozens. Many of the workers were of First Nations nationalities. There have been two substantive developments recently in the investigation of the first of those two explosions–at the Babine Forest Products sawmill in Burns Lake, west of Prince George, on January 20, 2012.
Firstly, as reported last month, on January 10, 2014, the prosecution branch of the BC government announced it will not prosecute the company or any of the its officials. It says flaws in the investigation of the explosion by WorkSafeBC (BC’s workers compensation board) make it unlikely that criminal charges would stick. The decision not to prosecute has shocked victims, their relatives and the members of the communities where the sawmills are located.
Secondly, Premier Christy Clark has followed that up with an announcement late last week that she will ignore calls for a full public inquiry into the whole mess. This followed the publication of a report last week by John Dyble, deputy minister to the premier and head of the public service, that repeats accusations of a bungled WorkSafeBC investigation first made by the government’s prosecution branch. Clark commissioned the report by Dyble, an intimate adviser to her.
The nearly two-year WorkSafeBC investigation of the explosion was issued on Jan. 17 and reveals harrowing conditions of sawdust accumulation inside the Babine sawmill. It turns out the mill was not unique. The daily cleaning practices to eliminate sawdust that have been routine in the sawmill industry for decades and are known to be essential to safety have deteriorated in the past ten years, due in no small part to the lengthening of the two-shift operations that are standard in the mills. The daily work schedule provides fewer and fewer hours to clean dust from the mills overnight. That leaves it to weekend crews to do the heavy lifting.
Two additional factors have made the situation in the mills dangerous–winter conditions that see doors and windows closed to keep out the cold, and the processing of increasingly large volumes of wood killed by the mountain pine beetle epidemic. That wood is drier than typical wood processed in the past, and therefore its dust when milled is more explosive.
The pine beetle infestation has been caused by warming winter temperatures and has leveled most of the province’s pine forests. The sawmill companies are racing to process killed trees before it decomposes.
WorkSafeBC has defended its investigation. Jeff Dolan, WorkSafeBC investigations director, told CBC Radio’s As It Happens on Jan. 13 that past investigation practices have led to 31 criminal prosecutions resulting in 24 convictions since 1996. “The issues of law that the Crown have raised in this investigation have not been raised in previous investigations,” he said.
The Babine sawmill is majority owned by the Portland, Oregon-based Hampton Affiliates. In a statement issued on January 22, 2014, it said it “didn’t know” that accumulations of sawmill dust could be so dangerously explosive.
The investigation of the other sawmill explosion, at Lakeland Mill in Prince George, is ongoing.
Enclosed are three articles and one press release reporting the latest developments.
* * *
Report raises doubts about WorkSafeBC’s ability to protect workers
By Justine Hunter, The Globe and Mail, Feb 17, 2014
Victoria BC–John Dyble’s report [see article below] on the Babine mill explosion [northern BC, in January 2012] provides no solace for the families of the victims, nor does it give comfort to those who work in high-risk occupations in B.C. His report, released last week by Premier Christy Clark, concluded that one government agency should have listened to another government department about the proper conduct of investigations. The government has pledged to follow through with better training and improved communication between agencies next time around…
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/report-raises-doubts-about-worksafebcs-ability-to-protect-workers/article16919185/#dashboard/follows/
WorkSafeBC ignored legal advice from province, report on mill explosion finds
By Ian Bailey, The Globe and Mail, Feb. 14 2014
VANCOUVER — B.C.’s worker safety agency ignored years of legal advice from the province’s own lawyers before it bungled its probe of a 2012 mill explosion so badly that no one will ever face charges in the incident that killed two people, a report on the investigation says.
Premier Christy Clark said she is “deeply disappointed” with the errors and neglect revealed in the report written by one of her most senior deputy ministers [John Dyble] on the WorkSafeBC investigation. Because of those errors, the Crown could not lay regulatory charges because most of the evidence gathered would be inadmissible in court…
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/clark-deputy-blames-worksafebc-for-lack-of-charges-in-burns-lake-mill-deaths/article16860633/#dashboard/follows/
CEOs work together to create sawmill regulations
By Justine Hunter, The Globe and Mail, Jan. 27 201
VICTORIA —The night that a sawmill in Prince George exploded, two of B.C.’s leading forestry executives – normally fierce competitors – picked up the phone to talk.
Hank Ketcham, chair of West Fraser Timber, called Don Kayne, CEO of Canfor. The two companies are giants in the B.C. forest industry and they run head to head in the province’s Interior. But both men were driven that night by fear of a crisis they saw headed their way…
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/ceos-work-together-to-create-sawmill-regulations/article16510396/#dashboard/follows/
And,
Wet’suwet’en First Nation calls on Premier Clark to establish independent inquiry into Babine Forest Products mill explosion
Press release, Jan 30, 2014
http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/1297297/wet-suwet-en-first-nation-calls-on-premier-clark-to-establish-independent-inquiry-into-babine-forest-products-mill-explosion |
The clock strikes five and you hear the zipping of bags and coats as people around you ready themselves to shuffle out of the office. The work day is finally over.
But although you have the right to plan your evening as you wish, there are a few after-hours activities that can get you in serious trouble with your employer. Here are three after work actions that can get you terminated.
Bad mouthing
Gawker recently wrote about a campus safety officer who was fired from the University of Oregon for misconduct. James Cleavenger, the fired officer, and other members of the campus police team had kept a list of people they thought should “eat a bowl of d—-.”
The list is exactly what it sounds like: a series of 225 names of people and things the UO safety officers did not like. The list was constantly updated before and after shifts and even during department meetings. The University of Oregon confirmed the existence of such a list by releasing it to the public.
Although an extreme example, it still shows how bad mouthing your boss, client, or colleague can have a serious consequence. So next time you want to vent about work on social media or during a cocktail hour, consider the cost.
Moonlighting jobs
One of the main reasons why people may pick up an evening gig is for extra income. But while an additional source of revenue may alleviate some problems, it may stir others up. Make sure the additional work does not conflict with your duties with your primary employer. Let your boss know if you picked up a gig on the side to avoid any problems.
Most companies frown on moonlighting—especially if it’s the same work you would be doing at the office. Before jumping into moonlighting, check in with your boss to see if overtime is an option.
Disclosing company secrets
It seems harmless, but even telling a friend how you fixed a problem for a client can get you in trouble. Texting and emailing corporate information can also be problematic—even if you feel the information is positive. Become familiar with the confidentiality policies in your employee manual and see if your employer has any social media guidelines.
As much as what we do in our free time is personal, certain actions can still hinder our work. At the end of the day, it’s best to keep all work related information at the office.
Belo Cipriani is an award-winning author, former staffing professional, a spokesperson for Guide Dogs for the Blind and the Writer-in-Residence at Holy Names University. Learn more at BeloCipriani.com. |
Eric Worrall writes:
Professor Bob Carter, writing in today’s edition of The Australian, a major Aussie daily newspaper, warns that the world is unprepared for imminent global cooling, because of the obsession of policy makers with global warming.
According to Bob Carter;
Heading for ice age “GRAHAM Lloyd has reported on the Bureau of Meteorology’s capitulation to scientific criticism that it should publish an accounting of the corrections it makes to temperature records (“Bureau warms to transparency over adjusted records”, 12/9). Corrections which, furthermore, act to reinforce the bureau’s dedication to a prognosis of future dangerous global warming, by turning cooling temperature trends into warming ones — a practice also known to occur in the US, Britain and New Zealand. Meanwhile, we have a report by Sue Neales that the size of our grain harvest remains in doubt following severe frosts in southern NSW killing large areas of early wheat crops and also damaging wheat and canola crops in South Australia and Victoria (“Trifecta of calamities to deplete. crop harvest”, 12/9) Is it unreasonable to be surprised that none of your writers, much less the government, has noticed that leading solar astrophysicists, such as Habibullo Abdussamatov from Pulkovo Observatory in St Petersburg, have for years been commenting on the declining activity of the sun? These scientists are projecting a significant cooling over the next three decades, and perhaps even the occurrence of another little ice age. Obsessed as they are with a gentle global warming trend that stopped late last century, should the expected solar cooling eventuate, policy makers will rue the day they failed to heed the advice of independent scientists on climate change issues.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/letters/poor-project-management-the-cause-of-subs-debacle/story-fn558imw-1227056963829
Professor Abdussamatov, cited by Professor Carter in his letter, is head of the Space Research section of the Russian Academy of Science.
In 2006, Professor Abdussamatov issued a press release, warning that the world should prepare for imminent global cooling. Abdussamatov predicted that the global cooling would start in 2012 – 2015, and would likely peak around 2055.
http://en.ria.ru/russia/20060825/53143686.html
This predicted global cooling, if it occurs, will mean that polar vortex winters and cold related crop failures, such as the recent frost catastrophe which destroyed a significant fraction of Australia’s wheat crop, in the state of New South Wales, will become a normal part of life, and will most likely become a lot worse.
WUWT readers might recall a shameful incident last year, in which Professor Carter was unceremoniously dumped from his academic post. In my opinion, the removal of Professor Carter was part of an ongoing purge of Australian academics who hold unfashionable views on climate change.
==================================
Source of the graph: Source: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/trend
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C.E. Dyer reports that the streets of Paris, France have been devastated after mass illegal immigration from Africa has decimated one of Europe’s biggest cities and tourist destinations.
Louder with Crowder posted a YouTube video that shows what Paris, France looks like today thanks to the scourge of illegal immigration:
Take a look at this excerpt from the YouTube description of the video posted by Face of a Dying Nation:
This footage, taken with a hidden camera by an anonymous Frenchman in the Avenue de Flandres, 19th Arrondissement, near the Stalingrad Metro Station in Paris as well as areas in close proximity, shows the devastating effects of uncontrolled illegal mass immigration of young African males into Europe. This footage was taken by an anonymous Frenchmen after French police evacuated over 2000 illegal immigrants on the 16th of September. What was left behind was a trail of devastation. The migrants have since resettled there, the area looks like before – thousands of Africans live in tents and sleep on mattresses in the middle of the street as of October 16th.
The YouTube description went on to detail how illegal African immigrants urinate and defecate in the streets when no bathroom facilities are nearby, and garbage covers the area where African men waste their days waiting for asylum that will likely not be granted.
As these young African men with no skills or job prospects — not likely to gain asylum and if they did, would likely end up dependent on government assistance — wander the streets, crime and rape follow in their wake. The danger is so prevalent that French citizens avoid these areas and the police have stopped trying to patrol the crime-infested illegal immigrant hubs.
Widespread, uncontrolled illegal immigration poses a massive threat to the West as terrorists use our stupidity to infiltrate and carry out jihad.
As Crowder noted, France’s (and the rest of Europe’s) culture is at stake. France attempted to institute a Burkini ban, which they ended up backing off on because of left-wing progressive blowhards who, in many cases, are insulated from the dangerous effects of their insane policies.
We have living proof of what happens when you allow uncontrolled illegal immigration into the West, yet Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton wants open borders and thousands more inadequately vetted refugees to flood the United States.
This is a systematic effort to tear down the West so that the globalists can build a one-world government in its wake. It’s absolute insanity, but it is what is happening and make no mistake, if Clinton is elected, we will move toward a new world order — and that is a terrifying thought.
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Posted by Laurence Moroney, Developer Advocate
A constraint for some Android apps is the total number of methods that the underlying compiled .dex file can support. It’s limited by 16 bits, or 65,536 values.
When you include third-party libraries in your application, you will have all of their methods in your .dex file. Larger APIs, such as those included in Google Play services, will then begin eating into the limit very quickly.
You can learn more about this, and ways that you can work around it with the Android Studio 1.0 build system here.
Additionally, with Google Play services version 6.5 or later, it is possible for you to include Google Play services in your application using a number of smaller client libraries, so that only Google Play services APIs you use will get compiled into your .dex file, and therefore their methods won't count towards your method limit.
Prior to version 6.5, you would typically have a line like this in your build.gradle file:
compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services:6.5.87'
Starting with version 6.5, of Google Play services, you’ll be able to pick from a number of individual APIs, and you can see which ones have their own include files in the documentation. For example, if all you want to use is Maps, you would instead have:
compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-maps:6.5.87'
Note that this will transitively include the ‘base’ libraries, which are used across all APIs. You can include them independently with the following line:
compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-base:6.5.87'
The complete list of API names is below. More details can be found on the Android Developer site.
com.google.android.gms:play-services-base:6.5.87
com.google.android.gms:play-services-ads:6.5.87
com.google.android.gms:play-services-appindexing:6.5.87
com.google.android.gms:play-services-maps:6.5.87
com.google.android.gms:play-services-location:6.5.87
com.google.android.gms:play-services-fitness:6.5.87
com.google.android.gms:play-services-panorama:6.5.87
com.google.android.gms:play-services-drive:6.5.87
com.google.android.gms:play-services-games:6.5.87
com.google.android.gms:play-services-wallet:6.5.87
com.google.android.gms:play-services-identity:6.5.87
com.google.android.gms:play-services-cast:6.5.87
com.google.android.gms:play-services-plus:6.5.87
com.google.android.gms:play-services-appstate:6.5.87
com.google.android.gms:play-services-wearable:6.5.87
com.google.android.gms:play-services-all-wear:6.5.87
Note: At the time of writing, the correct version to use is 6.5.87. As this is a very granular number, it will get updated quite quickly, so be sure the check the latest version when you are coding. Often people will use a ‘+’ to denote versions, such as 6.5.+ to use the latest 6.5 build. However, it’s typically discouraged to use a ‘+’ as it can lead to inconsistencies. |
Three seasons ago, the Miami HEAT swept the Charlotte Bobcats out of the first round of the playoffs. The HEAT were on their way towards their fourth-consecutive appearance in the NBA Finals and their swarming, high-energy defense caused all sorts of issues for a team built around the slower, post-up stylings of Al Jefferson. The average margin of victory for Miami in that series was 9.5 points.
You can forget about all it now. This isn’t that.
Back when they were the Bobcats, just about 19.5 percent of Charlotte’s points came from three-pointers. That was then one of the lowest marks in the league. Now, with Nicolas Batum and Courtney Lee in the starting lineup alongside now-a-power-forward Marvin Williams and rim-runner Cody Zeller, 30.9 percent of their offense comes from deep.
That’s the same as the Cleveland Cavaliers. More than Portland. More than Houston. More than Atlanta and the Los Angeles Clippers. Only one team gets more of its offense from downtown, and that team just set the single-season record for wins.
“The second half of the season they’ve been like the Golden State of the East,” Dwyane Wade said. “We have our work cut out for us.
If the HEAT are going to advance, they’ll have to win the Battle of the Arc.
Charlotte’s newfound devotion and dependence on the three isn’t some gimmick, either. Coach Steve Clifford didn’t just finish binge-watching Jessica Jones on Netflix last year and decide to Kilgrave his team into a group of single-minded three-point gunners. By all indications, from the organizations roster moves to Clifford’s lineups and schemes, the team underwent a full-fledged paradigm shift.
The Golden State Warriors changed the league. The Hornets rolled with it, and in turning in a season with a Top-10 offense and defense in terms of efficiency Charlotte turned itself into a decent approximation of their possible inspiration.
“[They’re] like the Golden State of the East with how they play and how they drive-and-kick and pick-and-roll for threes,” Erik Spoelstra said. “And they have pullup three-point shooters. You have to be versatile in your defense. A lot of teams play that way, but they’re one of the better ones that do it.”
Alright, so we can back up a little here. The comparisons between the two teams mostly stop at the three-point line, as the Hornets don’t get to the rim or shoot nearly as well much less have the same players or flexibility. The point isn’t that the Hornets are the same as the Warriors, its that you might have to treat them as if they are the same.
Like the Warriors, Charlotte is capable of getting their threes every which way including loose. They can get them simple, with both Batum and Kemba Walker more than willing to dribble into a jumper if you give them too much of a cushion off a screen or one of their many handoffs – something Miami was have to be careful with given how far back their big men usually hang in pick-and-roll. They can get them complicated, with Batum and others running off and around a series of screens to get a quick shot off the catch.
And they can get their threes any way in between.
While the Hornets only sparingly went to the side pick-and-roll in matchups with the HEAT this year, they did strike with pick-and-pops early and often last time around. When they run it away from Hassan Whiteside, keeping him on the weakside of the floor, the HEAT have to deal with the threat of Batum and Walker in space off the dribble as Williams slides out to a shot he’s become one of the best at making.
“Marvin Williams, he’s not even setting a screen he’s always slipping,” Goran Dragic said. “It’s really tough for defenses, especially for the guy who is guarding him. You don’t know whether to stop Kemba or not to help so much.”
“Those are just tough shots,” Luol Deng added. “He’s a great player. He’s going to make tough plays.”
And then a play or two later they can take a slightly different avenue to getting the exact same look.
More than anything against this team, Miami needs to play smart and aware. Charlotte is as capable as anyone at finding the one shooter you helped off of too much in the corner, especially with Batum slinging cross-court passes, but their shooters don’t just stand around waiting for you to make a mistake. Without many one-on-one scorers the Hornets excel at movement out of necessity, running one action after another instead of bailing themselves out with individual play. When you’re focusing on all that movement on one side of the floor, the shooters are smart enough to loop up and down the line of the arc to create a passing angle you aren’t prepared for.
“Batum makes them very versatile,” Wade said. “He’s a great catch-and-shoot player, but also his ability to playmake and make you commit. That allows their three-point shooters to move and get in the right positions knowing that he’s going to find them as well.”
The Hornets don’t run a ton, though their possession numbers are a bit deflated by the fact that they are the best team in the league at taking care of the ball, but they’re incredibly efficient in the open floor. As they have for the past two months, the HEAT will want to push the pace to help up their own offensive efficiency. That cannot translate into loose defense running back the other way, lest the Hornets pass their way into quick hitters.
“They’re not scared to shoot,” Dragic said. “Even on a fast-break, if they play 3-on-4 or 4-on-5, if they can get open they’re still going to launch that three. Even if it’s one-pass and a shot.”
So how can Miami stop the perimeter onslaught? The good news is that only the San Antonio Spurs prevent non-corner threes better than Miami. The HEAT know a little something about taking away the value shots.
Some teams might choose to play Walker and Batum aggressively on the pick-and-roll, pressuring them to give up the ball, but they’re such good passers and Charlotte’s big men are such smart players that aggressive play can easily backfire into giving up a wide-open corner three. The HEAT haven’t really blitzed pick-and-rolls all season as they shifted to a more conservative style of defense around Whiteside’s paint protection.
Other teams may opt to switch everything, nullifying all of the Hornets’ screens and taking away the space they’re trying to create – a valid strategy against a team that doesn’t want to attack one-on-one in a slowdown game. But that takes an incredible degree of versatility and discipline and, again, it’s not something Miami has done much of this year.
What we have seen Miami do against teams like the Hornets and Warriors is fight like hell through those screens so Batum and Walker can’t get any space for a clean shot off the catch. Fighting through screens means trusting your big man to contain the ball until you can recover and with the need to stay home on all of Charlotte’s shooters, that puts pressure on Whiteside and Amar’e Stoudemire to lock down the paint without giving up open jumpers.
It’s a tough balance to strike, but it’s one Miami struck exceptionally well when the Warriors came to town after the All-Star Break. Sure, the Warriors did their thing and hit some ridiculous shots, but that was also as good as the HEAT have been against shooters almost all season.
You also have to have the guards who can execute such a physical strategy. Dragic, Wade and Joe Johnson have shown to be up to the task before, but Miami’s hidden weapons are rookies Justise Winslow and Josh Richardson. Last time Charlotte came to Miami the HEAT lost in part because the Hornets earned a few too many open threes and Batum hit a bunch of contested jumpers late, but Winslow gave both Batum…
And Walker…
All sorts of problems.
It’s a lot to ask of a rookie to defend the other team’s best players throughout a seven-game series, but Winslow has been doing it all season long so why would anything change now? He’s been more than up to the task.
How Miami will actually scheme for Charlotte remains to be seen, but they’ve had a plan for high-volume shooting teams before and they’ve often executed that plan extremely well.
It may seem a bit much to say they’ll have to defend like they defended the Warriors, but it’s best to give your opponent too much credit than too little. Besides, the Hornets have earned it. And if you respect them like the Warriors, you make them beat you like the Warriors. |
The next location was our final spot in New Zealand’s North Island and turned out to be pretty special.
Ohakune was our destination and was to serve as two locations within Middle Earth. One of these locations was up on Mount Ruapehu, which is the tallest mountain in the North Island and very sacred lands to the local Maori Iwi (tribes). They filmed quite a lot of the Mount Doom scenes in Lord of the Rings, such as Sam carrying Frodo up the cliffs, on other parts of the mountain, but this particular area was new ground for the production. That’s not to say that Ruapehu is Mt. Doom, which is a common misunderstanding amongst touring LOTR geeks.
It’s considered disrespectful to photograph the distinctive peaks of Ruapehu, so while they filmed much of the prologue battle and the slopes of Mt. Doom scenes on Ruapehu they had to digitally construct the imposing Middle Earth landmark out of a hodgepodge of other mountains, including active Hawaiian volcanoes.
The local Iwi (two tribes specifically, Ngati Uenuku and Ngati Rangi) granted permission to the production to film on this side of the mountain and to show the union of the tribes and the production they hosted a Powhiri. The production couldn’t force the cast and crew to go to this traditional event as it was on a day off, but they strongly urged everyone to go as the more people who showed the more respect would be shown to the Maori people who granted the crew permission to film on their lands.
They expected maybe 30-40 people and when I arrived at the Maungarongo Marae there was easily double that, including producer Zane Weiner and all the principal cast from Martin Freeman and Ian McKellen to all the dwarves. By the time the ceremony began there were 130 people from production there.
The hosts, Ngati Rangi, began with a haka, a sort of warrior dance made world-famous by the All Blacks Rugby team who perform it before every game. We, the visitors, weren’t allowed on the field (known as the Marae aitea) until after the haka when one of the warriors was sent out to distinguish whether us visiting movie types were friend or foe in a custom known as Tikanga. This man presented a rau (a fern) which was picked up by Zane, indicating that we came in peace and signified our two groups were met as friends and that we may enter the Marae aitea.
From here on out it was a series of speakers from both sides, which were kept separate, calling back and forth in turn, giving speeches that end in a song. The Ngati Rangi leaders each had a turn, speaking in Maori, which was translated for us by a liaison by the name of Turama Hawira.
We were all given a song to sing and in the parking lot went over it as a group. Since we were all visitors, in order to show respect to our hosts we all had to take part, including fat American reporters.
With the clouds slowly lifting off of Mt. Ruapehu in the background and bright sun shining down on us all the whole ceremony triggered some very serious spiritual buttons in me. I’m not a religious man, but there was an undeniable power here. The history behind the ritual, the sincerity of our hosts’ words and the obvious respect from the cast and crew all jumbled together into one heavy, focused atmosphere that was kind of amazing to experience.
Ian McKellen was the last person from the crew to speak and he gave a great speech talking about the journey this crew was undertaking and thanking them for letting us share their beautiful lands with the people of the world. “You could have easily told Gandalf the Grey ‘You shall not pass’ but you did not,” he said before reiterating his thanks for their cooperation and letting the filmmakers pass onto their property.
Remember I mentioned that each speech was followed by a song? After Sir Ian gave his speech all the actors playing dwarves stood up and sang one of the songs from The Hobbit, a particularly haunting baritone ballad called Misty Mountains (the very one from the newly released trailer).
The final part of the ceremony involved something called the hongi, where the visitors line up and walk past the iwi leaders, women and children, shake their hands and lean in to touch noses and foreheads. This invitation into each other’s personal space solidifies the union of our tribes and makes us no longer visitors, but tangata whenua (people of the land).
Walking down the line I must have done the hongi with a good 20 people, ranging from adorable kids to kindly old men and it’s not as awkward as I expected it to be. When touching noses with strangers that forces you to look them in the eye and consider them as more than what you take in at first glance. I was told afterwards that looking our hosts in the eye during the hongi was actually a sign of aggression, but they didn’t seem to take offense.
After all of us had completed the hongi, we gathered together and discussed some of the Maori mythology about the land and were told that we would have an iwi representative with us while the crew filmed “to protect the mountain from you and you from the mountain.” Remember that Ruapehu is an active volcano and the Maori believe there are good and bad spirits in the region that have to be respected in order to not upset the balance.
In addition to Turama Hawira being on hand at location we were asked to always say good morning to Koro (the Maori word for grandfather, referring to the mountain) when we arrived and good evening to Koro when we left as a sign of respect.
I can’t speak for everybody else, but I sure did. It’s hard not to get caught up by the majesty of this area and even though I don’t believe in exactly the same things that our hosts do I felt the power of the place.
The first location was at the Ohakune Beech Paddock, which wasn’t quite up the mountain, but just to be on the safe side I still turned to the mountain at the horizon and whispered a “Good morning, Koro.”
This wooded area was to represent the outskirts of The Shire and featured Bilbo catching up to Gandalf and the dwarves. They’re riding on horseback so you can imagine the circus that day. Thirteen dwarves and a Wizard and horses for them all!
The dwarves’ horses were wearing sort of shaggy jackets since they were supposed to be ponies, but the guys playing the dwarves would look silly in all their gear on tiny ponies. In order to sell the stature they had to make the regular horses look more pony-like.
The day was spent mostly getting wider shots of troop on horseback riding through the woods as Bilbo catches up to the party, but there was one shot in particular that you can actually glimpse in the trailer that had Fili and Kili picking up Mr. Baggins (from horseback) and putting him up onto his pony.
Watching Jackson, Martin Freeman, Aidan Turner and Dean O’Gorman set this up was particularly interesting. For more room, they moved out of the wooded area to a flat field where tent city was. Tent City is what they call the set-up just off-set. Peter’s tent, VFX, armor, prosthetics, cast and a few more get tents so they can do their work while close to the camera.
Peter, Martin and stunt coordinator Glenn Boswell (you’ll hear more about Glenn in a future report. This dude is a stunt guy who survived the making of The Road Warrior and Brian Trenchard-Smith’s Turkey Shoot!) blocked the shot, which was tricky because it involved three actors, two horses and needed precision timing to come off.
As you can see, the camera went where Peter’s hands are framing that shot, so Martin didn’t have to be fully lifted out of shot, just pulled up enough to sell the motion. I imagine they’ll grab another angle with Martin’s stunt double actually being pulled up and put on a pony. For this shot they just needed to sell him moving up so they have some motion to cut on.
That also explains the apple box Freeman has a furry hobbit foot up on. The action has him walking towards camera and stepping up on that apple box right when Kili and Fili get up to him so he can push up with his foot as they grab his backpack and hoist him up.
As you’re well aware, I’m sure, there’s a famous stigma about working with animals and children in show business. Some usages of this quote are from an actor’s perspective in that animals and children will steal the scene away from even the most charismatic actor every time out, but if I were a betting man (and I am) I’d say the roots of that saying come more from a practical aspect of filmmaking.
Working with either usually means slow going days and when on location that could be particularly frustrating.
It takes a lot of coordination to make the timing work when you have humans and animals in a scene together and I noticed some interesting things the trainers did to make the horses comfortable. For instance, I saw one of the trainers gently sniff the boom mic in front of a horse so the horse would follow suit and realize this fluffy thing hanging over his head wasn’t going to attack him.
Another issue at this location was the cloud cover. It was really cloudy, but not the cool puffy clouds… just white. At one point during filming the clouds parted and beautiful sunshine shined down on us all. However that wouldn’t match with everything they shot the previous day and that morning, so we waited around for more clouds.
Lighting is, of course, crucial for continuity. They can (and probably will) replace the flat white sky with interesting clouds, but if there’s bright sunshine and not the diffused light from previous takes their shots won’t match.
It was a quiet period. The shot had been set up, the work had been done and there was nothing to do but wait. It was kind of like being in the eye of a hurricane. Everything slowed down, the contained chaos of a movie set put on hold. It was pretty relaxing to be honest. After about 10 minutes the cloud cover came back and it was like some evil bastard kid had shaken up the ant farm and everybody was back to work.
In this lull I noticed the great artist John Howe was on set. I had seen him around the Stone Street studio set in Wellington, but didn’t want to bug him. I was hanging out with the sound guys Tony Johnson and Corrin Ellingford when Howe came up. I figured he was going to chat with them, but to my surprise he introduced himself to me and complimented the set reports.
I’ve been following his work for years, so I was quite taken aback by the kind words from somebody whose talent I admire so much. He was even kind enough to bring up the reports on his blog (read it here).
Before long he was joined by Alan Lee and we discussed the 3D art they did in the last production video. In reality that started off as joke and they didn’t really draw in 3D, but as the joke took shape they actually did collaborate on that piece, the very first time in all their years of working together that they both drew on one single piece of art. They used the computer to really add dimensionality to it, so that’s why that image really does work in 3D.
I strongly urged them to get it printed up for next year’s Comic-Con and that people would go nuts for it. I know I’d love to have one. They liked the idea, but we’ll see.
After two days of shooting at the Beech Paddocks the company moved to the mountain. I won’t have too much for you on this location thanks mostly to this:
That moss is endangered and very old. One of the conditions of shooting in this location was that only essential crew went down to the set and essential I am not, so I stayed up on the mountain road, which I was kind of okay with. They built this scaffolding to get down there, you see, and that scaffolding was declared safe, but I took one step out on it and felt the connecting slats bend under my girth and suddenly didn’t want to be there anymore.
The view was incredible, though, so inched my way out to get a clearer look back at the valley below us.
Between that epic vista and the crazy massive waterfall (and super rare moss) this location was visually stunning and I understand this place also plays a very important role in the journey. I know there is going to be a giant statue put into this location digitally. All the dwarves and Bilbo were down there looking for something. I can say no more!
I talked with Peter a bit before he made his way down to the set and he pointed out that they shot a lot of the opening prologue battle from Fellowship about 5 minutes drive from this spot, on the opposite slope. And down the mountain, the stream from this waterfall was where they shot Gollum catching his fish after joining up with Sam and Frodo.
Peter also tried to convince me that the surrounding area was all built by Weta Workshop, that all the rocks were really foam and the waterfalls were just salt being poured in slow motion, but he can’t trick me! No sir, not this time!
Since I spent most of my time in this location sitting in the catering tent catching up on writing (probably working on the Holiday Guide, actually) that’s about all I got for here.
Ruapehu represented the very last North Island location for Main Unit. After this we all drove back to Wellington, had a nice night (in my case filled with good company at a great Indian food spot called Planet Spice) and then boarded planes bound for the South Island, where the real fun (and weather extremes) kicked in.
