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integrated into their publishing environment. Adobe's acquisition of CQ5 apparently will address this down the line. However, it's unlikely that we'll see too many massive changes on existing major websites for some time as updating a CMS infrastructure is the work of Satan. A very rich Satan at that.
Adobe's biggest issue
Adobe is one of the worst offenders in Australia for charging a Nice-Beaches tax. Past excuses involve localizations, exchange rate hedging and local support. However, with the exchange rate having been above parity for some time now (it was around 60c to the US dollar with its last major realease), there's little justification for the massive price hikes that Australians must pay:
Photoshop CS6 US$699 vs $1168
InDesign CS6 US$699 vs $1168
Master Collection CS6 US$2599 vs $3949
Creative Cloud subscription US$50 vs $63
That's a two-thirds mark-up for the individual products, and a 50% mark-up for the Master Collection. Even taking into account the lack of GST on US prices, that's an astonishing hike. That said, the Cloud Price is far more reasonable. Two years of subscribing to the Creative Cloud costs $1512 and gives access to even more features than CS6 Mast Collection. Perhaps this is Adobe's way of pushing virtually all of its customers onto a subscription model without making them feel like they're being pushed?
Conclusion
All in all the ease of creating mobile apps and mobile-optimized websites means that CS6 has huge potential to change the market. It levels the playing field by putting affordable app development in the hands of the masses and means that publishers can finally stop focusing on the iPad. It won't happen overnight but at least other mobile platforms can stop being looked down upon as poor alternatives to the iPad in terms of tailored content.The Orangetown Council went into Tuesday's special meeting with a preliminary 2014 town budget that was slightly below the state mandated tax levy increase cap.
The board approved a series of amendments before adopting a final 2014 Orangtown Budget that calls for a 1.71 percent increase based on state tax cap calculations. The town is approximately $112,000 under the cap.
The actual average property tax increase for residents will be 3.36 percent, though the percentage is lower for cap purposes. The amendments approved Tuesday night reduced spending for 2014 by $1.5 million. The plan also calls for the town to spend $2.7 million in reserve funds, down from the $3.5 million in the preliminary budget.
The town board had been working off the preliminary budget, which was the same as the tentative budget submitted by Supervisor Andy Stewart Sept. 24. The rest of the council proposed many adjustments last week that were approved Tuesday.
One point of contention was town funding for four libraries. Most of the speakers during the public hearing portion of Tuesday's meeting opposed further cuts to library funding. The Blauvelt Free Library had already accepted a 10 percent cut from 2013. Stewart proposed keeping the libraries in Tappan, Palisades and Orangeburg at the same level as 2013, but the council approved 10 percent cuts in those budgets as well by a 4-1 vote. Check back with Patch for more on the debate about library funding.
Stewart's tentative budget had also called for cuts into the overtime funds requested for leaf pickup by Orangetown Highway Superintendent James Dean. Councilman Tom Diviny met with Dean, who proposed cuts to other areas within his department to fund the overtime.
"Jim convinced me his way was the better way to do it," Diviny said. "I said h e still has to cut $275,000 and he did. We gave Jim a number and he got to the number. I appreciate what Jim did for the town."
Stewart questioned if the other measures would put the department's ability to maintain the roads in jeopardy for the sake of just a few days quicker picking up leaves.
"You are making an issue of some people getting double time and wasting money," Dean said. "You are cutting back sevices that will effect safety and quality of life. If the leaves are not picked up in the time frame, people will suffer. It has happened here before. We wil make sure the roads stay in good shape. I guarantee you that."
The council voted to approve the cuts suggested by Dean and meet his requests for leaf pickup overtime.
The council went into executive session for over an hour to discuss personnel matters related to the budget. When they came out, they made three final changes to the budget.
Increase estimated revenue from building safety inspections from $1 million to $1.1 million
Fund vacant building inspector position at $52,000 plus benefits
Fund part-time seasonal help for building department at $25,000
Denied Nyack Ambulance Corps request to increase its budget by $47,311.
Budget $795,684 for Blauvelt Fire Protection, a decrease from $879,650 in the preliminary budget
Approved $275,000 in cuts by Orangetown Highway Department, putting funding back in for leaf pickup overtime requested by Superintendent Jim Dean
Approved $3.46 million in capital expenses to be paid for by bond.
Amortize cost of benefits for Orangetown Police, but pay CSEA as comes due. Preliminary budget had called for amortization of both
Spend $2.7 million in fund balance, down from $3.5 million in preliminary budget.
Remove $250,000 for college chargebacks, which will now be covered by Rockland County.
Remove $200,000 for Orangetown Police cars and direct OPD to spend DEA seizure money on cars.
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Among other key decisions by the council Tuesday:A violent fight broke out between Dodgers and Mets fans outside of Dodger Stadium, leaving a Mets fan in critical condition Friday night.Witnesses said the New York Mets fan was punched and then fell, hitting his head. The fight happened in the stadium parking lot after the National League Division Series opener between the two teams.People rushed to help the victim and one person, Maria Cerecer, caught the scene on camera."I walked closer and there was a gentleman on the floor and was bleeding profusely from the head. We got free rally towels that night, so they were holding the rally towels to his head," she said.Witnesses said the suspect was a tall man with blond hair.Investigators are releasing few details about the fight, saying it began as a verbal argument between fans and escalated into a physical confrontation.The victim is in critical but stable condition at Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center.The fight is drawing comparisons to the violent attack on Bryan Stow, a San Francisco Giants fan who suffered serious brain damage after being beaten in the parking lot on opening day in 2011.Los Angeles Police Department detectives are reviewing surveillance footage and continue to interview witnesses.Anyone who witnessed anything is asked to call the Los Angeles Police Department.Some Tough Guy Talk from the Respectable Negro.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma and Stand Your Ground Laws: An Escalating Spiral of Violence. When Will Black Men Finally Start to Defend Themselves Against White Street Vigilantism?
In thinking through the Prisoner’s Dilemma, there is an additional implication of the use of Stand Your Ground laws by white people (and those overly identified with Whiteness and White Authority). Should black and brown people, men in particular, apply a similar standard, acting preemptively based on the learned assumption that they will likely be shot dead by white men who claim “self-defense”? Stand Your Ground Laws, the concealed and open carry of weapons, and the court’s protection of white street vigilantes are creating an explosive mix where civic virtue, self-interest, and common sense demand that people of color win the Prisoner’s Dilemma of their lives by acting preemptively. Black self-defense is the inevitable result of white violence. Ultimately, Stand Your Ground laws may have a consequence that is very different from the one imagined by its supporters on the White Right.
First, does Devega, a college professor, not realize that there is more black on white murder than vice versa? Can he not see past the fact that the mass media massively publicizes white on black murder but hushes up white on black murder? Or is he deliberately taking advantage of media bias to pretend that blacks are poor innocent victims who never murder whites?
Second, Devega doesn’t realize that black power comes from soft power, not hard power. The stupid liberals weeping over Trayvon who don’t care a white about Chris Lane, Delbert Belton, or countless other victims of black on white murder, are the source of black power. From a poem in the 19th century (h/t to Jared Taylor):
Their tender hearts were sighing
As the negro’s wrongs were told
While the white slave was dying
Who gained their father’s gold.
(Quoted in Ann Norton, Alternative Americas, University of Chicago Press, 1986, p. 238.)
The tender hearts sighing of the rich white women is the wellspring of black power. Let them go forth and attempt to exert hard power. It will reduce their soft power, their cultural cachet, that comes not from them, but from their sponsors, their patrons, their masters on the liberal plantation.
Devega seems to really believe that his people are tough guys, and that we would somehow be afraid of the prospect of blacks really getting their violence on! This quote is pure delusion:
Black self-defense is the inevitable result of white violence. Ultimately, Stand Your Ground laws may have a consequence that is very different from the one imagined by its supporters on the White Right.
Hah! Bring it on, Chauncey! That’s attacking our strongest point by far! White men excel at violence like nothing else.
AdvertisementsJoe Allen has made 85 league appearances for Liverpool, scoring three goals
Liverpool have not discussed a new contract with Wales midfielder Joe Allen, BBC Wales Sport understands.
Allen, who joined Liverpool from Swansea City for £15m in August 2012, has 14 months left before his current deal expires.
The 26-year-old has previously said he is playing for his long-term Anfield future.
Liverpool rejected an enquiry from Swansea about re-signing their former player on loan in January.
Allen has only started four Premier League games this season including Sunday's 4-1 win over Stoke City.
He received a standing from Liverpool supporters after being substituted and was praised by manager Jurgen Klopp.
"He was brilliant. There is no other word for this. We only took him off because we need him," Klopp said.
"Joe is not 100 percent fit, but it is not possible because he couldn't train often enough. He was always on the bench because we have needed him.
"Hopefully he stays healthy forever and now he's a really good option."
Allen has been given his chance after captain Jordan Henderson suffered a knee injury in the Europa League quarter final first leg win over Borussia Dortmund.
He is likely to retain his place in midfield for Thursday's second leg tie against Klopp's former team at Anfield.President Obama vetoed legislation Tuesday that would have blocked the administration’s new regulation establishing federal authority over small waterways such as wetlands and ponds, a rule criticized by Republican lawmakers as a “power grab” by the EPA.
In a message to Congress, Mr. Obama said the new rule “is critical to our efforts to protect the nation’s waters and keep them clean.”
“Because this resolution seeks to block the progress represented by this rule and deny businesses and communities the regulatory certainty and clarity needed to invest in projects that rely on clean water, I cannot support it,” the president said.
The congressional resolution against the EPA’s water rule passed the Senate on a 53-44 vote. Three Democrats joined every Republican except Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican, in supporting the measure.
Republicans don’t have the two-thirds votes necessary to override the veto.
Resolution sponsor Sen. Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican, called the measure a necessary step against a “blatant power grab by the EPA.”
Opponents said the rule gives the federal government too much authority and would have a negative impact in rural states on energy production and agriculture.
Two courts have ruled against the regulation, and some Republicans predict it will be overturned.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.It's the last place you might expect to find hundreds of people smoking pot: But seniors living at the Laguna Woods Village retirement community -- also known as "Leisure World" -- have formed a non-profit, patient-run medical marijuana collective.Golf is a way of life at Laguna Woods Village, also known as "Leisure World."
But now many seniors there are trying out a different type of "green."
"I'm a very law-abiding citizen, believe it or not," said Margo Bouer, a resident. Bouer, 74, is a retired psychiatric nurse with advanced multiple sclerosis.
"This last year I realized I was choking on food more often," said Bouer. "I was prepared to make a serious decision about ending my own life."
Bouer had severe nausea and was unable to sleep. She considered suicide, until a friend suggested medical marijuana.
"I inhaled... blew it out, and I thought, 'OK, am I high?' I had no idea," said Bouer.
Bouer now grows her own marijuana. A friend helps her roll her marijuana cigarettes.
"And then I read a book and processed it myself and dried it and crunched it up and smelled it, and it smelled very good," said Bouer. For Bouer, it only takes about two puffs a night to ease the nausea and keep her feeling well enough to continue synchronized swimming with "The Aquadettes."
"I am grateful for the opportunity to tell the world there are good people out there who need marijuana," said Bouer.
Bouer is not part of the new medical marijuana collective at Leisure World.
But some of the seniors are. The city of Laguna Woods was the first in Orange County to pass an ordinance allowing medical marijuana dispensaries.
But so far no one has opened up a shop. So these seniors, many with debilitating illnesses, decided to create their own non-profit medical marijuana collective.
"A group of patients got together and decided we'd try to grow our own and make it available for our neighbors who also have doctor recommendations, but are too ill to grow," said Lonnie Painter, a resident and member of the Laguna Woods for Medical Cannabis Collective.
There is no storefront dispensary like you see all over Los Angeles. Instead, it's informal: "Patients helping patients."
"Marijuana is the only thing that will keep me from constant pain," said Maria D'Anelle, another member of the collective.
Leisure World residents Karin and Luis Alvarez are growing their own medical marijuana right on their balcony.
"I mean, they don't call them 'weeds' for nothing," said Luis Alvarez. "As long as you give them water and food and sun. They need to have sun."
Karin has endured a series of surgeries after a devastating injury.
"It's hard for me to stand any length of time," said Karin.
Karin had a near-fatal reaction to traditional painkillers, but she takes comfort now in knowing exactly where her medicine is coming from.
"We prefer that to going and buying it some place where we're not exactly sure what we're going to get," said Karin.
But some seniors in the collective don't want to say where the collective is growing its marijuana.
"We have had some plants stolen," said Lonnie Painter. Several thousand dollars' worth.
"It could be a vigilante, someone who's heard about it, thinks they might make a little money," said Painter.
It's a setback for the collective, but won't stop these seniors from "going green."
"It only takes a couple 'tokes' for me. Some people use more," said Painter.
Members are quick to point out that this is not about getting "stoned."
"I frankly could care less about getting high," said Jonathan Adler, another member of the collective. Adler is undergoing chemotherapy and radiation for breast cancer.
"Within seconds, literally five to 10 seconds, the thought of nausea disappears and it's replaced by what's commonly called 'the munchies,'" said Adler.
There is some risk. Despite California's medical marijuana laws, its use is still illegal under federal law.
"People laugh, they say, 'Can you imagine all these people in wheelchairs and walkers being made to do the "perp walk?"' You know?" said Painter.
Seniors like Margo Bouer say they're up for a fight.
"You know what, I thought, 'Come and get me -- Just come and get me,'" remarked Bouer.
To these seniors, marijuana means freedom from a life of pain.
"Well, do I look happy?" asked Bouer.Yesterday, WikiLeaks tweeted the decryption passphrase for the CIA Vault 7 leak. The password is, “I will splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the wind,” a quote credited to President John F. Kennedy.
RELEASE: CIA Vault 7 Year Zero decryption passphrase: SplinterItIntoAThousandPiecesAndScatterItIntoTheWinds — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 7, 2017
The quote was given to a Times journalist in the 1960s by a Kennedy administration official and published in the New York Times on April 25, 1966 in an article titled “C.I.A.: Maker of Policy, or Tool?” Read it here.
The video below references the JFK quote at the 2:50-mark.
The 6:15-minute video centers on Samuel Halpern discussing JFK’s relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency. Halpern was involved in the investigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Halpern says that the CIA is not all bad, but that the organization is highly individualistic.
The video focuses on Kennedy’s relationship with Cuba prior to his assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald and discusses Operation Northwoods, a proposed false flag operation against the Fidel Castro regime, that originated within the U.S. Department of Defense. According to ABC News, “the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.”
Kennedy refused the plan, but the CIA still wanted to deal with Cuba.
In the video, Halpern says he could never figure out why the CIA wanted to punish Cuba so badly but that he thought maybe it had to do with hubris. It’s then stated that JFK was finding it increasingly difficult to keep former Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles “in line” and that the agency was becoming a “state within the state.”
Convenient Deaths
1963 – 1976
In the three year period following the assassination many witnesses died – mostly of unnatural causes. Many rumors crawling around about the high death rate during these years. They are supported by the mostly suspicious circumstances the victims died under. For a unknown shooter or even shooters, all these deaths have on thing in common: they are very convenient to those assassins since these witnesses took their knowledge with them into the grave. But see yourself and decide whether these deaths are purely coincidently:
Date Name Connection with case Cause of death 11/63 Karyn Kupicinet Tv host’s daughter who was overheard telling of JFK’s death prior to 11/22/63 Murdered 12/63 Jack Zangretti Expressed foreknowledge of Ruby shooting Oswald Gunshot Victim 2/64 Eddy Benavides Lookalike brother to Tippit shooting witness, Domingo Benavides Gunshot to head 2/64 Betty MacDonald* Former Ruby employee who alibied Warren Reynolds shooting suspect. Suicide by hanging in Dallas Jail 3/64 Bill Chesher Thought to have information linking Oswald and Ruby Heart attack 3/64 Hank Killam* Husband of Ruby employee, knew Oswald acquaintance Throat cut 4/64 Bill Hunter* Reporter who was in Ruby’s apartment on 11/24/63 Accidental shooting by policeman 5/64 Gary Underhill* CIA agent who claimed Agency was involved Gunshot in head ruled suicide 5/64 Hugh Ward* Private investigator working with Guy Banister and David Ferrie Plane crash in Mexico 5/64 DeLesseps Morrison* New Orleans Mayor Passenger in Ward’s plane 8/64 Teresa Norton* Ruby employee Fatally shot 6/64 Guy Banister* x-FBI agent in New Orleans connected to Ferrie, CIA, Carlos Marcello & Oswald Heart attack 9/64 Jim Koethe* Reporter who was in Ruby’s apartment on 11/24/63 Blow to neck 9/64 C.D. Jackson “Life” magazine senior Vice-president who bought Zapruder film and locked it away Unknown 10/64 Mary Pinchot JFK “special” friend whose diary was taken by CIA chief James Angleton after her death Murdered 1/65 Paul Mandal “Life” writer who told of JFK turning to rear when shot in throat Cancer 3/65 Tom Howard* Ruby’s first lawyer, was in Ruby’s apartment on 11/24/63 Heart attack 5/65 Maurice Gatlin* Pilot for Guy Banister Fatal fall 8/65 Mona B. Saenz* Texas Employment clerk who interviewed Oswald Hit by Dallas bus?/65 David Goldstein Dallasite who helped FBI trace Oswald’s pistol Natural causes 9/65 Rose Cheramie* Knew of assassination in advance, told of riding to Dallas with Cubans Hit/run victim 11/65 Dorothy Kilgallen* Columnist who had private interview with Ruby, pledged to “break” JFK case Drug overdose 11/65 Mrs. Earl Smith* Close friend to Dorothy Kilgallen, died two daysafter columnist, may have kept Kilgallen’s notes Cause unknown 12/65 William Whaley* Cab driver who reportedly drove Oswald to Oak Cliff (The only Dallas taxi driver to die on duty) Motor collision 1966 Judge Joe Brown Presided over Ruby’s trial Heart attack 1966 Karen “Little Lynn” Carlin* Ruby employee who last talked with Ruby before Oswald shooting Gunshot victim 1/66 Earlene Roberts Oswald’s landlady Heart attack 2/66 Albert Bogard* Car salesman who said Oswald test drove new car Suicide 6/66 Capt. Frank Martin Dallas policeman who witnessed Oswald slaying, told Warren Commission “there’s a lot to be said but probably be better if I don’t say it” Sudden cancer 8/66 Lee Bowers Jr.* Witnessed men behind picket fence on Grassy Knoll Motor accident 9/66 Marilyn “Delila Walle* Ruby dancer Shot by husband after 1 month of marriage 10/66 Lt. William Pitzer* JFK autopsy photographer who described his duty as “horrifying experience” Gunshot ruled suicide 11/66 Jimmy Levens Fort Worth nightclub owner who hired Ruby employees Natural causes 11/66 James Worrell Jr.* Saw man flee rear of Texas School Book Depository Motor accident 1966 Clarence Oliver Dist. Atty. Investigator who worked Ruby case Unknown 12/66 Hank Suydam Life magazine official in charge of JFK stories Heart attack 1967 Leonard Pullin Civilian Navy employee who helped film “Last Two Days” about assassination One-car crash 1/67 Jack Ruby* Oswald’s slayer Lung cancer (he told family he was injected with cancer cells) 2/67 Harold Russell* Saw escape of Tippit killer killed by cop in bar brawl 2/67 David Ferrie* Acquaintance of Oswald, Garrison suspect and employee of Guy Banister Blow to neck (ruled accidental) 2/67 Eladio Del Valle* Anti-Castro Cuban associate of David Ferrie being sought by Garrison Gunshot wound, ax wound tohead 3/67 Dr. Mary Sherman* Ferrie associate working on cancer research Died in fire (possibly shot) 1/68 A. D. Bowie Asst. Dallas District Attorney prosecuting Ruby Cancer 4/68 Hiram Ingram Dallas Deputy Sheriff, close friend to Roger Craig Sudden cancer 5/68 Dr. Nicholas Chetta New Orleans coroner who on death of Ferrie Heart attack 8/68 Philip Geraci* Friend of Perry Russo, told of Oswald/Shaw conversation Electrocution 1/69 Henry Delaune* Brother-in-law to coroner Chetta Murdered 1/69 E.R. Walthers* Dallas Deputy Sheriff who was involved in Depository search, claimed to have found.45-cal. slug Shot by felon 1969 Charles Mentesana Filmed rifle other than Mannlicher-Carcano being taken from Depository Heart attack 4/69 Mary Bledsoe Neighbor to Oswald, also knew David Ferrie Natural causes 4/69 John Crawford* Close friend to both Ruby and Wesley Frazier, who gave ride to Oswald on 11/22/63 Crash of private plane 7/69 Rev. Clyde Johnson* Scheduled to testify about Clay Shaw/Oswald connection Fatally shot 1970 George McGann* Underworld figure connected to Ruby friends, wife, Beverly, took film in Dealey Plaza Murdered 1/70 Darrell W. Garner Arrested for shooting Warren Reynolds, released after alibi from Betty MacDonald Drug overdose 8/70 Bill Decker Dallas Sheriff who saw bullet hit street in front of JFK Natural causes 8/70 Abraham Zapruder Took famous film of JFK assassination Natural causes 12/70 Salvatore Granello* Mobster linked to both Hoffa,Trafficante, and Castro assassination plots Murdered 1971 James Plumeri* Mobster tied to mob-CIA assassination plots Murdered 3/71 Clayton Fowler Ruby’s chief defense attorney Uknown 4/71 Gen. Charles Cabell* CIA deputy director connected to anti-Castro Cubans Collapsed and died afterphysical at Fort Myers 1972 Hale Boggs* House Majority Leader, member of Warren Commission who began to publicly express doubts about findings Disappeared on Alaskan plane flight 5/72 J. Edgar Hoover* FBI director who pushed “lone assassin” theory in JFK assassination Heart attack (no autopsy) 9/73 Thomas E. Davis* Gunrunner connected to both Ruby and CIA Electrocuted trying to steal wire 2/74 J.A. Milteer* Miami right-winger who predicted JFK’s death and capture of scapegoat Heater explosion 1974 Dave Yaras* Close friend to both Hoffa and Jack Ruby Murdered 7/74 Earl Warren Chief Justice who reluctantly chaired Warren Commission Heart failure 8/74 Clay Shaw* Prime suspect in Garrison case, reportedly a CIA contact with Ferrie and E. Howard Hunt Possible cancer 1974 Earle Cabell Mayor of Dallas on 11/22/63, whose brother, Gen. Charles Cabell was fired from CIA by JFK Natural causes 6/75 Sam Giancana* Chicago Mafia boss slated to tell about CIA-mob death plots to Senate Committee Murdered 7/75 Clyde Tolson J. Edgar Hoover’s assistant and roommate Natural causes 1975 Allen Sweatt Dallas Deputy Sheriff involved in investigation Natural causes 12/75 Gen. Earle Wheeler Contact between JFK and CIA Unknown 1976 Ralph Paul Ruby’s business partner connected with crime figures Heart attack 4/76 James Chaney Dallas motorcycle officer riding to JFK’s right rear who said JFK “struck in the face” with bullet Heart attack 4/76 Dr. Charles Gregory Governor John Connally’s physician Heart attack 6/76 William Harvey* CIA coordinator for CIA-mob assassination plans against Castro Complications from heart surgery 7/76 John Roselli* Mobster who testified to Senate Committee and was to appear again Stabbed and stuffed in metal drum
The HSCA Investigation
Just when the House Select Committee on Assassinations was investigating the JFK assassination, more suspicious deaths were coming up:
Date Name Connection with case Cause of Death 1/77 William Pawley* Former Brazilian Ambassador connected to Anti-Castro Cubans, crime figures Gunshot ruled suicide 3/77 George DeMohrenschildt* Close friend to both Oswald and Bouvier family (Jackie Kennedy’s parents), CIA contract agent Gunshot wound ruled suicide 3/77 Carlos Prio Soccaras* Former Cuban President, money man for anti-Castro Cubans Gunshot wound ruled suicide 3/77 Paul Raigorodsky Business friend of George DeMohrenschildt and wealthy oilmen Natural causes 5/77 Lou Staples* Dallas radio Talk Show host who told friends he would break assassination case Gunshot to head,ruled suicide 6/77 Louis Nichols Former No. 3 man in FBI, worked on JFK investigation Heart attack 8/77 Alan Belmont FBI official who testified to Warren Commission “Long illness” 8/77 James Cadigan FBI document expert who testified to Warren Commission Fall in home 8/77 Joseph C. Ayres* Chief steward on JFK’s Air Force One Shooting accident 8/77 Francis G. Powers* U-2 pilot downed over Russia in 1960 Helicopter crash (He reportedly ran out of fuel) 9/77 Kenneth O’Donnell JFK’s closest aide Natural causes 10/77 Donald Kaylor FBI fingerprint chemist Heart attack 10/77 J.M. English Former head of FBI Forensic Sciences Laboratory Heart attack 11/77 William Sullivan* Former No. 3 man in FBI, headed Division 5, counter- espionage and domestic intelligence Hunting accident 1978 C.L. “Lummie” Lewis Dallas Deputy Sheriff who arrested Mafia man Braden in Dealey Plaza Natural causes 9/78 Garland Slack Man who said Oswald fired at his target at rifle range Unknown 1/79 Billy Lovelady Depository employee said to be the man in the doorway in AP photograph Complications from heart attack 6/80 Jesse Curry Dallas Police Chief at time of assassination Heart attack 6/80 Dr. John Holbrook Psychiatrist who testified Ruby was not insane Heart attack but pills, notes found, 1/81 Marguerite Oswald Mother of accused assassin Cancer 10/81 Frank Watts Chief felony prosecutor for Dallas D.A. Natural causes 1/82 Peter Gregory Original translator for Marina Oswald and Secret Service Natural causes 5/82 Dr. James Weston Pathologist allowed to see JFK autopsy material for HSCA Died while jogging, ruled natural causes 8/82 Will H. Griffin FBI agent who reportedly said Oswald was “definitely” an FBI informant Cancer 10/82 W. Marvin Gheesling FBI official who helped supervise JFK investigation “Long illness” 3/84 Roy Kellerman Secret Service agent in charge of JFK limousine Unknown
viaStartups Try To Reroute Food Waste To The Hungry
Enlarge this image toggle caption Serri Graslie/NPR Serri Graslie/NPR
In an alley in Northeast Washington, D.C., hundreds of pounds of produce are piled haphazardly on pallets. Mexican Fruits, a discount grocer, can't sell the fruit and vegetables inside these boxes because the food has gone soft or is lightly bruised. Some will be donated, but most boxes are destined for a large, green Dumpster nearby.
Before it gets tossed, Roger Gordon grabs one box of lightly speckled bananas. Gordon is the co-founder of Food Cowboy, a startup that's trying to redirect discarded food from Dumpsters to hunger relief groups. He's here at Mexican Fruits because he's hoping the grocer will call him the next time it has this problem.
"We want to set ourselves up as air traffic control for food," says Gordon, who's based in the Washington, D.C., area.
According to a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, 40 percent of food in the U.S. goes uneaten. And many see this wasted food as a business opportunity — from startups like Food Cowboy and CropMobster to the former president of Trader Joe's, who is opening up a market. But although food waste is an obvious problem, it's a complicated one to solve, whether you're targeting farmers, retailers or consumers.
In the retail food world, a lot of waste happens because distributors don't have time to find a home for the perishable food stores won't accept.
Gordon's brother, Richard, came to understand this firsthand. In his work as a trucker, he hauls "kicked" loads of food rejected by retailers often just for aesthetic reasons. If the load is small enough, he can take it home. But if it's large, his distributor might instruct him to drop it at the nearest Dumpster or landfill.
Convinced there should be a better way, the brothers started working together to scout out nearby food charities along Richard's trucking route. "The trucker is under time pressure.... But oftentimes the charity is just a few miles away from where the shipment has been rejected," he says. "It's just that the truckers don't know about it."
Enlarge this image toggle caption Serri Graslie/NPR Serri Graslie/NPR
To help make these connections, Food Cowboy has built a website where food companies, truckers and charities can find each other. Food Cowboy makes money by taking a small commission from the transactions. For 10 cents a pound, a food bank can buy as much from Food Cowboy as they can store.
But there are still challenges. Gordon says it has been difficult to get food retailers on board. Many are concerned they'll be blamed if someone gets sick. And even though there is a federal tax credit, the financial incentive may not be enough to sway them. Another major hurdle is convincing food charities to have flexible hours to receive a load on a trucker's 24/7 schedule.
"Dumpsters are always open. And there are more Dumpsters than food banks," Gordon says.
Food Cowboy had a soft start three months ago. So far, Gordon estimates its diverted about 300,000 pounds of food from landfills to food charities in Texas, Florida, Nebraska, Connecticut, New York and Georgia. The service launches nationwide this week; Gordon says its next iteration will be based on Twitter and have a compost component for the food too spoiled to save.
Like Food Cowboy, CropMobster connects people with excess food to others who can use it. The group uses an online message board, similar to Craigslist, where food producers, grocers and food charities can post ads in one of five categories: free, deal (meaning deeply discounted), wanted, donations or trade.
Co-founder Nick Papadopoulos tells The Salt he got the idea for the company while working on his family's farm in Petaluma, Calif., when he had to till excess food into the ground.
What started in one county six months ago is now open to people all over the Bay Area. Papadopoulos estimates his group has saved 100,000 pounds of food and generated $50,000 in new cash for the small businesses that have sold their surplus product on the site.
Earlier this month a rancher posted an ad for 35 percent off whole chickens when he ran out of freezer room. On the other end, a woman with 10 suburban apple trees used CropMobster to put a call out to gleaners who picked them clean within 12 hours.
Although the company is growing rapidly, no one working for CropMobster has been able to quit his or her day job yet. Papadopoulos says he wants to stay true to Crop Mobster's mission as he eyes expansion and angel investors and venture capitalists come calling.Mr. Cosby was asked to talk about his relationship with Beth Ferrier, one of the women who has accused him of drugging her. Ms. Ferrier has said that in the mid-1980s, after a brief consensual affair with the entertainer had ended, she met him before a performance in Denver, drank some coffee that he gave her, felt woozy and woke up in a car with her clothes a mess and her bra undone.
Q. What was your relationship with her?
A. We had sex and we had dinners and sex and rendezvous.
Q. What are rendezvous?
A. Rendezvous is when you call somebody and say, do you want to be at such and such and they say yes and you go there.
Q. Is there sexual contact associated with the rendezvous?
A. There was with Beth every time.
Q. Where did these rendezvous occur?
A. I don’t remember.
Q. Do you know the cities?
A. Denver for sure.
Q. Do you know if any of the rendezvous happened in New York City?
A. I don’t remember.
Q. How did it end with her?
A. Stopped calling for rendezvous.
Q. You stopped?
A. Yes.
Q. Why?
A. Just moving on.
Q. What does that mean?
A. Don’t want to see her anymore.Transportes
Até ao fim do ano devem haver meio milhão de veículos elétricos nas estradas da UE. Por cá, vendas estão a aumentar.
São cada vez mais os veículos elétricos a circular nas estradas da União Europeia (UE). A confirmação é dada pelos números da Federação Europeia dos Transportes e Ambiente, hoje divulgados, que mostram que esta opção é também cada vez mais nacional. Ao todo, por cá, a venda dos veículos 100% elétricos subiu 43% e isto apenas nos primeiros seis meses deste ano. E se aqui juntarmos os híbridos plug-in, os veículos com extensão de autonomia e os de célula de combustível, o aumento chega aos 103,5%.
Olhando para a quota de mercado nacional, as vendas destes veículos representaram 2,68% do total dos ligeiros de passageiros comercializados, no ano passado, no País, avança a Quercus, que cita os dados da Associação Automóvel de Portugal. Números que embora possam parecer pequenos, traduzem um aumento face a 2014. Mas dão conta do caminho que ainda é possível percorrer, sobretudo ao olhar para o ranking dos países europeus com mais vendas, que continua liderado pela Holanda, Noruega e Reino Unido.
Amigos do ambiente
Contas feitas, até ao fim de 2016 devem existir qualquer coisa como meio milhão de veículos elétricos a circular na UE. E ainda bem, defende a Quercus, que vê este crescimento, europeu e nacional, como positivo, isto apesar de, por cá, terem sido reduzidos os incentivos fiscais à mobilidade elétrica no início deste ano.
Preço de venda e a autonomia são identificados como os maiores entraves ao aumento das vendas, que poderá, reforça em comunicado, «ser uma das soluções para resolver os problemas de qualidade do ar e ruído nas áreas urbanas, incluindo-se aqui o incentivo à sua |
came earlier this week, as confirmed by the IIHF.
“My career is over, that much is certain," the 44-year-old told Finnish MTV. "It’s been nice to lead a life without any schedules, and there’s no place for (playing) hockey in that."
Selanne burst onto the North American hockey scene with 76 goals in 84 games as a rookie with the Winnipeg Jets in 1992-93. He went on to record 684 goals and 773 assists in 1,451 career games with the Jets, Anaheim Ducks, San Jose Sharks and Colorado Avalanche.
He ends his career having won a Stanley Cup with the Ducks in 2007, and with his name on the Calder (1993), Maurice Richard (1999) and Bill Masterton (2006) trophies.
In addition, Selanne won the Finnish title with Jokerit in 1992, one Olympic silver (2006) and three bronze medals (1998, 2010, 2014), one World Championship silver and one bronze, and represented Finland at six Winter Olympics, tying the record set by Raimo Helminen.
Selanne will most certainly be named to the Hockey Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility in 2017.NEW DELHI: On the eve of civil nuclear deal with Japan, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has said that India should say it will use its nuclear powers “responsibly” instead of stressing on “no first use.”Speaking at the release of a book, ‘The New Arthashastra: A Security Strategy for India,’ on Thursday Parrikar said that this was his personal view. Talking about India’s nuclear doctrine, Parrikar questioned why it was just said that India is for no first use. “Why do lot of people say that India is for ‘not first use…why should I bind myself? I should say I am a responsible nuclear power and I will not use it irresponsibly,” he said.The minister and defence ministry spokesperson Nitin Wakankar later clarified that the comments were his personal opinion, and did not reflect government policy. “It is not change in any government policy, I am also an individual. As an individual, I get this feeling sometimes. Why should I say I am not going to use it first? I am not saying you have to use it first just because you don’t decide that you don’t use it,” Parrikar clarified.However, this failed to satisfy his critics. “If the Defence Minister wants to speak in his personal capacity, he should resign from the government,” tweeted CPM General Secretary Sitaram Yechury. The defence minister’s remarks soon became a topic trending on twitter.The Indo-Japan nuclear deal that is to be signed shortly includes a clause for exit by Japan if India conducts a nuclear test. India’s nuclear doctrine talks on second strike capability and deterrence factor. Japan had imposed sanctions on India after the 1998 tests under the Vajpayee government. Japan is the only country to have been nuked and is sensitive to issue of nuclear tests.The Ministry of External Affairs on Thursday rejected World Bank proposals on two parallel mechanisms on Kishanganga hydel power project issue vis-à-vis Pakistan. “The World Bank has decided to proceed with both steps simultaneously. It was pointed by the Government to the World Bank that the pursuit of two parallel difference/ dispute resolution mechanisms — appointment of a Neutral Expert and establishment of a Court of Arbitration — at the same time is legally untenable.Inexplicably, the World Bank has decided to continue to proceed with these two parallel mechanisms simultaneously.India cannot be party to actions which are not in accordance with the Indus Waters Treaty. The Government will examine further options and take steps accordingly,” an MEA statement issued late Thursday night said, giving a new angle to India’s position on IWT. On the issue of differences between India and Pak on Kishanganga and Ratle Hydroelectric Projects under the Indus Waters Treaty, India had asked the World Bank to appoint a neutral expert to resolve the differences.In an upcoming episode of Law & Order SVU, the popular series will conflate the stories of southern celebrity chef Paula Deen and slain 17-year-old Trayvon Martin — two headlines that captured the nation’s attention and exposed how deeply racism is embedded in the fabric of this country.
According to TV Guide, Cybill Shepard plays Jolene Castille, a southern celebrity chef who guns down an unarmed, hoodie-clad, Black teenager who she mistakenly accused of following her.
RELATED: Rachel Jeantel Testimony: Trayvon Martin Trial
Executive Producer Warren Leight also confirmed that elements of New York’s ‘Stop & Frisk’ policies will be woven throughout the episode and that “tough questions” would be asked:
“Is racial profiling justifiable? Can self-defense involve racial profiling? We’re diving right into that,’ he said. ‘Can that happen in New York? Absolutely.”
SVU infamously tackled the Chris Brown and Rihanna domestic violence controversy in a February episode that drew wide-spread criticism. And the upcoming Deen-Martin story-line is sparking passionate debate even before it airs.
‘When the script was published it became a litmus test for everybody here,’ Leight said. ‘It was really interesting to see people read that script and have different interpretations about who did what and whether or not they deserved prison for it. It was fascinating.’
RELATED: Celebrities React To The Zimmerman Verdict Via Twitter
This is not the first time that Trayvon Martin has been used as a storyline.
HBO’s The Newsroom aired an episode earlier this month.
The Law & Order SVU episode is scheduled to be the third of the season, and according to Buzzfeed, is titled, “An American Tragedy.”
RELATED: Mothers Of Murdered Children Who Never Received Justice
Also On News One:ST. PETERSBURG, Russia, June 30 (UPI) -- A gay activists rallied in St. Petersburg, Russia, Saturday only to be met by anti-gay demonstrators and the ensuing confrontation led to arrests, police said.
Several dozen LGBT activists were at the sanctioned gay pride event at the Field of Mars when about 200 of anti-gay activists showed up, RIA Novosti reported. The anti-gay group urged police to ban the rally and threw eggs at the gay activists, the Russian news agency said.
A police representative said officers then broke up the protest and arrested dozens of gay rights activists and eight members of the anti-gay group.
The Russian LGBT network claimed, in a post on its Facebook page, that several activists were beaten up by the opposing side and more than 50 were detained by police.
One police officer was injured, Fonatanka.Ru, a local news website, reported.Dear SJWS attacking #gamergate #notyourshield :
THE most insulting and abusive thing you can say to a woman is that she has "internalized misogyny." You want to talk about "listen and believe?" Fuck you all. You continually discredit any individual thought by labeling someone a self-hater. The beauty of human beings is that we are all SO DIFFERENT. We are capable of our own set of beliefs, values, and IDEAS. To discredit someone who dare speak with their own voice because they "hate themselves", while claiming to "champion for their right to be taken seriously" is the most hypocritical thing ever. Seriously, ever. It astonishes me on a daily basis.
Women are not all attached to one big super-brain, dictating our beliefs and thoughts. We're more than capable of distinguishing an abusive or insulting situation from one that isn't. Telling me when to be insulted is the quickest route to making me feel insulted.
The only damn thing I'm internalizing is coffee. So speak FOR YOURSELVES instead of thinking you're important enough to speak on BEHALF OF OTHERS, who don't want you to.
Feel free to change every instance of "women" to any other group under the sun, the message STILL applies.
Reply · Report Postsorian said: ↑ stuart98 said: ↑ stuart98 said: ↑ Did you by any chance fix the ammo system on multiple weapons bug? Click to expand... Yes? No? Maybe so? Click to expand... No, and I would not expect it soon either. Currently, the game only supports 1 ammo using weapon per unit. To change this would be a lot of work and there are things higher up on the priority list. Click to expand...
How about one weapon using the system and the rest not using them in a turret multi-tracking system?Our battleships have main guns and flak guns. We are using the old battleship model, with the invisible side turrets and flak is on those. When we made the main guns use the energy system (but not the flak) it would crash the game and it would not always happen when the weapon begun firing. In fact usually it would happen some time after firing the first shot. At the time we assumed that the problem was trying to use the energy system with the turret multi-tracking system so we disabled the energy system.If the problem is indeed one weapon using the energy system and one not the the workaround should be trivial, but we would still like an option to have multiple energy storage per unit, when Uber finds time to implement it.Is it Christchurch or Gotham City?
With the White Lights of Hope swirling in the skies above earthquake-hit Christchurch, a man wearing a Batman costume – complete with mask, cape and tights – marched into the central police station late on Sunday night.
"First of all he wanted to speak to the commissioner," said Sergeant Chris Jones, who was just starting his shift when the "caped crusader" appeared.
"And then he wanted to know what was going on and why he'd been called, because he'd seen the lights in the sky."
The lights have been beaming out from within the cordoned central city since the first anniversary of last Septem-ber's quake as a symbol of hope for long-suffering residents.
Internet chatter quickly latched on to the similarity to the Bat-Signal – the emblem flashed in the skies above Gotham City to summon comic-book character Batman, usually at the behest of police commissioner Gordon. Jones was not impressed by Sunday night's masked prankster, who was filmed by a friend.
"He was actually rather a scrawny Batman, I'd have to say," Jones said.
"If he was going to look for a sidekick for a Robin, he'd have to be probably about 6 foot 4 and built like a tank to help him out."
After a brief exchange with police watchhouse staff, the costumed prankster, aged in his early 20s, made his exit – presumably to the Batmobile.
Jones said "Batman" was treated with the utmost respect, adding: "Contrary to popular belief, the police still have a sense of humour."Download raw source
Delivered-To: john.podesta@gmail.com Received: by 10.25.24.226 with SMTP id 95csp672867lfy; Fri, 8 Jan 2016 13:17:57 -0800 (PST) X-Received: by 10.25.23.85 with SMTP id n82mr11916580lfi.164.1452287877893; Fri, 08 Jan 2016 13:17:57 -0800 (PST) Return-Path: <milia.fisher@gmail.com> Received: from mail-lf0-x233.google.com (mail-lf0-x233.google.com. [2a00:1450:4010:c07::233]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id rj10si62218293lbb.90.2016.01.08.13.17.57 (version=TLS1_2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128); Fri, 08 Jan 2016 13:17:57 -0800 (PST) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of milia.fisher@gmail.com designates 2a00:1450:4010:c07::233 as permitted sender) client-ip=2a00:1450:4010:c07::233; Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of milia.fisher@gmail.com designates 2a00:1450:4010:c07::233 as permitted sender) smtp.mailfrom=milia.fisher@gmail.com; dkim=pass header.i=@gmail.com; dmarc=pass (p=NONE dis=NONE) header.from=gmail.com Received: by mail-lf0-x233.google.com with SMTP id d17so11691142lfb.1; Fri, 08 Jan 2016 13:17:57 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :cc:content-type; bh=TqFTICZ71h7L8C0tboaX2Um2KAVMvZyQ1LabX4WIUzo=; b=v/WWVkylemFI1J4DiyWnH1bNTcoQwTzEAxekQ1fgeYblKleqOE3wZSTkDWx1bU+f+o gkKMq7/ROqnZI+72zYt6tOyA1OEOneISIlIv7kGHdfnARHPq8Ezg3ryPYnip1+Y4pKm/ K7ZWWi7qKmE38Z/tGFhWT06BRZOKsRdIuDKAjCehvCEFnzdKU7LL7qRLInVBcwdPvbd1 iDC6SvV70Yjo7Z8/dSyc+FtMVJOJ9S9qPd46aBZTzOa2FZt1HEepziBrKb8MAwuXZj0m 8ARkYo9R9IkzlxChe8svRi8QXajXf886pGmP8StbrjVn3NMUEm9bVh29rtHIZOup/l5K ovjw== MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Received: by 10.25.205.76 with SMTP id d73mr29875992lfg.76.1452287877599; Fri, 08 Jan 2016 13:17:57 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.112.168.227 with HTTP; Fri, 8 Jan 2016 13:17:57 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <BLUPR05MB6255805C6EBFB88EAE87911BFF60@BLUPR05MB625.namprd05.prod.outlook.com> References: <58529C89-4D4E-439D-B99D-57BEEFE0DE3A@yahoo.com> <9d76d48cfe49201ac5f6ba8b9e8faae8@mail.gmail.com> <BLUPR05MB6255805C6EBFB88EAE87911BFF60@BLUPR05MB625.namprd05.prod.outlook.com> Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2016 16:17:57 -0500 Message-ID: <CADZo9g180fT74zh7-_iaTB1BaeoPvNPxeOwisb8mYr1BHHmv8g@mail.gmail.com> Subject: Re: Fw: Ambassador Cui From: Milia Fisher <milia.fisher@gmail.com> To: "Eryn Sepp (eryn.sepp@gmail.com)" <eryn.sepp@gmail.com> CC: "john.podesta@gmail.com" <john.podesta@gmail.com>, Milia Fisher <mfisher@hillaryclinton.com> Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=001a11412d220e5a310528d91fbe --001a11412d220e5a310528d91fbe Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Thanks, Eryn! Will reach out to Kurt. -John's @americanprogress and +my HRC email. On Fri, Jan 8, 2016 at 4:07 PM, John Podesta <jpodesta@americanprogress.org> wrote: > FYSA below on Amb. Cui's request to Kurt Campbell. This mistakenly went > to your AmProg yesterday. CCing myself and Milia--Let us know if we should > reach out to give him your updated contacts. > > ________________________________________ > From: Jake Sullivan <jsullivan@hillaryclinton.com> > Sent: Thursday, January 7, 2016 14:14 > To: Kurt Campbell; Laura Rosenberger; Dan Schwerin; John Podesta; > dkurtzphelan@gmail.com > Cc: Ashley Woolheater > Subject: RE: Ambassador Cui > > Kurt -- I have three or four other things to discuss with you. Can we do > a call tomorrow or Monday? > > -----Original Message----- > From: Kurt Campbell [mailto:kurtmcampbell@yahoo.com] > Sent: Thursday, January 7, 2016 11:59 AM > To: Laura Rosenberger <lrosenberger@hillaryclinton.com>; Jake Sullivan > <jsullivan@hillaryclinton.com>; dschwerin@hillaryclinton.com; john podesta > <jpodesta@americanprogress.org>; dkurtzphelan@gmail.com > Subject: Ambassador Cui > > Guys - Chinese Ambassador Cui invited me over to the residence Tuesday for > a coffee and to make a request. He wants to have an informal, private, off > the record get together with a few of us to discuss the next year and the > current state of US-China affairs. He asked me to host a social meal at my > house in the next month. He was fairly insistent and indicated that he > wanted to pass along some perspectives. I told him I'd reach out to you > all to see about your judgement on this and possible availability. I'm > happy to make some chili and cornbread by the fire but let's first decide > whether this makes sense. Please let me know your thinking. > > Best, > Kurt > -- Milia Fisher (858) 395-1741 --001a11412d220e5a310528d91fbe Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable <div dir=3D"ltr">Thanks, Eryn! Will reach out to Kurt. -John's @america= nprogress and +my HRC email.=C2=A0</div><div class=3D"gmail_extra"><br><div= class=3D"gmail_quote">On Fri, Jan 8, 2016 at 4:07 PM, John Podesta <span d= ir=3D"ltr"><<a href=3D"mailto:jpodesta@americanprogress.org" target=3D"_= blank">jpodesta@americanprogress.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote c= lass=3D"gmail_quote" style=3D"margin:0 0 0.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;= padding-left:1ex">FYSA below on Amb. Cui's request to Kurt Campbell.=C2= =A0 This mistakenly went to your AmProg yesterday.=C2=A0 CCing myself and M= ilia--Let us know if we should reach out to give him your updated contacts.= <br> <br> ________________________________________<br> From: Jake Sullivan <<a href=3D"mailto:jsullivan@hillaryclinton.com">jsu= llivan@hillaryclinton.com</a>><br> Sent: Thursday, January 7, 2016 14:14<br> To: Kurt Campbell; Laura Rosenberger; Dan Schwerin; John Podesta; <a href= =3D"mailto:dkurtzphelan@gmail.com">dkurtzphelan@gmail.com</a><br> Cc: Ashley Woolheater<br> Subject: RE: Ambassador Cui<br> <br> Kurt -- I have three or four other things to discuss with you.=C2=A0 Can we= do<br> a call tomorrow or Monday?<br> <br> -----Original Message-----<br> From: Kurt Campbell [mailto:<a href=3D"mailto:kurtmcampbell@yahoo.com">kurt= mcampbell@yahoo.com</a>]<br> Sent: Thursday, January 7, 2016 11:59 AM<br> To: Laura Rosenberger <<a href=3D"mailto:lrosenberger@hillaryclinton.com= ">lrosenberger@hillaryclinton.com</a>>; Jake Sullivan<br> <<a href=3D"mailto:jsullivan@hillaryclinton.com">jsullivan@hillaryclinto= n.com</a>>; <a href=3D"mailto:dschwerin@hillaryclinton.com">dschwerin@hi= llaryclinton.com</a>; john podesta<br> <<a href=3D"mailto:jpodesta@americanprogress.org">jpodesta@americanprogr= ess.org</a>>; <a href=3D"mailto:dkurtzphelan@gmail.com">dkurtzphelan@gma= il.com</a><br> Subject: Ambassador Cui<br> <br> Guys - Chinese Ambassador Cui invited me over to the residence Tuesday for<= br> a coffee and to make a request. He wants to have an informal, private, off<= br> the record get together with a few of us to discuss the next year and the<b= r> current state of US-China affairs. He asked me to host a social meal at my<= br> house in the next month. He was fairly insistent and indicated that he<br> wanted to pass along some perspectives. I told him I'd reach out to you= <br> all to see about your judgement on this and possible availability. I'm<= br> happy to make some chili and cornbread by the fire but let's first deci= de<br> whether this makes sense. Please let me know your thinking.<br> <br> Best,<br> Kurt<br> </blockquote></div><br><br clear=3D"all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class= =3D"gmail_signature"><div dir=3D"ltr">Milia Fisher<div>(858) 395-1741</div>= </div></div> </div> --001a11412d220e5a310528d91fbe--BEREA, Ohio - Joe Thomas has seen former teammates leave the Browns and thrive in successful situations. Jabaal Sheard made it to the AFC title game with the Patriots. T.J. Ward won a Super Bowl with the Broncos. Thomas, however, hasn't even been on a team with a winning record since his rookie season in 2007.
Doesn't he want what those other players have?
"I do," Thomas said on Wednesday before practice. "And I want to have it in Cleveland."
Seriously, though, it's been 10 years and, well...
"I'm a goal-setter and a guy that's very goal-oriented and to me doing the things that you set out to do and that you say you're going to do is important," Thomas said. "So when I first got here my goal and my mission is kind of always to make the playoffs and to help be part of turning the Browns into a consistent winner and kind of turning the franchise's fortunes around. We haven't done that yet, so to me that means that my mission is not yet complete here."
So when head coach Hue Jackson came out so emphatically on Monday, saying as deliberately as possible, "We are not going to trade Joe Thomas," it was music to the Pro Bowl left tackle's ears.
"It feels good to be loved," Thomas said. "I'm hoping that they stick to their word on that. Obviously I really want to be here. It's important for me to be part of the turnaround."
That's the hard part in all of this. It's NFL trade season and, while it has not traditionally been as active a time period as it is in other leagues, it has started to pick up. Thomas himself appeared to be at the center of a whirlwind of activity leading up to last season's deadline, with rumors flying that the Broncos and Browns were getting closer and closer to a deal that would have sent him to Denver.
That means, of course, that while Jackson on Monday can say the Browns aren't trading Thomas, sometimes things change, and Thomas has done the math.
"You always have to be ready and be able to roll with any punches that you're given, but I wouldn't expect to be traded obviously," Thomas said. "But it wouldn't be the most shocking thing in the world because that's the way the NFL goes. We're commodities in this business and we get traded just like stocks and bonds."
Thomas said that, as a good older player on a bad team, it's only natural that his name get bandied about in trade rumors. It's even more natural when considering how the front office has de-emphasized experience in favor of draft picks as they start over.
"It's not anything that I can control," Thomas said, "so it's not something that I would worry about. I think my years in the NFL has taught me to control the things that you can control and don't stress about something that's out of your control, because it'll make you crazy."
Jackson: 'We are not going to trade Joe Thomas'
At this point, though, time certainly isn't working in Thomas' favor. He'll turn 32 in December and his team will once again be playing out the string on another of his seasons. Thomas understands that reality and understands he can't predict how long the remainder of his career will last or how it will end.
"In football we're not really guaranteed even the next play, because it's such a violent sport that it can be taken away from you at any moment. I think you kind of accept that early on, so it's hard to ever really know when your career is going to be over. It's not something that you can worry about or try to count or plan on."
Part of it all, too, is that Thomas has become one of the athletes most identified with the city.
"Just because you weren't born somewhere doesn't mean you don't feel like you are associated with that city," Thomas said. "We've been here a long time. We feel like we've got some pretty deep roots here and there's no reason to want to leave."
-----
Follow me: on Twitter | on FacebookHarare - While rights activists in Harare on Friday protested xenophobic attacks in South Africa, President Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace were attending a children's party, according to the state broadcaster.
Mugabe, 91 and Grace, 49, were greeted with "screams of joy and whistling" when they arrived at the Harare city sports centre for the party, which is being held ahead of Zimbabwe's 35th independence celebrations on Saturday, the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation said.
Thousands of schoolchildren are at the party, where the Education Minister Lazarus Dokora claims Zimbabwe is in a "celebratory mood", according to an online update from the official Herald newspaper.
Mugabe's daughter Bona and her husband Simba Chikore are also at the party.
The long-time Zimbabwean president, who is also head of the AU and SADC, has not made any public statement yet about the xenophobic attacks in South Africa, though his ruling Zanu-PF party has expressed its alarm.
Zimbabwe was preparing to evacuate 1 000 of its nationals from South Africa on Sunday, according to media reports.
Riot police with truncheons forced some protesters to disperse from outside the South African embassy earlier on Friday, an activist told News24. The protest had not been given police permission to go ahead, unlike an anti-xenophobia protest planned by ruling party youths for early next week.
Anger is growing in Zimbabwe over the attacks in South Africa.
South African group Big Nuz was scheduled to give a concert in Bulawayo on Independence Day, but reports say it has been cancelled.
There are also calls for hip-hop star Cassper Nyovest's concert next week to be boycotted, even though he has said he will donate all proceeds to xenophobia survivors.Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had choice words for Hillary Clinton in an interview over the weekend, blasting the Democratic presidential nominee for blaming Russia for her loss to now-President Trump -- who picked up on the jab in a Monday morning tweet.
“When you lose to somebody who has a 40 percent popularity, you don’t blame other things -- Comey, Russia -- you blame yourself,” Schumer told the Washington Post. “So what did we do wrong? People didn’t know what we stood for, just that we were against Trump. And still believe that.”
Schumer, D-N.Y., was referring to comments Clinton has made tying her November election loss to multiple factors -- including former FBI Director James Comey’s decision to re-open the investigation into her private email server as well as the email hack of her campaign chairman's account.
The president echoed Schumer’s comments on Twitter early Monday, using them to suggest the probes of Russian meddling in the election and possible coordination with his associates are going nowhere.
CLINTON BLAMES COMEY, WIKILEAKS FOR LOSS
“After 1 year of investigation with Zero evidence being found, Chuck Schumer just stated that ‘Democrats should blame ourselves, not Russia,'” he wrote.
Back in May, Clinton said she would take “absolute personal responsibility” for losing presidential campaign -- but went on to blame Comey and Russian interference.
She also mentioned WikiLeaks, the antisecrecy website which some analysts believe to be connected to Russia and which posted the hacked emails of Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta.
“I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but were scared off,” Clinton said at the Women for Women International luncheon in May.
She added: "If the election were on October 27, I'd be your president."Kyhesha-Lee Joughin's father recalls moment he found 3yo daughter dead on floor of Petrie unit
Updated
A Brisbane man who discovered his three-year-old daughter dead in his lounge room says he told his housemate to get rid of a bong before calling triple-0.
Matthew Lee Williamson is facing a contested sentencing hearing in the Supreme Court after he pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Kyhesha-Lee Joughin, but said he never hurt her.
He has instead admitted to not acting to save her life when she was gravely ill and suffering from numerous injuries.
Kyhesha-Lee died in March 2013 at a unit in Petrie, north of Brisbane, and was found to have suffered internal bleeding, cuts and bruises.
Williamson said his housemate Christopher Kent woke him when the girl was "stiff" and lying on the floor.
He said Kent then decided to leave.
"I started to dial and before I pressed call, that's when he said he was leaving so I said, 'If you're going anywhere, can you get rid of this [bong] with you'," Williamson said.
"Then I gave that to him and I proceeded to call triple-0."
Prosecutor Phil McCarthy asked him: "So your first thoughts that go through your head when your daughter's on the ground dead is that police might get you for having a bong?"
Williamson replied: "That's correct."
In the weeks before Kyhesha-Lee's death, Williamson said he saw blood coming from her vaginal region but did not report it to authorities because he "didn't think anything of it at the time".
Williamson denied sexually abusing her but said he never told anyone about her injuries until police interviewed him after her death.
He said his daughter accused Kent of digitally penetrating her, but that he still did not make a report because he was fearful of his housemate.
"He was always intimidating," Williamson said.
He said, when Kyhesha-Lee had facial bruising and a cut ear, he did not take her to a doctor because Kent told him not to.
In the final days of her life, Williamson said Kyhesha-Lee was vomiting green fluid but he did not seek medical treatment or tell his family.
Defence barrister Michael Copley asked Williamson why he did nothing.
Williamson replied: "I was afraid I'd lose her... to welfare."
Kent, who received a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to Kyhesha-Lee's manslaughter, also denied harming the girl.
He told the court on Wednesday Williamson would regularly "smack her and slap her".
Williamson admitted using a rope to tie his bed to the toddler's door handle to keep her door shut, but said he only did so to prevent her sneaking out to the kitchen and spilling milk on the floor.
Forensic pathologist Dr Nathan Milne said there was evidence the girl had suffered vaginal lacerations and internal injuries, a cut ear and multiple bruises to her face and arms.
Williamson buried his head in his hands and cried as photos of the Kyhesha-Lee's injuries were shown in the courtroom.
The hearing before Justice Roslyn Atkinson is continuing.
Topics: murder-and-manslaughter, courts-and-trials, child-abuse, brisbane-4000
First postedMont. Republican Greg Gianforte apologizes for assaulting Guardian reporter
CLOSE The Republican candidate for Montana's US House Seat, Greg Gianforte, is charged with misdemeanor assault of a reporter, hours before polls open. Jacobs, who works for The Guardian, recorded the sound of his confrontation with Gianforte. (May 25) AP
Montana Republican Greg Gianforte formally apologized to The Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs for body slamming the journalist on the eve of Gianforte's election to the U.S. House of Representatives. The House member-elect has also pledged to donate $50,000 to the non-profit Committee to Protect Journalists.
"My physical response to your legitimate question was unprofessional, unacceptable, and unlawful," he said in a letter to Jacobs Wednesday. "As both a candidate for office and a public official, I should be held to a high standard in my interactions with the press and the public. My treatment of you did not meet that standard."
Gianforte also confirmed that Jacobs did not initiate physical contact with the Montana politician. "I had no right to assault you," Gianforte added.
Greg Gianforte's "sincere apology" to @Bencjacobs includes a $50,000 donation to the Committee to Protect Journalists pic.twitter.com/r7Fr3E36zt — Gregory Korte (@gregorykorte) June 8, 2017
Jacobs accepted Gianforte's apology, saying, "I hope the constructive resolution of this incident reinforces for all the importance of respecting the freedom of the press and the First Amendment and encourages more civil and thoughtful discourse in our country."
The politician still faces a misdemeanor charge for the altercation, but a judge granted an extension until June 20 for Gianforte to appear in court, The Associated Press reported Wednesday.
The assault occurred on May 24 when Jacobs pressed Gianforte on a health care bill. Jacobs later tweeted that Gianforte had "body slammed" him and broken his glasses.
Greg Gianforte just body slammed me and broke my glasses — Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) May 24, 2017
Gianforte's campaign initially released a statement claiming Jacobs had "aggressively shoved a recorder in Greg's face," and that the altercation occurred when "Jacobs grabbed Greg's wrist, and spun away from Greg, pushing them both to the ground. However, a Fox News reporter's first-hand account of the event claimed that "Gianforte grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground behind him."
Gianforte won the race despite two Montana papers — the Missoulian and the Billings Gazette — rescinding their endorsements. The House seat opened up for the special election after President Trump named Rep. Ryan Zinke to head the Interior Department.
A GoFundMe campaign to help Jacbos buy new glasses was started in the wake of the incident, and the reporter's broken glasses are now headed to the Newseum in Washington, D.C. to be added to the collection of the museum dedicated to journalism.
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Follow Ryan Miller on Twitter @RyanW_Miller
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2sVORD4Kashmir at War
Since 1947, Kashmir has been subjected to three full scale wars between India and Pakistan. The last one occurred as the two nations were poised to become nuclear powers. Until the late 80s, the nature of tension in the valley between these full scale battles can be viewed as latent violence. This period was dogged by rigged elections, corruption, dissent, and awry political coalitions, which led to shaky governments. It was in 1989 that the armed militancy broke out. Since then a burgeoning Indian military presence has been engaged in counterinsurgency policies.
Depending on the source, the violence in Kashmir has been described as an insurgency, low-intensity conflict, proxy war, organized violence, militancy, guerilla war, state terrorism, occupation, unresolved dispute, invisible war, and war in all its major connotations. There is no single consensus on the type of violence, since multiple actors are involved, occupying different hierarchical levels and using different forms of violence.
In her analysis, Cynthia Cockburn has gone as far as calling the situation in Kashmir a civil war. As far as the word "war" is concerned, it has been described as an “organized force between two politically independent units, in pursuit of [each unit’s] policy” or simply as a lethal intergroup violence. The studies of war do not offer quantitative cutoff point comparable to the Correlates of War project’s benchmark of 1,000 battle deaths for distinguishing warfare from lesser forms of violence. However, they do normally distinguish qualitatively between warfare organized by recognized group leaders and unsanctioned violence by certain in-group members against certain out-group members.
In these quantifying terms, characterizing the situation |
student rights, not just Muslim student rights.”
Mr Hussain said he believed the students might have a case against the university in law.
“Any action which is targeting students because of their face or faith will breach the Equality Act 2010,” he said. “Higher educational institutions should promote freedom of expression and the proposed vetting of sermons smacks of a Middle East autocratic regimes rather than a place of learning. The law requires justification and a proportionate response to potential discrimination and interference with fundamental rights. The argument here is that all Muslims are being punished for the alleged indiscretions of a minority in the distant past. This is at odds with the ethos of such institutions and the law.”
City University has previously struggled with radicalism from its Islamic Society. In 2010 the Quilliam Foundation, an anti-extremism think-tank, published a report accusing its members of intimidating other students, particularly those on the campus newspaper, as well as gay, Jewish and female students.
In one sermon, which was recorded, the speaker said: “The Islamic state teaches to cut the hand of the thief. Yes it does. And it also teaches us to stone the adulterer. When they tell us that, the Islamic state tells us and teaches us to kill the apostate, yes it does.”
However it is not clear if the Friday prayers, which the university claims is not run by the Islamic Society, have been a cause for concern when it comes to radical or hate speeches. A source at the University told The Independent that the decision to close down the Friday prayers was not triggered by a single recent event or a recent rise in concern of radicalism. Instead it was taken after “long and careful consideration”.
Muslim students on campus believe they have been unfairly targeted while Mr Sheikh said the Isoc was intimately involved in organising and publicising the Friday prayes. They have set up a campaign group, Muslim Voices on Campus, to protest the closure of the prayer facilities.
In a series of video messages on the MVoC Facebook page, Muslim students have voiced their outrage at the decision.
“I feel the utmost anger,” one unnamed student said in the video. “If I was to recommend this university to other students I would think twice. To be taking away this massive right for us. This is not just a concern for Muslims around the university, we should get everyone involved as well.”
Another added: “Many Muslims on campus and international students will go elsewhere to a different university, who accepts us, accepts our religion, our values and our morals.”
The government has repeatedly ordered Universities to take a tougher stance against Islamist radicalism on campus. In 2011 a cross-parliamentary group of MPs and peers claimed fundamentalism was still flourishing. However, many universities and academics are loathe to monitor or crack down on radicalism given that campuses are exactly the kind of places where free speech, radical thinking and the countering of extremist ideas should be openly encouraged.
In a statement, City University said the room used was never a dedicated space specifically Friday prayers and was instead an area that students could use for various activities ranging from meetings to pilates classes. Last year the University asked those organising the prayers to submit their sermons in advance and keep them online afterwards for people to view.
“Friday prayers were deemed University events open to all students and staff, and are not solely a student or student society event,” the statement read. “As such the University needs to be assured of the quality and appropriateness of what is being delivered and that all students eligible to deliver prayers and sermons are considered equally and given the opportunity to do so.”
The statement added: “Despite repeated requests and assurances, the information from those students leading Friday prayers was not forthcoming. Whilst this was a disappointment, the University could not continue to condone an activity taking place on its premises where it cannot exercise reasonable supervision.”
The university also said it had given students alternative options for Friday prayers that were away from campus but nearby.
Giulio Folino, president of the City University Student Union, said he had sympathy for both sides of the argument and was working to try and find a solution. “It is important that both the University and students recognise the importance of balancing rights and responsibilities,” he said. “Whilst it is right that the University needs to be reassured of the appropriateness of discussions on university property, I also believe that this should not interfere with freedom of speech on campus.”
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
Subscribe nowHead of Vote Leave, Matthew Elliott, poses for a photograph at the Vote Leave campaign headquarters in London, Britain May 19, 2016. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls
By Guy Faulconbridge and Kate Holton
LONDON (Reuters) - Anger at established elites and irritation at the interventions of leaders such as U.S. President Barack Obama will help to push British voters to opt for an exit from the European Union on June 23, the head of the Vote Leave campaign said.
With a team of about 60 full-time staff in a tower block across the River Thames from Parliament, Matthew Elliott is plotting what he describes as a revolution: Brexit.
A British exit would rock the European Union -- already shaken by differences over migration and the future of the euro zone -- by ripping away its second-largest economy, one of its top two military powers and by far its richest financial center.
While Boris Johnson, the most popular politician on the Out side, grabs headlines, Elliott and his campaign director, Dominic Cummings, 44, are the strategists behind a campaign to pull Britain out of a club it joined in 1973.
For Elliott, 38, the EU referendum is a David and Goliath battle with elites and a doomed European project that endangers Britain's prosperity.
Elliott told Reuters in an interview that his campaign has gained traction from anti-establishment winds that have grown in Western Europe since the 2008 economic crisis and resentment over warnings about Brexit from big companies and world leaders.
"We are capturing that wind and I think it could be the thing which really drives us to victory," Elliott said in the countdown to the referendum next month.
"I wouldn't see it as the wind of [presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald] Trump - I think there is a much wider anti-establishment feeling across the world," he said.
From Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to the International Monetary Fund and Wall Street, world leaders and institutions have lined up behind Prime Minister David Cameron to caution voters about the risks of dropping out of the EU.
Pro-Europeans say a Brexit vote would unleash market turmoil, torpedo British clout, undermine London's status as a top financial capital, weaken Western security and even delay the Federal Reserve's next interest rate rise.
OBAMA OR CRICKET?
Opponents of the EU say such warnings are overblown and that though there could be short-term market volatility, Britain would prosper if it broke the shackles which have linked it to a decaying German-dominated experiment in European integration.
The Brexiteers admit they are outgunned.
Cameron's backing for EU membership has the support of some of the world's most powerful companies such as Microsoft and GE, banks such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, world leaders such as Obama and even traditional domestic foes such as the Labour Party, trade unions and Scottish nationalists.
"Yes, taking that on is tough but it doesn't represent where the vast majority of the British public are," said Elliott.
Elliott said Obama's warning that Britain would be at "the back of the queue" for a U.S. trade deal had backfired. Opinion polling in the immediate aftermath of the Obama visit showed no sudden increase in support for the In campaign.
"Obama could have had a huge impact had it been done in a softer and more subtle way but the way in which it came out, basically saying: 'Get to the back of the queue if you leave the EU' - that resonated extremely badly with people," he said.
Just days before Obama's intervention, Ian Botham, one of England's greatest cricketing all-rounders, publicly backed a British exit.
"If you ask the average person who do you trust more with the UK's best interests: Obama or Botham? Most people would say: 'Well actually I am more interested in what Ian Botham says than what Obama says'."
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he did not want Britain to leave the EU and that there would be nothing easy or automatic about negotiating a new trade deal.
"When we vote to leave we can take back control of the ability to strike trade deals that we've given up to Brussels bureaucrats," Elliott said, when asked to comment on Trudeau's comments. "Canada hasn’t given up control of its borders or handed Brussels 350 million pounds every week to trade with the EU, and nor should we."
"BIG GUNS"
Vote Leave's strategy is to underscore the danger of staying in an EU which even many pro-Europeans agree has failed to solve a series of crises.
Story continuesOne morning in September, Lissette Castrillón, a caseworker in Providence, Rhode Island, drove to an apartment on the western edge of town to visit Annie Rodriguez, a young mother, and her two-year-old daughter, Eilen. Castrillón and Rodriguez sat down on a worn rug and spoke about the importance of talking to very young children. They discussed ways to cajole a toddler into an extended conversation, and identified moments in the day when Rodriguez could be chatting more with Eilen, an ebullient little girl who was wearing polka-dot leggings. “Whenever she’s saying a few new words, it’s important to tell her yes, and add to it,” Castrillón told Rodriguez. “So if she sees a car you can say, ‘Yes, that’s a car. It’s a big car. It’s a blue car.’ ” Eilen suddenly said, “Boo ca!” Castrillón looked at her and said, “Right! Blue car! Good job!” Rodriguez noted that Eilen had recently become so enthralled by an animated show, “Bubble Guppies,” that she had become “stuck on that word ‘guppy.’ ” She went on, “Everything’s ‘guppy, guppy, guppy.’ So when she refers to something as ‘guppy’ I try to correct it—like, ‘No, that’s not a guppy. That’s a doll.’ ” “Guppy?” Eilen said, hopefully. Castrillón said, “Well, I think right now the important thing won’t be so much telling her no but just adding words and repeating them, so she’ll start repeating them on her own.” Rodriguez is enrolled in a program called Providence Talks, the most ingenious of several new programs across the country that encourage low-income parents to talk more frequently with their kids. Once a month, Eilen wears a small recording device for the day, and the recording is then analyzed. An algorithm tallies all the words spoken by adults in her vicinity, all the vocalizations Eilen makes, and all the “conversational turns”—exchanges in which Eilen says something and an adult replies, or vice versa. The caseworker who visits Rodriguez’s home gives her a progress report, which shows in graph form how many words Eilen has been hearing, and how they peak and dip throughout the day. Castrillón presented Rodriguez with the month’s report. She leaned over her shoulder and said, “See, this shows the percentage of adult words. There were over fifteen thousand words spoken in that day.” “Wow!” Rodriguez said. Castrillón noted that significantly more conversation took place when the TV was off, and that it had been off more that month than the previous one. “There was pretty high electronic sound last time,” she said. “This time, there was very little.” Rodriguez nodded, studying the printout. In the nineteen-eighties, two child psychologists at the University of Kansas, Betty Hart and Todd Risley, began comparing, in detail, how parents of different social classes talked with their children. Hart and Risley had both worked in preschool programs designed to boost the language skills of low-income kids, but they had been dissatisfied with the results of such efforts: the achievement gap between rich and poor had continued to widen. They decided to look beyond the classroom and examine what went on inside the home. Hart and Risley recruited forty-two families: thirteen upper, or “professional,” class, ten middle class, thirteen working class, and six on welfare. Each family had a baby who was between seven and twelve months old. During the next two and a half years, observers visited each home for an hour every month, and taped the encounters. They were like dinner guests who never said much but kept coming back. In all, Hart and Risley reported, they analyzed “more than 1,300 hours of casual interactions between parents and their language-learning children.” The researchers noticed many similarities among the families: “They all disciplined their children and taught them good manners and how to dress and toilet themselves.” They all showed their children affection and said things like “Don’t jump on the couch” and “Use your spoon” and “Do you have to go potty?” But the researchers also found that the wealthier parents consistently talked more with their kids. Among the professional families, the average number of words that children heard in an hour was twenty-one hundred and fifty; among the working-class families, it was twelve hundred and fifty; among the welfare families, it was six hundred and twenty. Over time, these daily differences had major consequences, Hart and Risley concluded: “With few exceptions, the more parents talked to their children, the faster the children’s vocabularies were growing and the higher the children’s I.Q. test scores at age 3 and later.” Hart and Risley’s research has grown in prominence, in part because large-scale educational reforms like No Child Left Behind have proved disappointing. Addressing the word gap by coaching new parents sounds like a simpler intervention. Last year, Hillary Clinton announced a new initiative, Too Small to Fail, that emphasizes the importance of talking to infants and young children; in the fall, President Barack Obama convened a White House conference whose goal was to “bridge the word gap and put more young people on the path to success.” Other cities, including Cambridge, Massachusetts, have initiated programs similar to the one in Providence, and still others have begun public-awareness campaigns with radio spots and bus-shelter signs reminding parents to talk frequently to their kids. The notion of the word gap even turned up on “Orange Is the New Black,” when one of the inmates urged her boyfriend to talk with their new daughter, because “there’s all these studies that say that if you don’t talk to the baby they end up, like, fucked by the time they’re five.” The way you converse with your child is one of the most intimate aspects of parenting, shaped both by your personality and by cultural habits so deep that they can feel automatic. Changing how low-income parents interact with their children is a delicate matter, and not especially easy. Lissette Castrillón was sensitive to the challenge, and she had an appealing informality: she listened carefully to Rodriguez, praised her efforts, and said admiring things about Eilen, all while sitting cross-legged on the floor. But, perhaps inevitably, there was an awkward moment. Castrillón had brought an iPad with her, and she played for Rodriguez a video of a mother shopping at the grocery store while her toddler sat in the cart—just to show, Castrillón explained, that you could “talk aloud when you’re pretty much doing anything.” The mother onscreen was blond and fit, and wore white jeans; she looked like a character in a Nancy Meyers movie, and her patter was so constant that it became wearying. “Here’s our crunchy peanut butter, sweetheart!” she trilled, scanning an aisle filled with organic food. “Here’s the Wild Oats one. Roasted almond butter. Crunchy. Let’s get crunchy, Bubba.” The cart was piled high, and the items looked expensive. “Bubba, we’re running out of room. What are we going to do? Did Mommy buy too many groceries today? I think we should get the creamy, too, because Murphy does not like when I get that crunchy. And we like to have the peanut butter because peanut butter’s good for you. It’s got protein.” Rodriguez watched the video with a serious expression. It was hard to imagine her holding forth with such preening gusto in the organics aisle. Castrillón said, “Well, you know, just—whatever the food is you’re buying, you can talk about color, shape, and texture.” “No need to come to order. The Honorable Justice Perkins is just tenderizing his porterhouse.”
In 2012, the mayor of Providence, Angel Taveras, heard about the Mayors Challenge, a new competition being offered to cities that proposed a bold idea for making urban life better. The prize was to be given by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the foundation started by Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, on the premise that cities are “the new laboratories of democracy.” The city that won the grand prize would receive five million dollars to realize its project, and four other cities would be given a million each. As Taveras recalled, “They announced that challenge on Twitter, and right away I said, ‘We’re going to go for it.’ And I didn’t know exactly what it would be at the time, but I knew it was going to be on early-childhood education.” Taveras’s focus was not unusual: these days, everyone from preschool teachers to politicians talks about infant brain development, and toy companies tap into parental anxiety about it. But Taveras had a personal investment in the subject. He is the son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, neither of whom went beyond the eighth grade. He grew up in Providence, and his mother, Amparo, who raised him largely on her own, worked factory jobs to support him and his two siblings. When he was four, Amparo enrolled him in a local Head Start program, and he felt that it had made a decisive difference in his life. He went on to Providence public schools, and then attended Harvard University and Georgetown law school. Taveras calls himself the “Head Start to Harvard” mayor, and he still has his graduation picture from the program. “I wore a cap and gown, and it was so special for me,” he recalled. In 2010, at the age of forty, Taveras became the first Latino mayor of Providence, a city that is nineteen per cent Latino, mostly Dominican. Tall and skinny, with rimless eyeglasses, Taveras is nerdier and nicer than you might expect of a Providence mayor. One of his predecessors, Buddy Cianci, was twice convicted of felonies while in office: once for racketeering, and once for assaulting a man—using a lit cigarette and a fireplace log—who was dating his ex-wife. Taveras, by contrast, wrote a children’s book called “How to Do Well in School” and seems genuinely to enjoy mayoral duties like dropping in for “story time” at a local library. One day, while Taveras was mulling over what to propose for the Bloomberg competition, his policy director, Toby Shepherd, told him about Hart and Risley’s research—including their calculation that a poor four-year-old has heard thirty million fewer words from his parents than a wealthy one has. That number had attracted a lot of attention in the press—to the point that Hart and Risley’s study was sometimes faulted for an overemphasis on the sheer quantity of words. But Taveras learned that Hart, who died in 2012, and Risley, who died in 2007, had also identified important differences in kinds of talk. In the recordings of the professional families, they found a “greater richness of nouns, modifiers, and past-tense verbs,” and more conversations on subjects that children had initiated. Catherine Snow, a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, who studies children’s language development, told me that these findings made sense, since quantity was often a proxy for quality. “Families that talk a lot also talk about more different things,” Snow said. “They use more grammatical variety in their sentences and more sophisticated vocabulary, and produce more utterances in connected chains.” Such parents, she noted, “don’t just say, ‘That’s a teapot.’ They say, ‘Oh, look, a teapot! Let’s have a tea party! There’s Raggedy Ann—do you think she wants to come to our tea party? Does she like sugar in her tea?’ ” Parents who talk a lot with their young children ask them many questions, including ones to which they know the answer. (“Is that a ducky on your shirt?”) They reply to those devilish “Why?” questions toddlers love with elaborate explanations. Erika Hoff, a developmental psychologist at Florida Atlantic University, has published studies about early language development whose results are similar to those of Hart and Risley. She recalled marvelling at “the young professor mothers” at a university childcare center: “Everything was a topic of conversation. If they had to get out of the building in case of a fire, they’d be so busy discussing the pros and cons with their toddlers that I kind of wondered if they’d make it.” Among the more affluent families studied by Hart and Risley, a higher proportion of the talk directed at children was affirming, which was defined to include not just compliments like “Good job!” but also responses in which parents repeat and build on a child’s comments: “Yes, it is a bunny! It’s a bunny eating a carrot!” In those families, the average child heard thirty-two affirmations and five prohibitions (“Stop that”; “That’s the wrong way!”) per hour—a ratio of six to one. For the kids in the working-class families, the ratio was twelve affirmatives to seven prohibitions, and in the welfare families it was five affirmatives to eleven prohibitions. Hart and Risley included one extended description of a mother from the poorest group, at home with her twenty-three-month-old daughter, Inge: The mother returns; Inge sits on the couch beside her to watch TV and says something incomprehensible. Mother responds, “Quit copying off of me. You a copycat.” Inge says something incomprehensible, and her mother does not respond. Inge picks up her sister’s purse from the couch. Her mother initiates, “You better get out of her purse.” Inge continues to explore the purse and her mother initiates, “Get out of her purse.” Inge does not answer; she begins to take coins out of the purse and put them on the coffee table. Her mother initiates, “Give me that purse.” Inge continues to put coins on the table. Her mother initiates, “And the money.” Inge does not answer but gives her mother the purse. Hart and Risley noted that the mother was “concerned” and “affectionate” toward her child. Inge was dressed in nice clothes and fed consistently, and she was toilet trained; at one point, the mother picked her up and kissed her. But she made “few efforts to engage the child in conversation,” and did not “re-direct” Inge when she wanted her to stop doing something, or treat exploratory misbehavior as a sign of curiosity rather than defiance. Most of what the mother said to Inge was “corrective or critical.” Hart and Risley also provided examples of various kinds of conversation—mostly, but not exclusively, among the professional families—in which parents prompted and encouraged children to talk: The mother initiates, asking Calvin (24 months), “What did we do on Halloween? What did you put on your head and on your body? What did you look like?” When Calvin does not answer, she tells him, “You were a kitty cat.” Calvin says, “Wanna get. Where go?” His mother says, “What are you looking for? I know what you’re looking for. What used to be on the door handle?” Calvin says, “Where?” His mother says, “The trick-or-treat bag. We ate up all the candy already.” Calvin says, “Where the candy go?” His mother says, “It’s all gone in your tummy.” Calvin says, “Want some.” Mayor Taveras thought that such conversational strategies could be taught to new parents, and decided to address the word-gap problem with the Mayors Challenge. “Head Start is awesome,” he told me. “But we’ve gotta do something even before Head Start.” At the time, his wife was pregnant with their first child, and he “was reading and talking to my daughter in utero. I decided it can’t hurt. I’d come home and say, ‘It’s Daddy,’ and ‘How are you?,’ and everything else.” Even though the Hart and Risley study had encompassed just a few dozen families, the transcribing and coding of all those tapes had been laborious. New technology, Shepherd told him, could make counting words much easier. In 2005, a research foundation named LENA (for Language Environment Analysis) had developed a small digital device that could record for sixteen hours and recognize adult words, child vocalizations, and conversational turns. Such distinctions were important, because researchers had determined that merely overheard speech—a mother holding a child on her lap but talking on the phone, for instance—contributed less to language development. The LENA recorder could also distinguish between actual people speaking in a child’s earshot and sounds from TVs and other electronic devices; children under the age of two appear to learn language only from other humans. The device was about the size of an iPod, and it fit into the pocket of a specially designed vest or pair of overalls. (Children soon forgot about the devices, though they occasionally ended up in the toilet or in the dog’s bed.) LENA’s device had been used in academic research on language development and in interventions for hard-of-hearing, autistic, and developmentally delayed children. In 2009, a Chicago surgeon named Dana Suskind, who specializes in cochlear-implant surgery for deaf children, began using LENA’s technology in a program called the Thirty Million Words Initiative, which includes a study on the effects of encouraging low-income parents to talk more with their children. Suskind had come across Hart and Risley’s research after noticing divergent outcomes for her young patients. “Cochlear implants are truly a modern medical miracle,” she said. “But, after the implantation surgery, some of the kids we saw were reading and speaking on grade level, and others were much slower to communicate. The difference almost always had to do with socioeconomic status.” Taveras named his proposed project Providence Talks, and decided that technology would be supported with counselling. During home visits with low-income parents, caseworkers would discuss the science of early brain development. They’d advise parents to try to understand better what their kids were feeling, instead of simply saying no. Parents would be told that, even when they were bathing a child or cooking dinner, they could be narrating what was going on, as well as singing, counting, and asking questions. The caseworkers would bring books and demonstrate how to read them: asking children questions about what was going to happen next and livening up the dialogue with funny, high-pitched voices and enthusiastic mooing and woofing. For the mayor, it was important that Providence Talks did not seem exclusive. “I love it that you can do this in Spanish or any other language,” he said. “I love it that you can do it even if you’re not literate. Even if you can’t read them a book. You can still talk to them about what an apple is: ‘This is a red apple, this is a green apple, this is how you cut it.’ Just talking and engaging and having a conversation.”
In March of 2013, Taveras learned that Providence Talks had won the Mayors Challenge grand prize. The Bloomberg committee praised the city for its “direct, simple, and revolutionary approach.” Taveras wanted to jump up and down and scream, but, fearing that this wasn’t mayoral, he contented himself with fist-bumping Toby Shepherd and the rest of his staff. A big part of the program’s appeal lay in its technology. Using LENA devices, caseworkers could show parents how much they’d been talking at various times of the day. Crucially, parents found the gadgets fun: they were like Fitbits for conversation. Andrea Riquetti, the director of Providence Talks, told me, “The fact that we have this report, in a graph form, makes it nonjudgmental.” Parents were likely to resist, she felt, if the program seemed scolding. “We can say, look, here’s the data. Look how much you were talking at eleven o’clock! How can we do this for another half hour? As opposed to a home visitor telling a parent, ‘You’re not talking to your child enough.’ ” Providence Talks had its critics, some of whom thought that the program seemed too intrusive. The A.C.L.U. raised questions about what would happen to the recordings, and one of the organization’s Rhode Island associates, Hillary Davis, told National Journal, “There’s always a concern when we walk in with technology into lower-income families, immigrant populations, minority populations, and we say, ‘This will help you.’ ” She continued, “We don’t necessarily recognize the threat to their own safety or liberty that can accidentally come along with that.” Others charged that Providence Talks was imposing middle-class cultural values on poorer parents who had their own valid approaches to raising children, and argued that the program risked faulting parents for their children’s academic shortcomings while letting schools off the hook. Nobody contested the fact that, on average, low-income children entered kindergarten with fewer scholastic skills than kids who were better off, but there were many reasons for the disparity, ranging from poor nutrition to chaotic living conditions to the absence of a preschool education. In a caustic essay titled “Selling the Language Gap,” which was published in Anthropology News, Susan Blum, of Notre Dame, and Kathleen Riley, of Fordham, called Providence Talks an example of “silver-bullet thinking,” the latest in a long history of “blame-the-victim approaches to language and poverty.” To some scholars, the program’s emphasis on boosting numbers made it seem as though the quality of conversation didn’t matter much. As James Morgan, a developmental psycholinguist at Brown University, put it, obsessive word counting might lead parents to conclude that “saying ‘doggy, doggy, doggy, doggy’ is more meaningful than saying ‘doggy.’ ” Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a psychologist at Temple University, told me that Hart and Risley had “done a very important piece of work that pointed to a central problem”; nevertheless, their findings had often been interpreted glibly, as if the solution were to let words “just wash over a child, like the background noise of a TV.” Her own research, including a recent paper written with Lauren Adamson and other psychologists, points to the importance of interactions between parents and children in which they are both paying attention to the same thing—a cement mixer on the street, a picture in a book—and in which the ensuing conversation (some of which might be conducted in gestures) is fluid and happens over days, even weeks. “It’s not just serve and return,” Hirsh-Pasek said. “It’s serve and return—and return and return.” The original Hart and Risley research, whose data set had only six families in the poorest category, was also called into question. Mark Liberman, a linguist at the University of Pennsylvania, said, “Do low-income people talk with their kids less? Well, that’s a question about millions of people. Think of people in the survey business, trying to predict elections or develop a marketing campaign. They would find it laughable to draw conclusions without a large randomized sample.” Encouraging adults to talk more to children was all to the good, Liberman said, but it was important to remember that “there are some wealthy people who don’t talk to their children much and some poor people who talk a lot.” Indeed, recent research that supports Hart and Risley’s work has found a great deal of variability within classes. In 2006, researchers at the LENA Foundation recorded the conversations of three hundred and twenty-nine families, who were divided into groups by the mothers’ education level, a reasonable proxy for social class. Like Hart and Risley, the LENA researchers determined that, on average, parents who had earned at least a B.A. spoke more around their children than other parents: 14,926 words per day versus 12,024. (They attributed Hart and Risley’s bigger gap to the fact that they had recorded families only during the late afternoon and the evening—when families talk most—and extrapolated.) But the LENA team also found that some of the less educated parents spoke a lot more than some of the highly educated parents. Anne Fernald, a psychologist at Stanford, has published several papers examining the influence of socioeconomic status on children’s language development. In one recent study, Fernald, with a colleague, Adriana Weisleder, and others, identified “large disparities” among socioeconomic groups in “infants’ language processing, speech production, and vocabulary.” But they also found big differences among working-class families, both in terms of “the children’s language proficiency and the parents’ verbal engagement with the child.” Fernald, who sits on the scientific advisory board for Providence Talks, told me, “Some of the wealthiest families in our research had low word counts, possibly because they were on their gadgets all day. So you can see an intermingling at the extremes of rich and poor. Socioeconomic status is not destiny.” “He’s all business during the week, but on weekends he displays a playful humor. ” In response to the privacy concerns, Mayor Taveras and his team volunteered their own households to be the first ones recorded. They also guaranteed that the LENA Foundation’s software would erase the recordings after the algorithm analyzed the data. Though this probably reassured some families, it also disappointed some scholars. “That’s a huge amount of data being thrown out!” James Morgan, of Brown, told me. “There were real concerns whether families would participate otherwise. But as a scientist it breaks my heart.” To those who argued that Providence Talks embodied cultural imperialism, staff members responded that, on the contrary, they were “empowering” parents with knowledge. Andrea Riquetti, the Providence Talks director, told me, “It really is our responsibility to let families know what it takes to succeed in the culture they live in. Which may not necessarily be the same as the culture they have. But it’s their choice whether they decide to. It’s not a case of our saying, ‘You have to do this.’ ” Riquetti grew up in Quito, Ecuador, came to America at the age of seventeen, and worked for many years as a kindergarten teacher in Providence schools. In Latino culture, she said, “the school is seen as being in charge of teaching children their letters and all that, while parents are in charge of discipline—making sure they listen and they’re good and they sit still. Parents don’t tend, overall, to give children a lot of choices and options. It’s kind of like ‘I rule the roost so that you can behave and learn at school.’ ” The Providence Talks approach “is a little more like ‘No, your child and what they have to say is really important.’ And having them feel really good about themselves as opposed to passive about their learning is important, because that’s what’s going to help them succeed in this culture.” Riquetti and the Providence Talks team didn’t seem troubled by the concerns that Hart and Risley’s data set wasn’t robust enough. Although no subsequent study has found a word gap as large as thirty million, several of them have found that children in low-income households have smaller vocabularies than kids in higher-income ones. This deficit correlates with the quantity and the quality of talk elicited by the adults at home, and becomes evident quite early—in one study, when some kids were eighteen months old. Lack of conversation wasn’t the only reason that low-income kids started out behind in school, but it was certainly a problem. The biggest question was whether Providence Talks could really change something as personal, casual, and fundamental as how people talk to their babies. Erika Hoff, of Florida Atlantic University, told me, “In some ways, parenting behavior clearly can change. I have a daughter who has a baby now and she does everything differently from how I did it—putting babies to sleep on their backs, not giving them milk till they’re a year old. But patterns of interacting are different. You’re trying to get people to change something that seems natural to them and comes from a fairly deep place. I don’t know how malleable that is.” After decades of failed educational reforms, few policymakers are naïve enough to believe that a single social intervention could fully transform disadvantaged children’s lives. The growing economic inequality in America is too entrenched, too structural. But that’s hardly an argument for doing nothing. Although improvements in test scores associated with preschool programs fade as students proceed through elementary school, broader benefits can be seen many years later. A few oft-cited studies have shown that low-income kids who attended high-quality preschool programs were more likely to graduate from high school and less likely to become pregnant as teen-agers or to be incarcerated; they also earned more money, on average, than peers who were not in such programs. Such data suggest that a full assessment of Providence Talks will take decades to complete.
On a cool, rainy morning in April, I went on a home visit with a young caseworker named Stephanie Taveras (no relation to the mayor), who had been assigned to Providence Talks. Two months earlier, the program had begun with fifty-eight families; the plan was to start adding many more families in the fall, with a projected, if optimistic, enrollment of two thousand families. The monthly recording and coaching visits would go on for two years. On earlier visits, Taveras had discussed a baby’s cognitive development by bringing a little wax model of a brain with her. The family lived in an apartment in Southside, on a block of small, scrubby lawns, chain-link fences, and two-story wooden houses. It was a predominantly Latino neighborhood, where a third of the families have incomes below the poverty line. On a nearby street, there was a corner shop, Perla del Caribe, and a meat market, El Vecinos, but there was no one out on the street that morning, and it felt a little desolate. Inside, Taveras greeted a seven-month-old girl, Skylah, who was smiling and gurgling while propped up in an ExerSaucer. Skyl |
Those are liquid cooled chrome GPU pipes in the photo. They look even better in real life.
When Dominique did his talk in 2013 on using Hashcat to turn Gravatar profile hashes back into email addresses, the Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan GPU was released which provided 5045 Gigaflops of processing power.
In May of his year Nvidia launched the GeForce GTX 1080 which comes with 8873 Gigaflops of processing power. In just two years the amount of processing power that is available has almost doubled.
When you consider that 2 years ago a single researcher reverse engineered 45% of gravatar profile photos into email addresses, it’s quite possible that a criminal group armed with a modern GPU cluster, as shown above, could reverse engineer a far higher percentage today. The problem will only get worse.
Email hashes may expose your identity across the Web
The use of email address hashes has a further problem. If you view the source of a website using Gravatar profile photos, extract the hash and then google that hash in quotes, you can find other websites and services that are used by the individual you are researching.
For example: A user may be comfortable having their full name and profile photo appear on a website about skiing. But they may not want their name or identity exposed to the public on a website specializing in a medical condition. Someone researching this individual could extract their Gravatar hash from the skiing website along with their full name. They could then Google the hash and determine that the individual suffers from a medical condition they wanted to keep private.
To demonstrate this issue, we have created the form below which you can use to do a Google search of the MD5 hash of your own email address. We don’t log anything. This simply uses pure javascript to open a new window or tab with a google search of the hash of your email in quotes. Enter your email in the text field below and click the link to do the search. You should note that Google doesn’t index all Gravatar hashes because they appear in page source. But you may find a few interesting results that help illustrate the problem.
Email:
Click to Google an MD5 of your email
The above can be used to Google an MD5 hash of anything. Try entering in your domain name or common passwords (not passwords you actually use). Let us know what you find in the comments.
What to do to protect your email address and identity
To solve the identity and spam problem that Gravatar presents, the most effective option is to use a unique email address to register on each website you are a member of. The email address should be hard to reverse engineer.
If you use an @gmail.com address, Gmail provides a feature whereby you can append a plus sign to your email address and anything after it is ignored. If your email address is yourname@gmail.com, you can change it to yourname+junkGoesHere@gmail.com and you will still receive the email.
What we suggest you do is use a unique gmail address on any Gravatar enabled website when you register. Therefore yourname@gmail.com would become: yourname+2h4J1q9ZuU9@gmail.com. Gmail has documented this feature here. The feature also works with hosted Gmail addresses where you use your own domain. Outlook.com also provides this feature.
Using this technique makes it much harder for a spammer to reverse engineer your email address from a Gravatar hash. Try to make your email address at least 20 characters long and include upper and lower-case letters and numbers in the suffix after the plus sign. If you have uploaded a custom Gravatar profile image, you should note that this has the side effect of not displaying that image on the websites where you make this change. Instead you will get a default profile image.
Receiving extra spam is an inconvenience. It can be a minor inconvenience if you have an excellent spam filter in place. However, having your identity exposed on a website where you assumed your identity was private can be embarrassing at best and have far worse consequences. We therefore suggest that you switch to using a plus-suffix on any website where it is important to maintain your personal privacy.
What should Gravatar do?
This presents a significant challenge for a service that is as widely used as Gravatar. They can’t simply upgrade their own systems. Web applications that have integrated Gravatar rely on the fact that they can request an image with an MD5 hash of a user email address and get a profile photo in return. These applications all need to be updated too, and there are thousands – quite possibly tens of thousands of them.
Even if Gravatar switch to SHA-2 or a longer and stronger hashing algorithm, they are still vulnerable to GPU accelerated email cracking attacks. The identity problem will also still exist.
They could consider switching to a more computationally intensive hashing algorithm like bcrypt. That would provide significant resistance to reverse engineering. But it comes with the obvious cost that it is computationally intensive. Gravatar need to generate a lot of hashes to provide the service they do. Developers who integrate Gravatar into their products also need to generate hashes from email addresses. Both will suffer from increased resource usage if they start using bcrypt. It also doesn’t solve the identity problem.
There are other options available like using a shared secret between developers and the Gravatar servers to generate hashes. These come with their own implementation challenges and performance implications. This option may solve the identity issue because it could generate unique hashes across websites that are also hard to reverse engineer.
A final option is to switch to locally hosted images and move away from hashes or global unique identifiers of any kind. This will introduce more complexity for developers who want to integrate Gravatar into websites, but has the benefit of doing a better job of protecting user privacy and avoids disclosing email addresses.
Further comments on privacy
This is a complex problem and there is unfortunately not an easy fix for Gravatar. In my opinion, the most important issue here is the potential exposure of user identities. I think the medical example that I provided above illustrates how much damage can be done if a user identity is exposed under certain conditions.
That is why the privacy implications of this problem cause the most concern. If you aren’t particularly technical you may simply trust a website owner who says that your full name and personal information won’t be exposed. With the current way Gravatar works, you run the risk of having that information exposed.
As always I welcome your comments below and will respond as time permits.
Update: After publication, one of our senior staff pointed out that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) considers an email address to be PII, or personally identifiable information. Please see the NIST publication 800-122 “Guide to Protecting the Confidentiality of Personally Identifiable Information (PII)“. PII has a legal meaning in many jurisdictions and is used in the definition of privacy law.WORLD CUP 2010: Sven Goran Eriksson to take charge of Ivory Coast in South Africa
By Sportsmail Reporter
Three in a row: Swede Eriksson was at the last two World Cups as England manager
Sven Goran Eriksson is set to lead Ivory Coast at the World Cup finals.
Jacques Anouma, head of the African country's FA, is in Paris to conclude negotiations with the former England manager, who emerged as the frontrunner after Guus Hiddink turned down the chance to replace Vahid Halilhodzic.
Eriksson, 62, is considering a short-term contract before a likely return to club management after South Africa 2010, when Frenchman Gerard Gili is expected take over.
Halilhodzic was dismissed after only taking Ivory Coast to the quarter-finals of the Africa Cup of Nations earlier this year.
Former Manchester City boss Eriksson, who quit Notts County as director of football in February, took England to the quarter-final stage at both the 2002 and 2006 World Cups.By Eris Zion Venia DysonDear Mr. Charles Ramsey,First and foremost thank you. Thank you for being an up-stander versus a bystander. All too often we are quick to flee from the things that could land us in imminent danger, but you in your heart of hearts knew that the right thing to do was to come to the aid of someone who was crying out. We as the members of this great City of Cleveland are forever beholden to you for finding three of our daughters who we thought we’d never see again. But through the grace of the Most High they are now safe.In plain speak, you said something so profound, and I want to unpack the statement that you made: “When a young, pretty white woman runs into the arms of a Black man you know something wrong.”What does this statement mean in 2013? For me, it spoke volumes. It says: In America, we are taught to fear Black Men. They are assumed to be violent, angry, and completely & utterly untrustworthy. This statement also says what we have always known to be true for this country: White women, specifically pretty white women have no business in the same space as Black men. For as long as we can remember American society has been the sustainer of white women and the slayer of Black men.We have seen it with the all too familiar story of Emmitt Till. We have seen it with the less familiar story of George Stinney; the youngest person in the United States ever executed. At 14 years old he was charged with the murder of two white girls in Alcolu, South Carolina. He was charged with this murder after being the last to see these two girls alive and even helped to search for them. With no evidence and no concrete witnesses he was sent to the electric chair, with a booster seat for his 90lb body, his case never reopened even after the culprit admitted he committed the crime.I write this letter with extreme gratefulness, because I know how this country has historically made a mockery of, and torn down men like you: Black men who have been the fall guy, Black men who are assumed guilty for wearing hoodies and having wallets that somehow get mistaken for guns. So we all know that you could have easily decided that you would not put yourself in harm’s way.And for your act of heroism you are met with extreme scrutiny couched in jest. Joke after joke for telling your truth, as plain as you knew how. You, Mr. Ramsey, were made fun of for flinching when the sounds of police sirens struck an innate reaction of terror in you. We all know that the police weren’t made for the protection of Black men. The 911 operator who engaged you with disdain, disbelief, and sheer aggravation reaffirmed that “you don’t have to be white to support white supremacy.” So if you don’t “look” like a hero, “speak” like a hero, “dress” like a hero, or wear your “hair” like a hero, then you’re just another person used to build the comedic chops of aspiring YouTube/Twitter/Facebook/Instagram sensations.Thank you Mr. Ramsey for your discernment. Words can’t express what you have done for the families that finally have answers. As for the court jesters, there’s not much we can do for the cowards who don’t see that you did what the Cleveland Police department and the FBI could NOT do for an entire decade. As James Baldwin said, “When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn’t a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking."Thank you for being “somewhat insane” enough to act.With Love,eZvRepublished with permission from an ezv truthAn American man and a French woman meet on a train in Eastern Europe. They live on different continents. But before the sun comes up, they have spent the night together. What happens next?
You’d expect the answer to be, nothing. It’s just a one-night stand in a faraway place. But in director Richard Linklater’s trilogy, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight, their romance blooms into commitment and kids.
While some might dismiss this as Hollywood romanticism, it is actually a common experience. For the past five years, my colleagues at Match.com and I have conducted an annual national study called Singles in America, and in each year, a majority of survey respondents have reported having a one-night stand. And 27 percent of our 2014 respondents reported having had a one-night stand turn into a long-term, committed partnership.1
We humans are a romantic tribe. Over 54 percent of American singles (which make up over half of the adult population) believe in love at first sight; 56 percent believe laws should make it easier to wed; 89 percent believe you can stay married to the same person forever. And, remarkably, 33 percent of American singles believe it’s ok to leave a “satisfactory marriage” if you are no longer passionately in love. In America, as in much of the post-industrial world, romantic love is in full bloom.
Yet between 43 and 50 percent of American marriages will fail, and some 67 percent of American cohabiting couples report that they are terrified of the social, legal, emotional, and economic consequences of divorce.2 Divorce, men and women wanly joke, is in the drinking water.
Also in Sociology Let’s Play War By Jonathon Keats In the spring of 1964, as fighting escalated in Vietnam, several dozen Americans gathered to play a game. They were some of the most powerful men in Washington: the director of Central Intelligence, the Army chief of staff, the national...READ MORE
So I have come to believe that—motivated by romance and afraid of what sociologist Andrew Cherlin calls the marriage-go-round—today’s singles are ushering a long pre-commitment stage into the courtship process. Fast sex is part of the package. Couples want to get to know everything about a potential life partner before they tie the knot. Welcome to the age of slow love.
Hulton Archive / handout
Singles in America is not a poll of the Match.com population. Instead, it probes an annual representative sample of over 5,000 Americans, based on the U.S. census. To date we have queried over 25,000 men and women—to my knowledge, the largest national representative study of singles. And what we have found is an abundance of caution.
Take hooking-up—an uncommitted sexual encounter between two people who are not currently in a romantic relationship with one another. Hooking up appears reckless. Certainly those who engage in one-night stands are risking sexually transmitted infections, unwanted pregnancy, and emotional trauma. Nevertheless, in the 2014 Singles in America study, 66 percent of single men and 50 percent of single women reported that they had engaged in a one-night stand—and these numbers have varied little over the past five years. Why do we hop into the sack with someone we hardly know?
Perhaps because you learn a lot about a person between the sheets. You might even kick-start a real relationship: Any stimulation of the genitals promotes dopamine activity, which can potentially push you over the threshold into falling in love. At orgasm, oxytocin and vasopressin—neurochemicals linked with feelings of attachment—spike. With just one night of casual sex, risky as it is, you may win life’s greatest prize: a devoted mating partner.
Romantic love is like a sleeping cat; it can be awakened at any time. Feelings of deep attachment, however, take time.
Nevertheless, few race to the altar after a night in bed together. Instead, many take the next cautious step, a friends with benefits relationship—commitment-lite. In this sexual arrangement, a pair has coitus when convenient, but they don’t appear in public as a couple. In 2013, 58 percent of men and 50 percent of women in our Singles in America study reported that they’d had a friends with benefits relationship, including one in three people in their 70s. And 28 percent of our 2014 participants had had a friends with benefits relationship turn into a long-term partnership.
Next, many couples move in together—another cautious step toward permanent pairing, which first entered the public discourse with a famous 1966 article by anthropologist Margaret Mead. Mead suggested that a young couple with no immediate plans to reproduce should first make an “individual marriage,” a legal tie that excluded bearing children, did not imply a life-long commitment, and had no economic consequences should the couple part. A “parental marriage” could come later if they so decided.
“Living together,” a version of the first step of this two-step marriage, emerged in the 1970s; and today what had been scandalous has become routine. In 2012, 58 percent of those in our Singles in America study reported that they have lived with one to five partners outside of wedlock. And as the Pew Research Center notes, some 64 percent of Americans believe this living arrangement is a step toward wedding.3
But discretion still reigns after partners have agreed to marry. In 2014, 36 percent of singles in our Singles in America study said they wanted a pre-nuptial agreement.
Even marriage is becoming provisional. Civil partnerships in England, civil unions in the U.S., and de facto partnerships in Australia enable a couple to start and end a partnership relatively easily. France’s pacte civil de solidarité, or PACS, is particularly intriguing. Enacted in 1999 primarily to enable gays and lesbians to obtain a legal means of attachment without conventional matrimony, it immediately became popular among heterosexuals. All you do is go to a federal office with your partner and sign some papers to initiate a legal relationship. If you want to end it? Send in a form.
One-night stands; hooking-up; friends with benefits; living together; pre-nups; civil unions. These all spell caution. But they also spell logic—because our brain is soft-wired to attach slowly to a partner.
The basic circuits for romantic love lie in primitive regions of the brain, near those that orchestrate thirst and hunger. Romantic love is a drive—one of three basic brain systems that evolved to direct our fundamental human mating and breeding strategy. The sex drive predisposes you to seek a range of mating partners; romantic love enables you to focus your mating energy on a single individual at a time; and feelings of attachment incline you to form a pair-bond at least through the infancy of a single child. Feelings of romantic love and deep attachment to a partner emerge in a pattern highly compatible with the spirit of the times—that is, with slow love.
I say this because my colleagues Lucy Brown, Art Aron, Bianca Acevedo, and I have put new lovers into a brain scanner (using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or fMRI) to measure neural activity as these men and women gazed at a photo of their sweetheart. Those who had fallen madly in love within the past eight months showed activity in brain regions associated with energy, focus, motivation, craving, and intense romantic love. But those who had been passionately in love for eight to 17 months also showed activity in an additional brain region associated with feelings of attachment.4
Sexual liberalism has aligned our courtship tactics with our primordial brain circuits for slow love.
Romantic love is like a sleeping cat; it can be awakened at any time. Feelings of deep attachment, however, take time, and they can endure. In another of our studies, led by Acevedo, we put 17 men and women in their 50s and early 60s into the brain scanner. These participants had been married an average of 21 years, and all maintained that they were still madly in love with their spouse. Their brains showed that they were: They were deeply attached as well.
We have even begun to map some of the brain circuitry responsible for this marital happiness. In our study of long-term lovers, those who scored higher on a marital satisfaction questionnaire showed more activity in a brain region linked with empathy, a trait they had most likely retained from their initial passion.5 Moreover, when psychologist Mona Xu and her team used my original research design to collect similar brain data on 18 young men and women in China, she found that those who were in love long term showed activity in a brain region associated with the ability to suspend negative judgment and over-evaluate a partner,6 what psychologists call “positive illusions.”7 Much like men and women who have just fallen madly in love, these long-term partners still swept aside what they didn’t like about their mate and focused on what they adored.
Because feelings of attachment emerge with time, slow love is natural. In fact, rapidly committing to a new partner before the liquor of attachment has emerged may be more risky to long-term happiness than first getting to know a partner via casual sex, friends with benefits and living together. Sexual liberalism has aligned our courtship tactics with our primordial brain circuits for slow love.
I am optimistic about the emergence of slow love. During our long agrarian past, our forebears married to please God, the local community, and their extended family. Spouses were tied to the land and to one another. Where could you go with a ton of wheat? A host of associated beliefs about the sexes emerged, including strictly arranged marriages, virginity at marriage, till death do us part, and the credo that a woman’s place was in the home. Unchained from the constraints of farm living, today’s singles are turning inward, choosing partners for themselves—and taking time to wed. Where marriage was the beginning of a partnership in farming societies, today it is the finale.
Slow love appears to be working, too. In 2012, with Match.com, I surveyed 1,095 married Americans (not on their dating site, of course). Among our questions was: “Knowing what you now know about your spouse, would you marry the same person again?” Eighty-one percent said yes. Moreover, 76 percent of these men and 73 percent of these women said they were still “very much in love.” And a 2013 survey of more than 12,000 adults in 15 countries established that 78 percent of married men and women were also “happy.”8
The marriage revolution going on today may actually enable more happy partnerships. Slow love is, after all, in our DNA.
Dr. Helen Fisher is a Biological Anthropologist and Senior Research Fellow at The Kinsey Institute. She has written five internationally best selling books on love and personality and is currently Chief Scientific Advisor to Match.com.
References
1. All statistics from the Singles in America survey are unpublished, and provided courtesy of Helen Fisher.
2. Miller, A.M., Sassler, S. & Kusi-Appouh, D. The specter of divorce: Views from working- and middle-class cohabitors. Family Relations 60, 602-616 (2011).
3. Pew Research Center: Social and Demographic trends. The decline of Marriage and Rise of New Families. http://www.pewresearch.org/ (2010).
4. Aron, A., et al. Reward, motivation and emotion systems associated with early-stage intense romantic love. Journal of Neurophysiology 94, 327-337 (2005).
5. Acevedo, B., Aron, A., Fisher, H.E., & Brown, L.L. Neural correlates of marital satisfaction and well-being: Reward, empathy, and affect. Clinical Neuropsychiatry 9, 20-31 (2012).
6. Xu, X., et al. Reward and motivation systems: A brain mapping study of early-stage intense romantic love in Chinese participants. Human Brain Mapping 32, 249-257 (2011).
7. Zentner, M.R. Ideal mate personality concepts and compatibility in close relationships: A longitudinal analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 89, 242-256 (2005).
8. Ipsos. Valentine’s Day: Correlations Between Relationship Status and Happiness, Financial Situation. http://www.ipsos-na.com/ (2014).VANCOUVER -- Jordan Schroeder is back with the Vancouver Canucks and Roberto Luongo is back in goal as the Canucks try to take back the Northwest Division lead from the Minnesota Wild on Monday.
Luongo gets a fourth straight start for just the second time this season despite giving up nine goals in his last two, including three in the final period of a 5-2 loss to the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday.
Luongo has, however, only given up one goal in his last four starts against the Wild at Rogers Arena, and the Canucks are playing the first of back-to-back games, with Cory Schneider almost certain to start Tuesday against St. Louis.
"Like I have said before, I never try to figure it out," Luongo said of the rotation in goal. "This is obviously a huge game for us. We are aware of what the standings are and how tight it is, especially with the Wild battling for first place."
Schroeder will be part of it after weekend injuries prompted his recall from the Chicago Wolves of the American Hockey League on Monday.
Coach Alain Vigneault expected to have an update later in the day on forward David Booth, who left the rink on crutches with a walking boot on his left foot after getting hurt in the first period of the loss to Detroit on Saturday. They already were without forward Zack Kassian after his back acted up following practice Friday, and Selke Trophy-winning center Ryan Kesler, who only played seven games before fracturing his foot blocking a shot.
Schroeder, a Minnesota native picked in the first round of the 2009 NHL Draft, had two goals and five points in 22 games with the Canucks before being sent back to the AHL on March 11. The speedy 5-foot-9 center had a goal and three assists in three games back with the Wolves.
Here are the rest of the expected lineups for the game Monday between the Canucks and the Wild at Rogers Arena:
WILD
Zach Parise - Mikko Koivu - Charlie Coyle
Pierre-Marc Bouchard - Matt Cullen - Devin Setoguchi
Dany Heatley - Kyle Brodziak - Cal Clutterbuck
Jason Zucker - Zenon Konopka - Torrey Mitchell
Ryan Suter - Jonas Brodin
Clayton Stoner - Tom Gilbert
Justin Falk - Jared Spurgeon
Niklas Backstrom
Matt Hackett
Scratched: Nate Prosser, Brett Clark
Injured: Mike Rupp (lower body)
Notes: Rupp was injured during a win Saturday at the Colorado Avalanche and will be replaced on the fourth line by Jason Zucker, who returns for the first time since being knocked out of a March 12 game against Anaheim by a late hit by Corey Perry that resulted in a four-game suspension for Perry. Zucker was cleared to return Saturday but was a healthy scratch, and said he won't be thinking about the hit that left him lying on the ice for almost five minutes before being helped off by medical staff. "That's the worst thing you could do is get scared by it," Zucker told NHL.com. "If you are worried about getting hit the whole time, you are not playing your game, so as far as the game goes [Monday], that hit never happened."
CANUCKS
Daniel Sedin - Henrik Sedin - Alexandre Burrows
Mason Raymond - Andrew Ebbett - Jannik Hansen
Chris Higgins - Jordan Schroeder - Dale Weise
Tom Sestito - Maxim Lapierre - Steven Pinizzotto
Dan Hamhuis -?????????Jason Garrison
Alexander Edler - Kevin Bieksa
Keith Ballard - Christopher Tanev
Roberto Luongo
Cory Schneider
Scratched: Andrew Alberts, Cam Barker
Injured: David Booth (left foot/ankle), Zack Kassian (back), Ryan Kesler (fractured foot) Manny Malhotra (eye)
Notes: Ballard gets back into the lineup in place of Alberts after being a healthy scratch for three straight games. … The Canucks announced the signing of Swedish forward Ludwig Blomstrand to a three-year entry-level contract Monday. Chosen in the fourth round of the 2011 NHL Draft, Blomstrand had 13 goals in 44 games with Djurgarden and Almtuna in the Swedish second division.In the heart of Houston's most elite neighborhoods, burglars targeted a high-end luxury apartment complex on Monday. Houston police told ABC13 the break-ins happened around noon in the 2300 block of Mid Lane.Two men remain on the run after evading police officers.Security footage from inside one of the units show two men using a crowbar to break-into the apartment. The camera captured them sneaking inside a couple's home before trying to disable the surveillance system. The man who lives there talked to Eyewitness News, hoping someone can recognize the criminals.He asked we call him Chad and not show his face out of safety concerns. Chad said he is asking for help because the crooks stole precious family heirlooms including a ring belonging to his wife's late grandfather."Whenever she got here and realized that it was gone, she just kind of broke down in my arms," said Chad. "I was speechless. I wanted to tell her everything was going to be all right. I wasn't sure."Chad told ABC13's Steve Campion his Nest app first alerted him to intruders. Chad was at lunch with co-workers when he received a notification. He opened the live stream to his apartment camera and realized something was wrong. He immediately called 911. When police arrived, they said they found 2 black men running in the hallway. The men raced to the parking garage and fled in a silver Chevrolet Cruze."My heart just dropped. I feared the worst. I wasn't sure if my wife was working from home that day. Thankfully, she wasn't." said Chad. "If you see the ring. If you know these guys just let us know. My wife is heartbroken. I just want to do what I can to make her smile again."Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers of Houston at 713-222-8477 or HPD's Burglary and Theft Division at 713-308-0900.It is an amazing thing how some people perform at their best, only under pressure. They usually do quite well in “competitive environments”, and where there’s no pressure, well, they suck, simply out of their natural element ;-).
Now, if you’re one of those individuals, also as an Ubuntu user, looking for a way to improve your typing speeds and searching for a tool that challenges you a bit, then you might wanna try “Typespeed”. It’s a console based simple game where words “fly” around from your left side to the right, and before they reach the right-edge (where they get deleted), you must finish typing them!.
Although at first it’s fairly easy as the speeds aren’t that hard to handle. But the more you type, more words you get and the faster they come (starting with single words then it kinda starts to fill up your terminal window! :D).
It’s actually a bit hard (at least for me), but really fun too (sometimes ;-)).
But remember, this is not a typing tutor.
Few main features …
*. It has few built in typing modes such as language based words (English, German, Italian, Finnish, Thai etc), C# programming language based ones, Dos commands and Unix/GNU-Linux commands.
*. When the words get closer to the right edge, they change their colors from Green to light Orange, and then turn to Red when they’re about to be deleted.
*. Has a bottom status bar that shows you your current speed (WPM), word count, ranking, mistypes etc.
*. If you find the default speeds are too aggressive, then you can change that by entering “Game Rules” option.
*. Has three built in training modes (default, classic and training). If you want the words to come at a constant speed, then you can choose the “training” under the “Game Rules” (from its main menu, type “6” and press Enter).
*. Also has a dedicated log, that shows you your previous ratings, speeds and few other details.
If interested, you can install “Typespeed” in Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin, 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by typing the below command in your Terminal window.
sudo apt-get install typespeed
To load the game, put the below command in your Terminal window.
typespeed
To start it, your Terminal has to has a certain size (80 x 24). The simple solution is to maximize it or, just try resizing (make it bigger) it a bit. Whenever you want to end typing, simply type the “Esc” key and it’ll take you to its main window.
You can navigate the menu using the number assigned before each name (“1” for starting the game, “7” for quitting etc). That’s it, enjoy!.
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“I will dance with anybody. I’ve chased men and women. I like men and women both.” –Boxer Emile Griffith, quoted in Illustrated, 2005.
I’m not usually one to linger on obituaries, but this one held my all the way to the end: The New York Times’ July 24, 2013 obituary of the 1960’s prizefighter Emile Griffith, during whose distinguished boxing rumors apparently circulated that he was gay.
Now at the time of his death a half century later, he is most remembered for having killed one of his opponents in the ring — a fellow boxer who had teased him about his.
At the weigh-in before their 1962 match, his opponent Bennie “Kid” Paret had used a derogatory Spanish term to accuse Griffith of being homosexual. In the 12th round, Griffith got even. With his right fist pounding Paret’s head “like a baseball bat demolishing a pumpkin” according to ringside witness Norman Mailer, Griffith knocked his accuser. Paret died 10 days later in the hospital from intracranial bleeding.
Griffith maintained that he was bisexual — equally attracted to both men and women. But male bisexuality is a difficult label to make stick. Even now when it’s reasonably safe in at least some parts of the developed world to be openly gay, and when female bisexuality is well recognized, there remains a great deal of skepticism about whether male bisexuality exists.
Many writers on the subject have wondered whether most self-identified male bisexuals are simply homosexual men trying to “have it both ways” — having sex with men while holding on to heterosexual privilege. Heterosexual women intuitively worry that bisexuality in a male partner might be like cancer — likely to spread and eventually kill the relationship. Or as the saying goes, “bi now, gay later.”
According to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, not many bisexual men ever admit the fact to their female lovers. Most regard it as a conversational “third rail” — touch it and you die.
But if male bisexuality is kept secret, then there's no way to dispel myths about it. Such as that it doesn't exist. Or that if it does exist, it's just a gateway to. As I found myself explaining to writer and editor Holly Millea in the July 2013 edition of Elle Magazine (p. 110 — “Mired in Desire”), there’s a whole assortment of bisexualities in both men and women. One can’t really generalize. The universe of bisexual people is far broader than I originally thought when I first set out as a sex therapist 25 years ago.
True, some bisexual men who date women are largely gay and just haven’t accepted the fact yet. But some — many — are largely straight, with just a touch of gay thrown in. Some seem to be hypersexual — what might have called “polymorphous” — able to be turned on by just about anything that moves. Some are so nearly asexual that the of their lovers doesn’t seem to matter either way. Some have been so damaged by early emotional or sexual that it’s difficult to tell.
And some — but not many — seem to be truly right down the middle. Perfectly normal men from loving homes, who just happen to be turned on equally by men or women.
One would think that such individuals — able to run Mac or PC equally well — would be the happiest of men. But the reality is otherwise. As I explained to Holly Millea in Elle, “They tend to have ongoing crises. Gender-object is so fundamental in our current world and is such a big pillar of identity, and these guys don’t know who they are.”
The prizefighter Emile Griffith may have been such a man. In an interview in Sports Illustrated in 2005, he struggled to categorize himself — “I don’t know what I am. I men and women the same.” That same year, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert recalled speaking with the former prizefighter about his sexuality — “I asked Mr Griffith if he was gay, and he told me no. But he looked as if he wanted to say more. He told me he had struggled his entire life with his sexuality, and agonized over what he could say about it.”
The world has changed in many ways since 1962 when Benny Paret called Griffith a maricon and paid for it with his life. But male bisexuality is still a difficult and confusing subject for most people. Often most of all for the bisexual man himself.
If Griffith had come of age today, perhaps he’d have sought counseling at my colleague Dr Margaret Nichols’ Institute for Personal Growth where he’d have been told the reality — that he was perfectly OK, just a bit unusual. Mother Nature specializes in the unusual. It's just taking the rest of us a while to accept that fact.
But what about a bisexual man’s female partner — who worries she’ll be abandoned later, if he decides he’s more attracted to men? Here, it’s important for a man to know himself well, and to be honest with himself and his partner about who he is.
Though that’s gotten a bit easier in recent decades, it’s still a difficult conversation to have with oneself. Or with a partner.
But if the alternative is to keep such an intimate thing a secret, then it’s often worth the risk.
Copyright © Stephen Snyder, MD 2013
www.sexualityresource.com New York City
Follow Dr Snyder on Google+ and TwitterIt’s no joke.
Saudi Arabia has been elected to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
Again, this is not a joke.
Agencies around the world are criticizing the UN’s decision, for obvious reasons. Saudi Arabia, a country where women are subjects of male family members; where women must adhere to strict dress codes and are prohibited from driving; where women cannot interact with men they are not related to for fear of being beaten, imprisoned in their own home, and sometimes even killed, is now |
21 jurisdictions and connecting people all over the world. “With that amount of information, it is easy to miss things, to miss key stories,” says Díaz-Struck. “It is easy to get lost among millions of documents if you don’t have a way to approach them.”
ICIJ extracted data from the leaked files to create a database of company and shareholder names and addresses, registry jurisdictions, and so on. Linkurious offered “a very good starting point to make sense of connections and find politicians and people of public interest” and trace their alliances and offshore business dealings, Díaz-Struck says.
ICIJ has shared the data with many news outlets, which has put a number of politicians in an uncomfortable spot. In April, for instance, the British newspaper the Guardianfollowed up reporting by Reykjavik Media and Sweden’s SVT television network, and ran a story revealing that Iceland’s prime minister and his wife owned an offshore holding company, Wintris Inc., based in the British Virgin Islands. Wintris’s holdings included debts from several Icelandic banks that had failed. Gunnlaugsson’s failure to disclose the investment to Iceland’s Parliament and voters led to calls for a snap election. The prime minister eventually stepped aside.
As with Mapping the Republic of Letters, the Panama Papers work relies on human interpretation to make the most of what the visualization software can do. “You still need the journalistic skills to make sense of the data and then report the story,” Díaz-Struck says. Combine that with the right tools and “then you will have a powerful investigation.”
The tool-building begun by the Mapping the Republic of Letters team hasn’t stopped yet. Edelstein, Coleman, and their colleagues are at work on the next generation of visualization tools. Palladio, another NEH-supported tool, combines nodes of connections with map views. Fibra, in development with a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies, will draw on linked data to create a flexible tool that Coleman hopes will be like sketching a network as you read through texts, turning “cold” connections into “hot” ones by linking them to existing information held in far-flung libraries and collections.
Who knows what future investigations these tools will make possible? The Panama Papers journalists used Linkurious “because it was the only thing available to do this work,” Coleman says. “That’s a huge win.”It’s been more than a month since some 850 political detainees in Hama’s Central Prison revolted, taking guards hostage and overrunning part of the facility. Negotiations are aiming at highlighting judicial malpractice and the release of about half of the prisoners.
Some 850 political prisoners in a prison in Hama, west-central Syria, have been in open revolt for over a month now, protesting against the prison management and calling on the Syrian government to put an end to show trials of political detainees, arbitrary detentions and the use of torture.
Hama Central Prison is a civilian detention center in which prisoners are allowed family visits, contact with the outside world and access to legal assistance. The facility’s political prisoners, which make up nearly half of the prison body, have all been detained for political dissidence since the uprising against Bashar al-Assad’s government began in early 2011. They have all been charged with terrorism.
Syrian journalist Shiyar Khalil, a former detainee, has functioned as the prisoners’ intermediary since the protests began, speaking to them via Skype and WhatsApp and relaying their messages to the outside world from his home in France.
“When they first told me about their plans, I told them they were insane and that the regime will kill them all without a blink of an eye, but they told me they have already made up their minds,” Khalil told Syria Deeply. “After realizing they were determined to revolt, I asked them how I could help. They told me they needed media coverage; they needed the eyes of the international media and rights groups to be on the prison, so that the regime wouldn’t commit a massacre.”
On May 2, following the announcement of a decision to relocate five of the facility’s prisoners to the notorious Sednaya prison outside of Damascus, known for torture and politically motivated executions. The five had been detained while participating in demonstrations in Hama in 2011, charged with participation in “terrorist activities” and sentenced to death.
To protest against the transfers, the inmates rioted, taking seven guards hostage in the process. “They closed the doors and blocked all entrances with metal beds and took seven prison guards,” said Khalil, who was speaking on Skype with several of the prisoners when the riot began.
The prisoners dismissed initial attempts by the head of the prison and security officers to negotiate with them.
All of the facility’s political prisoners had been charged by the Damascus “Counter-Terrorism Court,” which tries dissidents as terrorists and hands out arbitrary sentences, according to the Violations and Documentations Center in Syria.
“The prisoners, who have been through the Counter-Terrorism Court in Damascus, told the prison management that the sentences they were handed were unfair,” said Khalil. “Those 850 prisoners have been detained by the government since the beginning of the uprising, and therefore, were all tried as terrorists.”
When the riot first broke out, Khalil spoke to fellow Syrian activists and journalists, including former detainee Mazen Darwish, a well-known free speech advocate and president of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression. They agreed to organize a media campaign to shed light on the developments in the prison.
Knowing that without the involvement of a powerful third party, they risked a potentially brutal government crackdown to suppress the riot, the prisoners first demand was that the International Committee of the Red Cross be involved in any negotiations between them and the regime. “Involvement of the ICRC was our [the prisoners’] assurance that the regime would not commit an atrocity in the prison,” said Khalil.
The ICRC sent memorandums to the Syrian government informing it of their request to enter the prison. While the government tolerated the ICRC’s involvement at first, it quickly dismissed the group as a “foreign body meddling with internal affairs,” according sources inside the prison, as reported by Al Jazeera.
The prisoners demanded the implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution No. 2254 of 2015, which calls for the release of any arbitrarily detained person in Syria. They also demanded an end to military field courts, the Counter-Terrorism Court and the use of torture to extract confessions.
Military field courts are a common procedure employed by Syria’s security apparatus. Judges visit detention centers and hand out sentences to a number of detainees, spending as little as five minutes on each case. The detainee is tried without any legal representation, has no right to speak during the trial and the sentence is not subject to appeal. Death sentences are commonplace.
The prisoners also demanded the cancellation of all death sentences of political detainees whose confessions were extracted under torture or were sentenced by one of the pop-up military field courts. Evidence for the death sentences is often based on confessions extracted under torture. During interrogations, inmates have repeatedly reported being handed pre-written confessions to sign, which they often do to put an end to the abuse. They also demanded improvements in the living conditions in the prison, and increased access to basic needs like medicine, food and family visits.
Negotiations and Prisoner Releases
So far, negotiations under the auspices of the ICRC have led to the release of nearly 180 political prisoners from the Hama prison. Talks between the prisoners and prison management, which began just one day after the riot started, led to the release of 32 detainees, including the five who were due to be transferred to the facility in Sednaya.
“Eight of the prisoners were moved to rebel-held areas in the north under the ICRC’s supervision, while the rest went back to their homes in Hama,” said Khalil.
Although they had successfully prevented the transfer, the prisoners pressed on with their protest as government troops encircled the prison, firing tear gas in through the windows before cutting the facility’s water and electricity.
Negotiations between the prisoners and government officials that began on May 5 led to a new agreement: 400 detainees would be released within a month, including 50 prisoners on the first day, 60 on the second day, in addition to the immediate admittance of much-needed food and medicine into the facility.
The agreement brought about a partial truce, as groups of prisoners were slowly released over the following days, although the numbers were much lower than the agreed-upon figures. Hundreds of heavily armed government troops remained outside the prison’s walls.
The number of prisoners released each day steadily decreased until May 23, when the government freed only seven prisoners, pushing the prisoners to riot once again.
On May 25, inmates took the prison warden, a police officer and nine prison guards captive, after Judge Rida Musa sentenced another 11 inmates to death and made arrangements for their transfer to the facility in Sednaya.
“After realizing that the regime could not be trusted to keep its promises, and after it continued to block the entry of food and medicine into the prison, the prisoners changed their rhetoric. It was either death or freedom,” said Khalil. “They demanded the immediate release of all political detainees in the Hama prison in one day.”
The prisoners released the police officer on May 31 in exchange for a return of water and electricity services to the prison. The government released another 15 prisoners on June 1, but since then, no other detainees have been discharged.
A collection of 55 organizations and 107 prominent individuals – including lawyers, judges, journalists and activists – released a signed statement on June 2 condemning the government for its failure to comply with the May 5 agreement. According to anonymous sources at the Damascus-based terrorism court, Judge Musa has refused to sign further release papers.
The 850 political detainees in Hama Central Prison are a small portion of the nearly 200,000 political prisoners in detention facilities across Syria.Reforming our outdated, complex, and overly burdensome tax code and cutting taxes for hardworking families has the critical support of State and local officials across the country. As Congress works to have a bill on President Donald J. Trump’s desk before the end of the year, a majority of governors have indicated their support for tax reform and 21 governors recently signed a letter to congressional leadership supporting the effort. The governors urge the two chambers to swiftly pass meaningful tax reform legislation, writing, “We’ve proven in our states that you can cut taxes, create jobs, and generate budget surpluses all at the same time. If it can work in our states, it can work for America.”
GOVERNORS
Governor Doug Ducey (R, AZ): “Make no mistake, special interests will fight like crazy to keep their loopholes and special treatment. But government shouldn’t be in the business of picking winners and losers. We need to set a rate for businesses that’s fair, close the loopholes and make our tax code simpler and more equitable for everyone.”
Governor Paul LePage (R, ME): “From his long and successful career in business, President Trump knows firsthand that a burdensome tax code doesn’t create jobs, it kills them. When he outlined his vision for tax reform last week, I was pleased to see it will help Maine families keep more of their hard-earned paychecks.”
Governor Chris Sununu (R, NH): “America’s business tax rates are probably the most self-destructive feature of the current system. By reducing the highest business tax rate in the developed world, something that we have shown, right here in New Hampshire, is a huge boost to competitiveness that creates new jobs and higher wages. And finally repealing the death tax is long overdue.”
Governor Kim Reynolds (R, IA): “Iowa families are burdened with high income taxes that lower their take-home pay and business tax rates that limit economic opportunities and wage increases. Because up to 75 percent of the burden of business tax rates falls on workers, paychecks are smaller and raises are all too rare. When working families should be dedicating money to savings, college and retirement accounts, they’re sending too much out of their hard-earned paychecks to Washington, D.C., instead.”
Governor Rick Snyder (R, MI): “It has been more than 30 years since Washington, D.C. passed major tax reform. Since then, the tax code has become a 74,000-page Goliath puzzling American families and businesses. We need reform now to ensure Americans receive much-needed tax relief, provide a boost to our nation’s economic growth and allow millions of workers to keep more of their hard-earned money.”
Governor Phil Bryant (R, MS): “With a level playing field, American businesses and workers will once again dominate a global economy. I am grateful the president and the Republican congressional leadership are committed to making that happen. The framework deserves to become legislation and should pass Congress. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that we cannot afford to miss.”
Governor Henry McMaster (R, SC): “For too long, our tax code has been overcomplicated and uncompetitive, placing an outsized burden on business while perplexing the average American. This is a rare opportunity to fix a broken system, putting money back in taxpayers’ pockets and encouraging more companies to invest, expand, hire and profit. It’s a win for South Carolina.”
Governor Jim Justice (R, WV): “President Trump is continuing to keep his promise to Americans to help grow our country by providing our average families with significant tax relief.”
Governor Matt Bevin (R, KY): “Recently, our national economy has been rebounding following a long period of tepid recovery. That makes this the perfect time to tackle federal tax reform and I applaud President Trump for his leadership on this issue.”
Governor Asa Hutchinson (R, AR): “Washington’s system of taxation takes too much money, is too complicated and hampers economic growth. The result is a system that places too heavy a burden on our businesses and citizens. It places our country at a disadvantage in an increasingly competitive and mobile world.”
Governor Eric Greitens (R, MO): “For too long, our tax system has been complex, corrupt, and high. We need a system that is simple, fair, and low. In Missouri, we’re trying to do our part at the state level—but the biggest changes that small business owners need begin at the federal level. The President understands this. We were pleased that he chose Springfield, Missouri, to announce his effort on tax reform. And we were glad to host him in St. Charles, Missouri, on Wednesday, where he again sent a message to Congress to get tax reform legislation done and delivered.”
Governor Gary Herbert (R, UT): “If we want businesses to come to the United States and stay, we have to create the right conditions. I commend Congressional leaders for their efforts to lower the U.S. corporate tax rate and move to a system that will encourage companies to bring their profits to the United States and invest in the American economy. Our corporate rate—highest in the industrialized world—and our treatment of overseas earnings are glaring exceptions to an otherwise business friendly environment. Lower taxes and a simpler tax code means faster economic growth, more jobs, and higher wages. There are still important differences to be ironed out, but it’s refreshing to see Washington tackling something difficult but necessary. Let’s hope it’s the beginning of a new trend.”
Governor Matthew Mead (R, WY): “Eliminating onerous restrictions and regulations would allow businesses to afford to pay employees higher wages and reinvest in their own growth.”
Governor Mary Fallin (R, OK): “Our nation’s tax code, on the other hand, is outdated and in desperate need of reform. Due to incomprehensible regulations and untold pages of forms and instructions, nearly 90% of taxpayers need external help to simply pay their taxes.”
Governor Susana Martinez (R, NM): “New Mexicans deserve a tax system that puts their household budget ahead of more government bureaucracy. Real tax reform on the federal and state levels is long overdue and it is now time we put our communities and businesses first.”
Governor Greg Abbott (R, TX): “Listen, the fact of the matter is that it has been far too long since we’ve had tax reform in the United States of America. This is a meaningful step toward the kind of tax reform that the United States needs. I think it is important especially at the corporate level so that internationally we will be more competitive. … We will be advancing the United States of America economically if this tax plan passes and so I hope it does.”
Governor Rick Scott (R, FL): “My budget cuts $180 million in taxes to build on our success of cutting taxes 75 times saving Floridians more than $7.5 billion. DC needs to follow our lead and get tax reform done now.”
Governor Pete Ricketts (R, NE): “I applaud the President and congressional leadership for making tax reform a top priority this year.... Providing relief will put more money back into the pockets of hardworking families and unleash economic growth in communities across our nation.”
Governor Bill Walker (I, AK): The House and Senate conference committee on tax legislation has a singular opportunity to open one of the most prospective onshore areas in the world to safe oil and gas exploration and development – limited to 1/750th of the Coastal Plain or 1002 Area, which itself is just eight percent of ANWR – right here in the United States, on the North Slope of Alaska. It is critical that Congress act and get this legislation over the finish line to put the national resources of the Coastal Plain to use for the good of the country. Alaska’s economy needs this boost, and our nation needs a strong Alaska.
Governor Doug Burgum (R, ND): “North Dakota leaders have worked hard over the past 25 years to reduce individual and corporate income tax rates, pass sensible regulations and foster a business-friendly environment that stimulates investment and job creation, and we appreciate President Trump recognizing those continuing efforts.... We share the president’s goals for tax reform: simplify the tax code, lower rates to ease the burden on middle-class families and set corporate tax rates at levels that allow U.S. businesses to better compete in the global economy, bringing back jobs and wealth from overseas. And we urge Congress to work with the administration to achieve meaningful tax reform that encourages economic growth and saves taxpayers time and money.”
Governor Dennis Daugaard (R, SD): “I thank @SenJohnThune, @SenatorRounds and @RepKristiNoem for their support of tax reform. They understand that responsible reform can jumpstart our economy.”
Governor Scott Walker (R, WI): “Our nation’s tax code, on the other hand, is outdated and in desperate need of reform. Due to the incomprehensible regulations and untold pages of forms and instructions, nearly 90 percent of taxpayers need external help to simply comply with paying their taxes. Across the country, this time and energy spent adds up to some 6 billion hours and $15-16 billion in tax compliance costs, according to the Internal Revenue Service and the National Federation of Independent Business.”
Governor Kay Ivey (R, AL): “President Trump is proposing the largest tax cut for American families and businesses in decades.... The current tax structure is oppressive to families and businesses alike, and it simply sets us up for failure in today’s global economy. We’ve proven in Alabama, with the lowest unemployment rate in history, lower taxes and less government regulation produces jobs – it’s time Washington joins us in our efforts.”
Governor Eric Holcomb (R, IN): “We must simplify, close loopholes, institute fairness and lower overall rates—especially for small business.”
Governor Brian Sandoval (R, NV): “Reforming the nation’s tax code is an incredibly complex task that is long overdue. I applaud the President for making this a priority in this Congress, and I appreciate Congress’ attention as they reform our tax code with a focus on fairness, competitiveness and economic growth. I continue to appreciate the leadership of Senator Heller and our entire Congressional delegation; their willingness to work with the state will help ensure the final legislative product will be one that will help Nevada grow, put more Nevadans to work, and allow Nevadans to keep more of their hard-earned money.”
LT. GOVERNORS
Lt. Governor Casey Cagle (R, GA): “To reach our nation’s potential we need a tax system that empowers entrepreneurs and businesses to invest in our workforce. Our leaders have an opportunity to set us on a path of economic growth, job creation, and prosperity to enable more of our families to climb up the economic ladder. I applaud the leadership of President Trump and our state’s congressional delegation for their support of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, delivering hardworking Georgians the tax relief they deserve. Americans have waited 31 years for meaningful tax reform, and the stakes have never been greater.”
Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch (R, WI): “I am grateful that President Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan are finally tackling reform of our broken federal tax code. They’re working right now on an ambitious plan to make the federal tax code simpler, flatter and fairer.”
Lt. Governor Mary Taylor (R, OH): “The President is proposing the biggest tax cut to small and midsize businesses in 80 years, and as we have seen in Ohio, this will jumpstart the nation’s economy. The Council of Economic Advisors has estimated that the average American household income could increase between $4,000 and $9,000 a year in wages and salary alone from this proposal.”
Lt. Governor Brian Calley (R, MI): “The reform plan President Trump unveiled last month will be a game changer for all Americans. We know its principles are sound because of our experience here in Michigan. A simple, fair and efficient tax code will go a long way for everyone.”
Lt. Governor Mike Foley (R, NE): “President Trump is following through on his commitment to help grow America’s middle class with federal tax reform.”
Lt. Governor Mike Parson (R, MO): “The President of the United States is offering a tax plan that would greatly benefit Missouri families.... The President’s plan would reduce taxes and allow families to keep more of their hard-earned money. It would also allow the next generation of Missouri workers to invest in themselves, afford a quality education, and get a good job here in our state.”
Lt. Governor Tim Griffin (R, AR): “Individuals and families know how to spend the fruits of their labor and provide for their families better than bureaucrats a thousand miles away. Tax reform will allow Arkansans to save for the future, pay off credit-card debt, or simply make ends meet.”
STATEWIDE OFFICALS
Bill Schuette, Attorney General (R, MI): “The last president to reform America’s tax code was Ronald Reagan. During his time in office, America added 15.9 million jobs, an increase in the nation’s workforce of more than 17 percent. Now more than ever, our economy needs a booster shot. President Trump’s tax reform is just what the doctor ordered to simplify the code, create more jobs and spur greater growth in our economy.”
Josh Hawley, Attorney General (R, MO): “President Trump has a bold plan to change course and give working Missourians a chance to move ahead. His plan honors real work and prioritizes the taxpayers instead of the tax takers.”
John McMillan, State Agricultural Commissioner (R, AL): “Farmers in Alabama and across the nation face natural disasters, significant price fluctuations in the market, increased regulations and many other challenges. Without comprehensive tax reform, the American farmer may eventually be taxed out of business or at least taxed where he or she can no longer pass the farm on to the next generation. The elimination of the estate tax is just one of the revisions in the Tax Reform plan that provide farmers hope.”
Jeff Witte, State Agricultural Director (NM): “The farm and ranch property often has to be split and sold to satisfy estate taxes upon the death of a family member. This predicament leads to the next generation having to take family assets to satisfy the tax in order to preserve the enterprise as a whole, leaving these individuals in a position in which they cannot succeed financially, eventually losing the family business.”
Mike Strain, State Agricultural Commissioner (R, LA): “A lowering and restricting of tax rates will put more money in the pockets of our citizens and will ultimately allow farmers and other business owners to have more money to invest and help grow the economy. Lower tax rates for consumers will also increase their purchasing power for better nutrition for all American families.”
Dave Yost, State Auditor (R, OH): “Tax reform would be good for the economy, and it will be good for Ohio families. The President’s plan will double the standard deduction so that more income is taxed at zero percent. It will increase and expand the Child Tax Credit to help more middle-class families and — finally! — eliminate the marriage penalty.”
Ron Knecht, Controller (R, NV): “The special interests that benefit from exemptions, deductions and credits available only to some parties are few in number, but each member of the group has a large stake in keeping these provisions.”
John Dougall, State Auditor (R, UT): “As the Republican Congress and President Trump take up the daunting issue of tax reform, we encourage our federal colleagues to follow Utah’s lead and create a system that is simple, equitable, and stable for American taxpayers.”
Walker Stapleton, State Treasurer (R, CO): “I applaud and support the efforts of federal lawmakers and President Trump to simplify our nation’s tax code and jump-start our economy. As Treasurer, I know Colorado families and small businesses will benefit from a tax plan that is simpler and our economy will thrive with a lower corporate rate. It will bring jobs and investment back to America and make us more competitive in a global economy.... This is a once in a generation opportunity to fundamentally change the structure of our complicated and burdensome tax code. I support the efforts of Congress and the President to get it done.”
SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE
House Speaker Mike Turzai (R, PA): “It’s the number one policy initiative... and nothing will help families and employees and jobs more.”
House Speaker Richard Corcoran (R, FL): “Nationally, it’s clear that we need broad tax reform, and I’ll gladly support any effort to simplify the tax code and cut rates. Luckily for the nation, the conservative spirit that drove Florida’s success is alive and well in the tax framework that Trump laid out.”
House Speaker Brian Bosma (R, IN): “With one of the top business climates in the nation, Indiana’s economic environment stands in stark contrast to the dysfunction of federal tax policy and job-killing regulations.”
House Speaker Tim Moore (R, NC): “Tax relief is about protecting hard-earned paychecks and empowering all families in the workforce to succeed together in the entrepreneurial spirit of the United States. It’s about helping everyday people provide themselves a higher quality of life and build opportunities without an excessive burden on their bottom line. Again, for Congress and President Trump to realize the full potential of the American economy, North Carolina is the bellwether state when it comes to tax reform.”
House Speaker Tim Armstead (R, WV): “President Trump’s plan would provide significant tax relief to the backbone of West Virginia’s economy – our small businesses. Perhaps no segment of West Virginia’s economy has had to weather the economic storm more than our small and family-owned businesses. The President recognizes the challenges our small businesses must meet and has proposed to cap the maximum tax rate these businesses must pay. This step will provide a much-needed boost to these struggling small businesses who mean so much to our neighborhoods across West Virginia.”Man drowns at Casuarina Sands on Christmas Day
Updated
Police are urging Canberrans to be vigilant around waterways after a man drowned on Christmas Day at a popular swimming hole in the territory.
As the temperature climbed to 30 degrees yesterday, many ACT families celebrated by cooling off at Casuarina Sands to the west of Canberra.
However, tragedy struck in the afternoon when a 27-year-old man was pulled unresponsive from the popular swimming spot on the Murrumbidgee River.
Police and paramedics were called to the river bank, but nothing could be done to save the man.
Police said they believed his death was not suspicious and will investigate the circumstances surrounding the drowning.
The death comes as another 27-year-old man drowned on Christmas Day at a busy beach south of Sydney.
ACT Policing have urged Canberrans to take care in waterways over the summer period.
A report will be prepared for the coroner.
Topics: death, community-and-society, disasters-and-accidents, canberra-2600, act
First postedNow, it was Irving’s turn to be surprised. After seventeen years abroad, helping to manage a family import business, working as a diplomat, and honing his literary career, Irving had returned to his hometown.
But the New York of 1832 was not the same as the New York he’d left in 1815. Out near the edge of the city—or the place where he once marked the city’s end—buildings now stood instead of woodland. In other ways large and small, Irving’s old haunts had evolved. “I passed through places that ought to be familiar to me, but all were changed,” he later recalled. “Huge edifices and lofty piles had sprung up in the place of lowly tenements; the old landmarks of the city were gone; the very streets were altered.”
What had not changed, as Irving quickly discovered, was New York’s affection for one of its famous native sons.
When Irving’s return ship, the Havre, stalled outside New York Harbor, unable to complete its passage because of a steady headwind, a local newspaper dispatched a schooner to collect Irving and bring him ashore—a clever way to get the scoop on Irving’s arrival back in the States. Invitations quickly poured in for public dinners in Irving’s honor. He had left as a famous writer in 1815, and his celebrity mushroomed during his years away. He’d kept up his literary career during his days abroad, creating a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic with the publication of The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.
The Sketch-Book contained not only “Rip Van Winkle,” but “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Irving’s iconic tale of an ungainly schoolteacher who might— or might not—be the victim of a supernatural presence in the woods.
Both “Rip” and “Sleepy Hollow” drew on Hudson Valley settings, affirming Irving’s connection with New York City and the wider region of New York State. But The Sketch-Book also contained many other pieces inspired by Irving’s time in England, prompting some critics to conclude that Irving had turned his back on America to become an Old World scribe.
The criticism stung. Irving feared that questions about his national loyalties were widespread, and he wondered how he’d be received in New York after being gone nearly two decades. He needn’t have worried. The New-York Mirror, expressing what seemed to be the consensus view around Manhattan, hailed Irving’s arrival as “almost like the coming to life of some of those departed poets and authors whose works enrich our libraries, and whose names are cherished as something sacred and apart from those of the living.”
“It was fitting that he had been brought ashore by a newsboat,” writes Irving biographer Brian Jay Jones, “for Washington Irving was all that New York could talk about.”
Despite the big thumbs-up from so many of his fellow countrymen, Irving decided that his next book should embrace a distinctly American theme. Within weeks of landing back in New York, he found his subject. The author had cleverly gotten himself invited on a small government expedition to the Western frontier. He’d take notes along the way and publish a travelog of his experiences.
Few people seemed a more unlikely candidate for a cowboy outing than Washington Irving. He was forty-nine, had a complicated health history, and was the ultimate city slicker, a sophisticate who had passed much of his adulthood in the great capitals of commerce and culture—New York, London, Paris, Madrid, Dresden. Earlier in 1832, in an adventure typical of Irving’s lifestyle, he had visited England’s Newstead Abbey, sleeping in the bed where the late poet Byron had once slumbered and dining with the Duke of Sussex, brother to the king.
How would such a man fare out on the prairie, among wolves and warring tribes? Imagine Calvin Trillin saddling up for a rodeo, and you’ll get some idea of how silly all of this seemed. By any practical measure, Irving’s Western road trip made little sense, but he had an insatiable wanderlust and a flair for improvisation. He’d cooked up his scheme for a frontier odyssey in a matter of days, with some equally dubious prospects for a Wild West excursion along for the ride.
While aboard the Havre on his voyage from France to New York, Irving had met and quickly befriended two fellow passengers—the young Swiss count Albert-Alexandre de Pourtalès, and Charles Joseph Latrobe, an Englishman who had been hired as Pourtalès’s tutor and guardian. The nineteen-year-old Pourtalès was something of a rogue, and his parents were sending him overseas so that he could indulge his wild side, presumably out of view of polite society. The three men agreed to do some traveling together once they landed in the States, though nothing nearly as ambitious as the journey that soon developed. While on board a steamboat heading from Buffalo to Detroit, Irving and his friends met Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, who had been appointed by President Andrew Jackson to help inspect the lands for resettlement of Native Americans who were being forcibly relocated to the west of the Mississippi River.
Irving, Latrobe, and Pourtalès jumped at the chance to go along with Ellsworth’s team, which was accompanied by a band of rangers for protection. They’d be gone from September through November, traveling through Missouri, then down into the largely unsettled prairies of what is now Oklahoma, then looping to Arkansas, where Irving could work his way back to New York.
Irving began the trip with no official duties. He signed on as a kind of writer-in-residence around the campfire, his role similar to the embedded reporters who, in modern times, have been placed within the ranks of American soldiers on patrol. But, early in the mission, Ellsworth tapped Irving to be his secretary—“for which,” Jones notes, “Irving received a saddle, bridle, blanket, bearskin, and India mat, but no pay.”
It was a thrilling itinerary for Irving, but he knew that the trip had been inspired by a tragic chapter of American history—the uprooting of Native American communities from their ancestral homelands. Irving viewed these tribal cultures with a sense of elegy. Writing to his brother Peter about his Western tour, Irving mentions “an opportunity of seeing the remnants of those great Indian tribes, which are now about to disappear as independent nations, or to be amalgamated under some new form of government.”
During the party’s visit to St. Louis, which was then little more than a trading post, Irving met William Clark, legendary half of the Lewis & Clark team that explored the lands of the Louisiana Purchase. Clark had recently helped settle the Black Hawk War, named after the Sauk Chief Black Hawk, who was now a prisoner at nearby Jefferson Barracks.
Irving arranged to visit Black Hawk, apparently expecting to see a mighty warrior in chains. Instead, as Irving noted in a letter to his sister, the chief “is an old man upwards of Seventy: emaciated & enfeebled by the sufferings he experienced and by a touch of cholera.”
Irving’s encounter with Black Hawk sharpened his skepticism about U.S. policy. “I find it extremely difficult, even when so near the seat of action, to get at the right story of these feuds between the White & the red man,” he told his sister, “and my sympathies go strongly with the latter.”
Irving’s journey also brought him close to another national shame, slavery. As the party traveled down the Ohio River by steamboat, Irving met a slave woman who tearfully explained to him that she had been separated from her children, who lived away from her on a nearby plantation. “Such wrenching true stories turned his stomach,” Jones writes, “yet Washington Irving... never risked his reputation espousing controversial political views. His opinions remained his own.”
While Irving’s sensitivity to racial injustice might have been ahead of his time, his writings were carefully crafted for commercial appeal. That meant not rocking the boat too much.
The Sketch-Book contains two essays on Native Americans, both largely sympathetic to indigenous culture. In one of those essays, “Traits of Indian Character,” Irving was fairly blunt about the challenges of inequality:
It has been the lot of the unfortunate aborigines of America, in the early periods of colonization, to be doubly wronged by the white men. They have been dispossessed of their hereditary possessions by mercenary and frequently wanton warfare; and their characters have been traduced by bigoted and interested writers. The colonist has often treated them like beasts of the forest; and the author has endeavoured to justify him in his outrages.
Pretty tough language, to be sure, but then Irving, as if falling prey to the same self-justification he’s just deplored, goes on to laud the U.S. government of his day as much more enlightened, declaring that it “has wisely and humanely exerted itself to inculcate a friendly and forbearing spirit towards (Native Americans), and to protect them from fraud and injustice.”
Photo caption “There is something, at first glance, quite oriental in the appearance of this tribe,” Irving observed of the Creeks. Tel-maz-há-za, a Warrior of Distinction. Creek. 1834. Catlin, George (1796–1872), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC / Art Resource, NY
Andrew Burstein, another Irving biographer, does a good job of explaining Irving’s limitations on Indian policy: “He was unlikely to contest the will of Andrew Jackson, that honest ‘old Roman’ with ‘a little dash of the Greek’ whom he preferred to see as a man who wished people well.”
If Irving seemed willing to acquiesce to popular sentiment regarding Native Americans, it’s perhaps also because his own racial views were sometimes conflicted and contradictory. He writes with great admiration of the Osages he meets: “They had fine Roman countenances, and broad deep chests; and, as they generally wore their blankets wrapped round their loins, so as to leave the bust and arms bare, they looked like so many noble bronze figures.”
But throughout A Tour on the Prairies, he tends to treat people of mixed blood with a suspicion typical of the times. His running mockery of a “Jack-of-all-work” on the expedition nicknamed Tonish seems at least partly fueled by the camp hand’s status as “a |
are deemed, or deem themselves, to have a conflict of interest, they are excused and replaced by the next person on the list.
Those who sit on judicial panels are drawn from many walks of life. They range from former players and coaches to ex-referees, members of the legal profession and even people involved in the governance of other sports.
Can Meekings appeal if he is found guilty?
In a word: no.
To quote the Scottish FA's rules on this matter: "Determinations made under the fast track procedure shall be final and binding. There shall be no right of appeal of a determination in fast track proceedings.
Can the ban be extended?
No. A one-match ban would have been applied if Meekings had been caught at the time and the same punishment will be handed down if he is found guilty by a panel.
Does it cost Inverness to contest this?
There is no payment to the Scottish FA for contesting a notice of complaint. It only costs clubs money if they appeal a decision by a referee, such as a red card.
Is this happening because Celtic wrote a letter to the Scottish FA?
One man who is qualified to speak about external pressures affecting the compliance officer is his predecessor Vincent Lunny.
"Tony is a very experienced advocate with many years experience at the very top level in criminal legal circles," he said.
"He will be making a decision based on the application of the rules. Just to put that to the side - the social media and the Celtic aspect would be a complete irrelevant consideration.
"It is a question of does the action match up with the criteria within the protocol? If it doesn't then he will be cleared. If it does he will get the one-match ban."
Why no action against Lukasz Zaluska for his tackle on Edward Ofere?
The only way the compliance officer can take action in this instance is if he deemed the referee did not seen an act of serious foul play or violent conduct.
While any decision on this is ultimately subjective, it is difficult to argue Zaluska was guilty of a red card offence. A penalty would have been a reasonable decision, but the compliance officer can not retrospectively award a spot kick.
Who is responsible for these rules?
Ultimately the clubs. The protocol was adopted four years ago with the nation's football teams accepting all of the processes. The rule regarding sending-off offences has been in place from the inception of the judicial panel protocol.
The regulations are due to be reviewed this year and the clubs have the power to raise an issue to be discussed at this summer's Scottish FA annual general meeting.Buying Choices
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Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Concerning the Recent Scamming Accusations
The ESC eSport Ltd. management is aware of the recent accusations by ex-ESC Counter-Strike player Pawel “innocentCS” Mocek. Pawel tweeted about ESC Gaming still owing the team money for DH Winter 2014 Major Stickers. ESC Gaming is currently in the process of investigating the issue internallyand will release an official statement tomorrow.
Due to the recent changes in the ownership structure of ESC eSport Ltd. the issue was not known to the current management. ESC owner Rolf Platschka was informed and is currently briefing us on the background of the situation. It is in our best interest to resolve this conflict and we ask the affected players to contact us via our official channels. We will work on a solution as fast as possible.
This statement can also be found on our website http://myesc.de/
Reply · Report PostHUNTSVILLE, Alabama - The first pieces of the $100 million Twickenham Square mixed-use development in Huntsville's medical district are expected to open in very early 2014.
Tom Hunt, whose PHD Hotels is developing a 101-room Homewood Suites along Gallatin Street, said workers are busy framing in the third floor.
"Progress is great there," Hunt said earlier this week. "We're on track to open hopefully sometime in January."
Ditto for the first wave of 246 loft apartments being built by Bristol Development Group of Brentwood, Tenn. Bristol executive Sam Yeager said he expects tenants to start moving into the recently-renamed Artisan apartments in January or February. The original name was The Flats at Twickenham Square.
Yeager said potential tenants "have been calling" but leases won't be available until construction is farther along.
"We obviously got impacted by the rains," Yeager said Wednesday, "but everyone is pitching in to try to make up for what Mother Nature dealt us."
Work is also progressing on Triad Properties' five-story, $36 million medical office tower at the northwest corner of Gallatin Street and St. Clair Avenue. Triad executive William Stroud said crews recently poured 77 concrete support columns for the Twickenham Place tower.
Stroud said passersby should see the building's steel skeleton begin to emerge from the ground in about six weeks. A climate-controlled pedestrian bridge will connect the third floor of the tower to Huntsville Hospital's main public parking garage.
Gerry Shannon, another Triad executive, said Huntsville Hospital will be part-owner of the building and plans to relocate its clinical laboratory there. The lab will cover the entire third floor and half of the fourth floor - about 35,000 square feet in all.
Shannon said a large Huntsville medical practice has agreed to take over most of the fifth floor and will also be part-owner of the tower. The name of the practice will be announced later, he said.
"We've got a couple of non-medical tenants looking at the ground floor, but nothing signed yet," Shannon said Thursday. "The preference has always been to have a bank there, and maybe a small sandwich shop or something like that."
The goal is to have a certificate of occupancy from the city by mid-February so the hospital lab and others can move into the tower in early March, he said.
The things that local shoppers and diners are most excited about - a new Publix supermarket, four new restaurants and other retail stores - will come last.
Yeager said retailers don't want to move to Twickenham Square until the roads and other heavy construction is finished in mid- to late-spring 2014.
"We have a lot of (retailers) that want to be there, and they're willing to pay rents that were not in that market before because there wasn't the product there," said Yeager. "But they don't want to open in a construction zone."
He said Bristol and its development partner, PGM Properties, have signed "one or two" leases for restaurant and retail space but are not ready to name the businesses.
"We want to make sure we've got the right mix," said Yeager.
Twickenhenham Square is taking over the former Councill Courts public house site. Bristol, PGM and Triad paid the Huntsville Housing Authority just over $5 million for the 11.7-acre property.
Follow me on Twitter: @swdoyleA Los Angeles artist claims she was punched in the face after painting a nude portrait of Donald Trump.
Illma Gore, 24, says she was walking to an art supply store Friday when she claims a group of men approached her and she heard “Trump 2016,” according to NBC.
“He got out and punched me in the face and said ‘Trump 2016’—then he drove off,” Gore said.
The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating the alleged assault, according to NBC.
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This isn’t the first time Gore says she’s faced violence over the painting, which shows the Republican presidential candidate nude, with small genitals. Gore told TIME that her pastel drawing, titled “Make America Great Again,” was painted before comments by Trump in response to accusations in March that he had small hands.
Gore says she does not worry about more attacks, but that she is concerned about free speech. “I am scared for America, and for the future for myself and for artists,” she said. “Whoever hit me should take responsibility for their actions as well. It’s cowardly not to.”
Contact us at editors@time.com.http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BittersweetEnding
Kubo, Kubo and the Two Strings "This was a happy story. But... it could still be a whole lot happier..."
Victory, at last! The Big Bad has finally been vanquished, the day has been saved, all the damsels in distress and innocent bystanders have been rescued and the heroes are ready to reap their reward, kiss their Love Interests and walk away toward the setting sun...
...victory, really? Then why does no one feel like cheering? Why is the atmosphere so heavy with melancholy? Why do you find yourself counting your losses as well as your gains?
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Somewhere between the Happily Ever After and the Downer Ending, the Bittersweet Ending happens when victory came at a harsh price, when, for whatever reason, the heroes cannot fully enjoy the reward of their actions, when some irrevocable loss has happened during the course of the events, and nothing will ever be the same again. A Bittersweet Ending is still ending on a high note, but one that is mixed with sadness and nostalgia. Often, such endings are the result of the plot making a completely happy ending impossible. (Looked at objectively, some Happy Endings have more things lost or irrevocably broken than some Bittersweet Endings. This trope relies more on the mood than on such objective weighing of matters.)
Some specific cases of Bittersweet Endings are:
Bittersweet Endings can fall on either end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism. They come up frequently in High Fantasy, for obvious reasons — an epic that ends with the hero triumphing over the ultimate Big Bad and bringing peace and prosperity to the land, but at the same time defeating the ultimate Big Bad does not always come without sacrifices, whether be most or all of the characters dying in the end or the characters are at a loss about what to do now. Sometimes these are worlds and stories where you can Earn Your Happy Ending, though it won't be Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Also shows where too many romantic interests are introduced for one hero are doomed to end in this way or with No Romantic Resolution, since painless resolution is mostly impossible.
Sometimes the story's Aesop requires a bittersweet ending in order to be effective. For certain issues, this is the only way to get the point across without the effect being undermined by other tropes such as the Everybody Laughs Ending.
In short, if the characters are worse off than when they started, it's a Downer Ending. If they're better off (or at least status quo is preserved), but the work still ends on a melancholy note, it's a Bittersweet Ending. Another way to think of it is that if the story's main conflict is resolved in favor of the protagonists, but at great sacrifice, it's a Bittersweet Ending. A Downer Ending requires the heroes to fail, and the conflict resolving with nothing good happening in the end, if it's even resolved at all.
Prone to Meaningful Funerals, Wartime Weddings, and To Absent Friends, and having Babies Ever After and Someone to Remember Him By result in Dead Guy Junior.
Compare with Pyrrhic Victory, where the day is carried, but the cost of winning is crippling to the victors.
Compare and contrast with Ray of Hope Ending, where the villain prevails but not all is lost. Also with Esoteric Happy Ending, where the author clearly meant it to be joyful, beautiful and uplifting... but the readers don't see it that way.
Please be careful in adding any real life examples.
Note that as an ending trope, the following entries are riddled with unmarked spoilers.
Example subpages:
Other examples:
Podcasts
Interstitial Actual Play sees two pop up during the Door to Darkness one-shots. A Touch of Darkness. Shego defeats Kim Possible, kills Betty and leaves Fred to die, and makes Archie so angry that she's able to take control of his Darkness and allow him to be Norted. Archie leaves with the Organization, but shortly after an amnesiac Nobody made from Betty appears and is able to rouse Fred from the brink of death. Lonely Hearts. The defeat of the Sheriff at Bright Eyes' hands helps dissuade a good portion of the xenophobia they had prior, and the Killjoys remain in Twin Peaks to help continue he healing. However, Bright Eyes and Calumon are separated and alone because Calumon wiped himself from everyone's memory and chose not to restore himself to Bright Eyes.
Professional WrestlingMajor X-Men: Days Of Future Past Character And Plot Details Revealed By Eric Eisenberg Random Article Blend
The site says that Kitty Pryde, played by Ellen Page from X-Men: The Last Stand, will still be playing a pivotal role in the story. It is Kitty who uses her power to send Wolverine back in time, but when an incident occurs the X-Men must look for a mutant who can take Kitty's powers and bring Wolverine back. This very well could be how Anna Paquin's Rogue enters into the story. Fans will remember that Rogue had her mutation removed at the end of X-Men: The Last Stand, but the effects of the "cure" may not be permanent - as evidenced by the final scene in the film featuring Sir Ian McKellen's Magneto being able to move a metal chess piece right before the credits rolled.
But that's not all the information that Vulture received about the story. While all of this information will be revealed on Saturday at
The other final big reveal is the identity of the character played by Josh Helman, the Aussie star who was only cast in the film
We'll have even more for you about X-Men: Days of Future Past on Saturday during the 20th Century Fox panel at Comic-Con. We've long been wondering about which member of the X-Men would be time-traveling from an apocalyptic future back to 1973 in Bryan Singer's X-Men: Days of Future Past, but now it appears that the character's identity has been revealed. While it was Kitty Pryde's consciousness that was sent back in time in the original comics, and it was Bishop who took the trip in the fantastic X-Men animated series adaptation from the '90s, Vulture has learned from a source that it will be Hugh Jackman's Wolverine who will best sent back in the new film.The site says that Kitty Pryde, played by Ellen Page from X-Men: The Last Stand, will still be playing a pivotal role in the story. It is Kitty who uses her power to send Wolverine back in time, but when an incident occurs the X-Men must look for a mutant who can take Kitty's powers and bring Wolverine back. This very well could be how Anna Paquin's Rogue enters into the story. Fans will remember that Rogue had her mutation removed at the end of X-Men: The Last Stand, but the effects of the "cure" may not be permanent - as evidenced by the final scene in the film featuring Sir Ian McKellen's Magneto being able to move a metal chess piece right before the credits rolled.But that's not all the information that Vulture received about the story. While all of this information will be revealed on Saturday at San Diego Comic-Con (so don't worry about spoilers), the site has gotten early intel about the identity of characters played by some of the actors new to the franchise in X-Men: Days of Future Past. First up there's Peter Dinklage, who joined the cast back in February. There was immediate speculation that he would be playing one of the film's main villains, with many deducting that he could play the inventor of the Sentinels, Bolivar Trask. Well, those who were thinking along those lines were dead on, as the Game of Thrones star will indeed be playing Trask in the movie. It's worth noting that actor Bill Duke - who looks different than Dinklage in every way imaginable - actually played a character named Trask in X-Men: The Last Stand, but it appears this new sequel will be completely ignoring that.The other final big reveal is the identity of the character played by Josh Helman, the Aussie star who was only cast in the film last month. Despite being a late addition to the cast, it was said at the time that he would be playing a very significant rile and that he would be on set for several weeks. Today we learn that's because he will be playing a younger version of famed X-Men baddie Bill Stryker, the character played by Brian Cox in X2: X-Men United. While Dinklage will mostly be featured in the future parts of the movie's timeline, starring alongside Page, Paquin, McKellen, Sir Patrick Stewart, Halle Berry, Daniel Cudmore and Shawn Ashmore, Helman will be featured as the main antagonist in the 1973 parts, with X-Men: First Class stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult and Lucas Till. The younger version of Styker was actually mentioned briefly in First Class when Xavier (McAvoy) was proving his telekinetic abilities to Bill's father at the CIA.We'll have even more for you about X-Men: Days of Future Past on Saturday during the 20th Century Fox panel at Comic-Con. Blended From Around The Web Facebook
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NEW DELHI: The CBI has filed three charge sheets against former chairman of First Leasing Company of India Limited (FLCIL) and ex-BCCI chief A C Muthiah, and former Managing Director Farouk M Irani for allegedly cheating three banks to the tune of around Rs 665 crore, officials said today.
The probe agency has filed these charge sheets before a special CBI court in Chennai, they said here.
The charges levelled by the agency include criminal conspiracy, cheating and forgery among others, a CBI spokesperson said.
In the first case, it was alleged that key officials of FLCIL, in furtherance of a conspiracy with the statutory and internal auditors of the company, had availed various credit facilities from IDBI Bank with mala fide intentions to cheat it, the official said.
He said it was done on the basis of forged financial reports and funds were siphoned away for extraneous and personal purposes causing loss of Rs 273.99 crore to the bank.
In the second case, the accused had allegedly availed credit facilities from UCO Bank in the form of working capital limit and short term loans in the name of FLCIL, Chennai by furnishing false and fabricated financial statements, the CBI alleged.
It is alleged that the funds were siphoned away causing wrongful loss of Rs 142.94 crore to the bank, the spokesperson said.
Similar modus operandi was also used by the accused to avail various credit facilities from the State Bank of India by furnishing inflated income and assets in the financial statements by creating unsubstantiated entries in the books of accounts since 1998, the CBI alleged.
The spokesperson said the funds were diverted for personal purposes causing wrongful loss of Rs 248.46 crore to the bank.
"Investigation conducted by CBI has disclosed that the accused along with seven shell companies in... conspiracy with statutory and internal auditors had cheated the banks by submitting forged financial statements to obtain undue credit limits and siphoned off the same... causing wrongful loss of Rs 665 crores(approx) to the banks," the spokesperson said.
He said investigation has also disclosed that the promoter-directors had misappropriated the assets of the company entrusted to them by using such loaned money to donate annually to a trust run by Muthiah.
Muthiah was the chairman of Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) from 1999 to 2001.CHICAGO — Curtis Granderson, a very professional outfielder, gives me a walking tour of his old haunts at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He points out the baseball stadium with a backdrop of the soaring downtown skyline, and two new Little League fields with artificial turf and light towers.
We’re on the South Side, and not so many blocks from here, mayhem rules too many young lives. This is a handsome oasis. In the summertime, dozens of black Little Leaguers from those often chaotic neighborhoods jam the fields here from sunup to sundown.
Granderson talked with two of those Little Leaguers last year. The boys, 8 and 9, told him they had never seen Lake Michigan, the vast and shimmering water that stretches all along Chicago’s eastern shore.
“We wanted to build a place where these kids could play and get a wider view of life,” Granderson says. “Then we take them on university tours and get a conversation going that they might not have.”At EdenKeeper we’ve reported on green initiatives being adopted in churches from Berkeley, California to Raleigh, North Carolina, to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. And while it’s always great to see Christians doing good things for the environment, we haven’t seen churches of different denominations actually make a localized push to be more environmental.
Well, we hadn’t seen it until we read the Chattanooga Times Free Press recent article, “Local Churches Going Green as Part of Their Faith.” The article highlights the work of three local churches of different dominations that have decided to put their faith into action for the environment. Check out the great things these churches are doing.
New Hope Presbyterian Church
New Hope Presbyterian Church established an “Earth Care Team,” a group dedicated to being “stewards of God’s earth.” The dozen members oversee the church’s green efforts such as the recycling program. They also have limited the use of Sytrofoam products and started serving fair-trade coffee, which is grown in developing countries by farmers who are fairly paid and encouraged to use sustainable farming practices.
“My concern for better green living is based on practicing my faith through caring for creation,” said Rosie Sanislo, who founded the team. “Scripture and our reformed faith tradition call humans to be stewards of the earth — God’s good creation. Each of us has the power to make choices that reflect our faith commitments, and be better caretakers of the precious resources God provides. We have a responsibility to restore the creation we have used and abused.”
The church also installed energy-efficient heating and air conditioning systems and windows and a tankless hot water heater. Its Vacation Bible School has an Earth-Care theme and its playground equipment contains 25 percent recycled materials. And, by the end of this year, the group plans to develop a rain garden to absorb and clean stormwater runoff from the church parking lot, said Sanislo.
Nationally, the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) has an Environmental Ministries program that offers a certification process to help churches create and maintain green projects — just another example of the PCUSA’s environmental commitment.
“Our church governing body, the Session, also endorsed an ‘Earth Care Pledge’ that accompanied our application for certification as an Earth Care congregation,” Sanislo said. Churches that make the pledge must accomplish a specific number of actions toward caring for the Earth in four categories: worship, education, facilities, and outreach. Each year, the program audits the churches to make sure they’re adhering to the rules.
Grace Episcopal in Brainerd
Located in a racially and economically diverse neighborhood where there are few public parks and green spaces, Grace Episcopal puts its faith into action for the environment by hosting the Brainerd Farmers Market and Community Gardens.
“It is the mission of Grace Church as stewards of the ‘creation’ to offer organic and sustainably grown produce to our community,” said market director Catherine Durham. The market, held in the church parking lot every Saturday from 10am to noon through late December, provides organic produce, eggs, dairy, and meat products grown within 50 miles of Brainerd.
“[The church] sees providing such respite as an essential part, not only of godly stewardship, but also of our church’s basic mission,” said Durham. Anyone can come and pick vegetables, strawberries, and blackberries from the church’s Community Garden.
“The community garden’s pavilion has a living, ‘green’ roof,” Durham said. “Additionally, the church’s two butterfly gardens are certified with the North American Butterfly Association, and were included on butterfly garden tours during their biennial convention here last month.”
The grounds of Grace Episcopal are certified National Wildlife Federation Backyard Habitat and also received an award from the Chattanooga Tree Commission in 2012 for the church’s care of mature canopy trees.
Unitarian Universalist Church in Chattanooga
The Unitarian Universalist Church‘s green programs started small with the formation of the Green Sanctuary Initiative, an initiative to get the church accredited as a “green sanctuary” by the denomination. Then the church established an outdoor garden to attract wildlife, an herb garden that the church uses when it’s serving food, a new lighting system to reduce energy, and a recycling program for the church.
“We began with small projects,” said church member and environmentalist Sandy Kurtz. “We took steps to reduce energy use by changing the lighting system and the way we operated the church... We set up a recycling program, and we got rid of all Styrofoam products at our potluck dinners. People started bringing their own utensils and then took them back home to wash.”
And now, after jumping through a “bunch of hoops” to get permits from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and Electric Power Board (EPB), the church has become the first in the area to install several solar panels on its roof. “We have been working on this for three years,” said Kurtz, who spearheaded the project. “We did our research. We raised the money with our congregation to pay for the project.”
While the church doesn’t use the electricity provide by the panels itself, it feeds the energy to the TVA/EPB grid for general distribution of clean, green energy. According to Buck O’Rear, church vice president of resources, TVA is buying the electricity for four cents per kilowatt hour. (Not too bad for the environment or the church’s coffers.)
Kurtz said that the solar panels are hopefully just the first phase of the church’s electricity generation. “We would like to eventually have enough panels to supply our total electricity needs for the church,” she said.
The church hopes to encourage other churches to go green too. “Every denomination does something to help their fellow man,” said Kurtz. “Our guiding principles promote respecting the web of life. We bear a responsibility that all life does well and it benefits us all. We are reducing our carbon footprint, and with our solar panels, we’re doing something to make a difference.”
News and Photo Source: Chattanooga Times Free Press
Keep up to date with all the eco-spirituality news here on EdenKeeper. Subscribe to our newsletter to never miss a story.Instant gratification is the key takeaway for the millennials and keeping this in mind, global PC and printing major HP on Wednesday launched Sprocket - a pocket-sized photo printer - in India for Rs. 8,999.
The unique hand-held printer would allow you to print instant pictures (2x3-inch size) and share among friends. Users will need to download the Sprocket app from Google Play Store or Apple App Store on their smartphone, pair it with the printer, place specially-designed HP ZINK papers in the device, switch on Bluetooth, and can then print images.
"The device is especially made for the millennial segment which is between age 10-24. But we are not restricting our target to that age group only. People who like to preserve their memories would like to own the 'Sprocket' which is a pretty affordable device," Raj Kumar Rishi, Senior Director, Printing Systems, HP Inc India, told IANS.
"'HP Sprocket allows users print their treasured memories instantly on-the go with just a few taps", Rishi added.
The companion app enables users to print photographs directly from their social media accounts on Facebook and Instagram.
"While smartphones have made it very simple to store our memories digitally, the power of printing photographs cannot be undermined. The moment a digital photograph gets printed, it becomes a tangible treasure one can cherish for life" Rishi noted.
HP is taking the e-commerce route to market the Sprocket printer in black, red and white colour variants in India.
"We are going online via Amazon to start with. As the business shapes up, we would decide the next step. We are the leading brand in the consumer printing industry with a very high market share. Our job is to increase our market and make printing more relevant," the executive told IANS.
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), HP regained the top position in Inkjet printer market in the second quarter of 2017 with a unit share of 45.9 percent after posting a 7.2 percent (YoY) growth.
The company also continues to be the market leader in the laser HCP market with 57.4 percent market share.
Rishi credited the entire growth story to "solid innovations" happening across the market segments such as the launch of A3 printers across SMB and enterprise segment.
"There are three big use cases for consumer printing and the biggest use case is school homework. With 'Sprocket', we are developing the new use case in the mobile printing space. We believe that this would help the segment grow further," Rishi noted.
"Secondly, we introduced our portfolio in the Ink Tank printers. We are continuously innovating when it comes to consumer printing. We launched the world's smallest All-in-One printer last year," he added.
The company has chosen to use ZINK printing technology for Sprocket printer. HP ZINK paper would be available for Rs. 539 for a pack of 20 sheets and Rs. 1,249 for a pack of 50 sheets.
The user would get a complimentary pack of 10 ZINK papers with the box at the time of purchase, the company said. The peel-and-stick backing property of ZINK paper can turn the photos into fun stickers too.If you’re looking for a single, simple explanation for the rise of the Islamic State that flatters your pre-existing politics, you’ve hit pay dirt.
Hawks and anti-imperialists alike are flogging a recently declassified U.S. intelligence report. Depending on who’s spinning it, the report either proves that Washington ignored dire warnings about the rise of ISIS or that the U.S. was in a secret alliance that fueled the jihadi army’s rise.
The same report, essentially summary observations, analysis, and predictions about the state of the war in Syria in 2012, generated both of these headlines in reaction:
“Defense Agency Report: Administration Ignored Report Warning of ISIS Threat”
“Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq”
The document in question is a draft intelligence report from August 2012 written for the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The redacted version of the report was released last month in response to a freedom of information act request submitted by the conservative watchdog site Judicial Watch.
The intelligence report about Syria is just that — a report, It’s not a policy directive and there’s no proof that any action was taken based on its analysis. Nevertheless, people across the political spectrum are taking it as if it were a presidential order. Anti-Muslim bigot Pamela Geller thinks it’s a scandal because it proves President Obama knew about ISIS and chose to do nothing. Geller’s outrage is the inverse of the indignation expressed by far-leftists like the Guardian’s Seumas Milne who takes the report as proof that the U.S. abetted ISIS to sow discord in the Middle East, part of a grand divide and conquer strategy. Neither one seems to understand what they’re actually looking at.
Milne’s Guardian piece is subtler than its headline. It grants that the DIA report, “doesn’t mean the US created Isis, of course,” and adds caveats likes, “the report isn’t a policy document. It’s heavily redacted and there are ambiguities in the language.” But it assumes, ambiguities aside, that the report reveals some level of collusion with ISIS as a tenet of U.S. policy seeking to inflame sectarianism. “For the past year, US, British and other western forces have been back in Iraq, supposedly in the cause of destroying the hyper-sectarian terror group Islamic State,” Milne writes. Supposedly, that’s why they are there but the report, Milne suggest, shows otherwise.
Not only does the intelligence report not represent official policy, as some have suggested, it’s not even a finished report. In capital letters on the top of the second page, “not finally evaluated intelligence” is clearly visible. Writing about the report for his site 20 Committee, Former NSA officer John Schindler puts its in perspective:
“Having written my share of IIRs, let me explain a few things to you. First off, this report, which is classified SECRET/NOFORN (i.e. it’s far from “highly classified”) is so heavily redacted that it’s difficult to say much meaningful about it. Who filed this IIR has been taken out, and its distribution list (at least what we can see of it) is the usual alphabet soup of DoD and IC headquarters and agencies. Nothing special here, not one bit.”
That might be overstated. The report is undoubtedly intriguing, and seems to have been especially prescient on a number of matters. But, by itself, it’s only evidence of one analysis among thousands churned out yearly by the various intelligence agencies.
(Full disclosure: I was an army intelligence officer for a while, if I can mention that without implicating myself in a grand conspiracy. My experience was at the tactical level. This sort of report of regional scope and strategic implications was outside my purview.)
The DIA report is half blank from redactions, but what’s left visible states matter of factly that Salafists including ISIS’s predecessor group al-Qaeda in Iraq are the, “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.”
That’s noteworthy for two reasons. First, because it has been interpreted by some observers as evidence that the drive to arm moderate Syrian rebel groups was undertaken in spite of the fact that the government’s own analysis acknowledged that jihadists were already dominant in Syria by August 2012. Those supporting the opposition, according to the report, include: “The West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey…while Russia, China and Iran support the [Assad] regime.”
More significantly, the report proceeds to make this prediction:
“If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”
The reference to Salafists in Syria could mean any number of groups, including those like Ahrar Al-Sham or Suqoor al-Sham, which are effectively at war with ISIS. But if we take Salafists to mean ISIS, the report describes more or less what happened with the Islamic State establishing itself in eastern Syria before expanding over the border from eastern Syria into Iraq. It provides, as right-wingers incensed by the government’s failure to heed it have noted, an accurate if limited prediction of what was in store for the region as ISIS began consolidating its power in 2012. But it’s the second part—“this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want— that’s been grist for conspiracy theorists who think they’ve finally found proof that ISIS is essentially a U.S. plot.
One obvious question is: Who are those supporting powers to the opposition who were rooting for an Islamic State and do they include the U.S.?
Earlier in the report, the “supporting powers” were listed as the West, Turkey and the Gulf countries, but, as Middle East analyst Juan Cole points out, “the US wouldn’t be included in the “powers” supporting al-Qaeda-linked groups! — especially by the DIA!” Rather, the report seems to be suggesting what Vice President Biden acknowledged in a speech at Harvard last year.
“Our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria,” Biden said. “The Turks, the Saudis, the Emiratis, et cetera. What were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war what did they do?” They funded jihadi groups like al Qaeda in Iraq, according to Biden, which fed off that support and burgeoned into ISIS.
But to suggest that the intelligence report promoted the formation of the Islamic State as a policy goal for the U.S. is to ignore what it says in the next paragraph.
“The deterioration of the situation has dire consequences in the Iraqi situation and are as follows:
1. This creates the ideal atmosphere for Al Qaeda in Iraq AQI [the earlier incarnation of ISIS] to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi, and will provide a renewed momentum under the presumption of unifying the jihad among Sunni and Iraq and Syria, and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against what it considers one enemy.”
Not exactly an endorsement of the coming caliphate.
The name on the report is redacted but whoever wrote deserves credit. Clearly they got a lot right: the endurance of the Assad regime, the ascendance of the jihadist elements in Syria to their sponsorship by some U.S. allies and how those policies would lead to a jihadi state that would have dire consequences for Iraq.
The report raises some important questions but it’s a mistake to think it answers them. The DIA could do itself and the public a favor by addressing the 3 year-old declassified report instead of responding to inquiries with variations on “no comment” as it did when approached by journalist Brad Hoff.
Even if the White House had missed the 2012 report entirely, it had a briefing from DIA head Michael Flynn in February 2014, predicting “ISIL probably will attempt to take territory in Iraq and Syria in 2014, as demonstrated recently in Ramadi and Fallujah.” Two months after he made the speech |
and Raven, led the norn southwards. But not before Aesgir fought Jormag and managed to cut out one of his fangs – a tooth about five times the height of a male norn. Even more, Aesgir survived the epic encounter and joined his fleeing people, leading them south where they could recuperate and establish a new domain.
However, Jormag’s revenge followed the norn south – and his minions threatened them from both outside and inside. Some foolish male norn came to the conclusion that Jormag is the ultimate Spirit of the Wild, the apex predator of the world and that he should not only be revered like the rest of the spirits, but outright worshipped. They named themselves the Sons of Svanir, after their spiritual ancestor, and began their plot to overthrow the other spirits and convert other norn to the worship of Jormag. While the Sons begin their journey into frigid darkness and depravity hale and hearty, the more blessings they receive from Svanir “shamans,AP (File)
INDIANAPOLIS — Dozens of Indiana firefighters, police officers and emergency medical workers say a federal appeals court should uphold same-sex marriage in Indiana and Wisconsin for the sake of the families of gay first responders, a spokeswoman said Monday.
More than 100 first responders have signed a legal brief that will be filed Tuesday with the 7th U.S. Court of Appeals, said spokeswoman Jennifer Wagner of an advocacy group called Hoosiers Unite for Marriage.
The signers – from Indianapolis, Evansville, Terre Haute, New Albany, Kokomo and other Indiana communities – argue the two states deny gay first responders “the equal dignity and respect they deserve.”
“Heterosexual colleagues go to work knowing that, should tragedy befall them in the line of duty, Indiana and the communities they served will come to their family’s aid – with financial resources, healthcare, and higher education. But even though (the signers) walk shoulder to shoulder with their heterosexual colleagues, beneath them in Indiana is no safety net, only darkness born of fear and discrimination,” a draft of the brief states.
The plaintiffs who challenged Indiana’s gay marriage ban include firefighters and police officers.
Article continues below
Federal judges in Indiana and Wisconsin overturned each state’s gay marriage ban in separate rulings. When both states appealed, the appeals court combined the cases. The court has scheduled oral arguments in both states’ appeals for Aug. 26.
Hundreds of same-sex couples were married in both states after the bans were overturned and before the appeals court issued stays.
At least 20 briefs have been filed in the case, many of them supporting the two states, including one from the attorneys general of 10 other states. The briefs from opponents of same-sex marriage cite political theory, social stability and even biblical text as supporting their positions.
© 2014, Associated Press, All Rights Reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
This Story Filed UnderLoi Luu is the co-founder and CEO of KyberNetwork, a decentralized, trustless, cryptocurrency exchange.
In this opinion piece, Luu discusses the challenges facing technologists seeking to popularize decentralized exchanges for cryptocurrency trading, framing liquidity as one of the key obstacles to production.
The total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies is now above $137 billion, up from $16 billion at the beginning of the year.
But before the world can conduct a significant amount of its transactions via cryptocurrency markets, the problem of liquidity must be addressed.
Liquidity refers to the extent to which a market allows assets to be bought and sold at stable prices. Lower liquidity tends to result in a more volatile market (especially when large orders are placed), and it causes prices to change more drastically; whereas higher liquidity creates a less volatile market, and prices do not fluctuate as significantly.
Today, cash is the most liquid asset. If a transaction of $1 million takes place, the market is able to absorb that transaction easily without the value of the dollar drastically changing. Costs associated with the transaction, and the value of the currency at the time of the transaction, are also known beforehand.
However, the same transaction in bitcoin, or any other cryptocurrency, has a much greater effect on the cryptocurrency’s value.
This is because of the market’s lack of liquidity. The amount of cryptocurrency available on a specific trading platform can run out, requiring the buyer to complete the transaction at 1–10 percent more than expected.
To complete the same transaction of $1 million, it could end up costing between $10,000 and $100,000 more than the original price to make the trade.
Decentralized trading platforms
Until now, the cryptocurrency space has been dominated by centralized exchanges that help facilitate transaction from government currencies to cryptocurrencies.
Centralized exchanges, like Coinbase, are easy to access and easy to use. However, as many have failed to adequately secure their customers’ funds, decentralized exchanges are becoming a popular concept.
Centralized exchanges have been simply unprepared for the recent influx of users, causing major system failures and attracting the attention of hackers. While some centralized exchanges are more secure than others, there’s still been a number of security failures, like last year’s Bitfinex hack, which resulted in thousands of users losing their savings (until it was later repaid).
Decentralized trading platforms offer an alternative, and perhaps even more valuable service, by promising greater security and transparency. They do not rely on third-party services to hold customer funds. Instead, peer-to-peer transactions are possible through an automated process.
The benefit of using a decentralized exchange is that there is no need to put any trust in the exchange platform itself, as the funds are held by the user in a personal wallet, rather than with a third party. Decentralized exchanges can also provide more privacy, while reducing the risk of server downtime, if only for those who are more tech-savvy.
Unfortunately, decentralized trading platforms still lack the commodity, easy of use, and overall “user support” to attract a mainstream user base. Therefore, the liquidity and market depth of these exchanges is still quite low.
Addressing the liquidity challenge
Improving the liquidity in decentralizing trading platforms is one way to help encourage mainstream adoption. Of course, many factors contribute to the liquidity of an asset. But, if the ways in which consumers make monetary transactions using cryptocurrencies could be simplified, then it’s not difficult to imagine that the demand for such assets would increase.
There’s little doubt that trading cryptocurrencies will continue to take place on different kinds of exchanges for the foreseeable future without a single, more stable asset emerging to keep their value in check. This means that overcoming market fragmentation and liquidity problems will require a unique solution.
One approach to solving the challenges that exist in decentralized exchanges is to reduce the cost of the switch for cryptocurrency traders. If an on-chain platform can tap into multiple reserves, and lower the barriers of switching from one exchange to another by working with various wallet providers, then users can log into their wallets and execute a token conversion without ever leaving their wallets.
This allows receipts to access payments from any token that a decentralized platform supports.
Token-to-token convertibility is not the only approach to solving the liquidity challenge. There are many other unique ideas on how to help users execute cross-network transactions seamlessly and at reasonable rates – and these solutions are opening up entirely new ways for the greater public to participate in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
Furthermore, liquidity is not the only factor in the adoption of the technology, but it stands to be a critical component in how the market matures. Promoting liquidity in the blockchain ecosystem, and specifically in decentralized exchanges, will be key to improving the general public’s perception of cryptocurrencies as a valuable way to trade currencies safely and securely.
Disclosure: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership stake in Coinbase.
Liquid paint image via ShutterstockGoogle and Bing Not Generous To Windows 8, Showing More of Negative Suggestions
Google and Bing suggested searches are a running meme, and for good reason users’ emotions and views about the certain products can be unleashed. This can be exciting, or saddening, and sometimes even both.
The search queries suggestion screenshots below were taken in a concealed session of Google Chrome, which shows that no user was logged in to either Bing or Google. Now, Google, will tell us what Windows 8 ‘is:’
Users on Google are giving Windows 8 a firm one out of four i.e. 25% positive result. Is this is a fair metric? Of course not. Now, lets check the screenshot below of what users on Bing are searching for Windows 8:
Bing shows two positive results out of eight, which means that only 25% positive result which is not so good. It can be noted that the insults on Bing are precise and the praise is comprehensive. Moreover, ‘ugly,’ and ‘Confusing’ words, are far more on-the-nose than ‘great.’ or ‘awesome’.
Definitely, it would be interesting and humorous to point out how Microsoft’s own search engine is suggesting more of negative results that will certainly have negative impact on its core product Windows OS sales. Bing and Google are the Western search market at this point of time. If this is what consumers are looking for, the company could have most of its home work left in terms of educating the general people regarding the benefits and new features about its aspiring newly launched platform Windows 8.
The first rumor of internal saddening situation with Windows 8′s sales figures are out which we covered in our recent blog post. It is now Microsoft’s work to pick a bulletin and try to stick to it. It will be interesting to see what and how the company will do in the coming few months in order to give a boost to its newly launched Windows 8 sales numbers.
Just for fun, we can compare the two screenshots above of Google and Bing queries to what Windows 7 provokes using a same search process. Here you go:
What is the main problem? A problem in Windows 7 can inform its consumers that their copy of Windows 7 is infact not authentic and is instead fake. To get more information on this issue, Microsoft has a help page for users.
Unhappily, there is not much from the Windows 7 results to compare with the search results of windows 8; search queries for Windows 7 are more operative, whereas Windows 8′s search queries are more related with its new launch in the market.
Article SourceThe overused and often trite definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
In the New South Wales camp, despite staring down the gullet of the Blues’ 10th loss in 11 years, selectors Laurie Daley and Bob Fulton continue to push blind loyalty above all when it comes to team selection.
State of Origin game two hopeful Wade Graham charged over high tackle Read more
In reality, the pair are only being loyal to losing.
They have been loyal to Dylan Walker, a player who had no right being selected as the bench utility for game one and a player the coach simply had no plan for and no idea how to use. He played nine minutes where he looked like a lost puppy trying to find his owners.
They have been loyal to Matt Moylan, a player who would not have been picked in the series opener had James Tedesco not fractured his shoulder blade in the weeks prior. Tedesco was ahead of Moylan by any judge’s card. The Tigers fullback is arguably the best player available to the Blues, yet has been overlooked for a player who only got a run because of injury and was only fair at best when given that opportunity. Tedesco is the only player in the NRL with at least nine tries and nine assists – despite missing three matches.
They have been loyal to Josh Morris despite Morris averaging a paltry 60.6 metres an outing in 14 Origin showings. He is played on the right side in Origin despite being a left centre for Canterbury. Last game, Morris stifled all Blues momentum when he dropped a simple tap.
They have been loyal to Blake Ferguson, who is so out of form for the Sydney Roosters he has committed nine handling errors in his last five games. His team is anchored in second-last on the premiership ladder.
In terms of pure numbers, New South Wales have the luxury of more options, of greater choice, of significant flexibility. Yet they use none of these advantages because the Blues powerbrokers are obsessed with replicating a Queensland culture that was born out of necessity, not want.
The notion of Maroon loyalty is a myth. They pick the best available side to them nearly every time, while the Blues continually do otherwise.
Under Daley and Fulton, it is almost as if New South Wales’ do not play to win, instead playing not to lose. It is a conservative approach that undermines New South Wales’ chances before they even step on the field. The Blues go into nearly every match handicapped by their own selection panel.
The selectors are so scared of Greg Inglis that Morris is regularly picked to negate him. No consideration is given to Inglis’ dramatic decline in form or the out-there prospect of naming a Blues centre who can actually score a try. They are so fearful of repeating the Jarrod Mullen fiasco that they have stuck with players like Mitchell Pearce far longer than they should have.
NSW and Queensland make one change each for State of Origin game two Read more
NSW’s selection panel have continually gone to the well on notions like ‘wingers need to be big’, ‘the bench always needs a backline utility’, and ‘the halves need a one-dimensional defensive protector’.
In 10 games under Laurie Daley, the Blues have been held to two tries or fewer on nine occasions, averaging just 10.2 points a match. The Maroons have posted 26-plus in three matches over that time – all in Brisbane – yet the Blues go to Suncorp with the series on the line following the same conservative, defence-first blueprint that has failed time and time again.
If Daley and Fulton don’t start prizing winning above all, the time for a change of leadership and a change of direction may be nigh. The Blues cannot afford another year where their advantages are dismissed for a misguided value system that gives New South Wales no chance, and no future.Hillary Clinton may have a financial incentive to remain in the presidential race for a while. And she has Senator John McCain to thank for it.
Clinton has loaned her struggling campaign $11 million in recent months. A little-known provision of a 2002 campaign-finance law cosponsored by McCain prevents candidates who drop out of the race from raising money after the nominating conventions to repay themselves for personal loans.
If Clinton fails to come up with the funds by the Democratic convention in August and she fails to gain the nomination, she will be out the $11 million. If she quits before then, she may find it hard to get people to keep giving cash so she can retire her debt.
That may ratchet up pressure on Clinton to cut a deal with rival Barack Obama, who is keeping the door open to possibly helping pay her debt, which also includes more than $10 million in unpaid bills to vendors and consultants.
"Helping to pay off the debt would certainly be a clear signal of Obama's desire to bring the two candidates together," said Anthony Corrado, professor at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.
BLOOMBERG
Obama regrets division between Jews, blacks
WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama said that he regrets the division that has grown between Jews and blacks and that he remains committed to ensuring Israel's security.
Obama discussed his relationship with the Jewish community and Israel in an interview posted yesterday on The Atlantic magazine's website, part of his continuing effort to reassure Jewish voters who have expressed some unease about his candidacy. The situation didn't improve as an adviser to the militant Palestinian group Hamas recently said they hope Obama wins the presidency.
Obama said some in the Arab world may be attracted to his candidacy because he spent part of his childhood in the Muslim nation of Indonesia, has the middle name Hussein, and advocates presidential-level talks with foreign leaders ostracized by the Bush administration.
"I welcome the Muslim world's accurate perception that I am interested in opening up dialogue and interested in moving away from the unilateral policies of George Bush, but nobody should mistake that for a softer stance when it comes to terrorism or when it comes to protecting Israel's security or making sure that the alliance is strong and firm," Obama said. "You will not see, under my presidency, any slackening in commitment to Israel's security.
"I think that the idea of a secure Jewish state is a fundamentally just idea, and a necessary idea, given not only world history but the active existence of anti-Semitism," Obama said. "That does not mean that I would agree with every action of the state of Israel, because it's a government and it has politicians, and as a politician myself I am deeply mindful that we are imperfect creatures and don't always act with justice uppermost on our minds."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MoveOn.org seeking funds to air contest-winning ad
A rather predictable entry won a contest hosted by the antiwar group MoveOn.org for a TV ad supporting Barack Obama.
"I'm a lifelong Republican and I'm voting for Barack Obama," a Southern California police detective and veteran says in the ad, which echoes Obama's stance that he will appeal to Republicans, independents, and Democrats.
The group, which is seeking donations to air the ad, says it was selected from more than 1,100 submissions and after 5.5 million online votes and judging by a celebrity panel.
FOON RHEE
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.Local (in my neck of the woods anyway) legend Stetson Kennedy, best known for his ground-breaking journalism exposing Ku Klux Klan members in the 1940s, is taking on the Qur’an burning church. The 93-year-old Kennedy has vowed to perform a citizen’s arrest of Pastor Terry Jones of Dove World Outreach Center on Sept. 11.
Stetson Kennedy says he’ll be in Gainesville this weekend, and will conduct a citizen’s arrest on Dove World Outreach Center Pastor Terry Jones on the grounds of inciting violence and rioting. “Any citizen in the presence of a crime in progress may make a citizen’s arrest,” Kennedy said. “In this case, I would intend to take the Reverend Jones to the nearest U.S. Attorney.”
Kennedy plans to arrest Jones on grounds of sedition, which can be defined as inciting people to disturb the public peace. It’s a bit of a reach, but it makes more sense than Jones’ own plan to paint all of Islam with one brush, based on the attack by Osama bin Laden’s followers nine years ago.
Around the world, others are making a similar error of generalization in mistaking Jones’ idiocy as representative of all America, or all of Florida, or even all of the Missouri-born Jones’ operating base of Gainesville, with some Muslims vowing revenge for Jones’ ignorant actions against Americans, including troops, abroad.The White Rose of York (also called the Rose alba or rose argent), a white heraldic rose, is the symbol of the House of York and has since been adopted as a symbol of Yorkshire as a whole.[1]
History [ edit ]
The origins of the emblem are said to go back to the fourteenth century, to Edmund of Langley, the first Duke of York and the founder of the House of York as a cadet branch of the then ruling House of Plantagenet (although other reports suggest the rose and Yorkshire have links going back further than that.)[2] The actual symbolism behind the rose has religious connotations as it represents the Virgin Mary, who is often called the Mystical Rose of Heaven.[2] The Yorkist rose is white in colour, because in Christian liturgical symbolism, white is the symbol of light, typifying innocence and purity, joy and glory.[3]
During the civil wars of the fifteenth century, the White Rose was the symbol of Yorkist forces opposed to the rival House of Lancaster. The red rose of Lancaster would be a later invention used to represent the House of Lancaster, but was not in use during the actual conflict.[2] The opposition of the two roses gave the wars their name: the Wars of the Roses (coined in the 19th century.) The conflict was ended by King Henry VII of England, who symbolically united the White and Red Roses to create the Tudor Rose, symbol of the Tudor dynasty. In the late Seventeenth Century the Jacobites took up the White Rose of York as their emblem, celebrating "White Rose Day" on 10 June, the anniversary of the birth of James III and VIII in 1688.[4]
At the Battle of Minden in Prussia on 1 August 1759, Yorkshiremen of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry's predecessor the 51st Regiment picked white roses from bushes near to the battlefields as a tribute to their fallen comrades who had died.[2] They stuck the plucked white roses in their coats as a tribute.[5] Yorkshire Day is held on this date each year.[2]
The Yorkist Rose was engraved on the coffin holding the remains of King Richard III, the last Yorkist king of England and the last to die leading his troops in battle, interred at Leicester Cathedral on 26 March 2015. The coffin was made by Michael Ibsen, a distant relative of the king, whose DNA helped to prove his identity.
Use in Yorkshire heraldry [ edit ]
Flag of Yorkshire
The flag of Yorkshire is a White Rose of York on a blue background.[6] The flags of the three ridings also prominently include it.[7][8][9]
More than 20 civic entities in Yorkshire have a coat of arms that includes the rose of York.[10] When depicted at small size it is rendered more simply, more as a graphic image.
In heraldry The Rose of York is defined only in words Rose Argent barbed and seeded proper (a white Rose with sepals and seeds in their natural colours).[10] According to the College of Heralds, the heraldic rose may be used with ether a petal at the top or with a sepal at the top.[11] Traditionally, the rose is displayed with a petal at the top in the North Riding and West Riding but with a sepal at the top in the East Riding of Yorkshire,[11] However this custom is often disregarded.
International uses [ edit ]
The Yorkist rose is used in the seal of the City of York, Pennsylvania, which is known as White Rose City. The town's minor league baseball team, which played in different leagues for several decades, was called the York White Roses.
A 2016 York Revolution War of the Roses hat worn by Michael Rockett.
The white rose is also featured on one of the hats for York's current minor league baseball team, the York Revolution. The hats are worn during War of the Roses games vs. the Red Rose City, the Lancaster Barnstormers.
The York Rose features on the shield of Canada's York University.
The York Rose also features in the emblem of Lenana School, a tier-one High School in Nairobi, Kenya. Lenana School was formerly known as Duke of York School, after the Duke of York.
Queens County, New York uses the white and red rose on the county flag. Queens County was named after Queen consort Catherine of Braganza, spouse of Charles II who sent a fleet to New York in 1664 to recapture New Amsterdam from the Dutch and renamed New York for the Duke of York, James brother of Charles II.
White rose is also the coat of arms of Lithuanian town Alytus - the regional capital. It is also one of two coat of arms in the country that features roses. The largest pedestrian bridge built in 2013 - 2015 is also named "The bridge of White Rose". The name was chosen by the citizen of the town.
See also [ edit ]While we may have lost this particular battle, we certainly haven’t lost the fight. We and are allies mobilized like never before, and along the way I’m sure there were many acts of courage, both large and small, that made the margin between Yes and No razor thin.
Below is one such story. Gino VanGundy did something many of us would not have the courage to do: engage a “Yes on 8” supporter in their home and share how we feel about the issue, in the hopes of getting them to rethink their perceptions about marriage equality, and perhaps, us. But often we fall back on those feelings that kept us in the closet when confronting total strangers we fear are against us, to share who we are and where we stand. This makes Gino’s story all the more relevant.
If you have any stories or someone you would like to give tribute to or who inspired you, please email me at share@inlookout.com. I would love to post them here to inspire members of our community to be proud of who they are, to take a stand, and to make a difference.
Here’s Gino, in his own words, just a few days before the election…
Do you live in the suburbs? Are you tired of seeing the YES on Prop 8 signs everywhere and feeling like our voices are being drowned out by those that want to deny us (or your friends) our civil rights? I, for one, AM! They have even been coming to my front door. I have always taken the “nice guy” approach with them because mamma always said, “you can get much further with a teaspoon of honey than you can with a teaspoon of vinegar.” Speaking with them has been interesting, at best, but each time one leaves I find myself wondering, why the NO folks aren’t out there going door to door too. They have been coming to my door specifically because of the NO signs I have in my yard. Why shouldn’t we do the same?
About two weeks ago, as we were driving out of town on our daily trek from Fairfield to San Francisco (at 6am!) we were greeted by the largest YES banner we had ever seen! It was huge and stood about 12 feet in the air, was at least 6 feet wide and 4 feet high. Every morning for the last two weeks we have seen that sign staring down at us. To say that it has been an unpleasant way to start our day would be an understatement.
Today it hit me! If they can come to my front door, why can’t I go to theirs? I was admittedly terrified but decided that my first stop would be the house with the gigantic banner. I sat in my car for at least ten minutes as I mustered up the courage to actually ring the door bell. I thought, “deep breaths Gino, and just put one foot in front of the other” as I walked up the front walkway. I rang to doorbell and every natural instinct I had told me to run like hell! I stayed put and just as I was about to high-tail it out of there I heard the locks on the front door start to click. I was stuck! UGGH!
As the door slowly opened I was greeted by an older African American woman of about 75. Behind her stood a younger African American woman that was staring me down like I was not someone to be trusted. I smiled and introduced myself as a neighbor. I went on to ask them if they might be willing to discuss the banner that was looming over the busy street below. I sensed some indignation as in “who the hell are you to be telling me that I can’t put any damn sign I want in my yard?” I backpedaled and let them know that I believed it to be their right to hang whatever sign they choose and I went on to tell them that I was not there to attack them on their personal beliefs. I told them I was there to offer them a point of reference when thinking about the impact a YES vote on Prop 8 would have. “Well, what’s it matter to you? What are YOUR thoughts on the issue,” the younger woman said as she stepped out from behind the older woman. I took a big gulp and leapt right in! “Well,” I said, “for starters, I’m gay and the passage of Prop 8 would eliminate my right to equality under our Constitution.” Suddenly the older woman’s face softened and she said, “Well my sister works in San Francisco and she has a lot of gay friends and she wants me to take that damn thing down.” I saw an “in” but I waited for her to finish. “All this stuff is just too confusing to me! I’m not even a registered voter. Some guy knocked on my door and asked if he could put a sign in my yard to support some proposition. I told him that I didn’t care and the next time I went outside I looked up and saw this gigantic sign in MY BACKYARD!” “I never agreed to let him in my backyard he must have had a ladder because my gate is always locked.” “I’m just too old to get up there and take that thing down.” I had my in! “Oh, well if you’d like ME to take it down, I’d be happy to do that for you!” “Fine by me,” she said.
Unfortunately they did not have the key to the gate but I told them that I was more than happy to come back later when the person that had the key had returned. An hour later my daughter and I returned with our tools in hand and they happily let us into the backyard. Down came the sign, hugs given by all and my daughter and I expressed our sincerest appreciation as we left.
If you have thought of knocking on doors, now is the time. We have to get out and educate those that are blindly following, or worse, have been tricked into supporting something they do not fully understand. Be heard “stand up” and take the lumps that will surely come but know that there are people out there that support us but need some help to do it. One sign and one person at a time we can, at minimum, start to turn this dangerous tide.Scott Brown, the United States’ ambassador to New Zealand, said guests at a Peace Corps event in Samoa were “beautiful” and told a woman server she could make hundreds of dollars in hospitality in the US — prompting a State Department inquiry into his propriety at official events.
“Apparently somebody took offense to that,” the former Republican senator from Massachusetts said in a video addressing the incident. “I was in fact told by my people, you’re not Scott Brown from Rye, New Hampshire, anymore, you’re an ambassador. And you have to be aware — culturally aware — of different cultures, different insensitivities, and I’m always welcoming that kind of good advice.”
One witness at the July event told New Zealand’s television station 1 NEWS that the ambassador had behaved “obnoxiously” in front of the 250 guests, which included New Zealand dignitaries.
Brown said the incident was a misunderstanding and likely based in political motivations. “Politics is a blood sport back home, and at this event there were a lot of people that didn’t like the president,” Brown said in the video statement.
The reports come amid heightened scrutiny around sexual harassment claims in politics and entertainment. Brown has been accused of inappropriate comments in the past: In August 2016, a former Fox News host alleged in a lawsuit that Brown, who was a network contributor, had made sexually charged comments to her, suggesting she would “be fun to go to a nightclub with.” Brown denied the claims, calling them “totally false.”
Brown, an early supporter of President Donald Trump’s candidacy in 2016, has been serving as the ambassador to New Zealand — and the envoy to Samoa — since June. He served as the senator from Massachusetts from 2010 to 2013, claiming an upset win to fill a vacant seat after Ted Kennedy’s death. He was unseated by Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2012 and ran another unsuccessful Senate bid in New Hampshire in 2014.
In the video statement, Brown said both he and his wife made similar comments at the event, explaining that they had seen people at the event earlier in the day “and they were all dirty and grungy, and when we walked in, they were all dressed to the nines; they looked great,” which is why he said they were “beautiful.”
His comment to the female server whom he told could make hundreds in the United States, he said, was his way of complimenting the caliber of the service.
“Will I say it again? Probably not,” Brown said.Netflix is growing - and fast.
But in the last 90-day period, the streaming service added more subscribers internationally than it did domestically. We know this because the company just announced its third quarter earnings, reporting $1.74 billion in revenue and $74 million in profit. For comparison purposes, it reported $110 million in profit during the same period last year.
Netflix therefore fell slightly short of what Wall Street analysts had predicted:$1.75 billion in revenue and earnings of 12 cents a share. Apart from the financial stuff, Netflix reported how well it's doing in terms of subscribers.
It added 3.62 million new subscribers, which includes 880,000 domestically and 2.74 million internationally, meaning Netflix beat its own expectations and now has 69.17 million subscribers worldwide. It is on target to hit 70 million by the end of the year. Although subscriber count is higher than expected, US growth didn't match expectations.
Netflix anticipated a 1.15 million increase in the US - based in part on the fact that it had a 980,000 subscriber boost in the US during the same period last year. In response to the sluggish growth, Netflix said it was due to "the ongoing transition to chip-based credit and debit cards" and its "inability to collect".
Nevertheless, Netflix predicted it'll add 1.65 million new subscribers in the US in the fourth quarter this year. Following the release of its earnings on Wednesday, Netflix stock dipped 6 per cent in after hours trading.
Tune into Netflix's webcast at 2 pm PST to hear comments from executives.
READ: Netflix review: The leading light in home entertainmentForget about brain tumours, mobile phones may also cause your bones to crumble, scientists in Argentina appear to have discovered.
Medical researchers at the National University of Cuyo believe that cellular phones may increase the likelihood of developing Osteoporosis, a skeletal disease characterised by reduced bone mass and deterioration which can lead to skeletal fragility.
The team studied 48 healthy adult men for a year, asking half of them to carry a mobile phone close to their right hip, and the other half, the control group, to continue not to use a phone at all.
The phone users, on average, carried their phones for 11 hours a day and have done so for over five years. In a healthy body, bones are remade every 11 years.
When their bones were subsequently tested and measured using x-ray absorption techniques, the fellows with phones showed "significantly lower" bone mineral content (BMC) and bone mineral density (BMD) between the upper right femur - near where the phone was carried - and the upper left femur.
The team noted that the phone users were generally younger and weighed less than those participants who didn't use a phone. Their heights were much of a muchness. BMC also declined with age, while bone mineral density (BMD) rose with weight, but these factors led to changes on both sides of the body.
The study notes that these effects may not apply to women or kids.
"The different patterns of right-left asymmetry in femoral bone mineral found in mobile cell phone users and non-users are consistent with a nonthermal effect of electromagnetic radiofrequency waves," the team said. The results "suggest that these devices may adversely affect bone mineralisation". ®ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani military will shoot down any US drone that intrudes the country's airspace under a new defence policy in which troops have been given greater liberty to respond to incursions by Nato and allied forces in Afghanistan, according to a media report."Any object entering into our airspace, including US drones, will be treated as hostile and be shot down," a senior unnamed Pakistani military official was quoted as saying by NBC News.The defence policy was changed after a Nato air strike on two military border posts killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on November 26.Following the air strike, army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani issued a communique that gave troops in the field full liberty to respond to any future attacks without consulting their superiors.Kayani issued multiple directives since the November 26 attack, including orders to shoot down US drones, senior military officials said.Pakistan also shut down all Nato supply routes and asked the US to vacate the Shamsi airfield in Balochistan province by December 11.Experts | Staff | Board of Directors | Contact | Donate | Impact
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About EPI. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank created in 1986 to include the needs of low- and middle-income workers in economic policy discussions. EPI believes every working person deserves a good job with fair pay, affordable health care, and retirement security. To achieve this goal, EPI conducts research and analysis on the economic status of working America. EPI proposes public policies that protect and improve the economic conditions of low- and middle-income workers and assesses policies with respect to how they affect those workers.
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or graduates study for the bar exam. Loan terms range from one to 20 years. Bar loans also typically have higher interest rates than private or federal student loans do.
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International student loans
Students who aren’t U.S. citizens generally won’t qualify for federal student loans (unless you’re an eligible noncitizen). Several private lenders offer loans for international students, and they often require a U.S. citizen co-signer.
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Medical school loans
Private student loans may offer lower interest rates than federal loans for medical students with good credit. But they don’t come with forgiveness options if you work for a nonprofit hospital after graduation, which would qualify you for federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
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Student loans for bad credit
Most federal student loans don’t require a credit check, so they’re your best option. If you need more money for school, a handful of private lenders offer loans specifically for borrowers with bad credit. They’ll decide whether to lend to you based on additional factors like earning potential.
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Student loans without a co-signer
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State loans
Many states offer their own loan programs, but they generally behave more like private loans than federal loans. Search the U.S. Department of Education’s database of state loan options to see what’s available where you live.
Credit union loans
Credit unions and community banks offer private loans, too. If you have an existing relationship with one of these institutions, you may have access to more favorable terms and discounts on your loan than larger financial institutions offer.
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Types of student loan refinancing
After you graduate and have shown responsible payment history, you may be able to refinance student loans. That’s when a private lender pays off your loans and gives you a new repayment schedule and lower interest rate. Generally, you need a credit score of 690 or higher to refinance. You’ll lose federal loan protections if you include federal loans in the package.
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Medical school refinance loans: after residency
As an attending physician with strong income and good credit, you’re an excellent candidate for refinancing. Steer clear if you plan to take advantage of federal loan programs like income-driven repayment or forgiveness.
» COMPARE: Refinancing options after residencyMedia playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Ch Supt Alasdair Robinson: "Anyone within 50 metres of a 600Ib bomb would be killed"
Police have said that a bomb found at the border near Newry contained 600 pounds of explosives and was fully primed.
The device, which had been placed in an abandoned van on the Fathom Line, was discovered on Thursday.
It was made safe on Friday evening.
Ch Supt Alasdair Robinson said the bomb was twice as big as the bomb that exploded outside Newry courthouse two years ago.
"If this had exploded it would have caused devastation," he said.
"To put it in perspective - anyone within 50m of this device would have been killed and anyone within 100m, seriously injured."
The police chief also rejected criticism that motorists had been able to drive past the bomb and said police had closed a main cross-border road within 12 minutes.
"Many police services would struggle to get an international border road closed in this time frame," he added.
"There was some residual traffic following the closures and, while we made the public aware of the road closures and advised them to avoid the area, a few cars ignored our advice.
"We do everything in our power to protect human life."
The Fathom Line was closed for 24 hours while the police and Army dealt with the alert.
Ulster Unionist MLA for the area, Danny Kennedy said if the bomb had exploded it would have caused serious destruction.
He said: "It had the potential to cause lethal damage.
"A 600 pound device at the road side waiting for a police patrol. It is just unthinkable."
Abandoned
A member of the public reported the discovery of a suspicious vehicle to police on Thursday.
It had been abandoned with its engine running.
Dissident republican paramilitaries have been blamed for a number of bomb attacks in the city in recent years.
Earlier this month, a bomb was found near the Cloghogue roundabout in Newry, just off the main Belfast to Dublin dual carriageway.
Police said the device contained a significant amount of explosives and had the potential to kill.
It was also made safe by army bomb experts.James Bryant Conant (March 26, 1893 – February 11, 1978) was an American chemist, a transformative President of Harvard University, and the first U.S. Ambassador to West Germany. Conant obtained a PhD in Chemistry from Harvard in 1916. During World War I he served in the U.S. Army, working on the development of poison gases. He became an assistant professor of chemistry at Harvard in 1919, and the Sheldon Emery Professor of Organic Chemistry in 1929. He researched the physical structures of natural products, particularly chlorophyll, and he was one of the first to explore the sometimes complex relationship between chemical equilibrium and the reaction rate of chemical processes. He studied the biochemistry of oxyhemoglobin providing insight into the disease methemoglobinemia, helped to explain the structure of chlorophyll, and contributed important insights that underlie modern theories of acid-base chemistry.
In 1933, Conant became the President of Harvard University with a reformist agenda that involved dispensing with a number of customs, including class rankings and the requirement for Latin classes. He abolished athletic scholarships, and instituted an "up or out" policy, under which scholars who were not promoted were terminated. His egalitarian vision of education required a diversified student body, and he promoted the adoption of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and co-educational classes. During his presidency, women were admitted to Harvard Medical School and Harvard Law School for the first time.
Conant was appointed to the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) in 1940, becoming its chairman in 1941. In this capacity, he oversaw vital wartime research projects, including the development of synthetic rubber, and the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bombs. On July 16, 1945, he was among the dignitaries present at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range for the Trinity nuclear test, the first detonation of an atomic bomb, and was part of the Interim Committee that advised President Harry S. Truman to use atomic bombs on Japan. After the war, he served on the Joint Research and Development Board (JRDC) that was established to coordinate burgeoning defense research, and on the influential General Advisory Committee (GAC) of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC); in the latter capacity he advised the president against starting a development program for the "hydrogen bomb".
In his later years at Harvard, Conant taught undergraduate courses on the history and philosophy of science, and wrote books explaining the scientific method to laymen. In 1953 he retired as President of Harvard and became the United States High Commissioner for Germany, overseeing the restoration of German sovereignty after World War II, and then was Ambassador to West Germany until 1957. On returning to the United States, he criticized the education system in works such as The American High School Today (1959), Slums and Suburbs (1961) and The Education of American Teachers (1963). Between 1965 and 1969, Conant, suffering from a heart condition, worked on his autobiography, My Several Lives (1970). He became increasingly infirm, suffered a series of strokes in 1977, and died in a nursing home the following year.
Early life [ edit ]
James Bryant Conant was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, on March 26, 1893, the third child and only son of James Scott Conant, a photoengraver, and his wife Jennett Orr née Bryant. Conant was one of 35 boys who passed the competitive admission exam for the Roxbury Latin School in West Roxbury in 1904. He graduated near the top of his class in 1910. Encouraged by his science teacher, Newton H. Black, in September of that year he entered Harvard College, where he studied physical chemistry under Theodore W. Richards and organic chemistry under Elmer P. Kohler. He was also an editor of The Harvard Crimson. He joined the Signet Society and Delta Upsilon, and was initiated as a brother of the Omicron Chapter of Alpha Chi Sigma in 1912.[6] He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with his Bachelor of Arts in June 1913. He then went to work on his doctorate, which was an unusual double dissertation. The first part, supervised by Richards, concerned "The Electrochemical Behavior of Liquid Sodium Amalgams"; the second, supervised by Kohler, was "A Study of Certain Cyclopropane Derivatives". Harvard awarded Conant his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1916.[8]
In 1915, Conant entered into a business partnership with two other Harvard chemistry graduates, Stanley Pennock and Chauncey Loomis, to form the LPC Laboratories. They opened a plant in a one-story building in Queens, New York, where they manufactured chemicals used by the pharmaceutical industry like benzoic acid that were selling at high prices on account of the interruption of imports from Germany due to World War I. In 1916, the departure of organic chemist Roger Adams created a vacancy at Harvard that was offered to Conant. Since he aspired to an academic career, Conant accepted the offer and returned to Harvard. On November 27, 1916, an explosion killed Pennock and two others and completely destroyed the plant. A contributing cause was Conant's faulty test procedures.
Following the United States declaration of war on Germany, Conant was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Sanitary Corps on September 22, 1917. He went to the Camp American University, where he worked on the development of poison gases. Initially, his work concentrated on mustard gas, but in May 1918 Conant took charge of a unit concerned with the development of lewisite. He was promoted to major on July 20, 1918. A pilot plant was built, and then a full-scale production plant in Cleveland, but the war ended before lewisite could be used in battle.
Conant was appointed an assistant professor of chemistry at Harvard in 1919. The following year he became engaged to Richards's daughter, Grace (Patty) Thayer Richards. They were married in the Appleton Chapel at Harvard on April 17, 1920, and had two sons, James Richards Conant, born in May 1923, and Theodore Richards Conant, born in July 1928.
Chemistry professor [ edit ]
Conant became an associate professor in 1924.[13] In 1925, he visited Germany, then the heart of chemical research, for eight months. He toured the major universities and laboratories there and met many of the leading chemists, including Theodor Curtius, Kazimierz Fajans, Hans Fischer, Arthur Hantzsch, Hans Meerwein, Jakob Meisenheimer, Hermann Staudinger, Adolf Windaus and Karl Ziegler. After Conant returned to the United States, Arthur Amos Noyes made him an attractive offer to move to Caltech. The President of Harvard, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, made a counter offer: immediate promotion to professor, effective September 1, 1927, with a salary of $7,000 (roughly equivalent to US$100,964 as of 2019[16]) and a grant of $9,000 per annum for research. Conant accepted and stayed at Harvard. In 1929, he became the Sheldon Emery Professor of Organic Chemistry, and then, in 1931, the Chairman of the Chemistry Department.[13]
Between 1928 and 1933, Conant published 55 papers. Much of his research, like his double thesis, combined natural product chemistry with physical organic chemistry. Based on his exploration of reaction rates in chemical equilibria, Conant was one of the first to recognise that the kinetics of these systems is sometimes straightforward and simple, yet quite complex in other cases. Conant studied the effect of haloalkane structure on the rate of substitution with inorganic iodide salts[19] which, together with earlier work,[20] led to what is now known as either the Conant-Finkelstein reaction or more commonly simply the Finkelstein reaction.[21] A recent application of this reaction involved the preparation of an iodinated polyvinyl chloride from regular PVC.[22] A combination of Conant's work on the kinetics of hydrogenation and George Kistiakowsky's work on the enthalpy changes of these reactions[23] supported the later development of the theory of hyperconjugation.
Conant's investigations helped in the development of a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of acids and bases. He investigated the properties of certain acids which were many times stronger than mineral acid solutions in water. Conant christened them "superacids" and laid the foundation for the development of the Hammett acidity function.[27] These investigations used acetic acid as the solvent and demonstrated that sodium acetate behaves as a base under these conditions.[28][29] This observation is consistent with Brønsted–Lowry acid–base theory (published in 1923)[30] but cannot be explained under older Arrhenius theory approaches. Later work with George Wheland[31] and extended by William Kirk McEwen[32] looked at the properties of hydrocarbons as very weak acids, including acetophenone, phenylacetylene, fluorene and diphenylmethane. Conant can be considered alongside Brønsted, Lowry, Lewis, and Hammett as a developer of modern understanding of acids and bases.
Between 1929 and his retirement from chemical research in 1933, Conant published papers in Science,[35][36] Nature,[37] and the Journal of the American Chemical Society about chlorophyll and its structure.[38] Though the complete structure eluded him, his work did support and contribute to Nobel laureate Hans Fischer's ultimate determination of the structure in 1939.[39] Conant's work on chlorophyll was recognised when he was inducted as a foreign Fellow of the Royal Society[1] on May 2, 1941.[40] He also published three papers describing the polymerisation of isoprene to prepare synthetic rubber.
Another line of research involved the biochemistry of the hemoglobin-oxyhemoglobin system. Conant ran a series of experiments with electrochemical oxidation and reduction, following in the footsteps of the famous German chemist and Nobel laureate Fritz Haber. He determined that the iron centre in methemoglobin is a ferric (FeIII) centre, unlike the ferrous (FeII) centre found in normal hemoglobin,[42][43] and this difference in oxidation state is the cause of methemoglobinemia, a medical condition which causes tissue hypoxia.[44]
Conant wrote a chemistry textbook with his former science teacher Black, entitled Practical Chemistry, which was published in 1920, with a revised edition in 1929. This was superseded in 1937 by their New Practical Chemistry, which in turn had a revised edition in 1946. The text proved a popular one; it was adopted by 75 universities, and Conant received thousands of dollars in royalties. For his accomplishments in chemistry, he was awarded the American Chemical Society's Nichols Medal in 1932, Columbia University's Chandler Medal in 1932,[47] and the American Chemical Society's highest honor, the Priestley Medal, in 1944.[48] He also received the society's Charles Lathrop Parsons Award in 1955, for public service.[49] He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1924,[50] and the National Academy of Sciences in 1929.[13] Notable students of Conant's included Paul Doughty Bartlett, George Wheland, and Frank Westheimer. In 1932 he was also honored by membership of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.[51]
After some months of lobbying and discussion, Harvard's ruling body, the Harvard Corporation, announced on May 8, 1933, that it had elected Conant as the next President of Harvard. Alfred North Whitehead, Harvard's eminent professor of philosophy disagreed with the decision, declaring, "The Corporation should not have elected a chemist to the Presidency." "But", Corporation member Grenville Clark reminded him, "Eliot was a chemist, and our best president too." "I know", replied Whitehead "but Eliot was a bad chemist." Clark was very much responsible for Conant's election.
President of Harvard [ edit ]
On October 9, 1933, Conant became the President of Harvard University with a low-key installation ceremony in the Faculty Room of University Hall.[55] This set the tone for Conant's presidency as one of informality and reform. At his inauguration he accepted the charter and seal presented to John Leverett the Younger in 1707, but dropped a number of other customs, including the singing of Gloria Patri and the Latin Oration. This was a sign of things to come. While, unlike some other universities, Harvard did not require Greek or Latin for entrance, they were worth double credits towards admission, and students like Conant who had studied Latin were awarded an A.B. degree while those who had not, received an S.B. One of his first efforts at reform was to attempt to abolish this distinction, which took over a decade to accomplish. But in 1937 he wrote:
I do not see how one can make very much headway as a student... of history and literature without a reading knowledge of Latin. I do not see how a person can go very far in any branch of science without a thorough understanding of mathematics, and if the underpinning was bad in school, probably the necessary calculus and so forth would not have been taken during the college years. I know that a man cannot be a research chemist without a reading knowledge of German. It is hard to acquire it as the first language in college.
Other reforms included the abolition of class rankings and athletic scholarships, but his first, longest and most bitter battle was over tenure reform, shifting to an "up or out" policy, under which scholars who were not promoted were terminated. A small number of extra-departmental positions was set aside for outstanding scholars. This policy led junior faculty to revolt, and nearly resulted in Conant's dismissal in 1938. Conant was fond of saying: "Behold the turtle. It makes progress only when it sticks its neck out."
Conant added new graduate degrees in education, history of science and public policy, and he introduced the Nieman Fellowship for journalists to study at Harvard, the first of which was awarded in 1939.[64] He supported the "meatballs", as lower class students were called. He instituted the Harvard national scholarships for underprivileged students.[55] Dudley House was opened as a place where non-resident students could stay. Conant asked two of his assistant deans, Henry Chauncey and William Bender, to determine whether the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) was a good measure of academic potential. When they reported that it was, Conant adopted it. He waged a ten-year campaign for the consolidation of testing services, which resulted in the creation of the Educational Testing Service in 1946, with Chauncey as its director. Theodore H. White, a Boston Jewish meatball who received a personal letter of introduction from Conant so that he could report on the Chinese Civil War, noted that "Conant was the first president to recognize that meatballs were Harvard men too."
Instead of conducting separate but identical undergraduate courses for Harvard students and students from Radcliffe College, Conant instituted co-educational classes. It was during his presidency that the first class of women were admitted to Harvard Medical School in 1945, and Harvard Law School in 1950.[68] Lowell, Conant's predecessor, had imposed a 15 percent quota on Jewish students in 1922, something Conant had voted to support. This quota was later substituted with geographic distribution preferences, having the same effect of limiting Jewish admission. In the words of historians Morton and Phyllis Keller, "Conant's pro-quota position in the early 1920s, his preference for more students from small towns and cities and the South and West, and his cool response to the plight of the Jewish academic refugees from Hitler suggest that he shared the mild antisemitism common to his social group and time. But his commitment to meritocracy made him more ready to accept able Jews as students and faculty."
In 1934, Harvard-educated German businessman Ernst Hanfstaengl attended the 25th anniversary reunion of his class of 1909, and gave a number of speeches, including the 1934 commencement address. Hanfstaengl wrote out a check for 2,500 Reichsmarks (roughly equivalent to US$196,653 as of 2019) to Conant for a scholarship to enable an outstanding Harvard student to study for a year in Germany.[72] The President and Fellows of Harvard College rejected the offer due to Hanfstaengl's Nazi associations. When the issue of Hanfstaengl's scholarship came up again in 1936, Conant turned the money down a second time.[75] Hanfstaengl's presence on campus prompted a series of anti-Nazi demonstrations, in which a number of Harvard and MIT students were arrested. Conant made a personal plea for clemency that resulted in two girls being acquitted, but six boys and a girl were sentenced to six months in prison.[76]
When the University of Berlin awarded an honorary degree in 1934 to American legal scholar and Dean of Harvard Law School Roscoe Pound, who had toured Germany earlier that year and made no secret of his admiration for the Nazi regime,[77] Conant refused to order Pound not to accept it, and attended the informal award ceremony at Harvard where Pound was presented with the degree by Hans Luther, the German ambassador to the United States.[79] While Conant declined to participate in the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars, Harvard awarded honorary degrees to two notable displaced scholars, Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein, in 1935. What Conant feared most was disruption to Harvard's tercentennial celebrations in 1936, but there was no trouble, despite the presence of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the President of the United States, and a Harvard graduate of the class of 1904, whom many Harvard graduates regarded as a socialist and a class traitor. It was only with difficulty that Lowell was persuaded to be presiding officer at an event at which Roosevelt spoke.
An incident took place during the 1941 Harvard–Navy lacrosse game, when the Harvard Crimson men's lacrosse team attempted to field a player of African-American descent. The Navy Midshipmen men's lacrosse team's coach then refused to field his team. Harvard's athletic director, William J. Bingham, overruled his lacrosse coach, and had the player, Lucien Victor Alexis, Jr., sent back to Cambridge on a train. Conant subsequently apologized to the Commandant of Midshipmen. After serving in World War II, Alexis was refused admittance to Harvard Medical School on the grounds that, as the only black student, he would have no one to room with. Alexis graduated from Harvard Business School instead.[84]
National Defense Research Committee [ edit ]
In June 1940, with World War II already raging in Europe, Vannevar Bush, the director of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, recruited Conant to the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), although he remained president of Harvard. Bush envisaged the NDRC as bringing scientists together to ""conduct research for the creation and improvement of instrumentalities, methods and materials of warfare." Although the United States had not yet entered the war, Conant was not alone in his conviction that Nazi Germany had to be stopped, and that the United States would inevitably become embroiled in the conflict. The immediate task, as Conant saw it, was therefore to organize American science for war. He became head of the NDRC's Division B, the division responsible for bombs, fuels, gases and chemicals. On June 28, 1941, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8807, which created the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD),[89] with Bush as its director. Conant succeeded Bush as Chairman of the NDRC, which was subsumed into the OSRD. Roger Adams, a contemporary of Conant's at Harvard in the 1910s, succeeded him as head of Division B. Conant became the driving force of the NDRC on personnel and policy matters. The NDRC would work hand in hand with the Army and Navy's research efforts, supplementing rather than supplanting them. It was specifically charged with investigating nuclear fission.
In February 1941, Roosevelt sent Conant to Britain as head of a mission that also included Frederick L. Hovde from Purdue University and Carroll L. Wilson from MIT, to evaluate the research being carried out there and the prospects for cooperation. The 1940 Tizard Mission had revealed that American technology was some years behind that of Britain in many fields, most notably radar, and cooperation was eagerly sought. Conant had lunch with Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Frederick Lindemann, his leading scientific adviser, and an audience with King George VI at Buckingham Palace. At a subsequent meeting, Lindemann told Conant about British progress towards developing an atomic bomb. What most impressed Conant was the British conviction that it was feasible. That the British program was ahead of the American one raised the possibility in Conant's mind that the German nuclear energy project might be even further ahead, as Germany was generally acknowledged to be a world leader in nuclear physics. Later that year, Churchill, as Chancellor of the University of Bristol, conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws degree on Conant in absentia.[96][97]
Conant subsequently moved to restrict cooperation with Britain on nuclear energy, particularly its post-war aspects, and became involved in heated negotiations with Wallace Akers, the representative of Tube Alloys, the British atomic project. Conant's tough stance, under which the British were excluded except where their assistance was vital, resulted in British retaliation, and a complete breakdown of cooperation. His objections were swept aside by Roosevelt, who brokered the 1943 Quebec Agreement with Churchill, that restored full cooperation. After the Quebec Conference, Churchill visited Conant at Harvard, where Conant returned the 1941 gesture and presented Churchill with an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.[101] After the United States entered the war in December 1941, the OSRD handed the atomic bomb project, better known as the Manhattan Project,[102] over to the Army, with Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves as project director. A meeting that included Conant decided Groves should be answerable to a small committee called the Military Policy Committee, chaired by Bush, with Conant as his alternate. Thus, Conant remained involved in the administration of the Manhattan Project at its highest levels.
In August 1942, Roosevelt appointed Conant to the Rubber Survey Committee. Chaired by Bernard M. Baruch, a trusted adviser and confidant of Roosevelt, the committee was tasked with reviewing the synthetic rubber program.[104] Corporations used patent laws to restrict competition and stifle innovation. When the Japanese occupation of Malaya, North Borneo and Sarawak, followed by the Japanese occupation of Indonesia, cut off 90 percent of the supply of natural rubber,[104] the rubber shortage became a national scandal, and the development of synthetic substitutes, an urgent priority.[104] Baruch dealt with the difficult political issues; Conant concerned himself with the technical ones. There were a number of different synthetic rubber products to choose from. In addition to DuPont's neoprene, Standard Oil had licensed German patents for a copolymer called Buna-N and a related product, Buna-S. None had been manufactured on the scale now required, and there was pressure from agricultural interests to choose a process which involved making raw materials from farm products. The Rubber Survey Committee made a series of recommendations, including the appointment of a rubber director, and the construction and operation of 51 factories to supply the materials needed for synthetic rubber production.[104] Technical problems dogged the program through 1943, but by late 1944 plants were in operation with an annual capacity of over a million tons, most of which was Buna-S.
In May 1945, Conant became part of the Interim Committee that was formed to advise the new president, Harry S. Truman on nuclear weapons. The Interim Committee decided that the atomic bomb should be used against an industrial target in Japan as soon as possible and without warning. On July 16, 1945, Conant was among the dignitaries present at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range for the Trinity nuclear test, the first detonation of an atomic bomb. After the war, Conant became concerned about growing criticism in the United States of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by figures like Norman Cousins and Reinhold Niebuhr. He played an important behind-the-scenes role in shaping public opinion by instigating and then editing an influential February 1947 Harper's article entitled "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb". Written by former Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson with the help of McGeorge Bundy, the article stressed that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were used to avoid the possibility of "over a million casualties", from a figure found in the estimates given to the Joint Chiefs of Staff by its Joint Planning Staff in 1945.
Cold War [ edit ]
The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 replaced the wartime Manhattan Project with the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) on January 1, 1947. The Act also established the General Advisory Committee (GAC) within the AEC to provide it with scientific and technical advice. It was widely expected that Conant would chair the GAC, but the position went to Robert Oppenheimer, the wartime director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory that had designed and developed the first atomic bombs. At the same time, the Joint Research and Development Board (JRDC) was established to coordinate defense research, and Bush asked Conant to head its atomic energy subcommittee, on which Oppenheimer also served. When the new AEC chairman David E. Lilienthal raised security concerns about Oppenheimer's relationships with communists, including Oppenheimer's brother Frank Oppenheimer, his wife Kitty and his former girlfriend Jean Tatlock, Bush and Conant reassured Lilienthal that they had known about it when they had placed Oppenheimer in charge at Los Alamos in 1942. With such expressions of support, AEC issued Oppenheimer a Q clearance, granting him access to atomic secrets.
President Harry S. Truman, center, in 1948 presents Conant, at right, with the civilian Medal for Merit award with bronze palm. Vannevar Bush watches at left.
By September 1948, the Red Scare began to take hold, and Conant called for a ban on hiring teachers who were communists, although not for the dismissal of those who had already been hired. A debate ensued over whether communist educators could teach apolitical subjects. Conant was a member of the Educational Policies Commission (EPC), a body to which he had been appointed in 1941. When it next met in March 1949, Conant's push for a ban was supported by the president of Columbia University, General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower. The two found common ground in their belief in ideology-based education, which Conant called "democratic education". He did not see public education as a side effect of American democracy, but as one of its principal driving forces, and he disapproved of the public funding of denominational schools that he observed in Australia during his visit there in 1951. He called for increased federal spending on education, and higher taxes to redistribute wealth. His thinking was outlined in his books Education in a Divided World in 1948, and Education and Liberty in 1951. In 1952, he went further and endorsed the dismissal of academics who invoked the Fifth under questioning by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
A sign of Conant's declining influence occurred in 1950, when he was passed over for the post of President of the National Academy of Sciences in favor of Detlev Bronk, the President of Johns Hopkins University, after a "revolt" by scientists unhappy with Conant. The GAC was enormously influential throughout the late 1940s, but the opposition of Oppenheimer and Conant to the development of the hydrogen bomb, only to be overridden by Truman in 1950, diminished its stature. It was reduced further when Oppenheimer and Conant were not reappointed when their terms expired in 1952, depriving the GAC of its two best-known members. Conant was appointed to the National Science Board, which administered the new National Science Foundation, and was elected its chairman, but this body had little financial or political clout. In April 1951, Truman appointed Conant to the Science Advisory Committee, but it would not develop into an influential body until the Eisenhower administration.
Conant's experience with the Manhattan Project convinced him that the public needed a better understanding of science, and he moved to revitalize the history and philosophy of science program at Harvard. He took the lead personally by teaching a new undergraduate course, Natural Science 4, "On Understanding Science". His course notes became the basis for a book of the same name, published in 1948. In 1952, he began teaching another undergraduate course, Philosophy 150, "A Philosophy of Science". In his teachings and writing on the philosophy of science, he drew heavily on those of his Harvard colleague Willard Van Orman Quine. Conant contributed four chapters to the 1957 Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science, including an account of the overthrow of the phlogiston theory. In 1951, he published Science and Common Sense, in which he attempted to explain the ways of scientists to laymen. Conant's ideas about scientific progress would come under attack by his own protégés, notably Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Conant commented on Kuhn's manuscript in draft form.
High Commissioner [ edit ]
In April 1951 Conant had been approached by the Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, about replacing John J. McCloy as United States High Commissioner for Germany, but had declined. However, after Eisenhower was elected president in 1952, Conant was again offered the job by the new Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, and this time he accepted. At the Harvard Board of Overseers meeting on January 12, 1952, Conant announced that he would retire in September 1953 after twenty years at Harvard, having reached the pension age of sixty.
In Germany, there were major issues to be decided. Germany was still occupied by the Soviet Union, the United States, Great Britain and France. Dealing with the wartime allies was a major task for the high commissioner. West Germany, made up of the zones occupied by the three western powers, had been granted control of its own affairs, except for defense and foreign policy, in 1949. While most Germans wanted a neutral and reunited Germany, the Eisenhower administration sought to reduce its defense spending by rearming Germany and replacing American troops with Germans. Meanwhile, the House Un-American Activities Committee slammed Conant's staff as communist sympathizers and called for books by communist authors held in United States Information Agency (USIA) libraries in Germany to be burned.
The first crisis to occur on Conant's watch was the uprising of 1953 in East Germany. This brought the reunification issue to the fore. Konrad Adenauer's deft handling of the issue enabled him to handily win re-election as Chancellor of West Germany in September, but this also strengthened his hand in negotiations with Conant. Adenauer did not want his country to become a bargaining chip between the United States and the Soviet Union, nor did he want it to become a nuclear battlefield, a prospect raised by the arrival of American tactical nuclear weapons in 1953 as part of the Eisenhower administration's New Look policy. Conant lobbied for the European Defense Community, which would have established a pan-European military. This seemed to be the only way that German rearmament would be accepted, but opposition from France killed the plan. In what Conant considered a minor miracle, France's actions cleared the way for West Germany to become part of NATO with its own army.
At noon on May 6, 1955, Conant, along with the high commissioners from Britain and France, signed the documents ending Allied control of West Germany, admitting it to NATO, and allowing it to rearm. The office of the United States High Commissioner was abolished and Conant became instead the first United States Ambassador to West Germany. His role was now to encourage West Germany to build up its forces, while reassuring the Germans that doing so would not result in a United States withdrawal. Being fluent in German, Conant was able to give speeches to German audiences. He paid numerous visits to German educational and scientific organizations.
Later life [ edit ]
Conant returned to the United States in February 1957, and moved to an apartment on the Upper East Side of New York. Between 1957 and 1965, the Carnegie Corporation of New York gave him over a million dollars to write studies of education. In 1959 he published The American High School Today. This became a best seller, resulting in Conant's appearance on the cover of Time magazine on September 14, 1959.[146] In it, Conant called for a number of reforms, including the consolidation of high schools into larger bodies that could offer a broader range of curriculum choices. Although it was slammed by critics of the American system, who hoped for a system of education based on the European model, it did lead |
Pay - Too new, huge premine, ICO, no block explorer even though it's new, and block rewards increase instead of decrease
XBS BitStake - Involves a centralized service which has been shut down, and was run by people in Nigeria, and involves bank transfers with Nigerian bank accounts? Also no explorer.
XCE Cerium - Too new, no explorer, already delisted from all exchanges
XCH ClearingHouse - No block explorer
XDQ Dirac - No explorer, but XDQ would be a good coin to spend at Dairy Queen
XEMP EmpoCredits - Too new, only traded at its own exchange?
XFC Forevercoin - Too expensive, no explorer, too many coins
XGR GoldReserve - No explorer, no exchanges
XLB Libertycoin - Official explorer link has tranny porn; explores gender roles, but not the blockchain
XMG Magi - Marketcap too high for now
XNC XENcoin - No block explorer, dead?
XPB Pebblecoin - No explorer, cryptonote coin so burn addresses aren't possible?
XPH Pharma - Specs unavailable, too high inflation/PoS rewards
XQN Quotient - No explorer, recent community takeover, users have informally voted against BARR exchange
XRA Ratecoin - Marketcap too high for now
XSEED BitSeeds - Too much premine
XST Stealthcoin - Marketcap too high for now
XUP Upcoin - Too new, no block explorer, no exchange except Yobit, questionable ICO/cloudmining scheme, dev was supposed to burn coins but used a fake burn address and spent them?
XVI Vibranium - Too new, explorer is down, High PoS masternodes
XWT World Trade Funds (WTF Coin) - No explorer?
XXX XxXcoin - NSFW
YAC Yacoin - Explorer offline?
ZED Zedcoin - Blockchain is forked beyond all recognition
ZNY Bitzeny - Very little forum activity, explorer doesn't show current supply
ZOOM Zoom - Too new, but otherwise could be eligible in the future
ZS ZimStake - No explorer, no exchanges?
$MINE InstaMineNuggets - Over 50% of current supply is premine
$MINEW InstaMineNuggets Class A - Premine is about 50% of current supply? Or is that only for the other InstaMineNuggets coin?
$MINEZ InstaMineNuggets Class B - Premine is about 50% of current supply? Or is that only for the other InstaMineNuggets coin?
$$$ Money - Problems finding connections? Very little forum activity, no active exchanges?
Please let us know if any of our information is incorrect, or if you think one of these coins should be reconsidered for burn redemption.
Most of our information comes from CoinMarketCap, Bitcointalk, and Google searches, but we can easily miss a coin being listed at another exchange, a new block explorer, or other important information that could change a coin's eligibility status.
CoinMarketCap has removed coins that are only listed at AllCoin, because AllCoin is offline (hopefully it's temporary). So, again, this information is constantly changing. Burning Altcoins for Redemption and Reduction - http://barr.me
BARR_Official
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Hero MemberActivity: 630Merit: 500 Re: [ANN] [BARR] Burning Altcoins for Redemption and Reduction - Multi-Proof-of-Burn October 25, 2015, 02:14:03 AM #11 Quote from: BitcoinNational on October 25, 2015, 01:54:42 AM
small note... if there was a dispute someone could just sign a message or send an amount from the address to 'prove' they hold the key/rights.
Good point. Unfortunately I think a lot of these coins will be sent from exchanges, in which case that wouldn't work.
As to the ineligible coins, being on that list doesn't mean it's a bad coin. It just means it won't work for burn exchange - maybe because there's no block explorer, or maybe just because there's no chance of destroying the supply because high mining rewards are still ongoing. Of course if a coin's marketcap is too high we won't be able to burn it, so being eligible for burn is a separate issue from being a good coin. And a large premine doesn't necessarily disqualify a coin, unless it's likely that the premine is still mostly held by the devs. We want to give BARR to crypto holders, not reward scammers for hodling their own premine.
But we definitely need feedback on anything we got wrong, because we are going to need a lot of coins to burn. Good point. Unfortunately I think a lot of these coins will be sent from exchanges, in which case that wouldn't work.As to the ineligible coins, being on that list doesn't mean it's a bad coin. It just means it won't work for burn exchange - maybe because there's no block explorer, or maybe just because there's no chance of destroying the supply because high mining rewards are still ongoing. Of course if a coin's marketcap is too high we won't be able to burn it, so being eligible for burn is a separate issue from being a good coin. And a large premine doesn't necessarily disqualify a coin, unless it's likely that the premine is still mostly held by the devs. We want to give BARR to crypto holders, not reward scammers for hodling their own premine.But we definitely need feedback on anything we got wrong, because we are going to need a lot of coins to burn. Burning Altcoins for Redemption and Reduction - http://barr.me
zodiac3011
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Hero MemberActivity: 770Merit: 500 Re: [ANN] [BARR] Burning Altcoins for Redemption and Reduction - Multi-Proof-of-Burn October 25, 2015, 10:27:31 AM #14 I really love your concept of burning coins. Especially multi proof of burn, this will lower the price of others coin and increase the price of BARR considerably. However, I think that based on NXT which is a currency got quite big blockchain right now will slow down the amount of user who hates waiting for things to sync
hybridd
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NewbieActivity: 1Merit: 0 Re: [ANN] [BARR] Burning Altcoins for Redemption and Reduction - Multi-Proof-of-Burn October 25, 2015, 11:09:26 AM
Last edit: October 25, 2015, 11:49:30 AM by hybridd #16 I literally made an account on this forum (finally) just to point out the obvious scam in all of this:
So you're proposing burning a coin and receiving credit for burning in BARR, however this means eventually BARR is going to have some value on the asset exchange. That is 1 BARR = x units of NXT.
Since you control the supply of BARR, what is honestly preventing you from when x hits some desirable rate that you just don't dump a huge chunk of your BARR onto the market, make a nice profit and walk?
Also, lol the fact that you're doing this manually, this honestly wouldn't take more than a day or two to automate, since people can attach messages to transactions they could put their NXT address / pub key in the message field, submit the coins to the burn addresses listed and you have a worker bot that pays them out automatically -- literally a day of coding tops.
tl;dr
obvious (eventual) scam, dev probably doesn't know jack about coding
-- edit: this post will probably get deleted too, but op deleted the post where I called out his bullshit in technical details, oh well.
BARR_Official
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Hero MemberActivity: 630Merit: 500 Re: [ANN] [BARR] Burning Altcoins for Redemption and Reduction - Multi-Proof-of-Burn October 25, 2015, 11:18:00 AM
Last edit: October 25, 2015, 11:52:10 AM by BARR_Official #17 Quote from: sorrros on October 25, 2015, 09:36:18 AM Hi guys,
I believe the exchange rate of XAI is too favorable according to the real coin prices in the market.
It should be.5 BARR per XAI to be fair with KEY and FRAC. Can you pls update this before Nov 1st?
KEY and FRAC both have a higher supply, and they're both cheaper than XAI. So the price is already balanced between all 3, with approximately 500,000 BARR allocated for each altcoin.
We can't set the exchange rate at the current price of a low-volume market, because we already know that nobody is willing to sell at that price. So we are offering more than the current price for all 3 coins, to give holders enough incentive to sell.
KEY and FRAC have both been trading under 3000, so we're setting the exchange rate at.5 BARR (estimated at 5000). XAI has been as low as 4000, it's still around 5000 now, and there still aren't many sell orders going through. So we're setting the exchange rate at.75 BARR (estimated at 7500).
These rates allow us to offer an equivalent amount of BARR for the entire supply of each coin:
1,003,590 FRAC for 501,795 BARR
945,787 KEY for 472,893 BARR
684,468 XAI for 513,351 BARR
Does this seem fair to all 3 coins, since we're offering the same amount of BARR for each one?
KEY and FRAC both have a higher supply, and they're both cheaper than XAI. So the price is already balanced between all 3, with approximately 500,000 BARR allocated for each altcoin.We can't set the exchange rate at the current price of a low-volume market, because we already know that nobody is willing to sell at that price. So we are offering more than the current price for all 3 coins, to give holders enough incentive to sell.KEY and FRAC have both been trading under 3000, so we're setting the exchange rate at.5 BARR (estimated at 5000). XAI has been as low as 4000, it's still around 5000 now, and there still aren't many sell orders going through. So we're setting the exchange rate at.75 BARR (estimated at 7500).These rates allow us to offer an equivalent amount of BARR for the entire supply of each coin:1,003,590 FRAC for 501,795 BARR945,787 KEY for 472,893 BARR684,468 XAI for 513,351 BARRDoes this seem fair to all 3 coins, since we're offering the same amount of BARR for each one? Burning Altcoins for Redemption and Reduction - http://barr.me
darkitecht
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NewbieActivity: 1Merit: 0 Re: [ANN] [BARR] Burning Altcoins for Redemption and Reduction - Multi-Proof-of-Burn October 25, 2015, 11:23:25 AM #19 Quote from: hybridd on October 25, 2015, 11:09:26 AM I literally made an account on this forum (finally) just to point out the obvious scam in all of this:
So you're proposing burning a coin and receiving credit for burning in BARR, however this means eventually BARR is going to have some value on the asset exchange. That is 1 BARR = x units of NXT.
Since you control the supply of BARR, what is honestly preventing you from when x hits some desirable rate that you just don't dump a huge chunk of your BARR onto the market, make a nice profit and walk?
Also, lol the fact that you're doing this manually, this honestly wouldn't take more than a day or two to automate, since people can attach messages to transactions they could put their NXT address / pub key in the message field, submit the coins to the burn addresses listed and you have a worker bot that pays them out automatically -- literally a day of coding tops.
tl;dr
obvious (eventual) scam, dev probably doesn't know jack about coding
Yo did the devs actually just ignore this? i was browsing and noticed this, had to make an account just to point out how the devs tried to burry this without response...
id like to hear what they have to say, for one. Yo did the devs actually just ignore this? i was browsing and noticed this, had to make an account just to point out how the devs tried to burry this without response...id like to hear what they have to say, for one.So, you want to build a space rocket or maybe you already have? Unless you represent a government agency, have access to Californian deserts or Siberia you might soon realize you have a problem. The problem faced by everyone building rockets.
Where in hell are you going to launch it?
Before getting into the darkest realm of it all (export issues) you should consider all options in your own country. In our case (Denmark) we are situated in a very dense populated area, which is the case for most of Europe, which makes it quite difficult for you to persuade anyone to launch at a random site on land. Most countries have test ranges for amateur rocketry and so do Denmark. But unless you want to stay (deliberately) below 2 km it is a no-go.
Your next step could be looking into finding a country providing better launching options. I suggest just forgetting about countries which are out of your reach, export-wise. Exporting rockets is really pure hell. You can’t argue about this or even if you can the mass of the final paper work will exceed the mass of your space rocket and even though “friendly” countries are all members of the Wassenar Arrangement, controlling the transfer and use of dual-use technology, I only consider it to be a wall of pain. And still you got the US ITAR and the EU equivalent making it virtually impossible for guys like us to break through anywhere.
For some reason less wise people have agreed to hinder the free flow of science and technology between countries which are supposed to be “friends”. But hey… I just live here..
We managed to find some countries where we could have a chance to legally sneak our rockets across the border such as Norway, Sweden and Iceland (there could be more). Sweden and Norway have some great test ranges (Esrange and Kiruna) but they all have a guy hired to answer the phone saying “No”. They don’t like flying experimental rockets that hasn’t flow before and if you mention human spaceflight they freak.
So what options do you and I have…???
WATER!
We found out that the legal boundaries of all countries ends about 12 nautical miles from the coast. From this line each country still has their Exclusive Economical Zone where they are entitled to exploit the ocean and sea bed __bu__t without any legal saying in what else is happening.
Launching from water may sound completely mad but it has been done many times and for Sea Launch it is just another day at the office. If your project ends up dying due to legal land-launch issues why not take a trip into the ocean and have some fun. We cannot handle the legal issues but we know how to solve technical problems so a decision to launch from sea is really a way to replace legal issues with a technical solution.
I am sure you are already thinking about stability, waves and rockets going crazy. But the ocean is just another technical factor you have to add to the entire system architecture and even though you have to sit tight, waiting on the shores until the waves, wind and sky is go for launch, but gives you an option to actually launch, it is just fine with me.
So, in the beginning of 2010 Copenhagen Suborbitals began the production of our sea launch platform named Sputnik. It was quickly decided to make it as a 12 x 12 m catamaran for good stability with a center placed launch tower. We finally had a way to launch our rocket but in sea waves below 1 meter.
The Rocket and its launch pad being towed to the shoot position in the Baltic Sea by a submarine. Bo Tornvig
The Fifty-Dollar Follow Focus follows focus for fifty dollars (plus shipping)
Even though the nice side of the 12 nautical miles provide you with freedom you still have to deal with the basic laws of maritime operations and requirements and do not forget that clearing the sky for any passing airliners is also a good idea. So, it is highly recommended to actually engage in co-operation with the maritime authorities of your country because they also co-operate with the advisory airspace and will furthermore guide you about which parts of the sea is the best option for you.
Our experience is that they are more than willing to do so. We have never met anyone going against our wishes for performing test launches at sea.
The maritime authorities of Denmark advised us to perform our tests in one of two military test ranges (ES D 139) in the Baltic Sea east of a Danish island called Bornholm. On a normal day the areas are used for normal ocean traffic and fishing but a single phone call will change it into a closed test range.
Test range area in the Baltic Sea. Image: Copenhagen Suborbitals
During the two operations using Sputnik we have upgraded its capabilities from being a platform which had to be towed/pushed to a self propelled unit with two Kubota diesel engines included all required systems and safety on board.
Sputnik launch platform in the Baltic Sea during launch operation. Image: Thomas Pedersen
Sputnik during launch of HEAT1X/Tycho-Brahe-1. Image: Bo Tornvig
The decision to launch at sea was our only option, so far, but also the best. Water is water wherever you go and it is really just a matter of creating a launch vessel capable of holding the size of your current or future rocket and capable of dealing with sea levels in whatever area of the world you want to operate from.
At some point our rocket may become very large and Sputnik will not be our main launching vessel. If so, it is just a matter of building a bigger catamaran, using a large barge or constructing something completely different. My favorite system is this!
No matter what we find to be the right solution for the future we just know that the biggest issue has be solved.
We found a way to launch our own space rocket. I recommend you might do the same if some guy says “no” in the phone when you are asking about land-launch.
Ad Astra
Kristian von BengtsonThe Minimum Wage and Monopsony By David Henderson
There’s been a fair amount of discussion on the web lately (here and here, for instance) about the minimum wage and monopsony. As is well known in economics, a skillfully set minimum wage, in the presence of monopsony in the labor market, can actually increase employment. I don’t have a graphical proof handy but I expect that many labor economics texts have such a graphical proof.
Here’s the proof in words. To say that a firm has monopsony power is to say that the supply curve of labor to the firm is upward-sloping. That is, the firm is not a price-taker in the labor market. So when the firm that employs n workers and pays Wn per worker wants to hire one additional worker, it needs to pay more to each worker than it paid when it hired n workers. Call this new wage Wn + x. But that means that the cost of hiring that n + 1st worker is not the wage, Wn + x, that the firm pays the worker: it’s that wage, Wn + x, plus x times n. The reason: it pays all the other n workers that increment, x, also. Because the firm recognizes this, it hires up to the point where the value of marginal product = Wn + x + x*n. Now, if the government skillfully sets a minimum wage a little above Wn + x, the firm knows that it can’t reduce the wage by hiring fewer people and also knows that it won’t raise the wage by hiring a few more people and so it hires more people.
The main reason people started talking about monopsony in the context of the minimum wage in the 1990s was the study, and later the book, by David Card and Alan Krueger. They were trying to explain why they found their result, which was that an increase in the minimum wage in New Jersey, while the minimum wage in Pennsylvania held constant, did not decrease employment in fast food restaurants in New Jersey relative to in Pennsylvania. Various people, most notably David Neumark and William Wascher, criticized the Card/Krueger data and, using better data, found the more-standard result. I don’t want to get into that here.
Instead, I want to note something about the monopsony explanation. Here’s what I wrote in my review of their book:DALLAS -- Chandler Parsons packed the two most frustrating months of his career and the two best basketball months of his life into a season that ended prematurely.
Next up: Rehabbing from surgery on the meniscus in his right knee, followed by free agency, when the 27-year-old forward will have to figure out whether he's returning to the Dallas Mavericks, for whom he'd like to resume his role as the lead recruiter. Parsons discussed all that and more in an expansive interview with ESPN.com.
ESPN.com: You go to get an MRI thinking you're dealing with some soreness in your lower hamstring. The doctor comes back and tells you you've got a partially torn meniscus and are going to need surgery. Because of the time of the year, it ends your season. What was your reaction?
Parsons: That was devastating. It was something that I really wasn't expecting. In that Golden State game, our trainer Casey Smith visibly saw me limping, but it was so low in my hamstring that I was kind of hoping that I just tweaked it or pulled it a little bit. At the same time, in the back of my head, I obviously realized that it was the same leg and same knee that I had the microfracture on, so that was a little worrisome. Editor's Picks Q&A: Why a title allowed David Lee to move on from the Warriors As he returns to Oracle Arena, David Lee reflects on accepting a lesser role on a championship team, when he knew Draymond Green was great and why he was content to leave the Warriors.
As I sat out a few days, the flexibility in my leg wasn't bending very much. When I was running and jogging, I wasn't really able to stride out, so as a precaution, we went and got an MRI. It was just something I didn't see coming. Obviously, I didn't know that day as I was walking into the doctor -- them telling me I was having season-ending surgery. Just horrible timing.
I couldn't help but just break down. [Knee surgery] was something I just went through. It was such a grind and so grueling, exhausting rehab with the previous surgery, and now I'm finally back, feeling close to 100 percent, playing extremely confident and playing well. Now, in the most important time of the season when our team needs me the most going into this playoff push, Doc tells me that basically I'm done for the season and we've got to fix it.
It's definitely way more minor than last season. It's going to seem like a piece of cake with the rehab from what I've already been through.
From that standpoint, I'm confident I'll be OK. Obviously, the length of the recovery time is nowhere near as long as it was last time, with this one being six to eight weeks. There's some positive things that came out of it. I think this was an overall good thing to do now, to clean up. It's bad timing, because I'm not playing now in the most important time of the season, but for the long-term future, I think this was the best idea to do. Obviously, Mark [Cuban] and Rick [Carlisle] and our doctors agreed.
ESPN.com: As you mentioned, it is the same knee you had the hybrid microfracture surgery on last year. Is this at all related to that, or is it just an unfortunate coincidence? Chandler Parsons found the range for Dallas this season before a knee injury sidelined him. Ronald Martinez/Getty Images
Parsons: It's a coincidence. I think where I did have that microfracture surgery, it's always going to be there. It's pretty much a divot in the cartilage that I had removed there with different strategies and different techniques that we used to fix that. It's always going to be there. A lot of guys in the NBA do have that, [but] it just doesn't seem to bother them. They were either born with that or the grind just kind of wears and tears on your body. It could be a variation of a lot of things.
It could have been overcompensating on different parts of my legs, overuse, could have been a lot, but this is something that nobody could have really been able to predict. They don't think it's something that will continue to happen, which is good for my future and my career. It's not something that's going to keep haunting me, hopefully.
Brilliant stretch
ESPN.com: It was really a wild ride of a season for you. Coming off that surgery, you had a really rough rehab and probably the most frustrating two months of your career starting out. Then, once you got healthy, you were playing the best basketball of your life until your season ended prematurely. Now that you've had a little bit of time to put this in perspective, in the grand scheme of things, how do you look at this season?
Parsons: It was a roller coaster. There was a bunch of low times for me and a lot of new things I've never experienced before with the whole rehab process, the minute restrictions, trying to come off the bench, trying to find solutions to make our team the best possible team and selfishly trying to get myself going to get myself back to how I was playing. It was tough.
"Free agency is a fun time, and obviously I have the opportunity here to opt out. That's not necessarily to leave Dallas. That's maybe to sign a longer-term deal here." Chandler Parsons, on his future in Dallas
It really makes you focus on how important health is. It's something that I never really had to worry about or go through until this last season's surgery and now this year. When I look back, I can't help but think if I was healthy, I would have done this, or we would have won this game, or we would have been a 3-seed. It's hard to say, but I just know that I'm doing everything in my power to get back to being 100 percent healthy. This is just another minor bump in the road.
ESPN.com: When you were healthy this year, you morphed into one of the better shooters in the league and added that element to your game. Statistically, you went through the best stretch of your career over two-plus months. Is that the player people should expect Chandler Parsons to be moving forward?
Parsons: Yeah, and I think that's the player I'm going to be right off the jump next season. Once I got my head back and my legs back and being in game shape, I felt like I was one of the better players in the league. It wasn't just a game here, a week here, a week there. It was for a solid two-month period of consistency, which is what I hadn't shown a lot of in my career.
I felt like I was getting to play the best I ever played in my career before this meniscus tear. That's the player I envisioned myself being when I signed with Dallas. That's the player I envision myself being next season.
I'll enjoy the struggle and the pain of the rehab process, going through this again, because I had a little bit of success this year after last year's surgery. I know what to expect now. I know what to feel in my leg. I know when to pull back, when to push harder, so I think this time around I'll have a better understanding of it. I look forward to being back on the court as soon as possible and getting ready to start next season.
Opt-out plan
ESPN.com: Speaking of next season, the world's worst-kept secret is that you're opting out of your contract this summer. Will you be back in Dallas?
Parsons: That's something that we've got to figure out. Obviously, I've been extremely happy here, and I think I've made it very vocal that I love Dallas. I love the organization. Everything I did last summer with the free agency and the recruiting efforts is something I really enjoy doing.
It's something that I feel like I'm pretty good at doing. I have a great relationship with Coach Carlisle and Dirk [Nowitzki] and my teammates here. Cuban's obviously my guy, and I wouldn't want to play for anybody else. I feel like he's the best owner in the NBA.
But right now, it's tough to look ahead. I have so much on my plate right now with the rehab and the surgery. I still feel like I'm a big part of this team going forward while they're in the middle of this run. I'm still going to practice every day. Didn't travel on this last road trip, but I'm planning on traveling to L.A. and Utah and finishing this season with them. Playing Houston here, I'll give them any input and any insight I have going up against those guys.
Free agency is a fun time, and obviously I have the opportunity here to opt out. That's not necessarily to leave Dallas. That's maybe to sign a longer-term deal here. There's a lot of options, and that's something me and my agent Dan [Fegan] will talk about when it's more appropriate and that time comes.
ESPN.com: Are you a max player in this market?
Parsons: We'll see what the value is. Obviously, the market is going very high up, and a lot of guys are getting paid a lot of money. You see where your value is, you see what the market is for free agents this summer around your caliber and your position. Last [contract], it was max, so we'll see what it is this summer.
ESPN.com: That doesn't sound all that confident.
Parsons [laughs]: Well, I feel like I've got the best agent in the business to handle those types of questions.
Chandler Parsons played three seasons in Houston -- two alongside James Harden -- before leaving for Dallas in 2014. AP Photo/Pat Sullivan
Reaction to Rockets' fizzle
ESPN.com: The Rockets are in town tonight. You've got relationships with the guys you played with there, James Harden and Dwight Howard in particular. For a team that went to the West finals last year, basically bring their whole core back, are you surprised with the way things have gone in Houston this summer and that the Harden-Howard dynamic does not seem to have clicked?
Parsons: Yeah, I am surprised. The success that they had last year, I was actually surprised with that as well. Josh Smith really helped them last year. That 4-5 pick-and-roll was really, really tough to guard, so I think getting rid of him hurt them a little bit with the mojo that they had and that small-ball lineup. Him being able to facilitate at the 4 was huge for them.
Then, when you've got two stars like Dwight and James, it's tough. They both want the ball. They both want to score. They both want to make big plays down the stretch. So you have to have a balance there. You have to have a great understanding. It just seems like they're not on the right page, on the same page, every now and then.
Going through a coaching change during the season can be difficult. They always like to make moves in the middle of the season, so it's tough to get in a rhythm. I just think that's a problem they're experiencing. When you look at their roster, they have so much talent that it's crazy to think that team could not make the playoffs, but it just shows you how good the other teams are and how strong the West is.
In a way, I almost feel bad for J.B. Bickerstaff, because that's a tough situation for him to come into. I think he's got a bright future ahead of him. He's one of my favorite people I've ever met in my life, so from that standpoint, I want them to do great. I want them to do really good obviously outside of playing Dallas. For him, I feel like I want them to do good. I still have a good relationship with Dwight and Pat [Beverley] and T.J. [Terrence Jones] and James. I'm still rooting for those guys in the back of my head, but at the same time, that's a division rival, so I don't hate to see them lose, too.
ESPN.com: Dwight is also expected to hit the market this summer after opting out of his contract. Do you anticipate that there will be discussions between you two about hooking back up, whether that's in Dallas or somewhere else?
Parsons: Yeah. We have ongoing talks and text messages still to this day. He's one of my good friends. It's cool that we could have the opportunity to go into free agency this summer together.
I've expressed how I think he can be one of the dominant players in this league. I think he still has a lot left in the tank. He gets criticized a lot for whatever reason, but I still think he can be one of the best big men in the league and a game-changer. He's not that old [Howard is 30]. He still has a lot left in the tank.
It'll be interesting to see where his head is going into free agency. Obviously, right now is not the time to be talking about that with five games left and both of our teams in position to try to make a run here, make the playoffs and then hopefully advance. When the time comes this summer, we'll definitely be spending some time together and talking.
After the failed Jordan courtship
ESPN.com: Speaking of big men that you spent a lot of time with in the summer, what's the relationship between you and DeAndre Jordan at this point after the fallout from last offseason, when you had him and then you didn't?
Parsons: Pretty nonexistent, honestly.... Me and DJ obviously got super close during that time. It's kind of in the past now for both of us. He's made his decision and has had a decent year in L.A., so I'm happy for him. They're a team that's a contender this year. I've said many times I'm over it. He didn't do anything illegal.
I still think he would have been a much better player individually here in Dallas. You never know what's going to happen in the upcoming years. He's a good dude at heart.
ESPN.com: Coming back from that, you talked about how you wanted to be back recruiting for the Mavericks this summer. How does that work with your situation uncertain?
Parsons: It's tricky, because if I'm going out and I'm recruiting a free agent right in the beginning of free agency, and they obviously know that I've opted out of my contract and I'm still not signed with the Mavs, it's difficult for them to get an understanding of what the foundation of the Mavs is going to be going forward when the main guy recruiting them still isn't signed.
That's something that Fegan and Mark and Donnie [Nelson] and everybody, they have to talk early on to maybe get something done. Obviously, Dan will be talking to every team in the league with there being so much cap space everywhere, but that's a tricky thing. I can't really recruit anybody to Dallas until I know that I'm coming back to Dallas.Just a good ol' day, driving around town, picking up a, uhh... What do they call milkshakes at Starbucks again?
One of those.
Then going to your favorite spot in the mountains, setting up a little camp, and looking at the cloud of smog that is Los Angeles.
You can't actually see Los Angeles, just the cloud.
But still I'm all up on Reddit talking about how San Antonio Rodriguez world is full of racism, and do you believe how much oppression is in this picture?
You go to a place, (I can't say S******** because then Starbucks will be all up my ass or something) get your smoothie, and get THAT look from the lady in the window.
Disgraceful.
That was a joke by the way, I'm not that overly sensitive.
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Sound interesting? Head over to the download page!Welcome to the official launch of Texas Gaming Championships! TGC is a professional video game championship series featuring the best players from around Texas competing in variety of tournaments to see who is the supreme champion. All TGC events will feature top player rankings in Super Smash Bros Wii U, Ultra Street Fighter 4, Pokemon R/S, Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3, Mario Kart |
but she's only a child. They should have waited 10 years and let her make a mark among the deprived sections of the society."
It is a view that has infuriated many more liberal Pakistanis who made their anger known on Twitter, excoriating those who tried to belittle this win.
This division in views on Malala is for the most part symptomatic of a division that dates from the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan.
Father's politics
Malala's father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, who has been her guide and mentor, is associated with ANP, a political party that links up with the Red Shirt movement. This is a secular force of Pashtun nationalists that was allied to Mahatma Gandhi's All India Congress and opposed the Indian partition.
After independence, the Red Shirts were dubbed as traitors and Indian agents, and often persecuted by successive military regimes that used religion and religious groups to garner support and legitimacy.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption There is opposition to Malala's father and his outlook on life and politics
As the only political party in the Taliban-infested north-west to publicly call itself secular, the ANP suffered major setbacks during the last few years when scores of its leaders and activists were assassinated by militants. And while it still has a large support base, opposition to its outlook has been growing.
Even Tariq Khattack felt the need to make mention of Malala's father in his BBC interview.
"Her father is a good salesman, that's it, and the daughter has also become a salesgirl, dancing to the tune of the West. They don't deserve anything," he said.
So the mixed reaction that Malala has attracted can be partly explained in terms of her political heritage in a society where religion - and an enduring perception of the West as the enemy of Islam - has come to dominate public discourse.
Pakistan's other laureate
Image copyright Keystone Image caption Pakistan's first Nobel laureate was physicist Abdus Salam, who happened to be an Ahmadi
And she is not alone in this.
In fact, she is the second Pakistani to win the Nobel prize.
The country's first Nobel laureate, physicist Dr Abdus Salam, belonged to the Ahmadi community, which was declared un-Islamic in 1970s.
Nobody, not even the government, has in living memory observed either his birthday or the anniversary of his death.
Malala's pedigree may prove to be slightly more tolerable.
Correction 13 October 2014: This article originally referred to Tarik Khattack as editor of the Pakistan Observer. This was not a position he held with the paper, which he left earlier this year.The Improvised Explosive Device Threat To The Homeland: Americans Are Not Prepared
Robert C. Hodges
Introduction
It is a beautiful day at a Gulf Coast city in Florida. The early spring temperatures are a perfect 75 degrees. The sun is setting and downtown, the night parades are beginning. Main Street is packed with thousands of party goers, parade crowds, and the pirates on the floats as they move through the narrow streets. Suddenly, there is a loud and sharp report that surprises the people on the streets. Before, anyone can understand what has happened a second explosion occurs right in the middle of the parade, then a third bomb hidden in a trashcan two blocks away detonates. There are bodies and screaming wounded victims near all of the detonations and the carnage is spread over almost a half mile. While emergency services respond and civilians on the scenes try to react and recover, the news channels in the area report they have received a message from a well-known violent extremist organization (VEO) claiming responsibility for the attack! Thankfully, this is just a scenario of events that has not occurred. However, this coordinated attack is a terrorist’s tactic, technique, procedure (TTP) and it is not out of the realm of capabilities of some extremists, terrorists, or lone-wolfs attackers in the U.S. The U.S. needs to be prepared for this type of explosive attack and the resulting carnage.
Around the globe, violent attacks conducted by extremists are at the top of news reports. These VEOs have many tools at their disposal to use during these deadly combined attacks including knives, pistols, assault rifles, and explosives. The explosives used to make homemade bombs or Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) is not a new method of attack. However, the use of social media, improved technology, and the low cost to build an IED are all key factors in the rise of IEDs being used as an effective method of operation (Hoffman, 2014, p66). On the homeland, Americans as a whole, do not fully understand the current IED attack capabilities and the threat posed to the U.S. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has made great strides in protecting the U.S. homeland and the population (GAO, 2006). The DHS and all of its departments and the FBI must take actions working with other governmental agencies to train and improve the capabilities of first responders and improve the understanding of the IED threat to the U.S. The goal is to ensure the U.S. and Americans are informed, well prepared, and ready for the dangers presented by the global IED threat.
The state of readiness, or preparedness, of the American population and the capabilities of the DHS are key factors in reducing casualties and the effectiveness of IED attacks conducted in the U.S. Attacks by extremists, no matter if they are transnational terrorists or homegrown violent extremists, are recognized as a threat to the U.S. homeland. It is essential that government organizations, first responders, and the general population all understand the threat of the IED and know their roles in limiting the effectiveness of these attacks.
The DHS has a strong foundation focused on training and preparing for the IED threat however, local first responders’ capabilities and the U.S. population’s knowledge of the IED hazard has not reached the levels needed to assure readiness. A synergistic effort by the DHS, FBI, local authorities, and first responders focused on IED education and awareness has improved first responders’ capabilities. The President has placed the responsibility for terrorism and Counter IEDs on the FBI and the DHS (PPD-17, 2013, p4). The DHS has the ability to develop training programs. Can the DHS and the FBI, through training and awareness programs, improve the capabilities of first responders and public safety specialists, while providing a better understanding of the IED threat to the American population?
Literature Review
With collaboration by the Intelligence Community (IC), the U.S. military, defense community, and government protective offices, there is quite a bit of information and many articles written on IEDs and the predicted threats that they present. Also, there are web-sites created by offices like the DHS’s Office of Bombing Prevention (OBP) and the FBI’s National Security Branch that have information on IEDs, terrorism, and the training programs to counter the threats. Many of these agency programs and efforts are a result of Presidential Policy Directive 17 (PPD-17) titled Countering Improvised Explosive Devices.
PPD-17 is a strategic-level document that looks at the IED threat and the efforts needed to counter this threat. It has a great flow from explaining the threat, the need to strengthen the U.S. policy, and the necessity to put the policy into action. The focus of this policy directive does hit on most of the essential elements needed for a successful C-IED program. The U.S. must improve the collection of information on IEDs and the people and organizations who use them as a weapon. This includes advancing intelligence collection and analysis. Then the U.S. must have a trained security force capable of understanding the IED threat and C-IED operations. This trained force must be ready to respond. This policy document gives a great coverage on all of these topics. The area that was overlooked is how this information, training, and the awareness levels will be relayed to the U.S. population. While a “whole-of-government approach” is needed before the threat is immediate (PPD-17, p4), Americans need to be made aware of the government programs and what is expected of the people on the street. The threat, as presented in PPD17, is well documented in many articles and news reports.
As published in the Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 2011 Bergen, Hoffman, and Tiedemann (Bergin, et al) presented information on the threat to America in their article “Assessing the Jihadist Terrorist Threat to America and American Interests”. Bergen and his coworkers shared information that ensures the reader understands the threat from Jihadists to America. They present information on the threat from Al Qaeda, the associated Al Qaeda off-shoots, and the organizations who support the Al Qaeda extremist agenda.
The groups inspired by Al Qaeda cross the Middle East and northern Africa. They include organizations like Al Qaeda in Iraq, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and the Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) based in Yemen. The AQAP specifically “has been looking to expand its terrorist attacks beyond Yemen and Saudi Arabia…” This includes the “underwear bomber” on Christmas Day 2009 (Bergen, et al, 2011, p71). There are also groups like al-Shabab in the Somalia region of Africa and Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani militant organization.
After an introduction to the Al Qaeda threat and its reach around the globe, the Bergen team go on to explain the changing threat environment. Along with this, it is pointed out that the “American ‘melting pot’” is not resistant to the recruitment and radicalization of its residents (Bergen, et al, 2011, p78). Diversification is part of the plan for success for Al Qaeda. Reaching Americans and recruiting them is a key goal for Al Qaeda. After well-explained details for future Al Qaeda attacks, the paper goes on to describe future targets.
This paper, written in 2011, doesn’t have any reference to the Islamic State (IS), Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Daesh, or its other names. This may be seen as a flaw with the research. The information provided by Bergen and the team proved to be spot on. Some of the warnings of suicide operations, attacks on American and western interests globally, and military forces was right on target. This, along with the questions presented as tied to preparedness of the U.S., provides a view of the future threat and the concerns for readiness.
A description of actions taken by the U.S. government to counter terrorism in the U.S. provided in a Congressional Research Service report written by Jerome Bjelopera, provides information on the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) and intelligence reforms put into place with the goal of countering the growing terrorist threat toward the U.S. The title of the report is “The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Terrorism Investigations” and the reader will understand this report focuses on the terrorism threat. The IED threat is not specifically mentioned, but terrorist attacks are expected. While the FBI has the lead on terrorist events, intelligence reforms and collaboration with DHS and other local law enforcement elements are seen as the route to success (Bjelopera, 2013, p25). Other supporting research documents did not focus on the IED, but they present information key to the questions about the readiness of the U.S. population as related to IED attacks.
The IED threat is very real and it can be very simple. As highlighted in The National Interest, IEDs are made of commercially available, easily accessible materials around the house. These IEDs count for the largest part of the insurgents’ attacks (Hoffman, 2014, p66,7). Hoffman goes on to explain that not only are IEDs inexpensive, if used properly they can cause millions of dollars in damages and needed repairs. That does not even consider the loss of lives and limbs as a result of the attacks.
The information provided in Hoffman’s article “Low-Tech Terrorism” puts a lot of attention in the possible use of chemical, biological, and nuclear materials in these IED attacks. The technological challenges and cost to employ a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) like described may be preventing its use. As long as IEDs are so accessible and cheap they will continue to be a weapon of choice.
A look at the Boston Bombings of 2013 provided in Perspectives on Terrorism, written by Rohan Gunaratna and Cleo Haynal, gives detailed information on the recruiting and radicalization of the Tsarnaev brothers. The information in this paper covers many of the details of how the brothers were radicalized, what the signs of radicalization were, and how this may be prevented, is key information on the counter terrorism front. It does not directly support the concerns focused by this paper. However, there are several key points that can be taken from Gunaratna and Haynal. The fact that a 2012 survey showed a reduced concern for terrorism by the American public supports the reasoning of why Americans may not be trained and ready to respond to an IED threat. Americans, in general, just do not see a realistic IED threat.
The paper also provides supporting information on the efforts of online radicalization and information sharing through the media. The information on how to build the pressure cooker IEDs was taken from Inspire magazine in an article called “How to Make a Bomb in Your Mother’s Kitchen” (Gunaratna, Hayan, 2013, p52). The information on IEDs, how to make them, and how to employ them is available and easily accessible. First responders must be ready when extremists decide to use them.
In addition to the DHS and the FBI, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) takes part in the education of emergency first responders. As seen during the response to the Boston Bombings, first responders are not always prepared and ready for such a violent attack. Anthony Kimery points out the value of post-attack actions and how the information gathered can supplement investigation and intelligence efforts. He also highlights the new information system and forms developed after evaluating the lessons learned from the Boston Bombings.
This same article in Homeland Security Magazine, December 2013/January 2014, touches on the Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO). JIEDDO was formed as a need from the war against IEDs in Afghanistan and Iraq. JIEDDO analysts predicted that IEDs as seen in Afghanistan would be used off the battlefield and predicted the attack like the Boston Marathon Bombing (Kimery, 2014). JIEDDO is now called the Joint Improvised Device Agency (JIDA).
Another professional paper that referenced JIEDDO was published in the January/February 2013 issue of The Officer. The article “The Weapon for Choice” presented strong points of argument that IEDs present new challenges for the military, international safety, and the security of the U.S. Homeland. Eric Minton opens with some statistics and facts that brings the reader into the focus of the paper. Lieutenant General (LTG) Barbero is introduced as the Director of JIEDDO. The key points explained how IEDs are a threat being realized around the globe. JIEDDO’s mission is three fold: train the force, defeat the device, and attack the network.
JIEDDO’s last mission is the strategic goal, an enduring effect to reduce the IED threat. Currently the IED threat is a network and it can only be defeated by another network. This article, like some others, covers how homemade explosives (HME) are used in many IEDs. Some of the information is slightly outdated having been written three years ago during IED and C-IED combat operations. This article seems to revolve around quotations from LTG Barbero. These quotes are on point, but with so many quotes someone may believe this article was written to support JIEDDO and LTG Barbero’s programs. Minton’s paper also presented C-IED information and efforts. The emphasis was on a whole-of-government approach. Mr. Minton highlights the need for intelligence, collaboration and security for the future to defeat the IED network.
Predictions into the future are challenging, but are required by analysts and the IC. One method of predicting future attacks is to look at successful attacks from the past. As presented in “Countering the Coordinated Attack” written by A. Richman, Dov Zwerling, Avichai Persi, Nissan Ratzlav-Katz, Nati Aron, IEDs are usually an element of a coordinated attack. This article provides a definition for a coordinated attack and looks at three such events/attacks. IEDs and Vehicle Borne IEDs (VBIEDs) were used in these attacks (Richman, et al, 2010, p24). Attacks like these have been seen is several countries, but have not yet been seen in the U.S. This may be only due to the dud firing of an IED built and employed during the San Bernardino terrorist attack. If the San Bernardino 2015 attack would have been conducted on separate fronts at the same time it may have met the definition of a coordinated attack. It is only a matter of time until coordinated attacks like those seen against western targets in France and the United Kingdom will be seen on U.S. soil. As a whole, the U.S. Homeland can be seen as a soft target.
The Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium (TRAC) web-site provides some detailed information on the threats faced by soft targets. Examples are tourism areas, hotels, sporting events, and other areas where thousands of people gather with limited security filters. TRAC has information on the terrorists, their expected mode of attack, their motives, and how they expect to benefit from these attacks. In remarks on how to counter the threat from terrorists’ attacks, there are points on how to educate key people in the industry. The program operated jointly by the DHS and the TSA called the “First Observer”. This program “attempts to train parking attendants with skills to identify a potential threat” (TRAC, 2016). This will bring awareness levels closer to the American population and provide another line of defense.
The FBI’s official web site, www.fbi.gov, provides many links and a plethora of information tied to the efforts of the FBI and their offices. One of these offices is the Terrorist Explosive Devices Analytical Center (TEDAC). TEDAC is a “single interagency organization to receive, fully analyze, and exploit all terrorist IEDs of interest to the United States” (FBI, TEDAC, 2016). The information available at the web-site will support with facts and figures of the events the FBI was involved with. This site links many core and interrelated web pages that are instrumental in understanding the current counter terrorism and C-IED operations.
The American public has seen the attacks around the world and on the U.S. Homeland where IEDs were used to kill and maim fellow Americans. They are aware of the threat of the IED however, most of the U.S. population is not concerned with the IED threat. There are several governmental agencies that are directed by PPD17 to lead the C-IED efforts. The DHS has the lead and this office works collaboratively with the FBI, TSA, FEMA and others to train, equip, and prepare for terrorist attacks. These attacks include IED attacks.
The Homeland Security Presidential Directive-19, Combating Terrorist Use of Explosives in the United States (HSPD-19) calls for a nation strategy to prevent, protect against, and prepare to respond to the terrorist use of explosives in the U.S. There are several different definitions for and IED. Because this paper is focused on the needed actions by organizations linked to the DHS, the working definition for IED as related to this paper is provided in HSPD-19. “’IED’ means an explosive device that is fabricated in an improvised manner incorporating explosives or other destructive, lethal, pyrotechnic, or incendiary chemicals” (HSPD-19, p127). This directive recognizes the threat IEDs present to the U.S. and directs agencies to develop and implement plans and policy to counter the threat. This includes funding and implementation plans (p130). The goal is for federal agencies to team with local agencies and personnel to deter, protect, and prevent explosive attacks in the U.S.
This research will reinforce the understanding of the IED threat on the U.S. Homeland. It will also explain the current readiness levels of these key organizations and the programs used to train and prepare for IED/explosive terrorist attacks. The response capabilities of these organizations and first responders can be seen as competent and improving. The key is getting the American population to understand the importance they play in national readiness and security. The people must have a heightened awareness level and understand the actions that may save lives should an IED attack occur. This paper will the link PPD-17 to HSPD-19 and the agencies involved with setting the way ahead to improved population awareness and national readiness.
Methodology
The recent complex attacks in Europe claimed in the name of VEOs and the lack of knowledge possessed by the American population related to IEDs brings to attention the need for improved readiness. In an effort to address this lack of preparedness a qualitative instrumental approach was taken, with the goal being to provide insight into the realistic IED threat, the lack of IED knowledge by Americans, and the need for training to improve readiness. The variables evaluated and the questions researched were all focused on the main hypothesis. Can the DHS’s OBP and the FBI, working with other key government agencies, through training and awareness programs, improve the capabilities of first responders and provide a better understanding of the IED threat to the U.S. general population?
Information gathered during research supports the hypothesis of this paper. There is a realistic threat of IED attacks in the U.S. homeland. Also, Americans lack the general knowledge tied to this threat. To improve security and safety there is a need for C-IED training programs. The evolving IED threat is a direct variable that is easily supported and researched along with the capabilities of the organizations that are key to the C-IED programs. Articles from news agencies online reveal the ongoing death and destruction resulting from IED attacks. Almost daily IED attacks are included in news reports. Intelligence analysis reports will be the vital link between recorded history of IED attacks and predicting the future threats. This future threat needs to be shared with Americans.
Understanding the U.S. population’s current knowledge of IEDs is an indirect variable that is very difficult to answer from a qualitative research study. It is important to understand the knowledge and opinions of the American population. Does the general population believe the IED threat is real? A study conducted in 2012 showed that most Americans were not concerned about a terrorist attack on the homeland (Gunaratna & Haynal, 2013,p44). Another variable that can only be answered at some point in the future deals with how well Americans respond to the training efforts of the DHS, OBP, FBI, and local first responders.
Understanding the training capabilities of the DHS-OBP and the FBI were key parts of this research. Looking into these organization’s web pages for the training provided and goals of the programs provided a strong comprehension of their efforts and capabilities. As research focused on the threat and the need for training, the official web-sites of the DHS-OBP (http://www.dhs.gov/obp) and the FBI (https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/terrorism) provided information on authority, current programs, and leads on related materials. An example of resources from the FBI web-site include information on the Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center (TEDAC). Current events and information from the news media were also included in the IED threat research efforts.
Linking the threat of the IED directly to loss of life and limb by Americans and the need to be prepared is essential. To this end, news reports of IED attacks on the U.S. Homeland and the devastation caused were retrieved from online articles. Examples include the Boston Marathon Bombing as reported by CBS News (CBSNEWS, 2016). Reports of these actual IED attacks on the Homeland bring to attention a shortfall in readiness and the need for actions.
In efforts to provide a well-rounded argument for the need of improved IED threat awareness and C-IED training, research was conducted seeking materials countering the ideas presented in this paper. In conversations with peers, questions were asked about the availability of IED or bomb-making materials and the knowledge to assemble a functional IED. During this research, no reference supporting a counter argument could be discovered. There is a plethora of information available on how to build IEDs. Unfortunately this information includes details on how to make Homemade Explosives (HME) from items in your kitchen if needed (Hoffman, 2014, p67). I also found no reports that pointed to the wasted efforts or funds by the DHS’s OBP or the FBI in their C-IED training efforts. All methods used to find supporting information for this research were used to find a counter argument. No counter arguments were discovered. Efforts to find a counter argument only revealed more supporting information.
Without argument, there is a realistic IED threat in the U.S. There is also a recognized lack of IED knowledge and understanding of the IED threat by Americans. These facts demonstrate the need for improved IED awareness training and increased IED readiness.
Analysis and Findings
"Our capabilities to counter IEDs have evolved and grown. We must not become complacent, but must continue to challenge ourselves and each other to be more effective against these threats as we work together to reach our shared national interests of safety, security, and prosperity." -- Barack Obama, President of the United States, Presidential Policy Directive - 17 Countering Improvised Explosive Devices
In recent years, the general population of the United States (U.S.) has become more aware of the threat from explosives used to make home-made bombs. This education has developed so that the acronym used by military specialists and public safety professionals for these types of bombs has become easily recognized. The Improvised Explosive Device or “IED” became a part of the daily news reports from Iraq and Afghanistan during Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. What was once called a booby trap, or road-side bomb became understood as types of IEDs and were a well-used part of the American vocabulary. There are many definitions for the IED. For the purposes of this research the definition from the HSPD-19 was used. An IED “means an explosive device that is fabricated in an improvised manner incorporating explosives or other destructive, lethal, pyrotechnic, or incendiary chemicals” (HSPD-19, p127). The IED is used during an “explosive attack” defined by the same reference as “an act of terrorism in the United States using an explosive.”
As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continued, Americans started to understand that an IED was an explosive attack that could kill or maim people and destroy property. However, the threat they posed to Americans and the U.S. homeland was not recognized. The population as a whole did not feel threatened by terrorists or that these IEDs were going to be used on the streets of the U.S. (Gunaratna & Haynal, 2013, p 44). Many local leaders and public safety officials reflected this lack of concern with inaction. After all, these were tools of war being seen by combat forces on foreign soil. Even if these extremists and insurgents had the ability to make IEDs, how or why would they use them in the U.S.?
The U.S. has been attacked with IEDs several times in recent history: The first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, the Oklahoma City bombing on the Murrah Federal building in 1995, the attempted car bomb discovered in New York’s Time Square in 2010, and the well-known attack at the Boston Marathon in 2013 (FBI Reports and Publications, 2016). After these attacks and several other events, the U.S. still does not recognize IED attacks as a realistic terrorist threat to the Homeland. Research conducted by Steven Becker, PhD, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, reflects this lack of understanding. His study showed that there is a concern by Americans related to terrorism. However, these same Americans when asked, the majority do not think the attacks will happen where they live (2010, p19). Americans must accept that an explosive terrorist attack can happen to them. The U.S. and Americas have been and will continue to be a target of IED attacks from many origins.
Transnational terrorists are the first threat that many think of. This is a result of the activities in the last decade from Islamic extremist groups like Al Qaeda and the Islam State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Islamic State (IS), and the Daesh. Attacks from these VEOs are not the only threat to the U.S. homeland. There are also threats from homegrown violent extremists (HVE) and lone wolf attackers that originate on the homeland. All of these are realistic threats to the U.S. and they all have the ability to design, build, and detonate IEDs capable of killing and maiming people and destroying property (Bergen, P., Hoffman, B., and Tiedemann, K., 2011, p67-69). The IED threat to Americans was solidified most recently by the terrible attacks at the Boston Marathon Bombing in April, 2013 (CBSNEWS, 2016). The IED will continue to be used during violent attacks by terrorists.
There is no disagreement from security experts that the IED has become and will continue to be the “weapon of choice” by VEOs (Minton, 2013). As long as the components to make an IED can be easily accessed or made with little concern of being discovered, they will continue to be employed in violent attacks. Another reason for IEDs to continue as main weapons of terrorists is the fact that they are incredibly effective and very inexpensive. An example of this is the 1993 bomb attack on the World Trade Center in New York. The IED placed in the van and parked in the garage under the World Trade Center cost less than $400. This bomb killed six people, wounded around a thousand, and caused $550 million in damages (Hoffman, 2014, p68). IED attacks in the U.S. will continue and are expected to increase. Actions must be taken to inform and educate the American population on how to prepare for an explosive attack, what is suspicious and should be reported, and what they should do if they become the target of an IED attack.
Many government offices and programs have been created to facilitate the improved readiness at the federal and local government levels. While these agencies have improved the response capabilities of first responders and C-IED professionals, the preparedness of the general population has not been improved. An example of this lack of preparedness consider this, if the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) or the DHS released an IED threat advisory, what actions by Americans should change?
It was proven in New York that if someone parks an SUV on Times Square, then walks away as smoke is coming out of it, and the SUV has large gas tanks visible inside then someone will recognize the threat and call 911. On the opposite end of the attack spectrum, as experienced during the 1996 Olympics Bombing in Atlanta and the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings, no one pays attention to someone leaving a back pack in or near a garbage can and then walking away from it. Many Americans have heard the DHS’s tag line, “If you see something, say something.” It is trademarked slogan (DHS.GOV). This tag line successfully highlights the fact that safety and security are everyone’s concern. However, it makes no attempt to teach the audience how to identify an IED. Overall, there is still a lack of knowledge by the general population on what is suspicious as related to the terrorist threat, VEOs, lone-wolf attacks, or IEDs.
With the exception of trained responders, C-IED professionals, and military members with deployment training; the average American doesn’t know what an IED may look like or what they should be looking for. As part of this education there are many questions that need to be addressed. What may an IED look like? If someone thought they saw an IED, who do they report it to? How do they report it? Should they take any other immediate actions? These answers can only be provided through dedicated IED awareness and training programs. The DHS and the FBI recognize the need for this training. These agencies have developed IED training and information programs available on line. Most of the information available on the FBI.GOV web site is focused on C-IED operations by the Public Safety Bomb Squads (PSBS) and emergency responders. The FBI operates the Hazardous Devices School (HDS) at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama (FBI, 2016). This is the national school where all bomb technicians are trained and certified. The HDS ensures that all PSBS meet a minimum standard and have minimum equipment so they may respond to IED and suspect IED attacks. The DHS-OBP has recognized the need for training designed for the community.
The best example of information and training provided by the DHS and the OBP is available at the “Counter-IED Awareness Products” page on the DHS.GOV web site (https://www.dhs.gov/counter-ied-awareness-products). Here the DHS has developed and posted excellent information related to bomb threat guidance and checklists. The DHS and the OBP offer C-IED training courses designed not only for first responders, but for the community and private sector. Examples of this training include “Bomb-Making Materials Awareness Program Training” and “IED Search Procedures Workshop” (DHS, 2016). This is a great effort on the right path to success. One short fall in this effort is informing Americans that this information is right at their fingertips. Until there is a concentrated effort by the DHS to reach out to Americans and offer IED threat awareness training, the U.S. general population will not know what the terrorist explosive attack is or how they can prepare before an IED attack and respond after the explosive attack.
Conclusion
Events like the Boston Marathon bombing demonstrate the realistic IED threat on the U.S. homeland as well as the American population’s lack of preparedness and knowledge of IEDs. As seen by the explosive attacks in the United Kingdom, Spain, France, and recently Turkey; the IED is a weapon that continues to be used very successfully by terrorists and violent extremists. All around the globe explosive attacks are in news reports. Terrorists have made the IED the leading part in their complex attacks. Attacks by transnational terrorists, lone wolfs, or homegrown violent extremists are recognized as a mounting threat to the U.S. homeland. Improved technology and information sharing through social media are factors that have facilitated the rise in IED attacks. Information provided by the FBI, DHS, and counter terrorism professionals establishes that the IED threat on U.S. soil is an issue that must be addressed. Currently, Americans do not understand the perils faced as related to the IED threat.
The American general population knows that an IED is a homemade bomb and they are aware that these bombs have been used in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most Americans understand that IEDs are being used by VEOs like the Islamic State. However, they do not fully understand the IED threat in the U.S. The White House and the current administration recognize the threat that IEDs present to the U.S. As a result there is a Presidential Policy Directive on Countering IEDs. This document and the Homeland Security Presidential Directive on Combating Terrorist use of Explosives aligns the responsibility for C-IED efforts under the DHS.
The DHS through its OBP has the lead on C-IED efforts in the U.S. The DHS and the OBP have taken very proactive efforts to create training programs. These training efforts are focused on the first responders and security professionals whose job it is to protect the American people and property from the explosive effects of IEDs.
The DHS, working with the FBI, has made great gains working with local agencies and first responders. PSBS assigned to police and sheriff’s offices throughout the U.S. and security personnel have an improved understanding of the IED threat and C-IED capabilities. The Government Accountability Office has recognized these efforts and the successes of the DHS (GAO, 2006). These agencies and personnel are better prepared. The readiness of the general population is still several steps behind.
The future and way forward is in the wheelhouse of the DHS. The solution may be a series of public service announcements (PSA) similar to the “Duck and Cover” message used by the Civil Defense in the height of the Cold War (Military.com, 2016). The Civil Defense used these messages to teach people to keep their “eyes on the sky” and trained civilians to prepare and respond after a nuclear attack. After the wall in Berlin fell, the Civil Defense disappeared. The DHS has filled this role as it was created after the attacks of 9/11.
The DHS has a strong foundation focused on training and preparing for the IED threat. As highlighted by LTG Barbero when he commanded JIEDDO, there are three focuses in defeating the IED network: defeat the device, attack the network, and train the force (Minton, 2013, p 75). JIEDDO’s focus was C-IED in combat and looked for military solutions. All military members had to receive IED training before going into the combat theater. Now the combat theater is coming to the U.S. While the DHS, the FBI, and other agencies have prepared to defeat the device and attack the network, little has been done on the third element of success; train the force. The civilian equivalent to the force is the general population.
There should be an effort to provide basic IED information to the American population. One method to address this training need may be short PSA messages, like “Duck and Cover” to present information on what an IED may look like or how it may be used by an attacker. These PSA announcements developed by the DHS will need to inform Americans on what makes an item, a person, or an activity suspicious.
There is little doubt that a synergistic information and training campaign led by the DHS and including the FBI and local authorities can successfully improve the U.S. population’s IED threat awareness and readiness. These training efforts must begin before a series of bombs detonate in an American city, subway system, or large public gathering. Any continued delay in these training efforts will only enhance the success of the IED attacks.
Bibliography
Bergen, P., Hoffman, B., and Tiedemann, K., Assessing the Jihad Terrorist Threat to American Interests, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 34 Issue 2, p65-101, February 2011, Accessed January |
at Toy Fair as we all might have liked. We did our best though to get an in-depth look at each of the upcoming sets. We also learned that the first two Bionicle Netflix episodes will be premiering in March and the next two in July. To check out the upcoming sets to see what Bionicle has in store for us, read on! Bionicle 71312 Ekimu the Mask Maker 94 pieces. Age 7+
$14.99 (USD) $17.99 (CAD)
Available in June I apologize for the main picture coming out blurry here, but hopefully the others allow you to see enough detail. Ekimu is quite the upgrade from last year's Mask Maker with a trans-light blue Mask of Creation and a ton of that color overall. He retains a similar shield design, but his hammer no longer incorporates a stud-shooter. The new chest armor in trans-light blue is printed. On the back, you can see that he has both a waist swiveling function and an arm-swinging function, combining the 2015 and 2016 features into one build. He also includes Umarak the Hunter's mask in a new color combination, which has a very evil look with the trans-neon orange. 71313 Lava Beast 114 pieces. Age 7+
$14.99 (USD) $17.99 (CAD)
Available in June Enough of the creatures - bring on the beasts! The things that stood out most to me about Lava Beast is the new rocky or crystalline shell piece in trans-black and the new head. All of the beasts use the same mask and jaw, the latter of which attaches to the head using the same hole as the eye stalk. I'm not a huge fan of the design, but it certainly looks monstrous. Lava Beast does have a cool printed torso armor and the straight Hordika necks in Dark Orange, which I believe is a first. His head is also recolored in trans-neon green, which is nice for adding some variety. His fingers have some poseability, which is a plus, and there's also some sort of gear function on the weapons which I wasn't able to check out. Finally, he has the same swiveling waist as the Uniters. All-in-all I see some nice pieces even if I'm not a fan of the whole. 71314 Storm Beast 109 pieces. Age 7+
$14.99 (USD)$17.99 (CAD)
Available in June I already went over the new mask and armor shell the beasts all have, so at first there's not a whole lot that seems exciting about Storm Beast aside from the colors. He does have a new printed torso armor, and I like the use of feet as hands, although the empty socket is a little distracting. When you turn around Storm Beast though, the real fun begins. Using some rather ingenious Technic construction, he's set up so that if you pull the tail in different directions you can raise the right arm, the left arm, or both. They won't stay where you put them like with last year's gears, butI found this to be a really cool, unique, and innovative play feature that makes this set possibly my favorite of the summer wave. 71315 Quake Beast 102 pieces. Age 7+
$14.99 (USD)$17.99 (CAD)
Available in June Finally we have Quake Beast, the last monstrosity of the summer wave. While I like the printing on his chest armor, it does seem like it would be difficult to reuse. Trans-purple has been one of LEGO's favorite colors lately, and we get a whole bunch more of it here. As far as play features go, the Quake Beast uses last year's new gearbox piece on its side to allow you to swing his arm forward and back like he's giving a right-hook versus a karate chop. It's a bit clunky, but I applaud the designers for trying something different. 71316 Umarak the Destroyer 191 pieces. Age 8+
$24.99 (USD) $29.99 (CAD)
Available in June Umarak is back in the summer wave with a big upgrade. While he uses the same jaw as the beasts, he gets a new mask, which is very nice and undead-looking. The chest armor is stickered, much like 2015 Onua. The legs are once again very Technic-heavy, which some love and others hate. The hands have gears in them, so that if you move one finger the others move as well. It's a nice addition but with no lever or knob to activate it, I'm not sure how different it is from just using ball joints. His other play feature is a swiveling waist like the winter sets have. There's a lot of Techniic that goes in here, as you can see on the back, making this set quite a bit more complex than your average constraction figure. 71300 Uxar Creature of Jungle 89 pieces. Age 6+
$9.99 (USD) $12.99 (CAD)
Available in January See our full review of the Uxar Creature of Jungle here. 71301 Ketar Creature of Stone 80 pieces. Age 6+
$9.99 (USD) $12.99 (CAD)
Available in January See our full review of the Ketar Creature of Stone here. 71302 Akida Creature of Water 120 pieces. Age 6+
$9.99 (USD) $12.99 (CAD)
Available in January See our full review of the Akida Creature of Water here. 71303 Ikir Creature of Fire 77 pieces. Age 6+
$9.99 (USD) $12.99 (CAD)
Available in January See our full review of the Ikir Creature of Fire here. 71304 Terak Creature of Earth 74 pieces. Age 6+
$9.99 (USD) $12.99 (CAD)
Available in January See our full review of the Terak Creature of Earth here. 71305 Lewa Uniter of Jungle 79 pieces. Age 7+
$14.99 (USD) $17.99 (CAD)
Available in January See our full review of the Lewa Uniter of Jungle here. 71306 Pohatu Uniter of Stone 90 pieces. Age 7+
$14.99 (USD) $17.99 (CAD)
Available in January See our full review of the Pohatu Uniter of Stone here. 71307 Gali Uniter of Water 87 pieces. Age 7+
$14.99 (USD) $17.99 (CAD)
Available in January See our full review of the Gali Uniter of Water here. 71308 Tahu Uniter of Fire 132 pieces. Age 8+
$19.99 (USD)$24.99 (CAD)
Available in January See our full review of the Tahu Uniter of Fire here. 71309 Onua Uniter of Earth 143 pieces. Age 8+
$19.99 (USD)$24.99 (CAD)
Available in January See our full review of the Onua Uniter of Earth here. 71310 Umarak the Hunter 172 pieces. Age 8+
$19.99 (USD) $24.99 (CAD)
Available in January See our full review of the Umarak the Hunter here. 71311 Kopaka and Melum - Unity set 171 pieces. Age 8+
$24.99 (USD) $29.99 (CAD)
Available in January See our full review of the Kopaka and Melum - Unity set here. And that's what we can expect for Bionicle for the rest of the year. If you have any questions about the sets, please post them in the Talkback and I'll do my best to answer them. To help pick what theme we cover next, make sure you go vote here and check out all of our Toy Fair 2016 coverage right here. There's a lot more to come, so stay tuned to BZPower! « Return to NewsDaily Events Under Feature
The establishment press first went for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s throat. The attacks may not be fatal, but they put Christie off his game and delayed and maybe ended his opportunity to become the prohibitive favorite for the 2016 Republican nomination.
Now they are coming for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.
This week all the Republican governors are meeting in Washington D.C. for the Republican Governors Association annual meeting. But it might be best understood as the first caucus—two years before Iowa. Christie, Walker, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry, Sam Brownback and Mike Pence are all governors who could credibly run for President based on their policy and political successes in their respective states.
So how is Scott Walker responding to the establishment left’s coming attacks?
He is cutting taxes in Wisconsin. Again.
Walker announced a series of tax cuts totaling more than $800 million in this year’s budget: a $406 million cut in property taxes and $100 million in lower income taxes. The property tax cut will save the average homeowner $100 over last year. The personal income tax will be cut by reducing the lowest income tax bracket from 4.4 percent to 4.0 percent. Every family will receive a tax cut of about $58 per year.
In addition, the state will reduce its withholding tax for state income taxes saving taxpayers $322.6 million each year. This will save the average family of four about $58 each month.
The leadership of the Republican House and Senate have both endorsed the size and shape of the tax cuts.
This is possible because of the success of Walker’s policies that were enacted over the violent opposition of the labor unions and left in Wisconsin three years ago.
The success of his reforms led to this year’s budget surplus of $912 million. After the tax cuts Wisconsin will be able to add $100 million to the rainy day fund, or as the State Senate prefers, held against contingencies. The governor’s proposal would better protect taxpayers.
These tax cuts added to the tax cuts in the past three years add up to $2 billion in tax relief since Governor Walker took over three years ago.
Three years ago it would have been hard to imagine today’s good news. When Scott Walker defeated Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in the November gubernatorial election in 2010, the state faced a $3.6 billion budget deficit. The former Democrat Governor Jim Doyle and Democrat legislature had repeatedly tried to “fix” the deficit by adding on job killing taxes that slowed growth and job creation in the state. Wisconsin lost 133,000 jobs in the previous governor’s term.
Good policy pays off.
Scott Walker did not try to balance the budget with one-time gimmicks or across the board spending cuts that would cut both muscle and fat, punishing necessary programs while failing to reform government failures.
Act 10 was the signature legislation that reformed the state’s public sector labor laws. No longer could unions have local governments take union dues (sometimes reaching $1,000 per worker earning $50,000) from their paychecks and hand it over to the union bosses. Act 10 required that any payment of union dues be made voluntary. Union bosses would have to learn to ask for dues money rather than have someone else pick the workers’ pockets. Unions would be limited in what they could negotiate. No more negotiating labor union agreements with gold-plated pensions that taxpayers could never afford. No more union control of the work rules. Schools would be run by principles and school board, not labor union officials. And benefits would not be part of negotiations. Unions under Act 10 can negotiate pay raises up to the inflation rate.
Schools can hire and fire to have the most competent teachers. Excellent teaching and education—not union make-work rules—will be the goal of Wisconsin schools.
All local government was freed from more than $2 billion in imposed costs and local governments found that even with lower state funding they were better off. Good teachers would no longer be threatened with losing their jobs to a lousy teacher due to seniority rules.
Teachers were no longer forced to buy insurance from a monopoly insurance company that the unions profited from. Millions were saved by teachers and the union lost one of its profitable income lines at the expense of teachers.
Tens of thousands of union activists demonstrated around and in the State Capitol three years ago. Scott Walker and the Republican House and Senate held their ground and reformed state government. Now teachers, students, and taxpayers are reaping the benefits of governing well.
And once again the left will try and defeat Scott Walker. Walker is the only Governor who has been elected twice already in the last three years. Once in 2010 and once again when the unions got the signatures to force a recall election that Walker won. The left understands that Walker’s continued success in Wisconsin is a rebuke to the progressive movement and the strengthening of a possible GOP presidential candidate in 2016. The name-calling has started on social media. Watch for the heavy artillery from the New York Times.
Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform. Follow him on Twitter at @GroverNorquistWhat's new in this version
2.2.11.0 (11/14/2017) - WM10 : Navigation bar hides at start 2.2.0.0 (11/13/2017) - New "Cinema" mode in VR settings : watch non 360° videos like if tou are at the cinema! - Bugfix: SBS mode bad results with video rendering. 2.1.0.0 (07/17/2017) - W10 : Transparency tile - WM10 : Bugfix - crash at launch on 2.0.0.0 (07/13/2017) - Windows 10 UWP (Works with XboxOne too) but the old version for Win 8.1 (Desktop+Phone) is still updated with this package. (Note : you can use gamepads on Windows Mobile 10) - Spherical Video SBS (Side By Side) handled (top-bottom or left-right) 1.2.0.0 (07/19/2016) - Sensor performances improved - General performances improved 1.1.0.0 (07/01/2016) - New feature : You can read 360° images/photos now (local files or URI) - Some Bug fixes 1.0.0.5 Bug fix : the app crashed sometimes at launch (due to Google Analytics...) 1.0.0.3 - DEMO button on the Start Page - Increase interpupillary distance setting for large screens (or large interpupillary distance on human faces!) - Bug fix 1.0.0.2 Bug fix with touch gestures 1.0.0.1 - New Feature : 3D VR Headset supported (Oculus Rift like devices, Google Cardboard etc.) - 3D VR Headset : Customize Interpupillary distance (IPD) - 3D VR Headset : Buy recommended device via the app - Better UI experience (click once to show/hide the player controls) - Better video performances - Handle URI to play videos (in addition of local & YouTube videos)Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a pretty big game. In fact, the PC version’s file size is pushing 100GB, although console versions are smaller. But that’s just file size; which would have been meant nothing to Tolkein while he was devising his famous novels.
Here’s our Middle-earth: Shadow of War PC Review.
So in order to figure out how physically large Shadow of War is, we did some Important Maths™. We figured out that the game’s 97.7GB file size would need to be installed on 86416 5.25 inch floppy disks. Those disks are 1.6mm thick, so if you stacked all of them one on top of the other, you’d end up with a pile a little over 138 metres tall.
To put that into perspective, that’s the equivalent of stacking 129 hobbits on top of one another, which is the same as around 34 Treebeards. It’s also just under 10% of the size of The Tower of Sauron, which Peter Jackson and his team reckoned was an impressive 1400m tall.
Maths is hard, and I’m too young to properly remember floppy disks, so if I’ve fudged the numbers here somehow, I’m sorry.Image copyright Getty Images
Scotland's economy is showing signs of slowing faster than the rest of the UK as consumer spending fades and firms remain reluctant to invest, according to a report.
The EY Scottish Item Club has predicted "below-par" GDP growth of 0.9% in 2017 - half of that expected for the UK.
It suggested the retail sector would be worst hit by "mounting pressure" on consumers.
Employment in Scotland is also forecast to continue to fall this year.
In 2017, it is expected to drop by 0.1%, followed by further decreases of 0.5% and 0.3% in 2018 and 2019 respectively.
However, manufacturing output is predicted to grow in line with the overall economy for the first time since 2013, as weaker sterling and a pick-up in global demand "ultimately provide a boost to exports".
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The report suggested the retail sector would be worst hit by "mounting pressure" on consumers
The item club said Scottish households were "likely to endure a fall in real incomes" this year as a result in part of rising inflation and "weak" labour market conditions.
It expects consumer spending to rise by just 1% in 2017, and by less than 1% per year between 2018 and 2020.
This compares with an average annual rate of 2.3% over the past five years.
The forecaster said this reflected "a significant loss of momentum from a key driver of the Scottish economy".
It expects Scottish growth to slow a little in 2018 to 0.7% before gradually accelerating to around 1.4% by the end of the decade.
However, it predicts that throughout this period, the Scottish economy will grow more slowly than the UK.
Dougie Adams, senior economic advisor to the EY Scottish Item Club, described the Scottish economy as being "stuck in the slow lane".
He said: "As flagged in previous EY Scottish Item Club reports, one factor is the ending of the outsized contribution to GDP growth from construction as many of the big-ticket public sector-funded infrastructure projects near completion."
Image copyright PA Image caption Many Scottish infrastructure projects, including the Queensferry Crossing, are nearing completion
He added: "Consumer spending, which last year proved surprisingly resilient and helped buoy the economy, is fading.
"A weak labour market and rising inflation is putting further pressure on incomes and recent research reveals that households expect worsening economic conditions.
"All of this means consumers are likely to be more cautious."
EY's chief economist for UK and Ireland, Mark Gregory, said: "Scotland's economy is showing signs of slowing faster than the rest of the UK which sends a clear message that business and government will have to work harder and smarter to achieve sustained growth.
"The economy has to rebalance and shift away from a reliance on public-funded major infrastructure projects.
"Sector diversification is also required to help move away from an over-reliance on the oil and gas, construction and financial services sectors."
Foundations'strong'
Responding to the report, Scottish Economy Secretary Keith Brown said: "Despite serious challenges such as the slowdown in the oil and gas sector, the foundations of Scotland's economy are strong.
"Unemployment is falling and we are seeing early signs that the situation is improving for North Sea operators.
"This report from E&Y builds on the Scottish Engineering quarterly review figures released earlier this month by showing positive signs for the manufacturing sector in Scotland.
"This report also comes after the 2017 EY Scotland Attractiveness Survey confirmed 2016 was a record-breaking year for foreign direct investment into Scotland.
"For the second year in a row we have attracted more projects than ever before and Scotland has been the top UK region outside London in every one of the past five years."
'Damning report'
Scottish Conservative economy spokesman Dean Lockhart said: "This is another damning report that shows just how much harm has been caused by the SNP's handling of our economy.
"While the rest of the UK economy grows we are on the verge of a recession, and these figures confirm that we are stuck in the'slow lane'.
"With the SNP focused on independence they've neglected jobs, businesses and Scotland's economy.
"It's time they took the threat of a second referendum off the table and started concentrating on turning our ailing economy around as soon as possible."
Labour market 'improving'
Meanwhile, a separate report has suggested improving labour market conditions in Scotland.
The latest IHS Market Report on Jobs for Scotland found that last month there were sharp rises in worker placements, record growth in permanent staff demand and falling availability.
In terms of staff demand, the data signalled the fastest rate of expansion in the survey's 14-year history, with growth faster in Scotland than across the UK as a whole.
Scottish recruitment consultancies also recorded further steep growth in demand for temporary staff.
Sector data indicated that staff demand rose fastest in the IT and Computing sector for both permanent and temporary roles.
Meanwhile, the rate of expansion in permanent staff placements in Scotland reached its highest in 27 months as growth matched the UK as a whole, which was at a 25-month high.In one of his first public events since being held under house arrest, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange appeared in London Saturday for a conversation with Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, moderated by Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman. They discussed the impact of WikiLeaks on world politics, the release of the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, and Cablegate — the largest trove of classified U.S. government records in history.
“From being inside the center of the storm, I’ve learned not just about the structure of government, not just about how power flows in many countries around the world that we’ve dealt with, but rather how history is shaped and distorted by the media,” Assange said.
Assange also talked about his new defense team, as well as U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning, the accused Army whistleblower who has been jailed for the past year. Assange is currently under house arrest in Norfolk, outside London, pending a July 12 appeals hearing on his pending extradition to Sweden for questioning in a sexual misconduct case. He has now spent six months under house arrest, despite not being charged with a crime in any country. Assange was wearing an ankle monitor under his boot and Saturday’s event concluded shortly after 6:00 p.m. so he could return to his bail address by his curfew.
The event also marked the publication of the paperback edition of Žižek’s Living in the End Times, in which he argues that new ways of using and sharing information, in particular WikiLeaks, are one of a number of harbingers of the end of global capitalism as we know it.
The discussion was sponsored by the Frontline Club, founded in part to remember journalists killed on the front lines of war.
Please note that this program contains the words sh*t and bullsh*t and may NOT be suitable for broadcast.
VAUGHAN SMITH: Good afternoon. My name is Vaughan Smith. I’m the founder of the Frontline Club, co-founder actually, co-founder with my wife Pranvera, who’s hidden amongst you somewhere. We’re very excited to be doing this today. This is the largest event we’ve done at the Frontline Club. And I’d like to thank Will of the Troxy Centre and all his team. I’d like to thank you for coming to this fantastic place. I’d like to thank Dan, our branding man, because I’m standing in front of a hundred logos, which are all new. So thanks, Dan. Our new look. We’re not shy of our new look. I’d like to thank the Frontline Club staff, who have worked extremely hard to put this on, particularly Flora and Millie. And so, thank you all. I’m extremely proud of you all.
The Frontline Club exists to promote what’s best in journalism and to put on debates and discussions like this. We’re a social enterprise, and if you wish to support us, come to Paddington, if you haven’t already been, where we can feed and entertain you. We do 200 events a year. As a social enterprise, the money you spend tonight and any money you spend at the Frontline Club helps us do this work, so we’re very grateful for it.
If you want to help Julian or Slavoj or Democracy Now!, you can buy some books or put donations at the end. That facility will be there. Now, it’s Julian’s 40th birthday tomorrow, so if you want to help him with those exorbitant legal fees, then, you know, give generously at the end.
So, all that remains is for me to welcome Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! Amy is a multiple-award-winning journalist and is the main presenter for Democracy Now! and has flown all the way from America to be here, and she’s a pretty fine person. And I’m extremely glad to hand over to her now. Thank you very much.
AMY GOODMAN: Good afternoon. It is a great honor to be with you this afternoon, and a shout out to all of the people who are watching this broadcast all over the world. We are live-streaming this at democracynow.org. By the way, how many of you watch or listen to or read Democracy Now!?
We have given out about a thousand fliers of where we broadcast in Britain and also where you can watch, read and listen to the broadcast. We’re also live-streaming. We’ve offered the embed for anyone to take to put on their website. The Nation is live-streaming us. MichaelMoore.com is live-streaming us. Free Speech TV is broadcasting Democracy Now! across the United States. And there are many others. I hope people tweet in, Facebook in, let us know what you’re doing with this broadcast.
It’s extremely important, because information is power. Information is a matter of life and death. We’ve learned that through these remarkable trove of documents that have been released in the last year. The Iraq War Logs, the Afghanistan War Logs, and what’s been called Cablegate, the U.S. State Department documents that are continuing to be released.
Why does it matter so much? Well, we’ll talk about that this afternoon, but let’s just take one example that came out in the Iraq War Logs, February of 2007. The war logs show that two men were standing, Iraqis, under an Apache helicopter. The men have their hands up. They clearly are attempting to surrender. The Apache helicopter can see this. So, they’re not rogue. The soldiers call back to the base, and they say, “What should we do? These men have their hands up.” The lawyer on the base says you cannot surrender to a helicopter, and they blow the men attempting to surrender away. That was February 2007.
Now, we will fast-forward to July 12th, 2007, and video that has been released by WikiLeaks. This devastating video of an area of Baghdad called New Baghdad, where a group of men were showing around two Reuters journalists. Well, one was a videographer, a young up-and-coming videographer named Namir Noor-Eldeen, and one was his driver, Saeed Chmagh. He was 40 years old. He was the father of four. And they were showing them around the area. The same Apache helicopter unit is hovering above. They open fire. The video is chilling. I am sure many of you have seen it. If you watch or listen to Democracy Now!, we played it repeatedly, discussing it with various people, from Julian Assange to soldiers who were there on the ground. Over time, we dissected this.
The soldiers opened fire. You have the video of the target, and you have the audio of the sounds of the soldiers cursing, laughing—but not rogue, always going up the chain of command, asking for permission to open fire. In the first explosion, Namir Noor-Eldeen and the other men on the ground are killed. Saeed Chmagh, you can see him attempting to crawl away. And then a van pulls up from the neighborhood, and they’re attempting to pick up the wounded. There are children in the van. And the Apache helicopter opens fire again, and Saeed Chmagh, others in the van are killed. Two little children are critically injured inside.
Now, I dare say that if we had seen what came out in the Iraq War Logs in February of 2007, if we had learned the story at the time, after it happened, of the men with their hands up trying to surrender, there would have been an outcry. People are good. People care. People are compassionate. They would have called for an investigation. Perhaps one would have begun. But it might well have saved the lives of so many. Certainly, months later, perhaps that same Apache helicopter unit under investigation would not have done what it did. And maybe Namir Noor-Eldeen, the young Reuters videographer, and his driver Saeed Chmagh, not to mention the other men who were killed and the kids critically injured, none of that would have happened to them. That’s why information matters. It is important we know what is done in our name. And today we’re going to talk about this new age of information.
We’re joined by two people many of you know well. Earlier, I asked a young man who had come to the gathering why he had traveled so far. He said, “Are you kidding? To be with two of the most dangerous people.” Well, the National Review calls Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek “the most dangerous political philosopher in the West,” and the New York Times says he’s “the Elvis of cultural theory.” Slavoj Žižek has written over 50 books on philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory. His latest book, Living in the End Times. And we’ll talk about what he thinks and talks about around the world.
Now, we’re joined by another man who has published perhaps more than anyone in the world. In fact, he wrote a book on the underground computer information age called Underground: The International Computer Underground [Ed.: Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness, and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier. But with the Iraq War Logs, the Afghanistan War Logs, now the U.S. government cables that have yet to be fully released, I would say that Julian Assange is perhaps the most widely published person on earth.
Today we’re going to have a conversation about information, and I’d like to ask Julian to begin by going back to that moment in 2007, as we talk about the Iraq War Logs, and talk about the significance of them for you and why you’ve chosen to release this information.
JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, Amy, I suspect, under that criteria, perhaps Rupert Murdoch is the most widely published person on earth. Something [inaudible]. People say that Australia has given two people to the world, Rupert Murdoch and me, fairly big in publishing.
Well, in some ways, things are very easy for us and very easy for me, in that we make a promise to sources that if they give us material that is of a certain type, that is significant, of diplomatic, critical, ethical or historical significance, not published and under some sort of threat, we will publish it. And that actually is enough.
Of course, we have a goal with publishing material in general. But it has been my long-term belief that what advances us as a civilization is the entirety of our intellectual record and the entirety of our understanding about what we are going through, what human institutions are actually like and how they actually behave. And if we are to make rational policy decisions, insofar as any decision can be rational, then we have to have information that is drawn from the real world, in a description of the real world. And at the moment, we are severely lacking in the information from the interior of big secretive organizations that have such a role in shaping how civilization evolves and how we all live.
So, getting down into Iraq, so that was 400,000 documents, each one written in military speak; on the other hand, each one having a geographic coordinate down often to 10 meters, a death count of civilians, U.S. military troops, Iraqi troops and suspected insurgents. So, it was the first—rather, the largest, because we also did the Afghan War Logs—the largest history of a war, the most detailed significant history of a war to have ever been published, probably at all, but definitely during the course of a war. And so, it provided a picture of the everyday squalor of war, from children being killed at roadside blocks to over a thousand people being handed over to the Iraqi police for torture, to the reality of close-air support and how modern military combat is done, linking up with other information such as this video that we discovered of the men surrendering, being attacked.
So, as an archive of human history, this is a beautiful and horrifying thing, both at the same time. It is the history of the nation of Iraq, in most significant recording, during its most significant development in the past 20 years. And while we always see newspaper stories revealing and personalizing some—if we’re lucky, some individual event or some individual family dying, this provides the broad scope of the entire war and all the individual events, the details of over 104,000 deaths.
And we worked together to statistically analyze this with various groups around the world, such as Iraq Body Count, who became a specialist in this area, and lawyers here in the U.K. who represented Iraqi refugees, to pull out the stories of 15,000 Iraqi civilians, labeled as civilians by the U.S. military, who were killed, who were never before reported in the Iraqi press, never before reported in the U.S. press or in the world press, even in aggregate, even saying, “Today a thousand people died”—not reported in any manner whatsoever. And you just think about that: 15,000 people whose deaths were recorded by the U.S. military but were completely unknown to the rest of the world. That’s a very significant thing. And compare that to the 3,000 people who died on 9/11. Imagine the significance for Iraqis.
So, that is something that we specialize in and that I like to do and I’ve always tried to do, is to go from the small to the large, not just by abstraction or by analogy, but actually by encompassing all of it together, and then trying to look at it and abstract, through mathematics or statistics, and so to try and push both of these things at the same time, the individual relationship plus the state relationship plus the relationship that has to do with civilization as a whole.
AMY GOODMAN: Slavoj Žižek, the importance of WikiLeaks today in the world?
SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: Well, to understand properly this question, it’s just—you can withdraw and give me two hours. No, but I will try to condense it. First, let me say also how proud I am to be here and to let me mention something which maybe most of you don’t know, that how difficult even it was to organize this event, like it had to be moved two times, out and more out from Central London and so on.
So, again, what I want to say is, let me begin with the significance of what you, Amy, started with, these shots. I mean, not shooting, but video shots of those Apache helicopters shooting on. You know why this is important? Because the way ideology functions today, it’s not so much that—let’s not be naive—that people didn’t know about it, but I think the way those in power manipulate it. Yes, we all know dirty things are being done, but you are being informed about this obliquely, in such a way that basically you are able to ignore it.
And can I make a terrible, maybe sexual offensive, but not dirty—don’t be afraid—remark? You know, like a husband—sorry for making male chauvinist twist—a husband may know abstractly “my wife is cheating on me.” And you can accept, “OK, I’m modern, tolerant husband.” But, you know, when you get the thought of your wife doing things, it’s quite a different thing. And it’s, I would say, with all respect, something similar. It’s very important, because the same—no, no, I’m not dreaming here. The same thing I remembered happened I think about two years ago in Serbia. You know, people rationally accept that we did horrible things in Srebrenica and so on, but, you know, it was just abstract knowledge. Then, by chance, all the honor to Serb media who published this, they got hold of a video effectively showing a group of Serbs pushing to an edge and shooting a couple of Bosnian prisoners. And the effect was a total shock, national shock, although, again, strictly seeing, nobody learned anything new.
So here, so that I don’t get lost, if you allow me just a little bit more, here we should see the significance of WikiLeaks. Many of my friends who are skeptical about it are telling me, “So, what did we really learn? Isn’t it clear that every power, in order to function, you have collateral damage? You have to have a certain discretion—what you say, what you don’t say.” But to conclude, I will propose a formula of what WikiLeaks is doing, and it’s extremely important. Of course, I’m not a utopian. Neither me nor Julian believes in this kind of a pseudo-radical openness—everything should be clear and so on. But, what are we dealing with here?
Another example from cinema, very short, Ernst Lubitsch’s Ninotchka. You find there a wonderful joke, where, I think towards the beginning of the film, the hero enters a cafeteria and says, “Can I get some coffee with cream, please?” And the waiter answers him, “Sorry, we ran out of cream. We only have milk. So, can we give you—can I serve you with coffee without milk?” That’s the trick here. Like, when we learn something from the media, like, if I may repeat the metaphor, they behave as if they are serving coffee with cream. That is to say, of course we all know they are not telling the entire truth, but, you know, that is the trick of ideology. Even if they don’t lie directly, the implications, the unsaid, is a lie. And you bring this out. You are not so much putting them—catching them, as they put it, with their pants down, lying on behalf of what they explicitly say, but precisely on behalf of what they are implying. And I think |
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Contact Emily Le Coz at elecoz@jackson.gannett.com or (601) 961-7249. Follow @emily_lecoz on Twitter.
Read or Share this story: http://on.thec-l.com/1IltsnoHow California Is Turning The Rest Of The West Blue
Enlarge this image toggle caption iStockphoto.com iStockphoto.com
Colorado's politics have become positively Californian lately. There are new restrictions on guns. Pot is legal. The legislative agenda featured an expansion of alternative-energy use requirements for rural consumers. Gay couples can now enter into civil unions.
There's a reason for all this.
Lots of Californians have moved to Denver and its environs, bringing a progressive strain of politics with them and angering more conservative parts of the state — so much so that 10 northeastern counties are planning symbolic but serious votes on secession this fall.
Conservatives have discovered that living on the far side of the Rockies is no longer far enough to get away from the influence of West Coast liberals.
"California migration, to a degree, has altered Colorado politics," says Mike Krause, vice president of the Independence Institute, a free-market think tank in Denver. "I see California license plates in my neighborhood and on my commute all the time."
Source: John Pitkin's tabulation of 2011 American Community Survey PUMS
Making Other States Liberal
California transplants aren't the entire reason the Mountain West has become arguably the nation's chief swing region in national politics. The number of Californians moving to other Western states has actually declined over the past couple of decades, while growth of Hispanic populations has been more important in terms of shaking things up politically.
Still, newcomers from California have not only helped put Colorado in the Democratic column in recent presidential elections, but they've also helped President Obama carry Nevada two times.
Californians have contributed to make Salt Lake City and Boise more Democratic in recent years, but they are easily outvoted by Republicans in other parts of Utah and Idaho. Similarly, other states such as Arizona and Texas remain reliably Republican, but contain more liberal enclaves thanks to new arrivals from the West Coast.
"It's not going to change Texas politics immediately, but all of the inbound migration to Texas is making Texas more liberal than it otherwise would be," says Ian McDonald, a political scientist at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., and author of a dissertation on the effects of migration on the American electorate.
Voting With Their Feet
The phenomenon is happening on both sides of the country. Northeasterners have already made Southeastern states such as Virginia and Florida more politically competitive, while making the GOP hold on Georgia perhaps more shaky.
But it's particularly pronounced out West. Nevada has the nation's lowest percentage of residents who were born in the state.
With Californians making up half of all newcomers to Nevada during its recent boom years, they now have an outsized influence. Only 14 percent of Nevada's electorate was born in the state, according to a Brookings Institution study — compared to more than 20 percent who hailed originally from California.
"In the case of Nevada, the spillover effect is pretty clear," says John Pitkin, a demographer affiliated with the University of Southern California. "Nevada is almost a satellite of California."
Ideology Is All Relative
What may be ironic is the fact that most of the people leaving California are relatively conservative — by California standards.
They want cheaper homes and job opportunities, but they are also motivated by the state's higher tax rates, says Robert Lang, who directs the Brookings Mountain West, a research center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Nevertheless, they also tend to be fairly progressive on social issues such as gay marriage and abortion — and overall may be more liberal than their new neighbors in other states.
"You see that in other parts of the country, too," says Ruy Teixeira, a Democratic demographer at the Center for American Progress. "You have the phenomenon of relatively conservative people leaving a liberal state and moving to a conservative state where they're relatively liberal."
Resisting Californication
There's nothing new about Californians leaving for other states. For decades, many residents of Oregon and Colorado have adorned their cars with bumper stickers advertising themselves as "natives." In Idaho, the stickers read, "Keep Idaho beautiful... go back to California."
"Ten to 15 years ago, there were actually billboards up saying 'Don't Californicate Colorado,' " says Krause, the Independence Institute vice president. "People were coming here in droves because they could buy a great house with their equity from L.A. or San Francisco."
Migration across the country has slowed in recent years, due to the recession and stagnant housing markets. But with the economy picking up and home prices in California skyrocketing, people may start moving again.
California is already sending in excess of 100,000 people per year to other states. That's adding to the Democrats' current advantage in the Electoral College.
"One of the things it's clearly doing is that it's making the other states bigger and adding to their electoral weight," Pitkin says.
A Bluer California
Population loss is troubling news for California. The state, which experienced net in-migration of 3.3 million people during the 1990s, now is losing people to other states.
Nearly all of the state's recent growth has come from births, according to Dowell Myers, a demographer at USC. The 2010 Census represented the first time that California-born residents accounted for a majority of the state population. It was also the first time that California did not gain congressional seats (and thus add electoral votes) since becoming a state in 1850.
Much of California's middle class is now moving away. From 2000 to 2010, the state lost $29.4 billion in income it potentially could have taxed due to migration of workers, according to the Tax Foundation, second only to New York.
California's demographic challenges are bad news economically but point to one thing politically: The state now offers even more fertile territory for Democrats. The state was competitive in national elections as recently as the late 1980s, but now is routinely ignored by presidential candidates because it is so solidly Democratic.
The departure of some of its relatively conservative voters has left the state almost entirely blue. Democrats hold every statewide office in California and won supermajorities in both legislative chambers last fall.
"Every Republican who goes makes the state bluer because there are so few of them," says Pitkin.But even taking off at all was an uncertainty. Launching land-based bombers, laden with fuel, bombs and five-man crews, from the short runway of a carrier designed for smaller fighter planes had been done in training, but never in combat.
That he survived the bombing run, and the water landing of plane 15, and then a cat-and-mouse drama for weeks with the Japanese Army as it hunted for the airmen — eight of the 80 men were captured and three were executed — was just a matter of luck and of doing one’s job, Mr. Saylor said in an interview with The New York Times last year.
“I didn’t dwell on it,” he said, his voice clipped and matter-of-fact, his shirt buttoned to the top. “It was just a mission we did in the war,” he added. “We did what we had to do.”
In some ways, the real test for Sergeant Saylor, who turned 22 the month before the raid, on April 18, 1942, came before takeoff, when an engine of his plane malfunctioned in testing on the carrier Hornet as the squadron sailed west toward Japan.
The task of finding the trouble and fixing it fell to him as the plane’s engineer gunner, he said. Disassembling a bomber engine on the heaving deck of an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific, he said, had never been done, and it meant carrying every loose part into the fuselage as he worked, for fear that pieces would roll off the deck into the sea. On a coffee table in his house, he kept a replica of the gear arm that was at the heart of his, and his engine’s, trouble that day.Corporate giants are making big contributions to disaster relief organizations to help victims of Tropical Storm Harvey.
The storm is expected to leave behind billions of dollars in damages.
Companies have pledged more than $157 million to relief efforts as of Saturday afternoon, according to an estimate from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Sixty-nine companies had donated $1 million or more so far.
Walmart has pledged up to $20 million in cash, products and matching donations, while Verizon has contributed $10 million. On Friday, tech billionaire Michael Dell pledged $36 million to relief efforts.
The figures are constantly changing as contributions continue to pour in -- and employee gift matching programs and customer donations are already bringing in even more funds.
"The corporate response thus far [has] been strong," Marc DeCourcey, senior vice president of the Chamber of Commerce Foundation, told CNNMoney.
Related: Impact Your World - How you can help
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina and Rita brought in more than $1 billion in business aid within the first six months of each disaster, according to the Chamber of Commerce Center for Corporate Citizenship.
The Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 raised $566 million from corporate donations, while the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami brought in $301 million. Hurricane Sandy in 2012 raised $141 million within the first six months in business aid, per the Chamber's data.
Companies have also gone beyond just writing a check, by volunteering, providing in-kind donations like water and food, and encouraging employees to donate by matching contributions, according to Mark Shamley, the president and CEO of the Association of Corporate Citizenship Professionals.
"The bottom line is companies have embraced their civic duty to respond to disasters in ways that transcend check writing," he said.
When companies respond to disasters, they build a tremendous amount of good will externally and internally, says Una Osili, associate dean at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
"Employees themselves want to work at companies that are engaged in a broader social good and making the community better," she said.
Many corporate giants are overwhelmingly donating to the Red Cross.
"We are extremely pleased and gratified by the outpouring of support we are receiving to help those affected," a Red Cross spokeswoman told CNNMoney.
Here's a running list of what foreign and domestic companies are doing to help.
Abbott: Abbott and its foundation the Abbott Fund are giving $1 million in grants and healthcare and nutrition products. That includes $900,000 in grants to the Red Cross, Americares and Direct Relief, and $100,000 in healthcare and nutrition products.
Abbvie: The AbbVie Foundation is giving $1 million in grant funding for organizations like Red Cross, AmeriCares, Direct Relief International, and Feeding America. It is also matching employee donations made to relief organization.
AdvoCare: The nutrition and wellness company pledged $50,000 and another $50,000 in matching funds for donations gathered on the American Red Cross portal on its site.
Aetna: The Aetna Foundation announced a $100,000 contribution to both the American Red Cross and the Community Foundation of Greater Houston. It will also donate $50,000 to nonprofit Team Rubicon to assist current and future disaster relief efforts.
Air Products: The Air Products Foundation is contributing $100,000 to the Red Cross and local agencies in the Gulf Coast. It is also matching employee donations.
Albertsons: The food and drug retailer is matching the first $200,000 donated by its customers in stores and online.
Allergan: The Allergan Foundation on Monday said it will donate $100,000 to the Red Cross to support victims of Harvey.
Allstate: Allstate and the Allstate Foundation have pledged $1.5 million to Harvey relief. The company is also matching employee and agency owner contributions.
Amazon: Amazon and Whole Foods matched $1 mllion in cash donations made on Amazon.com to the Red Cross Hurricane Harvey Relief.
Ameren: The power company is giving $25,000 to the Red Cross.
American Express: American Express is donating $150,000 to the Red Cross. It will match up to $100,000 in employee donations to the Red Cross.
Amgen: Amgen, a biopharmaceutical company, is donating $80,000 to Direct Relief International and $20,000 to the American Kidney Fund's Disaster Relief Program to help dialysis patients impacted by the storm. The company will also match employee donations.
Anadarko: The company donated $1 million to Greater United Way Disaster Relief Fund.
Andersen: The manufacturer of windows and doors is making a $50,000 donation to the Red Cross. It will also match up to $25,000 in employee contributions. The company is also giving $100,000 worth of windows and doors to Houston Habitat for Humanity to help with rebuilding efforts.
Apple: The tech giant made a $2 million donation to the Red Cross over the weekend, an Apple spokeswoman told CNNMoney. Apple will also match employee donations 2 to 1. Users can donate to the Red Cross through iTunes or on the App Store. The company has helped raise more than $1 million over the past few days, according to an employee email obtained by CNN.
AT&T: AT&T is contributing $350,000 to help communities following the storm, including $100,000 to the Greater Houston Community Fund, $100,000 to the Red Cross Hurricane Harvey Fund and $50,000 to the Coastal Bend Community Foundation in South Texas.
The AT&T Foundation will match employee donations up to $50,000 each to Team Rubicon and to the AT&T Employee Disaster Relief Fund, which supports employees who live in the areas affected by the storm. (AT&T is acquiring Time Warner, the parent company of CNN.)
Associa: The homeowner and property management company pledged $50,000 to the Red Cross through its non-profit Associa Cares.
Avangrid: The energy and utility company will contribute $50,000 to Red Cross Disaster Relief through its foundation.
Bank of America: The Bank of America Charitable Foundation is donating $1 million to support Harvey relief efforts, including a $250,000 donation to the Red Cross. The remainder of the funds will be allocated as the company learns more about recovery needs, a spokesperson told CNNMoney.
Bank of America will also match employee donations of $1 or more until September 30. Its usual gift match minimum is $25.
Bass Pro Shops: The sporting good store has pledged $40,000 worth of supplies to relief efforts.
Bayer: Bayer told CNNMoney it is donating $100,000 each to the Red Cross and nonprofit Direct Relief.
BB&T: Bank BB&T is giving $100,000 to the Red Cross of Greater Houston in Texas.
BBVA Compass: BBVA Compass' foundation will contribute $250,000 to the Red Cross and the Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund. The bank also aims to raise up to $250,000, both online and at its branches, from employees and customers for those organizations.
Boehringer Ingelheim: The Boehringer Ingelheim Cares Foundation is contributing over $100,000 to Americares and Direct Relief International. It is also donating $25,000 to the Texas A&M Foundation to help animals impacted by Harvey.
Boeing: The Boeing Charitable Trust committed $1 million to the Red Cross for Harvey relief efforts.
BMO Financial: Financial services provider BMO Financial contributed $100,000 to the Red Cross.
BP: BP and the BP Foundation have donated $750,000 to assist with relief efforts. The contribution will be split equally among the Red Cross, the Community Foundation of Greater Houston and the United Way of Greater Houston. The company will also match employee contributions.
Bristol-Myers Squibb: The pharmaceutical company and its foundation are donating $250,000 to Americares, Direct Relief International and the Red Cross. Its foundation will also match employee donations to organizations working on relief efforts. It is also giving medicines valued at $10 million to Americares and Direct Relief.
Campbell Soup: The company made a $50,000 contribution to the Red Cross and United Way of Greater Houston. It will also match employee donations to the Red Cross up to $25,000. The company is also donating food products.
Camping World: The retailer will match customer donations up to $2 million made in stores to the Red Cross. The company is also accepting clothing and apparel donations.
Cargill: The company made a contribution of $150,000 to the Red Cross and Feeding America. It is also matching employee donations.
CarMax: CarMax and its foundation are pledging $100,000 to the Red Cross. For every dollar an employee donates to the Red Cross, the foundation will double the amount. It is also providing impacted employees with up to $1,500 through CarMax's Associate Disaster Relief Fund.
Carnival Cruise Line: The cruise line and its philanthropic arm Carnival Foundation are donating $1 million to disaster relief efforts. Carnival Chairman Micky Arison and his wife Madeleine are also contributing $1 million from their foundation.
Caterpillar: The Caterpillar Foundation donated $300,000 to the Red Cross to help with immediate relief efforts for Harvey.
Cheniere Energy: Cheniere Energy on Monday said it will make a $1 million donation to the Red Cross to help with relief and recovery efforts following the storm.
Chevron: Chevron is making a $1 million donation to the Red Cross. The oil and gas company will also match donations made to relief efforts by its employees and retirees.
Cigna: The Cigna Foundation is contributing $100,000 to the Red Cross. Cigna employees can also request matching funds for their donations to the Red Cross.
Citgo: The petroleum company is giving $3 million to relief efforts in Houston. The company said that contribution came out of a $5 million fund the company has pooled together to help provide aid primarily to Corpus Christi, Houston and Lake Charles, Louisiana -- all of which are home to Citgo facilities.
Citi: The Citi Foundation has committed a $1 million donation to the Red Cross, the company told CNNMoney.
Coach: The Coach Foundation has committed $200,000 to the Red Cross. Coach (COH) will also match employee contributions.
Coca-Cola: The Coca-Cola Foundation pledged $1 million to the Red Cross on Tuesday. Coca-Cola (KO) will also match employee donations made to the company's Employee Disaster Relief Fund up to $100,000.
Comcast: Comcast NBCUniversal is giving $500,000 toward the Houston Mayors' Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund and the Red Cross. The organizations will share the donation. The company will also donate advertising time on its cable networks to these organizations to run public service announcements about how to aid with flood relief efforts.
Comerica: The Dallas-based bank will donate $100,000 to the Red Cross.
ConocoPhillips: The company is making a $2.5 million donation to both the Red Cross and the United Way of Greater Houston.
Employees and retirees in the U.S. can request to have their personal contributions matched.
CVS: CVS Health and the CVS Health Foundation announced $200,000 in cash and in-kind product donations, including $50,000 each to the Greater Houston Community Foundation and the Red Cross, and $25,000 to the Salvation Army. CVS will also match employee contributions up to $25,000.
Del Frisco's Restaurant Group: The company is donating 20% of sales from Thursday to Monday across all 53 restaurants. Its goal is to donate $1 million to Houston area food banks.
Dell: Dell has pledged $500,000 the American Red Cross and Team Rubicon. The company will also match employee contributions up to $10,000 per person each year.
Direct Energy: The company is matching donations up to $25,000 to the Red Cross on this website.
Discover: Discover will match donations up to $500,000 for every cardholder who donates to the Red Cross via their Cashback Bonus program or makes a donation with a Discover card. The company is also matching employee donations.
Disney: Disney and ABC's Houston TV station KTRK-TV announced a $1 million contribution to the Red Cross. The company is matching employee donations.
Dollar General: Dollar General is donating $50,000 to the Red Cross. Customers can also make a contribution in stores through September 9.
Dow: The Dow Chemical Company Foundation is contributing $1 million to support Harvey relief, including $100,000 each to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund and Team Rubicon. Dow is also matching employee and retiree donations up to $100,000 to the Red Cross.
Edmunds: The company is pledging $50,000 toward local relief efforts. Edmunds is also matching employee donations up to $500 per person.
Eli Lilly: The pharmaceutical company's foundation is contributing $250,000 to the Red Cross. It will also match employee donations to the Red Cross and Salvation Army.
Enterprise Rent-A-Car: The Enterprise Rent-A-Car Foundation is donating $1 million to the Red Cross.
Exelon: The utility company is donating $150,000 to the Red Cross. Exelon will also match employee contributions up to $5,000 per person.
Exxon Mobil: Exxon Mobil on Friday said it's donating $500,000 to Red Cross organizations along the U.S. Gulf Coast to aid with relief efforts. On Tuesday, the company contributed $500,000 to the United Way of Greater Houston.
Exxon will also match employee donations up to $3 million.
Facebook: Facebook donated $1 million to organizations on the ground providing support. The social media giant on Thursday said more than $10 million has been raised on its platform for Harvey relief.
FedEx: FedEx committed $1 million in cash and transportation support to deliver medical aid and supplies in the wake of the storm. It works with the Red Cross, Direct Relief, Heart to Heart International, the Salvation Army and Team Rubicon.
FirstEnergy: The company's foundation will donate $25,000 to the Red Cross and match employee contributions up to $50,000.
Ford: The Ford Motor Company Fund is donating $100,000 to disaster relief efforts. Texas-area Ford dealers have also donated $200,000. The automaker has also promised to raise a total of $3.5 million by matching donations to designated community relief charities.
General Electric: The GE Foundation has donated $500,000 to the Red Cross, a spokeswoman told CNNMoney. It will also match employee donations to participating disaster relief organizations.
General Mills: The company is sending more than $500,000 in food donations, such as Yoplait and Nature Valley products, to help those displaced by the storm. It will match employee gifts up to $250 per person.
Google: The tech giant is making a $250,000 Google.org grant to the Red Cross and matching employee donations up to $250,000. Google.org also launched a matching campaign for consumers, up to $1 million.
H-E-B Grocery: H‑E‑B Grocery will donate $100,000 toward Hurricane Harvey relief efforts, specifically to the Red Cross, Salvation Army and Feeding Texas. Customers can also make a donation at its Texas stores.
HCA Healthcare: HCA donated $1 million to the American Red Cross.
Hilton: The company is donating $500,000 to the Red Cross and to the Hilton Responds Fund for affected employees. The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, a private family foundation established by the founder of Hilton Hotels, has also pledged $500,000.
Home Depot: The home improvement retailer on Monday committed $1 million to help storm relief efforts. The donation will go to nonprofits, such as the Red Cross, Salvation Army, Convoy of Hope, Operation Blessing and Team Rubicon.
Honda: The company has pledged $100,000 to the Red Cross.
Humana: The Humana Foundation, the philanthropic arm of health insurance company Humana, (HUM) on Saturday gave a $250,000 immediate grant to the Red Cross.
IBM: IBM is donating $2 million in cash and in-kind technology and services. The company said it will support the Red Cross and small businesses.
Intercontinental Exchange: ICE is making a $1 million contribution to the Red Cross and matching employee donations.
International Paper: The company has pledged $1 million to help with disaster relief efforts, including $750,000 to Red Cross chapters in Texas and Louisiana and $250,000 to Feeding America.
J.C. Penney: The department store is donating $100,000 to the Red Cross.
Jefferies: Investment bank Jefferies announced a $1 million donation to several charities aiding in the relief effort. On Thursday, the firm said its clients, employees and shareholders contributed $5 million to 14 organizations.
JPMorgan Chase: The firm said it would donate $1 million to the Red Cross and other nonprofit groups providing immediate relief. JPMorgan is also matching employee donations to these organizations.
Chase will also automatically waive or refund fees, such as late fees for mortgages and credit cards, through September 10 for customers in areas severely impacted by the hurricane.
Kansas City Southern: Its charitable fund will donate $50,000 to the Red Cross. The railroad company will also match employee gifts up to $25,000.
Kellogg: Kellogg Company Fund, the charitable arm of Kellogg, is committing $100,000 to nonprofit Feeding America to aid disaster relief efforts.
Kindred Healthcare: Kindred Healthcare is making a $50,000 donation to the Red Cross to aid recovery efforts from Harvey in Texas and the Gulf Coast.
Kohl's: Kohl's announced a $500,000 donation to the Red Cross. The department store will also give an estimated $1 million to help Kohl's associates who were significantly affected by the storm.
Kroger: The Kroger Co. Foundation committed $100,000 to the Houston Food Bank. For every share of Kroger's Facebook post, the foundation will donate $5 to the Food Bank, up to $100,000.
Lennar: The homebuilder donated $1 million to the United Way of Greater Houston Flood Relief Fund. The company will also match employee contributions.
Lowe's: The home improvement retailer on Saturday announced a $500,000 contribution to American Red Cross Disaster Relief to help provide food, shelter and supplies to those impacted by Harvey and other crises. At Lowe's stores in Texas, customers can also make a donation to the Red Cross.
LyondellBasell: The chemical company donated $200,000 to the American Red Cross Texas Gulf Coast Region.
Macy's: The department store gave $50,000 to the Red Cross and is matching employee donations and customer contributions in stores. Macy's also donated $1 million to the United Way's Hurricane Harvey relief fund.
MasterCard: The company donated $100,000 to the Red Cross. Mastercard will also match employee donations.
Mattress Firm: The Houston-based mattress retailer started an employee assistance fund and contributed the first $25,000. Mattress Firm will also match employee donations up to $100,000. The company is also giving $1 million in products.
Mazda: Mazda and its foundation will donate $100,000 to the Red Cross Hurricane Harvey Disaster Relief Fund.
McDonald's: The fast-food giant will contribute $1 million to the Red Cross. It will also match $250,000 in employee donations.
McKesson: The pharmaceutical distributor is donating $100,000 to nonprofit Direct Relief and $150,000 worth of medical supplies to World Vision.
MetLife: The MetLife Foundation will donate $250,000 to the Red Cross and match employee contributions.
Microsoft: Microsoft on Monday announced a $100,000 grant to the Red Cross. The tech giant is also contributing another $2.5 million in cash, technology and services to support relief efforts and to aid nonprofit and public-sector organizations.
MillerCoors: MillerCoors is pledging at least $25,000 to the Red Cross. The company also sent 50,000 cans of drinking water to Texas, where they will be distributed by the Red Cross.
Monsanto: The company will donate $500,000 to the Red Cross and Feeding America.
Motiva: The Houston-based oil company pledged $500,000 to organizations such as the Houston mayor's Hurricane Harvey Disaster Relief Fund and the Red Cross.
Nationwide: The Nationwide Foundation is giving $500,000 to Red Cross Disaster Relief.
New York Life: New York Life is donating $500,000 to support Harvey relief efforts, including $150,000 to the Red Cross and $100,000 apiece to Save the Children and Feeding Texas. The life insurance company will also match employee donations up to $150,000 to these organizations.
NextEra Energy: The company is contributing $100,000 to the Red Cross and will match employee donations up to $100,000.
NRG Energy: The Houston-based company is donating $1 million to organizations including the Greater Houston Community Foundation, the Red Cross and the J.J. Watt Foundation Houston Flood Relief Fund. NRG also says its providing another $1 million in community support and customer assistance.
NuStar Energy: NuStar Energy is giving $125,000 to Red Cross, $75,000 to Salvation Army and $50,000 to the San Antonio Food Bank. The Greehey Family Foundation, which was started by NuStar Chairman Bill Greehey, is also giving the same amount to each group.
Oncor: The Dallas-based utilities company has contributed $100,000 to the Red Cross.
Orbital ATK: The aerospace and defense company is giving $100,000 to the United Way of Greater Houston.
Pacific Life: Its foundation donated $100,000 to the Red Cross. The life insurance company is also matching employee donations.
Panda Express: The company's foundation Panda Cares will donate $500,000, divided between the American Red Cross and the Tzu-Chi Foundation. Customers can also make a contribution in stores through September 15.
PayPal: The payments platform will match employee donations. PayPal also launched a Disaster Relief Campaign.
PenFed Credit Union: PenFed, one of the country's largest credit unions, will donate $50,000 to the Red Cross Corpus Christi and Houston chapters.
Pentair: The Pentair Foundation made a $25,000 donation to the Red Cross. The manufacturing company will also match employee contributions.
PepsiCo: PepsiCo and the PepsiCo Foundation gave a $1 million grant to the Red Cross.
PetSmart: PetSmart Charities is giving $1 million to help animal welfare agencies that are working to rescue, relocate and care for pets that have become homeless due to the storm. These organizations include the Houston SPCA, the SPCA of Texas, Rescue Bank and Houston PetSet. The company is also providing in-kind donations, like pet food and supplies.
PG&E: Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) will match employee donations up to $50,000.
Phillips 66: Phillips 66 will contribute $1 million to the Red Cross. The oil company will also match employee contributions up to $15,000 per person.
Pioneer Natural Resources: The company contributed $100,000 to the Red Cross and will match employee donations.
PNC: The PNC Foundation, the philanthropic arm of PNC bank, will contribute $250,000 to the Red Cross and match employee donations up to $100,000.
QVC: QVC is making a $100,000 donation to the Red Cross and will match employee contributions up to $50,000. It will also match customer donations to the Red Cross up to $100,000.
Range Resources: The oil and gas company announced a $100,000 donation to the Red Cross for Harvey relief aid.
RBC: The bank is donating $100,000 to the Red Cross.
Regions Bank: The bank is donating $100,000 to support relief efforts. The funds will be split between the United Way of Greater Houston's Flood Relief Fund and a program to help Regions associates directly impacted by the flooding.
Reynolds American: The Reynolds American Foundation contributed $150,000 to the Red Cross.
Rockwell Collins: The company has pledged $100,000 to the Red Cross.
Ross Stores: Ross Stores made a $400,000 donation to the Red Cross. The discount retailer is also accepting customer contributions in stores until September 16.
SABIC: The Saudi chemical manufacturing company donated $200,000 to the Red Cross Texas Gulf Coast Region.
Samsung: Several of Samsung's U.S. subsidiaries are donating $500,000 to the Red Cross. The company is also giving $500,000 worth of products, such as washing machines, dryers, laptops and tablets, to nonprofits.
Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories: SEL has contributed $150,000 to the Red Cross for relief efforts.
Sealed Air: Sealed Air is making a $100,000 donation to the Red Cross. The company will also match employee contributions up to $25,000.
SecureView: The company contributed $100,000 to the Red Cross.
Sempra Energy: The Sempra Energy Foundation will contribute $75,000 each to the Red Cross Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund and nonprofit Americares. The foundation will also match up to $50,000 in employee donations.
Shell: Shell announced a $1 million donation to the Red Cross Hurricane Harvey disaster relief fund on Tuesday.
Southern Company: The Southern Company Charitable Foundation will give $100,000 to the Red Cross. The company will also match employee and retiree donations.
Southwest Airlines: The airline donated $500,000 to the Red Cross.
Sprint: Sprint and SoftBank are donating $2.5 million in cash to support the Red Cross, Sprint employees affected by Harvey and other community relief efforts.
Stanley Black & Decker: Stanley Black & Decker announced a commitment of up to $125,000 for immediate disaster relief, including a $50,000 donation to the Red Cross and $25,000 to the Houston ToolBank. It will also match employee donations 2 to 1.
Starbucks: The Starbucks Foundation donated $250,000 to the Red Cross. Customers can also make a contribution to Harvey relief efforts at any Starbucks (SBUX) store in the U.S.
State Farm: State Farm is matching employee donations through its Matching Gift Program. Its foundation matches employee donations to nonprofits from a minimum of $25 to a maximum of $1,500 per calendar year.
Stream Energy: The Dallas-based home energy and wireless provider, donated $25,000 through its philanthropic arm Stream Cares to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.
SunTrust: The SunTrust Foundation (STI) announced a $100,000 grant to the Red Cross.
Sysco: The Houston-based food distributor said it will donate $1 million to relief efforts, including an "immediate" contribution of $500,000 to the American Red Cross.
Target: The retailer is donating $500,000 to support Harvey recovery efforts, including to organizations like the Red Cross, Salvation Army and Team Rubicon.
Taylor Morrison: The homebuilder has donated a combined $250,000 to the Red Cross Harvey Fund and to an internal Harvey relief fund. It will also match employee contributions.
TD Ameritrade: The company will match employee and client donations up to $500,000 to the Red Cross.
TechnipFMC: The oil and gas projects company is donating $1 million to the United Way of Greater Houston.
Tegna: The broadcasting company launched Texas Cares, an initiative to support Harvey victims for employees and customers. The fund has raised over $1.5 million as of Wednesday morning. Tegna matched the first $100,000 in donations. All of the funds raised will be donated to the Red Cross Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund.
Tenet Healthcare: Tenet Healthcare Foundation contributed $20,000 to the Red Cross.
Texas Instruments: TI is making a $100,000 donation to the Red Cross. The company is also matching the donations of employees and retirees up to $100,000.
Time Warner: Time Warner, the parent company of CNN, will make a $100,000 donation to Houston Habitat for Humanity, the Houston Humane Society, Save the Children and Shelterbox. Employees can also have their donation matched through the Matching Grants Program.
Toyota: Toyota is pledging $3 million to Harvey relief, including cash contributions to the St. Bernard Project and American Red Cross, matching employee and dealer contributions and donating pre-owned vehicles. Dan Friedkin, the chairman of Houston-based Gulf States Toyota, has also established the Friedkin Disaster Relief Fund and pledged $1 million.
TransCanada: The energy infrastructure company made a $100,000 contribution to the Red Cross and is matching donations online.
TXU Energy: The company is giving $500,000 to assist customers who need help paying their electric bills in areas affected by Harvey.
Under Armour: Under Armour donated $50,000 to assist Team Rubicon in response to Harvey.
Union Pacific: Union Pacific has pledged $250,000 to support Hurricane Harvey relief efforts, including $100,000 to the Red Cross and $50,000 to Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner's Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund. The railroad company will match contributions to its employee support network through September 30, up to $100,000. It will also match donations made to the Disaster Relief Matching Gifts Program for Hurricane Harvey, where employees can contribute funding to the Red Cross, Salvation Army and other groups.
UnitedHealth: UnitedHealth announced a donation of $1 million to support Texas communities impacted by the storm. The company said it's working with officials and stakeholders in Texas to determine "how the funds can most effectively support relief efforts." It is also offering a 2 to 1 match for employee donations toward disaster relief efforts.
United Airlines: The airline will give up to three million bonus miles to MileagePlus members who donate to disaster relief organizations such as the Red Cross or AmeriCares. United (UAL) will also match the first $200,000 raised in donations on its crowdfunding campaign.
United Rentals: The equipment rental company is pledging $200,000 to the Red Cross.
UPS: The UPS Foundation has pledged $1 million to Harvey relief efforts. This includes a combination of cash grants, in-kind transportation donations and technical expertise.
UPS will donate an additional $500,000 in cash and assistance for the post-crisis recovery phase in the coming months.
Valero: The oil company announced a $1 million donation to the Red Cross.
Verizon: Verizon pledged $10 million to support Harvey relief efforts. The grants will go to organizations like the Greater Houston Community Foundation, the One Star Foundation and the Salvation Army Southern Territory.
Visa: Visa will make a $250,000 donation to the Red Cross and match employee donations two to one.
Vizient: The Dallas-based company is giving $1 million in funds and employee match contributions.
Walgreens: Walgreens pledged $200,000 to the Red Cross. Customers can also make a donation in stores in the U.S., Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands.
Walmart: Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said he was accepting $2 million from Walmart and the Walmart Foundation. The retail giant is also matching customer donations two to one with cash and products of up to $10 million to support the Red Cross. Walmart and its foundation will also give cash and products totaling $10 million |
go far beyond what Europe has been willing to consider so far".
A full federal government in Europe could potentially accommodate larger ongoing regional subsidies for Greece. But its advent appears unlikely before further bailouts are likely to be required in the coming years. Member states may well be unwilling to countenance a further series of large monetary transfers.
As for the Greek population, it is clear that they are already near to their limit in terms of the austerity they will bear as the price for the remaining in the euro and – possibly – the European Union itself.
For the time being they wish to stay put. A poll published on 18 July in the left-wing Efimerida Ton Syntaknon newspaper indicated that 70% of Greece's population would prefer to accept the bailout deal if it kept Greece in the euro.
The European Central Bank has agreed to release €900m (£624.7m) in emergency credit next week to the crippled Greek banking sector. But banks are to remain closed until at least Sunday and it remains unclear whether they will be able to reopen immediately.
Meanwhile, new ministers in Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' government were sworn in today after a reshuffle expelling dissidents from his cabinet, prior to negotiations for the country's third bailout package.
The sackings marked a schism with the main leftist faction in the ruling Syriza party following a rebellion over the bailout terms. Tsipras replaced them with allies of his own or from his coalition partners. His aim is to finalise the bailout before possibly holding new elections.
"Our aim is to negotiate hard for the terms of the agreement, not just to seal it, but on how it will be implemented. There are many vague terms in the text," said the newly appointed Labour Minister George Katrougalos.
Opinion polls indicate that Tsipras' popularity remains high. The Efimerida Ton Syntaknon poll indicates that Syriza would get 42.5% of the vote if an election were held now, almost double the conservative New Democracy's 21.5%.Today EPA Facts launched a new interactive game called “Trash the Evidence.” The user plays EPA chief Gina McCarthy, who must go around Washington trashing emails and text messages while avoiding the press.
The game highlights the EPA’s abysmal transparency record and relationship with the press. McCarthy recently claimed, at a House Oversight Committee meeting, that her staff has “lost” the requested emails regarding the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska. McCarthy is also being sued for refusing to release records of text messages containing work-related communications. This is unsurprising, given the EPA’s long history of secret emails and hidden communications.
McCarthy’s EPA has also been extremely guarded and refused to cooperate with the press. The Society of Environmental Journalists officially registered its strenuous objections with the way McCarthy and the agency continuously avoid taking unscripted questions and going on the record. But can McCarthy avoid the press in this game as well?
Play the game here to find out and see if you can get the high score![1] Available at participating retailers, while supplies last. Game download codes inside. Download from Xbox Live; ISP fees apply. Significant storage required. 4K streaming with select apps, see www.xbox.com. HDR functionality available with supported games and TVs. Xbox One Backward Compatibility feature works with select Xbox 360 games, see www.xbox.com/backcompat. Xbox Live and broadband internet required for initial download of game to console. 2016 Electronic Arts Inc. Battlefield and Battlefield 1 are trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. or its subsidiaries. NO WEAPON, VEHICLE OR GEAR MANUFACTURER IS AFFILIATED WITH OR HAS SPONSORED OR ENDORSED THIS GAME. Conditions and restrictions apply. See www.battlefield.com/disclaimers for details.
[2] Games sold separately. 4K streaming with select apps, see Xbox.com. Amazon 4K streaming coming October 2016. Some apps require app provider-specific subscriptions and/or other requirements. See xbox.com/live. HDR functionality available with supported games and TVs. Xbox One Backward Compatibility feature works with select Xbox 360 games, see http://www.xbox.com/backcompat. Xbox Live and broadband internet required for initial download of game to console. Xbox Live Gold required for online multiplayer (sold separately). Network claim: Independent IHS Markit study, June/July 2016. Tested on Xbox One v. PlayStation 4 on top 5 selling games with matchmaking; results may vary, not an endorsement. Visit xbox.com/betternetwork.
[3] Games sold separately. Xbox One Backward Compatibility feature works with select Xbox 360 games, see http://www.xbox.com/backcompat. Xbox Live and broadband internet required for initial download of game to console. Access to EA games before release requires EA Access. EA Access requires paid subscription, sold separately; see www.ea.com/eaaccess for details. Halo Wars 2 and Titanfall 2 coming soon.
[4] Free Games Offer: For paid Gold members only on Xbox One, active Gold membership required to play free games you’ve redeemed. Restrictions Apply. Savings based on retail value of game. Games sold separately. Requirements and available features vary across consoles; Multiplayer between Xbox One and Xbox 360 supported for select titles. Download required. http://www.xbox.com/backcompat.
Offer valid from April 1, 2018 to June 30, 2018 while supplies last. Available only in Microsoft online store in the United States (including Puerto Rico). Offer valid only on select Xbox One S Battlefield 1 500GB console. Exclude Xbox One S Battlefield 1 TB and all other consoles. Not valid on prior orders or purchases; cannot be transferred or otherwise redeemed for cash or promo code(s). May not be combinable with other offers. Refunds will take into account the discount. Price discount does not include taxes, shipping or other fees. Void where prohibited or restricted by law. Microsoft reserves the right to modify or discontinue offers at any time. Limit of 3 offers per customer. Other exclusions and limits may apply.
**Offer valid from June 28, 2015 until June 30, 2018, while supplies last. Available in Microsoft retail and online store in US (including Puerto Rico) only. Valid with purchase of select Xbox One Consoles. Not valid on prior orders or purchases; cannot be transferred or otherwise redeemed for cash or gift cards. May not be combinable with other offers. Refunds will take into account the discount. Price discount does not include taxes, shipping or other fees. Void where prohibited or restricted by law. Microsoft reserves the right to modify or discontinue offers at any time. Limit of 3 per customer.Advertisements
By Walter Agnitsch
To celebrate the 10th Thunder season we are starting off with ranking the craziest, loudest, most thunderous dunks in the OKC history.
The fans are going crazy! Chesapeake Energy Arena has had several moments where it was so loud you wondered if the roof was going to stay on. Most of these moments were thanks to a rim rattling dunk that almost brought the basket down, or embarrassed an opponent. These are the top five dunks in the Ford Center/Chesapeake Energy Arena.
OKC Hornets Kirk Snyder dunks on Von Wafer
This is cheating I know that, but this is one of loudest moments in downtown OKC. The Lakers were the best team in the NBA and had the best player in the NBA in Kobe Bryant. On this night, the Hornets gave an absolute stomping on the LA Lakers and this was the cherry on top.
Jerami Grant dunks on Kevin Durant
Kevin Durant leaving OKC shook the Thunder to its core. Even worse Durant kicked us when we were down by saying all those things about the city and about the King of the Prairie. Durant’s first game against the Thunder started all OKC’s way and early on looked like the Thunder could cruise to victory. Capping off a run Jerami Grant absolutely posterized Kevin. Too bad the Thunder could not win the game.
Russell Westbrook dunks on Clint Capela
Words can not describe the difficulty of this dunk, but I am going to anyway. The game is on the line and you need a basket to seal it, everyone knows the ball is going to Russ. He has to run all the way to half court and back to get open. Then has to dunk left handed on Clint Capela. This truly is one of the best highlights from his MVP season.
Kevin Durant dunks on Brendan Haywood
It’s hard to put KD on any list, but this was truly a monster dunk. Ever since the Mavericks beat the Thunder in the Western Conference the Thunder have dominated them. The anger and frustration we have brought to Mark Cuban is a great joy in life, and hopefully, that continues in the seasons to come.
Russell Westbrook dunks on Steph Curry
Steph Curry is one of the most annoying players in the league, and Westbrook making him look like a JV high school player was something sweet. Westbrook has so much speed and then just to launch in the air just makes him impossible to stop. ‘Some run, some make runways’ just makes so much sense about Durant leaving but also how Russell can just fly like a jet and can’t be stopped.
Honorable mentions:Update:
The LGBTQ community wants answers after a vicious attack severely injured two drag performers and a possible second attack injured another.
"What comes to mind is that this is like a pattern. This needs to be stopped," Robert Foster, who was attacked near a gay bar in Downtown Austin, said.
Foster bears the scars of a brutal attack he and a friend suffered at the hands of unknown assailants shortly after performing in a drag show at Barbarella late Monday night.
"I do remember being followed and then somebody was trying to talk to me while they were behind me and then all of a sudden my purse was being pulled out from underneath my arm. From there well that's when things get a little blurry for me," Foster said.
Foster said he was hit so hard his tooth almost tore to his septum. Foster's friend, who was unavailable for this interview, suffered a broken leg after the suspects ran him over with their car.
Less than 24 hours later, Oscar Zavaleta said he endured a similar attack outside of Bout Time II in North Austin.
"I felt someone strike me from behind. Someone hit me. After that both of the gentleman took turns punching me." Zavaleta said, "It really hurts because the fact is I could be dead."
Zavaleta claims he suffered a broken nose and a black eye. He said the men also stole his cell phone and wallet.
Management at Bout Time II said they were not made aware of the incident and issued the following statement:
Bout Time II takes its customer safety very seriously. As of now, we are unaware of any situation happening outside of our club. We have security on staff until 3 AM every night and we have video surveillance surrounding the nightclub. If ever there is an issue at our club, please contact us immediately so that we may assist in resolving the issue.
It is not known if the attacks are linked however the victims feel additional safety measures should be put in place.
"If it is a pattern we need better security around the bars and the clubs people need to know just because it hasn't happened to you yet, it can," Foster said.
And while the bruises may be fresh, the support from the LGBTQ community has helped them heal.
"I do have some scaring but bones can be mended but the fact that my community has made me feel so blessed makes me feel like people care," Foster said.
Foster said no arrests have been made in the case. The Austin Police Department was not available for an interview.This article is an itinerary.
This itinerary describes the overland route from Istanbul, Turkey, to New Delhi, India. Also known as the Hippie Trail, this was a legendary route since the sixties and was followed by thousands of travelers until the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the beginning of the civil war in Afghanistan, both in 1979.
Today it is a bigger challenge than it was before these political events and depending on the local political situation it may be possible or not. Borders between countries (India-Pakistan) are closed from time to time. Some places are no longer accessible for ordinary travelers without great risks for their safety.
The route is also part of the Silk Road used throughout ancient times from Europe to Asia.
Understand [ edit ]
This route involves crossing three countries from one extremity to the other, namely Turkey, Iran and Pakistan, and some parts of India. Going through Afghanistan may be possible or not depending on the changing political situation there and your evaluation of your personal safety and comfort.
Only information specific to this itinerary is available here. For details on places to visit along the way, see the specific pages.
Avoid going during Ramadan, unless you are muslims or you are prepared to fast.
Police and officials in Eastern Turkey, Iran and Pakistan are quite touchy. Keep a low profile while dealing with them.
Avoid reaching a place in the middle of the night.
An alternate route to India is through Russia and/or Central Asia, described in Europe to South Asia over land. The easiest way to link up with that route from Istanbul might be to get a boat to a Black Sea port.
Turkey [ edit ]
Western Turkey is visited by tourists from all over the world, so you will find all usual facilities here. But the further east you go, the fewer travelers you will meet, especially if you go away from the main transport facilities. So people there won't be so accustomed to tourists. However, this should not prevent you from visiting those places. See Turkey for all details.
Iran [ edit ]
Iran is not much visited by tourists, and that is one of the main reasons to go there. People are eager to meet foreigners and if you get used to the local way of life you will enjoy your trip.
Afghanistan [ edit ]
Due to the civil war and the Taliban regime, almost nobody goes there unless they have a good reason to visit. However, since the end of the Taliban regime, NGO members and journalists can get a visa. See Afghanistan for details.
Pakistan [ edit ]
There have always been tourists in Pakistan, although many fewer at times when the country is making news. The land borders have been closed at times during the Afghan war and when diplomatic relations with India were suspended. See Pakistan for details.
India [ edit ]
India is a favourite with travelers, so in most cities you will get all the facilities you expect as a tourist. See India for details.
Prepare [ edit ]
Visas [ edit ]
Iran, Pakistan and India require a visa for most travelers, so you have to get that beforehand. The embassy of Iran in Ankara and the consulate in Istanbul now refuse to deliver visas if you are not a resident in the country. The situation is the same for Pakistani and Indian embassies and consulates almost everywhere, although there are a few exceptions.
Getting Iranian visas can be a frustrating process for applicants from western countries. As of 2006, the situation for residents of most western countries was that visa applications were often (though not necessarily always) turned down unless the embassy had received a "visa reference number" through the Iranian Foreign Ministry in Tehran. You may be denied a visa if your embassy does not tell you about a reference number requirement, and also because the visa form does not even have a space for the reference number! Reference numbers can be obtained through contacts in Iran (who have to apply to the Foreign Ministry) or through some travel agencies. Some of them, like IranianVisa.com, accept payment over the Internet (roughly €/USD 30 for a normal reference number) and make sure that reference numbers are sent to your embassy within approximately 14 days of application. The costs of obtaining a reference number are in addition to the embassy's visa fees.