As usual, here’s the preview of our next location:
Now it’s time for our featured crew member! One of the most important people in the whole location process, and a key figure in the arrangement with the Ngati Rangi and Ngati Uenuku, is a man by the name of Jared Connon.
Jared is the supervising location manager and is one of the key members of the team that hunts down, checks out, organizes and locks in each of these locations that we’re tagging along on.
From the first recce photos to the clean up after filming has wrapped Jared is on the front lines, searching out spots that not only work for the story being told, but that are also logistically feasible. Keep in mind that a crew some 400+ strong (and that’s just counting main unit) has to be able to stay within close proximity, but also has to be able to access these locations.
So, it’s not as simple as Jared and his department finding pretty locations, there’s a whole logistical side that has to be figured out.
Talking with Jared he said the process on The Hobbit started back under Guillermo del Toro’s direction and many of the spots picked remained when Peter stepped from producer/writer to producer/writer/director.
The brief rundown of the process begins with the script (naturally) and a list of locations is made when Peter informs them what he’s planning on shooting in studio and what he wants to find on location. A scout researches and makes his or her way up and down both islands taking tons of reference photos of prospective spots.
Back in Wellington the team will look at these and any that might prove worthy are marked and a big recce is planned with many of the department heads and Peter to see each location for themselves and decide if they want to go for it.
When that call is made the real fun stuff begins. Securing the locations, dealing with landowners, or the government if it’s public land, and trying to squeeze every bit of value from these stops.
Location shooting is an expensive process and whenever possible they try to get a couple different locales from one company move. This time out there aren’t a lot of one or two day stops before moving on to the next location and they planned it that way. If the company can stay based in one spot and get multiple locations for different segments of both movies they get more bang for their buck.
Jared is one of the many members of the team that keep the machine greased and moving smoothly. Without him you wouldn’t get those pretty aerial shots and the whole iconic feel of these films would be reduced. So, this one’s for you, Jared! Thanks for all that you do and for the help in getting all the Maori stuff right at the start of the report!
Click Here to Read An Unexpected Journey Part 1 – Concerning Hobbiton
Click Here to Read An Unexpected Journey Part 2 – They Call Me Mr. Chubb
Click Here to Read An Unexpected Journey Part 3 – Beginnings and Endings
Click Here to Read An Unexpected Journey Part 4 – A Palaver of Istari
Click Here to Read An Unexpected Journey Part 5 – Thorin’s Dilemma
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter |
Once a rising economic power in the Balkans, a crushing economic crisis has stripped Greece of much of its wealth and pushed to ahead of only neighbors Romania and Bulgaria among the poorest countries in the European Union.
Greece is one of the poorest countries in the EU according to a research published today by a German think-tank. The country is third only to Bulgaria and Romania which are poorer. Some 20 percent of Greeks are living below the poverty level now.
According to these statistics the poorest countries in the 27 countries of the EU are mainly the Easter Europeans with the Scandinavian, Luxembourg and Netherlands being the richest. Greece ranked 14th among the 15 pre-2004 EU members.
According to IW, Institute of German Economy, Greece ranks third in poverty measured by four different ways; official poverty, which includes those who earn less than 60% of the average income, estimated poverty based on a person’s own estimation of his/hers own economic situation, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty and the real disposable income of a family.
According to researchers, poverty is a big problem in Latvia as well. Scientists proposed series of reforms to protect labor as a mean to reverse the trend of impoverishment. They also proposed supporting social groups which are in great danger of impoverishment such as single parents. Since 2008, when the economic crisis began, unemployment rose from 7.5% to 27% and poverty rose from 20% to 40% with another 20% being on the edge of the official poverty rate which is estimated as 60% of the average income. |
Also both sides do it and not a dime’s worth of difference.
Ralph Nader, the former Green Party presidential candidate and lifelong consumer activist, says Donald Trump’s dizzying presidential candidacy hasn’t been all bad, while Hillary Clinton is winning the Democratic nomination by “dictatorship.”
And though he has heaps of praise for Bernie Sanders, Nader still won’t say whom he voted for in the 2016 primary or which candidate he plans to cast a ballot for come November. He’d actually prefer there was an option for “none of the above.” . . .
[I]n an interview with U.S. News, Nader expressed more positive thoughts about Trump’s candidacy than Clinton’s.
The liberal activist says Trump has brought some important issues to the fore.
“He’s questioned the trade agreements. He’s done some challenging of Wall Street – I don’t know how authentic that is. He said he’s against the carried interest racket, for hedge funds. He’s funded himself and therefore attacked special interest money, which is very important,” Nader says. “But he’s lowered the level of political debate to unheard-of depths of salacious, slanderous and vacuousness, garnished with massive self-boosterism and repetition.”
“And that’s not good, because that brought a lot of money into the media and that’s the kind of debates they’re going to want to goad.”
When asked what positive contributions Clinton has made to the 2016 campaign, Nader called her a “corporatist, militarist Democrat” who would have been defeated by Sanders if every state held an open primary.
“She’s going to win by dictatorship. Twenty-five percent of superdelegates are cronies, mostly. They weren’t elected. They were there in order to stop somebody like Bernie Sanders, who would win by the vote,” he says.
To date, Clinton has captured 3 million more total votes than Sanders, but Nader argues the results would be different if independents were allowed to participate in each state. |
atrickomg:SpongeBuddy Mania has made it nine years on the web!The staff who has worked on it in the past and in the present want to thank all the fans and members who have come along with us on this great journey.To celebrate the ninth year of SBM, I'd like to present some updates as well as a reminder for everyone that I will be showing either a disney movie or a cartoon in our chat party on Saturday night at 8pm central time. The link to this will be provided when the times gets closer.Here are some updates:- Updated SpongeBob Nicknames list- if you ever want to do things with your best friend, here's a list you can follow, thanks to SpongeBob- make sure you follow the correct boating procedures when wanting to drive a boat- all the orders made at the KK- all the menu items at the KK- all the parties, contests, etc. that have happened in Bikini Bottom- ever wondered how many times the formula has tried to be duplicated?- too many times the formula has been incorrect- 3 new songsNow, there are still updates to come. I've got about a handful more pages to make but I'm trying to enhance them, not with sentence enhancers, but with pictures and some formatting. I will also fix some of the pages mentioned above in the near future and make them look better.You can either send a PM on the forums or send an email through the contact page.Anyways, thanks for the memories and the support for all these years! Only 365 more days til the 10-year anniversary! |
Queensland election: Adani protesters disrupt Palaszczuk's campaign trail for second day
Updated
Protesters against the Adani mining project in north Queensland have again made their presence felt on the state election campaign trail.
Both leaders are hoping to get over the distractions that already emerged from Adani protesters and from One Nation questions.
Adani protesters heckled both Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls yesterday and already this morning in Airlie Beach where Ms Palaszczuk is campaigning.
The Adani protesters were again taken away by security.
One Nation questions are still dogging Mr Nicholls and Ms Palaszczuk, which is because of full preferential voting and opinion poll predictions of success for One Nation raising the possibility of a hung parliament.
LNP leader Tim Nicholls is campaigning in south-east Queensland ahead of the November 25 poll, saying he is prepared for a fear campaign from Labor.
Just three days ago, crossbench MP Robbie Katter said if his party held the balance of power in the new parliament, he would demand that the north gains independence.
"Queenslanders have been dominated by major parties which focus on winning votes in the south-east of Queensland," he said in a press release.
"Meanwhile, they take the wealth that's generated in regional areas and funnel it down to their south-east Queensland seats."
This is no new threat — in fact the Katters have been calling for a separate state for years.
No surprise Palaszczuk campaigning in north
But it strikes a chord with voters and it shows the sentiment of residents past the Tropic of Capricorn.
It is no surprise then that Ms Palaszczuk is spending the first quarter of her campaign in the north.
"I'm up here in Airlie Beach, because we know how important regional Queensland is to this state," she said in a live cross.
"This is a really important election and I'm asking the people of Queensland to continue to put their trust in me and to deliver the jobs and health and education that we have been fighting to restore."
And it is familiar territory — back in March, within hours of the passing of Cyclone Debbie, Ms Palaszczuk was on the ground coordinating the recovery.
Her handling of the crisis reportedly garnered a peak in the polls for weeks.
LNP plugs regional plan
Mr Nicholls too knows the fight for the battleground seats of the north will be tough.
Even before the election was called, he made some 20 visits to Townsville in 12 months.
"It's about Queensland issues, it's about who has been listening, who has been planning — we've got a regional plan for regional Queensland," he told media on day one of the campaign.
Mr Nicholls said this morning he had not invited Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to help the LNP's election campaign.
He said Mr Turnbull and other federal MPs were welcome to help but he would not be drawn on whether he felt they might have a positive effect.
"That's up to others to make those judgements — I'm out there campaigning on the issues that matter to Queenslanders," he said.
"The intricacies of the political world aren't of a great deal of importance when you're finding it hard to pay your bills, when you're worried about whether your kids are going to have a job or a trade or going to get into uni, and whether you're stuck in traffic and you can't get a train."
'Two major parties have lost their way'
One Nation Queensland leader Steve Dickson said the major parties might not have a choice about doing a deal with One Nation.
"It's like drinking water — without it you die, and at the end of the day you're going to have to come and have a drink — we're holding the water," Mr Dickson said.
Mr Dickson said people were turning to One Nation because they thought the party was honest.
"We all know that the two major parties have lost their way and it's not just here — it's a worldwide phenomena," he said.
"It's happened in Europe, Germany, France, New Zealand, the United States — I mean, one would be an accident, two would be a coincidence, but there's a wave of change happening in the world and it's happening right here."
The issues here are divisive and need decisive leadership, whether it is Adani, the power crisis, water supply or unemployment.
Behind each leader is a team of advertisers, working around the clock, to get their message to the people — whether it is in the north, the south-east or everywhere in between.
Topics: elections, government-and-politics, political-parties, alp, liberal-national-party, state-parliament, parliament, one-nation, minor-parties, brisbane-4000, qld, australia, airlie-beach-4802, proserpine-4800, mackay-4740
First posted |
A recreational marijuana store located in southern Colorado became the first business of its kind in the state to announce the tax totals from the new industry that pot advocates say will be a boon for state education and struggling local economies.
Finance officials in Pueblo County, the tenth most populated county in Colorado, announced that the two marijuana shops there have earned approximately $1 million in sales in January. That sum has produced approximately $56,000 in local sales taxes.
Pueblo County is the only community between Denver, Colorado and the New Mexico state line where recreational marijuana stores are permitted by law. Two shops were opened in January, the first month in which recreational marijuana was legal in Colorado, and three more stores have since opened in February.
Along with the sales tax figure, officials told the Pueblo Chieftain that the county also collected $70,400 in licensing and renewal fees in January alone. County Commissioner Liane McFayden said that $100,000 in the first month is far ahead of the $400,000 in revenue she predicted for the entire year.
“The irony is that the only new revenue we have coming in is in marijuana and yet we have to open a new judicial building,” she said.
County Budget and finance Director Cal Hamler responded by joking, “We have to sell more weed!”
The state taxes recreational marijuana at a 10-percent rate, but then refunds 15-percent of that total back to the counties where the drug was first sold. There are 160 license pot stores throughout Colorado and each has until February 20 to publicize its sales tax totals. Pueblo County was simply the first to do so.
County Clerk Gilbert “Bo” Ortiz told the Associated Press that the marijuana industry could generate as much as $670,000 in new tax revenue for Pueblo County in 2014. If the current pace continues, Gilbert said, the state will earn $11.2 million in marijuana sales this year. That is especially remarkable when considering that the county’s annual budget is $165 million.
“Being really the only real retail marijuana outlet in southern Colorado, the numbers don’t surprise me,” Commissioner McFayden told KRDO-TV in Colorado. “Certainly we have a sheriff and a prosecutor in our district attorney not very excited about marijuana. The likelihood is it’s going to be the best avenue for us to open up our judicial building.”
It’s impossible to predict the total amount of revenue the entire state will receive by the end of the year, yet tax officials have forecast that the additional revenue could amount to $67 million. An estimated $27.5 million will be put aside for education and other regional needs, while a large percentage of the remainder will be recycled and used to regulate the marijuana industry itself. |
CLOSE Parts of Philadelphia Pike were closed Thursday night after a pedestrian was struck by a vehicle just before 7 p.m. 11/18/16 William Bretzger & Damian Giletto/The News Journal
Buy Photo John L. Schultz, 84, of Wilmington was struck and killed on Philadelphia Pike, north of the Washington Street Extension, on Thursday, Nov. 17. (Photo: William Bretzger/The News Journal)Buy Photo
If you ran a race in the Delaware Valley, you probably know who John Schultz is.
But today, the running community is mourning his death.
Schultz, 84, was killed Thursday night crossing Philadelphia Pike when he was hit by a pickup truck.
Known for his trademark red shorts and no t-shirt, Schultz didn't start running until the age 59 in 1990. The former consulting regulatory affairs chemist at the DuPont Co. missed the bus one day and decided to walk home from the DuPont Building at 10th and Market streets – in business clothes and dress shoes. Four miles later, a walk turned into a jog and a passion for running was born.
"What if I could just keep doing it?" Schultz told The News Journal in 2008.
Keep on doing it he did.
Schultz was scheduled to run two races this weekend: the Turkey Trot in Newark on Saturday and the Philadelphia Marathon on Sunday. Then, per tradition, the Brooklyn, New York, native would travel home for Thanksgiving, where friends say he would likely find a race there.
“He had the tendency to do long distance runs back-to-back,” said Wayne Kursh, CEO, and chairman of Races2Run, an organization that puts on racing events in the region.
“You hate to lose a guy like John,” Kursh said, who’s known Schultz for more than 20 years. “I thought he’d be running until he was 100.”
Buy Photo A pickup truck rests at the scene of an accident involving a pedestrian struck by a vehicle on Philadelphia Pike at Bellefonte Avenue, reported about 6:50 p.m. Thursday. (Photo: William Bretzger, The News Journal)
State Police said Schultz was trying to cross the northbound lanes of Philadelphia Pike, just north of the Washington Street Extension at about 6:50 p.m. Thursday. Schultz was wearing dark clothing and not crossing at a crosswalk, according to Master Cpl. Jeffrey Hale.
Police say Schultz stepped into the path of a 2010 Toyota Tundra driven by 32-year-old man from Wilmington.
STORY: Four-vehicle crash delays East Newport Pike traffic
STORY: Police: Crash that injured six caused by man fleeing hit-and-ru
He became the 12th pedestrian killed on Delaware's roads since Sept. 1 – three of those fatalities have occurred this week.
Many in the Delaware running community figured out that Schultz was the unnamed person killed in the accident based solely on a picture of the victim's shoe on delawareonline.com.
Buy Photo Delaware State Police officers investigate at the scene of an accident involving a pedestrian struck by a vehicle on Philadelphia Pike at Bellefonte Avenue, reported about 6:50 p.m. Thursday. (Photo: William Bretzger, The News Journal)
Ralph McKinney, 71, was a friend of Schultz for more than 35 years. They were often "traveling buddies" and he described his friend as a "unique personality who was very intelligent and in no way ready to slow down."
“It’s a tragic death because you weren’t prepared for it," McKinney said. "He was a healthy 84-year-old, and he was the oldest competitive active runner Pike Creek Valley Running Club,” McKinney said. Schultz was inducted into the organization's Hall of Fame in 2007.
“He would be running any chance he could,” McKinney said.
Schultz ran more than 100 races a year, including four marathons. It’s the reason Schultz was so well known.
“He may have competed primarily in the Tri-State area, but he was admired nationwide for his motivation, inspiration and determination to actively run at his age,” McKinney said.
Schultz averaged a 17-minute mile and while his finishing times may have decreased as he got older, McKinney said his workload did not. Schultz seldom missed races and never cut on the amount of races he ran.
Christina Richter, a neighbor of Schultz, said the running community lost a dear friend. She would always see him running and walking the same trails.
“Him and his red shorts were such a beloved part of the community,” she said.
Schultz had just completed a Dover marathon around Halloween, according to Richter.
At 84, running kept his mind, body and spirit young. It’s probably why the lover of opera and choir member at St. Helena Church, never stopped.
“Those few seconds are worth the hours that you put in up to that,” Schultz said. “Running, to me, is like a parable of life. Why are you running at all? Because there's a finish line… I figure I've got nothing to lose in the last couple hundred yards. All that's a big thrill.”
Contact Alonzo Small at (302) 324-2856 or asmall@delawareonline.com.
Read or Share this story: http://delonline.us/2g3tdIx |
Howard Phillips Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward didn't see the light of day until 1941, four years after the writer succumbed to cancer and kidney disease in his hometown of Providence, Rhode Island. Weird Tales had become a regular home for Lovecraft's work, and editor Dorothy McIlwraith included The Case… in the pulp magazine's May issue that year. Lovecraft never produced the kind of work that ran in highly visible glossies like The New Yorker or The Saturday Evening Post, and it wasn't just because of the abhorrent racist sentiments that he could barely keep from surfacing in his prose (the author made no secret of his distaste for New York City's immigrant population while he lived in Brooklyn, for example). He wrote fiction steeped in people gone mad, sea creatures, and varied unearthly horrors -- hardly the stuff of contemporary mainstream magazines.
"At the time Lovecraft penned his stories," wrote Psycho author Robert Bloch, "no self-styled sophisticate dare presume to take them seriously, either as literature or as a metaphor for contemporary reality." One of Bloch's early short stories appeared alongside The Case of Charles Dexter Ward when it ran in Weird Tales. H.P. Lovecraft's byline had by then been frequently occurring in the magazine for nearly two decades, and his story earned prime real estate, even if he wasn't around to see it. A cover line positioned atop the publication's title dubbed the work "a NEW -- never before published novel by LOVECRAFT." The lengthiest of the author's works, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward was printed in two parts, with the second half published months later. It was abridged for the magazine, and didn't appear in full form until 1943, more than 15 years after Lovecraft finished writing it.
Charles Dexter Ward is introduced as "an antiquarian from infancy" in the original prologue to Lovecraft's novella, which reads like a detail-rich newspaper report in the present tense, rife with specific dates and individual names that sometimes earn but a single mention. Ward's devotion to "history, genealogy, and the study of colonial architecture, furniture, craftsmanship at length crowded everything else from his sphere of interest," wrote Lovecraft, but this isn't what drove Ward to the psychological deterioration that I.N.J. (Ian) Culbard suggests in the first few pages of his often grim graphic novel adaptation.
Culbard's work opens after a winter that "saw a great change in (Charles Ward); whereby he abruptly stopped his general antiquarian pursuits and embarked on a desperate delving into occult subjects both at home and abroad, varied only by this strangely persistent search for his forefather's grave." Orderlies scramble inside an empty patient's room at a hospital from which Ward has vanished. The night skies are black, softened only by swirls of serene blue tones that Ian Culbard uses to depict a lunar eclipse which coincides with Ward's escape. Culbard follows Lovecraft's lead in walking the narrative backward, so that the "case" of poor Charles Dexter Ward unfolds at a lethargic, stirring clip.
Hell-bent on researching the most microscopic pieces of a layered family history, Charles Ward burrows deeply into Old Providence. Lovecraft's meticulous scene-setting is answered in the graphic novel with Ian Culbard drafting stately mansion exteriors and farmhouses in simple, slender strokes and never lending them more than two or three tones from his understated color palette. When Ward stumbles upon the records of an exporter and distant relative named Joseph Curwen, it's a fascinating find that Culbard marks with musty diary entries, blue-gray-coded flashbacks, and sordid secondhand accounts. The story's Curwen fled witchcraft persecutions-era Salem for Providence, gaining the trust of nearly no new neighbor in the process. Having kept late hours on his farm in order to carry out all sorts of alchemy and chemistry experiments, Joseph Curwen was "marveled at, feared, and finally shunned like a plague," wrote Lovecraft. Townsfolk wanted nothing to do with a man who welcomed inexplicably massive numbers of livestock onto his land, from which howls and other odd guttural outbursts could be heard nightly. Worse yet, Curwen never appeared to have aged past thirty. Charles Ward's research produced documents that dubbed him a "strange, pallid man, hardly middle-aged in aspect yet certainly not less than a full century old," and even as Ward is transfixed, the records ultimately create a composite for Joseph Curwen that is nothing less than chilling.
Action-packed comics don’t often owe to depictions of characters sifting through moldy correspondence, deciphering archaic language, and unlocking mantras typically reserved for cellars or graveyards. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is largely driven by words, but Ian Culbard -- evidently also prone to unearthing dusty texts -- has adapted several novels for the comics medium and nabbed the British Fantasy Award for Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness (2010), so he knows well how to move the author to a stylish visual format. There's lots of talk here, yellowed newspaper cut-ins, and letter reading, each set on black pages. Culbard's slope-chinned cast wears angular-cornered overcoats and facial expressions styled with minimal line work. They're dead ringers for the affluent, early 20th century Brit zombies he drew for The New Deadwardians (2012), perpetually serious figures who mull documents and converse in the tall, plush chairs preferred by the era's upper class. But within these dialogues and rigorous literary exploration lie an urgency and a textured work of horror.
Charles Ward's obsession with Joseph Curwen accounts for a mere fraction of H.P. Lovecraft's story -- Ward's studies doom him, ushering him into a pitch-black cycle involving sinister rituals, fits of violent paranoia, vampirism, and a conjuring of unfriendly apparitions best left to the past. Ian Culbard builds this wonderfully. The book is dotted with spare grisly sequences and a final act that materializes in catacombs framed in wordless, black-and-mold-green panels ala Alan Moore's Cthulhu-fired Neonomicon. And while Ward's subject grows more ghastly with the turn of every page, Lovecraft's antiquarian can hardly resist digging further. For the reader, the feeling proves contagious. |
Something that I was seeing during the first event of the Scripting Games was the use (or misuse) of implementing pipeline support for a parameter in a function or script. While most people did do this correctly, I did see a decent number of people do some things that would never work at all if someone attempted to pipe data into their function. I want to clarify/expand on some things that I talked about in a previous article that should be done and why some of the methods being used will not work like you think.
We all know that being able to pass objects (not text!) through the pipeline with PowerShell is just amazing and very powerful. Doing this by taking output from another cmdlet and then streaming it into another command which allows us to chain commands very seamlessly without effort. Doing this will also throttle the amount of memory that is being allocated (in most cases) that the current session is using for the commands.
Getting started…
Want to know more about the pipeline? Then do the right thing and explore PowerShell’s awesome help system with the following command:
Get-Help about_pipelines
What you may not know is how to properly implement this to get the benefit of the pipeline in your functions. And by this, I am talking about the Begin, Process and End blocks in the code. I am going to show initially some mistakes that could be made with this implementation and how to overcome them.
First off, how do I allow my parameter to accept pipeline input? By specifying one of the following parameter attributes:
ValueFromPipeline Accepts values of the same type expected by the parameter or that can be converted to the type that the parameter is expecting. ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName Accepts values of the same type expected by the parameter but must also be of the same name as the parameter accepting pipeline input.
Now with that out of the way, lets look at what you might expect to see:
Param ( [parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$True)] [string[]]$Computername )
The Computername parameter allows for pipeline support by value of something that is a string or a collection of strings. If we were accepting pipeline that has the same name as Computername (or any defined Aliases with the [Alias()] attribute, we would use the following:
Param ( [parameter(ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName)] [Alias('IPAddress','__Server','CN')] [string[]]$Computername )
This allows me to do something like pipe the output of a WMI query using Get-WMIObject into a function and it would grab the __Server property of the object and use it in the pipeline of the function. Pretty cool stuff! Please make sure that if you use the *ByPropertyName attribute, that there is actually a property in the object either supports it or you are using an Alias attribute that has the property that will map to whatever the incoming object has.
Now on to the main point of this article which is setting up the guts of the function to process this correctly.
Begin, Process and End with no pipeline support
First off, if you are not accepting pipeline input, you really have no need to use Begin, Process and End because frankly, it is doing nothing for you other than just taking up space in your code. I know that people may be doing this as a way to organize their code, but there is a better way that I will show you in a moment.
Function Get-Something { [cmdletbinding()] Param ( [parameter()] [string[]]$Computername ) Begin { Write-Verbose "Initialize stuff in Begin block" } Process { Write-Verbose "Stuff in Process block to perform" ForEach ($Computer in $Computername) { $Computer } } End { Write-Verbose "Final work in End block" } }
This is really a false sense of the blocks working as they are just going in the order provided in the code. Instead, take advantage of the PowerShell V3 ISE and its ability to use code folding with regions to organize your code accordingly.
Function Get-Something { [cmdletbinding()] Param ( [parameter()] [string[]]$Computername ) #region Initialization code Write-Verbose "Initialize stuff in Begin block" #endregion Initialization code #region Process data Write-Verbose "Stuff in Process block to perform" ForEach ($Computer in $Computername) { $Computer } #endregion Process data #region Finalize everything Write-Verbose "Final work in End block" #endregion Finalize everything }
Same output, but now without the Begin, Process and End blocks. I’ll repeat it again, if you don’t allow for pipeline input, then just stick with using #region/#endregion tags to organize your code (you should also do this regardless of pipeline input or not).
Pipeline support with no Process block support
Ok, so what happens if we do specify a parameter that has pipeline support but has NO Process block? This was something common I saw during Event 1 and will show you what happens when trying to run a command that is setup this way.
Function Get-Something { [cmdletbinding()] Param ( [parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$True)] [string[]]$Computername ) Write-Verbose "Initialize stuff in Begin block" Write-Verbose "Stuff in Process block to perform" $Computername Write-Verbose "Final work in End block" }
What do you think will happen when I run this with pipeline input? Will it process everything? Will it process nothing? Lets find out!
If you thought that it would only show the last item in the pipeline, then you are the winner! What is happening is that without the Process block, the behavior is similar to what we would expect from the End block.
The way to do it…
So what is the proper way to accomplish this, let me show you that now with the following example.
Function Get-Something { [cmdletbinding()] Param ( [parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$True)] [string[]]$Computername ) Begin { Write-Verbose "Initialize stuff in Begin block" } Process { Write-Verbose "Stuff in Process block to perform" $Computername } End { Write-Verbose "Final work in End block" } }
Works like a champ now. But take a look at something here. The Write-Verbose statement runs for each item that is processed in the pipeline. What does this mean? Well, it means that you have to be careful about what is put in the Process block as it will run each and every time for each item being passed through the pipeline. In other words, don’t try to create the same file to write to with output or creating your main array that will hold data in it such as this example:
Function Get-Something { [cmdletbinding()] Param ( [parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$True)] [string[]]$Computername ) Begin { Write-Verbose "Initialize stuff in Begin block" } Process { $report = @() Write-Verbose "Stuff in Process block to perform" $report += $Computername } End { Write-Verbose "Final work in End block" $Report } }
All of that data collected was overwritten with each item. I also saw something similar to this on a few submissions during Event 1. Be careful about not making this mistake!
Do I need all of these Begin, Process and End blocks?
With all of this information presented to you, does this mean that you only have to specify a Process block in your function? Well, yes and no. Yes if all you have is pipeline stuff to process and have no need to initialize anything else in the beginning. If you do have things to spin up, then add a Begin block to handle that, otherwise your function will fail when being run like this:
Function Get-Something { [cmdletbinding()] Param ( [parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$True)] [string[]]$Computername ) Write-Verbose "Initialize stuff in Begin block" Process { Write-Verbose "Stuff in Process block to perform" $Computername } }
The function will actually load into memory without issue, but check out what happens when you attempt to run the function.
All seems well until we get to the Process piece. Instead of being read as a Process block, it is misinterpreted as Get-Process which obviously fails. Point here is keep everything in the Begin,Process and End blocks if you have need for them.
Function Get-Something { [cmdletbinding()] Param ( [parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$True)] [string[]]$Computername ) Begin { Write-Verbose "Initialize stuff in Begin block" } Process { Write-Verbose "Stuff in Process block to perform" $Computername } }
Much better!
Multiple parameters that accept pipeline input
Now for something a little different. I saw at least one submission that had multiple parameters with pipeline input and wondered how was that going to work (turns out not so well!). See this example:
Function Get-Something { [cmdletbinding()] Param ( [parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$True)] [string[]]$Name, [parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$True)] [string[]]$Directory ) Begin { Write-Verbose "Initialize stuff in Begin block" } Process { Write-Verbose "Process block" Write-Host "Name: $Name" Write-Host "Directory: $Directory" } End { Write-Verbose "Final work in End block" $Report } }
Instead of the usual numbers into the pipeline, I am going to use Get-ChildItem and pipe that into my function to see what happens.
Weird, isn’t it? It will process the same value for each parameter just because it accepted pipeline input. How do we get around this issue? Use the PipelineValueByPropertyName attribute instead.
Function Get-Something { [cmdletbinding()] Param ( [parameter(ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$True)] [string[]]$Name, [parameter(ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$True)] [string[]]$Directory ) Begin { Write-Verbose "Initialize stuff in Begin block" } Process { Write-Verbose "Process block" Write-Host "Name: $Name" Write-Host "Directory: $Directory" } End { Write-Verbose "Final work in End block" $Report } }
Now we are able to pull two separate values with 2 parameters that accept pipeline input. Another option would be to use ParameterSets, but that would mean that you would only have one parameter or the other to accept pipeline input and wouldn’t have the output that I have above allowing the use of multiple parameters to accept input AND use that in the function side by side.
One last thing, take care when using both ValueFromPipeline and …ByPropertyName with multiple parameters as it can cause some craziness in the output.
Function Get-Something { [cmdletbinding()] Param ( [parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$True,ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$True)] [string[]]$Name, [parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$True,ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$True)] [string[]]$Directory ) Begin { Write-Verbose "Initialize stuff in Begin block" } Process { Write-Verbose "Process block" Write-Host "Name: $Name" Write-Host "Directory: $Directory" } End { Write-Verbose "Final work in End block" } }
In fact, this completely freaks out the Directory parameter and doesn’t actually bind to anything. This is due to the order of binding when you use both of these attributes.
Order of Parameter Binding Process From Pipeline
Bind parameter by Value with same Type (No Coercion) Bind parameter by PropertyName with same Type (No Coercion) Bind parameter by Value with type conversion (Coercion) Bind parameter by PropertyName with type conversion (Coercion)
You can use Trace-Command to dig deeper into this and really see what is happening. Working with Trace-Command can be complicated and reading all of the output can certainly be overwhelming, so use at your own discretion!
This is a little bonus content on working with Trace-Command and seeing where the parameter binding is taking place as well as when Coercion and No Coercion is taking place. I’ll be covering 6 one-liners to highlight specific items with the parameter binding.
The baseline that I will be using is for a timestamp that is a string and then another object that has a [datetime] type that will be piped into 5 functions to show each method of binding.
#String time $nonType = New-Object PSObject -prop @{Datetime = "5:00 PM"} #[datetime] type $Type = New-Object PSObject -prop @{Datetime = [datetime]"5:00 PM"}
Looking at how parameter binding handles different types
Here we will look at a simple function that accepts pipeline input by PropertyName to handle incoming data.
Function Get-Something_PropName { [cmdletbinding()] Param ( [parameter(ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$True)] [datetime[]]$Datetime ) Process {$Datetime} }
First lets run my variable with the Type [datetime] already defined and see where the parameter binding takes place:
Trace-Command parameterbinding {$Type | get-Something_PropName} -PSHost
You can see that it started out at line 5 by first seeing if it can pass the NO COERCION with the ByPropertyName attribute by validating that it is the type of [datetime] with the result being SUCCESSFUL.
Next up: the non-type property for the datetime parameter.
Trace-Command parameterbinding {$nonType | get-Something_PropName} -PSHost
Remember where the NO COERCION worked on the last run because the property was of the same type as the parameter requirement? Well, it doesn’t work out so well with my string value of “5:00 PM”. You can see where it doesn’t pass with a SKIPPED. Next up is the attempt to cast the input (COERCION) as the [datetime] type so it can match what the $DateTime parameter is requiring. This is done using the [System.Management.Automation.ArgumentTypeConverterAttribute] and in this case, it is SUCCESSFUL.
As a side note, I will be using the $nonType variable from here on out to show each time how it fails the NO COERCION attempt before the COERCION attempt.
Working with the [Alias()] attribute
Writing advanced functions means that support pipelining means also potentially using the [Alias()] parameter attribute to handle other properties that the parameter doesn’t have. This is more important when working with ByPropertyName.
Function Get-Something_PropName_NoAlias { [cmdletbinding()] Param ( [parameter(ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$True)] [datetime[]]$Date ) Process {$Date} }
Trace-Command parameterbinding {$nonType | get-Something_PropName_NoAlias} -PSHost
Well, that is certainly interesting. If you look at line 4 here, it shows an arg of System.Management.Automation.PSCustomObject which isn’t all that useful. This is because the property being passed is DateTime while the parameter of this function is Date. The PropertyByName completely fails because it has no idea about the incoming data. So will ByValue work instead? Lets find out.
Trace-Command parameterbinding {$nonType | get-Something_Value_NoAlias} -PSHost
A little better this time around, but still a failure. Since it is ByValue, the parameter doesn’t care about what the name is of the object being passed through. It does see the input as a hash table with the data viewable, but still fails because it is neither the type of [datetime] nor can it be converted to the type as well. Just for run, lets pass a single integer into this and see how it works out.
Trace-Command parameterbinding {1 | get-Something_Value_NoAlias} -PSHost
Obviously it was never going to be of the [datetime] type, but it was easily converted into a [datetime] type object so it was able to bind to the parameter even without the alias attribute.
Ok, now we are going to add an Alias attribute for ‘DateTime’ to handle the incoming object.
Function Get-Something_PropName_Alias { [cmdletbinding()] Param ( [parameter(ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$True)] [Alias('DateTime')] [datetime[]]$Date ) Process {$Date} }
Trace-Command parameterbinding {$nonType | get-Something_PropName_Alias} -PSHost
As expected with the nontype input, the first check fails and then, thanks to the alias that handles the DateTime parameter, is successful with the COERCION check. Rather than show what would happen with the ByValue attempt, what do you think will happen this time around? HINT: History will repeat itself.
Working with both ByPropertyName and ByValue and Aliases
Up until now, I have been working with either ByValue or ByPropertyName, but never actually combining both into a function. That changes with the following example. Here I will have both configured as well as setting an Alias to show what happens both with the nontype input.
Function Get-Something_PropName_Value_Alias { [cmdletbinding()] Param ( [parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$True,ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$True)] [Alias("Datetime")] [datetime]$Date ) Process {$Date} }
This shows a perfect example of the list I showed on how the parameter attempts to bind the incoming data. First it attempts the ByValue and ByPropertyName with NO COERCION (matching the type of object to parameter) and then proceeding to the type conversion (COERCION) with ByPropertyName before finally succeeding with the ByValue type conversion.
Doing what I did earlier by adding a 1 instead of the $nonType shows a different result by succeeding on the ValueFromPipeline WITH COERCION.
If using No Aliases in your function for parameters, expect some issues as well. If you are passing an object into your function that doesn’t have the same property name as your parameter, then it will fail regardless of how the pipeline attributes are set. The only way it would succeed is if you pass a single object (vs. an object that has multiple properties) that will work for the ByValue and is either of the same type or can be converted to the required type.
That wraps up this post on implementing pipeline support as well as taking a swim into using Trace-Command to debug parameter binding. Hopefully this has provided you enough information to feel better prepared to implementing pipeline support as well as troubleshooting when it fails. |
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CASS COUNTY, Mo. -- A teenager upset over the New England Patriots' victory in Super Bowl 51 is facing a felony charge for threatening his high school through a social media post. Prosecutors charged Jashon Taylor, 17, of making a terrorist threat, a class D felony.
A probable cause statement says Taylor was mad that the Patriots beat the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday night, so on Snapchat he threatened to shoot up Belton High School. The court document states he said in part: "Bro i hate the patriots and every fan they have... OMG im f****n pissed. Let it be known im shooting Belton tomorrow or tuesday whenever i go back. Imma find every hoe bragging and blast them."
One of Taylor's Snapchat followers took a screenshot and emailed it to police. When officers went to Taylor's home and asked if he knew why they were there, he replied: "It's about what was posted on Snapchat." His mom asked him about what he posted, and he replied: "about shooting up the school."
He was arrested and upon further questioning admitted that he typed and posted the statement to Snapchat, which he said about 50 people saw. He added that several people messaged him, urging him to delete the post, which he did after about 15 minutes.
Online court records show that Taylor was released on a signature bond, no court dates are listed for him yet. |
Pyongyang: North Korean state media warned on Tuesday of a nuclear attack on the United States at any sign of American aggression as a US Navy strike group steamed toward the western Pacific.
US President Donald Trump, who has urged China to do more to rein in its impoverished ally and neighbour, said in a Tweet that North Korea was "looking for trouble" and the United States would "solve the problem" with or without Beijing's help.
Tension has escalated sharply on the Korean peninsula amid concerns that reclusive North Korea may soon conduct a sixth nuclear test and after Washington said at the weekend it was diverting the aircraft carrier strike group Carl Vinson toward the Korean peninsula in a show of force.
US officials have stressed that stronger sanctions are the most likely US course to press North Korea to abandon its nuclear program, but Washington has said all options - including military ones - are on the table. It said a US strike last week against Syria should serve as a warning to Pyongyang. |
Hamas Leader Urges Citizens to Offer Themselves as Human Shields (Video)
Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri urged Gaza Muslims to offer themselves up as human shields.
“It’s been proven effective.”
Via the IDF Blog:
What lovely people.
MEMRI has the transcript:
Interviewer: “Are people still going up to the rooftops?” Ayad Abu Rida (Reporter) : “Witnesses told us that there is a large gathering, and people are still going to the Kawari family house, in order to prevent the Zionist occupation’s warplanes from targeting it.” Interviewer: “What is your comment about this? People are reverting to the (human-shield) method, which proved very successful in the days of martyr Nizar Riyan…” Sami Abu Zuhri: “This attests to the character of our noble, Jihad-fighting people, who defend their rights and their homes with their bare chests and their blood. The policy of people confronting the Israeli warplanes with their bare chests in order to protect their homes has proven effective against the occupation. Also, this policy reflects the character of our brave, courageous people. We in Hamas call upon our people to adopt this policy, in order to protect the Palestinian homes.” |
There are many limits I can see a user reaching on their PCs and in the online services they use. Storage is the main concern with your Gmail account having a storage limit, your Dropbox account having a ceiling depending on your account tier, and ISPs increasingly limiting our bandwidth quotas. One limit I never thought I’d see someone quote is a contacts limit, but that’s exactly what one Google Apps user is currently facing – he can’t add any more people to his list.
Brad Feld, managing director of Foundry Group has recently hit such a limit on his Google Apps account. He thought it strange, so got his IT guy Ross to contact Google about increasing the limit. His mail simply said:
One of our users has hit some sort of limit of 10,000 contacts – we need this increased as this user needs more than 10,000. Can you let me know how to increase this limit?
Google’s usual response to such a question is to increase the limit, or at least offer to for a price. Both would have been acceptable responses for Feld. But in this case it is a hard limit and Google responded as such:
Hello Ross, Thank you for your message. I understand that you are inquiring about the Contact limit per user for a Google Apps for Business account. This is expected functionality at the moment and we suggest that you remove some of the contacts that you don’t use to free up some space on your account. You are not able to increase this amount, however if you would like you can submit a feature request for increasing the amount of Contacts each user has. To do this please follow these instructions 1. Login to your Google Apps account.
2. In your dashboard, scroll down to the very bottom on the screen and you will see a link called ‘Suggest a Feature.’
3. Click on this link and you will be able to fill out a feature request. I hope you found this information useful, Ross and thank you for your understanding.
While I doubt many people will ever reach 10,000 contacts it is something to keep in mind. It also makes very little sense as to why 10,000 is the limit. Any ideas?
Read more at FeldThoughts |
Marlborough businessman Tony Smale is disappointed that Marlborough has been overlooked by Government and television broadcaster, with Marlburians facing the same or higher costs for Freeview than other parts of the country, for a lower quality service.
Marlborough residents will not have access to Freeview high definition television despite the cable supplying the service to Nelson running through Blenheim.
The broadcasting minister, Freeview and television broadcaster TVNZ said Marlborough was missing out because of a lack of funding.
Freeview is the digital replacement for analogue TV, which is being switched off in Marlborough on April 28.
While 86 per cent of the country have access to Freeview HD, Marlborough will not. They are also among the 600,000 people who will be able to access only 18 of the 28 channels on Freeview Satellite.
This is despite the Freeview feed for Nelson being delivered via fibre-optic cable from Christchurch and through Blenheim, before being bounced to the Nelson transmission site via microwave repeaters above Kaituna and Havelock.
Blenheim businessman Tony Smale, who recently went to upgrade his television, was surprised Marlborough residents would miss out on Freeview HD.
"This is symptomatic of the decision-making that goes on in Wellington," he said.
"How can it be a question of economics when Nelson's cable runs through Blenheim?"
Government and broadcasters appeared to have been misinformed when making their decision, he said, pointing out that Masterton, which had half the population of Marlborough, is getting Freeview HD.
After making some inquiries, he received a response from Broadcasting Minister Craig Foss, who said the aim was to get the widest population coverage with the available funding, and there were no plans to expand the network further.
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment spokesman Ian Hutchings said the Kaituna repeater was capable of covering Blenheim if broadcasters decided to extend the service, but TVNZ transmission service manager Wayne Huggard said it would be a significant extra cost.
Freeview general manager Sam Irvine said the reception quality of Freeview satellite would still be a big improvement over analogue.
However, Noel Leeming Blenheim store manager Joe Smith said the Freeview satellite quality would be only 70 per cent as good as Freeview HD. The only way to get high definition television here would be by paying for SKY or Igloo services. |
Image: Apple
While we still have a few more days to wait before Apple's latest smartphones arrive in our hands, the next-generation mobile software iOS 7 will land on devices from Wednesday.
iOS 7 is the seventh major iteration of the mobile platform, which according to latest IDC and Gartner figures powers about 14 percent of all smartphones worldwide, compared to Android's massive 79 percent. That said, Apple's iPad tablet share remains strong at about one-third of the market.
Read this Apple's iOS 7 hands-on, in pictures (gallery) The iPhone and iPad maker on Monday announced iOS 7, its latest mobile operating system. ZDNet takes it for a test drive and shows you the new user interface and some of the new features. Read More
The new software includes more than 200 new features, including an overhauled bright and colorful user interface. It also packs in a number of business-ready features designed to entice prosumers and enterprise users.
But not everyone will want to — or necessarily should — install the latest version on their iPhones and iPads.
Before you accept the automatic software upgrade on your phone, or head to iTunes to download the software, think again. Here are six important factors to consider.
1. Some apps won't be compatible right away
As with almost every new software version, apps often require a modest update at most to remain compatible. But some apps will fall behind simply fail to work — or fail to appear in the update list — because of an incompatibility issue.
In some cases, apps that were previously available may no longer be due to Apple having to approve each app before it can be downloaded by the end user. The technology giant has updated requirements for existing apps, such as user interface tweaks, and may not receive immediate approval. In some cases, apps can get stuck in the approval queue for weeks.
On the other hand, some apps will be designed specifically for iOS 7 and will be entirely worth the upgrade.
2. There isn't a jailbreak available (yet)
For some, jailbreaking a phone flings open the gates to Apple's walled garden of in-built features, apps, and services. For others, it's not even remotely important, and in some cases frowned upon by IT departments. That said, as many iPhone owners are bring-your-own-device (BYOD) users, many still prefer to have their devices running customization tweaks and features that non-jailbroken devices would lack.
While few iPhone developers have given a firm timeline for offering their jailbreak wares — it depends on how secure iOS 7 is, as jailbreak tools require exploiting the software's security layers — no doubt many security experts and hackers will be working tirelessly on it from the moment they land their hands on iOS 7. In some cases, it can take less than a day, but with every minor software update comes new fixes to prevent existing jailbreak tools from working.
3. Expect a few bugs and quirks in the first few weeks
According to some estimates, one percent of all iPhone traffic is already using a pre-release version of iOS 7. But that remains a mere fraction of the vast majority who will end up installing the finished and polished software.
But as the pool widens out to the general public, expect a few bugs and flaws that haven't yet been ironed out. This isn't a dig at Apple's quality control — in any major software upgrade from any manufacturer, you can expect (and likely have at some point experienced) the same. In line with previous years, updates will likely be coming to iOS 7 in the trailing weeks after its initial release to fix anything that users are struggling with.
4. If you're using a work phone, check with IT first
Despite the inclusion of new enterprise-focused features , such as per-app virtual private networking (VPN) and single sign-on support, business users may not be allowed to upgrade to the latest software until an IT administrator or CIO approves the software.
In any case, internal apps or mobile device management (MDM) solutions may not yet be compatible with the latest software, systems may need to be adjusted to accommodate new features, or it may simply be too early for businesses to risk jumping on the early adoption train so soon. If you upgrade without permission from work, you could find your device barred from use on the corporate network.
5. Older devices may experience sluggishness
iOS 7 is compatible with the iPhone 4, iPod touch (5th generation), and iPad 2 tablets and later. Not all devices come with the same feature set as the brand new iPhone 5s and 5c smartphones, and the latest iPad with Retina display, as they require the latest hardware to work properly. (If the device isn't listed, such as iPhone 3GS handsets, you're unfortunately out of luck.)
Older compatible devices may still not see the full performance one might expect with the latest editions to Apple's smartphone and tablet lineup.
Users should be aware that older devices that retain iOS 7 compatibility may be slow or sluggish at times, particularly if the device is low on storage or when running multiple apps at the same time.
6. Downgrading to iOS 6 may be impossible
Though beta and pre-release versions of iOS 7 allowed developers and software testers to downgrade to the latest stable iOS 6.1.3 or 6.1.4 build, Apple is not expected to extend the same courtesy with the final "gold master" version of iOS 7.
As with other recent major iterations of iOS, it has become increasingly difficult — if not impossible — to downgrade to earlier major versions of iOS unless certain files are saved. Even then, it often requires third-party non-Apple apps, and this process is not officially supported. And for those running the latest devices with A5 and A6 chips, you're altogether out of luck due to the way the software is constructed.
More on iOS 7: |
This summer we added support for texting from your computer and it was one of our most popular updates. Today we’re bringing this same feature to Android tablets!
Texting from your Android tablet with Pushbullet is really simple. To get started, you will need to have Pushbullet set up on your phone and have SMS sync enabled there. Once you’ve got that set up, just tap SMS in our Android app’s menu on your tablet to start texting any time.
Your SMS threads show up on the left and clicking on a thread opens the conversation history. You can then send a text by simply typing a message and tapping send.
The text messages are sent from your tablet to your phone before being sent. This means they come from your phone number and the recipient never knows you’re sitting with your tablet. (This also means any SMS rates your carrier charges still apply to texts sent using Pushbullet on tablet.)
If you have more than one phone, you can select which device to send the text messages from using the selector on the top of the SMS screen.
Texting from your tablet is available to all Pushbullet users, though starting December 1st, unlimited texting with Pushbullet does require a Pro account.
Get the latest version of Pushbullet from the Play Store now to get texting from your tablet!
PS: We’re doing an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on the Android subreddit today. Join us there to talk about Pushbullet Pro and anything else on your mind! |
A significant amount of work on JavaScript toolkits and frameworks has centered around trying to fix, normalize, and optimize browser implementations. Doing so requires making many assumptions about what the problems are, how our tools will be used by developers, and what we expect of the future.
The assumptions made often turn out to be wrong. What’s worse is that these choices may prove to be correct for a very long time before coming back to bite us. During this period of blissful ignorance, toolkits can become tremendously popular and become a vital part of large, complex codebases.
Event Bubbling and Event Delegation
Event bubbling allows events originating from a child node to “bubble up” to its parents. This behavior led JavaScript developers to the loose design pattern of identifying the node we really care about receiving events from – which is typically written using CSS selector syntax – but adding the listener to a parent of that node.
Once this pattern made its way into toolkits, a number of assumptions had to be made when designing the APIs we have today, originally revolving around both performance and efficiency.
Event delegation is one of the defacto ways of doing event handling. But is it the right methodology for all projects? In fact, the better question might be whether the assumptions each toolkit has made are right for your project. Knowing whether an API is right for your project depends on knowing what assumptions these tools are built on and understanding how each toolkit has interpreted them.
Assumptions
Let’s look at some assumptions that might be made in thinking through how to efficiently manage DOM events.
The native event registration mechanism is too slow
Unless you can come up with a secondary reason for an API to exist, do not create a new API. With the effort browser vendors are putting into their run-times, it is all but guaranteed your implementation will one day be slower than the native implementation. At SitePen, we had a project that relied on the speed of an array splice. Even though we discovered in some cases that manually downshifting indexes and array length could result in a significant speed improvement, we had no way of targeting a specific browser, browser version, or platform as there was no way to do a run-time feature test to determine if our implementation was faster than the native API.
New native APIs will not emerge
Work very carefully to guarantee you’ve gathered enough information to fall back to a native implementation either as it exists now or as it could conceivably exist in a perfect world. Another term for this is “future proofing”. In some cases, you may end up with an API that has more required parameters than absolutely necessary, but if it guarantees an easy transition to a significantly better native API, do it. A good example of this is the eventual native support for querySelectorAll where browsers implemented an API natively that many developers assumed would never happen.
There is no performance penalty for uncommon use cases
Event delegation may manifest itself in several ways and the two outlying situations are a small number of events on a large number of nodes versus a large number of events on a small number of nodes. If you optimize the API for one of these two outliers, you may create significant bottlenecks for the other. With event delegation, while we may only ever have to add an event listener to a single node, a complicated method of identifying the nodes where callbacks should fire may have a disproportionate performance hit. This can be the case with event delegation when a large number of events are fired very quickly, such as mouse movement or scroll events.
DOM events aren’t always the result of user interaction – we also have synthetic, custom, and loading events.
Conditions and context
When considering event delegation, it is easy to think that we only need to concern ourselves with user interaction. This could lead us to assume that nodes are always part of a document and then ask, why wouldn’t we just add a single event handler to the document object? But DOM events aren’t always the result of user interaction – we also have synthetic, custom, and loading events. If the nodes we want to listen to are not in the document yet, but the main listener is on the document object, we will never be notified. And if it is unclear from the API that the listener has been added to the document and not one of the passed parameters, it can be baffling to understand why this is happening.
Abstraction is required
If a toolkit was to offer an API for event handling that only supported delegation – requiring both a parent node and a selector to identify child nodes – there would be no way to add an event listener directly to a node. Even requiring CSS selector syntax introduces higher-order functionality that could easily use another selector syntax or a simple function.
Side effects will not happen
As we saw above, DOM event bubbling allows the event delegation pattern to exist in the first place. But when you learn about what the full specification entails, you will see that event bubbling can be canceled. Your implementation may involve passing a custom event to the callback with a no-op stopPropagation method or you may just document that this can be a problem and limit the utility of your event delegation API. Both of these approaches have problems, but if you decide to do something like attach the event handler to the document object, it can amplify the side effects by adding a significant number of layers where the event can be canceled.
Timelessness
Once code has been written, it is tempting to “set it and forget it”. But with each year browsers improve in ways we cannot imagine or predict and the assumptions we had when the code was written may prove to have been wrong despite our best efforts.
Summary
Why are you choosing event delegation for your project?
Is the native implementation too slow? That’s unlikely in modern browsers.
Are there better APIs to perform event delegation? Not yet – if you need event delegation, this is a good pattern.
Does the toolkit’s performance optimization match what your project needs? If it’s focused on an outlier, it may not.
Is there something about the toolkit’s implementation that won’t work for your project? Read the documentation, it will usually be noted.
Are there side effects? You may not find this out until you run into a bug, so have it in the back of your mind.
Because all design patterns risk becoming anti-patterns as people learn them without learning the assumptions made during their creation, you should ask these same questions for any new tool you employ in your project. Be especially careful if what you are doing seems like it is cutting a corner. With care and thoughtfulness, your projects will be the shining monuments you know they can be.
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Adelphophage wrote:
Fate of the Carlyle expedition we always found to be a bit easy, to be honest. It's essentially a variation on the "do X research encounters" mystery all the official Ancient Ones have, with the slight complication you have to go to a specific location and one bonus (generally beneficial) encounter at the end.
What exactly slowed you down? Were you spending a lot of time getting to the Eldritch tokens, or were you having trouble on the tests to get the clues? Also, just want to check, you only moved the eldritch token to a new space if you succeeded in getting the clue, right?
Thanks for spotting the typo, I'm building up a list of corrections for the next version. Also, thanks for playing, and I hope you give it another go!
Given that you spent quite a while on the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh, how did you find the Plagues of Egypt - were they annoying and did any go off? |
Nick Diaz is easily one of the most popular fighters in mixed martial arts (MMA) today.
His brash microphone skills, precision boxing, durable chin and intelligent offensive output makes him one of the most well-rounded fighters in Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) today, whether at Welterweight or Middleweight.
But, despite his striking skills and raw toughness, the 32-year-old Stockton, Calif., native is even better on the ground. This recent video posted by BJPenn.com showcases the flexibility needed to pull off some of the guard positions and submission attempts that the veteran has provided over the years.
It's a staggering feat to be able to bend like a ballerina, but Diaz seems to have it down pat. There are probably only a handful of fighters in UFC today who can stretch their limbs in such a manner.
Diaz is currently fulfilling his 18-month suspension from a failed drug test leading back to his bout with Anderson Silva at UFC 183, but will eligible to return to action this August. |
Before the advent of central banks in the early 20th century, prices were just as likely to go up as down. The world of the 1930s and the more recent lost decades of Japan give testament. Prices change – and while they usually go up these days, sometimes they do not. We are at such a moment of uncertainty.
That one or the other should be favored, is a fascinating debate. Currently, almost all central bankers have a targeted level of inflation that approaches 2%. Some even argue for higher levels now that deflationary demons approach in peripheral Euroland. They argue that the 2% level is sort of like a firebreak. Once inflation approaches zero, goes their theory, the deflationary firestorm is difficult to stop. With interest rates at zero and quantitative easing approaching potential political maximums, there is little water left to pour on the flames. Best then to keep inflation at a reasonable 2% so that the zero hour never comes. They have a point, but then how to explain to the average 30-year-old citizen that if so, his/her retirement dollar will only be worth half as much come 65, and if inflation averages 3%, it will only be worth a third. Actually, a 30-year-old citizen of the 1970s (yours truly), has experienced a 75% depreciation of his purchasing power.
Jim Grant, one of the most gifted financial historians of our day, has long argued that economies did just fine during bouts of deflation in the 18th and 19th centuries – in fact, in many cases, they did better. America in the 1880s was a period of good deflation with output rising by 2% to 3% from 1873 to 1893.
But Grant must know, I suspect, that our modern finance based economy is not your 19th century Oldsmobile, if there had been one. Stopping the printing press sounds like a great solution to the depreciation of our purchasing power but today’s printing is simply something that the global finance based economy cannot live without.
Why not? Simple math, I suppose. Our 2014 U.S. Oldsmobile requires 4% nominal growth just to keep it running, and Euroland economies need at least 3%. Having created outstanding official and shadow banking credit of nearly $100 trillion with an average imbedded interest rate of 4% to 5%, the Fed presses must crank out new credit (nominal growth) of approximately the same 4% to 5% just to pay the interest rate tab. That of course wasn’t the case in Grant’s 19th century version – there was very little debt to service. But now at 500% to 600% of GDP (shadow debt included), it’s a Sisyphean struggle just to stay above water. Inflation, in other words – or in simple math – is required to pay for prior inflation. Deflation is no longer acceptable.
Such is the dilemma facing central bankers (and supposedly fiscal authorities) in 2014 and beyond: How to create inflation. They’ve made a damn fine attempt at it – have they not? Four trillion dollars in the U.S., two trillion U.S. dollar equivalents in Japan, and a trillion U.S. dollars coming from the ECB’s Draghi in the eurozone. Not working like it used to, the trillions seem to seep through the sandy loam of investment and innovation straight into the cement mixer of the marketplace. Prices go up, but not the right prices. Alibaba’s stock goes from $68 on opening day to $92 in the first minute, but wages simply sit there for years on end. One economy (the financial one) thrives while the other economy (the real one) withers.
The real economy needs money printing, yes, but money spending more so, and that must come from the fiscal side – from the dreaded government side – where deficits are anathema and balanced budgets are increasingly in vogue. Until then, Grant’s deflation remains a growing possibility – not the kind that creates prosperity but the kind that’s the trouble for prosperity.
Earlier today in The Trouble with Porosity and Prosperity Bill Gross mentioned the possibility of deflation in the US and spoke of the Fed's Sisyphean struggle to create inflation.In a Bloomberg TV interview, Trish Regan asked Marc Faber about Gross' deflation theory. Faber also discussed Japan's latest QE endeavor.Faber stated: Japan is Engaged in a Ponzi Scheme . Click on link to watch video.TRISH REGAN: Hello, Marc. Always good to see you. What do you think here about what Bill Gross is saying? Do you think in fact deflation is a real possibility.MARC FABER: Well, I think the concept of inflation and deflation is frequently misunderstood because in some sectors of the economy you can have inflation and in some sectors deflation. But if the investment implication of Bill Gross is that – and he’s a friend of mine. I have high regard for him. If the implication is that one should be long US treasuries, to some extent I agree. The return on 10-year notes will be miserable, 2.35 percent for the next 10 years if you hold them to maturity in each of the next 10 years.However, if you compare that to French government bonds yielding today 1.21 percent, I think that’s quite a good deal, or Japanese bonds, a country that is engaged in a Ponzi scheme, bankrupt, they have government bond yields yielding 0.43 percent.Well I think they’re engaged in a Ponzi scheme in the sense that all the government bonds that the Treasury issues are being bought by the Bank of Japan.REGAN: So Japan’s engaged in a Ponzi scheme. What about the US? We’ve done our share of money printing. We’ve had record low interest rates for six years.FABER: I think the good news is – for Japan is that most countries are engaged in a Ponzi scheme and it will not end well. But as Carlo Ponzi proved, it can take a long time until the whole system collapses.Here are a few excerpts courtesy of Bloomberg that did not appear in the above video.REGAN: I know you have been bullish in gold for – well, pretty much forever, Marc. But now we’re in a situation where gold is at a four-year low. Goldman now predicting 10, 15 down [percent]. Soc Gen saying $1,000. Where do you see gold finishing the year?FABER: I would say Goldman Sachs is very good at predicting lower prices when they want to buy something. I would say, yes, we are down from $1,900 to $1,160 or something like this, and it’s been a miserable performance since 2011. However, from the 1990 lows we’re still up more than four times. So I just looked at performance tables over 10 years and 15 years. Gold hasn’t done that badly, has done actually better than stocks.Now I personally, I think that we may still go lower. It’s possible. I’m not a prophet, but I’m telling you I want to own some gold because I don’t trust the financial system anymore. I think the whole thing is going to collapse one day and then I’ll be happy to have some assets. But of course the custody is important. I wouldn’t hold my gold at the Federal Reserve because they will lend it out. I wouldn’t hold my gold in the US at all.REGAN: Okay. So you want gold even at these levels. Where do you see – you still see it going lower however as we close out the year?FABER: I don’t know whether it will go lower, but I think by the time I die, it will be meaningfully higher. I’m now 68 and I don’t think it will be 100 [I will die at 100]. I’m not that optimistic.Gross and Faber are primarily talking about prices (price inflation and deflation), not monetary inflation and deflation. However, Gross mixes the two when he discusses printing presses and credit math.Nonetheless, Gross' context is clear. I run into this myself and dislike having to write "price", "monetary", or "credit" in front of every inflation or deflation reference when context should make it clear.Bill Gross says "."I suggest, ordinary consumer price deflation will not hurt banks one bit. The problem for the Fed is not price deflation, but asset-price deflation.Gross should be able to figure this out. Interestingly, Gross even spoke of "The truth of the matter is falling consumer prices never have and never will hurt banks.The alleged "bad deflation" which Gross did not mention is in regards to falling asset prices. If banks extend loans on houses or other investment property, and the loans go sour, banks become capital impaired, unable or unwilling to lend.The irony is the Fed (central banks in general), cause asset price inflation (followed by deflationary asset price busts), when they attempt to create 2% inflation willy-nilly as if consumer price deflation is bad.Actually, there is no such thing as "bad deflation". All deflation is inherently good. Deflation is the natural state of affairs as a result of rising productivity and technological advancements.Falling prices means more affordability for more people.Deflation onlybad when banks make poor lending decisions on risky assets, then become capital impaired when the loans go bad. Why does that happen? Easy ... The Fed has created a moral hazard. Banks believe the central bank will always bail them out if they get in trouble.And so far they have. So banks keep making risky loans, and investors keep plowing into riskier and riskier assets.Via the moral hazard of bailouts, the Fed sponsors bubbles and crashes of increasing amplitude over time.But the biggest bubble of all is belief central banks will always be able to handle these busts.Gross needs to replace "simple math" with "exponential math" coupled with the fact central banks can (for a while) target prices in general, but they cannot target wages or the prices they want.The Fed expanded money supply by $4 trillion dollars and the CPI is up less than 2%!What's the Fed going to do for an encore when the global economy slumps, US jobs with it, and prices of goods services, and assets sink?Expand money supply by $8 trillion? $16 trillion? $32 trillion? Buy equities? Buy more than 100% of debt issuance like Japan? How nuts does it get?Gross concludes with "". I suggest Gross go back to the drawing board and come up with a different answer.Mike "Mish" Shedlockhttp://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com |
The Supreme Court will take up the question of whether President Obama's recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were constitutional in a case that has the potential to reshape how recess appointments are done more broadly. The DC Circuit court overturned Obama's recess appointments in a sweeping decision saying the president can only make recess appointments between sessions of the Senate and when the vacancy occurred during the recess; other federal appeals courts, though, have defined the recess appointment power more broadly in past decisions. Which is, of course, a good set-up for the Supreme Court to hear a case.