A quick preview (as of Sept. 2006) of the pages of the embassies of these countries in Washington puts the total cost of visas for Americans for these four countries at over $270.
Timing [ edit ]
Plan from 15 days to several months for a trip, depending on the time you spend at each place. Theoretically, jumping from one bus to another, it can be done in 11 or 12 days, but it would mean never stopping on the way! The length of the whole journey is 7000 to 8000 kilometers.
The actual timing is something like this:
Istanbul to Teheran: 3 days
Teheran to Zahedan: 30 hours
Zahedan to Quetta: 30 hours
Quetta to Lahore: 24 hours
Lahore to New Delhi: 2 days
Take your time. Avoid rushing from one place to the other.
Cost [ edit ]
In the '90s it used to cost much less than the air trip, even including all hotels and food on the way! It mainly depends on the currency rates of Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. In 1992 the whole trip could be done in 5 weeks for about 350 US dollars.
As of Nov. 2004, total visa costs alone are over $400. In what probably is off-peak travel time (winter and early spring) round-trip flights from New York to Istanbul are under $400. It seems like the most cost-effective way to get to the US is to take a one-way flight (around that same time frame) from Delhi to Tehran on Mahan Airlines for under $400 and then catch a bus/train back to Istanbul.
As of October 2008, a single flight Istanbul-Delhi/Mumbai (or vice-versa) is about 200 Euros with Air Arabia, a low-cost airline based in the UAE. Therefore, going by land is now more expensive than the air trip, however a few hours in a plane have nothing to compare with a few weeks/months traveling through and visiting these 3 countries!
Climate [ edit ]
The route can be done in almost all seasons, except winter due to heavy snow especially in Turkey and in adjacent regions of Iran, and the roads are sometimes not passable. A big part of the route in Turkey, Iran and Pakistan is at an altitude of over 1000 meters, so the temperature there is comfortable even in the midst of summer and is cold but dry in winter. However, the great part of Turkey, especially east of Ankara, is very cold and very snowy in winter and the Indus Valley in Pakistan is very hot in summer (May to July).
Read [ edit ]
The book to read before leaving to go on the road is Danziger's travels: Beyond Forbidden Frontiers. It is the story of a hair-raising 18-month overland trip from London to Beijing in 1984 by Nick Danziger (ISBN 0586087060). Another great read is "The Wrong Way Home: London to Sydney the Hard Way" by Australian writer Peter Moore (ISBN 0553817000), in which he travels along the "Hippie Trail". He made his trip in the late 90s, covering 25 countries in 8 months, even venturing into war-torn former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.
The route [ edit ]
Istanbul [ edit ]
Istanbul is the biggest city in Turkey. Starting from there you have the choice of at least 3 modes of transport to Iran.
By bus: First there are direct buses to Teheran run by Iranian companies. Straight, cheap, no hassle, but where's the fun? And staying two days in a bus is not the most comfortable way of transportation. Then there are Turkish buses going to Erzurum which are probably more comfortable than the Iranian buses.
By train: There are trains (Vangölü Ekspresi/Lake Van Express) three times a week from Istanbul’s main Asian station (Haydarpaşa) to Tatvan, on the west coast of Lake Van, where you can find a ferry across the lake to Van city (on the east shore). From there on you can catch the train for Tabriz. There is also a once-weekly train service from Istanbul (Haydarpaşa) to Teheran (Trans-Asia Express). Trans-Asia is actually two different trains; in Haydarpaşa you board a Turkish train (every Monday as of June 2008) and ride it all along the northwest-southeast axis of Turkish soil until Tatvan, where you take the ferry and cross to Van. At Van station you get into the Iranian train (although you are in fact still in Turkey; you cross the border while you are inside this train) and ride it until Teheran. These trains cross the border on a more southern location than Doğubeyazıt, so you don’t have a chance to see Mount Ararat (but of course, there are many beautiful mountains along the route).
By ferry: There are also boats across the Black Sea to Trabzon. From there, it is a fairly short bus trip to Erzurum.
Erzurum [ edit ]
Erzurum is the hub for visiting eastern Turkey. If you didn't get the direct bus to Teheran, you will have to change means of transport here. There are buses going to Dogubayazit (4 hours).
Dogubeyazit [ edit ]
Dogubeyazit is the last town before the border. It is mainly a garrison town, but it is also the point of departure for the climbing of Mount Ararat and visiting Ishak Pacha palace (İshak Paşa Sarayı). There are taxis going to the border.
Turkey-Iran border [ edit ]
The Turkey-Iran border is at an altitude of 2600 meters, at the foot of Mount Ararat where, according to the Bible, Noah ended up with his Ark.
Tabriz [ edit ]
Tabriz is the first major Iranian city you reach on this route.
Teheran [ edit ]
Teheran is the capital of Iran. It's a huge city of about 10 million inhabitants.
Going to Kerman, you have choice of buses or a railway line. There are buses twice a day, which take a full day or a night (about 15 hours). Trains are certainly more comfortable, but run only three times a week. There are even direct buses to Zahedan (22 hours).
If you are not in a hurry, going to Isfahan is worth the trouble. It is probably the most beautiful city of Iran. A bit further in the same direction is another interesting city, Shiraz, and near it are the ruins of Persepolis.
Kerman [ edit ]
Kerman is a station on the railway line to Zahedan and a hub of southern Iran. Buses to Zahedan take seven hours, but there also is a direct sleeper from Teheran as of January 2012.
Zahedan [ edit ]
Zahedan is the last town before the border with Pakistan. [1] Take a taxi to the border. You have to take food and water with you for 2 days. There is no shop and no restaurant before Quetta, 700 km across the desert.
About the food-issue:
According to my experience in 2004, in Mirjave (just after the border),there is a chaishop and in the village there are little markets..
If you take the trip by bus (most likely), there are restplaces on the route to Quetta. The bus stops about every 4 hours and at many checkpoints.
Iran-Pakistan border [ edit ]
The Iran-Pakistan border post, called Mirjave, is in the Kavir-e Loot desert, which is in the middle of nowhere. This is the real border between the East and the West.
The border closes in the early afternoon, and you can't stay there because there is no accommodation available. You will have to go back to Zahedan if you reach the border too late. You might be able to find accomodation in the town of Mirjave, some 10km from the border post.
Once you cross the border, you have to wait for a bus. From here driving is on the left.
Don't change money directly at the border, it's better to do it in a shop at the main square of Taftan. They change Rials and dollars at an acceptable rate.
There are trains from Taftan to Quetta the 3rd and 17th of every month.
Quetta [ edit ]
Quetta is the first place you reach when entering Pakistan coming from Iran.
From here, there are direct trains to Lahore.
Lahore [ edit ]
Lahore is the second biggest city in Pakistan and the capital of the state of Punjab.
There are buses and taxis going to the border. In January 2004, the Lahore-New Delhi train was restored. It is probably more comfortable than the bus, but slower, as it used to stop at the border for hours while the police checked people and luggage. Also trains are much less frequent.
Pakistan-India border [ edit ]
The Pakistan-India border has been closed and reopened several times during recent years, so check beforehand. In January 2004, the Lahore-New Delhi train was restored.
New Delhi [ edit ]
New Delhi is the capital of India.
Alternative route through Afghanistan [ edit ]
From Teheran to Lahore, there are two main routes.
The usual route today is as shown above. Swing Southeast from Teheran to enter Pakistan at its extreme Western edge, bypassing Afghanistan. This is safer. Travelers with any caution at all should avoid Afghanistan.
The main overland route of the 60s and 70s went East to the Iranian city of Mashad, then to Herat, Khandahar, Kabul in Afghanistan and down through the Khyber Pass to Pakistan. This is described below, but is generally considered too dangerous today.
Afghanistan was scary even in the 70s; most of the men carried rifles and they all had knifes. However, nearly all the guns were single-shot, mostly muzzle loaders with quite a few 19th century British army Martini-Henrys with lever action. Then in 1979, the USSR invaded them. Soon many Afghans had AK-47s. Today nearly every Afghan man has an automatic weapon.
Of course, not all Afghans are likely to take potshots at tourists, or to kidnap one. Most are friendly, helpful, and hospitable. However, as the only country to be invaded by both the USSR and the US, they do have some reason to resent light-skinned foreigners. With everything still (as of mid-2007) chaotic, going there is spectacularly risky, though details of the dangers change from time to time.
If you do decide to risk Afghanistan, see our article on War zone safety.
Mashad [ edit ]
Mashad is the largest city of Eastern Iran and the capital of its province.
There are daily trains to and from Teheran. Buses take 14 hours to Teheran. Buses to Taybad take about four hours.
Taybad [ edit ]
There are minibuses and taxis to the border, called Eslam Ghale, 11 km away.
Iran-Afghanistan border [ edit ]
From the Afghan side, there are buses to Herat.
Herat [ edit ]
Herat is a big, rich Afghan city, influenced by Iranian culture. It is well-developed because of trade with Iran and in a good shape compared to other Afghan cities. The people are very friendly and hospitable to foreigners and are also more religious than people in Kabul.
No tourism exists in Herat, but there is a small community of foreign workers from Europe or other Western countries. They are easy to find by asking in the German or Indian consulate or hanging around in the Marco Polo Hotel.
Afghan Roads [ edit ]
Most Afghan roads are very poor. You need a four wheel drive vehicle with a winch to even consider driving on them.
One exception is the main highway from Herat in the West to Kabul in the East. This swings widely South via Kandahar; the centre of the country is filled with impassable mountains.
There is also a good highway from Kabul North through the Hindu Kush to Mazar-e Sharif and the border of Tajikistan in Central Asia. This road contains the Salang tunnel, which is the longest in the world. It was built with Russian aid and then used for the Russian invasion.
Kandahar [ edit ]
Kandahar is the main city of Southern Afghanistan.
It was a major stronghold of Taliban, and among the last places to surrender in the recent war.
You can go South from here to Quetta, Pakistan.
Kabul [ edit ]
Kabul is the capital of Afghanistan.
Afghanistan-Pakistan border [ edit ]
The way from Kabul to Peshawar takes about ten hours.
From Kabul to the border [ edit ]
Buses start early and need about eight hours to reach the border. The road is not in a very good shape so don't expect a very comfortable ride. The price is between 200 and 250 Af (below 4 Euro) if you pick up a mini van bus with ten to twenty other people together. Tall people will be more comfortable in the front seats. These vans are sometimes a little more expensive.
Taxis are faster and more expensive.
Jalalabad is a moderate-sized city between Kabul and the border. If the political and security situation permits (not likely, as of mid-2007!), consider spending a night there. Starting from Jalabad in the morning lets you avoid the crowd by getting to the border ahead of people coming from Kabul.
The border closes at lunchtime.
From the border to Peshawar [ edit ]
Buses and taxis end at the border. People need to cross the border on foot and take a second bus or taxi. Foreigners (non-Pakistani or non-Afghani) have to get a permission to cross the tribal areas, which are located between the border and Peshawar and are controlled by tribes and not by the Pakistan government. The permission is free but a soldier will take you with him in a taxi. The soldier will cost about 100 Pakistani (1.4 Euro) and the taxi twice that.
The way goes through the legendary Khyber Pass.
Security [ edit ]
The travel seems to be secure for travelers who know what they are doing. The traffic is the biggest danger thus it could be recommended to travel on a Friday when the traffic is lighter than the other days. If possible take a good driver you know already. Buses may drive safer than taxis because they are slower.
Peshawar [ edit ]
Peshawar is a huge city in Pakistan. The city has a lot of traffic and seems to have a good economic situation.
Places to stay [ edit ]
There are many hotels and guest houses with western standards. Especially in the "University Town" district and in the city centre.
Places to visit [ edit ]
The old city centre with the bazaar and an old mosque is worth a visit.
In the summer, hiking tours to the mountains are offered. Ask at Green Tours in front of the Greens Hotel.
The Khyber pass is one hour away and can be visited by taking a taxi. It is located in the tribal area, and easy to find. Permission is needed for foreigners to enter this area.
Peshawar Museum and the University of Peshawar's museums are worth visiting for ancient cultural artifacts.
Other places to visit along the way [ edit ]
Some other places are worth a visit, but you don't necessarily have to pass through them on this journey.
Turkey [ edit ]
Ankara (capital of Turkey)
Erzincan
Ruins of Ani, ancient capital of Armenia and known as City of 1001 Churches
The Armenian Monastery on Aktamar Island in Lake Van - one of the most impressive sites in Eastern Turkey.
The Mediterranean coast of Southern Turkey is a resort area, reportedly much like the Greek islands but cheaper.
Iran [ edit ]
Isfahan (capital of Persia during the Safavih dynasty)
Shiraz (Persepolis)
Bam (2500-year old citadel from the Parthian Empire, almost destroyed in an earthquake December 2003)
Pakistan [ edit ]
Islamabad (capital of Pakistan; all embassies are there)
Rawalpindi (hub of Northern Pakistan; stay here if you want / need to go to Islamabad)
Taxila (Buddhist archeological site from emperor Ashoka)
India [ edit ]
Amritsar is a city in Punjab near the India-Pakistan border. It has the Golden Temple, is the centre of the Sikh religion and has some museums and memorials.
Simla is a hill town North of Delhi and was the summer capital of the British Raj. It has a pleasant climate and interesting old colonial buildings.
Armenia [ edit ]
Though this would involve a trip north from Iran, if the Armenian churches and monasteries you see all over Turkey and Iran whet your appettite, you should certainly head into Armenia.
See also [ edit ]
This is a usable itinerary. It explains how to get there and touches on all the major points along the way. An adventurous person could use this article, but please plunge forward and help it grow!Monzo's deputy CEO Paul Rippon, left, and CEO and founder Tom Blomfield. Monzo
LONDON — Startup bank Monzo raised £71 million ($93 million) in a new financing round, doubling its valuation since its last fundraising round in February.
The British company is now valued at £280 million ($336 million) and said it now has more than 20,000 current account holders. Total users have increase by nearly 300% since February's Series C funding round, from 120,000 to 470,000.
"This is an incredible endorsement of our strategy so far, and sets us up to continue the growth we've seen this year into 2018," said CEO Tom Bloomfield.
"We want to make it as easy as possible for people to manage and make the most of their money, to give people total visibility and control over all of their finances, and offer them their pick of the best products that the market has to offer," he said.
Monzo launched its prepaid card in October 2015, and in April obtained a full banking license, allowing it to provide current accounts. To date, customers have spent over £800 million ($1 billion) with their Monzo cards.
Investors in this latest funding round include Goodwater Capital, Stripe, Passion Capital, and venture capitalist Michael Moritz. The company said funding will be used to expand, roll out current accounts, and build its marketplace offering. Since February's funding round, Monzo's London team has more than doubled in size.
£1.5 million ($2 million) has also been reserved to allow existing crowdfunding investors to increase their investment amounts if they choose. More than 8,000 people have invested in Monzo through crowdfunding, and in March last year the bank raised £1 million ($1.3 million) in 96 seconds, the fastest crowdfunding campaign in history.
In October, the bank announced it was ending one of its most popular features, unlimited free ATM withdrawals abroad. It said it would cap current account customers' free overseas withdrawals at £200 per month, and apply a 3% charge on any further withdrawals.
"Monzo's growth in the UK has been incredible, and the fact that it's been driven by word of mouth makes it even more exciting," said Chi-Hua Chien, managing partner of Goodwater Capital.NEWS RELEASE 11/15/93 CONTACT: Stanford University News Service (650) 723-2558 Collective intelligence: Ants and brain's neurons STANFORD - An individual ant is not very bright, but ants in a colony, operating as a collective, do remarkable things. A single neuron in the human brain can respond only to what the neurons connected to it are doing, but all of them together can be Immanuel Kant. That resemblance is why Deborah M. Gordon, Stanford University assistant professor of biological sciences, studies ants. "I'm interested in the kind of system where simple units together do behave in complicated ways," she said. No one gives orders in an ant colony, yet each ant decides what to do next. For instance, an ant may have several job descriptions. When the colony discovers a new source of food, an ant doing housekeeping duty may suddenly become a forager. Or if the colony's territory size expands or contracts, patroller ants change the shape of their reconnaissance pattern to conform to the new realities. Since no one is in charge of an ant colony - including the misnamed "queen," which is simply a breeder - how does each ant decide what to do? This kind of undirected behavior is not unique to ants, Gordon said. How do birds flying in a flock know when to make a collective right turn? All anchovies and other schooling fish seem to turn in unison, yet no one fish is the leader. Gordon studies harvester ants in Arizona and, both in the field and in her lab, the so-called Argentine ants that are ubiquitous to coastal California. Argentine ants came to Louisiana in a sugar shipment in 1908. They were driven out of the Gulf states by the fire ant and invaded California, where they have displaced most of the native ant species. One of the things Gordon is studying is how they did so. No one has ever seen an ant war involving the Argentine species and the native species, so it's not clear whether they are quietly aggressive or just find ways of taking over food resources and territory. The Argentine ants in her lab also are being studied to help her understand how they change behavior as the size of the space they are exploring varies. "The ants are good at finding new places to live in and good at finding food," Gordon said. "We're interested in finding out how they do it." Her ants are confined by Plexiglas walls and a nasty glue-like substance along the tops of the boards that keeps the ants inside. She moves the walls in and out to change the arena and videotapes the ants' movements. A computer tracks each ant from its image on the tape and reads its position so she has a diagram of the ants' activities. The motions of the ants confirm the existence of a collective. "A colony is analogous to a brain where there are lots of neurons, each of which can only do something very simple, but together the whole brain can think. None of the neurons can think ant, but the brain can think ant, though nothing in the brain told that neuron to think ant." For instance, ants scout for food in a precise pattern. What happens when that pattern no longer fits the circumstances, such as when Gordon moves the walls? "Ants communicate by chemicals," she said. "That's how they mostly perceive the world; they don't see very well. They use their antennae to smell. So to smell something, they have to get very close to it. "The best possible way for ants to find everything - if you think of the colony as an individual that is trying to do this - is to have an ant everywhere all the time, because if it doesn't happen close to an ant, they're not going to know about it. Of course, there are not enough ants in the colony to do that, so somehow the ants have to move around in a pattern that allows them to cover space efficiently |
."[13]
Sholto Douglas who commanded No. 84 Squadron RFC which was initially equipped with the S.E.5a, listed the type's qualities as being: "Comfortable, with a good all-round view, retaining its performance and manoeuvrability at high level, steady and quick to gather speed in the dive, capable of a very fine zoom, useful in both offence and defence, strong in design and construction, [and] possessing a reliable engine".[citation needed]
While the S.E.5 remained in RAF service after the Armistice, the type began to be withdrawn soon afterwards. The S.E.5 also continued in service for a time in Australia and Canada, and in 1921 a Viper-engined S.E.5a was taken to Japan by the British Aviation Mission to the Imperial Japanese Navy.[14]
A number of machines found roles in civilian flying after the war. On 30 May 1922, the first use of skywriting for advertising occurred when Cyril Turner, a former RAF officer, spelt out "London Daily Mail" in black smoke from an S.E.5a at The Derby.[15] Others were used for air racing; one such privately owned aircraft won the Morris Cup race in 1927.[16]
Variants [ edit ]
S.E.5 First production version. Single-seat fighter biplane, powered by a 150 hp (112 kW) Hispano-Suiza 8a piston engine. S.E.5a Improved production version, powered by a 200 hp (149 kW) Hispano-Suiza 8b V-8 or 200 hp (149 kW) Wolseley Viper piston engine. S.E.5b Experimental prototype, with sesquiplane wings, streamlined nose and retractable radiator. Eberhart S.E.5e S.E.5a assembled from spare parts by American company Eberhart Aeroplane, 180 hp Wright-Hispano E engine and plywood-covered fuselages, about 60 built.[17][5] T.E.1 Drawings for a two seat fighter "based on a scaled-up S.E.5" were prepared early in 1917 - the type was to have had a 31 foot 3 inch wingspan, 200 hp Hispano-Suiza 8 engine, and to have been armed with a single forward firing Vickers and a Scarff mounted Lewis for the observer. Six examples ordered (A 8951 - A 8956) but because of the success of the Bristol fighter, and in view of the shortage of Hispano-Suiza engines, none was ever completed.[18]
Operators [ edit ]
Argentine Navy – One SE.5a aircraft, in service from 1926 – 1929.
No. 1 Flying Training School RAAF
Aviação Militar (Brazilian Army Aviation) – One SE.5a aircraft, donated by Handley Page, in service during 1920.
Irish Air Service
Irish Air Corps
Surviving aircraft and replicas [ edit ]
Originals [ edit ]
D7000... The Shuttleworth Collection's SE5a at Farnborough 1962, then painted as...
... and almost 52 years on as F-904 at Old Warden
An original S.E.5a may be seen at the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden, England, UK. This aircraft was originally serial F904 of No. 84 Squadron RAF, then flew as G-EBIA from September 1923 to February 1932.[20] It was stored between 1933 and 1955, before being restored to a flightworthy condition by staff at the Royal Aircraft Establishment and then passed onto the Shuttleworth Collection. An extensive refurbishment of this aircraft was performed in 2007. It has been re-registered as G-EBIA, it was first painted as D7000, then as F904.[20]
An original S.E.5e may be seen in the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Dayton, Ohio, USA. The museum acquired the S.E.5e through a donation by the estate of Lt. Col. William C. Lambert, USAF Ret, a First World War ace with 21.5 victories. Lambert flew the S.E.5a as an American member of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Air Force. The Air Force Museum Foundation also helped buy the aircraft. It is painted to represent an S.E.5e of the 18th Headquarters Squadron, Bolling Field, Washington, D.C., in 1925.[21]
Another four original airframes are statically displayed at: the Science Museum, London, UK; Royal Air Force Museum, London, UK; South African National Museum of Military History, Johannesburg, South Africa; and the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, Australia.[citation needed]
Reproductions [ edit ]
Full-scale replica S.E.5a built by Miles Aircraft in 1965 and used in films
Two full-scale replica S.E.5a aircraft were built by Miles Aircraft in 1965 for use in film making and were transferred to the Irish civil aircraft register in 1967 while the two were employed in flying scenes for the 1966 war movie The Blue Max.[22]
Three flightworthy reproductions (designated SE5a-1), along with a single static example, were constructed by The Vintage Aviator Limited in New Zealand. According to the group, the reproduction aircraft, which was the company's first project, combined some authentic components, such as the Hispano engines used, with newly-fabricated parts based on original archived drawings.[23]
The Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington displays the reproduction SE.5a that Florida craftsman Bobby Strahlman and his partners completed for collector Doug Champlin in 1989. This reproduction features one.303 Vickers and one.303-caliber Lewis machine gun, and carries the paint scheme of American ace George Vaughn, who served with the Royal Flying Corps. The SE.5 was displayed at Champlin's fighter museum at Mesa, Arizona until the collection was transferred to Seattle in 2003.[24]
Fictional portrayals [ edit ]
Lynn Garrison ’s Miles built SE5 September 15, 1970 immediately before fatal crash of Charles Boddington during filming of Richthofen & Brown
The Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5 has been portrayed, both by original and replica aircraft, in various movies. These include Wings (1927), Hell's Angels (1930), Flying Down to Rio (1933), Crimson Romance (1934), Test Pilot (1939) and The Aviator (2004).[25]. Converted Stampe et Vertongen SV.4 trainer/tourer aircaft were used to portray S.E.5s in the 1976 Anglo-French production Aces High.
The 1971 film Zeppelin makes reference to the use of the S.E.5 as a weapon to defend against the German Zeppelins that were attacking Britain during the First World War. The film, however, is set in the fall of 1915, a full year-and-a-half before the S.E. 5 entered squadron service. The dogfight scene near the film's conclusion features S.E.5a replicas.[25]
Specifications (S.E.5a) [ edit ]
Close-up of the cockpit instrumentation of a S.E.5
Data from South African National Museum of Military History[26] The Vintage Aviator[9]
General characteristics
Performance
Armament
See also [ edit ]
Aircraft of comparable role, configuration and era
Notable pilots of the S.E.5
References [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
Citations [ edit ](CNN) British fighter jets have taken part in their first airstrikes in Syria, hours after UK lawmakers voted in favor of bombing ISIS strongholds there.
"RAF Tornadoes have just returned from their first offensive operation over Syria and have conducted strikes," a spokesman for Britain's Ministry of Defense (MOD) said early Thursday.
The four jets took off from Akrotiri air base in Cyprus, targeting an oil field in Eastern Syria, the MOD told CNN.
More details on the operation are expected from the ministry later today.
Lawmakers voted 397 in favor of action and 223 against, following a 10-hour debate.
JUST WATCHED Kurdish fighters advance against ISIS Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Kurdish fighters advance against ISIS 00:10
After the November 13 terror attacks in Paris, France asked the U.S.-led coalition to bump up the military offensive against ISIS.
Now that Britain has decided to expand airstrikes that it previously conducted only in Iraq, the spotlight is on the German Parliament, which also is expected to approve greater military commitment against the terror group.
The German plan would activate 1,200 troops in anti-ISIS efforts, but in a support role -- not direct combat.
U.S. President Barack Obama welcomed the British move and said the coalition would work "to integrate them into our coalition air tasking orders as quickly as possible."
British airstrikes
Prime Minister David Cameron kicked off the debate by saying that ISIS is a threat to the British people, proved in part through the beheadings of UK hostages in the Middle East and other atrocities.
"This is not about whether we want to fight terrorism. It's about how best we do that," Cameron said.
He said the UK faces "'a fundamental threat to our security" and posed the question, "Do we work with our allies to degrade and destruct this threat... or do we sit back and wait for them to attack us?"
"This is the right thing to do to keep Britain safe, to deal with this evil organization and as part of a process to bring peace and stability to Syria," Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told CNN.
Hammond said the military campaign will have two stages: airstrikes to degrade ISIS capabilities and an eventual ground assault.
The airstrikes can begin "pretty much straight away" after the vote passes, he said.
In his rebuttal to Cameron, Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn called the Syria decision "one with potentially far-reaching consequences for us all, here in Britain, people in Syria and those in Middle East."
Corbyn called for Cameron to explain "how British bombing in Syria will contribute to a comprehensive, negotiated, political settlement of the Syrian war."
After the vote, Corbyn tweeted that Cameron pushed for the Parliament vote after he saw opposition in the country was growing. Corbyn said a diplomatic settlement on Syria should be the goal.
Britain's Parliament voted in 2013 against UK military action in Syria. Lawmakers in the House of Commons rebuffed Cameron's call for a strong response to allegations the Syrian government had used chemical weapons in the civil war. Parliamentary authorization has only been given for UK military action in neighboring Iraq as part of the international coalition against ISIS.
German reconnaissance
German legislators on Wednesday were debating on an expanded commitment, deploying high-tech intelligence jets over Syria and northern Iraq to help other countries' forces pinpoint targets.
The Cabinet, representing a country known for its reluctance since World War II to engage in military adventures abroad, approved the military support mission against ISIS in Syria this week. Lawmakers must approve it, too, before it takes effect.
The measure reportedly has overwhelming political support, with only two smaller parties objecting. The vote is widely seen as a rubber stamping of Chancellor Angela Merkel's recent commitment to France's Hollande.
In addition to sending troops and equipment in a support capacity against ISIS in Syria, Germany would strengthen its training mission in northern Iraq, according to German public media news site Deutsche Welle.
Germany has not committed to airstrikes, and its post-World War II constitution hinders it in participating in battle on foreign soil.
JUST WATCHED U.S. to send more special forces to Iraq and Syria Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH U.S. to send more special forces to Iraq and Syria 02:17
U.S.'special operators'
The United States has already been pummeling ISIS' de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria. On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the United States will send in a special targeting force to carry out raids against ISIS in Iraq.
"In full coordination with the government of Iraq, we're deploying a specialized expeditionary targeting force to assist Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces and to put even more pressure on ISIL," Carter said before the House Armed Services Committee, using another name for ISIS.
"These special operators will over time be able to conduct raids, free hostages, gather intelligence and capture ISIL leaders."
The force is in addition to the "less than 50" Special Operations Forces that Obama authorized in October to aid in the fight against ISIS in Syria.President Obama won a major victory in the Senate Tuesday in a dogfight that has major, long-term implications for his agenda.
The Senate, by a vote of 58-40, approved an amendment proposed by Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) to strip $1.75 billion in funding for the F-22 fighter. Levin worked hand in hand to kill the F-22 money with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
"There was an extensive effort by the White House," said Levin. "The president really needed to win this vote, not just in terms of the merits of the F-22 issue itself, but in terms of the reform agenda."
The vote had become a proxy fight against the power of the military-industrial complex, a term coined by President Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell address.
"It's What Eisenhower Warned us About," tweeted McCain before the vote. The F-22s have not been used in Iraq or Afghanistan and military experts agree they're not suited for American campaigns, yet lobbying and regional concerns have kept the program funded year after year. The victory over the military-industrial complex is arguably its most significant setback since World War II. For McCain, it was "probably the most impactful amendment that I have seen in this body on almost any issue."
"Up until the last couple hours, this vote was in doubt," McCain said. "And so I'd like to give credit to the president for being very firm on this issue and to the Secretary of Defense, who gave as strong a speech as I've ever heard in my life."
Obama had threatened to veto any bill that authorized the F-22 funding.
Forty-two Democrats and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, joined 15 Republicans to defeat the F-22.
Levin and McCain did a victory lap up to the third floor of the Senate after the vote, sitting down in the press gallery to celebrate.
As Eisenhower first defined it, the military-industrial complex is an alliance of military officers who demand ever greater funding, industry that wants the same and home-state senators and representatives who are more concerned about jobs at home than the ultimate value of the program.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' defection from the alliance broke its back.
Yet 14 Democrats and independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, still voted with the military-industrial complex. A review of the roll call shows that regional interests played a larger part than ideology.
Democrats who voted to support the F-22 spending: Sens. Chris Dodd (Conn.), Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray (Wash.), Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall (N.M.) (Udall's Colorado cousin, Mark, voted to kill it), Daniel Akaka and Daniel Inouye (Hawaii), Max Baucus and Jon Tester (Mont.), Bob Byrd (W.V.), Mark Begich (Alaska) and Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.).
The same geographic pattern holds on the GOP side. Republicans who voted to kill the funding: Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker (Tenn.), John Barrasso and Mike Enzi (Wyo.), Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham (S.C.), McCain and Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), who is the Senate's most outspoken foe of wasteful spending, but not joined by his GOP colleague Sen. Jim Inhofe.
Sen. John Ensign of Nevada joined Democratic Leader Harry Reid and Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) joined Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) in opposing the F-22. Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) voted against the military industrial complex even while his Democratic colleague from the state, Shaheen, voted with it. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) joined the Democrat, Begich, in supporting spending for the planes. The same bipartisan dynamic was at work in Indiana with Republican Sen. Richard Lugar and Democrat Sen. Evan Bayh voting on the side of reform. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) stood against the program; Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) was for it.
Obama's predilection for compromise and common ground couldn't come into play in the F-22 issue, because it wasn't a question of how much funding, but whether it should be funded at all.
"It would be hard to find any kind of middle ground on this issue," McCain noted afterward.
UPDATE: The White House renewed its veto threat Tuesday, in case the House was giving any thought to reinserting the funding in conference committee. "If that money is there, that bill will be vetoed," Robert Gibbs said in response to a question from The Advocate during the White House press briefing.
Ryan Grim is the author of This Is Your Country On Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in AmericaInvariably, either while building a new database, or while maintaining old ones, you will find that the business needs change or that you’ve made a mistake. Either way, you will need to modify the tables that you’ve created. Change is inevitable and luckily SQL Server takes that into account, providing you with mechanisms to modify structures after you’ve created them.
Important Warning
One of the fundamental concepts of databases is that the data is stored. You can’t simply throw data away when you need to make a change to a table. There are two levels of changes you can make to a table. The first, is a change that won’t affect data in the table. These are simple changes and we’ll cover them in this blog post. The second level of change is a change that can affect data in the table. This is a much more complicated change requiring multiple steps to protect the data in the table. This will be covered in later blog posts after you’ve learned more about how to work with data and structures.
Using the GUI to Modify a Table
To modify a table through the GUI you’ll need to navigate to the table and open the Table Designer window by right clicking on the table and choosing the appropriate menu choice. When you open this window you should note that the cursor is in a new, blank column, waiting for you to start typing. See the focus here:
To add the new column just supply a column name and pick the data type. After you have typed the name, the Allow Nulls box will be automatically selected, making this column allow NULL values. Leave that as is. Requiring data in a new column also requires you to create default data. That will be covered in another blog post. Saving the table will add the new column you just defined to it.
T-SQL Can Modify Tables Too
You can also use T-SQL to modify a table. Suppose the business requirements changed and you now need to capture the government identifier for a person, such as their Social Security Number in the US. You’ll want to add a column for storing this information. This T-SQL statement will add a new column to the table:
ALTER TABLE Personnel.Person ADD GovernmentID CHAR(11) NULL; 1 2 ALTER TABLE Personnel. Person ADD GovernmentID CHAR ( 11 ) NULL ;
The statement should make a lot of sense. You’re telling SQL Server to ALTER a TABLE. Then you’re specifying exactly which table, including the schema, Personnel.Person. You’re added a column, GovernmentID, with a specified data type, CHAR(11). T-SQL is frequently quite straightforward in how the language modifies objects.
Generating Scripts
While you can type all the scripts directly into T-SQL, believe it or not, the GUI can also generate scripts for you. Navigate back to the Table Designer window. Define one more column. Before you hit save, look up at the Table Designer toolbar. The button all the way on the left is used to script out whatever changes you have made within the Designer window:
Pushing the button will open the Save Change Script window. This window shows you the script that SQL Server would generate to make the changes you’ve defined. SQL Server generates a much more complicated script than is strictly needed, but it’s doing that to try to protect you from accidents that you could introduce if you just took the scripts strictly as defined. It does this by setting connection information and a transaction. You don’t need to do all this. But, if you look in the Save Change Script window, you’ll see an ALTER TABLE statement, just like what you defined all on your own.
If you click Yes here you can save the script and use it to update the table at a later time. If you watch, most of the GUI windows offer you the capability of saving a script that does whatever it is you’ve tasked the GUI with completing. This is a great way to learn more about how SQL Server works. It’s also a handy way to generate a script so that you can run it on more than one database in the event you need to.
Conclusion
The basic changes to a table are very easy and straightforward. It’s just a good idea to always remember that frequently your changes won’t be basic. Then you have to employ quite a bit more work than we did here in this blog post.Dawn and Steve Thomas want the world to understand the chronic, crippling blushing that led their 20-year-old son Brandon to commit suicide last May.
Steve and Dawn Thomas rarely saw their son Brandon blush, and if they did, it wasn’t a worry.
Brandon was blond and fair, like his twin brother, Devin, and an occasional flush of color didn’t seem concerning.
“We wouldn’t have witnessed it,” said Steve Thomas. “It wasn’t even happening here at home. I think this was his place of comfort.”
So they were stunned last fall when Brandon, a friendly, well-liked University of Washington student, confessed to his mother he’d been struggling with crippling, chronic blushing for four years.
John Brecher / msnbc.com Steve and Dawn Thomas are speaking out about their son Brandon's death to raise awareness of the little-known disorder estimated to affect between 5 percent and 7 percent of the population.
And they were devastated on May 29, when Brandon jumped from the 11th floor balcony of his Seattle dormitory, leaving behind a five-page note blaming his suicide on despair caused by the little-known disorder.
“When Brandon finally let us in to his secret life of torment, we were obviously way behind,” his mother said.
Six weeks later, the Thomases are speaking out about Brandon’s death to honor his last wish. In the letter, the young man who hid the problem from his friends, his family -- even his twin -- wanted the world to know that there’s nothing trivial about turning red.
“One of the reasons he took his life is that if he took this drastic measure, it would raise awareness,” Dawn Thomas said. “He wanted his death to have an impact.”
Courtesy Thomas family Twins Brandon, left, and Devin Thomas were close, but Brandon hid his condition even from his brother.
To that end, Dawn, 45, Steve, 47, and Devin, 20, are seated on a couch in the family’s manicured lakeside home in Renton, Wash., just outside Seattle, stoically facing a reporter’s notebook and a video camera. Dawn, who works at nearby Microsoft, and Steve, a firefighter, wanted to set the record straight.
“I’ve had people come up to me, even at his service, and say ‘I know, I blush, too, when I’m in public,’” said Dawn Thomas. “That is not what this is about.”
Instead, they say that Brandon was fighting a daily battle with what experts describe as pathological blushing, facial reddening that goes far beyond the typical flush most people feel at committing a social faux pas or speaking in front of a group.
An estimated 5 percent to 7 percent of the population may suffer from chronic blushing, an uncontrollable reaction triggered by an overactive nervous system and compounded by the fallout of social shame. That’s according to Dr. Enrique Jadresic, a Chilean psychiatrist and the world’s foremost expert on the disorder, who also suffered from it himself.
“Blushing, which presumably is a minor symptom, can erode not only self-esteem, but also the will and desire to live,” said Jadresic, the author of a 2008 book on the condition, called “When Blushing Hurts: Overcoming Abnormal Facial Blushing.”
There are ways to treat chronic blushing, including hypnosis, therapy, anti-anxiety drugs and, for some, a controversial surgery that snips or clamps the nerve in the torso that controls flushing. But like Brandon, many so-called blushers suffer silently, ashamed to admit to the condition that colors work, romance and other crucial parts of life.
Courtesy Thomas family Brandon Thomas confessed to his mother last fall that he'd been struggling with chronic blushing for more than four years.
'No, mom, you need to just go look it up'
When Brandon called his mother in tears last fall, she knew only that it was serious -- and that he must have been desperately in need of help.
“I was sitting there trying to make sure I chose my words carefully: ‘OK, Brandon, you know we all blush,’” Dawn Thomas recalled. “And he said, ‘Mom, no, you need to just go look it up.’”
Online, she discovered what Brandon had found: blogs, anecdotal reports and a few scientific studies that described people for whom routine blushing had become unbearable.
“The biggest thing for him and the biggest thing for all the people who suffer with chronic blushing is the shame,” she said. “People do think of it as trivial because we all blush. And what’s the problem?”
At first, the problem isn’t even the blushing itself, Jadresic said in emails to msnbc.com. Around puberty, some people with a heightened sympathetic nervous system, the network that controls involuntary actions like sweating and blushing, seem to start to blush more, but without the social cues such as embarrassment that typically trigger a blush.
Blushing occurs when the tiny blood vessels of face, called capillaries, widen, allowing more blood to flow through them, causing the skin to redden. The widening occurs in response to signals sent from the brain through the nerves. It's an involuntary action often sparked by strong emotions, such as embarrassment or anger, but also can be caused by spicy foods and alcohol. In chronic blushers, though, there may be no obvious trigger.
That was the case with Brandon, who started blushing around age 15. Without warning, he'd flush bright red from his neck to his ears.
“He would be laughing with people and someone would point out, ‘Oh, look how red Brandon’s getting,’” said Dawn Thomas, recounting what Brandon had told her. “And he’d be thinking, ‘I am?' Because he didn’t realize he was turning red.”
The color was noticeable, said Troy Colyer, 20, who had been friends with Brandon since middle school and attended the University of Washington with him. But Brandon was such a funny, energetic guy, well-liked by everyone, that it didn't draw too much attention.
"He used to blush, but we didn't think much of it," recalled Colyer, who organized a vigil after Brandon's death attended by at least 100 people. "People thought it was cute and funny."
'He was the last person in the world you'd think would do this.'
Some friends may have joked about the blushing, but it was never mean-spirited; no one ridiculed Brandon, Colyer said. He and others were stunned to learn that Brandon was suffering.
"He was the last person in the world you'd think would do this," Colyer said.
What no one knew, Brandon's mother said, was that when anyone pointed out the blushing, Brandon became embarrassed. And then he started dreading the blushing he couldn’t control, leading to what experts call “erythrophobia,” or fear of blushing.
“Since it’s visible and uncontrollable and frequent, you are always on the alert. You dread blushing or the possibility of it happening,” Jadresic explained.
Doctors, psychiatrists and others have long debated the source of chronic blushing. For years, professionals thought it was a psychological issue.
“The view was that the main problem was in the blusher’s mind, in the way the blusher thought about the blush,” Jadresic said.
More recent research has suggested that it actually is based in biology, Jadresic said.
“Clearly, we do not all blush the same, to the same extent and severity,” he noted.
When people blush more frequently and intensely than normal, it can trigger severe psychological and social reactions, Jadresic said. Sixty percent of blushers in one study and 90 percent in another study met the diagnostic criteria for social anxiety disorder, or SAD, he added.
Courtesy Thomas family When Brandon and Devin were young, the family enjoyed hiking, camping and traveling to places such as Hawaii.
'I am tired of blushing.'
Regardless of the cause, chronic blushing can cripple a sufferer’s life. In his last letter to his parents, Brandon tried to explain how the disorder dominated him.
“I blush several times a day. It doesn’t have to be when I am embarrassed either,” he wrote.
He would blush in class, on the phone, while driving in his car, late at night when he recalled blushing during the day. He would take the stairs instead of the elevator from the 11th floor in order to avoid meeting someone he knew entering the elevator on the way down, which he knew would trigger a blush.
All of this agony was kept secret, Brandon's friends and family say. The business major who hoped to be a firefighter like his dad was outgoing and loved sports, especially basketball and soccer. He and his brother had a longstanding rivalry about the Huskies vs. the Cougars, the mascots of the state's warring college teams. When Devin left for school at Western Washington University in Bellingham, a couple hours north of Seattle, the brothers were in frequent contact. "We texted a lot," said Devin.
With friends, Brandon was something of a peacemaker, his friend Troy Colyer recalled.
"He was the glue that kept everyone together," he said.
Outwardly, there was no sign of the young man whose last letter reported that he cried himself to sleep nearly every night.
“I am tired of blushing,” Brandon wrote. “It is exhausting to wake up every day and have to find little ways to avoid blushing situations.”
Desperate efforts
Once they knew about the problem, Brandon’s family tried desperately to get him help. In April, they took him to doctors, found a counselor, got prescriptions for low doses of anti-anxiety drugs and beta-blockers, which have been successfully used to treat blushing. They discussed the possibility of endoscopic thoracic sympathectomy, or ETS, the controversial surgery sometimes used to treat both excessive sweating, or hyperhidrosis, and pathological blushing.
Jadresic, who had the surgery himself, believes that it can be an effective cure. He led a study of more than 300 patients published last year that compared surgery, drug treatments and no treatment. Among those treated with ETS, 90 percent reported being either “quite satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the results.
Still, the surgery is controversial. Some patients have reported serious side effects, including unusual sweating or weakness, sometimes without controlling the blushing.
“Health professionals should ensure that surgery is used only as a last resort,” said Jadresic.
Brandon wanted the surgery, but reluctantly agreed to try drugs and therapy first, his parents said. During an anxious meeting in Seattle, a doctor told Brandon the surgery had only a 50 percent chance of success. In response, the family planned to see a new doctor in New York this summer, one who was more familiar with the operation. If that didn't work, they planned to visit an expert in Ireland who claims to cure chronic blushing.
Before they could take those steps, however, Brandon was gone.
“He was so hopeless by the time [he told us],” his mother said. “He believed in his mind that he was never going to have a successful career, and that he would never have a successful relationship because of this.”
Now they’re speaking out about chronic blushing, hoping to create a website that gathers information about the condition all in one place, providing links to Jadresic’s book, which may have provided hope to Brandon if he’d seen it earlier. The website is still under construction. People who want to know more -- or to contact Brandon's parents -- can send an email to info@chronicblushinghelp.com.
With more information, maybe Brandon could have held on long enough to get help, his parents said. As it is, they'll never know exactly why Brandon couldn't wait, or what specific event might have spurred his final action.
“That’s the hard part,” Steve Thomas said. “There are just so many unanswered questions.”
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Pressemitteilungen » Pressemitteilungen aus dem Jahr 2019 » Pressemitteilung Nr. 7/16 vom 14.1.2016 Siehe auch: Urteil des I. Zivilsenats vom 14.1.2016 - I ZR 65/14 - Bundesgerichtshof Mitteilung der Pressestelle Nr. 7/2016 Bundesgerichtshof zur Facebook-Funktion "Freunde finden" Urteil vom 14. Januar 2016 - I ZR 65/14 - Freunde finden Der unter anderem für das Wettbewerbsrecht zuständige I. Zivilsenat hat heute entschieden, dass die mithilfe der Funktion "Freunde finden" des Internet-Dienstes "Facebook" versendeten Einladungs-E-Mails an Personen, die nicht als "Facebook"-Mitglieder registriert sind, eine wettbewerbsrechtlich unzulässige belästigende Werbung darstellen. Der I. Zivilsenat hat weiter entschieden, dass "Facebook" im Rahmen des im November 2010 zur Verfügung gestellten Registrierungsvorgangs für die Funktion "Freunde finden" den Nutzer über Art und Umfang der Nutzung von ihm importierter Kontaktdaten irregeführt hat. Der Kläger ist der Bundesverband der Verbraucherzentralen und Verbraucherverbände in Deutschland. Die in Irland ansässige Beklagte betreibt in Europa die Internet-Plattform "Facebook". Der Kläger nimmt die Beklagte wegen der Gestaltung der von ihr bereit gestellten Funktion "Freunde finden", mit der der Nutzer veranlasst wird, seine E-Mail-Adressdateien in den Datenbestand von "Facebook" zu importieren, und wegen der Versendung von Einladungs-E-Mails an bisher nicht als Nutzer der Plattform registrierte Personen auf Unterlassung in Anspruch. Der Kläger sieht in dem Versand von Einladungs-E-Mails an nicht als Nutzer der Plattform registrierte Personen eine den Empfänger belästigende Werbung der Beklagten im Sinne von § 7 Abs. 1 und 2 Nr. 3 UWG*. Er macht ferner geltend, die Beklagte täusche die Nutzer im Rahmen ihres Registrierungsvorgangs in unzulässiger Weise darüber, in welchem Umfang vom Nutzer importierte E-Mail-Adressdateien von "Facebook" genutzt würden. Das Landgericht hat der Klage stattgegeben. Die Berufung ist ohne Erfolg geblieben. Der Bundesgerichtshof hat die Revision der Beklagten zurückgewiesen. Einladungs-E-Mails von "Facebook" an Empfänger, die in den Erhalt der E-Mails nicht ausdrücklich eingewilligt haben, stellen eine unzumutbare Belästigung im Sinne des § 7 Abs. 2 Nr. 3 UWG dar. Die Einladungs-E-Mails sind Werbung der Beklagten, auch wenn ihre Versendung durch den sich bei "Facebook" registrierenden Nutzer ausgelöst wird, weil es sich um eine von der Beklagten zur Verfügung gestellte Funktion handelt, mit der Dritte auf das Angebot von "Facebook" aufmerksam gemacht werden sollen. Die Einladungs-E-Mails werden vom Empfänger nicht als private Mitteilung des "Facebook"-Nutzers, sondern als Werbung der Beklagten verstanden. Durch die Angaben, die die Beklagte im November 2010 bei der Registrierung für die Facebook-Funktion "Freunde finden" gemacht hat, hat die Beklagte sich registrierende Nutzer entgegen § 5 UWG** über Art und Umfang der Nutzung der E-Mail-Kontaktdaten getäuscht. Der im ersten Schritt des Registrierungsvorgangs eingeblendete Hinweis "Sind deine Freunde schon bei Facebook?" klärt nicht darüber auf, dass die vom Nutzer importierten E-Mail-Kontaktdaten ausgewertet werden und eine Versendung der Einladungs-E-Mails auch an Personen erfolgt, die noch nicht bei "Facebook" registriert sind. Die unter dem elektronischen Verweis "Dein Passwort wird von Facebook nicht gespeichert" hinterlegten weitergehenden Informationen können die Irreführung nicht ausräumen, weil ihre Kenntnisnahme durch den Nutzer nicht sichergestellt ist. Vorinstanzen: KG Berlin - Urteil vom 24. Januar 2014 - 5 U 42/12 LG Berlin - Urteil vom 6. März 2012 - 16 O 551/10 Karlsruhe, 14. Januar 2016 *§ 7 UWG: (1) Eine geschäftliche Handlung, durch die ein Marktteilnehmer in unzumutbarer Weise belästigt wird, ist unzulässig. Dies gilt insbesondere für |
am to hire a loyal Tory editorial writer who was unhappy at another paper, Killam wrote back that he discussed the matter with Scott and understood that the Mail and Empire didn’t want this particular hack. On another occasion, the news editor phoned Killam about publishing one more article in a series which had led to threats of legal action. Killam asked him one question: “If you had to do it all over again, would you run the articles?” When the editor said yes, Killam gave the go-ahead, indicating he would consult a lawyer the next morning. No lawsuits occurred.
For a Conservative paper, the Mail and Empire proved progressive at times. Building on the legacy established by Kit Coleman in the Victorian era, the paper hired female reporters who worked outside the traditional women’s department. One year, the news staff sent to cover the Canadian National Exhibition consisted entirely of women. The three reporters—Thelma Craig, Jessie MacTaggart, and Iris Naish—received ribbing from the competition, as a male Telegram reporter changed the sign above their office door to read “Femail and Empire.”
Over the years, the Mail and Empire acquired the remnants of two competitors: the Times (formerly its sibling paper the News) in 1919, and the World in 1921. By the mid-1930s, with only two morning papers left in Toronto, observers wondered when it would swallow up the older but weaker Globe. Circulation figures for 1936 showed the Mail and Empire distributed 118,389 copies, the Globe 78,736. Employees at the Globe tended to be paid less, thanks to owner W.G. Jaffray’s preference for enriching his church over his workers.
In October 1936, mining millionaire William H. Wright and financial whiz kid George McCullagh purchased the Globe. On November 19, after less than a week of negotiation with Killam (which McCullagh described as “comparatively easy and of the most pleasant nature”), the pair purchased the Mail and Empire. Wright admitted that a merger had been on his mind since his initial purchase. The new paper, the Globe and Mail, would debut on November 23. 1936 and be produced from the Mail and Empire’s offices at King and Bay until a new building was finished near King and York (the Mail building was demolished in 1939 for a Bank of Montreal office tower, which itself was replaced in the 1970s).
The official statement promised that the best features of both papers would be included in the new publication. It also promised a politically independent editorial policy: “It will give general support to governments in power, whether Conservative or Liberal, reserving, however, the fullest liberty to criticize any actions of any government which we do not consider to be in the public interest.”
If the hyperbolic coverage in the Telegram is believed, Toronto Conservatives and Orangemen were aghast at the news that the Liberal Globe was taking over their morning paper. The Telegram’s phone lines were flooded with calls urging the evening paper to launch a morning edition to fill the void. We have a little trouble believing some of the responses the Telegram printed, such as the woman who claimed the loss of the Conservative voice of the Mail and Empire made her feel so rotten she couldn’t finish her ironing, or the man who drove in from Brantford to plead for a morning edition. While a group within the Conservative party considered buying the Mail and Empire, they failed to raise enough money to satisfy Killam, who reportedly received $2.5 million for the paper.
Mail and Empire employees prepared the paper’s final edition for publication on November 21, 1936. Musicians played tunes like “The Last Post” and “Auld Lang Syne” as production wound down. At a wake for the paper, employees unsure of their future criticized Killam, feeling the paper had weathered the Great Depression well. McCullagh agreed to provide four weeks pay to those who weren’t joining the Globe and Mail. The Star, which observed that the Mail and Empire was the third major morning paper in Ontario to fold within the previous eight months (the other casualties were the London Advertiser and Hamilton Herald) regarded the glut of former newspaper employees as “one of the tragedies of business life that the elimination of an industrial unit almost invariably has this effect.”
Among those initially let go was William Arthur Deacon, Canada’s first full-time professional book critic. As literary editor of the Mail and Empire since 1928, Deacon had championed Canadian literature and grown a loyal following for his nurturing attitude. When the papers merged, literary duties were handed to the Globe’s Charles Jenkins. The backlash from staff, readers, and the literary community was such that within a week, Deacon was rehired with a higher pay rate. He stayed in the role for the next quarter-century.
While Deacon and fellow Mail and Empire columnists like McAree settled into their new home at the Globe and Mail, the Telegram ferociously attacked the new paper. It was upset by alleged abandonment of Conservative readers and McCullagh’s increasingly cozy ties with Liberal Ontario premier Mitch Hepburn. Via daily editorials and front page stories, the Telegram depicted the merger of the papers as a conspiracy designed to silence opposition to improved educational funding for Catholic schools. The Telegram needn’t have been so paranoid, as the loss of a morning Conservative voice didn’t last long. By the Second World War, McCullagh fell out with Hepburn and the Liberal party in general, and shifted the Globe and Mail’s politics rightward. In 1948, he added the Telegram to his holdings.
Meanwhile, Killam followed the status of former Mail and Empire employees who had difficulty finding work. In January 1937 he paid the remaining 30 or so workers affected one week’s pay for each year they had spent at the Mail and Empire, and assured pensioners they would continue to receive money. Killam remained an enigmatic figure until his death in 1955. Shunning attention for his actions in life—he quietly helped out employees as long as they never publicly revealed his involvement—posthumously he proved one of the country’s greatest philanthropists. He directed that the inheritance taxes levied on his estate be used to aid public institutions, resulting in a large portion of the initial funding of the Canada Council. When his widow died a decade later, both had set up provisions in her will to fund academic research and medical institutions across the country.
Within the Globe and Mail, the Mail’s legacy faded as former employees moved on. Apart from a few clippings, the paper’s files weren’t retained, nor were bound copies of the paper. Richard Doyle once asked Globe and Mail publisher Jim Cooper why, given its legacy was buried, the paper never dropped the Mail from its masthead. “For a very good reason,” Cooper responded. “There are lots of Globes—like the Boston Globe—but there is only one Globe and Mail!” The paper can’t even find respect in the digital age—the Globe & Mail’s online archives doesn’t include it, while an incomplete run of issues published between 1881 and 1900 were included in Google’s discontinued newspaper digitalization project.
Though all but forgotten, both the Mail and the Mail and Empire played important roles in the evolution of Canadian newspapers from party mouthpieces to fully rounded publications. A promotional boast that “The Mail Does It All” wasn’t far from the mark.
Additional material from Hurly-Burly by Richard J. Doyle (Toronto: Macmillan, 1990); A Very Private Person by Douglas How (Halifax: Trustees of the Estate of Dorothy J. Killam, 1976); King by Allan Levine (Toronto: Douglas & McIntrye, 2011); William Arthur Deacon: A Canadian Literary Life by Clara Thomas and John Lennox (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982); the February 6, 1895 edition of the Empire; the October 1, 1927 and November 19, 1936 editions of the Globe; the January 6, 1937, July 24, 1950, January 10, 1953,and August 9, 1977 editions of the Globe and Mail; the February 7, 1895, September 18, 1897, January 12, 1903, November 19, 1936, and November 21, 1936 editions of the Mail and Empire; the February 6, 1895,February 8, 1895, October 1, 1927, November 19, 1936, and November 20, 1936 editions of the Toronto Star; and the February 7, 1895, November 19, 1936, and November 21, 1936 editions of the Telegram.
Every Saturday, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today.Her family is one of NOM’s most massive contributors. The Detroit News reports:
President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday said he intends to appoint West Michigan GOP mega donor and philanthropist Betsy DeVos to be his education secretary, putting an ardent supporter of school choice in charge of the nation’s education policy.
DeVos, 58, is seen as a national leader in the school choice movement, which she has called an attempt to “empower” parents to find good schools for their children, whether they be traditional public schools in other neighborhoods, charter schools, virtual schools or private institutions.
DeVos is a former Michigan Republican Party chairwoman whose husband, Dick, unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2006. The DeVos family, heirs to the Amway Corp. fortune, are the most prolific donors to the Michigan Republican Party, GOP officeholders and candidates.In waging a war on illiteracy and innumeracy, Nicky Morgan has fallen for a fascinating delusion: “war” as a metaphor for determined, effective action. In real life war is slow and incredibly destructive; and by the time it is over, nobody can even remember what the objective was.
The education secretary’s bellicose mood takes practical shape with this suggestion: any English primary school that can’t drill times tables into every pupil by the age of 11 will be taken over by new management. Since there will always, in every school, be one kid who can’t manage it, the next government will, some time in 2017, be looking for 17,000 new headteachers. But that is by no means the most glaring flaw in Morgan’s plan.
She was billed as an emollient choice at education after the bruising Gove-ian era, when teachers and heads – and once, memorably, even governors – were portrayed as truculent, self-interested obstacles to the great reformer. Morgan was different: she was listening; she recognised that teachers, far from being the slothful creatures of Michael Gove’s imagination, were actually working far too hard.
She went as far as to ask them how hard they were working, and what they thought was the source of their workload: “Your stupid policies,” the majority replied. If only for a moment, it did look as though there was a person in charge who thought of teachers as a valuable element in the learning process. But no: that was just the friendly hand she proffered, hiding her lasso behind her back, like a dog catcher. Now we’re back to square one: a picture in which governments want the best for children, and schools don’t; governments drive learning by setting targets for schools, who would otherwise just make endless necklaces out of macaroni.
The relentless testing has already begun – as Morgan told The Andrew Marr Show this morning, the government has “introduced the phonics check for six-year-olds, and 100,000 more young people are able to read better as a result”.
Even if we leave aside the controversies around phonics-fundamentalism, and assume that teaching children words that don’t exist is the best way to introduce the joys of reading, her claim is still mistaken at the most elemental level. Testing young children doesn’t improve their reading, any more than taking the temperature will make it snow.
If we want to make data out of this new policy, all we can say for certain is that 100,000 six-year-olds have wasted 30 minutes demonstrating their progress, which is 30 minutes they could have spent learning something. Children are measured at an ever more granular level, to a narrowing set of performance indicators. It is fundamentally disrespectful to them, a cynical waste of their time for the purposes of political point-scoring.
This misunderstands the nature of learning: that individuals do different things at different rates, and the speed of one individual’s learning can vary wildly, without being anybody’s fault. It creates targets that are neither reasonable nor desirable, and then demonises teachers for “teaching to the target” having first established that they will be fired if they don’t (and replaced with the robot army that the Department for Education is presumably about to unveil).
The most infuriating thing is how all this goes unchallenged; how it is accepted as a physical and demonstrable truth that setting these targets leads to improvements. Marr referred to Morgan’s “very, very ambitious new targets”. It is impossible to interpret that as anything but approval: what he calls “ambition” is merely another layer of counting, to ensure that schools do the things that they undertake but cannot, without surveillance, be trusted to deliver.
In the 1980s the big Conservative fear was that teachers were all out to propagandise on behalf of homosexuality and that malleable children would have no choice but to become gay. The fear now is a bit more shapeless but no less preposterous: that without politicians holding the whip, the teaching body would not care about results, about where Britain stood in the international comparison tables, about who was and wasn’t literate when they got to secondary school.
I have never heard it satisfactorily explained what a teacher’s true motivation is, if it isn’t to teach children. Do they actively want to destroy the UK’s international standing, some kind of hard-left apology for colonialism? Do they seek to undermine Britain’s employers by delivering unto them people who can’t multiply 12 by 8? Are they simply people who hate children, and are prepared to devote their lives to ruining as many chances as they can? If they’re just people who want to hide from the world and have incredibly long holidays, why on earth did they become teachers and not MPs?
An interesting footnote is that all the fanfare goes on the announcement of a target: when, months or years down the line, it has not been met, there is some mumbling about how it was probably the fault of the previous government, and the charabanc moves on.
Morgan, so new to the job, has already been reprimanded by the statistics authority for misleading the House of Commons about the extent of illiteracy and innumeracy. (She said one in three kids couldn’t read or write by the age of 11; the remark had no statistical basis.) The information gathered in this massive measurement exercise is routinely papered over, misrepresented or ignored, almost as if the results were never the point. The point was to reinforce one message: teachers do not care about the future and can’t be trusted; politicians do, and can.
She has believed her own spin, it seems: Morgan really must think one in three is illiterate if she thinks we’ll swallow this.we're sitting here in the midst of a (non) blizzard, hunkering down in this super snowy, windy, and frigid weather. we got up this morning to take our little pup, quint out for a walk, needless to say he wasn't happy. we're not sure he's really into snow, as he runs away from us when we attempt to put his little black turtleneck sweater on, and when we try to squeeze his dainty feet into snow shoes he hates it even more. it's become a 10-15 minute process, depending on if it's both me and frank or just one of us, all for a 2 minute "walk" consisting of quint trotting in circles and finding the nearest vertical object to relieve himself on. we come back inside and the timid dog he was outside quickly disappears into a bold, playful pup zipping around the apartment, sometimes hopping on all fours, and poking us with his tiny snout encouraging us to play with him. most times you can find frank on the floor with him playing as if he were a dog as well, and as i'm sure you can imagine, quint is always totally delighted by that. we're constantly so amazed at how such a little guy can have such a tremendous personality - he's totally filled with life, and brings us so much love and light each day! this week, just under a year ago we picked him up at the shelter, all 7 3/4 pounds of him, so me and frank are reflecting a bit on how special he is, while also wondering what our lives were like before him :)
while quint isn't a fan of veggies (he actually eats around them), he is a big lover of apples - i often mash a couple slices up for him, which he loves to crunch on. most meals i have to be careful of setting them at a height he can reach, but salads never worry me - i know he'd rather occupy his time doing other things like playing with his reflection or chasing his tail. this carrot-centric salad is super simple, but also super tasty, with crushed fennel, sweet caramelized shallots, crunchy apple, and a respectable amount of blood orange juice to top. it was inspired by a salad over at vinegar hill house, and it's one of those little dishes that continues to have flavor, texture and depth in each bite, while also being really simple to put together and enjoy. plus, it's a salad served on the warmer side of spectrum, for these chilly days when thinking of eating something cold is just a no-go.
love + warmth, xo!It is not often that penis graffiti could be said to be doing a civic good.
But on the streets around Bury and Ramsbottom, near Manchester, one man has employed crudely-drawn male genitalia in a bid to attract the local council’s attention to potholes.
Within 48 hours of the anonymous artist’s work appearing, many of the potholes have been filled.
The man, who calls himself “Wanksy” in a nod to the celebrated street artist Banksy, told the Manchester Evening News: “The roads of Manchester are in an appalling state, especially around Bury. I have cyclist friends who have been hospitalised.
“They damage vehicles. Sometimes it’s hard to know which pothole caused the damage because there are so many. When I’ve finished in Ramsbottom, I’ll move on to the rest of Manchester.”
He added: “I wanted to attract attention to the pothole and make it memorable. Nothing seemed to do this better than a giant comedy phallus. It’s also speedy, I don’t want to be in the road for a long time. It seems to have become my signature. I just want to make people smile and draw attention to the problem. It seems to be working, judging from the Facebook fan page.”
While “Wanksy” admits he does not have a 100-per-cent success rate, he offers no apology for his actions and says he uses paint which disappears in a week or two.
But local councillors are less than impressed.
(Photo: "Wansky"/Facebook)
“The actions of this individual are not only stupid but incredibly insulting to local residents,” a spokesperson for Bury council said.
“Has this person, for just one second, considered how families with young children must feel when they are confronted with these obscene symbols as they walk to school? Not only is this vandalism, but it’s also counter-productive.
“Every penny that we have to spend cleaning off this graffiti is a penny less that we have to spend on actually repairing the potholes.”
The spokesperson added: “We urge the perpetrator to stop defacing the roads immediately, and ask anyone who sees this sort of criminal damage being carried out to report it to the police and the council.”A new major version is always exciting: when it comes to one of our favorite frameworks like Symfony, it’s Christmas come early for developers. But is is also worrisome. Will my application break? Will I have to rewrite half of my code? Don’t panic! We will go through the 3.0 major version changes and cover various subjects from new features to upgrading.
What’s up doc?
To be honest, there is no new shiny feature in this version.
What? You said Symfony 3.0 was awesome!
Yeah, Symfony 3.0 is awesome exactly because of that.
Let’s go back to one rule of semantic versioning:
Major version X (X.y.z | X > 0) MUST be incremented if any backwards incompatible changes are introduced.
As a consequence, Symfony 3.0 is allowed to break compatibility. It does little else. And this is necessary: at some point, you need to clean the compatibility layers burdening your framework. But to avoid most of the pain, the Symfony developers used a well designed release schedule:
Major features were introduced in 2.7 and 2.8 (which was released at the same time as 3.0)
2.7 and 2.8 are backward compatible
Since 2.6 users are notified about deprecated methods when they are used
All compatibility layers are dropped in the 3.0 version
If you are interested in shiny features and have not moved to 2.7 yet, you might want to read this:
The framework has become more standard (support of the PSR-3 standard for logging), has got rid of some architecture mistakes and is more decoupled and reusable than ever. Here are the notable changes:
A new directory structure
Basically, the entire structure of Symfony didn’t change but there were some tweaks:
2.5 directory structure | 3.0 directory structure app/ cache | var / cache app/ logs | var / log app/bootstrap.php. cache | var /bootstrap.php. cache app/console | bin /console app/phpunit. xml.dist | phpunit. xml.dist
As a result, you can run PHPUnit without specifying a config file: phpunit instead of phunit -c app. All binaries are moved into the bin directory and the new var directory was made for easier permission settings (the entire directory should be writable).
New components
The Asset component was introduced in 2.7 and automatically manages URL generation and versioning of your stylesheets, javascript files and images.
The LDAP component was introduced in 2.8 and allows you to use an LDAP service as a security provider.
A PHPUnit bridge was added in 2.7. Its main advantage is that use of depreciated code is reported and tests will fail because of that. With this bridge it will be easier for you to stay up to date.
Profiler improvements
The Twig and Translation profilers were added. Furthermore, the whole debug interface was redesigned to have a nicer look and a better user experience.
How to upgrade to 3.0
First of all, PHP 5.5 is the new required version to run Symfony 3.0. Check that your servers are running 5.5 or newer PHP versions, if not consider upgrading PHP.
Now, you need to check the migration status of installed bundles. Here is a Google Doc summing up migration statuses of major bundles.
As for the code itself, this is the easiest part. And you should do it even if you don’t meet the above requirements because 2.7 and 2.8 came with great performance and security improvements. Updating to a new LTS (Long Term Support) version when it comes out (2.8) is also a good practice for maintainability.
A method that should work in most cases:
Update to 2.8.X. There is no compatibility breaks in minor versions, so your website will still be running.
Quickly install the Deprecation Detector utility.
Run deprecation-detector check in your Symfony app. It will list all deprecated methods and classes with a hint on how to fix the issue.
in your Symfony app. It will list all deprecated methods and classes with a hint on how to fix the issue. If you need more details you can check the full UPGRADE guide.
What’s next?
Be careful though, the 3.0 version is not an LTS one. The last LTS version is 2.8 and the next one is the 3.3 to be released in May 2017.
Concerning PHP7 (this is a great month for PHP lovers), Symfony will not move to this version yet, but a bump to PHP 5.6 next year is being considered.
As 3.0 is not that a revolution (but a needed cleaning process), development will continue normally in the next months to come.
Conclusion
Even if you don’t upgrade now (but you really should), you can move to 2.8 which is an LTS and have warnings about deprecated methods that are removed from the 3.0 version.
Migration from Symfony 1 to Symfony 2 was (and still is) a terrifying journey. With the Backwards Compatibility Promise, the Symfony development team wanted to build a more lasting framework and produced a nice and smooth migration process for 3.0.
The official blog post
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Join UsOverzealous fans, autograph seekers, strange women draped over the hood of his car -- these are the sorts of things one might expect David Coverdale to have to deal with at his home. But as it turns out, the Whitesnake singer's problems are quite a bit hairier.
Classic Rock Magazine reports that Coverdale recently found himself playing unwilling host to a black bear at his Lake Tahoe home, and although the intrusion ended quickly -- and with what sounds like fairly minimal damage -- it's an experience he'd obviously rather not repeat. "It must have weighed 450-500 pounds," said Coverdale. "It took out two armed screens, opened the fridge, ate his fill, then took a huge poop."
As a Tahoe homeowner, Coverdale's familiar with what a nuisance black bears can be; in fact, this is the second time one has broken into his house, so he knew how to proceed once he saw what was going on. "I came upstairs and interrupted him. I shouted like crazy as I couldn't find my air horns. Thank God, he remembered where he entered," he said. "I quickly looked around as I saw the mess and couldn't see where he gained access, then he headed for some sliding doors that we leave open when it's hot. They're only open five or six inches, and we have 'bear poles' that prevent anyone or thing opening them."
Those who live in black bear habitat know that the creatures aren't normally aggressive, but they're definitely hungry, and they can be pretty crafty about getting at food when it's within smelling distance. Unfortunately, they're not always graceful enough to dodge priceless rock star memorabilia. "I saw with my own eyes the creature rear up on its hind legs and squeeze out, taking an antique Tiffany lamp out as it escaped -- heartbreaking," said Coverdale, who told the magazine he intends to add additional bear-proofing features to the house.Photo: Toyota
Any Model You Want as Long as It's Pluggable
Click to see our 2010 Toyota Prius slideshow. Photo: Toyota
Prius hybrid models debuting in 2014 will come with plug-in capabilities as a standard feature. Around 2015, Toyota aims to lift global hybrid sales to around 1 million units a year, bringing the total number traveling the world's roadways to 5 million. Since some 70% are expected to be Prius models, the automaker hopes to use the plug-in versions to tap replacement demand. The future plug-ins will feature high-performance lithium ion batteries. Current models can travel a maximum 38km [24 miles] per liter. The fourth-generation offerings will be able to cover more than 60km [37 miles], including electricity-only mileage. (source)
The Nikkei is reporting that Toyota will make the whole Prius family (by then, larger and smaller hybrids will join the current model) 'plug-in'. In other words, you'll be able to recharge the batteries using electricity from the grid. This should improve fuel economy substantially in city driving, since the gasoline engine might not be required at all for short trips.
The beauty of this move is that they're making it standard. If it was a more expensive option, many people would opt not to get it. But making it standard on the best-selling hybrid model in the world means that other automakers will have to make most or all of their hybrids plug-ins. This'll push mass-adoption of this technology forward, and will make a big difference for city driving CO2 emissions.
the larger Prius V. Photo: Toyota
As I always say, it's still better to walk, cycle, or take public transit. But if you're going to drive, get the most fuel-efficient vehicle that meets your needs and drive it as little as possible.
See also: Toyota Launches Prius Alpha 7-Seater in Japan
Via Reuters, GCC
More on the Toyota Prius
Mama Prius: The More Voluminous Prius V (2011 Detroit Auto Show)
Baby Prius: The Smaller Prius C Concept (2011 Detroit Auto Show)I’ve spent many, many hours focusing my brain on imagining what the Zombie Apocalypse would be like (with the help of many movies and video games of course.) I think Max Brooks did a great job conveying much of what could/would go on with his BOOK World War Z (not the movie.) Also a little show called “The Walking Dead” does a pretty good job at conveying the interpersonal relationship issues and sparsity of supplies. The thing is, it doesn’t scare me any more, at least not the zombie part. People are and always will be, the biggest threat. Even if zombies could happen and lets say the virus or radiation that brought them back to life did not allow for insects, animals and/or bacteria to break down their bodies, they would still be quickly reduced to a pile of meat by mother nature. We are not built to withstand her force. Wind, heat, cold, rain and just the regular old wear and tear of walking around would make quick work of the zeds. Now, the people..that is a horde I don’t want to mess with.
Happy Wednesday,
JavisLast Monday, the 23rd of January, the Egyptian People’s Assembly convened the first gathering of a freely elected representative government in a post-Mubarak world. This historic moment took place just two days before the first anniversary of the protest movement that made such an assembly possible. Yet during the course of that year, reporters in American and European news outlets have struggled to come to grips with events in the rapidly changing Middle East that, in many ways, have defied conventional stereotypes of politics and culture in the Arab World.
David Kirkpatrick’s piece in the New York Times, “Chaotic Start to Egypt’s First Democratically Elected Parliament,” emphasized the “bedlam,” “yelling,” and “chaos” of the proceedings, while much of the British press characterized the election as an “Islamist” victory. A Telegraph piece evoked a tone of apprehension at “the rise of the Islamists,” noting cryptically that it “has alarmed liberal Egyptians and Western governments.” Reports of this kind are driven by a sense of fear and a desire to control the disorder, revealing a fundamental misunderstanding of the significance of what has come to be known as “the Arab Spring.”
Beyond Radical Islam vs. Secularism
Many in the West, and even specialists of Middle East history and politics, have still not recognized the sheer magnitude of what has transpired in the past year. In this short time, no less than three decades-long authoritarian dictatorships have been overthrown: two by social movements that mobilized hundreds of thousands if not millions of peaceful protesters (Tunisia and Egypt), and one by revolutionary military engagement (Libya). Massive peaceful protest movements in Morocco, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia have led to important legal and constitutional reforms creating space for a greater share of freedoms in the Arab kingdoms of the Middle East.
The regional political atmosphere has been reshaped. The Arab League has suspended Syria’s membership; the King of Jordan has called for the resignation of Bashar al-Assad; the growing influence of Turkey in the regional politics has become evident; Tawakkul Karman, a Yemeni political activist was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to bring about democratic reforms in Yemen in the face of violent state repression; and there’s even been a strong ripple effect on the Palestine-Israel issue, the most volatile in the Middle East. The Palestinian Authority recently requested that the United Nations recognize the statehood of an independent Palestine, a political move that has further demonstrated the United States and Israel’s isolation from the rest of the world on this issue.
In spite of the new dynamics of Middle East politics there still remain places like Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria where longstanding dictators have clung to power and utilized brutally repressive measures, intimidation, arrest, and killing to suppress individuals from organizing against the government. Nevertheless, given all that has changed, these events should, without a doubt, be seen as the most significant global political transformation since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
As extraordinary as these events have been, and the swiftness with which they have taken place, the conditions for the current revolutions had long been set: income inequality, unemployment, inflation, state repression, and changing demographics in a youth boom. The question was not if, it was when. Now that it has happened, one of the major questions being raised—with anxiety in some quarters and great excitement in others—is what role will religion play in the rapidly transforming Middle East? This is a thorny question, primarily due to the Western media which has cast a narrative that’s more reflective of the fears of countries like the United States and Britain than the realities on the ground in places like Egypt and Tunisia.
Still, amidst all the prognostications in American and European political punditry, really only two diametrically opposed views can be heard; both of which have little merit. One predicts the rise of a radical Islam that will engulf the Middle East and pose a grave threat to democracy and the West. The second envisions the emergence of democratic secular forces that will reject Islam and join the global community of nations in freedom.
Both derive from basic misconceptions about the workings of politics in the Middle East. They rely on the assumption that the Arab situation is unique, and that Arabs are inherently incapable of democracy. Because of their inability to create democracy, goes the conventional wisdom, an idea has been promoted that the Arabs need a strong ruler to lead. In the interest of “stability,” international aid was given in the form of guns, money, and diplomatic legitimacy to support authoritarian post-colonial regimes across the Middle East.
A second misconception derives from the view that Islam is the sole driver of everything in the Middle East. From this perspective, class, gender, ethnicity, occupation, urban vs. agrarian—all the social factors that are identified as the movers of change in other societies—have nothing to do with the political realities of the Middle East. Islam, like the Arabs, is a special case of a religion that has fundamental problems; the most common accusations being that it is inherently violent and/or anti-democratic.
Fear of the Arab Street
These narratives, much older than the current reporting on the Middle East, derive from colonial politics. They have become much more pronounced since 9/11, when the United States continued to legitimate dictatorial regimes that demonstrated their willingness to crack down on Islamic militants. The policy of supporting undemocratic governments in the Middle East has, however, had the side effect of perpetuating conditions of inequality and suppressing civil society in nearly all quarters of the Arab world.
And yet, when the large-scale peaceful protests began in Tunisia and Egypt, many pundits reluctantly agreed that the West should go on supporting these longstanding dictators. There was an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion about the events unfolding in the “Arab street.” Bill O’Reilly who, during the first days of the revolution supported the Egyptian regime, warned viewers that, “If Mubarak is overthrown—and that is likely—who will take his place? Right now the fear in Washington is that the Muslim Brotherhood will seize power. They are jihadists who hate America and who will help al-Qaeda all day long.”
This view was emblematic, in a paranoid way, of an aversion to political change in the Middle East. New York Times headlines, such as “Tumult of Arab Spring Prompts Worries in Washington,” and “The Dangers Lurking in the Arab Spring,” reflected the fear and apprehension of what was essentially a series of anti-authoritarian movements. The Economist was forced to fully retract and apologize “unreservedly” for attributing a number of false statements to Rachid Ghannouchi, one of the leading Islamist figures of post-authoritarian Tunisia. Among them, that he had “threatened to hang a prominent Tunisian feminist, Raja bin Salama, in Basij Square in Tunis, because she [had] called for the country’s new laws to be based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
What all this anxious coverage failed to recognize is the one unmistakable trend now clearly visible: That the political transformations of the Middle East are the coming of age of a new Islamism. Like Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (a “Christian-based” party that applies Christian principles of democracy), the political vision of the new Islamism melds the broad cultural identity of being a Muslim with constitutional and democratic governing systems.
While this may seem like a new and counterintuitive phenomenon to some, it’s actually a trend that goes back at least to the 1980s, but which really took shape in the 1990s when a new, political form of Islam garnered a majority in the Turkish parliament and elected the country’s first Islamist Prime Minister. The trend continued in Turkey with the 2003 election of Recep Erdogan, the leader of the Justice and Development Party. Some political analysts are beginning to see these developments as a successful reconciliation of Islam and democracy, one that serves as a model for the new Islamism emerging across the Middle East.
Youth Protest, Islamists Win Seats
But the Arab Spring did not begin as an Islamist movement. It began on 17 December 2010, when a Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, was harassed by local police who prohibited him from selling his merchandise and added insult to injury by slapping and spitting at him. Following that incident, he doused himself with gasoline and publicly set himself on fire. He died on 4 January 2011. It wasn’t the only event of this kind but it became a symbol of how corrupt authoritarian regimes in the Middle East were |
I was really having a tough time deciding between Stalberg and Brendan Leipsic for the final spot. However, after watching hours of game tape and meticulously breaking down the footage on each player, I decided to go with Stalberg. Why? Well, Stalberg is 6’3 per 60 minutes while Leipsic’s height-per-60 is closer to 5’9. Just kidding, that’s a really stupid way to analyze players. The decision came down to Leipsic having little to no NHL experience and not producing at an extremely high rate at 5v5 in the minors. Throwing Leipsic with Boyle and Panik wouldn’t be the greatest recipe for success.
DEFENSEMEN
D1: John-Michael Liles – Anton Stralman
First pairing: Listen, I love Phil Kessel, but Anton Stralman may be the most valuable piece to this team. He’s arguably the most underrated defenseman in the league and is *exactly* the kind of player the Leafs need right now. Another funny thing about Stralman is that the pick the Leafs acquired when they traded him ended up being Brandon Saad, but they traded that away, too. Anyways, Stralman is a true first-pairing guy and someone who I miss dearly.
Playing on Stralman’s left side is another guy who’s undervalued (albeit, to a lesser degree) in John-Michael Liles. Liles’ tenure with the Leafs was brief and filled with injuries, but he has gotten back on track and has been a steady contributor on each team he’s played for. He can skate and move the puck, two things that are borderline requirements in today’s NHL.
D2: Dion Phaneuf – Cody Franson
Second pairing: Yeah, I know Dion Phaneuf captained the team through one of its darkest stretches in franchise history, but, 1) he was pretty good for part of that stretch and, 2) he’s still a decent player given the right usage.
I really feel bad about the way Dion’s tenure as a Leaf came to an end. He seems like a genuinely good guy who was brought in with lofty expectations and thrown into a position where he was set up to fail. We talk a lot about players being whipping boys… Dion was a whipping boy. Regardless, he’s still a useful guy to have around and is easily a top-4 guy on this team.
Cody Franson is also someone who was run out of town (although not even close to the extent that Phaneuf was) but didn’t necessarily deserve it. He’s alright offensively, much better than he’s given credit for defensively, and loved playing for the Leafs. Plus, he’s a coveted right-handed defenseman. He’s someone that, as a free agent, I wouldn’t mind seeing Toronto go after.
D3: Matt Hunwick – Carl Gunnarsson
Third Pairing: It’s only fitting that these two end up on a line together. Remember when Roman Polak used to be Carl Gunnarsson? Ah, the good ol’ days… Instead of Hunlak, we could have had Hunnarsson or Gunnwick.
I wrote about how Hunwick is actually a pretty valuable piece back in June and I believe the Penguins made a smart move in handing the contract they did this summer. He’s a bottom pairing guy, sure, but an elite bottom pairing guy. Basically, when he’s not injured or playing with a carousel of partners, his numbers are stellar and he’s able to handle the competition. I would have been happy to have him back on a 2-ish year deal.
Finally, Carl Gunnarsson makes the team because, well, he’s better than Scott Harrington, Korbanian Holzer, Luke Schenn, and Francois Beauchemin. That’s pretty much it.
GOALIES
Starter: James Reimer
Backup: Jonathan Bernier
It seems like so long ago that this was Toronto’s goalie tandem. Jonathan Bernier was going to become the next great, young, number one in the NHL and James Reimer was going to be the best backup in the league.
First off, the most disrespectful thing that has ever happened in the history of professional sports is the Leafs trading for Bernier after Reimer straight up dragged the 2012-2013 Leafs into the playoffs. Also, the trade would have been even more of a disaster had the Leafs not re-acquired the pick they sent to Los Angeles in in the trade (Travis Dermott) from Columbus almost two years to the day later.
Anyways, not only is James Reimer a saint but he’s also a really damn good goalie. He played over 40 games for the first time this past season and posted an impressive.920 SV% while doing so. Meanwhile, Jonathan Bernier had an average season with the Ducks and will likely continue his career as a really good backup.
WOULD THIS TEAM WIN 20 NHL GAMES?
This team frickin’ sucks, but I’m fairly confident that they’d win 20 games.
Submit your NFL lineup in this FREE Draft Kings by September 10th for your chance to win $100,000 for the highest scoring player. If your roster matches up perfectly in Week 1 then you could walk away with $1,000,000,000 from Draft Kings! Enter your lineup today.It’s a conundrum of truly cosmic proportions — what factors decide whether a galaxy will turn into an active, star-forming one or a quiescent graveyard where barely any stars are born? A team of international researchers have now taken a step toward solving this longstanding mystery, and the answer, it turns out, is black holes.
According to a new study published in the journal Nature, low-energy supermassive black holes in a class of galaxies known as “red geysers” may be creating and fuelling fierce interstellar winds that suppress star formation by heating up ambient gas. This so-called “galactic warming” prevents gas from cooling and condensing, thereby turning many galaxies to a cosmic graveyard of sorts.
“Stars form from the gas, a bit like the drops of rain condense from the water vapor. And in both cases one needs the gas to cool down, for condensation to occur. But we could not understand what was preventing this cooling from happening in many galaxies,” co-author Michele Cappellari from the department of physics at Oxford University, said in a statement. “But when we modeled the motion of the gas in the red geysers, we found that the gas was being pushed away from the galaxy centre, and escaping the galaxy gravitational pull.”
For the purpose of this study, the researchers observed a near-dormant distant galaxy named “Akira.” They found that the galaxy’s supermassive black hole, which is powered by the gas influx from a companion galaxy named “Tetsuo,” is capable of producing a wind with enough mechanical energy to heat ambient, cooler gas and suppress star formation.
Researchers now believe that Akira and other galaxies like it are part of a class known as “red geysers,” which are rich in old, red stars and lack the younger blue ones.
“This phenomenon, discussed in the paper with reference to Akira, appears surprisingly common and could be generally applicable to all quiescent galaxies,” the researchers said in the statement.The Los Angeles Lakers have been checking around the league this week to gauge Pau Gasol's trade value, according to sources briefed on the discussions.
Sources told ESPN.com that the Lakers have been contacting teams in an effort to acquire a top-10 pick in Thursday's draft. The Lakers also are seeking an established player along with the pick if they're to part with Gasol.
A deal was not imminent as of Wednesday afternoon.
Earlier this month, Lakers president of basketball operations Jim Buss and general manager Mitch Kupchak both said that a major move is unlikely even after Los Angeles' disappointing five-game playoff exit to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Gasol has been a coveted asset the past few years but comes at a high price. Aside from wanting picks and players in return, sources say that the Lakers want teams to assume the final two years and $38 million of Gasol's contract.
The Lakers might have an even tougher sell with
Metta World Peace, who also has been shopped in order to gauge his trade value.
While the Lakers would be looking for considerably less, such as a late first-round pick or perhaps some cap relief, World Peace's contract obligations (two years, $15 million remaining on his deal) -- combined with a 15 percent trade kicker -- might prove too much for another team to bear.The surprise launch of the Microsoft Band device a few weeks ago also lead to a quick sellout of the smartband on the Microsoft Store website. Today, Microsoft is confirming that the company made more than 5,000 units of the Band, contrary to a report posted on another media outlet, but stopped short of stating just how many Band devices have been sold.
The report came from Microsoft Product Reviews, which stated that a company support employee for the Band said over the phone, "Microsoft only had 5,000 of them for the launch." However, as many of us know, support employees are not always reliable when it comes to offering news about a product. Today, Microsoft sent Windows Central the following statement:
"We are excited by the response we have seen to Microsoft Band and while Microsoft does not comment on production volumes, we have sold well beyond the numbers suggested to date. We are working to get devices into the hands of customers as quickly as possible and expect shipments of Microsoft Band to continue arriving in Microsoft Stores throughout the holiday season. People are encouraged to visit their local Microsoft Store to place an order, and they will be able to pick up a Band when it arrives. Customers can also visit https://www.windowscentral.com/e?link=https%3A%2F%2Fmicrosoft.msafflnk.net%2Fc%2F159229%2F433017%2F7593%3FsubId1%3DUUwpUdUnU27017%26subId2%3Ddwp%26url%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.microsoft.com%252Fen-us%252Fstore%252Fb%252Fhome%253Frtc%253D1&token=fMH4lmxC to sign up to receive notification when the device is available online."
The https://www.windowscentral.com/e?link=https%3A%2F%2Fmicrosoft.msafflnk.net%2Fc%2F159229%2F433017%2F7593%3FsubId1%3DUUwpUdUnU27017%26subId2%3Ddwp%26url%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.microsoft.com%252Fen-us%252Fstore%252Fb%252Fhome%253Frtc%253D1&token=fMH4lmxC site has not yet posted word on when they will get a new shipment of the Microsoft Band. Do you think the company is waiting until Black Friday to begin selling the Band again?
Source: Microsoft Product Reviews
This post may contain affiliate links. See our disclosure policy for more details.Theresa May’s planned laws for countering extremism and terrorism are close to being shelved because the proposed legislation has failed to provide a clear definition of the problem it is intended to address.
Sources say that the former home secretary’s delayed counter-extremism bill, rebranded the counter-extremism and safeguarding bill in the Queen’s speech last May, has been in effect grounded by government lawyers after failing to provide a legally acceptable definition of extremism.
The bill details proposed civil orders to tackle extremism, which is defined only as “the vocal or active opposition to our fundamental values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and the mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs”.
The government’s legal advice is that the planned legislation cannot adequately define its core issues of “nonviolent extremism” and “British values”; instead it risks bringing law-abiding people under unnecessary scrutiny.
A source close to the process said: “The bill is sinking without trace. They cannot get a working definition of extremism – lawyers are effectively saying it’s incompatible with issues like free speech.”
The failure is a personal one for May, whose intention as former home secretary to strengthen the state weaponry against extremism was first mentioned in the Queen’s speech of 2015, although it neglected to define the extremist activity that it proposed to suppress.
Liberty’s Bella Sankey said that, rather than making us safer, the bill would ‘curb our freedom’. Photograph: liberty-human-rights.org.uk/Handout
May’s intention to broaden extremism’s definition was always contentious, with opponents arguing it would diminish the law’s protection of fundamental rights including freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom to protest. Critics have said that it would discriminate against Muslim communities or could be used against groups that espouse conservative religious views including evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews who do not encourage violence.
Bella Sankey, policy director for human rights group Liberty, said: “We and countless others warned the government that these plans to shut down free and democratic speech were unworkable, fundamentally dangerous and doomed to failure. We’re glad they’ve finally seen the light.
“We already have a wealth of laws to fight incitement to violence. Rather than making us safer, the counter-extremism bill would alienate, discriminate and divide our communities, all while curbing our freedom – a core British value that’s fundamental to our democracy and to the fight against those who want to destroy it.”
A damning report by a cross-party group of MPs and peers, the joint committee on human rights, warned the government last July that creating a definition of extremism might prove legally insurmountable.
Observing that government departments used different wording to describe extremism, MPs concluded that “these definitions are couched in such general terms that they are likely to prove unworkable as a legislative definition. In particular, the extent to which lack of ‘mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs’ could or should be deemed unlawful is likely to prove deeply contentious.”
It added: “It is far from clear that there is an accepted definition of what constitutes extremism, let alone what legal powers there should be, if any, to combat it.”
In its report, the committee reveals that it wrote to May in October 2015 when she was home secretary, asking how she intended to define “non-violent extremism” and “British values”.
The committee, says the report, did not receive a substantive or satisfactory response to the question. The Home Office also did not respond to the Observer after being asked if a definition of extremism had been agreed, although a spokesperson said the bill remained under consideration.
The government’s response to the criticisms from the joint committee of human rights, published last October, said: “We accept that there needs to be certainty in the law. Legislation would not be discriminatory or targeted at a particular section of the public. It would apply to all citizens and be targeted at harmful activities rather than the holding of views. Freedom of worship is a fundamental and hard-fought British liberty that should be defended.”If you wanted a single sentence to sum up the state of our modern campaign finance system, it would be hard to do better than this one from the Washington Post's Matea Gold and Tom Hamburger:
One longtime bundler recently fielded a call from a dispirited executive on his yacht, who complained, "We just don't count anymore."
This is what we've come to: the rich businessman on his yacht feels out of the loop, because campaigns only care about billionaires.
Billionaires trump bundlers
With attempts to regulate spending in tatters, and unlimited donations now permitted to flow into and out of Super PACs and outside groups, campaigns are increasingly spending their time wooing the absolute richest of the rich.
And according to Gold and Hamburger, donors who are merely rich, but not mega-rich, are feeling neglected. The story quotes connected fundraisers using the phrases "minor leagues" and "feel a little disenfranchised." Head over and read the full, excellent piece.
But it didn't always work this way. Back before Citizens United v. FEC and subsequent court rulings brought Super PACs into being in 2010, each individual was permitted to give no more than a few thousand dollars to a presidential campaign, and a bit more to a party committee. Because of these contribution limits, presidential campaigns were particularly reliant on star fundraisers called "bundlers," who could convince many of their rich friends to cough up several thousand bucks each.
But Super PACs that can raise unlimited sums have changed the math. Just one billionaire can now, legally, fund a full ad campaign promoting a candidate or savaging his opponent. "Who needs a bundler when you have a billionaire?" Gold and Hamburger write.
Campaigns are tailoring their strategies accordingly. For instance, Jeb Bush is reportedly delaying the official launch of his campaign for two big money-related reasons, as Alex Isenstadt and Katie Glueck reported recently.
Bush wants to maximize both the time in which he can solicit unlimited funds for his Super PAC and the time he gets to work with the strategist who will likely head his Super PAC, Mike Murphy. Once Bush is an official candidate for federal office, the Super PAC will have to raise its huge sums without Bush asking for them directly — and Murphy (or whoever runs the Super PAC) will no longer be able to coordinate with Bush's campaign.
Another example? Many expected Jeb Bush would win so much support in Florida that Marco Rubio wouldn't be able to raise the money he needs for a presidential bid.
Yet Rubio only needs to hook a few big fish to raise tens of millions of dollars. And according to another Washington Post report (this time by Ed O'Keefe and Matea Gold), he's already hooked one. Billionaire Norman Braman, an auto dealer from Miami, "is expected to put as much as $10 million into a pro-Rubio super PAC," the authors write.
As Gold and Hamburger's story points out, campaigns will still need to raise money in their own right, under the old fundraising limits, so the bundlers will come into play eventually.
But for now, they're feeling pretty lonely on their yachts.
Read more: 40 charts that explain money in American politicsMaria Cino (left) and Deborah Pryce are among the major players. | AP photos GOP lobbyists on rise again
Even before the midterms, things started changing for Republicans on K Street. Returned phone calls. Prospective client meetings. They were becoming something other than a Washington afterthought.
That growing status was cemented when Republicans retook control of the House, going from impotent to important overnight and putting a whole class of GOP operatives, lobbyists and communicators back in business.
Story Continued Below
“My Republican friends are walking around with big smiles on their faces,” said Democratic operative David DiMartino.
And no wonder: The money’s good. (See: Rangel'spectacle' set to begin)
When Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, their operatives cashed in. For instance, Steve Elmendorf launched his Democratic firm in December 2006 with $170,000 worth of business. Last year, the former aide to then-House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt brought in almost $7.4 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Now, it’s the Republicans’ turn.
After four years in political exile, GOP operatives with ties to presumptive House Speaker John Boehner, soon-to-be Majority Leader Eric Cantor and other top Republicans will help set the agenda on health care, tax cuts and government spending. (See: Pelosi's first job: Rally liberals)
Of course, some of the lobbying world’s most recognizable names will very likely see a bump in business. After all, it doesn’t hurt that Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti’s Bruce Mehlman cut his teeth as a general counsel to the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Republican Conference.
And omnipresent guys like Ron Bonjean, the former communications director to then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), are positioned to cash in on their years of congressional experience now that Republicans are back in control.
But the capital’s new map of influence extends beyond the city’s most recognizable names to a mix of GOP players. There are the Republican-only shops that survived the nuclear winter of Democratic control; former Republican lawmakers poised to cash in on their years of Washington experience, and message makers practiced at getting their voices heard with the conservative class. (See: Obama arrives home to new reality)
Here is POLITICO’s sampling of Republicans and GOP firms poised to take part in the Republican renaissance:
Clark, Lytle & Geduldig
Launched in the Republican dark ages of 2008, this nimble GOP shop — specializing in financial services lobbying — now stands to make big dollars on the depth of their Republican connections. This summer, the firm partnered with former House Republican Conference Chairwoman Deborah Pryce, who has personal connections with many key House Republicans from her eight terms as a lawmaker from Ohio. (See: GOP is urged to avoid social issues)AUSTIN, Texas -- Ricky Williams got a sneak peek at the past and the future two days before more than 30,000 fans were able to judge for themselves Sunday.
The former Texas Heisman Trophy winner was back on campus to take a look at his new statue.
The University of Texas unveiled an 8-foot, 1,000-pound Ricky Williams statue that stands near one of Earl Campbell outside the football stadium. AP Photo/Michael Prengler/Cal Sport Media
The likeness?
"Close enough," he laughed.
The 8-foot, 1,000-pound likeness was unveiled just outside Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium on Sunday afternoon.
"He had what it took and still has what it takes," said Joe Jamail, a longtime Texas benefactor who spoke at the ceremony. "Ricky has done his part."
Williams' part was to rush for a then-NCAA record 6,279 yards, including 2,124 his senior year.
For those accomplishments and more, the university commissioned David Deming to build the statue that was placed close to one of Texas' other Heisman winner, Earl Campbell.
"Words can't describe how honored I am," Williams said. "Having a statue at DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium is something I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams when I came here from San Diego.
"Texas was such a welcoming place, and with its unbelievable history and tradition, it's extra special to be a part of that. I'm just humbled and grateful to be recognized in such an amazing way by a school and city that has meant so much to me and my family and is a vital part of my life."
Carter Strickland covers University of Texas football for HornsNation.SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea shot dozens of rounds of artillery onto a populated South Korean island near their disputed western border Tuesday, prompting South Korea to return fire and scramble fighter jets, military officials said. At least one South Korean marine reportedly was killed.
The skirmish came amid high tension over North Korea's claim that it has a new uranium enrichment facility and just over a month after North Korean leader Kim Jong Il unveiled his youngest son Kim Jong Un as his heir apparent.
South Korea's YTN television said one South Korean marine was killed and that two people were injured. The report said several houses were on fire and shells were still falling on Yeonpyeong island, which is about 60 miles (100 kilometers) west of the coast. The station broadcast pictures of thick columns of black smoke rising from the island.
Yonhap news agency, quoting a military official, said four soldiers were wounded.
President Lee Myung-bak ordered officials to make sure that the firing wouldn't escalate, according to Yonhap, quoting a presidential official. YTN said between 1,200 and 1,300 people live on the island, citing an island resident.
A South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff official said dozens of rounds of artillery landed on the island and in the sea. The official says South Korea fired back. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of JCS rules, said South Korea's military is on alert. He had no other details, and could not confirm the reports of casualties.
Tensions between the two Koreas have remained high since the sinking in March of a South Korean warship in which 46 sailors died. Seoul blamed a North Korean torpedo, while Pyongyang has denied any responsibility.Steam bouncer Greenlight has found room on its guestlist for another eight games. Titles include Verdun, a World War 1 set multiplayer shooter; Day One, a survival game starring an alcoholic widower; Vector, a side-scrolling parkour 'em up; and In Verbis Vitus, an action fantasy in which you complete puzzles by shouting at your monitor. It's certainly one of the more interesting collections we've seen waved into the money disco.
Here's the full list:
"Votes in Greenlight give us a hugely valuable point of data in gauging community interest," writes Valve's Alden Kroll, explaining the Greenlight process, "along with external factors such as press reviews, crowd-funding successes, performance on other similar platforms, and awards and contests to help form a more complete picture of community interest in each title."
As always, games will be released over the coming weeks/months/years, as developers finish and integrate their work into Steam. As for Verdun, and its take on online trench warfare, you can test out the beta in your browser right here.The rift between Davis Cup outcast Bernard Tomic and Tennis Australia has escalated dramatically, with Tomic's father John threatening to sue the governing body for defamation over an email misreporting of this week's ATP tournament name as the "Hall of Shame Tennis Championships".
Tomic accepted a wildcard into the grasscourt "Hall of Fame" event in Newport, Rhode Island, after an outburst at Wimbledon resulted in the world No.25 being overlooked for the Davis Cup quarter-final against Kazakhstan in Darwin, starting on Friday. Tomic has drawn fellow Queenslander John-Patrick Smith in the Newport first round.
A Tennis Australia email said Bernard Tomic was to play at the "Hall of Shame Tennis Championships". Credit:Joe Armao
After John Tomic's pre-Wimbledon criticism of TA's funding of his daughter Sara, in particular, led to performance director Pat Rafter's subsequent vow to cut off all financial support for the Tomic family, Bernard followed his third round Wimbledon loss to eventual champion Novak Djokovic with an extraordinary attack on the operation headed by chief executive Craig Tiley, and president Steve Healy, while effectively describing Rafter as their stooge.
The next instalment came in a written statement sent from Tomic senior to Fairfax Media on Monday, which read: "The Tomic family is very disappointed by TA's continual shaming and misrepresentation of Bernard.As we noted earlier, it has not been a very good week for David Barton, so this seemed like a good opportunity to pull together a list of some of the most absurd things that he has said over the last year or so just to give people who might not be particularly familiar with Barton or his work a better sense of just what sort of claims he likes to puts forth.
Yesterday we posted a list a ten demonstrably false claims Barton has made in recent months but this list, though also filled with falsehoods, focuses more on the sorts of patently ridiculous claims that Barton is prone to making:
Given this sort of record, is anyone surprised that a publisher that agreed to print a book written by Barton ultimately had to recall it?I didn't eat the apple. It looked good. It looked tasty. It was good for food. But where Eve and Snow White both failed, I triumphed. How?
A bit of back story is in order. In the roughly sixteen years since high school, I've grown in many ways. I've grown older. I've grown wiser. I've grown much more mature. I've also grown fatter, and I don't like it. I have, over the years, resolved to do something about it. I finally hit on a great idea last summer that was inspired by behavioral economics and websites like StickK. I would constrain myself to a fairly rigorous exercise routine by pledging to give money to the Barack Obama and Mitt Romney campaigns if I didn't work out as planned. A friend on Twitter pledged to give money to a food charity if I made it all the way through my program. I pledged $10 to Obama and $10 to Romney for every time I made it through the week without exercising according to plan.
It worked like a charm. I didn't miss a day. I checked one of my 2012 "Finish Year" goals off the list in the Fall: "Run 45 minutes without stopping. Or dying." I was able to stick to a diet that basically cut out simple carbohydrates with the exception of a cheat meal or cheat day once per week. I felt better, I had more energy, and things were good.
But I quit. Specifically, once the challenge was over, I quit lashing myself to the mast and stopped pledging money to politicians for failing to eat right and exercise. So naturally, I ended up back where I started. I thought I would stay on the horse once I had developed the habits. I didn't.
That changed last week as I initiated a new set of constraints aimed at improving my diet and exercise habits. I formed a pact with my pastor whereby we set goals for our fitness practices and penalties for failing to achieve them. For every goal I break, I pay the Democrats and Republicans $5 each. The difference between this year and last year: I have no end date for this, so as far as I can tell, I'm in this for the long haul. Here are a few of my goals for physical and spiritual fitness:
1. Run three days per week, do strength training two days per week. Or, basically, do two strength workouts and three running workouts in a week. Ideally, I'll run on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and do strength on Tuesdays and Thursdays or Tuesdays and Saturdays. This gives me enough wiggle room to switch the days around when things come up or when it's pouring rain and I need to switch workouts.
2. No simple carbohydrates--basically, no sugar, no grain, no white potatoes. I'm allowed to eat anything else in virtually unlimited quantity. That meant a lot of salad, fish, and collard greens at lunch today. I get one cheat day per week, which I spent on Chinese at lunch and a Vietnamese noodle bowl for dinner on Tuesday.
That also meant I had to pass on the delectable apple dumpling they serve at Samford's cafeteria on Fridays. It was tempting. Very, very tempting. But the apple looks a lot less delectable when you know it's going to cost you $10.
3. Do my "One Year Bible" reading every day. I've been working on the YouVersion.com One-Year Bible for about two and a half years now. I'm almost at the end, and it's time to finish. I'll switch to a different plan when I finish this one. This is where I faltered earlier in the week: I now have to write checks for $5 to the Democrats and the Republicans at my earliest opportunity.
4. Drink two ounces of water for every ounce of coffee. This, actually, has been the hardest of the goals, largely because I have to think about it more. I drink massive amounts of coffee, and I'll sit and drink it all day, every day if I'm not very deliberate about moderating my intake. I've persevered, though, and I've cut the amount of coffee I'm drinking while increasing my water intake.
I've been at this again for a week and a half, now, and I've resigned myself to the fact that I probably lack sufficient willpower to do a lot of these things on my own without putting a very sharp stick at my back. It has been a fun journey of self-discovery. By the end of the year, I hope it also involves a fun journey to a tailor to have my suits altered because they're too big.Boys studying art history are said to have shared details of paper, it emerges a week after deputy head quit over suspected leak
Eton college has been hit by further controversy over exam questions being leaked to its pupils, after it emerged that sixth formers’ marks had been disallowed for the second time this summer.
The Guardian has learned that Eton pupils studying art history had their marks in one paper disqualified after the exam board, Cambridge International Examinations (CIE), investigated reports that pupils at the school had prior knowledge of the exam’s questions.
The news follows the revelation by the Guardian last week that a deputy headteacher had left the famous boarding school, and sixth formers taking economics had had their final results altered after the teacher was said to have circulated exam questions.
Both cases involve CIE’s Pre-U certificate, regarded as equivalent to A-levels and popular in many independent schools but which has come in for criticism over the high potential for security breaches.
Eton teacher leaves school after 'breach of exam security' Read more
Independent school teachers frequently act as chief examiners for Pre-U papers, allowing them advanced access to questions – and raising fears among other headteachers that some have taken unfair advantage of Pre-U courses.
The head of one school, a member of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC) of leading private schools, told the Guardian that the controversy had “made up our minds” on putting pupils in for A-levels rather than the Pre-U certificate.
Ofqual, the exam regulator for England, is also said to be taking a close look at the Pre-U’s structure.
Pre-U certificates are only sat by 4,300 candidates a year, a tiny number compared with the 828,000 A-levels sat in the UK this summer. Tight security means A-level chief examiners often do not also work as teachers or in schools.
CIE is the only board to offer the Pre-U exams. CIE is part of Cambridge Assessment, a non-teaching department of the University of Cambridge, which includes the OCR exam board offering conventional GCSE and A-level exams.
Chris King, the HMC chair, who is head of King’s grammar school in Leicester, said: “We have been concerned for some time, particularly in the smaller entry qualifications, about the exam boards’ reliance on teachers to both set exams and teach the students who will sit them.”
A letter from Eton’s headmaster, Simon Henderson – obtained by the Guardian – sent to pupils and families said details of the Pre-U art history paper “was sent by a teacher at another school to pupils there in advance of the examination.
“This communication was then forwarded to a boy at Eton and circulated amongst the majority of boys in advance of them sitting their art history examination.”
Eton college said in a statement: “Following an investigation by Cambridge International Examinations, pupils at Eton who sat Pre-U art history this summer were deemed to be inadvertent recipients of confidential information in relation to one paper.
“This matter related to information that Eton pupils had been sent via a pupil at another school in advance of the examination. No member of staff at Eton was involved in any way.
“Whilst the pupils had done nothing wrong, CIE awarded them assessed marks for that paper according to its established method. Eton co-operated fully with CIE’s investigation throughout.”
Earlier this week the Daily Telegraph reported that an art history teacher at Winchester college had been suspended after giving pupils “prior information on exam questions” in the Pre-U art history exam.
CIE confirmed that the two cases were linked, and that the exam material obtained by Winchester pupils was shared with pupils at Eton.
As a result of CIE’s investigation, Henderson told parents: “There is no suggestion that anyone at Eton has done anything wrong.
“However [CIE] has decided that they cannot accept the marks of any candidate at Eton for this component because to do so would threaten the integrity of the exam and certification.”
Eton advantages and exams in economics | Brief letters Read more
Pupils were told their marks for the first part of the art history paper would be discarded, and the pupils would instead receive a final grade based on an average of their marks and forecast grades.
King, the HMC chair, said independent schools wanted an urgent meeting with CIE in the wake of the Winchester and Eton exam leaks.
“A meeting has been set with the Cambridge International exam board to discuss this summer’s Pre-U qualification to seek assurance that sufficient safeguards are in place.
“We need to ensure that senior teachers who take on the responsibility for setting exams are not placed in an impossible position, and the very few who may be tempted to give their pupils too much help cannot do so,” King said.
A spokesperson for Ofqual said the regulator was not aware of any other cases involving CIE Pre-U or other CIE qualifications.
“We review all instances of reported malpractice each summer, and the actions the exam boards have taken. We will consider if any further action, investigation or strengthening of rules is required,” Ofqual said.Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Guardians of the Galaxy top a trio of weak newcomers in what still amounts to a solid August weekend as summer nears its end.
I come today not to mock The Expendables 3 but to mourn it. The Expendables opened on this weekend in 2010 with a robust $35 million, while The Expendables 2 opened in August 2012 with $28m. As such, the fact that The Expendables 3 opened with $15.9m is something of a shock. Franchise fatigue has clearly set in, in America at least. The third entry in the action all-stars to the rescue franchise this time features (deep breath) Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Mel Gibson, Antonio Banderas, Dolph Lundgren, Wesley Snipes, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Kellen Lutz, Ronda Rousey, and Bruce Lee, Kelsey Grammer. But the biggest (and best?) line-up yet couldn't overcome franchise fatigue. Expendables 3, produced for around $100 million by Nu Image and Millennium Films, suffered from two big problems.
The film got leaked online in a near-DVD quality form nearly a month before release. The film went out with a PG-13 rating. Obviously the copious apparent downloads didn't help, but we've seen with Taken and X-Men Origins: Wolverine that piracy can be overcome if the product is sold well or heavily anticipated anyway. We will never know how many people who watched the bootleg would have otherwise gone to the theater, but I would argue that the number is pretty low at least in America. The film played 66% over the age of 25, meaning that it played mostly to audiences too old to download and watch a bootlegged movie on their laptop. That's not a defense of piracy, as it's |
elit. The bouncing around was compounded by a sluggish WJC, but to Vesalainen’s credit, he bounced back in the playoffs with a string of dominating performances. He’s a goal scorer with size, strength and very good vision, but like most power forwards, Vesalainen goes through periods of inconsistency. But pairing him with a pass-first playmaker likely bears the results you expect from a player with his skills and an NHL-ready build.
20. C Michael Rasmussen (Tri-City, WHL | 6’6, 215) : The Flames made a lot of smart moves, so why not continue the trend by grabbing one of the draft’s top two-way centers who exploded into one of the WHL’s top goal scorers. Rasmussen isn’t flashy nor a speed burner, but he’s a smart player with or without the puck and an absolute nightmare to defend off the cycle. Need a guy to take a key draw or matchup up against a top forward? Rasmussen’s the one to do it. And while a wrist injury keeps him out of both the WHL playoffs and the U18’s, it shouldn’t prevent him from becoming a quality NHL center. The Flames made a lot of smart moves, so why not continue the trend by grabbing one of the draft’s top two-way centers who exploded into one of the WHL’s top goal scorers. Rasmussen isn’t flashy nor a speed burner, but he’s a smart player with or without the puck and an absolute nightmare to defend off the cycle. Need a guy to take a key draw or matchup up against a top forward? Rasmussen’s the one to do it. And while a wrist injury keeps him out of both the WHL playoffs and the U18’s, it shouldn’t prevent him from becoming a quality NHL center.
21. LW Maxime Comtois (Victoriaville, QMJHL, 6’2, 200) : Ottawa is in desperate need of wingers below the NHL level after trading top goal-scoring prospect Jonathan Dahlen, and this is the part of this draft’s first round where even an inconsistent kid like Comtois can turn out to be a huge steal. The numbers for a pre-draft QMJHL’er aren’t eye popping (51 points in 64 games), but his tenacious, in-your-face style and leadership abilities is what will endear him to playoff or contending teams looking late-first round for a key enabler rather than a centerpiece. Comtois is a smart player who moves very well for a kid carrying such a thick frame, and he’s an excellent penalty killer. Ottawa is in desperate need of wingers below the NHL level after trading top goal-scoring prospect Jonathan Dahlen, and this is the part of this draft’s first round where even an inconsistent kid like Comtois can turn out to be a huge steal. The numbers for a pre-draft QMJHL’er aren’t eye popping (51 points in 64 games), but his tenacious, in-your-face style and leadership abilities is what will endear him to playoff or contending teams looking late-first round for a key enabler rather than a centerpiece. Comtois is a smart player who moves very well for a kid carrying such a thick frame, and he’s an excellent penalty killer.
22. RHD Callan Foote (Kelowna, WHL | 6’4, 212) : Happy times are back in Edmonton as the Oilers are going to the playoffs for the first time in over a decade. And while it’s easy to point to Connor McDavid as the biggest reason behind their resurgence, the truth is for once, the Oilers can defend and stop the puck. No player at this stage of the first round can defend and manage the puck better than Foote, whose father Adam won multiple Stanley Cups as a stay-at-home defender for the Avalanche in the 1990s. Only Callan is a step quicker and processes the game at an extremely high level. Watching Foote defend his territory makes you forget he’s still a teenager, and his hard, accurate shot will create a lot of rebounds for Connor & Co. to corral. Happy times are back in Edmonton as the Oilers are going to the playoffs for the first time in over a decade. And while it’s easy to point to Connor McDavid as the biggest reason behind their resurgence, the truth is for once, the Oilers can defend and stop the puck. No player at this stage of the first round can defend and manage the puck better than Foote, whose father Adam won multiple Stanley Cups as a stay-at-home defender for the Avalanche in the 1990s. Only Callan is a step quicker and processes the game at an extremely high level. Watching Foote defend his territory makes you forget he’s still a teenager, and his hard, accurate shot will create a lot of rebounds for Connor & Co. to corral.
*23. C Ryan Poehling (St. Cloud State, NCHC | 6’2, 183) : The Sharks are an aging team with an average pool of prospects — six of their seven top scorers are over 30 and Logan Couture just turned 28. And if they make the Stanley Cup, this pick goes to Vancouver thanks to a condition in the Jannik Hansen trade. Still, the hunters are about to become the hunted, so a good start would be to build around a big, playmaking center like Poehling, a Minnesota kid who was the driving force behind Team USA’s near victory at the 2016 Hlinka. He didn’t get a ton of ice time as a college freshman, so the numbers (13 points in 35 games) are not an accurate reflection upon how skilled this kid is. Poehling can skate, dangle, dazzle and hit, drawing comparisons to Nashville’s Ryan Johansen. The Sharks love to draft Americans and should be quite familiar with Poehling, who plays in the same conference as 2016 second rounder Dylan Gambrell. The Sharks are an aging team with an average pool of prospects — six of their seven top scorers are over 30 and Logan Couture just turned 28. And if they make the Stanley Cup, this pick goes to Vancouver thanks to a condition in the Jannik Hansen trade. Still, the hunters are about to become the hunted, so a good start would be to build around a big, playmaking center like Poehling, a Minnesota kid who was the driving force behind Team USA’s near victory at the 2016 Hlinka. He didn’t get a ton of ice time as a college freshman, so the numbers (13 points in 35 games) are not an accurate reflection upon how skilled this kid is. Poehling can skate, dangle, dazzle and hit, drawing comparisons to Nashville’s Ryan Johansen. The Sharks love to draft Americans and should be quite familiar with Poehling, who plays in the same conference as 2016 second rounder Dylan Gambrell.
* 24. LHD Nicolas Hague (Mississauga, OHL | 6’6, 215) : The Coyotes sure love the OHL — they’ve drafted an Ontario Leaguer in the first round in each of the last four drafts. I don’t see that trend changing thanks to the extra first they acquired from Minnesota in the Martin Hanzal trade, and a towering two-way defenseman like Hague is someone they could use. Like most young defensemen with size, Hague is somewhat of a project. But he has an excellent shot and takes the kind of calculated risks their arsenal of young puck distributors can incorporate into the offense. Hague is very active in the offensive zone, especially on the power play, while his one-on-one play improved as the year progressed. The Coyotes sure love the OHL — they’ve drafted an Ontario Leaguer in the first round in each of the last four drafts. I don’t see that trend changing thanks to the extra first they acquired from Minnesota in the Martin Hanzal trade, and a towering two-way defenseman like Hague is someone they could use. Like most young defensemen with size, Hague is somewhat of a project. But he has an excellent shot and takes the kind of calculated risks their arsenal of young puck distributors can incorporate into the offense. Hague is very active in the offensive zone, especially on the power play, while his one-on-one play improved as the year progressed.
25. LW/C Scott Reedy (US U18, NTDP | 6’2, 204) : The Rangers have one of the worst collection of non-NHL prospects in the league, but that’s more of a byproduct of maintaining a young, competitive roster at the NHL level rather than pointing to all the draft picks they trade. Nevertheless, they’ve done quite well with American-born players, specifically from the NTDP (J.T. Miller, Brady Skjei). Reedy should be no different, as he’s a powerful forward with exceptional vision and Miller-esque versatility to play either center or wing. He’s an outstanding puck handler and can create plays either off the rush or within tight quarters, and far too often has he victimized opponents with violent yet controlled zone entries. And while it’s true the organization is in desperate need of defensemen, they can’t let this talented a forward slip away. The Rangers have one of the worst collection of non-NHL prospects in the league, but that’s more of a byproduct of maintaining a young, competitive roster at the NHL level rather than pointing to all the draft picks they trade. Nevertheless, they’ve done quite well with American-born players, specifically from the NTDP (J.T. Miller, Brady Skjei). Reedy should be no different, as he’s a powerful forward with exceptional vision and Miller-esque versatility to play either center or wing. He’s an outstanding puck handler and can create plays either off the rush or within tight quarters, and far too often has he victimized opponents with violent yet controlled zone entries. And while it’s true the organization is in desperate need of defensemen, they can’t let this talented a forward slip away.
26. RHD Henri Jokiharju (Portland, WHL | 6’0, 180) : Swift puck movers always seem to be in demand, so the Pens can do no wrong in drafting another Finnish-trained blueliner who is honing his skills in North America. Jokiharju is a power play quarterback who skates very well and connects with his stretch passes, but also shows he won’t back down from a challenge while battling in his own end. That doesn’t mean he’s physical — Jokiharju will never be confused with Brooks Orpik. But he’s a poised character who can handle a heavy forecheck and skate his way out of most jams. His shot is somewhat average but he has a quick release and isn’t afraid to throw it at the net. Swift puck movers always seem to be in demand, so the Pens can do no wrong in drafting another Finnish-trained blueliner who is honing his skills in North America. Jokiharju is a power play quarterback who skates very well and connects with his stretch passes, but also shows he won’t back down from a challenge while battling in his own end. That doesn’t mean he’s physical — Jokiharju will never be confused with Brooks Orpik. But he’s a poised character who can handle a heavy forecheck and skate his way out of most jams. His shot is somewhat average but he has a quick release and isn’t afraid to throw it at the net.
27. C Shane Bowers (Waterloo, USHL | 6’1, 183) : A dynamic two-way player with a high IQ to compliment his many puck skills. Bowers can create or finish plays on the rush, and is very crafty and creative. He makes difficult plays look easy, especially in traffic while acting strong on the puck to handle harassment as he’s controlling in tight spaces. Committed to Boston University, Bowers looks to slip away into an open area with the hammer cocked, as he owns a lethal shot and can fire it with accuracy even if the puck is behind, in front of or in his skates. He’s deceptive on zone entries as he can use a speed burst for a cage rush, or slow it down and dump it off to a cutter or trailer A dynamic two-way player with a high IQ to compliment his many puck skills. Bowers can create or finish plays on the rush, and is very crafty and creative. He makes difficult plays look easy, especially in traffic while acting strong on the puck to handle harassment as he’s controlling in tight spaces. Committed to Boston University, Bowers looks to slip away into an open area with the hammer cocked, as he owns a lethal shot and can fire it with accuracy even if the puck is behind, in front of or in his skates. He’s deceptive on zone entries as he can use a speed burst for a cage rush, or slow it down and dump it off to a cutter or trailer
28. C Nick Suzuki (Owen Sound, OHL | 5’11, 183) : The Habs don’t have much to write home about when it comes to forward prospects, so any top-six skater at this point would be a welcomed addition. Suzuki is an outstanding offensive talent who is as low maintenance as you get — get him the puck and watch him make things happen. He’s one of the few players that can create multiple quality chances on a single shift, due in large part to his hustle and ability to steal pucks. Suzuki is a threat on both the power play and penalty kill, and while this kind of versatility is common for upper-tier draft eligibles, he is among the best of the best. The Habs don’t have much to write home about when it comes to forward prospects, so any top-six skater at this point would be a welcomed addition. Suzuki is an outstanding offensive talent who is as low maintenance as you get — get him the puck and watch him make things happen. He’s one of the few players that can create multiple quality chances on a single shift, due in large part to his hustle and ability to steal pucks. Suzuki is a threat on both the power play and penalty kill, and while this kind of versatility is common for upper-tier draft eligibles, he is among the best of the best.
*29. LW Nikita Popugaev (Prince George, WHL | 6’6, 217) : This too is a conditional pick that could go to Dallas from the Patrick Eaves trade, but only if the Ducks make the Western Conference finals. Anaheim was able to make this sort of deal because of its deep prospect depth, but if retained, they can play around and take a gamble on a goal scorer like Popugaev — big and skilled but inconsistent and at times, disengaged. His strengths are obvious the second he hits the ice, as he possesses a massive wingspan and a long stride that allows him to keep the puck away from chasing opponents. And while his shot-release combo is deadly, he can also make plays and find the open man with accuracy. This too is a conditional pick that could go to Dallas from the Patrick Eaves trade, but only if the Ducks make the Western Conference finals. Anaheim was able to make this sort of deal because of its deep prospect depth, but if retained, they can play around and take a gamble on a goal scorer like Popugaev — big and skilled but inconsistent and at times, disengaged. His strengths are obvious the second he hits the ice, as he possesses a massive wingspan and a long stride that allows him to keep the puck away from chasing opponents. And while his shot-release combo is deadly, he can also make plays and find the open man with accuracy.
30. RW Grant Mismash (US U18, NTDP | 6’0, 186): A tough-as-nails goal scorer with the ability to find the open man, Mismash has been a key cog for the NTDP, including strong performances at each of the two U18 Five Nations Tournaments. He’s headed to North Dakota, but for now, keep an eye on him as he’s expected to be one of the better prospects at this year’s U18 Worlds in Slovakia. Mismash is a physical winger with an excellent shot who can be a load to handle in the offensive zone, and his ability to fire pucks off the pass, especially on the rush, is a rarity among 2017 draft prospects. A tough-as-nails goal scorer with the ability to find the open man, Mismash has been a key cog for the NTDP, including strong performances at each of the two U18 Five Nations Tournaments. He’s headed to North Dakota, but for now, keep an eye on him as he’s expected to be one of the better prospects at this year’s U18 Worlds in Slovakia. Mismash is a physical winger with an excellent shot who can be a load to handle in the offensive zone, and his ability to fire pucks off the pass, especially on the rush, is a rarity among 2017 draft prospects.How I Passed My U.S. Citizenship Test: By Keeping the Right Answers to Myself
By Dafna Linzer, ProPublica
This story is a co-publication of Slate and ProPublica.
Last month, I became an American citizen, a tremendous honor and no easy accomplishment, even for a Canadian. After living here for 12 years, I thought I knew everything. Then I learned how we mint Americans.
After years of steep filing fees and paperwork (including one letter from Homeland Security claiming that my fingerprints had “expired”), it all came down to a test. I passed, and, my fellow Americans, you could too—if you don’t mind providing answers that you know are wrong.
Friends told me I didn’t need to study, the questions weren’t that hard. But I wanted to and so for months I lugged around a set of government-issued flashcards, hoping to master the test. I pestered my family and friends to quiz me. Sometimes I quizzed my sources. I learned things (there are 27 amendments to the Constitution) and they learned things (there are 27 amendments to the Constitution). But then we began noticing errors in a number of the questions and answers.
Take Question 36. It asks applicants to name two members of the president’s Cabinet. Among the correct answers is “Vice President.” The vice president is a cabinet-level officer but he’s not a Cabinet member. Cabinet members are unelected heads of executive departments, such as the Defense Department, or the State Department.
The official naturalization test booklet even hints as much: “The president may appoint other government officials to the cabinet but no elected official may serve on the cabinet while in office.” Note to Homeland Security: The vice president is elected.
Still, a wonderful press officer in the New York immigration office noted that the White House’s own website lists the vice president as a member of the Cabinet. It’s still wrong, I explained. I told her that my partner wrote an entire book about the vice president and won a Pulitzer Prize for the stories. I was pretty sure about this one. A parade of constitutional scholars backed me up.
In fact, the Constitution aligns the vice president more closely with the legislative branch as president of the Senate. Not until well into the 20th century did the vice president even attend Cabinet meetings.
Then there is Question 12: What is the “rule of law”?
I showed it to lawyers and law professors. They were stumped.
There are four acceptable answers: “Everyone must follow the law”; “Leaders must obey the law”; “Government must obey the law”; “No one is above the law.”
Judge Richard Posner, the constitutional scholar who serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago, was unhappy. “These are all incorrect,” he wrote me. “The rule of law means that judges decide cases ‘without respect of persons,’ that is, without considering the social status, attractiveness, etc. of the parties or their lawyers.”
So, where do these questions come from?
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
, a department within Homeland Security, spent six years consulting scholars, educators and historians before the current test was introduced in 2008. The result: 100 questions and answers designed to provide an in-depth treatment of U.S. history and government.
“The goal of the naturalization test is to ensure America’s newest citizens have mastered a basic knowledge of U.S. history and have a solid foundation to continue to expand their understanding as they embark on life as U.S. citizens,” said Christopher Bentley, a spokesman for USCIS.
During the citizenship interview, applicants are asked a randomly selected 10 questions from the test and must answer six correctly. In addition to the questions, there is a reading and writing test for English proficiency.
My immigration lawyer accompanied me to my interview. In the security line, I told her I was bothered by Question 16: Who makes the federal laws?
Each of the three possible answers, it seemed, was incomplete. The official answers were: “Congress”; “Senate and House (of representatives)”; “(U.S. or national) legislature.” I’m not a lawyer but even Canadians watched Schoolhouse Rock. Where, I wondered, was the president, whose signature is what makes a bill into a law?
My lawyer sighed, she agreed. But: “If you get asked that question, just give the official answer,” she said. I didn’t get that question.
I also wasn’t asked Question 1: “What is the supreme law of the land?”
The official answer: “the Constitution.” A friend and legal scholar was aghast. That answer, he said, is “no more than one-third correct.” He’s right.
Article VI, clause 2 in the Constitution, known as the Supremacy Clause, explicitly says that three things—the Constitution, federal laws and treaties—together “shall be the supreme law of the land.”
Question 96 asks: Why does the flag have 13 stripes? The official answer: “because there were 13 original colonies.” In fact, the flag has 13 stripes for the 13 original states.
Many of the test questions, organized under topics such as “system of government,” “geography” and “American history” are correct and informative. Since I’m a reporter, one tugged at my heart.
Question 55 asks: What are two ways that Americans can participate in their democracy? Among the correct answers: “write to a newspaper.”
At my interview, I was asked questions on presidential succession, the Cabinet, Senate terms and the Supreme Court. I was asked to name a branch of government. (I went with the executive.)
I was asked Question 8: What did the Declaration of Independence do?
Heeding my lawyer’s advice, I went with the official answer: “declared our independence.”
I answered six consecutive questions correctly and moved on to the language section of the exam. Native English speakers are not exempt from this section and I was asked to read aloud the following sentence: “Columbus Day is in October.”
I was then asked to write a sentence in English. Remarkably, it was the same sentence: “Columbus Day is in October.”
Next, I reaffirmed answers I had given on my citizenship application
Was I a member of the Communist Party? Was I member of a totalitarian party? Am I a terrorist? Although I was born in 1970, I was asked: Between March 23, 1933, and May 8, 1945, did I work for or associate in any way with the Nazi government of Germany? Had I worked at a concentration camp?
The officer who interviewed me, Sandy Saint Louis, had to ask me the questions. But she didn’t even look up or wait for my responses. She checked off “No” after each one.
She did pay attention when she asked whether I was a habitual drunkard, a polygamist, a drug-smuggler, a felon, a tax-evader.
My paperwork was in order, my background check was complete. When the interview was over, Saint Louis pressed a large wooden seal into a red ink pad and stamped “approved” across my application. A wave of relief washed over me and my lawyer shot me a sweet smile. Ten days later, when I returned for the swearing-in, a brief and final questionnaire asked if I had engaged in prostitution since the interview. I checked “No.”
On Friday, Jan. 28, accompanied by my family, I was among 160 citizens-in-waiting who filed into a third floor auditorium in lower Manhattan to be sworn in as Americans. On our seats were an American flag, a copy of the Constitution, a booklet featuring the stories of prominent naturalized Americans and a welcome letter from President Obama.
Reading the letter, I began to cry. I had spent more than one-quarter of my life hoping to become American, and I was suddenly overwhelmed by the honor and the significance of the moment. The place I have called home for 12 years was finally claiming me as well.
I looked around the room and saw other fortunate souls with long journeys now behind them, quietly weeping with joy.
An immigration official asked us all to stand, and to remain standing, when the name of our country of origin was called out. After he read through the names of 44 countries, we were all standing, waving our flags.
Together, we took the Oath of Allegiance and were then seated as citizens of one nation.
Everyone in the room that day had scored a perfect 100 percent on the test and, for fun, an official decided to test us all once more. Who wrote “The Star Spangled Banner”? he asked. Only a few called out “Francis Scott Key,” perhaps because that question is no longer on the test. It was prominently removed four years ago.
A newly sworn-in citizen led us in the Pledge of Allegiance. We sang the national anthem and then watched a video message from the president shown at every swearing-in ceremony across the country.
“It’s an honor and a privilege to call you a fellow citizen of the United States of America,” Obama told us. “This is now officially your country.”
There were more tears. At the end of the hour, we received certificates of naturalization and were given instructions on how to obtain U.S. passports.
My family and I left soon afterward. It was 10:30 a.m. and cold outside. We took the subway uptown. Three children got off at three different stops, headed to their schools or the library. We took the youngest up to his school. He walked in clutching his American flag and announced proudly to his teachers that “Mommy is American.”
At a party that evening, I displayed the letter from Obama and laid out the flashcards. Over Sam Adams beer and mini-burgers, I spoke about the ceremony and test. The host led us all in the Pledge of Allegiance, my second of the day. Looking around the room, I realized that a significant number of my friends are journalists, writers, academics and lawyers. It’s a nitpicky crowd and during three hours of celebration they noticed additional errors in the questions.
At the end of the night, one of the catering staff gathered up the flashcards and as she held them out to me, she revealed that next month she too will take her citizenship test. I was thrilled. I closed my first day as an American citizen by handing them over to her. “Which ones did you say were wrong again?” she asked. “Just give the official answer,” I said, “and you’ll do fine.”
You can follow Linzer at @dafnalinzer.DALLAS (AP) — A Texas woman said Monday that she's suing a federal agency to force the return of a film shot by her grandfather that shows a portion of the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Gayle Nix Jackson, who lives in the Fort Worth area, is seeking $10 million in compensation for the film shot by Orville Nix on Nov. 22, 1963.
In the days after the killing, he gave the film to the UPI news agency with the understanding that after 25 years it would be returned to the family. However, it was obtained by the Warren Commission and another federal panel that investigated the shooting and assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
It's not clear where the original copy may be but Nix Jackson believes it's in the possession of the National Archives and Records Administration because most materials that were part of the federal inquiry were forwarded to the NARA. The lawsuit says the agency has told Nix Jackson it does not have it. An agency spokeswoman declined to comment Monday.
The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza says a film shot by Abraham Zapruder has greater historical value because it shows all of the shooting, as opposed to Nix's film and two others that capture part of the assassination.
Nix Jackson said her grandfather's film was shot from Dealey Plaza. She said it shows Zapruder across the street and the grassy knoll from where some witnesses thought they heard at least one shot fired.
It's incomprehensible that authorities would lose "an important piece of historical evidence," said Nix Jackson, whose lawsuit was filed Saturday in federal court in Washington, D.C.
"I can understand little clerical issues," she said. "I don't' understand the loss of evidence like this."
Nix filmed the presidential motorcade as it entered the plaza, but he didn't know he had captured the shooting until the photo lab that processed his film told him later.
The film sequence includes first lady Jackie Kennedy climbing onto the trunk of the limousine, and Secret Service agent Clint Hill jumping onto the vehicle, according to the lawsuit.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.CIA Memo On Stopping Leaks To Reporters Is Promptly Leaked To Reporters
from the let's-go-back-to-step-one dept
In a memo to the CIA workforce this week, Brennan says the "Honor the Oath," campaign is intended to "reinforce our corporate culture of secrecy" through education and training. The Associated Press obtained the memo Wednesday, marked unclassified and for official use only.
Brennan writes that the campaign stems from a review of CIA security launched last summer by former director David Petraeus, following what Brennan calls "several high-profile anonymous leaks and publications by former senior officers."
Sometimes these kinds of stories write themselves. With all of the leaks coming out of the NSA lately, the CIA, complete with new director John Brennan, has announced a program to stop leaks to reporters from within the CIA. And, wouldn't you know it, the program was almost immediately leaked to the Associated Press:I have this picture of John Brennan doing a facepalm upon seeing this, and starting his next memo: "Let's return to step one..."
Filed Under: cia, john brennan, journalism, leaks, memoThe axe has fallen on management jobs in Newfoundland and Labrador, with Premier Dwight Ball announcing Wednesday that nearly 300 jobs in the core public service will be eliminated.
Ball, who had campaigned on a 2015 platform that pledged to avoid job cuts, said the governing Liberals had no choice but to prune non-union positions as it grapples with a deficit that is projected to reach $1.58 billion at the end of the current fiscal year.
Ninety of those positions are currently vacant, the premier said.
Progressive Conservative Opposition Leader Paul Davis said the government was reneging on the premier's campaign promise to avoid job cuts. He rejected Ball's assertion Wednesday that the previous government wasn't honest about the province's financial situation.
'Heads were in the sand,' says Davis
"We were very clear in the state of the economy and what was happening in the economy," he said.
"If they couldn't see it, they're the only ones in the province who didn't understand how difficult a time we were headed for. If their heads were in the sand and not paying attention to the reality of what was going on in the world, then that's their misstep."
Public sector workers poured out of Confederation Building in St. John's on Wednesday after a day marked by an announcement of job cuts. No one wanted to talk to CBC News. 0:44
Despite significant cuts last spring, the provincial debt is projected to widen to $14.7 billion.
The cuts represent 17 per cent of management-level positions, and will mean annual savings of between $20 million and $25 million in salaries and benefits, after a one-time estimated cost of $15 million for pay in lieu of notice to employees affected.
It's the latest step to create what Ball and Finance Minister Cathy Bennett repeatedly called "a flatter, leaner" structure in the public service.
"We realize this is a very difficult time for people who are impacted by this new management structure," said Bennett. "These are not easy decisions. However, with our very serious fiscal situation, they are decisions that had to be made."
The cuts are in response to a dire fiscal situation in the province and a public service that is by far the largest in the country on a per capita basis.
Pinprick of cuts
As of 2015, there were 94 public sector jobs per 1,000 people in the province, compared with a national average of 67.
The cuts announced Wednesday are essentially a pinprick, since they will only reduce that number by 0.6.
Finance Minister Cathy Bennett says it was difficult but necessary for cabinet to eliminate scores of jobs. (CBC)
There are roughly 48,000 public sector positions in the province, both in the core government services and with boards, agencies and Crown corporations.
NDP Leader Earle McCurdy slammed the announcement Wednesday, calling it "cuts for cuts' sake."
"It's a pretty grim day for a lot of Newfoundland and Labrador families who'll have to look long and hard at what their future involves."
The cuts to management positions follows an earlier reduction of 20 per cent of senior executive positions, and nearly a third of communication positions.
. <a href="https://twitter.com/PremierofNL">@PremierofNL</a> says more than 1,300 management level positions remain in government, and they have "stability." <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/cbcnl?src=hash">#cbcnl</a> —@TRobertst
The job cuts were part of a broader announcement that included a realignment of some government departments, though there were no reductions in the number of government ministers.
Several departments and agencies are seeing a change in mandate and structure given the job cuts announced Wednesday:
Business, Tourism, Culture and Rural Development.
Environment and Climate Change.
Various divisions under Executive Council.
Fisheries, Forestry and Agrifoods.
Municipal Affairs.
ServiceNL.
Transportation and Works.
McCurdy called the restructuring just a cover for the cuts.
"I don't see a plan for the economy of this province," he said. "Last year's budget said unemployment is at 15 per cent, heading for 20. I've seen nothing since that would help that, and certainly having a bunch of layoffs in the public service sure doesn't help that."
Slimmer government
A day earlier, Ball told reporters that the government was continually looking for ways to "decrease the footprint of government" but had refused to confirm whether cuts were imminent.
There are about 48,000 public sector positions in the province, both in core government services and with boards, agencies and Crown corporations. (Eddy Kennedy/CBC)
"We need to make sure that we have the right people doing the right job, which would include the right amount of people doing the right job," he said.
No date has been announced for the next budget.During the 1930’s Mercedes-Benz were designing and manufacturing cars in the environment of Nazi Germany and, as Adolf Hitler was a car enthusiast (albeit one who could not drive) there were significant influences placed upon the design team and engineers to create cars that fitted in with the National Socialist Party’s plan for Germany, which included a national network of high speed roads called Autobahns, and the vision that motor car ownership would become widespread. Inherent in all this was the influence of Dr. Ferdinand Porsche and his ideas about design which had been established during his time at Mercedes-Benz during the twenties. For an example of this see our previous post on a 1926 Mercedes-Benz Model K.
Thus it was during the 1930’s that there was something of a tug-o-war between Hitler, and Dr. Porsche’s preference for rear engine cars and the automotive engineering establishment that favored conventional designs. (You will find our previous article for Hagerty Insurance on the pre-war rear engined Mercedes-Benz if you click here). It was a contest that was to be won and lost in the car showrooms. What would the buyers choose?
The three rear engined Mercedes-Benz, the 130, the mid-engined 150, and the rear engined 170H were the unconventional cars in direct competition with the conventional Mercedes-Benz 170V. For the Mercedes-Benz 170V Sports Roadster we are featuring the most direct competition was with the mid-engined Mercedes-Benz 150.
Although the 170V seems to be a conventional car at first glance we quickly find as we look underneath the coachwork that it is rather more technically advanced that we might first imagine, and we will also discover that it has a lot in common with its rear and mid-engined rivals.
This Mercedes-Benz 170V shares the same engine as the rear-engined 170H. But the similarities don’t stop there. Both use a backbone chassis not quite as originally developed by an associate of Dr. Porsche, Austrian engineer Hans Ledwinka.
The chassis of the 170V has a twin oval tube backbone onto which the engine, drive-train, suspension and coachwork are all supported.
Looking at the rear of the conventional looking 170V we notice that it has four wheel independent suspension, and that the rear suspension uses swing axles as were used on Dr. Porsche’s Volkswagen and on the three rear engined Mercedes-Benz. We arrive at the discovery that the chassis and suspension between the rear engined models and the conventional front engined 170V all share the same heritage.
The front suspension of the Mercedes-Benz 170V was independent with transverse leaf springs whilst the rear used coil springs with swing axles and was of the same type as the rear and mid-engined cars. This suspension proved to be stable and provided a high level of ride comfort on the 170V and on the rear engined cars also.
The brakes of the Mercedes-Benz 170V are hydraulically actuated drums all around. So this was a car with impeccable ride quality, excellent and predictable handling, and excellent brakes. Add to this the Mercedes-Benz excellence in build quality and you have a formula that should be a winner in the showrooms. But was it? This Sports Roadster was up against one of the most beautiful and technologically advanced Mercedes-Benz of the thirties, the mid-engined 150.
The Mercedes-Benz 150 was significantly more expensive than the 170V, and it also had no luggage space, the front being filled up with |
safer bet than emulating the left-wing populism of Corbyn in the UK. The reason is that Corbyn’s policies are a step in the direction of challenging the system itself, which no capitalist politician wants to do.
A way forward
While they try to appear left-wing, Ardern’s Labour, like Australia’s Labor Party, is looking with envy at the success of right-populists such as NZ First. This success exists because a section of working people, alienated from establishment politics, are turning to right-populism in the absence of genuine solutions. But, like the mainstream parties, the right-populists have no intention of challenging the logic of capitalism.
This logic promotes big business profits at the expense of wages, public services, welfare, housing, the environment, healthcare and everything else that working people rely on. A genuine alternative would be a political party both by and for working people, proposing socialist solutions.
We are entering an era of disillusionment with the institutions of capitalism. This is what lies behind the electoral shocks of the last two years across the western world. This disillusionment will not be satisfied with a superficial change to the image of the old labour parties. Only the working class, armed with a socialist program and organisation, can lead a way forward.Moscow was gripped by the worst gridlock ever seen as unexpectedly severe snowfall hit the Russian capital on Christmas Day, literally paralyzing the city. Police registered up to 500 road accidents an hour and 200 flights were delayed.
The longest traffic jam stretched 60km, or over 37 miles, Russia’s online road traffic monitoring service Yandex Probki (Yandex traffic jam), reported.
Yandex rates jams from 0 to 10 points.
"Guys, remember this historic day. It is the first time when 10 points was reached so early and for so long. It has been like that for 7 hours already. More is to come,” Yandex spokeswoman Elina Staviskaya posted on Facebook.
Из-за снега движение по всем улицам крайне медленное. Такой красной Москвы мы давно не видели pic.twitter.com/DzcXQUjpdK — Яндекс.Пробки (@yandexprobki) 25 декабря 2014
More than 11,000 units of specialized equipment have been struggling to cope with such a large snowfall (25cm, 10 inches) in so short a period.
These largely futile efforts have failed to help the situation on the roads. The congestion worsened in the evening when huge numbers of people left their workplaces and began to head home.
Near zero visibility and atrocious road conditions caused numerous accidents.
By 5pm, traffic police reported that in just one hour they had registered over 500 accidents, 45 of them serious.
Commuters have been advised to walk. In many cases it was nearly impossible to reach Metro stations by bus.
While stuck in traffic some people tried not to lose their sense of humor. Using the Yandex Probki mobile application, many started chatting and leaving funny notes for fellow drivers on the map.
“Let’s eat snow and clean roads,” suggested one driver. Another proposed to go back to their offices and having a party.
“Join us in the blue bus. We’ve been here since 8:00,” others wrote. Somebody begged Father Frost (Russian Santa Claus) to give a siren as a gift for New Year, hoping it would help.
#видеожесть #телкипляшут #смотретьдоконца Безумные девушки танцуют посреди многочасовой пробки глубоко в области. В пути уже более 12 часов. Но, слава богу, сейчас мы уже стоим по направлению в Москву. #дедыжелалинамдоброгопути @an_gla @pak_eliza A video posted by SO MUCH OF ME (@somuchofme) on Dec 12, 2014 at 11:54am PST
Drivers handed over food and water, joked and cursed the weather. Numerous people stopped to help fellow commuters who were stranded in the snow.
Moscow airports were also affected by the blizzard conditions. Over 20 flights were canceled and nearly 200 flights delayed. Some passengers said they were stuck on planes for hours as the aircraft were unable to taxi.
Moscow public services began working early in the morning and will “continue round the clock,” authorities say. They promised that by Friday morning all the snow will be cleared.I haven’t played all that many games in virtual reality, but I feel confident saying that Google’s Tilt Brush — which is essentially the MS Paint of VR — is among the best experiences out there. And it’s going to get even better, because Google is adding a multiplayer mode.
My excitement probably sounds a little ridiculous if you’ve never played around in Tilt Brush before. Why on Earth would someone be excited about multiplayer Paint?
It's way more fun than a paint app ought to be
But the newness of virtual reality makes playing around in Tilt Brush a magical experience that’s unlike any game or app you’ve tried before. You can easily lose an hour or more wandering around Tilt Brush’s void drawing streaks of light like some minor god learning the possibilities of their domain.
The idea of doing that in multiplayer sounds wonderful. Tilt Brush is a pure, creative experience, and the ability to inhabit the same canvases and build in the same worlds as some friends should be a lot of fun.
There’s no word yet on exactly when multiplayer mode will arrive — for now, Google is just announcing that it’s in the works.
It’s detailed a handful of other features that it’s working on for Tilt Brush, too.
One of those is a natural extension of multiplayer: avatars for each person. You can essentially draw around a virtual Vive headset to create an otherworldly mask. It looks cool.
Google is also working on adding a posable manikin and a working zoetrope, which would let you create short animations. It’s also developing something it calls the "portal brush," which lets you see through to the outside world using the Vive’s cameras.Announcing Sleepy Puppy — Cross-Site Scripting Payload Management for Web Application Security Testing
Netflix Technology Blog Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 30, 2015
by Scott Behrens and Patrick Kelley
Netflix is pleased to announce the open source release of our cross-site scripting (XSS) payload management framework: Sleepy Puppy!
The Challenge of Cross-Site Scripting
Cross-site scripting is a type of web application security vulnerability that allows an attacker to execute arbitrary client-side script in a victim’s browser. XSS has been listed on the OWASP Top 10 vulnerability list since 2004, and developers continue to struggle with mitigating controls to prevent XSS (e.g. content security policy, input validation, output encoding). According to a recent report from WhiteHat Security, a web application is 47% likely to have one or more cross-site scripting vulnerabilities.
A number of tools are available to identify cross-site scripting issues; however, security engineers are still challenged to fully cover the scope of applications in their portfolio. Automated scans and other security controls provide a base level of coverage, but often only focus on the target application.
Delayed XSS Testing
Delayed XSS testing is a variant of stored XSS testing that can be used to extend the scope of coverage beyond the immediate application being tested. With delayed XSS testing, security engineers inject an XSS payload on one application that may get reflected back in a separate application with a different origin. Let’s examine the following diagram.
Here we see a security engineer inject an XSS payload into the assessment target (App #1 Server) that does not result in an XSS vulnerability. However, that payload was stored in a database (DB) and reflected back in a second application not accessible to the tester. Even though the tester can’t access the vulnerable application, the vulnerability could still be used to take advantage of the user. In fact, these types of vulnerabilities can be even more dangerous than standard XSS since the potential victims are likely to be privileged types of users (employees, administrators, etc.)
To discover the triggering of a delayed XSS attack, the payload must alert the tester of App #2’s vulnerability in a different manner.
Toward Better Delayed XSS Payload Management
A number of talks and tools cover XSS testing, with some focussing on the delayed variant. Tools like BEef, PortSwigger BurpSuite Collaborator, and XSS.IO are appropriate for a number of situations and can be beneficial tools in the application security engineer’s portfolio. However, we wanted a more comprehensive XSS testing framework to simplify XSS propagation and identification and allow us to work with developers to remediate issues faster.
Without further ado, meet Sleepy Puppy!
Sleepy Puppy
Sleepy Puppy is a XSS payload management framework that enables security engineers to simplify the process of capturing, managing, and tracking XSS propagation over long periods of time and numerous assessments.
We will use the following terminology throughout the rest of the discussion:
Assessments describe specific testing sessions and allow the user to optionally receive email notifications when XSS issues are identified for those assessments.
describe specific testing sessions and allow the user to optionally receive email notifications when XSS issues are identified for those assessments. Payloads are XSS strings to be executed and can include the full range of XSS injection.
are XSS strings to be executed and can include the full range of XSS injection. PuppyScripts are typically written in JavaScript and provide a way to collect information on where the payload executed.
are typically written in JavaScript and provide a way to collect information on where the payload executed. Captures are the screenshots and metadata collected by the default PuppyScript
are the screenshots and metadata collected by the default PuppyScript Generic Collector is an endpoint that allows you to optionally log additional data outside the scope of a traditional capture.
Sleepy Puppy is highly configurable, and you can create your own payloads and PuppyScripts as needed.
Security engineers can leverage the Sleepy Puppy assessment model to categorize payloads and subscribe to email notifications when delayed cross-site scripting events are triggered.
Sleepy Puppy also exposes an API for users who may want to develop plugins for scanners such as Burp or Zap. With Sleepy Puppy, our workflow of testing now looks like this:
Testing is straightforward as Sleepy Puppy ships with a number of payloads, PuppyScripts, and an assessment. To provide a better sense of how Sleepy Puppy works in action, let’s take a look at an assessment we created for the XSS Challenge web application, a sample application that allows users to practice XSS testing.By Doug Powers • June 2, 2013 12:29 PM
**Written by Doug Powers
The number of people comparing Obama to Nixon is on the rise. Mitch McConnell’s done it. George Will’s done it. Even Bob Schieffer’s gone there.
Now, thanks to this video from Revealing Politics by way of Instapundit and Powerline, it appears that President Obama has also been doing his best to keep the comparisons alive:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlYZ2s_95gs&w=425&h=239]
Lots more Obama/Nixon similarities at MOTUS. If the Obamas get a dog named Checkers the circle will be complete.
That said, Jim Treacher writes why it’s ridiculous to compare Obama to Nixon:
Nixon was a Republican! Another difference: Nobody died in Watergate. Let alone a United States ambassador being murdered by Islamic terrorists, and then the administration incessantly lying about it to cover up their own incompetence.
Duly noted.
**Written by Doug Powers
Twitter @ThePowersThatBeThe film, directed by Laura Poitras, explores the life of the whistleblower whose revelations about the NSA sent shockwaves around the world
Laura Poitras’s film Citizenfour, looking at the exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden, has been nominated for the best documentary Oscar.
Poitras spent eight days with Snowden in Hong Kong as his revelations about the NSA were published in the Guardian, and instantly created a major diplomatic event. Along with input from Glenn Greenwald, the film also looks at the aftermath of the revelations, with Snowden moving to Russia while the US, having shown to be spying on its citizens on a vast scale, scrambled a response.
The film continues an arc for Poitras, who ended up on a US Homeland Security watchlist for her Iraq-based My Country, My Country, and who looked at the NSA’s spying in a 2012 film The Program with another whistleblower, William Binney.
With its incredible access and agenda-setting subject, Citizenfour could well consider itself the favourite in the category. It faces competition from Wim Wenders’ The Salt of the Earth, a biographical documentary looking at photographer Sebastião Salgado; the similarly minded Finding Vivian Maier, whose stunning street photography was discovered long after her death; Last Days in Vietnam, looking at the chaos of Saigon as the Americans departed following the war; and Virunga, a Netflix-produced doc exploring a national park in Congo under threat from militia.
There was no space, however, for the much-fancied Life Itself, a film about legendary US film critic Roger Ebert, who died of cancer in 2013. Given the Academy tends to love anything about show business itself, the team will likely be disappointed it didn’t get a nomination.
• Mark Kermode on Citizenfour: ‘Bravely made and utterly engrossing’
• Oscar nominations 2015: The Grand Budapest Hotel and Birdman tie for top honoursMarijuana dispensary owners, clerks and landlords got their first day in court Wednesday, with some calling it a waste of time and money as Canada moves toward full pot legalization. More than a dozen people appeared at Old City Hall on charges of contravening Toronto’s zoning bylaw that states only federal licensed marijuana distributors, who mail or courier pot, can operate — and only in industrial parts of Toronto.
Ninety people face charges after the raids on marijuana shops in Toronto last month. ( David Rider / Toronto Star file photo )
Most of the accused received disclosure of the case against them and a date to return for trial in August on the charges, which carry a maximum fine of $25,000 for individuals and $50,000 for corporations. In the May 26 raids by Toronto police and city licensing staff, many of the 90 people arrested were also hit with more serious Criminal Code drug trafficking charges. “I think it’s kind of ridiculous and funny, actually,” Mercedes Carter, 26, who works at a Danforth Ave. dispensary, said of the zoning charges after appearing in court.
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“We don’t know where it’s going to go from here, if the dispensaries are going to be allowed to stay open or (pot sales) will be monopolized by the (federally) licensed producers.” Carter said she and a colleague are not facing criminal trafficking charges — and possible jail time — because they suspected a raid was coming and stopped stocking actual marijuana a week before police swooped in. The landlord of a shop near Roncesvalles Ave. and Queen St. W. told Justice of the Peace Felicitas Campasano she would return for trial Aug. 10. Outside court the landlord, who gave her name as Nancy, said she is hoping uncertainty over the legality of the federal government’s medical marijuana program will result in her not being convicted of the zoning charge. “There’s no foot traffic” around the building she owns, she said, adding that one past tenant went bankrupt.
“These (marijuana) guys pay. It’s very difficult to rent in that area. I thought it (storefront medical marijuana distribution) was legal.” Kendra Stanyon, a lawyer representing several of the people charged, said she was surprised city licensing went after some minimum-wage clerks with zoning charges.
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“You have employees caught in the crosshairs here; it's not just owners, and they’re facing summonses with potential $25,000 fines,” she said. Those facing criminal charges will have their first appearances in court next month. Marijuana shops, some demanding a prescription and others not, started spreading across Toronto months ago. They flourished as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed to legalize marijuana, with strict regulations, in 2017. Adding to the legal haze, a federal court judge in B.C. struck down a ban on medical-marijuana patients growing their own plants, giving Ottawa until August to bring its medical-marijuana law in line with the Charter. The raids came after some residents and politicians voiced concern over the concentration of pot shops in some areas. Some marijuana dispensaries continue to operate in Toronto. The city’s licensing department says its crackdown is not over and more businesses could be charged.In the previous post we looked at a number of scenarios where there is a link between having correct beliefs and a successful outcome. Success in these context meant reacting reasonably to a perceived threat, or it meant achieving a simple goal like catching a train in order to get to work. In any case the interactions with the world and the beliefs involved were relatively simple and immediate. The number of objects and beliefs in play were small.
It appears to me though that the relationship between correct beliefs and successful outcomes is also true for more complex projects, say learning a language or climbing a mountain. In order to learn French, I need to be correct in my beliefs that the vocabulary and grammar I am learning is French. If I am learning Italian words instead, believing that they are French, my project to learn French is doomed. To climb a mountain, I need correct beliefs about geography, weather conditions, the required climbing gear and many other factors, in order to succeed.
Then there is also a question of luck. Luck – good or bad – can mess up the relationship between beliefs and outcomes. Let’s assume that I incorrectly believe that there is a train at 8.20am and therefore go to the station exactly for that time. Actually, I’m wrong. There is a train at 8.15am. On any other day, I would have missed it. But today, as luck would have it, the train is delayed by five minutes so I catch it. The successful outcome can’t be said to have related to any correct belief of mine. Or say I’ve prepared and trained conscientiously to climb a mountain, studied the different routes and ensured that I have the right levels of fitness and the required equipment, but on the day a freak change in weather, totally unpredicted by the forecasters, forces me to turn around before reaching the summit. Despite my correct beliefs, bad luck has prevented a successful outcome.
So far the examples we’ve looked at related to beliefs about things and the way the world is organised. But there is a class of beliefs that is said to be particularly relevant to achieving successful outcomes from our own activities. That’s the class of beliefs about ourselves and our place in the world. That makes sense: successful outcomes are ultimately about how a number of variables turn out to be arranged. And one or more of those variables are bound to concern the people interacting with the world. In the mountaineering example, success may depend on my assessment of my mountaineering skills and what I (correctly or incorrectly) believe about my ability to get to the peak in inclement weather conditions.
The psychologist Carol Dweck talks about this as a “tradition in psychology that shows the power of people’s beliefs.” The beliefs she is interested in are people’s beliefs about their own abilities and their own potential to extend these abilities. She distinguishes between the “fixed mindset” in which people believe that traits such as intelligence are given and static and that challenges are points at which their qualities are assessed and proven on the one hand, and the “growth mindset” in which people believe that challenges are there to be overcome, that failures are opportunities to learn and that, of course, intelligence and ability can be acquired and extended on the other hand. Dweck isn’t particularly interested in which of these mindsets is true but in the effects of believing in the components of the one or the other.
And the pay-offs in having a growth mindset – that is to say a certain set of beliefs about oneself – are great. People with a growth mindset are more likely to stay on difficult tasks for longer, more likely to succeed at tasks, but also generally more likely to have better outcomes on a range of things such as health and relationships.
Another area where beliefs about ourselves matter is the area of so-called “learned helplessness” and its counterpart “learned optimism.” Psychologists distinguish three areas of belief that are relevant: permanence, pervasiveness and hope.
In the words of Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology, the permanence belief looks like this:
“People who give up easily believe the causes of the bad events that happen to them are permanent – the bad events will persist, are always going to affect their lives. People who resist helplessness believe the causes of bad events are temporary.”
So people with a permanent (pessimistic) belief system might think “I’m all washed up,” while someone with a temporary (optimistic) outlook might say “Right now I’m exhausted.”
Pervasiveness is about whether we have universal or specific beliefs and the extent to which we believe the causes of good or bad events affect all areas of our lives, or are specific.
Having hope is about finding permanent and universal causes for good events and temporary as well as specific ones for bad events. So for example to think “I’m talented” rather than “I was lucky this time” if something goes well. Or “I was a bit distracted that morning” rather than “I’m just stupid.”
Seligman, like Dweck, is more interested in the effects of holding those kinds of beliefs, than their relation to the truth. He writes:
“Sometimes the consequences of holding a belief matter more than its truth. When you break your diet, the response ‘I’m a total glutton’ is a recipe for letting go of your diet completely. Some people get very upset when the world shows itself not to be fair. We can sympathise with the sentiment, but the belief itself may cause more grief than its worth. What good will it do me to dwell on the belief that the world should be fair?”
But I’m wondering whether the relationship between beliefs and outcomes that we observed in the previous post isn’t somehow relevant here too. That would mean that the beliefs at the core of a “growth mindset,” that intelligence and capability can be expanded, or the beliefs at the centre of “learned optimism,” that the causes of personal failure are temporary and specific, are correct beliefs and therefore more conducive to positive outcomes due to an interaction between the belief and what is out there in the world.
I’ll want to look at this more in the next post.
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Like this: Like Loading...As we mentioned in an earlier post, Hillary has already compared herself to Wonder Woman. She just can’t help herself when it comes to playing the woman card.
Here’s the video of Hillary talking about the movie:
Trending: CNN Told By South Korean Official: “Clearly Credit Goes To President Trump” (VIDEO)
Now the film company has responded. They don’t want her help.
Heat Street reports:
Hillary Clinton Politicizes ‘Wonder Woman’ Saying She Relates to ‘Strong Woman Saving World from Disaster’
A source at Warner Brothers, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Heat Street: “It’s great that Hillary Clinton will see the movie but her remarks aren’t particularly helpful and our publicity team certainly won’t be spreading them about.
“Wonder Woman doesn’t need Hillary Clinton’s endorsement—it will make $250 million by the end of this week. We’re anxious to keep politics out of Wonder Woman any way we can.
“[Treasury Secretary] Steve Mnuchin was an executive producer of the movie so if anyone should be talking about the movie, it’s him. But thankfully Mnuchin is not talking about it—he didn’t even go to the premiere. Wonder Woman is not a political film!”
Hillary Clinton is probably never going to go away.
She loves the spotlight too much.Overwatch continues to dominate the gaming scene six months after its release. Blizzard is going to create their own competitive league and, based on the multitude of tournaments and Twitch activity, it’s clear that Overwatch is here to stay.
The second competitive season finished up last week with season three just around the corner. Let’s check in on everyone’s favorite hero shooter to see where it stands.
Revamped ranking system
The ranking system in season one was a decent start but rife with issues, most of which have been fixed with the new ranking system in season two. Players are now rated on a scale of 1-5000 instead of 1-100 with wins and losses altering your rank by ~30 points. Similar to games like Halo 5: Guardians and League of Legends, Overwatch now has skill tiers that place players into buckets based on their skill ranking. You can never fall below the bottom of a tier, unless you are in the Master or Grandmaster tiers. I reached as high as 2479 before season two was over, a game short of the platinum tier. Ugh.
Another big change is the addition of ties. Gone are the days of a coin flip, praying you would draw the easier side of a map to hang in for two minutes. Both teams gain a small amount of competitive points for a tie, which is a lot better than losing 15-20 minutes and a bunch of rating on a 50/50 draw.
Sombra, the ARG master, has arrived
Blizzard teased Sombra, a stealth hero, for months and months prior to finally releasing her just after Blizzcon a few weeks ago. She is an attack hero, bringing the distribution to seven attack heroes, six defense, five tanks, and five support. Her kit feels like a mixture of Tracer and Reaper. Sombra can go into complete stealth and sprint for about five seconds unless she is damaged (pro tip: Winston’s auto-lock gun does wonders). She can also throw a beacon that she can warp back to. Her shiniest toy is her hacking ability which can totally change a game. Hacking a character renders their abilities unusable, which can truly devastate certain heroes. A Tracer that can’t blink is pretty useless and a Reinhardt that can’t shield or charge is a dead man walking. Sombra’s ultimate ability is a EMP blast that hacks all enemies in the area as well as destroying all shields and barriers, which is a great way to start a push.
Overall, Sombra feels pretty strong. I’m not claming to be any good with her, but it’s clear that when people can use her well, Sombra is a weapon. It’s pretty fun to stealth from afar, sprint into the fray, EMP the entire enemy team and start wreaking havoc.
Out with the brawl, in with the arcade
Overwatch’s version of the rotating weekly game mode with different rules, Brawl, has been replaced with a full blown arcade. Arcade mode currently has five different playlists, the first and most fun being 1v1. You and your opponent are given the same random hero and the first to kill the other gets a point, first to five points wins. Some heroes make for great duels like Widowmaker and Pharah. Others, like Bastion and Zarya, can lead to long, drawn out rounds. Either way, 1v1 is a great way to blow of a little steam and practice not only how to use a hero but how to counter it. Honestly, I’m surprised at just how fun it is. My first attempt went into the final round tied at four, followed by a draw as Hanzo, ending with a win for me as McCree. The new 3v3 elimination mode is best-of-five with no respawns per round. Tired of matching up with random players when only a few of your friends are on? 3v3 is a good fit.
There are three 6v6 variants in the arcade mode as well. One of the better brawls, where your hero randomly changes each time you die, has its own playlist. The no limits playlist is the old version of quick play where hero stacking is allowed, since quick play now adheres to the single hero limit of competitive mode. The final playlist is a shuffled list of all past brawls. Arcade mode is fun for two main reasons: there is no ranking which means you can play more loosely than normal and you can earn up to three loot boxes per week when you win three, six, and nine games in the week. I was always pushing for Overwatch to steal Hearthstone’s “win a game and earn a card pack” system to push players into the brawl, so this is a great fit.
Balance changes for the coming season
As is customary with major competitive games, Blizzard has released a large set of balance changes just ahead of the coming season. The full patch notes can be seen at that link, but here are a few highlights:
Damage to non heroes, like Torbjorn’s turret, no longer build ultimate
All ultimate ability costs increased by 25%
Mercy’s passive heal kicks in after one second, down from three seconds, increasing her survivability
Pharah is a lot more floaty now that her alt fire jump jets increase lift by 35%. She can stay in the sky forever with ease by using that and her rocket jump.
Overwatch continues to move forward with season three kicking off December 1. A huge Symmetra rework is currently on the PTR, making her the first hero with a choice between two ults and a new moving shield ability. The next new hero is unclear, although pec dance master Terry Crews said he would love to voice Doomfist.
How do you feel about the recent Overwatch changes? What would you like to see in future patches? Will you protest the game if we don’t see a Santa Roadhog skin? Leave a comment below!When a year comes to a close, it’s almost inevitably accompanied by reflection: what you did, where you went, and which adventures you checked off your bucket list. At the same time, the arrival of a new year—hello, 2016!—comes with the delicious promise of a blank slate for new experiences.
Fortunately, if you’re lucky enough to live in the Bay Area, there’s an almost endless list of adventures to choose from, no matter what your preferred outdoor pursuit. But we whittled some of the best down to 49—in honor of San Francisco’s history—to provide plenty of inspiration for the year to come. From a few obvious must-do's (like riding a cable car) to more off-the-beaten-path experiences (like Yosemite in the offseason), this ultimate San Francisco bucket list should give you plenty of inspiration for your outdoorsy pursuits in 2016 and beyond.
Instead of setting New Year’s Resolutions, why not make it your mission to knock off as many of these as you can (if you haven’t already)? Happy trails, and Happy 2016.
1. Mountain bike at Mount Tam.
This iconic peak is a beloved spot among trail runners and hikers, but to fully appreciate the essence of Mt. Tam, you need to bomb down its slopes on a mountain bike. This is where the sport took shape, after all, when a passel of young daredevils raced down infamous Repack trail on specially rigged bikes. Not quite up for the challenge? Visit the Marin Museum of Bicycling and Mountain Bike Hall of Fame instead.
2. Surf at Fort Point.
If there's a break, Fort Point can be a fantastic spot to catch some waves. ClatieK
The break and conditions aren’t always ideal for this, but when they are, there’s a certain amount of smugness in surfing this spot, with the world’s most famous span stretching above and gawking tourists below.
3. Ride alongside a pro at a gran fondo.
If you haven’t yet experienced the glory and gastronomy of a gran fondo, make 2016 the year to do it. Part ride, part rolling party, all fun, these rides, which originated in Europe, have exploded in popularity in the United States as of late. There are plenty of world-class options to choose from in the Bay Area, including the Bottega Gran Fondo in April (but sign up fast, as they sell out quickly).
4. Charge up the trails in the country’s oldest trail race.
The famous Dipsea Trail offers plenty of stairs and views of the Pacific Ocean. Class V
The country’s oldest trail race, which runs from Mill Valley to Stinson Beach and includes climbs and descents brutal enough to be called Suicide and Insult Hill, also happens to be located right in our backyard. Another bonus for Bay Area locals: Registration is done through snail mail in order to give an edge to locals and help it maintain its quirky, Bay Area feel. This year’s race, the 106 th annual is set for June 12, and registration usually happens in March, so keep an eye on the calendar.
5. Bomb down San Francisco’s curviest street on a Big Wheel.
It’s one of San Francisco’s quirkiest events, and Bring Your Own Big Wheel could be one of the wildest ways you’ll ever spend Easter (see No. 28 for another). Join the costumed masses who race down the crazy-curvy Vermont Street in Potrero Hill on Big Wheels and every other manner of plastic wheeled contraption (no metal parts on bikes and trikes permitted).
6. Visit Yosemite National Park.
Yosemite and its myriad adventures are a must-do. Dawn Ellner
If you haven’t yet experienced the iconic granite rock formations, waterfalls, and astonishing beauty of one of America’s most beloved national parks, it’s time to pack up the car for a road trip. To avoid the crowds—the 748,000-acre park sees some 4 million annual visitors—plan your visit anytime except between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and consider going in the winter, when the park is least crowded and especially magical.
7. Soak up the views along Paradise Loop.
This approximately 35-miler is, well, paradise for both mid-level and intermediate cyclists, with glorious rollers, even more glorious views of San Francisco Bay, and smooth, recently paved stretches.
8. Swim in San Francisco Bay.
Take inspiration from Kim Chambers and take a dip in the Bay (but you might want to wear a wetsuit). Naotake Murayama
While not all of us mere mortals have a 30-mile swim in the Bay within reach (like superhuman long-distance swimmers Simon Dominguez and Kim Chambers, whose swims to/from the Farallon Islands made headlines in 2015), you can still earn bragging rights by swimming in the frigid waters of San Francisco Bay. Don a wetsuit (or not) for a few laps in Aquatic Park, or go hardcore with a race like Escape from Alcatraz or Escape from the Rock.
9. Watch the sunset from Twin Peaks.
Yes, you’ll have to battle with lots of other awed onlookers and probably a tour bus or two. But it’s still worth it to take in the sunset from one of San Francisco’s most well-known summits, with the sun setting on one side and the lights of the skyline twinkling below.
10. Run the Bay to Breakers.
A sampling of the costumes found at Bay to Breakers. Blane Bachelor
In recent years, organizers have cracked down on booze and out-of-control revelry at Bay to Breakers, but that hasn’t sapped the fun out of one of the most quintessentially SF events on the calendar. And running in this hybrid of race/rolling party is way more fun than spectating: It’s a great way to take in the diversity of SF’s neighborhoods, while justifying the beer you drank (discreetly) along the way or are about to start swilling at the end.
11. Ride the cable cars.
Yes, it’s touristy. Yes, it’s ridiculously expensive ($6 for a one-way fare). But just try not to smile as you hang on for dear life aboard one for these historic beauties as it rattles and clacks up the city’s infamous hills.
12. Hike Big Sur.
With views like this, it's no wonder that Big Sur is so beloved. Franco Folini
This is some of the most glorious land on the planet, with rocky bluffs, the crashing Pacific, and towering coastal redwoods. primed for world-class hiking, biking, camping, and simply soaking up the Great Outdoors. You’ll have to book about six months in advance to snag one of two campsites at Julia Burns Pfeiffer State Park—and if you do, you’ll be spoiled for life from the views—but day adventures are easier to come by.
13. Watch for whales along the coast.
During the summer, catch a glimpse of the pods of humpback and blue whales that swim along the coast and to the Farallon Islands during their migration. Several companies offer whale watching tours, including the Oceanic Society, or keep an eye out for the gentle giants at coastal viewpoints like Point Reyes.
14. Eat clam chowder at Spud Point Crab company.
Be careful: The clam chowder at Spud Point Crab Company is indeed addictive. Jake Wheeler
Clam chowder on a best-of adventure list? You bet: You can use it as a much-deserved award for ticking off a bunch of outdoorsy options in Bodega Bay, about two hours north of San Francisco. But trust us: The clam chowder alone at Spud Point Crab Company is worth the trip.
15. Ski from Tahoe City to Truckee.
If you need some inspiration to tackle your first ski race, consider this: Half of the participants in The Great Ski Race, a 30-kilometer Nordic ski race from Tahoe City to Truckee, are first-timers, wearing costumes is highly encouraged, and the race raises money for the Tahoe Nordic Search and Rescue Team.
16. Spend a weekend driving Highway 1.
When the itch for a road trip pops up, don’t worry about a plan: Just toss the tents and sleeping bags into the car, grab the map, and hit Highway 1, one of the most iconic and jaw-droppingly beautiful stretches of pavement in the country, if not the world. The rest will take care of itself.
17. Gawk at the tallest living beings on the planet.
Some of these coastal redwoods live up to 2,000 years old. Blane Bachelor
Those would be the coastal redwoods, and while we love Muir Woods, sometimes it’s just too overrun with tourists to fully soak up the overwhelming beauty and longevity of these leviathan trees. So head instead to Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve in Guerneville, where, if you hike a bit into the woods, you’ll you’re likely to lose any crowds—as well as yourself.
18. Torch your quads on the infamous Sand Ladder.
Running from Baker Beach up to Lincoln Avenue, this torturous set of "stairs" is basically made up of logs and cables—and a boatload of sand—that form unevenly spaced steps. Unless you're in serious fighting shape, expect to be thoroughly winded at |
email server while outside of the United States…including sending work-related emails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. “We assess that it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s person email account,” Comey noted.
Comey then contradicted himself and explained that they found the actions by Clinton to be “extremely careless,” but noted they had no evidence they intended to break the law.
Knowing that she was transmitting TOP SECRET information on an unsecured server is, in fact, a violation of multiple laws.
Violation of 18 U.S. Code § 798 — disclosure of classified information applies to Clinton as her knowledge of the unsecured server allowed for her to “knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person” classified information. Someone guilty of this crime “shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both,” under the law.
Anther law, 18 USC 793 — gathering, transmitting or losing defense information also carries a penalty of an unspecified fine or imprisonment of up to 10 years, or both.
Both 793 and 798 fall under the broader 1917 Espionage Act.
To highlight the special treatment of Clinton in this matter, below are two recent cases as pointed out in a recent article.
Bryan Nishimura, a California Naval reservist, was sentenced to two years’ probation and a $7,500 fine after he pleaded guilty to removing classified material and downloading it to a personal electronic device. The FBI found no evidence he planned to distribute the material.
Bronze Star recipient and combat veteran Chief Petty Officer Lyle White pleaded guilty to storing classified documents on a nonsecure hard drive in Virginia. He received a suspended 60-day sentence and a suspended $10,000 fine in return for the plea. White said the information was for training purposes to study and that he had no intent to communicate with anyone.
While neither of these to men received jail time for their acts, they were both officially charged and convicted — and their crimes are far less grave than Clinton’s.
What this announcement by the FBI highlights is the farce of justice in America. Clinton is far too well-connected to be charged by her far too well-connected friends — in spite of glaring violations.
In the land of the free, there are two sets of legal systems — one for those who make and enforce the laws and one for the poor souls who are forced to obey them, no matter how immoral.
Help Us Be The Change We Wish To See In The World.Are you feeling tired, congested or sore? Essential oils are plant extracts that help ease the discomfort of these common ailments as well as many more. If you have hiked through a pine forest or walked through a peppermint field you may have noticed the soothing effect of these natural aromas.
We have gathered 13 common essential oils into an infographic that outlines which oils to use for different symptoms, explains benefits, and suggests oil pairings. In order for you to best use our guide, it is important to understand how to properly apply and utilize essential oils.
Using Essential Oils
Applying Topically – Essential oils are so light in weight and size that they are able to find their way to the blood stream through the skin. Many oils used for hair and skin are applied topically. Remember, a little goes a long way.
Inhaling – Diffusers are commonly used to cleanse the air. The lungs are lined with blood vessels, which circulate the oils through the body once you breathe them in.
Mixing with personal care products – Adding a few drops of oil to shampoo, body butter, or even toothpaste can have positive long-term effects.
Ingesting – Oils used for digestive health can be added to water. No more than three drops should be used. Before ingesting be sure to double check warning labels! Not all oils are safe for consumption and even those that are should only be consumed in VERY small quantities.
Top Three Oils for Medicinal Use
If you are new to aromatherapy and looking to build your natural medicine cabinet, start with these oils. They all have a wide range of benefits and can be found in your local health food store.
Tea Tree Oil
Tea tree oil is commonly used for its antibacterial, antiviral, antimicrobial, antiseptic and anti-fungal properties. This oil can help lessen many skin conditions including rashes, acne, dandruff, bug bites, burns and more.
Peppermint Oil
Similarly, peppermint oil is known for its antibacterial, anti-fungal, anti-inflammatory, pain-relieving and decongestant properties. Peppermint oil can be ingested or used topically to help with head discomfort, respiratory issues and indigestion.
Lavender Oil
Lavender is beloved for its lovely smell which soothes and acts as an analgesic, as well as its anti-inflammatory, antiseptic, anti-fungal, antiviral, antibacterial, diuretic and sedative properties. It is also useful for burns, cuts and inflammation.
Now that you are informed on how to use the oils and the top choices for homeopathic remedies, read through our guide to learn about even more benefits these organic aromas can offer. Below are 13 common essential oils with common ailments they alleviate and suggested pairings.
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Need more stress relievers? Read our post on decreasing stress with aromatherapy to learn more on the power of neurological response to natural scents!
Please note, essential oils are not to be used in place of medication.3D Puff Embroidery Digitizing
You must have come across those sturdy and thick designs on baseball caps or on snap-backs. Aren’t those protruding 3d designs cool? They surely are but what goes in embroidering those designs is what we will be looking at today.The profound 3D effect comes from the use of 3d embroidery foam. This is where the name 3D puff embroidery comes from.The use of puff increases the height of design and thus, by increasing the depth, it renders the 3D-effect.
Like any technique that you are just starting at, start to 3D embroidery is also a baffling affair. But like any other skill, your way out is practicing more and identifying areas that you need to improve.
There is an ever-increasing demand for 3d designs over the past few years, especially with caps and hats. Adhering to the best practices of 3D embroidery means producing better results and low production costs and time.
Mastering 3D embroidery means having an edge over your competitors. Therefore, here are best practices for 3D embroidery:
Decide Optimum Machine Speed:
Deciding an optimum machine speed is important as it has an impact on the quality of embroidered designs.Many a time you will be required to slow the speed as compared to your normal orders.
The optimum speed for each machine is different. Try few tests runs with different speeds and figure out an optimum speed that gives out the best results.
Choice Of Fabric:
Avoid using delicate and slippery fabrics with 3D puffs. There are two reasons for it.
Firstly, the fabric is more susceptible to in-hoop movement while working with foam. Secondly, the stitch density in 3d puff embroidery is higher than normal designs.
Consequently, thick, and stable fabrics, like the ones in caps, are preferred. Lofty fabrics like towels also do not go well with 3D puff embroidery. Their own loft fades the 3d effect and thus fails to cater a captivating design.
Choosing Sharp Needles:
When working with 3D designs, choose sharp needles which can easily make perforations through the foam. Easy and more perforations mean that foam can be easily removed afterward.
Choice Of Foam:
The choice of foam mainly depends on the height of design you want to embroider. The more 3d or protruded effect you want, thicker should be the foam and hence, more will be the height of design.
Thick foams, though create louder designs, are difficult to work with. The thicker a foam is, the more it hinders the smooth functioning of the machine.
Therefore, very thick foams should never be your pick. Especially when we are talking about embroidering at the commercial level.
Embroider Flat Design First:
Firstly, start with normal designs on your fabric. This will be done as you would normally embroider a material.If it is a cap, which will often be the case, take care of all the important factors that play a role during embroidering a cap.
Learn more: Custom Hat Embroidery – Challenges, Problems, and Solutions
Create a stop:
Create a stop once you are done with the flat design.
Learn how to program stops in your machine as this is something you will need a lot in your career and specifically, while you are dealing with 3D puff embroidery.
On color changes, you need to make sure that machine provides proper stops.
Laying The Foam:
Stick the foam on top of the fabric with either a tape or sticking spray. The purpose of this is to keep the fabric in position and resist underneath movement.
Sew The Outline:
Before embroidering with satin stitches, create an outline of the design. This outline will now stabilize the area that is just going to be embroidered.
Due to the foam, there is an increased instability to the set-up. Foam is stuck to the fabric for the very same reason. Stitching an outline counteracts this innate instability by providing the ‘cut’ in foam.
Remove Excess Foam:
Once the design is done, remove the excess foam. If there are little pieces of puff that are too rigid to be removed with bare hands, apply a heat source.
Use a heat gun to remove the foam. It is possible that some puff bits remain stuck. Weed them out through tweezers.
Include Test Runs:
Whenever you are dealing with a new design, try sewing out some test runs. Compare different variants and finally choose what works best with the fabric and equipment.
For inexperienced embroiderers, this drill also serves as their practicing ground. It allows them to evaluate what works and what doesn’t work that well. It enables them to harness optimum conditions for the actual sew-out and for similar future jobs.
Stitch Density:
Stitch density of 3D puff embroidery is kept higher than normal flat designs. When we say, high density we are essentially referring to the satin stitches that come on top of the flat design.
Underneath stitches should have a normal stitch density. Most computerized embroidery machines have this ability to manage multiple manage stitch densities and enabling you to keep underlay stitches close and tight.
Increased stitch density of top satin stitches as compare to underneath stitches, allows the design to have an enhanced “3D-ish” effect.
3D Embroidery Digitizing:
Digitizing for 3D embroidery designs is tricky as well as an integral part of the process.
Use longer stitches while working on 3D embroidery designs. Digitized designs with strong underlay border and satin stitches work best with puffs.
A digitizer should understand that not every design will work on foam. There are additional considerations that a digitizer should keep in mind while working with 3d designs. For instance, excessive underlay will not work with a 3d puff.
It is important that you work with a digitizer who knows these differences in and out and is well-adept with his job role. Try finding a digitizer who has a vast experience of working with different designs
See: 5 Tips to Outsource a Quality Embroidery Digitizing Service
We are a professional embroidery digitizing service with years of industry experience. With a team of experienced and skilled embroidery digitizers, we are capable of taking care of all your digitizing needs. Connect with our embroidery digitizing team and you will not have to ever find another cheap digitizing service.Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev believes that US attempts to unilaterally rule the world are futile, just as any party which, instead of trying to co-exist with another, struggles to impose global hegemony is doomed to fail.
“We live in a global world, and US attempts to become a ‘lone wolf’ and conduct unilateral operations… they all fail, collapse, but [the US] tries again,” Gorbachev said in an interview with Rossiya 24 TV channel, emphasizing that in a similar fashion anyone else’s “attempts to unilaterally control the world would fail.”
“We should think about how to co-exist in this hard and crazy – yet the sole – world known to a man so far,” Gorbachev added.
Speaking about the current geopolitical situation Gorbachev noted that the international community, particularly the United States, blinded by its “triumph” after the collapse of the Soviet Union, has “failed to make adequate conclusions.”
“So much effort was made to stop the nuclear arms race, the Cold War…we have learned nothing from it. And now there are even talks about war again,” he said.
European countries had a total freedom of choice in terms of what policies to follow, but Americans did their best to “lay their hands on it,” Gorbachev believes.
READ MORE: Gorbachev: It’s up to Europe to prevent new Cold War between US and Russia
Earlier, Gorbachev warned Western and Russian leaders against dragging the world into a new Cold War amid the Ukraine crisis. Back in December he said that “there are signs of Cold War” in the recent cooling down of relations between Moscow and Washington. And while Europe must become the locomotive of shaping the new world order to prevent new conflicts, he said it is being pushed in the opposite direction.
US policies, Gorbachev says, are defined by the defense industry which has a heavy influence on the country’s economy, politics, culture and art. “American foreign policies to a great extent are controlled by anything but democratic forces,” he said.
He reiterated his belief that the US needs political and economic reforms similar to ‘Perestroika’ carried out in the Soviet Union during his rule in the 1980s.
READ MORE: ‘America needs a Perestroika’ – Gorbachev to RT
On the eve of the 70th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, Gorbachev expressed wishes for Russian people to always be proud of their ancestors and the history of their nation. “A Russian person has reasons for patriotism,” Gorbachev said, adding that anyone who sincerely loves the motherland also loves and engages in everything unfolding there.
“No matter what happens to me, I am not going to flee [Russia], I could have fled, but no, I think it's the last thing to do,” Gorbachev said.
Russia will mark the 70th anniversary of wartime victory on May 9 with military parades in honor of the holiday being held in cities across the country. More than 78,500 people will take part in the parades and almost 2,000 items of military equipment will be put on display.If Donald Trump wins the White House in November, comedian and former "The Man Show" co-host Adam Carolla can claim credit for predicting the mogul's rise back in 2008.
"He's gonna be president in eight years, you understand that everybody?" Carolla said on his radio show back then.
His co-host at the time, Teresa Strasser, groaned as Carolla made the prediction. Carolla then said, "You understand Donald Trump is gonna be president. He'll be president one day. It'll be in our lifetime."
Carolla did not go into details about why he thought Trump would win.
Trump is in a strong position to collect the Republican nomination after big wins in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada over the last three weeks. However, he still faces significant challenges from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
Trump was still supporting Democrats when Carolla made the comment in 2008 and had kind words to say about Hillary Clinton during her 2008 run. Trump has flirted with a White House bid since the late 1980s.
"Now will he still have Melankia, or whatever her name is?" Strasser asked Carolla, referring to Trump's third wife, Melania Trump.
"Oh no, no, no. Because she will have seen her 38th birthday," Carolla shot back.
"So there will be a new Slavic former model, first lady," Strasser said.
Carolla replied, "That's right."
© LAKANAA few months ago, I attended a talk at Mozilla by Ted Nyman (of Github) titled “Scaling Happiness”. The video is freely available.
Nyman argued that companies with minimal formal structure are better for workers (specifically, better at maximizing workers’ happiness) than more traditional companies. Whenever someone asks whether something is “better”, I ask “better for whom?” Whose happiness was Nyman talking about? He didn’t say, but when I think about happiness, I ask what’s best for women, for people in GRSMs (gender, romantic and sexual minorities), for disabled people, and for people of color, since not too many people seem to think about what’s best for people in these groups. (For the record, I’m in the second and third of those groups, though I’m usually not perceived that way in one case, and often not perceived that way in the other.) Happiness for the dominant cadre in the software industry — that of people who have white privilege, male privilege, cis privilege, and heterosexual privilege, and who lack visible disabilities — is not the same as happiness for everybody.
I don’t mean to say that happiness is a zero-sum game, that when abled white cis men are happy, that inherently takes away some of the limited pool of happiness from disabled trans women of color. Rather, part of the problem is that people who have privilege perceive happiness as a zero-sum game; part of their happiness comes from seeing themselves as better than others.
I think most people in the tech industry or in open-source or free culture communities know what I’m talking about when I say “structurelessness”. Perhaps you work at a “flat” company that encourages employees to make up wacky job titles to put on their business cards, calls everybody a “team member”, or renders everyone uncertain about who their boss is. Or maybe you’ve only worked at more structured, hierarchal organizations: ones with managers, a complicated organizational chart, ranks, and hierarchy. You probably know the distinction even if you’ve only been on one side of it.
Does structurelessness eliminate competition, abuses of power, and status hierarchies, or does it just drive them underground? To break down the question, let’s look at a few ideas about structurelessness, some of which are from Nyman’s talk and others are just things I keep hearing from people in the free/open-source software and culture world.
Authenticity : people are happier when they are able to be who they really are at work.
: people are happier when they are able to be who they really are at work. Informality : people are happier when they’re able to be informal at work, such as by wearing T-shirts with holes in them or saying “fuck” a lot.
: people are happier when they’re able to be informal at work, such as by wearing T-shirts with holes in them or saying “fuck” a lot. Conduct : formal mechanisms for guiding behavior aren’t that important, since in a healthy organization, people will just be nice to each other.
: formal mechanisms for guiding behavior aren’t that important, since in a healthy organization, people will just be nice to each other. Leadership : people whose job it is to manage aren’t necessary when people can just manage each other.
: people whose job it is to manage aren’t necessary when people can just manage each other. Accountability: formal goals and performance metrics just get in the way of getting a job done.
As a nod to structurelessness, I’ll take on these points in no particular order.
Hierarchies
First, why would a feminist argue in favor of structure when structure so often means hierarchy, and hierarchy is deeply entwined with oppression?
It’s true, I’m not a big fan of hierarchies. Maybe they can be used for good, but I haven’t seen a lot of that in reality. At the same time, though, it’s also a fallacy to think that simply declaring we’re not going to have hierarchies makes hierarchy go away. Jo Freeman wrote about this in the ’70s, in her essay “The Tyranny of Structurelessness”. Based on her experiences in feminist organizing, she found that groups of people (like feminist consciousness-raising groups) that declared they weren’t going to have a formal structure devolved into unofficial hierarchies, which were much harder to challenge and hold accountable.
Authenticity
Do you trust people to see you for who you are? I mean the question in two senses: (1) Do you believe that it’s even possible for you to communicate who you are to others without a great deal of effort, and (2) Do you trust others, as a general rule, enough to assume they will behave cordially towards you once they know who you are?
In his talk, Nyman talked about how in typical companies, many relationships are inauthentic. That is, people don’t act towards each other in the ways that they would in the absence of a rigid, externally imposed set of relationships. At least stereotypically, people don’t behave towards their bosses, or to their subordinates at work, the way they behave with their friends. He argued that people are happier when they can present themselves authentically and have authentic relationships, and that a less structured organization fosters such relationships.
If you are queer, or trans, or have mental illness, or all of the above, you probably know something about the perils of presenting yourself as you really are. Dan-Savage-style coming-out narratives notwithstanding, many of us who are placed socially in these ways find that we cannot be completely authentic in all aspects of our lives. I definitely want to express myself, but I have to balance that against other needs, like being able to make a living in a capitalist society. If I dressed the way I’d prefer to, if I talked more openly about the times when my depression and anxiety prevent me from getting work done, I might find it harder to fit in, to stay attached to a professional group, to stay employed, than I already do. So instead, I wear T-shirts and cargo pants, and I let people think (at times) that I’m merely disorganized or not that committed to what I do.
In my opinion, it takes a lot of privilege to assume either that greater authenticity leads to greater happiness, or that the only reason you would leave who you are at the door when you step or roll into work is the formal, organizational structure of the place where you work.
Moreover, being your authentic self in front of somebody else requires trust, and outsiders have very good reasons not to trust insiders. For me, part of what I mean when I say I lack a certain amount of privilege is that every day at work, I make calculations about who is safe to interact with and who is unsafe. Of course, there are degrees of safety and it’s not a binary choice. For example, every time someone uses “crazy” as a pejorative — suggesting that what I am is also a label to insult an idea with — that decrements their “safety” score inside my head. Almost everyone uses this word in this way — even I still do, given that I’m not free of internalized ableism — which is why I say it’s not a binary property. If my company became totally flat and got rid of all structures, processes, and goals, I wouldn’t be able to have authentic interactions just because of that. I’d still have this calculus of safety I have to apply all the time.
And what about when who you are makes people uncomfortable? If you’re queer, trans, kinky, poly, disabled, you probably either have spent a lot of time trying to blend in, or you have stories about when people become uncomfortable upon realizing some aspect of who you really are, and having to comfort them. (Or both!)
To take a completely different example, do you really want to encourage people to be “who they really are” when who they really are is a harassing creep? Maybe having to be a bit inauthentic at work serves an equalizing function, like a uniform. If you know what the rules are, it’s more likely that you’ll be able to follow them and less likely that you’ll be cast out for breaking a rule you didn’t know existed.
Informality and isolation
Usually, no one tells little kids on the playground who to play with and who not to play with. But even very little kids start forming hierarchies of exclusion when left to their own devices. Vivian Paley’s work, as documented in her book “You Can’t Say ‘You Can’t Play'” showed both that in groups of kindergarteners, leaders emerged who got to decide which kids got to play and which kids got excluded; and that a teacher could change that by imposing the simple rule that “you can’t say ‘you can’t play'”. And increasing the amount of inclusion in the group made the kids in it feel more accepted, on the whole. An advocate of structureless organizations might argue that Ms. Paley should have just let her pupils be their authentic selves and form their own social alliances. But at least according to Paley’s account, imposing the rules made the kids happier — contrary to Nyman’s claims about structurelessness and happiness.
Now, perhaps kids are just different from adults. I also don’t think it’s necessarily human nature to form hierarchies in the absence of formal rules. Fundamentally, I don’t care whether that’s because of nature or nurture. No matter what combination of nature or nurture it is, as human beings we have the latitude to choose what we will value. Personally, I value inclusion, and while I can’t prove logically to somebody else that this is something they should value too, I think there’s plenty of evidence that inclusion and the overall happiness of people in a group correlate. And, as Paley’s kindergarteners show, inclusion does not necessarily naturally arise from structurelessness.
Mentorship
Isolation is closely related to an insidious way in which people who believe themselves to be good can perpetuate oppression: the withholding of mentorship. In another context, that of law schools, Pamela J. Smith wrote about how even when Black women gain admission as law students, informal social barriers to the development of mentoring relationships with faculty members are a form of discrimination that is difficult to challenge (“Failing to Mentor Sapphire: The Actionability of Blocking Black Women from Initiating Mentoring Relationships”, reprinted in Critical Race Feminism, Adrien Katherine Wing ed.)
Informal mentoring between apparent peers is mediated by social power dynamics as well. In her book Leaving The Ivory Tower, Barbara Lovitts wrote about the importance of tacit knowledge in determining whether Ph.D students succeed or fail. Many graduate programs are quite structureless in a day-to-day way; despite having a clear hierarchy (tenured faculty, tenure-track faculty, non-tenured instructors, postdocs, grad students), new graduate students must navigate a system with very little formal structure in order to learn the unwritten rules of the game. The difference between being a popular person and an unpopular one in grad student social groups can be the difference between academic success and failure. Would fewer grad students drop out because of isolation if there was a more formal process for initiating beginning students?
In my personal experience as someone who, earlier in my life, didn’t resemble most of my colleagues, lack of mentorship is a major structural barrier to success both as an academic computer scientist and as a software engineer. And I think lack of structure translates into lack of mechanisms to encourage formal mentoring relationships — something that has a disparate impact on women, people in gender, romantic, and sexual minorities, people of color, disabled people, and everybody else who may not feel comfortable approaching someone of higher social status to ask for support.
Likewise, people with disabilities that affect how they process tacit social cues — such as people who are on the autism spectrum — may have a much easier time contributing harmoniously when the rules are made clear than when they must access all resources by guessing at a system of unwritten rules. Since ability to write software isn’t contingent on being neurotypical, barriers to entry for neurodiverse people mean excluding a portion of the talent pool for no particular reason.
When a marginalized person joins an organization, in the absence of structure, isolation and lack of mentorship can combine to render them powerless and unable to ask for — or perhaps even express — what it is that they need. In such a situation, it’s easy for that person to then be labeled “unproductive” by the very community that has, without even knowing it, made it impossible for that person to learn and grow. Formal structures are one way to level the playing field and make sure that everyone has the same opportunities, regardless of whether senior folks in the organization find them initially easy to relate to or identity with.
Codes of conduct and diversity expectations
I don’t know how a structureless organization would maintain or enforce a code of conduct. Maybe in such an organization, everyone just likes each other so much that it’s not necessary to have one. But codes of conduct aren’t needed because people aren’t nice or because they don’t like each other; they’re needed because different people have different expectations about what kind of behavior is appropriate in which contexts. It doesn’t seem to me like getting rid of formal structure solves that problem.
Codes of conduct are just one way to help a group become or remain diverse, by ensuring a safe environment for everyone and providing mechanisms to address breaches of that safety. Without formal structures, how does a company make and keep itself diverse? While the practice of affirmative action is often inaccurately derided as “quotas”, a few tech companies do go as far as to institute numerical quotas for hiring women. I would suspect that such a practice, and even more flexible affirmative action concepts, would conflict with informality. But how does a structureless organization avoid devolving simply into hiring friends?
In general, how do you make sure that an organization without structure doesn’t default to recreating the same power hierarchies that exist in its underlying society? I asked this question during the question and answer period at Nyman’s talk, but it got a little lost in translation. Nyman’s answer amounted to “we won’t hire racist or sexist people”. But that’s not good enough. Everyone raised in a white supremacist society has unconscious racism, and everyone raised in a patriarchy has unconscious sexism. It’s obviously inadequate to dismiss the possibility of recreating systematic oppression “because most of us are good ethical people”. Nyman himself admitted that Github is getting less diverse.
Leadership
Unless it literally consists of a collection of people, each working alone — in which case you’d wonder what makes it an organization — in an organization without people formally titled “manager”, people will have to step up to manage each other at least sometimes and to some extent. How do you take initiative and assert power — in the absence of a structure that makes that power legitimate — when you’re already culturally oppressed and disempowered? If nobody is a manager, who will be most successful in, say, asking that their team institute a “run regression tests before committing code” policy: a tall, white, able-bodied, cis man; a short, Latina, disabled, cis woman; or a fat, Black, genderqueer person? When is it possible for people to really treat each other as equals, and when do they infer hierarchies when not given a formal hierarchy to look to?
What about when you’ve been punished in the past for trying to regulate others’ behavior instead of “knowing your place”? If you’re perceived as female, knowing that girls who assert power get called “bossy” and women who assert power get called worse, but also knowing that your leadership skills will eventually be called into question if you don’t assert power, structurelessness starts looking like a double bind.
Accountability
Without goals and performance metrics, how do people get held accountable? I don’t just mean accountability for delivering on the promises one makes as part of doing one’s job. How about, for example, not finding a subtle way to fire somebody for discriminatory reasons and make it look like it was performance-related?
In his talk, Nyman acknowledged that more “formal” processes are necessary for handling harassment: he acknowledged, “you can’t just go to anyone” if you’ve been harassed. But what else, falling short of “harassment” as such, might require a formal process?
Summing up
I’ve been pretty negative about structureless organizations. But there might be positives. Are they more open than more traditional companies to people with less formal education, or whose biographies are otherwise non-traditional? (I don’t know.) Do they make it harder for entrenched managers to retain power by virtue of seniority? (Again, I don’t know.)
To be fair, there isn’t just one set of processes that could arise when an organization sets aside formal structure. The majority could end up ruling most of the time. Or an organization could make decisions based on consensus. Or it could be cloyingly called a “do-ocracy”, in which decisions get made by whoever has enough time and energy to implement the consequences of the decision. I still think there’s the risk of majority rule, though, and the problem with that is that decisions about basic rights, respect and dignity can’t and shouldn’t be made by a majority. Where do basic rights, respect, and dignity come into this discussion? The number of occupations that are at least potentially a route into the middle class, at least theoretically available to anyone who has acquired a certain skill set that is possible for anyone dedicated to acquire, is steadily decreasing. If you’re in a social class such that you need money to live, learning how to program isn’t a bad way to go. But that will only continue to be true if tech company jobs are open to any qualified candidate, without the hidden price tag of humiliation based on one’s race, gender, disabilities, or sexual orientation.
Majority rule is, then, a problem because majorities often opt to keep minorities in their place for the benefit of the majority. And yes, a group made up of entirely people who see themselves as good and ethical can and will deny basic rights, respect and dignity to people based on gender, sexuality, ability, race, class, and other axes of oppression. The world might be different someday, but we can’t get there by pretending we are there.
Your thoughts, readers?
Thanks to Geek Feminism bloggers Sumana, Mary and Jessamyn for their comments.A leader has emerged for Auburn's No. 3 running back spot, even if it's not officially listed on the depth chart.
Kamryn Pettway and Kerryon Johnson are Auburn's clear top two options in the backfield, and are actually listed as co-starters, but the next man up is a different style of runner.
"Kam Martin will probably be the next guy that is in," Auburn coach Gus Malzahn said Tuesday. "Devan Barrett's done a good job. Malik Willis has good job. We've got confidence in all those guys.... The good thing is we got depth at that position. That's always a positive."
Martin, a sophomore, had 44 carries for 320 yards and three touchdowns with two receptions for 52 yards last season.
Redshirt-freshman Malik Miller and freshman Devan Barrett also contended for the role and Malzahn said they both did well this preseason.
Barrett is also expected to have a role on special teams and is listed as the third kickoff returner.
"Devan's a guy that we feel like is talented, he just needs more experience," Malzahn said. "When he gets in there, he could be very specific on some of the things he does."
AL.com will update this story.Athlone SPCA has appealed for information following the discovery of a dog which was shot in the head in the town.
Athlone SPCA has appealed for information following the discovery of a dog which was shot in the head in the town.
The animal charity posted a harrowing photo of the cruelly slain dog on its Facebook page.
The husky-type dog is believed to have been shot four times with a shotgun, and it was left - with part of its head blown off - in a public place.
The organisation said it is working with the gardai to find the perpetrators of the killing.
"We were alerted today to a dead dog at the entrance at Glynwood Bog, Athlone a popular place for families to walk t[their] dog on a good Sunday," the charity statement said.
"The dog was a young husky-type breed and had been shot with four cartridges from a shot gun."
"Half his head was blown off. The dog thought he was going for a walk and this was his fate."
"He could have been taken to the pound or animal shelter or even sent to a vet to be humanely [put to sleep] but no he had his head blown off for all dog lovers to pass by."
"If anyone knows this dog please contact the ASPCA at 087 9925052 or contact the Athlone garda at 0906498550."
"All info will be on a strictly confidential basis. we apologise in advance for this picture but we want to catch the person responsible. this part of our work is very hard to take."
Online EditorsThis Keto chocolate mousse recipe is basically a chocolate-flavoured fat bomb. Super-easy to make, with only a few simple ingredients required.
You can eat it on its own as a really decadent dessert, or use as a filling for cakes.
It is very rich and filling, so you only need to a little bit to satisfy even very strong chocolate cravings!
Sugar-free cocoa powder – safe brands
I use Green & Black unsweetened cocoa powder in my recipes – I think it’s the best option if you are in the UK.
In the USA, good brands for high-quality unsweetened cocoa powder are Valrhona and Ghirardelli.
If you use a different brand, just make sure it doesn’t have any added sugar.
Granulated sweetener work better than drops
I recommend using a granulated sweetener, like Truvia or Swerve.
Liquid sweetener drops can work too, but some people reported problems with texture and bitter taste when using drops.
Keto Chocolate Mousse Super-rich and creamy keto dessert Prep time: 5 min | Yield: 3 servings Ingredients Unsalted butter – 60g |
Jim Crow, 1946 Jim Crow demonstration, 1947 Catholic school integration, 1947 Golden Eagle steamboat, 1947 Smoky plant, 1947 Dewey doesn't defeat Truman, 1948 Fairground Park mob, 1949 Trains in 1949 Mill Creek, 1948 Mill Creek Valley area housing, 1952 St. Malachy in Mill Creek Valley, 1959 Pruitt-Igoe housing project goes up, 1954 Chuck Berry, 1950s Red Schoendienst, 1953 Beating the heat in 1954 Muny performers, 1954 Grand Center, 1954 Integration of schools, 1955 Blanchette Bridge, 1957 Train commute, 1957 Stan Musial, 1958 Ralston Purina fire, 1962 Ralston Purina fire, 1962 Gaslight Square, 1961 Gaslight Square, 1961 Gaslight Square, 1961 Gaslight Square fire, 1962 Gaslight Square, 1965 Civil Rights protest, 1963 East St. Louis bank protests, 1963 Protestors, 1963 Jefferson Bank protests, 1963 Jefferson Bank protests, 1963 Stan Musial retires, 1963 World Series 1964 JFK mourned in St. Louis August A. Busch Jr. and son toast a beer, 1964 Cleared riverfront, 1961 A lot going on in St. Louis, 1964 Gateway Arch construction, 1964 St. Louis' Chinatown Searchlight city, 1965 Arch construction Gateway Arch comes together Busch Stadium under construction in 1965 Gateway Arch construction Gateway Arch Construction 1965 Gateway Arch construction Busch Stadium, 1966 Home plate from old Busch Stadium is flown to Busch II in 1966 Peering down from the Arch The Beatles at Busch, 1966 TWA air hostesses, 1967 Enjoying popcorn, 1968 Supreme Court ruling in housing discrimination case, 1968 Downtown in 1969 Downtown with USS Inaugural, 1970 USS Inagural, 1987 USS Inaugural, 2012 Pruitt-Igoe housing project comes down, 1972 The St. Louis Arena, 1980 St. Louis mob wars, 1980 St. Louis mob wars, 1980 Buck and Caray, 1982 Deseg program, 1983 Ozzie flips, 1985 Wickenheiser "Monday Night Miracle" goal in 1986 Ted Drewes, 1988 Chuck Berry honored, 1989 Satellite view of St. Louis, 1991 Flood of 1993 flood satellite image The Great Flood of 1993 The Great Flood of 1993 The Great Flood of 1993 Ted Drewes, 1993 Coral Court Motel, 1995 John Goodman, 1997 1998 Brett Hull 1998 Brett Hull Super Bowl stop The St. Louis Arena, 1999 Pope visits, 1999 Pope visits, 1999 Pope visits, 1999 A new millennium, 1999 TWA, 2001 Praxair, 2005 Anheuser-Busch 2008 World Series Game 7 win, 2011 Union Station, 2012 'Little Bosnia,' 2013 Jon Hamm, sports fan Lighting the Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge Stan Musial Veteran's Memorial bridge illuminatedSupplied by team’s PR.
15 NOVEMBER, 2017 – Building on the success of an exciting 2017 season in the F4 British Championship certified by FIA – powered by Ford EcoBoost, Sharp Motorsport are continuing to invest in the future with the engagement of Pure Pace Performance Management on a full-time basis.
Pure Pace Performance Management is headed by multiple championship winning, S grade ARDS race instructor Stuart Jones.
“I am really excited to be working with Sharp Motorsport,” he said. “Their presentation and attention to detail is outstanding and presents a fantastic platform for advertising and sponsorship partners.
“Pure Pace Performance management will be working on all aspects of team performance including organisational, personnel, technical, sporting and the all-important commercial aspects.
“The aspect close to my heart though is driver development. I am fortunate to have had a lot of success developing race drivers and it has been great to do a job that I am passionate about.
“Driver development and particularly young driver development is multi-faceted. It is critical to treat each driver as an individual and design a plan that works for them. Whether it’s on track in a coaching car, detailed simulator work, class room theory, mental approach or presentation skills, each driver will present with strengths and weaknesses that will need honing.”
Said Sharp Motorsport team principal Joe Sharp: “It’s really exciting to have Stuart on board for 2018. It means we can really start to push as a team now! We had a busy year learning in 2017 which was great and has put us in a good position to build now and really teach the drivers everything they need to progress their careers.
“We are very keen to speak to new drivers who are either looking to improve their F4 performance or are ready to take the critical step into the exciting world of FIA F4, and we are already talking to potential drivers for the 2018 season.”By Cathy H. Burroughs, International Travel Writer & Adventure Blogger
Just over the Georgia border and east of the city of Jacksonville, Florida is the 22 miles of wide, white uncrowded Jax Beach – a mere five plus hour drive from Atlanta or a reasonably priced one-hour trip on Southwest Airlines. It was here in the height of the 20’s that the very rich, the very famous, and just about everyone else flocked to the “World’s Finest Beach.”
Gracing the dunes practically right on the beach is the imposing one of a kind historic oceanfront Casa Marina Hotel – a time capsule, providing direct access to the exoticism and glamour of this bygone era. It doesn’t take much to imagine the likes of Jean Harlow, Charlie Chaplin and even Al Capone passing through the corridors or dancing the night away to the Charleston, Black Bottom or Fox Trot in the gleaming hallways and salons of this Spanish hacienda style hotel listed on the prestigious National Register of Historic Places.
Nearly a century later, the last remaining building standing from the prohibition era has been lovingly restored. Each room has fixtures and decorative touches that reflect the hotel’s different time periods with 23 (21 have ocean views) uniquely designed boudoir deluxe rooms and parlor suites. Suitable for a movie set, the dramatic and evocative grand ballroom or salon with alfresco courtyard festooned with paper lanterns under the starry night sky, against the backdrop of the crashing sea couldn’t be more perfect for the more than 150 weddings and special events that take place each year.
Our first night there we enjoyed crab cakes and the fruit plate in the penthouse restaurant/lounge watching the fireworks and our accommodating DJ made the switch from fusion to Motown without missing a beat. Sunday’s multi-coursed eight seating buffet with mimosas just named “Jax’s best” by Void Magazine, was understandably packed. With primo prime rib (divine!), paella, fried green tomatoes, a decorative and photogenic epic Red Snapper (8-10 are served each weekend) and more delectable food choices than anyone could possibly eat in one sitting.
The previous night we took the short walk to the hotel’s sister sports bar and eatery with surround flat screens Zeta’s. The menu included scrumptious flat bread pizzas (we couldn’t resist and took one to go!), outstanding Greek salads, and much more with twenty home brewed and specialty beers, lagers and ryes with names like Ruby Beach and Power to the Porter. That night the Jacksonville Jaguars won, so life was good.
A short 12 minute walk takes you to the Beaches Museum & History Park for a fascinating historic display with park and replica houses and locomotive in and around its strikingly contemporary building. During the summer months a free trolley will carry you from place to place with surfing, hiking and biking all a short distance away.
On Sunday morning we dashed the 45 minutes back to enchanting Amelia Island for an exceptionally fun and adventurous Craig Cat catamaran group tour, two to a boat – essentially like a go cart on the water. For 3 1/2 hours we zipped, doughnuted and joy rode the wave caps, crossing the lines to both Georgia and Florida twice, navigating Egan’s Creek, past Fort Clinch and on to Cumberland Island. Here on the island where JFK Jr. married are 150 wild ponies, wild turkeys, aardvarks and the ruins of the Carnegie castle. On our last day we went over one or two of the many bridges that make Jacksonville “the city of bridges,” making the 30 minute ride to the surprisingly progressivedowntown and spectacular not to miss Museum of Contemporary Art.
Speaking of not to miss: the Casa Marina Hotel is still the place to stay on the beach and has witnessed it all – when everything and anything seemed and was possible. We’re happy to report this remarkable “Grande Dame” of the beach is still loaded with history, still stunning and still going strong!
Casa Marina Hotel and Restaurant
691 First Street North
Jacksonville Beach, FL 32250
904-270-0025
www.casamarinahotel.com
Big thank you to the fabulous Leigh Cort of Leigh Cort Publicity, Christine Hoffman of the Beaches History Museum, the Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art, Sunny and the team at Zeta Brewing, Allen Elefterion, Rob and Bobby at Backwater Adventure Amelia Island (BackwaterAdventureAmelia@gmail.com), and last but not least, the wonderful Grace Palafox and the wonderful and welcoming Casa Marina Family.
Cathy H. Burroughs is a noted international travel writer who is published widely.Man Killed in Officer-Involved Shooting at Buffalo River Identified Copyright 2019 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Location of Spring Creek Campground within Buffalo National River. [ + - ] Copyright 2019 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
HARRISON, Ark. - The man killed in an officer-involved shooting last week has been identified, and additional details relating to the investigation have been released.
Sunday, August 20, around 1:30 a.m., two National Park Service (NPS) law enforcement rangers were conducting a routine patrol of the Spring Creek Campground, located in the Lower District of Buffalo National River.
An investigation has preliminarily revealed that as the rangers entered the campground, they were immediately confronted by a white male, later identified as Jonathan Bolger, 34, of Branson, Missouri.
The rangers reportedly identified themselves as law enforcement officers and illuminated Bolger with flashlights. The rangers said Bolger was pointing an object directly at them, which they believed was a semi-automatic handgun.
The rangers said they ordered Bolger to drop the handgun and he refused. He reportedly continued verbally challenging them and was then shot by one of the rangers. The rangers said they provided immediate lifesaving efforts to Bolger, but they were unable to revive him. He was pronounced dead by Regional Medical Center ambulance personnel when they arrived.
The preliminary investigation has revealed that Bolger was armed with a Umarex XCP air pistol, which resembles a two-toned semi-automatic handgun, and does not have an orange tip to identify it as an air pistol.
Copyright 2019 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. This stock photo depicts a Umarex XCP air pistol, similar to the one involved in the incident.
Copyright 2019 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. This stock photo depicts a Umarex XCP air pistol, similar to the one involved in the incident.
The investigation is being conducted by the NPS Officer Involved Shooting Investigation Team, a specially trained unit of special agents from around the country. The Arkansas State Police Criminal Investigative Division and Searcy County Sheriff’s Department provided substantial investigative support at the scene of the incident, and are actively assisting the NPS in the investigation.
Both involved rangers were placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation, as is the normal protocol of the NPS. Also in accordance with NPS procedures, once the investigation is complete, the case will be presented to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Searcy County Prosecutor for review.HOUSTON - Police said Friday that they have captured the man wanted in connection with the beating and decapitation of the 10-year owner of an auto-parts shop Thursday in southeast Houston.
Officers were called around 6 p.m. to Mykawa Auto Parts in the 9100 block of Mykawa Road.
Houston Police Department Homicide detectives found the body of Enayatolah "Andy" Khorsand, 58, beaten and decapitated. According to detectives, the crime was caught on cameras from inside the shop and shows images of the suspected killer.
A friend found the body.
“I see the body laying down. A lot of blood. I was in shock you know. I was shaking. I've known him for like eight years,” said a friend.
A friend of Khorsand who doesn't want to give his name, found him dead inside Mykawa Auto Parts Thursday night. He said the killer used a bat and a machete.
“When I opened the door, I seen him like laying down and no fingers and no head. I said, 'Someone killed my friend.'”
Raymond Jackson, 62, is charged with murder in connection with the death.
“He was very gentle guy, he comes and just sweep the floor and pick up the little trash,” said the friend. “Andy paid to him some money for for the little work that he did, but we never expected this. Never.”
People who visited the shop Friday morning said Khorsand was very generous, he was loved by everyone, and hearing the details of his death was unbelievable.
"He would help anybody, if you were sick or something, Andy would go in his pocket and give it to you. I just don't understand who would want to do this," the victim's friend said.
The woman said she has known Khorsand for 20 years. Khorsand was a husband and father of two boys, 13- and 17-years-old.
Others who knew him said he would help no matter what.
"If they needed a car, he would help them out. Even if you just had $800, he made sure you would have a car. And when I heard that, all I thought about was him," Khorsand's friend, Rod Shaw said.
Many of Khorsand's friends said they don't understand how anyone could do this.
"(He had) no issues with nobody, everybody loved Andy, not just liked Andy. Everybody loved Andy. He always made you laugh," one of Khorsand's friends said.
Police are working to find a motive for Khorsand's death.
“I see that blood inside. I see and I don't know how to handle it,” said family friend Connie Castillo.
“He always said that we have to forgive and forget. I dont' know how we're going to forgive him and forget what that man did to him. I don't know how,” said Castillo. “My brother, my friend. He's not coming back. He's not going to come back but we'll be able to save the life of somebody else.”
Police arrested Jackson at his mother's home on Groton near Buffum in Sunnyside Friday afternoon. His longtime neighbor said he was nice, but appeared to have mental issues.
“He's just a good kid. If I wanted something did, I'd call him over here and he'd come over and do it. He's a good fella,” said Rubie Byrd.
Anyone with information about the crime is asked to call the HPD Homicide Division at 713-308-3600, or Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS.
2016 Click2Houston/KPRC2Abstract
There is ongoing debate about how and why the menstrual cycle affects women’s attraction to men. According to the dual sexuality hypothesis, women form pair-bond relationships with men who provide care but also obtain genetic benefits by biasing mating effort towards men with high-fitness genes during the fertile phase. By contrast, the commitment hypothesis proposes that attachment bonds with primary partners function to strengthen pair-bond relationships by enhancing in-pair attraction at the fertile phase, rather than extrapair attraction. We tested these hypotheses by measuring women’s daily sexual and emotional attraction towards men over the whole menstrual cycle. We employed 1) a urinary luteinizing hormone test to determine the day of ovulation, 2) a 5-part classification of menstrual cycle that identifies a distinct peri-ovulatory phase, and 3) individualized phase identification for each participant. There was a mid-cycle rise in extrapair sexual desire. Women gave and received more care from partners during the menstrual than the mid-cycle phases. Partner’s sexual attractiveness and mutual commitment did not moderate these findings. The results do not support either the dual sexuality or commitment hypotheses, and imply that female self-reported sexual desire is not strictly dependent on cyclic hormonal changes. Our results are more consistent with a recently proposed `spandrel’ hypothesis, positing cycle phase effects as a nonfunctional by-product of raised estradiol. Additionally, we found that, with the date of ovulation estimated by luteinizing hormone tests, 45% of ovulations were misclassified by the backward counting method, which urges caution in interpreting results based on counting methods.
INTRODUCTION
There has been debate about the extent to which women’s attraction to in-pair and extrapair partners fluctuates over the menstrual cycle. According to the “dual sexuality” hypothesis (reviewed in Thornhill and Gangestad 2008), women pursue a dual sexuality strategy, favoring genetic quality in males with whom they mate whilst forming long-term pair-bonds with males that provide care and/or resources. Evidence is provided by studies showing that during periods of peak fertility and when seeking short-term partners, women’s sexual preferences shift to favor men who possess phenotypic indicators of “good genes”, such as low fluctuating asymmetry (signaling developmental stability) and more masculine traits such as androgen-mediated olfactory cues (Havlicek et al. 2005; Thornhill et al. 2013) and dimorphic facial shape (Penton-Voak et al. 1999, but see Gildersleeve et al. 2014a). Such testosterone-dependent traits in sexually selected species are thought to be costly and therefore honest signals of condition because high circulating levels of testosterone compromise immune responses (Folstad and Karter 1992). Partnered women whose mates are of lower genetic quality are proposed to be especially likely to be attracted to extrapair mates during peak fertility (Gangestad et al. 2005). Supporting this, women with less sexually desirable partners experience greater sexual attraction to other men when fertile and, in some cases, a decrease in attraction to their primary partner (Larson et al. 2012). According to the dual sexuality argument, the extent to which the primary partner lacks phenotypic indicators of gene quality moderates the strength of women’s extrapair sexual desire.
An alternative hypothesis—the “commitment” hypothesis—implicates pair-bond attachment as a key moderator. Eastwick and Finkel (2012) argued that, because the evolution of the ovulatory shift adaptation is likely to have preceded the reproductive pair bonds, a new adaptation has occurred to counter this cycle shift effect, thereby supporting intersexual cooperation and reducing antagonistic coevolution. This adaptation depends upon the attachment bond which cements long-term commitment and redirects women’s sexual desire at high fertility toward the partner, rather than to extrapair men. In support of this, they found that women who were strongly bonded to their partner experienced more intimate physical contact with them on high fertility days. In weakly-bonded women however, peak fertility was associated with decreased intimate contact with their partner. These 2 hypotheses make specific predictions regarding the interaction between their favored moderator (sexual attractiveness or relationship commitment) and cycle phase on women’s evaluations of their long-term relationships and desire for in-pair and extrapair men.
Previous studies have not produced consistent findings. Congruent with the commitment hypothesis, Pillsworth et al. (2004) found that extrapair desire during the fertile phase was reduced by relationship satisfaction. However, other findings have failed to find support. Although Pillsworth et al. (2004) found in-pair sexual desire was higher on more fertile days, this effect was not moderated by relationship commitment, satisfaction or length. Similarly, Larson et al. (2012) found no evidence that relationship quality or length moderated fertility-related changes in in-pair or extrapair attraction. Larson et al. (2013) included a measure of investment attractiveness, operationalized as high financial status and desirability as a long-term partner. To the extent that women’s positive evaluation of these qualities might be associated with greater commitment to the relationship, the commitment hypothesis would predict an interaction between partner’s investment attractiveness and women’s ratings of relationship quality at high versus low fertility. However (and contrary to prediction) the only (marginally) significant interaction indicated that women partnered with men of high investment attractiveness reported decreased (rather than increased) closeness at high compared to low fertility. Pillsworth and Haselton (2006) found no interaction between investment attractiveness and phase on either in-pair or extrapair sexual desire. The bulk of empirical research to date has been inspired by and has preferentially supported the dual sexuality hypothesis. In the most detailed analysis of relationship variables to date (Larson et al. 2013), phase interacted with ratings of partner’s sexual attractiveness for 3 measures of relationship quality (satisfaction, closeness, faults, and virtues). Women partnered by more sexually attractive men felt closer to them and more satisfied with the relationship during the fertile phase than the nonfertile phase. Women with less attractive partners experienced decreased closeness and found more faults with them at high versus low fertility.
Two recent meta-analyses of over 50 studies, which examined potential cycle shift effects on purported “good gene” traits, reached different conclusions about the strength of support for the cycle shift effect (Gildersleeve et al. 2014a; Wood et al. 2014). The fierce debate about this inconsistency (Harris et al. 2014; Wood and Carden 2014; Gildersleeve et al. 2014b) centered upon 3 key methodological issues which we address in the design of the present study. One important issue concerns the estimation of the fertile period. There is wide variation in the placement and size of the fertile window used by researchers. The majority of studies base their estimate on the reported date of previous menses or the expected or actual date of next menses, assuming a 28-day cycle (despite evidence of wide variability in cycle length, Münster et al. 1992). For instance, in studies reviewed in Gildersleeve et al.’s (2014a) meta-analyses (data collection ended in December 2012), around 92% of studies published before 2010 and 83% of studies published after 2010 used counting methods (see Gonzales and Ferrer 2016). Ovulation is estimated using either a forward counting (from the first day of last menses) or backward counting (from first day of the next menses) methods, with the latter method proving the more valid estimate (Gangestad et al. 2016). The number of days included in the fertile period has ranged from 5 to 11 (Harris et al. 2013). Other researchers use a continuous measure of the probability of pregnancy from a single act of intercourse on the day of data collection (calculated by Wilcox et al. 2001). Importantly, these methods are not very accurate in assessing whether or when ovulation occurred. The most precise procedure to identify the ovulation might be transvaginal ultrasonography (e.g., see Cobey et al. 2013). However, it is both invasive and costly. Since the menstrual cycle is under the control of 4 primary hormones—follicle-stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone (LH), estrogen, and progesterone—it is possible to estimate the timing of ovulation by measuring hormonal fluctuations. These methods include measurement of daily hormone levels (e.g., Direito et al. 2013), assessment of weekly hormone levels (e.g., Hahn et al. 2016), and the combination of counting and hormonal methods (e.g., Roney et al. 2011). Another less costly method is the measurement of LH alone. A sudden surge in LH triggers ovulation; therefore, ovulation can be conveniently estimated by the use of commercial instant tests which assay LH surge (e.g., see Gangestad et al. 2005; Pillsworth and Haselton 2006; Larson et al. 2013). These hormonal methods are naturally sensitive to individual differences in the way hormones fluctuate and how it affects women’s cycles. Regarding LH, a study showed that in 75% of cycles ovulation occurred around the first LH surge (Direito et al. 2013), implying that the accuracy of LH tests can be improved by administering tests daily until the initiation of an LH surge (Gangestad et al. 2016). In our study, we administered LH tests daily during individually tailored test windows. We use it in the current study to establish a distinct 6-day peri-ovulatory phase during which conception is most likely (Wilcox et al. 1995).
A second concern is with study design. Some studies employ a between-groups design comparing fertile and nonfertile groups on a dependent variable of interest. A repeated measures design is preferable because it reduces the noise associated with between-group analysis and dramatically reduces the sample size required to achieve adequate power (Gangestad et al. 2016). However, most studies to date have employed a between subjects design (e.g., 62% of reviewed studies in Gildersleeve et al. 2014a’s meta-analysis study, see Gonzales and Ferrer 2016) and taken only 2 measures, one each from fertile and nonfertile phases. Measurement reliability is increased by aggregation, so we employed a daily diary method to calculate ratings across an entire menstrual cycle. This also allowed us to more accurately record the date of menses onset rather than relying on the recollection of participants, around 20% of which is erroneous by at least 3 days (Wegienka and Baird 2005).
A third issue is the importance of tailoring phases to the individual cycle of each participant. Rather than assuming a 28-day cycle, we individualized each participant’s cycle by calculating 5 phases (menstrual, follicular, peri-ovulatory, luteal, premenstrual). This also permits a more sensitive analysis by identifying a peri-ovulatory phase (when fertilization is possible), distinct from the broader follicular phase which is sometimes used as a proxy for the fertile window. We also distinguish the premenstrual phase from the broader luteal phase in light of the fact that up to 80% of women experience negative premenstrual psychological changes, as well as a significant decrease in sexual desire (Yang et al. 2010).
The primary aim of the study was to examine cycle phase effects, specifically whether they are moderated by partner physical attractiveness (PA) or by mutual commitment (MC). A secondary aim was to address the methodological debate about the potential impact of differences in estimating fertile and nonfertile phases. We reanalyzed our data following the description given by Haselton and Gangestad (2006) in their report of how partner’s sexual-versus-investment attractiveness (SIA) moderated cycle phase effects on extrapair attraction. Their analysis employed a within-participant 2-phase classification scheme. We compared these results with those obtained using our 5-phase scheme individually tailored around the hormonally-estimated day of ovulation.
Recently, after the completion of our study, Havlíček et al. (2015a) proposed a “spandrel” hypothesis which asserts that the within-cycle shift in women’s mate preferences is not in itself an adaptation, but is instead a by-product of the calibration of individuals’ behavior to their levels of reproductive hormones and associated attractiveness. Although there is no uniform agreement about which hormones are specifically associated with sexual desire, evidence suggests that estradiol was positively and progesterone was negatively associated with female sexual desire (Roney and Simmons 2013; Roney and Simmons 2016). Estradiol is known to increase around ovulation and progesterone to peak at the mid-luteal phase (reviewed in Barbieri 2014). Thus, the spandrel hypothesis views the cycle shift effect as a nonfunctional by-product of raised estradiol. In the discussion section, we will mention some connections between our work and this new hypothesis.
METHODS
Participants
Participants were 40 naturally cycling heterosexual women who received a nominal payment and/or course credits for their participation. They were recruited through a participant pool in a psychology department (Durham University) or via social networking systems outside the department. Of the original sample of 40 women, 5 women were dropped from the analysis due to the use of mood-altering medication, relationship termination, illness, or irregular menses. The final sample was composed of 35 women (median age = 20.0 year old 95% CI [20.50, 24.30]) all of whom were in a committed romantic relationship (median relationship length = 1.88 years 95% CI [1.79, 4.63]). The women described themselves as European (63%), Asian (31%), North American (3%), and South American (3%). One of the women had 2 children. Having children could plausibly affect women’s sexual desire, but it was not possible to test the effect, since there was only one relevant participant in our sample. Nonetheless, exclusion of this woman’s data did not alter results and her data were retained.
Procedure
The study was approved by the Durham University Psychology Committee on Ethics. At an initial session, the study was explained to participants and they gave informed consent. They provided demographic information and completed an evaluation of their partner (see below). Participants were provided with urinary LH test sticks (Clearblue® Easy Digital Ovulation Test) and given directions on how to use the tests.
After the initial session, participants completed daily questionnaires via a dedicated website. After participants notified us via email that they had started their menses, they were emailed a link to the online questionnaire every morning. This acted as a daily reminder for participants and enabled us to send a special reminder during a LH test window (see below). The reminders and links continued until participants informed us of the onset of their next menses. Participants were not able to see their previous responses.
Participants took the LH tests during their cycle. LH surge generally occurs 36–44 h prior to ovulation (reviewed in Barbieri 2014), and ovulation is believed to occur 15 days prior to the onset of next menstruation in a standard 28-day cycle (Gangestad et al. 2016). In order to schedule the LH test window tailored to each woman, information about the date of the first day of previous menses, usual cycle length, and the length of her previous cycle (obtained at the initial session) was used in conjunction with the date of the onset of her next menses (emailed by the participant on the day she began her daily ratings) to identify the predicted date of her subsequent menses. The likely date of ovulation was then estimated using the backward counting method. Women were asked to test daily for 10 days, beginning 5 days before the estimated LH surge day.
MEASURES
Intake questionnaire
At an initial meeting, participants provided information on age, ethnicity, use of hormonal contraceptives, menstrual cycles, and length of current relationship with their primary partner. Participants rated their partner’s PA (“How physically attractive is your partner?”), level of commitment from and to their partners (“How committed is your partner to you?” and “How committed are you to your partner?”), and level of partner’s financial security (“How financially secure is your partner?”) using a visual analogue scale (0 = Not at all to 100 = Very).
Daily questionnaires
The daily questionnaire was composed of 8 items. Six items were designed to assess 6 pair-bond relationship dimensions derived from a previous factor analytic study (Shimoda 2014). These were: Obsession, “My partner always seems to be on my mind.”; Care-receiving, “I feel that my partner understand me when I have a hard time.”; Care-giving, “I am prepared to be counted on by my partner and I will always be there for and care about my partner in times of need.”; Separation distress, “I would feel despair if my partner left me.”; In-pair sexual desire, “How strong is your desire to engage in sexual activity with your partner?”; and Extrapair sexual desire, “How strong is your desire to engage in sexual activity with a person you find attractive (not your partner)?”. Participants were instructed to think about their feelings on that day and rate the applicability of the 6 statements on a 5-point scale (Disagree Strongly to Agree Strongly for emotional items and No Desire to Very Strong Desire for sexual desire items). Participants also rated their mood, “How is your mood right now?” (Worst = 0 to Best = 100). In a 10-day window during which women used the test sticks daily, they were also asked to report the result of their ovulation tests.
Menstrual phase coding
The cycle was divided into 5 phases as follows. The mean length of menstruation is 5 days (reviewed in Barbieri 2014); hence, the 5 consecutive days from the onset of menses were coded as the menstrual phase. Conception probability is highest during a 6-day interval that ends in ovulation day (Wilcox et al. 1995). Thus, the peri-ovulatory phase of peak fertility was coded as 6 successive days (from 4 days before the day of LH surge to 1 day after the day of LH surge). With these milestones established, the follicular phase was identified as the time between the end of menstruation and the start of the peri-ovulatory phase, the luteal phase as the interval between the end of the peri-ovulatory phase and 3 days prior the reported onset of the next menses, and these 3 premenstrual days as the premenstrual phase. Hence, whereas the length of the menstrual, peri-ovulatory, and premenstrual phases was common to all participants, the length of the follicular and luteal phases differed depending on each individual’s cycle.
Statistical analyses
A 2-level linear mixed model (SPSS 23 IBM) was used to analyze the daily reports of the 6 relationship measures (i.e., obsession, care-giving, care-receiving, separation distress, in-pair and extrapair sexual desire). The daily reports (level 1) nested within participants (level 2). We first examined whether the 6 relationship measures varied as a function of cycle phase (Model 1). This base model was constructed from cycle phase as a within-subjects variable with 5 time points (menstrual, follicular, peri-ovulatory, luteal, premenstrual phases). We also included an intercept for participants as a random effect. A random slope for participants was not added as it yielded convergence problems. Mood may vary systematically over the cycle for hormonal and lifestyle reasons. Thus, a main cycle effect on mood was also tested (with the intercept also allowed to vary randomly, Model 2). We also entered mood as a time-varying covariate to the base model (Model 3). We then examined whether the partner’s PA or the couples’ MC moderated the effect of phase on any of the 6 dependent measures. Women’s evaluations of their partners’ PA and MC (created by summing commitment to and from partners) were entered into the base model simultaneously as between-subjects covariates to examine interactions with cycle phase on the 6 relationship measures (Model 4). These variables were mean centered so that main effects of phase would be estimated at mean levels of partner ratings. Pairwise contrasts were conducted to compare each phase. We used a first-order autoregressive covariance structure for the repeated measurements. The estimation method was restricted maximum likelihood.
Additionally, we reanalyzed our data using SIA as a moderator in a 2-phase classification scheme. We adopted the scheme used by Haselton and Gangestad (2006) due to their clear description of the decision rules used to assign participants to fertile and nonfertile phases. To mimic their SIA variable (“sexual attractiveness” minus “long-term attractiveness” in their study), SIA was estimated by subtracting women’s ratings of their partner’s financial security from PA ratings. SIA represents the extent to which men have relatively more long-term (indicated by negative values) or short-term (indicated by positive values) partner qualities (Haselton and Gangestad 2006). We also recoded our data so that phase was a binary independent variable (fertile versus infertile). Fertile days included the estimated day of ovulation (i.e., 15 days prior to the onset of the next menses) and the 4 days preceding it. Infertile days spanned from the third day immediately following the estimated day of ovulation to 3 days prior to menstruation. There were 34 women in the analyses (one participant who took emergency contraceptives was excluded). Using the 2 phases as a repeated measures variable and SIA (mean-centered) as the covariate, we used repeated measure analysis of covariance with the 6 dependent measures being the average of each scale computed for each phase. Following interactions, tests of simple effects were conducted using directed tests (see Rice and Gaines, 1994; Haselton and Gangestad, 2006), assigning a critical value of P < 0.04 to the predicted direction and P < 0.01 to the unpredicted direction (P dir ). This analysis was repeated using our 5-phase classification.
RESULTS
Preanalyses
Participants completed an evaluation of their partner |
-commerce," which sounds like a Scott Lake flourish. Lake also came up with the name of the software Lütke was building: Shopify.
That was 2006. Soon they officially launched Shopify the product (it became the company's name later). They'd also begun to add people. The first was Daniel Weinand, a fellow German programmer and friend of Lütke's with a strong artistic sense (and whom they consider a co-founder). Their first office was a few chairs pulled around a table in the Bridgehead coffee shop on Elgin Street. For the month of October, 2006, their revenue was $8,000. By the time Lake decided to leave the company, in 2008, it had about 10 people on staff and was making more than $60,000 a month. (These numbers are Lake's recollections; Lütke refuses to divulge any figures.)
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Why did Lake leave? Because he's a classic start-up guy. "I really enjoyed the starting of it," he says from the office of his new company, Source Metrics. "By the end it was less exciting for me. It was more lawyers, accountants." Running a company requires different skills, a different mindset. "Keeping all of this stuff going starts to grate on you after a while."
There were other irritations too. If Shopify was going to grow, it needed money. It had an investor in John Phillips, formerly a Toronto corporate lawyer and executive with Clearnet Communications and Telus Mobility, who has given angel money to at least 35 companies through his Klister Credit Corp. Phillips was impressed by the "elegance" of Shopify's software and, using his simple formula of great management team + great product + market validation in the form of sales, had valued the nascent Shopify at $3 million and written a $250,000 cheque. But Shopify needed more. Lake had been game to push for a venture capital infusion, but Lütke was torn. He couldn't decide whether he wanted to be involved in a growth company (inherent with any VC investment) or what he calls a "lifestyle company" that stayed small, made great software and churned out dividends.
"I think Scott was frustrated with me," says Lütke, "based on me changing my position on this so often."
And it wasn't as though they were getting a lot of positive feedback from investors. The Canadian investment community had no appetite for the risk entailed in a software start-up. A few Silicon Valley venture capitalists, aware that Lütke was doing interesting things with Ruby on Rails, made inquiries. But when they heard what Shopify was developing, they did a collective spit-take. E-commerce? Are you nuts? Wasn't that a '90s thing? Didn't it lead to the dot-com collapse? Not interested.
"My early interactions with VCs were really, really poor," says Lütke. "People just did not understand what I was doing."
With the departure of Scott Lake, solving that issue, and any other, became entirely Tobi Lütke's problem.
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Alpha phase
Until Lake left in 2008, Lütke had focused exclusively on product development and treated the financial aspects of Shopify as a black box. He had virtually no business background. "When I took over as CEO," he says, "I had to essentially get an MBA in a couple of weeks."
Lütke has a unique way of tackling such challenges. First, he defines what he calls the "problem domain," and then he directs an intense amount of focus and brain power at it. "Any given thing," he says, "like how to do finances of a company, how to organize a company internally, and HR, these things are problem domains to me. I'll try to just understand them as I would try to understand something I need to build software for."
He read a lot. Quickly. And as part of his self-directed crash course, he decided to fly to SiliconValley. He set up meetings with venture capitalists and listened to their questions about Shopify's attrition rates and conversion rates and "funnel" (the various means by which a company attracts the attention, and secures the commitment, of new customers). He had no idea what they were talking about, but he wrote down the terms. Then he went back to the hostel he was staying in and looked everything up on Wikipedia. He would read up on how to calculate contribution margin ratio (the amount by which sales exceed variable production costs), then go to Shopify's database to get the numbers. "Oh," he'd think, "that's an interesting way to look at the business." Then, at the next meeting, he was able to answer one more question.
And through these same meetings, Lütke hoped to find Shopify's next CEO. He had no intention of handling the job permanently. As someone whose mental reward system was based on the joys of creating and refining software, he found business matters a frustrating waste of his time. "I had to spend an entire day not doing any programming," he says. "And it always felt like I didn't do anything. I was really unhappy." It took him about a year to "rewire" his brain and begin to see such meetings as useful contributions to the company's progress. "That was a rough transition."
There was also the matter of money. In Ottawa, he and McKean were staying with her parents
and living off savings. Cash flow was so tight that McKean's father, and others, had to write cheques so that Shopify could meet its small payroll.
Lütke took the burden of this stress entirely on himself. He told no one at the company. "I was sitting in meetings," he remembers, "talking with my peers about building things that would take us a year, when I knew we didn't have four weeks of money left. And I could not let anyone know that."
He knew the minute he did, their focus would naturally shift to the short-term, to work on things for immediate benefit. For Shopify to succeed, he needed them to keep thinking long-term.
*************
BETA PHASE
Lütke looks back on his early days as CEO and says that, except for programming, "I think I was bad at everything. A hundred per cent of everything."
Among the skills that challenged him most was a fairly crucial one: personal interactions. How to work with people in a team? How to encourage better work? Lütke had no idea. He admits, "I'm still terrible at giving people feedback."
This is, apparently, an accurate self-assessment.
"Be prepared to be crushed," says Shopify's vice-president of revenue, Toby Shannan. "If you can't be crushed, you don't make it on the executive team. You need a thick skin."
It's not that Lütke shouts, or treats people meanly. He's simply direct. Unfiltered. When he looks at the fruits of someone's labour, he says what he thinks. Even if what he thinks is: "This is shit."
Mark MacLeod, who acted as Shopify's first CFO, believes it has something to do with Lütke's programming background. "Software engineers can be brutally honest and frank with each other," he says. "You are expected to be very smart, know your stuff, be able to think on your feet, and be open tobeing challenged at any moment. That approach very much informs how Tobi operates."
And yet, Lütke's skill in reading people, and getting the most out of them, is one of the reasons angel investor John Phillips worked to persuade him to take on the CEO job permanently. "It is staggering how good he is with people," says Phillips. "He is absolutely heroic."
It seems that, in dealing with his human resources, Lütke is working on a whole other level. In fact, talking to him about people is a bit like talking to a bossy psychologist.
For instance, he rejects the use of "personas" in the workplace. The personality masks that many people wear, trying to fit in or act the part, are not tolerated at Shopify. "I have serious, serious problems with personas," says Lütke, "with unauthentic individuals." Nearly every lawyer he meets, for example, appears to be "the same 60-year-old, grey-haired, white guy," regardless of the person's actual age or gender. And too many executives have built their careers presenting a bluff, can-do image. Lütke finds it infuriating. "I spot it in a nanosecond and I want nothing to do with people who are like this."
In practice, that means people who work at Shopify wear what they want to wear—shorts, flip-flops, whatever—and their interactions should reflect their actual feelings. He even strives to meet with executives in the places they feel most comfortable. Every Wednesday at 4 p.m., for example, Lütke and Toby Shannan have a standing meeting at a pub. "Tobi says, 'I like to meet people in their most idiomatic-appropriate location.' That is a quote," says Shannan.
By demanding authenticity, Lütke wants to liberate people to get to the nub of the task quickly, without the interference of trying to maintain a guise. (It's for this reason Lütke is also working on his feedback, because upsetting people makes things "less efficient.")
The other thing Lütke demands of his executives, and by extension all his employees, is personal growth.
He likes to talk about boxes. People, he explains, exist within the box they find comfortable, until something forces them out of that box and into a new one. High school is a box. The first years are difficult, but then you figure out how it works. You find your comfort level, until graduation forces you into the new box of university, where you have to work toward comfort again.
"Everyone loves feeling comfortable," says Lütke. "But it's actually completely useless." It's during that period of discomfort where intense learning and growth happen. "So what I'm trying to create is an environment where almost everyone around me feels uncomfortable all the time, because I'm dragging them into the next box."
Harley Finkelstein is a good example. As chief platform officer, Finkelstein's job encompasses sales, business development, partnerships. But the focus of his efforts changes constantly. "Tobi has consistently pushed me to become comfortable with being uncomfortable," says Finkelstein. "Once I get good at something, lo and behold he walks into this office and says, 'You built that, and now you should take care of this thing.'"
Build a system for thousands of third-party agencies around the world to refer business to Shopify. Done? Now focus on increasing sales tenfold. Now scale up this third-party app store. Make it a hundred times bigger than it was. Finkelstein swallows hard and accepts each challenge. "He has created for me an insatiable desire to learn and grow every single day," he says.
The fact that Finkelstein is even part of this company is testament to Lütke's own personal growth. Always smiling, talking so quickly he sounds like a recording with the spaces removed, Finkelstein couldn't be more different from his boss. He's here because one day John Phillips mentioned to Lütke that everyone who worked with him was the same guy, everyone came from the same programming background as Lütke and Daniel Weinand. He thought Lütke should shake things up a bit.
So Lütke hired Finkelstein, and Toby Shannan, a warm, bearded, bear of a man, and several others from different backgrounds, and everything changed. All of a sudden there was diversity of opinion. Instantly there were a multitude of possible solutions to any given problem. "I made one change," says Lütke, "based on one comment by John, and it massively impacted the company." It got him to reconsider how big Shopify could be. "You know what?" he said to himself, "I think this is a growth company."
And growth meant getting venture capital.
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Gold Master
It was the summer of 2010. At Bessemer Venture Partners, one of Silicon Valley's largest venture capital firms, Trevor Oelschig and Jeremy Levine were getting the sense that the field of e-commerce was picking up some tailwind. They (and a third partner, Alex Ferrara) began hunting for a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company to exploit the possibilities, and their research led them to Ottawa's Byward Market. Here, they found a soft-spoken German software developer, and a team of now 20 people who, as a group, had very little experience. And something about it seemed special.
Says Oelschig, "Tobi had built a culture, a product, and had a vision that rivalled anything that could be found 2,500 miles away in Silicon Valley."
It didn't hurt that, by now, Lütke's company was making money. The 2008 crash and subsequent recession that had hurt everyone else had benefited Shopify hugely. Thousands of people who'd lost their jobs were opening online stores to survive. This was another example of the luck Lütke talks about. The worse things got for the economy, the more Shopify signups increased.
One of the things that struck the Bessemer group as remarkable was how much Lütke had accomplished in Ottawa, a city that seemed barely visibleto them on the software start-up landscape. Early on they'd even asked Lütke, ever so gently, if he'd consider moving his company to Silicon Valley,if only to help with recruiting. Says BVP's Trevor Oelschig, "We just weren't sure that there would be enough talented people."
But Lütke was adamant about staying in Ottawa (where his wife, Fiona, is now a deputy director in Foreign Affairs), and he had no such concerns. "There's a deep talent pool in Ottawa, and Canada as a whole," he says. "Smartest people I've met anywhere in the world." While the collapse of Nortel had a huge impact on the region's high-tech sector, it spawned hundreds of smaller companies that still exist. Roughly 70,000 people in the region work in the industry, many of them in software.
In fact, as Shopify grew, it found the real challenge in recruiting was not a lack of available software expertise, but a perception that it employed only young people. Lütke wanted to bring more accomplished workers into the mix, and he was finding it nearly impossible. Then a typical moment of Shopify luck and ingenuity changed that.
Word had come that IBM's Riverside office in Ottawa was laying off employees. Lütke and his team concocted a plan. The day of the layoffs, they set up Shopify's recruiting booth on the street, right next to IBM. As laid-off workers left the building, they were immediately presented with the opportunity to work somewhere their talents were needed.
When John Phillips heard about it later, he was "aghast" at the impertinence. And Lütke understands: "We tend to be a bit cheeky." But he says about 10 ex-IBMers now work at Shopify. "It accomplished exactly what we wanted it to do."
Lütke knew that achieving success in an SaaS business required a willingness and an ability to change anything, at any time. He'd had a particularly vivid example of how difficult change can be when he decided to switch Shopify's entire business model—the day before his wedding. Overnight, Shopify went from charging its merchants a percentage of sales to selling monthly subscriptions (a more reliable revenue stream), and Lütke was taking calls from furious customers into the night. "I sort of resolved on figuring out how I could build a company that celebrates change rather than be afraid of it," he says. "Because I got a real dose about how much people didn't like that."
He needed a workforce that stayed happy and engaged, even as it expanded daily. "Shopify is a very culture-driven organization," says Toby Shannan. "You can manage less if everyone believes more." So Lütke named Daniel Weinand the company's chief culture and design officer, making it Weinand's job to ensure employees were happy and buying in. Now Shopify has become renowned for its employee-engagement innovations. There are quarterly "Hack Days" during which employees are encouraged to work on projects of their own design (it might be a complementary bit of software, or a suddenly huge collection of hot sauces in the eating lounge, or a wall of tongue-in-cheek portraits of Shopify executives in 17th-century French military uniforms). There's the internal bonus system, called "Unicorn," in which employees are able to nominate and vote for colleagues who've contributed something positive to the company. (Employees are able to nominate themselves, too—one of the internal company mantras is, "Do things. Tell people.")
Lütke needed an executive team he could trust to be devoted to the ideals he espoused. "He has an operating system," says Shannan. "To work with Tobi, you need to know this operating system or you cannot work with him. One of the things is: Things need to be simple."
A bunch of smart people in a room can find themselves looking for more and more complicated answers, particularly as the scope of the business expands and the stakes increase. Lütke won't have it. "I'm always deeply suspicious of people who try to solve problems by immediately running toward a complex solution to something that could be solved simply."
There are consequences to raising Lütke's suspicion. Among his executives, he uses a metaphor: the trust battery. When you first join, the trust battery hovers at about 50%. Every decision you make as an executive either adds to or drains the trust. Once enough good decisions push the trust level to 80%, you achieve autonomy.
It's not as easy as it seems. You might be inclined, as an executive with your eyes on the trust battery, to make safe decisions. That's not going to work. Lütke's expectations are too high.
"He often talks about, 'Your work here needs to make an impact like a crater,'" says Shannan. "So it's not like just good work, it's not excellence; it's like massive, cosmic impact. It needs to be visible from outer space."
That means Shopify's executives are required to take risks. That makes it easier to fail. And while Lütke understands failure and admires risk, and doesn't want his executives to shy away from it, there's no doubt that failure of the wrong kind will drain the trust battery.
"So," says Shannan with a shrug, "that makes him very difficult to work for."
*************
Official Release
In December of 2010, Bessemer organized a Series A funding of $7 million and purchased 20% of the company and two seats on the board. A Series B round, for $15 million, came the following October. And in 2013, a Series C round, led by OMERS Ventures and Insight Venture Partners, brought in $100 million, one of the largest VC investments in the high-tech space in recent years.
During that first funding round, Bessemer had valued Shopify in the "low tens of millions," according to Jeremy Levine. Since then, Shopify has acquired two other software start-ups, Select Start Studios and Jet Cooper, opened offices in Montreal and Toronto, and reached a valuation of around $1 billion. And where once there were three main competitors in the field of e-commerce software—Shopify, Bigcommerce and Volusion—each at the time with 20,000 to 30,000 merchants, now Shopify has more than the other two combined.
"Now," says Levine, "they do in about a half a month the amount of revenue that they did in the entire year before we invested."
Arguably, Shopify has achieved that because Lütke has focused on everything but money. First he devoted himself exclusively to the incremental improvements and refinements to his product. Then he poured the same intense focus into the functioning of the people around him, and the company as a whole.
Now the focus is even bigger.
John Phillips considers it his job to go into Lütke's office once in a while and get him to clear everything off his desk. As CEO, he feels, Lütke shouldn't have any actual work to do. "He has guys to do that. And if he meddles in it, he'll cause a problem." Instead, he wants Lütke spending his time thinking big thoughts. "He's got to be looking ahead."
That really doesn't seem to be a problem for Lütke. Shopify bought Select Start Studios because Lütke anticipated the explosion of mobile. It dropped the "e" off e-commerce because of its push into bricks-and-mortar stores. (Shopify merchants can now get point-of-sale kits, including iPad card readers, cash boxes and receipt printers, all tied into the Shopify inventory and analytics systems.)
Looking ahead now means thinking about when Shopify is headed to an IPO. No one believes Lütke intends to cash out and start something new, which—because VC investors expect a big payday—makes an IPO inevitable. Lütke doesn't want to talk about it much, though, so he uses another school analogy. Taking angel money was grade school, VC money brought Shopify into high school, and an IPO would be graduation. There are plenty of reasons why people don't make it out of high school, he says. "None of them good." But if things continue going well, "at some point we will hopefully graduate."
In the meantime for Lütke, looking ahead alsomeans thinking about how Apple's new electronic payment system will alter mobile purchasing. It means considering how robotics will change the labour market, how 3-D printing will affect delivery times, and what all of that, and more besides, might mean for commerce.
His partner and friend, Daniel Weinand, says, "Sometimes it feels like he is going a few years into the future and is coming back with positive information and sharing it with us."
And if you give him a moment, Lütke will gravitate to a discussion of something really big: what it means to change how people buy.
"Human history is the history of conducting commerce," he says. "It started with trade caravans. Probably language developed because people needed to trade goods with each other." And every time there were breakthroughs in the ways peopleconducted commerce, says Lütke, every time an innovation made commerce easier or faster, "that's when civilization changed."
The implication is that Shopify could be part of one of those breakthroughs. "We are engaged in making commerce more seamless."
Tobi Lütke started off wanting to sell snowboards. Ten years later, he's talking about changing the world. That's some growth curve.Couch-competitive multiplayer gamehas found success on the PlayStation 4 and PC, after launching on Steam, to gross $500,000. Developer Matt Thorson revealed this figure in a new interview with Eurogamer.The game was an IGF nominee. Its earlier incarnation,-- released alongside the Ouya -- was routinely pointed out by the startup's CEO Julie Uhrman as the best game on the platform. It sold approximately 7,000 units on that platform, Thorson has revealed. Those sales would have grossed roughly $105,000 for Thorson at $15 a copy, netting roughly $73,500 for after Ouya's 30 percent cut is deducted.The game is doing best on the PlayStation 4, which Thorson puts down to player patterns. The game is a two-to-four player fighting game that has only local co-op play. Its single player mode is also de-emphasized in favor of a robust competitive mode."I think it's just a console game, ya know?... I think a lot of people still sit down with their friends when they play their consoles, whereas they don't do that on PC," Thorson told Eurogamer.The key to its success may be encapsulated here: "For me, it should be really easy to pick up and play with very little prior knowledge. People should be able to encounter it for the first time at a party and have a blast playing it immediately. But even more importantly, there has to be enough depth to make players want to show up for another session," Thorson told Gamasutra when interviewed as part of the Road to the IGF series earlier this year.Ivan Cleary would like another NRL job but a World Cup role with Lebanon is a strong option in the meantime.
Former Warriors coach Ivan Cleary is tipped to make a coaching return at next year's Rugby League World Cup.
Cleary is reportedly eyeing the Lebanon job for the tournament to be co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand.
Cleary has been out of coaching since losing the Penrith Panthers job last year.
Sydney's Daily Telegraph described Cleary as "the next coach to be hired in the NRL" but suggested he would make an earlier return to action with Lebanon.
READ MORE:
* Former Warriors coach Cleary invited to All Blacks training
* Former Panthers coach Ivan Cleary joins NRL to aid refs
* Shadow of Ivan Cleary looms large on the NRL coaches
Cleary could work alongside Josh Mansour guiding a Lebanese team that can call on the likes of Robbie Farah, Tim Mannah, Michael Lichaa and Mitchell Moses.
Lebanon must face Australia and England in their group and a win over France could see them move past pool play.“Duke Nukem Forever,” a video game synonymous with never being released, is finally being released.
The first person shooter about a space marine with a penchant for off-color humor who battles aliens with increasingly destructive weapons, was to be the fourth installment in a series of games that garnered critical praise and generated controversy for its depiction of women. After 10 years in development, 3D Realms, the studio behind the game, announced it was shutting down in 2009.
The game is being finished by Gearbox Software and will be published by Take-Two Interactive, publisher of the “Grand Theft Auto” series. The game is being shown to consumers and the press for the first time at a video game convention today. Gearbox hopes to release the game next year.
Announced in 1997, “Duke Nukem Forever” went through numerous changes as developer 3D Realms tried to keep pace with new technology its competitors were introducing into their games.Whisky People #3 – Ralf Mitchell
Fact Sheet
Name: Ralf Mitchell (“Ralfy”)
Year of Birth: 1962
Place of Residence: Glasgow, Scotland / Isle of Man
Profession: Undertaker
Whisky Involvement: Video commentator
Portrait
Today’s guest is living proof that the internet has the power to turn a simple person into a celebrity. A Glasgow undertaker named Ralf Mitchell did something a little bit uncommon and all of a sudden found himself confronted with a level of publicity that he would never have expected.
Most of you will have heard the story before, but anyway. Forced to stay at home due to a shoulder injury, Ralfy started to record videos in which he is reviewing whiskies as well as sharing general whisky knowledge sitting at his kitchen table in front of his whisky cabinet. On his site ralfy.com he had already started a whisky blog before where he published written whisky reviews and ratings.
Ralfy’s whisky vlogs as he likes to call them became so popular that he has been continuing to publish them ever since. Apart from the “home videos” he also records visits to distilleries and festivals where he interviews other whisky people. And then there are his field trips where he reviews whiskies on location, be it up on the ben or down in the glen.
What is the secret of the man in the zippered jumper who seems to remove his tweed country cap only at bedtime? Ralfy was certainly not the first one to record whisky reviews on video, and he will surely be not the last one either.
I thnk the key to his popularity is the obvious authenticity of his videos paired with a natural talent for presentation. Nothing looks rehearsed or even staged, it’s just as if he was sitting at the table with you chatting about whisky over a dram. Without having met him in person, viewers are convinced that what they see in the video is 100% genuine Ralfy and not someone playing “nice chap” in order to sell you something.
But it’s not only about the presentation; there is a lof of substance in Ralfy’s videos as well. Even if you may already know the bottles he reviews, there is always the chance to learn something new about whisky because Ralfy loves to spice up his vlogs with bits of general and useful whisky knowledge. Not to forget his often stated aversion against industrial treatment of whisky with caramel or chill filtration.
Ralfy has been a member of Glasgow’s Whisky Club for three years where he holds the position of Chanty Rastler (“chamber-pot shaker”), his task being to let distillers know when their whisky was not quite as excellent as expected.
Apart from whisky, Ralfy is also interested in all kinds of other spirits from around the world, or in his own words: “Whisky, Rum, Tequila, Grappa, Eau de Vie, Mescal, if it’s alcoholic, … and quality flavour, I’m interested.”
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Just recently, Ralfy has sold his house in Glasgow to move to the Isle of Man to look after his mother. But he has promised he will continue to vlog and also attend whisky events.
Interview
Was there some decisive moment of “initiation” that turned you from a casual whisky drinker into the malthead you are obviusly now or did it just sort of happen?
The decisive moment from Whisky casual to Anorak was a bottle of Bunnahabhain 12 yo about eleven years ago. It was a present from my Dad and I mixed it with tonic water until I ran out of tonic water and used tap water instead. As the water got less and less the flavour got more and more. … I found that I loved the complexity I had never noticed before.
Are you surprised by the amount of recognition your vlogs have earned you in the internet whisky community?
I never expected to receive so much recognition and positive feed-back from so many people so soon. In fact I never expected anything!
ralfy.com started as a conventional Blog but with my decision to record video Blogs (Vlogs) in the form of 10 minute, unedited, informal video clips mainly of reviews of bottles, I seemed to hit an appreciative audience looking for a ‘Malt friend/advisor’ rather than for an Expert presenting a Marketing message or whisky cliches. I appreciate 98% + of comments and feed-back being mature and genuine with little hassle from Trolls (pests). ( that can haunt some on-line commentators).
In your vlogs you are very outspoken, some of your favourite terms are “artisan distiller”, “caramel” and “chill filtration”. Have you experienced any displeasure about your opinions when you met whisky producers who might feel addressed by your criticism?
It’s hard to say with the Scotch Industry whether they see me as a Malt-pest or harmless anorak spending lots of cash on alcohol!
I am certainly perceived to be out-spoken on various issues (which does help reinforce my independence from the Industry) but I never slag individuals or whiskies off, …. I strive to keep things positive, pragmatic and cheery whilst I present myself as a fellow traveller on the malt-road sharing the journey by passing on my experience as a whisky-fan and not a lecturing Malt-snob preaching superior knowledge and insights at a grateful passive audience whilst soliciting free-stuff from the Industry like special bottlings, lunch invites, cocktail parties, cash or fancy trips, all which lay in wait to trip up the unwary Blogger and compromise their voice.
With the internet’s growing Global influence as an educator and informer, well provisioned cash-rich Marketing Departments wish to control this medium through sponsorships e.t.c. to keep the ‘Message’ to their liking. Some ‘bunnety’ anorak coming along and gaining an audience not within their sphere of control, … they don’t really like it.
The sensible Industry people see that I am generally considerate and educational along with being entertaining, so they give some passive support and the occasional compliment plus a decent dram at whisky tasting Festivals …. But not too many compliments!!!
More and more members of the whisky industry embrace social media like Twitter and Facebook. Do you see this as a mere marketing stunt or as a chance for the conusmer to communicate better with the people who produce their favourite tipple?
Twitter and Facebook are just accessories of the internet which give practical options for communication for everyone. Traditional Blogs and more structured web-sites do this well and understandably the Industry wants it’s voice heard too within these formats. A whisky is nowhere until people know about it and where to buy it.
At the moment nearly all whisky commentators do refreshing varieties of good presentation in relation to whiskies whether it be structured conservative marketeers or the more authentic freelance commentators doing their thing on limited finances, perhaps making them more imaginative and creative.
Whisky blogging and journalism tends to focus almost exclusively around single malts while blends make up the bulk of the global whisky market. Are whisky writers too elitist or whisky buyers too uneducated or whisky makers too much focused on volume sales?
True! most on-line commentary relates to Malt whiskies, and I have made a point of featuring many Blended Scotches in my Vlogs as I know this is useful to a younger, inexperienced audience who cannot initially afford Malts or perhaps want to move from Blends to Single Malts having gained an introduction via decent Blends like Teachers Highland Cream and Black Bottle.
Whisky makers focus on volume sales as that is where the real cash profits are. Malts account for only 7% of whisky sales although this percentage is growing steadily, but most of the opinion forming internet talk is about Malts, not Blended Scotch which perplexes the Industry who are wary of increased expectations of quality. If customers want better Malts today, a bigger group of Blended Scotch customers may demand better quality Blends tomorrow.
You are an undertaker. Some people might argue that it is impossible to really love this kind of job. Are they right?
I have been an Undertaker for over twenty years living and working in Glasgow. Have I loved the job? … well ‘love’ is not really the right word, I have found it to be a varied, rewarding, life-enhancing job with no two days the same.
I would rather have been an Undertaker than be doing many of the jobs relating to the Whisky Industry, thats for sure. A Cooper, too much hard graft, an Ambassador, too much travel and saying the same thing in different Countries.
Common Questions
1. Please share a memorable whisky moment with us. This might be a fantastic dram, someone you met or any other situation that left a deep impression in your memory.
Many years ago on Skye I worked in a Hotel as a seasonal waiter for ‘College’ cash! A local character prided himself on producing great hooch bottled in soda bottles and of a presentable quality which he ‘shared’ round local bars, … but he was never caught distilling.
… the reason was simple, he was buying the whisky at a Glasgow Wholesaler and decanting into the soda bottles to make it appear that he was a good ‘hoocher’.
He just loved the reputation and status, but couldn’t be bothered with the challenge of actually making the stuff!
2. What percentage of your life do you dedicate to whisky (sleep ignored)? Do you think it should be more or less, or is it just about right?
I have a dram most nights, two or three (perhaps four) glasses and a bottle of ale. I don’t get drunk, I don’t binge and I never dram on an empty stomach. … got to keep it moderate, flavour first and no dizzy turns. Particularly when recording Vlogs once or twice a week which takes only thirty minutes at a time. … yippee!
3. Your three tips for whisky novices
Don’t waste time on bad whiskies.
Don’t waste time in bad company.
Don’t put all your money in the Bank.
4. Your three tips for experienced whisky lovers
Learn to identify more what makes good whiskies.
Learn to keep good company when drinking whisky.
Learn to keep an open mind with Spirits.
5. What was the last dram you had and how did you like it?
I Had a dram of 20 year old Benriach at the Glasgow’s Whisky Club Tasting a few hours go and loved it’s traditional character. …. 90/100The Viper will once again roar down the storied Mulsanne straight, as SRT is returning to the famed French race with two identically prepared GTS-R race cars set to compete at Le Mans later this month. Enthusiasts have been waiting a long time for a repeat appearance of the ten-cylinder coupes, which haven't raced since winning the GTS class three times from 1998 to 2000. Ralph Gilles, president and chief executive officer of the SRT brand and motorsports, told Autoweek, " Le Mans is a world stage. The GTS-R has enjoyed great success at Le Mans in the past, and we're excited to start a new chapter of Viper racing at that historic venue."Understandably, the rules at Le Mans have changed over the past decade and the automaker will be racing a new vehicle. Gary Johnson, SRT racing manager, told the publication, "Our plan is to be as competitive as we can and see what happens at the end."The new GTS-R shouldn't have trouble running against its competitors in the LM GTE Pro Class, as its chassis has proven itself several times since its American Le Mans Series (ALMS) debut last August. This year alone, the No. 91 Viper has finished in the top five in all three races it has entered. "We're going with the same commitment to do our best," said Johnson.To learn more about SRT's race efforts, check out its new web series called Beyond the Checkered Flag. We've linked to the first video belowA dozen or so men—and one woman—bemoaned the state of men’s studies on an appropriately gray, damp day here. One complained about the "lack of space to interrogate masculinity" on the American college campus. Another cited widespread "blind hatred" of the idea. Several others offered anecdotes of their colleagues’ skepticism toward the annual conference of the American Men’s Studies Association, where this session was held. "People think it’s a men’s retreat where we’re going to share feelings and engage in illicit activities," said Nicholas P. Marino, a graduate student in rhetoric and composition at Purdue University. "Do you guys know what I mean?"
Nods all around.
Feelings were indeed shared at the conference (whether illicit activities occurred is beyond the scope of this article |
shoot on nearby enemies and can help you repel the attack easier.
Am I boring you yet? Good. Everything you decide to build or upgrade requires either gold or stone. Those are the non-premium currencies that you can excavate from your mines. That’s right, imps don’t gather resources, they build rooms, traps, upgrade rooms and traps and dig dirt tiles. Mines produce certain amount of resources and they work non-stop regardless if you are running the game or not, but are affected by the resource cap depending on their level. Level 2 Gold mine for example can produce up to 1500 gold before it stops excavating until you launch the game and move the gold to your treasury (that also has a level based resource cap).
It is payday
Gems are the premium currency. What do you need them for? Well, let me put it this way. Absolutely everything you do, every action you take, every room you build or upgrade, every trap you lay or even every tile you dig has a timer attached. Gems are used to speed things up so you don’t grow old waiting for them to finish. Summoning Imps also requires ridiculous amount of gems. The resources the game provides to new players will be enough to summon 3 imps that will work around the clock building or upgrading stuff you need, or digging their way to one of the 4 mines located on each corner of the map. Why is this such a big deal? There are 3 different type of dirt tiles you can dig through. The ordinary land mass that takes couple of seconds to remove, the medium rock that takes 4 hours and the solid rock tile that requires 24 hours to penetrate. As you can assign only one job per Imp, you get the idea why you need more. If you get lucky, you can find small amount of gems while digging tiles and completing achievements, but that amount is so insignificant that will literally take weeks before you gather enough gems to summon your 4th imp. On the bright side, you can chain-slap your Imps to make them work harder. The “buff” grants them 2x efficiency bonus and reduces all Imp-related timers by half for 60 minutes.
This is no wishing well keeper
Right, on to the battle part of the game. You have two options here, follow the “campaign” and complete missions one by one, or try to plunder other players dungeons. No matter what you decide to do, it always comes down to this:
1. Deploy your minions on one of the entry points (mines).
2. Watch them plunder or die trying.
The only thing that matters here is which unit you deploy first, a decision you will have to make based on the dungeon layout you currently attack. Trolls for example will try to destroy nearby traps before doing anything else, Bile Demons will hit the treasury, Skeletons will hit the dungeon heart and so on. Once you deploy your units, you will lose them whether you win the battle or not. You don’t get to bring back any survivors for some reason, so think twice before unleashing all your minions. There are also couple “defense missions” where you have to repel waves of enemy creatures (no, not real players). Those missions are the only reason to build mazes and traps on key points. Every damage you take is only temporary for the duration of the mission and you can’t really lose-lose. Completing missions or raiding dungeons will provide additional gold and stone (sorry, no gems) and bring you one step closer to the top of the leaderboard.
Since you can attack other players dungeons, it would only be fair if they could do the same to you. And yes, they can, but you don’t get to actively defend your dungeon. All you can do is watch a replay of their attack and take sweet sweet revenge. You only lose small amount of Gold, Stone and Rank when someone raids your dungeon so nothing to worry about.
My god… its full of pies
Dungeon Keeper for Android runs on the Unity 3D engine and graphics are decent, to say at least. There are no major flaws, except the game feels kind of lifeless. Remember how we used to watch our minions roam around the dungeon, go for a training session or go grab a chicken from the hatchery when they feel hungry? Non of this happens here. All your creatures do is wander aimlessly or hang around their rooms. Even when you make an action like building a door, you won’t see the trolls rushing towards the workshop and hitting the anvil with their hammers.
Controlling the game is easy as everything is touch-enabled and you aren’t really required to do anything special regarding unit placement, nor you can control them once they are off. The only technical problem I certainly noticed was the occasional “lag” when scrolling or zooming in. It’s not a frame rate issue as far as I can tell, but rather resource loading. Once everything gets cached up nicely, the game runs like a dream. This is probably the reason why your 3D rendered minions turn into 2D icons at certain points. I am sure EA will iron-out all those bugs and make the game less demanding in future.
There is nothing left to research
Now you know how to play the game and what to expect, will you do it? Yes, it’s different, filled with timers and has little to no connection with the original game, but frankly it’s not that bad if you compare it to other MOBA games on the market. The game fully supports Google’s game services, including cloud save, so even if you get bored at some point and decide to uninstall it, your dungeon will still be there waiting for your return. You can even play the game without spending any real money if you decide to devote healthy amounts of time managing the resources on daily basis. What really bothers me though, is EA’s decision to defile the name of “Dungeon Keeper”. I mean come on, the game could easily be named something like “Dungeons” or “Dungeon Lords” and do equally good or even better, but noooo they had to try and lure old fans in hope to empty their wallets (Is nothing sacred?). And this is probably just the beginning. EA owns all Bullfrog licenses so plenty of games are waiting to be (re)released and my guess is that all of them will be freemium. We are probably never going to see proper Dungeon Keeper game for Android, or Dungeon Keeper 3 for that matter. All we have at the moment is an old game that slowly fades away with every new version of Windows released.
By Dejan B.Atomic crosschain swap transactions
Lykke is semi-centralized exchange that means that matched trades are settled on a blockchain (Bitcoin or Ethereum). A single trade between two parties is a swap of two kinds of assets between those two parties. See more about Lykke Ethereum integration here Lykke is integrating Ethereum The following assets can be exchanged: 1. Assets swaps on the Bitcoin blockchain Colored coins swaps
Colored coin vs Bitcoin swaps 2. Assets swaps on the Ethereum blockchain Ethereum Tokens swaps
Ethereum Token vs Ether swaps 3. Crosschain swaps Bitcoin vs Ether swaps
Bitcoin colored coin vs Ether swaps
Ethereum token vs Bitcoin swaps Crosschain swap assumes that Alice transfers asset to Bob on the Bitcoin blockchain and at the same time Bob transfers another asset to Alice on the Ethereum blockchain. Such two transfers should be made in trustless way – swap must be atomic operation (see more Atomic cross-chain trading). Proof-of-concept for Crosschain swaps is required to be implemented. There are the following scenarios should be covered:
Scenario I. Bob pays first
1. Bob’s transfer on Ethereum is based on a smart contract protected with a hash H calculated from Bob’s secret preimage R. Alice can redeem Bob’s payment only by providing secret R. Bob’s transfer to Alice can be canceled if it is not redeemed by Alice during 48 hours. 2. Alice’s transfer is a bitcoin HTLC transaction that has the following output Bob’s signature and secret preimage R which hashes to revocation hash H OR Alice’s signature and OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY <24 hours> 3. Bob redeems the HLTC during 24 hours and reveals his secret R. Otherwise Alice can get her coins back. 4. Alice should redeem Bob’s payment with providing revealed secret R into smart contract. Otherwise Bob can cancel his smart contract payment.
Scenario II. Alice pays first
1. Alice generates secret preimage R and calculates public hash H. Alice transfers assets with bitcoin HTLC transaction that has the following output Bob’s signature and secret preimage R which hashes to revocation hash H OR Alice’s signature and OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY <48 hours> 2. Bob transfers assets to Alice using Ethereum smart contract protected with a Alice’s public hash H. Bob can cancel the smart contract transfer if it is not redeemed by Alice during 24 hours. 3. Alice can redeem Bob’s payment by providing secret R into contract. Bob gets smart contract event notification revealing Alice’s secret R to Bob. 4. Bob should redeem Alice’s bitcoin HTLC payment with revealed R during 24 hours. Otherwise Alice can get her coins back. Platform preference Highly recommended that Bitcoin part would be implemented on C# using NBitcoin. Ethereum part would be implemented on C# using Nethereum.Yes, you read that right. And yes, I am English. So how could I say something so crazy, you ask? Well first a little background.
I have spent the last 5 years at Criteo. What I joined in 2009 was a 30 person French start up based in Paris, though I remained based in London. Today, we are listed on the NASDAQ with well over 1,000 people and around 400 in Paris. I have personally been involved with hiring and managing hundreds of different people as a result, from countries as diverse as the US, Japan, Germany and Italy. I’ve therefore learned a little about the fascinating cultural diversity that makes the world so fun.
So why hire a French person?
To answer that let me first ask another question:
What does a great hire look like?
There are 3 key attributes when hiring someone in almost any role:
Analytical skills. The growth of computing power has made analytical skills an absolutely key determinant of the value someone can add. In the right hands, modern computational power, and the tools that make it easy to use, are a remarkable "force multiplier". This means the world is crying out for people who are not only smart, but also have strong mathematic skills. The second key attribute is creativity. Creating new things, or solving problems in a new way, is where the most value is created. Good interpersonal/commercial skills. Sales skills and interpersonal skills aren’t exactly the same thing, but if the product you are selling really is good then they are very close. The ability to work with other people, to explain why something is a good idea, and to understand what other people need: these are the skills of a great consultative sales person, or a strong product manager.
The French score really highly on this list. How comes?
Firstly, the French elite education system is very good. Rather like India, you are ranked based on your position in the country and based on this rank it determines whether you go to one of the Elite schools (the “grandes écoles”), and indeed which of these Elite schools you can enter. In addition the highest prestige thing you can do in France is go to an engineering school - and they have a fearsome series of exams in order to reach this, requiring an extra 2 years of study. Even if you go to a business grande école you study a great deal of mathematics to a high level. As a result I have been enormously impressed by the analytical and quantitative skills of top French graduates. The UK elite study history and politics, the US is governed by those who study law, but in France the elite study highly quantitative subjects.
Secondly, the French also have a strong culture of skepticism. While this may not help their sense of happiness (“A recent WIN-Gallup poll found that their expectations for the coming year ranked lower than those in Iraq or Afghanistan”), it is a great basis for creativity. They are always ready to ask “why”, and are very keen to come up with a better solution than yours. This is the exact reverse of a culture that encourages rote learning. In my experience there are countries with education systems with a very strong emphasis on maths but also a strong focus on getting the “right” answer - these seem to be particularly predominant in Asia. In these countries successful graduates from top universities are still very smart, but unlike in France have been drilled since early childhood not to ask too many questions and to do what they are told. As a result, these systems seem to generate a high proportion of people who have scored extremely highly on tests from infancy to university, but struggle more with thinking of brand new things to do based on the problem and tools at hand. A French engineer on the other hand will definitely challenge you :-).
Finally, individual French are very good at getting on with people in multinational organisations. France is a mix of Northern and Southern Europe in one nation. They sometimes bemoan this, but perhaps it explains why there are so many French in senior management in global businesses – they combine a rules based, quantitative culture, with some of that “Latin charm” that we Anglo-Saxons are so envious of.
So to conclude: hire a french person.
Of course, I haven’t told you where to hire a french person which is a different question altogether…I never want to act my age / What's my age again? / What's my age again?
Mark Hoppus was barely 27 in 1999 when blink-182 released “What’s My Age Again,” an infectious song about refusing to grow up despite facing the pitfalls of arrested development. It was the Poway-bred pop-punk trio’s biggest hit to date — and their first to suggest a budding sense of introspection, if not maturity.
But time waits for no one — as the Rolling Stones sang in 1974 — and acting (or not acting) their age is a more pertinent question than ever for blink.
blink-182, with A Day To Remember and All-American Rejects When: 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday (sold out) Where: Viejas Arena at Aztec Bowl, 5500 Canyon Crest Drive, San Diego State University Tickets: $25-$99 Phone: (800) 745-3000 Online: ticketmaster.com
Now 44, Hoppus is still singing “What’s My Age Again” nightly, at least judging by blink’s concert repertoire during its Canadian mini-tour earlier this month. He’ll likely sing it again when the group plays here Thursday and Friday night at SDSU’s Viejas Arena.
The shows will mark the official start of the group’s first U.S. tour since blink singer, guitarist and co-founder Tom DeLonge exited in early 2015, although whether he did so voluntarily remains unclear.
DeLonge contends he never quit and that he is is still a member, even though his role was filled last year by Matt Skiba of the Alakaline Trio.
Hoppus and blink drum dynamo Travis Barker maintain they were forced to replace DeLonge only after he refused to commit to a new blink album and tour. DeLonge subsequently released his first solo album and first work of fiction, the UFO-inspired “Sekret Machines Book 1: Chasing Shadows,” a 704 page book he co-wrote with A.J. Hartley.
DeLonge also co-leads Angels & Aiwaves with San Diego’s Ilan Rubin, who has also played with Nine Inch Nails and Paramore. The two did an in-depth joint interview with the Union Tribune in late 2014, less than two months before Hoppus and Barker announced last year that they were teaming with Skiba in place of DeLonge.
The very public blink feud serves as a potent reminder of just how dysfunctional even the most successful rock bands can be, even after — or, rather, especially after — its core members have worked together since they were teenagers.
Through nearly all of the tortured estrangement of the last year, DeLonge, Hoppus and Barker communicated through their respective managers and representatives, rather than sit down and hash things out in person. This lack of one-on-one interaction seems to be both a symptom of their problems — and, quite likely, the cause.
Hoppus is now the only original member still on board (Barker replaced the band’s original drummer, Scott Raynor, in 1998). This month, the revamped blink released a new album, “California,” its first since 2011’s “Neighborhoods” and only its second since 2003’s self-titled “blink-182.”
The group, you may recall, broke up in 2005, then reunited in 2009, after Barker survived a fiery plane crash that claimed four lives. They discussed their reunion in a Union-Tribune interview that year.
The new tour by blink is timed to promote “California” — and to make as sound a case as possible that there’s life for the band with Skiba in place of DeLonge. The album entered the national Billboard sales charts at No. 1 last week, after selling 186,000 copies and knocking Drake’s “Views” out of the top-spot after a 9-week run. (This week, Drake is back on top and blink is at No. 3, with sales of 37,000, an 80 percent drop.)
“California” is blink’s first chart-topping album since 2001’s “Take Off Your Pants and Jacket.” Alternately rousing and a case of aural water-treading, it is an uneven outing and overly long at 16 songs, even though two of them —“Brohemian Rhapsody” and “Built This Pool” — clock in at just 30 and 16 seconds, respectively.
A solid team player, Emo veteran Skiba is an accomplished guitarist and singer, if overly earnest, who seems deferential to Hoppus. It’s a respectful move that yields mixed results, since the bratty interplay and banter between Hopppus and DeLonge accounted for so much of blink’s proudly juvenile charm.
Of course, blink isn’t the first band to soldier on without a key founding member. And it’s easy to sympathize with Hopus and Barker, who understandably don’t want to jettison blink’s music, or its lucrative brand.
When they toured without DeLonge as +44, after blink’s first break-up, their San Diego tour stop was at SOMA, not the far larger Viejas Arena, where they perform Thursday and Friday. Likewise, when DeLonge mounted his first tour with Angels & Airwave, their debut show was at the intimate Belly Up in Solana Beach.
So, a new album — without DeLonge — it is, for better and worse.
“California’s” best songs, including the high-octane “Bored to Death” and the melancholic “San Diego,” suggest blink could regain its footing and have a reasonably solid future. The album’s lesser songs suggest otherwise. They sound very much like something (make that, someone) is missing. In those instances, the results bring to mind the title of The Police’s fourth album, 1981’s “Ghost in the Machine.”
The real test will be if blink sticks around for another album and tour, and begins to forge a new identity — or, at least, build on its current one. Only then will we — and the band — know if it can survive and thrive with Skiba in place of DeLonge.
You don’t have to be a cynic to predict that another reunion, with DeLonge replacing Skiba, could be looming a few years down the road. If so, egos will be checked, pride will be swallowed, and Hoppus, Barker and DeLonge will realize that they fare better together than they do apart.
Then, after another album and tour — Stay together for the grandkids! — they can break up again. Or not. What’s their age again?Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption The analysis suggested average earnings had fallen back to 2005 levels
Average earnings in Scotland will not return to their pre-recession level until 2016 at the earliest, according to analysis by the Scottish government.
It suggested wages had not made the same progress as the economy or the jobs market and had fallen back to 2005 levels.
Last month, Scottish government figures indicated the economy had grown past its pre-recession level.
The number of Scots in work also hit a record high between April and June.
Youth and Women's Employment Secretary Angela Constance said: "Despite the continued improvements in Scotland's economic performance, too many households still struggle to meet their bills with wages eroded and the cost of living increasing.
"Around half of working age adults and over half of children in poverty are in working households."
Youth unemployment has fallen by 2.9% over the year, and is level with the UK rate, while the number of women in employment has reached a record level of 1,250,000 - 36,000 more than a year ago.
But Ms Constance said females still faced a number of challenges in the workplace, including greater job insecurity, higher levels of under-employment and pay inequality, with women paid on average 19% less than their male counterparts.
She added: "As the economy strengthens the Scottish government is focusing on the outlook for growth and in particular the type of growth we want to promote to ensure that growth is sustainable, resilient and allows everyone to realise their potential."2015 WWE pay-per-view and WWE Network event
Extreme Rules (2015) was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event and WWE Network event produced by WWE. It took place on April 26, 2015, at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Illinois.[1] It was the seventh event under the Extreme Rules chronology.
Eight matches were contested at the event (including with one match on the pre-show). In the main event, Seth Rollins defeated Randy Orton in a Steel Cage match to successfully defend the WWE World Heavyweight Championship.
The event was available on the WWE Network in over 140 countries[2][3] and on pay-per-view had 56,000 buys (excluding WWE Network views), down from the previous year's 108,000 buys.[4]
Storylines [ edit ]
The card consisted of eight matches, including one on the preshow, that resulted from scripted storylines, where wrestlers portrayed villains, heroes, or less distinguishable characters in scripted events that built tension and culminated in a wrestling match or series of matches, with results predetermined by WWE's writers.[5][6] Storylines between the characters played out on WWE's primary television programs, Raw and SmackDown.
At WrestleMania 31, John Cena defeated Rusev to win the United States Championship, marking Rusev's first defeat since appearing on WWE's main roster.[7] On the April 2 episode of SmackDown, Rusev invoked his rematch clause to face Cena for the title at the event.[8] On the April 13 episode of Raw, following Cena's title defense against Bad News Barrett, Rusev attacked Cena with a chain and Lana revealed that the match between Cena and Rusev would be a Russian Chain match.[9]
At WrestleMania 31, Bad News Barrett had lost his Intercontinental Championship in a 7-man ladder match.[7] In the following week, Barrett repeatedly attacked the new champion, Daniel Bryan, during and after matches[8][10] and invoked his rematch clause for Extreme Rules.[11] However, when Bryan was declared unable to compete due to an injury, Barrett was instead given a match against Neville on the event's pre-show.
At WrestleMania 31, Randy Orton defeated Seth Rollins. Later that night, Rollins cashed in his Money in the Bank contract during the scheduled WWE World Heavyweight Championship match between Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns and pinned Reigns to win his first WWE World Heavyweight title.[7] On the April 6 episode of Raw, Orton defeated Ryback and Reigns in a triple threat match to face Rollins for the title at the event.[11] On the April 13 episode of Raw, Orton defeated Tyson Kidd and Cesaro in a Handicap match to earn the right to choose a stipulation, while Rollins defeated Kane to also earn the right to choose a stipulation. Rollins chose to ban Orton's finisher, the RKO, while Orton made the match a Steel Cage match.[9] On the April 20 episode of Raw, Triple H announced that Kane will be the gatekeeper to the cage for this match at the event.[12]
After his return from injury, Sheamus repeatedly attacked Dolph Ziggler on Raw[9][10] and on the April 16 episode of SmackDown, announced that he would face Ziggler in a Kiss Me Arse match at the event.[13]
On the April 2 episode of SmackDown, Dean Ambrose fought Luke Harper to a no contest, after Harper powerbombed Ambrose through the announcers table.[8] On the April 13 episode of Raw, Ambrose attacked Harper after Harper lost to Ryback by disqualification.[9] On the April 20 episode of Raw, Ambrose and Harper once again fought to a no contest. Later that night, a Chicago Street Fight between Ambrose and Harper was scheduled for the event.[12]
During several April episodes of Raw Big Show made several attacks against Roman Reigns,[11] including a chokeslam onto the roof of a taxicab,[9] leading to a Last Man Standing match being set for Extreme Rules.[13]
On the April 13 episode of Raw, Paige won a battle royal by last eliminating Naomi to earn a title shot against Divas Champion Nikki Bella at Extreme Rules.[9] After the match, Naomi turned heel by attacking Paige, who suffered a storyline injury and was later deemed unable to compete at the event.[14] Thus, Naomi replaced Paige as the title challenger for the pay-per-view event.[15]
On the April 20 episode of Raw, The New Day defeated The Lucha Dragons by countout to earn a WWE Tag Team Championship match against champions Tyson Kidd and Cesaro.[12]
Event [ edit ]
With Daniel Bryan injured and unable to compete, Bad News Barrett faced Neville on the pre-show. Neville won the match after executing the Red Arrow on Barrett.
Main card [ edit ]
The first match was the Chicago Street Fight between Dean Ambrose and Luke Harper. After both of them brawled through the backstage area, Harper got into a car and was followed by Ambrose, and the two drove out of the arena. Due to the street fight stipulation meaning no count-outs, the match was deemed to be continuing as the event progressed.
Next was the Kiss Me Arse match between Dolph Ziggler and Sheamus. Ziggler won the match with a roll-up. After the match, Sheamus refused to kiss Ziggler's ass. Sheamus tried to escape through the audience, but was brought back by the referee. Sheamus then pretended to perform the deed, only to execute a low blow and a Brogue Kick on Ziggler. Sheamus then made Ziggler kiss his arse by rubbing his arse on Ziggler.
After that, Tyson Kidd and Cesaro defended the WWE Tag Team Championship against The New Day (Big E and Kofi Kingston). Kofi won the match for his team by pinning Cesaro with a roll-up, thus winning the WWE Tag Team Championship.
While The New Day were being interviewed following their win, both Ambrose and Harper pulled up in the car that they had left in earlier, continuing their street fight match as they made their way back to the ring. Ambrose would eventually win the match via pinfall after executing Dirty Deeds on Harper.
In the fourth match, John Cena defended his United States Championship against Rusev in a Russian Chain match. The ending of the match came when Cena performed an Attitude Adjustment on Rusev, while he touched the fourth corner after both men had touched all three corners.
Next, Naomi challenged Divas Champion Nikki Bella. The ending came when as the referee pulled Nikki away, Brie kicked Naomi. Nikki executed a Rack Attack on Naomi for the pinfall victory, thus retaining the title.
After that, Big Show took on Roman Reigns in a Last Man Standing match. During the match, Big Show executed a Chokeslam on Reigns through two tables on the outside, while Big Show also went through a table and was later speared through the barricade. After Reigns speared Big Show through the Barricade, Reigns speared Big Show through the Spanish announce table. The ending to the match came when Reigns overturned the English announce table, trapping Big Show underneath for the ten count.
Next, Bo Dallas came to the ring, mocking the Chicago crowd. He was interrupted by Ryback, who attacked him and then led the crowd in a "Feed me more!" chant to end the segment.
Main event [ edit ]
In the main event, Seth Rollins defended the WWE World Heavyweight Championship against Randy Orton in a Steel Cage match, with Orton's RKO finisher banned, while Kane was appointed as the gatekeeper in this match, responsible for opening the cage door. Midway through the match, Kane prevented Orton from leaving the cage, but was then accidentally hit by the cage door, which was kicked by Rollins. This caused Kane to enter the ring and chokeslam J&J Security (Jamie Noble and Joey Mercury), who tried to interfere, as well as both Orton and Rollins. Orton then attacked Kane with an RKO before Rollins executed an RKO on Orton as well. Rollins then escaped the cage to win the match and retain the title.
Aftermath [ edit ]
The following night on Raw, Randy Orton declared that he deserved another shot at the WWE World Heavyweight Championship due to the inconclusive manner in which his match with Rollins ended. Later, Roman Reigns said that he deserved a title shot since he defeated The Big Show. Kane, acting on behalf of The Authority, allowed viewers to vote on who Rollins would face at Payback; the WWE Universe voted for Rollins to defend in a triple threat. On the May 4 episode of Raw, Dean Ambrose defeated Rollins to gain entry into the match, making it a Fatal 4-Way. Rollins retained at Payback by pinning Orton.
At Payback, John Cena defeated Rusev in an "I Quit" match to retain the United States Championship, ending their feud. Also at Payback, Sheamus defeated Dolph Ziggler, ending their feud; during the match, Ziggler trapped Sheamus in the corner of the ring and forced Sheamus to kiss his arse, fulfilling the stipulation of their match at Extreme Rules.
On the April 30 episode of SmackDown, Cesaro and Tyson Kidd won their rematch for the Tag Team Championship, but by disqualification, hence The New Day retained the titles. They then had a third match at Payback, which The New Day won.
On the May 11 episode of Raw, Daniel Bryan announced that he had an MRI on his shoulder and was told by doctors that there was no timetable for when he would be able to return to the ring. Due to this, he decided to relinquish the Intercontinental Championship.[16][17] The vacant title was won by Ryback at Elimination Chamber. On February 8 2016, Bryan announced his retirement from in-ring competition due to medical reasons.
Reception [ edit ]
Critical reception to the event was mixed. Nolan Howell of slam sports awarded the event 2 out of 5 stars, adding that it was "thoroughly average" and "a show worth missing".[18]
Kenny Herzog of Rolling Stone praised the Last Man Standing match between Reigns and Big Show, calling it "thrilling" and "the match of the night". However he was critical of the show's production, the Cena-Rusev match and the steel cage main event, which he described as "inconclusive" and "lifeless".[19]
Results [ edit ]
^ Ambrose and Harper left the arena during the match, with the next two matches starting and ending before Ambrose and Harper returned to the ring to finish their match. ^ Sheamus refused to fulfill the stipulation, and instead made Ziggler kiss his arse.
Other on-screen personnel [ edit ]Jimmy Shelton
Senior Video Director and Halo aficionado
I started playing Halo when the original game came out in 2001 and I've been highly addicted. The universe fascinated me. It was ancient, grand, and epic and the stories being told felt larger than anything I had played previously. That's why, naturally, I was desperately waiting for the inevitable movie or TV show announcement so that the rest of the world could experience this magical place.
When Halo Nightfall was announced with Ridley Scott attached, instant giddiness ensued. It was going to happen this time. Someone as talented as Ridley Scott was bound to get this universe right. After watching the premiere episode, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Halo Nightfall tries to briefly introduce the audience into this world (via text) and then immediately turns into a generic sci-fi show with some of the worst CGI I’ve seen in recent years. It doesn’t feel grand or epic or ancient. One of the main scenes has a Covenant Elite casually stroll into a shopping mall to detonate some form of biological weaponry. Seriously?!?
This show was only green-lit because of the Halo name and it will die after this season because if this pilot is any indication it’s not only a bad Halo adaptation, it’s just a bad show. We now expect brilliance from our television. You can’t ride the Halo brand and expect poor storytelling, bad acting, and horrible CGI to get you anywhere. I want the industry to stop trying to adapt Halo because they’re doing it for all the wrong reasons. Just make an entertaining show and stop destroying my hopes and dreams.
Adi Robertson
Reporter and science fiction aficionado
Despite my overall love of science fiction shooters, I’ve never really followed Halo’s story — if nothing else, the Endless Capital Letters for non-proper nouns put me off. So I have no investment whatsoever in Nightfall, and if I really want to get up to speed for Halo 5: Guardians, I’ll check Wikipedia. That said, if someone described the theoretical premise of Nightfall to me at a party, I’d probably watch it. "Yeah, it’s like someone set Event Horizon in Battlestar Galactica, except everything’s happening because of Master Chief." The show might be richer for someone who knows the world, but the tropes are universal enough that I doubt it matters much.
Unfortunately, the first episode is neither Event Horizon nor BSG. It’s not even Caprica. I imagine it’s hard to squeeze a whole pilot into 30 minutes, and the building blocks are fine — Mike Colter and Christina Chong are likeable leads, the cinematography has a ‘90s-TV feel but a rich palette — but it’s just so hard for me to care about people I’m barely introduced to, laboring under a comically gruff voice-over about honor in battle, fighting over a world that so far consists of a military base, some trees, and a shopping mall. I might not be able to see the capital letters when characters keep talking about Elite Zealots, but I know they’re there.
I’m holding out hope that Nightfall’s "ancient, hellish artifact" will actually be as creepy or surreal as the showrunners have promised, which could draw me back for at least one more episode. But I’m not optimistic. The pilot feels like my worst stereotypes about the Halo universe and space opera (BSG notwithstanding) in general: a serviceable action story hamstrung by a devotion to bland epic lore-crafting at the expense of character development or unique set pieces that don’t fit some overarching 343 Industries Bible. Wake me up when Master Chief summons Pinhead.
Chris Ziegler
Deputy Editor, likes cars
I am a casual gamer (and that's being generous). I think I've heard of Halo. I may have owned the first Halo for the original Xbox.
Where am I? What's going on? Why does the CGI look like it was pulled out of the bottom of a Cracker Jack box? Why is North Korea's infamous "Tower of Doom," the Ryugyong Hotel, on this space city's skyline? Oh, and spoiler: there's no Halo anymore. I guess it got blown up? I don't know if that's actually a spoiler, maybe that happened in one of the video games already.
Nightfall just doesn't seem accessible in any way to people who aren't up to speed with the franchise — but Halo diehards will probably have a very different experience. I won't be watching again, unless Vin Diesel shows up.
Andrew Webster
Reporter, succinct reviewer
The emotional depth of the Phantom Menace combined with the production values of a made-for-TV movie. Cool armor, though.I’ll admit that when I heard of his most recent arrest, like many of you, I was ready to kick Rolando McClain to the curb and drive the final nail into a coffin called Rolando’s Ravens career – one dead on arrival.
But Ozzie Newsome and John Harbaugh have so far refrained from doing that and you have to wonder why. After all isn’t a John Harbaugh team supposed to be rich with character consisting of over-achieving, hard-working Mighty Men who love the game of football?
Such a description doesn’t exactly jump to the forefront of your mind when you think of McClain.
So why do the Ravens think as assistant general manager Eric DeCosta said during The Baltimore Sun Sports Forum, that Rolando, “deserves a second chance”?
Could it be that there are still concerns about the middle of their defense, one that Ozzie seems hell bent on improving? Are there lingering doubts about the ability of Jameel McClain to bounce back from a spinal contusion injury?
Let’s assume that the Ravens are sincere and they genuinely want to give McClain a second chance even if some would argue, and with reason, that the “second chance” took place a couple of chances ago. The Ravens do have strong ties to Alabama, Nick Saban and The Crimson Tide coaching staff. Surely they’ve done their homework and have concluded that “second chance” is worth the risk.
And really what risk is there?
The Ravens aren’t guaranteeing Rolando any money so even if second chance needs a third, so what?
Some might worry that McClain could be a locker room cancer. But the Ravens locker room is strong and one bad apple, assuming McClain goes that way, won’t spoil the whole bunch. It’s far more likely that McClain would be influenced to move in a positive direction than him influencing other Ravens to venture down a dark path.
Even if the Rolando |
urge to go out and hire a consultant to come up with one, that’s not going to work. It’ll either emerge or it won’t.
MT: Anything hopeful? What’s the most hopeful thing you see?
TS: Well I do think that the Women’s March was very hopeful, and it was hopeful precisely because it was spread out. I have some faith that women, probably not just Democrats or progressives, self-stylized, but women just who are upset at various things are going to be good at networking and forming some kind of oppositional groups and, you know, some of the things that are happening…There are certain issues that I think need to be front and center. Understanding exactly the implications of the huge transformations in health insurance that these people are proposing is a great one because it cuts across many kinds of districts and will involve many kinds of people. The immigration one is good in the sense that you can tell stories about affected families everywhere given the bungling focus. And I think that’s where the focus should be; the focus should be on telling the stories of actual people. Women may be good at that.
I think even women conservatives have been uneasy about the immigrant bashing. And then the other one, though, that the left has to think about: I don’t want to hear anything more about electoral college reform, getting money out of politics. All these procedural fixes that the wealthy on the left are fixated on…The horse has left the barn; it’s too late. Unless there’s electoral turn-around starting in 2017 and ’18, in which Democrats are winning, this thing could lock in.
So the number one thing has to be signing up people to vote and getting them out to vote. Assuming that the courts are going to fix the voting system: Forget it. I mean they’re not, not on the timescale that’s needed. So I don’t know, I’m talking to wealthy progressives and trying to convince them to stop giving all their money to this or that procedural fix. You know I was disappointed that Barack Obama framed it as gerrymandering reform. I hope you’re aware that the best studies show that only half of the problem of the mismatch between Democratic numbers and Democratic legislative results would be solved by gerrymandering reform if it happened universally and perfectly. Half of the problem is the concentration of Democratic constituencies in big cities.
MT: Okay, thanks.A Kurdish refugee boy from the Syrian town of Kobani sticks his hand out of a tent in a refugee camp in the border town of Suruc, Sanliurfa province November 21, 2014. REUTERS/Osman Orsal
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Nearly 87 million children around the world under seven years of age have been growing up in conflict zones, in conditions that can hinder the development of their brains, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Thursday.
Exposure to extreme trauma may hinder the development of brain cell connections, essential for health, emotional wellbeing and ability to learn, UNICEF said.
"In addition to the immediate physical threats that children in crises face, they are also at risk of deep-rooted emotional scars," Pia Britto, UNICEF chief of early child development, said in a statement.
"Conflict robs children of their safety, family and friends, play and routine.
"Yet these are all elements of childhood that give children the best possible chance of developing fully and learning effectively, enabling them to contribute to their economies and societies, and building strong and safe communities when they reach adulthood."
A child is born with 253 million functioning brain cells called neurons, which have the potential to develop rapidly during the first seven years of life before reaching full adult capacity of around one billion neurons, UNICEF said.
This, however, largely depends on early childhood development such as breastfeeding, learning opportunities and a chance to grow up in a safe environment, it said.
Extreme trauma puts children at risk of living in a state of toxic stress inhibiting brain cell connections, with lifelong consequences to their cognitive, social and physical development, UNICEF said.
(Story corrects headline and text to note the 87 million refers to children under 7 years of age.)
(Reporting by Magdalena Mis, editing by Tim Pearce. Please credit Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)Bill Nye is an American television host, scientist, science educator, writer, actor and comedian. Check out this biography to get detailed information on his childhood, life and timeline.
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William Sanford ‘Bill’ Nye, is an American television artist, host and entertainer, known popularly as ‘Bill Nye the Science Guy’. He was born and brought up in Washington D.C. to World War II veterans. His interest in science was initiated by his father who was a sundial enthusiast. He graduated from the Cornell University in mechanical engineering and began his science career at Boeing, Seattle where he developed a hydraulic pressure resonance suppressor. He is a big fan of speading science education through entertainment and for that he began his entertainment career with small gigs at the comedy theatres, working as an assistant on the show ‘Back to the Future: The Animated Series’ and eventually bagged the most famous role of his life, ‘Bill Nye the Science Guy’. Besides these shows on the television and doing science miniseries for The Discovery Channel, Nye partook in every opportunity to spread the message on restoring energy and environment and teaching small children and sometimes the mature audience the importance and role of science in day to day life. He has been honored by many universities with several doctorates because of his contribution to science with his acting skills and talent on the television.
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All eyes are on the European Union as the UK approaches its controversial Brexit vote. But ramifications of the referendum will be more far-reaching than any one continent. Given that London is the biggest gateway for international travel to Europe, a UK separation could create a storm of regulatory headaches, from immigration, to consumer protections, to airlines. Here's what passport holders need to know ahead of the vote on Thursday.
Flying through Heathrow may feel more like flying through JFK-not in a good way.
International travellers passing through New York's JFK will all commiserate over the brutal American welcome of a four-hour customs line (that's the average wait time on weekends, according to a recent study led by various travel advocacy groups). At London's Heathrow, queues move a lot more quickly, and that's largely because EU citizens can enter through a separate line without any restrictions. If Brexit passes, those travellers could potentially join Americans and other international travellers in one queue for non-UK citizens.
See Also Britain travel guide
Charlie Leocha, president of consumer advocacy group Travelers United, said that if Brexit passes, "getting in and out of the UK will be an absolute horror show." As a member of the committee that helped raise funding for the installation of automated customs and border patrol kiosks in major American airports, he knows how long it can take to come up with solutions for these types of problems. "Improving the process for customs and immigration in the US took major cooperation from airlines and airports over an extended period of time. The problems we've had with this in the US are going to replicate in the UK - and it's going to be a mess," he said.
But others are more optimistic; Luke Petherbridge, public affairs manager for the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) and a co-author of the report "What Brexit Might Mean for UK Travel," isn't particularly worried about this point. "We can't see that it would have any significant impact," he said about the potential for expanded customs controls. "If you needed a visa before, you will still need a visa. And we expect that there would be an allocation of resources from the UK government to adjust for any passenger influx at customs and border patrol."
See also: How Aussies can avoid the Heathrow nightmare
On the other hand, arriving by train or ship shouldn't change at all.
"If you travel through the tunnel from London to Paris, you go through French immigration in the UK and then through UK immigration in France-that's how it works currently, and there's no reason why that should change," explained Petherbridge, who also offered reassuring words about cruise travel. "You've always had to show your passport at port on a cruise ship-that should be no different."
See also: A Ferrari on rails: On board the new, faster Eurostar
Travelling to Europe may be cheaper?
The finance world is bracing itself for economic turmoil next week should Brexit pass. The general consensus is that the British pound would take a hard hit on the heels of a split, which would have a domino effect on global economies. For internationals visiting the UK, it would likely translate to preferential exchange rates and more affordable vacations. Compounding matters is the possibility that EU nationals will also curtail their frequent visits to England; the travel booking site TravelZoo conducted a survey that revealed one in three Europeans would be less inclined to travel to the UK following a leave vote.
Reduced spending power in the UK also has its ramifications across Europe. According to the ABTA's report, compiled with Deloitte, UK citizens spent 19.76 billion, or $28 billion, on outbound travel throughout the EU in 2014. Industry estimates put 10 million British travellers in Spain each summer alone. Ripple effects could create deeply discounted vacations across the entire Mediterranean, particularly in British-favoured destinations such as Ibiza, Mallorca, Tuscany, and Provence.
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"This could be a good summer for Americans to head to Europe," advised Leocha. Or next summer: Since many Brits will already have travel plans in store for this summer, it'll take until 2017 to see the real effects of a reluctant British traveller base.
See also: What are the rules for Australians in Europe's visa-free Schengen countries?
But affordable airfares may be harder to find.
Under Single European Sky legislation, any carrier based in the EU has the guaranteed right to operate freely throughout the continent. In the event that Brexit passes, carriers such as British Airways and EasyJet (which are based in London and Luton, respectively) will have to renegotiate their bilateral agreements with the EU to continue flying into Europe.
Consumer protections may take a dip?
The EU has unrivalled consumer protections for travellers, compensating them on anything from delayed flights to cancellations due to natural disasters. That will continue for passengers (including non-EU citizens) on flights on European-based carriers to and from the EU. UK-based carriers will have to decide whether to live up to EU standards or chip away at consumer rights-as American carriers have done. Flight insurance providers such as Berkshire Hathaway may emerge as the winners here.
And so might (some) travel taxes.
On a recent phone interview, ABTA's Petherbridge explained that the EU currently imposes a strict cap on Britain's value-added tax (VAT), which would be up for revision following a leave vote. But there's also good news about travel taxes. Under current EU policies, any flight departing the EU pays departure taxes as dictated by the individual countries. Considering the heavy entry taxes at Heathrow, it should come to no surprise that the UK is one European country that levies a departure tax as well. As Petherbridge puts it, passengers on domestic UK flights pay this tax twice-since they technically depart from the UK, and thus, the EU, on two occasions. At up to 26 ($37) per flight, this could add up to a savings of more than 200 for a family of four flying within the UK.
Little things, like phone roaming, could cause big headaches.
The EU has made big strides in reducing the cost of mobile data roaming-currently there are strict caps on roaming charges, and by April 2017, the concept of roaming will be completely obsolete across the continent. For internationals, that means one European SIM card has been enough to guarantee connectivity (without the excessive bill) from Portugal to Poland. That may no longer be the case if and when the UK switches over to an independent mobile network.
Beaches are another small but potentially pervasive concern for travellers and U.K. residents alike, as the EU has a series of exacting requirements that relate to coastal clean-up efforts. Whether those will be maintained in the face of economic decline is up for debate. The fate of locally beloved foods may also be hanging in the balance.
The big picture is still to be determined.
Even without taking into account the number of Brits who have vacation homes across the Mediterranean, ABTA reports that 1.3 million UK citizens live in other EU countries. Those homeowners account for millions of passenger seats on EU flights on their own-a single carrier estimates 2 million seats-while their friends and family members add nearly 9 million visits, according to ABTA and Deloitte. All this is imperiled by questions about homeownership rights that arise from a potential Brexit.
In the event that these rights are revoked or halted, there may soon be a glut of Mediterranean vacation homes coming to the market. But that's unlikely, said Petherbridge. "The economic impact of abandoning those [expat] communities would be huge, so there's a big incentive to continue some amount of cooperation," he said. Still, he added that it would be "impossible to gauge how receptive either side would be at this point."
That uncertainty is a running theme across all these issues, which hinge on sheer speculation until after Thursday's vote. Even if the resolution passes, both Leocha and Petherbridge estimated that it would take two years to address the tangled web of concerns that could arise from the split.
The ABTA hopes that's not the case. According to its official position, "the risks and uncertainties associated with the UK leaving the EU, both economic and regulatory, outweigh any potential upsides for travellers or travel businesses."
BLOOMBERG
See also: 20 things that will shock first-time visitors to the UK
See also: 10 London highlights that most visitors missLONDON (Reuters) - Europe faces almost inevitable recession next year and years of stagnation as policymakers’ response to the euro zone crisis causes a downward spiral, billionaire investor George Soros said on Tuesday.
Flaws built into the euro from the start had become acute, Soros told a seminar, warning that the euro crisis could have the potential to destroy the 27-nation European Union.
The euro’s lack of a correction mechanism or of a provision for countries to leave it could be a fatal weakness, he said.
Germany had imposed its criteria on how a 750 billion euro ($1 trillion) euro zone rescue mechanism should be used and was imposing its own standards — a trade surplus and a high savings rate — on the rest of Europe, Soros said.
“But you can’t be a creditor country, a surplus country, without somebody being in deficit,” he said.
“That’s the real danger of the present situation — that by imposing fiscal discipline at a time of insufficient demand and a weak banking system, by wanting to have a balanced budget you are actually... setting in motion a downward spiral,” he said.
Germany would do relatively well because the decline in the euro had boosted its economy, he told the seminar on the euro zone crisis organized by two thinktanks, the European Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for European Reform.
“Germany is going to smell like roses but (the rest of) Europe is going to be pushed into a downward spiral, stagnation lasting many years and possibly worse than that,” he said.
“In other words, I think a recession next year is almost inevitable given the current policies,” Soros said, later clarifying that he meant a recession in Europe as a whole.
WARNS OF SOCIAL UNREST
“If there is no exit, (it) is liable to give rise to social unrest and, if you follow the line, social unrest can give rise to demand for law and order and (sow the) seeds of what happened in the inter-war period,” he said.
Political will to forge a common fiscal policy in Europe was absent and since Europe was liable to move backwards if it did not advance, “the crisis of the euro could actually have the potential of destroying the European Union,” he said.
European banks had bought large amounts of the sovereign bonds of weaker euro zone countries for a tiny interest rate differential, Soros said.
“That’s one of the reasons why the banks are so over-leveraged and why the German and the French banks own Spanish bonds,” he said.
“Now... they have a loss on their balance sheets which is not recognized and it reduces the credibility of those banks so the banking system is in serious trouble,” he said.
“The commercial paper market, for instance, in America is now refusing to lend to European banks so there is even a funding crisis and the ECB (European Central Bank) has to step in and the banks are unwilling to lend to each other,” he said.Image caption The company is increasing it prices from 1 July
Airtricity, Northern Ireland's second biggest electricity supplier, has announced it is increasing prices by 17.8% from 1 July 2013.
The move matches that by Power NI, which is raising its prices by 17.8% from the same date.
Airtricity said it could not continue to absorb the significant increase in wholesale costs.
"We very much regret the need to increase our prices," the company's managing director Stephen Wheeler said.
"As the utility regulator has pointed out, local prices are vulnerable to the rising energy costs on the international markets and those costs have remained high.
"Airtricity remains committed to offering a fair price for the energy we supply and providing a range of practical and financial support measures for those struggling to pay their bills.
"We recognise that this type of electricity price volatility presents significant difficulty for customers in managing their household budget and we would welcome greater stability in the management of regulated tariffs."
The company said the average annual increase for households would be £90.
The Consumer Council said it was disappointed by the price rise.
Its chief executive, Antoinette McKeown, said: "Airtricity's announcement is very unwelcome for struggling consumers and businesses.
"The biggest savings can be made by switching supplier and switching your method of payment.
"So, if you are with supplier 'x' and currently pay by cash or cheque, and you switch to supplier 'y' but also set up a direct debit, you can make the biggest savings."
Announcing its price rise last week, Power NI said it was in response to world fuel costs over which the firm had no control.
At the end of 2012 Power NI had 78% of the domestic market, Airtricity had 19%, and Budget Energy had 3%.
The figures for the business market were: Power NI 49%, Airtricity 28%, Energia 12% and Electric Ireland 11%.
As the cost of generation has gone up and down over recent years, all the main suppliers have roughly followed the trajectory of Power NI in terms of their prices.Polished metal and obsidian mirrors have existed from ancient times, and because of this, historians have usually passed over the introduction of the glass mirror as if it was just another variation on an old theme. But the development of glass mirrors marks a crucial shift, for they allowed people to see themselves properly for the first time, with all their unique expressions and characteristics. Polished metal mirrors of copper or bronze were very inefficient by comparison, reflecting only about 20 percent of the light; and even silver mirrors had to be exceptionally smooth to give any meaningful reflection. These were also prohibitively expensive: most medieval people would only have glimpsed their faces darkly, reflected in a pool of water.
The convex glass mirror was a Venetian invention of about 1300, possibly connected with the development of the glass lenses used in the earliest spectacles (invented in the 1280s). By the late fourteenth century, you could find such mirrors in northern Europe. The future Henry IV of England paid 6d to have the glass of a broken mirror replaced in 1387. Four years later, while traveling in Prussia, he paid £1 3s. 8d in sterling for “two mirrors of Paris” for his own use. His son, Henry V, had three mirrors in his chamber at the time of his death in 1422, two of which were together worth £1 3s. 2d. Although these were still far too expensive for an average farmer or tradesman, in 1500 the prosperous city merchant could afford such an item. In this respect, the individual with disposable income differed greatly from his ancestor in 1400: he could see his own reflection and thus knew how he appeared to the rest of the world.
People’s ability to appreciate their unique appearance led to a huge rise in the number of portraits commissioned, especially in the Low Countries and Italy. While almost all the oil paintings that survive from the fourteenth century are of a religious nature, the few exceptions are portraits. This trend toward portraiture grew in the fifteenth century, and came to dominate nonreligious art. As important men increasingly commissioned artists to create their likenesses, the more those likenesses were viewed, encouraging other people to have their portraits painted. Portraits invited the viewer to “Look at me!” and implied that the sitter was a man of substance, or a well-connected woman, worth portraying because of his or her status. They encouraged you to talk about these people, making them the center of attention.
One of the most famous paintings of the century is Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Marriage, painted in Bruges in about 1434. It shows a convex round mirror on the back wall, reflecting the backs of the subjects to the artist. If van Eyck’s Portrait of a Man with a Turban, painted the previous year, is of the artist himself (as it probably is), then he also had a flat mirror by this date. We know from Brunelleschi’s famous experiment on perspective that flat mirrors were available in Florence at that time. After van Eyck, self-portraits abound for the later fifteenth century in Italy as well as the Netherlands. Dürer painted quite a few, culminating in the image of himself as Christ at the age of twenty-eight (1500); his introspection rivals that of Rembrandt in the seventeenth century. In such an artist’s hands, the mirror became an instrument whereby a man could start to investigate how other people saw him. Hitherto artists had only portrayed other people; now they could put themselves into the picture. And anyone who saw the intense interrogation by the artist of his own face, searching for the clues to his nature, could not help but pause for thought about his or her own identity.
All this amounts to far more than just a series of attractive pictures. The very act of a person seeing himself in a mirror or being represented in a portrait as the center of attention encouraged him to think of himself in a different way. He began to see himself as unique. Previously the parameters of individual identity had been limited to an individual’s interaction with the people around him and the religious insights he had over the course of his life. Thus individuality as we understand it today did not exist: people only understood their identity in relation to groups—their household, their manor, their town or parish—and in relation to God. Occasionally individuals stood out from the crowd in the way they wrote about themselves—you only need to think of Peter Abelard’s autobiographical Historia Calamitatum and Ulrich von Lichenstein’s starring role in his own romances—but the average person saw himself only as part of a community. This is why the medieval punishments of banishment and exile were so severe. A tradesman thrown out of his hometown would lose everything that gave him his identity. He would be unable to make a living, borrow money, or trade goods. He would lose the trust of those who could stand up for him and protect him physically, socially, and economically. He would have no one to plead his innocence or previous good behavior in court, and he would lose the spiritual protection of any church guild or fraternity to which he belonged. What happened in the fifteenth century was not so much that this community identity broke down, but rather that people started to become aware of their unique qualities irrespective of their loyalty to their community. That old sense of collective identity was overlaid with a new sense of personal self-worth.
This new individualism had a religious dimension, too. Medieval autobiographical writing is not normally about the author himself, but about his relationship with God. Similarly, the hagiographies of early medieval saints are archetypal moral stories of men and women who followed God’s path. Even in the fourteenth century, a monk writing the chronicle of his monastery or a citizen writing about his town would incorporate God into his narrative, as the important element of the story was not the community itself so much as its relationship to God. As the fourteenth century drew to a close and people started to see themselves as individual members of their communities, they started to emphasize their personal relationships with God. You can see that transformation reflected in religious patronage. If in 1340 a wealthy man built a chantry chapel to sing Masses for his soul, he would have the interior decorated with religious paintings, such as the adoration of the Magi. By 1400, if the founder’s descendant redecorated that chapel, he would have himself painted as one of the Magi. By the late fifteenth century, more often than not, just the patron’s portrait would be on display, the emblems of faith that the artist included in the painting being sufficient representation of the religiosity the patron wished to project.
The new individualism also extended to the way people expressed themselves. The letters they wrote to one another were increasingly of a personal nature; previously letter writers had restricted themselves to formalities and orders. There was now a marked trend toward writing about yourself and revealing your personal thoughts and feelings. Examples of such autobiographical writing abound in the fifteenth century: in English there is The Book of Margery Kempe; in Castilian, Las Memorias de Leonora López de Córdoba; and in Italian, Lorenzo Ghiberti’s I Commentarii. Four of the earliest collections of English private letters—the Stonor, Plumpton, Paston, and Cely letters—also date from the fifteenth century. Ordinary people started noting down the times and dates of their births, so they could use astrology to find out more about themselves in terms of their health and fortune. The new self-awareness also led to a greater desire for privacy. In previous centuries, householders and their families had shared a dwelling entirely, often eating and sleeping in the same hall as their servants. Now they began to build private chambers for themselves and their guests, away from the hall. As with so many changes in history, people were largely unaware of the significance of what they were doing. Nevertheless, our vision of ourselves as individuals, not just members of a community, marks an important shift from the medieval world to the modern.
Excerpted from Millennium: From Religion to Revolution: How Civilization Has Changed Over a Thousand Years by Ian Mortimer. Copyright © 2016 by Ian Mortimer. Reprinted by arrangement with Pegasus Books.Marco Fu won his first title carrying ranking points since the 2013 Australian Goldfields Open by defeating Michael White 4-1 in the final of the Dafabet Gibraltar Open at the Tercentenary Sports Hall.
The world number 14 won three successive frames from 1-1 to win the €25,000 top prize at the penultimate event of this season’s Kreativ Dental Clinic European Tour. Fu had lost his previous two finals in European Tour events, but was never behind against opponent White in Gibraltar.
Victory for Fu ensures that he will qualify to play at this season’s Players Championship event, which will be held at Manchester’s Event City for the first time next March.
The two-time ranking event winner recently made it to the quarter-finals of the International Championship and the same stage of the Betway UK Championship in York to confirm his place at next month’s Dafabet Masters. Fu also made his fourth career maximum break earlier this week to earn an additional £3,500 from the rolling prize.
The first two frames of the final were shared before Fu claimed the next three with a top break of 140 in frame four. White, who was appearing in his first Kreativ Dental Clinic European Tour final, had chances to take a lead in the third frame but was unable to take advantage and Fu closed out victory.
“It’s great, I’ve heard a lot about Gibraltar in the past but this is the first time I have been here and it is absolutely beautiful,” said Fu. “It’s always nice to be able to take part in a big tournament like this in a new place because we get to see the city and play snooker as well.
“Winning it is like a dream come true. This is my first European Tour title and it is in Gibraltar so I will be back.”
The Kreativ Dental Clinic European Tour is a series of six events across the continent, with the top 24 on the final Order of Merit to qualify for the Players Championship in Manchester. The sixth and final event is the Gdynia Open from February 24-28.
Results (last 16 onwards)
Last 16
Liang Wenbo 4-3 Mark Selby
David Grace 4-2 Peter Ebdon
Dominic Dale 4-3 Kyren Wilson
Marco Fu 4-2 Luca Brecel
Alfie Burden 4-2 Oliver Lines
Michael White 4-3 Andrew Higginson
Mark King 4-2 Ricky Walden
Stuart Bingham 4-0 Nigel Bond
Quarter-finals
Liang Wenbo 4-1 David Grace
Marco Fu 4-1 Dominic Dale
Michael White 4-2 Alfie Burden
Stuart Bingham 4-1 Mark King
Semi-finals
Marco Fu 4-0 Liang Wenbo
Michael White 4-0 Stuart Bingham
Final
Marco Fu 4-1 Michael WhiteSendtember – according to climbing folklore – is blessed with perfect cool, dry, stable spring conditions in which climbers can harvest the gains made in a long winter of hard training. September, they say, is the most sendingest month of the year.
It might have a catchy name but it’s wrong.
Okay, it’s not exactly wrong it is just less right than Ticktober.
At VL we often deal in myths. We also want to know where is the most efficient place to put our energies for maximum climbing benefit. So naturally we wanted to find out if there was any meat on the Sendtember myth that it is the month for attacking projects and dream routes.
To do that we enlisted the Brains Trust at The Crag (the collaborative climbing database), who took our whimsical wondering and nailed it to the ground with cold, hard data – the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong.
Articulating the hypothesis was easy – September is the best month for climbing performance.
To test it all we had to do was figure out if the data showed a correlative increase in propensity for hard sends. After some back and forth around interrogative logic, we settled on a query that searched for a personal best climbing outdoors for specified tick types by Australians in Australia who had already logged five ticks of that tick type. Which is a short way of saying, when do climbers tick their hardest routes.
Difficulty is not the be all and end all of performance but it’s the obvious metric and we feel it provides a foundation for understanding performance.
We refined the data three ways; for all tick types combined (Tick, Onsight, Red Point & Pink Point), for Onsight only and for Red Point only. The data was normalised for site growth across the query period (2011-2014) but was not normalised for the number of holidays in the month.
The trend is clear. Whilst there is an upswing in tickage in September the phenomenon peaks in October, making it the most sendingest month.
There are spikes also in December/January and April but it doesn’t take a Cardinal to recognise the effects of Christmas and Easter. Still, even though heaps of people climb over the Christmas holidays and Easter is a declared National Climbing Holy-day, the peaks in October are greater.
Simon from The Crag has a poetic reason for drilling down to tick type, “Red Point is about working a route, so my hypothesis is the ideal conditions are less a factor then just getting there as many times as you could. Onsight is about being at one with the rock, so my hypothesis is that the conditions would be more significant.”
Onsights are very high in October and significantly higher in September suggesting conditions play a big part in keeping cool in the face of the shock of the new.
Noteworthy is the parlous state of redpointing in September – the second lowest result for any month of the year. Perhaps it is the working month though, with climbers putting time into working routes, which pays off with an October – the best month for redpoints – send.
And the very good news in all this – it is only the start of October so you have the whole glorious month in which to send.
Sendtember might be okay but the stats tell us that Ticktober is where it’s at. Go forth and achieve.
Simon MaddenTEL AVIV – There have been numerous reports about the possibility that the Obama administration may support unilateral action at the United Nations Security Council regarding a Palestinian state or resolutions targeting Jewish communities in the West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem.
Speaking to the Saban Forum in Washington over the weekend, Secretary of State John Kerry notably refused to confirm that the U.S. would veto a UN resolution intended to set guidelines for the establishment of a Palestinian state, allowing only that the Obama administration would veto a resolution “if it is a biased, unfair resolution calculated to delegitimize Israel.”
Congress last month issued a nonbinding resolution opposing UN action, instead highlighting the importance of direct negotiations between the parties.
Here are five basic reasons unilateral UN action would be a disaster for Israel and would strengthen the Palestinian campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state while rewarding Palestinian support for terrorism.
1 – The Palestinians would be rewarded for refusing direct negotiations with Israel.
The same PA that now seeks to unilaterally impose a solution at the UN failed to respond to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unprecedented attempts to jump-start negotiations aimed at creating a Palestinian state, including freezing Jewish construction in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem and releasing Palestinian prisoners.
If the PA wanted a state, Palestinian leaders would at least respond to Netanyahu’s open-ended willingness to begin talks instead of repeatedly refusing to come to the bargaining table. UN action would send a message to the Palestinians that they can get away with refusing to negotiate with the Jewish state and still target Israel unilaterally at the UN.
2 – The Palestinians would be rewarded for refusing multiple Israeli offers of a state.
Once again, if the Palestinians wanted a state, they would not have to resort to anti-Israel resolutions at the UN. Israel has offered the Palestinians a state in much of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with a shared capital in Jerusalem numerous times. These offers were made at Camp David in 2000, Taba in 2001, the Annapolis Conference in 2007, and more offers were made in 2008. In each of these cases, the PA refused generous Israeli offers of statehood and bolted negotiations without counteroffers.
3 – Any UN condemnation of settlements would support the anti-Semitic Palestinian position that a future state must be ethnically cleansed of all Jews.
What exactly is the problem with Jews living in the West Bank or eastern Jerusalem, areas with deep historical and religious significance to Judaism? Condemning Jewish construction in these areas would seem to support Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ extremist position that not a single Israeli can live in a future Palestinian state. “In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli — civilian or soldier — on our lands,’ Abbas said.
Interestingly, there is no talk about the international community condemning rampant illegal Palestinian construction on Jewish-owned property in eastern sections of Jerusalem, including the construction of dozens of apartment buildings on about 270 acres in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Qalandiya and Kfar Akev, and about 50 acres in a north Jerusalem suburb known as Shoafat. The land is indisputably owned by a U.S.-based Jewish group.
4 – Israel’s West Bank and eastern Jerusalem Jewish communities are not illegal.
Firstly, the singular focus on settlement activity leaves out the intent of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, the only binding resolution pertaining to the West Bank, which calls on Israel to withdraw under a future final-status solution “from territories occupied” as a result of the 1967 Six Day War. The resolution does not call for a withdrawal from “all territories,” a designation deliberately left out to ensure Israel’s ability to retain some territory for security purposes under a future deal.
The Jewish Virtual Library explains:
The Security Council did not say Israel must withdraw from “all the” territories occupied after the Six-Day War. This was quite deliberate. The Soviet delegate wanted the inclusion of those words and said that their exclusion meant “that part of these territories can remain in Israeli hands.” The Arab states pushed for the word “all” to be included, but this was rejected. They nevertheless asserted that they would read the resolution as if it included the word “all.” The British ambassador who drafted the approved resolution, Lord Caradon, declared after the vote: “It is only the resolution that will bind us, and we regard its wording as clear.”
Also, as the Committee for Accuracy for Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) pointed out in an email blast, international law does not make Israeli settlements illegal:
CAMERA notes:
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Conventions, which is relied upon by those who claim the settlements are illegal, does not apply in the case of the West Bank. This is because the West Bank was never under self-rule by a nation that was a party to the Convention, and therefore there is no “partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party,” as Article 2 of the Convention specifies. Moreover, even if it did apply, by |
affect lifespan.
The researchers removed a ton of potentially confounding variables, including "college attendance, marital status, birth year, career length, age at debut year, and BMI." Once they had controlled for all those factors, they found smile intensity really did do a good job predicting longevity - it accounted for 35% of the total variability in players' survival chances. Not bad for smiling once a year when your picture is taken.
There were other factors the researchers found that helped longevity - players who attended college had a "44% reduced risk of dying in any particular year", and for every addition season a player stayed in baseball, he enjoyed a 4% increased chance of surviving in a given year. Those two seem to make sense - players who are able to keep playing longer are likely to, in general, be fitter than those who have shorter careers, and they probably have more accrued income to spend on healthcare down the road. As for college attendance, more recent players are more likely to have attended college, so they also enjoy the generally increased life expectancy in the overall population.
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Now, if you'll forgive me for willfully misinterpreting this study, I present to you a foolproof plan for immortality. To wit:
1. Become a professional baseball player.
2. Never, ever retire.
3. For the love of god, SMILE in your baseball cards!
And, hey presto, you should live forever. What could be simpler? As an added bonus, you should make many millions of dollars in the process. But be careful to only try this in professional baseball. The health benefits of playing professional football forever are rather less certain.
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[NCBI via Discoblog; up top is the original baseball card with Honus Wagner, along with its rather ironic reverse side featuring Piedmont Cigarettes.]When word broke early last week that former president and first lady Barack and Michelle Obama had landed a joint deal at Penguin Random House worth a reported $65 million, many in the industry were stunned. The advance is, if not the largest on record for two standalone works, certainly the largest in recent memory.
As is its company policy, PRH has not commented on the money. Some insiders, all of whom spoke to PW on the condition of anonymity, have expressed skepticism about the accuracy of the figure (which the Financial Times first reported). A week before the deal was announced, one high-ranking publisher at another house who had been involved in negotiations said that he thought the two books would fetch a total of $30 million. But many in the business, including scouts monitoring the auction, said they think the $65 million figure is accurate.
Assuming, then, that PRH did spend $65 million on both books, the publisher has a number of ways to make back its money, and then some. Industry members are confident both books will do well in hardcover, trade paperback, e-book, and audio. With Barack Obama’s new book, PRH has a title that will likely be an instant bestseller and will also become a backlist mainstay. It also has the potential to become a popular choice for course adoption. According to NPD BookScan, which tracks about 80% of print sales, Obama’s two previous books, 1995’s Dreams from My Father and 2006’s The Audacity of Hope, have sold roughly 4.7 million print copies combined since 2001, when BookScan started tracking sales.
Michelle Obama’s book is more of a gamble. Many insiders said that, despite her popularity as first lady and the notoriety she achieved in the just-closed presidential election, it’s harder to make an educated guess about how well her book could sell, out of the gate or in backlist.
In addition to not discussing the advance, PRH has released little to no information about the books themselves. As of press time, standard details usually included in acquisition announcements—publication date, the imprint publishing the book—had not been shared. Insiders tracking the books said it was thought that the titles would be released in fall 2018 and that Crown will be handling them, since Crown is the PRH division that published Barack Obama’s earlier books. Other lingering unknowns: who will edit the books and, most crucially, what they are about. (Sources said Obama’s book is not “merely” a memoir.)
Getting back to that advance, and how PRH might recoup its upfront investment, there is the matter of the foreign rights market. (PRH, which acquired world rights, did not respond to an inquiry about whether it will offer rights to the Obama titles at the forthcoming London Book Fair, set to begin March 14.)
A number of insiders said they thought PRH might choose to let each of its international divisions release the books in its home country. Should PRH try, instead, to bring in money through the sale of foreign rights, the question becomes how much publishers in other countries will pay for the books.
One literary agent said he thought the most PRH might make from foreign rights deals was $6 million, explaining that, because seven-figure foreign rights deals are so rare, it is unlikely even the biggest markets would pay in that range. One foreign rights associate guessed PRH could earn $10 million–$15 million from foreign deals. Her breakdown? “The bulk of the money I think would come from the U.K. and Germany, where I imagine they will do seven-figure deals.” She felt the larger markets in Western Europe and Asia would draw less, “albeit six figures.”
Still other insiders said that fathoming the math is impossible, since the sum PRH paid is itself so far from the norm. As one foreign rights associate put it: “We’re all so blown away by the numbers on this deal that the sky’s the limit, right?” She went on, “I’ve rarely seen seven-figure deals abroad, but these numbers are new to the game.”
An American scout, echoing this sentiment, said that because “no one expected it to go this high, [with the books selling for] almost double what we might have imagined,” it’s pointless to rely on history to make an educated guess. “You almost have to throw normal figures out the window.”
Another American scout, who also admitted he never predicted the books would sell for as much as they did in the U.S., guessed that PRH might be able to make as much as $25 million through foreign deals: “I would think that £10 million in the U.K. is crazy—but maybe not. Germany and Holland and Brazil will be the other big territories, I think. Seven or eight million in Germany and Brazil? Two million in Holland? Four million in China?”
In the end, it seems, paying $65 million for these books might not have been such a bad idea.Figure 1. Overly Restrictive Product Market Regulations
Figure 1. Overly Restrictive Product Market Regulations
Source: OCDE
Improve competition in key industries such as transport, financial, telecommunications, logistics, communications, and distribution
Increase labor market flexibility, for example by addressing skill mismatches and social barriers that block qualified workers from certain employment based on gender, age, or ethnic group
Simplify and rationalize tax regimes and regulatory frameworks
Increase the level and efficiency of infrastructure investments
Source: Wacker (2016).
Figure 2. Impact of Poverty on Growth Increases with VolatilitySource: Wacker (2016).
Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean suffer from low productivity: the region’s workers produce on average just a fifth of the output of a US worker.Productivity is the outcome of the functioning of an economy – both at the micro and macro levels. Therefore, we need to focus on the drivers of productivity if we want to shrink the efficiency gap.As discussed in a previous blog post, a fundamental cause for this efficiency gap is what economists call resource misallocation.In this post, I dig deeper on what can be done to address this problem, drawing on the results from our recent study Understanding the Income and Efficiency Gap in Latin America and the Caribbean At the microeconomic level, the drivers of productivity can be classified as external or internal to the firm External FactorsIn many Latin American countries, external factors (factors mostly outside firms’ control or influence) became barriers to productivity growth.External factors can include the overall regulatory framework (including in labor and capital markets), access to finance, the degree of trade openness, availability of public infrastructure (such as access to electricity, paved roads, ports and airports) and tax policy.These can often become barriers to adequate resource allocation – thereby blocking the flow of labor and capital to the most productive enterprises and reducing aggregate productivity.For example, product market regulations (the red diamonds in Figure 1 below) are among the most restrictive in the region’s countries.What can be done to turn these external factors from negative to positive drivers of productivity growth? Here are some of the most important reform areas:Internal FactorsThen there are also internal factors that work as barriers to productivity growth.Internal factors include managerial capacity and ability to innovate within firms. Surveys of management practices suggest that managerial efficiency varies significantly across firms in different countries. In addition, incentives to invest in managerial skills also vary by country.Innovation is a key internal driver of firm-level productivity growth, but external factors prevent firms from absorbing technology that is readily available. In fact, institutional variables, such as poor rule of law and weak protection of property rights, have greater force in Latin America than elsewhere in reducing firms’ incentives to innovate. This means that even internal factors can be influenced by external factors such as policy reforms.The region’s relatively high poverty rates have hindered convergence to higher income levels. Why? If poverty is widespread, the poor might have no means to invest – including in education – despite their potentially high payoff.A novel finding of our study is that this effect is magnified by macroeconomic volatility. This potentially creates a vicious cycle: Macroeconomic volatility and uncertainty further increases the negative effect of poverty on growth, because under such conditions the poor will refrain even more from investing. In addition, volatility discourages poorer workers from moving to sectors that are more profitable and productive. Figure 2 shows that the adverse effect of poverty on growth becomes more pronounced as GDP volatility increases.Policies that reduce macroeconomic volatility – such as, for example, fiscal rules when appropriate – will help thwart the vicious cycle of high poverty and low growth. Conversely, countries should steer clear from policies that amplify macroeconomic volatility – such as pro-cyclical fiscal policy – as longer-term harmful effects may result.
What now?
Our study confirms the importance of microeconomic reforms for reducing the efficiency gap in Latin America and the Caribbean. But it also shows that governments can facilitate growth at the micro level by fostering a stable and predictable macroeconomic policy environment – since the macro and micro dimensions are inextricably linked.Photo: Daniel Bartolome and Ona Bombí/ICFO Two quantum random number sources were built on this 6 mm x 2 mm photonic integrated circuit, which is juxtaposed against a 1-cent euro coin.
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Taking advantage of technology developed to manipulate light on chips, a team based in Spain and Italy has created an integrated circuit that can be used to generate true random numbers by taking advantage of the thoroughly unpredictable nature of quantum mechanics.
The compact approach, which might one day find its way into smartphones and tablets, could be a boon for engineers hoping to keep financial transactions and other communications secure. Random numbers are a vital ingredient in the encryption schemes we rely on to secure data, and they’re also a powerful tool in computational modeling.
Today’s conventional random number generation is done using computer algorithms or physical hardware. A chip-based random number generator can, for example, use analog or digital circuits that are sensitive to random thermal fluctuations to generate unpredictable strings.
But even if these sources look quite random, it’s practically impossible to prove they are perfectly so, explains Valerio Pruneri of the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Spain. If you wait long enough—perhaps far longer than you’d care to wait—you may ultimately find there are correlations between numbers, ones that would ultimately allow you to crack the random-number-generation scheme.
Systems that obey the rules of quantum mechanics, by contrast, could be impossible nuts to crack. “Quantum physics, by definition, is fully unpredictable no matter what,” Pruneri says. “There is no way that somebody can guess future numbers based on current information.”
Quantum random number generators are nothing new; there are even commercial systems available. But Pruneri and his colleagues decided to take aim at portability. They wanted to create something that could spit out random numbers at a high rate, but be small and energy-efficient enough that it could ultimately be integrated with microelectronics—perhaps in a package small enough to fit in a smartphone or tablet.
The chip they created takes advantage of standard fabrication techniques used to construct photonic integrated circuits. A small, pulsed indium phosphide laser is responsible for infusing the system with randomness. Below a certain energy threshold, a laser emits a small number of photons through a process called spontaneous emission, which creates light with random phase. This randomness impacts the ultimate phase of the light the laser emits when it’s above that threshold, once stimulated emission starts to dominate, Pruneri explains. The result is that, pulse to pulse, the laser light will have a random phase.
To transform these random phases into something usable, the pulsed light is mixed with light from a second indium phosphide laser on the chip. The phase of the first laser’s pulses will ultimate impact how light from the two laser sources interfere with one another, creating certain brightness differences that can be read out by a photodetector.
This quantum “entropy source” can be used to produce random numbers at a good clip—in the realm of a gigabit per second. The work appears online today in the journal Optica.
Pruneri says the next step is to integrate the chip with conventional CMOS electronics to turn the output of the system into random numbers that can be used by software. Here too, he expects the team will take advantage of photonics integrated circuit manufacturing techniques that have been built up over the years, in particular a way of pairing silicon and other materials, called hybrid integration.About This Game
The all-new MLBPA license lets players come alive. For the first time ever, Out of the Park Baseball features authentic FaceGen images of real players. With player aging, real-time emotion, and automatic uniform adjustment based on trades and free agency for most major leaguers, you’re more in touch with your club than ever.
New 3D animation with moving player symbols making plays and greatly improved authentic 3D major league ballparks deliver the most powerful in-game experience yet.
All-new Historical Exhibition mode allows you to pit any two major league teams from 1901 to 2015 against each other in a single game or series of multiple lengths. Or set up any past World Series matchup with authentic rosters automatically imported. What if...?
Authentic historical minor league systems from 1919 through 2015 with a database of more than 100,000 real players let you navigate farm systems to unprecedented levels.
New support for multi-core processors means that Out of the Park Baseball 17 cranks through simulations and other tasks at up to 60% better speeds than last season.
Automatically generated game recap headlines and stories report on key events throughout the games and your overall experience.
GMs will face smarter, more cunning AI GMs and managers that have individualized, personal approaches to roster-building, scouting, and finances.
A beautiful, redesigned game interface makes it easy for armchair GMs and managers to build their baseball empire.
And much more, like recoded scouting, better AI, more realistic player development, definable trade needs etc. Dozens of new features await you!
Out of the Park Baseball 17 - winner ofaward and now officially licensed by MLB.com and the MLBPA - is the best baseball strategy game ever created!"OOTP is an astonishing accomplishment!" - Boston Red Sox Principal Owner John W. HenryOut of the Park Baseball 17 is a baseball fan’s dream. Step into the shoes of a GM and/or field manager to own the future or rewrite the past of your favorite real-world franchise. Build the team the way you want to. Start a new career with your favorite 2016 MLB team or span through almost 150 years of baseball history and run any team from the past! You can even set up your own fictional baseball universe or compete in online leagues against other OOTP players. The possibilities in OOTP 17 are endless.The brand new 2016 MLB roster set will include all projected Opening Day MLB rosters as well as the complete minor league system down to the rookie leagues and even future draft classes. Can Jake Arrieta, David Price, and Johnny Cueto give their teams the pitching boosts they need? Will Albert Pujols, Chris Davis, and Bryce Harper once again help power their clubs to victory? Can the Kansas City Royals repeat or will the Chicago Cubs finally win the World Series again? Find out and guide your favorite MLB franchise to glory!Dive into the more hands-on management and set your team's lineups, pitching staffs, and in-game strategy. You can oversee your league at a high level, or play out each game, managing play by play or even pitch by pitch. OOTP players progress realistically over time. Build a team through the draft, or sign big free agents to put you over the top!New Features in OOTP 17 include:Own the future - rewrite the past!Visit us on www.ootpdevelopments.com Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ootpbaseball Twitter: http://twitter.com/ootpbaseball Major League Baseball trademarks and copyrights are used with permission of MLB Advanced Media, L.P. All rights reserved.OFFICIALLY LICENSED PRODUCT OF MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL PLAYERS ASSOCIATION - MLBPA trademarks and copyrighted works, including the MLBPA logo, and other intellectual property rights are owned and/or held by MLBPA and may not be used without MLBPA’s written consent. Visit www.MLBPLAYERS.com, the Players Choice on the web.In my rush to get to 48G, about six rows from the very back of the jumbo Boeing 747 en route to Paris from New York City, I hit nearly every person I passed already sitting comfortably in their seats with my unwieldy seafoam green carry-on bag.
Finally, I arrived at my aisle seat in the middle row. Without glancing down at my neighbor, I dropped the heavy bag onto the floor, feeling giddy for my European adventures to begin.
So far, so good.
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But after stowing my bag in the overhead compartment above my seat, I looked down and saw an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man shaking his head no at me. He shook his head over and over again to make his message crystal clear. My mood immediately shifted from excited to anxious.
I had read about Orthodox men refusing to sit next to women on planes before, and knew it was becoming a serious problem for Israeli airlines, where tensions between secular and Orthodox Israelis already run high.
Some ultra-Orthodox Jews don’t sit next to women on planes due to a strict interpretation of the Jewish law Negiah, which forbids men from touching other women who aren’t family members. But not all ultra-Orthodox Jews interpret the law in this way, and many have no problem sitting next to women on planes.
That said, I respect those who do observe Negiah. Whenever I encounter an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man who doesn’t want to shake my hand, I don’t take offense; It’s his decision and interpretation of Judaism. Other people’s bodies are their own to do with what they will, and it’s not my place to overstep that boundary. But when my physical comfort is compromised because of a belief that touching another woman will somehow lead to sex or impurity, that women are too tempting to even sit next to on a plane, well, that’s the devotee’s problem—not mine.
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My parents taught me about a time before I was born when black people were forced to move from their seats, and I always told myself that I’d never quietly submit to anyone who demanded I move because of who I am—in this case, a woman.
Adrenaline rushed through me. I’ve never been one to cower in the face of misogyny.
I’ve never been one to cower in the face of misogyny.
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As soon as the ultra-Orthodox Jewish man shook his head, and motioned for me to switch seats with a man several rows up, I turned to him and said calmly but firmly, “I know what’s going on; I understand. And I respect you, but you must respect me.”
I continued, “I know you can’t sit next to me, and that’s alright with me, but I’m afraid it is you who needs to find another seat. I’m not moving.”
The man smiled warmly; he was neither mean nor angry. But I was angry that he wanted me to move instead of moving himself. Beneath his veneer of kindness was a singular motivation: to get me away from him—and that felt bad.
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For a few minutes, we sat next to each other. I shifted in my seat uncomfortably, and kept my eyes fixed on Air France’s literature in the seatback in front of me. Meanwhile, the man tried to get the attention of every other man who walked by us. I became frustrated and felt antagonized. I didn’t want to yell at him, but I had made myself clear: I wasn’t moving. So, I didn’t know why he wouldn’t stop trying to get men to take my seat. The man wasn’t listening to me, and I knew that underneath all those smiles were plain disregard for my comfort and disrespect for my womanhood. Exasperated, I got up and walked to the back of the plane to complain.
“If he cannot sit next to a woman, then he needs to find a seat of his own,” I told the flight attendant.
“There’s three of them and one of you,” she responded, saying it was a full flight.
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“I paid for that seat—that is my seat. If he wanted to ensure he’d be woman-free, he should have purchased the whole row,” I exclaimed.
We went on like this, her and I, for several minutes.
“I’m angry,” I said.
“I know it,” she said sympathetically. “I’ve had to deal with this before.”
The flight attendant assured me that she didn’t think it was fair, either.
When I looked back towards my seat, there was a man sitting there. No one had asked for my permission—he just took it while I was complaining to the flight attendant.
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“Is it okay?” she asked me, motioning to the man who now occupied my seat.
“Well, what can I do at this point?” I replied, defeated.
After several minutes in my new seat, two rows behind my old one—and two rows from the bathroom at the very back of the plane—I began to feel angry again. If I had to be displaced, I should be upgraded. The flight attendant laughed in my face at my request.
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She, and by extension Air France, clearly weren’t thinking about the significance of what had transpired. What if it was a white supremacist with kind eyes and a warm smile who refused to sit next to me because I’m black? Or a non-Jewish person who couldn’t stand sitting next to me because I’m Jewish?
I knew that underneath all those smiles was plain disregard for my comfort and respect for my womanhood.
Using religion as an excuse for inequality isn’t a new phenomenon. Accommodating passengers based on their religious beliefs is a slippery slope; moving me, instead of moving the man whose religion dictates that he shouldn’t sit next to a woman, suggests Air France tacitly agrees that his beliefs trump my secularism.
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What occurred after I tweeted about my experience has been a nightmare. Men who identified as Hasidic accused me of lying about the incident, someone else accused me of lying about being Jewish, and others called me an “odious skank” and a “shvartze”—a derogatory term for a black person in Yiddish.
But the response that bothered me most was from the man who claims he took my seat:
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His version of the story illuminates the crux of the issue: To this man, I was a hysterical woman whose only goal was to get an upgraded seat. He neglected to mention the complaints I lodged against Air France for misogyny, and the many times I said it wasn’t my responsibility as a woman to accommodate his religious beliefs. None of that mattered in his eyes.
Apparently, Air France didn’t think much of my grievance, either, because it only offered me $150 for my “inconvenience.”
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And that, unfortunately, is how patriarchy operates. Critics repeatedly said I should’ve done the nice thing and moved without making it a big deal—the subtext being that I should sacrifice my beliefs and comfort for the beliefs and comfort of a man.
Collier Meyerson is a reporter at Fusion with a focus on race and politics. She lives in Brooklyn.Image: iStockphoto
Nobody likes passwords. If you use the same one everywhere, a single slipup can give a thief access to all your information. If you make your passwords unique, you’ll have so many you’ll have to rely on your Web browser to remember them.
Pokai Chen and Meng-syun Tsai, computer scientists at National Chiao Tung University (NCTU), based in Hsinchu, Taiwan, think the solution is to revert to the days when the only ID you ever needed was your signature. They’ve come up with an app that lets you log in by drawing your signature—or anything else, really—in the air with your smartphone.
The app, called AirSig, has been available since September on Google Play. In mid-October it won first prize in the Cloud Innovation and Application Contest sponsored by Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs.
AirSig, a form of gesture recognition, grew out of research the pair did at NCTU. There are several other academic groups around the world that have explored the idea, but with less success.
Chen says that sensors embedded in the phone’s handset can catch and recognize a signature in the air, though he wouldn’t reveal which sensors the app relies on and for what. Most smartphones now include a 3-axis accelerometer, a gyroscope, and a compass, and some are starting to come equipped with air-pressure sensors.
In experiments, AirSig took only 0.1 second to recognize a signature—100 times as fast as the best performance of a similar system reported in 2011 by a team at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid [PDF]. The Taiwan group also found there was a 0.63 percent chance that a user’s signature could be falsely rejected. However, it would be almost impossible to hack this system, Chen says, because the false acceptance rate was also very low—0.97 percent. The team got that figure by observing 32 people who tried mimicking a signature 20 times after seeing someone sign a name once.
The results are favorable compared with what the Spanish team was able to achieve. Using a biometrics measure called the equal error rate, which allows comparisons of error rates across methods, AirSig scored 0.8 percent versus the Spanish system’s 2.8 percent.
The 0.8 percent equal error rate is “absolutely amazing,” says Lin Zhong, a computer scientist at Rice University who has done research on gesture recognition using mobile devices [PDF]. And the number also points to a clue about AirSig’s inner workings. “I guess they used both accelerometers and a gyroscope. In our work, we only used the accelerometer, because gyroscopes had not appeared on phones back then,” he says. “The gyroscope definitely will help the accuracy.”
According to Chen, the app’s ID authentication technology is secure because it considers what you know (your signature), who you are (the particular way you sign your name), and what you have (your own smartphone with the app) at the same time. “The in-air signature is highly safe because it will stay unknown to others forever if it has never been revealed,” and even brute-force attacks would not be able defeat it, Chen says.
By comparison, Chen says, thieves can trick Apple’s iPhone 5s Touch ID by lifting a fingerprint or using the finger of the phone’s unconscious owner. In fact, in September, just a few days after the release of the iPhone 5s, the Chaos Computer Club, a group of hackers based in Berlin, claimed it had hacked the iPhone’s fingerprint reader. A report by the market research firm IHS iSuppli estimates that the Touch ID fingerprint sensor costs US $7. “Compared to the cost for Apple to adopt Touch ID technology…using our technology to secure a smartphone leads to no extra hardware cost,” Chen says, adding that it should be relatively easy to build an iOS version of AirSig.
About the Author
Yu-Tzu Chiu is a Taipei correspondent for Bloomberg BNA. She has chronicled Taiwan’s tech policies for IEEE Spectrum since 2000. In February 2013, she reported on a way to use brain activity to predict whether a new online game would be a hit or a flop.Turkish Army vehicles and tanks move near the Syrian border in Suruc on February 23, 2015 (AFP Photo/Ilyas Akengin)
Beirut (AFP) - Turkish forces shelled Kurdish fighters in northern Syria for a third day on Monday but failed to stop their advance, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Britain-based monitor said Turkish troops were shelling the road to the west of the town of Tal Rifaat, which has been a key target of a Kurdish-Arab alliance called the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in Aleppo province.
The group said the shelling also targeted the region to the west of the Syrian border town of Azaz.
The alliance's advances have angered opposition-backer Turkey, which accuses the Kurdish forces of links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party that has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.
"Fighting has been ongoing since Sunday in the western part of Tal Rifaat between the SDF and rebels," said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.
"At least 26 rebels have been killed in the fighting" for the town in recent days, he added.
Tal Rifaat is a key remaining bastion of mostly Islamist rebel forces in Aleppo province, where the regime this month launched a major operation backed by Russian warplanes.
Simultaneously, the SDF forces have been advancing in the region, seizing the Minnigh air base from rebels, attacking Tal Rifaat and cutting the road leading from the town to Azaz on the Turkish border.
On Monday, SDF forces seized the village of Kfarnaya, two kilometres (1.2 miles) south of Tal Rifaat, the Observatory said.
The Kurdish advance is a complication for Washington, which has backed the SDF in its fight against the Islamic State group, but has also warned the alliance not to take advantage of the fluid situation in Aleppo by seizing new territory."Working with AGsoundtrax has been an A+++ experience on every level from the super high quality of the products to customer service. In addition to purchasing existing tracks, I have commissioned new ones that are magnificent and perfectly matched to my specifications. Because my work reaches large and savvy audiences, I am very discerning when it comes to audio for my projects and I have never been so satisfied working with a composer. I will continue to work with AG who is hugely talented, passionate about the work and responsive in a way that has inspired me to be a better, kinder colleague. In fact, I am so happy with our work together, I regularly promote AG to my clients and audiences. Thank you again AG!!"
Global stress management speakerLatest Articles from Yuppiechef
The Sugarbird Gin story Many new gins on the market strive to be elite and premium, the best in the west. Not this gin. This gin strives to innovate. Brought to life by a small group of insatiable entrepreneurs, Rob Heyns and Nzeka Biyela, founders of League of Beers, and Kelly and Mark Goldsworthy,... Continue reading Read Article
Andy Fenner’s take on the perfect steak Yeah, yeah, I know. You’ve read a million articles on how to cook steak. But bear with me. I thought I’d take the invitation to write for (the awesome) Yuppiechef, to introduce you to a fairly unconventional way to do it. Choosing your meat: An obvious place to start, yes?... Continue reading Read Article
Get your green screen with March’s free wallpaper Our wholesome and healthy March wallpaper is here to bring some natural goodness to your life. We hope that this artful array of vibrant veggies inspires healthy cooking, and reminds you that eating your greens should bring nothing but guilt-free pleasure. HD Desktop 1980 x 1080 (with calendar) – download 1980 x 1080... Continue reading Read Article
A granadilla frozen yoghurt for your screen? February’s wallpaper Desserts don’t have to be guilty pleasures. With just five ingredients you can whip up this delicious frozen yoghurt in your own home. This summertime winner is made to scale up or down and perfect for those spontaneous summer suppers with friends. Here’s something fresh and fun for your February wallpaper. HD Desktop... Continue reading Read ArticleSnooty The Manatee Dies, And A Florida Community Mourns
Enlarge this image toggle caption Tamara Lush/AP Tamara Lush/AP
Two days after his 69th birthday, Snooty the manatee has died in what the South Florida Museum says was "simply a heartbreaking accident." The manatee drowned after being trapped by a hatch door, officials said Sunday.
Snooty was the oldest manatee in captivity — and he was believed to be the oldest on record, according to the South Florida Museum, which houses the Parker Manatee Aquarium in Bradenton, Fla.
"Aquarium staff is heartbroken," said Jeff Rodgers, the museum's provost and chief operating officer.
Staff members who arrived at work this morning weren't able to find all the manatees, Rodgers said Sunday afternoon. He said an underwater hatch that accesses a plumbing area "had somehow been knocked loose" — and that while the other, younger, manatees had been able to go in and out of the area, Snooty had gone through but hadn't been able to get himself back out. The manatee was roughly 1,300 pounds — about twice the size of the other animals.
When workers reached Snooty, he was no longer alive, Rodgers said. He said the hatch was normally bolted shut, and that an investigation is ongoing to determine how it opened. Rodgers also said the hatch hadn't previously posed a problem.
The aquarium is closed to the public today. The manatee's fans have been posting messages of sadness and support online, along with some confusion: Snooty has been the subject of hoaxes before, in which bogus claims went out that he had died. The latest was just two days ago.
"Heartbreaking, I remember seeing him for the first time when I was 12," Leslie Young said via Facebook.
Others left tributes at the museum — including flowers and a head of lettuce, as Carlos Munoz of The Sarasota Herald-Tribune noted on Twitter.
When another person asked if the new claim is real, the museum's staff verified that it was, adding, "We are devastated."
"We grieve right along with these folks," Rodgers said. "We've given a lot of hugs on the front porch of the museum today as people were coming in. A lot of people loved that manatee. We loved him too."
Snooty was the first manatee to be born in captivity, in 1948. He had lived at the aquarium since 1949; he became the official mascot of Manatee County, Fla., back in 1979. He was also at the heart of the museum's manatee rehabilitation program, which helps injured or animals recover and return to the wild.
There are currently three manatees in the rehab program, Rodgers said.
"We're still processing Snooty's loss right now. We don't know if we'll have another resident manatee," he said.INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) -- Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department is investigating a case of fraud at Cathedral High School.
According to the police report, someone used an email posing as the school's president, who was home sick. In the email, the person requested that $27,000 be moved from the general fund to pay a consulting fee.
The request seemed odd to staff members but the email appeared to be legitimate according to the police report.
After signing off on the check, a staff member called the school's president about the request only to learn he did not send the email. School employees notified their bank and attempted to stop payment. The bank later discovered the person requesting the check had used an account from Bank of America. The name and address attached to the account were fake.
On Wednesday afternoon, the school released a statement.
"The school was the target of an email scam," said Cathedral spokeswoman Jan Stanich. "We have notified the authorities and are working through those channels to rectify the situation."
So far police have made no arrest. If you information call Crime Stoppers at 317-262-8477, or 317-262-TIPS.With abysmal snow conditions in Southcentral Alaska, the Iditarod Trail Committee is considering moving the race's restart north to Fairbanks.
Race marshal Mark Nordman said the committee is considering the move, though he said Tuesday the race "isn't even close to making that decision."
"Nothing has changed at this point, but you want to have a plan B in place and... Fairbanks would be the place to go," Nordman said.
He said race officials would decide whether to move the race by mid-February. He noted that cooler temperatures have helped to freeze rivers the trail travels over, saying the south fork of the Kuskokwim River was frozen. Nordman said there's more snow in the Alaska Range than at the same point last year, but it wouldn't hurt to have more.
Last year's decision to send mushers through the Dalzell Gorge, a notorious section of steep, challenging trail, was met with criticism by racers who felt the trail was dangerous in snowless conditions.
The 1,000-mile race has only been moved once in its 42 years. In 2003 the restart was moved from Southcentral Alaska to Fairbanks. A similar conversation occurred in 2014, with the race ultimately deciding to keep the traditional route.
"Every year there is somewhere when you take 1,000 miles of trail that there's some major issues," Nordman said. "… I guess as far the overall weather pattern, that's what everyone is talking about."Muslim women face many barriers when it comes to keeping fit and upholding principles of modesty at the same time but thankfully Nike are working on a solution.
Finally, female Muslim athletes are to be suitably represented in the world of professional sportswear as |
joking! Imagine a kind 22-yr-old man who is keeping a 60-yr-old secretary company at a (lame) company party (I uh, may be speaking from past experience). In a spirit of mock flirtatiousness, she asks, “Oh, so will you buy me a drink now?” The correct response (“correct” in this case meaning “barely socially competent”) is to laugh and smile agreeably, not to mock and deride— “Oh, shoot, you don’t know?” Pretend you’re in a large group talking, and your best friend says something embarrassing—maybe a cancer joke when the host’s father is deathly ill with cancer—and worse, your friend doesn’t realize it. How do you react? You act embarrassed for them. You might even try and cover for them.
(My personal favorite) Any combination of the above. “What, no!” (wrinkle nose and laugh at the ridiculousness of the idea, look at her half-smiling with a quizzical, slightly worried look on your face as wonder if maybe rather than joking she’s entitled or clueless, then get past the joke/steer back on track/save her from herself by moving on in conversation. All of this happens very fast.)
But no item on that four-part list is the important part. The important thing is what ties them together—the assumption that, “No, it would be ridiculous for me to buy you a drink.”
And if you have that set in your head, then you will not commit the sin referred to as “making a big deal about it.”
When does someone make a big deal about something? Usually, when things aren’t going their way. The squeaky wheel gets the grease; the wheel is squeaky because it has no grease. It’s harder to change things than it is to let them stay as they are; it’s easier to not buy a girl a drink when that’s the normal state of affairs, than it is when that’s “the norm” in your mind.
LDS story: So, I’m Mormon. And what makes this whole post kind of funny is that, well, I don’t drink. At all. Like, ever in my life, except by accident at a friend’s birthday party when I was 11.
So when I read pickup/redpill advice to the effect of, “Don’t sarge drunk,” it always feels slightly vindicating for me, because, well, Mormon.
What’s interesting to me, though, is reading guys’ thought processes as they consider it. “What do I say about why I’m not drinking?”
You know what I say? “No, thanks though.” End of story. This is not because I have a reason they think is good. If someone really knew my reasons, (“I believe God appeared to a boy in 1820 and gave us additional scripture, and that God later told us through that same guy that we shouldn’t drink,”), then they’d think my reason sucked. Doesn’t matter though—it’s my *commitment* to it that stops people from giving me grief, not that they agree with me.
This post is not about drinking. It’s about the power of being secure in your frame—secure to the point that you don’t need to make a big deal about anything.
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Wii U is a super fun and family oriented video game console with really cool graphics. Recommended to any kids from 4 to 100 years old.
This item doesn't belong on this page.Here’s an interactive bar chart that will give you a sense of how thoroughly Apple dominates the premium end of the mobile phone market, where most of the money is made:
To get a feel for what’s going on, click back and forth between the two views—market share and profit share. With 17.2% of the smartphone market in 2015, Apple captured 91% of the profit. Samsung, with 23.9% of the market, took 14% of the profit.
Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley, who posted this data last week, has been monitoring the situation for several years. His numbers aren’t perfect. He’s comparing smartphone market shares with mobile device operating profits, and only where they are available. (Chinese manufacturers are not required to disclose profits, so they don’t.)
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Sharp-eyed readers will note that Apple and Samsung shared 105% of the profit last year. That’s because so many of their competitors lost money.
For more on Apple, watch:
Apple, however, just keeps clearing the table. It took 91% of what Walkley calls the mobile market’s “value share” in four of the past five quarters. In the fifth, it took 93%.Mawlana Shaykhu-l-Islam Ahmad Zayni Dahlan
al-Makki ash-Shafi'i
(Chief Mufti of Mecca al-Mukarramah).
May Allah be pleased with him Introduction
During the reign of Sultan Salim III (1204-1222 AH) many tribulations took place. One was the tribulation of the Wahhabiyyah which started in the area of al-Hijaz(1) where they captured al-Haramayn(2), and prevented Muslims coming from ash-Sham(3) and Egypt from reaching their destination to perform Pilgrimage (Hajj). Another tribulation is that of the French who controlled Egypt from 1213 A.H. until 1216 A.H. Let us here speak briefly about the two adversities(4), because each was mentioned in detail in the books of history and in separate treatises. Background On The Tribulations Of The Wahhabis
The fighting started between the Wahhabis and the Prince of Mecca, Mawlana Sharif Ghalib Ibn Bu Sa'id, who had been appointed by the honored Muslim Sultan as his ruling representative over the areas of al-Hijaz. This was in 1205 AH during the time of Sultan Salim III, the son of Sultan Mustafa III, the son of Ahmad. Previous to the outbreak of fighting, the Wahhabis began to build power and gain followers in their areas. As their territories expanded, their evil and harm increased They killed countless numbers of Muslims, legitimated confiscating their money and possessions, and captured their women. The founder of their wicked doctrine was Muhammad Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab, who originated from eastern Arabia, from the tribe of Banu Tamim. He lived a long life, about one-hundred years. He was born in 1111 AH and died in 1200 AH. His history was narrated as follows: Muhammad Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab started as a student of knowledge in the city of the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam: Medina al-Munawwarah. Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab's father was a good, pious man among the people of knowledge as was his brother, Shaykh Sulayman. His father, his brother, and his shaykhs (teachers of religion) had the foresight Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab would innovate a great deal of deviation and misguidance, because of their observance of his sayings, actions, and inclinations concerning many issues. They used to reprimand him and warn people against him. Some Of The Beliefs Of Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab
What Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab's father, brother, and shaykhs speculated about him came true-by the Will of Allah, Ta'ala. Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab innovated deviant and misleading ways and beliefs and managed to allure some ignorant people to follow him. His deviant and misleading ways and beliefs disagreed with the sayings of the scholars of the Religion. His deviant beliefs led him to label the believers as blasphemers! He falsely claimed visiting the grave of the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and performing the tawassul(5) by him as shirk(6). Additionally, he falsely claimed visiting the graves of other prophets and righteous Muslims (awliya) and performing tawassul by them was shirk as well. He added to this by saying, "To call upon the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, when performing tawassul by the Prophet is shirk." He passed the same judgment of shirk on the ones who call upon other prophets and righteous Muslims (awliya) in performing tawassul by them. In an effort to give credibility to his innovations Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab embellished his sayings by quotations which he selected from Islamic sources, i.e., quotations which are used as proofs for many issues but not the issues which Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab was attempting to support. He brought false statements and tried to beautify them for the laymen until they followed him. He wrote treatises for them until they believed that most of the People of Tawhid(7) were blasphemers. Alliance With The Saudi Family
Moreover, Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab called upon the princes of eastern Arabia and the people of ad-Dar'iyyah(8) to support him. They carried his doctrine and made this endeavor a means to strengthen and expand their kingdom. They worked together to suppress the Bedouins of the deserts until they overcame them and those Bedouins followed them and became foot-soldiers for them without pay. After that, these masses started to believe that whoever does not believe in what Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab said is a blasphemer, and it is Islamically lawful (halal) to shed his blood and plunder his money. The matter of Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab started to evidence itself in 1143 A.H. and began spreading after 1150 A.H. Subsequently, the scholars--even his brother, Shaykh Sulayman and the rest of his shaykhs-- authored many treatises to refute him. But Muhammad Ibn Su'ud, the Prince of ad-Dar'iyyah in eastern Arabia, supported him and worked to spread his ideology. Ibn Su'ud was from Banu Hanifah, the people of Musaylimah al-Kadhdhab(9). When Muhammad Ibn Su'ud died, his son 'Abdul-'Aziz Ibn Muhammad Ibn Su'ud took over the responsibility of fulfilling the vile task of spreading the Wahhabi beliefs. Many of the shaykhs of Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab in Medina used to say, "He will be misguided, and he will misguide those for whom Allah willed the misguidance." Things took place as per the speculation of the scholars. Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab claimed his intention behind the madhhab he invented was "to purify the Tawhid" and "repudiate the shirk." He also claimed people had been following the shirk for six-hundred years and he revived their Religion for them!! The Methodology of Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab took the verses revealed to speak about the blasphemers and applied them to the Muslims. The following examples from the Qur'an illustrate this point. Allah, ta'ala, said in Surat al-Ahqaf, Ayah 5: Who is more astray than the one who performs supplication (du'a') to [worship] other than Allah; the one other than Allah he supplicates to will not answer his du'a'. Allah, ta'ala said in Surat Yunus, Ayah 106 : "Do not perform supplication (du'a') to [worship] other than Allah; the one other than Allah you supplicate to will not benefit you and will not harm you" The verses in the Qur'an similar to these ones are numerous. Muhammad Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab gravely misinterpreted the previously cited verses and said: "The Muslim who asks help from the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, other prophets, or the righteous people (salihun), or who calls or asks any of them for intercession is like those blasphemers mentioned in the Qur'an." According to the false claim of Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab, the Muslims who do these things are blasphemers. He also considered visiting the grave of Prophet Muhammad and the graves of other prophets and righteous Muslims for blessings as blasphemy. Allah revealed Ayah 3 of Surat az-Zumar in reference to the mushrikun: Those who worship the idols said: "We do not worship them except to achieve a higher status from Allah Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab falsely stated: "Those who perform tawassul (asking Allah by the prophets, for example) are similar to those blasphemers mentioned in Surat az-Zumar, Ayah 3, who claim they do not worship the idols except to achieve a higher status from Allah." He said: "The blasphemers did not believe the idols create anything; they believed Allah is the Creator." He gave his version of proof from the Qur'an by citing Surat Luqman, Ayah 25 and Surat az-Zumar, Ayah 38, in which Allah said: If you ask them, `Who created the heavens and earth?' They will say, `Allah'. In Surat az-Zukhruf, Ayah 87, Allah said: If you ask them, `Who created them?' They will say,Allah. Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab falsely concluded from these verses that the Muslims who perform tawassul are similar to those blasphemers. The Scholars refute Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab In their writings to refute Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab's sayings, the scholars said his deduction was false. The believers did not consider the prophets or the awliya as gods and they did not deem them partners to Allah. Instead, they correctly believe the prophets and awliya are good slaves and creations of Allah, and they do not deserve to be worshipped. The blasphemers intended in these verses believed their idols deserved Godhood. They exalted them as one would exalt his Creator, even though they believed the idols did not create the heavens and the earth. The believers, on the other hand, do not believe the prophets or righteous Muslims (awliya) deserve to be worshipped, nor do they deserve to be attributed with Godhood, nor do they exalt them as one would exalt God. They believe these people are good slaves of Allah, His beloved ones whom He chose, and by their blessings (barakah) Allah grants His mercy to His creation. Hence, when the slaves of Allah seek the blessings (barakah) of the prophets and righteous Muslims (awliya) they are seeking these blessings as a mercy from Allah. There are many proofs and examples from the Qur'an and Sunnah about this basic belief of the Muslims. Muslims believe Allah is the Creator, the One Who grants benefit and inflicts harm, and the only One Who deserves to be worshipped. Muslims believe that no one other than Allah has the power to affect the creation. The prophets and righteous people do not create anything. They do not possess the power to bestow benefit or inflict harm on others, but Allah is the One Who bestows the mercy upon the slaves by the righteous Muslims' blessings. Hence, the belief of the blasphemers, i.e., the belief their idols deserve to be worshipped and have Godhood, is what makes them fall into blasphemy. This saying of the blasphemers, as previously cited in Surat az-Zumar, Ayah 3, was said in an effort to justify their belief when they were disproved and shown idols do not deserve to be worshipped. How can Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab and those who follow him find it permissible to equate the believers, who believed in Tawhid, to those blasphemers, who believed in the Godhood of the idols? All the previously cited verses and the verses which are similar to them are specific to the blasphemers who associate partners with Allah--none of the believers are included. Al-Bukhari narrated by the route of Ibn 'Umar, may Allah raise their ranks, that the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, described the Khawarij as those who took the verses revealed about the blasphemers and attributed them to the believers! In the narration by the route of Ibn 'Umar the Prophet said: "What I fear most for my nation is a man who mis-explains the Qur'an and takes it out of context." Proofs For Tawassul - The Permissibility of Asking Allah for things by some of His Creation. If performing tawassul had been blasphemy, then the believers, i.e., the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, his Companions, and the Salaf and Khalaf of this nation would not have done it. Yet it is mentioned in the sahih hadith of the Prophet that the Prophet used to ask Allah by saying: "O Allah, I ask You by the status of those who ask You.(10) " Without doubt, this is tawassul. The Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, used to teach this supplication (du'a') to his Companions and order them to say it. This issue was expounded upon in different books and treatises refuting Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab. There is a hadith related by al-Hakim that mentions after Adam ate from the tree, he performed tawassul by our Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. He did that, because he saw the name of the Prophet written on the 'Arsh, Adam said: "O Allah, by the dignity of this son [Muhammad], forgive this father [Adam]." It was also related by Ibn Hibban, that upon the death of Fatimah Bint Asad, may Allah raise her rank, the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, with his own honorable hands, put her in her grave and said: "O Allah, forgive my mother(11), Fatimah Binti Asad, and widen her place by the status of Your Prophet and the prophets who came before me. You are the most Merciful." There is a hadith classified as sahih(12), that a blind man asked the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, to make a supplication (du'a') to Allah to return his sight. The Prophet ordered him to make ablution (wudu') and pray two rak'ahs and then say: "O Allah, I ask You and direct myself to You by Your Prophet, Muhammad, the Prophet of Mercy. O Muhammad, I ask Allah by you to fulfill my need. O Allah, enable him to intercede for me." The blind man did what the Prophet taught him to do(13) and Allah brought his sight back. Moreover, as related by at-Tabarani, the tawassul made by the blind man was used by the Companions and Salaf after the death of the Prophet. 'Umar Ibn al-Khattab performed the tawassul by al-'Abbas (the uncle of the Prophet), may Allah reward their deeds, when he prayed the Salah of 'Istisqa'(14) with the people. There are other proofs mentioned in the books of the Islamic scholars but we will not recount them at length here. The one who pursues the saying of the Companions and their followers will find a great deal of proof about the validity of calling the prophet by saying "O Muhammad" in his presence as well as in his absence and in his life as well as after his death. In fact, many texts include the phrase which means, "O Muhammad". Calling the name of the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, is permissible. An example is the saying of the Companion, Bilal Ibn al-Harith, may Allah reward his deeds, when he went to the grave of the Prophet. He said: "O Messenger of Allah, ask Allah to send rain to your Nation." His saying contains this format(15). Shaykh Muhammad Ibn Sulayman al-Kurdi(16) was among the authors who wrote refuting Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab. He was Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab's own shaykh. Among what he said is as follows: O Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab, I advise you, for the sake of Allah, ta'ala, to hold your tongue regarding the Muslims. If you hear from anyone who asks for help from other than Allah that one has the power to effect things without the Will of Allah, then teach him the right thing about this issue, and show him the proofs which state no one other than Allah brings things from non-existence into existence. The one who rejects that is blasphemous. You have no right to label the majority of the Muslims as blasphemers(17) while you are deviant from the majority of the Muslims. In fact, it is more reasonable to consider the one who deviates from the majority of the Muslims as a blasphemer then to consider the Muslims as a nation as blasphemers--because the deviant one has followed a path other than the path of the believers. In Surat an-Nisa', Ayah 15, Allah said: Whomever contends with the Messenger after the right path was exposed to him and follows other than the way of the believers, Allah will leave him to whatever he followed and put him in Hell (Jahannam)]. The Permissibility Of Visiting The Grave Of The Prophet
Visiting the grave of the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, was performed by the Companions and the Salaf and Khalaf who came after them. Many hadiths cite the benefit of this deed and the scholars of Islam have written books about this matter(18). Calling On Someone Other Than Allah
Among of what was mentioned concerning calling on someone other than Allah, whether that one is present, absent, dead or alive, is the saying of the Prophet: "If the animal of anyone of you went out of control in the wilderness, then call: `O slaves of Allah, help me'", since there are slaves of Allah [i.e. the angels] who will respond to him. There is another hadith related by al-Bazzar in which the Prophet said: " If one of you lost something or needs help while in an open land, then let him say:
"O slaves of Allah, help me." Another narration says, "Rescue me, because Allah has created slaves whom you do not see." When traveling at nightfall the Prophet, sallallahu 'alyhi wa sallam, used to say:" O earth, my Lord and your Lord is Allah." When the Prophet visited the grave of Muslims, he used to say:"O people of the graves, peace be upon you." In the Tashahhud in as-Salah the Muslim says: "O Prophet of Allah, may Allah protect you from infirmities, and have mercy and blessings on you." There is no harm in calling on and performing tawassul by someone unless one believes that someone other than Allah actually creates things. Hence, as long as one believes that only Allah creates them, there is no harm in performing tawassul. Likewise, attributing a certain doing to other than Allah does not harm unless one believes this doer actually creates. So once it is established the person does not believe the creating is for other than Allah then attributing a doing to other than Allah is understood in its proper context. When one says: "This medicine benefited me," or "This particular righteous Muslim benefited me," he is merely exposing the created reason of the benefit. These statements are also similar to when one says: "This food satisfied my hunger," or "This water quenched my thirst," or "This medicine cured me." When Muslims say such statements, they understand them in their proper context, i.e., food, water, and medicine are only reasons, and Allah is the Creator of their benefit. The general proofs mentioned in this summary are enough to refute Ibn 'Abdul-Wahhab. The scholars of Islam have expounded on this issue in several treatises. Footnotes: 1 Al-Hijaz refers to the western part of Arabia which includes Mecca and Medina.
2 Al-Haramayn refers to Mecca and Medina.
3 Ash-Sham refers to the area that includes Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine.
4 Only the first adversity will be presented in this booklet.
5 Tawassul is asking Allah for goodness by a prophet, righteous believer, etc.
6 Shirk refers to associating partners to Allah.
7 The People of Tawhid refers to the Muslims.
8 Ad-Dar'iyyah is a region north of the city of Riyad, Saudi Arabia.
9 Musaylimah al-Kadhdhab was a blasphemous man who claimed the status of prophethood for 10 himself after the death of Prophet Muhammad. He was killed by the Muslims during the caliphate of Abu Bakr, may Allah raise his rank.
10 Ibn Majah and others related this hadith and the-Hafidh, Ibn Hajar, deemed it a strong hadith
11 The Prophet called her `my mother' out of likening her to his real mother.
12 Sixteen hafidhs of hadith classified this hadith as sahih, including at-Tirmidhi, at-Tabarani, al-Bayhaqi, as-Subki, among others.
13 It is clear in the narrations of this hadith, the blind man was not in the session of the Prophet when he did as the Prophet ordered him.
14 Salah of 'Istisqa' refers to performing a specific prayer which includes making supplication for rain.
15 Al-Bayhaqi related this hadith and classified it as sahih.
16 Shaykh Muhammad Ibn Sulaym al-Kurdi was the one who wrote al-Hashiyah on the explanation of Ibn Hajar to the text of Bafadl.
17 It is mentioned in a hadith it is easier for the devil to trick the lonely person who is away from other Muslims. The Prophet, sallallahu al 'alayhi wa sallam, while encouraging the Muslims to perform the prayers in congregation said: "Moreover, the wolf will eat the lonely lamb."
18 Among these hadiths is the one related by ad-Daraqutni that the Prophet said: "On the Day of Judgment, I will intercede for the one who visits my grave with the good intention."Math for Game Developers is exactly what it sounds like - a weekly instructional YouTube series wherein I show you how to use math to make your games. Every Thursday we'll learn how to implement one game design, starting from the underlying mathematical concept and ending with its C++ implementation. The videos will teach you everything you need to know, all you need is a basic understanding of algebra and trigonometry. If you want to follow along with the code sections, it will help to know a bit of programming already, but it's not necessary. You can download the source code that I'm using from GitHub, from the description of each video. If you have questions about the topics covered or requests for future topics, I would love to hear them! Leave a comment, or ask me on my Twitter, @VinoBS
This series is ongoing - check back every Thursday for new content!