Since the NLRB requires a three-member quorum to function, everything the labor board has done since the recess appointments were made a year and a half ago could be invalidated by this case. The delays that were already common for workers with cases before the NLRB, compounded by further delays from the constant lawsuits and uncertainty, are devastating to workers' lives. Now, the question is essentially this: Can the Republican filibuster entirely shut down a federal agency? Obama has nominated people to the board, including renominating the recess-appointed members, but why would Republicans confirm people to enforce labor law under a Democratic administration? Today's Republicans emphatically wouldn't.
The immediate problem of NLRB nominations could be solved by Senate rules reform. But the broader question of under what circumstances the president can make recess appointments will be decided by the Supremes. I guess their decision will give us a sense of when they think the next Republican president will be elected ...
Tell Harry Reid to reopen filibuster reform in light of continued Republican obstructionism. |
Welcome to the 9th CX’s Weiss Schwarz deck techs! For this article, we’re going to look at the deck that won the special ACEN 2014 tournament, with a report at the end!
This deck and report are brought to you by Robert Grasso. Robert emerged victorious from the field of 34 players,most of whom were playing SAO. English card names will be used, as the set has been released in English.
Let’s get started!
3939
Level 0 – 17
2 “Never Ending Song”Hatsune Miku (PD/S22-E079)
4 “39 Get!”Hatsune Miku (PD/S22-E039)
2 Hatsune Miku”Divine Goddess” (PD/S22-E033)
3 Hatsune Miku”Solitude” (PD/S22-E090)
3 MEIKO”Long Pareo” (PD/S22-E055)
3 Megurine Luka”Resort Bikini” (PD/S22-E053)
Level 1 – 10
2 Hatsune Miku”Dark Angel” (PD/S22-E067)
2 Hatsune Miku”Kitty Cape” (PD/S22-E035)
2 Hatsune Miku”Honey Whip” (PD/S22-E043)
4 Hatsune Miku”FOnewearl Style” (PD/S22-E037)
Level 2 – 8
1 “Together with You”Hatsune Miku (PD/S22-E031)
2 “My Song for You”Hatsune Miku (PD/S22-E032)
1 Hatsune Miku”Append” (PD/S22-E038)
2 Weekender Girl (PD/S22-E046)
2 Megurine Luka”San-no-Sakura Maple” (PD/S22-E069)
Level 3 – 7
3 Hatsune Miku”Factory Tyrant” (PD/S22-E027)
4 “Electron Diva”Hatsune Miku (PD/S22-E026)
CX – 8
4 Sadistic.Music‡Factory (PD/S22-E048)
4 World’s End Dance Hall (PD/S22-E074b)
At level 0, we have 17 characters.
“Never Ending Song” Hatsune Miku lets you pay 1 stock to draw and discard a card. You can also pay 1 stock and rest it to Brainstorm and draw a card for each CX revealed.
“39 Get!” Hatsune Miku gives all your other characters with “Miku” in the name +500 power. You can also rest this card to give one of your characters with “Miku” in the name +500 power until end of turn.
With Hatsune Miku “Divine Goddess”, you can rest 2 [Music] characters to give a character you control +2000 power until end of turn.
Hatsune Miku “Solitude” gains +1000 power and +1 level if you have no other characters on your center stage (Back stage is OK).
When you play MEIKO “Long Pareo”, you may pay 1 stock and discard a card to Salvage a [Music] character.
Megurine Luka “Resort Bikini” is a level reverser. When it attacks, you choose up to two of your [Music] characters and those characters get +500 power until end of turn.
At level 1, we have 10 characters.
Hatsune Miku “Dark Angel” has a 0 stock, +1500 power Backup ability.
Hatsune Miku “Kitty Cape” gets +1000 power if it is in the middle position of the center stage.
Hatsune Miku “Honey Whip” is a vanilla 5500 power character.
Hatsune Miku “FOnewearl Style” has hand (character) encore.
At level 2, we have an unusual 6 characters and 2 events.
“Together With You” Hatsune Miku gives your characters in front of it +1000 power. You can rest it to give all your other [Music] characters +500 power until end of turn.
“My Song for You” Hatsune Miku gets +1000 power until end of turn whenever another [Music] character you control attacks.
Hatsune Miku “Append” has a Change ability for 2 stock and a card in hand for “”Electron Diva” Hatsune Miku”.
If you don’t control a [Music] character, you cannot play Weekender Girl. It lets you tutor (search) for up to two [Music] characters.
Megurine Luka “San-no-Sakura Maple” has a 1 stock, +3000 power Backup ability.
At level 3, we have 7 characters.
When you play Hatsune Miku “Factory Tyrant”, you draw up to 2 cards, then discard a card. It has a CX combo with “Sadistic.Music‡Factory”: when you reverse a character with it, you may put that character into your opponent’s clock.
“Electron Diva” Hatsune Miku gets +500 power for each other [Music] character you control, and has a Heal ability when you play it or Change into it.
The CX spread is 4/4, with all 1k1 effects, and a 4/4 split between Gold and Door triggers.
How do we use this deck?
This deck has a lot of familiar cards from a previous deck that we have covered, with some key differences.
The deck has a very standard level 0 with its “loner” characters and level reversers, as well as utility in its supports. There are no tricks involving characters that send themselves to memory though.
At level 1, the deck gains access to its free Backup effect, and has a full set of Hatsune Miku “FOnewearl Style” to keep a board presence in the face of characters that are much larger, e.g. a Time Machine Miku.
At level 2, the deck has a full swath of options, as it doesn’t rely on its level 1 to carry it through the midgame. Instead of relying on super large characters, it gives them strict upgrades in the form of “My Song for You” Hatsune Miku, and better supports and even more powerful Backup effects. Weekender Girl is an all-star card here, as it can turn a bruised board into a nightmare in the course of one turn, with the added upside of thinning the deck of non-CX cards.
Level 3 is the familiar “punch to clock” and Heal effects, but they are not (always) repeatable. The Gold and Door triggers the deck uses ensures either that the following turn will be an attack with a 1k1 or with a better character.
How do we beat this deck? What does this deck not do well? Is there something missing?
Arguably, this deck is missing one of the most powerful CX combos known to the set: Time Machine Miku. However, the trade-off is that the CX Time Machine is itself only a 2k1, and does overall less damage than a 1k1 effect will. Instead of attempting to grind out an advantage at level 1, the deck opts to be much more powerful at level 2, making the level 3 effects more incidental rather than the end goal.
The deck’s maximum power on the defense is relatively low in the early levels, but its access to cheap encore effects can make up for that. Because the deck’s primary focus is not on anything other than steady attacks for 2/2/2 or 3/3/3, it will most likely have a difficult time against decks that can refresh quickly, and Heal repeatedly (e.g. Madoka). Anti-salvage and Heal tax effects will only be incidentally helpful against the deck, but they will not be especially effective. At the end game, effects that can secure a powerful board position or overpower them (such as Leafa’s Pure Wish or Beacon of Hope, Asuna in SAO/SAO vol. 2) can make the deck struggle to finish a game.
Onto the interview!
The winner! Robert Grasso
M: What was a really lucky moment you had during the tournament?
R: In round 2, I was able to run my opponent out of CXs early on. I pushed for so much damage he had to refresh, and I was able to win out from there.
M: How about a really unlucky moment?
R: The very next round actually. I had no level 0 characters even after taking a mulligan, and I kept on drawing and discarding CXs. My opponent rushed me to level 2, and then I finally was able to get a wall of oversized characters to stabilize the game, but it was really bad in the opening turns.
M: How did you prepare for the tournament?
R: I just finished the deck and showed up ready to play!
M: Congratulations again on the win, and thank you for the interview! Is there anything else you would like to say, shoutouts, and so on?
R: Shoutout to Parallel Worlds and Gaming, and to my friend Andrew who taught me how to play.
M: Thanks Robert!
One last kudos as well for Audri, the TO you may remember from a past interview. Congratulations on a successful tournament, and we’re looking forward to hearing more from the US Midwest’s Weiss Schwarz scene!
Questions? Comments? Send us a message via Facebook or an email at theninthcx AT gmail DOT com. Be sure to sign up for our monthly giveaway where we are giving away a box every month! Thanks for reading!
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Does .999… = 1? The question invites the curiosity of students and the ire of pedants. A famous joke illustrates my point:
A man is lost at sea in a hot air balloon. He sees a lighthouse approaching in the fog. “Where am I?” he shouts desperately through the wind. “You’re in a balloon!” he hears as he drifts off into the distance.
The response is correct but unhelpful. When people ask about 0.999… they aren’t saying “Hey, could you find the limit of a convergent series under the axioms of the real number system?” (Really? Yes, Really!)
No, there’s a broader, more interesting subtext: What happens when one number gets infinitely close to another?
It’s a rare thing when people wonder about math: let’s use the opportunity! Instead of bluntly offering technical definitions to satisfy some need for rigor, let’s allow ourselves to explore the question.
Here’s my quick summary:
The meaning of 0.999… depends on our assumptions about how numbers behave.
A common assumption is that numbers cannot be “infinitely close” together — they’re either the same, or they’re not. With these rules, 0.999… = 1 since we don’t have a way to represent the difference.
If we allow the idea of “infinitely close numbers”, then yes, 0.999… can be less than 1.
Math can be about questioning assumptions, pushing boundaries, and wondering “What if?”. Let’s dive in.
Do Infinitely Small Numbers Exist?
The meaning of 0.999… is a tricky concept, and depends on what we allow a number to be. Here’s an example: Does “3 – 4” mean anything to you?
Sure, it’s -1. Duh. But the question is only simple because you’ve embraced the advanced idea of negatives: you’re ok with numbers being less than nothing. In the 1700s, when negatives were brand new, the concept of “3-4” was eyed with great suspicion, if allowed at all. (Geniuses of the time thought negatives “wrapped around” after you passed infinity.)
Infinitely small numbers face a similar predicament today: they’re new, challenge some long-held assumptions, and are considered “non-standard”.
So, Do Infinitesimals Exist?
Well, do negative numbers exist? Negatives exist if you allow them and have consistent rules for their use.
Our current number system assumes the long-standing Archimedean property: if a number is smaller than every other number, it must be zero. More simply, infinitely small numbers don’t exist.
The idea should make sense: numbers should be zero or not-zero, right? Well, it’s “true” in the same way numbers must be there (positive) or not there (zero) — it’s true because we’ve implicitly excluded other possibilities.
But, it’s no matter — let’s see where the Archimedean property takes us.
The Traditional Approach: 0.999… = 1
If we assume infinitely small numbers don’t exist, we can show 0.999… = 1.
First off, we need to figure out what 0.999… means. Most mathematicians see the problem like this:
0.999… represents a series of numbers: 0.9, 0.99, 0.999, 0.9999, and so on
The question: does this series get so close (converge) to a result that we cannot tell it apart?
This is the reasoning behind limits: Does our “thing to examine” get so darn close to another number that we can’t tell them apart, no matter how hard we try?
“Well,” you say, “How do you tell numbers apart?”. Great question. The simplest way to compare is to subtract:
if a – b = 0, they’re the same
if a – b is not zero, they’re different
The idea behind limits is to find some point at which “a – b” becomes zero (less than any number); that is, we can’t tell the “number to test” and our “result” as different.
The Error Tolerance
It’s still tough to compare items when they take such different forms (like an infinite series). The next clever idea behind limits: define an error tolerance:
You give me your tolerance for error / accuracy level (call it “e”)
I’ll see whether I can get the two things to fall within that tolerance
If so, they’re equal! If we can’t tell them apart, no matter how hard we try, they must be the same.
Suppose I sell you a raisin granola bar, claiming it’s 100 grams. You take it home, examine the non FDA-approved wrapper, and decide to see if I’m lying. You put the snack on your scale and it shows 100 grams. The scale is accurate to 1 gram. Did I trick you?
You couldn’t know: as far as you can tell, within your accuracy, the granola bar is indeed 100 grams. Our current problem is similar: I’m selling you a “granola bar” weighing 1 gram, but sneaky me, I’m actually giving you one weighing 0.999… grams. Can you tell the difference?
Ok, let’s work this out. Suppose your error tolerance is 0.1 gram. Then if you ask for 1, and I give you 0.99, the difference is 0.01 (one hundredth) and you don’t know you’ve been tricked! 1 and .99 look the same to you.
But that’s child’s-play. Let’s say your scale is accurate to 1e-9 (.000000001, a billionth of a gram). Well then, I’ll sell you a candy bar that is .999999999999 (only one trillionth of a gram off) and you’ll be fooled again! Hah!
In fact, instead of picking a specific tolerance like 0.01, let’s use a general one (e):
Error tolerance: e
Difference: Well, suppose e has “n” digits of precision. Let 0.999… expand until we have a difference requiring n+1 digits of precision to detect.
digits of precision to detect. Therefore, the tolerance can always be less than e! And the difference appears to be zero.
See the trick? Here’s a visual way to represent it:
The straight line is what you’re expecting: 1.0, that perfect granola bar. The curve is the number of digits we expand 0.999… to. The idea is to expand 0.999… until it falls within “e”, your tolerance:
At some point, no matter what you pick for e, 0.999… will get close enough to satisfy us mathematically.
(As an aside, 0.999… isn’t a growing process, it’s a final result on its own. The curve represents the idea that we can approximate 0.999… with better and better accuracy — this is fodder for another post).
With limits, if the difference between two things is smaller than any margin we can dream of, they must be the same.
Assuming Infinitesimals Exist
This first conclusion may not sit well with you — you might feel tricked. And that’s ok! We seem to be ignoring something important when we say that 0.999… equals 1 because we, with our finite precision, cannot tell the difference.
Newer number systems have developed the idea that infinitesimals exist. Specifically:
Infinitely small numbers can exist: they aren’t zero, but look like zero to us.
This seems to be a confusing idea, but I see it like this: atoms don’t exist to cavemen. Once they’ve cut a rock into grains of sand, they can go no further: that’s the smallest unit they can imagine. Things are either grains, or not there. They can’t imagine the concept of atoms too small for the naked eye.
Compared to other number systems, we’re cavemen. What we call “tiny numbers” are actually gigantic. In fact, there can be another “dimension” of numbers too small for us to detect — numbers that differ only in this tiny dimension look identical to us, but are different under an infinitely powerful microscope.
I interpret 0.999… like this: Can we make a number a bit less than 1 in this new, infinitely small dimension?
Hyperreal Numbers
Hyperreal numbers are one system that uses this “tiny dimension” to examine infinitely small numbers. In this, infinitesimals are usually called “h”, and are considered to be 1/H (where big H is infinity).
So, the idea is this:
0.999… < 1 [We’re assuming it’s allowed to be smaller, and infinitely small numbers exist]
0.999… + h = 1 [h is the infinitely small number that makes up the gap]
0.999… = 1 – h [Equivalently, we can subtract an infinitely small amount from 1]
So, 0.999… is just a tiny bit less than 1, and the difference is h!
Back to Our Numbers
The problem is, “h” doesn’t exist back in our macroscopic world. Or rather, h looks the same as zero to us — we can’t tell that it’s a tiny atom, not the lack of any matter altogether. Here’s one way to visualize it:
When we switch back to our world, it’s called taking the “standard part” of a number. It essentially means we throw away all the h’s, and convert them to zeroes. So,
0.999… = 1 – h [there is an infinitely small difference]
St(0.999…) = St(1 – h) = St(1) – St(h) = 1 – 0 = 1 [And to us, 0.999… = 1]
The happy compromise is this: in a more accurate dimension, 0.999… and 1 are different. But, when we, with our finite accuracy, try to describe the difference, we cannot: 0.999… and 1 look identical.
Lessons Learned
Let’s hop back to our world. The purpose of “Does 0.999… equal 1?” is not to spit back the answer to a limit question. That’s interpreting the query as “Hey, within our system what does 0.999… represent?”
The question is about exploration. It’s really, “Hey, I’m wondering about numbers infinitely close together (.999… and 1). How do we handle them?”
Here’s my response:
Our idea of a number has evolved over thousands of years to include new concepts (integers, decimals, rationals, reals, negatives, imaginary numbers…).
In our current system, we haven’t allowed infinitely small numbers. As a result, 0.999… = 1 because we don’t allow there to be a gap between them (so they must be the same).
In other number systems (like the hyperreal numbers), 0.999… is less than 1. Here, infinitely small numbers are allowed to exist, and this tiny difference (h) is what separates 0.999… from 1.
There are life lessons here: can we extend our mental model of the world? Negatives gave us the conception that every number can have an opposite. And you know what? It turns out matter can have an opposite too (matter and antimatter annihilate each other when they come in contact, just like 3 + (-3) = 0).
Let’s think about infinitesimals, a tiny dimension beyond our accuracy:
Some theories of physics reference tiny “curled up” dimensions which are embedded into our own. These dimensions may be infinitely small compared to our own — we never notice them. To me, “infinitely small dimensions” are a way to describe something which is there, but undetectable to us.
The physical sciences use “significant figures” and error margins to specify the inherent inaccuracy of our calculations. We know that reality is different from what we actually measure: infinitesimals help make this distinction explicit.
Making models: An infinitely small dimension can help us create simple but accurate models to solve problems in our world. The idea of “simple but accurate enough” is at the heart of calculus.
Math isn’t just about solving equations. Expanding our perspective with strange new ideas helps disparate subjects click. Don’t be afraid wonder “What if?”.
Appendix: Where’s the Rigor?
When writing, I like to envision a super-pedant, concerned more with satisfying (and demonstrating) his rigor than educating the reader. This mythical(?) nemesis inspires me to focus on intuition. I really should give Mr. Rigor a name.
But, rigor has a use: it helps ink the pencil-lines we’ve sketched out. I’m not a mathematician, but others have written about the details of interpreting 0.999… and 1 or less than 1:
“So long as the number system has not been specified, the students’ hunch that .999… can fall infinitesimally short of 1, can be justified in a mathematically rigorous fashion.”
My goal is to educate, entertain, and spread interest in math. Can you think of a more salient way to get non-math majors interested in the ideas behind analysis? Limits aren’t going to market themselves.
Other Posts In This Series |
Former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu (R), the irascible TV face of Mitt Romney’s campaign, told a Granite State audience Tuesday that President Obama won reelection thanks to a base that’s “dependent, to a great extent economically, on government policy and government programs.”
That puts Sununu squarely in the “gifts” caucus, the group of Republicans who — like Romney himself — believe Obama’s coalition is formed by people who want handouts rather than the self-sufficient, individualistic base that they envision as the GOP base. In the wake of the Republican losses across the country last month, the party has split over the “gifts” idea, with some former Romney surrogates and officials dismissing the notion and others, like Sununu, embracing it.Sununu made his remarks at a post-election forum with two other former Republican governors of New Hampshire. The Concord Monitor reported Sununu said Obama won “not because of message,” but because the party unified and pushed out their government-dependent base.
“It was because of political organization, political unity, joining together across a broad spectrum of different views within the Democratic Party, and presenting a perception of what they were going to do in a way that was absolutely attractive to their base,” he said.
The two other former Republican governors in the room, Craig Benson and Steve Merrill, agreed with Sununu’s take.
Republicans in general tend to believe that a smaller government favors greater individual responsibility while a larger government favors more dependency. But the language of “gifts” — also known as the language of the “forty-seven percent” — is something many prominent Republicans are trying to get away from. That includes Romney’s own VP nominee, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).
“Both parties tend to divide Americans into ‘our voters’ and ‘their voters.’ Republicans must steer far clear of that trap,” Ryan said at a Washington awards banquet Tuesday. “We must speak to the aspirations and anxieties of every American.”
Republicans on the short list for the 2016 presidential primaries as well as activists from the Hispanic and other communities have for the most part repudiated the “gifts” language. But other former members of Team Romney have latched onto the “gifts” rationale as Sununu has. Last month Romney’s top campaign adviser Stuart Stevens bragged about winning the majority of votes among Americans who make more than $50,000 a year — who, he suggested, are the Americans worth winning over.
“The Republican Party has problems, but as we go forward, let’s remember that any party that captures the majority of the middle class must be doing something right,” Stevens wrote in a Washington Post op-ed.
After the piece was roundly criticized, Stevens walked things back a bit, lamenting that the Romney campaign didn’t do more to reach out to minority voters. |
“I am a human being, living out of all prejudice and going to the unknown,” Ms. Suleiman said. “I belong to humanity. My first and my second husbands are Sunni. I do not belong to any religion. These classifications are out of date.
“When the revolution broke out, I realized that I was a Syrian, and that my role was to guide people so as not to let them be dragged to death.”
She said at the time that she was joining rallies and making other public appearances to protest the state’s influence over Syrian cultural institutions and to counter Mr. Assad’s attempts to demonize the antigovernment demonstrators. She was joined at a number of protests by Abdul Baset al-Sarout, a Syrian soccer star.
“I just wanted to go just to say we Syrians are one people,” Ms. Suleiman told Al Jazeera. “I wanted to contradict the narrative of the regime and show people that there is no sectarianism in Syria. I wanted it to stop its lie that those who protest are armed groups, foreign agents or radical Islamists.”
Most sources said that Ms. Suleiman was born on May 17, 1970, in the northern city of Aleppo.
After moving to Damascus, she graduated from the Higher Institute for Dramatic Arts and acted in numerous plays. She also appeared on Syrian television shows including “The Diary of Abou Antar,” “Little Ladies” and “Small Hearts.”
Peter Harling, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, an organization in Brussels whose goal is to prevent deadly conflicts, was quoted by The Financial Times in 2012 as praising Ms. Suleiman’s role in preventing even worse violence in Homs, the city in western Syria that endured indiscriminate bombardment by government forces and was one of the first to hold large demonstrations against Mr. al-Assad in 2011.
“She has tried to contain the damage among Alawites who have been hijacked by the regime,” Mr. Harling said. |
High above Chile, the International Space Station's crew offers up a lovely look at the glaciers gleaming in the southern Andes, as seen in this January 22 image released by NASA. (See also: "Up on the Farm? Five Reasons NASA Needs Space Greenhouses.")
Beloved by hikers, Patagonia was easy to reach for the orbiting space lab, flying some 230 miles (370 kilometers) overhead.
The view shows O'Higgins Lake in Patagonia, one of the deepest lakes in the Western Hemisphere, fed by glaciers that have thinned in recent decades.
View Images PHOTOGRAPH BY EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY/VPHAS+ TEAM
How about a swim? The sparkling lights of the Lagoon Nebula would surely entice any space traveler in the mood for a dip, its veil shimmering in this view released on January 22. (See also: "6 Space Events This Week: Taurids, Lagoon, and Neptune.")
Captured by the European Southern Observatory's telescopes in Chile, the nebula hangs only 5,000 light-years away, in the constellation of Sagittarius, the Archer. The giant gas cloud, about a hundred light-years across, is a nursery for newborn stars.
View Images PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA/JPL/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
Sand dunes and the North Pole don't usually come to mind together, but they might for Martians.
The northern polar regions of the red planet, featured in this NASA view released on January 22, boast a dune made of sand mixed with carbon dioxide ice. Jets of carbon dioxide gas venting from the dune have marked its surface with dark spots.
View Images PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA/JPL-CALTECH
A pair of black holes, marked in magenta, whirl their way around a nearby galaxy in this look across the cosmos released on January 21 by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array.
At the center of the galaxy lies a "supermassive" black hole that's millions of times more massive than the sun. Most galaxies have such monsters at their hearts, including our own Milky Way.
But not many boast a nicer "ultraluminous x-ray" black hole, like the second one (on the right) in the image. About a hundred times heavier than the sun, these black holes shine particularly bright with x-rays, for reasons still under investigation by astronomers.
View Images PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA/JPL/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
Scared of snakes? Don't look at the wiggly shapes adorning Oxus Patera, a frozen volcanic caldera on Mars, as seen in this NASA image released on January 22.
The scalloped nicks along the spines of the caldera's ridges were likely cracks caused by the expansion and contraction of ice sometime in the ancient past on Mars, scientists suggest.
View Images PHOTOGRAPH BY JEFF SCHMALTZ/NASA/MODIS RAPID RESPONSE TEAM
Mix volcanic ash with fog and you get "vog," here seen as a blue-gray plume stretching across the South Pacific, pictured on January 7 via NASA's Aqua satellite.
Mixed with the sun's glint off the ocean, the vog stems from the Vanuatu Archipelago northeast of Australia, where two islands, Gaua and Ambrym, frequently release volcanic ash and gases.
View Images PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA/JPL/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
Yowch! Gullies rake across the raw landscape of Mars in an image released this week by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera.
Some four billion years ago, a comet or asteroid splashed onto the southern highlands of Mars, creating the Argyre Impact Basin just south of the gullies.
After the impact, water or lava flow into the basin may have carved these gullies, which are more than 3.6 miles (6 kilometers) long.
View Images PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA/JPL/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
Where's the water? Planetary geologists ponder what floods carried the bright deposits along the walls of a Martian canyon shown in this image released this week from the orbiting HiRISE camera.
Called Coprates Chasma, the canyon is just one arm of the massive Valles Marineris, a massive trough that stretches for 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) across the red planet. While the larger canyon is essentially a massive crack in the crust of Mars, portions of its branch canyons are thought to have been partly carved by water long ago.
View Images PHOTOGRAPH BY ESA/NASA/HUBBLE
Blame Einstein for the optical illusion exemplified by the Twin Quasar, as seen in this Hubble Space Telescope picture released on January 20.
First spotted in 1979 and thought to be two objects, the two bright points at the center of the image are actually just one quasar, a fantastically powerful, active galaxy very far away. A huge galaxy called YGKOW G1, about four billion light-years away, lies between Earth and this quasar. The giant galaxy actually splits light from the distant quasar into two parts, creating the double image we see as the Twin Quasar. |
By:The Indian Constitution does guarantee freedom of speech, but that is subject to ‘reasonable restrictions’.Hate speech is in the news - particularly with the pleasantries being exchanged by our politicians in the run-up to the national elections. A Congress politician suggested that BJP’s PM candidate Modi deserves to be chopped to pieces while a BJP politician suggested that the Congress’s Gandhis should be stripped and deported to Italy.The favourite Indian social reaction is to lament the perceived inadequacy of laws, and to clamour for legislation to cure the problem. Every social ill is readily blamed on absence of laws, and our lawmakers readily oblige with the dictum: show me a problem and I will write you a law. Just last month, the Supreme Court was called on to rule in public interest litigation that derogatory speeches made on the lines of religion, caste, race and place of birth should be regarded as an act against the Union of India. Severe interventions to gag authors and speakers of hateful and derogatory expressions were sought.The Supreme Court rightly refused, ruling that asking the court to be an activist and to legislate is a bad idea. The court listed and discussed an exhaustive list of Indian legislation that already governs hate speech.Now, what constitutes “hatred” can be an unruly horse. Would every contemptuous statement signify hatred and therefore be curtailed? Hindu zealots who would want Wendy Doniger’s book banned instead of writing another book to counter her mistakes (assuming they knew what the mistakes really were) did argue that she hated Hindus. Congress supporters would argue that the ridicule heaped on Rahul Gandhi after his television interview represents hatred. BJP supporters would argue that Chidambaram’s view that Modi’s knowledge of economics could be written on the back of a postage stamp, connotes hatred. Chidambaram supporters could argue the same about Modi’s jibe that Chidambaram believes he was standing first in the queue of recipients when God was distributing intellect.The Indian Constitution does guarantee freedom of speech and expression, but that is subject to ‘reasonable restrictions’. This follows the British model (with the legacy of monarchic governance over free speech) to permit the making of laws that can curb this freedom on certain specified grounds. Many of these grounds can pose serious challenges in interpretation and nullify the freedom. To quote just one example, restrictions on the ground of ‘friendly relations with foreign states’ could be used to write law that criminalises or prohibits writing against Sri Lanka’s treatment of Tamils or the United States’ treatment of Edward Snowden.On the other hand, the United States, with the legacy of a republic, involves a principled stand permitting near-absolute freedom of speech and expression thanks to the First Amendment to the US Constitution. US courts have very rarely permitted intervention against the freedom of speech and expression, only in the rarest of rare situations where a speech of expression violates some specific provision or objective of law – say, communication of inside information to aid insider trading – or where the speech or expression represents an exhortation to imminently commit a violent crime. Denying the Holocaust may be a crime in Canada, and indeed in parts of Europe, but in the US, one would be at liberty to do so although the US is home to a large and powerful Jew community.The US is officially a market of opinions – by and large, you can hold and express a point of view without restrictions. It is another matter that we now know that secret tribunals can take away your liberties on the basis of privately held opinions that have been ascertained by snooping into your email. The battle between free speech and hate speech is not unknown to the US too. Sections of jurists argue that there is “too much freedom” there. Yet, when it comes to election campaigning, when someone is out of line and indecent in how the other side is attacked, internal retribution in the campaign team is swift. The offending person is dropped from the campaign team and apologies and remorse is immediately expressed.International conventions entailing affirmative protection of an atmosphere of respect and dignity from attack by speech and expression require signatory states to outlaw hate speech. Even the Indian Supreme Court, while rejecting the petition, asked the Law Commission to frame guidelines clearly defining ‘hate speech’ and to consider how Parliament could empower the Election Commission to derecognise political parties whose members indulge in hate speeches even in times when elections have not been notified and the Election Commission’s jurisdiction to control such conduct is not force.The world’s largest democracy should tread cautiously and not rush to legislate. By nature, ‘hatred’ is determined by context – a cartoon likening George Bush’s face to a monkey does seem funny but a similar one about Barack Obama’s features is not funny at all thanks to the historical legacy of racial prejudice in large segments of humanity against persons of African origin. We often gloat at how “an Indian can borrow from a Jew, lend to a Scot and still make a profit” but a heavy-handed anti-hate speech law could well criminalise that statement.The real solution lies in effecting social change and addressing our weaknesses as people. Political parties need to impose and enforce norms to ensure a higher quality of discourse from their members at all levels regardless of the degree of bitterness in contest. Anna Hazare is reported to have initiated such an exercise with Gandhi, Modi and Kejriwal. That is the only right path to take. |
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, announced Wednesday that she has returned to Washington, D.C., after a weeklong “fact-finding” trip to Syria and Lebanon.
Gabbard’s office said in a press release that the Army veteran met specifically with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during her trip, as well as Lebanon’s newly elected President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister Saad Hariri, the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, nonprofit workers and clergy.
“Originally, I had no intention of meeting with Assad, but when given the opportunity, I felt it was important to take it. I think we should be ready to meet with anyone if there’s a chance it can help bring about an end to this war, which is causing the Syrian people so much suffering,” Gabbard said in a statement.
Trump Meets With Progressive Democrat Tulsi Gabbard and Rick Perry
Russian Ambassador Invited Trump Administration to Syria Peace Talks as US Issued Sanctions
Her office provided photos and video of the congresswomen on her trip, but none of the alleged meeting with Assad.
During his tenure, President Barack Obama repeatedly called for Assad to step down, and his administration established a modest program to train and aid rebel groups fighting against him. Obama argued that Assad had lost all political legitimacy and was viewed by his citizens as a brutal dictator.
Gabbard, on the other hand, consistently criticized Obama for these policies and accused him and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of an “interventionist” foreign policy agenda.
She said Wednesday that her trip further convinced her that the U.S. should stop aiding any rebels fighting against Assad in the war-torn country. She called the rebel groups “terrorists.”
“The U.S. must stop supporting terrorists who are destroying Syria and her people. The U.S. and other countries fueling this war must stop immediately. We must allow the Syrian people to try to recover from this terrible war," she said in her statement.
“We must end our war to overthrow the Syrian government and focus our attention on defeating al-Qaeda and ISIS,” her statement continued.
Several international, peace and rescue organizations estimate that over 400,000 people have been killed since the civil war in Syria began over five-and-a-half years ago and have accused the Assad’s regime of purposefully targeting and even gassing his own citizens.
President Donald Trump met with Gabbard to discuss foreign policy back in December and has said in the past that he would likely end any U.S. effort to back any opposition fighters in the country. |
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Roberto Firmino knew “straight away” Liverpool was the right club for him, and has revealed the club’s current Brazilian duo were a factor in his move to Anfield.
The midfielder was the Reds’ second-costliest signing of the summer following his £29m move from Hoffenheim, but was arguably the most exciting after his impressive performances in the Bundesliga.
The transfer, completed during his time with the Brazilian national squad at the Copa America, appeared to move swiftly.
But Firmino admits he knew of the club’s interest in him months before, with the possibility of playing with Philippe Coutinho and Lucas Leiva particularly appealing to him.
He said: “I first knew about it a few months earlier and I instantly thought it would be an interesting idea for me because I knew Lucas and Coutinho were playing here.
“I had the chance to play alongside Philippe for the national team so, yes, I knew it would be a great opportunity for me straight away,
“I’m very happy to be here.”
IN PICS: How fans rated Firmino and his team-mates against Bournemouth
The 23-year-old says Coutinho told him what he could expect from his new club, and Firmino already knows his decision was the right one.
“He [Coutinho] said it’s a great club with a great squad and a great spirit so I’m really happy to be here,” added Firmino. “Now I know for myself that the team spirit is really good, because the players gave me a really warm welcome.”
Firmino’s signature was seen as a coup for the Reds, especially with no Champions League football.
Chief executive Ian Ayre flew out to South America to finalise the deal, although Firmino admits no other clubs had made a formal bid for him.
“I wasn’t aware of any other concrete offers for me, I only know that Liverpool were the only one keen to sign me and I wanted to come here,” he said.
“It was interesting [for Ayre to fly out] but when he went to the Copa America to sign me, everything was already agreed so it was just the formalities.”
Firmino has made two substitute appearances so far and is hoping to make his first start for the club away to Arsenal on Monday, in a game that could have ramifications on the race for the top four.
Reds boss Brendan Rodgers has stated his side are looking to land a blow on Arsenal, and Firmino has no doubt about what his new club must achieve this season.
“Obviously Liverpool is a great club and as a great club Liverpool has to be fighting for big things,” said Firmino.
“We have to be at the top so we will be fighting for a Champions League spot for next year and hoping to finish as high as we can in the Premier League.” |
Oh My gosh! Oh My gosh! This is soo Exciting! After a fairly lousy day at the j.o.b, I returned home to a package at the front door. It was addressed to me and had the little reddit man on the label. I opened the box to find five gift wrapped packages. Oh My! Oh My!
It was like my Secret Santa lived next door or something, except my next door neighbor is a religious kook who told us not to say hi to her, and my Secret Santa is all the way across the country in Jacksonville Florida!
The first gift I opened was a 'Philadelphia Cream Cheese Cookbook'!!! I LOVE Cookbooks! And I just told my husband not 30 minutes earlier I'd found three packages of cream cheese in our crisper and needed "to do something with them"! It's from 1981 - Nordic Chicken Pate anyone??? Oh My! Oh My!
The second gift I unwrapped was a set of three kitchen clothes, and they were Orange, Yellow, and White! My Kitchen is Orange, Yellow and White!!!! Oh My gosh! Oh My gosh!
The next gift I unwrapped was a super cool set of three book markers -- You have no idea the crazy things I use as bookmakers!!! I am always needing book markers!!! Oh My! Oh My!
The next gift was another cookbook called '365 Ways To Cook Chicken'! It's from 1984 and it is soooo cool! I Eat Chicken!!! Oh My gosh! Oh My gosh!
My final gift was a great sturdy wooden handled rubber spatula with the words "Keep Calm and Bake On" printed on it!!! Oh My gosh! Oh My gosh!
I don't exchange gifts with anyone in my family, my husband and I don't really celebrate the holidays, so we did this Reddit Gift Exchange for something fun and different. I cannot tell you how thrilled I am with these amazing gifts!!! Thank you Secret Santa, you sure made my day! Hell, you made my week! Quite possibly my month! Thank you so much!
Truly, I could not be more pleased. Secret Santa, you always have a place to visit if you come to Oregon! Thank you sooo very much!!!! Oh My gosh! Oh My gosh! |
Friday has come and gone. In quiet style, another U.S. bank has been closed by the FDIC: First Priority Bank of Bradenton, Florida. The appearance of reality is that a number of banks will fail in the short-term without warning. What do you do when your bank is closed by the FDIC? Don’t panic by storming the doors. Assuming that you follow the $100,000 account rule, Uncle Sam has you covered. The FDIC has provisions to make your life much simpler without losing your cool.
In the case of First Priority Bank, all non-brokered deposits (more details) have been transferred to SunTrust Bank. The bank will re-open on Monday during regular business hours at the former First Priority Bank main office and branch locations and money usage is uninterrupted. The change is designed to be transparent and you maintain the right to withdraw your money based on available funds during any business day. After all, the FDIC doesn’t want a loss of confidence on their hands. You are well covered.
The first best thing to do is the visit the FDIC website. You will find a press release about any closed banks on the front page of the FDIC website near the top. On the press release, you will find a link that will allow you to verify the insurance status of each of your accounts. This link will be available for use no later than the first business day after bank failure.
There is a linked list of any affidavits, forms and any declarations that may relate to your bank closing along with complete instructions, assuming that you need them. In a pinch, you can call the FDIC Call Center at 800-837-0215 during posted hours, which are generally quite generous.
That is all there is to the initial process. In the case of First Priority Bank, insured funds are now in the receivership of SunTrust Bank. You aren’t required to do a thing to protect your insured money. Of course, proper money management considering insurance coverage limits is always your best protection. Avoiding brokered accounts is probably good medicine as well during these troubled times to avoid needless complexity.
Buck up soldier. Unless you are a careless millionaire, you are probably well taken care of right now. But how many millionaires have bundles sitting in a bank at low or no interest? Mr. Joe Average is well protected for checking and savings. Having a fit, should you choose to have one, ought to be reserved for more serious economic situations. ~ E. Manning
check out “What Bank Fraud Means to Depositors”
New Article: Starting August 9, find out about insurance coverage over $100K limits.
check out “Insurance Over $100K FDIC Coverage? Yes!”
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MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Three hunters shot and wounded themselves on the opening day of Wisconsin's gun deer season.
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Recreational Safety Warden Mark Little says the first happened in Brown County about 5:30 a.m. Saturday. A 49-year-old man was working on his firearm when it discharged into his right ankle.
The second happened after 9 a.m. in Forest County. A 49-year-old Crandon man was sitting in the cab of his truck when he saw a deer. When the hunter went to move his rifle, it went off, sending a bullet through his legs and then the truck's seat and door.
WSAW-TV reports the third incident happened in Shawano County. A 51-year-old man bent over and his holstered handgun fired, hitting his leg.
The season runs through Sunday, Nov. 26. |
For future reference, I'm going to title these ones LMC, because Lego Minifig Concepts takes up too much title space.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
As a continuation of my Lego stuff, I'm going to be doing more overall in this style, a clear, concise view of just the minifigure.
I'm starting this off with the Commander Shepard default male we've been seeing in the previous two demos and promotional images, as well as being a little closer to his ME2 appearance. I was originally planning on holding this off until I had more of the crew done (at least 6, I think), but my computer decided to start to die shortly after I finished this one.
I'm not going to be able to do anything further until I get a replacement, which is going to be a quite a while because I'm pretty much broke until I can find a part-time job.
_______________________________________________
Mass Effect in Lego would be super-amazingly awesome, so I thought up how I think Lego would do it if they did it.
This is a part of my Lego concept series, intended as if were to be a product, not a video game. A Lego video game requires there to be a Lego product, of which none of these, that I will be doing, are. |
Alexis Sanchez joined Arsenal in 2014 for a fee in the region of £35m
Arsenal forward Alexis Sanchez is "not putting in a shift" and looks as though he has "clocked off", says Gunners legend Ian Wright.
The 29-year-old has scored four Premier League goals this season - eight fewer than at the same stage last year.
Sanchez, who was linked with Manchester City in the summer, is out of contract at the end of the season.
"The way he's playing now, I can't see how that is going to hurt Arsenal," Wright told BBC Radio 5 Live.
Sanchez has scored 77 times for Arsenal since joining the club from Barcelona in 2014.
Wright, who scored 185 times in 288 appearances for the Gunners, does not believe the Chile forward is "putting it in".
He said: "People looking in who are potential buyers, what are they thinking about him and his attitude?"
Like Sanchez, midfielder Mesut Ozil is also out of contract in the summer.
The 29-year-old scored the only goal in Saturday's victory over Newcastle, and created eight goalscoring chances.
But Wright is not hopeful the German will stay.
"I'd love to be proved wrong," he said. "What we're seeing from him now is the kind of play we want to be seeing from him." |
If you are a Sprint Hero owner and want the latest official 2.1 update baked into a custom ROM with root, then you currently have only one alternative - the Fresh ROM.
Custom ROMs For The Hero
There are pretty much only 2 main Sprint Hero custom ROMs - DamageControl (by damageless and TrevE) and Fresh (by flipz). Both are very good, have an excellent track record, and great communities behind them.
I've personally been using DamageControl on my Hero but post-official 2.1 update, flipz has moved a little faster than damageless and TrevE, and incorporated it into his Fresh ROM pretty much on the next day, while DamageControl is still stuck at 2.08.1.
The Fresh ROM, just like DamageControl, comes already rooted, which is a huge plus. As far as I know, there is currently no standalone way to root a stock 2.1 Hero, other than by installing one of these custom pre-rooted ROMs.
If I understand it correctly, you would be able to upgrade to the Fresh ROM in the following situations:
you already have a rooted OS, such as 1.5 with the root hack or a previous version of DamageControl or Fresh
you've had a rooted OS before at one point and flashed a custom recovery image that allows installation of custom ROMs
The only situation in which you cannot install a custom ROM then seems to be if you have never rooted your phone, never flashed recovery, and already upgraded to the official 2.1. In this case, you will have to wait for a standalone hack applicable to 2.1.
Fresh ROM
Here is some information about the Fresh ROM from the official description:
Based on the official Sprint RUU.
Auto apps2sd 2.7 beta 7 custom by tkirton. This one will not move your cache to sd at my request (tkirton built it this way for me). But you can turn on cache2sd if you want.
Updated google maps to v4.2.1 with “Nav” link in the app drawer and multi-touch.
All protected apps in market
Live wallpapers (launcher2 only. Not in Rosie.)
Espresso bottom bar by flipz
Full color HTC sliders by flipz
flash_image for flashing RA
Nexus Launcher2
Updated estrongs file explorer to v1.3.12
Updated market to v1713
Updated facebook to v1.2
Quickboot works… for those who use it! Removed: Amazon mp3 GSD (HTC test program that was draining battery) HTC Footprints HTC Navigation Panel HTC Ringtone trimmer HTC Stocks Quick Office Learn more pdf viewer Sprint navigator Sprint Nascar Sprint NFL Sprint TV Teeter DOWNLOAD REMOVED APKS HERE: http://geekfor.me/downloads/fresh21removedapks If you use Fresh Kitchen 1.0.5 you can copy them to your My Apk’s folder and use the app installer to install them.
Added: Busy box Super User Wifi tether 1.6 (downgraded due to DHCP/NAT issues)
What to expect / how to flash it / READ THIS : Download and copy the zip to the root of your sdcard
Reboot to RA and do a data wipe / factory reset (REQUIRED)
You may also need to wipe sd:ext if you are having troubles booting.
If you are running Fresh Toast and ext4 then you’ll need to partition back to ext3 if you want to use apps2sd
Pick flash zip from sdcard and select fresh-cdma-hero-2.1.zip
After it finishes flashing reboot. Expect the first boot up to take a while.
If it freezes during first boot then you were likely using a2sd from another rom. Unfortunately during earlier 2.x roms there were a few versions of a2sd floating around and now that is going to cause problems. If this happens to you (and you already did a factory reset like you should have) then you will need to boot in to RA and go to wipe and then Wipe SD:Ext Partition. This will delete all apps off your sdcard. You will want to reflash the rom if you have to do this or else you will be missing some apps from the rom.
then you were likely using a2sd from another rom. Unfortunately during earlier 2.x roms there were a few versions of a2sd floating around and now that is going to cause problems. If this happens to you (and you already did a factory reset like you should have) then you will need to boot in to RA and go to wipe and then Wipe SD:Ext Partition. This will delete all apps off your sdcard. You will want to reflash the rom if you have to do this or else you will be missing some apps from the rom. When the phone boots and comes to the user setup screen I would recommend syncing your google account right away. I noticed an old bug creep back in where it gets stuck during sync. This seems to be avoided by adding your google account during setup.
For more detailed upgrade instructions and to find out more about rooting and custom ROMs, use the following tutorials:
Are you using Fresh already? How do you like it? Have you ever compared it to DamageControl? Feel free to share in the comments. |
Shoaib Mansoor with Junaid Jamshed | Dawn.com
A veteran of the entertainment business, Shoaib Mansoor has enthralled audiences in this country with unforgettable productions that have become landmarks in Pakistan Television history.
The trend-setting serialised drama Ankahi, the outrageously funny Fifty- Fifty and the music nostalgia buff’s dream, Silver Jubilee, all possessed a freshness and vitality of the kind that rarely makes it to the mini-screen in this country. With these and many other memo-rable television programmes to his credit, Shoaib Mansoor has proved time and again that he is a breed apart.
More recently, Mansoor has ventured into relatively uncharted terrain, directing two drama series based on life in the Pakistan Army. The first, Sunehrey Din, aired in 1990, was notable for its slick editing and glossy production values — qualities that are sadly lacking in standard PTV fare. For his most recent venture, Alpha Bravo Charlie, a sequel of sorts to the 1990 series, Mansoor is not only in the director’s seat, but has written the script and handled most of the camera work as well.
What sets him apart from other directors or producers? How does he keep the creative spirit alive, when others at PTV seem stuck in a rut? In this tete-a-tete with the Herald, Mansoor talks about the making of Alpha Bravo Charlie, his unique style of working and the difficulties of getting army jawans to deliver their lines without staring straight into the camera.
Navaid Rashid. You have done two serialised dramas about life in the armed forces. Is there a special reason for your fascination with this theme?
Shoaib Mansoor. It is just coincidence. When Sunehrey Din was aired in 1990, the response from viewers was tremendous. As a result, the people at the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) asked me to do another serial about the army.
Rashid. How did you come up with the idea of Alpha Bravo Charlie?
Mansoor. It is actually a sequel to Sunehrey Din. The Pakistan Military Academy (PMA) cadets who featured in the 1990 drama are now lieutenants and captains. They have completed their training and are commissioned by the Pakistan Army.
I initially based the new serial on the life of officers in a single unit but when I started writing, I felt the play would be more interesting if it was not limited to a particular unit. And since Pakistani troops are frequently sent overseas, I decided to place some characters in a foreign setting. So, one of the captains in Alpha Bravo Charlie is sent to Bosnia.
Photo by Ather Shahzad
Initially, we had decided to shoot in Somalia but Pakistani troops had already returned from that country, so Bosnia became the only option. The earlier part of the serial was actually filmed in Bosnia. I had not even completed the script at the time, all I had was the portion based in Bosnia.
I wrote the rest of the script on our return to Pakistan and then shot the remainder of the play. Many facts about the Bosnian war, which very few people are aware of, have been portrayed in this serial. The real reason behind the war is also discussed, but all this information is knitted into the plot.
Rashid. Writing and producing a play on the army is a sensitive task. How did you go about your work?
Mansoor. I started work on the serial in 1995 and completed it in 1997, spending the first eight or nine months doing research. I lived in army units for several weeks and spent a lot of time with officers and jawans in Lahore and other cities to see how they live and what they do.
I wanted to add a touch of reality to the serial. When you watch it, you can’t tell that a civilian has written the script. I have captured the language, the lifestyle and the various situations that arise in real army life.
Rashid. Like Sunehrey Din, Alpha Bravo Charlie is also sponsored by the ISPR. Was their involvement a problem for you?
Mansoor. I have enjoyed a good rapport with the ISPR ever since we did Sunehrey Din together. I feel army men are comparatively better people to work with as they are more disciplined. Perhaps if someone new was doing this serial, he would have encountered a few problems. But since I had worked with the ISPR before, I did not face any difficulties. I am satisfied with my work.
Rashid. As far as the officers in the drama are concerned, you used the entire cast of Sunehrey Din with the exception of Saleem Sheikh. Why was he not chosen?
Mansoor. I like to work with fresh talent. Saleem was a newcomer in Sunehrey Din, but over the years he has evolved into a popular film and TV star. So I decided not to cast him in Alpha Bravo Charlie. There is no other reason why he was not selected. In fact, I am on very good terms with him.
Rashid. The three main characters of Alpha Bravo Charlie are not professional actors, or even civilians for that matter. Why is that?
Mansoor.Actually, one of the three boys playing the lead roles is not an army officer. The reason that I used these young men is that, as I mentioned earlier, Alpha Bravo Charlie is a sequel to Sunehrey Din so I felt I had to use the same actors. At the same time, I had worked with them before and knew that they had the potential to carry a serial.
Meanwhile, if I had chosen a professional actor he would have had to be thoroughly coached first. I felt that army officers would play the roles more authentically. As far as the supporting cast is concerned, when I am choosing newcomers for the lead roles, it simply does not make sense to make the play seem stale by adding a known face.
And in any case, I don’t like to hire stars for my serials — I make stars. I am not being conceited, it is just what I prefer. As long as I work, I will always work with newcomers. Stars don’t excite me. They never have.
Rashid. But wasn’t it difficult to get army personnel to act?
Mansoor. It was both easy and difficult. Easy because the officers were not really acting, but merely doing what they do in their professional lives. What one needs in this kind of work is self-confidence, and that is a quality army officers possess in abundance. They faced the camera confidently, which is a great help, so it was easy to work with them.
Some members of the core Fifty-Fifty team with Shoaib Mansoor in 1979 | Dawn.com
There were some problems, though, with the jawans because many of them had never seen a camera before. The first few days of shooting were wasted because the jawans would look straight into the camera while saying their lines. They did not understand that an actor must not look into the camera. I had to re-shoot a number of scenes, especially the ones in Siachen, because of this problem.
Moreover, since the jawans are not educated they could not read the script. So I had to make them memorise the lines by reading them out. At times, when a jawan had to speak more than one sentence, I had to shoot each sentence separately, and that too after several retakes. You might not have noticed this while watching the serial because of the editing. But when I am working with newcomers, I am prepared to face these kinds of problems.
Rashid. What was the most trying aspect of the project?
Mansoor. People might think that it must have been difficult to shoot in Bosnia, with a war going on, or in Siachen, where the weather is unforgiving. But I was at ease in both these locations because when I work, the problems that crop up don’t bother me. The only problem that I had was with the jawans, as I mentioned earlier.
I also had to keep my recording unit small, so I handled the camera myself, besides writing the script and directing. At times, there was just one man accompanying me who carried the equipment. Part of the camera work was done by someone else, but I had already shot most of the difficult scenes in Bosnia and Siachen myself, and the results were equally good. And since I was more confident when I was operating the camera myself, I thought I’d handle it on my own.
Rashid. What feedback have you received about Alpha Bravo Charlie?
Mansoor. I get my feedback through the print media because I lead a secluded life. In fact, I stay at home most of the time and my social life is practically nonexistent. Sometimes, I spend weeks at a time in the house without going out. So I did not get a direct public response, just what I heard from the press shows I attended for the serial.
Before it was aired on PTV, though, the serial was viewed by a committee comprising generals – somewhat like a censor board – who approved it and then the chief of army staff watched it and he too approved of the programme. Their reaction was very positive.
Do not mistake this for arrogance but, frankly, I do not wait for any sort of reaction to my plays. The director should have a basic sense of what he is doing, which audience he is targeting, what appeal it has for them and how to handle the theme. I knew the audience for whom I made this serial.
Alpha Bravo Charlie is not for the uneducated classes. In fact, they might not even be able to understand a major portion of the play, the scenes shot in Bosnia, since it is in English. But I could hardly force the Bosnians to speak Urdu, and dubbing their voices would have spoiled the entire effect. This section has Urdu subtitles, but to read them you have to be educated as well.
Although it is important to produce something that has mass appeal, at times one must do something for a certain class alone. I made this serial from that point of view.
This was originally published in the Herald's July 1998 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print. |
Free energy for sale: Steorn's impossible Orbo hits the market
Last week a small company in Dublin called Steorn started taking orders for their USB phone charger. It's on the large side, and is only good for two or three smartphone charges per day, or one tablet charge. So then, why are they asking 1200 euros (about $1275) each for them? Well, for one thing, you don't have to plug them in. But there are other, much cheaper chargers that draw their power from sunlight or some other source and never need to be plugged in. With Steorn's OCube charger you're not paying for convenience, you're paying to be one of the first to own a device that does the impossible -- and that might be on the verge of revolutionizing science and technology.
Or at least, that's what Steorn would have us believe.
The OCube is the latest iteration of Steorn's Orbo technology. According to Steorn's CEO Shaun McCarthy, engineers there were working up a design for a wind-driven generator to power ATM security cameras back in 2003, when they stumbled upon a strange effect: the generators were putting out more power than they were taking in. Steorn spent the next few years ruling out potential sources of experimental error, and then trying to understand the theoretical basis of the anomaly. Finally they convinced themselves that there was no getting around the conclusion that they'd invented a perpetual motion machine. They'd found a loophole in the way that magnetic fields interact that allowed the law of conservation of energy to be broken, and caused so-called "free energy" to be generated: energy from nothing.
A technology that generates free energy would of course be enormously valuable for an endless range of applications, from eliminating the need to burn fossil fuels, to making clean water and electricity cheaper and more accessible to billions of people. It's no wonder then that history is littered with claims of perpetual motion machines, many of them outright hoaxes, and none of them ever having resulted in a practical device. In this context, Steorn found that no academic scientists were willing to endorse their technology, and without scientific backing, no manufacturers were interested in licensing it. So, they decided to reach out directly to the public.
In 2006 Steorn ran a full page ad in The Economist, flaunting the impossibility of their claim with the George Bernard Shaw quote, "All great truths begin as blasphemies." The ad offered "a world with an infinite supply of pure energy" and asked for scientists and engineers to apply to be part of a "jury" of experts Steorn was assembling, who would test their technology and go on the record with the results. This was the highest profile free energy claim in recent memory, and it drew a lot of attention -- even Michio Kaku took the time to come out against it. "It's a fraud," he told ABC News, "It's not possible. You can't sue me for quoting the rules of physics."
In 2007 Steorn set up a highly polished weekend-long public demonstration of their technology, now dubbed Orbo, at the Kinetica Museum in London. Press releases showed an elegant device, a simple wheel with four magnets set into its edges, mounted in a plexiglass frame and surrounded by an array of magnets fixed at angles along its perimeter. The big day arrived and the demo was... delayed. Then delayed again. And finally cancelled. The device failed, and Steorn blamed it on the hot lights beating down on the museum installation. Then in 2009, Steorn's hand-picked jury of experts came out with their verdict: they had been shown no evidence that Orbo generated excess energy. Finally at the end of 2009 Steorn held another public demo, this time in Dublin. They showed off a new version of their Orbo technology. This one replaced the outer set of permanent magnets with electromagnets, and it was claimed to produce some three times the energy it consumed. However, it was connected to a battery that drove those electromagnets (which it was said to continuously recharge, but which could just as well have been providing all the power itself) and its claims of excess energy production were supported only by cryptic and inconclusive calorimetry tests and oscilloscope readings. This last demo failed to impress, and in the wake of their previous failures, it was widely believed that the world had heard the last of Steorn.
But that was not to be. Over the years since, Steorn has managed to convince enough of the right people of the credibility of their technology to gather themselves 20 million euros of investment. They've spun off a separate company, called HephaHeat, to focus on water heating applications of the Orbo technology (HephaHeat is said to have contracts with major water heater manufacturers, but as of yet no products have been announced). And just recently, in a series of online videos, Steorn has unveiled yet another version of Orbo, a "Never-Die Battery" that directly produces electricity without the need to be recharged, ever. Shaun McCarthy has demonstrated the basics of how this new Orbo is put together: it's made of layers of dissimilar conductive metals, with layers of a non-conductive "electret" material sandwiched between them (an electret is a material with an electric field frozen in place, similar to how a permanent magnet has a magnetic field frozen in place). According to McCarthy, this new Orbo works on the same underlying principle as each previous iteration, though you wouldn't know by looking at it; there are no permanent magnets, no electromagnets, no moving parts or control circuitry.
What makes this episode different from each of Steorn's previous adventures is that for the first time they are making Orbo-powered products available to the public, to be put to long-term use, tested, and torn apart. Their first products are clunky, impractical and overpriced: the 1200 euros phone charger is to be followed in early 2016 by a 480 euros retro-style non-smart cell phone that never needs charging. Later offerings will include an e-cigarette and a wireless game controller. But the impracticality of this motley collection of devices is beside the point: Steorn wants to get Orbo into as many people's hands as possible, so they won't need the blessing of academic science. People will find out for themselves that Orbo works, and proclaim it over and over on the internet, until the rumble is loud enough that scientists have to take it seriously, and manufacturers want to license it. Then Steorn can leave product development to others, while they focus on lowering the cost and improving the energy density of their core technology. Eventually, Orbo will power every phone, every car, maybe even everything. That seems to be Steorn's hope, anyway.
To pull this off, they just have one final hurdle to prove they can overcome: the law of conservation of energy, one of the most basic building blocks of modern physics. Conservation isn't just a pattern that's been seen experimentally again and again; it's the mathematical foundation from which much of physics is derived. For example, conservation has caused physicists to hypothesize the necessity of new, never-before-seen subatomic particles, and the existence of these particles was later confirmed experimentally. Some would say that violation of the law of conservation of energy is unthinkable, because if it didn't work, then all of the electronics and other technology we've built on the back of our understanding of physics wouldn't work either. Then again, paradigms do change in science, and classical Newtonian mechanics fit nearly all the experimental data and formed the basis of a lot of successful science, before being replaced by a more complete understanding in the form of relativity. Overturning science is an extremely high bar for Steorn to vault, but it's not necessarily impossible.
Steorn's OCube USB charger is available to be ordered now for delivery within six weeks, for the cost of 1200 euros plus shipping. The OPhone is available for pre-order, for delivery in the first couple months of 2016, for 480 euros plus shipping. For more information, go to orbo.com.
If you're interested in finding out whether (and how) Steorn's Orbo technology works, but don't have the money to spend on your own OCube or the expertise to figure out what makes it tick, there's another way to get involved. A group of PhD engineers and scientists from Aalto University in Finland is holding a crowdfunder to raise enough money to purchase an OCube, so they can test it and figure out how it works. A documentary crew is following this project, and contributors will receive a DVD of the finished film.
This is a decisive moment for Steorn; once they start taking payments for orders, they're legally obliged to deliver the miracle they've claimed, or else they're on the hook for fraud. It might be the beginning of the end for Steorn, or just the end of the beginning. Either way it continues to be an entertaining ride. And if a future of abundance and the end of global warming just happen to come out of this, so much the better. I plan on ordering my own OCube and putting it to a long term test. For updates, you can follow my blog, Dispatches from the Future.
Michael Ferrier is a cognitive scientist, game developer, and curious soul who lives surrounded by chickens in the woods of southeastern Massachusetts. He's been blogging about the mystery that is Steorn since 2007. |
U.S. President Barack Obama greets doctors on stage after delivering remarks on the need for health insurance reform this year, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington. Reuters/Jason Reed President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday laid out a timeline for the repeal and replace of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), better known as Obamacare, in his first press conference since he was elected, arguing that Republicans are helping Democrats by replacing it immediately.
Trump said that the law is collapsing on its own, citing increases in premiums in particular states for ACA exchange-based plans.
Trump said that instead of letting the law fail and having Americans beg Trump to repeal the law, which he said would make Democrats look bad, he plans to repeal and replace Obamacare soon after he takes office and Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee is confirmed.
"They own it right now. So the easiest thing would be to let it implode in 2017 and, believe me, we'd get pretty much whatever he wanted. But it would take a long time," Trump said.
"We're going to be submitting, as soon as he is approved, we'll almost simultaneously — shortly thereafter — have a plan. It will be repeal and replace. It will be simultaneously," he added.