The video below contains the playlist for all the videos in this series, which can be accessed via the playlist icon at the top of the embedded video frame. The first video in the series is loaded automatically
Calculus [playlist=PLW3Zl3wyJwWMC516An98BF8Pn6nfXaEWe]This guest post is contributed by Mark Paul and Anastasia Wilson. Both are members of the class of 2011 at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
In some cultures asking how the kids are doing is a colloquial way of asking how the individual is faring, acknowledging that the vitality of the younger generation is a good metric for the well-being of society as a whole. In the United States, the state of the kids should be an important indicator. Young workers bear the significant burden of funding intergenerational transfer programs and maintaining the structure of payments that flow in the economy. Today, the kids’ outlook is almost as bleak as the housing market; they are unemployed, underwater on student debt, and out of luck from a reluctant political system.
Currently, even after a slight boost in jobs growth, unemployment for 18-24 year olds [correction: should be 18-19 year olds] stands at 24.7%. For 20-24 year olds, it hovers at 15.2%. These conservative estimates, using the Bureau of Labor Statistics U3 measure, do not reflect the number of marginally attached or discouraged young workers feeling the lag from a nearly moribund job market.
The U3 measure also does not count underemployment, yet with only 50% of B.A. holders able to find jobs requiring such a degree, underemployment rates are a telling index of the squeezing of the 18-30 year old Millennial generation. While it appears everyone is hurting since the financial collapse, young adults bear a disproportionate burden, constituting just 13.5% of the workforce while accounting for 26.4% of those unemployed. Even with good credentials, it is difficult for young people to find work and keep themselves afloat.
If companies are unwilling to hire bright young college graduates even at a relatively low salary and minimal benefits, will they ever be willing to hire anybody at all?
Jobs aren’t the whole story. Recent college graduates, those in the labor force with the freshest batch of knowledge and skills, are currently underwater and sinking fast with unprecedented student loan and personal debt. Average student debt for the class of 2008 was $23,200, an increase over four years of about 25%, meaning that students are knee deep in negative equity between their educational investment and actual earnings.
Between inflated student debt and the lack of available jobs for qualified graduates, students are defaulting at an all time high level of 7.2%. From 2008 to 2009, student debt defaults jumped about 30% to $50.8 billion. This earning-to-debt gap not only hurts lending institutions, but also may affect students’ future abilities to borrow – a significant hurdle in our credit driven economy.
If student debt and job stagnation continue, younger workers will face real structural unemployment (as opposed to the fake kind that had been suspected by some economists, but was recently debunked by the San Francisco Fed). The more time these young workers spend unemployed and underemployed, the greater chance for future structural unemployment due to deteriorating human capital.
High debt, high defaults, and low family earnings will prevent many students from finishing college at all. High unemployment for those who do manage to graduate with a degree will create barriers for those unable to start their careers. As economists have shown, most current deficits can actually be attributed to the decrease in tax revenues - a debilitating trend that will continue without well-targeted action.
In order to combat such structural problems, the need for investment in education and jobs is clear. This investment will act as an insurance policy against persisting future structural unemployment and subsequent government revenue declines. This investment can take the form of direct funding for public higher education, increased financial aid to students, and expanded federally guaranteed loan and grant programs. As many states have slashed and burned public higher education budgets, as in Massachusetts, federal attention should be directed towards this crisis. The 2009 stimulus funding provided only two years’ worth of support to sustain public higher education in the Commonwealth, where universities have historically been a top priority. The need for a long-term restructured investment plan in public higher education is obvious, not just in Massachusetts, but the other forty-nine states as well.
At the same time, insurance against the impending doom of climate change could be taken out in the form of a green jobs bill, providing work and an outlet for innovation for recent college graduates. As Robert Pollin and Dean Baker have suggested, long-term investments in rebuilding a green energy industrial base, complete with manufacturing and R&D, could revitalize the entire economy if funded as part of a 10-year plan to the tune of $50-100 billion. Such investment could create 660,000-1.3 million jobs per year – the kind of growth that seems to have escaped our collective memory.
Green collar industry would naturally target the young workers who are up to date on the high-tech nature of green jobs, and much research and development would, as with most budding industries, take place at academic research institutions like public universities – a two-for-one stimulus in both jobs and education.
In order to solve future structural problems in the United States and ensure a future for the sandwich generation, fiscal policy focused on educational and job growth is crucial. While deficit hawks may squawk about the costs, the burden of repayment is on younger people Without adequate education and careers for students, we will never be able to balance the budget. In the long run, it makes more fiscal sense to create jobs and collect tax revenue than to rely on a model that merely waits for the private sector to invest.
While the political feasibility of such a measure is questionable, the incentives are there no matter on what side of the aisle you may sit. Jobs investment will improve employment. Education will increase productivity (and profits too), increasing tax revenues from businesses and personal incomes and helping balance the budget. Crisis is not the time for austerity, and these types of investments in the viability of the U.S. economy should be done when money is at its cheapest.
In a dire job market, facing imminent climate change, and lagging aggregate demand, keeping the younger generation afloat will inevitably be a decision to sink, swim, or at least throw out some life jackets.Like most offices and companies this time of year, MLS has been in a bit of a holiday slumber the past several weeks. The Expansion and Re-Entry Drafts came and went. But off in the distance one can hear drums of the 2015 preseason: the USMNT January Camp and SuperDraft. Stay tuned as LWOS has big plans in the works for SuperDraft on January 15.
Following the annual ‘Cupcake Camp‘ are friendlies at Chile (Jan. 28) and home to Panama (Feb. 8). The match against Panama will be played at the StubHub Center in Carson, CA.
Jurgen Klinnsman has historically used this training camp to call in a combination of talented youth and some veterans who’ve been on-the-bubble, but not regulars in the National Team. These rosters have historically been MLS-dominated. Only 3 of 25 players from last year’s camp were not from MLS. While Klinnsman has called in lots of European-based players in recent friendlies, I imagine this camp will still be primarily MLS players because they are in the off-season. We could see a few more Europeans, especially one of Klinnsman’s favored young guns who might not be getting many minutes with their club.
So, if we here at LWOS were Klinnsman for a day, who’s coming to January Camp?
Goalkeepers (3): Bill Hamid (DC), Sean Johnson (Chicago), Nick Rimando (RSL)
Rimando: Brad Guzan will be busy with Aston Villa, as they fight to make top half of the EPL. Klinnsman will look too see if Rimando continues to be the short wonder that is the ‘Wall of the Wasatch.’ He will continue to challenge Guzan for the starting spot vacated by Tim Howard.
Hamid: He showed in 2014 that he is the leader of the most ready of the young American MLS keepers, winning Goalkeeper of the Year.
Johnson: That third spot is a toss up really. I picked Sean Johnson because the skill set and potential are still there. He didn’t get the results on the field in 2014, but the rest of his competition got benched, cut, or hurt at some point this year. Steve Clark from Columbus had a decent 2014 starting all 34 league matches. He’s a dark horse to get called in for sure.
Defenders (9): Corey Ashe (Houston), Andrew Farrell (New England), Sean Franklin (DC), Matt Hedges (Dallas), Amobi Okugo (Orlando City), Michael Parkhurst (Columbus), Robbie Rogers (LA), Chris Schuler (RSL), Seth Sinovic (SKC)
Ashe/Franklin/Sinovic: Three of the better and most consistent American outside backs in MLS. With Beasley retiring from the national team, there’s a gaping home at left back. With Fabian Johnson’s ability to play multiple positions, DeAndre Yedlin is the only de facto regular right back. Any top outside back in MLS has a shot at being a regular in the future, and that starts with these guys.
Farrell: The first overall pick in the 2013 SuperDraft has developed nicely for the Revs. He’s smart, athletic, and can play both right back and center back. The kid has a great attitude and didn’t suffer a sophomore slump in 2014. You want to grow and nurture your talent, you need to start them young. Like all first-timers, this is a chance to audition for the Gold Cup.
Hedges/Schuler: Two young center backs with lots of MLS experience, both being major players for their back lines in recent years. I couple them together because of their styles. We’ve seen a theme with both MLS and the national team of having a physical do-it-all center back ( |
said Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Ben Wakana."
Where we do agree with Politico is that "there are reasons to think the next round may be different." Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans, which dominate many state exchanges, saw profits plummet by 75 percent between 2013 and 2015, according to an analysis by A.M. Best Co. A chief reason for the financial woes: “the intensity of losses in the exchange segment.”
"I have to raise prices because I have to assume the worst,” said Martin Hickey, CEO of New Mexico Health Connections, one of the surviving co-ops, which expects to increase prices by roughly a third for 2017. “Whether it stabilizes or not, we can’t take the risk.”
Even New York-based Oscar, the much ballyhooed, tech-savvy startup bankrolled with billions in venture capital dollar, is sputtering. Medical costs for Oscar’s individual customers in New York, where it has the most customers, outstripped premiums by nearly 50 percent last year, according to financial filings.
"In some cases the hole is getting deeper rather than getting better,” said Deloitte’s Scott.
In short: expect majour double-digit percent increases in premium prices, and not just because Obamacare is fatally flawed, but for two key reasons we warned about years ago when Obamacare was being rolled out: i) not enough participants to make it economically scalable and ii) those who did sign up are so sick that they promptly soaked up all the externalities.
From Politico:
One big reason is lower-than-expected enrollment of younger, often healthier people who balance the costs of those who require more costly care. Roughly 12.7 million Americans signed up for Obamacare plans during the most recent open enrollment period. That’s far below the 22 million projected by the Congressional Budget Office, and it’s certain to decline as some drop out. “The pool is far less healthy than we forecast,” said Brad Wilson, CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, which says it lost $400 million on its exchange business during the first two years and is weighing whether to compete for Obamacare customers in 2017. “That’s an issue not just here in North Carolina, but all over. … We need more healthy people in the pool.”
Then again, the healthy people have no incentive to sign up and would rather pay the penalty charge instead of spending far more to subsidize those who are not healthy. Sure enough, as with all epically flawed government projects, the cracks in Obamacare became apparent with time.
There’s a growing realization the financial penalty for failing to obtain coverage is an insufficient cudgel to convince younger Americans to enroll. The fee for 2016 is $695, or 2.5 percent of income, whichever is higher. Just 28 percent of HealthCare.gov customers for 2016 were between the ages of 18 and 34, significantly below the 35 percent threshold typically considered necessary for a balanced marketplace. “It wasn’t enough of a hammer,” said Kevin Fitzgerald, an insurance lawyer with Foley & Lardner. “You need a lot of healthy people to sign up to make the numbers work. Obviously that didn’t happen.”
Ah, we get it now: only Obamacare had "enough of a hammer" it would work like a charm.
And then there was the timing arbitrage. Health plans have complained that Obamacare’s enrollment rules are too loose, allowing people to wait until they need medical care to sign up for coverage, and then to halt payments once they’ve received treatment.
This may work for Netflix, but it is an absolute disaster when it affects a mandatory tax program that is supposed to benefit everyone.
The Obama administration is addressing some of these concerns: It has eliminated some reasons Obamacare customers can use to sign up outside the standard enrollment season. And it plans to require proof from exchange customers that they’re eligible to sign up outside the normal window because, say, they've moved or had a kid, which are among the most common reasons.
Alas, such "real time fixes" also never work and end up being gamed by the consumers every step of the way. Which is why health plan officials say more needs to be done to stabilize the markets, for instance, by giving them greater flexibility to sell different kinds of policies. "We have real concerns about the next year or two based on the experience so far,” said Ceci Connolly, CEO of the Alliance of Community Health Plans, which represents 22 plans. “Even for our members that are getting close to breaking even on this, they say that it’s a really challenging and unpredictable environment.”
Most health plans remain optimistic the markets will eventually stabilize. Security Health Plan, which does business in 41 Wisconsin counties, attracted three times as many exchange customers as anticipated during its first year of Obamacare business.
“Was it a financial winner? No,” said John Kelly, the health plan’s chief marketing and operations officer. “We expected to take losses and we did.”
But no more, which is why literally in the days heading up to the general election, the US population will be served a very unpleasant reminder of what happens when big state goes out of control, and that there is no such thing as "free healthcare."
Just how much of a hit to Hillary's election chances the "Obamacare shock" will be, we will find out on November 8.Image copyright Getty Images
US and UK police have launched investigations into sexual assault allegations against the film producer Harvey Weinstein.
The New York Police Department is looking into an allegation dating from 2004 and is reviewing whether there are any additional complaints.
London's Met Police has received an allegation of sexual assault in the London area in the 1980s.
Weinstein has "unequivocally denied" any allegations of non-consensual sex.
US actress Rose McGowan took to Twitter on Thursday to allege that she was raped by Weinstein.
In a series of tweets addressed to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, McGowan alleged she had told Amazon Studios she had been assaulted by Weinstein.
Skip Twitter post by @rosemcgowan 1) @jeffbezos I told the head of your studio that HW raped me. Over & over I said it. He said it hadn’t been proven. I said I was the proof. — rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 12, 2017 Report
Amazon later said in a statement that its studio head, Roy Price, had been put on "leave of absence" and that it was reviewing projects it had with the Weinstein Company.
Weinstein's spokeswoman Sallie Hofmeister reiterated on Thursday: "Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr Weinstein."
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption (L-R) Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Cara Delevingne, Lea Seydoux, Rosanna Arquette, Mira Sorvino have all spoken about their experiences with Harvey Weinstein
The New York Police Department said it was "looking to speak" to an individual who had made an allegation dating from 2004.
Assistant Commissioner J Peter Donald said: "Based on information referenced in published news reports, the NYPD is conducting a review to determine if there are any additional complaints relating to the Harvey Weinstein matter.
"No filed complaints have been identified as of this time."
The force also appealed for anyone with information to come forward.
The Metropolitan Police, meanwhile, said it had been passed the allegation of sexual assault by Merseyside Police.
A Merseyside Police statement said it "can confirm a report was received at 8.40am on Wednesday (11 October 2017) of an alleged sexual assault in the London area in the 1980s".
The investigations come as more women publicly accuse Weinstein of inappropriate behaviour, sexual harassment or assault.
Image copyright Rex/Shutterstock Image caption Harvey Weinstein and Kate Beckinsale appeared together at the 2004 premiere of The Aviator
British actress Kate Beckinsale is one of the latest, saying she had an encounter with him aged 17, at the Savoy Hotel in London.
The Underworld star said on Instagram she was told to go to his room, where he "opened the door in his bathrobe".
"After declining alcohol and announcing that I had school in the morning I left, uneasy but unscathed.
"A few years later he asked me if he had tried anything with me in that first meeting. I realised he couldn't remember if he had assaulted me or not," she said.
British actress and model Cara Delevingne also said he tried to kiss her as she tried to leave a hotel room.
Emma Thompson told BBC Two's Newsnight programme she found him to be a "bully" when his company Miramax owned the rights to her film Nanny McPhee.
She said she did not know about the allegations of sexual impropriety but added: "They don't surprise me at all and they're endemic to the system anyway.
"I don't think you can describe him as a sex addict. He's a predator. That's different."
Thompson said there are "many" others like him in Hollywood. "Maybe not to that degree. Do they have to all be as bad as him to make it count?"
US actress Jane Fonda told the BBC's Hardtalk programme that his alleged victims did not come forth sooner "because he's powerful, because they're scared".
"Most of these women were in their 20s when it happened. Vulnerable.
"Afraid that if they say anything or do anything that it'll ruin their career," she said.
She added that she wished she had been "braver" by going to the authorities when she first heard the allegations "about a year ago".
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Emma Thompson: "This man is at the top of a very particular iceberg"
Ms Hofmeister has said Weinstein "obviously can't speak to anonymous allegations, but with respect to any women who have made allegations on the record, Mr Weinstein believes that all of these relationships were consensual.
"Mr Weinstein has begun counselling, has listened to the community and is pursuing a better path."
Three women earlier accused Weinstein of rape in an investigative article in The New Yorker magazine.
They are Italian actress and director Asia Argento, former aspiring actress Lucia Evans and a third woman who was anonymous.
'I've got to get help'
Speaking on Wednesday, Weinstein said: "We all make mistakes - second chance I hope."
He told TMZ: "Guys I'm not doing OK but I'm trying; I've got to get help. I'm hanging in - I'm trying my best."
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Jane Fonda: "I should have been braver"
TMZ reported he was heading to Arizona to a treatment facility.
As he departed in a car, the 65-year-old made a plea for fair treatment from reporters, saying: "I've always been loyal to you guys... I've been a good guy."
In other developments, the hosts of the Oscars are to hold emergency talks this weekend to consider Weinstein's future role.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said the allegations of sexual assault against Weinstein were "repugnant".
'Unequivocal condemnation'
Bafta, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, has already suspended his membership.
A statement has also been issued by Cannes Film Festival, which Weinstein attended many times.
President Pierre Lescure said the festival had been "dismayed to learn of the accusations".
"These actions point to a pattern of behaviour that merits only the clearest and most unequivocal condemnation," he said.
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.NEW DELHI: India will offer online visa facilities for 45 countries including US, Australia, Germany, Israel, Japan, UAE, Palestine, Jordan, Thailand, Singapore and Russia. The facility will be announced on November 27 by the ministries of home affairs and tourism.Elaborating on the Modi government’s focus on tourism and culture, Union minister Mahesh Sharma told TOI, “The PM has given a vision for the importance of Indian tourism. We will take the country’s rich heritage and culture via tourism and aviation to the world. We propose to propagate to the four corners of the world. This will create employment for youth whether it is medical tourism, adventure or rural tourism."Countries that already have visa on arrival and will be able to apply under the electronic travel authorization scheme include Finland, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Singapore, Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Phillippines, Laos and South Korea.Foreign tourists in a Goa beach.Once implemented ETA will allow foreign travelers to apply for a visa and receive an online confirmation within three to five working days. ETA will be available for a 30 day period from the date of the tourist's arrival in India. The government plans to establish a separate website to extend the facility to foreigners intending to visit India as tourists.To get the visa, they would need to apply in the designated website along with the required fees.Foreign tourists in a beach in Andamans.The e-visa scheme — received the PMO’s nod in June — and is expected to be implemented in the coming months.The countries that are unlikely to be on the list include SAARC and countries that are on "prior reference" list which include Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Afghanistan.This is the first time that electronic visas will be implemented in the country. Officials said plans were afoot to include all 109 countries in a phase-wise manner.HARRISON, NJ (July 19, 2013) – The New York Red Bulls announced today they came to a deal with defender Digão to mutually agree to cancel his contract.
“We have spoken with Digão over the past couple of weeks and believe that this is the best resolution for all parties involved,” said Red Bulls Sporting Director Andy Roxburgh. “We want to wish Digão the best of luck in the next stage of his career.”
Digão signed with the Red Bulls on Sept. 14, 2012. The Brazilian appeared in one postseason match in 2012 but had not played in the regular season.
Digão (full name: Rodrigo Izecson dos Santos Leite) signed with Italian club A.C. Milan in 2004 and from 2005-07, he was loaned out to fellow Italian side A.C. Rimini. He returned to Milan for the beginning of the 2007-08 season and made his lone Serie A appearance for the club in March 2008. Digão also played in Belgium with Standard Liege, in Italy with U.S. Lecce and F.C. Crotone and Portuguese side F.C. Penafiel.It is done.
The decision has been made.
You're going to write a book and there's no doubt it's going to be great.
And so you saunter downstairs to the family computer a little bit later, after everyone else has gone to bed, notebook tucked under your arm, questions zipping about to and fro in your head.
What will you write? What sort of story? How many fans will you have? Who will publish you? How rich will you be?
Each one leaves the forefront of your mind before it can be properly answered. The only thing you know is that you're going to write a book.
And it's going to be great.
Because of course it's going to be great. You've found a new hobby, a new way to spend some spare time, something to do that will help you think, maybe, and you're going to make some money off it, too. How could it not be great?
And, as you sit there, a fresh blank page suspended inside your monitor, wreathed in a pure white glow, the answer to that question comes: because you don't know how to write.
You think back to the days you spent in high school taking creative writing classes, but that doesn't help. You try to remember how many books you've read and realize you haven't read a new book in years.
Without quite realizing it, you expected something to just come to you, as you sat there, a great and romantic epic, perhaps, or a dark and gritty tale of an alternate-history World War I, told with a ambiguously Wild West/Cyberpunk aesthetic.
But the truth of the matter is, over two thirds of Americans—that's two hundred million—try at least once to write a book in their lifetime, and of those two hundred million books, only about a million are finished, and of those million books, only a few hundred thousand are published.
And, of those few hundred thousand books, fewer than a hundred make it on any bestseller lists.
The simple truth is, you are enormously insignificant.
Armed with this information, what do you do? Well, the way I see it, you've two choices: you can give up, or you can continue.
And if this is your first book, or even your first story, the numbers are daunting.
But it gets worse. Not only do only a small fraction of books get published and even a smaller fraction become successful by any definition of the word, but you still don't know what to write, or how to.
If you've decided to continue on in spite of these hideous numbers, I commend you; that was brave.
But now what? Well, you might think, even if so few writers become authors, those few must have some advice for me.
And they do.
Stephen King wrote a great book, On Writing, a book which I have read three times since I've owned it. E.B. White and William Strunk Jr. collaborated on a legendary piece called The Elements of Style.
They'll all say the same thing: write concise sentences, don't use long words, avoid adverbs and adjectives, etc, etc.
All solid advice, worthy of adherence, but it's just that: advice.
There are no rules for writing. Not really.
After all, I'm certain someone told David Foster Wallace that footnotes have no place in fiction, but Infinite Jest remains one of the most (in)famous works of literature in the entirety of the English language.
Of all the things that the great authors can tell you, all but one is but a guideline, and that one real rule is this: write.
That's it.
There are addons to that rule that make things a little easier, such as, "write every day," and "read, at least as much as you write," but beyond that, there's nothing else.
No real, clear-cut rules, no how-to handbooks, and no mentors.
Those numbers are looking steeper all the time, aren't they?
But that's okay. You may not know how to write, and no one can tell you how to write, but really, that's fine. All you have to do is: write.Eugenio Savio/AP The US women's soccer team suffered a shocking loss to Sweden in the Olympic quarterfinal, ending the pursuit of a gold medal.
After the match remained tied at 1-1 through 120 minutes, it went to penalty kicks for the first time in Olympic women's soccer.
From there, the US went through a brutal meltdown. Alex Morgan's shot was saved, and Christen Press' shot sailed over the net. Although Hope Solo managed to save one of Sweden's shots, it wasn't enough, and Sweden advanced.
Afterward, Solo was less than complimentary of the Swedish team, ripping its style of play and saying Sweden didn't deserve to win (via Sports Illustrated's Grant Wahl):
"I thought that we played a courageous game. I thought we had many opportunities on goal. I think we showed a lot of heart. We came back from a goal down. I'm very proud of this team. But I also think we played a bunch of cowards. The best team did not win today. I strongly believe that. I think you saw American heart. You saw us give everything we had today."
When asked why she said Sweden played like cowards, she said:
"Sweden dropped off. They didn't want to open play. They didn't want to play great soccer. It was a combative game, a physical game. Exactly what they wanted and exactly what their game-plan was. They dropped into a 50. They didn't try and press. They didn't want to open the game. And they tried to counter with long balls. We had that style of play when Pia [Sundhage] was our coach. I don't think they're going make it far in the tournament. I think it was very cowardly. But they won. They're moving on, and we're going home."
While Solo is entitled to her critique of another team's style of play, it's also not a great look. Sweden chose to play conservatively, and ultimately, it worked.
Both teams had opportunities in extra time. Carli Lloyd's header that found the back of the net was waved off after she pulled down a defender to get to the ball. Sweden also had a goal waved off after it was (questionably) called offsides.
Lost in this rant is Solo calling out Sundhage, the former US women's coach who is now the Swedish coach. Sundhage had a simple reply to the jab:
Solo is heated about the tough loss, as any athlete would be, but it isn't the most gracious way to bow out either.At first they seem to be simple questions.
How many asylum seekers have come into Canada? How many are being allowed to stay?
We've been asking, and the simple answer is: it's not that simple.
From their very first steps over the border, asylum seekers are quickly caught up in a system involving numerous federal, provincial and non-governmental agencies, all of which keep information and statistics in different ways — but none of which specifically track the number of people filing asylum claims after crossing the border illegally.
Boundary Avenue in Emerson, Man., runs along the 49th parallel. Hundreds of potential refugee claimants have crossed here and in the surrounding area. (Gary Solilak/CBC)
The two frontline agencies involved, the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), are no longer releasing this type of data. They both say the information is difficult to track consistently from region to region.
Through a combination of previously released numbers and repeated information requests to several agencies, we've attempted to break it down.
How many people have crossed?
That's almost impossible to know. The more than 6,400-kilometre-long southern Canada-U.S. border is wide open and undefended.
Under the Safe Third Country Agreement, Canada generally does not accept refugee claimants coming in via the U.S., but there are exceptions. Canada is also a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention, so those who sneak through the border crossing can be given permission to make a claim here.
The fastest way border crossers can do that is go directly to a CBSA office or get picked up by police and sent to the CBSA.
For the first two months of the year the CBSA says 2,176 people made asylum claims. But that figure captures both those who made claims at border crossings and those who snuck through and were later allowed to make a claim.
Immigration, Refugees and Citzenship Canada (IRCC) also accepts asylum claims, from people who are already in Canada. Once again, this data captures not only those who have snuck in but also many who are already here legally, like on a student visa, for example.
In other words, neither of the national agencies that deal with asylum claims can say how many are coming from people who have just walked over the border.
Asylum seekers move carefully along a railway overpass in Emerson, Man., in the early morning hours of Feb. 26. (John Woods/Canadian Press)
At one point, the Manitoba office of the CBSA was providing statistics on refugee claimants who crossed illegally, but the numbers were often contradictory from month to month and became unreliable. The department said that was due to a "clerical discrepancy" in their year-to-year stats, and that stats across regions "were being captured differently."
It has now ceased providing that information, referring inquires instead to the RCMP.
This week, the RCMP in Manitoba also stopped providing numbers, claiming it wants a "more consolidated national approach."
Who gets to stay?
When someone files a refugee claim, it goes to the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) for consideration. The agency has no way of knowing from the claim application how the person entered the country.
The IRB considers that information "irrelevant" to whether a claim is valid.
Adding to the confusion, the IRB's statistics — which include new claims and decided claims, whether accepted, rejected, withdrawn or abandoned — are typically released on a three-month delay.
However, for the first two months of this year, the release was fast-tracked in Manitoba.
The view from Manitoba
While it's certainly not the whole picture, Manitoba is the easiest place to put it all together because:
The is only one main location for border crossings.
There is only one police agency involved.
Most applications are being handled by one settlement agency.
And the data collection between agencies is the most up to date.
The RCMP confirmed they picked up 143 people who snuck across the border between January 1 and Feburary 28, 2017, near Emerson, Man., and sent them to the CBSA office there.
(The CBSA says it processed a total 126 asylum claims in this period, but has also said its reporting takes time to fully update.)
Of those 143 people, 136 border crossers went on to Winnipeg and made contact with the Welcome Place settlement agency.
As for the other seven, it's possible they filed claims on their own, went to file in a different province or went underground.
It's also possible some were denied entry and detained pending removal from the country. The CBSA said it has denied entry to some border crossers who didn't pass a security check, but declined to specify how many crossed illegally.
Manitoba Justice says there are currently eight people in provincial custody on immigration matters. CBC News has confirmed one was a border crosser.
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale has only said the government is analyzing the data on asylum seekers. (Fred Chartrand/The Canadian Press)
For that Jan. 1-Feb. 28 time period, the Manitoba office of the IRB says it has received 48 new asylum claims. It appears many of them intend to stay, because the province confirms it received 43 claims for social assistance from refugee claimants during a similar period.
What the numbers say
That means, as you move along the system, there are about 100 people who just disappeared into the stats. Either their claims haven't shown up in the data yet or they haven't made claims in Manitoba.
Lags in reporting and updating stats by various agencies accounts for some of that.
But it's also possible we're simply losing track of some asylum seekers as they move around. Many border crossers CBC News spoke to in Manitoba told us they were trying to get to Toronto.
Federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale has repeatedly said the government is analyzing the data.
Meanwhile, it's a good bet that as the weather warms, more people will come.Photo
Going through a Supreme Court confirmation battle in the middle of a presidential election has happened just five times in the past 100 years. The last one occurred in 1988.
That year, a Democratic Senate confirmed President Ronald Reagan’s appointment of Anthony M. Kennedy in a 97-0 vote. He was nominated on Nov. 30, 1987.
In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s attempt to elevate Justice Abe Fortas to chief justice was contentious and spawned the “Thurmond Rule.” The move was withdrawn, as was a separate nomination of Homer Thornberry to the court.
In January 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt nominated Frank Murphy. He was confirmed less than two weeks later.
In February 1932, it took just nine days for Benjamin Cardozo, nominated by Herbert Hoover, to be confirmed.
In 1916, Woodrow Wilson nominated two justices: Louis Brandeis, on Jan. 28; and John Clarke, on July 14. While it took just 10 days for Mr. Clarke to be confirmed, Mr. Brandeis was not confirmed for over four months.More than 20 countries are waiting to join the China-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), its designated president said today as he allayed concerns it was aimed to challenge US and Japanese influence in the region.
The number could bring the AIIB on a par with or even surpass membership in the Japan-led Asian Development Bank (ADB), which currently has 67 members, 19 of them outside of the Pacific, according to its website.
"We have 57 countries (which are potential founding members) and to my knowledge...More than 20 countries are on the waiting list," AIIB president-designate Jin Liqun told delegates of the Summit conference, without naming them.
"That makes it more than 70. I'm sure there will be more countries which will be interested," added Jin, a former Chinese vice finance minister who was put forward by to head the bank and was elected in August by the prospective founding members.
The AIIB has been viewed by some as a rival to the Washington-based World Bank and the Manila-based ADB, which has been headed by Japan, its biggest donor, since it was founded in 1966.
The US and -- the world's largest and third-largest economies, respectively -- have notably declined to join the AIIB although they are members of the ADB, but Jin said the door is open to both.
"It takes longer for some countries to reach their internal consensus in making their decision," he said.
"We've been very much patient. As you know, the door is open to all of the countries and if they make a decision just pick up the phone, make a call and we can handle the rest of the business," he said, referring to the US and
Of the 57 AIIB potential founding members, 50 have already signed, including Australia, while the seven others have until the end of the year to affix their signatures.
The bank will be based in and will have a capital of USD 100 billion, with USD 20 billion paid initially. It is expected to start operations next year.
will be the biggest shareholder with 30 percent. Among non-Asian participants, Germany is the largest shareholder with 4.5 per cent, followed by France with 3.4 per cent and Brazil on 3.2 per cent.
Jin said the AIIB is not aimed at challenging the ADB and the World Bank for influence in as the region's funding requirements are so massive.
He cited ADB estimates that Asia's infrastructure demand could reach USD 730 billion per year by 2020, vastly exceeding available resources from existing multilateral lenders.
"Creating AIIB has never been about challenging existing institutions. The world stage is spacious enough to allow many actors to perform," Jin said.Super Robot Wars V launches in English on February 23 in Asia
Asian release launches day and date with Japan.
The English version of Super Robot Wars V will launch both physically and digitally for PlayStation 4 and PS Vita in Southeast Asia on February 23, Bandai Namco announced.
February 23 is the same date the game launches in Japan.
Here’s a full overview of the game, via Bandai Namco Asia:
Play as original characters, and use 25th anniversary special original robots in combat! Players can choose from several main characters to play as, such as Soji Murakumo (male) and Chitose Kisaragi (female). Or, they can use the default settings and play as one of the game’s sub-characters. Whichever character a player uses, they will begin the game with the VangRay, a prototype anti-alien mobile weapon developed by the 3rd Special Tactical Lab. This unit was built to provide the best in mobility, armaments, and firepower, despite being constructed in haste using parts and materials from existing units. As special 25th anniversary bonus, the Grungust and Huckebein robots from 4th Super Robot wars original series will also feature in combat! Even new players can enjoy Super Robot Wars V Beginners Mode allows the player to challenge himself with different tasks and scenarios at a predetermined difficulty level, earning bonus Money and Tac Pts upon clearing the map. Players may switch game modes at the Intermission. Switching modes will not affect the storyline, or the robots and pilots that will make an appearance. Starring the Great Mazinger and Mazin Emperor G! A new Mazinger, the Mazin Emperor G, will make its first-ever appearance in the series. The unit is based off the Great Mazinger, and boasts superior capabilities. An Emperor Aureole is mounted on its back, and other weapons include the Great Smasher Punch and Emperor Blade. Its pilot is Tetsuya Tsurugi. The game will come with the same 3 bonuses as the Japanese version! Bonus 1: The “Special Starter Pack” special scenario – In this scenario, players can earn Power Parts and Money that will give them a boost in the early stages of the game! Get to receive 100,000 in-game currency, 1,000 Tac points, Power Parts. V Circuit (Movement +1, weapon DMG +200, Range +1 for non-map weapons and weapons with Range of more than 1). Quantum Computer Terminal (increases all attributes by 10% (Accuracy, Evasion, Critical, incidence rate for special Evasion and shield defense))
The “Special Starter Pack” special scenario – In this scenario, players can earn Power Parts and Money that will give them a boost in the early stages of the game! Bonus 2: Super Robot Wars V Original Theme – A special Super Robot Wars V original theme for PS4 and PS Vita!
Super Robot Wars V Original Theme – A special Super Robot Wars V original theme for PS4 and PS Vita! Bonus 3: Grungust and Huckebein original robots unlocked for combat from the first stage of the game, specially for the 25th anniversary. By entering the product code before the second episode, players can unlock he following Power Parts and bonuses for the Grungust and Huckebein and original characters Velt (CV: Ryosuke Kanemoto) and Lottie (CV: Haruka Terui). Power Parts V Aggressor (weapon DMG +100, Accuracy correction +20, Critical correction +20) V Defensor (Max HP + 500, Max EN +50, Armor +100, Mobility +15) The bonus scenario “Trial By Fire” will be playable after clearing the second episode! Clearing the bonus scenario will give the following bonuses! 50,000 Money 500 Tac Pts Power Parts Barrier Field (equips a barrier that reduces all attack damage by 1000. Using the barrier consumes 5 EN)
Grungust and Huckebein original robots unlocked for combat from the first stage of the game, specially for the 25th anniversary. By entering the product code before the second episode, players can unlock he following Power Parts and bonuses for the Grungust and Huckebein and original characters Velt (CV: Ryosuke Kanemoto) and Lottie (CV: Haruka Terui).
View a set of English screenshots at the gallery.Today’s editorial cartoon is for all the parents of precious children who have ruined Easter Egg Hunts for the rest of the world. From Georgia to Colorado, Easter Egg Hunts, a tradition for Christian children on Easter, have been cancelled due to helicopter parents.
Seems some parents feel the need to make sure their kids win at any cost including jumping into the fray, knocking down other kids, just to make sure their precious child get an egg. Sure there were probably some over aggressive kids that should have been reigned in by their parents but that shouldn’t result in chaos on what should be a kids event.
Want to make sure your kid walks away with an egg or two. If they start coming back empty handed, drop a few eggs you brought near your feet and exclaim “oh look you missed one” Or better yet, teach your kid how to deal with and overcome disappointment.
When I started this site 5-6 years ago, I expected it to be a hit within a year, have a book deal within 18 months and have Hollywood calling to option my work within three years. Guess what, none of that happened. And if my parents hadn’t taught me how to deal with disappointment, I would be curled up in a fetal position in the corner instead of posting this gem.Share
Getting the balance right between supply and demand when a new product launches is always a tricky proposition for any company. Make too many and you could be left with stock you’re unable to shift, but make too few and you risk leaving consumers disappointed, or worse, seeing them switch to alternative products instead.
By all accounts, Nintendo has a hit on its hands with its recently launched $60 NES Classic Edition game console, with many retailers selling out of the machine soon after new supplies come in.
Indeed, market research firm NPD said Thursday the Japanese company has so far sold 196,000 Classic Edition consoles in the U.S. since it went on sale in early November.
With the holiday shopping season in full swing and many folks looking for some fun stuff to throw in the Christmas stocking, Nintendo will be keen to get fresh supplies of the console into stores as fast as possible.
For consumers eager to end the year with a spot of Nintendo nostalgia, Best Buy on December 20 may be your best bet. Find out more here.
In further evidence of how the retro game machine has caught the public’s imagination, Google revealed this week that the Classic Edition was the seventh most popular tech search in the U.S. this year, and the second most popular console behind none other than the Nintendo Switch, the company’s much-anticipated hybrid platform set for release next year.
If you’ve missed out on the NES Classic Edition buzz, the machine is a miniature version of the company’s hit console from the 80s, and comes with 30 classic games pre-loaded. Just like the games, the setup is super simple – no internet required, no updates and no downloads. Just plug in (to your TV) and play.Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers has been warned against a summer bid for Mario Suarez after the Atletico Madrid midfielder's agent intimated that his client's future lies in Italy.
According to the Daily Telegraph, the Reds are keen on recruiting the 28-year-old at the end of the season, whilst Premier League rivals Arsenal have also expressed an interest in the Spain international's signature.
However, in an interview with Football Italia, Suarez's representative Manuel Garcia Quilon suggested that if he leaves the Vicente Calderon in the forthcoming transfer window then it will be to join one of three Serie 'A' sides that have previously made enquiries.
"He is a spectacular player and the Italians wanted him," confirmed Quilon. "He was followed in January by three or four Italian teams, including Milan, Inter and Napoli.
"At the moment I couldn't say if there are any meetings planned [for the summer] but it's true that in the past he was pursued by Milan."
The news will |
, he flooded people with junk faxes and has even faced numerous lawsuits filed by Facebook, AOL, MySpace and others since then. The "default judgment" mentioned in the prosecutors' statement is actually a reference to an instance back in 2009 when Wallace was fined $1,000,000,000 for online fraud, an amount he was unable to pay.
Source: Ars Technica via Engadget | Gavel on court desk image via ShutterstockJudge Julie M. Lynch said she wished she could put him in jail for the rest of his
Gary Sovie (above) was sentenced to 17 years in prison for raping a toddler
An Ohio man has been sentenced to 17 years in prison for raping a toddler.
Gary Sovie, 49, confessed to the crime earlier this year after photos of the assault were found in a tote bag he donated to the Salvation Army by an employee at the thrift store.
He took a deal in the case, with the prosecution recommending the sentence in exchange for his guilty plea on counts of rape and pandering sexually oriented matter involving a minor.
The Columbus Dispatch reports that Judge Julie M. Lynch said at the sentencing that she wished she could have given Sovie more time behind bars.
'I don't think there should be one day that you get any break,' Judge Lynch told Sovie.
She also called what Sovie did to the young girl 'the bottom of the barrel for a human being.'
Scroll down for video
Sovie dropped off a tote bag to the Salvation Army back in May, not realizing that there were 32 photos inside showing the naked girl and the toddler being abused.
An employee for the Salvation Army contacted authorities soon after, and due to pay stubs that were also left in the bay police were able to track down Sovie.
Sovie immediately confessed when confronted with the evidence, and said: 'I'm a very sick person.'
He was advised by his legal team not to speak during his sentencing this week, but when Judge Lynch demanded he sat something the newly convicted sex offender said: 'Sorry.'
Shame: Sovie accepted a deal in the case in exchange for pleading guilty to one count of rape and pandering sexually oriented matter involving a minor
Caught: He confessed to the crime after a Salvation Army (store above) employee found 32 photos of the act inside a tote bag Sovie donated to the store
The mother and father of the young girl, who is now a teenager, spoke about their shock and horror when they learned about the assault this past June in an interview with 10 TV.
'I never suspected this. She has no memory. She has no recollection of this incident,' said the victim's mother.
'I was beside myself. This was my child. This was my whole world.'
She later added: 'People are asking all over social media, where was the parent where was the parent?
'Well I am the parent and I can tell you this: in 18 years - no signs, no symptoms, no inkling, no clue…nothing was put out there that made me feel that my child was in danger.'
The young woman's father meanwhile was a bit more blunt, saying: 'I want to kill him.'
In addition to his 17 years behind bars, Sovie will also have to pay a $35,000 fine and register as a sex offender every 90 days after his release.This blog uses affiliate links. Basically, I make a small commission when you use these links, at no additional cost to you.
How to make soap foam dough - a fun homemade play dough alternative for kids! It's a great sensory dough recipe for kids of all ages.
We have created a new favorite sensory dough recipe: soap foam dough!
This soap foam dough quickly became a favorite of my youngest son's. It is moldable like play dough, but snaps cleanly like silly putty.
It is super simple to make, uses only two ingredients (or three if you want colored dough), and takes only a few minutes to prepare.
It uses ingredients you likely already have on hand, requires no cooking, and is easy to clean up since it just melts when water is added to it.
Intrigued yet?
I know you are.
What is Soap Foam Dough?
Soap foam dough grew out of my kids' love for soap foam sensory bins. It makes a lovely alternative to play dough and is way easier to make. Like I mentioned above, there's no cooking involved, like traditional play dough. There's also no weird ingredients that you might not have on hand (like cream of tartar).
It's just a simple homemade play dough alternative that's a fun sensory experience for kids.
But what is really neat about soap foam dough is that it snaps cleanly like silly putty.
The dough looks even more pretty when the different colors are combined. The end result is a beautiful marbled dough.
This dough cleans up really easily since it is made with soap, but before cleaning up, why not turn the soap foam dough into some colorful, messy oobleck. Simply add some water to the soap foam dough until it has an oobleck like texture (usually it's a 1:1 ratio of water and cornstarch ).
Ready to make soap foam dough? Find out how to make this sensory dough below.
How to Make Soap Foam Dough - A Fun Sensory Dough for Kids!
This soap foam dough is just one of the beautiful activities you can find in my book Pop! Squirt! Splash!, but to give you a little taste of what you will find in the book, I will show you how to make this beautiful dough.
To make soap foam dough, you will need:
To make soap foam dough, combine the foaming hand soap with the liquid watercolors in a bowl. I actually make my own foaming hand soap with castile soap. Slowly add the cornstarch. Mix and knead the dough until it is smooth. You may need to sprinkle up to 1/2 tbsp more cornstarch into the dough or add extra soap if needed. It should not be sticky and the dough should snap in half when you put pressure on the ball of dough. Here's a video tutorial for making the dough:
My three year old wanted to make red, purple, and green dough. Isn't it lovely?Since soap foam dough can snap in half like it does, it makes it the perfect sensory dough for exploring fractions. Or for stacking.Image copyright PA
Next month the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, and the leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage will debate Britain's membership of the European Union in a special programme on BBC Two.
Ahead of this programme, we want to hear your hopes and concerns. Should Britain remain in the European Union, or would the country be better off leaving the union?
For your chance to be part of the studio audience on the night and put your question to the two party leaders, email the question you would like to ask to europedebate@bbc.co.uk or tweet it using the hashtag #europedebate
The European Union: In or Out? will be broadcast on Wednesday 2 April at 19:00 on BBC Two.
Thanks for your comments. You can read some of your views here.NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks on major markets rose along with the euro on Thursday as a market-friendly presidential candidate led in opinion polls ahead of elections in France on Sunday.
Former French finance minister, Emmanuel Macron, maintained a slim lead in polls, but the election is still a four-way battle in the first round vote on April 23. Should Macron rank first or second in Sunday’s election, he is seen easily winning the runoff vote on May 7 after remaining candidates are eliminated.
However, after surprises in last year’s U.S. election and the UK Brexit referendum, voter indecision and low turnout could catch markets wrong-footed yet again.
France's CAC stock index.FCHI jumped 1.5 percent, its strongest daily performance since March 1.
On Wall Street, stocks rose as traders continued to bet on a strong earnings reporting season. Profit expectations have risen in the last two weeks and S&P 500 stock index company earnings now are expected to have gained 11.1 percent in the first quarter.
“You look at a day like today and it tells you there is a lot of cash on the sidelines that wants an opportunity to buy when the market sells off even just a little bit,” said Phil Blancato, CEO of Ladenberg Thalmann Asset Management in New York.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average.DJI was up 174.22 points, or 0.85 percent, to 20,578.71, the S&P 500.SPX gained 17.67 points, or 0.76 percent, to 2,355.84 and the Nasdaq Composite.IXIC added 53.74 points, or 0.92 percent, to 5,916.78.
The Nasdaq closed at a record.
The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index.FTEU3 ended up 0.18 percent and MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe.MIWD00000PUS gained 0.63 percent. Emerging market stocks rose 0.58 percent.
EURO HOLDS NEAR 3-WEEK HIGHS
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., April 20, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
The euro held near a three-week high against the U.S. dollar as some traders closed out bets made on the grounds that the common currency would fall ahead of or after the election.
“Euro bulls will definitely respond to positive news around Macron, but that dissipates as the reality of low turnouts sets in,” said Alfonso Esparza, senior currency analyst at OANDA in Toronto.
The euro EUR= was up 0.09 percent against the dollar at $1.0719 after hitting a three-week high of $1.0777 earlier in the session.
Oil prices ended mixed, as investors weighed rising U.S. production against geopolitical uncertainties.
U.S. crude prices CLc1 settled down 17 cents at $50.27 a barrel. Brent futures LCOc1 posted modest gains, however, ending up 6 cents to $52.99.
U.S. Treasury yields rose as investors waited on the results from the French election and as rising risk appetite boosted stocks, after yields fell earlier and broke below key technical resistance.
The 10-year note US10YT=RR fell 12/32 in price to yield 2.25 percent. The yield briefly fell as low as 2.165 percent on Tuesday, the lowest level since Nov. 10, and it has tumbled from 2.63 percent on March 14.
In other commodity markets, U.S. gold futures GCcv1 fell 0.09 percent to $1,282.60 an ounce.
For graphic on French presidential election, click: tmsnrt.rs/2lPduBG
For graphic on global foreign exchange rates in 2017, click: tmsnrt.rs/2kIQHol
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For graphic on global assets in 2017, click: reut.rs/2kD4BGA
For graphic on global bond dashboard, click: tmsnrt.rs/2lmwqHC
For graphic on global market cap, click: reut.rs/2pHTxifSenior Gameplay Designer Frederik Thylander has revealed some new information regarding the point system implemented in Battlefield 3.
First, Mr. Thylander recently announced that a total of 12 sets camouflage patterns will be available for your soldier in Battlefield 3. Fans have been curious to know exactly how these camos will be unlocked and what styles are included. Thylander give his answers: “I’ll leave the styles a secret, but as with every ‘all-kit’ unlock, it’s through rank-up.”
Thylander has also recently cleared up a few things up about how points will be earned in the final build of Battlefield 3. Personally, I was very excited to play as the Recon class in BF3 after finding out about all the cool gadgets that the class will be receiving, like the spawn beacon and the SOFLAM. One thing that disappointed me in the Beta was that the Recon class did not get any points for having teammates spawn on their beacon. However, according to Thylander, this has been addressed for the final build as the “Spawn beacon [now] gives points.” He also clarified a few things regarding the controllable MAV: “MAV is a mobile motion tracker. Points to you for anyone that dies in it’s radius.” It’s good to see the Recon class getting a bit more attention in terms of points.
As for the SOFLAM gadget, it seems that points are also rewarded accordingly for assisting in destroying vehicles. Thylander had this to say about laser painting: “The person who painted gets each point of damage…” He continued, “note also, though a javelin cannot lock on an air target by itself, [it] can lock on painted stuff. And, SOFLAM can paint air targets.” What I like about this is that it really encourages the Recon class to be more active in assisting other teammates, especially the Engineer class in this case, with his Javelin.
What did you guys think about the point system in the Beta, and what would you like to see changed in the final build? Leave your comments below, and make sure to follow @MPFirst on Twitter and check out our brand new Facebook page!
Missed some recent news regarding New Spotting Features in Battlefield 3? Also, MP1st wants your feedback!HOUSTON - What may be a million dollars worth or more of uncirculated South African gold coins were discovered in an old safe that was meant for scrap metal, and now the question is, legally, to whom do these valuable coins belong?
A locksmith at Robbie's Key & Lock in West Houston told Local 2 it took weeks to get that safe open and when he finally did, inside were cases and tubes of gold coins, small silver bars and jewelry.
The locksmith secured the safe and called police. Members of HPD's precious metal unit responded and took temporary custody of the contents.
A man recently acquired the safe from an estate executor who asked him to clean out the garage of the deceased. He was asked to remove the safe from the garage and dispose of it however he wanted. He brought it to Robbie's to see if there was anything inside.
The executor of the estate found out about the discovery and staked her claim on the valuable coins.
Attorney Mike DeGuerin was called to broker a deal and tells Local 2 the coins have been returned to the executor of the estate.
Copyright 2013 by Click2Houston.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election charged President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and another aide, Rick Gates, with money laundering on Monday.
A third former Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty in early October to lying to the FBI, it was announced on Monday.
It was a sharp escalation of U.S. Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s five-month-old investigation into alleged Russian efforts to tilt the election in Trump’s favour and into potential collusion by Trump aides.
Manafort, 68, a longtime Republican operative, and Gates were arraigned at a federal courthouse in Washington.
Both men pleaded not guilty to the charges in a 12-count indictment, ranging from money laundering to acting as unregistered agents of Ukraine’s former pro-Russian government.
The judge ordered house arrest for both men, and set a $10 million (7.57 million pounds) unsecured bond for Manafort and a $5 million unsecured bond for Gates. With unsecured bonds, they are released without having to pay but will owe money if they fail to appear in court. There will be another hearing on Thursday.
The developments in the Mueller probe weighed on the U.S. dollar, which slipped 0.5 percent against a basket of currencies.
Mueller’s investigation and others by congressional committees into alleged Russian efforts to influence the election have cast a shadow over Trump’s first nine months in office.
U.S. intelligence agencies say Russia interfered in the election by hacking and releasing embarrassing emails and disseminating propaganda via social media to discredit Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Russia denies the allegations and Trump denies any collusion.
Neither Trump nor his campaign was mentioned in the indictment against Manafort and Gates. The charges, some going back more than a decade, centre on Manafort’s work for Ukraine.
The indictment includes accusations of conspiracy against the United States, failure to report foreign bank accounts to the U.S. government and conspiracy to launder money, a count that carries a 20-year maximum prison sentence.
A White House spokeswoman said the indictment had nothing to do with Trump or his campaign and showed no evidence of collusion between the campaign and Russia.
“We’ve been saying from Day One there’s no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, and nothing in the indictment today changes that at all,” spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told a news briefing.
Manafort’s attorney, Kevin Downing said in a statement that there was no evidence the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government. Downing said Manafort’s work for the Ukrainians ended in 2014, two years before he joined the Trump campaign.
Downing accused Mueller of using a “novel” legal theory to prosecute Manafort under a law requiring lobbyists to register with the Department of Justice when they are doing work for a foreign government.
GUILTY PLEA
In a development directly related to Trump’s 2016 election campaign, it emerged on Monday that Papadopoulos, a former campaign adviser, pleaded guilty earlier this month to making false statements to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents.
Mueller’s office said Papadopoulos lied to FBI agents about the timing of contact between him and a professor in London who claimed to have information that would hurt Clinton.
Papadopoulos, a little-known former foreign policy adviser in the campaign, made a plea bargain that stated he had since “met with the Government on numerous occasions to provide information and answer questions,” according to a court document.
Sanders, the White House spokeswoman, said Papadopoulos’ role in the campaign was “extremely limited” and that he was a volunteer.
A combination photo of former Trump 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort (L) and Rick Gates, a former Trump campaign official are shown in Washington, U.S., October 30, 2017. REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan/Jim Urquhart
“He asked to do things (and) he was basically pushed back or not responded to in any way,” she said.
In a May 4 email quoted in the Papadopoulos indictment, a Trump campaign employee forwarded a message from Papadopoulos proposing a meeting between Trump and the Russian government to another campaign official.
The employee included a note, according to the indictment, that read: “Let’s discuss. We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.”
A source in Washington, who did not want to be identified and who has seen the email, said the sender was Manafort and the recipient was Gates.
Manafort ran the Trump campaign from June to August of 2016 before resigning amid reports he might have received millions of dollars in illegal payments from a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.
FRUSTRATION
Trump reiterated his frustration on Monday with the Mueller probe, which he has called “a witch hunt.”
“Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren’t Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????,” Trump wrote on Twitter, referring to Clinton.
Mueller has been investigating Manafort’s financial and real estate dealings and his prior work for a political group, the Party of Regions, which backed former pro-Kremlin Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich.
Both Manafort and Gates generated tens of millions of dollars of income from Ukraine work and laundered money through scores of U.S. and foreign entities to hide payments from American authorities, the indictment said.
They concealed from the United States their work and revenue as agents of Ukrainian political parties and used their wealth to lead a “lavish lifestyle” without paying taxes on the income, it said.
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The indictment said Manafort owned properties in Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Hamptons, Arlington, Virginia, and elsewhere.
Prosecutors said Manafort spent almost $1 million on eight rugs in two years and more than $1.3 million on clothes from shops in Beverly Hills, California, and New York City. They also said he had been making payments on four Range Rovers and a Mercedes-Benz.
Gates was a longtime business partner of Manafort and has ties to Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs. He also served as deputy to Manafort during his brief tenure as Trump’s campaign chairman."I stayed on to chair a further meeting for them by agreement and also because we had the cyclone (Marcia), it would have been poor form just to walk out there and then," he said. When asked for the reasoning behind his resignation, Mr Stone was blunt. "I don't work for Labor governments," he said. "… I could see there would be irreconcilable differences in the time ahead and I think the government was entitled to pick someone who would implement their policies. "I don't support their policies and so it's best to move on.
"When (former prime minister Kevin) Rudd was elected, I had three Commonwealth appointments at the time, one of which had just been renewed for six years, and I resigned them all immediately." Mr Stone said his resignation had nothing to do with Labor's proposed merger of Energex, Ergon and Powerlink, although he said it would be "interesting" to see how it panned out. "We had, at the request of the (Newman) government, looked at that, but we just couldn't see how it would work," he said. Mr Stone, whose annual remuneration package was $87,725 in 2014, said his tenure had delivered big dividends for Queensland taxpayers. He said the final dividend in 2011-12, when he was appointed, was $226 million, with $188 million going to Treasury.
In 2013-14, Mr Stone said, the final dividend was $406 million, with $294 million going back into the government's coffers. He said the 2014-15 results, which would not be published until the end of the financial year, would "mirror" the 2013-14 results. "When I came on board, the dividend back to the taxpayer was OK, but there was nothing huge about it," he said. "That's a matter of efficiencies, not a matter of profitability driven by increased tariffs or anything like that. "It was about making sure the place runs more efficiently and all of that money was being funnelled into the government to pay down debt." Mr Stone said he had "huge regard and respect" for the people who worked at Energex.
"It was a great privilege to serve and I consider it an important three years of my life, of contributing to the public good," he said. Electrical Trades Union state secretary Peter Simpson welcomed Mr Stone's departure and said the union was "happy to see the back of him". "He was one of the most divisive chairpersons we've ever come across," he said. "Goodbye and good riddance." When asked for comment about Mr Stone's resignation, Treasurer Curtis Pitt had little to say.
"This was his personal decision and we wish him well in the future," he said.Greek soldiers have successfully defused a World War II bomb in Thessaloniki, the country's second largest city, after evacuating tens of thousands of people from the area.
"The operation is over, everything went well," regional security chief Apostolos Tzitzikostas said four hours after a demining team began its work.
The 1.5m-long bomb was initially thought to contain nearly 250kg of explosives, but on closer inspection was found to be a 170kg device.
Army chief of staff Nikos Phanios said the bomb's firing mechanism "was still in a very good shape, and this was what had us worried."
The device was American-made he said.
Some 70,000 people were targeted for evacuation within a 1.9km radius of the bomb site, affecting three working-class neighbourhoods west of the city-centre.
A resident looks at a map showing the radius of the evacuation area
The start of the operation was slightly delayed as police removed a camera that had been placed above the crater by a Greek media outlet in breach of guidelines for covering the event.
The operation is unprecedented in Greece, "where a bomb of this size has never been found in an area this densely populated," Mr Tzitzikostas added.
But shopkeeper Stelios Orphanos said that people in the area could remain at home if they stayed indoors until the bomb had been defused.
Many chose to do so "because they are scared of thieves," he said.
Some of those evacuated complained. A woman in her 80s muttered as she was taken away: "There's no reason to be scared, if the bomb had to go off it would have done so already."
Most of the buses brought for evacuation remained empty however as many people left on their own.
Some 400 refugees in a nearby camp were also bussed to safer areas.
According to Greek media reports, the bomb was dropped by a British plane during air strikes on the city's nearby railway station and port in 1943.
The army however has not confirmed or denied the report.
Seven decades after the end of World War II, unexploded bombs from the conflict are still being found around the globe.
On 23 January dozens of people were evacuated after a bomb was found near a Hong Kong university, while three days before that Britain's navy disposed of a suspected wartime bomb found close to the parliament in London.
In the German city of Augsburg, 54,000 people had an unwelcome Christmas surprise on 25 December when they had to leave their homes while authorities dealt with a bomb dropped by Britain during the war.With Help From America's Test Kitchen, Why Buy When You Can DIY?
Enlarge this image toggle caption Anthony Tieuli/America's Test Kitchen Anthony Tieuli/America's Test Kitchen
Even people who love to cook don't make everything from scratch. You might make a homemade graham cracker crust, but who makes graham crackers?
Chris Kimball, that's who.
The host of America's Test Kitchen on TV and radio says there are quite a few foods you'd never think of making for yourself that you actually can. But why would you go to the trouble of hacking things — balsamic vinegar, Greek yogurt, caramel, Nutella spread, dairy-free whipped cream — that are so easily bought in the store?
"Some of these actually save you money, and some of them produce a much better product — because a lot of the commercial products you get have fillers and stabilizers and gums and other things," Kimball says. And, perhaps the most important reason of all, it's fun. To prove it, he showed Morning Edition host Renee Montagne how to make these treats in the tiny NPR West office kitchen.
Kimball tells us that the Nutella hack is a favorite. The iconic chocolate-hazelnut spread, originally created in a thick, brick form as a way to stretch out expensive chocolate in Europe after World War II, has a "plastic texture," he says. "When you make your own, it tastes like hazelnuts."
Here are some of the DIY recipes and notes America's Test Kitchen shared with us:
Coconut Milk Whipped Cream (dairy-free)
When we heard that it was possible to make dairy-free whipped "cream" using the thick layer of coconut fat from the top of a can of regular (not low-fat) coconut milk, our curiosity was piqued. Our test batches, although not as lofty as true whipped cream, had a pleasant mild coconut flavor and enough velvety billows to make us think that this unlikely ingredient could provide an acceptable dairy-free alternative.
With a little more experimentation, we came up with two tips for success. First, the creamy part of coconut milk isn't always separated from the watery part; we found that refrigerating the can for a few hours helps form two distinct layers. Second, it's important to skim off only the very thick, fatty portion of the milk, or the cream won't whip properly.
1 10 oz. can of coconut milk, containing about 3/4 cup of cream
1 1/2 Teaspoons sugar
1/2 Teaspoon vanilla
pinch of salt
To make 1 cup of whipped coconut cream, chill a mixing bowl and beaters in the freezer for at least 20 minutes. Using a spoon, skim the top layer of cream from the can of coconut milk (about 3/4 cup of cream) and place it in the chilled bowl with sugar, vanilla, and a pinch of salt. Beat on low speed until small bubbles form, about 30 seconds. Increase the speed to high and continue beating until the cream thickens and light peaks form, about two minutes. Serve immediately or cover and refrigerate for up to four hours.
Instant-Aged Balsamic Vinegar
True aged balsamico can be as high as $60 an ounce! We wondered if we could hack our way to a reasonable substitute with a decent supermarket brand.
We tried reducing supermarket balsamic with sugar and flavorings ranging from black currant juice to coffee. In the end, we found that a straight reduction of ⅓ cup of vinegar and 1 tablespoon of sugar worked well enough, but the addition of 1 tablespoon of port added the complexity we were after. Vigorous boiling destroyed nuances in the vinegar's flavor; the best results came from reducing this mixture for 30 to 40 minutes over extremely low heat (barely simmering) to about half of its original volume. (recommended supermarket brand Lucini Gran Riserva — $14 for 8.5 ounces).
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
1 Tablespoon port
1 Tablespoon sugar
Reduce balsamic vinegar with port and sugar very slowly over low heat until it measures half its original volume.
Kale Chips
If you've somehow missed that kale chips are a "thing," with recipes flooding cooking sites and packages of commercially made chips now turning up even in ordinary supermarkets, trust us: Tossing torn leaves of kale with oil and salt and baking them until crispy is a worthwhile endeavor. The slightly browned leaves take on a nutty, sweet taste and a pleasing, brittle texture. But the standard oven approach isn't perfect: It's hard to get the leaves evenly browned; plus, it's difficult to drive off enough moisture so that the chips stay crispy when stored for more than a few hours. So when we noticed a few blogs promoting a microwave method, we were eager to give it a try. We found that the microwave dehydrates the leaves evenly and thoroughly, so they stay crispy longer — and the chips cook a whole lot faster than they do in the oven. (Note: For the best texture, we prefer to use flatter Lacinato kale. We also found that collard greens work well, but we don't recommend curly-leaf kale, Swiss chard, or curly-leaf spinach, all of which turn dusty and crumbly when crisped.) Here's our take on the technique.
5 oz. kale (about 1/2 bunch)
kosher salt to taste
Remove stems from kale. Tear leaves into 2-inch pieces; wash and thoroughly dry, then toss well with 4 teaspoons oil in large bowl. Spread roughly one-third of leaves in single layer on large plate and season lightly with kosher salt. Microwave for 3 minutes. If leaves are crispy, transfer to serving bowl; if not, continue to microwave leaves in 30-second increments until crispy. Repeat with remaining leaves in 2 batches. Store chips in airtight container for up to 1 week.
Graham Crackers
Graham crackers get their distinct wheat flavor from graham flour, a coarsely ground whole-wheat flour. However, many store-bought graham crackers these days contain far more white flour than wheat. For our version, we wanted a graham-forward cracker with hearty texture, so we used twice as much graham as all-purpose. Granulated sugar complements the wheat's sweetness and helps the crackers crisp. We also add a little toasty, caramel-like sweetness with a few tablespoons of molasses. The dough is sticky, so we roll it out between sheets of parchment, which also allowed us to slide the prepped crackers right onto the baking sheet. We trim the edges, score the dough, and dock the tops a few times with a fork to keep them from puffing in the oven. Overbaking these crackers will turn them dry and crumbly. Keep an eye on them. They should take only about 15 minutes and should be golden and firm at the edges.
1 1/2 cups graham flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 Teaspoon baking powder
1 Teaspoon baking soda
1/2 Teaspoon salt
1/3 Teaspoon ground cinnamon
8 Tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces and chilled
5 Tablespoons water
2 Tablespoons molasses
1 Teaspoon vanilla extract
Adjust oven racks to upper-middle and lower-middle positions and heat oven to 375 degrees. Process graham flour, all-purpose flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in food processor until combined. Add butter and process until mixture resembles course cornmeal, about 15 seconds. Add water, molasses and vanilla and process until dough comes together, about 20 seconds.
Divide dough into quarters. Working with 1 piece of dough at a time roll dough out between 2 pieces of parchment paper into 11-by-8‑inch rectangle, 1/8 inch thick. Remove top piece of parchment paper and trim dough into tidy 10 by 7 1/2- inch rectangle with knife, and then score rectangle of dough into 12 2 1/2 inch squares. Prick each square several times with fork.
Bake crackers until golden brown and edges are firm, about 15 minutes, switching and rotating sheets halfway through baking. Slide baked crackers, still on parchment, onto wire rack and let cool completely. Repeat with remaining 2 pieces of rolled-out dough.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Anthony Tieuli/America's Test Kitchen Anthony Tieuli/America's Test Kitchen
Transfer cooled cracker, still on parchment, to cutting board and carefully cut along scored lines. Graham crackers can be stored at room temperature in airtight container for up to 2 weeks.
Chocolate-Hazelnut Spread
If you're anything like us, eating a spoonful of Nutella straight from the jar is a guilty pleasure — but if you've never had homemade Nutella, you're missing out on a world of flavor. From our perspective, store-bought Nutella has a couple of major shortcomings: lack of real nuttiness, and a plasticky texture. Could we make this supermarket favorite taste fresher and even more flavorful? The answer is yes — and the technique is surprisingly simple. Toasted hazelnuts and cocoa powder provide the backbone, while a food processor and some oil bring it together. Mix in confectioners' sugar, vanilla, and salt, and you're done.
2 cups hazelnuts
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1/3 cup cocoa powder
2 Tablespoons hazelnut oil
1 Teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 Teaspoon salt
Place hazelnuts in single layer on rimmed baking sheet and roast at 375 degrees until fragrant and dark brown, 12-15 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through roasting. When hazelnuts are cool enough to handle, move to a medium bowl, place second medium bowl on top and shake vigorously to remove skins.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Anthony Tieuli/America's Test Kitchen Anthony Tieuli/America's Test Kitchen
Process peeled hazelnuts in food processor until their oil is released and they form a smooth, loose paste. Add sugar, cocoa powder, oil, vanilla, and salt and process until fully incorporated and mixture begins to loosen slightly and becomes glossy. Transfer spread to jar with tight-fitting lid. Store at room temperature or refrigerate for up to one month.
Greek Yogurt
Greek yogurt has become ubiquitous in the past few years. In the test kitchen, we use it in recipes like tzatziki sauce, or we simply eat it on its own, drizzled with honey and sprinkled with some good granola. Buying a container from the store is easier than ever, with many major yogurt companies now making Greek-style yogurt. But there are a lot of good reasons to make your own. It's easy, and quality pints don't run cheap. But perhaps most important, many brands take shortcuts, like using gelatin, pectin, or inulin (a flavorless dietary fiber) to make a thicker product, which saves money and time but degrades flavor. To make fresh, clean-flavored Greek-style yogurt, use the best-quality homogenized, pasteurized milk and "starter" yogurt (with live active cultures) that you can find. You won't need any special equipment, just a few simple techniques:
4 cups 2 percent pasteurized low-fat milk
1/4 cup nonfat dry milk powder
1/3 cup plain 2 percent Greek yogurt
Place fine-mesh strainer over large glass bowl, then set bowl in larger bowl filled with ice water. Heat milk in large saucepan over medium-low heat until milk registers 185 degrees. Remove pot from heat, gently stir in milk powder, and let cool to 160 degrees, about 7 to 10 minutes.
Strain milk through prepared strainer and let cool, gently stirring occasionally, until milk registers 110 to 112 degrees; remove from ice bath. In small bowl, stir 1/2 cup warm milk into yogurt until smooth. Stir yogurt mixture back into milk. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and poke several holes in plastic. Place bowl in oven and turn on oven light, creating a warm environment of 100 to 110 degrees. Let yogurt sit undisturbed until thickened and set, 5 to 7 hours. Transfer to refrigerator until completely chilled.
Set clean fine-mesh strainer over large measuring cup and line with double layer of coffee filters. Transfer yogurt to prepared strainer, cover with plastic, and refrigerate until about 2 cups of liquid have drained into measuring cup. Transfer strained yogurt to jar with tight fitting lid, discarding drained liquid. Refrigerate yogurt for up to one week.How does the fetus develops inside the mothers stomach? How do cells develop in the fetus? Question Date: 1999-03-09 Answer 1:
Once a sperm and egg |
Category 1 hurricane by the time it makes landfall later that night. In addition, a mandatory evacuation has been ordered for Venetian Isles, Lake Catherine and Irish Bayou, which are outside the city's storm protection system.
Landrieu initially said the curfew would start at 6 p.m., but the New Orleans Police Department later said it would start at 7 p.m. instead.
At 6 p.m. Saturday, police will also place barricades at all underpasses. This will include interstate off-ramps that lead to these underpasses.
The mayor and city officials are providing an update on preparations, including information on the status of the Sewerage & Water Board's drainage system. Watch it here.The Bayou Corne Sinkhole was created from a collapsed underground salt dome cavern operated by Texas Brine Company and owned by Occidental Petroleum. The sinkhole, located in northern Assumption Parish, Louisiana, was discovered on August 3, 2012, and 350 nearby residents were advised to evacuate.[1] Scientists have stated that the evacuation order could last for years.[2]
Background [ edit ]
Bayous such as Bayou Corne were largely settled by the Acadians in the late 1700s, who were attracted to the locations for its economic potential as an alligator and crawfish nesting site.[3] Beneath much of the state of Louisiana, including these bayous, are salt domes, gigantic deposits left during the formation of the North American continent. These domes vary wildly in scale and depth, some as much as 35,000 feet below the surface and as large as Mount Everest.[4] With such depths and dimensions, these domes are naturally under thousands of pounds per square inch of pressure.[5]
The economic value of salt domes has been exploited for centuries.[6] Salt mining has been going on in Louisiana since the Antebellum period, and in the 20th century, the government began using these underground salt caverns as storage reservoirs for crude oil.[7] Where there is a juncture of mining, petroleum engineering, and drilling, care must be taken to maintain stability, so as to prevent a disaster as happened at Lake Peigneur.[8]
Bayou Corne is located in Assumption Parish, the highlighted region of southern Louisiana
The Napoleonville Dome lies beneath Assumption Parish, and was characterized by 53 distinct caverns, six of which were operated by Texas Brine.[9] One of these, Oxy3, owned by Occidental Petroleum, was more than a mile below the surface. Oxy3 was less than 100 feet from the nearest oil and gas storage-sheath, a distance that, while unsafe, was not illegal.[10] In 2010, Texas Brine applied for a permit to expand Oxy3. Its subsequent pressure tests were unsatisfactory, yet the company felt that the cavern would be able to withstand the pressure regardless.[11]
The incident [ edit ]
In June 2012, residents of Bayou Corne began to notice unusual phenomena; the ground was prone to shaking and bubbles began to arise from the water.[11] The US Geological Survey noted an increase in seismic activity,[12] but could not point to an exact source or cause. The local government sent in experts, who suspected a natural gas pipeline leak, but that assumption proved false.[11] As the symptoms worsened towards the end of July, Texas Brine officially denied the likelihood of a sinkhole. Oxy3 had begun to cave in.[11]
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal issued an evacuation order on August 3, 2012 after residents reported smells of crude oil throughout the town.[13] Texas Brine investigated the situation by drilling a relief well and found that the outer wall of the salt dome had collapsed, allowing sediment to pour into the cavern and oil and gas to escape to the surface, causing the shaking and bubbles residents had observed.[14]
Expansion [ edit ]
When first the sinkhole appeared, it spanned a hectare (2.5 acres).[15] As of late February 2014, the sinkhole is 26 acres and growing.[16] Texas Brine is still responsible for managing the sinkhole and has burned off 25 million cubic feet of gas in an attempt to deplete the escaping reserves.[17] Areas in the vicinity of Bayou Corne have demonstrated a similar, bubbling-up phenomenon, though as of yet no definite connection has been made between these and the original sinkhole.[18] Scientists have no conclusive answer to when the evacuation orders—largely dependent on the escaping methane gas—will be lifted, yet 3D seismic surveys completed at the beginning of January 2014 show that the sinkhole’s expansion is slowing as it begins to stabilize.[19] Aside from the methane escaping via bubbles to the surface, the sinkhole has a tendency to “burp” up debris.[20] This is how its expansion is patterned. Seismic activity will occur, causing it to eject some debris—both solid matter and oil—which makes room for more to slough into the hole, including dirt and trees.[11]
Impact [ edit ]
The residents of Bayou Corne, who as of March 2014 have been evacuated for 19 months, have involved themselves in a protracted legal battle with Texas Brine.[21] From the start of the evacuation, each resident received checks from Texas Brine for $875 per week.[22] Some residents receive these checks without having even left the town, in defiance of the evacuation order.[11] One such resident, Mike Schaff, said of Texas Brine’s financial settlement option “They think we’re just a bunch of ignorant coonasses." [11] Nine months after the evacuation, Governor Jindal threatened to sue Texas Brine unless they offered a buyout option to residents.[23] Accordingly, Texas Brine offered to deal with the 350 affected residents. As of March 2014, 65 people had accepted some form of buyout.[24] Others have opted to join a class-action lawsuit against Texas Brine which was set to go to trial in 2014.[25] The ecological effects of these developments on local flora and fauna are yet unstudied, but the sinkhole continues to destroy nearby cypress trees, swallowing them during expansion.[26] The Atlantic’s Tim Murphy has summarized the incident thusly: “Bayou Corne is the biggest ongoing industrial disaster in the United States you haven't heard of.” [11] One class-action lawsuit led to a proposed $48.1 million settlement in 2014, although some residents felt that the legal fees to be awarded ($12.03 million) were too high a percentage of the total.[27]
In September 2014, Texas Brine requested a permit to discharge wastewater back into the Bayou Corne sinkhole in an effort to fix some of the damage it has caused, which sent former and current residents of the town into a frenzy as a heated debate ensued over whether the company believed to be responsible for severe damage and loss of homes should be given permission to tamper more with an area already considered to be "deeply contaminated," as environmental activist Nara Crowley stated.[28]
In July 2015, Texas Brine began a series of lawsuits against Occidental Petroleum, claiming that an oil well drilled by Occidental Petroleum in 1986 triggered the cavern wall break that led to the creation of the sinkhole. Texas Brine is currently seeking $100 million in damages from Occidental Petroleum over the issue.[29]
In 2018, it was reported[30] that a state district judge ruled that fault was shared among three companies: Texas Brine was 35% at fault, Occidental Chemical was 50% at fault, and Vulcan was 15% at fault. Appeals to the ruling are expected.
See also [ edit ]Getty Images
Fans in Oakland have made their desire to add wide receiver DeSean Jackson to the Raiders roster clear, but the team is reportedly still mulling how much of a push to make for the former Eagle.
Albert Breer of NFL Network reports that the team is still doing “background work” on Jackson. Breer believes the team is aware of the possibility that bringing Jackson back to his home state and the area where he attended in college may result in “added risk” of things going poorly off the field.
General Manager Reggie McKenzie will surely weigh that risk against the risk that will come to his continued employment if the Raiders put up another lackluster season in 2014. He’s invested in several free agents to upgrade the roster from last year and Jackson would add a high-level offensive threat to that mix.
Of course, the Raiders may join the rest of the league in watching Jackson try on a Redskins uniform in the near future. Jackson is set to visit with the Redskins on Monday and the right offer from owner Dan Snyder could mean that the background work in Oakland amounts to nothing.This article is over 6 years old
Ricardo Patino says the UK has threatened to enter its embassy in London and arrest the WikiLeaks founder
Britain has told the Ecuadorean authorities it believes officials can enter its embassy in London and arrest Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, according to Ecuador's minister for foreign affairs, Ricardo Patino.
The development came two months after Assange walked into the embassy in a bid to avoid being extradited to Sweden where he faces allegations of sexual assault.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Patino said Ecuador would announce its decision regarding Assange's asylum request at 7am (noon GMT) on Thursday.
Patino also released details of a letter he said was delivered through a British embassy official in Quito, the capital of Ecuador.
The letter said: "You need to be aware that there is a legal base in the UK, the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987, that would allow us to take actions in order to arrest Mr Assange in the current premises of the Embassy."
The letter added: "We need to reiterate that we consider the continued use of the diplomatic premises in this way incompatible with the Vienna Convention and unsustainable and we have made clear the serious implications that this has for our diplomatic relations."
An Ecuadorean government spokesman said: "We are deeply shocked by the British government's threats against the sovereignty of the Ecuadorean embassy and their suggestion that they may forcibly enter the embassy.
"This a clear breach of international law and the protocols set out in the Vienna Convention.
"Throughout out the last 56 days Mr Julian Assange has been in the Embassy, the Ecuadorean government has acted honourably in all our attempts to seek a resolution to the situation.
"This stands in stark contrast to the escalation of the British government today with their threats to break down the door of the Ecuadorean embassy.
"Instead of threatening violence against the Ecuadorean embassy, the British government should use its energy to find a peaceful resolution to this situation which we are aiming to achieve."
A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: "We have consistently made our position clear in our discussions with the government of Ecuador.
"The UK has a legal obligation to extradite Mr Assange to Sweden to face questioning over allegations of sexual offences and we remain determined to fulfil this obligation.
"We have an obligation to extradite Mr Assange and it is only right that we give Ecuador the full picture.
"Throughout this process we have drawn the Ecuadoreans' attention to relevant provisions of our law, whether, for example, the extensive human rights safeguards in our extradition procedures, or the legal status of diplomatic premises in the UK.
"We are still committed to reaching a mutually acceptable solution."
Assange denies the allegations against him, but fears he will be sent to the United States if he goes to Sweden.
An offer to the Swedish authorities by Ecuador for investigators to interview Assange inside the London embassy was rejected.Several studies have shown that people eat faster and leave sooner when loud music is playing so restaurants have been turning up the volume to increase flow-through.
And this isn’t the only tactic restaurants use. Diners seated at tables in the middle of the room tend to be less comfortable and eat faster. The same holds true for uncomfortable chairs.
They also want you to eat more as well as faster. Warm colors like red, orange and yellow stimulate the need to eat.
CNN reports that:
On hectic nights, the reservationist at Salumeria Rosi Parmacotto in New York City will inform diners that they need the table back in 90 minutes for the next party. If you lurk over your digestif too long, chef Cesare Casella will place your name on Salumeria’s no salami list.
Source: CNN April 30, 2010
Dr. Mercola’s Comments:
If youre in the mood to linger over appetizers and savor each bite of your main course, all while enjoying conversation with your dining companions, your local, trendy restaurant may not be the best choice.
There are actually many reasons why dining out may not be your best option not the least of which is food quality, or lack thereof but theres also the issue of atmosphere.
Clearly there are many exceptions to this rule, but most restaurants primary mission is to generate a profit, and the more diners they can seat in any given night, the fatter their profits will be. Knowing this, those in the industry have carefully crafted tricks of the trade designed to subtly get you in, stuffed and out in the shortest amount of time possible.
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As CNN reported, tactics include:
Playing loud music, which makes people eat faster and drink more (in a shorter amount of time)
Seating patrons in the middle of restaurant, surrounded by chaos
Using uncomfortable chairs
Displaying elaborate dessert trays, cheese carts and other visual enticements
Decorating in warm colors like red, orange and yellow, which stimulates your desire to eat
These strategies strongly encourage you to rush through your meal, a practice thats not only unpleasant but bad for your digestion and waistline as well.
Why Eating Fast is Not Recommended
When you visit most restaurants, taking your time to eat and chew your food thoroughly will likely go right out the window. There are certainly select upscale dining establishments that will march to a different drummer, and pride themselves on allowing patrons to linger and really taste each course of their meal but these are the exception rather than the norm.
For the most part, you can expect that eating out will encourage you to shovel in more food, faster, than you likely would at home. Why is this not a good idea?
It will make you eat more, for starters.
A study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism last year found that subjects given identical servings of ice cream on different occasions released more hunger-regulating hormones when they ate it in 30 minutes instead of five. So although the serving size remained the same, they felt fuller after savoring the ice cream compared to when they wolfed it down.
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In another study from 2008, subjects also reported feeling fuller when they ate slowly. Interestingly, they also ended up consuming about 10 percent fewer calories when they ate at a slow pace as opposed to when they were rushing.
A third study, published in the British Medical Journal, found that eating quickly, and eating until feeling full, tripled subjects risk of being overweight. The authors concluded:
Eating until full and eating quickly are associated with being overweight in Japanese men and women, and these eating behaviors combined may have a substantial impact on being overweight.
Eating your food slowly, chewing up to twice as long as you normally would, will also instantly help you control your portion sizes, which naturally decreases calorie consumption.
Another benefit of chewing longer is that your food is digested better. The majority of your digestive enzymes are actually in your mouth, not in your stomach. Therefore, chewing your food longer allows it to be broken down better.
Youre also likely to find that you actually enjoy the taste of the food more.
Most Restaurant Food is Far From Optimal
When it comes to top restaurant gripes, the pace of your meal may actually pale in comparison to food quality.
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Ive often wondered how restaurants can offer so many different menu options and in about 15 minutes, sometimes less, have it sitting in front of you ready to eat.
This just isnt possible if youre cooking food from scratch.
In reality, many restaurants are simply buying processed frozen foods, popping them in the microwave, and passing them off as homemade cooking. This is something youd expect from a cafeteria, fast-food joint or chain restaurant, but it even occurs at five-star eateries.
Further, daily specials are not always the chef's inspiration of the day. Instead, daily specials are often dishes prepared specifically to get rid of ingredients nearing the end of their shelf life. To spot these iffy "specials," look out for expensive items used in a way that minimizes their flavor, such as cut and braised lamb chops playing second fiddle in a dish.
Also, similar to the way grocery stores pack the most visible shelves with the most profitable foods, restaurant dishes that earn the most profit are always located in the most eye-catching spot on the menu. This says nothing for quality, however.
Its common at restaurants for inexpensive fish such as pollack to get passed off as something more expensive, like cod. Or, Maryland-style crab cakes may be made from crab that came from Vietnam. Most fish in restaurants is also farm-raised, which you definitely want to avoid.
Even the healthiest restaurant meals are typically loaded with calories as well. According to a registered dietician and representative for the American Dietetic Association, restaurant meals average between 1,000 to 1,500 calories, and because theyre served in gigantic portions, youre likely to eat more than you would at home.
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The end result is that eating out often means youre typically eating low-quality food at a premium price, a lose-lose situation for both your health and your bank account.
Unfortunately, many Americans have made eating out a way of life. In 2008, the average U.S. household spent close to HALF of its food budget on meals eaten away from home, according to The Survey of Consumer Expenditures for 2008, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
A Better Choice for Your Meals
Most of you probably know that I am not a major fan of eating out, primarily because of the major unknowns at most restaurants in terms of food quality, preparation and addition of toxic substances like high-fructose corn syrup, preservatives and MSG. Also, as I said earlier, much of the food is actually cooked in microwaves to speed up delivery, and I try to avoid any food that has been cooked in a microwave.
Instead, I have long stated that if you want to be optimally healthy, you, ideally a family member or someone you hire needs to put some serious time into preparing your meals. This way, you can prepare your meals with unprocessed, high-quality food, you control the portion sizes, and you can enjoy your food in an atmosphere that is calming and not rushed.
I am fond of saying that if you fail to plan you are planning to fail so before you go to bed at night make certain that you know what you are going to eat the next day so you dont have to rely on purchasing unhealthy meals.
For help getting started, please do read my 14 tips to eat healthy on a tight budget along with the quick, home-cooking tips in the article How to Cook Whole Food From Scratch and Keep Your Day Job!
It takes a bit of planning on your part, but please make an effort to eat the majority of your meals at home and rely on dining out for only the rare occasion.
Related Links:
May 20, 2010
The Best of Joseph Mercola(Yicai Global) Aug. 1 -- Chinese tourists rank China first in the world in terms of tourism safety, and prefer overseas destinations that are generally considered safer, according to a survey from online travel giant Ctrip.Com International Ltd. [NASDAQ:CTRP].
Some 67 percent of Chinese tourists voted China as safe, Beijing Daily reported on July 31. Japan came in second with 51.6 percent of tourists deeming it safe while Singapore topped Southeast Asia. The top 10 list also includes New Zealand, Iceland, Australia, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden and the United Arab Emirates.
The survey found that Chinese tourists are now attaching more and more importance to safety and prioritize this when making travel decisions and online reservations.
Chinese tourists' judgment on the safety of a country is usually a comprehensive impression that is easily affected by recent events and public opinion. Their travel choices are particularly affected by terrorist activities, natural disasters, vicious crimes, large-scale infectious diseases and other events. Other factors include unfriendly people, conmen and inefficient or corrupt governments.
"The countries deemed safest by Chinese tourists are all relatively developed regions with a high degree of civilization and public order," said a travel expert at Ctrip. "This is consistent with Chinese travelers' impressions of safety in overseas countries."
The top ten cities ranked by the tourists were Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, Xiamen, Shenzhen, Lhasa, Guangzhou, Naning, Macau and Chengdu, with tourists generally considered greater economic income and a mature tourism sector as the biggest factors affecting safety.
Ctrip also issued a list of high-risk countries in line with safety reminders from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Department of Consular Affairs. The department warns travelers to "stay away" from or "travel with caution" to Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan's ninth largest city Quetta, three of Nigeria's northeastern states, Liberia and Iraq, among other countries and regions.A Georgia woman says that she and Herman Cain engaged in a 13-year affair, but the GOP presidential candidate issued a preemptive denial on Monday.
In an interview with the local Fox affiliate in Atlanta, Ginger White said she met Cain in the 1990s and he invited her to meet him in Palm Springs. From there, she said, the affair took off and he flew her to places where he gave speeches and lavished her with gifts.
WATCH: Ginger White’s interview with Atlanta Fox5 News
“He made it very intriguing,” White said. “It was fun. It was something that took me away from my humdrum life at the time. And it was exciting.
“It wasn't complicated. I was aware that he was married. And I was also aware I was involved in a very inappropriate situation, relationship.”
To substantiate her claims, White showed the Atlanta reporter phone records documenting 61 calls from a number that the reporter later traced to Cain. The calls were being made as late as September 2011; Cain, who has acknowledged a relationship with White but not an inappropriate one, responded to a text message to the phone number, but told the reporter he was helping her financially.
“This is not an accusation of harassment in the workplace – this is not an accusation of an assault - which are subject matters of legitimate inquiry to a political candidate,” said attorney Lin Wood, who Cain hired after several sexual harassment allegations surfaced against him earlier this month.
“Rather, this appears to be an accusation of private, alleged consensual conduct between adults - a subject matter which is not a proper subject of inquiry by the media or the public. No individual, whether a private citizen, a candidate for public office or a public official, should be questioned about his or her private sexual life.”
After being criticized for his slow response to sexual harassment allegations in recent weeks, the presidential candidate on Monday refuted the story by appearing on CNN the hour before White’s interview aired.
The former Godfather’s Pizza CEO told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that a story would break Monday night in which a woman is “going to accuse me of an affair for an extended period of time.”
Cain told CNN, “It is someone that I know, who is an acquaintance who I thought was a friend.”
The GOP presidential candidate later elaborated on their relationship, saying she was a “friend, because not having a job, et cetera and this sort of thing.” He said it was “premature” to talk about how long he had known the woman, and that his wife had not met her.
Cain didn’t offer other information, explaining, “I don't want to specify because I don't know what's in the story... We will address these when they come out, but at this point, I just wanted to give you a heads up. I don't have anything to hide and we will address the details as we know them.”
Once the story broke Cain said, his attorney, L. Lin Wood, would respond.
Cain said he had spoken to his wife about the most recent accusation. “Her reaction was very similar to mine — ‘Here we go again.’... As long as my wife believes that I should stay in this race, I'm staying in this race.”
He concluded that he would have a “nice steak dinner” tonight, because he’s “done nothing wrong.”
Even as Cain denied the accusations on television, his lawyer told the station in a statement that his client would not be responding publicly.
“[T]his appears to be an accusation of private, alleged consensual conduct between adults — a subject matter which is not a proper subject of inquiry by the media or the public,” wrote Wood. “Mr. Cain... has no obligation to discuss these types of accusations publicly with the media and he will not do so even if his principled position is viewed unfavorably by members of the media.”
After White’s accusations were made public, her attorney, Edward White, told CNN’s John King that White wasn’t likely to profit off them and had gone public after several media inquiries regarding her relationship with Cain.
“I’m concerned about whether or not she’ll be able to keep her job,” White said.
Earlier this month, Politico reported that two women were paid settlements over sexual harassment allegations against Cain from his time at the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s. One of the women went public, and two others ultimately accused Cain of sexual harassment. Cain denied ever sexually harassing anyone. His poll numbers initially withstood those allegations, but in recent days he has begun a downward slide.
White said she knows her name will be dragged through the mud, but that she felt it was important to get her story out, especially because she wasn’t happy about how Cain has treated his past accusers.
“I wanted to give my side, before it was thrown out there and made out to be something filthy,” White said. “Some people will look at this and say that is exactly what it is. I’m sorry for that.”
The Fox Atlanta report showed White has had financial problems, including evictions in recent years and a bankruptcy 23 years ago. She said she is struggling like many single mothers and is unemployed.
More on PostPolitics
4th woman accuses Herman Cain of sexual harassment
In announcing retirement, Frank goes after Gingrich
Political scandals of the last decadeThinking too little of God sometimes leads you to think too little of yourself.
For years, I thought it was the other way around. I always thought that seeing God as big meant I needed to see myself as small. Or, to put it another way, the bigger my vision of God grows, the more my vision of myself will shrink.
Wrong.
While it’s true that an oversized view of yourself can be a sign that you have an undersized view of God, it’s also true that an undersized view of God can make yourself smaller.
This truth hit me when I was preparing to lead a Gospel Project session about the twelve leaders from Israel who went into Canaan to spy out the land. Ten of the spies focused on the obstacles – the fortified cities, the formidable armies, and the towering giants. Then came their pitiful self-assessment: “To ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and we must have seemed the same to them” (Numbers 13:33)
Grasshoppers. That is the label the spies used to describe themselves.
Here they were – the chosen people of God, the children He rescued from slavery and set on the path to the Promised Land. The people who witnessed the mighty hand of God smiting the most powerful empire in the world. Grasshoppers.
The warning sign of Israel’s faithlessness was not that they thought too highly of themselves, but that they didn’t think highly enough. Their lack of faith in God led to a distorted vision of themselves and their obstacles. They saw the problems as bigger than they really were, and thus they saw themselves as smaller than they really were.
When your God is small, your obstacles seem big. But when your view of God is small and your view of your obstacles is big, your view of yourself shrinks.
That’s the insight that rocked me. I’d always thought that “trusting in myself” was the sign that I was failing to trust in God. As if faith in God and faith in myself is a zero-sum game.
But that’s not the story of the Israelites. When their faith faltered, they saw themselves as smaller and more insignificant than they really were. Instead of sensing humility and awe in what God had promised to do through them, they felt humiliated before the giants in the land.
We are mere grasshoppers! they thought. We can’t take on the giants. We’ll be squashed!
Here, the Israelites weren’t thinking too highly of themselves because they thought too lowly of God. They were thinking too lowly of themselves because they thought too lowly of God.
And so, I ask myself:
How many times have I failed to act in faith because I thought too little of myself, or because I minimized the gifts and talents and passions that God Himself has put in me?
How many times have I viewed myself as a grasshopper rather than as a child of the King?
How many times have I exaggerated challenges and diminished God’s call?
How many times have I faltered in faith, not by overestimating myself but by underestimating what God can do through me?
Failure to see the grandeur of God squashes our hope in what He can accomplish through us. A distorted vision of God leads to a diminished view of ourselves. In the end, we no longer think we are capable of doing what God has called us to do.
Reading the narrative in Numbers, I want to step into the scene, shake the Israelites by the shoulders and say, “God sees you as His children! He has called and equipped you. Take the mountain! You are not lowly insects cowering under the feet of your enemies – you’re the children of the King whose footstool is the entire cosmos!”
Here, Israel got it wrong. But in a later scene, the future king David gets it right. He marches right up to the giant and takes him down. This wasn’t an act of arrogance, but of confidence in the God who had called him, the God he knew to be stronger than the enemy.
Underestimating yourself is not humility, but faithlessness. The stronger your faith in God is, the stronger your faith will be in what God can and will do through you.Troubleshooting & Support
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If you have a more general programming question, check out our active community on Stack Overflow. If you require further assistance, please use one of the support channels described in this article.What is the Kabbalah / Cabala / Qabalah?
All of these spellings derive from the Jewish Kabbalah, which is an esoteric method that aims to explain the relationship between deity and humanity. Deity is defined as the unchanging, eternal, and mysterious aspects of reality as opposed to the finite and mortal.
Jewish mystics used Ten Emanations, or spheres, to represent the highest and most abstract ideas of deity. Together, these Ten Spheres (Sephiroth in plural, and Sephira in singular) make up the Tree of Life. They are, in their English names: the Crown, Wisdom, Understanding, Mercy, Severity, Beauty, Victory, Glory, the Foundation, and the Kingdom.
Today, Qabalah is the basis for a plethora of magical and mystical systems.
In order to understand how Hermetic Qabalah came to be, we have to acknowledge a few things from the history of Jewish Kabbalah and note some important people from the Christian Cabala movement.
The What’s What in Jewish Kabbalah and how it’s significant to the Hermetic Qabalah:
Merkabah Mysticism and the Hekalot: alluded to the hidden knowledge from the prophet Ezekiel. This is the basis of the Sepher Yetzirah and how to “perform” the Great Work. Imagery from the Wheels of Ezekiel and Jacob’s Ladder are precursors to diagrams of the Tree of Life.
Bereshith Mysticism: expounded the secrets of the creation of the universe from Genesis, including the esoteric “truths” behind Adam and Eve, the Serpent, Satan and so on.
Lurianic Kabbalah: theorized a new doctrine of creation, providing a basis for the idea of rectification of the soul through righteous devotion to divinity. These theories are crucial to the Hermetic Qabalah, as they depict how human acts influence the balance of creation/reality. They also show how the upper divine world is tied in its fate according to the lower mundane world and vice versa.
Hasidism: a reexamination of Judaism, giving it a different aim for immediate perception of the Divine amidst the mundane.
Cabala (Christian Mysticism) reinterpreted Kabbalistic doctrine to a distinctly Christian perspective. The three topmost spheres on the Tree of Life (the Crown, Wisdom, and Understanding) are connected to ideas of the Trinity, and the seven remaining spheres are representative of earth and the mundane world. This interpretation filtered down into Aleister Crowley’s later doctrine for the Abyss, a region between the three “supernal” spheres and the seven “earthly” spheres.
The Who’s Who in Christian Cabala and their significance to Hermetic Qabalah:
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: had a syncretic worldview that combined Platonism, Neoplatonism, Aristotelianism, Hermeticism, and Kabbalah.
Athanasius Kircher: another syncretic Cabalist who built on Mirandola’s work and wrote the Oedipus Aegyptiacus, which combined Egyptian mythology and traditional concepts from the Jewish Kabbalah. This is illustrated this in his version of the Tree of Life. He was also the first to insert the Hebrew letter Shin into the Tetragrammaton (four-lettered name of God) to denote YHShVH (Yahshuah, or Jesus). His work has led directly into the Occult/Hermetic Qabalah today, and his version of the Tree of Life is still the most widely used Qabalistic diagram among magic practitioners.
Christian Knorr von Rosenroth: was an editor, translator, and annotator of Kabbalistic texts.
The Hermetic, or Occult Qabalah initially arose alongside the Christian Cabalistic movement during the European Renaissance with the help of magicians such as Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, Francis Barrett, and Eliphas Levi. These would later include individuals such as Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune.
Unlike Cabala, however, Qabalah draws on many other influences besides Kabbalah. These include: Western astrology, Alchemy, Egyptian and Graeco-Roman religions, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism and John Dee & Edward Kelley’s Enochian system of angelic magic.
Why Should I Use the Hermetic Qabalah for my Magical Practices?
It is the underlying philosophy and framework for Western Occultism and various magical societies. The Hermetic Qabalah is also a precursor to Neopagan, Wiccan, and New Age systems. Because it is all-inclusive, the practitioner is free to use any of its existing attributions as well as map one’s own personal symbol-set onto the Tree of Life.
It is convenient in both ceremonial and solitary settings, so it can provide you with a language to communicate your experience with others (and yourself).
Featured art “Bodhi” by Morgane DematonsSome curious news out of the land of Strikeforce today. Scott Coker spoke to MMAJunkie about the welterweight title situation, and implied that someone new will be stepping into the organization soon. And the implication is that this new fighter is of a very high caliber, judging by Coker's words anyway. When he was asked if the Paul Daley vs. Tyron Woodley fight on July 30th was a # 1 contenders matchup, he had this to say:
"I would say the winner of that fight we're definitely keeping our eye on," Coker said. "I think by the end of the year, you'll see a title fight happening."
A typical non-answer from Coker. I thought this fight might be for the title itself, but apparently not. And it seems like that is the case because of what Coker said next:
"We're about to sign another fighter that |
air about 50 metres away.
Inayatullah fled along with his family of 13 - more than 192,000, or 42 percent, of the displaced are children - when the bombs began to drop near his home in Miranshah
While the military says that it had warned residents that a military operation was going to begin, residents of North Waziristan say the warnings - most delivered through pamphlets or local mosques - were not consistently delivered across the district.
"The only warning we had was when our local mosque and cemetery was destroyed by bombing from jets," said Mustafa Khan, 55, a resident of the small village of Issori, near the town of Mir Ali.
The road to Bannu has been arduous for those who have fled their homes.
"There was bombing everywhere. We came here out of fear for our lives," said Muhammad Shershah, 33, a pharmacist who is a native of Miranshah. Shershah said that his family undertook what was normally a three-hour journey by car on foot, due to the lack of vehicles.The trek with his family of 15 took three days, with frequent stops at more than a dozen military checkpoints.
At least seven other large families Al Jazeera spoke to, all including children and elderly members, reported the same journeys on foot. That list included Gul Rabib Khan, 45, a one-legged man from the town of Haiderkhel, who said his 20km journey to the camp in Bakka Khel, of which he undertook 14km on foot, took him more than 12 hours.
Doctors say many have arrived with major health issues.
"Most of the patients here are suffering from dehydration and acute respiratory infections," says Dr Faqir Abdullah, 28, who treated many of those who arrived at the Saidgi checkpoint, on the border with North Waziristan.
"Most of them are confused and anxious, because many of them have travelled on foot. These people had left their homes, and we saw they were in a state of shock."
Meanwhile the military operation in North Waziristan continues. On Wednesday, the military said that it had killed 13 people – all designated "terrorists" - in air strikes on Taliban hideouts near Mir Ali. The strikes brought the total official death toll since Operation Zarb-e-Azb officially began on June 15 to 330.
It is impossible to independently verify that figure, as entry to the area is strictly controlled. North Waziristan has been a hub for a complex network of armed groups, including the Taliban, the Haqqani network, al-Qaeda, the Uzbek group ETIM and pro-government militias for several years.
Ground attack imminent
With most of the population now cleared (North Waziristan's normal population is about 700,000), the army says it is now preparing a ground offensive. Curfews have been reimposed, and no movement is allowed on the roads leading to and from the tribal district.
With the major influx over, the concern for the government now, says Commissioner Shah, is resettlement of the IDPs. Bannu has been forced to bear the brunt of the inflow, due to its proximity to North Waziristan and the lack of willingness of other provinces to take in the displaced.
"Bannu is a small, undeveloped town and right now it is absorbing hundreds of thousands of people," he said. A police official said that matters had gotten to the point where one out of every three people in Bannu was an IDP.
"We didn’t want to leave our homes … we have left all our belongings there. We brought just the clothes on our back," said Azizullah, 35, one of a handful of residents of the Bakkakhel camp. "When this is all over, we want to go back."
It was a sentiment not echoed by his seven-year-old son, who accompanied him as the family fled on foot from their village near Miranshah.
"I was scared of the fighting there. I don’t want go home, because there is violence there," he said.
Follow Asad Hashim on Twitter: @AsadHashimIn my previous post, which is a short introduction to ngAnimate, we saw how just including ngAnimate in a project and a dozen lines of CSS can add slick animations to ng-repeat easily.
That was a very simple use-case, and in this post I want to show you how you can use it to animate transitions inside any container you have, with about the same complexity!
Our example, simple pagination
Say we have a regular component that displays a list. It has basic pagination – we only display a fragment of the list and there’s a “next” button to move on to the next fragment.
Our animation-less component would look something like this:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 angular. module ( 'app', [ 'ngAnimate' ]). component ( 'parent', { template : [ '<button ng-click="$ctrl.nextPage()">Next</button>', '<div class="container">', '<div class="page">', '<div ng-repeat="line in $ctrl.pages[$ctrl.currentPage]" ng-bind="line.text"></div>', '</div>', '</div>' ]. join ( '' ), controller : function () { var self = this ; this. currentPage = 0 ; this. pages = [ // Here be pages of stuff... ]; this. nextPage = function () { self. currentPage = ( self. currentPage + 1 ) % self. pages. length ; }; } });
Now if you’re following along you can see that this is basically Angular 101. A simple component with a list of pages, and our template just displays that list with a little button to advance pages. Nothing fancy.
At this point we are sans-animation. Pressing the “next” button would instantly swap the contents of the page.
Not the best UX in the world, right?
Introducing ng-animate-swap
ng-animate-swap is a nifty little directive that’s part of ngAnimate (full docs here). What it does is… well… animate when you swap things!
Where in the previous post we saw how ngAnimate adds events to a set of situations it knows (e.g. leave, enter and move for ng-repeat ), ng-animate-swap allows us to add leave and enter events to any DOM element!
You do it by passing ng-animate-swap an expression to watch for. Whenever that expression changes, it will trigger the animation to swap the container from the previous state to the new one.
In our case, we would like to swap the element with the page class, so it will animate whenever you move between pages.
The line we change in the template, after the changes, looks like this:
1 <div class= "page" ng-animate-swap= "$ctrl.currentPage" >
Pretty simple, right? We tell ng-animate-swap to listen for page changes.
Now, with a dozen or so lines of CSS we’ll add a basic animation and, voila, here’s your slick animation:
I won’t go into the CSS in this post, but you can see if for yourself, along with a live example, here.
With basically no JavaScript changes and very minimal template changes, ngAnimate gives us a lot of power to add animations to our apps.
Keep that in mind the next time you need to spice a screen up a little.Emerita Ayala, 23, takes a selfie with her son, Dominic, 8, during her graduation party at Guapo’s in Fair Lakes, Va. Emerita earned a bachelor’s degree from George Mason University on Dec. 21, 2016. She started at 18 and got help through the Generation Hope nonprofit, which gives scholarships and mentoring to teen moms. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)
After the graduation and before the marriage ceremony, Emerita Ayala’s family gathered one recent afternoon at a Mexican restaurant in Northern Virginia for a lunch to celebrate her big day. Helium balloons declaring “Congratulations” floated above the long table.
The 23-year-old, still in her green graduation gown, had just been awarded a bachelor’s degree from George Mason University. The daughter of Salvadoran immigrants in Fairfax County, Ayala was the first in her family to get a college diploma. She had overcome formidable obstacles: When she started, she was a single teenage mother.
So Ayala ordered a strawberry margarita at Guapo’s in the Fair Lakes shopping center and savored a moment that a few years ago might have seemed improbable, if not impossible. Dominic Ayala, by her side, ordered apple juice.
The 8-year-old said he was “really happy and proud” of his mother and explained why: “I can spend more time with her when she has graduated.”
Free time, as mother and son well know, is scarce for a single parent who holds full- and part-time jobs and carries a full university course load. Ayala’s success was the product, above all, of her own determination to get an education, a resolution she traces to her pregnancy at age 15.
She remembers when classmates and adults saw her swelling belly and doubted her future. “Their reaction was, ‘She’s not doing anything with her life. Her life is over,’ ” she recalled. “I just really wanted to prove all these people wrong. I’m not going to be a failure.” With diploma in hand, Ayala said she plans to pursue a career in criminal justice. Her dream is to work for the FBI.
But there is more to her story than defiant ambition. Ayala, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, got help from key sources. Her family provided child care and housing. Public higher education enabled her to start at a low-cost community college and transfer to the university. And she received a scholarship from a nonprofit organization called Generation Hope, which provides funding and mentoring to help teenage parents in the Washington region earn a college degree.
The need for such help across the country is vast. Recent federal data suggests that there are about 4.8 million parents in college, said Barbara Gault, vice president and executive director of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Those student-parents face steep challenges. Many schools offer little or no child care, and federal data shows that what care is available on campus has dwindled in recent years.
Many young parents, especially teenagers, skip college entirely.
“The chances of teen moms getting a college education are extremely small,” Gault said. “Their financial needs are so intense.” It’s not just about tuition, fees, room and board. It’s also about child care and time commitments.
“Without support,” Gault said, “it becomes a near-impossibility to manage taking care of a child by yourself and attending college full time or even part time.”
Five years ago, Ayala was profiled by The Washington Post as she began at Northern Virginia Community College. Her life then was hectic and exhausting.
[From the archives: Fairfax teen juggles college, 3 jobs, 3-year-old]
There were classes two days a week. There were three jobs: managing a night shift at a McDonald’s, staffing a front desk at a Catholic church on weekends, assembling telephones for a company in Dulles. There was Dominic, then 3 years old and not understanding why his mom had to study late at night and get up early for work, even on his birthday. Ayala’s mother, father and sister would take care of him in their townhouse in Centreville when she couldn’t.
There was also a mentor from Generation Hope, Kimberly Korbel, a Fairfax County business executive who wanted to help because she knew from personal experience what it was like to be a teenage mom. Korbel met with Ayala once a month to advise her on time management, financial aid and other life issues, and they kept in touch in between by email and phone.
Now, Ayala’s life still seems hectic and exhausting, but also exciting because her persistence paid off. She earned an associate’s degree from the community college in 2015 and transferred to Mason, the state’s largest public university. She majored in criminology, law and society and minored in psychology.
Along the way, she dropped the jobs at McDonald’s and the church, was promoted at the communications company and started working part time as a probation officer at the Fairfax County jail, a position within her field of study. Dominic started school and is now in second grade, reading “Junie B. Jones” and “Judy Moody” books.
Sometimes she took Dominic to Mason. He recalls going there once when he had a stomach virus and once after a dentist appointment. She recalls taking him with her one day to an adviser’s office while she took a test. She also remembers a time when Dominic called her while she was on campus to assure her that she would ace another exam. “He was my little cheerleader,” she said.
Often, Ayala got only five hours of sleep each night. There was no time for extracurricular activities. Given a choice between hanging out on campus and going home, she always went home. “I stressed about not being there for Dominic,” she said. “He needed me.” But the courses were fulfilling. Ayala said one of her favorites was a class on human rights that covered sex trafficking and slavery.
Her Generation Hope scholarship paid $2,400 toward Mason’s annual in-state tuition and fees of about $11,000. Ayala also received a federal Pell grant and other financial aid and wound up graduating with about $5,000 in student loans. (Dominic’s father contributed no financial support, Ayala said, and has been out of their lives for several years.)
Nicole Lynn Lewis, a former teenage mom and graduate of the College of William and Mary who founded Generation Hope, said the nonprofit has grown since its inception in 2010. It now has 87 scholars at 18 colleges in the District, Maryland and Virginia.
It had started the school year with 88 scholars but lost one when Zoruan Otto Harris, a teenage dad, was fatally shot in September at a community event in Southeast Washington just as he was about to start at Prince George’s Community College.
[D.C. community event disrupted by gunfire]
Lewis said the group aims to expand to serve 100 scholars by 2018. She said the three biggest issues scholars face are child-care shortages, unstable housing and domestic violence. Mentoring is crucial, she said. “This is a model that works,” Lewis said. “We want to be able to scale it, bring it to other cities.”
Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University, said three Generation Hope scholars have graduated from the Catholic school in Northeast Washington and 10 are now enrolled there. “It’s a very fine organization,” McGuire said. “The kind of support they give to single teen parents, it’s just critical. There are so many young, single parents who just don’t know how to make the next move in their lives.”
Korbel, Ayala’s mentor, was at EagleBank Arena on Dec. 21 to see Ayala graduate with 2,508 others who received bachelor’s degrees from Mason. “I would not miss this for anything,” Korbel said. “I can’t tell you how proud I am and how proud she should be of herself. She’s come a long way.”
Also cheering were parents Martin Ayala, 51, a construction worker, and Zenayda Marinela Ayala, 44, who cleans houses and takes care of their three sons: Martin, 16; Joel, 8; and Christopher, 6. Emerita’s sister, also named Zenayda, is 21 and wants to follow her path from the community college to Mason. “She’s been an example,” the sister said. “We all look up to her.”
The morning commencement was just the first life ritual in Emerita Ayala’s big day. In the afternoon, she would marry a man she had known since middle school, Josue Alvarenga, 23, a forklift driver from Manassas. After lunch, she and Alvarenga and Dominic and others in the family gathered for a civil ceremony at a lawyer’s office in Fairfax. She would no longer be a single mom.
Jose E. Auñon, who officiated in a small conference room, asked a question before the couple exchanged vows: Was Ayala thinking about law school? The new graduate laughed.
“No, I’m tired,” she said. “I’m tired of school.”The Swedish Schools Inspectorate on Wednesday ordered Lundsbergs school to close down until the management can ensure the safety of boys and girls enrolled there.
"It is very sad that so shortly after our inspection, and a few days after the students returned to school, such serious incidents take place," Ann-Marie Begler, General Director of the Schools Inspectorate, told the TT news agency on Wednesday.
"It's a very interventionary decision, I'm aware of this, but our mandate is to protect children and students."
Lundsbergs, which was attended by Sweden's Prince Carl Philip along with several of the country's business elite, has been rocked by a succession of bullying allegations.
The schools watchdog has previously received numerous reports of bullying, degrading "fagging" traditions which forced younger pupils to act as servants for older students, and violent initiation rituals at the school.
In May last year, students claimed they had been forced to engage in oral sex and eat manure. In 2011, a student allegedly had their nipples electrocuted with a fly swatter. At the time, the school's headmaster said that the claim about pupils being forced to eat dung was "exaggerated".
The inspectorate warned the school's management in October that it risked receiving a fine of 500,000 kronor (£50,000) if it failed to do more to counter what it claimed was an endemic bullying culture.
In its statement on Wednesday, it said that the closure could potentially last for six months, and that there was no certainty that the school would ever reopen.
"If the foundation, in a very credible way, fixes the flaws in the school so that it can guarantee student safety, the inspectorate may decide that the school can reopen. If not, the inspectorate will revoke the foundation's right to operate a school," it said.
Sofia Orre, a member of Lundsbergs' school board, condemned the decision, telling Swedish television it would be a "devastating" for the students.
"The only thing I can say with such short notice is that it is a disaster for the students who attend the school, most of whom are happy,"
Lundsbergs, established in 1896, is modelled on British boarding schools such as Eton and Harrow, but is smaller, with just 200 students.
Unlike in the UK, only a tiny minority of Swedish pupils attend private boarding schools, and the schools are generally viewed with suspicion.
The other elite schools are Sigtuna, which was attended by Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf and the industrialist Marcus Wallenberg, and Grennaskolan.
Solbacka, which featured in a popular film and book about bullying by one of its alumni, the journalist Jan Guillou, closed in 1973.A painting of Leonard Peltier, an Indigenous rights activist and current political prisoner of the US, on a storefront in San Francisco, California. (Photo: Gary Stevens)
The former Iowa United States attorney in charge of the widely-condemned prosecution and conviction of Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier wrote to President Obama saying granting clemency to the 72-year-old, considered by many the longest-held political prisoner in the US, would be “in the best interests of justice.”
In writing the letter, James Reynolds, who was the chief prosecutor during Peltier’s 1977 trial as well as a subsequent appeal, joins Nobel Peace Prize winners Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and Rigoberta Menchu, as well as tens of thousands who have signed petitions calling for clemency for Peltier, who was convicted under dubious circumstances of the murder of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975.
“It is truly extraordinary for the head prosecutor in such a politicized case to take a public stance contrary to the FBI. It is unprecedented to our knowledge,” said Martin Garbus, the lead counsel in Peltier’s petition for clemency. “We will urge President Obama to weigh Mr. Reynolds’ letter when considering Mr. Peltier’s case, and to examine the Petition with fresh eyes. We believe that Mr. Peltier’s conviction presents one of the greatest injustices in the history of the American justice system.”
Peltier has continually maintained his innocence and in the 40 years since the trial, original evidence continues to surface showing that Peltier was convicted under false pretenses. Amnesty International is just one of dozens of organizations who point out that a US appeals court judge found that the FBI withheld key ballistics evidence showing Peltier’s gun did not fire the bullets which killed the two agents and that the key testimony used to extradite Peltier from Canada, where he sought asylum, was perjured.
Reynolds’ letter comes as pressure mounts on President Obama — who has granted clemency to 1,176 prisoners, more than the previous 11 presidents combined — to finally pardon Peltier, who is gravely ill. Many worry that the veteran prisoner may die in prison given the scant hope that incoming President Trump would release the world-renowned political prisoner.
In an earlier interview, Garbus told Democracy Now! that former President Clinton had told Peltier’s defense team that he would grant clemency before leaving office in 2000, a promise he broke after a last-minute protest by FBI agents.
In support of Peltier’s release, Archbishop Tutu wrote, “In a nation which so prides itself on a strong and incorruptible judicial system and a human and responsive government, it is sad indeed to think that in nearly a (half) century, justice has been elusive for this man. If the matter continues without remedy and action, it will soon be too late for any justice at all. A tragedy of this magnitude cannot be allowed.”ANN ARBOR, MI - Hamed Razavi was looking forward to a return trip to the United States to receive recognition for the research he had spent the better part of five years working on at the University of Michigan.
Razavi, an Iranian student who had been a doctoral student in Interdisciplinary Mathematics at UM since 2010, was this year's recipient of the Sumner Myers Award, which is awarded by UM and given to a student who excels in the study of mathematical analysis.
He had intended to present his doctoral thesis and officially receive the award sometime in March or April, but those plans were halted after President Donald Trump's announcement of an executive order, which paused the United States' entire refugee program for four months, indefinitely bans all refugees from Syria and temporarily freezes immigration from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.
Although a temporary suspension of the ban was announced on Feb. 4, Razavi said he is still unsure if his visa application is going to be processed again.
UM students from Iran express concerns over executive order at gathering The 109 Iranian students enrolled at UM in the fall of 2016 made up all but three of the total number of students from the seven countries in the executive order. Of those students, 105 were pursuing graduate degrees at UM, while two were graduate professional students.
"Imagine you have lived in a country for more than five years, you went to school there and have a lot of good memories," he said in an email. "You are invited to go back and stay for a couple of days to present your research and receive an award for the work for which you spent five years of your life. How would you feel if you are told are not allowed to go back to your university? I was saddened when I learned about the travel ban, but there was not much I could do about it."
According to the Associated Press, three judges on the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will decide as soon as Thursday whether to immediately reinstate Trump's travel ban, which temporarily suspended the nation's refugee program and immigration from seven mostly Muslim countries that have raised terrorism concerns.
Hamed Razavi, an Iranian student who had been a doctoral student in Interdisciplinary Mathematics at UM since 2010, was this year's recipient of the Sumner Myers Award, which is awarded by UM and given to a student who excels in the study of mathematical analysis. With the status of a recent executive order issued by President Donald Trump banning travel to seven Middle Eastern countries up in the air, Razavi will likely not be able to attend a ceremony to accept the award at UM.
Razavi applied for his U.S. visa on Jan. 25 - a couple of days before Trump's executive order. His application process was suspended after the travel ban was announced.
"Since, for Iranians, acquiring visa takes at least 4 to 6 weeks (on) average, and at anytime during this period the travel ban may be put back again, the whole situation is unclear now," he said in an email.
Razavi currently works at the biorobotics laboratory of Ecole Polytechinque Federal de Lausanne in Switzerland, where he continues to research on human-robot interactions for collaborative tasks.
At this point, UM is looking into the possibility of live broadcasting Razavi's talk and acceptance of the award from Lausanne, Switzerland.
UM mathematics professor Karen Smith is advocating for Razavi to be able to travel to the United States to accept the award.
Smith said the ban's negative impact has extended beyond Razavi, more directly impacting international students and post-doctorate candidates at UM.
UM student from Iran says educational path to U.S. is difficult Babak Soleimani is quick to admit he hasn't been impacted as much as other Iranian students at the University of Michigan by the executive order recently issued by President Donald Trump.
"Razavi already has a prestigious post-doctoral position in Switzerland, and will no doubt be offered a position elsewhere in European industry or academics when that ends," Smith said in an email. "Sadly, (United States) universities will not be able to compete for talent like this anymore, either because of a direct ban, or because of the anti-immigrant and anti-science atmosphere the ban represents, even for citizens of countries not directly affected."
Razavi admitted he has not been impacted as directly as some of the 112 UM students from the seven countries included in Trump's executive order, 109 of those students were from Iran, according to fall 2016 enrollment figures.
"I see many Iranian scholars and scientists in situations worse than mine, (including) many newly admitted graduate students who invested a lot of time and energy to get into a good university in the US, and now with one order in one night they see all their dreams are destroyed," Razavi said. "I do not think this is beneficial for the interests of the U.S. either."Turkey is under growing pressure to consider a major escalation in migrant deportations from Greece, a top European Union official said Thursday, amid preparations for a highly anticipated summit of EU and Turkish leaders next week.
European Council President Donald Tusk ended a six-nation tour of migration crisis countries in Turkey, where 850,000 migrants and refugees left last year for Greek islands.
"We agree that the refugee flows still remain far too high," Tusk said after meeting Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
"To many in Europe, the most promising method seems to be a fast and large-scale mechanism to ship back irregular migrants arriving in Greece. It would effectively break the business model of the smugglers."
Tusk was careful to single out illegal economic migrants for possible deportation, not asylum-seekers. And he wasn't clear who would actually carry out the expulsions: Greece itself, EU border agency Frontex or even other organizations like NATO.
Greek officials said Thursday that nearly 32,000 migrants were stranded in the country following a decision by Austria and four ex-Yugolsav countries to drastically reduce the number of transiting migrants.
"We consider the (FYROM) border to be closed... Letting 80 through a day is not significant," Migration Minister Ioannis Mouzals said.
He said the army had built 10,000 additional places at temporary shelters since the border closures, with work underway on a further 15,000. But a top U.N. official on migration warned that number of people stranded in Greece could quickly double.
Peter Sutherland said the "inevitable consequence" of closed borders throughout the Balkans "is that Greece increasingly becomes a camp for refugees and migrants."
About a third of migrants trapped in Greece are at the village of Idomeni, on the border with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Dwellers at a sprawling camp there hold out hope for crossing in increasingly difficult conditions.
Greek police said 130 people were allowed to cross the border Thursday.
Migrants said FYROM didn't accept computer-generated stamps issued by the Greek police, and therefore they couldn't prove their identity documents were genuine.
Adnan Abdallah from Syria had waited to cross from Greece to FYROM for three days, but when he finally was let through, he was turned back because the stamp on his refugee document is computer-generated.
"They say here (in Greece) everything is OK, but on the other side this is not acceptable," he told The Associated Press.
The EU is struggling to hold its members to plans for a Europe-wide solution in dealing with the mass migration.
Hungary has already called a referendum on EU plans for a mandatory quota system for settling migrants, and says it's was considering action to bolster its border fences with additional police and military personnel, and extending the fence to the Romanian frontier.
Earlier Thursday, Tusk told officials in Athens that Europe had little chance of resolving the crisis without full respect of controls on the external borders of Europe's passport-free Schengen area — signaling pressure on Athens to do more to separate economic migrants from those fleeing war in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.
He also had a direct message for them.
"I want to appeal to all potential illegal economic migrants, wherever you are from: Do not come to Europe," Tusk said.
"Do not risk your lives and your money. It is all for nothing. Greece, or any other European country, will no longer be a transit country."
[AP]Navy helicopters dip in Lake Tahoe
Two Navy instructor pilots from San Diego have been forever stripped of flying status and two student pilots will have to repeat training because of a September incident in which they dipped two $33 million helicopters into Lake Tahoe while trying to take photos for the squadron’s Facebook page, a Navy official said Wednesday.
The Sept. 13 incident became public because a bystander caught the event on video and posted it on YouTube.
The video shows the two MH-60R Seahawk helicopters trying to hover low, about 70 feet off the lake. One apparently loses control for a few seconds, smacks its landing gear in the water, then pulls up. Both aircraft went into the water, though the footage only captured one, Navy officials have said.
Both helicopters were damaged. Repairs to electronic antenna and other equipment totaled $505,000.
The Navy’s report on the incident, released Wednesday, holds harsh words for the two flight instructors, both lieutenants, at the controls that day.
“Their complacency, lack of flight discipline and succession of poor judgments nearly led to the loss of two aircraft and 10 U.S. Navy sailors for no benefit and did result in the damage of two aircraft.”
Another flight instructor riding in the rear of the helicopter was placed on a year of probation, during which flying will be off limits.
“The mishap was entirely preventable,” Vice Adm. Allen Myers, commander of all naval air forces, said in the report. “The aviation community was lucky this day, and a horrific loss of life was narrowly avoided.”
The Navy didn’t name the pilots involved because the punishments they received are considered administrative, and therefore private. A Navy official with knowledge of the case provided the details but declined to be named.
The loss of flight status for a pilot means he or she will have to seek a nonflying job in the Navy. With tight competition for officer slots, this action could be career-ending.
Retired Navy F-14 pilot and San Diego resident Steve Diamond called the punishment just, but “a crushing blow” for an aviator.
“It sends a message to a whole generation of aviators. ‘Hey, you can’t do this.’ So it has a higher purpose,” he said. “Aviation is unrelenting when it comes to risk and safety.”
The student pilots, who already have their aviator wings and were learning how to fly this specific aircraft, will have to repeat at least six months of training.
The 33-page report drew an unflattering portrait of the squadron involved, HSM-41 at North Island Naval Air Station. The unit’s purpose is to train pilots to fly the Seahawk.
The commanding officer at the time, who was not named, created a climate that contributed to the mishap, it concluded.
The year before, the commander himself flew over Lake Tahoe at a low altitude, about 200 feet from the water — something that had “no valid training or operational reason.” The report also criticized the commander for laissez-faire oversight of flights headed outside of San Diego.
That officer was replaced in the squadron 10 days after the September crash and is now doing graduate work at the Naval War College in Rhode Island, a Navy spokesman said. The replacement was not related to the incident.
The former commander’s career was not affected by the Tahoe mishap because “ultimately, nothing in the investigation indicated that accountability rested solely with him,” said Lt. Aaron Kakiel, a spokesman for Myers.
The two Navy helicopters were returning from participating in the California Capital Airshow at the former Mather Air Force Base. The report said one of the flight instructors organized the trip because the airshow was close to family members in Sacramento.
They decided to hover over Tahoe’s Emerald Bay so they could get a nearby island in the background of the shot, which they planned to offer for the squadron’s Facebook page.Cyprus the focus of escalating regional tensions
By Jordan Shilton
14 July 2012
The government of Cyprus has indicated its intention to seek financial support from Russia, even as officials from the European Union (EU), European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) determine the requirements of a potential bailout.
President Demetris Christofias and Finance Minister Vassos Shiarly stated they planned to turn to Moscow for additional support, following the agreement of a 2.5 billion euro loan in 2011. Russian government sources confirmed last Friday that Cyprus was asking for a further loan of 5 billion euros—almost a third of Cyprus’s GDP. The talks have become more urgent after credit rating agencies Fitch and Moody’s downgraded Cyprus’s three main banks to junk status at the end of May.
Shiarly criticised troika policies, claiming that the cause of Cyprus’s economic problems was the deal struck in late 2011 to force a “haircut” on Greece’s creditors. The agreement saw the debt owed by Athens to private creditors cut by up to 100 billion euros. This resulted in losses for Cypriot banks of up to 80 percent of their investments in Greek government bonds, according to Schiarly, totalling 4.2 billion euros.
Speaking as Cyprus assumed the rotating presidency of the EU, Christofias insisted, “We maintain the right to have relations with third countries”.
Christofias, president since 2008, was the general secretary of the Stalinist AKEL, the Progressive Party of Working People. He has presided over a significant strengthening of Cypriot-Russian relations. Russian deposits in Cypriot banks total 22 billion euros, the largest of any non-EU state. This figure is greater than the country’s GDP. Total bank deposits, at 150 billion euros, are nine times greater than Cyprus’s economic output.
Out of a total population of less than 900,000, between 40,000 and 50,000 Russian citizens reside in Cyprus. Several Russian companies have a large presence on the island, with energy firms Gazprom and Lukoi having offices there. Nicosia and Moscow have a tax exemption agreement, which permits Russian investors based in Cyprus to take advantage of the extremely low 10 percent business tax rate while paying no tax in Russia. As a result, a significant level of investment in Russia is conducted by companies with their bases in Cyprus.
Russia’s growing influence is viewed with hostility by the EU and the United States. A recent article in the German daily Die Welt accused Cyprus of playing a “double game with Russia and the EU”.
The possibility of a Russian loan to Cyprus prompted reports that Britain was considering extending a bilateral loan to Nicosia alongside EU support. Cyprus is a former British colony and two British military bases remain on the island.
Extending financial aid would be aimed directly at preventing Russian expansion. Recently, there has been considerable speculation that Moscow is viewing Cyprus as an alternative military base in the region to replace its operations in Syria, which is threatened with Western-led military intervention.
Beyond the island’s strategic location in the eastern Mediterranean, the interest of the major powers in Cyprus has grown sharply due to the discovery of vast energy resources. According to a 2010 report from the US Geological Survey, the Levant basin contains a possible 120 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of natural gas supplies.
Commenting on the find, leading project official Brenda Pierce observed, “The Levant Basin Province is comparable to some of the other large provinces around the world, and its gas resources are bigger than anything we have assessed in the United States”.
While a portion of these resources are to be found within the maritime borders of Cyprus, the Levant basin encompasses the territorial waters of Israel, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. As a recent analysis pointed out drily, “It hardly takes a crystal ball to predict that the discovery would set off a feeding frenzy of interest and maritime claims and counter-claims”.
Turkey has rebuked Cypriot moves to put drilling rights out to tender, threatening that any company cooperating with the Greek Cypriot Republic will be left out of future projects in Turkey. Ankara defends the rights of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus to exploit the resources in the region, and has stated that moves by Cyprus or Greece to extract energy resources from areas it deems to be Turkish water would be viewed as an act of war.
Israel has also drawn the ire of Turkey for offering to cooperate with Cyprus to jointly exploit reserves. The idea has been floated that Israeli natural gas could be transported to Cyprus to be refined before being sent on through Greece to the European market. Cypriot Commerce Minister Neoclis Sylikiotis commented after a recent trip to Israel, “In the field of energy we are slowly putting flesh on the bones of this strategic cooperation”.
The US has long supported energy transportation routes to supply the European market which bypass Russia, and views Israeli-Cypriot |
restoring the Soviet empire.
Just as there is no evidence of the Russian military in Ukraine, there is no evidence of Russian forces threatening Europe or any discussion or advocacy of restoring the Soviet empire among Russian political and military leaders.
In contrast Washington has the Wolfowitz Doctrine, which is explicitly directed at Russia, and now the Council on Foreign Relations has added China as a target of the Wolfowitz doctrine.
The CFR report says that China is a rising power and thereby a threat to US world hegemony. China’s rise must be contained so that Washington can remain the boss in the Asian Pacific. What it comes down to is this: China is a threat because China will not prevent its own rise. This makes China a threat to “the International Order.” “The International Order,” of course, is the order determined by Washington. In other words, just as there must be no Russian sphere of influence, there must be no Chinese sphere of influence. The CFR report calls this keeping the world “free of hegemonic control” except by the US.
Just as General Breedlove demands more military spending in order to counter “the Russian threat,” the CFR wants more military spending in order to counter “the Chinese threat.” The report concludes: “Congress should remove sequestration caps and substantially increase the U.S. defense budget.”
Clearly, Washington has no intention of moderating its position as the sole imperial power. In defense of this power, Washington will take the world to nuclear war. Europe can prevent this war by asserting its independence and departing the empire.0 Shares
Smackdown Live is consistently praised by WWE fans for being the better show as compared to RAW. Our polls have shown that fans on a weekly basis say that Smackdown Live was the better show. So why is that? Why is Smackdown Live more popular with fans, even though Vince McMahon is still in charge of both?
Mick Foley recently made an appearance on the Lilian Garcia: Making Their Way To The Ring podcast. During the interview he spoke on a wide variety of topics about his wrestling career and his current role as the General Manager of RAW.
Foley blames the 3 hour length of RAW as the reason why fans prefer Smackdown Live on a weekly basis:
“Even though SmackDown has been kind of like the internet darling, I believe that if they had three hours instead of two they would find out that it’s tough to be a darling when you’ve got that massive three-hour anchor around your neck”
Foley brings up an interesting debate. Is the writing substantially better on Smackdown compared to RAW? Or is it strictly the length of the show that makes it the more popular choice?
[irp posts=”18981″ name=”Paul Heyman and JBL Address Critics That Say RAW Should Only Be 2 Hours”]
Is the writing that much better on Smackdown or is it because they have less time to fill that they are able to put the best product out? Would RAW be better than Smackdown if it was a 2 hour show since they have the stronger roster?
Let us know what you think in the comment section below. Do you agree or disagree with Foley?Feb 19 2010 | 3:08pm ET
A rabbi has been charged with trying to extort $4 million from a hedge fund, as well as lying to federal prosecutors in an effort to increase the pressure on the unidentified firm.
Milton Balkany, who runs a prominent Orthodox Jewish day school in Brooklyn, N.Y., was arrested yesterday after accepting two checks totaling $3.25 million from the hedge fund. According to prosecutors, he demanded a pair of $2 million donations to two schools, including his own, Bais Yaakov, from the firm. He warned that he was the spiritual adviser to an inmate who told him that the fund had engaged in insider-trading in 2004 and 2005, and that he would instruct the unidentified man not to tell investigators if the hedge fund ponied up.
Balkany allegedly told the hedge fund’s lawyers, with whom he was in touch between December and this month, that prosecutors and the Federal Bureau of Investigation knew that the inmate had the information. Authorities say that that was untrue, but not through any lack of trying on Balkany’s part: He allegedly contacted the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan—which brought the charges against him yesterday—in an attempt to get them to contact the inmate, by lying.
The rabbi was charged with wire fraud, extortion, blackmail and making false statements. The 63-year-old, who faces up to 20 years in prison, was released on $250,000 bail.
It’s not Balkany’s first run-in with the law. In 2003, he was charged with misappropriating federal grant money. Those charges were dropped after Balkany and prosecutors struck a deferred-prosecution agreement, which generally stipulates that charges will be dropped if the accused does not commit another crime during a specified period.
After the hearing yesterday, Balkany referred to those allegations. “Seven or eight years ago, I was accused of wrongdoing,” he said. “The government had to back off them. This thing is much more ridiculous.”
Balkany said he was simply trying to help the inmate get a sentence reduction. Whether that’s the case could become clear at trial: The hedge fund’s lawyers taped some of their conversations with the rabbi.TLDR: this post explains how to use Docker to setup an ownCloud server with a PostgreSQL database, persisting the data across reboots or image upgrades.
I finally reinstalled my entire VPS, using the provisioning tool Ansible, and I wanted to have a more isolated install of ownCloud. I decided to use a Docker container to run this application in a more isolated and portable way, and to avoid installing this application directly on the server.
So I used Docker
First question, what image to use? When typing owncloud on DockerHub, I immediately see there is a (recent) official image, simply named owncloud.
We can try to run it right now to check everything works fine:
docker run --rm -it --name owncloud -p 80:80 owncloud
That was quick. Now, you can exit/stop this container.
We will need a database
If you don’t already have a database up and running you want to use, you can either install one on the host, or spin up a second container for it. Being an adept of PostgreSQL, let’s use the associate container:
docker run --name owncloud-postgres -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=mysecretpassword -d postgres docker run --rm -it --link owncloud-postgres:owncloud-db --name owncloud -p 80:80 owncloud
Instead of a SQLite database, we use a PostgreSQL one, with user postgres, the password supplied when creating the container (here mysecretpassword ), the database postgres, and the host owncloud-db.
You should be able to get a running instance by entering these settings in the startup page of ownCloud. If it doesn’t work you can see the debug log (created after the first request on owncloud), using:
docker exec -it owncloud tail -f /var/www/html/data/owncloud.log
Persisting the data across container destruction and upgrade
We will need to store the ownCloud data and configuration folders outside of the container, as upgrading the container would destroy everything.
This can be achieved by using Docker Volumes, and even docker data volumes. We will need to do the same for the PostgreSQL container (think “database backup”).
At this point, copy-pasting the commands to run these containers begins to be unreadable, and painful. What we want is to describe how containers should be started, linked, and configured, so let’s use Docker Compose.
Docker Compose
The concept is simple: use a YAML file to describe how your containers should be… composed together, and then let a docker-compose up start everything!
You can install it with pip install docker-compose.
Here is the docker-compose.yml file:
# Composition of the containers needed owncloud : container_name : owncloud image : owncloud ports : - 80:80 links : - postgres:owncloud-db postgres : image : postgres environment : - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=mysecretpassword
All you have to do now is docker-compose up to start all the containers.
Persist the data
Let’s add some persistence by adding some data volumes: we want to create “data” containers for PostgreSQL (for the data itself) and ownCloud (configurations and files stored).
The folders we need to persist are:
/etc/postgresql for the database configuration
for the database configuration /var/lib/postgresql for the database content itself
for the database content itself /var/www/html/data for owncloud’s data
for owncloud’s data /var/www/html/config for owncloud’s configuration
This is achieved using the docker-compose.yml file I uploaded in this Gist, take a look at it.
To check all the data is persisted, you can star files (or remove/create files), and then remove the postgres and owncloud containers to check if the next docker-compose up does persist these modifications:
docker rm -f test_owncloud_1 test_postgres_1 # Replace "test" by the name of your folder docker-compose up
Then go back in your browser:
Here you are! You have a fully functional ownCloud installation running locally!
Upgrade?
Please note that the owncloud-data_1 and postgres-data_1 containers should never be deleted. To upgrade the other non-data containers (postgres or owncloud) for example when a new image is available:
docker pull owncloud docker pull postgres docker-compose -d
The -d flag is to detach from the containers so they can start in the background :)
Last settings
To setup your own cloud, don’t forget to change the hostname and domainname lines in the compose file.
You may also want to enable HTTPS, this will be for another blog post.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
DES MOINES, Iowa – Joni Ernst has been elected as the next U.S. Senator from Iowa. The Republican, a state Senator from Red Oak, defeated Democrat U.S. Representative Bruce Braley in one of the nation’s closest watched elections.
COMPLETE COVERAGE: Decision 2014
PHOTO GALLERY: Ernst Elected to US Senate
VIDEO: Ernst Claims Victory
VIDEO: Braley Delivers Concession Speech
RESULTS: Election Day 2014
Ernst will fill the seat currently occupied by Senator Tom Harkin. Harkin, who has served in the U.S. Senate since 1985, announced in January 2013 that he would retire at the end of his term in January 2015.
Recent polls had shown Ernst pulling ahead, a poll released by the Des Moines Register this weekend showed her with a seven point lead. A Quinnipiac University poll released Monday showed the race was tied at 47%.
Ernst will be sworn in to the Senate in January.
WATCH: Joni Ernst's Victory Speech
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WATCH: Bruce Braley's Concession Speech
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PHOTO GALLERY: Joni Ernst Elected to US SenateA court has ruled that French Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini was correct when he concluded that GMO food, when fed to rats, caused serious health problems including tumors.
March-against-monsanto.com reports:
Now, Prof. Séralini is in the news again – this time for winning a major court victory in a libel trial that represents the second court victory for Séralini and his team in less than a month.
On November 25, the High Court in Paris indicted Marc Fallous, the former chairman of France’s Biomolecular Engineering Commission, for “forgery” and the “use of forgery.” The details of the case have not been officially released.
But according to this article from the Séralini website, Fallous used or copied the signature of a scientist whose name was used, without his agreement, to argue that Séralini and his co-workers were wrong in their studies on Monsanto products, including GM corn.
A sentencing for Fallous is expected in June 2016.
Second Court Victory Reached
This was the second such court victory for the professor’s team, following a November 6 victory in a defamation lawsuit over an article in the French Marianne magazine which categorized the Séralini team research as “scientific fraud”.
What few people realize about the original Séralini study on GMOs is that it was only retracted after a serious PR offensive from Monsanto and the Biotech industry, one that included the creation of a whole new position on the original Food and Toxicology journal: Associate Editor for Biotechnology.
The new position was actually filled by a former Monsanto employee who helped convince the journal’s author to retract the study.
Now more than 2 years later, these are the facts: Séralini and his team’s original study has been republished in a different peer-reviewed journal, Environmental Sciences Europe; they have won two key lawsuits against those who have attempted to ruin their reputations; and a recent peer-reviewed letter even asserted that Séralini and his team may have been right after all on their discovery showing tumors in lab rats fed GMOs.
In other words, the jury is still out on GMO safety to say the very least, just as countless independent scientists have warned, and Séralini’s study stands as yet another cause for concern with the ongoing GMO experiment. It also shows the lengths that the Biotech industry will go to in order to discredit any independent science that clashes with their own version of science.THERE is a famous, brilliant and totally surreal scene in the 1994 satire programme, "The Day Today" (see it here), in which a narrator tells the viewer, over a patriotic rendition of "I vow to thee my country", that "This is Britain, and everything's alright". The images are a sort of parody of Conservative "broken Britain" rhetoric. Police officers smoke spliffs, paramedics rob old ladies and children help to light a man's cigarette. I was reminded of it today, when reading the front page of The Daily Telegraph, which has a preview of a speech that Iain Duncan Smith, the welfare secretary, intends to give this evening. He will say that the current system of benefits is supporting "dysfunctional behaviour".
"All too often, government’s response to social breakdown has been a classic case of 'patching’—a case of handing money out, containing problems and limiting the damage but, in doing so, supporting—even reinforcing — dysfunctional behaviour."
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It's an argument put about quite often by government ministers. The last administration, they say, massively increased benefit spending, which led lots of people to opt out of work. The children they are raising are growing up delinquent. As David Cameron put it after last year's riots, "Irresponsibility. Selfishness. Behaving as if your choices have no consequences. Children without fathers. Schools without discipline. Reward without effort." All quite convincing. Thankfully, however, mostly quite wrong.
The first part is that society is not broken, at all. If anything, it's healthier than ever. In this week's issue, we've published a story about the current generation of young people—those aged between around 15 to 25. This generation of young people is the best behaved in decades. They drink less, smoke less, take fewer drugs, and have fewer teenage pregnancies. They get better exam results and are more likely to go to university. Frankly, they're incredibly well-behaved. All this has happened despite a huge and ongoing increase in levels of single-parenthood and a similarly large decline in marriage, not to mention the lack of discipline in schools that Mr Cameron mentioned.
The second part is that there wasn't really a big increase in the numbers of lazy or benefit dependent people under Labour. Certainly, Labour spent a lot on welfare, but here is a fact that fits uncomfortably with Mr Duncan Smith's analysis: in 1997, 17% of households with children were workless. As of last year, the number had fallen to 12.8%. Almost all of that improvement happened under Labour. It happened because far more lone parents now go to work. That is probably because Labour spent a lot of money devising elaborate benefit systems—primarily tax credits—to encourage single mothers to find jobs. It may have been expensive, but "patching" didn't only contain problems: it arguably helped to solve them.
I sometimes feel as though Mr Duncan Smith thinks he lives in a world where every urban corner is occupied by a hoodie with a knife and every council flat with a feckless, drug-taking single mother. That is perhaps unfair—when he drops the rhetoric, he is actually quite well briefed. But it would help his case if, for once, he was a little positive about British society. After all, this is Britain, and everything is alright.The future of outsourcing will depend on increasing efficiency and adapting to new technologies as service buyers focus more on desired business outcomes rather than business processes. Even though costs play a major role, innovation, commitments and business outcomes will become more central to contracts, taking on greater importance and value.
While making sourcing decisions and selecting the right service provider, buyers weigh their reputational risk against the service provider’s ability to stay relevant, innovative and focused, in order to attract and retain the best employees.
It is important for Service Providers to demonstrate and apply world-class best practice each and every day. The best service providers do not limit themselves to incremental process improvements; rather they act as consultants always on the look-out for innovations which can drive forward value additions to the client’s business.
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Visit: http://www.sblcorp.com/business-process-management-services for more information on SBL BPM Services.Here’s a bit of cheery news from the Web 2.0 Summit: AT&T Mobility President and CEO Ralph De La Vega just told interviewer Michael Arrington that the company is working with Apple to let the iPhone serve as a tethered wireless modem for laptops soon. And he says it’ll be available “soon.”
There have been rumors that this was in the works for a while, but if anyone at AT&T or Apple has made it official until now, I managed to miss it.
There are at least two existing tethering options for the iPhone: NetShare and iModem. The former was removed from Apple’s iPhone App Store and the latter only works on jailbroken iPhones; both violate AT&T’s terms of service. Even if AT&T wants more money for a tethering plan–and I’m assuming it will charge something like $50 or $60 a month–I think a lot of people will sign up.
One major remaining question: Given that Internet access on an iPhone 3G can be pretty sluggish, just how quick will it be if a meaningful percentage of iPhone users are routing their connections to laptops and doing things that are even more bandwidth-hogging than typical iPhone tasks?
Read more:Official Phase 10 is here and it’s better than ever! Let Dolores guide you through all the exciting new locations and new Phases to play. Lay back and relax in Tropical Paradise, bundle up while playing in Chilly City, cavort with the Greek Pantheon on Mount Olympus - and so much more!
Game Features
● Play Classic Phase 10: complete the original 10 phases - as much as you want, for free!
● Challenge your friends online!
● Unlock new and exotic themes, each with a fun new set of phases
● Get to know a cast of unique unlockable characters
● Use Wild and Skip cards, and power-up advantages to increase your chances of winning
● Track your progress as you play the core game and explore a variety of side missions
● Build your prize collection: craft new items to use in-game
● Participate in special events to win fun limited-time prizes
● Challenge yourself: customize your settings and difficulty levels
● Get started with an interactive tutorial, or jump right into the game
Are you a fan of wickedly fun card games like Uno and Skip-Bo? Then compete against a cast of lively opponents in one of the best rummy-type card games of all-time! Select the difficulty and characters, unlock new game locations and unique phase sets, craft new items to customize your game, and play power-ups to enhance your game experience each time you play. Phase 10 takes all the fun of the classic family card game and updates it for your modern, mobile, on-the-go life.
Download the official Phase 10 game today!
How to Play
A phase is a combination of cards that can be composed into sets (multiple cards of the same value), runs (multiple cards in consecutive ascending order), cards of one color, groupings of even or odd numbers, or a combination of these. Each phase is specific to each hand dealt, meaning you must complete the current phase to advance.
Support and Feedback
We’re always happy to receive feedback and assist with technical problems. Please connect
with us!
Support: https://support.magmic.com
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Manchester United midfielder Marouane Fellaini has said he's been unjustly portrayed as a "murderer" and a "villain" during his time in English football, which could be drawing to a close at the end of this season.
The 30-year-old is reportedly considering an exit when his contract expires in the summer, and he told Belgian magazine Humo (h/t Daily Mail's Chris Wheeler) of his annoyance with how he's seen in the Premier League:
"They have labelled me an aggressive player, a murderer.
Look, I'm fanatical. The team that wants it the hardest wins. But there have been times when I came out as the villain. What should I do if they pull me by the hair? It sounds like a joke, but it really hurts.
[...]
"Players often try to provoke me but do you know how many yellow cards I collected last season? Four, in 45 matches. I've never destroyed someone's career."
Fellaini earned a retrospective three-match ban in May 2016 for an elbow on Leicester defender Robert Huth, although the latter was handed the same punishment for tugging the Belgian's hair, proof he wasn't innocent, either.
The most infamous of his two red cards in United colours came against Manchester City for a clash of heads with striker Sergio Aguero, although he suggested the Argentinian's exaggeration of the incident was partly to blame.
Fellaini said: "Last season I was suspended after the derby against City for a headbutt against Aguero. He stepped towards me and then dropped dead. But, no, I get the red."
For whatever reputation the Belgian may hold as an enforcer, there's little arguing with the winning streak United have developed when he's played this season, as was recently illustrated by WhoScored.com:
Wheeler added the player is seeking £170,000 per week and has turned down United's offer to improve his current £120,000-per-week earnings. Belgian football journalist John Chapman provided further context:
The 6'5" target has held a reputation as a symbol of David Moyes' forgettable year at United, having been infamously signed from the Toffees for £27.5 million, £4 million more than the Red Devils needed to have paid in 2013.
Fellaini is confident in his own ability and insisted he has "no need to prove anything—not in England or in Belgium," adding that "nothing can touch" him as he approaches the end of his 10th campaign in England.
Samuel Luckhurst of the Manchester Evening News listed Fellaini as one of the figures who could leave the Theatre of Dreams this season as manager Jose Mourinho seeks more squad improvements:
He went on to suggest another offer from United "will probably follow," but he doesn't know if he will accept it. Perhaps his frustrations with his image in England mean only a significantly improved offer will convince him to stay.- Thomasville, Marietta, Atlanta
She gave the performance of a lifetime in just her third film—and won an Oscar at 27.
Joanne Woodward was born in Thomasville and grew up there and in Marietta. She loved movies, and in 1939 she and her mother attended the Atlanta premiere of Gone with the Wind.
Woodward went to Louisiana State University for two years, but after her father saw her perform in The Glass Menagerie, she was off to New York. She joined the Actor’s Studio, where dramatic coach Sanford Meisner encouraged her to lose her Southern accent.
In 1952 she met another actor named Paul Newman; they married in 1958 and became one of Hollywood’s leading couples. In her third film, Woodward portrayed a real-life Georgia woman with multiple personality disorder. The Three Faces of Eve earned Woodward the 1958 Best Actress Oscar and made her a major star. She received three other Oscar nominations in her career and won two Emmys.
One of the 20th century’s most versatile actresses was born in Thomasville on February 27, 1930, Today in Georgia History.I’ve got a Markdown file in my Dropbox that’s called “Write every day”. I created this file on April 22, 2014. Today, five months later, that document contains 40.164 words.
If you do the math, you’ll know I would’ve had to write at least 250 words a day since starting back in April. And that’s exactly what I did. I wrote. Every single day.
By now writing daily has become a habit of mine – one that I’ve formed by commitment and discipline, and also one that I’m proud of. More prolific writers might find my word count laughable. But I don’t care. Everybody has to start somewhere.
I truly believe that getting into the habit of writing consistently was one of the best decisions I’ve made this year. This post explores the reasons why I care about writing and keep doing it every day. I hope it inspires you to write (more) too.
Communicating with peers
I’m a software engineer. I write software for a living. The two jobs of an engineer are to grasp complex topics and to clearly communicate about them. It’s no secret that effective written communication is essential to the success of engineering teams (and whole businesses), even more so when they’re distributed.
As software developers, we use a number of different channels to convey information of one kind or another to coworkers and open source collaborators. There’s the source code itself, READMEs, commit messages, GitHub pull requests and issues, Wiki pages, email, team chat, and probably more. What do all of these have in common? Words. Written words.
Let me quote one passage from Getting Real that says it best:
Effective, concise writing and editing leads to effective, concise code, design, emails, instant messages, and more. That’s because being a good writer is about more than words. Good writers know how to communicate. They make things easy to understand. They can put themselves in someone else’s shoes. They know what to omit. They think clearly. And those are the qualities you need.
If written communication is that important to my work – and the same applies to open source development – I better make sure to invest in my writing skills.
Connecting with people
I admire good writing. The more of it I consume, the more interested I get in writing myself. I read a lot of books and blog posts on my Kindle. And sometimes, but not too often, an author manages to connect with me – be it through a touching personal story, by turning a complex topic into simple words, or by making me laugh out loud. It’s that ability to connect with an audience that I find fascinating and worthwhile at the same time.
As Matt Gemmell stated in one of his superb essays, reaching (more) readers is a great reason for writing in the first place.
Spreading ideas
I’m convinced that writing is the best medium for spreading ideas in the depth they deserve. I would always choose reading a book over watching a 15-minute TED talk. For example, go ahead and read Where good ideas come from (but please finish my piece first), then watch the corresponding talk. You will know what I mean.
I like being close to my thoughts and ideas (full disclosure: I’m an introvert and talking to people – especially strangers – is hard for me). While reading other people’s work makes me think and inspires me, writing allows me to capture my own ideas and feelings, which in turn might inspire you.
Which brings me to the last and most important reason to write.
Providing value
I just keep writing. The more I write, the more likely it is that my writing will provide value to the people that read it. – Paul Jarvis
Paul has become one of my favorite writers. That’s not because Paul has the best prose out there. No. It’s rather because he keeps on publishing valuable content, week after week. Even though he has only been writing professionally for a couple years now, he has already self-published a handful of bestselling books on business, creativity, writing, and vegan cooking.
If you pay attention to his work, you can see how Paul’s writing has been gradually improving over time. His secret? He is consistent with writing every day to improve his skills. Without a doubt, he inspired me to do the same.
Providing value to your readers is also key when it comes to building your own audience. Done right, you can even make a living of it. I’m far away from earning anything, but I wholeheartedly recommend Nathan Barry’s book Authority, which contains everything you need to know about making money from your writing.
After reading this, I hope you understand my motivation for showing up every day to do the work. Yet you might be wondering where you can find the actual results of my daily writing sessions. Well, this is where my problem lies.
Writing itself is hard. Coming up with valuable content and putting it out there is even harder. While I’ve written enough words to fill an entire book, I didn’t ship any of it. This is in part because most of my writing is just for me (or at least that’s what I keep telling myself).
The biggest problem I face, though, is that I’m a perfectionist. I have a hard time writing shitty first drafts and postponing editing until after getting something down on paper first. Instead, I often try to get it “right” the first time, thereby making the writing process unnecessarily painful. The number of blog posts I’ve published this year is evidence enough of my struggle.
While it’s obvious that I need to keep working on the publishing part (with this post being a first step in the right direction), I’m convinced that consistent writing is important for any of the reasons I presented in this blog post.
If you, dear reader of this blog, care about writing as much as I do, please share your experiences and thoughts in the comments below. I’d really appreciate it.
Update: This post managed to get to the top of Hacker News, where also a lot of comments have been posted.
Update #2: There’s now a Japanese translation.
Update #3: I wrote a follow-up post in which I reflect on my writing goals.
Image credits: Flickr
Tagged under: WritingAlthough AMD’s GDC 2016 “Capsaicin” event was primarily focused on game development – it is the Game Developers Conference, after all – AMD did spend a brief moment discussing their future GPU plans. For the first time in many years, AMD has published a GPU architecture roadmap.
Plotting perf/watt against the years, AMD’s roadmap unveils two new architectures: Vega, and Navi. Essentially everything there is to know about these architectures is in this slide – AMD is being tight-lipped regarding further details – but this map gives us some tantalizing new information to work with.
Vega is currently scheduled to come relatively quickly after Polaris. Depending on how literal you interpret this chart, the far left edge of the Vega box does fall into 2016, though obviously AMD intends to leave themselves some wiggle room here and not tie themselves down to specific dates. The fact that Vega comes this soon after Polaris is interesting; it seems hard to believe that it’s a direct successor to Polaris – I can’t see AMD replacing Polaris parts in less than a year – so this points to Vega being more of a cousin, and is where AMD’s naming system isn’t especially helpful in deciphering anything further.
With Polaris confirmed to use GDDR5, Vega is notable for being the first AMD architecture to use HBM2, and the first parts in general to use HBM tech since Fiji. I’m presuming these are higher-end GPUs to complement the Polaris GPUs (the smaller of which we know to be a low-power laptop design), which is where HBM would be more cost-effective, at least at current prices.
Meanwhile AMD has also confirmed the number of GPUs in the Vega stack and their names. We’ll be seeing a Vega 10 and a Vega 11. This follows Polaris GPU naming – which has finally been confirmed – with Polaris 10 and Polaris 11. I have also been told that Polaris 11 is the smaller of the Polaris GPUs, so at this point it’s reasonable to assume the same for Vega.
Finally, farther out towards 2018 is an architecture AMD is calling Navi. This one I suspect will attract the most attention (even if it’s the farthest out) due to the ambiguity of its features: “scalability” and “next gen memory”. Similar to how it’s hard to see Vega directly replacing Polaris, it’s hard to see Navi directly replacing Vega after only a year. This leaves Navi rife for speculation; I could very well see it being a Polaris replacement since we’ll be nearly 2 years past Polaris, or perhaps something to do with AMD’s APU plans. Either way I don’t expect that this will be the last time AMD teases it before finally launching it.Really? 3/10/14 – Overheard at CPAC Last Week.
“Hatred is the coward’s revenge for being intimidated.” ― George Bernard Shaw
Last week, conservatives enjoyed their late winter love-in – the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). The usual suspects were there. And conspicuous by their absence were most of the GOP mainstream.
Following are some of the more memorable things said.
Ben Carson on gay marriage.
Conservative darling, Dr. Ben Carson, gives with one hand and takes with the other – “Of course, gay people should have the same rights as everyone else. But they don’t get extra rights. They don’t get to re-define marriage.”
Then he conflates gay marriage with bestiality. “Marriage is between a man and a woman. No group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality, it doesn’t matter what they are. They don’t get to change the definition.”
Actually, court decisions show that the Constitution protects the citizens from people like Ben Carson, and other bigots, who would define marriage to their satisfaction.
(NB. Marriage is a contract. Minors and animals cannot enter into contracts.)
The American Society for the Protection of Tradition Family and Property.
If they GOP gay group, GOProud, thought that conservatives now welcomed gays – too bad. Because in the conservative universe, a marriage of two physically abusive, emotionally stunted, alcoholic adulterers of different sexes has more legitimacy than the marriage of two loving, emotionally bonded, adults of the same sex.
Michel Medved makes stuff up
Without doubt this johnny-come-lately conservative uttered the most breath-taking claim of the conference. “There has never been a state in this country that has ever banned gay marriage. That is a liberal lie.”
Michele Bachmann on the conservative mind.
This outgoing champion of intellectual flexibility offered this chestnut, “Our movement at its core is an intellectual movement”. She did not present any evidence for her assertion.
Frank Gafney puts on the foil hat.
Dramatis Personae: Frank Gafney – head of something called the Center for Security Policy. Grover Norquist – anti-tax crusader and head of the Americans for Tax Reform.
Gafney thinks that Norquist should not be invited to CPAC because, “Norquist … (has) had relationships with a bevy of individuals with strong ties to the Muslim Brotherhood”.
Gafney, apparently, does not have strong ties with reality.
Sarah Palin paraphrases the NRA.
If Sarah Palin were ever to become President it would simplify our foreign policy. If we didn’t like you we would just bomb you.
As she said, “Mr. President, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke.”
She should consider that all the American nukes didn’t stop the Soviet Union from invading Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, nor Russia from invading Georgia.—————————————————————————————-
There’s an updated post (Jun. 2014) about the top Japanese Websites. Please check it out HERE.
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Three years ago, we posted two blogs about the “Top 10 Most Popular Websites” in China and Japan respectively. Since then, a lot has happened in the cyberspace, but most of the top players stayed put, almost perfectly in order. Here, I’d like to reintroduce the Japanese top dogs, showcase the newcomers, and examine those websites that withered away. Check out the sister article on China from last week
JAPAN:
At 79.5% population penetration, Japan’s 101 million Internet users ranks 4th only behind China (538M), United States (245M), and India (137M) (data as of June, 2012). Long recognized as the technological haven of the world, we won’t be taking our eyes off Japan’s online trends in the foreseeable future.
The Top 3
1. Yahoo! Japan
As with China, Japan’s #1 through 3 did not budge from the top of the chart in the last three years either. While Yahoo! has lost out to Google years ago in the West, Yahoo! Japan has managed to hold on to the top spot for the last decade. No other websites in Japan offer such a complete package of contents under a single portal. Yahoo Japan logged 18.4 billion page views and 66 million |
my soldering setup. Yes, the monkey too.
Soldered the diodes.
Sticking the diode legs inside the microcontroller was kinda annoying.
Putting the microcontroller in and soldering it.
Preparing to solder the switches.
All switches ready, time to upload the firmware.
And there we go. Yes, I actually assembled it without putting in the USB cord, how silly.When I first tried to buy this on Amazon it was sold out! ( that speaks something about this product ) Bummer! I waited and saw it was going to be in stock again and put my order in. I read lots of other reviews first mind you.
NOW FOR THE “COME TO JESUS” TALK.... It seems some folks have unrealistic expectations. Some have bought this for recreational purposes. Don’t do this, this is an emergency bivy/sleeping bag only!! It’s not made for comfort! It’s not soft and comply. It’s made to help you stay alive if things go bad and you find yourself outside in the cold. It will do what it’s designed to do and well. It’s not breathable so venting it will be nessesary as per the instructions. You may be a little damp but you’ll be alive!! That’s the point right? I bought it because it looks sturdier than other bags of the same purpose. I bought it because it will fit me, I’m 5’11” and 260 lbs. I bought it for my bug out bag. I’m a prepper and spend a lot of time out doors if at all possible and so I know what my requirements are, I understand what the limitations of this bag are. Yes I’d buy it again! I own similar products by other manufacturers but think I will buy a second one of these as a back up should I have to bug out for a longer time than expected. Buy this, understand what it’s for, stash it and hope you never have to use it!More on Palm’s WebOS ‘Media Sync’
In yesterday’s piece on Palm’s WebOS “media sync” iTunes integration I mostly avoided the legal aspects. When I say that the WebOS media sync feature is not “legit”, I mean that it is not supported by Apple, not something Apple intends for third-parties to do, and (if Jon Lech Johansen’s theory is correct) a violation of the USB specification.
But is it illegal? And would it be illegal for Apple to take countermeasures against it? My guess is “no” to both questions.
WebOS’s media sync is clearly a hack, but hacks generally don’t violate any laws. I’m not a lawyer and I’m not an expert on the DMCA, but I don’t see how masquerading as an Apple iPod over USB would violate it. If Palm were doing something to strip DRM from music or video files, that would be another story. But they’re not.
Legality aside, is Palm doing anything wrong in a moral sense? Matthew Paul Thomas, on Twitter here and here, draws the analogy between WebOS masquerading as an iPod via USB and Safari masquerading as “Gecko” via its HTTP user-agent string so as to identify itself as being compatible with certain poorly-coded web sites. That’s an interesting analogy, but there are differences, including that Safari’s complete user-agent string still uniquely and honestly identifies it as Safari. Safari and other WebKit-based browsers such as Chrome include the word “gecko” in their user-agent strings on the assumption that web sites that look for “gecko” in the UA string do so not because they’re trying to serve specific content only to actual Gecko-based browsers, but because they’re trying to serve specific content only to browsers with Gecko-like rendering features. I.e. when Safari or Chrome “just work” when rendering some web site that checks for “gecko” in the UA string, it is almost certainly in accordance with the intentions of whoever developed the web site. When the Pre “just works” with iTunes, it is not in accordance with Apple’s intentions. That’s not to say it is wrong, particularly since in both cases — browser UA strings and Palm’s media sync — the primary purpose is to do what the user wants. But it’s not a great analogy.
I don’t think WebOS’s media sync is a mistake on Palm’s part because it is wrong, I think it’s a mistake because it is risky and unnecessary.
I think where Palm is weakest, legally, is with regard to all of the former Apple engineers now working on the Pre and WebOS. Even if Palm could prove that no former Apple employees used their knowledge of Apple trade secrets to implement this feature, I don’t know whether Palm is in good enough financial shape to risk such a suit.1
The flip side is the question of whether Apple would risk legal trouble by shipping a future release of iTunes that blocks WebOS from syncing. On the surface, one might think that Apple can do whatever it wants with its own software. The question some are raising, though, is whether Apple should be legally constrained from anti-competitive behavior as the holder of a monopoly.
Nick Forge writes:
It’s one thing for Apple not to facilitate syncing with 3rd-party (non-Apple) players, but another altogether to actively go out of their way to stop it happening. Can you imagine the fallout if Microsoft were to add code into the SMB protocol that blocked access to non-Microsoft systems? Apple effectively monopolises the portable media player market, and if they resort to Microsoft-in-the-90s style tactics to hold on to that monopoly, they could find themselves on the wrong side of the U.S. Department of Justice.
I disagree with Forge that an analogy to Microsoft and SMB is apt. Being the clear market leader doesn’t necessarily mean that Apple holds a monopoly, a term which has been thrown around far too loosely in the aftermath of Microsoft’s court cases in the U.S. and E.U. Many markets have a clear leader, but very few market leaders hold a monopoly.
What monopoly does Apple hold, specifically? A monopoly in “portable media players” wouldn’t seem relevant — it is iTunes, the Mac and Windows software, that WebOS interfaces with, not iPods. Does iTunes (not the store, but the desktop app) constitute a monopoly? I would say no, not even close.
Often overlooked is that Apple already provides a way for third-party software to access the contents of your iTunes library: the iTunes Music Library.xml file. The legit way for a third-party portable device to sync music and video with iTunes is for the device makers to write or license their own software to read the iTunes Music Library.xml file and copy the media from the library. That’s what Nokia Multimedia Transfer and RIM’s BlackBerry Media Sync do, and it’s what DoubleTwist does for a wide variety of non-Apple portable devices, including the Pre. Yes, DoubleTwist is Jon Lech Johansen’s company,2 but that doesn’t render invalid his opinion that WebOS’s media sync is a hack. DoubleTwist (without any official relationship with Palm) syncs media between the Pre and iTunes legitimately; Palm’s “media sync” does not.
What it comes down to is that third-party (i.e. non-Apple) devices and software already have legitimate access to the contents of your iTunes library. The XML file describes the audio and video files and your playlists. The media files themselves are stored out in the open as regular files inside the “iTunes Music” folder.
What they don’t have is legitimate access to iTunes’s built-in automatic “just plug in the device via USB and iTunes will see it” syncing. I don’t see that as the basis for government anti-trust action against Apple. Rather than write their own Mac and Windows software to recognize when a Pre is plugged in and sync media with the iTunes library, Palm is piggybacking on the software Apple wrote to support iPods.
Ultimately, my guess is that Apple won’t take any immediate action — technical or legal — against Palm. I think Apple will treat it more or less the way they’ve treated iPhone jailbreaking.The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered campaign early access is out in the wild on PlayStation 4 - and players have found a really cool Easter egg that doubles as a brand new achievement / trophy.
The Time Paradox achievement is new to Modern Warfare's campaign, and involves killing Vladimir Makarov.
Vladimir Makarov was the antagonist in Modern Warfare 2 and 3, so killing him in Modern Warfare 1 creates the time paradox that means the sequels never happened. Doc Brown would love this.
In the remastered version of Modern Warfare, Makarov and Modern Warfare 3 protagonist Yuri are in a jeep in the area at the beginning of the One Shot, One Kill mission - the one where you're charged with sniping Zakhaev. The pair were added to the game for the remaster - they're not in the jeep in the original campaign.
The idea is the Easter egg joins up the Modern Warfare games in the series timeline. Remember, in Modern Warfare 3, there's a flashback scene where you're in the jeep as Zakhaev is shot, seeing the events from Yuri's perspective.
To get the Time Paradox trophy, you need to snipe Zakhaev, as before, then quickly snipe Makarov. Boom! Time paradox created.
The video, below, from our Ian Higton, shows it off in action.
It's a really nice addition to the game from the developers at Infinity Ward and remaster maker Raven Software. More of this please!Parity said it could unlock its $150 million in missing funds “within the next four to six months.”
According to TechCrunch, co-founders Gavin Wood and Jutta Steiner said that funds were not “lost” and that a future hard fork could release the quarantined Ether.
Steiner stated:
“There are discussions that the issue could be fixed in a general protocol upgrade… probably in the next four to six months.”
As TechCrunch editor Mike Butcher noted, though, the bug that caused this freeze was actually known and had been reported long before it caused this issue. Steiner didn’t disagree, but noted that this issue wasn’t reported as a critical security flaw at the time. “It sounded like a nice-to-have update,” she said.
How upset is Woods about this? It doesn’t seem like he’s too fazed by it. “It’s a long-term savings account for us right now,” he quipped.
Earlier this year, Parity lost about $150 million worth of Ethereum (513,774.16 Ether) when a user accidentally deleted a code library that made Parity’s wallets work. At least 1 million in ETH became frozen — and about $90 million of those were actually from Parity co-founder and Ethereum core developer Gavin Wood’s token sale for its Pokadot blockchain technology.In 1971 the performance artist Chris Burden stood against the wall of a California art gallery and ordered a friend to shoot him through the arm. That.22 rifle shot was the opening salvo of a movement that came to be called “endurance art”—an unnerving species of performance art in which the performer deliberately subjects himself to pain, deprivation, or extreme tedium. Try as he might, Burden never quite matched the shock of his spectacular debut (and he did try, once letting himself be crucified onto the back of a Volkswagen Beetle).
As fate would have it, I had just shown my students at Williams College the grainy footage of Burden’s shooting when we learned of his death in May. Curiously, the clip did not provoke them as it had their predecessors in my classrooms in decades past. No one expressed any palpable sense of shock or revulsion, let alone the idea that the proper response to the violation of a taboo is honest outrage. One student fretted about the legal liability of the shooter; another intelligently placed the work in historical context and related it to anxiety over the Vietnam War.
Placing things in context is what contemporary students do best. What they do not do is judge. Instead there was the same frozen polite reserve one observes in the faces of those attending an unfamiliar religious service—the expression that says, I have no say in this. This refusal to judge or take offense can be taken as a positive sign, suggesting tolerance and broadmindedness.
But there is a broadmindedness so roomy that it is indistinguishable from indifference, and it is lethal. For while the fine arts can survive a hostile or ignorant public, or even a fanatically prudish one, they cannot long survive an indifferent one. And that is the nature of the present Western response to art, visual and otherwise: indifference.
In terms of quantifiable data—prices spent on paintings and photographs and sculptures, visitors accommodated and funds raised and square footage created at museums—the picture could hardly be rosier. On May 1, New York’s Whitney Museum moved from 75th Street to the Meatpacking District and reopened in a $422 million building. The move first seemed inexplicable when it was announced several years ago, but it has proved to be a brilliant stroke. Relocating to a hotter and more fashionable neighborhood abutting the wildly popular High Line Park is one of those gambits that instantly transforms the logic of the game board, like castling in chess. The new Whitney was designed by the furiously prolific Renzo Piano, and while it will not please everyone (its boxy swivel of platforms distressingly recalls the flight tower of an aircraft carrier), it swaggers with brio and panache and is fast becoming one of the world’s best-attended museums.
Equally robust is the art market, to judge by a Christie’s auction on May 11 that set several records, including the highest price ever paid at auction for a work of art: $179.4 million, paid by an anonymous bidder, for Picasso’s Women of Algiers (Version O). One can expect more such record-breaking in the next few years as the art market is increasingly roiled by Hong Kong dollars, Swiss francs, and Qatari riyals. (The buyer of the Picasso was subsequently revealed to be the former prime minister of Qatar.)
But quantifiable data can only describe the fiscal health of the fine arts, not their cultural health. Here the picture is not so rosy. A basic familiarity with the ideas of the leading artists and architects is no longer part of the essential cultural equipment of an informed citizen. Fifty years ago, educated people could be expected to identify the likes of Saul Bellow, Buckminster Fuller, and Jackson Pollock. Today one is expected to know about the human genome and the debate over global warming, but nobody is thought ignorant for being unable to identify the architect of the Freedom Tower or name a single winner of the Tate Prize (let alone remember the name of the most recent winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature).
The last time that artists were part of the national conversation was a generation ago, in 1990. This was the year of the NEA Four, artists whose grants were withdrawn by the National Endowment for the Arts because of the obscene content of their work. Their names were Tim Miller, John Fleck, Holly Hughes, and Karen Finley—the latter especially famous because her most notable work largely involved smearing her own body with chocolate. As it happened, their work was rather less offensive than that of Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe, who had been the subject of NEA-funded exhibitions the year before. Serrano’s photograph of a crucifix immersed in a jar of his own urine was called “Piss Christ.” Mapplethorpe’s notorious self-portrait featured a bullwhip thrust into his fundamental aperture. Even the New York Times, a stalwart champion of Mapplethorpe, could not honestly describe that photograph, let alone publish it, referring to it with coy primness as a “sadomasochistic self-portrait (nearly naked, with bullwhip).”
That controversy ended with a double defeat. In a case that was heard by the Supreme Court, the NEA Four failed to have their grants restored. But Senator Jesse Helms and Representative Newt Gingrich likewise failed in their determined effort to defund the NEA (total budget at the time: $165 million). And the American public—left with an impressionistic vision in which urine, bullwhips, and a naked but chocolate-streaked Karen Finley figured largely—drew the fatal conclusion that contemporary art had nothing to offer them. Fatal, because the moment the public disengages itself collectively from art, even to refrain from criticizing it, art becomes irrelevant.
This essay proposes that such a disengagement has already taken place, and that its consequences are dire. The fine arts and the performing arts have indeed ceased to matter in Western culture, other than in honorific or pecuniary terms, and they no longer shape in meaningful ways our image of ourselves or define our collective values. This collapse in the prestige and consequence of art is the central cultural phenomenon of our day.
It began a century ago.
For most of human history, works of visual art were the direct expression of the society that made them. The artist was not an autonomous creator; he worked at the behest of his patron, making objects that expressed in visible form that patron’s beliefs and aspirations. As society changed, its chief patrons changed—from medieval bishop to absolutist despot to captain of industry—and art changed along with it. Such is patronage, the mechanism by which the hopes, values, and fears of a society make themselves visible in art. When World War I broke out in 1914, that mechanism was delivered a blow from which it never quite recovered. If human experience is the raw material of art, here was material aplenty but of the sort that few patrons would choose to look upon.
When I went to Germany to study architecture in 1980, it was still common to see wounded veterans from both world wars. The first seats on buses or subways were reserved for them and were usually occupied. One day a fellow student and fellow history buff chanced to remark that the worst cases were from World War I, but of course one never saw them.
“They never show their faces?” I asked, naively.
“Mike,” he said, “they have no faces to show.”
He was speaking of the Verstümmelten—the mutilated, those who lost jaws, cheeks, and noses in the shambles of the trenches, where a raised head was the target of choice. They had been so wounded, brought to a nearby field lazaretto and put together as much as possible, that they would spend the rest of their lives seen only by the family members who tended to them. “There is one,” my friend said—I can still picture the expansive gesture he made—“in practically every street.”
Not until then did I properly grasp the unbearable intensity of German artists such as Ernst Kirchner, Otto Dix, and George Grosz, who created their most memorable work during the war or just afterward. The human body—dynamic, beautiful, created in God’s image—had long been the central subject of Western art. It was now depicted in the most tormented and fragmented manner, every coil of innards laid bare with obscenely morbid imagination. Kirchner and Dix depicted the gore. Grosz, who refrained from showing actual injuries, was even more disturbing. He made collages of faces out of awkwardly assembled parts, like a jigsaw puzzle assembled with the wrong pieces, suggesting those sad prosthetics that would have been an ubiquitous presence in 1918.
Christianity had introduced the motif of beautiful suffering, in which even the most agonizing of deaths could be shown to have a tragic dignity. But things had now been done to the human body that were unprecedented, and on an unprecedented scale. The cruel savagery of this art can be understood only as the product of collective trauma, like the babble of absurd free associations that tumble from our mouths when in a state of shock. That kind of irrational expression was the guiding principle of Dada, the movement that came about at the end of the war and that was made famous by Marcel Duchamp’s celebrated urinal turned upside down and named Fountain. Even the name Dada itself was a quintessential absurdist performance, selected at random from a French-German dictionary (the word is French baby talk for “hobby-horse”).
Dada applied unserious means to a serious end: the search for an artistic language capable of expressing the monstrous scale and nature of the war. But the absurdist moment was short-lived and quickly superseded. The toppling of Europe’s three principal empires and the Russian Revolution seemed to confirm that the West had entered into a radical new phase of cultural history, the most consequential since the rise of Renaissance humanism half a millennium ago. There was a general sense that a world radically transformed by war required an equally radical new art—an art of urgent gravity. While modern art had certainly existed before the war, there now came into being a comprehensive “modern movement” that was active in all spheres of human action, not only in art but in politics and science as well. In its wake, Pablo Picasso rose from being a mere painter with a quirky personal style to a world-historical figure whose work was as important to the future of mankind as Einstein’s or Freud’s.
All this gave the modernism of the 1920s its tone of moral seriousness, which became even more serious once the Great Depression began. One sees this high-minded seriousness most strikingly in the architects of the modern movement. They saw their mandate as the solving of the central architectural challenge of modern life—how to use new materials and means of construction to make housing affordable and cities humane. Today the lofty principles that motivated them seem quaint, such as that German fixation on the Existenzminimum. This was the notion that in the design of housing, one must first precisely calculate the absolute minimum of necessary space (the acceptable clearance between sink and stove, between bed and dresser, etc.), derive a floor plan from those calculations, and then build as many units as possible. One could not add a single inch of grace room, for once that inch was multiplied through a thousand apartments, a family would be deprived of a decent dwelling. So went the moral logic.
We may shudder at the thought of so many identical families penned into so many identical boxes, but at root this idea was an expression of a humane and humanistic view of the world. It took for granted that the mission of architecture was to improve the human condition, even as modern artists assumed that theirs was to express that condition. To accomplish this, they did not require the traditional patron. The prestige and power of those patrons had been diminished by the war, and with that diminution went their ability to dictate to artists. That became even more pronounced after the stock-market collapse in the late 1920s, especially in the United States. When the Museum of Modern Art introduced European modern architecture to America in its celebrated 1932 exhibition of the International Style, it dismissed the traditional capitalist client with remarkable highhandedness. A half century of robust artistic and architectural patronage by the industrialists who had ruled American life since the Gilded Age was written off with a sneer by the exhibition’s organizer, Alfred Barr: “We are asked to take seriously the architectural taste of real-estate speculators, renting agents, and mortgage brokers.” In other words, the making of art was far too serious to be left to sentimental clients who might mistakenly desire a narrative painting with a clear moral message, or a facsimile of a villa they had admired in Tuscany.
After World War II and the introduction of the atom bomb, it seemed pointless to try to preserve the confused traditions of a civilization that had brought the world to the ledge of oblivion. Instead, the artists came to believe they had to dispense with the entire accumulated storehouse of artistic memory and the history of the benighted West in order to begin anew.
The 1950s painter Barnett Newman summarized this line of thought pretentiously but accurately:
We are freeing ourselves of the impediments of memory, association, nostalgia, legend, myth, or what have you, that have been the devices of western European painting. Instead of making “cathedrals” out of Christ, man, or “life,” we are making it out of ourselves, out of our own feelings.
“We are making it out of ourselves” is a fair summary of the revolution in patronage the modern movement had brought about, in which the artist himself had now been transformed into his own patron. And yet, radical as were Newman’s existentialist “zip” paintings, consisting of spare, massive vertical stripes smoldering like a cosmic portal about to open, they remained traditional in one key respect: They still existed in a recognizable moral universe. For all their portentous grandiloquence, the zip paintings still speak of that ancient durable strand in the Western tradition, a belief in the tragic dignity of man.
With the irreversible decline of that belief, it may be said that the age of postmodernism began, and that the journey to the present state of monumental public indifference to art started to accelerate.
Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp’” is the first attempt to define the rapid change in attitude that was taking place in the early 1960s toward art, society, tradition, everything. It was not so much a change in style or philosophy as in sensibility. This new sensibility, Sontag wrote, “sees everything in quotation marks” and “converts the serious into the frivolous.” Although the condition of the world seemed ever more serious—the Cuban Missile Crisis had just taken place—a younger generation in the Western democracies had determined that the proper response was to be even less serious, to throw up one’s hands and confront the world with irony. Even as Sontag wrote, that new sensibility was being reflected in painting (Andy Warhol), sculpture (Claes Oldenburg), and architecture (Robert Venturi), each of whose works exist, in some sense, in quotation marks. Common to all was a shared posture of irreverence and ironic detachment. This new dispensation worked itself through the veins and arteries of the art world with remarkable briskness from studio to gallery to museum to classroom. In one respect, the insouciance of pop art came as a refreshing breeze. Warhol’s soup cans and Oldenburg’s giant floppy hamburgers made no momentous claims to have banished nostalgia, legend, and myth; though in part they were intended to reveal the hollowness of capitalist commercial culture, they could not help but offer subject matter that was attractive, reassuring, and familiar. These were the still lifes of prosperous postwar America, and, like their 19th-century counterparts with their glistening fruit and vegetables, they spoke of abundance.
Only in architecture did the new sensibility take a while to establish itself. What client would wish to invest their millions in an “ironic statement”? The Quaker sponsors of Guild House, a retirement home in Philadelphia, were chagrined to learn that the metal sculpture over the entrance was meant to represent a giant television antenna—in the words of its architect Robert Venturi, “a symbol of the aged, who spend so much time looking at TV.” Unimpressed by his claim that it was inspired by the Château d’Anet, they promptly had it removed.
In the same way that pop art was meant as criticism yet featured a welcome note of playfulness, postmodern architecture did offer a playful, witty alternative to a modernism grown stale and formulaic. The calamitous failure of urban renewal was now everywhere apparent, and modernism’s claim that it could create humane cities was exploded definitively in Jane Jacobs’s brilliant The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961). After a time, postmodernism’s jaunty irony was carried into the American cityscape by commercial clients such as AT&T who built the first uninhibitedly witty skyscrapers since the art deco towers of the Roaring Twenties. The burden art had carried since the end of World War I—the obligation to express ponderous things in ponderous ways, the burden to be on perpetual guard duty in the avant-garde, ever alert to any reactionary tendency—had been cast off.
For the most part, though, this new nonchalance was short-lived. Oldenburg’s goofy seven-foot Floor Burger (1962) was pleasantly apolitical. But a mere seven years later, he would produce the most memorable item of antiwar art to come out of the Vietnam War, Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks, a parody of a tank he erected in front of Yale University’s administration building. Instead of a gun turret above its treads, it sported an oversized lipstick, not proudly erect but distressingly flaccid (Oldenburg’s sardonic commentary on masculinity and war). Although it was removed within a year (to be replaced later by an inferior replica in permanent materials), Lipstick was a harbinger of the return of seriousness to the art scene, a seriousness now tinged with fury, indignation, and, increasingly, politics.
A whole spectrum of other political causes soon found expression in art—environmentalism, feminism, Chicano rights. This new seriousness differed sharply from the old. If modernism had understood itself to be upholding and developing the culture from within, revolutionizing Western art in order to save it, its postmodern successors offered a critique from without. This was the counterculture that emerged after the collapse of the postwar liberal consensus, and its stance was essentially adversarial, distinguished by hostility to the existing order. It viewed the advanced industrial society of the West not as the highest development of human civilization but rather as a corrupt enterprise whose shameful legacy was slavery, colonialism, and exploitation.
It is easy to see why an artistic culture unwilling to champion even the abstract concept of Western culture would feel resentful toward a modernism that sought to do just that and would try to cut it down to size. Indeed, a canard was widely disseminated that abstract expressionism—the least political of all art movements in its rejection of the politicized social realism of the 1930s, which found its most enduring expression in Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings—was itself a CIA plot. According to this deranged view, the Congress for Cultural Freedom had sponsored international exhibitions of artists such as Pollock and Willem de Kooning as part of a CIA-subsidized campaign of cultural imperialism. While this highly tendentious reading of history has been roundly discredited, it has passed into the conventional professional wisdom.
Most of this slipped under the radar of the American public, which had by the 1970s established a kind of concordat with the art world. Whatever art had to offer—minimalism, conceptualism, photorealism—was a zany precinct where anything might happen, a source of entertainment, a zone that might be safely regarded with benign neglect. There was no arguing with success: When confronted with something as willfully bizarre as one of Robert Rauschenberg’s Combines (wherein a stuffed Angora goat might be inserted through an automobile tire), the public was happy to say “don’t ask, don’t tell” and tiptoe away with a smile on its collective face. After all, Rauschenberg was very famous, and his art made him very rich. If you didn’t like it, fine; somebody would and would pay huge sums for it.
Such was the concordat that fell apart spectacularly in the late 1980s, and when it did, artists were just as shocked as the public.
From time to time, so-called conceptual artists had looked to find new ways to use the human body artistically. Their agenda was by no means to express humanist values or even beautiful suffering—quite the contrary. In 1961, Piero Manzoni offered for sale 90 tin cans purportedly containing the Merda d’artista (to this day it is uncertain whether or not the cans actually contain his excrement, since to open one would cost on the order of $100,000). Manzoni’s foray into scatology was a prophecy of things to come. Ten years later, Vito Acconci became a minor celebrity with his performance of Seedbed, which involved his hiding under a platform in a gallery and speaking to visitors above while masturbating.
If these acts had any political agenda at all, it was anarchy. But in the wake of Roe v. Wade and then the AIDS epidemic, the human body assumed a political significance it had not had since abstract expressionism had banished life-drawing as one of those “devices of Western European art” that Barnett Newman had condemned. Now, as Barbara Kruger proclaimed in the celebrated poster she designed for a 1989 abortion-rights rally, “Your body is a battleground.”
There poured forth a great deal of body-centered art. Its one great constant was a high quotient of rage—as furious as any statue-smashing interlude in the long history of iconoclasm. Here was an anguish and loathing not seen since the days of Grosz and Dix, both of the self-hating variety (expressed through masochistic acts) and generalized rage against society (Serrano’s urine-immersed crucifix). I think of Ron Athey’s now notorious Four Scenes from a Harsh Life, for which he incised patterns into the back of a collaborator with a scalpel, dabbing up the blood with paper towels that were affixed to a clothesline and swung out over the wincing audience.
Such art, unlike that of Grosz, offered no coordinates from which society could navigate to find a higher purpose. Rather, it fulfilled the definition of what the late Philip Rieff called a “deathwork,” a work of art that poses “an all-out assault upon something vital to the established culture.”
Given this art’s flagrantly, deliberately transgressive nature, it is remarkable how surprised and bewildered its creators were when they felt the full measure of public disapproval, which came to a climax with the effort to defund the National Endowment for the Arts. After all, having been properly vetted and feted at every step by curators and journalists, academics and bureaucrats, these artists quite reasonably assumed that they were beyond reproach. That there was yet another actor out there in the mists, a public upon whose judgment their fate might depend—a public that might act to withdraw state funding of projects that were expressly intended to transgress its values—seems not to have crossed their minds.
One Harvard scholar suggested that Serrano erred because while he knew “his photograph to be provocative, he did not count on such a broad audience outside the art world.” But what to make of an artist who does not wish to have a broad audience or speak to his own society? At a minimum, it is not even political art—art that seeks to persuade or focus attention—if it exists only within the silo of its own echo chamber.
Although the body-art movement lost its incandescent fury as the AIDS crisis subsided, there lingered a fascination with the degraded human body. This reconfigured itself in the 1990s as the movement known as “abject art,” which the website of London’s Tate Gallery tactfully defines as “artworks which explore themes that transgress and threaten our sense of cleanliness and propriety particularly referencing the body and bodily functions.” The most notorious example came seven years ago when a Yale art student presented a performance of “repeated self-induced miscarriages.” According to her own account, she inseminated herself with sperm from voluntary donors, “from the 9th to the 15th day of my menstrual cycle…so as to insure the possibility of fertilization,” afterwards using “an herbal abortifacient” to induce the desired miscarriage. Here was indeed a deathwork, proud and unashamed. (The only solace is that she might not, in the end, have actually carried out her project in reality.)
Such projects, real or imaginary, returned the spotlight to the human body. But this was hardly the body that was, as Hamlet put it, “like a god in apprehension.” Rather, it was a ravaged and wounded thing, degraded and defenseless. One can almost understand the popularity of the ghastly flayed and “plastinated” bodies exhibited by Günther von Hagen, the notorious corpse artist, in his traveling “Body Worlds” exhibition.1 Unlike the degraded victimhood on display in most examples of abject art, his figures evoked dynamic action and freedom, and at least a shard of hope.
When viewed against this dispiriting backdrop, poor punctured and perforated Chris Burden seems like an Old Master.
And yet, and yet. Even as the public was flinching from the excesses of performance art and abject art, it was embracing museums as never before. The newly opened Whitney is the last of New York’s four major museums to renovate, enlarge, or replace its home in recent years. It reflects a worldwide trend that began in 1997 with the near simultaneous openings of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which made overnight celebrities of their architects (Richard Meier and Frank Gehry, respectively).
Bilbao had another, more consequential effect. In just three years, it famously recouped the cost of its construction (which was underwritten by the provincial Basque government) partially through admissions but mostly through increased tourist revenue. This was dubbed “the Bilbao effect,” the notion that the building of a prestige museum can transform
the international profile of a city and make it a pilgrimage destination.
This helped launch a feverish wave of international museum-building that still shows no sign of abating. In fact, the only thing remotely like it is the cathedral-building boom of the Isle de France in the 13th century, when each city vied to build the loftiest, thinnest, and brightest Gothic nave.
If one compares the performance of museums to other entertainment facilities in the United States in terms of box office, the museums come off splendidly. According to the American Association of Museums, annual attendance hovers at about 700 or 800 million, and it did not even suffer declines during the recession of 2008. These figures far exceed the combined attendance at major-league sporting events and amusement parks. This is not by accident, for museums have been assiduously cultivating their attendance for quite some time. The process began with the “Treasures of Tutankhamen” exhibition that opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1978 and drew a record 1.8 million visitors. Startled museum trustees, previously accustomed to covering the annual deficit with a discreet check, took notice of the lines stretching around the block. The temptation proved irresistible, and the culture of the museum reoriented itself toward the regular production of a reliable blockbuster.
By any measure, there is hardly an institution in the Western world so healthy as the museum today. By any measure—there’s the rub. For some things cannot be measured but are important nevertheless. In 1998, exactly 20 years after the Tutankhamen exhibition, the Guggenheim brought forth “The Art of the Motorcycle,” an exhibition widely panned as without educational merit. Yet it, too, was a crowd-pleasing sensation, and it, |
in Gold City, an old mining town, haunted by the ghost of a miner from 1849 who is said to wander the mines looking for the last vein of gold.
5 5 "Decoy for a Dognapper" Indian Witch Doctor and Ghost of Geronimo / Buck Masters October 11, 1969 ( )
When a series of local dognappings alarms prize-winning dog trainer Buck Masters, the gang offers to have Scooby-Doo pose as a decoy to catch the dognappers. However, their plan works too well as Scooby is himself dognapped, leading the gang to discover that the dognappers appear to be under the command of a ghostly Indian witch doctor.
6 6 "What the Hex Going On?" Ghost of Elias Kingston / Stuart Weatherby October 18, 1969 ( )
The kids pay a visit to their friend Sharon Weatherby, whose Uncle Stuart has been cursed by the ghost of the family's neighbor, Elias Kingston. When Uncle Stuart disappears altogether, Mystery Inc. ventures into the abandoned and allegedly haunted Kingston Mansion next door, in search of him and the ghost.
7 7 "Never Ape an Ape Man" Ape Man / Carl October 25, 1969 ( )
The gang get jobs as extras on Daphne's uncle John's set of his new movie The Ape Man of Forbidden Mountain, based on the legend of an ape man. However, the legend soon comes true and the ape man terrorizes the set and the gang.
8 8 "Foul Play in Funland" Charlie the Funland Robot controlled by Sarah Jenkins November 1, 1969 ( )
The gang notice that the carnival Funland appears to be operating by itself, so they go to investigate. They soon discover a crazy robot running loose, but when they notify the caretaker, he and his sister rebuff them, convincing the kids to solve the mystery themselves.
9 9 "The Backstage Rage" Phantom Puppeteer / Mr. Pietro November 8, 1969 ( )
While getting a pizza, Shaggy and Scooby-Doo come across a violin case filled with counterfeit money. While Scooby is distracted by a dog puppet, the case of money is stolen away. Shaggy, Scooby, and the rest of the gang find a string puppet controller at the scene and follow it to the local puppet theater, where they uncover a counterfeiting operation, controlled by a spooky puppet master.
10 10 "Bedlam in the Big Top" Ghost Clown / Harry the Hypnotist November 15, 1969 ( )
Mystery, Inc. meets a strongman and a midget, both on the run from a circus allegedly haunted by a ghost clown. The gang goes to the circus grounds to investigate, but Daphne, Shaggy and Scooby fall victim to the Ghost Clown's powers of hypnotism.
11 11 "A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts" Count Dracula, Werewolf, Frankenstein's Monster and the Gypsy / Big Bob Oakley, alias "The Actor" November 22, 1969 ( )
While on their way to Franken Castle, the gang stop to get their fortunes told by a gypsy. She warns them "they will meet their doom" if they go to the castle. The gang goes to the castle anyway, where they are confronted by Count Dracula, Frankenstein's monster and a Werewolf.
12 12 "Scooby-Doo and a Mummy, Too" Mummy of Ankha / Dr. Najib November 29, 1969 ( )
While visiting a museum, the gang learn about the legend of Ankha, a 3000-year-old mummy. Legend had it that the mummy will come back alive and turn people to stone if he is removed from his tomb. Shaggy later finds a coin inside his pocket from the exhibit, and when the gang go back to return it, they find the mummy has come to life and turned the professors to stone, and now he wants Shaggy's coin.
13 13 "Which Witch is Which?" Witch / Zeb Perkins, Zombie / Zeke Perkins December 6, 1969 ( )
While lost in a swamp, the gang comes across a zombie who spooks them. In the nearby town of Swamp's End, they learn that a witch nearby brought the zombie to life, and the gang investigates.
14 14 "Spooky Space Kook" Space Kook / Henry Bascombe December 13, 1969 ( )
The Mystery Machine runs out of gas in front of a farmhouse, next to an abandoned airfield, which is haunted by a UFO and its ghostly alien driver.
15 15 "Go Away Ghost Ship" Ghost of Redbeard / C.L. Magnus, Ghosts of Redbeard's Crew / Hired Henchmen December 20, 1969 ( )
The newspaper reports that local shipping company owner C.L. Magnus's company is going out of business, because the ghost of the pirate Redbeard is haunting the harbor and looting Magnus' ships. After reading the story and consulting Magnus, the gang sets out to see if they can stop the ghost.
16 16 "A Night of Fright Is No Delight " Phantom Shadows (Giggling Green Ghosts) / Cosgoode Creeps and Cuthbert Crawls January 10, 1970 ( )
Scooby-Doo is named in the will of Colonel Beauregard Sanders, an eccentric millionaire whose life he saved several years earlier. The only way to claim the inheritance is for Scooby, and the other four heirs to stay the night in the Colonel's mansion — which they quickly learn is haunted by two phantom shadows.
17 17 "That's Snow Ghost" Snow Ghost / Mr. Greenway January 17, 1970 ( )The first impression that some on the periphery have of Disney Infinity is that it can easily be written off as a direct copy of the Skylanders blueprint. In truth, what we have here is an action-adventure game that uses real-world figures and implements them in the video game as playable characters, which is similar in formula to Skylanders, but that’s where the similarities both begin and end. Rather than thinking of it as ripping-off the Skylanders design, Disney Infinity should instead be considered as a new entry in this budding genre that combines physical toys with digital games. Nintendo, alongside developer Ambrella, is already delving into this new genre with the release of Pokémon Rumble U, and it could also be argued that games using AR technology, such as Kid Icarus: Uprising, are doing similar things as well. Suffice it to say, the popularity and demand for these types of games is definitely growing.
Jumping right in, the first thing that you’ll notice — after playing through the soul-filling, tear-jerking marvel that is the game’s introduction — is that gameplay is divided up into two sections: Play Sets and the Toy Box. Play Sets are the more structured style of play, placing you in an open world themed after one of several Disney universes. The Toy Box, on the other hand, is a completely unstructured world creation platform that allows you to build just about anything that you could ever dream up. Both portions of gameplay differ greatly from one another, but each creates an equally unique experience that shouldn’t be missed
The Infinity starter pack comes packaged with Play Sets from Monsters University, Pirates of the Caribbean, and The Incredibles. After selecting which universe you would like to play in, you then simply need to place your desired character on the included Infinity Base, and you’ll be dropped into an open world. Each Play Set contains its own plot that is conveyed through a series of story missions, but there are plenty of side missions to accept from needy citizens as well. Completing missions will earn currency that can be used to purchase items in the Play Sets that can then also be used in the Toy Box. Not unlike the popular LEGO series, the difficulty is set relatively low, and death has no tangible consequences, but it’s still fun to charge through the Play Sets and experience the worlds contained within.
Unfortunately, characters can only exist within their own universes, so you won’t be able to fight in the Pirates universe as Mr. Incredible, but that potential variety does become available when you eventually switch over to playing in the Toy Box. Play Sets also support local multiplayer, allowing for split screen action between you and a friend, but again, you will need to invest in at least one other figure from the corresponding universe if you want to play cooperatively. Despite their open world nature, each of the included Play Sets only take around seven hours or so to see and complete everything, but — at the time of writing — there are additional Play Sets featuring The Lone Ranger and Cars universes available at retail. The existence of these additional Play Sets points to the potential for unlimited expansion of the core game, very similarly to how downloadable content works with other retail titles.
As a fairly straightforward action-adventure game within the Play Sets, the controls here are kept relatively simple, but they’re not without their confusions. Controlling your character follows the standard formula of left stick to move and lettered buttons to jump and attack, but selecting objects and performing other tasks can be cumbersome. Rather than assigning one button to regularly take care of special actions, the game jumps between pressing X, Y, and A in a seemingly random pattern. The same action is always performed using the same button, but you’ll never know what button you’re supposed to press until the game explicitly tells you to do so. It’s a strange and flawed design, but once you’ve invested some time into the game, you will begin to grow accustomed to its quirks. Inconsistencies aside, the controls are tight, allowing for quick maneuvers and precision platforming when called for. You also have the option of playing the entire game off-screen on the Wii U GamePad.
Unlike the various Play Sets, Toy Box mode leaves the structured mission-based play style behind to opt for an open world creative platform. Whether your goal in life is to build and jump off of the tallest tower in the world, or if you want simply want to build a racetrack on which you can outpace all of your friends, the Toy Box allows you to make it happen. Playing through the Play Sets and earning money allows you to purchase and unlock new assets to use in the Toy Box, but then it’s completely up to you to choose what you do with them. Want to build a complex hedge maze riddled with traps? Go ahead. You’d rather build an arena and fight baddies in it Thunderdome style? That’s fine too. Whatever you can accomplish in the Toy Box is limited only by your imagination. If you’re not one for building, you also have the option of downloading previously built Toy Boxes from Disney’s server, so there’s definitely something for everyone; there’s always the promise of plenty more to come. The Toy Box also supports multiplayer exploration, allowing up to four people to join and play simultaneously online.
While most of the Disney assets become available to you through unlocking, there are certain items and effects that are only available through the use of Power Discs. These discs, when placed on the Infinity Base, give your characters special abilities such as extra strength or health, but there are also some that instead place new items or themes into your Toy Box. Collecting all of these Discs can lead to some new and interesting creative possibilities, but they are also optional purchases and completely unnecessary towards getting the most out of this game.
Standing right beside all of the great things that the Toy Box is capable of, there is also the plain fact that the system is a bit confusing at first. Not unlike the finicky controls, the Toy Box can take a while to grasp, but once you’ve got the system down it’s all smooth sailing. Exclusive to the Wii U version of Infinity, too, are the GamePad’s touchscreen controls, which are implemented intuitively into the Toy Box. Rather than having to constantly open and close menus in search of the right piece of landscape or character that you want to place in your world, the GamePad’s touchscreen allows you to access all of your assets right in your hands, never detracting from what you’ve already built on screen. This system makes for effortless switching between objects, something that is a refreshing feature when considering the complexity of some Toy Box creations.
Disney Infinity may not be the most detailed looking or graphically taxing game that we’ve ever seen, but creating a realistic and gritty game based on the Disney universe would sort of be missing the point. All of the environments here are colourful and brimming with variety, just as you would expect to see in a Disney or Pixar film. The character models are more on the cartoony end of the spectrum, fashioned to look exactly as they do in their physical figure counterparts. Keep in mind that everything in-game is supposed to be a toy, so they are designed to look the part. There are some slight graphical hiccups, such as characters getting stuck in walls or the occasional choppy animation, but this occurs no more often than one might see or expect from any other open world game. It’s admittedly tiresome to see games in which these fallacies still appear, but it doesn’t occur to the point of ruining the overall experience. There are some more grating technical flaws, such as long load times and a sometimes-wily camera, but if you’re able to overlook the occasional hitch then the complaints are mostly grasping at straws.
The soundtrack here is on par with the Disney standard, featuring music and effects from the films being represented. Characters are fully voice acted during cinematic scenes, and they even shout out some classic dialogue during gameplay. The majority of NPCs are also voice acted, giving detailed instructions on tasks that they request of you, further deepening the rabbit hole of quality that was put into making the fictional universes come to life.In response to a string of recent break-ins, the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan has given a local Pennsylvania chapter the go-ahead to form a neighborhood watch group.
“You can sleep tonight knowing the Klan is awake!” read fliers promoting the neighborhood watch group in Fairview Township. The leaflets appeared on the doorsteps of homes along Ridge Road on April 18, PennLive reports.
(Story continues below.)
The KKK's neighborhood watch flier for Fairview Township.
“It’s just like any neighborhood watch program. It’s not targeting any specific ethnicity. We would report anything we see to law enforcement,” Frank Ancona, the organization’s imperial wizard and president, told PennLive. “We don’t hate people. We are an organization who looks out for our race. We believe in racial separation. God created each species after its kind and saw that it was good.”
According to its website, the organization -- headquartered in Park Hills, Mo., with local chapters in every state but Hawaii -- is a "non-violent" and "law abiding group" composed entirely of white Christians. The group claims to have “been misunderstood for years.”
From the website's Who We Are section:
The Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is a White Patriotic Christian organization that bases its roots back to the Ku Klux Klan of the early 20th century. We are a non-violent organization that believes in the preservation of the White race and the United States Constitution as it was originally written and will stand to protect those rights against all foreign invaders. We believe in the right to bear arms against all that threaten our home and family.
A call to the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan was not immediately returned.
Similar fliers promoting KKK neighborhood watch programs appeared in other states across the country this past year year. In July 2013, recruitment fliers with the same slogan as the Pennsylvania leaflets appeared on doorsteps in Springfield, Mo. In January 2014, the same flyer was spotted in driveways in Virginia.IN December, wolf 832F ventured out of her territory in Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley. As soon as she left the park, she lost its protections, and the wolf, a 6-year-old alpha female, was shot and killed by a hunter.
It’s rare for the death of an animal to make the news, but wolf 832F was a bona fide celebrity — one of Yellowstone’s most visible and popular wolves — and her death led to a public outpouring of grief. Making her death even more tragic was the fact that she had been wearing an expensive GPS tracking collar, which allowed scientists to follow her every move and gain crucial insight into the lives of gray wolves.
In recent years, there has been much pontificating about how modern communications technologies are changing the way that we relate to other people. Less discussed is the way these advances are reshaping our relationships with other species. By using satellite and cellular tags to track free-ranging animals, biologists are providing us with intimate access to the daily lives of other species, drawing us closer to the world’s wild things and making us more invested in their welfare.
Over the past several decades, the use of wildlife tags has proliferated as the devices have become smaller and more powerful. Today’s tags are capable of collecting months’ or years’ worth of data on an animal’s location at a given moment, and can be used to track everything from tiny tropical orchid bees to blubbery, deep-diving elephant seals. The devices provide crucial information about populations — helping scientists uncover the migratory pathways of Arctic terns or the ocean currents that loggerhead sea turtles like to surf — as well as individuals. Is this particular predator a pack leader or a lone wolf? A dedicated hunter or a mooch? How much time does it spend with its pups? Who are its associates, rivals and mates?Growing up in West Virginia, the mountains were gigantic, static beasts, looming over my head, challenging me to climb them. Which I did, several times. My mother used to say as she got older, the mountains got taller which is why she couldn’t climb them anymore. I certainly share that sentiment.
In Southern West virginia, I grew up in a little coal camp along with a multitude of other coal camps. My family lived and died in the coal fields.I had, and have several family members associated in some form with coal. My grandfather worked his entire life walking the rails of Norfolk & Western (Now Norfolk and Southern) until he died when I was just shy of 3 years old. My uncle has worked all of his life in the deep dark caves, bolting roofs to ensure the safety of those around him. He was a UMWA miner when coal bottomed out in the markets in the 80s, and strikes occurred everywhere. He lacks 3 years to be able to retire with a full pension but he’ll never get it – he’s reached the grand old age of early retirement. Now he must fight for his black lung that he rightfully earned, and live off of only his Social Security and 401K. During that same time, my aunt had to move out of state being unable to find sustainable work locally. This is the hungry beast named coal; its maw is wide open and it flows like a black river, leaving famine or feast in it’s wake.
(A no trespassing sign on an active MTR site in southern WV.)
There’s nothing more that I love other than my home. I realized more and more this great land is a part of me, as much as I am of it. Driving down a one lane, curvy, winding road up a holler to discover what’s there is a thrill, invigorating to the fullest extent. There’s also the people too, who throw a hand up at you with a giant smile on their faces, even though you may be a total stranger in that part of the “county” as we call it. If you stop to talk to them, most of the time it’s as if you’ve known them for years, and have to find an excuse to get away.
On the other extreme, the myriad of no trespassing signs that you know to take seriously are posted everywhere or your ass will get blown off by an old hillbilly with a shotgun. It is all a part of West Virginian life. If you ever find yourself all the way at the head of the holler, any holler, just stop, and listen. You can feel the mountains around you, closing in like a mother holding its child. The culture hidden in these steep wooded slopes is amazingly rich in diversity, and unique feel. No matter where you are, it feels like home. Our little corner of Appalachia is special, full of its own mystique that anyone can see, if you just look for a moment.
Coal has a love/hate relationship with West Virginia. Coal loves to roll out of the mountains, earning millions which at least some are returned with various taxes, reclamation funds, and bonds. It also returns in the form of pay checks that many depend on, including my family. Coal does provide electricity to many in the nation, as well as the heat to strike iron for all of the steel produced by the United States and beyond. Coal has its many uses. It can be found in tires, tar, different chemicals, dyes, soaps, along with many other things. It has provided a living to those of us who have been here for generations, putting food on the table, clothes on children’s backs, and paying the household bills just like any other industry.
I cannot say enough, that I’m not really for, or against coal. Coal is that gigantic elephant in the room, that we have to have currently in order to live until technology advances enough to replace it. It sits down wherever it wants. It eats from everyone’s table, demanding to have its full share and more. Throughout the history of the discovery of coal, contention, confrontation, and strong emotion has led its way to becoming the few providers of southern West Virginia to its serfdom. Just to briefly touch on it’s particularly dark history, a few reminders – Blair Mountain. Paint Creek. Matewan. Mother Jones. The fight of the Union to get miners a decent livable wage, and protection from thugs employed by coal companies at the time to ensure their serfs, or employees, toed theline. There was war. Families kicked out of coal camps. People on both sides killed in the 1900’s drive bys, raids, and paid security, intimidating them to follow the rules. The later protests and union busting of the 80s, and 90s. Coal barons didn’t like giving up their profits then; and in light of that fact, they certainly still don’t now.
Coal companies have done everything possible to continue to keep their opposable thumbs on workers. From destroying unions, to padding politician pockets ensuring coal loving legislation passes, they have perfected the propaganda and loyalty they’ve always wanted. There isn’t a highway in southern West Virginia that does not include a billboard promoting coal. Numerous bumper stickers, vinyl decals, and stickers proclaim people’s love of coal on their vehicles. The hard working miners, most in stripes stopping at stores shuffle along spending their paychecks and supporting the local economy. We are a coal state. And don’t you dare attempt to destroy that image. Mining is also one of those occupations you will find the proudest workers, who hold their heads high for their legacy; their work ethic making many seem like part timers in any other job. They should be proud, too. Being one of the most dangerous occupations in the world, they deserve the appreciation of what they do.
West Virginians are proud of their coal heritage, but also turn a blind eye many times to what else is occurring in their state. I am proud of my own heritage but also accept that things change, unlike many others who live here. This is why I chose to start recording the history of the destruction of my beloved homeland.
The idea that we are capable of anything else besides coal mining is an enigma that no one willingly will choose to explore. We instead choose to ignore all of the signs, as well as any attempts to advance ourselves beyond just coal. I’m afraid to even provide my identity due to repercussions of this project. To some that may be exaggerating, however, it’s a very justified fear. Job loss, threats, they are very real and have happened to others in the past, those that chose to stand up to the tradition and question if this is the path we want to continue to take.
Coal is the dinosaur that’s slowly dying. It doesn’t matter if you root for coal with all your might, or fight against it with protests and crying for environmentally safe energy. The elephant in the room? It’s buffet is now being rationed. It won’t die from starvation in my lifetime by any means. However, the next generation has a long hard road to finding an industry to make a decent wage, and provide for their family if they stay in southern West Virginia. The information is out there for yourself, you just have to research it. Studies on the long term markets, easy coal retrieval predictions, you name it. I won’t bore you with tons of links or documents and studies. Research it yourself, avoiding both sides of the propaganda mills to come to your own conclusion. One of many:
Decline of Appalachian Coal
Coal is not the providing beast it once was, but is instead embellished until it is imagined to be the only thing we can ever have, or work for. Coal has wrapped itself around our throat, hypnotizing us to believe it is our only way to survive, and to attack anyone who advocates advancing into other technologies or industries. If we don’t find another to sustain us, we could be in deep trouble before we know it in this area. My home.
The biggest issue I have with coal, is while all of this is mostly my opinion, there is one thing that is not. Coal is destroying us as it slowly crawls out the door. While the masses chant “coal, coal, coal!” the shovels, drag lines, and trucks are tearing down mountains at an alarming rate. They have the public where they want them; they have the state government in their pockets – and all the while, destroying every bit they can, while on their way out. Our watersheds are also a victim of this practice. A hard and drawn out battle over the clean water acts, stream buffers, and water quality are still going on right now as we speak. Those stuck in the middle, residents who have lived generations in the hollers that coal companies are now trying to fill do without good water, and the fear that their homes will be destroyed along with their way of life. Some also choose to sell out and move, to get away from the problem – only to find the problem encroaches upon them again sooner or later, when a company targets another mountain. Another prime example of this: Lindytown, which was bought out by Massey several years ago.
Lindytown
One day, while meandering down roads, I ran atop some sites and decided to document them. I felt that at least this, this much I could help contribute to wake up calls for my people, who have never backed down from a challenge – until now. I’ve never shot anything controversial, but feel that someone needs to document the real world here in Appalachia, the one that outsiders never get to see. It may not even seem like such a controversial subject to those who do not reside here. My hope is that after shooting various MTR operations, that perhaps I can change that opinion a little.
I’m all for being an energy producing state. It’s a proud fact we power a good part of the nation, though it’s changing with the shuttering of coal plants along with the switch to the lower cost of natural gas. But change is needed, and needed NOW to prepare for when it comes, not only for our people, but for our land as well. The destruction I have seen on MTR jobs pains me; I feel it in my heart, as it cracks a little. There needs to be a middle ground, in order to continue to extract the one resource we’re known for above any other. There needs to be change, a change in processes, and a change in how we allow out of state boards and CEOS to decide that we need flat land that they jokingly make “post use” plans for, that will never sustain anything. Well, perhaps a golf course. This land will never be stable; it will always be settling, leaching out minerals and chemicals into our streams and becoming a gigantic eyesore in each and every site. The topsoil that was once abundant on these sites, and has accumulated for years is forever gone. The same for our native forest, as it’s replaced with grass. I have been on sites, I have seen valley fills, and I’ve seen the streams they cover. I’ve seen the bare rock that leaches chemicals into our earth and our groundwater. We need people to look past the propaganda from the pro coal side, as well as the environmental side and say – Hey! Maybe this isn’t a good idea on how we practice this type of mining. Perhaps, a middle ground can be reached and a newer, better process to minimize the impact that MTR causes. Underground mining has its problems as well, but it is not on the level of an MTR site. Unfortunately, I’m a visual artist, not a mining engineer, so I don’t have any revelations in order to better this practice to satisfy everyone. Instead, I can put photographs to my words, and hope someone sees them and feels the same as I do who has the knowledge to throw out ideas to improve what mining we have left in our state.
I don’t want to see another great migration down the “hillbilly highways” that occurred during the 80s. I also don’t want to be a part of that migration. I certainly don’t want to see anymore destruction of my mountains, either; not in this form. The latest fight was over Blair Mountain. Designated a Historical Site, then had that stripped away why? Because of money from the coal industry. This battle is still being fought, legally to stop stripping this historic and important site. How can we have let it even get that far? Because we have forgotten what was fought for there.
A fight like this shows the true beast that is coal. It will steamroll any who defy it, with the power of generations behind it fueling the beast to mow any of us down who might disagree with its practices. “Lay down, serfs. The lord of the manor will flatten that hill!” With that cry, that is also what we do; we lay down, and continue to allow it, with our state legislature the first to bow their heads. Today, coal companies are in trouble. Patriot is in bankruptcy, jerking the hard fought for benefits to UMWA retirees, while giving millions in bonuses. Alpha Natural Resources has just officially filed a bankruptcy claim. These are just two examples of the struggle the coal industry is in. When these giants fall, what do they leave us in southern WV? A broken economy, with no solution to replace them with. For generations the coal industry has road blocked any attempts to entice other well paying industries to the area. The state legislature themselves, have also done the same. Many cry it’s due to regulations and laws; however, this has been coming for a very long time, well before anything has been implemented. Major companies, unable to protect their behemoth appetites for more profit, switched from producing Steam coal to met coal, flooding the market and dropping the bottom out of pricing, slashing their own throats. They have spent millions trying to fight regulations, instead of using those same millions to find other ways to implement changes to help themselves. As easy to mine coal reserves become rarer, and companies filing bankruptcies, it will only get worse as this vicious cycle of the snake eating its own tail continues.
So what will we be left with? A broken economy, locally; half finished flattened mountains, and coal executives running to the bank, running away from the problem they themselves have created over generations of extraction at the cost of everyone’s humanity and environment. Politicians, continually ignoring the plight that this portion of the state is finding itself in, continue to take mine company hand outs to bury their heads in the sand and blame everyone else but ourselves. There’s a defining line in this state; anything south of Charleston is fodder for the machines. We are constantly ignored, our pleas for help in this area are unheard in the day to day management of the state. North of Charleston you’ll find a bit more diverse economy, as well as a priority for the state legislature to focus on. A perfect example? The Coalfields Expressway, a promise to this area of the state to open up for accessibility, and perhaps woo an industry or two to make their home here. It’s status? Now on hold, due to the coal company who was stripping the McDowell county portion of the road. This road project has been delayed more than any other. The state legislature turns a blind eye to the southern half of the state, sticking their heads in quicksand and hoping that things are maintained as they are and are not really heading for the downfall that they truly are doing. If this was the northern part of the state, above the Charleston line? They’d fall all over themselves in attempts to head off the runaway train at the pass. The rest of us are collateral damage for the mining industry, drug use, and poverty.
I am the hypocrite; I am the Judas who chooses to NOT ignore what the industry is doing to my heritage. I am the one who chooses to take the chance and show what it looks like, for others to make their own decisions even if it may end up causing repercussions. I am the one that while MTR provides my sustenance, I choose not to sit and idly turn a blind eye to what is happening around me, allowing the destruction of so much of my home. What I have photographed is only a touch upon the many forgotten mountains that are flattened at the expense of people, land, and environment. I may or may not be able to update this post, depending on opportunities to be able to photograph this type of subject. I can only hope, that perhaps someone else out there feels the same. Or at least, feels the pain that I feel. I’m sure there will be those who disagree with my opinion, and that’s still a good thing if it brings this subject to light for discussions. Maybe it will wake up enough people to the sights around them, who feel the charge to perhaps attempt to make a call to a representative, or discuss it around the dinner table. No matter what happens, something must give, and I fear, it will be…us.There was just that one little thing.
Defence lawyer Marie Henein put it thusly to the witness, the third (and last) accuser to testify against Ghomeshi at his sexual assault trial : “You messed around and gave him a hand job. It happened at your place. It happened after the assault.”
In the witness’s hand. At her house. Consensually. A post-dinner manual stimulation. A couple of days after the then-CBC celebrity radio host had allegedly wrapped his own paws around the complainant’s throat and squeezed.
It’s getting monotonous, these testimony-bruising rewrites that sharp cookie Henein has elicited from the complainants. In this case, however, the witness got there first, pre-emptively, with her altered statement to detectives and the revelation, induced under examination in chief by Crown attorney Michael Callaghan.
She regrets the intimacy; Ghomeshi invited into her bed, the creep who’d hurt her not long before during another “make-out” session in the park, and suddenly tightened his fingers around her neck. More crucial, though, as far as this woman’s flagellated credibility is concerned, was her failure to disclose that romantic interlude to either police investigators or the Crowns who have been in her corner — at least not until last Friday, when the complainant, long belatedly, provided an amended statement.
Accuser: “It was an absolute misjudgment, an embarrassment and one that a lot of women make.’’
“He magically appears in your home, his penis ends up in your hand, he sleeps over …” Henein continued as the witness — who can’t be identified — fidgeted nervously on the stand, nearing the end of another problematic day for the prosecution, although some of the jaw-dropping zing has gone out of the proceedings as the trial staggers to a conclusion.
BOING went the trial, as, for the first time on Monday, Ghomeshi’s penis was introduced into evidence, albeit not as formal exhibit — merely as party to events under dispute.
This witness was in the courthouse last Tuesday while the first witness was still testifying, because she was originally expected to be called second. She was not to follow media reports of the trial and, indeed, claims that’s not what happened.
A pertinent detail which, Henein later charged, was slotted in only once the complainant realized that similarly damaging evidence had been presented to the two women who’d preceded her into the witness box – flirtatious emails and photographs and a hand-written letter sent to Ghomeshi after each had been purportedly subjected to violent mistreatment: slaps, punches, choking: considered the stuff of sex assault because the sudden, unexpected attacks occurred within a sexual context — passionate kissing.
She’d merely overheard part of a radio report on Friday, something about “emails,” which made the witness go back to check whether she had any such communication with Ghomeshi following the alleged assault, finding only one. It was just “curiosity” that sent her looking, she testified under cross-examination.
But the timing of the complainant’s amended statement — under oath — is provocative. It was only at that point she hastily added a reference to the consensual “sex act” at her house.
What the witness originally told investigators, when she went to police with her allegation on Dec. 3, 2014 — 12 years after the alleged abuse — was that there had been three significant interactions with Ghomeshi that July.
A walk in the park, one evening, after she had finished her performance in a free public engagement. Ghomeshi, whom she barely knew, had come up from behind while she was speaking to a group of girls and placed his elbows on her shoulders and made a weird comment: “We’re engaged.”
Witness: “It was taking ownership of me in a way that was surprising.”
They went for dinner on the Danforth, sat on the patio, and she was struck by his apparent keenness to be spotted. “He seemed very aware of who was noticing him.’’ Otherwise, she remembered nothing else about that night.
The next time she encountered Ghomeshi was following another performance. They talked and drifted to a bench near the baseball diamond. “We were making out. Suddenly I felt his h-h-hands on my shoulder and his teeth and his hands were around my neck and he was squeezing. It all happened so fast. It was rough.’’
But no, she hadn’t attempted to get away from Ghomeshi. They never even spoke about it. The purported incident did, however, raise “warning bells.’’
“I |
original seven-step plan would have meant delaying the "D" and subsequent missions, and endangering the program's goal of a lunar landing before the end of 1969. George Low, the Manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office, proposed a solution in August 1968 to keep the program on track despite the LM delay. Since the next CSM (designated as "CSM-103") would be ready three months before LM-3, a CSM-only mission could be flown in December 1968. Instead of repeating the "C" mission flight of Apollo 7, this CSM could be sent all the way to the Moon, with the possibility of entering a lunar orbit and returning to Earth. The new mission would also allow NASA to test lunar landing procedures that would otherwise have had to wait until Apollo 10, the scheduled "F" mission. This also meant that the medium Earth orbit "E" mission could be dispensed with. The net result was that only the "D" mission had to be delayed, and the plan for lunar landing in mid-1969 could remain on timeline.
On August 9, 1968, Low discussed the idea with Gilruth, Flight Director Chris Kraft, and the Director of Flight Crew Operations, Donald Slayton. They then flew to the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama, where they met with KSC Director Kurt Debus, Apollo Program Director Samuel C. Phillips, Rocco Petrone, and Wernher von Braun. Kraft considered the proposal feasible from a flight control standpoint; Debus and Petrone agreed that the next Saturn V, AS-503, could be made ready by December 1; and von Braun was confident that the pogo oscillation problems that had afflicted Apollo 6 had been fixed. Almost every senior manager at NASA agreed with this new mission, citing confidence in both the hardware and the personnel, along with the potential for a circumlunar flight providing a significant morale boost. The only person who needed some convincing was James E. Webb, the NASA administrator. Backed by the full support of his agency, Webb authorized the mission. Apollo 8 was officially changed from a "D" mission to a "C-Prime" lunar-orbit mission.
With the change in mission for Apollo 8, Slayton asked McDivitt if he still wanted to fly it. McDivitt turned it down; his crew had spent a great deal of time preparing to test the LM, and that was what he still wanted to do. Slayton then decided to swap the prime and backup crews of the D and E missions. This swap also meant a swap of spacecraft, requiring Borman's crew to use CSM-103, while McDivitt's crew would use CSM-104, since CM-104 could not be made ready by December. David Scott was not happy about giving up CM-103, the testing of which he had closely supervised, for CM-104, although the two were almost identical, and Anders was less than enthusiastic about being an LMP on a flight with no LM. Instead, in order that the spacecraft would have the correct weight and balance, Apollo 8 would carry a LM test article, a boilerplate model of LM-3.
Added pressure on the Apollo program to make its 1969 landing goal was provided by the Soviet Union's Zond 5 mission, which flew some living creatures, including Russian tortoises, in a cislunar loop around the Moon and returned them to Earth on September 21. There was speculation within NASA and the press that they might be preparing to launch cosmonauts on a similar circumlunar mission before the end of 1968.[37]
Erection and mating of spacecraft 103 to Launch Vehicle AS-503 in the VAB for the Apollo 8 mission
The Apollo 8 crew, now living in the crew quarters at Kennedy Space Center, received a visit from Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the night before the launch.[38] They talked about how, before his 1927 flight, Lindbergh had used a piece of string to measure the distance from New York City to Paris on a globe and from that calculated the fuel needed for the flight. The total he had carried was a tenth of the amount that the Saturn V would burn every second. The next day, the Lindberghs watched the launch of Apollo 8 from a nearby dune.
Saturn V redesign [ edit ]
The Saturn V rocket used by Apollo 8 was designated AS-503, or the "03rd" model of the Saturn V ("5") Rocket to be used in the Apollo-Saturn ("AS") program. When it was erected in the Vehicle Assembly Building on December 20, 1967, it was thought that the rocket would be used for an unmanned Earth-orbit test flight carrying a boilerplate command and service module. Apollo 6 had suffered several major problems during its April 1968 flight, including severe pogo oscillation during its first stage, two second-stage engine failures, and a third stage that failed to reignite in orbit. Without assurances that these problems had been rectified, NASA administrators could not justify risking a manned mission until additional unmanned test flights proved that the Saturn V was ready.
Teams from the MSFC went to work on the problems. Of primary concern was the pogo oscillation, which would not only hamper engine performance, but could exert significant g-forces on a crew. A task force of contractors, NASA agency representatives, and MSFC researchers concluded that the engines vibrated at a frequency similar to the frequency at which the spacecraft itself vibrated, causing a resonance effect that induced oscillations in the rocket. A system that used helium gas to absorb some of these vibrations was installed.
The Apollo 8 Saturn V being rolled out to Pad 39A
Of equal importance was the failure of three engines during flight. Researchers quickly determined that a leaking hydrogen fuel line ruptured when exposed to vacuum, causing a loss of fuel pressure in engine two. When an automatic shutoff attempted to close the liquid hydrogen valve and shut down engine two, it had accidentally shut down engine three's liquid oxygen due to a miswired connection. As a result, engine three failed within one second of engine two's shutdown. Further investigation revealed the same problem for the third-stage engine – a faulty igniter line. The team modified the igniter lines and fuel conduits, hoping to avoid similar problems on future launches.
The teams tested their solutions in August 1968 at the MSFC. A Saturn stage IC was equipped with shock-absorbing devices to demonstrate the team's solution to the problem of pogo oscillation, while a Saturn Stage II was retrofitted with modified fuel lines to demonstrate their resistance to leaks and ruptures in vacuum conditions. Once NASA administrators were convinced that the problems had been solved, they gave their approval for a manned mission using AS-503.
The Apollo 8 spacecraft was placed on top of the rocket on September 21, and the rocket made the slow 3-mile (4.8 km) journey to the launch pad on October 9.[41] Testing continued all through December until the day before launch, including various levels of readiness testing from December 5 through 11. Final testing of modifications to address the problems of pogo oscillation, ruptured fuel lines, and bad igniter lines took place on December 18, three days before the scheduled launch.
Mission [ edit ]
Parameter summary [ edit ]
Mission profile
As the first manned spacecraft to orbit more than one celestial body, Apollo 8's profile had two different sets of orbital parameters, separated by a translunar injection maneuver. Apollo lunar missions would begin with a nominal 100-nautical-mile (185.2 km) circular Earth parking orbit. Apollo 8 was launched into an initial orbit with an apogee of 99.99 nautical miles (185.18 km) and a perigee of 99.57 nautical miles (184.40 km), with an inclination of 32.51° to the Equator, and an orbital period of 88.19 minutes. Propellant venting increased the apogee by 6.4 nautical miles (11.9 km) over the 2 hours, 44 minutes, and 30 seconds spent in the parking orbit.
This was followed by a trans-lunar injection (TLI) burn of the S-IVB third stage for 318 seconds, accelerating the 63,650 lb (28,870 kg) command and service module and 19,900 lb (9,000 kg) LM test article from an orbital velocity of 25,567 feet per second (7,793 m/s) to the injection velocity of 35,505 ft/s (10,822 m/s)[5] which set a record for the highest speed, relative to Earth, that humans had ever traveled. This speed was slightly less than the Earth's escape velocity of 36,747 feet per second (11,200 m/s), but put Apollo 8 into an elongated elliptical Earth orbit, close enough to the Moon to be captured by the Moon's gravity.
The standard lunar orbit for Apollo missions was planned as a nominal 60-nautical-mile (110 km) circular orbit above the Moon's surface. Initial lunar orbit insertion was an ellipse with a perilune of 60.0 nautical miles (111.1 km) and an apolune of 168.5 nautical miles (312.1 km), at an inclination of 12° from the lunar equator. This was then circularized at 60.7 nautical miles (112.4 km) by 59.7 nautical miles (110.6 km), with an orbital period of 128.7 minutes. The effect of lunar mass concentrations ("mascons") on the orbit was found to be greater than initially predicted; over the course of the ten lunar orbits lasting twenty hours, the orbital distance was perturbated to 63.6 nautical miles (117.8 km) by 58.6 nautical miles (108.5 km).
Apollo 8 achieved a maximum distance from Earth of 203,752 nautical miles (234,474 statute miles; 377,349 kilometers).
Launch and trans-lunar injection [ edit ]
Apollo 8 during launch
Apollo 8 launched at 12:51:00 UTC (07:51:00 Eastern Standard Time) on December 21, 1968, using the Saturn V's three stages to achieve Earth orbit. The S-IC first stage landed in the Atlantic Ocean at, and the S-II second stage landed at. The S-IVB third stage injected the craft into Earth orbit and remained attached to perform the TLI burn that would put the spacecraft on a trajectory to the Moon.
Once the vehicle reached Earth orbit, both the crew and Houston flight controllers spent the next 2 hours and 38 minutes checking that the spacecraft was in proper working order and ready for TLI. The proper operation of the S-IVB third stage of the rocket was crucial, and in the last unmanned test, it had failed to reignite for this burn. Collins was the first CAPCOM on duty, and at 2 hours, 27 minutes and 22 seconds after launch he radioed, "Apollo 8. You are Go for TLI." This communication meant that Mission Control had given official permission for Apollo 8 to go to the Moon. The S-IVB engine ignited on time and performed the TLI burn perfectly. Over the next five minutes, the spacecraft's speed increased from 7,600 to 10,800 meters per second (25,000 to 35,000 ft/s).
After the S-IVB had placed the mission on course for the Moon, the command and service modules (CSM), the remaining Apollo 8 spacecraft, separated from it. The crew then rotated the spacecraft to take photographs of the spent stage and then practiced flying in formation with it. As the crew rotated the spacecraft, they had their first views of the Earth as they moved away from it – this marked the first time humans had viewed the whole Earth at once. Borman became worried that the S-IVB was staying too close to the CSM and suggested to Mission Control that the crew perform a separation maneuver. Mission Control first suggested pointing the spacecraft towards Earth and using the small reaction control system (RCS) thrusters on the service module (SM) to add 1.1 ft/s (0.34 m/s) to their velocity away from the Earth, but Borman did not want to lose sight of the S-IVB. After discussion, the crew and Mission Control decided to burn in the Earth direction to increase speed, but at 7.7 ft/s (2.3 m/s) instead. The time needed to prepare and perform the additional burn put the crew an hour behind their onboard tasks.
Apollo 8 S-IVB rocket stage, shortly after separation
Five hours after launch, Mission Control sent a command to the S-IVB to vent its remaining fuel, changing its trajectory. The S-IVB, with the test article attached, posed no further hazard to Apollo 8, passing the orbit of the Moon and going into a 0.99-by-0.92-astronomical-unit (148 by 138 Gm) solar orbit with an inclination of 23.47° from the plane of the ecliptic, and an orbital period of 340.80 days. It became a derelict object, and will continue to orbit the Sun for many years.[52]
The Apollo 8 crew were the first humans to pass through the Van Allen radiation belts, which extend up to 15,000 miles (24,000 km) from Earth. Scientists predicted that passing through the belts quickly at the spacecraft's high speed would cause a radiation dosage of no more than a chest X-ray, or 1 milligray (mGy; during a year, the average human receives a dose of 2 to 3 mGy). To record the actual radiation dosages, each crew member wore a Personal Radiation Dosimeter that transmitted data to Earth, as well as three passive film dosimeters that showed the cumulative radiation experienced by the crew. By the end of the mission, the crew members experienced an average radiation dose of 1.6 mGy.[53]
Lunar trajectory [ edit ]
Lovell's main job as Command Module Pilot was as navigator. Although Mission Control normally performed all the actual navigation calculations, it was necessary to have a crew member adept at navigation so that the crew could return to Earth in case communication with Mission Control was lost. Lovell navigated by star sightings using a sextant built into the spacecraft, measuring the angle between a star and the Earth's (or the Moon's) horizon. This task was made difficult by a large cloud of debris around the spacecraft, which made it hard to distinguish the stars.[54]
By seven hours into the mission, the crew was about 1 hour and 40 minutes behind flight plan because of the problems in moving away from the S-IVB and Lovell's obscured star sightings. The crew placed the spacecraft into Passive Thermal Control (PTC), also called "barbecue roll", in which the spacecraft rotated about once per hour around its long axis to ensure even heat distribution across the surface of the spacecraft. In direct sunlight, parts of the spacecraft's outer surface could be heated to over 200 °C (392 °F), while the parts in shadow would be −100 °C (−148 °F). These temperatures could cause the heat shield to crack and propellant lines to burst. Because it was impossible to get a perfect roll, the spacecraft swept out a cone as it rotated. The crew had to make minor adjustments every half hour as the cone pattern got larger and larger.[55]
[56] South is up with South America in the middle. The first image ever taken by humans of the whole Earth, probably photographed by William Anders South is up with South America in the middle.
The first mid-course correction came eleven hours into the flight. The crew had been awake for more than 16 hours. Before launch, NASA had decided that at least one crew member should be awake at all times to deal with problems that might arise. Borman started the first sleep shift but found sleeping difficult because of the constant radio chatter and mechanical noises. Testing on the ground had shown that the service propulsion system (SPS) engine had a small chance of exploding when burned for long periods unless its combustion chamber was "coated" first by burning the engine for a short period. This first correction burn was only 2.4 seconds and added about 20.4 ft/s (6.2 m/s) velocity prograde (in the direction of travel). This change was less than the planned 24.8 ft/s (7.6 m/s), because of a bubble of helium in the oxidizer lines, which caused unexpectedly low propellant pressure. The crew had to use the small RCS thrusters to make up the shortfall. Two later planned mid-course corrections were canceled because the Apollo 8 trajectory was found to be perfect.[55]
About an hour after starting his sleep shift, Borman obtained permission from ground control to take a Seconal sleeping pill. The pill had little effect. Borman eventually fell asleep, and then awoke feeling ill. He vomited twice and had a bout of diarrhea; this left the spacecraft full of small globules of vomit and feces, which the crew cleaned up as well as they could. Borman initially did not want everyone to know about his medical problems, but Lovell and Anders wanted to inform Mission Control. The crew decided to use the Data Storage Equipment (DSE), which could tape voice recordings and telemetry and dump them to Mission Control at high speed. After recording a description of Borman's illness they asked Mission Control to check the recording, stating that they "would like an evaluation of the voice comments".[57]
The Apollo 8 crew and Mission Control medical personnel held a conference using an unoccupied second-floor control room (there were two identical control rooms in Houston, on the second and third floors, only one of which was used during a mission). The conference participants concluded that there was little to worry about and that Borman's illness was either a 24-hour flu, as Borman thought, or a reaction to the sleeping pill. Researchers now believe that he was suffering from space adaptation syndrome, which affects about a third of astronauts during their first day in space as their vestibular system adapts to weightlessness.[59] Space adaptation syndrome had not occurred on previous spacecraft (Mercury and Gemini), because those astronauts could not move freely in the small cabins of those spacecraft. The increased cabin space in the Apollo command module afforded astronauts greater freedom of movement, contributing to symptoms of space sickness for Borman and, later, astronaut Russell Schweickart during Apollo 9.[60]
Still from film of the crew taken while they were in orbit around the Moon; Frank Borman is in the center.
The cruise phase was a relatively uneventful part of the flight, except for the crew checking that the spacecraft was in working order and that they were on course. During this time, NASA scheduled a television broadcast at 31 hours after launch. The Apollo 8 crew used a 2-kilogram (4.4 lb) camera that broadcast in black-and-white only, using a Vidicon tube. The camera had two lenses, a very wide-angle (160°) lens, and a telephoto (9°) lens.[62]
During this first broadcast, the crew gave a tour of the spacecraft and attempted to show how the Earth appeared from space. However, difficulties aiming the narrow-angle lens without the aid of a monitor to show what it was looking at made showing the Earth impossible. Additionally, without proper filters, the Earth image became saturated by any bright source. In the end, all the crew could show the people watching back on Earth was a bright blob. After broadcasting for 17 minutes, the rotation of the spacecraft took the high-gain antenna out of view of the receiving stations on Earth and they ended the transmission with Lovell wishing his mother a happy birthday.[62]
By this time, the crew had completely abandoned the planned sleep shifts. Lovell went to sleep 32 and a half hours into the flight—3 and a half hours before he had planned to. A short while later, Anders also went to sleep after taking a sleeping pill.[62] The crew was unable to see the Moon for much of the outward cruise. Two factors made the Moon almost impossible to see from inside the spacecraft: three of the five windows fogging up due to out-gassed oils from the silicone sealant, and the attitude required for passive thermal control. It was not until the crew had gone behind the Moon that they would be able to see it for the first time.
Apollo 8 made a second television broadcast at 55 hours into the flight. This time, the crew rigged up filters meant for the still cameras so they could acquire images of the Earth through the telephoto lens. Although difficult to aim, as they had to maneuver the entire spacecraft, the crew was able to broadcast back to Earth the first television pictures of the Earth. The crew spent the transmission describing the Earth, what was visible, and the colors they could see. The transmission lasted 23 minutes.
Lunar sphere of influence [ edit ]
This photograph of the Moon was taken from Apollo 8 at a point above 70 degrees east longitude.
At about 55 hours and 40 minutes into the flight, and 13 hours before entering lunar orbit, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first humans to enter the gravitational sphere of influence of another celestial body. In other words, the effect of the Moon's gravitational force on Apollo 8 became stronger than that of the Earth. At the time it happened, Apollo 8 was 38,759 miles (62,377 km) from the Moon and had a speed of 3,990 ft/s (1,220 m/s) relative to the Moon. This historic moment was of little interest to the crew, since they were still calculating their trajectory with respect to the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center. They would continue to do so until they performed their last mid-course correction, switching to a reference frame based on ideal orientation for the second engine burn they would make in lunar orbit.
The last major event before Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI) was a second mid-course correction. It was in retrograde (against the direction of travel) and slowed the spacecraft down by 2.0 ft/s (0.61 m/s), effectively reducing the closest distance at which the spacecraft would pass the Moon. At exactly 61 hours after launch, about 24,200 miles (38,900 km) from the Moon, the crew burned the RCS for 11 seconds. They would now pass 71.7 miles (115.4 km) from the lunar surface.
At 64 hours into the flight, the crew began to prepare for Lunar Orbit Insertion 1 (LOI-1). This maneuver had to be performed perfectly, and due to orbital mechanics had to be on the far side of the Moon, out of contact with the Earth. After Mission Control was polled for a "go/no go" decision, the crew was told at 68 hours that they were Go and "riding the best bird we can find".[64] Lovell replied, "We'll see you on the other side", and for the first time in history, humans travelled behind the Moon and out of radio contact with the Earth.[64]
With 10 minutes remaining before LOI-1, the crew began one last check of the spacecraft systems and made sure that every switch was in its correct position. At that time, they finally got their first glimpses of the Moon. They had been flying over the unlit side, and it was Lovell who saw the first shafts of sunlight obliquely illuminating the lunar surface. The LOI burn was only two minutes away, so the crew had little time to appreciate the view.
Lunar orbit [ edit ]
The SPS was ignited at 69 hours, 8 minutes, and 16 seconds after launch and burned for 4 minutes and 7 seconds, placing the Apollo 8 spacecraft in orbit around the Moon. The crew described the burn as being the longest four minutes of their lives. If the burn had not lasted exactly the correct amount of time, the spacecraft could have ended up in a highly elliptical lunar orbit or even flung off into space. If it had lasted too long, they could have struck the Moon. After making sure the spacecraft was working, they finally had a chance to look at the Moon, which they would orbit for the next 20 hours.[66]
On Earth, Mission Control continued to wait. If the crew had not burned the engine, or the burn had not lasted the planned length of time, the crew would have appeared early from behind the Moon. Exactly at the calculated moment, however, the signal was received from the spacecraft, indicating it was in a 193.3-by-69.5-mile (311.1 by 111.8 km) orbit around the Moon.[66]
After reporting on the status of the spacecraft, Lovell gave the first description of what the lunar surface looked like:
The Moon is essentially grey, no color; looks like plaster of Paris or sort of a grayish beach sand. We can see quite a bit of detail. The Sea of Fertility doesn't stand out as well here as it does back on Earth. There's not as much contrast between that and the surrounding craters. The craters are all rounded off. There's quite a few of them, some of them are newer. Many of them look like—especially the round ones—look like hit by meteorites or projectiles of some sort. Langrenus is quite a huge crater; it's got a central cone to it. The walls of the crater are terraced, about six or seven different terraces on the way down.[67]
Lovell continued to describe the terrain they were passing over. One of the crew's major tasks was reconnaissance of planned future landing sites on the Moon, especially one in Mare Tranquillitatis that was planned as the Apollo 11 landing site. The launch time of Apollo 8 had been chosen to give the best lighting conditions for examining the site. A film camera had been set up in one of the spacecraft windows to record one frame per second of the Moon below. Bill Anders spent much of the next 20 hours taking as many photographs as possible of targets of interest. By the end of the mission, the crew had taken over eight hundred 70 mm still photographs and 700 feet (210 m) of 16 mm movie film.
Throughout the hour that the spacecraft was in contact with Earth, Borman kept asking how the data for the SPS looked. He wanted to make sure that the engine was working and could be used to return early to the Earth if necessary. He also asked that they receive a "go/no go" decision before they passed behind the Moon on each orbit.[67]
As they reappeared for their second pass in front of the Moon, the crew set up equipment to broadcast a view of the lunar surface. Anders described the craters that they were passing over. At the end of this second orbit, they performed an 11-second LOI-2 burn of the SPS to circularize the orbit to 70.0 by 71.3 miles (112.7 by 114.7 km).[66][67]
Throughout the next two orbits, the crew continued to check the spacecraft and to observe and photograph the Moon. During the third pass, Borman read a small prayer for his church. He had been scheduled to participate in a service at St. Christopher's Episcopal Church near Seabrook, Texas, but due to the Apollo 8 flight, he was unable to attend. A fellow parishioner and engineer at Mission Control, Rod Rose, suggested that Borman read the prayer, which could be recorded and then replayed during the service.[67]
Earthrise [ edit ]
When the spacecraft came out from behind the Moon for its fourth pass across the front, the crew witnessed an "Earthrise" in person for the first time in human history.[69] NASA's Lunar Orbiter 1 had taken the first picture of an Earthrise from the vicinity of the Moon, on August 23, 1966.[70] Anders saw the Earth emerging from behind the lunar horizon and called in excitement to the others, taking a black-and-white photograph as he did so. Anders asked Lovell for color film and then took Earthrise, a now famous color photo, later picked by Life magazine as one of its hundred photos of the century.[69][71]
Due to the synchronous rotation of the Moon about the Earth, Earthrise is not generally visible from the lunar surface. This is because, as seen from any one place on the Moon's surface, Earth remains in approximately the same position in the lunar sky, either above or below the horizon. Earthrise is generally visible only while orbiting the Moon, and at selected surface locations near the Moon's limb, where libration carries the Earth slightly above and below the lunar horizon.[72]
The Apollo 8 astronauts become the first people to see the Earth rise
The Apollo 8 Genesis reading
Anders continued to take photographs while Lovell assumed control of the spacecraft so that Borman could rest. Despite the difficulty resting in the cramped and noisy spacecraft, Borman was able to sleep for two orbits, awakening periodically to ask questions about their status. Borman awoke fully, however, when he started to hear his fellow crew members make mistakes. They were beginning to not understand questions and had to ask for the answers to be repeated. Borman realized that everyone was extremely tired from not having a good night's sleep in over three days. He ordered Anders and Lovell to get some sleep and that the rest of the flight plan regarding observing the Moon be scrubbed. Anders initially protested, saying that he was fine, but Borman would not be swayed. Anders finally agreed under the condition that Borman would set up the camera to continue to take automatic pictures of the Moon. Borman also remembered that there was a second television broadcast planned, and with so many people expected to be watching, he wanted the crew to be alert. For the next two orbits, Anders and Lovell slept while Borman sat at the helm.[69]
As they rounded the Moon for the ninth time, the astronauts began the second television transmission. Borman introduced the crew, followed by each man giving his impression of the lunar surface and what it was like to be orbiting the Moon. Borman described it as being "a vast, lonely, forbidding expanse of nothing". Then, after talking about what they were flying over, Anders said that the crew had a message for all those on Earth. Each man on board read a section from the Biblical creation story from the Book of Genesis. Borman finished the broadcast by wishing a Merry Christmas to everyone on Earth. His message appeared to sum up the feelings that all three crewmen had from their vantage point in lunar orbit. Borman said, "And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you—all of you on the good Earth."[75]
The only task left for the crew at this point was to perform the trans-Earth injection (TEI), which was scheduled for 2 1⁄ 2 hours after the end of the television transmission. The TEI was the most critical burn of the flight, as any failure of the SPS to ignite would strand the crew in lunar orbit, with little hope of escape. As with the previous burn, the crew had to perform the maneuver above the far side of the Moon, out of contact with Earth. The burn occurred exactly on time. The spacecraft telemetry was reacquired as it re-emerged from behind the Moon at 89 hours, 28 minutes, and 39 seconds, the exact time calculated. When voice contact was regained, Lovell announced, "Please be informed, there is a Santa Claus", to which Ken Mattingly, the current CAPCOM, replied, "That's affirmative, you are the best ones to know."[77] The spacecraft began its journey back to Earth on December 25, Christmas Day.
Unplanned manual realignment [ edit ]
Later, Lovell used some otherwise idle time to do some navigational sightings, maneuvering the module to view various stars by using the computer keyboard. However, he accidentally erased some of the computer's memory, which caused the inertial measurement unit (IMU) to contain data indicating that the module was in the same relative orientation it had been in before lift-off; the IMU then fired the thrusters to "correct" the module's attitude.[78]
Once the crew realized why the computer had changed the module's attitude, they realized that they would have to reenter data to tell the computer the module's actual orientation. It took Lovell ten minutes to figure out the right numbers, using the thrusters to get the stars Rigel and Sirius aligned, and another 15 minutes to enter the corrected data into the computer. Sixteen months later, during the Apollo 13 mission, Lovell would have to perform a similar manual realignment under more critical conditions after the module's IMU had to be turned off to conserve energy.
Cruise back to Earth and reentry [ edit ]
Reentry, December 27, 1968, photographed from a KC-135 at 40,000 feet
The cruise back to Earth was mostly a time for the crew to relax and monitor the spacecraft. As long as the trajectory specialists had calculated everything correctly, the spacecraft would reenter Earth's atmosphere two-and-half days after TEI and splash down in the Pacific.
On Christmas afternoon, the crew made their fifth television broadcast.[81] This time, they gave a tour of the spacecraft, showing how an astronaut lived in space. When they finished broadcasting, they found a small present from Slayton in the food locker: a real turkey dinner with stuffing, in the same kind of pack given to the troops in Vietnam.
Another Slayton surprise was a gift of three miniature bottles of brandy, which Borman ordered the crew to leave alone until after they landed. They remained unopened, even years after the flight. There were also small presents to the crew from their wives. The next day, at about 124 hours into the mission, the sixth and final TV transmission showed the mission's best video images of the Earth, during a four-minute broadcast.[84] After two uneventful days, the crew prepared for reentry. The computer would control the reentry, and all the crew had to do was put the spacecraft in the correct attitude, with the blunt end forward. In the event of computer failure, Borman was ready to take over.
Separation from the service module prepared the command module for reentry by exposing the heat shield and shedding unneeded mass. The service module would burn up in the atmosphere as planned. Six minutes before they hit the top of the atmosphere, the crew saw the Moon rising above the Earth's horizon, just as had been calculated by the trajectory specialists.[86] As the module hit the thin outer atmosphere, the crew noticed that it was becoming hazy outside as glowing plasma formed around the spacecraft. The spacecraft started slowing down, and the deceleration peaked at 6 standard gravities (59 m/s2). With the computer controlling the descent by changing the attitude of the spacecraft, Apollo 8 rose briefly like a skipping stone before descending to the ocean. At 30,000 feet (9.1 km), the drogue parachute deployed, stabilizing the spacecraft, followed at 10,000 feet (3.0 km) by the three main parachutes. The spacecraft splashdown position was officially reported as in the North Pacific Ocean, southwest of Hawaii at 15:51:42 UTC on December 27, 1968.[8]
Yorktown after a successful splashdown and recovery The crew of Apollo 8 addresses the crew of the USSafter a successful splashdown and recovery
When the spacecraft hit the water, the parachutes dragged it over and left it upside down, in what was termed Stable 2 position. As they were buffeted by a 10-foot (3.0 m) swell, Borman was sick, waiting for the three flotation balloons to right the spacecraft. About six minutes after splashdown, the command module was righted into a normal apex-up orientation by its inflatable bag uprighting system. The first frogman from aircraft carrier USS Yorktown arrived 43 minutes after splashdown. Forty-five minutes later, the crew was safe on the flight deck of the Yorktown.[86]
Legacy [ edit ]
Historical importance [ edit ]
Apollo 8 came at the end of 1968, a year that had seen much upheaval in the United States and most of the world.[89] Even though the year saw political assassinations, political unrest in the streets of Europe and America, and the Prague Spring, Time magazine chose the crew of Apollo 8 as its Men of the Year for 1968, recognizing them as the people who most influenced events in the preceding year.[89] They had been the first people ever to leave the gravitational influence of the Earth and orbit another celestial body.[90] They had survived a mission that even the crew themselves had rated as having only a fifty-fifty chance of fully succeeding. The effect of Apollo 8 was summed up in a telegram from a stranger, received by Borman after the mission, that stated simply, "Thank you Apollo 8. You saved 1968."
One of the most famous aspects of the flight was the Earthrise picture that the crew took as they came around for their fourth orbit of the Moon. This was the first time that humans had taken such a picture while actually behind the camera, and it has been credited as one of the inspirations of the first Earth Day in 1970.[93] It was selected as the first of Life magazine's 100 Photographs That Changed the World.
The Apollo 8 astronauts return to Houston after their mission
Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins said, "Eight's momentous historic significance was foremost"; while space historian Robert K. Poole saw Apollo 8 as the most historically significant of all the Apollo missions. The mission was the most widely covered by the media since the first American orbital flight, Mercury-Atlas 6 by John Glenn, in 1962. There were 1,200 journalists covering the mission, with the BBC's coverage broadcast in 54 countries in 15 different languages. The Soviet newspaper Pravda featured a quote from Boris Nikolaevich Petrov, Chairman of the Soviet Interkosmos program, who described the flight as an "outstanding achievement of American space sciences and technology".[96] It is estimated that a quarter of the people alive at the time saw—either live or delayed—the Christmas Eve transmission during the ninth orbit of the Moon. The Apollo 8 broadcasts won an Emmy Award, the highest honor given by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.[98]
Apollo 8 commemorative stamp
Madalyn Murray O'Hair, an atheist, later caused controversy by bringing a lawsuit against NASA over the reading from Genesis. O'Hair wanted the courts to ban American astronauts—who were all government employees—from public prayer in space. Though the case was rejected by |
a lot of data, which means we have to add in a high-speed data network and a new computer system to allow the information flow into the jet’s new displays,” Howard says. “The speed and agility of the F-16 is great, but in many ways it is about information going into the cockpit – so instead of the pilot managing displays they make tactical decisions.”
The F-16V upgrade also includes a new 6 x 8" centre pedestal display, and additional operating capabilities if required, such as auto ground collision avoidance, a joint helmet-mounted cueing system, Link 16 data link, Lockheed Sniper targeting pod and conformal fuel tanks which can allow the jet to fly for more than 900 miles. There is also the option to buy more sophisticated weaponry.
According to Howard, three customers have ordered more than 300 F-16s modified to the new standard, but he is reluctant to name them.
However, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) in September 2011 outlined a $5.3 billion deal for the upgrade of 145 F-16A/Bs for Taiwan. In July 2015 the Republic of Korea Air Force awarded Lockheed a $2.5 billion contract to upgrade 134 KF-16C/Ds, after dropping a similar deal with BAE Systems. The third customer is unknown.0 0 0 2 0
Introduction
Many years ago, I wrote a white paper on how to configure a VEEAM Off-host backup proxy server for backing up a Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V cluster that uses a hardware VSS provider with VEEAM Backup & Replication 7.0. It has aged well and you can still use it as a guide to set it all up. But in this article, I revisit the use of a hardware VSS provider dedicated specifically to some changes in Windows Server 2016 and its use by Veeam Backup & Replication v9.5 or later. The information here is valid for any good hardware VSS provider like the one StarWind Virtual SAN provides (see Do I need StarWind Hardware VSS provider?)
Major Changes in Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V Backup
This is actually a big subject. To fully appreciate the steps forward made by Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V Backup I encourage you to read two articles on the StarWind Software blog: Hyper-V backup challenges Windows Server 2016 needs to address and Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V Backup Rises to the challenges. I’m not going to repeat all that info here.
Hyper-V backup has seen major improvements in Windows Server 2016, especially around performance, scalability and reliability and scalability. One of the significant changes that helped in achieving that was the removal of the hard dependence on the Hyper-V host VSS provider. To be clear, it is no longer needed to backup Hyper-V guests at all.
This doesn’t mean however that it’s impossible now to leverage a hardware VSS provider with Windows Server 2016. If you have a storage array that has a supported hardware VSS provider you can use that to integrate the SAN snapshots into the backup software (or vice versa depending on your point of view) for various use cases.
StarWind Virtual SAN eliminates any need for physical shared storage just by mirroring internal flash and storage resources between hypervisor servers. Furthermore, the solution can be run on the off-the-shelf hardware. Such design allows StarWind Virtual SAN to not only achieve high performance and efficient hardware utilization but also reduce operational and capital expenses. Learn more about ➡ StarWind Virtual SAN.
So why would I still use an off-host proxy?
As we stated above that you don’t need to use the host VSS provider anymore and this has helped improve Hyper-V backups this leads to the question why you would still need or want to do this in this day and age? Especially in environments where you have 10Gbps or better RDMA capable networks and you can configure backups to be copied from the source to the target leveraging SMB Multichannel and SMB Direct and multichannel, this seems old-fashioned or in many cases with certain Hyper-V converged or hyper-converged solutions even impossible. Think Storage Spaces (Direct) for example.
Some (hyper-)converged solutions do have a hardware VSS provider. StarWind Virtual SAN is an excellent example of this. While it was primarily developed for internal use such as for LSFS based HA synchronization which leverages snapshots. You can however also leverage this hardware VSS provider with Veeam Backup & Replication if you wish to do so.
On the other hand, even today there is still a huge percentage of big and small SAN storage around or being actively deployed leveraging iSCSI and Fibre Channel. Sometimes this is because it’s known familiar technology, it works and serves the needs. Sometimes it’s because the use case and/or environment are not a good fit for hyper-converged. So, no, it’s not always because people are caveman era type engineers that will let you have their SAN when you pry it from their cold dead hands. But no matter what, in essence, you do not need to leverage a host (Windows native or hardware) VSS provider anymore even with those traditional SANs. So, let’s take a look why you might still do this.
An off-host backup proxy has following benefits:
It offloads the backup IO way from the production Hyper-V host. This relieves the IO on the CSV and the FC or iSCSI HBAs.
This might still help to avoid potential IO-related issues like timeout issues under heavy backup IO with CSVs or some of the bugs related to software snapshots of Hyper-V CSVs on Windows Failover Cluster nodes. Even if that’s is probably less so than in previous versions.
You offload the backup process from the Hyper-V nodes to a separate server. This preserves CPU cycles and network bandwidth associated with the backup process for virtualization workloads.
Depending on your particular setup you avoid copying data over the network if the backup repository storage is attached directly to the Off-Host Backup Proxy.
Does this mean you sacrifice the progress made in Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V backups? Do you lose the improvements in performance, scalability, and reliability? The answer to that is no. You can use hardware VSS providers and still enjoy many of the benefits we gained.
If you’ve read the above-mentioned articles Hyper-V backup challenges Windows Server 2016 needs to address and Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V Backup Rises to the challenges it will help to understand why.
Even with a hardware VSS provider the Hyper-V guest backup is now leveraging the Hyper-V recovery checkpoint and relies solely on the in guest VSS to create an application consistent state. This means even when leveraging the hardware VSS provider no interaction is needed with it to create that application consistent recovery checkpoint and the host VSS snapshot process doesn’t need to wait for all VMs to finish their part of the backup process. This translates into significant time savings and reduction in complexity. The time needed to make the hardware VSS snapshot is strongly reduced as it no longer starts with the first and last guest VM finishing it’s the vhdx creation and having to mount the vhdx into each guest for further consistency processing against that guest VSS snapshot. Actually, even a generation 1 VM with only IDE controllers and no ISCSI controller will backup fine now. That iSCSI controller had to be there on Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V guests to be able to mount and dismount the VHDX in line. That’s no longer the case (*).
(*) Note: The fact that you will not see a disk mount event with a duplicate disk ID warning and a disk unmount during backups of VMs on Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V host is valid when you use Veeam with the Replay Manager 7.8 hardware VSS provider. When back-ups are made of the VMs with the Replay Manager 7.8 Server software without Veeam you’ll still see those events. This seems to be a legacy artifact on Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V host for their backup software.
Typically, the system event log of a VM on a Windows Server 2016 host that’s being backed up with Veeam shows only informational events about the stopping and starting of the Hyper-V Volume Shadow Copy Requestor Service (i.e. the backup software), the Veeam service-related events around the VeeamVSSSupport service being installed and started (VeeamGuestHelpe.exe) some VSS snapshot related events.
That’s a big difference with how it used to look like this inside a VM on a Windows Server 2012 R2 host. There you would get a warning about duplicated disk ID’s and about the surprise removal of that disk during the mounting/unmounting of the VHDX to the guest on a vSCSI controller.
Now it can just create a “volume snapshot” using recovery checkpoints without all that mount/dismount overhead. On top of that, the reliability improvements carry over to the off-host backup proxy process of taking backups making the process more robust and allow for fewer moments for potential conflicts or problems when multiple VSS snapshots are being taken simultaneously or very close to each other. In this example, we even had the extra help from an updated Hardware VSS provider that has fixed a Veeam specific issue. Take look what all these improvements mean to the duration of creating a host VSS snapshot. It’s impressive.
In the above picture, you can see that the hardware VSS snapshot time is 21 seconds. That at least 10 times faster than what it used to be (3.5 to 4.5 minutes depending on what the SAN is under at that moment). I have seen it drop a low of 11 seconds and have never seen it go over 25. Actually, the import phase can now take longer than the snapshot phase.
Do note that this doesn’t mean you need or must use off-host proxy backups. There are still some VSS / LUN related drawbacks to this. But if your environment today can still benefit from them to reduce CPU cycles and reduce bandwidth on the Hyper-Host iSCSI or FC HBA’s and avoid possible network congestion you certainly can. You might end up as a very happy camper and have a better experience with faster, more reliable and more scalable solution when you do leverage Veeam off-host backup proxies. I know I am.
Conclusion
Leveraging off host proxy backups for Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V environments does still make sense in certain environments. We have shown that even as it relies on a host-based hardware VSS provider it actually still benefits from the improvements Hyper-V backups got in Windows Server 2016. That gives us better performance and reliability. Make no mistake, decoupling Hyper-V backups from host VSS snapshots is a very good thing. This does not, however, mean that a Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V aware (hardware) VSS provider cannot benefit from this as well. It will work faster, scale better and more reliable too. Examples of this a when leveraging transportable snapshots with off-host backup proxies and when it with certain types of backups that integrate with SAN storage snapshots. So, if you can benefit from using a hardware VSS providers, do so and don’t worry but be happy!
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5 out of 5, based on 1 review 5 out of 5, based on 1 reviewb4nny do a quick walkthrough of cp_antiquity on
I certainly don't expect these changes to suddenly make Antiquity a competitively viable map, but I do expect that they've improved the map. From small 'quality of life' changes to a significant new route being added into 2nd, this update should improve the gameplay in general. The changes from B15 to B16 can probably be best summed up as 'b4nny told me to do it'. In all seriousness, I'm very lucky to have high tier Team Fortress 2 competitive playerdo a quick walkthrough of cp_antiquity on his Twitch channel. You can check out his comments here. While it was a fairly casual review of the map, the insight proved to be incredibly valuable.I certainly don't expect these changes to suddenly make Antiquity a competitively viable map, but I do expect that they've improved the map. From small 'quality of life' changes to a significant new route being added into 2nd, this update should improve the gameplay in general.
B16 B15
LAST SPAWN What was probably the most glaring error of the map -- that one of the exits here allowed players to defend the point while in spawn -- was corrected by adding a minor foyer to the exit. There's no excuse for that mistake; it was just an oversight in my rush to get the map ready for the workshop. The new exit now forces defenders to move properly out of spawn before engaging attackers and no longer drops them directly onto the point. I left the stairs and part of the old platform in since it seemed like this might be an interesting sentry or spy decloak spot. The window there mitigates its use as a spot for attackers to ambush players leaving spawn. What was probably the most glaring error of the map -- that one of the exits here allowed players to defend the point while in spawn -- was corrected by adding a minor foyer to the exit. There's no excuse for that mistake; it was just an oversight in my rush to get the map ready for the workshop. The new exit now forces defenders to move properly out of spawn before engaging attackers and no longer drops them directly onto the point. I left the stairs and part of the old platform in since it seemed like this might be an interesting sentry or spy decloak spot. The window there mitigates its use as a spot for attackers to ambush players leaving spawn.
B16 B15
LOWER LOBBY The lobby between 2nd and last was opened up significantly. Gone is the plastic shack on the top walkway as well as a large portion of the wall connecting the lobby with the deadfall room. In this case, b4nny's suggestion was to remove that entire wall, but as I worked on this area, I noticed that doing that would allow players to sit on the top walkway and spam the doorway in the computer room at the other end of the deadfall area. This didn't seem desirable, so I removed only enough of the wall to allow more freedom for fights.
A few minor bits of detailing help sell the story behind the wall's removal and why there's such a stark aesthetic change between the areas. The lobby between 2nd and last was opened up significantly. Gone is the plastic shack on the top walkway as well as a large portion of the wall connecting the lobby with the deadfall room. In this case,'s suggestion was to remove that entire wall, but as I worked on this area, I noticed that doing that would allow players to sit on the top walkway and spam the doorway in the computer room at the other end of the deadfall area. This didn't seem desirable, so I removed only enough of the wall to allow more freedom for fights.A few minor bits of detailing help sell the story behind the wall's removal and why there's such a stark aesthetic change between the areas.
B16 B15
UPPER LOBBY In the upper area of the lobby, the route through the ruins was sealed up and the spytech/industrial style balcony was widened to consolidate the routes. Instead of providing vision into the old ruins route, the windows now expose an out-of-bounds area. This also serves the purpose of directing attention to the new location of the medium ammo pack, which was previously in one of the ruins rooms. In the upper area of the lobby, the route through the ruins was sealed up and the spytech/industrial style balcony was widened to consolidate the routes. Instead of providing vision into the old ruins route, the windows now expose an out-of-bounds area. This also serves the purpose of directing attention to the new location of the medium ammo pack, which was previously in one of the ruins rooms.
B16 B15
DEADFALL ROOM This is just a quick comparison shot to show how the removal of the wall between the lobby and the deadfall opens up vision on this side as well. The large lower entrance from 2nd is in full view, and the opening should also let a flanker peek and harass anyone standing on the upper balcony in the previous images.
As a sidenote, I think this change gives this spot the same feel as the corresponding area on the very old version of the map. This is just a quick comparison shot to show how the removal of the wall between the lobby and the deadfall opens up vision on this side as well. The large lower entrance from 2nd is in full view, and the opening should also let a flanker peek and harass anyone standing on the upper balcony in the previous images.As a sidenote, I think this change gives this spot the same feel as the corresponding area on the very old version of the map.
B16 B15
SECOND POINT When I created the staircase exit in this area, I felt competitive players would dislike it, even with the liberal use of playerclip and blockbullet tools. To my surprise, b4nny mentioned that it looked like an interesting area to fight on, and suggested it be expanded. The distance now makes it possible for Winger-equipped scouts to jump from the stair platforms to second point, though not stock scouts.
Another suggestion was to pull the medium pickups out of the stone shack and put them in the open for the teams to fight over. This should also work out better for rollouts, as now soldiers or demos do not have to sidetrack to grab health before heading to mid. When I created the staircase exit in this area, I felt competitive players would dislike it, even with the liberal use of playerclip and blockbullet tools. To my surprise,mentioned that it looked like an interesting area to fight on, and suggested it be expanded. The distance now makes it possible for Winger-equipped scouts to jump from the stair platforms to second point, though not stock scouts.Another suggestion was to pull the medium pickups out of the stone shack and put them in the open for the teams to fight over. This should also work out better for rollouts, as now soldiers or demos do not have to sidetrack to grab health before heading to mid.
B16 B15
GARDEN FLANK EXIT One of the things b4nny mentioned was how easy it was for defenders on the second point to watch all three entrances from mid. He didn't have a specific suggestion for addressing it, but I agreed wholeheartedly that it was a problem. After toying with various ideas and looking at other maps, I decided to create an additional route from the garden area. Normally, having three entrances into an area is a golden rule of mapping for TF2, but I feel that the height advantage defenders have here warrants the extra entrance.
Additionally, this small area in front of the first forward spawn felt underused. Now it can potentially be a more viable battleground, while also giving forward spawns a more direct route to mid. One of the thingsmentioned was how easy it was for defenders on the second point to watch all three entrances from mid. He didn't have a specific suggestion for addressing it, but I agreed wholeheartedly that it was a problem. After toying with various ideas and looking at other maps, I decided to create an additional route from the garden area. Normally, having three entrances into an area is a golden rule of mapping for TF2, but I feel that the height advantage defenders have here warrants the extra entrance.Additionally, this small area in front of the first forward spawn felt underused. Now it can potentially be a more viable battleground, while also giving forward spawns a more direct route to mid.
B16 B15
GARDEN FLANK ROUTE The other end of the new garden flank. I carefully placed this further back so that players coming from the second point area through the stone doorway would not have the route in their direct vision, and thus would be less likely to go down it and end up back at the second point.
One notable potential issue with this spot is that a sniper sitting at the very back has a pretty long sightline to one of the platforms at mid. I came very close to blocking this sightline off, but didn't for two reasons: 1) I wanted to be sure that this route could be navigated as smoothly and easily as possible, so I didn't want any more obstacles, and 2) an enemy team could very simply enter mid, capture the point, AND exit into second without any of them ever coming into the sniper sightline. For those reasons, the sightline will stay for now, and I'll hold some solutions in reserve in case it becomes a problem. The other end of the new garden flank. I carefully placed this further back so that players coming from the second point area through the stone doorway would not have the route in their direct vision, and thus would be less likely to go down it and end up back at the second point.One notable potential issue with this spot is that a sniper sitting at the very back has a pretty long sightline to one of the platforms at mid. I came very close to blocking this sightline off, but didn't for two reasons: 1) I wanted to be sure that this route could be navigated as smoothly and easily as possible, so I didn't want any more obstacles, and 2) an enemy team could very simply enter mid, capture the point, AND exit into second without any of them ever coming into the sniper sightline. For those reasons, the sightline will stay for now, and I'll hold some solutions in reserve in case it becomes a problem.
B16 B15
CHOKE FROM MID An additional entrance was added to this location, and the structure was simplified. While there was meant to be a small trade-off between being the most direct route from mid to the second point and being easy to spam, it proved too easy to lock this location down that way and overall it just felt very uncomfortable to traverse. Besides the extra opening, a displacement was added inside to help ease movement up and down the small stairs, and torches were added to make it more noticeable.
Since mid has been compacted, the health and ammo located near the entrance were moved so that they weren't directly in the side path. An additional entrance was added to this location, and the structure was simplified. While there was meant to be a small trade-off between being the most direct route from mid to the second point and being easy to spam, it proved too easy to lock this location down that way and overall it just felt very uncomfortable to traverse. Besides the extra opening, a displacement was added inside to help ease movement up and down the small stairs, and torches were added to make it more noticeable.Since mid has been compacted, the health and ammo located near the entrance were moved so that they weren't directly in the side path.
B16 B15
MID SHORTENED Overall, the mid point was shortened by 128 hammers units on both sides, for a total of 256 units. This sounds massive, but mid still feels quite roomy and easy to navigate. You can spot which areas of the wall were truncated to make this possible. The false window to the left of the tree was removed, and the area below was tightened up.
Damage caused by the growth of the tree was converted from brushwork into a model. While this helped reduce some resources and also made condensing mid easier, you can notice a slight lighting difference between the model and the surrounding brushwork. I'm not sure if anyone would notice it if I'd not pointed it out just now!
Aesthetically, you can also easily notice where I fixed the normal maps on the stone wall texture. In B15, they were inverted, making the stones very odd-looking. Overall, the mid point was shortened by 128 hammers units on both sides, for a total of 256 units. This sounds massive, but mid still feels quite roomy and easy to navigate. You can spot which areas of the wall were truncated to make this possible. The false window to the left of the tree was removed, and the area below was tightened up.Damage caused by the growth of the tree was converted from brushwork into a model. While this helped reduce some resources and also made condensing mid easier, you can notice a slight lighting difference between the model and the surrounding brushwork. I'm not sure if anyone would notice it if I'd not pointed it out just now!Aesthetically, you can also easily notice where I fixed the normal maps on the stone wall texture. In B15, they were inverted, making the stones very odd-looking.
B16 B15
INTERIOR STAIRS The stairs inside the buildings surrounding mid were tightened up considerably. Now the lower route goes directly under the upper route, rather than off to one side and back in again. A drop down was added near the exit to the point, allowing soldiers in particular to quickly access the upper floor. The stairs inside the buildings surrounding mid were tightened up considerably. Now the lower route goes directly under the upper route, rather than off to one side and back in again. A drop down was added near the exit to the point, allowing soldiers in particular to quickly access the upper floor.
B16 B15
INTERIOR DROPDOWN At the other end of the hall from the stairs is the bottom of the dropdown. In the previous version, this wasn't just an alcove but was the entrance to the hall to the upper floor, and a small health pack and medium ammo pack were awkwardly placed at the ends. With the new version, these pickups were moved into the alcove as if it were a dedicated area, and the hallway in front leads directly to the stairs. At the other end of the hall from the stairs is the bottom of the dropdown. In the previous version, this wasn't just an alcove but was the entrance to the hall to the upper floor, and a small health pack and medium ammo pack were awkwardly placed at the ends. With the new version, these pickups were moved into the alcove as if it were a dedicated area, and the hallway in front leads directly to the stairs.
B16 B15WHEN Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, made her case in August that the country could manage its record inflow of refugees, she added an exhortation. “German thoroughness is super,” she said, “but now German flexibility is needed.” A snigger went through the room; Germans rarely consider flexibility a national virtue. Yet they are doing admirably.
Between 800,000 and 1.5m refugees will arrive in Germany this year, straining every part of Germany’s usually orderly administration. The problems begin in the processing centres where asylum seekers are registered. Many are overwhelmed, leaving some refugees unrecorded and raising fears that terrorists may enter. The federal government wants to hire thousands of staff, but training them takes time.
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The next challenge is housing. “Terrible,” is how Michaela Vogelreuther describes the situation in the Bavarian city of Fürth, where she is in charge of accommodating refugees. When its reception centre filled up, she added satellite facilities in surrounding towns and requisitioned a gymnasium. Schoolchildren must now do without physical education. Ms Vogelreuther also lacks beds, showers and lavatories. Security is understaffed; fights among refugees are frequent, often between different religious or ethnic groups.
Refugee children must attend school. One teachers’ association reckons an additional 25,000 teachers are needed. Some schools simply place the refugees, most of whom speak no German, in regular classes. In elementary school this approach may be better than separate “welcome classes”, says Ludger Wössmann at the Ifo Institute, a think-tank; children pick up languages quickly. But in large numbers, refugees can lower the academic level for German children. “Welcome classes”, by contrast, may be necessary for older children, but can keep them from integrating. Eyüp Yildiz, the deputy mayor of Dinslaken in North-Rhine Westphalia, worries that segregated classes will leave refugees unemployable and susceptible to extremism.
Refugees of university age face different problems. They are entitled to study just as Germans are, but in practice they lack school records and language skills. This gave Markus Kressler, a psychology student in Berlin, the idea to found Kiron University, a transitional academy where refugees can take online courses before being placed in a regular university. Donors and sponsors cover the fees (€1,200 per student). About 150 have enrolled, and there is no upper limit, Mr Kressler says.
For educated refugees, the prospects are good. After three months in the country they gain permission to work. For the first 15 months they must prove that no unemployed EU citizen wants their job, but this is usually feasible: German industries face major labour shortages. Such young, skilled newcomers represent an antidote to Germany’s shrinking population.
Europe's safe lists: Which countries does Europe consider safe for migrants to return to?
Integrating unskilled refugees is harder. The World Bank estimates the illiteracy rate among those aged 14-24 at 4% for Syrians, 18% for Iraqis and 53% for Afghans. Germany’s new minimum wage of €8.50 does not help. Asylum applicants who fail to get a job end up on welfare. The latest figures from the federal labour agency show that the number of refugees in work was up by 8% year-on-year in July, but the number of those on the dole was up 23%. Among Syrians, who often cannot read Latin script, the figures are even higher.
Most economists think the economic effects of the refugee crisis are positive. Germany’s additional spending to house and feed the refugees—estimated at €4 billion this year and €10 billion next—acts like a stimulus programme. Commerzbank, Germany’s second-largest bank, reckons that this will lift German growth from 1.7% to 1.9% in 2016. Germany’s local, state and federal governments will still have a budget surplus of €23 billion this year and €13 billion in 2016, according to an estimate by four leading German think-tanks.
In its logistical response, Germany is thus proving itself more flexible than Germans could have hoped. Whether the country can avoid long-term cultural alienation is harder to measure.TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox.
Given the public panic at the Pirates losing twice to the lowly Cubs, then coming home and falling to the high-flying A’s for the first three-game losing streak since … what, Grapefruit ball? … it surely was safe to project that a fourth consecutive loss on this Tuesday night at PNC Park would have summoned no less than the Four Horsemen of the Epic Collapse.
So, Oakland 2, Pittsburgh 1?
Batten down the hatches!
Trade Brandon Inge to the Cardinals!
Trade him to the Reds, too!
Fire Lamont!
Ask Teke!
Do something!
Fair enough on the Inge thing, actually. He’s hitting his weight at.184, punctuated by 3-for-19 pinch-hitting. And if his primary role on the roster is clubhouse chemist, that’s as expendable as his production. As attested by a few players themselves in this space a week ago, this tight-knit group has lab coats to spare.
What it needs are more bats, including what’s already here.
In that same piece a week ago, I advised caution with any major trade that risks blowing up whatever cosmos aligned to get this team this far, while also expressing confidence in the pitching and the everyday eight. I stand by that, as well as the lingering asterisk attached to right field.
But no bench trade is ever a major trade, and that’s now mandatory territory. Between Inge, Travis Snider, Gaby Sanchez, Garrett Jones and Michael McKenry, the Pirates are.148 as pinch-hitters, with one home run and 11 RBI.
That’s not just upgradable.
That’s unconscionable.
And to his credit, Clint Hurdle acknowledged as much when pressed Tuesday, saying management is having “conversations about the best direction for the club.”
Keep talking, gentlemen.
In the seventh inning, Hurdle sent Sanchez up as a pinch-hitter with a man on second. One out, one run down.
Whiff.
We’ve seen it all year and, fair or not, tight games are what the Pirates play, and all it takes is a pinch-hit to win.
It also takes, especially with this franchise’s recent history, some real resolve.
Let’s not kid anyone: The sky isn’t falling — not even during 90-minute rain delays that have no rain! — but this is the first real adversity the 2013 edition has faced. Sure, there was the 1-5 start and another identical stretch in June, but that was before soaring to the best record in the majors, before expectations soared concurrently.
It’s important — imperative, actually — to hold it together.
“We’re not changing lanes,” Hurdle fairly beamed moments after this loss. “We’re staying the course.”
I think they will.
Call me crazy after seeing this team just drop series to the Phillies and Cubs and now the A’s, but it’s still playing quite well per its strengths — pitching and defense — and, to be blunt, several hitters are performing below par. Not just in right field, either.
There’s more to be had from Neil Walker than.244 and two stints on the disabled list.
There’s even more from Andrew McCutchen and Starling Marte, who have been good but can be great.
And what of Jones, who is capable of huge tears, but who has dragged through two months at.239 with little pop?
He assured after an 0 for 2 in this one he’s “getting there,” and I’m prone to believe him.
All can and should do more.
If they don’t, then revisit.
Here’s something else: It’s wholly possible that this little slide will be good thing.
No, think about it: If the Pirates don’t ever struggle, or even if their struggles are delayed beyond the July 31 trade deadline, a lot of warts can stay hidden until it’s too late. Better to start fretting over real needs right now.
Coming out of the All-Star break, the Pirates have a nine-game road trip that includes the Reds and Nationals, then six each against the Cardinals and Rockies in a 15-game span.
That’s a lot of hard ball.
But that’s also how it goes. It’s just the natural ebb and flow of baseball that the Pirates had somehow — unnaturally — sailed past until now.
Healthiest reaction of all came from the precocious Marte: “Everything is good. Tomorrow, you’ll see.”
Dejan Kovacevic is a sports columnist for Trib Total Media. Reach him at dkovacevic@tribweb.com or via Twitter @Dejan_Kovacevic.
Paul Schofield is a Tribune-Review sports reporter. You can contact Paul by email at pschofield@tribweb.com or via Twitter.This Ducati Monster S4R build – aka Bastardo – comes to us via Minsk, Belarus from Yuri Shif Custom shop. Yuri Shif Custom is a well-known bike building shop, for their rather eccentric and out of this world builds. They’ve been crafting beautiful custom motorcycles out of their Shif Custom workshop since way back in 2006. Although the majority of the custom motorcycles they piece together are Choppers, this Ducati Monster S4R has sure got my attention. Some of you may be familiar with their customs from the Russian and European magazines and events. They’ve won numerous awards for their builds in Russia and throughout Europe, from “Best in Show” to “Best Engineering” to “Best Metric” and many more. You can honestly say that Yuri Shif Custom has placed Minsk on the map of custom builders in a very short time and with loads of uniquely amazing builds. Now Belarus is also known for beautiful custom builds not just beautiful supermodels.
After a short Q&A with Anastasia aka Stiusha – the PR Director and beloved muse of Yuri Shif – I learned that with the exception of the frame, engine, suspension and wheels, the accessories adorning this bike were custom-built in-house by Shif Custom. According to Anastasia the build took about 12 months to complete and many man hours. The trellis frame, the swing arm, rear spring and triple clamps were powder coated red and they stand out just enough to bring your attention to the rest of the build. The motor cases were painted white to keep in theme with the white powder coated wheels and front fork. Yuri opted for an STM Evoluzione EVR slipper clutch unit, he then had his team CAD design and CNC fabricate the billet clutch cover and timing belt covers to keep in tone with the mechanical-naked look of the build. The team at Shif Custom was also responsible for the 2-into-1 exhaust system that finishes with a carefully placed muffler just below the swing arm.
At the front, the controls have been extremely de-cluttered and minimalized. The custom-made handle bars have been powder coated white and the controls have been reduced to two buttons on each side of the bars. The choke has been relocated to the left side of the bike, just below the tank. The instruments received a touch of red paint around the bezel of the speedometer and RPM clocks. Shif Custom designed and fabricated one-off billet bar-end mirrors, grips and fluids containers, this being the only choice for this build. The monster headlight is beautifully wrapped in an aluminum hand-shaped fairing that brings even more attention to the detail of this build. The front and rear mud guards are also Shif Custom made from aluminum. The Shif Custom aluminum tank fits very well with the overall theme of the bike and so does the one of a kind Shif Custom split seat. The tank received an aluminum gas cap and center wrap that also has the role of keeping the tank on the frame.
The one-off split seat has been dressed in black and white leather with red piping. Just by glancing at the details on the stitching you can tell the attention to detail was a key component in this build. The rear subframe was also built in-house by Shif Custom. The rear sets are billet Shif Custom rather simple units that do the job very well. Overall this is a very clean build with great attention to small details. It is definitely a head turner. Check out the gallery for the rest of the beautiful pictures taken by Eugene Bobrikov – photographer for MOTO magazine, Russia’s no.1 motorcycle magazine.
List of Modifications:
Ducati Monster S4R
STM Evoluzione EVR slipper clutch
Shif Custom clutch cover
Shif Custom timing belt covers
Shif Custom 2-into-1 exhaust system and muffler
Shif Custom front fairing
Shif |
is my experience that the large world powers typically take actions to affect world football. World football is an enormous international business.
That is no longer my concern. My sole focus at this stage of my life is on the people of Trinidad and Tobago."
Jack Warner insists he is innocent of the charges
13.04
All 14 individuals arrested face up to 20 years in prison if found guilty. Anointed successor to Sepp Blatter, Jeffrey Webb is the most high-profile name on the list. Who are the rest and what do they do? Telegraph Sport investigates.
12.39
As per the US Department of Justice's report, a search warrant has been issued for CONCACAF headquarters on Miami Beach. And the Federal agents are not wasting any time...
#BREAKING: Federal agents are executing a search warrant at CONCACAF soccer organization headquarters on Miami Beach. pic.twitter.com/bRsrRnZvIQ — WSVN-TV (@wsvn) May 27, 2015
12.33
So much, then, for Sepp Blatter's blather about transparency, writes our Chief Sports Feature Writer Oliver Brown...
The only glimpse one could catch of Jeffrey Webb, his anointed successor as president but now one of several men engulfed by charges of racketeering and wire fraud, was through the disguise of some luxury laundry.
Read his full comment on how Fifa officials become acquainted with accountability at very place they have felt most indulged.
12.20
BREAKING: Swiss Federal Office of Justice has blocked bank accounts relating to the Fifa investigation at banks in Switzerland.
"Further to three US requests for legal assistance, the FOJ has also ordered the blocking of accounts at several banks in Switzerland through which bribes are claimed to have flowed as well as the seizure of related bank documents," the office said.
The FOJ said Eugenio Figueredo has been arrested on request from the US with the following seven men: Eduardo Li, Jose Maria Marin, Julio Rocha, Costas Takkas, Jeffrey Webb, and Rafael Esquivel in detention pending extradition.
Wanted for questioning by the Swiss attorney general are the 10 Fifa ExCo members from 2010 still in place apart from Blatter and Platini. — Ben Rumsby (@ben_rumsby) May 27, 2015
12.06
Right. It's passed midday, it's time to come up for air and actually recap on what has been going on this morning and how we've got to this very sorry day for football (but we say that every time a fresh scandal comes out). Well we've kindly put together a very detailed and fancy timeline to bring you up to speed. Watch this space for further developments. Because this one is going to run and run...
Follow how events unfolded this morning following hotel raids in ZurichSource: Xinhua| 2017-09-12 19:57:23|Editor: An
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Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic (3rd L) meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping's special envoy Meng Jianzhu (2nd R), who is also member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and head of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the CPC Central Committee, in Belgrade, Serbia, Sept. 12, 2017. (Xinhua/Wang Huijuan)
BELGRADE, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- China and Serbia agreed here on Tuesday to deepen pragmatic cooperation in all fields during a meeting between Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Meng Jianzhu, special envoy of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Meng, member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and head of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the CPC Central Committee, recalled the decision made by the two presidents to establish comprehensive strategic partnership and the agreement reached by the two leaders on promotion of mutually beneficial cooperation, which charted the course for bilateral relations.
Meng said that China, who always regards bilateral relations from a strategic and long-term view, is willing to keep high-level communication and personnel exchanges with Serbia, to promote the connection between China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and Reindustrialization strategy of Serbia, to support and encourage Chinese enterprises to invest in Serbia, so as to deepen pragmatic cooperation in all fields and foster a community of shared future with Serbia.
Meng also stressed that cooperation on law enforcement security is an important part of comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries. To make it a new highlight in bilateral relations, China is willing to, based on mutual beneficial and win-win principles, strengthen cooperation on such key areas as counter-terrorism, cyber security and combating transnational crimes.
Vucic thanked China for long-term help and support. He said that Serbia, as China's reliable friend and partner, stands ready to keep high-level communication, to promote construction of big projects. He also expressed hopes that Chinese enterprises could come to invest in automobile manufacture, food processing, and tourism industry in Serbia, thus achieve new development on pragmatic cooperation.
Meng arrived in Serbia on Sunday evening, during the visit he also met with Serbian former president Tomislav Nikolic and Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic.Buffy The Vampire Slayer had great storylines, great characters, and great dialogue. It did not have a great sense of fashion. Indeed, the clothes on Buffy were of an era, and even in the context of the late-90s and early-2000s they were pretty awful. So much so that there’s an entire Twitter account devoted to Bad Buffy Outfits—and, boy, are there some stinkers. So consider us rendered skeptical of some of the merchandise featured in Hot Topic’s upcoming line in honor of the show’s 20th Anniversary that Yahoo! debuted today. A recreation of this hideous Willow sweater from season three’s “Doppelgangland?” No thanks.
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We’ll even pass on a version of this oversized red coat that Buffy donned in that season’s finale, though, fine, a Faith jacket would be pretty cool.
The Hot Topic offerings are part of a load from various retailers sanctioned by 20th Century Fox Consumer Products. We’re more partial to Ripple Junction’s Sunnydale High T-shirts and Surreal Entertainment’s stake-themed mugs. See more over at Yahoo!Izvor: N1
Dvadeset i sedam osoba na nivou Bosne i Hercegovine ima službenu pratnju, a cijeloj zemlji broj je još veći. Pet ih je odbilo to pravo. Indikativno - podatak o troškovima fizičke i tehničke zaštite nadležni nam nisu mogli saopštiti.
Beriz Belkić dugogodišnji je bh. političar. Jedan od rijetkih koji tokom obavljanja važnih funkcija uz sebe nije želio imati službene pratioce.
"Ja sam u Predsjedništvu BiH zajedno sa pokojnim Jozom Križanovićem i gospodinom Radišićem vrlo malo to koristio iako su stalni pritisci bili da se to mora, da je takva situacija, čak i kućica pred zgradom. Međutim ja to nisam koristio. Odbio sam, ali nisam ništa morao da pišem", otkrio je Belkić.
Službenu pratnju odbijao je i dok je bio u rukovodstvu Predstavničkog doma Paralmentarne skupštine.
"Meni je to smetalo. Poštujem ljude koji to rade, ali ja nisam mogao to da radim. Prvo sam smatrao da mi to ne treba – da živim u svom gradu, u svojoj zemlji i bilo bi me i stid pomalo i ljudi, da ide za mnom nekih dvoje-troje ljudi kroz grad. Ni govora na godišnje odmore. Ja jednostavno nisam želio svoj privatni život i svoje navike da mijenjam", objanio je on.
Belkićev kolega iz parlamentarnih klupa Halid Genjac, takođe je odbijao pratnju.
"Kad pogledate kretanje funkcionera po Bosni i tu masu crnih automobila u pratnji i pratilaca i naravno prvi utisak je da je to pretjerano. Kada sam bio predsjedavajući Predstavničkog doma PS BiH dva mandata 1996. i 1998. imao sam mogućnost da biram i ja sam odabrao da mi nije potrebna pratnja. Nisam ni u jednom ni u drugom mandatu imao pratioca", kazao je Halid Genjac, delegat u Domu naroda PS BiH.
No, većina zvaničnika koristi i ovo i svako drugo pravo, dok paralelno, građani godinama čekaju provođenje važnih odluka Ustavnog suda BiH ili donošenje bitnih zakona.
Trenutno, 27 osoba na nivou Bosne i Hercegovine imaju službenu pratnju. Fizičku i tehničku zaštitu 24 sata na dan. To je odbilo pet osoba koje na to imaju pravo. No, podatak o njihovim imenima u nadležnoj Direkciji za kooordinaciju policijskih tijela u BiH je tajan. I ne samo to. Poražavajuća je informacija da nije moguće utvrditi visinu troškova službene pratnje zbog toga što zavisi od obima i vrste zaštite, kako nam je saopšteno.
00:00 Izvor: N1
"Mislim da u ovakvim slučajevima možemo govoriti o nepostojanju moralne, političke, ljudske i profesionalne odgovornosti. I možemo govoriti o jednoj odrođenosti od naroda – ljudi koji žive u ovoj zemlji. Ne bih htjela da prozivam gospodina Mladena Ivanića jer se ni po čemu ne razlikuje od drugih, ali je plastičan primjer – kada ga pitate da li mu zaista treba automobil koji košta 200.000 KM on kaže ne odlučujem ja o tome, o tome odlučuju stručne službe Predsjedništva BiH", ističe novinarka Rubina Čengić.
Prema Uputstvu iz 2005., npr., članovi Predsjedništva BiH imaju po četiri policijska službenika. Zaštitna formacija određuje se na osnovu tri modela. Uobičajeno su u pratnji tri vozila. Mogu biti i četiri, a u slučaju saznanja o konkretnom ugrožavanju bezbjednosti vrlo važne ličnosti u pratnji može biti, čak, devet vozila.
N1 pratite putem aplikacija za Android | iPhone/iPad i društvenih mreža Twitter | Facebook.I think it is no secret that many consider Power Play as something that needs to be improved on. Many have different concerns and opinions. I myself have thought a lot about the question how I would like to see Power Play to be improved and hope this post will lead to some positive discussions. Before I start I would like to mention that Power Play has enriched ED a lot and I hope we can help making it even better. So here we go, my opinion on Power PlayLets start with something "simple" the Ranking inside a Power. To reach Rank 5 seems almost impossible and keeping this Rank required a lot of grinding. Smaller Powers wish for more Players reaching Rank 5, getting a good pay and be able to buy bigger ships to support their Power. Larger Powers may not have the same problem, but I do think reaching Rank 5, if you want to keep having fun and the opportunity to have a real life while also enjoying ED is almost impossible. I myself reached Rank 5 twice and must admit that I felt exhausted. When I finally reached the desired Rank 5 I thought it would be "easier" to keep. But both times RL was keeping me from staying in Rank 5 and another grind was in order to reach that again. Do I think Rank 5 should be reachable more easily? No I don't! But I think there should be a better system in place to keep that Rank. If I am pledged to a Power for a long time it would in my opinion make sense if I would need to grind less to keep my Rank. If you stay longer with a Power you will need less Merits, if you just joined you will have to do more. Make sense to me.In my opinion a player need to be pledged with a Power for some time before getting to vote on possible expansions. Giving a player more nomination points for each cycle pledged with that power makes in my opinion more sense than to base those nomination points on the Rank. Since it is so important to prepare the correct system for a Power I also would suggest that players pledged with a Power get better conditions to prepare a system when allied with a Power for a long time.Depending on the Power you have pledged to you will have different ways to earn Merits. You can transport things or fight. As far as I know fighting has two different Merit payouts. If you go into an expansion you will get 10 Merits for each kill. Undermining as an Archon CMDR will earn you 30 merits per kill. Transporting things is restricted based on your Rank and every 30 minutes you will be able to get more units. Of course you can also pay credits to reset the timer. Unfortunately the credits you earn when delivering the goods is not as much as it will cost you to reset the timer. Another problem is that fighting will earn you more Merits in the same amount of time than delivering goods. What I would like to see is a better payout for those who choose to deliver goods. This would help hauler CMDRs to earn money while helping their faction. Especially new players could earn money more easily and become involved with a Power early in their careers.When talking about earning Merits we see many talking about Open vs Solo players. How unfair it is that the payout is the same. I agree and would like to see those rewarded who are bold enough playing in open. There are different options possible. You could either increase the Merits that can be earned or give them more credits for each merit earned in open.Players defecting their preferred Power to another one and started sabotaging them. I personally think this can be an interesting way to play the game, but is at the moment not well balanced. Having the opportunity to become a "spy" should be a valid "career" option if the Power Play system would get some changes. But as it stands right now you can defect, do damage and than go back to your previous power. In my opinion there should be some sort of probation time before a player can do such things. As mentioned in "Power Play - System Nomination" if a player is pledged with a Power for a longer period of time this player will gain more trust and can do more stuff. This would open up a whole new dynamic, because a Player who actually want to hurt a Power must stay with a Power long enough to do damage or has to do a lot of grinding before any damage can be done.Balancing a game isn't easy and I do understand that very well. I think FDev are doing a great job and created a fantastic game. I also appreciate how much they listen to the community and hope many players will agree. Making changes will take time and I hope my post today will at least have some points worse considering.Thursday, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released The National Broadband map, a staggeringly powerful free tool that gives anyone access to census-level data about broadband connectivity in the United States.
The map, which cost roughly $200 million to build, includes data from more than 25 million records, showing what types of broadband are available in all of the 50 U.S. states (FTTH, Docsis 3.0, Cable, DSL, Mobile, etc.), which companies provide service (and thusly where regional monopolies exist,) and the maximum advertised speeds. Users can then filter data by region, state, city, county, district, block, or even street address, or by regional and household demographic information. This data can then be plugged into the map's "analysis" feature, and compared with data from other areas.
Planning to move? You can input your address and compare it with other addresses to see how they stack up. With the open APIs, you can even build smartphone apps that do this for you.
Broadbandmap.gov hosts the map for standard consumer viewing, but it is also available as a downloadable package, and through open APIs for developers who want to build applications utilizing this precious data. All of the maps and site data were built by IT firm CompuTech with open source software like OpenGeo and WordPress, and map data is scheduled to be updated twice annually to keep figures current as the administration moves forward
with the National Broadband Plan.
"This cutting-edge tool will continue to evolve with the help of new data and user feedback," said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski in a prepared statement on Thursday. "It will provide consumers, companies and policymakers with a wealth of information about broadband availability, speeds, competition and technology, and help Americans make better informed choices about their broadband services."
The map is expected to go live on Thursday afternoon.80 top CEOs tell Obama, Romney to slash social spending
By David Walsh
26 October 2012
The chief executives of 80 large US corporations have issued a “Deficit Manifesto,” calling on the next president to “fix America’s debt” by making substantial “changes in the federal budget.” The statement was published by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.
Behind the innocuous phrases is the demand by some of the richest individuals in America for the slashing of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and a general offensive against the working class.
The CEOs’ letter, signed by a “Who’s who” of CEOs at giant US banks, financial firms and industrial corporations, calls on politicians to acknowledge “that our growing debt is a serious threat to the economic well-being and security of the United States.” It calls for Washington to adopt “an effective plan [to] stabilize the debt as a share of the economy, and put it on a downward path.”
The plan should be enacted now, “but implemented gradually to protect the fragile economic recovery and to give Americans time to prepare for the changes in the federal budget.” In other words, their proposals would worsen life for wide layers of the population, who need to “prepare” themselves for a drastic decline in their conditions.
Making no reference to the trillions of dollars made available to the banks during the financial bailout nor the trillions more that go toward imperialist war and the global defense of their economic interests, the company heads insist that the target of a plan to “fix America’s debt” should concentrate on the programs that assist tens of millions of working people, the poor and retirees.
They argue that a plan must “Reform Medicare and Medicaid, improve efficiency in the overall health care system and limit future cost growth” and “Strengthen Social Security, so that it is solvent and will be there for future beneficiaries.” These are code words for gutting these programs, which the wealthy consider an intolerable drain on resources.
The CEO statement also calls for “comprehensive and pro-growth tax reform, which broadens the base, lowers rates, raises revenues and reduces the deficit.” Felix Salmon of Reuters comments, “You can’t have lower rates and higher revenues—not without eviscerating pretty much all of the tax deductions which much of the middle class has learned to rely upon. Mortgage-interest tax relief, the charitable deduction, even the deduction for state and local taxes: pretty much all of them would have to go.”
Salmon comments sardonically that “the letter basically just says ‘please cut our taxes, raise taxes on everybody else, and cut the benefits they get from Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, which are programs we individually don’t rely upon.’”
The statement concludes by calling on Washington to implement the recommendations of the 2010 bipartisan Bowles-Simpson Commission.
Those included some $4 trillion in budget savings to be achieved almost entirely at the expense of the working population: new taxes on consumption and employee health care benefits and cuts to the federal old-age insurance programs, Social Security and Medicare, and to the jobs and pay of government workers. At the same time, Bowles-Simpson called for large tax cuts for the rich and corporations.
In fact, the Wall Street Journal points out that the CEO manifesto “was organized by the Fix the Debt campaign, a bipartisan effort largely inspired by Republican Alan Simpson and Democrat Erskine Bowles, who chaired a 2010 deficit panel appointed by President Obama and have been crisscrossing the country sounding fiscal alarms.”
The new “manifesto” comes on top of a letter issued last week by 15 CEOs of banks, brokerages and insurance companies calling for the federal budget to be reduced and warning that failure to take action by the end of the year could result in renewed financial crisis and economic slump. Among its signatories were Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase; Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs; Michael Corbat, CEO of Citibank; John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo; and Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America. (See “Wall Street issues its orders to Obama, Romney”)
Dimon, Blankfein and Moynihan also attached their names to this week’s open letter. Among its other signers were the CEOs of Alcoa, AT&T, Boeing, Caterpillar, Delta Airlines, Dow Chemical, GE, Merck, Microsoft, Time Warner, UPS, Verizon, etc. Financiers, speculators and asset managers are also on the list, including Leon Black of Apollo Global Management, Larry Fink of BlackRock (with $3.3 trillion in assets under management, the world’s largest such firm), Martin L. Flanagan of Invesco and Thomas M. Joyce of Knight Capital Group.
It seems probable that every one of the 80 on the list is a multi-millionaire, simply on the basis of his or her annual compensation. A little investigation reveals that the following signatories did well for themselves last year: David Cote of Honeywell took in $56 million in total compensation (fifth-highest paid executive in the US), Dimon of JPMorgan Chase earned $42 million, Paul Jacobs of Qualcomm made $36 million, Randall Stephenson of AT&T, $26 million, Alexander Cutler of Eaton Corp., $26 million also, BlackRock’s Fink, $23 million, Jeffrey Immelt of GE, $21 million, Goldman Sachs’ Blankfein, $21 million as well, and Glenn A Britt of Time Warner, $17 million.
How many billionaires are there among the “Deficit Manifesto” signers? Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, worth $16 billion and the 19th richest person in America, according to Forbes, is one. Fellow billionaires Leon Black, Andrew and James Tisch of Loews Corporation, Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management and Steven Roth of Vornado Realty are also on the list.
Eighty corporate-financial thieves, who between them are largely to blame for the financial disaster of 2008, who are collectively responsible for the destruction for countless jobs and entire communities, publicly inform the political powers that be what the policies of the next government—theoretically still elected by the populace—are to be.
And, of course, the response of the Obama and Romney camps to the CEO letter was sympathetic and even enthusiastically supportive. The Journal cites the comment of Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt: “There’s a strong and growing consensus that the only way to reduce the deficit while also growing the economy is through a balanced approach that includes both tough spending cuts and increased revenue.”
Romney campaign spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg told the newspaper, “As president, [Romney] will bring his record of bipartisan success to Washington and put us on a path to achieve more than the Simpson-Bowles commission ever proposed—balancing the budget within the next 10 years.”Doc Brawler Profile Joined November 2011 United States 260 Posts Last Edited: 2012-12-30 12:40:44 #1
This post is meant to start a new positive discussion on the status of mech vs toss HOTS style! nonbelievers there is another thread for you called "mech tvp still not viable" SO please only comment if you want to help players mech and or are looking for help on how to do it!
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=375338
This started as a response to that post btw...
First off, I truly think that mech IS viable in WOL and HOTS. See day9's video on mech vs toss:
+ Show Spoiler +
Yes, this video is a year old, but still its main points are valid.
Also just because it is "viable" does not mean it is easy or even good, or should be attempted by anyone but the insane... It takes a lot of patience and a much different style than bio, see Lyyna's mech vs toss guide:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=323003
This player uses ghosts, tanks, hellions, thors, BC, banshees, vikes and ravens, ALTERING the composition based on needs... It can all be afforded if u keep your units alive and choose wisely.
So why don't the pros use it? First off they do, just very rarely. Also remember when MVP was one of the only Koreans going mech vs zerg and how often he lost? New styles take time to perfect and mech will always be vulnerable to early harassment and technical attacks (roach drops)
OK now to HOTS:
MSC and oracles really limit your openings, but u can punish a MSC attack with extremely fast hellion drop and trade probes for scvs (http://www.twitch.tv/ogssupernova) or open rine tank... It’s still the beta! new openings will emerge…
Compared to WOL, mech did get stronger against toss, battle hellions > hellions in fights, and mobile detection still very snipable by vikes (MSC and observer).
One of the problems with TvP in general, is that they (toss) can dictate the unit composition. Ex. bio vs toss
they go zelot heavy u need rines and medevacs,
they go colo u need vikes
they go HT u need ghosts
they go DT u need scans (raven?)
Mech is just more intense.
Ex, if they go MASS archon and or imortal, 5-7 ghosts WILL melt their expensive army immediately, if they go MASS chargelots, hellions and any air to ground will do great against them.
Composition is crucial, and this means scouting early and often. Hellions, vikes, medevac boost and SCAN (duh) all make for great scouts. Always get a bunch of orbitals!
Also tanks are NOT unreasonably expensive in money or supply... 3-4 tanks at a time plus upgrades and vikes is common on 3.5 bases in a mech vs zerg game. Compare their cost to how effective tanks are in a defensive position-- they ARE viable. Maybe not OP or an instant win, or even good aggressively, but they are viable and will keep u alive.
What about SKY TOSS??
Toss sky got a HUGE buff in HOTS. Terran AA got decent buffs if you look carefully. Thor's new high impact payload does decent against heavy sky units and widow mines offer huge AA spalsh, not to mention they need to be manually targeted because of priority targeting (imo their biggest asset).
What about the raven? I don't think anyone, including Blizz, knows where this fits in. The WOL raven is awesome—free HS makes ravens a bit more useful, HOTS HS missile is an awkward yamato, but then again, its still beta...
Still not convinced any mech army can beat any toss army? Try it yourself instead of just theory crafting! get a friend and make the perfect unit compositions... here is my WOL ex
2 ravens
8 ghosts
12 tanks
10 hellions (opt for harras)
4 thors (opt for preference)
5 BC (if it goes late game get as many as u can mid game 1 or 2 will do)
12 vikes
This is ONLY 162 supply! leaving 38 for scvs (which is way to high for lategame terran, MULE OP lol)
Now let Toss get 3-3-3 upgrades, archons colo, imortals, chargelots, high templar, a few carriers or whatever sky toss they want. U will be surprised at how well this battle will go for terran.
NOTE: Composition needs to be tweaked to enemy army composition. This applies to both toss and terran so don't cry about it. Ex Banshee forces AA, hellion run-bys force expensive static defense or defensive army placement.
TIP: As you go ultra late game, replace everything with BC and ghosts and ravens, as they are supply efficient (6,2 and 2 respectively!)
How do I get there?
Easily the hardest and most important part. Again, see the guides posted earlier. Also I have a few suggestions:
Wall-ins are your friend! Toss will often try to roll over mech as it is very fragile in mid/early game. Turtling makes a huge difference. I use PF, ebay wall offs, (cheap, build fast and allow high sec and building armor upgrades) rax to clog up chokes and missile turrets for harras defense.
BTW what about harras? While you are turtling how can u deal with toss harass, their main army, and not let toss mass expand?
Vikes and hellions SHUT DOWN warp prism harass.
Hellion/widowmine run-bys and drops decimate lightly protected mineral lines.
What if toss invested in 13 cannons on each of their 5 expos?!!!
Ok this is a big investment and usually indicates a very passive game on the toss part. A very powerful and common response to mech. If u sense this coming, you should already have one ghost academy, get 5 more! Multi-pronged nuke haras is soooo good against static defense and toss in general. Plus, ghosts only cost 2 supply, so with 6 ghosts u can attack two (or 6) expos at once and KILL one (or damage most) for sure (unless toss is gosu and defends all bases at once with detection...)
My plea to those who still do not believe: have a tiny bit of faith in Blizzard and experiment (even if you loose trying) instead of giving up. Also keep working together! On this thread do NOT SAY mech not viable! This thread is not for you. Instead say, "I have trouble with x,y and z" or hey "so and so really works for me"
Shout out to HTOmario, a great (GM) meching terran who never stops trying to innovate! check out his stream and vods for ideas!
http://www.twitch.tv/htomario
Before you start reading, this post is long. So skip to the plea at the bottom if u don't have time to read.This post is meant to start a newon the status of mech vs toss HOTS style! nonbelievers there is another thread for you called "mech tvp still not viable" SO please only comment if you want to help players mech and or are looking for help on how to do it!This started as a response to that post btw...First off, I truly think that mech IS viable in WOL and HOTS. See day9's video on mech vs toss:Yes, this video is a year old, but still its main points are valid.Also just because it is "viable" does not mean it is easy or even good, or should be attempted by anyone but the insane... It takes a lot of patience and a much different style than bio, see Lyyna's mech vs toss guide:This player uses ghosts, tanks, hellions, thors, BC, banshees, vikes and ravens, ALTERING the composition based on needs... It can all be afforded if u keep your units alive and choose wisely.So why don't the pros use it? First off they do, just very rarely. Also remember when MVP was one of the only Koreans going mech vs zerg and how often he lost? New styles take time to perfect and mech will always be vulnerable to early harassment and technical attacks (roach drops)MSC and oracles really limit your openings, but u can punish a MSC attack with extremely fast hellion drop and trade probes for scvs (http://www.twitch.tv/ogssupernova) or open rine tank... It’s still the beta! new openings will emerge…Compared to WOL, mech did get stronger against toss, battle hellions > hellions in fights, and mobile detection still very snipable by vikes (MSC and observer).One of the problems with TvP in general, is that they (toss) can dictate the unit composition. Ex. bio vs tossthey go zelot heavy u need rines and medevacs,they go colo u need vikesthey go HT u need ghoststhey go DT u need scans (raven?)Mech is just more intense.Ex, if they go MASS archon and or imortal, 5-7 ghosts WILL melt their expensive army immediately, if they go MASS chargelots, hellions and any air to ground will do great against them.Composition is crucial, and this means scouting early and often. Hellions, vikes, medevac boost and SCAN (duh) all make for great scouts. Always get a bunch of orbitals!Also tanks are NOT unreasonably expensive in money or supply... 3-4 tanks at a time plus upgrades and vikes is common on 3.5 bases in a mech vs zerg game. Compare their cost to how effective tanks are in a defensive position-- they ARE viable. Maybe not OP or an instant win, or even good aggressively, but they are viable and will keep u alive.Toss sky got a HUGE buff in HOTS. Terran AA got decent buffs if you look carefully. Thor's new high impact payload does decent against heavy sky units and widow mines offer huge AA spalsh, not to mention they need to be manually targeted because of priority targeting (imo their biggest asset).What about the raven? I don't think anyone, including Blizz, knows where this fits in. The WOL raven is awesome—free HS makes ravens a bit more useful, HOTS HS missile is an awkward yamato, but then again, its still beta...Still not convinced any mech army can beat any toss army? Try it yourself instead of just theory crafting! get a friend and make the perfect unit compositions... here is my WOL ex2 ravens8 ghosts12 tanks10 hellions (opt for harras)4 thors (opt for preference)5 BC (if it goes late game get as many as u can mid game 1 or 2 will do)12 vikesThis is ONLY 162 supply! leaving 38 for scvs (which is way to high for lategame terran, MULE OP lol)Now let Toss get 3-3-3 upgrades, archons colo, imortals, chargelots, high templar, a few carriers or whatever sky toss they want. U will be surprised at how well this battle will go for terran.NOTE: Composition needs to be tweaked to enemy army composition. This applies to both toss and terran so don't cry about it. Ex Banshee forces AA, hellion run-bys force expensive static defense or defensive army placement.TIP: As you go ultra late game, replace everything with BC and ghosts and ravens, as they are supply efficient (6,2 and 2 respectively!)Easily the hardest and most important part. Again, see the guides posted earlier. Also I have a few suggestions:Wall-ins are your friend! Toss will often try to roll over mech as it is very fragile in mid/early game. Turtling makes a huge difference. I use PF, ebay wall offs, (cheap, build fast and allow high sec and building armor upgrades) rax to clog up chokes and missile turrets for harras defense.BTW what about harras? While you are turtling how can u deal with toss harass, their main army, and not let toss mass expand?Vikes and hellions SHUT DOWN warp prism harass.Hellion/widowmine run-bys and drops decimatemineral lines.What if toss invested in 13 cannons on each of their 5 expos?!!!Ok this is a big investment and usually indicates a very passive game on the toss part. A very powerful and common response to mech. If u sense this coming, you should already have one ghost academy, get 5 more! Multi-pronged nuke haras is soooo good against static defense and toss in general. Plus, ghosts only cost 2 supply, so with 6 ghosts u can attack two (or 6) expos at once and KILL one (or damage most) for sure (unless toss is gosu and defends all bases at once with detection...)My plea to those who still do not believe: have a tiny bit of faith in Blizzard and experiment (even if you loose trying) instead of giving up. Also keep working together! On this thread do NOT SAY mech not viable! This thread is not for you. Instead say, "I have trouble with x,y and z" or hey "so and so really works for me"Shout out to H |
Mexico City, where he's meeting with his U.S. and Mexican counterparts, Defence Minister Rob Nicholson says he's ordered Lawson to get to the bottom of the matter.
The issue has the potential to tarnish the credentials of the Conservative government and Nicholson, a former justice minister. Both have long championed tough-on-crime legislation and the rights of victims of crime.
Nicholson says he was "deeply angered" to read of the allegations.
Recent high-profile cases
The Maclean's article comes just weeks after a pair of high-profile cases made headlines across Canada.
The former commanding officer of the army's main training base in western Canada was found guilty of sexual assault in early April.
A military judge found that Maj. David Yurczyszyn, who was once in charge of CFB Wainwright in Alberta, groped a woman's breast at a reception following Remembrance Day services in 2012.
At the beginning of his court martial, Yurczyszyn pleaded guilty to a charge of drunkenness under the National Defence Act, but he denied intentionally grabbing the woman.
Cpl. Derrick Gallagher, 31, was taken into custody on March 31, and has been charged with 26 counts of sexual assault. (OPP) Police in eastern Ontario also recently issued a public appeal for victims to come forward following the arrest of a soldier at Garrison Petawawa, Ont.
Cpl. Derrick Gallagher, 31, was taken into custody on March 31, and initially charged with eight counts of sexual assault and two counts of voyeurism contrary to the Criminal Code.
Police later added 18 additional charges.
Investigators said they know of 18 alleged victims and are still trying to identify as many as 50 women who may have been victimized without their knowledge.I received a new toy to play with a couple of days ago, called a Jibun Techo. It's a planner from Japan that's competing with Hobonichi, but it seems much more rare to see these in the wild, so I've had lots of questions about it.
I've filmed quite a long video walkthrough as well, which you can watch below:
Warning: very image-heavy post ahead!
Now is probably a good time to say that I don't speak Japanese, and I've found very little information about the Jibun Techo in English. Therefore, I don't know heaps about it, and what I do know has largely come from Google Translate and from using my own Jibun. Apologies in advance if anything I say isn't correct! I've done my best to check all the information I'm sharing.
The Jibun Techo is made by Kokuyo, who also make Campus notebooks as well as other stationery. I'd actually seen the Tomoe River paper Idea notebooks by Kokuyo at Nanami Paper in packs of two, without realising at the time that they're part of the Jibun Techo system.
The Jibun Techo is designed to be used as a three-book set. The main book, which can also be purchased on its own, is the Diary. This is the actual planner. The other two books are the Idea book, which is for notes, and has gridded Tomoe River paper inside, and the Life book, which is for things that don't change, like your family tree and life achievements. This one doesn't have Tomoe River paper, but something else that's ideal for archiving, I believe. The system is set up so you'd keep the Life book, and match it with a new Diary every year, as well as new Idea books when needed.
The Diary comes in a clear plastic cover which has pockets on the inside covers where you can slip in the extra Idea and Life books to keep them all together.
I didn't want the Life book, so I bought just the Diary in the plastic cover, but I also purchased a set of two Idea books separately.
I bought my Jibun from eBay, because it was quite hard to track down from outside Japan, but I've also seen them listed on Etsy. The official Kokuyo site is all in Japanese, so while I think I could purchase it directly, I wasn't game to spend so much money on something where I couldn't read the purchase and shipping forms!
The Jibun isn't cheap—it's fairly comparable to the Hobonichi range. I got free shipping on mine from eBay, but I did pay a little extra to get a yellow one, because all the sellers offering lower prices only had boring white covers. The official site shows some cute spotted and checked covers, but they were all sold out when I was shopping for mine.
This range of cute covers is just one of the clues that Kokuyo is going after Hobonichi with this product, though. There's also an actual comparison table showing the differences between the Hobonichi and the Jibun. The table is pretty small, stating differences like the Hobonichi only being one book, while the Jibun is three. The Jibun comes in two sizes, the A5 slim, which is what I have, and the mini, which is B6 slim.
So what's inside? The main thing to note about the Jibun if you're comparing to a Hobonichi is the lack of daily pages. There's no day-per-page section in the Jibun.
There are yearly, monthly, and vertical weekly sections, so the most space you'll get for a single day is a column in a weekly two-page spread. If you've found your Hobonichi's daily pages going to waste because you don't need that much room, the Jibun could be a great solution.
The other big difference I've noticed is that the Jibun's page design is more busy. It has a lot more colour than the Hobonichi and many more sections and symbols.
There's little happy/neutral/sad faces, for instance, on the monthly pages and each day of the weekly section. There are weather icons across the top of each day in the weekly section, so you can circle or tick the weather conditions for the day, and at the bottom of each day are spaces for sunrise/sunset times and meal tracking. If you're someone who tracks things like your mood and the weather in your planner anyway, the Jibun has all this built in for you. I don't use any of that stuff so it feels like clutter to me, but I can definitely see how it could be useful to other people.
For those coming from a Bullet Journal setup, there are also some built-in collections at the start of the Jibun that you might already have: a book list with a space for ratings, a similar movie list, a list of gifts given and one for those you've received, and a generic "recommendations" list. And if you add an Idea book, that'll give you plenty of room for extra collections.
Because the Jibun is designed to have the Idea book added, it doesn't come with any extra empty note pages. The Idea book adds plenty of extra space, and barely any heft, but it's worth noting you'll need both if you like having extra blank pages in your planner.
The Jibun comes with two ribbon bookmarks built in, and the clear plastic cover has a bunch of pockets. For those who've had Hobonichi covers before this won't be a big deal, but I've always kept my Hobonichis inside other covers I already had, to avoid buying more covers I didn't need. The Jibun came with the clear cover so I got it whether I wanted it or not, and I'm glad I did.
It has three card-size pockets on the inside of the front and back covers, which are perfect for stickers and bookmarks.
On the outside front cover there's a pocket that covers the bottom two-thirds or so, and on the outside back cover is a vertical pocket that covers the right half. I found the back pocket quite handy for holding letters I need to post or reply to.
You can see in the image at the top of this post that I tried clipping my fountain pen to the front outside pocket. Don't do that! I only did it overnight, but the plastic of those outside pockets is very soft, and it warped slightly where the pen had been clipped on. It's recovered now, but I won't do that again.
If you don't add extra Idea or Life books, you'll also get the pockets inside the front and back covers to use, as these are designed to hold the extra books in.
Because I've been keeping my Hobonichi Cousin Avec inside my A5 Roterfaden with my chunky Seven Seas Crossfield journal, I've never thought of the Hobo as being light and portable—even though it is. But I'd been hoping to go back to use my Roterfaden just for my journal and Kindle, and stop lugging it around the house with me, so when the Jibun arrived and had its own cover, I just naturally kept it out of any other covers. Which is all to say, it feels very portable to me—light and thin and easy to carry around. It's slightly less wide than a full A5, being an A5 slim size, and I think that might help too, if only a little.
One final thing I should mention: the paper is the same delicious Tomoe River paper as in the Hobonichi. Here's a look at the show-through from a fine fountain pen on the same page when it's flat and when I hold it up a bit:
So that's it! I hope this post helps you decide if a Jibun Techo is for you. Feel free to hit me up with any questions you have! I'll leave you with some photos of how I'm using the Jibun so far, though I'm still experimenting.
P.S. I make some stuff you might like: Exist, a personal analytics app to help you understand your life, and Larder, a bookmarking app for developers.Our expectations were all out of whack on climate change. For years, environmentalists and world leaders promised a “big bang” international agreement, a comprehensive, world-wide plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to which pretty much every nation on the planet would be a willing party. A global problem, after all, requires a global solution.
President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
But decades of work has merely resulted in soft promises from some nations to reduce their emissions, a nominal commitment to enforce an international agreement, its content not yet articulated, by the end of this decade, and clarity about the political obstacles in the way of a big accord.
The heart of the problem is that developing countries want the developed world to reduce its greenhouse gas output and pay them, and the West doesn’t like that idea absent real greenhouse-gas commitments from big developing nations with rising economies, such as China, India and Brazil. It’s hard enough for a few countries to work through that problem issue-by-issue, let alone all of them at the same time across the variety of contentious questions involved in world climate discussions. U.N. forums have been fractious, with national interest, global politics and concerns about reputation pulling the big players in various directions.
That’s why one bit of news from the G20 conference that just wrapped up in St. Petersburg, Russia, is encouraging. Outside of the cumbersome U.N. process, the United States and China, the world’s two largest greenhouse emitters, announced steps to “phase down” the use of hyrofluorocarbons (HFCs), potent greenhouse gases used in refrigerators, air conditioning units and other things. They agreed to use the machinery of Montreal Protocol — a preexisting international system that has successfully cut pollutants that harm the ozone layer — to do it. And the full G20 — which includes Brazil and India — issued a statement supporting the plan to roll back HFCs.
These nations have to fill in specifics. But if they arrest the global expansion of HFC use, the White House says that unified action could prevent the equivalent of 90 gigatons of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere by 2050. That, The Post’s Steve Mufson points out, is about two years’ worth of the world’s current output.
On its own, that won’t do nearly enough. But this sort of agreement — among a few, big countries responsible for nearly all of the emissions that matter — represents another approach, outside the U.N. process, to achieving meaningful global action on climate change. The central problem doesn’t disappear with fewer players in the room. Yet, so far, it has been easier for Chinese leaders in particular to make climate-change commitments after huddling with President Obama to hash them out. This may be because such agreements require some level of mutual sacrifice and, therefore, trust that the other parties are serious. Americans are wary of moving before the Chinese do, and vice versa. The HFC announcement was also easier because it is a discrete issue that the G20 can address in isolation.
It hasn’t been clear that this strategy would work any better than the U.N. process. But, at the least, this sort of effort keeps climate change in world leaders’ minds. At best, meanwhile, the big emitters could see to a range of problems, pressure others to join in, and lead the way to a global treaty consisting of a bundle of smaller agreements already struck among themselves and various countries. That’s worth trying for.(l. to r.): David McNew / Getty; Alex Wong / Getty; Joe Skipper / Reuters John McCain, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani
Last summer, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani took time out of a GOP debate to defend John McCain: "I happen to be a very big admirer of Senator McCain and I can tell you quite honestly that if I weren't running for President I would be here supporting him." Pundits speculated that the praise was simply a kind word for the man whose campaign had recently exploded, plagued by debt and defections. Privately, McCain advisers wondered if Giuliani was playing nice in order to secure McCain's endorsement after he dropped out of the race.
But this week it was Giuliani who dropped out of the race and endorsed McCain, praising him as an "American hero."
The endorsement was a reflection of the authentic respect McCain and Giuliani have for each other. But that's not all the two candidates share. The endorsement deal was solidifed when both campaigns stayed at the Deerfield Hilton in Florida, following the Republican debate in Boca Raton on January 24. The two campaigns' staff mingled easily over drinks. Acknowledging that his candidate was not likely to survive a defeat in Florida, a Giuliani aide approached one of the McCain senior staffers. Come Wednesday, he said, "Just tell us what want us to do we've got to stop him."
"Him," of course, is Mitt Romney, the candidate who seems to be uniting his Republican rivals almost as much as Hillary Clinton. "The degree to which campaigns' personal dislike for Mitt Romney has played a part in this campaign cannot be underestimated," says an adviser to one of those rival campaigns. While sharp words have been exchanged between practically every Republican candidate at one point or another on the campaign trail, the aversion to Romney seems to go beyond mere policy disagreements. It's also a suspicion of what they see is his hypocrisy and essential phoniness what one former staffer for Fred Thompson called Romney's "wholesale reinvention."
The Romney campaign doesn't pretend the sour attitude toward its candidate doesn't exist. But chief counselor Ben Ginsberg insists echoing one of the campaign's main themes the attitude stems largely from the fact that Romney is "the outsider candidate. He's not from Washington and he's going to change Washington. He's not part of their club."
At times, this apparent rancor among the other candidates toward Romney has seemed like a schoolyard pact for example, in the many snarky comments aimed at Romney during the Republican debate on Jan. 5, just before the New Hampshire primary. The campaigns have denied there's any political collusion going on; they insist all of them simply feel the same way about Romney.The FA can confirm that Sam Allardyce has left his position as England manager.
Allardyce's conduct, as reported today, was inappropriate of the England manager. He accepts he made a significant error of judgement and has apologised. However, due to the serious nature of his actions, The FA and Allardyce have mutually agreed to terminate his contract with immediate effect.
This is not a decision that was taken lightly but The FA's priority is to protect the wider interests of the game and maintain the highest standards of conduct in football. The manager of the England men's senior team is a position which must demonstrate strong leadership and show respect for the integrity of the game at all times.
Gareth Southgate will take charge of the men's senior team for the next four matches against Malta, Slovenia, Scotland and Spain whilst The FA begins its search for the new England manager.
The FA wishes Sam well in the future.World of Resistance Report: Financial Institutions Fear Global Revolution
In Part 1 of the WoR Report, I examined Zbigniew Brzezinski’s warnings to elites around the world of the “global political awakening” of humanity. In Part 2, I looked at the relationship between inequality and social instability, and in Part 3 I examined the World Economic Forum’s warnings of growing inequality and the “lost generation” of youth who pose the greatest threat to oligarchic interests around the world. In this fourth installment in the series, we turn to reports from top banks and financial institutions warning about the growing threats to their interests posed by an increasingly disenfranchised and impoverished population – manifested in protests, strikes and social unrest.
In November of 2011, Bob Diamond, the CEO of one of the world’s largest banks, Barclays, stated in a speech: “We’ve seen violent protests in Greece, public sector strikes across Europe, [and] anti-capitalist demonstrations that started on Wall Street have spread to other places around the world.” Diamond added: “Young people have been especially hit hard by high levels of unemployment. The threat of further social unrest remains if we don’t work together to generate stronger economic growth and more jobs.”
A March 2013 report by senior economic adviser George Magnus of UBS Investment Research, entitled “Social Unrest and Economic Stress: Europe’s Angst, and China’s Fear,” noted that “the wave of social unrest that rumbled across Europe between 2008 and 2011 has become less intense... [and] has come as a cause for relief in financial markets.” Yet, he wrote, the occasional upsurge in large-scale national and European-wide anti-austerity protests and strikes “signifies the deep malaise in the complex and fragile trust relationship between European citizens and their governments and institutions.” Since 2010, approximately 13 out of 19 E.U. governments had been voted out of office or had collapsed, indicating that “public anger... is far from dormant, and its expression is mostly unpredictable.”
Social unrest, added the UBS report, “is a systemic phenomenon” that is “highly uncertain, complex and ambiguous,” and which can lead “to the toppling of governments, or even political systems.” Social unrest across the E.U. “has been notable more for the public expression of lack of trust in the institutions of government, including in Brussels,” the headquarters of the European Union.
This “lull” in social unrest, warned Magnus, “is most likely deceptive.” The present problem in Europe “is the same” as the main problems in Europe of the 1930s – when mass poverty, unemployment and social unrest led to the rise of fascism. The underlying problem in both eras was “the inadequacy of mainstream, political channels to address rising public concern about the loss of economic security, social stability and, yes, cultural identity.”
Citing an OECD study, the bank report noted that “austerity has gone hand-in-hand with a variety of forms of social and political instability, and politically-motivated violence.” There have been "heightened levels of social unrest and shocks to the political system in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy... sometimes requiring the force of the state to suppress it.” These are especially important matters for banks to pay attention to, since the European debt crisis was caused primarily by the big banks – and the austerity and "structural reform" policies (along with the bailouts that accompanied them) were designed for the benefit of those banks as well. Thus, resistance to austerity and "reform" is, in effect, resistance to the bailouts for the big banks.
In May of 2013, JPMorgan Chase released a report, “The Euro Area Adjustment: About Halfway There,” which assessed "progress" in the European Union on the issue of austerity and structural reform. The “adjustment” of European society, claimed the report, was “about halfway done on average,” noting that the process would continue for much of the rest of the decade although it faced major challenges, including the development of “new institutions” in the E.U. and what the bank called “national legacy problems.” This vague term referred to “the constitutions and political settlements in the southern periphery [of the E.U.], put in place in the aftermath of the fall of fascism, [which] have a number of features which appear to be unsuited to further integration in the region.”
Just what does this mean? The bank explained that “fiscal austerity” was likely to be a major feature in the E.U. “for a very extended period.” However, if the European Monetary Union is to survive the coming decade, “deep seated political problems in the periphery... need to change.” But what precisely are these “deep seated problems”? The bank elaborated that many of the southern periphery states’ constitutions “tend to show a strong socialist influence,” referring to the fact that many constitutions guaranteed various social rights for populations, including labor, healthcare and educational and civil rights.
Further, the bank reported that many of these nations suffer from the following features: “Weak executives; weak central states relative to regions; constitutional protection of labor rights; consensus building systems... and the right to protest if unwelcome changes are made to the political status quo.” The translation: democracy itself is the problem. As such, JPMorgan noted, “the process of political reform has barely begun.” In other words, out with democracy and in with financial and corporate oligarchy.
The bank’s report also noted that there were a number of potential threats as the process of “political reform” advanced, including “the collapse of several reform minded governments in the European south,” a “collapse in support for the Euro or the E.U.,” the possibility of “an outright electoral victory for radical anti-European parties,” or perhaps even “the effective ungovernability of some Member States once social costs (particularly unemployment) pass a particular level.” JPMorgan Chase warned that while there wasn’t a current situation of “ungovernability” in E.U. states, the longer-term prospects were “hard to predict, and a more pronounced backlash to the current approach to crisis management cannot be excluded.”
AXA, one of the world’s largest financial institutions and insurance companies, published a report in July of 2013 written by Manolis Davradakis, entitled “Emerging Unrest: Looking for a Pattern,” which expressed particular concerns and perspectives on the issue of social unrest. The report noted that emerging market economies “are currently experiencing a surge in political risk due to social unrest that is being fueled by reasons that differ from those that resulted in the Arab Spring.”
The “main cause” of unrest in emerging market nations was “the rise of the middle class,” as this portion of the population “realize that they continue to experience the same everyday problems as poorer population strata, namely a high crime rate, poor public services, and corruption.” The report cited examples of social unrest in Turkey and Brazil, warning that these countries could see their credit ratings cut if the social upheaval is “lasting.”
The AXA report referred to the multiple episodes of unrest across emerging market nations in the summer of 2013 as “riots,” stating that they had several points in common, namely that “they were sparked by a government decision affecting daily life” and that the protesters were “not affiliated with political parties or movements” but instead were “well educated members of the middle class.” These factors were reminiscent of the massive unrest that took place in the advanced economies during the 19th century when emerging middle classes were struggling “for better living standards and more representation in political governance.”
Beyond a certain point, warned AXA, “repressing mass demands for a more open society becomes costly and economically ineffective.” A government’s inability or lack of will “to acknowledge the people’s right to freedom of expression and a voice in decision-making is a source of social unrest.”
AXA devised a Poor Governance Index (PGI), analyzing seven key indicators that could lead to social unrest, and concluded that the potential for instability in the BRIC nations – Brazil, Russia, India and China – was quite high. It also cited increased potential for unrest in Egypt, Ukraine, Indonesia, South Africa, Tunisia and Turkey, warning that such unrest “may have implications for emerging market [credit] ratings." It noted that several credit ratings agencies had already warned about the effects that “prolonged social unrest” could have on the ratings for Turkey and Brazil.
Going further, in July of 2013, Stephen D. King, chief economist of HSBC bank, warned that growing wealth gaps and increasing divisions between generations could result in youth uprisings similar to the Peasants Revolt of the Middle Ages. King commented: “I am intrigued at the moment that the youth are quite peaceful, and I wonder whether that might change. It is very difficult to predict but youth movements might become more focused on their own rights rather than the economy.”
In October of 2013, King wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which he warned that as bad as things already were, “they are going to get much worse, for the United States and other advanced economies, in the years ahead,” writing that both sides of the North Atlantic region had “already succumbed to a Japan-style ‘lost decade’” in which “promises can no longer be met, mistrust spreads and markets malfunction.” King wrote that “facing the pain will not be easy,” especially as policy makers continue to “opt for the illusion” and “pray for a strong recovery... because the reality is too bleak to bear.”
The “bleak” reality is that these and other big banks and financial institutions have repeatedly collapsed the global economy and profited along the way, punishing entire societies and populations into poverty through a process of plundering and exploitation as governments feared the wrath of “financial markets.” The banks that are now bigger, more dangerous and more powerful than ever fear the growing discontent, unrest and resistance of populations – especially the youth. The world’s major financial institutions fear that the global economic system which they helped to create, and over which they rule, will ultimately come back to haunt them in the form of mass social unrest, potentially undermining their power and the system as a whole.
Andrew Gavin Marshall is a researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada. He is project manager of The People’s Book Project, chair of the geopolitics division of The Hampton Institute, research director for Occupy.com’s Global Power Project and World of Resistance Report, and hosts a weekly podcast show with BoilingFrogsPost.image source: http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/media/fanart/?view=fanart-0214
Contents
Post-patch gameplay impressions
Changes made in patch 13.0
"Ravage" Build
"Assimilation" Build
"Old Burst Down" Build
Alternative talent choices
Conclusion(s)
Post-patch gameplay impressions
Gameplay of new Kerrigan definitely felt good. The range increase for “Primal Grasp” is built-in, so you have a free talent on level 1. And i decided to invest that talent in “Sharpened Blades”(20% damage increase for “Impaling Blades”), as i was playing the same old Burst Down build. Overall, new Queen of Blades felt snowballier than before. The chase down potential of “Queen’s Rush”, and the ability to cast Kerrigan’s version of “Blood for Blood” at the start of the fight, to get some shields, made me like the “new-old” build.
At that time, it was my first PTR game with Kerrigan and i was unaware about two new insane builds, which developers prepared for patch 13.0. Those we will, of course, discuss and see how good they are, but firstly let’s review the patch notes and see what changes were made to Queen of Blades.
Changes made in patch 13.0
In their blog, developers stated that they wanted to provide slight buff, and at the same time create new builds for Kerrigan. The actual changes:
Seasoned Marksman (Talent) removed
Focused Attack (Talent) removed
Searing Attacks (Talent) removed
Sprint (Talent) removed
Blood for Blood (Talent) removed
New Talent (Level 13): Queen’s Rush
Activate to increase Movement Speed by 25% for 4 seconds. Hero Takedowns automatically activate this effect.
New Talent (Level 16): Essence for Essence
Activate to steal 10% of an enemy Hero’s Health, and gain twice that amount as Assimilation Shields
Assimilation (Trait)
Lingering Essence (Talent)
Assimilation Shield duration increased from 12 to 20 seconds
New Talent (Level 7): Assimilation Mastery
Increases Health and Mana Regneration by 100% while Assimilation Shields are active
Ravage (Q)
Damage increased from 50 (+20 per level) to 60 (+22 per level)
Mana cost decreased from 75 to 50
Clean Kill (Talent)
Now also increases the damage dealt by Kerrigan’s next Ravage by 20%
Adaptation (Talent)
Half of Ravage’s Mana cost is now refunded when jumping to an ally
Eviscerate (Talent)
Range bonus increased from 25% to 40%
Impaling Blades (W)
Mana cost increased from 60 to 75
Primal Grasp (E)
Range increased by 20%
Mana cost increased from 50 to 60
Cooldown increased from 8 to 10 seconds
Damage decreased from 50 (+13 per level) to 40 (+10 per level)
Sweeping Grasp (Talent) removed
Psionic Pulse (Talent)
Damage per second increased from 12 (+2.4 per level) to 15 (+3 per level)
New Talent (Level 1): Energizing Grasp
Refunds 10 Mana per enemy hit, up to a maximum of 60
Maelstrom (R)
Damage per second increased from 25 (+2.5 per level) to 30 (+3 per level)
Cooldown reduced from 120 to 100 seconds
Duration reduced from 9 to 7 seconds
Ultralisk (R)
Cooldown now begins once the Ultralisk is killed
Torrasque (Talent)
Ultralisk can now be reborn more than once, so long as the egg isn’t destroyed within 8 seconds of the Ultralisk’s death
All the changes listed above can be sorted in 4 categories. First category is removal of Auto-Attack talents. Previously, there were some builds based around right clicks, but they were weak. So, Blizz decided to remove them, while providing new options and talents for new builds.
Second category is about “Sprint” and “Blood for Blood” removal. It is important because what devs did is they gave Kerrigan her own version of those talents. “Queen’s Rush” is her version of sprint. It provides slower speed boost, but activates for free each time hero is taken down. “Essence for Essence” is basically BfB but for shields, not HP. These are very cool changes, as they make talents more unique and hero related. In my dreams, i wish that every hero had such talents, and there were no common talents.
Next category of changes is about the usual abilities talent overhaul, and it’s probably the biggest one. Here we can see tons of buffs for “Ravage”, both for the ability and talents. All these changes create viable “Ravage” build, boost ability damage, and lower Mana cost. Other than that, we see changes that nerf “W” and “E” abilities a bit. Overall, Kerrigan’s AOE and single target damage remains the same. These changes are the tweaks to the DPS output. They are needed to compensate the “Q” damage buff, as well as “Sharpened Blades” talent.
Last part is about changes to ultimates. The changes to “Ultralisk” make it so that you have a 20 seconds longer cooldown, and the upgrade is buffed a bit. But what is more interesting are the changes made to “Maelstrom”. The damage was increased, while the duration was lowered. Overall, it has same damage output, and even more damage prior to late game, but the damage is done a bit faster.
All these changes shift the gameplay even more in the momentum based side, while making Kerrigan snowballier as well.
New Builds
With all the buffs listed above, new builds appeared. First one is based on “Ravage” ability, and promotes aggressive style of play. In this build Kerrigan is very good at long distance initiations, “snowballing” the fights, and finishing off the targets. On the other hand, second build, based around her Trait, allows Queen of Blades to fill the role of semi-tank, while providing decent amount of disables, burst, and space for your teammates.
“I take no prisoners”
(Ravage Build)
image source: http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/media/wallpapers/?view=wall038
This build is very momentum based. Kerrigan gameplay in general is momentum based, but this build emphasizes on it even more. Basically, you are looking to do two things. First one is to capitalize on positional mistakes of your enemies; to do that you are able to perform crazy initiations with long-ranged “Q”. Second one is to quickly clean-up damaged targets, using all your damage output for that, and then switching to a new damaged target. This won’t be hard, as this build provides a lot of mobility across the fight.
Talent choices
image source: https://www.heroesfire.com/hots/talent-calculator/kerrigan#gr_X
As you can see, on every tier that you have upgrade for “Ravage”, you go for it. The level 1 talent, “Siphoning Impact”, will provide nice sustainability buff. But this talent is optional. If you know that additional sustain won’t be needed, or you really need that damage buff, you can choose “Sharpened Blades” talent.
Next 2 talent tiers will be your core upgrades to “Ravage”. At Level 4, “Clean Kill” will refund 100% of Mana cost, and will increase damage of next “Ravage” on 20%, on each takedown. Keep in mind that this means any takedown, be it hero, creep or mercenary. This creates very imba strat for “Infernal Shrines”, which I’ll describe in Pros and Cons to this build. Level 7 talent, “Adaptation”, will allow you to jump on allies for half of the cooldown and mana cost. “Adaptation” adds very strong mobile and juking potential to your hero. Now, you are able to fake some initiations, to bait key enemy spells, and jump back to allies. Lastly, it’s just good for repositioning.
For Heroic, i prefer “Maelstrom”, unless there is very strong need in zoning someone. Then i go Ultralisk. Overall, “Maelstrom” fits this build much better, in terms of gameplay. It adds damage to both, initiation and cleaning-up potentials. However, it is more momentum based, so if you are new player, you might want to try playing with “Ultralisk”. This way you won’t be forced into quick decision making, as “Ultralisk” provides stable results. And also requires some control, from time to time.
Level 13 talent will make you god-like in terms of mobility and initiation. You are able to jump onto allies or foes through textures, walls, etc. Also, repositioning across the fight becomes much easier. I’m not even talking about cleaning up here. You just fly across battlefield from target to another, in just few seconds of time!
There is no “set in stone” talent for 16, so i prefer “Overdrive”. It adds a lot to your damage output, but at the same time it doesn’t have such drastic Mana effect, as your “Ravage” costs no Mana if you make a takedown with it. This talent is, of course good, when you try to burst someone down, but it has insane value when you are cleaning-up the targets with “Ravage”!
The talent choice at level 20. Personally, i like to play with upgrade for “Maelstrom”. However, such play style is very risky, and one mistake can cost you a fight, or even a game. This build provides insane mobility, but as you know many heroes are getting Blinks on level 20. So, if you are new to Kerrigan, or don’t feel like playing risky, it is better to take “Bolt of the Storm”
Pros and Cons
Pros
High mobility
The ability to jump on allies with reduced Mana cost and cooldown, insane range, and Mana cost refund on kill - all these things make “Ravage” very versatile spell, and Kerrigan very mobile hero.
Insane chase-down and cleaning-up potential
Combined with other spells, “Ravage” offers high damage output, with tons of CC, mobility, and overall fast paced fights. This all comes from cooldown reduction, or negation, due to the talents mentioned above.
Strong initiation
Be it ally or foe, you can jump on him through impassable terrain, and from very long range. This creates different juking and initiating possibilities, which can be combined with the combo to achieve some insane comebacks and plays.
Cons
High skill cap
As it always is with Melee Assassins, they are hard to play. Part of it comes from mechanic, part comes from hero design, and so on. In case of Kerrigan, it is about landing your combo, monitoring your positioning, and overall game understanding of when to go in and go out. This builds is very mobile, so it is easier to reposition your hero, but other two points remain the same.
About the “Infernal Shrines” start. The creeps, who are spawned by the shrines, have fixed amount of HP. And at some point of the game, near level 7, you are able to one-shot them with “Q”. Combine that with “Clean Kill” talent(refunds Mana on kills), and you are able to do |
set up to track the flow of goods for reconstruction in Gaza. But the territory’s economy remains largely closed off from the West Bank, Israel and Egypt – a factor that has hampered economic growth. Residents require permits to leave the territory, and these are only granted in limited circumstances.
The recent conflict further devastated the territory’s economy. The World Bank estimates Gaza’s GDP will be $530 million less in 2015 than it would have been without the war.
Since the fighting, unemployment has jumped 11 percent to 44 percent, “probably the highest in the world,” the Bank said. Sixty percent of young people are out of a job, and 80 percent of the strip’s 1.8 million residents receive some sort of aid.
Steen Lau Jorgensen, the World Bank’s Country Director for the West Bank and Gaza, called the outlook for Gaza “very troubling”.
“The ongoing blockade and the 2014 war have taken a toll on Gaza’s economy and people’s livelihoods,” he said in a statement, commenting on the near disappearance of exports and a 60 percent shrink in manufacturing. “The economy cannot survive without being connected to the outside world.”
as/jd/hawith reporting from Aubree Abril. Updated at 2pm with comment from Cruz adviser and IAFF spokesman.WASHINGTON – Turns out, union firefighters may not be core supporters of Sen. Ted Cruz.One applause line after another – when he’s addressing a friendly group of conservatives – drew dead silence Tuesday morning at the International Association of Firefighters Legislative Conference and Presidential Forum.Repeal “executive amnesty.” The joke about the Texas definition of gun control (“hitting what you aim at”). Silence.Abolish the IRS? Crickets. Though the follow-up– a joke about sending all those IRS agents to the U.S.-Mexico border -- drew scattered chuckles.With a friendly audience like the one Cruz enjoyed at the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this month, those lines are surefire winners.The senator’s effort to tailor his broadside on Obamacare for the union audience – IAFF is part of the AFL-CIO -- didn’t pay off, either.“I know that unions across this country are hurting under Obamacare. The Cadillac tax is coming. It was sold to you and everybody else in this country under false pretenses,” Cruz said. “Five years ago reasonable minds could have differed on whether this was a good idea. But today, seeing millions of American who’ve lost their jobs, who’ve been forced into part time work, who’ve lost their heatlh care, who’ve lost their doctor – it is the essence of reasonableness, it is essence of pragmatism to acknowledge this thing isn’t working. We need to repeal it and start over.”This too, left the audience unmoved.“Although we can't agree on a lot of what he said, he's certainly entitled to his point of view,” Guy Turner of Abilene, president of the Texas State Association of Fire Fighters, said afterward. "It is time to focus your efforts on another argument, not the Affordable Care Act. The American people are going to pay for healthcare one way or another. Either through the Affordable Care Act or for those individuals who go uninsured and still receive treatment and don't pay anything."Cruz did get a polite reception, and applause at the start and end of his half-hour appearance.Cruz adviser Rick Tyler said the senator deserves credit for appearing before a labor union. And he asserted that the IAFF opposed the Affordable Care Act "Whether they reacted or not, Ted Cruz and the firefighters are in sync" on that issue, he said.IAFF officials took issue with that.“It’s not true,” said spokesman Scott Treibitz. “We did support the legislation. We had some issues with the legislation, continue to have some issues with the law. But in general we did support it.”The IAFF objects to the “Cadillac tax” that Cruz mentioned, which hits union members with high-end insurance, and has been working to get that changed. “But the whole idea of repealing the entire program is not something this organization supports,” Treibitz said.Like other speakers, Cruz paid homage to firefighters. He cited the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Boston Marathon bombing, and the fertilizer explosion in West, Texas, that killed a dozen first responders.He keeps a West fire helmet in his office, he said, “to remind me of the incredible bravery shown every day. Every day in a crisis situation, the men and women here risk everything.”He blamed budget problems in fire departments across the country on six years of economic stagnation and anemic growth, which he blamed on federal policies that have hurt small business.Cruz made no mention of the recently settled impasse over Department of Homeland Security funding. Democratic speakers, including former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, derided Republicans for delaying a DHS budget to protest President Obama's immigration policies.Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y. -- a frequent Cruz critic -- alluded to him and other potential 2016 contenders on that issue : “I find it really hypocritical to have people come before you, say, ‘I stand with the firefighters, We have to be with you,’ and then they don’t vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security,” King said.Steve Moody of the San Antonio Professional Fire Fighters Association agreed with Cruz’s views on border security and not much else.“He had a hard audience,” he said.Michael Suh and Nicole Germack when an officer saw them having sex on the roof of a fast food restaurant.
A romantic night turned hot and spicy when a couple was caught allegedly having sex on a Chipotle roof in Delaware Saturday.
Michael Suh, 38, and Nicole Germack, 27, were arrested after an officer observed them engaging in sexual intercourse on the front of the roof of the Chipotle restaurant on the 100 block of East Main Street, Newark Police said in a press release.
The officer advised the couple to stop having sex, but they continued for almost 20 seconds, according to authorities.
When they finally stopped, they fled from the roof and into Suh's apartment a few feet away, said police.
The couple was placed under arrest inside the home. Both were released after paying $1,800.
Suh and Germack are facing multiple charges including lewdness and resisting arrest. It was not immediately clear if either had obtained an attorney.MUMBAI: Boosted by strong buying in metal stocks and heavyweights like HUL and Tata Power, the sensex provisionally closed 231 points up at 25,037, a new record high closing for the index.Thursday's rally was also helped by foreign fund buying, institutional dealers said.Earlier in the session, the sensex traded lower due to profit booking but late rally, mainly because of FII buying, took the Sensex to an intra-day high at 25,044. If the final closing is above 25,000, this will be the first closing for the index above the 25,000 mark.Among the sensex shares, Sesa Sterlite closed 6.6% higher at Rs 315 while Hindalco closed 6% higher at Rs 170. Among the other top index gainers were HUL, up 4.9% at Rs 630 and Tata Power, up 4.4% at Rs 110.Among the handful of laggards were M&M, down 1.4% at Rs 1,200 and HDFC Bank, down 1.4% at Rs 806.In the gold market, the slow drift in gold prices continued with the price of the yellow metal in the city bullion hubs hovering below the Rs 26,700/10gram mark in evening session.PRIVACY POLICY
PRIVACY POLICY of KTM Sportmotorcycle GmbH and (hereinafter “KTM”)
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This document was last updated on 01.09.2014CAT scans reveal that the Sudanese woman bore the image of the Archangel Michael on her leg.
The mummified remains of an Egyptian woman, discovered in a cemetery near the bank of the Nile. revealed a surprising discovery: she bore a tattoo of the Archangel Michael.
CAT scans performed by the British Museum revealed that the woman, who lived in Sudan around 700 AD, had the tattoo on her inner thigh (whether it was meant to be seen remains unknown).
The tattoo features a cross on top of a symbol representing the Archangel Michael. It combines in one symbol the letters forming the name Michael (MIXAHΛ) in Greek or Coptic (both languages use a very similar alphabet).
According to the British Museum, the tattoo suggests that the Sudanese woman was of Christian faith, and may have hoped to place herself under the protection of the Archangel – one of the patron saints of Nubia.
The monogram of Saint Michael has been discovered in Nubia, where it was found on the walls of churches and on pottery, but researchers were surprised to find it on a tattoo.
The use of tattoos to indicate one’s faith continues to be popular among Copts today, many of whom have a small cross tattooed inside the wrist.
The mummy was part of an exhibit at the British Museum that showed CAT scan images of mummies found along the Nile. In preparation for the exhibit, which opened in 2014, the mummies were taken at night to hospitals for CAT scans and x-rays, according to a report in the Telegraph.A coordinated plugin update occurred this morning between many popular WordPress plugins to address a common security vulnerability that allows for XSS cross-site scripting attacks.
The common vulnerability that triggered a coordinated plugin update of many popular plugins this morning is caused by a lack of escaping of two WordPress functions, add_query_arg() and remove_query_arg().
It appears it was a common misunderstanding that the functions needed additional escaping when in use, and the WordPress Codex documentation for the functions did not show proper escaping in the example use cases for several years.
The exact number of plugins affected is unknown, but a number of the most popular WordPress plugins are affected.
The vulnerability was originally disclosed to the team at Yoast by Johannes Schmitt of Scrutinizer CI. Joost de Valk took the issue to their security partner, Sucuri, and together they understood that the issue could affect far more than plugins than WordPress SEO and Google Analytics by Yoast.
They worked with WordPress lead developer and WordPress.org plugin team member Dion Hulse to evaluate how many other top plugins may be vulnerable. Combined, Joost notes in his security notice post that 44 people joined a dedicated WordPress Slack channel to work on the updates, which resulted in the coordinated release.
Millions of websites affected
Millions of websites are vulnerable due to this issue. Jetpack and Yoast’s WordPress SEO alone are active on well over a million websites.
Sucuri has identified a minimum of fifteen plugins affected, but they note they’ve only looked into the top “300-400” and others that were notable.
In all likelihood, many more plugins than those listed will have similar vulnerabilities. add_query_arg() and remove_query_arg() are relatively common functions in advanced WordPress development.
Not always a high risk vulnerability
It’s hard to speak for exactly how high risk the mis-use of the functions could be, as they are used in different ways in different plugins; and even within a certain plugin codebase, they could be used many times and have different risk levels in each instance.
Escaping is a fundamental development principal. One of my favorite coffee mugs (pictured above) is from WordPress.com VIP and says, “Sanitize early, escape late, and drink often.”
It is therefore concerning that there was such broad misuse of a WordPress function for so long, and it went unchecked in the Codex.
The Codex previously had examples without escaping, and it had no indication whether the return value was escaped or not. It simply stated that the return value as, “New URL query string.”
This has been updated, both in the examples and the return value section, to note that it can potentially return unescaped data.
New URL query string. Note that this string may contain unescaped data not intended for a URL, especially if the data added comes from user input. The result should be passed through esc_url() before being output as HTML, in a link.
That said, of the developers I’ve spoken to, even with the vulnerabilities in place they say that the risk of exploitation is small, due to the privileges required of users to attack. Though it is important to note that that is no guarantee, and it is important to update your plugins if you have updates available.
The Codex is a wiki. It’s not a fundamental issue of WordPress that this was poorly documented, however it does point to some of the problems that have been noted for some time in regard to the value of the Codex. In fact, just this morning the Codex page for add_query_arg() was redirected to the new developer.wordpress.org page for the function instead.
Eventually, the Codex will go away for most functions that can point to the new developer reference.
Five plugins opting in to forced updates
Jetpack, Easy Digital Downloads, P3 Plugin Profiler, Download Monitor, and Related Posts for WordPress are all opting in to automated forced updates from WordPress.org. This means that these plugins have created new releases for each major branch of their plugins to be distributed and automatically updated by the WordPress.org team.
Other plugins are not opting in. Notably, Yoast did not opt in for WordPress SEO or their Google Analytics plugin. Joost de Valk cites concerns that some site owners had their plugins deactivated during the last forced upgrade process they went through.
Indeed, my own site has had plugins deactivate when forced updated each time it’s occurred. I took this issue to members of the WordPress.org update team, and was told that they believe it is an edge case occurrence, and that while they are monitoring new updates, there is not currently a plan to change practices for the updates. I will be very interested with the updates today how commonly this happens.
Other posts and resources
I will continue to collect plugin update posts, changelogs, and other resources for this update. If you run a WordPress website, these updates will likely affect you.
There is no reason for panic or to be too concerned, but you should update your plugins as soon as you can to reduce your risk of vulnerability.Former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele slammed President Trump on Tuesday for his tweet blasting GOP candidate Ed Gillespie following the results of the Virginia gubernatorial election.
"Did YOU win Virginia?" Steele asked in response to Trump's tweet.
Did YOU win Virginia? https://t.co/ZH8STJ4pEj — Michael Steele (@MichaelSteele) November 7, 2017
The president tweeted that Gillespie, also a former chair of the RNC, had not been a strong enough advocate of Trump's agenda during his campaign against Democrat Ralph Northam, who swept to victory on Tuesday night.
"Ed Gillespie worked hard but did not embrace me or what I stand for," Trump tweeted after the race was called. "Don’t forget, Republicans won 4 out of 4 House seats, and with the economy doing record numbers, we will continue to win, even bigger than before!"
Trump reportedly urged voters to go to the polls for Gillespie in a last-minute robo-call, in which he praised Gillespie for his hardline views on immigration and crime.
Steele has become a vocal critic of the president, and has praised Republican lawmakers such as Sen. Bob Corker Robert (Bob) Phillips CorkerBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Sasse’s jabs at Trump spark talk of primary challenger RNC votes to give Trump 'undivided support' ahead of 2020 MORE (R-Tenn.) for speaking out against the Trump administration, which he said has succumbed to "insanity."The best way to get good at anything is too actually go out and do it— and do it a lot. The challenge for China is that you can wargame all you want but unless you have experienced actual combat there will always be a learning curve. And the curve for China is steep: Beijing has not not fought a major war since its roughly one month skirmish with Vietnam in 1979.
Now, while knowledge from a conflict thirty-five years ago might not translate into success against America in a war, having little to no combat experience could pose some challenges for China. Washington going into any conflict with Beijing would certainly have a decisive advantage when it comes to war fighting. While the conflicts America has fought over the last twenty-five years were not A2/AD battle royals, the last few decades has offered the U.S. military the capability to test out new systems and tactics, fix things that aren’t working when it comes to combat operations, and make important adjustments for future scenarios. For example, the U.S. did not need to send F-22s into Syria, however, the opportunity to learn on the battlefield and gain experience is of vital importance and likely the main reason for doing so. And it is one area that would have to be considered a major advantage in a battle against China.
Let’s not mince words: a U.S.-China war would be hell on earth. It would likely start World War III. Millions— maybe billions— of people would die if nuclear weapons were ever used in such a conflict. The global economy would likely face ruin— that’s what happens when the world’s biggest economic powers start shooting at each other. Thankfully the chances are remote it will ever happen. Yet, the threat of such a conflict remains thanks to the many different pressure points in the U.S.-China relationship. Forget the challenge of ISIS, Ukraine, Syria or whatever the flavor of the moment is. The U.S.-China relationship— and whether it remains peaceful or not— is the most important challenge of our time. Period.
Recently in these digital pages (full disclosure: the piece was first posted in 2015 and was reprinted thanks to reader interest) I examined in a short piece on these digital pages how China could do great damage to U.S. and allied military forces in a war. Thanks to over twenty years of large scale investments, the PRC has gone from being a third-rate military that could project very little offensive punch to arguably the second most powerful military machine on the planet. And with an emphasis on weapons systems that embrace anti-access/area-denial military doctrine (A2/AD ), China seems to be developing the tools it needs if war with America did ever come to pass. Beijing’s motto these days: be prepared.
This article examines the challenges China would face against the U.S. in a conflict--but in a very broad, top-down, and practical sort of way. This time I will avoid the fun but sometimes easy to pick apart scenario-style type of analysis. While Beijing certainly has the tools to get the job done when it comes to a war with Washington, the challenges China would face in such a conflict would be immense— and many of them could be quite basic. The PRC would be going to war against the premier military power on the planet— some would argue the most lethal fighting machine of all time. In this essay we will review some of the important foundational reasons why many argue, quite convincingly, that the U.S. would very well defeat China in a war.
A Great Mystery: Just How Good Is China’s Military Anyway?
Yes, Beijing keeps cranking out those whizz-bang high-tech weapons of war like sausages. China has those shiny, new carrier-killer missiles that everyone is always fretting about ( including yours truly.) Its building aircraft carriers, 5th generation fighters, multiple types of cruise missiles, nuclear and ultra quiet diesel submarines, drones, mines and so on.
It all looks really good— at least on paper.
When it comes to a war with the U.S. how well would Beijing be able to use all that stuff? The real question seems pretty simple: yes, China is certainly developing all the military and technology goodies to field a potent force. However, how well can it operate all that equipment in the pressure filled situation of a war? Sure, Beijing is certainly developing a world-class military, but can its soldiers operate all that equipment competently? Just how well trained are they? You can have the best military in the world but if you don’t know how to use it, well, you get the idea.
Opinions are mixed on this for sure. Ian Easton from Project 2049, in a piece for The Diplomat, reminds us of the possible capabilities, nature, and mission of the PLA — and its certainly not all about America:
The state of “software” (military training and readiness) is truly astounding. At one military exercise in the summer of 2012, a strategic PLA unit, stressed out by the hard work of handling warheads in an underground bunker complex, actually had to take time out of a 15-day wartime simulation for movie nights and karaoke parties. In fact, by day nine of the exercise, a “cultural performance troupe” (common PLA euphemism for song-and-dance girls) had to be brought into the otherwise sealed facility to entertain the homesick soldiers…
Easton continues:
While recent years have witnessed a tremendous Chinese propaganda effort aimed at convincing the world that the PRC is a serious military player that is owed respect, outsiders often forget that China does not even have a professional military. The PLA, unlike the armed forces of the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other regional heavyweights, is by definition not a professional fighting force. Rather, it is a “party army,” the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Indeed, all career officers in the PLA are members of the CCP and all units at the company level and above have political officers assigned to enforce party control. Likewise, all important decisions in the PLA are made by Communist Party committees that are dominated by political officers, not by operators.
So how much would the above impact the much-needed rapid reaction time essential to make quick decisions once the bombs begin to drop in a war with America? Is China up to the challenge? While the above exercise in 2012 could be just one isolated incident, the idea of the PLA being a “party army” is a very important reality. What does this all mean in a war with America? Your guess is as good as mine.
How Good Can Beijing Fight “Jointly”?
There is no better way to make a modern military even more deadly than to fight “jointly.” Sharing intelligence and waging war by coordinating your forces across multiple domains (think air, sea, space, cyber and land) is the best way to achieve hard fought military objectives and is the ultimate force multiplier. It is something America and many other great powers are putting a lot of time, energy and resources into.
China is also working towards such a goal. And while sources vary on how well Beijing could wage a major joint operation against a determined foe— especially against the U.S.— many have their doubts. In a recent report by the RAND Corporation titled “China’s Incomplete Military Modernization” the authors have some serious doubts when it comes to Beijing’s joint warfighting capabilities :
Many Chinese strategists identify the inability to conduct integrated joint operations at the desired level of competence as the central problem China faces as it aspires to project combat power beyond its land borders. Indeed, Chinese sources highlight several problems that contribute to the PLA’s shortcomings in the area of joint operations and suggest that there is still a large gap between China and developed countries’ militaries, especially the United States.
In the same paragraph, the authors of the study also discuss issues with training, reinforcing my earlier point:
PLA publications also highlight continuing shortfalls in training, despite years of effort to make training more realistic and more valuable in terms of addressing shortcomings and improving the PLA’s operational capabilities. In addition, the publications point to persistent challenges in combat support and combat service support functions and forces, as reflected by frequent discussions of shortcomings in logistics and maintenance capabilities that appear in PLA newspaper reports and journal articles.
Can They Innovate?
When it comes to military technology, keeping ahead of the curve is key. America seems to crank out new defense tech all the time. The question over the long-term for China will be how well it can keep up in the tech game. Specifically, can Beijing develop advanced military systems indigenously? This might be the biggest challenge for China when we look out over the long term (10-20 years in the future) in a conflict with America.The Savage Detectives. Now, you can’t even pop into my apartment for a quick hello without having the Chasing Milf Booty DVD shoved in your face—”I don’t know, man, to each is own, but do these look like MILFs to you?!” In hindsight, the fact that visions of cavernous vaginas now regularly appear in my dreams seems worth it, given all that I’ve learned. I recently finished a 6-month foray into Brooklyn’s porn industry—the result of which you can read here. To say that I began my investigation as a noob would be putting it lightly; prior to researching, the only porn I knew of were the explicit and detailed sex scenes in Roberto Bolaño’s novel. Now, you can’t even pop into my apartment for a quick hello without having theDVD shoved in your face—”I don’t know, man, to each is own, but do these look like MILFs to you?!” In hindsight, the fact that visions of cavernous vaginas now regularly appear in my dreams seems worth it, given all that I’ve learned.
1. Before researching, if you mentioned ace of spades, one thing came to my mind, and one thing only: the lucky beginner in a game of BS. Now I know that it also denotes a black man who only has sex with white women.
2. The average rate for a male porn star doing straight porn is $500 to $600. Gay porn will pay three times that amount.
3. Since male porn performers get paid significantly more for doing gay porn, many straight men will now do gay porn for the money. Hence the term, gay for pay. The real gay porn performers out there typically hate this trend and dread the day when they are paired up with such a man.
4. Just as men get paid more for doing gay porn, so do women. And apparently the one distinctive feature that will indicate whether a woman is truly a lesbian is her nails. A bona fide |
of drought, such as now, banking on that water is a risky bet.
San Diego's $1 billion bet
In the early 1990s, fears that a drought-induced limit to imported water could leave San Diego County with just a trickle from its scarce local supply prompted the regional water agency to include desalination as part of its long-term strategy, according to Bob Yamada, a planning manager with the San Diego County Water Authority.
Today, the county's Carlsbad Desalination Project under construction is the largest seawater desalter in the Western Hemisphere. When it comes online in 2016, the $1 billion facility will produce enough water to meet the daily needs of 300,000 area residents, which is about 7 percent of the county's water requirements.
That's water, the project backers say, that will no longer have to be imported via the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, a wholesaler of imported water based in Los Angeles that has a testy relationship with its southern neighbor.Thanksgiving is our holiday of refugee commemoration. We have no holiday to commemorate the first successful English settlement, Jamestown, which was a commercial and political venture, or the first French and Spanish settlements, which were also commercial and political. We celebrate only the arrival and survival of a band of Pilgrims seeking not only opportunity but also refuge. Of the many and varied American creation epics, this is the one we have chosen to celebrate.
We have never been a land, of course, where refuge has gone uncontested. The Germans, the Irish, the Italians, the Jews, the Slavs, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Mexicans, the Muslims — every group of newcomers has been reviled and labeled a peril to our way of life. Each group, to be sure, contained a dangerous few, just as the non-immigrant population did. At the turn of the 20th century, a handful of native and immigrant anarchists preached a gospel of violence and assassination. A Jewish immigrant shot and wounded industrialist Henry Clay Frick; a Slavic American shot and killed President William McKinley; two Italian immigrants probably (the verdict of history is still out on this one) killed a Massachusetts bank guard. The number of murders committed during the same period by native old-stock Americans gripped by racial and religious hatred exceeds that committed by the new-stock anarchists by thousands, but to the nativist mind, all murders are not created, or considered, equal.
In 1924, by an act of Congress, virtually all immigration from Asia and Southern and Eastern Europe was halted. (The law was not to be repealed until 1965.) Fortunately, immigration from those lands had not been banned earlier. Had Americans always excluded millions due to their fear of a few, this would be a very different country. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio (and Frank Sinatra, and Enrico Fermi) indeed?
Today, we may marvel at many of our forebears’ conflation of “anarchist” with “Italian,” but the same nativist and racist phobias now dominate the discourse of one of our two major political parties. Arabs are jihadists; Mexicans are rapists; a little more than 80 percent of murdered whites are killed by blacks — whoops, it turns out that a little more than 80 percent of murdered whites are killed by whites, but to the neo-Nazi who concocted this Big Lie, and to the Republican presidential front-runner who publicized it, spreading that lie and similar sewage is apparently how they intend to win adherents and, for Donald Trump, take power.
We’ve had presidential candidates whose campaigns were rooted in appeals to racism and even racist violence: That was the very essence of George Wallace’s political appeal. But it’s been a long time since a front-runner of a major party’s presidential contest has based his appeal on raw racism, much less dropped hints that roughing up his critics was fine by him. To find Trump’s antecedents, you have to go back to the Southern segregationist demagogues who whooped up their crowds by affirming the rightness and necessity not merely of their racism but of racist violence as well.
In Trump, the Republicans’ Southern Strategy — pioneered by Barry Goldwater and perfected by Ronald Reagan — has hit bottom. Just as the Southern economic elites found they could count on the electoral support of the region’s largely impoverished white working class by steering those workers’ resentment at their lot toward even more impoverished African Americans, so today’s Republicans look at their own (no longer just Southern) white working-class supporters — whose jobs have been offshored and whose paychecks have been shrunk by indifferent financiers and corporate executives — and steer their resentment toward immigrants and minorities.
Trump’s distinctive contribution to this decades-long process has been the rawness of his racism, the thuggish tone of his speech and the huge growth of anti-minority police powers that he has championed. In proposing to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants and their U.S. citizen children, in suggesting that the government monitor mosques, he has positioned the Republican Party much closer to fascism than to the libertarianism toward which some mistakenly believed the GOP was headed. (The broad appeal that Trump’s proposals have among right-wingers makes you wonder whether their nonsensical phobias about the Democrats’ seizing their guns and throwing them into camps isn’t just a psychological projection of what they’d like to do to their opponents.)
It’s all a far cry from the spirit of the holiday we celebrate today. For today’s Republicans — including Trump’s rival candidates afraid to call him out for what he is — celebrating Thanksgiving is an act of high hypocrisy.Former foreign secretary’s stinging criticism of party after crushing defeat by Conservatives is likely to revive speculation of return to UK politics
David Miliband has said the Labour party has been sent “back to the classroom for the second time in five years” after its crushing defeat in the general election.
The former foreign secretary previously said “deep and honest thinking” was required after his brother, Ed, led Labour to its worst election defeat since 1983.
In comments that will add to speculation that he plans a return to British politics, Miliband said he was part of a Labour team that won elections rather than lost them. “I was in the backroom in the early 1990s when Labour in the UK figured out how to win elections rather than lose them,” he said. “As this month’s election in the UK showed, the electorate have recently sent us back to the classroom for the second time in five years.”
Miliband, who is president of the International Rescue Committee, made the comments at the Harvard Kennedy school graduation address. In the lecture the former Labour frontbencher also launched into a stinging criticism of David Cameron’s foreign policy and said Britain was politically “in retreat”.
“The UK is one of the most open and globally engaged cultures in the world; DfID (the Department for International Development) is a world leader in aid programming but politically we are in retreat,” he said. “The defence budget is going down; there is a referendum coming on whether to stay in the EU.”
Miliband expounded on his views on foreign policy and warned that international rivalries and deteriorating relations between powerful countries such as the US and Russia were hampering international peace.
He said Syria had “descended into hell”, and said its demise highlighted the danger of not constructing a proper foreign policy. “Syria is where all the problems, and the absence of solutions, of modern foreign policy come together – so much so that the human consequences are losing their capacity to shock,” he said.
“No, the truly shocking aspect of what is happening in Syria is the extraordinary absence of a political process to seek to solve the problem. Or even any impetus towards a political process. Instead, Syria is declining amid a desperate and dangerous silence; and its problems are being exported to its neighbours.
“Deteriorating relations between the US and Russia over Ukraine, the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and rifts between the backers of Syria’s fragmented opposition have sapped hope that a meaningful political process can take place. And, of course, the high price of the mistakes of the west in Iraq and Afghanistan have sapped confidence that western powers will do anything other than make things worse, and drained support for anything other than hand-wringing. That is the explanation for the UK’s almost complete absence from the political as well as military battlefield.”
He said humanitarianism alone would not solve intractable conflicts and called for an international political solution.
Miliband said he supported French proposals, which would mean permanent members of the UN security council should agree to suspend their right of veto in cases of mass atrocity.Advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) are a group of harmful compounds produced either endogenously or during thermal food processing. Once absorbed by humans via food intake, AGEs can cause oxidative cell damage and contribute to pathological development of various diseases. The AGE-inhibitory activity of dietary polyphenols in vitro has been extensively reported before, but the current study is pioneering in examining the antiglycation activity of five selected dietary polyphenols (phloretin, naringenin, epicatechin, chlorogenic acid, and rosmarinic acid) during the thermal protein glycation process. When added into the glucose-casein glycation model heated at 120 °C for 2 h, these polyphenols were capable of inhibiting the formation of both total fluorescent AGEs and nonfluorescent carboxymethyllysine (CML). The thermal stability and transformation of polyphenols are likely important factors affecting their antioxidant activity and inhibitory efficacy of reactive carbonyl species formation. Treatment with epicatechin would lower not only AGE formation but also AGE-induced cytotoxicity and oxidative stress to human retinal pigment epithelial (ARPE-19) cells.by
The fascist regimes of the 1920s and 30s were corporatist, totalitarian and militaristic. Capitalists colluded with their respective states to wage class war against workers’ parties and unions; order was established through an illiberal mix of propaganda and repression; and the system depended on war or the threat of war to thrive. Those regimes were also violent, nationalistic and racist, as were fascists everywhere.
For more than three decades in the United States and Britain and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere in Europe and throughout the world, we have lived under a kinder, gentler functional equivalent of classical fascism — in which, ironically, “free market” ideology is invoked to sustain a state-capital alliance as powerful as in the classical version. In the conditions in which this new order emerged, it has been possible to mute the nastiness with which “fascism” is rightly associated. But fascism’s war on the working class continues in this new form. So does its assault on enlightenment values and the enlightened institutions that the labor movement championed.
It has become commonplace to call the kind of regime I have in mind “Reaganite,” though Ronald Reagan was only one of several figures involved in its inception and implementation. In view of Margaret Thatcher’s earlier rise to power and her greater ideological lucidity, “Thatcherite” would be a more apt designation. But thanks to America’s paramount position in the world and Britain’s subordinate role, it is Reagan’s name that has stuck. Bertram Gross was spot on back in the early days of Reagan’s presidency when he called Reaganism “friendly fascism.”
In the United States, Reaganism was never an exclusively Republican concoction. Arguably, it began – timidly — in the final years of the Carter administration. And Reaganism’s most effective implementers have been Democrats — Bill Clinton and now Barack Obama. Obama is the most recent Reaganite president in a continuous chain.
With remarkable suddenness, Reaganism’s moral and intellectual bankruptcy are becoming apparent to all but the willfully blind, thanks to events in Wisconsin and elsewhere. The Reaganite era may therefore now be entering into its final stage. Classical fascism was crushed militarily, though facsimiles survived for decades in the Iberian peninsula, Latin America and elsewhere. As its demise in Germany and Italy approached, fascism’s perniciousness mounted to unprecedented levels. Friendly fascism is unlikely to be done in so abruptly or thoroughly, and its end too will likely be kinder and gentler. Still, regimes in their death-throes can do grave harm.
Thanks to the revelatory events in the Midwest, there is reason to hope that Obama – who, characteristically, toddled off to hobnob with corporate bigwigs in Silicon Valley as workers and students launched their epochal struggle in Madison, and who then paid a call on entrepreneurs in Cleveland as Ohio workers were mobilizing in Columbus — may be literally our last Reaganite president.
Unfortunately, we will not know for sure for some time. Since the Republican establishment, in thrall to its useful idiots, is unlikely to come up with a plausible alternative in whom a sane capitalist would place his trust, it will be hard for Obama to lose in 2012. Meanwhile, no matter how much incontrovertible evidence our “bipartisan” president provides for the hypothesis that he is actually a secret Republican, and no matter how vociferously he talks out of both sides of his mouth, no Democrat will run against him – not that there are many who could or would plot a significantly different course. Plausible third party challenges are even less likely, since third party candidates are perceived as spoilers, and no one with any sense would risk Scott Walker or someone of his ilk landing anywhere near the levers of power.
Therefore expect the Democratic base to rally around Obama again. One would think that, at long last, organized labor would at least make demands on Democrats in exchange for its indispensable support. But if the past is any guide, this is unlikely too. It has been a long time since labor’s vision extended beyond the abject horizons of lesser evilism, and old habits, no matter how inapt, are hard to beak.
Nevertheless, caution at this time is more than usually wrong-headed – if only because those vaunted “independents” for whose sake Obama and other Democrats ignore the interests of their base are unlikely to hand the Democrats another shellacking. Just as Bush and Cheney were godsends for Democrats in 2006 and 2008, the Tea Party-GOP alliance is sure to push “moderate” voters back into the Democratic camp. Sadly, though, even as there is little reason for lesser evilists to fear a challenge from the left, there is even less chance that one will materialize.
But, as workers stir, there are grounds for hope. The principles to which Republicans are committed reflect their moral and intellectual level, but at least they are committed to principles. In contrast, Democratic politicians, Obama especially, are weathervanes. Paradoxically, this moral failing of theirs is why we need not despair, and why the harm the lesser evil will otherwise do after its likely comeback in 2012 can be mitigated. To that end, no effort should be spared in promoting programs that go against the self-justifications that make Reaganism possible.
The time is past due to take on the Reaganites’ relentless colonization of the public sphere — by resuming positions that appeal to longstanding sentiments and traditions and that were once universally understood to be mainstream. One way to do this would be to attack the most vulnerable “private options” that Reaganites, including Obama, defend. Workers fighting to retain collective bargaining rights have shown the way; they have exposed the vulnerability of the Reaganite order.
In a healthier political culture than ours, resistance to privatization would be a by-product of efforts to advance a vision of a radically better society; to install real democracy, including economic democracy or, as few now dare to say except in disapprobation, socialism. Never has that struggle been more needed. But in a culture degraded first by Cold War liberalism and then by the scourge of Reaganism, a genuinely conservative resistance to privatization may be the best we can hope for in the short and medium term.
Here are three broad areas for turning back the Reaganite penchant for private options:
1) Perhaps the most urgent priority, inasmuch as our Nobel laureate Commander-in-Chief is hell bent on waging budget busting, destabilizing, and terrorism inducing wars of choice, is to insist that military service again be treated as a public responsibility; in other words, that it no longer be a desperate career move, like working at a low wage job, for those with no better options in the labor market. This idea draws on longstanding American traditions, and on universal understandings of fairness.
To be sure, we have always had “volunteer” armies to carry out colonizing and imperial projects in parts of the world where European powers were excluded or took no interest. But in the twentieth century, when technological advantages over “natives” no longer sufficed, we relied on conscription to obtain the necessary cannon fodder. As the Vietnam War went bad, the draft concentrated the minds of an entire generation and their parents, tearing the country apart. Richard Nixon therefore put an end to the draft, deciding to rely on proxy armies (“Vietnamization”) and economic conscripts instead. Reaganite presidents then went on to add mercenaries to this lethal mix. This offends fairness, and it enables capitalism’s penchant for perpetual war. In today’s world, Reaganite presidents can wage wars only to the extent that they privatize them. This is why deprivatization is necessary.
One tangible and potentially popular way to move towards this end would be to restore universal conscription — this time for all young Americans, regardless of sex, and without any of the not very subtle class-based exclusions of conscriptions past. Let Reaganites just try to unleash wars of choice then!
2) Ending or at least diminishing the role of “the private option” in health care is not in line with past practice in the United States, but it is very much in line with a strain of mainstream thinking that goes back at least to the days of Teddy Roosevelt. It is also the norm throughout the civilized world.
Instead of defending Obama’s milquetoast reforms (and concomitant gift to private insurance companies and health industry profiteers), we should advocate for public, not private, health care provision. There are many models from which to borrow, as everyone would by now understand had not our Reaganite president taken the very idea off the table from the beginning of his health care “debate.” Ironically, though, in his efforts to placate those even more Reaganite than he, Obama has said that he will allow states to pursue their own initiatives, subject to certain constraints.
Proponents of public provision intent on eliminating or at least minimizing the disabling effects of private alternatives should seize the opportunity in states where the political climate is favorable. Something like that happened at the provincial level in Canada; it can happen here.
3) Then there is education. Private schools and colleges have been around since early colonial times, but for more than a century and a half, we have had a robust system of public education as well. By siding with, not against, teachers’ unions and others for whom public education is a priority – not for Obama’s and Arne Duncan’s “competitiveness” reasons, but in order to bolster democratic citizenship — we can return to where we were, and move beyond it. Except for benighted souls who favor religious indoctrination (which can always be pursued privately, after school hours) or who are wedded to traditional mechanisms for forming social elites, support for high quality public education should be an issue around which everyone can rally.
Years ago, Albert Hirschman called attention to how, in market societies, those who are dissatisfied with particular arrangements such as those found in the schools can sometimes “exit,” perhaps by entering into alternative arrangements, or else remain, seeking change through the exercise of “voice.” Priority should be given to efforts to make exit options in education harder, and the voice option easier to exercise and more effective. This implies not just reversing the privatizing thrust of Reaganite education policy by resourcing public schools, colleges and universities properly, but also developing ways to democratize their functioning.
Privatization and more generally the commodification of everything will be our undoing unless we stop the Reaganite menace in its tracks. To the extent we succeed, we can resume the task, all but abandoned in our mainstream political culture for more than thirty years, of moving forward to a better world. Workers in Wisconsin and elsewhere are at this moment showing the way. We must not let the last of the friendly fascists derail their efforts and lead us all, yet again, astray.
ANDREW LEVINE is a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and POLITICAL KEY WORDS (Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College Park.?We're getting down to the wire before the NFL lockout begins and already things are getting a little nutty.
ESPN's Adam Schefter reports that an unnamed wife of an NFL player had labor induced last week so that her baby would be born before the lockout, and therefore the player's team would be forced to foot medical bills as opposed to the player.
ProFootballTalk points out that the ordeal was unnecessary, and that if the player had continued paying for COBRA health coverage the baby's birth would still have been covered even if there's a lockout.
Nevertheless, it's becoming very clear that some players aren't financially prepared to handle a lockout. The NFLPA isn't ready to budge yet, but news like this will eventually add up and the union could be forced to give in.
Bookmark the Sports Page >The minimum wage costs jobs. It makes our economy less efficient. Opponents of raising the minimum wage act as if this is the end of the story. But it isn’t. Many government policies reduce economic efficiency and make our society a bit poorer than it otherwise would be. But we’ve made a decision that other social goals make it worth the cost. So it is with the minimum wage.
The minimum wage has been around since the New Deal. If it’s so clear that raising it costs jobs, why do we not hear more poor people complaining about it? (I’ve never heard any poor person complain that the minimum wage is too high.) The reason? For a low-income individual, the minimum wage is a gamble. You might lose your job. But you might get a raise. The average wage of a Walmart “associate” is $8.81 an hour. A raise to $12.50 would be 41 percent. If you make only the federal minimum wage of $7.25 (as many Walmart associates do, though the exact number is subject to dispute), your raise to a “living wage” would be 72 percent! That is a deal worth considering.
Trouble is, Walmart is not offering that deal. Walmart sells as cheaply as it can, and that requires hiring people as cheaply as it can. Forcing Walmart to pay higher wages than its competitors is unfair, and forcing it to pay people more than it has to is unfair to its customers, many of them poor themselves, who would have to pay higher prices.
A confession: I love shopping at Walmart. In fact, I love just wandering around Walmart, admiring the cornucopia of stuff for sale and the miraculously low prices. I can hardly wait for six new Walmarts in the Washington area. (Right now there are none except in distant suburbs.)
However, I don’t want to exploit my fellow Americans by underpaying them. I would happily pay a bit more for the knowledge that nobody involved in the making and selling of whatever I purchase has been paid less than $12.50 an hour. How much is “a bit”? According to a study two years ago by scholars at the University of California at Berkley and City University of New York, the average Walmart customer spends about $1,200 a year there. (Good news for me: I am below average—but I can rectify that!) Even if the entire cost of a wage increase (to $12, not $12.50) were passed on to customers, the cost to an average customer would be just more than 1 percent, or $12.50 a year.
Who wouldn’t pay 12 bucks and change for the right to roam the Walmart aisles without guilt? Well poor people might not be able to. But, depending on how it’s done, they may not have to.
There’s no need to force Walmart into raising its wages and prices. Let the market work! These days almost everything you buy carries a label making the claim that in some way it is morally superior. It is “organic.” It is “gluten free.” It is “cruelty free”—cruelty to animals, that is. Everything from dishwasher detergent to entire office buildings gets certified by how “green” it is.
Why not create a label symbol indicating that the product you are about to buy is “poverty-free”—i.e., no American involved in making it or getting it to you makes less than $12.50 an hour?
Obviously, this should not be limited to Walmart, but Walmart could lead the way. On some items, they might want to try putting poverty-free and non-poverty-free items side by side on the shelf and see how many people go for each.
Yes, yes, I know there are problems. Imports, for one. A reason for Walmart’s low prices is that much of the labor that goes into its products is that of foreigners in distant lands who are lucky to get 12 cents an hour, let alone $12. Furthermore, that’s a good thing, the bottom rung on the ladder to the middle class.
As long as it’s voluntary, the extra cost of a living wage can be passed along to the customers, and any competitive disadvantage should disappear. Or here’s an idea: Hidden cameras could photograph the greedheads who wouldn’t pay 11 cents more for poverty-free peanut butter and bought the cheaper stuff instead. Their pictures could be posted at checkout.
No? Well, maybe that goes too far.
Michael Kinsley is editor-at-large of The New Republic.Somatic psychiatry has taken over psychiatry, and replaced an in-depth understanding of human nature. The fundamental and incorrect premise of somatic psychiatry is that the source of psychiatric problems come from defects in the brain. The false belief is that we are subject to brain diseases, and we need somatic treatments to fix them. This theory of psychiatry is now truly believed by most psychiatrists, as well as a lot of the general public at large. Its treatments have been lobotomies, ECT, and psychiatric drugs. (For a fuller exploration of Somatic psychiatry, read the appendix to my book, “Do No Harm: The Destructive History of Pharmaceutical Psychiatry and its Bedfellows – Electroshock, Insulin Shock, and Lobotomies.”)
Unlike neurology, psychiatry is not today, and has never been, about brain diseases. Neurology deals with literal organic brain damage or disease, either from anatomic malformations, death of brain cells from strokes or bleeds; damage from tumors, infections, seizures, concussions, dementias, toxic states etc. There is a clear distinction between organic diseases and functional conditions. Functional conditions refers not to the physical brain, but to the content of the consciousness it creates. Instead, psychiatry deals with the pains of life. This is manifest in the brain in a totally different fashion.
As I have shown in other blogs, the highest organization of the brain is the creation of the play of consciousness. We write our plays as we adapt to life. These plays are written through the emotional centers of the brain, the amygdala and the limbic system. Trauma — deprivation and abuse — especially in the early years, and continuing all the way through life, informs the writing of our plays. As a result of trauma one adapts by writing darker plays. This the real source of psychiatric symptoms and suffering. The plays operate in keeping with the way the brain actually functions in consciousness. The play and its adaptations are what defines functional conditions.
Somatic psychiatry has usurped the idea of what is biological. Of course we are biological creatures. And yes, everything we know, think, and feel comes from the brain. But psychiatric symptoms do not come from brain lesions creating diseases — it’s not anatomic, structural connectivity, or the microbiology of synapses and neurotransmitters. Obsessions, compulsions, phobias, anxiety, depression, and even schizophrenia and manic-depression reflect the way our play gets written by our adaptation to trauma. This is the true level by which our biology operates psychiatrically.
The appropriate treatment is psychotherapy. Through psychotherapy one recovers from problematic plays by mourning them in the context of trust and caring in the therapeutic relationship. It specifically heals the trauma in the same way it formed in the first place.
Historically, psychiatric diagnoses were never intended to signify literal brain diseases. They used to be a shorthand and a guide to point to the psychological issues that presented. This is how it still should be today. The way diagnosis is now used is a travesty. Psychiatric patients are being told they have a brain disease. And they really believe there is something genetic and biochemically wrong with them. Diagnoses were never intended to label and reduce our humanity. Psychiatric symptoms and suffering is purely a human problem. I do not use diagnosis at all. I attend to the person. Symptoms point to issues, which I deal with as they present themselves. Psychotherapy is the only practice that is humane, respectful, and caring. And it works.
Let’s take a brief review of somatic psychiatry, and the faulty science used to promulgate it. For lobotomies, the apparent locus in the brain for human problems was believed to be the prefrontal cortex. Since this part of the brain is the problem, let’s ream out the frontal lobe. In case there is confusion about the science, Antonio Egas Moniz, the inventor and promoter of this medieval horror, actually received the Nobel Prize for his great work. Thankfully this dark chapter in psychiatric history seems to have passed. But not so fast. It has now reappeared in different form — the promise of new drugs to erase traumatic memories. Life can be a happy dream. Let’s excise the bad and keep the good brain cells. Let’s control memory itself. This new improved model is actually chemical psychosurgery. A Brave New World indeed. Life is difficult. Trauma does leave scars. There is only one way to deal with trauma, loss, and pain, and that is to mourn it. It’s part of the human condition.
Shock treatment, whether electrical or chemical, goes back centuries. The purpose is to induce a grand mal seizure. The science was always bizarre. The theory was that seizures are the opposite of schizophrenia. Therefore a seizure will correct an imbalance in the brain — sound familiar? It’s like the Prozac theory of correcting chemical imbalances in the brain (a theory that has also been discredited). Many psychiatrists to this day still consider shock treatments the gold standard of psychiatry. Somatic psychiatry has now drifted over to neurostimulation therapeutics — Deep Brain Stimulation. We selectively pinpoint a small locus of brain cells. Zap them, and it fixes that damaged clump of brain cells, and the connected cells downstream. Now it begins. We are already on route, with ‘evidence based’ studies, to demonstrate the alleged effectiveness for DBS for the ‘diseases’ of depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, phobias, post traumatic stress, anxiety, and schizophrenia. Millions of dollars will be spent to prove these ‘promising’ theories. And with good marketing they will soon turn into beliefs. In time, it will be shown that these treatments don’t do anything constructive, and somatic psychiatry will move on to something new.
In the domain of pharmaceutical psychiatry, there haven’t been any new developments in years. We were told that ‘biological depression’ would finally be cured as we moved into the heyday of antidepressants. Get everybody on Prozac. In fact, the opposite occurred. Deaths from suicide have increased 24 percent from 1999 to 2014. It is now the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. The suicide rate for middle-aged women, ages 45 to 64, jumped by 63 percent over the period of the study, while it rose by 43 percent for men in that age range, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, as reported by the NY Times, April 22, 2016. In fact, black box warnings have been put on antidepressants for children and adolescents because antidepressants have been implicated as a cause of suicide. The real evidence is clearly mounting that the same danger applies to adults as well. Never mind the side effects — where people become estranged from their feelings, have no sexual feelings, and experience addiction and habituation. It is almost impossible to detox from these drugs without horrible and debilitating symptoms. Patients are now told they must take the antidepressants for life for their ‘disease.’ And when habituation takes place, new ones are added in.
Ben Goldacre is his illuminating Ted lecture, “What doctors don’t know about the drugs they prescribe” reveals the science behind ‘evidence-based studies,’ which are evidence-based in name only. A fifteen year review of antidepressant studies showed that 50% of the 76 studies were positive and 50% were negative. All of the positive studies were published and all but three of the negative studies were suppressed and not published. In 2004, approximately half of all studies that weren’t already suppressed by the pharmaceutical industry concluded that antidepressants are not significantly more effective than placebo alone. And two thirds of studies for children given antidepressants show the same. Even the standard for the positive studies by which effectiveness is scientifically accepted is that if antidepressants work 40% of the time and placebos work 30% of the time, it is deemed to be an effective drug. This means that the antidepressants apparently work 10% of the time in half the studies. In real science, the exception proves the rule. For a theory to be correct it has to be correct 100% of the time.
Somatic psychiatrists are now moving in new and bizarre directions, as the ineffectiveness of antidepressants shines through. Hallucinogenic drugs are being promoted as a cure for depression, alcoholism and the rest of psychiatry. The ‘evidence based studies’ are beginning, and not surprisingly, claim to be showing great promise. Here’s a good one: the bacteria in our gut is the cause for depression. The new theory is the microbial imbalance theory for depression — add it to the serotonin imbalance theory. Once again, the ‘evidence based’ studies claims it is showing great promise.
Somatic psychiatry has been so effectively marketed that most people believe in it. Belief is so very powerful. It is actually considered reasonable and constructive to be given a psychoactive pill for the human condition. Should we actually take seriously the idea that our gut bacteria cause depression? Do you think we all should drop acid and that’ll straighten out our lives? Perhaps we should zap our brains with DBS? Hold onto your hats.One of the great things about Stampede Wrestling was its inter promotional matches. Many classic encounters took place in Calgary between the Stampede roster and champions from other wrestling territories such as the AWA, NWA, Japan and even other Canadian organizations. Here is a classic encounter out of Stampede Wrestlings rich past thats bound to interest wrestling historians. A young Bret Hart challenges the 4 year world title reign of the legendary AWA heavyweight champion, Nick Bockwinkle. Bret was legitimately injured at this time and, of course, in the early “learning phase” of his career. However that did not stop Bret, the future “best there ever will be” and Nick,who was at the time “the best there was” from putting on a good wrestling match for all the fans. Worth noting is the mention of Davey Boy Smith winning the Stampede light heavyweight title, earlier in that same night. Worth also noting are the post match interviews by Ed Whalen with Nick Bockwinkle and “Dr. D” Shultz,who of course, competed in Stampede for several years. Dr. D also competed in the AWA, NWA, WWF and is most famous for his assault on a reporter who told him wrestling was fake! Enjoy the classic match and I will see you all for another ” ring-a-ding-dong-dandy”, next week!
[youtube XNp1xkXEP60]It seems Randy Quaid may not have been acting in the movie Independence Day—he may just be that crazy.
The conspiracy theorist and his wife, Evi, took a spare moment from being their kooky litigious, bill-jumping pseudo-celebrity fugitives from justice selves to record a new video PSA filled with – what else? – brand new paranoid rantings against “The Man.”
It’s hard to believe it’s only been five years since the Quaids first claimed a shadowy group of Hollywood spooks they dubbed “star whackers” were out to get them, triggering and justifying an increasingly bizarre series of legal shenanigans and felony charges ranging from stiffing a Southern California luxury hotel for $10,000 to resisting arrest in Marfa, Texas, and, most recently, being rejected by the government of Canada. (Here’s a partial timeline of their paranoid, mostly hotel and house-squatting-related escapades.)
Quaid has been relatively quiet of late by Randy Quaid standards since he and Evi have been stuck in Canada and unable to return to the United States, where felony warrants are out for their arrests. (Fear not: the couple is reportedly suing Secretary of State John Kerry to come home.)
In the video posted today, Quaid wears the very same palm tree-adorned Hawaiian shirt he sported as a schizo pilot who believes he was abducted by aliens in 1996’s Independence Day, one of the blockbusters he says he helped congloms like Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp. and Warner Bros. make billions from, getting only personal persecution in return. The Golden Globe-winning actor rails against Murdoch, Warner Bros., Village Roadshow Chairman/CEO and ex-WB exec Bruce Berman (who “stole my house”), the New York Post, and TMZ, which he’s renamed “#PMC - police media corruption.”
And that’s all before the now-bushy-bearded Quaid screams, “Rupert, you wanna fuck me? I’m gonna fuck you,” hands Evi a Murdoch mask, and energetically simulates sex with her yelling, “I’m baaaack!” (his Independence Day line) as a dog howls in agreement by his feet.
Watch the insanity here:Jonathan Gruber — the source of more smoking guns than the battle of Gettysburg — recently appeared before a hostile House committee. The good professor, you might recall, is an MIT economist who played a significant (and paid |
(ASW) composition was calculated to test any mixing with seawater, using data presented in Berner and Berner (1996). Swamp waters are brackish and their salinity depends on rainfall, sea connection and evaporation. Because of the flat topography, there is considerable seasonal variation in the water replenishment of the swamp. During the dry season, two thirds of the swamp area is dry, only the north‐east part being permanently waterlogged. Dried land is used for agriculture. We monitored two sites in the swamp: an inner site (#20) and a second site at the sluice gate (#22). After a period of more or less intense rainfall (January 1999 and January 2001 respectively), the chemistry of the swamp waters indicates a mixing of surface waters (MEW) and seawater as assessed by Na, Ca, Cl and SO 4 (Figure 4a and b). During the dry season, sulphate depletion was observed (Figure 4b); calculation of saturation indexes shows that this could not be due to a sulphate phase precipitation (gypsum, anhydrite, thenardite and mirabilite), and it is likely that the trophic condition of the swamp (probably eutrophic, personal observation) led to part of the sulphate ions being reduced and released as sulphide during the biological oxidation of organic matter. This hypothesis is corroborated by the low concentrations of nitrate (Table II) as compared with those sampled in surface water. The solution is close to equilibrium towards calcite in HA22 and HC22 and over‐saturated in HA20 and HD22. Figure 4 Open in figure viewerPowerPoint Distribution of the chemical composition of the Kaluvelly swamp through time. (a) Na+ versus Cl− concentrations and (b) Ca2+ versus SO 4 2− concentrations from January 1999 to October 2000. The dashed line corresponds to mixing between an average seawater (ASW from Berner and Berner, 1996) and surface waters (as reported MEW) The chemical characteristics of the swamp waters indicate a large input of surface/running water in January 1999 and evaporation in October 2000 and June 2001 and confirm that the 2000–2001 winter monsoon was rather weak.
Groundwaters from the three main aquifers The Cuddalore aquifer is an unconfined one. In the Vanur aquifer, #15, 16, 17 and 25 are in the unconfined area and the other boreholes in the confined area. The charnockite boreholes are located in the outcrop area. Calculation of saturation indexes shows that Cuddalore waters were under‐saturated with respect to calcite. Some Vanur (HB7, HC7, HE15, HE16 and HE26) and charnockite waters (#2, 32, HC34, HC50, HC52, HD52 and HE34) were in equilibrium with calcite. The chemical composition of waters from the Cuddalore showed seasonal variations, with lower salinity after the monsoon in January and an increase in TDS from June to October (Table II). In the Vanur aquifer, this seasonal pattern was less pronounced and occurred later due to water travel time. This may explain the slight increase in conductivity recorded in #47 and 48 from 1999 to 2001, while the rainfall‐deficient period was between 1995 and 1998. In contrast, no seasonal variation was observed in the charnockite aquifer water which had high salinity varying significantly between boreholes and across time for individual boreholes. Charnockite waters exhibited the same general chemical characteristics as Cuddalore and Vanur waters, linked to similar geochemistry of host‐rocks, the Vanur and Cuddalore sandstones being composed of charnockite‐sourced detritic deposits. However, the waters from these three aquifers cannot be differentiated with binary diagrams plotting concentrations of major elements, such as Na+ versus Cl− (Figure 5a). Figure 5 Open in figure viewerPowerPoint (a) Na+ versus Cl− concentrations in waters sampled in October 2000. The dashed line represents the linear correlation for a mixing between input waters (MEW) and an average seawater (ASW; Berner and Berner, 1996). (b) NO 3 − versus Cl− concentrations in samples collected in January 2001 Cuddalore The chemical composition of the water from the Cuddalore aquifer shows a limited range. This water is characterized by low TDS and low Mg concentrations (Table II). Among all major element ratios, the distribution of Ca/Mg ratios as a function of Mg/K ratios (Figure 6) allows the identification of the Cuddalore waters as a distinct and homogeneous group, with an Mg/K ratio ranging from 0 to 10 and a Ca/Mg ratio ranging from 1·5 to 3·5 throughout the studied period. Water with the lowest salinity was located close to the top of the hill of Auroville, #43, then #39 and 42, corresponding to the recharge waters of the Cuddalore aquifer. Input of recharge waters reduced the Ca/Mg ratio (Figure 6a–d). The SO 4 /Cl ratio ranged from 0·05 to 0·15 (expressed as a molar ratio; October; Figure 7). In one borehole (#40), water was possibly mixed with irrigation waters with high chloride and nitrate contents (Figure 5a and b). This chemical signature records amount, method and quality of fertilizer application, nitrogen uptake by crop and evaporation/evapotranspiration as well (Stigter et al., 2006). Figure 6 Open in figure viewerPowerPoint Ca/Mg versus Mg/K ratios for groundwater samples collected (a) in October 2000, (b) in January 2001, (c) in June 2001 and (d) in October 2001. ASW, average seawater (Berner and Berner, 1996) Figure 7 Open in figure viewerPowerPoint SO 4 /Cl ratios versus SO 4 2− concentrations in waters collected in October 2000. The dashed line represents the seawater ratio. MEW corresponds to the average ery water end‐member Vanur Water with the highest salinity was found in the deepest part of the confined area of the Vanur aquifer (#29, 35, 47 and 48; Tables I and II, Figure 5a), while the lowest salinity was measured in the unconfined area (#15, 16, 17, 25 and 30). A chemical gradient was recorded from the recharge area to the deepest parts of the confined area (Figure 5a). Distribution of Ca/Mg ratios as a function of Mg/K ratios (Figure 6) showed a trend between two kinds of water, from #48 and 47 to 30, with Mg/K and Ca/Mg ratios ranging from 10 to 30 and from 0·5 to 1·5, respectively. Samples from #47 and 48 were enriched in Ca and K as compared with other Vanur boreholes (Figure 6) and come within the Cuddalore domain. In October 2000, the water chemical composition in two boreholes (#26 and 35) differed from that found in samples from other boreholes (Figure 6a) and then tended to present the same Ca/Mg and Mg/K ratio from October 2000 to October 2001 (Figure 6a–d). For #35, an input of water similar to #37 (Ottai aquifer) is hypothesized. The mean concentration of chloride recorded in boreholes from the recharge area suggests that #16 could be contaminated by anthropogenic chloride (e.g. KCl; Figure 5a). Nitrate contents corroborate this hypothesis (Figure 5b). An input of irrigation waters is also suspected for #35 (Figure 5b). In the Vanur aquifer, the SO 4 /Cl ratio increased with the salinity of water, from 0·05 to 0·65 (expressed as a molar ratio; October 2000; Figure 7). The chemical composition of the Vanur waters varied from #25 (unconfined area), which could represent the recharge waters, to an enriched end‐member at #29 (confined area, depth 200 m; Figure 5a). Charnockite Various chemical compositions were observed in the groundwater in the charnockite aquifer. No clear chemical pattern can be observed in binary diagrams (e.g. Figure 5a) and these waters presented extremely variable Mg/K (from 0·4 to 110) and Ca/Mg ratios (from 0·6 to 4·1; Figure 6). Charnockite waters are mineralized, such as Vanur waters, but are sulphate depleted (Figure 7). The SO 4 /Cl ratios ranged from 0·05 to 0·25 (expressed as a molar ratio) in October 2000. In several boreholes (#23, 31, 32, 33, 50 and 52), an input of rich irrigation waters is suspected because of the high concentrations of both chloride and nitrate (Figure 5b). This is corroborated by high concentrations of orthophosphate (not presented in Table II; between 5 and 7 × 10−5 mol/l) recorded in #23. Since the chemical signatures recorded in the different charnockite boreholes were similar, there is no evidence of hydraulic connection between them, which is in accordance with the aquifer characteristics (water circulation through fractures and alterite pockets). To sum up, recharge was rapid in the Cuddalore with seasonal TDS variations and delayed but steady in the Vanur (Table II), while no regular pattern was observed in the charnockite. Cuddalore and Vanur waters form a homogeneous cluster, whereas charnockite waters represent a heterogeneous cluster. Cuddalore waters were less saline than Vanur and charnockite waters which exhibited the same salinity range. In the Vanur, #47 and 48 exhibited Ca/Mg and Mg/K ratios that differed widely from those found in samples taken from all the other deep boreholes in this aquifer, locating them in the Cuddalore domain. In the deepest part of the Vanur aquifer, waters exhibited unexpected heterogeneity as compared with other waters, particularly wells in the area with the lowest pressure (#13, 29 and 35; Tables I and II, Figures 1 and 3), and presented the largest time variation. This could indicate a poor connection of these wells with the rest of the aquifer, possibly linked to (i) a heterogeneous permeability of the aquifer, (ii) hydraulic connection with other aquifers (natural or through boreholes) or (iii) disconnection/isolation of some parts of the aquifer due to the balance between abstractions and recharge.
Groundwater from the other aquifers Other aquifers, Kadaperikuppam (#9, 11 and 51), Ottai (#28 and 37) and Turuvai (#36), were sampled to identify any connections. Apart from #28 which had very high salinity, samples from all the boreholes had medium salinity values (Table II). However, borehole #28 is equipped with a hand pump and is exposed to village input. Water sampled (at the outcrop) from the Kadaperikuppam aquifer (calcareous sandstone) was not Ca rich, compared with water from the Vanur aquifer, but K depleted. It was more enriched in chloride than did the Vanur recharge waters and exhibited a very stable SO 4 /Cl ratio: 0·4 for #9 and 0·1 for #11. Samples from HA9, HA11, HB9, HC11, HD11 and HE9 were in equilibrium with calcite. The two boreholes monitored in Ottai had very different chemical signatures. The data are in accordance with the geometry of this discontinuous aquifer (occurring as limestone lenses in clays). The chemical signature of these samples also differed from those in the other aquifers. Samples from #28 exhibited high TDS (from 2700 to 5100 mg/l) and were more enriched in Na, Mg and chloride than samples from Vanur. Water from #37 was more enriched in Ca and chloride and more K depleted than samples from Vanur. The SO 4 /Cl ratio calculated for both boreholes was very stable through time: about 0·3 and 0·7–0·9 for #28 and 37, respectively. Only HE37 was close to equilibrium with respect to calcite, whereas all the other samples taken from this borehole were under‐saturated, similar to those taken from #28. The chemical signature of water from #36 (Turuvai) was similar to that of Vanur samples. The SO 4 /Cl ratios ranged through time from 0·06 to 0·1. Water from #36 was under‐saturated with respect to calcite, except in October 2001 (HE36) when it was close to equilibrium.
Salinity time variation The salinity time‐variation study focused on Vanur because it is the most tapped aquifer. As the salinity variability recorded in this aquifer could be caused by seawater input, Na+, Cl−, SO 4 2− and TDS data were used to identify the involved processes. TDS indicated that salinity varied by less than 20% during the monitored period. The waters showing most variability with time came from boreholes #7, 13 and 17. There was no general pattern of salinity increase; some boreholes (e.g. #15 and 35) exhibited a slight increase, some (e.g. #29 and 48) showed a slight decrease, while others fluctuated from one survey to another. Looking at binary diagrams for January 1999 to October 2001, the distribution of chemical composition of waters was more consistent in October 2001 (Figure 6). It is likely that there was a purer Vanur chemical signature, with less input from other kinds of water, and reflecting the recharge water input from the 1998–1999 winter monsoon from the unconfined Vanur. Time variations of the concentrations of Na+, Cl− and SO 4 2− (Table II) confirm the TDS results. These results also confirm the input of recharge waters in the deepest parts of the aquifer (e.g. #13 and 29). The chemical characteristics of the samples from #35 and 26 (Figure 6) initially differed from those of the other boreholes but were similar in October 2001. In January 1999, #7 seems to have been replenished with saline water from the Kaluvelly swamp (Table II and D'Ozouville et al., 2006). This input dropped sharply after October 2000. Variation in salinity in the other aquifers (Cuddalore, Kadaperikuppam, Ottai, Turuvai and charnockite), based on TDS, was larger than that in the Vanur. In the Cuddalore, Kadaperikuppam, Ottai and charnockite aquifers, variation rose to 30, 50 and 100% (Table II). As in the Vanur aquifer, there was no general trend towards increased salinity.
Strontium isotope data The 87Sr/86Sr ratios and Sr concentrations are presented in Table III. 87Sr/86Sr ratios were determined first in a few samples from the 2000 and 2001 campaigns to confirm that this ratio behaves as a ‘conservative’ hydrological tracer. According to Figure 8a, the 87Sr/86Sr ratio should not vary through time at the considered scale. Figure 8 Open in figure viewerPowerPoint (a) 87Sr/86Sr ratios for samples collected in 2000 are reported versus the 87Sr/86Sr ratios for the same samples collected in 2001 to evidence the conservative behaviour of the 87Sr/86Sr ratios for deep aquifer samples. The 1:1 regression line is represented by the black line. (b) 87Sr/86Sr ratios versus Cl− concentrations in samples collected in January 2001. Arrows point out boreholes suspected to have received NO 3 ‐ and Cl‐rich irrigation waters. Dashed lines represent 87Sr/86Sr ratios recorded in seawater and in sampled fertilizers. Fertilizers #Fert3 and Fert9 did not contain any chloride Table III. Concentration of Sr, 87Sr/86Sr ratios and associated two standard deviations (2σ), in water samples collected from October 2000 (HB) to June 2001 (HD) Label Sr (µmol/L) 87Sr/86Sr 2σ Label Sr(µmol/L) 87Sr/86Sr 2σ HB9 18.79 0.709956 0.000008 HC24 9.63 0.711199 0.000008 HB16 6.90 0.714373 0.000007 HC25 3.01 0.714407 0.000007 HB19 2.85 0.708896 0.000007 HC26 14.95 0.709517 0.000008 HB23 7.86 0.708391 0.000008 HC27 8.90 0.709508 0.000008 HB30 5.37 0.713078 0.000007 HC28 77.43 0.710667 0.000007 HB31 8.55 0.705778 0.000008 HC29 14.59 0.710253 0.000006 HB36 24.83 0.709036 0.000007 HC30 6.53 0.712932 0.000008 HB37 10.43 0.709347 0.000009 HC31 8.20 0.705761 0.000009 HB38 1.21 0.709377 0.000008 HC32 26.43 0.706633 0.000007 HB46 4.34 0.708970 0.000007 HC33 7.46 0.710878 0.000008 HB47 40.07 0.708155 0.000006 HC34 5.23 0.712403 0.000008 HC2 2.41 0.711883 0.000008 HC35 18.35 0.709378 0.000007 HC4 21.23 0.709575 0.000008 HC36 27.10 0.709159 0.000007 HC6 0.89 0.710291 0.000007 HC37 10.26 0.709457 0.000008 HC7 10.95 0.712284 0.000007 HC38 1.23 0.709319 0.000007 HC8 2.22 0.710605 0.000007 HC39 1.01 0.709326 0.000008 HC9 22.32 0.709943 0.000007 HC40 2.19 0.709248 0.000012 HC10 27.63 0.709450 0.000008 HC46 4.39 0.708998 0.000008 HC11 7.81 0.710610 0.000008 HC47 54.03 0.708144 0.000008 HC13 11.35 0.710541 0.000008 HC48 33.35 0.707967 0.000008 HC15 4.94 0.711940 0.000008 HC50 9.76 0.708398 0.000009 HC16 7.51 0.714413 0.000008 HC52 22.63 0.706660 0.000007 HC17 4.72 0.713679 0.000007 HC19 2.61 0.708893 0.000008 HD49 12.22 0.708895 0.000007 HC22 36.76 0.709064 0.000008 HD53 4.86 0.708371 0.000006 HC23 6.44 0.708276 0.000006 Seawater (Bay of Bengal) 84.13 0.709199 0.000008 The samples taken from the three main aquifers (Vanur, Cuddalore and charnockite) displayed contrasting signatures (D'Ozouville et al., 2006). The Sr concentrations of the Vanur waters did not show any significant variations as compared with those in the Cuddalore waters (Table III) but tended to increase from unconfined to confined areas (see Figure 7 in D'Ozouville et al., 2006). All the samples, except those from #47 and 48, displayed higher 87Sr/86Sr ratios than that of present‐day seawater. The Cuddalore waters showed nearly constant intermediate 87Sr/86Sr ratios with variable Sr concentrations, down to very Sr‐depleted (1·01 µmol/l), demonstrating the influence of recharge (by rainfall). The recharge was recorded from samples with low Sr contents and 87Sr/86Sr ratios close to that of seawater, since rainfall has an 87Sr/86Sr ratio close to that of seawater, as measured during this study (0·709199 ± 0·000008) and published elsewhere (Dia et al., 1992; Davis et al., 2003; Banner, 2004). The Sr contents of the charnockite water samples were in the same range as those of Vanur samples. However, they presented large 87Sr/86Sr ratio variations (from 0·712403 ± 0·000008 to 0·705761 ± 0·000009; Table III), as did those of the surrounding charnockitic rocks (from 0·706954 ± 0·000007 to 0·727856 ± 0·000007; Table V). The surface waters displayed rather low Sr contents, indicating recharge by diluted waters (i.e. rainfall) and 87Sr/86Sr ratios close to (but slightly higher than) seawater values (Table III).
δD and δ18O data δ18O and δD signatures of water bodies were used to characterize evaporation or water–rock interaction processes (Table II). No local rainfall data were available. Because precipitation is brought mainly by the NE monsoon (Pondicherry meteorological station), the published rainfall data from Sri Lanka (at Colombo and Puttalam, from 1992 to 1995: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 2002) are thought to be representative of the rainfall received by the Kaluvelly watershed and were used to define a local meteoric water line: δD = 7·6δ18O + 7·8 (D'Ozouville et al., 2006). Local rainfall sampled during this study (September 2000, June 2001 and October 2001) was distributed along this line, confirming this hypothesis (Figure 9). Figure 9 Open in figure viewerPowerPoint Distribution of δ18O as a function of δD expressed as ‰ versus SMOW. (a) In January 1999, (b) in October 2000 and (c) in January 2001 (no rain for January 2001; the rain samples from June and October 2001 were added). The straight line represents the local meteoric line calculated for Sri Lanka (rainfall at Colombo and Puttalam, from 1992 to 1995: IAEA, 2002): δD = 7·5δ18O + 7·8 (R2 = 0·907; 44 data points have been used). Arrows help locate the rain samples. (d) Distribution of Cl− concentrations as a function of δ18O in samples collected in January 2001. Dashed lines represent mixing between (i) Cuddalore waters and seawater, (ii) Vanur recharge waters and seawater and (iii) MEW and seawater. Numbers on the dashed lines refer to percentage of seawater No evaporation process could be identified for erys and groundwater samples collected in January 1999 (Figure 9a). For October 2000, the enrichment in 18O compared with the local water line indicates some degree of evaporation, mainly for samples collected from borehole #11, 23, 24, 30 and 33 (Figure 9b). In January 2001, after a small monsoon, evaporation was still noticeable, mainly for borehole #11 and 24 (Figure 9c). These results reflect the small recharge of erys observed at this period. Distribution of chloride concentrations based on δ18O (Figure 9d) allowed two groups of deep boreholes in the Vanur aquifer to be differentiated: those from the eastern area (#47 and 48) and those from the western area (#13 and 29). Because of their mixed origin, waters from #35 appeared in the eastern group. Distribution of chloride and δ18O in the Vanur samples did not show the usual positive pattern observed during water evaporation. Mixings between different recharge waters (MEW, waters from the Vanur recharge area and Cuddalore waters) and seawater were tested (Figure 9d). Data distribution did not assess any significant input of seawater in the Vanur aquifer but assessed a more important contribution from the Cuddalore waters in #47 and 48 (east) than that in #13 and 29 (west). This result is in accordance with major element ratios (Figure 6). Main groundwater samples were distributed along the local meteoric water line, indicating a meteoric origin of the water. The transfer of water (rainfall plus irrigation water) during infiltration does not record physical evaporation. This result has been observed previously in similar areas in India (Gupta et al., 2005; Négrel et al., 2007). However, we have no information about transpiration. The meteoric signature also reflects the low topography of this area (little surface run‐off).
Fertilizers Samples of a number of commonly used fertilizers were collected to determine whether agricultural practices had an impact on the chemical and isotopic signatures of the aquifer waters. Major ions, nitrate and Sr isotopes were measured (Table IV). Table IV. Chemical composition and 87Sr/86Sr ratio of typical fertilizer used in this area Label Trade mark and company Measured composition (in weight) 87Sr/86Sr Fert2 MOP—Indian Potash Limited K+ 52% Cl− 48% 0.714050 Fert3 DAP—SPIC Limited NO 3 − 37% SO 4 2− 10–53% other 0.707896 Fert4 Complex fertilizer 17:17:17—Madras Fertilizer Ltd, Chennai K+ 15% Cl− 14% NO 3 − 17–54% other 0.718762 Fert8 MOP—SPIC Ltd, Tuticorun K+ 52% Cl− 48% 0.722003 Fert9 Superphosphate—EID Parry Ltd, Chennai Ca2+ 13% NO 3 − 14% SO 4 2− 32–61% other 0.707838 The strontium isotope composition of these fertilizers was determined by identifying specific end‐members characterized by Sr isotope signature. Sr isotope ratios of fertilizers can be divided into two groups (Table IV): (i) radiogenic, with values up to 0·722003 and corresponding to Cl‐rich fertilizers and (ii) non‐radiogenic ratios of around 0·7078 corresponding to previously recorded values (Négrel and Deschamps, 1996; Bölke and Horan, 2000) and not containing chloride. The first group could correspond to values registered elsewhere in intensively cultivated areas using fertilizers composed of a mixture of dolomite and potash (Bölke and Horan, 2000). In contrast, the second group is commonly found for phosphorus‐bearing components used in the production of nitrogen fertilizers (Négrel and Deschamps, 1996; Bölke and Horan, 2000). They exhibit Sr isotope ratios similar to early Tertiary marine values (Banner, 2004). Samples from #16 in the Vanur aquifer contained both chloride and nitrate with a high 87Sr/86Sr ratio, suggesting contamination by a fertilizer from the first group. However, it should be kept in mind that as we did not have access to complete sets of archived fertilizers, it was not possible to determine whether the groundwater Sr isotope ratios were matched over space and time by those of agricultural applications. However, these two extreme values for fertilizers match the data and correspond to analyses of fertilizers in the literature.Sean Hannity hosts an unbelievable debate between British Islamic fundamentalist preacher Anjem Choudary and Pamela Geller, the organizer of the draw Mohammed cartoon contest in Texas that al-Qaeda sympathizers attempted to attack last weekend. Hannity runs down the list of Choudary's radical views before Geller has a chance to respond:
PAMELA GELLER: Catholic laws apply only to Catholics, Jewish law applies only to Jews, but this Sharia Law takes every basic aspect of human life and asserts its authority over non-Muslims, unlike Jewish law and unlike canon law. That is why under the Sharia they are slaughtering the Christians and secular Muslims across Africa and across the Muslim world.
The fact is, in that fatwa that was issued against me, my name is preceded by kanzir, which means 'pig.'
It is the word Mohammed used before he slaughtered -- beheaded hundreds of Jews. So to first say to the liberal media that this is not religious is absurd and obscene on its face.
To blame me and say that my cartoons are controversial? Murdering cartoonists is controversial.
It is the jihadis who made this a flash point, not me. Does anyone really they they would have been peaceful, loving Americans--
GELLER: No. I am talking sir. I know you are used to stepping over women, but you're not going to have it here.
I submit to you that my conference saved lives because I understand the threat, and we had enormous protection, and the Garland Police were superb. But those Jihadists drove a thousand miles for this conference.
Would they have hit a mall? Would they have hit a coffee shop like in Australia? That conference saved lives and shame on the media.
Here Choudary attempts to interrupt, but Geller overrides him.Working on deploying Infer inside Facebook has taught us how important it is to have the analysis tool deeply embedded into the developers’ workflow; see our “Moving Fast with Software Verification” paper.
Infer runs as part of our continuous integration (CI) system, where it reports issues on code modifications submitted for review by our engineers. We think it’s great when someone can hook up Infer to their workflow, and we’re working with several other companies to help integrate Infer into their own CI systems. We’ve come far enough in a collaboration with Spotify to talk about it now!
Last July, shortly after Infer was open-sourced, we started talking with the Marvin (Android Infrastructure) team at Spotify. They were interested in using Infer on their Android app, but it did not work with their build system. They were using the Gradle build system, but Infer’s deployment within Facebook is done using a different build system, Facebook’s Buck; we had only an initial, basic integration with Gradle, which did not work with Spotify’s app. A Spotify engineer, Deniz Türkoglu, made improvements to our Gradle integration, which he submitted as a pull request to Infer’s codebase, which is hosted on GitHub.
Then, in November 2015, two of our engineers, Dulma Churchill and Jules Villard, traveled to the Spotify office in Stockholm to attend a Hack Week there. After running Infer on the Spotify app, we discussed the analyzer reports with Spotify engineers, and we agreed that they identified potential problems in the code. Infer is now running as part of Spotify’s CI system, and here is a quote from Deniz on Spotify’s perspective on Infer, which we include with his kind permission.
“At Spotify we are continuously working on making our codebase better, and in the Android infrastructure team we use a lot of tools: static analyzers, linters, thread/address sanitizers, etc. In our quest to make our code even better, we started using Infer. Infer found several legitimate issues that other tools had missed. The Infer team was also very helpful in following a few false positives that we encountered, and we now have it running on our build servers. Infer is a great add-on to a company’s toolbox. It’s not intrusive — you can simply add it to your flow and it will tell you where you forgot to close that cursor or leaked that context. If you find a false positive, just report it or, even better, make a PR. With more users, it will just keep getting better.”
This collaboration was truly a two-way street: Not only does Infer find issues in Spotify, which helps improve its Android app, but feedback from Spotify led to several improvements in Infer, including resolution of false positives and improvements of Infer’s UI and integration with Gradle. The better Gradle integration will make it easier for other people to run Infer on lots of other apps around the world.
We’re excited to collaborate with other companies and individuals to help make the world’s software better. If you are interested in integrating Infer into CI or otherwise hearing about our experience, drop us a line!By spcnet.tv on October 28th, 2012 | Taiwanese Entertainment
Taiwanese actress and pop singer Ruby Lin has always prided herself on her marketing value as a spokesperson considering her popularity as an actress, however, she is horrified when her photo was used for advertising hymen repair surgery, so much so that she has filed a copyright infringement suit, according to Jayne Stars.
It is understandable that Ruby is upset, as the copyright infringement has already lasted for 2 years.
The suit for unauthorised use of Ruby Lin’s photo online for hymen repair surgery was mounted against Beijing Greene Hospital, and the trial began yesterday morning in the Court of Chaoyang.
Ruby is requesting damages for the use of her image without her consent as well as an apology. Based on accepted celebrity spokesperson fees, the lawyer said she will be suing for $500,000 RMB, plus $100,000 RMB for mental distress.
According to her lawyer, “Ruby will never appear in this kind [hymen repair surgery] of advertisement. Even if money is offered, Ruby will turn it down.”
In their defence, Beijing Greene Hospital claimed that although the website has their name on it, it is not affiliated with them. They claimed that they have never administered nor accessed the site.The Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party
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"This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy."
U.S. Representative Christopher Shays, R-CT, (New York Times 3/23/05) What is Dominionism? Palin, the Christian Right, & Theocracy
by cberlet
Fri Sep 05, 2008 at 06:13:19 AM PDT Sarah Palin is a "Dominionist" with an apocalytic End Times theological viewpoint that sees the war in Iraq as part of God's plan. More on the End Times in the next post. Let's talk about Christian Right Dominionism and tendencies toward authoritarian theocratic governance. With a number of bloggers calling Sarah Palin a "Dominionist," it is a good idea to clear up some obvious errors in the use of terminology. Neither Sarah Palin nor her Protestant church affiliated with the Assemblies of God should be described as practicing a form of "Dominion Theology" or "Christian Reconstructionism." That is just plain wrong. It is fair to suggest that Palin displays the tendency called "Dominionism" in some of her public statements. As one of the authors who popularized the term "Dominionism" (along with Sara Diamond, and Fred Clarkson), I feel some obligation to clear up this confusion, which stems from some very sloppy research posted on a number of websites where the terms "Dominionism," "Dominion Theology," and "Christian Reconstructionism" are used improperly and interchangeably. "Christian Reconstructionism" is a form of "Dominion Theology" that influenced a tendency toward "Dominionism" in the Christian Right and certain evangelical churches such as The Assemblies of God. But, lumping of these theologies together is neither accurate, nor fair. How did this confusion get started? In a September 1994 plenary speech to the Christian Coalition national convention, Rev. D. James Kennedy said that "true Christian citizenship" involves an active engagement in society to "take dominion over all things as vice-regents of God." Kennedy's remarks were reported in February 1995 by sociologist and journalist Sara Diamond, who wrote that Kennedy had "echoed the Reconstructionist line." More than anyone else, it was Sara Diamond who popularized the term "dominionism," using it to describe a growing political tendency in the Christian Right. It is a useful term that has, unfortunately, been used in a variety of ways that are neither accurate nor useful. Diamond was careful to discuss how the small Christian Reconstructionist theological movement had helped |
.S.Diane Abbott is to be replaced as a pundit on BBC1's late-night political discussion programme This Week by the former cabinet minister Hazel Blears following her bid to become Labour leader.
Abbott announced last week that she intends to contest the party's leadership but has yet to secure the nomination of 33 MPs necessary to get her name on the ballot paper.
Nevertheless, the BBC has taken the decision to replace her on This Week because it was concerned her continued appearance as a pundit would breach its editorial independence guidelines.
Abbott is a regular on the show alongside host Andrew Neil and fellow pundit Michael Portillo, the former Tory minister, with whom she has formed a popular double act on the This Week sofa.
She told the Guardian today: "They told me I can [continue on the show] and it appears they've backed off. I find it very strange."
Blears is a former Labour party chair and communities secretary, a role which she left last year. Her resignation was seen at the time as evidence of Gordon Brown losing the confidence of his cabinet, as it came less than 24 hours after Jacqui Smith quit as home secretary. Blears said she was leaving for "personal reasons".
The Telegraph claimed she quit partly because of the revelation that she had not paid capital gains tax on the sale of two properties. She was returned as MP for Salford earlier this month, having been first elected to parliament in 1997.
A BBC spokesperson, said: "For the sake of fairness to all the candidates for the Labour party leadership, while Diane is a candidate she won't be making her usual appearance on the This Week sofa."
• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediatheguardian.com or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.
• If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication"."I think it's tragic," says Philip White, a sport sociologist at McMaster University. "You live in a culture where everybody is supposed to have an opportunity to advance and kids are simply shut out."
Our analysis is grounded in data. Stick with us while we get the heavy stuff out of the way.
Over the past 12 months, The Spectator obtained home postal codes for 218 players on 13 of the OHL's 20 teams — roughly 60 per cent of the homegrown players in the league. We cross-referenced them with demographic information from Statistics Canada's 2011 National Household Survey to find:
• 80 per cent came from neighbourhoods with median family incomes above the Ontario average of $80,987, and 25 players — roughly 15 per cent — came from neighbourhoods with median family incomes at least 50 per cent higher than the norm,
• 90 per cent came from neighbourhoods where fewer people live in poverty than the usual 13.9 per cent,
• 74 per cent came from neighbourhoods with post-secondary completion rates higher than the standard 64.8 per cent, and
• 66 per cent came from neighbourhoods with median home values above the Ontario average of $300,862.
We also examined the data at a regional level. Overall, the outcomes were similar — yet, in the Hamilton area, which also includes Burlington and Grimsby, trends in three of the four categories were more pronounced.
Of the 17 locally born players, 14, or roughly 82 per cent, came from neighbourhoods with above-average incomes and dwelling values. An even greater proportion — more than 88 per cent — came from neighbourhoods where post-secondary completion rates were unusually high.
The situation troubles McTeer, a kinesiology professor who, like White, has studied the intersection of sport and social class. That's because players who make it to the OHL aren't inherently more talented than their non-hockey-playing peers — "they just had way better experiences because their families could afford it."
The numbers are only part of the story.
After plotting the postal codes on a map, we found not a single player from the Hamilton area came from the lower city and just two hailed from the Mountain north of the Lincoln Alexander Parkway. Collectively, the 17 points form a horseshoe that skirts the old City of Hamilton and its less affluent neighbourhoods — a pattern replicated in a number of major cities in southern Ontario.
In Toronto, for instance, not one player came from the area stretching east from the Don Valley Parkway and south from Highway 407 all the way to Highway 38 in Pickering — roughly 320 square kilometres encapsulating some of the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the provincial capital.
In Ottawa, every one of 10 players came from suburbs with above-average incomes and post-secondary completion rates, and six came from neighbourhoods with poverty levels approximately one-third of the Ontario norm.
It's a picture the league wasn't eager to share.
The OHL, which is the top rung of the junior hockey ladder in Ontario and a development league for the NHL, denied The Spectator's request for postal codes. It also advised several of its teams to do the same.
"We take the addresses purely under the understanding that we only use it for information we send to families, that teams send to families," said league commissioner David Branch. "That's the reason we don't release that information."
Altogether, seven teams declined to provide postal codes — the North Bay Battalion, the Mississauga Steelheads, the Oshawa Generals, the Kingston Frontenacs, the Ottawa 67's, the Sarnia Sting and the Windsor Spitfires.
Some cited the OHL's advice as a reason, while others, including the Oshawa Generals, simply did not respond to our repeated requests.
The trends uncovered in this investigation aren't limited to the OHL. In fact, there's a large body of research which suggests similar disparities exist at all levels of the game across Canada and that the overall price of hockey is on the rise — the consequence of a collision of factors, including privatization, sport specialization, spiralling public subsidies and the decline of volunteers.
In 2013, The Globe and Mail's James Mirtle reported on a confidential Hockey Canada survey of 1,300 parents. It showed the participants had an average household income around 15 per cent higher than the national median and most listed their occupation as a professional, owner, executive or manager — typically well-paid, flexible lines of work.
The survey also found it's not only the highest levels of the sport that cost a bundle. The average parent spent nearly $3,000 on minor hockey in the 2011-12 season alone.
"It's widely known that Canada's national winter sport is expensive to play," Mirtle writes. "But various factors have conspired over the last 10 to 15 years to make minor hockey dramatically more expensive, pricing out middle-class families. These days, more and more of the players that go on to play major junior, college and ultimately pro hockey are from wealthy backgrounds."
There's more.
In their 2013 book "Selling the Dream: How Hockey Parents and Kids Are Paying the Price for Our National Obsession," Ken Campbell and Jim Parcels argue that families with more money "have created an enormous advantage for their children by exposing them to programs that cost a lot and require a huge commitment." Hockey is becoming an increasingly exclusive club, they add, "and the more competitive the hockey, the more exclusive the club."
Similarly, in a book chapter titled "Goodbye, Gordie Howe: Sport Participation and Class Inequality in the 'Pay for Play' Society," Richard Gruneau writes there is nothing to suggest higher-level sport has become more accessible to Canada's lower classes over the past three to four decades. On the contrary, "the higher levels of sport in Canada today are less accessible to the lower classes than ever."
It hasn't always been this way — particularly when it comes to hockey. As recently as the 1970s, most professional players came from families in which fathers worked in farming, fishing, logging or blue collar trades, adds Gruneau, a professor in Simon Fraser University's school of communications. For example, the father of Wayne Gretzky — the widely acknowledged greatest player of all time — wasn't an executive, but a Bell Telephone repairman. "Few families in similar circumstances are likely to send a player to the pros today."
Steve Staios knows as well as anyone the sport has changed.
Long before taking the reins as president and general manager of his hometown Bulldogs, the former NHLer was just another kid from Westdale cutting his teeth with the Hamilton Huskies. He says he has no idea what his variety-store-owner parents paid for him to play in the mid-1980s — just that it's nowhere close to the $20,000 or so he spends each year for his 15-year-old, Nathan, to suit up with an elite team in Vaughan.
When Staios was his son's age, there was no power skating, no summer hockey, no personal trainers. His off-season routine consisted of nighttime soccer and daytime shinny at the now-shuttered Hamilton Doublerink on Barton Street East.
"We'd pay our three dollars and bring a bagged lunch," he says. "Our parents would drop us off at nine and pick us up at three."
Staios sinks into a leather club chair in his York Boulevard office, reflecting on the cohort of players coming out of Hamilton at that time. Some, like him, went on to the NHL, while others would play in the minor leagues or in Europe. The shinny was good, he says, competitive.
"It was all 'throw your sticks in the middle.' It wasn't a lot of specific drills or anything like that."
Jack Birch tells a similar story.
Growing up in Peterborough, the Winnipeg Jets scout and former McMaster University coach spent his winters on backyard rinks and frozen ponds. "We'd get up on a Saturday morning and be gone until dark," he says — something unheard of in today's world of hyper-present helicopter parents.
"Now, the only way for these kids to develop is through some kind of organized program. The pond hockey is gone," he adds. "They have to be part of a minor hockey organization of some sort and they have to be coached...
"When we were kids, we played hockey. And when hockey was over, we played lacrosse or baseball, and then we played hockey again. There was no such thing as trainers and all that stuff, but we had the opportunity to do it because we didn't need to have parents around to play the game."
Here's what we know:
The OHL is largely composed of players who come from a small and exclusive segment of society and is largely devoid of players who don't — a trend that extends beyond the league's borders, from house league right up to the pros.
The question is, is that a problem?
Yes, says Peter Donnelly, a huge one — especially if we as Canadians think of ourselves as a fair society. Because if we do, he adds, "this is a creeping, welling example of unfairness."
But that's only part of it. It's also a problem because the system is limiting the size of the overall pool of talent — something that has implications for the OHL, its governing body, Hockey Canada, and the sport itself.
When Canada started to adopt the Soviet-style model of early intensive training and talent identification in the mid-1970s, late developers and low-income kids began to be cut out, says Donnelly, a University of Toronto professor who specializes in social inequality and sport.
It's now rare to find players in the upper echelons of the game that grew up in low-income households or didn't take up elite hockey at young age. Those who start late (for financial or other reasons) aren't advancing, even though they might possess a wealth of inherent talent.
"How many Wayne Gretzkys are there among those 80 per cent of kids who can't ever get to play really high-level competitive hockey?" Donnelly asks.
Birch, the Jets scout, backs him up.
"That's the best way to say it," he says. "An enormous amount of talent doesn't get the opportunity to start. Or there's an enormous amount of talent that may have gotten to start but fell out pretty quickly for reasons other than talent."
The OHL's Branch, however, doesn't buy it. At least not entirely.
For those players who take up the game, the chances of a phenom falling through the cracks are "extremely minimal," notes the commissioner. "You can't say it would never happen, but I don't believe that would necessarily occur."
In saying that, "undoubtedly there are some players that never take up the game but could well have been the next Connor McDavid or the next Bobby Orr." But, he adds, "I guess you could say that about any sport."
Here's the thing, though.
At the same time hockey costs are skyrocketing, more Canadians are excelling in basketball, baseball, football and other sports, making you wonder if some of our best athletes, who once went into hockey by default, are now finding other arenas.
And if so, how much does money have to do with it?
Back in his office, Staios, the Bulldogs boss, is pondering a different question:
Is it even possible for a kid from an average background to make it to the OHL these days?
"Yes," he says. "Again, there needs to be a certain level of — "
He doesn't finish his thought.
"That's the concern," he continues. "I think if you're a lower-income family in Canada, it becomes much more difficult. Much more difficult. There has to be a certain level of — or time on ice, or certain ability to go out and train that could take you to the next level."
It's unsettling for him — the idea that you could have a very good, passionate and disciplined athlete who has the will to make the game better, but lacks the opportunity.
It's unsettling for Gruneau as well.
If we as a nation have an interest in having the most skilled players involved in the game, the Simon Fraser professor says — the players with the desire and the aptitude and that one-in-10,000 combination of drive and athleticism — then you've got to find a way for them to play at an elite level.
"Because otherwise what we end up with are teams of pretty good rich kids."
Series extras
How we did it
The Spectator requested home postal codes for all Ontario-raised players from the Ontario Hockey League’s 20 teams. Of those, 13 provided us with information for the players on their post-trade deadline rosters and seven — the North Bay Battalion, the Mississauga Steelheads, the Oshawa Generals, the Kingston Frontenacs, the Ottawa 67’s, the Sarnia Sting and the Windsor Spitfires — did not. The OHL head office declined to our request.
In total, we obtained 218 postal codes, which accounts for roughly 60 per cent of the Ontario-born players in the league after the trade deadline. All but a few, which were obtained by reaching out to individual players by phone or social media, came directly from the 13 participating teams. We then attempted to cross-reference the postal codes with demographic data from Statistics Canada’s 2011 National Household Survey, before comparing the outcomes with provincial and regional averages. We also mapped them.
We found demographic data for 165 of the 218 postal codes. Information for the remaining 53 was unavailable for several reasons — in some cases, it was blacked out because the number of respondents in the corresponding census tract was too small, while in others, the postal code didn’t align with a single census tract, but two or three or more.
Those 53 postal codes were included in our geographic analyses, but not our findings related to median family incomes, post-secondary completion rates and so forth.
The Spectator also used information from the City of Hamilton’s ward profiles, which are a compilation of data from several sources including the 2011 Census, the 2011 NHS, city permits and applications and the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. As the city acknowledges, there are some drawbacks to using NHS data, since the survey was voluntary. That means the results could be subject to higher non-response bias than the previous mandatory long-form census — a concern because populations who choose to respond to a survey tend to be different than those who choose not to.
When reading this project, you’ll notice we abstained from publishing the teams and players associated with the postal codes, as well as the postal codes themselves. This was done in an effort to protect the privacy and personal information of the players — mostly teenagers between the ages of 16 and 20. It’s also worth stating that our findings relate not to the players’ families, but to the broader neighbourhoods in which they reside.
— Teri Pecoskie, Hamilton Spectator
E.J. McGuire data supports Spec findings
E.J. McGuire
He might have been best known for his work as a coach and scout, but E.J. McGuire was also a top-notch researcher.
Before his death from cancer in 2011, the Buffalo native and former Guelph Storm bench boss worked with Wilfrid Laurier University’s William McTeer and McMaster University’s Phil White to gather and analyze information about the parents of NHL draftees.
The trio looked at everything from occupational status and education levels to divorce rates in order to gain an understanding of the families from which elite hockey players come.
They collected data over two three-year periods (1993-95 and 2003-05) and compared it to the results of national labour force surveys and Statistics Canada reports. McTeer says their findings were presented at a conference, but never published — he provided them to The Spectator because of their relevance to this project. View the PDFs below.
In the first three-year period, McGuire and his collaborators found both mothers and fathers of draftees were most likely to work as either self-employed or employed professionals or high-level managers — jobs at the high end of the occupational status scale, which speaks to the cost of participating in high-level hockey and who is able to afford it.
They also found most had either a post-secondary diploma or university degree and almost all (88 per cent) were still married (compared to 60 per cent for the general population).
One significant change in the second three-year period had to do with the parents’ work. This time around, both mothers and fathers were most likely be occupied in semi-professional, technician, middle management or supervisor roles, as foremen, or in the skilled clerical, sales, service or crafts trades.
The decline among fathers in the highest occupational status group could be due to a couple of factors, says McTeer — disenchantment with the game given its violence and the media buzz around concussions, or, possibly, the fact that elite hockey leaves little time for things such as family meals, vacations or other sports.
It’s also possible that, since the work weeks of professionals are generally getting longer, dads on the top end of the occupational status scale simply have less time to take their kids to hockey games and practices.
Interestingly, McTeer notes, there’s no corresponding drop in education levels, which is thought to be a closely related variable. In fact, the percentage of fathers with university degrees rose from 27 per cent to 42 per cent from the first three-year period to the second, while the percentage of mothers with university degrees more than doubled from 22 per cent to 47 per cent.
— Teri Pecoskie, Hamilton Spectator
NHL Parents Data by The Hamilton Spectator on Scribd
Player profiles
PAY TO PLAY
About the series
A highly significant number of the Ontario Hockey League’s homegrown players come from a small and exclusive segment of society where high rates of post-secondary education, incomes and housing values collide.
Is it a problem? How was it caused? And what could be done to fix it?
Those are the questions the Spectator's Teri Pecoskie sets out to answer in this three-part series. Here’s a rundown of where we’ve been and what’s to come:
Part 1
The problem: Our data shows Ontario-born players tend to come from similar neighbourhoods — a trend that could have implications for the OHL, Hockey Canada and the sport itself
The cause: Hockey is expensive, but cost is just one of several factors preventing kids from diverse neighbourhoods and backgrounds from playing the game — particularly at competitive levels
The fix: Stakeholders say they believe in hockey opportunities for all, but it’s going to take more than talk to level the playing field
tpecoskie@thespec.com
905-526-3368 | @TeriatTheSpecFormer FBI Agent Speaks Out: 'I Was Not Protected'
Enlarge this image FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Robyn Gritz spent 16 years at the FBI, where she investigated a series of major national security threats. But she says she got crosswise with her supervisors, who pushed her out and yanked her security clearance.
For the first time, she's speaking out about her situation, warning about how the bureau treats women and the effects of a decade of fighting terrorism.
"Watching everything that's going on in the world, how I had battled al-Qaida in Iraq, the Taliban... all my experience, all the time I had put in there, I'm selling lipstick and blush," she said of leaving the FBI. Courtesy Robyn Gritz hide caption toggle caption Courtesy Robyn Gritz
"When you're fighting terror and you're seeing buildings come down before you, you're passionate and you're emotional, and I think the American people want you to be that way when you're fighting terror and keeping them safe," said Gritz.
That passion fueled her to work weeks on end investigating the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11. And for years after, she devoted herself to national security cases that just kept coming. Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl disappeared in Pakistan. A former FBI agent, Robert Levinson, went missing in Iran. And then there were the al-Qaida leaders hiding overseas.
"I wanted to be in the middle of it," she says. "And I wanted to be able to make a difference."
For 15 years, Gritz says, she did. Her bosses at the FBI gave her excellent or outstanding performance reviews, she says. But when a reporter made contact with her last year, she was selling cosmetics at Macy's.
"Watching everything that's going on in the world, how I had battled al-Qaida in Iraq, the Taliban... all my experience, all the time I had put in there, I'm selling lipstick and blush," she says.
How did that happen? Gritz says the FBI drummed her out of a job. All because of allegations about fraud on her time card that she says just didn't happen. The FBI also blamed her for not attending a 7:15 a.m. meeting and sending an unprofessional email to an ex-boyfriend.
Now, she's got the ear of people like Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley. The Republican lawmaker from Iowa says he's concerned about what he heard from Gritz and a small but vocal band of female whistleblowers at the FBI.
"When you have seven or eight people who come to you and talk about gender discrimination, I feel like I have a responsibility to raise that issue," Grassley says.
"When you have seven or eight people who come to you and talk about gender discrimination, I feel like I have a responsibility to raise that issue." Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley
So Grassley asked the FBI director about its treatment of female agents at a hearing last year. Grassley said he heard from one woman called emotionally unstable and difficult, all because "she pointed out that her men's size 40 hazardous materials suit didn't fit her."
The senator added: "Another whistleblower claims she was denied a job for which she was ranked first out of six candidates because her male supervisors claimed she was quote-unquote emotionally fragile following a divorce."
The FBI didn't want to talk about Robyn Gritz's case, in part because it's still moving through the system. But officials there say they understand the importance of whistleblowers. And FBI Director James Comey has said he's trying to diversify its largely white male ranks.
That won't come soon enough for Gritz, who says she never wanted to be branded a complainer. After a decade of 24/7 work fighting terrorism, things got rough in her personal life — a hostile divorce caused in part by her work. And then, after she'd gone to work on detail to the CIA, her FBI supervisors started asking about her hours.
Gritz says she tried to resolve the problems short of a lawsuit. Plenty of male agents got away with far worse, she says, with no punishment. But she says the FBI pushed her into a corner.
"I sat there for about a year and a half... idled, basically ignored, ostracized," she says.
Then, Gritz got a notice that the FBI intended to begin a process to fire her over the time card issues and the inappropriate email she sent.
"I had dedicated my life to protecting the people of the United States... and then I was not protected and I felt it was because I was a strong female." Robyn Gritz
"I had given up a marriage, I had given up 16 years of my life of anniversaries, birthdays, weddings, special events, Christmas, all of the holidays," Gritz says.
"I had dedicated my life to protecting the people of the United States... and then I was not protected and I felt it was because I was a strong female."
Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who led the Defense Intelligence Agency, worked closely with Gritz to find terrorists overseas. He says it's a shame the FBI let go of someone with years of top national security experience.
"She was one of the really, to me, bright lights and shining stars early on that just kinda got it when it came to the kind of enemy that we were facing and the relationship that was necessary between law enforcement and the military... and I just thought she was really a real pro," Flynn says.
Gritz, now 46 years old, had to sell her home and move in with her parents. The FBI yanked her security clearance, and she thinks they've been black balling her for jobs in the field. That's how she ended up selling makeup. She recently moved to a better paying position answering phones at a call center.
Even though Gritz has left the government, she says, she still hears from a lot of women, and some men, at the FBI, people who she says aren't getting a fair shake.
After all, Gritz says, "When you can take out an agent that has my credentials, you can do it to anyone."
An inspector general is looking at Gritz's allegations and her case is slowly moving through a backlog in the equal opportunity system.Sneak Peek 4
After Noel Kahn’s abrupt death, the Liars try putting their lives back together again in “Playtime,” the first of the final ten episodes of Freeform’s hit original series “Pretty Little Liars,” airing TUESDAY, APRIL 18 (8:00 – 9:02 p.m. EDT). Fans can catch up on where the Liars left off with an all-day marathon of season seven starting at 11:00 a.m. EDT and running up to the one-hour spring premiere at 8:00 p.m. EDT.Spencer focuses on learning more about her connection to Mary Drake, while Aria and Ezra figure out what their future may hold now that Nicole is back in the picture. Mona helps Hanna get her fashion career back on track, and Emily struggles to balance things between Ali and Paige now that the three of them are working at Rosewood High. Meanwhile, A.D. has a special delivery for the Liars, one that reveals the final endgame. The Liars realize this latest gift pushes things to a whole new level.“Pretty Little Liars” is produced by Alloy Entertainment in association with Warner Horizon Television and is executive produced by I. Marlene King, Oliver Goldstick, Leslie Morgenstein, Charlie Craig and Joseph Dougherty.The series stars Troian Bellisario, Ashley Benson, Tyler Blackburn, Lucy Hale, Ian Harding, Shay Mitchell, Andrea Parker, Janel Parrish and Sasha Pieterse.
After years of being stalked and bullied by the mysterious “A” – first, the original “A” (Mona); then later by big “A” (Charlotte); and now by their newest tormentor “A.D.” – Aria, Spencer, Hanna, Emily and Alison are ready to end the games and finish this for good. The final ten episodes will be chock-full of homecomings and reunions, including the return of Wren Kingston (Julian Morris), Pastor Ted Wilson (Edward Kerr), Jenna Marshall (Tammin Sursok), Paige McCullers (Lindsay Shaw), Melissa Hastings (Torrey DeVitto) and Sydney Driscoll (Chloe Bridges). The season will continue to be the deadliest and most romantic yet. Any and all lingering questions, including who killed Jessica and Charlotte DiLaurentis, and of course, who is A.D., will finally be answered once and for all.The season premiere will pick up immediately where the last episode left off. After hearing the news that Nicole is alive, Aria and Ezra have to deal with the fact that Nicole is back in Ezra’s life and what that means for them. Spencer, fresh from being shot presumably by A.D., must now deal with the repercussions of being told that Mary Drake is her biological mother. Alison must cope with the news of her pregnancy as Emily tries to stay by her side and guide her through the next steps. After spending a romantic night together, Hanna and Caleb will explore where they go from here.“Pretty Little Liars” is produced by Alloy Entertainment in association with Warner Horizon Television and is executive produced by I. Marlene King, Charlie Craig, Joseph Dougherty, Oliver Goldstick and Leslie Morgenstein. The series stars Troian Bellisario, Ashley Benson, Tyler Blackburn, Lucy Hale, Ian Harding, Shay Mitchell, Andrea Parker, Janel Parrish and Sasha Pieterse.Sallie Mae, a publicly traded company that is the nation’s biggest student lender with $22 billion in loans originated last year, led the field in spending $3.48 million in federal lobbying in 2009, an increase from $3.2 million in 2008, and other lenders spent millions of dollars more, according to an analysis prepared for The New York Times by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Political action committees for the lenders and company employees made $2.1 million in political contributions last year, with the money split evenly among Democrat and Republican candidates, the data showed. Sallie Mae’s PAC alone made $194,000 in donations.
Some 10 million students got loans last year to help pay for their educations, and there is disagreement about whether having the federal government take over virtually the entire lending program would help or hurt them. Private lenders warn that students may default on their loans more often because they will get less counseling; the Obama administration says students will benefit from more grants and expanded educational programs.
A defeat for the White House at the hands of the industry could become further evidence of the administration’s sagging political fortunes. The unexpected loss of the Massachusetts Senate seat has given opponents of the lending plan an opportunity that seemed unlikely last September, when the House approved legislation to move to a federally-sponsored loan program.
The student loan industry, which would be forced out of the loan origination business if the proposal became law, is seeking to cast the administration’s plan as an ill-conceived government takeover that could put thousands of people out of work at private lending centers around the country at a time when unemployment is hovering around 10 percent.
“We anticipated this,” Arne Duncan, the education secretary, said of the lending industry’s lobbying efforts. “They’ve had a sweet deal. They’ve had this phenomenal deal that taxpayers have subsidized, and that’s a hard thing to give up.”
Private lenders get a cut of the federally backed loans that they originate and service, with little risk of their own. At Sallie Mae, lobbyists for the firm are focusing on senators regarded as fiscal conservatives, as well as those in states that are home to lending centers with jobs at stake, including Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, New York and Pennsylvania, said John F. Remondi, chief financial officer for the company.
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Student loan lenders employ about 35,000 people around the country, although estimates differ as to how many jobs would be eliminated if the federal government took over all direct lending on student loans.
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“We haven’t left any stone unturned — we’ll meet with anyone who will meet us,” Mr. Remondi said in an interview. “We’re trying to identify at least 12 senators who would be helpful in this process.”
At the same time, Sallie Mae and other lenders have staged a series of town-hall-style meetings at their job centers around the country to help mobilize opposition to the White House plan and collect thousands of signatures for a petition drive in support of their own plan.
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“I would think that the White House would prefer not to make senators vote for something that is going to be very unpopular in their states — and for good reason,” said Jamie Gorelick, a former Clinton administration official who is now lobbying for the lending industry.
Mr. Obama defended his plan last week in his State of the Union address.
“To make college more affordable, this bill will finally end the unwarranted taxpayer subsidies that go to banks for student loans” and use the savings to finance other educational programs, he said to cheers from Democrats. “In the United States of America,” Mr. Obama said, “no one should go broke because they chose to go to college.”
The money that would be saved by cutting out the private-industry middlemen — about $80 billion over the next decade, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis — could instead go toward expanding direct Pell Grants to students, establishing $10,000 tax credits for families with loans, and forgiving debts eventually for students who go into public service, administration officials say.
The bill would also shift tens of billions of dollars in expected savings to early learning programs, community colleges and the modernization of public school facilities.
Representative George Miller, the California Democrat who has led the fight for the lending overhaul as chairman of the House Education Committee, predicted in an interview that the plan would ultimately pass.
“If people want to lose $80 billion on the taxpayer’s dime for the very narrow interests of Sallie Mae, I guess they can decide that, but it makes no economic sense to me,” he said. “They had a great ride for years.”
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If Congress backs Mr. Obama’s proposal, opponents say that students will forfeit the individualized service that private lenders are better able to offer: a one-on-one meeting in a high school gym, a range of loan options to pick from, or an 11th-hour meeting to avoid a default. The lenders have offered an alternative proposal to retain a more active role in originating loans, which they say would generate significant federal savings — $67 billion in the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Some financial-aid administrators at colleges around the country say they are worried that the political uncertainty over the loan proposal and the one-size-fits-all approach of the White House’s approach could hurt colleges and students.
“We’re caught in a political struggle,” Caesar Storlazzi, the chief financial aid officer at Yale, said in an interview. Like a wave of other colleges in recent months, Yale decided in November to switch from private-sector loans to the federal government’s direct-lending program.
But with passage of the White House plan now appearing “less inevitable,” Mr. Storlazzi wonders whether keeping the private lenders in business is better for students.
“It really felt like the administration was just shoving this down our throats,” he said. “It feels a bit like a federal takeover.” With competition among lenders, he said, “We get better prices and services.”Tyre choices for Korea, Japan and India are revealed // The medium compounds are hard at work during next three rounds Published 17 September 2013 by Christine
Credit: Pirelli S.p.A.
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The Singapore Grand Prix this weekend will see drivers opting to run either the supersoft or medium compounds, and they will have exactly the same choices available for the next race in Korea. Tyre suppliers Pirelli have confirmed the compounds available for the next three races, with the better traction generated by the supersoft set to deal with the slippery surfaces at Korea.
In Japan, the orange sidewalls will make a reappearance as the hard compounds are paired with the medium. The faster corners at the Suzuka track, including the infamous 130R, will require more durable rubber for the race.
Finally, the Indian Grand Prix will see medium and soft tyres on offer, as the Buddh Circuit doesn’t have the extremes of some of its predecessors but is still pretty challenging on the compounds.
Pirelli are batting off criticism once again, after a string of less spectacular races are being blamed on the changes to the tyres. Boss Paul Hembery said: “I thought the German and Hungarian Grands Prix were two of the best races we had ever had... in Germany and Hungary.” So that clears that up.Title says it all. I am writing this from my phone because I am incapacitated. I was tired of using Windows 7 so I thought I'd give Linux a try. I create a live USB with the ISO and a handy program that creates USBs you can boot from. I launch up a VM and boot Ubuntu. Everything works fine. I boot from USB on my main rig and hit "Try Ubuntu". Everything works fine. I restart my comp, back in Windows. OK, I'm ready to make the plunge. Go to install ubuntu, wipe my entire 500gb hdd. Installation is fine, I'm asked to reset. I reset, and it boots from the USB, ok... I restart and go to my boot menu. Only my USB and CD drive show up. I've tried all the other instillation options, reinstall, install ubuntu alongside ubuntu, wipe disk and install ubuntu, nothing works. I tried everything multiple times and nothing has worked, I am on a endless loop. What do I do? I tried looking up solutions on |
the microbiome to psychiatric disorders such as autism. In one study, a mouse model for autism showed an elevation in the concentration of two bacterial species in the gut, and a subsequent metabolomic analysis revealed elevated levels of several metabolites. Shockingly, injecting healthy mice with one of these metabolites caused autistic-like behaviors to arise, proving the causal link between the microbiome and autistic symptomatology.
• Metabolomics may also be the key to preventing lethal C. difficile infections. Ironically, one of the largest risk factors for C. difficile infection is antibiotic treatment. Antibiotics wipe out a wide variety of indigenous bacteria, creating an environment that is more suitable for C. difficile growth. Due to the nonspecific nature of antibiotics, however, it is difficult to determine which extinction of an indigenous bacterial species was responsible for promoting C. difficile growth.
But a metabolomic analysis found that while antibiotics kill many bacterial species, they only cause a change in the concentrations of a few metabolites, potentially simplifying the path to the development of treatments that do not promote C. difficile growth. These data show that, in addition to cataloguing how antibiotics alter the gut microbiome, identifying how they affect the metabolome is critical for understanding the relationship between health and disease.
• Metabolomics research can even yield an understanding of serotonin synthesis in the gut, where 90% of the body’s serotonin is produced. Gut serotonin has been implicated in several disorders, including cardiovascular disease, irritable bowel syndrome, and osteoporosis. Until recently, it was not understood how serotonin production in the gut is regulated. A metabolomics study revealed that it is regulated by metabolites released by indigenous spore-forming bacteria, further confirming the importance of the gut microbiome to human health.
Metabolomics has elucidated the link between the microbiome and many other conditions ranging from periodontal disease to obesity, and its relevance is only bound to increase as we learn more about the role of our indigenous microbes in disease.
Now that we have the ability to profile our full metabolome in conjunction with our microbiome, we believe it is time for the biomedical research community to concentrate not only on the genetic makeup of the microbiome but also the metabolites they produce. Since a metabolomics approach allows scientists to examine all the small molecules in our body, including hormones, amino acids, co-factors, neurotransmitters, and other compounds, it gives us a shot at understanding every step of disease etiology, from gene to phenotype.
Cataloguing the human microbiome has advanced biomedical research by revealing the importance of the microbiome in human health. Now, we must take the next step and use the metabolome to bring us the rest of the way. Since it accounts for all the small molecules in the body, metabolomics is the most comprehensive approach to studying how the microbiome can be used to detect and treat disease. Given its versatility and impact, we cannot afford to overlook the metabolome anymore.Clips and images were published Thursday of a 13-year-old Palestinian terrorist who was hit by a car while fleeing from police earlier this week, disproving claims by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas who said Wednesday he was “executed” by Israel.
The pictures, distributed by the Government Press Office, show Ahmad Manasra awake and sitting in a bed at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital.
In one picture he is seen making a hand gesture some have interpreted as an Islamist symbol.
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Manasra is accused of carrying out a stabbing spree on Monday with his cousin Hassan Manasra, 15, seriously injuring a 13-year-old boy and 25-year-old man. Hassan Manasra was shot and killed after charging at police with a knife, while Ahmed Manasra was injured after being hit by a car while fleeing.
On Wednesday night, Abbas accused Israelis of “executing our boys in cold blood, as they did with the boy Ahmed Manasra and other children in Jerusalem and other places.”
Other Palestinian officials and relatives have also claimed that Manasra and his cousin were not involved in an attack.
The Prime Minister’s Office quickly issued a statement after the PA president’s speech saying he was spreading “lies and incitement.”
“The boy he is referring to is alive and hospitalized in Hadassah after stabbing an Israeli child who was riding his bicycle,” the statement said.
On Thursday, the independent news website Room 0404 published on its site and Facebook page a short clip clearly showing Ahmad Manasra alive and relatively well.
הוא מת אבו מאזן? תיעוד בלעדי של חדשות 0404. בכדי להוכיח את ההסתה הנתעבת והשקרנית של יו״ר הרשות, יצאנו לצלם ולהביא הוכחה מהשטח. הנה לפניכם המחבל בן ה-13, חי ונושם (לצערנו) בבית החולים הדסה.הוא אפילו צוחק כאשר לא מצלמים אותו. הפיצו לכל העולם! עכשיו!הבהרה חשובה: כל האזרחים היישובים בסמוך למחבל בן ה-13, אינם קשורים אליו בשום צורה. מדובר במשפחה דרוזית, אשר בני המשפחה שירתו בכוחות הביטחון ואף בתפקידים בכירים. Posted by 0404 on ceturtdiena, 2015. gada 15. oktobris
In another clip, the deputy head of Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital, where Manasra is hospitalized, says he is “in moderate to light condition, hospitalized in one of our department and receiving good treatment. From a medical point of view, we will probably be able to discharge him in a few days.”
13 y old Ahmad Mansara – who Abbas claimed "executed in cold blood" – in full conscience today at Hadassah hospital pic.twitter.com/gWxZR1CXy7 — Tal Shalev (@talshalev1) October 15, 2015
The 25-year-old victim of Monday’s stabbing is in moderate condition. The 13-year-old is still unconscious. His condition was upgraded from critical on Monday, when he was stabbed, to serious but not life threatening on Tuesday.
The attack was one in a series of nearly two dozen terror attacks over the last two weeks, many of which have involved East Jerusalem teens involved in stabbing attacks in the capital.“I think what CNN did was unfortunate for them, as you know now, they have some very serious problems. They’ve been fake news for a long time, they’ve been covering me in a very dishonest way,” he said. “But CNN and others, NBC equally is bad, despite the fact that I made them a fortune with ‘The Apprentice,’ but they forgot that. But CNN has really taken (the video) too seriously and I think they’ve hurt themselves very badly, very very badly.”
There has been a very concerted effort to further attack CNN by claiming the network has been the real bully in relation to the original creator of the video, a Reddit user who goes by the name “HanAssholeSolo.” Critics have argued that CNN has used blackmail to extort an apology out of him. That’s been the position of Fox Contributor Tammy Bruce.
“They realized they can’t quash Trump like a bug, so they went after this private citizen who has nothing to do with Trump,” Bruce said Wednesday morning on “Fox and Friends.” “(He) made this meme that the president picked up, and they decided that they could get their pound of flesh from this individual.”
Ted Cruz accused CNN of “extortion.”
“If CNN constructively obtained the gif-maker’s [intellectual property], it’s a [Georgia] crime if they threatened to ‘disseminate any information tending to subject any person to hatred, contempt, or ridicule,'” Cruz wrote.
When CNN reported that many of this Reddit users other posts were highly racist, anti-Semitic and sexist, indicating that he was either a neo-Nazi or willing troll of the alt-right, Donald Jr. argued that this claim coming forward was “only a matter of time.”
x It was only a matter of time folks... CNN: Trump's Wrestling Meme May Be Racist, Antisemitic https://t.co/DdCFgavmKK via @BreitbartNews â Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 3, 2017
And of course he continues to whine about “the left” obstructing and “resisting” his dear ol’ dad.
x It's sad that the left today would rather see America suffer and fail than to see it succeed with @realDonaldTrump at the helm. #maga â Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) May 12, 2017
That’s a sentiment shared by his brother Eric on Fox and Friends.
“If you look at the amount of coverage that has been directed to that story and all that nonsense and garbage versus the amount of coverage directed to the fact that the Dow is at an all-time high, that the S&P 500 is at a all-time high, that the Russell 2,000 is at an all time high,” he said. ”I mean, we’re thriving as a nation. Everybody wants to get focused on nonsense. On garbage. On distractions.”
So we’ve established that according to the Trumps, CNN is the bad guy here. They don’t spend hours and hours talking about how great everything is under Donald Trump. Instead, they seem to want to talk about “garbage” like subpoenas, grand juries, ethics inquiries, three congressional committee investigations, and the actions of Special Counsel Robert Mueller while noting that GOP operative Paul W. Smith admitted to the Wall Street Journal that he was actively seeking stolen copies of Hillary Clinton emails from Russian Hackers in order to provide them to Michael Flynn, and that this story has been confirmed by a UK cyberanalyst he recruited to help him authenticate those emails.
That’s called “collusion,” ladies and gents.
Yeah, but never mind all that—they’ve been crybabies about the bodyslam video and been a bully to the racist, neo-Nazi, alt-right asshole who made it by saying they won’t reveal his personal ID largely because he apologized and he’s a private citizen.
What has apparently set them all off is that CNN didn’t promise to never reveal his identity if he went back on his promise to not to get all racist again, as this lengthy editorial from the Washington Examiner claims.
Somehow CNN managed to turn what was a negative story about Trump against itself. Shortly after the story came out, #CNNBlackmail became the top trendingTwitter topic — ahead of #july4th2017. Conservative pundit and lawyer Ben Shapiro, despite being a critic of Trump and victim of anti-Semitism, called CNN's actions "thug journalism" and "essentially blackmail." Even journalists from left-leaning outlets, such as Vox's German Lopez, agreed the cable news network's conduct was "Extremely unethical." … It's also quite ironic that CNN overreacted to what many considered to be just a humorous, if somewhat juvenile, meme after Trump retweeted it. This is not to condone Trump's tweet, which started this brouhaha. But, let's face it, no one expects mature behavior from him anyway.... A news organization's mission is to report the news, not to thought-police the internet and threaten to make people famous if they make fun of it. CNN, especially, should understand the importance of protecting anonymous speech, given all the anonymous sources it uses.
Nobody expects mature behavior from the president of the United States? CNN should understand how important anonymity is because they use so many anonymous sources?
Let’s be blunt: that is fucking bullshit.
Nobody is promised anonymity on the internet. Not one single person. CNN did not “extort” an apology out of this guy and frankly, if he doesn’t have the guts to openly admit who he is when posting vicious racist bullshit on the web, he’s a coward by definition. He’s also not a 15-year-old, as many of these people have claimed. [Even the Washington Examiner admits that the sentence where CNN says they “reserve the right to reveal” his ID — something they actually agree CNN always had the right to do and argue they’d be in less trouble if they’d already done it — was added to the story after it was completed by an executive, not by the author Kaczinski. This means that the apology was not “forced” because it had already been provided and published on Reddit before hand.] The fact that Fox News, the Trumps, Ben Shapiro, the Washington Examiner, and pretty much the entire right wing thinks the privacy rights of one racist troll supersede the safety concerns of the employees at CNN is simply astounding.
Oh, don’t worry—nobody would actually try to go out and harm someone at CNN, right? Nobody might consider ramping up the actions shown in that video just a notch, eh?
But that’s not the story we heard when Kathy Griffin held her mock decapitated “blood coming out of his wherever” Trump head. Nope, that’s not how Don Jr. thought about it.
Donald Jr. took to his Twitter account Friday evening to decry Griffin’s recent attempt to invoke the “victim card” by claiming Trump has “broke” her. After all, Griffin was the one who — in an alleged joking manner — held up a fake severed head of President Trump. She’s also the person who referred to then-President-elect Trump as “President piece of sh*t.” “The only thing #KathyGriffin is a victim of is her own ignorance. 24 hours from fake apology to victim status is impressive by any standard!” Trump Jr. tweeted.
And when Shakespeare in the Park did a modernized version of Julius Caesar with a Trump-like character, just as they previously had done with an Obama-like character, there wasn’t much “joking” from the Trumpies.
Donald Trump Jr. on Wednesday appeared to link the shooting at a congressional baseball practice that injured at least five to the controversial production of "Julius Caesar" in which the slain Roman dictator was outfitted in a way that resembled President Trump. Following the shooting Wednesday morning, President Trump's son retweeted a comment from CNN and Fox News contributor Harlan Hill, who drew a straight line from "events like today" to "glorifying the assassination" of the president in a theatrical production.
Poor Donald is apparently so delicate he can’t handle a 600 418-year-old play, but CNN just has to suck it up?
That apparently applies even when someone with White House access has already done to them and their staff what they specifically didn’t do to the Reddit guy: released all their personal contact, phone, and home address information to the world.
Jack Posobiec, a controversial pro-Trump activist who has attended White House briefings, hyped information on Wednesday that he claimed were the personal details of multiple CNN employees and talent.... The information in his tweet included phone numbers and/or addresses for Wolf Blitzer, Daniel Patrick Merica, David Chalian, Don Lemon, Brian Stelter and Erick Erickson. With the exception of Blitzer, all of the phone numbers went to voicemail or had been disconnected. However, records showed that the CNN employees had a connection to many of the listed street addresses. Additional alleged personal details for Fareed Zakaria and Andrew Kaczynski of CNN’s KFile were available on the 8chan site. Details for family members of the employees were also posted by 8chan trolls.
So people on 8chan are passing around the phone and address information for the family members of prominent CNN anchors. And has this lead to death threats against CNN reporters and their family, particularly Andrew Kaczynski who wrote the report on our favorite Reddit user?
Why, yes, Yes. It. Has.
According to The Daily Beast, Kaczynski, who heads up the network’s “K-File” investigative program, his wife and his parents have all received threats from an amalgamation of far-right trolls intent on “doxxing” him due to what appears to be a threat to do the same to Reddit user HanAssholeSolo, the creator of the GIF. According to the Beast, Kaczynski’s family are the recipients of at least 50 threatening or harassing phone calls, and other members of the K-File team also received harassing messages after the information began cropping up on 4chan’s politics board (the initial site of the calls to dox K-File). “The only thing I worry about is somebody getting hurt,” an anonymous source told the Beast. “These far-right trolls are really threatening people and coming after people. Somebody’s gonna do something stupid at some point.”
And another reporter who first found the Reddit user, even before CNN did, has been receiving gory death threats too.
Jared Yates Sexton, a journalist who teaches writing and linguistics at Georgia Southern University, reported Sunday that the president had shared an internet meme created by a Reddit user called “HanAssholeSolo.” That person made frequent racist and threatening posts on Reddit, including one earlier this month identifying Jewish employees of CNN. Sexton tweeted Monday that he had gotten numerouts threats — often accompanied by antisemitic and Nazi themes — since revealing the meme’s creator.
And yet: where are the right-wing outrage monkeys now? What exactly do they have to say to the families of CNN anchors and reporters or to Jared Yates Sexton about their right to “privacy?”
Yes, we had all called for more civility in our rhetoric after the shooting of Majority Whip Steve Scalise just a few weeks ago by a former Bernie Sanders/Jill Stein supporter—even though neither of them has ever advocated any type of violence or had criticized or targeted Scalise. But that didn’t come up when a faked video which was promoted and endorsed by several GOP presidential candidates was wrongfully produced by right-wing anti-abortionists and directly inspired an attack on Planned Parenthood that injured cops and killed three people. Where the frack was their call for “civility” then? Where was their scream that the “baby parts” video was “fake news?”
Nowhere, that’s where.
And speaking of crimes, the story that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough told about how he and co-host Mika Brzezinski were threatened by the White House to either apologize to Trump or else there would be a negative National Enquirer story about them? That wasn’t exactly legal.
The White House threats, which Scarborough said were communicated via text messages he has saved, were presumably sent from Washington, D.C. to New York City, where Scarborough lives and works. If so, New York, D.C., and federal law could be implicated. New York Penal Law § 135.60 (Coercion) Under New York law: A person is guilty of coercion in the second degree when he or she compels or induces a person to engage in conduct which the latter has a legal right to abstain from engaging in, or to abstain from engaging in conduct in which he or she has a legal right to engage, or compels or induces a person to join a group, organization or criminal enterprise which such latter person has a right to abstain from joining, by means of instilling in him or her a fear that, if the demand is not complied with, the actor or another will: Former White House counsel Norm Eisen said he believes White House aides violated that statute. Trump, if he was involved in the scheme, could also be implicated. D.C. Criminal Law § 22–3252 (Blackmail) D.C. law is similar to New York law. Under the D.C. code: (a) A person commits the offense of blackmail, if, with intent to obtain property of another or to cause another to do or refrain from doing any act, that person threatens (2) To expose a secret or publicize an asserted fact, whether true or false, tending to subject any person to hatred, contempt, or ridicule; or (3) To impair the reputation of any person, including a deceased person. lawyer familiar with D.C. law, who asked for anonymity due to the political nature of the topic, says White House aides (and potentially Trump) may have violated this provision. It is, the lawyer noted, seldom prosecuted in D.C. U.S. Code § 872 (Extortion by officers or employees of the United States) Under federal law: Whoever, being an officer, or employee of the United States or any department or agency thereof, or representing himself to be or assuming to act as such, under color or pretense of office or employment commits or attempts an act of extortion, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; but if the amount so extorted or demanded does not exceed $1,000, he shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.
So when we go on about putting people at personal risk and invading their privacy, or how they may have committed “blackmail,” “extortion,” and “coercion,” the fingers don’t necessarily point toward anything CNN did. Instead they point directly at Trump and his sycophants.
And it’s not like the strategic release of personal information about private citizens isn’t something that people on the right like Michelle Malkin haven’t done before. They have.
Whatever your beliefs are regarding military recruiting at colleges, Michelle Malkin crosses the line of decency by printing the telephone numbers of the students that formed the protest. They have been receiving death threats non-stop.
But then again, there are those among us who will never, ever, see it that way. Not even after anti-Clinton people have shown up armed and fired off rounds at an innocent pizza parlor that right-wing media told them was part of a child sex ring. Not even after pro-Trump vandals have painted ‘false flag” graffiti at an elementary school.
Responding officers found “Kill Trump,” “Left is the best,” “Bernie Sanders 2020” and “Death to Trump” written on a sign in the playground. The investigation took an unexpected turn after police released surveillance video of a balding white male with a Red Sox t-shirt.
These people will whine and cry that CNN doesn’t report how high the Dow is (even though they do report that) and they’ll whine about Kathy Griffin, Julius Caesar, or Mika Brzezinski being “mean to Trump” and about CNN not actually revealing someones identity. But they’ll never, ever, condemn or take any responsibility for fostering a culture (actually a cult) of people who actually have threatened reporters and their families, who actually have killed people as the Planned Parenthood shooter did after hearing and seeing right-wing lies about “selling baby parts,” or who would do something like write “Kill Trump” on an elementary school wall just to make liberals look evil and violent.
Nope, that will never happen. And that’s a problem.
And now: more Rachel Maddow, just because she’s right on point. Trump just doesn’t care—and neither do his family or fans.
Oh look Uday just upped the ante.
x One of the best I've seen. ðÂÂÂðºð¸ðÂÂÂðºð¸ https://t.co/rqCplijJ57 â Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 8, 2017
Which was a retweet from this guy which features (badly) edited footage from Top Gun with Trump’s face overlayed on a pilot shooting down “CNN” marked planes.
x Hey @CNN we heard you like memes
ðÂÂÂðÂÂÂð»ðÂÂÂð¶ðÂÂÂ¥ s p i c y b o i pic.twitter.com/324hKyg4yW â Old Row (@OldRowOfficial) July 8, 2017
At least they haven’t seen this yet.TrueWorldHistory.info presents a compelling series of video documentaries, lectures and interviews. These videos offer an uncensored perspective of today's world, as well as where we are heading as a global civilization.
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This post brilliantly details the precise ways some trans supporters have adopted abusive tactics to SILENCE women, rather than engaging in honest debate. Especially the threats of suicide. I mean, REALLY???
This essay is well written, easy to read, comprehensive, and extremely illuminating.
PLEASE REBLOG IT!!!
It’s not so much that I am terrifically bothered on a personal level that some individuals live their lives as the opposite sex. However, I do not find the political or social implications of changing gender to be conducive to women’s liberation. In examining the structural and systemic nature of women’s oppression, trans ideology and practice seems opposed to an effort towards a more healthy social environment for women and men alike. For holding this view, myself and many other women have been at the brunt of a backlash to be reckoned with. The way this backlash manifests has a list of elements characteristic of classic abuser behavior. Let’s have a look at them.
Name calling:Women who critique the use of gender are routinely and quite quickly called transphobic, scum, vile, dangerous, Nazis, and evil—among other slurs. We are cursed at, verbally attacked, and berated for expressing any view short of total and complete adherence to the views of transgender theorists and activists. This happens regardless of how diplomatically we attempt to engage in discussion and, so far, without any verbal attacks or name calling in response.
Threats of violence:Radical feminist women are routinely threatened with physical violence, including beating, rape, stabbing, and even death.
Harassment and stalking:Radical feminists have been stalked privately and publicly. Trans activists have shown up to radical feminist events, sometimes in very large numbers, to harass, threaten, and verbal assault the women attending, sometimes singling out a single woman they particularly dislike. Online, some radical feminist women are sent constant emails and private messages containing threats of violence or verbal assault.
Rallying supporters and enablers: Trans activists enlist the help of women to side with them and assist in the the above mentioned activities. Women’s empathy is exploited to advance the goals of trans activists, even if the goals are achieved through abusing women who hold any opinion they dislike. Nearly all 3rd wave feminists support, protect, and help trans individuals to further their abuse.
Reversals: The word ‘cis’ has been coined and applied to women who do not identify as trans, and from this a theory of cis women oppressing transgendered people is formed. Underneath this analogy, women are accused of oppressing men, because the men claim to now be women. Since we do not claim to be anything, being that we simply are human females no matter how we identify, we are reframed as the oppressor for not taking on an identity that assumes the position of the ultimately oppressed. This completely side-steps thematerial realitythat we live in a male-dominated, patriarchal culture in which human females are oppressed on a global scale by men who wield power and privilege over us. No matter how we might identify, if we chose to, would this reality significantly change. The entire situation has been flipped upside down by simply adding a few words to the English language and developing a theory around the vocabulary. It is true that transgendered people face unique challenges when living their lives presenting as the opposite sex. It is not the case that women are now oppressing them.
Projection: Radical feminists are accused of hate, fear, and a desire to violate the human rights of transgendered people. Considering the behavior outlined in this list, I contend that this is projection.
Gas-lighting: We are routinely told that the threats of violence aren’t really happening, that we are just making this all up, that we are just hateful bigots or uneducated. It is demanded that everything be fully documented or else its existence is denied.
Erasure/Minimizing:For example, the word “female” is considered offensive and any conversation about menstruation or motherhood is called transphobic and/or hate speech.
Attempts to control, change, or distort reality:This is also related to gas-lighting, as mentioned above. For example, insisting that men who identify as women have vaginas, that there is no such thing as a female human being, or insisting that a penis is female, etc. are all forms of reality distortion.
Isolation: Because trans activists have an interest in the feminist movement, a split in the movement can be found along the lines of the trans position. In feminist circles, if a woman expresses any critique or sometimes even a question about the nature of gender and transgenderism, she is immediately ostracized, banned from the group, and rejected by her sisters. The only groups where this doesn’t happen is among other radical feminists. We are isolated for not conforming to an ideology that we have objections to, not for abuse or hate speech, but for disagreeing. Name calling, cussing, and verbal attacks are perfectly tolerated when directed at a feminist by a trans person. Disagreement with a trans person, however diplomatic and authentic the attempt to have a respectful discourse, is grounds for banning.
Sabotage: When radical feminists organize an event, it is often fervently protested, like clockwork, and sometimes successfully destroyed. Women’s reputations are targeted in a similar fashion the way a classic abuser tells the whole town and all the woman’s employers that she is a crazy bitch. The goal is to further isolate her and intimidate her into returning to the abuser or punish her for leaving.
Attention:We cannot focus on ourselves. As mentioned with my own experience, I was criticized for not mentioning transgenderism in my article about something completely unrelated. This stands true across the board. Any focus squarely on the rights of biological women is attacked. Discussion about women and girls, or anything that only effects women who were born as women, is attacked for not including transgendered people.
Constant, and I mean CONSTANT, drama:Sure to keep our heads spinning, no sooner do we announce a meeting than we have to work overtime to make sure that it’s not closed due to trans activist saboteur. No sooner do we start a discussion about, say, maternity rights than we have to address an onslaught of accusations that we are transphobic bigots. In fact, just saying, “I’m a radical feminist,” in a mixed feminist group can be cause for immediate upheaval of solidarity and drama all around the topic of transgenderismand nothing else. It can last all afternoon, all day, all week, all month—hell, we understand at this point that it will never end. We don’t have a second to breathe and reassess what is going on or focus on our own needs. Blogs are getting pulled, women are being email bombed, events are being crashed, groups are splitting in half, etc—ad nauseam. I am walking on eggshells, because I fear there’s a problem lurking around every corner when I try to do anything to improve the status of women.
No respect for boundaries: Women-born-women space is infiltrated regularly. Discussion takes place ridiculing lesbians for not being sexually attracted to male to transgendered people. Any establishment of a boundary by a woman that is tested by a trans person must be removed, or else the woman is in for the above list of actions. This is an especially sore spot for women, because we are not raised feeling like we have a right to set boundaries and are taught that having boundaries is abuse of the person who wants to cross them.
Threats of suicide and self-harm:Radical feminists are constantly told that we are killing trans people, although there is absolutely no record of an actual murder taking place in which a radical feminist killed a trans person. We are accused of causing violence against trans people, of causing trans people to hurt themselves, and being responsible for their suicides. This reminds me of when my ex, a narcissistic sociopath, faked his own suicide when I finally got away from him and didn’t go back. He got his own mother to call me and accuse me of killing her son. I found out later that he had never been in a coma, but had somehow convinced her that she needed to say that to make me talk to him—which I didn’t. He was abusive and I knew this was a trap. Another ex, also abusive, once punched through a glass door that I locked when fearing his attack and when he came in the house, he showed me his bloody hand and said, “Look what you made me do.” This is psychological manipulation. I do not ever want anyone to be so tormented that they take their own life, but it is abusive and coercive to attempt to make a person agree with you or else threaten suicide or blame them for the suicide of others.
In conclusion, based on this list of behaviors, I find much of the trans movement to be employing abusive tactics against radical feminists. I know at least one woman who has even taken out a restraining order to protect herself from physical violence after being vehemently stalked. I know multiple women who readily fear speaking at all because of this sort of violent backlash taking place. I’ve experienced enough of it myself to be absolutely fed up and ready to say: no more.
Regardless of how we disagree with one another, this is absolutely unacceptable behavior. It is intolerable. Assembling an army, a movement, which targets a group of women and then hailstorms them with abuse is not okay.
I am sure what will come of this article from trans activists is an assertion that we caused this, that we were asking for it in some way. Where have we heard this argument before??Los Angeles, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/27/2013 -- Inspired by son David's desire to run across the nation and fueled by their passion to ensure that the nation's food supply is GMO-free, healthy and sustainable, the Wilcox family of Alaska launches an Indiegogo campaign to raise the 45,000 dollars needed to fund the family's transcontinental running dream. The cross country running father and son team of Brett and David will do the running, with mom Kris and daughter Olivia manning the team's crew in the trek from Huntington Beach, California through Washington, D.C. and on to the Atlantic.
The Wilcox family counts on the publicity gained from their run to promote the importance of sustainable agriculture, seed freedom and the right to know about GMO ingredients in food. David, himself a regional cross-country champion, will be only the second 15-year-old ever to make the transcontinental run, while Brett and David will be the first father and teen son team to run across the U.S. Through meetings, presentations and media interviews, the Wilcox family will show people why they absolutely need to know what is in their food and why giant corporations are dictating the future of America's agricultural industry to the detriment of its animals, people and land.
"Bullies like the giant chemical companies poison the Earth, our political processes and our agricultural system," explains Brett Wilcox in his Indiegogo campaign. "We’re running across America to say enough is enough. Poisoning our soil, waterways and air is wrong! Killing bees and butterflies is wrong! Poisoning our health is wrong!"
Starting out in Huntington Beach, California on January 18th, the Wilcox family will visit farms and farmers across the nation to document their stories and experiences. The team will talk with people about genetically modified organisms (GMOs), Roundup, and patented seeds, bringing attention to the risks facing the nation's food supply and the health of its citizens. The team will continue running through Saint Louis, Missouri to the world headquarters of Monsanto, one of the world's biggest proponents of GMO seeds and the makers of the pesticide Roundup. The runners will also speak with lawmakers in Washington, D.C., reminding them of their sworn duty to protect the health and interests of the American people, not the health and interests of multi-national chemical corporations.
Funding the seven month run, in addition to both Brett and Kris taking extended leaves of absence from their jobs, involves considerable financial support. The 45,000 dollars raised from the Indiegogo campaign, supplemented by donations raised on the road and sales from Brett's book, "We’re Monsanto: Feeding the World, Lie After Lie," will support the run by helping purchase airfare, a motor home and fuel for the trip, high quality video camera and equipment for documentation, vehicle and health insurance, food, and running gear.
About the Wilcox Family
Poised to become the first father and teenage son transcontinental running team, supported by a mom and daughter running crew, the Wilcox family is committed to running across America to support a GMO-free nation and the safety and health of future generations. In the hope that |
obbied to add lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals to the U.S.'s existing nondiscrimination law. He also spoke at Auburn University in December of 2013, noting that Apple has long had protections for LGBT employees.During the Pride event, Tim Cook tweeted a congratulations to the 5,000 Apple employees and their families that attended the parade, saying "inclusion inspires innovation," the same line later used in the video.Last First Ord T Status D/O Notes Diocese Source/Assignments
Macias Juan B Sued Dominican Sued 1988. Accused with Rev. Cristobal Garcia, O.P. of providing an altar boy with drugs and sexually abusing him in 1983-86. Los Angeles, CA Source:
LA Times 06.20.88
Mackan Patrick 1958 P Sued Congregation of the Resurrection Accused in a 2002 suit of sexually abusing a 17-year-old Canadian girl after she had been raped and impregnated by another man. The abuse is alleged to have continued 1972-75 and to have included oral sex and sexual intercourse. Some of the abuse occurred during trips to the US, where Mackan supervised other priests of his order in the Louisville archdiocese. His later career involved the education of children with special needs. Mackan died in 1990. Louisville, KY Source:
Brantford Expositor 09.05.03
Assignments:
Detailed BA.org Assignment Record
MacNaughton John 1946? P Sued Diocesan One civil suit filed in 2004 alleging abuse by MacNaughton. Man said abuse occurred in 1967 at what is now St. Mary's Home for Boys in Beverton. Plaintiff committed suicide in 2005 just prior to mediation in case. MacNaughton is deceased. Portland, OR Source:
The Oregonian 10.12.04; The Oregonian 08.17.05; The Oregonian 08.29.05; Table: The Oregonian 11.12.06
MacPherson David M. 1967? P Settled Diocesan In 2003 two women settled "claims" with Covington Diocese over allegations that MacPherson had molested them in 1960s at St. Patrick's Parish. Diocese paid total of $750,000 to the two women and to a man who alleged abuse by Fr. Earl Bierman. Both women were part of a class action suit filed against the Diocese of Covington. Diocese said MacPherson left active ministry in 1978 and was laicized six years later. Covington, KY Source:
Cincinnati Enquirer 10.14.03; Cincinnati Post 10.14.03
Assignments:
BA.org Assignment Record
MacSweeney Patrick J.? P Accused Diocesan Named publicly as accused on the diocese's list in late 2018. Noted to have had two accusations against him, in 3/10 of abuse in the 1960s, and 3/14/06 of abuse in 1961. First assignment in diocese in 1955. MacSweeney died 6/16/67. Wheeling-Charleston, WV Source:
Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston List Updated 12.05.18
Madaj
John A. 1939 P Accused Diocesan First named publicly as accused in the 8/14/18 PA Grand Jury Report. Madaj's file contained two anonymous letters to Fr. McHugh in 12/52 alleging Madaj was having an affair with his housekeeper. In 3/90 the parents of a male 19-year-old told the diocese that Madaj had sexually abused their son at age 9 or 10. Madaj denied the allegation. Died 1998. On diocese's list 8/19/18. Scranton, PA Source:
PA Grand Jury Report Profile 08.14.18; Diocese of Scranton List 08.19.18
Assignments:
PA Grand Jury Report Profile 08.14.18
Madore Edward C. "Ted" 1973 P Accused Diocesan Named publicly as accused on the diocese's list 12/3/18. Laicized. Syracuse, NY Source:
Diocese of Syracuse List 12.03.18
Madrid (also Madred?) Jaime 1968 P Settled Diocesan Accusations that Madrid abused boy for 2 years (1971-1972) in rectory, car and other places. Civil suit filed in 1992 says diocese knew in 1967 that other priests in diocese were homosexual/pedophiles and failed to report. Madrid admitted charges. Boy pled delayed discovery in suit. Litigation settled with non-disclosure. One report says Madrid told El Paso Bishop Raymond Pena in 1992 that he had abused boy 20 yrs ago. Died 10/07. El Paso, TX Source:
San Antonio Light 3.6.92; El Paso Times 10.29.07
Maffei
Joseph 1958 P Settled Salesians of Don Bosco Attorney Garabedian announced settlement 9/13 on behalf of one plaintiff who alleged abuse by Maffei as a 12-yr-old boy when the priest was assigned to Sacred Heart Retreat House in Ipswich MA. The abuse was said to have taken place at the Marian Shrine in New Rochelle NY. Native of Italy. Came to the US in 1952. Died 12/29/09. New York, NY Source:
Salesians of Don Bosco E-Service 01.28.10; The Republic (AP) 09.04.13; John Doe v Fr Sean Rooney SDB et al 12.16.13
Assignments:
BA.org Assignment Record
Magee
Finian (Robert) B Sued Franciscan In April, 2003 civil suit. McGee (properly spelled Magee) is accused of groping and rubbing against a 12 yr old boy in early 1970s. He was the boy's 6th grade homeroom teacher and allegedly molested him in the classroom and in his private school office. Died 8/27/93. Rockville Centre, NY Source:
Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn 08.27.93; Newsday 04.15.03
Assignments:
BA.org Assignment Record and Other Info
Magel
John E. 1960 P Sued Diocesan Retired 1995. Placed on leave 6/02 when one man filed suit against Archdiocese which alleged that Magel exposed himself to a group of boys by preparing a meal in the nude while on a camping trip. Same Plaintiff also alleged abuse by a parochial school teacher. Magel was returned to active (retired) status 3/03 when Archbishop Kelly determined there was no evidence he had abused children. Louisville, KY Source:
Courier-Journal 9.29.02 (Major Account); Courier-Journal 07.16.02; Courier-Journal 09.29.02; Courier-Journal 10.20.02; Courier-Journal 03.24.03
Assignments:
BA.org Assignment Record
Magnus
E. Neil 1963 P Accused Diocesan A woman received "acknowledgment of crimes" and financial assistance for counseling from the archdiocese in 11/16 due to her claims of rape by Magnus and another priest, Rev. Joseph Maskell. Magnus was Keough High School's Religious Services Director, Maskell was chaplain and counselor. Per the woman they raped her at a CYO picnic in 9/70, when she was age 14 and a new Keough student. She said Magnus showed up in a police car and that the rape occurred after she was given a drink that weakened her. She said Fr. Maskell watched, then also raped her, and that his assaults continued through her high school years. She claimed, too, that on one occasion a Baltimore police officer joined Maskell and, after paying the priest, raped her. Magnus died 11/27/88. Magnus has been accused by at least one other former student, and Maskell by many. Both men have been implicated in the unsolved 1969 murder of Sr. Cathy Cesnik, to whom girls had confided abuse. Baltimore, MD Source:
Inside Baltimore 10.02.14; Inside Baltimore 10.02.14; Bilgrimage 05.16.15; Inside Baltimore 11.07.16; Huffington Post 05.14.17; Romper 05.19.17; Bustle 05.20.17; Inside Baltimore 08.04.17; Crime Report 11.08.17
Maguire Joseph P Sued Diocesan Accused in a lawsuit 11/18 of the sex abuse of a 12-year-old boy in 1955, at San Francisco de Asis in Ranchos de Taos. Santa Fe, NM Source:
Albuquerque Journal 10.08.18; Santa Fe New Mexican 11.09.18
Mahon
Gerald 1971 P Settled Diocesan Mahon, Vicar General and former director of Vocations for Diocese, was accused of improprieties by two seminarians in cases that were never publicized and were settled out of court and sealed in early 1990s. Both settlements involved under $100K, mostly for counseling. One involved a seminarian who also implicated priests in 2-3 other dioceses. Other involved seminarian's allegations against Mahon, 3 other bishops and another vicar general. This was resolved by offering counseling and career training. Winona, MN Source:
St. Paul Pioneer Press 04.19.95; Sunday Oregonian 10.10.04
Mahoney
Daniel Joseph 1952 P Accused Diocesan Died 7/4/07, age 80. Assigned to Holy Name of Jesus parish for 34 years. Name included on the diocese's list released 8/1/18. Accused after his death of the sexual abuse of a child. Harrisburg, PA Source:
Pennlive 08.01.18; York Daily Record 08.01.18; York Daily Record 08.01.18
Mahoney
John E 1964 P Sued Capuchin Franciscan Named for the first time in 4/03 lawsuit, Mahoney allegedly spanked and caressed the bare buttocks of an 11 year old boy on a trip to West Point in 1967. Future attempts to molest the boy 'occurred in the sacristy, the bell tower and in defendant's car.' At the time of the alleged abuse, Mahoney was the Director of the Capuchins' St Francis Retreat House, across the Hudson from West Point. For many years, Mahoney celebrated Mass at St Barnabas Church in Bellmore, on Long Island, where the complainant was a parishioner. Another accused Capuchin, Fr Gabriel Massaro, also has a Garrison connection. In addition to the Rockville Centre diocese and the NY archdiocese, Mahoney was assigned to a parish in the Manchester NH diocese 1990-1994. Died 12/15/04. Rockville Centre, NY Source:
Newsday 04.15.03; St Barnabas Church Bulletin 10.31.04; Capuchin Necrology 12.15.04; Journal News 12.15.04
Assignments:
BA.org Assignment Record and Other Info
Maio
Eugene A. 1960? P Sued Jesuit Accused in suit of sexually abusing one person at Marymount High School in Los Angeles, during the time Maio was on the faculty of the Jesuits' Loyola University. Previously trained in Kansas City KS archdiocese as student priest, and afterward was on faculty of the Jesuits' St. Louis University in St. Louis archdiocese for 2 years. May have been laicized in 1970 or 1971. Was living in Akron OH area in 2003. Los Angeles, CA Source:
LA Archdiocesan Report 2.17.04 page 5; LA Times Database 04.20.06; St. Louis American 05.13.09
Assignments:
BA.org Assignment Record
Mako Louis 1962 P Accused Diocesan Named publicly as accused by the Diocese of Scranton on its list 8/19/18. Born in Romania, ordained in Europe. Worked in Scranton diocese 1975-77. Died in 1998. On Scranton diocese's list 8/19/18. On Diocese of Buffalo's list 11/5/18. Scranton, PA Source:
Diocese of Scranton List 08.19.18; Diocese of Scranton List 08.19.18; Diocese of Buffalo Updated List 11.05.18
Malee Kevin J. 1978 P Sued Diocesan Criminally charged with 2 counts 11/87. 1988 civil suit accused Malee of assaulting same 15 yr old for two years at rectory, church, family home and while on vacation with family. Malee countersued. Helena Diocese had one archival file and the Great Falls Diocese has two secret archives files. In 1990 Judge denied Plaintiff's request for discovery of these files. Malee ended up in San Diego. Great Falls-Billings, MT Source:
John v. Bp. of Great..; Cascade Cty, MT; # ADV-88-1174; Spokesman Review 11.12.87
Mallman Egon 1929 P Accused SJ As part of Section 13.1, Non-Monetary Commitments, of the Society of Jesus, Oregon Province, Reorganization Plan (7/18/11) the province agreed to post on its website the names of all members of the province who are identified as perpetrators of sexualabuse in proofs of claims filed in the bankruptcy case, and who have not denied the allegation. Mallman is included on this list without any additional information on claims against him. Worked in Heart Butte MT for 40 yrs. Died 8/20/80. ncluded on the Helena diocese's list posted to its website 4/29/15 in compliance with the non monetary terms of the 3/5/15 bankruptcy settlement. Portland, OR Source:
Jesuits Oregon Province website accessed 12.07.12; Rocky Mountain Mission - Northwest Accessed 06.23.13; Diocese of Helena List 04.29.16
Assignments:
BA.org Assignment Record
Malone Donald T. 1960 P Accused Diocesan Removed 1988 from position as high school principal after he was accused of soliciting sex from a young teenage boy. then transferred to three parishes before being placed on permanent leave. Also arrested in 1979 for public lewdness at rest strop. New York, NY Source:
Journal News 4.12.02 (in collection of articles); USA Today 11.11.02
Assignments:
BA.org Summary of Directory Entries
Malone Emmet 1947 P Settled Franciscan Accused in a 2004 lawsuit of molesting an 11-year-old boy in the early 1950s while instructing the boy how to pray. The Franciscans stated that "we believe something did happen," and the suit was settled. Malone also worked at Corpus Christi parish and school in the Chicago IL archdiocese. San Antonio, TX Source:
WOAI-TV 05.26.04
Maloney John P. 1964 P Accused Diocesan First named publicly as accused in the 8/14/18 PA Grand Jury Report. Pittsburgh, PA Source:
PA Grand Jury Report Profile 08.14.18
Assignments:
PA Grand Jury Report Profile 08.14.18
Maloney William F. 1959? P Accused Diocesan Accused in 2002 of abusing one person at St. Theresa's in North Reading, where Maloney was assigned briefly before he entered the Military archdiocese as a Navy chaplain. The complainant also accused the pastor, Msgr. John J. Lane. Served as Chaplain in Navy from 1968-1973. Per 8/11 Boston Archdiocese database, Maloney was laicized in 1974 on other grounds. Boston, MA Source:
Sherman Letter 04.12.02; National Catholic Register 08.25.11; Providence Journal 01.10.16
Assignments:
BA.org Assignment Record
Mandeville Lucien 1935 P Accused Diocesan Accused of abuse of 1 youth in 1944 in Lewiston, 1 in early 1950s (who said Mandeville also abused his younger brother) in Rumford, and 1 during an unknown time frame. Retired in 1973 and died in 1984. Allegations were reported to Diocese in 2002. Portland, ME Source:
Portland Press Herald (AP) 7.4.05; Maine AG Document Production 05.27.05; Portland Press Herald 07.17.05
Mangen (Mangan) Daniel J. 1980 P Sued Soc. Precious Blood Last name is Mangen in 2002 & 1993 Catholic Directories. Per 3/02 story, woman accused Mangen of sexually abusing and raping her for 3 yrs in early 1980s when she was between 16 and 18. Suit filed1999. Mangen had acknowledged being sexually active with adults and minors but denied woman's claims. Did admit that he had been sexually active with two parishioners during the same time. Worked in Chile, SA 1984 and later in Peru. Believed to be in Valdivia, Chile as of 11/10 (not as priest). Cleveland, OH Source:
Plain Dealer 03.10.02; NewsChannel5 (TV) 03.22.02
Assignments:
BA.org Assignment Record
Mangini Charles M. 1968 P Accused Diocesan Removed 1993. Name quietly added among 7 others to diocesan website 11/17 of priests laicized by the Vatican office "authorized to deal with cases involving sexual abuse of minors by a cleric." Brooklyn, NY Source:
New York Times 11.09.17; New York Times 11.10.17
Mann Hubert P Settled Diocesan Mann, who died in 1972, is alleged to have abused a 15 year old youth in late 60s. 2002 article says Mann asked the boy to live with him at rectory after boy's foster father died. Mann would give him alcohol and then assault him. Claim was included in 11/02 $950K settlement re 16 Plaintiffs. Manchester, NH Source:
Associated Press 05.31.02; Union Leader 10.12.02; Union Leader 12.09.02; NH AG Audit Records 03.26.09
Manspeaker Terry D Convicted Diocesan Manspeaker, a deacon, received 5 yrs probation in 1994 after pleading guilty to assaulting a 17 yr old teenage boy and to making sexual advances to a 14 yr old boy. Hartford, CT Source:
Hartford Courant 01.27.95
Manuppella
Anthony J. 1976 P Accused Diocesan Accused of making unwelcome advances and discussing homosexual lifestyle with seminary student and taking him to gay bars. Suit filed 1999. Current status of lawsuits unknown. Pastor of St. Peter in Merchantville per 2011 New Jersey Provincial Directory. In 2018 pastor of St Gianna Beretta Molla, Northfield. Camden, NJ Source:
Brief in McKelvey v Pierce, 51,840 (New Jersey 2001); New Jersey Provincial Directory, 2011, p 228; Courier Post 03.24.99; Daily Journal 11.08.99; Daily Journal 06.03.00
Manzione Arthur D Accused Diocesan Removed from duty Aug., 2003. Accused of abuse in the early 1980s. Ordained as a deacon in 1979, Manzione was also an elementary school principal at the time of the abuse. Laicization announced 9/05. New York, NY Source:
Journal News 9.2.05; Journal News 08.21.03; New York Times 08.21.03; Journal News 09.14.03
Manzo
Francis J. 1962 P Sued Diocesan Manzo is one of 12 priests and a religious brother named in a 10/02 lawsuit against the Diocese of Brooklyn, filed by 43 plaintiffs. One man claimed Manzo violently abused him when he was an altar boy during the early 1990s. Manzo was officially on leave from the diocese beginning in 1995. He is not indexed in the Catholic Directory after 2002. A church bulletin in 9/16 indicates that Marzo was still a priest of the diocese. Brooklyn, NY Source:
Newsday 10.16.02; USA Today 11.11.02; Resurrection Roman Catholic Church 09.11.16
Assignments:
BA.org Assignment Record
Marcinek Henry J. 1956 P Accused Diocesan First named publicly accused in the 8/14/18 PA Grand Jury Report. Died 1987.Allegation to diocese in 11/07 from a man who said Marcinek abused him from about 1972, when he was a 10-year-old Holy Rosary student in Republic, until the early 1980s. He said the abuse, including oral copulation, occurred at the rectory, Marsinek's cabin and on trips, including to to Sea World and Geauga Lake in OH and Niagara Falls. Marsinek may have also abused the alleged victim's brother. He said his family was poor and Marsinek gave him money and gifts, including a car. Settled for $10k and 90 counseling sessions. Greensburg, PA Source:
PA Grand Jury Report Profile 08.14.18
Assignments:
PA Grand Jury Report Profile 08.14.18
Mardaga Ronald 1980 P Accused Diocesan In 1986 Mardaga admitted to sexually abusing a minor in late 1970s. His faculties were removed in 1986. No information on sex of victim current status. Name appeared on Sept. 2002 list of priests accused of abuse which was released by Archdiocese of Baltimore. Baltimore, MD Source:
Archdiocese of Baltimore 09.25.02
Assignments:
Archdiocese of Baltimore 9.25.02
Marie Eva N Sued Sisters of Charity of Nazareth Nun. Named as an abuser of one youth in 1960s and 1970s at St. Thomas-St. Vincent Orphanage per civil suit filed in 2004 by approximately 50 people. Louisville, KY Source:
Courier-Journal 07.23.05
Marie Genevieve N Sued Sisters of St. Francis A man and a woman, both 60, allege in 8/07 civil suit that Sister Genevieve Marie, a nun and teacher at St. James School in McMinnville, engaged in acts of physical and mental cruelty toward them in the mid- to late 1950s. Portland, OR Source:
The Oregonian 08.02.07; Statesman Journal 08.03.07; Catholic Sentinel 08.09.07
Marier Edward 1988 P Sued Diocesan In 11/06 woman sued Marier and Bishop William Skylstad over allegations that the priest possessed child pornography. Woman said she found the porn in 1996 while cleaning the priest's room. She told the Bishop. Marier denied that it was child porn but was sent for treatment. Later reassigned. Woman says in suit that the bishop defamed her by publicly issuing a strongly-worded press release that supported Marier. Court dismissed lawsuit 3/07 on Defense Motion. Spokane, WA Source:
Seattle Post-Intelligencer (AP) 11.14.06; Spokesman Review 11.14.06; Spokesman Review 11.17.06; Spokesman Review 03.31.07
Assignments:
Assignment Record as created by BA.org
Marin Miguel 1978 P Sued Diocesan 17 yr old plaintiff and another boy spent night at rectory 4/96. Marin gave them alcoholic beverages and allowd them to watch an R-rated movie. After the boys went to sleep, Marin got into bed with them and attempted to "french kiss" plaintiff.Plaintiff stopped him but shortly began to exhibit signs of mental disturbance and was hospitalized. Parents filed suit on his behalf in August, 1996. Suit was settled in Sept. 1996 for $23,000. Still on leave as of 2002 OCD. El Paso, TX Source:
Ruben v. Dio of El Paso; El Paso, Cty; # 96-2995
Marino Vincent 1983 P Sued Diocesan Man filed suit 09/13 alleging abuse as a teenager by Marino at St. Agnes Catholic Church in Niantic. Marino would give him wine, buy liquor for him, and watch porn with him before assaulting him. Plaintiff says he reported abuse when he was in his 20s but no action taken by Diocese. Marino was later transferred to another parish and is currently serving at parish in Siracusa, Sicily. Norwich, CT Source:
The Day 10.09.13
Marion Jude Sister N Accused Unknown One pending claim against Sr. Marion Jude shown in bankruptcy reorganization documents for Fairbanks Diocese 1/25/10. Fairbanks, AK Source:
Excerpt from Bankruptcy Reorganization Documents for Fairbanks Diocese 1.25.10, p. 2
Mark (unknown) B Sued order? Sued 2003. Accused of abuse from 1979-1983. Alleged victim committed suicide. Los Angeles, CA Source:
Pasadena Star-News 04.23.03
Marrokal Donald P. 1958 P Accused Passionist First named publicly as accused on the Youngstown diocese's list 10/29/18. Deceased. Youngstown, OH Source:
WYTV 10.29.18; Diocese of Youngstown List 10.30.18
Martell Dennis L. 1976 P Accused Diocesan Per a 9/02 Status Report from Detroit Archdiocese, Martell had been ordained for the Archdiocese but has been laicized. Name also appears on the Detroit Archdiocese Status Report of 5/04. His name appeared in 1993 Catholic Directory but not in 2002 edition. Detroit, MI Source:
Archdiocese of Detroit Status Report 10.09; Detroit Archdiocese Status Report 11.02; USA Today 11.11.02
Martin Austin? P Accused S.D.S. Salvatorian Named publicly by the Savannah diocese on its list 11/8/18. Noted to have worked in the diocese 1964-69, and to have been laicized. Deceased. Savannah, GA Source:
Diocese of Savannah List 11.08.18
Martin James Aloysius P Accused Diocesan Accused of abuse of 1 between 1934-1938 per Archdiocesan report. Retired 1954. Died per report.. Los Angeles, CA Source:
LA Archdiocesan Report 2.17.04 page 2
Assignments:
LA Times Database 4.20.06
Martin John F. P Sued Diocesan Civil suit filed 10/09 alleged that Martin and another priest, Andrew Burke, sexually assaulted him on multiple occasions in early 1970s when he worked as a Janitor at St. Pius X Parish. Some of the abuse occurred prior to his 18th birthday. Martin died in late 1970s. This is believed to be first case naming Martin. Pueblo, CO Source:
Denver Post 10.21.09; Pueblo Chieftain 10.22.09
Martin Patrick H. 1937 P Sued Diocesan Accused in a 2/26/04 suit of sexually abusing altar boys at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs in Manhattan. Three plaintiffs allege abuse 1955-61, beginning at age 11, 10, and 13, with one claiming >200 incidents during 5 years. Martin also had a disciplinary role at parish grammar school. Suit claims other altar boys besides the plaintiffs were abused. New York, NY Source:
Complaint 02.26.04
Martin Roger M. 1951 P Accused Diocesan First named publicly as accused by the diocese on its 11/13/18 list of priests credibly accused of sexual misconduct with a minor or vulnerable adult. Deceased. Ogdensburg, NY Source:
Bishop LaValley Letter 11.10.18; Diocese of Ogdensburg List 11.13.18; Adirondack Daily Enterprise 11.14.18
Martin Marie Sister N Sued School Sisters of Notre Dame Sued in 2005. One of several religious accused of abuse at Madonna Manor, a Catholic home for troubled children. Man claimed that she beat him when he tried to tell her about rape by Gilbert Gauthe when Gauthe was still a seminarian. New Orleans, LA Source:
Times Picayune 08.25.05; Times Picayune 03.14.06; Times Picayune 10.20.09; City of Angels 10.25.09
Martin, M.I.C.M. Joseph M. B Sued Brother of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (M.I.C.M.), based at St. Benedict Abbey in Harvard MA. Martin died 12/29/13 qt age 86. A man told the Order in 2017 that Martin raped him as a boy in the 1970s. The man filed suit in 7/18, claiming Abbot Francis X. Connelly knew Martin admitted the abuse to the police in 2013, but didn't tell him. A CA monsignor had contacted police after the man confided in him. The man also claimed the Abbot offered to help with his medical expenses, but withdrew the offer because his needs were too costly. Worcester, MA Source:
Boston Globe Obituary 01.02.14; AP via Star Tribune 07.18.18
Martin/Peralta Philip 1979 P Accused Diocesan First identified publicly as accused on the Santa Fe archdiocese list 9/12/17. On Diocese of Las Cruces list 1/08/18. Report noted to have been received in 2002 of an alleged incident in 1984. Martin worked at NMMI in Roswell 1983-84. Santa Fe, NM Source:
Archdiocese of Santa Fe list 09.12.17; Diocese of Las Cruces List 11.08.18; KVIA 11.08.18
Martinez Charles 1980 P Sued Francisan Civil suit filed 12/93 alleged Martinez abused one youth from 1977-1983, beginning when the plaintiff was 12 and Martinez was studing to be a Franciscan Friar. Martinez would take the boy with him on trips throughout the U.S. Martinez denied all allegations but was suspended when allegations surfaced 4/93. Some defendants dropped 4/95 after settlement with one. Remaining portion against Martinez was dismissed 5/95. Santa Fe, NM Source:
Albuquerque Journal 5.7.95; Romero v. Fanciscian...;Bernalillo Cty, NM; #D-202-CV-9311111; Albuquerque Journal 05.23.95
Martinez Luis (Louis) P Settled Sons of the Holy Family Two civil suits filed against Martinez in NM in 1994. Both allege that Martinez abused minor females. No dates for abuse are given in either suit. Martinez allegedly left the priesthood but no information on laicization. At least one suit (maybe both) settled by Archdiocese of Santa Fe and Sons of the Holy Family 12/95. Included in Santa Fe archdiocese list of accused on 9/12/17. Santa Fe, NM Source:
Santa Fe New Mexican 01.11.96; Archdiocese of Santa Fe List 09.12.17; Rio Grande Sun 09.26.17
Martinez Robert Lee 1979 P Accused Diocesan First identified publicly as accused in Santa Fe archdiocese list on 9/12/17. Santa Fe, NM Source:
Archdiocese of Santa Fe list 09.12.17
Martinez Roger L. 1976 P Accused Diocesan First identified publicly as accused in Santa Fe archdiocese list on 9/12/17. Santa Fe, NM Source:
Archdiocese of Santa Fe list 09.12.17
Martinkosky Joseph A. 1957 P Accused Diocesan First named publicly as accused by the diocese on its list 10/31/18. Noted to have been suspended from ministry in 1991. Steubenville, OH Source:
Diocese of Steubenville List 10.31.18; WTOV 10.31.18
Mary Andrew Sister N Accused Unknown Sister Mary Andrew (a/k/a Sister Frances Doyle) has been accused of sexual abuse of at least two girls at Notre Dame School in Manhattan in mid-1940s. School was run by Society of St. Ursula; Sr. Mary Andrew was the principal. One accuser was said she was abused as a 14-year-old sophomore. She went on to become a nun but left the order years later. The school and the order have reportedly refused to help her as a survivor. Andrew died 11/29/06. New York, NY Source:
Catholic New York 12.21.06; Road to Recovey Media Statement 06.04.14; Road to Recovery 08.13.14; Road to Recovery Media Statement 08.13.14; Business Insider 11.15.16
Mary Anne Patricia N Sued Unknown In civil suit to be filed 8/3/07, one man who was born in 1955 alleges that Sister Patricia Mary Anne, a nun and teacher at the Madeline School in Portland, sexually abused him as many as 100 times over a two-year period beginning in 1964. Portland, OR Source:
The Oregonian 08.02.07; Statesman Journal 08.03.07; Catholic Sentinel 08.09.07
Mary Asia Sister N Accused Unknown Two or more pending claims against Sr. Mary Asia shown in bankruptcy reorganization documents for Fairbanks Diocese 1/25/10. Fairbanks, AK Source:
Excerpt from Bankruptcy Reorganization Documents for Fairbanks Diocese 1.25.10, p. 1
Mary Claudine Sister N Settled Unknown Name included in Diocese's 9/02 $13.5 mil mass settlement in 36 sexual abuse lawsuits alleging abuse by 11 priests and a nun. No other information found. Providence, RI Source:
Providence Journal-Bulletin 09.10.02
Mary Jane Sister N Sued Sisters of St. Mary of the Presentation Accused in a 2005 suit of sexually abusing a girl age 6-7 in 1960-61 at St. Patrick Catholic School in Washington. Her current status was unknown in 2005. Peoria, IL Source:
Copely News Service 11.30.05; Journal-Star 12.01.05
Mary Jane (in Louisville) Sister N Sued Sisters of Charity of Nazareth In a 7/22/04 amendment to a suit, Sr. Mary Jane was accused of abusing a girl at Presentation Academy. Same plaintiff also alleged abuse by 2 other nuns: Sr. Caroline Mary Schneider and Sr. Jean. Order confirmed that there was a nun by that name at the school. Sister was removed from ministry pending investigation. Louisville, KY Source:
Courier-Journal 07.23.04; Courier-Journal 09.12.04
Mary Joanne Sister N Accused Unknown One pending claim against Sr. mary Joanne shown in bankruptcy reorganization documents for Fairbanks Diocese 1/25/10. Fairbanks, AK Source:
Excerpt from Bankruptcy Reorganization Documents for Fairbanks Diocese 1.25.10, p. 2
Mary Omer Sister N Sued School Sisters of Notre Dame Sued in 2005. One of several religious accused of abuse at Madonna Manor, a Catholic home for troubled children. At least one claim included in almost $5.2M settlement with Archdiocese in Fall, 2009. In references to settlement, she is referred to as Mother Superior Mary Omer. New Orleans, LA Source:
Times Picayune 08.25.05; Times Picayune 03.14.06; Times Picayune 03.11.10
Mary Rosalia Sister N Accused Unknown One pending claim against Sr. Mary Rosalia shown in bankruptcy reorganization documents for Fairbanks Diocese 1/25/10. Fairbanks, AK Source:
Excerpt from Bankruptcy Reorganization Documents for Fairbanks Diocese 1.25.10, p. 2
Maslar William J. 1956 P Accused Diocesan First named publicly as accused on Allentown diocese's 8/19/18 list. Removed in 2002. Died in 2005. Allentown, PA Source:
Diocese of Allentown list 08.19.18
Mason James E. 1967 P Convicted Diocesan In 2000, man accused Mason of making sexual advances when he was junior in high school and at Univ. Diocese did not tell him that Mason had been found guilty in 1981 of sexually assaulting a student and placed on probation for 18 months. Absent on sick leave from 1987 through 1992 per Catholic Directory; "On duty outside the diocese" from 1993 to 200 |
3, 2012, Respondent [i.e. Shrout] wrote the following order, “Please call in KCL 20 mEq PO TID #90 0 refills.” At all times, Respondent failed to adequately document whether she or another health care provider was the person who evaluated the patient and created the treatment plan and orders. Respondent failed to adequately document the health care provider who was making the evaluation and treatment decisions regarding the patient. Respondent’s failure to adequately document the health care provider who was making the evaluation and treatment decisions regarding the patient was so significant that the medical records appear to show that the Respondent was the health care provider who was making the evaluation and treatment decisions regarding the patient.”
The complaint mentions numerous aggravating factors relevant to the Board’s case. These charges represent a very preliminary stage in the resolution of this case, and of course Shrout has the right to reply and rebut them. Currently, other health care providers who have open cases against them by the TMB include Drs. Zanhua Yi, Alejandro Marquis, Greg Burzynski, and head quack Stanislaw Burzynski. The elder Burzynski’s case is currently scheduled to be heard by a judge in November.Late-season storms across the US could have consequences past winter, as states are forced to draw on emergency funds
Hard-pressed city and state authorities across the east and midwest of the United States are having to find hundreds of millions of dollars in extra funds to meet the costs of dealing with one of the coldest winters of recent times.
As the latest in a series of storms to dump several feet of snow on major cities struck on Monday, budgets for clearing snowfall and removing ice from streets had already been busted from North Carolina to Vermont by extended stretches of bitterly cold weather.
“This winter, Mother Nature is not only breaking records, she’s breaking budgets as well,” said Erica Michel, a research analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures. “From the midwest to the south-east and up through New England, states are reporting historic spending on snow removal.” Regional government experts warned that spending cuts and even job losses may have to follow.
Members of Michigan’s house of representatives are currently considering a $100m emergency funding package for clearing and filling potholes on their roads. The plan was approved by the state senate after regional officials warned that overspends would leave them unable to carry out basic maintenance such as mowing and fixing guardrails later in the year.
Like many cities from the midwest to the east coast, Detroit, had its snowiest January on record this year. Officials from the surrounding Wayne County have said their snow-clearing costs are up by 200% on last year. Detroit filed for bankruptcy last July.
Yet more snow and freezing rain swept up from the south to the mid-Atlantic region on Monday, shutting down government offices and schools in Washington DC, and prompting states of emergency to be declared from Mississippi to New Jersey.
To the midwest, Ohio’s transportation department had three weeks ago already spent more than $20.6m over and above its $65m annual budget for clearing roads. Some $13.1m had been spent on overtime pay for the hundreds of crew members operating the state’s 1,627 ploughs – more than twice the total winter spend on overtime two years ago.
This NOAA GOES-13 satellire image shows the late-season winter storm as it continues to shift eastward. Photograph: HANDOUT/AFP/Getty Images
The city of Chicago has also torn through its budget for removing snow, having spent $28m – more than 36% over budget for the year. Molly Poppe, a city spokeswoman, said a $6m fuel tax surplus would be used to bridge the gap. Officials from the state of Illinois told The Fiscal Times last month that they had spent more than $100m on clearing snow this winter, compared to $33.9m at the same point last year.
Further east, New Jersey has spent a total of $106m this winter on clearing snow – an increase of almost 70% on last year’s total of $62.5m. While gritters in the state used 258,000 tons of salt last year, some 442,000 tons had been used by the middle of this February.
“We set a new record,” Steve Shapiro, a spokesman for the state department of transportation, told the Guardian. “It has been an unusually difficult winter. We have had almost twice as much snow as in a typical year, and it came in back-back storms of unusual severity”.
Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City, last month approved $35m in additional funding for tackling snow across the five boroughs this winter. The extra cash amounts to more than 60% of the city’s regular $57.3m budget, which has been burned through already.
“We have had more expensive winters,” said Kathy Dawkins, a spokeswoman for the city’s department of sanitation. “But this has cost more than average … in light of all the severe storms we have had, more money was made available so we could continue to clear the streets and remove the snow.”
A city snow plow cleared a lane in Lexington, Kentucky. Photograph: Lexington Herald-Leader/ZUMA Press/Corbis
James Brooks, the program director for community development and infrastructure at the National League of Cities, said that in many areas “cities have been left hanging on their own” to deal with the effects of winter storms despite being “in a weakened capacity coming out of the great recession”.
“Cities will undoubtedly now have to cut back on things such as frequency in delivery of services, on personnel, perhaps even on entire programs,” said Brooks. “You have to cut where you have the most dollars, which is really in personnel costs … Cities are still going to confront some of the residual aspects of these winter storms well into the balance of this fiscal year.”
In New England, Massachusetts has spent more than $100m on snowstorms this season, according to the Associated Press, almost two and a half times the state’s $43m budget for the fiscal year. New Hampshire’s transportation department was forced to obtain approval for a $2.25m raid on the state highway fund, which comprises fuel tax revenue and vehicle registration charges, to supplement its regular $42m winter budget.
“We do anticipate having to go back for more,” said William Boynton, a spokesman for the New Hampshire state department of transportation. Boynton estimated that officials had spent about 88% of their budget two-thirds of the way through winter. “We have completely exhausted our overtime budget. It’s probably going to be the most expensive winter we have ever had.”
The pain has been felt farther south, too. Officials in North Carolina, where central and eastern schools were closed early on Monday after the National Weather Service issued a winter weather advisory, told reporters a month ago that they had already exceeded their $30m yearly allowance. In Virginia, the state Department of Transportation has already exceeded its $10m snow removal budget by $3.4m, according to WRIC, a regional news station.New York Knicks
Best: Willis Reed The Knicks had the No. 1 overall pick in the 1964 draft. They grabbed Jim "Bad News" Barnes from Texas Western (now UTEP). The best news from that year for New York, however, came in the second round when they selected Willis Reed from Grambling. The 6-9 center was a key piece to the teams that brought two titles to Madison Square Garden — the only two so far — and his effort in Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals has not faded. He edges Walt Frazier, selected in the first round in 1967 after leading Southern Illinois to an NIT title at the Garden. Worst: Frederic Weis Let's be honest. Another center, another first-round choice (15th, 1999) and another moment for the ages. Only difference is this time the Frenchman is best remembered for being posterized by Vince Carter in the 2000 Olympics. The slam was called the "dunk of death" by the French media. The choice of the the 7-2 center wasn't far from that. He never played in the NBA, but will never be forgotten.The final version of Firefox 19 may have just left the den, but the Mozilla team are already hard at work on the beta version of Firefox 20, which just came out for Android today. Notable new features include a new per-tab private browsing feature that lets you alternate between normal and private tabs within the same session, customizable shortcuts for the home screen and support for additional ARMv6 devices. The browser also now supports lower-end phones with the minimum requirements of a 600MHz processor, 384MB memory and a QVGA display, which includes devices like the Samsung Galaxy Pop and the HTC Aria. Curious? Check out the release notes at the source, or if you're willing to tread those risky beta waters, just download it right now from Google Play.Beware of Innocent Looking Puddles Crash Reminds Cyclists and Pedestrians to Take Extra Caution in the Rain
On the evening of January 10, during the last round of storms, tour guide and active San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) member Lauren Sailor was bicycling down the 800 block of Market Street on her way to get a tune up for her trusty steed, Morgan. It was dark and rainy. That portion of Market Street has no real bike protection or lane–just some sharrow markings. Sailor heard a car coming up on her left. Then she saw a rectangular shaped–and innocent looking–puddle. She had to make a choice: take her chances with the puddle, or swerve and risk a conflict with the car. She made the same instant calculation all cyclists have to make on our streets, almost every day–she decided the puddle was the safer bet.
This time she was wrong.
Sailor hit an especially deep pot hole that was lurking below the surface of the water. It swallowed her front wheel, grinding her bike to an instant halt. Her momentum had to go somewhere and it did–she flew over her handlebars and crashed down on her right side. “Fortunately, I landed on my arm and not my head!” said Sailor.
But she smashed her elbow.
“I knew something was unusual, because my arm hurt more than it should. I’ve taken plenty of spills, but I was like ooooh, this really aches!” A good Samaritan helped her retrieve her bike and some nearby police came over. They put a safety cone in the pot hole to make sure nobody else hit it. And Sailor was off to the hospital. On Jan. 18 she had surgery and had a titanium plate and screws put into her arm.
Rachel Gordon, a spokeswoman for SF Public Works, said it’s imperative that people call 311 to report pot holes, especially during such strong winter rains. “Our crews filled nearly 3,000 pot holes in January, which is double the typical month…we’ve had five or six crews running seven days a week filling them–if we know about them.” She said they do prioritize bicycle routes.
The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, meanwhile, has an online guide for riding in the rain:
Metal surfaces, road imperfections, and painted surfaces can become slippery in wet weather. So be especially mindful when crossing over train tracks, metal grates or sewer covers, and even bike lane markings. When you ride over them, keep your feet in a “neutral” position (both feet even on the pedals at the 3 and 9 o’clock position), take some of your weight off the seat by lifting your butt up, and stop pedaling to maintain balance.
SFBC also recommends slowing down, of course. But even doing all of these things, sometimes the road can get you. It’s hard to see what Sailor could have done differently–if she’d opted to swerve in front of a car, the results could have been far worse. Of course, with protected bike lanes, she would have had the flexibility to evade the pothole without risking getting hit by a car. “We’ve been calling for years and years to see physically protected bike lanes from the Embarcadero through Octavia. The City’s lack of urgency for Better Market Street on delivering protected bike lanes along this high-injury corridor is particularly disappointing while people continue suffering serious injuries and worse there,” said Janice Li, Advocacy Director for the SFBC.
Meanwhile, today was Sailor’s first physical therapy session. Thankfully, it was less painful than she feared. She’s looking at a few months of hard work and rehab and, if all goes well, she should recover nearly the full range of motion in her arm. With luck, she’ll be riding again in a month or two–sadly, without Morgan, which was damaged beyond repair.
“I have eight screws and a titanium plate. They put me together Humpty Dumpty style. It could have been a lot worse.” Still, she remains frustrated with San Francisco’s streets. “If there had been a dedicated space for me to ride where I wouldn’t be worried about getting into a driver’s path, I doubt this would have happened… this is a major bike thoroughfare. It’s a shame that there aren’t safe conditions.”Editor’s note: Minnesota Vikings punter, Tripping Icarus bass guitarist, video game aficionado and Twitter icon (@ChrisWarcraft) Chris Kluwe offers his take on the NFL draft for the Pioneer Press. Kluwe went undrafted out of UCLA in 2005, signed with the Seattle Seahawks, was claimed off waivers by the Vikings right before the season and has been with Minnesota ever since.
April 23, 2005. The first day of that year’s NFL draft. All across the country, hundreds of young men sit anxiously in front of their television screens, eyes locked onto the ticker tape scroll feverishly racing across the bottom of the screen, ears straining to make out the next name announced, hearts pounding as time drips by, molasses syrupy slow.
Some of these eyes light up with excitement and glee as the commissioner declares, “And with the (fill in the blank) pick, the (one of 32 NFL teams) select …” Screams fill the air, backs are slapped, kisses are bestowed upon teary-eyed mothers; all is right in the world, and we’re movin’ on up to the east side.
Others, well, others aren’t so lucky. Slowly the once-ebullient party balloons droop down from their perches against the top of the ceiling as the guacamole grows warm and rancid. Guests and family members exchange awkward glances and mouth empty platitudes: “They’ll definitely call your name tomorrow,” or “I’m sure it’s just a matter of time,” until suddenly there is no more time and you’re not even Mr. Irrelevant.
If you’re lucky, then you survive the lonely road of the undrafted free agent, of hoping a team will call you up and at least give you a chance in training camp, at least give you one step upon that green field that now seems so far away with all its pageantry and flash. Signing bonus? Here’s two grand, son – and, oh, aren’t you glad to see it because hopefully it’ll pay the rent for a month or two while you desperately try to prove your worth to unsmiling men in mirrored glasses, busy hands constantly timing, testing, summing up your entirety on a brown clipboard filled with neat rows of numbers, and here comes the Grim Reaper to collect your playbook.
Some don’t even get that option. The phone never rings, the channel switches over to the evening news (filled with the grinning faces of fresh new millionaires), and the dream is over, stillborn upon the vine. Oh, you’ll keep working hard at it, maybe even get a lucky break if someone goes down to an injury early on and they need a body and somehow you can make the most of that tiniest of opportunities, but don’t kid yourself, Kid, it’s the longest of long shots.
Hey there, put the pills down, it’s not all doom and gloom. Most of the people getting drafted are in the same boat as you. All the preparation leading up to the draft, all the pro days and game video and endless interviews, only for a lucky few is it the Golden Ticket into the factory. Unless you get stuck in the chocolate pipe like JaMarcus Russell or fall down the squirrel hole like Ryan Leaf, a first- or second-round pick guarantees you at least three years in the league. You see, you’re someone’s investment, you’re someone’s job, and if you flame out, then it’s their livelihood on the line and no one likes looking like a fool. And if one team gets rid of you, well, you were a first-round pick so you must have some sort of potential. Hey, boys, let’s kick the tires on this one and see if he can work in our system.
Third round? You’ll get two years to prove your case. They’ve put some money into you, but if you don’t pan out, then they’ll cut their losses and move on to the next guy (who just might be an undrafted free agent who’s working his ass off to make the team, and he knows this is his only chance). You’ve got a little leeway as a third-rounder, but it’s just enough rope to hang yourself. Use it wisely.
Fourth round or later? They like your potential, but you’re going to have to earn your spot. You’ll have an advantage over the undrafted guys, but it’s not much; the depth chart will have your name higher than theirs for a day or two, but if you don’t bust your butt, it’s not going to stay that way. Save that signing bonus for a rainy day, and don’t get sucked into the veterans’ lifestyle; they’ve got cash to burn because they’ve collected those game checks. Until you suit up on Sunday, you’ve got nothing but hollow promises.
You see, what no one will tell you, what no one can tell you, is that the draft is a total crapshoot. You may run 40 yards in a straight line like Usain Bolt, you may jump higher than Superman and knock college linemen around like bowling pins, you may have the world’s most impressive highlight reel that gets 2 million hits on YouTube a week. Conversely, you may have bombed your pro day, thrown the ball backwards during the Senior Bowl or even spelled your own name wrong on the Wonderlic test.
It doesn’t matter. Sure, you might jump up to the first round, or slide all the way out of the draft, but that isn’t what earns you your money. What earns you your money, the only thing that earns you your money, is suiting up on Sunday and showing you can play out on that field. That you have what it takes to be among the best of the best, day in and day out, year after year, and NO ONE knows who’s going to flash that talent. Oh, they can make a guess at it, but that’s all it is – a guess.
Me?
I am playing video games during that draft. I have a very zenlike approach to things. If I can affect it, I’ll do everything in my power to make sure the outcome is one I desire (i.e. all the stuff leading up to the draft), but if I have no control, then why worry about what’s going to happen? What will be, will be. My agent calls about halfway through the second day and says Seattle is going to either take me late in the seventh round or as an undrafted free agent right after the draft, and Seattle calls right after the draft.
The rest is hard work, perseverance and, yes, a little luck.Coming Soon
The Stranded
When a tsunami strands dozens of teens on an island at their private school, they soon realize no rescuers are coming and they must save themselves.
Delhi Crime
Based on true events, this dramatized series follows the police investigation of the 2012 Delhi gang-rape case. Starring Shefali Shah and Adil Hussain.
Escape from Hat
A desperate rabbit rallies an unexpected band of allies to help him escape from inside a magician's hat and return to the human boy he loves.
Paskal
Naval unit PASKAL is among the most elite special forces in Malaysia. But all bets are off when one of its own stages a hijacking. Based on true events.
Merry Happy Whatever
A strong-willed dad navigates the stress of the holiday season when his daughter brings her new boyfriend home for Christmas. Starring Dennis Quaid.
Rudy Ray Moore
When Hollywood shut him out in the 1970s, multi-talented Rudy Ray Moore created his own work, including the well-known blaxploitation film, "Dolemite."
Love Alarm
A software developer creates an app that alerts users if anyone nearby harbors romantic feelings for them. Adapted from the popular web cartoon.
Sweet Magnolias
Maddie Townsend has a lot on her plate -- including three kids, a cheating husband and one unlikely suitor who has everyone in town talking.FERGUSON, Missouri— The police officer who shot and killed unarmed teenager Michael Brown may not have filled out a detailed incident report following the Aug. 9 shooting.
Close video As Lawrence predicted, no incident report St. Louis County prosecutors office confirmed that Ferguson PD didn’t file a report after the shooting death of Michael Brown. Our panel joins Lawrence. share tweet email save Embed
During a briefing with the St. Louis County Prosecutor’s Office on Thursday, prosecutors told NBC News that since turning over the investigation into Brown’s death, the Ferguson Police Department had yet to generate an incident report.
Late Wednesday night, the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri released what it described as a report turned over to it by the police department following a lawsuit it filed to obtain the records. The report is scant on details typically found on an incident report involving a homicide. It lists little more than the date, time and location of the incident. But more curious are the timestamps on the document.
According to information on the report a supervisor had not reviewed the document until Aug. 19, 10 days after the fatal shooting. And final approval wasn’t given until Aug. 20.
The ACLU released the report via Twitter on Friday night.
In response to our lawsuit for #MikeBrown shooting report, STL County Police Dept released: http://t.co/Zu07m9rkJz pic.twitter.com/VYupLYTxTh — ACLU of Missouri (@aclu_mo) August 20, 2014
The prosecutors office says no report, narrative, or details from the investigation will be released to the public while there is a grand jury empaneled to review the incident.[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/233349108″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
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Show Notes
Part One – FSU Recap/Cuse Preview
FSU –
– I really hate to be the “I told you so” guy when it’s referencing something bad but the running game was a disaster. Last week against BC was fluffed up with long runs. When you don’t have those it shows in games like this against tough teams.
– J-Sam – 7 carries for 23 with a long of 14. The other 6 carries went for 1.2 ypc.
– Nyheim – 3 carries for 18 with a long of 14. The other 2 carries went for 2 ypc.
– Nichols – 3 carries for 14 with a long of 9. The other 2 carries went for a staggering 2.5 ypc.
– Jacoby – 17 carries for 25 with a long of 12. The other 16 carries went for 0.8 ypc.
– OUR LEADING RUSHER WAS OUR QB WHO AVERAGED LESS THAN 1 YARD A CARRY IF YOU TAKE AWAY THE LONE 12 YARD BREAKAWAY.
– Awful numbers led to abandoning the run. RB’s had 13 carries the entire game. That’s including having a lead for a good chunk of the first half.
– Couldn’t run the ball so we threw almost 50 times against FSU’s defense. That’s not a good thing.
– Jacoby was only the leading rusher because he was running for his life a good bit. Designed QB runs early but a lot of it was scrambling (unsuccessfully at that.)
– Fact is this was a great offense with Shad and Dayes, a good offense with Dayes, and now it’s up in the air. They can decide whether or not they’re still good.
– Again, I don’t blame anyone for this. Losing RB1 and RB2 is a massive hit. It changes an offense.
– E – YPC w/ Dayes – 6.3 and YPC w/o Dayes – 4.8
– Passing game was about what it’s been for the bulk of the season. Not many shots downfield and the ones taken weren’t successful.
– Deep balls weren’t on target a lot. Difference between this game and the BC one where they were was a collapsing pocket. Jacoby had time a lot more against BC than FSU.
– When he did have a limited amount of time there was usually not a lot open downfield.
E –
OL & WR, i questioned Jacoby earlier in the year but this game they really emphasized that guys weren’t open downfield. TV cameras showed FSU’s tight coverage and we had no where to throw.
OL was good against BC, and while they might be the #1 ranked Defense, FSU has better athletes up front 10/10 times. It showed.
OL takes time to develop. Have to bring in talent but you have to develop them. Not like DL where you can bring in the best guys and they play b/c they are strong. Mcgirt. Richardson, Adams, Tyler Jones, Prescod. will be a good line with time. 3 4 stars and 2 guys who have played
Play calling has to adjust for not having days and not having guys who can get up.
Side note – Hate the short side field runs.
Def. played well enough to win, no help from the offense. Maguire killed us, had to stop blitzing.
Cuse
– 3-7 but play a lot of close games, Clemson, LSU, FSU played them tough.
– Give up a lot of points but can we score? 30 to Central Mich, 44 to UVA, 45 to USF, 41 to Lville
– tons of injuries. Walk-on juco QB.
six game losing streak
Part Two – Basketball
William & Mary –
– Not a lot to say. It was an absolute disaster.
– When jump shots aren’t falling this team is going to be in trouble.
– Last year we had Lacey to bail us out and make some plays to cover up for poor shooting nights.
– The answer this year was supposed to be Henderson.
– Out 6-8 weeks after getting injured 7 minutes into the first game of the season. How bout that luck?
– Abu and Caleb had good games. That’s about the only positive to take from it.
South Alabama –
– Actually somewhat executed the gameplan for this one.
– Jump shots from the PG position are still lacking but that’s something that can be fixed with 1 game of shooting the ball well.
– Statline for Cat wasn’t terrible if you don’t look at FG percentage. 3 of 11.
– 2 assists shy of a triple-double.
– 11 of 12 from the line. Key for him until the jump shot shows up is to drive into the lane and get to the line.
– Bright spot so far has been Caleb. 7 of 10 shooting on the night and 4 of 6 from behind the 3 point line.
– Looks like a team that hasn’t figured it quite out offensively. There’s time but they’ve got to be a lot better if it’s gonna be 5 tourneys in a row.
– NCAA birth and this will be Gott’s best coaching job yet.
– Obvious that they miss Henderson. Open position for the player that decides they’re gonna be the go-to scorer.
– Upside of that has been playing time for Maverick Rowan.
– Went 6 of 15 against W&M and 5 of 10 against South Alabama.
– Has potential to be a REALLY good player. Looks for his shot and will only get better. I don’t want to say Scott Wood but.. Scott Wood.Beginner's Guide to Major Watch Brands How do all these expensive makes of watches stack up? How do the major watch brands compare to each other? Aren't Rolex the best watches in the world? If Rolex is not the only superior watch brand, why haven't I heard of these other watches? What are the ranges of luxury watches available?
What should I expect to pay and get within each range?
And what brands are in each range? How do the major watch brands compare to each other? The actual relationships and who exactly is better than whom is highly debated among wristwatch aficionados. There are so many different attributes of each and so many different things that are important to each buyer or owner that a simple list of "the best" or attempts to rank the brands in detail would be fruitless. So this guide is merely a starter to help the beginning watch buyer understand the range of brands available. Rolex is covered in more detail here, because they are the single brand that has the broadest public perception of excellence. They have become the yardstick by which most watch layman discussions of the high end watch brands go by. Any mentions of specific brands in particular categories is intended as a general guide to get you started looking, but is in no way a definitive guide to all these brands have to offer. Beyond that, you will have to do more detailed research on the specific attributes of the watch and watch companies you find of interest to determine which are better for your specific wants and needs. Aren't Rolex the best watches in the world? Rolex is clearly the best known and most popular fine watch brand in the world. Rolex has long been known as a maker of superior watches. They pioneered and invented several major watch concepts, such as the first "certified chronometer," the first effective "waterproof" and dustproof watch casing, the first wristwatch with an automatic changing date, and the techniques used in mass-manufacturing of premium watches. It was in the 1980's that their reputation went from stellar to astronomical from being broadly publicized as the luxury wristwatch of choice of the so-called 'yuppie' movement of young, affluent people who enjoyed conspicuous consumption as a indication of their newfound status. Both the people who embraced and those who decried the yuppie image were very effective in making the name of Rolex a household word. In that time, Rolex prices took a stellar rise to match their popularity. A stainless steel DateJust model that sold new for around US $900 in 1981 rose to US $2350 by 1991, despite only nominal changes to the product. Models in finer metals took even more dramatic increases, leaving many existing owners to joke about the newer models now being made of "unobtanium." There are several myths about Rolex that need to be dispelled: MYTH: Rolex are individually handmade watches --Most Rolex watches are mass-produced by highly efficient factory machines using a number of techniques pioneered and patented by Rolex. Rolex makes in the vicinity of 1,000,000 watches a year. They do have some very high end models and special editions that are handcrafted.
--Most Rolex watches are mass-produced by highly efficient factory machines using a number of techniques pioneered and patented by Rolex. Rolex makes in the vicinity of 1,000,000 watches a year. They do have some very high end models and special editions that are handcrafted. MYTH: Rolex are the most accurate watches in the world --Completely untrue. A $25 Casio will tell time just as well if not better. Spending thousands of dollars on a watch buys you the additional jewelry features of the watch. It does not buy you a more accurate timepiece.
--Completely untrue. A $25 Casio will tell time just as well if not better. Spending thousands of dollars on a watch buys you the additional jewelry features of the watch. It does not buy you a more accurate timepiece. MYTH: A Rolex watch takes a year to make --While Rolex has claimed this in their advertising, they have never explained any tangible basis for this claim. This is meaningless advertising fluff to give the romantic illusion that there is a craftsman laboring over your watch for a year to bring it to perfection. This is intended to obscure the fact that they are really mass-produced.
--While Rolex has claimed this in their advertising, they have never explained any tangible basis for this claim. This is meaningless advertising fluff to give the romantic illusion that there is a craftsman laboring over your watch for a year to bring it to perfection. This is intended to obscure the fact that they are really mass-produced. MYTH: Rolex watches are a good buy because they have a high resale value--While they do sell used at a higher percentage of their original retail price than many other brands, that does not mean they are always good investments or safer purchases than other watches. You WILL lose money on almost any watch--Rolex or otherwise--you purchase new and later resell. For more information on this, read the article in the Buyer's Guide section titled Watches with a good resale value are a good investment, right? So are Rolex the best? That depends entirely on your needs, perceptions, and what you want to get out of owning a fine watch. Rolex are extremely good watches with immense popularity and recognizability. But they are not clearly the best watch, best investment, or only fine choice you can make when purchasing an expensive wristwatch. Understand that you do have a number of fine alternatives ranging from comparable quality for a lot less money on up to infinitely more complicated handcrafted timepieces for even more staggering prices. The best watch purchase decision is one where you research all the pertinent information, but in the end make the decision based on what you feel most comfortable with. The truth is that there are millions of happy Rolex owners, as well as millions of happy owners of other high-end watch brands. If Rolex is not the only superior watch brand, why haven't I heard of these other watches? Popularity is only one indication of a superior product. In most cases, the general public knows only certain brands which were well publicized as the 'best of the best' and may be totally unaware of other equal or superior products that are available. If you asked the average person-on-the-street about watches, they would probably tell you the market starts with Timex and Casio, moves up to Seiko, then TAG, and reaches its epitome with Rolex. Yet the most popular or well known choices frequently are not what the true aficionado would select. I'm sure you would find your man-on-the-street sample would also be unaware of the true collectors' choices of wines, cigars, audiophile equipment, sports cars, or writing instruments. Similarly, they will unlikely know the additional fine watch brands such as Alain Siberstein, Audemars Piguet, Blancpain, Chopard, Fortis, Franck Mueller, IWC, Jaeger-Le Coultre, Patek Phillipe, and Ulysse Nardin to name a few. In many products, the well-known brands like Bose, MontBlanc, Sony, and Rolex dominate their markets from global name recognition. While they do have quality products, they are not always the only superior choice. Success can spoil the innovation, the competitive edge, and the uniqueness that was what built the reputation these companies and products enjoy today. Sure, if you want to impress the general public, you buy names anyone will recognize--sometimes even without regard to outrageous premium prices or quality and features that are less than one would expect from their "leader of the pack" reputation. But the true connoisseurs and aficionados buy what impresses *them*, which may often include brands that the general population would not even recognize. What are the ranges of luxury watches available?
What should I expect to pay and get within each range?
And what brands are in each range? The actual relationships and who exactly is better than whom is highly debated among wristwatch aficionados. This table is intended only to show very broad, general groupings of brands based on what each of these brands are most known for and what the bulk of their product lines represent. Many brands have a few special higher-end collections and some have lower-end models. High-End Luxury
There are always superb options when money is no object. Expect To Get: A particularly refined watch recognized only by people "in the know." Very exclusive in design and craftsmanship, produced in small numbers, available through only very specialized dealers. In short, these are the Rolls Royce class of timepieces. Examples of Brands in this Range: Expect Retail Prices To Be: A Lange and Sohne, Alain Silberstein, Audemars Piguet, Blancpain, Breguet, Franck Muller, JLC, Parmigiani, Patek Phillipe, Ulysse Nardin, Vacheron Constantin starting at $5,000 for Steel models
starting at $10,000 for Gold on a leather strap
starting at $20,000 for Gold on a Gold bracelet
with the sky as the limit. Some watches can exceed $2,000,000. Design/Style: On The Outside: On The Inside: Either highly distinctive or ultra-conservative. Very to extremely limited production. Partially to completely handcrafted. Hand finished mechanical movements either developed and produced by the same company ('in-house') or bought from specialty movement houses and highly customized. Additional mechanical complications--from obvious ones like moon phases and power reserve indicators to very subtle ones like correctly handling all the obscure conditions of the Gregorian calendar. As NEW watches: As USED watches: As VINTAGE watches: Sold mainly through very exclusive and high-end jewelry dealers. While some modest discounts are customary, larger discounts are rare. Some of these are available through gray market dealers. But on such exclusive and expensive products, it is not usually a good idea to buy through unauthorized sources. Because of high new watch prices and limited production, used models are in notable demand and still command quite decent prices. Always collectible, always valuable. Summary: If you have the kind of money necessary to play in this field, then you likely do understand what the true merits and values of world-class luxury items have to offer. These are the products that impress those in the know, not the average Joe on the street. Exclusivity and extremes of refinement and jewelry value are king here. Luxury
The largest, most |
mode. However, other more innocuous activities (likely part of ongoing maintenance and repairs) are continuing within and near the Main Administrative Area. As long as the site continues in what likely is stand-by status, a sixth nuclear test could be conducted at any time with minimal advance warning.Plans to grow Australia's first commercial crop of medical cannabis at Christmas Island have met resistance from some locals, who fear that islanders won't see the financial benefits and drugs may end up in the hands of local youths.
The cannabis proposal is the latest of a series of developments that have raised the ire of Christmas Island residents, who say the controversial detention centre damages efforts to grow the island's tourism industry and a reduction in the frequency of government-contracted planes means mail is frequently delayed.
Medical marijuana plan "needs to be approved by the community": Christmas Island shire president Gordon Thomson. Credit:Wolter Peeters
Australian firm AusCann announced last month it will plant trial medical cannabis crops on Christmas Island, 2600 kilometres northwest of Perth.
Subject to changes in federal law and the success of the pilot, the company intends to plant the first commercial crop for the domestic market in late 2016, and is confident of winning support from locals.We live in a world where sexual assault can be dismissed with jokes or excuses, even used in a chatup line or plastered across a T-shirt. The UK rape statistics are shocking, and so are these harrowing reports to the Everyday Sexism Project
This is rape culture – and look at the damage it does
What do we mean when we say “rape culture”? You may have heard the term used recently. It describes a culture in which rape and sexual assault are common (in the UK over 85,000 women are raped and 400,000 sexually assaulted every single year). It describes a culture in which dominant social norms belittle, dismiss, joke about or even seem to condone rape and sexual assault. It describes a culture in which the normalisation of rape and sexual assault are so great that often victims are blamed, either implicitly or explicitly, when these crimes are committed against them. A culture in which other factors such as media objectification make it easier to see women as dehumanised objects for male sexual purposes alone.
It’s part of rape culture when “I’m feeling rapey” T-shirts are put up for sale on eBay. Or when a member of a University sports team goes out in a “casual rape” shirt, or another team plays a game called: “It’s not rape if …”
It’s part of rape culture when a child victim of sexual abuse is accused of being complicit and somehow “egging” on her abuser in the court case against him. It’s rape culture that makes it so hard for male victims to speak out too, because hand-in-hand with the dismissal of rape as a hilarious joke goes the stigmatisation of male rape victims as effeminate, impotent or non-existent.
Sometimes it’s hard to recognise or understand rape culture without hearing real-life examples of how it impacts on everyday lives, starting from an incredibly young age:
Jill Nicholls (@NichollsJill) @EverydaySexism #followed home from primary school by gang of boys saying they'd rape me - didn't know what it meant but was scared - ran
Tasha Berg (@TashaHugs) @EverydaySexism Overheard young boy on bus saying - "I'll rape your mum so bad she can't walk". Sickening!
It means that the discussion and threat of rape becomes an acceptable part of public discourse:
Shruti Sardesai (@ShrutiSardesai) @EverydaySexism Can't go out for walks around my house bc routinely harassed, called names, and told that I need to be raped. Lovely stuff.
Anna Porretta (@Little_Terrors) @EverydaySexism My coworker was walking me to my car after my closing shift, I thanked him and he laughed & said he could rape me right now.
And the idea of rape becomes fair game for public jokes:
Angela Barnes (@Angela_Barnesy) Genuine chat up scene unfolding on this train: Boy: do you have a rape alarm? Girl: yes Boy: shame I despair for humanity. @EverydaySexism
Rape culture suggests that men have a ‘right’ to women’s bodies, thus undermining the concept of consent:
Storm Emily (@TheUrbanDryad) @EverydaySexism Guy I used to go out with decides he wants to restart stuff between us. When I decline he threatens to rape me #ShoutingBack
This leads to common misconceptions about women “asking for it” or “wanting it”, even if they explicitly say otherwise:
Chocoholic Girl (@chazzyb31) @EverydaySexism At a party with bf, met his friend & pregnant gf. Friend follows me into toilets & says he's going to rape me bcs I want it.
♀☭Tw¡nk Sl¡thersby☭♀ (@Twinklecrepe) @EverydaySexism I was raped by a coworker. I told my boss about it; she said it wasn't rape and implied I actually wanted it
This leads to public speculation about whether victims’ dress or behaviour could be to blame for their own assaults:
elin who (@therosetylah) @EverydaySexism two girls in my class were talking about how you'd only have yourself to blame for getting raped if you wore a short skirt
Catherine (@Scathach_81) @EverydaySexism A former magistrate blames short skirts for rape on #bbctbq Welcome to 21st century Britain. #VictimBlaming
Wolf Mommy (@Wolf_Mommy) When a man told me breastfeeding my baby in public is going to get me raped. @EverydaySexism
This shifts all the focus onto victims, while perpetrators are not addressed at all:
The Family Buisness (@Sarah_Watsons) @EverydaySexism ever since I was little my mum told me how to not get raped but I have never heard her once tell my 2 brothers not to rape.
Rape culture can permeate every area of a woman’s life, from the pavement:
Katie McArthur (@grrumblecakes) And FURIOUS that there are people alive who think threatening to rape me on my way to work is a funny joke #everydaysexism
To the workplace:
AM (@adorrissey) @EverydaySexism upon hearing I was 19 and a virgin, my coworker suggested I "needed to get raped."
From the classroom:
Ellen Steenkamp (@EllenSteenkamp) @EverydaySexism At age 11 classmate on schooltrip stated that 'no-one would rape me anyway cuz I'm too ugly'. Others only laughed at that
To our own homes and families:
honey-senpai (@kawaiifriend) @EverydaySexism bought an open back t shirt for a concert a month ago; my father told me the shirt screamed "rape me"
As the word starts to lose its meaning, it becomes harder and harder to object to rape culture:
Charlie Price (@charliecat82) @EverydaySexism #LadCulture being told by an ex-boyfriend that he'd like to rape me and then he didn't get why I was angry.
Worst of all, the widespread and normalised nature of rape culture makes it increasingly hard for victims to speak out, as they learn to believe they won’t be taken seriously, or are dismissed when they do:
Amanda Tall (@AmandaLDTall) On a nearly empty metro 4 men shouted they wanted to rape me. Scary but we're not meant to make a fuss so didn't tell anyone @EverydaySexism
Lorg Mo Chearta (@BriMonroeCarter) @EverydaySexism I was 15 & my rape happened at a party. Never reported it because I knew I would get blamed&no would believe me. #RapeIsRape
Chitra Nagarajan (@chitranagarajan) #ididnotreport because I thought I was overreacting - when being followed by groups of men and threatened with rape
Vidyut (@Vidyut) the usual. RT @THELOUDERMOUTH: @EverydaySexism When I told friends I was raped, they said I'should have been more careful.' #shoutingback
The cycle is perpetuated as victims are silenced and blamed, the crime normalised, and perpetrators completely ignored.
This is rape culture.It has been a difficult time for newspapers. The industry has experienced serious challenges due to multiple factors going back at least to the early 1960s when the three major television networks began their extensive and widely popular evening news programs, with the likes of Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley.
Recent Setbacks
The rise of the Internet over the last two decades has posed a much larger challenge. More people were able to access more interactive news sources, including the Internet editions of major newspapers, nearly all of which were free in the beginning. Then there was Apple, with its ground-breaking iPad which made accessing news sources more user-friendly. Newspapers competed hard to design their own applications, which often required paid subscriptions. Of course, Ipad has competitors now and many newspapers have implemented paid firewalls for their Internet sites.
However, the Great Recession may have dealt the most important blow to the print edition. The collapse of the housing market brought a catastrophic decline in real estate and help wanted classified advertisements, a key source of revenues. Added to this was a drop in overall business, which also reduced advertising revenues.
Some large newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal,and The New York Times claim they have gained circulation. However, looking beneath the gross numbers provided by the Alliance for Audited Media, it is clear that virtually all of the gains are in on line editions, while print editions continue to decline. Even the online gains may be overstated, because a print edition subscriber who is also an online edition subscriber gets counted twice for the same newspaper.
Smaller Press Runs
A review of the change in circulation in the nation's 20 largest newspapers since 1998 indicates the depth of the losses. The year 1998 is chosen because newspaper circulations remained at high levels and the losses to Internet editions and other media sources has not yet occurred.
From 1998 to 2013, the 20 largest newspapers lost more than 5 million of their 13.4 million weekday print subscribers, a loss of nearly four out of ten subscribers (39 percent). At the same time, there were substantial differences among the top 20 papers in their losses (Table).
Top 15 Newspapers in 1998: 1998-2013 Print Circulation Newspaper 1998 2013 % Change The Wall Street Journal 1,740 1,481 -14.9% USA Today 1,653 1,424 -13.8% The New York Times 1,067 731 -31.5% Los Angeles Times 1,068 433 -59.5% The Washington Post 759 431 -43.2% New York Post 438 409 -6.6% Chicago Tribune 673 368 -45.3% New York Daily News 723 360 -50.1% Arizona Republic 435 286 -34.3% Newsday (Long Island) 572 266 -53.5% Houston Chronicle 551 231 -58.0% Minneapolis Star Tribune 335 228 -32.0% The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer B. 382 216 -43.4% The Denver Post 342 214 -37.5% San Diego Union-Tribune 378 194 -48.7% The Dallas Morning News 480 191 -60.3% The Philadelphia Inquirer 429 185 -56.9% Chicago Sun-Times 486 185 -62.0% Newark Star-Ledger 407 180 -55.7% The Boston Globe 471 172 -63.5% Total 13,389 8,185 -38.9% In thousands Source: Alliance for Audited Media & predecessor
Losers and Catastrophic Losers
All of the newspapers lost subscribers, but some lost many more than others. The New York Post, a tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, posted the smallest loss, less than 30,000 of its 1998 subscriber base of 438,000.
USA Today, Gannett’s unique national general-interest newspaper, experienced the second smallest loss, at 13.8 percent. USA Today, also the newest newspaper on the list (1982), is the nation's second-largest newspaper and fell from a circulation of 1.65 million in 1990 to 1.42 million in 2013.
Another Murdoch title, The Wall Street Journal, purchased in 2007, did a third-best in holding onto its print readership. The Journal retained its position as the largest daily newspaper in the nation, with circulation dropping from 1.74 million in 1998 to 1.48 million in 2013. This amounted to a small loss compared to other newspapers (14.9 percent). The 260,000 loss in actual subscribers was larger than the total current daily circulation of 10 of the top 20 US newspapers (such as the Houston Chronicleand The Boston Globe).
The nation's third largest newspaper, The New York Times, lost nearly one-third of its print circulation between 1998 and 2013. Even so, this was less than the loss rate of all but three newspapers (The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today).
The largest relative circulation loss was atThe Boston Globe, which saw a departure of nearly two-thirds (63.5 percent) of its subscribers. This was more than double the losses by its owner, The New York Times.
Two other newspapers lost 60 percent or more of their readers between 1998 and 2013. The Chicago Sun-Times experienced a loss of 62 percent while The Dallas Morning News saw 60 percent of its subscribers flee. This huge loss is particularly notable, given that the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area is one of the fastest growing regions in the world. For example, in Phoenix, which has also grown very rapidly, theArizona Republic lost only one third of its readership, having taken advantage of the rapidly expanding market.
Perhaps most disastrous has been the decline at the Los Angeles Times. For more than two decades, the LA Times had been the nation's third or fourth largest newspaper, following The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and sometimes The New York Times. This ranking was not much changed in 2013, as the LA Times was the fourth largest newspaper.
However, over 15 years, the LA Times lost nearly 6 out of every 10 of its subscribers. In 1998, the LA Times had 1,000 more subscribers than The New York Times, at 1,088,000. By 2013, print subscriptions at LA Times had fallen to 433,000. Over the period, The New York Times managed to secure a stranglehold on third position, opening a nearly 300,000 subscriber lead over the LA Times. Should the losses at the LA Times continue at this rate, it could be passed by both The Washington Post and the New York Post within a couple of years (Figure).
In raw subscriber numbers, the LA Times losses were the most precipitous by far at 635,000, compared to second largest loss at the New York Daily News at 363,000. The Daily News continues a long slide, having been the nation’s largest newspaper for decades to the 1970s. It is now the third-largest paper in the three paper New York City market, having been passed by the New York Post some time ago. The Daily News, however, still leads the suburban Newsdayand Newark Star-Ledger.
Even Bigger Losses
Some of the larger declines in newspaper circulation are not evident in the latest data. For example, The San Francisco Chronicle experienced a drop of 65 percent in its circulation from 1998 to 2012 (2013 data not available). The spectacular decline of Detroit’s two metropolitan dailies has outstripped all of the others over a longer period of time. In the middle 1980s, the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News each had circulations of approximately 650,000. By 2012, the Free Press had fallen to approximately 135,000 and the News to under 80,000. These drops were much larger than the city of Detroit’s population loss. Now, the two papers offer home delivery only three days of the week (Thursday, Friday and Sunday), while subscribers are encouraged to use internet editions on other days.
Of course, over the last 15 years, a number of familiar titles have been closed, such as the Rocky Mountain News (Denver), the separate Atlanta Journal and Constitution (now combined as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution) and the Cincinnati Post. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer took the intermediate step of shutting down its print edition, but retaining an Internet edition, which has remained a strong presence online.
Where from Here?
There have been other changes as well. Virtually all of the US broadsheets (the wide, familiar print format) are now printed in more compact editions, having been reduced from approximately 15 inches wide to 12 or even 11 inches wide (28, 30.5 and 38 centimeters). There are international format changes, as well. The Times of London (weekday edition) converted from broadsheet to tabloid in 2004, while The Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne’s uniquely named The Age switched to tabloid format in March.
The communications business has changed over the past two decades. Newspapers have been trying to cope, but it seems unlikely that print editions will experience any resurgence. The open question is whether the newer online strategies will save them from oblivion, but that’s hard to predict.
Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.
Photo: Los Angeles Times headquarters courtesy of WikiCommonsLet's get to the Philadelphia Eagles links...
Bradford lifts Eagles to OT win - Inquirer
The play call came into the headset in Sam Bradford's helmet from Chip Kelly, and the quarterback turned to wide receiver Jordan Matthews. "Hey, I'm coming to you," Bradford said. "Win right here." The message came before the ninth play of overtime on Sunday against the Dallas Cowboys, and there would not be a 10th. Bradford found Matthews, just as the play was designed, and Matthews ran 41 yards through the Cowboys defense for the Eagles' 33-27 victory. "He trusted me, he gave the chance to catch and run, so it was game over," Matthews said.
Handing out 10 awards from the Eagles-Cowboys game - PhillyVoice
The Eagles are -30 in point differential on the season in the first quarter. Against Dallas they were outscored 7-0 and outgained 116-48. Here are the Eagles' first quarter scores on the season.
Clutch - Iggles Blitz
There are a lot of heroes in this game, but none bigger than the Eagles OL. Lane Johnson played LT for the first time in his NFL career and had a good game. Dennis Kelly made his first start at RT since 2012 and played far better than any of us expected. The Eagles ran for 172 yards. Sam Bradford threw for 295 yards and was only sacked once. He got hit a few times, but had plenty of time to throw.
Four Downs: Bradford Steps Up In Win - Birds 24/7
112 - That's how many receiving yards Cole Beasley tallied tonight, as he recorded nine catches on 11 targets. He also scored two receiving touchdowns and consistently hurt the Eagles — but mostly Malcolm Jenkins — on double-moves. On both of his touchdowns, Beasley ran a few yards to the outside, then quickly turned and cut back inside. Jenkins struggled against the quick receiver in the slot, but the second touchdown appeared to involve a miscommunication. Jenkins maintained outside leverage even as Beasley cut inside, so he was likely expecting help from a safety or inside linebacker.
Philly radio station raises $19K for women's shelter in Dallas following release of Greg Hardy photos - NJ.com
If there is any good to come from the incident involving Dallas Cowboys defensive end Greg Hardy and then-girlfriend Nicole Holder from May 2014, this is it. And it is coming from, of all places, the Cowboys' rival city -- Philadelphia. After the release of 48 photos from the incident involving Hardy and Holder were released on Friday, Sports Radio 94 WIP, the top sports station in the city, started a GoFundMe account for the Genesis Women's Shelter in Dallas. As of Sunday morning, the station had raised just over $19,000, far surpassing its goal of $3,000.
A Win That Means So Much For Eagles - PE.com
Chip Kelly is right when he says that each week carries the same weight in an NFL season and that each win means the same and that next Sunday against Miami represents the same challenge as a prime-time, all-timer against arch-rival Dallas on Sunday night at AT&T Stadium. But still, let's let our guard down for just a moment here...
DeMarco Murray's return to Dallas turns into sweet redemption - CSN Philly
The Eagles beat the Cowboys, 33-27, and if you want a story of redemption, here it is. In the first Eagles-Cowboys game, Murray was 13 for 2 rushing. Sunday, he battered his former team up and down its own field. “I saw the frustration after the first game,” center Jason Kelce said. “Saw the frustration during the first game. I think regardless of what he says to the media, there are some relationships he has on this team, he made a big move during the offseason and I imagine this kind of meant a little bit more than a typical game for him.”
The Dallas Cowboys need to cut Greg Hardy, and yet they aren't doing it - SB Nation
Nobody is forcing the Dallas Cowboys to employ Greg Hardy. They're choosing to do it, in spite of the horrific things we know he's done.
Eagles and NRG are working together to give away tickets, prize packs, and more
Check this out, Eagles fans! And stay tuned to BGN for more info on contests involving free tickets.
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Manager: Brandon Lee Gowton Follow @BrandonGowtonThe goal of last year’s Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 2C, if not 1.5C, are admirable, but it’s unlikely that this aspirational goal can be reached with voluntary greenhouse gas emission reductions alone. Already, we are nearing the 1.5C global warming level, with predictions for reaching 2C not far into the future. The implications of global warming are recognized widely, both in short-term events like coastal inundation and extreme weather, and long-term in the form of permanently shifting climate zones and higher sea level. The range of our actions, however, is not limited to greenhouse gas generation only.
Building on humanity’s remarkable history of engineering approaches to overcoming challenges, climate engineering techniques should be included as viable solutions for reducing the impacts of global warming.
Building on humanity’s remarkable history of engineering approaches to overcome challenges—from early use of fire to create stronger tools, to modern manufacturing and construction—climate engineering techniques should be included as viable solutions for reducing the impacts of global warming. Investigations of geoengineering approaches have been around for several decades, but have grown especially since the 2006 publication of Paul Crutzen’s essay on reducing solar influence, called “Albedo enhancement by stratospheric sulfur injections: A contribution to resolve a policy dilemma?”
Climate engineering takes two approaches: (1) Carbon dioxide removal (CDR), and (2) solar radiation management (SRM). CDR addresses the cause of climate warming by removing greenhouse gas from the atmosphere (“treat the illness”). SRM offsets the warming effects of greenhouse gases by allowing Earth to absorb less solar radiation (“treat the symptoms”). Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, as proposed in the Paris Agreement, is desirable, but is not a prerequisite for climate engineering. Among the range of techniques, SRM, the focus of Crutzen’s essay, is the main source of professional and public anxiety and has mostly remained taboo. There are concerns about unintended consequences, local applications with global consequences, runaway effects, and even climate warfare.
Given that climate engineering remains highly controversial, a set of thoughtful research papers and scientific commentaries have been published on this topic in AGU’s open-access journal Earth’s Future, introduced by Boettcher and Schäfer (2017). The thematic set of papers entitled Crutzen +10: Reflecting upon 10 years of geoengineering research, examines the techniques and risks of climate engineering, from specific methodologies to sociopolitical dimensions. The contributions highlight our much improved understanding of the environmental, political, and societal risks and benefits of climate engineering, but they also recognize that the current state of our knowledge is insufficient for reliable deployment. Computer modeling and integrated assessments have advanced the positive and negative aspects of various techniques, allowing for an informed public debate and eventual decision-making. Some nations more than others are advancing this understanding and are considering some implementation. However, more extensive scientific efforts and social study that includes real-world, outdoor experimentation will be needed to adequately assess near-term deployments and their impact.
Climate engineering has unquestionable potential to limit global warming when coupled with currently available technologies, but the scientific, social and ethical dimensions of implementation are not sufficiently examined. Given the worldwide impact of most deployment approaches, planning should occur on a global scale, involving all nations, both rich and poor, and not be limited to a few technologically advanced, wealthy stakeholders. We know we must limit the impacts of global warming, but we also know that warming will continue for decades or centuries even with radical reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. This situation generates an urgent need to invest in research and impact analysis of climate engineering approaches. Judging by the resilience of today’s human society to global environmental change, ignoring the potential of climate engineering solutions does not seem prudent nor realistic.
—Ben van der Pluijm, Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Michigan; email: [email protected]; and Guy Brasseur, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology; National Center for Atmospheric Research; email: guy[email protected]The Cleveland Indians have signed former Toronto Blue Jays first baseman David Cooper to a minor-league contract.
Cooper, 26, was the 17th pick in the 2008 draft out of the University of California-Berkeley. He batted.364 to win the Pacific Coast League batting title with Las Vegas in 2011 and was trying to claim the starting first-base job in Toronto last August when he suffered a career-threatening back injury against the Detroit Tigers.
Cooper got a new life in early April when Dr. Curtis Dickman, a Phoenix-based neurosurgeon, performed an innovative surgery to repair a herniated thoracic disc in his back. Cooper auditioned for multiple clubs in recent weeks before signing with Cleveland.
Once Cooper completes a rehab assignment, he could provide an additional left-handed bat for the Indians, who have been going with a combination of Nick Swisher and Carlos Santana at first base.
Cooper's deal includes an opt-out clause that allows him to sign with another club if he isn't added to Cleveland's big league roster in time to be eligible for the playoffs.It's been a long—but fabulous—week. If you missed 43 Things to do in Detroit before You're Dead yesterday, be sure to check it out.
Now, get out there and enjoy Detroit!
Weekend Roundup
1. Zoo Boo - Head to the Detroit Zoo for a "merry-not-scary" celebration complete with trick-or-treating, entertainment and a haunted reptile house. October 12—14, 19—21, & 26—28.
2. LEGO KidsFest - It's time to build! Hands-on, interactive and educational activities featuring our favorite building blocks. Miniature and life-size models built of legos, a building academy and more. October 12—14.
3. Tashmoo Biergarten - It's opening weekend at our favorite beer garden in the West Village. Enjoy craft beer and a great community. October 13—14.
4. East English Village home tour - Tour this upper Eastside neighborhood featuring a walk-through of 12 properties, decor showrooms and entertainment. October 14th.
5. Great Lakes Regional Chili Cookoff - Kellogg Park in downtown Plymouth hosts this fundraiser. Taste different varieties of chili, entertainment & a motorcycle show. October 14th.
Do you know of a great event going on in Metro Detroit this weekend? Add it to the comments and share it with us!Image caption The government is targeting 90% superfast broadband coverage by 2015
A £1.1bn funding gap means the government's targets for broadband are unlikely to be met, says a report by the London School of Economics.
The government wants 100% access to fast broadband services and 90% access to superfast services by 2015.
The report says the government should do more to ensure that underinvestment does not harm the UK economy.
A rise in broadband penetration of 10% can lead to a 0.9%-1.5% boost in GDP per capita, the report adds.
The cost of meeting the targets will be £2.4bn but funding for broadband from all public sources amounts to a total of £1.3bn, according to the LSE report, which was sponsored by customer management software company Convergys. That leaves an estimated £1.1bn gap that private investors will be expected to fill, it says.
"The government target of 100% coverage by basic broadband by 2015 is likely to be met, but it is less clear when the government targets of 90% coverage by superfast broadband, and 100% coverage by fast broadband, are likely to be met," the report says.
The LSE defines "basic" broadband as services offering speeds of up to 2Mbps. "Fast" broadband ranges from 2Mbps to 24Mbps, and "superfast" exceeds 24Mbps.
Paolo Dini, one of the report's authors, said the government should spend more on broadband given the economic benefits it could bring.
"In this year's budget the government allocated £200bn for transport infrastructure and £50m to broadband. That doesn't seem quite right."
But a spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport denied the targets were likely to be missed.
"We are confident of completing the roll-out by 2015. All local authorities except two met the government's timeline by submitting their initial broadband plans on time," he said.
"We have always been clear this investment will not meet the full cost but will help make it economically viable for telecoms companies to roll out broadband to areas that would otherwise be left behind."
Big spender
Oliver Johnson, chief executive of Point Topic, a broadband research company, said the report's figures matched his own estimates for broadband spending: "There is definitely a funding gap. It's unlikely that the targets will be met."
But he said that the UK was spending a significant amount on broadband compared with other European countries.
"The UK is in the top two or three in terms of central spend and commitment to achieve comprehensive coverage. We are actually not doing too badly, although the whole of the western hemisphere lags behind Asia in this regard."
The UK comes 17th in a global ranking of broadband penetration - the number of broadband lines per 100 population - according to Point Topic research. It says the UK's figure of 34.75% at the end of 2011 is behind neighbours including France, Belgium and The Netherlands, but just ahead of Germany, Canada and the US.
But the UK ranks 31st in terms of the penetration of fibre-based services, a technology used to provide "superfast" services.Sir Alex Ferguson visited the Thomas Lyte workshop where the trophy was made
The League Managers Association (LMA) have announced that their 50th Manager of the Year award will be marked by the presentation of the Sir Alex Ferguson Trophy to the winner.
Former Manchester United boss Ferguson is considered one of the greatest managers in the history of the game, having been in charge at Old Trafford for 27 trophy-laden years.
And Ferguson says he is delighted to have given his name to a trophy which the LMA say rewards "the manager who has made the greatest use of the resources available in the current campaign".
The winner can come from the Premier League, Championship, League One or Two, and it will be presented at the LMA Annual Awards Dinner in London on Monday.
The new trophy has been designed and crafted by a team of expert silversmiths at Thomas Lyte, renowned London-based designers of sporting trophies, and it features the names of all the previous winners.
Ferguson said: "I am very proud to have the LMA Manager of the Year trophy named after me. It is a fantastic honour.
"When you look at the list of managers that have won this trophy, going right back to 1968, it is very humbling and a reminder of the various winners' achievements.
Sir Alex Ferguson was joined at the Thomas Lyte workshop by fellow former Manager of the Year winners Howard Wilkinson and Alan Curbishley
"There's no doubt that the likes of Sir Matt Busby, Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley, Brian Clough, to highlight just a few, were absolute legends, and left a fantastic legacy of how their teams played.
"And the current holder, Claudio Ranieri - what he achieved with Leicester City last year was nothing short of miraculous. He was a very worthy winner, there's no doubt about that."
LMA Chairman Howard Wilkinson, himself a former Manager of the Year, said: "There is no greater accolade than to have your successful endeavours honoured by your peer group.
"The names inscribed on this magnificent trophy will invoke memories of landmark moments in the history of English football.
"It will make all future winners feel especially honoured to have their name added to the trophy, thereby recording their own personal contribution to the chronicles of the game.
"Sir Alex is without question the association's most acclaimed, respected and universally admired member.
"The LMA is thrilled that the trophy bears his name, which guarantees its importance in sport."U.S. President Donald Trump is giving himself a "10" for his administration's response to hurricane-damaged Puerto Rico.
Trump made the remarks Thursday during a meeting with Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello at the White House. The president said the federal government has done a "really great job."
He said he has given his blessing to Congress for a funding plan, but added that the governor "understands that these folks can't be there forever."
Rossello said Trump "has been clear that no U.S. citizen will be left behind."
The meeting comes after Trump received some criticism for his response to Puerto Rico after hurricanes Irma and Maria. Rossello has been supportive of Trump, while the mayor of San Juan has been outspoken in her criticism.
Many still without power, water
Maria caused as much as an estimated $85 billion US in damage across an island already mired in an 11-year recession.
That has complicated and delayed efforts to restructure a portion of a $74-billion public debt load that officials say is unpayable.
And it has thrust Puerto Rico's territorial status into the international spotlight, reviving a sharp debate about its political future as the island of 3.4 million people attempts to recover from flooding, landslides and power and water outages.
National Guard soldiers distribute water and food in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in September. (Carlos Giusti/Associated Press)
Roughly 80 per cent of power customers remain in the dark, and another 30 per cent are without water. Schools remain closed. Stoplights are not operating.
While nearly 90 per cent of supermarkets have reopened, many have bare rows of shelves empty of goods like water, bananas and canned tuna.
Nearly 5,000 people remain in shelters, with many using rainwater to shower.
Congress pledges billions in aid
Last week, the House of Representatives passed a $36.5 billion disaster aid package for places including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and now a group of Democratic lawmakers are pushing for tax relief, saying that people and businesses in both U.S. territories affected by Hurricane Maria receive unequal treatment compared with U.S. states.
The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency also has pledged more than $171 million to help restore power across the island, and it has distributed more than $5 million to municipalities in need, as well as $ 1 million to Puerto Rico's National Guard.For the last week I have been fasting in solidarity with the men on hunger strike in the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, forgoing all food and taking only liquids. I began day one thinking about a book I had recently read: former detainee Ahmed Errachidi's The General. Errachidi had worked as a chef in London for 18 years but was sold for a bounty to US forces after he travelled to Pakistan. He was finally released from the prison in 2007, but not before he had been held in isolation for three years and tortured relentlessly. The book describes his five and a half years in Guantánamo, being abused along with his fellow detainees.
Reading about his being delivered into the hands of sadists who inflicted punishment day after day and told him his case would never come to trial, you can begin to understand why the hunger strikers in Guantánamo feel they have no other recourse. I thought about what it would take to endure a real, long-term hunger strike with all the pain – physical and emotional – involved. How hard it must be when you have no idea how long your strike must last – an indefinite fast – just to secure some basic justice.
I embarked on this project because I hope it will make some small contribution to Reprieve's StandFast campaign to raise awareness of the Guantánamo hunger strikers, and make people realise the basic facts of what is going on there. More than half of those held have been cleared for release by the US government yet remain in prison due to a lack of will by that same government.
It is unfathomable that the US authorities refuse to release prisoners who have been cleared of any charges and who have countries that will admit them at once. Take Shaker Aamer, one of the prisoners on hunger strike. He is a British resident who has a British wife and four British children, the youngest of whom he has never met.
Aamer's family have waited day after day, year after year, hoping that he will one day return to |
of his deal with the team. There is a chance that he will be flipped for a draft pick if (or when) the Leafs are out of the playoff race by the time the 2016 trade deadline draws near.
Pierre-Alexandre Parenteau – Right Wing – 32 years old – $1,500,000 / 1 year
The Leafs next move was inking PAP to a one year deal worth $1.5 million. This deal is reminiscent of the Winnik/Santorelli signings of yesteryear (expect a similar fate for Parenteau at the 2016 trade deadline if all goes as planned). Parenteau ranked 12th among Habs forwards in 5v5 TOI last season due to a combination of injuries and a lack of trust from head coach Michel Therrien. Parenteau has managed to score 1.43 primary points/60 minutes at even strength since 2012 which ranks ahead of all current Maple Leafs forwards not named Joffrey or Nazem. Here are his closest comparables from 2012-13 to 2014-15 when considering possession and production…
It’s evident that the Leafs are going to be paying Parenteau a fraction of what he’s worth if he manages to stay healthy. With Kessel gone, PAP tops the Leafs depth chart at right wing and will definitely see his fair share of ice time next season.
Richard Panik – Left/Right Wing – 24 years old – $975,000 / 1 year
Amidst the UFA frenzy, Richard Panik was re-upped for another year at $975 K. Panik’s production has been lackluster thus far at the NHL level but he’s been solid defensively (CA60 TmRel of -4.61, last 3 years) and has shown flashes of skill.
Mark Arcobello – Center/Right Wing – 26 years old – $1,100,000 / 1 year
At around 4:45 pm the Maple Leafs front office made another move signing forward Mark Arcobello. The Leafs are now the FIFTH team to own Arcobello’s rights since the start of the 2014-15 NHL season. It’s surprising that Mark has bounced around so much considering his passable performance at the NHL level. His statistical cohorts over the last 3 years are depicted below…
Yet another smart, cost effective signing considering Arcobello’s comparables. The diminutive forward will likely play in a bottom six role with the Leafs in 2015-16, hoping to gain some stability moving forward.
Daniel Winnik – Left Wing – 30 years old – $5,000,000 / 2 years
Toronto capped off their day by bringing hometown forward Daniel Winnik back into the fold. The Leafs are obviously familiar with Winnik’s work ethic and his ability to dish the puck (His 0.83 first assists/60 from 2012-13 to 2014-15 ranks only behind Kadri among current Leaf). Winnik is another strong possession player who should help the team push play up ice. His closest comparable forwards are as follows…
There’s little doubt that Winnik makes any hockey team better. He’ll comfortably slot just about anywhere in the lineup and can handle a heavy workload when down a man (2nd in the NHL in 4v5 ice time last season). A cerebral workhorse who is definitely a welcomed addition at a modest cap hit of $2.25 million per year.
Conclusion
Regardless of what you think about the Kessel deal, there isn’t any doubt that the Toronto Maple Leafs landed a few talented free agents at more than fair price tags yesterday. They currently own 11 draft picks heading into the 2016 NHL draft and now have a surplus of productive, affordable talent that can be parlayed into a few additional picks between now and next June (if all goes as planned). There’s an overt trend developing in the type of players being brought into the organization and there’s no questioning the teams devotion to implementing data into the decision making process.
Shawn Matthias — Center/Wing — 27 years old, $2,300,000 / 1 year
Click here for analysis of the Shawn Matthias signing.Google CEO Larry Page is making good on his promise to put more wood behind fewer arrows as the company focuses more of its resources and efforts on its core products.
Google
Google today announced in a blog post that the company will discontinue its Google Labs efforts. Bill Coughran, Google's senior vice president for Research and Systems Infrastructure, said the company has learned a lot by launching very early prototypes in the Labs. But he added that the company's "greater focus is crucial if we're to make the most of the extraordinary opportunities ahead."
What this means for Google Labs right now is that some projects and experiments will end immediately. And some Labs products and tech will be folded into other Google product areas. Coughran also said many Google Labs products that are available as apps through the Android Market will continue to be offered there.
"We'll continue to push speed and innovation--the driving forces behind Google Labs--across all our products, as the early launch of the Google+ field trial last month showed," Coughran said in the blog post.
Last week, after the company's earnings were released, Google CEO Larry Page tried to reassure analysts and investors that the company is focusing on projects that will offer the biggest returns on investment.
"Overall, we are focused on long-term, absolute profit and growth, as we have always been," Page said. "It's easy to focus on things that we do that are speculative, e.g., driverless cars. But we spend the vast majority of our resources on the core products. We may have a few small speculative projects happening at any given time, but we are very careful stewards of shareholder money. We are not betting the farm on this stuff."
Google recently killed off a couple of other projects that were not gaining traction. Last month it pulled the plug on Google Health, a personal health records service, and turned off the lights on Google PowerMeter, a service for monitoring Web-based home energy use.
Correction 2:25 p.m. PT: The original version of this story incorrectly attributed the author of Google's blog post announcing the end of Google Labs. Bill Coughran, senior vice president for Research and Systems Infrastructure, wrote the blog post.WE drink water to quench our thirst, according to Lu Yu, author of the Chinese classic Chajing, wine to banish melancholy and tea to clear the mind.
This was written in AD780, during the Tang Dynasty; the Chinese were evolving the philosophy of cha dao, the way of tea, when those in the West were just finding their feet after surviving several terrible centuries since the fall of the Roman Empire.
Apart from the vicissitudes of history, this wise saying, included in the National Gallery of Victoria's exhibition Tea and Zen, reminds us how intimately beverages are associated with human culture and even with the quality of a people's thought.
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There was neither tea nor coffee in the ancient world or even in Renaissance Europe. Both appeared around the middle of the 17th century, and coffee in particular began to have profound effects both on social life, with the beginning of the coffee house, and more generally on culture and even literary style.
The nervous energy stimulated by coffee is palpable in the writing of Voltaire, who is said to have consumed 40 cups a day, and in the exuberance of Balzac's style; caffeine-inspired excitability undoubtedly contributed to the intellectual hysteria of the French Revolution.
But even in its Arabian homeland, coffee is only 500 or 600 years old. Tea, in contrast, has been prepared and drunk for thousands of years, and although it is also a stimulant, its effect is much gentler, promoting lucidity rather than excitement.
The cultures that are particularly attuned to the state of mind induced by tea -- apart from the special case of Britain -- are those of China and Japan, the dual focus of Tea and Zen, and the spiritual tradition with which tea is particularly associated is Buddhism in its Ch'an or (in Japanese) Zen form.
Buddhism is a complex system of beliefs, originating in the teaching of the historical Buddha about 2 1/2 millennia ago. It arose as a reform movement within Hinduism, as Christianity arose within Judaism: its object was to offer a way out of the nightmare of endless reincarnation and repeated cycles of suffering.
This world of pain, Buddha came to understand, was an illusion produced by desire and attachment; if one could abolish desire, one would abolish suffering -- to this extent his teaching recalls the Stoic doctrine of ataraxy -- or perhaps, taking the argument a step further, cancel the world itself.
The prospect of escaping from suffering had a wide appeal, as did the later Christian idea of an afterlife where the just would be recompensed for the evils they had endured in this existence. But the original teaching was too abstract, and Buddhism soon turned into something easier to understand, a religion, succumbing to a proliferation of deities and spirits, heavens and afterlifes.
At the same time, Buddhism adapted in various degrees to the previously existing cultures and beliefs it encountered in its diffusion. Thus the Japanese ended up with a compromise: they are traditionally married in the rites of Shinto, the ancient animistic religion associated with life and fertility, but buried in the Buddhist rite, which promises salvation.
In China, Buddhism was less successful. It encountered a civilisation already based on a complementary pair of belief systems, Confucianism and Taoism, neither of which was a conventional religion either.
Confucianism is essentially an ethical doctrine based on the teaching of Confucius. But it is balanced by the completely different and unrelated philosophy of Taoism, taught by Laozi. If Confucius teaches the laws of social life, Laozi speaks of our relation with the greater world of nature and the cosmos. Nature is a living presence, animated by the breath of life, the chi, and the self dissolves in its communion with being. This is the thought that underpins Chinese landscape painting, and such imaginary views of mountains and streams served partly to console the Confucian mandarin obliged by his duties to spend much time in the city.
Buddhism encountered resistance from the Confucians but formed its own synthesis with Taoism. In its origin, Buddhism was a quest for extinction; but Taoism was concerned with communion with something greater, a cosmic order outside the self.
The assimilation of a positive aim allowed Ch'an Buddhism to dispense with the religious paraphernalia, becoming less a religion and more a spiritual practice, and in this way arriving at something closer to the spirit of Buddha's original teaching.
Ch'an was called Zen in Japan, where it became a fundamental part of the culture. It was specifically adopted as part of the philosophy of the samurai, because it allowed one to live and act in the world while maintaining inner detachment.
The central idea of Zen is to maintain unswerving presence, not distracted by desire or fear. Hence the application of Zen to archery, well-known since the post-war book by Eugen Herrigel, but discussed earlier by the great Japanese scholar Daisetz Suzuki.
The archer is not to think of himself and what he is doing with the bow but only of the target. The arts of swordsmanship and tea are also discussed by Suzuki in Zen and Japanese Culture (1959).
But Zen itself is famously unteachable; there are countless stories of masters refusing to instruct students who ask for answers, and of monks tearing up scriptures. Paradoxes (koan) are used to reduce the rational mind to surrender. According to Zen doctrine, you cannot even seek enlightenment, since desire and yearning are incompatible with presence. It is simply there as soon as you stop striving.
The relevance of tea to all this is that it both promotes lucidity and calm and serves as a stimulant, so that it was originally used to help Zen monks stay awake during stretches of meditation that could go on for many hours. According to legend the monk Bodhidharma sat in meditation for nine years until his arms fell off (giving rise to the popular Japanese Daruma doll).
The NGV exhibition is elegantly laid out with a small contemporary Japanese tea-house in the centre and the two sides of the square room divided between Chinese artefacts on the left and Japanese on the right. It is accompanied by a concise but scholarly brochure that allows the viewer to understand an experience of tea that has relatively little in common with that of a hurried cup made by jiggling a tea bag in mechanically boiled, chemical-filled water.
Great attention was paid to the growing and picking of tea -- often cultivated around the Zen monasteries -- and then to its preparation. The leaves were originally made into tea cakes, some of which was broken off and dissolved in the boiling water, and then mixed with a whisk like the one still used in the Japanese tea ceremony.
The water had to be pure, preferably from a pristine mountain stream. It had to be boiled to the correct degree. And then it had to be served in beautiful cups, in order to appreciate its colour and its perfume.
Most or all of these principles are common to China and Japan, but the exhibition is also an opportunity to consider some of the profound differences between these two cultures, manifest in the materials they produce for the making, serving and enjoyment of tea.
The Chinese side of the exhibition includes landscape scrolls as well as beautiful blue and white wares and bowls in the celadon hue that was admired because it recalled jade. The first impression is one of great refinement, but also a certain characteristic informality.
Several scrolls evoke the environment in which the Chinese liked to drink tea, or to imagine drinking it: high in the mountains, on the terrace of a scholar's retreat, overlooking forests and streams, so that the pleasure of tea is visibly assimilated to that of communing with nature.
The many writings cited remind one of another aspect of Chinese classical culture, namely its love of reflecting on aesthetic experience, of writing lists of rules for enjoying things such as tea or wine or mountain views, or cataloguing various other refined pleasures.
Although there are shared elements, the Japanese aesthetic is very different. What is expressed in literary terms in China seems to be turned into elaborate ceremony in Japan, a conversion that is in keeping with the more formal and introverted character of Japanese culture, but also with the idea that Zen is all about practice and can be conveyed better through participation in a ritual than in theoretical or even literary discourse.
Because of the particular conditions of Japanese history -- and specifically the rise, in the late medieval period, of a powerful and wealthy new feudal class of people eager to make a show of their cultural sophistication -- the Japanese love of refinement expresses itself in two different and in a sense diametrically opposed ways.
On the one hand there is an extreme luxury of materials and workmanship in some cups, tea-caddies and other equipment made of metal or lacquer with inlays of precious materials; and on the other hand this very extravagance provoked a predictable return to radical simplicity and the characteristic Japanese wabi aesthetic.
Instead of fine porcelain, humbler stoneware was preferred for teacups; the darker earth hues set off the green tea better, and instead of the minute exactness of pattern, a preference arose for the random effects of glazing that formed asymmetrical and patchy compositions of colour and texture.
Perhaps it is only in Japan that a change in something as apparently rarefied as the tea ceremony could become a tool of political power, but as the catalogue explains, in the 16th century the effective ruler Hideyoshi adopted the reformed ceremony as symbolic of his new social order.
A simplified ceremony, however, does not mean a less formal one. The materials may be humble, but each of the actions involved in the preparation and serving of tea is slow and considered. This is something that has to be seen to be appreciated, and the exhibition is accompanied by the video of a tea master performing the cha-no-yu.
It is an absorbing spectacle, like watching any highly refined activity carried out with skill and expertise. The gestures are minimal and yet stylised, almost choreographed, but never gratuitous. They are set as a pathway through the sequence of necessary practical operations, to allow the mind to remain, in the spirit of Zen, undisturbed and present.Bayern Munich Bayern Munich Borussia Dortmund Borussia Dortmund (0) 1 (2) 1 FT Borussia Dortmund wins 2-0 on Penalty Kicks. Game Details GameCast
Lineups and Stats
Borussia Dortmund ended Bayern Munich's dreams of a treble by beating Pep Guardiola's men in the semifinal of the DFB-Pokal in a dramatic penalty shootout.
Robert Lewandowski put Bayern in front and they appeared to be cruising until Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang levelled in the 75th minute.
Arjen Robben came and went with an injury ending his brief involvement in the game, while Dortmund ended the game with 10 men after Kevin Kampl was sent off in extra-time.
The real drama was to unfold in the penalty shootout, though, with Philipp Lahm and Xabi Alonso both slipping and Mario Gotze's penalty saved before Manuel Neuer sent his spot-kick against the crossbar. Dortmund netted two of their three penalties to go through.
Dortmund wasted the first big chance of the game when Shinji Kagawa's attempted pass to put Marco Reus through on goal was intercepted, and within seconds the ball was being played through to Lewandowski.
His first shot came back off the post, but the danger did not end there as the Polish forward stroked the ball into an unguarded goal from a tight angle to put Bayern in front.
The hosts were in full control of the game, holding possession and teasing Dortmund at times.
Lewandowski nearly had a second early in the second half when he was put through by Juan Bernat's neat reverse pass, but the Pole struck the crossbar.
Borussia Dortmund escaped Bayern and advanced to the DFB Pokal final.
The ball this time fell back out for Thomas Muller, who tried to nudge it past Marcel Schmelzer, but the Dortmund defender made a block with his arm and was lucky not to see a penalty awarded.
Mitchell Langerak then made an excellent stop from Thiago Alcantara before the second big cheer of the night welcomed Robben back into action for the first time since early March.
Bayern were still in complete control, until Dortmund levelled out of nowhere.
In truth, they had thrown their tactics book out of the window from the moment Henrikh Mkhitaryan took the place of Kagawa, and it was from his cross that Aubameyang turned the ball in with Neuer's clearance coming after the ball had already crossed his line.
Dortmund were suddenly not only back in the game, but on top of it too with Neuer forced into making fine saves, first from Mkhitaryan and then from Reus.
A worrying sight was to follow for Bayern when Robben limped off the field again, just 15 minutes after coming on, and in the end it was they more than Dortmund who were relieved to hear the full-time whistle.
Tiredness was evident on both sides in the extra 30 minutes and, apart from two Bastian Schweinsteiger headers, neither came close to deciding matters within 120 minutes, while Dortmund lost Kampl early in the second period to a second yellow card.
Lahm and Alonso both slipped as they sent their penalties off target and Mario Gotze saw his penalty saved by Langerak before Neuer sent Bayern's fourth penalty against the crossbar, and Dortmund went through with Ilkay Gundogan and Sebastian Kehl on target.An Italian judge has convicted Deutsche Bank of fraud, as the bank struggles to save its reputation amid widening probes over tax evasion and rate-fixing after the departure of its former CEO Josef Ackermann.
Deutsche Bank was convicted together with US giant JP Morgan Chase, Switzerland's UBS and a German-Irish bank, Depfa, for their role in overseeing fraud by their bankers in the sale of interest rate bets to the city of Milan. About €90 million are to be seized from the four banks, who will also have to pay €1 million each in fines.
The case is only the first in a series of similar complaints: around 600 Italian municipalities had bought such derivatives and lost about €4 billion during the financial crisis, according to the Italian central bank.
In parallel, Deutsche Bank is part of a worldwide investigation for altering the British benchmark interest rate (Libor) and its euro-counterpart (Euribor). Once the European Central Bank takes over the supervision of eurozone's largest banks, Deutsche Bank will fall under the new scrutiny.
The Milan sentence, which can still be appealed, also comes after Deutsche Bank had its Frankfurt headquarters raided last week in a probe for alleged tax evasion on profits cashed in from trading with carbon permits.
Germany's largest commercial bank, once renowned for its solid and risk-averse business, has been transformed over the last decade into an aggressive investor and speculator with risky bets known as derivatives, largely due to the leadership of Swiss top banker Josef Ackermann, who stepped down earlier this year.
The US Senate named the German bank alongside Goldman Sachs as the two institutions that played a “key role” in the financial crisis.
But unlike Denmark's Danske Bank whose management apologised for its role in the financial crisis, Ackermann still got praise for it.
At his opulent farewell party, Ackermann received video-testimonials including from EU commissioner Olli Rehn, who praised him for "restoring confidence in the financial sector."
Ackermann's successor, Juergen Fitschen, who vowed to change the company's culture, has meanwhile also come under fire in Germany for having phoned up the regional governor to complain about the police raids which are denting his bank's reputation.A Promising Band Has The Worst Album Release Day Ever
Hoodie Allen Blocked Unblock Follow Following May 13, 2017
As an independent musician and life-time music fan, I have begun to mark my Google calendar weeks in advance to remind myself to check out the newest album releases every Friday. It feels like lately there has been more highly buzzed about albums flooding Spotify than I can even keep up with. This past Friday (May 12th) was an especially crowded field for my calendar, which included the debut release from Harry Styles, the re-emergence of Paramore and the latest from the under appreciated Machine Gun Kelly. Despite these marquee titles, the album that I was most looking forward to hearing was from the Brooklyn punk/indie rock duo PWR BTTM.
PWR BTTM is a band that came on my radar pretty recently after I saw the lyric video for their song “Answer My Text” on Youtube and subsequently their NPR Tiny Desk Concert. I found them to be really creative, funny and unapologetically self-aware both in their lyrics and performance in the above. In researching more, it seemed that they were poised to have a break out with this release. The band’s wiki categorizes them as “queer punk” which I mention here just to say that the support for them amongst the LGBTQ community seemed fervent and sizable*. It felt like people wanted them to win and that their new album Pageant could be that breakout.
Then May 11 came. Allegations of abuse emerged online against PWR BTTM lead singer Ben Hopkins. It’s been well written about by publications across the web such as Spin (below), Jezebel, Brooklyn Vegan and many more.
Watching this unfold as a fan of the band was quite terrifying and disappointing. The band released a statement on the allegations which you can read here if you feel so inclined. The fallout from these allegations has been incredibly swift and comprehensive. I really didn’t want to spend that much time speaking on the allegations itself because 1. I think its important to believe victims when they come forward and 2. the actions and statements of the team and touring crew around them in the last 48 hours will probably say more than I ever could.
So since the allegations of abuse surfaced:
Every opening act on the PWR BTTM tour has dropped off The band’s management has dropped them as a client The band’s label has released them and offered refunds to fans who pre-ordered Their record release show was cancelled, as well as 2 upcoming festival appearances Members of the touring band (not in the duo) have quit. The band’s album currently sits at #102 on the album chart just a day after release (note: my own projections sans-allegations would have been for them to have a Top 20 release with Pageant)
Total Implosion. Everybody around the band has distanced themselves with remarkable speed. The band hasn’t tweeted or promoted the album, instead their last use of social media seems to be the official statement in response to the allegations.
I have to admit I was really surprised to see all of this happen so quickly. I don’t know whether that should be a huge applause to the individuals in this situation or a huge red flag to what I’ve seen online in the past but there is certainly a difference in the professional response in the PWR BTTM situation as compared to a few notable instances I can think of like Front Porch Step and Kodak Black. And that’s what I’d like to talk about.
Front Porch Step is a solo acoustic project from Ohio emo artist Jake McElfresh. In 2015, he was accused by several young people of sexual harassment through mobile phones, including sending nude pictures of himself to underaged girls. There was a preponderance of evidence online to support these claims and the disgust from fans in the Warped Tour scene, where McElfresh had primarily made his name, was sweeping. We often look to artists as idols, embracing their music as a part of our identity, and here we have a clear abuse of that power where an artist took that admiration and turned it into an opportunity to engage sexually with underaged fans. As a musician with a lot of friends in the Warped scene, I remember following the news closely and feeling like there was no way that this person should be allowed to continue touring and being in situations where any of these abuses could continue. His label Pure Noise Records removed him from their website but his management (to my knowledge) continued on. It wasn’t until nearly 3 months later that McElFresh made an official statement on the allegations, telling “his side of the story”. If Facebook comments are any indication, this statement was met with a mix of disgust from now former fans and supportive messages from remaining fans defending his actions. On July 1, McElFresh played one show at Warped Tour in Nashville, TN as according to the organizer’s involved: “if he was a legitimate danger to anyone, he simply wouldn’t be here”. Fast forwarding to present day, Front Porch Step released his latest album this year and a cursory look at his social media shows positive fan comments from “those who stuck with him”. He is getting thousands of likes and hundreds of shares, and there is very little mention of the abuse.
Let’s unpack this for a second and contrast it to PWR BTTM. Front Porch Step basically disappeared from social media when his allegations emerged. His team did not crumble around him. He found support in pockets of his music community both professionally and with fans. He failed to make any sort of substantive statement for months and upon doing so, claimed to have “learned a terrible lesson” (however his statement doesn’t really equate to that of one taking true responsibility for their actions, more so to that of one who would like to do damage control and continue their career)
More closely in hip hop recently, we have seen the emergence of two bright stars in Kodak Black and Xxxtentacion, who have both been accused of assault / sexual assault coinciding with having their biggest break out records to date. DJ Booth, a favorite blog of mine, speaks to the rap’s embrace of these artists despite their allegations more in depth below.
So what are we to make of this all? I think there must be a large correlation between the swift deconstruction of PWR BTTM and the self-policing nature of the LGBTQ community. By that I mean (from my outsider’s view), the community is very tight knit, organized and has done an impressive job of holding it’s members accountable for its actions. Especially those of influence (see: Milo Y)
Is this something unique to the LGBTQ community? Why is PWR BTTM done and Front Porch Step busy promoting his latest release? There is a very clear disconnect and it’s troublesome. Painting an even broader stroke outside of music, there are plenty of examples of those in Film and TV who continue to be rewarded despite having similar and serious allegations levied upon them. Although I probably should spend 2000 more words on it if I’m going to name drop him into this article, Casey Affleck enjoyed one of his most critically successful years at the same time as he publicly faced allegations of workplace harassment. He continues to be repped by a major talent agency.
I don’t mean to make any false equivalencies here. Every situation is unique to itself and lumping them all together is a disservice to the individual victims in these matters. However, I can’t ignore some of the commonalities: high profile, in the public artists, who are then treated differently by their communities following allegations of abuse. It makes me wonder if the values inherent inside these communities are different or if there’s something else at play. Throughout history, there are many times where fans and the general public by large has been able to separate an artist personally from the art they create. We have enjoyed the music and supported the commerce of many people whose actions by today’s standard would be reprehensible. In examining PWR BTTM and the whirlwind 48 hours that have transpired since the release of their album, it seems apparent that the LGBTQ community has exhibited a strong display of morals and values that many of us outside that community should look to as brave and responsible: holding one of their brightest star’s fully accountable for their actions, sending a clear message of what is right and wrong. Young kids need to know that there are consequences to one’s actions and that often comes from the top down. If we tolerate the illegal actions of our peers, what message does that send to the next generation?
Note: This is my first time using Medium. Would love to continue writing here and looking forward to interacting with those of you who took the time to read this. Thank you for taking the time and I’m eager to learn if there’s anything about these stories that I’m missing or anything that can be contributed to the overall discourse, albeit a heavy one for my first writing here.
* made a slight edit here. previously i had mentioned not feeling comfortable to use the term ‘queer punk’ as a straight white male. after a discussion with an individual online they educated me that since this is the band’s self identifying term that is okay to use, and it is more divisive of me to create a distinction about my unfamiliarity on usage. thank you :)Chernobyl disaster The nuclear reactor after the disaster. Reactor 4 (center). Turbine building (lower left). Reactor 3 (center right). Date 26 April 1986 ; 32 years ago ( ) Time 01:23 (Moscow Time, UTC+3) Location Pripyat, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union Cause Inadvertent explosion of core during emergency shutdown of reactor whilst undergoing power failure test Death(s) 31 (direct)
15 (estimated indirect deaths up to 2011)[1]
The Chernobyl disaster, also referred to as the Chernobyl accident, was a catastrophic nuclear accident. It occurred on 25–26 April 1986 in the No. 4 light water graphite moderated reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near the now-abandoned town of Pripyat, in northern Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union, approximately 104 km (65 mi) north of Kiev.[2]
The event occurred during a late-night safety test which simulated a station blackout power-failure, in the course of which safety systems were intentionally turned off. A combination of inherent reactor design flaws and the reactor operators arranging the core in a manner contrary to the checklist for the test, eventually resulted in uncontrolled reaction conditions. Water flashed into steam generating a destructive steam explosion and a subsequent open-air graphite fire.[note 1] This fire produced considerable updrafts for about nine days. These lofted plumes of fission products into the atmosphere. The estimated radioactive inventory that was released during this very hot fire phase approximately equaled in magnitude the airborne fission products released in the initial destructive explosion.[5] This radioactive material precipitated onto parts of the western USSR and other European countries.
During the accident, steam-blast effects caused two deaths within the facility: one immediately after the explosion, and the other compounded by a lethal dose of radiation. Over the coming days and weeks, 134 servicemen were hospitalized with acute radiation sickness (ARS), of which 28 firemen and employees died in the days-to-months afterward.[6] Additionally, approximately fourteen radiation induced cancer deaths among this group of 134 hospitalized survivors were to follow within the next ten years (1996).[7] Among the wider population, an excess of 15 childhood thyroid cancer deaths were documented as of 2011.[1][8] It will take further time and investigation to definitively determine the elevated relative risk of cancer among the surviving employees, those that were initially hospitalized with ARS, and the population at large.[9]
The Chernobyl accident is considered the most disastrous nuclear power plant accident in history, both in terms of cost and casualties. It is one of only two nuclear energy accidents classified as a level 7 event (the maximum classification) on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the other being the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011.[10] The struggle to safeguard against scenarios which were perceived[5] as having the potential for greater catastrophe, together with later decontamination efforts of the surroundings, ultimately involved over 500,000 workers and cost an estimated 18 billion rubles.[11]
The remains of the No. 4 reactor building were enclosed in a large cover which was named the "Object Shelter", often known as "The Sarcophagus". The purpose of the structure was to reduce the spread of the remaining radioactive dust and debris from the wreckage and the protection of the wreckage from further weathering. The sarcophagus was finished in December 1986 at a time when what was left of the reactor was entering the cold shut-down phase. The enclosure was not intended as a radiation shield, but was built quickly as occupational safety for the crews of the other undamaged reactors at the power station, with No. 3 continuing to produce electricity up into 2000.[12][13]
The accident motivated safety upgrades on all remaining Soviet-designed reactors in the RBMK (Chernobyl No. 4) family, of which eleven continued to power electric grids as of 2013.[14][15]
Overview
Location of Chernobyl nuclear power plant
The abandoned city of Pripyat with the Chernobyl facility visible in the distance
The disaster began during a systems test on 26 April 1986 at reactor 4 of the Chernobyl plant near Pripyat and in proximity to the administrative border with Belarus and the Dnieper River. There was a sudden and unexpected power surge. When operators attempted an emergency shutdown, a much larger spike in power output occurred. This second spike led to a reactor vessel rupture and a series of steam explosions. These events exposed the graphite moderator of the reactor to air, causing it to ignite.[16][discuss] For the next week, the resulting fire sent long plumes of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere over an extensive geographical area, including Pripyat. The plumes drifted over large parts of the western Soviet Union and Europe. According to official post-Soviet data,[17][18] about 60% of the fallout landed in Belarus.
Thirty-six hours after the accident, Soviet officials enacted a 10-kilometre exclusion zone, which resulted in the rapid evacuation of 49,000 people primarily from Pripyat, the nearest large population centre.[19] Although not communicated at the time, an immediate evacuation of the town following the accident was not advisable as the road leading out of the town had heavy nuclear fallout hotspots deposited on it. Initially, the town itself was comparatively safe due to the favourable wind direction. Until the winds began to change direction, shelter in place was considered the best safety measure for the town.[19]
During the accident the wind changed direction; the fact that the different plumes from the reactor had different ratios of radioisotopes in them indicates that the relative release rates of different elements from the accident site was changing.[20]
As plumes and subsequent fallout continued to be generated, the evacuation zone was increased from 10 to 30 km about one week after the accident. A further 68,000 persons were evacuated, including from the town of Chernobyl itself.[19] The surveying and detection of isolated fallout hotspots outside this zone over the following year eventually resulted in 135,000 long-term evacuees in total agreeing to be moved.[19] The near tripling in the total number of permanently resettled persons between 1986 and 2000 from the most severely contaminated areas to approximately 350,000 [21][22] is regarded as largely political in nature, with the majority of the rest evacuated in an effort to redeem loss in trust in the government.[23] Many thousands of these evacuees would have been "better off staying home."[24] Risk analysis in 2007, supported by DNA biomarkers, has determined that the "people still living unofficially in the abandoned lands around Chernobyl" have a lower risk of dying as a result of the elevated doses of radiation in the rural areas than "if they were exposed to the air pollution health risk in a large city such as nearby Kiev."[25][20]
In 2017 Philip Thomas, Professor of Risk Management at the University of Bristol, used the years of potential life lost metric to conclude that "Relocation was unjustified for 75% of the 335,000 people relocated after Chernobyl", finding that just 900 people among the 220,000 relocated during the second evacuation would have lost 3 months of life expectancy by staying home and that "none should have been asked to leave". For comparison, Thomas found that the average resident of London, a city of ~8 million, loses 4.5 months of life due to air pollution.[26][27]
Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus have been burdened with the continuing and substantial decontamination and monthly compensation costs [23][24][28] of the Chernobyl accident. Although certain initiatives are legitimate, as Kalman Mizsei, the director of the UN Development Program, noted, "an industry has been built on this unfortunate event," with a "vast interest in creating a false picture."[24][29]
The number of nuclear power plant constructions started each year worldwide, from 1954 to 2013.
The accident raised the already |
sixth grade, Gee had started a band and sewed the girlish outfits she craved, under the guise of providing “costumes.”
By the time Gee lost both parents in a car accident at 25, “we'd still never said anything about it.”
By the mid-1970s, Gee had given up touring and settled in Sarasota, establishing herself as “that outrageous guitarist.” A second marriage — to Donna, Gee's wife of 24 years — and a second son, sometimes known as G Minor, followed, along with a series of gigs and music store positions.
She often wore makeup, skinny jeans, high-heeled boots with lacing — but no skirts or dresses. At least not in public.
One day Gee got a call from a middle school, offering a substitute position as band director for a few days.
“To their credit, they got over their shock pretty quickly,” Gee remembers. “I walked into the band room and there are 60 kids looking at me like, 'What are you?' ”
Gee told them she was a boy, but that they should call her “Miss-ter” Gee. Then she threw out their scores for “Hot Cross Buns,” introduced them to Count Basie, taught them to improvise and encouraged them to be true to themselves.
They couldn't get enough.
But later, when a transgender student asked why, if they were supposed to be true to themselves, Gee wasn't doing the same, the teacher didn't have an answer.
It was time.
Day by day
Gee called a family meeting with her wife and sons — the very people who had given her a pink Daisy guitar and matching rosy outfit of skinny jeans, Betty Boop top and pink Converse shoes for her 53rd birthday.
They said to go for it.
Gee started going to a support group, taking hormones, getting prepared. One day when she was feeling brave, she went out in a skirt, baring clean-shaven, “never-seen-the-sun” legs for the first time.
As great as her relief at letting go of a colossal lie was her grief that it was so hard on her family. She was called monster, pervert, pedophile. People asked Donna if she was crazy. Someone stuck a sign on her front lawn: “Tranny lives here.”
“I've wanted to commit suicide many times,” Gee says. “The darkest time is having people hate you for really no reason at all.”
But every day now, there is a little less pain, a little more joy.
Fellow musicians call out the haters, labeling them jealous wannabees. A co-worker asks her to be a bridesmaid in her wedding party.
Her employers at the Guitar Center, where she is head guitar instructor, value her talent and give free rein to her fashion choices.
Worth the wait
And then there are the moms who come to her for advice about their own sons/daughters. Gee tells them: “Her name isn't Gene, honey, it's Gina,” and hands them a card for a gender identity specialist.
To the child she simply says, “Consider me your big sister.”
She has neither the impetus nor the money to go through gender reassignment surgery, though a nose job and other work would be welcome, if only to reach her full feminine potential.
“It's not about the sex,” Gee says. “That has nothing to do with it. I just like being a girl.”
There is so much still to look forward to in this first true life. Her life.
“I've been waiting 45 years for this. I'm a 60-year-old man who looks like a 40-year-old woman, and I'm proud of it,” she says.
Gee stands atop four-inch stiletto ankle boots and tugs demurely at the hem of her royal blue miniskirt before setting off down the sidewalk. The trail of wonder she leaves in her wake is now a compliment, not a concern.
“I have always been a girl,” she says. “I just came out with the wrong genitalia.”And other answers to questions you didn’t ask.
“What’s up with those fidget spinner things?” — Curious Carl
Have you seen those? They have ball bearings and three little wings and you spin it and it spins and spins like crazy. You can rest it on your thumb and just kind of watch it spin. Some light up with little bulbs. It’s the latest fad with all the kids, allegedly. There is very little in the world left to hold on to. Back into the old days, when things were getting rough, me and your mother used to go outside and split a cigarette. Before that, you could smoke butts literally anywhere. Elevators. Movie theaters. The space shuttle. Before that I think people just openly did coke and opium all the time, just to make it through the day. And what problems did those people even have? Worldwide Flu Epidemic? Sounds dreamy. Try having a crazy tweeting president! You’d beg for a lethal dose of influenza.
So, when things get rough and all seems bleak, keep your fingers busy. Busy fingers are happy fingers. They think maybe the crime rate has gone down, especially among young people, because of the proliferation of cell phones. Not merely just because of the heightened level of reporting crimes. I would argue it’s because people are too busy screwing around with their phones to commit crimes. Who has time to commit crimes when there’s all these photos to like on Instagram and all these tweets to troll on Twitter?
Hands too small for a full-size fidget spinner? Make your own out of paper.
This week will be a long build up to Former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony in front of Congress Thursday. Or, if you prefer, the release of Katy Perry’s new album Witness. Both have the chance to determine what kind of nation we’re going to be going forward. As Katy Perry gets less infectiously poppy and more vengeful and atonal, it’s a fair bellwether into our national psyche. “Swish Swish” was not as grim a misstep as “Chained the the Rhythm.” “Bon Appetit” seems to side with French Globalism over America Firstness. But what happened to the Happy Go-Lucky Songstress of “Roar?” Is this what it sounds like when she roars, gutturally, from the her deepest recesses? Like some lost track off the Beetlejuice Soundtrack? When will Katy cheer up and make us dance again? Unfettered by the worries of this world?
James Comey’s testimony is much better in the abstract than it will be in real life. This isn’t the end of A Few Good Men. No one puts all their cards on the table to some lame Congressional committee. You give them a taste, and then you make them buy the whole thing when your memoir comes out the year after. That James Comey was keeping contemporaneous notes all along is a good thing. But if he’s upset about being called a ‘nut job’ by the guy he basically made president we will probably never know. Either the Trump Administration will block his testimony or he will fink out. Nothing good will come out of the year 2017. Except for Wonder Woman, which is a masterpiece.
So we may need to keep our hands busy for the foreseeable future. These little plastic things take a little of the edge off. If we all spin them at the very same time, possibly we can send all the pollution right up out of our atmosphere, just spin it right on up out. There is some thought that the spinners can focus us for the difficult tasks ahead. People say that we can’t be distracted. We must constantly be vigilant. The real Donald Trump of the 1990s is stuck in the Black Lodge and this new doppelgänger is determined to puke its toxins in every direction. That’s a new “Twin Peaks” reference. Should you be watching “Twin Peaks?” All distractions are incredibly important now. Anything that distracts us from our descent into madness is a blessing. You will remember not the moments of high stress and angst, but the moments you found comfort in small, stupid things.
Jim Behrle lives in Jersey City, NJ and works at a bookstore.It's not a case of 'oh, it's an honest mistake, we forgive you'. It's a case of 'we've sustained over a billion military casualties, fully reducing the enemy is projected to more than triple that, and we don't want to fight that war if we don't have to'. They've had revenge to an extent (not enough to truly satisfy anybody, but they have been blasting planets to ash), but more than anything else, they're tired of the whole bloody mess, and if they could they would drop it and walk away. That, essentially, is what the 'peace settlement' is. It's not forgiveness, it's exhaustion.
As for prisoners, many wouldn't, but many would. There's a nasty little quirk of human psychology that makes people sympathise with their captors, even if those captors do horrible things to them. In this context, where their captors do, in fact, deserve pity, that's only going to be amplified, so there will be some prisoners who 'collaborate with the enemy'. It doesn't have to be many of them, hell, it doesn't have to be more than one, it just needs to be somebody who can explain how a radio works. Bear in mind, for example, that there were and are pro-Nazi Jews.
Why do you assume that Deat Star-alikes would have to be the same size as the Death Star? They could easily be the same size as any other ship; their power comes from magic, remember? The physical components are just there to provide an anchor point for the spells, and how powerful the spells are depends entirely on who casts them. Besides which, of course, I said originally that the power level you take them to is up to the author, they just need to be significantly more powerful than human ships. The idea behind that is that it plays up the individualist, personal to the mage nature of magic, it jives with the traditional 'powerful wizards make absurdly powerful artefacts relative to everything else in the setting' thing, it differentiates between mass production and magic cottage industry, and it means that there's actually some challenge involved for humanity, rather than an effortless walkover.
I understand that some people like effortless walkovers, but IMO, unless you're writing a oneshot, those make for bad stories. Given that, you want there to be some tension, some possibility that humanity might lose, and for there to be a challenge to overcome. Having the enemy have better ships (as well as worse ships, remember) but far fewer of them compared to the mass produced swarm of human mid-range ships is a way of doing that.
Click to expand...A cardboard record was a type of cheaply made phonograph record made of plastic-coated thin paperboard. These discs were usually small, had poor audio quality compared to vinyl or acetate discs, and were often only marginally playable due to their light weight, slick surface, and tendency to warp like a taco shell. Playability could be improved by placing a coin between the lock groove and the spindle hole to add weight and stability. These records are distinct from both flexi discs, which are sturdier, and from many of the old home-recording discs since cardboard discs were mass-produced for a specific purpose.[1]
Cardboard records were often used as freebies in promotional campaigns, and as such were assumed to be played once or twice and then thrown away. Two examples, both from the late 1980s, were Life Cereal's "Rock Music Mystery" and McDonald's' "Menu Song" contest, both of which were designed around audio "clues". Because of their disposable, limited-run nature, as well as their association with long-gone advertising campaigns, cardboard records can be quite collectible.
Cardboard records are also associated with pornographic recordings included with magazines of similar subject matter.
Certain songs credited to the fictional 1960s–1970s band The Archies were released as cardboard records printed directly on boxes of breakfast cereal. Other groups, such as The Monkees and the Jackson 5 also had records released on the backs of cereal boxes during this time. These records, if found in pristine condition, have significant value among collectors as well.
In the past, Mad Magazine inserted cardboard records of songs from its series of merchandised novelty albums in certain of their Mad Super Special reprint magazines. One of these, for example – the mid-60s release "It's a Gas!" – featured a rhythmic belching sound (allegedly provided by the magazine's fictional mascot, Alfred E. Neuman) with a honking saxophone break played by an uncredited King Curtis.
References [ edit ]
^ WFMU 91.1 Jersey City " http://www.wfmu.org/MACrec/ " April 2010Users of torrent site Pirate Bay are reporting that popular internet browsers Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Safari are blocking the site. A malware warning seems to be appearing when users try to access the site similar to the one that appeared for Kickass Torrents last month as well as in October 2015.
While Google Chrome seems to be giving a deceptive warning for the site due to the new Google Safe Browsing policy, Firefox users are being told: "This web page at thepiratebay.se has been reported as a web forgery and has been blocked based on your security preferences." Some Safari users are also reporting the same phenomenon.
Generally, a warning like this would appear when an ad network is compromised and malicious ads start popping up. A diagnostic report (at the the time of reporting) on the problem reads: "Thepiratebay.se contains deceptive content. Don't panic. Users sometimes post bad content on websites that are normally safe. Safe Browsing will update the safety status once the web-master has cleaned up the bad content."
Google started the Safe Browsing service a couple of months ago restricting multiple ad sites to protect users from visiting malicious websites that contain malware. Generally, malvertising attempts use dubious JavaScript redirection tricks to scam users into clicking on pop-up links or ads that seem harmless but may lead to malicious sites.
Torrent sites are a major ground for malware injectors and it may be possible that the number of malicious ads may have been too high leading to such a problem. The Pirate Bay has yet not clarified its stand on the subject or given any reason for the problem.
Update: An update seems to have been made by Pirate Bay to fix the issues as now it seems the site has been cleared safe by Google. The Google transparency page however, shows that there were some safety issues as we have already reported.Despite all the humans, English language, and proper British accents, it's important to remember that the Star Wars universe isn't our own. Things are different there - they have landspeeders, they order around protocol droids, and their language - although sounding similar - has words that we think we know, but really have no clue. These are 7 terms from Star Wars that don't mean what you think they mean.
7. "Sith" is a species.
The Sith are the bad-guy Force people. Everyone knows that! They're the anti-Jedi, lightning shooting, Darth-named weirdos who refuse to use anything other than red in their lightsabers. Except...well, they didn't start off as "the group of Dark Side Force-guys." They started off as a species unto themselves.
Basically, they were red-skinned humanoids with gross face-tentacles from the planet Korriban. They had a predisposition towards the Dark Side of the Force, but that wasn't what defined them. That happened once a group of human Dark Jedi happened upon the species and interbred with them for a couple thousand years. Eventually, the Sith species was pretty much bred out of existence, and Sith became synonymous with the evil, cloak-wearing dudes we know them as today.
Although, it probably would've been smart to try using any lightsaber color other than red if they wanted to not give away their allegiances immediately.
6. "Blue Milk" is bantha milk.
Remember that gross blue milk Luke drinks on Tatooine? Well it gets even grosser - that milk is actually bantha milk, a.k.a. those huge, hairy, horned buffaloes the sand people are always riding on. Yes, someone actually squeezes udders (presumably under the bantha) and some disgusting blue milk shoots out and into a bucket. Since it seems SUBSTANTIALLY more dangerous to milk an elephant-sized bantha than your average cow, one would imagine blue milk would be more of an expensive or rare commodity than Luke treats it. Then again, we don't know if pasteurization exists in the Star Wars universe, so maybe Luke just knew that blue milk swimming with bacteria wasn't worth getting stomped on.
5. "Death Stick" is a hallucinogen
If you'll recall, "Death Sticks" were introduced in Attack of the Clones, when a Death Stick-guy offered a Death Stick to Obi-Wan - who, for whatever reason, declined the Death Stick. Reminder: in this universe, there is a product that people consciously use that is called "DEATH STICK." Regardless, you would probably assume they were preachy Star Wars stand-ins for cigarettes, since - ya know - "death stick" is literally a slang term for cigarettes. But you'd be wrong.
Death sticks are actually hallucinogens. And not just any hallucinogens! These hallucinogens actually reduce your lifespan every time you use one - shortening your life more and more with each successive stick of death. Even more weirdly, the death sticks natural state was a liquid that could be added to alcohol or injected straight into your veins. And even double-weirdly, they inhibited your connection with the Force.
So: reduces your lifespan, cuts you off from the Force, and is literally named "DEATH STICKS." Cigarettes don't look so bad now, do they MOM?Never make a decision when you are hungry. The hormone ghrelin -- that is released before meals and known to increase appetite -- has a negative effect on both decision making and impulse control. Such were the results of a recently conducted study at Sahlgrenska University.
When hungry, the hormone ghrelin is produced in the stomach. In a new study conducted on rats at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, the hormone has been shown to have a negative effect on decision making capabilities and impulse control.
"For the first time, we have been able to show that increasing ghrelin to levels that are seen prior to meals or during fasting, causes the brain to act impulsively and also affects the ability to make rational decisions," says Karolina Skibicka, docent at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg.
Impulsivity
Impulsivity is complex, but can be broken down into impulsive action (inability to resist a motoric response) and impulsive choice (inability to delay gratification).
Many have experienced the difficulty of resisting getting a sandwich or something else, even if we know that dinner will be served soon, and the same is true for the rats used in the study.
The rats can be trained to be rewarded (with sugar) when they execute an action such as pressing a lever ("go") -- or instead they can be rewarded only when they resist pressing the lever ("no-go") when an appropriate learned signal is given. They learn this by repeatedly being given a signal, for example, a flash of light or a buzzing sound that tells them which action should be executed for them to receive their reward.
Were given ghrelin
An inability to resist pressing the lever, when the "no-go" signal is given, is a sign of impulsivity. Researchers found that rats given ghrelin directly into the brain, which mimics how the stomach would notify us of a need to eat, were more likely to press the lever instead of waiting, despite it causing them loose their reward.
The ability to delay gratification in order to get a greater reward later is a comparable measure of impulsive choice (decision). It can be illustrated by options such as those between getting a single cookie now or several cookies if you wait a few minutes, or overeating high-calorie foods for immediate feeling of pleasure while disregarding the long term benefits of eating less or eating healthy.
The person who chooses immediate gratification even though waiting provides a greater reward, is characterized as being more impulsive and that implies a poorer ability to make rational decisions.
Reduced the impulsive behavior
Researchers at Sahlgrenska Academy found that higher levels of ghrelin prevented the rats from being able to wait for the greater reward. They further evaluated where in the brain ghrelin acts to affect impulsivity.
"Our results showed that restricting ghrelin effects to the ventral tegmental area, the part of the brain that is a crucial component of the reward system, was sufficient to make the rats more impulsive. Importantly, when we blocked ghrelin, the impulsive behavior was greatly reduced," says Karolina Skibicka. Even a short period of fasting, a more natural way of increasing the release of ghrelin, increased impulsive behavior.
Long-term changes
Impulsivity is a distinctive feature of many neuropsychiatric disorders and behavior disorders such as ADHD, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), drug abuse and eating disorders.
The study also showed that increased levels of ghrelin even caused long-term genetic changes in the brain circuits that are linked to impulsivity and decision making. A ghrelin injection into the brain that resulted in impulsive behavior in rats, caused the same type of changes in dopamine related genes and enzymes as can be seen in ADHD and OCD.
"Our results indicate that the ghrelin receptors in the brain can be a possible target for future treatment of psychiatric disorders that are characterized by problems with impulsivity and even eating disorders," says Karolina Skibicka.Complaint lodged after rodeo bull breaks leg
Updated
Animals Australia has lodged a complaint about alleged breaches of Queensland animal protection laws over the treatment of a bull which broke its leg at a rodeo on Saturday.
The animal welfare group says it had two observers at the Warwick Rodeo in southern Queensland who captured the bull's distress on video.
Director Glenys Oogjes says organisers' attempts to herd the injured animal out of the arena prolonged its suffering.
She says at one stage a ute was used to try to push it out.
"It went on and on with the bulls coming into the arena to help him to herd him out," she said.
"He was further injured by them and then it was some half an hour later before he was loaded onto a truck, which in itself is a breach.
"He should have been put down immediately."
Animals Australia says Queensland's rodeo laws are the weakest in Australia, with no requirement for a vet to attend or for injuries to be reported.
The ABC has contacted the organisers for a response.
The Australian Professional Rodeo Association says the bull was treated humanely and spokesman Steve Hilton says his organisation will fight the complaint.
"I can't imagine that anybody can stand up and say that job could have been handled any better," he said.
"There's no other way we could have got that bull off the arena and I think they sort of dramatised the whole thing a little bit.
"[It's] not like we're cruel people, we really do try and look after these animals to the best of our ability and everybody's devastated with the loss of that bull."
Mr Hilton says the animal was treated humanely.
"You wouldn't be able to go out into the arena to euthanise him for a start - you've got to get him to a place where you can do that," he said.
"Where the bull's in the arena like that you can't just rush out there and do anything and like I said, everything was done that could possibly been done."
Topics: animal-welfare, rural, warwick-4370, qld
First postedFor more on this story, go to CNN affiliate KMBC
(CNN) -- The pilot of a high-performance biplane died Saturday afternoon when his aircraft crashed at an air show in Kansas City, Missouri, officials said.
The plane was doing maneuvers around 1:45 p.m. CT (2:45 p.m. ET) when it crashed into grass near a runway at the Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport, said Joe McBride, spokesman for the Kansas City Aviation Department.
Footage from CNN affiliate KMBC showed smoke and flames rising from the site.
"I was watching the plane when it did the roll and it was coming down and still spinning," eyewitness Ryan Bader told CNN affiliate KSHB. Like others, Bader expected the plane to pull up and continue the maneuvers.
Air show director Ed Noyallis identified the victim as Bryan Jensen, who grew up in Iowa and flies for Delta Air Lines.
According to the show's website, Jensen piloted the "Beast," described as "a one of a kind aircraft."
The Kansas City Aviation Expo Air Show was closed for the remainder of the day. It will reopen Sunday, officials said.
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration were on site.
The public was never in any danger, Noyallis told reporters.
"Our hearts go out to Bryan's family and loved ones and we are devastated by this terrible accident," Noyallis said. "Aerobatic flying can be a dangerous thing as evidenced by today's accident."
According to the show's website, the small Horizon Hobby biplane is "the only piston-powered biplane on (the) air show circuit with a thrust to weight ratio greater than 1:1."
CNN's Divina Mims contributed to this report.University Hospitals Case Medical Center's MacDonald Women's Hospital is leading an international trial investigating a first-of-its-kind on-demand drug for pre-menopausal women with sexual dysfunction. Led by Sheryl Kingsberg, PhD, this international Phase II study is one of the largest clinical studies to ever explore a "use-as-needed" treatment, Tefina, for women experiencing orgasmic disorder.
Tefina is a nasal gel containing testosterone and is inserted in the nose with an easy to use applicator 1-4 hours before sexual activity. The study, which will involve 240 patients in the U.S., Canada and Australia, will evaluate if there is an increase in the occurrence of orgasm over the treatment period, compared against baseline levels.
"Tefina is a potentially revolutionary treatment to restore women's ability to obtain orgasm and sexual satisfaction" says Dr. Kingsberg, Primary Investigator of the study and Chief of Behavioral Medicine at UH MacDonald Women's Hospital. "Low sexual satisfaction is linked to a lower sense of well being as well as to tension in relationships. We are hopeful that this be a real help for patients who say'sex has become a chore.'"
Anorgasmia, also known as female orgasmic disorder, is defined as the persistent or recurrent delay in or absence of orgasm. Although this condition affects 1 in 5 women worldwide, there are no approved treatments for anorgasmia.
Tefina, developed by Trimel Pharmaceutical Corporation, is a self-administered low-dose testosterone gel. The testosterone is absorbed through the nasal lining, resulting in a rise in levels throughout the body. Low testosterone is linked to low sexual desire and the development of climax problems. Testosterone therapy not only improves sexual desire through central actions in the brain but also results in increased vaginal blood flow, which is critical for sexual satisfaction.
"Female orgasmic disorder can be very frustrating for women who have previously enjoyed a satisfying sexual relationship," says Dr. Kingsberg, who is also Professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. "There is a vast need for new treatments for women with sexual difficulties as previous studies have shown that at least 5 percent of women are unable to achieve orgasm. Historically we have had little to offer women and progress has lagged way behind that of treatment for male sexual problems."
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Participants must be aged 18 to 49 and be unable to be sexually satisfied after previously having had no problems. Angelina Gangestad, MD, is the PI for the local trial site at UH Case Medical Center. For more information, call 440-995-3810.
About University Hospitals
University Hospitals serves the needs of patients through an integrated network of hospitals, outpatient centers and primary care physicians. At the core of our health system is University Hospitals Case Medical Center. The primary affiliate of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, University Hospitals Case Medical Center is home to some of the most prestigious clinical and research centers of excellence in the nation and the world, including cancer, pediatrics, women's health, orthopedics and spine, radiology and radiation oncology, neurosurgery and neuroscience, cardiology and cardiovascular surgery, organ transplantation and human genetics. Its main campus includes the internationally celebrated UH Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital, ranked among the top children's hospitals in the nation; UH MacDonald Women's Hospital, Ohio's only hospital for women; and UH Seidman Cancer Center, part of the NCI-designated Case Comprehensive Cancer Center at Case Western Reserve University. University Hospitals Case Medical Center is the 2012 recipient of the American Hospital Association - McKesson Quest for Quality Prize for its leadership and innovation in quality improvement and safety. For more information, go to www.uhhospitals.orgA lot of witches are good at what they do. Some are even elite with their skills. But very few are totally unstoppable.
This is not to say that one needs to be unstoppable with their craft. One can certainly practice every once in a while and still achieve success in their spells and rituals. Witchcraft often needs to come second after work, family, etc and that's fine.
But as this is a new year, I’ve made some goals for myself. I desire for my Paganism and witchcraft to become a major player in my life and I will practice, practice, practice till I become unstoppable. If your goals for this year align with mine, buckle up, because here’s what we need to do.
Be True to Your Desires
You need to have the faith and confidence to know your desires and address them fully. I knew I wanted to start Arcane Alchemy about a year ago, but I kept waiting out of fear. I knew I was unhappy at my corporate job but first I needed to gain the confidence to leave. I needed to fully realize my desires and respect that they were worth my time and energy.
When I finally left to work on this website full time I was truly filled with joy and excitement for what lies ahead. Holding on to things that made me unhappy delayed my growth. This year I will continue to live life on my own terms, and if something isn’t right I will not hesitate to change it.
Push Your Limits
To find what works best for us, we will need to try different things. Currently I’m a solitary witch who is often shy in large groups. As such, I have little experience working magic with others. This year I’m going to push myself out of my comfort zone to expand my network and find others to practice with. Strive to find what you're apprehensive of within your practice, and give it a try this year.
Follow Your IntuitionToronto’s Danforth neighbourhood has it all: restaurants, grocery stores, culture, and soon, a marijuana dispensary — if Sam Mellace has his way. The medical marijuana user and activist is opening the New Age Medical Clinic near Danforth and Pape Aves. on Wednesday with an eye toward a Health Canada policy change that would allow him to sell the pot he grows directly to medical marijuana consumers.
Sam Mellace stands in the window of what he hopes will be the first storefront, regulated medicinal marijuana distribution shop in Canada. He's opening the Danforth clinic Wednesday and hopes to be providing legalized marijuana by 2014. ( RICHARD LAUTENS / TORONTO STAR )
His move comes at a time when the country is reconsidering how it supplies marijuana. A new policy is in the final stages of development, and Health Canada plans to begin rolling it out this spring with full implementation by March 2014. Under the policy, Health Canada will pull back from administering medical marijuana and license producers such as Mellace, who would then take care of distribution themselves. While the policy is still in development, some core elements are known. Mellace’s new clinic would probably be able to act as a storefront for his grow operation.
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“The upstairs is ready to go — there’s two doctors’ offices ready to go. Once we do the grand opening, within a few days, after that we’ll be fully functioning,” said Mellace. “We’re setting up the first one here... there will be more of these clinics going up in and around Toronto.” If approved, Mellace expects he’ll be able to distribute 45 kilograms of marijuana from the Danforth location each month, based on his surveys of current licensees. He plans to charge $5 per gram, while Health Canada is predicting prices around $8 per gram. As of December, 28,000 people were licensed to possess marijuana in Canada. Health Canada expects that number to jump to 50,000 by 2014. The agency is currently the sole supplier and distributor — something it wants to get away from. Instead, it will rely on doctors to prescribe the herb. While Mellace — who lit up a joint in the House of Commons in 2010 to protest marijuana regulations — plans to distribute medical pot at the clinic, he said its main function will be to treat people hooked on opiate drugs like morphine and oxycodone.
“Looking at the situation as it stands right now, what we’re trying to do is build up the clientele and try to get as many people as we can help off of the opiate addictions,” Mellace said. He renovated the clinic to include two examination rooms, a blood-testing room, other modern medical facilities and plenty of security. Two general practitioners will be on staff, as well as a psychologist, psychiatrist and naturopath.
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The clinic will operate as a natural treatment centre and will also help people apply for medical marijuana permits, which are still necessary until Health Canada’s new policy takes effect. The permit is being revised after the last round of public consultations concluded Feb. 28. Mellace has applied for a permit to conduct marijuana research and is itching to put in his application to be a producer under the new model.New Delhi: On a blazing hot Saturday afternoon in June, a group of people assembled in a small room in an under-construction building at Today Ridge Residency, Sector-135, Noida, a part of the National Capital Region (NCR) centred around Delhi.
The motley group, with people ranging from senior citizens to software engineers, had one thing in common. Each one of them has parted with a huge chunk of their savings to buy a home, which had not been delivered to them.
Most of them booked an apartment in the project owned by Today Homes and Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd in 2010.
The buyers were assured of delivery in about two-and-a-half years; it has been six years now and most are yet to get possession.
At some other projects by builders such as Unitech Ltd, Amrapali Group, The 3C Company, Gardenia Group and Jaypee Group, the wait for possession has lasted more than eight years.
Rajiv Kumar Goel, who works for a private firm, said he commutes every Saturday for five hours to and from Faridabad to join the group.
“I have to take leave every Saturday to come here and my company cuts that amount from my salary," he said.
Today Homes, The 3C company, Gardenia Group, Amrapali Group and Jaypee Group did not respond to a Mint questionnaire sent a day earlier.
The NCR, India’s biggest property market in terms of volume, has numerous projects such as Today Ridge Residency that have been stuck for years, with just concrete structures and minimal work on the ground.
A combination of lack of funds, rising debt, unsold inventory, a trust deficit among customers and incessant litigation have brought the sector to a standstill, with no takers for the flats under construction.
A Knight Frank India report released on 4 July said that new launches in the NCR have been in a decline since 2010 and have dropped by more than half over the last six years.
Property consultant Liases Foras said NCR has witnessed a rise in unsold inventory by almost 14% to hit a high of 267,000 units by the end of March 2016 and it will take around six years to sell them.
The rot began to set in during the early part of the decade. The residential property market touched a high in early 2010 with firms raising loans to enter real estate in pursuit of what looked like an unstoppable boom.
“In the last 4-5 years we saw everyone from every industry come to real estate. Shoemakers and milk packagers, Godrej, Tata and the who’s who of the world entered the business. But many of them are stuck now," Omaxe Ltd chief executive Mohit Goel said in an interview.
The sector went from boom to bust in the face of a spate of farm protests and resulting litigation.
Puneet Parashar is a buyer in Amrapali Group’s Heartbeat City project in Sector 107, Noida, which has been stuck in litigation after farmers challenged the land acquisition by New Okhla Industrial Development Authority. The Supreme Court, in an August 2013 order, quashed the acquisition of about 547 acres of land, which included two other projects by the 3C Company and Great Value Projects India Ltd, encompassing a total of about 5,000 flats.
While the apex court passed its order in August 2013, the New Okhla Industrial Development Authority, builders and the lenders didn’t inform the buyers, who kept paying their dues for a whole year without knowing that projects had actually been declared illegal.
Great Value Projects India Ltd and New Okhla Industrial Development Authority didn’t respond to a questionnaire sent to them.
“With the project stuck and the weight of rent already weighing me down, I wasn’t able to shell out EMIs (equated monthly instalments) to my bank. Taking the situation into account, I asked my bank for a restructuring of my loan, but they instead sent me a notice. I had to finally sell my property to pay the loan amount," said Parashar of the loan taken from Axis Bank.
Axis Bank didn’t respond to a questionnaire sent by Mint.
Low investor interest and lack of cash flow have resulted in ballooning debt at all the major real estate companies, with Jaiprakash Associates Ltd (Jaypee) having a consolidated debt of ₹ 58,250 crore as of 31 March. DLF Ltd is saddled with a debt of ₹ 22,202 crore and Unitech weighed down by ₹ 7,165.7 crore.
“The customer cell here clearly says that they don |
ANOPOULOS: Why?
PAUL: Because time has come around to the point where the people are agreeing with much of what I've been saying for 30 years. So, I think the time is right.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well this, is a big step for you, Congressman. Congratulations. As I say at the beginning, you're not afraid to court controversy. You seem to be doing it again right now. Just yesterday, we showed it in Jon Karl's piece, you came out against the way the president Obama conducted the raid against Osama bin Laden. More than 90 percent of the American public support it. Why are you against it?
PAUL: Well, I was talking about the procedure. You know, I endorse the whole idea of going after him. I supported going into Afghanistan. I thought we blew it then. We had him cornered. We let him get loose. And then, we went and invaded Iraq. We spent $1 trillion. We've lost 5,000 American lives. We've killed many, many innocent people. So, the process has been very bad. So, I have no qualms about getting him. I'm delighted he's gone. But the whole thing is, we could have done it differently. And besides-
STEPHANOPOULOS: How could we have done it differently?
PAUL: Ignoring the Pakistani government doesn't help us at all. It looks like we're trying to be more antagonistic towards the Pakistanis. They have helped us in the past catch many terrorists and I don't see any reason we can't do that.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But, you would have taken the risk, sir-
PAUL: I think the process is different. If you compare what we did after World War II. Think of the worst Nazis that committed the Holocaust. You know, we arrested them. We tried them and we hung them. I don't know why we have to embark on a whole, new system because the people get riled up. The politicians can rile the people up and after the dust settles, they might say, it could have been another way. And the other thing is, to make a decision on this whole process is a little premature. Every day, we hear a different story about exactly what happened. So, I was asked if I could do it differently. And I said yes. And I think the goals and the results would have been better. But I'm really worried about, you know, building this animosity with the Pakistanis right now. I'm all for cutting the foreign aid. Like, I wouldn't have ever given them any money. But I'm afraid we've already expanded the war into Pakistan. We've been bombing them. At the same time we bomb them, we give them foreign aid.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me-
PAUL: So, I think the whole process now is to build up the enemy in Pakistan so we have a massive invasion there and spread the war. Those are concerns I have.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me turn to some issues here at home. Celia from Springfield, Ohio wants to test how just how far your libertarian principles take you. She ask, "Do you think everyone should just be responsible for themselves and if a flood washes your house away, no FEMA? Sink or swim?"
PAUL: Yeah. I think that's how a free society works and that's the way the Constitution mandates. I'm on the Gulf Coast. I have a house on the beach, or had one recently. And I don't think somebody in New York or New Hampshire or Iowa have to pay for my flood on the Gulf Coast.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So, how far would you-
PAUL: No. So, insurance is an old-fashioned way of doing it. Buy insurance. And if the insurance won't sell it to you, it means it's too dangerous. If it's too dangerous, why dump the responsibility on the ta taxpayer? You know, it doesn't make good moral sense. It doesn't make constitutional sense.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Jon showed in his piece, that you would give states the right to legalize heroin if they wanted to. And you're at odds with your party, the Republicans on so many issues, on foreign policy, on domestic policy, on social policy. Why not run as an independent, given your differences with the Republicans on so many issues?
PAUL: Well, I would like to qualify a little bit about the drugs. But the question is why don't I run as an independent? Because we don't have true democracy in this country. We lose lives going overseas, spreading our goodness and our great democracy and we orchestrate elections. If we don't like them. We void them. If we don't get the people we support and the people the CIA supports. But, running as an independent here is not possible, unless you're a billionaire like Ross Perot. You don't get on the debates. If I was an independent, George, you would not have me on this program this morning. I
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, I'm not sure-
PAUL: I''ve been a Republican for all these years. Elected to Congress. My family was Republican. And I was out of the Republican Party for one year. There's nothing wrong with nudging the Republicans to a true constitutionalism. Stick to their guns on fiscal conservatism.
STEPHANOPOULOS: We have a few seconds left. Last time around, you bet me everything I had in my pocket that you would win the presidency. It didn't quite turn out that way. How do you define success this time around, in ten seconds?
PAUL: My success is, I always win. You know? Because I, you know, the victories are one thing. But we win elections when people said we never could win elections. So, I define by doing very well, I believe right now, we're coming in number one in the Republican primary is an absolute possibility. Many, many times better than it was four years ago. Our troops, our supporters, the grassroots are enthusiastic. More so where I was impressed before. I'm super impressed with the enthusiasm we're getting.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Okay. Well, good luck, Congressman.Why the Former Klansman Is More Relevant To Donald Trump’s Campaign Than Any Republican Elected Official, Including Mike Pence
Yesterday afternoon, I was a guest on the Jim Engster Radio Show with former Louisiana State Sen. Ben Bagert, one of a small but prominent group of people who have had the surreal experience and perhaps the misfortune of running against David Ernest Duke for the United States Senate. In Bagert’s case, it was way back in 1990, and Duke was much more formidable, as a candidate, 26 years ago in Louisiana than he is today.
Although he ultimately lost the 1990 election in a run-off against incumbent U.S. Senator J. Bennett Johnston, David Duke still managed to carry an astonishing 60% of white voters. The next year, when he squared off against Edwin Edwards for Louisiana governor- the notorious “Vote for the Crook; It’s Important” election- he lost again, but despite that, he still won 55% of white voters.
This year, for the third time, he’s once again running for United States Senate in Louisiana, and once again, even though there is not a chance in hell that Duke could ever win this election, he has sucked up all of the national and international media attention and likely persuaded countless people who have never been to Louisiana that he has a legitimate shot.
I will dispel that belief right now: David Duke has a greater chance of getting struck by lightning, or, less macabre, a greater chance of winning the Powerball than he has of becoming the next junior United States Senator from Louisiana.
As Sen. Bagert mentioned to me yesterday on the radio, Duke isn’t really a politician; he never has been. He’s a creature of the media, and he’s been delighted to serve in that role for most of his adult life- staging phony vigilante protests at the Mexican border or on college campuses, often carrying around more members of the press than members of his organization at his events.
He relishes in the attention, which the media has often been too willing to oblige him, and for the most part, he’s learned how to present himself as a soft-spoken, unthreatening, faux-intellectual, and not a raging racist lunatic.
Of course, it’s all theater. David Duke may believe in everything he says, but he is still an actor. As Sen. Bagert reminded listeners yesterday, Duke is an extremely effective public speaker and debater. If you listen to the debates he had with Gov. Edwin Edwards, you’ll hear much of the same stuff that Bobby Jindal said sixteen years later and that Donald Trump is saying today. Some of it is uncanny.
Duke knows this, of course. He’s proud of it. It makes him appear prescient and wise, and as we know today, it’s why he’s decided to- yet again- run for the U.S. Senate.
For the first time in his adult life, he recognized a Presidential candidate who was preaching what he’d been practicing for decades. There’s a reason Trump had a difficult time finally (and even then sheepishly) repudiating David Duke. To the dismay of most Americans, the Trump campaign has provided cover for our country’s most virulent racists, and throughout the course of the last eighteen months, it has formed a symbiotic relationship with the so-called “alt-right,” people, like Trump campaign CEO Steven Bannon and online personality Alex Jones, who have made their living peddling absurd and offensive conspiracy theories that appeal, almost exclusively, to older white men who see their institutional privileges being whittled away as the country becomes more diverse, more tolerant, and more globally-aware.
The Trump campaign wasn’t launched after an escalator ride down the lobby of Trump Tower; it was actually launched on Twitter and cable news, years before, when Donald Trump persistently made the absurd claim that Barack Obama had lied about his birth certificate.
He repeatedly told the American public that he had proof; he said that he sent down investigators to Hawaii. None of this was true, of course, as he was forced to reluctantly acknowledge a couple of months ago.
Trump became a force in national politics by embracing a racist and phony story about the true identity of the very first African-American President. It wasn’t just about a chance to earn some free media; it was about planting the seeds for a national campaign, a campaign that would be built by disaffected white men who were offended by the fact that their country was led by a black man. And of course, no one could say it that clearly in the open, so it became about the authenticity of a birth certificate.
Oh, we’ve all seen the short-form, but what does the long-form show?
Ok, fine, now that we all have the long-form certificate, we have some serious questions about the watermark and the typeset.
Lost in all of this coverage and speculation was one simple fact: The birth certificate didn’t really matter, even if it were forged or faked (which it most certainly wasn’t), even if Obama had been born in Kenya or Indonesia. His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was a white woman from Kansas. Her son, no matter where he may have been born, is considered a natural-born citizen, just as John McCain (who was born in Panama) and George Romney (who was born in Mexico) were.
Try as he might now to discount the importance of the birther controversy or to ludicrously deflect blame to Hillary Clinton because of a memo one of her campaign staff members circulated in 2008 about Obama’s American “roots” (which was really just code for “Hawaii,” not for “obvious Manchurian candidate who faked his own birth certificate as a baby and lied about his own mother so that one day he’d get elected President of the United States by more votes than anyone in American history), Donald Trump’s entire rise in politics was predicated on a blatantly racist, comically ridiculous conspiracy theory.
He didn’t just casually entertain the conspiracy theory. He invested in it. He spent years of his life arguing about it, publicly, on television and on the internet. He adopted birtherism as his political brand. And the whole thing wasn’t just dumb and racist, it also reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of the law and the United States Constitution.
It didn’t appeal at all to legal experts or to Constitutional scholars: It appealed to people who were so repulsed by the idea that a black man was elected President of the United States and who believed- or at least hoped- that the only explanation for his election was because he had somehow broken the law, forged his birth certificate, lied about the identity of his own mother. That’s how disruptive an election of an African-American man was to their own sense of identity and self-worth.
And for too long, our supplicant media played along with this racist stupidity, treating it like tabloid entertainment and coddling Donald Trump like an entertainer.
As we know now, Trump’s embrace of birtherism was a harbinger of things to come: Claims that the Mexican government was “sending” rapists and murderers to the United States, tall-tales about witnessing hundreds of Muslims celebrating in the streets of New Jersey on September 11, 2001, stories about the Chinese “inventing climate change.”
These aren’t things that a rational or intelligent or decent American would ever believe, but they all find an ideological home in the alt-right and in white nationalism.
There’s nothing surprising about the fact that David Duke is so enthusiastically supportive of Donald Trump. And it makes sense why- even though Trump has “denounced” his support- Duke is still spending his own campaign money on robocalls encouraging people to vote for Trump. On almost every major policy issue, their platforms are almost identical, but unlike Trump, David Duke has been consistent about all of these issues for more than four decades.
When David Duke was a college student at LSU, he’d dress up in Nazi uniforms, and then, for a time, in klan’s robes. If you ask folks who knew him back then, they’ll tell you that he was treated like a total pariah on campus, that he had very few friends at the time, and that the racist and neo-Nazi screeds he delivered in LSU’s Free Speech Ally were either entirely ignored or universally ridiculed.
But at some point, David Duke decided he wanted to get into politics, and he knew he couldn’t get elected to anything if he didn’t look the part.
So, he traded in his klan’s robes for a suit. He got himself a fancy haircut. He presented himself as an entrepreneur, even though there’s very little evidence he made much of anything. He even spoiled himself with cosmetic procedures- chemical peels, a lift or two for his face, something to fix his nose.
He disavowed his prior involvement in the KKK. He told people he was a born-again Christian. He stopped speaking in overtly racist language and talked, instead, in well-crafted code. He smiled a lot. He held enormous campaign rallies all across the state, and he used his controversial past to earn him more free media than any of his opponents could have possibly afforded.
For a time, David Duke had a powerful and persuasive message that resonated deeply with the majority of whites in Louisiana, many of whom are still alive and voting in this year’s election. It was about crime and drugs and out of control immigration and “welfare queens” and the feeling that our entire country was on the verge of some sort of existential calamity, and you know what? Even though David Duke was the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, that message almost worked when he ran for Senator in 1990 and Governor in 1991.
Previously, during his campaign for the Louisiana State House of Representatives, Duke was publicly repudiated by both former President Ronald Reagan and then-current President George H.W. Bush; they urged voters to reject his insipid racism. It was the first time in modern American history that both a former President and a current President of the United States had intervened in a local state representative election.
Duke won that little race, and Presidents Reagan and Bush privately blamed themselves, believing they had allowed Duke the ability to make himself appeal to those who were simply against “the establishment.”
In only a week from now, the election will finally be over, and we’ll all be able to reflect back, with the benefit of hindsight, about what the last crazy two years really mean about who we are as a country. We’ll study this year’s election more than any other one in modern history. For at least the next two decades, we’ll reference the election of 2016 and what it revealed about our country.
Here’s my suggestion for future historians: If you want to understand the special set of circumstances that resulted in the Republican Party nomination of Donald Trump, you should read about what happened down here in Louisiana 25 years ago.Hellfire dummy missile found in 'wrongful shipping mix-up' returned to US after Cuban delivery
Posted
The United States has recovered a missile accidentally sent to Cuba two years ago, bringing an end to an unusual and sensitive episode in the world of defence.
Key points: US-made dummy missile lost in shipping mix-up while being returned from Spain
Dummy version of missile shipped to Cuba by mistake in 2014
Concerns Havana could pass on sensitive military information to Russia or China
The dummy training version of a US-made Hellfire missile was returned with the "cooperation of the Cuban Government", US State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said.
The missile went missing after a logistical mix-up in Europe.
"The re-establishment of diplomatic relations and the re-opening of our Embassy in Havana allow us to engage with the Cuban Government on issues of mutual interest," Mr Toner said.
A source familiar with the issue — who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity because of US laws protecting the confidentiality of commercial arms deals — said the missile, which did not contain explosives, was shipped to Spain first for a NATO training exercise.
The missile was sent from Orlando, Florida, but the mix-up occurred when it was being sent back to the US.
It is believed the missile was loaded onto a truck chartered by Air France headed toward Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris, then onto a cargo flight to Havana, where it was seized by the authorities there.
Despite the recent thaw in US-Cuban relations, the loss of the missile — even the dummy version — raised the possibility Havana could pass sensitive military technology on to rivals such as Russia or China.
Washington has treated the matter as a logistical mix-up, but the US Justice Department is investigating.
The Hellfire missile, commonly fired at ground targets from a helicopter or a drone, has been in service since 1984, and has been delivered to more than two dozen countries.
The Hellfire is produced by US defence giant Lockheed Martin, along with an inert version known as a Captive Air Training Missile, stripped of its warhead, fuse, gyroscope and motor.
AFP
Topics: defence-forces, united-states, cubaFor the bay in Canada, see Bay of Fundy
Fundie or fundy (plural fundies) is a pejorative slang abbreviation used to refer to religious fundamentalists of any religion or denomination, although it is primarily directed towards fundamentalist Christians.[1] The term is used most commonly by those opposed to the Christian right movement. The term is often associated with religiously motivated conservative moral beliefs, especially those regarding social issues.
In financial markets it is also used as a slang abbreviation for "fundamentals" which are the underlying driving forces and metrics that drive the success of a business (in equities trading), or in the case of commodities trading these would be the underlying supply and demand dynamics. Fundies or fundamentals is used as a term to describe the type of analysis being undertaken or the perspective of a particular viewpoint to distinguish usually from Technical analysis which is the analysis of pure price and volume activity from markets.
In etymological terms, "fundie" is an example of a mutated contraction resulting from relaxed pronunciation, where the original word (in this case fundamentalist) is shortened and slightly altered. "Fundie" is a diminutive made by changing to -ie ending, like in hypocorism (diminutives of given names) and many diminutives in Australian English.
There is no recorded first use of the term, though its appearance in the American English vocabulary coincided with the rise of Christian Right politics in the 1970s. An early use of the term "fundie" was Isaac Asimov's short story "Evidence", first published in book form in the collection, I, Robot, published in 1950.[2]
See also [ edit ](CNN) You are told -- twice-- that your son has died, once by a state trooper and then again by a local police officer.
What do you do?
Express thanks, and perhaps frustration, that it's not true.
An Alaska family rode this emotional roller coaster earlier this week. And on Friday, Justin Priest -- the man whose parents believed had died -- said his family is "very private," but hopes some good comes from getting the story out so no one else has to endure a similar nightmare ride.
"We wanted to put a little pressure on the police department to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again," Priest said. "And I think we achieved our goal."
It is true that Justin D. Priest was pronounced dead at the scene late Wednesday after the car he was driving slammed into a tree in Juneau, police announced in a news release. Two other passengers in his vehicle were injured, including one "with apparent life-threatening injuries."
When something horrible like this happens, law enforcement officers have the unenviable job of notifying next of kin.
So, Juneau police reached out to the Alaska State Troopers, trying to get information on a Justin Priest from his parents in Palmer to determine if their son was in Juneau at the time of the accident.
"Instead,... the communication got mixed up," Juneau Police Chief Bryce Johnson said. "We somehow communicated it wrong, and they thought that we wanted to tell the family that their son had died in the crash."
That's what troopers did, going to the Priest home in Palmer before dawn to relay the horrific news.
Then, Priest's father called Juneau police to verify it was his son who died in the accident. A Juneau officer said it was.
But a different Justin Priest had died, one who was 33, as police noted in their press release, and from Juneau.
The Justin Priest whose parents were contacted is 29, according to the Alaska Dispatch News, and from south Anchorage, about 570 miles away by air or boat and 850 miles by car from Juneau.
The parents of the 29-year-old thought their son was dead when they went to his house early Thursday morning.
They knocked on the door. And guess who answered, according to the Dispatch News?
Their son Justin, alive and well.
"Justin?" his father asked, the news website reported. "It's Justin! Praise Jesus, we thought you were dead."
The mixup got back to Juneau later Thursday. Police there issued an updated press release, apologizing "for our error" and "for any anguish our mistake has caused."
Johnson, Juneau's police chief, talked directly to the living Justin Priest's father by phone.
"He told me what they went through, and I was left speechless," said a choked up Johnson. "From my perspective, after hearing all that they did, I was talking to a great man. I was left with an immense amount of respect for him."
After this incident, Johnson said Juneau police would review its dispatch recordings, talk to officers about following procedures, and possibly change protocols if it makes sense.
What the police chief is not doing is shirking blame for what happened.
"It was our case, our responsibility," Johnson said. "...The family deserves for us to acknowledge that it was our mistake, and we are sorry."Shakespeare described the terrifying beauty of the adolescent so early in its development, and so definitively and so thoroughly, that it is only slightly an exaggeration to say that he invented teenagers as we know them today. “Romeo and Juliet,” his extended study of the humiliations and glories of adolescence, is the biggest hit of all time and, unlike most of Shakespeare’s works, it has never slipped out of fashion. It has been adapted across genres and eras, into operas and ballets and musicals. The most popular brand of Cuban cigars: Romeo y Julietta. State laws that allow judges to exempt minors from statutory-rape charges are called, naturally, “Romeo and Juliet provisions.”
This shouldn’t be surprising: People just love to watch a couple of dumb kids make out and die. (And they are awfully young, these dumb Veronese kids: Shakespeare doesn’t ever tell us Romeo’s exact age but we know that Juliet is just 13.) The great French scholar Philippe Ariès concluded that for most of the Medieval period “people had no idea of what we call adolescence, and the idea was a long time taking shape.” Yet our whole modern understanding of adolescence is there to be found in this play. Shakespeare essentially created this new category of humanity, and in place of the usual mix of nostalgia and loathing with which we regard adolescents (and adolescence), Shakespeare would have us look at teenagers in a spirit of wonder. He loves his teenagers even as he paints them in all their absurdity and nastiness.
Of course, the most important feature of adolescent rebellion is that it’s doomed. In this, as well, Shakespeare was right there at the beginning. He defined what it means to be “star-cross’d.” The opposition between the adolescent and the mature orders of the world can have only two possible endings. One is comic: the teenager grows up, develops a sense of humor, marries, has kids, moves to the suburbs, gets fat and becomes boring. The other is tragic: the teenager blows up in a blaze of glory. We much prefer to live the comedy. We much prefer to watch the tragedy.
Adapted from “Flaming Youth,” a chapter in “How Shakespeare Changed Everything,” by Stephen Marche (Harper, May 2011).JEANETTE V. writes:
We live in evil times populated by fools who declare themselves wise:
Transgender military personnel from 18 countries gather for meeting
The conference attendees, who are all from militaries that allow transgender service, gathered in Washington, D.C. on Monday.
— Comments —
Paul T. writes:
“From the shawls of Montezuma
To the sheers of Tripoli…..”
Sean writes:
I find it extremely difficult to take these overweight men dressed in female uniforms seriously. But yet they are absolutely serious in their attempt to move us toward their dark and disturbed way of thinking. This always amazes me, the fact that they think we will all go along with it eventually. The minority of minorities leading us around by the nose. Its no use saying its disgusting, its just pathetic.
Laura writes:
The supreme irony of “transgenderism” is that after all that surgery and hormone treatment the men still look like men and the women still look like women.
James P. writes:
What would happen if ISIS captured one of those freaks? Probably they’d die laughing…
Karl D. writes:
More and more it seems like we are living in a real life Mel Brooks film. But who knows? Maybe this is the warfare of the future? To temporarily disable your opponent through comedy. Imagine an entire platoon of these creatures charging up a hill screaming like banshees (from hormone-affected voices) waving a rainbow flag in uniforms designed for them by Versace. The enemy would probably fall down laughing in a fit of hysterics. Concerning my flag crack? Don’t be surprised if that too won’t come to pass. Sooner or later there will be an entire openly homosexual and transexual division. And you just KNOW the rainbow flag will be flying along with the stars and bars by order of the U.S. Army. There are so many parallels between the fall of Rome and what is happening today that it is frightening.
Douglas writes:
It was serendipitous that I went from Richard Spencer’s Radixjournal website to find your article with the horrible pictures of transgender military men then read Karl’s comment starting with the statement about a Mel Brooks film. Spencer is featuring a video by Jack Donovan regarding his new book about masculinity. Jack Donovan is gay. The alternative right appears to be devolving into a parody. That is what happens when you try to have a traditional white value system without God.
Ty Moore writes:
To answer those of you who asked: “This is what stands between us and our enemies?” I say this: Yes, she is. She risks her life, you make fun of her name. Classy.
Laura writes:
Make fun of “her” name? This isn’t about names, and no one here has given the impression that it is.
A reader writes:
Presumably, the Canadian or Israeli or English armies would give me several divisions to command if I donned a bicorn hat, a blue tunic, and said I really am Napoleon Bonaparte.
Laura writes:
And if you feel like a four-star general, possibly as if you’ve always been a four-star general, you should be able to dress and act like one.The President's pronouncement did not sit well with other minority senators either: 'A country which has illegally built a great wall of sand in our seas is not, and far from, the epitome of a good friend either,' referring to China
Published 3:59 PM, October 21, 2016
MANILA, Philippines (UPDATED) – "A whole level of betrayal."
Senator Leila de Lima slammed President Rodrigo Duterte’s announcement of the country’s “separation” from the United States during a state visit to China.
The President's fiercest critic hit Duterte for announcing his “horrible foreign policy” in front of foreigners instead of his countrymen. (READ: Palace: Don't 'interpret' Duterte split from US)
“It’s one thing to keep your Cabinet members in the dark – which is deeply troubling in itself – but it’s a whole level of betrayal to keep that from the Filipino people, and to announce it for the first time in front of foreigners,” De Lima said in a statement on Friday, October 21.
Borrowing the words of Senator Richard Gordon used against her in a recent hearing on the rise of extrajudicial killings, De Lima said Duterte clearly committed “material concealment” with his act. It is not what Filipinos signed up for, she said, citing a survey that shows Filipinos trust the US more than China.
“To borrow the eloquent words of my colleague Senator Gordon, what a'material concealment' from the Filipino people!” De Lima said.
De Lima said official visits to China are really about extravagance, but this should not blind the President. She reminded him that he is not a god and that it is not just his own life at stake in the decisions he makes.
“This is what an official visit to China looks like: they will wine you, dine you, roll out the red carpets, and treat you like queens and kings. It’s a really good feeling.”
“Huwag mong ibenta ang mga Pilipino sa ideolohiyang tatalikod sa minamahal nilang kalayaan at demokratikong pamumuhay sa ilalim ng ating Konstitusyon. Nangako kang tatalima sa Konstitusyon, do it. You have no right to put yourself above the sovereignty of the people. Hindi ka diyos,” she said.
(Don't sell out the Philippines to ideologies against their beloved freedom and democratic way of life enshrined in our Constitution. You promised to follow the Constitution, do it. You have no right to put yourself above the sovereignty of the people. You're not a god.)
De Lima is a member of the Philippine team that brought the maritime dispute with China to The Hague in Netherlands. The Permanent Court of Arbitration eventually ruled against China's claim over the entire South China Sea based on its 9-dash line. (READ: Philippines wins case vs China)
Backlash
Duterte’s pronouncement also did not sit well with senators from the minority bloc.
Minority Leader Ralph Recto, who has repeatedly urged Duterte to slow down with his words, said any sudden change in the country’s foreign policy direction should be well thought out.
“Any drastic shift in our foreign policy direction should be well-thought out and not simply blurted out. Because of its far-reaching implications, it cannot be an announce-now-study-later thing,” Recto said in a statement.
The senator said there is no need to antagonize any nation, especially the US, which is home to the largest number of Filipinos abroad.
The US, he said, is also the biggest source of foreign exchange remittances of the country, one of the biggest donors, and a major market of Philippines products and services, such as the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry. (READ: Duterte vs US: PH to lose 3rd largest trading partner)
“Foreign policy rebalancing should not mean that we swing the pendulum to the other extreme, that we dump old friends for new suitors. We should practice big-tent diplomacy, welcoming all, and shunning no one. The national interest is served by extending amity to all, and hostility to none,” he said.
As for Duterte’s plan to “re-align” with China, Recto said the Asian giant is not a good example of a friend for illegally claiming part of our seas. (READ: Photos show China building hangars in West PH Sea)
“Yes, our relations with the United States may not be perfect. But a country which has illegally built a great wall of sand in our seas is not, and far from, the epitome of a good friend either," he said.
Senator Antonio Trillanes IV said Duterte’s pronouncements favoring China only mean one thing – that he is a communist.
“If he thinks like a communist, talks like a communist, frees the communists, and appoints the communists, then he must be a communist,” he said, reffering to Duterte's seemingly soft stance on communists.
Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri, a known Duterte ally, expressed concern on the possible backlash of the statement to the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry.
“Most of the companies operating in the BPO sector are from the US. I’m afraid if the time will come that they would decide to pull out. I hope that doesn’t happen,” Zubiri told reporters in Bacolod.
He, however, maintained he is still in favor of an independent foreign policy, one without antagonizing any nation.
“If one door closes, another opens. But I’m hoping we can keep all doors open for stronger economy," he said. – Rappler.comPEANUT ISLAND, Fla. - A nuclear-bomb shelter was a must-have in the 1950s and ’60s.
Magazines displayed backyard do-it-yourself versions. Castro Convertibles pitched its foldaway “jet beds’’ as bunker-ready. And a pair of publicity-savvy newlyweds actually spent their honeymoon inside one for 14 days.
President Kennedy, who was facing a series of nail-biting face-offs with the Soviets, even recommended a fallout shelter for all Americans “as rapidly as possible’’ in an October 1961 speech. Two months later, Kennedy was presented with his own top-secret tropical bomb shelter off Palm Beach, Fla., on an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean.
Few even know it is here, but some area residents believe the bunker is a must-see attraction that could put Peanut Island, a manmade islet, on the map.
Termed the “Detachment Hotel’’ in documents, the fallout shelter here was built by Navy Seabees in less than two weeks at the end of December 1961 and sits a short stroll from a rambling colonial-style house that doubled as a US Coast Guard station. Deftly camouflaged by trees, it was hard to spot. If people asked, they would be told it was a munitions depot, nothing more. Kennedy visited the bunker twice during a drill.
“The government never declared it existed until 1974,’’ said Anthony Miller, a member of the executive board of the Palm Beach Maritime Museum, a nonprofit organization that leases part of the land on Peanut Island and runs a charter school and gives tours of the bunker and the former Coast Guard station. “But it was the worst-kept secret in Palm Beach.’’
With the Soviets intent on shipping nuclear warheads to nearby Cuba, Kennedy was assured a radiation-proof haven a mere 5-minute helicopter hop from his oceanfront winter home on millionaire’s row in Palm Beach. Peanut Island sits just between Palm Beach and its ritzy companion, Singer Island. It was intended to be used as a terminal for shipping peanut oil; that never happened, but the name stuck.
To ensure the president’s safety during the summer, when he visited the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, a sister shelter was built on Nantucket Island in 1961; it has never been open to the public.
The Florida bunker, which fell into disrepair in the 1990s, was cleaned up and has been open for tours since 1999, shortly after the museum leased the land. Buried under layers of concrete and built with quarter-inch-thick walls of steel and lead, the bunker looks like something from the television show “Lost.’’
Inside, to the left of a long corrugated tunnel, lies the decontamination shower, the first hint that the possibility of a nuclear showdown was not thought to be far-fetched. Eleven months after the shelter was built, the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted.
The shelter is decorated as it was then, more or less, with replica pieces and a presidential seal. The decor is fittingly rustic, a far cry from Jacqueline Kennedy’s sensibilities. There is room enough to hold 30 people on 15 metal bunk beds for 30 days. A Taylor Transmitter ham radio sits on a desk in a corner.
“His mobile phone, back in the day,’’ Miller said.
Shelves are stocked with giant tins of waterless hand cleaner (today’s Purell), cans lined with lead that contained drinking water (no longer advisable), deodorant to clean clothes, petroleum jelly, castor oil, and ample Army K-rations. Gas masks sat at the ready. An escape hatch lies at one end, just in case the Russians were coming.
In one corner, there is a rocking chair, a nod to Kennedy’s bad back.
But just how long the museum can keep operating the bunker is another matter. The museum has been running at a loss for years now, Miller said, and the curators are embroiled in a decade-long tussle with a few Palm Beach County commissioners to open a full-service restaurant, as many |
users would take a two-minute quiz, telling True&Co if their bras were too tight, or if they had problems with “busting out” (apparently 62% of women do), and True&Co would use these metrics to recommend bras for a customer’s particular body shape. Now, they’re using the 7 million data points they’ve accrued to design bras tailored to their users’ body shapes. As founder Michelle Lam states: “With all this virtual stuff, it’s so easy to create a uniquely personal experience for every person, but creating physical goods that also feel like they’re made for you is what’s incredibly fascinating to me.”
The bras, using a patented fitting system called True Spectrum, are variable far beyond the usual remit of chest width and cup size. They take into accont if a customer’s breasts are full or shallow, high or low, wide-set or close together. These bras have quickly become True&Co’s bestselling products, accounting for a quarter of all sales and boosting revenue 600% in the past few months.
Victoria’s Secret have also established a quiz for their clients, and startup ThirdLove have developed a body scanning app for getting measurements. But in the future, we may see tailored fashion moving beyond the chest region. Many have fallen fowl to buying an item of clothing over the internet and immediately returning it, realising it doesn’t look half as good on their body shape as it does on the model. Tailored clothing recommendations could change this, something that Lam is aware of: “I look at the old retailers out there, and I see an imperfect model,” she says. “I think this is the way women are going to shop for intimate apparel in the future, and not only that, but I really believe this is the way women will shop for all apparel in the future.”
Read more here.
(Photo credit: Melissa Maples)
Follow @DataconomyMedia
Interested in more content like this? Sign up to our newsletter, and you wont miss a thing!There were flailing limbs, zippy one-liners and plenty of intense television-camera stare downs as Stephen Harper, Tom Mulcair, Justin Trudeau and Elizabeth May faced off in the first leaders' debate of the 2015 campaign.
While the leaders' sparred, people took to Twitter to highlight the best and worst moments of the debate.
Almost as soon as the debate began, people started commenting on the leaders' body movements. Many tweeted about how the leaders were staring down the television cameras.
Though Harper and Trudeau were also guilty of camera staring, Mulcair might have gotten the most online reaction
The meme possibilities in this debate are huge. Harper's cut-eye, Mulcair's bug eyes. Do your thing, Internet. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/macdebate?src=hash">#macdebate</a>. —@TeachRandom
Thomas Mulcair has been taught to'smile with his eyes' And when he does it's terrifying. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/macdebate?src=hash">#macdebate</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/canpoli?src=hash">#canpoli</a> <a href="http://t.co/ElnyyUwcpk">pic.twitter.com/ElnyyUwcpk</a> —@UinvitedU
Mulcair keeps smiling with his eyes and it makes me worry he will strangle me <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/macdebate?src=hash">#macdebate</a> —@markcritch
Others wondered why Trudeau was using his arms to talk so much.
why are trudeaus hands moving so much... he literally looks like he is waving away flies. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/macdebate?src=hash">#macdebate</a> —@MorganCrockett
<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/macdebate?src=hash">#macdebate</a> somebody tie down Trudeaus hands, making me nauseated —@JosephSears1
Trudeau has been doing to much boxing, he's moving his hands too much <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/macdebate?src=hash">#macdebate</a> —@tehWrightstuff
Harper and 'Let's be clear'
Each of the leaders' had signature quips they brought out many times throughout the debate. Conservative leader Harper is already well-known for using the phrase, "Let's be clear." Some decided to create a drinking game out of it.
And for tonight's drinking game... every time someone says, "Let's be clear" - <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/macdebate?src=hash">#macdebate</a> —@MKutney
"Let's be clear!" #8 Everybody drink! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/macdebate?src=hash">#macdebate</a> —@WayeMason
That "let's be clear" thing is a real verbal crutch for Harper. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/macdebate?src=hash">#macdebate</a> —@RosieBarton
"Let's be very clear,'' says <a href="https://twitter.com/pmharper">@pmharper</a>, ramping up his "let's be clears" <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/macdebate?src=hash">#macdebate</a> —@nutgraf1
Others used the phrase to poke fun at moderator Paul Wells.
Let's be clear...this moderator sounds like a real party animal. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/macdebate?src=hash">#macdebate</a> —@ChristaMarshal1
May started off many of her rebuttals by saying, 'With all due respect' … but Twitter users pointed out that didn't necessarily mean'respect.'
"With all due respect" = I'm about to insult you. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/macdebate?src=hash">#macdebate</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/leadersdebate?src=hash">#leadersdebate</a> —@zachristy
Love the line by <a href="https://twitter.com/ElizabethMay">@ElizabethMay</a> "with all due respect, Mr. Harper" meaning none <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/macdebate?src=hash">#macdebate</a> —@mrdfleming
Trudeau's signature quip: Yelling 'That's not true' several times at Harper. Some thought it was the most heard phrase of the night.
Key phrase of the night? "That's not true, Mr. Harper" <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/macdebate?src=hash">#macdebate</a> —@ShanesaBeach
If I hear <a href="https://twitter.com/JustinTrudeau">@JustinTrudeau</a> say "that's not true Mr. Harper" or "Nobody believes you" once more, I'm moving to Alaska... <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/macdebate?src=hash">#macdebate</a> —@CharterLaw
Most commonly heard statement from <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/macdebate?src=hash">#macdebate</a> "That's not true Mr. Harper". —@A_DoubleB
Mulcair chose to focus on himself. His signature quote was about fighting for Canada 'his whole life.'
Why the "I have fought for Canada" rhetoric, Mr. Mulcair? <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/macdebate?src=hash">#macdebate</a> —@kathleenaikens
"I have fought for Canada my whole life," says Mulcair. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/macdebate?src=hash">#macdebate</a> <a href="http://t.co/MjDLggCoPY">pic.twitter.com/MjDLggCoPY</a> —@blinkwriter
There was also a lot of weird discussion about the number 9, prompted by Trudeau's response to a question from Mulcair about the threshold for recognizing a vote for Quebec's separation.
TRUDEAU HITS MULCAIR WITH THE NUMBER 9!! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NINE?src=hash">#NINE</a> <a href="http://t.co/BJsyscY63s">pic.twitter.com/BJsyscY63s</a> —@Tor_Grit
When Trudeau don't give you his number #9 <a href="http://t.co/jb62OLqRQg">pic.twitter.com/jb62OLqRQg</a> —@SafeeyaEf
So what did people think?
Thursday's debate, hosted by Maclean's magazine, was the first not to be organized by the broadcast consortium, of which CBC is a member. Some liked the debate and the revised format.
Overall <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/macdebate?src=hash">#macdebate</a> was quite good. Didn't enjoy everyone speaking over May, and moderation was lacking. —@parismarx
<a href="https://twitter.com/MacleansMag">@MacleansMag</a> great format <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Macdebate?src=hash">#Macdebate</a> tonight. It allowed for a good healthy debate. Everyone had a fair shot. —@Harnettshow
Others thought it lacked moderation...
One of the worst debates I’ve seen, no moderation, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/macdebate?src=hash">#macdebate</a> not worth the time, I’ll go back to watching Futurama —@phoefgen
This is the worst episode of Jeopardy I've ever seen <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/macdebate?src=hash">#macdebate</a> —@Hutch_Hogan
And Jann Arden just found it downright boring.CTV Ottawa
For many football fans in Ottawa, the blasts of the old Rough Riders horns are the sound of football in the Capital.
The horns are similar to the Vuvuzela noisemakers that became synonymous with the 2010 South Africa World Cup.
“It is part of the fabric of Ottawa football,” said John Rodenburg of TSN 1200, holding a horn. “If we're turning the page on a new era of football, maybe let's get rid of it, but if we're talking about the history of football in Ottawa, it has to include this,” he added.
The horns will be allowed at TD Place stadium for Redblacks games, but not all noisemakers will be.
Air horns and amplified noise devices will not be permitted in the stadium.
The horns are expected to come out of hiding for the Redblacks home opener on July 18.Investors who pushed up shares of General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler on a bet that Donald Trump will gut clean-air rules may have forgotten another player with a big say: California.
The state has more people and cars than any other, giving its regulators an outsize influence on what automakers build. And lest anyone think differently, California has no intention of backing away from clean-air enforcement, even if Trump undermines federal mandates, said Dan Sperling, a member of its powerful Air Resources Board.
“The ARB is definitely committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030,’’ Sperling said. “I don’t think the California effort will be much affected.’’
Carmakers have long complained of mandates that force vehicles to have fuel-saving technologies regardless of whether buyers want them. During the campaign, Trump promised to renegotiate the Paris climate accords and called the Environmental Protection Agency a disgrace for writing too many regulations. Auto stocks surged last week after the president-elect named climate change skeptic Myron Ebell to lead his EPA transition team.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, whose lineup is filled with light trucks and is the least fuel-efficient, soared the most since October 2014 on Thursday while GM gained the most in a year. Tesla Motors Inc., which produces only electric vehicles and is making a big push into solar energy, declined.
California’s role
California accounts for such a big portion of U.S. auto sales that its rules have long been a de facto national standard, and the ARB is helping design zero-emission vehicle standards in other parts of the world including China and Canada’s Quebec. The state influence will continue even if Trump slows the global fight against climate change, Sperling said. He’s concerned that “other countries will say, ‘if the U.S. is not committed, why should we invest more money in this?’’’
On Thursday, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, with two years left in his term, tweeted that California will “continue to confront the existential threat of our time -- devastating climate change.’’ ARB Chairman Mary Nichols tweeted, “California’s commitment to clean air and climate protection has been strengthened by this election.’’
Smog-plagued California enacted its first air quality standards in 1959 and demanded the right to continue doing so after Richard Nixon created the EPA a decade later. Five years ago, the state agreed to link its targets to national U.S. standards as part of President Barack Obama’s plan to boost average fuel economy to a projected 50.8 miles per gallon by 2025.
Zero-emission mandates
Until 2025, neither side can breach this agreement unilaterally. But California for now is barreling toward new rules for the following five years that would keep it on track to lower greenhouse gases by 2030 as Sperling outlined. To do that, some 40 percent of the state’s auto sales would have to be zero-emission vehicles -- ZEVs -- or gas-electric plug-ins by 2030, up from 3 percent now, according to the ARB staff’s published projections.
The California board, EPA and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are all involved in a so-called midterm review of Obama’s fuel economy targets for 2022-2025. If California’s directors decide in February to leave the 2022-2025 targets in place and start deliberations about the five-year period through 2030, it would be jumping ahead of the other two agencies and setting a mark for what it believes should happen.
“The midterm is over for us if we take that step,’’ Sperling said.
Seeking compromise
There’s still a need for cooperation between the state and federal regulators. Before California can extend its ZEV mandates beyond 2025, it will need permission from Trump or his successor -- or threaten to sue, a step it’s taken before. In the meantime, the Republican-controlled Congress could amend the Clean Air Act to remove California’s ability to set its own standard, or for other states to adopt similar plans. Congress could slash the EPA budget.
Automakers may be in a position to promote a compromise between Trump and California, since they need rules that let them sell the same cars in all 50 states, said Robert Bienenfeld, assistant vice president for environmental policy at Honda Motor Co. in the U.S.
“Maybe automakers will need to come to the defense of the EPA,’’ Bienenfeld said. “We need an enforcement agency to make sure everyone is playing by the same rules. There are lots of good rules that are broadly supported by the public. The wholesale disbandment of EPA is unthinkable.’’RIVERBANK, Stanislaus County — The Tuesday morning event was billed as “coffee and casual conversation” with Rep. Jeff Denham. But after the Turlock Republican made an 11th-hour decision to support the GOP health care bill last week, many of the 100 people lined up before the doors opened weren’t feeling casual and didn’t need caffeine to get amped up.
They wanted to know how Denham could back a bill that could lead to 109,000 of his constituents — like them — losing Medi-Cal coverage and threaten 7,000 health care jobs in a district with high unemployment. Several said Denham’s aides had told them as recently as a day before the House vote that he would oppose the bill. But on Tuesday, the congressman said some last-minute provisions made him more comfortable voting for it.
“He flipped at the last minute,” said Wayne Adler, a Manteca (San Joaquin County) resident who carried a sign that read, “Denham lies/CA (District) 10 dies.”
And while the legislation may pose serious questions about health care, a life-and-death question for some voters, it also raises real political danger for Denham.
He is one of seven California House Republicans whom Democrats are targeting in the 2018 midterm elections, in part by tying him to the health care vote and the fact that he votes in line with President Trump’s positions 100 percent of the time, according to Fivethirtyeight.com.
They hope outrage over those positions will help flip a district that Hillary Clinton won in November and Denham carried by only 8,201 votes. Then again, Democrats have been trying unsuccessfully to replace Denham since he was first elected in 2011 in a swing district where 40 percent of the popultion is Latino and the unemployment rate is 18 percent.
So while nearly every other California GOP representative is steering clear of town halls during the current congresional break, Denham showed up to explain his vote Tuesday at the 8 a.m. coffee at the Riverbank Teen Center.
Back to Gallery Swing district GOP Rep. Denham gets earful over health... 9 1 of 9 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle 2 of 9 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle 3 of 9 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle 4 of 9 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle 5 of 9 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle 6 of 9 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle 7 of 9 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle 8 of 9 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle 9 of 9 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle
“He’s a man who knows his district pretty well,” said Thomas Holyoke, a professor of political science at California State University Fresno. “The Democrats keep running at him over and over again, and he keeps winning.”
Unless the Senate passes a similar version of the House bill and Trump signs it, Holyoke doesn’t think last week’s vote will hurt Denham. “I don’t think he runs much of a risk at all if nothing ends up passing. On most issues, the public doesn’t have a very good memory,” he said.
But some people in Riverbank said Tuesday that the atmosphere has been changing since Trump’s surprise victory in November. Traditionally, there hasn’t been a lot grassroots political activism in this district, which is centered on Modesto, but that is starting to change. The Turlock branch of the grassroots progressive group Be the Change has more than 200 members in Denham’s hometown, and an immigrants rights demonstration in Modesto a few weeks ago drew 200 people.
Usually, only a handful of people turn out for Denham’s early morning coffee events, and, “They just want to talk about how bad the roads are in town,” Adler said. But few in Tuesday’s audience wanted to talk roads. They were terrified about losing their health care coverage.
And they jeered Denham when he said that last week’s vote was bipartisan.
Avonelle Tomlinson, who said she has “lived in this valley since I was 6 years old,” has fibromyalgia, arthritis and other ailments that prevent her from working full time. She survives largely on food stamps.
“I’m your constituent. I’m at your office every week. I call you. I email you. I write you letters. You’ve sent me one response,” Tomlinson told Denham. “I am suffering and you don’t care. What can you do to help me?”
“I voted for something that I thought would help my district,” Denham said.
Denham told her, “If you have Medi-Cal, you will continue to be on Medi-Cal. If you have a pre-existing condition, you’ll continue to have pre-existing coverage.” Medi-Cal is California’s version of Medicaid.
Tomlinson wasn’t buying it. She was also worried about what would happen to her roommate, who has multiple sclerosis.
“This isn’t helping anyone and you know it,” Tomlinson said. “The poor people are getting screwed.”
“How are they getting screwed?” Denham said. “You’re telling me (the bill) is cutting Medi-Cal, but you can’t tell me where. You’re telling me (your friend is) not going to be covered under pre-existing conditions, but you can’t tell me why.”
And so it went for the hour-long event.
Denham explained that he decided to support the bill after an amendment added $8 billion to help those with pre-existing conditions pay for increased premiums in states that seek waivers from that part of the law.
“That’s just a Band-Aid on a gaping wound,” said Michelle Park, a Turlock artist. “It’s not going to cover how much premiums are going to go up.”
Denham reasoned that Democrat-dominated California likely would not seek a waiver from having to comply with any mandate to cover pre-existing conditions.
“Do you think California is ever going to opt out?” Denham asked the audience. “I look at every vote from a state perspective and a (Central) Valley perspective.”
But Matt Napier told Denham that was a narrow view.
Napier, a former firefighter who can’t work because of a spinal injury, worries he will lose everything should his wife lose her job, which provides the family’s health insurance. Napier grew up in a mobile home park near Madera and wants his children to have opportunities he didn’t as a child.
“I’m worried about the poor and middle class across the country,” Napier told Denham. “This isn’t a California issue. I care about Mississippi and Alabama.”
After an hour, Denham thanked people for coming and encouraged them to have some coffee as he headed out the door.
Momeets after he left, Park stood outside the Riverbank Teen Center, shaking her head.
“Deflection, deflection, deflection, that’s all he does,” she said as she stood next to a cardboard cutout of an empty chair meant to symbolize Denham’s dearth of town hall appearances. After his heath care vote, she covered it with dozens of flip-flops. “He’s Teflon.”
Park didn’t give Denham credit for being one of the few Republicans to face constituents after the health care vote.
“That’s his job,” she said.
Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli
10th Congressional District
Area: Stanislaus County and part of San Joaquin County. Main cities include Modesto, Tracy, Manteca, Oakdale, Turlock and Ceres.
Economy: Median household income of $56,368 is below the state figure of $61,320. Agriculture is the major industry, with almonds, hay, walnuts, vegetables and poultry the top components.
Ethnic makeup: White, 46 percent; Latino, 41 percent; Asian, 8 percent; African American, 4 percent; other, 1 percent.
Politics: Democrats have a 39 percent to 36 percent registration edge, and Democrat Hillary Clinton beat Republican Donald Trump, 48 pertcent to 45 percent, in 2016. Republican incumbent Rep. Jeff Denham beat Democratic challenger Michael Eggman, 52 percent to 48 percent.
Source: Chronicle research
Video
To see a video of a constituent confronting Rep. Jeff Denham, go to http://bit.ly/2q3TeMwSTART TRANSMISSION >
Hey gunslingers. Sabine “Mixer” Murillo here, bringing you the straight feed. OP.NET is live and here for you working operators. We have to say that we are not affiliated with Crosshair or the Mercenary Guild, otherwise they’ll flip their scrim …
Sorry, um, yeah, we’ve got a show for you today. Of course, we do, right? That’s what you’re listening to. Got Skiv coming by later with an in-depth look at A&R’s Omnisky line of cannons and what’s coming down the pipe … so that’ll happen …
Job Board. Let’s get to that.
Charon System. Been told that armistice talks between the States of Acheron and Dellin on Charon III have broken down and seems like both sides are gearing up for war. We’ll have to see if the UEE decides to arbitrate, but I’m guessing there’ll be some jobs opening up there soon …
I’m sorry.
I gotta take a minute and get something off my chest. I got a comm right before we went live. Old buddy of mine from the 185th got in touch. Hadn’t spoken to Cuchillo in, I don’t know, seven years? Eight, maybe. Anyway, sent me a comm after all this time. There was another kid in our flight named Stephen Ganz. He was from some cluster-farm in Goss and a believer. Down to the core. If you put any kind of authority or certainty in your voice, you could make him believe anything you told him. Wasn’t because he was dumb. I don’t know why, but I think he just wanted to believe you. Anyway, everyone in the squadron used to exploit the hell out of it. XO christened him Doormat to the pilots, but he always took it with a smile, even after people would inevitably tell him the truth.
Doormat, Cuchillo and myself all got out around the same time and we stayed in touch on the regular for a bit. Then, very slowly, it became less regular. No reason for it neither, he just became one of those people that always seemed close until you realized he wasn’t anymore.
Last I’d heard, Doormat was having a tough time making a go of it in the normal. I remember meaning to give him a comm or stop by, but times were tight for me too and I kept putting it off.
So … long story short, I guess Stephen Ganz was killed a few days ago on Prime.
Cuchillo said last time he saw Doormat he was doing low-rent hauling runs for scraps, living in a squat somewhere in the Blocks and sharing a bathroom with thirty people in his quad. He’d gotten hooked and kicked WiDoW three times, been married and split twice, but he was still that goofy kid, believing that things were gonna turn his way. All he had to do was make it until then.
They found his body on a landing platform. Three shots to the back. Some Police Academy grad assigned to the case thought it was a cargo transfer gone bad. Maybe it was a scam or just some stupid thugs weaseling out of paying for their haul shot my friend and stuffed him between two StorAlls like a piece of trash.
My friend, who put his ship in front of incoming fire to save Retro during a moon battle in Oya.
My friend, who used to straighten peoples’ sheets before inspection.
My friend, who, despite everything, saw the best in the worst.
You didn’t deserve to check out like this.
So I just want to say to Stephen Ganz, who I let slip in life, I won’t forget you in death.
And I’ll find who did this.
Please believe that.
In fact …
I quit.An Israeli yacht crew rescued a group of Syrian and Iraqi refugees clinging to a capsized rubber dinghy adrift in the water in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea Sunday morning.
The group, sailing off the coast of Turkey, pulled 11 refugees from the water, in addition to a dead infant.
After hearing faint cries for help while boating between the Turkish town of Kas and the Greek island of Kastellorizo, members of the Ashdod-based Poseidon Sailing Club noticed an approximately 11-year-old Syrian boy floating in the water alone.
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“We pulled him out of the water and he told us his brother was missing and probably dead,” the yacht’s captain, Shlomo Asaban, told the Ynet news website.
The crew began to search for members of the boy’s family who had been aboard the sunken boat. “We rescued 12 people in all, including a dead infant,” the captain said.
“The mother said she had cradled her infant son’s body all night,” Asaban told the Hebrew-language news site.
“We realized they were Syrian and Iraqi. We gave them water and cellphones so they could contact their families, Asaban recounted. “Afterwards, we told them we were Jews from Israel, and they kissed us and said ‘Thank you,'” he added.
Another passenger on the yacht, Gal Baruch, said the dramatic rescue had been a harrowing experience for crew members.
“We’re a team who’ve spent a lot of time at sea, but we’ve never come across such a difficult scene,” he related. “The crew acted fittingly and we followed maritime law — which dictates you have to save people regardless of where they are from.
“The most difficult moment was pulling the deceased baby out of the water and watching his mother mourn him on our boat,” Baruch told Israel’s Channel 2. “That is something that will remain with me for the rest of my life.”
Baruch said crew members administered lifesaving first aid to one of the survivors, who was suffering from a heart attack and a diabetic seizure. “We gave him candy, and it saved his life,” he said.
“Let’s just say if we hadn’t been there, there wouldn’t be any survivors,” Baruch told the TV station. “It will be hard to return to normal life after this… This is something that will never leave any of us. But it’s an honor to save 11 people.”
The refugees were taken to shore and transferred to Greek authorities on Kastellorizo.
Hundreds of refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea trying to reach Greece and other locations, amid what international officials have described as a crisis.
European leaders are scrambling for solutions to manage the tide and discourage migrants — many of them refugees from the Syrian war — from risking their lives in illegal crossings run by traffickers.
On Thursday, a wooden boat carrying dozens of migrants sank near Lesbos after colliding with a Greek coast guard vessel.
Seven people, including four children, died, and the body of a woman that could be part of the same group was found on Friday.
According to Greece’s port police, the boat had apparently been attempting to flee the coast guard vessel.
Over 200 migrants have died making the perilous Aegean Sea crossing from Turkey to Greece this year.
On Wednesday, a woman, a young girl and a baby died after their boat sank off Lesbos.
Late on Thursday, EU leaders at a summit had urged Turkey to help stem the refugee flow.
More than 470,000 people have arrived in Greece, according to the IOM, most of them fleeing the civil war in Syria.
Times of Israel staff and AFP contributed to this report.The story about the teenager, which originally ran in the UK newspaper "The Jewish Chronicle," featured in the weekend editions of many German newspapers as well as the online edition of respected news magazine "Der Spiegel."
The "Chronicle" reported that 14-year-old "Phillip" (not his real name) transferred from the Gemeinschaftschule in the Friedenau district of Berlin to another school after suffering anti-Semitic abuse. The teenager was subjected to verbal harassment after revealing he was Jewish. He was also grabbed and threatened with a realistic-looking pistol that later turned out to be fake.
"Listen, you are a cool dude but I can't be friends with you," the newspaper quoted one of his former classmates as saying. "Jews are all murderers."
Read: Rent-a-Jew project hopes to ward off anti-Semitism in Germany
The mother of "Phillip" decided to send him to another high school. The teenager himself is shocked by what happened to him.
"It was terrible, but I didn't have time to think what's happening at the time," "Phillip" told "The Jewish Chronicle." "Now when I look back, I think, oh my God."
The newspaper wrote that the case "illustrates long history of antisemitic (sic) harassment of Jewish pupils, particularly by Arab and Turkish children."
Berlin schools are melting pots, but not always tolerant ones
The first incidence of anti-Semitism
Ironically, the school in question participates in the pro-tolerance initiative "Schools Without Racism - Schools With Courage." Members pledge to abide by principles of multicultural and interfaith respect, a message that seems not to have gotten through to some of "Phillip's" classmates.
In a written statement on the school's website, the school directorship said it was distressed by the incident.
"Firstly we'd like to express our regret and horror that a student was forced to experience anti-Semitism in his everyday school life," the statement read. "We are losing an especially active and high-achieving student who chose our school with joy and saw it as an opportunity to further his development."
The school said that after the first incident was reported, it had invited "Phillip's" grandparents, who witnessed the Holocaust, to talk to his class. The statement added that the school was seeking help from the pro-tolerance Salaam-Shalom initiative and the city government.
The school said that it was reporting the students who tormented "Phillip" to the police and that this was the first time it had been confronted with anti-Semitism.
School principal Uwe Runkel said he was sorry that "Phillip" had left.
"After the first incident, we addressed it," Runkel told Berlin's "Tagesspiegel" newspaper. "Now, unfortunately, we no longer have the chance to convince the boy that he's safe here. But we'll continue to address this issue, and the perpetrators will face consequences."
So is this an isolated incident of bullying carried out by historically ignorant youths? Or is anti-Semitism a widespread problem in Berlin schools with a high percentage of students from Muslim backgrounds?
Many anti-Semitic incidents are the work of the extreme right
'I'd beat up a Jew'
The story opened the floodgates for social media posts attacking Muslims and excoriating Chancellor Angela Merkel's welcoming stance toward refugees. In fact, there was no indication that any of the tormentors came from refugee families, and anti-Semitic attacks on Jews in Germany are carried out not just by Muslims, but by right-wing extremists as well. Nor is the problem in general restricted to Germany.
On the other hand, there is no denying that anti-Semitic thought and speech is common among some Muslim students in some German schools. Activists have been drawing attention to the problem for years.
"Because of concrete cases of mobbing and a general climate of anti-Semitic expressions of hostility, some students prefer to go to non-public, Jewish schools," the director of the American Jewish Committee in Berlin, Deidre Berger, told the "Bild am Sonntag" newspaper in March 2015.
In May of that year, the Deutschlandfunk radio station recorded students from Muslim backgrounds at one Berlin school saying things like: "If a Jew enters our school, he'll get beaten up - I'd beat him up too."
"The Jewish Chronicle" quoted Aaron Eckstaedt, principal of the Moses Mendelssohn Jewish High School in Berlin, saying that "six to 10" parents a year tried to move their children there to escape anti-Semitic harassment.
And the problem is by no means confined to the German capital.
Experts say one-sided views on the Middle East conflict are one problem
Jewish teachers afraid
The Deutschlandfunk report also featured Jewish teachers from Berlin and elsewhere in Germany saying that they were afraid to reveal their religion to their students.
"There was a student who told me: 'If I saw a Jew, I'd immediately kill him,'" one teacher from northern Germany told the radio station on the condition of anonymity. "And he meant it."
The abuse caused one teacher in Berlin to address an angry public letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders complaining about anti-Semitism in Berlin's schools. Berlin authorities say they are aware of the problem and acknowledge that the word "Jew" is frequently used as an insult in some of the German capital's schools.
There was a flurry of interest in the topic in 2015, when the German-Israel Youth Congress was held in Berlin, but the public attention quickly dissipated. Other incidents of anti-Semitism in Berlin schools were reported last year. According to the website report-antisemitism.de, members of the Jewish Forum for Democracy and against Anti-Semitism (JFDA) were called "child murderers" when they visited a school in the heavily Muslim district of Neukölln in May 2016. The JFDA said they had never before experienced such crass anti-Semitism among students.
There are no official statistics on anti-Semitic incidents specifically in Berlin schools, although the Research and Information Office on Anti-Semitism in Berlin recorded 470 such incidents generally in Berlin last year. Experts say the problem of anti-Semitism in schools stems partly from the conflicts in the Middle East and young people's susceptibility to conspiracy theories.
"The Middle East conflict is a big concern of these young people, but their knowledge of the issues is very one-sided," Islamism expert Ahmad Monsour told the "Tagesspiegel" in 2015. "It quickly turns into anti-Semitism. It's easy to say the Jews are to blame for everything."The only thing in NYC that's more mind-boggling than our real estate market is our parking situation. Try to explain the concept of alternate-side parking to a non-New Yorker, and you'll see what we mean.
That's why we were intrigued to hear about a new app called Spot Pog, via DNA Info. The free app — which is available everywhere in NYC — allows people to "swap" public parking spaces for credit.
You track open (or soon-to-open) parking spots within the app. Drivers earn virtual currency, or "pogs," every time they alert another user that they're about to vacate a spot (the company suggests you let people know 15 minutes before you leave your spot). Credits can be used to claim a soon-to-be-free spot later on.
But the app is particularly useful to outer borough residents who own driveways, as it allows them to rent out a parking spot to drivers who may not |
mates. But these direct, not-exactly-revolutionary tales of love could also shadow as political cries. Again, not something you’d expect from London Grammar. But sticking to their student roots, they manage to relate the anxiety of growing up into an increasingly uncertain world.
The album title, ‘Truth Is A Beautiful Thing’, could be perceived as a retort to the era of fake news, but that’s something they deny. “It’s funny how it’s coinciding, people keep asking about that!” Rothman laughs. “I don’t think it was purposeful, [but] it’s funny how art, music or literature can reflect the time without even necessarily intending to do so.” Back into diplomatic mode, Reid makes it clear the trio aren’t a “political band”, saying, “I don’t know enough to be able to preach about anything.”
Still, between being interviewed and having their photo taken, they keep chatting about UK politics, their love of Jeremy Corbyn, and fears for the future. After all, it’s hard not to pick up a front page these days without getting slightly anxious about tyrannical leaders or nuclear Armageddon. Final studio sessions for the album took place when Donald Trump was being inaugurated – “Cheery times,” as Rothman jokes. Even subconsciously, a sense of fear rubs off on the record. There’s so much more going on than emotive break-up bangers.
The reason why London Grammar can never be pigeonholed: there’s always something else bubbling under the surface. And it’s easy to misunderstand what they’re about. They’re in the pop sphere, but they don’t write wall-to-wall hits. They’re signed to dance label Ministry of Sound, but they don’t soundtrack Ibiza club nights. “We’re in the middle,” vocalist Reid astutely admits. The in-between is often a risky space to work in, and it’s why many are still trying to figure out this band. Reid looks at their place in the world – not pop, not dance, just somewhere in-between – and calls it “the hardest game of chess ever”.
The trio are more than happy to fill their own niche, but staying there is the tough part. The challenge with ‘Truth Is A Beautiful Thing’ was twofold – to keep their heads and not get turned by success, and to stay in their own unique lane while finding out who they really are. It’s a test they’ve passed with flying colours, so far. If Elon Musk is right and the world really is a simulation, here’s hoping a game-changing next chapter is already written in the sand.For my entire lifetime conservatives have been told that their only home was the Republican party, and that any move for a third or new party would lead to Democrat majorities until the end of time. Given what has happened in the aftermath of Republican’s pathetic attempt to repeal the ACA, it is time to take that chance.
For the past 4 election cycles, every single Republican has campaigned on repealing Obamacare and instituting free-market reforms in its place. They claimed to need control of the House to fight its implementation; they received their majority, they caved. But that was just because they needed control of the Senate; they obtained control of the Senate, they caved. But that was only because they didn’t have the Presidency; now they have the Presidency, what did they do?
Well, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and a few Republican “leaders” concocted a bill in secret that would have had the effect of crippling the ACA’s funding mechanisms, while leaving in place the regulations and mandates that have been responsible for the massive increase in premiums and deductibles. Then the leadership swiftly pushed the bill to the floor with minimal opportunity for debate or amendment, and presented it to the House as a binary choice between that and Obamacare. When conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus made it plain that they could not support the bill, Speaker Ryan pulled it and a party-wide witch hunt began against the members of the Freedom Caucus. No compromise, no debate, no attempt to recraft the bill; the Republican leaders did what they have done for the past 6 years: they wrote a terrible piece of legislation, bypassed the usual legislative process and demanded that conservatives support it or else. Well, I think it’s about time for “else”.
How many more times are conservatives going to accept the treatment we receive from the Republican party? Every two years conservatives turn out in droves to vote for whatever crap candidate the Republicans have decided to foist upon us. Every legislative session those crap candidates and their crap leaders make a minimal effort to push an agenda that is only marginally more conservative than the Democrat’s would be, and give up after a moment’s difficulty. These people, none of these people, deserve our support any longer. No matter the cost, conservatives must end this cycle or there is no hope for the nation.
Even if it means 20 years of Democrat rule, conservatives must rid Washington of every Paul Rya, Mitch McConnell, and yes even Donald Trump. In many ways these fools are worse then the Democrats; at least the Democrats are honest about what they want to do, and are willing to fight to achieve it. What has Paul Ryan ever fought for? How many times has he winged about reforming entitlements, only to craft a budget that takes one set of Social Security IOU’s and moves them to a different part of Social Security? How many times has Mitch McConnell promised that he will do whatever is necessary to ensure Neil Gorsuch is confirmed? Does anyone really believe that he will remove the filibuster if Democrats use it?
And for those of you who thought that Trump would be the Avatar of rage against the Establishment, what has he done to unseat Paul Ryan and enact a conservative legislative agenda? He spent a couple of weeks demanding that the awful Establishment-crafted replacement for Obamacare be passed, and then turned his guns on the conservatives as soon as it failed. If you really want to destroy the Establishment, if you really want to get rid of those pieces of human debris who fight conservatives at every turn, but refuse to battle the Democrats, then you must destroy the Republican Party. That is the only option. Until each and every Republican hack politician and staffer finds himself jobless and partyless, they will continue to give conservatives the shaft. I say it’s high time we stop bending over and taking it.
AdvertisementsHOUSTON — Ryan Gassett had already put in a full day, moving heavy boxes and furniture for $15 an hour, when his introductory welding class began at 10 p.m. By the time he arrived at Lone Star College north of Houston, the highway toll collectors at the exit for the school had closed for the night and the campus janitors were mopping bathrooms.
The graveyard-shift course was not his first choice, Mr. Gassett, 19, explained, but “there were no other openings.” So he took what he could get.
In recent decades, welding — like other blue-collar trades that once provided high-school graduates with a reliable route to the middle class — seemed to have about as promising a future as rotary phones. But many of these once-faltering occupations are finding new life in Texas and the Gulf Coast region, where an industrial revival built around the energy boom continues to spawn petrochemical plants and miles of new pipeline despite the plunge in crude oil prices.WASHINGTON (AFP) - The National Security Agency chief said on Tuesday (Sept 13) he was "perplexed" over Twitter's move to block US intelligence from accessing data which may help thwart violent attack plots.
NSA director Michael Rogers made the comments at a congressional hearing in response to Senator John McCain's criticism of Twitter for refusing access to a real-time analytics service called Dataminr.
McCain queried Rogers about a Wall Street Journal report in May that Twitter had blocked intelligence agencies from using Dataminr, which uses algorithms and location tools to reveal patterns among tweets.
The veteran senator said the report indicated that Dataminr had alerted its clients minutes before this year's Brussels attacks and at the time the November Paris attacks began to unfold.
"So we have a situation where we have the ability to detect terror attacks... Yet in order to for us to anticipate these attacks we have to have certain information, and Twitter is refusing to allow them to have certain information which literally could prevent attacks?" the senator who heads the Armed Services Committee asked.
Admiral Rogers replied: "Yes sir, and at the same time (Twitter is) still willing to provide that information to others for business, for sale, for revenue."
He added, "I'm perplexed by their approach in this particular incident... Clearly, I wish I had a better understanding, and perhaps there are insights that I am not aware of."
McCain then said of Twitter: "So shame on them."
Twitter has said it allows both government and business to use the data, as long as it is not for "surveillance" purposes.
Media reports have said that Twitter, which owns a stake in Dataminr, did not want to appear to be too close to US intelligence.
"Dataminr uses public tweets to sell breaking news alerts to media organisations and government agencies, for non-surveillance purposes," a Twitter spokesman said in a statement.
"Due to privacy concerns, we have not authorised Dataminr or any third party to sell data to a government or intelligence agency for surveillance purposes. This is a longstanding Twitter policy, not a new development."
The dispute involving Twitter is the latest between US tech firms and the government over the degree of cooperation in fighting crime and other violence, in view of privacy concerns.
The statement added that Twitter "responds to valid legal process issued in compliance with applicable law, and our most recent transparency report shows over 5,000 US government information requests in 2015 alone."20 Pages Posted: 20 Jun 2017
Date Written: June 19, 2017
Abstract
America has been at war continuously for over 15 years, but few Americans seem to notice. This is because the vast majority of citizens have no direct connection to those soldiers fighting, dying, and returning wounded from combat. Increasingly, a divide is emerging between communities whose young people are dying to defend the country, and those communities whose young people are not. In this paper we empirically explore whether this divide—the casualty gap—contributed to Donald Trump’s surprise victory in November 2016. The data analysis presented in this working paper finds that indeed, in the 2016 election Trump was speaking to this forgotten part of America. Even controlling in a statistical model for many other alternative explanations, we find that there is a significant and meaningful relationship between a community’s rate of military sacrifice and its support for Trump. Our statistical model suggests that if three states key to Trump’s victory – Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin – had suffered even a modestly lower casualty rate, all three could have flipped from red to blue and sent Hillary Clinton to the White House. There are many implications of our findings, but none as important as what this means for Trump’s foreign policy. If Trump wants to win again in 2020, his electoral fate may well rest on the administration’s approach to the human costs of war. Trump should remain highly sensitive to American combat casualties, lest he become yet another politician who overlooks the invisible inequality of military sacrifice. More broadly, the findings suggest that politicians from both parties would do well to more directly recognize and address the needs of those communities whose young women and men are making the ultimate sacrifice for the country.LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Firefighters battled on Saturday to gain control of a destructive wildfire burning near Santa Barbara, California that mushroomed in size overnight, pushed by gusty offshore winds into dry brush that has not burned in decades.
The Whittier Fire, which broke out July 8 and has already destroyed eight homes, had been more than 50 percent contained on Friday before so-called “Sundowner” winds picked up in the evening, according to a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) website.
Nearly 3,000 people who were forced to flee their homes near Cachuma Lake and the community of Goleta remained under evacuation orders as fire officials said another evening of Sundowners could drive the flames toward populated areas.
“The fire continues burning in an area above the community of Goleta and crews continue to build containment and contingency lines to hold the fire in check,” Cal Fire said on the Inciweb fire-tracking website. “The east and west flanks of the fire continue to burn towards established containment lines.”
More than 1,600 firefighters were working the blaze, assisted by water-dropping planes and helicopters. Highway 154 was shut down in both directions and the Los Padres National Park was closed to the public. Evacuation shelters were opened at a high school in Goleta.
The conflagration, which had blackened 17,364 acres along California’s scenic central coast as of Saturday afternoon, was being fed by brush and vegetation that had not burned since 1955, according to fire officials.
“The combination of old, dry fuels with a newly cured heavy grass crop contributed to the rapid growth of this fire,” Cal Fire said. “Large, old oak trees are continuing to burn well after the fire has past, leaving hazardous snags along highways and firelines.”
The Whittier Fire is among more than 50 large, active wildfires burning across the U.S. West as forecasters warned that hot, dry conditions could persist, creating tinderbox conditions.
Red flag warnings were issued for Northern California and parts of other states, where the National Weather Service said temperatures could reach above 90 degrees Fahrenheit 32 degrees Celsius) and winds to gust 50 miles (80 km) per hour.
Slideshow (3 Images)
Flames have charred more than twice as much land in California so far in 2017 compared with a year earlier, according to Cal Fire.
Still, firefighters have made significant gains against the so-called Wall Fire, which had damaged or destroyed 44 homes in Butte County and more than 60 other structures, calling it mostly contained as of Saturday.
The Alamo Fire, which charred some 29,000 acres and destroyed at least one home in San Luis Obispo County, was said to be 92 percent contained as of Saturday morning.JERUSALEM, July 19 (Reuters) - Legislation that Israel’s Arab citizens fear could limit their freedom of speech came a step closer on Sunday to becoming law.
The bill, proposed by a legislator from the ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu party of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, would withhold government money from any state-supported institutions that fund activity deemed detrimental to the state.
Such activity includes "rejecting Israel’s existence as the state of the Jewish people" and supporting "armed struggle or terrorist acts" against Israel.
A ministerial committee approved the bill, clearing the way for its presentation to parliament for future debate and voting.
The legislation is a watered down version of a proposed law that would have made it a criminal offence to commemorate the "Nakba" on Israel’s independence day. The term refers to what Palestinians describe as the catastrophe they suffered when Israel was created in 1948.
About 1.5 million, or 20 percent, of the country’s citizens are Arabs of Palestinian origin.
Leaders of the Israeli Arab community have been outspoken in rejecting any definition of Israel as a Jewish state and in supporting their Palestinian brethren’s statehood aspirations in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israeli Arab lawmaker Ahmed Tibi described the bill as "Lieberman’s thought police running amok and dragging the entire government with it."
Tibi said "hatred of Arabs has caused the government to lose its mind".
Criminal penalties in an earlier draft of the bill were removed at the request of several ministers. (Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Jon Boyle)Tesla CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that his company is in the middle of negotiations with the Chinese government on the possibility of manufacturing its cars in the country. Without jumping into specific details of the negotiations, Musk hinted that if the Chinese government gives the thumbs up on allowing a manufacturing plant in the country, prices of its models could potentially drop by around 33 percent.
The California-based automaker is determined to gain a stronger hold in the Chinese market, knowing full well the benefits of being a player in the country. So far, sales of Tesla models in China have been tepid at best and Musk is determined to increase that number. From January to September 2015, Tesla has sold just 3,025 units of the Model S in China, and while that may be an admirable number in another country, that’s far from what can be characterized as decent volume in a country China’s size.
Having a manufacturing facility in China could open that sales floodgate for the company. But getting there will take a lot of work, and in the Chinese government’s case, a lot of convincing. One potential roadblock is the government’s requirement for a foreign automaker to establish a joint venture with a Chinese company just so the automaker can build cars in the country. So far, Musk hasn’t said anything pertaining to progress on its negotiations with the government.
It is imperative that Tesla boosts its sales in China considering the massive investments it has made in other divisions, particularly its $5 billion battery factory in Nevada. Without the strength of the Chinese market to boost its volume, Tesla has already been forced to slash off roughly 30 percent of its 600 employees in the U.S. It’s not a given that a Chinese plant will reverse its sales fortune in China, but at the very least, it’s going to help drive up production, and just as important, brand recognition among Chinese customers.
Continue reading for the full story.Through seven games, the Buffalo Bills are outpacing their 2013 squad in penalties.
The Bills rank third in the NFL with 61 penalties for 527 yards. Entering Week 8 last season, the Bills ranked seventh with 52 penalties for 452 yards.
Buffalo has good company atop the penalty leaderboard, however. Five of the NFL's 10 most-penalized teams have winning records, including the 5-2 New England Patriots, who lead all teams with 63 penalties this season.
Here is a look at the most penalized Bills players:
PENALTY LEADERBOARD
DE Jerry Hughes -- 7
CB Leodis McKelvin -- 6
S Duke Williams -- 4
CB Stephon Gilmore -- 4
G Cyril Richardson -- 4
TE Lee Smith -- 3
WR Sammy Watkins -- 3
(10 tied with 2 apiece)
PENALTY BREAKDOWN
Holding (offensive) -- 11
Holding (defensive) -- 9
Pass interference (defensive) -- 8
Offsides (defensive) -- 8
False start -- 7
Unnecessary roughness -- 4
Illegal formation -- 4Subsidizing hugely profitable companies is a good idea why again?
President Obama is leading the charge on ending taxpayer subsidies to the massively profitable oil companies. This week, the Senate voted in a procedural vote on Senate bill 2204, the Repeal Big Oil Subsidies Act, to do just that. The vote was a lopsided 92-4 but that’s not because Senate Republicans actually want to end these subsidies. It’s because, for some reason, they think this is a winning issue for them and that it will go down in flames in the end while making the Obama administration look bad in light of rising gas prices.
The Obama administration smartly disagrees. They want to have this national conversation. Why? Because rising gas prices are tracking corporate profits quite nicely as it turns out. In other words, the only ones taking a hit on the rising cost of oil are consumers, not the oil companies.
As I have said before, the main reason for the current spike in oil prices is due to speculation. Have a look at this chart:
Click for larger version, chart courtesy of Obama for America
Democrats, led by Senator Bernie Sanders, are trying include limits on oil speculation on Wall Street. It’s doubtful that they will get it, however, because Republicans are well funded by the oil industry and there are a few oil-funded Democrats that will likely join them. That’s what happened the last time they tried this.
But the Obama administration is smart to force this public debate. They are making the Republicans admit that they side with Big Oil and not American gas consumers. They, like anyone paying attention and with an ounce of common sense, know that subsidizing hugely profitable oil companies is a waste of precious taxpayer money and that allowing wild speculation that profits only Wall Street bankers and traders at the expense of the rest of us is ridiculous. Taking away those subsidies and redirecting some of that money toward sustainable, renewable energy sources is smart energy policy. If your argument that this is “picking winners and losers” and that is wrong, I suggest to you that the current massive subsidies to Big Oil is already a policy of picking winners. Or, in this case, “a winner”.
Here’s President Obama’s statement on Senate Bill 2204:
The Administration supports Senate passage of S. 2204, which would repeal $21 billion in special tax breaks for oil and gas companies over 10 years. The Nation’s outdated tax laws currently provide the oil and gas industry billions of dollars per year in these subsidies, even though the industry is reporting outsized profits. Furthermore, heads of the major oil companies have in the past made it clear that high oil prices provide more than enough profit motive to invest in domestic exploration and production without special tax breaks. In making the tough choices necessary for deficit reduction, the Nation simply cannot afford these wasteful subsidies, and that is why the President has proposed to eliminate them in his past three budgets as well as in his framework for business tax reform. This money can be better spent promoting domestic manufacturing, encouraging the development of clean energy technologies that will reduce our dependence on oil, and cutting the deficit. In addition, S. 2204 is consistent with elements of the President’s Budget such as the reauthorization of the section 48C advanced energy manufacturing credit and the extension of the section 1603 program. Together, these important provisions support projects that will increase the Nation’s production of domestic clean energy and encourage investment in factories that will manufacture cutting-edge energy technologies here in the United States. There is no silver bullet when it comes to high gas prices, which is why the Administration has consistently advocated for an “all-of-the-above” approach when it comes to the Nation’s energy policy. By ending taxpayer subsidies to large oil companies and investing part of that money in a clean energy industry that has never been more promising, S. 2204 is consistent with that approach.
[Oil drop image credit: Chris Savage | Eclectablog]TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Hondurans spilled into the streets of the capital on Monday night, banging pots and pans and joining rebel police in defiance of a curfew imposed after a presidential election that was heavily criticized by the Organization of American States.
Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernandez celebrates with supporters as he cited exit polls to declare himself winner in the presidential election in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, November 26, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido
Some police officers abandoned their posts and joined carnival-like demonstrations that erupted across the city hours after night fell and the curfew was supposed to have begun.
A statement issued in the name of the National Police said the officers were upset with the government over a political crisis that was not their responsibility.
“Our people are sovereign,” said a member of the elite Cobra riot police, reading the statement. “We cannot confront and repress their rights.”
Authorities finished counting votes on Monday after a week of increasingly widespread criticism about the Nov. 26 election, with Organization of American States (OAS) lending credence to opposition claims the government manipulated the results to ensure a win.
“The tight margin, along with the irregularities, errors and systematic problems that have surrounded this election, does not allow the mission to be certain about the results,” said former Bolivian President Jorge Quiroga, heading the OAS election observation mission in the Central American country.
Electoral authorities said President Juan Orlando Hernandez won 42.98 percent of the vote, compared with opposition challenger Salvador Nasralla’s 41.39 percent, based on 99.96 percent of ballot boxes tallied.
However, authorities refrained from declaring a winner, with Nasralla’s center-left opposition Alliance demanding a wide recount of nearly a third of votes, a request backed by the OAS and European Union election observers.
Lending more support to that view, a leader of rebellious Cobra riot police told reporters the country wanted a vote-by-vote recount to clarify the results, and called on the armed forces to come out in support of the police protest.
The Alliance, which claims that results sheets from ballot boxes were altered, is expected to formally contest the results.
President Hernandez, who has been praised by the United States for his crackdown on street gangs, also refrained from calling himself the winner on Monday, despite claiming victory several times since the election.
“I make a call for peace, for brotherhood, for sanity, for national unity,” he told reporters.
In a striking sign of support for Hernandez, 49, the U.S. State Department cleared the way for Honduras to receive millions of dollars in U.S. aid two days after the election, certifying that the government has been fighting corruption and upholding human rights, a document seen by Reuters showed.
Related Coverage OAS says Honduran vote results in doubt due to 'irregularities'
POLICE UNIT DISOBEYS
The government was struggling to contain the fallout from the chaos on Monday evening.
Even former TV star Nasralla joined a crowd of boisterous supporters, jumping up and down in a tan suit while flashing peace signs and joining a chant of “the dictatorship will fall,” a video posted on Twitter showed.
The additional powers granted to the army and police including the nighttime curfew from Friday were intended to stem the protests and have led to more than a thousand arrests. Up to 12 people have been killed in the protests or during the curfew.
Tens of thousands peacefully took to the streets on Sunday in a show of force for the opposition.
The police revolt began when more than 200 members of the Cobras refused to carry on battling protesters, saying it was tantamount to taking sides. Nasralla has repeatedly called on the security forces to ignore orders.
“We are rebelling,” said one of the policemen, who covered his face in a ski mask and declined to give his name. “We call on all the police nationally to act with their conscience.”
They soon had the support of other units, with reports that their protests had spread to other cities.
The police also said they were angry about the death of two colleagues shot while they were enforcing the curfew on Sunday night, an attack a spokesman said was unrelated to the election protests.
Two civilian protesters were killed in the capital overnight, their relatives said, although authorities did not confirm the deaths.
The OAS called for peaceful protests, said politicians must not incite violence and that security forces must respect human rights.
Last week, at least three people were killed as soldiers broke up protesters’ blockades. One police source and local reports said five more had been shot dead in the north of the country on Friday. The deaths have not been confirmed by authorities.
‘STOLEN’
Early last week, Nasralla, a 64-year-old former sportscaster and game show host, appeared set for an upset victory, gaining a five-point lead with more than half of the ballots tallied.
The counting process suddenly halted for more than a day and began leaning in favor of Hernandez after resuming.
Slideshow (9 Images)
Opposition leaders on Monday showed a sample of their own records of polling that did not match with the tribunal’s.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accused the United States of backing vote fraud in Honduras, while the U.S. embassy on Monday called for a “transparent, impartial, and opportune election result.”
Honduras struggles with violent drug gangs, one of world’s highest murder rates and endemic poverty, driving a tide of its people to migrate to the United States.Nitpicking is the act of removing nits (the eggs of lice, generally head lice) from the host's hair. As the nits are cemented to individual hairs, they cannot be removed with most lice combs and before modern chemical methods were invented, the only options were to shave all the host's hair or to pick them free one by one.
This is a slow and laborious process, as the root of each individual hair must be examined for infestation. It was largely abandoned as modern chemical methods became available; however, as lice populations can and do develop resistance, manual nitpicking is still often necessary.
Metaphor [ edit ]
As nitpicking inherently requires fastidious, meticulous attention to detail, the term has become appropriated to describe the practice of meticulously searching for minor, even trivial errors in detail (often referred to as "nits" as well). Thus "nitpicking" may be a pejorative term for troubleshooting, proofreading or similar, whose excess could be a psychopathologic form of criticising, see hypercriticism.
See also [ edit ]DETROIT -- The Washington Redskins learned a valuable lesson Sunday. They showed their typical resolve. Their quarterback showed a thing or two, leading a comeback.
But they couldn’t close out the game late, largely because of mistakes made earlier in a 20-17 loss to the Detroit Lions. You can’t go on the road and have your starting running back fumble twice, including once in the end zone. The Redskins had another fumble when center Spencer Long was pushed back into quarterback Kirk Cousins on a third-and-1.
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Suddenly, the Redskins have reached a crucial point in their season. They have tight end Jordan Reed still sidelined with a concussion. Left tackle Trent Williams was hurt late Sunday and cornerback Josh Norman also left with a concussion. Meanwhile, the Redskins have to travel to London on Thursday night. Not a good time.
“We’re still a pretty good team here,” Redskins receiver DeSean Jackson said. “To be in dog fights with teams we feel we should be winning easily is definitely frustrating. We have a lot of good players on this team. We should be winning, not struggling. That’s something we have to figure out as a team.”
But they have a bigger issue with running back Matt Jones and his continued problems with ball security. He fumbled once when not hit -- another concentration lapse -- but recovered. However, he also fumbled into the end zone in the first half when he was around the 2-yard line. After that play, Jones wasn’t much of a factor and finished with just 10 carries for 27 yards. More yards are available, but he’s not consistently getting them. That’s OK if he’s growing, but if he’s not getting those yards and fumbling as well? That’s not going to help.
"It's extremely disappointing, especially when you beat yourself. That's the hardest part to deal with," Redskins left tackle Trent Williams, dealing with a hyperextended left knee, said of the loss.
Kirk Cousins did his part to leading the Redskins on a late surge, but the game really was lost much earlier. Gregory Shamus/Getty Images
Yes, the defense caved late. It let Detroit drive 75 yards in six plays, offering little resistance. It let the Lions win a game the Redskins nearly snatched, dropping them to 4-3 and snapping a four-game winning streak. The defense was playing without Norman, and that made a difference on the last series, but that wasn’t the only reason this one got away.
The defense, for the most part, did a solid job -- good enough to win with more help. The Redskins know what their defense is about; it's an improving and smart group but not one that will just shut a good offense down all game.
The sad part for Washington is that it wasted two terrific series by the offense led by Cousins. He had shown what he needed to, leading what seemed to be a game-winning drive. He delivered with clutch throws and ran the final 19 yards for a score. Cousins has slowly improved this season, and this would have been the sort of game that boosted his confidence.
But this game was lost early. It was Jones’ fumble. It was the fumbled exchange. It was kicker Dustin Hopkins, who usually is automatic, bouncing a 45-yard field goal attempt off the upright for his first miss of less than 50 yards this season.
"If we played like we did in the fourth quarter, the game would have been different," Redskins right guard Brandon Scherff said.
The Redskins want to be taken seriously. One game does not derail their season, but they certainly had a chance to write a different narrative Sunday. There's not much margin for error in the NFL. That's why it's important to take care of business early if you want to win late.A key responsibility of any politician should be to act as a facilitator, helping to build the foundations from which citizens can make the most of the opportunities given to them to make their own lives better. This is how I see my role on parliament's international trade committee. It is the duty of MEPs to advance the opening up of trading relationships with other parts of the world as far as possible, providing the means by which our businesses can flourish.
Never was this more evident than now, as the transatlantic trade and investment partnership (TTIP) negotiations continue. As part of this process, parliament is debating its report on recommendations to the commission. My recommendations are simple; this is a defining moment for the EU and we must push for a comprehensive deal in one undertaking. A fully implemented TTIP deal could benefit the EU by €119bn a year, which means that every day a TTIP deal is not signed costs the union €330m.
These benefits can be achieved in various ways, such as by lowering tariffs, removing non-tariff barriers to trade and opening up investment opportunities. Streamlining trade in this way is especially beneficial for our small and medium-sized enterprises, the lifeblood of our economy and key to its recovery.
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While many people dispute the studies showing the potential benefits of a future deal, it is difficult to deny that duplicative testing requirements impose costs on businesses that prevent them from expanding their export markets, for example. This is particularly frustrating when standards on both sides of the Atlantic are similarly high.
My colleagues and I cannot afford to miss the opportunity we have. However, as has been well documented, there are concerns circulating about TTIP, most notably about the investor to state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism.
Many of these concerns are unfounded and are used as excuses for underlying opposition to any deal. Non-discriminatory treatment of investors, which rapporteur Bernd Lange cites in his draft report as being an essential part of the deal, can only be guaranteed by an arbitration mechanism such as ISDS.
Opponents of ISDS worry about large American multinationals suing European governments but what is not discussed is protection for our own European companies, which is vital in fostering the confidence for them to invest abroad.
While nobody is claiming that ISDS as it currently stands is perfect, ruling it out completely at this stage is a red line that will harm negotiations. European trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström recently outlined the college's continued support for the inclusion of ISDS in TTIP, with the provision that it will seek to suggest improvements along the lines of those identified following the public consultation last year. Judgement on ISDS should be delayed until we know what an improved mechanism will look like.
The public consultation also plays into a wider debate about the transparency of the negotiations, again an aspect which has come in for some heavy criticism. Following a slightly reserved start we are now seeing the most transparent free trade negotiations to have been conducted by the EU, following the commission's recent transparency initiative.
Negotiations by their very nature must contain an element of secrecy in order to avoid competitive disadvantage and while it is not practical to expect complete transparency of all texts, the European commission is heading in the right direction.
These TTIP negotiations could be a make or break moment for the EU's trade policy - does the EU take trade seriously and is it open for business? It is vital that the European parliament plays a constructive role in making them a success, sending a positive message on our ambition and hopes for a comprehensive TTIP deal that can deliver.I've made a number of changes that may improve performance, namely if you're piping objects to the script from AD itself, but a few other small tweaks. I've also added in a paramter that takes an array of explicit UNC paths, with examples listed. If you tried one of your known shares via an explicit path, does it work any differently? Also, I realized the runspaces in use require PowerShell 2.0 or greater, so if you're calling the script from a Win Server 2008 you should update your PowerShell framework version for it to work (or from XP / Vista as well). Also, do you have actual access to the shares you're scanning? If all else fails, test if the file recursion itself is working by setting $path="UNCPATH you want, with no trailing \, then run: $mypath=$path + "\*DECRYPT*" $fileslist=@(ge t-childitem -path $mypath -Recurse -ErrorAction Ignore) -- what does $fileslist show after? It should show all matches for *DECRYPT* found in the $path. Feel free to e-mail my gmail with further details if this seems off.File photo of Islamic State group members. (Associate Press)
© Thomson Reuters 2015
The White House said on Tuesday the United States would like to see Russia engage constructively with the international coalition fighting Islamic State militants in Syria, rather than build up its own military presence there.White House spokesman Josh Earnest said President Barack Obama had not spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the issue but would attempt to do so when the president "determines that it would advance our interests."The two countries have been in frequent communication. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov by phone on Tuesday, the State Department said, in their third conversation since Sept. 5.The State Department said Kerry made clear that Russia's support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad "risks exacerbating and extending the conflict, and undermining our shared goal of fighting extremism if we do not also remain focussed on finding a solution to the conflict in Syria via a genuine political transition."Russia's Foreign Ministry said Lavrov had stressed the need to create a united front to battle terrorist groups in Syria.US officials have voiced concern about Russia's increasing military presence in Syria, saying it appears to be aimed at strengthening the government of Assad, a longtime Russian ally, rather than seeking a transition to a new political leadership."What we would prefer to see from the Russians is a more constructive engagement with the 60-member coalition that's led by the United States that's focussed on degrading and ultimately destroying ISIS," Earnest told a briefing, using an acronym |
what was in your vault or not. If you've mysteriously had Vault insist that an item is protected when it isn't showing up as such, then this update will fix that issue.* New module that stops items from being destroyed if they're in your vault. This new feature essentially renders the need to use Blizzard's item restore unnecessary! If you use Vault to protect all your valued items, you'll now never accidentally sell them or destroy them!* The selling functionality has now been separated out into its own module, so if you only want the functionality which stops you from accidentally destroying items or vice versa, then you have that choice.* The confirmation dialogues for the Blizz Options module wipe button tended to appear behind the options dialogue sometimes, depending on where on your screen it was. This isn't great design. So I've taken the confirmation dialogues away for now, they work on first click.* In relation to the above, the BlizzOptions, SlashCommand, and DataBroker modules all now have a way to restore your Vault database. It keeps a backup of the session vault, so if you accidentally wipe it (as a friend of mine did) or you mess it up somehow, you can just restore from that backup.* A number of other bug fixes and optimisations to deal with possible erroneous Vault item lists. And just a general code cleanup overall. Getting Vault to where I want it to be, now.- 4.3.018I've reorganised the folder so that disabling modues is easier, you no longer have to delete them, you can instead just turn them off in the Addons menu panel before logging in.Please delete the Vault folder before upgrading to this version. Thanks.- 4.3.017I've added a tooltip module. This adds 'Vault Protected' to the tooltips of items which are in your vault so that you can see that even when selling.- 4.3.016So, I tried loading Vault on its own to see if I had the embeds right. Everything but the Blizzard Options module - of course. So I've fixed up the embeds for that.So now Vault will load on its own without issue. I had a FUN TIME going through AceGUI to see exactly which elements were necessary and which weren't, because I'll be damned if I'll load files that I don't need to. :|There's even a part in AceConfig that tries to force you to load AceConfigCmd and that's just not cool. They really need to modularise that stuff so that AceConfigCmd is optional. Well, that's dealt with.I kind of wish that there were a library for Blizz Options stuff out there that wasn't like pulling teeth.- 4.3.015Had a useless line of code in the Blizzard Options module. It was bothering me.- 4.3.014Ffff. I screwed up the zip. The previous version was actually working for me, so there are no changes in this. I just happened to screw up the zip. Derp. I blame it being version 13. So it is no longer version 13!- 4.3.013Small optimisation for the Blizzard Options Module. I realised that there was one table I could nil once I was done with it (once the options frame closed). No need to leave that hanging around in memory if it's not being used.- 4.3.012In this version I've made the Blizzard Options Module a bit more responsive. Essentially, the following will occur:- Add button will update to notify you of a successful addition.- Add button will tell you if you're trying to add an item that's already in your vault.- Wipe button tells you that your vault has been successfully wiped.- Buttons return to their original names when the Blizz Options frame closes.I already had the add button tell you if you were clicking it without an item on your cursor, so it wasn't a big issue to update the module to include this extra functionality.Oh, and in the previous version, the add button would work like an add/remove toggle, that was an unintended 'feature' that isn't in this version - this version behaves how you would expect it to, given what the UI says.- 4.3.011I wasn't satisfied with the quarter-arsed way I implemented the slash command system for controlling Vault, and I also wasn't happy that the slash command stuff was part of the core mod. So I ripped that out, redid it, modularised everything, and now? Now there's a prettified and far better slash command system, and a Blizzard Options module (AceConfig-3.0 based) too, because I could.See the description for details!- 4.3.010I dislike code detritius, and I noticed that there were a couple of variables lying around from teh previous rewrite that were no longer being used, so I got rid of those.There was also an issue with supplying /vault with no link. It's supposed to give you instructions as to what to do with the mod, as is /vault help, but instead it just threw an error. Whoops. This was due to me not passing things properly to my own inform function thanks to having had a 'derp' moment.So that's 010.- 4.3.009Vault's DataBroker component had the same icon as Atlas. I've remedied this by using a different lockbox icon. INV Box 04, the purple one, if you're curious!I also took the time to poke the code and make sure that I replaced all my tabs with eight spaces, to make for ease of reading in viewers other than Windows notepad. (I keep forgetting that, and I like to keep my mods as readable as possible so that if people want to poke stuff to see how it works, they can do that with the least amount of hassle.)- 4.3.008I'm going from a clean slate with this version, as the last couple of versions have seen some bug or another getting in the way. However, I've done a lot of testing of this version. At one point I got a little nuts and decided to just sell my entire bag by right-click spamming.The code is so solid now that it bought back every item in my list, and it left the items that weren't in my list sold. So right now? I can't see any issues. And after a bumpy road, I finally feel I've reached the end of what I can do with Vault.From here on out I suspect the only changes will be minor ones as they're necessary, if any. But after having rapidly sold my entire bag and having seen Vault buy back things without any errors, and having done a good hour or two of testing sitting at a vendor and sell-spamming, I can't imagine that any bugs will arise.If they do, I'll fix them in short order. But right now I'm feeling pretty good about this.[This article appears in the Aug. 7, 2017, edition of Sports Illustrated.]
With special reporting by Michael Bamberger, Ben Baskin and Pete Madden.
Playing golf with the 45th President of the United States offers a revealing character study of him. Donald Trump's private clubs are where he feels most comfortable, and holding court with members and guests and employees is an important part of the ritual—in the pro shop, at the driving range and especially on the 1st tee, where Trump traditionally announces the teams for a friendly wager and will typically take the best player available for his partner. Some earnest person in the group will typically keep score, though the terms of the match are usually unstated and Trump's interest in the ebb and flow of the match is modest at best. Yet he somehow knows when his putt is meaningful, and he attempts those putts with a certain amount of fanfare.
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SI spoke with numerous people who have teed it up with Trump over the years and all report that he doesn't play a round of golf so much as narrate it, his commentary peppered with hyperbole. "Is this not the most beautiful asphalt you've ever seen in your life?" he'll say of an ordinary cart path. At the turn he'll ask, "Have you ever had a better burger?" Years ago Trump was mid-round when he took a long call from Mark Burnett, the producer of The Apprentice. He put down his phone just long enough to play his shots, at one point saying, "Wait one second here while I blast this 250-yard 3-wood." Trump also lavishes attention on his playing partners. "We didn't talk any business because there wasn't time," says Ernie Els, who last February played golf alongside Trump and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. "He was more focused on making sure me and the Japanese prime minister had a good time. He kept on the two of us, making sure we had a proper introduction, making conversation, just being a good host."
Trump always takes a cart and a caddie, whom he pays well. He insists on driving. Recent footage that showed him navigating his cart across a green at his club in Bedminster, N.J., generated horror in the golf press, but this is old news at Trump's clubs, where he has been known to drive onto tee boxes too.
Trump was first off the tee at Aberdeen in 2012, but the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency has foiled his bid to open a second course there. Andy Buchanan/AFP/GettyImages
As for his game, Trump is surprisingly limber for a portly man of 6' 2", and his good eye-hand coordination shows through in all aspects of his play, but especially in his ability to hole putts, which he does with a wristy, old-fashioned stroke that is nothing like the method preferred by the best players today. On the backswing of his full shots, he takes the club inside and, impressively, gets his left shoulder well behind the ball. He then makes a lunging, down-the-line swing with his feet dancing through the finish. It's not pretty, but it repeats and it's a swing with rhythm and power. "He's a much better golfer than you think he'd be because he hits the ball a long way," says Phil Mickelson. "He has clubhead speed, and there's no substitute for that." Trump favors the latest in TaylorMade equipment, owing to a long-standing friendship with Mark King, the company's former CEO. But when Prime Minister Abe gave Trump a gold-colored Honma Beres S-05 driver, it went straight into the bag. (Retail price of the club: $3,755. The gift was made in November, and as President-elect, Trump was permitted to accept a gift that he would not have been allowed to take after the inauguration; Presidents are forbidden from accepting a present from a foreign government with a value that exceeds $390.)
Trump will sometimes respond to a shot he duffed by simply playing a second ball and carrying on as if the first shot never happened. In the parlance of the game, Trump takes floating mulligans, usually more than one during a round. Because of them it is impossible to say what he has actually shot on any given day, according to 18 people who have teed it up with Trump over the last decade, including SI senior writer Michael Bamberger, who has done so nine times. In 2007, Trump called Bamberger to brag about a 68 he had shot at Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles. Trump's handicap index is officially 2.8, but he has posted only three scores since '14. Els, a South Florida resident who has known Trump for many years, estimates he is "an eight or a nine." For Trump to shoot 68 on a tough course like Bel-Air would require him to play nearly perfectly from tee to green while making a number of substantial putts. One of his playing partners that day confirmed that Trump played "good," but that he took all the usual liberties common among everyday golfers: mulligans, gimmes, improved lies, etc. There was no mention of the 68 in a subsequent story, and Bamberger heard about it from Trump.
In a 2013 tweet aimed at entrepreneur Mark Cuban, Trump wrote, "Golf match? I've won 18 Club Championships including this weekend. @mcuban swings like a little girl with no power or talent. Mark's a loser." Trump has never made public a list of his club titles, and fact-checking calls to all of the Trump properties on this subject went universally un-returned. Winged Foot is the one non-Trump club at which the President is a member, and his name does not appear on any of the honor boards in the old clubhouse.
Trump has often said that golf is a small part of his businesses but that it means more to him than any of the others. As he told SI years ago, "A lot of my friends are gardeners. I never understood it. Then I started building golf courses—it's gardening on a big scale." He clearly loves the game, and even at 71 is easily the best golfer who has ever lived in the White House. It is a long-standing trope that golf reveals a lot about a man's character. What, then, does President Trump's life in golf say about him?
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Donald Trump has always been attuned to the status markers of the ruling class. Private golf clubs were and remain a particular obsession of his. He could buy the gaudiest house in Palm Beach—and he did, Mar-A-Lago—but he would never be invited to join the nearby Seminole Golf Club, where Ben Hogan wintered every year to prepare for the Masters. (According to club lore, Trump's chances of admission vanished when he dined there with his then wife Marla Maples and she breast-fed their infant daughter, Tiffany, in view of the ladies who were lunching.) Trump may have reshaped skylines up and down the East Coast, but citadels such as Pine Valley and Shinnecock Hills remain beyond his grasp, their memberships prizing discretion and old money. If building skyscrapers is pure id, creating golf courses is a chance to play God by literally reshaping the Earth, and so Trump has created a series of monuments to himself, replete with man-made waterfalls. The perennial outsider now has nine eponymous private enclaves of his own, to go along with seven high-end public properties, on three continents.
With his children (from left) Eric, Donald Jr. and Ivanka beside him, Trump reopened Turnberry in June 2016, one of 16 clubs around the world that bears his name. Andrew Milligan/PA Wire
But building golf courses was never going to be enough. Trump pined for the validation that would come with important championships being conducted on his courses. These can only be bestowed by the tweedy ruling bodies, and so Trump campaigned for such tournaments with the same intensity he would later bring to chasing electoral votes. To woo the decision-makers, Trump lavished free memberships upon at least three golf officials as well as relentless attention that continues today; since being elected he has played golf with and had multiple phone conversations with Pete Bevacqua, the CEO of the PGA of America. There has been much to discuss: In May, Trump National Golf Club Washington, D.C., hosted the PGA Senior Championship, and in 2022 the PGA Championship will be played at Trump Bedminister, the so-called Summer White House in a tony hamlet in New Jersey, 45 miles from New York City and six miles from USGA headquarters. (The President is playing the long game with the PGA of America, hoping to land one of the sport's ultimate prizes, the Ryder Cup.) Last month Trump got a national championship when the USGA brought the U.S. Women's Open to Bedminister. Trump spent 2 1/2 days chewing the scenery at the tournament, his obvious good cheer undiminished by a smattering of protesters on nearby roadways and others standing peacefully beneath his aerie looming over the 16th tee. Trump tweeted eight times about the event, more than he has since taking office about opioid addiction, the international refugee crisis and climate change... combined.
Golf is never far from the President's mind, it seems. In perhaps the most cogent analysis of how he took the electoral college while losing the popular vote, he told The New York Times, "It's like, if you're a golfer, it's like match play versus stroke play." To illustrate his contention of widespread voting fraud, according to a story in the Times, Trump cited to a gathering of lawmakers that two-time Masters champ Bernhard Langer had been unable to vote at a polling place in Florida while several people "who did not look as if they should be allowed to vote" were permitted to cast provisional ballots. One complication with this spurious anecdote: Langer, a German national, is not a U.S. citizen and is not eligible to vote here. In feting Clemson's national football championship, Trump likened the team's iron will to Jack Nicklaus's and Arnold Palmer's. In a meeting with business leaders at the White House, Trump coaxed Jeff Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, into telling the story of having witnessed the President make a hole in one years earlier. While TV cameras rolled, Immelt said, "President Trump goes up to a par-3 on his course. He looks at the three of us and says, ‘You realize, of course, I'm the richest golfer in the world.' Then [he] gets a hole in one. So I have to say, I've seen the magic before."
Here Trump interjected, "It's a crazy—no, I actually I said I was the best golfer of all the rich people, to be exact, and then I got a hole in one. So it was sort of cool."
MORE: Trump's 10 best golf courses, ranked! | Trump's swing sequence
Ascending to the Presidency never seems to diminish any commander in chief's ardor for the game—Ike, Nixon, Clinton etc. On the campaign trail Trump mocked Barack Obama for playing golf too often, but since taking office Trump has spent some part of more than 20% of his days at a golf club. (Exactly how many rounds he's played is subject to conjecture because the White House refuses to confirm when the President tees it up, even on days when he's spotted with clubs in tow.) Trump has theoretically turned over day-to-day operations of his golf business to his son Eric—who was recently in Scotland to open the new King Robert the Bruce course, where he declared, regrettably, "We made Turnberry great again"—but there have been concerns about conflicts of interest. Four days after the election, the President-elect hectored British officials about a long-standing obsession: a wind farm off the coast of Aberdeen, Scotland, that he says spoils the views from Trump International Golf Links. In February, while Trump's so-called Muslim ban was front-page news, Eric and his brother Donald Jr. flew to the United Arab Emirates under Secret Service protection for the gala opening of Trump International Golf Club Dubai, a swank new course at the heart of a vast development where thousands of luxury homes offer the chance for Saudis and Iranians and other wealthy buyers to park their money. Another branded course, Trump World Golf Club Dubai, is being built down the road as part of AKOYA Oxygen, a 55-million-square-foot development; the course has been designed by Tiger Woods, who teed it up with the President-elect a month after the election.
Trump has two large-scale golf projects in development in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world. The Trump Lido course, outside Jakarta, is being designed by Els. On Bali, Mickelson is re-designing a course for what is being billed as a six-star resort. Trump's partner in both developments is Hary Tanoesoedibjo, a billionaire who was a vice presidential candidate in Indonesia on a failed ticket in 2014. Tanoesoedibjo was an invited guest at Trump's inauguration and later said his friend had inspired him to strongly consider running for Indonesia's presidency. An April '17 story by The Intercept detailed Tanoesoedibjo's alleged links to an ISIS-backed militia that is seeking to oust Indonesia's democratically elected president, Joko Widodo. Were Tanoesoedibjo to take the presidency in 2019, it would be un-precedented for a U.S. President to have such deep financial ties to another head of state.
Trump's golf business has also created various complications domestically. Going back to 1998, Trump Organization properties have been involved in at least 98 lawsuits. Trump has sued more than half a dozen municipalities, seeking to have the property taxes on his courses lowered. (One exception is the Bedminster course, at which a small herd of penned goats allows Trump to take a tax credit for "agricultural use.")
During one of the debates, Hillary Clinton cited painters who had been "stiffed" by Trump—in a much-publicized 2016 judgment, a Miami paint store was awarded $32,535.87 in owed billings for work done at Trump Doral. (Nearly $300,000 in penalties and lawyers' fees were also imposed.) A different golf-related lawsuit led to Trump's running afoul of IRS regulations. At a '10 outing to benefit Alonzo Mourning Charities at Trump National Westchester, a $1 million prize was offered for a hole in one on the 13th hole. A finance titan named Martin Greenberg dunked his shot, but the insurance company underwriting the contest refused to pay, saying the contract stipulated that the hole had to play at least 150 yards but was set up at only 139—not that Greenberg or any of the other golfers knew that the hole had been laid out too short. He sued, and eventually the case was settled with Trump's agreeing to make a $158,000 donation to Greenberg's foundation. The money came from Trump's foundation, instead of out of his own pocket. (This so-called "self-dealing" is illegal. Trump was ordered to pay a fine for a separate such violation, and he shuttered his charity.)
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There is no doubting Trump's deep affection for the game of his Scottish mother's ancestors. (He has said that building Trump Scotland in woolly dunes on the eastern coast was a tribute to her—Mary MacLeod.) His first foray into golf, a half century ago, was not as a country-club kid but at a lively public course, Cobbs Creek, in West Philadelphia. He was introduced to the game by classmates while he was an undergraduate at Wharton from 1966 to '68. Trump said to GOLF.com, "My initial reaction to the game was that I loved the competition. But as you get older and wiser and richer, you realize it's not only about the competition, it's about the beauty of it, and that's what has kept me attracted me to the game more than anything: walking down all those beautiful fairways." He venerates the old-time greats. The clubhouses at his courses are full of pictures of Hogan, the most precise and least bombastic of all the great golfers. But Trump felt a particular kinship for Palmer, and before the King's passing last year, he often remarked, "What a man he is." When Trump named a villa at Doral for Palmer, Arnie was there to cut the ribbon. Ditto for Woods and for Gary Player. When Mickelson called Trump to praise the practice range at one of his courses, Trump saved the message for months.
As he did during a round in West Palm Beach in April, Trump always takes a caddie and a cart with him, but he insists on being behind the wheel. Allen Eyestone/The Palm Beach Post
Trump has supporters in the LPGA because he has treated the players with a similar deference. From 2001 through '08 the tour held its season-ending event at the Trump course in West Palm Beach. (In '06 it became the first LPGA tournament to offer a million dollars to the winner.) Trump rolled out the red carpet for golfers who were accustomed to being treated with little fanfare. Throughout the tournament he relentlessly schmoozed the players, spreading goodwill and befriending two of the most prominent women on tour, Natalie Gulbis and Cristie Kerr. (Trump has offered advice on business matters to both and, in the case of Gulbis, counsel on her love life; after her romance with Ben Roethlisberger ended and she said publicly that he was the one who broke things off, Trump told Gulbis, "I never want to read that again. From now on I want to read that you dumped him.") On election night, when many athletes took to social media to express their misgivings about the result, LPGA pros were notable in their enthusiasm for the Trump victory. Suzann Pettersen's tweet was representative: "Hats off for this man, @realDonaldTrump, Mr. president :) congrats my friend! #thetrumpshowwillcontinue."
And so while the U.S. Women's Open generated protests in the streets last month (sign on an overpass of I-78: women's rights are human rights) and hand-wringing in the press, the players were largely supportive of Trump. Those with misgivings about playing their most important tournament on a Trump course were too politic to say so publicly, preferring to grumble to reporters off the record. The USGA had awarded the Women's Open to Bedminster in May 2012; sources within the organization confirm that last year, after Trump ratcheted up his controversial campaign rhetoric, the organization had looked into changing the venue but decided the cost would have been too high, financially and politically, especially after Trump threatened a lawsuit. For Trump, hosting the Women's Open was a triumph, the culmination of more than a decade of intensive wooing. The Women's Open is rarely a money-maker for the host venue but he gladly signed on, knowing it is often a stepping-stone to what he covets most, hosting a U.S. Open at his crown jewel Trump Bedminster. "I might be an old man being wheeled around or even dead," Trump told SI in '11, "but it'll happen."
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The red 1986 Ford F-150 Flareside rumbles down Lamington Road in the town of Bedminster, past the intricate stone wall and the two black signs emblazoned with gold lettering—trump national golf club and private—that mark the entrance to the club where the President's daughter Ivanka was married in 2009 and where he wishes to someday be buried. Two American flags stick out of the hood of the pickup, and a pocket-sized blue Constitution sits on the driver's seat. An effigy of Trump rides in the truckbed, the dummy adorned with a foot-long Pinocchio nose, a Russian flag in its right hand, and a cardboard tombstone around its neck that reads rip 23 million people. As the horn of the truck ceased functioning years ago, the driver and organizer of the rally, Jim Girvan, resorts to leaning out the window and blowing a vuvuzela as he passes the golf club.
It's a bleak, rainy Saturday in the middle of June, and there are eight cars in the cortege, carrying 12 adults and one six-month-old baby. "Rain or shine, few or many, we persist to resist," Girvan, 64, says, taking a puff of his e-cigarette. The so-called People's Motorcade has met every Saturday since the first weekend of March, gathering at 9 a.m. at Ten Eyck Park, about six miles from Trump Bedminster, where the group adorns their cars with signs. (Today's includes DUMP TRUMP, replete with a poop emoji sporting a blond coif.) The protestors then drive up and down Lamington Road, honking horns and waving signs. The weekend before, 150 cars, carrying 500 people, came out to the rally because Trump was at the club hosting a fundraiser for Tom MacArthur, a congressman instrumental in passing the House health-care bill.
All of this hubbub is in jarring contrast to the atmosphere in an idyllic town that is seemingly frozen in time. There are 8,200 residents of Bedminster, including Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets and Trump's choice for ambassador to the U.K., as well as former presidential candidate and publishing mogul Steve Forbes. Most of the residents live on expansive properties carved out of the former farmland. The town seal has a horse's head emblazoned in the center, and there are still 18 miles of dirt roads in Bedminster, preserved over the decades to allow residents to meander on horseback. One eccentric is known for tooling around town in a carriage drawn by eight horses.
Supporters showed up at the Women's Open in Bedminster last month. Trump flew from Paris and arrived at the club on Friday and stayed through the weekend. Carolyn Kaster/AP
Trump bought Bedminster in 2002 for $35 million when developers of a 506-acre project ran into financial difficulties. He is an astute shopper always on the lookout for distressed properties that can be had for a good price. The previous owners were already more than halfway done with a golf course, but, working with celebrated course architect Tom Fazio, Trump oversaw extensive changes to the layout, including the addition of a massive waterfall framing the 1st hole that he has bragged cost upward of $10 million. Trump Bedminster debuted in '04 and has been a staple on GOLF magazine's Top 100 list. In '08 a second 18 holes opened, designed by Tommy Fazio, a nephew of the architect. (Trump had wanted him listed in promotional materials as Tom Fazio II, even though his father's name is Jim.) This track was named the New Course while the original layout, which hosted the Women's Open, was retro-actively christened the Old Course. Initiation fees have run as high as $250,000, and the annual dues are currently $22,100. ("And they nickel and dime us to death on everything!!!" one member says via text message, including this year an additional charge of $26 to register members' handicap indexes.)
Though Trump doesn't like to publicly identify a favorite among his courses, Bedminster is special to him because of the acclaim it has received and its proximity to his home base of New York City. It's so special, in fact, that in 2014 Trump filed a petition with the state of New Jersey to build a 10-plot private family cemetery on a piece of land overlooking the 1st hole.
During election season, Bedminster morphed into a kind of permanent campaign rally site. Trump posters and bumper stickers were plastered across the property, and an anti-Hillary shrine was built in a bar in the men's locker room. The club held a Ryder Cup–style competition in which the teams wore either red or black Make America Great Again hats. At most other golf courses in America the TV is tuned to Golf Channel, on mute, but throughout last summer and fall, the television in Trump Bedminster's shop was on Fox News, with the sound blaring. As President, Trump has already made four visits to the club. He has his own cottage adjacent to the pool; it was recently given a secure perimeter by the Secret Service, leading to the inevitable joke that it's the only wall Trump has successfully built. Chatting with some members before a recent round of golf, he explained his frequent appearances: "That White House is a real dump." (A White House spokesperson denies this occurred.) Trump is often at his most unguarded among the people who pay for their proximity to him. Last November, the President-elect hosted a cocktail reception and dinner at Bedminster on the same weekend that he was holding interviews at the club with candidates for his Cabinet. At the dinner, Trump addressed the members of the club by saying, "This is my real group. You are the special people. I see all of you. I recognize, like, 100% of you, just about." Then he issued an open invitation to drop in on his Cabinet interviews the next day.
The White House does not disclose the President's playing partners, but word often leaks out; after a round together in February, Rory McIlroy took so much heat publicly for what was construed by some as a political act that he later said he doubts he would accept another invitation from Trump. In early July, Bedminster member Mike Ferguson was rumored to have played with Trump. This caught the attention of Washington Post reporter David Fahrentold because Ferguson is a lobbyist for Big Pharma. (Ferguson's employer, BakerHostetler, did not respond to a request for comment.)
It's plain to see why a lobbyist would revel in rubbing elbows with the President, but at Bedminster there has been a backlash to the fanfare that now accompanies Trump's visits. One member says two dozen of his brethren have already resigned or put their memberships on hold for a year and that he expects a similar number to vote with their wallets next year. This is less of a political protest than a nod to the attendant hassles: When Trump is on the grounds all cars are searched upon entry; if he is in the clubhouse, all members must clear security before entering, even if it's a quick jaunt to the gents at the turn; and if Trump is in his cottage, kids in bathing suits are wanded before being allowed in the pool area.
Divisions within the town of Bedminster were reflected in the election—Trump won by just 42 votes. (Mitt Romney took Bedminster by nearly 600 in 2012.) Trump has a mixed reputation as a steward in the community. He set aside 210 acres for a grassland habitat for birds, and it was planted with a grass seed mix called Donald Trump Golden Fescue. But in '11 the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection cited the golf club for a number of violations, including waste-water pollution, destruction of wetlands and the illegal removal of a stand of mature trees.
Before Trump's foray into politics, the biggest controversy around Trump Bedminster was the "farmland" tax break because of the eight resident goats—which the club claims cut the grass—and 113 acres of hay surrounding the course. The designation saves Trump Bedminster tens of thousands of dollars a year in taxes, although the club is still Bedminster's second highest taxpayer, behind AT&T, which has a complex in town. The blurred lines between his roles as President and club patriarch created headlines earlier this year when a brochure for Trump Bedminster's bridal planning service stated that: "If [Trump] is on-site for your big day, he will likely stop in & congratulate the happy couple. He may take some photos with you but we ask you and your guests to be respectful of his time & privacy." The brochure was changed after an outcry that the President was using his office for monetary gain, but a few weeks later Trump still popped into a wedding, and photos of him with the bride and groom lit up social media.
Trump's preoccupation with golf has been duly noted by protesters too. Jeff Malet/Newscom/ZUMA Press.com
Trump Bedminster is an important gathering spot for charities and community events because the town has no hotel or other banquet hall to host meetings. "They've never turned us down," mayor Steven Parker says of an annual swearing-in party for public officials held at the club. "They give us the charity rate. So politics aside, I think the average person in Bedminster would have a very positive view of the Trump Organization and probably Mr. Trump. The people that I've mostly dealt with have looked at it like, ‘The sitting President likes our town as much as we do. So I may not agree with everything that he stands for. Or I may not agree with anything that he stands for. But, by God, it's kinda neat to have a President living in your town.'"