Trump told the New York Times on Tuesday that he wants the ACA repealed "within days," but the comments from the press conference appear to set a slightly longer timetable. Price's confirmation hearing will be held January 18.
Additionally, a bill currently in the Senate to repeal significant parts of the ACA through the budget reconciliation process has set a January 27 deadline for committees to produce a repeal bill. GOP leaders have also discussed delaying the law even further until a full replacement bill can be created.
Trump also insisted that the burden of Obamacare would remain on Democrats, echoing remarks by GOP leaders that the law is failing. Democrats have said that the law has its problems but needs small changes in order to protect the positive from the ACA — such as the expanded coverage for more than 20 million Americans.
"Obamacare is the Democrats problem," Trump said. "We are going to take the problem off the shelves for them. We're doing them a tremendous service by doing it. We could sit back and let them hang with it. We are doing the Democrats a great service."
The Department of Health and Human Services reported on Tuesday that more than 11.5 million have signed up for ACA-based plans so far in this open-enrollment period, higher than any other enrollment period in the ACA's history. |
It took 18 months, 1,200 man hours and the resources of one of the world’s largest automakers, but the one millionth Chevrolet Corvette ever built was returned to the National Corvette Museum today looking as if it had never fallen into a 40-foot sinkhole.
The white ‘92 convertible wasn’t the most valuable car among the eight cars that fell into the sinkhole, but it was perhaps the most meaningful to General Motors and Corvette builders. The car had rolled off the line with signatures of every worker who helped build it, and for its restoration, GM committed to preserving as many of those signatures, and as much of the original car, as possible.
After being fetched out of the sinkhole, the damaged Vette was taken to GM’s tech center in Warren, Mich., where a team of 30 workers spent four months examining every detail of the Vette. The engine and drivetrain turned out to be in good shape; they even saved the original Goodyear Eagle GS-C tires. The interior and windshield turned out to have the most damage, and even then most parts were preserved rather than replaced — from the red leather headrests with “1,000,000th Corvette” embroidery to the exhaust system.
For the body parts destroyed in the fall, GM techs replaced them with parts from a similar car of the same vintage. In two cases, a signed original part was too damaged to use, so GM scanned the workers’ signatures and reapplied them to the new pieces. And in the one case where a signature couldn’t be saved, the worker in question, one Angela Lamb, signed the replacement part. GM even still had the original computer graphic file used to print the “1,000,000th” windshield banner.
Continue reading |
Pressure to examine voting machines used in the 2016 election grows daily as evidence builds that Russian hacking attacks were broader and deeper than previously known. And the Department of Homeland Security has a simple response:
No.
DHS officials from former secretary Jeh Johnson to acting Director of Cyber Division Samuel Liles may be adamant that machines were not affected, but the agency has not in fact opened up a single voting machine since November to check.
Asked about the decision, a DHS official told TPM: “In a September 2016 Intelligence Assessment, DHS and our partners determined that there was no indication that adversaries were planning cyber activity that would change the outcome of the coming US election.”
According to the most recent reports, 39 states were targeted by Russian hackers, and DHS has cited–without providing details–domestic attacks in its own reports as well.
“Although we continue to judge all newly available information, DHS has not fundamentally altered our prior assessments,” the department told TPM.
Computer scientists have been critical of that decision. “They have performed computer forensics on no election equipment whatsoever,” said J. Alex Halderman, who testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week about the vulnerability of election systems. “That would be one of the most direct ways of establishing in the equipment whether it’s been penetrated by attackers. We have not taken every step we could.”
Voting machines, especially the electronic machines still used in several states, are so insecure that an attack on them is likely to be successful, according to a report from NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice out Thursday morning. David Dill, a voting systems expert and professor of computer science at Stanford University quoted in the report, said hackers can easily breach election systems regardless of whether they’re able to coordinate widely enough to alter a general election result.
“I don’t know why they wouldn’t try to hack voting machines and I don’t know what would stop them,” Dill told TPM. “Any statement that says ‘We haven’t see evidence of X’ also means ‘We haven’t lifted a finger to investigate.’”
DHS told TPM Wednesday afternoon it was confident in “multiple checks and redundancies in US election infrastructure” and referred to the testimony of Liles and Jeannette Manfra, DHS undersecretary for cybersecurity, who said US electoral systems were fortified by “diversity of systems, non-Internet connected voting machines, pre-election testing, and processes for media, campaign, and election officials to check, audit, and validate results.”
The new Brennan Center report, however, details the dangers of voting machines that aren’t properly secured, particularly the effect on public confidence of a very public successful hack, whether or not it managed to swing an election. “In the current hyper-partisan environment,” the authors noted, “evidence of this kind of hack could lead to accusations by each side that the other is rigging the election.”
While forensic examinations would answer many questions vital to researchers trying to improve voting systems, the potential for eroded confidence in those systems may help to explain DHS’ reluctance to seek out hard evidence. The department said most attacks were simple scanning, rather than attempts to alter tallies or poll books.
Evidence always seems to stop with “we don’t know:” An NSA report leaked to The Intercept in June detailed a phishing operation by the Russian military intelligence agency GRU on voting hardware maker VR Systems that in turn targeted voting officials. Like DHS, the NSA said it was unclear whether those officials’ machines had been compromised.
Some of the paralysis around how to move forward is a result of tensions between DHS and states angry about the designation of their election systems as “critical infrastructure” in January, just before President Trump took office. Then-secretary Johnson even acknowledged at the time that the designation was controversial to many state election officials, who see the offer of federal assistance, often with strings attached, as an attempted takeover (Johnson testified last week that when a critical infrastructure designation was first floated to state officials in August, the reaction “ranged from neutral to negative”).
“They’re in this strange position where they had a lot of pushback from election officials over federal overreach and in some ways they’re in a little bit of a bind,” said the Brennan Center’s Larry Norden, one of the authors of its report.
Everyone knows what has to be fixed, Norden says, but no one wants to go first. “The states want the counties to act, the counties want the state to pay for things, the states may want the money but they don’t want any of the mandates that come with the money,” he says. “There are investigations but there are no positive solutions yet.”
Current auditing processes, which vary wildly from state to state, are frequently arduous and sometimes nonsensical. In Virginia, where the margin of victory is often very shallow, it is illegal to audit the vote except when the margin is more than 10 percent—and only then if the local election official agrees, and after the election has been certified. When that audit takes place, it can’t change the outcome of the election, even if the audit reveals a completely different tally.
Cybersecurity expert Jeremy J. Epstein says the Virginia rule illustrates why widespread changes to voting standards are so difficult: Every place has different rules. In many states, “localities have almost no ability to raise funds,” Epstein observes. “Even if the state wants to do something, getting 130 localities in Virginia to do something that requires action at a local level is very hard to do.”
The dangers are real: Some voting machines still use Windows XP, which Microsoft hasn’t updated in years. Epstein has personally demonstrated huge security flaws in others. In 2015, he successfully campaigned to decertify the AVS WinVote machine, a touchscreen device that used a woefully outdated and insecure wireless protocol called WEP, which can be hacked in three minutes. Epstein pulled off the hack successfully and was able to retrieve the WinVote’s factory-set passwords: “abcde” and “admin.”
Halderman, too, has dramatically demonstrated how easy it is to take over voting machines, in one case simply by loading a voting machine with a memory card filled with malicious software that can then hitch a ride on that machine back to the central location where the votes are tallied (Machines are left unguarded so often that Ed Felten, who worked in the Obama White House as a deputy chief technology officer, used to make a tradition of posting pictures of them to his and Halderman’s blog, Freedom to Tinker).
In fact, Halderman testified before the Senate Intelligence panel that not only could he successfully breach voting machines himself, but he had made the process part of his assigned coursework.
“I know firsthand how easy it can be to manipulate computerized voting machines,” he told the Senate. “As part of security testing, I’ve performed attacks on widely used voting machines, and I’ve had students successfully attack machines under my supervision.”
These computer scientists agree the problem is urgent and nonpartisan, and no less a Trump ally than Rudy Giuliani said Wednesday that he believed the problem was serious, too. Even in the polarized post-election environment, Norden says he thinks legislators may be able to agree on the issue need to secure voting systems.
“The intelligence community has been pretty clear that while [the Russian hacking teams] may have favored Trump in the election, their interest is in undermining our democracy,” said Norden. “Regardless of party, I think we all share the idea that democracy is essential to the country.” |
The HTC One (M8) Google Play Edition, the last remaining Google Play Edition device, is no longer for sale. In fact, the device isn’t even listed under the “Phones & Tablets” tab on Google Play; you need a direct link in order to see it. Not that this change is much of a surprise, since the new HTC flagship is around the corner, but it’s sort of sad to see, because this could be the end of the Google Play Edition line of devices.
For months, we expected a Galaxy S5 Google Play Edition to arrive – even Google thought it was coming – but it never did surface officially. So as the rest of the line (Moto G, Z Ultra, G Pad 8.3, and Galaxy S4) has disappeared 1-by-1, we kept wondering if something new would pop up or if Google would slowly let the brand die. I would guess that GPE is dead.
But hey, at least the One (M8) GPE just got that hot Lollipop action! A nice little send off, for sure.
Play Link |
It's common for journalists to use social media to crowdsource information. But increasingly, what appear to be innocuous questions are incurring the disgusting commentary once relegated to the darker corners of the blogosphere. Guardian journalist and Feministing founder Jessica Valenti is no stranger to this breed of unsolicited vitriol. However, even this veteran feminist was taken aback by the response to a question posted over the weekend, asking followers about tampon subsidies in different countries.
Twitter friends: Anyone know a country where tampons are free or somehow subsidized? August 8, 2014
While some offered helpful suggestions, an astonishing number went on the attack, calling her a "cunt," recommending a hysterectomy and telling her to "stick a few fingers in your you-know-what to stem the bleeding."
If you think the global inaccessibility of sanitary products is funny, then you not only need better jokes - you're a HUGE asshole. August 8, 2014
Shocked and aghast at all the vicious hate directed at her, Valenti compiled some of the most objectionable reactions on Storify.
The villification and hounding of female writers online is nothing new, of course. The Guardian's Chris Elliott recently wrote a story on the phenomenon, noting that his website had recorded a significant increase in the abuse spewed by commenters on articles ranging from body hair to domestic violence to single parenting.
Far from worrying about crossing any line, commenters and social media users seem to feel that there is no line, leaving no insult unsaid and no threat unuttered. Anita Sarkeesian, founder of Feminist Frequency, a blog about sexism in the gaming industry, said she "was surprised by the level of vicious and misogynist hate I received, which included a loosely organized campaign of death threats, rape threats and attempts to collect and publicly distribute personal information, such as my home address and phone number."
In January, fellow feminist writer Amanda Hess wrote about her own experiences dealing with a Twitter user who repeatedly threatened to rape and kill her and cut off her head.
"None of this makes me exceptional," noted Hess, who received her first rape threat back in 2009. "It just makes me a woman with an Internet connection."
Let's not forget Caroline Criado-Perez, the activist who successfully campaigned to have Jane Austen's face on a British bank note last year, only to receive a deluge of horrifically graphic threats that, at their peak, were being sent via Twitter at the rate of one per minute, "with men discussing how they will rape me together, which parts of my body will be penetrated and exactly how they are going to kill me."
This time, Valenti did not receive any death threats. But next time, who knows? We live in a society where this behavior can arise over a campaign lobbying to put female faces on national currency or a query over tampon accessibility. The question of whether women will ever truly feel safe online remains an essential one for our generation and, perhaps, for the future of a free Internet.
This July, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Elonis v. United States, a case that deals with online threats disseminated through social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. The defendant has painted the case as a defense of constitutionally protected free speech rights, but the outcome could have crucial consequences in cases like Hess' and Criado-Perez's.
Ultimately, Valenti went ahead and wrote her artcile about tampons, which was shared thousands of times and racked up hundreds of comments. She published it on Monday, quietly proving to Twitter trolls everywhere that their hatred wasn't going to stop her from doing her job. |
pleasanter? Is that a word? Reply
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Sure it is! So is "velveted." They're both perfectly cromulent words. Reply
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There is dispute about that; the trend is toward more inflectional (-er/-est) endings, regardless.
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I was having the same thought. "Let's get drunk and fondle guns!" Reply
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Is your icon from one of the Archie and Mahitabel books? Reply
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Yes, it is! Reply
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What could possibly go wrong? Reply
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Suicide is painless. Reply
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And none of that "Please drink responsibly" crapola here! Reply
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Well, at least they don't have him actually drinking the stuff while he's cleaning the guns. Reply
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Ernest Hemmingway approves! Reply
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Ernest Hemingway had only one em in his name. Reply
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ya man Reply
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Help the war effort: stay home and drink!
Alrighty then! Reply
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Caption: So that's what they mean by Ancient Pistol. Reply
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He looks a little too happy playing with his gun Reply
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That's beautiful art work. In the grammar I learned (and teach), generally a word that's more than one syllable would not have "er" added. Rather, "more pleasant" would be the correct way. "Pleasanter" just sounds wrong! Reply
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Manhattans and muzzle-loaders sounds like a fun evening to me. Reply
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Produced by Paul Jones
EVANSTON, Ill. --- Imagine staying dry underwater for months. Now Northwestern University engineers have examined a wide variety of surfaces that can do just that -- and, better yet, they know why.
The research team is the first to identify the ideal “roughness” needed in the texture of a surface to keep it dry for a long period of time when submerged in water. The valleys in the surface roughness typically need to be less than one micron in width, the researchers found. That’s really small -- less than one millionth of a meter -- but these nanoscopic valleys have macroscopic impact.
Understanding how the surfaces deflect water so well means the valuable feature could be reproduced in other materials on a mass scale, potentially saving billions of dollars in a variety of industries, from antifouling surfaces for shipping to pipe coatings resulting in lower drag. That’s science and engineering, not serendipity, at work for the benefit of the economy.
“The trick is to use rough surfaces of the right chemistry and size to promote vapor formation, which we can use to our advantage,” said Neelesh A. Patankar, a theoretical mechanical engineer who led the research.
“When the valleys are less than one micron wide, pockets of water vapor or gas accumulate in them by underwater evaporation or effervescence, just like a drop of water evaporates without having to boil it. These gas pockets deflect water, keeping the surface dry,” he said.
In a study published today (Aug. 18) by the journal Scientific Reports, Patankar and his co-authors explain and demonstrate the nanoscale mechanics behind the phenomenon of staying dry underwater.
In their experiments, the researchers used a variety of materials with and without the key surface roughness and submerged them in water. Samples with the nanoscale roughness remained dry for up to four months, the duration of the experiment. Other samples were placed in harsh environments, where dissolved gas was removed from the ambient liquid, and they also remained dry.
“It was amazing and what we were hoping for,” said Patankar, a professor of mechanical engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. “My lab likes to defy normal experience. In this work, we looked for properties that manipulate the water phase changes we know.”
The researchers also report that nature uses the same strategy of surface roughness in certain aquatic insects, such as water bugs and water striders. Small hairs on the surfaces of their body have the less-than-one-micron spacing, allowing gas to be retained between the hairs.
“These gas-retaining insects have surface properties consistent with our predictions, allowing them to stay dry for a long time,” said Paul R. Jones, the study’s first author. He is a Ph.D. student in Patankar’s research group.
The researchers focused on the nanoscopic structure of surfaces, which, at the nanoscale, are somewhat akin to the texture of a carpet, with tiny spike-like elevations separated by valley-shaped pores in between.
When submerged, water tends to cling to the top of the spikes, while air and water vapor accrue in the pores between them. The combination of trapped air and water vapor within these cavities forms a gaseous layer that deters moisture from seeping into the surface below.
“When we looked at the rough surfaces under the microscope, we could see clearly the vacant gaps -- where the protective water vapor is,” Patankar said.
Historically, scientists had not understood how to keep water vapor from succumbing to condensation within the pore, which can cause water to wet the surface. But the Northwestern team found the molecular key: They demonstrated that when the valleys are less than one micron in width, they can sustain the trapped air as well as vapor in their gasified states, strengthening the seal that thwarts wetness.
The study, titled “Sustaining Dry Surfaces Under Water,” also includes authors from ETH Zürich, Switzerland; Arizona State University; University of Illinois at Chicago; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and the University of Denmark.
The Initiative for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern (ISEN) supported the research. |
Tom Brady may be the greatest quarterback in NFL history, but he also appears to be the victim of a theft. The #12 jersey Brady donned in the New England Patriots’ thrilling 34 to 28 victory over the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI has gone missing.
Brady, who was named the game’s MVP, says he placed the game-worn jersey in his bag after the game ended. Brady did so to change into other clothing—a gray Super Bowl champion shirt—for the Vince Lombardi trophy presentation. During the presentation, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who was booed loudly by the crowd, presented the Lombardi trophy to Patriots owner Robert Kraft on the stage with Brady, Patriots president Jonathan Kraft and head coach Bill Belichick standing nearby. Apparently Brady’s bag was left in the Patriots locker room during this presentation. After the presentation ended, Brady went to retrieve the jersey from his bag. The jersey, however, was no longer in the bag or anywhere else in Brady’s line of sight. Brady believes that someone “stole” the jersey while he left the bag unattended.
• Order the Patriots' Super Bowl LI commemorative package here
It is of course possible that no theft occurred. Brady’s jersey may have been inadvertently moved or even accidentally discarded. A locker room in the aftermath of a Super Bowl victory is joyous and chaotic, with players, family, friends and media all congregating in a relatively confined space. Many in attendance have also consumed a good deal of alcohol and thus their judgment might be impaired. With those factors in mind, a Patriots equipment attendant may have wisely placed Brady’s jersey in a safe place, though perhaps without telling Brady. Boston Fox 25’s Tom Leyden and Butch Sterns report that, according to a team official, an equipment attendant secured Brady’s jersey. The jersey, however, was thereafter lost or misplaced.
Whatever happened to Brady’s jersey, the jersey remains missing as of this writing. It’s unclear if security cameras within the NRG stadium might prove helpful in locating the jersey’s whereabouts or who might have it. The Houston Police Department is now investigating and Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick has called in the Texas Rangers to help. Brady seems disappointed about the jersey gone missing, calling it “unfortunate.” Brady hopes people will let him know “if it shows up on eBay somewhere.”
Technically, Brady does not own the jersey, as it is the property of the Patriots and the NFL. Brady, however, would have been able to keep it as a cherished memento from his fifth Super Bowl victory.
If there is a jersey thief and if the thief is caught, he or she could face up to 99 years in prison under Texas law
Assuming Brady’s jersey was stolen and assuming the person or persons who stole it are identified—to be sure, quite a few assumptions there—the value of the jersey would have a dramatic impact on the degree of crime charged. Like other states, Texas assigns very different penalties for theft, which refers to intentionally taking property that the thief knows belongs to someone else. The penalties range widely depending on the value of the stolen item or items.
For example, a stolen item worth between $500 and $1,499 is punishable by up to one year in jail as a misdemeanor offense. But if the stolen item is worth between $1,500 and $19,999, the thief can be charged with a felony and face up to two years in prison. A stolen item worth between $20,000 and $99,999 is a felony of the third degree under Texas law and is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The maximum prison sentence increases to 20 years if the stolen item is worth between $100,000 and $199,999. What about a stolen item worth $200,000 or more? In Texas, a thief of such a high-value item has committed a felony in the first degree and faces between 5 years and 99 years—yes, 99 years—in prison.
According to remarks by Rich Mueller of Sports Collectors Daily to Brad Tuttle in Tuttle’s Time article, the missing jersey could be worth $400,000 or more on an open market. While, for obvious reasons, a famous stolen item is not sold on an open market, the fair market value of the item would determine the degree of felony charged. Prosecutors and defense attorneys would thus debate how to assess the fair market value of Brady’s stolen jersey. Prosecutors would contend that such value is equivalent to what the jersey worn by Tom Brady in his historic Super Bowl LI victory would be worth if lawfully sold, whereas defense attorneys would insist that the jersey’s fair market value is merely the value of a used jersey worn by an NFL player—meaning a value lower than what it cost as a new jersey. Note that if the value of the jersey is determined by a court to be $200,000, a person charged with stealing the jersey could face first-degree theft. If convicted, he or she would face the possibility of a prison sentence ranging anywhere from five years to 99 years in prison. Would such a thief likely spend anywhere near 99 years in prison? Almost certainly not, particularly if the thief is a first time offender and is apologetic. But it would be a frightening legal situation for virtually anyone to encounter.
If there is a jersey thief who plans to sell the loot, he or she will have to wait a while before such a transaction could be conducted without the risk of criminal prosecution. Under Texas law, there is a five-year statute of limitations for theft. This means that a thief could face criminal prosecution for the misdeed until 2022. Potential buyers of the jersey should also beware while the statute of limitations is in effect: Buying a stolen good can itself constitute a criminal act. Even when not a crime, buying stolen personal property means that you take possession—but not legal title (ownership)—of the property. Such property must be returned to its rightful owner upon demand.
Brady’s missing jersey is not the first time that a Patriots Super Bowl item has been, shall we say, diverted from its rightful owner. In 2005, Kraft showed his Super Bowl XXXIX ring, adorned with 124 diamonds, to Russian President Vladimir Putin. As the story goes, Putin liked the ring so much that he decided to keep it, despite Kraft reaching out his hand for Putin to return it. Kraft initially told the public that he intended for Putin to have the ring as a gift, but later admitted that the White House directed him to offer such a diplomatic—and inaccurate—explanation. Kraft has since told media that he still wants the ring back. On Sunday, Kraft told Fox News that he would be happy to order a new Super Bowl XXXIX ring for Putin, with Putin’s name on it. He hopes that President Donald Trump would be able to convince Putin to exchange such a new ring for the one that belongs to Kraft.
Michael McCann is SI’s legal analyst. He is also an attorney and a tenured law professor at the University of New Hampshire School of Law. |
We ended up not having enough chocolate, so we cut up some Hershey's kisses to get it up to the 1 cup mark. Once you get a full cup of chocolate, add that into the mixture.
Next, we need to cut up our bacon. By now, they should be relatively grease free, and much easier to cut up. Dice them up into chucks, it's easier to do them all at one time. With our 6 slices we ended up getting a little more than 1/2 cup of bacon.
I wouldn't suggest going over a 50:50 ratio of chocolate to bacon.
Add the bacon to the mixture, and mix it up by hand using a spoon.
JockoSadie1 suggests putting the dough into the fridge or freezer for 15-30 minutes to let it rest. I haven't tried it out yet, but these cookies really do flatten out. So, if you have the patience, pop 'em in the fridge. |
One year ago, I reviewed the Google Pixel XL and said it was Android at its best. I also wondered if that would be good enough, and it certainly has proven not to be. Instead of becoming the next iPhone, the Pixel line became the next Google Glass. Part of the problem was that there wasn’t enough supply to meet initial demand. Once the supply part was fixed, the demand part fell.
Google hopefully isn’t going to make the same availability mistakes with the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, both which start shipping on October 19. But even if they make a lot of phones available for sale, it doesn’t mean that people will be picking them up. The problem is that both phones don’t really differentiate themselves from others on the market.
It’s shocking that both Pixel smartphones only have a single camera lens, which is so 2016. (One year in the smartphone world is like 10 years in the real world.) Both the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and the iPhone 8 Plus have a dual-camera lens that not only lets the photographer take photos with 2X optical zoom, but allows control of background focus. In short, the new iPhone and Galaxy Note cameras can truly replace digital cameras.
The smartphones, which look rather plain, look a lot like the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. The Pixel XL has a 6-inch OLED screen that looks beautiful, but it doesn’t beat Samsung in the screen size department. Both phones will run Android 8.0 (Oreo), which will give them a slight edge over other Android phones. But as much as Android has improved, it’s still no iOS. Why not just buy the iPhone 8 or 8 Plus. Better yet, why not wait a couple more weeks for the iPhone X?
Both smartphones have 4GB of RAM, which is certainly enough for more than 99 percent of smartphone users. But why would someone who is thinking about the Galaxy Note 8 go for the Pixel 2 XL instead when the Note 8 has 6GB of RAM and includes an S Pen stylus for digital note-taking?
The Pixel 2 will cost $649, while the Pixel XL runs for $849. The prices are cheaper than their counterparts from Samsung, Apple, and even LG. But as much as the marketplace thrives when there are more competitors, it’s just hard to believe that we’ll be seeing a lot of people with the new Pixel smartphones in the next couple of months. I hope I’m wrong and that Google exceeds all sales expectations. |
If you are a fan of dirt rally, this is not what you’re looking for. The supposed “Sim” handling is on rails and the cars have an unrealistic
If you are a fan of dirt rally, this is not what you’re looking for. The supposed “Sim” handling is on rails and the cars have an unrealistic amount for grip. When you through the back out the game steps in and assists with recovery, I matched the setting to my Dirt rally settings and it did not help. The car just seems to want to stay on the track and doesn’t have to be forced to stay on. The cars feel under powered and the sense of speed is gone. Hitting a random bump in the road and flying of track in to a tree at 100mph that’s rally that’s dirt rally. In dirt 4 when the car hits a jump or bump the physics feel heavy almost as if the track is magnetic. When in the air you can see the game forcing the car straight trying to land on either the left, right two or all four tyres as if those are the only 3 outcomes available instead of just letting the physics dictate it. The other users reviewing the game positively are newcomers and not hard-core fans, the applaud the games accessibility yet fail to see that the success of dirt rally was in its lack of accessibility. Hard-core gamers want hard-core games with no limitations in the physics to “assist” new comers, this game will never be competitive for this exact reason it’s not a level playing field. The entire gaming industry is threated by developers pandering to casuals for a quick buck instead of listening to dedicated life-long fans. It would not have been hard for Codemasters to simply add a Dirt rally handling option yet they have not….Why? because the physics don’t allow it. When I first heard of Dirt 4 I thought na it’s too good to be true this soon, I was proven right. The exact team who created dirt rally should be used for dirt rally 2 I don’t want to have to wait through another 3 of this trash before it happens. Come on codemasters you had it right with dirt rally all you needed to do was give us a few more tracks and cars and we would have been more than happy instead you pander to these scum casuals, even if you would have just gave us DLC for dirt rally I would have paid for it rather than waste money thinking this is it when it isn’t. The casuals you are appeasing will be gone when the next gimmicky trash comes along and we the real fans will be waiting as usual at the back of the queue.
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According to the Hindustan Times, Boeing Co (NYSE:BA) is in talks with the Indian government to set up a production plant for the Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet, as part of their larger plan to invest billions of dollars in the country. If the agreement goes through, Boeing will have the ability to tap into India’s highly technical and cheap labor force.
The F/A-18 Super Hornet is a twin-engine, supersonic, all weather, multirole fighter jet, and has the capability of landing and taking off from an aircraft carrier, according to Boeing's website. This development comes after the world's largest aerospace corporation announced plans to invest billions of dollars in the South Asian country.
This is a perfect opportunity for Boeing to establish itself in country. Incentives from the government, such as the "Make in India" campaign, is helping to make things easier for foreign companies to establish themselves in India.
The aerospace giant is planning on setting up an industrial capacity, capable of manufacturing the full life cycles of planes. The FA/18 production plant has enough depth and capacity to harness room for further growth. With a production plant in place, Boeing will have a set investment in capabilities, infrastructure and partnerships in India, making room for further expansion.
The company is taking an active initiative to expand the aerospace industry in India. Boeing has predicted that over the next five years, India's population will grow to a staggering 1.6 billion people, giving them primary access to an enormous market.
Furthermore, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), India’s airspace will become the largest market by 2030. Currently, India has the 8th largest airspace market, worth $16 billion. Air travel is expected to grow around 6.4% annually as well. With consistent GDP growth and significant development of the middle class, India is an ideal investment point for the aerospace giant.
The company has also hinted at developing fifth-generation fighter jets for the Indian government. Boeing develops the F-22 Raptor jointly with Lockheed Martin, which is a future growth option for the former.
Moreover Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has increased India’s defense expenditure substantially, making the country one of the world’s largest consumers of defense arsenal. Just recently, India purchased $2.5 billion worth of helicopters from Boeing in September, 2015.
However, the deal is subjected to government-to-government approval, which isn’t expected to face major hurdles. Boeing is heavily dependent upon the US government for orders, with more than 85% of revenues coming from the Pentagon. The company will have to be careful in its discussions with both governments.
Additionally, according to the guidance for 2016, Boeing's military aircraft segment is expected to have revenues of $12.3 billion, decreasing by 10% from revenues earned in 2015. With expansion plans for India, total operating revenue could decrease substantially for the Boeing military aircraft segment. However, in the future, margins could improve significantly, with lowering costs, because of production in India.
Nevertheless, Boeing is not the first aerospace corporation to enter India; rival company AIRBUS GROUP (OTCMKTS:EADSY) had entered the aerospace industry long ago. The first Airbus’ footprint in India was found in 1980, when an agreement was reached with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) to manufacture doors for the A320. HAL produces half of the A320's total number of doors.
Airbus currently controls the fast growing Indian aerospace sector, through its fully-owned subsidiary, Airbus India Operations, established in December 2013. In addition, Airbus has expanded in engineering, manufacturing of aero-structures, information technology, research and design, and sub-assemblies throughout the country. |
Features
Free-Form Sketching
With VPaint, the lines composing your illustration or animation are not Bezier curves, but hand-drawn curves called edges. You can conveniently set the width of drawn edges by holding CTRL. If you are using a pen tablet, VPaint can use the pressure information to generate edges with variable width.
Sculpting
Once drawn, your edges can be easily edited à la ZBrush: simply push the curve using our sculpting tool. The radius of influence can be almost instantly changed at any given time by holding CTRL. In the same way, curves can be smoothed by holding SHIFT. The width of curves can also be edited locally by holding ALT, making possible to intuitively design curves of variable width even with a mouse. Junctions between edges are tracked by VPaint, and always preserved during editing (unlike in most other vector graphics editors, where Bezier paths are all independent from each others).
Painting
Using the paint bucket tool, it is easier than ever to color vector illustrations. Just click on a region bounded by existing edges to fill this region with the current color, creating what is call a face (= painted region). Unlike most other vector graphics editor, the face keeps track of which edges define its boundary, and thus editing this boundary automatically update the painted region. Junctions between faces are tracked by VPaint, and always preserved during editing.
Animation
At the bottom of the window, there is a timeline to let you create an animation by drawing several frames, and you can easily play/pause with the spacebar, and go one frame left or one frame right with the arrow keys. You can either draw everything frame by frame, or copy elements from some frame (CTRL+C) and paste them at another frame (CTRL+V). You can also do a special paste called motion-paste (CTRL+V) to paste elements several frames away with automatic inbetweening.