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Trump's smooth relations with Bedminister owe much to Ed Russo, the self-styled (he has no formal training or degree) environmental expert for the Trump Organization who is an all-purpose fixer and consigliere. Russo grew up in Bedminster and later chaired the town planning board; he helped broker Trump's purchase of the land. Outside Bedminister, the combative style Trump has employed in the White House characterizes his dealings in golf. During a 2005 lawsuit with a construction company over disputed billings for work done at Trump's golf club in Westchester County, N.Y., his then lawyer Y. David Scharf offered this: "If you get caught with your hand in Mr. Trump's cookie jar, you're going to get slapped and slapped hard." Trump was ultimately awarded $2.1 million in damages, plus interest and legal fees. (He later sued Scharf's firm, Morrison Cohen LLP, for unauthorized use of his name and likeness on its website; the lawyers termed the suit "frivolous" and claimed it was a diversionary tactic as Trump was unwilling to pay an outstanding tab of $470,000. While a judge threw out Trump's complaint, the parties came to an undisclosed settlement.) In other legal skirmishes, the cookies have often gone to Trump's opponents.
In February 2017 a federal judge ordered Trump Jupiter Ritz Carlton, in South Florida, to pay $5.77 million to a group of 65 disgruntled members. Trump had purchased the Jack Nicklaus–designed course in '12. In a letter to the members, he vowed to turn it into "one of the finest clubs anywhere in the world!" By the time Trump assumed control, 150 members were on a waiting list to resign from the club and claim their refundable deposits of $200,000. (This potential $30 million liability had been part of the terms of the sale.) As at many high-end clubs, a member's resignation at Jupiter isn't accepted until a new member joins. It could take years to clear the resignation list and in the interim the members were still being billed their monthly dues. But Trump barred them from the grounds, saying in an April deposition, "You're probably not going to be a very good club member, you're not going to be so happy." He then offered the wait-listers a deal: They could remain part of the club if they forfeited their deposit and in return they would receive three years of free dues (a total savings of at most $20,000, depending on the membership category). In the letter to members, he wrote: "If you choose to remain on the resignation list—you're out." In subsequent video testimony, Trump termed the threat "negotiation." The members wanted their money back, lawyered up and ultimately prevailed.
Not all of Trump's golf-related legal skirmishes are battles between haves and have-mores. In February 2016, the Trump Organization sued five homeowners whose properties are adjacent to the Red Course at Trump Doral, in Miami. Russo told The Miami Herald that the middle-class homes were "in serious disrepair. And there are behaviors in people's backyards that are inconsistent with a world-class |
this sector can be further expanded to connect the Ratnagiri-Ganpatiphule stretch with Malvan. The land distance between these cities is no more than 200 km, but the terrain is difficult to drive on and create new roads on.
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However, coastal transportation to Malvan can solve this problem.
Overhaul Agriculture Governance
The current Devendra Fadnavis government is working towards the goal of doubling farmer income by the year 2022. This process can get a big leg up by adopting in toto the NITI Aayog recommendations on how agriculture is governed and managed in the state. The new model law – Agricultural Produce and Livestock Marketing (Promotion and Facilitating) Act (APLM), 2017 should be implemented with full zeal and vigour.
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The state needs to dismantle the control of local mandis working under the Agriculture Product Market Committees (APMCs) completely. Buyers should be allowed to tap the seller farmers directly without restrictions on quantity or frequency of buying. Private mandis – aggregators – should be encouraged and the e-National Agriculture Market reforms hastened. This will require supplementary investments in improving farm credit, farmer insurance, and supply chain networks.
Create A Water-Sufficient State
Irrigation has been a key theme for the Fadnavis government already. The Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyan has been a resounding success. Maharashtra's Farm Pond on Demand scheme has been selected in the top 10 Innovations under Prime Minister Awards 2017. This razor-sharp focus on irrigation has to get to a logical conclusion soon.
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The difference in water availability between western Maharashtra and the Marathwada region is stark. The Mumbai-Pune belt has planned its water need and controlled the water usage reasonably well over the years. But Marathwada is almost always parched with unsustainable cropping patterns, further compounding the water problem.
The micro-irrigation programmes, which currently cover about 25 per cent of the villages of the state, have to reach the entire state swiftly. The stated aim of Chief Minister Fadnavis to move the state from flood irrigation to drip irrigation in the next 10 years is a commendable target to set.
These programmes need to reach a logical conclusion, and this is one big transformation theme already being attacked from different angles.
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Create A Power-Sufficient State
When Bhiwandi implemented the power distribution reforms in 2006, bringing in private players, there was a lot of scepticism and political opposition. Today, the Bhiwandi Model is looked upon as the ideal model to emulate, and other states routinely learn from it. The model brings in distribution franchisees from the private sector and provides for state's assistance in making the private player successful through enabling involvement.
Move 120 km south east from Bhiwandi – today as the country has minimised the gap between power generation and power demand – Pune still sees a day-long power cut every Thursday. It is a remnant and a sore reminder of the power shortage and rationing era.
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These contradictions show that the one state which hasn’t learnt from its successes in the power sector is, unfortunately, Maharashtra itself!
Power availability is the key for industries and agriculture. The state needs to invest massively in segregating the feeders used for different purposes. There is central assistance for this programme, and the state should aim for 100 per cent segregation. There is also the need to overhaul the local city distribution networks – surplus power at source is of no use if consumers can’t use it.
However, the creaking urban power infrastructure leads to routine power cuts in cities. This problem has to be addressed – Pune can be the ideal place to start given the in-apposite 'Dark Thursdays.'
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Maharashtra should also aggressively invest in technology upgrade. Smart meters for cities and solar pumps and solar power setups should be encouraged and experimented with. The national UJALA programme to popularise LED bulbs shows that state can catalyse scale without subsidisation for consumables if only the programme is designed well.
Solar pumps are a fit case for this design extension.
Like the Chief Minister has set a no flood irrigation target, a similar ambitious no power cut target needs to be set and implemented in line with the national 2022, 24x7 power for all target.
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Maharashtra Day is a day to celebrate the past glory and to take pride in a land of myriad achievements and rich history. It should also be a day for new beginnings, to shape a better future and for a resolute approach to deliver what it takes.Music writer David Hepworth’s recent book, Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars, pronounces the era of the rock star over. Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain – who committed suicide in April 1994, a week before Oasis released their first single, Supersonic – is described as “possibly the last one”. If this is so, nobody appears to have told Liam Gallagher.
The former Oasis frontman struts on, all swagger and attitude, as if fresh from an argument with a traffic warden. His first words to the crowd rejig the Beatles’ I Am the Walrus: “Hiya, you are Leeds and we are all together.” He kicks a fan (of the mechanical, not audience, kind) and starts singing: “Tonight, I’m a rock’n’roll star.” And for the next 90 exhilarating minutes, he is exactly that.
It’s not immediately obvious what Gallagher has got that so many other performers haven’t. Unusually, for a star at arena level, there’s not much of a show. The occasional strobe aside, the only real concession to theatrics is the phrase “Rock’n’roll” daubed across a white organ (a knowing homage to the lost, great Manchester band World of Twist, whose stage act incorporated the same slogan in the early 90s). Indeed, for almost the entire performance, we’re watching a 45-year-old man in a coat, who sings while rooted to the spot. And yet, every movement seems to radiate raw power and energy as guitars and drums rage around him. The eye is inexplicably drawn to him, all the time (his scarlet coat, while the musicians are all in black, certainly helps). At the end of the song, he spits out his own explanation of his magnetic otherness: “None of the fuckin’ plastic pop star!”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Liam Gallagher and his reason to be. Photograph: Andrew Benge/Redferns
Being able to draw on an era-defining Oasis classic such as (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? as early as the second song certainly adds a frisson. But when people – many half his age – gawp up at Gallagher in the same way small children gaze at a T-rex skeleton in a museum, they do so in the knowledge that we may not see his like again: a rock singer whose band rocketed from playing to the bar staff at the nearby Duchess pub to Knebworth, and the biggest gigs of the 90s, inside three mercurial years.
However, this show doesn’t feel nostalgic. If Gallagher’s supersonic confidence took a knock after the flop of his post-Oasis band, Beady Eye, it’s surely rocketing again after his solo debut album As You Were outsold the rest of the Top 20 combined in October (and shipped more than brother Noel’s current No 1). Half of his set still consists of Oasis songs, penned by his estranged sibling, but as Liam recently pointed out on Twitter: “He wrote ’em, I made ’em.”
With his voice recovering a long lost octave, the likes of Some Might Say and Supersonic are roaring jets, but the solo songs hold their own. With Gallagher’s voice a perfect mix of two Johns – Lydon and Lennon – they are either spikily vitriolic (Greedy Soul, You Better Run and Wall of Glass) or more wistfully emotional (Bold and For What It’s Worth). The last – reputedly an apology to ex-wife Nicole Appleton and already a crowd singalong – is as great an anthem as he has sung in 20 years. He then turns impeccable curator of his catalogue, turning a 1995 B-side, Rockin’ Chair – surely the greatest “lost” Oasis song of all – into a reflective celebration of survival. Be Here Now is recovered from the scrapyard of lesser-loved later Oasis songs and turned into a showstopper, with the crowd boosting the “yeah yeah yeah” refrain.
Liam Gallagher: ‘Rock’n’roll saved my life’ Read more
Throughout, pints are raised, couples (straight and gay) hug and chants of “Liam! Liam!” echo around the arena. The Mancunian is in good humour, commenting on the venue’s no-swearing commandment (“Fuck that”) and responding to a chant of “Yorkshire! Yorkshire!” with a pithy, “I’ve got nothing against Yorkshire but calm down. You’ve got good tea.”
The audience erupts for the encore of Cigarettes and Alcohol, and the line “Is it worth the aggravation, to find yourself a job, when there’s nothing worth working for” sounds as relevant as ever in the era of zero-hours contracts. Live Forever is delivered in a beautiful new arrangement, complete with cello. Then, with the house lights up, Sid Vicious’s version of My Way blaring out and the crowd filing out, Gallagher suddenly bounds back on. “Had you there, didn’t I?” he cackles, and delivers a perfect Wonderwall before exiting as he entered, applauding the applause, and every inch the rock’n’roll star.Sony London Studio’s Unannounced PS4 Game Will Involve “Superb Quality” Vehicles
Giuseppe Nelva February 16, 2014 5:37:02 PM EST
We already knew that Sony London Studio is currently working on an unspecified number of unannounced PS4 games, and today we learn more on one of them thanks to a new career opportunity ad seeking a Senior Artist.
Here’s an excerpt of the ad, with the relevant details bolded:
____________________
Based in Soho, London, we are part of Sony Computer Entertainment’s worldwide development studios and are currently looking for an experienced and highly motivated Senior Artist to join a small, dynamic game development team working on an exciting next generation PS4 title.
We are looking for a senior artist with next-generation experience, who will not only produce environment and vehicle assets to a superb quality but will also work as a ‘go to’ artist in the art department. You will help to solve the exciting challenges facing the development team.
Working with the Lead Artist and programming team, you will help to define, plan, and deliver solutions for the art team to achieve the visual goals set by the project. The role will include researching and developing new techniques for next-generation art creation.
This is a great opportunity for you to join our team. Through supporting the Lead Artist and working together with the rest of the art team, you will have an important role to play in the creation of this next-generation title.
The role will involve:
The creation of environments and vehicle assets to a superb level of quality.
Collaborate with the Lead Artist to help deliver the creative vision of the game.
By working with the graphics programmers and Lead Artist, help deliver our next-generation lighting solutions.
____________________
So there you have it: the game will involve vehicles, while it’s not yet clear if it’ll be an actual racing game or another kind of experience that will include driving. The mention of “superb quality” assets possibly hints to a title in which vehicles will be crucial to gameplay.
Of course we’ll keep you updated on any further information that will emerge, but for now we know that Sony has some more vehicle-based fun in store for us.OTTAWA, Dec 16 (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's approval rating has dropped 10 percentage points in the last three months amid rising dissatisfaction with the economy and concern about pipeline approvals, a public opinion poll released on Friday showed.
Still, Trudeau remained far more popular than his two political opponents and more popular than any recent prime minister, with 55 percent of Canadians expressing confidence in his performance, the Angus Reid poll showed.
That was down 10 points from the 65 percent approval rating Trudeau enjoyed in September, according to the survey, which carried the headline "Is the honeymoon ending?"
"While this level of approval may well be the envy of prime ministers past and future, it also represents the lowest approval he has recorded at any point since his Liberal Party won a majority mandate in last October's election," Angus Reid said in the poll.
FLASHBACK: See Trudeau and Obama at the State Dinner
13 PHOTOS NTP: Canadian PM Justin Trudeau visits White House, State Dinner See Gallery NTP: Canadian PM Justin Trudeau visits White House, State Dinner WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 10: President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada exchange toasts during a State Dinner at the White House March 10, 2016 in Washington, D.C. Prime Minister Trudeau is on an official visit to Washington. (Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 10: President Barack Obama (C) gives a toast as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (L) and First Lady Sophie Trudeau of Canada look on during a State Dinner at the White House March 10, 2016 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 10: US President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hold a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office of the White House March 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. This is Trudeau's first trip to Washington since becoming Prime Minister. (Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 10: US President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hold a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office of the White House March 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. This is Trudeau's first trip to Washington since becoming Prime Minister. (Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 10: U.S. President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau walk from the Oval Office to a joint press conference in the Rose Garden of the White House March 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. Trudeau and Obama met privately in the Oval Office prior to the press conference. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 10: U.S. first lady Michelle Obama stands with Canadian first lady Sophie Gregoire Trudeau during an arrival ceremony for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (not pictured) on the South Lawn of the White House, March 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. This is Trudeau's first trip to Washington since becoming Prime Minister. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) US President Barack Obama and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau take part in a welcome ceremony during a State Visit on the South Lawn of the White House on March 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. / AFP / Nicholas Kamm (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 10: U.S. President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau walk from the Oval Office to a joint press conference in the Rose Garden at the White House, March 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. Obama and Trudeau met privately before the press conference. This is Trudeau's first trip to Washington since becoming Prime Minister. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 10: Canandian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau escorts his wife Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau during an arrival ceremony with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House, March 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. This is Trudeau's first trip to Washington since becoming Prime Minister. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 10: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau greets invited guests during an arrival ceremony with U.S. President Barack Obama on the South Lawn of the White House, March 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. This is Trudeau's first trip to Washington since becoming Prime Minister. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 10: U.S. President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau watch as a fife and drum corps performs during a an arrival ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House, March 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. This is Trudeau's first trip to Washington since becoming Prime Minister. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 10: U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the location of the Stanley Cup as he welcomes Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during an arrival ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House, March 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. This is Trudeau's first trip to Washington since becoming Prime Minister. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and US President Barack Obama greet visitors as they take part in a welcome ceremony during a State Visit on the South Lawn of the White House on March 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. / AFP / MANDEL NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images) Up Next See Gallery Discover More Like This HIDE CAPTION SHOW CAPTION of SEE ALL BACK TO SLIDE
Trudeau, dogged by accusations that rich donors to the Liberal Party have gained privileged access, will be questioned by Canada's ethics commissioner to see whether he broke conflict of interest rules, an official said on Thursday.
The poll showed Trudeau remained far more popular than either of his main political opponents, interim leaders of the Conservative and New Democratic parties, who will be replaced in 2017. Interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose won 35 percent approval, while NDP leader Tom Mulcair notched a 43 percent approval rating, the poll showed.
Trudeau's drop in popularity was matched by a drop in voter satisfaction on a broad range of issues, including the economy, foreign policy, healthcare and public security, according to the poll.
The prime minister has also had to thread the needle on energy and the environment, recently announcing the approval of two pipelines and the quashing of a third just months after announcing a plan to require provinces to put a price on carbon emissions by 2018.Gone Home review
Tweet 30 This page has been shared 30 times. View these Tweets. Like Like 57 56 6 09:00 on 14 September 2013 Logan Decker at
Every connection we feel with another human being begins with a gradual descent through layers of familiarity until we touch something unique or resonant, when we go from the general idea of a person to the specific. Gone Home makes that process visible, and through the first-person exploration of one family’s home, turns it into a surprising and moving game.
It’s 1995, and Kaitlin Greenbriar has come home eager to reunite with her family after a year-long adventure in Europe. Instead she finds a deserted house and an apologetic note from her sister Sam begging her not to dig around “trying to find out where I am.”
By the end of your three-to-four-hour exploration of the house, you’ll find out where Sam and your parents have gone. What happened to them, though, isn’t as important as why – and you uncover that why by rummaging through a warren of rooms in an enormous house that includes hidden panels, secret passages, and a basement larger than my entire apartment. You’ll open every door, turn over and examine every tissue box, and find embarrassing stuff in closets.
Gone Home requires you to use your own empathy to solve the puzzle of each family member’s internal struggle. Sam’s story takes precedence, the examination of some items triggering readings from her journal (performed with impeccable, vivid immediacy). We sense her frustration when abysmal teachers try to squash her creativity. We’ve got her back when she sneaks out to a live show. And we experience her dizzying plunge into first love with Lonnie, a young woman whose feelings are slowly revealed to her (“I don’t think Lonnie even gets Lonnie sometimes”) much as Sam’s are to us.
She’s likeable, creative, headstrong and about to crash-land into adulthood. Who wouldn’t see a bit of themselves in her and root for this passionate teenager? This sentimentality can be moving at times, but the way her story feels unambiguously administered rather than intuited weakens the premise and challenge of the game. She gradually becomes less an individual and more an avatar immersed in evocative symbols of a time and place: a poster with the names of Black Francis and Lisa Loeb; cassette tapes with handwritten inset cards; console cartridges, and cheat codes scrawled on pieces of paper.
Gone Home is a game that seems to emerge from a deep, creative restlessness with the testosterone-and-adrenaline fuelled conventions of videogames. But it doesn’t respond by merely dressing up literary devices with indie whimsy and calling it interactive storytelling: the characters and their stories don’t exist without your insight and emotional intelligence. We’ve all understood in a general sense that videogames can tell stories in a way no other medium can. Gone Home is the definitive proof.
Expect to pay: £15 / $20
£15 / $20 Release: Out now
Out now Developer: The Fullbright Company
The Fullbright Company Publisher: In-house
In-house Multiplayer: None
None Link:www.gonehomegame.com
Verdict Leans heavily on nostalgia and sentimentality, but Gone Home is an affecting game that challenges you like no other.
Tweet 30 This page has been shared 30 times. View these Tweets. Like Like 57 56 6 reddit Upvote DownvotesubmitWith bright eyes and high hopes, jobseekers apply for positions within companies for which they would like to work. These can be millennials looking for their first job out of college, people for whom the recession has hit hard, or currently employed workers looking for a change of scenery. Yet for each group, one thing remains constant: if the candidate experience is not enjoyable, those people will likely come away with tainted views of the company to which they applied.
Applying to jobs can quickly become a demoralizing process if companies do not pay special attention to the candidate experience. Updating one’s resume and specifically tailoring cover letters for each job gets tiring, and if no one is responding, it can feel a little bit like getting stood up for a date.
Some businesses believe that the failure to acknowledge a job application will not harm their company’s reputation, when in fact the opposite is true. A study by Career Builder found that 44% of workers who did not hear back from an employer when they applied for a job said they had a worse opinion of that employer. A separate study found that 32% reported that they would be less likely to buy a product from a company who did not respond to their job application.
There are certainly organizations reading this and saying, “But how can we possibly respond to every applicant? That’s a waste of time and resources. It’s easier to just ignore the ones that we don’t want.” This all may be true, but just because something is easier, does that necessarily make it the right business move?
In today’s world, where something posted online can spread with the speed of Captain Trips, probably not. Just look at Comcast, who took a big hit to their (already pretty terrible) reputation when a phone call of a man attempting to cancel his internet service and repeatedly getting stonewalled by the customer service representative went viral. Not only did it take an ocean of damage control to deal with that fiasco, but Comcast won the prestigious “Worst Company in America” award thanks in large part to it.
Granted, that may be a customer experience issue, but businesses should not be so naïve as to think candidate experiences within the recruitment process will simply stay within the company. In fact, 78% of workers said they would discuss a bad experience they had with an employer with friends and family, while 17% said they would post something about their negative experience on social media. An additional 6% said they would blog about a bad experience.
Another important factor in creating a good candidate experience is ease and fluidity of application. A study by Dr. John Sullivan and Associates found that in general, 90% of candidates who reach a career site do not actually apply. There are a myriad of issues that cause that number to be so high, but the most significant one is probably that 70% of companies force their applicants through a “maze-like microsite,” as Meghan M. Biro puts it, and then fail to acknowledge their application through an email or phone call. Even when applicants are contacted, 21% of recruiters are reportedly not enthusiastic about the company in question being an employer of choice, which adds an entirely different layer of complexity to the candidate experience.
These things all add up to affect a company’s recruiting. How can businesses expect to attract the best and brightest when their entire system to engage applicants is inherently flawed? When it comes to candidate experience, employers should A) take a look at the Candidate Experience Awards (CandE Awards) for examples of what companies are doing right and B) remember these three tips to ensure they’re doing all they can to entice the top talent.
1) Try to respond to every application with some semblance of speed. If the quantity is simply too much to handle manually, look into automated services.
2) Do not underestimate negative recruiting experiences. Scorned candidates can be vindictive, and if one of their blog posts or tweets goes viral, the PR department is going to be busy.
3) Simplify the application process. Get rid of any unnecessary roadblocks that get in the way of interested parties submitting their resumes.
This simple advice could be all the difference from providing a nightmare candidate experience to one that jobseekers rave about to their friends.Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration,
Note: Inventories shown in the graph do not include pipeline fill, lease stocks, or oil in transit from Alaska. PADD is the Petroleum Administration for Defense District. U.S. Energy Information Administration, Weekly Petroleum Status Report and Working and Net Available Crude Oil Storage Capacity Inventories shown in the graph do not include pipeline fill, lease stocks, or oil in transit from Alaska. PADD is the Petroleum Administration for Defense District.
Crude oil inventory data for the week ending February 20 show that total utilization of crude oil storage capacity in the United States stands at approximately 60%, compared with 48% at the same time last year. Most U.S. crude oil stocks are held in the Midwest and Gulf Coast, where storage tanks were at 69% and 56% of capacity, respectively, as of February 20. This capacity use calculation reflects only crude oil stored in tanks or underground caverns at tank farms and refineries, and excludes some crude oil that is included in commercial inventory data, such as pipeline fill and lease stocks held in production areas.
Capacity is about 67% full in Cushing, Oklahoma (the delivery point for West Texas Intermediate futures contracts), compared with 50% at this point last year. Working capacity in Cushing alone is about 71 million barrels, or more than half of all Midwest (as defined by Petroleum Administration for Defense District 2) working capacity and about 14% of the national total.
EIA releases a report twice a year detailing crude oil and product storage capacity in the United States; this report describes two measures of capacity.
Net available shell capacity includes tank bottoms, working storage capacity, and contingency space (see figure below). Tank bottoms are volumes below the normal suction lines of a storage tank that may include water and sediment and are difficult to access. Contingency space is space above the maximum operating inventory level that remains empty during normal operations. This contingency space allows flexibility to exceed working storage capacity without creating safety hazards or operational disruptions.
Working storage capacity, which excludes contingency space and tank bottoms, is perhaps a more useful measure of capacity. From September 2013 to September 2014, total crude oil working storage capacity increased from 502 million barrels to 521 million barrels. Operation of crude oil storage and transportation systems requires some amount of working storage to be available to be filled at all times in order to receive deliveries by pipeline, tanker, barge, and rail. Therefore, it is not possible to completely fill all the working storage capacity reported by EIA for the United States and PADD regions. The exact amount of storage capacity that must be available to maintain operation of crude oil storage and transportation systems is unknown.
The storage utilization rates reported above reflect crude oil inventories stored in tanks or in underground caverns at tank farms and refineries as a percentage of working storage capacity. Simply dividing the total commercial crude inventory by the working capacity can lead to overestimates of storage capacity utilization, because some inventory data include crude oil that is not truly in stored in tankage, such as:
Pipeline fill, or oil that is being transported by pipeline
Lease stocks, or oil that has been produced but not yet put into the primary supply chain
Crude oil on ships in transit from Alaska
As reported in the Weekly Petroleum Status Report, EIA crude oil inventory data include estimates for pipeline fill, lease stocks, and crude in transit from Alaska. Subtracting those volumes removes about 120 million barrels from the larger definition of crude oil inventories, or almost 30% of the national total. Even with these adjustments to inventory, the estimates of working storage capacity utilization provided above are slightly overstated because estimates are not available for volumes in floating storage, tank bottoms, and oil on rail or barges.
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, adapted from U.S. Energy Information Administration, adapted from Monthly Bulk Terminal and Blender Report Instructions
Principal contributors: Alex Wood, Hannah BreulThe non-waiver trade deadline is still a few days off, but the White Sox have already publicly acknowledged that this season is dead. And even after a bizarre three-game winning streak at the expense of the Tigers and Cubs, their playoff odds still sit somewhere around five percent. Perhaps it was a mercy that they got crushed by the dregs of both leagues sandwiching the All-Star Break and didn’t string everybody along. With the deadline approaching and deals starting to increase in frequency and magnitude around the majors over the past few days, and after last year’s deadline where the Sox neither bought nor sold, it seems as though there is more clamoring from fans and media (and perhaps from the front office) to commit to a direction–and in this case, selling.
I definitely get the appeal of selling. It would at least offer some clarity as to what the team’s plan was, and it’s harder to be disappointed when the Sox miss the playoffs if there was never any hope to make it in the first place. There seems to be some added attraction to it given the organization’s reputation for refusing to rebuild when it seemed quite prudent to do so in recent years.
The thing is, I’m not sure it’s strategically correct to sell at this time; not in any significant way. The only expiring contracts they have for the end of this season are Austin Jackson, Justin Morneau, and the two catchers. I suppose if Alex Avila or Jackson were healthy, some team that was in the hunt might want to add them as bench pieces, but they’re not. Perhaps with Morneau looking pretty solid in his first few games back, maybe some other team would be willing to send something over for him (although personally it’s so nice not watching Avisail Garcia play baseball every day that I might prefer just keeping Morneau around for the rest of this now-pointless season).
So, most of the assets of any consequence to sell are under control for 2017–Todd Frazier, Brett Lawrie, Melky Cabrera, David Robertson, Zach Duke and so on. As it stands, even though 2016 has been a huge disappointment, they still look to finish somewhere between 78-83 wins; pretty much what they were projected to do coming into the season. And, if the Sox are trading one third of their starting lineup for 2017, they would be basically punting yet another prime season of Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, and Adam Eaton.
There are no replacements in-house for those three bats (Frazier, Lawrie, Cabrera). The only position players left in the organization who could contribute to 2017 profile as bench pieces at best. That means if the Sox are selling those guys, they are conceding that they cannot build a winner around a core that features two of the best pitchers in baseball on absurdly cheap contracts. If the Sox can’t win with that kind of core, they’ll do what, exactly, with the next one, should they ever actually acquire another one? If White Sox management has decided this core isn’t good enough–or at least, good enough for this front office and scouting department to win with–then shouldn’t the first step be cleaning house in the front office and scouting department and let those guys make the call for whether/what how to buy or sell?
Besides, I don’t think it makes sense to give up on Sale and Quintana, because once again the problem in 2016 was not the core. As has been written dozens of times here, the problem with 2016 was failing to make even a credible effort at rounding out the supporting cast. After Adam LaRoche retired, the primary DH job was given to Garcia with zero backup plan even though everybody but the White Sox has known for a long time that he is unplayable. Center field was given to a glove-only fourth outfielder. The plan at shortstop was “hope that a utility player and a minor league free agent on his absolute last legs could hold down the fort until Tim Anderson showed up,” and it was very likely that Anderson would not be ready at all this year. Catcher has been a mess that seems to have particularly agitated White Sox Twitter this year.
But, especially given how well Anderson played out of the gate, this team was legitimately one free agent outfielder and one bat to play at DH that was better than Garcia away from being a real competitor. The solution to “Wow, roster spots 15-25 were horrible this year” isn’t “nuke roster spots 1-10.”
Frankly, they look to be in even better shape for 2017. Miguel Gonzalez is under control for 2017 as well, and is posting the best peripherals of his career in his age-32 season. He seems to be enjoying the switch from the Orioles Pitching Hellscape to Don Cooper Land. Anderson is here and looks to at a minimum be a league average shortstop, which is better than the team had coming into 2016. James Shields is terrifying and too expensive and was definitely A Mistake, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be better than John Danks profiled to be as the fourth or fifth starter for next year.
This is a core that can and should be successful. The Sox just need to figure out what to put around it and how they are going to get there.
Who can the White Sox trade without destroying 2017 if they aren’t dumping Sale, Quintana, Abreu, and Eaton?
If the Sox are confident about being able to generate bullpen arms from within, that is certainly an area where they can sell at the deadline and increase the overall talent in the organization, and maybe even free up some money.
Robertson still has two years and $25 million left on his deal. Although this has hardly been his best season, we are still only talking about forty innings or so of a very strong career. Given what we’ve seen given up for Aroldis Chapman and Mike Montgomery so far–and I think it’s fair to say Robertson is somewhere between those two guys in terms of quality–the Sox could expect a good return here. If they are confident in Zack Burdi, Carson Fulmer, and in the healthy returns of Zach Putnam and Jake Petricka, it could be argued this is an area where they can afford to sell from to help out elsewhere and still run out a good relief corps in 2017.
Zach Duke is the diet version of Robertson in this regard. Although the organization has had an oddly difficult time adding lefty relievers, Duke shouldn’t be deemed irreplaceable. Again, given how much teams seem to covet relievers these days, he could bring back something neat.
Maybe Don Cooper & Co. decide Fulmer is ready to be a starter in 2017. It’s a topic worth debating, but if that’s the case, perhaps somebody would be interested in Gonzalez. It feels risky to trade him; 2016 has been ruthless in showing how much starting pitching depth a team realistically needs. If he is traded and Shields reverts to his Worst Pitcher of All Time act, it is probably putting way too pressure on Fulmer to pitch 180 good innings.
And other than the aforementioned Avila and Jackson who appear to be injured for the bulk of the time a team would want to add them…that’s kind of it.
Make no mistake–if the Sox decide to trade Sale and Quintana and Eaton, then sure, they should blow everything up and trade everybody and go scorched earth. If they do that, they need a whole new front office to do it, but that is a not crazy option. It’s just a hideously unpleasant road to start going down when the Sox already look to be adding to a massive playoff drought. But, if they aren’t trading those guys, it doesn’t make any sense to abandon 2017 either. Because if they trade Melky, Lawrie, and Frazier, the Sox are in fact giving up on 2017 unless they spend a ton to replace them…but if they are willing to do that, the Sox would be better served to just spend a ton to supplement them instead.
It has been a bleak couple of months in the midst of a bleak decade for the White Sox, but that doesn’t mean the situation is as bad as it feels. If they play their cards right–not a given, certainly–they can position themselves really, really well for next year.
Lead Image Credit: Patrick Gorski // USA Today Sports ImagesRecently, deadly floods in India and South Asia and powerful storms in United States knocked out power to millions. But when people’s lives are thrown into chaos by devastating natural disaster, using alternative energy source may not seem like an obvious response. However, since energy grids are often the first to fail when a disaster hits, and outages hamper recovery efforts, energy entrepreneurs believe that off-grid renewable energy could provide an instant source of power to those who need it most.
“After a natural disaster hits, it can take weeks or longer for power to be restored and the expense of repairing transmission lines can be very high. Solar and battery mini-grids are a more resilient solution, as it allows local and remote communities to regain access to power, clean drinking water, medical facilities and communications immediately,” says William Brent |
Also, let us know what you think of this style of game preview, as we’ll try to do more of them in the future if people enjoy it. It obviously wouldn’t work for every game, but NimbleQuest is a perfect example of a title that plays just as good in your browser window with arrow keys as it will on your iOS device with swipe gestures.From Maine to California, Minnesota to Mississippi, America is rife with basketball history. Some states’ roots run much deeper, however, which makes picking the the best player from each state a lot tougher than it sounds.
The NBA has been in existence since June 6, 1946. Since then, over 3,000 players have logged time on the world’s most prestigious hardwoods. While the game of basketball looks, sounds, and feels (much) different today than it did 70 years ago, that doesn’t change the fact that players have come from far and wide to participate at the highest level of the sports.
Today, we attempt to pinpoint the best NBA player from all 50 states. Yes, many of the top players in the association have actually come from outside the United States of America — especially in recent years. And yes, limiting our sleuthing to one player per states invariably means that many all-time greats will be left off the list. But that only makes the resulting list all the more unpredictable. And unpredictable means fun, right?
Right? Right.
From Michael Jordan to Wilt Chamberlain and Larry Bird, the unquestioned greats of the NBA will be undoubtedly included, but not every state can boast a surefire Hall of Fame inclusion. That makes for some interesting debate, so feel free to (vehemently) disagree with our findings in the comments section. Or, you know, tell us how much you like this list. Whatever suits your fancy, really.
Let’s get right to it, coming at you alphabetically and beginning with the great state of Alabama.
Note: Players must be BORN in the state to be eligible for consideration.Tuesday was a day for straightening stories—some of which were bent more out of shape than others—and for filling in details about the killing of Osama bin Laden. The Pentagon released a “Narrative of Events,” which notes that “the team methodically cleared the compound moving from room to room in an operation lasting nearly 40 minutes.” But the narrative itself is more economical than methodical—as well as a bit different than the account we’d had before. It’s worth reading in full; Jay Carney, the press secretary, read some of it at his briefing, at which he also said that our government was concerned that releasing photographs of bin Laden’s body might be “inflammatory.” (See Philip Gourevitch’s discussion of that point.) Here are some excerpts of the narrative:
In addition to the bin Laden family, two other families resided in the compound: one family on the first floor of the bin Laden building and one family in a second building. One team began the operation on the first floor of the bin Laden house and worked their way to the third floor; a second team cleared the separate building. On the first floor of bin Laden’s building, two Al Qaeda couriers were killed along with a woman who was killed in cross-fire. Bin Laden and his family were found on the second and third floor of the building. There was concern that bin Laden would oppose the capture operation and indeed he resisted. In the room with bin Laden, a women—bin Laden’s wife—rushed the U.S. assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed. Bin Laden was then shot and killed. He was not armed.
Reading that, it sounds as though the woman who was killed was not bin Laden’s wife, or even on the same floor of the house as he was, and thus not being used by him, as the White House first said, as a “human shield”—certainly not in the sense most of us understood—and that bin Laden’s wife, who “rushed the U.S. assaulter,” survived. (Where is she now?) Bin Laden not being armed is relevant less in a legalistic sense—as Carney said, “resistance does not require a firearm”—than because it suggests a missed, or rather ignored, opportunity. How hard would it have been to arrest him, and to put a man who murdered people in this city on trial in this city?
There are other details: “The body was placed in a weighted bag; a military officer read prepared religious remarks, which were translated into Arabic by a native speaker.”
And there were other storytellers: the BBC quoted an I.S.I. official, but doesn’t say whether he managed to keep a straight face while telling them this:
“the compound was not on our radar, it is an embarrassment for the I.S.I.…. We’re good, but we’re not God.”
That compound was a few hundred yards from a military academy, so “not on our radar” might be the wrong metaphor (as might “not God”). More interestingly, the I.S.I. official told the BBC that several children were in the compound, and that one of bin Laden’s daughters was with him when he was shot; one would like more details about that. (CNN reported, meanwhile, that the White House had three sets of photos: the body, the burial at sea, and the raid, including one of bin Laden’s dead son, who appeared to be about eighteen.)
How much does it matter for us to get all the details right? Isn’t there a larger truth: that bin Laden was a bad man, and a murderer, and a plotter of more murderers, and we got him—imperfectly, maybe, but doing our best? It still matters, a great deal. Our victory over him, ultimately, will depend on whether people in the world feel that we are asking them to live with the indignity of being lied to—or are complicit in the lies we tell ourselves—or are, instead, dealing with them honestly. The soldiers who went after him risked their lives; we can live with the truth, whatever it is.
Read David Remnick, Steve Coll, Lawrence Wright, Jon Lee Anderson, Dexter Filkins, Hendrik Hertzberg, George Packer, and more of our coverage of Osama bin Laden’s death.A team led by Bulgarian archaeologist Prof. Nikolay Ovcharov has uncovered an enormous cult complex at the ancient Thracian city of Perperikon in the Rhodoppe Mountains.
The complex consists of at least 9 altars each 2 meters in diameter located on an area of 12 square km. They are dated back to about 1 500 BC thanks to objects discovered around them, which is about the time of Ancient Egypt and the civilization of Mycenae and Minoan Crete. This is the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age.
On those altars, the ancient Thracians practiced fire rituals; similar rituals were practiced at about the same time in Ancient Egypt, on the island of Crete, and in the Hittites state in Asia Minor.
Professor Ovcharov, who gave a special press conference in the southern city of Kardzhali Wednesday, said the discovery of the cult complex may lead to the discovery of a connection between Ancient Thrace and the Minoan Crete civilization.
One of the altars Ovcharov's team found is built of stone plates with thickness of 1,5-2 meters; this is believed to be the largest altar in Southeast Europe.
During their excavations at Perperikon over the summer, the archaeologists found items from the late period of the Roman Empire, and a medieval citadel dated to 13-14th century, which is a testimony that Perperikon was an important city during all time periods.Normally in this series we primarily explore X-wing. But every so often we’ll take a small detour into areas of gaming. Today we’re going to look back at the Obligation system in FFG’s Star Wars RPG.
We all have obligations. To family, friends, work or even just ourselves. Big or small, we all owe someone something, even if that someone is ourselves or our own desires. Obligation is a part of life.
Fantasy Flight made this concept a core feature of the Star Wars Edge of the Empire RPG for good reason. Every character has a certain amount of obligation right from the get go. It is a core mechanic in the game and an important part of developing the games narrative. Obligation exists to help establish your character as a member of the fringe. You’re obligation is so high, it has a numerical value. It’s part of the reason you’re out there, fending for your life on the edge of the Empire, instead of working a cushy middle class job in the Core.
Designed by the esteemed Sterling Hershey (whose real life is the inspiration for the character Sterling Archer of the show Archer. True story. Look it up.), Obligation is one of the best mechanics for EoE, right after the narrative die system itself. Sterling has delved into the mechanic some on his blog, providing some examples of different type of obligation levels and clarifying some questions. I suggest you head over there for some good details straight from the horse’s mouth.
For us, we’re going to begin a tour of the different types of Obligation that EoE offers and take a look at how these might work in your game and what the consequences might be for accumulating a lot of it. Strap in and power up your Obligometers…
We’re going to start with the easiest Obligation, Debt. Our PC, Han Solo, begins the game with 5 Debt Obligation. He works with the GM and decides he’s indebted to the crime lord Jabba the Hutt. Han decides to take a few extra points of Obligation at character creation so that he can afford to buy a badass DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol. Now with a Obligation Debt of 10, Han begins his adventure.
Starting out on the world of Tatooine, the GM makes a roll with the PC’s obligation and as luck would have it, Han comes up. After the party meets, in a cantina of course, the GM decides that a 10 Obligation warrants a visit from a bounty hunter. But only a low level one sent to take him alive.
With the rest of the party distracted, they should know better than to split up so early, Han is confronted by a Rodian bounty hunter. The Rodian begins talking to Han and the GM wants to give him an out by agreeing to go speak to his debtor, Jabba. Not having time for this BS, Han decides to just shoot him. Scoring a Triumph, he drops the Rodian in one shot.
Having bested the bounty hunter before speaking to Jabba, the GM decides he still wants that meeting to occur so he has Jabba show up at Han’s ship. Now some roleplaying begins as Han is outnumbered. The player gets a chance to flesh out why he owes Jabba such a debt and his character’s backstory begins to take form.
Before ending the encounter, Han attempts a Negotiate check to buy himself more time on his debt. While he rolls a success, he generates a significant amount of threat. The GM elects to give Han more time to repay the debt in exchange for increasing his Obligation.
Several sessions later, Han again comes up on the Obligation roll. Having not thought about this encounter since the first session, his Obligation is a dangerous 15. The GM raises the stakes and sends a nemesis level bounty hunter after Han. They run into each other on Bespin and this time, no Triumphs to save the day, only Despair.
Captured and frozen in carbonite, the rest of the party is forced to put their main quest aside to go rescue Han. They succeed in freeing him and killing Jabba, eliminating Han’s debt. Now Han has no Obligation. His reputation with the underworld is shot, having repaid his debt through murder. Good luck getting a loan now, Han.
This is just one example of how Obligation can play into your games. Next time, we’ll tackle some of the more abstract obligations and how they can enhance your characters and your game.
Comments
commentsThis is the mail archive of the gcc-announce@gcc.gnu.org mailing list for the GCC project.
GCC 4.3.0 Released
From: Jakub Jelinek <jakub at redhat dot com>
To: gcc-announce at gcc dot gnu dot org
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 06:21:34 -0400
Subject: GCC 4.3.0 Released
Reply-to: Jakub Jelinek <jakub at redhat dot com>
GCC 4.3.0 has been released. GCC 4.3.0 is a major release, containing substantial new functionality not available in GCC 4.2.x or previous GCC releases. See: http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.3/changes.html for more information about changes in GCC 4.3.0. This release is available from the FTP servers listed here: http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html The release is in gcc/gcc-4.3.0/ subdirectory. There is one important caveat. It was discovered after the final release has been made that some OS kernels on i?86 and x86_64 architectures violate the processor specific ABI with regards to the DF flag, if a process is interrupted with a signal while doing overlapping memmove or running some other code with DF flag set, the signal handler might be started with DF flag set on entry to the signal handler. GCC 4.3.0 no longer emits cld instructions unnecessarily, so GCC 4.3.0 compiled async signal handlers or functions the signal handlers call that rely on DF flag being cleared might misbehave. This will be hopefully fixed in the kernels soon and future GCC releases might provide an optional workaround for this bug. Fixes for some systems: Linux http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=e40cd10ccff3d9fbffd57b93780bee4b7b9bff51 FreeBSD http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=121422 Hurd http://sources.redhat.com/ml/libc-alpha/2008-03/msg00020.html If you encounter difficulties using GCC 4.3, please do not contact me directly. Instead, please visit http://gcc.gnu.org for information about getting help. As always, a vast number of people contributed to this GCC releases -- far too many to thank individually!Quick Vote When will you know that an economic recovery is underway? When the Dow tops 10,000
When GDP turns positive
When job growth resumes
It's already started or View results
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- South Korea leads the world in providing broadband services, according to a study released on Thursday. The United States did not make the top 10.
South Korea dramatically improved the speed, quality and availability of its Internet service in 2009, pushing past Japan, the former worldwide leader, according to a team of business students from the University of Oxford in England and the University of Oviedo in Spain.
The study, sponsored by Cisco (CSCO, Fortune 500), examined 66 countries and 240 cities. Broadband leadership was measured by various factors, including the number of wired households, where South Korea scored 97%. Hong Kong, which was rated number three in overall broadband leadership, had an even higher penetration, at 99%.
In terms of overall leadership, Hong Kong was followed by Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Singapore, Luxembourg, Denmark and Norway.
The United States did not make the list's top 10, even though it made "significant, above average improvements" in quality, the study said.
In terms of broadband Internet quality, the U.S. lags behind not only Sweden, which leads Europe, but the island nations of Malta and Iceland, and the former Soviet Bloc country of Lithuania.
The top three cities with the best overall broadband services -- Yokohama, Nagoya and Sapporo -- were all in Japan, the study said.
Japan also led the way for providing quality services outside major cities. But the study showed that the biggest digital quality divide between urban and rural areas was in Lithuania, Russia and Latvia.
"The Broadband Quality Study shows us which countries have made real moves towards the Internet of the future," said Professor Maria Rosalia Vicente of the University of Oviedo, in a written statement. "It also provides fresh evidence of the urban-versus-rural quality divide. The challenge for countries now is to bridge this quality divide."
The study's researchers judged broadband quality by measuring upload and download speeds, network latency and capacity. For their benchmarking, they tested out typical applications used today such as video streaming, Web browsing and social networking.
But they also took a look at which countries have the broadband quality necessary for handling future applications, like high definition Internet television and video communications, which they expect to become common in the next three to five years.
That list features nine countries, including the leaders South Korea, Japan and Sweden, as well as former Soviet nations Lithuania, Bulgaria and Latvia. The U.S. didn't make the cut.Clio Awards Clio Awards logo Awarded for creative excellence in advertising and design Country Worldwide Presented by Evolution Media First awarded 1960 ; 59 years ago ( ) Website clios.com
The Clio Awards is an annual award program that recognizes innovation and creative excellence in advertising, design and communication, as judged by an international panel of advertising professionals.[1] Time magazine described the event (in 1991) as the world's most recognizable international advertising awards.[2]
History [ edit ]
The awards, founded by Wallace A. Ross in 1959, are named for the Greek goddess Clio, the mythological Muse known as "the proclaimer, glorifier and celebrator of history, great deeds and accomplishments".[3]
1960s [ edit ]
The Clios were first given in 1959, for excellence in television advertising, by the American TV and Radio Commercials Festival. Each winner received a gold Georg Olden–designed statuette. The competition was expanded to include work on international television and movies in 1966, and then radio ads, in the United States, in 1967.[3]
1970s [ edit ]
Engraved plaque on the 1977 Clio award given to Artie Schroeck for arranging the music in a McDonald's jingle.
The Clio Awards were acquired by Bill Evans in 1972 for $150,000[4] and the Clios became a profitable "for profit" company.[3] At one point, the company's income was $2.5 million per year, being derived primarily from Clio nomination fees, of $70 to $100 per entry.[2]
Evans expanded competition by including: U.S. Print advertising in 1971; International Print advertising in 1972; International Radio advertising in 1974; U.S. Packaging design in 1976; International Packaging design; and U.S. Specialty advertising in 1977.[3]
1980s [ edit ]
In 1983, Evans continued to expand by acquiring U.S. Cable advertising in 1983.[3]
The rules for the 1984 award required that a given entry appear publicly during the calendar year in 1983. In order to be eligible, Chiat/Day needed to run Apple Computer's 1984 commercial for the Macintosh computer prior to Super Bowl XVIII. In December 1983, Apple purchased time on KMVT in Twin Falls, Idaho, after the normal sign-off, and recorded the broadcast in order to qualify.[5]
In 1984, the following year, a nearly identical situation occurred when Ziebart's ad agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach, purchased time on a Detroit channel carrying the inaugural Cherry Bowl college football game in December, 1984 in order for that commercial to be eligible for the 1985 awards. The move paid off as Ziebart's "Friend of the Family (Rust in Peace)" commercial garnered the Clio Award in 1985.[6]
In 1987, Evans acquired Hispanic advertising.[3]
1990s [ edit ]
1991 Clio Awards [ edit ]
Attendees of the 1991 Clio Awards who had paid the US$125 admission price did not have tickets waiting at the door, as promised. Also missing were any Clio officials and Clio President Bill Evans. The event did not start on time; in fact, people stood around drinking, schmoozing, and trading rumors about Evans and the Clio organization for more than two hours. Finally, the lights dimmed and the band started playing. A man walked up to the microphone and began to speak. He identified himself as the caterer and announced that the master of ceremonies was a no-show, but that he would give it a shot. It started out well but, after being informed that there was no script and no winners list, he gave up and walked off. A second man walked onstage and began talking, but he was not a polished speaker and it was obvious that we he was inebriated. Print ads were the first awards; transparencies of the winning entries were displayed. As each image appeared on screen, the owner of the work was asked to come to the stage, pick up their Clio, and identify themselves and their agency. When the last award in the category was dispensed, the band began playing an interlude and the emcee began singing. The audience began booing and throwing dinner rolls, and the man staggered offstage. Several minutes passed, but no one took his place. As the people began to leave, one man mounted the stage, strode to the table of remaining statuettes, snatched one up, and waved it as he left the stage. Two other individuals claimed their own awards; then suddenly, the stage was stampeded by advertising executives, intent on the Clios that remained.[2][4]
The event for television commercials, scheduled a few days later, was called off.[2][4]
1992 Bankruptcy [ edit ]
On March 17, 1992, Clio Enterprises Inc., filed for bankruptcy, claiming $1.8 million in debts and indeterminate assets of at least US$1 million.[7] Chicago publisher Ruth Ratny purchased the Clio name for an undisclosed figure. Evans had wanted $2 million, and trade publications reported a sale price of $10,000, which Ratny called low. Ratny reorganized the event as the New Clio Awards, and combined what had previously been two events into a single presentation, which was delayed from June until September 1992. Advertising Age magazine reported 6,000 entries, less than one quarter of the 1990 total. As a concession to the 1991 winners who had not yet received the trophies, their entry fee was waived. The 1990 award show at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts drew 1,800, while only 500 paid for the 1992 show at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel,[4] which was hosted by Tony Randall. A total of 86 awards in 73 categories were handed out.[8] Another major change with the "New" Clios was direct competition between U.S. and foreign firms, which resulted in Swiss agency Comsult/Advico Young & Rubicam being named the winner of the best Television campaign.[9]
A bankruptcy court ruled that the creditors of the 1991 Clio Awards should be paid. At the time, Ratny lacked the financial resources to settle the US$600,000 debt. Another Chicagoan, James M. Smyth a former film editor, put up the money and became sole owner of the Clio Awards. On New Year's Eve of 1992, he began working on the 1993 Clio awards show.[10][11] The award ceremony was again delayed until September, and Jay Chiat of TBWA\Chiat\Day, Rick Fizdale from Leo Burnett Worldwide and Keith Reinhard at DDB Worldwide joined the Clio Executive Committee.[12]
In 1997, the Clios were sold to Dutch-owned company VNU Media.[2]
2000s [ edit ]
In 2007, VNU changed its name to the Nielsen Company.[2]
In 2009, e5 Global Media assumed control of Clio, when it acquired magazines Adweek and Billboard (among others) from Nielsen Business Media.[13]
In 2010, Nicole Purcell was appointed Executive Director of Clio and Brooke Levy was hired to run marketing for the organization. Together they have been credited with reestablishing Clio as a best-in-class creative program. In 2015, Nicole Purcell was promoted to President.[14]
In 2017, the Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive acquired the Clio Awards Collection from the London International Awards, the organization that purchased the collection from the Clio organization in 1992.[15] Composed of thousands of reels of 16mm and 35mm film, the collection contains Clio entries and winners from the 1960s through the early 1990s across a wide variety of categories.[16] International submissions are also included in the collection.[15]
Clio is currently part of MediaBistro Holdings, a group that also includes Adweek and The Film Expo Group, and is owned by Guggeinheim Partners.[17][18]
Judging [ edit ]
In 2014, Clio assembled a 50/50 male-female jury made up of more than 70% international (non-US) judges.[19] 2014 was also the year Clio began holding judging sessions internationally. The 2014 judging session took place in Malta, and the 2015 session will take place in Tenerife, Spain.
According to the Clio Awards website, more than 80% of submissions are eliminated within the first two rounds. Juries then determine whether a work deserves to be included on the Shortlist, or receive a Bronze, Silver, or Gold medal. One work in each media type may be awarded the Grand Clio, the highest honor.[20]
Clio stated, in 2007, that the competition received more than 19,000 entries from all over the world and enlisted a jury of more than 110 judges from 62 countries. Nearly two-thirds of the submissions came from outside the United States.[21]
Grand Clio Award (1988)Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif thinks some Senate Republicans need a lesson in civics and international law.
In a letter sent Monday to Iran's leaders, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and 46 of his GOP colleagues warned that any agreement the U.S. reaches with Iran on that country's nuclear program might not be the final say on the matter.
"The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen," they wrote, "and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time."
Signs of progress in Iran nuclear talks
In response, Zarif brushed the letter aside, saying it "has no legal value and is mostly a propaganda ploy."
"It is very interesting that while negotiations are still in progress and while no agreement has been reached, some political pressure groups are so afraid even of the prospect of an agreement that they resort to unconventional methods, unprecedented in diplomatic history," he added.
Zarif "expressed astonishment that some members of Congress find it appropriate to write leaders of another country against their own president," a press release explained. "It seems that the authors not only do not understand international law, but are not fully cognizant of the nuances of their own Constitution when it comes to presidential powers in the conduct of foreign policy."
He warned that a change of administrations would not relieve the U.S. of its obligations under an international agreement reached under the previous administration. Any attempt to change the terms of that agreement, he added, would be a "blatant violation of international law."
"The world is not the United States, and the conduct of inter-state relations is governed by international law, and not by U.S. domestic law," Zarif explained. "The authors may not fully understand that in international law, governments represent the entirety of their respective states, are responsible for the conduct of foreign affairs, are required to fulfil the obligations they undertake with other states and may not invoke their internal law as justification for failure to perform their international obligations."
Zarif's response echoes that of some Democrats, who have criticized Republicans for taking the "unprecedented" step of preemptively undermining President Obama's drive to secure a deal over Iran's nuclear program.
Obama: U.S. will “walk away” if we can’t reach Iran deal
"I am appalled at the latest step of 47 Republicans to blow up a major effort by our country and the world powers to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the Iranian nuclear program," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, said in a statement. "This is a highly inappropriate and unprecedented incursion into the president's prerogative to conduct foreign affairs and is not befitting this chamber. This letter only serves one purpose--to destroy an ongoing negotiation to reach a diplomatic agreement in its closing days."
President Obama said Monday he finds it "ironic" to see some members of Congress "wanting to make common cause with the hardliners in Iran" who oppose a deal.
"It's an unusual coalition," he said. "I think what we're going to focus on right now is actually seeing whether we can get a deal or not...If we do, then we'll be able to make the case to the American people and I'm confident we'll be able to implement it."
The U.S. and five other nations are seeking a deal with Iran that would allow Western powers to verify that Iran's nuclear program is being used only for peaceful energy purposes, and not to pave the path to a nuclear weapon. The next round of negotiations is scheduled to begin March 15.
President Obama has repeatedly stressed that "no deal is better than a bad deal," and he's said the U.S. will simply walk away from the talks unless they produce a deal that allows officials to verify Iran is keeping its end of the bargain.1. The nits were mostly gone when I looked at his hair this morning.
2. Our family policy is to have our children ONLY do homework that matches our parenting philosophy.
3. Destiny is SO fond of you. How about babysitting for us Saturday night?
4. You know that blog entry I wrote about you. I want you to know I really AM over it now and I really didn't mean AT ALL for it to go viral.
5. The only reason Bryce misbehaves is because you don't like him.
6. I emailed you over an hour ago, why haven't you answered yet?
7. I'd love to come in and speak to your class about my job! What do I do? Oh, I'm a marketer for Plasti-Krap Sugar Snacks.
8. I'm so sorry to interrupt while you're having dinner out with your wife, but if you could just give me a quick summary of how Preston is doing in your class, that would be great.
9. I don't know where YOU went to school, but in the Ivy League….
10. Cassandra has what the doctor describes as "fecal urgency."
11. Word to the wise: Timmy bites.
12. I'd like to observe your teaching style, but I don't want to make you nervous. Is it OK if I just stand in the doorway for a while each morning?
13. I need you to call me IMMEDIATELY every time Jade gets a grade lower than a B. Got it?
14. Roald Dahl? Harry Potter? Those are all devil books and there's no way Olivia is reading them.
15. Our family believes in freedom of speech, so we don't limit our child's vocabulary. So if Bonnie swears in class, understand that we expect you not to call attention to it.
16. I don't believe in sending in school supplies, there seem to be plenty in the classroom anyway.
17. I know Sadie has a little fever today, but it's only allergies.
18. You clearly have no idea just how gifted Beau is, otherwise you would never have given him a C.
19. Jared will be out of school the week AFTER Spring break too. The beach is so much less crowded then. You understand.
20. I called the superintendent and the principal to hear what they have to say. And now I'd like to hear your explanation for why Elspeth isn't in honors this year.
21. It's very important that you include Taylor's imaginary friend in every morning roll call. And she'll need her own cubby and seat.North Koreans dislike when outsiders refer to their country as “North Korea.”
They prefer the official title, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), as it represents Pyongyang as the true, legitimate Korean government. Yet, according to Western standards, North Korea is neither “democratic” nor a “republic.” So how did this totalitarian state and hereditary dictatorship acquire this contradictory title?
As the Soviet Union expanded its influence into Eastern Europe in the early 1940s, Moscow created the idea of “people’s democracies” in order to distinguish new Leninist republics from previous bourgeois regimes, but at the same time reaffirming the Soviet Union’s superiority in socialist construction and as the center of the world communist movement. Soviet satellites such as Macedonia, Romania and Bulgaria became known as “people’s democracies” and officially “people’s republics.”
“The ‘people’s democracy theory,’ created by the Soviet ideologues in the early 1940s, implied that those (newly independent) countries were going through a lengthy transition from capitalist or even colonial and semi-feudal societies to socialist societies,” Prof. Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University told NK News.
The names also reinforced the Soviet Union’s position at the top of the communist hierarchy.
“In the Soviet bloc, ‘people’s democracy’ meant a lower stage of socialist construction than the stage already achieved by the USSR,” Prof. Balazs Szalontai of Kwangwoon University said. “This implied an inferiority of the smaller communist states vis-à-vis the USSR, and probably this is why Romania later renamed itself ‘Socialist Republic’ under the maverick (Nicolae) Ceausescu.”
As communism and the “people’s democracy theory” spread to Asia, the Soviet-inspired naming rituals continued. After the liberation of Korea from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, the Soviet-aligned state in northern Korea sought to distinguish itself from the rival government in the south, the short-lived provisional government which called itself the People’s Republic of Korea, so it added “democratic” to the beginning of its name. Mao Zedong’s government became known as the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
“The ‘people’s democracy theory’ emphasized that these countries were yet to start full-scale socialist construction, so their major current goal was to overcome their backwardness through the implementation of general democratic policies,” Lankov said.
“Such policies included land reform, abolition of hereditary privileges of gentry where such privileges existed, the introduction of gender equality, and partial (or complete) nationalization. In other words, those countries were seen as…building the foundation of socialism while still remaining humble democracies, albeit of a better type.”
Though technically there are multiple parties in the DPRK today, the Korean Workers’ Party tightly controls elections and the other parties exist purely for show.
“Obviously ‘democracy’ in this context does not mean what we in the non-communist world think it is – contested elections, multiple parties, etc. – but rather reflects the claim that these party-states represent ‘the people,’ as opposed to oppressive feudal or capitalist systems.” Prof. Charles K. Armstrong of Columbia University said.
North Korea was the first to use both “democratic” and “people’s” in its name but would not be the last, Armstrong pointed out. The communist regimes in Ethiopia (1987-1991), South Yemen (1967-1990) and Laos (1975-present), as well as the non-communist government of Algeria (1962-present), also used both “democratic” and “people’s” in their official titles.
North Korea never changed its title, unlike some former Soviet satellites. These include the “Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia,” which became the “Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia” in 1963 and Romania, which renamed itself the “Socialist Republic of Romania” in 1965. These former “people’s democracies” defied their Soviet comrades as the Soviet Union felt that these states were behind in socialist construction.
“It is not incidental that the Soviet leadership was not pleased to learn in the 1960s that some of the erstwhile ‘people’s democracies’ began to restyle themselves as ‘socialist countries,’” Lankov said. “I have seen documents about such displeasure in the papers of the Soviet embassy in Pyongyang.”
The lack of a North Korean name change may also reflect its unique position as a divided nation.
“The fact that the DPRK consistently kept its original name, rather than renaming itself the Socialist Republic of Korea in the same way as Romania did was probably attributable to its official doctrine of national unification,” Szalontai said. “In a purely rhetorical sense, a ‘socialist republic’ would have implied a sharper division between the two Koreas than a ‘democratic’ one.
“The name of the ruling party (Korean Workers’ Party) has also remained the same, whereas in Ceausescu’s Romania and post-1976 Vietnam, the Workers’ Parties were renamed as Communist Parties as a sign of a step forward in socialist construction and/or national unification.”
With the Soviet Union having long since collapsed and its European satellites having abandoned communism, there appears little reason for the DPRK to change its name prior to collapse or reunification with the South. When reunification takes place, though, what will the unified Korean state call itself? Koryo, a Korean dynasty that lasted from 918-1392 (and which provides the basis for the name “Korea”), may hold the key; Kim Il Sung himself pushed for the establishment of the “Democratic Confederate Republic of Koryo” in the 1970s and 1980s.
Time will tell, of course, whether reunification happens peacefully. Even if it does, what name the two sides can agree is just one issue they’ll have to resolve.
Picture: Eric LafforguePresident Donald Trump’s administration has resuscitated the U.S.-backed efforts to combat the deadly opium crop and its heroin derivative in Afghanistan, triggering an increase in interdiction and eradication activity after counternarcotics operations nearly disappeared over the last few years.
Data compiled by a U.S. watchdog agency shows the increase in counternarcotics activity.
Opium provides 60 percent of the Taliban terrorist group’s funding, according to the U.S. military.
Dr. Sebastian Gorka, a deputy |
remarkable wings come into their own, as the birds twisted and turned around the tall beech and sycamore trees.
I counted 18 of them coming in to feed on the mixed grain we spread out on two ground-level bird tables below the apple trees. This food is intended for small birds, mallard and mandarins, though if the badgers have eaten their peanuts during the night they often help themselves too.
Grebe joins dippers in the Highlands Read more
A window five metres from the tables is ideal for observing, and photographing, the mandarins. About a third of the birds were drakes and the rest comparatively drab-looking females and juveniles.
At this time of the year the drakes are very striking, with a green and purple crest and a chestnut-orange ruff around their necks, orange-brown flanks and dark back. The varying colours blend to create an image of golden plumage dramatically offset by the two copper-coloured sail feathers that extend vertically 5cm or more forward of the tail; over the years I have made a collection of them when they have moulted in the garden.
Feeding was frantic, the mandarins jostling each other as they scooped up the grain, pausing only to dart over to the bird bath for a quick drink before running back into the melee. Then, as quickly as they arrived, the visitors were gone, heading very low over the field towards the river.
Follow Country diary on Twitter: @gdncountrydiaryUniversities across the nation are striving to help students cope with the stress of Election Day, such as offering tips on managing anxieties and events to help absorb election results.
Take Virginia Commonwealth University, which posted a six-point guide on how to “cope with election stress.”
the way you do”; “find a healthy escape,” such as exercise, journaling or meditating; “connect,” to hang with allies and friends, but “limit conversation that has potential to get heated”; “refuel” by drinking lots of water and getting plenty of rest; and finally “do something” through volunteering and advocacy. The advice includes suggesting students: “unplug,” to stay informed but not constantly scroll their newsfeed; “be present … give yourself permission to feelthe way you do”; “find a healthy escape,” such as exercise, journaling or meditating; “connect,” to hang with allies and friends, but “limit conversation that has potential to get heated”; “refuel” by drinking lots of water and getting plenty of rest; and finally “do something” through volunteering and advocacy.
“Election season is here and it’s important to practice self care,” the VCU Office of Multicultural Student Affairs noted on its Nov. 2 Facebook post.
University of Rochester’s Counseling Center posted a guided, two-minute meditation to help students handle their “election stress.”
And a note posted on Facebook by the University of Iowa’s Counseling Service lets students know the center “is here for you should you need to process through your experience of the presidential election.” The center also linked to an article that offers “Six Ways To Manage Election Stress With Mindfulness.”
Similarly, the University of Washington Counseling Center posted an article on “how to cope if your candidate loses on Election Day,” linking to a USA Today article headlined : “A 12-step plan for what to do if your candidate loses on Election Day.”
Wake Forest University counseling posted an article titled “Election stress is a real thing,” noting the write up also “contains tips to help people manage their stress related to the election.”
The University of Illinois’ Counseling Center noted in a Nov. 2 post “we’re a little less than a week out from Election Day. This campaign season has been especially stressful for many. How to stay strong and manage stress,” linking to a Psychology Today article titled “5 Ways to Stay Mentally Strong During Campaign Season.”
The advice therein? “Save your breath. Set healthy boundaries. Think realistically about the future. Limit your media consumption. View election season as an opportunity.”
A viewing party at East Carolina University hosted by the Political Science department and Center for Student Leadership and Engagement is billed by one student as a “safe space” for students to watch the results.
“It is important to have it on campus, so they know they are in a safe space and can say how they feel about the process and let it be kind of an open forum,” Erick Jenkins, a student vote everywhere ambassador at the CSLE, told the East Carolinian campus newspaper.
Allegheny College is hosting two post-Election Day decompression events for faculty and students “who wish to process the election in an open and welcoming space.”Serves 6 to 8
Time: 45 minutes
Comfort is an entire experience. It’s not just about taste, but texture, aroma and even the cooking experience can be comforting. That’s where roasting comes in!
Roasting gets you so much flavor and complexity with embarrassingly little effort. The kitchen becomes all warm and toasty and rich aromas waft through the entire house. Of course the scent of roasting potatoes make you feel as snuggly as a kitten making muffins on a pillow, but the fennel adds an alluring licorice note in the air, making the experience just slightly more intriguing. It’s also got a great creamy texture, making this soup thick and velvetty.
Because everything is roasted, there’s not much else you need to do to make it fabulous. No sauteeing, no spices; the oven gives you all the flavor you need. Once cooked, all you’ll need to do is puree. Lifechanging!
2 lbs yukon gold potatoes, cut into 1 inch chunks
Olive oil for drizzling
2 fennel bulbs (reserve the fronds)(those are the frilly green leaves)
1 large onion, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch slices
1 teaspoon salt, divided
Fresh black pepper
2 cups warm vegetable broth
2 cups unsweetened warm soy or almond milk
Preheat oven to 425 F. Line 2 large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.
Place sliced potatoes on one baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil (1 tablespoon should do, but 2 tablespoons is ideal for browning.) Sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon salt and add add several dashes fresh black pepper. Toss with your hands to coat completely. Roast potatoes for 15 minutes.
In the meantime, prepare the fennel and onions. Slice the fennel bulbs from top to base, in 1/2 inch slices. Place on the other baking sheet with the sliced onions and toss with olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon salt and pepper to coat, just like you did with the potatoes.
When the potatoes have roasted for 15 minutes, remove from the oven and use a spatula to flip them. Return to the oven on the upper rack, and place the fennel and onions on the middle rack.
Roast for 10 minutes, then remove the fennel and onions, flip, and roast an additional 5 to 10 minutes. At this point, the potatoes should be tender and the fennel and onions should be caramelized.
Reserve a few pieces of fennel for garnish. If using a food processor, place potatoes and fennel in the workbowl along with warmed milk and broth. Pulse a few times, so that it’s creamy but still chunky. Don’t over-puree or potatoes will turn gummy. Thin further with water, if needed.
You can serve immediately, or transfer to a pot to warm a little more and let the flavors meld.
You can also use a submersion blender by transferring all ingredients to a 4 quart pot and blending so that it’s creamy but still chunky, thinning with water as needed.
Taste for salt and pepper, ladle into bowls, garnish with reserved roasted fennel slices and fennel fronds, and serve!× 1 of 5 Expand Cover photo by Ryan Morris × 2 of 5 Expand Photo by Ryan K. Morris David Reeder × 3 of 5 Expand Photo by Ryan K. Morris Lexmark CEO David Reeder sits in on a sales meeting at the Lexmark headquarters in Lexington, KY on Tuesday, May 2, 2017. All Photos by Ryan K. Morris × 4 of 5 Expand Photo by Ryan K. Morris David Reeder × 5 of 5 Expand Photo by Ryan K. Morris David Reeder Prev Next
Lexmark International, Lexington’s iconic maker of printers and a key economic engine here for decades, announced Wednesday morning that its new CEO, David Reeder, has resigned.
“All of the Lexmark family want to thank David Reeder for his impressive efforts as CEO of the company, and as CFO as well,” Mickey Kantor, chairman of the Lexmark Board of Directors, said in a statement. “We wish him and his family the best in the future.”
Reeder was hired as CFO in 2015. He became CEO after the company was sold last year to a Chinese-based consortium.
The news release said Reeder left for “personal reasons” and that a search for a new leader was commencing.
The company said Brock Saladin, senior vice president and chief revenue officer, and Allen Waugerman, senior vice president and chief technology officer, would lead the company in the interim.
David Reeder talked last month with Business Lexington in an exclusive interview: Reeder profile.Sophomore - OT - 6'8 316 - Dallas, Ga
Frontrunner to start at RT tackle this season despite seeing action is just 4 games in his brief career.
Former 3 star prospect will compete another raw prospect in Sunny Odogwu and 5 star freshman KC McDermott for the majority of snaps.
Has great natural size and no shortage of confidence, but looks like he can be beat by powerful ends like UM stud Al-Quadin Muhammad.
Watch #76 on the highlights below:
"I didn’t want to be behind Seantrel and [Brandon] Linder. Did I think I was better than them? All day. But they were seniors, damn good players. You have to wait your time, bite your tongue and work. Now it’s my time." - Taylor Gadbois during spring practice.
Summary: The RT position is by far the biggest question mark along Miami's offensive line. Gadbois looked over matched in the footage above against AQM (hopefully a lot of the tackles UM faces this year have the same fate Vs him). Perhaps Gadbois is a diamond in the rough? Time will tell. If he or Odogwu do not hold up, McDermott may be inserted into the line-up sooner then the coaches had hoped. The 'Canes could also shift Jon Feliciano to RT and play one of the younger guards in his spot. However if Gadbois is up to the task, Miami should have one of the better O lines in the ACC 1 through 5, if not the country.
Stay tuned for more player profiles as we count down to Labor Day Vs Louisville.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/03/21/4008030/miami-hurricanes-taylor-gadbois.html#storylink=cpSummary:Princeton Neuroscience Institute researchers are joining with scientists from 19 other laboratories around the world to create the $15 million International Brain Laboratory (IBL).
Two Princeton neuroscience labs, led by Jonathan Pillow and Ilana Witten, are joining forces with researchers from Europe and the United States to crack the code on how the brain makes choices, by studying the activity and interactions between individual neurons across its different areas. IBL researchers come from the United States, Great Britain, Portugal, France and Switzerland.
Jonathan Pillow
"It's incredibly exciting to be a part of this collaboration, which brings together experimentalists and theorists from around the world to study how neural activity from across the brain gives rise to complex behavior,” said Pillow, an associate professor of psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute (PNI).
Half of the 21 IBL teams are experimental laboratories; the other half are focused on theory. Funding comes from the Simons Foundation in the U.S. and the Wellcome Trust in Britain.
Why focus on choices?
"Life is a succession of choices, from the most insignificant to the most intricate,” said Alexandre Pouget, a neuroscience professor at the University of Geneva Faculty of Medicine. “But unravelling the mechanisms that lie behind our choices is difficult, and the complexity of that task far outstrips the capacity of a single laboratory. It requires a close correlation between theory and experiments on a scale that has never before been achieved.”
The laboratories taking part in the IBL project will join their skills and work on understanding how the brain solves a single specific behavioral task.
Ilana Witten
“The use of identical experimental procedures will eliminate the differences that normally hinder replication of data across laboratories," explained Zachary Mainen, a neuroscientist based at the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal. "In this way, we will be able to pool data as if it were a single giant experiment, even though it is in fact distributed between two continents. The approach is a big departure for neuroscience, where it has been difficult to integrate results into a common theoretical framework due to differences in methodology and lack of motivation to share and standardize data.”
To determine exactly how the brain functions when confronted with a choice, each of the laboratories will investigate neuronal activity in mice faced with a very simple decision-making task. A visual stimulus — such as a black stripe on a white background — will appear on a screen to the left or right of the mouse. The animal then has to use its paws to turn a small steering wheel to align the stripe back to the center of the screen. "The mouse will have to decide whether the stimulus is on the right or the left, and [it] will convey its decision by operating the wheel," said Pouget.
The experiment will be conducted under the same conditions at each of the 11 experimentally oriented IBL labs. All the parameters will be standardized, from the apparatus to the training the mice undergo.
The IBL team will record the activity of several hundred neurons simultaneously, undertaking measurements in all areas of the brain at the cellular level. In all, the researchers will record activity from 5,000 to 10,000 neurons in animals performing exactly the same task. This comprehensive and entirely unprecedented map of neuronal activity will be made possible thanks to the precise coordination between different laboratories.
Two PNI graduate students, Angela Radulescu and Nina Rouhani, created an artistic representation of the brain on the glass window of their office.
The theoretical laboratories will use this unprecedented dataset to develop large-scale models of the decision-making process. To do so, they will also develop innovative information technology tools for collecting and processing data in a standardized manner. This will lay the technological and theoretical framework for interpreting data as it becomes available.
"I'm very excited about this large-scale collaboration," said Witten, an assistant professor of psychology and PNI. "By standardizing decision-making research in neuroscience labs across the world, and bringing together researchers with different experimental and computational expertise, I believe the IBL has the potential to have a major impact on neuroscience."
Ultimately, IBL researchers hope to establish a comprehensive theory of decision-making that will explain how each part of the brain contributes to the task.
"We are excited about the potential of this open and collaborative model, which will help us understand how the brain shapes behaviour,” said Anne Churchland, an associate professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. “It’s a unique opportunity to bring together leading scientists to meet the challenge of neural complexity."
David Tank, the Henry L. Hillman Professor in Molecular Biology and co-director of PNI who also directs the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain, one of the primary funders of the IBL, said: “We hope that the large-scale collaborative nature of the project, its emphasis on data sharing and a focus on a single behavior, will help to move the field of neuroscience forward by illustrating how many labs can seamlessly work together. Since its inception, the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain has emphasized collaboration, open data and fusion of experimental and theoretical expertise.”
The 21 teams participating in the IBL project are drawn from 15 institutions: Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, Columbia University Medical Center; Champalimaud Research, Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown; Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York; Columbia NeuroTechnology Center, Columbia University; Cortical Processing Laboratory, University College London; Department of Basic Neuroscience, Faculty of Science, University of Geneva; Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California-Berkeley; Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London; Center for Learning and Memory, University of Texas-Austin; Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris; Neural Dynamics and Computation Lab, Stanford University; Princeton Neuroscience Institute; Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour; and the Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, University College London.
Liz Fuller-Wright, Princeton University, and Marco Gérard Cattaneo, University of Geneva, contributed to this story.We’re proud to announce that The Fate of the Furious DLC is officially coming to Rocket League!
In collaboration with Universal Pictures and Dodge, our new Premium Battle-Car brings the same winter-hardened Ice Charger driven by Dom Toretto in the upcoming film, to YOU, our faithful community. Watch the trailer below!
For $1.99 USD (or regional equivalent), players will be able to grab the Ice Charger itself, in addition to exclusive Ice Charger premium Wheels and six Premium Decals -- Clean Cut, Crazy Sandwich, Flames, Rakugaki, Rally, and CCCXL. The new ride can be fully customized, too!
The DLC will be available on April 4 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, ahead of The Fate of the Furious’ theatrical release on April 14. Check out our dedicated page!New, by popular demand, all our AR-15 Toolcraft BCG's will feature Mil-Spec Carpenter No. 158 Bolts. And, as always, all our Toolcraft carriers are are plated by UCT Coatings in Florida, with the EXO coating. UCT is the originator of EXO coating, a patented, high-performance nickel boron coating.
Bolt Subassembly:
Bolt: Carpenter No. 158 Alloy Steel, Shot Peened
MPI Inspected
Extractor: Shot Peened Hardened D2 tool steel
O-Ring: Mil-Spec
Gas rings (3): Milspec
Coating: Nickel Boron Plated
Bolt Carrier:
Heavy Duty M16 design
8620 steel, plated
Gas key: hardened billet 4140 machined, plated
Gas Key Screws,: Grade 8 properly staked (heavy strike). Screws may or may not be plated.
Nickel Boron Plated (UCT Coatings in Florida)
Cam Pin:
8620 steel Nickel Boron Plated
Firing Pin:
mil-spec firing pin made from centerless ground 8740 steel, hard chrome coated
Notes:
1. All Toolcraft bolts are MPI inspected, but not necessarily marked MPI. WCArmory requests MPI marked bolts but Toolcraft can not guarantee that all MPI inspected bolts will be MPI marked. Email WCArmory for this disclaimer from the Toolcraft Operations Manager.
2. All BCG's are ordered direct from Toolcraft with the coating applied by Toolcraft's sub-supplier. All coatings are purchased and furnished direct from Toolcraft, and their full warantee is obviously valid.
3. WCArmory has been selling Toolcraft BCG's since 2009.In Ireland, abortions are prohibited by law and women caught obtaining one can face up to 14 years in prison. The law is so extreme that many women — some estimates say as many as twelve a day — travel to other countries so they can have the procedure done legally. One woman and her supportive friend made international headlines last month when they live-tweeted that journey.
Now, a new campaign urges the repeal of the country’s Eighth Amendment, which criminalizes abortion unless the mother’s life is in jeopardy.
The Repeal Project launched with the following powerful video, featuring dozens of strong women discussing how they’re persecuted like women at Witch Trials and calling for a separation of church and state on the matter, all while wearing shirts with the word “REPEAL”:
Amongst other ordeals, trial by water
Tied to a chair or run under a boat
If she survives the drowning and floats she’s a witch.
If she dies, she’s a woman
We are not witches but if the church and state insist
Then let us be the descendants of all the witches they could not drown
This heirloom of trauma, this curse
This agony of water in order to hold agency over our bodies
Not all of us have survived, the waves do not part
There are no miracles here
When a stethoscope is a crucifix on your belly
How do you have any choice but the water
And fair medical treatment on other shores
A body is a body is a body is a body is a body is a body is a body
Not a house. Not a city. Not a vessel, not a country
The laws of the church have no place on your flesh
How is it that livestock is worth more to this land than us?
Eleven women every day leave Ireland seeking an abortion abroad.
We ask for the land over the water. Home over trial. Choice over none.
For our foremothers, for ourselves, the generations yet to come
Witches or women, these are our bodies which shall not be given up.
It seems almost quaint to protest by broadcasting the word “Repeal” on your clothing, but it’s incredibly brave to be open about such a taboo topic. I hope it gains traction.
(Thanks to Ashling for the link)President Trump with national security adviser H.R. McMaster (third from left) and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis (right) listen during a meeting at the European Union headquarters in Brussels. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
President Trump’s unfitness for the presidency — from his inability to master serious policy issues to his ingrained dishonesty (must he lie about a call from the Boy Scouts?) to his self-absorption — has put the country in a constant and unique state of turmoil. The sense that the nation is on a roller coaster with no safety bar prompts public servants to make exceptions to long-standing rules of decorum and statecraft.
Especially with John F. Kelly as the chief of staff, the country now finds itself, in a situation in which, as military historian and author Tom Nichols writes, “the national security advisor, the secretary of Defense, the chief of staff—and, more distantly, the head of the U.S. prison system—are now all retired or serving generals, with a total of 13 stars among them. Rarely have so many served at once, and with so much political weight upon their shoulders.” Well, he needs Jim Mattis at the Pentagon to keep the country from really going off the rails. And he needs Kelly because he listens to no one else. All of this may be true, but with each new general the balance between military and civilian leadership becomes more untenable. Trump’s defects become justification for an undemocratic spectacle:
The reliance on martial virtue in the face of presidential chaos is dangerous not because it raises the threat of a coup, but because it creates an invitation to a kind of soft praetorianism, if only by sheer default. If Congress becomes acclimated to the idea that the military, instead of the legislative branch, should be watching over the president, why shouldn’t the American people and even the military itself come to the same conclusion?... As in the case with everything in the Age of Trump, the danger is that this is yet another hazardous practice we’ll accept it because we will have simply gotten used to it. This is a risk not because Kelly, McMaster, and Mattis are bad generals, but because we are now forced to trust, far too much, that they are in fact very good generals, in every possible way.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on July 26 said President Trump wants Attorney General Jeff Sessions to "focus on things like immigration, leaks, and a number of other issues." (Reuters)
Likewise, leaks abound, making even Democratic critics of the president queasy when the president loses the ability to seek honest advice and speak candidly. Well, these people need to leak because the country must know how unfit he is. Perhaps, but once again the problem goes beyond one contemptible Oval Office occupant. The office of the presidency, ironically for an authoritarian pretender like Trump, is taking a beating. David Frum argues that “if no high national-security secret has been betrayed in these transcripts, the workings of the U.S. government have been gravely compromised, and in ways that will be very difficult to repair even after Trump leaves office. Trump’s violation of basic norms of government has driven people who would otherwise uphold those norms unto death to violate them in their turn. Contempt for Trump’s misconduct inspires counter-misconduct.”
So do we break the rules to save the country from Trump or let Trump implode in ways that could have grave consequences for the country’s national security and democratic institutions? We have no perfect formula, no algorithm for determining when to veer from the norm and when to let Trump drive himself and possibly the country into a ditch. Let’s try out a few guidelines that may help us survive the Trump presidency.
First, Congress has extraordinary responsibilities to investigate wrongdoing and protect the Justice Department and FBI under this president. Lawmakers should do so publicly, statutorily when possible, and on a bipartisan basis. Republicans, it’s now or never to demonstrate that you are patriots.
The Washington Post's Carol Leonnig explains that special counsel Robert Mueller's investigative team has requested that the White House retain records of a meeting with a Russian lawyer. (Victoria Walker,Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)
Second, members of the executive branch should feel free to resign and publicly explain why (without revealing government secrets). It is a powerful way to call attention to problems and to give credibility to the accusations launched against a reckless and incompetent president. (Mattis may be the exception; we’d strongly prefer he not resign for the sake of keeping us out of nuclear war and other calamities.) Under no circumstances should members of the administration lie for the president; Sean Spicer found out that innocuous lies can turn into monumental ones. And they must refuse to carry out illegal or immoral orders, accepting the risk that they could be fired. (It bears repeating that at this point no one who is concerned about his or her personal integrity and/or legal exposure should go work directly for the president. One cannot do so without becoming an enabler.)
Third, Congress should not confirm any more generals/admirals (or retirees) for civilian slots, especially if Cabinet-level positions open up. If this president cannot operate without hiding behind military brass, it’s time for him to leave.
We fully understand this leaves vast, uncertain terrain. When is a leak a vital tool to prevent a rotten policy decision, expose a lie or reveal wrongdoing and when is it a gratuitous swipe at the institution of the presidency? When does one decide that staying in the administration for the sake of preventing things from getting even worse has become a weak rationalization for continuing to enable this president?
There are no easy answers, only a series of nerve-racking dilemmas. The only clear answer is that we must never, ever elect a president as deficient as this one. Our institutions can take only so much stress-testing.As an architect, I tend to communicate through sketching – which is starting to make me a bit of a relic. Most young people these days seem to work more on the computer and generate images that are created digitally, which I love, but I don’t want one skill at the expense of the other.
One of the extra-curricular activities I spend my time on is working with the Texas Society of Architects (TxA) – the state level component of the American Institute of Architects – as their Chair of Digital Communications. [Hmmmm … wonder how I go that job?] We are about to run another one of our coordinated hashtag events on Instagram. This is my one of my most favorite social media platforms – and particularly so for architects. Let’s face it, architects tend to do some pretty cool things and despite the unworldly number of photos of coffee and craft beers, architects seem to have pretty interesting Instagram feeds.
Our Texas Society of Architects event actually kicks off tomorrow on Tuesday, June 24th, but I wanted to give some of you folks some notice so that you can be prepared come tomorrow and play along.
Here’s how it works:
Step 1: Take a picture of an architectural sketch you have created – the subject matter can be of whatever you want
Step 2: Post that picture to your Instagram account. If you don’t have one, take the plunge with me here and sign up. There’s going to be all sorts of cool things we are going to do this year.
Step 3: Add the hashtags #ArchiSketch and #TexasArchitects in the description of that picture. If you didn’t know, adding a “#” in front of a word instantly makes that word searchable. This means you can click on any word that has a hashtag in front of it and all the pictures that have that hashtag will come up for viewing. Depending on the level of participation, we might even curate some of the pictures into an article on the Texas Society of Architects website.
Step 4: Follow txarchitects on Instagram (you can follow me as well if you aren’t already). Just so you know, there will probably be prizes at some point.
.
For fun, I thought I would look back at a block of photos that I’ve posted to my Instagram feed that would have worked well with the #ArchiSketch hashtag. The vast majority of images I post on my Instagram feed are architecturally themed, and a large chunk of those are sketches that I create as part of solving the problems associated with my projects. I’ve mentioned about a million times (although I haven’t counted to see if that number is accurate) that I am not a particularly adept at sketching, I can do it well enough to convey a thought and communicate an idea, which I suppose actually makes me quite skilled at sketching.
The rest of my afternoon is starting to look up – all that’s missing is a beer
Hashtags used: #sketching
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FYI – sketching with a black pen is always more fun than sketching with a red pen
Hashtags used: none
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another day, another practical sketch. Working out a column base plate detail for a steel window
Hashtags used: #frommydesk #architect #sketch
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Tried to sketch a little while I was on the plane this weekend – kind of ‘bouncy’
Hashtags used: none
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sliding door, steel frame, butt joint glazing detail … Fun to solve but a margarita would make it more fun.
Hashtags used: none
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thinking through sketching
Hashtags used: #architectural #sketch#detail #whatanarchitectdoes
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a different sort of teaching sketch … this one’s for the contractor
Hashtags used: #sketch
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just not feeling it today …
Hashtags used: none
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old and new on the same page
Hashtags used: #sketching
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sketching out a deck guardrail so that it’s simple yet has some architecture to it – and owner wants a curb at the edge
Hashtags used: none
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quick sketch of an interior bed wall – I think it reads well enough
Hashtags used: #frommydesk #sketch
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Working sketches this morning, walking a coworker through design dimensions
Hashtags used: #sketches
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Sketch from spring break – last time was #Paris, now it’s time for London
Hashtags used: #sketch #London
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A peek at my playhouse this year – detailing and execution will make this sing
Hashtags used: #sketch
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nope – this ain’t it. Good thing I only spent 90 seconds on it sketching
Hashtags used: #sketching
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This is what 3lbs of sketches looks like
Hashtags used: none
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Not all projects are big and fancy, sometimes It’s a simple window package redesign
Hashtags used: #sketching #fast #whatanarchitectdoes
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spending the afternoon sketching through a trellis detail – way more fun than processing pay apps
Hashtags used: #architect #design #sketching
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Some days, being an architect is so awesome it’s hard to imagine I get paid to do this
Hashtags used: #architect
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I know there are a lot of Instagrammers out there, and I hope you will participate in our hashtag event. Just remember to use the hashtags #ArchiSketch and#TexasArchitects (no spaces between words).
May you always have your favorite pen with you,Tesla CEO Elon Musk. REUTERS/Beck Diefenbach Tesla reported first-quarter earnings on Wednesday, and they were better than expected: Tesla lost less money than analysts thought the company would.
After the numbers hit, CEO Elon Musk and his team held a conference call. And Tesla kicked it off with a bang.
For years, Musk has said that Tesla wants to be delivering 500,000 vehicles per year by 2020.
But massive preorders for the Model 3 car that was unveiled in March — some 400,000 — have compelled Tesla to change that plan.
Musk now wants to hit 500,000 by 2018, a full two years ahead of schedule.
He called it the biggest "strategic change" that Tesla is now making.
"Increasing production five fold over the next two years will be challenging and will likely require some additional capital, but this is our goal and we will be working hard to achieve it," Tesla said in a letter to shareholders.
Up to now, Tesla has managed to build and deliver a maximum of about 50,000 vehicles in a single year. And that max was achieved last year, when Tesla downgraded its delivery guidance several times during the year.
This year, Tesla is sticking to its 80,000 to 90,000 delivery guidance.
But it's clear that the Model 3 has significantly altered Tesla's planning for the future.
An unfinished Model S at Tesla's assembly plant in Fremont, California. Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider
On the call, Musk stressed that as good as Tesla is at design and technology, the company needs to up its game as a manufacturer.
"We take it very seriously, and we need to solve it if we're going to scale and scale rapidly," he said.
Musk will evidently take personal responsibility for upping Tesla's production pace. He said that he has a desk at the end of a production line at Tesla's factory in Fremont, California, and that he also keeps a sleeping bag there.
But make no mistake: Getting to 500,000 in annual deliveries in just two years is going to be the biggest challenge Tesla has yet confronted.
So he took the opportunity to put out a call for help.
He asked the "best manufacturing people in the world" to join Tesla. He added that the company's "hellbent" focus would be to get "super good at making large complex objects."On his show Wednesday night, The Daily Show host Jon Stewart praised New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for finally finding the real President Barack Obama thanks to Hurricane Sandy.
Stewart noted that Christie had been a vocal ally of Romney, playing a clip of the New Jersey governor mocking Obama’s leadership skills less than two weeks ago. In the clip, Christie compared Obama to a man wandering around a dark room trying to find a light switch.
But Christie’s attitude dramatically changed after Hurricane Sandy slammed into the east coast. On Tuesday, the governor praised Obama’s “outstanding” leadership and cooperation.
“Yeah, I guess he found that fucking light switch,” Stewart quipped.
The Daily Show host joked that Christie had finally met the real Obama, not the imaginary “empty chair” Obama that conservatives had constructed. But Stewart remarked that not everyone had gotten “the memo,” showing a clip of Fox News host Steve Doocy asking Christie about doing a photo-op with Romney.
The New Jersey governor bluntly responded that he didn’t “give a damn” about presidential politics.
“If I know my state and my governor, I believe that is the point in the conversation where you are supposed to flip over a table and yell, ‘prostitution whore!” Stewart joked, alluding to the TV show Real Housewives of New Jersey.
Watch video, via Mediaite, below:Media playback is not supported on this device Belgian GP practice: Nico Rosberg suffers dramatic tyre failure
Belgian Grand Prix on the BBC Venue: Spa-Francorchamps Dates: 21-23 August Coverage: Live on BBC TV, BBC Red Button, BBC Radio 5 live, online, mobile, the BBC Sport app and Connected TV. Full details here
Leading drivers raised concerns about tyre safety following the high-speed blow-out suffered by Nico Rosberg at the Belgian Grand Prix.
Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso were among those who raised the issue in the drivers' briefing on Friday evening.
Hamilton's Mercedes team-mate suffered a tyre failure at 190mph but came to a halt without hitting the barriers.
Race director Charlie Whiting defended F1 tyre supplier Pirelli's record to the drivers in the meeting.
Pirelli said that following an investigation it could find "no issue with the structural integrity of this or any other tyre" and that the damage was "consistent with an external source".
Mercedes executive director (technical) Paddy Lowe said the failure "appears to have been a puncture caused by a foreign body", adding that the failure was "unusual".
Media playback is not supported on this device Belgian GP FP2 highlights: Nico Rosberg fastest despite tyre failure
Sources inside the meeting said that during a discussion about the drivers' concerns about tyre safety, Hamilton asked whether governing body the FIA was going to look at using a different tyre supplier.
Pirelli's contract runs out at the end of 2016 and it is facing competition from Michelin for the new contract from 2017.
In addition to Hamilton and two-time champion Alonso, other top drivers to express their concerns were four-time champion Sebastian Vettel, multiple race-winner Felipe Massa and Red Bull's rising star Daniil Kvyat.
Whiting reminded the drivers that Pirelli had suffered no other failures of this kind since they had changed the construction of their tyres following a series of failures during the 2013 season.
Rosberg said it was luck, not skill that he avoided a collision in the aftermath of the tyre failure
The drivers have fresh memories of the worrying events of the 2013 British Grand Prix, when several drivers suffered major tyre failures during the course of the race. |
attendance at the event. And no, they did not ask us to spend the night.)
Who is ultimately responsible for Amanda Todd’s death? Who can stop bullying?
Is it the teachers? First of all, that depends on if the teacher is a decent human being. Many teachers, especially those who are male, do nothing but egg on the aggression in students. For our purposes, though, let’s say the teacher truly does care and wants to do what she or he can to prevent bullying. Well, next is how. The means available for teachers to make a difference are rapidly dwindling with school boards and administrations being taken over by the right-wing, comprised of people who are bent on disallowing even art and music programs, never mind a comprehensive anti-bullying curriculum. Regardless, much bullying happens out of the sight of teachers. It’s in the bathrooms, in the hallways, at recess, or before or after school.
Then it’s up to the parents to stop it. Once again, this depends on the parents being good human beings. Judging by the mass injustice and ecological crises caused by this society, I don’t see much reason to be optimistic about most people. However, for our purposes, let’s pretend these are parents that truly do care, that want to do what it takes to stop their child from bullying others or from being bullied. The parents can spend all the time they’d like having conversations with their child after school, but most kids learn just as much or more about life from the other kids they are around during the day. Unless every parent of every student is teaching the same lessons of love and compassion, and unless every student is listening in earnest and soaking up the morals, it’s only a matter of time before one child comes across another who says something like, “hey, let’s go make fun of that girl’s crooked teeth” or “hey, look at that fat kid.”
All of this brings us back to the original culprit; the one that creates the indecency of so many teachers and parents who enable bullying. I’m speaking of the dominant culture. If we have any chance of stopping the cruelty committed by children, we must stop the cruelty committed by adults. Where do we think the kids learn it? As Fazeela Jiwa notes, “Violent behavior stems from a tolerance of, or a reluctance to acknowledge, the power imbalances mired in the fabric of our social structures at all age levels…The same oppressive learned behaviors occur in the workplace, in bars and clubs, on the street, and in other adult-inhabited places.”
This whole country was founded on bullying. It started and continues with the genocide of indigenous people, the enslavement of Africans, the use of women as chattel, and the destruction of the natural world. To stop bullying means to stop the misogynists, white supremacists, homophobes, and earth-killers in power. It means to end capitalism.
Amanda Todd’s never ending story eventually did end when she tried again to drink bleach, and this time succeeded in taking her life. Even after her death, people continue to celebrate her humiliation and complain about the public outcry as annoying. This is sadism beyond words.
Those who are bullied need to know it’s not their fault. Those who are not bullied need to stand in absolute solidarity and intervene at every instance of abuse. As long as some people profit, whether socially or economically or both, from another’s suffering, none of us are free. Amanda’s never ending story is the never ending story of so many suffering under this cruel and ruthless culture. Unless we rise up to stop it, we can expect nothing from the future but more Amanda Todds.
“Why do I get this?” the flashcards in Amanda’s video finished. “I messed up by why follow me. I left your guys city. I’m constantly crying now. Every day I think why am I still here? My anxiety is horrible now. Never went out this summer. All from my past…lifes never getting better. Can’t go to school meet or be with people. Constantly cutting. I’m really depressed. I’m on antidepressants now and counseling and a month ago this summer I overdosed. In hospital for 2 days. I’m stuck…whats left of me now. Nothing stops. I have nobody. I need someone. My name is Amanda Todd.”
Beautiful Justice is a monthly column by Ben Barker, a writer and community organizer from West Bend, Wisconsin. Ben is a member of Deep Green Resistance and is currently writing a book about toxic qualities of radical subcultures and the need to build a vibrant culture of resistance.From Bulbanews, your community Pokémon newspaper.
XY025 to air on April 24 in its place
Article Discussion Report error Monday, April 21, 2014 Reported on Bulbanews by Pokemaster97
Originally reported on TV-Tokyo
This article brought to you by Bulbanews, your community Pokémon newspaper.
Link to this article
XY024: Undersea Castle! Skrelp and Dragalge!!
TV Tokyo recently announced that the originally scheduled episode airing on April 24 in Japan, XY024: Undersea Castle! Kuzumo and Dramidoro!!, has been postponed until further notice. The next episode, XY025: Shōyō Gym Battle! Pikachu vs Chigoras!!, will be airing in its place. It is unknown when the episode will eventually air or what future episodes have had changed air dates. There will still be a break on May 1, as previously announced.
While the reasoning for the delay has yet to be confirmed, the scheduling change may have resulted from the sinking of a ferry off the coast of South Korea that occurred last week. The tragedy resulted in at least 64 deaths with 238 people still missing.The concentrated nicotine in e-cigarette refill liquids can be toxic if inadvertently ingested or absorbed through the skin. Reports of poisonings due to accidental ingestion of nicotine on refill liquids are rapidly increasing, while the evaluation of nicotine dermally absorbed still lacks. For that reason we studied transdermal nicotine absorption after the skin contamination with e-liquid. Donor chambers of eight Franz diffusion cells were filled with 1 mL of 0.8 mg/mL nicotine e-liquid for 24 h. The concentration of nicotine in the receiving phase was determined by high-performance liquid chromatography (LOD:0.1 μg/mL). Nicotine was detectable in receiving solution 2 h after the start of exposure and increased progressively. The medium flux calculated was 4.82 ± 1.05 μg/cm2/h with a lag time of 3.9 ± 0.1 h. After 24 h, the nicotine concentration in the receiving compartment was 101.02 ± 22.35 μg/cm2 corresponding to 3.04 mg of absorbed nicotine after contamination of a skin surface of 100 cm2. Skin contamination with e-liquid can cause nicotine skin absorption: caution must be paid when handling refill e-liquids.LIKENED to hell on earth, where despair and fear live side by side, take the frightening journey inside Australia's worst address.
NT NEWS journalist Sarah Crawford spent a week staying at the notorious Kurringal Flats in Darwin's north - here is what she found.
Torres Strait Islander Angie Mareko has a booming voice which echoes off the grimy walls of Kurringal Flats.
Right now her frightening bellow is directed at dopey-eyed Whitney Brinjen who has plonked herself down in the corridor with a dirty, big bong in her lap.
''F*** what are you doing? Take the c*** inside or I will tip it over the balcony," Angie, 38, roars.
Even in her supremely stoned state, Ms Brinjen does not need to be asked twice.
Lots of things are lobbed over the balconies of Kurringal Flats.
Lounge suites, mattresses, clothes and blades from pedestal fans.
Resident Fabian Yovich, 33, saw someone tip a heavy, analogue TV off the balcony of block four. It exploded on the steps near his front door.
"After that I stopped allowing my little nephews to stay over," he said.
Kurringal Flats are three, four-storey buildings of poverty, dysfunction and entrenched disadvantage dumped in the middle of one of Darwin's poshest suburbs, Fannie Bay.
Walking through the back gate past the no alcohol sign feels like you are stepping into an alternative universe.
The contrast between the leafy, picture-perfect townhouses of Fannie Bay and the grim, dirty white blocks of the Territory Housing complex is so extreme you feel disorientated.
Dozens of abandoned vehicles are in the car parks. Some vehicles have had their windows smashed or number plates removed. One car has had its engine and all the seats ripped out.
People sit on the stairs or in the corridors drinking port from plastic bottles all day - even though drinking in common areas carries a $500 fine.
Transvestite Ziggy Wilhelmsen, 50, believes people on the outside think he and all the residents of Kurringal Flats are creeps.
''The society around here thinks we are a big waste of time,'' he says sitting cross-legged on his couch in a shiny, dark brown wig.
''Sure we are poor and not much of us had a lot of education but we are a real mixed group here.''
A 58-year-old disability pensioner who wants me to call her Mary tells me there is only one way to find out what Kurringal Flats is really like.
''You need to see it at night,'' she says.
Mary offers to let me stay on her couch in her one-bedroom flat in block eight for a couple of nights.
I take up her offer and move in.
The Best Block
"Most of the people in this block are elderly, Christian and non-drinkers," Mary's friend Neil Williams, 53, tells me.
This block is pretty quiet. It is the best block by far.
Mr Williams, also a disability pensioner, live upstairs from Mary in a two-bedroom apartment which he pays $160 a fortnight to rent. Both have been here for over a decade.
Block eight backs onto a quiet suburban street and Waratah oval where Kurringal residents regularly drink.
Some block eight residents have put pot plants on their balconies. One woman has hung Chinese lanterns.
Kurringal Flats was built by the federal government in 1966. At its peak there were eight blocks which housed 350 people. Two blocks were demolished in 2001.
Another three were bulldozed two years later and Kurringal Court retirement village, for Territory Housing tenants aged over 55, was built on the land.
Now there are 91 tenants living in 78 units. A further six are empty. Everyone agrees the worst building is block six in the middle.
Mary's neighbour, John Mu, whose screen door was recently broken down in a police raid, tells me that block six is not safe.
"When you are going in there be careful. They can punch you or stab you. You can see the blood on the ground. Police go there all the time," he says.
Block four, on Dick Ward Drive, is considered to be somewhere in-between not as safe as eight but far better than six.
I sleep on Mary's couch for two nights - the fans buzzing full blast in the build-up heat.
I can't hear the screams that residents complain keep them up at night.
I have an offer to stay for three nights at someone else's refurbished flat at the top of block six. So I move my sleeping bag to the middle block from where the nightly shouts emanate.
The Worst Block
Gilbert Shaw, 58, gives an animal-like scream that only years of hard-drinking can achieve.
Someone has stuck a fire hose through a hole in the fly screen of his kitchen window and flooded his block six apartment.
It is the second time in 18 months he has been flooded out.
Hosing the apartment down was probably a good thing - it looks like it has not been cleaned since the last fire hose attack. Cockroaches crawl around the living room without fear.
There is still a large blood stain in the hallway where Mr Shaw was bashed with a metal broom handle during a robbery a month earlier.
He sits on a dirty mattress and sucks on a bong.
"I am sick of this," he says. "Where are security? This is bulls***."
People in block six say jealous men target Mr Shaw because they don't like their women coming over to his house when his disability pension arrives.
Other times the enfeebled alcoholic - who has a large scar on his chest from a heart operation - is attacked because he is an easy target from which to steal money and food.
Mr Shaw denies enticing women to his flat with money, gunja and booze.
"Girls just come over here and have a bit of fun - the dark girls love me," he says.
Mr Shaw was put in Kurringal Flats after he underwent the heart operation in Adelaide. Before that he was homeless.
But after 18 months at Kurringal he has been given a final warning to clean up or get out.
"I am trying to start a new life but it is all going wrong," he says.
Block six is certainly far grimmer than eight. People openly smoke bongs on the balconies, empty deal bags litter the floor and there are frequent eruptions of rage between tenants day and night.
The residents blame the violence and anti-social behaviour on visitors.
"The biggest problem is not the people living here all the time, it is their relatives that come here and take over the place," retiree John O'Brien, 85, of block eight tells me. I found that was not true.
The incidents of violence and anti-social behaviour that I saw were mostly caused by people who live at Kurringal Flats.
After talking to Mr Shaw, I sit in the stairwell with a Torres Strait island family who are visiting relatives that live in block six.
They chat and laugh drinking alcohol from plastic bottles as the fights and drama caused by the Kurringal residents ebb and flow around them.
A grandmother in the group sings me a lullaby she wrote for her three-year-old grandson.
Her daughter has moved to Sydney with the little boy and she misses him.
"Look to the sky. For Jetstar, Fly him back to me, Tears I cry, Narima, You broke my heart, Bring him back to me."
It is beautiful. We ask her to sing it again.
Cops and Grog
Old man Ezra Young is sitting at a picnic table in the common area when his girlfriend cracks him over the head with an almost empty bottle of rum.
She has just had a case of VB tipped out by police and she is furious.
Mr Young, 68, is unsympathetic. He is telling the rest of her drinking party that they got what they deserved.
"That is their law. They are public servants. That is their law and it is right," he says.
His girlfriend runs up behind screaming his name before crashing the bottle on the back of his head.
It does not break, so she throws it at his feet where it smashes.
I clear off as all hell breaks loose.
It is pension week at Kurringal Flats and the booze and gunja are flowing freely.
Some drinkers managed to run into the darkness when the police turned up, but the people at the picnic table were too slow.
An officer lobbed a wine skin into the car park where it split.
Mr Young's girlfriend drunkenly scolds the officers as they pour her cans into the grass.
"You steal my drinks," she shouts.
"It does not worry me, I can just buy more - I drink in moderation."
"Shut up," a police officer replies.
"Don't spend your money on grog, buy food instead," he tells the group.
Darkened figures, who have been watching the grog bust silently from block four, yell "f*** off, mother f*****" as the police drive off.
Residents of Kurringal voted to ban drinking in common areas in 2008.
Many residents support the ban while slyly drinking in public at the same time.
I see Mr Young an hour-and-a-half later staggering back to his ground floor flat in block six.
He says he is OK, touching the back of his head.
"She was jealous of another woman," he grins, "I am going to bed now."
St John Ambulance is called to block six three times that night.
The next morning rum and coke bottles, wine boxes and beer cans are scattered throughout the grass.
Security
A Territory Housing worker and a public housing safety officer knock on Mr Williams' screen door.
"We are doing a blitz on Kurringal to clear up the anti-social behaviour," one of the women tells Mr Williams.
"We need to get on top of it. This is our major problem. If there are issues we need to be made aware of it."
They hand Mr Williams a card with numbers he can call if there is trouble.
He is pleased. "In the past we have begged for security here but they have just driven in and out.
"Since this lot have started they have cleared it up a bit because they walk around."
Public housing safety officers were introduced to manage anti-social behaviour in Territory Housing complexes in June last year.
They can ban people from Territory Housing complexes for up to 12 months and have authority to tip out alcohol.
The officers patrol the grounds of Kurringal Flats about 7 o'clock every evening chatting with residents and sometimes at night.
Mental illness
Mr Williams and Mary have seen many failed attempts at placing mentally ill people at Kurringal Flats.
There was big Al who sometimes walked around naked covered in faeces.
Mary had a neighbour who would sit on a crate in the corridor with a mirror stuck to her forehead.
And another woman would try to kung fu her every time she left her unit.
Many are treated by the Tamarind Centre, an outpatient service for people with serious mental illness.
"Some had to be carted away - they did not make it," Mr Williams said.
"But there is this guy in the front block who dresses up as a woman. He has been there for years."
That is Ziggy Wilhelmsen.
He moved into Kurringal Flats with a wife, who suffered from schizophrenia in 2003.
Two years later, his wife divorced him and moved out.
After that he became a she.
"I became aware of my body and that I am a hermaphrodite," Ms Wilhelmsen said.
She says police have broken down her door several times and taken her to hospital.
But she denies she is a schizophrenic.
"Possibly bi-polar," she said.
"But I don't hear voices."
She pays $148 a fortnight for her two-bedroom unit.
A psychiatric nurse comes every 28 days to give her an injection.
She does not go out much.
"Some people are friendly with me here. There is a guy downstairs - he says I look pretty with make-up. But there is others that say 'ugly old hermaphrodite'."
Instead, Ms Wilhelmsen spends most of her time nutting out Einstein's theory of relativity.
"I am very lonely," she said.
"I have not had any sort of contact with people for a long time."
Fannie Bay shops
Over the road at Fannie Bay shops, Tim Copping from Captain's Seafood has been serving up chips to Kurringal Flats residents for 20 years.
At $2 a small serve he believes he has the cheapest chips in Darwin.
"I reckon I have about 15 regulars that come from there," he said.
"A few ladies I have known for 20 years. They are always nice even if they have had a few."
He thinks Kurringal Flats needs a major overhaul.
"Clean it up, downsize the blocks and check the people that go in there regularly," he says.
"Let's face it, we are the ones that are paying for it."
Paul O'Brien at North Coast Stereo a few doors up from the flats is far less generous.
"They should demolish the wildlife park," he says.
His wife Julie says she knows very little about Kurringal Flats, even though she and her husband have run the electronic entertainment store for 20 years.
They have only ever had one customer from Kurringal Flats.
"I only notice them crossing the road to the service station because they run out into traffic without looking - but that is endemic in Darwin," she says.
BP service station attendant Susie Niempromlee said she likes serving people from Kurringal Flats as long as they are not drunk and have the money to pay for the items.
"Sometimes they grab too many things and don't have enough money on their BasicsCard. I ask them to put things back but they throw them around," she said.
She said large groups of teenagers at night can be intimidating and hard to manage.
"The manager said that we are allowed to lock the door when they come," she said.
The future of Kurringal Flats
The CLP government's first Minister for Housing, Pete Chandler, described Kurringal Flats and other old Territory Housing stock as "basket cases."
"The $1.8 billion of taxpayer-owned assets have been neglected," he said.
"Seventy-eight per cent of all urban stock is over 23 years old, creating a massive maintenance bill. Many houses are in such a bad way they are vacant.
"The overall condition of housing does not paint a pretty picture," he added.
Back in 2003, then Chief Minister Clare Martin gave the three remaining blocks at Kurringal a used-by date of this year.
Labor pledged during the August election campaign to tear down Kurringal Flats and build a mix of private, affordable and public dwellings.
The site is zoned to provide up to 160 homes in a mix of one, two and three bedroom units in buildings four storeys high.
Mr Chandler made similar suggestions to redevelop Territory Housings old stock at Kurringal, The Narrows (Shiers Street) and Coconut Grove (Runge Street) in November.
"We want to see inclusive communities and eliminate enclaves of disadvantage," he said.
The 15,000sq m block at Kurringal is ripe for building new properties to address Darwin's housing shortage and sky-rocketing rent.
But what about the residents of Kurringal?
Many would not and could not live in a mixed development of public and private housing.
They would not be tolerated.
That is why many of them are here in the first place.
John O'Brien, who refused to remove into Kurringal Court retirement village a decade ago, knows the flats' days are numbered but is indifferent about the future.
"I don't care, as long as I have a roof over my head," he said.
More on Kurringal:
Living on the edge
Trouble outside
For more see the Northern Territory News
Originally published as Hell on earth in our worst addressIran's education department has banned ugly teachers from the classroom, including women with facial hair or those suffering from acne.
A list of proscribed ailments, including having a scar or a fungal infection was released by the FARS news agency.
Anyone who is cross-eyed, has ugly facial moles or skin conditions such as acne or eczema faces redundancy.
Iranian teachers have been warned they face the sack if they do not meet strict aesthetic and health standards which ban conditions such as acne and fungal infections from the classroom
Teachers who have fewer than 20 teeth also face being banned from the classroom
Women who have facial hair will also be sacked, along with teachers with fewer than 20 teeth or those suffering a fungal infection.
Women are allowed to teach in Iran although they must wear a scarf covering their hair.
Art teachers will be sacked if they report they are colourblind and infertile female teachers will also be banned from the classroom.
According to EuroNews, users on Twitter citicised the rules, claiming if implemented in full, the people such as Stephen Hawking would be prevented from teaching students in Iran.Forbes names the 13 top-earning dead celebrities of 2016
Michael Jackson tops the list, but you'll never guess why.
By: MeTV Staff Posted: Oct 13, 2016, 11:36AM News MeTV StaffOct 13, 2016, 11:36AM
Image: AP Photo/Rusty Kennedy
When a celebrity dies, their popularity doesn't disappear. All of the movies, albums and images remain forever, ensuring the stars will live on for years to come.
Some celebrities have broken away to become top earners in death, sometimes decades after they've passed away. But there's no secret formula to land a spot on this list, which includes musicians, actors, athletes, scientists, authors and models.
Are you surprised by any of these celebrities?
1 Michael Jackson (2009) $825 million! In 1985, Jackson bought the Beatles publishing catalog, which he sold to Sony in 1995 for a 50/50 venture. Fast forward to 2016, and the Jackson estate It's not a shock Jackson tops the list. After all, his sudden death in 2009 still seems like it was just yesterday. While the king of pop earned royalties from album sales over the last year, an investment in the 1980s helped Jackson earn — wait for it —! In 1985, Jackson bought the Beatles publishing catalog, which he sold to Sony in 1995 for a 50/50 venture. Fast forward to 2016, and the Jackson estate sold its share and earned a pretax payday of over $800 million. It's the biggest annual haul for any celebrity — dead or alive. Image: YouTube
2 Charles Schulz (2000) The creator of the Peanuts comic strip still earns a lot in an average year. But last year's well-received film adaptation, plus a portion of the popular brand's licensing arrangements, helped him earn a staggering $48 million. Image: AP Photo/Ben Margot
3 Arnold Palmer (2016) Although Palmer died less than a month ago, he'll be appearing on this list for decades to come. The golfing legend has 500 branded stores in Asia, as well as an eponymous (and tasty) brand of iced tea that accounts for 25% of the Arizona Beverage Company's revenue. In all, Palmer earned $40 million in the last year. Image: AP Photo/LP
4 Elvis Presley (1977) The king of rock 'n' roll still sells one million physical albums a year, but that's not why Elvis continues to generate income nearly four decades since his passing. Elvis' $27 million haul comes mostly from ticket sales to Graceland, the former Memphis, Tennessee, estate that currently serves as a museum. Image: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
5 Prince (2016) Prince's sudden death earlier this year meant he was still at the top of his game, earning almost $2 million per show. The constant touring and millions of album sales helped Prince earn $25 million. Similar to Elvis, Prince's estate in Minnesota recently opened as a museum, meaning his income will continue to climb well after his death. Image: penner
6 Bob Marley (1981) The deceased reggae star doesn't earn much from album sales. Instead, Marley earned $21 million in the last year from merchandise sales, Marley's Mellow Mood beverages and House of Marley audio projects. Image: Wikimedia Commons
7 Theodore Geisel (1991) You might be wondering who Theodore Geisel is and why he's on this list. We don't blame you, but he also goes by another name: Dr. Seuss. His childrens books still move millions of copies every year, and the release of the previously unpublished What Pet Should I Get? pushed his sales over the top, helping him earn $20 million. Image: Al Ravenna
8 John Lennon (1980) Imagine how much the musician would make if he were still alive. To this day, Lennon continues to earn a share of the Beatles' record sales. Other ventures, including the Cirque du Soleil show Love! in Las Vegas, helped him earn $12 million. Image: Wikimedia Commons
9 Albert Einstein (1955) Despite being deceased for more than six decades, Einstein still rakes in the cash. There's good reason the math whizz lands on this list, his face is plastered everywhere from t-shirts to tablets. A licensing deal with Salesforce's new artificial intelligence product helped Einstein make $11.5 million. Image: Associated Press
10 Bettie Page (2008) The original pinup bested other sex symbols like Marilyn Monroe to land a spot on the list thanks to lingerie, bridal wear and handbag deals. In total, she made $11 million in the last year. Image: CMG Worldwide
11 David Bowie (2016) The release of the album Blackstar two days before his death in January helped Bowie outsell Michael Jackson and Prince this year, eventually earning $10.5 million. Image: AP Photo/Joe Schaber
12 Steve McQueen (1980) $9 million. No, the legendary actor isn't earning the bulk of his royalties from Wanted: Dead or Alive. Instead, deals with Tag Heuer, Porsche, Persol and Barbour have endured thanks to his eternal cool factor and helped him earn
13 Elizabeth Taylor (2011) In a world where every celebrity has a least one fragrance to his or her name, Elizabeth Taylor still plays a commanding force in the field. Her various scents, including White Diamonds, helped her earn $8 million. Image: 20th Century FoxTibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama is seated with Arthur Brooks of AEI, center, and Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University at an event titled "Happiness, Free Enterprise, and Human Flourishing" at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, Thursday, Feb. 20, 2014. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
WASHINGTON -- "'I write articles for The Huffington Post.' That's so boring!" Arthur Brooks exclaims.
Brooks, the head of the American Enterprise Institute, is trying to explain something to me. He doesn't actually write for HuffPost. He doesn't actually think my job is boring. I think.
"I mean, it's cool, I guess," he says, hedging.
The point he's really trying to make is that defining one's self by a job description saps life of meaning.
"I am the president of a major free enterprise think tank. No! That's not who I am. I'm a purpose-driven person," he says. And the purpose? "Fighting for people."
"My movement shouldn't be fighting against things. My movement should be fighting for people," he says. "The problem with the conservative movement is it became a product-driven movement."
Brooks, a 49-year-old father of three with a highly eclectic background as a professional French horn player-turned-behavioral economist-turned-conservative thought leader, had an hour earlier on Thursday hosted the Dalai Lama at the American Enterprise Institute. Until a few years ago, AEI was known primarily as an establishment Washington think tank, advocating mostly green-eyeshade economic proposals and hosting hawkish foreign policy thinkers who argued for the surge of U.S. troops in Iraq in 2007. On the right, it was positioned between the Cato Institute, a libertarian group, and the Heritage Foundation, which focused a bit more on conservative social and cultural issues.
Since Brooks arrived as president five years ago, however, AEI has "been changing," he said. Over the past year or so, it's become clear that both AEI and Heritage have moved to dramatically new places.
The Heritage Foundation, under the new leadership of former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), is taking on the Republican establishment from within, aided by its combative political arm, Heritage Action. It's the think tank of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's brand of politics, beloved by the hardcore grassroots and scorned by many in the political class, left and right.
AEI, meanwhile, is being transformed from a dusty warehouse for bean-counting economists and neocons to what Brooks calls an organization "in the human welfare business." He talks often with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the latter of whom he describes as "an authentically good and high-integrity guy." Brooks is deliberately carving out a path distinct from that of other conservative think tanks in the nation's capital.
"There are a lot of think tanks and organizations around town that, believe me, the Dalai Lama is not calling. Right? Because what are you going to talk about?" Brooks laughed. "Are you going to talk about, you know, lowering marginal tax rates? There's no point of interaction. No common language."
An aide to the Dalai Lama called AEI after reading one of Brooks' books, Brooks said, and then he and others traveled to the Tibetan leader's temple in exile, in Dharamsala, India, during the government shutdown last fall. Brooks meditated at the temple and met with the Dalai Lama, who agreed to visit the think tank during his annual visit to the U.S.
The Buddhist spiritual leader has referred to himself as a Marxist and as sympathetic to socialist economic policies. But during his panel discussion at AEI, he said the conversation had softened his opinion of the free market system.
"Now after to listen [sic] yesterday and today, I developed more respect about capitalism,” the Dalai Lama said with a laugh. "Otherwise, just my impression, capitalism only takes the money, then exploitation."
Next month, Brooks will host former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates at AEI for a conversation about alleviating poverty.
These kinds of events -- hosting big names usually associated with liberal causes -- are aimed in part at creating, as one panelist described it on Thursday, a "scrambling of the categories."
"We're trying to live according to purpose as opposed to according to products," Brooks told me. "And if you're trying to classify organizations with respect to product lines, we should be very confusing."
But he also believes that conservative economics is the best way to help the poor -- that's what a good deal of his academic research focused on. He thinks that conservatives need to engage with thinkers of different persuasions not only to gain credibility, but also to learn and improve their own ideas.
"The truth is that one of the reasons there is a lot of misery in the bereft competition of ideas today is because we don't want to talk to people who are different than we are," Brooks said. "Somebody who's dedicated to improving the lives of everyone, especially the lives of people who are weaker than we are, is welcome at AEI."
Brooks acknowledged that conservatism, as a political movement, has not put low-income people at the center of its efforts. "Has the movement ever been a fighting force for the poor? In modern times, no. But I think it actually can be," he said.
He is a registered independent. He said his goal is not to revive the GOP.
"I don't care about the Republican Party because here's what I really, really want. I mean, I care about the Republican Party -- I care about the Democratic Party -- because I care about America," he said. "To bring back the Republican Party? No, that's not the objective at all. I want, 15 years from now, to have the free enterprise movement be as apolitically accepted as the civil rights movement is today."
To do so, Brooks said, conservatism needs an attitude adjustment.
"To be a part of the conservative movement, you should be expected to love people," he said. "This is a movement that must answer anger with love."
He had been talking, a moment earlier, not about liberal anger but about conservative anger over the direction of the country. Brooks' rhetoric and talking points offer an implicit criticism of the tea party movement.
"This idea that we want to keep with the initial outburst that fueled the tea party revolution in 2010 is not constructive. Because you can't keep saying, 'We're the majority. We're the majority,'" Brooks said. "I know you're the majority. What are you going to do with it?"
Yet even though he has called "the habit of fighting against things" a "terrible habit," Brooks is careful not to overtly criticize groups like Heritage or politicians like Cruz. When asked if the Texas senator is a positive force in American politics, he offered a non-endorsement followed by a prediction.Presidential Transition Act of 1963
Public Law 88-277
Eighty-eighth Congress of the United States of America
AT THE SECOND SESSION
Begun and held at the City of Washington on Tuesday, the seventh day of January, on one thousand nine hundred and sixty-four
An Act
To promote the orderly transfer of the executive power in connection with the expiration of the term of office of a President and the Inauguration of a new President.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That this Act may be cited as the “President Transition Act of 1963”
PURPOSE OF THIS ACT
Sec. 2. The Congress declares it to be the purpose of the Act to promote the orderly transfer of the executive power in connection with the expiration of the term of office of a President and the inauguration of a new President. The national interest requires that such transitions in the office of President be accomplished so as to assure continuity in the faithful execution of the laws and in the conduct of the affairs of the Federal Government, both domestic and foreign. Any disruption occasioned by the transfer of the executive power could produce results detrimental to the safety and well-being of the United States and its people. Accordingly, it is the intent of the Congress that appropriate actions be authorized and taken to avoid or minimize any disruption. In addition to the specific provisions contained in this Act directed toward that purpose, it is the intent of the Congress that all officers of the Government so conduct the affairs of the Government for which the exercise responsibility and authority as (1) to be mindful of problems occasioned by transitions in the office of President, (2) to take appropriate lawful steps to avoid or minimize disruptions that might be occasioned by the transfer of the executive power, and (3) otherwise to promote orderly transitions in the office of President.
SERVICES AND FACILITIES AUTHORIZED TO BE PROVIDED TO PRESIDENTS-ELECT AND VICE PRESIDENTS-ELECT
Sec. 3 (a) The Administrator of General Services, referred to hereafter in this Act as “the Administrator,” is authorized to provide, upon request, to each President-elect and each Vice President-elect, for use in connection with his preparations for the assumption of official duties as President or Vice President necessary services and facilities, including-
(1) Suitable office space appropriately equipped with furniture, furnishings, office machines and equipment, and office supplies as determined by the Administrator, after consultation with the President-elect, the Vice-President elect, or their designee provided for in subsection (e) of this section, at such place or places within the United States as the President-elect or Vice-President-elect shall designate;
(2) Payment of the compensation |
next to the door.
They sat there for several hours, when the dwarf Glimding walked up after having taken a several hour long dump. He banged on the door in a rhythmic fashion and it opened. Gargy stood up with his hands in the air and his mouth open in shock and exclaimed "What the cluck, man! I've been trying to open that for hours!" Glimding just ignored him and walked inside. Gargy followed him and then the rest of the fellowship did too. Suddenly and for no reason the door collapsed and the room became very dark. "Well fuck." A voice rang out.
A light appeared, at the end of Gargy's staff. The group began to go through the mines. It took them several hours. The stress was getting to Gargy and he decided to light a cigarette. He began his elaborate fire demon summoning spell, but the very tall bobbit sneezed, and it caused Gargameldalf to say the wrong word, which caused the demon to be very aggressive towards the Fellowship. "Run!" Gargy shrieked, and the fellowship began running away.
They ran for about a mile, being chased by the giant Glagrog. They reached a bridge, and the fellowship crossed, but Gargameldalf stopped halfway through. "Stahp!" He yelled at the beast. It slowed, and stepped onto the bridge. "Dude, I'm giving you two warning, stop now. Seriously bro, this isn't cool." Gargy said to the slowly approaching fire demon. Gargameldalf began his black sacrament to dispel the demon, but it stepped forward again, and the bridge cracked under the weight, and broke. The demon fell into the nothingness below. "Oh. Alright that works too." Gargy said as he turned and began walking towards the fellowship. But then he tripped on a rock and fell off the bridge. He clung to the edge, and as Yolo began screaming, he said to the fellowship, "Eat your peas son!" Then he fell.
The fellowship found the exit and as they left the cave dungeon draugr place thing, the fellowship was saddened by the loss of Gargameldalf and dramatic music was playing. Then Selfie drew everyone together and said "K guise, we gotta leave dis place, there's gonna be a lot of orks coming because it's mating season." And the elf, whos name was Orlando Bloom-Dah-Elf, which can be shortened to Bloomdelf, said "For pity's sake, give them a moment!" Selfie shook his head. "No, we need to go to the elf place of Lost-TARDISland. It's bigger on the inside there. We should be safe from the orks mating calls."
They went to the Lost-TARDISland, and the elves there gave them gifts of power. To Selfie, the life of the elves was given because his love was there and she screwed him silly. To Orlando Bloomdelf, there were two fancy knives and a bow given. Yolo was given a light. Jerome was given a rope. Glimding was given elf hair. And the very freakishly tall bobbit whos name I'm too lazy to type was given a sword, despite his mental state which dictated he not be given any sharp objects. And then (Bromo- Bremo- Bromosomething… what was it, bromomeer? Was that it? Well I guess I'll go with Bromomeer.) Bromomeer was given nothing, because he's a big smelly willy.
The elves of Lost-TARDISland told what was left of the fellowship that they needed to go on the Universal Studios Wild River Run ride. So they gave them three boats, the Argo, the Titanic, and the USS Prometheus and the Fellowship began their journey down the Alduin River. They rafted down the river for a few hours, passing the feet of two giant copies of the Statue of Liberty.
After a long while, nightfall came and the fellowship decided to camp by the ruins of an old place called Afew Rooster. Selfie and Orlando Bloomdelf were conversing in hushed tones. "There's something following us…" Selfie said to Orlando, and Orlando replied, "I know. I can feel it in my luscious blonde hair." Jerome suddenly stood up and started yelling about something, but he was clearly high so Selfie ignored him. But then Glimding piped up and said, "Hey, Selfie, I think little Yolo is missing. And where's that faggot Bromomeer?" Selfie was all like "Oh shieet, Bromomeer's gonna try to take the bland ring from Yolo!" Selfie, Orlando, and Glimding all ran off into the woods, looking for Yolo. Jerome was left with the tall Bobbit who had just crapped his pants.
Meanwhile, Yolo was taking a relaxing walk, and Bromomeer came out of nowhere. He said to Yolo, "None of you Bobbits should be out here… Least of all you. You know, that bland ring of power… I would love to hold it for you." Bromomeer was very attracted to the idea of being able to be invisible, naked, and in a lady's changing room. He wanted to take the ring from Yolo. "No, leave me alone!" Yolo overreacted for the camera and then ran as far as he could.
Bromomeer gave chase, but he lost sight of Yolo because Yolo had a magical clock that made him invisible. Which was a stronger article of magic than the bland ring of power but nobody knew he had it. So he came to a big building part of the ruins and he started hallucinating so he fell off the top of the building. He turned his spy-watch off and then Selfie came out of the woods. "Yolo! Where… IS… THE RIIIIIIING!" Yolo started crying and was like "Why are you yelling at me?! I don't like conflict!" Selfie kneeled in front of Yolo. "Bby, dunt wurry, I'd never harm you."
Suddenly a horn sounded in the distance. Selfie snapped his head in the direction of the sound, and said, "Oh no! It's Bromomeer's pink sparkly horn of Glitter-Glue! He must be in trouble!" He pulled out his sword, and Yolo yanked his special sword that would suddenly and without warning catch on fire whenever orks were around. The sword was flaming, and Yolo looked up suddenly as orks in heat began crawling from the bushes, looking for someone to satisfy their… heatness.
Selfie ran forward and slew the three horny orks. "Yolo! Run! Get out of here! Mating season is when orks are at their most dangerous!" Yolo started running back towards the boats. Orlando Bloomdelf and Glimding came out of the forest, and the three people ran off towards the sound of the horn, which was constantly sounding at a very annoying pace, reminiscent of an alarm clock.
Bromomeer was in deep conflict with a whole lot of orks. The tall Bobbit was there too, as Jerome had fallen asleep and the Bobbit had bobbed off to find adventure. He came across Bromomeer and then a bunch of orks came out and Bromomeer started fighting them off. He killed like, fifty orks before a very large ork with a huge thingaling walked out. He came up behind Bromomeer as he fought off more orks, and with a great and powerful pelvic thrust, impaled Bromomeer through the back. Selfie arrived in time to watch a bunch of smaller orks carry off the tall Bobbit.
With a shout, Selfie ran towards the large ork, and prepared to swing his sword sword, he can swing his sword sword. Sword his diamond sword sword. But an arrow sprouted from the large orks forehead. Selfie skidded to a stop as the large ork fell to the ground. He turned towards Olrando Bloomdelf and glared at him, because the elf had stolen his kill. Glimding grumbled. "It still only counts as one!" Orlando put his hand on Selfie's shoulder. "Where is Yolo?" He asked. "He's gone off on his own. The only thing we can possibly do at all despite having two more boats is going after the tall freakish Bobbit. We can't leave him to the assured rape that will come of being an ork slave during mating season." The elf nodded. Glimding murmered to himself, "But, how do we know what happened to Jerome? What if he didn't go with Yolo? What if we're literally just leaving him here?" He shrugged and followed Selfie and Orlando Bloomdelf into the woods.
Meanwhile Yolo boarded the USS Prometheus, and Jerome awoke from his nap, lazily following Yolo into the water. He started splashing because it's hard to swim when you've just woken up, so Yolo realized that Jerome was following him. "Hey buddy! Come aboard!" He grabbed ahold of Jerome's hand and they sailed off into the sunset, singing pirate shanties.
TO BE CONTINUEDBy supporting a measure that would have expanded background checks on gun buyers, Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Kay Hagan (D-NC) appear to have found a way to please both fellow Democrats and their red state constituents.The latest survey released Thursday by Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling showed that Landrieu and Hagan actually bolstered their re-election prospects by supporting the background checks legislation. Facing potentially difficult races next year in a pair of states that were carried by Mitt Romney in 2012, Landrieu and Hagan were two of the final Democrats to ultimately pledge support for the measure, which ultimate failed in the Senate last month. Four other red state Democrats joined most Republicans to vote against the legislation.
But PPP’s findings, the latest in the firm’s ongoing effort to gauge reaction to the gun bill, suggested that the votes will be more of an advantage than a disadvantage for Landrieu and Hagan.
In Louisiana, the poll found that 71 percent of voters support “requiring background checks for all gun sales, including gun shows and the Internet.” Forty-four percent of voters there said they are more likely to back Landrieu in 2014 as a result of her vote. Meanwhile, just a little more than a quarter said they are less likely to support her. Another 29 percent said her vote will make no difference on whether they support Landrieu for re-election.
Conversely, Landrieu’s Republican colleague from Louisiana, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), earned low marks for his opposition to the background checks measure. The poll showed that 40 percent of voters are less likely to support Vitter, who will be up for re-election in 2016.
An overwhelming majority of Hagan’s constituents in North Carolina — 73 percent — are also in favor of expanding background checks. Fifty-two percent of Tar Heel State voters said they are now more likely to vote for Hagan in 2014 because she supported the bipartisan Senate bill. And much like in Louisiana, Hagan’s Republican counterpart may have committed a political pratfall by opposing the bill. Half of North Carolina voters said they are now less likely to support Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) as a result of his “no” on the background checks legislation. Burr will be up for re-election in 2016.
PPP has tracked the public’s attitudes toward the gun bill since it fizzled in the Senate. The firm released another poll last week showing Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) facing a sizable backlash in New Hampshire over her “no” vote. At a town hall meeting on Tuesday, Ayotte was confronted by the daughter of a woman who was killed in the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn.
PPP released a larger poll earlier this week showing similar blowback for five other senators who also opposed the measure, including Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), whose approval rating fell to 32 percent after the vote.
Meanwhile, a poll from Quinnipiac University showed that Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), one of the co-authors of the background checks legislation, drew a bounce at home for his efforts on the bill.Scott Pruitt Attorney General of Oklahoma arrives to meet with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., December 7, 2016. Brendan McDermid/Reuters Donald Trump has picked Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during his administration.
The Sierra Club, at 124 years old, is one of the most venerable environmental groups in the US. On Wednesday, the group released a statement calling Pruitt unfit to serve as EPA Administrator, and comparing the choice to "putting an arsonist in charge of fighting fires."
Pruitt, 48, has served as Attorney General for Oklahoma since 2011. In that time he's stood out among state-level politicians for his sharp opposition to EPA regulations — a position cited as a badge of honor on his official biography on his office's website.
He is part of a lawsuit designed to tear up the EPA's Clean Power Plan, a signature Obama administration effort to combat greenhouse gas emissions.
He's also part of a state administration that has taken a favorable stance toward fossil fuel extractors. During his five-year tenure as Oklahoma attorney general, a method of oil extraction that involves pumping saltwater into the ground became much more common in the state. The result was a sharp increase in earthquakes.
Pruitt does not seem to have a background in the sort of environmental issues that will reach his desk if he's confirmed by the Senate. Before his term as State Attorney General, he served eight years in the Oklahoma State Senate, where, according to his official biography, he focused on "fiscal responsibility, religious freedom and pro-life issues."
Here's the statement from the Sierra Club, titled "Scott Pruit is unfit to serve as EPA Administrator":
Having Scott Pruitt in charge of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is like putting an arsonist in charge of fighting fires. He is a climate science denier who, as Attorney General for the state of Oklahoma, regularly conspired with the fossil fuel industry to attack EPA protections.
Nothing less than our children's health is at stake. Scott Pruitt, whose own bio describes him as 'a leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda' cannot be trusted to head the EPA, an agency charged with protecting all Americans from threats to their water, air, and health. We strongly urge Senators, who are elected to represent and protect the American people, to stand up for families across the nation and oppose this nomination.John "Show some Grace" Kerry. Abu Ghraib style??
It is difficult to judge who is the worst Secretary of State in the United States of America in recent years. John Kerry must however go into the annals of history as the most idiotic, the most snide, the most arrogant, the most insolent, the most intrusive, the most inconsequential and the best bedpal the Islamic terrorists ever had. Today he asked the Syrian President to show some grace to the terrorist filth he has defeated.Let's show some grace, Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo style!
Show some grace?
Show some grace to the "rebels" fleeing Aleppo he said, directing his unwanted and unwelcome comments to Russia and the legitimate, elected Syrian government, supported by around seventy per cent of the population. Show some grace. That has to take the biscuit as the most idiotic comment of the century.
Show some grace, to terrorists. What exactly does Kerry mean by that? He means let them get out scot free so that they can regroup and either try and enter Aleppo again or else join up with their friends creating a second front in Idlib or down at Palmyra again. I wonder what the satellite communications eavesdroppers will glean out of that, I wonder what version of the English accent we will hear when we listen to the orders being given to the ISIS hordes trying to put pressure on the Syrian government by launching a ferocious attack in the south.
Show some grace to the terrorists. A fitting comment from the chief of diplomacy of the Obama regime. He means allow those who have sliced the breasts off women to go free, he means allow those who have impaled little boys on metal stakes to walk home, he means allow those who have forced little girls to watch their fathers being disembowelled, castrated and sodomized to escape, he means allow those who have gang-raped little girls after they have been forced to watch their mothers being raped, having their throats slit, having their breasts sliced off, having their vaginas slit up to their necks, then gang-raping the said little girls again before and after they were beheaded to simply disappear into the countryside, he means allow those who have murdered the Syrian security forces, cut them open and eaten their hearts, to melt away. Show some grace to this filth? Did he say "Show some grace"?
Does the USA "show grace"?
Now let us put the boot on the other foot. Did the United States of America show any "grace" to Saddam Hussein after the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, lied through his snout stating that he had weapons of mass destruction? Did the United States of America show any "grace" to Muammar al-Gaddafy, the man who took Libya from the poorest country in the world to the country with the highest Human Development Index in Africa, after he was caught by western-backed terrorists?
The hell they did, Hillary Clinton, another failed Secretary of State, had the audacity to go to Tripoli and giggle at his death. Well, she isn't giggling now, is she?
Did they "show grace" at the torture and concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay? Did they "show grace" at Abu Ghraib, where soldiers were tortured and sodomized by filth sent from the dregs of US society, where soldiers who had been fighting terrorists were deprived of sleep, had their food urinated in, Moslems were forced to eat pork, were attacked by dogs and by that sh*t faced AmeriKKKan heroine, Lynddie England, "jes' havin' fun"? Did they show any grace?
So what John Kerry is saying is basically the following: "Oh Sh*t, we screwed up again guys, we backed the wrong side again and we lost. We tried to impose our form of democracy from 35,000 feet and we trampled on an entire nation without respecting its values and its culture, we ignored its five thousand years of history despite the fact that our country was based upon the extermination of the people who lived there and is a little over two hundred years old. We backed terrorists because we wanted Assad to go, we called his government illegal and anti-democratic despite the fact that it was elected by the majority of the people, and we lost. Russia has once again trounced us because Russia once again is following international law, Russia is fighting against terrorists while we are supporting them. Again. So we are trying to see what we can do elsewhere in Syria to destabilize the Government, even if that means cavorting with ISIS. We know that in just over a year Russia has done more damage to ISIS than we and our European, sorry "f*ck the European Union", words of my colleague in Government, did in several years."
A fitting epitaph to John Kerry and his failure as US Secretary of State. This man, and Hillary Clinton before him, have done more damage to the image of his country than any other American in history, except perhaps George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice and Barack Obama.
Exterminate the bastards
I am sorry, but rather than "show some grace" to these terrorists, so that they can regroup in Idlib and elsewhere, and continue their murderous policies, I believe the way forward is to exterminate the bastards to the last man, if indeed "man" is the right term. Enough of cavorting with murderous filth, rapists, arsonists, thieves, torturers. Showing "grace" to excrement like this is an insult to the police and security forces everywhere, not just in Syria.
Let us imagine what John Kerry would say if thousands of armed thugs started massacring the police and military in the United States of America, raping women, sodomizing boys and slaughtering little girls. Would he appear on television and say "show some grace"?
Probably, he would. Give me a cell and I would like to "show some grace" to John Kerry and his regime chief, Obama.
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
Pravda.Ru
Twitter: @TimothyBHinchey
timothy.hinchey@gmail.com
*Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey has worked as a correspondent, journalist, deputy editor, editor, chief editor, director, project manager, executive director, partner and owner of printed and online daily, weekly, monthly and yearly publications, TV stations and media groups printed, aired and distributed in Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, Mozambique and São Tomé and Principe Isles; the Russian Foreign Ministry publication Dialog and the Cuban Foreign Ministry Official Publications. He has spent the last two decades in humanitarian projects, connecting communities, working to document and catalog disappearing languages, cultures, traditions, working to network with the LGBT communities helping to set up shelters for abused or frightened victims and as Media Partner with UN Women, working to foster the UN Women project to fight against gender violence and to strive for an end to sexism, racism and homophobia. A Vegan, he is also a Media Partner of Humane Society International, fighting for animal rights. He is Director and Chief Editor of the Portuguese version of Pravda.Ru.In a statement following his announcement that he would not be participating in tonight’s GOP debate on Fox News, Donald Trump‘s campaign said, “[He will] host an event in Iowa to raise money for the Veterans and Wounded Warriors, who have been treated so horribly by our all talk, no action politicians.” This morning, Ben Ferguson contrasted that with statements the real estate tycoon made in 1991 and 2004, when he tried to get homeless and disabled veterans kicked off of Fifth Avenue in front of the famed Trump Tower.
Trump is decrying “all talk, no action politicians” now just as he was in the 1990s, though the action he wanted the New York State Assembly to take then regarding disabled veterans was markedly different than the action he is blaming President Barack Obama‘s administration for not taking now. (It should be noted, too, that actions that have been taken by some organizations to aid veterans have turned out not to be all they claim to be.) In a 1991 letter to the Assembly, he wrote, “While disabled veterans should be given every opportunity to earn a living, is it fair to do so to the detriment of the city as a whole or its tax paying citizens and businesses?”
By “detriment of the city,” the future GOP frontrunner meant “detriment of Trump Tower,” which sits on Fifth Avenue. While it is known as a ritzy shopping district in New York, Fifth Avenue is also the home of dozens of opportunistic street vendors. Many of them are disabled veterans who are given special licenses by the Department of Consumer Affairs. According to The Daily News, the protections and exceptions extended to peddling veterans date back to the 1890s and were created to give those who were disabled in the Civil War an opportunity to support themselves.
Though previous attempts to relocate veterans to streets where they would make less money didn’t work, Trump was undeterred. In 2004, he wrote to then-mayor and possible future presidential rival Michael Bloomberg, imploring him to help get rid of the wounded warriors on his street.
“Whether they are veterans or not, they should not be allowed to sell on this most important and prestigious shopping street,” he wrote. “The image of New York City will suffer… I hope you can stop this very deplorable situation before it is too late.”
The GOP debate and Trump’s counter-event begin in 10 hours, so get your strongest drinks ready because this topic is sure to come up once or twice or 15 times tonight.
[image via screengrab]
For more from Lindsey, follow her on Twitter.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.Police officers injured as vehicles are set ablaze and streets blocked by burning tyres in clashes ahead of Mario Draghi speech
At least 350 people arrested in protest at ECB HQ in Frankfurt
Dozens of police officers have been injured and hundreds of people detained after anti-austerity protesters clashed with riot police near the new headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt.
At least seven police cars were set on fire as streets were barricaded at the “Blockupy” demonstration to mark the opening of the billion-euro building on Wednesday morning.
Polizei Frankfurt (@Polizei_Ffm) Hier ein Video, das die Angriffe auf das 1.Polizeirevier #Frankfurt zeigt und selbsterklärend ist #18M #18nulldrei pic.twitter.com/cplhoqPFW4
Some protesters said they were injured when police used pepper spray. At least 350 people were held by police, according to the German news site Deutsche Welle.
Police used water cannon to try to make a path through the mass of black-clad protesters to the entrance of the building. The new building was targeted because the ECB has come to symbolise spending cuts and market reforms of the kind being forced on Greece.
The German justice minister, Heiko Maas, said that “everyone has the right to criticise institutions like the ECB. But pure rioting goes beyond all limits in the battle for political opinion.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Demonstrators dressed as clowns pass by a burning police car during the Frankfurt protests. Photograph: Michael Probst/AP
Hundreds of officers ringed the ECB. The inauguration ceremony took place as planned, with the ECB president, Mario Draghi, thanking guests “for being here despite the difficult situation outside”.
He said the new headquarters for the currency union’s central bank was “a symbol of what Europe can achieve together”.
“European unity is being strained,” Draghi said, according to an advance text quoted by Reuters. “People are going through very difficult times. There are some, like many of the protesters outside today, who believe the problem is that Europe is doing too little.
“But the euro area is not a political union of the sort where some countries permanently pay for others.”
The Blockupy alliance estimated that about 10,000 demonstrators were at the rally. They included trade unions and Germany’s Left party.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A police vehicle is parked near the European Central Bank building. Photograph: Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters
“Our protest is against the ECB, as a member of the troika, that, despite the fact that it is not democratically elected, hinders the work of the Greek government. We want the austerity politics to end,” Ulrich Wilken, one of the organiser told Reuters.
The Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, last week criticised ECB policy towards Athens as “asphyxiating”, a criticism also made by the protest organisers.Jeffrey Mitchell, a volunteer firefighter in the suburbs of Baltimore, came across the accident by chance: A car had smashed into a pickup truck loaded with metal pipes. Mitchell tried to help, but he saw at once that he was too late.
The car had rear-ended the truck at high speed, sending a pipe through the windshield and into the chest of the passenger—a young bride returning home from her wedding. There was blood everywhere, staining her white dress crimson.
Mitchell couldn't get the dead woman out of his mind; the tableau was stuck before his eyes. He tried to tough it out, but after months of suffering, he couldn't take it anymore. He finally told his brother, a fellow firefighter, about it.
Pushing to remember a traumatic event soon after it occurs doesn’t unburden us—it reinforces the fear and stress.
Miraculously, that worked. No more trauma; Mitchell felt free. This dramatic recovery, along with the experiences of fellow first responders, led Mitchell to do some research into recovery from trauma. He eventually concluded that he had stumbled upon a powerful treatment. In 1983, nearly a decade after the car accident, Mitchell wrote an influential paper in the Journal of Emergency Medical Services that transformed his experience into a seven-step practice, which he called critical incident stress debriefing, or CISD. The central idea: People who survive a painful event should express their feelings soon after so the memory isn't "sealed over" and repressed, which could lead to post-traumatic stress disorder.
In recent years, CISD has become exceedingly popular, used by the US Department of Defense, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Israeli army, the United Nations, and the American Red Cross. Each year, more than 30,000 people are trained in the technique. (After the September 11 attacks, 2,000 facilitators descended on New York City.)
Even though PTSD is triggered by a stressful incident, it is really a disease of memory. The problem isn't the trauma—it's that the trauma can't be forgotten. Most memories, and their associated emotions, fade with time. But PTSD memories remain horribly intense, bleeding into the present and ruining the future. So, in theory, the act of sharing those memories is an act of forgetting them.
A typical CISD session lasts about three hours and involves a trained facilitator who encourages people involved to describe the event from their perspective in as much detail as possible. Facilitators are trained to probe deeply and directly, asking questions such as, what was the worst part of the incident for you personally? The underlying assumption is that a way to ease a traumatic memory is to express it.
The problem is, CISD rarely helps—and recent studies show it often makes things worse. In one, burn victims were randomly assigned to receive either CISD or no treatment at all. A year later, those who went through a debriefing were more anxious and depressed and nearly three times as likely to suffer from PTSD. Another trial showed CISD was ineffective at preventing post-traumatic stress in victims of violent crime, and a US Army study of 952 Kosovo peacekeepers found that debriefing did not hasten recovery and led to more alcohol abuse. Psychologists have begun to recommend that the practice be discontinued for disaster survivors. (Mitchell now says that he doesn't think CISD necessarily helps post-traumatic stress at all, but his early papers on the subject seem clear on the link.)
Mitchell was right about one thing, though. Traumatic, persistent memories are indeed a case of recall gone awry. But as a treatment, CISD misapprehends how memory works. It suggests that the way to get rid of a bad memory, or at a minimum denude it of its negative emotional connotations, is to talk it out. That's where Mitchell went wrong. It wasn't his fault, really; this mistaken notion has been around for thousands of years. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, people have imagined memories to be a stable form of information that persists reliably. The metaphors for this persistence have changed over time—Plato compared our recollections to impressions in a wax tablet, and the idea of a biological hard drive is popular today—but the basic model has not. Once a memory is formed, we assume that it will stay the same. This, in fact, is why we trust our recollections. They feel like indelible portraits of the past.
None of this is true. In the past decade, scientists have come to realize that our memories are not inert packets of data and they don't remain constant. Even though every memory feels like an honest representation, that sense of authenticity is the biggest lie of all.
When CISD fails, it fails because, as scientists have recently learned, the very act of remembering changes the memory itself. New research is showing that every time we recall an event, the structure of that memory in the brain is altered in light of the present moment, warped by our current feelings and knowledge. That's why pushing to remember a traumatic event so soon after it occurs doesn't unburden us; it reinforces the fear and stress that are part of the recollection.
This new model of memory isn't just a theory—neuroscientists actually have a molecular explanation of how and why memories change. In fact, their definition of memory has broadened to encompass not only the cliché cinematic scenes from childhood but also the persisting mental loops of illnesses like PTSD and addiction—and even pain disorders like neuropathy. Unlike most brain research, the field of memory has actually developed simpler explanations. Whenever the brain wants to retain something, it relies on just a handful of chemicals. Even more startling, an equally small family of compounds could turn out to be a universal eraser of history, a pill that we could take whenever we wanted to forget anything.
And researchers have found one of these compounds.
In the very near future, the act of remembering will become a choice.
Photo illustration: Curtis Mann; Photo: Owen Franken/Corbis
Every memory begins as a changed set of connections among cells in the brain. If you happen to remember this moment—the content of this sentence—it's because a network of neurons has been altered, woven more tightly together within a vast electrical fabric. This linkage is literal: For a memory to exist, these scattered cells must become more sensitive to the activity of the others, so that if one cell fires, the rest of the circuit lights up as well. Scientists refer to this process as long-term potentiation, and it involves an intricate cascade of gene activations and protein synthesis that makes it easier for these neurons to pass along their electrical excitement. Sometimes this requires the addition of new receptors at the dendritic end of a neuron, or an increase in the release of the chemical neurotransmitters that nerve cells use to communicate. Neurons will actually sprout new ion channels along their length, allowing them to generate more voltage. Collectively this creation of long-term potentiation is called the consolidation phase, when the circuit of cells representing a memory is first linked together. Regardless of the molecular details, it's clear that even minor memories require major work. The past has to be wired into your hardware.
That understanding of how memories are created emerged in the 1970s. But what happens after a memory is formed, when we attempt to access it, was much less well understood. In the late 1990s, Karim Nader, a young neuroscientist studying emotional response at New York University, realized that no one knew. "My big advantage was that I wasn't trained in memory," Nader says. "I was very naive about the subject. Even though the field wasn't that interested in the mechanisms of recall, it struck me as a mystery worth pursuing."
He began with the simplest question he could think of. While it was clear that new proteins were needed for the making of memories—proteins are cellular bricks and mortar, the basis of any new biological construction—were additional proteins made when those memories were recalled? Nader hypothesized that they were, and he realized that he could test his notion by temporarily blocking protein synthesis in a brain and looking to see if that altered recall. "This is the kind of question you ask when you don't know how else to approach the subject," Nader says. "But I had to do something, so why not this?"
His boss, the famed neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, couldn't have been more discouraging. "I told Karim he was wasting his time," LeDoux says. "I didn't think the experiment would work." To LeDoux, the reason was obvious: Even if Nader blocked protein synthesis during recall, the original circuitry would still be intact, so the memory should be too. If Nader could induce amnesia, it would be temporary. Once the block was removed, the recall would return as strong as ever. And so LeDoux and Nader made a bet: If Nader failed to permanently erase a set of fear memories in four lab animals, he had to buy LeDoux a bottle of tequila. If it worked, drinks were on LeDoux. "I honestly assumed I'd be spending a bunch of money on alcohol," Nader says. "Everyone else knew a lot more about the neuroscience of memory. And they all told me it would never work."
He taught several dozen rats to associate a loud noise with a mild but painful electric shock. It terrified them—whenever the sound played, the rats froze in fear, anticipating the shock. After reinforcing this memory for several weeks, Nader hit the rats with the noise once again, but this time he then injected their brains with a chemical that inhibited protein synthesis. Then he played the sound again. "I couldn't believe what happened," Nader says. "The fear memory was gone. The rats had forgotten everything." The absence of fear persisted even after the injection wore off.
The secret was the timing: If new proteins couldn't be created during the act of remembering, then the original memory ceased to exist. The erasure was also exceedingly specific. The rats could still learn new associations, and they remained scared of other sounds associated with a shock but that hadn't been played during the protein block. They forgot only what they'd been forced to remember while under the influence of the protein inhibitor.
The disappearance of the fear memory suggested that every time we think about the past we are delicately transforming its cellular representation in the brain, changing its underlying neural circuitry. It was a stunning discovery: Memories are not formed and then pristinely maintained, as neuroscientists thought; they are formed and then rebuilt every time they're accessed. "The brain isn't interested in having a perfect set of memories about the past," LeDoux says. "Instead, memory comes with a natural updating mechanism, which is how we make sure that the information taking up valuable space inside our head is still useful. That might make our memories less accurate, but it probably also makes them more relevant to the future."
After collecting his tequila, Nader hit the library in an attempt to make sense of his bizarre observations. "I couldn't believe that no one had ever done this experiment before," he says. "I thought, there's no way I'm this lucky." Nader was right. He had unknowingly replicated a 44-year-old experiment performed by a Rutgers psychologist named Donald Lewis, in which rats had been trained to be afraid of a sound—associating it, again, with an electric shock—and then had those memories erased by a separate electroconvulsive shock. Lewis had discovered what came to be called memory reconsolidation, the brain's practice of re-creating memories over and over again.
But by the mid-1970s, neuroscientists had largely stopped investigating reconsolidation. Other researchers failed to replicate |
be tempted to pursue the latter. “It’s a common phenomenon in higher education,” writes ProPublica reporter Marian Wang. “Students with less money relegated to institutions with less money.”
5) Privileging “value” in the university.
Obama used the word “value” eight times in his speech to convey his idea of what students ought to demand of higher education—value not in the sense of a moral disposition, but in the “Value Meal” sense. The ratings plan will “help students compare the value offered by colleges and encourage colleges to improve.”
But the president disregarded the staggering number of university classes taught not by tenured, tweed-clad professors but grad students and adjuncts in second-hand cardigans. A prevailing obsession with “value” in higher education would presumably hone in on instructor quality, but unlike RTTT, the administration’s new plan wastes no ink distinguishing between effective and ineffective instructors.
Teachers unions didn’t immediately sense an existential threat from RTTT’s emphases on evaluation and alternate routes to certification such as Teach for America. But in Tennessee, the first big winner of RTTT riches, cause for concern soon arose. Recent legislation has diminished teacher pay, eliminates incentives to pursue further degrees, and ties evaluations to test data.
Faculty advocates so far have been less credulous. But colleges are already veritable market-leaders in capitalizing on cheap labor and minimizing the experience required to be an instructor. Nationally, untenured or contingent faculty members teach a majority of courses in colleges and universities. According to the American Federation of Teachers, adjuncts teach 49 percent of all undergraduate classes. But this total doesn’t include graduate students, who teach 16 to 32 percent of classes at research universities.16
Even in the hallowed halls of Harvard, 57 percent of instructors are adjuncts.
The 75 percent of university instructors who aren’t tenured earn about a third of what their tenured colleagues make. So as the “proletarianization of higher education” advances, we hear stories like that of the near-destitute, 83-year-old adjunct at Duquesne who had a heart attack on the lawn in front of her decaying house. She didn’t have health insurance, and her salary barely topped $10,000.
It bears mentioning that a profusion of untenured instructors may not be fantasticfor graduation rates.
No more reassuring for college instructors, adjunct and tenured alike, are the new initiative’s endorsements of MOOCs, or massive open online courses. “Some of these approaches are still being developed,” says Obama’s plan, “and too few students are seeing their benefits.” This is true. These approaches see about90% of enrolleesoverall drop out, and when compared with traditional courses, have far fewer completers. The empirical evidence for MOOCs’ efficacy isscarce.
At the beginning of 2013, MOOC powerhouse Udacity teamed up with San Jose State University to deliver courses online. Udacity’s CEO said it would “change the life of Californians,” and touted the plan as a means to expand access, lower costs and drive innovation. The school and company divorced abruptly this July with half the students in online courses failing.
Moreover, massive online courses would denude higher education of its empathetic and interactive nature. Philosophy professors at San Jose Statepenned an open letterto this effect in response to a social justice course that was being foisted on them. “We regard such courses as a serious compromise of quality of education,” they wrote, “and ironically for a social justice course, a case of social injustice.”
MOOCs have their analog in fully online charter schools, darlings of Jeb Bush, which about 200,000students now “attend.” These nominally educational entities are multiplying despite graduation rates hovering around 38%, achievement data scraping the bottom, and campaign-donation-driven legislative favors for e-school companies revealed on a semi-regular basis.
As regards labor, both RTTT and its successor share a gesture towards “quality” instruction that’s belied by moves toward non-credentialed, inexperienced teachers and fewer, poorer labor standards.
6) No College Left Behind.
“An outcomes-based culture is rapidly developing amongst policymakers in the higher education sector,” declares a 2012 report sponsored by the Gates Foundation and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, “Measuring Value-Added in Higher Education.” With hardly contained delight, they add that this development “mirrors recent trends in the K-12 sector.”
Like RTTT’s progenitor No Child Left Behind, much of the genetic material of higher education reform is drawn from Texas. Just as the apocryphal “Texas Miracle” became the backbone of NCLB’s testing and accountability model, college reforms propagated in Texas have captured the attention of reformers nationwide, with the Gates Foundation playing its usual capo-de-tutti-capi role.
The foundation also funded Compare College TX, an accountability system, and supported—in fact helped inspire—Governor Rick Perry’s $10,000 degree plan. This initiative epitomizes the Republican higher-ed platform, defined by performance funding, value-added measurements and the likely curtailing of state funds.
The foundation’s other forays into higher education—an accountability challenge, numerous nationalcollege completion initiatives, and a series of research paperswith consulting firm HCM Strategists made Gates “one of the strongest voices for accountability measures in higher education.” Gates’s $472 million in higher-ed munificence aims “to set an agenda, to help clarify an agenda and rally momentum around an agenda.” That momentum has brought the agenda all the way to the President’s pen.
Those who’ve followed K-12 reforms see the writing on the wall for higher education. The agenda is already set.
For some, however, that agenda’s familial resemblance to Race to the Top and reform patriarch No Child Left Behind is cause for concern. The president of the American Association of University Professors calls it “little more than a version of the failed policy of ‘No Child Left Behind’ brought to higher education.”
But in a sense, NCLB and RTTT are coming to higher education whether these reforms succeed or not. In a Washington Postop-ed this year, a retired high school teacher told college professors, “I want to warn you of what to expect from the students who will be arriving in your classroom.” After bewailing the stultifying effects of high-stakes accountability, he concluded:
Now you are seeing the results in the students arriving at your institutions. They may be very bright. But we have not been able to prepare them for the kind of intellectual work that you have every right to expect of them. It is for this that I apologize, even as I know in my heart that there was little more I could have done. Which is one reason I am no longer in the classroom.
Education observers can discern the sound of K-12 education reform rising in the halls of higher education. The score is the same, as are the composers. And for many students now entering colleges and universities, it’s the only tune they know. But it remains to be seen whether faculty and staff will perform the parts written for them.
They’ll need an alternative. Admirably, Obama’s college initiative takes aim at student debt, but that’s more symptomatic relief. To truly remedy the system, higher education must be understood as a public good, rather than private commodity available only to those who’ll pay the asking price.Baku, Azerbaijan, April 30
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Iran has banned access to WhatsApp messenger application in the country.
The secretary of the Committee for Determining Criminal Web Content, Abdolsamad Khorramabadi said that the committee has made the decision by the end of the last Iranian calendar year (ended on March 20), Iranian ISNA news agency reported on April 30.
Khorramabadi went on to say that the Information and Communications Technology Ministry has not implemented the decision yet, however the committee has officially informed the ministry about it.
While responding to a question about the reasons behind the ban, Khorramabadi denied to unveil further details, saying the Information and Communications Technology Ministry should issue a response to that.
The official also said that the committee has not made decision yet on filtering other smart phone network applications such as Viber, Tango and Instagram.
Maybe in the future the committee will look into blocking the applications, he added.
Iran already made decision to block access to another social network application WeChat last December.
The Committee for Determining Criminal Web Content which is headed by the prosecutor general of Iran, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei was established in 2009.
The committee has 13 members including 6 ministers from Iranian president Hassan Rouhani`s cabinet.
Several of world's most popular networks, such as Twitter and Facebook are banned in Iran, while users are still able to access them via proxies. For the geeks uninitiated in the world of computer, a proxy allows bypassing 'gates' meant to block certain sites.
The Iranian authorities banned Facebook and Twitter in summer 2009 when ex-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election victory sparked off massive protests that gained momentum with the help of organizers using social media.
Follow Trend on Telegram. Only most interesting and important newsEarlier today we posted a story about some updates coming to Resogun, including a photo mode and potential new levels. A fairly simple story that has now got even more interesting thanks to one comment in the comments section of the PS Blog post, by James Hawkins of the site’s team. When asked about a Vita version for Resogun the following reply was given.
Keep watching this space, the VITA version is coming and is looking, sounding and most importantly, playing great!
That one sentence has seemingly confirmed that a Vita version of Resogun is in development, though it is unknown at what stage it is at. Housemarque has made no such announcement of this edition, which could mean the news was released a little earlier than planned. We’ve contacted the studio regarding the comment, and hopefully we’ll get a reply to confirm or deny the Vita version’s existence. Resogun for Vita would have to be reworked as the effects in the PS4 version wouldn’t be easy to replicate in a downgraded version. Of course if you have a PS4, Vita, and have Resogun you can play it on the handheld via remote play.
Source: PS Blog via NeoGAFReliance Jio has resumed sales of its ambitious JioPhone. According to a report by The Economic Times, the telecom company has started sending messages to customers with a link attached to buy the advanced 4G VoLTE feature phone. The link has a code which the customer needs to show at the nearest Jio outlet to get the phone.
Advertising
In the first phase of sales, Reliance Jio managed to sell around 6 million of Jio phones. Now, the company is targeting close to 10 million customers in the second phase who had shown interest in the phone but could not get it after the device went out of stock. Mukesh Ambani, owner of Reliance Industries (RIL), launched JioPhone in July this year. The company started taking pre-orders for the same in August. However, due to unprecedented demand for the JioPhone, which led to the deliverers being pushed to October 19.
For those who are unaware, the 4G-enabled feature phone is priced at Rs 1,500 which is refundable after a period of three years given users return the device. Those who pre-book the device will have to pay Rs 500 upfront and the rest Rs 1,000 at the time of delivery.
As for specifications, JioPhone offers smart features like a voice assistant, the ability to support Jio apps like JioTV, etc. It gets a 2.4-inch QVGA display and this is a single SIM phone. The phone also supports a microSD card slot, FM Radio, torchlight, and SOS option. There’s also a 2MP rear-facing camera and a 0.3MP front camera. The processor is dual-core SPRD 9820A/QC8905 one and there’s 512MB RAM onboard, coupled with 4GB storage, which is expandable to 128GB. The device is backed by a 2000mAh battery inside.Road Traffic Law The Law Bicycles, as do all other road vehicles, travel on the left-hand side of a carriageway [or road ] (Shadou, 車道) in Japan.
Bicycles, as do all other road vehicles, travel on the left-hand side of a [or ] (Shadou, 車道) in Japan. It is not allowed to ride bicycles on the sidewalk [or footpath ] (Hodou, 歩道). But some sidewalks are assigned by the National Police Agency to also allow bicycles. A sign will indicate cyclists can mix with pedestrians.
It is not allowed to ride bicycles on the [or ] (Hodou, 歩道). But some sidewalks are assigned by the National Police Agency to also allow bicycles. A sign will indicate cyclists can mix with pedestrians. If there is the sign on the right, you can ride on both sidewalk and carriage way. (*1)
On shared sidewalks, do not harass pedestrians. Do not ring your bell with impatience. Always give way to pedestrians.(*2)
Bicycles must be equipped with a light in front, a reflector in rear, and a bell. (*3)
All bicycles must be registered with the prefectural police department. This registration is required to make it easier to find stolen bicycles. It is not a tax or insurance. (*4)
Insurance is not compulsory. You do not necessarily need to take out insurance to ride a bike. Also a helmet is optional.
Tandem bikes are not legal except in Nagano prefecture. (*5)
This sign means "DO NOT ENTER by bicycle".In most cases, it is seen at an underpass, an overpass, or freeway.
This sign means "DO NOT ENTER by bicycle".In most cases, it is seen at an underpass, an overpass, or. This sigh is a stop sign. Be sure to stop short of that sign and look right and left. If there is no traffic you can proceed. The Law in Reality *1 Many cyclists ride on sidewalks regardless of it being so assigned or not. The police will overlook cyclists on sidewalks. That law is really dysfunctional.
*2 It is difficult to say that sidewalks are safer than the carriage way (or road). Look out for commuter cyclists who have a notorious reputation for their reckless behaviour. And never hit pedestrians. The highest claimable amount in the past ran into tens of millions yen.
*3 The police do enforce having a front light. Personally I do not worry about a bell and have never been stopped by police for not having one.
*4 Registering a bicycle is also a dysfunctional rule. First, there is no penalty if you do not register your bicycle. Foreigners on a tourist visa cannot register anyway. It is only for residents of Japan. A stolen bicycle is unlikely to be found in a traveller’s possession whether it was registered or not. In conclusion, never mind. Forget it.
*5 How many times do I have to say "dysfunctional"? In reality, if riding a tandem bicycle, a policeman will not stop you. That law was originally to prohibit the dangerous practise of carrying someone else on an ordinary bicycle. Maybe the government officials at the time were unaware of tandem bicycles. Curiously the rule remains. Safety Please also visit this page
Reader's page > Bill's What are Japanese Roads Like? Tunnels Tunnels have been enemy of Japanese cycle tourist for a long time. Older tunnels don't have sufficient space for a wide sidewalk and it's carriageway [or traffic lane] is often too narrow, so cyclists prefer steep detours rather than flat tunnels. Tunnels made more recently have wide sidewalks you can cycle on. Anyway, make sure you can be seen. Have good powerful front lights and decent reflectors for tunnels. Cycling Roads There are narrow cycling roads, often along rivers, but many of them are confusing making it easy to get lost. Sometimes dirt surfaces suddenly appear. These trails are better suited for cyclists who live in Japan, using them for their daily training. As for safety, be aware of there are different risks than on general roads. Pedestrians and ordinary bikers freely go where you would not expect them. Where general roads cut across cycling roads, car drivers tend to be careless. Cycling roads are a kind of lawless area. Please do not assume you are safe on a cycling track.. Many accidents on one-way roads Almost all of Japanese one-way roads allow cyclists to legally ride along them the wrong way. But this causes confusion and accidents. Drivers tend to be careless when cyclists approach the wrong way or when they open their car doors. Many of my friends have been involved in accidents when they rode the wrong way. If you do so, assume that drivers will not see you and ride slower. Other regulations Before you park and leave your bicycle keep in mind two things. Lock and key. Using a long wire lock to tie two wheels to a convenient pole is a good way.
Keep your valuables with you, safe and secure. These two bits of advice will help avoid disappointment. Carry your bike Upon arrival at Narita or Kansai International Airport, which is the best way to get to your destination? In Japan, you are not allowed to bring your bike on public transport without taking it to pieces and storing it in a bike bag. es. You have to do "Rinko", This means your bike must be put in some kind of bike bag before you bring your bike in a coach or train. You have to take off at least both wheels and place a frame between them to arrange your bike in this bag. This special bike bag costs around 5,000-8,000 yen in bike shops in Japan. transport page for more information.
uploaded:01, 09, 2009Pussy is an energy drink, but as the more intuitive of our readers might know, it has another meaning.
It also means cat.
That’s why this cardboard standee of a man holding a can of Pussy, and saying “I’ve tasted pussy, have you?” is not in the least incredibly hilarious.
Have you?
Pussy is an energy drink first started in the UK by one Jonnie Shearer, now a millionaire from its success.
It is currently banned in the UK by their Advertising Standards Authority for being too sexually explicit, though we aren’t sure why.
As for the aforementioned standee at Big Box hypermart in Jurong East, it isn’t the only one.
The standees are part of a marketing campaign by the Singapore branch to spread awareness about the drink:
It’s kind of a treasure hunt for eagle-eyed Singaporeans.
“If you can locate these standees, take a selfie with them and message us with your photos with the location and can you stand to win a 24-can carton of Pussy 100% Natural Energy Drinks worth S$72, t-shirts, caps, and other souvenirs. Contest runs from 7 February to 28 February 2017.”
Whoa, free Pussy!
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Top image from Twitter
If you like what you read, follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get the latest updates.The World Wide Web is growing up. It turns 25 on March 12 — if you use the date Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote a paper proposing the system as the birthday of the Web.
The Web is now woven in our everyday lives. We use it for everything, from looking up directions to chatting with friends and family thousands of miles of away. Can you even remember the last time you went a day without the Web?
Back in 1995, only 14 percent of American adults used the internet. Today it’s 87 percent, according to the Pew Research Center, and among young adults aged 18 to 29 it’s 97 percent.
Pew Research Center’s Internet Project in partnership with Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Project is marking the internet’s birthday this year with a series of reports on internet penetration, privacy, cyber security, the “internet of things” and net neutrality.
The first report, released this morning, uses Pew’s extensive research on technology in American life, which dates back to 1990 when Pew first asked a question about computer use in a national survey. The report also includes telephone interviews conducted in January of 2014 to look at internet penetration and how Americans feel about the internet. Those interviews surveyed 1,006 adults living in the continental United States, including 502 with landline phones and 504 cell phones, 288 of which didn’t have a landline phone.
Those telephone interviews show that Americans generally feel the internet has made a positive impact on their lives and personal relationships.
“After they tote up all the positives and negatives of life in the digital age, the vast majority of users believe these technologies have made things better for them and for society,” Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center Internet Project said. “They see problems, to be sure, but most have now brought technology so deeply into the rhythms of their lives that they say it would be very hard to give up.”
Here are some of the key findings of the survey:
The internet is ingrained into American life
71 percent of adults in the U.S. say they use the internet on a typical day.
The internet is good
90 percent of internet users say the internet has been a good thing for them personally, while 6 percent say it has been a bad thing and 3 percent volunteer that it has been some of both.
76 percent of users say the internet has been a good thing for society, while 15 percent say it has been a bad thing and 8 percent say it has been equally good and bad.
The internet is essential
53 percent of internet users say the internet would be, at minimum, “very hard” to give up. That’s more than those who say cell phones, televisions and landlines would be “very hard” to give up.
39 percent of internet users feel they absolutely need to have internet access.
30 percent of internet users said it would be hard to give up access because they simply enjoy being online.
The internet has strengthened relationships
67 percent of internet users say their online communication with family and friends has generally strengthened those relationships, while 18 percent say it generally weakens those relationships.
76 percent of internet users said that people they witnessed or encountered online were mostly kind, while 13 percent of people said were mostly unkind.
56 of internet users say they have seen an online group come together to help a person or a community solve a problem, while 25 percent say they left an online group because the interaction became too heated or members were unpleasant to one another.
“Looking back at the origins of the Web, we can see patterns of use and non-use that persist today,” Susannah Fox, co-author of the Pew Research Center report said. “A person’s level of education is still a primary factor in predicting whether she uses technology or not. And the younger someone is, the more likely it is that she uses technology. One constant is that users, whenever they start, say that digital communications tools strengthen their relationships.”
Do you feel the same way about the internet?Mr. Meguro, 77, and the other former Japanese prisoners are the human flotsam of the great clashes of this century, ordinary people who somehow found themselves caught up in and battered by terrible waves of war and ideology. Only now, in the flickering twilight of their lives, are they getting on dry land again.
Japan has mounted determined efforts to recover the bones of soldiers who fell on distant battlefields during World War II. But it has made much less of an effort to recover former soldiers still alive in Russia.
''The Japanese Government is interested in collecting the remains of soldiers, but it doesn't show any interest in finding living people,'' said Yoichi Ogawa, the secretary general of the Japan Sakhalin Compatriot Exchange Association, a private organization that has searched for Japanese in Russia.
Seichi Saito, a former soldier who was held in Russia after the war -- but for only two years -- said the problem was that Japan had accepted Russia's assertions that all Japanese had been returned long ago.
''Once they accepted that, there was no more reason to look for people,'' Mr. Saito said.
Sadaaki Numata, the chief Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said however that the Government had established procedures to repatriate the former prisoners in Siberia and does pay for them to return to Japan. He noted that the number of these former prisoners returning to Japan is increasing.
''We are trying as much as we can to get these people back,'' he said. ''Those people who remained are dispersed in many parts of Russia, and the information which we have on them is 50 years old. And that presents serious practical difficulties in locating them.''
Russia's treatment of former Japanese soldiers touches a deep nerve here. At the end of the war, Soviet troops seized and imprisoned more than half a million Japanese troops and civilians in China and other places. More than 50,000 perished in brutal conditions in Stalin's labor camps in the late 1940's and early 1950's. The Soviet Union made its last major repatriation of Japanese prisoners in 1956, but since then there has been a trickle of others like Mr. Meguro, particularly since the collapse of Communism.
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Mr. Meguro was a code-breaker stationed throughout the war on Sakhalin, an island that Japan then controlled but is now part of Russia. He was sent to Siberia after Japan's surrender and spent eight years in a labor camp.
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Asked what it was like, Mr. Meguro looked blank and said nothing. His interpreter from Russian to Japanese, Eiko Tanikawa, a Japanese woman who also was stuck in Russia after the war and was allowed out only after writing in 1968 to Nikita S. Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, said gently: ''I asked him about it this morning, and he said: 'Some of my close friends died in the camps, and I don't want to remember that time. It's too awful to speak of.' ''
Upon his release in 1953, Mr. Meguro said, he was assigned to work in a remote collective farm in Siberia.
''I applied to go back to Japan, but that was denied,'' Mr. Meguro said.
It is not clear why Mr. Meguro was kept in the area, but he had been working in a small logging camp and it may be that the camp directors did not want to deal with the expense and nuisance of sending him home. So he was simply put under the supervision of the nearby collective farm, and he was so relieved at the improvement that he did not much question it.
''On the collective, people accepted me and were very kind,'' he said. ''I married, and my wife's family was very good to me.''
Mr. Meguro's wife, Maria, is Russian and he has three grown children who see themselves simply as Russians. But Mr. Meguro has been stateless all these years, always obliged to report to the authorities and never allowed to travel even within Russia.
A timid man, not one to challenge authority, Mr. Meguro says he never pushed to return to Japan. Only last fall, when Japan's Prime Minister, Ryutaro Hashimoto, paid a visit to Siberia did Mr. Meguro test the waters. With the encouragement of Maria, who saw how much her husband treasured the Japanese samurai movies occasionally shown on Russian television, Mr. Meguro dared to write to a Russian newspaper, asking to be allowed to visit his homeland.
The letter was published and found its way to a Japanese newspaper. Veterans' groups then helped arrange for Mr. Meguro to make a visit home.
On arriving at a Japanese airport, Mr. Meguro was greeted by a crowd of television cameras and by two childhood friends -- with whom he shook hands Russian style, instead of exchanging bows Japanese style. Mr. Meguro later prayed at the graves of his parents, who never knew that he had survived the war.
Mr. Meguro concluded his 10-day visit and returned to Russia on April 6, but he set in motion a process that is expected to grant him a military pension -- with 10 years' back pay.
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''I will not move back to Japan,'' he said. ''After all, my wife is Russian. But I would like to give her a great gift of a visit to Japan to show her my homeland.''The one man who saved 70 lives in Pulse during Orlando shooting https://t.co/KVs1mUfJhX — The Independent (@Independent) June 15, 2016
O'Reilly: 'It's the President's Job to Lead the World Against the Jihad'
Imam: I Never Knew Orlando Terrorist; Attacks Don't Represent Islam
A Marine veteran is being hailed as a hero after helping dozens of people escape during the terror attack at an Orlando nightclub.
Imran Yousuf, who served in Afghanistan, was working as a bouncer at Pulse nightclub when gunman Omar Mateen opened fire early Sunday morning.
Yousuf immediately recognized the sound of a high caliber weapon and his training kicked in.
"Everyone froze. I'm here in the back and I saw people start pouring into the back hallway, and they just sardine pack everyone," Yousuf told CBS News.
He knew that just beyond the packed crowd was a door to safety.
"And I'm screaming 'Open the door! Open the door!' And no one is moving because they are scared," he explained. "There was only one choice. Either we all stay there and we all die, or I could take the chance, and I jumped over to open that latch a we got everyone that we can out of there."
He estimated that 60 or 70 people ran out the door, escaping the nightclub.
"I wish I could have saved more to be honest," Yousuf said, fighting back tears. "There are a lot of people that are dead... there's a lot of people that are dead."
See the full interview, here.
Johnson: Orlando Terror Attack Was a Case of 'Self-Radicalization'
Gutfeld on Glamorizing Evil: 'The Less a Fiend Is Seen, The Better'
Carson: 'Look at the Spirit of Trump's Muslim Ban, Not the Letter of What He's Saying'Value stream mapping is a method to create a structured image of the material and information flow on the shop floor. You often hear that a value stream map should be the first and last thing to do during a lean project. It sometimes sounds like all you need is VSM and Kaizen and you are on the road to success. This is bollocks! While value stream mapping is sometimes quite useful, it is not a universal tool.
A Bit of History
The idea of a structured diagram of the material flow in manufacturing was there long before Toyota and lean. A 1918 book Installing Efficiency Methods included diagrams very similar to modern value streams (Thanks, Bryan Lund and Michel Baudin for digging that and other details up).
At Toyota, it was called Material and Information Flow Analysis, or MIFA for short. Another name was MIFD for Material and Information Flow Diagrams. There it was used mainly at the internal lean consultancy group OCMS. From there it made its way into lean manufacturing.
The bible for value stream mapping in the Western world is the best-selling book Learning to See by Mike Rother and John Shook, published in 1999. They also coined the terms value stream mapping (VSM) and value stream design (VSD), and defined the most commonly used set of symbols in value stream mapping.
The modern Western view of value stream mapping stems from this book. However, it almost took on a life on its own, and in the Western world, VSM nowadays features much more prominently than the authors ever imagined, and sometimes even more than they wanted (more on that later).
Why Are Value Stream Maps so Popular?
About the Importance of Value Streams
Often, you hear that value stream maps are the beginning and the end of lean improvements, they are your alpha and your omega, they are your morning and your night, your ying and yang, your A and Z, your … This is bollocks!
The benefit of value streams are by far exaggerated in the Western world. At Toyota, in fact, they do very few value streams. They prefer to work directly on the shop floor.
While I like value streams and use them frequently, I personally find that the Western world puts too much emphasis on value stream mapping. Many invest too much time in making a value stream and then have no time or energy left to actually improve the situation on the shop floor.
I have seen companies where the bonus of the plant manager depended (among other things) on how often per year the plant updates its value stream. Once per year was lame, twice was acceptable, but only with four plant-wide value stream updates per year did the bonus start to look good. Hence, two to four times per year, all shop-floor-related management spent a day drawing value streams. They were rarely used for anything useful, except to improve the chances of a promotion for all involved. In my opinion, these value stream maps were a colossal waste of resources.
Again, value stream maps can be very useful if applied to the right problem. Doing them “just because” is a colossal waste of time!
Then Why Are Value Streams so Popular in the West?
At Toyota, improvements on the shop floor are done by people from the shop floor, and they know it very well. In the West, lean projects are often driven by external consultants. These consultants (hopefully) have a lot of experience in improvement projects, but chances are they have little knowledge of your products and know even less about how you make them.
Hence, they need to understand the shop floor first. However, imagine the consultant telling the client that during the first week of the project they’re not doing anything. They’ll only try to understand what the client knows already – how to make his products. Of course, the consultants still want to bill the client for the time they are doing nothing but learning to understand the client’s system. In all likelihood, the client would be less than impressed.
However, if the consultants tell the client that they start right away with a value stream, it already sounds much better (and much more billable). If the consultants tell the client that the value stream map is the most important thing for lean and cannot be skipped under any circumstances, it is so much easier to bill for the time and to get the support of the client to educate the consultants. Plus, in the end, the consultants even have a nice, fancy chart (the value stream map) to show the client.
Value stream maps are often pushed by consultants that need to familiarize themselves with the shop floor of their client.
Additionally, in Western companies, management often likes fancy slides and frilly charts. Value stream maps fulfill that desire. Yet, having a value stream map and improving the shop floor are not one and the same. Make sure the solution fits the problem. Besides, in my opinion, management rarely goes into the details of value stream mapping of somebody else, but rather treats it as a nice wallpaper.
So Does This Mean that Consultants Shouldn’t Do Value Streams?
Whoa, whoa, hold your horses. Do you really want a consultant fiddling with your shop floor without understanding what is really going on? Giving the consultants time to understand the shop floor is a necessity for a successful lean project! If they make a value stream map on the side, it does not hurt. Just remember that a value stream has a specific use but is not a tool to solve all problems.
However, if you merely want to bring outsiders up to date with your system, another possibility would be to give the consultants a boiler suit and have them work in the line for a day or two along with the normal operators. This also gives them a good understanding of the shop floor, possibly even more than a value stream map would. Although I imagine this may not be too popular with some consultants.
When to Use Value Stream Maps
The value stream map can give you a graphic representation of the information and material flow. This in turn can help you with both understanding and improving your shop floor organization.
When You SHOULD Draw a Value Stream Map
As with all lean improvement projects, you should first have a problem that you want to fix! Then, depending on the problem, you collect data, make different analyses, and use appropriate lean tools to improve your problem. A tool by itself is not a solution. Like many other lean tools, doing value stream mapping for the sake of doing the map won’t help you much.
A value stream map is a flow layout of the material and information flow. As such, it can help you visualize and understand the material and information flow. This can be done for the current state (also called value stream analysis or VSA) and also for the future desired state (also called value stream design or VSD).
As such, value stream maps can help you with understanding the flow of information and material. It can help you to see problems and inconsistencies. Common issues where value stream mapping is often useful are, for example:
Designing a new manufacturing line (where it is part of the process)
Improving the flow of material and information of an existing line in a flow shop (in comparison to a job shop)
Determining lead times and replenishment times in flow shops (e.g., to calculate the number of kanban)
Reducing unevenness (mura) in the material and information flow of flow shops
Please keep in mind that depending on the exact problem you try to solve, the maps can look differently. For example, if I want to determine the lead times, I count material. However, if I don’t need the inventories, it would be a waste to count them.
When You MAY Draw a Value Stream Map
For other problems, a value stream map may or may not help, depending on the details of your problem. Below are some examples of when a value stream map can be done somewhere during the improvement, but this is not necessarily clear at the beginning of the project.
Capacity constraints
Efficiency issues
Finding and eliminating waste (helps you to find some, but also misses a lot. Not a perfect tool for waste elimination.)
Cost issues
Delivery performance problems
Flow related problems in job shops, because the material flow is not standardized and may differ for every |
4 addresses in ARIN's vaults is a /11, or 2(32-11) = 2.09 million addresses. Although requests for such large blocks don't come in every day, the largest ISPs in North America do request blocks of this size at somewhat regular intervals. Soon, that last /11 will be gone. Then there's a /12 (1.04 million addresses), a /17 (131 thousand addresses), and a /20 (4,096 addresses). After that, it's basically scraps, with only /21s (2,048 addresses) and smaller left.
"In the coming weeks, for the first time in history, an organization will come in and request IPv4 address space and qualify, but we won't have it in our inventory to fulfill the request." Richard Jimmerson, ARIN's CIO, who currently oversees ARIN's registration services, told Ars. "We've been in phase four of the countdown plan for a year now. Currently, all requests are evaluated by two team members on a first-in, first-out basis. Soon there may be two organizations that have requested /11s. One will be approved first and get our last /11. The other will potentially qualify also and then go on the waiting list, or they'll have to choose a smaller block size."
"Over the years, some IPv4 address space has been returned to the system,"Jimmerson said. "A lot of that has gone back to the IANA global pool. IANA has been redistributing that IPv4 space back equally to the five RIRs. It is possible still that IPv4 address space will be returned or reclaimed, for instance, when address holders go out of business or don't pay their fees. We didn't expect to see that anymore with the transfer system in place, but it's still happening. This address space will be used to satisfy requests on the waiting list."
There is some potential to apply game theory to the waiting list: ask for a large address block and you may not get anything, or you may be waiting for a long time. Ask for a small block and you'll get it. So it's helpful to know the size of the requests that are on the waiting list. But for now, ARIN won't be publishing the contents of the waiting list.
However, organizations that are transitioning to IPv6, the successor to IPv4 with its near-infinite address space, may request a small block of IPv4 addresses (16 to 256 addresses) to be used with transition technologies—if they haven't received any IPv4 address space in the last six months and don't currently hold any that could be used for this. ARIN has set aside a separate /10 block (4.19 million addresses) for this purpose.
"Approximately 50 percent of ARIN's members have IPv6 address space registered,"Jimmerson said. "Our message to the community is to think about IPv6 first. There's a limited supply of IPv4. Please check on the ARIN website; it's still possible to request IPv4 address space, but only for a very limited time. There's also the address space for transition purposes. But organizations that have an ongoing need for IPv4 addresses should look into the ability to transfer IPv4 addresses. We do expect transfers from the ARIN region toward the RIPE region, especially the Middle East, to pick up as soon as the policy that allows for this goes into effect due to pent-up demand. ARIN already conducts transfers to the APNIC region."
In the meantime, IPv6 deployment has been increasing slowly but steadily: Google's IPv6 measurements show that currently, a little over five percent of Google's users world-wide run the new version of the IP protocol, while during weekends we're starting to get close to seven percent. The US is now the second country in the world with IPv6 deployment at nearly 15 percent. Only Belgium has more IPv6 at 30 percent. Of course that means that the other 85 percent of Americans (well, their ISPs) may be occupying a spot on ARIN's waiting list in the near future—along with the 99.5 percent of Canadians that are still IPv4-only.Text size
China's foreign exchange reserves have fallen for the third straight month.
China's FX reserves came in at $3.17 trillion at the end of September, down $19 billion from a month ago, the largest decline since May. The street had expected FX reserves to stay at $3.18 trillion.
The offshore yuan fell to 6.7182 per dollar earlier this morning, a new 9-month low, amid worries over the British pound's 6% flash crash. The offshore yuan stabilized to 6.7144 recently.
"The renminbi has held fairly steady against the dollar in recent months. But, as today’s data highlight, this is only because the PBOC has continued to intervene heavily in the FX markets in response to still large capital outflows," wrote Capital Economics' Julian Evans-Pritchard. He explained his reasoning:
Our model suggests that fluctuations in exchange rates and global bond prices should have increased the dollar value of the reserves by around $8bn. This implies that the People’s Bank (PBOC) probably sold around $27bn in foreign exchange last month, with the pace of sales largely unchanged since July when the PBOC stepped up intervention in response to post-Brexit volatility. Given that we don’t expect a major change in the current account surplus in September, this suggests that capital outflows remained broadly stable last month at around $40bn.This article is about the horse. For other uses, see Black Jack (disambiguation)
Black Jack in John F. Kennedy's funeral procession
A coal-black Morgan-American Quarter Horse cross, Black Jack served in the Caisson Platoon of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard). Named in honor of General of the Armies John J. "Black Jack" Pershing, he was the riderless horse in more than 1,000 Armed Forces Full Honors Funerals (AFFHF), the majority of which were in Arlington National Cemetery. With boots reversed in the stirrups, he was a symbol of a fallen leader.
Early life [ edit ]
Black Jack was foaled January 19, 1947, and came to Fort Myer from the cavalry remount station at Fort Reno, Oklahoma, on November 22, 1952. Black Jack was the last of the Quartermaster–issue horses branded with the Army's U.S. brand (on the left shoulder) and his Army serial number 2V56 (on the left side of his neck).[1]
Career [ edit ]
Black Jack served a long and respectable military career. Among the highlights were that he participated in four state funerals:[1]
Army Major General Philip C. Wehle was the Commanding General of the Military District of Washington during those state funerals, except during the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson. At that time Army Major General James Adamson served as Commanding General.
Death and burial [ edit ]
Black Jack died after a 29-year military career on February 6, 1976. He was cremated, with his remains laid to rest in a plot at Fort Myer, Virginia, on Summerall Field; his final resting place lies 200 feet (60 m) northeast of the flagpole in the southeast corner of the parade field. He is one of four horses in United States history to be buried with Full Military Honors, the others being Chief, Sergeant Reckless, and Comanche.[3][4]
Notes [ edit ]The party will continue June 27, with The Arts Council throwing its first block party of the summer.
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - The start of downtown's Arts & Entertainment Districts was a big success, according to those who made it happen.
"I think the consensus was (June 20) was a banner night for downtown Huntsville," Allison Dillon-Jauken, executive director of The Arts Council, said. The council was responsible for bringing in the musicians, jugglers and others who performed around the Courthouse Square and Big Spring International Park on the opening night of the districts as well as on June 21. The council is also sponsoring entertainment each Thursday and Friday nights, the days the districts will be open during a three-month trial period.
On the district nights, patrons can purchase an adult beverage and then stroll the blocks around the square and near the intersection of Meridian and Cleveland streets, the site of a second, smaller district. They can shop at the Greene Street Market at Nativity and stop to listen to a musician or watch an artist at work around the square. One Thursday a month, they can also see dozens of artists and their works at the Sidewalk Arts Stroll.
Hundreds of people turned out for the opening night of the districts, and Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle has been collecting feedback from the sponsoring organizations as well as the businesses and city departments that were involved.
"We saw neighbors greeting each other, families with children, lots of strollers and a great sense of community spirit," Battle said. "This is the environment and energy we want to see downtown, where people are willing to get outside to enjoy the arts and entertainment. They can also have a drink, do some shopping, grab a meal, and maybe end the evening with a little dancing, too."
A lot of people did get a beverage to go, creating record-breaking nights for some of the area's businesses. Akinde Olagundoye, manager of the Amendent XXI bar, said patrons came out in numbers on June 20, with the line of people buying drinks out the door. People were excited about the live music and performers along with the ability to take a drink down the block to the farmers market or arts stroll, he said.
"It energized everybody to do something like that," he said, adding the bar did "five to six times" its normal sales on Thursday night.
Friday was busy but not to the extent of the number that came out for the opening night and for the arts stroll, he said.
John Robinson, who owns Amendment XXI with his son, Breck Robinson, called the opening of the districts "phenomenal." He praised the Battle administration for getting the ball rolling on the districts once the Alabama legislature passed the law allowing cities to have open container areas. He also praised local law enforcement.
"They've gone the extra mile to promote downtown, and they backed up their verbal commitments with things that made it doable," Robinson said. "It came off nicely. It's all been a good thing and it will be the first of several moves they will make, and we encourage them to do that."
In addition to buying beverages, people were also buying produce at the Greene Street market, with some of the vendors selling out last week. They were also buying art, with some artists having as much as $1,600 in sales.
Harrison Brothers Hardware stayed open while the street performances were going on, from 5 to 8 p.m., and also saw a big uptick in sales the evening of June 20, Donna Castellano, acting director of the Historic Huntsville Foundation, said. The foundation runs Harrison Brothers and profits from the sale of items in the store go to local preservation efforts and foundation activities.
"I think there were a lot of people out and excited about the Arts & Entertainment Districts," Castellano said. "It's what we all wanted to accomplish. I really hope people will come back Thursday, go to Green Street Market and enjoy the entertainment, grab a drink or dinner downtown. Become addicted to downtown, that's what we're trying to get people to do."
The party will continue June 27, with The Arts Council throwing its first block party of the summer. Eustis Avenue between the square and Greene Street will be closed off, and the finals of the Homegrown Talent contest will take place on a stage in front of the Church of the Nativity, Episcopal. The contest had been scheduled to take place during the Panoply Arts Festival in April, but was postponed due to weather.
The contest will begin at 5 p.m., with the winner announced that night. The music will continue after the contest, with the 2012 winners, the 911 Reporters, and other groups performing until 8 p.m. Activities will also be on the square, with performances by a flute choir and demonstrations by the North Alabama Woodworkers as well as Green Pea Press. Dillon-Jauken said people are welcome to bring chairs and blankets for the block party.
"You can do Greene Street Market, the block party, venture around the square and then go through the park to the Huntsville Museum of Art, which is also open on Thursday night," Dillon-Jauken said.
"You will also find some entertainment on Thursday and Friday nights that will always be new and different," Dillon-Jauken said about the 15 weeks of programming The Arts Council is calling Arts2. "It won't always be a combination of Greene Street and the arts stroll, but it will always be something new and different each Thursday and Friday night."
For a list of Homegrown Talent finalists, click HERE.In this 2012 file photo, Vladimir Katriuk stands at his honeybee farm in Quebec. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press via AP)
In 2012, a journalist visited Vladimir Katriuk at his farm about 40 miles outside Montreal. At one point during the encounter, Katriuk, who was in his 90s, grabbed part of a beehive and started talking about a queen bee.
“You see?” he told the Canadian Press reporter. “Here they have started to make the royal cell.”
The reporter hadn’t asked about the hive, though. His question was about a list from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which had named the Ukrainian-born beekeeper — who died this month — as one of the world’s most wanted suspected Nazi war criminals.
The Canadian Press noted that the Jewish human-rights organization named for a famous Nazi hunter had ranked Katriuk fourth on its list, “after a new study alleged he was a key participant in a village massacre during World War II.”
The reporter trekked to Ormstown, Quebec, and confronted Katriuk, who “repeatedly refused to discuss anything about himself — other than his passion: the honey bees.”
“I have nothing to say,” Katriuk said. “When we talk about bees, that’s different. When we talk about my own affairs, that’s something else. I’m sorry.”
This week, with Katriuk now up to No. 2 on the Wiesenthal Center’s list for the “murder of Jews and non-Jews in various locations,” the Associated Press reported that he had died in Canada at age 93.
Katriuk’s attorney said the death occurred earlier this month. “It was a stroke or something do with a stroke,” the lawyer, Orest Rudzik, told the Canadian Press.
[The moral guilt of Oskar Groening, the ‘Accountant of Auschwitz’]
Katriuk, who moved to Canada in the 1950s, was a member of a Ukrainian battalion of the SS, the elite Nazi storm troops, between 1942 and 1944, according to the AP, citing war reports.
And he was accused of taking part in a brutal massacre during World War II, the horrifying details of which were included in a 2012 Holocaust and Genocide Studies report.
Nazi troops annihilated the village of Khatyn in Belorussia — now known as Belarus — on March 22, 1943, killing nearly 150 people, most of them children and women, and burning down their houses.
“Its residents were herded into a barn and burned alive,” reads the report, authored by Lund University historian Per Anders Rudling.
A memorial is seen in the former village of Khatyn, northeast of Minsk, on March 22, 2015. (Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)
“One witness stated that Volodymyr Katriuk was a particularly active participant in the atrocity,” Rudling’s paper says. “He reportedly lay behind the stationary machine gun, firing rounds on anyone attempting to escape the flames.”
One of the few survivors of the massacre was a young boy, Viktor Andreevich Zhelobkovich, who, Rudling wrote, recalled years later that a “punitive squad” ordered his family into the street and brought them, along with other families, into a barn just outside their village.
“I could see between the planks of the barn wall how they piled up hay against the wall, which they then set on fire. When the burning roof caved in the people and and people’s clothes caught on fire, everybody threw themselves against the door, which broke open. The punitive squad stood around the barn and opened fire on the people, who were running in all directions.”
Zhelobkovich said he and his mother “made it five or six meters from the doors of the barn,” where his mother died.
“The barn burned down, burned corpses lay all around,” Zhelobkovich said. “Someone moaned: ‘drink…’ I ran, brought water, but to no avail, in front of my eyes the Khatyn villagers died one after another. Terrible, painful deaths.”
[Criticized by fellow survivors, Auschwitz victim defends hugging Nazi guard]
By the 1950s, according to the Canadian Press, Katriuk was living in Canada, where he became a beekeeper. In 1999, the Federal Court in Canada found that he falsely represented himself and concealed facts to obtain citizenship in the country. Years later, however, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s cabinet didn’t strip his citizenship.
Earlier this month, Russian authorities asked for Katriuk’s extradition to Moscow so he could be tried for alleged war crimes, according to the Globe and Mail. “Harper’s Conservative government ignored the request, saying it will never recognize Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and its interference in Ukraine.” the AP reported.
Just hours before Katriuk’s death was announced, the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs in Toronto called on the Canadian government “to review this case and take the necessary steps to ensure that, if guilty, Katriuk be held accountable for war crimes committed in collaboration with the Nazi regime.”
The case, the Globe and Mail noted, “has upset Jewish Canadians and war-criminal hunters for years.”
The newspaper noted that in 2012, Mark Adler, a conservative member of Canada’s House of Commons, “suggested via Twitter that Mr. Katriuk needed to leave.”
“Vladimir Katriuk hid his past as a Nazi collaborator,” Adler tweeted. “We must never forget. Collaborators’ lives shouldn’t end on a soft Canadian pillow.”
As news of Katriuk’s death spread, Russian officials criticized Canada for allowing him to remain in the country.
“Sadly, the Canadian government ignored numerous appeals by Canadian Jewish organizations and efforts by the Russian authorities to ensure that justice be served, allowing Vladimir Katriuk to retain citizenship of Canada while peacefully residing in this country,” press secretary Kirill Kalinin for the Russian Embassy in Ottawa said in an e-mail sent to the Canadian Press. “Employing legal or politically motivated loopholes to evade from trying or extraditing Nazi war criminals is totally unacceptable.”
[How Alois Brunner, the world’s most wanted Nazi, evaded justice for more than 60 years]
“Of course, Katriuk’s death ends the case,” Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, told the New York Times. “Because Russia asked for his extradition, finally there was a country that was willing to bring him to justice, but that didn’t happen because of contemporary politics.”
Zuroff told the Times that Katriuk’s prosecution was made difficult by the lateness of Rudling’s revelations. “The most damning evidence against him was discovered relatively recently,” Zuroff said of Katriuk.
The Times noted that Rudling’s article was “derived from Soviet interrogation files that were declassified only in 2008 and were unavailable during earlier proceedings against Mr. Katriuk in Canada.”
In 2012, shortly after the publication of Rudling’s research, Zuroff told the Canadian Press that a lack of political will is often the biggest obstacle in bringing suspected Nazis to justice.
“What’s the chance of a 90-year-old Nazi war criminal committing murder again? Zero,” he said at the time. “All they have to do is wait it out. People are going to die soon anyway and they’ll spare themselves the expense, the embarrassment and the problems — logistically or whatever — of prosecuting one of their own (citizens).”
For his part, Katriuk always denied that he’d committed war crimes.
When the Canadian Press reporter visited his farm three years ago, Katriuk said he hadn’t heard about his addition to the Wiesenthal Center list and he wouldn’t discuss the allegations.
“Let people talk,” he said.
But, the Canadian Press noted, Katriuk “hinted that one day he might tell his story — but he didn’t say when.”
Said the beekeeper: “When it’s time to talk, I will talk. Right now is not the time for me to talk.”
Read More:
The horrible reason one woman had to wait 77 years for her PhD
FBI Director James B. Comey: Why I require FBI agents to visit the Holocaust Museum
After all the survivors have died, the Holocaust will seem as dry and dusty as the Civil WarHow To Make it As A Millennial
Jennifer Silva Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 9, 2015
We live in a strange time — a time of instant gratification. We seldom think about it but we’re living in the future that we could only imagine as kids. Almost everything is available with the click of a button, personal drivers, dates, food, living space, music, tickets, you name it there’s an app for it. It’s a beautiful thing. It has also changed the way many people think, especially millennials.
Millennials (defined as 18–34 in 2015) are now the largest, most diverse generation in the U.S population. As a millennial myself, I can attest to the fact that we value community, family and creativity in our work and we’ve been shaped by technology. The fact that tech has shaped us is why we are used to getting things right away. As nice as it is to get things with the snap of a finger, that’s not the way you become successful. It’s a long and consistent grind.
Not only do you have to work hard, but you have to work harder now because of the economic climate we’re in. It’s a known fact that many of us have started our careers during a economic downturn and it’s something that we will have to deal with for years to come. How we respond to this will determine how much money we make, the good news is we’re still surrounded with massive opportunity — it’s just not found in the same places that our parents found it.
Our parents found opportunity by going to college, getting good grades, working for large corporations, climbing the latter, putting money into a 401(k) and saving for retirement. The game has changed, contractors are becoming the new workforce and in the future employees won’t exist. Sound scary? It’s bittersweet really. Uber is a great example, the ride-sharing startup has 160,000 contractors, but just 2,000 employees. That’s an astonishing ratio of 80 to 1. It’s not just on-demand companies that employ significant contract workforce’s. Microsoft has nearly two-thirds as many contractors as full-time employees. Even the simplest business structures, sole proprietorships, have increased their use of contract workers nearly two-fold since 2003. With the right discipline this freedom to create your own hours can be a wonderful thing for you. With lack of discipline it can be detrimental. So how do you succeed in this new world? I’ll tell you what’s worked for me.
From 2007 to 2010 the U.S. has printed and distributed 16 Trillion dollars! Clearly, there isn’t a shortage of money, there’s an abundance of it but there’s certainly a shortage of long term think and creativity. I’m sure that your parents told you that you have to get a good job and “make money”, well they’re wrong, only the Federal Reserve can print bank-notes. You have to start thinking of how you can get money, and by using your creativity you can get money from various ways. The three ways to generate massive wealth from personal experience are by becoming a personality (“I’m not a businessman, I’m a business….. man”- Jay Z), by creating value through a business (starting one) or creating value for a business (investing in one, joining one etc…)
I’ve written a list of ideas and action steps for each way to help get your train of thought in motion.
Becoming a personality:
Podcast (great way to get attention and generate reoccurring ad revenue)
Blog (great way to get attention, and sell your products/services)
Newsletter (great way to get attention, and sell your products/services)
Write a book (great way to get attention, and get residual income)
Create quality video content via YouTube videos (great way to get attention, generate ad revenue, and sell your products/services)
Periscope/Meerkat (great way to get attention)
Webinars (great way to get attention and sell your products/services)
All of these methods help you get two things, attention and money, because attention leads to money.
Action Steps:
Choose one of the above methods to get money. Do what it takes to setup the infrastructure to build content on. Set weekly/monthly goals, e.g. if you setup a blog, set a weekly goal of at least 2 quality blog posts a week. If you setup a podcast aim for 1–2 quality podcasts a month (and scale it up as you grow). Be consistent — make sure that the quality of your content and when you release it is consistent. This is what ultimately defines your brand. Constantly improve and be different — seek ways to dominate your space by going above and beyond what others are doing. If others are releasing a 3 blog posts a week, release 4 or release one that is better than all 3 of there’s.
Starting and building a business
eCommerce (straight forward, highly competitive).
Build a product that is different than what’s out there that helps either consumers get what they want or businesses get what they want.
What do businesses want? — More money.
What do people want? — Social status, health, relationships, money.
Building a business is pretty straight forward you’re looking to make a profit by fulfilling a need in the market place. You can achieve this either by selling a product to consumers, or selling a product to businesses, it’s really that simple. The hard part is determining what that product is and finding product market fit.
Action steps (non-eCommerce):
Write at least 5 business ideas down each day. After a month of doing this you’ll have a bunch of ideas. Choose the 5 best ideas. (best ideas = help a lot of people and solve a real need/want) For each idea speak to 5–10 different people and ask if they would be interested in paying for such a thing. Choose the idea that receives the most promising response (you want genuine responses, so press them and say “would you pay upfront right now?”) Attend programming meetups, hackathons, visit stackoverflow.com, and network with technical people. Write specs for the product and outline your vision. Bootstrap or raise funding from friends, family, or an angel investor to begin funding the development of the product. Once the product is built begin marketing the hell out of it! (read: Traction — A startup guide to getting customers, and visit growthhackers.com)
Creating value for an existing business
Traditional method — If you have a unique qualification or direct experience in marketing, sales, programming, design, law, business dev, the good news is, there’s no shortage of companies that could use your help. Either join them, or do contract/consulting work for them.
Come up with unique ideas for existing businesses/incumbents and share the ideas with them for free! (great way to build relationships with key people, and you never know how this value add will come back to you)
Introduce two decision makers at complimentary businesses. (by being the link between two people, you’ll have created value for both parties)
The action steps in this last section are self explanatory.
See, in this new economy you need to stand out and be creative. With the internet we are all fortunate enough to have the ability to reach hundreds of millions of people, and do things our parents and their parents only dreamed of. It’s up to us to use for all it’s worth and separate ourselves from the pack (the middle class).
It won’t be here for long. We’re quickly moving toward a world of the have’s and have not’s. OK, I lied, we’re living in it. Which side do you want to be on? I don’t mean to scare you with what I’m about to say but these are the cold hard truths. The value of the dollar is decreasing (because as I mentioned earlier the fed is printing a shit-ton of it!), school tuition is increasing and employment uncertainty is at an all time high. Don’t believe me? Here are some relevant data points conducted by a policy think-tank — the University tuition and compulsory fees are expected to have about tripled from 1990 to 2017 and because the nation’s money supply is constantly being expanded the dollar is rapidly declining.
You have to realize that we are in a flawed system and if you play by the rules you’re going to lose. This is not to say break the laws, I highly encourage and live by being ethical. The point is the old system that your parents believed in has failed them, and will fail you too. You have to play by the new rules.
Build up your personal brand or build up your companies brand. Build relationships with great people. Create value for those people. Be ethical. Be fearless.
The point is you have to start kicking ass. Follow me and share this with your millennial friends and I’ll show you how to start kicking ass in my next post.In a hundred years time, historians of science and technology will look back at our age and marvel at the theories, experiments, and breakthroughs that characterise our age.
But they will also puzzle over the scientific cul de sacs of our time: the theories and ideas that fell by the wayside because they turned out to be misconceived, wrong or just plain mumbo jumbo.
Inevitably, this raises an interesting question: how much of what we consider mainstream investigation will fall into this category of best-forgotten science?
One way to approach this question is to examine our own attitude to science at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th.
The popular account goes a little like this. This era was characterised by a sense that the universe could be more or less completely described by Newton’s laws of mechanics, the laws of thermodynamics and Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory.
All was well, save for one or two minor cracks that everyone expected could be easily papered over. Of course, these eventually led to two of the greatest revolutions in scientific thought: Max Planck’s quantum theory in 1900 and Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity a few years later.
However, this popular account understates much of the complexity of scientific debate at the time. In particular, it fails to capture the extent to which many mainstream scientific ideas turned out to be spectacularly wrong. These ideas were widely discussed, much cherished and, in many cases, widely supported. Now these cul de sacs of science are largely forgotten.
Today, Helge Kragh at Aarhaus University in Denmark puts the record straight by re-examining the end-of-the-century, or fin-de-siecle, physics and the ideas that dominated it. There is much to learn from the stories he tells.
One largely forgotten episode was the general dissatisfaction at this time with the notion of ‘matter’. Various lines of thought seemed to suggest that the idea of an atomistic universe built from fundamental units of matter was flawed.
For example, the laws of thermodynamics only made sense if atoms were rigid bodies with no internal structure. And yet the evidence from spectroscopic experiments suggested that atoms must have internal structure. The phrase “matter is dead” became a widely used catchphrase at the time and clearly something had to give.
One mainstream resolution of this problem was based in the idea that matter was not a fundamental property of the universe but an emergent one. This coincided with a growing understanding that various different forms of energy–kinetic, potential, chemical, thermal etc–were manifestations of the same thing. So perhaps matter was merely another form of energy too.
This idea, which became known as energetics, enjoyed strong support for many years. It held that since Newton’s laws could be described purely in terms of energy, there was no need for the hypothesis of atoms. This was a grand unified theory of the universe and one of its chief proponents was Willhelm Ostwald, who later won a Nobel prize in chemistry for his work on catalysts.
In a talk in 1895, Ostwald said: “The most promising scientific gift that the closing century can offer the rising century is the replacement of the materialistic world view by the energeticist world view”.
Another solution came from the notion of the luminiferous ether, which dominated scientific thought in a way that is hard to imagine today. “The basic problem was not whether the ether existed or not, but the nature of the ether and its interaction with matter,” says Kragh.
The ether was widely believed to be the fundamental bedrock of the universe, from which all other things emerged. Many physicists proclaimed that the ether would be the basis for a grand unified theory of everything, among them, ironically, Albert Michelson.
One theory widely discussed for several years was put forward by William Thomson, aka Lord Kelvin, who believed that atoms were vortices in the ether. Curiously, physicists never proved this idea wrong. Instead, it simply ran out steam.
Then there were the various discoveries that turned out to be little more than wishful thinking. The discovery of X-rays by William Roentgen in 1895 led to the announcement of a bewildering range of other rays, for example N-rays, black light, rays of positive electricity, Moser rays, selenic rays and magnetic rays.
All of these turned out to be figments of the fertile imaginations of the physicists involved; the result of a kind of ray hysteria.
Kraghe describes various other episodes in fascinating detail. What’s interesting of course is the extent to which it is possible to draw parallels between the trends in science then and now.
In the last 20 years there has been a growing sense that various different forms of information–genetic, digital, entropic etc–are manifestations of the same thing. What’s more, there is intense interest in the role that information might play in the laws of physics. Could it be that information is more fundamental than the concepts of mass or even energy. Perhaps the laws of physics must derive from its properties, if only we could decypher them?
Then there is the search for dark matter, a mysterious substance that fills the universe even though we cannot see, feel or even measure it.
And of course there are various theories of everything that focus on uniting quantum mechanics and relativity while predicting various extra dimensions, other universes and even an infinite multitude of them.
How much of this will seem irrelevant, bizarre or wrong in a hundred years time? It’s impossible to say but the parallels with some of the episodes from a hundred years ago make for entertaining speculation.
Kragh clearly shows that only a small fraction of the mainstream scientific debate in the 1890s is relevant today. And there’s no reason to think that same won’t be true when historians reassess early 21st century science in a hundred year’s time.
Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1207.2016: A Sense Of Crisis: Physics In The Fin-De-Siècle EraKorean grilled pork belly dish
Samgyeopsal (삼겹살, lit. three-layer meat), samgyeopsal-gui (삼겹살구이), or grilled pork belly is a type of gui (grilled dish) in Korean cuisine.
Etymology [ edit ]
Directly translated from Korean, samgyeop-sal (삼겹살) means "three layer flesh," referring to striations of lean meat and fat in the pork belly that appear as three layers when cut.[1][2] In Korea, the word samgyeop-sal, meaning "pork belly", often refers to samgyeop-sal-gui (grilled pork belly), in the same way that the word galbi, meaning "ribs", often refers to galbi-gui (grilled beef ribs). Gui refers to roasted, baked, or grilled dishes.
One can also find ogyeopsal (오겹살), with an o meaning "five". Ogyeop-sal includes the skin part of the pork belly, unlike samgyeop-sal where the skin is removed. This corresponds with the Chinese word for pork belly, wǔ huā ròu (五花肉) or "five flower meat", as the Chinese pork belly usually includes the rind.
Preparation [ edit ]
Samgyeopsal on a charcoal grill on a charcoal grill
samgyeopsal being cut with scissors Cookedbeing cut with scissors
Thick, fatty slices of pork belly,[3] sometimes with the skin left on and sometimes scored on the diagonal,[1] are grilled on a slanted metal griddle or a gridiron at the diners' table, inset with charcoal grills or convex gas burners.[2][4] Usually, diners grill the meat themselves, flipping and cutting them with tongs and scissors, and eat directly from the grill.[1][2][3]
The meat is usually neither marinated nor seasoned, although marinated samgyeopsal in flavors such as ginseng, wine, garlic, herbs, curry, doenjang, and gochujang has gained popularity since the late 2000s.[2][5] Slices of garlic, onions, green chili peppers, mushrooms, and kimchi are often grilled alongside using the fat trickling from the pork belly.[1][2][4]
Common accompaniments for samgyeopsal include ssam vegetables such as lettuce, kkaennip (perilla leaves), ssammu (pickled radish paper) and dipping sauces such as ssamjang (made with seasoned mixture of chili paste and soy bean paste) and gireum-jang (made with sesame oil, salt, and black pepper), jangajji (soy sauce-pickled vegetables) such as myeongi-jangajji (pickled Siberian onion leaves) or yangpa-jangajji (pickled onions), kimchi, as |
at different specific time points (see below). After blood sample collection 12 hours (h) after dose, the subjects were discharged from the Clinical Pharmacology Unit. After a washout period of at least 10 days, subjects were switched to the second phase receiving the alternate coffee preparation, and the blood samples were collected in the same manner. Identical meals and fluids were served during the 2 study phases. All subjects were required to refrain from drinking beverages containing caffeine (except those given in this study) and alcohol from the time of screening until the end of the research study. After initiating each coffee procedure, subjects continued fasting until water and lunch were served 2 h and 6 h afterwards, respectively.
2.6. Blood Sample Collection for Determination of Caffeine Pharmacokinetic Parameters
In each study phase, subjects were fasted overnight for at least 8 h. Venous blood samples were taken via heparinized IV catheter inserted into a forearm vein. Fifteen mL of blood samples were drawn from each subject prior to an administration of either the coffee enema or oral coffee consumption and again 10, 20, 30, 40, and 60 min and 1.5, 2, 4, 8, and 12 h after each procedure. The blood collecting tubes were centrifuged at 1,200 rpm for 15 min, and the plasma was separated and frozen at −80°C for later analysis.
2.7. Determination of Caffeine Concentrations in Coffee Solutions
The assay of caffeine content was modified from the high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method and conditions previously reported elsewhere [18, 19]. One mL of each coffee preparation (either enema solution or ready-to-drink coffee beverage) was diluted 10-fold with 10% methanol and was then spiked with 10 μL of internal standard (IS, 100 μg/mL acetaminophen). Five µL of sample solution was injected into the HPLC system. Chromatographic separation was performed on 5 μm C 18, i.d. analytical and guard columns. The chromatography condition consisted of two mobile phases. The mobile phase A used was 1 mmol/L perchloric acid/isopropanol (1,000/56, v/v)/2.2 mmol/L sodium dodecyl sulfate which was pumped through the column at a flow rate of 1 mL/min for 7 min. The mobile phase B used was 1 mmol/L perchloric acid/isopropanol (1,000/88, v/v)/3 mmol/L sodium dodecyl sulfate and was pumped through the column at a flow rate of 1 mL/min for 8 min, and the analytes were detected by UV absorption at 274 nm, while the column was maintained at 40°C. The caffeine content of the unknown samples was determined using a calibration curve of peak height ratios of caffeine and IS versus respective caffeine concentrations (2,500–100,000 ng/mL) with the use of linear regression.
2.8. Determination of Caffeine Concentrations in Plasma
The assay was modified from the protein precipitation procedure previously described elsewhere [18, 20]. Two hundred and fifty μL of sample plasma was spiked with 10 μL of IS and then deproteinated by mixing the plasma sample with 380 μL of acetonitrile and kept at room temperature for 20 min. After vortex mixing, the protein was removed by centrifugation at 14,000 g (room temperature) for 5 min. An aliquot of the supernatant (600 μL) was removed and evaporated to be vacuum dried for 2 h at 60°C. The residue was reconstituted with 50 μL of mobile phase B and then vortex spun for 20 seconds. Five μL of this solution was injected into the HPLC system as described above. Chromatogram of plasma containing caffeine and IS is presented in Figure 1. Plasma concentrations of caffeine were determined by interpolating the peak height ratios of caffeine and IS versus respective caffeine concentrations (0.1–4 μg/mL).
Figure 1: Chromatogram of plasma sample containing 4.00 μg/mL of internal standard (IS, retention time = 4.217 min) and 4.00 μg/mL of caffeine (retention time = 7.082 min).
The percentage of coefficient of variation (%CV) of intraday precision for plasma caffeine concentrations ranged from 1.69 to 3.91%, whereas, the %CV of interday precision ranged from 4.47 to 5.78%. The deviation of intraday and interday assay for plasma caffeine concentrations ranged from −8.45 to 2.00% and −3.43 to 5.52%, respectively. The lower limit of quantification (LLOQ) was 0.1 μg/mL. The mean recovery of caffeine from the determination procedure was 96.97%.
2.9. Determination of Blood Pressure and Heart Rate
Blood pressure and heart rate were measured using Omron digital blood pressure monitor (IntelliSense, Model HEM-711, Omron Healthcare, Inc.) prior to either the coffee enema or the oral coffee consumption and again at 10, 20, 30, 40, and 60 min and 1.5, 2, 4, 8, and 12 h following both coffee procedures. Subjects were instructed to maintain a relaxed, semirecumbent position for a 5-min stabilization period before each measurement.
2.10. Data Analysis and Statistical Methods
All statistical analyses were performed using the SPSS package for Windows and StatsDirect 2.5.6. All data were compared with two-side test. Differences were considered statistically significant at.
The primary outcomes of this study were the pharmacokinetics parameters of caffeine, which were the maximal plasma concentration ( ), the time to the maximal plasma concentration ( ), the area under the plasma concentration-time curve from time 0 to 12 h (AUC 0–12 ) and from time 0 to infinity (AUC 0–∞ ), and the half-life ( ). The and were obtained directly by visual inspection of each subject’s plasma concentration time profile. The AUC 0–12, AUC 0–∞ and were determined by noncompartmental analysis using the TopFit software version 2.0 for personal computer. The slope of the terminal log-linear portion of the concentration-time curve was determined by least-squares regression analysis and was used for the calculation of the elimination rate constant ( ). The elimination was calculated as 0.693/. The AUC 0–12 was calculated using the trapezoidal rule. Extrapolated AUC from time to infinity ( ) was determined as. Total AUC was the sum of AUC 0–12 + AUC 12–∞.
The pharmacokinetic parameters were presented as mean ± SD. The differences of the mean values of, AUC 0–12, AUC 0–∞,, and between both coffee procedures were statistically analyzed using paired t-test. Additionally, the 95% CIs were calculated in order to analyze associations between different procedures. The differences of the mean values of plasma caffeine concentrations at any specific time points between both coffee procedures were also analyzed using paired t-test.
The secondary outcomes were the hemodynamic parameters after administration of each caffeine procedure. The mean values of systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and heart rate between baseline and at any specific time points after initiation of each coffee procedure were compared using one-way ANOVA with repeated measurement.
3. Results
Eleven healthy Thai male subjects were enrolled in the study. Their mean values of age, weight, height, and BMI were yr, kg, m, and kg/m2, respectively. The mean values of systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and heart rate (HR) were mm Hg, mm Hg, and beat/min, respectively.
Six servings of each coffee solution were measured for caffeine content. The mean caffeine contents were mg/500 mL for coffee enema solution and mg/180 mL for ready-to-drink coffee beverage. These mean values of the caffeine contents were not statistically different between the coffee solution prepared for the enema and the ready-to-drink coffee beverage ( ).
The mean plasma caffeine concentration-time profiles and the pharmacokinetic parameters of caffeine (, AUC 0–12, AUC 0–∞,, and ) after a single administration of the coffee enema and the oral coffee consumption are shown in Figure 2 and Table 1, respectively. The mean values of, AUC 0–12, and AUC 0–∞ of caffeine obtained from the coffee enema was about 3.5 times significantly less than those of the coffee consumed orally, despite having slightly but statistically faster. Nonetheless, the mean of caffeine obtained following both coffee procedures did not statistically differ.
Table 1: Pharmacokinetic parameters of caffeine following a single administration of the coffee enema or the oral coffee consumption ( ).
Figure 2: Mean plasma caffeine concentration-time curves following a single administration of the coffee enema (CE) or the oral coffee consumption (CC) ( ). *Statistically significant between groups (, paired t-test).
A single administration of either the coffee enema or the coffee drink produced no statistical change in systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and heart rate when compared to their own baseline values (data not shown).
4. Discussion
In the present study, “unfiltered boiled coffee” (boiled coffee without filtration through fine-paper filter) was chosen for the preparation of the enema fluid according to the instruction established by Gerson and because it contains relatively high levels of bioactive compounds with antioxidant activity [6]. The dose of coffee edema (4 g of finely ground coffee beans), the volume of the enema fluid (500 mL), and the retaining duration (10 min) were chosen according to commonly practiced habit in the Thai coffee enema users. In contrast, since “instant coffee with milk and sugar” seems to be the most popular type of coffee drink in Thailand, the “ready-to-drink” beverage of this instant coffee was therefore chosen for the coffee consumption in this study because the amount of caffeine in each serving is consistent and has been standardized by the manufacturing company. Since the caffeine contents in both coffee enema fluid and ready-to-drink coffee beverage were not statistically different, it could be assumed that the pharmacokinetic study of caffeine following a single dose of both coffee procedures was conducted using the comparable dose of caffeine.
It has been demonstrated that caffeine absorption from the gastrointestinal tract, especially in the small intestine, is rapid and complete with the bioavailability of 99 to 100% after oral administration [21–27]. can be as wide as 15 to 120 min because of variations in gastric emptying [27–29]. Our results demonstrated that oral administration of a single dose of the coffee drink in fasting condition resulted in rapid absorption of caffeine with the average of 0.44 h (26.4 min). When the of oral caffeine absorption in our study was compared to those reported in other studies, our study demonstrated that a single administration of coffee consumption, containing 96.34 mg of caffeine, resulted in the average of 2.47 μg/mL comparable to of 1.5–1.8 μg/mL following a single 100 mg oral dose of caffeine [30, 31].
Caffeine can be also used in combination with some medications in suppository dosage form [17]. This data lends support to the notion that caffeine can be absorbed into systemic circulation when administered via the rectum or colon. It has been demonstrated that a single administration of rectal formulation of indomethacin/prochlorperazine/caffeine containing 75 mg of caffeine in adult patients with migraine and episodic tension-type headache exhibited averaged of 5.2 μg/mL and averaged of 1.9 h [32]. In contrast, the present study revealed that a single administration of 500 mL of coffee enema fluid containing a comparable content of caffeine (107.24 mg) resulted in a remarkably lower extent ( and AUC) but faster (0.30 h or 18 min) of absorbed caffeine. This discrepancy in pharmacokinetic parameters of caffeine following coffee enema versus caffeine rectal suppository might result from the possibility that the coffee enema fluid was retained for only 10 min, and the unabsorbable caffeine was then emptied from the large intestine by defecation afterwards. This factor limits the time for caffeine absorption into systemic circulation via the large intestine [33]. This might be a theoretical possibility which could also be used to explain why the coffee enema resulted in a significantly lower extent ( and AUC) and faster of absorbed caffeine compared with the orally consumed coffee, when the comparable doses of caffeine were administered in this study.
Nonetheless, the mean plasma of caffeine derived from the coffee enema or the orally consumed coffee (4.68 versus 4.87 h) did not significantly differ. Additionally, these values were also comparable to those of 2.5–5.7 h reported in other studies investigating the of caffeine after oral administration [21, 34]. This similarity is a result of the fact that caffeine is eliminated by first-order kinetics. With first order elimination, the elimination rate constant is independent of plasma concentration and routes of administration.
This study showed that a single dose of coffee orally consumed containing 96.34 mg/serving of caffeine exerted no statistical changes in the systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and heart rate when compared to the baseline values. These data are consistent with the results reported in previous studies. Indeed, several lines of evidence reported no change in these hemodynamic parameters after approximately 100–200 mg of caffeine (either in the form of coffee or purified caffeine) when administered orally to healthy subjects [9, 35–37]. Since the coffee enema resulted in a significantly lower extent of caffeine absorption, it is therefore not surprising that the coffee enema did not produce statistically significant clinical changes in such hemodynamic parameters when compared to the baseline values. These findings confirm that a single administration of coffee enema, with a given coffee concentration and volume mentioned in the present study, should not produce deleterious effects on the hemodynamics in healthy subjects. Nevertheless, since most of the caffeine in systemic circulation is normally eliminated within 4-5 half-lives (approximately 24 h) [38], it could be postulated that even multiple doses of coffee enemas (e.g., once a day or once every other day) would not result in the accumulation of caffeine in the body and hence should not adversely affect hemodynamic parameters. This postulation is in accordance with the results from our previous study demonstrating that multiple doses of a coffee enema (3 times weekly for 6 visits) do not adversely affect either the hemodynamic parameters or the electrolyte balance in healthy male subjects [9]. However, since caffeine is known to be extensively metabolized by hepatic cytochrome P-450 1A2 (CYP1A2) [39], and this metabolizing enzyme appears to be polymorphically distributed in human populations; therefore, CYP1A2 slow metabolizers possibly exhibit higher plasma caffeine concentrations and more pronounced hemodynamic effects following the coffee enema than the rapid metabolizers. This is likely to be an issue that warrants further investigation.
Although our previous study has demonstrated that single or multiple doses of coffee enema do not produce beneficial effects with respect to an enhancement of serum glutathione levels and trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity or a decrease in serum malondialdehyde concentrations in the same population reported here [9], documented evidence exists that it might be associated with considerable potential risks. It is worth noting that such procedure should be performed by trained and skillful personnel using appropriate equipment in subjects or patients without contraindication (i.e., colorectal cancer, recent bowel surgery, colostomy, gut obstruction, hemorrhoids, diverticulitis, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, etc.).
Some important limitations need to be considered regarding the present study. Firstly, the coffee enema fluid of which its mean caffeine content and the total volume were restricted to 107.24 mg/500 mL. In addition, each subject was requested to retain the coffee enema fluid for exactly 10 min while lying in various postures before defecation. In a real situation, coffee enema users might perform this procedure using different types of coffee with wide variation in coffee concentrations/volumes as well as retaining durations. The variations in these factors might influence colonic absorption and pharmacokinetics of caffeine following enema procedure and warrant further investigation. Secondly, this study compared the caffeine pharmacokinetics using the different types of coffee (unfiltered boiled coffee for enema versus ready-to-drink coffee for consumption) according to commonly practiced habits in the Thai population, further study investigating the same type of coffee liquid (e.g., unfiltered boiled coffee) with the same concentration and comparable dose should be encouraged. Thirdly, this investigation was conducted using a small sample size ( ). However, this small sample size was still able to demonstrate the statistical difference in caffeine pharmacokinetics between both coffee procedures, suggesting that the sample size should be considered adequate. Fourthly, this study was preliminarily investigated in male subjects. The female subjects were excluded in order to rule out the effects from sex hormone fluctuations during the menstrual cycles which might confound the volume of distribution and other pharmacokinetic parameters of caffeine between the two study phases [40]. Nonetheless, since there are no gender differences in pharmacokinetics of caffeine [41], the findings in male subjects reported here might be generalized to both male and female adults. Finally, slow and rapid phenotypes of caffeine metabolizing enzymes (e.g., CYP1A2, acetyltransferase, etc.) in the enrolled subjects should be screened prior to study participation, and pharmacokinetic study of caffeine following coffee enema in the different phenotypes warrants further investigation.
5. Conclusions
When comparable content of caffeine was administered, the and AUC of caffeine obtained from the coffee enema were about 3.5 times significantly less than those of the coffee consumed orally, despite having slightly but statistically faster. In addition, a single administration of the coffee enema or the oral coffee consumption did not adversely affect systolic and diastolic blood pressure and heart rate.
Trial Registration
This trial has been registered with Chinese Clinical Trial Register (ChiCTR), The World Health Organization International Clinical Trials: ChiCTR-TTRCC-12002044.
Conflict of Interests
All the authors do not have a direct financial relation with the commercial identities mentioned in the paper.
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Thailand.A skeleton found this afternoon on the Far East Side was that of an adult male, authorities say, but little else has been determined. Franklin County Coroner Anahi Ortiz said it's too early to tell whether the death was natural or a homicide, but did say the remains are human and that of a man.
A skeleton foundthis afternoon on the Far East Side was that of an adult male, authorities say, but little else has been determined.
Franklin County Coroner Anahi Ortiz said it�s too early to tell whether the death was natural or a homicide, but did say the remains are human and that of a man.
The skeleton was found after Columbus police received an anonymous 911 call at 2:53 p.m. that a skeleton was in a wooded area behind the AAA Car Care Plus building at 6971 E. Broad St., near Blacklick Creek.
Homicide detectives, who are called to any unattended death, are investigating.
Ortiz said the coroner�s office hasn�t yet positively identified the remains, but police might have some leads. A bag found near the skeleton held hospital discharge papers and prescription medications.
Ortiz didn�t say which hospital the discharge papers were for, though Mount Carmel East is about 1.5 miles from where the bones were found.
The medications in the bag were dated January 2014. But Ortiz said investigators can�t say for certain how long the skeleton had been there or whether the bag belonged to the man.
�They�re going to have to get the anthropologist to evaluate him,� she said.
laurenschield@dispatch.com
@larenschieldWhen the news hit that Sparrow has been acquired by Google, you could almost hear the collective sigh from those who use and love this wonderful iOS and Mac OS X email client. Many people (myself included) took to Twitter to voice our disappointment with this move, especially about the fact there there will be no additional development on the app:
We will continue to make available our existing products, and we will provide support and critical updates to our users. However, as w’ll be busy with new projects at Google, we do not plan to release new features for the Sparrow apps.
The response from many others was that we should just get over ourselves:
Sparrow doesn’t owe you anything. You paid, you got software. They can sell and/or kill it if they want. No right to complain. Sad, true. — Matt Gemmell (@mattgemmell) July 20, 2012
Matt is right, of course — Sparrow doesn’t owe us anything. The Sparrow team did everything right: they had a great idea, they worked hard on it, and they executed well. That’s why Sparrow is a great app that serves a real need, and why it’s so successful. This is how software development should work: make a great product, and sell it to people for money. The Sparrow team deserves enormous credit for doing that.
But the issue is not that we think Sparrow “sold out.” I don’t think any of us would have turned down Google’s offer if we were in their shoes. The Sparrow team deserve their success, and it’s their software — they can do with it whatever they want. It’s also a great strategic move by Google. If the Sparrow team end up making Gmail better, Google wins. If they don’t — well, at least they’ve eliminated a competitor, and they still win.
We need to reframe this argument. The real issue is much deeper than this specific acquisition. The real issue is the sudden vulnerability we feel now that one of our theories about independent app development has failed.
You see, for a long time we’ve chanted this refrain wherever we could: If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold. We point to Facebook and Delicious and ad-supported sites and lament the fact that we’re all just a set of eyeballs being sold to advertisers. So we came up with a solution. We decided that we don’t want to be free users any more. We decided that we want to pay independent developers directly so that they can have sustainable businesses and happy lives.
The philosophy is perfectly summed up in Don’t Be A Free User, a great post on the Pinboard blog:
What if a little site you love doesn’t have a business model? Yell at the developers! Explain that you are tired of good projects folding and are willing to pay cash American dollar to prevent that from happening. It doesn’t take prohibitive per-user revenue to put a project in the black. It just requires a number greater than zero. [“¦] So stop getting caught off guard when your favorite project sells out! “They were getting so popular, why did they have to shut it down?” Because it’s hard to resist a big payday when you are rapidly heading into debt. And because it’s culturally acceptable to leave your user base high and dry if you get a good offer, citing self-inflicted financial hardship.
This is why I am a paid subscriber to services like Pinboard and Instapaper. It’s also why I paid for the both the Mac OS X and iOS versions of Sparrow. I believe in this philosophy. I believe we should pay people for the things they make, so that they can make it even more awesome.
But with Sparrow’s acquisition the cracks in the philosophy starts to appear. Marco Arment (creator of Instapaper) posted his response to the deal in Talent acquisitions:
If you want to keep the software and services around that you enjoy, do what you can to make their businesses successful enough that it’s more attractive to keep running them than to be hired by a big tech company.
But… that’s what I did. I paid full price for every version of the Sparrow app I could find. I told everyone who would listen to buy it. I couldn’t have given them more money even if I wanted to. So, as a customer, what more could I have done to keep them running independently?
This is the core of the disappointment that many of us feel with the Sparrow acquisition. It’s not about the $15 or less we spent on the apps. It’s not about the team’s well-deserved payout. It’s about the loss of faith in a philosophy that we thought was a sustainable way to ensure a healthy future for independent software development, where most innovation happens.As we’ve come to expect, the PlayStation Plus free games for August 2013 in North America were unveiled today – 5 days into the month and one day before the first freebie – revealing that we can expect Hitman: Absolution to replace Battlefield 3 tomorrow, August 6th.
Here’s every game leaving and entering the PlayStation Plus Instant Game Collection in August 2013:
Leaving the Instant Game Collection
Battlefield 3 (PS3) – August 6th
Labyrinth Legends (PS3) – August 13th
Gods Eater Burst (PSP, PS Vita compatible) – August 20th
Malicious (PS3) – August 20th
Dokuro (PS Vita) – August 27th
Entering the Instant Game Collection
Hitman: Absolution (PS3) – August 6th
Zen Pinball 2: Star Wars Pinball (PS3) – Undated
Bit.Trip Presents Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien (PS3) – Undated
Machinarium (PS Vita) – Undated
Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower (PSP, Compatible with PS Vita) – Undated
Be sure to check our PlayStation Plus updates every Monday and Next Week on the US/CA PSN updates every Thursday to learn when the other four titles will be joining the Instant Game Collection.
What do you think of the August 2013 line up? Let us know in the comments below.
[Source]
Essential Reading:whereis the corrected maximum sustained wind speed (m s) andis the minimum sea level pressure (hPa). Following Landsea (1993), we applied this correction to wind speed velocity in excess of 45 kt (1 kt = 0.51 m s) for the data before 1970; however, the effect of this correction is minimal at best and does not affect any conclusions reached in this study.
For the input data, we used the 6-hourly HURDAT best-track data from the period 1966–2012, because basinwide monitoring via satellite began in 1966 ( Landsea 2007 ), and only considered storms while they were in either their tropical or subtropical stages as designated in the HURDAT dataset. Landsea (1993) provided a correction for the wind speed for the intense TCs before 1970 using the following equation:
b. Empirical statistical analysis
The new empirical statistical analysis of ACE and PDI can reveal the quantitative contribution of four factors (TC genesis, TC track, TC intensity, and the nonlinearity of the previous three factors) to the positive anomaly in ACE and PDI. We conducted two types of analyses (total and origin) to investigate domainwide and location-specific effects. The empirical statistical analysis of ACE is described below. The description for the analysis of PDI is omitted because it can be conducted by replacing the square of wind speed in the ACE analysis with the cube of wind speed.
In a similar fashion to Yokoi and Takayabu (2013), we considered the ACE for each grid cell (10° × 10°) within the North Atlantic domain (0°–50°N, 0°–100°W), before discussing total ACE in specific regions and the domain as a whole. In general, ACE is defined as the accumulated cyclone energy throughout the lifetime of a TC (i.e., Lagrangian approach); however, we defined ACE as the accumulated wind energy for each grid cell (i.e., Eulerian approach). The summation of the ACE over the entire domain using the Eulerian approach is exactly equal to the summation of the ACE for all of the TCs using the Lagrangian approach.
The climatological mean of ACE in a grid cell A can be written as
0
0
0
0
0
0
where) is the ACE in a specific grid cell; an overbar indicates the climatological mean;) is the frequency of TC genesis in a remote grid cell) is the probability that a TC generated in the grid celltravels to the grid cell) is the mean square of maximum wind speed for TCs located in the grid cellbut originally generated in grid cell; andis the entire domain of the North Atlantic over which the integration is performed. Equation (2) indicates that the ACE for each grid cell is influenced by remote (and local) TC genesis, track, and intensity; therefore, the ACE anomaly from the climatological mean results from anomalies in these properties integrated over the entire domain. ACE in a specific period is obtained by considering the anomaly from its climatological mean:where a prime indicates the anomaly. Subtracting Eq. (2) from Eq. (3) yields the contribution of each term to the total ACE anomaly:where NL indicates the nonlinear terms defined byEquation (4) is referred to as the total analysis, and reveals the contribution of each of the four factors integrated over the entire domain to the ACE anomaly in a given grid cell. The four factors are (a) TC genesis distribution (first term), (b) TC track (second term), (c) TC intensity (third term), and (d) the nonlinear effect (fourth term). The contribution from the TC genesis term implies that a local ACE anomaly is generated by varying TC genesis frequency while TC track and TC intensity are kept as climatological mean values over the North Atlantic domain. The TC track effect includes anomalies in TC track direction, TC translation speed, and lifespan.
To facilitate an understanding of empirical statistical analysis, we will look at an example (Fig. 2). Let us suppose there are only four grid cells in the entire domain. As a climatological mean state (Fig. 2a), on average, two TCs generate in each grid cell of A 2, A 3, and A 4, and TCs propagate northwestward affecting the frequency of TC occurrence in grid cell A 1 [i.e., climatological mean ACE is 2400 (m2 s−2) in the grid cell A 1 ]. Assume that this occurs in an active TC period (Fig. 2b), which is characterized by an increase in TC genesis frequency for most of the grid cells, an increase in mean maximum wind speed, and changes in TC tracks in a few grid cells. These anomalies in TC properties result in a positive ACE anomaly of 3600 (m2 s−2) in grid cell A 1. Because the surrounded remote grid cells affect the local ACE anomaly, we should take into account all changes in TC properties (e.g., TC genesis frequency, TC tracks, and TC intensity) over the entire domain to address the relative contribution of each TC property to the ACE anomaly for grid cell A 1. The total analysis [Eq. (4)] reveals which of the TC properties integrated over the domain contributes to the anomaly in ACE in grid cell A 1 (Fig. 2c). For this example, the increase in mean TC intensity (green bar) is a major contributor to the ACE anomaly in A 1, followed by the increase in TC genesis frequency (red bar).
The total analysis approach [Eq. (4)] is unable to identify the location of the anomalies that are most important to the local anomaly in ACE. Here, we aim to identify the locations associated with a large contribution to the anomaly in ACE for a specific region. We also conducted an origin analysis to help identify the origin of an anomaly. The effect of a remote grid cell A 0 on an ACE anomaly in a specific region B (including multiple grid cells) is described by
0
1
4
1
4
1
4
4
1
3
1
2
1
The first, second, and third terms are the contributions of the anomalies in TC genesis frequency, TC track, and TC intensity, respectively, in the grid cell, to the ACE anomalies in region B. Likewise, the fourth term is the nonlinear contribution of the combined effect of TC genesis, track, and intensity anomalies to the ACE changes in region B.shows the result of origin analysis when the targeted region B is set as the grid cellfor the example. It is the TC intensity effect in grid cellthat contributes markedly to the ACE anomaly in grid cell. This is because mean TC intensity increases from 20 to 30 m sfor the TCs generated in the grid celland travel to. For the remote contributions from grid cell, the TC genesis factor also contributes positively; however, the contribution is offset by a decrease in the TC track effect because the probability of TC propagation fromtodecreases compared with the climatological mean state. For the remote contribution from grid cell, the TC genesis and track effects contribute positively to the anomaly in. The nonlinear effect arises because both TC genesis and TC tracks change simultaneously. For the grid cell, the TC genesis effect is the only contributor to the positive anomaly inbecause other TC properties remain as the climatological mean state.
We had planned to apply empirical analysis to the anomaly for an individual year to analyze linear trends of ACE and PDI and each term contribution. However, the trend analyses require a large number of TCs to reduce sampling errors, especially for the terms t(A,A 0 ) and w2(A, A 0 ). Therefore, it is questionable whether the empirical method can be applied to anomalies in individual years. To increase sample size (Yokoi and Takayabu 2013), we analyzed 41 consecutive and overlapping periods of 7 years each, beginning with 1966–72, then 1967–73, and continuing to 2006–12. By doing so, the interannual fluctuations are smoothed out and we can focus on the linear trend for the data with time scales longer than a decade. The 7-yr running means for the ACE and each term in Eq. (4) generate anomalies from the climatological means and their trends are evaluated and discussed in section 3a. The contribution of each term is evaluated for every grid cell A (10° × 10°) for the total analysis. The linear trend (or decadal anomaly) for each term in Eq. (6) is computed for the origin analysis and this provides the contribution of each term to the trend (or decadal anomaly) in ACE for region B as a function of remote grid cell A 0. When region B is set as the whole North Atlantic domain, the contribution of each grid cell to the basinwide ACE trend (or decadal anomaly) can be identified for each term.
As mentioned previously, Elsner et al. (2004) pointed out an abrupt shift in TC activity around 1995 (see Fig. 1) so that recent high values of ACE and PDI may be due to decadal variability rather than a linear trend. In section 3d, we also applied empirical analysis to decadal variability to identify contributing factors to the positive anomalies in the most recent decade. In the analysis, the target period is set as 1995–2012, whereas the climatological mean period is set as 1966–2012, and the same empirical analysis, as shown in Fig. 2, is applied.
The overall results for the analysis throughout this study are not sensitive to the running mean period (e.g., 5 or 11 yr), the analysis period (e.g., from 1979 to 2012), or seasons (e.g., August–October, July–November, and all seasons); however, the nonlinear term becomes larger when the applied grid size becomes smaller (e.g., 5° × 5° or 10° × 5°) because of the sampling errors described above. However, our overall conclusion remains consistent regardless of grid size.Mads Torgersen, program manager of C#, presented the upcoming C# 7 at QCon New York 2016. He also explained briefly the evolution of C# and introduced some features being developed for future versions.
The emergence of the cloud and distributed systems over the last years creates new challenges for developers. As developer needs evolve, languages have to follow. Evolving a multi-purpose language like C# is a matter of balancing different concerns:
- Improving vs staying simple
- Improve existing development vs attract new users
- Embrace new paradigms vs stay true to the OOP spirit of C#
.Net as a whole also experienced significant changes over the past few years:
- Support for Windows, Mac OS and Linux (.Net Core)
- Deploy system
- Compile to native code (.Net Native)
- Open source compilers and public Roslyn APIs
- Multiple editor choices (enabled by OmniSharp and Roslyn)
- Open source framework, editors and tools
C# 7
C# 7 will be shipped in Visual Studio 15, which is currently available as a preview. In order to make new language features available faster, point releases are being considered. This would lead to language features being included in minor releases. The goal is to give early adopters the option of activating individual features as soon as they are completed.
Tuples syntax will be included in C# 7. Returning several values from a method becomes more straightforward:
static (int sum, int count) Method() { return (0, 0) } // Calling the method and using the result var result = Method(); Console.WriteLine($"Sum:{result.sum}.Count: {result.count}.");
Tuples can also be used inside generic types. Tuples are value types, meaning they are allocated on the stack instead of the heap. This can lead to potential performance gains, such as reducing garbage collection overhead in critical code paths.
// async method returning a tuple static async Task<(int sum, int count)> Method() // Dictionary using a tuple as a key var dict = new Dictionary<(string first, string last), person>();
The cut of some pattern matching features has led to rumors that pattern matching was being cancelled altogether. Pattern matching is still in C# 7 and will be enhanced in future versions.
Beyond C# 7
Several features are currently in development for next versions of C#. Additional semantics are being explored for pattern matching to provide a terser |
also challenge modes that offer well-designed, timed scenarios. With all of the collectibles, extra quests, and treasures to uncover, there is definitely plenty to explore in Thief's dark, samey environments.
Speaking of, while it makes sense that a Thief would only work at night, the darkness that permeates the entire game doesn't help to create a noticeable mix of settings. You'll move from the dark streets of the City to the dark halls of a mental institution to the dark caves of an ancient underground library. These locales sound interesting on paper, but in the game you always feel like you are in the same place, in the dark, stealing stuff.
Outside of the stealth elements, Thief feels limited. The combat, for instance, is severely lacking. Yes, Garrett is a master thief, not a warrior, but every once in awhile you might find yourself going toe-to-toe with a guard. When this happens, all you have is a sword-dodging side-step move and a weak-feeling blackjack attack at your disposal, making for some incredibly dull encounters. Plus, because the combat is so lackluster, several of the armor and weapon upgrades become irrelevant simply because you'll want to avoid the boring head-on conflicts at all costs.
Thief also has some issues with sound glitches. On more than one occasion, I experienced looping guard dialogue that continued even when I was nowhere near the source, and there was also some inaudible speech during in-game cutscenes. Only by enabling subtitles was I able to discern what was being said. None of these sound bugs were enough to completely ruin the experience, but the fact that sound issues came up fairly regularly was annoying to say the least.
Still, despite its uninspired storytelling and occasional bugs, Thief is a worthwhile adventure that anyone looking for a stealth-based experience will enjoy. The reboot doesn't introduce any new concepts; it instead sticks to the simple, traditional shadow-skulking of the previous titles. But as any thief knows, the best payoff doesn't come without a few risks, and the rebooted Thief prefers playing it safe over raking in the big haul.
Thief maintains the strengths of its stealth-centric predecessors and offers plenty in the way of actual thievery, but don't expect any fun, new gameplay mechanics or an enchanting story in this reboot.
Thief was reviewed on Xbox One.There might not be an Occupy Belvidere yet, but that does not mean town council will be unprepared if it happens.
Town Councilman John Clemmer asked town attorney Dominick Santini at Monday night's meeting what would happen if there were "freedom of speech rallies" in town.
"With things going on the way they are, we may get a rally or two," Clemmer said. "You never know."
Santini said there are no ordinances related to a protesting in the town of 2,681 people, but he would report back to the council at the next meeting on permits available.
Clemmer said the permits would be beneficial because "you could at least put some kind of parameters on how long you can do free speech."
He suggested six months or a year as "reasonable" lengths of time to look at.
Mayor Charles Liegel and a member of the public said they were concerned about violations to free-speech guarantees under the First Amendment.
"It's just putting a time on it," Clemmer said. "Do you want people to get up and do their First Amendment 24 hours a day? I mean, people want to sleep at night."
Several protests inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City have popped up recently in the region.
In Bethlehem, a group of roughly 20 protesters have set up shop in the tea garden west of the city's public library.
In Easton, about 30 protesters calling themselves Occupy Easton gathered Oct. 15 at Scott Park.
In Washington, a group of 10 people protested in early October outside a Wells Fargo on Route 57.Advertisement 5 Investigates: Big discrepancies in services for special-needs students Share Shares Copy Link Copy
Services provided to students with special needs vary widely from family to family and the most affluent communities in Massachusetts make out much better than the least affluent, according to newly public records obtained by 5 Investigates. Watch the report For decades, battles over special-needs services have been waged largely in secret, with families having no way of knowing what services have been given to other families. But that changed last year when the state’s highest court ruled all private settlement agreements between school districts and families with special-needs children are public records, available to anyone. The man responsible for the change is Mike Champa. “The private settlement process is like negotiating for a used car,” Champa said. “It's not a healthy process.” Champa said he saw that firsthand after discovering his daughter had a learning disability – dyslexia – and went to the Weston School District for help. “We always got pushback from the school, but we sort of worked with them,” he said. The school department came up with an individualized education program, or IEP, for his daughter. But Champa felt the IEP didn't meet her needs, and asked for her to be placed in a specialized school outside the district. Then the real battle began. “Every meeting, we had seemed to become more and more contentious,” he said. “Eventually we got to the point where we said, 'This isn't working. We need information.'” Champa asked to see what arrangements had been made for other children with disabilities in his school district and was told that was information he was not allowed to have. “It just didn't make sense to me that the school wasn't willing to share information about the agreements it made with other parents,” he said. “We simply wanted what everybody else was getting.” Champa took the school to court, arguing private settlement agreements for students with disabilities are public records. Three years and nearly $100,000 in legal bills later he won the case. In its ruling, the Supreme Judicial Court said the public is entitled to see other families’ settlement agreements as long as names and other private information are removed. When Champa looked at the agreements, one fact jumped out right away. “Every agreement is different,” he said. In Weston, he reviewed 29 settlement agreements and found drastic differences. For example, sometimes the school district paid for 100 percent of tuition and in other cases only 50 percent, with the parents paying the rest, even though federal law entitles students with disabilities to “free appropriate public education.” He also discovered the school district paid for transportation for some students, but not others. “It was horrible for me to read settlement after settlement agreement and see how differently kids were being treated,” said Champa. 5 Investigates found another inequity after surveying 10 of the most affluent and 10 of the least affluent communities in the state. In the most affluent communities, 405 families received private settlement agreements. In the least affluent, only 15, not including Fall River, where the superintendent would not provide the number without a $400 payment for the records. Terry Alves-Hunter, a Dorchester mother, spent years fighting for special-needs services for her son. She had no idea these private settlement agreements even existed until now.“It should be out there,” Alves-Hunter said. “They are being paid by our tax dollars. It is up to us to know, not for them to keep it secret.” Said Champa, “With data, with sunlight comes more information, more transparency, more accountability.” 5 Investigates sat down with three parents of children with disabilities who have fought for years for services -- Mike DiPronio, Jennifer Stahr and George Teixeira. They all agreed that private settlement agreements for children with special needs are something that school districts wanted to keep secret. "I have a child with a learning disability that I was concerned about her education," said DiPronio. "I was horrified over what resources it took to get him what he needs." To these parents, special education in Massachusetts often means secretive special education, with parents kept in the dark about what school districts are providing to students with disabilities. So in the wake of the 2015 decision by the Supreme Judicial Court making private settlement agreements public, they started a website called shinesunlight.org. It is a place to post settlement agreements from Massachusetts communities so parents know what school districts are agreeing to pay for, including out of district placements. "It's literally in hopes of enlightening folks on what's going on in our broken system," Teixeira said. Still, they said, information is not flowing freely from the districts. "I'll get some information, but it's overly redacted," DiPronio said. Added Stahr: "We quickly realized that No. 1, it takes a long time and it's very expensive." When 5 Investigates tried getting the same information parents would ask for, some schools sent us bills for as little as $45, but others wanted as much as $1,750 and $2,546. We asked Tom Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, if parents should be having trouble getting their hands on settlement agreements. "No, no," Scott said. "It's clear our superintendents know what that law says." Asked if school districts are still trying to keep the information under wraps, Scott said: "Well I'm not sure it's keeping it under wraps. I mean I think this has posed a concern for schools for sure. Is that in the back of their minds? Probably to some extent it is." For some school districts, the concern with all the private settlement agreements becoming public is that parents will now know exactly what school districts have agreed to pay other students and expect the same for their child. We asked our three parents about the results of our survey of 10 of the most affluent and 10 of the least affluent communities in the state which found the vast majority of settlement agreements are happening in the wealthier school districts. "I think what you're finding in disparities is not at all surprising," said Stahl. And it was no surprise to Tom Scott of the superintendents' association either. "Money makes a difference in this process, and I hate to say that, but it's a reality," he said. "It's not that the more disadvantaged or poorer communities don't have access. Sometimes they don't know where to find that access." So what should parents do? Keep fighting to see settlement agreements. They're public after all. And find advocates who can help you. Below are some resources to get you started. Special education resources for parents: Federation for Children with Special Needs: Massachusetts Advocates for Children Shine Sunlight SPEDWatch Get the WCVB News AppParents of students in one California school district were astounded and outraged after learning the base salary of their district superintendent — $663,000 in 2013.
Jose Fernandez’s Centinela Valley Union High School District in Lawndale, Calif., includes three high schools and about 6,500 students, the local KCAL-TV reported.
On top of the salary, Mr. Fernandez was also recently granted a personal loan from district officials in the amount of $900,000 — with a repay term of 2 percent interest over 40 years, The Blaze reported. Moreover, the loan was granted to Mr. Fernandez after he had just wrapped bankruptcy proceedings.
Parents at an emergency school district meeting this week voiced outrage.
“I propose that there be a special recall election of this whole damn board and a criminal investigation into the board for breach of fiduciary responsibility,” one attendee yelled during the meeting, the local broadcast station reported.
Another woman shouted: “Not only is it wrong. It’s unethical. It is immoral to pay anybody that amount,” The Blaze reported.
And one teacher, Caryn Charles, said money was so tight for her school that she had to pay for her students’ paper out of her own pocket — yet the district could afford the six-figure salary for the superintendent.
Mr. Fernandez, meanwhile, answered the angry crowd with calm.
“I do hear you,” he said, the local media outlet reported. “I’ve listened very carefully, and I will sit and work with the board to deal with your concerns and the concerns they may have, and I think we’ll go through a process.”
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.An Austin rideshare driver says he feared for his life after he didn't immediately respond to a green light, last Friday.
Friday's incident is one of three road rage incidents that took place over the weekend.
Joshua Shirley makes a living in his car driving for Ride Austin. According to police documents, last Friday at around 2:30 p.m. Shirley was waiting in the left turn lane at the intersection of Brodie and Davis in South Austin. When the light turned green Shirley said a man in a white truck behind him "laid on the horn."
Shirley said the man in the white truck pulled up next to him while on Brodie Lane and waved a gun at him.
"I was already crying," said Shirley "I have not had someone pull a gun on me like that. It was pretty scary."
Shirley then pulled into an apartment complex and called 911 while the man in the white truck pulled into an apartment complex across the street and according to police affidavit pulled out a gun and pointed it at him, court documents say.
Shirley said, "I just started screaming. I was like, 'He has a gun! He has a gun! He's going to shoot!'"
Shirley drove off while on the phone with 911 dispatch, APD arrived seconds later and arrested a man police identify as Hugo Reyna.
Court documents said Reyna stated that "Joshua had given him the bird." And Reyna thought Shirley was trying to swerve into his truck. Reyna feared for his life so he "flashed" his unloaded gun at him as a mean of defending himself. Reyna told police he didn't point the gun at Shirley.
Shirley provided video of the incident to police showing Reyna pointing a handgun outside of his window directly at Shirley's car. CBS Austin requested the video from police on Oct. 25.
A.45 caliber bullet was found in the right front pocket of Reyna's pants at the time of his arrest.
Reyna is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and held on a $30,000 bond.
When asked what Shirley would say to Reyna if he saw him again, he said, "Take a few breaths, relax, I mean, life's busy enough, why rush when you're on the road."Alix Idrache* graduated from the U.S. Military Academy (USMA) at West Point this week.
Two mornings after graduation, however, he awoke to find himself all over social media. A photo taken at the ceremony was quickly going viral.
He posted the following comment:
https://www.facebook.com/alix.idrache.5/posts/1744073239197036
His comment reads:
“I woke up this morning and found my face all over Facebook and with it myriad of amazing comments about my accomplishments. I am humbled and shocked at the same time. Thank you for giving me a shot at the American Dream and may God bless America, the greatest country on earth.”
The photo that started it all was taken by Army Staff Sergeant Vito T. Bryant and shared by the United States Military Academy:
Idrache took a moment to comment on the photo on the Instagram page:
“I want to thank everyone for your kind and thoughtful comments on this picture. SSG Bryant captured a moment that I will never forget. At this moment, I was overwhelmed with emotions. Three things came to mind and led to those tears. The first is where I started. I am from Haiti and never did I imagine that such honor would be one day bestowed on me. The second is where I am. Men and women who have preserved the very essence of the human condition stood in that position and took the same oath. Men who preserved the Union in a dark period of this country’s history. Men who scaled the face of adversity and liberated Europe from fascism and nazism. Women like CPT Griest, LT Haver, MAJ Jaster who rewrote the narrative and challenged the status quo to prove themselves worthy of being called Rangers. The third is my future. Shortly after leave, I will report to FT. Rucker to start flight school. Knowing that one day I will be a pilot is humbling beyond words. I could not help but be flooded with emotions knowing that I will be leading these men and women who are willing to give their all to preserve what we value as the American way of life. To me, that is the greatest honor. Once again, thank you.”
Independent Journal Review contacted Idrache for additional comments, and asked what it was that had inspired him to serve in the U.S. Army. He answered:
“After signing up for selective service, I started receiving pamphlets from the Navy and Army National Guard. There was the promise of free college, which was very intriguing. More importantly, there was the image of the American soldier that I’ve always had and I was excited to become one. There was often US military presence when I was growing up and I was always infatuated by the soldiers. After enlisting, it became more than a path to a college education but an opportunity to fight for a powerful idea. I may be naive or idealistic, but I find this a very noble calling. When I was growing up, Haiti had to be demilitarized because the army was committing atrocities and it was corrupt. I’m not saying this army is perfect and it has certainly endured some tough times with integration and the post Vietnam era. However, knowing that there are millions of men and women who are willing to give their most precious gift because they swear to protect and defend an idea, is very appealing to me.”
West Point graduates like Idrache leave the Academy as commissioned 2nd Lieutenants, and owe the Army at least five years of service. All three of the women who graduated Army Ranger School – CPT Kristen Griest, 1LT Shaye Haver and MAJ Lisa Jaster – were also USMA graduates.
*Idrache clarified that his views do not represent those of the United States Military Academy, the United States Army, or the Department of Defense.Talia Sasson is the president of the liberal Zionist group the New Israel Fund (and a lawyer, former longtime government official, and candidate for the Knesset in the Meretz Party). On a podcast for the New Israel Fund four days ago she decried the idea that Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital is a blow to the peace process.
We must continue the peace process, because the two-state solution is the only imaginable political resolution of the conflict, whenever it comes, she said; and Israelis (i.e., Israeli Jews) will never accept a single state with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza having the right to vote for the parliament.
Sasson reasoned:
In my opinion the two state solution is the only solution that there is. So, with more difficulty or less, usually more, and more farther in the future, or whenever it would happen, this is the only solution in my understanding that can be there…. as a separation between the two peoples and different systems of laws. Because the other way round is one state, and one state–… maybe there are many people who believe in it in Israel, but I really doubt it, and I believe that it won’t last for the long run in the future. And therefore I believe that if Israel will continue by this situation, the end will be– in that way, or that way– one state, with Palestinians in the West Bank, maybe in the Gaza strip would have the right to vote in the Knesset. Then Israel would change its character and one day won’t be ever more the home nation of the Jewish people. In my opinion Israelis will never accept that. And therefore I believe it’s a matter of price, the two state solution would be. The question is, on what price? As long as the time is running out, the price is higher and higher.
As for people who say Jerusalem recognition is the last blow to peace, Sasson said they are wrong. There must be continuing dialogue, even if it doesn’t lead to a deal:
I don’t think so, because negotiations for peace is an interest of both sides. They both need it, even if they don’t understand that. Therefore I believe that when people would understand, maybe in Israel that peace is crucial for them, then there would be a dialogue for peace… I don’t know if we could end it with a peace agreement, but a dialogue would start.
She also said that Trump’s decision was a mistake because it fostered Palestinian “terror.”
I don’t believe this decision has any changes on the ground, except some ramifications that I would see negatively, that it encouraged terror. I think that we could see already, violence and terror by Palestinians, and of course it became, ‘They are doing this, and Israelis are doing that,’ and this way and that way, and we lose more and more lives, without getting anywhere. We’re not changing the situation by that.
And she said that the left can’t really criticize Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital:
In the left of Israel there is embarrassment. You can’t say Well I don’t accept American recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. We thought Jerusalem is our capital anyhow, with recognition or without. So if America recognizes that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, that’s fine with us of course. But I think that this is not the right moment. And when you make the right decision in the wrong moment, it turns the whole decision to be wrong.
Sasson’s remarks are a reminder of the fact that even the left in Israel deploys a rhetoric of Jerusalem-is-the-capital of the Jewish state, and Palestinian resistance to occupation is “terror”. And leftwing Zionists are opposed to one state because they themselves despair over the end of a Jewish state, or argue that Jewish Israelis will never accept that outcome. Ali Abunimah has said that Jewish Israelis can change their minds on this question the same way that intransigent South African whites changed theirs. For my own part, I’d say that I work in my community, and it’s important to me to see that American Jews abandon the idea of a Jewish state, and support the principles that govern our existence here, and that we have insisted on through many a struggle– separation of church and state; one person, one vote.University student Michelle Leng was stripped naked, bound and gagged when she was allegedly stabbed 30 times by her uncle and dumped in a blowhole on the NSW Central Coast, a court has heard.
Derek Barrett, 27, faced Burwood Local Court today accused of Ms Leng’s murder, along with a host of new charges, including child pornography.
Ms Leng was living with Barrett, who is married to her aunt, in Campsie when he allegedly took her captive on April 22 this year.
Her cousin is believed to have come to the home at some point that day, unaware Ms Leng was being held upstairs, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Photos of Ms Leng naked with duct tape across her mouth and wrists were found on a mobile phone linked to Barrett, police allege.
Barrett is accused of driving to the NSW Central Coast, where he visited relatives, before disposing of Ms Leng’s body at the Snapper Point blowhole, in Lake Munmorah national park, early on Sunday, April 24.
A car was filmed on a surveillance camera driving into the national park around four hours before Ms Leng's body was found floating face-down.
Barrett faced fresh charges today after video was found of Barrett purportedly masturbating over a child and Ms Leng on several separate occasions as they slept, at some point before Ms Leng was murdered.
Ms Leng had moved to Sydney five years ago from China, and was studying at the Sydney Institute of Interpreting and Translation.
Barrett’s lawyer Bill Whitby said last month his client was "shocked and upset" and will fight the murder charges.
Barrett did not appear in court and the case has been adjourned to August 10.
Barrett (left) and Ms Leng (right). ()
Barrett was married to Ms Leng's aunt, and she had been living at his home at the time of her murder. ()
© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2019At 55, I hope to be thinking about early retirement: move to Florida, buy five cats, get a boob job. Seems like Gary Numan doesn't share my vision. His career has spanned about thirty-five years, making electronic music that's inspired generations of musicians, and it doesn't look like he's letting up any time soon. Releasing his 21st album this month, Splinter (Songs From A Broken Mind), we've got an exclusive stream right hurr for you to enjoy. He's got some UK tour dates as well, so you can see him from the comfort of your hometown.
Gary Numan dates 2013
Oct. 17-18—The Masonic Lodge at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery—Los Angeles, California (SOLD OUT)
Oct. 25—The Masquerade—Atlanta, Georgia
Oct. 26—Mountain Oasis Festival—Asheville, North Carolina
Oct. 27—Black Cat—Washington, D.C.
Oct. 29—Music Hall Of Williamsburg—Brooklyn, New York (SOLD OUT)
Oct. 30—BB&T Center—Sunrise, Florida *
Oct. 31—Amway Center—Orlando, Florida *
Nov. 7—O2 Academy—Bristol, United Kingdom
Nov. 8—The Button Factory—Dublin, Ireland
Nov. 10—Rock City—Nottingham, United Kingdom
Nov. 11—O2 Academy—Sheffield, United Kingdom
Nov. 12—O2 Academy—Newcastle, United Kingdom
Nov. 13—O2 Academy—Glasgow, Scotland
Nov. 14—Manchester Academy—Manchester, United Kingdom
Nov. 15—O2 Academy—Oxford, United Kingdom
Nov. 16—Roundhouse—London, United Kingdom
Nov. 18—The Dome—Brighton, United Kingdom
Nov. 19—Wulfrun Hall—Wolverhampton, United Kingdom
Pre-order the record here.Even when he’s being praised, Tanner Roark often seems to be undersold.
Most have come to realize the right-hander is legitimately one of the best pitchers in baseball. And any who haven’t need only see his 13-6 record and 2.81 ERA in 24 starts to realize it.
Few, however, give Roark credit for being a complete pitcher, right down to the part where he field his position exceptionally well.
“He’s a good athlete,” Nationals manager Dusty Baker said. “Guys kid him because he doesn’t look like he’s... you know, he shouldn’t be a good athlete because he’s so stout. He’s not fat at all. He’s stout. And you watch him field his position, that’s a great indicator.... He’s told us many times that he was a quarterback and he used to be a shortstop. And he looked like one today.”
Indeed, Roark’s seven innings of one-run ball against the Braves on Sunday afternoon were impressive enough. Add three strong plays he made in the field and the legend only grows.
“That’s all we do all day in spring training,” Roark said of monotony that is pitchers fielding practice. “You want to get that out. You don’t want to have a softly hit ball perfectly placed so that a guy’s on base. You’ve got to go after them and try to do your best and get that out.”
Roark has been doing those kinds of things very well for some time now. And he only continues to improve as a pitcher, establishing the kind of run of consistent dominance we normally associate with Cy Young Award contenders and the like.
Nobody’s touting Roark for such an award yet, though if he keeps this up, his numbers will be difficult to ignore. In addition to the won-loss record and ERA, he has now enjoyed 10 starts this season in which he pitched at least seven innings while allowing one or fewer earned runs. Nobody else in the majors has done it that many times this year.
And did we mention his latest such outing occurred in the middle of the afternoon on a day when the temperature at first pitch was 96 and the heat index was 107?
“Boy, that was some performance, especially in the heat out there,” Baker said. “He never complains about the heat. He doesn’t complain about anything. He just goes out and pitches.”
Roark, in his distinctly matter-of-fact way, shrugged off any concerns about the weather.
“Yeah, it was hot,” he said. “But it was hot for everybody, and you can’t control Mother Nature. You’ve still got to pitch and still got to do your job. You’ve got to block it out.”Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said this weekend that the U.S. was not currently poised to send U.S. military forces into Syria, noting that while "we deplore the violence in Syria," the situation there could not be equated to that of Libya.
As many as 20 people have reportedly been killed amid growing protests in Syria, and anti-government voices have accused government officials of opening fire on protesters.
"Each of these situations is unique," Clinton said in an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation" that aired on Sunday. "Certainly we deplore the violence in Syria, we call - as we have on all of these governments during this period of the Arab awakening, as some have called it - to be responding to their people's needs, not to engage in violence, permit peaceful protests and begin a process of economic and political reform."
Arguing that Qaddafi's longstanding history of brutality distinguished itself from the regime of Syrian President Bashir Assad, Clinton said Syrian circumstances had not aligned in a fashion to suggest that the U.S. would undertake military operations there.
"The situation in Libya which engendered so much concern from around the international community, had a leader who used military force against the protesters from one end of his country to the other, who publicly said things like 'We'll show no mercy,' 'We'll go house to house,' and the international community moved with great speed in part because there's a history here," she told CBS' Bob Schieffer. "This is someone who's behaved in a way that's caused great concern in the past 40-plus years in the Arab world, the African world, Europe and the United States."
When asked about recent brutalities committed by the Syrian regime against civilians, Clinton suggested that "there's a difference between calling out aircraft and indiscriminately strafing and bombing your own cities, than police actions which frankly have exceeded the use of force that any of us would want to see."
Clinton said it was yet unclear "what will occur" in Syria, but said the U.S. would need to line up significant international support for military intervention if such a route were to be considered - and that at the moment that appeared unlikely.
"If there were a coalition of the international community, if there was the passage of a Security Council resolution, if there were a call by the Arab League, if there was a condemnation that was universal, but that is not going to happen because I don't think it is yet clear what will occur, what will unfold," she said.
Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who also appeared on "Face the Nation," condemned the violence in Syria but stopped short of calling for Assad's resignation.
"There is a different leader in Syria now, many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he's a reformer," Clinton said.
Gates, when asked directly if he thought Assad should step down, reiterated the White House dictum that "these kinds of things are up to the Syrians."
"What I said... when I was in the Middle East, is that the lesson that should be taken from Egypt was where a military stood aside and allowed peaceful protests and allowed political events to take their course, that's basically the lesson that I was talking about with respect to Assad, in terms of whether he should stand down or not," Gates told Schieffer, when asked if Assad should step down. "You know, these kinds of things are up to the Syrians, up to the Libyans themselves."
"We have to look at each situation as we find it," Clinton said, of assisting countries in turmoil. "Each of these we are looking at and analyzing carefully, but we can't draw some general sweeping conclusions about the entire region."Democratic vice presidential candidate, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., speaks during the third day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia July 27. (Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, AP)
ASHEVILLE – A jobs training center just south of downtown has been announced as the location for a campaign rally featuring Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine on Monday.
The event will be held at Arthur R. Edington Education and Career Center, 133 Livingston St. It is scheduled to run 6:30-8 p.m. and doors open at 4:30 p.m., the Hillary Clinton campaign says.
Kaine is a U.S. senator from Virginia and was formerly that state's governor.
He will be accompanied by his wife, Anne Holton, who was Virginia's secretary of education until she stepped down last month to focus on the campaign.
The Clinton campaign said Kaine will speak on Clinton's jobs plan.
The Edington Center, formerly known as the W.C. Reid Center, includes a job training center that is home to Green Opportunities. Green Opportunities is a nonprofit organization that trains low-income people for jobs in the construction, maintenance, building trades, culinary and restaurant fields. The center is a facility of the Housing Authority of the City of Asheville.
The Clinton campaign asks that those attending RSVP through the events section of the Clinton campaign website, www.HillaryClinton.com/events, to reserve a space. A direct link is located here.
Read or Share this story: http://avlne.ws/2bhstMN"All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it." - Please vote for a LEGO version of the wonderful story "The Little Prince" ("Le Petit Prince"), by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (copyright held by the Antoine de Saint-Exupery Estate 2014). If you are new here, this LEGO Cuusoo website is an official LEGO site where LEGO fans can submit projects for consideration. If the project gets enough votes (SUPPORT), then LEGO will consider making an official set based on the proposal. To help make The Little Prince a LEGO reality, please share the project on FB and Twitter, and tell your friends. Thank you!!!EN FRANÇAIS: Pour voter pour une version LEGO du Petit Prince, cliquez sur "Support" et suivez les instructions de ce lien: http://www.lepetitprince.com/2014/03/un-petit-prince-en-lego-oui-mais-grace... EM PORTUGUÊS: Para votar em uma versão LEGO de O Pequeno Príncipe, clique em "Support" e siga as instruções neste link: http://blogosetimoplaneta.blogspot.com.br/2013/10/lego-o-pequeno-principe.h... ESPAÑOL: Para votar por una versión LEGO de "El Principito", selecciona "Support" y sigue las instrucciones para registrar/votar: http://www.elprincipito.com/el-principito-necesita-tu-ayuda-para-convertirs.... Esto tomará sólo un minuto.ITALIANO: se volete votare per questa versione LEGO de "Il Piccolo Principe", cliccate sul bottone "Support" e seguite le istruzioni per registrarsi/votare, ci vorrà meno di un minuto! Ulteriori informazioni su http://www.thelittleprince.com/a-lego-little-prince-with-your-help-its-poss... IN DEUTSCH: Um für eine LEGO-Version von Le Petit Prince stimmen, klicken Sie auf "Support" und folgen Sie den Anweisungen in diesem Link: http://www.derkleineprinz.com/2013/11/hat-jemand-von-euch-schon-einmal-eine... ENGLISH: To vote for a LEGO version of "The Little Prince," click "Support" and follow the instructions to register/vote. The easiest way to register is through Facebook or Twitter. This will take just a minute. For more information, click here: http://www.thelittleprince.com/a-lego-little-prince-with-your-help-its-poss.... You won't get any spam or unwanted emails from LEGO. You can also register with your email. When you do that, you'll get an email to confirm you aren't a robot (!), so click on that link to go in, and answer a few brief questions. You can then click "Support" and you'll be asked to briefly indicate how much you think such a set should cost and why you like it. There is no obligation to make a future purchase. If you have to search for the project, use the search function at the top right and enter "The Little Prince". Please also leave a comment! I do reply to all comments. THANKS!!!_________________________________________________________________________________________________________MERCI BEAUCOUP to TheLittlePrince.com and its different language websites and Facebook pages (with over 7 million fans) for all of your support! The Antoine de Saint-Exupery Estate is supporting this project and has been incredibly helpful. The Little Prince is (c) the Antoine de Saint-Exupery Estate 2014._________________________________________________________________________________________________________UPDATE: Thanks to GlenBricker for the great rendering of the Asteroid B-612! I am now collaborating with him on this project. Stay tuned as there will be additional images posted....BREAKING NEWS: Greater Manchester Police have announced that eleven people have been arrested across England and Wales as part of an ongoing investigation into the banned nationalist group National Action.
Counter-terrorism officers from across the UK have apparently swooped to detain 11 men aged between 22 and 35 in a coordinated action.
Five of the suspects were held on suspicion of preparation of a terrorist act, while one was accused of possessing terrorist materials and eleven properties are being searched across a number of police force areas in England and Wales.
The arrests follow activity earlier this month by West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit.
The full list of those held is:
A 23-year-old man from Newton-le-Willows and a 33-year-old man from Prescot are arrested on suspicion of Preparation of A Terrorist Act, Funding Terrorism and Membership of A Proscribed Organisation.
A 24-year-old man from Seaforth on suspicion of Preparation of a Terrorist |
In this urban model, art becomes a means to an end, a way of capitalizing on human resources and attracting investors or tourists to metropolitan centers. It’s no surprise that sanctioned street art often walks hand-in-hand with the drive for preservation. Certain walls are designated historic brick, while others become canvases for city-hopping muralists. As an instrument of gentrification, palatable street art lends a sense of authenticity to those who seek it—the creative class, a veritable mish-mash of entrepreneurs, designers, and artistic professionals. Public art moguls tend to favor the aesthetic of gritty urban life, while simply painting over local problems and avoiding provocative statements. In the Creative Capital, there isn’t space for projects like LONELY.
After graduating from RISD, Yarrow Thorne started the Avenue Concept in 2013 to create a sanctioned space for public art in Providence. “We were quickly approached by the city and the graffiti task force as a solution to some of their challenges,” Thorne recalled, sitting in the organization’s Lockwood Street office. The Avenue Concept would take heavily targeted walls and organize a sanctioned mural project to combat what Thorne calls ‘negative tagging.’ They’ve also commissioned artists to paint the dull concrete walls between Central and Classical High School, as well as large murals on Washington Street by Polish street artists Etam Cru and Natalia Rak.
As part of this summer’s International Arts Festival, the Avenue Concept directed a citywide public art campaign. “We hired fifty local artists and designers to install as much art as possible in the city and a lot of people couldn’t care less about it. We got no exposure, no conversations,” Thorne said sadly, “There’s more media exposure on a national and local level for LONELY and there’s more people talking about it in good and bad ways.”
When marginalized voices are silenced or ignored, they often surface in subversive ways. LONELY confronted Providence with feelings of negativity in a way sanctioned public art installations rarely do. “I think art is being exploited in this city. They take who they want to take and they use it as a way to brand the city as a place where people that want an urban feeling would want to go,” said Costa. But in its plain block lettering, LONELY spelled out the problems of urban life. Alienation. Unemployment. Gentrification. Invisibility. LONELY couldn’t be commercialized or commodified. But it could be illegalized.
Bad for Business
In mid-April, the Providence Police Department put out a surveillance image of Costa descending a flight of stairs with a paint roller and a pan of his trademark pink paint. Still living with his family, Costa decided to turn himself in to the city instead of waiting for the police to raid the house.
“What happens if we let you go tonight and then tomorrow you fall off a building and die,” asked one of the detectives who questioned Costa upon his arrest.
“That would be tragic,” replied Costa’s lawyer, Thomas Thomasian.
“Not for me. For me, it would just make my job easier,” the cop replied.
“He threatened my mother,” Costa later recalled in his artist’s statement, “Looking at him, his stone face that never seems to smile, I realized he’s lonelier than the lot of us. To look an eighteen-year-old man in his eyes and tell him you couldn’t care if he took a four story drop to his death showed me what lonely meant to me.”
For firstor second-time offenders, graffiti is a misdemeanor, but multiple offenders may face felony charges in Rhode Island. State Senator Maryellen Goodwin, who sponsored the current legislation, told the Woonsocket Call back in 2013, “it makes neighborhoods look run-down and uncared for, sending a message to others that it won’t matter if they decide to add more graffiti, litter or blight to the area.” This argument—the broken windows theory—states that the deterrence and heavy punishment of minor crimes fosters law and order, preventing major criminal activity. A recent Providence Journal editorial echoes Goodwin, arguing that downtown needs to be cleaned up: “the park, plaza, and steps have been invaded by people who cause problems, including those suffering from mental troubles and/or drug addiction.” In this sense, stigmatized individuals, already excluded from the conversation, are blamed for the lack of resources provided to them. And the graffiti artist is thought to bear the burden of a future murderer, who may decide that a tag suggests a good location for taking somebody’s life. This policy not only fails to eradicate serious crimes, but also leads to rampant racial discrimination.
“We have a criminal justice system that disproportionally polices, arrests, tries, and convicts people of color,” said Daniel Schleifer, the executive director of New Urban Arts, a community arts center for youth in Providence. “There are young people from more affluent areas who are doing graffiti as well, and they’re less likely to come to the attention of authority.”
Costa chose to place LONELY in the most visible spaces, in the spaces that would provoke and antagonize authority: the Biltmore Garage, waterfront properties facing the East Side, and office buildings in the heart of downtown. “The idea of gentrification holds a lot of weight in this situation,” he said, “If you put graffiti in a neighborhood where it belongs—dilapidated or poorer people living there—the victim is discounted. They don’t really care what you see cause you don’t bring in as much money as these people.” In other words, cities selectively police graffiti, maintaining different standards for lowerand upperclass areas.
In the Creative Capital, not everybody has the same chance to express themselves. Property owners, city government, and artistic entrepreneurs get to decide which art to sanction and what the restrictions are on certain projects, often silencing critical voices and avoiding difficult conversations. In the push to lure new residents and new capital, marginalized communities are often left out of the creative process in favor of affluent, well-educated urban transplants.
As Schleifer puts it, “When you don’t have an opportunity to tell your story or the means to have your voice heard, that’s loneliness.”
I love you even when you don’t notice
In August, Costa pleaded no contest to six charges of vandalism and landed a grand total of $14,248 in fines and fees. Originally ordered by the court to pay monthly installments over two years, Costa recently received a letter reducing that time to one year. Per month, that’s equal to a forty-hour workweek on minimum wage.
The arts community has rallied around LONELY, and an online fundraising campaign has already raised $4,000 over the past two months. Vida Mia Ruiz, who started the campaign, told the Independent, “Given our community’s overwhelmingly positive response to the tags, I figured we could organize to make sure the story didn’t end with silencing of a bright, motivated, and conscious voice with the threat of probation, home confinement or jail should he be unable to meet the deadline.” The campaign has brought Costa into contact with accomplished local artists Will Schaff and Brian Chippendale, who have helped him improve his screen-printing and stenciling techniques when he’s not working his two jobs to pay off his legal fees. In early November, Costa exhibited framed prints of his work at the Columbus Theater as a statement about how art changes once it’s presented in an official space.
“I think that if you stop for a minute, what Devin’s trying to do is bring up a question in general. How lonely are we? How can we connect with other human beings? What a vulnerable thing to do,” Mary Beth Meehan told the Independent in a phone interview. As part of the International Arts Festival this past summer, Meehan exhibited large-scale photographic portraits of Providence residents on buildings throughout the city. One of Meehan’s photos, a picture of an Olneyville mechanic, hung right next to “Lonely as I’ve ever been,” on the façade of 32 Custom House Street, facing the river. Together, the two pieces—one commissioned, the other unsanctioned—filled up the formerly blank brick wall. While Meehan’s photo still stands, Costa’s message has been erased.
Perhaps the most iconic LONELY piece still in place is on the South Street Power Station: “I love you even when you don’t notice.” The former power station—soon to be jointly redeveloped by Brown University, the University of Rhode Island, and Rhode Island College—overlooks I-195 and its new, superior replacement, the Manchester Street Power Station. Stripped of its smokestacks and turbines, the building embodies everything LONELY stands for: disposability, inadequacy, estrangement. If you’re looking up the mouth of the Providence River, Costa’s statement is set against the skyline, reading like a love letter to the city.
“At the time I’d stopped living with my mom, and it was really hard for me to keep any kind of relationship with my mom from not being there,” Costa said as he recalled painting the phrase. “That was also the time that my friends had killed themselves.”
LONELY meant different things to different people. For some, it was the story of a guy who had lost his girlfriend. For others, it was the motto of an outsider. “Different communities reached out to me, a lot of people who had lived different lives and then are outcasted for that,” says Costa, “For it to reach that many different people meant something to me.”
Now, Costa is carrying LONELY further. After his exhibition at the Columbus Theater, he’s busy printing t-shirts and honing his skills in different artistic mediums. He still has a lingering sense of self-doubt and insecurity: “I struggle with what art is and I don’t really know if I’m an artist.” Over the past couple of months, some of Costa’s messages have been washed away, exposing the empty bricks beneath them. But despite the absence, you can see that LONELY is still there.
BEN WILLIAMS B’16 is trying to overcome a fear of heights.Goodbye, Meh Economy (MJ) There are a ton of reasons why I could never vote for Clinton--the lying, the corruption, her inability to conquer modest level changes... But there's only one reason
Many of you have had the pleasure of working in a decent economy. Many of you may even remember what it was like when Reagan was in office and an audible BOOM could be heard as America realized decline and malaise were not our destiny. But there's only one reason I voted for Trump.
Many of you have had the pleasure of working in a decent economy. Many of you may even remember what it was like when Reagan was in office and an audible BOOM could be heard as America realized decline and malaise were not our destiny.
Entering the workforce in 2001 wasn't ideal. America was confused and the economy was shaky. Hell, everything was in doubt. But as the economy recovered and things were looking stable again, the epic disaster seeded in the Clinton years began to bloom like red tide. Bush's inability to head off the crash, and Obama's sophomoric view of the world led us right back to the malaise and talk of managing the decline rather than fighting to succeed. Sixteen years of...unexpected. Sixteen year of...meh. Sixteen years of elitist garbage that always produced the same result. Sixteen years of...unexpected. Sixteen year of...meh. Sixteen years of elitist garbage that always produced the same result. It's the economy, phonies. It's the economy, phonies. A sub 2% GDP isn't the norm and no matter how many politicians or political economists preach that nothing more is possible, its just not true. Post WW2 GDP is much like Hillary's blood alcohol content: always above 2% and averaging above 3. A sub 2% GDP isn't the norm and no matter how many politicians or political economists preach that nothing more is possible, its just not true. Post WW2 GDP is much like Hillary's blood alcohol content: always above 2% and averaging above 3. So don't pay a Russian hooker to pee on my leg and tell me its raining vodka. So don't pay a Russian hooker to pee on my leg and tell me its raining vodka. Americans my age have never worked in a decent economy. We've always been in the meh. But we don't have to accept it, and for many of us, Trump was the first person to really reject the notion that sustained growth was even possible. Americans my age have never worked in a decent economy. We've always been in the meh. But we don't have to accept it, and for many of us, Trump was the first person to really reject the notion that sustained growth was even possible. Trump talked about optimism and that we can do better. That we don't have to accept a loss, fight for a tie, and spin it as a win a la the McConnell/Ryan wing of the Republican party. Trump talked about optimism and that we can do better. That we don't have to accept a loss, fight for a tie, and spin it as a win a la the McConnell/Ryan wing of the Republican party. He expects 3%, will push for 4, and then 5. No creature of government, regardless of party, would even consider the possibility. He expects 3%, will push for 4, and then 5. No creature of government, regardless of party, would even consider the possibility. Got my vote and will again. Got my vote and will again. Posted by: Open Blogger at 08:15 PM
MuNuvians MeeNuvians Polls! Polls! Polls! Frequently Asked Questions The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick Top Top Tens Greatest Hitjobs News/ChatAs the weekend blizzard approached Friday, Howard County Executive Allan H. Kittleman spoke to one of his most powerful residents — Maryland Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford — to let his fellow Republican know snow removal crews stood ready to plow his street.
"The lieutenant governor contacted me on Saturday and said if he could get out before the end of Sunday night or Monday morning that would be great," Kittleman said of their phone conversation. "We got it done Sunday night."
Many other Howard County residents aren't so fortunate, and the complaints are mounting around the Baltimore region about the slow pace of snow removal after the record-setting storm.
Few issues are able to rile an electorate or strike fear in elected leaders like snow removal. Elections have been lost after failed plowing efforts, accusations are routinely hurled about rich neighborhoods getting cleared first, and elected officials sometimes sound alarms over perceived political slights.
Kittleman said Rutherford was needed in Annapolis to help manage the statewide storm response, and so he made an exception to his rule about not extending plowing preferences to elected officials. The county executive noted that dozens of other streets had been plowed at that point as well.
But some county politicians were miffed. Del. Frank Turner, a Howard County Democrat who lives a block away from Rutherford and remained snowed in Monday afternoon, questioned what he called a double standard. All the other cul-de-sacs off plowed Eden Brook Drive remained untouched, he said.
"You have to deal with the politics of plowing," Turner said. "They came within a street of mine but didn't do it. I just find that odd."
Kittleman also faced criticism because his county's online snowplow tracker malfunctioned and shut down, leaving residents fuming and with little information about when their streets might be cleared.
Howard wasn't the only jurisdiction under fire. In Baltimore City, some council members were frustrated by the pace of snow removal, given the $40,000 an hour paid to contractors and the fact that snow stopped falling Saturday.
In Harford County, residents complained that their online snow tracker went dark overnight. Baltimore County officials fielded complaints from constituents who remained snowbound Monday. And some residents in Anne Arundel and Carroll counties griped about the pace of the cleanup.
But many residents also said they gained a greater appreciation for how their tax dollars are spent to carry out one of government's most essential functions: keeping the roads functioning.
Facebook pages for nearly all of the area's jurisdictions lit up with complaints and compliments for how snow removal crews were progressing.
For their part, elected officials don't shy from public appearances during major storms, promising a diligent response and hoping to win political currency. And in Maryland, voters are typically more forgiving of any failures, said Matthew Crenson, a Johns Hopkins University political scientist.
Not so where major snow events are more common. Crenson pointed to Michael Bilandic, mayor of Chicago in the late 1970s when a blizzard crippled that city for months.
"His snow removal efforts were so feeble he lost the next election," Crenson said. Maryland voters "are likely to give their elected officials a pass."
That is, Crenson said, if cleanup is largely done by Tuesday.
Ellen B. Cutler, 63, who lives in Aberdeen and teaches art history at Maryland Institute College of Art, said she has been shocked at the Harford County city's response to the storm. She lives on a cul-de-sac that had still not been plowed Monday night. As a New England native, she said she's "pretty fair about snow."
"But I can't get out of my house," said Cutler, who has lived in the house with her 82-year-old husband for 10 years. In 2010, she said, the city plowed her street more quickly. She blames Mayor Patrick M. McGrady, for whom she didn't vote.
Even Harford County Council President Richard Slutzky, a Republican, was frustrated. "My neighborhood in Aberdeen has much work to be done," Slutzky wrote in an email.
McGrady, a Republican, said "there is no prioritization of some neighborhoods over others."
"It isn't political for me. It's about helping the people," McGrady said. "The fact is our crews have been working 16-hour shifts to make sure the roads are clear."
Cindy Mumby, spokeswoman for County Executive Barry Glassman, a Republican, said crews had most of their work on Saturday ruined by high winds, forcing plows to "start at square one on Sunday." By Monday night, Mumby said, the county expected to have plowed about 85 percent to 90 percent of its 1,000 miles of roads and 1,200 cul-de-sacs.
As for the online plow tracker, Mumby said: "When the crews are sleeping, the map won't show the location of the plows."
Overall, Mumby said, the site "has been tremendously popular." She said the site had 62,000 unique visitors over the weekend, noting the county only has about 90,000 households.
In Howard County, Kittleman decided to take down the county's decade-old plow-tracking system rather than continue to frustrate visitors. The vendor that operates the system could not guarantee its accuracy in part because some trucks weren't equipped with tracking devices.
"It's not working," said Councilwoman Mary Kay Sigaty, a Columbia Democrat. "The software is not as reliable as it used to be. It was recording streets being cleared that weren't and not recording streets that were. Instead of making people crazy it was the considered opinion of all involved to take it down."
Sigaty said she has been urging residents to be patient.
"I'm working with my constituents to help them understand someone is always first and someone is always last to get plowed," she said. "We're all waiting for the plows."
Rutherford's road was not plowed until after 5 p.m. Sunday. That's "not particularly early," said Doug Mayer, a spokesman for Rutherford. "He thought it was important that he be able to leave his house to attend to his official duties 18 hours after the storm ended."The government threw everything at trying to defeat Tory rebels led by the former attorney general Dominic Grieve and their amendment to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill – which forces the government to enact a statute “approving the final terms” of Brexit before the UK leaves the EU.
And that is one of the big reasons why this defeat for Theresa May matters: it shows the fury among some of its MPs, notably those who voted to Remain, that they are being ignored, as Theresa May engages in the most important negotiations relating to this nations’ future since those that took us into the EU (or what was the Common Market).
The point is that the rebels rejected a written statement first thing this morning by the Brexit Secretary David Davis, in which he promised a vote on the final deal by MPs and Lords “in the form of a resolution”, as not giving them comfort that they would have sufficient time and latitude to really assess and judge the Brexit deal.
And literally minutes before 7pm, the justice minister Dominic Raab tried to offer another olive branch – which is that the government would reform its own bill in the next phase of its passage through the Commons to address at least one of the rebels concerns, namely that the PM and ministers would use their executive powers to sideline parliament and push through Brexit-related law changes by so-called Statutory Instrument.
Raab pledged these powers would not be employed till after Parliament had its say on the withdrawal terms. But in a rare and delicious moment of high drama, Grieve told Raab the offer had been made “too late”!
This is not a disaster for May – though it is an embarrassment that her authority has been undermined on the eve of the historic summit in Brussels which will approve phase one of our Brexit deal. But for the avoidance of doubt, none of the rebels say they want to stop Brexit. They just want more scrutiny of it, more influence over its nature.
This is cumbersome for May, because it may limit her flexibility in Brexit talks and their translation into British law. That is the annoying thing about parliamentary democracies. They don’t allow leaders to do precisely what they want.
Robert Peston is political editor of ITV News. This was first published on his Facebook page.Kirbyville High School Principal Dennis Reeves shot himself to death Tuesday afternoon inside of his truck in the school parking lot after submitting his resignation to the district’s superintendent.
Kirbyville High School Principal Dennis Reeves. (School district photo)
KFDM in Beaumont reported that officers found Reeves’ body shortly after 5 p.m. Tuesday inside of his truck along with a.380-caliber semiautomatic pistol.
The engine of the truck was running and the transmission was in reverse, but Reeves’ foot was on the brake and the vehicle wasn’t moving, police said.
Reeves informed the district’s superintendent of his resignation at around 4 p.m. Tuesday, Kirbyville Police Chief Paul Brister told KFDM.
About an hour later the superintendent saw Reeves in the truck and called police to check on him.
Classes ended for the year last Friday in Kirbyville and no students were on the campus.
Superintendent Tommy Wallis said Reeves told him he was resigning "to pursue other interests."
Reeves was not facing any criminal or disciplinary investigation, Brister and Wallis said.For the 1981 film based on the incident, see The Xi'an Incident (film)
The map showing the situation of China during the Xi'an Incident in December 1936
The Xi'an Incident (traditional Chinese: 西安事變; simplified Chinese: 西安事变; pinyin: Xī'ān Shìbìan) was a political crisis that took place in Xi'an, Republic of China in 1936. Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Republic of China, was detained by his subordinates, Generals Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng, in order to force the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) to change its policies regarding the Empire of Japan and the Communist Party of China (CPC).
Prior to the incident, Chiang Kai-shek focused on fighting Communists within China rather than the external threat of the Japanese.[2] After the incident, Chiang aligned with the Communists against the Japanese. The crisis ended after two weeks of negotiation, in which Chiang was eventually released and returned to Nanjing, accompanied by Zhang. Chiang agreed to end the ongoing civil war against the CPC and began actively preparing for the impending war with Japan.
Background [ edit ]
Japanese invasion of Manchuria [ edit ]
In 1931, the Empire of Japan continued to escalate aggression against China through the Mukden Incident and the eventual occupation of Northeast China. The "Young Marshal" Zhang Xueliang, the successor of Fengtian army stationed in the Northeast, was widely criticized for the loss of his territory against the Imperial Japanese Army. In response, Zhang resigned from his position and went on a tour of Europe.
Nationalist-Communist conflicts [ edit ]
In the aftermath of the Northern Expedition in 1928, China was nominally unified under the authority of the Nationalist government in Nanjing. Simultaneously, the Nationalist government violently purged members of the CPC in the Kuomintang, effectively ending the alliance between the two parties. Beginning in the 1930s, the Nationalist government launched a series of campaigns against the CPC. After Zhang returned from his tour of Europe, he was given the task of overseeing these campaigns with his Northeast Army. In the meanwhile, the impending war against Japan led to nationwide unrest and surge of Chinese nationalism. Consequently, the campaigns against the Communist Party were becoming increasingly unpopular. Chiang, fearing the loss of leadership to China, continued the civil war against the CPC despite lacking popular support. Zhang was hoping to reverse the Nationalist policy of prioritizing the purge of Communists, and instead focusing on military preparation against Japanese aggression. After his proposal was rejected by Chiang, the CPC was able to convince Zhang in their commitment to fight the Japanese as a united front, and Zhang began to plot a coup in "great secrecy". By June 1936, the secret agreement between Zhang and the CPC had been successfully settled.
Events [ edit ]
Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng in 1936
On 12 December 1936, bodyguards of Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng stormed the cabin where Chiang was staying and detained the Nationalist leader. A telegram was sent to Nanjing to demand immediate end to civil war against the CPC, and to reorganize the Nationalist government by expelling pro-Japanese factions and adopting an active anti-Japanese stance. As conflicting reports unfolded, the Nationalist government in Nanjing was sent into disarray.
Negotiations and release [ edit ]
Many young officers in the Northeast Army demanded Chiang be killed, but this was refused by Zhang as his intention was "only to change his policy". The responses to the coup from high-level Nationalist figures in Nanjing were highly divisive. The Military Affairs Commission led by He Yingqin recommended a military campaign against Xi'an, and immediately send a regiment to capture Tongguan. Soong Mei-ling and Kong Xiangxi were strongly in favor of negotiating a settlement to ensure the safety of Chiang.
On 16 December, Zhou Enlai arrived in Xi'an for negotiations, accompanied by fellow CPC diplomat Lin Boqu. At first, Chiang was opposed to negotiating with a CPC delegate, but withdrew his opposition when it became clear that his life and freedom were largely dependent on Communist goodwill towards him. Influencing his decision was also the arrival of Madame Chiang on 22 December, who had travelled to Xi'an hoping to secure his speedy release, fearing military intervention from factions within the Kuomintang. On 24 December, Chiang received Zhou for a meeting, the first time that the two had seen each other since Zhou had left Whampoa Military Academy over ten years earlier. Zhou began the conversation by saying: "In the ten years since we have met, you seem to have aged very little." Chiang nodded and said: "Enlai, you were my subordinate. You should do what I say." Zhou replied that if Chiang would halt the civil war and resist the Japanese instead, the Red Army would willingly accept Chiang's command. By the end of the meeting, Chiang promised to end the civil war, to resist the Japanese together, and to invite Zhou to Nanjing for further talks.[15]
Aftermath [ edit ]
The Xi'an Incident was a turning point for the CPC. Chiang's leadership over political and military affairs in China was affirmed, the CPC was able to expand its own strength under the new united front, which later played a factor in the Chinese Communist Revolution.
Zhang was kept under house arrest for over 50 years before emigrating to Hawaii in 1993, while Yang was imprisoned and eventually executed on the order of Chiang Kai-shek in 1949, before the Nationalist retreat to Taiwan.
References [ edit ]
Citations [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]
Cohen, Paul A (2014). History and Popular Memory: The Power of Story in Moments of Crisis. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231166362.
Eastman, Lloyd E. (1986). The Nationalist Era in China, 1927–1949. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521385911.
Garver, John W. (1988). Chinese-Soviet Relations, 1937-1945: The Diplomacy of Chinese Nationalism. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195363744.
Taylor, Jay (2009). The Generalissimo. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674033388.
Wakeman, Frederic (2003). Spymaster: Dai Li and the Chinese Secret Service. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520234073.
Worthing, Peter (2017). General He Yingqin: The Rise and Fall of Nationalist China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107144637.
Coordinates:173 mph wind whips Squaw Valley peak
High winds whipped the Sierra on Sunday as an atmospheric river bringing rain and snow moved through Northern California.
The most impressive gusts blew at 173 mph on a Squaw Valley summit and 175 mph atop a peak in Alpine Meadows.
These bursts were far stronger than the 110 mph winds that were forecast to be the record-breakers for the day.
Snow piles continue to grow in Mammoth Lakes, California, January 9, 2017 as a series of strong storms moves through the western US state. Snow piles continue to grow in Mammoth Lakes, California, January 9, 2017 as a series of strong storms moves through the western US state. Photo: DAVID MCNEW/AFP/Getty Images Photo: DAVID MCNEW/AFP/Getty Images Image 1 of / 90 Caption Close 173 mph wind whips Squaw Valley peak 1 / 90 Back to Gallery
What's more, they would have been tornado had they been cyclonic and sustained.
Many Tahoe ski resorts operated a limited number of lifts or closed entirely on Sunday, including Northstar, Sierra at Tahoe, Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows.
Winds were still gusting at well over 100 mph early Monday morning, and the National Weather Forecast office in Reno predicts the conditions will continue through Tuesday night and into Wednesday.
Check resort websites for updates on when they expect to reopen.Ashley Justice, second from right, lets out a shriek of surprise as her miniature dachshund, Harley, left, takes off early from the gate during the second qualifying heat at the 17th Annual Kent & Alan Wiener Dog Races Sunday, July 14, 2013, at Emerald Downs in Auburn. Three heats of short-legged competition had crowds cheering and participating dog owners rooting for their own little canine athlete. less Ashley Justice, second from right, lets out a shriek of surprise as her miniature dachshund, Harley, left, takes off early from the gate during the second qualifying heat at the 17th Annual Kent & Alan Wiener... more Photo: JORDAN STEAD, SEATTLEPI.COM Ashley Justice, second from right, lets out a shriek of surprise as...photo-4918141.66362 - |ucfirst
Miniature dachshunds prepare to head down the track track toward their owners during the 17th Annual Kent & Alan Wiener Dog Races Sunday, July 14, 2013, at Emerald Downs in Auburn. Three heats of short-legged competition had crowds cheering and participating dog owners rooting for their own little canine athlete. less Miniature dachshunds prepare to head down the track track toward their owners during the 17th Annual Kent & Alan Wiener Dog Races Sunday, July 14, 2013, at Emerald Downs in Auburn. Three heats of short-legged... more Photo: JORDAN STEAD, SEATTLEPI.COM Miniature dachshunds prepare to head down the track track toward...photo-4918142.66362 - |ucfirst
Shelby, a miniature dachshund, relaxes in a shady patch after placing in the top six of the first heat of dogs during the 17th Annual Kent & Alan Wiener Dog Races Sunday, July 14, 2013, at Emerald Downs in Auburn. Three heats of short-legged competition had crowds cheering and participating dog owners rooting for their own little canine athlete. less Shelby, a miniature dachshund, relaxes in a shady patch after placing in the top six of the first heat of dogs during the 17th Annual Kent & Alan Wiener Dog Races Sunday, July 14, 2013, at Emerald Downs in... more Photo: JORDAN STEAD, SEATTLEPI.COM Shelby, a miniature dachshund, relaxes in a shady patch after...photo-4918143.66362 - |ucfirst
Owners prepare their miniature dachshunds to take to the track to go head to head with other dogs at the 17th Annual Kent & Alan Wiener Dog Races Sunday, July 14, 2013, at Emerald Downs in Auburn. Three heats of short-legged competition had crowds cheering and participating dog owners rooting for their own little canine athlete. less Owners prepare their miniature dachshunds to take to the track to go head to head with other dogs at the 17th Annual Kent & Alan Wiener Dog Races Sunday, July 14, 2013, at Emerald Downs in Auburn. Three heats... more Photo: JORDAN STEAD, SEATTLEPI.COM Owners prepare their miniature dachshunds to take to the track to...photo-4918144.66362 - |ucfirst
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Ben Norman, the first place winner, tears down the track during the second heat of the 17th Annual Kent & Alan Wiener Dog Races Sunday, July 14, 2013, at Emerald Downs in Auburn. Three heats of short-legged competition had crowds cheering and participating dog owners rooting for their own little canine athlete. less Ben Norman, the first place winner, tears down the track during the second heat of the 17th Annual Kent & Alan Wiener Dog Races Sunday, July 14, 2013, at Emerald Downs in Auburn. Three heats of short-legged... more Photo: JORDAN STEAD, SEATTLEPI.COM Ben Norman, the first place winner, tears down the track during the...photo-4918145.66362 - |ucfirst
Miniature dachshunds scatter across the track, running amok toward their owners during the first heat of the 17th Annual Kent & Alan Wiener Dog Races Sunday, July 14, 2013, at Emerald Downs in Auburn. Three heats of short-legged competition had crowds cheering and participating dog owners rooting for their own little canine athlete. less Miniature dachshunds scatter across the track, running amok toward their owners during the first heat of the 17th Annual Kent & Alan Wiener Dog Races Sunday, July 14, 2013, at Emerald Downs in Auburn. Three... more Photo: JORDAN STEAD, SEATTLEPI.COM Miniature dachshunds scatter across the track, running amok toward...photo-4918146.66362 - |ucfirst
Owners greet their animals after their first heat of racing at the 17th Annual Kent & Alan Wiener Dog Races Sunday, July 14, 2013, at Emerald Downs in Auburn. Three heats of short-legged competition had crowds cheering and participating dog owners rooting for their own little canine athlete. less Owners greet their animals after their first heat of racing at the 17th Annual Kent & Alan Wiener Dog Races Sunday, July 14, 2013, at Emerald Downs in Auburn. Three heats of short-legged competition had crowds... more Photo: JORDAN STEAD, SEATTLEPI.COM Owners greet their animals after their first heat of racing at the...photo-4918147.66362 - |ucfirst
Owners prepare their miniature dachshunds to take to the track to go head to head with other dogs at the 17th Annual Kent & Alan Wiener Dog Races Sunday, July 14, 2013, at Emerald Downs in Auburn. Three heats of short-legged competition had crowds cheering and participating dog owners rooting for their own little canine athlete. less Owners prepare their miniature dachshunds to take to the track to go head to head with other dogs at the 17th Annual Kent & Alan Wiener Dog Races Sunday, July 14, 2013, at Emerald Downs in Auburn. Three heats... more Photo: JORDAN STEAD, SEATTLEPI.COM Owners prepare their miniature dachshunds to take to the track to...photo-4918148.66362 - |ucfirst
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Ryan Ocholik, center, Shelby, a miniature dachshund, center, and Ocholik's step brother, Nick Talley, cool down between race heats at the 17th Annual Kent & Alan Wiener Dog Races Sunday, July 14, 2013, at Emerald Downs in Auburn. Three heats of short-legged competition had crowds cheering and participating dog owners rooting for their own little canine athlete. less Ryan Ocholik, center, Shelby, a miniature dachshund, center, and Ocholik's step brother, Nick Talley, cool down between race heats at the 17th Annual Kent & Alan Wiener Dog Races Sunday, July 14, 2013, at... more Photo: JORDAN STEAD, SEATTLEPI.COM Ryan Ocholik, center, Shelby, a miniature dachshund, center, |
that separates bribery from appropriate compensation or reward is actually very difficult to define. Sometimes all we have to fall back on is a sort of intuitive misgiving, a “just because.” Though such intuitions should never be dismissed lightly, they are not always a wholly reliable moral guide: there used to be a widespread intuitive aversion to interracial marriage, for example. In the case of offering financial assistance to gift-mothers, our unease may derive partly from a subconscious feeling that it was the woman’s own fault she got pregnant, so she should have to pay. Rather than allowing unexamined assumptions or the double standard to drive policy by default, it is worth exploring whether some fresh analogies might help to reframe the question.
A New Kind of Peace Corps
Public discourse is a traffic in metaphors. Modern politicians bombard us with “wars”—on drugs, on cancer, on poverty, and, yes, on abortion—because that imagery is vivid and intelligible, whether or not the enemy is really an appropriate target for such an attack. But they tend to neglect the equally ancient and powerful metaphor of military service, Latin militia.
When Cicero details the grueling training required of the “recruit” to oratory, or the Roman citizen formerly known as Saul enjoins Timothy to “take your share of suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus,” they use the language most natural for inspiring determination and courage. Military service for a noble cause is attractive for both moral and social reasons. Young men flocked to join the army during the Second World War—knowing that they risked losing their lives—because they believed they were contributing to a great good, because their friends were with them, and because their community recognized, encouraged, and rewarded them. The continuing success of our armed forces in recruiting and retaining volunteers attests to the appeal of such heroism even today.
The Peace Corps is a successful example of extending the militia metaphor to a non-military enterprise. Peace Corps volunteers—“soldiers” whose “campaign” in foreign lands involves nurturing rather than fighting—are given training, structure, camaraderie, financial support, healthcare, counseling, and continuing benefits. Most importantly, they are recognized as providing a heroic kind of service for the good of the world, and therefore they are willing to undergo hardships and sacrifices. They know that their service is temporary, but that the rewards for offering it will endure.
I suggest that martial metaphor could be invoked in a positive way through the idea that, like the Peace Corps, gift-motherhood is a militia of peace. Women in the ancient world could not serve in the army, but it was recognized that their equivalent service—in terms of pain, danger, and importance to society—was pregnancy and childbirth; as Euripides’ Medea exclaims, “I’d rather stand three times behind a shield in battle than lie in childbirth once.” (Her children definitely would have been better off adopted.)
The image of the “fallen woman” is the antithesis of this rhetoric of service. Why not experiment instead with the language of heroism—and feminism? Like Wonder Woman, gift-mothers offer their miraculous ability for the good of humanity, only by giving life rather than taking it. To value and support all kinds of motherhood should be a priority for women, and men, of every political stripe. Making gift-motherhood more viable in fact gives women greater freedom of choice.
The Pain and Joy of Gift-Motherhood
There is no getting around the fact that gift-motherhood is painful, both physically and emotionally. People are willing to undergo pain intentionally only when they see it as contributing to a greater good, for themselves or others or both. That is why it is so important to highlight the enormous blessing—the gift of joy—that the gift-mother is offering. That alone can begin to compensate for her inevitable feeling of loss. A program with a name like “Bridge to Joy” would help put the focus where it should be. The gift-mother would be the bridge connecting the baby to whom she gave life with the parents longing for that baby, and it could be hoped that, despite her pain, she too could ultimately experience the joy that comes from an act of sacrificial love.
Simply having such a “program,” with an appealing name, would be an important first step. Other features, on the model of the Peace Corps, would then naturally follow in its implementation. Here are just a few:
– Companionship. Women seeking abortion often feel isolated and afraid. We do not expect people to go do humanitarian work in a foreign country alone, and we should not expect women to go through the physical and emotional stresses of gift-motherhood alone. – Exercise. Free exercise classes and facilities, along with nutrition counseling, would help bolster the mental and physical health of mother and child. Exercise is a positive action to take while waiting for something, an excellent habit to form for life, and a way of strengthening the sense that one is in training for an important endeavor. – Counseling. It is essential to acknowledge and empathize with the difficulty of going through pregnancy and then handing over the baby to someone else. Women need others to guide them through this emotional trauma and help them to recover afterward. – Healthcare. Prenatal, delivery, and postpartum care should be provided for gift-mothers, as they should be for all expectant mothers. Frequent check-ups would also help to ensure against drug and alcohol abuse.
Building this sort of program would not require starting from scratch. Adoption agencies already have many of these features in place, and we should begin by listening to the people involved in all aspects of the process, researching what is done well and what could be done better. Financially it would be within reach of even fairly modest philanthropy, and I suspect that many who feel battered by the culture wars would welcome the opportunity to direct their passion—and resources—toward a new, concrete, and cooperative goal.
Breaking Down Barriers to Adoption
Some legal and psychological barriers to adoption are unavoidable, but others may be artificial, less a protection of essential rights than an imposition of unnecessary restrictions. The health of our national polity would be well-served by questioning some of our long-held assumptions and prejudices in this area. Attitudes can be changed—after all, only four decades separate the assassination of Martin Luther King from the election of Barack Obama—but it sometimes takes a concerted national effort to change them. Reimagining gift-motherhood as a valuable kind of service is a starting place, with the potential to unite rather than divide.
What could make the service metaphor problematic in this case, of course, is the same thing that makes the pro-life position as a whole problematic: the tension between discouraging the cause of unwanted pregnancy and encouraging the natural result. Since the vast majority of women seeking abortion are unmarried, the act that would make their militia possible is one that is disapproved of by the conservative Christians who drive the pro-life movement. If we were dealing only with women who were already pregnant, the moral question would be easy, for gift-motherhood is a way to make the fault a happy one, to bring beauty from ashes. But if we succeed in portraying gift-motherhood as generous and even heroic, is there not a chance of turning it into an alluring Plan A?
This is a real concern, but the danger of incentivizing some sort of dystopian breeding program seems fairly small. Even if there were no stigma at all attached to pregnancy, the weight gain, physical discomfort, and health risks alone would be enough of a deterrent to keep women from voluntarily entering into it without the anticipated reward of their own baby. No one claims, as far as I know, that the beautiful babies on pro-life billboards have caused a surge in out-of-wedlock pregnancies. It is unlikely that a positive portrayal of gift-motherhood would do so either. If anything, the current rhetoric of “giving up one’s baby” implies a kind of capitulation, and this prejudice needs to be counteracted by emphasizing that gift-motherhood is an act of tremendous courage.
Turning the Tide
Obviously, no “Bridge to Joy” or anything else will inspire everyone. The Peace Corps currently has about 7,000 volunteers; numbers on that scale would scarcely make a dent in the total of annual abortions. Yet the very existence of the Peace Corps has implications for our values and identity as a nation. Maybe the tide would begin to turn if one pregnant celebrity became a gift-mother, just as international adoptions soared after Angelina Jolie adopted from Ethiopia. Certainly, finding joyful testimonies from those who have received the gift of a child, and from happy adopted children, will be like finding sand on a beach.
The important thing is to recognize that we need to start thinking in a new, “disruptive” way in order to break the stalemate on our most divisive social issue. Inflammatory rhetoric is easy; finding common ground takes more work. Still, in this age of wonders, even cooperation may be within the realm of possibility.
Focusing on making gift-motherhood more attractive is pro-life without being anti-choice, and it could be embraced by liberals as well as conservatives, or at least open a conversation between them. My mother and Mother Teresa would have welcomed such an opportunity to make peace.A trove of leaked documents made public Sunday purport to show financial ties between Russia and a member of President Trump's cabinet.
They also reportedly show how state-run Russian companies funded large investments in Twitter and Facebook.
The leak, called the Paradise Papers, was revealed when the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and its dozens of collaborating news outlets on Sunday published investigations related to them. The reporting partners included the New York Times, the Guardian and the BBC.
The project, which is based on more than 13.4 million documents dated from 1950 to 2016, covers a large number of global corporations, government leaders, and prominent people and their use of offshore accounts to avoid taxes or otherwise hide ownership of assets.
The documents have not been independently reviewed by CNN.
The reporting is similar to the Panama Papers, which in 2016 exposed cases involving celebrities and business executives who reportedly moved large chunks of their wealth into offshore tax havens.
Related: Inside the murky world of offshore tax havens
Several members of Trump's inner circle, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, were mentioned in the papers. The Times, which mentioned both men, said there was "no evidence of illegality in any of their dealings."
The consortium, meanwhile, noted in its reporting Sunday that there are legitimate uses for offshore companies and trusts.
"ICIJ does not intend to suggest or imply that any persons, companies or other entities have broken the law or otherwise acted improperly," it said in a disclaimer posted online.
Journalists with access to the Paradise Papers noted in stories published Sunday that their contents will continue to make news in the coming days.
Here are some of the government officials and companies mentioned in the first wave of reporting.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross
The New York Times reported that Trump's commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, has retained a multimillion-dollar stake in Navigator, a shipping company whose top customers include the Russian energy firm Sibur.
Sibur's owners include a member of Russian President Vladimir Putin's family and a Russian oligarch, according to the Times, which also says the firm itself was created by the Russian government.
Another of Navigator's clients is PDVSA, Venezuela's state-run oil company, which Trump targeted with sanctions this year.
The Times reports that Ross held his stake in Navigator through a "chain of companies in the Cayman Islands."
Related: Democrats want ethics probe of Wilbur Ross financial disclosures
The Times also says "much" of Ross's wealth, which is estimated to total around $2 billion, is tied up in secretive offshore investments.
When Ross disclosed his finances earlier this year, he included Navigator as a company he intended to retain an interest in. But that document did not disclose how large his stake was because it was not required.
But that won't help Ross escape political controversy.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Commerce Committee that questioned Ross before his appointment, accused Ross of misleading the committee and the public by "concealing an ongoing financial relationship" with Russians.
"Inexcusable and intolerable," Blumenthal said in a series of tweets Sunday. "Americans are owed answers on this Cabinet's troubling failure to disclose links to Russian interests."
The Commerce Department told CNN on Sunday that Ross was not involved with Navigator's decision to do business with Sibur.
"Moreover, Secretary Ross has never met the Sibur shareholders referenced in this story and, until now, did not know of their relationship," the agency said in a statement.
It added that Ross recuses himself from matters focused on transoceanic shipping vessels, though he has been supportive of the administration's sanctions against "Russian and other entities."
Twitter, Facebook and Russian money
The Times also reported that two state-run Russian companies secretly and indirectly poured millions of dollars into Twitter and Facebook.
Both of the transactions allegedly involved Yuri Milner, a Russian tech mogul who has business ties to Trump's son-in-law, White House adviser Jared Kushner.
According to the Times, Milner invested in Cadre, a tech real estate company that was founded by Kushner and his brother. Milner told the paper he has only met Kushner once.
Milner's link to Kushner and his company are unrelated to the Russian investments in Facebook and Twitter.
According to the Times, the Russian-owned VTB Bank gave $191 million to an offshore vehicle connected to Milner. Money from that entity was later used to help fund a stake in Twitter.
The newspaper also said the Russian oil and gas company Gazprom lent money to another firm that invested in Milner's multimillion-dollar Facebook deal.
According to the Guardian, Milner said the funding from VTB did not buy it influence at Twitter. He also told the newspaper that he wasn't aware that Gazprom was involved in the Facebook investment.
The Guardian noted that it is not clear whether Moscow saw a "political interest" in funding stakes in Facebook and Twitter, or if the acquisitions were "only intended to make money."
Twitter said in a statement that DST Investments 3 -- a fund managed by Milner's company DST Global-- was an investor before its IPO.
A Twitter spokesperson told CNN that the company "reviewed all potential investors" before it went public in November 2013.
The company also said that the stake owned by DST Global was divested in May 2014.
Facebook's IPO, meanwhile, was in May 2012. The company could not be reached late Sunday for comment.
But a Facebook spokesperson told the Guardian that the Gazprom-backed investment was ultimately sold five years ago.
--CNNMoney's Cristina Alesci contributed to this story.How do you prevent folks from going out, having a good time, and then accidentally stumbling around and getting hit by a train? In Japan, the answer is you watch for drunk behavior via cameras.
That's what Japanese railway company JR West is doing at Kyobashi station in Osaka, Japan. They installed a system composed of 46 cameras this week that will automatically monitor for signs of drunkenness, including sleeping and waiting aimlessly. The idea is that human attendants will then make the call on what to do.
As the Japan Times noted back in April, JR West has been looking at how to thwart drunken tumbles for some time. The company took a look at the 1,900 falls involving alcohol from 2012 and found that 60 percent of those had the tumbler sitting on a bench in a stupor prior to lunging up and falling onto the tracks. At the time, they considered reorienting the benches.
If you can read Japanese (or enjoy the oddities of Google Translate), you can read more about how the surveillance system works in their press release. For now it's only in use at the one station, but could potentially be expanded based on how useful it becomes.
If nothing else, we can hope for some very solid YouTube videos out of Osaka in the near future.
Source: The Wall Street Journal via The VergeCommemorating the 101st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, Armenian officials said that Yerevan will continue to push for the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide, and for the restoration of truth and justice over the Turkish crime that resulted in the deaths of over 1.5 million civilians, the expulsion of over half-a-million more.
The Armenian leadership, including President Serzh Sargsyan and Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan, flanked by religious leaders and foreign guests, gathered at the Tsitsernakaberd memorial complex in Yerevan on Sunday to commemorate the 101st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.
Speaking to reporters on Sunday after paying tribute to the victims, Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan said that Armenia will continue to fight for the restoration of justice, emphasizing that "Turkish authorities must recognize the Armenian Genocide, the 101st anniversary of which we marked today."
"The sooner the Turkish leadership thinks about accepting the truth, the better. The world also has work to do regarding this issue," he added.
"It was the first genocide of the 20th century, and needs to be condemned by the whole world. This is the only way for the struggle of preventing genocides. We, by condemning this crime and commemorating the memory of the victims, must build our motherland in the future, as well as Nagorno-Karabakh, the second Armenian Republic."
"The process will be considered done when the Turkish leadership and Turkish people accept the genocide committed by their ancestors," Abrahamyan said.
President Serzh Sargsyan paid tribute to memory of Armenian Genocide victims https://t.co/cyZFYkfUkS pic.twitter.com/2TfIo1GLDP — Anna Hakobyan (@anna__hakobyan) 24 апреля 2016 г.
The Armenian Genocide has been recognized by over two dozen countries, including Russia. A century ago, together with France and Britain, Russia plainly called the events "a crime against humanity and civilization."
Numerous ceremonies are being held in Moscow and in other Russian cities to commemorate the sad occasion, with many of Russia's large Armenian community of three million participating.
Last year, speaking on behalf of the 100th anniversary of the genocide, Russian President Vladimir Putin emphasized that the event was "one of the greatest tragedies in human history," and that "the events of 1915 shook the entire world."
"Russia," Putin said, "felt these events as its own grief," and played a key role in securing international condemnation for the violence inflicted against the Armenian people. "Russia remains resolute in what has always been its consistent view that there is not and cannot be any justification for mass murder of any people."
Today, Putin emphasized, "the international community must do everything possible to ensure that these tragic events never happen again, so that all peoples can live in peace and harmony and do not have to know the horrors that arise from religious enmity, aggressive nationalism, and xenophobia."
© AP Photo / Armenian civilians escorted by Ottoman soldiers, being marched to a prison in southeastern Turkish city of Elazig, April 1915.
According to Armenian estimates, about 1.5 million ethnic Armenians were systematically killed, and over 600,000 driven from their homes, by the Ottoman government during and after the First World War. Modern-day Turkey, the successor of the Ottoman Empire, has refused to use the word genocide to refer to the massacre, saying that Turkish nationals were also among the victims.Democrats are now extremely confident they will capture control of the Senate next month in the wake of Donald Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE’s drop in the polls and an intensifying civil war in the Republican Party.
Winning the majority is a given, Democratic officials told The Hill, adding that signs point to a pickup of seven seats and possibly more on Election Day.
To win control of the Senate, Democrats need to pick up four seats on Nov. 8, or five if Trump wins the White House.
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But they say the billionaire businessman has no chance of becoming commander in chief and that his bombshell comments about groping women have tilted races around the country.
Democrats contend they’re on track to pick up seats in Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“You’re looking at a potential plus-seven night,” said a Senate Democratic strategist. “I mean, that is a huge night for us if that’s how it goes down.”
The last big Democratic wave election was in 2008, when then-Sen. Barack Obama Barack Hussein ObamaChicago's next mayor will be a black woman Obama portraits brought more than 1 million visitors to National Portrait Gallery in first year With low birth rate, America needs future migrants MORE (Ill.) won the White House and Senate Democrats netted eight seats.
And then, Republicans weren’t as starkly divided as they are now.
The intraparty brawl unfolding in the GOP has Democrats wondering whether seats they had given up on in Florida, Ohio, Iowa and Arizona may be within reach after all.
Some Democratic strategists think a nine- or 10-seat victory is not out of the question.
A senior Democratic aide said Tuesday that Republican Sen. Marco Rubio Marco Antonio RubioWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration Sixteen years later, let's finally heed the call of the 9/11 Commission Schumer urges GOP to reject Trump's 'destructive' national emergency MORE’s seat in Florida is back on the table and that Ohio, where GOP Sen. Rob Portman Robert (Rob) Jones PortmanAddressing repair backlog at national parks can give Congress a big win Texas senator introduces bill to produce coin honoring Bushes GOP Green New Deal stunt is a great deal for Democrats MORE had pulled away from his Democratic challenger, former Gov. Ted Strickland, may become competitive again. Democrats canceled ads in Florida and in Ohio after Portman built a double-digit lead there in recent weeks.
The aide floated the possibility of shifting money away from New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, where more moderate voters are likely to be turned off by Trump’s lewd comments, to races in more Republican-leaning states.
That probably won’t happen, given the risky nature of such an unorthodox move, but the talk shows that some Democrats want to go big, believing the Republican Party is in the middle of a historic meltdown.
“If Trump loses Ohio by 15 points or more, which is entirely possible, then yeah, Ohio’s in play. Or if by 10 points or more, that’s entirely possible, too. Trump declared war on the establishment. Rob Portman is the establishment,” said the aide.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has told colleagues throughout the election cycle that it is possible for Republicans to lose the White House, even by a large margin, and keep Senate control, pointing to various historical examples.
“It’s never a good strategy to start measuring the drapes with still weeks to go in an election, especially when you are pulling resources out of competitive races,” said Andrea Bozek, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Clinton and Trump are tied in Ohio, according to an average of recent polls compiled by RealClearPolitics, but those surveys were conducted before Trump’s most recent scandal.
“We are working to figure out if this expands us into new states,” a Senate Democratic strategist with knowledge of the Senate races said Tuesday.
Jennifer Duffy, a senior editor at The Cook Political Report, said “it’s entirely too early” to know whether Florida and Ohio will become competitive again and noted Democrats’ recent advertising cancellations in both states.
Some Democratic strategists don’t want to wait another week to get all the polling data because time is of the essence with Election Day less than a month away.
The biggest problem Senate Democrats face in expanding the map is a lack of financial resources.
While the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has raised more money than its counterpart, Republican-allied outside groups have flooded money into expensive battlegrounds such as Florida and Ohio, forcing Democrats to retreat and focus on cheaper races in Missouri and North Carolina.
Rubio has not retracted his endorsement of Trump, who defeated him for the presidential nomination. Portman on Saturday said he could no longer support Trump and would instead write in his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence Michael (Mike) Richard PenceVenezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump 'And the award for best political commentary by an Oscar nominee goes to...' UN nuclear watchdog: Iran maintains compliance with 2015 pact MORE.
If Trump vents his anger on Portman by attacking his tenure as U.S. trade representative or his past support for trade deals, it could cost the senator at the ballot box.
Trump this week lashed out at Republicans who pulled their support, such as Portman and vulnerable Sen. Kelly Ayotte Kelly Ann AyotteBottom Line US, allies must stand in united opposition to Iran’s bad behavior American military superiority will fade without bold national action MORE (R-N.H.), tweeting: “Disloyal R’s are far more difficult than Crooked Hillary. They come at you from all sides.”
Ayotte initially said she supported Trump but declined to endorse him. She now says she won’t vote for him.
Republican candidates who stick with Trump risk turning off Republicans who might decide to sit the election out. But those who withdraw their support from Trump may see a sizable chunk of the GOP base vote against them in retaliation.
“This is the worst Catch-22 I’ve ever seen in politics. These Republicans are absolutely damned if they do and damned if they don’t,” said Matt Canter, a Democratic strategist at Global Strategy Group.
With the election shifting decisively for Clinton — hardly a Republican strategist in Washington thinks Trump can win now — Democrats are beginning to wonder if they might be overly focused on Senate races they’ll end up winning handily.
“Do you aim for a bigger night that would help you build a sea wall against losing the Senate in 2018, when we have such a terrible map?” the senior Senate Democratic aide said.
Republicans are defending 24 seats this year compared to the Democrats’ 10, but in two years the advantage will be reversed. Democrats will have to worry about 25 seats while Republicans will have to defend only eight.
“If you take that leap of faith, everything is in play. If Republicans stay home en masse — whichever side of the civil war they’re on — sure, everything is in play,” the source added.
Arizona, where Sen. John McCain John Sidney McCainGOP lobbyists worry Trump lags in K Street fundraising Mark Kelly kicks off Senate bid: ‘A mission to lift up hardworking Arizonans’ Gabbard hits back at Meghan McCain after fight over Assad MORE (R) appeared to be cruising to reelection, is no longer a slam-dunk for the GOP, Democrats say, especially if Trump declares war on Republicans who abandon him.
That’s what happened Monday, when Trump blasted McCain, the party’s presidential nominee in 2008, who said over the weekend he would not vote for Trump next month.
“The very foul mouthed Sen. John McCain begged for my support during his primary (I gave, he won), then dropped me over locker room remarks!” Trump tweeted.
McCain was in a dead heat with his Democratic challenger, Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick Ann KirkpatrickGOP compares Ocasio-Cortez to Trump Hispanic Caucus sets red lines on DHS spending bill Dem women rally behind Pelosi MORE (Ariz.), earlier this year. He pulled ahead, seemingly decisively, after outside groups spent big in Arizona to defend him.
In Nevada, Rep. Joe Heck (R), who is running for Senate, announced over the weekend he would not vote for Trump.
Heck drew boos at a weekend campaign rally, and Republican National Committeewoman Diana Orrock said she would no longer back the Senate hopeful.
“How hypocritical of him to denounce Trump on comments that were [11] years old and locker room banter? By not endorsing Trump, he is supporting Hillary,” she said.A woman who was jailed for pulling the plug on her fiance's kayak and letting him drown in New York's Hudson River has posed for a photoshoot lying under water in a bathtub after being released on parole. Angelika Graswald (bottom left), 39, was convicted and jailed for two-and-a-half years for killing Vincent Viafore (top left with Graswald) on April 19, 2015 after she was found to have unplugged the drain plug in his kayak on the Hudson River. Graswald, who has now been released from prison on parole, has spoken out saying she has no regrets about what happened to her fiance and says she has since found God. The Latvian immigrant, dubbed the 'kayak killer', posed for a photoshoot and interview with Elle Magazine following her release. One of the photos shows her staring at the camera with her face just below the surface of the water in a bathtub (right).Reuss (German: Reuß) was the name of several historical states located in present-day Thuringia, Germany. Its rulers, the House of Reuss, named all of their male children Heinrich (English: Henry) after the end of the 12th century in honour of Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor (1190–97), to whom they owed the estates of Weida and Gera. The head of each branch of the family bore the German title Fürst (Prince) as did their male children.
History of the various states [ edit ]
Several different principalities of the House of Reuss which had previously existed had by the time of the formation of the German Confederation become part of the two remaining lines (the Elder and the Younger lines). Before then, they had been part first of the Holy Roman Empire, and then the Confederation of the Rhine.
Origins [ edit ]
The region including what would become the Principality of Reuss was inhabited in early medieval times by Slavic people who were converted to Christianity by the German Emperor Otto I (936–973). In church matters the region was under the Diocese of Zeitz (founded in 968), which became a suffragan of Magdeburg. On account of the frequent inroads of the Slavs, the residence of the Bishop of Zeitz was removed to Naumburg in 1028, after which the See was called Naumburg-Zeitz.[1]
Upon its subjection to German authority, the whole province was allotted to the March of Zeitz. As early as the year 1000, however, Emperor Otto III permitted the entire part lying on the eastern boundary of Thuringia to be administered by imperial vogts, or bailiffs (advocati imperii), whence this territory received the name of Vogtland (Terra advocatorum), a designation that has remained to this day a geographical summary for Reuss, especially that part on the Saxon borders. The position of vogt soon became hereditary. The princes of Reuss are descended from the vogts of Weida.[1]
Early House of Reuss [ edit ]
Erkenbert I (1122) is proved by documentary evidence to have been their ancestor. His successors acquired almost the whole Vogtland by feuds or marriage settlement, although in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries they lost the greater part of their possessions, most of which fell to the Electorate of Saxony. In 1244 Henry IV entered a German monastery. His sons divided his possessions, their seats being respectively at Weida (extinct in 1535), Gera (extinct in 1550), and Plauen.[1]
In 1306 the Plauen branch was subdivided into an elder line that died out in 1572, and a younger line called Plauen at Greiz. Henry, the founder of the Plauen line (d. about 1300), on account of his marriage with a granddaughter of King Daniel of Galicia received the surname of "der Reusse" (Ruthenus), whence the name passed to the country.[1]
On account of the close relations of Reuss with the neighbouring Saxon states, Lutheranism speedily gained a foothold in Reuss. The rulers joined the Schmalkaldic League against the German emperor, and forfeited their possessions, but afterwards recovered them.[1]
Numbering of the Heinrichs [ edit ]
All the males of the House of Reuss are named Heinrich (Henry) plus a number. In the elder line the numbering covers all male children of the elder House, and the numbers increase until 100 is reached and then start again at 1. In the younger line the system is similar but the numbers increase until the end of the century before starting again at 1. This odd regulation was formulated as a Family Law in 1688, but the tradition of the uniformity of name was in practice as early as 1200. It was seen as a way of honoring the Hohenstaufen Emperor Heinrich/Henry VI, who raised Heinrich der Reiche/Henry the Rich (+1209) to the office of provost of the Cloister in Quedlinburg.
Main partition [ edit ]
Green: Reuss elder line (Greiz, Burgk)
Red:
Yellow:
Brown: The Reuss territories in the 18th century.Green: Reuss elder line (Greiz, Burgk)Red: Reuss-Gera (with Saalburg)Yellow: Reuss-Schleiz Brown: Reuss-Lobenstein
In 1564 the sons of Henry XIII of Reuss at Greiz divided the estates into
Reuss at Lower Greiz, descendants of Henry XIV the Elder
Reuss at Upper Greiz, descendants of Henry XV the Middle
Reuss at Gera, descendants of Henry XVI the Younger.
While the Middle Reuss became extinct in 1616, the Older and Younger lines were divided again several times until in 1778 Count Henry XI united the possessions of Upper and Lower Greiz to the Principality of Reuss Elder Line. In return the remaining estates of Gera, considerably larger though, became the Principality of Reuss Younger Line in 1806.
The two remaining Reuss principalities went on to join in turn the German Confederation (in 1815). Henry XXII of Reuss Elder line is notable among the more modern princes of this house for his enmity to Prussia, which he opposed in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, when the Prussian troops occupied his domain. Henry joined the North German Confederation and the new German Empire (1871). He alone of all the confederate princes remained until his death (1902) an implacable enemy of Prince Bismarck and of the conditions created in Germany by the foundation of the empire. His daughter Hermine Reuss of Greiz however became the second wife of the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II later. His son, Heinrich XXIV, Prince Reuss of Greiz (1878–1927), being incapable of ruling, the regency passed to the ruling prince of the younger line of Reuss.[1] Both lines lost their thrones in German Revolution of 1918–19.
Of both lines, only the Köstritz side branch of the Younger Line still exists today; their main seat is Ernstbrunn Castle in Austria, although the family regained some properties in the former Reuss states following German Reunification in 1990.
Aftermath [ edit ]
After World War I, the Reuss territories were unified in 1919 as the People's State of Reuss, which was incorporated into the new state of Thuringia in 1920.
The Upper Castle at Greiz
The Lower Castle at Greiz
Orangery at Gera
Burgk Castle
In fiction [ edit ]
A young Reuss Count, sent to the 1815 Congress of Vienna, is the protagonist of the 1899 operetta Wiener Blut and the 1942 film based on it.
See also [ edit ]The science is settled.
Have you heard this proclamation before about a controversial medical topic?
I have, and it makes me smile. Or maybe smirk. It feels almost like my toddler frothing up a tantrum and yelling with a furrowed brow, when she knows, deep down, that she’s backed herself into a corner.
We’ve heard it about the benign nature of GMOs & glyphosate, about vaccine safety and efficacy, about the danger of homebirth or the necessity of ultrasound. It is dangerous to be certain, let alone so aggressively and dismissively certain about science, which, by definition is a process rather than a destination.
Psychiatry, in particular, has trafficked in proclamation-based medicine, and is fast become the proving ground for corporate interests. With no objective tests preceding diagnosis and prescription of habit-forming medications, the field of psychiatry is a bonanza for the pharmaceutical industry.
You almost have to hand it to these corporations for their largely unfettered success in supporting the financial interests of their shareholders. The job of Big Pharma is not to care for you, protect your wellness, or heal your children. The job of Big Pharma is to win – win at the game of unbridled capitalism – and they have.
But, the Tide May be Turning.
This week alone, three articles crossed my desk that reinforce my faith in the ultimate correction that will take place.
On madinamerica.com, voices are echoing, discussing the turning tide and loss of confidence in psychiatry. There is a growing loss of faith in the field on the part of other specialists, a lack of interest in pursuit of the speciality by current medical students, and dissent in the ranks, exemplified by the likes of Allen Frances, former DSM taskforce chair. It’s no longer just the rants of the fringe alternative folks, it’s a rumble from inside the fortress.
With 7% of boys and 5% of girls medicated with psychotropics, and 10,000 toddlers under 3 prescribed stimulants, it is time to ask ourselves, what are we doing to our children? We need to look no further than the 2001 Study 329, a ghostwritten, data-manipulated propaganda tool designed to promote the prescription of SSRIs to children. Eleven years after its publication, Glaxo Smith Kline was ordered to pay a 3 billion dollar fine (part of the largest health care fraud settlement in US history) for misrepresenting evidence of increased suicidality in treated children (11 of those treated engaged in suicidal behavior vs 1 in the placebo group), in addition to falsely representing Paxil as outperforming placebo. This lack of efficacy was reflected in the results of two other unpublished GSK studies – 377 and 701. The results of the reanalysis of data by independent researchers has now been published in the British Journal of Medicine, asserting the opposite conclusion to that papered by industry. Dr. David Healy has dedicated a website to the exposure of this crime, stating:
“Thousands of North American children and adolescents were seriously harmed by taking SSRIs like Paxil. Many died. Neither doctors nor parents had the information they needed, and the FDA only reluctantly issued the appropriate warnings, as might be expected from a regulator that has “corporate partnership” in its mandate |
rate above three-to-one.
One of Coke’s biggest struggles was an inability to pitch deep into games, as he lasted just 5.3 innings per start. Whether that was due to Coke’s failure to mentally adjust to his new/old role or a lack of physical stamina is tough to say.
The book on relief pitchers, especially late-inning setup men and closers, is that they’re cut from a different cloth than most other players. They glare in at hitters, reach back for every last ounce of heat, and throw each pitch like it’s their last. But Rangers pitching coach Mike Maddux says the key to successful bullpen-to-rotation moves is to carry that “fire-breathing attitude” into the new gig.
“You have to develop your mind and body so you sustain the intensity you had as a reliever, so you can do it for nine innings,” Maddux said. “Instead of it being a save situation, it’s a winning situation — you have to shut ’em down in the first and again in the second, third, and so on. If you try to pace yourself, I don’t know if that’s going to work out. Just go as hard as you can until you run out of bullets.”
Maddux thinks he and the Rangers have a fire-breather with the stuff to excel as a starter in Neftali Feliz. The soon-to-be-24-year-old right-hander has reached triple digits on the radar gun with his electric fastball. But he’s also shown he can throw his curve and changeup for strikes, and even added a slider to his repertoire last season. Maddux has worked closely with Feliz from day one of his protégé’s major league career. The Rangers originally signed Feliz with the intention of grooming him to be a top starter. Yes, he may have excelled as a closer. But
“Look at the contracts that have been signed the past couple years,” said Maddux. “Cliff Lee was the top starter on the market, and he got $120 million. Papelbon was the top reliever, and he got $50 million. So your economics would tell you if you’re sitting on a no. 1 starter, why not use him before you have to pay him $120 million?” With Lee and Wilson leaving these past two offseasons, Feliz (and Yu Darvish) must now pick up the slack in the rotation if the Rangers intend to hold off the Angels in the AL West and get back to the World Series.
Daniel Bard faces similar pressure in Boston. The 26-year-old righty also wields one of the swiftest fastballs in the game, with strong numbers out of the pen in his first three major league seasons. Unlike Feliz, Bard has a history of spectacular failure as a starter. Pitching at Greenville of the South Atlantic League in his first season in the minors, Bard made 17 starts, posting a 6.42 ERA and walking nearly a batter an inning. He was a mechanical mess, and the Red Sox are confident they’ve since solved that problem. Still, with Boston passing on Edwin Jackson (and, to date, Roy Oswalt) as free agents, Bard is now being counted on to be the team’s no. 4 starter — with the no. 5 role potentially going to another converted reliever, Alfredo Aceves. Bard’s ability to harness his fastball-slider-change combo as a starter, to pitch into the seventh inning and beyond, to hold up over the grind of a long season these are some of the biggest questions the Red Sox must answer as they try to return to the postseason after last year’s spectacular collapse.
White Sox lefty Chris Sale and Royals right-hander Aaron Crow face less immediate pressure as they make the leap to starting on likely non-contending teams. But long-term, both clubs will need production from those young pitchers as they try to rebuild. Meanwhile, Phil Hughes might jump back into the Yankees rotation, one year removed from an 18-win season not entirely supported by peripherals (4.25 FIP, 1.3 HR/9 IP). Like Feliz and Bard, Sale, Crow, and Hughes also throw hard enough to have rotation-worthy fastballs, even if they do lose a couple mph from their let-‘er-rip bullpen roles. But Sale has never started in pro ball, after dominating as a starter at Florida Gulf Coast University; Crow showed major command issues after a hot start last season (5.3 walks per nine innings in the second half); and Hughes has shown flashes of potential as a starter, but never enough for the Yankees to simply leave him in the rotation.
For all of these pitchers, it would be great to apply science and predict the likely winners and losers. But if teams could predict with any degree of accuracy how these transitions would go, you’d see them a lot more often.
Whatever projections get made now would amount to (somewhat) educated guesses. Between the physical and mental obstacles, the stark differences in training regimens, and the reluctance of teams to mess with a good thing by converting a successful reliever to a starter, the future is uncertain. The fearsome fivesome could flourish or flop.The Indian government could soon become a player in the $10 billion ride-hailing market, launching its own taxi-booking app, the country’s minister for transport said on July 24.
According to the plan, the app will allow commuters to choose any mode of travel—from electric four-wheelers to two-wheeler taxis—from myriad service providers. “The government platform will help get more people employment opportunities,” Nitin Gadkari, India’s minister for roads and transport, was reported as saying by the Economic Times newspaper. “The idea is in the primary stage but we’re working on it seriously.”
If rolled out, the government’s ride-hailing app will compete in a market dominated by San Francisco-based Uber and Bengaluru-based Ola. “Why should two companies like Uber and Ola have a monopoly in the market?” Gadkari said. “We want people, even those running cab business at a small scale, to have an equal opportunity to provide service to people. The mobile app will provide a platform to such people and better, efficient and cheaper cab services to people.”
This revelation comes at a time when the Indian government is trying to bring clarity on the rules for cab aggregators. A new law under consideration seeks to bring taxi aggregators under the Motor Vehicles Act. Following this, various state governments must follow the guidelines fixed by the transport ministry while issuing licences to such companies. States will be free to further add additional rules since transport is a state subject.
For the past three years, the Modi government has been trying to set these rules, particularly since the rape of a passenger by an Uber driver in December 2014. Soon after that incident, India’s home ministry advised all states to ban taxi aggregators. Since then, a lack of clarity on the laws has left taxi aggregators confused on various matters.
Meanwhile, this isn’t the first time that a government has tried its hand at a ride-sharing app. In December 2015, the Delhi government launched the PoochO driver app, through which customers could book taxi and auto-rickshaw services in India’s capital. Disgruntled drivers of the cab aggregators, too, have been taking on Uber and Ola by launching their own platforms. In Karnataka, former Uber and Ola drivers sought the backing of the state’s ex-chief minister HD Kumaraswamy, who went on to launch HDK Cabs. In New Delhi, drivers launched their own taxi-hailing app called SEWA in April. Last month, Mumbai’s khaki-uniformed local cab drivers launched the Aamchi Driver (our driver) app.Mitt Romney is in trouble, Scarborough says. The problem with Mitt
Voters who like moderates can’t trust him. Conservatives who are desperate for victory don’t believe him. And the election Republicans should be winning seems to be slipping further from their grasp.
On Saturday night, I sent out a few tweets predicting Mitt Romney’s defeat if he continued his directionless campaign through November. The Huffington Post turned those tweets into an article complete with a screaming headline about my “dark warning” to Republicans.
Story Continued Below
On Sunday the Wall Street Journal raised similar concerns after Gov. Romney went on “Meet the Press” to embrace parts of Obamacare.
By Monday, Romney reversed his Sunday position while conservative host Laura Ingraham slammed his campaign for its fecklessness. Ingraham argued that if Republicans couldn’t win this year, they should shut the party down.
She’s right.
Barack Obama has sunk America $5 trillion deeper into debt, has enacted the largest stimulus plan ever, pushed through the biggest health care boondoggle in U.S. history and posted trillion-dollar deficits every year of his presidency.
And yet unemployment is still over 8 percent.
Two-thirds of Americans still think their country is headed in the wrong direction.
And Mitt Romney is still losing.
Really???
How can it be that this man who turned around countless businesses, saved the 2002 Olympics and ran Democratic Massachusetts like a pro be the head of such a disastrous campaign?
Who was responsible for burying his moving convention video behind the bumbling bluster of Clint Eastwood?
Who told Mr. Romney to issue a political broadside against the commander in chief the day after a U.S. ambassador was murdered?
And who decided that Romney would use his general election campaign to stand for absolutely nothing? The Wall Street Journal described this ideological listlessness as a “pre-existing decision.” The question conservatives should be asking is whether that strategy was hatched by a misguided consultant or the candidate himself.
Whoever is responsible needs to know that replacing real conservative ideas with a flood of negative 30-second ads is a pathway to defeat.The Chinese government is offering to reduce prison sentences for inmates who post pro-Beijing comments on social networks, according to a new study on the Middle Kingdom’s murky censorship regime.
Xiao Qiang, professor at Berkeley’s School of Information and founder of China Digital Times, has acquired and sifted through over 2,600 Communist Party directives sent to website editors over the past decade, according to a New York Review of Books (NYR) piece (via TechInAsia).
Some of these censorship orders – which range from a few lines to several pages long – were apparently obtained from micro-blogging sites and internet forums while others were sent to Xiao by disaffected web editors.
They cast an interesting light on China’s vast censorship apparatus, most notably on the “parallel task” of guiding public opinion towards pro-government sentiment.
The presence of “fifty centers” – netizens who agree to post positive comments about the authorities in return for fifty Chinese cents per post – has been known about for some years. Provincial propaganda offices also employ staff to post positive comments.
New tactics go even further.
“By now there are commercial enterprises that contract for comment work. Even prisons do it; prisoners can earn sentence reductions for producing set numbers of pro-government comments,” NYR’s Perry Link writes.
The study reveals a government acutely aware of the power of social media, and that state-run media would lose credibility if it didn’t mention events, no matter how potentially damaging to the Party.
Link explained Xiao’s findings in the following passage:
For stories that are acceptable, but only after proper pruning, the operative phrase is “first censor, then publish.” For sensitive topics on which central media have already said something, the instructions may say “reprint Xinhua but nothing more”. For topics that cannot be avoided because they are already being widely discussed, there are such options as “mention without hyping”, “publish but only under small headlines”, “put only on back pages”, “close the comment boxes”, and “downplay as time passes.”
It’s worth pointing out that, partly thanks to the experience of seeing their own posts deleted before their eyes, China’s netizens are getting increasingly wise to government censorship. However, in real terms, those participating regularly online are probably still only a fraction of the total population, as a recent study claimed.
That research also found that fewer than 15 per cent of active Sina Weibo accounts feature original posts and over half were inactive or zombie accounts. ®We all know Bill Murray, actor and comedian.
But before he was chasing gophers in “Caddyshack,” he was devoting himself to a different passion: Baseball.
And he did it right here in Washington.
In the summer of 1978, in between filming for Saturday Night Live and before he took a leading role in any movie, Murray played for the Grays Harbor Loggers.
Rob Neyer, a longtime baseball writer and author of “The Big Book of Baseball Legends” says he was skeptical when he first heard the 64-year-old actor had played ball.
But then he did his homework.
“I did notice a ‘William Murray.’ And I looked at his page, and sure enough – William Murray, two at-bats Grays Harbor Loggers, 1978, oh you know what – it’s true. This is Bill Murray. He played baseball,” Neyer said. “If I hadn’t known about this, probably very few other people did and there must be a story here that hasn’t been told.”
Neyer set out to talk to the players from that summer to find out just what kind of ballplayer Murray had been.
“He wasn’t that talented, as everyone said,” Neyer reported. “He did take it seriously himself. He took batting practice with the guys. He worked hard in the pre-game practices and all of his teammates told me he really worked hard at it and wanted to be as good as he could be.”
Murray may not have been brilliant at the bat, but the Loggers were actually really good.
“The Loggers were a different sort of beast because as an unaffiliated, independent team, they didn’t have a bunch of 18, 19, 20-year-olds like most of the teams in the league did. The Loggers had a bunch guys in their mid-twenties who had been around for a while,” Neyer said. “So, they didn’t have the potential that most of the players on the other teams had. What they did have was more talent, more ability, because they were older. They had two pitchers who had tremendous seasons. They had hitters that had been around for a while. They just had a bunch of mid-twenties baseball players, who basically had no chance of reaching the major leagues or even AAA. But they could really play in the Northwest league.”
While the Loggers were heading towards a championship win, Murray was being pulled into movies.
The comedian was set to star in Ivan Reitman’s “Meatballs.”
But the director told Neyer that Murray said he wasn’t sure he wanted to do the movie. He thought he wanted to spend the whole summer playing baseball and golf.
But as we all know now, Murray eventually did show up at the latest possible time.
“Reitman told me very specifically, that he didn’t know if he was going to have star on location until two days before the were supposed to start filming. And he couldn’t do it without Bill Murray,” Neyer said. “So he didn’t know if he was going to have a movie. But Murray’s lawyer called him and said ‘He’ll do it.’ Then, the day after they started shooting, Murray actually showed up. So this was a last minute thing. That’s how close it was.”
In five weeks time, Murray played for an independent professional team, flew to Canada to film his first major film, and returned to the Northwest to join the Loggers for one last hurrah when they celebrated their championship.
It’s just too bad there’s so little left of that summer of 1978.
“Can you imagine that now? There are no photos, no film, of Bill Murray getting a hit.”
But luckily, KIRO Radio news anchor Bob Larson actually watched Murray play in a game against the Walla Walla Padres that summer.
“He was everything you’d expect Bill Murray to be playing first base coach,” Larson said. “He would turn around and play to the crowd a lot and it was just a lot of fun. He didn’t embarrass himself out there. He was a good athlete. He really showed what he could do. It was entertaining – both from a comedic point of view and sports point of view – to see somebody like that get out there and play.”
The Loggers may have lost Murray’s baseball talent, but Hollywood gained a signature comic.In a couple of weeks, we’ll reach the end of the tent-growing phase of the Conservative Party leadership race. When Stephen Harper quit the leadership over a year ago, the Conservatives were given their first real chance in a decade to inspire their thinking, broaden their membership base, reach out to people who hadn’t considered them before, develop a fresh and appealing pitch.
So far, anyway, the party hasn’t exactly made the most out of the opportunity.
Conservatives want you to trust them with your money. But this is a Party which is struggling with math. To start with, however the Party set the rules for entering the race, they’ve got to fix it for next time. Fourteen people are running, at least six of whom ideally would have given the race a pass. Their contribution is to make a race so crowded it rarely gets interesting.
On a range of policy issues, the Conservatives seem determined to re-create the same coalition of voters that supported them in 2015, when they were handed their hat. Stephen Harper’s party bet heavily against compassion for refugees and tolerance towards Muslim immigrants. Most observers in the Party acknowledged that the low point of the campaign was when Kellie Leitch and Chris Alexander stood at a podium to announce that Canada needed a special measure—a toll free snitch line—to report the barbarism of your next door Muslim.
That didn’t work very well. But both those former Ministers are running, and hanging out with the Ezra Levant crowd which never wants to talk about anything else. Too often the only news about this race was the fight over who cares enough to keep Canada ‘Canadian’, if you know what we mean.
It’s not like there are no voters who share these feelings—but the number is somewhere between 15 per cent and 25 per cent, depending on whether you measure racial intolerance or a desire to curtail immigration.
When it comes to climate change, 13 of the 14 candidates oppose pricing carbon to help shift energy use towards renewable and cleaner energy. It’s one thing to not like carbon pricing, but to have no other climate solutions to offer? A definite tent-shrinker. Only 16 per cent of Canadians say they are “ardent environmentalists,” which helps explain why the Green Party and the NDP hit limits. But only 12 per cent say they care little about the environment. Having at least something to say about climate change is table stakes for the other 88 per cent.
As my smart, (younger) colleague David Coletto has been documenting carefully over the last few years, by the time the next election rolls around, baby boomers will no longer be the largest cohort of voters—millennials will.
You don’t have to be elbows deep in polling data to know intuitively what we see in our studies—that most young people are progressive and open minded, global in outlook, interested in new ideas, compassionate about the refugees, concerned about climate change, and inspired by technology and innovation.
Kevin O’Leary’s is tone deaf to these voters. His pitch in a nutshell: nothing in life matters but money. Younger voters want smart, creative thinking about how to shape an evolving Canadian economy in a constantly disrupted world. They want a society that’s welcoming and open, not suspicious, anxious and closed.
Maxime Bernier might win this race. If he does, will it be because so many conservatives share his enthusiasm for the radical policy changes he’s proposing? Probably not.
More likely it will suggest that Conservative members were wise enough to reject the obnoxious campaigns of O’Leary, Leitch, Blaney and Trost—but couldn’t get their heads around appealing to voters open to conservative ideas on some issues, but progressive on others, and interested in a plan that feels tuned for the next decade and beyond.
With just a couple of weeks before the tent is closed, it’s unlikely that the shape and tone of this race will change much. But for those of us who believe Canada needs a competitive, viable centre-right alternative, we can hope.
Bruce Anderson has been a prominent pollster, communications counsellor and political analyst in Canada for many years. Earlier in his career, he worked on election campaigns for both the Progressive Conservatives and the Liberals, but does not work for any political party now. For several years he was a regular member of CBC’s popular At Issue panel. He is the chairman of Abacus Data and Summa Communications. He wishes readers to know that one of his daughters is director of communications to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.Various Twitter-related tools and plugins have been multiplying fast over since we did our big Twitter Toolbox and 8 awesome Firefox plugins for Twitter earlier. When we say fast, we "mean 140+ new tools" fast, and we probably missed some, too. You know what this means: now you have to arm yourself with dozens of shiny widgets you probably don't need, but you can't resist them anyway.
Posting Enhancement
Brabblr - With Brabblr, you can post to all your micro blogging services including Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, Tumblr, Jabber, Frazr, and more.
Autopostr - This service lets your friends in Twitter know when you post a new picture on Flickr.
EmailTwitter - With this service, you can send tweets to Twitter from your cellphone without incurring SMS charges.
GroupTweet - Allows you to post private message to a group of Twitter friends.
Hashtags - You can add tags to your Twitter posts with this service.
HelloTxt - This service enables you to update Twitter, a host of other micro blogging sites, and social networking sites with one click.
LinkBunch - Need to share more than one link in a tweet? LinkBunch puts together all the links and provides you one link that you can share on Twitter. As you might have understood, this can be used not just with Twitter, but also with emails, IMs, SMS, etc.
LiveTwitting - Helps you cover a conference live on Twitter. Similar to liveblogging, only cooler.
MicroRevie - Post reviews on twitter accs and this service will turn them into microformats.
Mobypicture - A service to post to your blog and micro-blogging sites like Twitter through your mobile phone.
OutTwit - A tool for Outlook that will send the latest tweets from your friends as incoming email messages.
SecretTweet - Post to Twitter anonymously. If you really need to.
SnapTweet - Allows you to post your Flickr pictures to Twitter.
Snitter - an Adobe AIR based desktop client for Twitter compatible with Mac and Windows. The Linux version is in testing.
Twhirl - Twhirl is a popular desktop client based on Adobe AIR. It has a lot of impressive features including multiple Twitter accounts, connect to Friendfeed, post image to Twitpic, post to Pownce and Jaiku simultaneously, and search using Tweetscan.
TweetCube - This service allows you to post files on Twitter. Files that can be shared include.zip,.rar,.pdf,.jpg,.png,.gif,.mp3 and.txt.
Tweetr- an AIR based Twitter client for MAC and PC. You can use this to send files upto 100MB.
Twibler - posts your ebay listings to Twitter automatically.
Twideeo - You can post videos to Twitter using this service that lets you upload the vid to their site and then generates a link to your video.
Twit+ - You can tweet pictures, videos, and files using this service publicly or privately among your friends on Twitter.
Twitxr - Another neat way to post a picture on Twitter, Facebook, or Picassa.
TweetChannel - You can add TweetChannel as your friend in Twitter to help you channel your various posts.
TweetLater - An useful service to schedule your Twitter posts for the future.
Twitpic - Share pictures on Twitter using Twitpic.
Twitsay - You can tweet an audio recording to Twitter using this new and popular service.
Twits Like Me - You can use this service to find people on Twitter who share your interests.
TwitterCal - This service allows you to post events from your Google calendar to your Twitter accounts.
Twitter Feed - This tool allows you to send your blog atom or RSS feed to Twitter.
TwitterGram - Post an mp3 on Twitter using this service.
Twitteroo - This is another popular desktop client for Twitter.
TwitterIM - Using this tool, you can tweet from Windows Live Messenger and ICQ.
Twitterlights - This tool allows you to highlight snippets of text from any webpage and send it to twitter. The url of the page also gets converted into a tinyurl and gets included in your tweet.
Twitter Reply - With this tool, you can send your Twitter updates on a secret email address, or through Windows Live Messenger or ICQ.
Twittershare - This desktop/web application also allows you to post pictures on Twitter. Works on Mac as well.
VisualTwitter - Allow you to post pictures on Twitter.
Reading
TopTweet - This site provides you updates from the top Twitter personalities. Yes, it took us a lot of tries to take a screenshot without Scoble in it.
TweetWire - TweetWire grabs the freshest links posted on Twitter and displays them Yahoo News page style.
Twitter100 - Just like in your personal start pages, this tool will allocate a box to each of the people you follow on a single page and display their latest tweets.
Twitterator - Twitterator enables you to follow a group of people at one go.
Twitter Digest - This tool allows you to subscribe to a message stream from a Twitter user of a group of users on the web or through an atom feed.
Alpha Twitter - This site provides you with the top links on Twitter.
Search
Summize - A Twitter search engine, lately shaping into the leader of this space. You can run a RSS feed on your query too and filter tweets by language.
Flaptor Twitter Search - A simple Twitter search engine. You can get an RSS feed out of your search query as well.
Terraminds - Another search tool for Twitter.
Tweet Scan - This is a search engine for Twitter indexing all the public messages on Twitter.
Twits Like Me - This tool helps you find people on Twitter who share your interests.
Twitterment - A search engine for Twitter powered by Google search.
TwitterWho - Using this, you can search for multiple queries on Twitter at one go.
Twubble - This also helps find people who share your interests on Twitter. It brings our profiles who your current friends are already following.
Analytics
TwitBuzz - TwitBuzz is a service that follows the links, messages,and users on Twitter and displays them nicely on its site Digg-style.
TweetBeep - Just like Google Alerts, this service will send you an alert whenever your set keyword is mentioned on Twitter or when somebody link to your site.
TwitGraph - This service provides graphs of your Twitter usage - tweets by day, top 5 words, top 5 links, and top replies.
Twitterlinkr - Shows you the popular links that people are posting in Twitter.
24oclocks - You can see your tweets displayed by the hour of the day.
GeoTwitterous - Enter a Twitter ID and this tool will display from where the people that particular person is following are in a global map.
My Tweet Map - This tool will show you the latest tweets from your friends on a map.
Quotably - With Quotably, you can check out any Twitter user's conversations in a thread conversation style making it easier to follow. Extremely useful.
Sitevolume - Just like Alexa, this site will allow to see how many time a particular term has been used on Twitter, Digg, MySpace, YouTube, and Flickr. You can add in multiple terms and see bar graphs comparing the terms.
Twetterboard - An analytics service that provides information about popular Twitter users and popular links.
Tweetburner - Tweetburner gives you click stats for the links you posted in Twitter.
Twittermeter - You can use Twittermeter to see how frequently a word has been used on Twitter. You can also compare two or more words.
Twemes - Twemes follows Twitter public messages with particular tags to build a meme around a topic.
TweetStats - You can grab your Twitter stats including your tweet timeline, tweet per month, and tweet per hour.
TweetVolume - With this, you can check how many time a particular word appear on Twitter. You can compare upto five words and see the results in bar graphs.
TwitterLocal - This tool allows you to generate an RSS Feed of a filtered list of tweets from a certain area.
Tweetmeme - Displays popular topics on Twitter and those people talking about that topic.
Twist - This provides trends of what people are saying on Twitter just like Google Trends does for internet search words.
Twittermap - This tool displays the most recent public updates in the last 12 hours.
Twittermeter - Allows you to compare any keywords used on Twitter on through a graphical interface.
Twitt(url)y - This service tracks the most linked to urls on Twitter and display them Digg-style.
Wiiizzz - This service lists the audio tracks that have been listed to and shared on Twitter.
iPhone and other mobile phone clients
Twitter for iPhone - Another Twitter client for your iPhone.
iTwtr - This is an open source Twitter client for iphones.
Pocket Tweets - A web based Twitter client for the iphone.
Twittai - A Java-based Twitter client compatible with more than 200 kinds of mobile phones.
ceTwit - Twitter client for Windows Mobile. Not as cool as the iPhone versions, but then again, what is?
Twapper - Send updates from your 30boxes calendar to your mobile phone using Twitter.
TwitterFone - You can update Twitter from your mobile phone using this service.
Qik - Stream videos from your mobile phone to Twitter using Qik. Surprisingly, it works really well - try it out.
Fun/Utility
Crowd Status - View the status of your friends on Twitter in a start-up page style.
@answerme - With this tool, you can track the questions you ask on Twitter.
Bkkeepr - With this service, you can track the books you are reading on Twitter.
CommuterFeed - You can share your traffic report on Commuterfeed using Twitter.
Foamee - This is a fun site that allows you to track people who owes you beer or coffee using your Twitter account.
FoodFeed - FoodFeed is a micro blogging site that you can use to post about your food habits through Twitter.
InnerTwitter - Meditate by receiving chimes at regular intervals from InnerTwitter.
Notches - Allows you to write reviews of certain items on Twitter.
Hahlo - if you are not satisfied with your Twitter interface, you can check out Hahlo to manage your Twitter account. It gives you a separate profile page and the rest of the Twitter features in a new look.
LoudTwitter - This tool posts your Twitter posts on your blog. Hey, isn't Twitter supposed to be some kind of a blog, too? Now I'm confused.
My Tweeple - Manage your friends and followers in Twitter on a single web page.
Politweets - You can check out your presidential candidate's popularity on Twitter here.
Post Like a Pirate - This tool allow you to convert your post into pirate-speak before posting it to Twitter. I, however, don't need it, because I already speak like a pirate. Yarr!
Quitter - Quitter will help you how to use Twitter to quit smoking. Bonus points for cool name.
Roll.The.Dice - You can use this service to do all the silly things on Twitter like roll a dice, flip a coin, deal cards, or generate a random number.
StrawPoll - Sends out polls on Twitter that you can participate on. As they say, you can never have too many polls.
TrackThis - This is an useful service to get updates of your shipment using Twitter. It supports FedEx, UPS, USPS and DHL tracking codes.
Twee60 - You can tweet your Xbox live status with Twee60 automatically.
Twit2twit - Just like Facebook Wall to Wall, this service enables you to view any two Twitter users conversation via replies.
Twitimonials - This service allows you to praise your friends in a special way on Twitter.
TwitResponse - Set up your Twitter posts for the future.
TwittEarth - This is a 3D model of the earth displaying the latest updates on Twitter across the globe. You can download the tool as a screensaver.
Twitterfeed - Posts your blog posts automatically to Twitter.
TwitterMeThis - When you follow TwitterMeThis, it will send you a question randomly. If you are the first to answer that question, then you get $5.
TwitterSpy - TwitterSpy provides you a Google map on its site. when you hover your mouse above certain locations on that map, you get to see the latest public posts from that area. Strangely addicting.
Tweet140 - This service tracks your Twitter messages and rates them according to how many characters you messages are. The closer to 140 characters they are, the higher you score.
Tweetclouds - Create a word cloud from a public Twitter stream using this service.
Tweetgift - Remember Facebook where you can poke, throw a sheep, or hug a friend? Tweetgift enables you to do the same on Twitter.
Twaction - Another service that lets you do Facebook-style pokes and slaps at friends.
Twistori - Based on Summize, this service collects Twitter messages with words such as love, hate, think, believe, wish, and feel and displays them on its site with automatic updates.
Tweet Clouds - Make a tag cloud from your Twitter posts.
Tweetpeek - You can create a group Twitter feed with Tweetpeek.
TweetWheel - You can find out which of your Twitter friends know each other with this service.
Twitku - Mashup of Twitter, Jaiku, and Pownce public timelines. You can also post from its interface.
Twitpoll - You can participate on polls using Twitter through Twitpoll.
Tweetshots - this service allows you to take your Twitter posts to Tumblr, embed in websites, or send over email.
TwitterAnswers - TwitterAnswers combines Twitter and Mosio, so that you can send questions over Twitter and have them answered by other people.
Twitter Census - You can create surveys on Twitter using this service.
Twitter Comic Book - Enter your Twitter name, and this tool will create a comic strip for you based on your latest tweets, using Flickr pictures.
TwittEarth - A 3D globe of Twitter public timelines.
Twitter Karma - This tool fetches your Twitter friends and followers and displays them for you, letting you paginate through them in a nicer way than you would on Twitter.
TwitterNotes - You can create notes on TwitterNotes using Twitter and tagging your notes.
TwitterPoster - This site generates a mosaic of user icons of those with a large number of followers on Twitter.
TwitterSnooze - If you have friends on Twitter who are updating every 10 seconds and are irritating the hell out of you, you can simply now snooze them away using this tool.
TwitterSpectrum - Based on Summize, this tool show you the associated words of two pair of words or names in a nice spectrum layout.
Twittertale - Twittertale records all the swearing you do on Twitter and lists them down on its site. It also lists the top swearers and the top 5 naughty words.
Xpenser - Record your expenses using Twitter. You can also use other mediums like email, SMS, IM, voice, etc.
Who Should I follow - Find interesting people to follow on Twitter using this tool.
Popular Userscripts
Twitter Blacklist - This Greasemonkey script displays a big red banner on Twitter profiles that are blacklisted at twitterblacklist.com.
Twitter Live Updater - This one updates your Twitter pages without refreshing the webpage on your browser.
Friendfeed Filters - Allows you to create filters and groups of friends on Friendfeed.
Friendfeed Twitter Client - This create a 'Also send this comment as an @reply twitter' option on the Friendfeed comment box.
Friendfeed Tiny URL Resolver - Creates an inline preview of the Twitter tinyurls displayed on your Friendfeed page. Click the question mark displayed at the end of each tinyurl on the Friendfeed page.
Firefox Addons
Twitzer - This addon allows you to write more than 140 letters in your Twitter posts. The extra letters will be saved offsite and link to it will be placed on Twitter.
TwittyTunes - You can post the songs that you are listening to currently on Twitter using this handy plugin. Don't be surprised if people start unfollowing you.
Twitterbook - Tweet your favorite sites when you bookmark them on your browser using this addon. Don't use it if you're a heavy bookmarker, or else you'll annoy the hell out of everyone.
Twitterline - Displays your friends' public timelines on your browser toolbar.
Twitkit - A Twitter client for your Firefox sidebar.
Twitturl - This addon allows you to tweet the current url you are on on your browser.
Twixxer - Twixxer is a Firefox addon that allows you to post Twitter updates.
Twitterratio - This tool allows you to compare the ratio of the number of people you follow to those who follow you. The higher the ratio, the more Twitter heat you have.
Twitscoop - This tool pulls out the words most used in Twitter every minute and displays on its site.
Twitter Movie Reviews - You can review movies on Twitter using this service. It contributes to a handy list of graded movies, great when you need to quickly find something good at the video store.Description
TWA's Rocket To The Moon - Disneyland Ride Architectural Plans Group (Walt Disney, 1954). Two fantastic plans in one group! This attraction was one of the very first "D Ticket" rides when Disney added that classification in 1956. It was upgraded to an "E Ticket" ride in 1959 with the addition of that tier as well. So they considered this park attraction one of their most valuable offerings. These two architectural plans from the construction of the ride are both dated 4/19/54. The attraction opened in 1955 and was sponsored by Trans World Airlines until 1961. Page A2 has a beautiful graphic of the Rocket with the TWA logo that measures 16.5" tall. The sheets, labeled A2 and S2, list Walter H. Lobenstein as the civil engineer. They measure 33.25" x 24". Printed on yellow colored paper, there is slight fading on exposed edges from being rolled. There is edge and corner wear with very minor rips on some edges. This extremely rare glimpse behind the scenes is in Very Good condition.UFC welterweight Nick Diaz has filed a lawsuit against the Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) for alleged violations of statutory law and his Constitutional rights to Due Process.
Diaz, acting through his lawyer Ross C. Goodman, filed it in Nevada on Tuesday, April 24th. Diaz's motion for a preliminary injunction was filed Thursday.
The lawsuit is |
who gets out early — only to be visited by mobsters to whom he owes a lot of money. They warn him if he leaves the country, they will kill his friends and family. “It’s a tragic farce … every time you open a door, something happens,” Phillips said. “You got our investor. Great! I’m pregnant. Shit!”
Although Phillips was on stage alone – no cast yet – and TV critics saw no whiff of footage, Phillips insisted the 10-episode Season 1 order would make its May premiere date, hinting they are this close to casting an English TV star for one role and have an offer out to a “movie star to be the other guy.” Phillips put the stories together about nine months ago and started a writing room on Labor Day weekend. “We’re writing our seventh episode, and casting on the series’ other roles will happen at AMC on Monday, with shooting scheduled to start February 1.Mississippi State vs. Auburn
Auburn head coach Gus Malzahn and Mississippi State head coach Dan Mullen meet at midfield during warmups before the Mississippi State game Saturday, Sept. 26, 2015, at Jordan-Hare Stadium in Auburn, Ala. (Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)
(JULIE BENNETT)
Despite a 58-7 romp of ULM, Auburn is still a slight underdog in its first road trip of the season.
Auburn (3-2, 1-1 SEC) opened as a 1-point underdog at Mississippi State, according to VegasInsider.com, for this week's game at Davis Wade Stadium in Starkville (11 a.m. CT, SEC Network).
The line moved to MSU minus-1.5 within a half hour of its initial listing, but as of 6:10 p.m. CT, Auburn is now favored by 2.5.
Auburn has won 11 of the last 15 meetings in the series, but Mississippi State has won the past two. The Bulldogs beat the Tigers 17-9 on the Plains last season and 38-23 in Starkville in 2014.
Mississippi State (2-2, 1-1 SEC) is coming off an open week. After dropping their season opener to South Alabama, beating South Carolina and losing at LSU, the Bulldogs beat UMASS 47-35 in Foxborough, Massachusetts on Sept. 24.
Auburn has covered the spread in four of five games this season, including Saturday's win over ULM, in which the Tigers were favored by 32.5 points.Google released a beta of Chrome 32 on Thursday, fulfilling a promise to block many plug-ins and speeding up some tap operations on Android.
And Imgur fans will be eager to know that the new release also brings support for animated WebP images, a feature already added to Google's image format but that had to overcome hurdles before finding a place in Chrome, too. Some advocated for a shift to plain old video, but animated GIFs have attained newfound popularity. Google promises smaller file sizes with animated WebP as an alternative, said Urvang Joshi, the Google programmer who championed animated WebP support for Chrome, in a blog post Thursday.
In September, Google announced that it will ban plug-ins that use the NPAPI technology for interfacing with the browser and giving it extra abilities. The ban doesn't affect Adobe Systems' Flash Player, by far the most widely used plug-in, and will only affect several other widely used plug-ins after a more graceful phase-out period.
On Android, the Chrome 32 beta ditches a 0.3-second delay that bogged down the process of tapping on a link. The delay was necessary to make sure people weren't double-tapping to reformat a Web page for a mobile device. The delay is disabled for Web pages that Chrome judges to be designed specifically for mobile screens -- another incentive for Web developers to adjust to the mobile market.
The new browser also supports the Vibration interface, which lets Web apps buzz your phone the way native apps already can. That's one small step of the laborious process of trying to bring Web apps up to parity with those written directly for Android and iOS apps.Rice is the primary source of food for roughly half the world’s population. But it falls well short of providing enough iron, zinc and pro-vitamin A to meet daily nutritional requirements.
Iron deficiency is the most widespread nutritional disorder in the world, affecting more than two billion people. Symptoms include poor mental development, depressed immune function and anaemia.
To address this problem, scientists from the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG) have produced rice with iron levels high enough to meet daily recommended requirements. This rice has up to four times more iron than conventional rice and twice as much zinc.
What’s surprising about this development is it doesn’t involve patented technology.
The iron rice instead uses very clever science to “trick” the rice into thinking it has insufficient iron so the rice absorbs a lot more iron from the soil than normal. It’s a bit like tricking a person into thinking they are hungry when they are not.
Gene patents are commonplace in agriculture. It’s now possible to improve plants by transferring genes from plant to plant. Genes can be turned on or off and made to work only in particular parts of a plant.
Why would anyone patent a gene?
The knowledge of genes and their function is a valuable tool to improve our food supply and quality. But gene patenting has been a contentious issue recently.
Proponents claim gene patentability is the key to recovering the huge investments required to improve crops and human health.
When someone takes out a patent in Australia, they’re given the right to use their idea, exclusively, for 20 years. After that, the knowledge becomes freely available.
This system encourages innovation and the generation of new ideas which have practical application. In the scheme of things, 20 years is a small piece of eternity.
The agricultural biotechnology industry uses the patent system in the developed world to recoup extensive research expenditure. Large companies such as Syngenta, BASF, DOW, Monsanto, DuPont and Bayer hold 63% of the patents in this area.
Without gene patents we would have less innovation, a solution that wouldn’t help food security at all.
How do we support food security in the developing world?
Companies that invent genetically manipulated crops want to make their money back. But there are alternatives to gene patents when we are making crops for the developing world.
In the case of the iron-enriched rice, the work was funded by the HarvestPlus program and the Australian Research Council. The former is a charitable organisation and the latter is funded by the Australian taxpayer. These organisations don’t expect to recoup their costs.
Also, iron deficiency is largely a problem of the developing world. We need to ensure the technology is made available to as many people as possible, at the lowest possible cost. There is little likelihood of recovering development funding under these circumstances.
In some cases, where new technologies are useful in the developed world as well as in developing nations, it may still be useful to patent those technologies. Such technologies can be licensed to seed companies in the developed world for commercial gain, whilst still providing the technologies “for free” elsewhere.
From developed to developing and back again
Patent ownership can also help stop “leakage” from the developing world into the developed world. By this I mean the developed world cannot gain, for no cost, technologies which they should pay for.
There are many instances where even patented technologies owned by large companies have been “donated” to the developing world. The Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) project is one such example.
In this case, Monsanto has donated drought-tolerant transgenes (developed with BASF) to the WEMA project with no expectation of royalties. This approach is commonplace, despite cries from some that multi-nationals are trying to control the food supply chain.
In some cases, organisations such as ACPFG – where I am General Manager – patent technologies in both the developing and the developed world.
Why do we do this? Well, it means we can control how technology is deployed. We can ensure that large companies don’t exploit our technology for commercial gain if we don’t want them to.
And of course we don’t want that to occur in the developing world.
The other reason we may wish to patent in the developing world relates to the length of time it takes to develop new technologies – ten years is not uncommon. In that time countries can transition from developing to developed.
ACPFG works with many of the research centres that help developing nations, such as CIMMYT in Mexico, and the International Rice Research Institute in the Phillipines.
In the developing world, we have a policy of making technologies freely available, whether patented or not. Even if we have a patent on a gene, we can provide a no-cost license in developing countries; many large companies do the same. This is a policy that continues in the case of high-iron rice.Image copyright Getty Images Image caption There have been concerns over the levels of mercury in fish for many years
Rising temperatures could boost mercury levels in fish by up to seven times the current rates, say Swedish researchers.
They've discovered a new way in which warming increases levels of the toxin in sea creatures.
In experiments, they found that extra rainfall drives up the amount of organic material flowing into the seas.
This alters the food chain, adding another layer of complex organisms which boosts the concentrations of mercury up the line.
The study has been published in the journal, Science Advances.
Toxic form
Mercury is one of the world's most toxic metals, and according to the World Health Organization, is one of the top ten threats to public health. The substance at high levels has been linked to damage to the nervous system, paralysis and mental impairment in children.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Mercury is used in many parts of the world especially in gold mining
The most common form of exposure to mercury is by eating fish containing methylmercury, an organic form of the chemical which forms when bacteria react with mercury in water, soil or plants.
Levels of mercury in the world's ecosystems have increased by between 200 and 500%, since the industrial revolution say experts, driven up by the use of fossil fuels such as coal.
In recent years there are have been concentrated efforts to limit the amount of mercury entering the environment, with an international treaty, called the Minamata Convention, signed by 136 countries in place since 2013.
Image copyright Sofi Jonsson Image caption Researcher Erik Bjorn injects mercury into sediment samples
But this new study suggests that climate change could be driving up levels of methylmercury in a manner not previously recognised.
In a large laboratory, Swedish researchers recreated the conditions found in the Bothnian sea estuary. They discovered that as temperatures increase, there is an increased run-off of organic matter into the world's oceans and lakes. This encourages the growth of bacteria at the expense of phytoplankton.
"When bacteria become abundant in the water there is also a growth of a new type of predators that feed on bacteria," lead author Dr Erik Bjorn from Umea University in Sweden told BBC News.
"You basically get one extra step in the food chain and methylmercury is enriched by about a factor of ten in each such step in the food web."
Under the warmest climate scenario suggested by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there would be an increase in organic matter run-off of 15-20% by the end of this century. This in turn would see levels of methylmercury in zooplankton, the bottom link in the food chain, grow by between two and seven fold.
Image copyright Erik Lundberg Image caption Sediment cores were recovered from Swedish coastal waters for use in the mercury experiments
Different parts of the world will suffer different impacts say the researchers, with lakes and coastal waters in the northern hemisphere being the most likely to have significant increases in methylmercury levels in fish, while the Mediterranean, the central US and Southern Africa will likely see reductions.
Researchers hope that the Minamata treaty will be successful and countries reduce the amount of mercury that is being produced. Otherwise this discovery of a previously unknown source could have impacts for human health.
"If we reduce mercury emissions, then we need to know how fast will ecosystems recover," said Dr Bjorn.
"If we don't do anything and mercury doesn't decrease, and we add this on top then the implications would be severe."
Other researchers in the field say that the new study highlights important issues that have previously been little known.
"This work experimentally proves that climate change will have a significant effect of methylmercury budgets in coastal waters and its concentrations in fish," said Milena Horvat from the Jozef Stefan Institute in Slovenia.
"This work will also have an important impact on future scenario simulations on the presence of mercury in fish in response to global mercury reductions from emission sources (primarily industrial)."
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Freedom of religion and belief is a human right
Everyone in the UK has the freedom of religion and belief, which is a fundamental human right protected by a number of international treaties and declarations. This right encompasses freedom of thought on all matters. No matter what your family or the wider community says and irrespective of your race, sex, age, and background, you have this fundamental right.
Know how to protect yourself
If you are worried about your personal safety, take it seriously. Consider the risk and whether you should involve the police.
Open a separate/secret bank or savings account
Leave copies of important documents such as passport, National Insurance number and birth certificate along with spare clothing and cash with a trusted friend.
Keep helpline numbers close at hand. Have a telephone card or change for urgent phone calls.
Arrange alternative emergency accommodation in case of need.
Your internet, e-mail and document use activities leave traces on your computer that can be found. Use a computer to which those you are fearful of do not have access to, such as at work, in a library, or a friend’s computer. Cover your tracks when searching for information, emailing about your situation or visiting sites and web-forums like those of the CEMB if you are using a computer that others may have access to.
Know that you are not alone
There are many people who are in or have been in your situation. Don’t despair. It really helps to meet other like-minded people who know what you are going through.
You can do this by becoming a member of the CEMB, coming to its events, and joining the CEMB’s web forum. There are also many local skeptic, humanist, secularist and atheist groups in various parts of the country that would be more than happy to lend a hand. They also have regular meetings, where you can meet like-minded people and get support.
Help is at hand
Make sure you know about your rights and options so that you can make informed choices. There are many organisations that provide assistance and support. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.Beginning in the early 1900s, collegiate home economics programs across the nation included "practice house" programs designed to help female students learn "mothercraft," the scientific art of childrearing. At Cornell each semester, eight women students lived with a resident advisor in the "practice apartment," where they took turns performing a full range of homemaking activities in a scientific and cost-efficient manner.
In 1919, the first practice baby, named Dicky Domecon for "domestic economy," came to Cornell. Cornell secured infants through area orphanages and child welfare associations. Babies were nurtured by the students according to strict schedules and guidelines, and after a year, they were available for adoption. Prospective adoptive parents in this era desired Domecon babies because they had been raised according to the most up-to-date scientific principles.
Flora Rose, an early proponent of the program, believed that babies were essential to replicate the full domestic experience. Albert Mann, Dean of the College of Agriculture, called the apartments "essential laboratory practice for women students." As time passed, however, new research in child development pointed to the need for a primary bond with a single caregiver, and social changes in the lives of women made the practice house focus on domesticity seem old-fashioned. In addition, by the late 1960s, the ideology most prominent in the college favored hard science over practical applications. By 1969, the year the college changed its name, practice apartments were dropped from the Cornell curriculum.
Select an image at left
or choose from the list below:When you imagine an alien, what do you think of? A green, slimy creature with jagged teeth? Or maybe a cute little E.T.-like figure?
Generally, we envision aliens as somewhat like us -- slightly more bizarre or fearsome versions of ourselves, but humanlike nonetheless. These perceptions reflect our own fears and desires and imaginings.
Now, thanks to nonprofit studio Blank on Blank, we can listen to astronomer Carl Sagan explain why it makes perfect sense that humans would "project their hopes and fears upon the cosmos." Blank and Blank recently published author Studs Terkel's 1985 interview with Sagan as part of its "Experimenter" series.
Kirill Yeretsky Human-alien interaction, animated by Blank on Blank.
Sagan explains that our galaxy is one of probably hundreds of billions of other galaxies, and throughout these galaxies, there is an abundance of the carbon-rich complex molecules that are the building blocks for life as we know it.
"There's a lot of potential abodes for life," Sagan says in the interview, "and the stuff of life is everywhere.
Add to this equation billions of years for biological evolution on each planet and, Sagan adds, "It seems very hard to believe that our paltry little planet is the only one that's inhabited."
So, while we might not have a very good idea what extraterrestrials look like, it seems likely that they exist.I was hooked from the first lines I ever read of Anil Yadav’s shambling, hilarious travel book, Is That Even A Country, Sir! Journeys In Northeast India By Train, Bus and Tractor (originally written in Hindi, and now available in an excellent translation by Anurag Basnet, published by Speaking Tiger). It was an excerpt posted on Facebook by my friend Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, the brilliant young physician/writer, whose Mantoesque collection of short stories, The Adivasi Will Not Dance, has been banned in his native Jharkhand.
Shekhar posted Yadav’s account of passing through the notorious “chicken’s neck corridor" to enter Assam. “Small stations and halts were passing by—New Bongaigaon, Nalbari, Barpeta, Rangiya. The reports and pictures published in newspapers were all saying that these were those places where the killings of Hindi-speakers had taken place in recent days. Buying red tea and some local savouries from a vendor, it struck me that my speech is inflected with a Bihari accent which makes an appearance at unguarded moments. ‘Our name is Aneel Yadav.’ I can’t tell how many individuals I gather within, other than myself, when I draw out my name." A flute player innocently invites him to listen, which unleashes paranoia, “Who knows, maybe these people are using these techniques to identify Hindi-speakers on trains."
Is That Even A Country, Sir! Journeys In Northeast India By Train, Bus and Tractor: By Anil Yadav
Even halfway through that excerpt, I realized Yadav had produced that most precious of rarities—Indian travel writing in the classical mould: naked, humane, visceral and relatable. Of all the different categories comprising national literature, this one has continually, conspicuously lagged. It never genuinely flourished, but terminal decline set in after the advent of glossy travel magazines (full disclosure: I write for most of them) and blogs, which smell of editorial barter mendacity, reduced to plugging content that is mere padding around a laundry list of brand names. The newest trend is sheer vulgarity: name-dropping “celebrity"-authors photographed against postcard backdrops. This isn’t literature. It’s advertising.
Indian travel writing’s deterioration to lifestyle porn is particularly grotesque because it started off so well, with a string of vivid turn-of-the-20th-century accounts. I rate Nivedan best, the astounding memoir of Dharmanand Kosambi, who fled family responsibilities in a tiny village in Goa (his job was to tend to a grove of coconut palms) to study Sanskrit, Pali and Buddhism. He survived horrendous journeys filled with privation, trekked to the Himalayas, sailed to Sri Lanka, lived in a cave in Myanmar, and eventually taught at Harvard and Leningrad State Universities, before retiring to become something like Gandhi’s own Mahatma in the Sabarmati ashram.
Nivedan: By Dharmanand Kosambi.
Nivedan was marvellously translated from Marathi by Kosambi’s late granddaughter Meera Kosambi, who did the same for Pandita Ramabai’s eye-opening account of travelling in the US in the late 19th century. In her The Peoples Of The United States, this early Indian feminist adroitly reversed the male, Orientalist gaze, writing, for example, that “women—who may be pure, educated, effective as speakers, possessed of other excellent qualities, and much more capable than male preachers, but whose only fault is that they are women—are ordered by men to shut their mouths and sit quietly even if they have received a call from God to preach".
The Peoples Of The United States: By Pandita Ramabai
Where Ramabai was forthright and forceful, the impressionable 18-year-old Mohandas Gandhi’s stories of England depict someone entirely unsure of himself (though he had previously displayed mettle by defying community elders who threatened excommunication for leaving India). The uber-nerd future “Father of India" embarrassed himself frequently, in an extensive catalogue of humiliations, which makes The Story of My Experiments With Truth exceptionally endearing. “I directed my attention to other details that were supposed to go towards the making of an English gentleman" writes the hapless Gandhi. “I decided to take dancing lessons.... But it was beyond me to achieve anything like rhythmic motion. I could not follow the piano and hence found it impossible to keep time."
Such willingness to reveal blunders and awkwardness makes Gandhi’s diaries valuable, lasting and sheer fun to read. It is only when writers can admit they might be hopelessly homesick, and cursing the day they left home, that travel writing becomes credible and persuasive. Those are the makings of literature, not triumphal selfie-style despatches about tasting menus served by helicopter atop the Burj Khalifa, accompanied by new best friend Salman Rushdie.
The Story of My Experiments With Truth: By Mohandas K. Gandhi.
Perhaps the greatest travel book of all time, The Road To Oxiana, intersperses trenchant, whip-smart descriptions of 1930s’ Palestine, Syria, Iran and Afghanistan, with equally vivid stories of fear, crippling cold, and severe illness. At one point, Robert Byron writes: “We had nothing to cook, and still worse, no water. I had been thirsty since the morning, and now drank a supply of white mud, melted snow, and oil, which was kept in a petrol tin for the radiator. The moon shone bright, the road was hard, the wind blew my blankets off; tramping up and down, the soldiers kept watch and sang to reassure themselves. I was bemoaning these obstacles to sleep when I woke up in daylight, having slept for ten hours."
Still barely into my 20s, I came to Byron’s idiosyncratic masterpiece after reading the description of it as “sacred text, beyond criticism" by Bruce Chatwin, whose own books already made me feel that way about them. I’ll never forget the exact moment his writing first filtered directly to my gut, filling it with admiration, desire and longing. It was March 1990, unseasonably hot, outside the University of London Union where I had just finished basketball practice, and borrowed a battered copy of the (now legendary) 1983 Granta special edition on travel writing to read while replenishing myself with pints of St Clements (a mix of orange juice and lemonade). But before I took a sip, I was transfixed by a string of writers new to me: Jonathan Raban, Redmond O’Hanlon, Colin Thubron, Norman Lewis and, above all, Martha Gellhorn and Bruce Chatwin.
In his introduction to that seminal compilation, Bill Buford wrote: “these pieces succeed not by virtue of the details they report—exotic as they are—but by the contrivance of their reporting. They are all informed by the sheer glee of story-telling, a narrative eloquence that situates them, with wonderful ambiguity, somewhere between fiction and fact. There is of course nothing new in this kind of ambiguity, although travel writing seems to be its purest expression—purer even than the New Journalism of the sixties and seventies to which it bears more than a few similarities."
From that first reading, Chatwin and the markedly akin poetic Polish genius, Ryszard Kapuściński, have endured as favourites, but my all-time writing hero is the breathtakingly ballsy Martha Gellhorn. A great war correspondent, she kept travelling and writing for 60 years, including the gem-studded collection of “horror journeys", Travels With Myself And Another. I was still studying in London when I read it, and—the only time in my life—wrote to the author. It’s highly embarrassing to recall my piteous whining about inheriting an impoverished world, and hating becoming an investment banker (which fate loomed imminent).
Miraculously, Gellhorn wrote back. “I agree that your generation is taking on a miserable world.... But at 23, you have no right to despair. It is the only world you’ve got and the only time you have to live. Your job is to try and make any tiny corner of it better...for myself I think I’ve had more than a rich share of good luck. And though my writing has never been greatly read, I can’t say I honestly care: for me, personally, the point was to write it." Those astute words fuelled my life journey towards being a writer and living in Goa, but they’re also revealing of the crucial ingredients for travel literature: moral compass, fearlessness, integrity. Fakery flops, which is why most travel blogs stand out conspicuously unreliable, hooked on freebies and inducements.
Thus, it is unsurprising that the standout predecessor to Is That Even A Country, Sir! was also not written in English. Jangalnama by Satnam, (the Punjabi activist/writer who committed suicide last year), is a disturbing, yet very beautiful record of two months spent on the move with Maoist guerrillas in the jungles of Bastar. It’s full of piercing insight. “Garbage is the sign of a ‘civilized’ society. An abundance and luxury, followed by muck and filth. The ‘civilized’ human being litters the beaches of Goa, the snow-clad Rohtang Pass, and the glaciers of the Himalayas. Fortunately the epidemic of the tourism industry has not yet struck here, nor have the jungles been declared holy places like Rishikesh, Haridwar, Benaras and Allahabad, or every kind of filth would have poisoned the natural and social environment of these jungles."
Clear-eyed honesty like that is usually absent from Indian travel writing now, where unvarnished reality is treated with suspicion. This bares a critical fault line between travel and tourism, concepts that are twinned in industry parlance, but actually represent two very different things. In the essay, “It’s A Nomad Nomad World", Chatwin writes: “Diversion. Distraction. Fantasy. Change of fashion, food, love and landscape. We need them as the air we breathe.... ‘He who does not travel does not know the value of men,’ said Ib’n Battuta, the indefatigable Arab wanderer who strolled from Tangier to China and back for the sake of it. But travel does not merely broaden the mind. It makes the mind." This is not something you find by browsing TripAdvisor.
Anil Yadav’s book stands out for many reasons, starting with the most basic. He travels the most old-fashioned way, like Chatwin and Byron, by any means necessary. He took a Nagaland Roadways bus to Shillong, where “we were stiff with cold and could not control our shivering; so hungry that the thought of shredding the bus seats and eating them did not sound funny at all." His companion steadily falls apart: “That nasal drop which earlier had a home in his pockets was to be found more and more in his hands. The red jacket he was wearing—the one I had gifted him at the beginning of the journey—was filthy. Its bright colour was now a memory. His face had changed too. His eyes had become alert and wary but the corners of his mouth drooped and so did his shoulders."
But even as these misfits (Yadav is drinking steadily throughout the narrative) bumble through the North-East, their experiences allow a level of insight into the human condition that is incalculably superior to the conventional wisdom regurgitated in every know-it-all glamour feature on the region combined. “Tossing the useless goods on to his counter, I said, ‘You loot.’ No expression crossed the Marwari’s face. One by one, he waved incense in front of each of the fake goods he held in stock and prayed to the gods for all of them to sell at their full prices... he went to the back of the store and emerged with a tube of toothpaste in hand. ‘This is my personal toothpaste, you can have it. I cannot do any more for you. The underground and over-ground outfits here charge us so much tax that business has become impossible. Bhaisahab, if I sell original articles, I’ll starve.’"
Now that is travel writing worth the name.Two pupils at an Auckland school were sent to "time out" and made to write an apology letter after asking visiting Warriors players why they lost so often.
Blockhouse Bay Intermediate principal Michael Malins confirmed the school's action, but wouldn't reveal the exact wording of the questions.
But the Weekend Herald has been told by a source that one student asked why the team were so bad, and a second pupil - said to be a football fan who knew little about rugby league - asked where the team sat on the points table during the school visit earlier this month.
The Warriors finished the 2017 NRL in 13th position out of 16 teams; a result which has left long-suffering fans fuming especially given their star-studded playing roster including Shaun Johnson, Kieran Foran, Roger Tuivasa-Sheck and Isaac Luke.
Malins confirmed yesterday that the school's deputy principal spoke to two boys about the nature of their questions which were deemed "disrespectful" to the school's guests.
"The boys had time out to think about their actions and wrote letters of apology to the Warriors for disrespecting our school value of Manaakitanga. This was not a punishment, rather a restorative practice to apologise," he said.
Manaakitanga roughly translates to "hospitality" in English.
The online Māori Dictionary defines the term as "the process of showing respect, generosity and care for others".
The questions posed by the two schoolboys echoed those asked by many fans who saw the team - ranked as title contenders by some pundits on both sides of the Tasman pre-season - as big-time flops.
Warriors chief executive Cameron George confirmed the club received an apology letter from two Blockhouse Bay Intermediate schoolboys.
He would not comment on the appropriateness of the reprimand, saying that was up to the school to determine.
While he didn't witness the questions being asked, he told the Weekend Herald he understood they were about the team's on-field performance.
George said attending community events and school visits was "one of the good things" about being in the team and the players that visited Blockhouse Bay Intermediate "absolutely" still enjoyed the experience.
The team was used to fielding curly questions from both the media and school kids, he said.
"They're hard men. It's not the first time they've been questioned."
The Warriors finished the season on a losing streak of nine losses in a row; the worst in their 22-year history.
On the eve of the last match of the season - which they lost to the Wests Tigers in Sydney - coach Steve Kearney tried to be upbeat and create positives from failed season.
"I've got to say that through the course of the year it's been very challenging in the sense of results but they've turned up every week with a real attitude to want to improve," Kearney said.
"Their attitudes and energies have been wonderful given the circumstances."
And their faltering year saw many of their previous most-loyal fans turn on them via social media, including on the Warriors very own Facebook page.
The numbers of fans turning up at Mt Smart for home games also dwindled in 2017, with the Warriors having an average home attendance of 11,754 a match - the second lowest of all the NRL's 15 teams.
As the side fell apart on the field, owner Eric Watson also signalled towards the end of the season that he was prepared to sell the club which he bought in late 2000.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Education said it had not been made aware of the incident.
NZ HeraldParui, Jan. 21: The family of the Birbhum woman who was allegedly tortured by police today rued that lesser charges had been brought against the accused cops, pointing out that the youth who had slapped MP Abhishek Banerjee had been charged with attempt to murder.
"We are surprised by the discrimination by the police. My wife was beaten up by the police. They slashed her with blades and rubbed nettle leaves on her body. But the police thought the case was not important enough to slap the charge of attempt to murder. The same police had brought the charge against the youth who slapped Abhishek Banerjee. The bias hurts us," the woman's husband said.
"We demand that the police include the attempt to murder charge in this case too," he added.
Nine policemen who were part of the team that allegedly tortured the woman have been booked for molestation, voluntarily causing hurt, voluntarily causing hurt with dangerous weapons, voluntarily causing grievous hurt, wrongful restraint and acts done by several persons in common intention.
The charges attract a seven-year jail term. The maximum punishment for attempt to murder is 10 years' jail.
The charges have been drawn up on the basis of the FIR lodged in Birbhum's Parui police station on Sunday. Nobody was named in the FIR, which held nine unnamed cops responsible for the torture during a raid in Burdwan.
Today, the woman's mother lodged an FIR in Burdwan's Budbud police station, naming Parui police station officer in charge Amarjit Biswas, Birbhum police special operations group officer in charge Kartikmohan Ghosh, Bolpur sub-divisional police officer Amlan Kusum Ghosh, officer in charge of Illambazar police station Mohammed Ali, Budbud police station sub-inspector D.P. Patra and constables Dipak Bauri and Kashinath Das.
The complaint also mentions that some Trinamul leaders from Birbhum and Burdwan were present during the assault. The family had filed a supplementary FIR at Parui police station but later withdrawn it.
Birbhum police chief Alok Rajoria said it was for Burdwan police to decide what to do with the fresh FIR. Calls to Burdwan police superintended S.M.H. Meerza went unanswered.
The director-general of Bengal police, G.M.P. Reddy, today asked the Birbhum SP to submit a detailed report on the alleged torture by tomorrow, a Nabanna official said.
Sources in Birbhum said the lodging of the fresh complaint and the withdrawing of the supplementary FIR reflected a "feud" within the BJP.
"A section of BJP leaders are of the opinion that no police officer should be named in the FIR, fearing a reprisal. That is why the woman's husband was asked to withdraw the complaint. BJP leaders who wanted the police officers to be named apparently influenced the woman's mother in Budbud and made here lodge another complaint," a BJP source said.
Birbhum BJP president Doodh Kumar Mondal said he did not know of any feud.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
IOWA -- Senator Charles Grassley now says his words in support of cutting the estate tax are being misinterpreted after he was attacked online over the weekend.
It all started with a quote from Grassley in the Des Moines Register. As an explanation about why the estate tax was so important, the senator said, "I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it's on booze or women or movies."
Grassley's words were interpreted by many as a suggestion that average Americans don't deserve tax breaks because they misspend money, while wealthy Americans save their money.
Twitter users have been responding to Grassley's remarks. One said, "Senator Chuck Grassley, I don't drink. I'm married. The last movie I went to was a year ago. I spend my money on food, clothing, and child care. Thanks for making assumptions about me and basically calling me a lazy, drunk who buys prostitutes. Signed, An Average American."
Senator Chuck Grassley, I don't drink. I'm married. The last movie I went to was a year ago. I spend my money on food, clothing, and child care. Thanks for making assumptions about me and basically calling me a lazy, drunk who buys prostitutes. Signed, An Average American pic.twitter.com/VcSff2LW1k — Red T Raccoon (@RedTRaccoon) December 4, 2017
On Monday, Grassley told the Register his words are being taken out of context. However, he doesn't say he was misquoted.
He now says his opposition to the estate tax is because it is a double tax on someone's earnings, not because the wealthy deserve rewards for their spending habits.I am healthy in body and mind and am overwhelmed with love for my wife and children. I love life and expect nothing beyond that, save the perpetuation of my race and my spirit. However, in the evening of this life, faced with grave perils for my French and European homeland, I feel a duty to act while I still have the force to do it. I believe it necessary to sacrifice myself to break the lethargy that is overcoming us. I offer what remains of my life |
ria’s latest culinary delight rather than my attempt at cheesecake. If you don’t make this work then there is no getting that money back.
One of the greatest things about bootstrapping is that it allows you to focus your time on creating an uber mega super startup without having to worry about spending hours of your day wining, dining and pleading to investors to give you money. You have more time to focus on building a product that customers actually want and focusing all of your time on your core business.
A lot of the time entrepreneurs who bootstrap find a sustainable model more quickly than companies backed by VCs as the founders have more time to focus on the build-iterate cycle thus arriving to market fit more rapidly than their wealthy brothers.
Bootstrapping means no investors involved so the pressure comes from internally (is your own). So instead of outsiders shouting at you and pressuring you to reach deadlines, hit targets and employ more people you can just stand in the mirror and shout at yourself. It’s much nicer and more fun.
2. You Become A Master of Prioritizing And Will Burn Less
When your own money is on the table and knowing that when you hit a certain limit that the funds are gone, you really learn to watch your burn and to prioritize what comes first. Bootstrapping means you need to become an expert at controlling costs and keeping overheads to a minimum, staying lean and focusing on achieving higher profit margins. It will help you to take a step back and look at your company from an outsider’s point of view. It’s incredible what you will see and how capable you will be to turn things around.
Bootstrapping forces you to prioritize every single cost and to cut out any nonsense that isn’t needed, and believe me you will find plenty. Social media expert who is spending 10 minutes a day posting on FB, Get outtttaaa hereee!
As you have become a Jedi master of focus, the quicker your business model will be validated and the more chance you have of revenue coming in which reduces your burn and makes everyone a happy little camper.
3. Hey Mum Look At Me, I’m Independent, And I’m Flexible Too!
If you raise venture capital, be prepared to feel the heat (actually its more like a horrible sunburn that won’t go away). VC’s expect you to spend their money quickly and to see results even more swiftly so expectations are set very high. Every VC is different, some will play a very active role and some won’t but they all like things done their way.
Most VC’s have expert entrepreneurs at hand who have “been there and done it” who are there to help but this is your baby and you don’t want anyone else playing ball with it or telling it which way to run. Investors are thinking about their return so expect them to want to implement their own methods, monthly meetings, and possibly even people (if you don’t perform well they might replace you with a CEO of their choice).
Being a good ol’ bootsrapper means that you have the independence to run the business the way you want without anyone breathing down your neck. You now have the power to revolutionize the world with your idealistic vision without anyone stifling your creativity. Instead of being directed in a way that might lead you off your yellow brick road, you are accountable for your own decisions so don’t go looking over you shoulder for someone to blame if it doesn’t work out.
4. Execution
Less funds means a short runway and a huge necessity to work quickly to prove your business model. Bootstrapping means you don’t have an endless supply of cash to bring your product to perfection (which if you follow the lean methodology you don’t want to be doing either), so forcing you to get it to market more quickly.
Knowing that you are going to bootstrap a business means you start and get it to market more quickly than if you were chasing investors around like a loco and then trying to perfect your product a zillion times before it’s released.
5. Keeping A Big Piece Of The Pie
Not raising money means not giving up equity, yeyyy! If you bootstrap in a successful manner and manage to grow your business to a mini behemoth then you will have your chance to raise venture capital.
As you will have given up no equity, you’ll be in a much better position to negotiate with investors. If you raise money at an early stage, you’ll have already given up lots of equity that will be further diluted on every following round. Bootstrapping means you keep a bigger piece of the pie and if you do well and are acquired/go public then the math says that on payday you’ll have a bigger smile on your face.
Also when raising VC money, the clauses in the term sheets can be pretty strict on the founders, especially at the early stages. Founder’s shares (which were yours anyway) are usually vested over a period of 3-4 years, which means that if you don’t stick around then you lose the majority of the shares. Plus decision-making processes can be more lengthy and difficult as certain things must be approved by the board. Obviously having a sensible shareholder agreement between co-founders is essential but more often than not the conditions aren’t so harsh.
Bootstrapping can put a lot of financial pressure on the founders and in some cases it might not even be a viable option. It does however give you a great starting point and strong foundations for future success. There have been many success stories of bootstrapped startups selling their startups for billions of dollars so without a doubt it can be done. Give it a whirl on your next adventure!
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Energy industry jolted by advice to Norwegian government from its central bank, which runs $1tn fund
The Norwegian central bank, which runs the country’s sovereign wealth fund – the world’s biggest – has told its government it should dump its shares in oil and gas companies, in a move that could have significant consequences for the sector.
Norges Bank, which manages Norway’s $1tn fund, said ministers should take the step to avoid the fund’s value being hit by a permanent fall in the oil price.
The fund was built on the back of Norway’s hydrocarbon wealth, and around 300bn krone (£27.73bn), or 6%, is invested in oil and gas companies.
Norway’s $885bn-nil advantage in Britain’s sea of social troubles Read more
The recommendation by Norway’s central bank pushed down shares in European oil companies. Europe’s index of oil and gas shares hit its lowest level since mid-October on the news and was trading down 0.39% by late afternoon.
“The return on oil and gas stocks has been significantly lower than in the broad equity market in periods of falling oil prices,” the bank explained in a statement.
“Therefore, it is the bank’s assessment that the government’s wealth can be made less vulnerable to a permanent drop in oil prices if the GPFG [sovereign wealth fund] is not invested in oil and gas stocks.”
The Norwegian government said it would consider the proposal, but a decision should not be expected until next year and a “thorough assessment” was required.
“The issues raised by Norges Bank are complex and multifaceted,” the finance ministry said.
The bank did not set a deadline for when the fund should drop its oil and gas holdings. However, it made clear that its recommendation involved divesting from existing oil and gas shares as well as ruling out future investments.
The fund’s biggest oil and gas holding at the end of 2016 was $5.36bn in Anglo Dutch firm Shell, followed by $3.06bn in ExxonMobil, $2.04bn in fellow US oil firm Chevron, $2.02bn in the UK’s BP, and $2.01bn in France’s Total. It also has shares worth more than $1bn in oil services firm Schlumberger and Italy’s Eni.
The central bank’s move was welcomed by Paul Fisher, former deputy head of the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority and senior associate at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.
“It is not surprising that we see the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund managers no longer prepared to take the increasing risk associated with oil and gas assets, which do not have a long-term future,” he said.
Greenpeace Norway welcomed the central bank’s intervention, but said Norway must now also cease exploring for oil in the Arctic.
“Norway is already heavily invested in oil and gas resources, so selling off the oil fund’s fossil stocks will clearly help reduce our financial carbon risk,” said Truls Gulowsen, head of the group.
Norway’s largest private pension by value said that if the fund did ditch oil and gas stocks, the action could influence other investors.
Jan Erik Saugestad, chief executive of Storebrand Asset Management, said: “From a financial point of view this makes perfect sense, and we have been arguing for this for many years. This is a rational move given the overall exposure the Norwegian economy has towards oil.”
Bill McKibben, co-founder of climate group 350.org, said the move was “as astonishing as the moment when the Rockefellers divested the world’s oldest oil fortune”.
McKibben was referring to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s decision to divest from fossil fuels in 2014.
The oil price fell below $30 a barrel in January 2016 during a two-year slump, but has since recovered to just over $60 in recent weeks on geopolitical uncertainty and expectations that major oil-producers will extend production curbs.
• Follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk, or sign up to the daily Business Today email here.The spat arose after Donald Trump tweeted accusations that Sen. Ted Cruz's "people" were "doing very sleazy and dishonest 'pushpolls'" on him. | AP Photo Cruz denies Trump accusation over 'push polls'
Ted Cruz denied all knowledge of robocalls being made in South Carolina on Thursday after Donald Trump accused the Texas senator's "people" of "doing very sleazy and dishonest 'pushpolls' on me."
"I have no idea. We had nothing to do with them. I don't know what they were. We had nothing to do with them. So I had read reports of what is being said but somebody else is doing them, not us," Cruz told reporters before a rally with Glenn Beck in Fort Mill.
Story Continued Below
Brian Phillips, the Cruz team's rapid-response director, tweeted an hour after Trump's initial accusatory tweet, "The push polls are not coming from Cruz. Period."
The push polls are not coming from Cruz. Period. https://t.co/zrtoSnthTO — Brian Phillips (@RealBPhil) February 11, 2016
The episode follows a report by The Washington Post published earlier in the day that refers to robo-calls to potential voters in South Carolina that become hostile when the respondent voices support for a candidate other than Cruz. The Texas senator's campaign denied for that story that it was responsible for the calls, which said they were being conducted by Remington Research, the name of the consulting firm started by Jeff Roe, Cruz's campaign manager.
“We’re not doing any robo-polls in South Carolina,” Cruz’s director of research told the Post. "It’s not us making those calls. Anyone can make those calls as Remington Research to screw with reporters and make Jeff look like he’s doing something.”
Thursday is not the first time that Trump has accused Cruz's campaign of conducting push polling against him. In January, he tweeted:
Just found out that @tedcruz is spending a fortune on Iowa push polls negative to me. Not nice, but OK! New polls are great. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 13, 2016
Campaigns often use automated surveys to test different messages, which are often confused with push polls, which are designed to advance negative information or opposition research and are usually conducted under false pretenses. Message-testing, by contrast, is used by campaigns to gauge the effectiveness of various talking points.
Burgess Everett reported from Fort Mill, South Carolina.It appears the Twitter account of Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails County GOP in Minnesota shares image comparing Sanders to Hitler Holder: 'Time to make the Electoral College a vestige of the past' MORE's campaign chairman has been hacked.
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"I've switched teams. Vote Trump 2016. Hi pol," John Podesta's account tweeted Wednesday evening.
The tweet was quickly deleted.
Podesta has also been the target of email hacks. WikiLeaks has released thousands of emails stolen from Podesta's account and published them on its website.
The emails contained portions of the Democratic presidential nominee's private speeches to Wall Street firms.
The Clinton campaign has refused to confirm any of the leaked material and claims that WikiLeaks is acting as a front for the Russian government.There is a certain arrogance required to be a top-level professional fighter. The best fighters are filled with hubris, believing they'll prevail no matter the obstacle.
Jon Jones (R) delivers a blow vs. Glover Teixeira. (Getty)
It's often difficult for them to wrap their hands around a loss. It's rarely about what the opponent did or the horror of all horrors, the opponent might be better.
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But that kind of absolute confidence is required to make it to the top.
Glover Teixeira had plenty of it after winning 20 consecutive bouts and going unbeaten for nine years heading into his title bout with light heavyweight champion Jon Jones on April 26 at UFC 172 in Baltimore.
However, performance didn't match confidence as Teixeira took a massive pummeling from Jones. Bruce Buffer wasn't needed to read off the judges' scorecards to understand who won, and who lost, that fight. All it took was a peek at each man after the final bell to know.
Teixeira, though, is one of the rare fighters who acknowledges the ugly truth. Six months after that devastating loss, he's yet to make his first excuse.
He's preparing to fight Phil Davis in the co-main event of UFC 179 on Oct. 25 in Rio de Janeiro and is training as if he's facing another championship bout. He can't afford another one-sided loss and still harbor dreams of somehow, some way, getting another title shot.
UFC president Dana White isn't in the business of giving guys who were routed return matches very quickly, and Teixeira understands it's going to take some time. But he also knows he met a rare athlete in Baltimore.
"I'm upset I lost the fight, of course, but losing is a part of the game," Teixeira said. "I lost to a great fighter, one of the greatest ever, maybe the greatest ever. Jon Jones is a great champion and he's done what he's done for a reason."
Glover Teixeira (top) fights against Ryan Bader during UFC Fight Night in 2013. (USA TODAY Sports)
Story continues
The UFC heavily hyped Teixeira going into the bout and portrayed him as the most serious threat that Jones had faced in his title reign. That's what you do when you're trying to sell tickets and get people to buy pay-per-views.
It was also a bit of a subliminal message, because the Teixeira fight was Jones' first following a titanic struggle with Alexander Gustafsson in the main event of UFC 165 in September 2013:
If Teixeira is better than the guy Jones just fought, we might have a chance to see history made tonight.
Reality set in – it almost always does when the cage door is shut and marketing and public relations and promotion cease to matter – and Teixeira was handled like he'd never been handled before.
However, Teixeira had two things going for him in the bout with Jones that led many to believe he had a chance: He is an extremely hard hitter, both with the overhand right and the short left hook, and he has great jiu-jitsu skills.
Jones hasn't been the UFC's most popular champion, and so he hasn't gotten the credit he deserves for being as great as he is. But Teixeira made a major mistake early and got caught in a shoulder crank. It happened a little past the midpoint of the first round.
It resulted in a torn labrum, but the immediate problem was that Teixeira's great punching power was gone.
His weaknesses against Jones – a lack of speed and an inability to deal with the champion's length and reach – became more prominent.
Teixeira never stopped trying and kept stalking forward after Jones, but it was obvious fairly quickly there would be no historic upset on this night.
Teixeira, who avoided surgery, says he's left the loss in the past. He's using it as a reference point for where he needs to be in order to reach the championship level.
Phil Davis (red gloves) fights Anthony Johnson during UFC 172. (USA TODAY Sports)
"Part of being a professional is understanding how to deal with a loss," Teixeira said. "It's up to me to figure out how to correct the mistakes I made. I'm not worrying about Jon any more, because I have to deal with Phil Davis. But I have a lot of work to do to get back to the point where I'll put myself in position to get another shot [at the title]."
So Teixeira, who has never been a flashy or outspoken guy, simply took the time off he needed to let his wounds heal and then set about figuring out how to correct what had gone wrong.
He'll get a chance on Oct. 25 to display his progress and to show that his absolute confidence in his ability was warranted.
Who knows what will happen? But remember this: Jones is in a different league from the rest of the fighters in the world, and it's never a great idea to bet against a guy who had won 20 in a row over a nine-year span.
Related Video:good
In Gaza, children,
you learn that the sky kills
and that houses hurt.
You learn that your blanket is smoke
and breakfast is dirt.
You learn that cars do somersaults
clothes turn red,
friends become statues,
bakers don’t sell bread.
You learn that the night is a gun,
that toys burn
breath can stop,
it could be your turn.
You learn:
if they send you fire
they couldn’t guess:
not just the soldier dies -
it’s you and the rest.
Nowhere to run,
nowhere to go,
nowhere to hide
in the home you know.
You learn
that death isn’t life,
that air isn’t bread,
the land is for all.
You have the right to be
Not Dead.
You have the right to be
Not Dead.
You have the right to be
Not Dead.
The estimated turnout for this protest, according to Andrew Murray, was 200,000. I don't mind what precise figure people put on it, but it was, and certainly above 100,000. To this can be added the protests across the UK, which respectively numbered in hundreds and thousands. As I said earlier, this was the largest ever pro-Palestinian demonstration in the United Kingdom. I met a guy I know from MPAC at the start, and he agreed that the size of the demo was astonishing - this was as we were crowding into Hyde Park, before it even really kicked off. The severity of what Israel is imposing on Gaza, with the assistance of UK arms and the benevolence of UK diplomacy, has galvanised people in a way that we haven't seen since 2003. The tone of the protest was also very different from past demonstrations. For one thing, there was much more visible condemnation of the Arab regimes that are complicit in this attack. When speakers called for the Egyptian regime to be overthrown, the cheers were among the loudest of the day. For another, there is a great desire that this historic demonstration become the basis for a campaign. In some form or another, there is a desire to sanction Israel, up to and including a full-blown boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign. I would be delighted if such a campaign could be made to work.This brings me to something else I want to point out about the demonstration. In today's Guardian, over seventy Jewish writers and activists wrote to condemn Israel's atrocities in Gaza. The letter calls for a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions, which was also recently backed by Naomi Klein. This letter was cited twice by speakers, one of them Azzam Tamimi, who said "this war is not between Muslims and Jews, it is between the oppressed and the oppressor". The other speaker who I think was Ismail Patel said something that I think is extremely important, reflecting what Alexei Sayle said at last week's demonstration: it is long past time to stop allowing the state of Israel to call itself "the Jewish State". It is a travesty that a racist state that imposes apartheid and mass murder on the Palestinians has for so long been allowed to legitimise itself with reference to Jewish suffering, and particularly the Nazi holocaust. When its soldiers are bestialising themselves in Gaza, coldly murdering people in the most humiliating way, and imposing a system that seems in some respects to be deliberately redolent of the Warsaw Ghetto, the idea that Israel is the bearer of a legacy of resistance to fascism is disgusting, and absurd. Now, I know full well that we are not watching a repeat of the Final Solution, but it shouldn't have to get that far before Palestine has its Marek Edelmans. And we should not hesitate to support them when they defend Palestine.Finally, a word about the apparent ruckus outside the Israeli embassy. I didn't see it become at all serious, but I do know the police sealed off hundreds and perhaps more people in the area, and it has to be said that the police acted as if they wanted a fight. They had tried to confine an enormous amount of people into a densely barricaded bottleneck and, as far as I could see, this made the stewards' job more difficult. A number of protesters did evidently want to get into the Israeli embassy, and I did notice that one of them got onto the entrance walls and waved a Hamas flag around. Frankly,. The logical thing to do at this point would be to expel the Israeli ambassador and convert the building into the embassy of a future Palestinian state. But, as angry as people justifiably are, and as much as one would have every reason to expect a riot at this point, I personally saw nothing that could have even notionally justified the kind of clampdown that the police eventually imposed.Update: Here is the poem that Michael Rosen wrote, and read out for the protest:And since my digital camera wasn't working today, here are some good quality pics from Ellis Sharp. More from septicisle here. Jamie's pics, videos and report are here. See also, pictures from the Paris demo
Labels: air strikes, gaza, hamas, invasion, Israel, palestine, war crimesTEHRAN - Narges Kalbasi, the Iranian-British philanthropist, has been acquitted of murder charges by the ruling of an Indian court.
She posted on her Telegram channel that according to the Rayagada appealing court, she can claim damages because of all the problems and difficulties caused for her during this time.
In 2014, when Narges had set an excursion for her blind children, a child who was not part of her children’s home and was tagged along by his parents to the picnic, went missing.
After the disappearance of that healthy 5-year-old boy, the Rayagada court found Narges guilty of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced her to a year in jail and $4,300 in fines.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry expressed happiness over the news.
“I’m very happy to see that nonstop efforts of the country’s (Iran) Foreign Ministry bore fruit,” said spokesman Bahram Qassemi in a Telegram message.
Over the past few months a big online campaign has begun in the support of Narges, the benevolent Iranian-British woman who left the comfort of West to help the underprivileged children in India.
Earlier, top Iranian celebrities, actors, artists, as well as some Indian actors asked for the freedom of Narges.
Famous Iranian people like Mahmoud Farshchian, Ezatollah Entezami, Parviz Parastui, Asghar Farhadi, Majid Majidi, and many more came to join in the online campaign for freedom of Narges.
In a letter, the top Iranian celebrities asked Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to help resolve the Narges case.
To that letter Zarif responded: “I, too, have personally been involved in Ms. Kalbasi’s case in my latest trip to India and held talks with high level Indian officials regarding her. I assure you our goal is to immediately free her from all hardships and troubles and ask for a fair hearing with respect to her charitable services to the poor.”
After just two days of Zarif’s reply to the celebrities, came the twitter message of the Indian foreign minister which brought much hope to supporters of Narges.
Following Swaraj’s message, Narges expressed happiness in a personal message she left for one of the journalists at the Tehran Times, saying “I’m counting down the days to freedom.”
“Within the space of just a few days, both Dr. Zarif and Sushma Swaraj made public statements regarding my case which I am extremely grateful for. Obviously because this has happened in India, it is a huge step that Sushma Swaraj has now gotten involved. It just shows that if you fight for your rights, eventually you will have to be listened to. That's all I ever wanted, to be heard and to be given a fair chance”, she noted.
NA/AKThe author speaking in Second Life.
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with friend and 2016 Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson, who last month polled at 10 percent in general election picks. One of the things we spoke about was the future of political campaigning. Johnson won his New Mexico governorship in 1994 before the internet was being used much. Now, mastery of the internet and courting new media is a requirement to win any major election.
But the near future will be even more complex, with virtual reality, wearable tech, and holographic imagery all part of the show. The entire way a candidate runs for the presidency—from crowded rallies to handshakes at New Hampshire diners to their campaign buses—may soon change.
Politicians like Bernie Sanders already get it. He recently did a campaign event in virtual reality, a speech some are calling a historic first. Some of the advantages of campaigning in virtual reality might not be obvious. But on the YouTube video, one commentator talked about being able to get up close to read what was on Bernie's notes. That sounds cool, indeed—and not something you can't do in standard reality unless you can get past muscular security guards.
As a presidential candidate myself, I also recently gave a virtual speech in Second life. At the Terasem Annual Colloquium on the Law of Futurist Persons, I spoke to an audience that consisted of about 50 avatars—some who appeared as creatures, cyborgs, and significantly mutated transhuman beings. My own avatar—kindly created by transhuman spiritual organization Terasem for this event—looked quite like me, and even had the afternoon shadow, which apparently I'm often guilty of having.
Many experts cite President Obama's tech savvy 2008 and 2012 campaigns against John McCain and Mitt Romney, respectively, as a large reason he won. Obama was one of the first candidates to place ads in video games and other online environments. Some of his most remembered game ads were in NFL Madden 13 and NBA Live 09.
So far, no visible political candidates have really upped the ante with wearable tech, partially because we're so brainwashed with them wearing the same boring clothes for the last half century: tie, slacks, and coat. That's not to say American politics haven't been male-dominated over the last half century, or that US presidential elections, specifically, haven't always been male-dominated. Of course they have been.
But I hope that will change in the future. Built-in tech and LED lighting to candidate's shirts might enable viewers to see them better in various environments, like when it's shady outside or at night. In fact, we might be able to even feel our candidate's presence by shirts that create energy fields—or what some might call auras. At the very least, shirts could tell people candidate's moods if we wanted—already pets have collars that do that.
For me, wearable tech would be personal. In one of the biggest speeches so far of my campaign, I opened the Financial Times Camp Alphaville event in Europe. It was one of the hottest July London days on record at 95 degrees. Like everyone, I sweat right through my shirt—and it didn't look pleasant. I would've appreciated a shirt that could've automatically cooled me. I learned later that such innovations are on their way or already here.
But it's not just wearable tech. It's also implants. I have a small microchip in my hand—an RFID NFC implant—that can transfer business cards to smart phones with a quick hand swipe—and it's also programmed to text people: Win in 2016! It's a fun way to connect with supporters.
Coming in the future too will be augmented reality that mixes with the normal world. If Donald Trump wants a wall across the border, he can show it to us in live stream. The same can go for presidential candidate Jill Stein of the Green Party—show me 3D pie charts of how democratic socialist policies will not dramatically raise people's taxes. These tech advantages can surely help get important messages across.
Likely, the biggest change we'll see in the 2020 presidential elections will be the use of holographic images of candidates. Already we have robots that can be Skyped through and wander around interacting with people, but the holographic image will be the real deal. Slain rapper Tupac has done some concerts this way, and it's been a big hit with fans. The holographic tech, which is already here but is currently prohibitively expensive, will likely eventually replace video conference calls.
In fact, by 2020, we're likely to have driverless campaign buses filled with only holographic images traveling in them, ready to campaign and interact with journalists. Just in case you haven't had enough of Hillary Clinton, you could have ten buses with her hologram self campaigning in all the Super Tuesday states at once.
On my campaign bus, we had drones. They were never sophisticated enough to carry things very well, but in 2020 I'm sure candidates will be using them to hand out bumper stickers, carry banners at rallies, and project holographic images—including maybe fake cheering crowds.
It's possible the coming age of artificial intelligence and robots may replace the need for politicians. At least human ones.
Lest we think future elections are all about the candidates, perhaps the largest possibility on the horizon could come from digital direct democracy—the concept where citizens participate in real time input in the government. I gently advocate for a fourth branch of government, in which the people can vote on issues that matter to them and their decrees could have real legal consequence on Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Presidency.
Of course, that's only if government even exists anymore. It's possible the coming age of artificial intelligence and robots may replace the need for politicians. At least human ones. Some experts think superintelligent AI might be here in 10 to 15 years, so why not have a robot president that is totally altruistic and not susceptible to lobbyists and personal desires? This machine leader would simply always calculate the greatest good for the greatest amount of people, and go with that. No more Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Greens, or whatever else we are.
It's a brave new future we face, but technology will make our lives easier, more democratic, and more interesting. Additionally, it will change the game show we go through every four years called the US Presidential elections. In fact, if we're lucky—given how crazy these elections have made America look—maybe technology will make future elections disappear altogether.
Zoltan Istvan is a futurist, author ofThe Transhumanist Wager, and presidential candidate for theTranshumanist Party. He writes anoccasional columnfor Motherboard in which he ruminates on the future beyond natural human ability.A Breitbart staff writer is joining the Trump White House, Politico reported Sunday night.
Julia Hahn will be a special assistant to the president, according to the report, and is expected to work primarily under chief strategist and former Breitbart executive Stephen Bannon.
The report is based on “briefed on the move” and Politico said it’s “not clear whether the hire has been entirely finalized.”
In May 2016, Hanh penned an article for Breitbart headlined, “Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Five takeaways from McCabe’s allegations against Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race MORE Says U.S. Must Admit Muslim Migrants, Sends Kids to Private School that Screens Them Out.”
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That piece became an often pointed-to example of the rocky relationship between the Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and the Trump campaign after the candidate brought Bannon aboard.
Hahn’s piece suggested that Ryan was a hypocrite for sending his children to a Catholic school that offers tuition discounts to parishioners, contrasting the school’s position with Ryan’s opposition to Trump’s proposed religious test for Muslim immigrants.
Bannon had talked of wanting to destroy the Speaker when he headed Breitbart News, though since Trump’s victory, Ryan and Bannon appear to be getting along.Call it what you want, but Indeed Brewing Company can no longer market or label its seasonal spring honey beer as LSD Ale.
The feds made the brewery change the name of its Lavender Sunflower Date (that’s where the acronym came from) Honey Ale so that the acronym was no longer apparent.
The brewery did not face federal regulation until it started to cross state lines, and for a while, when Indeed was selling only in limited Wisconsin markets, they kept that particular beer in Minnesota. Regulators were concerned that the name implied there were drugs in the beer.
“The feds did not like the name LSD,” said Indeed co-founder and co-owner Thomas Whisenand. “They made that clear very quickly.”
But this year, the brewery has expanded to more Wisconsin markets and all of North Dakota, and they wanted to bring the beer to all their customers.
“We tried to find a way we could keep it on the label, like could we spell out the words and just bold the first letters,” Whisenand said. “But unfortunately we sell a regulated product and there’s not much you can do when the feds say no.”
The change came at a time when the brewery changed the packaging of the beer, which used to be sold in 750-milliliter bottles, but will now be sold as four-packs of 16-ounce cans.
Cans are better for the beer, and better for customers, Whisenand said.
“We’re much more efficient at canning, and it costs less,” he said. “And there are killer graphics on the can that sort of imply the roots of the beer.”
The beer, he says, is still the same product fans have come to expect.
“In fact, I think it’s even better,” Whisenand said. “It’s one of those love it or hate it beers. We think that’s a good sign, actually. If we can do that, it means we’re pushing the envelope. With the name, I think we were pushing the envelope, too. Unfortunately, the envelope broke.”
Lavender, Sunflower Honey, and Dates Honey Ale will be available in Indeed’s Northeast Minneapolis taproom starting this weekend and in cans at retail outlets the week of April 18.Republican men in Congress “aren’t as sensitive as they ought to be” when it comes to running against female candidates and appealing to female voters, Speaker John Boehner John Andrew BoehnerEx-GOP lawmaker joins marijuana trade group Crowley, Shuster moving to K Street On unilateral executive action, Mitch McConnell was right — in 2014 MORE (R-Ohio) said Thursday.
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“We’re trying to get them to be a little more sensitive,” Boehner said at his weekly Capitol press conference. “You look around the Congress, there are a lot more females in the Democratic caucus than there are in the Republican caucus. And some of our members just aren’t as sensitive as they ought to be.”
The Speaker was responding to a question about an article in Politico reporting that Republican men were getting a form of sensitivity training from party leaders.
In recent elections, a number of Republican Senate candidates have torpedoed their chances by making comments decried as insensitive or outright offensive to women.Sept. 22, 2012; Pasadena, CA, USA; UCLA Bruins defensive end Owamagbe Odighizuwa (94) and linebacker Anthony Barr (11) sack Oregon State Beavers quarterback Sean Mannion (4) and force a fumble in the third quarter of the game at the Rose Bowl. Oregon State won 27-20. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
UCLA Football, due to the rotational Pac-12 scheduling, will face the Oregon State Beavers this year for the first time since 2012.
RELATED: UCLA Schedule Preview, Colorado Buffaloes
The Beavers are embarking on a new era after the departure of iconic head coach Mike Riley. The Bruins will look to take advantage of Oregon State’s transition to grab a win before the Beavers inevitably improve.
The Oregon State Beavers:
Head Coach: Gary Andersen, 1st year
2014 Record: 5-7 overall, 2-7 Pac-12
The story of the season for Oregon State is the change at the head coach position. For fourteen of the last eighteen years, Mike Riley was the face of Oregon State football. His affable nature, quiet competence, and ability to find unheralded talent have defined the modern era of Beaver football. This is why his departure for the Nebraska job was so shocking.
But as beloved as Riley is/was among Beaver faithful, there’s a definite undercurrent of relief that Riley was able to depart on his own terms and that the athletic department was not forced to fire perhaps the most successful head coach in program history. Because Riley’s teams had started to stagnate, and his modest accomplishments were getting overshadowed by the meteoric rise of the hated rival Oregon Ducks in Eugene.
So Gary Andersen, coming off of a phenomenal rebuilding job at Utah State and then a successful, if brief, tenure at Wisconsin, has a rebuilding job ahead of him.
The Oregon State Offense:
The other locus of turnover for the Beavers is at quarterback, where Sean Mannion had held down the job, starting all but three games in four seasons.
As a result, the Beavers do not have a quarterback on the roster who has ever taken a snap in a college game. True freshman Seth Collins is expected to land |
writing is extremely cinematic. You have to work at it. You know, it's not going to lay down in front of you. You've got to give yourself to it, which I think is the mark of a great film. To me a great film is one that makes me think about it afterwards. The first thing I get from great cinema is, I'll say to myself, self, as I often address myself.
[LAUGHTER]
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Doctor Self?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Doctor Self to you and you. I'll say, what in the hell have I just seen? That occurred to me with Citizen Kane, and then a film like Blowup, and Belle de Jour. Have you ever seen Belle de Jour? When I first saw that and it ended, and the way it ended, I thought, what in the hell is this? But I couldn't get it out of my mind and I still haven't been able to after thirty or forty years. The same with [Michelangelo] Antonioni's Blowup. And both films sort of blur the line between reality and illusion.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Well don't all films, to some degree?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: No. Most films are probably worthless in that regard.
[LAUGHTER]
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Yours too?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Oh, absolutely. Beyond a shadow of a doubt.
[LAUGHTER]
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Well I don't agree with that.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: No but we're talking about works of art. We're not talking just about a movie that's playing this week somewhere.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Even though you did say three minutes ago that entertainment was a good way of judging a film.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: It might as well be because…
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: You shifted.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: But if you're going for anything else, other than entertainment today, the chances are you may be disappointed. And that's with the onset of digital cinematography and computer generated imagery where they can now do anything. And that's part of the problem. We can do anything. And I think the very best films were made when they had very little money but great invention, and great powers of invention, and everything was not at hand.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Have you changed your mind about a film?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: In what respect?
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: That you hated then loved, or the other way around.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Well I don't see a lot of new films today, to be very honest with you.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Ever?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Seldom. Seldom--maybe I see six or seven a year. My wife was up here a few weeks ago, I guess — Sherry Lansing — is still a great fan of the movies. I used to be, but certainly not as much anymore. I've taken now to watching a lot of the shows that you can stream or binge view on television, the cable shows, or stuff on Netflix or stuff like that, I think is more interesting than most of the films.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: But don't you think that it's interesting that some great films, is that you come to them, maybe with rules and formulae that you have in mind, and what makes them great is that they break those rules? And I think of some of the films that have most marked me is the ones I didn't initially always like.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Well, I may differ from you in the sense that I don't come to a film with any rules. I just want to be swept away. I simply want to be overwhelmed by the ideas, by the performance, by everything else in combination. Because film is the most collaborative art form there is. And you know why? You want to be a painter, all you've got to do is fill a blank canvas yourself. If you want to be a writer all you needed was a blank sheet of paper and a typewriter. Now you don't even need the paper if you have a computer. But you create this work of art, you the painter or the writer. But in film we call it "The Five Ton Pencil". You're working with literally hundreds of people; people who have great skills and who contribute so much to every film that's ever been made—
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: And yet a great filmmaker puts his stamp on the film. How?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Not necessarily. Look, it's possible, I suppose for a student of film, a film historian, to look at a piece of film and say Orson Welles directed that. Or possibly Federico Fellini. But Joseph Mankiewicz? That would be a lot different. Or even [Luis] Buñuel's film of Belle de Jour, which to me is a masterpiece, a great, great work of cinematic art. And yet it's filmed so simply. But behind it, behind the simplicity and the lack of style, the lack of technique, is the sensibility of Buñuel, one of the creators of surrealism. There's no more surrealistic film imaginable than Belle de Jour, or if you really get into it, more disturbing than that. It's way out on the edge. It's about human desire. And it's about the difficulty of achieving a sexual relationship between a husband and a wife and the extent to which they both go to make that work. And, boy, it's graphic without being upsetting. Although there are parts of it that could upset people.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: It's not very graphic. One of the things that makes it so great is his Buñuelwho takes what would, in somebody else's hands, be a tawdry subject
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Yeah.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: …and strips it of those elements. When he made that film his friends said, are you out of your mind? This is pulp fiction. Not that Pulp Fiction. A different pulp fiction. Why are you doing this? And what he did, he takes a story of the woman of the bourgeoisie who works on the side as a call girl and he took all sexuality out of that.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: You know what's happening though. You know what's going on with her at all times.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: But he does it in such a way, that the very thing that subject is about is not what you feel in the film and that's what gives it this disconnect that makes it a great film.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Well, I won't dispute that. But I still do not believe that it is so profoundly stylistic that you could look at that, even having seen Buñuel's other films and said, this is definitely a Buñuel film. Whereas you can with Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, even films that Orson Welles didn't direct but just appeared in you can see his touch in The Third Man, which he was an actor in for a brief period of time. But the whole film reeks of Orson Welles, even when he's not on screen. So there are great stylists.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Did you ever meet Orson Welles?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: No I never met Orson Welles. And I'm glad I didn't.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Why?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Because I heard he was a miserable son-of-a-bitch.
[LAUGHTER]
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: It wouldn't be too good for two such people —
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: I was going to say —
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: — to meet over a meal.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: — are there people going around saying the same about William Friedkin?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Probably. Undoubtedly. You might, perhaps, after this evening.
[LAUGHTER]
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: I told you, you got to keep me awake 'cause I'm on antibiotics. You're doing a good job.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Are you falling asleep? I want to go back to what you said about rules.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: I don't have any rules. I want to be… I don't want answers. I don't want a film to give me answers, only questions. And the films I just named, like Blow Up — Blow Up is like a murder mystery with no solution. There is no solution and after you've seen the film — how many of you have seen it? Let me see your hands if you've seen it. Yeah. After you've seen the film, you don't know what the hell to make of this, except you've been totally involved if you've given yourself to it. The same with Belle de Jour. When it's over, the last shot, what the hell have I just seen? That's what I'm looking for. And I don't get it a lot today. You get other things, certainly.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: When have you have it recently?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: What's a film that really captured…? I love the film Prisoners. I thought that's the film last year that moved me the most in all respects: performance, direction, cinematography, the story which ends on an ambiguous note, it's filled with surprises. It's very involving and very disturbing. And that's what I look for. I no longer expect to find the kind of comedies that I once loved, like The Marx Brothers, or even The Three Stooges, or early Woody Allen. Those are comedies. But you don't go to Woody Allen anymore for comedy. He's basically not doing the kind of slapstick satires that he once did. He's doing more serious films.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Does it bother you when you read about Woody Allen and his personal life? Does that impact how you view his films?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: I don't read about Woody Allen's personal life. I've known Woody Allen for fifty years. And I think I know about as much about him as there is to be known. I'm not talking about specific incidents in his life. I don't know anything about that. I know what you're alluding to. But that seems to me to be, I don't know, a he-said she-said kind of situation.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: But is there a point where morality gets in the way? Leni Riefenstahl: great director or not?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: She made at least one great film, Triumph of the Will, which is Nazi propaganda. But it's a great film as a piece of filmmaking. Do I agree with what she's propounding? Absolutely not. Nevertheless it's a very powerful film. In its day in the early 1930s it influenced a great many people, millions of people, to follow this little madman into hell.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: So I'm always troubled by this thing — is it a great film if morally what it's putting across is so antithetical to- —
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: To what?
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: — to —
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: To our standards? To yours? Or mine? Or his?
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Yes?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: No.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: And by the way I'm all in favor of films making you question morality.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Ah, we've made some progress.
[LAUGHTER]
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: We're going to make more because we're coming back to you.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Look, it's all subjective. Something that you may — I may get a message from these flowers here that is totally different from the art director's intention.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: They're plastic.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: They are plastic and it looked to me —
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Did you know?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Yes, of course. But it looked to me —
[LAUGHTER]
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: No you didn't, you thought they were real. Come on.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: No, I thought it was a funeral. I thought somebody died.
[LAUGHTER]
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Especially when I saw you walk in all dressed in black.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: It's blue.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Is it blue?
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Yes, that's your sense of darkness.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: I must be getting older.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: We're all getting older and at exactly the same pace.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: I don't want to impose my morality on anybody in an audience or anywhere else.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Yes you do because when you made —
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: No I don't.
[LAUGHTER]
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Hold on, because here's the proof. The first thing that put you on the map —
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Which map?
[LAUGHTER]
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: My little map.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: No, start defining these things. What map are you talking about? I didn't know there was a map.
[LAUGHTER]
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: This narrow-minded audience map—the Hollywood map. You made a doc. You're a young man, you're coming out of high school, you're not going anywhere, you get a job for a television station and you hear about a guy on death row and you decide to make a documentary about him, The People vs. Paul Crump. At the time you believed he was innocent. But you admit in your book that it benefitted you to believe that.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: You could put it that way. I put it differently in my book as I will put it to you now, Stephen. I believed, because this man as a result of my film--he was going to the electric chair—and when I met him, he had been at least seven years, maybe nine years on death row. And when I met him, I did believe in his innocence, but more importantly, I believed that his life was worth saving. As did the warden of the Cook County Jail in Chicago where he was. The warden had executed two people before Paul Crump and he didn't want to execute a third. So he allowed me to make this documentary on death row. As a result of the documentary, the Governor of Illinois--who later went to prison himself on criminal charges, his name was Otto Kerner, he was a big figure in the Democratic Party and on a short list to be a presidential candidate—he was the governor of Illinois and he pardoned Paul Crump to life imprisonment without possibility of parole as a result of seeing my film. And sent me a note to that effect. He told me that his parole and pardon board had voted two-to-one to let this guy go to the electric chair. So then Crump stayed in prison for, I don't remember how many years, at least twenty more, maybe more. Finally another governor, another parole and pardon board that had no memory of this incident, decided to let Paul Crump out of prison with the proviso that he confess to having committed the murder. And he did. He confessed. So the point in my book where I say, am I now absolutely certain of his innocence? No I'm not. But that wouldn't matter to me. He was a life worth saving. I think it's incumbent upon us--
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Well, let me read the evidence.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: The evidence of what?
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Your own words.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Please, you're going to love this.
[LAUGHTER]
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: You know I admire Billyso much, that's why it's fun to do this 'cause I could give him a hard time.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Go ahead. And you be the judge of whether I contradicted myself.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: "Was it that the state wanted its pound of flesh, or was he in fact guilty of murder? I tend to believe now that he was, but in 1962 I had to believe he was not." But here's where you go on to say: "A more troubling question for me is whether I would have made the film if I knew then that he was guilty. I was looking for a subject to film; he was looking for a get-out-of-jail card. I don't dwell on the question because it would mean we both gamed the system. Paul got his freedom, I got my career."
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Isn't that great? Jesus Christ! Who wrote this?
[LAUGHTER]
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: By the way, it's so well written.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: It is. It's stunning. I'm absolutely flabbergasted.
[LAUGHTER]
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: It is. But it does contradict what you just said.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: No it doesn't.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: How ambitious were you?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: I do say in there, I'm now convinced that he may have been guilty. He may have been guilty. So what? His life was spared. That to me, is… I was an instrument of God in my view in saving his life.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Do you believe in God?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Absolutely. I believe in God. I don't belong to any particular religion, but I believe in the teachings of Jesus as they're set down in the New Testament. I don't feel close to God in either a synagogue or a church or a mosque. But I can't help but believe in the teachings of Jesus. I think they're almost impossible to live up to, but they are a wonderful ideal. I've always sort of inherently believed that, Stephen, without any evidence. But what my life is about, what The Exorcist film is about is the mystery of faith. That mystery and all of life has been a great mystery to me. I raise the possibility there forty-five or fifty years after I made that film, that this fella whose life I saved from the electric chair, may have been guilty. He confessed to the crime in order to get out of prison. I think I would have done the same thing. If I was in his shoes and I had done as he had, forty years in a maximum-security prison, I would have confessed to any damn thing to get out.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: But that's not the point.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Well what is the point?
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: The point is that you say, Paul got his freedom--
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: You're going to read it again? I like it when he reads it.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: [LAUGHTER] By the way, it's great to read. It was very well written.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Oh, it's good stuff.
[LAUGHTER]
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: It is and that's a great story. You got your career. It put you on the map.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: What map?
[LAUGHTER]
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: That we were talking about.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: I wasn't in Hollywood. I made that film in Chicago.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: By the way, tell them not me.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Well I am talking to both of you. Unfortunately, this chair is angled toward you.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: We can turn it.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: And if I turn to the farthest group of people on the left, I'm off mic. Other than that, I can go like this and talk. Oh, that's good.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: It led to you getting documentary work for David Wolper, who then was a big television guy. It led to your making your first films. And led to your directing for Alfred Hitchcock and you did meet Alfred Hitchcock.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Yes I did.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Tell us about Alfred Hitchcock.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Well I'll tell you about the two very brief meetings I had with the master. And by the way, all you need to do is see Hitchcock's films and study them and you'll catch on how to be a filmmaker. Not simply the suspense films, but he was a master at handling every kind of scene, love scenes, double entendre, humor, some of his stuff is very funny, even within the darkest of his films like Psycho. I was invited by a man named Norman Lloyd, who produced The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. He's still with us, thank God, he's ninety-nine years old. And he was an actor, he worked with Orson Welles and Hitchcock. He worked in the Mercury Theater for Orson Welles and he worked on Hitchcock's films and later he was one of the producers of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, which was at one time called Alfred Hitchcock Presents. It was on for ten years. When it came around to the last episode, it was going to go off the air, one of my agents at the William Morris office showed that documentary that I made about this gentleman on death row to Norman Lloyd. Norman Lloyd said, this film has more suspense in the first ten minutes than anything we've done all year. He invited me to come down and to direct the last episode of the The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. And it happened to be a script that was written by a guy who became a very fine screenwriter named James Bridges, and there's a theater at UCLA, the movie theater is called The James Bridges Theater now. Bridges later went on to write The China Syndrome and a couple of other really good films that I can't recall at the moment, but they were very strong in their day and memorable. He wrote the script that I did, which was called "Off Season". It was an hour TV show. The actor in that show was John Gavin, who is the guy in Psycho who winds up taking down Norman Bates [Anthony Perkins]. If it wasn't for John Gavin, people would still be checking in to The Bates Motel. But John Gavin had to approve me because he was in that show. We were filming at The Bates Motel itself on the lot at Universal [Studios]. He looked at my documentary and he approved me to direct this and I did. And I had a really rough time with it 'cause I didn't know what I was doing. I had no idea what I was doing. Norman Lloyd said, "I'm going to give you one piece of advice," which I immediately proceeded to ignore. He said, "Because you're young—you're really a kid—and all these guys are veterans on this crew" — the camera man had won the Academy Award for photographing The Country Girl with Grace Kelly—very experienced crew. He said, "So what you have to do is you've got to win their confidence immediately. So choose, when you're blocking your shots:" — and I wondered what the hell he was talking about because I never blocked shots — he said, "When you're blocking your shots make sure you choose the simplest set up you can do and get it one take. If it's a close up of a glass of water that you have to make, shoot that first, do it in one take and move on. And then the crew will be convinced that you know what you're doing." And I thought, that sounds like a load of shit. So I set up a six-page shot that went across two sets. You didn't do six-page shots in those days, you did two or three lines at a time, then covered it then moved on. But I did this shot and time was going by and going by. There were murmurs on the set. But I got through that day and the next day Norman Lloyd saw the dailies on that shot and he came down to the set and I sort of have peripheral hearing and I was standing there blocking another shot with the actors. And the cameraman was about six or eight feet behind me and I heard Norman Lloyd come up and whispered to him. He said, "Jack, that shot that you guys made, it's fantastic, it's just beautiful." And the camera man that fought me on it, who said, "Geez, kid, let's just break this up so we can get the hell out of here," he said to Norman Lloyd, he said, "You like that shot?" [Norman Lloyd] said, "I loved it." He said, "It was my idea." And that was my first lesson in Hollywood.
[LAUGHTER]
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Good lesson.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: But about two days later, Norman Lloyd brought [Alfred] Hitchcock to the set to meet me. It was as though the waters had parted. Hitchcock sort of waddled into the studio surrounded by a retinue of men in black suits but white shirts.
[LAUGHTER]
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Blue suits.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: No. these were black. It was the Universal couture and it was the style of dress at Black Rock, which was what Universal was called. And they come in with Hitchcock,and Norman Lloyd brings Hitchcock over to me, and I had on a t-shirt and probably these same pants. Or something very much like them. Hitchcock came over without a smile on his face. He put out his hand like this. It's as though I was supposed to kiss it or something. I took his hand and it was wet, sort of like a wet fish. And I said, "Oh Mr. Hitchcock, what a great honor it is to meet you. I've learned so much from your films." And he said—he didn't even acknowledge that—he said, "Mr. Friedkin, usually our directors wear ties." And I thought he was kidding me. I said, 'Well I guess in my haste to get down here — " By the time I had finished the sentence he had left. I didn't see him again until four years later. It was four years later at the Directors Guild of America Awards. I had won that award for The French Connection. The banquet was at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. It wasn't in an auditorium like this, it was all tables and people had drinks and dinner and then they put on an award show. And while I'm up there receiving this award, I see Hitchcock at the table right down front with his whole family and all of his agents and I saw him and when I finished my acceptance speech, I had on a rented tuxedo with one of those snap-on bowties, and I walked down the center steps instead of to the side and I went right over to Hitchcock's table and I had this award. And I snapped my tie at him. And I said to him, "How do you like the tie now, Hitch?"
[LAUGHTER]
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: He didn't smile. Nor did he remember. But I did. I carry that with me for four years.
[LAUGHTER]
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: But I worship this guy as a filmmaker, you know? He has written the book. It's that simple.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: I want to show us a clip from The French Connection. You know the clip. This is the most extraordinary car chase. We're just going to watch part of it then we're going to talk about it.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Where do you see it?
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Well you can watch there.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Oh, it's up there. Oh, I see.
[CLIP THE FRENCH CONNECTION]
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: That's really, it's pure filmic experience. You couldn't do that in another medium.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: That's true. I think I said that in my book.
[LAUGHTER]
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: I know I heard it somewhere.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: That's true. I couldn't tell you the page this time. So here's one of things that's interesting about this film. First of all, you'd done four films before that.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Yeah.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Some pretty good films too. And then, here you are, in your early thirties and you can't get a job, for what? Two years?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Something like that.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: What did you think of your life at that point? Did you think, I'm never going to work again?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: No, you just keep going. You just keep plowing ahead. That's my advice to all of you, whatever your ambitions may be. The young woman who interviewed me for the LMU Magazine asked me, what would you say is the most important thing for a young filmmaker, what quality should they most have? And I said, endurance. And a belief in yourself. With that goes the ability to take a hit. 'Cause you're going to get it.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: But you lost that belief in yourself at some point.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Not really. I knew that I had lost touch with the public, and by extension the critics. But I've never lost belief in myself to this extent. I have never not believed that I could visualize a film in my mind's eye and not go out and make it. If I ever reach that point where I didn't think I could realize the film that I have in my head I would have to stop at that point. And I'm not ready to stop on my own. It's going to take that act of God to stop me. If that happens in the near future, you'll remember I said it here.
[LAUGHTER]
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Then these could be real, you know. My memorial. I took the hits. There's that line in Frank [Sinatra's] "My Way". "I took the blows and carried on and did it my way."
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: I've never liked that song.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: That's the national anthem of America.
[LAUGHTER]
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Well, there you go. So, here's what's interesting beyond what you went through at that early age, not being able to work: all the things you wanted in this film, you didn't get. You wanted Jackie Gleason for the leading role.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: True.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: You wanted Francisco Rabal for the role that Fernando Rey made famous. You weren't interested in an unknown actor named Gene Hackman.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: True.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Working with him and you weren't getting the performance because he was uncomfortable. And yet that film is as good as anything made in the 1970s.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: It's weird isn't it? It's pretty strange that it turned out that way. And that's all I can say as a spectator. Now, of course, these chase scenes that they do today are far more elaborate than that. The only difference is, we had to do everything you see and they don't anymore. They can generate it on a computer. But it looks pretty great, I'd say—the chases I see now. But all the stuff on the street, I had no permission to do any of that. For most of those shots, we drove the car at 90 miles an hour for twenty-six blocks with no crowd control, no traffic control. The only thing we had on top of the car, which you couldn't see when we made the point of view shots, was we had a police gumball on top, a siren, and a flashing light. Other than that, we just blew through twenty-six blocks of traffic at 90 miles [per hour]. Could you imagine trying to get permission to do that? I couldn't.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: You couldn't to get some of your crew to do it. You did it yourself.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: I made the over-the-shoulder shots because the director of photography and the camera operator were family men, they had kids, and I was single. And it was the stuntman who drove the over-the-shoulder shots, a guy named Bill Hickman. On the floor next to me was an on-duty New York City policeman named Randy Jurgensen. He's told the story many times himself. He was there, all padded up, as I was. He had a badge in case we got in trouble.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: But you could have killed somebody.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Possibly, yes.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Did you know that at the time?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Yes.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Was that the right thing to do?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: No, I wouldn't do it today.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: At what point did you cross a line where you say, I'm not going to do this any more?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: I guess I became an adult. I sort of matured.
[LAUGHTER]
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: At what point did you become an adult?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: To the extent that you see me now, and no further. No, I didn't care. I have always valued human life and my honest feeling is that there is not one single shot in any movie ever made--and I'm not exaggerating when I say this--that is worth a squirrel getting a twisted ankle and yet, what I had then to compensate for that was total belief that nothing was going to go wrong, that I could pull this thing off. And it was only that faith, that belief, and my belief in my colleagues that they could pull this off with me. That's all. Given that faith, which I may have even further, I would never do such a thing, anymore, no matter what.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Let's go back to the squirrel and the twisted ankle. Do you really believe that?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Yes. Do have someone's life endangered? For a shot in a movie?
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Abstracting that, to art in general. The Taj Mahal, would you say the same thing of that?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: It's a beautiful building. Did people die in the making of it? I suppose they did. They died in the building of the Temple of Solomon. Is it worth? I don't know. You'd have to ask their families that question.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: But I'm asking you.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: I would say no.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Not one life.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: At this point in my life.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: But you hesitate.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Look, here's why—at this point in my life: Vincent van Gogh gave his life to his art and got nothing back in return. He died without having sold a painting. These paintings today sell for $125-$150 million. He couldn't sell one. His brother Theo was the dealer for the Impressionists, and he sold a lot of Impressionists, but he couldn't sell a Vincent [van Gogh]. Why? And now why today? And Van Gogh died, I believe, at the age of forty-four. He only painted for ten years. You guys remember Johnny Carson, who used to do The Tonight Show? Or is that before your time? I remember one night coming home. I was living in New York and I turned on the TV set. Johnny Carson was on, he was doing one of his monologues. And that was the night that a Vincent Van Gogh painting sold to a Japanese collector for $85 million. Here was Johnny Carson and he was saying, do you know that a painting sold today for $85 million? It's the largest price that has ever been paid for a work of art. Of course the artist was Vincent van Gogh. He said, but what most people don't know is that when van Gogh made this painting, he was in a mental institution. And the reason he was in a mental institution is because he said, one day I'm going to sell a painting for $85 million. Now I think that's perfectly illustrative of how the mystery of fate works. What's different today about a van Gogh than it was in 1890 when he died? Not that long ago. He made over 3,600 works: oils, watercolors, drawings, prints. Not a one of them sold.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: The mystery of life or faith? They are two different things.
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: They are sort of connected, I would say.
STEPHEN GALLOWAY: Are they?
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: Yes, I think so. We have no control over our fate. You can walk out of this building and get hit by a car and not expect it. Or there's a f—ing earthquake and we all go down.
[LAUGHTER]
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: What do we have to do with an earthquake? I didn't do it, God. Yeah, but you're going to pay for whoever else did it.
STEPHEN GALLOW |
Merlo/NPR Juana Merlo/NPR
The search for an unsigned artist or band kicked off its submission period on January 12 and closed on February 2, 2016, drawing more than 6,000 valid submissions from all 50 states. Entrants must have been at least 21 years old and currently live in the U.S. to have entered. View entries from around the country on the Contest's official Tumblr page, which highlights performances with furry friends, 17-member brass bands, and on desks at the beach, snowy mountains and in subway stations. Did we mention there's one with a desk on fire and an entire performance on a treadmill?
Since 2008, the Tiny Desk Concerts series has presented a stage shared by well-known musicians – Adele, T-Pain, Yo-Yo Ma, John Legend, Wilco – and artists on the rise – Courtney Barnett, Chvrches, San Fermin and The Lone Bellow. More than 500 intimate performances have been recorded for the series, available at NPR.org/music, YouTube and on Roku via their free, HD-quality and TV-ready Tiny Desk concerts channel.
About NPR Music
NPR Music collaborates with NPR's newsmagazines, public radio Member Stations and the passionate NPR community to celebrate great music in every genre. Visit NPR.org/music to find the complete Tiny Desk Concerts series, live music, extensive archives of performances, interviews and reviews of artists from all genres.
About Lagunitas Brewing Company
Lagunitas Brewing Company began on a kitchen stove in Northern California in 1993. From actually getting beers into bottles and onto the streets, Lagunitas looks to the future... From expanding the Petaluma Brewery to building a second in Chicago and soon a third in Azusa CA to bringing its flagship IPA across the pond Lagunitas could probably make good beer on the Moon. Wherever you go, beer speaks, people mumble. More mumblings at www.lagunitas.com.
Contact
Press inquiries, interview requests: Hugo Rojo and Isabel Lara
Email: mediarelations@npr.orgWill Sutherland, son of Cricket Australia's chief executive James Sutherland and one of the most talented young athletes in the country, has revealed his decision to choose cricket over football.
Having led Australia at Under-19 level but also been among the most closely watched AFL players at junior level, 17-year-old Sutherland has chosen to accept the offer of a multi-year rookie deal with Victoria rather than nominating for the AFL draft.
"This was an incredibly tough decision," Sutherland said. "Most of the advice that I received was to just follow my passion. That sounds easy enough, but not so much when my passion is for both sports.
"I really loved my experience in the recent Under-18 National Championships when representing Vic Metro and this only made the decision more difficult. When it came down to it, my love and passion for the game of cricket just won out.
"I've thoroughly enjoyed representing my state and country in the under-age ranks and the prospect of potentially being able to continue this at the senior level is very much my dream. I'm excited and relieved about this decision and will now look to focus on completing my Year 12 studies."
A powerful batsman and strong fast-medium bowler, Sutherland had been openly courted by the AFL amid expectations that he could be a top 10 draft pick. Details of Sutherland's contract with the Bushrangers will not be finalised until an MoU is agreed between CA and the Australian Cricketers Association.
"We're pleased Will has made this decision and we look forward to supporting him through the rest of his Year 12 studies and his Cricket Pathway," Cricket Victoria's general manager Shaun Graf said.
"The full Cricket Victoria squad lists for the upcoming 2017-18 season will be announced following the resolution of an MoU."The smelly canary in our cities
By Jesse Hawley |
Usually the butt of jokes and objects of revulsion, it’s time we started listening to the message of the Australian white ibis. Share this story Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
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LET’S CONSIDER THE ibis: a bird, the butt of jokes, and an Australian icon. If you are one of the 90 per cent of Australians living in an urban area, you’ll probably know of them. Formally the Australian white ibis (Threskiornis molucca), they are striking birds, large and cream coloured, muck-stained as they stride down the street, leaping onto bin rims with defiant integrity and dunking their bald, wrinkled heads into unknown waste.
Their face tapers to a bizarre curved beak often lost in a saucy kebab wrapper. They strut about on long legs and toes, scaly and leprous like their heads. Making them stranger yet, their tails are adorned with frayed black feathers, while the undersides of their wings bear a red-raw streak of arm.
And yet, the public seem most offended by their nests – a honking, squawking mess in the canopy of street-side palms.
“Canary Island date palms – that’s their preferred nesting tree,” says Vicki Currie, Biodiversity Team Leader for the Inner West Council in Sydney. “They’ve got just the right density of foliage for nesting, and the structure to support the birds’ weight. We’ve got lots of palms. And where you’ll find the palms, you’ll find ibis nesting.”
What hits you first about the nests is not the sight, but the unique smell: dank, bitter, and stale, like garbage drying in the sun. It’s oddly tied to the city and to the ibis, and I’ve wondered about its true source.
I told Vicki about the palms near my house in Petersham, also in Sydney’s Inner West. “Actually,” she said, “I received a call from one of the residents there last week. The ibis numbers have been growing over the last three years, and this season it’s been particularly bad – with baby ibis being pulled from the trees by crows and eaten on the street. The residents took some to the vets or even adopted them, but we’ll need to do something soon.”
City-slicker. An urban ibis with a wingtag, 059-yellow, part of a large-scale study into ibis movement and foraging patterns conducted with the Australian Museum, NSW National Parks, and the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney. (Image: Ronald Woan/flickr)
Despite all this, the Australian white ibis remains an icon. Dedicated to ibis are dozens of Facebook groups with thousands of committed followers, paintings, comics, blogs, costumes, and radio shows. Somehow, the cultural spotlight has landed on the ibis’ hooked and unsuspecting face in the crowd and it’s there to stay: a funny-looking thing for us all to mock, a sanctioned target for jokes and memes, an avian Rob Schneider or Nickelback.
How old is this joke, though? Ibis are native birds and have been in Australia for millennia. Were people laughing at the ibis during the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics? Perhaps. How about the launch of the Surfers Paradise hotel on the Gold Coast during the 1920s — were we scoffing at scungy city ibis then?
No, because there was no such thing as city ibis then.
Looking at 1950s Sydney alone, there were few counts of ibis. Contrast that with Sydney 2014 and almost 9000 ibis were counted in the annual ibis census. Urban ibis are new.
So — why did thousands of birds choose to land in cities around the country to dodge cars and cats, eat festering refuse, and bear the brunt of hisses, hurls, and glares? Let’s take a trip to the country to find out.
The Murray-Darling Basin stretches across western New South Wales, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory, Queensland, and South Australia, collecting six per cent of Australia’s rainfall and providing habitat for 367 species of birds and 85 species of mammals. It was also once the primary habitat of the Australian white ibis.
The pre-colonial basin was lush, with the white ibis just one of 98 species of waterbird. Large white and glossy, ibis in their traditional habitat stride elegantly through the reeds and mudflats, their curved beak supremely adapted for sliding into the squelchy mud, sensitive to detect and extract crayfish, mussels and other tasties. Their heads are featherless, hygienic, and easy to keep clean. Contrasted against white plumage, their tail feathers are fringed with delicate, black lace-like feathers — the undersides of their wings glowing a rosy red when courting mates.
An Australian white ibis fossicking for aquatic invertebrates in a traditional habitat alongside a glossy ibis. (Image: Flickr/Geoff Whalan)
The basin has changed substantially since, and today is used intensively for agriculture and drinking water, supporting up to 4 million Australians. Our heavy reliance on the basin has come at the cost of our precious wildlife. As the wetlands dried up over the decades, ecosystems began collapsing — less water meant less plants, and less invertebrates, less fish, mammals, and birds.
According to historical observations provided by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, 20 out of the 85 species of mammals living around the basin have become locally extinct since European settlement. And that’s just mammals. Not the ibis, though. A honking wretch of an alarm, ibis were adaptable and enduring enough to flee the dying wetlands – in the shape of a large V – to the big smoke.
The ibis began arriving to town in droves, but instead of heeding their message for the plight of the Murray-Darling Basin, we got distracted by their funny beaks. The ibis landed in our cities – littered with cylindrical food dispensers full of half-eaten sandwiches, fruit, and chicken bits, footpaths where coffee cups rolled and chip packets skated. Once here, the ibis’ city populations boomed, while their wetland counterparts dwindled.
In the wild they eat crustaceans and insects – high fat, high protein foods, explains Sean Coogan, a nutritional researcher at the University of Sydney. “They’re carnivores. In Hyde Park where I study them, though, they seem to eat mostly carb-rich foods: noodles, bread, cookies. They happily eat food from this guy who actually cooks dinner for them the night before: rice with sausage, kale and carrots, and ramen… chicken flavour.”
“It was really funny during my experiments; I’d set out one experimental food in a black container and the ibis would eat from it. But as soon as I’d put out three dishes, the ibis would grow wary. They’re street smart. I ended up having to put the food in transparent containers so they could see it wasn’t a trap,” he says.
“I’m not sure why the ibis are eating such high-carb foods from the trash. I guess it’s all they can find. People typically don’t throw out protein or fats because they’re more expensive. Strangely though, even when given the choice — the ibis still chose carbohydrate-rich experimental foods. What they’re foraging for in the trash has to be an important consideration in any management plan.”
Rubbish is a staple for ibis, and in a sense, their colourful street names — bin chicken, trash turkey — mean more than we realise. A study monitored ibis for three days in Sydney and found that 40-50 per cent of birds fed from landfill daily; our excess has become fuel for the birds, allowing them to turn our waste into more baby ibis. With such decadence to live off, ibis are proliferating. More and more palm trees are becoming nests, stinky and noisy, and in some councils they must be ‘managed’. Our trash has manifested into walking, squawking animals and we don’t like it.
That familiar stench drifting from ibis nests? It’s not the smell of the birds, but of our own rubbish, our neglectful and disposable decisions coming home to roost. Ibis are a pungent indicator of our vast environmental footprint: they’re our smelly canaries.
But it’s not all doom and gloom, for the Australian white ibis is a paradoxical bird. They are rare where they should be abundant and over-abundant where they shouldn’t be; at the same time they’re both vulnerable and a pest – it’s illegal to harm them, yet councils have permits to cull them. And for all the disgust and jokes cast at them, they wield a great social leverage – each year in October, hundreds participate in the ibis census, counting tens of thousands of ibis over the country. And on 21 December, almost 15,000 Sydney-siders are either ‘interested’ or ‘going’ to an ibis-themed Facebook event … called ‘International Glare at Ibises Day’.
The Australian white ibis. Watercolour paintings by Matteo Grilli at Blogspot, used with artist’s permission.
I asked Sean and Vicki their opinions on the ibis.
“I love them,” says Vicki. “I find it difficult to see them in an urban environment living off scraps. I want to provide them with as much healthy habitat as possible, and get people seeing them in a nice light, like kookaburras or any other Australian icon. They’re beautiful, regal birds.”
“I came here from Canada and thought ‘Wow! These are really cool birds’,” says Sean. “Over time I saw them eating garbage and started to think they were gross. But then I started working with them and learned individuals, their personalities – some liked carrots, some didn’t, some were bold, some were flighty. I had a lot of fun in the gardens feeding those birds. And you know what’s weird? I even started to like their smell – it’s something.”
Ibis have our attention, for good and bad, and it can be channelled for change. Their social media appeal needs to be curbed for good, not inane. Spread the plight of the ibis, dispose of your rubbish properly, don’t waste food (food created on farmland irrigated by the Murray-Darling), and respect ibis. Next year, let’s see ‘International Care for Ibises Day’.
For more information on the Australian white ibis community survey, visit the page.
Jesse Hawley works as a Communications Advisor on CSIRO’s social media team. Outside of this role he’s a passionate science writer and illustrator, depicting subjects from marsupial lions to tummy terraria, household piranha plants to humans as disoriented apes. He has a special love for comedy and everything evolutionary.A distressed father in the Mitauli area of Uttar Pradesh chose to beg in order to arrange a vehicle to carry his daughter’s dead body back home on Friday. According to reports, Suatali area’s Ramesh sat beside his daughter’s body on the road, begging money from pedestrians. The incident came to light after a photograph, wherein Ramesh could be seen begging, went viral on social media.
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Despite his pleas for a vehicle to carry his dead daughter back to their home in Suatali, no one came to his rescue. Subsequently, Ramesh put the body on a footpath outside the hospital and started begging from passers-by. Authorities, however, said that Ramesh had not intimated the hospital for an ambulance, according to reporters.
Mitauli’s Chief Development Officer Amit Singh Bansal sought all documents related to the girl’s admission and treatment. He also said, “If the girl’s father had intimated hospital staff for the ambulance, the same could have been arranged.”
Hospital authorities informed that the girl was admitted to the Mitauli Health Centre on Thursday with high fever. She was later referred to the Lakhimpur Kheri district hospital where she was declared brought dead. The incident is starkly similar to that of Odisha’s Dana Majhi. On August 24, Majhi had walked about 10 kilometres along with his teenage daughter, carrying his wife’s body on his shoulders after he was allegedly denied a hearse by Kalahandi district hospital.
with inputs from PTIThe NHL's silly season is still in full effect as free agency nears on Sunday, and Steve Ott's name continues to make the rounds as one of the more noteworthy items of trade bait in the league.
Mike Ribeiro being traded shook this fan-base like a bit of an earthquake. Intellectually it made people wonder how the Stars can possibly replace his production next year, and how the lines would shake out. The loss of Steve Ott would shake something more emotional. His 39 points and face-off prowess aside, people believe that he is "the heart" of this franchise right now, and that his loss would be unendurable.
Nevertheless, rumors of his removal persist, mainly from ESPN's Pierre LeBrun, who blogged about it this weekend...
Mike Ribeiro was shipped out Friday by the Dallas Stars, and now we wait and see if the same will happen to Steve Ott as the club tries to reshape its core a little and get younger. A source told ESPN.com that Ott is getting plenty of interest, just as he did before the trade deadline.
And the tweeted about it again on Monday morning...
Steve Ott remains in play... My own personal belief is that he'd be a great fit in Montreal. He's got size and skill, defend some teammates.
In the end, Stars could just hold onto to him if they don't get the offer they're looking for.
Having survived one round of "Uh oh, Steve Ott is going to get moved" in late February Stars fans don't seem overly concerned just yet, which is surprising considering the credentials the perpetrator of this particular speculation possesses, but the anxiety could grow as Sunday approaches.
Is Steve Ott really all that available? The hockey reasons to move Mike Ribeiro were many. The age, contract and role of Steve Ott are a different story altogether...
Ott's chance to seize control of a top-six roster spot may have gone awry last year, partly due to what kind of player he ultimately is and partly due to the mix with which Glen Gulutzan had to work, but he's 29 years old, he's under control, and he possesses the hard-to-play against defensive attributes this team is starting to embrace as they redefine who they are and what they do.
39 points is nothing to sneeze at either, nor is the fact that he's twice been a 20 goal scorer or that he was #14 in the league in face-off percentage last season. Those are useful skill-sets that made him a covet-able asset as the trade deadline came and went. He's the kind of guy a team adds to be one of the missing pieces on the way to a Cup.
That's a tough kind of guy to part with. That he's been here for nearly ten years, has worn the "A" quite a bit, and is one of the most popular players (if not the most popular) makes it even worse.
Yet he's clearly in play as one of the Stars most attractive bargaining chips. Whether it will ever be labeled as such or not, the Stars are in fact in some form of a rebuild right now, and their stated goal is to continue getting younger and more skilled - Seeking a core of talent around which to build in the coming two or three seasons. Ott is a very talented, useful piece in the NHL, but is he part of "the future"?
It cannot be ignored that he plays a brand of hockey not completely dissimilar to what Brenden Morrow did for years and years. Morrow's situation is unique to him, yes, but it's also a reminder that 10 or 12 years given to that kind of abrasive style can take a significant toll. Will Steve Ott still be Steve Ott in 2015? This Stars fan would certainly like to think so, but it's not a crazy question to ask by any stretch of the imagination.
There are currently, and there always will be, somewhere around 20-23 NHL GM's thinking that their team, according to their long term plan, will be a competitive cup contender in 4-6 years, and the remainder who think they are now, or that they're close. The Stars are firmly in the first category, and if they ever want to move back into the others then parting ways with a franchise cornerstone who turns 30 this summer might be a necessary step.
If the return is right.
I am not advocating trading Steve Ott. I love Steve Ott. I'd love to see him and Cody Eakin and/or Vern Fiddler patrolling the third line next season with another FA acquisition as part of what will hopefully be an honest-to-hockey-gods shutdown checking line - But everyone not named Benn or Eriksson is for sale, and even they'd be up for grabs if the return was right.
Steve Ott would only be moved for a top quality, young roster player or prospect in this guy's opinion. Offensive skill of the high end variety is what it will likely take. Cody Hodgson, for instance, was a deal many believe the Stars would have made for Steve Ott, though it seems that particular deal was never on the table for Dallas in February. These kinds of deals are hard to put together due to the scarcity of players who fit the bill and an even greater scarcity of general managers willing to roll the dice on such a transaction.
Like LeBrun says, the Stars could just hold onto him if they don't get the offer they're looking for.
That's a tough thing for Steve Ott - To have his name out there every time the rumor mill gets going, and it will be again next February if the Stars find themselves in a similar position. Mike Ribeiro endured it without a peep for several seasons and Ott may have to do the same, but the Stars must feel, if you believe the chatter, that it's worth it to put their line in the water and see if anything is biting.
He's for sale in the same way that Bobby Ryan is for sale. The price is high, and it's one that may just be a fantasy at this point. If it doesn't happen then these teams keep these good hockey players and move on. It doesn't hurt to try - Until it does. Bobby Ryan's dissatisfaction with the trade rumors is starting to become apparent, so there's an end to the good will of these guys somewhere down the line. That's the downside to having this stuff, if it's true and we don't know that it is, out in public.
Either way it seems safe to say that if, IF Steve Ott were moved, the return would probably be one that fans could get behind - Or at least one fans looking at the big picture could get behind.
It would be painful, though. Very, very painful.Ubisoft released a new set of screenshots this weekend for Assassin’s Creed 3 and its Vita cousin, Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation, confirming that the main game will finally include snowman building!
In typical Ubisoft fashion, these new “screenshots” are a bit too well rendered to actually be from the game (especially in the case of Liberation). With that said, they are still representative of content found in both titles and are worth taking a look at.
One of the more interesting AC 3 screenshots appears to show Connor before he suits up in his assassin outfit, indicating that some portion of the game takes place before the new protagonist brings the fight to the Templars.
Check out the new screenshots for both titles in our gallery below.
Assassin’s Creed 3 will release for the PS3 and Xbox 360 on October 30th, alongside Liberation for the Vita. The Wii U version of AC3 will launch with the console on November 18th, with the PC version following on November 20th.
Source: NeoGAFby
Unraveling Mary Landrieu and the Online Sales Tax Proponents
For a few years now, legislators in the United States have been worrying themselves over the fact that some people have been able to avoid paying sales taxes to them. The internet and competition between jurisdictions have enabled that, and the more the merrier, I say. Constituents already suffer from onerous taxation, and paths for them to get out from underneath the burden should be welcomed not condemned.
Of course, the politicians don’t see it that way, at least the ones who have sales taxes in their states. They’ve been flailing about with “Amazon” taxes which have failed terribly. In North Carolina, for example, their attempt to tax people buying online from out of state saw tax revenues decrease rather than increase. Surprise surprise, many people chose to relocate and terminate their relationships with the state altogether.
Now these legislators are pushing Congress for blanket legislation from the federal level, the Marketplace Fairness Act. The bill, which the Senate has already passed, is both economically shortsighted and dangerous, since it is one step closer to a national sales tax. If passed, retailers in all states, at least those with an online or mail-order presence, would have to begin collecting taxes — regardless of the laws in their particular state.
One federal legislator to support this bill is Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, and she appeared on Jeff Crouere’s Ringside Politics of WGSO 990AM. Given that she offered the standard proponent justifications, let me address the two most important ones here.
Fairness: This online sales tax would actually create gross unfairness, since online retailers would then have to collect countless taxes based on the destination of the good. There happen to be at least 9,000 of them, and not even specialist organizations can keep up with all of the changing rates. Conventional stores, on the other hand, do not have to ask you where you live or where the good may be going. They only charge one tax rate or none at all.
Although not ideal, the National Taxpayers Union has recommended a superior alternative, an origin-based tax that would be fair. (See “Myth #8.”) They only support this as a least worst option, since it would still raise the tax burden. If the federal government must get involved, however, let businesses charge all customers one rate of tax, based on the jurisdiction in which the seller is located and not based on a maze of jurisdictions across the country.
Not a new tax: Does anyone, other than political peddlers, seriously believe this? Presently, state legislators have no legal authority to impose taxes on retailers in other states. This would give such authority and would plainly impose a new tax on those very retailers. Not only would it transfer more wealth to government bureaucrats and create a nightmare of paperwork and costly enforcement, it would be taxation without representation, since people with retail stores in other states cannot vote on the taxes they would have to collect.
That this has passed even one chamber indicates the desperation of legislators at both the state and federal levels. Their obstinate push to expand their taxing powers will only backfire, since it will be yet another deterrent against investment in the United States, and it will promote both the gray market and internet sales from across international borders.
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______________________________________________________________________________________________Lately it seems that there is some discussion regarding when to move on from the red pill. As someone who found the manosphere quite early, was a part of it for a while, left and then came back I found myself thinking about this idea. There is no doubt that everything we encounter in life is either a permanent fixture or a transitory element, meaning that some things stick with us for life, other things are part of our life for a while and are then left behind. To use weight training as an example, if you build your body over time, then you can maintain it with much less effort than it took to build. Yet if you completely neglect it, it will slowly crumble over time. This is similar with most skills, if they are not used, then they atrophy over time until we find ourselves not having the skills at all. Depending on the skill and the length of the atrophy period, one may be able to re-learn the skill rather quickly, or it may take just as long as the initial learning period.
This lead to the question, if a man internalizes red pill teachings will they remain with him in sufficient strength to avoid the very pitfalls that lead him to the manosphere in the first place? One must keep in mind that most men arrive at this corner of the internet because they have problems they need to solve, the problems are many and diverse, what they have in common is intersexual dynamics. Whether a man is attempting to figure out why his wife of 10 or more years left him for a guy she met a few weeks ago, why he is in a 5 year dry-spell, or why he is living in a dead-bedroom situation the manosphere can offer probable diagnosis and potential cures.
However, the solutions that the sphere offers are often the antithesis of the behavior of the man who requires them. After all, if his behavioral-schema worked, then he would not have the problems that was the impetus for him to seek out advice in the first place. I outlined many of the characteristics of the thesis, antithesis and failed attempts at synthesis in a series of essays earlier this year, and these fall into three categories. What doesn’t work, what works, and what we hope will work. The Blue Pill does not work, The Red Pill does work, and the purple pill is the desire among men who have seen reality to live the illusion. I’ve outlined the major differences in the table below:
The purple pill is that it sells itself as the continuation and natural evolution of the red pill, by having red pill knowledge and utilizing red pill methodology one can achieve blue pill ends. It is for this reason that it advocates many of the red pill methodologies, such as maintaining frame, lifting weights, being the leader of your family and many others that help build and maintains a woman’s perception of having landed the highest possible value male for her. Dread game at its most basic is simply a situation in which the woman perceives that losing her man would represent a bigger risk than potential gains she could achieve by either leaving or going outside the relationship.
The Maslow Problem
From my analysis of the problem, it seems that the focus on “meaning” is in many ways a Maslowian problem. Maslow’s hierarchy outlines different levels of needs that a human will experience. First are the physiological needs, including food, sleep, shelter and sex. Then come the safety needs that include things like personal security, financial security, health and well-being. Then come the social needs such as friendships, intimacy and family, followed by the esteem needs, that include being able to value oneself and being valued by others. Finally, the elephant in the room, self-actualization.
Now the red pill as a philosophy is focused primarily on the first four levels of the pyramid, the initial beginnings of the red pill, PUA were and still are largely focused on satisfying the sexual need. I would wager that even to this day a majority of people who enter the manosphere do so because they are unhappy with their sex life on some level. Be this a husband living in a dead bedroom relationship, a teenager who has no idea how to talk to girls, a divorced man who struggles with getting back into the market and many others.
However, the red pill also deals with safety needs, in that there is much advice on financial security among other things. My risk analysis of marriage for instance is largely focused on the potential financial consequences of current divorce, alimony and child support laws. Other men have focused on the risk of false accusations and threats to one’s freedom resulting from high conflict divorces or break-ups. Health is also a major focus of Red Pill theory, especially when it comes to a man’s duty to maintain his physical strength through lifting and protecting himself against medical problems through optimal nutrition, hormone levels and the likes.
On a social level, the red pill offers a community of men in similar situations, which allows the man to feel part of a community of like-minded men, something which is a rarity in today’s modern world. A major part of PUA in the early days was finding like-minded wingmen that would act as both support-group and drill sergeant in driving a man towards more progress and in many ways this is a fixture of the red pill as well. However, there is little sense in denying that the red pill does put individual over community.
Once one arrives at esteem, the focus on self-improvement within the manosphere has a dual purpose. While it does increase a man’s sexual market value, thus increasing his ability to find more and better mates. It also helps to build self-esteem and self-respect. For men, self-esteem is built through accomplishments, working through adversity and coming out stronger on the other side. Many of the red pill prescriptions on the earlier levels, such as facing your fear, managing your health, finances, lifting weights and others, helps build a sense of accomplishment in each man. The trouble of many young men in our modern world is that they have never broken through a barrier, they have been lifted over it.
Many men push themselves through the Maslowian levels at break-neck speed, and have few if any of the previous levels handled, but they want to be at the self-actualization level, because it is much more abstract. Where the prior levels have SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound) there is nothing of the sort for self-actualization. If we take an example or two from each level, we are all aware of when we are not eating and sleeping enough, or when we are not getting laid enough. The solutions are also specific, if the problem is “I’m not sleeping enough”, the goal is “I must get at least 7 hours of sleep, every day, for the next 30 days” this is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound. On level two, the problem may be “I’m living from paycheck to paycheck” the SMART goal could be “I need to save 5% of my paycheck every month for the next year”. If the problem is “I don’t have a social life” then the SMART goal is perhaps “For the next 3 months, go out and socialize with at least 5 different people every week”. If the problem is “I have no self-esteem”, then perhaps the SMART goal should be “Engage in [insert activity] three times per week and set progress goals”.
Self-actualization is the problematic one, and this is also where the focus among some appear to completely reside as of late. It is also where many aging pick-up artists find themselves after a decade or so of hedonistic freedom, they long for more, as Maslow puts it “What a man can be, he must be“. A man who has implemented all the advice the red pill offers on the other levels, find himself looking across the horizon, often looking for another prescription. His physiological needs have been covered, his security needs are taken care of, he has a large and vibrant social circle, and is most likely borderline narcissistic and viewed as high value by many. However, is he all that he can be?
There is no real way to create such goals for self-actualization, which is perhaps also why it is not talked about much in red pill theory explicitly. The Blue Pill Illusion naturally offers some such as being married, being a father, being a high performing employee and various others as “all you can be”, because “the group” has an incentive to create a structure to follow throughout the levels. If society ensures that one must have a job in order to satisfy the first and second levels of the pyramid, then this has certain requirements to behave in a given manner. Likewise, the smaller the Overton window, and accepted behavior in order to function in a social group, the more control the group has, the group also controls whether you are valued as a member or not, and can influence your self-esteem through negative feedback. If someone external to you defines the path to self-actualization/self-fulfillment, it also regulates your journey towards that destination, and therefore controls you.
In essence, culture and the group sets the goals for each level, designs a path that can easily be followed at each level, but does so primarily to get the needs of the group covered, rather than those of the individual.
Summary and Conclusions
If one looks at the table at the start of this essay, the major distinction between the red pill and the other two, is that the red pill does not define the end-state for you, this is something left up to each individual. In this regard it is a highly individual-focused philosophy, which is also why there are many descriptions of paths one can take, but very few that describes the destination. Telling a man to not make his woman his mission, doesn’t guarantee that he will be successful, and is the antithesis of the blue pill idealism that advocates that a man make a woman the center of his life.
One of the things I covered in my essay on “The Good Boys” was the tendency for some types of men to treat life as a check-list. Finish high school, check, finish college, check, get married, check and so on. In essence making all their major life decision without ever introspecting and questioning what paths they want to take in life. Some of the men who do very well with red pill theory, and especially PUA are men of this type, that run through their approaches, burn through the material and have a focus on being able to check off the various sub-points within the theory as fast as possible. As long as they have a prescription, they will follow and execute it to the letter. The trouble is that when these men are left without points on their list, instead of looking inside they look to the outside until they find someone who can provide them with a new point or two.
This is what happened with many of the early PUA gurus. If one thinks of PUA as a video-game, they kept leveling up and leveling up until they hit max level, then they spent years grinding the best gear in the game, then they enjoyed playing a max leveled, fully equipped character for a while, but this got boring. They thought pick-up was what would lead to them reaching self-actualization, but it turned out that it was not. Thus, they started searching for more goals, more points to check off their list, which is how most of them ended up married with children, this was the deductive next step that they had been socially programmed to take and which society said would actualize them.
The trouble is that self-actualization is a subjective concept, what gives meaning to the life of one man can be meaningless for another man. In fact, if a man takes the path of another, he may find himself rapidly descending the hierarchy down the bottom. For instance, a man who follows the prescription to vet a wife, get married and have children at age 25 that some offer, only to find that this does not offer his life meaning, in fact he finds the entire thing to be the antithesis of meaning for |
aggravating. It's ridiculous. "Why should he get to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants?" Jeanie rightfully asks before the script forces her to cave. "Why should everything work out for him? What makes him so goddamn special? Screw him."Former Justice Department official Victoria Toensing says more and more evidence shows FBI Director James Comey made basic errors in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information, and many FBI personnel believe his conduct has embarrassed the bureau.
In July, Comey offered a long list of poor decisions and “extremely careless” behavior by Clinton because she ran all of her email through a private email server. Then Comey said there was no intent by Clinton to break the law and no precedent existed for prosecuting the case. Therefore, Clinton would not be charged.
Since then, the FBI has released more and more evidence from the case, leaving Toensing and others with deep reservations about Comey’s competence. The latest revelations include the extension of immunity to Clinton State Department Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, that President Obama communicated with Clinton via her server under a pseudonym and that Comey allowed one prominent Democrat attorney to represent four different witnesses in the case.
“I think Jim Comey has to go,” Toensing told WND and Radio America. “I can’t tell you the number of present federal prosecutors and FBI people who have been talking to my husband (former U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova) and me about how upset they are with Jim Comey and his performance and how it’s embarrassed the FBI.”
Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Victoria Toensing:
While admitting any punishment for Comey is unlikely, Toensing is calling on Congress to rebuke him.
“Congress should at least pass some kind of a resolution condemning him for his inability, it seems, to conduct an investigation in a way that a first-year federal prosecutor would know how to do,” Toensing said.
Mills is one of multiple people who received limited or full immunity during the investigation. Toensing said that should have been unnecessary, but Comey failed to take one of the most basic steps in law to further the investigation.
“You have to open a grand jury,” she said. “Why didn’t the director open a grand jury? In his report, he complains that he didn’t get certain documents. He tried to get these documents but couldn’t get them. Well, do you know what you do in an investigation? You open a grand jury. Then you issue a subpoena and you get those documents.”
She said that step would have been particularly important with Mills.
“If he had a grand jury open, he would have been able to subpoena the computer of Cheryl Mills,” Toensing explained. “So he wouldn’t have had to give her immunity. He could have just subpoenaed it, and he would have gotten that computer.”
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Even more bizarre, despite Mills being given immunity – which is protection from criminal prosecution – Mills was allowed to sit in on the FBI’s interview of Clinton in July. Is this common practice?
“I’ve never heard of it,” Toensing said.
She’s also never heard of an investigation where a single attorney has been allowed to represent so many critical witnesses.
“He allows Beth Wilkinson, a known Democrat, to represent two attorneys (including Mills) and two other people. He allowed one lawyer to represent four people. That’s unheard of,” Toensing said. “Just think how she got to coordinate their testimony.”
Toensing said the new revelation that Obama emailed Clinton on the private server raises another red flag.
“It seems that he also thinks the president was involved, because now we know from the weekend dump that the president was using an alias. Therefore, the president had to know about this use of the private server,” Toensing said. “Now, he’s got the White House involved. He’s got the Democrat nominee involved. He just didn’t want to deal with it.”
She believes Comey, who has long had a reputation for seeing the law in black and white, wanted to avoid injecting the FBI into the middle of a contentious campaign season.
In addition, Toensing is flabbergasted that no one is facing charges for destroying evidence despite the tens of thousands of emails that Clinton admits her legal team deleted. Clinton claims they were all personal matters, but previous FBI document released dispel that argument.
Toensing said that fact shows clear intent, regardless of Comey’s insistence he could find none.
“Destroying evidence is just the most wicked evidence one could have against a person,” she said. “I have never heard of lawyers purposely destroying evidence and not being the target of an investigation themselves.
“I would be shaking in my boots if I had a subpoena from the Justice Department for a client and I went in and said, ‘Oh, we went through the files and we thought three file cabinets weren’t important so we just threw those away,'” Toensing said.
Get the hottest, most important news stories on the Internet – delivered FREE to your inbox as soon as they break! Take just 30 seconds and sign up for WND’s Email News Alerts!Long ago, when the mighty Brontosaurus still roamed the earth, I went to an infants school in a small satellite town in south west London. There, at lunchtimes, we used to play a game of war. This thrilling game began with two kids linking arms and skipping through the playground, chanting, ‘Who wants a game of war? War! Who wants a game of war? War! Who wants a game’- and so on, and so on. Kids would link arms with a boy (more rarely a girl) on either end, until finally a long, tenticular line waved its way across the playground. And that was it. Nobody actually ever played war. The tenticular arm would swing around until everyone got bored and went off to play football. We weren’t a very bellicose bunch, to be honest. So much for the imaginations of children.
Why am I mentioning this? Well, a better planned Game of War is in the news this week. It’s not the same game, of course. This war game dates back to 1890, when British school playgrounds really were school playgrounds, and a game of war probably meant boys setting up a maxim gun near the girl’s toilets.
‘The Game of War’ was a military strategy game, based on an original German model known as ‘Kriegspiel’. It was invented as a form of training for late Victorian army officers, and a version of it from around 1890 was on sale at Bonhams Auction House on Monday. As you can see, it’s quite a box, containing incredibly detailed maps and slate playing pieces for either army– and costing between £1500 and £2000 it’s a touch more expensive than a box of Monopoly. Using it, British officers perfected their military strategems and tactics in advance of war.
Or so they thought. In the event of war, the game was rather less useful than intended. As is well known, the First World War– on the Western Front, at least– was for the greatest part of four years a long seige of trenches, utilising machine gun emplacements, gas attacks, tanks and massive artillery shelling on a scale never before seen. The much-expected “war of movement”– that is, the rapid offensive or defensive movement across territory by cavalry or infantry, as at the Battle of Gheluvelt— was only seen at the very beginning and end of war. The Game of War only had six machine gun units for its entire gameplay. The officers who played the game were preparing for a war that would never take place.
At the end of the ninteenth century, military planners were looking backwards. They saw the comprehensive Prussian victory against France in 1870, where German troops finally occupied Paris, and imagined that the future promised the same. This retrospective attitude to war is reflected in some of the poetry at the beginning of the First World War: ‘The Volunteer’ by Herbert Asquith, for example, imagines a City clerk fantasizing about the picture book victories of Roman legionaries and medieval knights. Bored, he daydreams:
Thinking that so his days would drift away
With no lance broken in life’s tournament:
Yet ever ’twixt the books and his bright eyes
The gleaming eagles of the legions came,
And horsemen, charging under phantom skies,
Went thundering past beneath the oriflamme.
Asquith’s clerk, of course, decides to volunteer and is killed– lying “content”, as the poet proclaims, “with that last high hour, in which he lived and died”. Asquith wants the lesson to be that no matter how contemptible your job– and there is a patronising stink to his picture of the suburban commuter class– you too can live the glittering dream of knightly chivalry and imperial conquest. The remarkable complacency of the kind of culture that produced Herbert Asquith– and it’s too, too relaxed attitude to death– finds a mirror in the strategic unreadiness of the armies of the First World War. It is unfair to use 20/20 hindsight to criticise those who could not see what the future was to bring, but it is hard not to judge harshly the backwards-looking, even nostalgic perspective of certain members of the officer class before the First World War.
Was anyone looking ahead, anticipating the dread forms that modern technological warfare would bring? Well, in literature, certainly. Way back in 1879 Jules Verne wrote a today neglected (because pretty dire) novel called The Begum’s Fortune in which the inhabitants of a German city, Stahlstadt, build a new weapon to fire at a Utopian French City, Frankville. It is a form of artillery shell containing carbon dioxide that, when fired in a spread, will suffocate and freeze all beneath the barrage. Verne had been paying attention to the successful use of German artillery during the Franco-Prussian war; but his anticipation of the use of gas in the Great War was cannily accurate.
The second writer to grasp the shape of things to come was Verne’s contemporary and close competitor for the title, ‘Father of Science Fiction’: H.G. Wells. Wells, in a visionary 1903 short story called The Land Ironclads, imagined an armoured vehicle that would later come to be called the tank. His great imaginative leap was to wonder if heavily plated battleships (‘Ironclads’) could be imagined fighting, somehow, on land: only the battle of Cambrai in 1917 would bring his fantasy into reality.
And it is Wells, with his playful and aggressive imagination, that brings us back to the Game of War. For it was Wells who was the first man to bring the world of Kriegspiel into the living room, with his 1913 game book, ‘Little Wars’. Wells famously loved games– visits to his house in Sandgate inevitably meant playing them, whether the visitors were adults or children. There’s a line to be drawn from Kriegspiel to the Game of War to ‘Little Wars’, all the way to today’s computer games, like ‘Call of Duty’. War games are some of the oldest games there are: and I suppose, on some deep level, there might be something frightening about having them in our living rooms. Yet war games are about playing imaginatively with the highest stakes possible, but without the terrible consequences that actual war brings. It is The Game of War as an officer training tool, however, that shows the tricky middle ground between imaginative play and war: where a lack of imagination has profound consequences in not little, but Great Wars.
AdvertisementsThe review unit has been provided by GearBest.com
Specifications
What's in the box
Design, build and controls
Display
Brightness White luminance Black luminance Contrast Color temperature 100 % 433.436 cd/m2 0.439 cd/m2 987 : 1 11360 K 75 % 331.518 cd/m2 0.332 cd/m2 999 : 1 11104 K 50 % 230.759 cd/m2 0.233 cd/m2 990 : 1 11038 K 25 % 128.770 cd/m2 0.130 cd/m2 991 : 1 10870 K 0 % 18.269 cd/m2 0.019 cd/m2 962 : 1 10635 K
OS, UI and software
. Thoug. Thoug
Networks, calls and connectivity
Performance
Cameras
Primary camera
HDR Off HDR On
Secondary camera
Audio
Test Value RMAA rating Frequency response (from 40 Hz to 15 kHz), dB +0.02, -0.10 Excellent Noise level, dB (A) -94.2 Very good Dynamic range, dB (A) 94.2 Very good THD, % 0.011 Good THD + Noise, dB (A) -76.4 Average IMD + Noise, % 0.013 Very good Stereo crosstalk, dB -6.4 Very poor IMD at 10 kHz, % 0.020 Very good General performance Good
Frequency response Noise level Dynamic range THD + Noise (at -3 dB FS) Intermodulation distortion Stereo crosstalk
Battery
Final thoughts
was announced back in August 2016 and was launched in November the same year. Soon after that - in December, its Limited Edition was announced. The only difference between the classic and Limited Edition model is the chipset. The S7 packs a 2.1GHz Helio X20 SoC, while the Limited Edition is equipped with a 2.5GHz Helio X25 chipset. In this review we will put to the test theElephone S7 Limited Edition sports a 5.5-inch in-cell IPS display from JDI (Japan Display Inc.). The "bezelless", fully laminated screen has a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels and is protected by a Corning Gorilla Glass 3. Under the display, there's a fingerprint sensor embedded in the home button. Featuring the latest E-Touch 2.0 technology, it allows the home button to act as a physical and capacitive key with a multitude of functions. The limited edition of the model is based on a MediaTek Helio X25 (MT6797T) chipset, which features MediaTek's signature tri-cluster architecture for improved performance and power efficiency. The system-on-chip packs two 2.5GHz Cortex-A72 cores (cluster 1), four 2GHz Cortex-A53 cores (cluster 2) and another quadruplet of those, but clocked at 1.55GHz (cluster 3). Graphics are handled by a quad-core Mali-T880 MP4 clocked at 850MHz. The RAM measures either 3GB, or 4GB. It is double-channel, LPDDR3, and clocked at 800MHz. The on-board storage is of the eMMC 5.1 type and can be either 32GB, or 64GB. In both cases the memory can be expanded with up to 128GB. The device is equipped with a proximity, light, accelerometer, compass, gyroscope, and Hall sensor. It also features a 13-megapixel primary camera with an OmniVision OV13850 PureCel sensor with an f/2.2 lens and EIS. The front-facing shooter packs a 1.3MP OmniVision OV9762 sensor, interpolated to 5MP, and an f/2.4 lens. The advanced chipset provides advanced connectivity options, including 4G LTE Cat. 4 networks with VoLTE, dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Wi-Fi Direct, Cast display, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS and GLONASS. There's a micro-USB 2.0 port on board with OTG support along with a 3.5 mm jack. The smartphone is powered by a 3000 mAh Li-Pol non-removable battery with a 5V/2A fast charger supporting MediaTek's PE+ Quick charge technology. The smartphone runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow and is bound to be updated to Android 7.0 Nougat. Here are the full Elephone S7 Limited Edition specifications Elephone S7 Limited Edition is packed in a large beige cardboard box. On the lid, the company logo, model name and Helio X25 are imprinted. On the back of the box, there's information about some of the highlights of the model and certifications.The smartphone is placed in the top level compartment, carefully packaged and covered with thick protectors for the display and the back. Below it, in separate boxes, you will find a matte silicon case for the model, a 5V/2A AC power charger adapter (100~240V/EU plug), a USB cable, SIM tray pin, and a user manual in English.Elephone S7 is the first smartphone of the company that features. This type of back cover has been used on the S7 Limited Edition and other following Elephone models. The effect is truly beautiful and elegant. It looks like the back plate is covered with glass that reflects light in various of ways. This effect has been achieved by combining 15 different processes. However, all good things come at a price. The texture of the rear panel seems to be quite prone to scratches from everyday objects, so you might consider using a case, if you intend to buy this device. We did use it with a mobile stand in a car, placed in it pockets with keys and on rough surfaces. To be honest, it did not get scratched, but the surface does feel somewhat tender. The chassis and frame are made of metal and for their making special sandblasting process has been employed to achieve a delicate matte finish. The matte frame and shiny back create a visually pleasing combination, nicely complemented by the 3D glass on the display. It creates the frameless effect of the screen and meets the frame tightly. There's also an interesting effect to the touch as the metal frame feels much colder than the PVC back plate. The overall build is excellent. It looks like the manufacturer has put an extra effort into this model. The device is not only stylish and appealing to look at, but also feels great to the touch and is quite solid. One of the model's greatest assets is its compact form. It is only 73.2 mm wide. Except for the nubia Z11 and the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is one of the most compact smartphones with a 5.5-inch display. In this size class a width of 76-77 mm is more typical. The smartphone is 150.3 mm tall, which is also well below average, without being an exception. The average height of smartphones in this size class is 154 mm. In terms of depth, Elephone S7 Limited Edition is 7.6 mm thin. Though it might not be the thinnest smartphone around, it is below the average thickness of devices with a 5.5-inch display and a 3000 mAh battery. Its weight of 148 grams makes it also one of the lightest smartphones in its class. Without doubt, this device is made for comfortable one-hand operation. In addition to its compact form, it features slightly curved rear sides and a 3D curved front glass, which positively enhance the handling experience.Elephone S7 and its Limited Edition have one and the same body in terms of dimensions and weight as well as one and the same layout. On the front above the display the earpiece, LED notification light and front-facing camera are positioned. Below the display there is a single button - the home one, which can be used both as a capacitive and a physical key. It also has an embedded fingerprint sensor and is powered by the E-Touch 2.0 tech. A single tap on the button serves as a back function. Tapping twice, leads you to the home screen. The same happens if you press the home key once. Pressing twice opens the app you have pre-selected from the Shortcut menu in the settings. A long press opens the Task Manager. In case you prefer on-screen buttons, you can choose so from the corresponding menu in the Settings. The on-screen navigation bar can be hidden. On the back of the device, in the top left corner you will see the primary camera with a single LED light to its right. Towards the lower end of the rear the Elephone logo is imprinted. The volume and power buttons are placed on the right hand side, while on the left hand side of the device the hybrid dual-SIM tray is positioned. On the top frame the 3.5 mm jack sits, while at the bottom the micro-USB 2.0 port is located. On both sides of it there are speaker grilles, but only the right one actually covers a speaker. The other one is made simply for symmetry. Elephone S7 Limited Edition is available in black and dark blue. Upon announcement, it was said that the model will also have the gold and green colors, in which the classic variant arrives, but to date, these colors have not been available for the Limited Edition model. We are reviewing a black unit.The display of Elephone S7 Limited Edition is also one of the model's center-points. It sports an in-cell IPS panel made by Japan Display Inc. (JDI) and protected by a Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The unit is covered with a 3D glass, which coupled with the minimal bezels create the impression of a bezelless display. Indeed, the frame-to-frame screen does make a good impression from first sight, especially having a black frame for a background. If we have to compare it to the Elephone S3's display, which was the first bezelless model of the manufacturer, we must say that it looks much better with less distortions on the sides. It has a 75.7% screen-to-body ratio and the 1080p resolution on a 5.5-inch diagonal size, means the pixel density is 401 ppi. The in-cell technology allows the touch controller and the LCD layer to be merged into one, which ends up in creating display panels that are much thinner than traditional ones. In theory, this also leads to increased brightness and better color reproduction. The full lamination or the non-air-gap technology means that the different display layers don't have an air gap between them and they are glued together instead. This leads to decreased light reflection, improved transmittance and sunlight readability. The display of Elephone S7 Limited Edition arrives with a bunch of advanced software features including ClearMotion for fluent video reproduction and MiraVision for tweaking the image. Unlike many other smartphones with MiraVision support, the Elephone S7 Limited Edition utilizes all the features of this software suite. For starters, it includes what the manufacturer calls "sun screen". This is a software feature found in Settings > Display > MiraVision > SmartScreen. Under this option, all you have to do is turn on the Light-Adaptive Brightness option. It gives a brightness boost to your display, allowing it to be comfortably read under direct sunlight. You can also adjust the Picture Mode (Standard, Vivid, User Mode), the basic color parameters (contrast, saturation, picture brightness), along with some advanced color tuning such as sharpness and color temperature. The traditional dynamic contrast and eye care options are activated as well.The peak brightness of the display of the Elephone S7 Limited Edition sample we're reviewing is 433.436 cd/m. This is a very good level for a display of a mid-range smartphone and by using the SmartScreen option for boosting the brightness, it can also be easily read under direct sunlight. The black luminance values are quite proportional to the white luminance values at all brightness levels, which leads to an even static contrast ratio of around 990:1. The temperature of the white point is around 11000 K, which means that the colors on the screen look colder. You do have the option to make them warmer from the MiraVision settings though.The display of Elephone S7 Limited Edition covers a slightly smaller color space than the sRGB one. There are certain deviations in all three main areas - blue, red, and green, but there's nothing abnormal about it. The screen has a traditional striped sub-pixel architecture. The viewing angles are good in terms of color preservation, but not good in terms of brightness as there is a significant loss in brightness in lateral views. All in all, this is a good display unit. The 3D cover glass provides excellent tactile experience. Visual aesthetics with this frame-to-frame screen are great, too. Its brightness and contrast are good as well. The only drawbacks are the high temperature of the white point, which can be corrected with the available software, and the loss in brightness when the device is looked at from aside.Elephone S7 and its Limited Edition, which we review, run an almost stock Android 6.0 Marshmallow and are bound to be updated to Android 7.0 Nougat. The user interface (UI) is only very slightly tweaked, with no bloatware, but lots of additional software features that should enhance the way you interact with the smartphone and provide further customization options. But first things first. As already mentioned, the UI is quite clean with slight alterations only. The lock screen contains shortcuts to the Dialer and the Camera app. By default the Notifications and Quick Settings appear on it. A simple swipe unlocks the device, unless you choose any other type of unlocking, including a fingerprint one, from the security settings. The home screen has the typical row of docked apps - Dialer, Contacts, App Tray, Messenger, and default Browser. On top, there is another row of most used apps, which you can edit. By default, it contains the Camera, Gallery, Play Store, and Elephone Service. Swiping to the left or right gives you access to a second screen of apps, which contains the Clock, but you can remove it from there or add other apps, if you find this way of accessing them more convenient. The Task Manager is accessed by a long press on the home button. Though this is not Android 7.0 Nougat, you still get amode! From the Task Manager simply click on the icon that appears to the left of the X one. Voilà! You're already in split-screen mode and will be able to multitask more efficiently. The Notifications and Quick Settings are typical for Android M. Under the Quick Settings the cog icon does not activate the System UI Tuner, but only gives access to the list of Settings. The User icon is present, but its function is disabled. The Widgets menu is accessed by pressing longer on the home screen. You get a list of wallpapers for the home screen, a separate one for the lock screen (similar to Android N), and a list of traditional widgets. The Volume and Power Off shades are classic as well. All in all, the UI runs like a breeze and its familiar looks means you won't lose time finding your way around the device.The list of Settings is typical for Android M, but it does contain of multitude of additional features and functions developed by Elephone. All is fine with them and some turn out to be quite useful, however we'd recommend the usage of better wording in the description of the various functions, so it is clearer what one can do with the device. The Wireless & networks group of options is tweaked the least. It contains all familiar wireless connectivity options, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, VPN, tethering & hotspot. The Turbo download function is present as well along with settings for the networks, SIM cards and data usage monitoring and control. Device is the second group of options and starts off with the Display settings. It contains the traditional brightness level, adaptive brightness toggle, wallpaper options, screen sleep, screen saver, font size and cast display settings. In addition, you can toggle on/off the Hall sensor and choose the S View window. There are also toggles for switching on the display from the volume button and a toggle for displaying real-time speed. Unlike other Chinese manufacturers Elephone has gone a step further in providing various ways of tweaking the display and getting the most out of it as experience in different environments. For starters, you get a ClearMotion feature, which enhances video fluidity, so you can enjoy stutter free videos. Second comes MediaTek's MiraVision suite of display features, which is one of the most extensive ones we've seen on a MediaTek device.We've explained a large portion of these features in the Display section of this review, so here's just a compact list of the options you get: SmartScreen for an additional brightness boost when needed (in broad daylight, for example), picture mode, contrast, saturation, picture brightness, color temperature, sharpness. The Display settings are followed by those for the LED notification light, which offer a number of customizations. Then the Sound & notifications settings follow. They are classic and include the traditional sound profiles, notifications and DND settings, sound enhancement and a toggle for vibration upon touching the keyboard. The rest of the menus offer the typical Android 6.0 features for Apps, Storage & USB, and Memory. The Battery menu offers some extended functions, but this will be discussed in the Battery section of this review. The third group of settings is the Personal one and it contains the usual Location, Accounts, Google, Language & input, Backup & reset options. The security settings are also part of this group, but are named Fingerprint and password. Setting up a type of screen lock and a fingerprint ID is easy and works fine. The only glitch we stumbled upon is when we open the list of stored IDs and try to access the additional settings, which according to the description should allow authorization of purchases and secure app access. However, this function did not work. Of course, the SmartLock function, screen pinning and other traditional security settings are present as well.Along with the advanced Display and LED notification settings Elephone has added a whole new Settings group called. It contains the majority of additional features and functions we referred to above. The first feature is the Shortcut button. You can toggle it on and off, and if it is on you can choose, which app should be associated to it. The Shortcut button is actually pressing twice on the home button, which opens the app you have associated to it. The second feature contains a toggle for Screenon gestures. You turn on/off multi-finger camera start in any interface, three-finger screenshot, two-finger volume adjustment, long touch on the home button for screenshot. The Navigation bar management is also under Accessibility. You can choose to switch it on and off. When it is off, then the home button and the various types of taps and presses on it serve as a navigation. When it is on, you get an on-screen navigation bar with an option to hide it. The fourth feature is called Clear background App, from where you can toggle on/off a white list of apps, which will not be cleared. You can select/deselect separate apps from the list. Finally, there's a Task Manager feature, which is also created as an app. It serves as a monitor of apps that are running at the moment, installed apps and RAM monitor (total, used, available). The last major group of Settings is the System one and it contains the typical Date & time, Schedule power on & off, Accessibility (the classic Android one), Printing, and About phone. The latter contains a Wireless update feature. Upon configuring our review unit, it received a large update dated to February 18th, 2017, so this review is based on the latest software available for Elephone S7 Limited Edition.Applications on Elephone S7 and the Limited Edition model are accessed in two ways. The first one is directly from the home screen - either swiping to the left or right. The second one is from the App Tray on the home screen. The apps are listed in alphabetical order in successive screens. You can uninstall an app from this list only. The model arrives with Play Store pre-installed and no excessive bloatware. You get the traditional Dialer, which with the latest update has been optimized and is not laggy, Contacts, Messenger, and default Browser. The Clock, Calculator, Calendar, and Flashlight are the ones you have used to, so are the Downloads, Email, File Manager, Gallery, and Maps. There's a Search app, which allows you to search among the applications installed on the device, an Elephone Service app for direct communication with support and forums, an FM radio, and a Screen Recorder. The latter has been added with the latest software update. Elephone S7 also arrives with an App Locker app, a classic Sound Recorder, and a Task Manager app, which duplicates the functions of this feature found in the Settings menu.Elephone S7 Limited Edition is provided with a hybrid dual SIM card tray. Both trays can house a nano-SIM card, the second can be used with a microSD card, too, in case you need more storage. According to the specifications, the model supports quad-band 2G GSM (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz), dual-band 3G WCDMA (900, 2100 MHz), 4G LTE-FDD (800, 1800, 2100, 2600 MHz), and 4G LTE-TDD (2300, 2600 MHz) networks. MTK Engineering shows that our review unit supports 850, 900, 1700, 1900, and 2000 MHz WCDMA bands. 4G LTE bands are 15. LTE speeds are Cat. 4 ones. VoLTE support is present as well. Call quality with our review unit has been excellent at all times. As long as it concerns wireless connectivity, the device supports dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Wi-Fi Direct, Cast display, Bluetooth 4.1. All of these features work fine. We've noticed that in areas where Wi-Fi signal is generally very weak, the device struggled to maintain a stable connection. This wouldn't be a problem, if it didn't change constantly its MAC address. The model provides a Turbo download feature, which can be switched on if you plan to download files larger than 20MB. This functions combines Wi-Fi and 3G/4G connections at one and the same time to boost download speeds. The smartphone is equipped with a micro USB 2.0 port with OTG support and works with GPS and GLONASS. Upon initiation it took quite some time to detect satellites, but once it did, the accuracy was acceptable - up to 5 meters.Elephone S7 Limited Edition is equipped with achipset and this is the main difference with the standard version of the model, which packs a Helio X20 SoC with a 2.1GHz deca-core CPU. The Helio X25 system on-chip is 64-bit and is manufactured after the 20nm process. It features a tri-cluster architecture with ten CPU cores allotted in three groups with three different clock rates for more intelligent allocation of tasks and improved power efficiency. The first group contains two Cortex-A72 cores clocked at 2.5GHz, which are used by demanding processes. The second cluster includes four 2GHz Cortex-A53 and the third packs four 1.55GHz Cortex-A53 cores. MediaTek's CorePilot technology for heterogeneous multi-processing actually does the job of allotting tasks between the clusters. A 850MHz quad-core Mali-T880 MP4 handles the graphics. The same chipset powers the Vernee Apollo and the Meizu Pro 6, which have scored 92769 and 101157 points in AnTuTu, respectively. Our review unit of, thus slightly over-performing the Apollo, but yielding to the Pro 6. There are smartphones equipped with the Helio X20 SoC, which have shown similar AnTuTu results. Check, for example, the Vernee Apollo Lite (93030 points), LeEco Le 2 (X620) (92374 points) and the Zopo Speed 8 (92644 points). Elephone S7 Limited Edition outperforms them all as long as it concerns all benchmark tests that we have run and been able to compare. Except for AnTuTu, it shows even better results than the Meizu Pro 6 in Basemark OS II and Basemark X, Geekbench 4, and Vellamo.As long as it concerns graphics-focused tests such as Sling Shot, GFX, and Epic Citadel, Elephone S7 Limited Edition scores better than the Vernee Apollo in all, but the differences in most cases are marginal. In the Ice Storm tests our review unit shows better results than both the Apollo and the Meizu Pro 6. The picture changes if you have a look at the PCMark tests. The Work performance one shows that the Apollo and Pro 6 have better results than the S7 LE, but the latter has a better Computer Vision score. In reality, our sample of the model handled the most popular games (even those with heavy graphics) very well without noticeable lag or stutter.Elephone S7 Limited Edition has a 3/32GB of RAM/storage variant and a 4/64GB of RAM/storage version. We are reviewing a unit with 4GB of dual-channel LPDDR3 RAM clocked at 800 MHz. The smartphone works like a breeze and there are never too many apps open that can make it lag or stutter. In addition, Elephone has provided several software tools for managing apps in terms of freeing RAM and power efficiency, but we don't think you'll have to actually use them on a regular basis. The built-in memory is of the eMMC 5.1 type and its capacity is 64GB. Of those, 54GB are available to the user. In case you need more storage, you can use a microSD card of up to 128GB. The latest Androbench test couldn't run on our review unit, so for storage scores we rely only on the PCMark Storage test. Our review unit does score less than the Vernee Apollo, which has the same memory type and configuration. Both devices are outperformed by the Meizu Pro 6, which shows a staggering result for an eMMC 5.1 memory. MediaTek has equipped the Helio X25 with the so called Tiny Sensor Hub, which includes a proximity, light, accelerometer, compass, gyroscope, and a Hall sensor. There's a fingerprint sensor as well, embedded in the home button with a built-in independent chip that supports high definition fingerprint image matching technology. It also employs a self-learning algorithm to allow faster fingerprint unlocking. Identification rate is up to 99.7% and response speed can be as fast as 0.1 seconds, according to the specifications. Indeed, the sensor works fast in both creating fingerprint IDs and unlocking the device. Currently no other functions, except unlocking, are available.Elephone S7 Limited Edition has a standard Camera app for Android. On the home screen of the application you can toggle the various flash modes, switch between the two cameras, turn on/off gesture shot, choose the shooting mode (standard, panorama, picture-in-picture), choose a filter by swiping to the right and |
first we need to understand what it means to measure. In fact, we simply compare one quantity to another, which is called the unit of measurement. The standard measures of time are likely to be based on constant periodical processes of high accuracy.
Originally the Earth rotation used to be the one and the most famous periodical process. The daytime was measured by noticing from the observation point one of the two celestial bodies passing the meridian plane. However, constituent day (“sun day”) appeared to last 4 minutes longer than equinoctial day (“star day”). It is inconvenient to use star time since our whole life is connected with the change of day and night, thus, with the sun day. Nevertheless, it is difficult to state the exact duration of the constituent day. Firstly, the Sun is “too big”. Secondly, solar emission heats and deforms measuring instruments. And the last but not least, the length of the sun day varies as a result of the Earth’s speed change during its rotation.
In 1582 Italian scholar Galileo Galilei showed that pendulum (certain load on a slender bar) swings with a steady speed. Moreover, he proved that oscillation velocity depends not on the load weight, but on the length of that very pendulum. This is an important result in mechanics. Through this process a pendulum became useful device for time measurement. But due to oscillation relaxation it is impossible to measure long periods of time. The mechanism has to be wound up all the time. Apart from that, clock pendulum involved iron cores which changed their length with the change of temperature. Say, one-second pendulum needs 0,025 mm increase to its length to lose one second, and this process happens at the 2 degrees centigrade rise in temperature.
Humanity has invented a lot of kinds of clocks and watches: dial, water and fire clock, sand-glass, oscillating and observatory clock, digital clock, atomic clock, etc. The oldest known sundial is from Egypt and dates back to around 1500 BC. Salisbury cathedral clock, dating from about 1386,is claimed to be the oldest working clock in the world, speaking about mechanical clock.
Which is the most precise one? Nowadays the most accurate time is shown by the atomic clock. Its work is based on the transition between electron energy levels and to understand the basics of it we need to engage atomic physics. Oscillation frequency of electromagnetic waves correlates with the period of measured time with the help of electronic microchip. There are several types of atomic clocks nowadays. They use electromagnetic oscillations from the production of atoms of hydrogen, cesium or mercury in quantum generator. Error of measurement can constitute 1 second per 3 million years. Work of mercuric atomic clock stems from energy levels of mercury ion transition, which is captured by electromagnetic trap. Accuracy of such clock is 5 times higher than that of cesium atomic clocks. Let us consider the latter.
The principle of work of caesium clock is defined by the following process. Alkaline metal is to be heated in the smelt-furnace. Electrons start “jumping” from one energy level to another. The obtained frequency resulting from metal emission regulates the work of the clock. The first atomic clock was invented in the USA on the basis of ammoniac quantum generator. Later these clocks appeared in Russia and Japan and by the present day their creation is already developed in China.
It is cesium atomic clock to set the standard to time and frequency measurement. It changed in 1967 when 9 192 631 770 periods of electromagnetic emission, which appears during the cesium-133 atom jump, were fixed per a second. Traditional atomic clock is very huge – of about 2 m. This is how caesium clock looked back in 1955:
It is used in testing and researching laboratories as well as in navigation systems. However, newspapers have been saying recently that smaller atomic clocks have already appeared. Thus, caesium is literally the chemical element which has redefined time.
Scientists from American National Standards Institute have achieved the impossible: they created clock that is 1 sec slow per 1 bln of years. First time they spoke about the innovation in 2003 showing the example that was far from perfect. Ten years later scientists represented improved atomic clock model of high accuracy. This clock overcomes the most precise devices that were invented earlier. It was developed on ytterbium basis. This grey metal can be easily adapted, but its level of air oxidation is very weak. It refers to rare earth elements under the number of 70. Almost 10,000 ytterbium atoms were used to create this watch. They were cooled to the temperature of about zero and put to the optical lattice with the help of laser ray. They are kept in the lattice due to vacuum. Another laser which makes atoms jump brings the device into action. According to the calculations, this clock can run 1 second behind only in a billion of years. At the moment people cannot use it as hand watch due to its huge size, but it can help with adjustment of satellite connection.
Such high accuracy would help to conduct experiments in sphere of relativity theory, scientists hope. This clock can measure different passages of time in the points of 1 cm distance from each other (as a result of gravitation time in the lower point runs slower than in higher one).
Maybe it’s not that pretty, but here’s one of the most accurate clocks on earth:
Atomic clock is a useful device not only for scientific research, but also in engineering. Precise time measurement is required in the global positioning system – navigational satellites always involve atomic clock. The navigation satellite system works receiving signals induced from satellites to measure the distance between satellite at the moment of signal emission and the receiver when the signal is received. Having registered the time of radiofrequency signal and the speed of its distribution it is easy to define the distance to the source of emission. On the top of that, timing and synchronization of clocks with satellites and receivers are necessary to calculate coordinates in a correct way. Atomic clock is fixed to the satellite to measure the time within the accuracy of 1 nanosecond. Scientists work decisively to optimize suck clocks in size. Position indication of spaceships, satellites, ballistic rockets, airplanes, submarines, and even of automobiles moving on an automatic basis with the help of satellite connection are impossible without atomic clocks. They are used also in the system of satellite and land telecommunication as well as in the mobile telephony exchange, international and national standards bureaus, and in exact time services which translate time signals over the radio.
Needless to say, that although traditional gear-working clocks are less precise, in daily life the difference is beyond notice and, besides, up to now they are more convenient, so don’t throw away your favorite watch yet!Influential politicians across Eastern Europe have pointed to the Cologne attacks, in which men of Middle Eastern appearance allegedly sexually assaulted over a hundred women, as proof that Germany’s open-door refugee policy has been a mistake.
As Chancellor Angela Merkel seeks to reach a consensus on a quota system, whereby refugees would be divided up among European countries, the mood in Eastern Europe has now hardened against such proposals, with some governments saying they will refuse to take in young men.
The strongest criticism has come from Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico, who said in a television discussion that Migrants have become a ‘protected species’ in Germany, Spiegel Online reports.
The Polish government has also said that Germany has not taken the refugee influx seriously enough, adding that it doesn’t want to take young male asylum seekers in.
In Romania meanwhile, the influential ex-president Traian Basescu said that the Cologne attacks were proof that the Romanian government should join its Eastern European neighbours in opposing a quota system.
Slovakian premier Fico called for an emergency meeting of EU leaders in light of the Cologne attacks in order to discuss border controls, hindering migration and the development of parallel societies.
His country wouldn’t accept women being insulted in the streets, nor would it tolerate closed-off Muslim communities, Fico said.
‘Crisis of liberalism’
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in his weekly radio interview that it was proof of a crisis of liberalism that reporting of the sexual assaults in Cologne had been suppressed in Germany, adding that the press in Hungary is much freer than that in western Europe.
Orban added that Hungary is in the right on the refugee issue and that migration into Europe must be completely stopped.
Hungarian media went even further in its criticism of the German government.
Orban ally Zsolt Bayer described the Cologne attackers as “North African and Arabic animals - nothing but hyenas,” in an article for Magyar Hirlap newspaper, Spiegel reports.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is letting her family and children get eaten by hyenas, he wrote.
“There are no bastards on this earth more abominable and more destructive than these liberal pigs who are digging Europe’s grave,” wrote the conservative news site Magyar Idök.First and foremost, the Dolphins got off on the right foot with a close win over the Chargers.
It has been 24 days since we last saw the Miami Dolphins starters take the field. While their play was sloppy at times, the end result was a 19-17 win, placing Miami at the top of the AFC East.
With hurricanes, injuries, and a Week 1 bye, things have been a bit strange for Adam Gase in his second season as a head coach.
The season opener was no different.
(More on Timmons later)
On offense, veteran QB Jay Cutler played it conservative completing 24-of-33 for 230 yards and a touchdown. Most importantly, Smokin’ Jay had zero turnovers in his Dolphins debut.
While Cutler’s debut was a relief for fans who have heard war stories of his inconsistencies, the “Jay Train” was taken down the field early and often. Ajayi finished with 28 attempts for 128 yards averaging 4.4 yards per attempt.
Defensively, outside of the uncertainty surrounding Lawrence Timmons, the defense was sound. According to PPF, second-year linebacker Mike Hull, who played all 58 of Miami’s defensive snaps, struggled against the pass attack. He surrendered the most targets, receptions and yards allowed of all linebackers in coverage for Week 2. Rookie linebacker Chase Allen continued his strong performances from preseason, playing 13 snaps and grading out at 81.3. That mark which was the third highest on the defense.
Fans, it wasn’t pretty but it is a win. The resilience, the grit, the uncertainty is something that has surrounded Miami for the last week. But, like the Miami Dolphins, we overcame!
The Good
Cody Parkey-
“Parkey for President”?
While Cody Parkey may not win the presidential election in 2020, if there was a Week 2 game ball to be given out, hands down the ball goes to Parkey. Just two weeks removed from being cut by the Cleveland Browns, the former Auburn kicker proved why he beat out former Dolphin Andrew Franks.
His 54-yard game winning field goal is the longest game-winning field goal in Dolphins’ history.
DeVante Parker-
As I suspected he would, Parker caught four passes for a team-high 85 yards. His connection with Jay Cutler is clear, and he is making aggressive plays on the ball, something he lacked in previous seasons.
Parker, who has very similar attributes to Cutler’s former number one receiver Alshon Jeffery, will likely find himself in the same position. I still believe he will lead all wide receivers in yards this season.
The Bad-
Lawrence Timmons-
I am not sure of the circumstances, so I will keep my opinion to myself until I get exact information. But, here is what we do know.
Timmons left the team hotel before or during curfew, going AWOL.
Sources close to the situation reported that the Dolphins scrambled to locate Timmons, calling close friends and family.
According to TMZ, the organization put out a missing persons report, and located the veteran at LAX.
Timmons is now back with the team and is scheduled to meet with doctors, according to ESPN.
The Ugly-
Fire the Cannons-
Celebrating after a missed field goal? Now that is ugly
Chargers fire cannon as they lose & Dolphins fans drown the stadium in cheers. Dean Spanos ladies & gents. https://t.co/d4nXm4W72i — John Middlekauff (@JohnMiddlekauff) September 17, 2017
Moral of the story: Never trust a younghoe.Share 0 SHARES
WEATHER experts are warning Irish citizens this week that the up-and-coming winter season may actually get cold and even wet at times, all depending on the temperature and amount of rainfall.
Forecasters said the change will even affect some trees, which will lose their leaves over the coming months.
Explaining the unusual phenomenon, meteorologist Martin Byrne warned that November, December and January will probably be colder than the rest of the months in the year, and advised people to wear warmer clothes than they would in spring and summer.
“I would advise everyone in the country to buy a hat, jacket and a pair of gloves in preparation for this sudden change in climate,” he said. “These items of clothing can be purchased in any good clothes shop, and will protect you from the cold air. If you don’t have any form of heating in your home, I’d advise you to get some quick. Note: you cannot buy jumpers or jackets for houses, as they don’t make them that size.”
Along with the cold, darkness is also expected, with light dissipating earlier in the evening than in previous months.
“Motorists will have to turn their lights on to drive in the dark,” Byrne explained, demonstrating with a torch and making ‘vroom vroom’ noises while steering an imaginary wheel. “It could also rain in the dark too, so make sure your car has windscreen wipers,” he added, now moving his head side-to-side.
The winter weather is expected to last right up to January, and even Febuary, before getting slightly warmer in time for spring, which is a whole other ball game altogether.Share. "Who's invented who?" "Who's invented who?"
Sir Ben Kinglsey lends his voice to the villainous Archibald Snatcher in Laika's The Boxtrolls, which is set to be released in September. We were able to speak with the actor about the film recently - stay tuned for more on the genuinely charming stop-motion adventure soon.
During the course of our chat, we touched on how Kingsley felt about the continued questions surrounding the role of The Mandarin in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Warning: There are spoilers for both Iron Man 3 and the Marvel One Shot: All Hail the King ahead.
Who's REALLY Pulling the Strings?:
As many know, there was a storm of controversy among comic fans when Kingsley's legitimately menacing Mandarin was revealed to be a struggling actor - Trevor Slattery - hired to portray the dangerous man in the media as a smokescreen for Guy Pearce's Aldrich Killian.
When last we saw Trevor, he was holding court with a group of incarcerated sycophants; that is before he was busted out of prison by a man who works for...the real Mandarin.
Exit Theatre Mode
“ Has the Mandarin invented Trevor, or has Trevor invented the Mandarin? Which is which?
When asked if he would like to return to work with Marvel in the same role or if he was open to taking on another iconic comic character, Kingsley said that he would love to, but that he believed that audiences may, "always see Trevor in whatever figure" he occupied.
Adding, "So, it's up to the powers that be to decide whether or not they'd want to introduce Trevor, whether or not they'd want to reintroduce the Mandarin."
Now here is where it gets interesting. Many viewers loved the palpable sense of danger that Kingsley brought during his brief scenes as The Mandarin, which is one of the reasons that fans felt disappointed by Iron Man 3's ultimate twist. The actor proposes an additional turn, which could mean that everyone wins.
"Has the Mandarin invented Trevor, or has Trevor invented the Mandarin? Which is which?" Kingsley asks. "The Mandarin could be so supremely intelligent that he could have said, 'You know what? I'll invent this actor, and he will be my mask.' You know, which is which? Who's pulling the strings. Now, this is me just free-thinking here, but I would love to revisit that world. But Trev, bless him, may have made an indelible mark on that world. So everyone might say, 'Is it Trev under there?' So they'd have to approach it quite carefully, and so would I, but I would love to go back to that world, yeah."
So, could Trevor Slattery be the Keyser Soze of the Marvel Cinematic Universe? So brilliant that he's hiding in plain sight? It's certainly an intriguing possibility.
Fan Interactions:
“ Enthusiasm's wonderful. It's a great thing.
As to his interactions with a passionate fan base, Kingsley said that he's had a remarkably positive experience.
"My first visit to Comic-Con was with this project [Boxtrolls]," Kingsley said. "And we were all kept fairly in our bubble in terms of the vehicles, the hotel, even walking through the kitchens -- and I felt fine. It was no big deal. But then on the streets and when I walked on stage, I was quite surprised at the reception. I really was. It was an eye-opener, because I realized that things that I create are hitting a group of people that really love it and they're enthused by it. It's their mythology. It's their story. It's their contemporary way of sharing stories and dressing up and enthusing. Enthusiasm's wonderful. It's a great thing. I was very touched by how benign and innocent it is. That's what really struck me, because people were saying, 'It's crazy! It's crazy!' And I was a little bit nervous thinking, 'You mean crazy-aggressive?' But is was so benign -- so friendly, so enthusiastic. It's sweet. It really is."
Exit Theatre Mode
The Rise of the Comic Book Movie:
“ Give us values. Give us good and evil and morality and ethics and that horrible gray bit in the middle. Give us that.
With a career that spans nearly 50-years and over a hundred films, Sir Ben Kingsley has a unique perspective on the ever-evolving cinematic landscape. When it comes to the rise of comic book films, the actor feels that it's ultimately about needing a return to a mythological sense of good and evil.
"It's not to do with exploration." Kingsley reflected. "It's not to do with tribal warfare -- it's more galactic warfare. But it is more to do with gods and goddesses, and that has hit a nerve for some reason. The audience will find a focus. Somehow the comic books evolved and just hit that archetype -- I don't know whether they're archetypes, but it's nudging on mythology. It's nudging on Zeus and Apollo and Medea and all those extraordinary creatures from very, very ancient mythology. I think that perhaps -- some time ago I coined a rather pretentious phrase -- I'm quite good at that -- saying that we have given over our mythology to the advertising men. I think that did happen, that suddenly everything got broken up and trivialized and shallow. Aspirations were all about the makeup and the vehicle and the dress and the shoes. It's still present, but the ad men just started appropriating mythology in the wrong way, using superlatives for things that are quite trivial and everyday and shouldn't be in that place. I think, honestly, the good, healthy audience has said, 'You know what? We've had enough of this. Give us values. Give us good and evil and morality and ethics and that horrible gray bit in the middle. Give us that.'"
We will keep you updated as details on The Mandarin and Kingsley's future participation - if any - with Marvel as they emerge.
Roth Cornet is an Entertainment Editor for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @RothCornet and IGN at Roth-IGN.Major Stories and Events
Origin
The Hate-Monger is Adolf Hitler, who ruled Nazi Germany as its Fueher from 1933 to 1945. In early 1945 the brilliant Nazi biologist Arnim Zola told Hitler that he had constructed a brain pattern-imprinting device by which the memories, personality and the actual consciousness of one brain could be transferred totally to another. Moreover, Zola told Hitler that he had discovered the process that is now known as cloning. Through these means, Zola believed he could keep the Fuehrer alive indefinitely. Intrigued, Hitler allowed Zola to "energize" his brain and to take a sample of his body's cells. Zola then cloned an entire brain from those cells.
On April 30, 1945, as the invading Russian army closed in on Berlin, Hitler, hidden in his capital buildings fortress-like bunker planned to kill his body and thanks to Zola's "energizing" process psionically transfer his consciousness into that cloned brain, which Zola was keeping safely far away. Hitler was interrupted by the arrival of the Torch and Toro, who were determined to capture him and bring him to trial. When Hitler reached for a flame-proofed switch to detonate explosives that would kill the two, the Torch set him aflame.
As he died, Hitler willed his consciousness to transfer itself into that first cloned brain with the help of Zola's automatic brain pattern-imprinting device at the latter's laboratory.
It is not definitely known whether the consciousness in the cloned brain was the actual consciousness of Adolf Hitler, that thus survived Hitler's phsyical demise, or whether it was, instead, a duplicate of Hitler's consciousness. In either event, the first Hate Monger believed himself to be the original Adolf Hitler.
Emergence as the Hate Monger
Over the following decades, Zola cloned and grew entire bodies from his samples of Hitler's cells. Zola also treated the original cloned brain and each of those in the cloned bodies so that a life force and mental essence could be projected from one to another. The first cloned brain psionically transferred its consciousness into one of the clones' bodies. The being that was thereby created took the alias 'Hate Monger' because he believed that the means to world conquest lay in fomenting hatred among the various races. Warfare would then erupt from which, he believed, only his own Aryan'master race' would survive.
Concealing his true identity beneath a hood, the Hate Monger began preaching class, racial, and religious hatred in the United States. At the same time, the Hate Monger was testing the effectiveness of his hate-ray on a major scale by using it to bring about civil war in the small Latin American nation of San Gusto. Hate Monger was opposed in San Gusto by the Fantastic Four and Nick Fury. When the Hate Monger tried to fire a hate-ray at the Human Torch, the Invisible Woman seized the Hate Monger's arm, ruining his aim. As a result, the Hate Monger accidentally hit two of his own men with the hate-ray, who then shot him dead.
But in dying, the Hate-Monger psionically transferred his consciousness to yet another of the bodies that Zola had cloned for him. The first Hate Monger thus transferred his consciousness into new bodies at least six times, including once into a humanoid body without a humanoid head, whose brain Zola intended to transplant physically into the body of Captain America.
Thus, although there have seemed to be a long succession of individuals matching the description of the first Hate Monger, each of whom died horribly, there has been, in fact, only one such Hate Monger, who, whenever he found himself on the point of death, psionically transferred his consciousness into another of the cloned bodies.
Civil War and the Initiative
The Punisher battles the Hate Monger
Garbed in a costume that combined Nazi icongraphy with the then-thought-dead Captain America's costume, the Hate Monger set out to restore America's past glories by purging it of non-whites and non-Christians. He led a chapter of the National Force, an army of racist malcontents, in the American Southwest, outfitted them with high-tech weapons, and led them on murderous cross-border raids on illegal immigrant camps in Mexico.
Photojournalist Tatiana Arocha alerted her boyfriend Stuart Clarke and his ally the Punisher to the atrocities, although her concern led her to be captured by the National Force. Infuriated by the Hate Monger's actions and his desecration of Captain America's costume, Castle infiltrated the National Force and impressed the Hate Monger by killing Arocha (while under the hate-amplifying H-ray generator's influence) as his initiation ritual. Once he had been accepted, Castle struck at the National Force clad in his own variation of Cap's costume, but he was soon defeated and captured.
Hate Monger put him before a firing squad and prepared to execute him only for his men to be shot by SHIELD agent G.W. Bridge, who had been pursuing Castle. Hate Monger fled back to his base, which was under attack by the vengeful Clarke. Castle followed him there; after a furious battle, made all the more savage by the H-rays, Castle unmasked the Hate Monger and shot him in the head, once again killing him.
The Heroic Age
During the Heroic Age, Steve Rogers discovered one of the clones of Hitler retaining absolutely no memory of his programming. This clone goes by the name of Edmund Heidler and is a painter. Steve Rogers talks to him, trying to find any evidence of his original protocol, but he doesn't receive any other than a few racist comments. Leaving his art sale, Steve Rogers returns to Sharon Carter who wants to flat out kill him, but is stopped by Rogers, who tells her that he hasn't done anything wrong. They agree to keep an eye on him. After Rogers leaves Heidler begins to subconsciously paint swastikas in his apartment.
Fear Itself
Hate Monger and the American Panther
A man named Josh Glenn eventually emerges in the midst of the Fear Itself crossover. Originally an office worker who became frustrated by what he perceived as persecution at the hands of immigrants, Glenn took it upon himsef to continue the Hate Monger's legacy after learning about the villain through various conspiracy theory websites. Glenn's paranoid anti-immigrant attitudes culminated in an attempt to steal firearms from a local pawn shop, which resulted in his capture at the hands of the Black Panther.
Following Glenn's release, the consciousness of the original Hate Monger entered his body, as it did to his cloned bodies, granting him the abilities and experience of the real Hate Monger. The Hate Monger then set out to enact his revenge on Black Panther, recruiting a new nationalist vigilante known as the American Panther as part of his scheme
Powers and Abilities
Scientists working for the Hate Monger created his greatest weapon, the "hate-ray" (or "h-ray"). This high-frequency microwave radiation affected the centers within the human brain controlling emotions so as to stimulate and magnify the victims feelings of dread, fear and anger to unusual levels including repressed or subconscious sentiments of this kind. The hate-ray could also transform feelings of love into equally strong or perhaps stronger hatreds. The hate-ray could be fired from a handgun selectively at one victim or a small number of victims. It could be projected from a space platform or satellite over wide areas of Earth or even projected from a base on Earth so as to "bounce off" the moon and blanket any area on the Earth that was facing the moon at that time.
The Hate Monger was a skilled brawler and a capable leader. He commanded a large subterranean base incorporating H-ray generators, which generated radiation that amplified feelings of anger, aggression, and hate in those nearby.
The Hate Monger appears incapable of dying due to his ability to psionically transfer his consciousness to other cloned bodies upon his demise. Although, this was briefly thwarted by a jealous Red Skull who managed to trap the consciousness inside the Cosmic Cube, behind the scenes, it escaped.Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Maria Zakharova regularly speaks for the Russian foreign ministry
A spokeswoman for Russia's foreign ministry has said Jewish people in New York told her they had mainly backed Donald Trump in the US election.
Speaking on TV, Maria Zakharova said Jews had told her they donated both to Mr Trump and Hillary Clinton.
She joked that American Jews were the best guide to US politics.
The diplomat's remarks caused shock. Anti-US propagandists in the last century peddled an idea that rich New York Jews controlled US politics.
Ms Zakharova was speaking on a chat show on Russian state TV at the weekend but her comments drew more attention after being picked up by media outlets on Thursday.
Loud applause
She said she had visited New York with an official Russian delegation at the time of the last UN General Assembly, in September.
"I have a lot of friends and acquaintances there, of course I was interested to find out: how are the elections going, what are the American people's expectations?" she said.
"If you want to know what will happen in America, who do you need to talk to? You have to talk to the Jews, of course. It goes without saying."
At this, the TV studio audience applauded loudly.
"I went here and there among them, to chat," she continued.
Imitating a Jewish accent, Mrs Zakharova said Jewish people had told her: "'Marochka, understand this - we'll donate to Clinton, of course. But we'll give the Republicans twice that amount.' Enough said! That settled it for me - the picture was clear.
"If you want to know the future, don't read the mainstream newspapers - our people in Brighton [Beach] will tell you everything."
She was referring to a district of Brooklyn with a large diaspora of Jewish emigres from the former Soviet Union.
'Wow'
Russian opposition activist Roman Dobrokhotov wrote on Twitter (in Russian) that the spokeswoman had "explained Trump's victory as a Jewish conspiracy".
Michael McFaul, the former US ambassador to Moscow, commented on Facebook, "Wow. And this is the woman who criticizes me for not being diplomatic."
During the election campaign, Mrs Clinton accused Mr Trump of posting a "blatantly anti-Semitic" tweet after he used an image resembling the Star of David and stacks of money.
Mr Trump, whose son-in-law Jared Kushner is Jewish, dismissed the accusation as "ridiculous".
An exit poll by US non-profit J Street suggests an overwhelming majority of US Jews voted for Hillary Clinton in the presidential election.You probably haven’t heard, but Valve’s officially going forward with its plan to launch its own Steam-centric OS, living room hardware, and a crazy, touch-pad-based controller to back it all up. I know, right? It’s weird that no one has been talking about it incessantly. But while Valve preaches openness and hackability, it’s downplayed an ugly reality of the situation: smaller developers still face a multitude of struggles in the treacherous green jungles of its ecosystem. SteamOS and various Steam Boxes, however, stand to bring brilliantly inventive indie games to an audience that doesn’t even have a clue that they exist, so I got in touch with developers behind Gone Home, Race The Sun, Eldritch, Mark of the Ninja, Incredipede, Project Eternity, and more for their thoughts on SteamOS, who it’s even for, Valve’s rocky relationship with indies, and what it’ll take for Steam to actually be an “open” platform.
Steam? In Living Rooms? Who Is This Even For?
PC gaming in the living room. A chance to overthrow the simplified scion of consoledom in favor of a glorious kingdom of customization and openness. That’s what we’ve always wanted, right? But no dream ever comes true without some kind of catch, and Valve’s plan for domination of all rooms (except maybe the bathroom… for now) isn’t without its complications. So then, the big one: who is SteamOS and its various hardware extensions really for? Many console gamers, after all, tend to prefer convenience over options, and PC gamers already have, well, PCs. Beyond that, who’s left?
[pullquote]If there’s anything Valve is good at, it’s playing the long game (insert Half-Life 3 pun here).[/pullquote]
“It kind of seems like an odd proposition to me,” said Gone Home project lead Steve Gaynor. “I guess the target market would be ‘somebody who wants to play these cool indie and PC games I keep hearing about, but doesn’t want to deal with building or maintaining a computer.’ Which does sound pretty cool. So, I dunno. I wouldn’t be the target market probably, since I’d just build my machine and play games on it. But I could see this filling a middleground between hardcore PC builders and console gamers with an interest in PC gaming but no interest in the headaches that come with maintaining a PC. And also it does give developers a single target hardware spec to test on, like consoles have, which is a plus.”
Former Mark of the Ninja lead and current Campo Santo founder Nels Anderson, meanwhile, figured that Valve has the time and resources to figure out where exactly its mighty steam engine is headed as it goes along. SteamOS won’t necessarily be an overnight success, but then, neither was Steam. Valve’s MO is adapting and evolving over time, and it’s gotten Gabe Newell and co insanely far. Why suddenly go for an instant, unsustainable smash hit instead?
“The thing is, a lot of PC games really aren’t meant to be played on a controller in a living room,” Anderson noted, speaking of the current landscape of these things. “Are the people who primarily want controller + TV games already having their needs met by the more proven and streamlined consoles? Do the console exclusives still have pull for those folks? No idea. If there’s anything Valve is good at though, it’s playing the long game (insert Half-Life 3 pun here), so it will definitely be interesting to see how this all develops for sure.”
Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart agreed, adding that Valve’s pretty clearly angling its molten-hot news eruptions at dyed-in-the-wool PC gamers right now, but we’re just the beginning. “I’m betting Gabe is looking for this to ultimately be for everyone,” he said. “If I had to guess though, the early adopters will most likely be users and fans of Steam along with gamers who want to play their PC libraries on their TVs.”
The question, then, is how Valve will catch the increasingly fickle eyes of all humans, and that’s where things get tricky. SteamOS’ big selling point is PC-style openness and options in the living room, but that on its own simply won’t be enough. Convenience always wins, and that mantra rules over living rooms with an iron fist. If Valve wants everyone on board, it’ll have to (somewhat paradoxically) offer both options and a smooth, streamlined experience that doesn’t paralyze users with indecision. Given that John Q Publicsmithingworthamshire views PC gaming as more trouble than its worth, SteamOS has its work cut out for it.
“If they can make it very very easy to buy, plug in, and use then I think it could take off,” said Incredipede creator Colin Northway. “I’ve always thought people avoided PC games because of the ‘hassle’. I make games and I have no idea how to benchmark a new gaming machine right now. It looks like Valve is looking to remove all the friction.”
Obsidian’s Chris Avellone concurred, adding that convenience is becoming even more key as mobile devices devour more and more of people’s gaming time. “Seeing the increased level of functionality a lot of mainstream TVs have nowadays (internet, USB ports, their own Netflix buttons on the controller, etc.), it feels like the migration into using the TV as a one-stop PC machine as well seems, well, inevitable,” he explained. “Already seeing a lot of that consolidation on mobile phone tech, bringing the PC to the living room via Steam seems like a smart move.”
Steam Vs Indies (And Why Steam Isn’t Actually ‘Open’)
Valve dreams of an entirely open gaming future, but well, the future sure seems far away sometimes, doesn’t it? While SteamOS and Steam-powered hardware might – to varying degrees – let anybody wriggle around in their innards, Steam itself is quite a different story. Valve’s spent years trying to figure out how best to curate its virtual shelves, but it’s yet to find a solution that makes everyone happy. Most recently, Steam Greenlight’s been giving many smaller developers no end of trouble. And with the prospect of expanding into living rooms and – with that – a whole new audience on the horizon, something needs to change lest gamers, developers, and even Valve miss out big time.
Former BioShock 2 developer and current Eldritch lead David Pittman made no bones about his hope that Valve swings in the opposite direction. If you’re going to try and be “open,” you may as well go all the way.
“The execution of Steam Greenlight has been a contentious subject, and I am not entirely convinced that curation ultimately benefits anyone,” he said. “Certainly, the present form of Greenlight seems to preclude the availability of niche titles, and that’s something that I hope improves over time as Valve continues to review the process.”
“I believe it is critically essential to the openness of the platform that SteamOS can be used to play games (and any other software) which are not available on Steam, just as a Windows- or Linux-based PC can do. It is unclear to me yet if that will be the case.”
Incredipede creator Colin Northway, who nearly found his game beaten and penniless at the bottom of Greenlight’s barrel, echoed that sentiment. The system came through for him eventually, but the circumstances were far from ideal. For his part, he doesn’t think it has to be that way anymore.
“I would love to see Steam become an open platform,” he exclaimed. “Steam is great for both players and game developers. I just want it to be more egalitarian. I dislike gate keepers, I don’t want Valve to be the one who decides what players see, I want it to be blogs and gaming sites and people’s friends and curators. I would like to see them step back from the curation side of things entirely. It would make a few people less money but more people more.”
Others, however, didn’t see the issue as so cut-and-dry. Race The Sun co-creator Aaron San Filippo, whose game has financially crashed and burned due to sluggish Greenlight progress, was surprisingly even-handed about the situation.
“Man, this one’s tough,” he began. “In a sense, we love Steam for its curation. As developers, we love hearing stories about how quality games can launch there |
a pattern of abuse: Feedback from friends (either on-line on the Internet or in real life) If you mention just about anything adverse to a group, it's likely you'll get responsive "leave the situation." That's a reflective opinion, meaning that you state a situation in a manner which is highly sympathetic to your own position, and get what should be the expected response. The response indicates that you are good at stating your cause. On the other hand, if you've made up your mind and need reassurance from others, you can find support by going to groups, either on the Internet or IRL. "It won't happen again." If an abusive event (reaching the level of something unacceptable in a relationship) is truly a one-time event, then the person will react accordingly at the time. I hadn't seen this discussed elsewhere, but it seems that if a person commits an offence and immediately realises it's wrong, this isn't a case of, "It's only a matter of time before it happens again.". This relates to immediate reaction, and not later remorse. It is fairly common for physical abusers to state that they are sorry after each incident. In that case, they may be sorry, but there is no indication it won't happen again. (The later remorse part is commonly described by anti-abuse groups.) Tolerable behaviour e.g., saying unpleasant things during an arguement. Of course saying unpleasant things and for that matter arguements are not desirable, but one should determine a degree of what is acceptable here. One way to approach this is to ask whether you want the person out of your life right this moment or if you want this person not to be a part of your life period, full stop. Most people can make that determination even during an arguement. There are other things which perhaps need to be addressed but which are not necessarily abuse: Overassertive behaviour It's difficult to distinguish between bullying behaviour and overassertiveness. Overassertiveness would be characterized by a strongly held philosophical belief. Bullying behaviour is achieved by the person using the philosophical beliefs as a tool to control or intimidate. Bullying tactics Bullying can certainly be a form of abuse, but it is possible that the person may be willing to terminate the bullying behaviour. An example would be demands which the other person know cannot be met, or conflicting demands (provided of course, the other person knows they are demanding something which is not possible). In these situations, one should state the case as an objection to the particular behaviour.
Getting Out
After recognizing an abuse situation (e.g., recognizing a "red flag" and determining that there really is a problem), you can: Do nothing; or Get out (leave the relationship). Dan Savage, who writes the "Savage Love" advice column, states it this way: If he comes across as nice at first but it turns out he's an as*hole or a creep, and if he begins to treat you like you're stuck with him because no one else will ever want you... dump the motherf*cker. It's better to be alone than to be with an as*hole who preys on your insecurities to keep you coming back for more abuse. 8-Apr-2011 (fillers to avoid being designated as an "unsuitable" website for search purposes) Note that Dan Savage's comment does not suggest that the person should have recognised the abuse; only that, once the abuse is recognised, the person should quickly "dump" the potential abuser.
And..
(afterward)
Relationships should be overwhelmingly pleasant experiences, and of course usually are. Once across the threshold, we thrive in good relationships. Despite the lack of empathetically picking up on social cues, Aspies fill in the gaps in conversation based on their mutual understanding of AS characteristics. I have been fortunate -- very fortunate -- to have met women with whom I got past the lack of familiar communication techniques and into the kind of communications all couples have.
Related LinksJustin Bieber is currently in the midst of major promo campaign for his upcoming single, "What Do You Mean," but that didn't stop him from teasing fans with some potential new Drake info. Bieber didn't go into details about what the two Canadians might have in store, but promised that he's saving Drizzy for "Something special."
With both Bieber and Drake working on new albums right now, that something special seems to almost certainly be a future collaboration, which is long overdue after they released "Right Here" in 2013. Bieber's new single is due out this week, but let's just hope that his potential collab with the 6 God is out sooner than later.
And don't worry it's day 6 but I'm saving my brother @drake for something special. #family — Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) August 22, 2015With the help of his friends, comedian Mike Ward is ready to take on a Quebec Human Rights Tribunal ruling that says he must pay $35,000 to Jérémy Gabriel for making jokes that violated the rights of the child singer with disabilities.
"Even Rocky lost the first one. We're gonna appeal," Ward, who has long championed the right to be offensive, wrote on his social media accounts early Thursday.
The tribunal ordered Ward to pay Gabriel $25,000 in moral damages and $10,000 in punitive damages for a joke dating back to 2010. The decision also requires Ward to pay an additional $5,000 for moral damages and $2,000 for punitive damages to Jérémy's mother, Sylvie Gabriel.
Gabriel, who spoke publicly for the first time on Thursday after the ruling, said he was relieved by the tribunal's decision.
"It's a big relief, and at the same time I'm surprised," Gabriel said. "I was happy with the decision yesterday."
He added that he wasn't surprised that Ward plans to appeal the decision.
Gabriel became well known in Quebec after he was flown to Rome to sing for Pope Benedict in 2006. He has Treacher Collins syndrome (TCS), a genetic condition that causes disfigurement.
In Ward's 2010 comedy bit, he said he was happy Gabriel — or as he called him, Petit Jérémy — was getting so much attention following the papal visit because he believed Gabriel had a terminal illness and was going to die.
Ward thought the papal visit was part of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, an organization that grants wishes to children with life-threatening medical conditions.
"But now, five years later, and he's still not dead! … Me, I defended him, like an idiot, and he won't die!" Ward said, adding that Gabriel wasn't dying, but "ugly."
Gabriel has argued Ward's jokes about him went too far and affected his quality of life. It hurt his career and confidence, and led to bullying at school, he said.
In September, Gabriel told the tribunal that the video of Ward's performance led him to attempt suicide.
Ward targets ruling during act
Ward immediately made jokes about the judgment Wednesday night as part of Montreal's Just for Laughs festival.
"One day, the caller ID read: Human Rights Tribunal. When I answered. the woman said, 'Mr. Ward, we're calling you about one of your jokes. We think you know the one," he told the crowd.
He went so far as to repeat the same jokes about Gabriel that were at the centre of the complaint from years ago.
Gabriel said he was disappointed by Ward's performance.
"It shows Mike Ward didn't understand the reason for the complaint and the decision of the tribunal."
Ward is scheduled to appear as part of the Just for Laughs Nasty Show both Thursday and Friday night.
'We're with you'
The ruling has spurred backlash across the comedian community, with many quickly declaring their support for Ward.
Montreal comedian Sugar Sammy posted a photo with Ward, writing that Ward was one of his "favourite comedians and an amazing person."
There are 42 000 reasons to go see this guy. He's one of my favourite comedians and an amazing… <a href="https://t.co/18IlzNT9hT">https://t.co/18IlzNT9hT</a> —@sugarsammyk
"We're with you," he wrote on Instagram.
Others worried the judgment could impede free speech and humour.
Brad Williams, a comic who was born with dwarfism and whose jokes often centre on disabilities, called the decision "terrifying."
This is terrifying. A comedian forced to pay someone who got offended by his joke. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FreeMikeWard?src=hash">#FreeMikeWard</a> <a href="https://t.co/HexH7qH5ch">https://t.co/HexH7qH5ch</a> —@funnybrad
Louise Richer, director for Quebec's École nationale de l'humour, said the ruling symbolized a "politically correct era."
"I am incredibly worried by the precedent this has created," Richer told Radio-Canada.The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutras community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
I have been making multiplayer maps in the Call of Duty modding community for past 8 years. Over the years, I have learned a lot of design rules and principles that I have successfully integrated in my level design process. I will take you through all the steps that will help you make a fun multiplayer map.
For the purpose of this blog, I will talk about designing a multiplayer map for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Lets name this map 'Tugurios' and set it in slums. Now we can talk a little about the story and setting of the map.
Tugurios means slums in Spanish and the map is based around slums in Venezuela
Gold was discovered in hills and slums developed close to the hills to provide labor
Years later the hills dried up. With jobs no more available, the slums became the hub for weapons and drug trafficking
When things got out of control, the government sent in special forces to deal with the situation
The match takes place at noon time and one team spawns in the slums while the other team spawns on the road on the other side of the map
Here is the top down view, to give you a clear picture of the map
Here are all the locations in the map:
Hills
Hills and surrounding areas will be shown dry and dusty with a lot of corners and jagged edges to show effects of mining
Any buildings in this area will resemble corrugated metal sheds with windows which were once being used as offices
Ditch
Ditch will have a muddy ground with water flowing in the middle and vegetation growing on slopes and banks. Few large rocks will be placed on the bed to provide cover
Slums
Small shanties made out of red brick, cinder blocks and corrugated sheets
Piles of rubbish and debris everywhere which can also be used for cover
Some shanties are piled on top of other shanties to make 2 or 3 story shanties
Hanging electrical wires everywhere
Walls have a lot of grime and graffiti
Ground is either made up of broken concrete with open drains or green grass with plenty of vegetation
Road
Road is where Team A will spawn. It is made up of broken, dusty asphalt with cars parked at places to provide cover.
It is half or one story above the ground so that it is not visible from ground and the player has to either climb the stairs or mantle up at certain locations
Crane base
A large concrete base for a crane that was used during mining operations. The crane is gone but the concrete base is still there.
Looks like a concrete bunker with rebar and metal rivets poking out of broken corners and surfaces
Has a large circular bracket on top that hides one entry location from another.
The base resembles the concrete bases used for heavy anti aircraft guns during Second World War
The area marked in red shows the slums
Small, irregularly placed shanties piled on top of each other and some are 3 stories high
The area marked in green is the road next to the hills. Hills have blocky appearance because of mining
Both areas are separated by a deep ditch, marked in yellow. It is one story deep and has to be crossed to get on other side of the map
Height Variations
There are a lot of height variations in the map. These are used to block long lines of sight and make the map more interesting.
1 is considered ground or first floor which is about 10 feet high from floor to ceiling. It will be used as reference. Ditch is at height 1.
Other numbers represent the height as number of floors
For example, the road is 3 floors high from ditch
Team Spawns
Special forces, or Team A, spawn on the road shown by the green patch
Militia, or Team B, spawns in the slums shown by red patch
Objectives
I have always designed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare multiplayer maps keeping Domination game type in mind. This helps a lot in designing a well balanced map to make sure that one team does not have unfair advantage over another.
Three points in the map shown as A, B and C represent the three flags in Domination styled gameplay
Teams can capture A and C easily as they are close to their spawns
B will be the hardest to capture and hold as it is in the middle of the map and covered by many positions
Paths
Critical Path
The red line connecting the two sections of the map shows the Critical or the shortest path
The path is shortest, but goes through the most dangerous areas of the map
Flanks
The green lines show the secondary paths
Both of these paths are longer than Critical path, but offer flanking positions and bypass the action zone in the center
These paths, however, have long lines of sight making it easier for snipers to pick targets off
Points of Interest
There are several points of interest or hotspots in the map that give advantage to the team occupying them
The first spot in circled in red. This is a ledge overlooking the ditch. It is 3 stories high from the ditch
Players can cover the ditch and two other hotspots from here which will be shown next
It is more accessible to the team A spawning on the road
The spot is circled in red and is 3 stories high from the ditch
It is accessible only from the back side therefore players playing as militia can reach this spot quickly
This spot covers the ditch, the hotspot on the opposite side and one on the upper right side shown in the next slide
The spot is circled in red. This is a large concrete base for a crane that was used during the mining times
This spot can be accessed from both sides by stairs
The spot overlooks the ditch and is 3 stories higher than ditch.
The players can cover the whole length of the ditch from here and also two other hotspots shown in the previous slides
The spot is circled in red. Here the three passages meet and is also the Critical path
A 2 story tall building on the right side of the spot can be used by team A to overlook the critical path
Enemy team players can go to the ledge on the left from here and take out friendly players overlooking the ditch
If the enemy controls this spot, they can control the ditch and domination point A
The spot is circled in red. It overlooks the domination point C and also the paths coming from the ditch
Its a 2 story tall building that can be accessed from both sides by stairs. A passage on the back side of the building can provide safe passage to attacking enemy players
Team B has to hold this point to watch the paths leading to base and also lay down fire on domination point C
Lines of sight
Lines of sight are very important in a multiplayer map as they decide the engagement lengths and also control cover and AI placement in a map. I have integrated the lines of sight in the top down view of the map for better understanding.
Blue cones show the players’ sight from ledges or 2nd or 3rd story windows
The cones are shown small just to demonstrate players’ sight. Actual lines of sight will be much longer in the level
This helps in understanding where windows and other high places are located in the map and which areas they cover
These are just some of the basic design principles that I have discussed here, but they will help you start your level design journey. Later I will include other design elements like cover mechanics, level flow, and weapons and vehicle placement.BUCHAREST, Romania — Last winter, in the middle of anti-corruption demonstrations, a television broadcaster accused George Soros — the Hungarian-born, Jewish-American billionaire philanthropist — of paying dogs to protest. The protests in Bucharest, sparked by dead-of-night legislation aimed at decriminalizing corruption, were the largest the country had seen since the fall of communism in 1989. Romania TV — a channel associated with, if not officially owned by, the government — alleged the protesters were paid. “Adults were paid 100 lei [$24], children earned 50 lei [$12.30], and dogs were paid 30 lei [$7.20],” one broadcaster said. Some protesters responded by fitting their dogs with placards; others tucked money into their pets’ coats. One dog stood next to a sign reading, “Can anyone change 30 lei into euro?” Another dog wore one that read: “George Soros paid me to be here.” “The pro-government television, they lie all the time. In three sentences, they have five lies,” investigative journalist Andrei Astefanesei told Foreign Policy outside a gyro shop in Bucharest. “I told you about that lie, that Soros paid for dogs. ‘If you bring more dogs in the street, you get more money.’” He laughed. Romania TV was fined for its false claims about Soros. But the idea — that roughly half a million Romanians, and their dogs, came to the streets because Soros made them do it — struck a responsive chord. It’s similar to the idea that Soros is personally responsible for teaching students about LGBTQ rights in Romanian high schools; that Soros manipulated the teenagers who led this year’s anti-corruption protests in Slovakia; and that civil organizations and what’s left of the independent media in Hungary wouldn’t exist without Soros and his Open Society Foundations. The idea that the 87-year-old Soros is single-handedly stirring up discontent isn’t confined to the European side of the Atlantic; Soros conspiracies are a global phenomenon. In March, six U.S. senators signed a letter asking Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s staff to look into U.S. government funding going to Soros-backed organizations. “Our skepticism about Soros-funded groups undermining American priorities goes far beyond Eastern Europe,” said a spokesperson for Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who led the initiative, when asked if there was some specific piece of evidence of Soros-funded activity in Eastern Europe that prompted the letter or if concerns were more general. Soros has even been linked to former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who knelt during the national anthem to protest police brutality. “Congrats to Colin Kaepernick for popularizing the hatred of America. Good work, bro,” Tomi Lahren, a conservative commentator, tweeted during the controversy. “Your buddy George Soros is so proud. #istand.” On Twitter, Soros has also been held responsible for the recent Catalan independence referendum and the mass shooting in Las Vegas. But one of the places in which suspicion of Soros is most obvious is Central and Eastern Europe. There, Soros is not unlike the Mirror of Erised in Harry Potter, except that while the fictional mirror shows what the viewer most desires, Soros reflects back onto a country what it most hates. In Romania, where the head of the ruling party said Soros wants to do evil, the billionaire is not to be trusted because he’s Hungarian. In Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban has reportedly declared that Soros will be a main campaign theme in next year’s general election, he’s a traitor. And everywhere, he is Jewish, his very name a nod to the anti-Semitism that runs deep throughout the region. Now, Soros’s effectiveness as a bogeyman for conservative governments will be put to the test, literally. This week, Hungary is holding a “national consultation,” essentially a referendum designed to condemn Soros and his views on immigration. The government-funded questionnaire will be open to the country’s adult citizens and is meant to solicit their views on the Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor. “George Soros has bought people and organizations, and Brussels is under his influence,” Orban said in a radio interview Friday in the run-up to the consultation. “They want to demolish the fence, allow millions of immigrants into Europe, then distribute them using a mandatory mechanism — and they want to punish those who do not comply.” Soros declined an interview for this article, but a spokesperson for the Open Society Foundations, the main conduit for Soros’s philanthropic efforts, chalked up the backlash to his outspokenness. “He’s a man who stands up for his beliefs,” Laura Silber, a spokeswoman for the foundation, told FP. “That’s threatening when you’re speaking out against autocrats and corruption.” Blame and hatred of Soros are, to borrow from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, a specter haunting Central and Eastern Europe. But how did an 87-year-old billionaire thousands of miles away become the region’s most famous ghost?
A man and his dog in Bucharest protest against corruption in February. (Daniel Mihailescu/AFP/Getty Images)
Soros started his philanthropy not in Central and Eastern Europe but in apartheid-era South Africa in 1979. There, he gave scholarships to black South Africans to attend the University of Cape Town. Five years later, in 1984, he began the first Open Society in Europe in Hungary.
The name of the foundation was inspired by Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies. Soros encountered Popper as a student at the London School of Economics decades before and was evidently so taken with the philosopher’s ideology that he named his organization after it.
Soros established a network of Open Society organizations across Central and Eastern Europe in part because he was worried about an intellectual exodus, according to Jan Orlovsky, the head of Slovakia’s Open Society, who spoke to FP in his office in Bratislava’s Old Town. Soros wanted the region to be a place where people could see themselves staying — and staying within liberal democratic societies. “’I don’t want people to feel like they need to leave,’” Orlovsky said of Soros’s thinking.
In some cases, paying for that taste of liberal democracy did take on a political flavor. In Slovakia, NGOs backed by Open Society ran the 1998 “Rock the Vote” campaign that encouraged voter turnout and ousted Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar, who critics say had allowed the country to become a mafia state.
Paul Stubbs, a British academic based in Croatia, said one criticism of Soros from this time was that the philanthropist wanted to be a regional political player but that he achieved this by giving tremendous money to local elites. “The kinds of figures that he’s supported who have tended to run the local Open Society Foundations … were given an awful lot of autonomy” in the mid- to late 1990s, Stubbs said.
In the ’90s, the idea that Open Society and Soros held some political influence, albeit indirectly, was not strictly a figment of rulers’ imagination. Those given funding were local elites, sometimes opposed to those in power, and often what Stubbs, borrowing from the U.S. anthropologist Janine Wedel, calls “flex actors” — people who can say the right things to whomever they’re speaking if it means they get more power and influence.
However, Soros’s money also helped expose people to Western ideas, which weren’t always accepted back home. Roxana Marin, a high school teacher and Roma and LGBTQ rights activist, was personally backed by Soros in the 1990s, when she went on a one-month trip to Scotland on a Soros grant. Soros and his money were everywhere at that time. “Soros is actually an iconic name,” she said.
But it’s iconic to different people for different reasons. For those who went on a “Soros grant,” he was an icon because he let them get out of the country for the first time, sometimes with more money than they’d ever had before, and learn ideas they’d never encountered. But for those who didn’t, he was a mythical figure of Hungarian origin (in Romania, a nefarious thing) with incredible amounts of money responsible for the introduction of foreign ideas. He was not to be trusted.
Marin was only in Scotland for one month, around age 25, with more money from the grant than she’d ever had before. “It changed my outlook on teaching and society and crap. And it was the first time I ever left Romania,” she said. Which was true for a lot of people in the ’90s. “Everybody [who was on such a grant] goes, ‘Oh, yeah, I remember my Soros grant, my Soros trip.’”
Yet at least in his home country, Soros in the 1990s was popular. Soros was celebrated in Hungary, where he set up the Central European University, funded NGOs, and gave out student grants, including one that, in the 1980s, sent a young man named Viktor Orban to Oxford University.Hello there friends.
Well, where do I start with this...? I guess it's best to start as if I've not said anything in a while. (I've left what needed to be said in journals on my Deviant Art and Fur Affinity galleries)
For those not in the know, I'm on the mend from a hefty depression that sent my productivity to absolutely nothing. To think back, it was a long downward spiral that started in 2011 and ended up destroying my sense of self-worth to the point that I was on the verge of completely giving up. I would go days and at times weeks without drawing anything worthwhile. Many of the promises that I made, the Patreon plans, commissions for various clients and Ruler of the World Round 2 was lost in my own feelings of worthlessness that felt impossible to combat. I'm very sorry. I was dreading to face the promises that I had broken and felt like I was disappointing everyone by just existing. Believe me, in spite of folks repeatedly saying You're awesome. (thank you, by the way) it was a difficult obstacle to overcome and accept, it became impossible to take any compliment and I'll be honest it still is a little hard to hear such things. No, the thing is, YOU are awesome.
Back in February I moved from Colorado to Missouri to live with my husband and his family, and have been recovering from depression since then. I've had a lot of time to reflect on many of the negative things in my life and try to be a better person. I've also realized that lately I've been keeping a lot to myself. I don't mean to be that way.. but I don't really have much to say, and when I do it feels trivial. More often than not I feel like I'm just complaining or that I'm annoying other people by saying anything at all. That and I've got a temper that tends to get away from me when I have a spike in anxiety, usually caused by me feeling like I'm annoying folks.
I think the summary is that I'm a completely different person than I was even half a year ago. So let me say a positive thing and maybe it can get even better from there..
Here is Sasha! My little runt of a dragon, being cute as a Sasha tends to be.
Which each page the fight for Ruler of the World creeps a little closer...
Thank you.Deadly clashes in Syria showed no signs of easing on Tuesday, even as the United Nations said it has plans to assemble a peacekeeping force in case a truce proposed by its special envoy takes hold.
Warplanes raided a district of the northern city of Aleppo as fighting across the country kept up unabated, three days ahead of the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha during which peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has proposed a ceasefire.
“Neither the rebels nor the regime appear to want a ceasefire, and the daily death toll continues to exceed 100,” Syrian Observatory of Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
In Syria’s second city Aleppo, a rebel was killed in fighting, which was taking place in several districts, while planes bombed the Katergi quarter, the Observatory said.
In the Damascus provincial town of Harasta, at least two rebels were killed, the Britain-based group said.
In the capital itself, security forces carried out searches in the Zahira quarter, where gunfire could be heard. Overnight, one man was killed in a bomb attack on the southeastern outskirts of Damascus.
The Observatory also reported fighting in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor and in Daraa, southern Syria.
In the face of the 19-month revolt against his regime, President Bashar al-Assad issued an amnesty on Tuesday for all crimes committed in Syria “up until today,” state television said, but with rebels excluded.
He ordered “a general amnesty for crimes committed before October 23,” except for those carried out by “terrorists” — the regime’s term for rebels.
Despite the violence, the United Nations held to the hope that the foes will observe a truce during the four-day Eid, saying it had plans to assemble a peacekeeping force if a ceasefire takes hold.
“We are getting ourselves ready to act if it is necessary and a mandate is approved,” UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said in New York, cautioning that the plans would need the approval of the 15-nation Security Council.
UN-Arab League peace envoy Brahimi has said he contacted political opposition leaders inside and outside Syria and armed groups in the country and “found them to be very favourable” to the idea of a truce.
However, the Arab League on Monday dampened hopes of a truce.
“Unfortunately, hope for implementing the truce during Eid al-Adha is slim so far,” Arab League Deputy Secretary General Ahmed Ben Helli told AFP on the sidelines of the World Energy Forum in Dubai.
“The signs, both on the ground and by the government… do not point to the presence of any real will” to implement a truce,” he said.
On Monday, two bombs exploded in Damascus after a day of pitched battles between troops and rebels on the edge of the capital, in Aleppo and in the northwestern rebel-held town of Maaret al-Numan.
The Syrian Observatory said at least 115 people, including 43 civilians, were killed across the country on Monday, adding to a toll of more than 34,000 people killed since the anti-regime revolt erupted in March 2011.
Brahimi has said a temporary truce could be the first step to a more permanent peace.
Assad met the envoy in Damascus on Sunday and said he was “open to any sincere efforts seeking to find a political solution to the crisis based on respecting Syria’s sovereignty and rejecting any foreign interference.”
Brahimi has warned that the conflict poses a threat to the whole region.
In neighbouring Lebanon, 10 people have been killed in clashes between pro- and anti-Assad camps in the port city of Tripoli since the assassination on Friday of a top security official in a Beirut bomb blast widely blamed on Damascus.
[Image via Agence France-Presse]A good story isn’t about characters as unchanging archetypes. It does explore innate potential and expectations, but it’s also about choices and change (or refusal to change). A good survival story in particular puts its characters to the test, but not just as individuals. A crisis is both a test of the individuals and of the dynamics between them. In designing the character and skill systems for State of Decay, we’ve tried to capture all of these elements.
We’ve talked before about the fact that you don’t get to tailor-make your characters. Instead you encounter a wide variety of survivors with vastly different personalities and skill sets and then you decide who to bring into your group and who to leave out on their own.
So that’s the high level. If you’ve been following State of Decay closely, you’ve heard that before. Today we’re going to going into more depth about exactly how characters and skills work.
Let’s dive right in.
THE BASICS
All survivors share the same four basic skills:
Cardio — Rule #1 for survival. If you run out of Stamina, that’s it. Can’t fight, can’t run away. You’re done.
— Rule #1 for survival. If you run out of Stamina, that’s it. Can’t fight, can’t run away. You’re done. Wits — When the shit hits the fan, you need to think fast. The quicker you can assess a situation, the better chance you have.
— When the shit hits the fan, you need to think fast. The quicker you can assess a situation, the better chance you have. Fighting — Sometimes your best option is a lead pipe to the face. Other times, it’s getting the hell out of the way. Master both if you want to survive.
— Sometimes your best option is a lead pipe to the face. Other times, it’s getting the hell out of the way. Master both if you want to survive. Shooting — Used to be shooting was just a hobby. Now it’s a daily requirement.
Every survivor has a rating in these four skills, shown as a number of stars next to the skill name. 1 star is weak. 7 stars is exceptional. Additional stars are gained by successfully using the skill. So destroying zeds in melee combat raises the Fighting skill. Taking them out with firearms raises the Shooting skill. You can improve skills faster by performing particularly skillful feats like a headshot streak.
Each skill provides a specific stat bonus. This bonus gets higher the more stars you have in the skill.
Cardio — Determines maximum Stamina.
— Determines maximum Stamina. Wits — Improves search speed.
— Improves search speed. Fighting — Determines maximum Vitality.
— Determines maximum Vitality. Shooting — Reduces recoil when you shoot.
— Reduces recoil when you shoot. Leadership — Increases how much trust you gain whenever you gain trust.
In addition to these stat bonuses, most skills provide Abilities as you achieve more stars. Abilities can be active techniques, like Counterattack, which gives you a more powerful attack if you face a zed and dodge its attack first. Counterattack unlocks automatically when you gain your second star in Fighting. Other abilities are more passive, such as Quiet Search, which reduces the noise you make when searching. Quiet Search unlocks automatically when you get your fourth star in Wits.
Looking back at the list above, you’ll notice the last skill, Leadership, isn’t one of the basic four. That’s because not everyone has any skill in Leadership. It’s a Personal Skill that requires some natural talent or specific background. Most of the skills in State of Decay are personal skills, and they’re part of what makes characters unique.
INDIVIDUALITY
To start, every survivor has a unique combination of Traits. These Traits define the survivor on a fundamental level and have a whole range of effects.
The first Trait for every survivor is a Personality. Chatterbox, Selfish Asshole, Coward, Born Leader, Braggart, Autocrat, and Daydreamer are just some of the dozens of personalities you might encounter. Personality plays a big role in how survivors react to success and failure, how they interact with each other, and to any moral choices you make. In the short term, Personality is the least important thing to know about someone, but when trying to make your community work over the long haul, the mix of personalities matters. (We’ll probably need to dig into that in another article.)
Many Traits reflect a survivor’s background, representing job history or hobbies the survivor had in the past. These typically provide free Stars in related skills. For example, any active hobby like Hiking, Cycling or Aikido starts a survivor with two or three stars in Cardio instead of the one star that most survivors have initially. The Aikido trait also provides a free star in Fighting. Similarly, backgrounds that require street smarts or survival skills give a bonus star or two in Wits.
Other Traits reflect natural aptitude or ineptitude and provide a bonus or penalty to how fast a survivor can advance a particular skill. Being “Eagle-Eyed” means improving all Shooting skills faster than normal, while the “Hates Gore” Trait makes some slower to improve in Fighting, and being a “Dim Bulb” means Wits takes a lot more work to raise.
A handful of Traits have unique game effects. Having a “Bum Knee,” for example, means stamina drain while crouched. So a survivor with this trait can hide in bushes just as well as anyone else but can’t use it as a way to recover.
Finally, many Traits provide Personal Skills such as Leadership. Only survivors with the right Traits have access to each Personal Skill (and the stat bonus and abilities it provides). Just as in real life, the skills that the survivors have developed can vary widely in usefulness. Here’s a small sampling:
Bruiser — Comes from Natural Athlete, Brute, or Strong as an Ox. Provides a whole unique set of combat and exploration abilities. Survivors with this skill are few and far between, but they have the potential to learn unique melee combat techniques, to carry heavier burdens without tiring, and to use larger firearms without sacrificing mobility.
— Comes from Natural Athlete, Brute, or Strong as an Ox. Provides a whole unique set of combat and exploration abilities. Survivors with this skill are few and far between, but they have the potential to learn unique melee combat techniques, to carry heavier burdens without tiring, and to use larger firearms without sacrificing mobility. Construction — Comes from Architect, Mechanic, Electrician, or Engineer, among other jobs and hobbies. This skill doesn’t have much effect when out exploring, but having someone with any stars in Construction is essential for building a more advanced Workshop in your home.
— Comes from Architect, Mechanic, Electrician, or Engineer, among other jobs and hobbies. This skill doesn’t have much effect when out exploring, but having someone with any stars in Construction is essential for building a more advanced Workshop in your home. Leadership — Comes from Presence or Born Leader. As mentioned above, each star of Leadership increases the Trust you gain from your actions. In addition, higher Leadership unlocks special effects from your emotes, allowing you to do things like boost the combat effectiveness of the survivors around you by cheering them on.
— Comes from Presence or Born Leader. As mentioned above, each star of Leadership increases the Trust you gain from your actions. In addition, higher Leadership unlocks special effects from your emotes, allowing you to do things like boost the combat effectiveness of the survivors around you by cheering them on. Counseling — Comes from People Person, Funeral Director, Stylist, or other jobs and hobbies. This skill has no impact on your combat or exploration abilities, but provides a chance to prevent community conflicts and to raise the |
excellent book “The Tyranny of Silence”: “Until the 17th Century, words and actions were treated identically throughout Western Europe. Verbal expressions of deviant or unorthodox notions in religious matters was taken to be a physical attack on the Church, its members, and God. Speaking out in favor of political change or against the existing order was perceived as incitement to rebellion or treason. Exactly the same was true of totalitarian societies of the 20th Century.”
It’s clear that when we stop distinguishing between speech and violence we are actually backsliding to a time when suffocating orthodoxy reigned supreme. It’s downright medieval. Giving up on free speech means admitting that our grand experiment in free minds and the free exchange of ideas has actually been a failure. We’re saying that we need an authority to determine and enforce right thinking, as well as to ferret out and punish wrong thinking. I’m sure the campus Left sees themselves as that authority and they’re probably right. They run academia and they decide what’s out of bounds. But what if they lost that power? Would they still like censorship so much? I doubt it. Then they’d find out how it feels to be forcibly silenced—in other words, to be the kind of “marginalized groups” they pretend to be now.
Free speech is the foundational idea of a classically liberal society. We learn that while some people’s ideas may rub us the wrong way, may even make our blood boil, those people have a right to their ideas just as we have a right to ours. Free speech is a reciprocal agreement among members of a society that each will tolerate the others’ words. Things change when someone crosses the line into violence. If there is truly no distinction between speech and violence then we cannot have a classically liberal society. We must start locking each other up for our ideas, a proposition that has gained considerable support in places like Canada and Western Europe that delude themselves into believing that they are still free.Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare Doesn't Have Branching Storylines By William Usher Random Article Blend Call of Duty has regularly been a first-person shooter game that runs on a very linear story setup. Oftentimes gamers will just get thrown into the mix and play out the action as if it's a slightly deeper take on the on-rails arcade shooter... at least, mechanically. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare won't be changing that trend.
GamingBolt has been on a roll lately with landing exclusive interviews with key members of the development team for various high-profile games. One of the interviews they managed to land was with Advanced Warfare's creative director, Bret Robbins.
They put forward some questions about the potentiality of story-branching in
“Very early on we decided that we would tell a single story and that really came out of the desire to focus all of our energy on telling one very good story, and we’re really happy with the story we have created so there is no branching storyline,” … “Everyone that plays the game will experience the same story, which I actually like. I think it’s a great story and I want everyone to enjoy it.”
This also probably makes the most sense, budget-wise, because they only had Kevin Spacey for a limited amount of time (I imagine) and they most likely wanted to get the most out of him that they could. Having branching stories and requiring the actors to hang around and record multiple ways for a scene to play out probably would have broke their budget (although it's not like Activision couldn't afford it).
Given that the team is really focused on bringing a high-quality experience to the table (more-so than in year's past) it's not hard to see why they would forgo the use of multiple storylines or branching story elements for the game.
However, on the flip-side of that coin there's also the question of how well it may have boosted the game's appeal amongst the naysayers? If you remember, during the release of Treyarch's Black Ops series we saw that the story really was an important aspect of the game and that it not only played a very important part in the gaming experience but it was also one of the
Players were able to choose from various options during key scenes that radically changed the outcome of the game. Certain characters would live and other characters would die. This setup some very interesting moments throughout the game so that you were always curious what would happen next, or more-so, what would happen if you decided to play the game again?
Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 actually managed to offer gamers plenty of opportunities for strong replay values in the single-player portion of the game and that's a rarity in today's first-person shooter games. Sadly,
You can look for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare to launch on the Xbox 360, PS3, PS4, Xbox One and PC on November 4th. You can learn more by visiting the has regularly been a first-person shooter game that runs on a very linear story setup. Oftentimes gamers will just get thrown into the mix and play out the action as if it's a slightly deeper take on the on-rails arcade shooter... at least, mechanically.won't be changing that trend.GamingBolt has been on a roll lately with landing exclusive interviews with key members of the development team for various high-profile games. One of the interviews they managed to land was withcreative director, Bret Robbins.They put forward some questions about the potentiality of story-branching in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, which is due for release this fall, and Robbins told them that...This also probably makes the most sense, budget-wise, because they only had Kevin Spacey for a limited amount of time (I imagine) and they most likely wanted to get the most out of him that they could. Having branching stories and requiring the actors to hang around and record multiple ways for a scene to play out probably would have broke their budget (although it's not like Activision couldn't afford it).Given that the team is really focused on bringing a high-quality experience to the table (more-so than in year's past) it's not hard to see why they would forgo the use of multiple storylines or branching story elements for the game.However, on the flip-side of that coin there's also the question of how well it may have boosted the game's appeal amongst the naysayers? If you remember, during the release of Treyarch'sseries we saw that the story really was an important aspect of the game and that it not only played a very important part in the gaming experience but it was also one of the highly praised features of the game. Players were able to choose from various options during key scenes that radically changed the outcome of the game. Certain characters would live and other characters would die. This setup some very interesting moments throughout the game so that you were always curious what would happen next, or more-so, what would happen if you decided to play the game again?andactually managed to offer gamers plenty of opportunities for strong replay values in the single-player portion of the game and that's a rarity in today's first-person shooter games. Sadly, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare won't be featuring that same level of immersion or replayability. Still, Sledgehammer Games will be focusing on trying to deliver quality over quantity.You can look forto launch on the Xbox 360, PS3, PS4, Xbox One and PC on November 4th. You can learn more by visiting the official website Blended From Around The Web Facebook
Back to topOn May 22, a family waits for a meal to be served outside the Fred Jordan Charity in Los Angeles’ Skid Row neighborhood. (Photo by Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)
Poor Los Angelenos fight gentrification and police abuse.
The Safer Cities Initiative has succeeded in keeping poor people off the streets. The vast majority of the 12,000 police citations issued in the first year of the program were for jaywalking.
Linda Valverde was an insurance administrator for 20 years. She never expected to live in Los Angeles’ Skid Row. Neither did Michelle Autry, a dancer and writer who grew up in Los Angeles and Sacramento, Calif., and speaks five languages. Joe Thomas, a Vietnam War veteran born in Springfield, Ill., also didn’t plan to live in a single room occupancy (SRO) hotel in the area.
But these three people, along with dozens of other Skid Row residents, are making big changes in their community. They are all members of an organization of poor people called Los Angeles Community Action Network (LACAN), a nonprofit organization funded by a variety of foundations, individuals and the state of California. This racially diverse group of men and women are fighting against gentrification, the abuses of landlords and hotel owners, and the city of Los Angeles. Surprisingly, they have scored real victories.
For Los Angeles’ developers, Skid Row–or, as it is more politely called, Central City East–is a potential bonanza, located a half mile northwest of downtown and a stone’s throw from City Hall and the County Hall of Administration. Until recently, developers could easily convert a single-room occupancy hotel into multiple condominium units selling at $1 million each.
In 2002, the city of Los Angeles, in alliance with business interests, introduced a redevelopment plan. It called for the elimination of close to 4,000 units of low-income housing in Central City East. Despite the large population of African-Americans in the neighborhood, the real-estate industry marketed downtown “luxury lofts” with ads that displayed affluent white people and the occasional Asian.
Business leaders and city officials proclaimed the plan’s benevolence, playing on the stigma of Skid Row. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa often stated that redevelopment and removing people from the streets would “protect” the poor from drug dealers and others who “prey” on the homeless. Other officials claimed pushing poor and homeless people out of Skid Row would make the rest of the city take their “fair share” of social problems.
It can be difficult to grasp that areas that are not pretty, like Skid Row, are home to people. “I feel like I fit in here, no one judged me when I came to this community. I related to it, especially the women,” Valverde says. “They are here like me because of illness, death. They had careers before they came here.”
Nationwide, local governments rarely maintain neighborhoods where SROs have historically been the only thing standing between poor people and the street. Social scientists have documented that the loss of this form of housing in the late ’70s led to an increase in homelessness. Exploiting the belief that Skid Row residents were indigent–even though people have lived in the area for years–Los Angeles banked on the idea that no one would care. Neither the business community nor the city anticipated opposition.
Unlikely victories
LACAN fought against the proposed conversion of the SROs into lofts. In a campaign marked by intense political pressure and coalition building, they scored their first victory in 2006, when the city council passed a moratorium on housing conversions. In May 2008, the council passed a residential hotel preservation ordinance, which protects 19,000 housing units from demolition or conversion into more upscale accommodations.
“If it wasn’t for LACAN, [the developers and police] would have swept downtown L.A. clean,” says General Dogon, a middle-aged African-American man who has lived his whole life in Central City East.
LACAN’s defense of Skid Row residents also focuses on the conditions within individual SROs. The group monitors for abuses, such as churning (otherwise known as the “28-day shuffle”), in which hotel owners demand residents leave after 28 days to prevent them from obtaining legal protections granted to tenants. LACAN stopped such illegal evictions at the Frontier Hotel between 2002 and 2005. At the Alexandria, another SRO, the group won restitution against the owners who discriminated against minority residents and the disabled.
Debbie Burton, a LACAN organizer, moved to Skid Row in 2000 from the Watts neighborhood located in South Central Los Angeles. She talks about the isolation of living in a hotel. “I was in this one room and seeing no one doing anything about problems,” she says. “When I got involved with LACAN I spent time observing and opening my eyes to issues like affordable housing and to … abuse toward everyone in our community.”
War on the homeless
But just as the organization succeeded in preserving the neighborhood, Mayor Villaraigosa and Police Chief William Bratton launched the Safer Cities Initiative. Presented as a crime control measure, the city deployed a massive police force to Skid Row and outlawed sleeping or standing in the street. The initiative was approved in 2006, immediately after the city council passed the moratorium on SRO conversion, notes Steve Diaz, a community organizer who grew up in a hotel in Skid Row. “It was a planned initiative, an effort to clear the neighborhood,” Diaz says.
The Safer Cities Initiative has partially succeeded in keeping poor people off the streets. According to a report released by the UCLA Law School, “Policing Our Way out of Homelessness,” as many as 125 additional officers were used to round up the homeless and push other lower-income people off the streets. According to the UCLA report, during the first year of the initiative, there were 750 more arrests per month than the year before in the same area. The vast majority of the 12,000 citations issued in the first year of the measure, from September 2006 to August 2007, were for jaywalking. This is no minor inconvenience for the poor–fines can be as high as $159. Because many people cannot pay the ticket or are unable to secure legal help, pedestrian violations often lead to arrests.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California confirmed residents’ charges that crosswalk times were reduced in Central City East, making it impossible for a disabled or elderly person to cross the street in the allotted time. Abuses have also included physical attacks by the police on people who refuse to move and seizures of the property of the homeless.
Pete White, LACAN’s co-director, tells the story of a homeless woman who began screaming at the cops when they seized her belongings, which included the urn containing her mother’s ashes. According to White, the LAPD met her concern with laughter.
Although the Los Angeles police denied brutality, Police Chief Bratton told the Los Angeles Times on October 4, 2007, “Is there displacement? Certainly. But what’s wrong with that in some respects? … So if there is displacement, [it’s] all well and good.”
The UCLA study, as well as Steve Lopez at the Los Angeles Times, estimate that due to the intimidation and arrests, 1,500 fewer people now live in Skid Row. LACAN has responded to the city’s ordinances by forming a community watch program, training residents in how to handle the police, holding numerous demonstrations and filing lawsuits. On March 11, after finding city procedures exhausted, the group filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice.
“Downtown used to be a dense community, now there is no liveliness. Now it’s blank streets,” community organizer Diaz says. “You walk and see no one. You used to see people around–friends and neighbors.” Yet he said the newfound solidarity between the residents against the police has “brought the idea of resistance to a different level, creating a new culture.”
GET INVOLVED:Paris, episode two of Cabin Pressure, is available here for the next six days. Massive spoilers for this episode follow. Don't read on if you haven't heard the episode, and think you might want to.
First, to give those guys time to leave, thank you so much for all the nice comments about my piece about the News of the World on The Now Show this week. I cannot think of anything I've ever written that's got quite such a reaction. Tomorrow, outrageously big-headed though it seems, I'll put a transcript of it up here, including some of the bits that didn't make the edit.
But back in Paris, or at least on the way to Paris... did I fool you? I hope so. I love whodunnits, they are my trashy fiction of choice, especially the 'golden age' thirties and forties ones, and I've wanted to do a whodunnit episode of Cabin Pressure for ages - even before Captain Crieff took on his secret identity on BBC1. For a long time, this episode had a totally different plot and solution, and was all about Mr Alyakhin (from the Christmas special) and his party of rich yacht buyers losing some sort of priceless jewel on a trip to look at massive yachts in Palma. But the problem was, I always knew I wanted Douglas to be the culprit; and I couldn't quite believe in him actually stealing a valuable thing from a passenger, however unpleasant I made them. And then I remembered Birling Day, which meant I could also bring back Geoffrey Whitehead as a guest star, who is simply one of my favourite comedy actors.
I decided early on there would be no mention of the S word, or indeed the H word, still less the 'E, MDW' phrase. But that didn't mean there couldn't be, maybe, a couple of sly references... Benedict was an incredibly good sport about it all, especially given the audience was full of Sherlock fans. Though he did give me quite a look at the first read-through when we got to 'Wow, Skip! You're just like Miss Marple!'
A few people have asked me about Martin's money situation at the end - I did explain this in the script at one point, but as always I had to cut loads to fit it to 28 minutes. Anyway, yes, it's possible that Martin does not have to tell Carolyn that he lost the bet, given that Birling got the whisky in the end, and can claim his hundred pounds off her. However, personally, I think Martin's too decent; Douglas too boastful; and Arthur too incapable of lying for her not to find out the truth pretty quickly. However, Martin gets a thousand pound pearl off Birling, plus a fifty pound tip, so even if he pays up to Carolyn he comes out £950 ahead on the trip, which should buy him plenty of baked potatoes. So I think it's a happy ending for him.
Somebody asked why Carolyn opened the bottle at the start - so that she (and we) could be absolutely certain it was the genuine whisky seconds before being put into Martin's hands. After that, only Martin and Arthur touch the bottle before it's poured.
I'm very pleased a couple of people said they thought the guilty party was Mr Birling's wife. That's absolutely what she was there for. I hoped a lot of people trying to guess the solution would hit upon the Carolyn solution Douglas tries to sell Martin, and that others, if I introduced one other character early on, who was studiously never accused by anyone, would go for them. But really, of course, once Douglas has said he's going to steal a bottle of whisky... it always had to be Douglas. Hence this bit of dialogue which didn't make the edit:
MARTIN Stop doing that! I admit you have a sort of underhand sneakiness…
DOUGLAS A brilliant flair for strategy and subterfuge.
MARTIN...at your disposal, but what I have that you don’t, and which you always underestimate, is that I am meticulous and methodical. And it seems to me that so long as I make sure there is never even a moment on the trip when I’m not watching you, or the whisky, or both; then however clever you are, I can’t see how you’ll take it.
DOUGLAS Of course you can’t ‘see how I’ll take it’! I’d hardly be a criminal mastermind if you could ‘see how I’ll take it’! But I will take it.Westside Toastmasters is located in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, California - Westside Toastmasters on Meetup
Chapter 1
UNDERSTANDING BODY LANGUAGE FUNDAMENTALS
This is 'good' to Westerners, 'one' to Italians, 'five' to Japanese and 'up yours' to the Greeks This is 'good' to Westerners, 'one' to Italians, 'five' to Japanese and 'up yours' to the Greeks
The science of body language is a fairly recent study, dating primarily from around 60 years ago, although body language itself is, of course, as old as humans. Psychologists, zoologists, and social anthropologists have conducted detailed research into the components of body language - part of the larger family known as non-verbal behavior.
Stepping back in time when cave-dwellers discovered how to decipher grunts and to create words to convey their message, their lives became a lot more complex. Before verbal communication, they relied on their bodies to communicate. Their simple brains informed their faces, torsos, and limbs. They instinctively knew that fear, surprise, love, hunger, and annoyance were different attitudes requiring different gestures. Emotions were less complex then, and so were the gestures. Speech probably first developed between 2 million and 500,000 years ago, during which time our brain tripled its size. Today we tend to focus more on the words people speak, consequently most of us are largely uninformed about body language, let alone its importance in our lives.
Our spoken language, however, recognizes how important body language is to our communication. Here are just a few of the phrases we use -
Get it off your chest. This is hard to swallow.
Keep one at arm's length. As a rule of thumb.
Put your best foot forward. Face up to it.
Early Observations
Before the 20th century, a few forays were made into identifying and analyzing movement and gesture. The first known written work exclusively addressing body language is John Bulwer's Chirologia: or the Natural Language of the Hand, published in 1644. By the 19th century, directors and teachers of drama and pantomime were instructing their actors and students how to convey emotion and attitude through movement and gesture.
Perhaps the most influential pre-twentieth-century work was Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, published in 1872. Darwin discussed the connection between humans, apes, and monkeys. These species use similar facial expressions, inherited by a common ancestor, to express certain emotions. Out of Darwin's work grew an interest in ethology, the study of animal behavior. It spawned the modern studies of facial expressions and body language, and many of Darwin's ideas and observations have since been validated by researchers around the world.
Since that time, researchers have noted and recorded almost a million non-verbal cues and signals. Albert Mehrabian, a pioneer researcher of body language in the 1950s at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), found that the total impact of a message is about 7% verbal (words only) 38% vocal (including tone of voice, inflection and other sounds) and a whopping 55 per cent of your message comes through your gestures, expression, and posture. Mehrabian's premise is that the way people communicate is inseparable from the feelings that they project, consciously or not, in daily social interactions. Although some people contest Mehrabian's figures, the point remains that body language and vocal quality significantly contribute to the meaning of the message and determine the effectiveness of our relationships.
Anthropologist Ray Birdwhistell was another early pioneer the original study of non-verbal communication - what he called 'kinesics'. Birdwhistell made some similar estimates of the amount of non-verbal communication that takes place between humans. He estimated that the average person actually speaks words for a total of about ten or eleven minutes a day and that the average sentence takes only about 2.5 seconds. Birdwhistell also estimated we can make and recognize around 250,000 facial expressions.
Like Mehrabian, he found that the verbal component of a face-to-face conversation is less than 35% and that over 65% of communication is done non-verbally. Analysis of thousands of sales interviews and negotiations by researchers has shown that, in business encounters, body language accounts for between 60% and 80% of the impact made around a negotiating table and that people form 60 to 80% of their initial opinion about a new person in less than four minutes. Studies also show that when negotiating over the telephone, the person with the stronger argument usually wins, but this is not so true when negotiating face-to-face, because overall we make our final decisions more on what we see than what we hear.
Silent movie actors like Charlie Chaplin were the visual pioneers of body language skills, as this was the only means of communication available on the screen. Each actor's skill was classed as good or bad by the extent to which he could use gestures and body signals to communicate to the audience. When talking films became popular and less emphasis was placed on the non-verbal aspects of acting, many silent movie actors faded into obscurity and only those with good verbal and non-verbal skills survived.
Why It's Not What You Say
Despite what it may be politically correct to believe, when we meet people for the first time we quickly make judgements about their friendliness, dominance and potential as a sexual partner - and their eyes are not the first place we look.
Most researchers now agree that words are used primarily for conveying information, while body language is used for negotiating interpersonal attitudes and in some cases is used as a substitute for verbal messages. Although you're capable of choosing gestures and actions to convey a particular message, your body also sends out signals without your conscious awareness. For example, a woman can give a man a 'look to kill' and will convey a very clear message to him without opening her mouth.
Regardless of culture, words and movements occur together with such predictability that Birdwhistell was the first to claim that a well-trained person should be able to tell what movement a person is making by listening to their voice. Birdwhistell even learned how to tell what language a person was speaking, simply by watching their gestures.
Many people find difficulty in accepting that humans are still biologically animals. We are a species of primate - Homo sapiens - a hairless ape that has learned to walk on two limbs and has a clever, advanced brain. But like any other species, we are still dominated by biological rules that control our actions, reactions, body language and gestures. The fascinating thing is that the human animal is rarely aware that its postures, movements and gestures can tell one story while its voice may be telling another.
How Body Language Reveals Emotions and Thoughts
Body language is an outward reflection of a person's emotional condition. Each gesture or movement can be a valuable key to an emotion a person may be feeling at the time. For example, a man who is self-conscious about gaining weight may tug at the fold of skin under his chin; the woman who is aware of extra pounds on her thighs may smooth her dress down; the person who is feeling fearful or defensive might fold their arms or cross their legs or both; and a man talking with a large-breasted woman may consciously avoid staring at her breasts while, at the same time, unconsciously use groping gestures with his hands.
Determining the size of the issue at hand? Determining the size of the issue at hand?
The key to reading body language is being able to understand a person's emotional condition while listening to what they are saying and noting the circumstances under which they are saying it. This allows you to separate fact from fiction and reality from fantasy. In recent times, we humans have had an obsession with the spoken word and our ability to be conversationalists. Most people, however, are remarkably unaware of body language signals and their impact, despite the fact that we now know that most of the messages in any face-to-face conversation are revealed through body signals.
Former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, former US President Bill Clinton, and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi have animatedly and regularly used their hands to reveal the relative sizes of issues in their mind. A former Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, once defended pay increases for politicians by comparing their salaries to corporate executive salaries. He claimed that executive salaries had risen by a huge amount and that proposed politicians' increases were relatively smaller. Each time he mentioned politicians' incomes, he held his hands a yard (1m) apart. When he mentioned executive salaries, however, he held them only a foot (30cm) apart. His hand distances revealed that he felt politicians were getting a much better deal than he was prepared to admit.
Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden - narrating how big a problem we have or bragging about his love life? Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden - narrating how big a problem we have or bragging about his love life?
Why Women are More Perceptive
When we say someone is 'perceptive' or 'intuitive' about people, we are unknowingly referring to their ability to read another person's body language and to compare these cues with verbal signals. In other words, when we say that we have a 'hunch' or 'gut feeling' that someone has told us a lie, we usually mean that their body language and their spoken words don't agree. This is also what speakers call audience awareness, or relating to a group. For example, if an audience were sitting back in their seats with their chins down and arms crossed on their chest, a 'perceptive' speaker would get a hunch or feeling that his delivery was not going across well. He would realize that he needed to take a different approach to gain audience involvement. Likewise, a speaker who was not 'perceptive' would blunder on regardless.
Being 'perceptive' means being able to spot the contradictions between someone's words and their body language.
Overall, women are more perceptive than men, and this has given rise to what is commonly referred to as 'women's intuition'. Women have an innate ability to pick up and decipher non-verbal signals, as well as having an accurate eye for small details. This is why few husbands can lie to their wives and get away with it and why, conversely, most women can pull the wool over a man's eyes without his realizing it.
Research by psychologists at Harvard University showed how women are far more alert to body language than men. They showed short films, with the sound turned off, of a man and woman communicating, and the participants were asked to decode what was happening by reading the couple's expressions. The research showed that women read the situation accurately 87% of the time while the men scored only 42% accuracy. Men in 'nurturing' occupations, such as artistic types, acting and nursing, did nearly as well as the women; gay men also scored well. Female intuition is particularly evident in women who have raised children. For the first few years, the mother relies almost solely on the non-verbal channel to communicate with the child and this is why women are often more perceptive negotiators than men because they practice reading signals early.
What Brain Scans Show
Most women have the brain organization to out-communicate any man on the planet. Magnetic Resonance Imaging brain scans (MRI) clearly show why women have far greater capacity for communicating with and evaluating people than men do. Women have between fourteen and sixteen areas of the brain to evaluate others' behavior versus a man's four to six areas. This explains how a woman can attend a dinner party and rapidly work out the state of the relationships of other couples at the party - who's had an argument, who likes who and so on. It also explains why, from a woman's standpoint, men don't seem to talk much and, from a man's standpoint, women never seem to shut up.
The female brain is organized for multi-tracking - the average woman can juggle between two and four unrelated topics at the same time. She can watch a television program while talking on the telephone plus listen to a second conversation behind her, while drinking a cup of coffee. She can talk about several unrelated topics in the one conversation and uses five vocal tones to change the subject or emphasize points. Unfortunately, most men can only identify three of these tones. As a result, men often lose the plot when women are trying to communicate with them.
Studies show that a person who relies on hard visual evidence face to face about the behavior of another person is more likely to make more accurate judgements about that person than someone who relies solely on their gut feeling.
The evidence is in the person's body language and, while women can do it subconsciously, anyone can teach themselves consciously to read the signals.
How Psychics Know So Much
If you've ever visited a psychic you probably came away amazed at the things they knew about you - things no one else could possibly have known - so it must be ESP, right? Research into the fortune-telling business shows that operators use a technique known as 'cold reading' which can produce an accuracy of around 80% when'reading' a person you've never met. While it can appear to be magical to naive and vulnerable people, it is simply a process based on the careful observation of body language signals plus an understanding of human nature and a knowledge of probability statistics. It's a technique practiced by psychics, tarot card readers, astrologists and palm readers to gather information about a 'client'. Many 'cold readers' are largely unaware of their abilities to read nonverbal signals and so also become convinced that they really must have 'psychic' abilities. This all adds to a convincing performance, bolstered by the fact that people who regularly visit 'psychics' go with positive expectations of the outcome. Throw in a set of tarot cards, a crystal ball or two and a bit of theatre, and the stage is perfectly set for a body-language reading session that can convince even the most hardened sceptic that strange, magical forces must be at work. It all boils down to the reader's ability to decode a person's reactions to statements made and to questions asked, and by information gathered from simple observation about a person's appearance. Most 'psychics' are female because, as women, as discussed previously, they have the extra brain wiring to allow them to read the body signals of babies and to read others' emotional condition.
To demonstrate the point, here now is a psychic reading for you personally. Imagine you've come to a dimly lit, smoke-filled room where a jewel-encrusted psychic wearing a turban is seated at a low, moon-shaped table with a crystal ball:
I'm glad you've come to this session and I can see you have things that are troubling you because I am receiving strong signals from you. I sense that the things you really want out of life sometimes seem unrealiztic and you often wonder whether you can achieve them. I also sense that at times you are friendly, social and outgoing to others, but that at other times you are withdrawn, reserved and cautious. You take pride in being an independent thinker but also know not to accept what you see and hear from others, without proof. You like change and variety but become restless if controlled by restrictions and routine. You want to share your innermost feelings with those closest to you but have found it unwise to be too open and revealing. A man in your life with the initial 'S' is exerting a strong influence over you right now and a woman who is born in November will contact you in the next month with an exciting offer. While you appear disciplined and controlled on the outside, you tend to be concerned and worried on the inside and at times you wonder whether or not you have made the right choice or decision.
So how did we go? Did we read you accurately? Studies show that the information in this'reading' is more than 80% accurate for any person reading it. Throw in an excellent ability to read body language postures, facial expressions and a person's other twitches and movements, plus dim lighting, weird music and a stick of incense, and we guarantee you can even amaze the dog! We won't encourage you to become a fortune-teller but you'll soon be able to read others as accurately as they do.
Inborn, Genetic or Learned Culturally?
When you cross your arms on your chest, do you cross left over right or right over left? Most people cannot confidently describe which way they do this until they try it. Cross your arms on your chest right now and then try to quickly reverse the position. Where one way feels comfortable, the other feels completely wrong. The evidence shows that seven out of ten people cross their left arm over their right and furthermore that this may well be a genetic gesture that cannot be changed.
Much debate and research has been done to discover whether non-verbal signals are inborn, learned, genetically transferred or acquired in some other way. Evidence has been collected from observation of blind people (who could not have learned non-verbal signals through a visual channel), from observing the gesturing behavior of many different cultures around the world and from studying the behavior of our nearest anthropological relatives, the apes and monkeys.
The conclusions of this research indicate that some gestures fall into each category. For example, most primate babies are born with the immediate ability to suck, showing that this is either inborn or genetic. The German scientist Eibl-Eibesfeldt round that the smiling expressions of children born deaf and blind occur independently of learning or copying, which means that these must also be inborn gestures. Ekman, Friesen and Sorenson supported some of Darwin's original beliefs about inborn gestures when they studied the facial expressions of people from five widely different cultures. They found that each culture used the same basic facial gestures to show emotion, which led them to the conclusion that these gestures must also be inborn.
Debate still exists as to whether some gestures are culturally learned, and become habitual, or are genetic. For example, most men put on a coat right arm first; most women put it on left arm first. This shows that men use their left brain hemisphere for this action while women use the right hemisphere. When a man passes a woman in a crowded street, he usually turns his body towards her as he passes; she instinctively turns her body away from him to protect her breasts. Is this an inborn female reaction or has she learned to do this by unconsciously watching other females?
Some Basic Origins
Most of the basic communication signals are the same all over the world. When people are happy they smile; when they are sad or angry they frown or scowl. Nodding the head is almost universally used to indicate 'yes' or affirmation. It appears to be a form of head lowering and is probably an inborn gesture because it's also used by people born blind. Shaking the head from side to side to indicate 'no' or negation is also universal and appears to be a gesture learned in infancy. When a baby has had enough milk, it turns its head from side to side to reject its mother's breast. When the young child has had enough to eat, he shakes his head from side to side to stop any attempt to spoon |
back whenever.” Flying Lotus let me borrow his TC-Helicon Voicelive. I could go on and on. All of my close friends have been here for me, making sure I have what I need and that I’m getting fed.
What is it about records? What makes them special?
What I love about vinyl is that even after the apocalypse you could still get vegetable oil and run two tables and speakers off of a generator and have a fucking dance party! That’s what I hope to be doing at the end of the world, spinning all this wonderful music, dancing, and being in love.
Records are time capsules. They’re emotional, spiritual, energetically-bound pieces of vinyl. They were cut with force and energy, not by a programmer. Visit The Gaslamp Killer on the web This interview with The Gaslamp Killer was originally published in the book Dust & Grooves: Adventures in Record Collecting. Please consider purchasing the book and continue your support of the Dust & Grooves project.
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The first independent analysis of Donald Trump's revamped tax plan is finally out, and it confirms what appeared to be true when the Republican presidential nominee gave his big tax speech last week: Trump's "yuge" tax cuts have shrunk dramatically, particularly for the middle class, and they now skew even more to helping the highest-earning Americans.
Very low-income families would see more benefits under the revised plan, the Tax Foundation said in its analysis, thanks to Trump's recently announced child-care tax credit. But those families would still see relatively small income increases compared with the nation's top earners.
The Tax Foundation projected the plan would increase economic growth and result in the creation of an additional 1.8 million to 2.2 million jobs over the next decade, a reflection of how much Trump has scaled back his tax-cutting ambitions. His original plan, released in 2015, would have led to 5.3 million new jobs, the same group estimated last year.
Those projections either contradict or call into question several of Trump's claims last week in a speech in New York, when he rolled out the plan.
Trump told the New York Economic Club that his full economic plan, including regulatory, trade and energy reform, would create an addition 18 million jobs over the next decade. That leaves 16 million jobs to be created by the nontax provisions of his plan, a number that many economists view skeptically. The Tax Foundation did not estimate the effects of Trump's energy, trade or regulatory proposals.
More concretely, Trump bragged that the plan would deliver large benefits for middle-income taxpayers and that, "by contrast, someone earning $5 million will receive virtually no change in their tax bill at all."
While such effects are theoretically possible for a very particular taxpayer at that income level, the Tax Foundation analysis predicts that the typical $5 million earner would see her or his tax bill fall by as much as $800,000 under Trump's plan.
The analysis also shows how a still-unresolved question about the plan's treatment of business tax rates matters enormously for the federal debt and the fortunes of the very rich.
It appears to be a direct trade-off. If Trump allows all businesses — including what are called pass-through entities, a group that includes many small businesses but also the bulk of Trump's companies — to pay a 15 percent tax rate, then the plan would increase the debt by as much as $5.9 trillion over the next decade, not accounting for additional economic growth. Also, the top 1 percent of taxpayers would see their incomes rise by 16 percent.
If the low business rate applies only to traditional corporations, then the plan's projected cost would drop to a maximum of $4.4 trillion over 10 years, a $1.5 trillion difference. The income increase for the top earners would decline to 10 percent.
The Tax Foundation also estimated how much additional economic growth the cuts would generate, using a model that tends to predict higher gains from tax cuts than many other models used by think tanks in Washington. Those effects are smaller than those for the previous version of the plan. Depending on pass-through treatment, the Tax Foundation estimated that Trump's new plan would add between 0.69 and 0.8 percentage points to U.S. gross domestic product growth over the next decade, compared with 1.1 percentage points estimated for the first version of the plan.
That plan was also much more expensive: It would have added at least $10 trillion to the debt over a decade, even after factoring in added growth, the Tax Foundation estimated.
The group appeared set to release its analysis last week soon after Trump's speech, but questions over pass-through treatment appeared to bedevil its analysts for days. Finally, they decided to present two possible interpretations of the plan, with different numbers for each.
"Tax Foundation’s best understanding of the Trump proposal, after examining the totality of all statements made by the campaign, is that pass-throughs are not eligible for a single 15 percent tax rate on the individual income that their owners report; at best, they may be allowed to adopt some kind of tax status similar to that of C-corporations, either on a temporary or permanent basis," the group wrote in its analysis. "In other words, our guess is that there is no means by which a business could get a single layer of taxation at a rate of 15 percent. However, we also acknowledge the arguments of those who perceive things differently."Highlight’s Yoon Doo Joon and Yong Junhyung will be traveling to Japan together!
According to Highlight’s agency, Around Us, on April 11, the two will be appearing on “Carefree Travelers” and will be flying to Japan on April 13 for recording.
The agency said, “They decided to appear on it because they are close with Jung Hyung Don, and Kim Yong Man takes good care of them.”
This is not the first time for Yoon Doo Joon and Yong Junhyung on a show together. The two also went on “Law of the Jungle” in Samoa.
When Yoon Doo Joon appeared on “Carefree Travelers” alone last time, the show actually reached its highest viewership ratings, so viewers are looking forward to the joint appearance of the two Highlight members.
Source (1)Mini Maple Bacon Donuts. (Like Real Ones!)
There are a million things going through my head right now as I think about these donuts.
Like, are some of these guys for real on The Bachelorette? No, I mean, for real-for real. Just… stop. Except for when you call quinoa “keee-noooo-ahhh.” Because that’s definitely how it should be pronounced, world.
Also, will I ever stop wearing this oversized t-shirt with a poem about girlfriends on the front of it, that I received when I WAS EIGHT YEARS OLD and that is currently on my body? The answer is probably not. It’s just soooooo soft. Sadly, I probably should not broadcast the fact that I am still physically capable of wearing a top from when I was eight years old.
Why am I so obsessed with the idea of seeing this Snow White movie? It’s not a Nicholas Spark’s movie, Ryan Gosling doesn’t have a part, and um, neither does Alexander Skarsgard, it totally isn’t from any chick-lit book (was Snow White chick lit?) and I get sort of bored with action movies. Yeah, weird. I think I just want popcorn. With something chocolatey and melty mixed in.
MY OTHER RECIPES MY OTHER RECIPES
And finally, I would like four thousand donuts for dinner tonight.
Sure, donuts are sort of a breakfast food, but we NEVER eat them for breakfast. Let me repeat: we never eat them for breakfast. Quite depressing.
My husband has some sort of mental block on going out to breakfast. I am, in fact, obsessed with the idea of going out to breakfast because I feel like in all my years, I’ve only done it a handful of times. Such a loser. Not that like, speeding through the drive-thru for a dozen of Dunkin Donuts’ donuts is actually considered “going out to breakfast,” but seriously, I’ll take anything I can get. Annnnnd it’s also difficult for me to even GET him to eat a donut. He “claims” he doesn’t like to waste his calories on donuts, but he “claims” this through bites of an entire pizza, a large Dairy Queen blizzard, and then an entire bag of pretzels dipped in hummus at midnight. It just all seems a little fishy if you ask me.
On the other hand, I should TOTALLY be able to convince him to take me to breakfast, because when the man stumbles (and I totally mean stumbles, like walks into walls and stuff) out of bed, he puts himself to work. I swear, at 5AM he is unloading the dishwasher with his eyes closed and then heads downstairs to vacuum his car, literally minutes after waking. I have no idea where this stuff comes from, because the minute I wake up my eyes are glued to my phone. It is just so, so odd and… uncomfortable. And you are hearing this from a serious morning person.!!!
Anyhoo.
Do you think that maybe he doesn’t take me to breakfast because I nag him or something? That can’t be it.
But you know, I wouldn’t even have the problem of attempting to force-feed him donuts if it wasn’t for that little Saturday over Easter when we bought a dozen mini’s for an arm and a leg… that tasted like serious heaven. I think I threw back two or three maple bacon donuts, and that’s only because my brother stole the rest before I could get my hands on them. Needless to say, I’ve been dying to make them… and to REALLY make them. Like fry the crud out of them. Yeasted, fried donuts. Serious donuts.
I don’t mind the baked donuts – actually, I make this recipe almost every month for dessert because it blows my mind – but this craving called for oil and bubbles and fluffy freaking dough.
OH MAH GOSH. I could not get enough. I couldn’t stop taking bite after bite. I also succeeded in making the other member of this household take them down, and let’s just say that by the end of they day… only crumbs remained. Serious donuts… serious win.
Mini Maple Bacon Donuts
[slightly adapted from Alton Brown]
makes about 15 mini donuts (depending on how you cut them)
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup bacon grease, in solid form
2 1/4 teaspoons dry active yeast (1 packet)
1/4 cup warm water
1 large egg, lightly beaten
2 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
12 ounces of all-purpose flour, plus a little extra if needed
vegetable oil for frying (I used 2 quarts)
8 slices of bacon, fried and crumbled
Add milk to a saucepan over medium-low heat and heat until just warm enough to melt the bacon fat. Place the bacon fat in a small bowl, the pour the warm milk over top and stir constantly until it’s melted. Set side to let cool to room temperature.
In the bowl of your electric mixer (fitted with a paddle attachment or beaters), add water and yeast. Let sit for about 5 minutes until foamy, then add in milk + bacon fat combo (it must be cooled) and turn the mixer on low speed. Add in the eggs, sugar, salt, nutmeg and half of the flour mixture, mixing on low speed until combined. Add the remaining flour, mixing on medium speed until combined. Remove the paddle attachment and replace it with the dough hook, then mix on medium speed for 3-4 minutes until dough pulls away from the bowl. Mine was a bit sticky, so I added in 3-4 tablespoons of extra flour until it became smooth. Remove from the mixer, add to bowl rubbed with vegetable oil, cover and let rise in a warm place for 1 hour.
Once risen, place dough on a floured workspace and roll until about 3/8 inches thick. I also kneaded in another tablespoons of flour or so here, just so the dough was smooth. Using a biscuit cutter (or something else round that works for you), cut out circles of dough, then using a small lid (I used a washed Tabasco lid, ha!) or knife, cut out the center. Place donuts on a baking sheet, cover and let rise in a warm place for 30 more minutes.
Heat oil a large pot, making sure it is 365 degrees. Add donuts 2-3 at a time, frying on each side for about 1 minute, and flipping with a spider or slotted spoon. Remove and let drain on wire rack placed above a paper towel. When finished, dip in maple glaze then roll in bacon. Serve immediately!
Maple Bacon Icing
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons maple sytup
1 tablespoon bacon fat, melted
1 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Combine all ingredients together in a bowl and whisk well until a glaze forms.
So… donuts for dinner for everyone! It’s the right thing to do.Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF
There are lots of first-person games, but how many of the characters are blind? Perception, a new horror game from some ex-BioShock and Dead Space developers, is using that as its hook.
Right now, whether or not Perception exists is a big maybe, as it’s currently trying to raise $150,000 on Kickstarter. The game’s been funded out of the developer’s own pockets for a while, and they’re looking to crowdfunding to finish it. They hope to ship next June.
The trailer they’ve released is super creepy, and shows off Perception’s core mechanic, which involves tapping your cane to get a sense of what’s around you.
The problem? Every time you make a noise, it alerts the spirits around you, the most menacing of which is an entity called The Presence.
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Perception’s main character, Cassie, has been having dreams about a house. Her research eventually leads her there, and she discovers supernatural forces that have been tormenting the residents for ages. Cassie is determined to find out why that is and stop it.
You know, supernatural forces like this horrifying thing.
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As a horror buff, I’m always on the lookout for something new, different, and subversive to scare me. At the very least, Perception sounds promising, and it’s unlike anything I’ve seen before.Share. How one of gaming's big letdowns earned the Elder Scrolls name. How one of gaming's big letdowns earned the Elder Scrolls name.
It’s an odd thing, redemption. While many of us like to think we’d be afforded the opportunity to change public opinion of ourselves should we make a mistake, in practice we’re often rather reserved in dishing out such benevolence. Which is why it’s amazing to see the degree of forgiveness the famously hostile gaming community has displayed over the last few years. Upon launch, Diablo III was a mess – a real-money Auction House that completely undercut the purpose of the game, an always-online requirement that scuppered many potential players desire to get involved and myriad bugs combined to make the fastest-selling PC title of all time one of the most disappointing too.
But things didn’t stay this way. Blizzard pumped heaps of effort into addressing concerns and, with the release of the Reaper of Souls expansion and its subsequent patches, there’s no denying Diablo III is what it should have been from the start. It’s not the only developer to have made such a move either – the poster child for redemption in the MMO space is unquestionably Final Fantasy XIV, which continues to go from strength to strength in an increasingly hostile marketplace. Yet Final Fantasy XIV isn’t alone in this achievement - there’s another MMO that many wrote off rather quickly that, thanks to a complete redesign rendering it almost unrecognisable, is very much worth a second look.
Exit Theatre Mode
Even in the run-up to the original launch of The Elder Scrolls Online, there were mutterings that it could never live up to Skyrim’s legacy.. Sure enough, when ESO went live it did so with more than its fair number of detractors. The MMO crowd felt they’d been lied to about how much interactive content there would be, while Elder Scrolls fans didn’t recognise this dead world as reminiscent of the ones they’d previously explored.
“ We should have done a better job defining what it is and not let other people define it for us.
“I think really what we didn’t do a good job of was telling people what the game is,” explains game director Matt Firor when asked exactly where Zenimax Online went wrong. “Everyone knew it was like Skyrim, but it wasn’t – we simply needed to be clearer about saying exactly what it is. We started doing that later and saying don’t expect Skyrim, don’t expect EverQuest – this is its own thing and you can play it solo, which we definitely didn’t talk about enough. Everyone thought we were making this hardcore MMO and that’s simply not the case. It just has some MMO features. We should have done a better job defining what it is and not let other people define it for us.”
Of course, by the time this realisation came, it was too late. The perception of the game was sullied in the eyes of the masses, but there was no way Bethesda could afford to let one of its flagship brands be damaged in such a manner, especially given the incredible reception Skyrim enjoyed. So work began to turn things around.
First, it was decided the highly-anticipated Xbox One and PS4 editions of the game would be indefinitely postponed until the game was in the state more players expected. To figure out how to go about doing this, Firor and his team went back to the vocal community that had already tried out the PC version and found it wanting.
Exit Theatre Mode
“We take feedback from the community very seriously,” he says. “That led us to some things like the world not feeling interactive enough, so that’s when we put in the ability to pick up armour and weapons you see lying around, or looting anything in any crate anywhere. It also led to the Justice System, where you can pickpocket and steal, more sandboxy stuff. Also redoing combat animations so it not only looks but also feels better and more visceral.
“ We did an intensive internal beta. Bethesda is pretty big now, so we invited everyone in different studios around the world to jump in and play.
“We really wanted to fix a lot of the quests that have phasing in them. We really bought into the idea we need to make the player experience meaningful, which of course means being able to change the world. But when you’re playing with another player or trying to help a friend, you see different parts of the world. So we went back through every zone in the world, changed quests everywhere to remove phasing just for that. With a multiplayer game it’s more important to be able to play with the people you want to play with than it is to see the results of what you’re doing.”
All of this was the culmination of many months of hard work. Zenimax originally hoped to release the revamped Elder Scrolls Online experience by the end of 2014, though in the end this didn’t happen until halfway through 2015. The studio was adamant not to repeat past mistakes.
“It was the best thing that happened,” he says of the extra console delay. “To go those extra four or five months? It was essential. We had the game done in December but we didn’t want to have stupid little problems rear up so we wanted to test it well. So instead of launching we did an intensive internal beta. Bethesda is pretty big now, so we invited everyone in different studios around the world to jump in and play.”
Exit Theatre Mode
With the relaunch looming imminent and an announcement about to be made, two decisions remained – first, what to call this new iteration of the game and second, should the decision be made to ditch the subscription fee? The latter was a contentious issue, not least because the introduction of in-game stores often comes with accusations of a pay-to-win culture, but for Firor and the rest of Zenimax the decision was pretty easy.
“ One thing we thought we’d see was that casual players would gravitate to consoles while hardcore players would remain on PC. Totally not true.
“The buy-to-play thing was interesting because it came about more as a realisation of hey we fixed some problems, the game really is good, we’d love to sell it to lots of new players, but to do that we should actually get the players that have already played it back in and show them how it’s changed – make them into evangelists.
“The first day of Tamriel Unlimited we didn’t sell a lot of units, but our concurrency was three times that it had been before. Those were all original players coming back. Then, through word of mouth, it went on to sell very well and of course the console version just exploded.
“One thing we thought we’d see was that casual players would gravitate to consoles while hardcore players would remain on PC. Totally not true. Console players are just as hardcore. The PvP is a little different because you can talk all the time so communication is different in group situations, but other than that people play the hell out of the console and PC versions alike.”
Exit Theatre Mode
As any decent MMO designer knows, however, launch is just the beginning – you’re only as good as your last update. With that in mind, it was during E3 this year that Zenimax announced plans to release one big DLC patch for The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited every three months. The first, available now, is the Imperial City. It provides Stalingrad-style PvP fighting in tight streets to compliment the open-field siege warfare of Cyrodil, along with two new dungeons and a narrative that concludes the Molag Bal storyline kicked off at level 1.
“ The big lesson though is that for games of this type, you can fix problems and people will come back.
As for the future, Zenimax is planning to release Orsinium next, which sees us return to the Orc homeland to engage in story-based PvE exploration. Rounding out the first year of DLC will be the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood storylines.. Firor also teases our “favourite assassin character from the Ebonheart Pact may or may not make an appearance,” – so fans of Naryu Virian should be excited.
There’s much, much more planned beyond all this too, but Firor is reluctant to get too ahead of himself. There are plans for exploring the Argonian land of Blackmarsh, and also “a whole new Dwemer dungeon that’ll be awesome, which could actually be bigger than a dungeon,” alongside new characters, stories and arcs.
Despite all this being on the horizon, the lessons learned from the game’s brutal do-or-die transformation won’t be forgotten. Firor candidly admits there may be more mistakes made in future, but that doesn’t mean Zenimax is afraid. Far from it.
Exit Theatre Mode
“The big lesson though is that for games of this type, you can fix problems and people will come back,” he says. “You have to make sure you’re always telling people what you’re doing, that you’re open and honest, but it shows you can hit the right notes – even if it takes a little longer than you thought, you can be redeemed.”
Luke Karmali is IGN's UK News Editor. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on Twitter.I operate differently. And I'm sure from this conversation you're going to be able to tell that.
I don't like following guidelines, or footsteps, or the crowd. I don't do what everybody else does. I find ways that work for me to get it done. I definitely don't follow the normal route most people take when I want to accomplish something. If we're all chasing the same goal, and we all use the same guidelines, then that means a lot of us end up at the same level. And I'm not trying to be one of the bunch, I'm trying to stand out from the bunch. And for that reason you have to think different and be different.
It's more important for you to accomplish what you want than to miss the things you're giving up.
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Everybody fails. That's what allows you to enjoy success. If life was nothing but a continuation of a bunch of successes, I don't think anyone would enjoy winning.
It means it's one strike, and in life there is no 'three strikes out and you're out' rule.
It's up to you to give up or continue. Failure to me is just another chance to be successful.
Anyone in any profession, they have tough times, where there are always obstacles to overcome, and I'm no different. But because I had the love for the sport, I knew it was what I wanted to do. It was easy for me to get out of bed every day and tackle all those potential obstacles or issues.
Take it one step at a time. Don't call success just one thing. Moving up the ranks, taking it one step at a time, you're going up the ladder, and you might have the main goal, but there are successes to achieve along the way.
My main goal was to get to the big leagues, to be a successful major-league baseball player, but in my journey to get there, I had many successes – getting a college scholarship, doing well in college, getting an opportunity to sign a professional contract, climbing at every level in minors I've been in. Those were all great successes.
If I never got to the big leagues, I still would've considered myself a successful person, and never a failure just because I didn't make it to the big leagues.
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I can't say it's destiny, but I think you need that internal desire and passion to do it every day, whether someone pays you or not.
I try to always say yes.
I have a pretty defined game plan … I delegate. I find good people, I bring them to my team, and I let them do their job, just like any company. I don't see myself as a company, but I have to operate like one in order to remain efficient. That's why I have the moving parts I have in place. A business manager, a tax specialist, a PR group, and I have people around me all the time who can help me.
I like to think about and ideas and projects and strategize with everyone else to make sure that this is a seamless operation and that I don't miss out on anything.
I do have six to eight hours of each day blocked specifically to focus on my baseball career, be it eating proper meals, getting enough rest, to do the proper workout and get enough rehab and treatment.
After 12 years in the big leagues, the experience certainly helps, and now I can tell what I need to do on the daily basis to prioritize. Being a family man is number one, a father to my kids, being there for my wife is a priority, and then baseball is number two. Everything else comes after that.
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One thing I learned from my parents was to not attempt to box anybody into any role, no matter what you want. Everyone needs the freedom of choice. What you can do is set the right example and create the proper environment surrounding them.
I think instinctively we are animals, and we have more direct contact with that than we might want to admit. Whenever you box an animal in, he's going to try to find a way out. So the last thing I'm going to try to do with my kids is tell them exactly what they need to be and how to do it.
They're still at the age where they think that this is what everybody's daddy does.
I always like coming in touch with positive messages. Life isn't really designed that way, so you have to create you own environment to operate under. Everything else can be extremely negative, and I don't have control over it. Positive reinforcement helps me in my attitude toward life.
I did a very descriptive article on the Players' Tribune about [the bat flip] … The only thing I'd add to it that gets lost in everything else, is the game is so commercial, so business-inclined and focused, that a lot of people forget that. And what gives me so much joy and satisfaction out of it is creating those experiences and memories for the people who were paying attention.
When you look at it later in time, next year, in five years, 10, 15 years, no one is going to remember anything else other than those memories. That's what will stick with me the most. To be a part of that is a great feeling. It should be for any person or athlete, just to live in people's minds and memories for a long time. That's way more satisfying than anything that can come with playing a professional sport.
It's not a choice, it's not like I have one, but that doesn't bother me. I go about my business the way I think is right, which would automatically set a good example for the kids that follow me.
You adjust, and you learn and you adapt. And if you don't you get left behind.
I like to understand how things work, why they are the way they are, and if I don't get it, I ask questions. I try to make sense of it. I use logic. I don't consider myself more intelligent than other people, but I try to pay attention and make sure that I know what's going on. I don't mind asking questions. I know a lot of people are shy about it because they feel maybe they'll come off like someone who may be ignorant or not knowledgeable, but I'm the opposite.
I have a process where I identify the things that I specifically need to sacrifice in order to get to the end goal. A lot of people don't go through that exercise to begin with, so they never find out what it is.
Jose Bautista’s home run and bat flip during Game 5 of the American League Division Series against the Texas Rangers was a highlight of Toronto’s postseason run. Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
I have one social life in Toronto – I can only enjoy certain lifestyles in Toronto, and it's a little different and more freer in the off-season. I do everything I want to do, I just do those things when I feel I can handle it and everything that comes along with it, specifically when I go out in public in Toronto in the summer.
In Tampa, I have a lot more freedom in the offseason. I get to enjoy things I normally wouldn't, like going around town, doing my dry-cleaning, going grocery shopping, doing things normal people do. I'm a normal guy, but it's just timing and managing a schedule. If I did the same thing in Toronto, it would take about four hours [because of photo and autograph requests].
Life doesn't end at a particular thing you might have achieved already. I always think that baseball, life in general and everything else I do, is a constant learning process.
Some people praise you, and others critique you. But you take it with a grain of salt because you know what keeps you successful in the first place, anyway. So whoever is happy and satisfied, so be it. And whoever is not, again, so be it.
– As told to Jamie RossIs your New Year's Resolution to read more books? Make sure to add these Irish classics to your reading list this year
Ireland, considering its size, has produced a large number of world-renowned writers. From Joyce to Wilde, and McGahern and Stoker, here's IrishCentral's list of the top 20 classic Irish novels.
1. James Joyce - "Ulysses" (1922)
"Ulysses" was first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920. It has been called one of the most important works of Modernist literature.
The novel chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an ordinary day, 16 June 1904.
Read More: Following James Joyce's ‘Ulysses’ through Dublin on Bloomsday
2. Oscar Wilde - "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1890)
This is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde. It first appeared as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890, printed as the July 1890 issue of this magazine.
The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward. Basil is impressed by Dorian's beauty and becomes infatuated with him, believing his beauty is responsible for a new mode in his art. Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, a friend of Basil's, and becomes enthralled by Lord Henry's worldview. The Picture of Dorian Gray is considered a work of classic gothic horror fiction with a strong Faustian theme.
Read More: Top facts about Oscar Wilde on the anniversary of his death
3. James Joyce - "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (1916)
This semi-autobiographical novel describes the formative years of the life of Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyce and an allusion to the consummate craftsman of Greek mythology, Daedalus.
Read More: Top 10 interesting facts about James Joyce
4. John McGahern - "Amongst Women" (1990)
"Amongst Women" tells the story of Michael Moran, a bitter, aging Irish Republican Army (IRA) veteran, and his tyranny over his wife and children, who both love and fear him. It is considered McGahern's masterpiece.
5. Flann O'Brien - "At Swim Two Birds" (1939)
At Swim-Two-Birds is a 1939 novel by Irish author Brian O'Nolan, writing under the pseudonym Flann O'Brien. It is widely considered to be one of the most sophisticated examples of meta-fiction. The novel was included in TIME magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.
6. Oscar Wilde - "Importance of Being Earnest" (1895)
Although this one isn't a novel it's certainly one of the best-told stories with some of the quickest most brilliant one-liners. "The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People" was first performed on 14 February 1895 at St. James's Theatre in London. It's a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae in order to escape burdensome obligations.
Read More: Oscar Wilde poems you wish you’d always known
7. Jonathan Swift - "Gulliver's Travels" (1726)
"Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships", better known simply as "Gulliver's Travels", is a novel by Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the "travellers' tales" literary sub-genre.
8. Flann O'Brien - "The Third Policeman" (1967)
This classic initially failed to find a publisher. The author withdrew the manuscript from circulation and claimed he had lost it. The book remained unpublished until his death in 1966. It then found a massive cult following.
9. Bram Stoker - "Dracula" (1897)
Dracula has been assigned to many literary genres including vampire literature, horror fiction, the gothic novel, and invasion literature. Stoker did not invent the vampire, the novel's influence on the popularity of vampires has been singularly responsible for many theatrical, film and television interpretations since its publication.
Read More: On this day in history: Irish "Dracula" author Bram Stoker dies in 1912
10. John Banville - "The Book of Evidence" (1988)
The book is narrated by Freddie Montgomery, a 38-year-old scientist, who murders a servant girl during an attempt to steal a painting from a neighbor. Freddie is an aimless drifter, and though he is a perceptive observer of himself and his surroundings, he is largely amoral.
11. Patrick McCabe - "The Butcher Boy" (1992)
The Butcher Boy is set in a small town in Ireland in the late 1950s. It tells the story of Francis 'Francie' Brady, a schoolboy who retreats into a violent fantasy world as his troubled home life collapses.
12. James Plunkett - "Strumpet City" (1969)
"Strumpet City" is a historical novel by James Plunkett set in Dublin at the time of the Dublin Lock-out. The novel is an epic, tracing the lives of a dozen characters as they are swept up in the tumultuous events that affected Dublin between 1907 and 1914.
13. C. S. Lewis - "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" (1950)
This is the first published book of "The Chronicles of Narnia" and is the best-known book of the series. Although it was written and published first, it is second in the series' internal chronological order, after The Magician's Nephew. Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. It has also been published in 47 foreign languages.
14. Edna O'Brien - "The Country Girls" (1960)
The Country Girls was the first novel written by Irish author Edna O'Brien. It was released in 1960 and later made into a movie. It tells the story of Kate and Baba who have spent their childhood together. As they leave the safety of their convent school in search of life and love in the big city, they struggle to maintain their somewhat tumultuous relationship.
Read More: Edna O'Brien's "The Country Girls" trilogy to be celebrated in Dublin over a whole month
15. Samuel Beckett - "Molloy" (1951)
At first, the book concerns two different characters, both of whom have interior monologues in the book. As the story moves along the two characters are distinguished by name only as their experiences and thoughts are, to say the least, similar. The novel is set in an indeterminate |
’s setbacks while the many powers that until recently demanded his removal – from the US to Turkey through Britain and France – are now quietly accepting his survival, grudgingly realizing he can be better for them than the fundamentalists who might succeed him.Even so, Assad’s potential survival of the world’s revulsion over the genocide he has unleashed does not mean the Syria he led into this war will be the one he will salvage from its jaws.Assad will never have his original Syria back, for two reasons:First, the Sunni majority that Assad has bled white will not return to his yoke.His assault has been so ruthless, and the wounds it has left will prove so deep, that the only way this population will return to room with his Alawite minority would be as its landlord, an arrangement that no Alawite will be prepared to accept, and which Assad is well placed to prevent.Second, Turkey’s invasion, unlike what Assad seems to assume, is not a variation on Islamic State’s occupation, nor can it be compared with any of his other enemies’ sporadic conquests elsewhere.Turkey’s is one of the world’s largest, best trained and most modernly equipped armies, and it now is also highly motivated, because Assad – as millions of Turks now see things – has swamped their country with three million refugees and also uncorked much of the terror they have come to face.That is why Islamic State’s impending eviction from Assad’s realms no longer means those territories will automatically return to Assad’s rule. After having spread along Assad’s side of the Turkish border, the Turks quickly made it plain they are in no rush to leave, as they began stretching electricity lines and preparing to supply water to local towns.This presence is defensive in its quest to stem refugee traffic and terrorist incursions, but it is also offensive in its quest to contain the emergence of a Kurdish autonomy in northern Syria. This offensive posture will likely develop further, to a role in the rest of Syria’s remapping.With Turkey’s invasion following Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s dramatic visit to the Kremlin last month and Russian Chief of Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov’s meeting last week in Ankara with his Turkish counterpart, Hulusi Akar, it appears Russia has agreed to accept Turkey’s creation of a buffer zone along Syria’s side of their 820-km. border.Whatever the extent of Turkey’s improbable harmony with Russia, it means Assad has effectively lost his north to some sort of long-term Turkish tutelage.While such a presence may be dismissed as confined to prewar Syria’s northern margin, Erdogan’s statement that his troops may march further south vindicates assessments that Ankara wants to eventually sponsor a Sunni state somewhere on prewar-Syria’s ruins.Such an internationally agreed re-design of Syria is becoming urgent for Russia because its great accomplishment in Syria, the restoration of its status as a superpower and a global power broker, is threatened the more Assad fails to fully defeat his rebels, and thus creates a protracted stalemate that will expose the limits of Russia’s clout.That is why what matters in Syria are not the cease-fires Kerry craves but the remapping it begs, and which – following Turkey’s invasion – has effectively begun.www.MiddleIsrael.net
Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>My fellow Chelsea supporters, our long national nightmare is over.
Before turning the page on Fernando Torres' Chelsea career, let's take a look at what the Fernando Torres era has cost Chelsea and what effect his two-year loan deal to AC Milan will have on Chelsea's finances.
In terms of actual sterling pounds, Fernando Torres has cost Chelsea nearly £85m so far (£50m transfer fee plus almost £35m in wages). For perspective, this is an absurd £4.25m for each of his twenty Premier League goals over the past three and a half years. If you want to include the other twenty-five goals he scored in Europe and in domestic cup matches, it's a still-absurd £1.88m for every goal scored.
His FFP hit was a crushing £18m+ per year, which, prior to Angel Di Maria recently signing for Manchester United, was the highest in the Premier League. Up until this summer, that £18m per year could have brought in just about any player in the world not named Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo.
It's also important to note that Fernando Torres provided very little additional revenue in shirt sales. While his number nine has been a popular seller in the past (his shirt was number five seller in the Premier League during 2012-13), he was outside the top ten in the Premier League last season.
Chelsea sells around a million shirts per season, and likely receives around 10-15% of the wholesale price of each shirt sold. Let's assume that Torres accounted for 25% of Chelsea's total shirt sales since joining the club (which I think is generous), he's sold around 900,000 shirts.
However, as Allison Fradgley astutely pointed out on Twitter, this sort of analysis naively assumes that a would-be Chelsea shirt purchaser wouldn't just buy a shirt with another player's name on the back. Even if we do give Fernando Torres "credit" for 900,000 shirts sold, the total revenue generated from these shirt sales, based on an estimated £40 wholesale price, is somewhere between £3.6m and £5.4m total. This is a drop in the bucket.
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When Torres came over from Liverpool for £50m in January 2011, he signed a five and a half year deal at £175k per week. His transfer fee was therefore amortised to £9.1m per year, and with two years left on his contract, he's carrying £18.2m in remaining book value.
When a player is sold, his entire book value comes due. Had the AC Milan deal been a permanent transfer, Chelsea would have been charged the entire £18.2m in 2014-15. This would have been ideal, as Torres already carries an £18.2m FFP hit (£9.1 per year in amortisation, £9.1m in wages). Chelsea would've been charged £18.2m plus whatever the club had to pay to make up for the reduced wages he'd likely be on at Milan. Next season, however, Torres would have been completely off the books.
As the deal is structured as a two-year loan, however, Torres will still cost Chelsea £18.2m per season, less whatever AC Milan contributes to Torres' wages.
Earlier reports suggested that AC Milan would be willing to pay the equivalent of £6m. Italian clubs report wages as annual net figures, as opposed to the English standard as gross weekly figures, and the £6m gross figure is the equivalent of the €4m net figure that was reported.
Assuming AC Milan pays £6m per year towards Torres' wages, Chelsea remains on the hook for £12.2m each year (the £9.1m in amortisation plus the remaining £3.1m of Torres' £9.1m annual wages).
However, Jason Burt reported that "it had been thought [Torres] was holding out for a payment on the £175,000-a-week contract he has with Chelsea but because his move to Milan is for two seasons, no pay-off has been forthcoming."
While there's a difference between 1) paying Torres a severance, and 2) splitting his wages with AC Milan (Chelsea would be responsible for around one-third based on the earlier reports already discussed), my interpretation of Burt's report is that Chelsea won't have to pay any portion of Torres' wages.
Assuming AC Milan becomes 100% responsible for Torres' wages, then Chelsea remains on the hook for £9.1m this year, as well as next year (the remaining £18.2m in book value remains amortised).
It would have looked better on the books for Chelsea to simply hand Torres a £6.2m severance, let him go for free on a permanent transfer, and have him cost £24.4m in 2014-15 (£18.2m in remaining book value plus the severance) and nothing in 2015-16, or alternatively, if Chelsea doesn't have to pay any of his wages, he'd cost £18.2m in 2014-15 (the remaining book value) and nothing in 2015-16.
While the total cost is the same, the club's 2015-16 FFP wage bill will likely be much higher than 2014-15, as the profit from selling David Luiz and Romelu Lukaku, among others, lowers this year's bill considerably (we'll roll out an updated version of the wage database after the transfer window closes, so you can see exactly what the difference is).
Essentially, loaning Torres to AC Milan likely saves Chelsea somewhere between £6m and £9.1m both this season and next season, but he remains on the books at a cost of somewhere between £9.1m and £12.2m per year.
On a personal note, while I appreciated Torres' hustle and certainly support whoever has the privilege of wearing a Chelsea shirt, there's not much I can point to that could even begin justifying his cost (besides allowing us to breathe for the final minute or two in the second leg of the Barcelona tie and doing an admittedly fantastic job of falling over Diego Contento to "win" what ended up being the most important corner kick in Chelsea history).
Chelsea has had an excellent run while Torres has been at the club, but imagine what the club could have achieved by getting even an average return on its enormous investment?
Fortunately, we never have to talk about it again, and I am very much looking forward to the future.In Jerusalem, construction of Jewish neighborhoods continues unabated, while Palestinians are still struggling for basic infrastructure.
By Aviv Tatarsky
There is no construction freeze. As opposed to declarations by right-wing politicians such as Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat or Education Minister Naftali Bennett, construction in Jerusalem was never frozen, while the cranes and bulldozers keep working tirelessly in the city’s Jewish neighborhoods located beyond the Green Line. Thousands of housing units in Gilo, Har Homa, Ramot, Pisgat Ze’ev, and Ramat Shlomo. These not only provide housing for Israelis — they establish facts on the ground in order to make partitioning the city, and as well as reaching a two-state solution, all the more difficult. This, of course, does not stop Israel’s ministers from complaining about a “construction freeze.”
There is a freeze on construction plans and tenders in Jerusalem. In 2012 the government approved a plan for over 6,000 housing units beyond the Green Line in Jerusalem. In 2013 and in the first three months of 2014 Israel published tenders for nearly 2,500 units in Ramat Shlomo, Gilo, etc. But since the breakdown in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, lead by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, in April 2014, Israel has hardly published tenders or promoted construction plans. This fact should be taken to heart by all those — on both the Right and the Left — who have eulogized the two-state solution. The solution has yet to reach its expiration date, and if anything is keeping it alive it is sheer political will — not the reality on the ground.
There is a construction freeze for Palestinians. Despite the severe construction shortage the municipality and government repeatedly thwart development plans for Jerusalem’s Palestinian neighborhoods. If you ask city council members, the shortage of classrooms and family health centers is a result of a “lack of suitable land.” Ask the residents of the Old City. Ask the residents of Sur Baher. Ask the residents of Issawiya or their neighbors in A-Tur — neighborhoods where after years of hard work and investing hundreds of thousands of shekels from their own pockets, the municipality decided to go back on its promises: although the master plan was coordinated with the municipality, the city decided to spend the money on a national park in the exact same spot. Meanwhile all the hard work for the betterment of the Palestinians went down the drain.
And what about the 600 housing units in Beit Safafa, announced by Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Liberman last week, and which according to Bennett would create “territorial contiguity between Bethlehem and Malha?” The truth is that most of this territory has already been built up. The permit Bennett spoke about only increases the building rate such that landowners can add a story or two. And even that didn’t gain approval until the residents lodged an appeal in court. Whatever open land was left near Beit Safafa has already been expropriated by the state for the sake of building an Israeli neighborhood. In fact 38 percent of land in East Jerusalem have been expropriated from their Palestinian owners in order to build apartments for Israelis. When it comes to our education minister, the combination of lying and scaremongering does not add up to incitement.
In the past few years the state has not approved a single, detailed master plan for the city’s Palestinian neighborhoods, while it approves plans for 10,000 housing units in Israeli neighborhoods. Alongside the infringement on the right to housing, and with a complete lack of planning, there is a shortage of investment in schools, infrastructure, and social services. The cumulative effect brings about enormous economic and social damage.
There is no freeze on home demolitions. Since the beginning of the year, the pressure by the authorities and the state to demolish “illegal structures” has increased dramatically. In April the city demolished Palestinian homes in al-Walaja, a village the was cut off from the separation wall, for first time. In Ayn al-Luza, located in the neighborhood of Silwan, an apartment complex of 100 units is under immediate threat of demolition. And more and more.
There is no freeze on evictions. In the Old City, in Sheikh Jarrah, in Batan al-Hawa (in Silwan) — state-backed settler organizations are working to expel 150 families from their homes. More families will be thrown into the streets, more children will lose their homes.
There is no way to pulverize the Palestinian part of Jerusalem without Israeli suffering. Israeli construction will not prevent the need for a political solution — it will only make reaching one more complicated. On the other hand, the systematic discrimination against Palestinians in Jerusalem creates poverty and hostility, destroying the community fabric in East Jerusalem. This is the soil from which the violence that kills Israelis grows. If we do not sow other seeds, this is what we will reap.
Aviv Tatarsky is a researcher with Ir Amim. This article was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.Former Obama foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes on Wednesday called President Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE's claims to have already modernized the U.S. nuclear arsenal "alarming" amid rising tensions with North Korea.
It's literally impossible for Trump to have changed our nuclear arsenal in 6 months. Alarming thing to lie about. https://t.co/9cizhVLJAU — Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) August 9, 2017
Rhodes's comment was in response to a tweet from Trump on Wednesday morning saying his first act as president was to "renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal," following threats from North Korea to use nuclear weapons on the U.S. territory of Guam.
My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before.... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 9, 2017
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The president's tweet was an apparent reference to the ongoing Nuclear Posture Review, a legislatively mandated look at U.S. nuclear capabilities and strategy which Trump began on Jan. 27 with an executive order. The review, which works to shape U.S. nuclear policy, comes as the Department of Defense is preparing to revitalize America's nuclear arsenal.
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Paul Selva, who is co-leading the review, said on July 18 that "my expectation is it will take several more months to complete the Nuclear Posture Review, and the Ballistic Missile Defense Review will follow it, because the second review is actually informed by many of the strategic choices that will be made in the Nuclear Posture Review."
Rhodes later tweeted saying the White House's "escalation" of the situation with North Korea is "insane" in response to Trump deputy assistant Sebastian Gorka Sebastian Lukacs GorkaGorka says subway murder proves illegal immigration 'is a national security threat' Dems call for revoking Kushner's security clearance Christie says Trump hired 'riffraff' in new book MORE, who compared the situation to the Cuban Missile Crisis under President Kennedy. "Get ready for more of this," he added.
This is insane. Why is the Trump White House insisting that this become a nuclear standoff and an escalating crisis? https://t.co/9dsGYvm9MD — Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) August 9, 2017
So we all have to rally around the leader because he decided to threaten North Korea with nuclear destruction. Get ready for more of this. https://t.co/P5STDMVWMy — Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) August 9, 2017
Boasting about the size of our nuclear arsenal and sending aides out to demand we rally around the leader is chilling. And it's only month 7 — Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) August 9, 2017
Rhodes advised former President Obama on the Iran nuclear deal, among other national security issues.Saido Berahino is a hot property on the transfer market
Crystal Palace have made a bid for West Brom striker Saido Berahino, according to Sky sources.
It is understood the offer is in excess of the bid made for the player by Stoke City earlier this week, which we understand was £20m.
Both Palace and Stoke are still awaiting a response to their offers.
Earlier this month, Palace made a £25m offer for Christian Benteke but the Belgian forward is determined to stay at Liverpool and fight for his place, according to his agent.
Berahino is in the final year of his contract at West Brom and flatly turned down the offer of a new contract last month.
It is understood that Stoke are prepared to pay £17m up front with a further £3m in add-ons for Berahino, but the Baggies are not prepared to let him leave until they have lined up a new striker of their own.
West Brom are interested in West Ham striker Diafra Sakho
Sky sources understand that Albion are interested in West Ham's wantaway striker Diafra Sakho, who is a target for Sunderland, but, like West Brom, the Hammers are reluctant to negotiate a deal without having plans in place for a replacement.
West Ham have been struggling all summer to land a coveted new centre-forward, seeing their interest in the likes of Michy Batshuayi, Christian Benteke, Alexandre Lacazette and Callum Wilson fail.
Earlier this month, we reported that West Ham have now turned their attentions to AC Milan striker Carlos Bacca, but are yet to agree a deal.Home improvement: DIY or leave it for the pros? 9:36 AM ET Thu, 24 Aug 2017 | 01:43
As millennials postpone life's major milestones, grabbing their attention has proven a bit elusive for home improvement retailers.
But now, as the older members of this generation start reaching the median age for first-time homebuyers, the industry is starting to see how their tastes differ from their predecessors — and likewise, how they'll need to evolve their businesses to suit these shoppers' needs.
Near the top of millennials' wish lists are smart, energy-efficient homes with an inspiring outdoor space. Yet most important for this cohort, which is already known for its desire to stand out, is finding a way to use their homes as a means of self-expression.
"[Millennials are] a lot more focused on bringing some personality into the home," Kevin Hofmann, Home Depot's chief marketing officer, told CNBC.
On a call with analysts in May, Home Depot CEO Craig Menear said millennials appear to be in a six-year delayed cycle for forming their own households. Indeed, the median age of first-time homebuyers reached 35 between 2010 and 2015, according to PwC. That's an all-time high since the firm started tracking this metric in 1970. And just last week, a report from the U.S. Census Bureau found the country's homeownership rate hit its lowest level since 1965.
Yet even as the generation holds onto urban living as long as possible — namely, until they become parents and have to send their kids to school — they are showing an inevitable desire to move back to the suburbs, PwC's Byron Carlock said.
"It's really not a question of 'if,' but rather a question of 'when,'" said UBS analyst Michael Lasser, who has a buy rating on Home Depot's stock.Whoop-sie! The GOP members of Ohio’s House of Representatives just pulled a blooper so big that it’s probably time to promote all of them to the United States House of Representatives. Fortunately for them–or at least for Ohio–they’re probably going to be saved by the other half of their legislature, the Senate.
The issue is student voting. In April, the state House Republicans decided it would be a great idea to limit the right of university students to vote and, at the same time, punish the schools that facilitated their voting. In spite of a 34-year-old U.S. Supreme Court decision that said students have a constitutional right to vote in person at the place where they are attending school, the House added an amendment to the state budget to prevent that. It would require any school that gave evidence of residency–a utility bill or a letter–to an out-of-state student for the purpose of voting in Ohio must then charge the student’s in-state tuition.
The legislators no doubt thought they were brilliant. The state universities were appalled at the possible loss of $370 million per year in tuition funds. So, obviously, they would refuse to provide students with such proof. At least, that was the reasoning of the GOP–which is not a group noted for grasping the big picture: [GOP Election Boards Mail Ohio Voters Wrong Polling Info, Cut Early Voting In Dem-Heavy Areas]
Then came the feedback. University officials were, of course, outraged. So were House Democrats. Rep. Kathleen Clyde, D-Kent, said:
“This is another attack on Ohio voters. This provision will make it very difficult for Ohio’s universities to help students vote. I think it’s outrageous. The problem, if we have one, is that not enough students are voting.”
But the real earful came from Republicans in the other legislative chamber. According to Sen. Randy Gardner (R-Bowling Green), Senate opposition to the provision was “overwhelming.” It seems that someone with a more level head pointed out that out-of-state students would be more likely to register to vote if the result would be paying in-state tuition — an amount that’s about half as much as out-of-state. And because of the direction that the student vote leans, the measure would ultimately mean more votes for the Democrats. Brilliant indeed, GOP!
As Sen. Bill Coley (R-Liberty Township), said about the amendment:
“There is some concern that it might have an unintended consequence. They would get some financial incentive to vote in Ohio. That’s not what the House intended, nor what the Senate wants. So we’re trying to rework that piece.”
Some Republicans, with their halos shining, are trying to claim that the move to add the amendment is really about lowering tuition. Because they are so concerned about the pocketbooks of out-of-state students. Uh-huh.
Rep. Clyde got it right in her comments from the House floor. Calling the proposal a strategy out of the “right-wing playbook”, she said:
“If you truly cared about giving students a tuition break, you’d actually fund one rather than forcing universities to do your voter-suppression dirty work for you.”
Apparently, the Republican legislators knew neither how transparent their tactic would be, nor even that the most obvious consequence would follow. Which raises another question: just why is it that being a Republican representative, either state or national, seems to require a special kind of dumb?
I’d be delighted if you joined me on Facebook or checked out my previous articles.My focus this week is on the “wiretapping” (electronic interception of communications, if you insist) of President Trump and his associates during the campaign. It seems to me this story is rapidly unfolding -- if only mostly in overseas press and online -- and promises to be far more explosive than the Watergate story, an account that says frightening things about our intelligence agencies and those of some of our allies, most particularly Great Britain. It has become increasingly clear to me that there was widespread wiretapping of President Trump and his associates and that the underlying justification was pretextual -- it was actually intended to spy on a political opponent. And it is equally clear that the nonsensical post-election tale that Russia colluded with Trump so that he could beat Hillary Clinton was a coverup tale to justify the unmasking and leaking of some of the information -- particularly about General Flynn -- which has taken place. The prior administration was so confident Hillary would win that they left their tracks uncovered and afterward were desperate to hide the truth so they projected and whispered the Russians were colluding with Trump.
Carter Page and the FISA Order
The Washington Post reported that the FBI and the Department of Justice (read Loretta Lynch and James Comey) got the FISA order for the purpose of monitoring a campaign foreign policy adviser to Trump, Carter Page, who had earlier worked in Moscow for Merrill Lynch and had invested (but sold his stock) in Gazprom, the large Russian energy outfit. It is unclear where the Post obtained this information, as the FISA request and order are still secret.
In any event -- and I assume this was an inside leak (probably by someone on the staff of Congressman Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee) to justify Lynch and Comey’s action -- there was no basis for the order. The nub of the charge -- which likely originated in the now-discredited “dossier” by ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele (originally hired by Hillary Clinton) was that Page had met with Igor Sechin, a Putin confidant. Both Page and Sechin’s company deny such a meeting ever took place. (This echoes an earlier charge in the dossier that a Trump attorney met in Prague with a Russian aide, which has been credibly debunked.) Page also had some minor contact with Russian “diplomat” Victor Podobny, to whom he provided on request “basic immaterial information and publicly available research documents.” Page has asked to be allowed to testify before the investigating committee.
Catherine Herridge on FOX interviewed him:
Page: I have nothing that I want to hide, and the more that the truth comes out the better, because there has just been so much lies, and now potentially false evidence, which is the next step beyond lies, when it is potentially used in a Court of Law, so that will be very interesting to see how this all plays out.
Th e opposition research firm that engaged Steele to compile the ”Dossier” (Fusion GPS) is refusing to answer questions posed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, inexplicably claiming, attorney-client privilege.
Linking anyone however remotely connected with Trump was key to the wiretapping as a correspondent with knowledge of such things reports:
The key part is where they apparently claim that Page "was an agent of the Russian government and knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of Moscow" I can easily imagine that the incident where he was asked for some open source material would be characterized in the application as "responds to tasking requirement from known FSB agent" or something like that. Almost any act could be interpreted in that fashion. Page's eagerness to testify strongly suggests that he thinks he has nothing to hide. The thing is, of course, that the Russian, as the representative of a foreign power that is placed in the highest category of threat to National Security, would have already been subject to a Full Investigation and all his communications with the rest of the world would have been subject to collection -- including communications with Donald Trump. Thus there wouldn't normally be any need to collect Page's communications with Russians because they were already being collected from the other end. Problem: I doubt that the Russian ever communicated with Trump, and if political intel on Trump was your true goal then collecting communications with the Russian and Page wasn't good enough. You'd need to have a full [full investigation]and do FISA collection from some American who was in touch with Trump or Trump's circle. Thus the need to identity some American as "an agent... " Not to belabor the obvious, but being contacted by a Russki and asked for open source material isn't evidence of someone being an agent of a foreign power -- it's evidence of the foreign power's interest in recruiting that person. Two very different things. And it simply doesn't approach predication for a FISA order. It's predication for a Preliminary Inquiry (under which you can't even apply for a FISA) to check further on the nature of the relationship, but it won't get you a Full Investigation, which you need for a FISA. Unless they had some much better info -- which, as Hinderaker [Powerline blog cited below] says, probably woulda been leaked by now -- there was some serious fudging going on." [Snip] But of course, these people all worked for Obama, so there's a big red flag there. In any event, if the FISA court could be (and likely was) hoodwinked into allowing Page’s communications to be captured and monitored, the government could collect all his communications with everyone without limit.
My friend Harry Lewis reminds us of the consequences of using a pretext to obtain a FISA order to invade the privacy American citizens:
The technical term for pretextual collection of intelligence by deliberately misidentifying the target to fool the FISA court -- which seems to have happened here-- is "reverse collection". I'm thinking perjury on the misleading affidavit to the court, and also by Lynch, who had to sign every application. Maybe obstruction of justice if there's a coverup. Rice hasn't yet been questioned under oath, so that will be her big chance to perjure herself or to take the Fifth.
Evidence of Other Western Intelligence Agencies Corroboration in the Snooping on Trump
John Hinderaker of Powerline, whose work my correspondent referred to above, notes that there was a cabal of Western intelligence agencies working with Obama to spy on Trump.
The Guardian adds to our knowledge of how the Obama administration and its allies overseas tried to discredit Donald Trump. (For purposes of this post, I assume that everything the Guardian says is true, even though it is based on anonymous sources who are pursuing their personal and political interests.) Britain’s spy agencies played a crucial role in alerting their counterparts in Washington to contacts between members of Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives, the Guardian has been told. GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious “interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information, they added. Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russians, sources said. The European countries that passed on electronic intelligence -- known as sigint -- included Germany, Estonia and Poland. Australia, a member of the “Five Eyes” spying alliance that also includes the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand, also relayed material, one source said. Another source suggested the Dutch and the French spy agency, the General Directorate for External Security or DGSE, were contributors. So just about every Western intelligence service was collaborating with the Obama administration in trying to elect Hillary Clinton. Yet, amazingly enough, they failed. The blindingly obvious point that the Guardian tries to obscure is that the combined assets of all of these agencies failed to find any evidence of collaboration between the Trump campaign and Russia. We know this, because the Democrats have pulled out all the stops. Both before the election, and especially after the election, they have leaked furiously to try to discredit President Trump. If there were any evidence of collusion between Trump (or even obscure, minor “advisers” like Carter Page) and Russia, there would have been nothing else in the Washington Post or the New York Times for the past five months. But they have nothing.
As Hinderaker also notes, the cabal thought there’d be no consequences for this dirty game because having read the Washington Post and New York Times, they were sure Hillary was going to win and they’d be rewarded for their treachery.
It’s also true, as Snowden revealed in 2013, that the British Government Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ) had been partly funded by the U.S. NSA to the tune of over 100 million British pounds. So they had even more incentive to play ball with Obama. Three days after Trump’s inauguration the head of that outfit unexpectedly resigned for “personal reasons.”
There’s every reason to believe that the head of NSA Mike Rogers did not participate in this scam and eight days after the election met with Trump, doubtless to apprise him of the skullduggery that had occurred. On that same date, then-defense secretary Ashton Carter and then-director of national Intelligence James R. Clapper, Jr. recommended Trump fire Rogers. Trump got rid of them instead, accepting their resignations.
FISA’s not the only way the Spying May Have Occurred
The great reporter Sharyl Attkisson, herself a victim of Obama’s spying operation, notes he had at his disposal other tools for spying on his opponents. (Given his history of winning by snooping, I can’t believe he didn’t use them all.)
Besides the FISA court, “wiretapping” or electronic surveillance can also be done under Title III authority. The government used this authority, for example, in the Justice Department’s secret Fast and Furious “gunwalking” case. Additionally, U.S. presidents have the power to issue secret presidential directives that can authorize otherwise illegal acts (theoretically in the country’s best interests). These directives may come with pre-planned cover stories to be used in the event the operation is exposed, and they come with indemnity for those involved, giving them permission to lie about the operation or their involvement without fear of prosecution. The public will rarely know about such presidential directives since most who see them must sign agreements that promise nondisclosure and consent to polygraphs. [snip] There are “back-door” ways to collect and report on a target without Title III or FISA court authority. If it’s for political purposes or blackmail, this may consist of “inventing” an excuse to surveil the target. If the work of targeting an individual cannot be accomplished by government intel officers, it can be contracted out to third parties or to foreign parties who aren’t bound by U.S. law. Incidental collection of a U.S. citizen target may be “orchestrated” for political reasons by those who have tools and tradecraft available to them because of their positions of power. There are ways to do it with no fingerprints. For example: 1. Locate a foreign target already under CIA surveillance. 2. Have a government agent use the foreign target’s phone and/or computer to make it look like the foreigner contacted the U.S. citizen whose communications are sought. The contacts can be benign, but they establish a record that falsely implies a relationship exists between the U.S. citizen and the foreign target. 3. The government agent can also mimic a communication back from the U.S. citizen to the foreign target, creating an appearance that the U.S. citizen initiated contacts. This could be favorable to justifying a warrant on the U.S. citizen later. 4. The U.S. citizen is now tied to the foreign entity and is now an “incidental” collection target that can be surveilled in a “masked” format. Although “masked,” the surveilling agency knows the U.S. citizen’s identity. 5. If the U.S. citizen does anything that can be construed as illegal or suspicious, it’s possible the intel agency can then receive approval to surveil him directly rather than only “incidentally.” Possibly inappropriate requests to “unmask” names of U.S. citizens captured during surveillance of a foreign target may be preceded by a chain of communications intended to provide a pretense or cover story to justify the unmasking.
Do you see a pattern here? I do.
The Russian Role
In his well-considered post linked above, John Hinderaker offers the most likely explanation for the hacking of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s email account and sending it to Wikileaks -- if that is how Wikileaks got it and Assange denies they were the source -- it was not to help Trump win; it was to bedevil her after Hillary won.
Rich Lowry writes in the NY Post that Obama’s record of bowing to Russian interests provides circumstantial evidence that he was the real Russian stooge. There’s no reason to believe that his long-time Secretary of State would have proven less so than he was.
There’s every reason to believe that Trump, on the other hand, will not be. There’s also every reason for the heads of the Western allies whose intelligence agencies cooperated in the electronic eavesdropping of Trump and his associates to come clean and apologize, and for those in the U.S. who orchestrated this to suffer fully the legal consequences of unlawful acts.Brisbane Broncos thump Gold Coast Titans 54-0, as Newcastle Knights, Canberra Raiders also grab wins
Updated
The Brisbane Broncos made the headlines on a big Saturday of NRL, annihilating the Titans 54-0, following the Knights' surprise win over the Warriors.
The Canberra Raiders then closed out the night with a convincing 30-12 win over last year's premiers the Sharks.
Broncos pulverise Titans on the Gold Coast
A Ben Hunt masterclass has helped ease Brisbane back into the top four as the Broncos handed Gold Coast a 54-0 drubbing.
Starting from the bench, Hunt made light of his new role at hooker with a hat-trick of tries in the absence of injured Andrew McCullough, the Titans enduring their biggest NRL loss.
Hunt scored twice inside 25 minutes of his introduction, set up an Anthony Milford try with a clever short kick and split the defence to race away for his hat-trick midway through the second half.
The St George Ill |
that as Treasury Secretary, I would require that any future actions with respect to AIG, Citigroup or any other institution be subject to careful scrutiny regarding the amount of taxpayer money being put at risk by acting relative to the costs of not acting."
Geithner does not believe that Americans can create a sound financial system without these subsidies. He does not believe that Americans can themselves right the financial system. He does not believe in free markets. He believes in Timothy F. Geithner. He will assess the costs and benefits. He will scrutinize. He will spend our money for us. He will decide how to create a stable arrangement.
How will he do this? He intends to save us by taxing us and transferring the money to some of these financial players that he selects by his complex judgments. He will keep alive institutions that have failed or are on the threshold of failure. He will help us by subsidizing bad loans and undermining the economy. He will also, by the way, protect and help his friends.
In the nineteenth century, the U.S. economy recovered quickly from a number of major financial episodes like the current one. Timothy F. Geithner, Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson, all of whom represent that cadre of persons who believe only in their own powers, were nowhere to be seen. Major banks, brokers, and investment bankers failed. The rot was cleaned out. In some instances, financial figures started over again. The profit motive quickly led to a restoration of credit and business.
Geithner’s words and rationales are hokum, puffery, claptrap, and nonsense. He appears to be deluding himself even as he deludes all within hearing who do not understand the actual content and meaning of his policies, that have Obama’s blessing and continue unchanged from the Bush administration. He is overstuffed with his own arrogance and drive for power, as all such officials are, and that is why he propounds this nonsense to us. His words are the weapons of choice to commit grave misdeeds against the people he is sworn to serve. Is it not to his advantage if he can get his victims to approve of their own victimization? I do not mean to pick on Geithner; his attitude is a handy example of the general mindset of important government officials.
Geithner added the following:
"As a condition of federal assistance, healthy banks without major capital shortfalls will increase lending above baseline levels.
Banks receiving government capital will be required to provide detailed and timely information on their lending patterns broken down by category. Public companies will report this information quarterly, including a description of the factors that influenced their decisions, in conjunction with the release of their 10Q reports.
The Treasury will report quarterly on overall lending activity and on the terms and availability of credit in the economy."
The U.S. government wants to force banks to make loans. The method is to dangle federal assistance or, in some cases, to impose such assistance on banks under the threat of other unnamed political harms to be done them. The assistance, which is the subsidy, carries a stipulation. The banks must make loans above levels laid down by the government. Welcome to fascism, U.S. style. The government is nationalizing the banks. It is dictating loan policies. That is why banks will be forced to report their loans in detail and justify them. The banks are to report to their pseudo—Board of Directors, which has Timothy F. Geithner at its apex, if not Barack Obama.
All of this continues to move the U.S. economy away from free markets and toward fascism, which involves government economic control while leaving the organizational forms of the free market in place. At one time, the government role in providing credits and subsidies was nil or relatively small. The New Deal brought in government-sponsored institutions that directed credit to mortgages, farm loans, and various other enterprises. The Small Business Administration began in 1953. There are now countless other programs and subsidies provided directly by government. The central bank creation in 1913 brought a heavy influence on overall credit creation, but the allocation was largely left to individual banks. In the last 30 years, that independence was compromised by various government acts and regulations that encouraged mortgage loans, community loans, and substandard loans. Recounting all these would fill several books. Now the allocation of credit by individual banks is being directly attacked and eroded by TARP. Further measures and regulation are likely.
These subsidies and controls are a one-way street. There is no case that can be made on economic grounds in support of what the government is doing, none whatever. Those many elements of the American public that are supporting what the government has and is doing to our credit system, our capital markets, and our economy, are undermining their own welfare and bringing about their own economic calamity. We are in the midst of such a downfall now. The same poisonous policies that produced this downfall cannot now remedy it. They can only continue the fall of the American economy and bring about a lower standard of living.
The Best of Michael S. RozeffPious Populist
Understanding the rise of Iran's president
Abbas Milani
Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who won a surprise election victory in 2005, has descended into infamy in the United States as a dangerous demagogue and an anti-Semite. Ahmadinejad must be taken seriously, however, and not just for his threats, verbal outbursts, and political provocations. Wherever he speaks and whomever he addresses, Ahmadinejad is always communicating with a domestic audience of millions of citizens in Iran, as well as with the rest of the Muslim world. He knows his audience well and, while he may convey an air of clumsy haphazardness, his discourse and demeanor express a meticulously crafted, politically astute message of pious populism. He is very much a product of recent Iranian history, and understanding his early years and rise to power provides insight into current circumstances in Iran, his own likely course of action, and the prospects for Iranian political reform.
Born on October 28, 1956, Ahmadinejad was the fourth child of a poor family who lived in a small village not far from Tehran, Iran’s capital. A few years later, his father moved the family to Tehran, part of a massive migration of Iranian villagers to cities that began in the late 1950s, stimulated by policies undertaken by the Shah in response to American pressures.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, then Shah of Iran, had first come to power in 1941, and was restored to his throne with American and British help in a 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq. After the coup the Shah was widely understood as, in the words of a U.S. ambassador, “a ward of the U.S.” In the late 1950s American advice mattered. With the Cold War raging and concern about oil supplies on the rise, the Eisenhower administration worried that the Shah’s repressive regime would incite a social revolution. The resulting pressure to liberalize, which mounted during the Kennedy years, compelled the Shah to introduce a series of socioeconomic reforms collectively known as the White Revolution (“white” for its supposed nonviolent nature).
The reforms granted women the right to vote and participate in the political process, secularized education and increased access to schools, and tried (unsuccessfully) to enable Iran’s religious minorities—principally Baha’is, Jews, and Christians—to take the oath of office on a holy book of their own choosing. The centerpiece of the “revolution,” though, was land reform. With that, along with other elements of the White Revolution, the Shah, U.S. analysts thought, would trade support from the traditional but corrupt landed gentry for that of a newly enfranchised peasantry and a bourgeoning middle class of technocrats, teachers, and shopkeepers. The Kennedy administration hoped land reform would first bring about dramatic social change and then—as predicted by contemporary theories of modernization—political transformation and a more liberal polity.
But Iran’s land reform program was troubled from the start. Although a sizeable number of peasants received land, each plot was usually too small to sustain an entire family. Moreover, rising oil revenues were turning Tehran and other big cities into virtual El Dorados. Instead of producing an enfranchised peasantry and an urban middle class, land reform led millions of villagers to migrate to the cities in search of better lives, expediting the movement of people like the Ahmadinejads to Tehran.
Politically, things were no better. The secular opposition—left and center—never accepted the reforms as genuine. Embittered by the 1953 coup against a powerfully nationalist prime minister, they did not regard the Shah’s regime as legitimate; it was, they said, a puppet of the United States, incapable of bringing about genuine change. The Shah himself, convinced that economic growth would guarantee his own survival, was unwilling to share political power with the new middle class, and certainly not with the poor masses converging on the cities. Nor, even more importantly, did the Shah’s regime make any effort to socially integrate families like the Ahmadinejads, who had flocked to the cities but were uncomfortable with the cosmopolitan ethos they found there. Moreover, from the beginning the conservative clergy viewed the White Revolution as an affront to Islam and a dangerous move toward Western modernity: Ayatollah Khomeini immediately denounced the proposed reforms, led the clerical opposition, and spent eight months under house arrest for his speeches against the Shah, the reforms, and an impending bill granting U.S. citizens immunity from prosecution in Iranian courts. His arrest, in 1963, provoked powerful urban protest, the so-called uprising of 15 Khordad 1342, which led to a large number of deaths—thousands according to the opposition, 400 according to more reliable sources.
The pressure on Iran to liberalize, which had continued through much of the 1960s, ended with the Nixon administration. The Nixon doctrine rejected the idea that the United States should police the world and pushed instead for strengthening local military powers, with Iran serving as the new hegemonic force in the Persian Gulf. Given carte blanche to buy new weapons systems, the Shah—faced with growing political pressure from below—grew increasingly authoritarian. Ignoring the letter and spirit of the Constitution, he banned all the existing parties and crafted a one-party system. Calling the party Rastakhiz (meaning “resurgence” or “rebirth”), he decreed that every Iranian must join it and eventually ordered party officials to develop an ideology for the country “based on the laws of dialectics.”
* * *
Like millions drawn to the city during those years, the Ahmadinejad family settled in one of Tehran’s poorest neighborhoods and brought with them the cultural conservatism and traditional Islam of Iran’s peasantry. Struggling to make a living through odd jobs, the elder Ahmadinejad continued to cultivate in his son an unbending devotion to Islam. Even by the standards of other villagers, the family was unusually devout. As a boy, Ahmadinejad regularly accompanied his father to the mosque and insisted on performing all religious duties and rituals, even before the requisite age. While his parents were regular participants in neighborhood religious organizations, Ahmadinejad himself was keen on learning and reciting the Qur’an.
Ahmadinejad became a hard-working, disciplined high school student, often finishing at the top of his class. In 1976 he took Iran’s national university entrance exams, and claims his score ranked 132nd among more than 400,000 examinees that year (though the school he chose to attend—the College of Science and Technology—was in the second-tier of such institutions, which is hard to reconcile with his claim). Those years saw a sharp rise in the number of new mosques throughout Iran, and prayer rooms in high schools and colleges. Concerned about the growing strength of his political opponents on the left, the Shah saw the piety of young men like Ahmadinejad as an antidote to communism. He failed to recognize the ambitions of clerics like Ayatollah Khomeini and their potential attraction to culturally alienated and economically disgruntled working class Iranians. Khomeini himself had been living in exile in Najaf, Iraq, since 1965, but his lectures on velayat-e faqih—his novel doctrine of guardianship by a leading Islamic jurist—were in circulation covertly among his followers in Iran. While clerical leaders willing to stay clear of politics were amply rewarded by the Shah’s regime, those who sided with Khomeini’s activist version of Shi’ism were sent to prison.
In 1977 U.S. policy in Iran changed suddenly once again. President Jimmy Carter’s talk of human rights, and his apparent willingness to pressure the Shah to liberalize, emboldened the once-cowed Iranian opposition. Ahmadinejad was by then a college student and became active in organizing Islamic students. For young men like Ahmadinejad, the Shah’s liberalization policy provided an opportunity to safely enter the world of politics. For the Shah, however, this “opening-up” proved disastrous. A mix of personal, political, economic, and social factors came together and created the perfect political storm: the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Political openings are dangerous for despotic regimes. The Shah was forced to liberalize, under direct pressure from the United States, at a time when oil revenues and economic growth were declining sharply. In 1976, he had gone on what the CIA called a “lending binge,” giving away almost two billion dollars. Yet less than two years later, Iran was back to borrowing. And the Shah himself was sick. Diagnosed with lymphoma and undergoing chemotherapy, he was on medication that made him depressed, paranoid, and pathologically indecisive. From his first days on the throne, he had shown a clear aversion to conflict and a decided inability to withstand pressure, and the medication only augmented this tendency.
Ahmadinejad and his family were among the millions who became foot soldiers of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution. Khomeini and his allies used an intricate network of mosques, religious classes, Qur’an recitals, and even modern lecture halls to consolidate their hold on traditional families. They also attracted new allies from the burgeoning middle class by offering what seemed to be a less dogmatic, more rational version of Shi’ism. The most successful such effort was made by Ali Shariati, a powerful orator whose lectures combined elements of Marxism, existentialism, structuralism, and the post-colonial theories of Franz Fanon with Shi’ism to fashion an ideology of social action. The clergy knew, through centuries of living close to the society, that the middle classes would be a dominant force in determining the future of Iran. Whoever formed an alliance with them would control the country’s future. Relying on the traditional pieties of the poor, the clergy’s new middle class allies made them a formidable force. Ahmadinejad learned that lesson well.
The growing network of Islamic institutions almost went unnoticed by Iran’s secret police. The Shah remained concerned about secular democrats and the left; he believed the clergy—who shared his hostility to these elements—were his strategic allies. He also believed that the enfranchised peasantry, grateful for the land he had given them, would come to his defense. He was wrong. Nor could the Iranian middle classes be bribed into political silence in return for a better economic life. The revolution was at least partially the result of this miscalculation.
(Ironically, today many of the same clergy who rode the Shah’s economic determinism into victory are banking on the same kind of policy. This time they call it “the China model,” and many in the regime’s leadership, notably Chairman of the Assembly of Experts Hashemi Rafsanjani, think it represents the only way the regime can survive in its current form. According to this “model,” the regime will allow the country to experience a liberalized economic boom, and in return the clergy will cling to its monopoly hold on power. For a variety of reasons, including the obvious inability of the Iranian regime to match China’s savings rate or internal market, or its ability to attract foreign investments, the China model is a pipe dream for Iran.)
The writings of Shariati, as well as the pro-Islamic writings of Jalal Al-Ahmad, easily one of the most influential intellectuals of his generation, paved the way for the alliance between a significant segment of the middle classes and the Islamic traditionalist poor. Moreover, the presence of a religious wing of the National Front—secular democrats who owed their political influence to the legacy of former prime minister Mossadeq—and the presence of characters like Mehdi Bazargan, a professor at Tehran University and a man of unbending piety and a long history of democratic activism in favor of democracy—made the alliance more palatable not just to the middle classes, but also to the Carter administration. In a 1979 cable from Iran, then American ambassador, William Sullivan, reflected these false hopes by suggesting that the Shia clergy are democratic in inclination and reliably anti-Communist. Finally, the Stalinist left joined the coalition in the hope of using Khomeini to overthrow the Shah and then, in due course, overthrow Khomeini and seize power. They wanted to follow a kind of “Leninist strategy” against Khomeini, but as it happened, Khomeini “out-Lenined” all the Leninists.
* * *
The unwieldy social and ideological coalition that brought Khomeini to power shared nothing but enmity for the Shah. With his departure, those differences emerged with full force. While religious activists like Ahmadinejad embraced Khomeini’s theocratic project, the technocratic middle classes hoped to use Khomeini against the Shah and then create a secular, democratic republic. The urban poor joined the coalition when Khomeini and his allies promised them economic benefits—free houses and free electricity, more wages, and less pressure from the government and their own bosses. No sooner had the Shah departed than the network of religious organizations, with a mosque in nearly every town and neighborhood, began quickly to dominate the revolution: in late 1979 the country voted in a referendum to become an Islamic Republic.
In the immediate aftermath of the revolution, and as a direct result of clerical dominance, Iran experienced an Islamic version of the Reign of Terror, resulting ever since in cycles of violence. Iran is something of an ethnic and religious quilt. At least a quarter of its 70-plus million people speak Turkish. Another six or seven million are of Kurdish origin. Yet another two to three million speak Arabic, and at least a million are Baluchis, who live in an area bordering Pakistan. During the Pahlavi era, the Shah and his father mimicked the Ataturk model (which banned Turkey’s Kurds from speaking Kurdish) and tried to solve Iran’s ethnic difficulties by enforcing a unified “Persian identity” and making it illegal for ethno-linguistic minorities to speak or teach their native languages.
When the central government appeared vulnerable after the revolution, simmering ethnic grievances erupted. In Iran’s Kurdish region, civil war broke out, leaving thousands dead. (The only job Ahmadinejad held before becoming mayor of Tehran was in the mid 1990s, when he was named the governor of Ardibil, which was populated predominantly by Turkish-speaking Iranians.)
Moreover, the regime’s attempt to impose its understanding of Islamic traditions—from mandating headscarves to banning unveiled women from television or films—created social strife in the country’s modernized cities. Some of the new strictures produced comical results: Hollywood films were shown with the women eliminated from every scene. Or “illicit” affairs between unmarried lovers were written out of scripts and replaced with more chaste relations, such as that of brother and sister.
Ayatollah Khomeini also began a massive purge of the military, which he suspected of harboring royalist tendencies. The Iranian air force, in particular, was decimated. After the government claimed to have aborted a coup attempt by a group of pilots, three hundred pilots were reportedly executed by firing squad. A new force, called the Revolutionary Guards of the Islamic Republic and composed of devout young men, often from the countryside, was created to safeguard the revolution and its leaders. Ahmadinejad would join them soon after the war with Iraq began in 1980. Their conservative cultural ethos and rancor against secular intellectuals and the middle class gradually emerged as the regime’s social paradigm. The regime began a massive policy of nationalizing and confiscating factories and banks owned by the elite of the Shah’s rule.
The bureaucracy no less than the military was purged. By harassing women who refused to wear the veil and pressuring men who did not display piety and devotion in their appearance, the regime facilitated the largest emigration in Iran’s history. The long war with Iraq, together with Saddam’s decision to bomb defenseless cities like Tehran, would accelerate this process. Those who left tended to be the more educated middle classes. Today at least two million—by some estimates, four million—live in exile.
In November 1979, with the country engulfed in military conflicts with ethnic minorities and clashes with the central government, and with many cities beset by strikes and student unrest, a new crisis emerged when radical Islamic students, encouraged and supported by the secular left, took over the American embassy in Tehran. In early planning for the takeover, the organizers asked the Islamic Student Association of each university to send two representatives to a clandestine plenary meeting. As scholars Alireza Haghighi and Victoria Tahmasebi have reported, Ahmadinejad, then an engineering student, was one of two delegates from the College of Science and Technology. When he heard of the plans, he demurred; he wanted them to first seek a fatwa from Ayatollah Khomeini. But the organizers wanted to give their leader “plausible deniability.” A few weeks later, when it emerged that Khomeini was bent on turning the hostage crisis into political theater to consolidate his own power, Ahmadinejad tried to join the student leadership committee. This time he was told he was not welcome. The episode became particularly important when, years later in the days after Ahmadinejad’s election as president, some of the former American hostages claimed that Ahmadinejad had been their guard, even their interrogator. All evidence, including an investigation by the CIA, has indicated that the allegations were untrue.
Khomeini used the hostage crisis—and the preoccupation with the embassy takeover in Iran, the United States, and much of the West—to pass a draconian constitution that placed virtually all power in the hands of an unelected ayatollah. He had come to power officially promising a democratic republic, though his own doctrine of the rule of the judges had circulated widely among his followers. From exile in Paris (where he went after Saddam Hussein expelled him from Iraq in 1978), he had said that no clergy would hold office when the revolution won power. But once back in Iran and empowered by the revolution, he placed virtually all power in his own hands and claimed a legitimacy founded on divine right, not popular will. If anyone dared remind him of his democratic promises, he resorted to an important concept of Shi’ism called tagiyeh. Much like Jesuitical equivocation, tagiyeh allows the pious to prevaricate in the service of preserving the faith or leading the faithful. (Khomeini was also a great admirer of Plato, and his doctrine of the guardianship of the jurist (velayat-e faqih) bears striking resemblance to Plato’s ideal of a republic ruled by a philosopher king, just as his idea of tagiyeh is similar to Plato’s idea of the noble lie.)
In Iran, as scholar Arash Naraghi has shown, Khomeini has even tinkered with his own theory of the rule of the jurist. Initially, according to his interpretation of the law, the purpose of such a government was to implement Shari’ah (religious law.) When faced with the practical problems of running a modern polity based on religious laws that were a thousand years old, however, Khomeini offered a new variant of his theory. Now, the ultimate goal of Islamic government is the preservation of the state itself, and all rules of Shari’ah, even the pillars of faith, are subject to change, depending on the interests of the state. In the new version the state is everything, and Shari’ah is but its tool.
As a nod to the democratic aspirations of the movement that had brought him to power, Ayatollah Khomeini allowed constitutional provisions for a powerless, but elected, presidency and a unicameral parliament. But even these weak institutions were circumscribed by the power of unelected mullahs. An appointed institution called the Council of Experts, composed of clerics and experts in Shari’ah, had veto power over all laws it deemed inimical to the letter or spirit of Islam. Initially of uncertain significance, it turned out to be a key factor in the clergy’s control of the county. During the presidency of the reformist Khatami (1997–2005), for example, the Council of Experts rejected more than two hundred laws passed by parliament in a two-year legislative term. The same council has also claimed for itself the right to veto candidates for any election in the country. In one election for the parliament (or Majlis), they rejected more than three thousand candidates, most of them supporters of Khatami-style reform.
* * *
The Iranian Revolution opened an opportunity for Ahmadinejad to enter politics; that opportunity vastly expanded after the eight-year war with Iraq.
Saddam Hussein, who hated Persians as a matter of principle—his last words from the gallows were “death to Persians”—and who had been unhappy about a 1975 agreement he signed with Iran over border issues, saw an opportunity in Iran’s domestic weakness and international isolation. With support from Persian Gulf Arab states concerned about Shia radicalism, and perhaps the United States (it was rumored that they “discreetly” issued a “green light”), Saddam ordered an attack on Iran in September 1980.
After some easy initial successes, Iraqi forces met stiff resistance. By 1982 they had been pushed back to their international borders. Many of the same Arab states that had encouraged Saddam to invade, expecting a quick victory, were now willing to pay reparations to Iran in return for a ceasefire. Khomeini refused, saying that the war would end only when Saddam was deposed. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan issued a presidential directive that made helping Iraq defeat Iran his administration’s official policy. The Soviet Union, France, Germany, England, and China offered arms and other aid to both sides. The war, begun by despotic ambition, continued by despotic intransigence, and prolonged by the greed of many nations, went on for eight years; close to a million people died, with millions displaced on both sides.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards fought with particular ferocity, and among them was the young Ahmadinejad. His precise role in the war has been something of a mystery. But we know that the Revolutionary Guards, under-equipped in battle compared with the Iraqi army, used throngs of young volunteers, called Basij, to walk over minefields in assaults on heavily fortified Iraqi positions. Reliable reports describe the Islamic Republic using stand-ins for Shi’ism’s revered and messianic twelfth Imam, each appearing on the horizon astride his horse and surrounded by an aura, encouraging the young men to fight on. Plastic keys, ostensibly good for opening the door to heaven, and to erotic and culinary delights, were also given to these young men, who walked to their deaths.
When the war ended, and the Revolutionary Guards and the Basiji returned to their cities and villages, they were shocked by the corruption that had transformed many of the revolutionaries in the clerical leadership into very rich men. Some had enriched themselves by virtually taking over industries that had been confiscated from the old regime. Others had become rich as the result of the war itself—from selling ration cards or receiving kick-backs in black-market arms purchases. While some Revolutionary Guard commanders and Basiji leaders soon acquired wealth of fantastic proportions themselves, the more devout members were deeply disturbed by it and began to plan for a return to the pieties of the early days of revolution. Ahmadinejad was among them.
The eight-year presidency of Ahmadinejad’s predecessor, the reformist president Mohammed Khatami, who was willing to expand personal freedoms and improve relations with the West, further convinced these devout Islamists that the very soul of the revolution had been compromised. A group of Guard leaders, including a recently appointed commander, signed an angry note to Ayatollah Khamenei, the “spiritual leader,” declaring deep dissatisfaction with the frequent pro-democratic student demonstrations under Khatami and threatening to take “necessary measures” to re-establish Islamic values.
Ahmadinejad’s election as the mayor of Tehran in 2003 was the result of public discontent with the Khatami reform movement. When elections to the city council came around, only about eleven percent of the population participated, and Ahmadinejad and a slate of his ideological allies won; they handily elected him the mayor. Though the city council was a notorious den of corruption, he lived a simple life, remaining in his lower-middle-class neighborhood. One of his earliest acts as mayor was to bury exhumed bodies of “war martyrs” in public squares of the city.
* * *
Ahmadinejad’s 2005 election, one of his chief lieutenants observed after the victory, was no “accident.” It was the result of “two years of complicated, multifaceted planning” by a coalition that included Revolutionary Guards commanders, a handful of clergy, some leaders of the Basiji (unhappy that the government had not yet given them jobs in the coveted civil service), and friends and allies of Ahmadinejad from his days as mayor of Tehran. This coalition was helped to victory by Ayatollah Khamenei. Easily the most powerful man in the country today, Khamenei has legal control of the army, the police, the intelligence agencies, the Revolutionary Guards and Basijis, the judiciary, and the country’s radio and television station. He also controls more than half of the Iranian economy through his control of the foundations (Bonyads) created from wealth confiscated during the revolution.
In the weeks before the election, Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was running against Ahmadinejad, promised to work to curtail Khamenei’s power. Rafsanjani, the presumed winner, talked more like a chief of state than a candidate. His message pleased Europeans who had long seen Rafsanjani as a leader with whom they could do business, but it angered Khamenei, who helped secure Ahmadinejad’s surprise victory. While Rafsanjani and the other losing candidates claimed that millions of dollars from public coffers had been illegally poured into the Ahmadinejad campaign, Khamenei “suggested” to all Revolutionary Guard commanders and Basiji leaders that they should vote for Ahmadinejad, each taking as many family members along as they could. Moreover, Ahmadinejad benefited from his rival’s complicity in creating the political situation voters had come to despise. When Rafsanjani—the “moderate” inside the Iranian regime who had arranged the secret Iran-contra negotiations between Iran and the Reagan administration—tried to reinvent himself as a candidate of reform, voters did not take him seriously.
Although Khamenei helped Ahmadinejad to power—it was rumored that after an eight-year troubled relationship with Khatami, the leader wanted an inexperienced and malleable president—he got more than he bargained for. After taking office Ahmadinejad began a massive purge of the Iranian bureaucracy, installing allies in key positions. Ahmadinejad’s administration has rightly been called a “barracks regime,” with a majority of his cabinet officials and top managers coming from the ranks of the Revolutionary Guards and intelligence agencies. The size of this network of allies and supporters surprised nearly all observers and apparently even Khamenei himself. More importantly, Ahmadinejad not only made new appointments but tried to change the criteria for them, recalling the early days of the revolution when publicly demonstrated piety was the sole basis for appointment to key positions in government and the economy. The most recent example of this shift is the appointment of an ex-Basiji leader, with no experience in nuclear matters, as Iran’s chief negotiator in the crucial and tense negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Moreover, in the February 2006 elections this same group of Revolutionary Guards and Basiji commanders captured a majority of seats in the parliament and ministerial positions.
The U.S. war in Iraq has strengthened Ahmadinejad’s hand by turning his bid for a nuclear weapons program into an Iranian nationalist cause. In the early 1970s Iran, with encouragement from the United States and Israel, launched an ambitious nuclear program. No fewer than twenty reactors were envisioned for the country. Some sources even claim that Israel had begun planning a joint program to help Iran develop missiles that could carry nuclear warheads. When the revolution came, Ayatollah Khomeini brought these programs to a grinding halt. Iran, he claimed, did not need a nuclear program, and he accused the Shah’s involvement in it as another sign that he was the imperialists’ lackey. Of course ending the nuclear program in 1979 was also something of a necessity. With much of its foreign currency reserves frozen by the United States as punishment for the hostage crisis, Iran was facing a serious financial crisis.
But in 1984, Saddam Hussein began to use chemical weapons against both restive Iraqi Kurds and Iranian forces. While the United States and the rest of the international community remained virtually silent, the regime in Tehran decided that it needed to revive the nuclear program and develop “an Islamic bomb” for its own security. In 1988, according to a recently declassified document, leaders of the Revolutionary Guards told Ayatollah Khomeini that the only way Iran could win the war with Iraq was with the acquisition of nuclear bombs. By then Iran’s nuclear program had already been fully launched.
Instead of following the protocols of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which Iran had been one of the first signatories, the Islamic Republic, worried about reactions from the United States and Israel, embarked on a covert program. Their hope, according to Ayatollah Rouhani, Iran’s nuclear negotiator before Ahmadinejad’s presidency, was “to do a North Korea on the world” and force the West to accept Iran’s nuclear program as a fait accompli. Since the program based in the city of Natanz was discovered five years ago, it has dominated Iran’s relations with the United States, the European Union, and even Russia. Ahmadinejad has been able to use the nuclear program to ride a wave of nationalism at home, and Muslim anger and frustration globally.
Ahmadinejad has used his defiance of the United States and Israel, and his infamous comments about the Holocaust and the destruction of Israel, to similar political advantage. And through coverage in the Iranian media, he has parlayed this popularity and his rock star treatment in the American media into more power at home. He even used to great advantage Columbia University’s President Lee Bollinger’s grandstanding when Ahmadinejad spoke on that campus this fall. Instead of setting up a confrontation between Bollinger’s denunciation and Ahmadinejad’s wounded innocence, the university might have conditioned Ahmadinejad’s appearance on his willingness to participate on a panel of scholars, activists, and representatives of religious and ethnic minorities. It would have shown the Iranian president requisite respect yet denied him another chance to assume the role of insulted victim.
* * *
Ahmadinejad has turned many things to his advantage, but neither Israel, nor the Holocaust, nor Iran’s nuclear program figured in his presidential campaign. Ahmadinejad was brought to power by his ability to understand and connect with the poor. He had mastered—in his words and deeds, his gestures and dress—a kind of populism that plays on fears and anxieties, especially among Iran’s poor. Not only did he do well in the poorer sections of the cities, he also easily carried the countryside. Even some from the middle class, unwilling to vote for Rafsanjani, voted for Ahmadinejad. To appeal to their technocratic impulses he uses the title of doctor, received when he finished his graduate studies in traffic engineering. Moreover, after Khamenei’s “suggestion,” the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij, along with their families, voted in the millions for him.
In interviews and speeches in Iran, he uses vernacular expressions and street idioms. He nearly always wears his uniform—an oversize jacket (or tunic), baggy pants, and a baggy shirt (Islam forbids any clothing, on men or women, that might betray bodily curves), all invariably light in color. He never wears a tie—the unmistakable sign of modernity. And since Islam forbids the frivolous sensation of a razor blade on a man’s face, Ahmadinejad’s beard is also part of his persona. All aspects of his appearance are intended to signal the sharp tension between moderns and traditionalists.
In the international media his traditional appearance is intended to be a challenge to the West, but at home it is equally provocative. Iran is a divided society, with a dedicated minority of about fifteen to twenty percent committed to the regime and its clerical leadership, and a disgruntled majority—some angry for economic reasons, others (especially women) alienated by the regime’s cultural policies and the sheer social and legal constraints on their lives.
Pulsating beneath the restrictions of Islamic Iran, however, is a world of vibrant youthful cosmopolitanism. Three out of every five Iranians are under the age of thirty. Their dress and values are drawn less from traditional Islam than from the norms of a global avant-garde. They are Internet savvy: indeed Iran ranks number one in the world in number of bloggers per capita.
The decidedly modern aesthetic accomplishments of Iranian cinema—embodied in the work of masters like Abbas Kiarostami—are now a matter of global acclaim, and a less well-known but no less vibrant renaissance is taking place in Iranian music. A generation of new composers, lyricists, musicians, and vocalists, equally at home with Western musical forms and the complexities of Persian classical music, have created a new genre that combines subtle social criticism with an ironic bite. Mohsen Namjoo—an internationally acclaimed artist from a traditional family—uses traditional “tar” to render jazz melodies and the guitar to play classical Persian music; Kiosk, easily Iran’s most popular rock band, melds the gruff timbre of Bob Dylan’s voice with the bitter lyricism of Leonard Cohen, and hints of Persian classical music.
The society ruled by the mullahs is also undergoing something of a sexual revolution. For men and women, bodies have become vessels of protest, sometimes defiant and dangerously promiscuous. A recent study by Pomona College anthropologist Pardis Mahdavi reported that at least half the married women interviewed in the more affluent parts of Tehran admit to having extra-marital affairs. The number is startling when we remember that adultery is a capital crime in Iran. The law is no less draconian with regard to homosexuality. After Ahmadinejad’s recent New York visit many commentators questioned his strange claim that there |
nearly constant cost has been transferred from the state to the students.Rohini Sethi, the University of Houston (UH) student body vice president who denounced Black Lives Matter, has seen the sanctions against her removed.
UH president Shane Smith released a joint statement Friday with vice president Rohini Sethi, explaining that the sanctions may not have been allowed under student government rules, though Sethi agreed to punish herself, The Daily Cougar reports.
"I may have had the right to post what I did, but I still should not have."
[RELATED: UH student govt sanctions VP for saying ‘all lives matter]
Smith and Sethi said they hope to unify the campus and increase cultural appreciation.
Sethi posted “Forget #BlackLivesMatter; more like #AllLivesMatter” on Facebook hours after a gunman killed five police officers at a Black Lives Matter-inspired July protest in Dallas, Texas. Students, thinking that Sethi was ignoring racial inequities suffered in the black community, began using #RemoveRohini on Twitter, calling on student government officials to force her out of office.
“We will work to address the racial disparities on campus that students have voiced,” the executives promised. “We will create methods to inform students of the injustices that exist in our country and provide avenues for students to make a positive difference.”
The UH student senate, which originally gave Smith the one-time power to put Sethi on a 50-day leave and require that she attend diversity training, later became concerned that its bill punishing Sethi was unconstitutional. The student government’s judicial branch will review the legislation, but the sanctions were removed and a compromise reached for now.
Sethi voluntarily chose to place herself on a leave of absence until the fall semester begins and she will attend the diversity trainings previously required by the sanctions. Her unpaid leave will last 15 business days.
A critical difference in the sanctions and her self-imposed punishment is that she can no longer be removed from office for failing to reform herself to the student senate’s standards.
Sethi blamed herself for causing division amongst the student body.
“I may have had the right to post what I did, but I still should not have,” Sethi said. “My words at the time didn’t accurately convey my feelings and caused many students to lose their faith in me to advocate for them. I take my responsibility seriously and want to re-earn their trust. I will always continue to learn and be ready to discuss these issues. When I return from my leave of absence, I will be prepared to place my full efforts into serving the students of UH.”
Smith defended his actions as well-meaning, despite the disagreement over their constitutionality.
“For those who were upset due to what they considered a violation of the first amendment, that was never my intention and I apologize for that impression,” Smith wrote. “I have tremendous respect for freedom of speech as a core American value. For those that are disappointed by the change, this is a compromise based in the reality of the situation. My stance on racial injustice has always been clear. For all involved, this is truly the best outcome.”
Smith continued, calling for the student body to forget the Sethi controversy and move forward, toward a vision of racial equality.
“As an organization, we will continue to make campus inclusivity a priority,” Smith wrote. “We will learn from this experience, but it is absolutely essential that we put the situation behind us and return to work. Our positions have only one responsibility—to improve the daily lives of our students. For the last few weeks, we have failed. We must promise to use the remainder of our terms to honor the faith our students placed in us.”
The UH NAACP chapter president said he thinks that the issue is not coming to a neat end.
“The reduction is disappointing to hear, but I’m personally past this Rohini situation,” Wesley Okereke said. “We, as the Black Caucus, are going to be focusing our energy into other pressing issues. I don’t think the reduced sanctions will quell anything, in fact, I think tensions have a possibility of escalating, seeing as how this whole situation transpired over a very long period of time.”
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @RiersonNCA teenager used as "bait" to lure a man who died by suicide hours after he was blackmailed by a group of males who targeted men on a gay hook-up app and threatened to out them as paedophiles will spend four months in detention.
The boy, now 17, was the fifth person to plead guilty after police this year cracked a syndicate for vowing to publicly "out" men, who they trapped through apps including Grindr, as child molesters if they didn't hand over mobile phones or cash.
He had been driven by greed when he asked the scam's teen "ringleader" to get involved, the ACT Childrens' Court was told on Monday.
"You should let me get in on one before I leave if you don't mind. It seems like fun and easy money," he said in a message.
The boy was among offenders who ensnared the man through social media and arranged a meeting at Mawson shops the night of January 20.Dynamic allocation will always undermine determinism and performance of a system. Any call to malloc(3) requires at worst traversing a tree to find memory that fits. Calling free(3) can be equally expensive. And when resources are tight, dynamic allocation is a tax on your available memory. On top of this, paths where malloc(3) has returned NULL are not well tested. As a best case, this is where errors, instability and unreliable behavior creeps in. As a worst case, this becomes an exploitable flaw for attackers. But it gets scarier.
True real time systems will always operate on fixed bounds for every aspect of the system. These limitations are of the hardware, of software's performance or of physics. With defined upper bounds, data structures like ring buffers, object pools and similar are applicable. Of course, to define an upper bound, you need to be ready to handle errors. What happens if your ring buffer wraps around? What do you do if you're out of objects in your memory pool? Many times, the laziest approach is to panic, but it is obvious this is not the correct approach. We need to think about this some more.
Picking a memory management scheme requires more work than just using malloc(). Knowing memory usage patterns becomes important.
For example, if an object is small and processed in-order, a ring or circular buffer might make sense. If you can place an upper bound on how long a record might last, this is fast and easy. The added bonus is that with locking (or the right lock-free structure) a ring can become a way to pass messages between threads or processes. Of course, beware of priority inversion, so this might not be the best approach for some cases.
For objects that might have varying lifecycles, an object pool might be best. By setting an upper bound on the number of objects that are available, you can know how big a pool you'll need even at compile time. You could allocate pools out of your.bss segment. This means that you don't even need dynamic allocation at startup. Objects that are free simply go onto a free list, and objects in use are tracked by their user.
What's important to remember when designing IoT systems is that there is only so much a CPU can do. A single Cortex-M3 will never catch up on worst-case loading for 10Gb Ethernet (14.88 million packets/second, or about 67.5ns/packet). So you need a smart cutoff. At best, you might be able to tune to hit real-time for certain cases. A simulated infinite buffer growing from dynamic memory will lead to failures in all aspects that allocate from the same dynamic region. This is why characterizing upper limits of system response is important. Through this, you can understand how much memory you will need. As well, it forces you to think about how to deal with cases going beyond your capacity. Cleanup after an out-of-memory situation is hard enough. Breaking unrelated systems only complicates things further.
Determinism and simplicity aside, diagnostics are another benefit of this approach. When memory lives in a fixed pool for each purpose, it's easy to check the validity of a pointer. It's also easy to write tools that walk free lists and determine what records are active. Tracking memory pressure can be simple with this. All things that improve resiliency of a system.
Static memory allocation is a technique used for decades in real-time systems. Cisco's IOS is a(n in)famous example. IOS allocated memory as pools at startup time, based on characterized limits of the types of interfaces in a router. Resources got sliced up as needed for applications (like IPSec) to achieve required performance. Some things were tunable by the user, but only in a limited sense. And often, tuning memory ratios needed a reboot.
For many IoT devices, even this approach is unnecessary. Often the functionality of your device is not dynamic. A smart plug has a fixed number of power outlets. An IR controller has only one set of IR LEDs. You might support a fixed number of active control sessions (maybe 3-4?) or maybe your protocol for controlling the device is stateless. Do you need a TCP stack that allows infinite reordering? Or can you live with resetting the TCP session and starting over on error?
Finally, if after all this you still need to use malloc(3) or a dynamic allocator, I'll leave you with this. Always check the return value. If I had a penny for every time I've seen unchecked return values from a dynamic allocator... well, I'd have a lot of dollars.Towards the end of a week in which streaming dominated the music business conversation thanks to a controversial YouTube video put up by Post Malone's label that may have helped his song reach the No. 1 spot on the Hot 100, Billboard has announced they are changing how their influential charts deal with streaming.
In a long statement released on Thursday, Billboard explained it all. On their Hot 100 singles chart, they used to treat all on-demand streams (Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, etc.) the same, and what they call "programmed" streams—from online radio stations like Pandora, where the song was chosen by the service itself, rather than the listener—counted less. The Billboard 200 album chart only counted on-demand streams, weighing them all equally, but it excluded video views.
So what's changing? Well, in an attempt to "better reflect[] the varied user activity occurring on these services," the charts will now divide on-demand streams up into two different categories. For the singles chart, plays that happen on paid services like Apple Music, or from users who have a paid subscription to a service like Spotify or SoundCloud, will be weighed more heavily than streams on free services like YouTube, or from free accounts on services that also offer paid options.
POST CONTINUES BELOW
The album chart will have a similar deal—"subscription-supported" streams will count more than ad-supported ones—but video plays will still be excluded.
No matter what happens with these changes next year, one thing seems certain—Tyler, the Creator will likely have something to say about it.Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas and 2016 presidential candidate, waves to the crowd as he takes to the stage before speaking at a campaign rally at the Northland Performing Arts Center in Columbus, Ohio, on March 13. (Ty Wright/Bloomberg)
Sen. Ted Cruz wants to “carpet bomb” ISIS and find out whether “sand can glow in the dark.” When pressed, however, Cruz said he would not bomb Raqqah, the ISIS capital, home to many civilians. He later explained:
You use airpower directed — and you have embedded special forces to direction [sic] the air power. But the object isn’t to level a city. The object is to kill the ISIS terrorists.
Cruz’s statements are problematic in three ways:
Carpet-bombing ISIS while leaving civilians unharmed is contradictory. His hyperbolic rhetoric and “aggressive posturing” suggest an attitude toward the use of force at odds both with international law and with what the Department of Defense teaches its professional military. Cruz’s mention of “carpet bombing” makes him appear both strategically and tactically out of touch with how the U.S. military actually fights wars these days.
You can’t “carpet bomb” and also protect civilians
At their most basic level, Cruz’s comments on the campaign trail and his comments during the Republican debate are confused. “Carpet bombing,” also known as “area bombing” or “saturation bombing,” by its very nature implies indiscriminate attacks against a geographical area that could be composed of both military and civilian populations and targets. That is specifically prohibited by the First Geneva Protocol of 1997 in Article 51, paragraphs 4 and 5.
[Here’s why we can only contain the Islamic State, not bomb it back to the Stone Age]
This amendment protocol to the Geneva Conventions expands the definition of international conflicts, extends the protection of the Conventions to civilian and medical personnel, and further specifies that civilians are to be protected from the hostilities. The United States has signed this protocol but the Senate has not ratified it. The relevant sections to this discussion are worth stating in full:
Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are:
a) those which are not directed at a specific military objective
b) those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or
c) those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol; and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.
Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered indiscriminate:
a) an attack by bombardment by any methods or means which treats as a single military objective a number of clearly separated and distinct military objectives located in a city, town, village or other area containing a similar concentration of civilians or civilian objects; and
b) an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of live, injury to civilian, damage or civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
These prohibitions come out of the Just War tradition. The Just War tradition has been around since St. Augustine and has evolved over time. Its moral principles are designed to help political leaders deliberate about when using armed force is justified. Once hostilities begin, the Just War tradition requires combatants to abide by the principles of proportionality and discrimination (or distinction).
Proportionality requires that the use of force be proportional to the desired military objective. Discrimination/distinction requires that only military objectives may be directly targeted.
[Want to help the Islamic State recruit? Treat all Muslims as potential terrorists.]
Cruz’s clarification that he wasn’t out to “level a city,” suggests that he’s at least sensitive to laws of war that protect civilians and cities from direct attacks. However, his stated desire to “carpet bomb,” taken on its own, would lead one to think otherwise.
Hyper-aggressive rhetoric undermines our military’s careful training
But there’s a deeper problem with this language. Careless use of hyperbolic rhetoric is harmful when used about a highly complex moral problem.
The Department of Defense goes to great lengths to educate its military members on the ethics and rules of warfare. Enlisted members and officers are instructed in LOAC (the Laws of Armed Conflict). Careful rules of engagement (ROEs) are issued on the battlefield, shaping the U.S. military’s tactical and strategic thinking.
Indeed, the U.S. Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force all require ongoing professional military education throughout each service member’s career, and send a select group of officers to war colleges. There, both American and international officers spend a considerable amount of time evaluating the ethical and practical issues of using overwhelming force. They also study the dangers of trying to solve complex problems by military means alone.
While an appeal to “carpet bombing” may be an emotionally satisfying response to the ongoing frustrations of a “war on terror,” it is neither morally acceptable nor even practically reasonable.
Modern warfare no longer includes “carpet bombing”
An emotional appeal to “carpet bombing” ISIS to see if “the sand glows” reveals an outdated view of military tactics and strategy. Conventional warfare in the 21st century is culturally, socially, ethically and technologically complex. Irregular warfare, such as our current “war on terror,” is even more so.
[Will foreign policy be a major issue in the 2016 election? Here’s what we know.]
Bombing ISIS is challenging because the organization isn’t concentrated in any one place. Conventional thinking about warfare does not transfer well to fighting terrorists. The Air Force doesn’t even teach “carpet bombing” as a modern strategy any more. Rather, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other military leaders ask service members to be “innovative and agile thinkers” in order to be effective in our newly complex wars.
Our Constitution puts civilians in control of the military. Members of the military accept this when they take their oaths of office. To be commander in chief of the armed forces, our candidates should show at least basic knowledge of the ethical and practical complexities of modern warfare.
Deonna D. Neal, PhD, is an associate professor of leadership and ethics at Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, and a former U.S. Air Force officer.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Air Force, the Department of Defense or the U.S. government.President Obama argued Wednesday that America must “discredit violent ideologies” if it wants to counter recruiting efforts by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda here at home.
The president, in his keynote speech at the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism, aimed to strike a balance between addressing the risk of the radicalization of disaffected youths and the need to reassure Muslim Americans that their communities are not being targeted as a source of terrorist plots.
Critics of the president have questioned in recent days why the White House was not using the term “radical Islam” to describe the target of its counterterrorism efforts. Obama emphasized that “there is no one profile of a violent extremist or terrorist.... It’s not unique to one group or to one geography or one period of time.”
“But we are here at this summit because of the urgent threat from groups like al-Qaeda and ISIL,” he said, using a term to refer to the Islamic State. “And this week, we are focused on prevention, preventing these groups from radicalizing, recruiting or inspiring others to violence in the first place.”
A group of community leaders, law enforcement officials, philanthropists and representatives from the private sector gathered at the White House on Wednesday to discuss whether three pilot programs in Boston, Los Angeles, and the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul could serve as national models for averting radicalism among Muslim youths.
“Every community touched by violence faces the same questions, whether it’s Boston or Paris, Baghdad or Peshawar: How can we prevent people from embracing hateful ideologies before they turn to violence?” asked Lisa Monaco, adviser to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, just before introducing Obama. “This summit is a place where we’re looking to find answers to those questions and to develop action plans that hold all of us accountable as we move forward.”
Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said in an interview that he and other leaders in Los Angeles are pursuing a strategy of “prevention, intervention and then ejection” in which civic leaders try to reach youths before calling in law enforcement as a last resort.
“There’s a division of labor,” he said, adding that moderate Muslims need to elevate their profile to counter the message of the Islamic State and other terrorist groups. “Our goal is to take back Islam and expose” the extremists’ “moral bankruptcy and religious exploitation.”
Obama spoke repeatedly about the “need to be honest” about extremists and the diversity within the Muslim community, noting that many Muslim Americans have grown weary of hearing from federal officials on the issue of terrorism.
“Engagement with communities can’t be a cover for surveillance. It can’t securitize our relationship with Muslim Americans, dealing with them solely through the prism of law enforcement,” he said as the audience applauded in response.
The president outlined a multi-pronged approach to countering the pull of terrorist groups, which included not just highlighting the perspectives of moderate Muslims, but also addressing the economic and political grievances disaffected youths may have. It also includes bolstering the resources of local communities so that they can compete with the savvy social media campaigns the Islamic State and al-Qaeda are waging.
“And, by the way, the older people here, as wise and respected as you may be — your stuff is often boring,” he said, prompting laughter, “compared to what they’re doing. You’re not — you’re not connected. And as a consequence, you are not connecting.”
Several online initiatives are being launched in concert with the summit, including a digital communications hub that the United States and the United Arab Emirates are establishing to push back against the Islamic State’s propaganda and recruitment efforts, a “peer-to-peer challenge” that the State Department is unveiling so that university students across the globe can develop digital content to counter violent extremist messaging. The United States also is joining with social media firms to organize several “technology camps” in the coming months to highlight alternatives to radicalism and challenge terrorist groups.
The administration also has established a couple of new positions aimed at stemming radicalism in the United States, including the first full-time coordinator for countering violent extremism at the Department of Homeland Security and a special envoy for strategic counterterrorism communications at the State Department.
Even as the country wages this fight, Obama concluded that Americans should not lose sight of the fact that Muslims are an integral part of U.S. society. He recalled how he recently received a Valentine’s Day card from an 11-year-old named Sabrina who wrote to him,“I am worried about people hating Muslims. If some Muslims do bad things, that doesn’t mean all of them do.”
“And she asked, ‘Please tell everyone that we are good people and we’re just like everyone else,’ ” Obama said. “That is how we discredit violent ideologies, by making sure her voice is lifted up, by making sure she is nurtured, making sure that she is supported.”On Saturday, President Trump spent time hate-tweeting the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico—in between holes of golf at his Bedminster, New Jersey, club. And on Sunday, he took in the Presidents Cup golf tournament in Jersey City, and strangely chose to dedicate the event’s trophy to the hurricane victims in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico.
While the president spent his weekend indulging in a decidedly white-collar sport, 3.4 million U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico are struggling to cope with the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, where half the island nation remains without drinking water and only five percent have electricity.
“The president’s response has been widely criticized all week, and it still doesn’t seem entirely clear that he understands the gravity of the situation,” John Oliver announced on Sunday’s edition of Last Week Tonight.
The HBO host then threw to a clip of Trump outside the White House on Friday where, before boarding a private jet en route to his Jersey golf club (at taxpayers’ expense, of course), the president remarked, “The loss of life, it’s always tragic, but it’s been incredible… the results that we’ve had, with respect to loss of life. People can’t believe how successful that has been, relatively speaking.”
Oliver was, understandably, beside himself: “How are you even trying to take a victory lap right now? The only way he could have saved that statement is if he added, ‘And don’t forget, I just kind of ramble! I know nothing. I talk because silence sounds weird. Try and think of me as a parrot who’s memorized some human sounds: yabba-dabba doo, Jumanji, bye-bye!”
Trump’s “rosy assessment” of the terribly dire situation in Puerto Rico has been disputed by numerous reporters, aid workers, and officials on the ground—including San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, who begged President Trump to “ make sure somebody is in charge that is up to the task of saving lives.” Trump, as is his wont, responded by lashing out at Mayor Cruz on Twitter, and alleging some sort of Democratic conspiracy:
Retired Lt. General Russel Honor é, who was in charge of the U.S. military response to Hurricane Katrina, was deeply critical of Trump’s Twitter rant, telling CNN: “ The mayor’s living on a cot, and I hope the president has a good day at golf.”
Oliver, meanwhile, couldn’t believe the nerve of President Trump. “Really? Really?! The primary obstacle to hurricane relief has been Puerto Rican laziness? You have got to hand it to Trump: anybody can say horribly racist things about Hispanic people on a golden escalator, but it takes real balls to do it while their fellow citizens are dying,” cracked Oliver. “Trump is basically saying, ‘When hurricanes hit our people, they’re not hitting our best. They’re killing poors, they’re killing lazies, and some, I assume, have said nice things about me.’”Star Trek: The Next Generation Now Available on Blu-ray
Star Trek: The Next Generation Now Available on Blu-ray by Charles Evans
Rumored concept art for CBS’ upcoming Star Trek series has leaked online with the codename “Green Harvest”.
ICYMI: Joe Menosky who wrote many fan favorite Star Trek episodes including Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Darmok”, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s “Distant Voices”, and Star Trek: Voyager’s “Year of Hell” has joined CBS’ new Star Trek series.
WARNING, POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOR STAR TREK 2017! CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED CADET.
Is Star Trek 2017 going by the codename “Green Harvest”?
According to TrekCore Mark Worthington will be the production designer for CBS’ new 2017 Star Trek series. Worthington is well known for his work on American Horror Story, Ugly Betty, and Lost. While CBS hasn’t confirmed that Worthington has the job it is listed on his resume.
The Worthington rumors led some investigating Trekkies to his portfolio website. On the site images that appear to be design concepts for the new Star Trek series were found under the heading “Green Harvest”.
SPOILERS AHEAD, LAST CHANCE TO TURN BACK CADET!
“Blue Harvest” was the code name famously used by George Lucas for Return of the Jedi to keep the press off the trail of the production. Obviously the “Green Harvest” moniker is a tip of the hat to Jedi.
We won’t be posting the leaked images here, because we’re not going to post artwork we don’t own and they have been removed from Worthington’s site. We will however say that they look unlike anything we’ve ever seen in Star Trek.
The images seemed to be of Klingon vessels, possibly a ship for Klingon dead, titled “Klingon Sarcophagus Ship”. The ships had an almost gothic feel, which would be interesting if they were some sort of grave ships.
This all may not mean anything of course since often times design ideas are scratched, but it’s certainly intriguing. If you want to see the images of yourself they are still up several places online.
Production designer is a huge job on a Star Trek series, what do you think of Mark Worthington getting the job? Let us know on Facebook or in the comments below.The stages used in dialectical behavior therapy
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is an evidence-based[1] psychotherapy designed to help people suffering from borderline personality disorder (BPD). It has also been used to treat mood disorders as well as those who need to change patterns of behavior that are not helpful, such as self-harm, suicidal ideation, and substance abuse.[2] This approach is designed to help people increase their emotional and cognitive regulation by learning about the triggers that lead to reactive states and helping to assess which coping skills to apply in the sequence of events, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to help avoid undesired reactions.
A modified form of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), DBT was developed in the late 1980s by Marsha M. Linehan,[3] a psychology researcher at the University of Washington, to treat people with borderline personality disorder and chronically suicidal individuals. Research on its effectiveness in treating other conditions has been fruitful;[4] DBT has been used to treat people with depression, drug and alcohol problems,[5] post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),[6] traumatic brain injuries (TBI), binge-eating disorder,[1] and mood disorders.[7][8] Research indicates DBT might help patients with symptoms and behaviors associated with spectrum mood disorders, including self-injury.[9] Recent work also suggests its effectiveness with sexual abuse survivors[10] and chemical dependency.[11]
DBT combines standard cognitive behavioral techniques for emotion regulation and reality-testing with concepts of distress tolerance, acceptance, and mindful awareness largely derived from Buddhist meditative practice. DBT is based upon the biosocial theory of mental illness and is the first therapy that has been experimentally demonstrated to be generally effective in treating BPD.[12][13] The first randomized clinical trial of DBT showed reduced rates of suicidal gestures, psychiatric hospitalizations, and treatment drop-outs when compared to treatment as usual.[8] A meta-analysis found that DBT reached moderate effects in individuals with borderline personality disorder.[14]
Overview [ edit ]
Linehan observed "burn-out" in therapists after coping with "non-motivated" patients who repudiated cooperation in successful treatment. Her first core insight was to recognize that the chronically suicidal patients she studied had been raised in profoundly invalidating environments, and, therefore, required a climate of loving-kindness and somewhat unconditional acceptance (not Carl Rogers' positive humanist approach, but Thích Nhất Hạnh's metaphysically neutral one), in which to develop a successful therapeutic alliance.[note 1] Her second insight involved the need for a commensurate commitment from patients, who needed to be willing to accept their dire level of emotional dysfunction.
DBT strives to have the patient view the therapist as an ally rather than an adversary in the treatment of psychological issues. Accordingly, the therapist aims to accept and validate the client's feelings at any given time, while, nonetheless, informing the client that some feelings and behaviors are maladaptive, and showing them better alternatives.[8] DBT focuses on the client acquiring new skills and changing their behaviors,[15] with the ultimate goal of achieving a "life worth living", as defined by the patient.[16]
In DBT's biosocial theory of BPD, clients have a biological predisposition for emotional dysregulation, and their social environment validates maladaptive behavior.[17]
Linehan and others combined a commitment to the core conditions of acceptance and change through the principle of dialectics (in which thesis and antithesis are synthesized) and assembled an array of skills for emotional self-regulation drawn from Western psychological traditions, such as cognitive behavioral therapy and an interpersonal variant, "assertiveness training", and Eastern meditative traditions, such as Buddhist mindfulness meditation. One of her contributions was to alter the adversarial nature of the therapist-client relationship in favor of an alliance based on intersubjective tough love.
All DBT can be said to involve 4 components:
Individual – The therapist and patient discuss issues that come up during the week (recorded on diary cards) and follow a treatment target hierarchy. Self-injurious and suicidal behaviors, or life-threatening behaviors, take first priority. Second in priority are behaviors which, while not directly harmful to self or others, interfere with the course of treatment. These behaviors are known as therapy-interfering behaviors. Third in priority are quality of life issues and working towards improving one's life generally. During the individual therapy, the therapist and patient work towards improving skill use. Often, a skills group is discussed and obstacles to acting skillfully are addressed.
Group – A group ordinarily meets once weekly for two to two and a half hours [ citation needed ] and learns to use specific skills that are broken down into four skill modules: core mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, emotion regulation, and distress tolerance.
and learns to use specific skills that are broken down into four skill modules: core mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, emotion regulation, and distress tolerance. Therapist Consultation Team – A therapist consultation team includes all therapists providing DBT. The meeting occurs weekly and serves to support the therapist in providing the treatment.
Phone Coaching – Phone coaching is designed to help generalize skills into the patient's daily life. Phone coaching is brief and limited to a focus on skills.
No one component is used by itself; the individual component is considered necessary to keep suicidal urges or uncontrolled emotional issues from disrupting group sessions, while the group sessions teach the skills unique to DBT, and also provide practice with regulating emotions and behavior in a social context.[citation needed] DBT skills training alone is being used to address treatment goals in some clinical settings,[18] and the broader goal of emotion regulation that is seen in DBT has allowed it to be used in new settings, for example, supporting parenting.[19]
Four modules [ edit ]
Mindfulness [ edit ]
A diagram used in DBT, showing that the Wise Mind is the overlap of the emotional mind and the reasonable mind.
Mindfulness is one of the core ideas behind all elements of DBT. It is considered a foundation for the other skills taught in DBT, because it helps individuals accept and tolerate the powerful emotions they may feel when challenging their habits or exposing themselves to upsetting situations. The concept of mindfulness and the meditative exercises used to teach it are derived from traditional Buddhist practice, though the version taught in DBT does not involve any religious or metaphysical concepts. Within DBT it is the capacity to pay attention, nonjudgmentally, to the present moment; about living in the moment, experiencing one's emotions and senses fully, yet with perspective. The practice of mindfulness can also be intended to make people more aware of their environments through their 5 senses: touch, smell, sight, taste, and sound.[20] Mindfulness relies heavily on the principle of acceptance, sometimes referred to as "radical acceptance".[4] Acceptance skills rely on the patient’s ability to view situations with no judgment, and to accept situations and their accompanying emotions.[4] This causes less distress overall, which can result in reduced discomfort and symptomology.
Acceptance and Change [ edit ]
The first few sessions of DBT introduce the dialectic of acceptance and change. The patient must first become comfortable with the idea of therapy; once the patient and therapist have established a trusting relationship, DBT techniques can flourish. An essential part of learning acceptance is to first grasp the idea of radical acceptance: radical acceptance embraces the idea that one should face situations, both positive and negative, without judgment.[21] Acceptance also incorporates mindfulness and emotional regulation skills, which depend on the idea of radical acceptance. These skills, specifically, are what set DBT apart from other therapies.
Often, after a patient becomes familiar with the idea of acceptance, they will accompany it with change. DBT has five specific states of change which the therapist will review with the patient: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance[22]. Precontemplation is the first stage, in which the patient is completely unaware of their problem. In the second stage, contemplation, the patient realizes the reality of their illness: this is not an action, but a realization. It is not until the third stage, preparation, that the patient is likely to take action, and prepares to move forward. This could be as simple as researching or contacting therapists. Finally, in stage 4, the patient takes action and receives treatment. In the final stage, maintenance, the patient must strengthen their change in order to prevent relapse. After grasping acceptance and change, a patient can fully advance to mindfulness techniques.
"What" skills [ edit ]
Observe This is used to nonjudgmentally observe one's environment within or outside oneself. It is helpful in understanding what is going on in any given situation.
DBT recommends developing a "teflon mind", the ability to let feelings and experiences pass without sticking in the mind.[23]
Describe This is used to express what one has observed with the observe skill. It is to be used without judgmental statements. This helps with letting others know what one has observed. Once the environment or inner state of mind has been observed with 5 senses, the individual can put words to observations and thus better understand the environment.[24]
Participate This is used to become fully focused on, and involved in, the activity that one is doing.
"How" skills [ edit ]
How to do Mindful Meditation. There are many "scripted" meditations available on YouTube; for example: The 3 Minute Meditation; or The Body Scan. How to do it (The Body Scan): You listen to the body scan and you allow your mind to focus on each aspect of your physical self, usually starting at your toes and ending at the top of your head. As you listen to the body scan and allow your mind to focus in on the body, you will notice your "busy mind" will come into consciousness. You will notice that thoughts and feelings will attempt to distract you from focusing on each part of your body. You will notice that some of the thoughts and feelings may be distressing to you. You may want to stop the meditation because it might be very painful emotionally or physically or because you are having negative or busy thoughts. Sometimes memories may surface and they may also be difficult emotionally to accept. How to do Mindful Meditation involves learning to acknowledge the thoughts, feelings and memories without needing to fight them or chase them away. The paradox: If we try to fight them, they seem to get bigger; but when we move into acceptance, they seem to get smaller. We enter the mindfulness meditation body scan, 3 minute meditation or other meditation sessions with no goals and with a non-striving stance. Again, if we enter with a goal to "fix my problems by meditating", that goal and pressure to fix something tends to make the problems bigger. To enter the meditation with a non-goal/non-striving attitude, so having no expectations, paradoxically, usually results in a reduction of stress, pain and other symptoms.
Nonjudgmentally This is the action of describing the facts, and not thinking in terms of "good" or "bad," "fair," or "unfair." These are judgments, not factual descriptions. Being nonjudgmental helps you to get your point across in an effective manner without adding a judgment that someone else might disagree with.
One-mindfully This is used to focus on one thing. One-mindfully is helpful in keeping one's mind from straying into "emotion" by a lack of focus.
Effectively This is simply doing what works. It is a very broad-ranged skill and can be applied to any other skill to aid |
foster care and adoption by helping them navigate the system, getting their paperwork in order and preparing them for instant parenting, plus offering advice on everything from bedroom furniture and schools to discipline and saving on groceries. They believe they send the strongest message simply by raising their kids, and loving them.
'These are the Hams'
In a scene repeated dozens of times a year, the Hams were leaving a pizza place in north Scottsdale when a woman asked, "What kind of group is this?"
"These are the Hams. This is our family," Steven told her.
Her eyebrows shot up as she counted the children with her eyes.
"These are all your kids? Oh, my gosh. Their poor mother. Where is she? I have to congratulate her."
"I am their mother - and their father," Steven said. Then, reaching out to shake her hand, he introduced himself, and then Roger, and each of the kids as they loaded into two cars and buckled in.
The men watched her face, saw her expression soften.
"That is so commendable of you," she told them. "They are very lucky children."
No, the men shook their heads and smiled. They are the lucky ones.
If it's ever legal for them to marry in Arizona, Steven and Roger say they'll be first in line, with their kids - and probably by then grandkids - in tow. And if it never happens, well, a marriage certificate and birth certificates are not what defines their family.
"Can you see what Christmas is going to be like at that house 20 years from now? There will be 100 people there," says Monbleau, the CPS adoptions caseworker. "I know that they will always be there for those kids."
Neither of the Hams' caseworkers, Monbleau or Shew-Plummer, worried about placing so many children in one home, though both concede they wouldn't do the same with every family. In separate interviews, each said she would entrust Steven and Roger with her own children.
Though Steven and Roger never planned to have such a large family, neither can imagine life any other way. Even when their running joke is that, when all the children are grown, they will buy a one-bedroom condominium in San Diego that doesn't allow pets or kids.
"Sure, there are days when I am ripping my hair out, but I wouldn't change it for anything," Steven says. "We knew the kids deserved a better life, and someone who would love them, no matter what. None of my kids will ever tell you, anytime in their lives, even years from now, that they didn't feel loved."
Reach the reporter at karina.bland@arizonarepublic.com.First, it was the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta. Now, it's the Niger Delta Avengers.
The Avengers have taken credit for bombings that affected major pipelines in the delta, including the Nembe and Forcados pipelines.
The attacks have disrupted the supply of natural gas to Nigeria's power plants, leading to extended blackouts across the country.
Dolapo Oni, head of energy research at Ecobank, said the attacks have also led to cuts in oil exports in three of Nigeria's oil grades. He says daily production may be down to less than 1 million barrels, from the normal 2.2 million per day.
"We're talking about the most important grades in Nigeria,” he said.
MEND, as the previous militancy was called, faded away after the government instituted an amnesty program in 2009 that gave ex-militants monthly stipends and enrolled some in training programs.
The identity of the Avengers is unknown, but Antony Goldman, director of Promedia Consulting, says the new group has learned a thing or two since the days of MEND. Members have taken to Twitter to announce attacks. They also have a blog where they list demands and have threatened Nigeria's military and oil majors like Shell and Chevron, both of whom they've attacked.
While MEND kidnapped — and occasionally killed — oil workers, the Avengers seem more interested in destroying petroleum infrastructure.
"This isn't a group that is looking to engage, particularly with the armed forces,” Goldman said. “It's not a group that has found to kidnap and ransom in that way that maybe is the case with earlier incarnations of militants."
Nor are they necessarily members of the previous insurgency, as they've feuded publicly with Government Ekpemupolo, known as Tompolo, a prominent former militant who is wanted by Nigeria's anti-graft agency.
Niger Delta activist Annkio Briggs says that while the tactics may have changed, the reasons for the insurgency are the same as when MEND took to arms. The group's demands include a redistribution of the ownership of oil blocks and a cleanup of spills in the delta.
Residents of the region have struggled with widespread poverty and polluted lands for decades.
"They're still talking about the same issues of the Niger Delta," Briggs said.
In a statement Wednesday, the military said it would stop the "economic saboteurs" in the Niger Delta.Elvis Adley (Photo: Purgatory Correctional Facility)
A man was arrested at Dixie State University’s Nisson Tower dorms Saturday after allegedly being found wearing nothing but a black garbage bag around his waist.
Elvis Wade Adley, 36, of Hurricane, is charged with lewdness, burglary, criminal mischief, theft and intoxication. Adley is being held in Purgatory Correctional Facility, facing a $7,260 bail.
According to the probable cause statement filed in the case, St. George Police Department officer Jace Hutchings responded to DSU’s dorms, located at 974 E. 100 S., at 9 p.m.
Hutchings wrote in the report that he made contact with Adley, and he was allegedly wearing a garbage bag that was "only covering his penis and buttocks."
Adley allegedly told the officer he "wasn’t in his right state of mind," according to the statement.
The Adley was "fidgety" and "appeared to be suffering the effects of methamphetamine," Hutchings wrote in the statement.
After Adley was detained, Hutchings spoke with three witnesses on the scene. According to the probable cause, witness Trevor Jenkins told the officer he observed Adley exit building B and walked across the campus “butt naked.”
Additionally, Britni Kolibar a second witness, told Hutchings she was informed by a third witness that Adley was allegedly trying to break into a DSU dorm, according to the report. The officer wrote in the statement that Kolibar walked to Shiloh Hall and told the officer she saw Adley allegedly trying to break into the boiler room with a screwdriver.
She told Hutchings she saw him leave with what appeared to be trash bags, according to the statement.
The third witness, Forrest Gee, also told Hutchings he observed Adley successfully break into the Shiloh Hall storage room and remove garbage bags from the inside, Hutchings wrote.
According to the report, Hutchings observed pry marks on the doors Adley was allegedly trying to gain entry to, and he estimated the damages sustained to both doors to be $50.
Adley allegedly smoked methamphetamine two days prior to his arrest, Hutchings wrote in the report, and he also didn’t sleep or eat for two days.
Adley told police he attempted to break into the rooms using a screwdriver, according to the statement, and he allegedly told the officer he blamed his actions on the side effects he was suffering from methamphetamine.
Court records indicate Adley has been charged with several misdemeanor offenses this year, including criminal mischief, disorderly conduct, assault and drug offenses.
Follow reporter Emily Havens on Twitter, @EmilyJHavens. Email her at ehavens@thespectrum.com or call her at 435-674-6214.
Read or Share this story: http://www.thespectrum.com/story/news/2016/08/15/man-allegedly-tries-to-rob-dsu-dorms-butt-naked/88801422/___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Hello all! Nathan Penn here to help with some of those pesky security questions that have lingered for years. Recently I have been fielding several questions on “How do I make sure that I am only using the TLS 1.2 protocol?”, “Can you disable 3DES and the legacy ciphers?”, and the “I just got back from a security class and they talked about Diffie-Hellman, am I using it?”.
The basics
Before we can start to answer any of that we have to build up some basics. An SSL session always begins with an exchange of messages called the SSL handshake. The handshake allows the server to authenticate itself to the client by using public-key techniques, and then allows the client and the server to cooperate in the creation of symmetric keys used for rapid encryption, decryption, and tamper detection during the session that follows. Optionally, the handshake also allows the client to authenticate itself to the server. Secure Channel, or Schannel, is used to negotiate this security handshake between systems and applications. To perform this function, Schannel leverages the below set of security protocols, ciphers, hashing algorithms, and key exchanges that provide identity authentication and secure, private communication through encryption.
Protocols Key Exchanges Ciphers Hashing Algorithms Multi-Protocol Unified Hello Diffie-Hellman NULL MD5 PCT 1.0 PKCS DES 56-bit SHA SSL 2.0 ECDH RC2 40-bit SHA256 SSL 3.0 RC2 56-bit SHA384 TLS 1.0 RC2 128-bit SHA512 TLS 1.1 RC4 40-bit TLS 1.2 RC4 56-bit RC4 64-bit RC4 128-bit 3DES 168-bit AES 128-bit AES 256-bit
While all of the options above are available to the operating systems and Schannel, they are not offered up in an a-la carte manner. Each Windows operating system maintains a pre-defined list of combinations, referred to as the cipher suite, which are approved for communications. The list is prioritized, with the top/first cipher suite being the most preferred. Below is the default cipher suites included in Windows 10 v1703:
TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384 TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384 TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA256 TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA TLS_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5 TLS_RSA_WITH_NULL_SHA256 TLS_RSA_WITH_NULL_SHA
Dissecting the cipher suite, we can see the protocol, key exchange, cipher, and hashing algorithm as illustrated below.
When the handshake is attempted, the client/server/application must negotiate until they find a common cipher suite. In addition to agreeing on a shared cipher suite, the protocol, key exchange, cipher, and hashing algorithm referenced by that cipher suite must be enabled and available for use, which they all are by default.
What is the system using?
Now that we have a basic understanding of a cipher suite and the components that make it up, how do you identify what the system is using? Enter Schannel logging which is written into the Windows System log. Schannel only logs basic information by default, however, we can turn the diagnostic logging up to include the detailed SSL handshake information by configuring the following registry key:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL EventLogging (DWORD) 1 (Basic) 7 (Verbose)
Enabling verbose logging of Schannel has the potential to generate quite a few events pretty quickly, so use sparingly as you are testing/evaluating, and turn it back to basic when you are done. Taking a look into the System log we may want to filter for Event ID 36880 – SSL (client or server) Handshake Completed Successfully. Review of these entries will detail all the Schannel connections to/from the system.
As we can see above the protocol used was TLS 1.2, and doing a quick Bing search on “CipherSuite: 0xC02F” reveals that TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 was used for the connection. Now we know that for this particular connection we used the TLS 1.2 protocol, the AES 128-bit cipher, a SHA256 hash, and the ECDH key exchange algorithm. VOILA!
So, you want to manage it yourself…
Now that we know what Schannel is composed of, what it is used for, and can identify the cipher suites we are using, we all agree we should leave it alone and let the system manage it right? Hmmmm… Well then, let’s get to breaking it (ahem… I mean tuning it). If we want to limit the cipher suite to only particular protocols, key exchanges, ciphers, or hashing algorithms we have two methods: Define a custom cipher suite priority, or disable the individual components.
Before we get into it, I do want to call out one more time –
Warning: Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly by using Registry Editor or by using another method. These problems might require that you reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that these problems can be solved. Modify the registry at your own risk.
Method 1 – Defining a custom cipher suite
To define a custom cipher suite list, we will need to provide a comma separated list of the ciphers suites we want the system restricted to (remember the cipher suites must be in priority order). Additionally, there is a character limitation of 1023 characters, so choose your cipher suites wisely. That said, taking the predefined cipher suites in Windows 10 v1703 from the table above and converting it into a comma separated list would look like this:
TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384 TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384 TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA256 TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA TLS_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5 TLS_RSA_WITH_NULL_SHA256 TLS_RSA_WITH_NULL_SHA
TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384,TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256,TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384,TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256,TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384,TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256,TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA,TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA,TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384,TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256,TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA256,TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256,TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA,TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA,TLS_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA,TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA,TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5,TLS_RSA_WITH_NULL_SHA256,TLS_RSA_WITH_NULL_SHA
Now, if we were to take this same table and identify all cipher suites using a cipher prior to AES, and hashing algorithms weaker than SHA256, the table and comma separated list would now look like this:
TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384 TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384 TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA256 TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA TLS_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5 TLS_RSA_WITH_NULL_SHA256 TLS_RSA_WITH_NULL_SHA
TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384,TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256,TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384,TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256,TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384,TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256,TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384,TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256,TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA256,TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256
Once you have a comma separated list of cipher suites the systems should be restricted to, deployment and management can be easily accomplished via Group Policy. Identify, or create a new, group policy that applies to the systems that are to be updated. Edit that policy, and under Administrative Templates -> Network -> SSL Configuration Settings there is an “SSL Cipher Suite Order” setting (shown below). Enabling this setting and supply your comma separated list. Once the policy replicates and applies the systems will only use the updated cipher suites.
Method 2 – Disable the Individual Components
So maintaining a list of cipher suites isn’t your thing, but you need to disable a particular component and disallow all the system configured cipher suites from using them. Unfortunately, there is no built-in group policy administrative template to help us this this time. The individual security protocols, ciphers, hashing algorithms, and key exchanges are all enabled on Windows by default, and to disable them requires a registry change. This change is done by adding the “Enabled” value to the associated component registry subpath that you want disabled and setting the value to “0” as illustrated below:
While there is no built-in group policy administrative template to do this, I would still recommend leveraging a group policy and using the group policy preference (GPP) functionality to make these changes.
Notice on the GPP example above has the “Remove this item when it is no longer applied” box selected. In the event that you would like to re-enable the component, removing the registry entry from the GPP will result in the key being deleted from the distant end and thereby re-enable the component. Below is a list of security protocols, ciphers, hashing algorithms, key exchanges, and their associated registry subpath.
WARNING: Disabling all components in any category will result in Schannel not having a single cipher suite that it can use to negotiate the SSL handshake, (and yes, that is BAD)!!!
Cipher Registry SubPath NULL HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Ciphers\NULL\ DES 56-bit HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Ciphers\DES 56/56 RC2 40-bit HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Ciphers\RC2 40/128 RC2 56-bit HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Ciphers\RC2 56/128 RC2 128-bit HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Ciphers\RC2 128/128 RC4 40-bit HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Ciphers\RC4 40/128 RC4 56-bit HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Ciphers\RC4 56/128 RC4 64-bit HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Ciphers\RC4 64/128 RC4 128-bit HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Ciphers\RC4 128/128 3DES 168-bit HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Ciphers\Triple DES 168 AES 128-bit HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Ciphers\AES 128/128 AES 256-bit HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Ciphers\AES 256/256
Hash Registry SubPath MD5 HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Hashes\MD5 SHA HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Hashes\SHA SHA256 HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Hashes\SHA256 SHA384 HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Hashes\SHA384 SHA512 HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Hashes\SHA512
Key Exchange Registry SubPath Diffie-Hellman HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\KeyExchangeAlgorithms\Diffie-Hellman PKCS HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\KeyExchangeAlgorithms\PKCS ECDH HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\KeyExchangeAlgorithms\ECDH
Protocol Registry SubPath Multi-Protocol Unified Hello HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\Multi-Protocol Unified Hello\Client HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\Multi-Protocol Unified Hello\Server PCT 1.0 HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\PCT 1.0\Client HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\PCT 1.0\Server SSL 2.0 HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\SSL 2.0\Client HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\SSL 2.0\Server SSL 3.0 HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\SSL 3.0\Client HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\SSL 3.0\Server TLS 1.0 HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.0\Client HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.0\Server TLS 1.1 HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.1\Client HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.1\Server TLS 1.2 HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.2\Client HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.2\Server
I hope all this helps clear things up and gives you an understanding of Schannel.
Additional Resources:
Supported cipher suites by Windows operating systems: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa374757(v=vs.85).aspx
Types of events that Schannel can produce: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn786445(v=ws.11).aspx
Schannel SSP registry entries: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn786418(v=ws.11).aspxAbout 205,000,000 results
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594 × 524 - 74k - jpgBaseball sure loves a manufactured controversy, especially if the terms "respect," "class," or "the right way" are involved.
No team attempts to uphold the unwritten rules of the game quite like the Kansas City Royals.
Last year, the Royals cleared benches six times — five times in April alone — and despite ending the season as World Series champions, the Royals are keen to clear the benches again to start 2016.
Article continues below...
You might recall the "controversy" surrounding Mets pitcher Noah Syndergaard’s first pitch in Game 3 of the 2015 World Series. With his team down 2-0 in the series, Syndergaard "got his team going" by throwing the game’s opening pitch over leadoff hitter Alcides Escobar’s head.
Benches didn’t clear then, but both the Mets and Royals established a stance of virtue. Then-Royals outfielder Alex Rios called the pitch "unprofessional." Professional bulwark Eric Hosmer declared the pitch was "not going to go over very easy."
Despite Syndergaard’s posturing statement that the Royals could meet him "60 feet, 6 inches away," the Royals didn’t do anything in Game 4 or Game 5, but they did win the ultimate prize.
You’d think that that would be enough to satiate the Kansas City’s bloodlust, but no — according to a Newsday report, the Royals are planning retribution for Syndergaard’s "unprofessional" pitch in their matchup with the Mets on Opening Night, April 3.
Don’t let the fact that it’s been five months since the original incident, or that the Royals had three games to respond to this aggression during the World Series, confuse you — the Royals are going to make sure Syndergaard (or, more specifically, some unknowing Mets position player) gets his comeuppance.
Baseball’s fade from national relevance has happened for many reasons — many outside of MLB’s control — but one of the reasons baseball has become a tribal sport with little whole-league appeal is the league’s widespread vigilantism.
Bad blood sells one-off tickets and snags local viewers, no doubt — it’s a different storyline in a summer-long soap opera for the compulsory audience — but at some point baseball’s culture of crusaders has to be perceived as empty. You can cry "unwritten rules" only so many times before people stop taking you seriously and ultimately cease to care about your plight.
The Royals have no reason to be angry at anyone, but they’re out for blood in the first game of the season. Why? Probably because they think their benches-clearing brawls in April 2015 galvanized the team and set them on a course toward glory. They can’t let anyone think they can get one over on them. That’s some next-level bloviation.
It wasn’t that the 2015 Royals rarely struck out, had an elite bullpen, boasted the best defensive nine in the sport, made some excellent moves before the trade deadline, and always seemed to come up with the clutch hit — no, as far as the Royals are concerned, the real reason behind their team’s success was their fighting spirit.
Baseball is struggling to find a market with young people — more than 50 percent of baseball viewers are 55 or older, up 41 percent over the past decade — despite the fact that it has highly marketable stars in Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, and Giancarlo Stanton (and those are just three.) Maybe part of that problem stems from young people seeing through the nonsense that seems to have overtaken the league.
Who wants to see homers and triple-digit fastballs when we could talk about Adam LaRoche, a five-month-old beef over Ball One, or "playing the right way"?
Millenials don’t have the attention spans or inclination to feign objection to a manufactured insult, whether it’s to the game or a team’s collective manhood.
If they want to see a fight, they can turn on a UFC or boxing match.
Maybe people want to watch entertaining baseball. For that, they should be tuning in to watch the Royals.
But that’s not what we’ll get Sunday — instead, we’ll see the coronation of a vengeful ruler whose first act in charge is placing a hit on his perceived enemy.
Fans in Kansas City can get angry, and Mets fans can then get angrier, but for the tens of millions of Americans without skin in the game, it’s all too exhausting for them to care.Jed York, don't be a fool. You either, Trent Baalke.
York, the San Francisco 49ers' CEO, is an intelligent man, as is Baalke, the team's general manager. Each needs to subjugate his ego.
Today.
They shouldn't persuade themselves -- or each other -- that the 49ers are so talented that any coach can get them to the NFC Championship Game or to the Super Bowl.
Once upon a time, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones believed his team could win with any one of 500 coaches.
Combustible? Yes. But replaceable? Not 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh. AP Photo/Mike Roemer
It was dumb then. It's dumb now.
Sure, Jones won Super Bowl XXX with Barry Switzer as his coach, but the Cowboys might've won four consecutive Super Bowls if Jones or Jimmy Johnson hadn't let their respective egos run amok.
The Cowboys could've been the NFL's greatest dynasty. Instead, we're stuck with a bunch of woulda, coulda, shoulda. Johnson's departure started the downfall that's left the Cowboys stuck in an abyss of mediocrity for nearly two decades.
The Cleveland Browns reportedly offered San Francisco draft picks in trade for Harbaugh during their lengthy coaching search. York initially denied the report -- then said the Browns broached the topic but were quickly rebuffed.
Harbaugh, who has led San Francisco to the NFL's second-best winning percentage (.760) over the past three seasons, has two years left on a deal that reportedly pays him $5 million a year.
Eight NFL coaches make more than $6 million a year. New Orleans' Sean Payton ($8 million) and New England's Bill Belichick ($7.5 million) are at the top of the list.
York should pay Harbaugh. If he needs to overpay the occasionally combative and petulant coach to make him happy, then overpay him.
Winning is more important than ego. Whether Jones admits it or not, letting Johnson leave is easily the dumbest move he's made in 25 years as owner.
Nothing else is even close.
Not passing on Randy Moss. Not firing Tom Landry. Not giving Roy Williams a $54 million contract or trading a pair of No. 1 draft picks for Joey Galloway.
Every coach is not replaceable.
Harbaugh knows how to win. He did it at the University of San Diego, going 29-6 in three seasons. He did it at Stanford, going 29-21, including a 12-1 record in his final season with the Cardinal.
And he's done it with the 49ers, compiling a 36-11-1 record for a team that had not been over.500 in eight seasons prior to his arrival. The 49ers went 13-3 in 2011, advancing to the NFC Championship Game before losing in overtime in Harbaugh's first season.
The next season, San Francisco lost to Baltimore in the Super Bowl; this past season, the 49ers lost in the NFC title game to Seattle. Each game was decided in the final five minutes.SIALKOT: Three Pakistanis, a woman among them, were killed and 11 others injured in unprovoked shelling by Indian forces on villages along the Sialkot Working Boundary on Saturday.
The villages which were fired upon were Bajrah Garhi, Khadraal, Anula, Beeni, Sucheetgarh and Charwah.
Officials of the Chenab Rangers said farmer Imdad Husain, 55, and Nazia Bibi, 36, were sleeping in their |
ask him to do more than one thing for his treat.
Mix in non-food rewards, such as petting or toys (as long as your dog likes those things - petting is not a reward if your dog doesn't like it).
Keep treats hidden in dog proof places around the house. Your dog will never know when you will decide that he should get a treat!
With enough practice, responses will become automatic, and won't require treats (except on special occasions, just for fun)
The following training suggestions are just that, suggestions. There are many, many ways to train a dog, and these are only here as a starting point.
Teaching A "Good Dog" Sign
The first thing to teach your dog is a sign for "correct" or "good dog!" You can use the ASL word for "Good," or a "thumbs up" or anything else that feels comfortable to you. To teach it, sit with your dog and a handful or so of really tasty treats. Use your "good" sign, and give the dog a treat. Repeat this several (approximately 3 to 10) times. Then give your sign and see what happens. If she looks at you as if to say "well, where's my treat?", she understands! Give her the treat.
Teaching "Watch Me"
There are two theories to teaching "watch me." One is to teach it as a habit (something the dog should do a lot, especially if he doesn't know what else to do), and the other is to teach it as a command (when given the sign).
To teach it as a habit, you start out by taking a treat, putting it up to the dog's nose, bringing it up to your nose, signing "good," and then giving the treat to the dog. The idea is for your dog to look you in the eye. Practice this for a few days. Then go to the next step, and hold the treat away from you (start out a foot or so from your face). Your dog will probably look at the treat. Wait until your dog gets impatient, and looks at you to say "well, where's my treat?" Quickly sign "good dog" and give him the treat. At first, all you will get is a quick glance, but you can slowly build up the time that your dog will look you in the eye. You should also hold the treat in different places (use the other hand, hold it in front of you, and at full arm's length). Practice holding the treat behind your back as well. You want the dog to learn that no matter where the treat is, the only way to get it is to look at you.
Teaching "watch me" as a command is very similar, except that you sign "Look" to the dog before trying to get them to look at you. Some people initially teach this by putting food in their mouth and then spitting it out at the dog when he looks at you. You should still follow up by teaching your dog to watch even when the food is held elsewhere.
No matter which method you end up using to teach your dog, it is important to randomly reward eye contact whenever you notice it (remember those treats you stashed around the house?) Just smile, sign "good dog" and pull one out. Your dog will watch you more often! (For more tips on getting your dog's attention when he isn't looking at you, see our Training page.)
Teaching "No"
Hardly any animal can look as deeply disappointed as a dog to whom one says "no."
- Jeffrey Maussaieff Masson
"No" is probably the most overused word in dog training. It is better to tell the dog something that she can do, rather than just to yell "no" all the time. For instance, if your dog jumps on you when you get home, what does telling her "no" do? Well, she knows that you aren't happy when she jumps, but she doesn't know what to do instead. So she tries something else and gets another "no." This could go on for quite a while as she tries to figure out what the proper greeting behavior is (and your dog could get the idea that you don't like her very much). It is far easier (on both of you), to tell her to "sit" and skip the "no" part altogether. You need to tell the dog what is "right," and "constructive criticism" will get you there a lot quicker.
So teaching no is a little less precise, since all that it really means is "stop." Most people end up teaching at least 2 versions of no, one for minor problems, and one for big problems. The first one is for "No, that's not what I want," and just means to cut it out, do something else. You can shake your head and close your eyes (cutting off eye contact) to reinforce your disapproval. The second no is more serious. "Stop" means you are in really big trouble, and should be accompanied by a very "mean" face and angry body language. This one should be used only after the first has failed, since if you overdo it, it won't be a "big deal" when you need it.