Onion Skinning
For better control over the timing and trajectory of your animation, you can overlay several adjacent frames of the animation at the same time. Also, you can split the view into as many views as you want, to show and edit side by side different frames of your animation. |
This weekend marks the 23rd anniversary of everyone’s favorite Mode 7ing, SEGA crushing, Super Mario World-having console, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. I could easily skim the SNES Wikipedia page and give you the rundown history of the console that you’ve seen a million times and have memorized word-for-word at this point, but I thought I’d do something different.
If you’re like me and born in the late 80’s or early 90’s (89 for me) you probably came just barely too late for NES craze. Your parents might have still had one by the time you were three or four and could sort of grasp the idea of how a video game works, but by that time the grandaddy of Nintendo systems was nearing 10 years old and the SNES was in full swing.
With that said, I thought I’ve give a quick glimpse into my personal history with the console and maybe it’ll trigger some hidden nostalgia goodness for you too. Just for the sake of keeping the memories authentic, I won’t be Googling anything to refresh my memory of the games as I’m doing the write-ups. This is all from what I remember from my first major console in video games.
Where It Started
I have no idea. I don’t remember when my parents bought a SNES or precisely the first time I played it. In fact, the Super Nintendo wasn’t even the first console I remember seeing. I definitely have faint memories of watching family members (mainly my brother) play Q-Bert on Atari and of course Super Mario Bros on the NES. We even found the Atari in our shed when I was a little older but eventually just threw it out thinking it was junk. Man do I regret that.
Anyway, the clear first game I remember playing is Super Mario World. And that’s where this little trip down memory lane starts. Here are a few of my favorite games for the 23-year-old console and what they meant to me.
Super Mario World (1990)
As I said, this is the first game I absolutely remember playing while having a controller in my hand and it was always with my brother or my mom that I played with. I don’t think I even made it very far on my own, never even past the first the first castle to create the bridge and get off the island. Most of my play time was spent jumping around that tree level with an odd fireplace in one of the trunks.
Playing with family members was another story entirely. I remember my brother was great at the game and I was the annoying little brother following and constantly draining our lives. When we – well mainly him – got to the final Bowser and his flying teacup of a helicopter I ended up putting my controller down and letting him take him down. Despite the fact that all I did was die and lose precious lives it still felt like I accomplished something. Being four-years-old is easy as hell.
When my brother was at school or otherwise couldn’t play, my mom would always be the one playing Mario. She wasn’t nearly as good as my brother of course, but miles better than me. One semi-related thing I remember is that, when she had to have surgery and stay hospitalized for a couple days, the first thing I asked was “who’s going to play Mario?” I had priorities.
Super Play Action Football (1992)
Super Play Action football is to me what Techmo Bowl is to most people. It was my first exposure to being able to play as the team I watched on TV (I don’t even remember what team it was back then I switched so much as a kid). Honestly the game was confusing as hell to look at. You play on a slanted field, but also have a semi-transparent map on the left side of the screen to orient yourself with the playing field.
Even without firing up an emulator and looking up a video or anything I distinctly remember the choose your team screens. There was a little guy with a flag and the text of your chosen team would flash outwardly from the center in blue or orange. I have no idea why I remember this so well but the visual and music that played on the select screen is absolutely burned into my mind. Maybe it’s because I had no idea which team to choose 90% of the time and would take forever deciding. I remember a lot of groans coming from my brother while he sat with his precious Bills already selected for me to pick a damn team already.
During the coin toss and whenever there was a big play, the game would cut away to a small crowd watching in what looked like a break room or an overfill room in the stadium. While cool (and as far as I know games still don’t do this), it absolutely terrified me. Something about the faces and mean pixelated expressions whenever the home team screwed up gave me nightmares. Whenever I knew it was coming I’d usually look away. Now that I think back on it, it’s a really cool feature and I still don’t know why modern football games don’t do it or something similar. But that’s another article altogether.
Mario Paint (1992)
Speaking of games that irrationally gave me nightmares – Mario Paint. I remember almost nothing about this game. Reason being, when I got to one part in particular I completely gave up on it and the thought of even seeing the intro screen was enough to make me cry as a four year old and still get a tingly creeped out feeling as a 24-year-old. There was one mini-game where you had to swat flies and after some amount of time a boss bug would come out and the creepiest music would play. That, combined with it’s terrifyingly angry eyes, were enough to make me never touch the game. To this day it still remains a game that I don’t dare play and I’m dreading looking it up after this write-up to find images and refresh myself on it. Seriously, I’m not exaggerating. My parents ended up giving the game away because I wouldn’t touch it or let my brother play it around me.
I do remembering playing around with the composer (which, by the way, has spawned a flash version and is still popular to this day) before my irrational fear of that stupid fly took hold and the splash screen that animated coloring a picture of Yoshi is still fresh in my mind.
Super Off Road (1993)
If you’ve never heard of this game (and based on the lack of a Wikipedia page I’m going to guess it wasn’t all that popular) it’s an isometric racing game similar to Blizzard’s slightly more popular Rock Rock n’ Roll racing. I remember always being frustrated with not knowing which direction to press to turn the way I wanted – “I pressed right why are you going up?!” – but that’s the nature of isometric games. Left always turns left even if it’s up on the screen.
Other than my terrible four-year-old motor skills failing me, I remember this game was awesome. There were a ton of upgrades you could get between races, those sweet one-piece wearing trophy babes, obstacles on the track were actually fun to avoid and ramp off of and using the nitro to blast across the screen was enough to blow my mind every single time. Considering isometric racers are still popular, I’d assume this aged well. If you can grab it on an emulator acquire it completely legally you should.
Donkey Kong Country (1994)
And when I say Donkey Kong Country, I strictly mean the original. I didn’t even know there were sequels until years later. But with that said, I was absolutely lost in DKC. There was so much going on and my brother went so fast that I barely knew what was happening. But damnit did I love every second. My strongest memory is that beaver for some reason. I really should play all these again.
The Lion King (1994)
I don’t remember getting very far in this game but, based on reading about it and watching people play it as an adult, there’s a very good reason. This game is freaking hard. I had always assumed I never made it past the first couple levels because of my pre-school ineptitude, but the game is just damn near impossible. That’s the great thing about playing games before all your cognitive abilities are there, I still had a blast with it. Despite being the same level every time, it still felt like a new adventure every single play-through – all the flashy lights and colors were new and exciting.
Kirby Super Star (1996)
This is a game I never actually owned, but put more time into it than several games that I did. As a kid, I had sleepovers almost every weekend. Whether it was going to a friends house or a friend coming to mine, it was almost always late nights playing games. My Kirby Superstar Playing days weren’t as long ago as some others on this list, though. I clearly remember both my friend and I owned N64’s (and maybe even Gamecubes toward the end) but we still played Kirby Super Star every time I went over to his house. Being that it wasn’t my house and guest rules and all that, I of course ended up with the bastardized controller with the macro button, but that didn’t stop us. He was a master of all the minigames and towards the end of our time playing it, we were pretty evenly matched. We destroyed that planet so many times in that timing/punch-the-ground minigame. Beat the game countless times over several years and it still remains one of my favorites with the best memories tied to it.
Games I Never Played, But Should Have
For one reason or another, there were just some games I never played. Being that I was only in my early to mid single digit ages while the SNES was king of the gaming world, most of the game decisions weren’t mine. They were just whatever we happened to own at the time. Great games like The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past and Chrono Trigger I just had no idea existed until I was much older and heard friends talk about them. I didn’t know about Link and his adventures until Ocarina of Time on the N64 came out and every single friend I knew with the console owned it and talked about it.
There were others I knew about and wanted to play, like Bomberman and Star Fox, but just never did for whatever reason. But everytime I thumbed through the JC Penny or Toys ‘R Us catalogs to circle Christmas presents they always caught my eye.
And, of course, there were games I knew about, wanted to play, but flat out wasn’t allowed. Games like Street Fighter and Contra that my parents found too violent and didn’t want me to see at such a young age. That’s not to say I didn’t play them at all, because I did at friend’s houses (sorry, Mom) but not nearly enough to remember anything from them.
Happy Birthday, SNES!
That obviously isn’t every game I’ve ever played, but these are the ones I remember the most without having to look up information.Super Mario Kart, for instance, I know I owned and played but I’ll be damned if I can remember a single thing about it. Even after buying it on the Wii U virtual console no fond memories came flooding back. Also, Super Mario Kart did not age well. Wow.
Nintendo consoles were the only ones I ever owned up until the original Xbox and it’s fair to say they helped shaped my gaming preferences and a little bit of who I am. So thanks SNES, for giving me a branch to hold onto growing up and always having an answer to the question “who’s going to play Mario?”
What are your fondest memories of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System? Sound off in the comments, or on your favorite social network.
Happy birthday! |
by Pratap Chatterjee / CorpWatch.
Raytheon, a U.S. military manufacturer, is selling a new software surveillance package named “Riot” that claims to predict where individuals are expected to go next using technology that mines data from social networks like Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter.
Based just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, Raytheon sells $25 billion worth of equipment a year to military clients like the Pentagon. Some of its most famous products include Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, Maverick air-to-ground missiles, Patriot surface-to-air missiles and Tomahawk submarine-launched cruise missiles.
Raytheon’s Rapid Information Overlay Technology (Riot) software extracts location data from photos and comments posted online by individuals, and then analyzes this information to create a variety of spider diagrams to show where the individuals like to go, what they like to do and whom they communicate with.
A video demonstration of the software was recently published online by the Guardian newspaper. In it, Brian Urch of Raytheon shows how Riot can be used to track “Nick” – a company employee – to predict that the best time and place to steal his computer or put spy software on it.
“Six a.m. appears to be the most frequently visited time at the gym,” says Urch in the video, which is dated November 2010. “So if you ever did want to try to get a hold of Nick – or maybe get a hold of his laptop – you might want to visit the gym at 6:00 a.m. on Monday.”
“Riot is a big data analytics system design we are working on with industry, national labs and commercial partners to help turn massive amounts of data into useable information to help meet our nation’s rapidly changing security needs,” Jared Adams, a spokesman for Raytheon’s intelligence and information systems department, told the Guardian.
Adams says that nobody has bought the software – which is still under development – yet. However, company filings indicate that Riot is classified as an “Export Administration Regulations 99″ item which allows it to be sold or exported to any client.
But it is certainly true that a number of U.S. government agencies have been eagerly pursuing surveillance software to exploit the vast quantities of data that individuals are posting online about themselves. In January 2012 the Federal Bureau of Investigation posted a request for an application that would allow it to “provide an automated search and scrape capability of social networks including Facebook and Twitter … and (i)mmediately translate foreign language tweets into English.”
Last month the U.S. Transportation Security Administration asked contractors to propose applications “to generate an assessment of the risk to the aviation transportation system that may be posed by a specific individual” using “specific sources of current, accurate, and complete non-governmental data.” The initial plan is to use it to screen volunteer flyers who will be offered the benefits of “expedited screening lanes … leave on their shoes, light outerwear and belts, as well as leave laptops and … compliant liquids in carry-on bags.”
Privacy activists say that the Riot package is troubling. “This sort of software allows the government to surveil everyone,” Ginger McCall, the director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s Open Government program, told NBC News. “It scoops up a bunch of information about totally innocent people. There seems to be no legitimate reason to get this.”
“(T)he government has no business rooting around people’s social network postings—even those that are voluntarily publicly posted—unless it has specific, individualized suspicion that a person is involved in wrongdoing,” writes Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. “Among the many problems with government “large-scale analytics” of social network information is the prospect that government agencies will blunderingly use these techniques to tag, target and watchlist people coughed up by programs such as Riot, or to target them for further invasions of privacy based on incorrect inferences.”
Indeed, it would also be possible for a tech-savvy malcontent to lead security officials on a wild goose chase, or even deliberately frame anyone they wanted.
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Either this image has been photoshopped or the owner suffers from a major case of gauge-envy. Either way, someone went through a lot of work to make the this midyear Corvette’s cockpit look like something that’s ready for the runway instead of the driveway.
Click here for a larger image.
The photo was posted in the C1-C2 section of the Corvette Forum. I dug a little further and found that this dash is in deed real and was found in a 1966 Corvette that was on display at a car show in Elderburg, Maryland in May, 2007. The picture was taken by by flickr user tperry111.
This ’66 Vette is not the first with flight-related gauges. When the factory built the custom 1963 Corvette convertible for Harley Earl’s retirement, engineers removed the glovebox and installed custom gauges, one of which was an altimeter.
Comments about this dash on the forum are plenty and range from pilots talking shop to the fact that the usually chrome spinner on the Corvette’s tilt/tele steering column was painted flat black. Blasphemy!
Source:
flickr via Corvette Forum
Related:
Motor Trend Video: Corvette Blue Devil vs Blue Angel
[VIDEO] Harley Earl’s 1963 Corvette Sells for $925,000 |
PG&E says Oakland gas blast wasn't its fault OAKLAND
Alton Crockett visits the East Oakland duplex where his cousin, Leon Spencer, 61, was burned over 80 percent of his body in a natural gas explosion. Alton Crockett visits the East Oakland duplex where his cousin, Leon Spencer, 61, was burned over 80 percent of his body in a natural gas explosion. Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close PG&E says Oakland gas blast wasn't its fault 1 / 5 Back to Gallery
An explosion that leveled the top floor of an East Oakland duplex and severely burned the building's owner was not the responsibility of Pacific Gas and Electric Co., a utility spokeswoman said Tuesday.
A preliminary investigation of the structure at 2317 and 2319 87th Ave. determined that there was "no gas leak outside the building" when the blast occurred at about 8 p.m. Monday, said PG&E spokeswoman Brandi Ehlers.
Investigators say the explosion may have been caused by a natural gas line rupture, but the exact cause has not been determined.
Assuming that the explosion happened inside the two-story building, any liability would be on the part of the owner, Leon Spencer, 61, who suffered burns over 80 percent of his body, authorities said.
Spencer had brought in neighbors to remodel the upstairs unit in preparation for renting it, authorities said.
Spencer was in critical but stable condition at St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco, hospital spokeswoman Linda Gillespie said.
Spencer ran out of the duplex shortly after the blast, witnesses said.
A neighbor, Donna Miles, 63, said she had opened the door to her home and had seen Spencer yelling, "Donna, help me!"
"I did see Leon on fire," Miles said.
The upper unit had collapsed onto the lower unit, where Spencer lived, said Battalion Chief Melinda Drayton of the Oakland Fire Department.
The force of the blast also shattered the windows of a nearby residence at 2311 87th Ave. Three adults and a child who live there were evacuated and were being assisted by the American Red Cross, Drayton said. |
On Tuesday the Seattle City Council transportation committee voted to approve an increase in the number of free-floating car share permits and operators. This would primarily benefit car2go, the German company whose blue-and-white mini cars are rented on a per minute basis. Up from 350 vehicles beginning in 2012, the company has reached the 500 vehicle cap under a pilot program monitored by the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT). The service has proved immensely popular and reportedly has 59,000 members in Seattle, the largest of car2go’s 30 cities and nearly one-tenth of the city’s population. The company has requested authority to expand, and the proposed legislation (PDF) will increase the permit cap six-fold and allow up to four car share operators in the city.
In the car2go model drivers don’t need to return the vehicle to a dedicated parking space, hence the term “free floating”. This enhances the public transportation network by enabling trips that may be inconvenient to reach by other means. Members can reserve vehicles up to 30 minutes in advance online or walk up to a vehicle on the street and go. Drivers can park on most streets, with exceptions on some business and arterial streets. According to a staff report (PDF), the vehicles currently occupy only 0.7 percent of the city’s paid parking space. On average, each vehicle is used six times per day and parked only 68 minutes between trips. Personal vehicles are unused 95 percent of the time.
Committee chair Tom Rasmussen noted that car2go estimates up to four percent (2,360) of Seattle members have ditched a personal vehicle since joining, which removes the option of driving everywhere for every activity and results in congestion reduction. Increasing membership of car-share services will only improve this outcome. SDOT Director Scott Kubly said car sharing is “…a key component to creating choices for people to get around the city, and allowing people to live a car-free or car-light lifestyle”.
The pilot program’s limitations will be resolved by the proposed legislation. There will be a cap of four car share operators; only two others, Zipcar and BMW’s DriveNow, have expressed interest, but the additional competition will enable the market to set prices and create greater consumer choice. The pilot program’s service area will also expand to the entire city limits, up from about two-thirds of it now. And after two years of service, new operators will be required to serve the entire city in exchange for an increased cap of 750 vehicles per operator (car2go would fall under this now). Effectively, this translates to a maximum of 3,000 car share vehicles citywide. That’s in addition to the hundreds of spot-based Zipcars already in place. The legislation requires regular reports from SDOT, and starting next year the SDOT Director is authorized to adjust the caps as necessary.
The permit cost for each vehicle will increase from $1,330 to $1,730. During the public hearing, car2go representative Walter Rosenkrantz said the company could not simply absorb that cost and may need to raise rental rates or reduce their sponsorship of community groups and events. SDOT’s reports are to include data on neighborhood parking rates and utilization so that fees can be adjusted as needed. Other considerations brought up were the desire for electric vehicles, though that would present logistical problems for charging, and the feasibility of integrating the ORCA card system with car2go. The legislation will next go to the full City Council.
Things are looking up for transportation in Seattle. Last year one of the mayor’s task forces smoothed out the ride-sharing debate with companies like Lyft and Uber, local bus funding was secured to prevent major cuts, bike share launched, two new light rail stations will open in 2016, and complete streets continue to be built out. The expansion of car share services will further incentivize the reduction of urban automobile ownership and improve mobility options citywide. |
So with only a week to go until Donald J. Trump officially becomes President Donald J. Trump, the world seems to have somehow gone to another level of craziness. This week BuzzFeed News released an unsubstantiated dossier full of serious allegations, including the fact that the Russian government has a compromising tape of Trump with Russian prostitutes putting on a golden shower show that they plan on using to blackmail him. Now, since these documents were released, there have been some great pieces, including one in The Atlantic from Julia Ioffe (who interviewed Melania Trump for this very publication) that lays out how such a tape would very much be in keeping with Russia's (and Putin's, specifically) modus operandi.
In January 1999, Prosecutor General Yury Skuratov was summoned to the Kremlin by then-President Boris Yeltsin’s chief of staff, who showed him a videotape of “a man who looked like” Skuratov frolicking in bed with two prostitutes. Then he asked Skuratov to resign, even though the prosecutor was in the middle of investigating Yeltsin’s administration for taking bribes from a Swiss firm trying to secure lucrative contracts for Kremlin renovations. It was a grainy tape and Skuratov would later say it was fake, but he submitted his resignation nonetheless. ... The tape is rumored to have been delivered personally to the head of RTR by “a man who looked like the head of the FSB,” who at the time was none other than Vladimir Putin.
But yesterday, in an unearthed interview from The Howard Stern Show in 2001, we were given a small reason to believe that the intelligence report was on to something. Trump and a gossip columnist named A. J. Benza got into an argument on the air in which Benza revealed something Trump had bragged to him about. (The clip starts at 4:20.)
Here's a transcript via Death and Taxes.
Trump: I assume A.J.’s clean. I hope he’s clean. Benza: Meanwhile, he bangs Russian people… Stern: Russian people? Trump: Who are you talking about, Russian people, A.J.? I don’t know anything. Benza: He used to call me when I was a columnist and say, “I was just in Russia, the girls have no morals, you gotta get out there.” [Trump’s] out of his mind.
Okay, so in 2001 a gossip columnist claimed that Trump bragged to him about having wild sexual escapades in Russia. Now, do we know this is true for sure? Nope. But it does seem to be quite the coincidence that it dovetails with current reports so well. Anyway, when you put this moment from 2001 and the report from BuzzFeed News in conversation with this answer from Trump during his press conference earlier this week, things get dicey.
And I always tell them — anywhere, but I always tell them if I’m leaving this country, “Be very careful, because in your hotel rooms and no matter where you go, you’re gonna probably have cameras.” I’m not referring just to Russia, but I would certainly put them in that category. And number one, “I hope you’re gonna be good anyway. But in those rooms, you have cameras in the strangest places. Cameras that are so small with modern technology, you can’t see them and you won’t know. You better be careful, or you’ll be watching yourself on nightly television.” I tell this to people all the time. I was in Russia years ago, with the Miss Universe contest, which did very well — Moscow, the Moscow area did very, very well. And I told many people, “Be careful, because you don’t wanna see yourself on television. Cameras all over the place.”
So basically we have an intelligence report saying Russia has a compromising video of Trump. We have a gossip columnist saying Trump bragged about going to Russia and having wild sex with women who "have no morals." And we have Trump himself saying he's well aware of the fact that in hotel rooms in places like Russia, you are definitely recorded by cameras.
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It almost seems like whether or not you think Russia actually has a damning sex tape comes down to one simple question: Do you think calling a gossip reporter and bragging about debauched overseas sex sounds like something Donald Trump would do? I don't know, but someone should ask Billy Bush, if they can find him.
WATCH: Donald Trump’s Obsession with Russia Will Be His Undoing |
Photo
BEIJING — Vietnam said on Friday that it would conduct live-fire naval exercises off its coast next week, a step that escalated a long-running dispute with China over territory in the South China Sea that both nations claim.
The naval maneuvers follow an exchange of sharp statements on Thursday. Vietnam claimed that China had harassed a seismic survey boat, damaging a research cable trailing behind it, and China demanded that Vietnam halt oil-exploration activities in the area.
In an announcement on its Web site, Vietnam’s state-run Northern Maritime Safety Corporation said that nine hours of naval exercises would be held on Monday off the country’s central coast, and it warned other vessels to avoid the area. This is the first time that the government has publicized a live-ammunition drill, The Associated Press reported.
The diplomatic flare-up is the most serious confrontation this year in a territorial dispute that also involves the Philippines, Malaysia and Taiwan. All five countries have competing claims to parts of the South China Sea bed, which may hold valuable oil and mineral deposits. Arguments over the territory have continued for years, and the nations signed a 2002 accord that committed them to show restraint in disputed waters.
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The issue heated up again last year because of a United Nations treaty that required all nations to file formal claims to continental shelf seabeds by the end of 2009. The documents that Vietnam and China filed asserted their competing territorial claims in the South China Sea more aggressively than they had before. China has seized scores of Vietnamese fishing boats in recent years, and Vietnam has responded with naval activities like the seismic survey this week. |
[+]Enlarge On Patrol Researchers plated Escherichia coli with the pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The pathogens glow red. On the right, the E. coli have been engineered to detect the pathogens and secrete a toxin that stunts P. aeruginosa’s growth. On the left, the researchers used normal E. coli, and the P. aeruginosa grew normally. Images were magnified 10-fold. Credit: ACS Synth. Biol.
When hospital patients develop nasty, antibiotic-resistant infections, the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa is often the culprit. In a new approach to killing the pathogen, researchers genetically modifiedEscherichia coli bacteria to detect and destroy P. aeruginosa (ACS Synth. Biol. 2013, DOI: 10.1021/sb4000417).
To combat pathogenic bacteria that have become resistant to some of our most potent antibiotics, Ron Weiss at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his team turned to nonpathogenic bacteria. They engineered a harmless strain of E. coli to spot nearby P. aeruginosa through the presence of a molecule called 3OC 12 HSL. The pathogen secretes the compound to communicate with its bacterial neighbors. Upon detecting 3OC 12 HSL, the engineered E. coli sentinels deploy a toxic protein called a bacteriocin that specifically enters P. aeruginosa and chops up its DNA, killing the pathogen.
The team’s inspiration for the new approach came from the bacteria themselves, Weiss says. “Bacteria use bacteriocins to regulate their population levels,” he says. “They kill some of their own kind for the good of the colony.” For example, when individual bacteria suffer damage from stressful situations, such as low nutrient levels, they produce bacteriocins along with a protein that pokes holes in the cell. The damaged bacteria then burst open, releasing bacteriocins into their immediate environment and killing many of their neighboring brethren. Some cells, though, survive because they express an immunity protein that stops the toxin’s DNA-chewing machinery.
E. coli bacteriocins can kill only other E. coli, and the P. aeruginosa toxins knock out only those pathogens. The reason is that the proteins first must bind to specific receptors on the bacteria’s surfaces, and these receptors differ between species. So the researchers had to modify the E. coli bacteriocin to strike P. aeruginosa. The team created a chimeric toxin: They combined the DNA-chopping domain of the E. coli toxin with elements from the P. aeruginosa toxin that bind to receptors on the pathogen’s surface.
Because the DNA-chopping domain comes from E. coli, the immunity protein produced by some P. aeruginosa can’t disarm the toxin. The team also added a protein component that forces E. coli to secrete the toxin into its surroundings. With this protein tag, the bacteria don’t have to burst to release the toxin.
Finally, the researchers engineered E. coli sentinels to express a protein that turns on the toxin production pathways after it binds 3OC 12 HSL.
[+]Enlarge Sense And Destroy The pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa (top right) secretes the small molecule 3OC 12 HSL (orange) as a way to communicate between individuals in its colonies. Researchers programmed Escherichia coli (large oval) to express proteins (blue) that can bind 3OC 12 HSL. Once the protein recognizes the small molecule, it turns on production pathways for a green fluorescent protein (green) and a chimeric toxin (yellow and pink). E. coli release the toxin, which enters and kills P. aeruginosa bacteria. Credit: Ron Weiss
Weiss and his colleagues showed that the engineered E. coli killed P. aeruginosa in a liquid culture without harming the sentinels themselves or other species of bacteria. When the researchers added a concentrated droplet of E. coli sentinels to an agar plate containing P. aeruginosa, the pathogen’s growth within the droplet area slowed by more than 97%.
Although these experiments demonstrate that the E. coli sentinel idea is viable, Weiss says that the system needs optimization before it can be tested as a treatment for P. aeruginosa infections. Currently, the E. coli aren’t very efficient: To inhibit the pathogens’ growth by 50%, the team needs 100,000 sentinels for every P. aeruginosa cell. Weiss wants to increase the binding affinity of the protein that recognizes 3OC 12 HSL, making the sentinels more sensitive to the presence of P. aeruginosa. He also hopes to improve the secretion of the chimeric toxin. Only about 5% of the protein produced by the cell makes it out of the bacteria. |
CEDAR RAPIDS — The city of Cedar Rapids plans to convert 1,000 acres of unused, unproductive city property — mostly lawn that has to be regularly mowed and sprayed at considerable expense — to habitat for monarch butterflies and other pollinators.
The 1,000 Acres Pollinator Initiative will “promote a rapid, substantial increase in native pollinator habitat throughout our community,” Mayor Ron Corbett said.
He intends later this month to sign a pledge supporting initiatives promoting monarchs and other pollinators.
“This is good stewardship — no mow, no spray. We’ll end up money ahead while improving the environment and creating enjoyable green space,” Cedar Rapids Parks Superintendent Daniel Gibbins said.
“We want to be a statewide leader in the effort to create more sustainable communities,” added Gibbins, who is spearheading the project.
The initiative, which will be phased in over five years, “uniquely combines public/private partnerships that will form a strong model for other Iowa communities to use as a resource and template to promote the rapid changes to our environment critical to the future of both pollinators and people,” Corbett said.
Initiated by Cedar Rapids and the Monarch Research Project, the effort includes the Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation, Linn County and the cities of Marion and Hiawatha.
“We have to create a movement for this to work,” said Clark McLeod, co-founder of the Monarch Research Project.
Established initially to help the butterflies recover, the research group since has expanded its focus to include all species of pollinator insects, which are in jeopardy because of habitat loss and overuse of pesticides and herbicides, among other causes.
‘Something we can fix’
McLeod said the gravity of the pollinators’ plight has been impressed upon him by a statement attributed to Albert Einstein — that people have but four years to live after the demise of pollinators.
The number of bees, butterflies and other pollinator insects has declined by 50 percent in the past 70 years, with the monarch population falling 90 percent in the last 20 years.
“This is something hugely significant to the planet and something we can fix,” McLeod said.
Master gardener Becki Lynch, the Monarch Research Project’s habitat director, said spraying, mowing and replacement of native plants with non-native species has turned cities into toxic zones for insects.
“Lawns are not just zero habitat. They are minus 10s because we spray toxins on them,” McLeod said.
Through the practice of “poliscaping” — creating environments friendly to pollinators — “we plan to reverse that with a well designed network of plantings that are pleasing to both insects and people,” Lynch said.
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In conjunction with the effort, Linn County Master Gardeners have designated 2016 as the Year of the Pollinator.
The plan calls for city employees to convert half the eventual 1,000 acres while private contractors paid for by grant proceeds and private funds to change over the other half, Gibbins said.
As the areas are converted, they will be marked with signs indicating their status as pollinator zones, monarch zones or both.
McLeod said he is confident the plan will make Cedar Rapids and Linn County an oasis for pollinators.
“But we can be successful only if we make Cedar Rapids a model for cities all over the continent,” he added.
Noting that sustainability is a hot topic, City Manager Jeff Pomeranz said the pollinator initiative is consistent with other city efforts to improve ecosystem services.
Those efforts, he said, include new stormwater fees and incentives to reduce runoff from heavy rains, conservation practices installed on city-owned farmland near The Eastern Iowa Airport, and the city’s leadership in the $4.3 million Middle Cedar Partnership Project, designed to reduce nutrient pollution upstream on the Cedar River.
All city departments that manage public land — parks, golf courses, utilities, sewers, airport, for example — have identified properties to be seeded with a mixture of native forbs, grasses, sedges and wildflowers.
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Dennis Goemaat, deputy director of the Linn County Conservation Department, said pollinator seed mixes have been or will be planted this spring at Morgan Creek and Squaw Creek parks.
The thousand acres will be converted at no cost to city taxpayers. The Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation is seeking federal and private foundation grants to cover the conversion costs, which range from about $1,000 to $1,700 per acre.
Private donations will cover any matching funds required for grants.
Gibbins said the plantings not only will benefit pollinators and other wildlife species but also make the land more absorbent. That will help to improve water quality and reduce erosion and flash flooding, while making it more esthetically pleasing with a summer long succession of blooms.
Gibbins said the pollinator zones will require less mowing and maintenance, saving the city money in the long run.
“We are going to return land to nature and change the perception of what constitutes natural beauty,” Gibbins said. |
After saying on her Women of the Hour podcast this week that “I still haven’t had an abortion, but I wish I had” in order to better empathize with the women she supports, Lena Dunham quickly became the scourge of the internet on Tuesday for “trivializing” the procedure.