Teaching a "Release" Word
Teaching a release word is also important. If you do not tell your dog that it's OK to move or do something else, he will have to decide on his own. Obviously, if you are teaching your dog to "stay," this is not a good thing, but it comes in handy at other times as well (such as when it is "OK" to go out the door). It is a fairly simple thing to teach. Whenever you finish practicing one thing, sign "OK" before going on to the next. When you end a training session, sign OK, and then put away the treats.
Teaching your dog to be Gentle
Teaching your dog to be gentle is essentially the same thing as teaching bite inhibition. Dogs should learn that people have very sensitive skin, and that they should be very careful with their teeth. This is a process that starts when they are puppies with their littermates. When a pup bites another puppy too hard, the puppy squeals and runs away. The pup who bit too hard learns that the fun stops when she bites too hard. Teaching a puppy to be gentle is a continuation of this. Obviously, with a deaf dog, squealing won't help, but withdrawing attention will. Teaching this should be a gradual process. Start out by pulling your hands back and getting up when the dog bites too hard (don't define too hard as any touch, that comes later). Don't pull your hands away too quickly, as that can become a game. If your pup tries to follow you, tie her to something before starting this lesson. As your pup learns, gradually make the "ouch" point lower, until your dog understands that teeth on human skin are a bad thing. (For more details on this process, please read Culture Clash by Jean Donaldson and/or How to Teach a New Dog Old Tricks by Ian Dunbar - see our Recommended Reading pages for more on these books.)
Teaching "Sit"
Rambunctious, rumbustious, delinquent dogs become angelic when sitting.
- Ian Dunbar
Sit is probably one of the most basic things that any dog is taught (and probably one of the easiest too). Start out by holding a treat at your dog's nose, and then draw it back toward his ears until he sits. Be careful not to raise your hand, or your dog will probably jump for the treat instead of sitting. Practice this a few times, and then start to work in the hand sign. You can use the obedience sign (at left), or you can use the ASL sign for "Sit." If you use the obedience sign, place the treat between your thumb and palm while you make the sign. Once the dog knows the sign, you won't need the treats in your hand.
Teaching "Down"
Down is another very basic command, but it is sometimes a bit harder to teach. The usual way to teach it is to have the dog sit, and then lower a treat from the dog's nose to the floor. Be careful that you are not moving the treat forward, as sometimes the dog will stand up (with her head down) to get the treat. This gesture will naturally turn into a down sign, but you can also use the ASL "Down."
Some dogs simply will not lie down this easily. Another way to do it is to sit or squat on the floor with one leg in front of you. Pick up a treat, and reach under your leg to show it to the dog. Lead her under your leg, which should be low enough that she must lie down to fit. As soon as her elbows and belly are on the floor, sign "down" and give her the treat. She should figure it out fairly quickly so you won't need to be on the floor very long. You can also use this method with a low table or under a chair.
Another way is slower, but will still work. Hold a treat in front of the dog's nose, and lower it a few inches (enough that she lowers her head). Be sure that her tail stays on the floor, don't give the treat for standing (you can hold the treat between your thumb and palm, so that your hand is in the "down" hand position). Once she is doing this regularly, lower it more. When she will lower her head all the way to the floor, start to draw the treat forward (just a smidge at a time). Again, be sure that her tail stays down. Your dog will eventually move a paw forward, so quickly give her a treat. Keep luring further and further along, until your dog will lie down. This may take a few lessons, but you will get there.
Teaching "Stand"
Stand is not a command that is used a lot, but it can come in handy when brushing your dog, or at the vet's office. With the dog sitting, lure him into a stand by passing a treat in front of his face. Most dogs will get up to get the treat. Give him the treat, and then put one hand in his collar and the other under his belly (so that he must stay standing). Just hold him a few seconds, then release. As he gets used to this, extend the time, and touch him all over (including tail, toes, mouth, and ears). Give more treats if necessary. The idea is that the dog will stand comfortably, no matter what you are doing to him. The sign will start out going from the dog's nose forward, but should be gradually angled upward (it will be a sweeping straight arm motion up), so that the dog will just stand instead of walking forward to get the treat.
Teaching "Stay"
Stay is an exercise that teaches the dog self control. Have the dog sit, and sign "stay" (your hand held palm in front of her face, or the ASL "Stay" which uses both hands). Quickly give a treat, then sign "Stay" again, another treat, "Stay" and one more treat. Then an enthusiastic "OK!" and she's done (you want her to change postition when you release her). Gradually make the time between the treats a bit longer, so she will stay sitting for longer periods of time (still use 3 treats, and then an "OK" when she is done working). Once she seems to understand, move on to the next step. Place the 3 treats on the floor in front of her. While she is still, feed her one treat at a time, fairly quickly (don't ask for the same length of time you had before, this is a new exercise for her). You may need to hold her collar at first, but don't try to hold her in a sitting position. If she insists on getting up, just do not let her have the treats. Scoop them up, cover them with your hand, or step on them. Tell her to sit again, and replace the treats. As she starts to understand that moving means the treats go away, start to stretch out the time between each bite again. Gradually add some distance (keeping the treats near you, pick each one up and bring it to the dog). Do not try to do distance and duration at the same time. If you want her to stay longer, you stay close. If you want her to stay with you further away, keep it short. Be sure to use your release sign, so that she knows when she can move. As your dog gets better, add in distractions (like jumping or spinning, or tossing toys). Staying while down is taught the same way.
Teaching "Leave It"
"Leave It" is a way to tell your dog that he cannot have whatever it is he is looking at. To teach it, hold a treat in one hand, open palm (if you sign your release word with your right hand, hold the treat in your left, and visa versa). Sign "leave it", and when the dog tries to take the treat, close your hand and turn it over. Do not pull your hand away or raise it up high. The dog will probably nose or lick your hand, or maybe paw at it. When he gives up and turns away, even for a second, sign "OK" and let him have it (still don't move your hand either forward or back or lower). As you practice, your dog will realize that he cannot have the treat unless you tell him that he can. Eventually, you will be able to hold a treat right under his nose and he will not touch it. Once he knows that, you can sign "leave it" regarding other things as well (such as food on a coffee table). You will need to practice, starting slow (such as putting food on the floor, then on a table, and so on), but this behavior usually transfers well.
Teaching "Come" & "C'mere"
The most important thing to remember about teaching come, is that you must never, ever punish your dog when she comes to you. This includes giving baths, or trimming nails, or anything else that your dog does not like! No matter what she did just before you called, the only thing that she will remember is that she came, and you yelled. If your dog is misbehaving, or you need to do something unpleasant, you must go to her. You don't want your dog to wonder whether or not it's safe to come this time. Also, when teaching "come," do not give your dog the opportunity to be wrong. In other words, don't call her to come unless you are certain that she will. Once she knows it down pat, you won't have to worry, but until that time, go get her instead of calling. Teaching a reliable come takes time (some trainers suggest that it's impossible to have a reliable recall until the dog is at least 2 years old).
That said, teaching come is much like teaching anything else. Usually, you will end up with two forms of come. The first is an informal "c'mere" that you would use when the dog is close to you. The ASL sign for "Come" works well for this. The other is a big sweeping gesture used when the dog is further away from you (sometimes this is done over your head, to really get her attention).
C'mere is a very casual come. It is optional for the dog, and is used when you don't really care if the dog comes or not (if you are going from the kitchen to the bedroom for instance, or outside, or inviting the dog over for petting). You don't need to give treats for this, since tagging along or getting her belly rubbed is usually reward enough (and it's optional anyway).
While teaching a serious "Come," especially with an older dog who may not have had good experiences previous to this, it is probably a good idea to use a line on the dog's collar. Never leave this on the dog when you aren't there to supervise! It can be pretty short in the house (4 to 6 feet), and longer for outside (20 feet is probably plenty). Do not use this line to pull the dog to you! Arm yourself with some pretty good treats, and encourage your dog to come to you (if she's a little slow, turn around and run the other way, she'll speed up to catch you). When she gets there, step on the line (quickly), so that she can't run off again, give her the treat, and then take her collar. Don't pick up the line until last. Praise her, and let her go play again. (If your dog thinks you only call her to make her come in from playing, she won't want to come either.) Practice this at least 3 times each training session. Eventually, you will be able to leave the line off, because coming to you is the most wonderful thing she could do!
Teaching "Go" and "Move"
Go and Move are very similar, but slightly different. "Go" means the dog should move to a specific place, or in a certain direction. "Move" means simply to get out of the way, or leave the immediate area.
To teach "Go," start out with your dog sitting next to you. Tell him to "Stay," and then walk over and put a treat on the floor a short distance away. Come back to your dog, and sign "Go" (pointing at the treat will work too). He should go get the treat. After practicing this a few times, put treats in two or three small containers (35mm film canisters work well). Have your dog sit and stay again. Place the treats in different places. Direct your dog to one of them. If he goes to it, quickly give him a treat (either from your hand or open the container). If he goes to the wrong thing, give a mild no (shake your head) and take him back to where you started to try again. Once he understands that he must go where you tell him, hide the containers. You want him to go where you say, whether there is food visible or not.
To teach move, sign "Move" to your dog, and then shuffle your feet toward him. He should scoot out of the way. Do not try to run your dog down, just get him to move. When he does, sign "good dog," give him a treat, and then work on something else for a few minutes before trying it again. After a few times, he should understand that "move" means to get out of your way.
Teaching to "Walk Nice"
Dogs are taught (unintentionally) to pull on the leash. Whenever they are taken for a walk, they pull, and their person follows along behind, so the dog think that is what a walk is. It is easier to teach a puppy with no bad habits how to walk nice, but an older dog can be taught too.
Teaching your dog to walk nice on a leash is often easier to start training off leash first. Start with a handful of treats, and while out playing, reward your dog every time she walks next to you. As she starts to do it more often, introduce a sign (such as patting your leg or hip). Once she seems to be doing well at that part, introduce walking on the leash. After she will walk nice in the back yard, try walking on the sidewalk.
Dogs that have already learned to be very determined pullers can be controlled by using a head halter (such as the Gentle Leader). There are several manufacturers, but all work basically the same way. The principal is the same as a horse halter; when the dog pulls, her head is turned and her body must follow. A small person is able to walk a large strong dog using one of these. Your best bet is to find a trainer to help you learn how to fit and use them, as most dogs will object at first (much like they did when first introduced to a leash and collar). Some dogs will not adjust, and something else will need to be tried, but most will get used to it. The only real drawback is that a lot of people will think that your dog is wearing a muzzle (in spite of the fact that the loop is not around her nose and her mouth is open with her tongue hanging out).
There are many other ways to teach a dog not to pull. Two of the most common are to stop moving whenever your dog pulls (eventually, she will come back to see why you aren't moving), or to turn and go the other way when your dog pulls (better stick close so as not to get lost). Sometimes your best bet is to talk to a trainer for help, as some techniques really need to be demonstrated to be effective. Regardless, your dog can be taught to walk nicely, it just takes practice. (Diamonds In The Ruff has a very good article on teaching your dog to "walk nice")
Going Further (Tricks, Vocabulary)
The first rule in successful dog training is to be smarter than the dog. Which is why some breeds are easier to train than others.
- Author Unknown
Don't stop here! the more you teach, the easier it is to teach your dog more. There are many, many things that you can teach your dog, and the more the two of you learn together, the closer the bond between you. You can teach your dog the names of various things (ball, toy, bone), or the names of family members. If you want to show off, check out our list of Activities that you can do together. Some dogs really have a lot of fun learning tricks as well (such as shake hands, speak, or roll over). The only limit is your imagination.I received an e-mail last week requesting help responding to claims attributed to a wind-industry friendly administration in Ontario claiming that we were, at times, importing electricity. I’ve pulled some figures in response and thought I’d take a couple of minutes to post my comments.
Of course we often have some imports into Ontario – because it’s a market connected to other markets. However, the number of hours Ontario imports more than it exports dropped from market opening (in May 2002) to the recession of 2009/09.
Periodically there will be a month with a few more hours in which imports are greater than exports, but since 2010 the one notable spike seen is early in 2014 when the region was short on natural gas making coal-fired generation (mainly via Michigan) more economic.
There have been, as I write this, no hours of net import thus far in 2015; only two since August 26, 2014, and only 52 since last April. The hours of net import that did occur exist because it’s a market – at not time did net imports come close to the level of unused gas-fired generators in the province.
The “idle gas capacity” in this chart is calculated as 6,000 megawatts less the hourly natural gas-fired production shown in the IESO’s Output and Capability report. The IESO reports 9,920 MW of gas capacity, so 6,000 treated as available is conservative.
Wind is shown in the chart because the discussion was about installing more wind turbines. In the 52 hours of net imports, wind produced less than 250 megawatts, which would have been about 10% of total industrial wind turbine capacity in the province.
It would be foolish to contract additional supply that would have been unavailable to produce 40% of the time Ontario was a net importer even if Ontario couldn’t easily have paid to get the production from within the province during those periods.
Here's the data/spreadsheet including the charts displayedWith explorations of Pluto and Saturn under its belt, NASA is preparing for another landmark excursion, this time to our solar system's largest known planet, Jupiter.
NASA reported last week that the Jupiter-bound space probe Juno successfully adjusted its flight path Wednesday, in a maneuver that secured the solar-powered craft's course for the gas giant. It's a journey nearly five-years in the making, and one that's likely to add to our rapidly expanding understanding of not just Jupiter, but of the solar system as a whole and our own place in it.
Juno is expected to arrive at Jupiter on July 4 where it will spend 10 months orbiting the planet and studying the gas giant's dozens of moons and enormous magnetic field.
Scientists hope that Juno will offer the first-ever views from below Jupiter’s clouds and gather information about the origin and evolution of the giant planet. The spacecraft was named after the goddess Juno, who, according to Greek and Roman mythology, was the wife of Jupiter (or Zeus as the Greeks knew him) and able to see his true nature even through the veil of clouds Jupiter formed around himself to hide his mischief.
Juno will be tasked with determining whether the giant gas planet has a solid core, mapping Jupiter's intense magnetic field and its gravitational field, measuring the amount of water and ammonia in the deep atmosphere, and observing the planet's auroras.
Its work will help astronomers understand how giant planets form and their role in the development of the rest of the solar system.
The latest mission will bring back the most detailed information of hundreds of years of study of the planet, starting with observations of Jupiter’s four largest moons (it has at least 50) made by Galileo Galilei in 1610 using an early version of the telescope.
It is also emblematic of a half-century of planetary discovery that with technological advancements in recent years has radically changed the understanding of our “cosmic neighborhood,” as The Christian Science Monitor's Pete Spotts has called it.
“The bottom line is that we’re in the middle of an unbelievable revolution in our understanding of what our solar system is all about,” Jim Green, who heads NASA’s Planetary Science Division, told The Monitor in September.
More than 180 robotic data-gathering missions to the moon and beyond had been launched by the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, China, or India by 2015. And increasingly sophisticated telescopes have provided a sharper view of objects previously unseen.
These have taught us that asteroids have moons, that the ones covered in ice have oceans below, and that at least one moon, Saturn’s Enceladus, experiences regular eruptions that eject some of that water into space, a potential sign of habitability and life. Astronomers have learned that other planets are made up from the same stuff that makes Earth, and that beyond the inner planets there is evidence for recent or current geological activity, similar to what we find on Earth.
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Astronomers consider the lessons gleaned through the exploration of the solar system as a critical means to understanding the origins and future of life on Earth.
“It’s of fundamental importance for the survival of life on this planet that we know what our neighborhood is,” Dr. Green told the Monitor.Garfield, the cartoon, debuted in 1978 and has been in circulation since. The strip features a cat named Garfield, a guy named Jon Arbuckle, and Arbuckle’s dog, Odie. Arbuckle is an awkward, perennial bachelor; Odie, a clumsy, good-natured, and not too intelligent drooler; and Garfield, of course, is the lazy, lasagne loving feline and a bit of a curmudgeon. For most of the cartoon’s life, the three have lived together in comedic bliss. But in October of 1989, that blissful existence was threatened when Garfield woke up to find himself, cold and alone.
And then it got really creepy. As seen below, for the five days after, Garfield found himself, alone, in an abandoned house.
(Click here for a slightly larger version, or here to see the first three-panel strip on Garfield.com.)
The last segment in the above-pictured series has Garfield, alone, screaming out in denial — and then, suddenly, Jon and Odie re-appear. In the final frame, Jim Davis, the author of Garfield, writes:
An imagination is a powerful tool. It can tint memories of the past, shape perceptions of the present, or paint a future so vivid that it can entice... or terrify, all depending upon how we conduct ourselves today...
All this would suggest pretty heavily that the Garfield universe isn’t about a guy, a cat, and a dog, but about the delusions of a pet left alone to fend for himself in what, to him, is a post-Apocalyptic universe. Nightmarish stuff, not really something from the funny pages.
But Davis would later explain. The six-day mini-series ended on October 28, 1989 — just a few days before Halloween. Davis, for reasons untold, wanted to do something “legitimately scary, as opposed to Halloween-scary,” per BoingBoing. As he further expanded on in the Garfield‘s Twentieth Anniversary Collection, he asked some people what scared them, and being alone (or dying alone) came up near the top of most everyone’s list. He never intended the segment to be a canonical take on what’s actually happening in Garfield’s world — consider it a dream sequence, if you will. And it most definitely did not mean for it to be funny, which is good because it plainly isn’t.
Bonus fact : Sometime before 2004, Garfield.com ran a free, web-based email service for its fans. For a while, that service was available at GMail.com, short for “Garfield Mail.” Today, of course, that is the URL of Google’s Gmail service.
From the Archives: Alone in the Ocean: A whale which is all by itself out there — because it’s unable to communicate with the other whales.
Related: The most recent Garfield book? “Garfield Gets in a Pickle,” featuring a cover of Garfield dressed like a pickle. It’s the 54th (!!) book in the Garfield series.Single-game tickets for the first half of the upcoming 2015-16 Colorado Avalanche regular season will go on sale this Saturday, August 29, at 10 a.m.
All home games through Jan. 22 will be available for purchase, including the home opener against the Minnesota Wild on Oct. 8. Tickets for the remaining home contests will go on sale in November.
Fans can purchase tickets online at ColoradoAvalanche.com or by calling (866) 461-6556. Tickets can also be purchased at the Pepsi Center box office. Single-game tickets will be limited to eight per person, per game and start as low as $23 per seat.
Avalanche Family Night Presented by White Fence Farm tickets through Jan. 22 will also be available for purchase beginning Saturday. Avalanche Family Nights Presented by White Fence Farm include one ticket, one meal and one Pepsi voucher for $31. A full list of promotional dates can be found at ColoradoAvalanche.com.
Guys Night Out presented by Bud Light will also be represented during nine games of the 2015-16 Avalanche regular season. This package includes one upper level ticket and one beer for $34.50.
Colorado Avalanche Full Season Memberships and Avs Pick ‘Em Plans are on sale now. For more information on how to receive priority access to purchase tickets to the 2016 Coors Light NHL Stadium SeriesTM and Alumni Games, visit ColoradoAvalanche.com.The Center for American Progress recently released a report that details the inhumane treatment faced by LGBTQ people currently detained in the U.S., awaiting immigration and asylum hearings. Here are some things you need to know from that report about what LGBTQ immigrants face in the detention system, and the fight to resist these massive injustices.
1. Immigrant detention is different from jail.
People in immigrant detention have not been convicted of a crime. They are being held until a hearing can occur that will either let them stay in the U.S., or result in their deportation. These hearings have no set timeline or deadline. Because they are not serving a sentence, people in immigrant detention have no way of knowing how long they will be there. While the average time a person spends in immigrant detention is 30 days, many LGBTQ immigrants are seeking asylum, and the average stay in detention for asylum seekers is 102 days. Immigration detention exists because legal mandates require it, not because the people detained pose a flight risk or threat to the community.
2. People in immigration court often don’t have legal representation.
Because immigrants aren’t on trial for a crime, people facing hearings that determine whether or not they can remain in the U.S. are not entitled to free legal counsel. The Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project (FIRRP) in Arizona is an organization that provides some legal assistance to immigrants facing hearings. Dorien Ediger-Seto, FIRRP Development and Outreach Coordinator, explains:
“Navigating the immigration system is really complicated… approximately 84% of people detained in Arizona go through the deportation process without an attorney. The Florence Project provides people with assistance in preparing their own cases and places a limited number of people with volunteer attorneys because it’s really helpful to have someone in the courtroom who understands the law. This is especially true for LGBTQ-based asylum claims — they are often very complicated but possible to win, though this isn’t ever a guarantee.”
Immigration is one of the most complicated areas of U.S. law. Without access to legal representation, immigrants facing deportation are less likely to know their rights or the availability of different programs or visas that could help them stay in the U.S. Legal counsel is also critical for LGBTQ immigrants because many of the protections that exist for LGBTQ people within the immigration system only occur if a formal complaint or request is filed with an attorney.
Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC) is another organization that works with detained immigrants, and they’ve laid out the various options and avenues immigrants are working with:
3. LGBTQ immigrants are often held in solitary confinement.
Often referred to as “protective custody,” detention centers sometimes place LBGTQ people in isolation to prevent assault and harassment from other people in detention. The CAP report discovered that this “protection” was prompted by things like presenting “effeminately,” or after being assaulted by other detained people. In solitary confinement, people are known to experience major psychological effects, such as panic attacks and paranoia. People placed in solitary confinement after being assaulted reported reliving their attacks, and having guards encourage the other detained immigrants to harass them during their allotted hour outside their cells.
4. LGBTQ immigrants face abuse and sexual harassment and assault in detention centers.
All immigrants are vulnerable to sexual assault and harassment in detention centers, particularly because of the isolation faced by people who do not speak the same language as guards or other detained immigrants. The CAP explained:
“Since immigration detainees are detained by [the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)]—the same agency that has the power to deport them—guards in these facilities have a high degree of control over detainees, who may believe the guards are able to impact decisions concerning their deportation status.”
5. LGBTQ people are frequently denied access to hormone therapy and medical care for HIV in detention centers.
Even though the 2011 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) standards for its detention facilities included access to hormone therapy for trans* people, trans* people are not actually guaranteed access to it. Ediger-Seto added, “When the standards are updated, it doesn’t mean every detention center is updating. Some detention centers are still operating under the 2008 standards, and even then they aren’t enforceable.” Because these standards are not enforceable, there is no institutional accountability. The CAP also reported that LGBT HIV positive people have faced harassment and difficulty obtaining medications.
6. Even where ICE says they are protecting LGBTQ people, they still face discrimination and harassment.
Trying to mitigate the problems faced by LGBTQ immigrants in detention, ICE created a detention facility in Santa Ana, California just for LGTBQ immigrants. But CAP indicated that Santa Ana fell far short of respecting the identities of the people there:
“Visitor volunteers from [CIVIC], documented incidents of guards telling transgender, asylum-seeking women to ‘use their male voice’ and ‘act male’ and using male pronouns when speaking about them to others. The organization also found that transgender asylum seekers who were transferred to the facility did not have access to hormone therapy for one to four months…”
Ediger-Seto also noted that the know your rights presentations that the federal government sponsors in some detention centers are not offered to people at Santa Ana.
7. Though immigration reform is on the national agenda, most possible measures won’t improve circumstances for LGBTQ immigrants.
Several of the proposed bills from the U.S. House and Senate under the umbrella of “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” include safeguards for LGBTQ people in immigrant detention and offer expanded legal protections or services for LGBTQ immigrants. But most of these bills carry the condition of expanded border patrol and enforcement, which increases the overall chance for LGTBQ people to find themselves in immigrant detention, facing deportation and violence at the hands of law enforcement.
The Fight to Resist These Injustices
Immigrants Are Organizing Inside Detention Centers
Ediger-Seto wouldn’t let me off the phone without telling me about the organizing happening within detention centers against the mistreatment of LGBTQ people:
“What the [CAP] report doesn’t say is that people in detention are organizing to educate their peers and advocate for themselves, and I think that’s something we don’t talk about a lot. Once, I worked with a person who had regular meetings with a supervisor at the facility to be like, listen, if something happens to me because I’m trans*, I’m going to tell you.”
People are speaking out to demand justice for the undocumented and queer community.
Julio Salgado’s “I am UndocuQueer” project highlights undocumented queer immigrants across the country, announcing their presence in the immigrant justice movement.
People are standing up all over the U.S. to protest immigrant detention.
From the Dream 9 and Dream 30 to the actions to shut down ICE detention centers and stop deportations across the country. Communities are coming together to demand justice for immigrants.
Arizona ICE shutdown video:A former youth minister of a Los Angeles church has been arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting his three stepchildren and a 10-year-old who is a family friend, authorities said Friday.Pablo Cesar Cartagena was taken into custody Thursday at his home, according to a statement from the Los Angeles Police Department.LAPD detectives released a photo of Cartagena "in case there may be additional victims of unreported incidents and are asking for the public's assistance in locating them," the statement said.According to investigators, the first victim was between 6 and 12 years old in 2005 when she was assaulted "numerous times" while no one was home. Those assaults occurred within an 18-month period.In 2008 and 2009, the suspect "violently sexually assaulted a teenage victim, on two separate occasions, while she took a shower," the LAPD said, adding that no other people were in the residence at the time.During those same two years, the news release said, Cartagena allegedly entered the bedroom of a developmentally disabled child, locked the door and "violently sexually |
required to secure a majority stake in Heart of Midlothian FC.
"At this time, the Foundation is set to choose the alternative funding option but wishes to maintain a strong, positive relationship with Mr McKie's group, given it and his own personal expertise."
And FOH Murray commented: "The board of Foundation of Hearts will consider the best option for Hearts, nothing else, ahead of next week's deadline.
"We welcome Gordon's honesty that his own consortium is not in a position to go it alone and thank him for putting a proposal to us. They have been forthright and professional all through the process.
"Our bid will combine capital funding support alongside the fantastic efforts of supporters in setting up thousands of direct debits to the Foundation to provide a stable ongoing financial platform.
"We are very confident that the route we pick will be right for Hearts both now and in the future, given the strong options available to us."
Meanwhile, Danny Wilson says he is committed to Hearts "for the long haul".
after signing a three-year contract, which followed a loan spell from Liverpool.
A registration embargo imposed on Hearts for an insolvency event placed the deal in doubt. However, the 21-year-old was able to complete the move, after agreeing a pay cut, as he was registered as a Hearts player at the time of entering administration.
"I had other offers but I made the commitment about a month-and-half ago to stay here and I made a lot of changes in my life for that," he said.
"I had been really happy here for six months and I get on so well with the manager and the boys at the club.
"So you don't just trade that for a bit of uncertainty.
"I'm here for the long haul and hopefully we can come through this better."Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption US President Barack Obama: "There is absolutely no justification for this type of senseless violence"
President Barack Obama has vowed to bring to justice those who carried out the attack that killed the US ambassador to Libya.
But he said the US consulate attack in Benghazi would not harm ties between the US and the new Libyan government.
It has sparked a political row in the US, with rival Mitt Romney criticising Mr Obama before the president hit back.
Ambassador J Christopher Stevens died after gunmen stormed the consulate amid protests over an anti-Islamic film.
Meanwhile, protesters in Egypt have clashed with security forces after crowds returned to the US embassy in Cairo for a second evening of demonstrations over the film.
Riot police fired tear gas at protesters, some of whom were seen carrying petrol bombs, witnesses said.
Planned attack?
[The attacks] go to the heart of the practice and theory of the Obama foreign policy. They also raise immediate questions why there wasn't more protection for the embassies, particularly on the anniversary of 9/11
US officials said the consulate compound in Libya began taking heavy fire around 22:00 local time on Tuesday night, and the main building was in flames soon afterwards.
Three other Americans were also killed, including Sean Smith, a state department employee, in what the White House described as a "complex" attack.
Libyan and US security forces tried to retake the compound several times, US officials said, but only succeeded early on Wednesday. Mr Smith was found dead inside the compound.
US officials said Washington was investigating whether the attack was organised in advance, rather than a spontaneous assault sparked by demonstrations over the film.
Officials told Reuters there were suspicions that a militia known as the Ansar al-Sharia brigade was involved in the attack. The group has denied the claim.
They also cited reports suggesting al-Qaeda's north Africa-based affiliate, known as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, may have been involved, the news agency reports.
The protests followed rallies in Cairo, where demonstrators angry at the film, called Innocence of Muslims, breached the walls of the US embassy and tore down the flag.
Little is known with any certainty about the origins of the film, including about a man named as Sam Bacile, reported as being behind its production.
BBC reporters probing his background on Wednesday were unable to confirm personal details.
A US marine anti-terrorism team is being sent to Libya to bolster security after the attack, a US defence source told reporters in Washington.
'Especially tragic'
Speaking in the Rose Garden at the White House, President Obama told reporters: "Justice will be done."
He condemned "in the strongest possible terms the outrageous and shocking" attack.
"It is especially tragic that Chris Stevens died in Benghazi because it is a city that he helped to save," he added, praising the dead ambassador for his work in Libya after the overthrow of the late Col Muammar Gaddafi.
The attack is a grim reminder that the threat the United States and the West have been dealing with for more than a decade may be reduced, but is not gone Viewpoint: Libya deaths no surprise
Earlier, the president was criticised by his Republican election rival, Mitt Romney, who said the administration appeared to "sympathise with those who waged the attacks".
According to Mr Romney, Mr Obama's team had sent "mixed signals to the world" in the face of violence, referring to a statement from the US embassy in Cairo, issued before it was known Mr Stevens had been killed.
Mr Romney stood by his criticism of the administration as events unfolded on Wednesday, despite a lack of firm support from his Republican party.
Later, in an interview with CBS on Wednesday, Mr Obama said that his election opponent had "a tendency to shoot first and aim later".
"It's important for you to make sure that the statements that you make are backed up by the facts."
'Wonderful person'
US ambassadors killed in line of duty John Gordon Mein - Guatemala, 1968: Shot dead by rebels who ambushed his car
Shot dead by rebels who ambushed his car Cleo A Noel Jr - Sudan, 1973: Shot dead along with senior US and Belgian diplomats by Palestinian militants, after being taken hostage in Saudi embassy
Shot dead along with senior US and Belgian diplomats by Palestinian militants, after being taken hostage in Saudi embassy Rodger P Davies - Cyprus, 1974: Killed by sniper gunfire during a protest at US embassy by Greek Cypriots
Killed by sniper gunfire during a protest at US embassy by Greek Cypriots Francis E Meloy Jr - Lebanon, 1976: Kidnapped and shot dead by Palestinian militants in Beirut with another senior US official
Kidnapped and shot dead by Palestinian militants in Beirut with another senior US official Adolph Dubs - Afghanistan, 1979: Killed in exchange of fire after Afghan and Soviet forces tried to free him from kidnappers in hotel Did Ansar al-Sharia carry out attack? Obituary: J Christopher Stevens In pictures: US film protests Film outrages media
Protests against the violence and against extremism in general were also held in Tripoli and Benghazi.
The deadly violence was condemned by Libyan officials.
Libya's interim leader, Mohammed Magarief, apologised to the US over the killings, which he called "cowardly criminal acts". Libya's deputy envoy to the UN, Ibrahim Dabashi, promised an investigation.
"We cannot understand how this group, or these persons, could have eliminated such a wonderful person," he told the Security Council.
Correspondents say the film at the heart of the row, which appeared on YouTube translated into Arabic, is highly provocative and insulting to Muslims. An Islamic tenet bans the portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad.
In other developments on Wednesday:Join the Dyldam Parramatta Eels on Monday, August 29, as the Blue and Gold farewell Pirtek Stadium when we take on the St. George Illawarra Dragons for Round 25 of the NRL Telstra Premiership.
And to celebrate our final clash before the redevelopment of Pirtek Stadium, we’ll be putting on a great night of Monday night football thanks to our game day sponsor, Arab Bank.
Key Times
Gates open: 4:30pm
Under 20s kick off: 4:45pm
NRL kick off: 7:00pm
The match will be live on FoxSports.
Bank Roll-the-Ball thanks to Arab Bank
Keep your eyes peeled during half time for some great entertainment thanks to our game day sponsor, Arab Bank.
Four teams of two will be in the contest to claim their hands on some great prizes!
#Parradise Hashtag Photo Printer
Visit the unique #Parradise Hashtag Printer in the TryLine City precinct ahead of the game to keep a memory of your visit to the final game at Pirtek Stadium. Take a photo, upload it to Instagram and/or Twitter with the hashtag #Parradise and get your picture printed on the spot!
The hashtag printer scans Instagram for any photos using that hashtag in the world, so guests can be anywhere :) Their accounts do need to be switched to public however in order for the software to pick up the hashtag.
We have a photo board we will set up to display photos for guests to collect.
Special Activities and Handouts
Arrive early to get your hands on some Round 25 Game Day handouts including Try Banners thanks to Shine Lawyers, Foutain Thundersticks, Kanebridge flyers, Arab Bank bags, water bottles, hand fans, stress balls, money boses & yoyos plus a unique collectable Commemorative program or one of our pennant flags (limited to 7,500)!
Pre-Game Activity
Plenty of pre-game activity at Pirtek Stadium ahead of kick off. Arrive early to see all the action including Junior League U6s CVD Cobras v Merrylands, U7s Blacktown PCYC v Greystanes Devils in action, a Lap of Honour with past Blue and Gold players, a giant ‘Welcome Home’ flag carried by 50 Blue and Gold Members and fans, selfie frames roaming the stands and precinct, a pre-game show with musician Shannon Noll and a special Moment of Silence for Blue and Gold player Ken Thornett.
Visit our Merchandise tent!
Visit our Merchandise marquee in the TryLine City precinct before the game, or visit the Eels Team Store located at the Parramatta Leagues Club for all the latest Blue and Gold merchandise and apparel.
Our Fan Experience Team is also on hand to help you with any general enquiries.
Get your FREE Blue and Gold Army collectible poster!
The first 2,000 people through the gates on Monday night at Pirtek Stadium will pick up a free Blue and Gold collectible poster!
We will have 11 different posters to distribute throughout the season, with our final poster featuring Club Captain Tim Mannah! Be there to collect our Round Twenty Five player!
Getting to the Game:
The Eels encourage all Members and fans to take public transport to the game.
Parramatta train station is the nearest train station to the ground, and is only a short walk or shuttle bus ride away. Parramatta Bus interchange is located on Argyle Street opposite the Parramatta train station.
A free shuttle bus runs from Col Sutton Reserve in Baulkham Hills to Pirtek Stadium both pre & post game. This service will run at 15-20 minute intervals in the lead up to the game & again for 1 hour after the game on NRL Game Day.
The Eels also run a free shuttle bus from Argyle Street, outside Parramatta Westfield, to Pirtek Stadium (Bus 1: 4:45pm; Bus 2: 7:00pm), and returning to the station after the game.
For more information on any of these services, please call the football club office on 8843 0300.
Parking
In 2016, the Dyldam Parramatta Eels have partnered with Parramatta City Council to offer the Blue and Gold Army a special $5 parking rate when the Eels play at Pirtek Stadium.
The Riverbank, Justice Precinct and Eat Street carparks in Parramatta will have a $5 game day rate available to Eels Members and fans from 6pm on nights when the Eels play home matches at Pirtek Stadium, and from 1 hour prior to kick off on the days when the Eels play afternoon games at Pirtek Stadium.
Please remember there is NO public parking at Pirtek Stadium on game day. Click through for more transport details, or consider the Parramatta City Council parking options.
Download the Smart Parking app to find the closest available parking in Parramatta on the day.Student suicides have risen to their highest level since at least 2007, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.
These figures - for 2014 - show 130 suicides in England and Wales among full-time students aged 18 or above.
There were 100 deaths by suicide among students in the previous year, with the figures covering all the UK.
It follows warnings last week that half of ambulance call-outs to a university were for self-harm or suicide attempts.
The suicide figures, published by the ONS, show there were 97 deaths by suicide for male students and 33 female students in 2014.
The previous highest figure was 127 in 2010, in England and Wales. ONS figures have recorded student suicides since 2007, when there were 75.
But across the whole age range of the population, young people have the lowest suicide rate. And ONS figures for the UK show that across all ages, for men and women, the suicide rates in 2014 were lower than in 2004, 1994 and 1984.
There has been much concern about whether universities are providing sufficient counselling and advice for students with mental health problems.
Image caption University of York data revealed ambulance call outs for self harming and suicide attempts
The University of York highlighted the rise in demand for mental health services by publishing data from ambulance call-outs to the university.
It showed that this year, up until the first week in February, 12 call-outs were for incidents of self harm or suicide attempts, representing 50% of ambulance emergencies at the university.
In the previous full calendar year, there were 134 such call-outs to the university, with suicide attempts or self-harm accounting for 32%.
The report from York's student mental ill-health task group concluded that the "prevalence and severity" of problems were getting worse.
It included evidence from more than 50 universities which had found a "noticeable increase in complex mental health crises" in 2015 compared with 2014.
And in almost 90% of universities, staff reported working on such incidents with either the police or a coroner during 2015.
Image copyright ONS Image caption The overall downward trend in suicides for all age groups since 1981 Source: ONS
York's vice-chancellor, Koen Lamberts, said the report had highlighted a "growing issue, not just for universities but for society as a whole".
"Rates of mental ill-health are increasing," said Prof Lamberts.
"We wanted our staff and students to feel able to talk about what that means for the university."
The university says it wants to improve the services available, such as more support for "first contact" staff responding to a crisis and a more coordinated approach with local NHS services.
Among the problems highlighted as a growing source of stress was the constant pressures of social media and the threat of cyberbullying and victimisation.
The report said students could feel under pressure to succeed at everything and experienced feelings of "low self-esteem, depression, anxiety and hopelessness" when things went wrong.
And there are problems related to young people being away from home for the first time, relationship worries and anxiety over money.
Last week was mental health awareness week and many universities highlighted the advisers and counselling services on offer to students.
Sir Anthony Seldon, vice-chancellor of Buckingham University, has been a prominent campaigner for universities to take a more active role in promoting the well-being of students.
He said more effort needs to be put into prevention, promoting the importance of emotional resilience and a healthier lifestyle.
"We need much greater candour about mental health problems, and universities can lead the way," he said.Share Pinterest
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Hyundai Motor Co. will spend $173 million to expand its engine plant in Alabama to build more four-cylinder engines.
The expansion work is set to be complete this fall and production is set to begin in March 2012. It will enable the company to start building the Nu four-cylinder engine for the Hyundai Elantra small car built at the plant.
The expansion will also let Hyundai increase production of the Theta four-cylinder engine used in the Hyundai Sonata built at the Alabama plant, and the Hyundai Santa Fe and the Kia Sorrento SUVs built at a Kia assembly plant in Georgia.
The investment will create 214 jobs, according to the state. It will boost engine production at the plant by 300,000 units per year, said Deuk Lim, CEO of Hyundai Motor Manufacturing America.
The expansion comes amid rumors that Hyundai is considering building a second assembly plant in North America.
Hyundai CFO Lee Won-hee said in April that no formal plans are in place but that the company could consider building another U.S. production plant if the market continued to improve.Twentieth Century Fox TV just released its Comic-Con panel lineup, but the most interesting aspect is which show is not on the list: Glee.
A studio spokesperson confirms the current plan is to not bring Fox’s musical comedy to the sci-fi and fantasy convention this year, even though Glee has been an unlikely Comic-Con hit since its premiere. The show made its first San Diego appearance in 2009 between its May preview airing and its official debut that fall. Glee also had packed auditoriums in 2010 and 2011.
So why isn’t the show going? Unclear at the moment, but we’re hearing that producers are still working out the creative aspects of season four (mainly, who sticks around full time) so it might be too early to talk about next season. Also, it’s probably worth noting that last year’s Comic-Con panel created some headaches for the network and studio after Glee co-creator Brad Falchuk contradicted fellow co-creator Ryan Murphy’s claims that several actors were leaving the show.
Still, between the Glee cast not doing a summer concert tour this year and not going to Comic-Con, that’s two of the show’s usual big publicity marketing ventures off the board.
Here’s what shows are going to Comic-Con from 20th Century Fox this year: Bones, Sons of Anarchy, Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers, The Simpsons, American Dad, Futurama and Brickleberry. Also: Here’s the list of Warner Bros. shows announced yesterday.A decades-old trend that Christianity is irrelevant is increasingly giving way to the notion that it is bad for society, a new study by the Barna Group in the United States has found.
The study found that U.S. society is undergoing a change of mind about the way religion and people of faith intersect with public life.
That is, there are intensifying perceptions that faith is at the root of a vast number of societal ills.
"Though it remains the nation's most dominant religion, Christianity faces significant headwind in the court of public opinion," says the study in it finding that Christianity is increasingly seen as bad for society.
The new major study conducted by Barna Group, is explored in the new book Good Faith, co-authored by its president David Kinnaman and released Feb. 23.
It examines society's current perceptions of faith and Christianity.
"In sum, faith and religion and Christianity are viewed by millions of adults to be extremist," the study says.
It finds the following notions that explain an emerging reality:
● Adults and especially non-believers are concerned about religious extremism.
(The report note that following religiously motivated terrorism such as the recent incidents in San Bernardino and Paris - it is no wonder that a backlash against extremism is reaching a boiling point. Currently, a strong majority of adults believe "being religiously extreme is a threat to society." Three-quarters of all Americans - and nine out of ten Americans with no faith affiliation - agree with this statement.)
● Nearly half of non-religious adults perceive Christianity to be extremist.
(The perception that the Christian faith is extreme is now firmly entrenched among non-Christians in the United States. A full 45 percent of atheists, agnostics, and religiously unaffiliated in America agree with the statement "Christianity is extremist." Almost as troubling is the fact that only 14 percent of atheists and agnostics strongly disagree that Christianity is extremist. The remaining four in ten (41 percent) disagree only somewhat. So even non-Christians who are reluctant to fully label Christianity as extremist, still harbor some hesitations and negative perceptions toward the religion.
● The range of what constitutes extremism is broad, ranging from behaviors that are almost universally condemned to more narrowly defined extremism.
(What actions and beliefs, exactly, come to mind when people think about religious extremism? The researchers examined more than 20 different activities and beliefs, asking a random, representative sample of U.S. adults to identify the degree to which each of those activities appeared extreme.
● Evangelicals stand out from the norm in terms of their attitudes on religious extremism – and they exhibit major differences from the skeptics.
The research points out a massive gap between two "super segments" in American life today: evangelicals and skeptics (those who self-identify as atheist, agnostic and religiously unaffiliated).
On virtually all of the extremist factors assessed in the research, evangelicals and skeptics maintain widely divergent points of view.
For example, only 1 percent of evangelicals believe it is religiously extreme for a person to teach his or her children that same-sex relationships are morally wrong.
However, three-quarters of skeptics (75 percent) believe this is extremist.
Kinnaman comments that, "These gaps show the challenges practicing Christians and especially evangelicals are facing.
"In a religiously plural and divisive society, various 'tribes' - ranging from faithful to skeptic - are vying to decide how faith should work.
"The most contentious issues are the ways in which religious conviction gets expressed publicly, but the findings illustrate that a wide range of actions, even beliefs, are now viewed as extremist by large chunks of the population."
Kinnaman notes, "The research starkly demonstrates the ways in which evangelicals and many practicing Catholics are out of the cultural mainstream.
"In fact, skeptics and religiously unaffiliated are now much closer to the cultural 'norm' than are religious conservatives. In other words, the secular point of view, which says faith should be kept out of the public domain, is much closer to the mainstream in U.S. life."
The Barna president says this explains why millions of devout Christians are undergoing such frustration and concern as they feel out of step with social norms and the cultural momentum.
"This is most significantly felt when it comes to social views, such as evangelicals' convictions on same-sex relationships. However, the perception of'social extremism' also applies to many other beliefs and practices, including personal evangelism and missions work."OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada unexpectedly posted a C$610 million ($545 million) trade deficit in August as exports dropped and imports rose by the largest amount in almost two years to hit a record high, Statistics Canada data showed on Friday.
Market analysts had expected a C$1.55 billion surplus after a revised C$2.20 billion surplus in July.
The figures suggest the export sector, which accounts for around 30 percent of gross domestic product, is still having trouble shrugging off the after-effects of the 2008 recession.
The Bank of Canada says it will not raise interest rates from their current near-record lows until it sees signs of an entrenched economic recovery. The bank is due to make a rate announcement and release updated economic forecasts on Oct. 22.
“This gives plenty of scope for (Bank of Canada) Governor (Stephen) Poloz to remain cautious,” said TD Securities strategist Mazen Issa.
The data, along with stronger-than-expected U.S. jobs growth, pushed the Canadian dollar down to a more than six-month low against the greenback. [CAD/]
The loonie CAD=D4 touched a session low of C$1.1244, or 88.94 U.S. cents, its lowest level since late March, down from Thursday’s close of C$1.1163, or 89.58 U.S. cents.
Exports in August dropped by 2.5 percent to C$44.19 billion on lower shipments of motor vehicles and parts as well as energy products. Volumes fell by 1.8 percent while prices dropped by 0.7 percent.
Exports of motor vehicles fell by 11.2 percent but that was because of stronger than expected figures in July, when fewer plants than usual were shut down.
“There’s no sugar-coating the fact that the August trade report was sorely negative,” said BMO Capital Markets economist Robert Kavcic.
“But Canadian trade numbers have swung wildly in recent months, partly because of some seasonal distortions, and it’s probably a bit soon to write off the export recovery,” he said in a note to clients.
Poloz said on Sept. 16 he was cautiously optimistic the export sector was starting to recover as the U.S. economy gained speed but added it would take time for hiring to pick up.
Imports jumped by 3.9 percent, the biggest month-on-month advance since November 2012, to hit a record high C$44.80 billion. Metal and non-metallic products and energy products were mainly responsible for the advance.
Exports to the United States, which took 75.3 percent of Canadian exports in August, dropped by 2.5 percent while imports grew by 1.4 percent. As a result, Canada’s trade surplus with the United States dropped to C$3.51 billion in August from C$4.76 billion in July.JCFW September Events include:
A Kick-Off Press Conference
An Opening Night with International Designers
JCFW Night of Lights where participating shops and restaurants offer discounts to patrons, with the goal of showcasing fashion, dining and fun in the historic downtown Jersey City area.
VIP, Children’s and Catwalk in the City Designer Fashion Events and
Charity Reception
JC Talent section
Style Tips, Fashion Brunch, Networking opportunities and much more…
In September 2015, JCFW presents Creative Runway: Where the Students Create the Runway. This will be a fashion design contest for high school students and our first Hair and Make Up Show entitled the Hair and Makeup Artistry Runway Show. More details on our Register page! We look forward to meeting you on the runway!!!
Interested in Sponsoring or Donating click here!! Sponsorship and Donation RegistrationDuring World War II, The Japanese Imperial Army captured Ramree Island in 1942. The island lies off the Burma coast, 70 miles south of Akyab, now known as Sittwe.
Since Ramree was strategically important, the Allies launched an attack in 1945 to retake the island and establish airbases to support the mainland campaign.
After a bloody campaign, British troops managed to drive nearly 1,000 enemy combatants off the island into the dense mangrove swamp that covered some 10 miles of Ramree.
It was after this that one of the oddest incidents in the history of warfare occurred.
The defeated Japanese soldiers ignored all appeals by the British for their surrender, and instead abandoned their base and entered the swamp. Many of the Japanese troops succumbed to tropical diseases carried by swarms of mosquitoes, as well as the various poisonous spiders, snakes and scorpions found in the marsh.
Another additional problem for the Japanese troops was the lack of drinking water and constant threat of starvation. Despite these numerous hazards, one danger stood out as the greatest.
One night the British soldiers reported hearing panicked screams and gunfire emanating from within the darkness of the swamp. They didn’t know what exactly caused the shouts of terror they heard, but only that the Japanese troops were being ravaged by some evil menace.
Unfortunately for the Imperial Japanese Army, the mangrove swamps of Ramree Island are home to an unknown amount of the largest reptilian predator in the world, the saltwater crocodile.
The reptiles can grow up to 20 feet long and weigh 2,000 pounds, but even a midsize saltwater crocodile could easily kill a full-grown adult human, with many being known to eat animals as vast as Indian water buffalo. The soldiers were viciously and mercilessly attacked by the crocodiles.
The naturalist Bruce Stanley Wright described the scene unfolding in his 1962 book, Wildlife Sketches Near and Far: “That night was the most horrible that any member of the M.L. [marine launch] crews ever experienced. The crocodiles, alerted by the din of warfare and the smell of blood, gathered among the mangroves, lying with their eyes above water, watchfully alert for their next meal. With the ebb of the tide, the crocodiles moved in on the dead, wounded, and uninjured men who had become mired in the mud.”
There is a long history of saltwater crocodiles attacking humans who wander into their habitats, and ultimately only 520 out of 1000 Japanese soldiers managed to survive the Ramree swamps.
Some of them being so badly injured and mauled that they were later recaptured by the British forces.
The likeliness of hearing of the Battle of Ramree Island is incredibly small due to it not being one of the Second World War’s most significant skirmishes, but many consider it one of the oddest and creepiest stories in the history of warfare.The first volume of the Persona 3 manga adaptation was originally released in Japan in February 2007, via Kadokawa’s Dengeki Maoh magazine.
Now the manga has been announced for official English localization by publisher Udon Entertainment.
Persona 3 Volume 1
Between one day and the next, inserting itself into reality at midnight, sits the Dark Hour. Few know about this special time that separates humans from the dangerous creatures known as Shadows. It is here that a group of students finds the ability to summon their inner selves – their “Personas” – to do battle with the Shadows before they can consume the minds of humanity.
Product Details
Pages: 182 pages
182 pages Format: Softcover, Black & White
Softcover, Black & White Artist: Shuji Sogabe
Shuji Sogabe Release Date: October 4, 2016
October 4, 2016 Price: $13.99 USD, $18.99 CAN
$13.99 USD, $18.99 CAN Publisher: Udon Entertainment
Udon Entertainment Language: English
English Size: 5.75 x 8.25
The manga is planned to be released in English on a bimonthly frequency.
The first volume of the manga is currently available for pre-order through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
The Persona 3 manga had its debut in Kadokawa’s Dengeki Maoh magazine in February 2007. It was an adaptation of the PlayStation 2 video game released in 2006, illustrated and written by Shuji Sogabe. Since then, the manga has had an irregular serialization schedule, with the most recent volume having released in Japan on January 19, 2016. Volume 10 will be the series’ final volume.
Persona 4 Manga
This news follows the English localization for the Persona 4 manga announced in May 2015. The fourth volume of the localized series will be releasing in August 2016.
Superstar teen idol Rise Kujikawa escapes to Inaba for a much-needed break from the limelight, and the usually sleepy town is caught in the grip of celebrity fever! But when Rise suddenly appears on the Midnight Channel and goes missing soon thereafter, it’s up to Soji, Chie, and the rest of the crew to rescue her from the TV World and figure out what – if anything – Rise shares in common with the previous kidnapping victims. Based on the popular Persona 4 video game!
Product Details
Pages: 170 pages
170 pages Format: Softcover, Black & White
Softcover, Black & White Artist: Shuji Sogabe
Shuji Sogabe Release Date: August 30, 2016
August 30, 2016 Price: $13.99 USD, $18.99 CAN
$13.99 USD, $18.99 CAN Publisher: Udon Entertainment
Udon Entertainment Language: English
English Size: 5.75 x 8.25
The upcoming volume is available for pre-order on Amazon.
The third volume in this series is slated to be released on July 12, 2016.
The Persona 4 Manga debuted in Dengeki Black Maoh magazine by ASCII Media Works in September 2008, in Japan.
Persona Q Manga
The second volumes of the Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth “Side: P3” and “Side: P4” mangas will also be releasing in English later this year, following their release in Japan in March 2016.
Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth Side: P3 Volume 2
The S.E.E.S continue through another danger-filled labyrinth to find their way home, but this time they’re joined by Persona 4’s Investigation Team. After defeating the Queen of Hearts, everyone must now battle with their own hearts in a maze themed around group-dating. And at the end of their journey, the leader of the S.E.E.S will be joined with his destined partner. Will true love be found, or will the strings of destiny bind the leader and his team to a grisly fate?
Product Details
Pages: 184 pages
184 pages Artist: So Tobita
So Tobita Release Date: May 31, 2016
May 31, 2016 Price: $7.39 USD
$7.39 USD Publisher: Kodansha Comics
Kodansha Comics Language: English
Amazon Page
The Side: P3 manga started being serialized in Bessatsu Shounen Magazine on February 9, 2015 by author Sou Tobita. It was published simultaneously in English via Crunchyroll, until the manga ended in November 2015.
Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth Side: P4 Volume 2
Yasoinaba s very own Investigation Team are back in action in a new adventure based on the critically acclaimed “Persona Q” series! While enjoying Yasogami High s cultural festival, the Team suddenly hears the ringing of a mysterious bell and a bizarre, new exhibit appears at the festival. Inside this exhibit is a most curious maze one that will take them on a wondrous and treacherous journey. And as they explore this labyrinth, they ll meet new foes and maybe even some new allies from the Persona universe
Product Details
Pages: 192 pages
192 pages Artist: Mizuno Moto
Mizuno Moto Release Date: May 31, 2016
May 31, 2016 Price: $10.99 USD
$10.99 USD Publisher: Kodansha Comics
Kodansha Comics Language: English
Amazon Page
The Side: P4 manga started being serialized in Monthly Shōnen Magazine in January 26, 2015 by author Mizuno Moto. The Side: P4 chapters are currently being simultaneously published in English by Crunchyroll.
Thanks to x for the news tip.
— Diamond Book Distributors September 2016 sales kitLiving among plants could help women live longer, according to a new study.
Writing in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital found that women “who live in homes surrounded by more vegetation appear to have significantly lower mortality rates than those who live in areas with less vegetation.”
Over the course of an eight-year study, the researchers found that the mortality rate among women who lived in the greenest surroundings was 12 percent lower than for those living in homes in the least green areas.
“We were surprised to observe such strong associations between increased exposure to greenness and lower mortality rates,” said Peter James, research associate in the Harvard Chan School's Department of Epidemiology. “We were even more surprised to find evidence that a large proportion of the apparent benefit from high levels of vegetation seems to be connected with improved mental health.”
The study suggests that greenery improved mental health by lowering levels of depression. Greenery, researchers say, also afforded more opportunity for social engagement, higher physical activity levels and perhaps less exposure to air pollution.
For the study, the researchers looked at data from 108,630 women enrolled in the Nurse’s Health Study from 2000-2008 and compared their mortality rates as well as the amount of greenery surrounding their homes. They viewed satellite images to determine how much vegetation surrounded the properties.
Risk factors such as age, economic status, race, ethnicity and smoking were accounted for as well.
One of the biggest effects of greenery appeared to be a lowered risk of respiratory disease and cancer. The study found that women living in areas with the most greenery had a 34 percent lower rate of respiratory disease-related mortality and a 13 percent lower rate of cancer-related deaths.
“We know that planting vegetation can help the environment by reducing wastewater loads, sequestering carbon, and mitigating the effects of climate change. Our new findings suggest a possible co-benefit - improving health - that presents planners, landscape architects, and policy makers with a potential tool to grow healthier places,” said James.Beijing: Archaeologists in east China have found the remains of a controversial Chinese emperor from a 2,000-year-old tomb who was deposed and stripped of his nobility after just 27 days but later made a marquis.
The remains of the "Marquis of Haihun" were pulled up in a coffin from the tomb that historians have believed to be his last resting place since the site was discovered near Nanchang, Jiangxi province capital, five years ago.
A seal inside the coffin bore the characters for Liu He, the marquis' name, Xin Lixiang, head of the excavation panel said.
The coffin was hoisted out in January and taken to a lab for examination, he said.
Earlier, the excavators had found another seal with the characters for "Seal of Master Liu," and his identity was also confirmed by inscriptions on gold coins and bamboo slips found inside the tomb, state-run Xinhua news agency reported today.
People were commonly buried with identifying seals in ancient China, and emperors or nobles generally got an additional seal confirming their rank.
Excavators continuing to work in the tomb, the best-preserved burial site from that period found in China, expect to find the noble seal soon, Xin said.
Liu He was the grandson of Western Han Dynasty Emperor Wu, whose reign ushered in one of the most prosperous periods in Chinese history.
According to historical records, Liu was born in 92 BC. He became the Prince of Changyi (in today's Laizhou, Shandong Province) at the age of five, when his father died. He was established as Emperor Fei in 74 BC, after his uncle, Emperor Zhao, died without an heir.
Liu's rise to power may have been swift, but his demise was even swifter. Accusing Liu of incompetence, the royal clan and powerful officials banished him |
"I received the information from the national intelligence agency of a certain country that they believe North Korea has deployed nuclear warheads at two underground facilities for Rodong missiles," Daniel Pinkston, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, told The Daily Telegraph from Seoul.
"We estimate that North Korea has as many as 320 Rodong missiles, which can be launched from mobile transporters anywhere in the country, and we are assessing the threat these pose," he said.
North Korea's deployment of nuclear weapons will heighten tensions in the region, already strained due to Pyongyang's determination to go ahead with the launch of what it claims is a rocket carrying an experimental satellite.
Tokyo, Washington and other countries in the region believe the projectile is a long-range missile.
The launch is scheduled to take place between April 4 and 8.
The intelligence reports suggest that the warheads are made from plutonium extracted at the Yongbyon nuclear complex, which North Korea has promised to dismantle in return for fuel assistance but has been stalling on completing.
The regime in Pyongyang has also threatened to halt the dismantling of its nuclear programme if another country interferes in the launch of its satellite or the United Nations imposes sanctions on it.
Rodong missiles have an estimated range of 1,300km, putting Japan within range of the two missile bases that have been identified in North Korea.
Satellite surveillance images have shown a three-stage rocket on a launch pad at the Musudan-ri facility close to the east coast of North Korea and experts estimate that it would take two days for technicians to assemble a Rodong weapon and attach a nuclear warhead.Vulcan Aerospace gives a close-up look at the giant airplane it is building in the Mojave Desert for carrying rockets into space, a project that is awesomely big but also tremendously odd-looking. Vulcan offers no details on the business plan for the aircraft.
MOJAVE, Calif. — In the high Mojave Desert, the airframe of Paul Allen’s giant, mysterious plane for carrying rockets into space is approaching completion.
It has twin fuselages, 95 feet apart, that are joined across the top by a massive wing, 385 feet from tip to tip — longer than a football field including the end zones.
With a larger wingspan than any aircraft ever built, the six-engined plane — officially called Stratolaunch — has been nicknamed the Roc, after a mythical Middle Eastern bird so big it could carry an elephant in its claws.
Ahead of a major space- industry conference that starts Tuesday in Seattle, Allen’s Vulcan Aerospace last week opened up the secretive assembly plant to a small group of journalists, among other things letting them walk across that massive wing.
The visit suggests that the challenge for Allen’s ambitious project is not whether his plane will fly, but whether his business plan will.
Vulcan’s concept is that this airplane will carry a rocket weighing up to 275 tons slung beneath the central part of the wing — between the two fuselages — and release it at 35,000 feet. The rocket will then launch into space and deliver satellites into orbit.
Unlike today’s massive Atlas and Delta rockets that launch vertically from Earth, the Roc will be able to land, load up and take off again, making space access easier and cheaper. It’s supposed to be more like a routine airport operation than a big Cape Canaveral-style deal.
“When such access to space is routine, innovation will accelerate in ways beyond what we can currently imagine,” Allen said in an emailed statement.
Yet this first close-up look at the great beast elicited not so much a wow response, more a “what the heck?” The plane is awesomely big but also tremendously odd-looking.
Mythic hybrid beast
Strange enough is the basic twin-fuselage, single-wing concept, which gives it the overall look of a pair of insects conjoined at the wing and enlarged to the size of a dinosaur.
Stranger still is the shape of the fuselages, each individually looking like a mythical hybrid beast that morphs from boxy at one end to sleek at the other.
This is the fanciful work of Scaled Composites, the innovative experimental aircraft firm founded by Burt Rutan that has designed and built the airplane and will fly it for Allen’s Vulcan Aerospace.
Any jet airliner you’ve ever flown in has a round fuselage, eschewing corners that could become points of excess pressure. But because the Roc’s aft fuselages are largely empty and unpressurized, the engineers of Scaled Composites went with a simpler-to-build boxy body at the back, rectangular in cross-section.
In the middle of the airplane, its body thickens considerably where it’s topped by the wing, to create clearance for the rocket slung under the wing’s center span.
The forward end of each fuselage is round, because it’s pressurized, and a long drooping neck tapers to a Boeing 747 cockpit, so that it resembles a dinosaur dipping to feed.
The three-person crew — pilot, co-pilot and flight engineer — will sit in a cockpit in the right-hand fuselage, maneuvering the plane from far to the right of the centerline.
The left-hand fuselage has what looks from outside like a cockpit with windows, but it’s empty and unpressurized.
The crew will enter the cockpit through an oval door that’s less than 5 feet tall, as if sized for a hobbit. It’s clear this vehicle is designed to carry test pilots, not passengers.
Cannibalized 747s
The crew’s flight deck is literally that of a 747.
Allen bought two used jumbo jets formerly flown by United Airlines and cannibalized them for parts that account for about half the empty weight of the Roc.
So although the shell of the cockpit and all the rest of the plane’s body is new — hand-built by Scaled Composites from carbon fiber composites — various key pieces and systems, including avionics, hydraulics and fuel subsystems, are salvaged 747 parts. BAE Systems was subcontracted to disassemble the 747 and install its systems on the Roc.
The cockpit seats look old and used because they are. The seats as well as the controls the crew will manipulate and the windows they’ll look out of all came from the 747s.
So did the plane’s six Pratt & Whitney engines, which are already refurbished, cleaned, wrapped and set aside in a corner, ready to hang on the airframe when it’s finished.
The pods around those engines, the 747 nacelles, and the pylons they will hang from are also ready.
Last week, workers were busy completing the struts that will cantilever the engines far out ahead of the wing and installing the connections that will link the engines to the airplane’s control systems.
The plane will have six sets of 747 main landing gear, each with four wheels, and two sets of 747 nose landing gear, each with two wheels.
Yet the overall look is nothing like a 747.
At the ends of the immense wings are very un-Boeing-like winglets, fins that could have come off a 1960 Cadillac Coupe de Ville.
No doubt they weren’t put there just to look different and cool, but they do.
Handbuilt from composites
There’s little doubt that the Roc will fly.
Scaled Composites, which has 300 people working on the project, has a successful enough track record. For example, it built the much smaller but also dual-hulled White Knight Two, the mothership used to launch a small suborbital vehicle.
Virgin Galactic plans to use White Knight Two to take tourists briefly to the edge of space.
And Scaled Composites has clearly been painstaking in building the Roc.
With a rocket attached, the aircraft will weigh 1.3 million pounds, equal to the fully loaded weight of the world’s largest civil airliner, the Airbus A380 double-decker jet that carries about 550 passengers.
Janicki Industries of Sedro-Woolley, a leading maker of composite tooling and parts, made about 40 percent of the Roc’s composite structure and trucked the pieces to Mojave.
Janicki also supplied huge fiberglass molds used in the Mojave facility to shape and fabricate large structural pieces such as the vertical tail.
Unlike the highly automated manufacturing of Boeing’s 787, where robotic heads lay down strips of carbon fiber tape that is then baked to hardness in a huge pressurized oven, the composite pieces of Allen’s one-off airplane are handbuilt.
Next to the 100,000-square-foot assembly building, T-shaped to accommodate the massive wings, is a separate, similarly sized fabrication facility, where Scaled Composites made such challenging carbon fiber parts as the jet’s 250-foot long single-piece wing spars.
Last week, two young women in a cold room there cut composite fabric and applied it by hand onto molds to fabricate some of the few parts still to be made.
Nearby, two young guys installed actuators that move the rudder on the right tail, the last piece of the airframe still to go on.
Inside the assembly building, the nearly completed airframe sat raised up on hefty metal stands, missing only that tail, its engines and its landing gear.
Atop the structure, workers used vacuum bags and applied heat to bond strengthening strips of composite on various pieces of the Roc’s skin.
Too big for the market?
What’s unclear is whether Stratolaunch will ever succeed as a business so that the Roc gets to fly more than a few times.
Since Allen first announced his project in Seattle in 2011, the business plan has changed several times, losing key partners along the way.
Originally, Elon Musk’s SpaceX was going to provide the launch rocket fitted beneath the Roc. SpaceX pulled out, to be replaced by Orbital ATK, which then also dropped out.
The first goal of Stratolaunch has been to launch satellites into orbit.
But at one point, Sierra Nevada, the Sparks, Nev.-based builder of a space vehicle called Dream Chaser, was invited to build a smaller version of that vehicle to fit under the Roc for potential human spaceflight. That plan, too, was shelved indefinitely.
In the meantime, Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin have successfully pioneered new reusable ground-launched rockets that are already dramatically lowering the cost of access to space.
And even the satellite-launch business has changed radically in the five years since Stratolaunch began.
Now there are multiple startups interested in finding new applications for satellites, boosting demand for launch vehicles.
But the demand has shifted mostly toward small, even tiny satellites going to low earth orbit, not the huge, minivan-sized satellites that used to be standard.
As a result, there are also new startups chasing new, even cheaper ways to launch these small satellites. Among them are Firefly, based in Cedar Park, Texas, and Los Angeles-based Rocket Lab, founded by New Zealander Peter Beck.
Paul Allen, in his emailed statement, compared this new wave of interest in space to the introduction of personal computers, the advent of the web and the proliferation of smartphones.
Greatly expanded access to low earth orbit “holds similar revolutionary potential,” Allen wrote.
Yet some consider that the Stratolaunch may be overbuilt for this new world of smaller-scale satellites.
Vulcan Aerospace president Chuck Beames said the large size of the Roc provides Stratolauch the flexibility to carry all loads, big or small, ensuring success however the market shifts.
However, in a briefing in Mojave, he provided no details of any new partners or contracts. He said many deals are in the works but cannot be talked about yet.
Adam Bruckner, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the University of Washington, said Vulcan’s lack of transparency makes it difficult to assess Stratolaunch’s future.
Although launching a rocket from the air is an interesting idea, miniaturization of satellites has changed the technology requirements in ways that could leave the Roc stranded, Bruckner said.
“They’ve developed this behemoth launch system and the market is changing under them,” he said. “I would not use this launch system if I was launching a handful of cubesats, which are very small.”
Despite the progress in Mojave, it’s clear there’s a long way to go before the Roc can roll out of the assembly building complete.
When the airframe is done, all the electrical, pneumatic and hydraulic systems must be installed.
And once it rolls out, it could take nearly a year of ground tests before it would fly.
Stratolaunch officials said assembly is about 76 percent complete.
A reporter suggested to Beames that a rollout this year looks unlikely given the current state of the project. That would push out the first flight to late next year.
“You’ll be pleasantly surprised,” Beames responded, adding that “there’s no pressure to bring this thing on line … until it’s done correctly.”
Though Allen’s virtually bottomless purse is funding the project now, by the time the plane flies, Stratolaunch will need a solid business plan to keep going.
Allen won’t want to emulate Howard Hughes, who in 1947 flew his eight-engined, 320-foot wingspan Spruce Goose on its first flight — which lasted about a mile at just 70 feet above the water.
It never flew again, and the Spruce Goose became a famous white elephant.Sweet Home Chicago
New Works by Cindy Scaife
February 3-26, 2017
BYOB Opening Reception Friday, February 3, 7-10pm
Cindy Scaife was born and raised in Toronto, Canada and she graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD). For over 25 years Cindy has worked as a full-time professional artist, muralist and art educator. Cindy is greatly influenced by the art, design and advertising illustrations of the Atomic Age. Drawing heavily from the colour palette and optimism of this era, Cindyʼs work reflects its own nostalgia and innocence. Cindy arrived at her style of art by way of the 1950ʼs advertising industryʼs development and use of the product mascot, an anthropomorphic character used to promote a companyʼs wares to a wide audience. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries in the Ontario, British Columbia and Los Angeles. Sweet Home Chicago is a tribute to Chicago’s rich candy history. With this show Cindy continues her exploration of food and advertising mascots by creating anthropomorphic imagery that examines the origins, cultural influences, history and significance of a variety of food products. While conducting extensive research into the food items that are specific and significant to the Chicago area, Cindy discovered the city’s unique and noteworthy connection to the confectionery industry. For over a century Chicago has been the candy manufacturing hub of the United States. With this exhibit, Cindy will be highlighting a selection of the candies that have become some of the most beloved and enduring sweets in the United States, all of which have Chicago roots.
Join us and Cindy for the opening reception on the evening of Friday, February 3, 7-10pm where we'll have snacks and beverages (BYOB if you want beer or wine), not to mention awesome music courtesy of DJ Sean Doe.
Works will be available to purchase at the gallery beginning at 11am on Friday, February 3 or via email starting at 2pm the same day for members of our Gallery Previews List (sign up here).
The 33 — A Cabinet of Curious Characters
New Works by BaM! (Bruce Bachelder and Mike Rende)
February 3-26, 2017
BYOB Opening Reception Friday, February 3, 7-10pm
“Check your ego at the door.” is the driving thought when Chicago-area artists Bruce Bachelder and Mike Rende (collectively known as BaM!) set out to create their collaborative art. The artists, both graduates of Northern Illinois University, each start a painting and then hand it to the other to complete. Sometimes they follow the original vision for the painting, but it’s always more interesting when they don’t.
The 33 – A Cabinet of Curious Characters is their newest series of paintings, inspired by a box of old "cabinet cards" that Bruce's mother found while cleaning out her basement. After pulling out all of the relatives she could identify, she planned to discard the remaining photos that were of people she did not know, but Bruce rescued them from that untimely fate and inspiration struck when he presented them to Mike.
Why not bring their ‘artistic misunderstanding’ to a more tangible format? Why not leverage a basic, clear, starting point and build on that? So they embarked on a challenge to create 33 new portraits, each based on a cabinet card from the basement find.
Join us, along with Bruce and Mike, for the opening reception on the evening of Friday, February 3, 7-10pm where we'll have snacks and beverages (BYOB if you want beer or wine), not to mention awesome music courtesy of DJ Sean Doe.
Works will be available to purchase at the gallery beginning at 11am on Friday, February 3 or via email starting at 2pm the same day for members of our Gallery Previews List (sign up here).Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, secretly worked for a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin a decade ago and proposed an ambitious political strategy to undermine anti-Russian opposition across former Soviet republics, The Associated Press has learned. The work appears to contradict assertions by the Trump administration and Manafort himself that he never worked for Russian interests.
Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics, business dealings, and news coverage inside the United States, Europe, and the former Soviet republics to benefit the Putin government, even as U.S.-Russia relations under Republican President George W. Bush grew worse. Manafort pitched the plans to Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, a close Putin ally with whom Manafort eventually signed a $10 million annual contract beginning in 2006, according to interviews with several people familiar with payments to Manafort and business records obtained by the AP. Manafort and Deripaska maintained a business relationship until at least 2009, according to one person familiar with the work.
"We are now of the belief that this model can greatly benefit the Putin Government if employed at the correct levels with the appropriate commitment to success," Manafort wrote in the 2005 memo to Deripaska. The effort, Manafort wrote, "will be offering a great service that can re-focus, both internally and externally, the policies of the Putin government."
In a statement to the AP, Manafort confirmed that he worked for Deripaska in various countries but said the work was being unfairly cast as "inappropriate or nefarious" as part of a "smear campaign."
"I worked with Oleg Deripaska almost a decade ago representing him on business and personal matters in countries where he had investments," Manafort said. "My work for Mr. Deripaska did not involve representing Russia's political interests."
In April, Franklin Foer wrote an extensive profile of Manafort, in which Foer details Manafort's decades-long relationship with Trump, which has spanned the former's career of advising some of the most despicable tyrants around the globe. In the piece, he recalls the time that Manafort "snookered" John McCain into aiding him in "undermining American policy."
Manafort's business partner, lobbyist Rick Davis, was one of McCain's top advisers. Manafort's and Davis' work in Ukraine was so concerning that, in 2008, a staffer on the National Security Council called McCain to ask him to help "dial back" Manafort and Davis, because: "By promoting enemies of the Orange Revolution, they were undermining American policy." But McCain had already been taken in by them.
That year, the pair had consulted on behalf of pro-independence forces in the tiny principality of Montenegro, which wanted to exit Serbia and become its own sovereign republic. On the surface, this sounded noble enough, so noble that McCain called Montenegro's independence the "greatest European democracy project since the end of the Cold War."
A report in the Nation, however, showed that the Montenegrin campaign wasn't remotely what McCain described. The independence initiative was championed by a fantastically wealthy Russian mogul called Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska had parochial reasons for promoting independence. He had just purchased Montenegro's aluminum industry and intended to buy broader swaths of its economy. But he was also doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin, on whose good graces the fate of all Russian business ultimately hangs. The Nation quoted Deripaska boasting that "the Kremlin wanted an area of influence in the Mediterranean." Got that? Manafort and Davis (who was running McCain's campaign) manipulated the Republican nominee to lend his support, under the auspices of "yay freedom," to a geopolitical event designed to enrich Putin and his allies.
And that was hardly the end of it.
Manafort and Davis didn't just snooker McCain into trumpeting their client's cause; they endangered him politically, by arranging a series of meetings with Deripaska, who the U.S. had barred from entering the country because of his ties to organized crime. In 2006, they steered McCain to attend a dinner with the oligarch at a chalet near Davos, where Deripaska speechified for the 40 or so guests. (The Washington Post reported that the oligarch sent Davis and Manafort a thank-you note for arranging to see the senator in "such an intimate setting.") Seven months later, Manafort and Davis took McCain to celebrate his 70th birthday with Deripaska on a yacht moored in the Adriatic. And now, two presidential cycles later, Manafort is running Donald Trump's campaign.
Russia's meddling wasn't just intended to try to install Trump as a puppet, but also to seek vengeance on Hillary Clinton:
When mass protests against Russian President Vladimir Putin erupted in Moscow in December 2011, Putin made clear who he thought was really behind them: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
With the protesters accusing Putin of having rigged recent elections, the Russian leader pointed an angry finger at Clinton, who had issued a statement sharply critical of the voting results. "She said they were dishonest and unfair," Putin fumed in public remarks, saying that Clinton gave "a signal" to demonstrators working "with the support of the U.S. State Department" to undermine his power. "We need to safeguard ourselves from this interference in our internal affairs," Putin declared. That history is important—because it explains why Putin orchestrated election interference on behalf of Clinton's opponent, even if Trump himself wasn't aware of it. (He was aware of it.)
Here's Comey on video explicitly confirming Russia wanted to hurt Clinton & help Trump pic.twitter.com/66lyRhTugq — T. R. Ramachandran (@yottapoint) March 20, 2017
REP. MIKE CONAWAY: The conclusion that active measures were taken specifically to help [Donald] Trump's campaign—you had that by early December? You already had that conclusion?
COMEY: Correct. That they wanted to hurt our democracy, hurt her, help him. I think all three we were confident in, at least as early as December.
Bev Cowling, 64, saw a sudden deluge of requests to join the Sanders Facebook groups she administered from her home in Toney, Alabama. All of a sudden, they were getting 80 to 100 requests to join each day. She and the other administrators couldn't vet everyone, and the posts started getting bizarre. "It came in like a wave, like a tsunami," she said. "It was like a flood of misinformation."
Cowling, a retired postal worker, said some of her Facebook group members were ready to believe the bogus news links. "People were so anti-Hillary that no matter what you said, they were willing to share it and spread it," she said. "At first I would just laugh about it. I would say, 'C'mon, this is beyond ridiculous.' I created a word called 'ridiculosity.' I would say, 'This reeks of ridiculosity.'"
But Cowling got pushback. She was called a "Hillbot" and a Trump supporter. She ended up removing dozens of members who refused to stop pushing conspiracy theories. "I lost quite a few friends," she said.
Devine knows campaign chairman Paul Manafort from, among other things, their collaboration on the campaign of ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. According to campaign aides, the morning after Trump was on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Weaver asked Devine to give Manafort a call to see if they could actually make the debate happen. They were already fielding offers from most of the networks—including a producer for Stephen Colbert, who wanted to host the debate on his own late night show.
Manafort laughed, said it was a joke, but then again, Trump was on his plane, and he had no idea what the candidate would do. The answer turned out to be a statement killing the speculation. Manafort left a voicemail for Devine saying he'd won over Trump. Devine never called him back.
This is a long one, but it's important, so settle in...The AP's Jeff Horowitz and Chad Day have reported on a major story regarding Donald Trump's former campaign chair Paul Manafort, who has long been at the center of questions about ties to Russia. I strongly encourage you to read the entire thing, as I'm just going to focus on a few pieces of the much more comprehensive article.This is the central piece of the reporting:Okay. So, three important notes.First, this is indeed a contradiction of Manafort's previous claims that he never worked for Russian interests. Manafort needs to be questioned about his ties to Russia, under oath, in Congressional hearings immediately.Secondly, 2006, the year Manafort signed the $10 million annual contract, was also the year that Manafort started living in Trump Tower Third, Deripaska was a supporter and financial backer of Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Putin then-prime minister of Ukraine, for whom Manafort also worked for nearly a decade. Yesterday, as I mentioned, the Washington Post's Andrew Roth reported on new documents reportedly showing that Manafort "laundered payments from the party of a disgraced ex-leader of Ukraine using offshore accounts in Belize and Kyrgyzstan." That disgraced ex-leader is Viktor Yanukovych.(I'll come back to that.)Naturally, Manafort continues to deny that his work for Deripaska had to do with anything but some business and personal consulting.Except. As the AP story also notes, "One strategy memo to Deripaska was written by Manafort and Rick Davis, his business partner at the time. In written responses to the AP, Davis said he did not know that his firm had proposed a plan to covertly promote the interests of the Russian government....He took a leave of absence from the firm in late 2006 to work on John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign."Which brings us to something about which I wrote last July The first point in recounting this history is to underline that Manafort's claim his "work for Mr. Deripaska did not involve representing Russia's political interests" is utterly false.The second point is to note that the 2016 cycle was not even the first time Manafort has tried to entangle a U.S. presidential candidate in pro-Russian policy. He tried it before, with John McCain, way back in 2006.When, I will note, it was presumed that the Democratic nominee that year would be—you guessed it—Hillary Clinton.Vladimir Putin's hatred of Hillary Clinton is well-known. As I've previously observed Much of Putin's animosity toward Clinton stems from her time as Secretary of State—but his animus extends back beyond her tenure at State, for the same reasons Obamaas his Secretary of State. By that time, she was already well-established as a diplomatic powerhouse, having, for example, played a crucial role in the Irish peace process Putin had good reason not to want Hillary Clinton as the United States president, because she was a clear threat to his empiric aspirations. Further, Putin believes the Bill Clinton administration exploited the political weakness that resulted from the fall of the Soviet Union. That grudge is as old as Kosovo. As a result, he almost certainly wanted to prevent a second Clinton presidency.That is not to suggest that Putin wasn't motivated by the oft-cited subversion of U.S. democracy to destabilize a key player on the global stage, keen to keep him in check. To the absolute contrary, Putin's campaign against Hillary Clinton was a central part of that.After all, Putin knows she's the most qualified candidate ever to run for the U.S. presidency, too.Earlier this week, FBI James Comey and Admiral Mike Rogers both confirmed during Congressional testimony that Putin's goal was not just to undermine faith in our democracy, and not just to help Trump win, but to hurt Clinton. Here is Comey explicitly confirming that:One of their chief strategies was hacking. According to the assessment of U.S. intelligence, Russians were responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee, and for dissimating hacked DNC emails via WikiLeaks. U.S. intelligence agencies and cybersecurity experts also believe that Russian intelligence was behind the hacking and release of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta's emails.A second primary strategy was propaganda : "Russia's increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery—including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human 'trolls,' and networks of websites and social-media accounts—echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers."The anti-Clinton propaganda that proliferated social media during the campaign was not just pro-Trump, but also pro-Bernie Sanders.Just 11 days ago, Ryan Grim and Jason Cherkis at the Huffington Post detailed the "fake news tsunami" that infected pro-Sanders Facebook groups.There were countless people who were primed by three decades of right-wing attacks on Clinton (and of course the all-too familiar misogyny incessantly wielded against her) to hate her, and they ate up every crumb of the avalanche of mendacious garbage being served up by Russian ratfuckers.Now, this is where things get even more complicated, and I want to just state plainly that I am not trying to insinuate anything. If I intend to say something, I will state it plainly. The information that follows are facts, about which I have, but not conclusions.Donald Trump was not Clinton's only 2016 opponent whose campaign was being run by a former adviser to the pro-Putin former Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych.At the same time Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort was working for Yanukovych, so was Sanders chief strategist Tad Devine. In fact, Devine and Manafort were collaborating, including during the period were Manafort's aforementioned money-laundering for Yanukovych took place. (To be abundantly clear: Devine is not implicated in that at all.)Devine, who convinced Sanders to run as a Democrat, reached out to Manafort at least once that we know of during the 2016 U.S. presidential election: To try to arrange the ill-fated debate proposed between Trump and Sanders.To be clear, as I noted at the time, the entire charade was an exercise in trying to make Hillary Clinton look bad, because she refused to agree to a debate with Sanders in California. So, the one time we know that Devine and Manafort communicated, it was to orchestrate something that was explicitly to harm Clinton.At this point, I expect some people are wondering if I'm going to acknowledge that the Podesta Group, a lobbying and public affairs firm founded by brothers Anthony Podesta and John Podesta—the latter of whom was, as mentioned above, Clinton's campaign chair—also did work for Yanukovych. They did indeed. But: John Podesta was working for the Obama administration at that time, not as a consultant.Notably, there was another member of the Clinton campaign who did consulting in Ukraine: Chief strategist Joel Benenson. Except he did not work for Yanukovych, but Yanukovych's rival, former Parliament speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who became Prime Minister of Ukraine after Yanukovych was ousted in 2014.To recap: Both Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign chair, and Tad Devine, Sanders' chief strategist, worked for the pro-Putin Viktor Yanukovych. Joel Benenson, Clinton's chief strategist, worked for Yanukovych's anti-Putin rival Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Yanukovych was ousted in 2014, at which time Yatsenyuk became Prime Minister, the same year that Devine goes to work for Sanders. (Manafort onboarded with the Trump campaign later.)So, two U.S. strategists worked for a pro-Putin Ukrainian, then each went to work for U.S. presidential campaigns whose chief opponent,was Hillary Clinton, who is virulently hated by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Thenare given a huge assist by Russian hacking and a massive disinformation campaign orchestrated by Russian intelligence.Now, just to be extremely clear that I'm not suggesting a straight-up equivalence between the two campaigns, let me point out a couple of major differences.1. Tad Devine has not been accused of any illegal activities in association with his work for Yanukovych, unlike Paul Manafort.2. Bernie Sanders, who has visited Russia, has not been, to my knowledge, suspected of being vulnerable by Russian kompromat cultivated on his visits, unlike Donald Trump.But, as I said above, if I intend to say something, I will state it plainly, and here I am plainly stating that I do believe these connections warrant more scrutiny.Manafort is one piece of a bigger puzzle. Maybe there is nothing more to find, but the only way to know that with certainty is to look.I am concerned by the questions that are raised by a long-time target of Putin's ire facing two opponents whose key campaign staff both worked for a Putin ally, and whose campaigns were given a direct assist by Russian interference that intelligence agencies have concluded was, in part, explicitly to derail her.I am concerned that both of those opponents ran on major-party tickets that were a departure from their previous party affiliations. Sanders was elected as an independent, and identified as an independent for 26 years in Congress, then ran as a Democrat at Devine's urging, and immediately returned to being an independent after the election. Trump used to be a Democrat, but switched to donating heavily to Republicans after Obama was elected—in that same election in which Manafort convinced McCain to sing the praises of Oleg Deripaska's independence initiative in Montenegro.I am concerned that the facts compiled here make me suspicious that something much bigger than we've even begun to comprehend went on during the 2016 presidential election, and that I don't have enough insight into what happened to quell those suspicions, because the people ostensibly tasked with protecting the integrity of our elections and democratic institutions aren't interested in meaningful investigation of what happened. Or didn't.I don't want to be suspicious. I don't want to sound orlike a conspiracy theorist, just for compiling and reporting facts. What I want is answers.[My thanks to the other contributors who offered valuable input on this piece.]Advertisement Mayor seeks to challenge officer bill of rights Mayor echoes disdain for officer caught on tape in beating Share Shares Copy Link Copy
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake on Wednesday added strong criticism of a city police officer who was caught on tape beating a suspect.Mobile users tap here for videoIn response to questions from the 11 News I-Team, the mayor said she's thinking about taking a step most elected officials avoid: taking on the state law that critics complain makes it too hard to fire a cop who crosses the line."It's not Sunday school," Rawlings-Blake said.Rawlings-Blake reminded the public that police officers have a tough job many times when trying to arrest a suspect."It's not all, 'Stop. I'm going to arrest you' and someone says, 'OK, here you go,'" the mayor said.But, as she's watched the video that surfaced Monday of city Officer Vincent Cosum beating Kollin Truss outside a city liquor store, the mayor also said she can find no justification."I have looked at it several times. I have tried to figure out under what circumstances was that the right thing to do. I can't figure it out," Rawlings-Blake said.The mayor echoed the police commissioner's concern that the incident wasn't properly reported or investigated prior to the filing of the lawsuit by Truss' lawyers.Only Tuesday was Cosum taken off the street with pay.The mayor wouldn't say whether Cosum should be fired, which is easier said than done because of a state law called the Law Enforcement Bill of Rights. It protects officers from being fired outright, and instead, it affords them a trial board process in which three police employees sit in judgment. The officer also gets four strikes to reject who sits on the board.If that trial board finds the officer not guilty, the case ends, and the commissioner can't overrule it.Investigators in the prison scandal last year cited the bill of rights for corrections officers as a reason officers in that case weren't held accountable.Police unions wield substantial political power, but when asked Wednesday if she'd be willing to take the lead in pushing for reform of the law, the mayor said yes."If we can come up with some solutions to change the officers' bill of rights to make it easier for us to do those prosecutions and make it more effective for us to investigate and prosecute, yes, I will," Rawlings-Blake said.Half Mortals Player's Companion Created by @Extra_Legs /u/inanotherextraverse Do not repost
Valkynes They are the very last thing you will ever see, so you had better pray you don't. They are the children of the choosers of the slain. They posess the touch of death. Children of the Shieldmaidens, the Valkyries themselves. If you fall at their hands, whether it be by magic or blade, it is said they have the power to decide your soul's final resting place. Your best chance is to fight them honourably. This, they will respect, and with good enough luck you may end up in Valhalla. I cannot wish you luck if you are to fight one, but I can wish you a glorious death, and pray that Brynhildr takes mercy upon your soul.
-- General Christopher Emmering, Justice and Honour Valkynes are the children of the 12 Valkyrja or Valkyries. These are women of great power, who conduct slain warriors of honour and glory from the battlefield to Valhalla, a place where they are blessed to an enless feast with Odin, the Allfather, and to prepare for battle in the fated Ragnarök. The Valkyne come about if a Valkyrie mates with a hero or other powerful mortal, a rare occurance, meaning Valkyne are very uncommon. They will nearly always live lives of battle, the instincts of their mothers driving them towards glory. It is the aim in many a Valkyne's life to to ascend into Valhalla, or even one day either attempt to join the ranks of their mother themselves. Of Heroes and Angels The Valkynes tend to look, on the whole, like their mortal fathers. They will share most physical characteristics |
eras in history and there are some throwbacks to smaller scenes from Chrono Trigger. The game itself is a step above your standard mobile RPG. You roam around the game world with your companions instead of accepting missions like most. However, there are still gacha elements and simplified battle mechanics. There is no energy so you can play as much as you want to. It's surprisingly good for its genre and right up there Brave Exvius as one of our favorites. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY
Alto's Odyssey Price: Freemium DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Alto's Odyssey is a natural choice for a free Android game. It features simple mechanics, gorgeous graphics, and a relaxing style. Players ski down a hill while avoiding obstacles and making massive jumps. There are also items to collect that can be traded in for various customization options. The game relies heavily on its wallpaper-worthy graphics. They are simple, but effective and the dark, gradient colors add a good atmosphere for the game. It's completely free to download and play with some limited ads. There are in-app purchases, but they are all for customization stuff so it's entirely optional and it doesn't affect game play. It's kid friendly and fun. Noodlecake Studios makes a bunch of other great free Android games as well. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY
Asphalt 9: Legends Price: Freemium DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY The Asphalt franchise has some of mobile's most popular racing games. Asphalt 8: Airborne and Asphalt Xtreme were the big ones in the series. However, Asphalt 9: Legends came out in July 2018. This is the most recent game in the series now. It includes 50 cars, a bunch of challenges, and a bunch of content to play with. That includes online multiplayer, single player stuff, and more. It uses an auto-go mechanism so you can't control your acceleration. That has angered some players. The graphics are good and there are social elements as well. It's a freemium game. Thus, the online competitive aspect may be skewed a bit. However, the single player stuff is classically good arcade racing. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY
Brawl Stars Price: Freemium DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Brawl Stars is Supercell's latest hit game. It's a brawler with online multiplayer elements as well as some MOBA elements. Players drop into a game with a couple of teammates, brawl with opponents, and try to win. There are a few game modes, including a straight brawl mode, a mode where you collect crystals, a heist mode where you steal the opponent's treasure, and a bounty mode where you beat specific opponents on a team. It feels like a Supercell game and that's mostly a good thing. Supercell also makes Clash Royale, Clash of Clans, and Boom Beach if you want something a little different. Brawl Stars was one of the biggest releases of 2018. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY
Critical Ops Price: Free with in-app purchases DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Critical Ops is among the newer generation of first person shooters and it’s one of the best. In this title, you’ll battle terrorists in a variety of urban-oriented levels or you can play as the terrorists if you want to. It has a strong online multiplayer community where you can play with your friends as well. It’s still a work in progress, but it seems to hit all the right marks and it’s updated frequently. If you’d like a first person shooter that’s completely free, NOVA 3: Freedom Edition is quite good as well. They're both free Android games worth checking out. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY
Here are even more Android games goodness! 10 best new Android games from February 2019! 15 best Android games of 2019!
EA Sports games Price: Freemium DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY EA has the market cornered on sports games. They are the only developer with yearly launches for most sports, including their Madden NFL Overdrive game, FIFA Soccer, NBA Live Mobile, EA Sports UFC, and others. These games all have very similar elements. You can play the actual sport and there is a sim mechanic in all of these games. The graphics are usually pretty decent and the controls are generally good. However, EA sports games have heavy freemium elements. That is a frequent frustration for many players and it makes it difficult to recommend EA in general. Unfortunately, EA is the only developer that makes games for most sports so that makes them the best by default. There are a few soccer games (Dream League Soccer) and Motorsport (Motorsport Manager Mobile 3) that are really good too. EA also has some popular freemium games like Star Wars: Galaxy of Heros that people seem to really like. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY
Final Fantasy Brave Exvius Price: Free with in-app purchases DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Final Fantasy Brave Exvius is perhaps the best Final Fantasy-themed freemium game out there. It features tons of elements from the original games, including actual town and dungeon explorations, hidden treasures, secret dungeons, and tons of lore. The game play is simple to learn but you’ll need to think critically in order to beat bosses and hard opponents. You’re frequently rewarded for logging in daily and additional missions, quests, and activities helps keep the game fresh. This is about as good as it gets for freemium titles. If this one isn’t doing it for you, but you love Final Fantasy, you can also try out Mobius Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy Record Keeper.. They round out a very positive group of freemium games from the Final Fantasy franchise. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft Price: Free with in-app purchases DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is a card dueling game where you unlock cards, build decks, and then duel other players using the deck you built. You can build multiple decks and Blizzard has been pretty good with putting out regular updates to add more cards and content. You can also log into your account on mobile or on PC which is a really nice touch. If you don’t want to face real players in real-time PvP combat, you can always beat down on some bots for practice. It’s free to play which makes it easy and accessible for everyone to try out. It's definitely one of the best free Android games out there. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY
HQ Trivia Price: Free DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY HQ Trivia is a hit new trivia game. It's a live game show where all players compete at the same time. There's a host that asks questions and people answer in real time. There are 12 questions per round with a ten second timer for each question. The people left standing after 12 questions split the winnings. Did we mention that it's real money? It's definitely something unique in the mobile gaming space. Games take place at 9PM EST every day with 3PM EST games on weekdays. That means there are 12 games per week. That makes it hard to burn out on the game too quickly. It's free to download with no in-app purchases. The developer is working on another game show style game in 2019 as well. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY
MADFINGER Games (several titles) Price: Free with in-app purchases (usually) DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY MADFINGER Games is one of the best mobile game developers for first person shooters. Their list of titles includes heavy hitters like the Shadowgun series (including their latest release, Shadowgun Legends), the Dead Trigger series (two games), and UNKILLED. Dead Trigger and UNKILLED are a family of zombie shooters with tons of missions, some online PvP content, and tons of stuff to do. Shadowgun is a sci-fi shooter series with a campaign, online PvP, and more. Most of the main games are freemium. They are all extremely good games despite that, though. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY
Yep! Here are even more awesome Android games! 10 best game apps for Android! 15 best RPGs for Android
Pocket City Price: Free / $3.99 DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Pocket City is one of the best games of 2018 and a natural for this list. The game is very similar to the old Sim City games. You build a city, create its infrastructure, make sure everybody has enough work and play, and even monitor your environmental impact. Players also get missions for experience points and unlockable buildings as you play. The game is surprisingly deep and you can generate reports about how happy your citizens are. The controls are surprisingly decent for a mobile game and it has a ton of content. The free version is a little smaller than its premium counterpart, but both versions play well. The free version contains ads. They aren't a big deal but it's something to be aware of. This is a fantastic game. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY
Pokemon Go Price: Freemium DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Pokemon Go was the biggest mobile game of 2016. Actually, it was the biggest ever. Even though its popularity has tapered off a bit, the game is still a very solid free option. Players can explore the real world around them all while catching Pokemon, taking down gyms, and finding Pokestops. New additions include legendary Pokemon, raid battles, trainer battles (with some caveats), and more. You can even trade Pokemon in the game now. The game continues to evolve beyond what many remember it to be. When it eventually ends its run, it'll go down as one of the greatest and most iconic mobile games ever. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY
PUBG Mobile and PUBG Mobile Lite Price: Freemium DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY PUBG Mobile hasn't been out globally for long. However, it's already one of the most popular mobile shooters available. It features a 100-player battle royale on a small island. Players collect gear, weapons, and vehicles on the island and battle it out. The winner is the last person standing. It also includes mechanics like a shrinking play area to keep games from going too long. There is also a Lite version of PUBG Mobile with lighter graphics, fewer players per match, and more. It's only available for lower end devices, though. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY
Sky Force Reloaded Price: Free with in-app purchases DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Sky Force Reloaded is the latest in the Sky Force franchise (which are all pretty good free Android games). Like its predecessors, Sky Force Reloaded is a top-down, scrolling shooter where you fly a plane and your goal is to defeat bad guys, avoid bullets, and perform all kinds of various quests. It’s an ode to the old school top-down shooters. Despite its highly improved graphics, the game stays true to those old shooters. The difference being that this one has better graphics. It’s a good overall experience just like the previous iterations were. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY
Vainglory Price: Free with in-app purchases DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Vainglory is perhaps the best MOBA currently available on Android. It boasts high frame rates, unlimited free play, and solid connections. You’ll be able to team up with people and go head to head against other teams much like you see in all MOBAs. There are also decent graphics, more than 25 heroes to unlock and play with, and you can play with (or against) bots if you so choose. There is also a beta version that can use the Vulkan API if you want to check that out. It's one of the better free Android games. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY
Thank you for reading! Here are a couple more app lists to check out! 15 best local multiplayer games for Android 15 best Android tower defense games
If we missed any of the best free Android games, tell us about them in the comments! To see our complete list of best app lists, click here.It has been a rough week for the Oregon Ducks football program.
Just days after having its eight-game Civil War winning streak snapped, and amid rumors of Mark Helfrich being fired, Oregon lost top-rated commit Deommodore Lenoir on Tuesday afternoon.
That significant blow also delivered a hefty symbolic shot in the recruiting rankings.
Rivals ranks its classes based on points, dolling out a set number based on each individual recruit's national ranking.
With 21 pledges, the Beavers have a sizable advantage in a point-rating system over the Ducks (14 commits), but given the turmoil surrounding Oregon's program, it seems possible Oregon State could hold onto its lead until Signing Day in early February.
When was the last time Oregon State had a higher-rated class than Oregon? According to Rivals it was 2006, when the Beavers signed 33 pledges compared to the Ducks' 21, a gap that was nearly impossible to overcome despite a significant difference in terms of stars per commit (2.67 to 2.36 in Oregon's favor).
This year, both Oregon and Oregon State are exceeding their 2006 recruiting results.
On 247Sports, a recruiting site that weighs stars over number of commits, Oregon sits at No. 32, while Oregon State is No. 38.
In other words, no matter how you slice it, the Civil War recruiting battle is hotly contested this year.
There's still lots of time left before the ink is dry in early February, but it's late November and Oregon State is ahead in the Rivals recruiting rankings.When David Cameron and Alex Salmond signed the deal in October 2012 allowing the Scottish parliament to stage a legally binding referendum on independence, the consensus was that Cameron had "outplayed" the First Minister. After calling the SNP leader's bluff in January 2012, the PM had denied him the second question he wanted on devo max.
I wrote at the time that this view was mistaken and that Salmond was "the winner" from the agreement. That this was the case is even clearer now, with all of the concessions the First Minister secured working to his advantage.
Here are the three ways in which he outmanoeuvred Cameron.
1. The timing of the vote: 2014, rather than 2013
The UK government originally insisted that it would only give Scotland the right to hold a binding referendum (a power constitutionally reserved to Westminster) if it was staged by September 2013. But this demand was dropped in return for Salmond agreeing to a one question vote. The result was that the nationalists were gifted the commodity they needed most: time. Having begun as the underdogs, they have had an extra year to build a grassroots campaign capable of winning over the undecided and to exploit the anger over measures such as the bedroom tax and other benefit cuts (most of which were only introduced in April 2013).
2. The wording of the question
The second key power that Cameron conceded to Salmond was the right to determine the wording of the question. While the First Minister abandoned his first choice - the biased "Do you agree that Scotland should become an independent country?" - on the recommendation of the Electoral Commission, he was still able to amend it to "Should Scotland be an independent country?" This wording allowed Salmond to lead the "Yes" campaign and to project the nationalists as the positive force in the campaign (while also avoiding any reference to the UK). Had Cameron played hardball and forced Salmond to accept a wording such as "Should Scotland remain part of the United Kingdom?" it could have been Alistair Darling leading the "Yes" campaign.
3. Allowing 16-17-year-olds to vote
Unlike in UK and Scottish parliamentary elections, Cameron reluctantly agreed to allow Salmond to extend the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds. The SNP's leader's motives were not hard to discern. Suspicious of the establishment and with fewer historic ties to the Union, these first-time voters were always likely to be susceptible to nationalism. His prediction has been fulfilled as recent polls have shown the young to be one of the most pro-independence groups. Last weekend's YouGov poll showed 60 per cent of 16-24-year-olds favour independence compared to 51 per cent of the rest of the population. In a referendum as tight as this one, the votes of 16-17-year-olds could alone determine the outcome.
And did Cameron really win on devo max?
Cameron's success in forcing Salmond to agree to a one-question referendum (denying him the consolation prize of devo max) was hailed as his biggest negotiating coup. But few now argue that this remains the case. With a clear majority in Scotland for further devolution, Westminster has been forced to offer new powers in any case, but has struggled to overcome public scepticism of its promises. Had devo max, or something close to it, been on the ballot paper to begin with, it would have had no such problem. While telling voters to say "No" to independence, it could have also told them to say "Yes" to a reformed Union. The irony is that Salmond's failure may yet gift him victory, as voters agree that independence is the only way to guarantee real change.The Japanese government is reeling following a hack that exposed the pension data of 1.25 million Japanese citizens.
Officials on Tuesday tried to caution the public that the number of breached records could rise, while also assuring them that their pensions were secure.
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“We will make every effort to keep this from causing inconvenience to those whose data was leaked and to review the issue and take preventive measures,” the top aide to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, told reporters, Reuters reported.
The breach comes less than two days after Japanese and U.S. defense officials vowed tighter cybersecurity coordination to help defend each other’s networks and military bases from digital attacks.
Japanese Pension Service officials said the breach occurred after hackers infiltrated the system through an virus contained in an email link, commonly known as a phishing attack. The digital thieves made off with names, birth dates, addresses, and pension identification numbers.
The incident has resembles a 2007 scandal in which government record keepers admitted to losing 50 million records of pension premium payments. The fallout eventually caused Abe to resign from his first term, before he returned to office in 2012.
Abe's approval ratings in Japan are high at the moment, and it's unclear whether the new pension breach could again hurt his political standing.
“On the other hand, even though his support levels are still relatively high, his policies are not widely supported,” Sophia University professor Koichi Nakano told Reuters. “It depends on how he is seen as coping.”
Abe’s opponents have pounced on the incident.
“This is a situation which undermines the foundations of livelihoods and shakes confidence in pensions,” Democratic Party executive Yoshiaki Takaki said, according to the Japanese Kyodo news outlet.
Abe is a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, considered a conservative party in Japan.Communiqué
LAVAL - Le Club de hockey Canadien a annoncé officiellement jeudi que la future équipe de la Ligue américaine de hockey qui s’installera à Laval à compter de la saison 2017-2018 portera le nom de Club de hockey Rocket de Laval.
Le nom de l’équipe est le fruit d’un concours qui s’est tenu du 11 juillet au 31 août 2016. Lors de la première phase du concours, entre le 11 et le 21 juillet, les partisans étaient invités à soumettre leurs suggestions de nom. Puis, au cours de la deuxième phase, du 26 juillet au 8 août, le public devait voter pour l’un des 12 noms qui avaient été retenus au terme de la phase initiale. Finalement, la troisième et ultime étape consistait à départager les trois noms finalistes, soit ceux de Patriotes, Rapides et Rocket. Le pourcentage obtenu pour chacun des noms fut respectivement de 24 %, 25 % et de 51 %.
« Nous tenons à remercier tous nos partisans pour leur implication dans le choix de l’identité de la nouvelle équipe affiliée aux Canadiens de Montréal. Le niveau de participation a dépassé nos attentes les plus optimistes avec plus de 54 000 votes reçus. Avec ce concours, nous voulions donner l’opportunité à nos partisans de s’exprimer et de décider du nom de leur future équipe. Si cet engouement est un prélude à ce qui nous attend à Laval, nous pouvons entrevoir la suite des choses avec beaucoup d’enthousiasme », de dire Vincent Lucier, président de l’amphithéâtre.
« Dès le premier jour, nous avons reçu près de 850 propositions et déjà la suggestion de ROCKET se démarquait. Ce fut le nom le plus populaire lors de la phase I en plus d’obtenir la majorité absolue lors des phases II et III, amassant plus de votes que tous les autres noms réunis. Le message était clair; nos partisans souhaitaient un nom qui résonne dans l’imaginaire collectif et qui honore la mémoire de Maurice Richard, l’une des figures légendaires des Canadiens et du patrimoine culturel du Québec. Nous ne pouvons que saluer le résultat », a commenté Lucier.
Dès maintenant, le Club de hockey Canadien entame un processus créatif visant à développer l’identité de marque du Club de hockey Rocket de Laval, son logo et ses couleurs. Ces éléments seront dévoilés au cours des prochains mois.Michael Janda reported this story on Thursday, May 23, 2013 09:24:00
TONY EASTLEY: It's an inter-city rivalry older than Federation and a new report suggests it's not over yet.
The report concludes that in as little as 25 years Melbourne could overtake Sydney as Australia's largest city.
The Committee for Sydney's report also reveals that Melbourne has rapidly gained ground in the harbour city's traditional economic heartlands of financial and professional services.
And rather than being just a problem for Sydneysiders, the study's authors and big business say the city's woes will hold back the whole nation.
Business reporter Michael Janda has more.
MICHAEL JANDA: Following the gold rush, Melbourne passed Sydney as Australia's largest city but its heyday was short-lived and for the past century Sydney has been Australia's biggest urban centre.
But perhaps not for too much longer according to a study by the Committee for Sydney.
TIM WILLIAMS: Sydney was growing at half the rate of Melbourne in the first decade of the century so it was a bit of a lost decade in terms of productivity and population growth.
MICHAEL JANDA: The committee's chief executive, Dr Tim Williams.
TIM WILLIAMS: If Melbourne kept on growing at the pace it was growing and we stalled as we had done then they would overtake us in population terms in the middle of the century but we think that's now unlikely to happen because of what you see behind us which is there are cranes back on the horizon again.
MICHAEL JANDA: Sydney is seeing some massive developments. How much more of this style of development is needed to maintain Sydney's momentum?
TIM WILLIAMS: Look, it's fantastic. This is good news for Australia as well as for Sydney because when Sydney fires, the nation booms. We're responsible for about a quarter of the nation's GDP. We're 43 per cent of all financial insurance services here.
MICHAEL JANDA: Yet even Sydney's traditional financial dominance has weakened: Melbourne's financial sector was only half the size of Sydney's at the turn of the century, a decade later its almost two-thirds the size.
Dr Williams says the nation needs Sydney to regain its mojo in sectors like finance, information technology and professional services to offset the economic drag as the mining boom winds down.
TIM WILLIAMS: We need the cities to do well. That's where most productivity is to be found and we need the globally competitive sectors that are only found in Sydney to do well.
MICHAEL JANDA: Can't we spread this growth more evenly around the rest of the nation? Why is Sydney uniquely important to Australia's economy?
TIM WILLIAMS: It's a bit like asking why is London uniquely important at the UK economy. There are certain things that Sydney alone can do for the Australian economy.
MICHAEL JANDA: Dr Kurt Iveson is an urban geographer at Sydney University, and he says the city he lives and works in has no unique claim to global status.
KURT IVESON: We could talk to people in Brisbane and Melbourne and indeed Perth who would also be able to point to the ways in which parts of their urban economies are fundamentally tied to different global industries and different flows of capital and labour.
MICHAEL JANDA: Dr Iveson says collaborative development between Australia's cities and regions is far better than a competitive mindset. And when it comes to population, size doesn't matter.
KURT IVESON: At the turn of the 20th century Melbourne was much bigger than Sydney so inherently it doesn't seem to me to be a problem either way.
TONY EASTLEY: Dr Kurt Iveson, an urban geographer at Sydney University, ending Michael Janda's report.America's hidden debt bombs
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- America's total debt load is on pace to top $13 trillion this year, and $22 trillion by 2020 -- and that's just the debt we're counting.
What's not being counted: potential debt bombs that don't get factored into most budget analysis.
When anyone talks about U.S. debt, they typically refer to two numbers.
The first is the debt held by the public. That's money owed to those who have bought U.S. Treasurys, most notably big bond mutual funds and foreign governments. Debt held by the public today is roughly $8 trillion and rising.
The second number is the money the federal government owes to government trust funds, such as those for Medicare and Social Security. The government has used revenue collected for those programs to cover other outlays. Currently, the debt to the trust funds is approaching $5 trillion.
The two combined is the total gross debt that's accounted for. But deficit hawks also worry about what's not on the books.
Here is just a sampling of the unseen or underplayed obligations that could worsen the debt outlook:
Losses from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are private companies that for years had the implicit backing of the federal government. That backing assured investors that if anything went seriously south for the companies Uncle Sam likely -- although not absolutely -- would step in.
Well, things did go south, and now both are run by the federal government.
While the implicit guarantee has become explicit for Fannie and Freddie, its treatment in the budget is up in the air.
"Our budget doesn't have Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on it, even though it's owned lock, stock and barrel by the American taxpayer," said Rudolph Penner, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) during a conference held by the Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform.
Last year, the CBO did start to account for both companies as if they were federal agencies on the budget. But the White House Budget Office only includes some potential costs because the future of the two companies is still under consideration. Last week, a Republican congressman introduced a bill that would require the two agencies be put on the budget.
It's still not clear what the companies' total hit to the federal budget will be. Amherst Securities, a broker-dealer in residential mortgage-backed securities, estimated that the total loss on the mortgages backed by the companies could reach $448 billion, with a portion of that covered by reserves or assumed by outside parties. The CBO estimated the net costs to the government could top $370 billion by 2020.
These are just estimates. But what's clear is that Fannie and Freddie are not cheap dependents.
That's why some argue that lawmakers should assess the potential costs of implicit government guarantees well before things go to pot.
"Their costs are largely unmeasured, unrecognized in the budget and unmanaged," federal budget expert Marvin Phaup wrote in a recent paper. "A troubling aspect of current policy aimed at restarting the financial markets is the likely expansion of implied guarantees to include the obligations of additional private financial institutions."
Unfunded promises
The governments' accrued debt to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds is known. And making those payments -- which begin in earnest this decade --won't be easy given the drop in federal revenue and the surge in government spending.
"[Lawmakers] need to acknowledge they have no way of funding them right now," said tax expert Len Burman, a professor of public administration and economics at Syracuse University.
But the piece of future entitlement debt that's not reflected under current budget protocols is what the government will have to pay into the system after its payments to the trust funds end -- which will happen by 2037 for Social Security and within the next decade for Medicare.
At that point, the programs will only be collecting enough in taxes to pay a portion of the benefits currently promised. There will be enormous pressure on the government to make up the difference, and Uncle Sam would have to borrow a lot of money to do so.
Some budget experts like Stuart Butler, vice president for domestic and economic policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, would like to see the long-term obligations to Medicare and Social Security included in lawmakers' annual consideration of the federal budget.
Right now, money allocated to both entitlement programs is considered "mandatory" spending and therefore the spending increases for the programs are on autopilot and the financial commitment is uncapped in future years.
True cost of tax breaks
Everybody loves tax breaks. And there's more than a trillion dollars of them to love.
That's the amount of money the Treasury foregoes in annual revenue as a result of the many breaks in the tax code. And that effectively increases the government's need to borrow.
But that trillion-plus isn't really up for consideration during annual budget discussions. "Tax expenditures are basically hidden," Burman said.
No one advocates abolishing tax breaks altogether. But Burman and others believe tax breaks should be treated as discretionary spending. The idea is to bring them into the open so lawmakers can make a conscious decision annually about what they spend on tax breaks and recognize the costs associated with that decision.
Long-term costs of new rules
This year is the first year in which high-income investors with traditional IRAs or 401(k)s -- both of which let savings grow tax-deferred until withdrawn -- will have a chance to convert their accounts into Roth IRAs, where investments grow tax-free.
The new conversion rule is scored as a revenue raiser on the federal budget over the next decade because those who convert must pay the tax owed on their traditional IRA savings the year they convert.
But long-term it's a different story. Since investments in the converted accounts will grow tax-free, Uncle Sam will collect less revenue than he otherwise might have had the investors kept their ever-larger savings in a traditional IRA and paid taxes on them in retirement.
"It will cost federal coffers a lot beyond the 10-year window," Burman said.Martin Rennie is often quick to point out that talking about the tactical approach of the Whitecaps in terms of the standard formations such as 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 is a massive over simplification of a game that seems to become more complex and more fluid with each passing season.
And he’s right of course; the days when the numbers on the team sheet corresponded to anything resembling the starting formation are long gone, but even thinking in the “old school” traditional terms can reveal something about the array of options that should be available to the coach in the coming season.
Last year Rennie showed a preference for playing three advanced players, with those out wide functioning not so much as pure wingers but rather as either the fashionable “inverted winger” who could cut inside onto his favoured foot or even as more defensive minded midfielders (Jordan Harvey was often used in this role if the side were leading late on).
It was only the all too fleeting glimpses of Omar Salgado on the left and Dane Richards on the right that demonstrated the value of having a pure winger who could stick to the touch-line and deliver a cross.
This season he should have the option to play at least one out-and-out wide man if he chooses to do so, with a combination of Erik Hurtado and Kakuta Manneh likely to fill in on the right and Salgado (if fit) or Teibert (if he can impress pre-season) on the left.
Who he plays out wide of course will also be influenced by who he selects in the middle.
If Darren Mattocks starts then, although he may have a phenomenal leap, he isn’t the sort of player to thrive on a diet of high crosses into the box which makes the selection of Camilo a much more likely route as the two have the ability to interchange positions in a way that should make them much harder to defend against.
If he goes the 4-4-2 route then his options increase exponentially.
There were signs last year that Mattocks and Kenny Miller could develop something akin to a partnership up front, with the pace of the latter feeding off the knock downs of the former, so it can’t be a coincidence that two of the off-season signings have been Tom Heinemann and Corey Hertzog, two big men capable of leading the line and providing ideal fodder for the host of pacey players around them.
Alternatively a pairing of Camilo and Hurtado through the middle could pose completely different problems for the opposition defence.
What this means is that Rennie hasn’t just got the ability to change the style of attacking play from game to game, but that he also has the opportunity to do that within a game as well, and simply having the option to introduce a lightning quick forward in the last fifteen minutes of a contest in which a goal is needed or a strong central attacker who can hold up the ball when the team are ahead and need to kill time is a huge upgrade on last season.
In fact the varieties of which forward, or combination of forwards, that could be played are so bewildering that the biggest headache Rennie may face is keeping them all happy but, as has often been pointed out, one of the big failings last season was the reluctance to rest players in the way that is so essential for a successful MLS season, so “the more choices the better” seems to have been the philosophy in building up the squad for the coming campaign.
Next time out I’ll take a look at the wide variety of midfield scenarios that the Whitecaps could field on any given game day.
You can follow me on Twitter: Twitter.com/squadplayerIF YOU are reading this while sitting in an aircraft and are of a nervous disposition, do not be alarmed, but the temperature inside the jet engines keeping you aloft probably exceeds the melting point of the materials that those engines are made from. That they do not consequently turn into a molten mess is a feat of modern engineering. It involves a combination of tough alloys and advanced production techniques, such as 3D printing, which allow components to be made with tiny channels through which cooling air circulates. Parts exposed to the most extreme temperatures, which can reach more than 1,300°C, are given additional protection with a coating of special heat-resisting ceramics.
New jet engines are designed to run hot because that results in a more efficient combustion, which lowers fuel consumption and cuts emissions. Hot engines, though, need nurturing. Nowadays the three big aircraft-engine makers, General Electric (GE), Rolls-Royce and Pratt & Whitney, usually include servicing as part of their sales, and many jet engines are leased on a “power-by-the-hour” contract. This means regular check-ups and maintenance are in the interests of airlines and producers alike. The difficult bit is inspecting an engine without dismantling it. That requires taking the aircraft to which the engine is attached out of service. And, with a power-by-the-hour contract, when a plane disappears into the workshop, it is not just the airline that loses money, but the engine maker, too. The hunt is therefore on for faster and more efficient ways to keep engines in tip-top condition.
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Don Lipkin, a chief scientist at GE Global Research in Niskayuna, New York, and his colleagues Todd Danko and Kori Macdonald, think they have come up with one. They are developing tiny robots which can venture inside an engine to inspect its innards and carry out any necessary repairs. Eventually, these robots may be able to work while a plane is waiting at a gate between flights.
Send in the microbots
Dr Lipkin’s robots are being tested in a laboratory, but he hopes to have them ready to go inside operating aircraft by the end of the year. To start with, they will conduct inspections. Later, once techniques are perfected, they will begin making repairs. Such robots will also be used to inspect and repair GE’s gas turbines. These are jet engines used in power plants to generate electricity, rather than as propulsion devices. But they, too, would benefit from reduced downtime for maintenance.
Inspecting the fan blades that draw air into the front of an engine is reasonably straightforward, because those blades are large and visible. But things get harder the deeper you go. Following the fan are a series of closely packed blades that compress some of the air before it arrives at the combustion chamber. When the compressed air reaches that chamber, and is mixed with fuel and ignited, the resulting hot gases then blast out of the rear, providing part of the thrust. The gases pass through a series of stubby turbine blades near the back of the engine. These, via shafts, turn the fan and the compressor, and thus keep the whole arrangement running.
In a working engine, all of these components are so tightly packed together that sometimes the only way to peek inside is by inserting an endoscope (a camera on a flexible tube) through a hole in the engine’s casing. But the view is limited. The researchers’ robots, however, are small enough to navigate their way around all the various blades, photographing everything they see and relaying the pictures wirelessly to technicians. Then, once the pictures have been analysed, the robot itself can often effect a repair.
The team’s robots come in several varieties. One is about the size of a small envelope and is flexible. It runs along a sort of rack-and-pinion track that is inserted into the back of the engine. The track is made |
those corners to buy you just a little more time to get to him."
The Broncos have the corners to take away Brady's first read, but Chris Harris Jr.'s shoulder injury could be a key factor in Denver's ability to slow Julian Edelman and the Pats' quick-pass attack.Is it pandering for the Hispanic vote or a serious policy proposal? In the case of Hillary Clinton, it just might be both.
While pushing for votes in New York (a phrase we haven’t seen in the news since 1976) the former Secretary of State told her adoring audience that, if elected, she would make it a priority to create a new federal agency which would knock down “all the barriers” to citizenship, particularly for all of those Americans in Waiting who are in the country illegally. (Daily Caller)
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said she would make it easier for immigrants to secure citizenship in a meeting with New York activists Wednesday, vowing to use her campaign to “knock down all the barriers.” “The hassle of becoming a citizen is sometimes overwhelming,” Clinton said, referring to the millions of immigrants in the United States who are eligible for citizenship but have not applied. “We should not add a series of barriers.” “I’m using this campaign to knock down all the barriers,” she added. Clinton touted her plan to create a new federal agency called the Office of Immigration Affairs to streamline services to both legal and illegal immigrants in the Manhattan meeting, which was timed just ahead of a New York primary in which support of the Latino community will be important.
Well that’s just what we needed, isn’t it? Whenever there’s an issue to be addressed in Washington these days the first thing you want to do is create yet another sprawling federal bureaucracy to deal with it. Much like The Weed Agency, once such an entity is summoned into existence it remains in perpetuity, growing ever larger and finding new and inventive ways to not only justify its place at the taxpayer trough, but to continually increase its budget year after year.
The truly offensive part of this is that we already have a massive agency which handles precisely these questions. Adding yet another one is both expensive and offensive in an era when we’re supposed to be finding ways to consolidate resources and reduce costs. And when it comes to illegal immigrants who are in the country already, we have an agency to deal with them also. It’s called Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) and it’s in need of precisely the type of support which Clinton clearly doesn’t plan to provide.
This brings up one final note about the event which is worthy of examination. (Emphasis added)
She made the remarks to about 10 representatives of New York’s immigrant communities, including a number of illegal immigrants, and representatives from immigrant advocacy groups. The New York State Immigrant Action Fund, one of the largest of those groups in the area, endorsed Clinton at the meeting.
This is precisely how far we have fallen in terms of elected officials and office seekers taking the rule of law seriously in this country. There was a time in living memory when a candidate for high office would never be caught dead in front of a camera with a criminal unless they were in handcuffs and on the way to jail. Now we have known criminals who are here in violation of our laws posing for photo ops with the Democratic frontrunner for the presidency and nobody so much as bats an eye. This isn’t really new or startling for the Democrats, since they previously hired an illegal immigrant to work at the DNC and nobody was ever prosecuted for it.
Perhaps this will win some votes for Hillary in the minority community. They may as well help elect her since she clearly has no intention of honoring the presidential oath to enforce the laws of the nation.Islamic State jihadists ruling over much of Syria and Iraq have a new icon, whose fashionably styled curly hair and black-rimmed glasses contrast strikingly with the pose in which he has been photographed: astride a horse, and waving a shining scimitar above his head.
Identified by friends as a young Egyptian university graduate from a well-off Cairo family, Islam Yaken, he has been both lionised and demonised back home as the "hipster jihadi".
Fighters from the al-Qaida linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant march in Raqqa, Syria (AP)
Although he is said to have once been a supporter of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood former president, Mohammed Morsi, his friends say there was little to suggest his sudden change of life direction a year ago.
His page on the social media site VK suggest a young man apparently obsessed with his body - it is dominated by a series of pictures of him in a gym, showing off his toned physique.
Now he uses Twitter to glorify the "Caliphate" of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, and to post gory pictures including one of two heads in a basket, which he compares to the heads of sheep that can be ordered for the table in specialist Egyptian restaurants.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (Rex Features)
"Islam Yaken's story is freaking scary," wrote one former school-mate, Aliya Mikkawi, on her own Twitter account. "He used to be at school with me."
Yaken was educated at the French Lycée in Heliopolis, an upmarket suburb of Cairo near the presidential palace, and speaks English and French as well as Arabic. He then went on to the prestigious Ain Shams University to study law, graduating last year.
Islam Yaken (Twitter)
His tweets from before he left for jihad show a more secular bent. "Kissing Burns 6.4 Calories A Minute," says one from 2011.
Now he is trying to persuade his family to come and join him in Raqqa, the city on the River Euphrates in Syria that Islamic State has now controlled for a year. "I spoke with my mother and told her to come and stay in this flat on the Euphrates," he wrote.
A Jihadist flag proclaims in Arabic that "There is no God but God and Mohammed is the prophet of God" is flown in the Syrian city of Raqqa (Getty Images)
"She can eat and drink and study, with the family and everything. She replied, 'My son, what would happen if the owners of the flat came back? What will you do then?' I told her not to worry - they are dead and gone."
Friends told local media that he was a member of the local Balance Gym, and that he had always been "funny but respectful".
His page on the social media site VK suggest a young man apparently obsessed with his body (VK.com)
They said they had no inkling of his decision to turn jihadi, though he had once referred to Mr Morsi, whom he previously supported, as an "infidel", reflecting the position of hardline Islamists such as al-Qaeda that the Muslim Brotherhood should not have involved itself in democratic politics.
Members of the Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) conduct a patrol looking for militants of the Islamic State in Iraq (Reuters)
Although he has not replied to requests for interview, he has shown he is aware of the media interest his pictures have aroused, thanking newspapers and television stations for helping to "mobilise" popular knowledge of the cause.
To those who have abused him, he has a simple response: "Some people insulted me but that's normal - it's just nonsense talk," he wrote.
"But there are two people who insulted our religion, and I advise them that when God opens up Egypt to us, if they are still alive, we will hit their delete button."OAKLAND, Calif. -- With Chase Center scheduled to be the new home of the Golden State Warriors in time for the 2019-20 season, the team has submitted a bid to host the NBA All-Star Game, league sources tell ESPN.
The bid submission year is murky. However, league sources say the earliest it would be is for 2021.
The 18,000-seat, privately financed multi-purpose arena that will include a public plaza is currently under construction. It will be located in the Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco.
The Warriors believe the new venue will be a world-class destination, and plan to host many of the most prominent entertainment events on the calendar each year.
With a state-of-the art facility, convenient public transportation options and multiple high-grade hotels that can accommodate the massive All-Star Weekend crowds, sources suggest the Bay Area has a great shot at landing the event for the third time.
The only time the city of San Francisco held the contest was in 1967 when the franchise was based there.
Golden State last hosted the event in Oakland in 2000.
The All-Star Game will be held in Los Angeles for 2018 and in Charlotte for 2019.
Cleveland, Milwaukee, Orlando, Detroit and Houston placed bids for 2020 or 2021. Portland was denied both years due to lack of hotels. Indiana is bidding for 2021.In the next couple of days Repercussus [-R.P-], one of the main US time zone corps in RAZOR Alliance, will be leaving.
This is a significant piece of information because members of that corp include Troyd23 (one of the sitting Troika), one of the <-RZR-> top US TZ military commanders and also one of the <-RZR-> head diplomats.
[-R.P-] also makes up a huge chunk of the current <-RZR-> US TZ and they most likely won’t be able to field as many fleets in that time zone without them. In fact, so far in November the corporation has been involved with over 23 billion worth of kills.
This is confirmed intel directly from the [-R.P-] corp leadership and their plan is to join Goonswarm Federation
The reason for the move is unhappiness over the current state of affairs in <-RZR-> and dissatisfaction with the organizational structure as a whole. I spoke to Dograzor, Diplomat for <-RZR-> alliance and he gave this statement on their behalf;
We are confirming that RP is leaving RAZOR Alliance on friendly terms, we will miss them and we hope that their decision works out for the best for all that are involved.
When asked about the reasons given by [-R.P-] for the move, Dograzor said that RAZOR Alliance would not comment on their internal affairs.
In my opinion Repercussus moving from <-RZR-> to Goonswarm will be a minor adjustment at most and will likely just involve switching comms and restationing with their fellow GSA corps. They will still be part of the CFC and have access to all that entails.
However if <-RZR-> are still trying to prove their prowess both in EvE and as a valuable full member of the CFC then losing this type of active USTZ PVP corp from their ranks will undoubtedly hurt. Whether or not this opens the gates for other corps to leave all depends whether the other corps in <-RZR-> are having the same type of issues that Repercussus has been having with <-RZR->.
Also of note, the person who is responsible for maintaining and paying for all of the <-RZR-> online infrastructure is stepping down and will most likely be quitting EvE for the foreseeable future. This person is not a member of [-R.P-] and it is unknown who will be taking this responsibility in the future. Dograzor of RAZOR alliance could neither confirm nor deny this information.
If you have anything that you think should be reported on EN24, please contact me at @mail_lite on Twitter, email at [email protected] or EvE Mail me in game.CLOSE The buying landscape has changed and so has the technology. From 3D home mapping to live periscopes, real estate agents are changing the way people search for their next home.
The region's inventory of construction-ready lots has hit an all-time low, new data reveals.
A home sold sign at a Nashville area subdivision. (Photo: AP) Story Highlights Nashville nearly tied with Portland, Ore. for the worst supply of homebuilder lots among large cities nationwide, according to Metrostudy.
Over the next five years, roughly 88,000 lots need to be developed across the Nashville region to ensure an adequate supply, according to MarketGraphics.
Areas such as Spring Hill, Gallatin, Murfreesboro and Lebanon are seeing an uptake in housing because they're relatively more affordable.
New home construction starts in the Nashville metro area rose 11 percent to a seven-year high of 2,320 in the second quarter.
The Nashville area’s inventory of available housing lots has hit at an all-time low, signaling even higher prices in the region's increasingly expensive real estate market.
Construction began on more than 2,300 Nashville area homes between April 1 and the end of June — a seven year-high that reflects a double-digit jump from the second quarter of 2015, according to new data from Washington, D.C.-based research firm Metrostudy.
Although a sign of a strong market, the explosion of construction in neighborhoods across the region has led to a new challenge: Nashville's developers and builders are struggling to meet demand for new homes.
Metrostudy's new data finds that the supply of vacant lots ready for construction would last just 14 months, the lowest number since the firm began tracking housing in the region. Metrostudy considers an 18-to-24 months supply healthy.
For the area's builders, who can only make Nashville's homes so tall and skinny, the lack of inventory means higher costs when they buy lots from developers. And those increases are passed along to buyers already suffering from sticker shock in many corners of the region.
"It impacts our ability to deliver affordable housing to the market," David Lowry, land acquisition manager with builder David Weekley Homes in Nashville, said about the high costs of developed lots. "And so we're going to see home prices continue to rise until there's an adequate supply of lots available for builders to build on."
In the second quarter, the average prices of a new, detached, single-family home in the Nashville area rose to a record $381,100, up from $346,000 at the same time in 2015, according to Metrostudy's latest field survey. "With prices above the $300,000s, affordability may soon become an issue," said Eugene James, the firm's senior regional director over the Nashville market.
The report shows Nashville with nearly tied with Portland, Ore., for the worst supply of homebuilder lots among large cities nationwide. Among Nashville-area counties, Rutherford, Davidson and Williamson had the lowest months' supply. Sumner and Maury had a balanced number of lots at the end of the second quarter but could soon experience a shortage as well amid pent up demand.
Eugene James (Photo: Submitted)
Over the next five years, roughly 88,000 lots need to be developed across an 11-county Nashville region to ensure an adequate supply, according to a separate tracking by MarketGraphics Research Group Inc.
"The chances of that happening is zero," said Edsel Charles, chairman of the Franklin-based new home market research company.
Charles points to a shortage of housing lot developers in the Nashville area market after the pool dwindled during the Great Recession. At the same time, he said, banks have tightened lending for new subdivisions amid more stringent government regulations that followed the economic crisis.
Pursuing affordability
Buy Photo As new home starts increase, the number of vacant developed lots available to build on decreases (Photo: Tennessean)
In addition to low inventory and high costs of lots, homebuilders say the wet summer has led to delays in preparing building sites. Higher labor and material costs, along with tougher building standards in some municipalities are also among factors driving up new home prices.
David McGowan, president of Nashville-based Regent Homes, cites requiring larger lot sizes and specific exterior materials, such as all-brick home mandates, as examples of such restrictions. He also noted Williamson County's plans to impose an average $10,000 new school impact fee on all new homes.
"New home prices always leads (overall) home prices and therefore sale prices of all of the (existing) homes will increase," he said.
Meanwhile, McGowan said developing a new home community in the Metro Nashville area — from purchase of the land to completion of a building lot — now takes two-to-three years, depending on the county and city. That's 30 percent longer than five years ago, he said. That increased length of time is part of what is fueling more infill home-building across the region, since such homes can be built more quickly.
David McGowan (Photo: Submitted)
Lowry, of David Weekley Homes, said the higher cost of land is forcing consumers further outside of the Nashville area to find affordable housing. Areas such as Spring Hill, Gallatin, Murfreesboro and Lebanon are seeing an uptick in housing because consumers can buy a larger house for their money there.
In White House, Tenn., Goodall Homes has 130 people on the interest list for its 51-lot Settlers Ridge community. "As prices continue to rise, it's pushing things more away to where land is less expensive," said Chris O'Neal, chief sales officer with the Gallatin-based homebuilder that's now part of Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary Clayton Homes.
Pent-up demand
Reflecting strong demand for new homes in the overall Nashville area, Carbine & Associates has sold all seven homes it started building earlier this year at the Tollgate Village subdivision in Thompson's Station in Williamson County. The homebuilding company has also sold all eight townhomes that it started building late last year in The Nation's neighborhood in West Nashville.
"If it's the right price points, they will sell very quickly," said James Carbine, president of the Franklin-based company that bears his name.
Brandon Jenkins (Photo: Submitted)
Carbine said his company is in a good position with lots because it develops its own home sites. Having its own utility division prevents delays other homebuilders have faced in preparing lots because of a shortage of subcontractors to install infrastructure for the home sites, he added.
Brandon Jenkins develops high-end lots through Brentwood-based Grove Park Land Co. and builds custom homes through Grove Park Construction.
He's seen demand and rising costs of land, labor and materials push the price of building new luxury, custom homes in west Brentwood to the $300 to $400 per-square-foot range or between $1.4 million and $4 million overall.
"The buyers are affording it now, but I'm worried that the end price, if it keeps escalating, is going to price a lot of buyers out of the market," Jenkins said.
Reach Getahn Ward at 615-726-5968 and on Twitter @getahn.
#NEW NASHVILLE
Music City is transforming at a breathtaking rate. In a series of stories launched earlier this year, The Tennessean has set out to chronicle Nashville's explosive growth and what it means for the city's economy, its culture and, most importantly, its people.
Read or Share this story: http://tnne.ws/2bQvxmjCartography is as much art as it is science. A map can use the best data and most sophisticated analyses but is ineffective if the reader can’t understand the story behind it. However, unless you’re Leonardo da Vinci, being both an artist and a scientist doesn’t come naturally, so we’ve found two maps that demonstrate how colors, labels, boundaries, and symbols can help you create a powerful map.
Though this image looks like it could be a picture of a rectangular-shaped petrii dish growing a family of bacteria, it’s actually a map of Washington Park in Denver, Colorado.
Each orange dot represents either a tree or a location of interest, the blue lines depict trails or roads, and the amorphous blobs (technically called polygons) are supposed to be ponds.
However, without proper labels, coherent boundaries, or an intuitive color scheme, it’s difficult to see what’s going on, let alone be able to use the map for a game of Ultimate Frisbee or a Sunday picnic.
Ah, much better. This map looks much more like a park because it follows three key design principles:
Colors should align with expectations. Here, the grass is light green, the ponds are light blue, and instead of being an unnerving shade of orange, the trees are now dark green. Labels should be hierarchical. Notice, for example, that the streets adjacent to Washington Park are named. The second map retains those labels but fades them into the background, emphasizing the interior of the park itself. Positioning should match the map’s intent. Because the map is designed for visitors to navigate the park, the walking paths and locations of interest are clarified and labeled. Likewise, instead of cluttering the map with words, the cartographer uses symbols (and a key) to depict the various activities available, which gives the map the same simple and expansive feeling as the park itself.
This map looks like a snapshot from halfway through The Oregon Trail, when a few of the covered wagons have finally made it West but most are still chugging through the East Coast and the Great Plains. In fact, it’s a map of every county in the United States, and it makes a very important point — but what could it be?
This map clearly has a point to make, and it does so by employing three more key visual design principles:
Add additional variables to tell a story. By showing both the median cost of rent (height) and the percent of income spent on rent (color), the map, called a bivariate map, implicitly tells a complex story about how affordability differs by region. Incorporate shapes to de-clutter the map. Though the first map has just as many points as the second, the former feels cluttered because each county is represented in an identical way. By expanding the range of visual options, the cartographer actually makes the map more legible. Use features that emphasize unexpected data. It’s well understood that major cities are expensive to live in, but what’s surprising about this dataset is the outliers. For example, a county in northern Salt Lake City has a high median rent, but it’s relatively cheap for people in that area. Conversely, residents in many counties around Milwaukee give a lot of their paycheck to their landlords, even though the property isn’t that costly in absolute terms.
This post was based off the work and research of Mamata Akella, the Senior Cartographer at CARTO. You can watch her full talk, All about the carto in CARTO at the Location Intelligence Summit to learn even more principles to apply to your map making process.
Don’t forget to share this post on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin!The recent attacks in Brussels have once again raised a difficult question: How do we combat terrorism? It’s a complicated problem, and there are no easy answers, but almost everyone agrees that violence is necessary. Even the most dovish liberal generally concedes that force in defense of freedom is an unfortunate – but inescapable – reality. This is especially true when confronted by groups like ISIS or al-Qaeda.
Dustin Howes is the David J. Kriskovich Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Louisiana State University. A political theorist, Howes studies the origins and utility of nonviolence. Much of his work is devoted to developing a theory of pragmatic pacifism, one free of religious and moral justifications. His new book, “Freedom Without Violence,” explores the history of violent and nonviolent attempts to gain political freedom and challenges the notion that violence is an indispensable tool.
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Recently, Salon corresponded with Howes about the book. We asked him why he thinks a conversation about the relationship between violence and freedom is needed. Our conversation is below and has been edited for clarity and length.
In your new book, “Freedom Without Violence,” you challenge the conventional view that violence is necessary to defend and exercise political freedom. What’s your argument, and how is it unique?
Well, there are a number of ways freedom is thought to require violence in conventional wisdom, in the histories we tell ourselves, and in the work of some of the most influential thinkers across the ideological spectrum. The impetus for writing the book was a conversation I had with a friend back in 2006. The justifications for the war in Iraq had evolved over time but one thing that remained consistent among the Bush administration rhetoric was the idea that we were fighting for freedom – either defending our freedom, which was supposedly threatened by weapons of mass destruction, or fighting for the freedom of Iraq, which we had “liberated” by overthrowing Saddam Hussein. My friend and I both opposed the war but he thought the freedom rhetoric was just window dressing. Nevertheless, it seemed to be very effective as an argument for the war and I had not heard opponents of the war adequately counter it. This got me wondering about the origins of the idea that violence and warfare are necessary for freedom and had me thinking that perhaps there was something wrong with how we use the word freedom, if it could justify this war.
The book is basically what I found in my investigations, along with an attempt to recover the lost, or at least deemphasized, connection between nonviolence and freedom. I found that freedom is usually thought to require violence for one of three reasons. The first reason is liberation from oppressive governments. The signature revolutions of the last few centuries are said to be founding moments in the history of freedom, although which ones – if any – count as being “truly” about freedom depends on one’s political perspective (I focus on the American, French, Haitian, and Bolshevik revolutions). The second reason violence is said to be necessary for freedom is to conserve or defend freedom once it is established. The history of this idea is complex, but in the seventeen century, when the very concept of the sovereignty of the modern liberal state was being formed, the violence of the police and the military were legitimated in the name of freedom. Finally, the oldest and perhaps most pernicious connection between freedom and violence is the idea that the free should rule over slaves and barbarians. This idea probably originated in ancient Athens but we see it expressed most dramatically in modern times in the form of the nationalist and socialist ideas that eventually became totalitarian.
Although these ideas are formidable, the counter-tradition I resuscitate offers some powerful rejoinders. On the issue of liberation, the abolitionist movement and the women’s movement that grew out of it have accomplished more for freedom than all of the violent revolutions combined, if we consider raw numbers of people or the portion of humanity effected. The worldwide abolition of slavery was achieved almost entirely with nonviolent means (our Civil War being an exception to the rule) and the great strides in women’s rights have been made without a single violent revolution. Moreover, nonviolent revolutions, from the Velvet Revolutions in Eastern Europe, to the overthrow of dictators in the Philippines, Chile, South Africa, and Egypt, to name a few, demonstrate that civil resistance can topple even the most brutal authoritarian regimes. Nonviolence has also been used to preserve and defend freedom. The oldest and still perhaps most astonishing examples of this come from the Roman republic, where the plebs refused to fight wars and even vacated the city en masse to preserve their freedom in the face of encroachments by the patricians. But in relation to the modern liberal state, ideas like civilian defense and restorative justice as alternatives to military defense and the prison industrial complex hold promise. Finally, I try to develop a concept of nonviolent rule that challenges the idea that those who rule themselves are somehow fit to rule over others.
In your last book, “Toward a Credible Pacifism,” you talk about pacifism not in moral terms but rather as a distinct form of politics – what do you mean by that?
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For good reason, the people we most readily associate with pacifism and nonviolence, like Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi tend to emphasize the moral superiority of nonviolence compared to violence. Claiming the moral high ground is good political strategy. Judith Butler wrote of nonviolence that it is “a carefully crafted ‘fuck you.’” I would not frame it quite so cynically. But I would say that emphasizing the moral dimensions of nonviolence tends to obscure the ways in which the methods of King and Gandhi tell us something about how politics works.
There’s a lot of confusion surrounding the terms nonviolence, civil disobedience, and pacifism – they seem to overlap in many ways. What are the differences? And why are those differences significant in your view?
There is a long history at work with all three terms and let me add another, which seems to be the favorite of the Peace Studies community at the moment: civil resistance. Many advocates of nonviolence outright reject the term pacifism because it too often connotes passive submission to oppression. I have called this “perverse pacifism” because it originated in an interpretation of Christianity that tried to square the Roman Empire with the message of Christ after the conversion of Constantine.
However, I think each term is useful and would distinguish them is this way. Pacifism is the ideological position, based on a range of ideas about politics, ethics, and the social, which holds that physical violence is never necessary. Nonviolence refers to the extraordinarily wide range of methods that people have developed that eschew or replace physical violence. Gene Sharp famously catalogued 198 such methods, from strikes to boycotts, and demonstrations to setting up alternative governments. Civil disobedience is when an act of nonviolence involves knowingly breaking the law and willfully submitting to the consequences even while declaring the punishment to be unjust. Civil resistance refers to any constellation of nonviolent methods that aim to overthrow a particular regime or achieve a particular political goal.
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Most people think of nonviolence as a domestic political tool (i.e. a Civil Rights struggle), not as something with broad applications in international politics. Is that a mistake?
Regardless of what one thinks of the Arab Spring or the Velvet Revolutions they undoubtedly transcend domestic politics in both the way they spread and their implications. Gandhi led the movement that eventually pulled away the cornerstone of the British Empire. One of the organizations I admire most, Combatants for Peace brings together former Israeli and Palestinian fighters who are now committed to nonviolence. The late Jonathan Schell referred to the growing awareness of nonviolence among the people of the world as a “new superpower” that made the world “unconquerable.”
There’s a well-known Mao quote: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” I imagine many of our readers will tacitly agree with this statement – do you?
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No. And I can use Mao’s ascendance to prove it. Mao came to power through what is perhaps the greatest strategic retreat in the history of warfare. The Long March involved trying to avoid direct engagement with the Nationalists while cultivating support among the rural areas the Communists traversed. Mao laid down strict rules for his soldiers regarding the treatment of the civilian population. The more the Nationalists used their guns, the more their power receded from them. If power grew from the barrel of a gun, the much better equipped Nationalists would have defeated Mao. It is important to note that this example is not an exception. Those who study military power have shown with extensive empirical studies the surprising result that better armed sides are not more likely to win wars. Think of the United States’ experience in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Power grows from the coming together of people for a common purpose. Using guns is one way to exercise power but it is not power itself and sometimes drains one’s power.
People intuitively assume that violence is the most reliable – and effective – political instrument. When conversation fails, and we’re left with incompatible goals, it appears violence has the final say. Is that something you dispute in your book?
Yes. While they may disapprove of violence morally, many people believe it is necessary as a “last resort” because of its perceived effectiveness. We know that violence does do certain things with 100 percent effectiveness. There are many forms of physical violence, but let’s just take killing as an example. We know that killing someone prevents them from speaking and acting in the future. If we disagree with what someone or some group says or does, killing them would appear to be a failsafe way of having one’s political preferences prevail. This is what I call the “veneer of reliability.” Why just a veneer? Because the certainty that some people will never again speak or act does not tell us what everyone else will say or do. When people are killed, others may respond with fear and be dissuaded from similar actions – or they might respond in the exact opposite fashion and, out of love and loyalty for the slain, be inspired to be like them. To put it more simply: Dead bodies don’t make policy, but they are almost invariably politicized by those who remain. How this plays out depends not only on how perpetrators interpret their violence but how survivors and witnesses respond and even how those who are killed confront death.
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As your question implies, many people conflate power and violence. But once we realize that killing someone or some group is only effective if people respond to such killing in the desired fashion, we come to see that power is something different. Hannah Arendt defines power as “concerted action” and that seems about right. When people join together in words and deeds, it determines the character of the world and our collective life. Violence is often in the mix, but it is no more reliable – in terms of political outcomes—than other forms of political action.
As a pacifist, how do you respond to questions about Nazism or ISIS or terror campaigns more generally? Force, I’d argue, is the only relevant currency against this brand of nihilism. Such extreme cases, if nothing else, seem to mark the limits of nonviolence.
Your question makes reference to two very different movements and time periods. They may share in common a tendency toward nihilism but I am not sure nihilism explains the core features of either. Unfortunately, liberalism and democracy are also susceptible to nihilism.
The rise of Nazi Germany is among the most frequent examples put forth to suggest nonviolence has its limits. A complete answer to this hard case requires an extensive discussion, which I provide in my first book. I also recommend Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke. In this space, I will just note a few things. The Nazis were experts at violence. They were much better at it than the Allies. They killed millions more people. But they lost. How is this possible? Because they ran out of power, that is, people willing to join with them in common cause. Along these lines there are dramatic examples of people resisting Nazi occupation with nonviolence and having success, from teachers in Denmark refusing to implement a curriculum of propaganda to the Bulgarians who refused to round up fellow Jewish citizens. Yet power exercised with violence is what ultimately stopped the Nazi movement. To really know whether or not nonviolence could have stopped them would require us to run back time and mount an effort of equal coordination, effort, and sacrifice to what the Allies used. Imagining such a scenario, I think nonviolence might have worked and perhaps been faster and less destructive.
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The current situation in the Middle East is equally, if not more, complex. The horrific violence of ISIS would seem to make them quite unappealing. Indeed, judging by the millions fleeing the region, to many they are. Yet they have gained considerable power and understanding why requires looking at the alternatives. We tend to think of the states in the region as our allies in the struggle against ISIS but it is precisely authoritarian governments and foreign intervention that make terrorism appealing to some. You mentioned the “currency of force.” Terrorists and authoritarian regimes may appear to be opposed to one another but in fact they fuel each other. Repression drives terrorism and acts of terror legitimate further repression. What distinguishes ISIS from Al Qaeda is their organizational capacity and planning skills, much of which is drawn from former members of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The great tragedy of Syria is that the extraordinary nonviolent uprising that took its inspiration from Tunisia and Egypt was specifically and intentionally derailed by Assad. We know through internal memos and his actions, such as releasing dangerous prisoners, that he wanted to transform the threat into a violent uprising. This seems counterintuitive until one realizes that governments are much better equipped to handle violent insurgencies than mass popular uprisings.
Some might say that adopting a pacifist posture in a world in which bad people (for lack of a better phrase) are willing to use violence against good people borders on morally irresponsible. I worry that abandoning violence entirely would leave the weak at the whims of the strong. What do you say to that?
I assiduously avoid claims about human nature. I think there is plenty of evidence for both the inherent good and evil of humanity. Aristotle says we are both the best and worst of animals. As for the strong and the weak, it seems to me that, politically speaking, the man who stood in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square in 1989 was stronger than the man in the tank and this would hold true even if the tank had run him over and despite the overall failure of the uprising. Physical strength and political power are two different things.
As for responsibility, one of the distinguishing characteristics of the use of violence, especially among modern political thinkers and actors, is that it is almost invariably said to be someone else’s fault. Violence rarely takes responsibility for itself. As your question suggests, violence is said to be forced upon us by the evil of others. Of course, if one asks those bad people what makes them do violence, we find they too blame the evil of others. One of the great strengths of nonviolence, certainly in the form of civil disobedience, is that while often inspired by injustice and aimed at evil, the practices foreground the idea that even as we disagree we all share responsibility for the character of community.
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You spend a lot of time talking about suffering and the fragility of the human body. Why is that essential to your worldview?
Two reasons. First, I think the modern philosophers and their predecessors in the late Middle Ages who emphasized our mutual physical vulnerability and the unique position that places us in relative to other animals were on to something. Although I draw very different conclusions from our equality of vulnerability, I think it a good baseline for discussion. Take terrorism, for example. If one holds the belief that it is possible or reasonable to expect that governments can make us completely safe from one another, it ignores what I take to be undeniable realities and encourages a perverse form of utopianism that paradoxically gives governments wide berth to do violence.
Second, the experience of human suffering has always been central to pacifism but sometimes in ways that seem to celebrate the mortification of the body. Part of what I am interested in doing is preserving a concern with suffering and holding on to what I think is a very sophisticated understanding of the political significance of suffering while at the same time calling into question some of the heavy moralism that characterizes the pacifist tradition.
What’s your response to those who say human nature and the anarchic international system necessitate war, and therefore violence is an unfortunate – but indispensable – tool?
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Again, I am a committed agnostic when it comes to human nature. The idea that the world needs violence because there is no world state implies that states are effective at mitigating violence. The vast majority of states live in |
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With Baobab you get a bit more freedom. With a Baobab tree you already have an API for changing the state and trigger an update (change) event. In other words, you do not need to create methods to change the state like you would in a store. Also considering that you only have one state tree there is never a dispatch to a sequence of handlers. What I mean by that is that in Facebook flux you can have multiple stores that reacts to the same action dispatch. A waitFor method allows you to let other handlers run before the current one. This is not necessary with a Baobab tree. Also by having one state tree you prevent circular dependencies and you will always have one method describing the intent of a specific action. In my opinion this gives you a better overview of what happens when an action is triggered.
So to compare this with an architecture using Baobab it will look more like this:
Architecture using Baobab |------------| |-> | State tree | --| | |------------| | | v |---------| |------------| | Actions | <------ | Components | |---------| |------------|
The actions are the business logic of your application. Actions will probably depend on other modules to run business logic, like fetch for http request etc. But you state tree does not depend on anything. Your components will only depend on a single state tree, other components and maybe you have some helpers etc. This gives a very simple overview of how your application works. Lets expand and take another look:
Architecture using Baobab |------------| |-> | State tree | --| | |------------| | | v |---------| |------------| Q, fetch etc. ---> | Actions | <------ | Components | <-- ClassHelper etc. |---------| |------------|
As we can see the State tree is left all alone. It lives at the top of your application where actions changes it and components grab those changes from it, when notified. So let us move on to the “Actions” part of this architecture. There really is not much to it. It is just a module you define with methods that has access to the state tree.
var stateTree = require('./stateTree.js'); var actions = { addItem: function (item) { stateTree.select('items').push(item); } }; module.exports = actions;
So this is a very simple action. Lets ut look at something a bit more complex, but before we do that lets talk about how you would structure the state of your application in a Baobab tree.
Application state
Traditionally I think we web developers has thought of state as a session object and/or entities in a database, and with good reason, that was all the state we had in traditional server side web applications. When more advanced web applications were developed in the client we got some new state we could control, application state. Application state is everything from your list of todos to UI loading state. So with Baobab, all state related to your application goes into the tree.
So how would you go about structuring this state in the tree? There are many ways to do this, and I can not tell you what is the best way to do it. That depends on the project and what you feel comfortable with. But I will give you some alternatives, as food for thought.
var Baobab = require('baobab'); var stateTree = new Baobab({ models: { notifications: [], contacts: [] }, views: { createContact: { isLoading: false } } }); module.exports = stateTree;
In this setup we have chosen to split by models and views, which are our traditional state concepts in modern web applications. Anything related to entities are put in the models domain space and everything related to UI state is put into views. Models might not come to much of a surprise, but maybe views does. The reason you would want to define views is that you probably have many components building up one view. By putting this state into your state tree you ensure that any changes to those components, or the addition of new components, all relate to the tree. Not each other.
var Baobab = require('baobab'); var stateTree = new Baobab({ admin: { notifications: [] }, home: { posts: [] } });
In this setup we have chosen to split up the tree by sections of your application. I would suggest this kind of setup for larger applications. This will make it easy to let components that are part of specific sections of your application to listen for state changes they relate to, but again would allow for “cross section state”. Maybe the home section would want to display the number of notifications. That would not be a problem.
var Baobab = require('baobab'); var stateTree = new Baobab({ notifications: [] }); module.exports = stateTree;
A third setup could be just adding state directly to the tree. This would be for smaller applications.
My message here is that there is no specific structure for building state. State structures differs as much as applications differs. But now you have a concept where you do not have to divide your state artifically to avoid circular dependencies, you do not have to use a waitFor method that makes your code harder to reason about and you can easily change the structure of your state as your application grows. That is great!
A bit more complex example
A process I have become a fan of is boxing in your layout to define components. This is introduced in Thinking in React. What I noticed is that you can use this concept to also define your Baobab state tree. Let us use the “Thinking React” example to define the Baobab state tree, but let us also get that data from the server:
stateTree.js
var Baobab = require('baobab'); var stateTree = new Baobab({ query: '', onlyProductsInStock: false, products: [] }); module.exports = stateTree;
Our actions could look something like this:
actions.js
var stateTree = require('./stateTree'); var ajax = require('ajax'); module.exports = { showOnlyProductsInStock: function () { stateTree.set('onlyProductsInStock', true); }, showAllProducts: function () { stateTree.set('onlyProductsInStock', false); }, searchProducts: function (query) { stateTree.set('query', query); ajax.get('/products', query).done(function (products) { stateTree.set('products', products); }); } };
Thats it! We have pretty much created a “backend” for our components. An API our components can use to ask for changes, much like you would communicate with a backend API. The changes are reflected in the components by the authority of the state tree. What is kind of cool about this is that you can very easily store this state in local storage so the user will get right back to where they were coming back:
main.js
var stateTree = require('./stateTree'); window.addEventListener("beforeunload", function(e){ localStorage.state = JSON.stringify(stateTree); }, false);
Optimizing
A very nice feature with Baobab is that it lets you very easily control rendering. By adding two options to your Baobab instance React JS will only render components when it actually needs to.
var Baobab = require('baobab'); var ReactAddons = require('react/addons'); var stateTree = new Baobab({ notifications: [] }, { mixins: [ReactAddons.PureRenderMixin], shiftReferences: true }); module.exports = stateTree;
These options does two important things.
The PureRenderMixin from React addons will ensure that the component will only render if the props passed to it or its own state has actually changed When Baobab changes a value in the tree it will propagate up and give all objects and arrays new references. The Baobab tree is immutable in that sense. That way a shallow check by PureRenderMixin is enough to verify that a render is needed. The nice thing is… you do not have to think about it!
So why does this matter? Lets have a look at how React JS renders and you will see what these two options fix.
1. React JS cascading renders
One important detail about React JS that is often overlooked is how setState on a component affects the nested components. When you use setState the nested components will run a check to verify if they need to update the DOM. That means if a change event is being listened to on your application root component and a change event is triggered from the store, all your components will do a render and a diff to produce any needed DOM operations. Lets visualize this:
[Cascading render] |---| | X | - Root component renders |---| | |----|---| | | |---| |---| | X | | X | - Nested components also renders |---| |---|
But if a nested component does a setState it will not affect parent components.
[Cascading render] |---| | | - Root component does not render |---| | |----|---| | | |---| |---| | | | X | - Nested component renders |---| |---|
This actually means that you could get away with only pointing to the state tree on the root component and then grab state directly from it in all other components, without attaching cursors. The drawback is that the whole application would render on all state changes.
2. Repeated rendering
What is even more important to understand about setState is that using a general change event will not only cause cascaded rendering but will also cause repeated rendering in components. Let me explain:
[Repeated rendering] |---| | | - Root component listens to change |---| | |----|---| | | |---| |---| | | | | - Nested components listens to change |---| |---|
When a change event now occurs the root component wil first trigger a render:
[Repeated rendering] |---| | X | - Root component reacts to change event and rerenders |---| | |----|---| | | |---| |---| | X | | X | - Nested components render |---| |---|
And after that, the nested components will actually rerender themselves again:
[Repeated rendering] |---| | | |---| | |----|---| | | |---| |---| | X | | X | - Nested components react to change event and rerenders |---| |---|
Now if there were deeper nested components this would cause the same effect, but with even more repeated rendering due to each nested level causes an extra rerender.
Thankfully you do not have to worry about this at all when using Baobab.
Isomorphic app
There is a lot of talk about isomorphic apps. An isomorphic app is able to render your application on the server and pass the complete HTML of it on the first request. Then React JS takes over on the client side. The examples shown this far is optimized for rendering on a “non-isomorphic” app. If you do want to explore this concept you would have to do something like this:
client side
var React = require('react'); var stateTree = require('./stateTree.js'); var AppComponent = require('./AppComponent.js'); var renderApp = function () { React.render(<AppComponent state={stateTree.get()}/>, document.body); }; stateTree.on('update', renderApp); renderApp(); module.exports = AppComponent;
server side
var React = require('react'); var defaultState = require('./defaultState'); var AppComponent = require('./AppComponent.js'); var html = React.renderToString(AppComponent({state: defaultState})); // Pass html as response
This effectively passes a state prop through your top component. The top component then has to pass this further down to the other components. This can be tedious and you loose the optimized rendering. There are developments in React JS, like withContext, which might make this easier to handle. I do not have much experience with this, so please enlighten the readers in the comments below if you do
Summary
As stated in the beginning of this article flux is still evolving. I personally think Baobab has a lot to offer this evolution in regards of all the challenges mentioned. If you have any questions or comments, please fire away in the comments section below. You can read more about Baobab at this repo and take a look at this clip from ReactConf 2015, Making your app fast with high-performance components that also highlights the issue in this article. Thanks for reading!Closing up shop … for now. The Envy by Melissa Gorga boutique is closed temporarily after the Real Housewives of New Jersey star had a “difference of opinion” with her business partner, Jackie Beard Robinson.
Rumors started swirling that the Montclair, New Jersey, retailer was shutting its doors after only a year when customers saw the entire store was empty — but the Bravo star’s rep tells Us that it will reopen in a few weeks with spring inventory.
“Melissa Gorga is and has always been an owner of the Envy by Melissa Gorga boutique,” Gorga’s rep tells Us Weekly exclusively. "Melissa and Jackie have had a difference of opinion on how the store should be run and at this point, Jackie is no longer involved in managing the boutique, but Melissa intends to maintain the success of the boutique by managing it on her own, and she is excited to open with a new inventory of spring fashions.”
A source tells Us that the reality star, 37, hasn’t seen eye to eye with Robinson for a while now, so Robinson decided to go into business with Kim DePaola, who owns Posche and has made cameos on RHONJ. The source says Robinson moved the inventory from Envy to DePaola’s store.
According to the source, the Love Italian Style: The Secrets of My Hot and Happy Marriage author disagreed with Robinson over spending and how to run the business. “Melissa was unhappy, and she was like, ‘You aren’t operating this store to make a profit. This isn’t working.’ She wanted to dissolve their agreement,” the insider continued. “But Jackie wanted Melissa to just give up her stake and be a paid spokesperson.”
However, DePaola tells Us a different side of the story. “Envy is closed. Jackie was the real owner all along,” she said. “I’m going to help her liquidate everything that was in the store. The store is empty. They stripped the chandeliers, the furniture, the computer, the cameras, all the clothes, it’s all gone. Jackie stripped it all because she owns it.… We’re going to have an Envy liquidation sale at Posche, the new Posche in Allendale.”
DePaola claimed that Gorga was never a true owner in the business. "Melissa made a deal with Jackie that she would promote, she would put pictures of herself on Instagram and she would get a percentage of what was sold,” she told Us.
While Envy at first was completely empty, the storefront was later covered in paper with a sign that said, “Temporarily closed for inventory. Will reopen very soon."
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Want stories like these delivered straight to your phone? Download the Us Weekly iPhone app now!5 of 19
Mike Roemer/Associated Press
Scheme: West Coast
Starter: Jordy Nelson
NFL1000 Scores: 71.1/100
NFL1000 Position Rank: 12/155
Returning from a torn ACL, Jordy Nelson won the NFL's Comeback Player of the Year honors in 2016. He scored the second-most touchdowns of his career (14) and finished with more than 1,200 yards for the fourth time in his nine-year career. Nelson was able to pick right up where he left off in 2014.
Nelson doesn't have elite quickness or speed, but he's such a reliable target for Aaron Rodgers against any type of coverage. Nelson knows how to win off the line of scrimmage and possesses some of the best body control in the league. He knows how to work on the boundary and separate at the last second to create space.
As fantastic as he was in 2016, he seemed to tail off at the end of the year. He's still Rodgers' favorite target, and that will allow him to be productive again in 2017 at age 32. The Packers will eventually need to draft his replacement on the outside, but Nelson has a few quality years left in Green Bay.
Starter: Davante Adams
NFL1000 Scores: 67.6/100
NFL1000 Position Rank: 42/155
Adams became a full-time starter in 2016 after struggling in his first two years in the NFL. The third-year receiver out of Fresno State barely missed 1,000 receiving yards (997) but scored a career-high 12 times in 2016. In the first two years of his career, he struggled with the playbook, and you could see he was overthinking every move he made. But in 2016 his confidence was restored, and he was an important part of the Packers' late-season run.
What 2016 showed was that Adams does have talent. There are still parts of his game that need cleaning up, such as the maddening concentration drops and his ability to read coverages. But he can get open fairly easily and has the explosion to make plays after the catch. At just 24 years old, Adams has a bright future ahead of him.
Starter: Randall Cobb
NFL1000 Scores: 67.3/100
NFL1000 Position Rank:: 45/155
After a breakout season in 2014, Randall Cobb signed a four-year, $40 million contract. Since signing his contract, Cobb's play has fallen off in large part due to injuries that have limited him. In the past two seasons, he's failed to crack 900 receiving yards in each and has only scored 10 total touchdowns after scoring 12 in 2014.
Cobb turns 27 this year and needs to play drastically better in 2017 to stay in Green Bay. He's the 15th-highest-paid receiver in the league, but he's just a slot receiver for the Packers. Injuries hurt him in 2016 as he lacked explosiveness. He wasn't making plays after the catch and was no longer a dynamic weapon on offense. Instead, he looked like a plodding slot receiver. 2017 will be a big year for Randall Cobb, as he needs to show that he still has the burst to be an elite weapon out of the slot.
Backup: Geronimo Allison
NFL1000 Scores: Did not have enough snaps to qualify
As an undrafted free agent out of Illinois, Geronimo Allison caught 12 passes for 202 yards in his rookie year. Allison surpassed hype machine Jeff Janis on the depth chart and proved he has a future on the Packers offense going forward. His lack of speed will always limit him, but there's a chance he could develop into the Packers' third receiver down the road.
Backup: Jeff Janis
NFL1000 Scores: Did not have enough snaps to qualify
Despite all of the athleticism and offseason hype, Jeff Janis has failed to record 100 receiving yards in a season in his first three years of the NFL. He's not likely to develop into anything more than a special teams player throughout his career.
Team Need: 5/10
Potential Draft Fits: Zay Jones (East Carolina), Chad Hansen (Cal), JuJu Smith-Schuster (USC)Update: 3:00 p.m. MST
PHOENIX — Same-sex marriage became legal in Arizona on Friday, a sharp turn for a state that became ground zero in the clash over gay rights less than a year ago when the state Legislature passed a bill allowing businesses to deny service to gays and lesbians.
Same-sex couples lined up to marry at the courthouse in downtown Phoenix immediately after Attorney General Tom Horne announced that the state wouldn’t challenge a federal court decision that cleared the way for same-sex unions in the state.
David Larance and Kevin Patterson, who were among the couples who sued to overturn Arizona’s ban, reflected on the effect of the ruling. “The best way I can describe it, is that it gives me such peace of mind,” Patterson said, choking back tears.
Shortly after, they were married to cheers on the courthouse lawn. “This is a great day,” Patterson said. “I never thought this would happen in Arizona.”
The decision bookends two weeks of nonstop court rulings across the nation, with judges striking down bans on same-sex unions and conservative state officials pushing back in a struggle that has increasingly gone in favor of gay marriage supporters.
Since Oct. 6 – when the U.S. Supreme Court let stand rulings that struck down gay marriage bans – same-sex couples have begun to wed in several new states.
In the West, for example, couples have since tied the knot in Alaska, Arizona, Idaho and Nevada, making Montana the lone state under the jurisdiction of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals where same-sex couples haven’t legally wed.
The federal government, meanwhile, announced Friday morning that it will recognize same-sex marriages in seven new states and extend federal benefits to those couples, which brings the total number of states where gay and lesbian unions have federal recognition to 26, plus the District of Columbia.
Based on the flurry of recent court decisions, including Arizona’s ruling Friday, more than 30 states now extend marriage rights to gay couples, and cases are pending in several others.
Arizona’s governor, Jan Brewer, said in a statement that federal courts have thwarted the will of voters and eroded the state’s power to regulate laws.
“Simply put, courts should not be in the business of making and changing laws based on their personal agendas,” Brewer said. “It is not the role of the judiciary to determine that same-sex marriages should be allowed.”
The issue has long been a source of tension in Arizona. Nearly eight months ago, Brewer vetoed the bill…
This Story Filed UnderNEW ORLEANS -- Thursday's shooting on I-10 pushed the number of shooting victims in New Orleans to more than 300.
Last year, the city didn't hit that grim milestone until early August.
The Level One Trauma Center at University Medical Center is now averaging about three shooting or stabbing victims a day.
"The human toll is extraordinary," trauma center Medical Director Dr. John Hunt said. "There definitely has been an up tick in penetrating trauma. That does actually tax the system a little bit more than other types of trauma."
Dr. Hunt says when shooting victims enter the trauma center, they are immediately evaluated by an emergency physician, trauma surgeon and team of medical professionals.
"When we get a level one activation, our highest activation, there's about 15 people that respond immediately," Hunt said. "We have the ability at night to probably run three operating rooms at one time on a dime and then call in personnel to run another probably five to six if we have to."
Before the patient enters the ER, it's up to New Orleans EMS to get the shooting victim to the hospital as soon as possible.
"Our whole goal on the protocol that we work under is that... if we have someone who's shot, we want to be by that patient's side and then en route to the hospital within no more than 10 minutes," EMS Lt. Liz Belcher said. "It can be stressful, for sure, but your training takes over and you do what needs to be done to help everybody that you can."
Belcher added, a lot of the tools and techniques the EMT's and paramedics now use are adapted from combat medicine in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We've taken those different techniques and applied them to street medicine more or less and we found that we're saving lives," Belcher said.
While trained to respond to all kinds of emergencies, both the trauma center doctors and the staff at NOEMS have a simple message for those committing acts of violence in the city.
"Stop it," Dr. Hunt said. "This isn't the way to solve anything."
"Come be a positive part of the community," Lt. Belcher said.
According to WWL-TV crime analyst Jeff Asher, New Orleans hit the 300 shooting victims mark last year on Aug. 3.
He says the city reached that same milestone on Aug. 1, 2015.The Krewe of Orpheus is throwing a musical party in honor of New Orleans' tricentennial at the annual Orpheuscapade Gala.
"New Orleans will have only one Tricentennial," Krewe of Orpheus Captain Sonny Borey. "We decided to honor our 300th birthday by throwing a party that is any music-lover’s dream featuring local musical legends.”
The list of artists includes Deacon John, Trombone Shorty and Irma Thomas. Other headliners could still be added as well. Here's the lineup as it stands now:
· Deacon John
· Trombone Shorty
· Irma Thomas
· Al “Carnival Time” Johnson
· Amanda Shaw
· Dixie Cups
· Big Freedia
· Bonerama
· Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes
· Flowtribe
· No Limits
· Party Crashers
The Krewe founded by Harry Connick, Jr. calls it, "One of the most exciting post-parade bashes in history."
The gala takes place after the Orpheus paraded on Lundi Gras. That's Monday, February 12th this coming Carnival season.
For more information... www.kreweoforpheus.com.Polymorphism in Haskell vs C++
posted on 2014-09-10 by Jonathan Dugan
Parametric polymorphism is when you write one function that works on many data types. In C++, this is pretty confusing, but it’s really easy in Haskell. Let’s take a look at an example.
Let’s say we want a function that calculates the volume of a box. In C++, we’d use templates so that our function works with any numeric type:
template<typename T> T boxVolume(T length, T width, T height) { return length * width * height; }
Templates have an awkward syntax, but that isn’t too much of a hassle. C++ has much bigger problems. What if in the course of writing your program, you accidentally pass in some strings to this function?
int main() { cout << boxVolume("oops","no","strings") << endl; }
We get this error when we compile with g++ :
test.cpp: In instantiation of _T boxVolume(T, T, T) [with T = const char*]_: test.cpp:22:47: required from here test.cpp:8:19: error: invalid operands of types _const char*_ and _const char*_ to binary _operator*_ return length * width * height;
This error message is a little hard to understand because of the templates. If we had written our function to use double s instead of templates:
double boxVolume(double length, double width, double height) { return length * width * height; }
We would get this simpler error message:
test.cpp: In function _int main()_: test.cpp:22:47: error: cannot convert _const char*_ to _double_ for argument _1_ to _double boxVolume(double, double, double)_ cout << boxVolume("oops","nope","bad!") << endl;
We see that this error is shorter and easier to use, as it clearly tells us we cannot pass string literals to our function. Plus there is no superfluous comment about our “instantiation” of boxVolume.
Now let’s try to write a polymorphic boxVolume in Haskell:
boxVolume :: a -> a -> a -> a boxVolume length width height = length * width * height
When we try to compile, we get the error:
test.hs:2:50: No instance for (Num a) arising from a use of `*' Possible fix: add (Num a) to the context of the type signature for boxVolume :: a -> a -> a -> a In the expression: length * width * height In an equation for `boxVolume': boxVolume length width height = length * width * height
Uh-oh! An error message! What went wrong? It says that we tried to use the * operator without declaring our parameters as an instance of the Num type class.
But what is a type class? This leads us to ad hoc polymorphism, also known as function overloading. Ad hoc polymorphism is when a function can be applied to different argument types, each with a different implementation. For example, the STL classes stack and queue each have their own push and pop functions, which, although they have the same names, do different things:
stack<int> s; queue<int> q; s.push(1); q.push(1); s.push(2); q.push(2); s.push(3); q.push(3); s.pop(); q.pop();
After the above code is executed, the stack s will be left with the numbers 1,2 while the queue q will be left with the numbers 2,3. The function pop behaves differently on stacks and queues: calling pop on a stack removes the item added last, while calling pop on a queue removes the item added first.
Haskell does not support function overloading, except through type classes. For example, if we were to specifically declare our own Stack and Queue classes with push and pop functions:
data Stack = Stack [Int] deriving Show data Queue = Queue [Int] deriving Show push :: Stack -> Int -> Stack push (Stack xs) x = Stack (x:xs) pop :: Stack -> Stack pop (Stack []) = Stack [] pop (Stack xs) = Stack (tail xs) push :: Queue -> Int -> Queue push (Queue xs) x = Queue (x:xs) pop :: Queue -> Queue pop (Queue []) = Queue [] pop (Queue xs) = Queue (init xs)
It results in a compiler error:
stack.hs:11:1: Duplicate type signatures for `push' at stack.hs:4:1-4 stack.hs:11:1-4 stack.hs:12:1: Multiple declarations of `push' Declared at: stack.hs:5:1 stack.hs:12:1 stack.hs:14:1: Duplicate type signatures for `pop' at stack.hs:7:1-3 stack.hs:14:1-3 stack.hs:15:1: Multiple declarations of `pop' Declared at: stack.hs:8:1 stack.hs:15:1
Changing the names of our push and pop functions to, say, stackPush, stackPop, queuePush, and queuePop would let the program compile.
A more generic way, however, is to create a type class. Let’s make a Sequence type class that implements our push and pop functions.
class Sequence s where push :: s -> Int -> s pop :: s -> s
This type class declaration says that any data type that is an instance of this Sequence type class can use the push and pop operations, or, in other words, can add and remove an Int. By making our Stack and Queue instances of the Sequence type class, both data types can have their own implementations of the push and pop functions!
instance Sequence Stack where push (Stack xs) x = Stack (x:xs) pop (Stack []) = Stack [] pop (Stack xs) = Stack (tail xs) instance Sequence Queue where push (Queue xs) x = Queue (x:xs) pop (Queue []) = Queue [] pop (Queue xs) = Queue (init xs)
Replacing our function definitions with these instantiations of the Sequence type class lets our program compile.
Type classes are also an important part of using templates in function definitions. In our function boxVolume, we got an error because we tried to use the * operation without declaring the type variable a as an instance of the Num type class. The Num type class is basically for anything that acts like a number, such as Int, Float, and Double, and it lets you use the common operations of +, -, and *.
Let’s change our function to declare that a is a Num :
boxVolume :: (Num a) => a -> a -> a -> a boxVolume length width height = length * width * height
This is called adding a class constraint. Whenever we want to declare a template function that relies on other functions, we have to add a class constraint that tells both the user and the compiler which types of data can be put into the function.
If we were to call boxVolume on strings, we would get this simple error message:
ghci> boxVolume "a" "b" "c" <interactive>:14:1: No instance for (Num [Char]) arising from a use of `boxVolume' Possible fix: add an instance declaration for (Num [Char]) In the expression: boxVolume "a" "b" "c" In an equation for `it': it = boxVolume "a" "b" "c"
The compiler tells us it can’t evaluate this function because strings aren’t numbers! If we really wanted to, we could make String an instance of the Num type class, and then this function would work! (Of course, why you would want to do that is beyond me.) That’s the power of parametric polymorphism combined with type classes.
So there you have it. In C++, although we can easily implement ad hoc polymorphism through function overloading, parametric polymorphism is a tricky beast. This is made easier in Haskell, especially with the use of type classes. Type classes guarantee that data passed in to functions will work, and guide the user into what they can pass into a function. Use type classes to your advantage when you next write a Haskell program!(RNS) Give these billboards credit: They don't hedge their bet.
Judgment Day is coming May 21, 2011 -- not sometime this decade, not sometime this year, but precisely on May 21.
The hundreds of billboards warning unrepentant commuters of their impending doom are courtesy of a California radio station led by 89-year-old Harold Camping, who initially predicted the world would end in 1994.
In New Jersey, about 30 believers paid to erect the signs in hopes of warning and saving their neighbors, said Bob James, a Morristown electrical engineer who organized the grassroots effort.
"Seven billion people are facing their death! What else could I do?" said James, who views the billboards as a message of hope. "When you have this information, with my love for my fellow man, I wanted to tell people."
Warnings of "end times" are cropping up all over. Along Route 15 in Rockaway Township, a handmade sign has a litany of upheaval that could double as a CNN news crawl: earthquakes, tsunamis and war.
"Pray! Pray! Get right. The signs of his coming are here," urges the anonymous prophecy.
Throw in buzz about the Mayan calendar's purported lights-out date of 2012 and it makes for jittery times.
"People love to speculate about the end of the world. It's human nature to want to know when Jesus is returning," said Barbara Rossing, author of The Rapture Exposed and an ordained pastor at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. "But Christ specifically admonishes us, 'Don't try to figure it out."'
She finds Camping's views to be at odds with even those described in the best-selling Left Behind books about the Rapture, when some Christians believe they will be swept up into heaven as those left behind endure years of war and hardship.
"He has some very strange teachings on his website," she said. "This is very odd thinking."
Many May 21 believers say the Bible contains clues that brook no argument. God tells Noah the world will end in seven days; the Bible also equates a day to 1,000 years. The date of the flood has been set at 4990 B.C., so adding 7,000 years plus one for the missing year "0"
produces the year 2011. Translating a biblical reference to a month and day, from the Hebrew calendar to the Gregorian, results in May 21.
"It's no other date. It's only that date," said Michael Garcia, special projects coordinator at Camping's Family Radio enterprise.
The gathering up of saved souls will begin, followed by five months of chaos and tribulation that will serve as a spiritual going-out-of-business sale. It will culminate with the end of the world on Oct. 21.
That is daunting to Anthony Hernandez, a 44-year-old technology worker from Chester Township who runs a monthly Bible study class in his home. Although he devotes himself to proclaiming the message of the May 21 date, he knows that doesn't guarantee his salvation.
"If I find myself here May 22, then I'll be unsaved, because all the believers will be taken," he said. Asked if that scared him, the father of seven answers, "It is scary. I don't know if my children are saved."
He's made no contingency plans for life after May 21, neither booking a summer vacation with relatives, nor stocking up on provisions.
"I've done nothing, because if I'm lost, I'm lost. It's over," he said.
Although the May 21 prediction is widely dismissed, even mocked, Camping's followers see validation in that reaction. After all, Garcia said, Noah met nothing but skepticism when building his ark.
"It probably wasn't even raining at that time," said Garcia, a 39-year-old father of six.
"What was the attitude of everybody else? They scoffed -- and they died," said James, who also sees inspiration in Noah's tale. "So scoffers don't bother me."
Nor is the refusal of mainstream churches to accept their prediction any cause for doubt, for Camping's followers believe most churches are now corrupt.
Family Radio has placed about 1,000 billboards nationally. Garcia declined to disclose the cost, nor how much contributors gave in total, but individual donations ranged from $100 to $5,000.
End-of-the-world predictions are nothing new, said Rossing, who specializes in eschatology, or the branch of theology examining the end of the world.
Baptist preacher William Miller had thousands of followers -- called Adventists -- convinced the date would be Oct. 22, 1844. Many climbed on their roofs in anticipation of their imminent ascension. When that didn't happen, the day became known as the Great Disappointment.
Belief in the discovery of secret information is alluring, Rossing said.
"It's like the decoder ring you found in your cereal box," she said. "You can be the first on your block to decode the Bible."
Kathleen O'Brien writes for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.If the “chicken” in McDonald’s “chicken” nuggets freaks you out, head over to Japan to try the franchise’s newest snack: Tofu Shinjo Nuggets, which officially go on sale this Wednesday.
They don’t include any chicken — instead, they’re made from ingredients including onions, soybeans, carrots and minced fish, a McDonald’s spokesperson told |
equality; he believes homosexuality should be criminalized. Yet Trump not only backed Moore’s candidacy with speeches and robocalls, he also dragged the Republican National Committee into spending money on Moore’s behalf.You know the rap against Donald Trump, right? He's playing to the anger of relatively poor and relatively dumb (read: uneducated) white hicks who are political neophytes. As National Review's Reihan Salam puts it in a column at Slate, "Trump is strongest not in the metropolitan corners of America, where he’s spent most of his life. Rather, his strongholds are the mostly overlooked sections of the South, Appalachia, and the rural and semi-rural North."
That's a comforting myth for Republican activists because they can then pretend that Trump doesn't really represent their party even as he scores yuge wins in primaries of "moderate" states such as New Hampshire.
But as Elizabeth Price Foley points out at Instapundit, it's just not true. The plain fact is that Trump is crushing his GOP competition across all demographics.
I’m not sure what makes Salam think that Americans of “Scots-Irish” descent are poor Appalachian hillbillies with substance abuse problems. This odd racial stereotyping aside, Salam is simply wrong that Trump’s primary support emerges from poor, uneducated whites, an unsupportable myth I’ve written about before that keeps getting repeated by the GOPe and Democrats alike. More importantly, I hardly think that a platform of issues that are important to all Americans–national security, jobs, immigration (all of which are intimately related)–is fairly characterized as a racial dog whistle, unless one believes that these issues are particularly “white” (or more specifically, “Scots-Irish”) issues.
Read more here.
Consider these exit polls from New Hampshire, where Trump smoked his nearest opponent, John Kasich, by close to 20 points. He won both genders, all age groups, all income levels, and all educational levels.
More exit summaries here.
Polls taken last year show that while Trump is particularly strong among less-educated voters, he stacks up very well against opponents across all ideologies and when it comes to education levels, too. From an Los Angeles Times account in December:
About one-third of Republican voters who have a high school education or less back Trump, which puts him far ahead of Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon, who is in second place with that group, at 17%. Ted Cruz at 9%, Sen. Marcio Rubio of Florida at 7% and Bush at 6% round out the top five. But among those with a college degree or more, Trump’s lead is much smaller. He has 21% of the voters in that group, compared with 19% for Carson, 13% for Rubio, 9% for Cruz and 6% for Bush.
Got that: He's more popular among Republicans who went to college than any of the other guys, too. Just not as popular as he is among high-school grads.
Coming out of Iowa, Trump also did well with college grads (he grabbed 22 percent of them to Ted Cruz's 26 percent) and post-grads (20 percent to 23 percent).
More here.
I understand why educated and cosmopolitan Republicans are freaked out by Trump: He's eating the party's lunch at this point.
And he is crass, vulgar, and generally unthinking. The things he says about women such as Megyn Kelly and Carly Fiorina, the way he reveled in Ted Cruz being called a pussy, how he thinks of Mexicans—these are all deeply embarrassing to anyone with any sense of shame or decency. His policies, such as they are, are stupid and embarrassing, revolving mostly around statements of self-aggrandizement and obsessions with masculinity, greatness, weakness, and an ability to bend people to his will.
And yet, the sooner that finely mannered Republicans admit that he pretty perfectly matches their longstanding anxieties and aspirations, the sooner they might either learn to live with him as their presidential nominee or radically alter the party they think he is somehow stealing from them. But to pretend that Trump is not representative of the GOP or has no constituency among coastal, urban elites? Yeah, dream on.Premier Brian Pallister's hold-out position on health funding from Ottawa appears to be threatening federal funding earmarked for a high-tech project promised more than two years ago.
A letter obtained by CBC News, written by a senior Manitoba civil servant and addressed to the federal finance minister's chief of staff, indicates Ottawa is making a link between Pallister's refusal to sign a deal on the federal health transfer and $60 million in funding for the Factory of the Future project.
Premier Brian Pallister's hold-out position on health funding from Ottawa appears to be threatening federal funding earmarked for a high-tech project promised more than two years ago. 1:53
Michael Richards, Manitoba's deputy minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, wrote the letter on Tuesday, expressing concern about what Pallister has described as "linkages" between Manitoba's stance on a health funding deal and other projects.
"These linkages — as I immediately and firmly relayed when you first raised them last Friday — are completely unacceptable to my government. That you were nonetheless instructed to re-assert them yesterday is more than unfortunate," Richards wrote to Richard Maksymetz, the chief of staff to finance minister Bill Morneau.
The Factory of the Future facility is being spearheaded by the National Research Council and would work closely with the private sector on the digitization of industrial processes. The previous federal Conservative government made the initial commitment to the project. The Liberal government maintained funding for the project in its first budget.
NRC says funding for projects still in place
A spokesperson for the National Research Council confirmed Tuesday the funding remained in place in three portions: $5 million in London, Ont., to retrofit the current lab space; $5 million in Montreal to improve operating efficiencies in machining, automation and robotics; and $60 million for a facility in Winnipeg to enable future collaborations and technology platforms for advanced manufacturing.
Intergovernmental Affairs deputy minister Michael Richards says the link between high-tech funding and health care 'introduces unnecessary friction and discord' between Ottawa and Manitoba. (CBC News ) Pallister raised concerns about funding for the Factory of the Future late last year, saying the projects were well along in the other two locations.
The rhetoric between Pallister and the federal Liberals has grown increasingly sharp as Manitoba remains the lone province without a national funding agreement on health care.
Pallister also refused to sign on to a national climate change plan last year as a gesture of defiance to get a first ministers meeting on health funding.
The letter from Richards to Ottawa also refers to Manitoba's holdout status on the climate change agreement as a "linkage," to getting a deal on health funding.
In the letter, Richards calls the federal stance "irreconcilable with any notion of collaborative federalism," and decries the connection between the Factory of the Future funding and the health transfer deal.
"The vulnerable health care needs and priorities of the people of Manitoba are not leverage points to advance other federal policy aims," Richards wrote.
Manitoba has asked Ottawa for increases in funding for Indigenous health programs and to fight chronic kidney disease, as well as cash similar to what the other provinces have received for mental health and home care. There is also a call for separate funding to help the province combat a growing opioid crisis.
Won't respond to 'threats,' Pallister says
Pallister's growing frustration with Ottawa was obvious as he spoke to reporters at the legislature following question period Wednesday.
"Yes, a threat was made to renege on a previous commitment, and we think that's unfortunate," Pallister said.
Premier Brian Pallister's relationship with Ottawa has grown increasingly tense. (CBCv News) As he spoke, the premier grew more direct in his criticism of how the federal government is managing negotiations on health funding, specifically around the Factory of the Future project.
"The withdrawal of previous commitments is not something that emboldens character or smacks of integrity... threatening to break your word is not something that is helpful in a negotiation if you wish to build trust, confidence. And as I say, Manitoba is a small province, but we have the right to be respected and we have the right to be heard," Pallister said.
The premier says the federal government needs to withdraw the threat, calling it "totally inappropriate." He says he's confident Manitoba will receive the same general increases in health-care funding the rest of the provinces are getting, as well as cash for mental health and home care.
The side deals on extra funding remain to be worked out.
Feds fire back
The federal government fired back in a response from Finance Minister Bill Morneau's office. The feds accuse Pallister of linking health-care funding to his refusal to sign a national climate change deal and say there has been an attempt to resolve several issues at the same time.
"It's important to remember that it was the government of Manitoba that linked these issues in the first place, citing health care when they refused to sign the Pan-Canadian Framework on Climate," a spokesperson for Morneau said.
Pallister described a lack of progress for the Factory of the Future until recently as "inaction," but called the latest salvo from Ottawa a "threat" from which the federal government must back away.
CBC News has asked the National Research Council for an update on the status of the Factory of the Future project, but so far has only been provided with a statement outlining the original promises made on the funding to the three locations.David Rudisha covered two laps of Icahn Stadium under his own flowing power. And Mo Farah, he sliced through the eight laps of the indoor mile with his own knife-sharp legs. Galen Rupp crushed the 1500, Silas Kiplagat, Nick Willis, they all propelled themselves very quickly around an oval. But they all had help in the early going from Matt Scherer. Scherer is, or was up until about a week ago, a professional track pacer, one of only a handful of people worldwide who used his speed and finely honed sense of time to help other people run fast. Though he started out as a competitive runner, his resume is filled with other runners' accomplishments.
Why Races Are Better Without Pacers Did you not holler at the screen when wraith-like Meb struck out on his own only eight miles into… Read more Read
Pacers, or rabbits as they're sometimes called (thus the bunny photo loop on his website), are frequently used in track races of 800 meters and longer to standardize the early laps and facilitate lively competition and fast times. Their job is to accurately lead through the first lap or 600 meters in a very specific time, getting the field off to a good start before stepping off the track, in anonymity. The pacer is a visual embodiment of time. Other runners in the field can easily judge their pace by how close they are to the rabbit. In recent years, almost every middle distance and distance world record was set with the help of a pacer. They're not allowed in World Championship or Olympic competitions, which may account for the few world record performances at those events.
While he can accurately click off a 400 to within a couple tenths of a second on the track, Scherer's sense of time pervades his life off the track too: He is acutely aware of passing months and years, the right time to hang back and the right time to move on. On July 19th, Scherer announced his retirement from pro pacing in a tweet from a track meet in Heusden-Zolder, Belgium. I caught up with him by phone to talk about his former career, and what's next.
Coming out of University of Oregon in 2006 with a business degree and a solid mid-distance track background, it sounds like you weren't sold on pursuing competitive running. What made you decide to try it?
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Professional running wasn't really something I was even looking at. But I ran pretty well at the end of my last year, at PAC 10s and NCAAs. A couple agents approached me after that and things started rolling from there. I actually had a 9-to-5 job lined up, so I had to go back and say I didn't want it. I thought I could take a shot at the 2008 Olympic Trials. I talked to Vin Lananna [Associate Athletic Director at UO] and got some direction, and Nike OTC was starting up that fall in Eugene — everything just kind of came together.
When and how did you decide to transition from professional runner to pacer?
I made it to the semi-finals of the Olympic Trials in 2008 in the 800. I was only running 1:46 mids which is ok for the US, but not good enough to make any noise on the world stage or get into Diamond League meets. Like any runner, I had paced a few times, to get into a good race or to make some money, and I had done a good job with it. 2010 was my last year as a competitive runner.
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Few competitive runners commit to full-time pacing because it requires this acceptance that you're not that fast, and that you're not going to improve — was that difficult?
I was satisfied with everything I had done in my competitive career. I mean, I'm a realist. It's not that I thought I wouldn't improve, but even if I got better and was able to get in a few more meets, what's that going to do for me? Maybe make me feel better. I was four years out of school; I needed to make some money. I thought pacing would allow me to stay in the track world and see if I could make that work.
Are there many professional pacers out there? In terms of a career, are there guidelines, a how-to?
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I'm not sure about the marathon world, and the only person I know who is strictly a pacer is Heron Lagat in the steeple. Rudisha usually has his own personal pacer… That's about it. There aren't many because most people are in track to win a gold medal. That's not going to happen being a pacer. As far as how to do it, I talked to my agent, Chris Layne. He wasn't sure it was possible either but he thought we should give it a shot. We didn't know anyone else who was pacing professionally.
Being a pro runner is selfish — training, racing, strategies are all about what's best for you — and being a pro pacer is almost completely selfless. How did you make that mental transition?
It's a different mindset. I treated pacing like a job. I am a competitive person, but I channeled my competitiveness to being the best I possibly could at that job, pacing. The meet director wanted me to hit the time and then get out of the way and let the guys run. I just had a task to do. And I get a lot of satisfaction from seeing other guys do things I couldn't do, and things they thought they might not be able to do. Once I established myself, runners were excited when I showed up because then they felt like they didn't have to think about the first 500 or 600 meters. I got satisfaction from that.
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How do you get the word out to athletes and race directors that you're available for pacing?
It's mostly internal communications between meet directors and agents. My agent sent out a list of athletes along with my name as someone who was available to pace. My first season pacing was indoor 2011. Most of the time, the race director hires me to pace for the entire field. A few times I've paced for one person in the race. Just like the runners, the race director picks up the cost of my travel, hotel and food.
Are you paid to hit certain splits? Go a certain distance? What if you don't hit that split — do you forfeit your fee?
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Yeah, sometimes it's one guy with a lot of accolades who gets to request the pace, but most of the time coaches of the athletes talk to the race director about what splits they want. The race director makes that decision and tells me about it the night before the meet. They ask me to hit this time at 400 and go this far, up to lap-and-a-half in an 800. [Scherer rabbits races between 800 meters and a mile] If I hit the split within half a second, that's acceptable. If the race turns out good, it doesn't matter if you hit the split they requested. Race directors want to put on a good show with fast times. I still get paid even if I don't hit the split because the runners in the field may not feel great. If I see that I have a 10-12 meter lead, I'll slow down to get back into contact. Then maybe I can pull them along again. It's never an issue if we came through slow because sometimes, even if they requested a certain pace, if the runners don't feel good, they're not going to go with me. There's only so much I can do from the front.
As a competitive person, you're out in front in a race — did you ever think about staying in and trying to win?
It never once crossed my mind to continue. If you're hired as a pacer and it's not in the race director's plan to continue, you may not get that job next year. You pretty much do what you're asked.
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Are you judged as a pacer by how accurately and consistently you hit splits (your skill), or by the result of the race (the other athletes' skills)?
A combination of those two things. I gathered those statistics and made that a point of self-marketing. But yeah, part of that was not in my control.
Did you make more as a runner or a pacer? How much did you make in 2013 from pacing [Scherer also got a stipend from Brooks]?
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I wasn't over that hump as a runner, so I made a lot more money pacing than racing. It's typical for the pacer in a Diamond League meet to make what the third through fifth place runners made. As a runner, I couldn't have even gotten a lane in that meet, and with pacing, getting paid is a sure thing, not just if you're having a good day. In 2013, I probably made about $30,000 between February and September.
What's the most difficult thing about pacing?
Being consistent. I didn't always know very far in advance what race I'd be doing so I needed to be in shape and ready to go the whole season. I needed to be able run as fast in February as in August. I couldn't really have an off day or down time during that seven or eight months. I didn't need to be in the best shape of my life — the training was not all that difficult. But I was on call from February to September. I'd get a call on Tuesday asking if I could be in Europe to pace on Friday. I didn't train to run 500 meters; I trained harder than I needed to so it made pacing feel easy. I did strength work because I had to be able to pace three times in week. And I couldn't lose fitness when I traveled. A person who was racing would never have that schedule of back-to-back races in different cities, sometimes on different continents, but that's all part of that switch in mindset. It was my job; I accepted it.
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What was the fastest split you've been asked to hit? The most memorable pacing job?
Fastest was 49 flat in an 800. That was when David Rudisha ran 1:41.74 in New York [adidas Grand Prix, 2012]. Most memorable? Oooo ok, there are two. One was in the middle of I don't know how many races within a few days — Asia, US, Europe — I didn't even know what time zone I was in. It was in Hengelo [Netherlands] in 2012 and a lot of people were focused on getting the Olympic A standards. I hit 50.50 exactly [for 400 meters] to a hundredth of second, which is what was requested. Seven people got the A standard in that race. That was really cool. The second was when I paced a Diamond League meet in London in 2013 in front of 60,000 people in the Olympic Stadium. It was surreal. I thought that must be what it felt like to be an Olympian.
Tell me about this Freelap timing system.
It's a nifty product. It's a sensor you put on the track that automatically splits your watch as you go by so you don't have to hit your watch. It was a good training tool for me, and really accurate, to within a hundredth of a second.
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You got to travel the world on someone else's dime, you're very successful — why retire?
I'm 30 years old. It made a lot of sense this year. I didn't have a real compelling reason to keep doing it, so I thought it was time to move on to the next thing. Even when I was competing, I never wanted to be that athlete who stayed one year too long and started not liking the sport. I didn't want to overstay my welcome. I'm the type of person who's always looking forward to what's coming next.
What's coming next?
In between pacing over the last six or seven years, I've been doing part-time work for Runnerspace, back end content management mostly. So I'll be working full-time for Runnerspace, doing some of that same thing; we'll figure out exactly what I'll be doing as we go. First though, I'm going to take a vacation.
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Vacation? Didn't you just get back from Europe?
Yeah, I paced three races in six days, so I didn't get to do anything. Normally I would try to stay an extra week in Europe at the end of the season and go backpacking. This time, I'm going to Cabo San Lucas [where there is no track].
Photo by Ross DettmanMeet Richard Mourdock, October’s Todd Akin. You might remember Mourdock, the Republican senatorial candidate from Indiana, from back in May, when he ousted incumbent Dick Lugar in the primary. You might not! You’ll definitely remember him now though. Sorry!
In a debate last night, Mourdock shared his gruesome thoughts about abortion and rape: “I just struggled with it myself for a long time but I came to realize: Life is that gift from God that I think even if life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” So it was it also God’s intention that Mourdock look like a sloppily manufactured, oddly pointy chimera of Victor Garber and George W. Bush? Mourdock’s God has strange tastes!
Capitalism’s God, Mitt Romney, has already issued a statement dissociating himself from Mourdock’s remarks. Per the presidential candidate’s spokesperson: “Governor Romney disagrees with Richard Mourdock’s comments, and they do not reflect his views.” Did the topic of abortion simply not come up when Romney decided to endorse Mourdock, then? Don’t Republican men sit around talking about abortion all the time?
Meanwhile, though the “horrible situation of Mourdock’s rape comments,” the Democratic National Committee has conceived—you see what we did there? No? Pay attention, we’re going to do it again—has conceived of a new ad campaign that has a mild shot of swaying undecided female voters toward President Obama.Five months after insisting he still fancied girls, Tom Daley, who came out as bisexual last December in an emotional YouTube video, has made a new announcement: last night, the 19-year-old admitted he only wants to be with men and says he is no longer attracted to women, confirming that he is actually gay. ‘I am a gay man now. I’m definitely gay, not bisexual’, he said, attempting to explain his change-of-heart for Keith Lemon on Celebrity Juice.
This paragraph is a collage of statements from news sources within the last two days. The story, invariably headlined something like ‘Tom Daley: I’m a gay man now’, is all over the web. (I noticed it as a trend on Facebook. At the time of writing, it’s the top one.) With any luck, the patchwork above distills the overarching narrative the press has spun.
Articles show similar patterns. Typically, they open with reminders Daley’s coming-out, in which he ‘insisted’ he liked women while dating a man, was barely five minutes ago; they pointedly note his being 19 (bisexuality, of course, is something teenage); they declare him now to have ‘admitted’ to being simply gay, as the glitterati – Andrew Sullivan, Dan Savage, Richard Lawson – said he would, adding a hundred words or more of gossip-column extraneity.
I’ve felt obliged to write about Daley before, but never quite been able to. As subjects for writing go, he’s always seemed an uninteresting figure – less interesting by far, at least, than a once-bullied, now-adored bilingual queer Olympian should be who lost a parent, was an A-student and photographed Kate Moss and who’s dating an Oscar-winner. I seem to be the only one not attracted to him: the public Daley feels sexless as a Ken doll.
Nonetheless, media’s treatment of him is unsettling – not least its creepy, invasive monitoring of his relationship, an indignity saved usually for royals. This latest headline, clearly, was one the press had ached for months to write in ‘told you so’ self-satisfaction, so nonspecific are the articles below it. Almost none quote what Daley actually said; almost all distort it.
Here is the clip that spurred reports. The entire exchange occurs within the first five seconds.
‘Let’s get right to the crunch here,’ says host Keith Lemon – persona of Leigh Francis, one more straight comic in the David Walliams mould who thinks ‘act queer’ is the fastest route to funny. ‘You’re a gay man now.’ (This is, as has thus far been largely overlooked, a reference to a popular Catherine Tate sketch.)
‘I, ah…’ Daley replies, sounding a bit uncomfortable.
That’s it.
Admittedly, his diction isn’t clear. A proper journalist’s transcription, and well-known journalists have hired me to give them, would render it simply as ‘[indistinct]’: the second word could equally be ‘agh’, ‘ugh’, ‘yeah’, ‘know’ or something else. Outlets desperate for a bi-now-gay-later scoop seem to have rounded it up to ‘am’ – then delved into wild, opportunistic paraphrase of what they hoped he’d said.
Even if Daley had answered ‘I am’, low-brow comedy quiz programmes on ITV aren’t quite the forum for Q&A on nuanced identities. Plenty who sail like me in vaguely bisexual waters would, I think, have shrugged along rather than correct Francis. We’re encouraged to bow to the binary of ‘gays’ and ‘normal people’, to be unfussy about what we’re called: erasure makes stating bisexuality awkward when it comes as a reprimand.
No, Tom Daley didn’t say he’s a gay man. Nor did he ever use the word bisexual, for that matter – but it’s obvious which one the press prefers.
Edit: For those saying Daley’s reply sounded to them like a clear ‘I am’, hear the isolated audio here.More than ever, the sixth man award seems to favor hired guns.
ESPN Forecast: NBA Awards These NBA postseason award predictions are powered by ESPN Forecast.
The list of recent winners includes Jamal Crawford (twice), J.R. Smith and Jason Terry, and this season the front-runner is straight from central casting: Lou Williams, an old-school shot hunter.
Lou Williams
Toronto Raptors
Should win: 33 percent
Will win: 42 percent
Only 42 percent of our panelists think Williams will win, but that puts him far ahead of any other candidate. For a franchise that has had only five All-Stars and few award winners, this one will be sweet, Lou.
Isaiah Thomas
Boston Celtics
Should win: 24 percent
Will win: 18 percent
This sixth man is a one-man offense, and often scintillating. Had Thomas been with the Celtics all season, this might be his award to lose, and maybe he'll win it after all. But getting traded at midseason is usually not something players put on their résumé.
Jamal Crawford
Los Angeles Clippers
Should win: 9 percent
Will win: 19 percent
The defending Sixth Man of the Year has continued to display a knack for making difficult shots, but not enough of them this season -- he's down to 32.7 percent on 3-pointers.
Andre Iguodala
Golden State Warriors
Should win: 16 percent
Will win: 9 percent
Iguodala, the unsung Pippen of his generation, might be a bit overqualified as a sixth man, but that's one more thing that makes the Warriors so great.
Rudy Gobert
Utah Jazz
Should win: 7 percent
Will win: 3 percent
Gobert has the rare hat trick of showing up on three awards pages: Sixth Man of the Year, Most Improved Player and Defensive Player of the Year.
Others receiving votes
Taj Gibson, Manu Ginobili, Nikola Mirotic, Patrick Patterson, Marreese Speights, Rodney Stuckey, Mo Williams, Brandan Wright.
Click below to see ESPN Forecast's 2014-15 award picks:There are many Bitcoin supporters who believe that digital currency is the future and investing in it today can reap huge returns later. The most popular way of owning Bitcoins is through buying on a Bitcoin exchange. Some people may choose to keep them for a longer time horizon while others like to profit by selling them as soon as they find an opportunity. Like any other asset, the principle of buy low and sell high applies to Bitcoins. Interestingly, there are many other ways to earn and own Bitcoins which are different from the buying them on a Bitcoin exchange. Here are a few options which Bitcoin enthusiasts can explore. (See: A Look At The Most Popular Bitcoin Exchanges)
Mining
Bitcoin mining is the process through which Bitcoins are released to come into circulation. In simple words it involves solving a computationally difficult puzzle to discover a new block which is added to the blockchain and receiving a reward in the form of few Bitcoins. The block reward (new Bitcoins) which currently at 25 (it was 50 in 2009 and decreases every 4 years). Back in 2009, when mining began, it took a regular desktop to be able to generate the coins but as more and more Bitcoins are generated, difficulty in the mining process increases. To combat the difficulty level, miners now use faster hardware like Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC), more advanced processing units like Graphic Processing Units (GPUs), etc. (See: What is Bitcoin Mining?)
Receiving As Payment
Another way to earn Bitcoins can be to accept it as a means of payment for products or services sold or provided. Say, you have a small store selling grocery or flowers, just display a sign “Bitcoin Accepted Here” and many of your customers may prefer to pay through this option. The payments with Bitcoins can be made with the requisite the hardware terminal or wallet address through QR codes and touch screen apps in case of a brick and mortar store. It’s easy to accept Bitcoins even for an online business, just add this option along with various other ways like credit card, net banking, etc to pay. Online payments will require a Bitcoin merchant tool (external processor like Coinbase, BitPay) to accept Bitcoin payments. (See: Stores Where You Can Buy Things With Bitcoins)
1:49 Ways To Earn Bitcoins
Working For Them
Bitcoins can be earned on a regular basis by getting paid for a job in Bitcoins. This system is not popular yet and thus has limitations in terms of such offers. Other than working for company, explore the option to be paid in Bitcoins as a self employed person. There are some websites which are dedicated to the digital currency paying jobs. WorkForBitcoin brings together work seekers and prospective employers through its website. Coinality is another job board which features jobs – freelance, part-time, full-time job opportunities for payment in Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Litecoin. Few companies which place job offers on Coinality are Coinbase, bitpay, ripple, secondmarket, etc. Jobs4Bitcoins (reddit.com) is a popular Bitcoin job board. BitGigs is a portal offering a wide range of jobs for payment in Bitcoins.
Interest Payment
Another interesting way to earn Bitcoins is by lending them. Lending can take three forms – direct lending to someone known or through a website which facilitate peer to peer lending where borrowers and lending meet, or lending Bitcoins to some websites that act as banks where you earn a certain interest rate for Bitcoin deposits. Some websites which offer such services are Bitbond, BitLendingClub, BTCjam, etc. However, be sure about the reliability factor while choosing a website offering deposit or peer to peer service; do go through the terms and conditions, research about the location and reputation of the company.
Gambling
Though Gambling is one of the options in the list, it’s not the best way to earn Bitcoins. There are many casinos which offer different options like online lotteries, jackpots, spread betting, casino games, etc to Bitcoin players. It is advisable to stay away from gambling as it is a highly risky way to acquire Bitcoins. (See: How Bitcoin Casinos Work)
The Bottom LineLet’s get the good stuff out of the way above the fold. Raspberry Pi 2 is now on sale for $35 (the same price as the existing Model B+), featuring:
A 900MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU (~6x performance)
1GB LPDDR2 SDRAM (2x memory)
Complete compatibility with Raspberry Pi 1
Because it has an ARMv7 processor, it can run the full range of ARM GNU/Linux distributions, including Snappy Ubuntu Core, as well as Microsoft Windows 10.
BCM2836 and Raspberry Pi 2
Since we launched the original Raspberry Pi Model B, back in 2012, we’ve done an enormous amount of software work to get the best out of our Broadcom BCM2835 application processor and its 700MHz ARM11 CPU. We’ve spent a lot of money on optimising a wide variety of open-source libraries and applications, including WebKit, LibreOffice, Scratch, Pixman, XBMC/Kodi, libav and PyPy. At the same time, the Raspbian project, run by Peter Green and Mike Thompson, has provided us with an ARMv6-compatible rebuild of Debian with hardware floating point support, and Gordon, Dom and Jonathan have spent thousands of hours working on the firmware and board support to make Raspberry Pi the most stable single board computer in the world. It’s worth going back and trying out an old SD card image from 2012 to get an idea of how far we’ve come.
Nonetheless, there comes a point when there’s no substitute for more memory and CPU performance. Our challenge was to figure out how to get this without throwing away our investment in the platform or spoiling all those projects and tutorials which rely on the precise details of the Raspberry Pi hardware. Fortunately for us, Broadcom were willing to step up with a new SoC, BCM2836. This retains all the features of BCM2835, but replaces the single 700MHz ARM11 with a 900MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 complex: everything else remains the same, so there is no painful transition or reduction in stability.
First silicon arrived last year, as we can see in this professionally shot video from bringup night:
Once we were confident that BCM2836 was performing as expected, James designed a series of prototypes, before we settled on the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B that launches today. This has an identical form-factor to the existing Raspberry Pi 1 Model B+, but manages to pack in both the new BCM2836 and a full 1GB of SDRAM from our friends at Micron. All of the connectors are in the same place and have the same functionality, and the board can still be run from a 5V micro-USB power adapter.
Raspberry Pi 2 is available to buy today from our partners element14 and RS Components. Remember you’ll need an updated NOOBS or Raspbian image including an ARMv7 kernel and modules from our downloads page. At launch, we are using the same ARMv6 Raspbian userland on both Raspberry Pi 1 and 2; over the next few months we will investigate whether we can obtain higher performance from regular ARMv7 Debian, or whether we can selectively replace a small number of libraries to get the best of both worlds. Now that we’re using an ARMv7 core, we can also run Ubuntu: a Snappy Ubuntu Core image is available now and a package for NOOBS will be available in the next couple of weeks.
Windows 10
For the last six months we’ve been working closely with Microsoft to bring the forthcoming Windows 10 to Raspberry Pi 2. Microsoft will have much more to share over the coming months. The Raspberry Pi 2-compatible version of Windows 10 will be available free of charge to makers.
Visit WindowsOnDevices.com today to join the Windows Developer Program for IoT and receive updates as they become available.
FAQs
We’ll keep updating this list over the next couple of days, but here are a few to get you started.
Are you discontinuing the Raspberry Pi 1 Model B and B+?
No. We have a lot of industrial customers who will want to stick with Raspberry Pi 1 for the time being. We’ll keep building Raspberry Pi 1 Model B and Model B+ as long as there’s demand for it. Both these boards will continue to sell for $35.
What about Model A+?
Model A+ continues to be the $20 entry-level Raspberry Pi for the time being. Although the new board is called Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, we have no plans to introduce a Raspberry Pi 2 Model A before the end of 2015.
What about the Compute Module?
We expect to introduce a BCM2836-based Compute Module in the medium term, but for now we’re focused on getting Raspberry Pi 2 Model B out of the door.
Are you still using VideoCore?
Yes. VideoCore IV 3d is the only publicly documented 3d graphics core for ARM-based SoCs, and we want to make Raspberry Pi more open over time, not less.
Where does the “6x performance” figure come from?
The speedup varies between applications. We’ve seen single-threaded CPU benchmarks that speed up by as little as 1.5x, while Sunspider is around 4x faster, and NEON-enabled multicore video codecs can be over 20 |
what I did. I got back into bed, and lay there for another hour, staring at the ceiling.
I work in a large organisation, surrounded by clever, funny, like-minded people. I’m sure there are some tossers – there are everywhere, aren’t there? – but I’ve never met them. I have the unalloyed privilege of working in an area whose subject matter fascinates me, and which I spend a good chunk of my free time studying and talking about. My job is a fulfilment of the ambition I had when I left university 25 years ago, and everything should be rosy. So why did I go back to bed that morning?
The age of loneliness is killing us | George Monbiot Read more
I did it because I am lonely at work, and staring at the ceiling for an hour was about as much as I could face. I am a different generation to my immediate colleagues, and I’m their manager. They don’t want to hear about my troubles; they don’t want me being the embarrassing old bloke inveigling my way into their 6pm drinks. And I’m shy and introverted, too (that might come as a surprise to those who know me casually, who doubtless think of me as loud and bumptious, but you don’t need to be a wallflower to be an introvert), so the idea of trying to forge new relationships with people is fraught with horror, even if I know it would be for my own good.
The result is that I feel almost entirely alone at work. There’s no one at the place where I spend much of my waking life to whom I can turn when I want to confide my fears, to moan about the upper echelons, to worry away about what’s happening at home.
But who cares, really? I get paid well to do something I enjoy, and still I’m skiving for an hour first thing in the morning. I should just man up, shouldn’t I? It’s not like I’m homeless or sweeping up litter or any of the other straw men brought up whenever someone in an apparently cushy number has the temerity to say they’re unhappy.
Except it’s not that simple. Workplace loneliness is a real problem, one which is being increasingly recognised, but it’s one we don’t want to talk about – who wants to be the person who opens themselves up to derision by announcing their feeling of isolation to their colleagues?
For 45 or 50 hours every week, I feel isolated
An academic study in 2011, by professors from California State University and Wharton School of Business, explained why workplace loneliness matters. After surveying a sample of 672 workers, Hakan Ozcelik and Sigal Barsade concluded that loneliness at work has a “significant influence on employee work performance, both in direct tasks, as well as employee team member and team role effectiveness rated by both the employee’s work unit members and supervisor”. Admitting to being lonely only made things worse, because the knowledge of another’s disaffection “provided stronger and more negative cues for the co-workers about the overall quality of their relationship with the employee”. Which makes them even lonelier.
The polling organisation Gallup offers employers 12 questions that will test an employee’s engagement at work. One of them is “Do you have a best friend at work?” As Steven Miranda of Cornell University told Fortune in 2014, it all counts to a company’s overall performance because without friends, without a feeling of social connection at work, people make less “discretionary effort” – the bits of work that lift an employee past being the contributor of the bare minimum. “When you walk into the office every morning, you’re either thinking, ‘I’m pumped about being here. I’m going to get so much done,’ or ‘How quickly can 5 o’clock come?’” he told Fortune. “I would bet my bottom dollar that people who are lonely and disengaged at work deliver far less discretionary effort than people who have a support system or a go-to person [at work].”
But how prevalent is loneliness at work? In August 2014 Relate released a study suggesting that 42% of people do not have a close friend at work. Not all of them are going to be lonely, of course, but a chunk of them are. And given that the same survey found that “we’re almost as likely to have daily contact with our colleagues (62%) as we are with our children (64%)”, then it’s evident that what happens at work has an impact on our wider attitudes to life.
In my own case, I used to have two very close friends at work – the kind who you know, after one conversation, you have an important bond with. One was my lunchtime friend – our relationship fulfilled the rules of the “office spouse”. The other was my pint-after-work friend. Both were crucial, I realised, to my happiness at work. Both have now left not just the company, but also the town. And so these days I sit alone in the canteen at lunchtime, reading the paper, and I never go to the pub after work. There are people I work with who I do count as close friends, but they don’t work for my company – they’re clients, or contacts, and while seeing them is a pleasure, it’s not part of my everyday life. For 45 or 50 hours every week, I feel isolated.
Loneliness is dangerous: ignore it at your peril | Philippa Perry Read more
Human resources experts say that employers have to tackle this. Employers should create support systems and “employee assistance programmes”, they “need to create a fun culture in order for employees to feel engaged, and this can be done by making sure there is a good balance of social events and everyday work”. That’s harder for companies to offer in an age of cuts and increasing casual work, of course, and it does raise the dread prospect of “compulsory fun”.
Advice columnists suggest having a bit more get up and go, advising that the shy might “appear aloof or uninterested even if that is not your intention … instead of focusing on your own discomfort, try to do all you can to put the other person at ease”. Right, because, we introverts have never thought of that. Or maybe we just find it almost impossible to do so, except in the most favourable circumstances. One expert advises breaking the ice each morning with a “Hi!”, as if that is a relationship builder, rather than something done by all but the most sociopathic.
I suppose that, for now, I’m resigned to being lonely at work. I wish I were a joiner, but I’m not; I wish I could banter away enthusiastically with people 10 or 15 years my junior, but our lives run on separate tracks. I’m hoping, I guess, for the moment when someone joins the company with whom I click. It only takes one person, but they’re not here now, and I feel bereft.February 3, 2013
2013-02-03T12:00:07-05:00
https://images.c-span.org/Files/858/20130203120243002_hd.jpg
Randall Robinson, founder and president emeritus of TransAfrica, talks about his life, career, and body of work. Mr. Robinson is distinguished scholar in residence at The Dickinson School of Law at Penn State. He received humanitarian awards from UNICEF, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Congressional Black Caucus, among others. During the interview he responded to telephone calls and electronic communications.
Mr. Robinson has written five non-fiction books: Defending the Spirit: A Black Life in America; The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks; The Reckoning: What Blacks Owe to Each Other; Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man from His Native Land; An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President. He has also written the novel Makeda.
Randall Robinson, founder and president emeritus of TransAfrica, talks about his life, career, and body of work. Mr. Robinson is… read moreOn Saturday night, an Indianapolis man named Derek and his wife took her parents to a blues-rock show at the famous Bell’s Brewery in Kalamazoo, Mich. As the night drew on, the crowd at the concert began to hear increasingly horrific news. A Kalamazoo woman had been shot outside her apartment complex. Then a father and son had been gunned down in front of an automobile dealership. Finally, a local Cracker Barrel had been turned into a bloodbath when a shooter opened fire, killing at least four.
Police at one of the scenes of the shootings in Kalamazoo. Several people have come forward since Dalton’s arrest to say he picked them up for Uber before and during his rampage. ( Mark Bugnaski / Associated Press )
Derek and his family were staying nearby, but he decided it was safer not to walk with a killer was on the loose in the college town. So he ordered an Uber. That decision could have cost them their lives.
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A photo of a heavy-set man with long, salt and pepper hair, glasses and a goatee popped up on the man’s phone. Uber’s app said his name was Jason and he would arrive shortly in a dark coloured Chevy SUV. Sure enough, the car pulled up and the family of four climbed in, with Derek in the front seat. “My father mentioned from the back seat, you know, the situation with the shooter,” Derek told NBC affiliate WOOD TV, using only his first name. “I kind of jokingly said to the driver, ‘You’re not the shooter, are you?’” Derek said. “He gave me some sort of a ‘no’ response... shook his head. “I said, ‘Are you sure?’ And he said, ‘No, I’m not, I’m just tired,’” he continued. “And we proceeded to have a pretty normal conversation after that.”
Roughly 20 minutes after the Uber driver dropped Derek and his family off at their hotel, a man matching the driver’s description was arrested nearby in connection with the deadly shooting spree. Police identified the suspect as Jason Brian Dalton, a 45-year-old who had only recently begun working for the ride-hailing service.
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Authorities in Kalamazoo charged Dalton on Monday with six counts of murder and 10 other counts, according to a copy of the complaint filed in court. Dalton faces up to life in prison if convicted in Michigan, which does not have the death penalty. When Derek saw photos of Dalton on Sunday morning, he called Kalamazoo Police detectives to report his brush with the suspect, he told WOOD TV. A police spokesman could not confirm or deny Derek’s account when contacted Monday, although authorities have said they believe Dalton appeared to continue looking for passengers even after his alleged shooting spree. Uber has confirmed Dalton had been working with the company and said he had passed a background check. “We are horrified and heartbroken at the senseless violence in Kalamazoo, Michigan,” Joe Sullivan, Uber’s chief security officer, said in a statement. “We have reached out to the police to help with their investigation in any way that we can.” Derek and his family weren’t the only customers to have close encounters with Dalton before or during the mass shooting. On Saturday afternoon at around 4:30 p.m., Dalton picked up a customer for a short ride but the trip turned out to be terrifying. In an interview, Matthew Mellen said Dalton drove erratically, blowing through a stop sign, side-swiping another car, swerving in and out of traffic and refusing to stop. All the while, the Uber driver acted like everything was normal. As soon as Dalton slowed down, Mellen jumped out and dialed 911, he said. It wasn’t until two hours later, however, that police called him back. By then, the alleged massacre had already begun. A 14-year-old girl was “gravely injured” at Cracker Barrel, according to authorities. She was initially reported dead — the mass shooting’s supposed seventh victim — and was being prepped for organ donation when she suddenly squeezed her mother’s hand. “Wow,” said a Kalamazoo police officer who asked not to be named when contacted by the Post early Monday morning. “It’s miraculous.”
Read more about:JavaScript is awful.
It’s got Good Parts!
Yes, but it’s also got Bad Parts. Lots of them.
We won’t use those parts.
How?
We’ll be disciplined.
Seriously, how?
We’ll be really disciplined.
Hmm. What about the pitfalls you don’t all know about?
Okay, we’ll use a linter.
That would shield you from the Worst Parts.
We’ll use ES2015.
That would shield you from the Next-to-Worst Parts.
What about the poor async support?
We’ll use Promises.
What about the broken data-modeling?
We’ll use ImmutableJS.
What about the broken data-processing?
We’ll use Underscore.
What about the broken data-flow?
We’ll use RxJS.
What about the broken data-consistency?
We’ll use TypeScript.
What about the broken rendering?
We’ll use React.
Why don’t you just start with a well-designed language?
Oh we couldn’t do that - there’d be too much to learn!Diversity The Cichlidae family stands out as an extraordinary example of vertebrate evolution. From the sheer size of the family to the complexity of their ecological interactions and rapid evolution, cichlids provide a unique glimpse of the many factors that promote speciation. The behavioral and physical changes resulting from intense speciation in cichlids is equally impressive. Cichlids demonstrate some of the most unique and intensive parenting in fishes and utilize several different mating systems, from monogamy to polygynandry (See Reproduction). Many feeding behaviors found in cichlids are unique among freshwater fishes (See Behavior and Food Habits). Finally, although the general body plan of cichlids is constant, they come in a dazzling array of shapes, sizes, colors, and dental plans, making them popular with aquarists and aquaculturists (See Physical Description and Economic Importance to Humans). (Berra, 2001; Greenwood and Stiassny, 2002; Moyle and Cech, 2000; Stiassny, 1991; Wheeler, 1985) There are no concrete figures on the number of genera and species in the Cichlidae family because there are still many revisions being made and a considerable number of species are yet to be described. Rough estimates range from 200 to 2000 species and approximately 140 genera, which, after Cyprinidae and Gobiidae, would make them the third largest family of bony fishes. The largest genus is the African Crenicichla with over 100 species. Cichlids inhabit fresh waters, and many species are endemic to isolated lake environments. The fact that no genera occur on more than one continent illustrates the degree of endemism in this family. (Berra, 2001; Nelson, 1994)
Development Cichlids follow a typical developmental pattern but some species brood the eggs in the mouth while developing. Parents exhibit various behaviors to promote the growth of young, which develop through three distinct stages: eggs, wrigglers (newly hatched, non-free-swimming young), and fry (free swimming but dependent on the parent). At the early stages of development, parents fan the eggs to provide ventilation and remove waste (termed “fanning”). Some species use their mouths to suck away wastes or to remove dead or fungus-ridden eggs (termed “mouthing”). Mouthbrooding species that carry developing eggs in the buccal cavity (mouth) accomplish mouthing and fanning by rolling and swishing the eggs in the mouth (termed “churning”). Finally, several behaviors are related to aiding the young in feeding. Parents may pick up leaf matter and drop it near the young so they may forage on the unexposed side (termed “leaf-lifting”), or dig into the substrate with the fins to expose buried prey (termed “findigging”). Another unusual method of aiding the fry in development is “micronipping,” in which fry feed on mucous secreted from the skin of parents. Micronipping was first discovered in Symphysodon discus, but has since been recorded for several other cichlid species. (Keenleyside, 1991) Some species of blue tilapia (among others), which are widely used in aquaculture, are susceptible to sex change for a period approximately 30-40 days after hatching by controlling temperature or adding hormones (See Mating Systems). Despite the fact that genetics also influence sex determination, hormones and temperature can overrule genetic determination, creating offspring that are all one sex. Aquaculturists take advantage of this fact to create single sex tanks, thus avoiding overpopulation. (Barlow, 2000) Development - Life Cycle
temperature sex determination
Lifespan/Longevity The lifespan of many wild cichlids is unknown. However, in aquaria they are relatively long-lived, about 10 years on average. Several can reach up to 18 years in captivity, suggesting that at least some cichlids have considerably long lifespans. (Barlow, 2000)
Behavior As a family, cichlids display numerous complex behaviors in feeding, reproduction (see Reproduction: Mating Systems), and parental care (Reproduction: Parental Care). In an evolutionary sense, the exploratory behavior of cichlids is also very important because this is what initially encouraged and later refined speciation. For example, competition for finite food sources in isolated ancient lakes encouraged individuals to exploit formerly unavailable food sources. Eventually morphological changes followed and feeding behaviors improved the capacity to exploit the new food sources. As a result, in some habitats, such as the Great Lakes of East Africa, cichlids fill virtually every ecological role within their trophic level (see Food Habits and Ecosystem Roles). In addition to breeding territories, investigators have learned that many cichlids maintain feeding territories as well. With regard to territorial feeding behavior cichlids are unique; very few freshwater fishes defend feeding areas, and these few usually only maintain the territories for brief periods. One hypothesis explains cichlids’ behavioral departure with three possible factors: the long-term stability of the environment (ancient lakes) in which many cichlids live, diverse feeding habits—some of which are similar to territorial marine reef species, and the fact that cichlids initially inhabited marine environments as opposed to archetypal freshwater fishes, such as minnows, catfishes and their relatives. (Barlow, 2000) The intensity of territoriality in cichlids ranges from extreme aggression - the exclusion of all other fishes, to the maintenance of brief territories during spawning, to no territories at all. Feeding territories are often better defined than breeding territories, with males of the same species (conspecifics) overlapping little. However, in some cases the feeding territories of different species (heterospecifics) do overlap. For instance, Pseudotropheus elongatus of Lake Malawi aggressively defends a territory to promote the growth of ‘algal gardens,’ which are maintained by females and juveniles. Females leave the territory to spawn but return with the eggs (mouthbrooding) seeking food and protection within the territory. However, the territory of Petrotilapia tridentiger (22 m2 on average) may actually include several Pseudotropheus elongatus territories as well as the territories of a few other small heterospecifics. Petrotilapia tridentiger defends against conspecifics and dominates the social hierarchy within its territory, feeding exclusively on the algal gardens of Pseudotropheus elongatus (which contain 2.25 times more algae than surrounding areas). Territorial fishes may also be overcome by large schools that use numbers to overwhelm aggressive defense with numbers. Petrochromis fasciolatus of Lake Tanganyika may form columns of 40 to 150 individuals and specifically attack the feeding territories of Variabilichromis moorii. The reason for selectively targeting the territory of Variabilichromis moorii is that algal density can be up to 15 times higher than in non-defended areas. A slightly different system is found in Gnathochromis pfefferi from Lake Malawi. Gnathochromis pfefferi females are not territorial but have overlapping home ranges with males. Males defend their feeding territories in the afternoon and overnight but during the day, they migrate to breeding territories where they spawn with females. (Barlow, 2000; Ribbink, 1991) Key Behaviors
natatorial
diurnal
nocturnal
parasite
motile
nomadic
territorial
social
colonial
dominance hierarchies
Communication and Perception Cichlids are able to communicate by various means: visual, acoustic, chemical and tactile. Visual communication primarily involves color changes and body movements and gestures. At least some cichlids are able to discern colors. Color changes are important in identifying individuals or families, or for communicating aggression, dominance, or sexual state. Typically, the brightest color patterns are associated with aggression. Body movements and gestures are also used to communicate aggression, dominance, or sexual state, and often combine with swimming patterns and color changes to emphasize a particular display. Tactile communication is mainly observed in aggressive males, such as the case of “mouth-fighting.” Tropheus moorii males lock mouths until one individual is pushed to the bottom and flees. In some mouthbrooding species (Simochronis and Tropheus) males often touch the anal region of the female as she begins to expel her eggs, presumably encouraging the female to lay her eggs. Sounds, such as grunts, thumps or purrs have been catalogued for at least 16 cichlid species. Experiments with one cichlid, Archocentrus centrarchus, have revealed that recorded sounds (produced during aggressive displays) evoked an aggressive response. Cichlids are known to use chemical cues to recognize their young in parenting. For example, Amatitlania coatepeque and Amphilophus citrinellus are able to discriminate their own small fry from those of other species. The reverse is also true; Amphilophus citrinellus fry are able to distinguish chemical cues given off by their parents. Etroplus maculates and Etroplus suratensis, which feed on fry, use chemical signals to avoid eating fry of the same species. Finally, monogamous pairs of some species need both visual and chemical cues to recognize each other. (Barlow, 2000; Nelissen, 1991) Communication Channels
visual
tactile
acoustic
chemical Other Communication Modes
mimicry
pheromones
scent marks
vibrations Perception Channels
visual
tactile
acoustic
vibrations
chemical
Food Habits As a family, cichlids consume virtually every type of food source available in the freshwater habitat they are found. They exhibit numerous modifications of the lips, teeth, jaws and gill rakers depending on the main food source. Although many cichlids are morphologically adapted to a particular food source, they may become generalists depending on availability. Additionally, cichlids consume various types of food depending on their stage of growth. Herbivorous cichlids may browse, scrape, comb, ‘tap’ or suck epiphytic (attached) algae, unicellular algae, and/or clumps of the substrate. Planktivorous cichlids browse throughout the water column on zooplankton and phytoplankton. Piscivorous cichlids feed on whole fish, the fry, larvae, or eggs of mouthbrooding species, and the scales or fins of various fishes. Three species from the genus Cyrtocara (Lake Malawi) use the peculiar technique, termed head-ramming, of shoving their head into the mouth of female mouthbrooders to force the expulsion of eggs, larvae, or fry, which they eat. Cichlids that feed on aquatic insects and other invertebrates use a variety of methods to expose or capture prey. Several species (Labidochromis maculicauda, Tanganicodus irsacae) browse over patches of algae or substrate, picking out individual insects and crustaceans. Lethrinops (Lake Malawi) feed on chironomid larvae by biting into the sandy substrate and filtering the larvae out with their gill rakers. The enlarged lips of some cichlids are used to suck insects out of cracks and crevices, while in others the lips help to feel for prey when browsing over various substrates. In addition to the latter feeding methods, some cichlids have developed swimming patterns allowing them to sneak up on prey or use larger fish for cover. Finally, the teeth of some cichlids are predominantly molars, allowing them to crush and process small and thin-shelled mollusks. (See an illustration of tooth morphology and diversity in fish). (Yamaoka, 1991) Primary Diet
carnivore piscivore eats eggs eats body fluids eats non-insect arthropods molluscivore scavenger
herbivore
omnivore
planktivore
detritivore Foraging Behavior
filter-feeding
Predation Many large cichlids prey on smaller members of their family or specifically feed in eggs, larvae, or fry. Investigators have also observed newly independent juveniles preying on young of the same or related species. These predation pressure help explain the evolution of intense parental care in cichlids. Introduced species, such as Nile perch, have proven disastrous for many endemic cichlids, even causing the extinction of some species (See Ecosystem Roles and Conservation Status). Humans have also exploited cichlids throughout their range for centuries. (Greenwood and Stiassny, 2002) Anti-predator Adaptations
mimic
cryptic Known Predators fish (Actinopterygii) humans (Homo sapiens)
Ecosystem Roles In the Great Lakes of Africa, the number of cichlid species is so large they fill virtually every ecological role within their trophic level, with the exception of primary producers such as photosynthetic algae and benthic arthropods. As one might expect, there is considerable interplay between various cichlid species in terms of predation and food availability. However, cichlids also influence the species of plants and algae that grow in their habitat (top-down control). One example of top-down control is illustrated by the introduction of the piscivorous Nile perch into Lake Victoria. The Nile perch is a voracious predator of small, planktivorous cichlids, which suffered precipitous population decline after the perches’ introduction. Planktivorous cichlids exert considerable predation pressure on zooplankton, and after they were eliminated, the zooplankton community changed drastically, to the point that a new species of zooplankton began invading the lake, Daphnia magna. (Berra, 2001; Jonna and Lehman, 2002) Ecosystem Impact
biodegradation
keystone species
parasite
Economic Importance for Humans: Positive Several cichlid genera are popular aquarium fishes - Cichlasoma, Pterophyllum, Symphysodon, and jewelfishes - because of their mild temperament and ease of breeding in captivity. However, most cichlids are extremely aggressive when kept in small areas and very difficult to breed. Several Cichla species are popular with sport fishermen, especially in Brazil. Cichlids have also been introduced for recreational fisheries or vegetation control. (Greenwood and Stiassny, 2002; Wheeler, 1985) Some cichlids are used extensively in aquaculture for several reasons. They are a good source of ‘white fish’ and fish products, they lack small bones in the muscle, and some species can grow quite large, allowing for the production of value-added products such as fillets. Most importantly, they feed low on the food chain (aquatic plants and plankton) so the cost of feed is low. Oreochromis and Tilapia are the most extensively farmed cichlids. They are most widely grown in Israel and Asia but cichlid aquaculture has been introduced to many other regions: Egypt (Tilapia), Africa (Oreochromis), Latin America (Astronotus, Cichlasoma and Orechromis), and the Caribbean (Tilapia). (Pullin, 1991) Positive Impacts
pet trade
food
research and education
controls pest population
Economic Importance for Humans: Negative No specific information was found concerning any negative impacts to humans.
Conservation Status Because many cichlid species are endemic to small geographic areas, they can be threatened relatively easily. Many cichlid species will never be described because they are going extinct so quickly. Such is the case with cichlids of Lake Victoria after the introduction of Nile perch. Nile perch were introduced as a food source (unsupervised) but, as a voracious predator, began to destroy cichlid populations throughout the lake. This has resulted in the largest mass extinction of endemic species in recent times. Conservative estimates are that across the Cichlidae family, 43 cichlids are extinct, five are extinct in the wild, 37 species are critically endangered, 11 species are endangered, 34 species are vulnerable, and one species is at low risk. (Berra, 2001; The World Conservation Union, 2002) IUCN Red List [Link] Not Evaluated
The earliest known cichlid fossils were collected in South America, dating back to the Eocene (57 to 37 million years ago), and in Africa, dating back to the Oligocene (33.7 to 23.8 million years ago). However, the fossil history is poor and it is widely believed that the cichlids, along with other labroid families, arose sometime early in the Cretaceous epoch (144 to 66.4 million years ago). Despite the paucity of fossils, investigators have identified several existing Malagasy and Asian genera as the least derived within the Cichlidae. Researchers have gained a good understanding of the evolutionary biology of cichlids from this discovery. For instance, substrate brooding is considered the ancestral breeding system because it is practiced by the oldest genera in Madagascar and Asia. (Greenwood and Stiassny, 2002; Stiassny, 1991)
Contributors R. Jamil Jonna (author), Animal Diversity Web.
Glossary Ethiopian living in sub-Saharan Africa (south of 30 degrees north) and Madagascar. Nearctic living in the Nearctic biogeographic province, the northern part of the New World. This includes Greenland, the Canadian Arctic islands, and all of the North American as far south as the highlands of central Mexico. Neotropical living in the southern part of the New World. In other words, Central and South America. Palearctic living in the northern part of the Old World. In otherwords, Europe and Asia and northern Africa. acoustic uses sound to communicate agricultural living in landscapes dominated by human agriculture. benthic Referring to an animal that lives on or near the bottom of a body of water. Also an aquatic biome consisting of the ocean bottom below the pelagic and coastal zones. Bottom habitats in the very deepest oceans (below 9000 m) are sometimes referred to as the abyssal zone. see also oceanic vent. bilateral symmetry having body symmetry such that the animal can be divided in one plane into two mirror-image halves. Animals with bilateral symmetry have dorsal and ventral sides, as well as anterior and posterior ends. Synapomorphy of the Bilateria. biodegradation helps break down and decompose dead plants and/or animals brackish water areas with salty water, usually in coastal marshes and estuaries. carnivore an animal that mainly eats meat chemical uses smells or other chemicals to communicate coastal the nearshore aquatic habitats near a coast, or shoreline. colonial used loosely to describe any group of organisms living together or in close proximity to each other - for example nesting shorebirds that live in large colonies. More specifically refers to a group of organisms in which members act as specialized subunits (a continuous, modular society) - as in clonal organisms. cooperative breeder helpers provide assistance in raising young that are not their own cryptic having markings, coloration, shapes, or other features that cause an animal to be camouflaged in its natural environment; being difficult to see or otherwise detect. detritivore an animal that mainly eats decomposed plants and/or animals diurnal active during the day, 2. lasting for one day. dominance hierarchies ranking system or pecking order among members of a long-term social group, where dominance status affects access to resources or mates ectothermic animals which must use heat acquired from the environment and behavioral adaptations to regulate body temperature estuarine an area where a freshwater river meets the ocean and tidal influences result in fluctuations in salinity. external fertilization fertilization takes place outside the female's body female parental care parental care is carried out by females fertilization union of egg and spermatozoan filter-feeding a method of feeding where small food particles are filtered from the surrounding water by various mechanisms. Used mainly by aquatic invertebrates, especially plankton, but also by baleen whales. food A substance that provides both nutrients and energy to a living thing. freshwater mainly lives in water that is not salty. herbivore An animal that eats mainly plants or parts of plants. introduced referring to animal species that have been transported to and established populations in regions outside of their natural range, usually through human action. iteroparous offspring are produced in more than one group (litters, clutches, etc.) and across multiple seasons (or other periods hospitable to reproduction). Iteroparous animals must, by definition, survive over multiple seasons (or periodic condition changes). keystone species a species whose presence or absence strongly affects populations of other species in that area such that the extirpation of the keystone species in an area will result in the ultimate extirpation of many more species in that area (Example: sea otter). male parental care parental care is carried out by males mimicry imitates a communication signal or appearance of another kind of organism molluscivore eats mollusks, members of Phylum Mollusca monogamous Having one mate at a time. motile having the capacity to move from one place to another. natatorial specialized for swimming native range the area in which the animal is naturally found, the region in which it is endemic. nocturnal active during the night nomadic generally wanders from place to place, usually within a well-defined range. omnivore an animal that mainly eats all kinds of things, including plants and animals oriental found in the oriental region of the world. In other words, India and southeast Asia. oviparous reproduction in which eggs are released by the female; development of offspring occurs outside the mother's body. parasite an organism that obtains nutrients from other organisms in a harmful way that doesn't cause immediate death pelagic An aquatic biome consisting of the open ocean, far from land, does not include sea bottom (benthic zone). pet trade the business of buying and selling animals for people to keep in their homes as pets. pheromones chemicals released into air or water that are detected by and responded to by other animals of the same species piscivore an animal that mainly eats fish planktivore an animal that mainly eats plankton polyandrous Referring to a mating system in which a female mates with several males during one breeding season (compare polygynous). polygynandrous the kind of polygamy in which a female pairs with several males, each of which also pairs with several different females. polygynous having more than one female as a mate at one time reef structure produced by the calcium carbonate skeletons of coral polyps (Class Anthozoa). Coral reefs are found in warm, shallow oceans with low nutrient availability. They form the basis for rich communities of other invertebrates, plants, fish, and protists. The polyps live only on the reef surface. Because they depend on symbiotic photosynthetic algae, zooxanthellae, they cannot live where light does not penetrate. saltwater or marine mainly lives in oceans, seas, or other bodies of salt water. scavenger an animal that mainly eats dead animals scent marks communicates by producing scents from special gland(s) and placing them on a surface whether others can smell or taste them seasonal breeding breeding is confined to a particular season sexual reproduction that includes combining the genetic contribution of two individuals, a male and a female sexual ornamentation one of the sexes (usually males) has special physical structures used in courting the other sex or fighting the same sex. For example: antlers, elongated tails, special spurs. social associates with others of its species; forms social groups. tactile uses touch to communicate territorial defends an area within the home range, occupied by a single animals or group of animals of the same species and held through overt defense, display, or advertisement tropical the region of the earth that surrounds the equator, from 23.5 degrees north to 23.5 degrees south. vibrations movements of a hard surface that are produced by animals as signals to others visual uses sight to communicate year-round breeding breeding takes place throughout the yearIt's fair to say that Breaking Bad had a pretty good 2013. It went from cult hit (the one box set you could confidently recommend to anyone who'd finished The Sopranos, The Wire or Mad Men) to being a drama that finished on a water-cooler high around the world.
The show's rise in popularity over the last few years speaks volumes about the way we watch TV now. After it was dropped in the UK by FX and Channel 5 (following their bold but ultimately daft decision to run the second series on back-to-back nights one Christmas), it was the powerful long-tail burn of DIY viewing options that allowed us to find Breaking Bad. Box sets, streaming services like Netflix and, let's face it, illegal torrents left the idea of a weekly broadcast looking outmoded; maybe the "all you can eat" model was better suited for such a moreish drama.
In the US, parent channel AMC saw viewing figures for their Sunday night debuts practically doubling every week in the run up to the final episode (surely an indicator of the snowballing number of new viewers ploughing through previous seasons to catch up in time for the finale). Here in the UK and Ireland we were also able to keep up ( |
and next year in North America and Europe.
Thanks, Games Talk.For the past few days, I’ve been doing demos and soaking up crafty awesomeness at the Craft & Hobby Association Winter 2012 Conference and Trade Show in Anaheim. Per usual, there have been tons of amazing events on the show floor. But, on Monday, Lion Brand Yarn rocked my fiber-loving socks off with their Lion Brand Winter 2012 CHA Fashion Show. There, the models walked an honest-to-god catwalk and sported a combination of Lion Brand Yarn patterns and creations from emerging designers, like this gorgeous dress from Elissa Eriksson.
Here are are a few more of my favorite designs from the show:
Sweater by emerging designer Gareth Brown.Dress by emerging designer Lucy Faulke.Gown by emerging designer Paula Cheng.Dress by emerging designer Heather Orr.There you have it, folks. I’m submitting this as definitive proof that yarn can be high fashion!Colin Kaepernick's decision to sit during the national anthem in protest of racial injustice and police brutality has the Santa Clara police union saying its officers might stop working San Francisco 49ers home games. Ian Cull reports. (Published Friday, Sept. 2, 2016)
Colin Kaepernick's decision to speak out against racial injustice and police brutality, as well as direct critical words at officers across the nation, has the Santa Clara police union saying its officers might stop working San Francisco 49ers home games.
NBC Bay Area obtained a letter, penned by union members, to the San Francisco 49ers stating that if the organization does not take action against Kaepernick, "it could result in police officers choosing not to work at your facilities."
The Santa Clara Police Department is the lead police agency at Levi’s Stadium. During 49er games, around 70 officers volunteer to work and are paid as security personnel. Now it is unknown whether more than half of those officers will show up at the team's next game on Sept. 12.
"I'm already hearing it this week that next week on Monday Night Football, some officers are not going to work," said Frank Saunders, president of the Santa Clara Police Officers Association.
According to the union, about one-third of the officers who work during 49ers games are from other Bay Area law enforcement departments. If Santa Clara's police officers refuse to work, others officers might be hired. But, Saunders said, that may create a conflict with the city’s contract with the police union.
Santa Clara Police Union Threatens Boycott of 49ers Games Over Kaepernick Protest
Colin Kaepernick's decision to sit during the national anthem in protest of racial injustice and police brutality has the Santa Clara police union saying that its officers might stop working San Francisco 49ers home games. Ian Cull reports. (Published Friday, Sept. 2, 2016)
Although disheartened and angered by Kaepernick's remarks, Santa Clara Police Department Chief Michael Sellers called for his officers to put the community's safety above potential boycotts in a statement issued Saturday.
"The safety of our community is our highest priority," Sellers wrote. "I will urge the POA leadership to put the safety of our citizens first. I will work with both sides to find a solution. In the meantime, I will ensure we continue to provide a safe environment at Levi's Stadium."
Sellers added that he respects Kaepernick's right to voice an opinion and encourages his officers to protect those constitutional rights for every citizen, even if they disagree.
Santa Clara Police Chief Calls for Safety First at Levi's Stadium
Although disheartened and angered by Kaepernick's remarks, Santa Clara Police Department Chief Michael Sellers called for his officers to put the community's safety above potential boycotts in a statement issued Saturday. Laura Malpert reports. (Published Saturday, Sept. 3, 2016)
Officers are angered by Kaepernick's comments about police brutality and accusations that officers "murder minorities." They are also frustrated by the San Francisco quarterback's decision to wear socks during practice that depict pigs in police uniforms, according to the association.
"The 49ers are allowing this to come out from an employee and it's making for a hostile work environment for us at the stadium," Saunders said.
The union's letter also stated that its board of directors have "a duty to protect its members and work to make all of their workings environments free of harassing behavior."
The San Francisco 49ers organization reiterated Friday night that it stands behind its previous statements and respects Kaepernick's right to freedom of expression.
In a statement made immediately following reports of Kaepernick's decision to sit down during the playing of the national anthem before San Francisco preseason game against Green Bay last week, the franchise said, "In respecting such American principles as freedom of religion and freedom of expression, we recognize the right of an individual to choose to participate, or not, in our celebration of the national anthem."
But Saunders wants the team to treat the quarterback like any company would treat an employee.
"It was a totality of all those circumstances that we felt, 'Let's go talk to the 49ers. Let's have them go deal with" Kaepernick, he said.
Top News Photos: R. Kelly Leaves Jail After Paying Bond
Kaepernick’s decision not to stand has triggered a firestorm of comments on social media, in the Bay Area and across the nation. Local police agencies invited Kaepernick over to see their work in action, while many of the quarterback’s colleagues in the NFL said they disagree with his decision not to stand — though some of said they support him.
Some American military veterans, many of them black, came to his defense online, using the hashtag #VeteransForKaepernick to indicate that they supported his right to express himself. And Kaepernick pledged to donate $1 million to as-yet unnamed community organizations.
NBC Bay Area's Brendan Weber contributed to this report.
Read the Santa Clara Police Officers Association's entire letter here:Pandagon is daily opinion blog covering feminism, politics, and pop culture. Come for the politics, stay for the complete lack of patience for the B.S. and bad faith coming from conservative leaders and pundits.
Ted Cruz was going full-bore with the fundamentalist persecution fantasies at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition summit this week. “Today’s Democratic Party has decided there is no room for Christians in today’s Democratic Party,” The Hill reports him saying, which means that either Cruz is one of those people who believes Obama is a secret Muslim or he’s defining “Christian” to mean only people who blow off that caring-f0r-the-poor thing in order to obsess about other people’s sex lives.
“There is a liberal fascism that is going after Christian believers,” he added, referring to an imaginary round-up of imaginary people that he dreamt about last night.
Just kidding! He actually defined what this “going after” and “fascism” looks like: Being told to mind your own business.
“Today’s Democratic Party has become so radicalized for legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states that there is no longer any room for religious liberty,” he whined.
In other words, not being able to bar other people from getting married is, in Cruz’s reckoning, a fascist assault on the “religious liberty” of conservatives. Got it. Now you people who didn’t go to Harvard might think of “religious liberty” as the right to be free from the kind of theocratic oppression that would, say, bar you from marrying based on someone else’s religious beliefs. You might also think of “fascism” as the kind of political philosophy that endorses such oppression, such as when people were rounded up and put into concentration camps because they had different religious beliefs from the majority or were gay, such as what happened to Jews and gays under Nazi Germany.
But you see, we’re talking about conservative Christians here. Clearly, they are a more important people than the rest of us. We are barely subhuman and clearly deserving of no rights at all. (Nothing fascist about that belief, either!) They are so superior to us—a master race, really—that the real fascism is in not letting them control the lives of the heretics and other non-believers. With that in mind, I cobbled together a list of other ways that the liberal fascists are going after the religious liberties of conservatives Christians.
The Liberal Fascist Agenda To Destroy Religious Liberty In 2015
Banning conservatives from mass-kidnapping the non-believers and putting them into mandatory Bible camp
Allowing churches that support reproductive rights or gay marriage to exist
Allowing any non-Christian church, temple, or mosque to exist
Reading about feminism, gay rights, or any other subject that hasn’t been pre-approved by Christian censors
Having sex in the privacy of your own home without submitting an application, complete with a detailed description of all planned sex acts, to Ted Cruz, so he can personally sign off on whether your sexual activity is Christianity-compliant
Allowing Democrats to run for office. We need a one-party state, or the fascists have won.
Praying to the “wrong” god or praying for things other than an end to all sexual expression that isn’t Ted Cruz-approved
Not praying at all
Making jokes about how Ted Cruz always looks like he’s about to cry-ejaculate. This may be the biggest fascist attack on religious liberty imaginable.
Share your own in comments!The B.C. Liberals raised over $300,000 in the two days immediately following the announcement of an NDP-Green partnership designed to topple Christy Clark’s government.
On May 29, Green Leader Andrew Weaver announced he would take his party’s three seats and support a new government led by NDP Leader John Horgan and his 41 seats. Together, the Greens and NDP won 44 seats in the province’s May 9 election, just one more than the Liberals 43.
On May 30 and 31, the Liberals raised $337,917.21, much of it from large corporations that will no longer be allowed to donate, if the NDP-Greens take power and eliminate corporate and union donations, as they pledged to during the election.
One of the largest donors is Coastal GasLink, a wholly owned subsidiary of TransCanada that is trying to build a 670-kilometre pipeline from Dawson Creek to the proposed LNG facility near Kitimat. Coastal GasLink gave the Liberals $10,500. The Kitimat LNG facility faces uncertainty in the aftermath of the election, as Horgan supports it but Weaver has expressed opposition.
Other large donors include real estate developer Anthem Properties Group Ltd. which gave $19,500, and paper and pulp company Skookumchuck Pulp Inc., which gave $20,000. Much of the money came from a handful of large donors — over one third, or $127,200, came from just 12 donors giving $5,000 or more.
This is largely in keeping with how the Liberals raised money prior to the election. They, generally, have fewer individual donations, but are able to attract much greater sums than the NDP. A Postmedia analysis of Liberal donations between 2005 and March 2017 found that 54.05 per cent of all money raised came from donations over $5,000. During a similar period 30.45 per cent of NDP donations came from donations over $5,000.
Clark isn’t going to recall the legislature until June 22, so at least until then her party will be able to take in large corporate donations. The large sums they’re raising give the Liberals a significant financial advantage for the next election, which may come quickly as the NDP-Greens’ one seat majority puts them in a precarious position.
Since the May 9 election, the Liberals raised $1,415,454.79, about double the $757,268 raised by the Green party in all of 2016. The Greens are well-placed for a rule change banning corporate and union donations, as nearly all of their 2016 donations came from individuals.
Related
In 2016, the NDP brought in $6.2 million, $3.8 million from individuals and $1.8 million from unions. The Liberals raised $12.5 million in 2016, $8 million from corporate donations and $4.5 million from individual donations.
After widespread criticism of B.C.’s donation system, which has no cap on how much can be donated, and permits foreign companies to give, the Liberals started releasing a weekly list of everyone donating to their party. The NDP and Greens do not put out such lists.
The pace of B.C Liberal donations has increased since the election. From Jan. 1 to the end of March 2017, the Liberals brought in $3.7 million. From May 10 to May 31, they raised $1.4 million. The Liberals next fundraising disclosure, which will show how much money they raised at the start of June, is scheduled to come out in the next few days.Human rights groups have urged Iran to lift restrictions on women attending university and enrolling in certain academic fields.
Thirty-six universities across Iran have banned women from 77 different majors, including accounting, counselling, and engineering, for the school year that begins on Saturday, Iran's Mehr news agency reported in August.
There was no official reason given for the move, but Iranian officials have expressed alarm in recent months about the country's declining birth and marriage rates, seen as partially caused by women's rising educational attainment in the last two decades.
In a statement released on Saturday, Human Rights Watch, the New York-based watchdog, urged the Iranian government to immediately reverse the more restrictive policies, and said they were a violation of the international right to education for everyone without discrimination.
"As university students across Iran prepare to start the new academic year, they face serious setbacks, and women students in particular will no longer be able to pursue the education and careers of their choice," Liesl Gerntholtz, women's rights director at Human Rights Watch, said.
Women in Iran make up a majority of college students.
According to Hossein Tavakoli, an official at Iran's National Education Assessment Organisation (NEAO), 60 per cent of those who passed this year's national college entrance exam were women.
Extra curbs have imposed on campuses, particularly a new push to segregate men and women into separate classes to prevent mixing of the sexes frowned upon by Iran's rulers.
Last week the minister of science, research and technology, Kamran Daneshjou, was quoted as aying authorities in the Islamic republic "welcome the establishment of one-gender universities, schools for only men or women."
He said that was the direction "our religion envisions for us."
Daneshjou dismissed Western criticism of Iran's steps, saying: "The angrier Western media gets, the more we realise we are moving in the right direction."
In August, Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel Peace laureate, argued in a letter to the UN that the closure of certain academic fields to women was part of a push by the Iranian government to stifle "women's presence in the public arena".(The Blaze) – The 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in which a mentally troubled young man killed 26 children and teachers, served as a rallying cry for gun-control advocates across the nation.
But in the three years since, many states have moved in the opposite direction, embracing the National Rifle Association’s axiom that more “good guys with guns” are needed to deter mass shootings.
In Kansas, gun owners can now carry concealed weapons without obtaining a license. In Texas, those with permits will soon be able to carry openly in holsters and bring concealed weapons into some college classrooms. And in Arkansas, gun enthusiasts may be able to carry weapons into polling places next year when they vote for president.
Dozens of new state laws have made it easier to obtain guns and carry them in more public places and made it harder for local governments to enact restrictions, according to a review of state legislation by The Associated Press. The number of guns manufactured and sold and the number of permits to carry concealed weapons have also increased, data show.
SPECIAL: OBAMA HAS YOUR GUNS AND AMMO IN HIS CROSSHAIRS! I need you to sign our Congressional Gun Warning now. IT’S TIME TO LOCK AND LOAD!
The trend has been discouraging to some gun-control advocates, even as other states have adopted stricter background checks. Other gun-control supporters say their movement is emboldened by the recent rise of Everytown for Gun Safety, a well-funded group backed by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg that is becoming influential in some state capitols.
The debate over gun rights moved to states after Congress rejected a bill in 2013 that would have expanded background checks to all gun sales, including those at gun shows and over the Internet. The arguments are expected to intensify next year as legislatures convene in the wake of the mass shooting of county government employees in San Bernardino, California, which is being investigated as an act of terrorism.
Recent mass shootings at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado, a community college in Oregon and a church in South Carolina have also reignited passions on both sides.
“Most of our churches are just wide open,” said Mississippi Republican Rep. Andy Gipson, who plans to file a bill next year allowing congregations to designate people who could carry guns.
The pro-gun legislation reflects a growing public sentiment that “gun-free zones are magnets for bad guys,” said David Kopel, a gun policy expert at the Independence Institute, a libertarian think tank in Colorado. He said that concept was not popular after the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, but the frequency of mass shootings since then has made the idea of having a trained, law-abiding gun owner present more appealing.
“We’ve gone from, ‘You can’t even say that out loud’ to it being an evenly divided issue, with the pro-gun side having an advantage on that,” he said. “I would expect that we will see continued movement on that in the coming year.”
Even before the Dec. 2 shooting at the office holiday party in San Bernardino, gun purchases and permit applications were on the rise.
On the day after Thanksgiving this year, U.S. gun sales approached a single-day record. More than 185,000 federal background checks were initiated, the most in the 17-year history of the program, according to FBI data.
“Everybody is swamped,” said Mike Conway, a salesman at Bullseye Sport in Riverside, California, near San Bernadino, which has run out of most guns. “A lot of first-time buyers. A lot of people that realize that they have to be responsible for their own safety.”
From 2007 to 2014, the number of concealed-carry handgun permits in states nearly tripled, from 4.7 million to 12.8 million, according to a recent report by the Crime Prevention Research Center, a group whose research is often cited by gun-rights supporters. Meanwhile, several states have passed laws shielding the identities of permit holders to protect privacy and prevent potential harassment.
Instead of limiting access to firearms after Sandy Hook, states such as Indiana and Mississippi passed laws to beef up the presence of police officers in schools. Kansas adopted a law allowing people to carry concealed weapons in many public buildings. Georgia and Arkansas, among others, allowed concealed weapons in bars and some churches. Tennessee made clear that permit holders can carry concealed weapons in vehicles and parks.
Several states also passed reciprocity agreements recognizing gun permits approved by other states, reduced permitting fees and loosened requirements. Wisconsin, for instance, eliminated a 48-hour waiting period to buy handguns.
And then there are new laws designed to thwart gun-control measures. States have prohibited authorities from seizing guns during emergencies, moved to ban the use of taxpayer funding for government gun buyback programs and banned the destruction of firearms seized by law enforcement. Some Republican-controlled states have pre-empted local governments’ ability to pass stricter firearms laws by declaring that it’s a matter for the state.
Everytown President John Feinblatt said many of the measures that expanded gun rights were passed when the NRA faced little opposition in statehouses, but that is starting to change. He said his group succeeded this year in opposing bills in several states that would have allowed concealed weapons on college campuses and permitted people to carry without obtaining permits.
Since Sandy Hook, six states have expanded background checks, and two more such measures are expected to be on statewide ballots next year in Nevada and Maine, Feinblatt said. His group, he added, isn’t concerned with how many guns exist, but wants rules in place to make sure they aren’t sold or transferred to criminals and the mentally ill.
“If more responsible gun owners want more guns and they are doing it the right way, that’s not going to affect public safety,” he said.
Eric Fleegler, a doctor at Boston Children’s Hospital who has studied state gun laws, said he worries that the expansion of gun rights could cause more fights to escalate into deadly confrontations, more people to commit suicide and more kids to die from gun accidents.
“In a country with 330 million people and 310 million guns,” he said, “the suggestion that the problem is we don’t have enough guns available just doesn’t seem to hold much weight.”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/12/13/states-move-toward-more-gun-rights-not-more-gun-control-in-years-after-sandy-hook-massacre/Gamasutra reports that the class action lawsuit brought against Sony last year over the removal of the "Other OS" feature in PlayStation 3 systems has been dismissed on all counts by a federal judge.
The Other OS feature was designed to allow users to install versions of the Linux operating system onto the console for the purpose of using homebrew applications, gaining access to more customization options and other legal uses. Sony removed the feature in April of 2010 as part of a major firmware upgrade in an attempt to counter exploits that were being used to "jailbreak" the system, allowing users to run unauthorized and pirated software.
Anthony Ventura, a California resident, filed the class action lawsuit against Sony Computer Entertainment America a few weeks later, claiming an "intentional disablement of the valuable functionalities originally advertised as available" on SCEA's part. Eight claims were included in Ventura's suit, alleging breach of express warranty, breach of implied warranty, violation of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, unjust enrichment, violation of the Unfair Competition Law, conversion, and violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
SCEA denied the claims and moved to dismiss the case in September of 2010, stating that the PlayStation 3 System Software License agreement and PlayStation Network Terms of Service allowed the company to update and modify the firmware however it wanted.
U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg dismissed all counts but the violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and allowed the plaintiffs to amend their claims. However, the judge said last week that the amendments failed to address "the previously identified deficiencies" of the original suit and granted SCEA's motion to dismiss. He did not allow the plaintiffs to amend their claims again.
Seeborg argued that Other OS will still work in PlayStation 3 systems unless the user chooses to disable it by upgrading the firmware. His statement read:The Brick Testament is a project created by Elbe Spurling[1] in which Bible stories are illustrated using still photographs of dioramas constructed entirely out of Lego bricks.
The project began as a website in October 2001 that featured six stories from the book of Genesis, and is completely unaffiliated with the Lego company.[2] There is also a Brick Testament book series.[3]
Throughout stories are retold using passages from the Bible, with chapter and verse cited, the wording being a free adaptation that Spurling says is based on a number of public domain Bible translations.[4] Occasionally, mostly when images are being used to contrast with the underlying scripture, Spurling dramatises the images with additional text. Such text is displayed in gray instead of the usual black.
Spurling's own commentary occasionally appears in illustrations and is displayed in gray text, and also as original titles for the stories themselves. For example, Spurling presents a story titled, "Stephen Gets Stoned" which is based on the New Testament book, the Acts of the Apostles, chapters 6-7. The scripture verse is cited directly beneath the illustration and commentary:
Scripture: Acts 6:10 But they were unable to stand against the wisdom and spirit with which Stephen spoke.
But they were unable to stand against the wisdom and spirit with which Stephen spoke. Illustration and commentary: A man is depicted holding a scroll in front of a crowd with a speech balloon saying: If you look at a few phrases here and there and completely ignore their original context, they totally predict Jesus! [5]
A Rolling Stone article that is included as a link in the Brick Testament web site suggests that Spurling is an atheist.[6] In 2015 Spurling announced on Facebook that she was an atheist, a transgender woman, and a lesbian, and had legally changed her name to Elbe Spurling but would likely retain her birth name, Brendan Powell Smith, for her books.[1] Her author page at Amazon.com is listed under "Brendan Powell Smith."[7]
Lego techniques [ edit ]
The dioramas seen in The Brick Testament are created from Spurling's personal Lego collection. The pieces come from hundreds of Lego sets dating from the 1960s to the present.
In the few instances where alterations are made to Lego elements, they are generally simple changes made with a hobby knife or permanent ink marker. An example alteration is God's hair: Spurling made God's white hair by carving a white helmet piece (found on Peeron). The only completely non-Lego part of Spurling's scenes is the background sky.[8]
All of Spurling's images are digital. Spurling photographed early scenes with a Nikon Coolpix 950. She now uses a Nikon Coolpix 4500. After photographing the scenes, she adds speech balloons and sometimes makes alterations using image editing software.
Media [ edit ]
Website [ edit ]
The Brick Testament website[9] began in October 2001. It originally featured six stories from the book of Genesis. The site now contains over 400 illustrated stories, from both the Old and New Testaments, and over 4,500 images.[10][11] It had an Alexa traffic rank of 53,191 in April 2007.[citation needed] Each story is tagged if it contains nudity, sexual content, violence and/or cursing.[11] The website has had over two million visitors.[12]
Books [ edit ]
Several hardcover Brick Testament books have been published, The Brick Testament: Stories from the Book of Genesis,[13][14] The Brick Testament: The Story of Christmas,[15][16] The Brick Testament: The Ten Commandments.,[17] and The Brick Bible: A New Spin on the Old Testament.[18] The US retailer Sam's Club withdrew The Brick Bible from sale in November 2011, "due to the complaints of a handful of people that it is vulgar and violent".[19]
The Brick Book of Mormon [ edit ]
In a Facebook post made on April 3, 2015, Spurling announced a new project entitled the Brick Book of Mormon. The stated goal of the project is "to make these teachings better known to the world. It is designed to capture the interest of non-Mormons curious to know what the LDS Church teaches, as well as believing Mormons looking for a fun new way to learn and share the history and teachings of their church. This project is currently in the RESEARCH PHASE in which I have been spending many months immersing myself in the scriptures and teaching manuals of the LDS Church and taking hundreds and hundreds of pages of notes. In the next phase, all these notes will be worked into a manuscript. From there the illustration phase will begin. It is not yet determined whether The Brick Book of Mormon will first be published as a book (like The Brick Chronicle series) or whether it will publish first to the web and then go to print (like The Brick Bible)."[20] The project was officially launched on February 6, 2017.[21]
See also [ edit ]In a press note issued on Saturday, the noted human rights activist and former IAS officer has questioned the timing of an income tax notice to the Centre for Equity Studies, a think-tank that he helps run, and asked whether it is being targeted because of the work Harsh Mander and others are doing to show solidarity with the victims of communal violence across India.
The press note is published below in its entirety.
§
A number of independent individuals, organisations and social movements collaborated to take out through many parts of the country a Karwan-e-Mohabbat, as a journey of atonement, solidarity, healing, conscience and justice with people living with hate violence. This was an entirely crowd funded Karwan, and the funds for this were received by Aman Biradari Trust, which does not have an FCRA.
On September 15, 2017, the Karwan was scheduled to stop at Behror at the site at which Pehlu Khan had been lynched, to pay tribute to his memory by placing a few flowers there. But a day before this, the Hindu Jagran Manch, Bajrang Dal and VHP announced that they would not allow the Karwan to pay this tribute. The Karwan responded by announcing that it would press ahead with its proposed tribute despite all opposition. In a television debate on September 14, 2017, in NDTV’s Left, Right and Centre anchored by Nidhi Razdan, I joined by phone from the Karwan bus. Mr Rakesh Sinha of the RSS during the debate made angry personalised attacks against me. He also said that I was against the RSS. I replied that I am indeed against the ideology of the RSS, because its belief in a Hindu rashtra contravenes the Indian constitution. During this same debate, Mr Sinha said, in a barely veiled threat, that the funding of ‘my’ organisations would be investigated. The next morning, despite stone-throwing mobs, I did finally prevail in placing flowers at the site of Pehlu Khan’s lynching.
Also read: Love and Loss in the Time of Lynching
Four days later, an organisation of which I am the director and one of the founders, the Centre for Equity Studies, received by email a notice under Section 143 (2) of the Income Tax Act for a Full Scrutiny of the income tax returns of the Centre for Equity Studies for the assessment year 2016-17. This has been followed by another notice dated September 20, 2017, by which they have retrospectively and suo moto rectified their earlier assessment order that our returns are in order. Both these order are attached.
The Income Tax Department may claim that this is just a routine notice. But the timing of the notice shortly after the public threat for getting the funding of ‘my’ organisations investigated, and the fact that less than 1 per cent of returns are scrutinised, suggest that this could well be an act of state vengeance and intimidation.
I would also like to point out that the Centre for Equity Studies had nothing whatsoever to do with the Karwan-e-Mohabbat. It brings out the annual India Exclusion Report, and works with homeless persons and other vulnerable groups.
We are happy to subject ourselves to any scrutiny, and will fully cooperate with the investigation, as we believe in public accountability. But I would like to state categorically that no amount of state intimidation of the organisations that I am associated with, would succeed to silencing my public dissent with policies and ideologies that I believe are detrimental to India’s constitutional values.Weddings are supposed to be pretty bloody special affairs. They’re things of beauty, romantic outings full of joy and love. And that’s exactly how it should be. They are, after all, days meant to celebrate the coming together of two lovers and their commitment to sharing the chores, sharing the sheets and sharing their lives forever and ever and ever. That’s probably why the guests at this wedding in Singapore were left a bit shocked.
They were all sitting down, enjoying the festivities and the free beer and the fine food while they toasted the happy couple, chatted sh** about who was going to be next and tried to predict how many kids the bride and groom would end up having when the groom presented his big surprise for the night. It seems he’d decided to create a video to reveal just how amazing his bride-to-be was (ha).
Yep. He became suspicious of her infidelity shortly before the wedding and did what any curious bloke would do: he hired a f*****g private detective. This private eye confirmed the groom’s suspicions and caught his betrothed behaving intimately with her bit on the side and ducking into a hotel room. And we all know what that means: yep, they were tired.
Not really.
They were f*****g.
It’s not really a nice thing to do when you’re about to get married to someone so you can’t blame the groom for being a bit pissed off.
Of course, he still had the wedding planned, paid for and people to please. The private eye told local media she thought he’d call off the wedding and knew something was up when she received a wedding invitation.
The groom had of course concocted a dastardly – and savage – plan. He’d put together a DVD containing a beautiful and romantic montage of his relationship with the cheating bride – and added the footage of her romantic liaison with her cuckolding lover. He played the video and then told the bride to go to hell. That’s some savage sh**.
Imagine enjoying a wedding when that happened. I know if it was me, I’d probably laugh my arse off, but imagine the bride’s family. It’s a f*****g brutal move. So, do you reckon she deserved it or was it a bit too much? Thoughts in the comments box.
H/T: UNIlad.The Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact is now up for grabs. Users in the U.S. can get ahead by pre-ordering the flagship device.
At the moment, the official Sony Store offers only the 32 GB version for pre-order in the U.S. The website has attached a $499.99 price tag to the brand-new device. By Nov. 2, Sony will commence shipping of the tablet (which comes in black and white) in line with the pre-orders.
Verizon is the first carrier to put the handheld on sale. Verizon customers can get the Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact for $199.99 on contract starting Oct. 23. T-Mobile is pegged to follow although the carrier is gearing up for the release of the tablet's sibling, Sony Xperia Z3 on Oct. 29. Sony has yet to announce the same offer in the U.K. but patrons in the country could only hope.
But what's in it for those who decide to buy the new Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact anyway?
"Good is a compact tablet. Great is a lightweight waterproof tablet."
There's the answer. The Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact is the right size, a considerable 8-inch Full HD Triluminos display complemented with 1920 x 1080 screen resolution. It is powered by a Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor clocking in at 2.5 GHz on top of 3 GB RAM. With generous internal makings, Sony topped it off with PS4 Remote Play support. After all, games are bound to load fast and look crisp and sharp.
It also features an 8.1 MP rear shooter and a 2.1 MP selfie snapper. Loaded with a 4500 mAh battery, users are in for an entire day of entertainment and more. Finally, it owes its ultimate selling point to its Premium Waterproof capability. For admittedly-clumsy users, this is something. Drop it or dip it down 1.5 meters of fresh water and it will only come out soaked and still awesome.
In a nutshell, Apple undoubtedly found a respectable foe.Castle Crashers & South Park Were A Big Influence On Half-Minute Hero For PC
By Spencer. September 24, 2012. 6:33pm
Marvelous AQL is about to bring Half-Minute Hero to PC as a Steam download. Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax Ultimate Boy is based on the Xbox 360 re-release, but has different gameplay modes like Princess 30 from the PSP version.
"The Xbox 360 version was actually created to be more appealing to the West. Since its largely based on the 360 version [Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax Ultimate Boy] is a good fit for the PC," producer Keinchiro Takaki said to Siliconera. I asked Takaki about the art style and if it was influenced by Western media like South Park.
"When we first started working on Half-Minute Hero for Xbox 360, when we did the prototype we tried to ape an American comic style. We looked at games like Castle Crashers and animation like South Park. Those were a big influence," Takaki replied.
While the market for PC games has surged in the West, it’s tiny in Japan. Falcom used to be one of the big players, but even they shifted to releasing PSP and Vita games only making PC ports for the Chinese market. Step into one of Akihabara’s PC stores and you’ll typically see shelves lined with doujin software or adult visual novels.
"The PC market in Japan is rather small," Takaki said when we were discussing if PC would be major platform for Marvelous AQL. "It’s a changing marketplace with consoles being more competitive and the market shrinking, we are definitely interesting as the PC as a platform moving forward. Half-Minute Hero is a step in that direction." Takaki is excited that the PC has a huge user base that dwarfs the PSP and Xbox 360.
What’s next for Marvelous AQL’s Steam plans?
"First of all, we would definitely like to put the second game out," Takaki answered. Half-Minute Hero Second was only released for PSP in Japan and so far has not been localized. "If that sold well then we would want to make another game in the series."
"If we were to make another game in the series I would like to try something else, maybe Unreal Engine for Half-Minute Hero," Takaki laughed.Yet another national poll of GOP voters shows Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE leading the 2016 pack, while Ohio Gov. John Kasich climbs in the field and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush sputters.
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Trump is on top of the new Quinnipiac poll with 20 percent, the best showing of any GOP candidate in all of Quinnipiac's polls of the field. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is next at 13 percent and Bush follows at 10 percent.
The new numbers also show a strong rise by Kasich, who announced his campaign just last week. He's more than doubled his support since Quinnipiac's last national survey in late May, which bodes well for his chances |
's a shocking $41.60 a year on households doing it tough in the face of rising prices. This, of course, isn't the actual direct impact on food manufacturing of a carbon price. It's only what would be passed on to consumers. Perhaps the food industry thinks that it would be unable to pass on the impact, that the almost negligible impacts found by Treasury are just a fraction of the overall costs. But they don't say that. That would require them advancing some evidence or reasoning, rather than mere assertions about how apocalyptic a carbon price would be. The constant claim from business that they support a carbon price, but not one that will affect them (usually, "cost jobs"), is, literally, nonsensical. You can't support a carbon price if you don't want it to change anything. It's like declaring in 1988 "I support the removal of tariffs, but not if it costs any jobs". The purpose of a carbon price -- the only purpose -- is exactly to change things, to start decarbonising the world's most emissions-intensive economy, so that at least we catch up with the rest of the world in per capita carbon usage, even if we're in no danger of leading the world. But at least when the Hawke government unleashed its second round of tariff reform in 1991, the economy was already plunging into recession. The reform, necessary as it was, exacerbated a serious downturn and helped turn it into a years-long period of high unemployment that wrecked tens of thousands of lives, not to mention the Keating government's budgets. For anyone prescient enough, it would have made sense back then to warn of the impacts of reform and urge delay. Now, unemployment is below 5% and one of the biggest dangers to the economy is skills shortages. Even if you accept the more absurdly dire claims advanced by the likes of Bluescope Steel, there will never be a better time to introduce a carbon price. Yet the manufacturing sector -- companies and unions -- want to freeze the Australian economy in time, to turn it into a living museum to a carbon-era economy. They want to keep the prop of carbon protectionism, the insistence that the implicit subsidy provided by allowing big polluters to not pay the costs of carbon emissions should be retained when other forms of protectionism have mostly been stripped away. The stripping away of that protectionism has cost far more jobs than a carbon price ever will, but they've been more than offset by new jobs elsewhere in a more competitive economy. Just like what will happen after a carbon price is introduced. But rather like climate deniers, there's a sense in which a carbon price is simply the excuse for more fundamental concerns. Manufacturing has been steadily shrinking as a proportion of the Australian economy since the 1980s, even before tariff reform. It slipped below 1 million workers last year and continues to fall. The high Australian dollar and high energy and commodities prices caused by the resources boom are only relatively recent, but they look like continuing to pressure manufacturing for years to come -- how will Bluescope Steel ever make a profit again if the dollar goes to 110 US cents and iron ore prices remain at historic highs? But that's a relatively recent phenomenon. Other longer-term trends are shrinking manufacturing, especially the preferences of Australian consumers. Local car manufacturers continued to churn out large family vehicles when Australians increasingly wanted smaller cars, which they happily bought from importers despite tariffs. Local food and grocery manufacturers complain about rising food imports and demand government action, but there's no one forcing Australians to buy foreign-made -- they do it because they want to. Compared to these factors -- and certainly compared to the impact of tariff reform -- the impact of a carbon price, even without compensation, is trivial. The so-called carbon price "revolt" is good old-fashioned protectionism by another name. And like the old variety that Labor took the historic decision to end, it won't work in an open economy.For generations of Venetians epic fist fights atop neighborhood bridges were a celebrated tradition. Beginning in about 1600, from September to Christmas each year rival clans would gather en masse on small bridges without rails and throw punches with the goal of knocking their opponents into the cold and sewage-strewn canal below.
These “Wars of the Fist” were frowned upon if not outright outlawed by the ruling Council of Ten, but tolerated as they marked a big improvement over the earlier tradition of fights with deadly sharpened and fire-hardened sticks. Legend has it that in a stick battle in 1585 the Castelanni clan, seeing that they had lost most of their sticks and were out-armed by the opposing Nicoletti clan, bravely threw off their protective clothing and offered to go mano-a-mano.
The fights were enormously popular spectacles, and drew huge crowds as shown in the La Guerra Dei Pugni painting by Antonio Stom, now hanging in Venice’s Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia. The fight would begin with champions placed on the four corners of the top of the bridge, with masses of fighters behind them. In 1670 the new Diedo bridge at San Marziale opened with marble footprints marking fighters’ starting points.
The Venetian pugilists honed their skills, and even traveled to teach the close-quarters fighting technique.
As the 1600s came to a close, the fights began to lose popularity, and aristocrats who had attended and sponsored fighters began to look to new sports. September 29, 1705 the last war of fists began in the usual manner, but punches elevated to general fighting, then a hail of rooftiles, and finally ended bloodily when knives were pulled.
The battles were officially outlawed, and this time it was enforced. For decades after the last battle, the fighters were celebrated in poetry, painting, and myth.
Although the fights took place on several bridges around the city, the most famous fighting bridge is the Ponte dei Pugni, located near Campo San Barnaba in Dorsoduro. Four white marble footprints mark the starting point for fighters (restored in 2005). Other notable fighting bridges were the Diedo bridge at San Marziale, Ponte della Guerra at Santa Fosca, and Ponte della Guerra at San Zulien.Documents menu http://www.runet.edu/~lridener/courses/BLKFEM.HTML Black Feminist Thought in the Matrix of Domination From Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990), pp. 221–238 Black feminist thought demonstrates Black women's emerging power as agents of knowledge. By portraying African-American women as self-defined, selt-reliant individuals confronting race, gender, and class oppression, Afrocentric feminist thought speaks to the importance that oppression, Afrocentric feminist thought speaks to the importance that knowledge plays in empowering oppressed people. One distinguishing feature of Black feminist thought is its insistence that both the changed consciousness of individuals and the social transformation of political and economic institutions constitute essential ingredients for social change. New knowledge is important for both dimensions ot change. Knowledge is a vitally important part of the social relations of domination and resistance. By objectifying African-American women and recasting our experiences to serve the interests of elite white men, much of the Eurocentric masculinist worldview fosters Black women's subordination. But placing Black women's experiences at the center of analysis offers fresh insights on the prevailing concepts, paradigms, and epistemologies of this worldview and on its feminist and Afrocentric critiques. Viewing the world through a both/and conceptual lens of the simultaneity of race, class, and gender oppression and of the need for a humanist vision of community creates new possibilities for an empowering Afrocentric feminist knowledge. Many Black feminist intellectuals have long thought about the world in this way because this is the way we experience the world. Afrocentric feminist thought offers two significant contributions toward turthering our understanding of the important connections among knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. First, Black feminist thought fosters a fundamental paradigmatic shift in how we think about oppression. By embracing a paradigm of race, class, and gender as interlocking systems of oppression, Black feminist thought reconceptualizes the social relations of dommation and resistance. Second, Black feminist thought addresses ongoing epistemological debates in feminist theory and in the sociology of knowledge concerning ways of assessing "truth." Offering subordinate groups new knowledge about their own experiences can be empowering. But revealing new ways of knowing that allow subordinate groups to define their own reality has far greater implications. Reconceptualizing Race, Class, and Gender as Interlocking Systems of Oppression "What I really feel is radical is trying to make coalitions with people who are different from you," maintains Barbara Smith. "I feel it is radical to be dealing with race and sex and class and sexual identity all at one time. I think that is really radical because it has never been done before." Black feminist thought fosters a fundamental paradigmatic shift that rejects additive approaches to oppression. Instead of starting with gender and then adding in other variables such as age, sexual orientation, race, social class, and religion, Black feminist thought sees these distinctive systems of oppression as bemg part of one overarching structure of domination. Viewing relations of domination for Black women for any given sociohistorical context as being structured via a system of interlocking race, class, and gender oppression expands the focus of analysis from merely describing the similarities and differences distinguishing these systems of oppression and focuses greater attention on how they interconnect. Assummg that each system needs the others in order to function creates a distinct theoretical stance that stimulates the rethinking of basic social science concepts. Afrocentric feminist notions of family reflect this reconceptualization process. Black women's experiences as bloodmothers, othermothers, and community othermothers reveal that the mythical norm of a heterosexual, married couple, nuclear family with a nonworking spouse and a husband earning a "family wage" is far from being natural, universal and preferred but instead is deeply embedded in specific race and class formations. Placmg African-American women in the center of analysis not only reveals much-needed information about Black women's experiences but also questions Eurocentric masculinist perspectives on family Black women's experiences and the Afrocentric feminist thought rearticulating them also challenge prevailing definitions of community. Black women's actions in the struggle or group survival suggest a vision of community that stands in opposition to that extant in the dominant culture. The definition of community implicit in the market model sees community as arbitrary and fragile, structured fundamentally by competition and domination. In contrast, Afrocentric models of community stress connections, caring, and personal accountability. As cultural workers African-American women have rejected the generalized ideology of domination advanced by the dominant group in order to conserve Afrocentric conceptualizations of community. Denied access to the podium, Black women have been unable to spend time theorizing about alternative conceptualizations of community. Instead, through daily actions African-American women have created alternative communities that empower. This vision of community sustained by African-American women in conjunction with African-American men addresses the larger issue of reconceptualizing power. The type of Black women's power discussed here does resemble feminist theories of power which emphasize energy and community. However, in contrast to this body of literature whose celebration of women's power is often accompanied by a lack of attention to the importance of power as domination, Black women's experiences as mothers, community othermothers, educators, church leaders, labor union center-women, and community leaders seem to suggest that power as energy can be fostered by creative acts of resistance. The spheres of influence created and sustained by African-American women are not meant solely to provide a respite from oppressive situations or a retreat from their effects. Rather, these Black female spheres of influence constitute potential sanctuaries where individual Black women and men are nurtured in order to confront oppressive social institutions. Power from this perspective is a creative power used for the good of the community, whether that community is conceptualized as one's family, church community, or the next generation of the community's children. By making the community stronger, Atrican-American women become empowered, and that same community can serve as a source of support when Black women encounter race, gender, and class oppression.... Approaches that assume that race, gender, and class are interconnected have immediate practical applications. For example, African-American women continue to be inadequately protected by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The primary purpose of the statute is to eradicate all aspects of discrimination. But judicial treatment of Black women's employment discrimination claims has encouraged Black women to identify race or sex as the so-called primary discrimination. "To resolve the inequities that confront Black women," counsels Scarborough, the courts must first correctly conceptualize them as 'Black women,' a distinct class protected by Title VII." Such a shift, from protected categories to protected classes of people whose Title VII claims might be based on more than two discriminations, would work to alter the entire basis of current antidiscrimination efforts. Reconceptualizing phenomena such as the rapid growth of female-headed households in African-American communities would also benefit from a race-, class-, and gender-inclusive analysis. Case studies of Black women heading households must be attentive to racially segmented local labor markets and community patterns, to changes in local political economies specific to a given city or region, and to established racial and gender ideology for a given location. This approach would go far to deconstruct Eurocentric, masculinist analyses that implicitly rely on controlling images of the matriarch or the welfare mother as guiding conceptual premises.... Black feminist thought that rearticulates experiences such as these fosters an enhanced theoretical understanding of how race, gender, and class oppression are part of a single, historically created system. The Matrix of Domination Additive models of oppression are firmly rooted in the either/or dichotomous thinking of Eurocentric, masculinist thought. One must be either Black or white in such thought systems--persons of ambiguous racial and ethnic identity constantly battle with questions such as "what are your, anyway?" This emphasis on quantification and categorization occurs in conjunction with the belief that either/or categories must be ranked. The search for certainty of this sort requires that one side of a dichotomy be privileged while its other is denigrated. Privilege becomes defined in relation to its other. Replacing additive models of oppression with interlocking ones creates possibilities for new paradigms. The significance of seeing race, class, and gender as interlocking systems of oppression is that such an approach fosters a paradigmatic shift of thinking inclusively about other oppressions, such as age, sexual orientation, religion, and ethnicity. Race, class, and gender represent the three systems of oppression that most heavily affect African-American women. But these systems and the economic, political, and ideological conditions that support them may not be the most fundamental oppressions, and they certainly affect many more groups than Black women. Other people of color, Jews, the poor white women, and gays and lesbians have all had similar ideological justifications offered for their subordination. All categories of humans labeled Others have been equated to one another, to animals, and to nature. Placing African-American women and other excluded groups in the center of analysis opens up possibilities for a both/and conceptual stance, one in which all groups possess varying amounts of penalty and privilege in one historically created system. In this system, for example, white women are penalized by their gender but privileged by their race. Depending on the context, an individual may be an oppressor, a member of an oppressed group, or simultaneously oppressor and oppressed. Adhering to a both/and conceptual stance does not mean that race, class, and gender oppression are interchangeable. For example, whereas race, class, and gender oppression operate on the social structural level of institutions, gender oppression seems better able to annex the basic power of the erotic and intrude in personal relationships via family dynamics and within individual consciousness. This may be because racial oppression has fostered historically concrete communities among African-Americans and other racial/ethnic groups. These communities have stimulated cultures of resistance. While these communities segregate Blacks from whites, they simultaneously provide counter-institutional buffers that subordinate groups such as African-Americans use to resist the ideas and institutions of dominant groups. Social class may be similarly structured. Traditionally conceptualized as a relationship of individual employees to their employers, social class might be better viewed as a relationship of communities to capitalist political economies. Moreover, significant overlap exists between racial and social class oppression when viewing them through the collective lens of family and community. Existing community structures provide a primary line of resistance against racial and class oppression. But because gender cross-cuts these structures, it finds fewer comparable institutional bases to foster resistance. Embracing a both/and conceptual stance moves us from additive, separate systems approaches to oppression and toward what I now see as the more fundamental issue of the social relations of domination. Race, class, and gender constitute axes of oppression that characterize Black women's experiences within a more generalized matrix of domination. Other groups may encounter different dimensions of the matrix, such as sexual orientation, religion, and age, but the overarching relationship is one of domination and the types of activism it generates. Bell Hooks labels this matrix a "politic of domination" and describes how it operates along interlocking axes of race, class, and gender oppression. This politic of domination refers to the ideological ground that they share, which is a belief in domination, and a belief in the notions of superior and inferior, which are components of all of those systems. For me it's like a house, they share the foundation, but the foundation is the ideological beliefs around which notions of domination are constructed. Johnella Butler claims that new methodologies growing from this new paradigm would be "non-hierarchical" and would "refuse primacy to either race, class, gender, or ethnicity, demanding instead a recognition of their matrix-like interaction." Race, class, and gender may not be the most fundamental or important systems of oppression, but they have most profoundly affected African-American women. One significant dimension of Black feminist thought is its potential to reveal insights about the social relations of domination organized along other axes such as religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and age. Investigating Black women's particular experiences thus promises to reveal much about the more universal process of domination. Multiple Levels of Domination In addition to being structured along axes such as race, gender, and social class, the matrix of domination is structured on several levels. People experience and resist oppression on three levels: the level of personal biography; the group or community level of the cultural context created by race, class, and gender; and the systemic level of social institutions. Black feminist thought emphasizes all three levels as sites of domination and as potential sites of resistance. Each individual has a unique personal biography made up of concrete experiences, values, motivations, and emotions. No two individuals occupy the same social space; thus no two biographies are identical. Human ties can be freeing and empowering, as is the case with Black women's heterosexual love relationships or in the power of motherhood in African-American families and communities. Human ties can also be confining and oppressive. Situations of domestic violence and abuse or cases in which controlling images foster Black women's internalized oppression represent domination on the personal level. The same situation can look quite different depending on the consciousness one brings to interpret it. This level of individual consciousness is a fundamental area where new knowledge can generate change. Traditional accounts assume that power as domination operates from the top down by forcing and controlling unwilling victims to bend to the will of more powerful superiors. But these accounts fail to account for questions concerning why, for example, women stay with abusive men even with ample opportunity to leave or why slaves did not kill their owners more often. The willingness of the victim to collude in her or his own victimization becomes lost. They also fail to account for sustained resistance by victims, even when chances for victory appear remote. By emphasizing the power of self-definition and the necessity of a free mind, Black feminist thought speaks to the importance African-American women thinkers place on consciousness as a sphere of freedom. Black women intellectuals realize that domination operates not only by structuring power from the top down but by simultaneously annexing the power as energy of those on the bottom for its own ends. In their efforts to rearticulate the standpoint of African-American women as a group, Black feminist thinkers offer individual African-American women the conceptual tools to resist oppression. The cultural context formed by those experiences and ideas that are shared with other members of a group or community which give meaning to individual biographies constitutes a second level at which domination is experienced and resisted. Each individual biography is rooted in several overlapping cultural contexts--for example, groups defined by race, social class, age, gender, religion, and sexual orientation. The cultural component contributes, among other things, the concepts used in thinking and acting, group validation of an individual's interpretation of concepts, the "thought models" used in the acquisition of knowledge, and standards used to evaluate individual thought and behavior. The most cohesive cultural contexts are those with identifiable histories, geographic locations, and social institutions. For Black women African-American communities have provided the location for an Afrocentric group perspective to endure. Subjugated knowledges, such as a Black women's culture of resistance, develop in cultural contexts controlled by oppressed groups. Dominant groups aim to replace subjugated knowledge with their own specialized thought because they realize that gaining control over this dimension of subordinate groups' lives simplifies control. While efforts to influence this dimension of an oppressed group's experiences can be partially successful, this level is more difficult to control than dominant groups would have us believe. For example, adhering to externally derived standards of beauty leads many African-American women to dislike their skin color or hair texture. Similarly, internalizing Eurocentric gender ideology leads some Black men to abuse Black women. These are cases of the successful infusion of the dominant group's specialized thought into the everyday cultural context of African-Americans. But the long-standing existence of a Black women's culture of resistance as expressed through Black women's relationships with one another, the Black women's blues tradition, and the voices of contemporary African-American women writers all attest to the difficulty of eliminating the cultural context as a fundamental site of resistance. Domination is also experienced and resisted on the third level of social institutions controlled by the dominant group: namely, schools, churches, the media, and other formal organizations. These institutions expose individuals to the specialized thought representing the dominant group's standpoint and interests. While such institutions offer the promise of both literacy and other skills that can be used for individual empowerment and social transformation, they simultaneously require docility and passivity. Such institutions would have us believe that the theorizing of elites constitutes the whole of theory. The existence of African-American women thinkers such as Maria Stewart, Sojourner Truth, Zora Neale Hurston, and Fannie Lou Hamer who, though excluded from and/or marginalized within such institutions, continued to produce theory effectively opposes this hegemonic view. Moreover, the more recent resurgence of Black feminist thought within these institutions, the case of the outpouring of contemporary Black feminist thought in history and literature, directly challenges the Eurocentric masculinist thought pervading these institutions. Resisting the Matrix of Domination Domination operates by seducing, pressuring, or forcing African-American women and members of subordinated groups to replace individual and cultural ways of knowing with the dominant group's specialized thought. As a result, suggests Audre Lorde, "the true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us." Or as Toni Cade Bambara succinctly states, "revolution begins with the self, in the self." Lorde and Bambara's suppositions raise an important issue for Black feminist intellectuals and for all scholars and activists working for social change. Although most individuals have little difficulty identifying their own victimization within some major system of oppression--whether it be by race, social class, religion, physical ability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, age or gender--they typically fail to see how their thoughts and actions uphold someone else's subordination. Thus white feminists routinely point with confidence to their oppression as women but resist seeing how much their white skin privileges them. African-Americans who possess eloquent analyses of racism often persist in viewing poor white women as symbols of white power. The radical left fares little better. "If only people of color and women could see their true class interests," they argue, "class solidarity would eliminate racism and sexism." In essence, each group identifies the oppression with which it feels most comfortable as being fundamental and classifies all others as being of lesser importance. Oppression is filled with such contradictions because these approaches fail to recognize that a matrix of domination contains few pure victims or oppressors. Each individual derives varying amounts of penalty and privilege from the multiple systems of oppression which frame everyone's lives. A broader focus stresses the interlocking nature of oppressions that are structured on multiple levels, from the individual to the social structural, and which are part of a larger matrix of domination. Adhering to this inclusive model provides the conceptual space needed for each individual to see that she or he is both a member of multiple dominant groups and a member of multiple subordinate groups. Shifting the analysis to investigating how the matrix of domination is structured along certain axes--race, gender, and class being the axes of investigation for AfricanAmerican women--reveals that different systems of oppression may rely in varying degrees on systemic versus interpersonal mechanisms of domination. Empowerment involves rejecting the dimensions of knowledge, whether personal, cultural, or institutional, that perpetuate objectification and dehumanization. African-American women and other individuals in subordinate groups become empowered when we understand and use those dimensions of our individual, group, and disciplinary ways of knowing that foster our humanity as fully human subjects. This is the case when Black women value our self-definitions, participate in a Black women's activist tradition, invoke an Afrocentric feminist epistemology as central to our worldview, and view the skills gained in schools as part of a focused education for Black community development. C. Wright Mills identifies this holistic epistemology as the "sociological imagination" and identifies its task and its promise as a way of knowing that enables individuals to grasp the relations between history and biography within society. Using one's standpoint to engage the sociological imagination can empower the individual. "My fullest concentration of energy is available to me," Audre Lorde maintains, "only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without the restriction of externally imposed definition." Black Women as Agents of Knowledge Living life as an African-American woman is a necessary prerequisite for producing Black feminist thought because within Black women's communities thought is validated and produced with reference to a particular set of historical, material, and epistemological conditions. African-American women who adhere to the idea that claims about Black women must be substantiated by Black women's sense of our own experiences and who anchor our knowledge claims in an Afrocentric feminist epistemology have produced a rich tradition of Black feminist thought. Traditionally such women were blues singers, poets, autobiographers, storytellers, and orators validated by everyday Black women as experts on a Black women's standpoint. Only a few unusual African-American feminist scholars have been able to defy Eurocentric masculinist epistemologies and explicitly embrace an Afrocentric feminist epistemology. Consider Alice Walker's description of Zora Neal Hurston: In my mind, Zora Neale Hurston, Billie Holiday, and Bessie Smith form a sort of unholy trinity. Zora belongs in the tradition of black women singers, rather than among "the literati."... Like Billie and Jessie she followed her own road, believed in her own gods pursued her own dreams, and refused to separate herself from "common" people. Zora Neal Hurston is an exception for prior to 1950, few African-American women earned advanced degrees and most of those who did complied with Eurocentric masculinist epistemologies. Although these women worked on behalf of Black women, they did so within the confines of pervasive race and gender oppression. Black women scholars were in a position to see the exclusion of African-American women from scholarly discourse, and the thematic content of their work often reflected their interest in examining a Black women's standpoint. However, their tenuous status in academic institutions led them to adhere to Eurocentric masculinist epistemologies so that their work would be accepted as scholarly. As a result, while they produced Black feminist thought, those African-American women most likely to gain academic credentials were often least likely to produce Black feminist thought that used an Afrocentric feminist epistemology. An ongoing tension exists for Black women as agents of knowledge, a tension rooted in the sometimes conflicting demands of Afrocentricity and feminism. Those Black women who are feminists are critical of how Black culture and many of its traditions oppress women. For example, the strong pronatal beliefs in African-American communities that foster early motherhood among adolescent girls, the lack of self-actualization that can accompany the double-day of paid employment and work in the home, and the emotional and physical abuse that many Black women experience from their fathers, lovers, and husbands all reflect practices opposed by African-American women who are feminists. But these same women may have a parallel desire as members of an oppressed racial group to affirm the value of that same culture and traditions. Thus strong Black mothers appear in Black women's literature, Black women's economic contributions to families is lauded, and a curious silence exists concerning domestic abuse. As more African-American women earn advanced degrees, the range of Black feminist scholarship is expanding. Increasing numbers of African-American women scholars are explicitly choosing to ground their work in Black women's experiences, and, by doing so, they implicitly adhere to an Afrocentric feminist epistemology. Rather than being restrained by their both/and status of marginality, these women make creative use of their outsider-within status and produce innovative Afrocentric feminist thought. The difficulties these women face lie less in demonstrating that they have mastered white male epistemologies than in resisting the hegemonic nature of these patterns of thought in order to see, value, and use existing alternative Afrocentric feminist ways of knowing. In establishing the legitimacy of their knowledge claims, Black women scholars who want to develop Afrocentric feminist thought may encounter the often conflicting standards of three key groups. First, Black feminist thought must be validated by ordinary Atrican-American women who, in the words of Hannah Nelson, grow to womanhood "in a world where the saner you are, the madder you are made to appear." To be credible in the eyes of this group, scholars must be personal advocates for their material, be accountable for the consequences of their work, have lived or experienced their material in some fashion, and be willing to engage in dialogues about their findings with ordinary, everyday people. Second, Black feminist thought also must be accepted by the community of Black women scholars. These scholars place varying amounts of importance on rearticulating a Black women's standpoint using an Afrocentric feminist epistemology. Third, Afrocentric feminist thought within academia must be prepared to confront Eurocentric masculinist political and epistemological requirements. The dilemma facing Black women scholars engaged in creating Black feminist thought is that a knowledge claim that meets the criteria of adequacy for one group and thus is judged to be an acceptable knowledge claim may not be translatable into the terms of a different group. Using the example of Black English, June Jordan illustrates the difficulty of moving among epistemologies: You cannot "translate" instances of Standard English preoccupied with abstraction or with nothing/nobody evidently alive into Black English. That would warp the language into uses antithetical to the guiding perspective of its community of users. Rather you must first change those Standard English sentences, themselves, into ideas consistent with the person-centered assumptions of Black English. Although both worldviews share a common vocabulary, the ideas themselves defy direct translation. For Black women who are agents of knowledge, the marginality that accompanies outsider-within status can be the source of both frustration and creativity. In an attempt to minimize the differences between the cultural context of African-American communities and the expectations of social institutions, some women dichotomize their behavior and become two different people. Over time, the strain of doing this can be enormous. Others reject their cultural context and work against their own best interests by enforcing the dominant group's specialized thought. Still others manage to inhabit both contexts but do so critically, using their outsider-within perspectives as a source of insights and ideas. But while outsiders within can make substantial personal cost. "Eventually it comes to you," observes Lorraine Hansberry, "the thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely." Once Black feminist scholars face the notion that, on certain dimensions of a Black women's standpoint, it may be fruitless to try and translate ideas from an Afrocentric feminist epistemology into a Eurocentric masculinist framework, then other choices emerge. Rather than trying to uncover universal knowledge claims that can withstand the translation from one epistemology to another (initially, at least), Black women intellectuals might find efforts to rearticulate a Black women's standpoint especially fruitful. Rearticulating a Black women's standpoint refashions the concrete and reveals the more universal human dimensions of Black women's everyday lives. "I date all my work," notes Nikki Giovanni, "because I think poetry, or any writing, is but a reflection of the moment. The universal comes from the particular." Bell Hooks maintains, "my goal as a feminist thinker and theorist is to take that abstraction and articulate it in a language that renders it accessible--not less complex or rigorous--but simply more accessible." The complexity exists; interpreting it remains the unfulfilled challenge for Black women intellectuals. Situated Knowledge, Subjugated Knowledge, and Partial Perspectives "My life seems to be an increasing revelation of the intimate trace of universal struggle," claims June Jordan: You begin with your family and the kids on the block, and next you open your eyes to what you call your people and that leads you into land reform into Black English into Angola leads you back to your own bed where you lie by yourself; wondering it you deserve to be peaceful, or trusted or desired or left to the freedom of your own unfaltering heart. And the scale shrinks to the use of a skull: your own interior cage. Lorraine Hansberry expresses a similar idea: "I believe that one of the most sound ideas in dramatic writing is that in order to create the universal, you must pay very great attention to the specific. Universality, I think, emerges from the truthful identity of what is." Jordan and Hansberry's insights that universal struggle and truth may wear a particularistic, intimate face suggest a new epistemological stance concerning how we negotiate competing knowledge claims and identify "truth." The context in which African-American women's ideas are nurtured or suppressed matters. Understanding the content and epistemology of Black women's ideas as specialized knowledge requires attending to the context from which those ideas emerge. While produced by individuals, Black feminist thought as situated knowledge is embedded in the communities in which African-American women find ourselves. A Black women's standpoint and those of other oppressed groups is not only embedded in a context but exists in a situation characterized by domination. Because Black women's ideas have been suppressed, this suppression has stimulated African-American women to create knowledge that empowers people to resist domination. Thus Afrocentric feminist thought represents a subjugated knowledge. A Black women's standpoint may provide a preferred stance from which to view the matrix of domination because, in principle, Black feminist thought as specialized thought is less likely than the specialized knowledge produced by dominant groups to deny the connection between ideas and the vested interests of their creators. However, Black feminist thought as subjugated knowledge is not exempt from critical analysis, because subjugation is not grounds for an epistemology. Despite African-American women's potential power to reveal new insights about the matrix of domination, a Black women's standpoint is only one angle of vision. Thus Black feminist thought represents a partial perspective. The overarching matrix of domination houses multiple groups, each with varying experiences with penalty and privilege that produce corresponding partial perspectives, situated knowledges, and, for clearly identifiable subordinate groups, subjugated knowledges. No one group has a clear angle of vision. No one group possesses the theory or methodology that allows it to discover the absolute "truth" or, worse yet, proclaim its theories and methodologies as the universal norm evaluating other groups' experiences. Given that groups are unequal in power in making themselves heard, dominant groups have a vested interest in suppressing the knowledge produced by subordinate groups. Given the existence of multiple and competing knowledge claims to "truth" produced by groups with partial perspectives, what epistemological approach offers the most promise? Dialogue and Empathy Western social and political thought contains two alternative approaches to ascertaining "truth." The first, reflected in positivist science, has long claimed that absolute truths exist and that the task of scholarship is to develop objective, unbiased tools of science to measure these truths.... Relativism, the second approach, has been forwarded as the antithesis of and inevitable outcome of rejecting a positivist science. From a relativist perspective all groups produce specialized thought and each group's thought is equally valid. No group can claim to have a better interpretation of the "truth" than another. In a sense, relativism represents the opposite of scientific ideologies of objectivity. As epistemological stances, both positivist science and relativism minimize the importance of specific location in influencing a group's knowledge claims, the power inequities among groups that produce subjugated knowledges, and the strengths and limitations of partial perspective. The existence of Black feminist thought suggests another alternative to the ostensibly objective norms of science and to relativism's claims that groups with competing knowledge claims are equal.... This approach to Afrocentric feminist thought allows African-American women to bring a Black women's standpoint to larger epistemological dialogues concerning the nature of the matrix of domination. Eventually such dialogues may get us to a point at which, claims Elsa Barkley Brown, "all people can learn to center in another experience, validate it, and judge it by its own standards without need of comparison or need to adopt that framework as their own." In such dialogues, "one has no need to 'decenter' anyone in order to center someone else; one has only to constantly, appropriately, 'pivot the center.' " Those ideas that are validated as true by African-American women, African-American men, Latina lesbians, Asian-American women, Puerto Rican men, and other groups with distinctive standpoints, with each group using the epistemological approaches growing from its unique standpoint, thus become the most "objective" truths. Each group speaks from its own standpoint and shares its own partial, situated knowledge. But because each group perceives its own truth as partial, its knowledge is unfinished. Each group becomes better able to consider other groups' standpoints without relinquishing the uniqueness of its own standpoint or suppressing other groups' partial perspectives. "What is always needed in the appreciation of art, or life," maintains Alice Walker, "is the larger perspective. Connections made, or at least attempted, where none existed before, the straining to encompass in one's glance at the varied world the common thread, the unifying theme through immense diversity." Partiality and not universality is the condition |
strangle the blogosphere and in turn eliminate their competition – while devastating free speech all in one foul swoop.Germany is fighting to stop a teenager and three other German women who joined Isis from being sentenced to death by Iraqi prosecutors.
The teenage ISIS bride, Linda Wenzel, who was captured in Mosul in July, was charged alongside three of her countrywomen.
The 16-year-old could be sentenced to death under Iraqi law, although authorities would have to wait until she was 22 before she was executed.
The teenager is believed to have converted to Islam after she was groomed online by an Isis recruiter.
She ran away from the small town of Pulsnitz, near Dresden, and flew to the Tukrish capital Istanbul, before she was smuggled into Iraq.
There, she reportedly married a Chechen fighter, who was later killed during the battle for Mosul.
Footage of Ms Wenzel’s capture shows her crying as she was dragged away by a group of soldiers, many of whom are laughing.
Ms Wenzel’s father, a construction worker, said he “collapsed” when he heard on the radio that his daughter was alive.
Holding a photo of Ms Wenzel that was taken by an Iraqi soldier, he said: “That is my little one.I recognised her from a little scar across one eye that she got as a child from a garden swing. I have never seen my little one look so serious and so sad.”Just six days after the iPhone 4’s launch, a pair of Maryland residents sued Apple and AT&T, alleging that the smartphone’s defective antenna design drops calls and can’t hold a strong signal.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Maryland, claims that Apple knowingly sold defective phones and broke its warranty promises. The lawsuit also levels seven additional charges against Apple and AT&T, including general negligence, deceptive trade practices, fraud and misrepresentation.
Kevin McCaffrey and Linda Wrinn each pre-ordered a new iPhone from AT&T on June 15, but after receiving their phones on June 24 and 28, respectively, they experienced dropped calls because of the device’s antenna design, the suit alleges.
“Plaintiffs are left with a device that cannot be used for the normal purpose and in the normal manner in which such devices are intended to be used.”
“Plaintiffs are left with a device that cannot be used for the normal purpose and in the normal manner in which such devices are intended to be used,” reads the lawsuit. “Plaintiffs are unable to return the phone without incurring a substantial restocking fee.”
The lawsuit seeks class-action status, a move that if granted would allow any U.S. iPhone 4 owner to join the case.
McCaffrey and Wrinn are represented by attorneys with Ward & Ward PLLC, a Washington law firm, and Charles A. Gilman LLC of Timonium, Md.
Their lawsuit is the first stemming from complaints about substandard iPhone 4 call reception, which started last week when the new phone reached users. Almost immediately, owners reported that their phones would lose a signal, or that the signal indicator would show a weakened signal, when the smartphone was gripped in a certain way, especially if it was held in the left hand.
Hardware experts believe that holding the iPhone can bridge the two antennas embedded in the steel band that encircles the device, lowering signal strength and changing their ability to receive and transmit signals at the designed frequencies.
McCaffrey and Winn’s lawsuit cited several of the accounts on the Internet of the reception problems, as well as e-mailed statements allegedly made by Apple CEO Steve Jobs to users and a leaked script for Apple support technicians that ordered them not to offer warranty service for the flaw.
The suit demands that Apple and AT&T pay compensatory and punitive damages, and that Apple be barred from selling more iPhone 4s until it has “repaired the design and/or manufacture defect.”
This lawsuit will likely not be the last. Last Monday, Sacramento law firm Kershaw, Cutter & Ratinoff began soliciting potential plaintiffs who had experienced poor reception for a class-action case. Tuesday, the firm said it had received more than 1,400 e-mails from iPhone 4 owners interested in joining a lawsuit.
“Thousands of people are really unhappy with their new iPhones and Apple’s response to the antenna issue,” the law firm wrote on its blog.
William Kershaw, KCR’s lead class-action counsel, did not respond to a request for comment on the firm’s plans.
Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer or subscribe to Gregg’s RSS feed. His e-mail address is gkeizer@ix.netcom.com. covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld
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Copyright © 2010 IDG News Service. All rights reserved. IDG News Service is a trademark of International Data Group, Inc.A shy, snub-nosed porpoise native to the Gulf of California is being driven into extinction by Chinese demand for a rare type of fish bladder. According to a new report by the advocacy group Greenpeace, the vaquita, the world’s rarest marine mammal, is being caught up in nets laid for another endangered fish off the coast of Mexico, the totoaba.
A bladder from a totoaba sells for as much as $645,000 in Asia. The organ is filled with a gas that helps the fish maintain buoyancy and, according to Chinese medicine, good for blood circulation and fertility.
Animal conservationists have long said that the only way to save the vaquita is to shut down the totoaba trade, which is illegal in Mexico and the United States. Researchers believe there are only 97 vaquitas left and that they could disappear entirely by 2018.
Another way to help the animal: target the product’s main market. Greenpeace researchers found the totoaba bladder, also known as fish maw, on sale in Hong Kong’s dried-seafood stalls and through wholesalers for between HK$40,000 and HK$5 million (US$645,000).
Greenpeace A bladder weighing 359 grams costs HK$240,000 (about US$31,000).
Greenpeace A pair of totoaba bladders packed in a wooden gift box with “Money Fish Maw” on the cover.
“Hong Kong authorities have the power to shut down this market. If they fail to act, not only will they be allowing an illegal trade to fester and fuel corruption in China and elsewhere, but they will be responsible for pushing the vaquita to extinction,” said Gloria Chang, program manager for Greenpeace East Asia, in a press statement.
Mexican authorities have banned fishing in the vaquita’s habitat for two years. US authorities have been cracking down on totoaba smugglers in California. Still, the illegal totoaba trade has flourished as demand for the fish has increased in Asia, owing in part to the growing scarcity of a similar overfished croaker in China, the bahaba.
The totoaba can grow to 1.8 meters (six feet) in length. But fishermen and smugglers often throw it back into the sea after snipping out its bladder to minimize the chance of being caught with large amounts of its meat. In Asia, the bladders are usually dried and used in soup.Transformers Titan Masters - Wave 2 Head Modes.
I got these from work, Entertainment Earth had sets in this week. If you pre-ordered, you could have some too. If you want to order from the next shipment: http://www.entertainmentearth.com/prodinfo.asp?number=HSB4697BB&id=16-502018719
Clobber is Grimlock. He’ll make you angry that the last proper G1 “Classics” Dinobot toy was arguably Grimlock Classics 2006. (Platinums, shmatinums.) It’s a redecorated/retooled Crashbash.
Skytread is Flywheels - and boy howdy, is he great. The Terri-Bull mold got new colors and a new faceplate, but that face sculpt is WONDERFUL.
Also wonderful? Brawn. He looks gorgeous in person, but again, no unique body just yet. Customizers will no doubt make great use of these. His vehicle mode ain’t bad, and the weapon mode is gnarly. I like it.
Rounding out the set is the fantastic Apeface. A little gorilla becomes a little jet, and the tiny robot ain’t bad either. The gun mode ain’t bad either.Santa Claus greets children at St. Viator's Winterfest in 2015. View Full Caption Provided
OLD IRVING PARK — It's open season for food, cocktails and crafts at the St. Viator Rec Center, 3644 N. Kedvale Ave., where Winterfest will be held from Friday-Sunday.
Beyond an ice skating rink and a Christmas trees lot, the festival's "Snowflake Cafe" will serve pancakes, walking tacos, pulled pork sandwiches and "holiday goulash," according to organizers.
Meanwhile, event sponsor Haymarket Pub & Brewery, 737 W. Randolph St., will offer up craft beer alongside wine, coffee with Bailey's, pop and hot chocolate at the "Winter Cocktail Bar."
There's also the "Miseltoe Market," featuring 20 craft vendors selling jewelry, artwork, lotions, holiday knickknacks and more.
Four varieties of Christmas tree will be for sale, ranging from $30-$60. Visitors can also buy wreaths and garlands, priced between $15-25.
All the while, a Santa Claus will be on hand to take free pictures with kids.
Winterfest will be open:
• 5-9 p.m. Friday
• 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Saturday
• 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here.BY 1976, REPORTER PAM ZEKMAN was well-acquainted with the everyday corruption that permeated Chicago. After all, the city was so well-known for shady dealings it birthed its own shorthand: “Chicago-style politics” was used with frequency to describe boss-style rule and graft in government.
Illustration by Jack Jordan/Chicago Sun-Times.
Zekman was part of a four-person Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative team at the Chicago Tribune, where she had gone undercover in a nursing home, for a collections agency, in a hospital, and at a precinct polling place, exposing wrongdoings ranging from medical malpractice to election fraud. “We had become known for doing this kind of undercover reporting with one caveat: When there’s no other way to get the story,” says Zekman. “We didn’t do it just for the idea of doing it and we did not do it cavalierly. ”
When Zekman was poached by a rival paper, the feisty Chicago Sun-Times, she proposed a daring project that would go down in the annals of journalism history as both a feat of reporting and a focal point for ethics debates still raging today. For years, Zekman had been collecting tips about city employees extracting bribes from local businessmen, but couldn’t get sources to go on the record; she figured the only way to get the story would be to get inside the system. So she convinced her paper to buy a bar. They would staff it with newspaper workers, run it like any other watering hole (with some notable exceptions that included concealed photographers), and wait to see what happened. It was named, appropriately, the Mirage. The voices in this story are:
PAM ZEKMAN, reporter, Chicago Sun-Times
ZAY N. SMITH, reporter, Chicago Sun-Times
JIM FROST, photographer, Chicago Sun-Times
BILL RECKTENWALD, investigator, Better Government Association
Interviews have been condensed and edited for length and clarity.
Bartender Jeff Allen watching water drain from bar sink drain directly onto basement floor. All photographs by Jim Frost of the Chicago Sun-Times.
FEBRUARY 1976
Pam: We started getting phone calls from businesses that were complaining about having to pay a steady stream of inspectors that come into the restaurants and bars looking for payoffs to ignore city violations. And we would go out to talk with them or try to talk with them on the phone into going public with this and not a single one would do it for fear that they would have trouble with the city forever if they went public with it and the city would shut them down. We couldn’t get anybody to go on the record.
Zay: Corruption was an everyday thing. It is in any city, but in Chicago we perfected many methods of it over the years.
Jim: In Chicago, in the ‘70s? To go up against City Hall? It’s suicide. Nobody would do it.
Pam: The idea evolved with George Bliss, who was one of my mentors at the Tribune. He and I proposed that the Tribune go undercover and buy a bar. And see what happens to us and see if we’re put through the same thing. The idea was presented to attorneys for the Tribune at the time and they pretty much killed it.
But when Pam ran the same idea to Sun-Times editor James F. Hoge in February 1976, he pounced on it—they would find the money, he told her. In December, Hoge officially greenlit the project. The paper would partner with a local watchdog group, the Better Government Association, which investigated corruption in Chicago. Pam called her contact Bill Recktenwald at the BGA with the news: the Sun-Times was buying a bar. The pair would pose as a married couple, Pam and Ray Patterson, aspiring tavern owners.
Games being carried into the bar.
JANUARY 1977
Pam: Bill Recktenwald from the Better Government Association and I went bar shopping as soon as we got the go-ahead from our bosses.
Bill: We had interesting conversations with people who were owners about, ‘Yeah, you had to pay people off.’ Very frank discussions; it was an open secret. When we were a reporter and an investigator, people wouldn’t talk. Now that we were a husband and wife pretending to buy a tavern, people wouldn’t shut up.
Pam: We looked at several locations. This location was relatively close to the Sun-Times so that people dispatched to the bar when they needed to help us—particularly photographers who were going to be assigned to the project—would be able to get there easily.
After months of looking for the right bar, the group landed on an ideal location: An unassuming tavern called the Firehouse on 731 North Wells Street and located about ten minutes from Rush Street, a bustling commerce corridor. In addition to being close to the Sun-Times offices, the bar came with an unexpected perk—a business broker who informed Pam and Bill he would help them cheat on their taxes and buy off officials.
Pam: Phil Barasch was the business broker who was handling the sale. He had also been the accountant for the former bar owner and Bill Recktenwald and I went to meet with Phil about this bar and we knew immediately after meeting this business broker that this was going to be the bar. We also felt extremely comfortable about the possible future of the project because he laid out for us, with no prompting on our part, how he was going to steer us through the process of getting licensed and getting inspected and getting our inspections approved—he would be contacting the building inspector and the fire inspector and whatever inspector we would have to deal with and we should leave an envelope with a certain amount of cash, and he told us what the cash amount should be for each inspector. And how to do it all!
Bill: He was one of those guys, after you shake his hand, you want to go wash.
A city inspector checks the beer cooler.
JUNE 1977
Pam and Bill bought the bar—for $5,000 down on the $18,000 asking price. (By the end of the project, the net cost to the Sun-Times and BGA would be $25,000.) Now they just had to open it, all while maintaining secrecy and following strict journalistic ground rules.
Bill: One of the things we wanted to make sure was that if anybody was indicted because of this, that it wasn’t us. And that meant that any papers we signed, like the application for the license, had to be 100 percent truthful because it was being signed under penalty of perjury; that the money being used to finance this came from a legal source. And we looked at the entrapment laws because we knew people would say it was entrapment.
Pam: The rule we followed the whole time was not to say anything, or pressure anybody to do anything they weren’t normally inclined to do.
Zay: It was a very highly kept secret. Three editors, Pam and I, and two photographers participated from a hidden loft. That was it from our paper. We didn’t even tell the publisher.
Pam: The newsroom did not know what we were working on.
Jim: I didn’t even tell my wife what I was up to.
Zay: It was a big chance. The cover could be blown at any time. What if someone was killed in the tavern? It happens, in a city like Chicago. It was a very nervy thing to do.
Pam: It was a constant, almost 24/7 reporting project where, at any given time, something could go wrong.
A Chicago inspector in the bar. It turned out to be incredibly easy to catch city officials taking bribes.
JULY-OCTOBER 1977
After rejecting a few tavern names—such as “Le Tappe Lloyd”, a play on “tabloid”—the team settled on an inside-joke: “Mirage,” an idealmoniker for a building riddled with code violations and coated in pigeon droppings.
Pam: The basement was a mess in terms of leaking water from pipes creating unsanitary conditions. The bathrooms were not up to code. There were just a whole variety of problems that we knew inspectors would likely have trouble with.
Bill: There was a point that we did bring a person in who was a structural expert to assure us that the building would not collapse if we filled it up with people.
Zay: It was dirty, badly kept, just kind of a hang-out for a few tipplers in the neighborhood. We cleaned it up as best we could, opened for business, and waited to see what the city would bring us.
The reporters decorated the Mirage with hanging plants and Marimekko prints and installed a jukebox and pinball machine. A sign outside offered a jaunty drawing of a cactus. Zay went by his college nickname, Norty; Bill (aka Ray) grew out muttonchops and a mustache to disguise his appearance, and Pam tied a scarf over her most recognizable feature, a head of bright red hair. The Mirage officially opened for business on August 17th, but evidence of corruption arrived much earlier.
Zay: The payoff parade began before we opened. The health inspector, when he inspected us— I mean, the basement just had maggots glistening on the floor. Upstairs it was no better. He shook us down for a few bucks and passed the place.
Pam: I think one of the things that amazed us is that these inspectors sold out public safety on the cheap. They were not taking huge amounts. We were told to leave $10 for one inspector, and $25 for another inspector.
Bill: The plumbing inspectors, the building inspectors, the electric inspectors, the fire inspectors— they all took envelopes with money in them and they all passed us. And we should never have passed.
Throughout the process, the Mirage staff assiduously documented every trespass.
Pam: We took notes immediately after having an encounter with one of the inspectors. When there was an obvious journalistic thing to record and report, I took a lot of notes and so did whoever else involved in whatever the event was. We kept, in essence, a diary.
Zay: We wanted to have photographers for various events, and luckily, at the back of the bar, there was a storage space and then a ladder up to another storage space about ten feet up. And it was the perfect place for them to be, there was a ventilation opening at that point and they rigged that so they could shoot through it without being seen.
Jim: Our cover was we were repairmen. Both Gene [Gene Pesek, another Sun-Times photographer assigned to the story] and I, in our car trunk, we had overalls, caps, and gloves and whatever a serviceman might have. And then we had a big tool box and the big tool box was to put your camera in to get it in and out. And so we would get the call that an inspector had shown up—and sometimes they showed up as a surprise. When you got that call on your two-way radio, whatever you were doing, you just walked out. You go to your car, pull on your coveralls, grab your toolbox, drive over there and walk in and say something to the bartender as you walked in, ‘Hey is that outlet still shorting out in the back?’ He’d say, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ and you’d fade into the back and go up into the loft and take your camera out and sit and wait for the exchange to take place.
From left are: Sun-Times reporters William Recktenwald, better Government Ass. Investigator, Pamela Zekman, Zay Smith and Jeff Allen, who posed as the Mirage’s owner.
Meanwhile, amidst the payoffs and reporting, the crew—most of whom had no experience operating a small business—still had to run a bar.
Zay: I always put on the jukebox Peggy Lee singing “Fever” which seems to me a suitable song for that place. Also on the jukebox was the Star Wars cantina theme. Which seemed very fitting for our clientele.
Bill: We were on a strict budget, so we had taken a lot of stuff in. Pam brought in her microwave from home and her blender.
Pam: Sometimes in the morning I was there by myself. Some people would walk in and ask for a drink that I had no idea how to make. One couple wanted a margarita at 11 in the morning, two margaritas. I didn’t have a clue as to what went into a margarita or how to make the salt stick around the top of the glass. Another guy wanted a shot and beer and I didn’t know exactly what that was and I put the shot into the beer. Which I now know is a terrible thing to do.
Zay: We finally decided, you know what, I’m going to go to bartender school, because a) I’d learn bartending, and b) I’d learn about how you handle tips and taxes and find another angle from which to view the corruptions that might exist. It was a good bartending school; I learned how to make 85 drinks. I came back having a rough idea of how to work behind the bar.
Bill: There was a fight and I’m not sure exactly who started it or how it started because I wasn’t watching carefully at the beginning part, but what occurred to me as being really strange is that people who had previously been sitting having nice conversations with each other all of a sudden are in this slugfest. People pushing, chairs going over. One of the bartenders was an intern at the BGA, skinny kid, jumps over the bar and all of a sudden I see him going back over the other direction. I don’t know if he was pushed or tossed.
Zay: One of our customers who came in every day, suddenly said to no one in particular, but loudly, “I’ve figured it out, I’ve finally figured it out, this place is a front! It’s gotta be a front for something.” I just laughed him off.
Pam in kitchen. The Mirage was given permits to sell and prepare food even though its kitchen contained at least two flagrant code violations: a hood above a grill with no exhaust fan and a sink that had been painted over.
The Mirage shuttered on Halloween; it was cleaned up and resold. During its scant four months in operation, the team been shaken down by everyone from pinball machine operators to state liquor officials and had collected evidence of a widespread culture of payoffs and negligence among city inspectors, including systematic tax fraud that was costing the city an estimated $16 million annually. Zay commandeered his own room at the Sun-Times to begin turning stacks of notes into a series of stories; Pam commenced months of follow-up reporting. On January 8, 1978, the Sun-Times debuted its first story in a 25-part series detailing the goings on at the Mirage. The story was an instant hit.
Bill: I’d take the L in and see people reading the paper, you know they’re reading your story. I knew where the jumps were and what was in the jumps, and you’d see people start to smile or chuckle at things that were in the stories.
Pam: Zay Smith did an incredible job [with the writing] and it was something people were talking about every day. And it wound up getting international attention, much to my amazement. It played in other countries and it was a huge, huge success.
Jim: There was probably five or six months after the thing broke that we were just going everywhere. Pam and Zay and Gene and I would go as a team to do appearances at universities, journalism schools, city clubs, journalism clubs.
Zay: I walked back down from the City Room, heading to my desk, and we had a row of desks down the middle and it was called “Murderers Row” because columnists—the stars—sat in that row. And as I walked past them, they looked up at me—they were obviously reading the papers that had just come out—and they smiled and gave me a thumbs-up. And I thought, ‘Well, that’s nice! They liked it!’ And it made me feel good. I was later told they gave me a thumbs-up because I got the word ‘ass’ in the paper. They’d been trying to get the word ‘ass’ past the copy desk for years.
Grand opening party.
The 25-part series had immediate and lasting impact. Over a dozen officials were suspended or fired. By June 1979, 18 city electrical inspectors had been convicted of bribery. Mayor Michael A. Bilandic created an Office of Professional Review to ferret out corrupt city employees, and the Illinois Department of Revenue created a task force to uncover tax fraud dubbed the “Mirage Unit.” The series, which had exposed citywide corruption with cinematic flair, was an obvious candidate for a Pulitzer, and was subsequently nominated by the Pulitzer jury in the category of Local Investigative Reporting. But when the nomination reached the board, things derailed quickly. Eugene C. Patterson, board member and editor and president of the St. Petersburg Times, declared that the nomination sparked “the most fascinating debate ever heard at Pulitzer.” The Mirage story, he said, “had an element of entrapment.” Benjamin C. Bradlee, executive editor of The Washington Post and also a board member, stated that, “We instruct our reporters not to misrepresent themselves, period. We felt a Sun-Times award for this entry could send journalism on a wrong course.” The Pulitzer was awarded to Pennsylvania’s Pottsville Republicanfor a series on coal and organized crime.
Pam: We found that we were in the middle of a growing controversy over undercover reporting and should you identify yourself as a reporter at all costs and never do this—that was one of the criticisms. There was a controversy that grew over the use of undercover reporting to expose wrongdoing versus reporting on wrongdoing based on anonymous sources. There was a standard at the time that was developed by TheWashington Post in the Watergate era of ‘two anonymous sources makes it okay’. My problem with that is I really feel that undercover reporting—when there’s no other way to get a story, and when there’s a substantial abuse that affects a lot of people—is a far more reliable method of reporting than charging somebody with wrongdoing based on anonymous sources so they don’t know where it’s coming from.
Zay: A few weeks later, The Washington Post started a series—and it was a good series—called “Down & Out.” And what was the series? A Washington Post reporter pretended to be homeless for a period of time to see what was going on. So you tell me the difference.
Bill: Everybody we talked about we had names for and everybody had an opportunity to respond. No one said, ‘No, I wasn’t there,’ ‘No, that didn’t happen’. They just shut up.
Pam: These inspectors walked in the bar and did what they apparently were doing in all of their inspections or a good part of their inspections. They were accepting payoffs and encouraging or pressuring businesses to make the pay offs by holding the idea of passing or failing an inspection over the heads of the business people. We just opened up for business and let them do what they normally do.
Patterson and Bradlee were not unanimous in their objection; board member Clayton Kirkpatrick, editor and vice-president of Zekman’s former employer, The Chicago Tribune, objected, saying later, “I don’t see any other way they could have exposed what they did.” The Columbia Journalism Review ran a Publisher’s Notes column in which it awarded the project its own “imaginary award”.
Photographers Jim Frost and Gene Pesek.
In conversations about the validity of undercover reporting, the Mirage is a perennial subject. Today, the Society of Professional Journalism includes in its Code of Ethics the edict that reporters should “Avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information unless traditional, open methods will not yield the information vital to the public.” Recent high-profile instances of undercover reporting include reporter Suki Kim’s months posing as a missionary and teacher in North Korea and an expose on for-profit prisons in Mother Jones in which a reporter went undercover as a prison guard. In an article addressing the story, Mother Jones editor-in-chiefClara Jeffery wrote, “Shane’s story will draw a fair bit of curiosity around the newsgathering methods employed. But don’t let anyone distract you from the story itself. Because the story itself is revealing as hell.”
PAM ZEKMAN worked at the Sun-Times until 1981, when she became an on-air investigative reporter at WBBM, Chicago’s CBS affiliate, where she still works. She shares two Pulitzer Prizes for work done at the Tribune and Sun-Times. She continued to work undercover after the Mirage, includingposing as a patient at an abortion clinic as part of an investigation that exposed unnecessary procedures being performed on women for profit.
BILL RECKTENWALD joined the staff of the Tribune as a reporter not long after the Mirage story broke. Among his many projects was a series of stories written about his time undercover as a prison guard at Pontiac State Prison, which resulted in the restructuring of the state prison system. He is currently a senior lecturer and journalist-in-residence at the School of Journalism at Southern Illinois University.
ZAY N. SMITH continued to work as an investigative reporter at the Sun-Times until he became a columnist. His popular column QT ran from 1995 to 2008. He still writes online. Smith and Zekman wrote a book about the Mirage, published in 1979, titled, simply, The Mirage.
JIM FROST worked at the Sun-Times until 2006. After the Mirage project he focused on feature story photography, though he was paired up with Zekman again for the abortion clinic story, for which he took photographs with a camera hidden in a briefcase. He now runs his own photography business and lives in Wisconsin.
Photograph at top: The grand opening of the bar in the late summer of 1978.
This article was originally published as part of our Off Topic newsletter, where you get an original story delivered to your inbox each and every week. Sign up now.The new Dodge Charger R/T is like the high-school athlete whose brothers have gone on to star in college and pro ranks. Indeed, with the formidable Hellcat V-8 and the SRT 392 hogging the spotlight, the kid brother’s credentials pale. After all, the 392 packs 485 horsepower and the Hellcat lays a 707-horse smackdown, heady numbers that could make one perceive the R/T’s 5.7-liter Hemi V-8 as a little tame.
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Do not be deceived. Unless you have an insatiable appetite for shredding tires, the 5.7’s output—370 horsepower, 395 lb-ft of torque—will satisfy most needs for speed. Okay, the R/T is governed to a mere 145 mph versus the Hellcat’s 204, but you’ll still reach the Chinese takeout place before they pack up your food, and 5.1 seconds to 60 mph will leave most sedans gasping for breath.
Track Pack Plus
Surprisingly, given its mass, the R/T has a good dynamic résumé. The driver is aware of the substantial, two-plus-ton curb weight, but the Charger’s chassis tuning mitigates that number very well.
Thanks to a rigid unibody, the basic Charger R/T nicely manages yaw, pitch, and roll. But those who love to drive are advised to get the 29R Customer Preferred pack, which upgrades the car, as it did on our test example, to Road & Track spec. Doing so means a cornucopia of goodies including the Super Track Pak sport suspension; the Road & Track Performance Group with more aggressive throttle mapping, revised traction control (higher intervention threshold), heavy-duty brakes, 20-inch aluminum wheels, and sportier rubber (245/45 Goodyear Eagle RS-A2 all-season performance tires); and Dodge’s Performance Pages software, which allows the driver to track acceleration, cornering, and a variety of other numeric markers.
View Photos MICHAEL SIMARI
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There’s a lot of other desirable stuff crammed into the 29R package, too, including nappa leather upholstery, ventilated front seats, heated rear seats (heated front chairs come on every R/T), a power tilt and telescope steering column, a heated steering wheel, power-adjustable pedals, and heated power mirrors, to hit a few high spots. At $3000 for all the foregoing equipment, it’s a must-have bargain collection.
Augmented by all the Track Pack goodies, the R/T dances even more remarkably well for a big car, the combination of quick (2.5 turns lock-to-lock), gratifyingly accurate electric power steering and firm suspension making it easy to place the car precisely where the driver wishes. And there’s enough grip to inspire confidence in very fast cornering.
It’s also very easy to develop affection for the eight-speed automatic. Shifts in the Charger aren’t quite as whap-whap quick as those delivered by some of the very best dual-clutch automatics, but one could call them deliberate, and in manual mode the transmission will hold the selected gear against redline—no autonomous upshifting.
The eight-speed is new for this year and slightly enhances EPA fuel economy versus last year’s five-speed unit, adding 1 mpg to the car’s city rating. That means 16 mpg in urban environs and 25 on the highway, on midgrade fuel, which is pretty good for a big V-8. We averaged 18 mpg in mixed driving. Would economy go up if the Hemi were fitted with direct fuel injection? Probably. But fuel economy isn’t a high priority for Hemi fans, nor for cars operating in this performance realm.
The car doesn’t have many demerits, and those it does have aren’t deal-breakers. We’ve already mentioned mass; cutting the curb weight would further improve handling and efficiency. The suspension tuning that gives the R/T its athletic reflexes can be a little stiff on gnarly pavement, and while grip—0.86 g—isn’t exactly a weak suit, it could be improved by a set of real summer performance tires.
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Such tires would probably improve the braking performance, too, as 170 feet from 70 mph is long for a car with sports-sedan pretense. We detected no real fade in the system, but the pedal did begin to go a little soft after repeated hard stops.
View Photos MICHAEL SIMARI
The Right Stuff
Considered in standard trim and before its 2015 refresh, the Charger ranked behind mainstream sedan offerings like the Toyota Avalon and the Chevy Impala in our comparison test. But for the owner who wants a strong performance component in the everyday drive, the new R/T has the right stuff for an agreeable $33,990 starting MSRP.
Our test car got expensive quickly, however. In addition to the $3000 Preferred/R&T stuff (again, don’t leave the showroom without it), it had $6975 of additional options. These included $995 for Beats audio gear; $1795 for the Technology Group (rain-sensing wipers, auto high beams, and safety nannies); $295 for Driver Confidence equipment (blind-spot and cross-path warning, exterior puddle lamps); and $695 for navigation, infotainment goodies, and a backup camera. Our car also was fitted with a power sunroof ($1195), Redline Red paint ($500), and a black-painted roof ($1500).
The grand total came to $43,965. That’s more than the cheap-speed $40,990 R/T Scat Pack, although still well shy of the $48,380 Charger SRT 392. (The wild and wooly Hellcat opens at $64,990.) In any case, there do seem to be some opportunities for whittling. Okay, the red paint is probably important, as it emphasizes the aggressive styling. On the other hand, do you really need the safety technology, puddle lamps, or the black roof?
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Options notwithstanding, this Charger figures as an underappreciated performance bargain in a full-size sedan. It’s everyday useful and ready to rock every day.Credit: Christie Medical Holdings
For a patient who is always jittery about holding out an arm for a needle, VeinViewer is a product that projects the image of veins on the person's arm, to help medical workers know where to put the needle.
VeinViewer uses near-infrared light to create a digital image of patient vasculature in realtime. The formal explanation of the product has been as a vascular access imaging device that assists clinicians in finding the optimal venipuncture site, avoiding potential stick complications.
VeinViewer is from the Memphis-based company, Christie Medical Holdings. The company said VeinViewer has been proven to increase first-stick success by up to 100 percent and decrease medically unnecessary PICC lines by greater than 30 percent |
In the meantime, a bomber unit—I Gruppe, Kampfgeschwader 54 (KG(J) 54)—redesignated as such on 1 October 1944[47] through being re-equipped with, and trained to use the Me 262A-2a fighter-bomber for use in a ground-attack role. However, the unit lost 12 jets in action in two weeks for minimal returns.[citation needed] Jagdverband 44 (JV 44) was another Me 262 fighter unit, of squadron (staffel) size given the low numbers of available personnel, formed in February 1945 by Lieutenant General Adolf Galland, who had recently been dismissed as Inspector of Fighters. Galland was able to draw into the unit many of the most experienced and decorated Luftwaffe fighter pilots from other units grounded by lack of fuel.
During March, Me 262 fighter units were able, for the first time, to mount large-scale attacks on Allied bomber formations. On 18 March 1945, thirty-seven Me 262s of JG 7 intercepted a force of 1,221 bombers and 632 escorting fighters. They shot down 12 bombers and one fighter for the loss of three Me 262s. Although a 4:1 ratio was exactly what the Luftwaffe would have needed to make an impact on the war, the absolute scale of their success was minor, as it represented only 1% of the attacking force.
In the last days of the war, Me 262s from JG 7 and other units were committed in ground assault missions, in an attempt to support German troops fighting Red Army forces. Just south of Berlin, halfway between Spremberg and the German capital, Wehrmacht's 9th Army (with elements from the 12 Army and 4th Panzer Army) was assaulting the Red Army's 1st Ukrainian Front. To support this attack, on 24 April, JG 7 dispatched thirty-one Me 262s on a strafing mission in the Cottbus-Bautzen area. Luftwaffe pilots claimed six lorries and seven Soviet aircraft, but three German jets were lost. On the evening of 27 April, thirty-six Me 262s from JG 7, III.KG(J)6 and KJ(J)54 were sent against Soviet forces that were attacking German troops in the forests north-east of Baruth. They succeeded in strafing 65 Soviet lorries, after which the Me 262s intercepted low flying IL-2 Sturmoviks searching for German tanks. The jet pilots claimed six Sturmoviks for the loss of three Messerschmitts. During operations between 28 April and 1 May Soviet fighters and ground fire downed at least ten more Me 262s from JG 7.[49] However, JG 7 managed to keep its jets operational until the end of the war. And on the 8th of May, at around 4:00 p.m. Oblt. Fritz Stehle of 2./JG 7, while flying an Me 262 on the Erzgebirge, attacked a formation of Soviet aircraft. He claimed a Yakovlev Yak-9, but the plane shot down was probably a P-39 Airacobra. Soviet records show that they lost two Airacobras, one of them probably downed by Stehle, who would thus have scored the last Luftwaffe air victory of the war.[50]
Me 262B-1a/U1 night fighter, Wrknr. 110306, with FuG 218 Neptun antennae in the nose and second seat for a radar operator. This airframe was surrendered to the RAF at Schleswig in May 1945 and taken to the UK for testing.
Several two-seat trainer variants of the Me 262, the Me 262 B-1a, had been adapted through the Umrüst-Bausatz 1 factory refit package as night fighters, complete with on-board FuG 218 Neptun high-VHF band radar, using Hirschgeweih ("stag's antlers") antennae with a set of dipole elements shorter than the Lichtenstein SN-2 had used, as the B-1a/U1 version. Serving with 10. Staffel Nachtjagdgeschwader 11, near Berlin, these few aircraft (alongside several single-seat examples) accounted for most of the 13 Mosquitoes lost over Berlin in the first three months of 1945.[citation needed] Intercepts were generally or entirely made using Wilde Sau methods, rather than AI radar-controlled interception. As the two-seat trainer was largely unavailable, many pilots made their first jet flight in a single-seater without an instructor.[citation needed]
Despite its deficiencies, the Me 262 clearly marked the beginning of the end of piston-engined aircraft as effective fighting machines. Once airborne, it could accelerate to speeds over 850 km/h (530 mph), about 150 km/h (93 mph) faster than any Allied fighter operational in the European Theater of Operations..[citation needed]
The Me 262's top ace[Note 5] was probably Hauptmann Franz Schall with 17 kills, including six four-engine bombers and ten P-51 Mustang fighters, although fighter ace Oberleutnant Kurt Welter claimed 25 Mosquitos and two four-engine bombers shot down by night and two further Mosquitos by day. Most of Welter's claimed night kills were achieved by eye, even though Welter had tested a prototype Me 262 fitted with FuG 218 Neptun radar. Another candidate for top ace on the aircraft was Oberstleutnant Heinrich Bär, who is credited with 16 enemy aircraft[51] while flying Me262's out of his total of 240 aircraft shot down.[52]
Anti-bomber tactics [ edit ]
The Me 262 was so fast that German pilots needed new tactics to attack Allied bombers. In the head-on attack, the combined closing speed of about 320 m/s (720 mph) was too high for accurate shooting, with ordnance that could only fire about 44 shells a second (650 rounds/min from each cannon) in total from the quartet of them. Even from astern, the closing speed was too great to use the short-ranged quartet of MK 108 cannon to maximum effect. Therefore, a roller-coaster attack was devised. The 262s approached from astern and about 1,800 m higher (5,900 ft) than the bombers. From about five km behind (3.1 mi), they went into a shallow dive that took them through the escort fighters with little risk of interception. When they were about 1.5 km astern (0.93 mi) and 450 m (1,480 ft) below the bombers, they pulled up sharply to reduce speed. On levelling off, they were one km astern (1,100 yd) and overtaking the bombers at about 150 km/h (93 mph), well placed to attack them.[53]
Since the 30mm MK 108 cannon's short barrels and low muzzle velocity (only 540 m/s (1,900 km/h; 1,200 mph)) rendered it inaccurate beyond 600 m (660 yd; 2,000 ft), coupled with the jet's velocity, which required breaking off at 200 m (220 yd; 660 ft) to avoid colliding with the target, Me 262 pilots normally commenced firing at 500 m (550 yd; 1,600 ft).[54] Gunners of Allied bomber aircraft found their electrically powered gun turrets had problems tracking the jets. Target acquisition was difficult because the jets closed into firing range quickly and remained in firing position only briefly, using their standard attack profile, which proved more effective.[citation needed]
Me 262 with R4M underwing rocket racks on display at the Technikmuseum Speyer, Germany.
A prominent Royal Navy test pilot, Captain Eric Brown, chief naval test pilot and commanding officer of the Captured Enemy Aircraft Flight Royal Aircraft Establishment, who tested the Me 262 noted:
"This was a Blitzkrieg aircraft. You whack in at your bomber. It was never meant to be a dogfighter, it was meant to be a destroyer of bombers... The great problem with it was it did not have dive brakes. For example, if you want to fight and destroy a B-17, you come in on a dive. The 30mm cannon were not so accurate beyond 600 metres [660 yd; 2,000 ft]. So you normally came in at 600 yards [550 m; 1,800 ft] and would open fire on your B-17. And your closing speed was still high and since you had to break away at 200 metres [220 yd; 660 ft] to avoid a collision, you only had two seconds firing time. Now, in two seconds, you can't sight. You can fire randomly and hope for the best. If you want to sight and fire, you need to double that time to four seconds. And with dive brakes, you could have done that."[54]
Eventually, German pilots developed new combat tactics to counter Allied bombers' defences. Me 262s, equipped with up to 24 unguided folding-fin R4M rockets—12 in each of two underwing racks, outboard of the engine nacelle—approached from the side of a bomber formation, where their silhouettes were widest, and while still out of range of the bombers' machine guns, fired a salvo of rockets with strongly brisant Hexogen-filled warheads, exactly the same explosive in the shells fired by the Me 262A's quartet of MK 108 cannon. One or two of these rockets could down even the famously rugged Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress,[55] from the "metal-shattering" brisant effect of the fast-flying rocket's 520 g (18 oz) explosive warhead. The much more massive BR 21 large-calibre rockets, used from their tubular launchers in undernose locations for an Me 262A's use (one either side of the nosewheel well) were only as fast as the MK 108's shells.
Though this broadside-attack tactic was effective, it came too late to have a real effect on the war, and only small numbers of Me 262s were equipped with the rocket packs. Most of those so equipped were Me 262A-1a models, members of Jagdgeschwader 7. This method of attacking bombers became the standard, and mass deployment of Ruhrstahl X-4 guided missiles was cancelled. Some nicknamed this tactic the Luftwaffe's Wolf Pack, as the fighters often made runs in groups of two or three, fired their rockets, then returned to base. On 1 September 1944, USAAF General Carl Spaatz expressed the fear that if greater numbers of German jets appeared, they could inflict losses heavy enough to force cancellation of the Allied bombing offensive by daylight.[citation needed]
Counter-jet tactics [ edit ]
Wrknr. 111711, was the first Me 262 to come into Allied hands when its German test pilot defected on March 31, 1945. The aircraft was then shipped to the United States for testing. This airframe,, was the first Me 262 to come into Allied hands when its German test pilot defected on March 31, 1945. The aircraft was then shipped to the United States for testing.
The Me 262 was difficult to counter because its high speed and rate of climb made it hard to intercept. However, as with other turbojet engines at the time, the Me 262's engines did not provide sufficient thrust at low air speeds and throttle response was slow, meaning in certain circumstances such as takeoff and landing, the aircraft became a vulnerable target. Another disadvantage that pioneering jet aircraft of the World War II era shared, was the high risk of compressor stall and if throttle movements were too rapid, the engine(s) could suffer a flameout. The coarse opening of the throttle would cause fuel surging and lead to excessive jet pipe temperatures. Pilots were instructed to operate the throttle gently and avoid quick changes. German engineers introduced an automatic throttle regulator later in the war but it only partly alleviated the problem.
The plane had, by contemporary standards, a high wing loading (294.0 kg/m2, 60.2 lbs/ft2) that required higher takeoff and landing speeds. Due to poor throttle response, the engines' tendency for airflow disruption that could cause the compressor to stall was ubiquitous. The high speed of the Me 262 also presented problems when engaging enemy aircraft, the high-speed convergence allowing Me 262 pilots little time to line up their targets or acquire the appropriate amount of deflection. This problem faces any aircraft that approaches another from behind at much higher speed, as the slower aircraft in front can always pull a tighter turn, forcing the faster aircraft to overshoot.
"I passed one that looked as if it was hanging motionless in the air (I am too fast!). The one above me went into a steep right-hand turn, his pale blue underside standing out against the purple sky. Another banked right in front of the Me's nose. Violent jolt as I flew through his airscrew eddies. Maybe a wing's length away. That one in the gentle left-hand curve! Swing her round. I was coming from underneath, eye glued to the sight (pull her tighter!). A throbbing in the wings as my cannon pounded briefly. Missed him. Way behind his tail. It was exasperating. I would never be able to shoot one down like this. They were like a sack of fleas. A prick of doubt: is this really such a good fighter? Could one in fact, successfully attack a group of erratically banking fighters with the Me 262?" Johannes Steinhoff, Luftwaffe fighter ace.[59]
Luftwaffe pilots eventually learned how to handle the Me 262's higher speed and the Me 262 soon proved a formidable air superiority fighter, with pilots such as Franz Schall managing to shoot down seventeen enemy fighters in the Me 262, ten of them American P-51 Mustangs. Other notable Me 262 aces included Georg-Peter Eder, with twelve enemy fighters to his credit (including nine P-51s), Erich Rudorffer also with twelve enemy fighters to his credit, Walther Dahl with eleven (including three Lavochkin La-7s and six P-51s) and Heinz-Helmut Baudach with six (including one Spitfire and two P-51s) amongst many others.[citation needed]
Pilots soon learned that the Me 262 was quite maneuverable despite its high wing loading and lack of low-speed thrust, especially if attention was drawn to its effective maneuvering speeds. The controls were light and effective right up to the maximum permissible speed and perfectly harmonised. The inclusion of full span automatic leading-edge slats,[Note 6] something of a "tradition" on Messerschmitt fighters dating back to the original Bf 109's outer wing slots of a similar type, helped increase the overall lift produced by the wing by as much as 35% in tight turns or at low speeds, greatly improving the aircraft's turn performance as well as its landing and takeoff characteristics.[62] As many pilots soon found out, the Me 262's clean design also meant that it, like all jets, held its speed in tight turns much better than conventional propeller-driven fighters, which was a great potential advantage in a dogfight as it meant better energy retention in maneuvers.[63][64]
Me-262 being shot down. Note jettisoned canopy and empty cockpit. As seen from USAAF P-51 Mustang gun camera
Too fast to catch for the escorting Allied fighters, the Me 262s were almost impossible to head off. [Note 7] As a result, Me 262 pilots were relatively safe from the Allied fighters, as long as they did not allow themselves to get drawn into low-speed turning contests and saved their maneuvering for higher speeds. Combating the Allied fighters could be effectively done the same way as the U.S. fighters fought the more nimble, but slower, Japanese fighters in the Pacific.[citation needed]
Allied pilots soon found that the only reliable way to destroy the jets, as with the even faster Me 163B Komet rocket fighters, was to attack them on the ground or during takeoff or landing. Luftwaffe airfields identified as jet bases were frequently bombed by medium bombers, and Allied fighters patrolled over the fields to attack jets trying to land. The Luftwaffe countered by installing extensive flak alleys of anti-aircraft guns along the approach lines to protect the Me 262s from the ground—and by providing top cover during the jets' takeoff and landing with the most advanced Luftwaffe single-engined fighters, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190D and (just becoming available in 1945) Focke-Wulf Ta 152H.[66] Nevertheless, in March–April 1945, Allied fighter patrol patterns over Me 262 airfields resulted in numerous jet losses.[citation needed]
As the Me 262A's pioneering Junkers Jumo 004 axial-flow jet engines needed careful nursing by their pilots, these jet aircraft were particularly vulnerable during takeoff and landing.[67] Lt. Chuck Yeager of the 357th Fighter Group was one of the first American pilots to shoot down an Me 262, which he caught during its landing approach. On 7 October 1944, Lt. Urban Drew of the 365th Fighter Group shot down two Me 262s that were taking off, while on the same day Lt. Col. Hubert Zemke, who had transferred to the Mustang equipped 479th Fighter Group, shot down what he thought was a Bf 109, only to have his gun camera film reveal that it may have been an Me 262.[68] On 25 February 1945, Mustangs of the 55th Fighter Group surprised an entire Staffel of Me 262As at takeoff and destroyed six jets.[69]
The British Hawker Tempest scored several kills against the new German jets, including the Messerschmitt Me 262. Hubert Lange, a Me 262 pilot, said: "the Messerschmitt Me 262's most dangerous opponent was the British Hawker Tempest—extremely fast at low altitudes, highly manoeuvrable and heavily armed."[70] Some were destroyed with a tactic known to the Tempest 135 Wing as the "Rat Scramble":[71] Tempests on immediate alert took off when an Me 262 was reported airborne. They did not intercept the jet, but instead flew towards the Me 262 and Ar 234 base at Hopsten air base.[72][Note 8] The aim was to attack jets on their landing approach, when they were at their most vulnerable, travelling slowly, with flaps down and incapable of rapid acceleration. The German response was the construction of a "flak lane" of over 150 emplacements of the 20 mm Flakvierling quadruple autocannon batteries at Rheine-Hopsten to protect the approaches.[73][Note 9] After seven Tempests were lost to flak at Hopsten in a week, the "Rat Scramble" was discontinued.[74]
High-speed research [ edit ]
Scale model of one of the Me 262 HG III versions at the Technikmuseum Speyer
Adolf Busemann had proposed swept wings as early as 1935; Messerschmitt researched the topic from 1940. In April 1941, Busemann proposed fitting a 35° swept wing (Pfeilflügel II, literally "arrow wing II") to the Me 262, the same wing-sweep angle later used on both the American F-86 Sabre and Soviet Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 fighter jets. Though this was not implemented, he continued with the projected HG II and HG III (Hochgeschwindigkeit, "high-speed") derivatives in 1944, designed with a 35° and 45° wing sweep, respectively.
Interest in high-speed flight, which led him to initiate work on swept wings starting in 1940, is evident from the advanced developments Messerschmitt had on his drawing board in 1944. While the Me 262 V9 Hochgeschwindigkeit I (HG I) flight-tested in 1944 had only small changes compared to combat aircraft, most notably a low-profile canopy—tried as the Rennkabine (literally "racing cabin") on the ninth Me 262 prototype for a short time—to reduce drag, the HG II and HG III designs were far more radical. The projected HG II combined the low-drag canopy with a 35° wing sweep and a V-tail (butterfly tail). The HG III had a conventional tail, but a 45° wing sweep and turbines embedded in the wing roots.
Messerschmitt also conducted a series of flight tests with the series production Me 262. Dive tests determined that the Me 262 went out of control in a dive at Mach 0.86, and that higher Mach numbers would cause a nose-down trim that the pilot could not counter. The resulting steepening of the dive would lead to even higher speeds and the airframe would disintegrate from excessive negative g loads.[citation needed]
The HG series of Me 262 derivatives was believed[by whom?] capable of reaching transonic Mach numbers in level flight[citation needed], with the top speed of the HG III being projected as Mach 0.96 at 6,000 m (20,000 ft) altitude. Despite the necessity to gain experience in high-speed flight for the HG II and III designs, Messerschmitt made no attempt to exceed the Mach 0.86 limit for the Me 262. After the war, the Royal Aircraft Establishment, at that time one of the leading institutions in high-speed research, re-tested the Me 262 to help with British attempts at exceeding Mach 1. The RAE achieved speeds of up to Mach 0.84 and confirmed the results from the Messerschmitt dive-tests. The Soviets ran similar tests.
After Willy Messerschmitt's death in 1978, the former Me 262 pilot Hans Guido Mutke claimed to have exceeded Mach 1 on 9 April 1945 in a Me 262 in a "straight-down" 90° dive. This claim relies solely on Mutke's memory of the incident, which recalls effects other Me 262 pilots observed below the speed of sound at high indicated airspeed, but with no altitude reading required to determine the speed. The pitot tube used to measure airspeed in aircraft can give falsely elevated readings as the pressure builds up inside the tube at high speeds. The Me 262 wing had only a slight sweep, incorporated for trim (center of gravity) reasons and likely would have suffered structural failure due to divergence at high transonic speeds. One airframe—the aforementioned Me 262 V9, Werknummer 130 004, with Stammkennzeichen of VI+AD, was prepared as the HG I test airframe with the low-profile Rennkabine racing-canopy and may have achieved an unofficial record speed for a turbojet-powered aircraft of 975 km/h (606 mph), altitude unspecified,[79] even with the recorded wartime airspeed record being set on 6 July 1944, by another Messerschmitt design—the Me 163B V18 rocket fighter setting a 1,130 km/h (700 mph) record, but landing with a nearly disintegrated rudder surface.[80][81]
Production [ edit ]
Underground manufacture of Me 262s
About 1,400 planes were produced, but a maximum of 200 were operational at any one time. According to sources they destroyed from 300 to 450 enemy planes, with the Allies destroying about one hundred Me 262s in the air.[66] While Germany was bombed intensively, production of the Me 262 was dispersed into low-profile production facilities, sometimes little more than clearings in the forests of Germany and occupied countries. Through the end of February to the end of March 1945, approximately sixty Me 262s were destroyed in attacks on Obertraubling and thirty at Leipheim;[82] the Neuburg jet plant itself was bombed on 19 March 1945.[83]
Large, heavily protected underground factories were constructed - as with the partly-buried Weingut I complex for Jumo 004 jet engine production - to take up production of the Me 262, safe from bomb attacks, but the war ended before they could be completed. Wings were produced in Germany's oldest motorway tunnel at Engelberg, to the west of Stuttgart. At B8 Bergkristall-Esche II at St. Georgen/Gusen, Austria, slave labourers of concentration camp Gusen II produced fully equipped fuselages for the Me 262 at a monthly rate of 450 units on large assembly lines from early 1945.[84] Gusen II was known as one of the harshest concentration camps; the typical life expectancy was six months.[85] An estimated 35,000 to 50,000 people died on the forced labour details for the Me 262.[86]
Postwar history [ edit ]
After the end of the war, the Me 262 and other advanced German technologies were quickly swept up by the Soviets, British and Americans, as part of the USAAF's Operation Lusty. Many Me 262s were found in readily repairable condition and were confiscated. The Soviets, British and Americans wished to evaluate the technology, particularly the engines.
During testing, the Me 262 was found to be faster than the British Gloster Meteor fighter jet, and had better visibility to the sides and rear (mostly due to the canopy frames and the discoloration caused by the plastics used in the Meteor's construction), and was a superior gun platform to the Meteor F.1 which had a tendency to snake at high speed and exhibited "weak" aileron response.[87] The Me 262 had a shorter range than the Meteor and had less reliable engines.
The USAAF compared the P-80 Shooting Star and Me 262, concluding that the Me 262 was superior in acceleration and speed, with similar climb performance. The Me 262 appeared to have a higher critical Mach number than any American fighter.[88]
The Americans also tested a Me 262A-1a/U3 unarmed photo reconnaissance version, which was fitted with a fighter nose and a smooth finish. Between May and August 1946, the aircraft completed eight flights, lasting four hours and forty minutes. Testing was discontinued after four engine changes were required during the course of the tests, culminating in two single-engine landings. These aircraft were extensively studied, aiding development of early US, British and Soviet jet fighters. The F-86, designed by engineer Edgar Schmued, used a slat design based on the Me 262's.[90]
Avia S-92, Kbely Museum, Prague, 2012.
The Czechoslovak aircraft industry continued to produce single-seat (Avia S-92) and two-seat (Avia CS-92) variants of the Me 262 after World War II. From August 1946, a total of nine S-92s and three two-seater CS-92s were completed and test flown. They were introduced in 1947 and in 1950 were supplied to the 5th Fighter Squadron, becoming the first jet fighters to serve in the Czechoslovak Air Force. These were kept flying until 1951,[4] when they were replaced in service by Soviet jet fighters. Both versions are on display at the Prague Aviation museum in Kbely.
Flyable reproductions [ edit ]
Me 262 (A-1c) replica of (A1-a), Berlin air show, 2006.
In January 2003, the American Me 262 Project, based in Everett, Washington, completed flight testing to allow the delivery of partially updated spec reproductions of several versions of the Me 262 including at least two B-1c two-seater variants, one A-1c single seater and two "convertibles" that could be switched between the A-1c and B-1c configurations. All are powered by General Electric CJ610 engines and feature additional safety features, such as upgraded brakes and strengthened landing gear. The "c" suffix refers to the new CJ610 powerplant and has been informally assigned with the approval of the Messerschmitt Foundation in Germany[91] (the Werknummer of the reproductions picked up where the last wartime produced Me 262 left off – a continuous airframe serial number run with a near 60-year production break).
Flight testing of the first newly manufactured Me 262 A-1c (single-seat) variant (Werknummer 501244) was completed in August 2005. The first of these machines (Werknummer 501241) went to a private owner in the southwestern United States, while the second (Werknummer 501244) was delivered to the Messerschmitt Foundation at Manching, Germany. This aircraft conducted a private test flight in late April 2006, and made its public debut in May at the ILA 2006. The new Me 262 flew during the public flight demonstrations.[92] Me 262 Werknummer 501241 was delivered to the Collings Foundation as White 1 of JG 7; this aircraft offered ride-along flights starting in 2008.[93] The third replica, a non-flyable Me 262 A-1c, was delivered to the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in May 2010.[94]
Variants [ edit ]
Me-262 variants
Note:- U = Umrüst-Bausatz – conversion kit installed at factory level, denoted as a suffix in the form /Un.[95]
Rüstsatze may be applied to various sub-types of their respective aircraft type, denoted as a suffix in the form /Rn. Data from:'Messerschmitt Me 262A Schwalbe[95][103]
Postwar variants [ edit ]
Avia S-92[104] Czech-built Me 262 A-1a (fighter)[105] Avia CS-92 Czech-built Me 262 B-1a (fighter trainer, two seats)
Reproductions [ edit ]
A series of reproductions was constructed by American company Legend Flyers (later Me 262 Project) of Everett, Washington.[106] The Jumo 004 engines of the original are replaced by more reliable General Electric CJ610 engines. The first Me 262 reproduction (a two-seater) took off for the first time in December 2002 and the second one in August 2005. This one was delivered to the Messerschmitt Foundation and was presented at the ILA airshow in 2006.[107]
A-1c American privately built, based on A-1a configuration. B-1c American privately built, based on B-1a configuration. A/B-1c American privately built, convertible between A-1c and B-1c configuration.
Operators [ edit ]
Surviving aircraft [ edit ]
Me 262A-2a (Black X), Australia, 2012
Me 262B-1a/U1 (Red 8), South Africa, 2008
Me 262 B-1a (White 35), at Willow Grove, Pa., in 2007; relocated to and on display in Pensacola, Fl.
Specifications (Messerschmitt Me 262 A-1a) [ edit ]
Data from Quest for Performance[23] Original Messerschmitt documents
General characteristics
Performance
Armament
Guns: 4 × 30 mm MK 108 cannon (the A-2a had only two cannons)
4 × 30 mm MK 108 cannon (the A-2a had only two cannons) Rockets: 24 × 55 mm (2.2 in) R4M rockets
24 × 55 mm (2.2 in) R4M rockets Bombs: 2 × 250 kg (550 lb) bombs or 2 × 500 kg (1,100 lb) bombs (A-2a variant)
Notable appearances in media [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp which provided the slave labour for production of Me 262.
Me 262 Project, construction of several flightworthy reproduction Me 262 aircraft in the 20th/21st century
Wunderwaffe
Aircraft of comparable role, configuration and era
Related lists
References [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
Citations [ edit ]WASHINGTON (AP) — The military parade for Donald Trump has come early.
Two months before Inauguration Day festivities, an extraordinary number of recently retired generals are marching to the president-elect’s doorstep for job interviews.
They include some who clashed with President Barack Obama’s administration.
It’s not unusual for an incoming administration to consider a retired general for a top position like CIA director. But Trump has turned to retired officers so publicly and in such large numbers that it raises questions about the proper balance of military and civilian advice in a White House led by a commander in chief with no defense or foreign policy experience.
The tilt toward military officials may reflect a limited pool of civilian options, since many officials from previous Republican administrations politically disowned Trump during the campaign.Women get all kinds of advice from magazines from how to dress to how to please a man in the bedroom, and even what to cook for us. And while it’s not all bad (with hotties like Kristen Bell and Jessica Alba on the cover) these mags are lacking much needed male insights. For example, we’re actually not that interested in your hair and we definitely don’t care about your shoes. Don’t get us wrong, we love the heels… we just don’t see why you need so many pairs that quite frankly, to us look the same. But if Women’s magazines were actually written by men, there wouldn’t be so much confusion about what we want. Here are some article titles, written by men that get straight to the point.There’s an implicit bargain that gets made at the start of every reality show’s season. We want our stars to suffer, and we’ll watch them drop 30 pounds while subsisting on a mostly rice diet on “Survivor.” We do not, however, want to watch them fall into the campfire and sustain second-degree burns.
We want steamy hookups, drunken antics and tearful regret. We do not want to be faced with a woman saying she was too intoxicated to consent to sexual activities.
This isn’t the first time that reality TV producers chose to film questionable on-camera behavior instead of stopping it. In 1999, on MTV’s “The Real World,” a cast member got extremely drunk and then got behind the wheel. Even though she was visibly intoxicated, staggering and slurring her words, producers elected to confront her the following morning instead of taking the keys.
That incident prompted discussion of what happens when a producer’s duty to catch salacious footage bumps up against her obligations as a human being. MTV handled it by airing footage of a producer telling the cast member on camera that she needed to get help or risk being fired.
But for every “Big Brother” that boots a male contestant for holding a knife to a female castmate’s throat, there’s a show like “Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire,” which cast a man with a history of domestic abuse as its star.
However belatedly, ABC and Warner Bros. have put themselves on the right side of the line. Hookups, yes; allegations of sexual misconduct, no. Weepy I-wish-I-hadn’t-done-that-with-him, fine; weepy how-could-they-let-him-do-that-to-me, not fine. We like to watch, but we don’t like watching that.
Which brings us, as all things must, to the reality TV star in chief.
Why is the possibility that someone took advantage of a female cast member bad enough to shut down a show’s production while President Donald “when you’re a star they let you do it” Trump sits in the White House?
My conclusion is that it’s the difference between seeing and hearing.
After all, N.F.L. officials reacted one way when they heard allegations that a player had a physical altercation with a woman. They had a different reaction when they, and the world, saw video of Ray Rice punching his fiancée in an elevator.The effects of injection of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), 3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA) and N-ethyl-3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDEA) (all 20 mg kg(-1)) on blood pressure, heart rate, core body temperature and locomotor activity in conscious rats were investigated using radiotelemetry. MDMA and MDA produced a prolonged increase in both systolic and diastolic pressures, with MDA causing the most marked rise. MDEA produced a transient but nonsignificant fall in diastolic pressure. The pressor response produced by MDA was accompanied by bradycardia. All three amphetamine derivatives caused an initial hypothermic response; however, MDA also produced a subsequent hyperthermia, and the speed of recovery from hypothermia was MDA>MDMA>MDEA. The alpha2A-adrenoceptor antagonist 2-((4,5-dihydro-1H-imidazol-2-yl)methyl)-2,3-dihydro-1-methyl-1H-isoindole (BRL 44408) (1 mg kg(-1)) prolonged the hypothermic response to MDMA. Only MDA induced locomotor activity when given alone, but in the presence of BRL 44408, MDMA produced increased locomotor activity. The order of potency for producing isometric contractions of rat aorta (alpha1D) and vas deferens (alpha1A) was MDA>MDMA>MDEA, with MDEA acting as an alpha1-adrenoceptor antagonist with a pK(B) of 4.79+/-0.12 (n = 4) in aorta. The order of potency for prejunctional inhibition of stimulation-evoked contractions in rat vas deferens (alpha2A-adrenoceptor mediated) was MDA>MDMA>MDEA. Blood pressure actions of the three amphetamine derivatives may be at least partly due to alpha1-adrenoceptor agonism or antagonism. The reversal of the hypothermic actions are at least partly due to alpha2A-adrenoceptor agonism since the hypothermic response was more prolonged with MDEA which exhibits low alpha2A-adrenoceptor potency, and effects of MDMA after alpha2A-adrenoceptor antagonism |
to talk with gay students. When I made my pilgrimage to meet her, even she advised me to remain closeted until after I got my first semester grades. She explained that the school would want to kick me out if they learned I was gay, and they could use poor grades as an excuse.
That’s not to say that there was silence about gay people. We did learn about them in an elective course on “special” populations. One week we learned about prostitution; another, about drug addicts. In between, we learned about homosexuals. A real live one showed up to tell us what it was like. He was articulate and our own age and seemed just like all of us. Indeed, I knew him. We had gone to college together and he was a student at Harvard Law School. I sat in awe of his bravery and prayed no one had seen him say hi to me.
I came out to classmates I felt close to. They were mostly supportive. One time I was talking with a classmate about a guy who had asked me out on a date. She confessed that she had thought that being gay meant simply that men had sex with men; it had never occurred to her that they might actually go to a movie or fall in love. Her honesty gave me a window into what many peers believed, as I would learn repeatedly over the years when people let down their guard.
During medical school, I was on the admissions committee. Two people interviewed each applicant and then presented to the rest of the committee. There was an applicant who was outstanding in every category; I gave him a 10 out of 10. The other committee member who in- terviewed him, a doctor at Children’s, gave him the worst score we’d seen. His record at one of the top schools in the country meant that he would have had to have confessed to murder, or worse, preferring Yale to Harvard, to get such a low score. We waited to hear the explanation. He said that he just didn’t feel “comfortable” with the applicant.
The committee was baffled. I wasn’t, because I had met the applicant. He was a man who was effeminate. I didn’t know if he was gay, but I did know that he was someone who was likely to have been called names or to have been roughed up because people thought he was. The doctor who had interviewed him already had a reputation at Harvard College, where he helped premeds put together their applications for medical school. Gay students knew to avoid being assigned to him.
As it turned out, with no articulated explanation for the low score, the committee was unconvinced and went with my score. The applicant was admitted, got an MD/PhD, eventually came out as gay, and has gone on to do important work in transgender studies. I wasn’t sorry that the doctor who had interviewed him left Children’s before I began residency here.
A year later I was doing my rotations. On my adult neurology rotation, a young woman came to the emergency ward with urinary incontinence and other symptoms and signs of a herniated disc. The myelogram confirmed the diagnosis. The neurosurgeon was eager to operate. The neurology team was delighted that she was a great teaching case. But she proved a richer teaching case than we anticipated. The neurosurgeon abruptly canceled the operation. It turned out that the radiologist had reversed his reading.
When pressed as to why he no longer saw what even a third-year medical student could see (that would be me), he confessed that the neurosurgeon had pressured him to change his read. When our team met with the neurosurgeon, he was direct. He had seen what he assumed to be a lesbian novel at the patient’s bedside, and he wasn’t going to operate. His rationalization was that she might have inserted something into her urethra that caused her incontinence. He had no research or case studies to support his theory. He had no explanation for why a lesbian would do this. He had no explanation for why it wasn’t showing up on x-ray. He made it clear, though, that he wasn’t going to operate on a lesbian.
Then I heard a voice shout, “So, she’s a lesbian, what does it matter!” And then I realized that the voice was mine. There was a moment of silence as everyone turned to look at me, jaws agape. The neurosurgeon burst forth with questions. How do you know? Did she tell you? What did she say? Indeed, she hadn’t said anything. It was just that she and the woman by her side during all of this were the most obviously devoted couple I’d met in any of my rotations yet. The neurosurgeon held firm. To their credit, the neurology team got orthopedics to perform the surgery.
On another rotation, I was on a consult service that helped diagnose a man with AIDS. His case hit home. He had just moved across the country with his boyfriend, who was a first-year Harvard medical student. The pulmonary fellow on our team, a generally kind man, grumbled to me that he hated having to go into this patient’s room. And so we didn’t go in much. The patient’s intern also avoided him, even managing to find herself too busy to perform a timed blood draw one night for a key lab test. I was still there writing my consult note, so after several attempts to gently remind her to take a break from having a light evening and chatting with staff, I just did it myself. This patient was not unlike any number of patients at hospitals around the country, wondering why the clinicians who were supposed to provide care and comfort appeared to be avoiding and even judging them.
He eventually died. His surviving boyfriend, the medical student, joined some other medical students and me at the 1987 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. While there, our visit to the AIDS quilt, a collection of panels that each represented someone who had been lost, was particu- larly poignant as we remembered my former patient and so many other patients and friends.
Later, during residency, we had a child in the neonatal intensive care unit with two moms. The primary nurse assigned to him was incoherent on rounds. She couldn’t contain her distaste for the boy’s parents. She didn’t want either mom around, including the one who had given birth. The charge nurse pulled her off the case. This was the same neonatal intensive care unit in which staff also found it hilarious that a female utilization review administrator used to be a man; they snickered and whispered within earshot when she was there. I encountered the same infant again a few months later on the wards when he was admitted with bronchiolitis. There the nurses and physicians treated the moms with all the respect that every parent should receive.
After my third year, I entered a joint masters program at the Kennedy School of Government. Having benefitted from the peer support of the medical school gay group, I teamed up with some other students to start one at the Kennedy School. We organized a public screening of a documentary about the life of Harvey Milk, an early gay rights leader who was assassinated. I agreed to do the introductory speech for the evening. When I mentioned this to my boyfriend, a junior faculty member at the law school who was concerned about getting tenure, he told me that word would certainly get back to the medical school and I would not get a residency. That gave me pause. He also told me he would have to break up with me because he wouldn’t be able to be seen with me once I came out publicly.
That was eye-opening in so many ways, and basically guaranteed that I would go ahead and introduce the evening. We had tried to meet with the dean to invite him to make some remarks at the event, but he wouldn’t even talk with us. Through his assistant, he declined to attend the event, but he did send a letter for us to read. It talked about the joys of running for public office. It mentioned nothing about being gay or our new student group. His letter became an object lesson for the school, with the audience laughing vigorously at the words so carefully chosen to avoid giving any hint of support for our group.
A few months later it was time for me to pick medical school rotations for the summer, so I met with my attending from my pediatrics rotation at Children’s, who was also a member of the admissions committee for the pediatrics residency. He had decided that he should be my advisor. He told me that I was definitely going to get into Children’s for residency so I should take the opportunity to do adult rotations because I’d get plenty of pediatrics for the rest of my career. He told me who should write my recommendations, with him being at the top of his list. At the end of our conversation, I told him I had one more thing I wanted to talk about. I told him I was gay.
I felt I had to. He was inquisitive about his advisees’ personal lives, often asking us who each other was dating, and I didn’t want him to hear from someone else and think I didn’t trust him. Plus, my most important example of leadership, which was presumably something that residencies looked at, involved the Kennedy School gay group. He looked stunned. He said nothing for a long time. Then he asked if I had told anyone else at the hospital. I said that I hadn’t, and he told me not to tell anybody. I left, not sure of what to make of our meeting.
After the summer, I came back to meet with him to finalize my residency applications. The only new grade that had come in at that point was an A+ on my end-of-the-first-year masters project. I went back over my list of recommenders because I thought I should add an attending from the summer. That’s when he informed me that he would not be writing me a recommendation. This time I was the one who was stunned. I hadn’t seen it coming. It wasn’t lost on me that without a letter from the attending of my only pediatric rotation, I wouldn’t be able to become a pediatrician. That boyfriend who had told me that word would get back to the medical school and keep me from getting a residency was right. What he hadn’t anticipated was that I would be the messenger.
So now I was in a bit of a tight spot. I had been scheduled to take my final masters courses that fall, but I canceled them and looked for open pediatric rotations. Luckily, the two I found on short notice had wonderful attendings, Ken McIntosh and Bill Berenberg. Without their recommendations, I could not have applied in pediatrics anywhere. This makes the fact that my endowed professor- ship is named for Dr. Berenberg a particularly special privilege.
It may seem odd that I didn’t complain to anyone, but there was no one at the medical school or the hospital to whom I or my gay classmates thought it was safe to complain. There were no policies to protect us; no griev- ance boards; no mechanisms in place. Times have changed, but I still have undergrads ask me if they can come out in their medical school applications and medical students ask if they can come out in their residency applications. Yes, times have changed, but they have not changed enough.
I wound up matching at Children’s and went through residency afraid that if the faculty found out about me, I could be mistreated or marginalized. I felt like I understood why the Children’s professor had said several years before that it was better to be secretive so that no one will bother you. But I didn’t agree with him. I told myself that I would never again hide my orientation in an application or work in a place where I feared being out.
Residency left little time for a social life, but I did get out every now and then. One night I was in a line for an AIDS fundraiser. Suddenly there were shouts and we found ourselves being chased down the street by a group of guys with baseball bats yelling, “Faggots, go home!” After they’d made their point, they cleared out, leaving a man lying unconscious in the street. I ran back to help him. A nurse from Children’s also appeared. The man was cut and bloody. He was responsive to pain but not arousable. We tended to him until the ambulance came. From what I later read in the local gay newspaper, he remained cogni- tively impaired.
After residency, I moved to L.A. for fellowship and stayed for 16 years. I was open in my daily life. It was nice. I overheard fewer fag jokes, no one was trying to fix me up with their sister, and I became a resource for people of all ages who were coming out and scared. I brought my boyfriend Jeff, now my husband, to work events. I apparently was the first person to bring a same- gender partner to such things. A senior faculty member came into my office one day, closed the door, and com- mented on my bringing Jeff to events. He then awkwardly told me that he was gay and had a partner. I never did see him bring his partner to a work function, but I think it pleased him to know that things were different for the next generation.
Years passed and I found myself looking at job opportunities on the east coast. An institution I was excited about invited me to interview. Before I’d even visited, the chair offered a recruitment package that blew me away. Everything sounded great. I asked on the phone whether there were domestic partner benefits. It was a perfunctory question, because given the city, I assumed the answer would be yes. By that point, most Fortune 100 companies had them. Turns out they didn’t, but they said they’d cover Jeff’s benefits to accommodate me. I explained that I appreciated the gesture, but I wasn’t interested in working in a place that didn’t have partner benefits for everyone.
That was on a Friday. On Monday they called back with news. They had committed to starting domestic partner benefits with the new year. This was remarkable. This was an insti- tution at which the residents, who were unionized, had recently included such benefits on their list of demands, only to have the administration refuse to come to the bar- gaining table unless that demand was removed. In the end, after visiting, I decided not to accept their offer, but they nevertheless followed through and implemented partner benefits. A simple nudge from outside an institution can sometimes have more impact than repeated requests from within.
Not long after, Gary Fleisher, our physician-in-chief, approached me about a search that was opening up for the position I’m now in. As I explored, I was surprised at how different the place seemed from when I was a resident and how comfortable I felt. My family wasn’t just something that was acknowledged but rather it was embraced. I was treated like any other recruit for a division chief position, with our hospital president Sandi Fenwick, Gary Fleisher, and others offering to help my spouse find a job and advising on how to find a preschool for our kids. There was something very natural about it. It was good to have my family structure treated as unremarkable.
It especially felt good after I got here and received a call from the head of our residency admissions committee, Sam Lux. He wanted to talk about an applicant I had interviewed. Sam feared that the applicant wouldn’t rank us #1 if his partner didn’t have an adult fellowship lined up in Boston. I was charged with making this happen. I asked for the partner’s name so that I could call the fellowships. It was an unmistakably male name. I felt like there had just been an earthquake and that no one had felt it but me.
As it turned out, his partner was so strong he didn’t need my help, but Sam wasn’t taking any chances. He was going on about how I had to call people at the Brigham and MGH and convince them to get their fellowship committees to meet early. Sam was so wonderfully oblivious to the pronouns. His nonchalance told me so much and drove home most clearly how different things were. I could not believe that in a mere two decades we had gone from “I’ve decided not to write you a recommendation” to “Your job is to get this guy’s partner a fellowship.”
I felt that way again a few months ago. I serve on the medical school promotions committee, which provides the final review before portfolios are passed on to the dean. On our docket was a faculty member from Children’s who has emerged as one of the leading researchers on the health of lesbian and gay youth. Committee deliberations are confidential, but I think I am within bounds to say that the enthusiasm for her accomplishments again gave me a sense of belonging, and another moment of realizing that what had once seemed impossible had actually come to pass.
Things really have changed. They have changed in so many places. And for that I am grateful. I have seen the Supreme Court rule that sex between people of the same gender is legal. I have seen gay marriage become a reality in Massachusetts. I have seen more and more states pass laws against discrimination in the workplace on the basis of orientation. I have seen gay youth come out in high school. I have seen gay college students baffled by the obsession of my generation with whether and when to come out and even the need to define ourselves by our orientation. I have seen it and thought back to myself as a young man who wondered why he was applying to medical school when he kept hearing that he would have to choose between being a doctor and being openly gay —- and I have felt both vindicated and happy.
It’s easy for me to think that my experiences two decades ago are ancient history. For me, they are. I’ve been lucky enough to construct a life that does not involve a daily fear of being outed, of being beaten, of being fired, or of having my children taken away from me. But many people still live with such fears. My experiences wouldn’t sound so quaint to them.
I am currently serving on the new Institute of Medicine Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Health Issues. The public testimony has been moving. The enthusiasm that people have for the very existence of the committee and the expectations they have for our report have been humbling. Their comments have been a reminder of just how marginalized people still feel, and how alienated they feel from the clinicians whom they depend on in their time of greatest need.
I was saddened by the recent case of Lisa Pond, who lay dying at a Miami hospital from a brain aneurysm while her partner of 18 years was blocked from seeing her. I was also saddened when I learned of the child of a lesbian couple who was hospitalized with a high fever in Bakersfield, California. The biological mother was allowed at the bedside while the other mom, who had legally adopted the child, was kept out, even though two parents were allowed for other children.
I was greatly dismayed when Lawrence King, an 8th grader in Oxnard, California, was shot and killed in his classroom for his presumed orienta- tion. And even closer to home, I was more than saddened when Carl Walker Hoover, a 6th grader from Springfield, Mass, committed suicide after enduring months of anti- gay bullying. There are many more stories like these.
Today is a great day to celebrate ourselves, our patients, and our institution, and appreciate how far we have come, but there’s still much more work to be done.
Thank you.
This piece appeared in the journal Academic Pediatrics.You need a javascript enabled browser to watch videos. Tap To Unmute PS4 System Software 2.0 - Sony Press Conference Gamescom 2014 Want us to remember this setting for all your devices? Sign up or Sign in now! Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos. This video has an invalid file format. HTML5 Auto HD High Low Sorry, but you can't access this content! Please enter your date of birth to view this video By clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's
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The new Share Play feature in the PlayStation 4's forthcoming 2.0 system update sounded extremely exciting when it first announced earlier this week. However, there is a major restriction on how Share Play can be used: a 60-minute time limit.
Following a report by French site Gameblog (via Attack of the Fanboy), Sony has confirmed with GameSpot that Share Play users will be limited to 60 minutes per session. There's no limit on the number of times you can use Share Play, meaning you can conceivably start Share Play up again and continue playing. Of course, this is hardly ideal, and likely not what people envisioned when Share Play was revealed during Sony's Gamescom press conference.
Share Play was pitched by Sony as a "virtual couch" that allowed for "an online local co-op experience." A PlayStation Plus member can share a game over the Internet with a friend, who can take control to either play alone or to play local multiplayer as if he or she were in the same room.
SCE Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida offered up some additional details on how Share Play will work in an interview with Famitsu (as translated by Kotaku). Comparing it to Sony's new PlayStation Now streaming service, he said, "How it works is, for example, say, a friend has a game that I don't. I ask them to let me play it, and if they send me an invitation, I can access their PS4 and play while watching the video that is streamed."
He didn't specify how much time could pass between these steps; it's possible the owner will need to be at his or her console to grant access at the same time as when someone wants to play a game. What it means for sure is that the person doing the sharing will be unable to use their system while someone else is remotely playing a game on it.
Some of this certainly dampens the enthusiasm I had for Share Play, but it's not all bad news. Yoshida said the feature works with all PS4 games without any effort on the part of developers. Additionally, save games are tied to the player's account, allowing you to try a friend's game, buy it, and then pick up from where you left off.
The 2.0 update that introduces Share Play--along with the ability to upload saved videos to YouTube and search for PSN users by their real name, among other things--is coming sometime this fall.A photo provided by Simon and Schustershows the cover of "Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin," by Frank Bailey. / AP Photo/Simon and Schuster
BECKY BOHRER, Associated Press
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) " A former member of Sarah Palin's inner circle has written a scathing tell-all, saying Palin was ready to quit as governor months before she actually resigned and was eager to leave office when more lucrative opportunities came around.
"In 2009 I had the sense if she made it to the White House and I had stayed silent, I could never forgive myself," Frank Bailey told The Associated Press.
Palin's attorney did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
"Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of Our Tumultuous Years" is due out Tuesday and based on tens of thousands of emails that Bailey said he kept during his time with Palin. It began with working on her 2006 gubernatorial campaign and continued through her failed run for vice president in 2008 and her brief stint as governor.
The Alaska attorney general's office has said it's investigating Bailey's use of the emails. Executive ethics laws bar former public officials from using information acquired during their work for personal gain if the information hasn't been publicly disseminated.
The state has yet to release thousands of emails that Palin sent and received during her 2 1/2 years as governor. Bailey's attorney has said Bailey took "great care" to ensure his writings were consistent with legal requirements.
Billed as the first Palin book by a former aide, "Blind Allegiance" bolsters the perception of Palin as self-serving, while casting Bailey as her enforcer " willing to do the dirty work, no questions asked.
Bailey became a footnote in Alaska political history by getting embroiled in an investigation of Palin's firing of her police commissioner over allegations the commissioner wouldn't fire trooper Mike Wooten, who'd had a bitter divorce with Palin's sister. Bailey was caught on tape questioning a state trooper official about why Wooten was still employed.
Bailey, who was Palin's director of boards and commissions, was put on leave after news of the recording broke, though he claims his actions were with the prodding of Palin's husband, Todd.
In spite of this, and what he describes as campaigns by Sarah Palin over the years to tear down others who have crossed or confronted her, he stuck around.
To speak up when he saw things he didn't agree with "went against all that investment of time and energy that I put into her," said Bailey. He said he "shed his family," his wife and two kids, to singularly focus on Palin during her rise to the governor's office and beyond.
When Palin burst onto the statewide political scene, she was seen as a "breath of fresh air" amid the corruption that had seeped into Alaska politics. "We looked at her as... that queen on a horse that could come in and save the state," he said. "As we started to see that that was not the case, I kept silent and I just kept on working."
Among the claims made in the book: that Palin's 2006 gubernatorial campaign coordinated with the Republican Governors Association, or RGA, in violation of campaign rules. The book describes cameras rolling as Palin strode through the door at an Anchorage hotel "over and over and over," for an RGA ad.
At that time, there was a one-year statute of limitations on complaints, and the Alaska Public Offices Commission did not receive any complaints related to Palin and the association during that period. However, the RGA was fined " unrelated to Palin " for late reporting, according to the commission's executive director, Paul Dauphinais.
Bailey said the final straw for him came in the summer of 2009, when Palin didn't attend a rally he believed she'd repeatedly agreed to attend, for supporters of a voter initiative to require minors get parental consent for an abortion. This came after a string of cancellations, including one before a Republican women's group at the Ronald Reagan Library in California. Her aides claimed no one had committed to this well-publicized event..
"Getting Sarah to meetings and events was like nailing Jell-O to a tree," Bailey wrote. On the campaign trail and as governor, Sarah went through at least ten schedulers, with few lasting more than months. Nobody wanted the job because Sarah might fail to honor, at the last minute, the smallest commitments, and making excuses for her became a painful burden."
By the time she cancelled on the parental notification event in Anchorage, Palin had resigned as Alaska's governor and embarked on a new path, one in which she'd become a best-selling author, highly sought-after speaker, political phenom and prospective presidential candidate.
Bailey claims her heart wasn't in governing after she returned to Alaska from her failed run for vice president. At home, she faced a barrage of ethics complaints " nearly all of which were ultimately dismissed " and Bailey said she told him as early as February 2009 that if she could find the right message to tell Alaskans, she'd "quit tomorrow."
She resigned in July 2009.
Bailey confesses to "a ton of mistakes" and speaks of a return to God; he said his church has become a sanctuary and that he's reconnect with his family. He said writing the book " which itself has generated controversy " was cathartic.
In February, the book project also made headlines when a draft manuscript was leaked. An attorney for Bailey and his co-writers accused author Joe McGinniss, who has his own Palin book coming out this year. McGinniss' attorney acknowledged McGinniss selectively shared the manuscript, but said the manuscript included no request for confidentiality.
Bailey dismisses any suggestion he's disgruntled or bitter; he said he got a front-row seat to state and national politics and was able to recommend judges and set up "hundreds" of board positions. "Yeah, there were some tough, tough times but hopefully I've learned from some of that," he said. "Time will tell."
He said he has no ill feelings toward Palin, with whom he says he hasn't spoken since the fall of 2009. If anything, he said, he feels sad for her.
"I'm sad at a lot of wasted potential," said Bailey, who believed she could accomplish more than she did as governor. "I certainly don't hate her but I look at a lot of wasted opportunities on her part."
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.Cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex only started supporting Ether trading on Monday (March 14th at noon UTC) and it has already made a big splash. Bitfinex very quickly snapped up the number two spot in terms of USD to ETH trading volume with about 25% of the total market share.
Over on the exchange of bitcoin to Ethereum side of the business, Bitfinex also took about 5.5% market share of the overall BTC/ETH trading volume. This makes Bitfinex the fourth largest BTC/ETH trading venue behind Gatecoin.
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We asked Charles Hayter, the CEO of CryptoCompare.com, if the new player is just going to take over market share or make the cake bigger: “It’s going to be a mixture of both – Bitfinex is reputable platform and by making Ether available it is going to attract new traders and encourage its present stable user base to take a bit at the market.”
Suggested articles Why Brokerages Outsource Their Broker TechnologyGo to article >>
Asked how much more new money entered the market yesterday, Hayter calculated it was around $5.9 million dollars from CNY, EUR and USD fiat currencies and $50 million in BTC. He added: “What’s interesting too is the growing rate of fiat as a percentage of total Ether trading, which is now 14% of total ETH trading.”
Bitfinex also plans to allow shorting and margin trading on Ether as soon as it is comfortable with the book depth and availability of Ether for lending, but it says that will depend on the community’s support because Bitfinex itself is not a participant in its own markets. Considering the strong adoption of Ether trading on the platform, we could expect to see Bitfinex enable shorting and margin trading in less than a week.
Distributed Denial-of-Service
What might have helped this impressive first day showing by Bitfinex is that Poloniex, the number one exchange by ETH/BTC volume and number three by ETH/USD volume, was facing some issues. Poloniex was hit with massive DDoS attacks that hurt its performance and although these subsided eventually, the exchange had to assure its users that their funds are safe.
Asked if the DDoS attacks on Polonix were meant to help Bitfinex, Hayter said: “No idea – there’ll be the usual rumor mill with accusations flying. Completely reprehensible as it is – it would make sense for an exchange to use this tactic as a means to gain market share – and this comes at a great cost to the exchange under attack in terms of the intangible loss of trust from its users. It cannot be condemned strongly enough.”This isn’t how any match is supposed to end, much less one to secure a spot in the final of the U.S. Girls’ Junior. Erica Shepherd, the winner, said she felt like she wanted to cry when it was over.
Shepherd’s putt for par on the 19th hole had already been conceded by opponent Elizabeth Moon. Shepherd, a Duke commit who had come from 2 down with four to play to force a playoff, stood off to the side and closed her eyes as Moon putted for birdie from 3 1/2 feet away. When she didn’t hear the putt drop, Shepherd said she opened her eyes to see Moon raking back her par putt. She’d missed it by a few inches.
Shepherd said her caddie, University of Indianapolis coach Brent Nicoson, asked if she had conceded the putt.
“I didn’t say that was good,” Shepherd told Moon.
Juli Inkster, who was working for Fox Sports, stopped mid-sentence while making the call: “Just a little quick and Erica Shepherd lives …”
The scene was reminiscent of the 2015 Solheim Cup when Suzann Pettersen said Alison Lee picked up a putt that had not been conceded.
The difference here, of course, is that Shepherd told rules officials she would have given Moon the putt had there been more time. Even tried to reverse it. But Moon incurred a penalty under Rule 18-2.
“I mean, we both tried to get it to where that putt was given to her but it just – it’s the Rules of Golf,” said Shepherd. “You can’t.”
Nicoson, Shepherd’s longtime instructor, called the whole situation sad.
“Erica went in the locker room to find (Moon) and give her a hug and (Moon) said, ‘I can’t believe I did it out of reaction, it’s not your fault,’ ” Nicoson wrote in a text, “but Erica feels terrible.”
Nicoson said both players handled a difficult situation better than many adults.
Shepherd, 16, will meet good friend Jennifer Chang (who defeated Taylor Roberts, 5 and 4, in her semifinal match) in Saturday’s 36-hole final match at Boone Valley Golf Club in Augusta, Mo. The pair were teammates at the recent Wyndham Cup, and Chang caddied for Shepherd after being eliminated.Big Wall/Backcountry Bathrooms
Hi Steph,
I love reading your blog and I love the questions you get from other women. So, my question has to do with spending the night on the wall with other climbers specifically guys. I don’t have any female climbing partners and so no one else to really ask this question to… How on earth do you go to the bathroom on the wall? Is there any privacy at all? I am headed to climb down in the Cochamo with someone I barely know and we are planning on doing some multi day routes. I’m just curious if there is anyway to have privacy. Thanks for the beta!
Jess
Hi Jess,
For some reason 😉 this is always going to be the single most interesting issue about climbing, for climbers AND nonclimbers! I am thankful for my years of climbing, because it has made me lose all unnecessary shyness issues in relation to taking a leak whenever nature calls–I actually have to remind myself not to just hunker down right there and go behind a clump of grass if I’m around nonclimbers because they get all freaked out. However my advice to you for your upcoming trip (and your future life in all other places) is just relax about taking a leak! It’s the most discreet thing in the world for girls because you crouch down and no one can see anything, from the front–perhaps even more discreet than for guys, yet somehow most men are absolutely unconcerned about using the world as their bathroom and we should follow their lead on this one. Naturally the same does not go for REAL bathrooming, which is a whole nother issue as you know which we’ll get to in a minute. Anyway, the good news is you’re going to know your new climbing partner a LOT BETTER after this trip 😀 The other good news is: everyone goes to the bathroom, it’s not just you!
There are two ways you can deal with these issues as a climber/outdoors person. The first is to be all awkward and shy. The second is to grab the bull by the horns and quit worrying about it. I was on the Zodiac once about 15 years ago with two girlfriends, which should have made everything all fine in the bathroom department….except for the fact that there was a party of guys on the route right below us for 3 days. On the first morning, my friend Kim just hollered down at them, “I have bad news for you guys, or maybe it’s good news I don’t know, but we need to pee!” This is the single most memorable thing I’ve ever heard anyone say, and it still cracks me up 😀 Peeing off the portaledge with strangers 3 pitches down is way up on my list of most awkward moments EVER and fully cured me of “stage fright” in any possible situation afterward (I’m pretty sure it qualified as bad news for the party below)…however it’s all part of climbing and life in the real world.
At a certain point, when you’re climbing long routes with your buddy, peeing is going to happen, and it doesn’t need to be a big deal. If you’re in a hanging belay, thanks to the miracle of elastic, you can just pull the back of your pants down, your harness legloop elastics will get out of the way, and you can be done with it in about 25 seconds. A few things to remember:
1. holding your pee for a long time is not good for you.
2. hydration is key on long routes: pound water the day and night before, try to pound more the morning of and rehydrate afterward.
3. when you’re in your sleeping bag and you need to get up and go, waiting is not going to make it any better 🙁
4. a full bladder will make you feel colder.
5. no real climber in the world cares if someone pees within 2 feet of them–just ideally, not on them (important to note when on a wall above others or when it’s windy).
6. when you’re a girl, you will undoubtedly pee on your shoes at some point in life and that’s just how it goes sometimes.
On to the thornier topic of going to the bathroom for real, always an unpleasant reality. This is a lot harder to overcome in terms of shyness, and is most certainly the most awkward part of camping or climbing big walls with your opposite-sex buddies. In the olden days, we used paper lunch bags and tossed them off and did a pickup patrol at the base later on if it was El Cap. You can’t really do that anymore: too many people. I climbed El Cap once with a very committed environmentalist, and she insisted we use paper bags (that was not hard to convince me to do–I really don’t prefer pooping in plastic) and made a daily chore of tying the bags to hang off ledges with string in order to let them mummify in the sun whilst we were on the wall. Then she packed them into a Seal-line bag for hauling. They were significantly lighter to haul, and on the summit she made a fire and burned them. I agreed that this system was superior in every way possible: it kept us from pooping into plastic (mega-plus!), there was essentially no weight for hauling and carrying loads down, and definitely a lot more environmental than throwing plastic wagbags into |
) Jan 2010 (19) Dec 2009 (23) Nov 2009 (19) Oct 2009 (24) Sep 2009 (22) Aug 2009 (24) Jul 2009 (22) Jun 2009 (23) May 2009 (20) Apr 2009 (24) Mar 2009 (24) Feb 2009 (21) Jan 2009 (28) Dec 2008 (25) Nov 2008 (20) Oct 2008 (25) Sep 2008 (28) Aug 2008 (28) Jul 2008 (25) Jun 2008 (27) May 2008 (31) Apr 2008 (30) Mar 2008 (33) Feb 2008 (36) Jan 2008 (41) Dec 2007 (33) Nov 2007 (24) Oct 2007 (24) Sep 2007 (12) Aug 2007 (16) Jul 2007 (15) Jun 2007 (14) May 2007 (14)If you notice that the lights are out at Caliente next week, don’t worry. The Devil’s Triangle restaurant will close after the Super Bowl and reopen two weeks later as Sheppard Street Tavern.
Caliente owner David Bender says he’s ready for a change.
When the recession hit in 2008, Bender had to get imaginative. Like other restaurants at the time, business dropped off precipitously. Bender responded by reducing the amount of entrees he offered and upping the sandwich selection. It worked.
Yet even as the economy rebounded, diners stuck to burgers and wings while the entrees languished. And Bender was tired of the misperception that Caliente was a Mexican restaurant.
“People would come in and ask for chips and salsa,” he says. “We really only have one spicy thing -- the stupid wings.” These are made with ghost peppers -- the hottest on the Scoville heat scale -- and were featured on the Travel Channel’s “Man vs. Food.”
The time had come again, Bender thought, to reinvent the restaurant. “I’m tired of staring at the same four walls.” he says. The staff has been a little apprehensive and others have wondered why he wants to tinker with a successful business. “What we’re doing, we do just fine,” he says, “but we could do better.”
When Caliente closes, Bender plan to renovate the interior. Diners will see new flooring, new booths and an extended bar. Outside, smokers will get their own lean-bar to discourage them from huddling around the front entrance.
But it won’t look like an entirely different space. “It’ll be more of a facelift and a boob job,” Bender says.
There won’t be many holdovers from the old menu -- the stupid wings will remain, along with a few other popular items, including the salmon burger and Texas Wisconsin Border Café chili.
Instead, you’ll find things such as chicken tenders cordon bleu -- the chicken will be wrapped in swiss and bacon before it’s breaded -- mac ’n’ cheese mini muffins and a lox Reuban. “I was trying to steer away from the fryer,” Bender says. He’s calling it upscale pub fare, but there will be plenty of traditional choices on the menu as well.
It’s another way to not only reignite Bender’s creativity, but to reenter the whirl of the Richmond dining scene, where a new restaurant seems to open every week.
Now, Caliente has two distinct sets of customers: families who come for dinner and a late-night bar crowd that lives in the neighborhood. “I’d love to see more of an overlap,” he says. “I’d like to see more of the bar customers eat and my dinner customers stay to hang out.”
CORRECTION: "Man vs. Food" aired on the Travel Channel. This article originally said that it was a Food Network show.Comments about homosexuals and abortion made by a priest during a church service, broadcast live by a television station that is part of the RTVE state broadcasting corporation, are to be examined by the organization's board of directors.
In the sermon, shown on TVE's La 2 on Good Friday, the Bishop of Alcalá de Henares, Juan Antonio Reig Pla, spoke of people today who "end up lacking guidance about what human sexuality is; already from childhood they think they are attracted to partners of the same sex.
"Sometimes to check on this they corrupt and prostitute themselves - or go to men's clubs. I assure you they will find hell," he said.
Reig Pla also referred to abortion in his homily: "Women who have aborted carry the suffering in their hearts and many of them cannot sleep because the sin always carries the destruction of a person."
The RTVE board will now debate whether to present a complaint against the Episcopal Conference over the sermon, say sources.
"We are not questioning the format, but we do ask that constitutional values be respected and in this case they have been violated," said the Socialist-chosen board member Miguel Ángel Sacaluga.Photo by Jennifer Closson
Greater Than Games founders Adam Rebottaro, Christopher Badell and Paul Bender.
When we checked in with St. Louis-based Greater Than Games last month, the company's execs were in high spirits — they'd blown away their Kickstarter goal of $40,000 in just eight minutes and were watching as the numbers leapt ever higher. In fact, operations director Paul Bender told us, it was "statistically reasonable" to think they might make it to $1 million.
It seemed a bit ambitious. But one month later, now that the Kickstarter has ended, the joke is on anyone who doubted — Greater Than Games' crowfunding campaign has topped out at a staggering $1.5 million."We're pleased and excited," Bender says, modestly. "It's just fantastic across the board."The company designs board games, and this Kickstarter was for the final chapter of its "Sentinels of the Multiverse" release, titled "OblivAeon."If you're not the sort of person who keeps up with board games, well, soon you won't have to be — after its huge success online and at specialty outlets, "Sentinels of the Multiverse" is now coming to Barnes & Noble and other mainstream retailers. The company sees huge room for growth; at this point, the fan base is more excited than it is huge.But that excitement, clearly, is real. And those Kickstarter backers who put up the money to back the project will be getting the first peek. Suffice it to say, there are many of them: 9,982 people contributed to the effort, funding it at 3,750 percent of its stated goal."We had projections of what we thought it would do, and that was just a quarter of what it ended up doing," Bender says.Greater Than Games now appears to hold the ranking of the second highest-funded Kickstarter in St. Louis history, just behind (you guessed it!) another board game. That one, called "Scythe," raised $1.8 million last October.Latest News
New quick status page See it here: Status I am really bad at keeping the blog up to date, and my plans have to change fairly frequently due to personal, professional, resource, and industry situation changes. This page is an attempt to have something that is quick enough to update that I am able to do it regularly. It also has very little information, so I don't have to worry about my confidence in prediction, or sharing things that are not ready. Every project that has been started will have an entry here that clearly states my current assessment of its status. {jcomments on}
New plans I think it's about time to talk about some longer term plans again. I've posted a bit about the current work on the ranged weapon interaction system, and also a bit on the HoO collaboration, but it's been a while since I said anything relating to our primary game ambitions. We have some new plans, but it's nothing drastic. The previous plan was to develop Hunter's Moon (the werewolves) and then using all the tech it used to build a general purpose combat simulator (GPCS, as yet unnamed). That plan heavily depended on having a year or so of solid full time development; probably funded through a kickstarter. Read more...
A sign of things to come With the musket and pistol kindly provided by the hearts of oak team all attention now focuses on the ranged weapon interaction system! I am super excited about this, and I think everyone will love what I've come up with. Time-scales are fuzzy, but hopefully not as long as it took to put the AI in place last year.
Colaboration with the Hearts of Oak team This is a big announcement that should have been made a while ago, but now that the AI is implemented on the combat testbed it can't wait. A few months ago I approached the lead developers for the Hearts of Oak project with a proposal for collaboration. Basically to provide our combat engine to them in return for publicity, assets, and the joy of contributing to such an important piece of work.
A summary of the agreement is as follows: Read more...Why Recycling Options Lead People To Waste More
People used more cups and paper when recycling was an option versus when they had to put them in the trash. Researchers say people's guilt for wasting is overridden by the good feelings for recycling.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
So when you recycle paper or an empty bottle, do you get that warm little feeling because maybe you think, hey, I've done something right for the world? Well, maybe you shouldn't get that feeling because there's some new social science research out there that suggests recycling can have a downside. Why are you always bringing negative news?
SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: (Laughter).
MARTIN: Shankar Vedantam, NPR social science correspondent, here to rain on our recycling parade. Hi, Shankar.
VEDANTAM: Hi, Rachel.
MARTIN: So recycling is bad?
VEDANTAM: No, recycling isn't bad. It's actually very good, Rachel. But in fact, that's where the problem lies. Recycling is so good that it makes us feel virtuous, and that can lead to problematic outcomes. Let me back up and explain. I was talking to Remi Trudel. He's a marketing professor at Boston University. He told me he was having lunch at a restaurant with his colleague, Monic Sun, when they noticed something.
REMI TRUDEL: We noticed that people were just grabbing napkins, like, way more than they needed. And we started thinking is it because they feel, you know, that it's OK because they're going to be recycling it anyways? So then we decided to run some experiments to try to prove it.
MARTIN: So I have to cop to something because I've totally done that, especially with young kids. I grab the paper towels like there's no tomorrow.
VEDANTAM: Right.
MARTIN: And I'm just thinking, oh, it's fine, like, because it's recycled, right?
VEDANTAM: Exactly.
MARTIN: And if I use a towel, it gets gross and then I have to wash it.
VEDANTAM: So that was exactly the insight that Trudel and Sun had. Now, there could be lots of reasons people use extra napkins at a restaurant, so Trudel and Sun decided to go back to their lab and conduct a series of experiments, Rachel. In one of them, they asked people to sample four different beverages. Sometimes the volunteers had a recycling bin to drop their paper cups. Other times, the volunteers had only a trash can.
TRUDEL: You could use a single cup to drink - to sample all four or you could grab a new cup each time. And so we just kept - we kept track of what they did. And sure enough, people used more cups when there was a recycling bin next to the sampling station.
VEDANTAM: The researchers also ran other experiments, Rachel. In one of them, people were asked to wrap a gift. When a recycling can was nearby, people used much more wrapping paper. Trudel told me that we see the same thing in many other domains in real life. If you buy a hybrid car, for example, that's much more efficient, you're much more likely to drive more miles because you feel there's less cost.
MARTIN: So there's not a correlation between recycling and how you think about waste or your own consumption.
VEDANTAM: I think intuitively there is a connection. We think that people who care about recycling will also care about reducing and reusing. But it turns out the feelings that drive those things are different. The motivations for those things are different. When you think your stuff is recyclable, you say, what's the difference?
TRUDEL: There's guilt associated with how much you're going to waste and how you're going to feel throwing that in the trash. If that guilt is lower than the pride that you get from throwing something in the recycling, from doing the right thing, you're more likely to use more resources and waste resources.
MARTIN: So it's just about what makes us feel good.
VEDANTAM: I think it is about what makes us feel good, and that's why when you're designing policies, it's not enough to design policies based on what makes sense. You actually have to pay attention to how people feel.
MARTIN: NPR's Shankar Vedantam. He is NPR's social science correspondent. He's also the host of a podcast that explores the unseen patterns in human behavior. It's called Hidden Brain. You should check it out. Hey, Shankar, thanks so much.
VEDANTAM: Thanks, Rachel.
(SOUNDBITE OF D33J'S "PARK")
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Project 4.2 was designed to study direct (primary) air blast injury, in animals, from an atomic weapon in the range of 20 to 50 psi under circumstances affording protection against missiles, thermal and ionizing radiation and to estimate the probable direct air blast hazard in man. The pressure levels at which atomic weapons direct air blast injuries occur will determine, to a large extent, the number of blast casualties likely to be encountered. It is probable that fatal overpressures are not reached until well within the range at which indirect (secondary) blast, thermal and ionizing radiation are practically certain to prove fatal. Only in special situations affording partial protection from other injuries are blast injuries likely to be of practical importance. Two animal species of widely different body weights (700 rats and 56 dogs) were exposed, together with air pressure recorders, in aluminum cylinders, covered by sandbags and dirt but open at both ends, at seven stations distributed within the intended overpressure range of 20 to 50 psi of Shot 10« About 200 rats were likewise exposed in Shot 9. Unfortunately, the destructive effect of the air blast of Shot 10 was much greater than anticipated. Many of the exposuremore » cylinders were displaced and their contents destroyed. Only a partial recovery of the animals was possible due to the excessive radioactive contamination which greatly limited the time in the area. Most of the animals were dead upon recovery. Those living were in a state of severe shock. Autopsy findings showed remarkably few traumatic lesions and lung hemorrhages in spite of the rough treatment and high overpressure to which they were subjected. The rats recovered from Shot 9 were exposed to a recorded pressure of 18 to 2k psi. The autopsy findings showed moderate lung hemorrhage in most of the animals undoubtedly due to direct air blast injury. The findings were typical of those seen following exposure to air blast from HE or in the shock tube. The agreement between the estimated pressures and the recorded pressures in the containers were good in some instances but not in others. Discounting the initial pressure rise, it was thought that the records represent the pressure changes in the exposure containers. The individual records exhibited rather wide variations in recorded pressures indicating a complex pressure field. The attempt to compare levels of direct air blast in small and large animals, and thereby to extrapolate to man, was not accomplished due to the lack of statistically reliable data on the dogs. The lapse of time between the death of the dogs and autopsy reduced the interpretable findings below the level required for statistical significance. Laboratory studies are planned to evaluate the relative importance of the several blast wave parameters in the production of injury, Recommendations for future field test studies will depend upon the outcome of this laboratory work.« lessWASHINGTON (AP) – A federal appeals court has turned down a Freedom of Information Act request to disclose National Security Agency records about the 2010 cyberattack on Google users in China.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center, which focuses on privacy and civil liberties, sought communications between Google and the NSA, which conducts worldwide electronic surveillance and protects the U.S. government from such spying. But the NSA refused to confirm or deny whether it had any relationship with Google. The NSA argued that doing so could make U.S. government information systems vulnerable to attack.
A federal district court judge sided with the NSA last year, and on Friday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the ruling.
In 2010, Google complained about major attacks on its website by Chinese hackers and suggested the Chinese government may have instigated them. The Chinese government denied any involvement. Soon after, there were news reports that Google was teaming up with the NSA to analyze the attack and help prevent future ones.
The privacy center's FOIA request drew a "Glomar" response, in which an agency refuses to confirm or deny the existence of records. The term refers to a case in the 1970s, when the CIA refused to confirm or deny the existence of the Glomar Explorer, a ship disguised as an ocean mining vessel that the CIA used to salvage a sunken Soviet submarine. Courts consistently have upheld Glomar responses.
"In reviewing an agency's Glomar response, this court exercises caution when the information requested" involves national security, Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote in the unanimous appeals court panel's ruling. "NSA need not make a specific showing of potential harm to national security in order to justify withholding information" under one of the law's exemptions because Congress has already, in enacting the FOIA statute, decided that disclosure of NSA activities is potentially harmful.
Brown said the question was whether acknowledging the existence or nonexistence of the requested material would reveal an NSA activity. The privacy center argued that some of the records it sought — unsolicited communications from Google to NSA — are not covered by exemptions cited by the NSA.
"The existence of a relationship or communications between the NSA and any private company certainly constitutes an 'activity' of the agency" subject to exemption, Brown wrote. "Whether the relationship — or any communications pertaining to the relationship — were initiated by Google or NSA is irrelevant to our analysis."
"Moreover," she added, "if private entities knew that any of their attempts to reach out to NSA could be made public through a FOIA request, they might hesitate or decline to contact the agency, thereby hindering its information assurance mission," which focuses on protecting national security information and information systems.
Brown, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, was joined in the ruling by Judges Brett Kavanaugh, another George W. Bush appointee, and Douglas Ginsburg, who was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan.Have you ever wondered what you really want out of life? Do you know what you want to achieve? Is it family, success, long life, lots of money, all of the above? Have you even asked yourself the question? And if you did ask yourself, didn’t you just as quickly forget about it?
We are constantly surrounded by TV ads, media trends, and all kinds of advice from sports heroes, music bands and film stars. They tell us what to do, what to like and what to think. They tell us what to eat, what to wear, how to bathe, even how to talk. This endless flow of information is in our face and in our heads 24/7. However, it is not there to help us. It is only there to sell us a product or a service or to increase their power over us.
What if you ignored this “advice” and chose something else? It wouldn’t take long for your friends, family and co-workers to tell you it was a bad idea.
The end result is you think you enjoy what you do, you think you live in a nice place, and you think you use the right products. Yet, deep down inside, you are not sure. Maybe you ask yourself “do I really like this job or is it only the money” and “do I really like these friends and their advice or don’t I have a choice?”
The question is “Do you know what you really want?”
The answer is “Yes you do, you just haven’t asked yourself yet”.
If you’re in an unhappy situation, don’t be passive and do nothing. A little positive thinking will tell you what you really want. That sounds good, but what exactly should you do? Did you ever have to do something, but had no idea even how to start? The more you thought about it, the more impossible it became. Round and round inside your head until you gave up, and went back to living with the old problem.
To know what you really want, you don’t need advertising. You don’t need to buy the latest products or services. Above all, you don’t need to be told. All you need is a little personal time to think things out. And I will tell you how to do that. However, do not expect instant answers for wealth, health, power and happiness. Happiness and health are natural conditions; they cannot be ends in themselves. Money and power do not bring you anything; they are just a means to get what you really want.
Here is a tip. Ultimately, it comes down to inner harmony and a true understanding. You will live a good relaxing life if you are healthy and happy. But if you don’t know what you really want, then all the money and power in the world won’t help you relax.
Here’s How to Find Out – an Exercise for Your Mind
You want to ask yourself “What do I really want?” The easiest way to know yourself and to get an honest answer to the question is … Sorry I can’t tell you; it’s not that easy. This is a private personal question to yourself, and the answer will be equally private. What I can tell you is the technique to use to ask the question. The answer will be your deepest and truest desire for what will make you happy and make sense of everything around you.
To start, find yourself some free time when you won’t be interrupted. Thirty minutes to an hour will be enough. Turn off all distractions (phone, computer, TV, etc.).
Take a sheet of paper and write at the top in large letters “I want …”.
Underneath write down the first thing that comes into your mind. Do not worry if it’s really stupid, nobody else is going to read it.
Carry on down the page, making a list of what you want. The first five to ten things will come easily to you and it should not take you more than a minute.
After that it gets interesting. Continue with your list until you have one hundred answers. Remember this is fun, not a chore! Just write whatever is natural, simple, and exciting.
Ah ha! There is the answer to your question. Eventually, one of your answers will be the one to make you happy, bring you money, and make you look successful to others. And the fact that you worked it out for yourself will make you even happier and more confident.
A True Example – How I Did It
I did the same exercise. After about fifty minutes, I had ninety-five answers. At first they were all the typical standard things like “I want to be rich,” “I want more friends,” “I want a big house.” Then came some really strange answers like “I want to read people’s thoughts,” “I want to fly.” Don’t worry, that is normal. After about twenty to thirty answers, all kinds of strange ideas will pop up in your head; things that you never thought you would want.
Now I am sure you are curious. You want to know what was the key answer that switched on the light in my head. I will tell you.
“I want to help other people be happy, rich, and in control of their lives”.
The hidden message (mine and maybe yours) is that to be happy and have everything I want, all I have to do is help as many people as possible! Ultimately, what we are is what we do, and what we do is reflected in the people around us. I encourage you to look around you and perceive everything, as a reflection of what you are, and again, from this standpoint ask yourself: ‘What do I really want?’
Ashton Aiden is passionate about helping people find practical and effective ways for overcoming their inner barriers, reaching that next level of success and self-awareness, and manifesting the life of their dreams. He is a certified life coach, the owner of Brainwavelove.com, and the author of ‘The Complete Change Your Life System’.A mob of mosquitoes is a “scourge.” And the cardboard tube Jodi Holeman holds in her hands buzzes with more than enough mosquitoes to fill a scourge’s ranks—a thousand, to be exact. She uncaps the cylinder and taps gently, encouraging the stragglers out. “Get to work, boys,” she says.
On this Tuesday morning in July, Holeman and her colleagues at the Consolidated Mosquito Abatement District are releasing 20 tubes full of mosquitoes in Clovis, California, at the northern tip of Fresno County in the Central Valley. They do this twice weekly, bringing a scourge upon the same 20 spots in the same subdivision, where the two-car-garage houses range in color from beige to brown. By summer's end, they will have blanketed the subdivision with 400,000 mosquitoes.
The point of this? To rid the neighborhood of mosquitoes.
Counterintuitive, sure. But these are no ordinary mosquitoes. They’re not locals, for one: They were flown in that night from Kentucky, where the biotech startup MosquitoMate breeds mosquitoes carrying a bacterium called Wolbachia within their cells. And the mosquitoes in the tube are all male. Once Holeman sets them free, the idea is that they’ll mate with local females that don’t carry Wolbachia. And the offspring won’t be able to hatch.
WIRED
This is all a big experiment. The district hopes the Wolbachia-infected male mosquitoes will become a vital tool against Aedes aegypti, a mosquito species invading the US that can carry diseases like dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya, and Zika. As temperatures rise, Aedes aegypti could push further north, bringing these diseases to communities that have never experienced them. Like in Florida, where some travelers to Latin America have returned with Zika and mosquitoes are now—officials said this week—transmitting Zika to locals. In July, Fresno County saw its first case of travel-related Zika. The disease is generally mild, but can cause birth defects. Nobody wants Zika to keep spreading.
To prevent an incursion, scientists have spent years—decades, even—exploring ways to kill mosquitoes and the diseases they carry. In Brazil, where the risk of Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases is high, scientists have tested genetically modified mosquitoes that are sterile. But in the US, a proposal to test the insects in Florida remains stuck within the gears of the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates genetically modified animals. Last year, the FDA approved its first genetically modified animal, a salmon. It took 20 years.
The route MosquitoMate is following in Clovis is less fraught. And it involves a different agency. Earlier this summer, the company submitted data to the Environmental Protection Agency to get Wolbachia in a related mosquito, Aedes albopictus, approved as a pesticide—an easier process than the FDA's. Three states had already tested Aedes albopictus. If the Wolbachia-infected Aedes aegypti work in Clovis, approval for that species could follow. Together, they could herald a new wave of mosquito-control strategies.
But will it work with this new mosquito? To get a brood of doomed eggs, you must get these males to mate. These bugs have spent their lives in a lab and the last 12 hours crowded in cardboard tubes—so they’re not exactly studs. “It’s a numbers game,” says Holeman. To increase the odds, the district will release orders of magnitude more males than there are females in the district.
So: 400,000 male mosquitoes, released over 10 weeks and 120 acres of suburban landscape. That’s the plan. Hopefully, it will be enough.
Consolidated Mosquito Abatement District
An Obscure Bacteria
Stephen Dobson has spent most of his life studying an obscure microbe that lives inside insects. His PhD: Wolbachia. Twenty years of lab work: Wolbachia.
It’s not as unimaginative as it sounds. For evolutionary biologists, Wolbachia is the best kind of puzzle. It not only lives in insects; it lives inside their cells, passed down from mother to offspring. Humans have such bacteria, or remnants of them, inside their cells, too. Mitochondria were once free-living bacteria that found refuge inside animal cells, and they remain a key part of cells' energy-processing machinery. Studying Wolbachia offers a window into the symbiosis between bacteria and insects—a niche topic, sure, but exactly the kind of basic research question a scientist like Dobson can happily burrow into for decades.
Scientists still aren’t exactly sure what Wolbachia does inside insect cells. Years into his research, Dobson noticed that when mosquitoes infected by different strains of Wolbachia—or one with Wolbachia and one without—mated, it interfered with how DNA duplicates. The eggs never hatched. This wasn’t just a niche research question anymore; this could be a new way to control mosquitoes.
Stained light micrograph of a wasp egg infected with Wolbachia. Merijn Salverda and Richard Stouthamer/Science Source
He began mixing and matching different strains of Wolbachia in different mosquito species. Aedes aegypti does not naturally carry the bacteria, so in 2005, his lab created the first line of Wolbachia-infected Aedes aegypti by injecting the bacteria into mosquito eggs. Once the bacteria is within the cells, it passes from mother to offspring. The mosquitoes Holeman is releasing descend from these original Wolbachia-infected ones.
By 2013, Dobson had founded MosquitoMate. That year, at an Aedes aegypti conference in Panama City, he ran into Steve Mulligan, the longtime manager of the Consolidated Mosquito Abatement District. They’d long known each other from meetings like this. But this year, for the first time, Mulligan had an Aedes aegypti problem.
Months before, Holeman received a call from a neighboring mosquito-control district office. Employees there had picked up an unusual bug in a trap, and they wanted her to confirm the species. Sure enough, she saw *Aedes aegypti'*s distinct black-and-white-striped legs.
Consolidated Mosquito Abatement District
Soon after Holeman identified that mosquito, her district started finding Aedes aegypti in its traps, too.
Mulligan knew he had to act quickly, before Aedes aegypti made a home in Clovis. This species isn’t just a disease carrier: It’s also hardier and more aggressive than most other mosquitoes. Aedes aegypti bite during the day, not just at dusk and dawn. They love biting humans especially. And they need only the smallest amounts of water to lay their eggs—the water in the dish under a potted plant is sufficient.
District employees went door to door in the neighborhood looking for water sources, emptying small ones and spraying bigger ones—abandoned swimming pools were common after foreclosures hit Clovis—with pesticides. “We basically threw everything we had at it, and it didn’t do anything,” says Holeman. Even the cold winter didn’t kill them. Aedes aegypti was in Clovis for good.
When Mulligan and Dobson ran into each other in Panama City, each found the partner they were looking for. MosquitoMate needed someone to test the sterile Aedes aegypti; Clovis needed some way of eliminating Aedes aegypti.
Before Mulligan started trying to eradicate mosquitos in Clovis a quarter-century ago, he studied pesticides at the University of California. The pesticides he tested are still being used today. “Sterile insects, I think they’re the way of the future,” says Mulligan. The district received an experimental use permit from the EPA and California’s department of pesticide regulation, and their study started in June.
Versus GM Mosquitoes
When Holeman and Mulligan go around releasing mosquitoes, they’re quick to greet passersby and explain what they’re doing. A person standing in the street letting out swarms of insects is a weird sight.
A few residents have complained about the buzzing insects. Although the males don’t bite humans—only females need human blood to nourish their developing eggs—they like to follow people and buzz in their ears. Others complain about government meddling with the environment. Yet by and large, says Holeman, most people are happy somebody is doing something about the mosquito problem.
Like one man who was out on a walk, pulling his toddler in a toy car. “Oh good, the mosquitoes are killing us,” he said, before moving on. Before the district started releasing mosquitoes, the team went door to door three times leaving flyers on doors explaining the project and announcing a community meeting to answer questions. One person showed up. Two others came only after Mulligan called them. He and Holeman are trying to get people on board with the Wolbachia mosquitoes. “Even if it’s very effective,” says Holeman, “if residents aren’t supportive, it’s going to be very difficult to implement.”
WIRED
Community support will be key as the EPA considers MosquitoMate’s applications for the use of Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes. The application has received 10 comments, at least three of them from people who confused the Wolbachia mosquitoes with genetically modified insects. For example: “I'm 100 percent against this plan to release GMO mosquitos in FL.”
If Clovis were experimenting with genetically modified mosquitoes, the scene might look different. The plan that comment referred was in the Florida Keys, where the biotech company Oxitec is attempting to release its GM mosquitoes in a field trial—it would be the first in the US. An online petition against the release garnered over 150,000 signatures, and opponents swarmed community meetings carrying “No Consent” signs. Oxitec has received more than 1,200 public comments on the FDA’s assessment about mosquitoes’ environmental impact. (The FDA found no significant impact, but that hasn’t cleared the roadblocks.)
“I’m an entomologist. I understand insects a lot better than I understand people,” says Dobson. “But it appears people are less resistant to the Wolbachia approach because it’s non-GMO, because it’s a naturally occurring bacterium.”
It’s not just people that he needs to convince, though. The EPA has never dealt with a “pesticide” like this before. “We kind of blew their minds,” says Dobson, who has been working with the agency on the application since 2008. “This has been a long process, a lot of emails, a lot of flights, a lot of stacks of paper going back and forth.”
Dobson says he expects approval in a few months, which would let mosquito-control districts in the US add the method to their arsenal against Aedes albopictus. As for the Wolbachia-infected Aedes aegypti in Clovis, MosquitoMate has sought permits for additional tests in California and Florida. If those go well, MosquitoMate will ask the EPA to approve its mosquitoes as a pesticide as well.
WIRED
Elsewhere in the world, China is releasing millions of Wolbachia-infected Aedes albopictus mosquitoes every week. And entomologists with the project Eliminate Dengue are taking advantage of another quirk of Wolbachia: its ability to prevent mosquitoes from passing the Zika, dengue, and yellow fever viruses onto humans. The downside is the number of mosquitoes remains unchanged, so they keep biting and biting. The upside is that this method is cheaper; a one-time release of female mosquitoes can infect an entire population with Wolbachia, whereas males must be continuously released.
These projects all come back to the same goal: creating a new tool to control mosquitoes carrying diseases. So on a 105-degree day, Holeman’s team is out in the sun, releasing scourges and scourges of mosquitoes.[Update: this book is now available on Amazon, in both eBook and printed versions – see here for more information.]
As many users of Delphi will know, the product’s official documentation is not exactly a classic of technical literature. While some parts are good, other parts and the overall structure are… not so good. Despite that, the market for Delphi books is hardly chockablock with entrants. The fact there was no entry level version of Delphi for a few years probably didn’t help, but that situation was rectified over a year ago now. At which point I acquired an itch that just had to be scratched…
Since then (Feburary 2011) I have been writing a book entitled Delphi XE2 Foundations that documents the language and wider RTL, in a reference-and-conceptual-overview style. If you will humour me, I’ve been aiming for something like the Albahari brothers’ C# 4.0 in a Nutshell (which is a great book by the way), only without the curly brackets!
My plan is this:
Self-publish in three parts as eBooks on Amazon, i.e. through their Kindle bookstore. Amazon do free reader apps for a range of platforms, so potential purchasers won’t need an actual Kindle device. UK pricing will be £7.59 per eBook (£22.77 for the whole |
is in Sudan, not here. This is a Jewish state!”
“Restrict their movements”
Ben-Ari apparently referring to some nearby counter-demonstrators said: “I can see them over there, those who want to destroy our country. I see those who are setting up a welcome tent for the millions of Africans who are on their way here and I tell them it’s no use, our response is the Jewish nation lives!”
Ben-Ari and several protesters then broke into singing the nationalist refrain, “The Jewish nation lives.”
Ben-Ari then praised the mayor of the Red Sea port city of Eilat for his alleged harsh treatment of Africans. The mayor, Ben-Ari said, “is doing a great job with the Africans there. I only wish we did the same here in Tel Aviv. He doesn’t allow them to attend schools, he restricts their movements, he knows what to do.”
Africans ‘bad for property values’
The handful of counter-demonstrators calling for an end to racism are confronted by some of the protestors and one woman shouts: “Disgusting! Why should my son go to school with 30 Sudanese in a class?”
The same woman adds, “Let’s see you take them back home to your neighborhood and then we’ll see you complain that your property values are dropping.”
Why did Haaretz delete the article?
It is very unusual for a publication to delete an article without explanation after it is published. Responding to my questions on Twitter, Sheen suggested it was because the article was no longer “newsy,” coming 24 hours after the rally.
While this may be what the Haaretz editors told Sheen, it is far from convincing. In a professional publication, such decisions are made before an article appears, not after.
@AliAbunimah It happens sometimes. In this case it was because the article wasn't newsy since it went up 24 hours after the rally took place — David Sheen (@davidsheen) December 12, 2011
After some further discussion, Dena Shunra suggested a more sinister motive:
@davidsheen @AliAbunimah I agree w/Ali - it's highly unusual to pull a story after it's on the web. Did they get a call from the gov't or? — Dena Shunra (@ShunraCat) December 12, 2011
Israel Right-wing Activists Rally in Tel Aviv, Demand Expulsion of African Migrants - Haaretz Daily Newspap…Pamela Anderson Lends Star Power To Fight Against Foie Gras In France
Enlarge this image toggle caption Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson showed up at the French Parliament Tuesday to speak out for animal rights. A French congresswoman is trying to put an end to what critics call a cruel practice to animals. It also happens to be central to one of France's most cherished culinary delicacies: foie gras.
Anderson said she was following the example of Brigitte Bardot, another sex-symbol-turned-animal-rights-activist. As a young girl, Anderson said, she was inspired when Bardot visited Canada in the '70s to condemn the slaughter-by-clubbing of baby seals.
"In many national cultures, there seems to be at least one cruel tradition that stands out as identifying that culture," said Anderson. "Be it the bullfight in Spain, eating dogs in Korea, the slaughter of dolphins and whales by Japan or the bloody and obscene massacre of seals in my own native Canada."
And in France, it's the making of foie gras, Anderson said. She described how 80 million ducks and geese live out their final weeks in caged anguish as they are force-fed to fatten their livers, through metal tubes shoved down their throats. She said the animals lead lives of misery and suffering for a nonessential luxury food.
Anderson called foie gras a product unworthy of a civilized society.
But foie gras is a favorite delicacy in France. Especially during the holiday season. No Christmas or New Year's table would be complete without a tray of raw oysters and a block of creamy foie gras to spread on little toasts.
French congresswoman Laurence Abeille has introduced a bill to ban force-feeding. She says a recent poll shows 70 percent of the French now oppose the practice.
"A lot of young people are vegetarians, and a lot of young people want to have a different relationship with the living world, and that includes animals," says Abeille.
But Abeille says it's hard to fight tradition.
Generally, treating farm animals well is seen as something important in France. For example, the French are horrified by massive feedlots for cattle in the U.S., where the beasts are exposed to cold and heat and fed corn. French beef cattle roam freely and graze on grass and hay. And there are laws against mistreating animals for profit. But Abeille says when it comes to foie gras, there seems to be a blind spot.
She admits her bill has no chance of passing. But she wants to start the debate. She already has.
Foie gras producers and the powerful French hunting and fishing lobby lashed out immediately at what they called a show biz assault against a wholesome tradition.
France produces 20,000 tons of foie gras a year, and exports it around the world. Its biggest markets are Belgium, Japan and Spain. But 20 countries have now banned force-feeding and the making of foie gras. (Last year, a federal judge overturned California's foie gras ban.)
Polls or no, it doesn't look as if France will be abandoning this gastronomic tradition any time soon.
Around the corner from the French parliament building in Paris is a cozy bistro that offers its own "house-prepared" foie gras.
Garance Journot and Marie Dupont are enjoying a meal together. The young women say even though they're against what they've heard is a cruel practice, they're not going to give up foie gras.
"It's too much a part of French culinary tradition," says Journot. "When we eat it, we don't even ask ourselves the question."Local Transit Start-up Working on Real-Time Tracking App, On-Board Payment Idea
Photo by Walker Evans.
A local start-up has set its sites on two of the most vexing problems facing its local transit agency – real-time tracking and convenient on-board payment. Omnibus, a group of developers and entrepreneurs formed at this year’s Give Back Hack event, is bullish on the potential of their app to offer an easy, visually-friendly way for riders to see on their phone exactly where their bus is.
They are also working on an easy and quick way for riders to pay for that ride – on board, and without cash – a fix that may be further in the future but even more far-reaching in its impact.
“The goal is to eliminate transportation uncertainty, and that can bring lots of benefits to our city,” said Nora Gerber, who pitched her idea on the first day of the weekend event and was surprised to see it take on a life of its own and eventually be voted the winning project on the last day.
“The app provides a visual, Uber-like experience, not just estimated time – that is something different,” she explained. “We really want to make it so that the bus is just the easiest choice.”
For the app to function, each bus in the system would have to be outfitted with a device to track its movement, which is different from some existing transit-tracking apps like MoveIt. Omnibus would not rely on individual riders, with an app open on their smart phone, being on a particular bus in order to track it.
This could potentially would make the Omnibus app more reliable, especially for smaller systems that might not have the critical mass of riders needed to provide crowdsourcing data. It also means, though, that it would require the explicit cooperation of the transit agency in any city in which it hopes to operate.
To that end, the Omnibus group has presented their concept to the COTA board and is encouraged by the initial, informal response from both staff and board members. The team thinks that a partnership could eventually be forged with the transit agency that would complement the work COTA and their vendor Trapeze have already done on the issue.
COTA announced in the fall of 2013 a plan to roll-out real-time tracking, but it has yet to be implemented after a long string of setbacks and issues with the accuracy of the product provided by the vendor. COTA VP of Communications Marty Stutz said that the system is currently being tested internally, but no date has been set for rolling it out to the public.
Whether an Omni/COTA partnership is eventually formed or not, count developer and COTA board member Brett Kaufman as a fan of the group.
“I was very impressed by their presentation, I thought they did an outstanding job and firmly believe it’s the kind of thinking our city continues to benefit from,” he said, adding that, “I am aware that COTA continues to consider all innovation opportunities and best practices from around the world.”
Since the Give Back Hack event in February, the Omnibus group has used the $5,000 prize money to further develop their ideas, while also pursuing additional funding from the Create Columbus Commission and the SEA Change Accelerator program, which has a $50,000 pool of money to distribute to worthy social enterprises.
In addition to bus-tracking, Omnibus is also “tinkering” with a proprietary system aimed at speeding up on-board payment by credit card.
“There’s nothing in the market that would easily replace the current (way of doing things),” said Omnibus team member and designer Bryan Vogel, adding that a speedy, non-cash system of payment has been identified by COTA’s NextGen outreach and planning process as a priority.
For Gerber, she sees great potential in both initiatives; “I grew up in Columbus. I love the city, and have always liked COTA, but I thought that it could be better connected…a better system for more people.”
For more information on Omnibus, visit rideomnibus.com.
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About the Author Brent Warren is a staff reporter for Columbus Underground covering urban development, transportation, city planning, neighborhoods, and other related topics. He grew up in Grandview Heights and has a Master's Degree in City and Regional Planning from OSU.
Tags:City in Arkansas, United States
Charleston is a city in Franklin County, Arkansas, United States, and (along with Ozark) one of the two county seats of Franklin County.[3] It is part of the Fort Smith, Arkansas-Oklahoma Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 2,522 at the 2010 census,[4] down from 2,965 in 2000.
History [ edit ]
Charleston was platted in 1870.[5]
In 1954, Charleston was the first school district in the former Confederate States to implement school integration in response to Brown v. Board of Education. On July 27, 1954, the school board, including President Howard Madison Orsburn, George Hairston, Archibald Schaffer, Herbert Shumate, and Homer Keith, unanimously voted to "disband the Colored School and admit the Colored children into the grade and high school when classes open for the fall semester." Accordingly, when the schools opened on August 23, 11 black children were in attendance alongside 480 whites.[6] School Superintendent Woodie Haynes made an agreement with the local press not to cover the event, and stonewalled any outside reporters that asked questions.[7] The decision to integrate had financial benefits, as the district had been paying a considerable sum to transport black high school students to Fort Smith, and were able to close the old Rosenwald school. Charleston suffered some discrimination from other schools and the state; many schools refused to play football against them and the band was denied the opportunity to play in some band competitions. In 1961, the first two black students to graduate from Charleston were Barbara (Williams) Dotson and Joe Ferguson.[6]
Geography [ edit ]
Charleston is in southwestern Franklin County, along Arkansas Highway 22, which leads east 9 miles (14 km) to Ratcliff and west 24 miles (39 km) to Fort Smith.
According to the United States Census Bureau, Charleston has a total area of 4.4 square miles (11.4 km2), of which 4.3 square miles (11.1 km2) is land and 0.1 square miles (0.3 km2), or 2.53%, is water.[4]
Demographics [ edit ]
Historical population Census Pop. %± 1880 393 — 1890 370 −5.9% 1910 576 — 1920 734 27.4% 1930 851 15.9% 1940 958 12.6% 1950 968 1.0% 1960 1,036 7.0% 1970 1,497 44.5% 1980 1,748 16.8% 1990 2,128 21.7% 2000 2,965 39.3% 2010 2,522 −14.9% Est. 2017 2,463 [2] −2.3% U.S. Decennial Census[8]
2014 Estimate[9]
As of the census[10] of 2000, there were 2,965 people, 1,201 households, and 815 families residing in the city. The population density was 706.4 people per square mile (272.6/km²). There were 1,315 housing units at an average density of 313.3 per square mile (120.9/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 95.58% White, 0.07% Black or African American, 0.64% Native American, 0.34% Asian, 1.48% from other races, and 1.89% from two or more races. 2.06% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.
There were 1,201 households out of which 31.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 52.3% were married couples living together, 11.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.1% were non-families. 29.2% of all households were made up of individuals and 14.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40 and the average family size was 2.96.
In the city, the population was spread out with 25.7% under the age of 18, 7.9% from 18 to 24, 26.7% from 25 to 44, 20.4% from 45 to 64, and 19.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females, there were 92.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 89.7 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $30,824, and the median income for a family was $39,598. Males had a median income of $27,917 versus $18,512 for females. The per capita income for the city was $14,912. About 8.6% of families and 14.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including 17.1% of those under age 18 and 16.6% of those age 65 or over.
Notable people [ edit ]
Dale Bumpers, governor of Arkansas and U.S. senator from Arkansas
Eddy Carmona, American football punter and placekicker for the Oakland Raiders
Steve Cox, former American football punter and placekicker and Super Bowl winner with the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl XXII
John "Tree" Adams, former American football offensive tackle with the Washington Redskins from 1945-1949
Denny Flynn, bull rider, of Charleston, Arkansas qualified for the National Finals Rodeo 10 times (1974-82, 1985) and set a record for most bull riding average titles won at the NFR (1975, 1981-82), later equaled by Jim Sharp.
Cody Sosebee- bareback rider/rodeo clown, of Charleston Arkansas, 1990 International Professional Rodeo Bareback Riding Rookie of the Year, 1991 International Professional Rodeo Bareback Riding World Champion, Over 13 times nominated for PRCA Clown of the Year, 2017 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo Barrel Man, 2018 PRCA Comedy Act of the Year
Education [ edit ]
Public education [ edit ]
The Charleston School District provides public education from kindergarten through grade 12 from its three facilities, Charleston High School (grades 9–12), Charleston Elementary School (grades K–4), and Charleston Middle School (grades 5–8).
The Public School District of Charleston, Arkansas was the first school district to integrate in the former Confederate States of America. The high school was destroyed in middle 2010 to make way for a larger middle school. There is currently a small monument to the integration in front of Charleston Middle School.Alex Trebek is being criticized for a “sexist” line of questioning to a female retired Army master sergeant during Tuesday night’s episode of “Jeopardy!”
Mr. Trebek was doing his obligatory mid-show interviews when he came across retired Master Sgt. Lisa Beth Davis and apparently became fixated on her gender.
“That must be really tough for a woman, because a master sergeant is giving orders most of the time. How was it for you?” the game show host asked.
“I’m pretty bossy,” the contestant responded without missing a beat. “I’m the oldest, so I know how to tell people what to do.”
“You’re the oldest in your family, did you have brothers?” Mr. Trebek asked.
After Ms. Davis informed the host that she has only sisters, he replied, “So you learned how to do it, good for you.”
The line of questioning was ripped as “sexist” by social media users and tabloids TMZ and the Daily Mail.
Alex Trebek just told a female contestant that being a master sargeant in the military “Must be very hard for a woman.” Woooooooooooooooow. Truly shameful moment @Jeopardy — Stacey Wilson Hunt (@GalinHollywood) December 20, 2017
Alex Trebek Makes Sexist Comment to ‘Jeopardy!’ Contestant About Her Military Job https://t.co/Eo61mTJoVF — TMZ (@TMZ) December 20, 2017
Alex Trebek: “Being a master sergeant must be hard for a woman because you have to give orders all the time.”
That sexism isn’t even subtle. — Mary Faurot (@MaryFaurot) December 19, 2017
Alex Trebek just asked a female military person if her job was hard for her as a woman because she needs to give lots of orders AND I WANT TO JUMP THROUGH MY TV AND BREAK HIS NOSE #Jeopardy — Sarah Caputo (@whitenoize_smc) December 20, 2017
Alex Trebek Makes Sexist Comment to ‘Jeopardy!’ Contestant About Her Military Job https://t.co/Eo61mTJoVF — TMZ (@TMZ) December 20, 2017
He told a contestant who is a retired army master sergeant, that it must be tough as a woman because a master sergeant “is giving orders most of the time”https://t.co/9RDJgJ28Ie https://t.co/fGBVwNK1xR — Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) December 20, 2017
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.What would require crashing the wildly popular WhatsApp messaging application?
Nearly 4000 Smileys.
Yes, you can crash your friends' WhatsApp, both WhatsApp Web and mobile application, by sending them not any specially crafted messages, but just Smileys.
Indrajeet Bhuyan, an independent researcher, has reported The Hacker News a new bug in WhatsApp that could allow anyone to remotely crash most popular messaging app just by sending nearly 4000 emojis to the target user, thereby affecting up to 1 Billion users.
2kb in size) message in the special character set to remotely crash Whatsapp messenger app. Bhuyan is the same researcher who reported a very popular WhatsApp crash bug last year that required 2000 words () message in the special character set to remotely crash Whatsapp messenger app.
"In WhatsApp Web, Whatsapp allows 65500-6600 characters, but after typing about 4200-4400 smiley browser starts to slow down," Bhuyan wrote in his blog post. "But since the limit is not yet reached so WhatsApp allows to go on inserting...when it receives it overflows the buffer and it crashes." After this discovery, the company patched the bug by setting up the limits of characters in WhatsApp text messages, but unfortunately, it failed to set up limits for smileys send via WhatsApp.
WhatsApp for Android devices including Marshmallow, Lollipop and Kitkat
devices including Marshmallow, Lollipop and Kitkat WhatsApp Web for Chrome, Opera and Firefox web browsers. It is sure that the latest version of WhatsApp is affected by this bug. The recent bug tested on Android devices by multiple brands and successfully crashed:It is sure that the latest version of WhatsApp is affected by this bug.
Video Demonstration
You can also watch the Proof-of-Concept (PoC) video that shows the attack in work.
How to Protect Yourself
Bhuyan told The Hacker News that he had reported the WhatsApp crash bug to Facebook. However, before the company patches the issue, there is a simple way out.
If you become a victim of such message on WhatsApp, just open your messenger and delete the whole conversation with the sender.
However, remember, if you have kept some records of your chat with that particular friend, you’ll end up losing them all.Similar home-made gins are common across Africa
Some 80 people have died in Uganda after drinking illegal home-made banana gin laced with methanol, a health official says.
Patrick Tusiime said so many people had died because relatives did not want to admit that people had been drinking the gin, known as waragi.
The deaths have occurred over the past three weeks in the south-western Kabale district, he told Reuters news agency.
He said the authorities were conducting house-to-house searches for the gin.
The BBC's Joshua Mmali in the capital, Kampala, says waragi is drunk across Uganda, often by those who cannot afford industrialised alcohol.
He says deaths from drinking it are not uncommon but this is the largest number killed at one time for several years.
About 120 jerrycans of waragi have been seized, reports Uganda's Daily Monitor newspaper.
"All the alcohol found has been confiscated but people are stubborn and have found ingenious ways of hiding it," Mr Tusiime said.
He said those affected became blind and suffered liver and kidney failure before dying.In early 2015, Youtube has separately launched the Youtube Kids app that includes specially curated content just for Kids. Later, the company even integrated the Youtube Red so that the kids can watch the ads-free videos by paying some fee. Almost after two years after launching the services, now the Youtube for Kids app is finally made its way to India. The App is available for both Android and iOS users and is already downloaded by 10 million users along on Android.
Earlier: Feb 23, 2015 – Are you a parent with kids at home? If yes then its time you should take a look at the newest App from Google which is “Youtube for Kids”. Most of the kids spend their time on the YouTube application, all thanks to the amazing content created by creators all around the world, but the biggest problem to this is the curation. Kids share the devices with their parents or are given access to devices which have the YouTube application and there are no filters which would restrict the content.
We had earlier covered an article on setting up child mode on iOS which was the only solution considering that you want only Child Safe content access, but with this new application you can stay assured about the content accessed. All the above mentioned problems are now fixed with this new app which helps in better discovery of content, where kids can explore and find the right content they have been searching for.
The Application has different Parental Controls.
Sound Settings : You have the option to switch OFF the background music and sound effects when you want a little peace. Search Settings : If you wish you could just pre-selected videos and limit the kids access to those videos and also disable the search feature. Timer : You can limit the kids access to the YouTube app by setting up a limited access. You can this way limit the screen time and also alert the child when the session is completed.Shoe insoles are a great way to obtain comfort, pain relief and the prevention of foot problems, especially for athletes. They provide cushioning and support to help absorb the shock that makes feet sore. Purchasing these could be an understandable investment, but what if you could make them yourself instead? WikiHow suggests that you may only need thick cardboard or an old yoga mat to create your own insoles. Here is the old yoga/exercise mat method:
Trace a flip flop or shoe of your size onto the smooth side of an old yoga or exercise mat. Cut out the design. Flip over what you’ve cut and trace it again onto the smooth side of the mat for the opposite foot. Cut out this insole as well and you’ll have a right and left foot insole. Trace and cut out four more insoles. You should have five total. Stack the cutouts, with the textured side up, for each foot. Using a hot glue gun, glue four of the layers together and press. Go little by little as opposed to trying to glue the whole layer at once. Leave to dry before you put them in your shoes for use!
For the cardboard insole method, head over to How to Build Shoe Insoles.by Brett Stevens on September 12, 2015
Anders Breivik continues to attract interest because he did what no conservative irked by multiculturalism will do: he blamed his own people, specifically liberals, and raised the cost of being a liberal to include the risk of death. Liberals now can preach full Communism wherever they want with zero repercussions; Breivik forever changed that in Norway, where parents now think twice about letting their children get involved with the Young Marxists. Typical of liberals, they are oblivious to the consequences of their actions until personal risk appears.
Åsne Seierstad, a somewhat typically neurotic journalist, does a fair job of chronicling the preparation and execution of the terror attacks at Utøya Island on July 22, 2011. Breivik executed 69 teenagers who were attending a far-left propaganda camp and killed eight more people in downtown Oslo with a Timothy McVeigh style ANFO car bomb. He explained his motivation as opposition to multiculturalism and leftism, which he sees as destroying Norway and Europe, and was sentenced to twenty-one years in a sentence that self-renews if he is still viewed as a threat to society, the equivalent of a life sentence anywhere else. He also raised eyebrows by giving the Roman salute during his trial. Seierstad chronicles all of these events faithfully and only goes awry when she tries to, in typical liberal fashion, provide a psychology that explains away Breivik’s concerns and acts.
He was rejected by those who mattered.
He did not fit in. He was patient and persistent, but he never it to the top of World of Warcraft. He was never among the Top 500 on the servers that matters, and thus was never ranked.
He acted like a king, when he was only a toy. (130)
One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway runs over 500 pages; to waste space on conjecture of that nature is not only irresponsible, but self-impressed to the point of narcissism. If any psychology is being revealed here, it is Seierstad, and her unprofessionalism in this regard — while the norm — lessens the power of this book. However, it also has numerous strengths. For one thing, Seierstad does an excellent job of speaking through her characters because she uses original research and, when possible, their words. She gives plenty of page time to Breivik and his statements to police as well as excerpts from his 1500 page manifesto and bibliography (in which Amerika.org was cited, in section 2.86). The latter half of the book seems almost sympathetic to Breivik, and in the former half, she acknowledges without blame the problems afflicting Norway, including first-world neurosis and boredom, immigration and failed multiculturalism, and the general ineptitude of government officials. Her description of the police response to the massacre could read like a Three Stooges episode, in parallel to the earlier incompetence of social workers trying to help Breivik’s mother, Wenche. Everywhere the utter instability of the Nordic Marxist-influenced society leaks out and provides a resonant backdrop to the motivation and ideological alignment of her central character.
The interrogation continued in the car on the way to Oslo. The officers asked Breivik to tell them honestly whether any more attacks were planned. He answered that: ‘If I give you that, I’ll have nothing.’ ‘It’s important to curb people’s fears now,’ objected the police. Breivik retorted that it was up to the powers of law and order to make people feel safe. ‘It’s beyond our power to reassure the Norwegian people now, so you have achieved that effect.’ Breivik grinned. ‘That’s what they call terror, isn’t it? (375)
This book takes a long time to get to the massacre, thankfully rushes through the massacre because shooting unarmed people is not all that interesting, and makes the trial less than boring which is a feat since almost all trials are mostly tedium. Seierstad picks crucial passages from Breivik’s statements to use in his dialogue with police, the press and the courts, and will give a casual reader a good idea of where he was going. Unlike a Hollywood production, she does not dumb down the ideation behind the attack; like Hollywood, she inserts too much focus on people and emotions that while important to readers, are fundamentally disconnected from what should be the focus, which is the issues and the change in history. She writes moderately, using very similar language with trope-cliché flair in the form of dramatic chapter endings, linguistic flourishes, excessive metaphors and the like. These are all standard to NPR, Salon, The Atlantic and other mainstream media standards for what is “good writing,” but this is not good writing. It is adequate, and with that none should have a problem, but it frequently becomes pretentious and adorns itself with decorations when it should focus on being functional and finding a way to make that interesting, as Seierstad did with the trial. A good editor could cut several hundred pages from this book and lose nothing of import.
When an event of political violence occurs, people rush to label it a tragedy and to paper over it with moral platitudes so that no one looks into the motivations of those involved. If Seierstad has a triumph, it is that she reveals the origins of Breivik and what shaped him; if she has a shame, it is the 200+ additional pages of focus on the victims, attempts to psychoanalyze Breivik, and other not really relevant material. She may have included that merely to disguise her quasi-affection for her subject, or because people are cud-chewing bovines who need a certain amount of “human interest.” Those parts are worth skimming over in this book because they contribute nothing; there is not enough about these victims to make them really impressive, which may explain why they were leftists. The real story here is the breakdown of Norwegian society and how it produces highly alienated people, and how one of these decided to act, and changed politics in Norway as a result.
Tags: anders behring breivik, anders breivik, asne seierstad, Books, diversity, immigration, knights templar, marxism, norway, templar knights, terrorism
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.We have some bad news for Sega fans (and, especially those holding out hope for a Shenmue announcement at E3). The company has confirmed to Game Informer that it will not have its own booth at the show next month in Los Angeles.
Sega will be teaming up with some of its partners, though. So you might see titles at booths belonging to platform holders or PC partners.
“Over the next months, SEGA of America will be focusing on the restructure and relocation to Southern California, and we have decided to not attend E3 with our own booth this year,” a representative told us via email. “With the majority of our bigger titles launching later in 2015/2016, particularly those from our AAA studios Relic Entertainment, Sports Interactive and Creative Assembly, we are concentrating our efforts for some of these major announcements after our relocation. Instead, we will be collaborating with our various business partners for this year’s E3 show.”
Sega announced a major restructuring in January that heralded significant layoffs. At the time, the company said it was planning to refocus on PC and mobile gaming. Most recently, Sega announced Total War: Wahammer under development at Creative Assembly.
Our Take
The note about partnering up means we still might see Total War: Warhammer at a PC manufacturer booth or Sonic hanging out with Nintendo. All isn’t lost Sega fans, there still might be some news coming from the publisher next month at E3.McCain cracks waterboading joke after slamming Giuliani for same Michael Roston
Published: Monday January 28, 2008
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Print This Email This Senator John McCain's campaign for president in Florida received a major lift after earning the endorsement of Governor Charlie Crist. How did McCain get Crist, who disagrees with the senator on government-backed catastrophe insurance, to support his campaign? Simple: He tortured him, according to the Palm Beach Post's campaign blog: Crist was asked if McCain used that tenacious, unyielding persistence in seeking the guvs endorsement.
Well, not that much, Crist began answering.
It was just waterboarding, McCain interjected. The remark appeared in conflict with McCain's Nov. 2007 broadside against Rudy Giuliani for a joke he made about torture. The former mayor of New York City joked on the campaign trail that if sleep deprivation was a form of torture, so was running for president. McCain's surrogates laid into Giuliani, accusing him of insulting, "all American soldiers who have had to endure real torture and mistreatment while in enemy hands," according to a story in the New York Sun. Giuliani's campaign responded at the time that McCain's own humorous remarks on the campaign trail showed that he should be able to take a joke. McCain is no stranger to humor-related controversies in the presidential race. In April of last year, McCain sang "Bomb Iran," to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann" at a South Carolina campaign stop. And later in the month, McCain joked with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central's The Daily Show that he had placed an improvised explosive device on his desk. When fellow Vietnam Veteran Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) reacted angrily to the remark, McCain told him and other critics to "lighten up and get a life."The two words “questions” and “doubts” are often interchanged when discussing concerns, confusion, or misunderstandings with Church doctrine, history, and policy. However, there is a difference between having questions and having doubts. It is important to understand this difference so that we know how to handle questions or doubts when we come across them in our personal lives. An article in the March 2015 issue of the Ensign by Adam Kotter, “When Doubts and Questions Arise” discusses this exact issue.
Brother Kotter defined questions and doubts as the following:
“A sincere questioner continues to be obedient while searching for answers. By contrast, I have seen that when people doubt their beliefs they often suspend their commitment to commandments and covenants while waiting for answers.”
Essentially, the difference between questions and doubts is how we respond to them. When we stay active in our callings, Church attendance, scripture study, and prayer, our questions are simply that: questions. When we stop doing those things, our questions can very quickly become doubts. That doesn’t mean that we should never ask questions, we just need to go about the right way in searching for answers. Brother Kotter regularly uses the terms “sincere questioner” and “sincere questions.” Meaning that when we ask a question, we are searching for God’s true answer, and when we find that answer we should be willing to accept it. He warns us of “talking yourself into the answers you want to believe rather than receiving true answers from God.”
I had such an experience a year ago. I had misunderstood a verse of scripture to mean something that it did not. When I discovered my misunderstanding I searched the footnotes, General Conference talks, and the Ensign to find the true answer. When I did find the answer, I struggled to accept it; and I continued to search in hopes of finding an alternative answer. I eventually fell to my knees and begged Heavenly Father to help me accept what I had learned. When I woke up the next day I felt calm and peace. The thought came to my mind, “You have your answer. You can either accept it and move forward, or hang on and let it destroy your faith.” I chose to accept the answer, and am so grateful that I did.
When we do the opposite by refusing to accept an answer, or when we stop participating in our faith before we even find an answer; we risk turning our questions into doubts. Accepting doubt leads us down a very different, and dangerous path. Brother Kotter said, “Satan can magnify our doubts or lead us to justify our sins.” I would like to emphasize that neither I nor Brother Kotter are calling doubters sinners, but Satan will use doubts to tempt us. If we give in to those temptations, Satan will then use our doubts to justify our actions when the Holy Ghost makes us feel guilty because Satan knows that if we justify our actions, we will not repent. If we give into our doubts we also run the risk of encouraging others to doubt with us. The deeper we fall into our doubts, the more vicious we can become towards those |
redevelopment by the private sector.
Check out how Austin is using its defunct Seaholm power plant as the centerpiece of a new mixed-use downtown development.
Or, take a look at what the private sector has done with a former elementary school in Portland, turning it into a hotel/microbrewery (this one is not downtown-specific but illustrates the strategy so well, I had to include it).
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #5
Consolidate regional economic development partner organizations into a single downtown location.
Why?
It may seem like an inconsequential decision but the location of government offices and community-serving organizations matters. This is even more important for organizations that interact with the outside business world like chambers of commerce and economic development organizations. Of course, public decisions to place jobs downtown are beneficial, but in this case, we’re talking about the image that is portrayed to the outside world.
What type of message do you think it sends when a city’s economic development corporation is located in a big-box strip center, or when the local chamber of commerce is housed in the upstairs of a convenience store? (Yes, I’ve actually seen both of these examples in the wild!). Take a look at what San Angelo, TX did.
San Angelo’s regional economic development partners chose to a construct a new consolidated facility in a strategic central city location to help spur further downtown revitalization. And the added benefit from this decision is the synergies gained by housing several cooperating organizations under a single roof.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #6
Create a permanent public market.
Why?
The most successful downtown districts have many major functions (employment, residential, entertainment, shopping, etc.). A key ingredient for creating a diverse downtown district is to have major destinations that draw people to downtown for reasons other than employment. Many cities have pursued professional sports teams for this reason, but this approach only yields intermittent benefits, because major league stadiums/arenas lie vacant much of the year.
On the other hand, a large public market can attract thousands of downtown visitors on a daily basis. Seattle’s Pike Place Market is a great example of such a public market. An estimated 8,000,000 to 10,000,000 annual visits are made to the market.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #7
Open a downtown satellite campus of a local university.
Why?
Downtown campuses can be a win-win for universities and for a city’s downtown. Major universities are often landlocked, and have trouble meeting their needs for facility expansion. Opening a downtown satellite campus can be a great option to expand the university’s reach. And the creation of a downtown university campus can do wonders for a city’s downtown.
The introduction of several thousand college students to a downtown can provide a major boost to the diversity of a downtown district, especially if student housing is included as part of the expansion. Downtown Phoenix benefits immensely from Arizona State University’s downtown campus. And the University of Texas-San Antonio downtown campus is a major asset for downtown San Antonio.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #8
Build a streetcar line connecting your downtown to an adjacent urban neighborhood.
Why?
Adding a streetcar line that connects your downtown to nearby urban neighborhoods will expand transportation options in your urban core, a good thing. But the biggest benefit from streetcars isn’t transportation-related, it’s an expanded potential for development. In fact, this is what streetcars were initially intended to do. In the early 1900s, it was standard practice for residential real estate developers to create streetcar lines that connected their land plots to the center city so that land values and development potential would increase on their property.
Modern day streetcar lines prove the time-tested benefits of streetcars for urban revitalization. Portland and Seattle offer good examples of streetcar lines that have more than paid for themselves in the way of new real estate development. In Portland’s case, the new streetcar line led to $3.5 billion in new development within 2 blocks of the streetcar line in only the first 7 years after the line opened.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #9
Create an awesome downtown playground to make your downtown more kid-friendly and family-friendly.
Why?
There is no question that downtowns across the U.S. are undergoing a major renaissance, especially in the way of new residential development. But, this resurgence has been fueled almost entirely by singles, young professionals, and empty nesters. Even the downtowns with the highest amounts of residential development in the last decade (Chicago, Seattle, Miami), struggle in their efforts to appeal to families with children. Check out this Huffington Post article which highlights the big-picture challenges associated with designing downtowns for families.
Many cities have high-quality downtown children’s museums but very few have playgrounds of equal caliber. Creating a top-notch downtown playground can be a truly transformative strategy, particularly if it’s part of a broader initiative to make your downtown more family-friendly and kid-friendly, because so few cities have an urban core that really appeals to families.
One example of a really unique downtown playground is the Imagination Playground in NYC’s Financial District. (Side note- The Imagination Playground was under construction when I lived in Lower Manhattan, but at the time our son, Gavin, was a newborn. We moved to Austin when he was only 2.5 months old, right after the playground opened, but on a visit to NYC back in 2012, Gavin – nearly 2 years old by that point – spent a good deal of time at this playground, especially in the splash pad section.)
San Antonio is another city aiming to make its downtown much more kid-friendly. The city is currently designing some major changes as part of the redevelopment of HemisFair Park (a large park named for the city’s 1968 world fair). The redevelopment plans for HemisFair Park aim to reshape the park from a largely underutilized asset into a regional destination for families.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #10
Create a branded downtown entertainment district.
Why?
Downtowns that offer a new, exciting district – even if it’s just a small area of a couple of blocks – provide residents with a reason to check out what is going on in the center of their community. A major upside of this strategy is that it can help to turn around the perceptions and reality of downtowns that have are not vibrant.
Perhaps the best example of this strategy is Oklahoma City’s Bricktown, a large mixed-use entertainment district that has transformed OKC’s one-time “dead-after-5pm” downtown into what is now hailed as a 24/7 attraction. Bricktown, which makes up the eastern section of downtown OKC, was filled with abandoned buildings as recently as the 1990s. Today, thanks to major infusions of public and private investments, the district is home to dozens of restaurants and bars, thousands of hotel rooms, and a growing number of residences.
Kansas City’s Power & Light District is a similar success story (though on a smaller scale than Bricktown) of a new entertainment district that breathed fresh life into that city’s downtown.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #11
Establish maximum parking standards for new downtown developments, or at least remove minimum parking requirements for new buildings.
Why?
Unfortunately, the majority of U.S. cities impose parking minimums instead of parking maximums, even in their downtown districts. This means that real estate developers are forced to provide a minimum level of parking when building new downtown offices, hotels, or residential structures, ignoring the market demand for parking. While these policies are generally intended to enhance or maintain access to downtown districts, they have the unintended side effect of fostering an over-dependence on auto travel while making downtown areas less walkable and less transit-supportive. Fortunately, there is a growing movement in large cities to abolish minimum parking requirements in downtowns.
Austin’s city council recently enacted an ordinance that removes mandatory minimum parking in the central business district.
And a few cities are really blazing a bold new path by not only removing parking minimums, but actually going the extra step to establish maximum parking standards which place an upper limit on the amount of new parking spaces allowed in downtown areas. You can read a fascinating account of the transformation of San Francisco’s parking policies over the last few decades here. In 1985, San Francisco first began experimenting with the removal of parking requirements for downtown commercial properties. Since then, San Francisco has increasingly adopted public policies that are aimed at reducing the amount of parking throughout the city, especially in the downtown area.
A relatively new innovation out of San Francisco is the SFpark pilot program, which introduced demand-responsive variable parking meter pricing with real-time information in multiple neighborhoods. A handful of other cities are experimenting with similar variable-rate approaches to on-street parking, including New York with its PARK Smart pilot project.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #12
Set up a downtown bike share program.
Why?
Any strategy that results in more transportation choices available within a downtown is a good thing if you’re aiming for a more vibrant urban core. And bike share programs – which have been spreading like wildfire across large U.S. cities in the past couple years – are certainly a good option for enhancing transportation access. But what makes this strategy so valuable is that it also provides indirect marketing and branding service for your downtown.
Bike share programs, with their highly visible stations and riders, broadcast a continual message to casual observers that downtown is a place for recreation and entertainment. Divvy Bikes in Chicago and Citi Bike in New York are two of the largest and most successful bike share programs in the U.S.
Lastly, bike share programs are highly flexible in terms of how they can be implemented and managed. Some systems are managed by non-profits, others are owned by local transportation authorities, and many are sponsored by major corporations or wholly owned and operated by the private sector. This flexibility in ownership/management models can help explain why the bike share craze has spread so quickly in such a short time.
Bottom Line
Admittedly, this is by no means a complete list…there are dozens, no hundreds, of different approaches to downtown revitalization. And you may have noticed that I chose to focus primarily on achievable strategies that are very much within the realm of the public sector. So, what’s the big takeaway? Whatever state your city’s downtown is currently in, there are many actions that can be taken to boost the vitality of your community’s urban core.
What is your city doing to make its downtown more vibrant?Ford and GM Scrutinized for Alleged Nazi Collaboration German diplomats award Henry Ford, center, with their nation's highest decoration for foreigners, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, in July 1938. (AP Photo)
By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 30, 1998; Page A01 Three years after Swiss banks became the target of a worldwide furor over their business dealings with Nazi Germany, major American car companies find themselves embroiled in a similar debate. Like the Swiss banks, the American car companies have vigorously denied that they assisted the Nazi war machine or that they significantly profited from the use of forced labor at their German subsidiaries during World War II. But historians and lawyers researching class-action suits on behalf of former prisoners of war are busy amassing evidence of collaboration by the automakers with the Nazi regime. The issues at stake for the American automobile corporations go far beyond the relatively modest sums involved in settling any lawsuit. During the war, the car companies established a reputation for themselves as "the arsenal of democracy" by transforming their production lines to make airplanes, tanks and trucks for the armies that defeated Adolf Hitler. They deny that their huge business interests in Nazi Germany led them, wittingly or unwittingly, to also become "the arsenal of fascism." The Ford Motor Co. has mobilized dozens of historians, lawyers and researchers to fight a civil case brought by lawyers in Washington and New York who specialize in extracting large cash settlements from banks and insurance companies accused of defrauding Holocaust victims. Also, a book scheduled for publication next year will accuse General Motors Corp. of playing a key role in Hitler's invasions of Poland and the Soviet Union. "General Motors was far more important to the Nazi war machine than Switzerland," said Bradford Snell, who has spent two decades researching a history of the world's largest automaker. "Switzerland was just a repository of looted funds. GM was an integral part of the German war effort. The Nazis could have invaded Poland and Russia without Switzerland. They could not have done so without GM." Both General Motors and Ford insist that they bear little or no responsibility for the operations of their German subsidiaries, which controlled 70 percent of the German car market at the outbreak of war in 1939 and rapidly retooled themselves to become suppliers of war materiel to the German army. But documents discovered in German and American archives show a much more complicated picture. In certain instances, American managers of both GM and Ford went along with the conversion of their German plants to military production at a time when U.S. government documents show they were still resisting calls by the Roosevelt administration to step up military production in their plants at home. After three years of national soul-searching, Switzerland's largest banks agreed last August to make a $1.25 billion settlement to Holocaust survivors, a step they had initially resisted. Far from dying down, however, the controversy over business dealings with the Nazis has given new impetus to long-standing investigations into issues such as looted art, unpaid insurance benefits and the use of forced labor at German factories. Although some of the allegations against GM and Ford surfaced during 1974 congressional hearings into monopolistic practices in the automobile industry, American corporations have largely succeeded in playing down their connections to Nazi Germany. As with Switzerland, however, their very success in projecting a wholesome, patriotic image of themselves is now being turned against them by their critics. "When you think of Ford, you think of baseball and apple pie," said Miriam Kleinman, a researcher with the Washington law firm of Cohen, Millstein and Hausfeld, who spent weeks examining records at the National Archives in an attempt to build a slave labor case against the Dearborn-based company. "You don't think of Hitler having a portrait of Henry Ford on his office wall in Munich." Both Ford and General Motors declined requests for access to their wartime archives. Ford spokesman John Spellich defended the company's decision to maintain business ties with Nazi Germany on the grounds that the U.S. government continued to have diplomatic relations with Berlin up until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. GM spokesman John F. Mueller said that General Motors lost day-to-day control over its German plants in September 1939 and "did not assist the Nazis in any way during World War II." For GIs, an Unpleasant Surprise When American GIs invaded Europe in June 1944, they did so in jeeps, trucks and tanks manufactured by the Big Three motor companies in one of the largest crash militarization programs ever undertaken. It came as an unpleasant surprise to discover that the enemy was also driving trucks manufactured by Ford and Opel -- a 100 percent GM-owned subsidiary -- and flying Opel-built warplanes. (Chrysler's role in the German rearmament effort was much less significant.) When the U.S. Army liberated the Ford plants in Cologne and Berlin, they found destitute foreign workers confined behind barbed wire and company documents extolling the "genius of the Fuehrer," according to reports filed by soldiers at the scene. A U.S. Army report by investigator Henry Schneider dated Sept. 5, 1945, accused the German branch of Ford of serving as "an arsenal of Nazism, at least for military vehicles" with the "consent" of the parent company in Dearborn. Ford spokesman Spellich described the Schneider report as "a mischaracterization" of the activities of the American parent company and noted that Dearborn managers had frequently been kept in the dark by their German subordinates over events in Cologne. The relationship of Ford and GM to the Nazi regime goes back to the 1920s and 1930s, when the American car companies competed against each other for access to the lucrative German market. Hitler was an admirer of American mass production techniques and an avid reader of the antisemitic tracts penned by Henry Ford. "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," Hitler told a Detroit News reporter two years before becoming the German chancellor in 1933, explaining why he kept a life-size portrait of the American automaker next to his desk. Although Ford later renounced his antisemitic writings, he remained an admirer of Nazi Germany and sought to keep America out of the coming war. In July 1938, four months after the German annexation of Austria, he accepted the highest medal that Nazi Germany could bestow on a foreigner, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle. The following month, a senior executive for General Motors, James Mooney, received a similar medal for his "distinguished service to the Reich." The granting of such awards reflected the vital place that the U.S. automakers had in Germany's increasingly militarized economy. In 1935, GM agreed to build a new plant near Berlin to produce the aptly named "Blitz" truck, which would later be used by the German army for its blitzkreig attacks on Poland, France and the Soviet Union. German Ford was the second-largest producer of trucks for the German army after GM/Opel, according to U.S. Army reports. The importance of the American automakers went beyond making trucks for the German army. The Schneider report, now available to researchers at the National Archives, states that American Ford agreed to a complicated barter deal that gave the Reich increased access to large quantities of strategic raw materials, notably rubber. Author Snell says that Nazi armaments chief Albert Speer told him in 1977 that Hitler "would never have considered invading Poland" without synthetic fuel technology provided by General Motors. As war approached, it became increasingly difficult for U.S. corporations like GM and Ford to operate in Germany without cooperating closely with the Nazi rearmament effort. Under intense pressure from Berlin, both companies took pains to make their subsidiaries appear as "German" as possible. In April 1939, for example, German Ford made a personal present to Hitler of 35,000 Reichsmarks in honor of his 50th birthday, according to a captured Nazi document. Documents show that the parent companies followed a conscious strategy of continuing to do business with the Nazi regime, rather than divest themselves of their German assets. Less than three weeks after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, GM Chairman Alfred P. Sloan defended this strategy as sound business practice, given the fact that the company's German operations were "highly profitable." The internal politics of Nazi Germany "should not be considered the business of the management of General Motors," Sloan explained in a letter to a concerned shareholder dated April 6, 1939. "We must conduct ourselves [in Germany] as a German organization.... We have no right to shut down the plant." U.S. Firms Became Crucial After the outbreak of war in September 1939, General Motors and Ford became crucial to the German military, according to contemporaneous German documents and postwar investigations by the U.S. Army. James Mooney, the GM director in charge of overseas operations, had discussions with Hitler in Berlin two weeks after the German invasion of Poland. Typewritten notes by Mooney show that he was involved in the partial conversion of the principal GM automobile plant at Russelsheim to production of engines and other parts for the Junker "Wunderbomber," a key weapon in the German air force, under a government-brokered contract between Opel and the Junker airplane company. Mooney's notes show that he returned to Germany the following February for further discussions with Luftwaffe commander Hermann Goering and a personal inspection of the Russelsheim plant. Mooney's involvement in the conversion of the Russelsheim plant undermines claims by General Motors that the American branch of the company had nothing to do with the Nazi rearmament effort. In congressional testimony in 1974, GM maintained that American personnel resigned from all management positions in Opel following the outbreak of war in 1939 "rather than participate in the production of war materials." However, according to documents of the Reich Commissar for the Treatment of Enemy Property, the American parent company continued to have some say in the operations of Opel after September 1939. The documents show that the company issued a general power of attorney to an American manager, Pete Hoglund, in March 1940. Hoglund did not leave Germany until a year later. At that time, the power of attorney was transferred to a prominent Berlin lawyer named Heinrich Richter. GM spokesman Mueller declined to answer questions from The Washington Post on the power of attorney granted to Hoglund and Richter or to provide access to the personnel files of Hoglund and other wartime managers. He also declined to comment on an assertion by Snell that Opel used French and Belgian prisoners at its Russelsheim plant in the summer of 1940, at a time when the American Hoglund was still looking after GM interests in Germany. The Nazis had a clear interest in keeping Opel and German Ford under American ownership, despite growing hostility between Washington and Berlin. By the time of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the American stake in German Ford had declined to 52 percent, but Nazi officials argued against a complete takeover. A memorandum to plant managers dated November 25, 1941, acknowledged that such a step would deprive German Ford of "the excellent sales organization" of the parent company and make it more difficult to bring "the remaining European Ford companies under German influence." Documents suggest that the principal motivation of both companies during this period was to protect their investments. An FBI report dated July 23, 1941 quoted Mooney as saying that he would refuse to take any action that might "make Hitler mad." In fall 1940, Mooney told the journalist Henry Paynter that he would not return his Nazi medal because such an action might jeopardize GM's $100 million investment in Germany. "Hitler has all the cards," Paynter quoted Mooney as saying. "Mooney probably thought that the war would be over very quickly, so why should we give our wonderful company away," said German researcher Anita Kugler, who used Nazi archives to trace the company's dealings with Nazi Germany. Even though GM officials were aware of the conversion of its Russelsheim plant to aircraft engine production, they resisted such conversion efforts in the United States, telling shareholders that their automobile assembly lines in Detroit were "not adaptable to the manufacture of other products" such as planes, according to a company document discovered by Snell. In June 1940, after the fall of France, Henry Ford personally vetoed a U.S. government-approved plan to produce under license Rolls-Royce engines for British fighter planes, according to published accounts by his associates. Declaration of War Alters Ties America's declaration of war on Germany in December 1941 made it illegal for U.S. motor companies to have any contact with their subsidiaries on German-controlled territory. At GM and Ford plants in Germany, reliance on forced labor increased. The story of Elsa Iwanowa, who brought a class-action suit against Ford last March, is typical. At the age of 16, she was abducted from her home in the southern Russian city of Rostov by German soldiers in October 1942 with hundreds of other young women to work at the Ford plant at Cologne. "The conditions were terrible. They put us in barracks, on three-tier bunks," she recalled in a telephone interview from Belgium, where she now lives. "It was very cold; they did not pay us at all and scarcely fed us. The only reason that we survived was that we were young and fit." In a court submission, American Ford acknowledges that Iwanowa and others were "forced to endure a sad and terrible experience" at its Cologne plant but maintains that redressing such "tragedies" should be "a government-to-government concern." Spellich, the Ford spokesman, insists the company did not have management control over its German subsidiary during the period in question. Ford has backed away from its initial claim that it did not profit in any way from forced labor at its Cologne plant. Spellich said that company historians are still researching this issue but have found documents showing that, after the war, American Ford received dividends from its German subsidiary worth approximately $60,000 for the years 1940-43. He declined a request to interview the historians, saying they were "too busy." The extent of contacts between American Ford and its German-controlled subsidiary after 1941 is likely to be contested at any trial. Simon Reich, an economic historian at the University of Pittsburgh and an expert on the German car industry, says he has yet to see convincing evidence that American Ford had any control over its Cologne plant after December 1941. He adds, however, that both "Opel and Ford did absolutely everything they could to ingratiate themselves to the Nazi state." While there was no direct contact between American Ford and its German subsidiary after December 1941, there appear to have been some indirect contacts. In June 1943, the Nazi custodian of the Cologne plant, Robert Schmidt, traveled to Portugal for talks with Ford managers there. In addition, the Treasury Department investigated Ford after Pearl Harbor for possible illegal contacts with its subsidiary in occupied France, which produced Germany army trucks. The investigation ended without charges being filed. Even though American Ford now condemns what happened at its Cologne plant during the war, it continued to employ the managers in charge at the time. After the war, Schmidt was briefly arrested by Allied military authorities and barred from working for Ford. But he was reinstated as the company's technical director in 1950 after he wrote to Henry Ford II claiming that he had always "detested" the Nazis and had never been a member of the party. A letter signed by a leading Cologne Nazi in February 1942 describes Schmidt as a trusted party member. Ford maintains that Schmidt's name does not show up on Nazi membership lists. Mel Weiss, an American attorney for Iwanowa, argues that American Ford received "indirect" profits from forced labor at its Cologne plant because of the overall increase in the value of German operations during the war. He notes that Ford was eager to demand compensation from the U.S. government after the war for "losses" due to bomb damage to its German plants and therefore should also be responsible for any benefits derived from forced labor. Similar arguments apply to General Motors, which was paid $32 million by the U.S. government for damages sustained to its German plants. Washington attorney Michael Hausfeld, who is involved in the Ford lawsuit, confirms GM also is "on our list" as a possible target. © Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company Back to the topIt's taken as a given that whatever else has changed over the past couple of generations, women still do the lion's share of the parenting in America. Data backs this up, but with an interesting twist that reveals that American dads have in some ways stepped up more than people realize. Back in 1965, the average woman with a child at home spent 10 hours per week on child care, and the average man with a child at home spent 2.5 hours. To share the burden equally, then, men would need to spend six or seven hours a week on child care.
And by 2011, the average American man with a kid at home was in fact spending seven hours per week on child care.
The reason that the burden isn't even is that while men decided to spend more time with their children, women decided to … also spend more time with their children.
Rather than dads getting more involved and moms taking a bit of a break, dads have gotten a lot more involved with their kids, and moms have gotten even more involved than they were before. When you consider that the average woman has fewer children these days than was the case in the baby boom years, what you're looking at is a drastic increase in the quantity of per-child parenting happening in two-parent households.
Since spending more time with your kids doesn't seem to change much for the kids one way or the other (see books by Judith Rich Harris and Bryan Caplan for the argument in more detail), one hopes parents are at least enjoying the extra child care time.
But whatever the upside of the trend toward more parenting, gender equality has (so far) been one casualty of it. And if you think about it, it's pretty easy to see how society could be stuck in a dysfunctional pattern in this regard. On the one hand, modern dads want to do their fair share. On the other hand, modern moms are laboring under social expectations that assign them primary responsibility for their kids. So if Dad does more, that doesn't so much lower the burden placed on Mom as raise the bar even higher.polrid | Internet Tips Tricks & News by
Have you ever wondered how Mozilla made money? Created by the Netscape Communications Group in early 1998, Mozilla.org went on to create so serious a contender to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer that Netscape’s own browser officially stopped being supported in March 2008. Now getting ready to bring us the fourth version of Firefox, Mozilla also has the Thunderbird email client, the Seamonkey internet suite, the Mac-friendly Camino web browser and the Sunbird scheduling tool amongst its repertoire.
Most web savvy surfers use the result of at least one Mozilla project or come into contact with those recommending their use on a regular basis, but does anyone know where the purveyor of open source surfing solutions gets its money from? After all, all of its projects are provided free and open to users and developers alike. But no-one can survive as long as Mozilla in a competitive market without making some money, somehow.
Funded by Netscape
Initially the organization was financed by the Netscape Group and in 1998 had just three full-time staff to find wages for. Most of the coding development work at that time was undertaken by Netscape staff and hundreds of volunteers in the open source community. When AOL took over the reigns at Netscape late in 1998, the telecomms giant confirmed that its support for the project would continue and later backed this up with a substantial donation, assisting with the creation of the Mozilla Foundation in 2003 after reducing investment in the Netscape browser and transferring intellectual property into the safe hands of said Foundation.
The Mozilla Foundation is described as “a non-profit organization that sponsors the Mozilla project and devotes its resources to promoting openness, innovation and opportunity on the Internet”. With such community spirit at its very core, it’s no surprise to find that the Foundation gratefully accepts donations towards its operational and development costs from its users – that’s you and me folks. It’s now time for me to make an admission. Although I’ve happily used Mozilla products for years, I’ve never actually parted with any cash. Nor do I know anyone who has. Maybe you could add to my guilt by telling me that you have.
Luckily for those of us who enjoy all the benefits of Mozilla’s projects without spending a penny, the Foundation also accepts, sometimes quite substantial, donations from companies such as AOL and Google and many others. The Foundation uses a slice of this income to fund enterprises in keeping with the aims of the organization. In 2007, the Foundation made grants to the University of Toronto Adaptive Technology Resource Center, The Perl Foundation, Creative Commons and the GNOME Foundation to name but a few.
Mostly Google
Contractual arrangements with companies like Google and Nokia are also accepted, but due to the strict rules governing the non-profit status of the Foundation, such things are taken care of by the Mozilla Corporation. A wholly-owned subsidiary of the Foundation, it was set up in 2005 to look after all business dealings and oversee all those lucrative contracts, like those which see Google and other popular engines provide default search referrals and which are said to account for over 80% of the company’s total revenue. The Corporation’s Board of Directors and Management Team are made up of Foundation members and various business people.
Mozilla continues to get much of its wealth from companies like Google, who has recently committed to extending its dealings with the company until at least 2011. Whether advice offered by Mozilla’s Director of Community Development, Asa Dotzler, earlier this month to ditch Google in favor of Microsoft’s Bing search engine signals a forthcoming change to this relationship remains to be seen. But whatever happens with that, so long as Mozilla continues to openly innovate, inspire, freely create and grab an increasing share of the internet application market, companies will no doubt be more than willing to offer huge sums of money by way of donation or investment and so help to ensure its survival.
Are you surprised that Mozilla gets most of its income via contracts with companies like Google? Have you ever donated to, or received a grant from, the Mozilla Foundation or know anyone who has?In a bizarre case, a strict headmistress of a UK primary school allegedly called police to thwart a students' plan to not smile and spoil a school photograph.Ann Hughes, the headmistress of a school in Anglesey, North Wales, found out some children were planning to "spoil" the picture and telephoned police, a professional conduct hearing was told.It is alleged that an officer was invited into the village primary school to reprimand the pupils unwilling to pose correctly, The Mirror reported.Hughes faces a catalogue of complaints including repeatedly calling one student "stupid" and favouring children whose first language was Welsh.The committee of the General Teaching Council for Wales heard yesterday that she failed to investigate the bullying of two pupils, shouted excessively in the classroom and unnecessarily criticised children's mistakes.One pupil watched as Hughes tore his examination paper in front of him when he had spelt his middle name wrong, the hearing was told.The school was engulfed in crisis in May 2011 when five of the six teachers simultaneously called in sick after earlier threatening industrial action following a vote of no confidence in Hughes.Staff claimed there was a climate of "fear" at the school before the headmistress was suspended in July 2011 and later dismissed. The case is still continuingSen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama questions former Deputy US Attorney General Sally Yates at her confirmation hearing in 2015. Screenshot via C-SPAN A video of former Deputy US Attorney General Sally Yates' 2015 confirmation hearing foreshadows the events that led to her firing by President Donald Trump on Monday.
The video resurfaced after Yates was dismissed for telling Justice Department employees she was not convinced Trump's executive order targeting immigrants and refugees was lawful.
During Yates' 2015 confirmation hearing, Jeff Sessions, the Alabama senator, whom Trump would later nominate as his attorney general, asked Yates, "Do you think the attorney general has a responsibility to say no to the president if he asks for something that's improper?"
Yates, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama, said, "Senator, I believe that the attorney general or the deputy attorney general has an obligation to follow the law and the Constitution, and to give their independent legal advice to the president."
Watch the moment:
Trump fired Yates on Monday after she defied him on his immigration order. A statement released by White House press secretary Sean Spicer called her objections a betrayal.
Sessions has been one of Trump's most vocal supporters. Observers have questioned whether he would remain neutral if he were to be confirmed by the Senate.For 1,400 years, Muslims have wished in vain for a weapon that could be used to reduce Western Civilization to whimpering submission. At last they have it: political correctness. All they have to do to in order to assert their dominance over us is constantly find some phony reason to be aggrieved:
Tahera Ahmad said that when she ordered a Diet Coke on the plane, the flight attendant brought her an opened can. Ahmed said she asked for an unopened one because of hygiene concerns but the attendant explained that airline policy prohibits them from serving unopened drinks because they can be used as a weapon.
ISLAMOPHOBE!!!
“I told her that she was clearly discriminating against me because she gave the man next to me an unopened can of beer. She looked at his can, quickly grabbed it and opened it and said, ‘It’s so you don’t use it as a weapon,'” Ahmad explains in a Facebook post. “Appalled at her behavior I asked people around me if they witnessed this discriminatory and disgusting behavior….”
In case that wasn’t enough to raise righteous ire among Muslims and their moonbat allies, Ahmad has further allegations, most likely heavily embellished if not totally fabricated:
At that moment, Ahmad said another passenger stood up and yelled at her to be quiet and “leaned over from his seat, looked me straight in the eyes and said, ‘Yes you know you would use it as a WEAPON so shut the f*** up.’ I felt the hate in his voice and his raging eyes.”
Tell you what, Tahera. If you don’t want people associating you with terrorist violence, why don’t you stop associating yourself with it? Reject Islam. But I’m forgetting: it is only a coincidence that over 26,000 lethal terror attacks happen to have been committed in the name of Islam since 9/11. Mohammad’s bloodthirsty behavior aside, Islam is the Religion of Peace.
A United spokesman told CNN that a flight attendant had tried several times to accommodates Ahmad’s beverage request but that there was a, quote, “misunderstanding.”
The flight attendant will be lucky to keep her job. That will teach her to behave with maximum obsequiousness toward Muslims in the future.
On tips from Mr. Mentalo, DJ, RF, and SR. Hat tips: The Last Refuge, Daily Kenn.Dogs have long been considered man's best friend, but their characteristics of loyalty and protectiveness have also earned them the lesser known title of "cheetah's best friend." That's right; dogs are being used more and more frequently to assist in conservation efforts to preserve the endangered cheetah both in captivity and in the wild.
Dogs at the Zoo
Since the 1980s, the San Diego Zoo Safari Park has assigned companion dogs to cheetahs that are involved in the zoo's captive breeding program.
"A dominant dog is very helpful because cheetahs are quite shy instinctively, and you can't breed that out of them," explains Janet Rose-Hinostroza, animal training supervisor at the Park. "When you pair them, the cheetah looks to the dog for cues and learns to model their behavior. It's about getting them to read that calm, happy-go-lucky vibe from the dog."
The primary goal of comforting cheetahs through this unusual partnership is to make them at ease in their captive environment so that they will be able to breed with other cheetahs. Shyness and anxiety don't bode well for a breeding program, so the inter-species friendships that the cheetahs are able to form with dogs can actually benefit the long-term survival of this rare cat.
The dogs enlisted by the Park are typically rescued from shelters, giving these homeless canines a new purpose in life.
"My favorite dog is Hopper because we found him at a kill shelter and he's just 40 pounds, but he lives with Amara, who's our toughest cheetah by far," says Rose-Hinostroza. "It's not about strength or overpowering. It's about developing a positive relationship where the cheetah takes her cues from the |
a partnership with the Cleveland Clinic to understand better what the sport was doing to fighters’ brains. It sends dozens of its fighters for brain scans and cognitive testing. “We want,” Elliott says, “to understand and get in front of any issues before they arise.”
Most UFC fighters and fans argue that the risk of long-term brain damage is considerably smaller in their sport than it is in boxing, even though the gloves they use are so slight that some call them sleeping pills. “I want to be able to chew my food when I’m older,” Hardy says, “and the MMA rule set is the safest place for me to test myself in a controlled environment.”
UFC vice-president of athlete health and performance Jeff Novitzky on setting up the sport's anti-doping programme. UFC vice-president of athlete health and performance Jeff Novitzky on setting up the sport’s anti-doping programme.
The best example of Zuffa’s approach, though, is its anti-doping policy. There’s no doubt that the sport of MMA has a doping problem. Jack “The Stone” Mason, who has fought 47 professional MMA fights, tells me that he dreads to think how many of them were against fighters who had taken steroids. In the UFC, Silva’s was only one of the more high-profile cases.
The UFC’s solution was to hire the best anti-doping expert it could find, Jeff Novitzky. He has joined the UFC from a 22-year career in federal law enforcement, the past 12 of them spent in anti-doping. Novitzky worked on the Balco laboratories case that brought down Marion Jones and Barry Bonds. Then, in the words of the cyclist Tyler Hamilton, he “drove a bulldozer into the bike-racing world” and busted Lance Armstrong. The UFC asked Novitzky to draw up its anti-doping programme. “It wasn’t lip service,” Novitzky says. “They were looking to clean up their sport, they were dead serious about it.” Novitzky has designed what he describes as the best anti-doping programme in professional sports. “And frankly,” he says, “there is not really a close second.” All UFC athletes are now subject to random testing, every day of the year.
UFC on social media UFC on social media
The programme is being eased in. Right now, Novitzky says, it’s running at about 60-70% of what it will be. In the meantime, fans have fun spotting the fighters who once had ripped bodies but whose physiques seem to have mysteriously softened in recent months.
Novitzky says that what drew him to the UFC was the opportunity “to build a programme from the foundation up”, as if he’d been given a blank piece of paper to work on. That touches on another key reason for the UFC’s success. It was in such a mess when the Fertittas took it over they were able to rebuild it as it liked, applying lessons they had learned from other sports. Lorenzo Fertitta says: “Boxing provided a tremendous roadmap, from a case study standpoint, as far as what to do and what not to do.” It felt boxing had become too fragmented, including too many titles at too many weights. “When we bought the company we sat down and I said, ‘Somebody buy me a Ring magazine from the 1950s. I want to go back to when boxing was simple and I want to see what the weight classes were.’” The UFC has eight weight classes. Boxing has 17, multiplied by the many different governing bodies.
On top of that, he says, “boxing came to the point where it was really only about the main event, it wasn’t about the show”. At a UFC event the card is stacked and at UFC London the O 2 was packed from the first fight, at 5.45pm, to the finish five hours later. But the single most important point is this, according to Fertitta. “Boxing had failed the fans because they had been unable to put on the fights the fans wanted to see. We waited, what, six or seven years to see Mayweather v Pacquiao?” There is, he says, “no running, there is no hiding in the UFC”. He’s right because the UFC has something close to a monopoly on the sport. For the top fighters, the UFC is pretty much the only option in MMA. At the end of 2015, it had 573 fighters under contract and it’s the UFC’s matchmakers who decide who fights who, where and when.
That control extends into all areas. The UFC is a thoroughly modern model of a sports business and where it once borrowed from other sports, other sports would now love to be able to copy it. It controls promotion and production, some aspects of regulation and, increasingly, distribution. It realised early on, as Fertitta says, that the best way to “reposition the brand and reposition the sport, really comes through our athletes”. The athletes are its best advocates. “At first, people think: ‘Gosh, these guys are just a bunch of bar room brawlers,’” Fertitta says. But “when they get to meet them they see that they are martial artists. They are intelligent. It is about the competition. It is about the sport. It is not about, in any way, the violence.”
So in 2005, it launched its own reality TV show, Ultimate Fighter, so that viewers could get to know the athletes and their backstories. It gathered a group of fighters, had them live and train together and then compete for a UFC contract. In the next two years, UFC had a 1,258% increase in revenue, including a 1,700% increase in PPV sales.
Since then, the UFC has turned down broadcast deals with HBO and ESPN because it didn’t want to give up control of production. Off-the-record conversations with some of its broadcast partners reveal that the UFC has a reputation for being notoriously demanding to work with. Its move into distribution meant UFC London was available only on Fight Pass, its online streaming service.
Add it all up and UFC has become so prominent that its name is almost synonymous with the wider sport of MMA. That, says Fertitta, “is one of the biggest misunderstandings”. MMA, he says, “is a vibrant industry, that happens every weekend, all around the world”. He estimates that there are 3,000-4,000 fights every year. The UFC stages 42 of them. It’s in those smaller promotions that the megastars such as Conor McGregor cut their teeth. “That’s how he got his experience, how he got his name and his following, and eventually our talent scouts find somebody like that and bring them into the UFC.” At these lower levels, MMA feels very different indeed.
‘We used to put a couple of mats down on my friend’s garage floor’ Facebook Twitter Pinterest England’s Joe Harding waits to restart his fight with Geir Kare Nyland of Norway in their BCMMA fight at the Charter Hall in Colchester on 20 February 2016. Photograph: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian
A week before Silva fought Bisping at UFC London, one of those smaller events was taking place in a leisure centre just outside Colchester. It was called BCMMA and it was run by Jack Mason, a fighter, promoter and trainer who, like Hardy and Bisping, is an old hand in that he’s been on the scene for a decade or so. Hardy says his second professional fight was on the end of the pier in Portsmouth. He was paid £100 for it. “I didn’t know anything about my opponent. I didn’t do any kind of medical testing and everybody was smoking.” MMA is evolving so quickly that Hardy, 33, says he is “part of the last generation that will remember the sport before it was a sport”.
It is the same with Mason. When he started, there weren’t any gyms to train in. “We used to put a couple of mats down on my friend’s garage floor,” he says. When Mason wanted to study new techniques, he would either look them up on YouTube or buy or borrow a VHS tape. Now there are MMA gyms across the country. Mason runs two, BKK Fighters, one in Colchester, the other in Chelmsford. One of BKK’s fighters, Arnold Allen, has just made it to the UFC. He fought, and won, on the undercard at UFC London. Allen is 22 and baby-faced. He wears a moustache that somehow makes him look even younger.
Last year Allen was called up as a late replacement for his first fight in the UFC. He had a week’s notice, but won so well that he earned a $50,000 bonus. He used the money to move to Montreal so he could train at the famous Tristar gym. Mason sees Allen as a member of the new generation. “They have been training since they were children, and their level is just crazy compared to mine when I started,” he says.
When he was 16, Allen decided to leave school and become a professional MMA fighter. He even wrote the goal down in his notebook. His ambition was more specific still: he wanted to become a UFC world champion. Whereas Mason and Hardy fell into MMA, Allen grew up with it.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Belgian welterweight Brian Bouland hits Jamie Pritchard, a featherweight from Newquay, England, in their professional catchweight BCMMA fight. Photograph: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian
Every fighter at Mason’s event in Colchester wants the very same thing Allen does. A couple of fighters on the top of the bill, Luke Barnatt and John Maguire, have been to the UFC and are trying to find their way back. Others are pros on the lower levels hoping to be picked up by the UFC’s talent spotters. Still more are amateurs, hoping to make the switch to the professional sport. Allen is living their dream, but it isn’t easy. After his victory at the O 2, Allen pleads: “Somebody sponsor me, please.” He’s shocked by how expensive life is in Montreal. While the UFC’s top fighters are making plenty, money is tight lower down the ranks and while the UFC helps arrange medical insurance for its fighters, Allen is struggling to pay for his meals.
The best estimate is that between 2005 and 2011, 13.6% of the UFC’s revenue went on the fighters’ wages. In many American sports, the split is nearer 50-50. In 2015, when its revenue was around $600m, Zuffa spent “over $100m” on “athlete costs including compensation, insurance, medical and travel”. The former UFC champion Griffin says that the UFC’s formula is simple: “If you sell tickets, you make money.” There’s pressure on the fighters to entertain, as well as to win, and Allen is annoyed that he let his last fight go to a decision and missed out on a “finishing” bonus.
Conor McGregor: can anyone stop the UFC's bearded kingmaker? Read more
At BCMMA in Colchester, no one is getting rich. Not even Mason, the promoter, who ended up with a profit of around £100. But then, like so many of the MMA community at this level, Mason isn’t in it for the money. BCMMA was a sell-out, but a lot was spent bringing in fighters from overseas, from Portugal, Poland, and, in particular, Norway and France.
Competitive MMA is banned in the latter two countries. In France, MMA is struggling to be recognised by the Ministry of Sport, largely, it says, because of opposition from the judo federation. “Our only option in France at the moment to hold an event is to apply as an entertainment,” says Elliott. “And we refuse to do that. Because this is a sport. MMA is a sport.”
It sometimes seems a fine line. While the 17,000 at the O 2 were well-educated in the intricacies of MMA and so knew where that line lay, many of the hundreds in Colchester didn’t. At one point, the referee had to ask two ladies to stop screaming “elbow him in the face”. It was, he explained, an amateur bout and so that move wasn’t allowed.
Most of the audience were there to see a Polish heavyweight named Rafal Cejrowski. Plenty had flown over especially to watch him. He was fighting João Mimoso, who is, no joke, a Portuguese university professor.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A young boy watches fighters warm up before their BCMMA fight.
Their fight was especially brutal. Less human chess, more like two big men belting each other in the face. Before it started, the security guards closed in around the Octagon. Cejrowski’s fans have a reputation for storming the fencing and, indeed, as soon as he had won, they started hurling themselves over the judges’ tables to reach the Octagon.
Despite that, BCMMA is one of the bigger and better-run events on the domestic circuit. It works with the UK Mixed Martial Arts Federation, which was formed three years ago to try to bring more order to the sport, and also SafeMMA, a body that works to ensure minimum standards of medical provision. SafeMMA has a list of volunteer doctors, often GPs, who attend events and perform medical checks before and after fights. It has also set up a register of fighters, to ensure they take six-monthly blood tests for hepatitis C, hep B and HIV.
UFC gender breakdown UFC gender breakdown
One of the overseas fighters at BCMMA had a problem with his hep C test, so Mason spent the night before the show escorting him to London for an emergency test. Backstage, a paramedic ran through a few simple tests after the fights. If the medic picks up any problems, the fighter is issued with a medical suspension so promoters who are signed up to SafeMMA won’t use them again until it has passed.
This is all very new. I’m told that as recently as three years ago, things were very different. It was around that time that UKMMAF was formed. Its secretary, Nigel Burgess, explains that while the fighters “are doing blood sweat and tears in the gym”, the UKMMAF officials “are doing blood, sweat and tears in front of our PCs and in meetings with councils”. It has introduced coaching courses, refereeing courses, and judging courses, are putting in place the pyramids and pathways that make up the grassroots of all sports. Its biggest problem at the moment is securing insurance cover.
There is a long way to go, but Burgess believes the sport will soon be in the Olympics. So does Fertitta and he thinks it will happen within the next decade. He says the IOC “see the popularity of what we are bringing to the table”. It is a business, he says, and “believe me they are paying attention to the ratings that we are generating”. Even the online stream of BCMMA pulled in 31,000 viewers, spread around Europe and the US.
MMA and the UFC are going to continue to grow. Fertitta says that the sport is around 20% of where it will be in a decade. What’s happening in the UK is also under way around the rest of the world. In 2015, the UFC staged its first events in Seoul, Melbourne, Krakow, Manila, Monterey and Glasgow. Its fighters are drawn from 45 countries, and its TV audience from 158.
Because, Fertitta says, here’s the thing: “What we have is this incredible thing where you take two athletes, at the top of their game, in the most incredible shape and you put them in the Octagon and you let them use any martial art they want to compete. And it translates. Immediately. Overnight.
“No matter what colour you are, what language you speak, what country you are from. It is fighting. And at some level, people get it.”The Sacramento Zoo’s red panda cub has already lived a trying life -- and it is not yet two months old.
Born June 8th, the nameless cub has yet to be officially revealed to the public. A combination of an infected cut, difficulties gaining weight and inconsistent care from his mother means the little guy is still slowly being nursed to health.
"He's had a little bit of a rough start," Dr. Anne Burgdorf, Sacramento Zoo veterinarian told the Sacramento Bee. Red pandas "can be shy and prone to stress."
Although this means the baby has been under the care of the zookeepers, he will hopefully be able to join the rest of the red pandas soon. "He will get to see, smell and hear other red pandas," Burgdorf said. "He will know he's a red panda.”
According to the San Diego Zoo, red pandas are plagued with high infant mortality rates. In fact, 19 percent of cubs are stillborn or die on the day of their birth. In the wild, cub mortality is exceptionally high, with some estimates reaching 74 percent.
Red pandas are also listed as threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, thanks to habitat loss and poaching. There are fewer than an estimated 10,000 mature adults left in the world, with a significant decrease in population every year.
Thankfully, the Sacramento Zoo’s panda could have a sunny future ahead. He currently weighs 1.6 pounds, which is just right for his age. Zookeepers are hoping that within the next three to six months, he will be able to join the other members of his species at the zoo as long as he continues to progress. At that time, the little guy will finally be given a name.Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF
Remember when the Atlanta Falcons announced they'd be building a new stadium—using a boatload of public money—that would be crowned with a retractable roof? The architects of the $1.2 billion project recently passed along a new fly-through of the design. And while it's our best look yet at the structure, it also brings up plenty of questions.
The stadium's architect, 360 Architecture, was recently acquired by mega-firm HOK—which sent along their latest renderings of the stadium, currently under construction and planned for a 2017 opening. You'll remember that the first renderings of its unusual roof structure showed a cobweb of wispy metallic struts that seemed to open and close, and the Falcons are going through with the unlikely (and definitely wildly expensive) plan.
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The new fly-through shows a more developed version of the roof—which Deadpsin obviously christened "the Sphincter"—that will open and close like a hexagonal aperture on a camera, as a press release explains:
Inspired by the oculus in the ancient Rome Pantheon, the stadium's unique roof opening will provide tremendous flexibility in hosting a wide variety of events in the stadium. Eight unique roof petals can open in less than eight minutes, creating a "camera lens-like" effect that exposes the inside of the facility to the open air on game and event days. The roof is constructed of ETFE fabric that, when closed, allows for translucent light into the stadium.
Fascinating though it sounds, that's not a terribly detailed description of the defining feature of a building already well underway. The mechanics of the aperture seem fairly simple, but I'm curious about the tracks the eight roofing modules seem to slide on, and what's powering them—not to mention how the movement will affect the rest of the structure, and how it will stand up to high winds. We've reached out to HOK to find out a bit more about the structure, and we'll report back when we do. [Atlanta Falcons]The ministers also agreed to push out the €40bn EU bailout loan for another seven years to help spread more evenly repayments of the country’s massive debt.
Department of Finance officials said yesterday it “was one of the better days in our programme” as the finance ministers met in Dublin Castle.
They agreed to urgently move forward the banking union that would see the EU’s rescue fund, the ESM, recapitalise troubled banks and put a system in place to wind up others.
For the first time, EU ministers accepted Ireland’s situation is different to other bailed-out countries, and that the money put into the banks should be recognised, said a senior EU official.
“They wanted to bail in senior bondholders and were not let and now we have done a bail-in for Cyprus — this is tough for them,” said the official, adding the ministers will examine Ireland’s specific circumstances before July.
Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the head of the eurogroup of ministers said: “There is a distinction between legacy and retroactive... We have made progress and there will be a more final discussion in June.”
A Department of Finance official said that getting EU finance ministers to agree to make a difference between retroactive repayments, and legacy assets — which means old debt waiting to be funded by the EU funds, “was a huge win for us”.
This could mean ownership of AIB and Permanent TSB, together with the shares the State owns in Bank of Ireland, moving to the ESM.
Finance Minister Michael Noonan, who is hosting the two-day meeting, welcomed the decision to extend the maturities on the bailout loans by seven years.
“It is particularly important, as it will increase the ability of our banks, semi- states and large companies to raise capital at lower cost on the financial markets and will have a consequent benefit across the whole Irish economy,” he said.
The current average repayment time for the EU bailout funds is 12.5 years.
The new deal will see the schedule pushed out to an average of close to 20 years. While it will also mean a saving for the State, it will reduce pressure on taxpayers and improve the country’s cash flow.
Portugal has won a similar deal — provided it fills a budget gap of €1.5bn over the next month. Portuguese finance minister Vitor Gaspar conceded it would have been better to get a 10-year extension but the troika warned there could be new conditions attached.
While there were some fears that the German parliament might object, Berlin expect to pass this, together with the €10bn bailout for Cyprus in the coming weeks before their general election.Note that if you are reading this file from a Subversion checkout or the main LLVM web page, this document applies to the next release, not the current one. To see the release notes for a specific release, please see the releases page.
For more information about LLVM, including information about the latest release, please check out the main LLVM web site. If you have questions or comments, the LLVM Developer's Mailing List is a good place to send them.
This document contains the release notes for the LLVM Compiler Infrastructure, release 3.2. Here we describe the status of LLVM, including major improvements from the previous release, improvements in various sub-projects of LLVM, and some of the current users of the code. All LLVM releases may be downloaded from the LLVM releases web site.
Finally, this release includes many small improvements to scan-build, which can be used to drive the analyzer from the command line or a continuous integration system. This includes a directory-traversal issue, which could cause potential security problems in some cases. We would like to acknowledge Tim Brown of Portcullis Computer Security Ltd for reporting this issue.
In the LLVM 3.2 release, the static analyzer has made significant improvements in many areas, with notable highlights such as:
The Clang Static Analyzer is an advanced source code analysis tool integrated into Clang that performs a deep analysis of code to find potential bugs.
Within the LLVM 3.2 time-frame there were the following highlights:
Polly is an experimental optimizer for data locality and parallelism. It currently provides high-level loop optimizations and automatic parallelization (using the OpenMP run time). Work in the area of automatic SIMD and accelerator code generation was started.
The 3.2 release has the following notable changes:
The VMKit project is an implementation of a Java Virtual Machine (Java VM or JVM) that uses LLVM for static and just-in-time compilation.
Within the LLVM 3.2 time-frame there were the following highlights:
Like compiler_rt, libc++ is now dual licensed under the MIT and UIUC license, allowing it to be used more permissively.
The 3.2 release has the following notable changes:
LLDB is a ground-up implementation of a command line debugger, as well as a debugger API that can be used from other applications. LLDB makes use of the Clang parser to provide high-fidelity expression parsing (particularly for C++) and uses the LLVM JIT for target support.
The 3.2 release has the following notable changes:
The LLVM compiler-rt project is a simple library that provides an implementation of the low-level target-specific hooks required by code generation and other runtime components. For example, when compiling for a 32-bit target, converting a double to a 64-bit unsigned integer is compiled into a runtime call to the __fixunsdfdi function. The compiler-rt library provides highly optimized implementations of this and other low-level routines (some are 3x faster than the equivalent libgcc routines).
The 3.2 release has the following notable changes:
DragonEgg is a gcc plugin that replaces GCC's optimizers and code generators with LLVM's. It works with gcc-4.5 and gcc-4.6 (and partially with gcc-4.7), can target the x86-32/x86-64 and ARM processor families, and has been successfully used on the Darwin, FreeBSD, KFreeBSD, Linux and OpenBSD platforms. It fully supports Ada, C, C++ and Fortran. It has partial support for Go, Java, Obj-C and Obj-C++.
If Clang rejects your code but another compiler accepts it, please take a look at the language compatibility guide to make sure this is not intentional or a known issue.
For more details about the changes to Clang since the 3.1 release, see the Clang 3.2 release notes.
In the LLVM 3.2 time-frame, the Clang team has made many improvements. Highlights include:
Clang is an LLVM front end for the C, C++, and Objective-C languages. Clang aims to provide a better user experience through expressive diagnostics, a high level of conformance to language standards, fast compilation, and low memory use. Like LLVM, Clang provides a modular, library-based architecture that makes it suitable for creating or integrating with other development tools.
The LLVM 3.2 distribution currently consists of production-quality code from the core LLVM repository, which roughly includes the LLVM optimizers, code generators and supporting tools, as well as Clang, DragonEgg and compiler-rt sub-project repositories. In addition to this code, the LLVM Project includes other sub-projects that are in development. Here we include updates on these sub-projects.
TCE uses Clang and LLVM for C/C++ language support, target independent optimizations and also for parts of code generation. It generates new LLVM-based code generators "on the fly" for the designed TTA processors and loads them in to the compiler backend as runtime libraries to avoid per-target recompilation of larger parts of the compiler chain.
TCE is a toolset for designing application-specific processors (ASP) based on the Transport triggered architecture (TTA). The toolset provides a complete co-design flow from C/C++ programs down to synthesizable VHDL/Verilog and parallel program binaries. Processor customization points include the register files, function units, supported operations, and the interconnection network.
Pure version 0.56 has been tested and is known to work with LLVM 3.2 (and continues to work with older LLVM releases >= 2.5).
Pure is an algebraic/functional programming language based on term rewriting. Programs are collections of equations which are used to evaluate expressions in a symbolic fashion. The interpreter uses LLVM as a backend to JIT-compile Pure programs to fast native code. Pure offers dynamic typing, eager and lazy evaluation, lexical closures, a hygienic macro system (also based on term rewriting), built-in list and matrix support (including list and matrix comprehensions) and an easy-to-use interface to C and other programming languages (including the ability to load LLVM bitcode modules, and inline C, C++, Fortran and Faust code in Pure programs if the corresponding LLVM-enabled compilers are installed).
In addition to producing an easily portable open source OpenCL implementation, another major goal of pocl is improving performance portability of OpenCL programs with compiler optimizations, reducing the need for target-dependent manual optimizations. An important part of pocl is a set of LLVM passes used to statically parallelize multiple work-items with the kernel compiler, even in the presence of work-group barriers. This enables static parallelization of the fine-grained static concurrency in the work groups in multiple ways (SIMD, VLIW, superscalar,...).
OSL was developed by Sony Pictures Imageworks for use in its in-house renderer used for feature film animation and visual effects, and is distributed as open source software with the "New BSD" license. It has been used for all the shading on such films as The Amazing Spider-Man, Men in Black III, Hotel Transylvania, and may other films in-progress, and also has been incorporated into several commercial and open source rendering products such as Blender, VRay, and Autodesk Beast.
Open Shading Language (OSL) is a small but rich language for programmable shading in advanced global illumination renderers and other applications, ideal for describing materials, lights, displacement, and pattern generation. It uses LLVM to JIT complex shader networks to x86 code at runtime.
LLVM D Compiler (LDC) is a compiler for the D programming Language. It is based on the DMD frontend and uses LLVM as backend.
Julia is a high-level, high-performance dynamic language for technical computing. It provides a sophisticated compiler, distributed parallel execution, numerical accuracy, and an extensive mathematical function library. The compiler uses type inference to generate fast code without any type declarations, and uses LLVM's optimization passes and JIT compiler. The Julia Language is designed around multiple dispatch, giving programs a large degree of flexibility. It is ready for use on many kinds of problems.
GHC is an open source compiler and programming suite for Haskell, a lazy functional programming language. It includes an optimizing static compiler generating good code for a variety of platforms, together with an interactive system for convenient, quick development.
FAUST is a compiled language for real-time audio signal processing. The name FAUST stands for Functional AUdio STream. Its programming model combines two approaches: functional programming and block diagram composition. In addition with the C, C++, Java, JavaScript output formats, the Faust compiler can generate LLVM bitcode, and works with LLVM 2.7-3.2.
EmbToolkit provides Linux cross-compiler toolchain/SDK (GCC/binutils/C library (uclibc,eglibc,musl)), a build system for package cross-compilation and optionally various root file systems. It supports ARM and MIPS. There is an ongoing effort to provide a clang+llvm environment for the 3.2 releases,
Crack aims to provide the ease of development of a scripting language with the performance of a compiled language. The language derives concepts from C++, Java and Python, incorporating object-oriented programming, operator overloading and strong typing.
An exciting aspect of LLVM is that it is used as an enabling technology for a lot of other language and tools projects. This section lists some of the projects that have already been updated to work with LLVM 3.2.
This release includes a huge number of bug fixes, performance tweaks and minor improvements. Some of the major improvements and new features are listed in this section.
LLVM 3.2 includes several major changes and big features: Loop Vectorizer.
New implementation of SROA.
New NVPTX back-end (replacing existing PTX back-end) based on NVIDIA sources.
LLVM IR has several new features for better support of new targets and that expose new optimization opportunities: Thread local variables may have a specified TLS model. See the Language Reference Manual.
'TYPE_CODE_FUNCTION_OLD' type code and autoupgrade code for old function attributes format has been removed.
Internal representation of the Attributes class has been converted into a pointer to an opaque object that's uniqued by and stored in the LLVMContext object. The Attributes class then becomes a thin wrapper around this opaque object.
In addition to many minor performance tweaks and bug fixes, this release includes a few major enhancements and additions to the optimizers: Loop Vectorizer - We've added a loop vectorizer and we are now able to vectorize small loops. The loop vectorizer is disabled by default and can be enabled using the -mllvm -vectorize-loops flag. The SIMD vector width can be specified using the flag -mllvm -force-vector-width=4. The default value is 0 which means auto-select.
We can now vectorize this function: unsigned sum_arrays(int *A, int *B, int start, int end) { unsigned sum = 0; for (int i = start; i < end; ++i) sum += A[i] + B[i] + i; return sum; } We vectorize under the following loops: The inner most loops must have a single basic block.
The number of iterations are known before the loop starts to execute.
The loop counter needs to be incremented by one.
The loop trip count can be a variable.
be a variable. Loops do not need to start at zero.
need to start at zero. The induction variable can be used inside the loop.
Loop reductions are supported.
Arrays with affine access pattern do not need to be marked as 'noalias' and are checked at runtime. We vectorize under the following loops: SROA - We’ve re-written SROA to be significantly more powerful and generate code which is much more friendly to the rest of the optimization pipeline. Previously this pass had scaling problems that required it to only operate on relatively small aggregates, and at times it would mistakenly replace a large aggregate with a single very large integer in order to make it a scalar SSA value. The result was a large number of i1024 and i2048 values representing any small stack buffer. These in turn slowed down many subsequent optimization paths. The new SROA pass uses a different algorithm that allows it to only promote to scalars the pieces of the aggregate actively in use. Because of this it doesn’t require any thresholds. It also always deduces the scalar values from the uses of the aggregate rather than the specific LLVM type of the aggregate. These features combine to both optimize more code with the pass but to improve the compile time of many functions dramatically. Branch weight metadata is preserved through more of the optimizer.
The LLVM Machine Code (aka MC) subsystem was created to solve a number of problems in the realm of assembly, disassembly, object file format handling, and a number of other related areas that CPU instruction-set level tools work in. For more information, please see the Intro to the LLVM MC Project Blog Post. Added support for following assembler directives:.ifb,.ifnb,.ifc,.ifnc,.purgem,.rept and.version (ELF) as well as Darwin specific.pushsection,.popsection and.previous.
,,,,, and (ELF) as well as Darwin specific, and. Enhanced handling of.lcomm directive.
. MS style inline assembler: added implementation of the offset and TYPE operators.
Targets can specify minimum supported NOP size for NOP padding.
ELF improvements: added support for generating ELF objects on Windows.
MachO improvements: symbol-difference variables are marked as N_ABS, added direct-to-object attribute for data-in-code markers.
Added support for annotated disassembly output for x86 and arm targets.
Arm support has been improved by adding support for ARM TARGET2 relocation and fixing hadling of ARM-style "$d.*" labels.
Implemented local-exec TLS on PowerPC.
Stack Coloring - We have implemented a new optimization pass to merge stack objects which are used in disjoin areas of the code. This optimization reduces the required stack space significantly, in cases where it is clear to the optimizer that the stack slot is not shared. We use the lifetime markers to tell the codegen that a certain alloca is used within a region. We now merge consecutive loads and stores. We have put a significant amount of work into the code generator infrastructure, which allows us to implement more aggressive algorithms and make it run faster: We added new TableGen infrastructure to support bundling for Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) architectures. TableGen can now automatically generate a deterministic finite automaton from a VLIW target's schedule description which can be queried to determine legal groupings of instructions in a bundle. We have added a new target independent VLIW packetizer based on the DFA infrastructure to group machine instructions into bundles. We have added new TableGen infrastructure to support relationship maps between instructions. This feature enables TableGen to automatically construct a set of relation tables and query functions that can be used to switch between various forms of instructions. For more information, please refer to How To Use Instruction Mappings.
A probability based block placement and code layout algorithm was added to LLVM's code generator. This layout pass supports probabilities derived from static heuristics as well as source code annotations such as __builtin_expect.
New features and major changes in the X86 target include: Small codegen optimizations, especially for AVX2.
New features of the ARM target include: Support and performance tuning for the A6 'Swift' CPU. ARM Integrated Assembler The ARM target now includes a full featured macro assembler, including direct-to-object module support for clang. The assembler is currently enabled by default for Darwin only pending testing and any additional necessary platform specific support for Linux. Full support is included for Thumb1, Thumb2 and ARM modes, along with sub-target and CPU specific extensions for VFP2, VFP3 and NEON. The assembler is Unified Syntax only (see ARM Architecural Reference Manual for details). While there is some, and growing, support for pre-unfied (divided) syntax, there are still significant gaps in that support.
New features and major changes in the MIPS target include: Integrated assembler support: MIPS32 works for both PIC and static, known limitation is the PR14456 where R_MIPS_GPREL16 relocation is generated with the wrong addend. MIPS64 support is incomplete, for example exception handling is not working.
Support for fast calling convention has been added.
Support for Android MIPS toolchain has been added to clang driver.
Added clang driver support for MIPS N32 ABI through "-mabi=n32" option.
MIPS32 and MIPS64 disassembler has been implemented.
Support for compiling programs with large GOTs (exceeding 64kB in size) has been added through llc option "-mxgot".
Added experimental support for MIPS32 DSP intrinsics.
Experimental support for MIPS16 with following limitations: only soft float is supported, C++ exceptions are not supported, large stack frames (> 32000 bytes) are not supported, direct object code emission is not supported only.s.
Standalone assembler (llvm-mc): implementation is in progress and considered experimental.
All classic JIT and MCJIT tests pass on Little and Big Endian MIPS32 platforms.
Inline asm support: all common constraints and operand |
Friday – NBA Stat Central
Sunday – Your NBA Fix PodcastLebanon’s prime minister resigned abruptly on Saturday, saying that he was stepping down in protest at Iran’s interference in his country and feared he would be assassinated like his father 12 years ago.
Saad al-Hariri announced his resignation from Saudi Arabia and the move appeared to have been done in coordination with Riyadh, which sees Iran as an arch-rival to be countered across the Middle East.
"The evil that Iran spreads in the region will backfire on it,” Mr Hariri said in a televised address. “Despite my efforts, Iran continues to abuse Lebanon.”
He also said his life was in danger and he was believed he was being targeted like his father, former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, who was killed by a massive car bomb in 2005.
“We are living in a climate similar to the atmosphere that prevailed before the assassination of martyr Rafik al-Hariri. I have sensed what is being plotted covertly to target my life,” he said."Just a Song Before I Go" is a song by Crosby, Stills and Nash that appeared on the 1977 album CSN. It was also released as a single and reached number seven on the Billboard singles charts, becoming the band's highest charting hit. It is also one of the band's shortest songs, with a running time of only 2:14. In Canada, it peaked at number 10.
The song was written by Graham Nash about leaving loved ones behind before going on a concert tour. It was written in Hawaii in about 20 minutes at the piano while Nash and Leslie Morris were staying with a friend, waiting for the rain to stop before leaving the house. The opening line came from the question: "You've got half an hour, why don't you just write a song before you go?"[1]
In a February 25, 2016 interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Nash stated that the homeowner bet him $500 that he couldn't write a song before he left. Nash said he still has that $500.
Crosby, Stills and Nash arranged "Just a Song Before I Go" as a straight ballad, with mostly acoustic textures anchored by two electric guitar solos from Stephen Stills.
In 2008, drummer Russ Kunkel and the group Chateau Beach covered the song on their album "Rivage."[2]
Personnel [ edit ]
Additional musicians [ edit ]
Sources [ edit ]Federal Troops sent to Los Angeles by George H.W. Bush during the 1992 riots. (Photo: Robert Couse-Baker / Flickr)Introduction
In this article and a corollary article by my colleague Nigel Gibson, we look critically at the political significance of the Los Angeles riots/rebellions of 1992 and their aftermaths. Inspired by W.E.B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon, two revolutionary thinkers from the African Diaspora, we also offer these reflections as challenges to hegemonic (or dominant) ideas of law and order, reason and rationality, and offer the rallying cry, shared by continued voices of protest, for new concepts and commitments in the struggle for freedom and a more humane world.
See Also:
Nigel Gibson | 20 Years After the L.A. Riots, Revisiting the Rationality of Revolt
To read more articles from Lewis Gordon or other writers in the Public Intellectual Project, click here.
In early spring 1994, I paid a visit to Los Angeles, where I was greeted in the airport at the arrival gate – that was still possible in those days – by my friend Mina Choi, who was a former babysitter to my eldest son when I was in graduate school. Having completed her studies at Yale, Mina was pursuing her writing career in Los Angeles. We embraced each other in a hearty hello, a mundane act expected of good friends, which, however, led to a halt and uncomfortable silence among our fellow travelers, their family and friends. Such was the response to a meeting of Northeast Asia and African America nearly two years after the 1992 Riots/Uprisings.[1] Although Rodney King famously pleaded, “Can we all get along?” there clearly continued to be much doubt.
That is, however, a simplification to look back to those events as fundamentally between Asian-Americans and African-Americans. Although part of the tale – that the value of black life was deeply insulted when shopowner Soon Ja Du did no prison time for shooting Latasha Harlins is one example, and the fact that many Korean businesses were attacked during the riots is another – we should bear in mind that the participation of whites and Hispanics/Latinos (the largest group arrested by the police) brought to bear additional considerations as the initial frustration of black populations, marked fundamentally by the effects of neoconservative polices of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, was transformed into the rage that sparked the unfolding events.[2]
Now, 20 years later, many of the conditions contributing to those riots and a series of others across the globe – as witnessed in the UK last summer – as well as mass demonstrations on the effects of global financial mismanagement and, in many cases, outright class massacre, have not only remained, but have also worsened. It’s difficult not to think of Baldwin’s well-known, prophetic imagery of fire next time. Yet that could also have been said of 1992 and 1968. As one goes back through the genealogy of the many national conflicts through which race and class converged as fundamental in the face of their continued evasion, the grammar of American “race and class relations,” so to speak, is generally one of continued disavowal of their legitimacy, of their being ancillary aberrations of an otherwise pristine societal order. The extent to which endemic racist features of American (and perhaps all modern) society need to be addressed is a question often feared, but, as recent events such as the Trayvon Martin homicide and the plethora of instances of police misconduct on racial matters attest, remains necessary.[3]
To address some of these endemic features, I will first outline, through drawing upon insights from W.E.B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon, violence in political terms, from a thesis of illicit appearance – the absence, that is, of the right of appearance. This will serve as the condition of possibility by which there was hyper-visibility, which is a form of invisibility, of blacks as the main subjects of the L.A. riots/uprising and the failure to regard the police and agents from the suburbs in a similar vein. I will then examine the grammar set by that portrait, wherein spillage and moving beyond boundaries lead to constructions of so-called “problem people” as monstrosity (warnings) or portents of varieties of “disasters” and a theodicy of social arrangements (for example, criminalization and other forms of pathologizing of racialized subjects) that set the framework for the next two decades of neoconservative and neoliberal political economies of the present.
Du Bois and Fanon on Illicit Appearance
Du Bois succinctly outlined much of what is the basis of Angela Y. Davis’ and Michelle Alexander’s critical scholarship on the prison industry in the United States when he reflected on the criminalization of blacks in the American system of laws and its enforcement:
… its police system was arranged to deal with blacks alone, and tacitly assumed that every white man was ipso facto a member of that police. Thus grew up a double system of justice, which erred on the white side by undue leniency and the practical immunity of red-handed criminals, and erred on the black side by undue severity, injustice, and lack of discrimination. For, as I have said, the police system of the South was originally designed to keep track of all Negroes, not simply of criminals; and when the Negroes were freed and the whole South was convinced of the impossibility of free Negro labor, the first and almost universal device was to use the courts as a means of re-enslaving the blacks. It was not then a question of crime, but rather one of color, that settled a man’s conviction on almost any charge. Thus Negroes came to look upon courts as instruments of injustice and oppression, and upon those convicted in them as martyrs and victims.[4]
Among Alexander’s observations is not only the alarming number of blacks incarcerated under the war on illicit drugs and other criminalization policies since the 1980s, but also something well known even in the time of Richard Wright, who reflected on the phenomenon in his introduction to “Native Son,” namely, the extraordinary number of those who were convicted, although, as evidence attested, they were innocent of the crimes for which they were charged. There is a form of perverse anonymity to the notion of “the” black criminal, which is that it is a place that could be occupied by nearly any black, although usually a black male, because of an overdetermined logic: blacks are always up to something. The consequent system of surveillance necessitated a deputy status to every white man. (The logic of white women as victims of black men created a structure, eventually, of white men as the protector of women – ironically, including black women and other women of color, from black men.)
Du Bois offered theory behind his observation. Decoding the so-called “black problem,” he showed the fallacy of making people into problems instead of understanding their relationship to social malediction.[5] To be a problem means wherever one “appears,” so do problems. The consequence is illicit appearance.
Fanon argued the same in “Black Skin, White Masks” and “The Wretched of the Earth.”[6] In the first, he questioned the logic of self-other relations in the study of racism and colonialism. Self-other relations pertain to the realm of acceptable appearance, where an ethical obligation emerges between the self and an other. Outside of that relation, there are neither selves nor others. Blacks are presumed, often pushed, into that nether-realm, which he called the zone of nonbeing. A peculiar conundrum emerges. If the double order of a realm of legitimacy is one in which blacks are “outside,” then their entrance poses a violation of that order. It would be a crossing of bounds, the violation of which is unjust and unethical. Such a rupture, he makes explicit in “The Wretched of the Earth,” is not only violent but also violence. The black, from this analysis, commits the crime of illicit appearance.
There is double jeopardy in this notion of illicit appearance. First, there is violation of the thesis that one should not appear. That black invisibility is presumed just, the assertion of visibility could not, then, be a right. Blacks under such a system thus lack even the right to appear. Second, that makes ordinary resources of moral argumentation futile, since the mediating conditions are barred: any movement from one sphere to the other is already outlawed. Thus, third, the black would have to suspend ethics as a mediating condition to the self-other relation and simply enter it by other means. Those other means take the form of political work, which those who wish to preserve the status quo often consider to be unethical. In ironic language, the apartheid structure of racial ethics makes black justice a form of white injustice and vice versa, to read as unjust justice versus just injustice.
Illicit appearance suggests also a paradox of racialized invisibility. The offending blackness is in fact a hyper-visibility, the effect of which is the erasure of individuating or contextualizing considerations – that is, human invisibility. Such hyper-vision manifests epistemic closure, where to see a black as such means there is nothing more to be known or to be learnt.
This odd logic of internality and externality is peculiarly theodicean. Theodicy involves accounting for the integrity of an omnipotent and omniscient entity in the face of evil and injustice. The classic response is twofold. First, the limitations of humanity impede understanding of the deity’s ultimate intentions. Second, human free will, granted by the deity, makes human beings accountable for emergent infelicities. Both formulations amount to this: the deity is intact; it is humanity that fails.
The modern secularization of sin has not led to the elimination of theodicean rationalization. By substituting science or the social system for the deity, similar reasoning emerges: those who suffer contradictions of the system must suffer because of their fundamental flaws, which make them external to the system, becoming, in Du Bois’ language, “problem people.” The history of race in the United States, under this interpretation, is marked by a theodicean problem in which the country is idolized and its contradictions become external. To bring those contradictions to the fore, then, follows the same logic of illicit appearance.
This problem of violation and threats to the social order were hallmarks of the Reagan administration’s policy on blacks. Although kept somewhat at bay by the cold war’s public relations battle over where the decent society lay, anti-black racism and anti-Communism often converged through the logic of the former belonging outside and the latter being presumed foreign. Thus, while the latter was supposedly an international threat, the former was very much an internal one: the systematic poverty, segregation and humiliations wrought on blacks could be rectified only by addressing their causes within the system, which requires changing it in ways presumed foreign. Black life, from this point of view, became intimately connected to policies that would advance the cause of foreign enemies. The country began to solidify itself from Reagan onward through the affirmation of black exclusion, an effort that also proved lucrative as it generated more markets for its management and maintenance. As prisons grew and social welfare declined, so, too, did new sites of wealth as prospects for equality dwindled. This period, we know, is the age of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. Together, these twins of the move from slightly left of center to the right depend on rationalizations of reality devoid of verification and rigor of analysis. Particularly with regard to race, their proponents work more through fictional and often mythic tropes than through reality supported by empirical evidence. This was, for example, the case with the “welfare queen” figure of the Reagan era and the black criminal (Willie Horton) of the George H. Bush period.[7]
The neoconservatives offer the construction of African-Americans as depraved, diseased, deviant, delinquent and intellectually deficient. The correlated disciplinary rationalizations of this ideology are black people as problems of judicial and criminal justice studies, health and education. The specific correlates are studies of crime, AIDS and intellectual deficiency. Their work is theodicean in the sense discussed above. The United States and the entire modern Western tradition are without fault, and the plight of the many whose labor and lives were fodder for the emergence of that tradition not only suffer from their supposed inherent deficiencies but also from an apparent lack of gratitude for the privilege of having some part in this self-congratulatory portrait.
There are many contradictions and double standards in the neoconservative position, including its proponents’ lack of memory of the role they played in creating the circumstances they criticize. The decimation of public institutions from the Reagan administration onward, for instance, created dysfunction on a scale that made it appear foolish to seek public solutions to problems of the common weal. At the same time, the bloated military budgets are premised upon the use of public funds for private interests. We could call this what it is: welfare for the rich. That African-American interests tend to be linked to a viable public infrastructure made African-Americans a marked enemy of privatization. In some instances, African-Americans were collateral damage, but in most cases, they were in the direct line of fire.
The neoliberals are not as overtly blatant as the neoconservatives. While they share the neoconservative fetishizing of privatization, they are concerned with preserving some semblance of human rights and democracy in the process. Thus, they are compelled to offer an alternative to the neoconservative mantra of pathological blackness. Instead, they present a conception of democratic life premised upon individualism, which makes the collective needs of a disenfranchised African-American population illegitimate. Privatization demanded an engagement with African-Americans as neoliberals continued the neoconservative attacks on public infrastructure. For neoliberals, African-Americans were, at first, more collateral damage. As it became clear that African-American interests rested upon a model of democracy premised upon group or collective rights, neoliberal critics waged a war on African-Americans in the insidious language of being concerned about the ultimate interests of African-American individuals.
We return, then, to the problem of illicit appearance. No black person is discriminated against as an individual, but the logic of legitimate appearance requires blacks not appearing as a group. This circumstance is exacerbated by the reality of how blackness functions in the perceptual field of an anti-black society; the effect is exponential, where a black translates into blacks. This exponentiality is the aforementioned hyper-visibility constitutive of invisibility. It is why, in spite of the many whites and lighter-skinned Hispanics/Latinos caught on videotape looting during the L.A. riots/rebellion, the portrait of the event is black.[8]
I should here like to add what might be a controversial consideration. The theodicean dimension of national integrity requires the affirmation of blacks as extra-systemic, as “outside.” This logic has enabled varieties of once non-white groups, such as the Irish, Italians and European Jews to become part of the national “we” through their conflicts with the nation’s “them.”[9] The many violent riots against black communities in the 19th century and first half of the 20th century are examples, and the various neoconservative portraits of a broken alliance between blacks and European Jews supposedly due to the emergence of Black Power movements in the 1960s is another.[10]
The status of Asian-Americans and at least light-skinned Hispanics/Latinos in the L.A. riots and subsequent racial conflicts raises the question of the relevance of such a logic of national affirmation. The structure of Korean and other Northeast-Asian-American merchants’ relation to black neighborhoods is reminiscent of the dynamics of Eastern European merchant immigrants during Baldwin’s time. Although the history of US attitudes toward Asians and Latin Americans is not a rosy one, it is also one of a strict logic of racial economy and differentiation. Where blacks are considered a menace, the rejection of white supremacy need not entail the same for anti-black racism. Thus, although there are Asian-American and Hispanic/Latino groups that fight against white hegemony and racist superiority, it would be naive to presume an instant solidarity with black causes. There are Asian-Americans and Hispanic/Latinos who are anti-black racists without any desire to be white. This failure of alliance has devastating effects, especially the extent to which it works well for policies of infrastructural disintegration through making strong associations with pro-infrastructure policies as black-oriented policies.[11]
I already mentioned the image of Soon Ja Du’s shooting Latasha Harlins in the back of the head after an altercation over a $1.79 bottle of juice – an act captured on Du’s store’s video camera – and we could add to it the many images of armed Koreans defending their stores, bringing together a powerful motif of American politics, namely, protecting property over life. What better rite of passage into American whiteness could there be, and if other markers of assimilation (such as marriage) are any indication, greater solidification with whiteness is an early message gleaned from those events.[12]
Additionally, we should bear in mind that one of the police officers who participated in the beating of Rodney King and was acquitted in the trial that ignited the protest was Hispanic/Latino: Rolando Solano. At no point in the iconography of the accused police officers is there a question of their whiteness. Also, although there was a white woman officer, Stacey Koon (ironic name, no?), there is an almost uniform image of the officers as male. Together, we have the solidified signification of white male officers. This structure is one that is unfolding in the present in unusual ways as questions remain of assimilation premised upon maintaining structural whiteness through anti-blackness.
Of Divine Warnings
The apocalyptic vision of Marines and National Guard troops patrolling decimated areas of Los Angeles bring to mind disaster with portents of natural and unnatural kinds as we consider the varieties of racially inflected catastrophes to come, ranging from Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans to the effects of the 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The many intervening and worldwide calamities bring the question of disaster to the fore. The term disaster, etymologically understood, means a fallen star or planet. Such an occasion is no less than a sign, but for whom a sign is issued is of crucial importance. If the witness of the sign is not the one for whom it is signified, that person would be swept up in the course of its transmission and then, in turn, become a sign. Let us call this tide a sign continuum, through which also emerges the notion of disastrous people.[13]
As sign continua, disastrous people do more than portend catastrophe. Their presence is supposedly catastrophic. They are thus, too, warnings, which makes them, in language of old Latin, a form of monstrum (warning), which, in the infinitive, is monere (to warn) and transformed in contemporary language into monsters.
There was a time in which the response to monsters was to learn from them. Serving the purpose of edification – to warn the community of things gone wrong (how else would they have been able to appear?) – monsters were once articulate. Whether creatures of antiquity, demonic ones of the Middle Age, or the prototypical concerns of what was to come in modernity in Mary Shelley’s novel, they offered warnings by which humanity could change course before reaching points of proverbial no return. The world of colonialism and racism is marked, however, by, among other things, the form of arrogance that emerges when man believes he has defeated God. Thus, as a potential conqueror of all there is, what warnings need such a human spirit take seriously? With such an attitude, a new development emerges for the role of monstrosity: that of the limits by which self-reflection could be asserted as transcendence. It is, in effect, to make particular groups of human beings take on the role of gods, by which others are left steeped in the babble of irrelevance. The effect is to place opposition to the hegemonic order outside the realm of legitimate appearance and speech. It is a return of the theodicean paradigm.
Being without voice, monstrosity is locked in its body and becomes simply destructive forces to be contained. We could read this process in the events leading up to the riots of 1992. What, after all were Latasha Harlins’ complaints to Soon Ja Du but a silenced effort at communication? What was Rodney King’s moving body but one that, by definition, was without words – and yet still, somehow, threatening – as he was being beaten to the ground? And how was it possible to determine excessive force when the police officers’ use of force was presumed legitimate? Would not the question of degree already be swallowed up in the acceptance of whether or not? Once force (not read as violence because presumed legitimate) is permitted, how could there ever be too much? Thus, when the jurors – most of them white, one Asian-American and one Hispanic/Latino – in Simi Valley were instructed to determine whether excessive force was used against King, what else could they have determined when the force was already presumed legitimate? Moreover, the racial grammar of the jury already said it all since, presumably, black jurors were incapable of transcending prejudice or vicarious attachment, but already, the imagined voice of a more reasonable America is demographically set: national identity solidified through black exclusion.
Locked in their bodies, then, since their words and their thoughts could not become part of the discursive communicative world of legitimate appearance, black bodies reached out through rage – monstrous rage through which Hispanics/Latinos and whites became part of the continuum, but not its illicit appearance. Although already set in motion from policies of the 1980s, the project of containment received renewed force from 1992 onward, and, as we know, legislation leading to more mechanisms of control followed as large numbers of blacks were imprisoned in spite of a declining crime rate in the nation; profits were to be made off of this development, and the privatization of prisons and varieties of other once-public institutions led to an error of dismantling much of the infrastructure that could have provided opportunities for those whose social reach did not extend beyond that of their own bodies.
Concluding Consideration
The neoconservative and neoliberal responses to images of disorder were to radicalize the dismantling of public institutions that could respond to those crises. That effort became global, as witnessed by the negotiation of the transformation of the South African apartheid government into a neoliberal post-apartheid one with, unfortunately, more radicalized inequalities, especially for black South Africans, despite the country’s being ruled by a predominantly black political party. Throughout the globe, similar structures of privatization and individuated conceptions of civil liberties led to wholesale violence and incarceration of blacks in the Caribbean and many Latin American countries. The United States and the UK were, additionally, leaders in this process.
The recent economic crisis reflects those developments in rather profound ways. Black male unemployment has remained at double the level of white male unemployment, which raises an extraordinary reflection on the supposed violent tendencies of blacks if we were to ponder what whites would do with, say, a 40 percent unemployment rate. On these matters, we could close with a reflection from Du Bois in another of his great corpus, “Black Reconstruction in America,” in which, after pointing out the hijacking of the emancipatory potential of Reconstruction and the conditions forged by Jim Crow, he moved beyond his 20th-century prophecy of the color line to the 21st-century condition for dignity and human worth, which, in his prescient thought, was no less than employment.[14] We are at that moment today, in a world rendered small and fast, through a population seven billion strong and with technological resources that make time and space contracted. It is under these conditions that we now reflect back on the past 20 years and ask ourselves, is it already so?
Endnotes
1. Of which there are many accounts and commentary. For a set of philosophers’, social scientists’, and literary theorists’ commentaries of the event, see Robert Gooding-Williams (ed.), “Reading Rodney King: Reading Urban Uprising” (New York: Routledge, 1993); cf. also Brenda Wall, “The Rodney King Rebellion: A Psychopolitical Analysis of Racial Despair and Hope” (Chicago, IL: African American Images, 1997).
2. For a detailed account of this incident, including a portrait of Harlins, Du, and Joyce Karlin, the white female judge who sentenced Du, see Brenda E. Stevens, “Latasha Harlins, Soon JA DU, and Joyce Karlin: A Case Study of Multicultural Female Violence and Justice on the Urban Frontier,” The Journal of African American History 89, no. 2 (Spring, 2004): 152–176.
3. For a summary history and analysis of this list, see, for example, Michelle Alexander, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” (New York: The Free Press, 2010) and Michael Tillotson, “Invisible Jim Crow: Contemporary Ideological Threats to the Internal Security of African Americans” (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2011). The story of Travyon Martin, the 17-year-old African-American killed by George Zimmerman, a white Hispanic/Latino and self-appointed neighborhood watchman, on February 26, 2012, is receiving worldwide attention as this paper is being written.
4. See W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches,” 7th Edition (Chicago: A.C. McClurg& Co., 1907 [original, 1903]), note 8, and for discussion, see Lewis R. Gordon, “Philosophical Anthropology, Race, and the Political Economy of Disenfranchisement,” The Columbia Human Rights Law Review 36, no. 1 (Fall 2004): 156–158. For Angela Y. Davis, see “Are Prisons Obsolete?” New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003, and “Women, Race, and Class” (New York: Vintage Books, 1983).
5. See “The Souls of Black Folk,” as well as “The Study of Negro Problems,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science XI (January 1898): 1-23. Reprinted in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 56 (March 2000): 13–27; see also my chapter, “What Does It Mean to be a Problem?” in “Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought” (New York: Routledge, 2000).
6. See Frantz Fanon, “Black Skin, White Masks,” trans. Charles Lamm Markman (New York: Grove Press, 1967) and “The Wretched of the Earth,” trans. Constance Farrington (New York; Grove Press, 1963). The analysis that follows is built on these texts and a variety from the black existential phenomenological literature. See, for example, Lewis R. Gordon, “Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism” (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Internaitonal Press, 1995), F”anon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay in Philosophy and the Human Sciences” (New York: Routledge, 1995), and “Existentia Africana,” as well as Lewis R. Gordon (ed.), “Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy” (New York: Routledge, 1997), Steve Bantu Biko, “I Write What I Like: A Selection of His Writings,” Foreword by Lewis R. Gordon, Preface by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, with an Introduction by Malusi and Thoko Mpumblwana, edited with a personal memoir by Aelred Stubbs C.R. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), and Noël Chabani Manganyi, “Being-Black-in-the-World” (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1973), “Alienation and the Body in Racist Society: A Study of the Society that Invented Soweto” (New York: NOK Publishers, 1977), and George Yancy, “Black Bodies, White Gaze: The Continuing Significance of Race” (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008).
7. This summary is offered in many texts, such as the Michelle Alexander and Michael Tillotson books already cited. See also Wendy Brown, “American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and De-democratization,” Political Theory 34, no. 6 (2006): 690–714, Joel Handler, for example, “The Poverty of Welfare Reform” (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), “Social Citizenship and Workfare in the United States and Western Europe: The Paradox of Inclusion” (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), Thomas Frank, “The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule” (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008), and C. Bradley and Yaron Broo, “Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea” (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2010).
8. The reader should consult the various YouTube postings of the riots.
9. See the many books on how various European groups became white such as Karen Brodkin, “How Jews Became White Folks: And What That Says About Race in America” (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), Eric Goldstein, “The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity” (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), Jane Anna Gordon, “Why They Couldn’t Wait: A Critique of the Black–Jewish Conflict over Community Control in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, 1967–1971” (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2001). Noel Ignatiev, “How the Irish Became White” (New York: Routledge, 2008), David R. Roediger, “Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs” (New York: Basic Books, 2006).
10. See, e.g., Iver Bernstein, “The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War” (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), William M. Tuttle, “Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919” (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1996), and “Reading Rodney King.”
11. See the texts on race, neoliberalism, neoconservatism and the dismantling of the social welfare state, cited above. For critical Latino commentary on this issue, see, e.g., José Alfaro, Ramon Jimenez, Esperanza Martell, Radhames Perez, José LaSalle, Rafael Sencion Marina Ortiz and Zenaida Mendez, “Geraldo Rivera Dividing Blacks and Latinos: Justice For Trayvon — Trayvon Is Us!” National Institute for Latino Policy Newsletter (April 6, 2012). We should also bear in mind that while there has been a pull toward whiteness as means of assimilation for Latino/Hispanic communities, there has also been a history, especially in Puerto Rican communities, of both a political solidarity and affirmation of blackness as exemplified by the significance of the most important collection of archives for the study of African America and the African Diaspora being the (Arturo) Schomburg Center for Black Culture, a division of the New York Public Library.
12. See “America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2010,” U.S. Census Bureau.
13. For a developed analysis of the thesis outlined here, see Jane Anna Gordon and Lewis R. Gordon, Of Divine Warning: Reading Disaster in the Modern Age (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2009).
14. W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880 (New York: Atheneum, 1992), originally published in 1935. For discussion, see, e.g., Susan Searls-Giroux, “Reconstructing the Future: Du Bois, Racial Pedagogy and the Post-Civil Rights Era,” Social Identities 9, no. 4 (2003): 563–98, and especially 591–6, and Reiland Rabaka, W. E. B. Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty-First Century: An Essay on Africana Critical Theory (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007).It’s called #DecisionDay for a reason.
There are still four spots in the Audi 2015 MLS Cup Playoffs that remain unclaimed heading into the final day of the regular season. But there’s also plenty more at stake, especially when it comes to playoff seeding.
Here’s the complete list of what's on the line so you can keep tabs on Sunday:
Who gets the final four tickets to the Audi 2015 MLS Cup Playoffs?
There’s only one spot left in the Eastern Conference and two teams vying for it. Orlando City (44pts) need to win big at the Philadelphia Union and hope that the New England Revolution (47pts) lose big vs. New York City FC, because even if the Lions catch the Revs in the standings on 47pts, the goal differential tiebreaker would be needed. Orlando enter #DecisionDay with a significantly worse goal differential (-9) than the Revs (-1).
In the Western Conference, there are four teams battling for three slots. Portland (50pts) look like a cinch for one of them, while Seattle (48pts) and Sporting Kansas City (48pts) will want to make sure they don’t slip up and give the San Jose Earthquakes (47pts) a chance to overtake them.
Who will get the last two Knockout Round byes?
The New York Red Bulls (No. 1 seed in East) and FC Dallas (No. 1 seed in West) already know they’ve avoided the midweek, single-elimination Knockout Round matches on Wednesday, Oct. 28 and Thursday, Oct. 29. But the No. 2 seed in each conference also gets a bye.
In the East, the winner of the match between Columbus Crew SC (50pts) and D.C. United (51pts) at MAPFRE Stadium (5 pm ET, FS1 and FOX Deportes) will clinch the East’s bye, but if they tie, Toronto FC still have a chance to snag it.
Meanwhile, in the West, the defending MLS Cup champions LA Galaxy (51pts) will hope they can survive a trip to Sporting Park (7 pm ET, ESPN, ESPN3 and ESPN Deportes) and hang on to the No. 2 seed. Any misstep by Bruce Arena’s side, and the Portland Timbers (vs. already-eliminated Colorado) and the Vancouver Whitecaps (50pts, vs. already-eliminated Houston) will look to take advantage.
Who gets to host the Knockout Round matches?
If you can’t get that Knockout Round bye, the next best thing is hosting the winner-take-all match.
Why is this important? Well, of the eight single-elimination Knockout Round matches played in MLS history since 2011, home teams have won six.
So if you thought the chase for the No. 2 seed is going to be a mad scramble, the No. 3 and No 4 seeds promise to be in flux for most of #DecisionDay.
Who wins the Supporters’ Shield?
The Supporters' Shield, awarded to the best regular-season team in MLS, will belong to the New York Red Bulls or FC Dallas, who both have 57 points and 17 wins. If the teams earn the same results in their final matches, the regular-season titlist will be determined by goal differential tiebreaker; the Red Bulls currently have the edge going into #DecisionDay (+18 vs. +12 for FC Dallas).
Will Giovinco take the Audi Golden Boot outright?
Barring a goal-scoring binge by LA’s Robbie Keane (19 goals) in KC, Toronto FC superstar Sebastian Giovinco (22 goals) looks set to claim the Audi Golden |
a person of color that meets your specifications? Tell me, just how do you determine that someone is an individual of color? ~robroy
Why isn’t anyone using their full names? Curious. I’m not keeping score. I actually don’t even like sports trivia. Oh, I see. This is another reference to the trope that discussions of race are just a game. Nice tie in! In all fairness to robroy, I should have stated that the 7 astronauts were read by me as being all white. It’s a guess. No color meter present.
Eric Stoller – your own commentary is in its self racist. I am a Caucasian American of Irish and German descent. My wife is mostly Irish. My two daughters are mixed Irish/German. My step son is 1/4 black, 1/4 Cherokee indian, and1/2 irish. His father is ½ black and ½ Cherokee, is a mathematician and a successful well respected businessman, and he and his cherokee mom black dad and mixed siblings attend our MIXED family get togethers such as Thanksgiving and/or Christmas. …So DON’T YOU DARE call me prejudiced, sir. AMERICA IS A MELTING POT. Color is not anymore and should never have been an issue here. I work with a multitude of black engineers and scientists, just as I work with a multitude of Asians, and Middle-Easterners. Caucasians such as myself are just part of the mix in my world. –In fact, current estimates have shown that demographically I may actually be a minority in my field within 20 years or so. People like yourself are merely pushing an agenda based upon fear and hostility bred by events that took place years before our present generation had anything to say about it! Does that mean that atrocities were not committed? NO! Of course things were wrong! That’s why change was necessary. Nowadays, however, the change is done. Color is not the issue at hand anymore. That is why I can safely say that with respect to any given crew of astronauts… Crew selection has nothing to do with gender, race, or skin tone. The issue is, HOW QUALIFIED AN INDIVIDUAL IS TO GET A JOB DONE, and on the part of NASA’s mission planners, the issue is also about PICKING QUALIFIED INDIVIDUALS WHO ARE AVAILABLE TO SUPPORT A MISSION AT THAT TIME. This is the very same reason why AGE is an important factor in astronaut selection for missions… Just because there is no one 60 years old flying our missions, do you hear folks screaming anything about AGE discrimination? Of course not! We all know that a certain level of physical fitness must exist for any one person to be selected to fly on a mission costing American Taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. ….So, please, just accept the fact that the crew was selected for the right reasons… And if you’re not happy with that then feel free to get over it, stop complaining, and work happily alongside the rest of us in this world who are most interested in making this world a better place and doing something to make that happen every day. ~Engineer Jones
Wow. When the hell did I say that this fellow was prejudiced? Am I making comments in my sleep again? Can we all just place this comment in the rhetorically racist bucket and move on…all in favor? Okay. Done.
All I see are seven brave folks. Mainly Americans, but more importantly, human. With the help of 10’s of thousands of other brave folks who spend their careers, and in some cases, their lives, to do the impossible. Every day. To be honest, I don’t care if the crew is black, white, green or purple. Male, female or ‘other’. I have just one question – Are they the best people for the job? Nothing more. Nothing Less. ~Fred in IT
Fred in IT doesn’t see color. Fred is a white dude. A guess of course…but usually when someone starts mentioning green people or purple people, they are almost always white. Green + Purple = White.
Eric, and others wondering about lack of diversity – according to NASA, 13% of America’s 136 astronauts are African-American, Asian-American or Latino. There have been at least 10 NASA astronaunts of African American ancestry, including one who died in the Challenger disaster. See more here. Also, see the diversity in this mission from 2006. Just because there are no faces like that in these 23 photos, do not infer an institutional bias. Now, please, can we drop the discussion of race or diversity in this context? Thanks. ~Alan Taylor (Alan Taylor is the creator, admin, and journalist/programmer that runs the Big Picture Blog. ataylor@boston.com)
Dear Alan, I’m surprised that you weighed in on this comment thread. I had assumed that as a journalist (it’s a default title that comes with the gig) and proprietor of the site that you wouldn’t join in on the “race doesn’t matter in space” bandwagon. By the way Alan, Native Americans are people of color too. Apparently if you’re Native American, you don’t get to go to space. To reiterate, my comment referenced a single photo, not the entire history of the space program. 7 white people. 0 people of color. In what context would you be comfortable discussing race and diversity? Just curious…
Not quite yet alan. I want to add that from the STS-107 (Columbia’s fatal mission) flight, Kalpana Chawla was an immigrant from India, Ilan Ramon was an Israeli citizen, and Michael Anderson was, I believe, African American ~James
Once again, my comment was regarding a single photo. I was not referring to any other moments in the history of NASA.
You might want to add that the current female record holder for number of days in space is a local girl, Suni Williams, recently returned last year from the Int’l Space Station. One of her parents (father) is Indian according to web info, and her mother is described as being of Slovenian descent, with Suni being described as Indian-Slovenian. See how this ethnic counting breaks down so fast and loses relevance? But for some reason, in my experience, when someone protests like Eric about not enough color, being of Indian descent (as in Asian-Indian) doesn’t seem to quite count as “color.” I hope the ethnic milestones cited above in previous posts and put to rest any preoccupation with the “first ethnic this” or the “first gender that”, and the science and engineering achievements can be celebrated and appreciated for themselves. ~robroy
My comment has been upgraded to “protest” status. I think that needing to clarify that fact over and over again really says a lot about how people read what they want to read and how that might not quite match up with what was actually written.
Mr Uppity Eric, African Americans represent 13.8% of the US Population and represent 13% of the astronauts. Noting these facts, you really sound like you are grasping at straws with your commentary on “institutional racism”, since they have EXACTLY proportional representation. I seriously HOPE that *only* qualifications and skills are taken into account in the selection of shuttle crews. A number much HIGHER than this would indicate that maybe the case, wouldn’t it? Given 13% of the population, any given group of 7 people has a 38% chance of NOT containing someone in your magical “pick me” color box. The mission in 2006 with three black astronauts… well, by random statistics, that would be highly unlikely, seeing that they comprise just 13% of the population (only about a 5% probability of finding 3 on a crew). On the whole, “people of color” are actually represented MORE than their constituent 13% should dictate over the last several years. Maybe I should write the anti-defamation league. That’s not fair!!!!!!!!!!!! Or maybe you’re just full of hot air? So, next time you choose to gripe, perhaps you should do it with a tad more deference to reality rather than some fairy tale rainbow-circus world. ~Matt
“Uppity.” Interesting word choice. Especially since it’s connected with all sorts of racist rhetoric. I guess Matt decided that I was “griping” in addition to the “protesting” and “complaining”. I really should mention that the most common theme that runs through most of the comments is dismiss, dismiss, dismiss.
And for Eric Stoller: sweetheart, just take a nap. you’ll feel better. really. ~Marjorie Brown
I felt fine when I wrote those two comments. Alert, creative, and sincere. Why is it assumed that when someone asks a question about race that they are not feeling well. Discuss race and you must have a temperature.
Matt. Please be careful using the word “uppity”. It has a long well known history of being followed with the “n” word. ~Clifford
Thanks Clifford. Although you sort of seem to be protecting Matt and not really addressing the racist theme that saturates the comments.
It would be nice to keep our race issues on this planet and out of space and the exploration of new world’s, that would be wonderful. Peace to all. ~S.M.S.
Yes, because in space, white astronauts can still not see color. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
They are all astronauts of color: Orange. ~Freddie
Dismiss. Call it a game. And mock. The trifecta. Oh and don’t forget to never, ever use your full name. Wouldn’t want anyone to know that you troll around the web cementing racist comment threads.
Eric Stoller:
Obsession with people’s race is precisely the OPPOSITE of Martin Luther King’s dream. I am sorry to inform you that you are a Politically Correct Neo-Racist. That being said… Go Astronauts! ~Mark G.
I never did say that I was obsessed with race. All of these interesting words that keep being placed in my mouth. I think I need to floss. Wow. I’m a what?!
As for those who make racial comments, “Wake up to the world”, Crew members must be selected on technical ability and not on some politically correct basis ~Robert Flemington
Welcome back trope #1. Folks of color don’t have the skills according to Mr. Flemington. Hey! He used a full name and everything. I thought the world (isn’t NASA just a United States venture?) was a diverse place made up of lots of folks of color and white people.
My son Alan has created this wonderful series of photo essays. He has discovered a venue that allows him to interact with the world that fascinates him. As many have noted, it is not just the rich and substantive photos that he selects, it is the opportunity to thoughtfully explore topics that we might otherwise have missed. Most of his followers share his wonderment of this place we all share. Some out there could do some work on forgiveness and understanding. For example, this piece is about the space program. Why hijack it for race relations? You can be sure that if a current event highlights race relation issues, Alan will find a thoughtful and sensitive way to depict where we seem to be. His work stands on its own merit.
Needless to say, his friends and family are delightfully pleased and proud. Look forward to each piece and hope he shares his perspectives so long as it makes him happy. Love you son. ~Mike Taylor
Dear Greg and Gail (the parentals), I am appalled and saddened that you have never come to my defense on a comments thread. Shoddy parenting…just kidding :-). WTF. Mike, I was not commenting on the quality or editorial process of the Big Picture Blog. Just that single photograph with 7 white astronauts. Read my damn comment! Wow. I “hijacked” the post with my comment. Are you serious? Are you saying that once again, in space, white astronauts do not see color and therefore this post should not either? Race exists in every single context.
I just have to comment on how great it was seeing Eric “I Am A Racist Myself” Stoller getting absolutely floored by his totally unwarranted and 100% ridiculous comments regarding racism in NASA. Anyone who follows the space program knows that NASA has an outstanding record when it comes to fair representation in regards to race. I am so sick of seeing the race card pulled out especially in places like this. The ignorance that it requires to accuse NASA of such unfair practices is absolutely staggering. It shows that not only are such people utterly clueless about the space program but also completely incapable of doing any sort of research on such topics before making such outlandish claims. The only racist I see in here is you Eric and again it was absolutely beautiful seeing you get your you know what handed to you in brilliant fashion. It brings a new meaning to the term owned. I guess that’s probably why you quickly disappeared and havent come back since. Good riddance as this quality website doesn’t need people like that. To the people that destroyed Eric’s comments, Very nice job indeed!! ~OrangeCrush
I need to create a book with all of the names that I have been called in the blogosphere. Name calling. Still not nice, even in the virtual sphere. Oh snap. Did I just see another mention of the elusive “race card”? Oh yes, there it is. It would seem that “this quality website” doesn’t need uppity folks like myself causing a stir by mentioning race. Racist – check. And Orange, I prefer to be “pwned.” “Owned” is so 1990’s. And I didn’t really disappear. I just didn’t want to sink any of my energies into the web of racist comments on the post. Trolls bore me and according to Marjorie’s comment, I am already in need of a nap.
Eric…..just a little clue…….You’re an Idiot.
A super accomplishment by AMERICA and you throw a race card in the mix.
Now, go get you Food Stamp card and your WIC card and go get some free groceries from Star Market for all the little liberal kids you and your many concubines have fostered.
Please don’t forget to buy condoms this time. ~You Got Told
Yes, America is raceless. How could I have forgotten. My bad. Wow. YGT decided that racism wasn’t enough and decided to sprinkle in large amounts of classism. Bravo for changing our ism mix.
Reply to #16……Comments like yours usually come from stupid people!
You don’t have to do a ton of research, to figure out why there aren’t an abundance of people of color in NASA or many other high tech positions……Just check out Bill Cosby’s comments on Oprah recently………. He said, “The high school DROP OUT RATE ( For people of color ) IS ASTRONOMICAL”!!!! So tell me Eric, should we put them right into the space program, as soon as they drop out, and hope that they catch on???? Get a life!…..Get a job!…….Get educated before you mouth off! ~Les Madaus
Les Madaus, you don’t have to do any research to see that my comment referred to the photo of the 7 white astronauts. And damn, your comment is quickly headed to the rhetorically racist bucket. Goodbye.
So now dear reader, I hope that you understand why I placed the most excellent quote from bell hooks’ “Teaching Community” at the beginning of my post. Race matters here on Earth as well as in space.
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Like this: Like Loading...The left has done a stellar job of demonizing Trump supporters and Republicans in general. Their excellent persuasion involves conflating the bad apples with the entire group. Both sides do it. The right calls everyone on the left selfish snowflakes, and the left calls everyone on the right racists. They do it because it works. The brain likes to conflate things. And if the shiniest object in our view involves headlines about racists, or lefty rioters, those images stick in our minds and taint our impressions of the entire group.
So let’s try this thought experiment.
Let’s say there is a group of Trump-supporting racists – the violent kind that I have never met – that starts terrorizing an African-American neighbor of yours. And let’s say it turns into a violent confrontation between the racists and the victim family. The neighborhood hears some commotion and pours into the streets. The racists have weapons and they are about to kill the family that was just minding its own business. The police are on the way, but not in time. Violence is about to happen.
Suddenly a shot rings out. A bullet goes through the back of the scariest racist’s head and hollows out his skull. He drops like a rock. The other racists drop their weapons and flee.
Who fired the shot that saved the African-American family? Was it a Republican or a Democrat?
One of the most underrated qualities of Republicans is that they police their own ranks. If you have a problem with a violent Republican racist, call some Republicans. They’ll solve it for you.
But don’t call a Republican if you are simply offended by another person’s opinion. In that situation you want to call some Democrats to ridicule and physically attack the person with the objectionable opinion.
By the way, I’m not a Republican. This is just an observation. I’ve been watching Democrats not police their own ranks – after the Berkeley violence for example – and it occurred to me that you don’t see that on the Republican side. Republicans generally appreciate free speech, but if someone attacks your family, your country, or your freedom in some physical form, keep some Republicans on speed dial.
Try it. You’ll be surprised how well it works.
Are you bothered by the fact that I am making sweeping and unsupported generalizations about Democrats and Republicans? If so, call a Democrat. I await your combined ridicule and physical violence.
—
Scott Adams
Co-founder of WhenHub, because you will love it.
Author of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, because you need a book for your upcoming trip."We know the statistics - that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioural problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.'' - President Barack Obama, Father's Day speech, 2008.
Yes, we do know the statistics. But that hasn't stopped an avalanche of hate - and I use the word advisedly - being unleashed against Cory Bernardi for quoting and echoing the sentiments of Obama in his book The Conservative Revolution (Connor Court 2013).
The big whisper going around now about Bernardi is that he is gay. The preposterous logic goes like this: Bernardi hates gays, he is obsessed by the subject, which means he is probably a repressed, self-loathing homosexual.
No less than a federal MP and Liberal backbencher, Warren Entsch, has promoted this absurdity. On Tuesday, he told Fairfax Media: ''He's obviously got an obsession with people that are gay. It worries me. You've really got to watch out for those that have these obsessions. He who protests the loudest …''Ice Cream for Breakfast at Molly Moon's
It seems there are all sorts of holidays or days to celebrate something, but ones that involve dessert for breakfast, well that's something we all can stand behind.
In honor of International Eat Ice Cream for Breakfast Day, Molly Moon's will be serving up scoops of ice cream with waffles and oatmeal on February 5 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Top your homemade waffle or organic oatmeal with various toppings including fruit, nuts, candied ginger and my personal favorite chocolate to help make your ice cream a bit heartier. Better yet, stop at Green Lake or Volunteer Park for a jog to burn off the the extra calories and eat a heaping scoop of their salted caramel with a waffle and chunks of chocolate. Or perhaps a scoop of the Vivace coffee flavor for those of us who need our jolt of caffeine in the morning. Fans of increasingly trendy savory oatmeal might enjoy a scoop of the cardamom with some nuts.
Bundle up and buck up Seattle, this Boston native knows how to wait in line for her ice cream regardless of weather conditions.If you're reaching this blog for the first time, welcome! I'm Vino, Olive Garden connoisseur, and I hope you enjoy reading it. In this annual blog, I obtain a Never Ending Pasta Pass and utilize it in a fun new way each year. One thing remains constant, though: I eat a lot of pasta.
There are four years of content to peruse, and over 300 reviews and high-definition pictures of Olive Garden food to salivate over. As for structure, some people prefer to go season-by-season (using the guide below), some people skip around randomly, and some just start from the beginning and power through! If that seems overwhelming, here's a curated list of posts you may particularly enjoy.
Year One
The first year (2014) Olive Garden offered the Never Ending Pasta Pass, and I decided to abandon my life of healthy mediocrity for a shot at stardom and diabetes. I ate nothing but Olive Garden's NEPB for 49 days, and documented every possible permutation of pasta, sauce, and topping - over 200 in all.
Introduction Video - Big thanks to my sister, the camerawoman
Noteworthy Days
One - The journey of a thousand bowls begins with a single bite
Four - My first time eating alone
Five - My first date (if only she could see me now!)
Sixteen - A tribute to my second-favorite poet
Forty- The best pun to non-pun ratio in the blog
Noteworthy Pastas
Rime of the Ancient Marinara - Still pretty proud of this one
Cheezilla - A fan favorite
Grown Up Meal For Big Boys - A special request sauce (primavera) and topping (grilled chicken) that is a real game-changer. Highly recommended if your OG will work with you
Collecting Seashells - Based on a true story
Year Two
Year two of the blog focuses less on the food and more on people. Using a special "Family Edition" Pasta Pass (only available in 2015) I went on 50 first dates at Olive Garden, and reviewed not only the food, but the people as well.
Introduction Video - Sorry about the audio levels. This was a ton of fun to write and make. I can see why people work in video rather than the dead format of blogging.
All Dates - One giant page of every date and the pasta they ordered, which I created only to quell a deep autistic need to categorize human beings by their choice of red or white sauce. Features links to each date's blog entry.
Random Dates (All dates were noteworthy in their own way)
Katrina - The brave first date
Marty - The Party's here
Celene- Writer of the worl'd second-best Olive Garden blog
Alycia - An Olive Garden hostess with a heart of gold
Roadtrips
San Francisco, California - I deeply regret not getting better photos of this beautiful city
Phoenix, Arizona - I deeply regret giving a con artist $10 in this oppressively hot city
Las Vegas, Nevada - Make sure to mouseover that picture
Noteworthy Pastas
Rice-A-Roni - Least appetizing
The Chicken - I never did get the meter quite right here
The End - Most photogenic
Year Three
Within a week of starting Year Three's blog I was hit by a semi-truck while riding my bike to work (this is a true story and not some weird meta-Olive Garden thing). I still ate at OG almost every day, and took some of my best photography, but there is no narrative or frame story for this year. I may recycle the idea I had for Year Three in a future blog.
Noteworthy Pastas
Light Lunch - Tasty and beautiful to look at too
Behind Every Good Pasta... - An ode to the rock upon which the OG empire is built
Alice, Your Days Are Numbered - True tales of a server's flagrant abuse of power
Baby Sauce - The first of a five-part series celebrating the forgotten girl band, Spice Girls. Can you guess which pasta is a thinly-veiled bitter stab at an ex who long ago forgot I exist?
Summer Vacation
In July of 2017, I got a message from Olive Garden's legal department demanding that I cease using their trademark on my site. I fought back, hilarity ensued, and eventually they backed down and gave me a bunch of stickers, so...justice?
An Unfortunate Misunderstanding - The initial letter, and my reply
Conclusion - The apology from OG, which never did include the limerick I demanded
Special Edition Bonus Content - A bunch of fans sent in their own OG-themed limericks, which I attached previously unused photos of Never Ending Pasta Bowl combinations to and made into bonus content. Click "Previous Entry" to begin scrolling through.
Year Four
The triumphant return of the 50 First Plates spinoff was bigger, better, and even offered fantastic prizes. In addition to the standard date, each woman also completed a "creative challenge" - an unrehearsed creation of a unique piece of art, which is attached to their respective blog entry. This was a lot of fun for me to watch, and apparently very stressful to perform. But hey, I bought you Olive Garden, lady.
The Splash Page / Entry Form / FAQ - My most-professional looking site yet! Yes, I did pay for the template but it was a lot of work to pastafy it to adequate levels.
The Contestants - Similar to season one, here is the page of everyone who participated in season two, with links to each of their entries.
Season Finale - The winner of the season and of my heart. The four essays that follow are my attempt to explain how she was able to destabilize a pasta institution. Warning: there is very little about Olive Garden in this content.
Noteworthy Pastas
1/50 - The Invisible Generation - Something a little more academic
Creamy Mushroom Sauce - The poster sauce of the 2017 NEPB did not disappoint, apparently. I never did get to try it as I became an obnoxious vegan the previous year.
Shrimpy Night - Van Gogh and read it yourself!
Gravity Well - It's amazing what some natural light can do for chain restaurant food.
The Mixup - Mostly just another pretty picture.
Whew! That's a lot of words and pictures about Olive Garden. Buon Appetito!Crit Damage Testing DS3 a guest Apr 24th, 2017 677 Never a guest677Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 1.36 KB For 2 hit animations, only the final damage number was counted Tested on the robed, praying hollows in the High Wall of Lothric, NG Both Titanite Scale and Twinkling Titanite weapons were not used for testing. All weapons had exactly 100 AR Format is: Crit Modifier Standard BS damage Hornet BS Damage Greathammers 100 104 122 110 122 143 120 140 164 130 158 185 Greataxes 100 104 122 110 122 143 120 140 164 130 158 185 Ultra Greatswords 100 104 122 110 122 143 120 140 164 130 158 185 Curved Greatswords 100 116 136 110 135 158 120 155 181 130 173 203 Hammers 100 129 151 110 150 175 120 170 199 130 189 221 Axes 100 141 166 110 163 191 120 183 215 130 203 237 Greatswords 100 158 185 110 180 211 120 201 236 130 220 257 Straight Swords 100 164 192 110 187 218 120 207 242 130 227 265 Reapers 100 164 192 110 187 218 120 207 242 130 227 265 Halberds 100 164 192 110 187 218 120 207 242 130 227 265 Thrusting Swords 100 164 192 110 187 218 120 207 242 130 227 265 Fists 100 158 180 110 176 205 120 196 230 130 215 252 Spears 100 181 212 110 204 238 120 225 263 130 248 291 Pikes 100 181 212 110 204 238 120 225 263 130 248 291 Curved Swords 100 181 212 110 204 238 120 225 263 130 248 291 Daggers 100 272 318 110 307 359 120 343 401 130 380 444
RAW Paste Data
For 2 hit animations, only the final damage number was counted Tested on the robed, praying hollows in the High Wall of Lothric, NG Both Titanite Scale and Twinkling Titanite weapons were not used for testing. All weapons had exactly 100 AR Format is: Crit Modifier Standard BS damage Hornet BS Damage Greathammers 100 104 122 110 122 143 120 140 164 130 158 185 Greataxes 100 104 122 110 122 143 120 140 164 130 158 185 Ultra Greatswords 100 104 122 110 122 143 120 140 164 130 158 185 Curved Greatswords 100 116 136 110 135 158 120 155 181 130 173 203 Hammers 100 129 151 110 150 175 120 170 199 130 189 221 Axes 100 141 166 110 163 191 120 183 215 130 203 237 Greatswords 100 158 185 110 180 211 120 201 236 130 220 257 Straight Swords 100 164 192 110 187 218 120 207 242 130 227 265 Reapers 100 164 192 110 187 218 120 207 242 130 227 265 Halberds 100 164 192 110 187 218 120 207 242 130 227 265 Thrusting Swords 100 164 192 110 187 218 120 207 242 130 227 265 Fists 100 158 180 110 176 205 120 196 230 130 215 252 Spears 100 181 212 110 204 238 120 225 263 130 248 291 Pikes 100 181 212 110 204 238 120 225 263 130 248 291 Curved Swords 100 181 212 110 204 238 120 225 263 130 248 291 Daggers 100 272 318 110 307 359 120 343 401 130 380 444MIAMI — Offense has not been an issue for the Heat recently. Strangely enough, it’s been the Heat’s defense that’s let them down.
And for an organization that prides itself on defense, these struggles have sounded an alarm. That alarm led team captain Udonis Haslem to speak to his teammates about the issue Monday.
“It’s easy when you’re a young team, when you’re scoring at a high rate and you’re averaging 100 and something points per game to kind of lose sight of what our identity is,” said Haslem, who has spent each of his 14 NBA seasons with the Heat. “We’ll take the scoring, but the Miami Heat’s identity is always going to be our defense.
“Through the years, no matter what kind of talent we’ve had or what kind of points we’ve been able to score or what the situation was offensively, we’ve always had a defensive scheme that’s been successful in this league. I just wanted the guys to understand that regardless of whether we’re scoring or what our offense is doing, no matter how bad the defense of the other team may be, we have our standards that we play at.”
[Hassan Whiteside rewarded for recent play with Eastern Conference Player of the Week award]
[Hassan Whiteside in foul mood after Portland loss: ‘I know the NBA rules’]
The Heat (34-36) have spent most of the season in the top-five in defensive efficiency. But Miami’s recent slippage on that end of the court now has the Heat ranked sixth in defensive rating for the season, allowing 104.3 points per 100 possessions entering Tuesday’s home game against the Suns.
Over the past three games, the Heat rank 28th out of the league’s 30 teams with a defensive rating of 113.1. Miami has a 2-1 record in that span, but only because it’s posted an NBA-best 119.0 offensive rating during this three-game stretch.
“For three games, our defense has slipped,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said after Monday’s practice. “Our offensive numbers have been terrific and that’s skewed us a little bit in terms of remembering what our identity is. For three straight games, we’ve given up big numbers. We were just able to outscore teams in the two previous games. We couldn’t last night and we paid the price for it.”
The three-game stretch began with a 120-112 win over the Pelicans, continued with a 123-105 win over the Timberwolves, but included a 115-104 loss to the Trail Blazers on Sunday.
With the Heat’s offense trending in the right direction and the defense moving in the wrong direction, Spoelstra was not in the mood to talk offense Monday. When asked an offensive-centric question, he quickly went back to Miami’s recent defensive struggles.
“It just makes me want to throw up,” Spoelstra said when asked about the Heat’s offense. “That’s where our mindset probably has been the last three games, that it’s about offense. We’re putting up great offensive numbers. We have to score now 116 points to be able to win? It’s ridiculous. We’ve given up 115, 112 and 105. Well, we’re not going to win many games that way. That isn’t the identity that we’ve built. We’re scoring enough, we’re building good enough habits.”
With two of the Heat’s next three opponents — Raptors and Celtics — in the top-10 in the league in offensive efficiency, Miami doesn’t have much time to fix its defensive issues.
Good thing for the Heat, they know they can play elite defense because they’ve done it for most of the season. Now, it’s just about getting back to it in the middle of a tight playoff race with 12 games remaining in the regular season.
“It has to be a collective commitment defensively,” Spoelstra said. “We have to be much, much better. We’ve been showing that for a long time and finding some success being a top-five defense. Well, we dropped out of the top-five and not so coincidentally dropped out of the playoffs.”
[Want more Heat news sent directly to your Facebook feed? Make sure to like our Heat Facebook page]In 2016, Amazon sold more than two million Echos, conversational interfaces built to house Alexa, an artificial intelligence personal assistant developed in 2014 that’s designed to “always get smarter.” Google hasn’t released its sales numbers for the Google Assistant enabled Home devices, which the search behemoth has started selling from pop-up retail outlets, but it’s estimated that the sale numbers quadrupled at Christmas. Millions of these devices now listen to millions of Americans going about their everyday lives, participating when songs need changing an Amazon orders need to be placed. But if proliferation has normalized the presence of voice-based A.I. systems, it has done little to help users clarify their relationships with the new help. This has become a source of banal jokes — “Okay Google, how was your day?” — but experts say that an emotional understanding of these machines, versus just a sense of their functionality, is critical to charting a path forward.
“Never before has humankind been challenged by its own creation to such an extent,” says Alexander Libin, Ph.D, a psychosocial scientist at Georgetown University to Inverse. “The balance between human-to-human and human-to-robot communication is very fragile at the moment. Some people see robots as just useful devices, and some of us look at interactive human-like computers as real substitutes for personal companions.”
Libin reasons that as long as humans have a grip on what’s real and what’s “an animated effect produced by the interactive technology,” our interactions with these machines won’t alter human relationship dynamics. People won’t begin to throw brusque formulations at each other in the manner of a connected home command. Still, it’s not as simple as making sure there isn’t social bleed. Relationship dynamics inevitably emerge from any interaction — and a hell of a lot faster when the interactions feel like they involve a sentient being. Which leads to the radical part: As people incorporate A.I into their lives, they are subconsciously creating a brand new social category.
Put another way, millions of people are socializing in a manner that is without precedent in their adult lives — adult being the operative word.
Julie Carpenter, a research fellow and social scientist at the Ethics + Emerging Sciences group at Cal Polytechnic State University, explains that humans tend to subconsciously attribute intent and autonomy to smart technology programmed to speak. When pressed, users still understand that Alexa is a system incapable of interacting in an emotive or intentional way. A man or woman using Alexa often treats the interface in the same manner a child interacts with a teddy bear. Despite understanding that Alexa- and Google Assistant-enabled devices are just gadgets, there is a desire to play house, to behave socially even though doing so is irrational.
“We’re still trying to figure out how much credence to give to this technology and where to fit it into our lives socially,” Carpenter tells Inverse. “ While people are aware that these don’t have agency, factors like |
We really need to be pushing our governments. Let’s not look back and regret what we’ve done. (“Nobody is safe“, and this guy has the temerity to suggest scientists like him are the “biggest skeptics on Earth”? Wow. ) PENELOPE AJANI Biological Scientist University of Macquarie, Sydney FEAR: UNKNOWN REPERCUSSIONS OF CLIMATE CHANGE The scientific community know sea levels will rise, people will be displaced and food resources will diminish. But I work on the small things, the ocean’s plankton, and we are already seeing climate shifts in these organisms. How those changes will affect the global ocean is something we really can’t answer – and that scares me. For example, the fact that we’re seeing tropical species all the way down the east coast of Australia, means massive changes are occurring. However, we currently can’t predict the exact impact of these shifts. Another example is that climate change will create winners and losers, there’ll be some species that get wiped out and some that will become prolific. Will it be the toxic algal species that are going to survive? There will come a time when we need to have answers, when these changes will greatly challenge humanity. (Any biologist who thinks that life is a static enterprise really should go back to school. Like climate, life changes. It also evolves, and adapts.) Each “scared scientist” vignette ends with: If you think these facts are frightening, help us change them. Take action here I’ll point out that there isn’t a hard sciences person in this group, and not a one of them appears to have any basic meteorological training, much less any climate science training. In their case, ignorance is not bliss, but a ticket to being scared out of their wits. You gotta love the black and white photography and the caricatures of dark doom the portraits exude. It looks more like “performance art” than science. Note the website traffic rank: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/scaredscientists.com Nearly 15 million. Wow, off the scale of lower than low. Meanwhile, WUWT is at: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wattsupwiththat.com Lower traffic rank numbers are better, for example Google is #1. This comparison says a lot: Finally, about that money they ask for when you “act now”, I wonder if it ends up here? Gotta love the domain registrar they use, quite appropos. ================================================== Domain Name: SCAREDSCIENTISTS.COM Registry Domain ID: 1801341743_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.syrahost.com Registrar URL: http://www.crazydomains.com Updated Date: 2014-08-08T02:08:31+08:00 Creation Date: 2013-05-15T00:00:00+08:00 Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2016-05-15T00:00:00+08:00 Registrar: CRAZY DOMAINS FZ-LLC Registrar IANA ID: 1291 Registrar Abuse Contact Email: Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +61.894220890 Reseller: CRAZY DOMAINS Domain Status: ok Registry Registrant ID: 12093151 Registrant Name: RACHEL GUEST Registrant Organization: Registrant Street: 6/5-13 LARKIN ST Registrant City: CAMPERDOWN Registrant State/Province: NSW Registrant Postal Code: 2050 Registrant Country: AU Registrant Phone: +61.299944154 Registrant Phone Ext: Registrant Fax: +. Registrant Fax Ext: Registrant Email: ================================================== In case anyone gets bent out of shape for me posting that info, I’ll point out it is public domain information, available to anyone who makes a WHOIS query, like this one: http://whois.domaintools.com/scaredscientists.com Anyway, good luck with the gloom and doom Rachel, you’ll need it to get past the laughing, especially after your last flop, the Years of Living Dangerously, which tanked in ratings after burning through several million dollars in production costs.
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Ever thought that your Sunday backyard grill burger patties could come from a lab instead of a farmyard cow? Some claim its the future — so, what’s ahead of us?
Back in 2013, Maastricht University’s Mark Post made a lot of noise about his lab-grown beef burger patties when he cooked them live on air for a British TV show. Post called it lab beef as “meat grown from the same cells that produce the meat in the cow, but this time outside the cow,” according to TIME. Post also said there were “no health concerns” — like E. coli or salmonella — with his lab-grown meat.
The patty was made of 20,000 muscle fibers grown from cow stem cells, colored with beet root juice, and seasoned with saffron to achieve a realistic look and flavor. Tasters on the show remarked how the beef had a pleasing palatability and smelled like a real burger — but they complained it needed better color and lacked the juiciness provided by fat.
More recently, Israeli startup SuperMeat crowdfunded over a hundred thousand dollars and is on its way to its goal of $500,000 to develop ethical, environmentally-friendly and healthier meat that “tastes exactly the same.” It’s based on the same principle of Post’s patties, where the developers expand and replicate tissues of meat from a small biopsy.We continue my NFC South Top 25 with No. 12:
Carl Nicks, guard, Buccaneers
What he did in 2012: After being signed away from the New Orleans Saints as a free agent, Nicks appeared in seven games before going out for the rest of the season with a toe injury.
Why he’s No. 12 in 2013: Back in his New Orleans days, Nicks was viewed by many as the best guard in the league. Assuming he’s at full health, there’s no reason Nicks can’t get back to dominant form. The Bucs’ plan of teaming him and Davin Joseph as the starting guards went awry when Joseph suffered a season-ending injury in the preseason. But Joseph also is expected to be back at full strength. That could give Tampa Bay the best guard tandem in the NFL and running back Doug Martin could end up being even more productive than he was in a stellar rookie year.
For previous entries in the NFC South top 25, click here.Prep time: 5 mins
Cook time: 30
35
Calories per serving: 235
Fat per serving: 1.7g
Total time:
Ingredients
6 oz Thin Spaghetti
5 Roma Tomatoes
1 Red or Green Bell Pepper
1 Small Yellow Onion
2 tbsp Minced Garlic
Salt and Pepper to taste
Cooking Directions
Pre-heat oven to 400F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Slice the pepper and tomatoes into halves. Place the pepper on the cooking sheet face down, and the tomatoes face up. Dice yellow onion and also place on baking sheet. Roast vegetables for 25 minutes, rotating the vegetables half way through, except for the tomatoes. Cook thin spaghetti noodles according to package instructions. Once vegetables are finished roasting and have cooled enough to handle. Dice tomatoes and pepper. Combine with onions and garlic in a sauce pan and heat thoroughly until juices have slightly reduced. Combine with spaghetti and salt and pepper to your liking!
You could also roast the vegetables in advance and store them in the refrigerator until they’re ready to be used. Should store for a week.The cryptocurrency markets continued to rise today as the asset class observed strong gains, including most notably, perhaps, litecoin.
The digital asset once dubbed “the silver to bitcoin’s gold” passed $78 to achieve a new all-time high at 06:54 UTC this morning, according to CoinMarketCap data. Standing at $75.57 at press time, litecoin has increased by 17.28 percent over the past 24 hours and an astonishing 49.37 percent over the last week.
Long in the doldrums, litecoin has seen a resurgence since its community moved to activate Segregated Witness (SegWit) on its network early in May – a scaling solution that also opens the door to new features such as smart contracts going forward.
Once again, South Korean exchange Bithumb has seen the majority of the trading, hosting 22 percent of the litecoin volume in the last 24 hours. Chinese exchanges OKCoin and Huobi are close behind, with 18 and 14 percent, respectively.
While not yet close to its record high of over $0.40 set back in May, Ripple Labs’ XRP token has also seen gains – rising 13.51 percent over the week to $0.25 today.
Dash and monero, too, have climbed this week, with press time prices at $382 (21.60 percent over seven days) and $140 (46.45 percent), respectively.
Taking a wider view, the combined market capitalization of all digital currencies attained a new record high today, and had passed $175 billion at press time. That’s up from $170.8 billion just yesterday, also going by data from CoinMarketCap.
Disclaimer: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership stake in Ripple.
Formation flying image via ShutterstockDavid Levine
As Russian military convoys continue the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has chosen to rehabilitate the alliance between Hitler and Stalin that began World War II. Speaking before an audience of Russian historians at the Museum of Modern Russian History, Putin said: “The Soviet Union signed a non-aggression agreement with Germany. They say, ‘Oh, how bad.’ But what is so bad about it, if the Soviet Union did not want to fight? What is so bad?”
In fact, Stalin did want to fight. The August 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact had a secret protocol that divided Eastern Europe between Hitler and Stalin. It led directly to the German-Soviet invasion of Poland the following month that began World War II. In speaking of this agreement, known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, as good foreign policy, Putin has violated both a long Soviet taboo and revised his own prior position that the agreement was “immoral.” What might he have in mind? What it is about rapprochement with Nazi Germany that is so appealing just at the present moment?
The historical significance of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact could hardly be greater: it stands at the beginning of German and Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe and all of the succeeding tragedies they brought, in Poland and elsewhere. Stalin entered the pact with Hitler fully aware of his partner’s anti-Semitism, and indeed accounting for it in his own diplomacy. On August 20, 1939, Hitler asked Stalin for a meeting, and Stalin was more than happy to agree. For five years the Soviet leader had been seeking an occasion to destroy Poland. Stalin had prepared by firing his Jewish commissar for foreign affairs, Maxim Litvinov, replacing him with the Russian Vyacheslav Molotov. The dismissal of Litvinov, according to Hitler, was “decisive.” On August 23, Molotov negotiated the agreement with Hitler’s minister of foreign affairs, Joachim von Ribbentrop, in Moscow.
In Geneva, where Zionists were meeting at their world congress, the news came as a shock. Everyone present immediately understood that Hitler had been unleashed and that a war was coming, with especially dire implications for Jews. Chaim Weizmann, the leader of the General Zionists, closed the congress with the words: “Friends, I have only one wish: that we all remain alive.” This was no empty pathos. Less than two years later, the Holocaust began in precisely the part of Europe that was dealt with in the secret protocol of the pact. By 1945 almost all of the millions of Jews who lived in these regions would be dead. Stalin famously said that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was an alliance “signed in blood.” Much of the blood shed in the lands concerned by the agreement would be that of Jewish civilians.
The Stalin-Hitler alliance had devastating consequences for Poland and the three Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. In Poland, on September 17, 1939, Stalin joined his ally Hitler in a military attack, sending the Red Army to invade the country from the east. It met the allied Wehrmacht in the middle and organized a joint victory parade. The Soviet and German secret police promised each other to suppress any Polish resistance. Behind the lines the Soviet NKVD organized the mass deportation of about half a million Polish citizens to the Gulag. It also executed thousands of Polish officers, many of whom were fresh from combat against the Wehrmacht.
Ten months later, the Baltic states were also occupied by the Red Army and annexed to the Soviet Union. These three small countries lost tens of thousands of citizens to deportations, including most of their elites. The Baltic states were declared by Soviet law never to have existed, so that service to those states became a crime. The Soviet idea that states can be declared to exist or not, now echoed in Russian pronouncements about Ukraine, is deeply etched in the political memory of Poland and the Baltic region today.
Because Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were attacked by the Soviet Union while Stalin was Hitler’s ally, their current leaders have also been particularly quick to see through other Russian propaganda positions, for example the grotesque claim that Russia had to invade Ukraine this year in order to protect Europe from fascism. They remember not only the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, but also the series of economic agreements between the Nazis and the Soviets that followed in 1940 and early 1941, and the sham elections and propaganda in the Soviet zone that seemed to find an eery echo in the recent Russian actions in occupied Ukraine.
In fact, Putin’s rehabilitation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact follows other recent moves by Moscow to revive the idea of a division of Eastern Europe between Russia and the West. In March the Russian parliament proposed to the Polish foreign ministry that the two countries divide the territory of Ukraine. No one in Warsaw took the suggestion seriously. In his victory speech after the Russian annexation of Crimea, Putin argued that the protection of ethnic brethren was a legitimate reason to invade Ukraine. This was Nazi Germany’s rationale for seizing Austria and part of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and the Soviet Union’s for attacking Poland in 1939. It is with such historical references in mind that we must understand Putin’s suggestion in the speech that Germany should sympathize with the doctrine of changing borders. Any such support for this argument would seem difficult to imagine in Germany, whose admirable position as a major European power depends precisely upon European integration. Yet important German statesmen such as Gerhard Schroeder and Helmut Schmidt have taken meaningful steps toward endorsing Moscow’s position by questioning the legality of the Ukrainian state.
It would be a mistake, however, to imagine that the significance of President Putin’s position is limited to the fate of Eastern Europe, important as that is. What is happening instead is an attempt by the Kremlin to move from one account of Russia in World War II to another—a shift in national historical memory that would have implications for all of Europe. Two versions of the commemoration of the war were always available because the Soviet Union fought on both sides of the war. In the first part of the war, from 1939 to 1941 the Soviet Union was a German ally, fighting in the eastern theater and supplying Germany with the minerals, oil, and food it needed to make war against Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and most importantly France and Britain.
After Hitler betrayed Stalin and the Wehrmacht invaded the USSR in June 1941, the Soviet Union was suddenly on the other side, and soon found itself in a grand alliance with Britain and the United States. For decades, official Soviet accounts of the war passed over the first part in silence and celebrated Soviet feats of arms in the second. In the international arena, if the Soviet Union wanted to present itself as a power that stood for peace, it had to deny that it was one of the powers that began the war. Soviet postwar propaganda, like Russian propaganda now, associated the West with fascism: this was one especially dramatic way of forgetting just who it was who fought on the same side as those fascists when the war began.
In view of the millions of Soviet citizens killed by the Germans after June 1941, and the undoubtedly decisive role that the Red Army played in the final defeat of the Wehrmacht, the commemoration of the struggle against the Nazis made perfect political sense. Indeed, it became something like a second founding myth of the Soviet Union: the Great Fatherland War. But in this telling of history, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact had to be denied: not so much as a crime but as a blunder. After all, it allowed German troops to approach the Soviet Union well before the invasion, it aided Germany to become the European power that almost reached Moscow, and it created a false sense of complacency in the Soviet leadership. In spring 1941, despite more than one hundred intelligence warnings, Stalin refused to believe that Germany would invade The Soviet Union.
As today’s Russia fights a war of aggression in Eastern Europe, the Kremlin seems increasingly ready to merge the traditional Soviet self-image as the country that defeated the Nazi aggression with Stalin’s own actions as a glorious aggressor. This implies a positive evaluation of the 1939 alliance with Nazi Germany. There has been a trial run for this sort of thing. Between 1939 and 1941, the Soviet Union presented Nazi Germany in its own internal propaganda as a friendly state, ceased to criticize German policies, and began to publish Nazi speeches. People at public rallies occasionally misspoke, praising “Comrade Hitler” or calling for “the triumph of international fascism.” Swastikas began to appear on buildings or even on posters of Soviet leaders.
Today, the positive emphasis on a war of aggression goes well with tendencies in the Russian media, where defiant declarations of Russian anti-fascism are increasingly submerged in rhetoric that may seem rather fascist. Jews are blamed for the Holocaust on national television; an intellectual close to the Kremlin praises Hitler as a statesman; Russian Nazis march on May Day; Nuremberg-style rallies where torches are carried in swastika formations are presented as anti-fascist; and a campaign against homosexuals is presented as a defense of true European civilization. In its invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government has called upon the members of local and European far right groups to support its actions and spread Moscow’s version of events.
In the recent “elections” staged in the Russian-backed eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, as in the earlier faked referendum in occupied Crimea, European far-right politicians have come as “observers” to endorse the gains of Russia’s war. Far from being an eccentric stunt, the invitation of these “observers” reveals why the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is meaningful to Moscow today. Although Putin would certainly have been pleased if actual German or Polish political leaders were foolish enough to take the bait of agreeing to a new division of Europe, he seems satisfied for the moment with the people who have actually responded, in one way or another, to his appeal to destroy the existing European order: separatists across Europe (including the UK Independence Party, whose leader, Nigel Farage, calls Putin the world leader he most admires); anti-European right-wing populist parties (of which the most important is France’s National Front); as well as the far-right fringe, including neo-Nazis.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was not only about territory in Eastern Europe but also about the entire European legal order. In making his alliance with Hitler, Stalin had a political logic. He imagined that in supporting the Nazi state as it began its total war he would turn the German armed forces to the west, away from the Soviet Union. In this way, the inherent contradictions of the capitalist world would be exposed, and Germany, France, and Britain would collapse simultaneously. In his own way, Putin is now attempting much the same thing. Just as Stalin sought to turn the most radical of European forces, Adolf Hitler, against Europe itself, so Putin is allying with his grab bag of anti-European populists, fascists, and separatists. His allies on the far right are precisely the political forces that wish to bring an end to the current European order: the European Union.
It should go without saying that a return to the nation-state in Europe would be a catastrophe for all concerned, including, in the end, for Russia. But there is an important difference between Stalin in 1939 and Putin in 2014. One can at least credit Stalin for attempting to resolve a real problem: Hitler did indeed intend to destroy the Soviet Union. In allying with Hitler he compromised his ideology and made a strategic mistake, but he was certainly responding to a real threat. Putin, on the other hand, had no European enemy. Without any apparent cause, in 2013, for the first time, the Russia government designated the European Union as an adversary. In its media and indeed in official foreign policy pronouncements it has characterized the European Union as “decadent,” in the sense of about to disintegrate.
This change in policy toward Europe, accompanied by the creation of a rival Eurasian Union, was then followed by the Russian assault on Ukraine. The Kremlin has continuously presented its intervention in Ukraine as resistance to European aggression. This is all a bit strange. The Russian invasion of Ukraine precipitated a rupture with the West that, from the point of view of protecting Russia’s basic interests, makes absolutely no sense. This was Russia’s choice, and it hardly seems a masterpiece of strategic thinking. Now the Kremlin’s tortured search for a justification and precedent has led to the jettisoning of one of the basic moral foundations of postwar politics: the opposition to wars of aggression in Europe in general and the Nazi war of aggression in 1939 in particular.× Make your TwitLonger posts ad-free For just £1 a month, you can support TwitLonger directly and remove ads from your posts
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Doctor Who - The Dispersion Diversion
DOCTOR WHO: THE DISPERSION DIVERSION
Following the Doctor, Nardole and Bill
A red school bell bursts into life, ringing obnoxiously in the ears of the young adults as they stride by, chattering and mumbling, a sea of deodorant and snapchatting. All were anxious to return to their dorms and make the most of the remaining daylight hours until their lectures and lessons the following day.
As the bell began to ring, Professor McAdams ushered his class from their seminar seats, rubbing away the chalk from the last 2 hours. One man, pale in complexion with a stare that seemed most unnerving, slowly removed himself from the bench, moving with grace towards the door. McAdams sniffed the air, grimacing at the hint of a peculiar smell diffusing across the lecture hall. He bent down, examining the ventilation built into the lecture stand from which he enlightened the generation of tomorrow. The man frowned, with a slither of ice in his eyes as he watched his professor investigate. He span his right foot sideways, making for the door, but unbeknownst to the man, his foot landed on a crumbling stick of chalk that went awry when McAdams brushed down his board. The chalk cracked into dust and crumbs, alerting McAdams to the sound.
McAdams span around, his brow hanging low. 'Oh! Russell, isn't it? Blimey, I had no idea you were there! If you're here about the assignment submissions, they aren't open until--'.
'Aah, oh no, Professor, its fine, thats okay. Just wonderin' what it was you were doing down there.'
'The most peculiar smell, Russell, thats all. It was fine earlier, but now it smells like petrol in here!'
Russell's eyes darted quickly.'Its probably fine Sir. You know the university. All kind of spooks and creaks around here.'
'Well I've had enough of this! This time every day, the smell occurs! I've been tolerating since term started but this is getting ridiculous! I've had a word with the head, and they're determined to look into it, I hope.'
Russell started to breathe heavily, despite his internal protests. He didn't want McAdam to interfere, but he couldn't give them up either.
McAdams' frown turned into confusion.'Russell, you're looking..peaky. Are you ok?'
Russell, startled, replied, trying to hide the squeakiness of his voice 'Oh yes, no Professor, I'm fine. I'd best go, turn these notes into something useful.'
Russell kept his eyes on McAdam's face, detailing his movements and headed for the door on shaky knees. He quickly closed the door as he left, and ran as inconspicuously as one can run when trying not to act as if they are running, which of course is a hard task.
The red bell rang a second time, signalling the end of the day.
He found the lavatories and opened the third cubicle along; only this one had access to the vents. He climbed onto the far from clean cistern of the toilet, ignoring the juvenile messages crammed on every conceivable surface. He slipped his fingers in between each metal plate, making sure at least 3 could reach the internal walls of the ventilation shaft.
He began to tap the metallic walls, each press of his fingers echoing and reverberating along the vents. He waited until he heard the light humming given off inside. He smiled a kooky, toothy smile and opened up his bag. Combing his bag, he pushed to find his special gift. Ah! He pulled it out. It glowed a silver and green like a faded jade jewel, emplaced into a crowning golden circle, with engravings of other wordly art highlighting the talisman. He scooped the rest of the chain, and held it to the vent, its green glow highlighting the vent walls. 'You know what this is yes?' He chuckled. The thing inside snarled in retaliation. 'Its okay! Its fine, just calm down. Today,m you don't need to protect yourself. You'll be fine. Don't do it today!'
McAdams had stopped investigating the vent, and had bent down to pack away his lecture pages, refraining from stuffing the pages into the folders, as to not crease them. He placed a page to the floor, and stopped. He sniffed the air, and rolled his eyes, that all too familiar smell lingered. His brow stiffened. This smell was too much, the most it had been in a while, ever since Professor Docherty had left the university. He sniffed the air, suddenly his lungs felt as if they were burning. His eyes wide, tears streamed from his face and his arms flailed, looking hopelessly for water or some nourishment and comforts. His hands clasped his neck, noticing his hands were turning a shade of purple.
His face had become a light purple, as if asphyxiated and veins in his head pulsated in panic. Finally, McAdams' body fell to the floor, his eyes still wide, as he lay without pulse, mouth agape on the floor of the lecture hall. A small hum rose from the vent, and a faint gurgle came from within the ventilation.
'You know, I can't keep using the TARDIS like this Bill!' The Doctor, his frowning eyebrows ever present strolled round his console, pulling back the Time Rotor so that the TARDIS could finish its materialisation.
'Oh Doctor, I only needed your help this time!' exclaimed Bill profusely, fiddling with her new badge, thinking about where it would appear on her denim jacket.
'And the time before that, and the time last Thursday' murmured an anxious Nardole, frowning with all the ferocity a man could do while wearing large round spectacles and a knitted coat.
Bill smirked. 'We all know that the TARDIS is a much more sophisticated form of transport than the bus. All of those people cramped into chairs, and how awkward is it when there are no seats left, and you have to sit next to a stranger!'
Nardole nodded his head in slight agreement.
The Doctor rolled his eyes and sighed. 'Well, this is the last time Bill. I mean it this time!'
Nardole tutted. 'You said you meant it last time, Doctor!'
The TARDIS let out a final whine and a boom as it landed in the Doctor's room in the university.
The Doctor popped his head round the side of the TARDIS, staring at Nardole, who was standing by the guard rails at the TARDIS doors. 'Haven't you got better things to do? You're always complaining about guarding the vault, but I don't see anyone there now. So get to it Nardole!'
Nardole rolled his eyes and turned his back on the Timelord. 'I didn't even sign up for this, you took the oath, not me.'
The Doctor grinned as Nardole left, and turned to face Bill, who was placing back a book she was reading from a bookshelf.
'On we go, I need to check the lecture hall is locked. You've got a big lecture tomorrow!'
'Bill scarpered down the TARDIS staircase, and followed the Doctor through the doors.
She caught up to the Doctor, who was quickly moving down the main university staircase.
'So, why lecture if you have all of time and space just waiting?' Bill asked with patient curiosity.
'Oh no, I used to Bill. Supernovas, quasars, alien life, I've had a good look. I took an oath to protect the vault and its contents. That means sticking around for a bit.'
'Is that why Nardole is so intent on keeping you here?'
'Nardole is just Nardole. I should've kept him in the big robot suit if I knew how naggy he would be!' exclaimed the Doctor with a chuckle.
Bill let out a glowing grin from ear to ear.
She bumped into the Doctor's back falling backwards and catching herself from falling to the ground.
'Hey! Next time tell me when you stop walking.'
The Doctor stood silently, as he looked back at Bill and back towards the lecture door.
'This should be locked. McAdams always made sure.'
'Oooh, a big mystery' Bill said in an eery voice. 'That, or he just forgot.'
The Doctor pushed past the open door, the lights dim and the lecture hall smelling musty, as old buildings do.
'It was the former.' whispered the Doctor staring down at the cold body of McAdams.
Bill took a breath.
'What happened to him Doctor?'
The Doctor fumbled around in his top left inside pocket for his Sonic Screwdriver. He pulled it out, along with a stick of celery.
Bill, with a confused frown asked 'Why do you have celery?'
The Doctor retorted quickly, defending carrying vegetation in his pockets. 'Why do you have badges? They're decorative.'
He handed Bill the celery.
'You. Wore this?' Bill asked.
'I used to, but it had its uses. Before that it was a big scarf, but I can't tell if celery was an improvement now. Anyway, can we move onto why, a lecturer is lying on the floor please?'
Bill recoiled her smirk. 'Sorry.'
The Doctor scanned McAdams body from head to toe, trying to make out an answer.
'Posion.'
Bill, was taken aback with shock. 'Poison? In a university?'
'Yes, but not the normal kind. He wasn't just lazy about cooking chicken, Bill. The Sonic is giving readings outside of Earth's normal atmospheric make-up.'
'Its alien.' stated Bill.
The Doctor span round to face Bill. 'Why'd you say it like that?'
'Like what?' asked Bill.
'Like thats not exciting!'
'Because with you Doctor, there's usually an alien hiding round the corner--'
'--or in the vents.' whispered the Doctor.
He motioned to Bill with his hands, pointing at the vent and to his ears.
'Listen!'
Bill lightly moved towards the vents, not putting herself to close.
'Hissss....*snap* *gurgle*.'
Bill's eyes widened, and she looked toward the Doctor, who activated his Sonic Screwdriver, giving a high pitched wail as it always did.
'Have you got a quiet setting for that?' called Bill.
'Its here Bill. That poison. The Sonic is picking up fluctuations in the recycled air in the vents. Whatever it is, its potency is getting to us.'
Bill coughed, her lungs not as adept as the Timelord's.
'Run Bill, we have to go! Get out! Get out!' he exclaimed in a panic, dropping his screwdriver as they made for the door.
The Doctor closed the door, sealing the air in using rags from the chalkboard cleaner trolley down the hall.
'This should keep it at bay for now. Are you alright Bill?'
Bill caught her breath, still clutching the celery the Doctor showed her.
'Ye-Yeah, I'm fine. Your Sonic is still in there though!'
'We can't go back in now Bill. Without the Sonic, we don't know what it is in there. It could be anything. Chen-7, Dioxsis. Chen-7 can kill a Timelord in a day. Its too risky.'
Bill was about to speak, before a sound, like a pipe hitting the floor echoed in the distance.
It was Russell. The Doctor looked down the dimly lit hall with a frown, noticing Russell staring back. Russell span around and ran for it.
'HEY! Stop!' cried the Doctor, running with Bill to catch Russell.
Russell ran towards the stairs, only to be greeted with a frown by Nardole as he came up them.
Nardole pulled out an early Sonic Screwdriver, stopping Russell in fright.
The Doctor and Bill caught up to Russell and Nardole, trying to catch their breath.
'What are you doing here? And why have you got my old screwdriver?' asked the Doctor.
'I heard all of the commotion and figured it must be to do with you. No-one else shouts with that accent in the middle of the night.'
The Doctor rolled his eyes.
'Don't hurt me!' squealed Russell, his eyes fixated on the Sonic device in Nardole's hand.
'Oh this? Don't worry about it, it can't hurt a fly. See?' Nardole pressed the Sonic, only for it to spark in his hand, causing Nardole to drop it in shock and it fell to the ground, smoking.
Bill stepped back quickly.
The Doctor sighed.
'You see, Nardole! This, this is why you make small talk with the Vault. Because you break all of my lovely equipment! That's two Sonic Screwdrivers in 20 minutes.'
'Two?' inquired Nardole. 'What happened to your one?'
'Well its not broken, just lost in a room of poisonous gas.' explained the Doctor, clasping his hands together.
Nardole tutted. 'Only around you, eh Doctor?'
The Doctor ignored him and moved on to Russell.
'What are you doing here after hours? I doubt you're that eager to learn, but if you were, that would make a nice change.' mused the Doctor.
'Its not my fault! I have to be here! It chose me to protect it!' Russell squawked.
'Hey hold on a tick. Who chose you, who are you protecting?'
'It calls itself the Magara' explained Russell. 'It said it needed help! I helped it survive!'
The Doctor sighed an angry sigh.
'Always you humans! You see something out of the ordinary, something different and you go out of your way to interfere!'
'I can show it to you. It gave me a gift.' said Russell sheepishly, pulling out the faded green and gold talisman.
The Doctor eyed it carefully. 'I feel like I've seen it before, I don't know where. That shape...'
He broke his train of thought and swung over to Bill.
'Do you still have that celery?' he asked impatiently.
'Yeah, why?'
'I think I know what kind of life form we're dealing with, I just need to check.'
He took the celery and rushed towards the lecture hall door, Bill, Nardole and Russell in tow.
He opened the door slightly, holding his red coat over his nose and mouth, moving his hand and the celery with it through the door.
'Stay back!' the Doctor murmured under his coat.
The group moved cautiously back per the Doctor's instructions, until the Doctor's hand reappeared, the celery looking different.
'Its purple!' Bill exclaimed.
The Doctor grinned his toothy grin towards them.
'I was right. The gas, its from the Praxis range. An old chemistry trick. I used celery to check for gases I was allergic too. The Praxis range of gases is also very deadly to humans. After all, our vascular systems aren't that different.'
The Doctor re-sealed the door, and snatched the Talisman from Russell's sweaty palms.
'Praxis gases are only found in particular galaxies. The talisman craftmanship narrowed it down to just one system; its not a Magara, there's no such thing! Thats it's name! Its from a race called the Jikreth! They create these talismans, the green jewel is only found on their home world! Its a Rehr crystal!'
From the ventilation, an echoed gurgle and screech rang around the vents.
'It understands! And I do too! It wasn't trying to kill us! It was just scared for its life! Bill you remember, we were fine until I used the Sonic. It could have poisoned us, it had bags of time. But it only felt threatened because of the Sonic!
'And the bell.' murmured Russell.
'The bell is high pitched. It occurs every day, and Professor McAdams was in the lecture hall when it rang. He was looking in the vents. It doesn't like the bell.' It got Professor Docherty too, ages ago.'
'Of course!' exclaimed the Doctor. 'The Jikreth don't tolerate high pitched noise. It felt threatened by the bell, by McAdams. Jikreth secrete a gas when under pressure. Praxis |
, charges Rs 15,0000 per annum for TCP/IP accounts (as against the Rs 5,000 for shell accounts and Rs 500 for student accounts). The government-run company has reportedly begun blocking access to users of 'ShellSock' starting on October 1. The reason provided by the firm - the use of ShellSock was not only reducing its revenues, but also lowering the quality of service offered to other 'paying' customers. The Kerala Internet Forum, the Kochi-based organisation of Net users, is leading the campaign to create "awareness" against VSNL's action. The forum is currently conducting an electronic signature campaign over the Internet. The forum has placed the resolution drawn up at its 'emergency meeting' of October 4 on the Net and has invited all "interested persons" to register their support with it. "We protest against further restriction of the shell account by VSNL for extraneous reasons. By this action, the chairman of VSNL has rendered himself ineligible to be the arbitrator under Clause 19 of the contract as the decision to further restriction is taken at his level and it is against the nation's interests," the KIF resolution says. However, a KIF representative said the organisation "was not too optimistic" about a favourable outcome. "There is very little that we can actually do. We can only raise awareness and get people to talk to VSNL. We are hoping that better sense will prevail," he said. Xtend Technologies, the creators of the software, have adopted a more strident approach. 'VSNL attempts to kill off ShellSock!' screams the company's makeshift Internet home page. "In an unprecedented move, VSNL, the monopoly ISP in India has unilaterally proceeded with its India-wide attempt to cripple ShellSock - a perfectly legal and ingenious software used by over 25,000 shell users," the company's note says. According to Xtend Tech's note, the use of ShellSock is "perfectly legal" as the software is "at heart a communication software that runs only on the user system" and does not have anything to do with the ISP. "ShellSock uses normal and documented shell commands that a user can actually type in to retrieve a HTML or Graphics file. Therefore, ShellSock does not use any loopholes in the shell account. All the commands that ShellSock uses are fully documented either in the UNIX manual or in the user manuals of the respective software," the note adds. The note also claims that the use of ShellSock does not constitute "hacking" into VSNL's TCP/IP network. According to Xtend Tech, none of the 19 clauses in the shell account contract (required by VSNL) specify that users can access only textual material. "Therefore, implicitly you have been given the right to access graphics," it claims. "After all, the contract is for a specific number of hours you spend online and not for the amount of data transferred," its note says. Xtend Tech further claims that it was always possible for users to download graphics and view it using an "image viewer" software. According to the company, ShellSock (which was launched a few months back) only automates the graphics download process and passes it onto a Web-browser software like the Netscape Navigator or Microsoft's Internet Explorer. "VSNL cannot object to a facility that was in place ever since their service was started, when all we have done was to give the shell user some automation... programs to help them along. VSNL objecting to the usage of ShellSock is actually objecting to the shell user automating his tasks," it says. Formed less than a year ago, the Cochin-based Xtend Technologies is run by computer experts and Internet consultants Kurian Thomas and K Jayakrishnan. However, VSNL is not without its share of supporters. According to a representative of the Internet Users' Club of India, it was only a "matter of time" before VSNL acted against the use of ShellSock. "VSNL, in fact, sent an email to all its users advising against the use of the software. The company had started to find out that more and more student users are starting to use it, leading to quite a serious loss of revenues. This latest action is unfortunate, but probably inevitable," he says.Photos by Durty Harry
Mick Jenkins is not your typical Chicago rapper. Having grown up two blocks away from where the Glo Boyz reside, Mick has a completely different outlook on the world than his neighbors.
Mick’s video for “Martyrs” is the best example of that contrast. His imitation of Chicago rap videos isn’t about poking fun at his competitors, but poking everyone’s cerebellum to try to wake them up.
We sat down with the 23-year-old emcee to talk about his upcoming project The Water[s], his purpose as an artist, and the moving “Martyrs” video.
Mass Appeal: When did you start rapping?
Mick Jenkins: During my sophomore year in college at Oakwood University. There was a rap competition called “Who Got Bars” and a couple homies were in it. I always had been a creative writer, my mother was a journalist, and because they were taking rap so serious, I just started taking it more seriously. I really became a student of what it is to rap and make music. That’s what’s gotten me here today.
MA: Were you listening to a lot of rap at a young age though?
MJ: Well, my father would played a lot of Christian music. I’m a Seventh-day Adventist. He played a lot of Fred Hampton and stuff. My mother played a lot of neo-soul; Jill Scott, Erykah, Prince, and whoever else you could think of.
My older cousin got me into a lot of hip hop via Talib, Little Brother— I really like Phonte, Q-Tip, Common. The first album I bought was College Dropout, like a lot of people coming up with me, just because we all the same age and shit. Those were the musical influences I was listening to. I wasn’t into the radio heavy, and that’s continued into today. It’s just… the same shit over and over.
MA: You’re from the South, you must’ve listened to Wayne.
MJ: I mean, we listened to Wayne heavy. Who didn’t? But the way I think about music now…
MA: How do you think about music now?
MJ: You’re not going to make it on my iPod if you’re not talking about anything. I understand the culture, and I tolerate the music when it’s around, but how many songs can I hear about the exact same shit? And that’s what they make. Wayne’s making music about the same shit he’s been making music for the past 15 years, and the radio is doing the same thing. I don’t really listen to mainstream music.
MA: What constitutes as meaning to you?
MJ: A purpose. It doesn’t even have to be my purpose. Just a focus. For example, I feel like Beyoncé wants to be more personal with this album and release it in a way she’s never done before. And that’s because she’s done this seven times already. We’re looking for new ways to do things and be more innovative. I feel like a lot of, at least with [hip hop], isn’t looking for new ways to be innovative. We really just recycling the same formula for these new artists that come out.
Migos and, what’s that boy? “Danny Glover”?
MA: Young Thug?
MJ: Yeah, Young Thug. They could have been interchanged and nobody would’ve known the difference. It’s the same shit over and over.
MA: What’s your meaning as an artist?
MJ: I want to wake people up to the ways of the music industry and the ways of the world. I feel like there’s very jaded views as to what love is, what being real is, what happiness is. I feel like the world, society in general, people have the the wrong idea about how to achieve these things and what will bring you happiness. I just want to poke people’s brains and be like, ‘Hey, this is definitely a better way than what they’ve been telling you.’ That’s the goal.
“Klondike Shit” is a song off Trees & Truths, and it’s blended in to make you want to listen to it, but it’s really talking about the beauty of a woman. There’s real messages in it. It’s challenging what we define as beautiful.
MA: Talking about Trees & Truths, what’s the difference between that project and The Water[s]?
MJ: The Water[s] has just been taking so much more time. Trees & Truths is the first 14 songs I recorded and we put them out. The Water[s] is choosing from a group of songs. What is really going to make this tape the best? Making sure that sonically they’re all in sync.
On Trees & Truths the production is all over the place, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but I want a project to be a project. To be more in sync and thought out on the sonic side rather than just on the conceptual side.
A lot of the songs on Trees & Truths I felt like I couldn’t perform. I wouldn’t perform them just because I didn’t feel absolutely comfortable performing them. I want people to leave with a certain amount of appreciation for my live performance, and the music needs to cater to that. It’s only so hype someone can get to some chill shit. With The Water[s] there’s definitely a lot more upbeat shit like “Martyrs.”
MA: How did the concept for the video “Martyrs” come about?
MJ: With “Martyrs” I knew I had to do the house scene, where I imitate the typical Chicago rappers. Just because the statement that I’m actually trying to make in “Martyrs” is that we used to be martyrs. Martyrs is usually associated with people who have died for a good purpose. That’s what we used to be. We were actually being hung, being persecuted just for being black. For different reasons, but we were standing up for ourselves, fighting back. Sometimes that would result in not so pleasurable outcomes.
I feel like these days we’re killing ourselves for no reason. A lot of that is fueled by the music. Not to say that it is the inception for it, but in that clip during the “Marytrs” video, that guy, I really should have put this on there, when they asked him what else would you say to the families of the men that you killed he said, “Fuck ’em, fuck ’em, fuck ’em. Even if they celibate. I know the game is crazy, it’s more crazy than it’s ever been. I’m married to that crazy bitch. Call me Kevin Federline.” What more proof do you need that this music influences you?
It may not be the reason he did that shit, but he was asked what would he say to the families of the victims he killed and he recited Wayne. That’s not an accident. That shit really effects you and that’s the statement I was trying to say. I knew I wanted to do that that scene.
MA: It’s interesting that you decided to imitate the Chicago rap scene being that you’re from there. There seems to be two sides to it; these kids are shining light on what’s happening, or they’re fueling the violence out there. What do you think is happening?
MJ: It starts with that drill shit because that’s what’s made this surge of attention come to Chicago. People turn their heads to Chief Keef and drill music, and that in turn had people listening to Chance The Rapper. It’s definitely not nationally realized, but you know.
I feel like it starts with that shit, and that does bring light to the situation— just not in the way you would think. People are having the discussion because of Chief Keef. I think three of them aren’t even allowed to perform in Chicago right now because of the violence their shows might incite.
But then, on the other side of it, myself and other artists who are my friends– it’s real. We grew up in Chicago two blocks away from where Glo Boys be at. I went to a terrible school. I grew up in the same thing, but I am not the same. We have the same stories we just see it from different angles. Me personally, I want to figure out solutions and think of what we can to do create change. I think Common and Kanye helped with like 20,000 jobs in Chicago with the project that they’re working on. I want to do things like that.
MA: How were you able to come out of a situation that was bleak and have a more solution based outlook than other artists?
MJ: I couldn’t even say because I don’t know what goes on in those people’s lives. I attribute it to my parents and the way I was raised. I’ve definitely had my fair share of hardships. My parents are divorced. My mother got lupus and I thought she might die. There’s a lot of different things that have happened in my life. But whatever I want I’m going to work at it. That’s just my past.
Here is a new track featuring Mick Jenkins and Supa Bwe titled “Treat Me (Caucasian).” Produced by Mulatto Beats and Supa Bwe, the beat is lackluster but the hook provides some excitement. Jenkins saves the track with his bombastic voice and engaging wordplay.
“Treat Me (Caucasian)” is off the Hurt Everybody EP set to drop next week.A former soccer coach is acquitted in a murder trial. The prosecutor in the case holds a news conference after the verdict. Three journalists covering the trial are excluded.
The dateline for this story isn’t somewhere overseas. It’s unfortunately in our own backyard, in upstate New York.
Last week, St. Lawrence County District Attorney Mary Rain barred The Watertown Daily Times reporter William Eckert and photographer Jason Hunter from a news conference after a not guilty verdict in the murder trial of Oral “Nick” Hillary.
Hillary was accused of stalking, strangling and killing 12-year-old Garrett Phillips. The trial has garnered media attention outside of New York, highlighted on national TV programs.
According to The Watertown Daily Times, Rain excluded Eckert because she said he “‘is a dishonest reporter and I won’t have a dishonest reporter reporting to the community dishonestly.'” (Another journalist, Brit Hanson, was also blocked from the news conference but it has been reported that Rain said that happened in error.)
Click here to read Eckert explain how the events unfolded.
This is unacceptable and threatens the right of a free press. If government officials use their power to decide which journalists are granted access to public information, involving the public, on public property, it threatens our rights and freedom to speak freely, gather information freely and publish freely.
This goes beyond granting someone an exclusive or first interview. This was a news conference where only a few people were excluded and they were excluded because of a government leader’s opinion of them and their work.
The government does not get to decide who reports on and covers them. The public should be outraged that a public official is trying to block their right to public information by blocking access to those that may ask critical questions or hold officials accountable. Excluding certain members of the press from interviews and news conferences interferes with the public’s right to know.
I join and support the New York State Associated Press Association, a group of New York newspaper and broadcast journalists, in condemning Rain’s actions.
“…It is inappropriate for you to attempt to control information by giving personal invitations to only certain reporters based on your preference for favorable coverage, or to bar reporters whose coverage you dislike,” the association president Tracy Ormsbee said in the letter.
Click here to read the full letter.
A response from Rain was not immediately received but will be added if it is.
The Watertown Daily Times is protesting and demanding an apology from Rain.
Related
Tags: Garrett Phillips, Jason Hunter, Lynn Walsh, New York, Oral Nick Hillary, St. Lawrence County District Attorney Mary Rain, Watertown Daily Times, Watertown New York, William Eckert
Defending the First Amendment and promoting open government are more crucial now than ever. Join SPJ's fight for the publics right to know either as an SPJ Supporter or a professional, student or retired journalist.Waitlisted passengers will soon get status messages on their mobile phones if their tickets get confirmed before their train journey.
A senior Railway Ministry official said the waitlisted passenger will get a SMS about the status of the ticket on the mobile phone number given at the time of ticket booking before the journey.
Currently, one has to either dial the enquiry number 139 or use the Internet to know the status of the waitlisted ticket.
Others get to know the status of their tickets only after reaching the respective station.
"Once the SMS-based service is operational, passengers will get the updated status of their waitlisted tickets automatically," the official said, adding "only those passengers will get the message whose tickets get confirmed."
CRIS, which is the technological arm of Railways, is making the software for the SMS-based service.
IRCTC has already launched a system which allows passengers to book tickets using mobile phones.
PTI
Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.An Interview with the Hilarious Eugene Mirman
If you’ve watched any comedy in the last decade, chances are you’re familiar with Eugene Mirman. He’s been absolutely hilarious on” Delocated,” “Archer,” “Flight of the Conchords,” and, of course, as Gene on “Bob’s Burgers”…just to name a few. His last stand-up special, “An Evening of Comedy in a Fake Underground Laboratory,” is also available right now for only $5. He sat down with us recently to talk about some of the most memorable moments he’s had while doing stand-up. Be sure to check him out live at a venue near you.
MANDATORY: You had mentioned before that you had a few bizarre fan encounters. Can you tell us about one of them?
EUGENE MIRMAN: I never had anything like someone mailing me a pig’s head, but several where people have known way too much information about me. Most of the time fans are really sweet and have emailed me really nice things. One time I was doing a comedy festival in Boston and one of the things we did was we built an eye contact booth, which I would sit inside of and basically all you could see was my eyes. It was a weird thing because most people don’t really build a booth specifically for eye contact. It was in the front of the venue and when people were coming in, they would see that it was me sitting in there and laugh then walk away.
However, there was one girl who came up to me and said “I want you to know that my dad had cancer and when he was really sick, he watched your special and it cheered him up.” As she walked away I thought “Oh my god, that’s really powerful” but then she immediately ran back and said, “Oh but he’s fine now, he didn’t die!” and then ran away. It was really funny because she realized she had made it sound like my special was the last thing her dad watched before he died and had to clarify it with “Oh no he’s great now, he’s fine, but you still cheered him up.” It was a very odd but very sweet encounter. I’d say there have been more things like that where people are positive than anything horribly negative.
MANDATORY: It would be terrible if the same girl showed up two years later to let you know that her dad is now actually dead.
EUGENE MIRMAN: But she adds on that he still really liked the special. Just to be clear, he really enjoyed your work.
MANDATORY: What about hecklers? Have you had any that really stood out to you?
EUGENE MIRMAN: Well the real problem is that most hecklers are just extremely drunk people talking really loudly and they get so loud it’s hard for you to focus on what you’re saying. It would be very hard if, right now, there were a bunch of drunk people yelling at us during our conversation. It takes people out of the show and it can ruin an event that people paid money for, that’s the real problem. That being said, it can be funny. One time I had a guy at a show in Atlanta and he was so drunk that he kept passing out and it basically looked like he was drunkenly telling his own dick a story. It was really funny because he was just collapsing into his lap. He eventually had to be thrown out though, because he just wouldn’t stop. He just had to tell this really great story to his dick.
I mean it’s certainly funny the moment he gets thrown out when everyone starts clapping, but he had been doing it for 15-20 minutes just ruining the night for everyone around him. It’s fun for some people, I guess, because it’s not planned. Like in England, it’s a much more interactive culture of stand-up so some comics ask them for things or suggestions and everyone jokes around. That’s very different from a person who just wants attention and thinks that they’re funny.
One of the weirdest moments was when I was performing in Miami and this lady kept yelling at me while I was on stage. After I was done she came up to me and said, “I really liked your stuff, it’s just that I wanted the band that was performing after you to play earlier.” I was like “That isn’t really how it works.” She explained this really ridiculous philosophy that was essential Ayn Rand except she had definitely never read Ayn Rand. She basically said “No, I believe everyone should be shitty to each other as long as it’s funny.” or something to that effect. Probably not quite that advance.
MANDATORY: Finally, for those that haven’t heard your album, An Evening of Comedy in a Fake Underground Laboratory, what can you tell them about it?
EUGENE MIRMAN: They can expect to hear some stand-up comedy and they can expect to be surprised, because comedy is a surprise. I don’t know, there are some goofy things on it too.
Also I have a comedy festival in Brooklyn, September 26-29th, and there’s still a few tickets left so if you’re going to be in the area, come check it out.This is a bull elephant firmly establishing why it is he, and not the lion, who is king of beasts. The elephant's penis is not only massive but prehensile. As we watched in baffled amusement (and the faintest tinge of inadequacy), he used his penis to prop himself up (as in the photo), swat flies from his side and scratch himself on his stomach. David Attenborough never showed us that...
There's good reason for elephants to have prehensile penises. It's hard enough for a six-tonne animal to get into the right position for sex, let alone having to do the rhythmic thrusting that's required. So he let's his penis do all the work for him.
You'll also note the dark stain behind his eye - that's a leak from his temporal gland. It means that this male was entering musth, the period when their testosterone shoots through the roof and they get incredibly horny and aggressive. We tried to drive round this male and he basically charged us. Tramply doom was averted by our driver who slammed his palm against the car door as hard as he could. The elephant stopped and huffed and puffed. We did our best to not soil ourselves.
This picture gives you an idea of how close he was. After a seemingly infinite standstill, he moved aside, extended his enormous penis and had a wee. It's amazing how terror can convert into comedy so quickly...Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Well, I started a post on Kiribati, but when it was half written I found Andi Cockroft had beaten me to it with his post. His analysis was fine, but I had a different take on the events. President Tong of Kiribati says the good folk of the atolls are again looking for some place to move their people if they have to. However, this time, it’s different. This time, they’re not blaming it on sea level rise. This time, they’re not talking about suing the industrialized nations. And this time, they’re making their own plans, they’re not waiting for the world to act. The headline in USA Today says:
Pacific nation may move entire population to Fiji
Figure 1. The island nation of Kiribati, which is comprised of the Gilbert and Phoenix groups and the Line Islands. I call it the world’s biggest tiny country. The Kiribati EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) is the eighth largest in the world … and it is 99.99% ocean.
Let me comment that if I had a chance to pull up stakes in Kiribati and move to Fiji, I’d do it in a second. Fiji is high volcanic islands, with rich soil and lots of it. And Kiribati, on the other hand, is tiny coral atolls with … well … nothing. Life on the atolls is tough, tough, tough. The highest point on any of the atolls of Kiribati is about 3 metres (10 feet) above sea level, and there is no real soil, only lime coral sand. It is a testament to the ingenuity and perseverance of humans that anyone lives on the atolls at all. The people from Kiribati are great folks, consummate seamen, and very interesting people in general. The ones I’ve known have been great folks. Don’t cross the women, though, bad mistake, the women will clean your clock if you cross them, that’s one of the reasons I like them so much.
But the fact that life is tough in Kiribati is not the reason that they’re talking about moving. And indeed, although the report mentions climate change, the President of Kiribati actually didn’t blame rising sea levels. The article goes on to say:
Fearing that climate change could wipe out their entire Pacific archipelago, the leaders of Kiribati are considering an unusual backup plan: moving the populace to Fiji. Kiribati President Anote Tong told The Associated Press on Friday that his Cabinet this week endorsed a plan to buy nearly 6,000 acres on Fiji’s main island, Viti Levu. He said the fertile land, being sold by a church group for about $9.6 million, could be insurance for Kiribati’s entire population of 103,000, though he hopes it will never be necessary for everyone to leave. “We would hope not to put everyone on one piece of land, but if it became absolutely necessary, yes, we could do it,” Tong said. “It wouldn’t be for me, personally, but would apply more to a younger generation. For them, moving won’t be a matter of choice. It’s basically going to be a matter of survival.” Kiribati, which straddles the equator near the international date line, has found itself at the leading edge of the debate on climate change because many of its atolls rise just a few feet above sea level. Tong said some villages have already moved and there have been increasing instances of sea water contaminating the island’s underground fresh water, which remains vital for trees and crops. He said changing rainfall, tidal and storm patterns pose as least as much threat as ocean levels, which so far have risen only slightly.
Now, before getting into the story, a few facts. First. name of the nation is pronounced “Kih-rih-bas”, with the accent on the first syllable. Why the strange spelling? Turns out that’s how you spell “Gilberts”, the old name of the islands, in the local language. There’s no “s” in the language, so they use “ti” for the “s” sound, based on how “ti” is pronounced in “motion”. Also, as in many Pacific missionary-derived orthographies of the local language, there are no diphthongs consonant pairs in the Kiribati language. So the “lb” in “Gilberts” becomes “rib” because … you guessed it, no “l” in the language, so they use “r” instead. So in Figure 1, you see that “Christmas” in the local language is spelled “Kiritimati”. Also, the people are called “i-Kiribati”, with the “i” pronounce like “ee”.
Returning to the idea of the i-Kiribati moving to Fiji, curiously, that would not be the first historical intersection between the people of Kiribati and the people of Fiji. In the early days of WWII, it became obvious that the Japanese would invade one of the Gilbert Islands called “Ocean Island” or Banabas. The Gilberts were British at the time, as was Fiji, so the Brits decided to act.
Basically, the British took all of the inhabitants of Banabas Island, and moved them lock, stock, and fishing lines to the island of Rabi in Fiji. Rabi is a beautiful island, and it is ruled domestically not by the Fijians, but by the Rabi Island Council. It’s like a little bit of Kiribati in Fiji, almost everyone on the island is i-Kiribati. So this would not be the first group of i-Kirbati to resettle in Fiji.
Nor would it be the first move by i-Kiribati away from the Gilberts group. The Phoenix group of islands were settled in the late 1930s by people from the Gilberts group. This occurred as a direct result of what would become a recurring problem—when atoll populations intersect with modern medicine, overpopulation is not far off.
As a result, the obliging British, who likely felt some responsibility, gave the Phoenix group to be settled by the i-Kiribati. They settled the islands between 1938 and 1940. But the water was bad and scarce. Communications were hard, as was transportation, and the war made it worse. In 1952, after a series of dry years, the experiment was declared a failure.
However, of course, by then there was no room for the Phoenix folks back in the Gilberts. Besides, by then there were newly overcrowded islands in the Gilberts too, people keep having kids. So … the Brits were looking for people to work on the plantations in the Solomon islands. In the early 1950s, they gave Wagina Island and land on Gizo Island in the Solomons to anyone willing to sign up for the Solomon Islands Settlement Scheme. Many of the folks who emigrated were from the Phoenix Islands, where poor water sources and a drought had combined to make the islands uninhabitable. Compared to that, the Solomons were a paradise. Except for the malaria, of course.
Drought has long been the bane of Kiribati. When your only water comes from a small lens of fresh water renewed only by rain, it is a matter of life and death. There is a fascinating report by some National Academy of Science folks, published in 1957, of their researches in Kiribati in the early ’50s. It was very clear, even back then, that droughts were a huge issue. Among many other interesting things they say are:
As for the rainfall, the attached graphs will show how it varies between the groups in the North, Central and South Islands (Fig. 4). One of the most important ecological factors in the Gilbert Islands is drought. These islands are periodically affected by it. There was a two-year drought in 1917-1919, a three-year drought in 1937-1939, and another which lasted a year and a half in 1949-1951. These periods of drought particularly affect the south islands. Comparative statistics in Figure 4 show the’ monthly rainfall of one island of each group over a period of 4 years, comparing periods or normal rainfall with periods of drought which occurred from August, 1949 to December, 1950.
And here is their Figure 4:
Figure 2. Monthly rainfall on three different atolls of Kiribati. Click image for a larger version.
Tarawa, the middle row, is the capital of Kiribati. Like the other islands, it depended entirely on rainfall for drinking water. Look at what happened in 1950 to the rainfall in Tarawa … yes, that would definitely cause problems. You can see why the British were wanting to move people in the early 1950s, they’d been dying of thirst on some of the atolls. Plus the population on the atolls was already very high. The NAS report says:
It would seem that the Gilbert Islands, where the soil is so poor, and which suffer from recurrent severe droughts, should have a small population. We observe, on the contrary, a very high demographic density. The population of the sixteen islands of the Group amounted at the time of the 1947 census to 27,824, or an average density of 243.9 per square mile. This figure is just given as an average and does not claim to have any great demonstrative value as, in fact, the density varies considerably as between one island and another. Thus Tamana has 441.5 per square mile while Aranuka has only 61.3.
But of course, moving folks from the Gilberts to the Solomon Islands didn’t solve the population problem either. To understand why it made no difference, here’s a historical look at the population of Kiribati
Figure 3. Kiribati population change over time. I picked the photo because for me it exemplified the irrepressible spirit of the i-Kiribati people. Population information is from the FAO and the NAS report cited above.
Remember that in 1947, people were already commenting on the high population density … and now the density is three times as great. So you can understand why the President is looking for more land. Here’s another bit of information. The article says that they want to buy a 6,000 acre parcel in Fiji. In Texas, that would only be a small ranch.
But that land in Fiji is nearly 10% of the total area of Kiribati, and nearly 15% of the inhabited area of Kiribati. So I understand why they want to buy it.
You can see the danger. The population is skyrocketing. And unlike just about every country on the planet, there is absolutely no sign of any slowdown in the Kiribati population growth rate.
But the rain … the rain is unchanged. It’s still years of wet and then years of dry, just like always … but when you have three times the people, the dry years become unsustainable. President Tong correctly notes “increasing instances of sea water contaminating the island’s underground fresh water”. He does not note the obvious reason that the well water is becoming brackish—there are three times the people drinking from each and every well, while the rainwater recharging the wells hasn’t changed.
As a result, I fear there is no obvious solution. Buying land in Fiji in 2012, while it is a good stopgap measure, will do no more to solve the underlying problem than did exporting people to the Solomon Islands in 1954. There is only one solution to their problem, and it has nothing to do with CO2, or the climate, or the industrialized nations, or the sea level. The people of Kiribati have to, must, reduce their birth rate.
I understand that there are issues of religion and social pressure and the like, but look at the blue line in Figure 2. Kiribati is already busting at the seams with people, and the rate of population growth is not decreasing … they will be lucky to come out of this without huge social, economic, and political problems. So I wish President Tong the best of luck in his efforts to reduce some of those problems.
And if anyone can pull it off, it would be the i-Kiribati. Let me close by quoting the 1950s NAS report again:
Another aspect of their nature is their total confidence in others, both in moral and material dealings. We also appreciated their independent spirit and their frankness, which is often disarming. Their answers, whether positive or negative, are always direct. But the Gilbertese’ forthrightness does not preclude a form of respect devoid of obsequiousness. His often unexpected reactions are never arrogant, and are a corollary of his independent, individualistic nature, as are his teasing spirit and fanciful mind. Both are expressed in choreographic attitudes, in which mimicry always has a deserved success. Finally, these people have a highly-developed artistic sense, and it would be difficult to find anything to equal some of their extraordinarily beautiful choral singing, It is really in their dances and choral singing only that the Gilbertese express the whole genius of their race, and can give rein to an exuberance which, because of a surprising modesty, is no longer manifested in the ordinary course of their everyday life. The Gilbertese are an intelligent people. Many show real pride in having risen above the general level, but it did not seem to us that this was ever expressed in a contemptuous or even haughty way. Those working with Europeans are generally avid to learn and to understand everything and are full of gratitude for whoever may have increased their knowledge, even about their own territory.
Yeah, that’s the i-Kiribati I know. Interesting, good-natured, hardworking folks. I wish them only the best.
w.
PS—Population density in Kiribati is currently about 750 people per square mile. If they were all moved to the land in Fiji as the headline claims, the population density there would be about 11,000 per square mile … by comparison, Bangladesh has a density of about 2,500 per square mile. So whether they buy the land or not, they won’t be able to move everyone there.
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Other LanguagesENID, OK—Local resident Spencer Cravel announced his plans to move to New York City Wednesday so that he might pursue his passion for being jostled and bumped around. “For a guy like me who enjoys getting jostled, bopped, and knocked from side to side by hundreds of strangers all pressing forward in a pointless hurry, New York City’s the place to be,” said Cravel, who first discovered his love of getting shoved from every direction as if in a herd of cattle while exiting a professional basketball game. “I’ve been to Chicago and there’s some good jostling there, especially around the El train entrances early in the morning, and I hear Tokyo has some top-notch jostling, but here, in America, if you want to be jostled, and I mean truly good and jostled, you got to go to New York City.” Cravel admitted he was relieved he’d no longer have to seek out jostling spots in his hometown, saying he’d grown tired of the “rinky-dink” jostling he experiences when trying to reenter his local movie theater after a film has just ended.
AdvertisementKevin Hayden – TruthisTreason.net
The adulteration and modification of some of the planet’s most widely used crops has changed our food landscape. Chemicals, preservatives, genetic modification and low-cost substitutions and fillers have wrecked meals that were once healthy for us. Stepping inside of a grocery store nowadays, we find ourselves in a dangerous and toxic new world. The introduction of genetically modified organisms into the food supply in the 1990′s, coupled with rampant use of carcinogens such as aspartame, and substitutions like high fructose corn syrup, set the perfect stage to form a deadly concoction known as processed food. Sadly, this is what encompasses the average American diet.
Genetically modified foods are now found in approximately 80% of all food in a typical grocery store.
What Exactly is a GMO?
A GMO, or genetically modified organism, is the result of a laboratory process of taking genes from one species and inserting them into another in an attempt to obtain a desired trait or characteristic, hence they are also known as transgenic organisms. This process may be called either Genetic Engineering (GE) or Genetic Modification (GM); they are one and the same.
It’s Hard to Be Informed Without Labels!
In Germany and throughout the European Union, food products that contain GMOs must be properly labeled as such. As a result, there are few GM products on store shelves because, when made aware of their presence, consumers almost unanimously reject them. But what many people fail to realize, both in Europe and in the US, is that conventional livestock is often fed GM soy and corn, which ultimately ends up on store shelves in the form of conventional meat, milk, and eggs.
Furthermore, the development of genetically modified foods often comes from seed and chemical companies, such as Monsanto, the developer of Roundup Weed Killer. Monsanto inserts most GMOs with a bacterial gene which allows the plant to survive a normally deadly dose of Roundup herbicide. Although the spray doesn’t kill the plant, its active ingredient called glyphosate accumulates in the plant, and is then consumed by rats, livestock, and humans.
Roundup Ready, Chemicals, and Glyphosate
There is so much glyphosate in GM soybeans, that when they were introduced in Europe, countries had to increase their allowable residue levels by 200 fold.
In the Journal of Toxicology in Vitro, researchers found that Monsanto’s popular “weed killer,” known as Roundup, is capable of interfering with and/or harming the male reproductive system. (Dec., 2011)
Glyphosate is considered to be within safe, acceptable levels up to 10,000 ppm. What is more disturbing is that even at a lower, presumably “non toxic” and almost non existent concentration of 1 ppm of Roundup herbicide, testosterone concentrations were observed to decrease by 35%.
A German university study has found significant concentrations of glyphosate in the urine samples of city dwellers. The analysis of the urine samples found that all had concentrations of glyphosate at 5 to 20-fold the limit for drinking water. As well as being used increasingly widely in food production, glyphosate-based weedkillers often also get sprayed onto railway lines, urban pavements, and roadsides.
News of this study comes not long after the publication of a study confirming glyphosate was contaminating groundwater. Last year also saw the publication of two US Geological Survey studies which consistently found glyphosate in streams, rain and even air in agricultural areas of the US.
Genetically modified crops are causing a growing epidemic of “superweeds.” These massive weeds have evolved a resistance to glyphosate, a chemical used on GM crops. Stronger toxic chemicals and soil-eroding tillage operations are required in order to eliminate superweeds.
Furthermore, by increasing the need for stronger and more poisonous pesticides, Dow Chemical company is awaiting approval from the USDA for their new line of corn and soybeans resistant to 2, 4-D, a chemical related to Agent Orange.
Years ago, this same Agent Orange ingredient was suggested, but the USDA stated that glyphosate was much safer and effective. We now see super-weeds resistant to gylphosate and so the USDA is nearing a complete reversal on its earlier statements by approving 2, 4-D to be inserted into the genes of our food staples.
GMOS were initially promoted as a bio-technology to reduce pesticide usage, but GM crops in the US used 26 percent more pesticides, per acre, in 2008 than non-GMO crops, based on US Department of Agriculture (USDA) data.
Animal Studies and Further Reproductive Issues
In a Brazilian study, female rats fed GM soy for 15 months showed significant changes in their uterus and reproductive cycle, compared to rats fed organic soy or those raised without soy. (Published in The Anatomical Record in 2009)
In Haryana, India, a team of investigating veterinarians report that buffalo consuming GM cottonseed suffer from infertility, as well as frequent and spontaneous abortions, premature deliveries, and prolapsed uteruses.
A study of male rabbits showed that glyphosate can cause a reduction in sexual activity and sperm concentration, and an increase in dead or abnormal sperm.
… “As an example, it is now being discovered that pollen from genetically modified corn can kill monarch butterflies,” writes Ron Garner in his book Conscious Health.
A Cornell University study showed that monarch butterflies suffered higher mortality rates when consuming milkweed leaves dusted with the Bt toxin associated with GM crops.
Industry mouthpieces have long alleged that Monsanto’s Bt toxin, which is derived from a soil bacterium known as Bacillus thuringiensis, is harmless to humans. The built-in pesticide has been integrated into certain GM crops to ward off pests. Bt corn, for instance, has actually been designed to produce the toxin directly inside its kernels, which are later eaten by both livestock and humans. (http://www.naturalnews.com/026426_G…) –
In the recent study, researchers Aziz Aris and Samuel Leblanc evaluated 30 pregnant women and 39 non-pregnant women … researchers detected Monsanto’s Bt Cry1Ab toxin in a shocking 93 percent of maternal and 80 percent of fetal blood samples. And 69 percent of non-pregnant women tested positive for the toxin in their blood.
Organ Failure
In what is being described as the first ever and most comprehensive study of the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers have linked organ damage with consumption of Monsanto’s GM maize (corn):
“Three varieties of Monsanto’s GM corn – Mon 863, insecticide-producing Mon 810, and Roundup® herbicide-absorbing NK 603 – were approved for consumption by US, European and several other national food safety authorities… “Effects were mostly concentrated in kidney and liver function, the two major diet detoxification organs, but in detail differed with each GM type. In addition, some effects on heart, adrenal, spleen and blood cells were also frequently noted.
As there normally exists sex differences in liver and kidney metabolism, the highly statistically significant disturbances in the function of these organs, seen between male and female rats, cannot be dismissed as biologically insignificant as has been proposed by others.
We therefore conclude that our data strongly suggests that these GM maize varieties induce a state of hepatorenal toxicity….These substances have never before been an integral part of the human or animal diet and therefore their health consequences for those who consume them, especially over long time periods are currently unknown.”
In regards to consuming Bt and GMO corn:
US corn agriculture (almost exclusively genetically engineered) has been criticized as environmentally unsustainable and conspicuously subsidized by the Federal government. Of the 160 food products that can be purchased at a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant, not one item can be traced back to a non-corn source. (It’s hard to avoid corn ingredients and by-products, with high fructose corn syrup being the most common!)
When speaking about high fructose corn syrup, one must understand that due to the government subsidies and the huge lobbying firms who stand behind corn, it has now become the dominant ingredient in our food supply. Corn syrup is far cheaper to manufacture than real sugar and it is added to almost everything. Aside from the human body’s irregular, confused, and cancerous response to the unnatural high fructose corn syrup, it is mostly made from genetically modified corn supplies. Your bread, soft drinks, juices, processed meats, pastas, chips, desserts, and everything in between have countless forms of GMO corn and high fructose corn syrup.
See my other articles regarding the dangers of corn syrup here.
Agencies and Countries Condemning or Banning GMOs
The German government has banned the cultivation of genetically modified corn, calling it, “a danger to the environment.”
The World Trade Organization, as urged by the United States, Argentina and Canada, ruled in 2006 that banning genetically modified foods was against trade rules. However, Austria and Hungary went ahead with their bans, regardless. The trade rules have since been overturned and now allow member countries to develop their own policies.
The Polish government adopted a policy on GMO food in November 2008. It allows cultivating GMOs only in laboratories and bans GMO trade; it also opposes cultivation of genetically modified foods.
Ireland has banned the growing of GM crops, and a voluntary GM-free label can be placed on all animal products–such as meat, poultry, eggs, fish, crustaceans, and dairy–that are raised with GM-free feed, according to a GM-Free Ireland press release.
Sri Lanka has banned the importation of genetically modified foods, preservatives and additives.
“This decision shows the majority of Swiss do not want genetically modified food on their plates,” Marlyse Dormond, a member of Parliament who backed the ban, told Radio Suisse Romande.
Greece has extended a ban on a strain of genetically modified corn produced by U.S. agriculture biotechnology company Monsanto for another two years.
France banned GMO maize (corn) in February of 2008, invoking a so-called safeguard clause because of, “serious risks for the environment.”
The four regions of Tuscany, Molise, Lazio and Marche and around 25 provinces, cities and communes in Italy banned GE crops, including Rome, Milan, Turin, Brescia and Genoa. These are all democratically-taken decisions in local or regional councils and in the case of Tuscany, the result has been ratified by the national government.
Portugal has two regions, the Algarve region and the Madeira islands, that have declared themselves GMO-free. Additionally, 27 municipalities all over Portugal have passed GMO-free declarations.
Peru’s Congress overwhelmingly approved a 10-year moratorium on imports of genetically modified organisms in order to safeguard the country’s biodiversity.
The Environmental Protection Agency has recently found that Monsanto’s genetically modified corn, which was created to kill insects, may be losing its effectiveness against rootworms. Furthermore, the EPA stated “Monsanto’s program for monitoring suspected cases of resistance is ‘inadequate’”.
Genetically engineered agriculture is an extension of the current industrial-farming practices that have resulted in the loss of family farms and farmer livelihoods around the globe.
In recent years, India has seen an incredible surge in GM cotton farmer suicides. This is attributed to the GM cotton and repeated spraying of herbicides destroying the fertility of the soil and the micro-organisms that exist naturally, resulting in massive crop failures. Additionally, many farmers have bankrupted themselves by having to purchase new seed every year from the bio-tech companies due to implanted seed self-termination genes.
GMO crops are promoted as way to feed the world and mitigate hunger; however, numerous studies demonstrate that the GM crops do not produce higher yields as claimed. As one example, a USDA publication reports that “GM crops do not increase the yield potential.”
Monsanto, the world leader in genetically modified crops and seeds, has been named the worst company of 2011 by Natural Society — for “threatening both human health and the environment.”
___
Kevin Hayden is a former New Orleans police officer-turned-political activist. He endured Hurricane Katrina’s chaos and societal collapse in the days following and after 5 years in New Orleans, moved to Oklahoma. Kevin currently runs www.TruthisTreason.net and works on local politics and education about our monetary, food, and foreign policies while building an off-grid homestead and helping people become prepared. He can be contacted directly at Contact@TruthisTreason.net
Tiny URL for this post: http://tinyurl.com/6tvjlaoScandinavians left more than just archaeological artefacts when they conquered parts of the British Isles − the Scottish language is full of it.
From the beginning of the 9th century AD through the 11th century AD, Vikings raided the coast of the British Isles. But there were also quite a number of Scandinavians who chose to settle there.
Evidence of their impact can be found even today in Scottish Gaelic, Irish and partly in English.
The Scottish Gaelic word trosg (cod in English, torsk in Norwegian) and stòl (stool in English, krakk in Norwegian) have their origins in Old Norse. So do the English words window (vindu in Norwegian) and sky (himmel in Norwegian).
There were many Scandinavian settlements along the coast, and many settlers specifically went to Scotland.
“It was natural for them to stay there because it was close to the ocean," says Pavel Iosad, a PhD candidate at the Center for Advanced Study in Theoretical Linguistics (CASTL) at the University of Tromsø.
Place names
The Scottish Gaelic language has traditionally been very strong on the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland. The Gaelic name of the site is Leòdhas, which many believe comes from the Scandinavian name Ljo›ahús. This is a compound word, comprised of a person's name and the word for residence or home.
Iosad says what is special about this area is that up to 90 percent of all place names have Nordic origins. Place names are clearly the most visible influence.
Many of the names end with suffixes such as -bost, including Siabost and Làbost. Bost comes from the Old Norse word bolsta∂r, or "bosted" in Norwegian, which means residence.
Borrowed words
When two languages come into contact with each other, it is common for words to be borrowed from the other language. These are words that we don't have an equivalent word for in our own language.
Since the Scandinavian immigrants who settled on the coast of Scotland engaged in fishing, many words related to the sea, boats and various fishing gear gained ground in the Scottish language.
For example, the Old Norse word Batr was Bata to the Scottish, which means boat, and bakbor>, which became bacbhord and means port.
According to Iosad when two languages come into contact, the grammar of both languages often also gets easier.
English grammar is in many ways simplified compared to Old English, which is probably as a result of the influence of other languages. Old Irish was also radically changed at precisely the time when the Scandinavians were there.
Immigration and linguistic influences also went the other way; a number of Irish monks went to Scandinavian countries and settled. Some Scandinavians also took Irish wives and slaves with them when they returned home.
Language under pressure
Scottish has been in a steep decline for some time, and is one of the many languages in the world that is in danger of disappearing.
"Today, mostly older people speak it, and it should come as no surprise that a lot of rural areas in Scotland are losing population," says Iosad. “At the same time there are some bright spots. In Glasgow, for example, there is a school where all the instruction is in Scottish Gaelic.”If you've been struggling to find your place in the cold, dark world, take comfort in the fact that two of society's most sensible women— Jane Austen and Jersey Shore's Jenni "JWoww" Farley —are offering new guides to life and love. Naturally, this presents a conundrum. Do you follow the counsel of Jane (via The Jane Austen Handbook writer Margaret C. Sullivan) who offers "proper life skills from Regency England"? Or do you listen to The Rules According to JWoww, which guarantees "Shore-tested secrets on landing a mint guy, staying fresh to death and kicking the competition to the curb"? Perhaps a sampling of their individual wisdom on the following topics will help you decide:
Jessica Grose Jessica Grose is a frequent Slate contributor and the author of the novel Sad Desk Salad. Follow her on Twitter.
On Deportment
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Jane Austen Handbook: No one wants to spend time withthose who have an unpleasant manner.
JWoww: Guys hate a Debbie Downer. It’s the ultimate turnoff.
On Essential Life Skills
Jane Austen Handbook : Master the art of needlework. To be an accomplished woman,you must know how to do fancy needlework…When company is present, she will displayimpressive embroidery and decorative needle arts.
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JWoww: Men love a lady who has skills...Let’s be honest: guys maysay they’re looking for someone pure and respectable to bring home to Mama, butthey’re secretly praying she’s a fucking nympho with a bachelor’s degree inbanging.
On Attire
Jane Austen Handbook : Evening is the time for your flimsiest muslins, prettiesttrimmings, and whatever family jewelry you can wheedle out of your mother.Low-cut bodices are perfectly acceptable, and a pretty headdress or some beadsor flowers woven into your hair will add just the right touch.
JWoww: Make sure you show your hips, ass and boobs in a sexy way;your clothes should cling to your body, giving guys a guide to what’s lurkingunderneath. Accentuate the look with stilettos, bracelets, rings and earringsand a clutch, all in the same color family so you look pulled together—nottrashy.
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On Courtship
Jane Austen Handbook : Ask him if he wants to go "stargazing." Everyoneknows what that means. If not he must be rather clueless, and perhaps youshould rethink your affection.
JWoww: It’s okay for a woman to make the first move…Here are a fewno-pressure openers that will get the conversation going.
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--"Do you come here a lot?"
--"Thismusic is great, don’t you think?"
--"Hi."
OnAppropriate Party Behavior
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Jane Austen Handbook : Serenity of countenance,elegant carriage, good posture, and graceful movements show your respect foryour company—both your fellow dancers and those watching the dance. Clapping,shouting, snapping your fingers or other loud interruptions will mark you asvulgar and unaccustomed to good company.
JWoww: Sloppy drunk is not a good lookon anyone. Stop drinking if you vomit. If you puke it up, don’t put more in.Vomiting is a sign that your body can’t take the amount of alcohol that youhave consumed. Call it quits for the evening and go clean yourself up at home.A view into the main accelerator tunnel of European XFEL, where 100 superconducting accelerator modules are being installed. Credit: Dirk Nölle, DESY A crucial component of the European X-ray laser European XFEL has taken up operation: The so-called injector, the 45-metre long first part of the superconducting particle accelerator, has accelerated its first electrons to nearly the speed of light. This is the first beam ever accelerated at the European XFEL and represents a major advancement toward the completion of the facility.
The X-ray laser European XFEL is an international research facility in northern Germany that will produce ultrabright X-ray laser flashes for unprecedented studies of the nanocosmos. It consists of a 2-kilometre long superconducting linear electron accelerator, followed by a series of highly precise magnets to produce the highly brilliant X-ray laser light.
The injector, which is located on the DESY campus in Hamburg and has been under construction since 2013, produced a series of tightly packed sets of electrons, or bunches, that passed through the 45-metre long injector beamline. The electrons made the full trip from start to end of the injector in 0.15 microseconds, achieving near light speed.
The injector shapes the highly charged electron bunches and gives them their initial energy, which is gradually increased across a 2-kilometre long linear accelerator that is still being assembled. Once energized, the electrons will be ready to generate the facility's X-ray flashes, enabling scientists to perform studies that are expected to have large impacts on medicine, energy production and storage, materials research, and many other fields.
The 'gun' releases the electrons and accelerates them shaped in bunches. Credit: Dirk Nölle, DESY
DESY, which is European XFEL's main shareholder and close partner, is responsible for the construction and operation of the electron injector as well as the rest of the linear accelerator. Components for the injector were produced across Europe by the 17-institute European XFEL Accelerator Consortium, which is led by DESY. This includes work done by DESY as well as in-kind contributions from institutes in France, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.
"All members of the European XFEL Accelerator Consortium contributed to the injector, and we appreciate their professionalism during design, construction, and installation," says DESY leading scientist Dr. Hans Weise, who is coordinator for the Accelerator Consortium. "Their contributions now allow us to prepare the high-quality electron beam required for operation of the free-electron laser."
The design of the injector is strongly based on the one found in DESY's X-ray free-electron laser FLASH, the prototype facility for the European XFEL that began operation as a user facility in 2005. Several billion electrons are released from an electrode of caesium telluride when it is struck by an intense ultraviolet laser flash. The electrons form a bunch which is accelerated by radio frequency and kept together by intense magnetic fields. The bunch is accelerated, first through a normal conducting cavity made of copper, then through a pair of superconducting accelerator cryomodules. The two latter devices are chilled to -271°C by liquid helium to allow for highly efficient beam acceleration. These modules give the full electron beam the required characteristics needed for producing the X-ray flashes that will be used for researching matter at the atomic scale.
The injector will continue to go through rigorous testing while the rest of the linear accelerator is installed. The next major milestone will be accelerating electrons the for the full accelerator length to the European XFEL's Osdorfer Born site approximately 2.1 km away from the start of the injector. This is expected in late 2016, with user operation to follow in 2017.
"The first electrons in the injector mark a major milestone for this ambitious discovery machine - my congratulations go to the physicists and engineers who have constructed and installed the components with great dedication," says Prof. Helmut Dosch, chairman of the DESY Board of Directors. "And with more than half of the superconducting modules of the main accelerator tested and installed, I am sure that the start of the commissioning of the European XFEL accelerator will follow soon."
"I am glad to see the efforts with constructing the injector come to a successful completion, as we continue our focus on finishing the rest of the accelerator so we can provide researchers with the world's brightest X-ray light," says Prof. Massimo Altarelli, managing director of European XFEL. "I want to thank everyone involved in the construction and start-up of this starting point for our facility."
Explore further: Team shrinks particle accelerator: Prototype demonstrates feasibility of building terahertz acceleratorsThe bells are chiming across the country as America’s first gay superhero wedding has made national headlines.The wedding of Northstar and longtime partner Kyle in Marvel Comics’ Astonishing X-Men #51 marks a change in climate for this age-old social issue, just as President Obama became the first president to support marriage equality. DC Comics also recently revealed that their own classic character, the original Green Lantern, is gay. But, despite all the hype in the media surrounding these brave announcements, you may not know that LGBT characters have been around in comics for quite a while. Today we’re taking a look through comics history to explore the lesser-known, but equally as relevant characters.
ULTIMATE COLOSSUS
The Ultimate Marvel Universe differs from the original canon in a myriad of ways, ranging from small differences to very drastic. In the case of Colossus, writer Mark Millar began injecting hints of Peter Rasputin’s sexuality into stories years ago, and it was expanded upon over the years, often as a way to portray Colossus being an outsider amongst outsiders. The steel-skinned mutant even left the team once because he couldn’t reconcile his feelings for a fellow X-Man.
DAKEN
Wolverine’s son is a bit of a mystery, as he has been shown kissing and even sleeping with men in order to gain strategic advantage, and in some cases has killed his partner afterward. It is heavily implied that the Dark Avenger/Dark X-Man “plays for both teams” in more ways than one.Daken has even made not-so-subtle suggestions as to his own bi-sexuality on several occasions.
BATWOMAN
In 2006 DC Comics unveiled their new Batwoman, and she was more than just visually different from previous incarnations. Kate Kane is a lesbian, and DC has not shied away from portraying her private life. Though the original Batwoman was romantically attracted to Batman, the newer version is not, and has been involved with Gotham City police officer Renee Montoya, now known as The Question.
SHATTERSTAR & RICTOR
X-Factor scribe Peter David is known for his out-of-left-field plot developments as well as his deeply emotional stories. Those two elements came together nicely in X-Factor #45 in 2009, when the two longtime friends finally admitted their feelings for one another and shared a dramatic kiss. David said on his blog days later that the two are indeed bisexual and would be exploring their relationship further in the comic.
HULKLING & WICCAN
Young Avengers Hulkling and Wiccan(formerly Asgardian) have also been together for a few years in the comics. Like Shatterstar and Rictor, their true relationship was hinted to be beyond merely friends in early issues, but later were revealed to be gay and in love. In Avengers: The Children’s Crusade, they are engaged and share their first on-panel kiss.
Comic books have long been at the forefront of social issues, from civil rights to drug abuse, and everything in between. The latest trend of LGBT characters is just the most prolific wave of gay-friendly heroes(and villains). Expect LGBT characters to pop up more frequently and in higher-profile roles and titles, because historically, where goes comics culture, so goes society. These extraordinary heroes are even more so because they not only fight for the fate of the world on a daily basis, they also fight to be treated as equals and respected for their actions, not their sexuality.
Imagine your life is on the line, the world is about to break, and just when you think there is no hope, a superhuman comes to the rescue, setting right the world and restoring order and justice. Now ask yourself if it truly matters whether he goes home to a boyfriend or husband?
After all, they may be superhuman, but they are still human.
For a list of over 300 LGBT comics characters, go to QueerSupe.Listen, son, I know it might seem like I’m a little tough on you at times. Obviously nobody wants to have their dad constantly breathing down their neck, pushing them to do things they don’t want to do, and then berating them for not living up to his unrealistic expectations. I get that. But you have to realize I’m doing this all for a reason. While it might not make sense now, when you’re in your late 30s and revile your life and hate the man you’ve become, you’ll be thanking me.
Trust me, one day, when you're almost 40 and a bubbling cauldron of bitterness and regret, then you will understand.
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Now, I'm sure that, right now, I probably seem like the meanest guy in the world to you. In fact, it probably feels to you like I'm only here to shame you, belittle you, and unfairly force you to bear the burden of my own deep-seated feelings of inadequacy and rage. What with all the name-calling, the constant admissions that you're disappointing me, and all the talk about how I demand the best from my son and anything less is unacceptable, you will likely feel pretty small and helpless sometimes.
But know this: You're going to wake up one morning at 37 or 38 and realize that you’ve been in a career you despise for 15 years, you've wasted your 20s and 30s in a grim cycle of self-hatred and failed relationships, and you’re not even sure what, if anything, makes you happy anymore. And I promise you, on that very morning, you will call me up and say, "Thanks, Dad. You were right, it was worth it."
You’ll remember all those times I didn’t let you hang out with your friends. You'll remember all those times I made you study until the wee small hours of the morning or fiercely practice, over and over, a sport you don't even enjoy. You'll remember all those times I grounded you for getting B-pluses on tests, and all those times I would make you promise, with tears in your eyes, to be better than all the other kids at school, and you'll know it was all for a reason: so you could grow up to be a morose, unsatisfied, and emotionally damaged adult.
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I promise you this will happen, son. Believe me, your old man knows a thing or two.
And look, I don’t expect you to understand this now. After all, why should you? I didn’t at your age. But someday you, too, will have kids you barely see because you’re always out working the job you hate, and you, too, will want to push them to an unsustainable extreme and make them paralyzed with worry and anxiety. And that's when the lessons and horrifying control issues I'm imparting to you now will finally pay off. Years from now, your own weak, inadequate children will, in turn, benefit from the way I am molding you into the exacting, unaffectionate, and hyper-critical father I've always tried to be for you.
And then, once you've actually started to resent and hate your own child for being younger than you, and once the painful realization of what your life could have been versus what it is has fully dawned on you, you’ll be able to say, "This is because of my old man and how he neutered my enjoyment for life when I was young and turned me into a near carbon copy of his simmering, depressed, emotionally arrested adult self."
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In fact, if I’ve done my job right, you won’t even be conscious of it until after this transformation has already happened. Ideally, the hell I put you through on a daily basis will be so ingrained in your psyche, you won’t even think twice as you push your own kids to master some skill, or sport, or academic discipline against their will—a thing that, regardless of their actual interests, furthers some unfulfilled goal of yours that I prevented you from achieving years ago. Trust me, I will make sure this happens, my son.
So shut up and finish your homework, because we’re getting up at 4:30 a.m. tomorrow for swim practice.Advertisement
Illustration: Harry Campbell
The lust for untested technological fixes is the curse of energy policy. Take your pick: self-driving solar-powered cars, inherently safe nuclear minireactors, or genetically enhanced photosynthesis.
Why not start with what is proven? Why not simply reduce the demand for energy, beginning with residential and commercial buildings?
In the United States that sector accounts for about 40 percent of total primary energy consumption (transportation is a distant second at 28 percent). Even now heating and air-conditioning account for half of residential consumption, which is why the single best thing we could do for the energy budget is to keep the heat in (or out) with better insulation.
The most rewarding place to do that is in windows, where the energy loss is the highest. That is to say, it has the highest thermal transmittance, measured in watts passing through a square meter of material, divided by the difference in temperature in kelvins on either side. A single pane has a heat transfer coefficient of 5.7 to 6 watts per square meter per kelvin; a double pane separated by 6 millimeters has a coefficient of 3.3. Applying coatings to minimize the passage of ultraviolet and infrared |
1 1957 2002 14 1 1955 15 4 1914 1946 1966 2015 16 2 2005 2012 17 2 1941 1998 18 0 (Best finish, second: 1920, 2009, 2010) 19 2 1954 2014 20 3 1921 1926 1987 21 1 1924 22 2 1927 1935 23 0 (Best finish, second: 1933) 24 0 (Best finish, fourth: 1967, 1969, 1972, 1995, 2009) 25 1 1974 26 0 (Best finish, third: 1956, 1960) 27 1 1932 28 2 1911 1936 29 0 (Best finish, second: 1911, 2002) 30 0 (Best finish, fourth: 1936) 31 0 (Best finish, fourth: 1951) 32 0 (Best finish, second: 1957, 1981) 33 0 (Best finish, second: 1980, 1992) 34-42 0
Winning car numbers [ edit ]
Chronological [ edit ]
1910's No. 1920's No. 1930's No. 1940's No. 1950's No. 1960's No. 1970's No. 1980's No. 1990's No. 2000's No. 2010's No. 1911 32 1921 2 1931 23 1941 16 1951 99 1961 1 1971 1 1981 3 1991 3 2001 68 2011 98 1912 8 1922 35 1932 34 1942 1952 98 1962 3 1972 66 1982 20 1992 3 2002 3 2012 50 1913 16 1923 1 1933 36 1943 1953 14 1963 98 1973 20 1983 5 1993 4 2003 6 2013 11 1914 16 1924 15 1934 7 1944 1954 14 1964 1 1974 3 1984 6 1994 31 2004 15 2014 28 1915 2 1925 12 1935 5 1945 1955 6 1965 82 1975 48 1985 5 1995 27 2005 26 2015 2 1916 17 1926 15 1936 8 1946 16 1956 8 1966 24 1976 2 1986 3 1996 91 2006 6 2016 98 1917 1927 32 1937 6 1947 27 1957 9 1967 14 1977 14 1987 25 1997 5 2007 27 2017 26 1918 1928 14 1938 23 1948 3 1958 1 1968 3 1978 2 1988 5 1998 51 2008 9 2018 12 1919 3 1929 2 1939 2 1949 7 1959 5 1969 2 1979 9 1989 20 1999 14 2009 3 2019 1920 4 1930 4 1940 1 1950 1 1960 4 1970 2 1980 4 1990 30 2000 9 2010 10 2020
By Number [ edit ]
No. Wins Years: 1 *7* 1923 1940 1950 1958 1961 1964 1971 2 9 1915 1921 1929 1939 1969 1970 1976 1978 2015 3 11 1919 1948 1962 1968 1974 1981 1986 1991 1992 2002 2009 4 5 1920 1930 1960 1980 1993 5 6 1935 1959 1983 1985 1988 1997 6 5 1937 1955 1984 2003 2006 7 2 1934 1949 8 3 1912 1936 1956 9 4 1957 1979 2000 2008 10 1 2010 11 1 2013 12 2 1925 2018 13 0 14 6 1928 1953 1954 1967 1977 1999 15 3 1924 1926 2004 16 4 1913 1914 1941 1946 17 1 1916 18 0 19 0 20 3 1973 1982 1989 21 0 22 0 23 2 1931 1938 24 1 1966 25 1 1987 26 2 2005 2017 27 3 1947 1995 2007 28 1 2014 29 0 30 1 1990 31 1 1994 32 2 1911 1927 33 0 34 1 1932 35 1 1922 36 1 1933 37 0 38 0 39 0 40 0 41 0 42 0 43 0 44 0 45 0 46 0 47 0 48 1 1975 49 0 50 1 2012 No. Wins Years: 51 1 1998 52 0 53 0 54 0 55 0 56 0 57 0 58 0 59 0 60 0 61 0 62 0 63 0 64 0 65 0 66 1 1972 67 0 68 1 2001 69 0 70 0 71 0 72 0 73 0 74 0 75 0 76 0 77 0 78 0 79 0 80 0 81 0 82 1 1965 83 0 84 0 85 0 86 0 87 0 88 0 89 0 90 0 91 1 1996 92 0 93 0 94 0 95 0 96 0 97 0 98 4 1952 1963 2011 2016 99 1 1951 0 0 No. Wins Years: 00 0 01 0 02 0 03 0 04 0 05 0 06 0 07 0 08 0 09 0
The race winners in 1975, 1999, 2010 and 2012 were all entitled to have car number 1 as defending series champions, but chose not to use it.
Notes [ edit ]I BOUGHT A LIME TODAY!!!
For those not following, this is a crazy experiment explained in this post.
So the day started off with the price around $510 for 1 BTC, down $30 from yesterday :(
The comments from reddit posts are great, there are some trolls, but in the main very good reception. People have offered to cook me dinner in exchange for bitcoin, which I may take up that offer!
So I have been slack and not made a website, but after writing this I will sort out my printer and make some paper wallets for tips to hand out, with my email on the back or something...
Anyhow, today was good. I went to work as usual, didn't ask any dairies on the way in though as was running late. Workmates were well up with the play and kind of interested in my madness.
So I had a few setbacks from workmates, we are planning on going out to a team dinner at Mama Browns (on corner Tory and Wakefield, where Wholly Pizza was), which I assumed didn't accept bitcoin... Also, we were having a shot of tequila to celebrate me joining the team again (recently shifted jobs back to my old workplace, by recently I mean monday!). Tequila needs limes, and I am usually the one to buy them.
So I'm in a few chat rooms relating to IT and security, and I post copies of this blog to it once I write them. I asked in one #kiwicon and someone kindly said they would buy me a lime, for bitcoin, and they lived locally. I would have to pickup of course, but that suited, because they lived close to Mama Browns, so I could ask on my way back to work.
I made the transaction, spent around $1, and told my workmates. Stunned is a word that could describe their expression.
So at lunch I had some free pizza (all staff meeting), and introduced myself to the company (even though I had already worked there). I mentioned that I was doing a month on bitcoin, and had recently brought a lime.
After lunch, I went to pick up my lime (from the rendezvous point... sounded like a dodgy thing to do right), and got a lime packaged in a brown foil lined bag, that was resealable, and had branding on it and all. It also came with a receipt, for 0.0022222 BTC. Wow! (I should note the contents of the bag was indeed a lime. The team shall have tequila tomorrow! The tequila is supplied by the company).
Back to work, but stopping on the way at Mama Browns. Ask if they know what bitcoin is, and YES, the guy does. I explain what I'm doing, and mention I was blogging it, he immediately asks where the blog is and loads it up. He says he isn't the boss, but will pass it on, and hopefully will accept it (as I'm eating there tomorrow...). This was all while I was holding a brown bag with a label of a lime on it, with a website that ended with.XXX (don't ask...). So I left my details, so watch this space. I might be legitimately eating out tomorrow night!
After work I went to a local user group (Wellington Python User Group), and told my story there (even though it has nothing to do with Python ;)). After the user group, some people went to a bar, and one of the user group attendees bought me a beer for bitcoin. Winning. So far on my travels I have bought a pizza, a beer, and a lime. Not quite the essentials...
I think I will reach out right now, because I need some of the following:
Phone top up card, any network (but currently on 2degrees)
Phone top up card for Australia (I'm in Sydney next week), on the optus network, I have a SIM already
Milk, cereal, bread
Anything else that people think would help!
But thats all for today, tomorrow I'm going to the following to chase them up to see if they will accept:
Fidels on Cuba
Midnight Expresso on Cuba
Rogue and Vagabond on Cuba
Mama Browns on Wakefield
If you can offer assitance, just do it! I'm on twitter as haquaman, on reddit as haquaman, on IRC as aquaman (no h), and email at hugh AT davenport DOT net DOT nz.
Feel free to donate to 155WivS5TdBdU1UMQVZNLodywzCUdLdBBk.JACKSONVILLE, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina wildlife officials are again considering whether to allow hunters to kill alligators in the state.
Copyright by WBTW - All rights reserved CLICK TO VIEW PHOTOS OF GATORS CAUSING PROBLEMS
Copyright by WBTW - All rights reserved CLICK TO VIEW PHOTOS OF GATORS CAUSING PROBLEMS
The Daily News of Jacksonville reports the state Wildlife Resources Commission is holding six meetings in June about changing its mind on alligator hunting.
The commission considered a proposal two years ago, but ultimately rejected rules that would allow hunters to kill one alligator during the month of September.
Commission spokesman said Allen Boynton says hunting would only be allowed on the southeast coast.
He says strict limits would be needed because it can take the reptiles 15 years to begin to reproduce.
North Carolina last allowed alligator hunting in 1973.
The June meetings will take place in Hampstead, Dublin, Bolivia, Jacksonville, New Bern and Washington.I first heard Anciients about two years ago, which is about a year after their debut album “Heart Of Oak” was released. The band and album did what rarely happens with me, and that’s start an instant love affair with their musical cohesion, totally encapsulating and gripping me with the myriad of sounds coming out of my speakers. The band’s intoxicating mix of current sounds with an old-school approach instantly won me over, and the album has remained in my musical rotation ever since.
So after a long three year wait, rumblings began to surface that the Vancouver, Canada quintet was writing the all-important follow-up album, due for release in the fall. I was instantly excited, and even more so with the release of the first single “Following The Voice” in late July. Any worries I had of the sophomore jinx were squashed at the very least for this song. It instantly brought back the sound I loved from their debut.
And now the hour is finally upon us to digest the new album “Voice Of The Void”. After lots of time listening to the first single (and also the album opener), I was eager to get my first taste of the rest of the batch of new songs. “Buried In Sand” (at almost eleven minutes being the longest song on the album) follows up the opening track by hitting just as hard, but it’s right out of the gate instead of a build. It slows down after a couple of minutes into a sludgy, plodding approach with an emotive guitar solo. There’s a nice atmospheric lull that comes into play, simmering the whole approach down even more, but not giving up on the emotion. It then starts building back to a higher paced forceful riff pattern. The band keeps an infectious energy going through all movements of the song and time flies by. “Worshipper” gives off a slow and labored opening which turns into a pertinent march. A twisting guitar solo and quick time changes give off a magical vibe. “Pentacle” is a good song to throw into the order at this point as it serves as a great way to slow down the pace of the album just enough with it’s guttural vocals and mid-paced groove as to not overwhelm the listener. “Descending” takes us a little quieter with the acoustic based instrumental showing great depth from the band.
“Ibex Eye” ramps things back up with a thumping and thunderous opening. This track incorporates a lot of beautifully picked guitar backdrops with a monstrous bass surging underneath. The death vocals help put the dirge and sludginess over the top in grand fashion. “My Home, My Gallows” is a head-bobbing jaunt with a mid-paced power drive as the core of the song. Plenty of interesting guitar melodies, both spiraling and frantic are woven into the song fabric. The second half of the song turns up the speed at times and works well with the crushing drums of Mike Hannay, moving in a fevered and unapologetic stomp, going back and forth between pounding and crisp to barrage-like. “Serpents” shows off Kenneth Cook’s powerful singing style which compliments the laid back light organs and emotive platform of the song. “Incantations” sets up a mood-setting acoustic pace for the final song on the album. It morphs into another set of complex guitar patterns and syncopated instrument cohesion that leaves me wondering how the band can move so seamlessly between the hard and soft and always make it sound interesting.
And in what seems like such a brief foray into the band’s new venture, “Voice Of The Void” comes to a close. The time flew by me, which is all the more surprising considering the album is over an hour in length. This speaks to me about how interesting and exciting the music is. When you can get so lost in an album that you lose all concept of time, you know it’s a winner.
However, I’ll be the first to admit that although this album took me away and onto a different sonic plane, it didn’t hit me as hard right away as their debut did. This isn’t to suggest that it’s any less worthy or less pleasing, however it’s such an involved sound that I took so much time feeling it out and analyzing the contents. But with repeated listens it grows more and more on me and sits with just as special of a place for me as “Heart Of Oak”. It’s almost more wide-open and expansive in a way, which is quite a feat.
This album should be the one to give the comparisons to bands like Mastodon and Baroness a rest as Anciients are proving that they have the songwriting ability to be in a class all of their own. This band features everything I want in a metal band; new sounds mixed with a respect for the old-school, emotional highs and lows, adrenaline pumping riffs and delicate yet carefully constructed musical landscapes.
The sophomore jinx didn’t enter into this album’s sound at all. And while it felt like an eternity to receive new material from the group, I’m more than happy with the result in the time it took to carefully construct the beautiful music I’ve digested.
Tracklist:
01. Following The Voice
02. Buried In Sand
03. Worshipper
04. Pentacle
05. Descending
06. Ibex Eye
07. My Home, My Gallows
08. Serpents
09. Incantations
Playing time: 66:01
Release date: 14 October, 2016
Label: Season Of Mist
Website: Anciients Official WebsiteBy Dilxuaz Pehlewi and Behzad Miran
In an exclusive interview with Rudaw, the director of the Syrian state media expressed his country’s readiness to support the Kurdistan Region against the Islamist State (IS/ISIS) armies. Minister Omran al-Zoubi also revealed that Syrian government forces are battling the IS gunmen side-by-side with the Peoples Protection Units (YPG) in the Kurdish-controlled areas of the country. The minister called on the international community to unite against IS in the region, directly accusing Turkey and Saudi Arabia of funding the extremist factions. Here is an edited transcript of the interview:
Rudaw: How is it that you have had no clear position so far about the jihadist attacks in Iraq?
Omran al-Zoubi: Syria is at a great war against terror. This is a war against many terrorist groups, and in particular against the IS, the al-Nusra Front, the Islamic Front and some other extremist groups. Syria has been condemning the IS attacks and will continue to do so in the future. This is a genuine Syrian policy to confront terrorism. Syria condemns the terrorist attacks on Iraq and the Kurdistan Region. And we condemn the atrocities conducted by the IS militants against our brethren in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.
Rudaw: At the moment the guerrillas of the YPG are battling IS militants. Are there any connections between your government and the YPG?
Omran al-Zoubi: I think it was about time for everyone to confront terror, but unfortunately some people had doubts about the nature of Syrian confrontation (against terrorism). I think now is the time to rally regional and international efforts against terror because it can occur in any country, it does not have any moral or religious framework. They are aggressive against Muslims and non-Muslims and all nations in the region alike. These terrorist organizations destroy the infrastructure of countries and steal their wealth. In the end, I think it’s the responsibility of all nations and governments in the region -- which have had no connection to these terror groups -- to come together and defend their history, existence, civilization and freedom against these groups.
Rudaw: Where is the Syrian government at the moment in its war against IS, and do you think the war will be widened?
Omran al-Zoubi: This war, I think, will be extended and broadened. It will reach every capital in the world. But are you aware about what happened to Syria as a result of the complicated conditions and under the pretext of the Arab Spring and the like? You also witnessed the support of the Gulf nations, with Turkey, providing for these terror groups. You witnessed how terrorists from all over the world joined the fight here in Syria. Now, what happened to the region is exactly what Syria had long been warning everybody of. Syria is still at war with terror in all ways possible, including military, intelligence, social, financial and cultural. We fight terror through uniting people and through the media, because we have to acknowledge that there is a media war going on, too. There are some media outlets and social media pages that report about attacks on Iraq and Kurdistan and Erbil and depict it as revolution and a just war. We have to put a stop to all this. Neither we in Syria nor our brethren in Iraq and Erbil or elsewhere in Beirut and Amman, are able to confront terror single-handedly. No one can confront terror alone. There must be cooperation, genuine cooperation. We have to share intelligence and knowledge. We should also support each other financially, as thousands of families both in Syria and Iraq have been displaced. None of this is possible without our commitment to cooperation.
Rudaw: YPG is very much at war in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan). Do you have any troops there or do you have any cooperation (with the YPG)?
Omran al-Zoubi: Our Syrian Kurdish brethren in Jazira (Cezire) are part of our nation. It’s the duty of all nations -- Kurds and Arabs alike -- to confront terror. They have the duty of protecting the nation, our dignity and people’s properties. Side by side with the Syrian army, they are doing their part. They are defending their country, their dignity, faith and civilized culture. This is why I insist that confronting terror is not something one could do alone, but should be conducted together. Every democratic force should confront the terror, because terror destroys indiscriminately. This is not a war against one faith or one part of the society,it’s an assault against the entire civilized community of the region.
Rudaw: How do you see the IS advance in Iraq? They regard Syria and Iraq as their “state”?
Omran al-Zoubi: We strongly condemn it. We also condemn the attacks on the Kurdistan Region. We condemn the atrocities being conducted there. Syria is confronting them (the terrorists) from Aleppo to Damascus and in many other places. We think of IS as a real threat to life, faith, stability of the region and the world.
Rudaw: The YPG are also at war in Hasakah area. Do you have any cooperation there?
Omran al-Zoubi: Some areas of Syria have been particularly attacked. But the Syrian warplanes and different national forces, including the YPG, are confronting them shoulder-to-shoulder. Indeed, in some areas there might be more pressure on a particular force, but even in Der Zour, which is part of the Jazira area, there is heavy resistance. It would not be wise to talk about every military action in the media, but I confidently can say that IS cannot impose its command in any part of Syria or stay there, because our Syrian troops chase them away. And every other national force does the same thing and would not let IS have momentum. It’s a matter of time, really. But I’m not talking about the neighboring countries which should take part in the effort against IS: We all know what the jihadist militants are doing along the Turkish border. These terror organizations have their bases and flags inside Turkey. We urge the Turkish government to take its responsibility. Turkey should refrain from collaborating with the terrorists. Turkey is with the terrorists who attack Syria and Damascus. We have a line of documents and confessions that prove Turkey’s involvement. Saudi Arabia and Qatar should also refrain from aiding these organizations. These terrorists are trained in Jordan, are supported financially by the Saudis and Qataris and use Turkish borders to receive shipments of guns and logistics through Turkish companies and banks. These (claims) are backed by Russian intelligence. We have to be aware of what happens on the ground.
Rudaw: The Syrian opposition criticizes President Obama for acting fast in defense of the Kurdistan Region, but not defending the opposition groups against Damascus.
Omran al-Zoubi: We need to be frank now more than ever. We all know about the connections the Syrian Opposition enjoys abroad in Qatar and Istanbul. The Syrian Opposition has become an apron for the al-Nusra Front, which is a terrorist group. Why are they supporting this group? Both IS and al-Nusra have common beliefs and grounds and are supported by the same side. This is why the Syrian Opposition is a non-nationalist front and is a failure. It shows their connection with terror groups. No one can hide their true identity for long. We have to be clear and identify problems. At the moment IS and other organizations have benefited from the West turning a blind eye. They have also been benefited by the financial support they are receiving from the Arab nations. We have shown evidence of that in the past and no one has paid attention. And now when things become clearer, the international community is complaining and says IS is a threat! We could have prevented this a year ago. But the imperialist powers do not pay so much attention to the spilled blood of our nations, regardless whether the lost lives belong to Muslims, Christians or Kurds. They don’t care about whose women are being raped, or whose women are being sold. They just think about their financial gains and what profits this could bring with it for the Americans and Europeans.
Rudaw: If the Kurdistan Region asks for your support against the IS, will you step in?
Omran al-Zoubi: I honestly want to tell you, the Syrian government is ready principally for any kind of support to defeat the IS on the condition that the countries that supported IS are not part of the alliance. But also Syria should be supported against the IS. This is a protracted and hard resistance. We have to support our people economically. Hundreds of thousands of people are on the mountains. Most of them are unreachable. We can’t provide them with food or water. This is a human tragedy. We have to confront IS on the principles of our common culture and civilization. This isn’t just a military issue, indeed.
Rudaw: Kinda Shamat, a Syrian minister, says they organized a refugee camp in Hasakah province to receive displaced Yezidis from Shingal, but the YPG says their forces are responsible. Who opened the camp?
Omran al-Zoubi: More than 1,000 families have arrived in Syria from that area and are treated like the Syrian families. They have all left their homes as a result of the terror attacks. Syria has always regarded its neighbors as friends, especially in regard to the Iraqi nation and our brethren in the Kurdistan Region. We act according to our beliefs. Syria is hospitable to everyone and knows how to act on such humane issues. We embraced Lebanese refugees in the past along with Kuwaiti and Iraqi refugees. Palestinian immigrants have been here since the 1940s. This is the way the Syrian nation acts and treats other nations and we remain this way because this is part of our national identity.
Rudaw: What is your position regarding the PYD local administrations (cantons) in Rojava?
Omran al-Zoubi: We have to be clear on this point, too. The Arab Republic of Syria maintains its territorial integrity and national sovereignty. Cantons are unacceptable in Syria as such. Any political and constitutional development, any political action, must take place within the formal and governmental framework. Considering all other details, when a group wants to claim independence through establishing a canton or impose a law of its own, or wants to sideline the government, of course it’s unacceptable. But speaking about this subject will alter the direction of our discussion here. The timing is not right for such discussions and actions. Our issue is the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The Syrian official position on a national scale is clear and has not changed.by Herman Daly
Attempts to integrate economics and ecology have been based on one of three strategies: (1) economic imperialism; (2) ecological reductionism; (3) steady-state subsystem. Each strategy begins with the picture of the economy as a subsystem of the finite ecosystem. Thus all three recognize limits to growth. The differences concern the way they each treat the boundary between the economy and the rest of the ecosystem, and that has large policy consequences for how we accommodate to limits.
Economic Imperialism
Economic imperialism seeks to expand the boundary of the economic subsystem until it encompasses the entire ecosphere. The goal is one system, the macro-economy as the whole. This is to be accomplished by complete internalization of all external costs and benefits into prices. Those myriad aspects of the biosphere not customarily traded in markets are treated as if they were by imputation of “shadow prices”–the economist’s best estimate of what the price of the function or thing would be if it were traded in a competitive market. Everything in the ecosphere is theoretically rendered comparable in terms of its priced ability to help or hinder individuals in satisfying their wants. Implicitly, the end pursued is ever-greater levels of consumption, and the way to effectively achieve this end is growth in marketed goods and services.
Economic imperialism is basically the neoclassical approach. Subjective individual preferences, however whimsical, uninstructed, or ill-considered, are taken as the ultimate source of value. Since subjective wants are thought to be infinite in the aggregate, as well as sovereign, there is a tendency for the scale of activities devoted to satisfying them to expand. The expansion is considered legitimate as long as “all costs are internalized.”
But many of the costs of growth we have experienced have come as surprises. We cannot internalize them if we cannot first imagine and foresee them. Furthermore, even after some external costs have become visible to all (e.g., climate change), internalization has been very slow and partial. Profit maximizing firms have an incentive to externalize costs. As long as the evolutionary fitness of the environment to support life is not perceived by economists as a value, it is likely to be destroyed in the imperialistic quest to make every molecule in creation pay its way according to the pecuniary rules of present value maximization.
Ironically, this imperialism sacrifices the main virtue of free market economists, namely their antipathy to the arrogance of central planners. Putting a price tag on everything in the ecosphere requires information and calculating abilities vastly beyond any imagined capacity.
There is no doubt that once the scale of the economy has grown to the point that formerly free environmental goods and services become scarce, it is better that they should have a positive price reflecting their scarcity than to continue to be priced at zero. But there remains the prior question: Are we better off at the new larger scale with formerly free goods correctly priced, or at the old smaller scale with free goods also correctly priced (at zero)? In both cases, the prices are right. This is the suppressed question of optimal scale, not answered, indeed not even asked, by neoclassical economics.
Ecological Reductionism
Ecological reductionism begins with the true insight that humans and markets are not exempt from the laws of nature. It then proceeds to the false inference that human action is totally explainable by, reducible to, the laws of nature. It seeks to explain whatever happens within the economic subsystem by exactly the same natural laws that it applies to the rest of the ecosystem. It subsumes the economic subsystem indifferently into the natural system, erasing its boundary. Taken to the extreme, in this view all is explained by a materialist deterministic system that has no room for purpose or will. This is a sensible vision from which to study the ecology of a coral reef. But if one adopts it for studying the human economy, one is stuck from the beginning with the important policy implication that policy makes no difference.
The reductionist vision frequently appeals to the Maximum Entropy Production Principle (often capitalized to elevate it to the same level as the Second Law of Thermodynamics). It says that whatever competing system maximizes entropy production will be competitively selected. Indeed one can appreciate the logic of this principle. The system that can monopolize and most rapidly degrade available sources of low entropy will displace competing systems by depriving them of their energy source. This insight should be taken seriously as a natural tendency. But when we apply it to the human economy it gives us an absurd policy implication. Namely, that the economy maximizes entropy production. Since maximizing entropy is the same as maximizing waste, that hardly offers a sensible rule for either understanding or directing the human economy!
The maximum entropy principle is more like the tragedy of open access commons than like the Second Law of Thermodynamics. That is, it is a trap–a competitive race to the bottom in the absence of collective action. The Second Law by contrast is an inevitability that we must recognize and adapt to; it has no known exceptions. The maximum entropy production principle is not a physical law. No action, collective or individual, can avoid the Second Law. Like the tragedy of the commons, the tragedy of entropy maximization is a detrimental competitive tendency that we must overcome by collective action. But if we mistakenly consider it a physical law on the level of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, then there is nothing to do but give up.
Economic imperialism and ecological reductionism have in common that they are monistic visions, albeit rather opposite monisms. It is the monistic quest for a single substance or principle by which to explain everything that leads to excessive reductionism on both sides. Certainly one should strive for the most reduced or parsimonious explanation possible without ignoring the facts. But respect for the basic empirical facts of natural laws on the one hand, and self-conscious purpose and will on the other hand, should lead us to a kind of practical dualism. After all, that our world should consist of two fundamental elements offers no greater inherent improbability than that it should rest on one only. How these two fundamental elements of our world (material cause and final cause) interact is a venerable mystery–precisely the mystery that the monists of both kinds are seeking to avoid. But economists are too much in the middle of things to adopt either extreme. Economists are better off denying the tidy-mindedness of either monism than denying the facts that point to an untidy dualism.
The Steady-State Subsystem
The remaining strategy is the steady-state subsystem. It does not attempt to eliminate the subsystem boundary, either by expanding it to coincide with the whole system or by reducing it to nothing. Rather, it affirms both the interdependence and the qualitative difference between the human economy and the natural ecosystem. The boundary must be recognized and drawn in the right place. The scale of the human subsystem defined by the boundary has an optimum, and the throughput by which the ecosphere physically maintains and replenishes the economic subsystem must be ecologically sustainable. That throughput is indeed entropic, but rather than maximizing entropy the goal of the economy is to minimize low entropy use needed for a sufficient standard of living–by sifting low entropy slowly and carefully through efficient technologies aimed at important purposes. The economy should not be viewed as an idiot machine dedicated to maximizing waste. Its final cause is not the maximization of waste but the maintenance and enjoyment of life.
The idea of a steady-state economy comes from classical economics, and was most developed by John Stuart Mill (1857), who referred to it as the “stationary state.” The main idea was that population and the capital stock were not growing, even though the art of living continued to improve. The constancy of these two physical stocks defined the scale of the economic subsystem. Birth rates would be equal to death rates and production rates equal to depreciation rates. Today we add that both rates should be equal at low levels rather than high levels because we value longevity of people and durability of artifacts, and wish to minimize throughput, subject to maintenance of sufficient stocks for a good life.
Ecological economics should seek to develop the steady-state vision, and get beyond the dead ends of both economic imperialism and ecological reductionism.UPDATES
Important
Removed Clans: Pantheons now consist of a single list of members and commanders.
Reworked the Core upgrade system found within the Ascension Atlas. Please note that the currency spent on upgrading the nodes will be reimbursed to players after logging in by pressing the F9 key.
Due to the Core upgrade system being reworked, currency spent on upgrading these nodes will be reimbursed to players upon login.
Pre-formed teams consisting of members that are too far apart in Prestige cannot participate in PvP Adventures.
Promo Bonuses [Relics, Class Promos, Reward multipliers] will not be offered on adventures that do not give rewards when completed. This includes, for example, difficulties with a rating of Very Easy.
Catch-up System: Implemented a system that allows players that haven’t played for an extended period or have signed up recently to catch up with the active & longtime players easier.
Made changes to the player’s Progress Screen.
Implemented a new combat statistics screen which is available to players in a Pantheon with a level 2 Academy. This can be quickly accessed with (CTRL+ X).
Implemented a unified reward rotation for all players. Each player will now be offered the same reward for completing certain adventures. For example, if two players meet the same conditions (they have both unlocked the Divine Form and have not reached their limits), they will receive the same reward for an adventure. Only the type of reward is the same, the amount received varies per the player. Exceptions |
two of his fingers also received cuts. Your partner managed to partly restrain you, albeit then you started to turn the knife on yourself and he had to further disarm you to prevent further self-harm,” Pringle said Monday.
The decision to offer a delayed sentence was blasted by Mark Brooks, chairman of the Mankind Initiative, an organization that supports male victims of domestic abuse.
“The judge’s comments are completely unacceptable and out of touch. This is a clear case of severe domestic abuse against a man and the focus and sympathy should be with him,” Brooks said in May, according to Sky News. “The judge seems to think that domestic abuse, when it is committed by a woman against a man, is not as serious as it rightly is when it is the other way round.”Death is a sacred thing, but nothing is more sacred than money. If you don't believe that, it's only because you haven't heard these five stories of people who get paid when you get laid (to rest).
5 "Dead Peasant" Insurance Pays for Dead Workers "Dead Peasant" Insurance Pays for Dead Workers
Evidently deciding that they weren't making quite enough money off of their workforce, certain companies will pay into life insurance policies for their low-level employees so they can collect tax-free death benefits in case any of them die. This is commonly known as "Dead Peasant Insurance," presumably because "Peon Blood Dollars" was deemed too tasteless.
"Looks like Rick is no longer with us. Also we can get you that ergonomic keyboard now."
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It doesn't matter if the employee quits, retires or gets fired -- the company collects benefits when he dies, even if he's no longer an employee. In fact, you could be insured by a Dead Peasant policy right now, and no one would ever have to tell you about it. So the next time you feel like Big Lots wouldn't care if you died, think again -- they would be overjoyed.Arda Turan and Aleix Vidal have agreed to join Barça despite not being able to play until January. A seemingly strange move at first glance but who wouldn’t wait half a year if it meant playing with Messi, Neymar and Suárez?
Arda Turan has given up six months of his career to play for Barcelona – but wouldn’t you?
Atlético Madrid’s Arda Turan made a quaint decision this week. Barcelona came calling for the Turkey captain and the midfielder decided his smartest next career move was to join and so sign off his own exclusion from football for six months, until January 2016.
The club are under a transfer ban for breaching rules on acquiring players under 18. This means anyone bought this summer cannot pull on the famous livery until next year. Yet Turan is not the only footballer who still cannot resist the lure of the European champions.
Aleix Vidal is another. In early June the Sevilla right-back joined Barça despite knowing his boots would be mothballed and it would be the New Year before he could start challenging Dani Alves for a first-team berth.
Arda Turan admits it will be tough to wait until January for Barcelona debut Read more
Vidal returned to the club he represented at junior level on a five-year deal at a cost of around £16m. Turan also signed on for five seasons, his price £24m. Except. Barcelona are in state of flux.
The embargo on the winter and summer windows is complicated further by the vacuum at the top of the club. The current presidential elections mean transfers are being conducted by a “managing committee.”
This body made the peculiar decision to insert a clause into Turan’s terms that allows the new president to sell the player back to Atlético by 20 July, 48 hours after the victorious candidate takes office.
“The managing committee approves the transfer of the player and FC Barcelona reserve the right of sale back to the Madrid club until 20 July this year,” was the statement offered when announcing his arrival this week. This was not the warmest of welcomes to Catalonia for Turan.
Given what he and Vidal have agreed it seems to deepen the sense each have made a short-sighted and self-defeating choice. Turan is 28 and so at his peak. Vidal is 25 and entering the footballer’s golden years. Yet both have surrendered a precious slice of the commodity most valuable to a footballer. The stuff that once gone is gone forever: playing time.
An elite player can hope for a decade as a real force at the top of the game. To wave away six months – half a season – as Turan and Vidal have done is surely a folly (as well as unprecedented).
Except is it? Look a little closer and this is an intriguing poser for debate. The answer to which may be a no-brainer. The question is whether half a season of prime career is a fair trade – even a bargain, maybe – for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to perform alongside Lionel Messi, Neymar, Luis Suárez, Andrés Iniesta, Ivan Rakitic, Alves, Gerard Piqué, Javier Mascherano and company. There is surely only one answer. It may, in fact, be harder to find the footballer who would, could – should – say no to this.
If they did, a retirement filled with regret and self-flagellation might await. They would be stalked by the constant question of why they had failed to seize the chance to join a side that last term redefined what being the world’s best club is.
As Turan said: “Once I heard of Barça’s interest, I couldn’t sleep until when the signing was made official. I was on holiday but I called my agent every day to ask if the deal was closed. I couldn’t get Barça out of my head. Having grown accustomed to suffering against players like Messi, Suárez, Neymar, Iniesta, now I have the honour of playing alongside them. Messi is the best in the world and Iniesta is my idol. Luis Enrique called me yesterday to welcome me. It was a great gesture, I’m very happy.”
The attraction of jumping on the great Barcelona carousel is irresistible. The imperious fashion with which Messi and company dispatched Juventus, 3-1, in May’s Champions League final established them once more as the continent’s superior force, a class apart from the rest of Europe’s aristocrats.
Barça’s fourth European Cup since 2006 completed a second treble since 2009, La Liga and the Copa del Rey having already been secured by Luis Enrique’s band of celestial performers. It made the club the first in Europe to achieve the feat of Champions League, domestic league and domestic cup twice.
The way they did so, how the 2014-15 Barça played formed the view that the treble vintage of Pep Guardiola may be “inferior” to that sent out by Enrique.
The dizzying pass-and-move and balletic touch remain but this has been enhanced by a muscular, direct quality that has raised this Barça to new heights.
So 2015 is a fine year for any footballer to join, even if they cannot strut their stuff until next year. In grabbing the opportunity Turan and Vidal have signalled each do not care about the byzantine politics of the club who now own them.
“I respect all the candidates. All I’m thinking about is that Barça are my dream and, if they want me and I want them, there’s nothing to talk about,” said Turan while Vidal added: “After the birth of my daughter this is the most important day of my life. I’m back at what used to be my home.”
He and Turan merely want to play for Barcelona – even if they have to wait six months to do so.By virtue of a player vote for the role of alternate captain, Philadelphia Flyers forward Valtteri Filppula will wear the 'A' for all home games and defenseman Andrew MacDonald will wear the 'A' for all road games.
Filppula was acquired by the Flyers on Mar. 1 at last year's NHL Trade Deadline and finished his season with five goals and eight points in 20 games with the club. He recorded a total of 42 points (12g-30a) in 79 regular season games split with the Tampa Bay Lightning.
A native of Vantaa, Finland, Filppula enters his 13th season in the NHL after spending time with the Detroit Red Wings and Tampa Bay Lightning. He has recorded 157 goals and 273 assists for 430 points in 795 regular season games. He has also added 79 points (24g-55a) in 152 Stanley Cup Playoff games, which includes a Stanley Cup Championship in 2008 with Detroit.Funko Disney Villains Pop! Ursula With Cruella De Vil Vinyl Figure Set Hot Topic Exclusive is rated 4.8 out of 5 by 76.
Rated 5 out of 5 by Disney Fan At HT from Love These :) Two figures long over do and done well.
Rated 5 out of 5 by Minnie1227 from Villaintastic Loved this pop once i saw it would come out and once i had it in my hands i loved it even more. It was the perfect set since i love ursula and my daughter loves cruella
Rated 5 out of 5 by canders from Perfect Condition I was so excited for this pop vinyl and hot topic did not disappoint! They look fantastic and the box is in fabulous condition.
Rated 5 out of 5 by odeadebi from Fabulous villains I bought this a month ago and I am in so much love its the details of two f my favorite female villains from Disney. Funko Pop always surprises me with the details of their products. Hot Topic sent my ladies in a safe and secure box. Love it.Your feel good story of the day right here! With all the negativity and sad news, I was glad to read this news headline and know there are still a lot of good people in this world.
Taxes can be a very heavy burden on some people, especially those who financially struggle already. For 30 to 40 mobile home owners who owned delinquent taxes on their home were saved by an anonymous man who showed up at the Missoula County Courthouse.
Most of the mobile homes were due to go on the Missoula County auction block Wednesday morning for delinquent taxes but were bailed out by this gentleman. “A gentleman showed up at my office at 8:30 this morning and wanted to take care of it,” said Annie Cathey, the county’s delinquent tax clerk who’s in charge of the annual auction.
I guess this gentleman saw an article about the owed taxes and knew these people needed his help. He paid some $9,600 of the back taxes, interest and fees owed on between 30 to 40 homes. Homeowners had until 5 p.m. Tuesday to pay up or their mobile homes became the property of the county to auction off.
I just get a bit choked up about these things. In a world so ridden with darkness, hurt and suffering. To hear about things like this restore my faith in man kind. Everyone needs help, some more then others, So remember if you are in a position to help others whether it be financially or with your time, please do.Trabant Coffee Gets the Boot for STG Expansion in the Neptune Building
Wikimedia commons
The Neptune back in 2007, before STG took over the lease from Landmark Theatres.
Last week, some of the business owners in the University District's Neptune building—many of whom have been on that block for over a decade—reported that they were increasingly anxious about losing their leases as Seattle Theatre Group expands its real-estate footprint.
On Saturday, three days after the original post, Tatiana Becker of Trabant Coffee and Chai said she got a text from her landlord saying they'd have to be out of the building by early next year and that STG was not interested in partnering with them. (Several months ago, when Becker was trying to figure out what was going on, she says she had a conversation with STG executive director Josh LaBelle in which he asked her whether Trabant had "cocktail recipes" and seemed to express some interest in the possibility of working together to open a cafe or bar.)
Neither STG nor landlord Craig Thompson are eager to take responsibility for the decision.
The landlord, Becker says, has repeatedly told her STG had a written right of first refusal and "things like his 'hands were tied' and that he didn't want to get into legal trouble with STG so he had to offer it up to them when my lease was up." (In last week's post, STG public relations manager Antonio Hicks said the organization made a verbal, non-binding right of first refusal agreement with Thompson.)
Meanwhile, STG is trying to distance itself from the deal. "As a tenant of the building we are in no way responsible for making eviction decisions," STG's director of marketing Vivian Phillips replied by email to a Stranger reader who expressed concern about last week's post. "Somehow, the article seemed to be bent on making STG the bad guy, when in reality this is WHOLLY a decision of the landlord... So this looming bad boys of non-profit arts picture The Stranger wants to paint is interesting, but mostly a sign of extremely poor journalism and absolutely no true research." (Confidential to Phillips: Large institutions almost always respond to unflattering facts by insisting they're not true—but if you know of an actual factual error in last week's post, please let me know and I'll change it. I'm not trying to get you, I'm trying to get it right.)
And on Friday, Josh LaBelle sent a mass emails to STG staff and volunteers about the story, saying that "the many details of our tenancy and right of first refusal on additional space at The Neptune are complicated" and protesting that "STG has only worked to stimulate the economy and vitality of the University District... The Stranger article is exemplary of an attempt to make the good work we have all done and continue to do seem worthless. It is not!"
To be fair, Phillips is technically right—it is officially the landlord's decision who he rents to. But just last week, the landlord confirmed he's only booting those tenants because STG has made him an offer he won't refuse.
Each party wants the other to take the blame—but it looks like there's plenty to go around.Special-interest groups are calling for public-utility regulations to be placed on the Internet — the most innovative and society-shaping deregulatory success story of our time. These people are trying to exert control over the Internet through “net neutrality” regulations that will likely benefit only a few huge Internet companies and the top 1 percent of Internet users.
Net neutrality was developed to ensure that Internet users had the freedom to view all the legal content they wanted. Recently, however, there has been a shift in focus: Some of the largest Internet companies are citing “net neutrality” as a reason to enshrine specific privileges that largely benefit them.
If these content companies get their way — and the Federal Communications Commission is now deliberating this — Americans will be forced to shoulder the costs for the high-speed networks and infrastructure upgrades needed to support high-volume Internet traffic generators, such as Netflix.
Whether they use those services or not.
The math is simple. As a network carries more traffic, it has to grow or it will become congested. To expand a network requires significant investment and expense — tens of billions of dollars a year in the case of Internet service providers (ISPs).
These costs can be recovered in two ways: Either by charging all consumers equally or by having the large companies that use far more of the network resources pay their fair share.
In the real world it is reasonable and even expected that people pay more for a resource they use more than others. Under the guise of net neutrality, however, the large companies want everyone to pay more so that they and their users — the people consuming the bulk of the resources — do not have to.
Net neutrality advocates claim they are doing this for the good of the Internet and to protect future startups. But neither claim stands up to even the faintest scrutiny. They are both a cover for a bold-faced attempt to force the many to subsidize the powerful few.
The only way the Internet can thrive is if all parties have incentives to improve — and more efficiently use — our high-speed networks. If Internet service providers are forced to serve as mere intermediaries, carrying content for other large companies, there will be little motivation for them to invest in their networks and foster innovation. Similarly, there will be no incentive for the heavy-traffic-generating companies to develop new ways to reach their consumers.
As for the small companies and startups that the proponents of Internet regulation are allegedly trying to protect, they are the ones who benefit from the kinds of creative network arrangements now available in the absence of Internet regulations. These arrangements differentiate them from the larger, more established companies who have developed their own ways to provide faster service to their consumers built on existing service provider networks.
No startup or new-market entrant can afford to spend considerable resources on their own global networks. That’s why the arguments from the large-content providers are self-serving: They have preferred access to consumers and want to keep it that way.
Contrary to the claims from those who are now most vocal in calling for 1930s “common carrier” regulations — dating from the age of the telephone-monopoly — be placed on the modern Internet, their true aim is to ensure that a small handful of companies do not pay their share.
Though that may be a successful, if questionable, business model for them, they risk subjecting the Internet to stifling regulations that will deter the long-term investments needed to power our Internet economy.
Regulators at the FCC and those on Capitol Hill who support the large content companies should be able to recognize this masquerade — and abandon any effort to impose public utility regulations on the Internet.
PHOTO (TOP): Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler testifies before a House Energy and Commerce, Communications and Technology Subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 20, 2014. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
PHOTO (INSERT 1): The Netflix logo is shown on an iPad in Encinitas, California, April 19,2013. REUTERS/Mike Blake
PHOTO (INSERT 2): An eBay sign is seen at an office building in San Jose, California, May 28, 2014. REUTERS/Beck DiefenbachWe are entering do or die time for my campaign for Congress, and if you are interested in helping the campaign we really need to hear from you. As I have discussed in previous emails, we have created an enormous amount of buzz all over Idaho’s first congressional district, and everywhere we go we are converting voters over to our side. If we can get this message out to everyone in the district effectively, we will definitely win. So in order to do that, I am traveling all over the state holding events, and you can find out the details about three big ones coming up below. We also have our all-important FEC fundraising deadline coming up on September 30th, and if anyone out there was considering contributing to the campaign, now is definitely a key time to do so. Big conservative organizations all over the nation will be evaluating the strength of our campaign based on the numbers we report, and they will make decisions on whether to fund us or not based on how well we do. We really need your help, and if you can possibly do so, I would like to ask you to donate to the campaign today…
https://www.michaelsnyderforcongress.com/contribute.html
We also have three big campaign events coming up. The first is at Athol Baptist Church on September 18th at 7 PM. People will be coming up from Couer d’Alene and coming over from places such as Sandpoint and Bonners Ferry, and we are hoping to pack the place out. And we are also hoping to gather as many of our volunteers from all over north Idaho as possible so we can start to get organized in a major way.
Below I have reproduced the campaign email that we just sent out. This email list is the primary way that we keep everyone up to date on the campaign, and so if you would like to stay in the loop please go to https://www.michaelsnyderforcongress.com/ and sign up to get the emails. As you can see from this example, we sure do have a whole lot going on…
3. At the end of September, we must file paperwork disclosing our total contribution amount. …this is key, because everyone judges your “viability” as a candidate based on this filing. If you’re in a position to do so, please donate to our worthy cause! We are 100% funded by you! Whether it’s $1 or $1,000…it all helps! Donate To The Cause!
YOU! You can watch it here. We made a short, simple video sharing our first billboard up in the district, which is all thanks to This is just one example of what we’ve been able to do with your support. Ultimately, the Lord’s will be done! If it is His will that I go to Congress, it will happen.
In Liberty,If it’s good enough for a dog, it’s good enough for a kid, right? A school district in Texas will be watching over its students a lot more closely, but not with the aid of extra teachers. Instead each pupil will be monitored with microchips.
Officials at the Northside Independent School District in rural Bexar County, Texas have approved a plan to track the whereabouts of each and every student by requiring them to walk the halls with identification cards in their pockets that are equipped with RFID microchips.
By using Radio Frequency Identification System technology, teachers and faculty will be able to monitor the move of over 6,000 students at two select schools and every pupil with special needs throughout the district as soon as next semester. If the pilot program is a success, the district intends on expanding the tracking system to all of its 112 schools, totaling nearly 100,000 students.
Backers of the program say the move is well intentioned and will actually bring the school millions of dollars in extra funding. Ghastly attendance rates in Bexar County currently keeps the district from earning around $175,000 a day in state assistance, reports KHOU News out of San Antonio, TX. Speaking to that city’s Express-News, district spokesman Pascual Gonzalez explains that the school wants “to harness the power of (the) technology to make schools safer, know where our students are all the time in a school, and increase revenue.”
When each step of the students is being watched by administrators, the district expects to see their absentee count drop drastically. But is it worth the cost of killing the privacy of thousands?
“It’s going to give us the opportunity to track our students in the building,” Principal Wendy Reyes of Jones Middle School tells KHOU. “They may have been in the nurse’s office, or the counselor’s office, or vice principal’s office, but they were marked absent from the classroom because they weren’t sitting in the class. It will help us have a more accurate account of our attendance.”
It will also let teachers know who is in the bathroom and for how long and monitor the group habits of students. It could also become catastrophic, of course, if the very sensitive data ends up in the wrong hands. Similar programs were pitched elsewhere in recent years, but in other instances the American Civil Liberties Union stepped up to speak out; in many cases, the programs were shot down after the ACLU intervened.
“We are urging the school board to recognize the important civil liberties concerns and safety risks implicated in RFID technology,” the ACLU’s Nicole Ozer, the technology and civil Liberties policy director of their Northern California office, wrote in a statement back in 2005. “RFID badges jeopardize the safety and security of children by broadcasting identity and location information to anyone with a chip reader and subject students to demeaning tracking of their movements. We hope the school district reconsiders this serious issue.”
In that case, the ACLU was opposed to a program at Brittan Elementary School Board in Sutter, California where youngsters were being tracked with RFID chips. Even though that kind of technology has become both more advanced and commonplace in the seven years since, it doesn’t change the concerns that continue to arise.
“The monitoring of children with RFID tags is comparable to the tracking of cattle, shipment pallets, or very dangerous criminals in high-security prisons,” Cédric Laurant of EPIC told the ACLU in 2005. “Compelling children to be constantly tracked with RFID-enabled identity badges breaches their right to privacy and dignity as human beings.”
But, hey — how else is the school going to raise a few grand?
“I think this is overstepping our bounds and is inappropriate,” Northside school board trustee M’Lissa M. Chumbley tells other district officials this week. “I’m honestly uncomfortable about this.”
Kirsten Bokenkamp of the ACLU tells the San Antonio Express-News that her organization is once again alarmed by Northside’s plans to implement the program. They are expected to challenge the board’s decision this time around too.
Source:
RTSwindon's Ben Gladwin, who had a penalty saved in the first leg, scored twice in the first 10 minutes of the second leg
Swindon reached the League One play-off final after a 10-goal epic against Sheffield United ended in a draw.
The Robins were 2-0 up inside 10 minutes thanks to Ben Gladwin's brace, before Michael Smith extended the lead.
A Nathan Thompson own goal and Chris Basham's header reduced the lead and Steven Davies replied to Smith's penalty after the break.
Jon Obika looked to have settled it but late goals from Matty Done and Che Adams pulled United level on the night.
However, Swindon held on to win the tie 7-6 on aggregate - setting a new record for the highest number of goals in a play-off semi-final - and Mark Cooper's side will now take on Preston in the League One play-off final at Wembley on 24 May.
For Sheffield United, their torrid run continues, with the Blades suffering their eighth consecutive play-off defeat, while the loss also ensures they will spend a fifth successive season in League One.
Swindon - who finished fourth - will face a Preston side who ended the season with a 10-point advantage over the Robins and who sealed their place in the final on Sunday by completing a two-legged victory over Chesterfield.
Record breakers Swindon's 5-5 draw with Sheffield United broke the record for the most goals in a single play-off match. The 13 goals in the semi-final tie is also a new record, surpassing the 12 that were netted in Crewe's 9-3 aggregate win over Walsall in a fourth-tier semi-final in 1993.
Swindon reached Wembley the hard way, having looked to have secured victory on more than one occasion in an enthralling second leg.
Gladwin, who missed a penalty in the first leg four days earlier, gave Swindon a stunning start with his half-volley from 20 yards powering past Mark Howard, before he tapped home Nathan Byrne's cross at the back post for 2-0.
The Robins were three goals up inside 18 minutes, and 5-1 up in the tie, with Smith showing good tenacity to win back possession and fire in from close range.
Blades had a lifeline less than 60 seconds later when Jamie Murphy's shot deflected in off Thompson and Basham's powerful diving header from Bob Harris's cross reduced the deficit further.
Swindon had their fourth goal of the night when Jermaine Hylton was brought down in the box by goalkeeper Howard and Smith converted from the spot.
Just as the tie looked over, Davies's header from another Harris cross made it 4-3 on the night, before Swindon substitute Obika dinked home to make it 5-3.
The game was not over yet though, as first Done slotted home for 5-4 and then in the last minute Adams equalised for the visitors.
Swindon held on through seven minutes of injury time to put themselves one game away from ending a 15-year absence from the second tier, with the final whistle sparking a pitch invasion and wild celebrations.
Nigel Clough's Sheffield United have now failed in all eight of their play-off campaigns
Mark Cooper is hoping to take Swindon back into the second tier after a 15-year absence
Michael Smith netted Swindon's fourth from the penalty spot
Jon Obika's smartly taken goal ended up being Swindon's winner in the tie
Aston Villa manager Tim Sherwood was among a host of bosses in attendance at the County GroundThe UN organisation in charge of global climate change negotiations is backing the fast-growing campaign persuading investors to sell off their fossil fuel assets. It said it was lending its “moral authority” to the divestment campaign because it shared the ambition to get a strong deal to tackle global warming at a crunch UN summit in Paris in December.
“We support divestment as it sends a signal to companies, especially coal companies, that the age of ‘burn what you like, when you like’ cannot continue,” said Nick Nuttall, the spokesman for the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC).
The move is likely to be controversial as the economies of many nations at the negotiating table heavily rely on coal, oil and gas. In 2013, coal-reliant Poland hosted the UNFCCC summit and was castigated for arranging a global coal industry summit alongside. Now, the World Coal Association has criticised the UNFCCC’s decision to back divestment, saying it threatened investment in cleaner coal technologies.
Several analyses have shown that there are more fossil fuels in proven reserves than can be burned if catastrophic global warming is to be avoided, as world leaders have pledged. Divestment campaigners argue that the trillions of dollars companies continue to spend on exploration for even more fossil fuels is a danger to both the climate and investors’ capital.
“Everything we do is based on science and the science is pretty clear that we need a world with a lot less fossil fuels,” Nuttall told the Guardian. “We have lent our own moral authority as the UN to those groups or organisations who are divesting. We are saying ‘we support your aims and ambitions because they are fairly and squarely our ambition’, which is to get a good deal in Paris.”
The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, sent a related message to investors in November, saying: “Please reduce your investments in the coal- and fossil-fuel-based economy and [move] to renewable energy.” But he stopped short of backing the divestment campaign itself.
Many religious groups are among the 180 organisations that have already divested their funds from fossil fuels, as well as city authorities and universities. “We see the divestment of churches very much as a moral imperative for them,” Nuttall said. “If their goal is relieving the suffering of millions of people, then divestment is in line with how they want the world to be.”
A recent tweet from the UNFCCC said: “Divestment worked to free [South Africa] of apartheid. Now it can help free us of fossil fuels.” The tweet carried a quote and image of the archbishop Desmond Tutu, who in 2014 told the Guardian: “People of conscience need to break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change.”
UNFCCC (@UNFCCC) #Divestment worked to free SA of #apartheid. Now it can help free us of #fossilfuels http://t.co/RWEszTzWvp @350 pic.twitter.com/0yWJOAn1y8
Divestment campaigners say their aim is to bankrupt fossil fuel companies morally, not financially. “No one is saying divestment by churches and universities will shift the market in a one-to-one way,” said Nuttall. “The message now is that you can get off fossil fuels without undermining your investments. It’s a different world now. You can save the world and get a good return on your investment.”
Many senior figures and institutions in the financial world, including the World Bank, Bank of England, HSBC, Goldman Sachs and Standard and Poor’s, have warned that only a fraction of known fossil fuel reserves can be safely burned and that the remainder could plummet in value posing huge risks to investors.
Benjamin Sporton, acting chief executive of the World Coal Association, rejected the linking of divestment from fossil fuels with divestment from tobacco and apartheid South Africa. “The coal divestment campaign is not comparable to any other divestment campaign,” he said. “Active and responsible investors play a vital role in encouraging investment in cleaner coal technologies. Demand for coal is not going away.”
Sporton said the divestment campaign was a concern: “There are economic and social dimensions that mean divesting from fossil fuels – and in particular coal – comes with significant risks, not least when 1.3 billion people are still without access to electricity.” The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in November that global warming is set to inflict severe and irreversible impacts on people and that “limiting its effects is necessary to achieve sustainable development and equity, including poverty eradication”.
“Meeting the demand projected by the International Energy Agency will call for $18.5tn (£12.6bn) of cumulative investment between 2014 and 2035,” said a spokesman for the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers. “This doesn’t support an argument for divestment.” Replacing coal-fired power stations with gas can halve carbon emissions, he added.
IPIECA, the global oil and gas industry association for environmental issues and “the industry’s principal channel of communication with the UN”, declined to comment.The following story was written and provided by the History Section of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A link to a photo gallery of high quality black and white images from the Chicago Tribune taken during Martin Durkin’s trial can be found at the end of this article. These images are amazing to view and historical true crime readers won’t want to miss them. This is an incredible story of a man who shot and wounded four police officers in two separate incidents before killing Agent Ed Shanahan in Chicago in 1925.
During his trial, Durkin was noted to have the ability to charm both a wife and mistress, and keep them both at the same time. He may have been a dynamic and interesting criminal in his day, but he was also a cold blooded murderer. His story is below.
On October 11, 1925, FBI Special Agent Edwin C. Shanahan, sought to apprehend Martin James Durkin, a professional automobile thief, for violation of the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act. Durkin had a long record. He had previously shot and wounded three policemen in Chicago and also had shot and wounded a fourth police officer in California. He had already attained a reputation as a desperate gunman who would shoot to kill upon meeting the slightest interference in his activities.
Special Agent Shanahan had received confidential information to the effect that a man thought to be Durkin was due to arrive at a certain garage in Chicago with a stolen automobile that he had transported to that city from New Mexico. Special Agent Shanahan procured proper assistance and proceeded to the garage in question. After an all day wait, it appeared that the information was inaccurate and that Durkin would not come into the garage as had been expected.
While the police officers with Special Agent Shanahan had momentarily left the garage for the purpose of seeking another detail of officers to relieve them, Durkin drove in with the stolen car. Special Agent Shanahan attempted to take him into custody but, through a ruse, Durkin swept an automatic pistol from the front seat of the stolen automobile and shot Shanahan through the breast. Special Agent Shanahan was the first FBI agent to be killed in the line of duty.
As a result of this atrocious murder, all the forces of the FBI throughout the country were concentrated in an effort to effect Durkin’s capture.
A few weeks after the murder of Shanahan, information was received that Durkin and a woman with whom he had been living would appear in Chicago at the home of a relative of the woman. Police officers of the Chicago Police Department attempted to arrest Durkin when he arrived at the house late at night. In the gun fight which followed, a police officer was killed and another wounded. Durkin again escaped.
Durkin successfully evaded capture until January 20, 1926, when he was arrested near St. Louis, Missouri as the result of an alarm spread throughout the United States and a last minute chase across the continent conducted entirely by special agents of the FBI.
Martin Durkin
Durkin’s “racket” was the stealing and interstate transportation of high powered automobiles which he sold after all the numbers thereon had been changed. The cars which he was particularly fond of stealing were Pierce Arrows, Cadillacs, and Packards. His favorite system in stealing such automobiles was to present himself as a prospective buyer at dealerships which handled these expensive cars. There he would dicker for the purchase of a high priced automobile and would agree to buy the same, arranging to have the car serviced and filled with gasoline and oil, ready for delivery to him the following day. He would agree to return the following day and pay cash for the car. That night he would burglarize the garage of the dealership in question and drive the expensive car away. He would then change the motor, serial number, and all other assembly numbers by means of which the car could be identified. Next, he would procure license plates under assumed names giving fictitious addresses. He would then drive the car to another state where he would dispose of it for several thousand dollars.
Special agents of the FBI carefully notified dealerships for such expensive cars throughout the United States as to the method employed by Durkin in these thefts. On January 10, 1926, as a result of this careful and systematic covering of the entire country, a Cadillac dealership at San Diego, California, informed the Los Angeles office of the FBI that, on the night before, a new Cadillac Phaeton with brown California top, green body and green wooden wheels had been stolen from their show room under circumstances identical with the system employed by Durkin. The motor, serial, and other assembly numbers on this stolen Cadillac were procured by FBI agents. In an effort to stop this car on the theory that perhaps the thief driving it might be Martin Durkin, all roads leading from California to the eastern section of the United States were covered. This systematic covering of all highways was conducted by Bureau agents in field offices at Los Angeles; Phoenix, Arizona; Denver, Colorado; El Paso, San Antonio and Dallas, Texas; and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The transcontinental highways leading East were covered by shotgun squads day and night for almost a week to no avail. The Cadillac failed to appear.
On Sunday, January 17, 1926, a sheriff in the town of Pecos |
daily) Five Fishermen is Halifax’s most revered seafood restaurant, but likely out of reach for those with a tight budget. If you don’t mind laying down some cash, this is the place to go for a local lobster or helping of mussels.
Enjoy oysters on a budget at Oyster Happy Hour from 4:00pm-6:00pm daily.
McKelvie’s Restaurant (1680 Lower Water Street) A seafood restaurant with a (waterfront) view, McKelvie’s serves up all things seafood from the classics (fish and chips and lobster) to grilled voodoo oysters and tempura fish tacos.
Murphy’s on the Water (Cable Wharf, 1751 Lower Water Street) Murphy’s is located right on the boardwalk looking out onto the Halifax harbour. Net your own lobster and enjoy a delicious bowl of seafood chowder in this nautical themed restaurant. Murphy’s also operates various harbour tours.
Salty’s (1869 Upper Water Street, 11:30-10 daily, seasonal variation on closing time) Located in Halifax’s historic properties and right on the water, grab a seat on Salty’s patio and enjoy a large helping of fish and chips or steamed lobster.
Beer
Scotians really like their beer.
While Nova Scotia is best known as the home of Alexander Keith’s, Haligonians flock to local breweries Propeller, Garrison and the new Bridge Brewing Company for their cold ones.
Health Services
prideHealth’s mandate is to provide and advocate for safe and accessible health care services for LGBTQ people in Halifax.
Halifax Sexual Health Centre (6009 Quinpool Road, Suite 201) The Halifax Sexual Health Centre is a pro-choice, queer friendly clinic that promotes sexual and reproductive health.
We’re Here, We’re Queer
The Nova Scotia Rainbow Action Project (NSRAP) is Nova Scotia’s umbrella advocacy organization for queer and trans people. NSRAP is the voice for LGBTQ people in the media and to government and has recently focused on lobbying government to include gender identity and expression in the Nova Scotia Human Rights Act and cover Sexual Reassignment Surgery (SRS). NSRAP also hosts a rad lecture series during Halifax Pride, the Trans Day of Remembrance vigil, the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia.
The Trans Liberation League (TLL) is a recently formed ad-hoc group of grassroots activists trying to make Nova Scotia a better place for trans people. The TLL’s TRANSform Healthcare campaign, demands that the provincial government cover transgender related health services such as surgeries. Search TRANSform Health Care on Facebook.
South House Sexual and Gender Resource Centre (SoHo), formerly the Dalhousie Women’s Centre, is a student-funded, volunteer-run resource centre that seeks to address oppression within a feminist framework. SoHo is both a safe space to chill and to organize.
Saint Mary’s University has a women’s centre and both NSCAD and the University of King’s College have active feminist collectives.
Also see Venus Envy and the Dyke and Trans March listed in other sections.
Family
Youth Project (2281 Brunswick St.) The Youth Project provides services and resources and holds events for queer and trans youth under the age of 25. The YP is housed in a beautiful Victorian home in the North End and holds weekly programs (such as the Talk It Out discussion group and the Transformers support group for trans youth and the Connect the Dots support group for LBGTQ youth hosted offsite in Halifax-area public libraries). The Youth Project also holds one camp for queer youth and one for trans youth during the summer and the annual Strike Out Homophobia bowl-a-thon.
Trans Family Nova Scotia is a peer-support organization for trans and gender queer people along with family, partners and friends. Trans Family holds in person meetings and hosts the Trans Family Nova Scotia Facebook group.
Neighborhood/Community
There is no LGBT Centre in Halifax and so both the Youth Project and Venus Envy play various community centre-like roles.
Halifax does not have a gaybourhood, so North End Halifax (and a few blocks of Gottingen Street specifically) is as close as it gets.
The North End is a racially and socio-economically diverse neighbourhood that is home to many artists, hipsters and queers. Traditionally, the North End has a large black population as well as a large number of low-income people. More recently the North End has become yet another target of gentrification.
The North End is largely residential (known for its multi-coloured homes) but is also home to a variety of locally owned businesses, restaurants and bars, including Menz Bar and the Company House.
A year ago, when local gay rights activist Raymond Taavel was killed, Gottingen Street was completely covered in rainbows in remembrance.
Hair and Ink
One Block Barbershop (2010 Gottingen Street, Tues 10-6, Wed 11-7, Thurs 10-8, Fri 11-7, Sat 10-4) One Block Barbershop is the undisputed king of hipster and “alternative” haircuts in Halifax. Go here for you’re a-symmetrical do’s, undercuts, bowl-cuts, ombre dye jobs and the odd (mostly queer) dance party thrown by various groups.
Thumpers Salon (1813 Granville Street, Tues-Fri 10-8, Sat 10-5) Consistently voted the best hair salon by Coast readers, Thumpers Salon, oh-so centrally located on Granville Street, and make food available to their patrons.
Newcombe Ink (5187 Sackville Street) Many within the queer community go to Rachelle Gammon at Newcombe, located downtown off of Barrington, for their ink. It’s a tattoo parlor, so it may be redundant to say this second-story shop a very cool space, but it is.
Lydia K. Tattooist is a bit of a tattoo legend in Halifax due to her stunning portraits and eye-popping colour tattoos. After leaving Utility, Lydia opened a private tattoo studio located in North End Halifax and you can book at appointment by emailing lydia.tattoo [at] gmail.com.
Adept Tattoos (6267 Quinpool Road) Owned by one of Haifax’s favourite tattoo artists, and local lesbian, Amber Thorpe, Adept Tattoos is an award winning tattoo shop located on Quinpool Road in the West End of Halifax.
Utility (6070 Quinpool Road, Tues-Sat noon-6) Likely Halifax’s most well known tattoo parlor, this is another award winner that is located on Quinpool Road.
Reading is Sexy
Venus Envy (1598 Barrington Street, Mon-Sat 10-6, Sun 12-5) Venus Envy is a must for any queer (or anyone really) visiting Halifax. This feminist, queer friendly (and staffed) bookstore and sex shop also serves as a stand-in community centre.
Unabashedly located on one of Halifax’s main streets, Barrington, Venus Envy is stuffed with sex toys, lube, natural period products, books, magazines, gay buttons, gay magnets, gay jewelery and gay flags. VE also host a wide variety of sexy workshops facilitated by their lovely and talented staff and guest stars.
The T-shirt sported by some of the babely VE staff says it best “Venus Envy Made Me Gay.”
Bookmark (5686 Spring Garden Rd, Mon-Wed 9-5:30, Thurs-Fri 9-9, Sat 9-5) Located on Halifax’s main street, Spring Garden Road, Bookmark has a great selection of new books and a formidable gender and LGBTQ section.
Bookmark also carries the hilariously titled children’s colouring book “Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away with the Spoon” which celebrates diversity in gender and sexuality.
Atlantic News (5560 Morris Street, Mon-Sat 8-9, Sun 9-9) Atlantic News (which also serves as a corner store) has Halifax’s largest selection of magazines (and newspapers) from all over the world, including a small section for the gays.
I Will Not Make Boring Art
The Khyber Centre For The Arts (1588 Barrington Street, Tues-Fri noon-5) A non-profit artist-run centre. And as if that wasn’t cool enough they not only host exhibit and artist lectures but fundraising events and dance parties out of this historic building.
Eyelevel (2159 Gottigen Street, Hours: “Come on in if the lights are on and you see evidence of human life”) A North End non-profit artist run centre, which features contemporary Canadian artistes. Also a thrower of events including the hilarious and touching “Dear Diary” where folks read entries from their childhood/teenage diaries in front of an audience.
Anna Leonowens Gallery (NSCAD) (1891 Granville Street, Tues-Fri 11-5, Sat noon-4) Named after the school’s founder Anna Leonowens, the “I” from the King and I, this public gallery features the art of those within the NSCAD community. The openings every Monday from 5:30-7pm during the school year (get there early if you want food) feature student art.
Mount Saint Vincent University (MSVU) Art Gallery (166 Bedford Highway, Seton Academic Centre, 1st floor) This university run gallery, located a ways out on the Bedford Highway, sometimes features rad exhibits such as Activist Ink featuring art from activists and artists Emily Davidson, Dan O’Neill and Ericka Walker.
Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery (923 Robie Street, ground floor Ignatius Loyola building) The first university art gallery in Halifax features contemporary art from new and established artists. The Director/Curator of this gallery is legendary Hali-gay activist, Robin Metcalfe.
Roberts Street Social Centre (2084 Creighton Street) No longer located on Roberts Street, as the name suggests, this community gathering space aims to give Halifax-area folks access to free or affordable independent and alternative media, art and education. The centre also aims to inspire social change through their projects such as the zine library, screen-printing collective, artist residency and various rad community events.
Queer Acts Theatre Festival is an annual pre-Pride LGBT theatre festival that features performances for and by queer and trans Haligonians and their allies.
Hosted at Neptune Theatre, the OutEast Film Festival is Halifax’s annual queer film fest featuring independent LGBT film from home and around the world. OutEast also throws various pink-popcorn adorned fundraising parties including the aptly named “That’s so Gay-la”.
Neptune Theatre (1593 Argyle Street) Halifax’s main stage for all things theatrical, this 50-year-old theatre, puts on a variety of productions, which have included Legally Blonde the Musical, The Importance of Being Ernest, La Cage aux Folles and Cabaret (as well as local fare). Each show hold a pay-what-you-can night the first Tuesday of each production, for those who don’t have a season’s tickets kind of budget.
DaPoPo Theatre is an independent theatre company that focuses on alternative and sometimes political theatre.
Zuppa Theatre Co. is an imaginative Halifax-based ensemble theatre company whose performances have featured some Hali-famous queers.
Rouge Fatale and Friends Weekly Drag Show (1983 Upper Water Street, Casino Nova Scotia) Halifax’s drag darling Rouge Fatale hosts a weekly show featuring guest appearances from her glamazon army at the Casino Nova Scotia every Sunday at 7:00pm.
Diversity
Nova Scotia as a whole is still a very white (Irish, Scottish) province with substantial indigenous African Nova Scotian and Mi’kmaq (Aboriginal) populations. While the majority of Scotians speak English, there is a very proud French speaking Acadian population, mostly located in rural Nova Scotia.
Halifax is really the only locale in Nova Scotia big enough to be deemed a city (Nova Scotia is made up of small, medium and large towns, villages, communities and native reserves). The city is significantly more racially diverse than the rest of the province, but is also unfortunately very segregated (due to a long and sordid history of systemic racism, google “Africville” for one such example).
Halifax is home to a wide variety of mos, from gays in suits to queer punks, and also has a large (and active) trans population.
Safety
The media in Halifax is obsessed with talking about the city’s “crime problem”. They get almost as hysterical over it as they do about an approaching hurricane. A lot of this talk revolves around fights at the infamous Pizza Corner (where to find all of the drunk bros after the bars close on the weekend, as well as delicious pizza/donair/poutine), the Halifax Commons at night and the North End.
I try not to get wrapped up in the hype. There are violent incidents, like in any other major city, so take the usual precautions when walking anywhere at night. People (and especially queers) in Halifax are all of the friendly, so someone may offer you a drive or to walk you home. Also, Halifax is not that big, so a cab isn’t usually that expensive if that’s what you need to do to be safe.
I personally try to avoid walking down Argyle Street during a weekend night with an obvious lady-friend if I can, lest I be cat called by drunk dude bros. There are, however, lots of good places to eat, drink and listen to music on Argyle, so tourists shouldn’t discount it completely.
Cost of Living
The North Ends (in both Halifax and Dartmouth) are generally the cheapest places to rent or buy if you want to be close to the downtown. If you luck out (and have a few roomies) you can rent a room for around $300 but can also pay upwards of $900 for a one-bedroom in downtown Halifax.
Thank You For Being a Friend
Maritimers in general are known for being really friendly. I always loved coming home from Toronto because the ladies at the Tim Horton’s would call me dear and love.
Halifax is a pretty (small L) liberal city with a formidable queer and trans community. Many local businesses display the rainbow flag and there are a good many Hali-famous queers (artists, performers, business owners). Overall, Halifax is pretty homo-friendly. Like anywhere however, how nice folks are to you can depend on your skin colour, how much money you have, physical ability and gender expression and LGBTQ folks still face discrimination, harassment and occasional violence.
One of the things that makes Halifax’s queer and trans scene lovely and unique is the involvement and support of our straight and cis-gendered allies. From getting glammed up for queer dance parties (and leaving to make room for more queers we ask them to) to taking action against homophobia and transphobia, our allies are a loyal and plentiful bunch. There has even been a recent upsurge of gay straight alliances at Scotian High (and Jr. High) Schools.
Laws/Regulations Affecting Queers
Same-Sex Marriage: We have it.
Human Rights Protections for Trans Folks: Recently, both the province of Nova Scotia and Canada’s Parliament passed legislation to include gender identity and expression as prohibited grounds for discrimination.
These changes are meant to protect people who identify as transgender, gender non-conforming or intersex from discrimination and harassment in employment, housing, education and more. While the passage of both of these laws was celebrated, many queer and trans people also acknowledge that there is still much we must do to ensure that Trans and gender variant people are accepted, safe and celebrated in our communities.
Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) Coverage: As many of you South-of-the-border folks know, Canada has publicly funded health-care. This means that we can visit the Dr. or a hospital without having to open our cheque-book (although we do pay for it through progressive taxes).
It’s something we’re pretty darn proud of.
Universal healthcare isn’t entirely universal though; it doesn’t cover most dental or mental health services. Up until very recently, it also didn’t cover “gender reversal/transsexual surgery.”
Following the addition of gender identity and gender expression to the Nova Scotia Human Rights Act, queer and trans activists focused their efforts on pressuring our government to cover much needed transgender related health services, including surgeries.
After concerted pressure from community groups, trans folks and their allies (and huge backlash after the government wrote a letter to NSRAP saying they wouldn’t fund SRS) the government announced that they would fund sex reassignment surgery (SRS) on June 12, 2013. Yay! This is a huge victory for Nova Scotia’s queer and trans community and our allies. We don’t, however, know the details of the new policy, such as what and how many surgeries will be covered, and to what amount.
How the G,L, B and T Communities Get Along
While I think our per-captita queer and trans population is quite high, Halifax is still a small city in a small (mostly rural) province and so, the Hali queer and trans community is fairly tight. There are communities and cliques within the LGBTQ community (suburb gays, the Company House crew, the activists, business homos, bar stars) and all-too-familiar divides (generational and political). But we generally try to work our shit out.Carly Fiorina was ready when CNN’s Jake Tapper asked her to respond to criticism about her record at Hewlett-Packard during last week’s Republican debate.
Looking intently into the camera, Mrs. Fiorina said a prominent venture capitalist who pushed for her firing at Hewlett-Packard in 2005 had recently taken out a full-page newspaper ad saying that he had been wrong to do so and that she had been “a terrific C.E.O.”
What Mrs. Fiorina did not mention was that the ad — which cost roughly $140,000 — was paid for by the “super PAC” supporting her presidential candidacy. The same group, Carly for America, has gathered video footage of the venture capitalist, Thomas J. Perkins, praising Mrs. Fiorina, and it could be used in television or Internet ads in the weeks ahead.
The moves are part of an extensive effort by Mrs. Fiorina and her supporters to redefine her rocky business reputation and fend off attacks on her as an unfit and heartless executive. Such accusations helped doom her 2010 Senate campaign in California. Democrats called her “Carly Fail-orina,” and the incumbent, Senator Barbara Boxer, depicted her as the face of corporate greed.Time to get Inside December 8, 2011
He fogged up the glass with his breath and drew a heart with his index finger. It was harder to see his face now but I knew he was smiling as he motioned towards it and pointed at me. I shook my head, half in amusement and half in disbelief, and rolled my eyes at him. He couldn’t be real. I mean, who does that? Especially for me?
He waved from inside the car, shrugged, and drove off. I waited until he was out of sight to let my face give into the grin that was forming on it. I felt like jumping and the world felt like it was spinning and this stupid, stupid grin threatened to grow and take over all the motor functions on my face. Clenching my teeth was all I could do to stop myself from laughing or shouting. I must have looked like the Cheshire cat, all teeth with a mysterious air of satisfaction. If this is supposed to be like drug addiction then I already knew I wanted another hit.
For the first time in a long time I felt wanted instead of wanting. There were no excuses or roadblocks, only a desire to be with me and the actions that carried that out. It wasn’t a guessing game and I wasn’t the choice after all other options had been exhausted. I was the option. Uncertainty be damned. It was choice, the choice to take those uncertainties and undefined x factors and doubts and move forward anyway. It’ll never all get figured out and worrying about it was just a waste of time. What mattered was the choice and the conviction to deal with things as they came. The reason? Simply that I was wanted and worth it, and that felt strange.
The leaves had turned brown months ago and frost was forming on the branches. Even with my coat buttoned the chill somehow found its way past my defenses. My face was getting numb, both from the cold and the strain of clenching my teeth. These days it got dark earlier and the sun must have sunk while I wasn’t looking. I didn’t even realize I was shivering. It was time to get inside.
AdvertisementsThere’s just this something about Ted Nolan.
Not everyone likes it, and certainly, not every team has wanted to hire it.
But it’s there.
How else to explain what’s going on with the Buffalo Sabres, a team that was supposed to accumulate points this season exactly at the pace the Edmonton Oilers are accumulating points this season, but instead is suddenly one of the hotter NHL teams?
Randy Carlyle was accused of throwing goalie James Reimer "under the bus" last season by saying after a loss he played "just OK." Well, earlier this season, Nolan threw his entire team under the bus, calling them a "peewee" team.
He has scratched Cody Hodgson. He has mocked the manliness and toughness of big forwards Marcus Foligno and Chris Stewart.
Yet the Sabres seem to be coming together, not coming apart, getting further away from the Connor McDavid promised land every day.
This may not be what GM Tim Murray wants. He knows what’s at stake here.
But that’s the chance you take when you hire Ted Nolan.
He may or may not take you exactly where you want to go.
More Weekend Takeaways:
Slimmer is better: It was interesting to see big defenceman Nikita Zadorov score the OT winner for the Sabres on the weekend, further establishing himself as a Buffalo regular after being scratched from a prospects game in the fall and later left sitting around seemingly awaiting a return to junior hockey in October.
Zadarov eventually got his chance and made the most of it. But a big part of it was that he came to training camp at a most robust 246 pounds, too much even for his 6-foot-5 frame. Now at a more manageable 230, he’s playing like he’s here to stay.
No World Juniors for Lazar: The Ottawa Senators insist they’d help the Canadian national junior team if they could by loaning centre Curtis Lazar, but probably won’t be able to. A suspected wrist injury to centre Zack Smith on Saturday afternoon has left the Sens with just one extra forward going into action this week, and if that’s the case, they need Lazar to stay.
Ottawa has until midnight Friday to decide. Ditto for Vancouver with Bo Horvat. More and more it seems the only help the Canadian junior nats will get from the NHL will be in the form of Rangers youngster Anthony Duclair.
Itching To Get Going: Speaking of McDavid, he didn’t play for the junior nats in two games against a team of CIS all-stars on the weekend, and the earliest he’s likely to get back into game action is Dec. 21st in a pre-tournament game.
The juniors cut five players on Sunday night, the most surprising being defender Chris Bigras, who was on last year’s squad.
Americans start preparations: Team USA opens it’s junior camp tomorrow at Boston University, choosing to hold a shorter camp than Canada. Jack Eichel, of course, is expected to be on the squad, setting up a possible New Year’s Eve clash with Canada and McDavid.
One of the more interesting players on the American side is likely to be 17-year-old Auston Matthews, who grew up in Arizona and is already slotted by many to be the No. 1 pick in the 2016 NHL Draft. Some believe that if Matthews was in this year’s draft, he would contend for the No. 2 selection with Eichel behind McDavid.
Enough is enough: Dallas GM Jim Nill had some tough love for winger Ryan Garbutt after his latest suspension, this one for slew-footing Dustin Byfuglien of the Jets last week.
"He’s got to stop," said Nill.
The three-game ban was Garbutt’s third in 13 months and second this season. As a repeat offender, it’s getting more expensive for him. He got one more game for the Byfuglien incident than he otherwise would have, and because the fine component of the suspension is calculated differently for repeat offenders, it cost Garbutt $65,853.66 instead of $29,032.26.
Big winger for sale?: There’s a fair bit of interest in Chris Stewart of the Sabres, who will be an unrestricted free agent next summer and isn’t having a great season. It sounds like Calgary, Boston and Ottawa all have degrees of interest, with Buffalo’s asking price being a B level prospect and an AHL player.
The trade freeze kicks in at midnight Friday, although Calgary’s self-imposed freeze started last Friday.
Uncertainty in Vancouver: The Canucks are hanging tough in the uber-competitive Pacific Division, but are just two points out of a non-playoff position despite their strong start.
There’s chatter GM Jim Benning would like to make a move or two, possibly including shipping out veteran forwards Chris Higgins (five goals, 30 games) and Alexandre Burrows (six goals, 25 games). Neither will be easy to move. Higgins has two more years on his deal with a $2.5 million cap hit and a limited no-trade clause, while Burrows has a full no-trade clause with two years left at a $4.5 million hit.
Cap squeeze in Chicago: We know the Blackhawks had to move defenceman Nick Leddy on the eve of the season to clear up the team’s cap situation, and it’s worth wonder how long Patrick Sharp and his $5.9 million salary will fit.
After missing 14 games to injury, Sharp is back, skating as a third-line right winger after playing for years on the left wing. The emergence of Brandon Saad on Jonathon Toews’ left side has bumped Sharp down the lineup and out of position. Saad scored the winner against Calgary on Sunday night. Sharp also scored a power-play goal.
With the extensions for Toews and Patrick Kane kicking in next season when both become $10.5 million cap hits, it seems logical Sharp’s salary (he has two more years left on his deal) will be the one to go. The open question is whether he’ll make it through this season before Chicago has to make a move to free up cash.
Johnny Hockey still cooking: Calgary’s Johnny Gaudreau is almost a point-per-game player after his slow start this season, and is in hot pursuit of Nashville’s Filip Forsberg for the rookie scoring lead.
Gaudreau’s assist Sunday night gave him 23 points in 30 games, six behind Forsberg, impressive when you consider the Calgary freshman was pointless in first five games of the season. Gaudreau is also a plus-8 and has yet to be assessed a single penalty minute.
NHL in Vegas idea starting to simmer: As reported on the weekend by Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, prospective Las Vegas owner Bill Foley is using Wayne Gretzky as a consultant as he plots an expansion team for the city, a team he would like to call the Las Vegas Black Knights in honour of his own military background.
Gary Bettman insists Vegas isn’t a done deal, and the ticket drive likely to start next month is all Foley’s idea. Funny, but it sure feels like a done deal.
Truculent Enough in Calgary: There has been speculation, at least in media circles, that Brian Burke might not last beyond this season in a senior position with the Flames, preferring instead to search for an open GM job or return to broadcasting.
Not true, Burke said on the weekend while on a scouting trip for the Flames. He has another year after this season on his contract and says he loves the job. Calgary owns several other teams in addition to the Flames including the CFL’s Stampeders, and may be looking to buy another minor league franchise in the near future. Ultimately, Burke could shift into a position overseeing all those teams.
"This is my last job in hockey," he says of his current role with the Flames.
Sitting out a mainstay: New Sens coach Dave Cameron demonstrated right away on the weekend he’s not afraid of making tough choices when he sat out 36-year-old defender Chris Phillips (1,166 games) against Boston.
If Phillips can’t find a role under Cameron, he would be interesting to many teams at the trade deadline after spending his entire career in Ottawa. He has one more year on his contract at a $2.5 million cap hit.
Next captain in San Jose: It seems almost a lock that Joe Pavelski will be the next captain of the Sharks. Most suggest he’s the team’s unofficial leader, with Joe Thornton having been stripped of the role last summer.
Timing, however, is everything. It seems like Pavelski will get the "C" before the end of the season, perhaps as the Sharks prepare for the post-season, assuming they make it. A big win over Nashville on the weekend was an impressive win for a team that often loses to teams it shouldn’t lose to and then shows it can skate with the best.
Leafs soaring in December: The Maple Leafs are piling up wins, and against good teams. The team is healthy, which always helps, and players are fitting into the slots where they belong, like Richard Panik on the fourth line, for example, who now has a career-high six goals.
Korbinian Holzer is filling nicely for the injured Roman Polak, and is offering up a sense of insurance if the Leafs decide they don’t want to spend millions on Cody Franson next summer.
The Leafs host Anaheim Tuesday, then play eight of the next nine on the road. We’ll find out how real all of this is during that string of road starts.
Training teenagers: The Oilers have held rookie centre Leon Draisatl under 12 minutes the last three games, and even bumped him to left wing against Anaheim Friday night. He hasn’t scored in 14 games and is looking both lost and tired. Yet the Oilers seem determined to keep him in the NHL, won’t loan him to Germany for the world juniors and have little interest in returning him to the Prince Albert juniors.
If there’s logic at play here, it’s well hidden. Then again, this is the Oiler way. Carefully grooming top picks in junior and the minors is for other teams.
Let’s talk turkey: While his brother Marcus is taking shifts at centre in Buffalo, Nick Foligno is shooting out the lights in Columbus with 13 goals, which could make him an attractive UFA next summer.
Columbus knows that, and is anxious to start contract talks with Foligno and his agent, Pat Morris. Anaheim’s Matt Beleskey, with 14 goals, is another interesting left winger who may be headed to free agency.
The NHL in Toronto: For anyone thinking the NHL will eventually have a second team in Toronto, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly made it crystal clear one more time last week at the board of governors meeting in Boca Raton that the Maple Leafs do not hold a veto over allowing a second team in the market.
Meanwhile, in a Hockey Night in Canada sit down with George Stroumboloupolous, Leafs chairman Larry Tanenbaum talked about it being easier to work alongside Bell and Rogers as co-owners because they are "strategic" partners (interested primarily in content) while the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund was in it strictly for return on investment.About
Mile High Pakems
Introducing the exclusive Mile High Pakems. This special edition version of our redesigned Pakems shoe has been engineered with all the great features of our original Pakems footwear. For the first time, and just in time for football season, we have Pakems in orange and blue! Whether you’re headed to the tailgate, going to the game, or just hanging at home with friends, throw on your Mile High Pakems when it’s time for the big game!
Pakems founder Julie Adams alongside star Running Back Montee Ball and Pro Bowl Tight End Julius Thomas.
Check out some of our special holiday pricing and stay tuned for even more great holiday deals!
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What are Pakems?
Pakems, a Colorado-based company, is on a mission to fundamentally change what active people wear on their feet before and after their favorite activity.
Pakems are lightweight, water-resistant, packable shoes engineered to take anywhere. They feature lightweight rip-stop fabric, rubber soles for traction, and a strapped bag for packability. When packed in their bag and waist strap, Pakems weigh about 15 ounces and can be reduced to a two-inch profile. This is convenient for sport enthusiasts as well as commuters who want comfort when they’re on the go or just relaxing. Whether it’s mid-mountain for lunch, after a long day on the slopes, backpacking, camping, a busy day of travel, or even after a grueling day on the gridiron, throw on some Pakems and relax.
***Available in Child sizes 12 - 5, Women's 6 - 11, and Men's 8 - 16***
Pro Bowl Tight End Julius Thomas in our special edition Mile High Pakems logo T-Shirt (available in 1st Down and TD rewards packages).
Chillin behind the scenes at the Pakems video shoot with star Running Back Montee Ball.
How they work
Each pair of Pakems comes in a matching tote bag that has been battle tested by some of the most extreme athletes on the planet. For those exact moments when you want to get out of your uncomfortable footwear, all you have to do is slide the shoes out of the bag, slip your feet in, and adjust the elastic draw cord for a precise fit. When done wearing, simply smoosh them together and place them back in the bag for easy transport. The strap on the Pakems bag can be removed and used to loop around your ski boot buckle for a hands-free way to carry your boots!
Crazy Portable! Bring Pakems with you anywhere!
Relax in comfort with Pakems wherever you may be.
Ski boots are uncomfortable....throw on some Pakems
Pakems Extreme coming soon!
Cortina Pakems coming soon!
Marble Pakems also available. Color and Customize your own!
HOLIDAY SPECIAL!
HOLIDAY SPECIAL!It has been almost a year since The Wall Street Journal dropped a bomb of a scoop on the Android community, saying Chrome OS would be "folded into" Android. The resulting product would reportedly bring Android to laptops and desktops. According to the paper, the internal effort to merge these two OSes had been underway for "roughly two years" (now three years) with a release planned for 2017 and an "early version" to show things off in 2016. It seems like we're still on that schedule, and now Android Police claims to have details on the new operating system—and its first launch device—coming Q3 2017.
First up, we've got a host of new code names to throw at you. The hybrid OS is apparently called "Andromeda." Besides being the name of a galaxy, it's probably meant as a geeky portmanteau of "id" and "Ch" Google also has a launch device cooking for Andromeda, which is officially codenamed "Bison"—Android Police says this is the unofficial codename of "Pixel 3." "Pixel 3" is a reference to the "Chromebook Pixel" (Google's flagship laptop line for Chrome OS), but since this edition isn't running Chrome OS, you can't really call it a "Chromebook" anymore.
We've seen Android and Chrome OS slowly come together in various ways recently, with Chrome OS gaining the ability to run Android apps and Android snagging Chrome OS' dual partition update system. It's easy to see the hybrid OS reports as an overhyped version of these products, but Android Police says Andromeda is a "completely distinct effort" from what is currently public. "Andromeda is a much larger, more ambitious initiative that is being pursued via merging Chrome features into Android not vice versa" the report says. "It would be more accurate to say Bison [AKA the Pixel 3 laptop] will run Android [rather] than Chrome OS."
Android Police also has a spec list, which it says is "very much subject to change." Even still, these figures provide an idea of what Google is planning. Bison is a 12.3-inch convertible laptop, but the report isn't sure if that means a Microsoft Surface Book-style detachable screen or a Lenovo Yoga-style fold-over keyboard. Internally, according to Android Police, there will be "an Intel m3 or i5 Core processor with 32 or 128GB of storage and 8 or 16GB of RAM," and the competing specs suggest the device will come in multiple configurations. For ports and extras, there are supposedly two USB-C ports, a 3.5mm jack, a fingerprint sensor, stereo speakers, quad microphones, a backlit keyboard, and a glass trackpad. The report claims the device is 10mm thick and will support a Wacom stylus, which will be sold separately.
The supposed release date for the Pixel 3 lines up nicely with the original Wall Street Journal report: Q3 2017. Android Police says it will start at $799.
We announced the 1st version of Android 8 years ago today. I have a feeling 8 years from now we'll be talking about Oct 4, 2016. — Hiroshi Lockheimer (@lockheimer) September 24, 2016
Again, that Wall Street Journal report from a year ago promised an "early version" of the merged OS for 2016. A year is a long time, and plans might have changed, but Google's October 4 event is sounding like a good place for a sneak peek.
Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google's SVP of Android, Chrome OS, and Google Play, has been hyping up Google's upcoming event in the strongest possible terms. He says we'll be talking about Google's October 4 event eight years from now—basically promising an event of historical significance. The event promises to see the unveiling of Google's Pixel phones, and rumors indicate we'll also see the launch of Google's new hardware product line, including Google Home, a "Google Wi-Fi" router, a 4K Chromecast, and a "Daydream" VR headset.
Other than Google Home and the VR headset, these are all yearly updates to products Google currently makes (some with new brand names). That collection would not live up to the "historically significant" benchmark set by Lockheimer's tweet. Executives overhype things all the time, of course. But if you're looking for an event that would be on the same scale as the launch of Android, the launch of another new OS from Google certainly |
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