No stranger to such a predicament, Dunham shared a lengthy apology on her Instagram later that day, blaming her “‘delusional girl’ persona” for the “distasteful joke,” adding that she has since made a “sizeable” donation to the charity Abortion Funds.
In the podcast, Dunham, who has long been a pro-choice activist, described a time when she visited a Planned Parenthood in Texas several years ago when a young girl approached her asking if she would contribute her thoughts to a project she was working on involving women sharing their stories of abortions.
The Girls star said, “I sort of jumped. ‘I haven’t had an abortion,’ I told her. I wanted to make it really clear to her that as much as I was going out and fighting for other women’s options, I myself had never had an abortion. And I realized then that even I was carrying within myself stigma around this issue. Even I, the woman who cares as much as anybody about a woman’s right to choose, felt it was important that people know I was unblemished in this department.
“I feel so proud of them for their bravery, for their self-knowledge, and it was a really important moment for me then to realize I had internalized some of what society was throwing at us and I had to put it in the garbage. Now I can say that I still haven’t had an abortion, but I wish I had.”
In her apology, alongside a photo of the word “Choice,” which was also the subject of her podcast, Dunham wrote, “I’m so proud of the medley of voices in the episode. I truly hope a distasteful joke on my part won’t diminish the amazing work of all the women who participated. My words were spoken from a sort of ‘delusional girl’ persona I often inhabit, a girl who careens between wisdom and ignorance (that’s what my TV show is too) and it didn’t translate. That’s my fault. I would never, ever intentionally trivialize the emotional and physical challenges of terminating a pregnancy. My only goal is to increase awareness and decrease stigma.” |
1. It may be exhausting but you can put on Oscar worthy acting performances for days, weeks or even months at a time, pretending to be okay with people and things that are actually stressing you out & driving you crazy. You’re basically a super dedicated, unpaid method actor.
2. Giving attitude here and there is a survival mechanism you use to avoid exploding. It’s a way of slightly sedating a potential blow up temporarily. Think of it like slowly unscrewing the cap of a soda so the carbonation doesn’t cause a massive, fizzy mess and overflow out of the bottle.
3. Thinking that your feelings are foreign to everyone else. When you see yourself as somewhat of a Martian, it’s easy to refrain from expressing what’s inside because you’re fairly certain nobody wouldn’t understand anyway.
4. In modern dating there are a lot of games being played, which can lead people to mistake your lack of feelings being expressed for an attempt at the popular “I bet I can care less than you do” shenanigans.
5. The silent treatment isn’t something you intend to use childishly, but more to get your point across. Silence is like an uncomfortable comfort zone for you to hold things in but also make it clear that you’re not thrilled with someone.
6. Eventually you’ll blows up. It’s inevitable. Probably randomly, all of those feelings will come out at once, and you’ll have the friendliness of a possessed person in the midst of an exorcism.
7. When you’re in a relationship and don’t want to hurt your partner’s feelings, you’ll hold things in as an unspoken favor, saving them from your potentially upsetting honest thoughts.
8. A common way to validate your holding things in is by telling yourself that they’ll slowly expire or you can last bottling ’em up until the cause of them passes. You’re probably wrong, but it’s a great excuse in the moment.
9. Innocent bystanders and undeserving individuals are at risk when you finally reach your boiling point. They aren’t the cause of your frustration, but get the brunt of the punishment. For example, one of your co-workers is excessively rude to you for three months straight and you deal with it, then one day another co-worker asks to borrow your stapler and you’re like, “SERIOUSLY??! SURE, COME OVER HERE TO USE MY STAPLER BECAUSE IT’S SO HARD TO KEEP TRACK OF YOUR OWN OFFICE SUPPLIES AND I’M THE ONLY ONE WITH A DAMN STAPLER AROUND HERE. STAPLE AWAY, DUDE. LAST TIME I CHECKED I’M NOT AN OFFICE DEPOT. THE LAKERS DON’T PLAY BASKETBALL INSIDE OF ME SO I’M NOT THE STAPLES CENTER! WHY DOESN’T DAD EVEN CARE ENOUGH TO CALL?… I mean…Whatever, just use the stapler and go away.”
10. Those rare instances where you do pour your heart out to someone had better go well, otherwise you’ll be devastated and further convinced that it’s just easier to say absolutely nothing about how you feel for the foreseeable future.
11. You understand how different opinions & feelings are. You may speak your mind and share your views, but when it comes to feelings you’ll hold off.
12. There’s a slight fear of consuming too much alcohol because that liquid courage could mean a whole lot of brutal, frustrated honesty coming out. Will you snap and say too much? Will you hurt feelings and ruin friendships? Find out next drink on, Uh-oh It’s About To Go Down!
13. Beating yourself up even further inside because you know that you’re bottling toxic sentiments up and need to speak your mind, but have failed to do so. Now not only are you mad at the world, but you’re shaming and being hard on yourself.
14. After spending so much time biting your tongue and holding back for the sake of others that you’re a mess inside, when someone finally asks you, “How are things going?” or “Is everything okay?” you’re overcome with all of the feels and want to burst in tears (and probably be hugged). You’ve bottled up an abundance of emotions and they just unscrewed the cap. You might be able to muster up a trembling voiced “I’m fine” and escape before the waterworks begin, but this only ends with you crying, whether it be on their shoulder or in private.
15. Deep down you understand that life is too short to not tell people how you feel, and there’s a constant battle within to improve on it. New Year’s resolution? I’m going to be more open with people. Randomly motivated to change? I’m going to be more open with people. It’s something you strive for, but ironically it’s much easier for you to say than do. |
Since the Russian military’s seizure of Crimea after Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution, the international community has struggled to anticipate President Vladimir Putin’s next moves. Yet as Ukraine's military and security services have expanded in response to Russia’s invasion, it is time to look more closely at debates in Kyiv over how to ensure the survival of the Ukrainian state. While misperceptions over the Kremlin’s willingness to escalate slowed Western responses as Russia grew stronger, underestimating the temptation to retaliate felt by many in Ukraine could lead to equally destabilizing developments as Russia weakens.
A key aspect of the post-Maidan transformation of the Ukrainian security state is the planning process within the National Security and Defence Council (NSDC) currently led by Oleksandr Turchynov. If the NSDC feels confident that the West remains willing to deter the Kremlin from further destabilizing Ukraine, it is likely to focus on shoring up the nation's defences. Yet if Western resolve is seen as shaky, there is a distinct possibility that the NSDC could evolve a security doctrine based on the understanding that Ukraine can only be safe if Russia is too weak to exert influence on neighbouring states. A hardening of the latter view would encourage a tacit acceptance of a more aggressive strategic outlook designed to keep Russia permanently under pressure.
Without reliable support from Western allies, there is a strong chance the NSDC will put in place a security doctrine with strong parallels to the Iron Wall paradigm that shaped Israeli strategy for eighty years. Based on the writings of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the Iron Wall model assumes that national survival can only be secured through strong security structures designed to keep opponents off balance and divided. For Jabotinsky, an Iron Wall strategy needed to be pursued relentlessly until opponents are forced to accept the legitimacy and territorial integrity of a contested state. Evolving far beyond Jabotinsky's original goals, strategic doctrine based on the Iron Wall model has been used by various Israeli governments to justify actions such as invasions of Lebanon or targeted assassinations. An NSDC inclined to believe Ukraine can only be safe if Russia remains off balance is more likely to encourage aggressive covert operations by various security institutions jostling for prominence in post-Maidan Ukraine.
These turf battles within the military and security services are of crucial importance to the future of Ukraine’s relationship with Russia. With so many in the security services proving unreliable in the aftermath of the Maidan Revolution, new opportunities opened up for Ukrainians who had no previous experience with intelligence work. While this infusion of fresh personnel ensured the survival of the country, it could become problematic if the NSDC decides to switch its focus towards covert operations. The links some new recruits have with radical movements provide various political groups with opportunities to use personnel within the security services to pursue their own agendas. Continued weaknesses in command and control also open opportunities for operatives to run 'cowboy' operations to destabilize Russian targets without the knowledge of the NSDC, potentially undermining civilian control of the military so essential to any democratic system. Whether veterans of the pre-Maidan security services will restrain their revolutionary colleagues remains questionable. For many experienced figures, a desire for payback after the humiliations of 2014 increases the risk that they could engage in risky operations if the NSDC encourages them to do so. The key role played by civic and oligarch networks in Ukraine's war effort could compound this problem. Officers and operatives desperate to show results can now draw on a wide range of activists and businessmen to help organize any future shift to covert operations against Russian targets that may have unpredictable consequences.
For actions that turn Crimea and the 'People's Republics' in East Ukraine into ungovernable spaces will have knock-on effects on the Russian Federation itself. Economic collapse in Donetsk and Luhansk is already driving up the costs of occupation for the Kremlin, while the fragmentation of occupied territories into criminal fiefdoms increases the risk that militia in-fighting spreads to neighbouring Russian regions. Unrest in the North Caucasus also provides a platform for anyone tasked with putting the Kremlin under pressure. In the 1990s, radical Ukrainian nationalists joined Chechen rebels to fight the Russian Army, while more recently anti-Kremlin Chechens have joined Ukrainian units. Such links provide a starting point for any NSDC strategy focused on weakening Russia. If the Putin regime stumbles, ethnic minorities, frustrated regional elites, and even criminal gangs could all become enmeshed in any potential destabilisation operations.
Yet the adoption of a more aggressive strategy contains enormous risks for Ukraine as well. Continuing attempts by the FSB to infiltrate Ukrainian institutions makes it likely that such plans could leak and damage Ukraine's international image. Successful operations could trigger developments that may also cause considerable trouble. Compounding already anarchic conditions in the occupied territories would make it far more difficult to reconstruct their institutions if they ever came back under Kyiv's control. Attempts to undermine security in vulnerable Russian regions have the potential to draw Kyiv into conflicts of little strategic relevance to the Ukrainian state. Historically, the pursuit of Iron Wall strategies did enormous damage to both Croatia and Israel's relationships with their core allies. It is unlikely that an NSDC strategy that shifts from a defensive to an offensive emphasis based on the same assumptions would enable Ukraine to escape a similar fate.
Despite all these dangers, the risk that Ukraine’s security services could be drawn into a shift towards aggressive covert operations against Russian targets remains high. Since Russia’s direct intervention, a full Ukrainian offensive in Donetsk and Luhansk remains out of the question. This leaves few other areas of action for the Ukrainian government if it feels public pressure to retaliate against the criminal activity of pro-Russian groups or Russian intelligence services. Coupled with continuing military casualties on the front line in Donbas and the deterioration of relations between Russian and Ukrainian society, any Kremlin blunder will put the NSDC under enormous pressure to “do something” and “hit back”. In such a situation, an aggressive Iron Wall strategy against pro-Russians and the Russian Federation will become a tempting path for Ukrainian security services with few other options.
There is much the EU and United States can do to prevent the kind of covert escalations between Ukraine and Russia that have blighted relations between India and Pakistan. EU member states need to ensure that any peace deal with Russia provides Ukraine with solid guarantees that any breaches will trigger a robust response. NATO must help Kyiv modernize its arms industry and reform the professional command and control structures of its army to deter any further escalation from the Kremlin. Such partial integration of Ukraine into Western security structures would give EU member states the leverage needed to restrain Kyiv from responding unwisely to Kremlin provocations. Just as NATO’s role as regional arbiter helped ensure that East European states solved conflicts through negotiation in the late 1990s, Ukraine’s path to European integration will strengthen those in Kyiv who believe that a national security strategy must remain in accordance with international law.
Since the beginning of the Maidan Revolution in November 2013, President Putin has taken enormous risks to prevent the integration of Ukraine into European institutions. The siege mentality this pressure has engendered in Ukraine has led to the distinct possibility that the NSDC will base its planning on an Iron Wall strategy. Yet by providing incentives for Ukrainian security services to stick to the rules, in the long term Ukraine’s European integration may prove the best guarantee of Russia's security the Kremlin can get. |
Exposure to toxic metals, like lead, have been linked to intellectual disability, and language, and behavioral problems, but the results of studies looking at whether toxic metals influence Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) have been mixed. Other metals like manganese and zinc are essential minerals important for proper development and health. Until now, one of the difficulties has been that levels of metal exposure are often only measured after a child has received an ASD diagnosis, However, Sven Bölte and colleagues realized that after a child receives an ASD diagnosis, they could determine their early exposure to heavy metals by looking at the levels of the metals in the child’s baby teeth, as they describe in a paper published last month in Nature Communications.
Baby teeth develop in the womb and early life and trap and store metals that are present while they develop. Bölte’s team used a laser to sequentially remove small layers dentine from teeth at different depths, and then they fed each layer into a mass spectrometer to measure levels of the metals lead, zinc, and manganese. Each layer of dentine corresponds to a different period of development, so the amount of metal detected in that layer correlates to the level of metal exposure or metal uptake during that developmental period.
Bölte and colleagues analyzed the developmental metal exposure of three groups of twins: discordant twins where only one twin had an ASD, those where both twins had ASDs, and those where neither twin had an ASD. They found that in the discordant twins, the twin with autism had higher levels of lead and lower levels of manganese and zinc, though these findings were only statistically significant during certain time windows.
Bölte’s team also found that children with lower levels of manganese and higher levels of lead scored higher on ratings of autism severity. This study shows that exposure to lead in the womb and early development may be an important non-genetic factors influencing autism |
It's time for Congress to follow the Sixth Circuit's lead and update one of the main online privacy laws—the Electronic Privacy Communications Act (ECPA). In the past, the Department of Justice has used the archaic law to obtain private online communications without obtaining a probable cause warrant as the Fourth Amendment requires. A bill co-sponsored by Reps. Kevin Yoder, Tom Graves, and Jared Polis—HR 1852, The Email Privacy Act—seeks to update ECPA by requiring a probable cause warrant whenever the government wants to access your online private messages.
The bill is slowly making its way through Congress, but we can speed it up. Tell your representative right now to cosponsor the bill. The bill ensures the government can't try to (ab)use ECPA in order to obtain our private online messages.
ECPA must be updated because the government has used the law to obtain private online messages—like personal email accounts or our social media messages—older than 180 days without a probable cause warrant. The government would have to obtain a warrant if those same messages were printed out on your desk. This difference shouldn't exist. By cosponsoring The Email Privacy Act, the government can no longer neglect the fact that Fourth Amendment protections do not whither with age.
Along with EFF, fifteen other privacy advocates and companies—like the Center for Democracy and Technology and DuckDuckGo—are spurring momentum to pass HR 1852. The bill would finally accomplish one of four goals of the Digital Due Process Coalition, a collection of tech companies, start-ups, privacy advocates, and think tanks working to update ECPA to ensure that laws continue to protect the rights of users as technologies advance and usage patterns evolve.
Updating ECPA is a common-sense move. Our freedom and constitutional protections do not expire with time. Tell your Rep. now to cosponsor HR 1852 and join us in demanding for long-overdue updates to our archaic electronic privacy laws. |
Posted by Theodoros II, Updated on January 7, 2017
The human body is an evolutionary marvel. It hosts the most intelligent brain on this planet (our brains can even hold up to five times more information the Encyclopedia Britannica…yikes), our bones are pound-for-pound stronger than some steels, and we are the best long-distance runners out of any animal.
But for being such an extraordinary living being the human possess a body that hosts an incredible amount of things that make no sense. For example, what’s the deal with male nipples? They serve no purpose, their comically unsightly, and can be sensitively painful (titty twisters anyone?).
And let’s not even talk about the human appendix. This roughly 10 cm long vestigial structure literally does nothing but cause pain. And who in their right mind likes pain?
What gives evolution?!?!
So on this list, we are going to go over 25 things about the human body that makes no sense…none whatsoever.
It’s almost as if evolution took a night off resulting in some epic evolutionary fails…and we’re the result. THANK’S EVOLUTION! |
A couple years ago I wrote a post about crap you don’t need for the holidays and well, it’s that goofy time of year again and thought I’d put the 2014 list together (with some help from the other DC degenerates) of more crap that ain’t nobody got time fo:
USAC License. USAC takes your money and kills fun. In fact, every time you buy a you-sack license, a brewery makes a session beer, and that shit ain’t cool.
The Rise of Enduro, because in three years there will be The Fall of Enduro and it’s sure to have far less glamour and way more plotline. Would enduro even exist without cameras, bro?
C02 Inflators. C02 is for races. Pumps are for training. Man up and stroke that shit. You’ll burn a few calories too, lard ass.
Sobriety, because the moment you think you gotta quit is the moment you gotta go ride.
E-Bikes.
Anything made by Rapha.
$6, $7, and $8k + “production” model bikes. Fuck me that’s a lot of money.
Anything “artisinal” and “sourced locally” or “craft”. Coffee, sandwiches, beer…You name it. Fucking stupid.
Mumford and Sons, Nickleback, Taylor Swift, etc.
Lance Armstrong. Fuck that guy.
Electronic shifting. Sure, it works really, really nice, but most cats
neither need nor benefit from the money spent. You are not a
continental pro. If you were, that shit would be given to you to ride.
neither need nor benefit from the money spent. You are not a continental pro. If you were, that shit would be given to you to ride. Strava KOMs. Seriously. Stop swinging your dick around and creating
segments for every climb, downhill, and idiotic course through the
neighborhood. If you want to race, go race. Pay your entry fee and toe
the line. Otherwise, quit half-stepping. You are not a pro.
segments for every climb, downhill, and idiotic course through the neighborhood. If you want to race, go race. Pay your entry fee and toe the line. Otherwise, quit half-stepping. You are not a pro. Donut, peanut butter, or any other obscurely flavored beer.
Masters racers using PEDs. Seriously? You’re a 50+ professional
with gobs of disposable income. You’re using testosterone, HGH, and
EPO? You are not a pro. Age with some grace. Let it go.
with gobs of disposable income. You’re using testosterone, HGH, and EPO? You are not a pro. Age with some grace. Let it go. Selfie sticks, when you arm just won’t do.
Anything with the word “enduro” in it, bro.
Leather artisan Etsy wine holder. If you’re the type of person that’s going to tool around on your bike carrying a bottle of wine with a leather strap, you probably aren’t even reading this post, and if you are, here’s a cycber bitch slap. Buy a King Cage rather and a flask and sip on some of grandpa’s cough medicine.
Phone handlebar mount…Strava, dumb. Get a Stem CAPtain so you never miss bar time.
Hipster resturants and their $12/$13 dollar sandwiches. Big Jonny recently seen a pound of ground beef for $9.99 at one place. For fuck’s sake, you can get ground beef at Basha’s for sub-three bucks if you pay attention to the sales. Just check their on-line weekly ad . Ground beef @ $3.87 / lb. Right now.
Anyways, feel free to add any other bullshit you come across in the comments. From all of us here at Drunkcyclist, we wish you the tittiest of holidays.
by |
Stephen J. Harper was a good prime minister — a smart, basically decent, hard-working guy who, for all his flaws, left the country better than he found it.
If you say that publicly these days, be prepared to tuck and roll. Even some former Harper stalwarts will grouse about his legacy now, if you corner them privately. As for the Twitteratti, don’t even go there. Yet the record will show Harper was, indeed, a better-than-fair steward, in a long line of Canadian prime ministers sharing similar traits — and considerably more moderate than his critics have long contended.
Consider: In late 2005, during the Christmas campaign, Harper and the Tories faced a barrage of negative messaging from a flailing Liberal machine. The Harperites were vengeful gnomes who’d transform Canada into a pale copy of President George W. Bush’s America. They’d wreck medicare. They’d outlaw abortion and same-sex marriage. Most famously, according to one Liberal party ad, the Conservatives would send soldiers — soldiers with guns! — into Canadian streets. Zounds.
What actually occurred, following Harper’s first win in 2006, was relatively dull. Canada in early 2008 was not dramatically different from what it had been in 2003. This was “incremental conservatism,” as then-Harper confidant Tom Flanagan put it. The idea was to move the country rightward in baby steps, so as not to frighten the great, centrist middle class back into the Liberal party’s waiting embrace.
There were surprising deviations away from the former Reform Party’s abrasive tone, such as the recognition of the Quebecois as a nation in late 2006, and the apology for Indian residential schools in 2008.
The Conservatives began trimming the hated GST, as promised; they began re-equipping the long-neglected military, as promised; they pursued liberalized trade and maintained the military mission in Afghanistan, including the Liberal-conceived blend of humanitarian and military aid. Faced with a global recession in 2009, they ran up a $56-billion stimulus deficit. Radical conservatism, this wasn’t.
But wait, said the critics. Should he ever get a majority, then you’ll see! And we did, following the election of May 2, 2011. And there was then, in one important respect, a departure. It was a strategy, fully developed by the fall of 2011, to dramatically speed the extraction of Canadian natural resources, mainly minerals and energy, to take advantage of a window of demand that might not exist forever.
Senior Conservatives understood time was not on Canada’s side in the matter of the 170-plus billion barrels of oil locked in the oilsands. The omnibus budget of 2012, a bloated monster that cemented Harper’s reputation for running roughshod over parliament, was the result.
It was clumsily executed. Communication throughout, especially with respect to environmental protection, was inept. It’s impossible to argue now, though, that the Harper government’s sense of urgency vis-à-vis pipelines was misplaced. In 2011, only the Keystone XL project to ship Alberta oil to the Gulf Coast was deemed at risk. Today every pipeline project is.
Tone, and the democratic deficit? Well, yes. There is that. The tone under Harper was often corrosive and it got worse as time marched on. The ads were often cruel, the digs at opponents personal, the attacks on institutions — including the Parliamentary Budget Office, a Conservative creation, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court — self-defeating. Nobody, before or after the decision to kill the mandatory long-form census in 2010, was ever able to explain it. Harper did not shoulder personal responsibility during the Mike Duffy mess. The party’s descent into the politics of the niqab last fall was deplorable and disastrous. All granted.
But the sweeping demolition of Canada as we knew it? That never happened. Health care spending increased. Tax policy, as the PBO found in a 57-page analysis in May 2014, remained broadly progressive. Program spending as a share of gross domestic product actually grew marginally over the Conservative decade, set against spending in the last year of Paul Martin’s government.
And the great social-conservative rollback of individual liberties, the bugaboo of all those ‘stop Harper’ campaigns, was permanently deferred at the insistence of the man himself, who knew such a shift would be anathema to his prospects.
Furthermore, and not inconsequentially: Harper has spent a quarter century in politics without ever seeing his name attached to a personal scandal. That ain’t nothin’, as the saying in Blue country goes. He remains, for defenders and detractors both, an enigma; someone who was a gifted communicator and inexplicably reserved and awkward, simultaneously.
But he is not, nor was he ever, the ogre he has been made out to be. Is his record mixed? Absolutely. But no Canadian prime minister with ten years on the docket can say different.
For all his failings, Stephen Harper ran a broadly stable ship for much of his time in power, until that time ran down, as it does. It’s not bad. And it’s nothing at all like the extremism we were led to expect, back when he was an impatient young theorist with a knack for strategy.
• Twitter: mdentandt |
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said there’s no argument: The Trump administration is ready to revoke a guidance that protects transgender students from discrimination in public schools.
Spicer was disputing a New York Times report that there’s been debate within the administration about whether the guidance should be revoked. His explanation:
The president has maintained for a long time that this is a states’ rights issue and not one for the federal government. So while we have further guidance coming out on this, I think that all you have to do is look at what the president’s view has been for a long time, that this is not something that the federal government should be involved in, that this is a states’ rights issue.
A few months before President Donald Trump was elected, the Obama administration sent out a legally nonbinding guidance to federally funded schools arguing that trans students are protected by existing federal civil rights law. So, that administration said, schools should respect trans students’ rights, including their right to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity.
The Obama administration cited Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in public schools. It argued that anti-trans discrimination is a form of sex discrimination, because discrimination against trans people is rooted in stereotypes and prejudices of what people should be like based on the sex they were assigned at birth.
Trump initially said he didn’t care what bathrooms trans people use, saying he would let Caitlyn Jenner use the bathroom for her gender identity in Trump businesses. But he later said that the Obama-era guidance, even though it was not legally binding, was an example of federal overreach — and he vowed to undo it if elected. A federal court had already placed an injunction on the guidance last year, but the Trump administration’s moves will seal its demise.
Conservatives, including those in the Trump administration, see the trans-inclusive view as a misinterpretation of federal laws. They argue that the authors of civil rights laws, which go back to the 1960s and ’70s, never intended to include trans people in sex discrimination bans, so trans people shouldn’t be protected under the statutes.
As Spicer mentioned, Trump has also said that this issue should be left to the states, which would effectively let conservative states continue to allow discrimination against trans kids in schools.
Trump’s decision apparently caused some infighting within the administration, according to the New York Times. Since the guidance dealt with schools, it required a sign-off from Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who was apparently uncomfortable leaving trans students unprotected. DeVos’s pushback caused her to clash with Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, both of whom have long wanted the guidance revoked. Faced with the decision to disobey the president or resign, DeVos ultimately played along, according to the report.
Spicer claimed there is actually no conflict within the administration. “Where you might be hearing something is more on the timing and the wording of stuff,” he said. “The conclusions, everybody in the administration is agreed upon.”
He also said the official letter to rescind the Obama-era guidance should come on Wednesday.
For more on the debate about trans people and bathrooms, read Vox’s explainer.
Watch: Anti-transgender bathroom hysteria, explained |
Fire in Bandra: A section of the Harbour Line has been closed down
Highlights Massive fire erupts at slum near Mumbai's Bandra station Railway officials say trains running normally, no cancellations Part of pedestrian bridge collapses, nobody hurt: Officials
I'm outside #Bandra station right now and the fire is BIG now...help needed urgently !! pic.twitter.com/nglF9n93Oo — Faridoon Shahryar (@iFaridoon) October 26, 2017
The overhead pedestrian bridge at the Bandra station , one of Mumbai's busiest, was engulfed in flames at rush hour after a fire erupted in a slum nearby. Four residents of the slum and one fire-fighter were injured.Trains, however, were not affected according to officials of the Western Railways.16 fire engines and nearly as many water tankers were used to fight the fire, which began at 3.15 pm in the Behrampada slum; the sky was filled with smoke at Bandra, the trendy western suburb of the financial capital, till nearly 6.30 pm.A part of the sky-walk near the eastern exit of the large station collapsed after it caught fire. The western entrance was kept functional. As a precaution against a stampede, security personnel were posted across the station to prevent large crowds from gathering. Mid-day reported that the fire erupted after gas cylinders exploded during a huge demolition drive in the slum this afternoon. |
The big brand camera companies are committing seppuku in front of our eyes. It’s fascinating.
Last week, I bought a brand new Canon S95 camera. It’s a great point & shoot. Maybe the best out there right now. It captures beautiful 10-megapixel images. It’s great in low-light. It’s fast. And it shoots HD video. I anticipate I’ll take about 5 percent of my pictures with it in the coming year. The other 95 percent will be taken with my iPhone. How do I know? Because I had the S90 last year and that was my exact usage pattern.
Obviously, the 10-megapixel, $400 S95 is the superior camera when compared to the 5-megapixel, $200 (with subsidy) iPhone 4. But the fact that I always have my phone on me easily trumps the specs. But to me, there’s actually something other than just the portability factor that leads to my usage being so heavily skewed towards the iPhone: connectivity.
Smartphones are always connected. Point & shoots never are. When I take a cool picture, I often want to share it right away. With my smartphone, it takes 20 seconds. With my point & shoot, it’s impossible. I have to wait until I get home, upload it to my computer, then upload it to the web.
It shouldn’t be surprising at all that smartphones are eating point & shoots’ lunch when it comes to percentage of pictures uploaded to sites like Flickr. Currently, the most popular camera in the Flickr community is the iPhone 3G. Below that are several prosumer-level DSLRs. There are no point & shoots on the top list.
And if you look at the popular point & shoot list, you’ll see that all of them are trending downward. Fast. Meanwhile, cameraphones are going the opposite way. Soon, I imagine that several Android phones will join the iPhones at the top of the popular list.
It’s a little dumbfounding that point & shoots have been so slow to hop on the connectivity and social bandwagon. The iPhone is now three and a half years old, and plenty of people were taking picture with their crappy RAZR phones and uploading them to the web years before that. The writing has been on the wall for a long time.
It stands to reason that as smartphone cameras continue to improve, they were going to squeeze out point & shoots anyway. We’re heading towards a world where the smartphone is the everyday camera and the DSLR is the special occassion camera. But we’re not there yet. I still have some need for a good point & shoot. And so do plenty of other people — the S95 is currently the 19th best-selling electronic on Amazon heading into the holiday shopping season.
But the big camera companies like Canon almost seem like they want to speed the process of killing point & shoot camera along. They just don’t seem to get it.
“Point and shoot has become point and shoot and share,” Twitter’s Josh Elman tweeted earlier. “It’s sad that cameras haven’t evolved to be networked and make sharing easier. I’m shopping for a new camera now and very disappointed,” he continued.
Elman must be going through the same process I went through a couple weeks ago. With no better solution, I ultimately settled on a sort hacked-together one: the S95 with an SD card from Eye-Fi that will add WiFi capabilities to your device. It’s okay. It does allow you to share photos when you take them — provided you’re connected to WiFi. WiFi which you have to configure on your card via your computer beforehand. In other words, unless you’re at home, it’s not much of a solution.
Further, given that everything else in the world is hopping on the geolocation bandwagon, you would have thought that the point & shoot makers would at least go there with GPS chips. Nope. Again, the only solution for most of these cameras is the Eye-Fi card. And again, it’s a pretty lame solution. Instead of using a combination of GPS and WiFi to get your location and pin it to a picture like most smartphones do, the EyeFi card simply records the nearest WiFi router address and it will only tag it to your photo if you run it through their (rather lame) software when you get home.
Ugh.
And don’t get me wrong, what Eye-Fi is doing is rather amazing given what they’re working with. They’ve essentially hacked the memory card input to make these cameras somewhat connected. But there really needs to be some sort of native hardware/software solution.
I know that there are some “social” point & shoots out there, like Kodak’s EasyShare products. But the reviews of those things range from mixed to poor. If I’m going to spend the extra money, I want it to be on the best point & shoot. Like the S95. Sadly, I can’t have the best of both worlds. And I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to until after the smartphones have already killed the genre.
In the smartphone world right now, we’re already evolving to the next phase. We’re seeing an explosion of interest is social apps built solely around the camera. Instagram, Hipstamatic, Picplz, Path, DailyBooth, CameraBag, Treehouse, IncrediBooth, Diptic, Burstn, etc. There are hundreds of apps with new ones launching each day. The point & shoot hasn’t even entered phase one yet. It’s really pretty pathetic. |
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